The first trial of a former Guantanamo detainee in a U.S. federal court began in New York City this week. With jury selection completed, opening arguments will begin Monday for Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani.
I went to the jury questioning and it was just another day at court, with a second terrorism trial happening next door. Outside the courthouse, there were no protests or demonstrations along the lines of what was staged by groups like Liz Cheney's Keep America Safe last December after the Obama administration announced it would try the September 11 co-conspirators in a New York federal court. In fact, Cheney and Co. were bizarrely quiet about this trial.
Human Rights First staff interviewed New Yorkers on the street in front of the courthouse while proceedings began. The overwhelming response was nonchalance, or confidence. Far from the nightmare scenarios predicted by those who oppose civilian trials for the 9/11 defendants. Watch the video released yesterday:
If you didn't already know the trial was going on, you'd never know that anything was different at all in the Southern District of New York courthouse and in the immediate vicinity. Sure, security was tight, but it always is. Observers had to pass through the usual metal detectors and check in their cell phones. It was business as usual.
In fact, although most New Yorkers don't realize it, there are now two major terrorism trials going on in the downtown Manhattan courthouse. In addition to Ghailani's, there's the case of four men charged with planting what they thought were bombs outside two Bronx synagogues, and planning to fire missiles at military planes. That trial, which hinges on the role of a government informant, has been going on for five weeks now without any safety incidents.
As this trial gets underway, you have to wonder what all the fuss was about. Civilian courts have convicted 400 terrorists since 9/11. Military commissions, 4. The trial itself has caused no disruption in lower Manhattan and is running smoothly.
I will be headed to Guantánamo later this month to witness the military commissions trial of Omar Khadr. Instead of taking the subway to the proceedings, I'll be flown down and escorted by U.S. government officials to a facility that has cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build and an additional $125 million every year to maintain. This doesn't seem to add up.
Talk about third parties in most places and folks will either snicker or rail about Ralph Nader helping to elect Bush. Talk about the Working Families Party in New York, and you get “Kingmaker.” At least that’s what the New York Post, the mouthpiece of Rupert Murdoch has to say.
The WFP is backing progressive champion Richard Aborn in the hotly contested race to replace legendary Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, who’s retiring after 35 years in office. That has the right-wing Post’s editorial page worried:
Drugs and guns are more readily available than fresh fruits and vegetables in some poor urban neighborhoods, and, if you think about it (which, sadly, most of us don't), lack of access to healthy foods hurts a community just as substance abuse and violence do.
We enlightened-or, depending on your perspective, elitist--eaters in New York's West Village clog up the aisles of Whole Foods or Trader Joe's as we dither between the "minimally treated" local apples or the organically grown ones from the Pacific Northwest. But a few miles north of our Ethicurean enclave, folks are too burdened by the obesity epidemic and a diabetes rate that's ten times higher than it is downtown to debate the merits of local versus organic. An apple a day of either kind might keep the doctor away, but it's a moot point when you live in a "food desert."
In neighborhoods from East Harlem to East LA, the statistics tell the same story; a shortage of shops and restaurants offering healthy food; a surplus of outlets selling cheap, high-calorie, low-nutrient convenience foods; and an alarmingly high rate of diabetes and obesity. Uber-capitalists crow about all our consumer choices, but where are the choices for these consumers, so ill-served that it's literally making them ill?
Everyone from activists to nutritionists to farmers to politicians is trying to tackle this fundamental problem of how to provide people with more of those fresh fruits and vegetables the USDA keeps telling us to eat but doesn't seem inclined to subsidize (unlike the corn that's coming out our ears and every other orifice, now, and going into our gas tanks, at great environmental expense.)
But bringing these underserved communities more fresh, whole foods is a half-baked plan if you don't follow through and show folks how to cook up all that gorgeous produce. That's why I was so thrilled to find out about The Go Green East Harlem Cookbook, which Jones Books is publishing today. It's a lovely little paperback packed with 68 recipes for wholesome comfort foods, it's bilingual (English on one side, Spanish on the other) and it's going to be given away for free to East Harlem residents at community events (the rest of us can buy it in bookstores or online for $17.95).
Wow, sounds like a real public service! And that's because it is. The Go Green East Harlem Cookbook was produced by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer in collaboration with the non-profit Community Fund for Manhattan, who spent $54,000 to print 8,000 copies of the cookbook.
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