ARTICLE BY LINN WASHINGTON ON MUMIA RUKING

 IMPORTANT AND POWERFUL ARTICLE BY LINN WASHINGTON
  The following article analyzing the recent decision by the Third
Circuit to deny Mumia a new trial, is written by Philadelphia
journalist and long time friend of Mumia, Linn Washington.  It is an
excellent piece, asserting straight upthat there is NO victory in
this decision as Mumia is not even granted life in prison without
parole, horrific and unacceptable as that alternative is.  The
prosecution still has the right to fight for and potentially win the
execution of Mumia.  Also, in describing all the violations of their
own precedents that the Third Circuit committed in making this
decision, based on the minority position (remember it was a 2-1
decision), he provides us, through that dissenting voice, a means for
challenging the legitimacy, if not the legality, of this whole
process.  We must publicize this information while asserting the
total unacceptability and viciousness of this decision.  Read this
article.  And let's together fight like crazy to defeat all those f
 orces tha
t are determined to silence, execute, and forever imprison our
Brother Mumia.  ONTO PHILADELPHIA ON APRIL 19;TH!!! FREE MUMIA AND
ALL OUR POLITICAL PRISONERS
  ----------------------------
  Observations and analysis of Linn Washington Jr.  on the federal
Third Circuit ruling in the Mumia Abu-Jamal case issued on March 27,
2008.  Washington, is a journalist and university professor in
Philadelphia who has written extensively about the contentious case
since Abu-Jamal's arrest in December 1981.



 OVERVIEW
  The long awaited ruling by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in
the Mumia Abu-Jamal case released on March 27, 2008 again displays
the dismaying pattern of US courts ignoring precedent to deny relief
to this death row journalist whose plight generates international
support.



 Precedent in American law means courts following previous court
rulings when determining specific legal issues.



 Precedent is the bedrock of American law.



 America law requires courts to follow precedent unless significant
evidence and/or compelling rationales necessitate changing precedent.



 This Third Circuit ruling changes precedent.  This ruling changes
precedent by applying legal procedures in a highly questionable
manner to dismiss compelling evidence of injustice against Abu-Jamal.



 The Third Circuit did uphold the elimination of Abu-Jamal's death
sentence.  This is no victory because the ruling upheld his
conviction thus condemning Abu-Jamal to life in prison.



 This ruling refused to grant Abu-Jamal a new hearing or new trial
on three compelling issues: prosecutors using racism to exclude
African Americans from the jury during Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial; the
prosecutor making improper comments to that '82 jury at the end of
the trial; and pro-prosecution bias by the '82 trial judge during a
1995 appeals hearing.



 The Third Circuit previously granted relief to persons convicted of
murder in Philadelphia after ruling that Philadelphia prosecutors had
illegally excluded African Americans from juries.



 However, in this Abu-Jamal case ruling, the court found no fault in
evidence of exclusion of African Americans from the jury in his 1982
trial.



 Curiously, the evidence of exclusion at Abu-Jamal's trial is of
equal or greater magnitude than proof of exclusion previously found
acceptable for relief by the Third Circuit.



 These previous rulings on jury discrimination formed the precedent
on that issue for the Third Circuit.



 That precedent stated it is wrong for prosecutors to discriminate
against even one black potential juror.  Additionally, that precedent
stated defendants did not have to object to jury selection
discrimination by prosecutors immediately when it occurred.



 Yet, this ruling reversed precedent on those two points of legal procedure.



 A week before this Abu-Jamal ruling, the US Supreme Court granted
relief to a death row inmate in Louisiana because of a discriminatory
jury selection process.  That Supreme Court ruling was written by a
Justice on that court who formerly served on the Third Circuit.



 That Justice, Samuel Alito, had approved relief to Philadelphia
murder defendants due to discriminatory jury selection practices by
prosecutors.  Alito, in a February 2005 Third Circuit ruling, stated
prosecutors commit a violation by removing "any black juror because"
of their race À-- a position similar to the position contained in
that recent US Supreme Court ruling he authored.



 THIRD CIRCUIT RULING
  The Third Circuit's ruling rested on a procedural finding by two
of the three judges on this appeal's court panel.  This finding
stated that lawyers for Abu-Jamal during the 1982 trial and the 1995
appeal hearing failed to follow the procedures legally required to
properly raise the issue of prosecutors improperly using racism
during the jury selection process.



 The panel's majority asserted that "Abu-Jamal has forfeited his
Batson claim by failing to make a timely objection" to improper
procedures by prosecutors referencing the US Supreme Court's 1986
Batson ruling that outlaws the exclusion of black jurors for reasons
rooted in racism.



 Philadelphia area author and investigative reporter Dave Lindorff
notes the absurdity of holding Abu-Jamal's lawyer responsible for not
strictly following procedures during the 1982 trial that the US
Supreme Court did not create until four years later in that 1986
Batson case.



 No lawyer (or judge) in the United States could predicted what
procedure the US Supreme Court would order four years in the future
observes Lindorff, author of the seminal 2003 book on the Abu-Jamal
case: "Killing TimeÁchinin"



 In reaching this conclusion against Abu-Jamal's jury discrimination
claim, that Third Circuit panel's majority created a new standard for
persons raising Batson claims in that court.



 This standard requires that a Batson violation claim must be raised
at the time of jury selection -- a contemporaneous objection.



 Interestingly, in reaching this conclusion of procedural errors by
Abu-Jamal's attorney, the panel's majority failed to note that this
lawyer at 1982 trial was unfairly thrust into the jury selection
process after that process was underway without the opportunity to do
any preparation.



 The trial judge granted the prosecutor's request to remove
Abu-Jamal from selecting his own jury, a decision without merit that
unfairly benefited the prosecutor and stripped Abu-Jamal of his right
to represent himself.  Plus, this action aggravated tensions between
Abu-Jamal and his attorney.



 Further, the panel's majority faulted an Abu-Jamal lawyer for not
properly raising the jury selection racism issue during Abu-Jamal's
first appeal in the late 1989's to the Pa Supreme Court without
acknowledging a major error committed by the lawyer who filed that
appeal.



 That attorney prepared that appeal without ever reviewing the trial
transcript.



 There is no way that attorney could have prepared a legally valid
appeal without knowing what specifically had happened at trial. 
(That appeal attorney was also suffering from what proved to be a
fatal brain tumor, a medical condition that impaired that attorney's
cognitive abilities.)



 In creating this new standard, the panel's majority makes it harder
to prove Batson violations.  Plus, this standard changes that court's
precedent on procedures needed to raise Batson claims.



 The judge who dissented from his two colleagues faulted them for
creating this new standard, a standard not ordered by the US Supreme
Court.



 "This case's newly created contemporaneous objection
ruleÁchiningoes against the grain of our prior actions, as our Court
has addressed Batson challenges on the merits without requiring that
an objection be made during jury selection in order to preserve"
future appellate review, the dissenter said.



 This judge, speaking specifically to changing precedent, said since
Third Circuit precedent did "Áchininn have a federal contemporaneous
objection ruleÁchininI see no reason why we should not afford
Abu-Jamal the courtesy of our precedents."



 Additionally, this dissenter stated that jury discrimination
practices displayed in a now infamous video-taped training session at
the Philadelphia DA's Office gave "a view of the culture" of that
office during the 1980's when Abu-Jamal was tried.



 This dissenter criticized his two colleagues for failing to make
the obvious connection between the discrimination instruction given
at the taped session and discriminatory practices used by
Philadelphia prosecutors before, during and after the 1980's.



 "Indeed, given that Abu-Jamal's trial preceded Batson, it is not
far-fetched to argue that the culture of discrimination was even
worse," the dissenter declared.



 Previously, the Third Circuit ordered new federal trial court
hearings to collect more evidence to enable full and fair
determinations on jury discrimination claims.



 The Third Circuit's ruling rejected that procedure for Abu-Jamal.



 MAJOR FLAWS IN COURT RULINGS
  This practice of creating new court standards to only apply to
Abu-Jamal was criticized in an Amnesty International report of the
Abu-Jamal case controversy released in 2001.



 AI criticized the Pa Supreme Court for altering its prior rulings
À-- precedents À-- to reach results against Abu-Jamal.



 In 1986, for example, the Pa Supreme Court overturned a
Philadelphia death sentence after ruling that a prosecutor named
Joseph McGill made improper comments to the jury during a trail
presided over by Judge Albert Sabo.



 McGill prosecuted Abu-Jamal in a 1982 trial presided over by Judge Sabo.



 Abu-Jamal's attorneys had alleged that McGill engaged in jury
selection discrimination À-- a claim documented by evidence but a
claim that the Third Circuit panel's majority rejected.  Sabo's
rulings during that 1982 trail aided this documentable discrimination.



 During Abu-Jamal's '82 trial, McGill made the same comments to the
jury that the Pa high court faulted in its 1986 ruling.  But when the
Court upheld Abu-Jamal's conviction in 1989 it refused to find any
fault with McGill making the same comments it had faulted him for in
its ruling three years before.



 Then, in 1990, the Pa Supreme Court reinstated its 1986 standard
regarding prosecutors making improper comments like McGill made.



 The Pa Supreme Court's flip-flopping on this form of prosecutorial
misconduct led Amnesty International to state in its 2001 report
that: "This contradictory series of precedents leaves the disturbing
impression that the Court invented a new standard of procedure to
apply it to one case only: that of Mumia Abu-Jamal."



 McGill's improper comments to the jury faulted by the Pa Supreme
Court in 1986 were an appeal issue before the Third Circuit Court. 
That federal court panel found no fault in McGill's comments, denying
Abu-Jamal relief he should have received if those federal appeals
judges fairly followed established law.



 The Third Circuit panel also rejected allegations that Judge Sabo
was biased during a major 1995 appeals hearing.



 Sabo's biased antics during that 1995 proceeding were so outrageous
this misconduct provoked strong, caustic criticisms from even
Philadelphia's normally anti-Abu-Jamal media.  An August 1995
editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer blasted Sabo's "injudicious
conduct" that included verbally badgering Abu-Jamal's attorneys and
even briefly jailing one of those attorneys for objecting to one of
his improper rulings.



 Scores of newspaper articles from the New York Times to the
ultra-conservativestlaw-and-order Washington Times reported on Sabo's
pro-prosecution bias at that '95 appeal hearing.



 The Pa Supreme Court curtly dismissed this widespread journalistic
criticism by contending that the "view of a handful of journalists"
did not convince that Court of Sabo's bias.



 Five of the seven Pa Supreme Court justices that upheld Abu-Jamal's
conviction in 1998 received campaign contributions from the lead
group seeking Abu-Jamal's execution, Philadelphia's police union, the
Fraternal Order of Police (FOP).  One of those '98 justices was the
ex-DA of Philadelphia who as DA fought to execute Abu-Jamal.



 The Third Circuit agreed with the Pa Supreme Court's 1998 ruling
that no evidence exists showing a "settled bias" by Sabo against
Abu-Jamal.  The Third Circuit panel made this assertion despite
noting Sabo making a series of "intemperate remarks" against
Abu-Jamal and his defense attorneys during that 1995 appeal hearing.



 In another flip-flop ruling, the Pa Supreme Court in March 1988
found that a single statement uttered by the judge during the murder
trial of a former Pa State Trooper "was extremely prejudicial" to
this Trooper who killed a woman inside a judge's office.



 Where the Pa Supreme Court granted a new trial to that killer cop
because of that judge's one improper comment, one year later the same
Court found no fault in numerous opinion laden statements Judge Sabo
made during the Abu-Jamal trial.



 Sabo rejected requests to remove himself from hearing that '95
appeal made by Abu-Jamal attorneys citing his pro-prosecution during
the 1982 trial.  News articles, editorials and commentaries all
faulted Sabo for not removing himself stating his failure recuse
himself graphically displayed unfairness in a proceeding where
fairness was desperately needed.



 Journalistic watch-dogs normally hostile to Abu-Jamal sought the
face of fairness in that '95 proceeding both to follow established
law and to quell critics claiming Sabo's unfairness against Abu-Jamal
undermined fairness.



 The federal panel's majority employed a legal procedure to sidestep
Sabo's clear and illegal bias À-- an Achilles Heel of that federal
ruling and this entire case.



 It is incredible to contend that the widely condemned Judge Sabo
who presided during most trial court proceedings in the Abu-Jamal's
case did not violate any of Abu-Jamal's rights at any time À--
despite his history of violating rights in this case and other cases.



 Judge Sabo handled 32 murder trials that ended in death sentences
before his retirement.  But 24 of those sentences in Sabo's courtroom
had been vacated for errors as of June 2007 according to the American
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).  Some of those death sentences were
reverse due to misconduct and/or mistakes by Sabo.



 Sabo had once ordered prosecutors to pursue a death penalty when
the death penalty had been ruled illegal in Pennsylvania.  Sabo's
ordering that illegal procedure led to overturning that death
sentence.



 WHAT NEXT?
  This March 2008 Third Circuit ruling leaves Abu-Jamal with few
legal options to challenge his conviction.



 Abu-Jamal can appeal the panel's ruling to the entire Third Circuit
Court hoping for that full Court to overturn the panel's ruling. 
Further, he can appeal any Third Circuit ruling to the US Supreme
Court.



 There is a slight prospect of new action in Pa state courts.



 The Third Circuit issued an order stating Abu-Jamal will receive a
life-sentence unless Philadelphia prosecutors hold a new penalty
phase hearing seeking to reinstate his death sentence within six
months.



 This mini-trial style hearing would allow Abu-Jamal to present
evidence, including new evidence of innocence that has emerged like a
flood since his first trial.



 But it is unclear if prosecutors will pursue this route that could
create evidence and procedure that could secure a new round of
federal appeals for Abu-Jamal.



 OVERLOOKED CRUX OF CASE
  Sadly, the federal judges at the trial and appellate court levels,
like judges in Pa state courts, have refused to uphold the most
fundamental issue in the contentious Abu-Jamal case: the right to a
fair trial.



 Critics of Abu-Jamal's conviction from Philadelphia's Francisville
section to France all feel he was denied a fair trial.



 Police and prosecutors blatantly engaging in misconduct to secure a
conviction destroys fair trial rights.  A trial judge openly biased
towards police and prosecutors destroys fair trial rights.  Court
applying the law in the Abu-Jamal case differently from applied in
other cases destroys equal justice rights.



 The Pa Supreme Court declared in a 1959 ruling involving a
Philadelphia murder case that every defendant is entitled "to all the
safeguards of a fair trialÁchinineven if evidence of guilt piles as
high a Mt EverestÁchinin"



 Abu-Jamal was four-years-old when the Pa Supreme Court issued that
1959 ruling against judges and prosecutors cutting-corners during a
trial.



 Abundant evidence documents that corners-cut by the prosecutor and
judge during Abu-Jamal's trial and by judges during his appeals
corrupted his rights to a fair trial and equal justice À-- rights
guaranteed by the US Constitution.



 In June 2007, state courts in Pennsylvania overturned the 200th
death penalty case since 1978 when that state reinstated executions,
the ACLU stated.



 It is incredible to contend that 200 death penalty cases contained
errors egregious enough to be vacated but not a single element in the
Abu-Jamal case warrants either a new hearing or a new trial.
  comThe End-

Oso Blanco [Byron Shane Chubbuck] update

From Oso Blanco's website http://www.osoblanco.org

- “Two Activist/Warriors Banned From USP Beaumont”
by: James Anderson (AKA) Coyote

http://www.osoblanco.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=132&It

- Red Alert: received email
This is an enquiry e-mail via http://www.osoblanco.org from:
I received a letter from James Anderson, aka, Coyote, a friend of Oso's at
Beaumont Penitentiary, dated March 24th, 2008 stating Oso has been
transferred to a prison in Coleman, Florida. His life is in danger because
the people who recently attacked Oso have alerted gang members in Coleman
about Oso's transfer. The warden, John Fox, wanted to get rid of Oso. This
is one way to do that. I have advocated for Oso to be transferred to a
prison in Oregon, but my efforts so far have not been successful.

This is his new address:

Byron Shane Chubbuck #07909-051
USP Coleman I
U.S. Penitentiary
P.O. Box 1033
Coleman, FL 33521

Jeff “Free’ Luers March 23, 2008 Prison Dispatch

It is Easter Sunday, a rather strange celebration to me, after all it’s just another stolen pagan holiday. Yet, I am celebrating the return of spring; the stirring of new beginnings, new life, new hope, another chance. Spring is like a bright, beautiful sunrise after a long night. It brings a smile to my face and joy to my heart. It is a time for planting seeds and hoping they will take root and grow.


For me it is also a time of reflection, not that I really need an excuse; I’m locked up, so I have a lot of spare time for reflection. Still, most of the campaigns and direct actions I’ve participated in almost all started in spring.
Spring isn’t just for lovers it’s for revolutionaries!

My thoughts today, however, seem more focused on the past rather than looking ahead to the future. Though I suppose in a way it is both because as I sit here and recall our past struggles and victories, I worry that someday we’ll forget them.


I fear that we will forget who we are (or rather who we were), where we came from, and why. Recently it struck me that I’m becoming old guard in this struggle, still far from being an elder but certainly not a fresh voice. The many letters I get from those under 20 confirm this and I must smile at the innocent way they have of making a 29 year old feel old.


But that’s what I’ve been thinking about today, because it was just 10 years ago when I climbed that Douglas fir called “Happy” and thus began the Fall Creek/Red Cloud Thunder campaign, which blossomed and sprouted into so much more.


I look at today’s struggle and all that is happening and I realize we’ve moved on from what we once were: A natural process of growth.
But, I wonder if as a part of that process we’ve left behind who we are? Will we so easily forget the road blockades and tree sits, the roaming street battles, the deaths of David Chain and Carlo Guiliani along with numerous others? Ten or twenty years from now what will we remember of our struggles and sacrifices or even our failures?

I look at the lessons we failed to learn from the anti-war and civil rights struggles of the 60’s and 70’s in which I am just as guilty. I look at the warriors of these struggles, many of whom are still behind bars decades later still struggling for their beliefs and freedom, still struggling against the same opponent we struggle against today. When we fail to remember our past, we fail to learn from it. We invariably make the same mistakes and fall prey to the same government tricks.


Any student of social change or any well-schooled activist, who knows a bit of history, knows resistance comes in cycles. American history is full of examples.


The problem is that each time we recreate our struggle in a new image or under a new banner we really believe it is new. We fall prey to thinking that our struggle is somehow different from all those that have come before.


Twenty years from now I don’t care if I’m remembered, at least not as an individual. But what I do care about is that out struggle is remembered and not just by us. I care that we remember why we were in the streets battling cops and capitalism. I care that we remember why we used to risk our lives sitting in trees through bad weather and long winters. I care that we remember and honor the sacrifices of those warriors who give so much of themselves to remain underground and those that gave their freedom or their lives fighting.


These people and these movements represent you and I. They represent all that we have fought and struggled for and all that we believe. They are the embodiment of our movement, our heart and soul. For beyond theory and desire they are the dream and without them we have nothing.


Struggles reinvent themselves time and again (hopefully evolving). They are infused with the energy of youth, young idealists eager to take up the cause. This energy keeps us vibrant, it keeps us alive, but it does not keep us grounded. Only our collective past can do that.


It is easy to look past the sacrifices, the personal struggles, and to let the N30s, the Redwood Summers, the Genoa’s and Vail’s fade into blurry memories of another time. After all, the world hasn’t changed. Sadly, things haven’t gotten better.


But, these are the monuments to our struggle. They are testimonials to our determination and our passion. They speak of our courage and willingness to fight back. These are our movement’s triumph, if only for a little while, because for those brief moments in time we rose above tyranny and we chose to be free, we chose to fight.


It is not that we must never forget. It is that we must always remember. The struggle did not start with us, it will not end with us; this struggle is as much yours as it is mine, as much theirs as it is ours.


Hopefully, the seeds we have planted will become tomorrow’s ancient forests. May we always look on that with the reverence and respect deserved.


Jeffrey “Free” Luers
www. freejeffluers. org

Support for Sadie and Exile Update

From:    solidaritywithsadieandexile@gmail.com
Date:    Sun, March 30, 2008

Hello All,
Thanks and praise to so many of you for your continuing moral and
financial support for Sadie and Exile. Generous donations and creative
fundraising efforts have kept them in commissary and books throughout
the winter and their spirits remain very strong. We join them in
sending deep appreciation for all the correspondence, books and funds
they have received.

As noted in an earlier message, Sadie and Exile have expressed their
desire to have a website set up.  We recognize how useful this would
be and we've appreciated the multiple offers to assist in this
process.  Their one imperative is that any website be congruent with
their philosophy and aesthetic and therefore any design work needs to
be coordinated with Exile directly. Obviously, this is an area where
they want to have agency and control at a time when so much of their
autonomy has been stripped away.  If you have web design skills and
can volunteer some of your time towards the creation of a website that
will honor these important individuals, please write as soon as
possible to Exile and express your interest in working with him:

 Nathan Block #36359-086
 FCI Lompoc
 3600 Guard Rd,
 Lompoc, CA 93436
 U.S.A.

Also, Sadie has recently requested particular images to decorate her
locker and bulletin board: owls, stags and mermaids are high on the
list, though she said as well she'd love to see trees, bark, fungi,
mushrooms and branches.

 Joyanna Zacher #36360-086
 FCI Dublin
 5701 8th St.- Camp Parks- Unit F
 Dublin, CA 94568
 U.S.A.

 Donations of any amount can be made out and sent to:

 S.S.E.
 c/o Maureen Block
 328 Slab City Rd.
 Lincolnville, ME 04849
 U.S.A.

In sadly related news, another individual has recently been caught in
the web of the "Green Scare." Briana Waters was recently found guilty
on two counts of arson related to a politically motivated action that
took place at the University of Washington in 2001. This fire has been
linked to the string of arsons that took place along the West Coast
said to be committed by members of the Earth Liberation Front. Briana
has steadfastly maintained her innocence, and was convicted primarily
by the testimony of two admitted arsonists who provided questionable
information to the government in return for drastically reduced
sentences. The judge who heard the case consistently denied defense
motions, and serious questions about the proceedings remain for many.
An appeal is likely. Briana was taken from her family (including her 3
year old daughter Kalliope) on Thursday immediately after the verdict,
due to spurious allegations that she was a "flight risk," and is
currently being held at a detention center in Seattle awaiting
sentencing. Being separated from her partner and daughter in this way
must be excruciating. We encourage you to write her when possible to
express your support for her. Please do not mention her case in any
way. A simple expression of empathy will undoubtedly be a balm for her
at this time...

Briana Waters #36432-086
FDC Seatac
Federal Detention Center
P.O. Box 13900
Seattle, WA  98198

For more information on Briana's case, please check out:
www.olycivlib.org
www.portland.indymedia.org (sear
www.cldc.org
www.supportbriana.org

Thank you and be well.

Eric McDavid's Sentencing Moved to April 10

Urgent ELP! Bulletin (30th March 2008)

Dear friends

ELP has just learnt that the American vegan activist, Eric McDavid, has had his sentencing put back again! ELP has lost count of how many times Eric's sentencing has been put back since his guilty verdict, where he was convicted of conspiring to carry out ELF actions (please note: no actions were actually carried out. He was found guilty of merely thinking about doing something illegal!)

For anyone who has ever awaited sentencing you'll know how awful this period is. Your life goes on hold. All of the hope of a not guilty verdict, you kept with you throughout the trial, has gone. Whilst awaiting your sentencing you can't do anything. After you are sentenced you have an end date. Even if its a long way away, you have an end date. But whilst awaiting sentencing there is no end date. Nothing to look forward to. You imagine the worse. As you dare not hope, for fear of disappointment. So in Eric's mind he'll be preparing himself for a 20 year sentence.....

The fact Eric's sentencing has been put back again is nothing but pure psychological torture for Eric. His morale will be at rock bottom with this news. So please please please send Eric a message of support today to help keep him strong.

Eric McDavid X-2972521 4E231A
Sacramento County Main Jail
651 "I" Street
Sacramento
CA 95814
USA

Below is a message from Eric's support campaign. Please help Eric in every way you can, but above all, please send him a letter of support.


Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2008 13:49:29 -0700
Subject: Eric's Sentencing Moved to April 10
From: sacprisonersupport@riseup.net
To:

Dear friends,

We just wanted to let everyone know that, much to our dismay, Eric's
sentencing has been pushed back yet again. Sentencing is now on calendar
for Thursday, April 10, at 9 am.

If you are able, please consider attending Eric's sentencing to show your
support for him in the courtroom. Please remember to come dressed
appropriately for court. We will continue to keep everyone updated of any
changes.

Yours,
SPS

++++++++++

Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network
BM Box 2407
London
WC1N 3XX
England
www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk

April Anarchist Birthday Brigade list

Here is the Anarchist Birthday Brigade list for April.
Please take a moment out of your time to send our
imprisoned comrades a message of support.

LA ABCF

April List

CHUCK SIMS AFRICA
AM4975 / Box 244
Grateford, PA 19426-0244
SCI Grateford
April 7, 1956

HAROLD H. THOMPSON
#93992
West Tennessee State Penitentiary
PO Box 1150
Henning, Tennessee 38041-1150April 9, 1942

ROMAINE 'CHIP' FITZGERALD
B-27527 / CSP-CENT
FC-2-110 / Box 921
Imperial, CA 92251
April 11, 1949

JANET HOLLOWAY AFRICA
OO6308 / 451 Fullerton Ave
Cambridge Springs, PA 16403-1238
April 13, 1951

MARSHAL EDDIE CONWAY
116469
MD. Correctional Training Center
18800 Roxbury Rd.
Hagerstown, MD 21746
April 23, 1946

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
AM-8335
175 Progress Drive
Waynesburg, PA 15370-8090
April 24, 1954

JANINE PHILLIPS AFRICA
OO6309 / 451 Fullerton Ave
Cambridge Springs, PA 16403-1238
April 25, 1956

Feds say they won't retry Waters in university ecoterror fire

By GENE JOHNSON

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004310657_apwstecoterrortrial1stldwritethru.html

AP Legal Affairs Writer

Federal prosecutors have agreed not to retry convicted University of Washington arsonist Briana Waters on a charge that could have sent her to prison for an automatic 30 years.

Waters was convicted this month on two counts of arson stemming from an ecoterror fire that destroyed the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture in 2001. But the jury deadlocked on three other counts, including the big one, using a destructive device during a crime of violence. That carried a mandatory minimum of 30 years in prison.

In an agreement signed Thursday, the U.S. attorney's office in Seattle said it won't hold a new trial on the deadlocked counts, and moved to dismiss those charges.

In exchange, Waters agreed that if a federal appeals court overturns her conviction, the government can refile the charges _ even if the statute of limitations has run.

Waters, a 32-year-old violin teacher from Oakland, Calif., faces five to 20 years when she's sentenced May 30. Prosecutors said she acted as a lookout for other Earth Liberation Front activists who set the fire, and obtained a rental car used in the crime.

"The jury held Ms. Waters accountable for the criminal conduct at the heart of this case: the arson of the Center for Urban Horticulture," U.S. Attorney Jeffrey C. Sullivan said in a news release. "After careful consideration, we feel the interests of justice are served by moving forward with Ms. Waters' sentencing on those counts of conviction."

One of her attorneys, Neil Fox, said he had no comment on the agreement.

The university fire was one of at least 17 fires set around the West from 1996 to 2001 by an Olympia, Wash., and Eugene, Ore., cell of the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front. The plant research center was targeted because the activists mistakenly believed scientists there were genetically engineering poplar trees. The center was rebuilt at a cost of $7 million.

A professor whose research was destroyed, Sarah Reichard, testified during the trial that the arson had devastated her, turning her from someone who backpacked alone in South America to someone who cowered in her home when a Greenpeace volunteer came to the door.

Two women who pleaded guilty testified against Waters, and rental car records suggested she obtained a vehicle used in the crime. Her lawyer, Robert Bloom, insisted during closing arguments that the women, Lacey Phillabaum and Jennifer Kolar, lied on the witness stand in an attempt to frame her and win lighter sentences.

The other two alleged participants in the UW fire were William Rodgers, who committed suicide soon after his arrest, and Justin Solondz, Waters' boyfriend at the time, who remains at large. Prosecutors said Solondz constructed the incendiary devices used in the fire in a clean room behind Waters' home in Olympia.

Angola 3 Prisoners Out of Solitary After 36 Years

Two moved out of solitary at Angola, LA Prison

by Gwen Filosa, The Times-Picayune
Thursday March 27, 2008, 9:24 AM

Free the Angola 3: http://www.angola3.org/

For the first time in almost 36 years, two state prisoners from New Orleans serving life for the 1972 murder of a guard have been moved from solitary confinement into a special dormitory created for maximum security inmates.

Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox were moved from solitary into a maximum security dormitory Monday, said Angie Norwood, assistant warden at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.

Wallace and Woodfox had been in solitary since their convictions in the death of guard Brent Miller, who was stabbed to death at a time when the prison was segregated and a Black Panther Party chapter had been formed there.

Wallace and Woodfox, who with a third inmate were known to supporters as the "Angola Three," have said their 36 years of solitary confinement at the prison amount to cruel and unusual punishment. Both are appealing their convictions. Both were serving time for armed robberies when the prison blamed them for Miller's killing.

The men's lawyers, who have recently captured national attention with the Angola Three's story, said they were taken by surprise with the move.

"They just did it," attorney Nick Trenticosta said. "It has nothing to do with what we did in the lawsuit. We've been in negotiations to settle the lawsuit. We had no knowledge or forewarning that they would be moved to a dormitory. It is a dorm created just now."

Wallace and Woodfox have sued the state over their stay in solitary confinement at Angola, where they and others are kept in single cells for 23 hours a day and only released for showers and exercise.

"This is no longer a secret," said Trenticosta, who plans to visit his clients Friday at the prison located about 2 1/2 hours from New Orleans.

Robert King, the third member of the Angola Three, had his conviction for killing another inmate overturned. He was released in 2001 after 29 years in solitary confinement. King formerly used the surname Wilkerson.

. . . . . . .

Gwen Filosa can be reached at gfilosa@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3304.

http://www.angola3.org/

Mon. April 7th-11th Avelino Gonzalez Support Week

http://www.prolibertadweb.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/avelinogcsupportletter.pdf

Monday April 7th-11th– AVELINO GONZALEZ CLAUDIO SUPPORT WEEK!!

ProLibertad is calling on all our allies and supporters to fax out our letter of support (top of the page) to end the torture and inhumane conditions Avelino is being subjected to.
Public Pressure campaigns work!! Fax out thE letter and motivate your friends to do likewise. DON'T THINK YOU CAN'T HELP AVELINO!! OUR MASS LETTER WRITING CAMPAIGNS CAN HAVE AN IMPACT!!

The idea is to fax the entire week and tie up their fax lines all week!!

Avelino González . . . A Tireless Fighter

In August of 1985, Avelino González, along with other Puerto Ricans and 2 North Americans, were accused of having participated in the planning and authorization of an operation to secure $7,117,000.00 from a Wells Fargo armored truck in Hartford, Connecticut on September 12, 1983. That operation was carried out by the then PRTP-Macheteros. They are accused of being part of the Central Committee and Political Commission of the PRTP-Macheteros. Avelino, his brother Norberto and Victor Gerena, the main person accused, could not be arrested at that time. Norberto and Victor remain underground to this day.

The charges against those arrested that year ended in a trial of a group of the accused (Carlos Ayes, Filiberto Ojeda, Juan Segarra, Norman Ramirez and Roberto Maldonado) in 1989 and finally led to a political-legal agreement in 1992 with the accused Orlando González, Hilton Fernández Diamante, Jorge A. Farinacci, Isaac Camacho, Elías Castro and Angel Días Ruiz and later led to another trial of the accused Ivone Meléndez Carrión. The legal agreement reached recognized the Macheteros as a political organization that fights for the independence of their homeland.

Avelino was born in the town of Vega Baja on October 8, 1942. Since his days as a student in the public schools of his country he established himself as a fighter for the freedom of his homeland. Upon entering the University of Puerto Rico he became a member of the Pro-Independence University Federation (Federación Universitaria Pro Independencia –FUPI), a student organization founded in 1956 that has stood out for its struggle for university reforms to improve conditions at the university for our people. Avelino became its vice-president. Avelino stood out as one of its best militants and as a person for whom no task was too small or too big to take on.

Since becoming a student he embraced socialist ideas as his own, becoming a constant student of the history of our working people and their struggles, as well as, studying the socialist ideological classics. He always stood out for his knowledge of the history of the workers’ international struggles and their revolutions.

He married in the mid-1960’s and had 4 children who today are part of the professional classes of our country. At that time he moved to New York City where he lived until the beginning of the 1970’s. He worked in Wall Street in that city while he carried out political work with the Puerto Rican community and organized part of the resistance of the revolutionary forces that were beginning to organize themselves in “the belly of the Yankee beast” and had begun to stand out by the end of the 1960’s. Avelino became part of the leadership of the Vito Marco Antonio Mission of the Movemento Pro-Independence (MPI) in New York.

Avelino returned to his homeland to integrate into the political work where he stands out as one of its most capable and disciplined leaders. At the time of the arrests in 1985 he was known for his role in the administration of the operations of the political magazine Pensamiento Crítico (Critical Thought). It is at that time that he becomes one of the Puerto Ricans most sought by the enemy and he transforms himself into the citizen José Ortega.

Upon getting to know Avelino as one of the leaders most committed with his ideas of freedom for our homeland and the program of struggle of his organization, we do not doubt that he has been in the heart of our people, struggling alongside them for their civil rights to freedom and social justice for its working classes. Many have been the trenches of struggle of this well-known leader and militant of the revolutionary struggles of our people and its movement for national liberation for the past 50 years.

Following the arrests of August 30, 1985, Avelino became part of the struggles of our people as “José Ortega”. For the past 22 years he alluded the enemy and was able to participate not only in the struggle for our peoples liberation but also as a worker and computer teacher where he realized work for the improvement of the services provided by the Department of Education of Puerto Rico.

Avelino is known for his calm tolerant manner but at the same time for his firmness in the _expression of his positions and political ideas. For him there is no room for hypocrisy when it’s time to combat ideas that he considers incorrect. His personality, his demeanor and his ideas regarding the necessity for unity in the liberation movement led him to always espouse that differences should not be a motive for divisions. He has never been heard to make mean-spirited or derogatory accusations of those he has political differences, either in his organization or toward those outside it with whom he has differences because of their political practice or strategy. He said in his first communication after his arrest, “ . . . Pandora left desperation out of her box and because of this they may chain and imprison my body, but never my spirit and my ideas”

Avelino today finds himself incarcerated in a state prison in the city of Hartford in conditions of “maximum security”. 23 hours in isolation in a jail cell, with one hour to get fresh air, with no access to his family and denied communication by telephone with his family members, his lawyers or friends. They propose to judge him, as they have his comrades in struggle, faraway from his Puerto Rican homeland.

The U.S. government must recognize Avelino’s status as a fighter for independence and a political prisoner, as he demanded in its imperial courts!

We know that Avelino is man in very good health at the time of his arrest and we hope that he remains so. Any change in his health condition will be the responsibility of his enemy jailers.

Let Us Support The Defense of Avelino!

Comité familiares y Amigos de Avelino González Claudio

Friends and Family of Avelino González Claudio

apartado postal #22282

San Juan. P.R.00931-2282

avelinogonzalezclaudio@yahoo.com

Recent letters in EW in support of Jeff "Free" Luers

http://eugeneweekly.com/2008/03/20/letters.html

JUSTICE FOR PEDOPHILES?

On Feb. 14, 2007, Jeff Luers received a long overdue Valentine when the Oregon Court of Appeals overturned the prison sentence of almost 23 years imposed on him in 2001 by Judge Lyle Velure. Recently Judge Jack Billings reduced Velure's disproportionately harsh, politically motivated, and illegal sentence to 10 years.

Just a few days after Judge Billing's ruling, lawyers for the Archdiocese of Portland forced a return to federal court for the victims of pedophile priests in the 175 cases settled last year. They refused to release documents currently kept secret under seal in the bankruptcy court file — even though Archbishop John Vlazny had promised openness regarding how much church leaders knew about the abuses and subsequent cover-ups. "Getting the secrets out," said abuse-victim attorney Kelly Clark, "was a big part of what my clients wanted." The Archdiocese also insisted that victims who file new lawsuits be identified by name in court proceedings, despite the time-honored practice of using only victims' initials to safeguard them in child sex abuse lawsuits.

Here's the kicker: Judge Velure, now retired, will mediate the question of which, if any, documents are released. If the two sides do not agree, U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan will settle the matter through binding arbitration. Velure and Hogan worked together to protect the financial interests and the secrecy of the Archdiocese in negotiating the original settlement.

How convenient for the Portland Archdiocese. Let's hope that the sexual abuse victims of pedophile priests receive more justice than Jeff Luers did. Don't, however, hold your breath.

Jerome Garger, Yachats

http://eugeneweekly.com/2008/03/06/letters.html

AN HONORABLE MAN

On Feb. 28, environmental activist Jeff Luers' 22 years and 8 month sentence was reduced to 10 years. Mr. Luers was resentenced to 90 months for an admitted June 16, 2000, arson that caused $50,000 of reparable damage to three trucks, and to 30 months for an alleged, but denied, May 27, 2000, attempted arson that caused $0 in damage.

If Lane County Assistant DA Hasselman had decided that Luers could serve the 90 months for the admitted Romania fire and the 30 months for the Tyree non-starter concurrently, he would have been free to leave the courtroom with the rest of us at 9:30 am because he has been incarcerated since his June 16, 2000, arrest, 92 months ago.

But Hasselman argued that Jeff should serve the 90 and 30 month sentences consecutively. Judge Billings agreed, even though he described Luers' statement as the most impressive he'd heard in 35 years as a lawyer, compared him to a returning war hero and heaped praise on Luers' male lawyers, Hugh Duvall and Jesse Barton. Judge Billings did note Luers' female lawyer, Lauren Regan.

As a resident of Lane County, I am disgusted that Luers did not walk out a free man on Feb. 28. It is not surprising that Luers was the most thoughtful defendant Judge Billings has encountered in 35 years — Luers was the most thoughtful and honorable man in the courtroom on Thursday.

Deborah Frisch, Eugene

Marie Mason released/preparing for trial

From:    freemarie@riseup.net
Date:    Thu, March 27, 2008

We are happy to report that despite a mind numbing amount of red tape and
drama from the probation dept. and the associated electronic tether, Marie
was released from jail Tuesday. She is under house arrest at a relative's
house and only able to go outside with permission 2 hours a week. She also
needs special permission to go see her lawyer because his office falls
outside the western district. There is a tentative trial-date set for May
27, 2008, but we have been informed by counsel that this date will almost
certailnly be pushed back as there has not been adequate time to prepare
the case.

Marie is under strict rules from the court as to who she can be in contact
with. Because of this we are encouraging anyone who wishes to be in
contact with her EMAIL your contact info to freemarie@riseup.net and we
will pass it along.

In a recent phone call she wanted to express gratitude for all the letters
of support and offers of help saying "Please let everyone know how much I
love them and how thankful I am for all the support. When I was locked up
I was basically cut off from the world and had no idea what was going on
outside. The letters were especially helpful shining light during those
dark times."

We are grateful to all who have donated to Marie's legal defense fund. If
you havent already we would like to encourage you to support Marie. We are
also happy to announce that the magazine Fifth Estate is matching
donations dollar for dollar up to $1000.  In order for Fifth Estate to
match your donation, it must be sent through their mailing address.
Please send cash, check, or money order made out to the Fifth Estate at
POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220.  This matching offer is only good through
April 15.  Please give generously, we need your help.

Also, the General Defense Committee of the Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW) has issued a $10 assessment stamp for members, the proceeds of which
will go to Marie and the other non-cooperating defendants. Additionally,
any individuals who choose to join the GDC in March, April, or May can
choose to have their entire one-year membership fee ($25 donated to the
support of Marie and the other non-cooperating defendants. We are
encouraging individuals to join and specifically choose to have their
membership fees donated to this support effort. You do not need to be a
member of the IWW to join the GDC. For more information on the GDC and how
to join, look to http://www.iww.org/en/projects/gdc

thank you all again for your support.

Got Your Back
Friends of Marie Mason
P.O. Box 19065
Cincinnati, OH 45219
freemarie@riseup.net
Listserv freemarie-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

Urgent Update from supporters of Marie Mason

From:    freemarie@riseup.net
Date:    Thu, March 27, 2008

Breaking information:  It has come to our attention that the F.B.I. are
actively attempting to contact people involved in support work for these
defendants.  We would like to remind everyone that they are under no
obligation whatsoever to speak with law enforcement under any
circumstances without an attorney present.  Additionally, if you do choose
to speak to law enforcement, and are found later to have been untruthful
in any way, this constitutes basis for criminal prosecution.

The National Lawyers Guild has established a hotline, 888-NLG-ECOL, for
individuals arrested or subpoenaed for offenses related to environmental
or animal activism.  Please feel free to call them if you are contacted by
law enforcement and would like to consult with an attorney on these
matters.

Got Your Back
Friends of Marie Mason
P.O. Box 19065
Cincinnati, OH 45219
freemarie@riseup.net
Listserv freemarie-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

American Youth accused of Anti-Sprawl Arson

Urgent ELP! Bulletin (27th of March 2008)

Dear friends

An American 17 year old youth, Michael Sykes, has been arrested accused of setting fire to two newly constructed houses. The cops have told the media that Michael has admitted the arson attack saying he did it in protest against urban sprawl. The cops also state he has admitted to torching a supermarket and a string of vandalisms, including damaging an 80-foot utility pole, painting an anarchist symbol and burning the American flag.

Despite the cops claim that Michael has admitted these offences he has pleaded not guilty in court and has been remanded into custody.

Please send letters of support to:

Michael W. Sykes
100 East 2nd St
Monroe
Michigan 48161
USA

Below is a mainstream media article about Michael:


Article published Thursday, March 27, 2008 - www.toldeoblade.com


Acused Arsonist May Get Plea Deal

MONROE - A plea bargain could be in the works to resolve criminal charges
against the Lambertville teenager accused of setting fires that caused
more than $500,000 damage to unfinished homes in Bedford Township, his
attorney said in court yesterday.

Michael W. Sykes, 17, of 7472 Canterbury Drive, appeared in Monroe County
District Court for a pretrial hearing on arson and home invasion charges
stemming from a March 14 fire that destroyed a house being built on
Brentridge Lane.

At the request of the youth's attorney, Judge Mark Braunlich waived a
preliminary exam scheduled for Monday.

The defense attorney, Andrew Peth, told Judge Braunlich that a preliminary
exam may not be necessary because he was in discussions with prosecutors
about a possible resolution that would avoid the case going to trial.
Judge Braunlich scheduled a pretrial hearing for April 9.

Investigators said the teenager confessed to the arson fire at the
unfinished home on Brentridge and admitted setting fire two days earlier
to a nearby condominium on Fountain Circle in a subdivision off Douglas
Road.

He was arrested March 16 when he attempted to siphon gasoline from the
vehicle of an undercover Monroe County sheriff's deputy, who was among
nearly a dozen officers working in a stakeout to catch the arsonist
responsible for the fires.

According to detectives, the Sykes youth, who is being held in the county
jail in lieu of a $1 million bond, admitted to setting the arson fires
because of his dislike for the development of new homes in the Toledo
suburb and the cutting of trees to build houses.

Assistant Prosecutor Michael Roehrig said later in an interview outside
the courtroom that discussions have been held with the teenager's attorney
to reach a possible resolution.

"But nothing has been reached at this date," he added.

In addition to arson fires that destroyed the homes, authorities said the
teenager confessed to setting earlier fires in the condo in Crystal Water
Villas and attempting to chop down an 80-foot utility pole along Sterns
Road on March 14.

The teenager also confessed to stealing an American flag from a residence
near Sterns and painting the anarchist symbol - the letter "A" inside a
circle - on it.

Mr. Roehrig said the investigation into the incidents was being reviewed
to determine possible charges, but a decision had not been made.

Sheriff's Detective Tom Redmond said the teenager also admitted to
committing arson fires when he was 15, including the January, 2006, blaze
behind the Kroger store at Sterns and Secor roads in Lambertville that
destroyed a semi trailer and filled the store with smoke.

The teenager's parents attended the court hearing. They talked privately
to their son as deputies were escorting him from the courtroom, where he
was to be taken back to the jail.

Contact Mark Reiter at:
markreiter@theblade.com
or 734-241-3610.

+++++++++++

Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network
BM Box 2407
London
WC1N 3XX
England
www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk

Upping the Anti for our Political Prisoners: Global Lessons for US activists

http://mywordismyweapon.blogspot.com/

by Kristin Bricker

Ask anyone who isn't from the United States to name the top five strategic and political miscalculations of the US left, and they're bound to include abandonment of political prisoners on the list. A popular Mexican protest chant explains why this
is such a grave error: “We're not all here! Our political prisoners are missing!” In order to build an effective movement in the United States, everyone who believes in justice and democracy has to struggle together, and this includes political prisoners. As long as activists allow political prisoners to languish in prison cells, those on the outside can't be truly free. Our tactics and strategies are constricted by the very real fear that when we're thrown in jail we're going to be forgotten by the movement, left alone to carry out our sentences in full. Or, as the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca's exiled Dr. Bertha Muñoz puts it, we'll be “buried alive.”

Vibrant struggles for political prisoners' freedom exist all over the world. Since the 2006 police riot in San Salvador Atenco that resulted in 207 arrests, Mexico has seen a revitalization of its political prisoner support movement.

The latest of a series of actions, cultural events, and meetings in support of Mexican political prisoners, the Forum for Freedom of the Country's Political Prisoners of Conscience, took place in Oaxaca City, Mexico, from March 14-16, 2008. It brought together former and current political prisoners, exiled activists, and supporters from Oaxaca, Chiapas, Tabasco, Mexico City, and San Salvador Atenco. They came together to articulate and coordinate the movement to demand the release of all political prisoners in the country.

The forum consisted of one and a half days of a plantón (protest camp) and a more intimate hours-long meeting to create a plan of action for a nation-wide struggle to free political prisoners. The weekend ended with a march demanding unconditional release of all political prisoners through Oaxaca City to the military base/prison where Oaxacan political prisoners are held.

Mexico has a rich history of struggle for the release of prisoners of conscience and the presentation of disappeared persons alive. During the Dirty War in 1969-1988, for example, Mexico had 788 documented cases of disappeared persons. This large number of compañeros who were missing or imprisoned instead of organizing in the streets had a negative impact on the movement. In response, collectives and organizations organized to demand the unconditional freedom of all of their political prisoners, forcing the federal government to pass an amnesty law in 1978. Many amnesty laws also exist at the state level.

These amnesty laws are always completely insufficient because most political prisoners are not imprisoned for sedition or rebellion, but rather invented charges of drug possession, kidnapping, or murder. This meant the grand majority of political prisoners are not released under the terms of amnesty. Even more politically problematic, “amnesty” has its roots in the Greek word for “forgetting,” and amnesty laws all over the world have honored the true meaning of the word: in order to receive amnesty, political prisoners must forget about the injustices they have suffered and never seek reparations or punishment for those responsible for their imprisonment. In other words, amnesty does not equal justice. However, Mexican activists forced a painfully corrupt, brutal one-party dictatorship to pass an amnesty law, tacitly admitting that it did in fact have so many political prisoners that it merited a special law to free them rather than handling their cases one-by-one. This is an incredible testament to the power and possibilities of a sustained prisoner solidarity movement.

They're all political prisoners

In order to create a viable movement in the United States for political prisoners' freedom, its important to define the term “political prisoner.” Whether or not it's explicitly stated, there is a prevailing opinion among the US left that some political prisoners are more worthy of solidarity and struggle than others. For example, Mumia Abu-Jamal maintains his innocence in a Philadelphia police officer's death, so he is imprisoned on purely political grounds and merits marches and civil disobedience for his freedom. Environmental activist Daniel McGowan, on the other hand, admitted that he committed a crime: arson. His support committee consists mainly of his friends and family, and there aren't “Millions for McGowan” marches demanding his freedom.

In addition to activists who were railroaded through the courts as result of their lawful political activity, those who commit crimes as part of the struggle are also political prisoners. As Atenco political prisoner Pedro Rivero puts it, “The ruling class' laws don't respect us, so why should we respect their laws?” So-called “eco-terrorists” break the law because they're doing what they think will best help protect us and future generations. Whether or not their actions make a difference, and whether or not we believe what they did was the most effective tactic, they did it for us and our children. For that reason, Rivero says of Mexican prisoners who have indeed broken the law, “We demand their freedom. Give us a list of your political prisoners [in the United States] and we'll demand their freedom, too.”

Changing the rules of the game

Like many struggles in the United States, activists allow the government to restrict, weaken, and distract political prisoner freedom movements with laws that define the terms of struggle. As long as the movement continues to play by the government's rules when it comes to political prisoners, relying on the state's courts and judges to carry out its version of justice, activists will always lose. Arrested activists can't avoid the court system, but we can't allow it to dictate our struggle for our prisoners' freedom, either. Political prisoners and allies go through the court system to expose its contradictions and injustices, but not to win their freedom. The key to beating the system, Pedro Rivero argues, is to make political prisoners “uncomfortable” for the government—too uncomfortable for it to continue to deny our compañeros their freedom.

Anarchists in Ireland have had amazing success in this endeavor. Since 2000, activists from all over Ireland have come together in Rossport for a protest camp to oppose a Shell gas project that residents say would harm their environment and way of life. Five activists were arrested for their involvement in this stunningly successful camp. Anarchists from the Workers Solidarity Movement mobilized in their defense, planning protests and marches, covering buildings with “Free the Rossport 5” graffiti, and blockading Shell Oil buildings and work sites. Activists in other countries protested at Irish embassies and consulates. Importantly, their protests always demanded the Rossport 5's freedom and termination of the Shell gas project, and protests to free the Rossport 5 more often than not targeted Shell holdings even though the Irish government imprisoned the five activists. Activists used the Rossport 5 in their protests against Shell to raise awareness and righteous anger against the gas project. It became unbearably embarrassing to continue to hold the Rossport 5 as prisoners, so after 94 days in jail they were released at Shell's request. Irish anarchists discovered at future protests against immigrant deportations that the police were under orders to not arrest any activists participating in the blockades, presumably to avoid further embarrassment over Ireland's lack of democracy and political liberties. Despite street skirmishes between anarchists and police at deportation sites, there were no arrests during the blockades.

In addition to taking the state off the offensive and putting it on the defensive, making political prisoners unbearably uncomfortable gives the movement a viable option for working outside of the government's legal system. It offers hope for jailed activists like Leonard Peltier who have exhausted all legal options. These prisoners are effectively abandoned by the movement under the false assumption that there is nothing more that can be done to win their freedom. But Pedro Rivero argues that, “To say to a political prisoner, 'Well, I was there with you during your trial and we did everything we could, but we lost and now it's over,' is to abandon those who selflessly fought for us.” The fact is that the government's laws were never meant to provide a “fair trial” for political prisoners. They were written to imprison them and repress movements for genuine justice, something that Peltier and indigenous peoples all over the world understand all too well.

A national plan of action to free all political prisoners

Because the US lacks a culture of formalized, organized, consistent support for political prisoners and a struggle to free them, we have to start from where we are, and that means starting small. Rivero argues that the first step is to create a list of all the country's political prisoners and make them part of our organizations' work. After all, prisoners don't cease to be an active part of the struggle once they are jailed. On the contrary—as Irish anarchists have demonstrated—they become symbols of the injustices we fight against. In our struggle to free our political prisoners, we must also raise the flag of the causes they fought for before their arrests.

It's necessary to cultivate a movement within movements to free our political prisoners as we continue to demand justice for the causes they fought for. In other words, the anti-war movement needs to organize to end the war, but at the same time it needs to demand the freedom of its many political prisoners. Just like the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) leaves honorary seats in their assemblies for their political prisoners and the Zapatistas invite disappeared persons to participate in their encuentros, our political prisoners are still a part of our struggle.

To say that political prisoners are always a part of the struggle means that we can't stop struggling until they are free. If the government knows that activists will stage an annual protest or only protest outside court hearings, then it knows it can wait us out, and our prisoners will never be free. Mariana de las Selvas Gomez, a political prisoner of the Atenco uprising, emphasizes that it was through the endless efforts of activists on the outside that she was finally freed after two years of imprisonment. “Despite the disappearances, the assassinations, the arrests...the struggle continued. The daily plantón and the protests to free the remaining sixteen Atenco political prisoners will continue as long as they're imprisoned.” And the Mexican government knows this.

Organizing within social justice movements for political prisoners' freedom goes beyond liberating prisoners and making movements whole again. It also presents an opportunity to radicalize and mobilize more legally compliant parts of the movement who still believe that justice is possible within the law. As Dan Berger points out in “Building a Political Prisoner Support Movement” in the June 2006 Left Turn, “Working to free political prisoners goes hand in hand with exposing the façade that the US is a country where injustice is minimal and solved through electoral politics: one point necessitates the other.” For this reason, we must work to free all political prisoners in the US: not just anarchist prisoners, not just people imprisoned against their will, but also people who having knowingly handed themselves over to the police or military in acts of civil disobedience and fully comply with the US legal system, such as SOA Watch or Catholic Worker activists. It presents an opportunity to demonstrate that the law won't liberate us; it will just repress us and our movements, so we must find another way to achieve our political goals and freedom for our political prisoners.

To fight the law and win without being constricted by the law, we must assure that no one, not activists, not the public, and certainly not the government, forgets that political prisoners exist and languish in our country's prisons. We have an unlimited supply of tactics at our disposal: dances, concerts, marches, movie screenings, protests, encampments, rallies, denouncements, declarations, forums, conferences, book discussions, graffiti, art and photography exhibitions, visits to political prisoners, street blockades... the possibilities are endless. Political prisoners of the Atenco uprising, for example, recently made prominent headlines in Mexico's nationally distributed newspaper La Jornada through the largest music festival ever held in San Salvador Atenco. Thousands of young people turned out for a ska concert with nationally-known bands like Antidoping to demand the release of Atenco's political prisoners.

Luckily, US activists don't have to start from scratch in the struggle to free our political prisoners. Pedro Rivera notes, “We've seen that there are already actions for political prisoners in your country, both for your political prisoners and for ours. These actions just need to be more formalized” and part of a long-term struggle to realistically demand the impossible: immediate and unconditional freedom for all of our political prisoners.

Court of Appeals Ordered New Sentencing Hearing, but Upheld Conviction

By KATHY MATHESON, Associated Press Writer
March 27, 2008

PHILADELPHIA - A federal appeals court on Thursday
said former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal cannot be
executed for murdering a Philadelphia police officer
without a new penalty hearing.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld
Abu-Jamal's conviction, but said he should get a new
sentencing hearing because of flawed jury
instructions. If prosecutors don't want to give him a
new death penalty hearing, Abu-Jamal would be
sentenced automatically to life in prison.

Prosecutors are weighing their options, Assistant
District Attorney Hugh Burns Jr. said Thursday.

Abu-Jamal's lead attorney, Robert R. Bryan, said he
was glad the court did not uphold the death sentence,
and said he wants a new trial.

"I've never seen a case as permeated and riddled with
racism as this one," Bryan said Thursday. "I want a
new trial and I want him free. His conviction was a
travesty of justice."

Abu-Jamal, 53, once a radio reporter, has attracted a
legion of artists and activists to his cause in a
quarter-century on death row. A Philadelphia jury
convicted him in 1982 of killing Officer Daniel
Faulkner, 25, after the patrolman pulled over
Abu-Jamal's brother in an overnight traffic stop.

He had appealed, arguing that racism by the judge and
prosecutors corrupted his conviction at the hands of a
mostly white jury. Prosecutors, meanwhile, had
appealed a federal judge's 2001 decision to grant
Abu-Jamal a new sentencing hearing because of the jury
instructions.

Hundreds of people protested outside the federal
building in Philadelphia where arguments were heard in
May and an overflow crowd — including legal scholars,
students, lawyers, the policeman's widow and
Abu-Jamal's brother — filled the courtroom.
Abu-Jamal's writings and taped speeches on the justice
system have made him a popular figure among activists
who believe he was the victim of racism. Abu-Jamal is
black; Faulkner was white.

The flaw in the jury instructions related to whether
jurors understood how to weigh mitigating
circumstances that might keep Abu-Jamal off death row.
Under the law, jurors did not have to unanimously
agree on a mitigating circumstance.

"The jury instructions and the verdict form created a
reasonable likelihood that the jury believed it was
precluded from finding a mitigating circumstance that
had not been unanimously agreed upon," the appeals
court wrote.

Arguments before the 3rd Circuit focused on several
constitutional issues, including whether prosecutors
improperly eliminated black jurors.

Ten whites and two blacks served on the jury.
Prosecutors struck 10 blacks and five whites from the
pool, while accepting four blacks and 20 whites,
according to Bryan, who argued that prosecutors of the
day fostered "a culture of discrimination."

Burns argued in court that Abu-Jamal was raising
issues on appeal that he had not raised during a
lengthy 1995 review of the case.

The officer's widow, Maureen Faulkner, has kept her
husband's memory alive over the years, and recently
co-wrote a book about the case. The book, "Murdered by
Mumia: A Life Sentence of Loss, Pain and Injustice,"
written with radio talk-show host Michael Smerconish,
came out in December.

Solidarity is a weapon

On Saturday the 9th of February, Natalja was arrested during a demonstration
in München, Germany against the NATO 'security' conference that is held
there every year in February. She's accused of having violently resisted
police measures. A judge decided that she was to be taken to the prison of
München. Natalja had been previously arrested during the G8 summit in
Germany last summer and got convicted to 10 months imprisonment. She also
has a third trial hanging after that she was arrested on the demo on the
first of May last year. It is likely that she will have to spend some time
in prison. During one month, she has not had any visit. On the 30th of
April, her trial will take place in München.

We publish parts of a letter she recently wrote from prison.

I went to Munich (the 'capital' of the state of Bavaria in southern Germany
– known for the traditional 'Oktoberfest'…) to join the protest against the
Nato war conference (officially called Security Conference) which takes
place in Munich every year in February. It is a meeting of political
leaders, military representatives and members of the arms lobby, who all
follow the invitation of the Quandt foundation. The Quandt family is main
shareholder of the BMW Corporation, a company producing cars but also
military equipment like vehicles and arms. (The roots of their wealth and
influence were in chemical industry – including the exploitation of
prisoners of a concentration camp during World War II.)

In spite of the 'private'/'commercial' background of the conference the men
and women 'of honour' meeting there have the status of official guests of
the federal Republic of Germany. The German army (Bundeswehr) is responsible
for the location…

[…]

First of all I have to say that I feel ashamed of my own damned passive
behaviour: I am confronted with an artificial environment constructed to
control people and forcing them to adapt to a way of life that seems to be
frozen. Prison is a complex structure of intimidation, emptiness,
humiliation and pressure.

I learn about the personal situation and the problems of the other inmates
and get a feeling of the tragedies of the so called 'illegal immigrants', a
feeling for what it means to wait for your deportation behind bars, which is
what many women in here do, waiting for their deportation being isolated and
helpless…

So this is my situation. – And my reaction? I don't react. I don't act. I
just am – and remain myself. But the only thing I do is waiting for the time
to pass and trying not to let things come too close.

For me imprisonment began with a kind of shock that is slowly disappearing.
It is replaced by a state of permanent distress, which is, however, rather
in the background and is covered with a thick layer of tiredness, boredom
and exhaustion.

At the moment I'm in a cell in the 3rd floor and I've got the cell to
myself. I'm glad about that. Being alone for 22 hours a day is a real
problem. – But not having any time for myself, not being able to spend even
5 minutes on my own within months would be an even bigger problem for me.

The day begins at 6 o'clock in the morning (at 7 o'clock in the weekend).
Then the guards switch on the light. (There is no electricity inside the
cells). The door remains shut, but we get hot water or 'coffee' through an
opening in the door, which is closed afterwards. At quarter to eight the
door is unlocked and the prisoners get clean underwear. We have to give back
the worn underwear at first…So we have to wear a bathrobe for this
procedure.

Between quarter to ten and quarter to eleven we may spend one hour in open
air. The yard is in the centre of the prison so that we can only see walls
and bars and 'a piece of sky' and some green grass and one nice tree.
Unfortunately we have to walk in the shadow all the time because the
sunlight doesn't find a way down into the yard. I think it's a little bit
like a cave.

At around 11 o'clock everybody gets their lunch. I always wait impatiently
until quarter past three in the afternoon because then the door is opened
again – and remains open for one hour: you can go 'next door' and 'visit'
your 'neighbours'. You have time to empty your waste-basket or ask for
further toilet paper…

Prisoners can't organise anything on their own. So if there is something
that needs to be organised or if they have an important request, they have
to fill in a special form. – Of course they have to ask for the form
first…In our case this hour when the cells are open is usually the only
occasion to do that.

Before our doors are locked again after sixty minutes we get herb tea and
food for both supper and breakfast next morning. At 10 o'clock in the
evening the night begins and the guards switch off the light.

We get a shower three times a week, which offers another chance for small
talk because we have to queue up in front of the room where the showers are.
(On Saturday and Sundays the structure of the day is a little different from
the one during the rest of the week.)

The rather abstract and formal description is superficial of course, but
maybe it gives an impression…

It's hard to say something about social life in here in general. The
'community' of the imprisoned women is full of contrasts and contradictions
and each one of the inmates may probably experience the social structure her
way – depending on her individual situation and point of view.

There is a kind of strong solidarity amongst the women as well as mobbing.
There are tactical alliances as well as real friendship.

Everybody is lonely in some way. Nearly all women hide most of their
feelings – and long for being understood. There is a lot of social pressure
to pretend you are strong and to keep emotions for yourself; no one wants to
be reminded of her own deep sadness and her own worries (e.g. about her
children who are now separated from their mother). But all this does NOT
mean staying in distance from one another. The women do give each other a
lot of warmth, sympathy, compassion and encouragement. Well, just like
outside the prison walls material needs and hierarchy based on different
'wealth' is an important factor.

And last but not least everybody longs for any interesting thing, any news
or any person that promises to be a splash of colour in the grey of
day-to-day life behind bars.

[…]
To write to Natalja:

Justizvollzuganstalt München
Frauenanstalt
Natalja Liebich
Am Neudeck 10
81541 München
Germany
--
for anarchy!

Is Briana Waters a terrorist?

In an alarming case, U.S. attorneys exploited post-9/11 counterterrorism laws to pursue and prosecute an environmental activist.

By Tracy Tullis Salon .com

Mar. 27, 2008 | In the early morning hours of May 21, 2001, a group of five men and women dressed in dark clothing and carrying backpacks crept close to the Center of Urban Horticulture on the University of Washington campus in Seattle. One of the intruders cut open a window of a ground-floor office; another climbed through it and placed a digital alarm clock wired to a 9-volt battery and a model-rocket igniter in the drawer of a filing cabinet. Next to the cabinet, he filled plastic tubs with gasoline. He set the timer and climbed back out the window.

Not long after, at about 3 a.m., a university security officer driving on his rounds saw "billowing smoke and flames" rising from the building. The building's cedar latticework had acted as kindling and the fire raced to the roof. From a city park a few miles away, the arsonists listened to the firefighters on an emergency scanner.

It took firefighters two hours to put out the flames. By that time the office where the fire had started had burned down to the studs, and the central hall and several botany labs were damaged. Damages were estimated at $2.5 million. The morning after the fire, agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms sifted through the ash but found no fingerprints. Any hairs that might have yielded a DNA signature had been incinerated.

Ten days later, the Earth Liberation Front, a loose group of underground activists who had burned a horse-slaughtering plant, logging company headquarters, SUV dealerships and a luxurious Vail ski lodge built on mountain lynx habitat, claimed responsibility for the fire. The group explained that it had targeted the office of Toby Bradshaw, a plant geneticist who they believed was genetically engineering trees for the benefit of the timber industry. They said his research would "unleash mutant genes into the environment" and "cause irreversible harm to forest ecosystems."

Federal and local authorities launched an exhaustive investigation, code-named Operation Backfire. For nearly two years, the FBI had no real leads in the Washington case or 16 other ELF arsons. The Earth Liberation Front is a secretive, amorphous group, with no structure or leaders or formal membership. It is more of a movement than an organization; anyone with a rage against ecological destruction and a match can act in the name of the ELF. The FBI didn't know where to go looking for them.

In spring 2003, FBI agents finally got their first break. They closed in on Jacob Ferguson, a heroin-addicted drifter who played in a metal band called Eat Shit Fuckface, and who had insinuated himself into the radical environmental movement -- no doubt finding a convenient outlet for the pyromaniacal tendencies he'd exhibited since the age of 8.

Ferguson quickly turned informant. He admitted to setting the first fire attributed to the ELF in the United States, in 1996, and to 12 additional arsons, mostly in Oregon. Although many ELF "elves" knew only two or three others, Ferguson knew pretty much everyone. Prosecutors dispatched him across the country -- from Arizona to Massachusetts -- to meet with his former compatriots and record their conversations with a hidden wire. Soon the FBI was knocking on doors across the country.

Most of the suspected arsonists, if convicted, would face at least 30 years in prison. Lured with promises of reduced sentences, friends turned in friends, boyfriends offered up the names of girlfriends. Recriminations flew. Those who named names "have dishonored themselves ... by becoming vicious traitors and tools of the state," wrote two non-cooperators in the Earth First! journal. In 2006, the trail of accusations led the FBI to the door of a quiet 32-year-old violin teacher in Berkeley, Calif., named Briana Waters.

Earlier this month, on March 6, a federal jury in Tacoma, Wash., found Waters guilty of two counts of arson for serving as a lookout at the University of Washington fire. According to two women who testified against her in return for dramatically reduced sentences, Waters hid in a shrub near the Center for Urban Horticulture with a walkie-talkie, ready to alert the others if the campus police strolled by. Waters testified she wasn't even in Seattle that night.

Although Waters was on trial for only the University of Washington arson, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Friedman charged that she was part of a conspiracy -- a member of a "prolific cell" of the Earth Liberation Front, responsible for 17 fires set in four states over five years. Ten conspirators have pleaded guilty and been sentenced; four have fled the country; three are awaiting sentencing. Waters, the only one of the accused to have pleaded innocent and therefore the only one to have stood trial, now faces 20 years in prison.

The group's alleged ringleader, William Rodgers, avoided a trial in his own way. From his jail cell in Flagstaff, Ariz., two weeks after his arrest in December 2005, he wrote, "I chose to fight on the side of the bears, mountain lions, skunks, bats, saguaros, cliff roses and all things wild. But tonight ... I am returning home, to the Earth, the place of my origins." He placed a plastic bag over his head and suffocated himself. According to medical records, Rodgers was found with his right arm raised, his hand held tight in a fist -- the Earth First! symbol of resistance.

Prosecutors celebrated the guilty verdict against Waters as a signal victory in the campaign against "eco-terror," a mission that the U.S. Department of Justice has made the centerpiece of its domestic counterterrorism program. "This cell of eco-terrorists thought they had a 'right' to sit in judgment and destroy the hard work of dedicated researchers at the UW and elsewhere," U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Sullivan declared in announcing Waters' conviction. "Today's verdict shows that no one is above the law."

Civil libertarians draw a different moral from the verdict. For them it is evidence of how the Justice Department has exaggerated the threat of eco-sabotage; they see Waters' story as a disturbing example of the misuse of federal authority and the excessive reach of the American counterterrorism program in the wake of 9/11. As Lauren Regan, director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center in Eugene, Ore., remarks: "There's a question of whether burning property is really the equivalent of flying a plane into a building and killing humans."

Briana Waters wouldn't seem to fit the profile of a dangerous terrorist. The daughter of an engineer and a stay-at-home mother, Waters was raised in suburban Philadelphia and migrated west to attend Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., a magnet for left political activists. She has long, straw-colored hair and blue-gray eyes, and always seems to hold her shoulders forward, like a girl who is shy about being tallest in her sixth-grade class. At Evergreen, she became head of the campus animal rights organization and led nature hikes through the nearby woods, teaching people how to identify native plants.

In her senior year, she participated in a prolonged campaign to prevent logging in the old-growth forest on Watch Mountain, part of the Cascade Mountain range. Her senior project was a documentary film about the protest, an elegy to the cooperation between Earth First! members and the residents of a small town, who together climbed into the canopy and refused to come down for five months, until Congress promised the public lands would not be handed over to the timber company. The protest saved 28,000 acres of wilderness.

Kim Marks, an Evergreen graduate who joined the tree-sit, remembers Waters playing her violin as she perched in the treetops. "It was the most amazing thing to be 120 feet up in the canopy and hear this beautiful fiddle music floating through the forest," Marks says.

Waters certainly brushed up against the radical environmentalist milieu, even if she was not one of the "elves." Her boyfriend at the time, fellow Evergreen student Justin Solonz, has been indicted for building the device that sparked the Center for Urban Horticulture fire, and she was friendly with others in the ELF underground.

But Waters has insisted she had nothing to do with underground activities. She testified at her trial that in May 2001, the month of the arson, she was busy promoting her film, showing it to college audiences on the West Coast. She has no specific recollection of where she was on the 21st; most likely, she said, she was sleeping at home in Olympia. She told the jury that the Watch Mountain protest, especially her experience building bridges between students and locals, and even logging families, impressed her as a model of sound activism, and confirmed her belief that more extreme measures, like arson, were "alienating" and counterproductive.

As it turned out, the University of Washington Horticulture building was a poor target for arson. Among the items destroyed were hundreds of photographs documenting plant regeneration on Mount St. Helens after the volcanic eruption, research on wetlands and prairie restoration, and a collection of rare showy stickseed plants that were being raised to replenish dwindling wild stocks in the Cascade Mountains. Bradshaw, the targeted professor, has said that although he had considered doing genetic engineering, he was not at the time of the fire. Rather he was conducting basic research on hybrid poplars, a fast-growing species that could reduce the pressure for logging in natural forests.

About a year after the fire, in 2002, Waters left her college town and moved to Berkeley, where she made her living teaching children violin and playing in Balkan and Irish folk music groups. She met her partner, John Landgraf, a carpenter, at a summer music retreat, and had a baby girl, Kalliope. She had little contact with the radicals she'd met in Olympia, and was only marginally involved in environmental causes.

But while Waters had moved away from the old radical environmental circles, the hunt for "eco-terrorists" was intensifying. During the 1990s, the FBI's domestic terrorism division focused on militias, white supremacists and cults like the Branch Davidians. But after 9/11, the agency began shifting its priorities.

Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI director Robert Mueller decided "they were going to restructure the FBI as a terrorism prevention organization rather than just a crime-fighting organization," explains Ben Rosenfeld, a civil rights attorney in San Francisco. The FBI vastly expanded its domestic and international terrorism capabilities, adding whole new categories of crime to its terrorism portfolio. Acts once considered property crimes -- like the arson at the University of Washington -- were now assigned not to the bureau's criminal division but to the terrorism division.

In testimony before a Senate committee in February 2002, James Jarboe, the FBI's domestic terrorism chief, alerted the public to this new mission, warning that the ELF and its sister organization, the Animal Liberation Front, had become a "serious terrorist threat." By May 2005, agents in 35 FBI offices would be investigating 104 separate incidents of "animal rights/eco-terrorist activities," including the fires set by the ELF in the Pacific Northwest.

In the wake of 9/11, federal prosecutors had some new legal tools at their disposal. Historically, the crime of terrorism has required civilian deaths. In fact, the State Department defined terrorism as "premeditated politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatants." But the USA Patriot Act created a new category of domestic terrorism, which is defined as an offense "calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government" or "to intimidate or coerce a civilian population." Under this broad definition, eco-saboteurs become terrorists if their crime seeks to change government policy or action.

Several Republican members of Congress didn't want to stop there. In a letter sent to eight mainstream environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, Colorado Rep. Scott McInnis and six other congressmen demanded that respectable environmental organizations "publicly disavow the actions of eco-terrorist organizations." In 2006, Congress passed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which imposes severe punishments on anyone who "intentionally damages or causes the loss of any real or personal property used by an animal enterprise."

During her trial at the Union Station Courthouse in Tacoma, Waters sat straight in an oversize leather chair, her hair pulled back in a rubber band. She wore gold wire-rimmed glasses and sometimes bit her nails as she listened to the proceedings.

In his opening statement before the jury, Assistant U.S. Attorney Friedman described how Rodgers, the unofficial leader of the University of Washington arsons, organized a series of instructional and strategizing meetings, which took place in five different cities. The group shared information on lock picking, reconnaissance, and the construction of devices that could ignite a fire. They also used the meetings to select targets and gather recruits for their "actions." They called their gatherings Book Club meetings because they communicated with coded messages, using passages from a book as the key. (At one meeting it was Ursula Le Guin's portentous novel "The Dispossessed"; at another, "The Only World We've Got," by environmental philosopher Paul Shepard.)

Waters and the other members of the group took "extraordinary measures," Friedman told the jury, to conceal their identities and their movements: adopting aliases, meeting in public places not associated with any of them, building their incendiary devices in a "clean room" to eliminate DNA evidence. The ELF activists were "organized in cells so if some are discovered the others can continue," Friedman explained. "It's a classic structure for a terrorist or a guerrilla organization."

On the witness stand, Waters declared that she never had an alias, never attended the clandestine Book Club meetings, and never saw any fire-starting device being built anywhere near her house. The prosecution argued that Waters had met with the arsonists at 8 p.m. in Seattle on the night of the crime. Defense lawyers presented a bank card receipt that shows Waters made a purchase at 7:12 p.m. in Olympia, 60 miles away, which would have made it difficult for her to have been in Seattle at 8 p.m.

The government's case against Waters rested heavily on the testimony of two informants, a radical journalist named Lacey Phillabaum and a yacht-racing aficionado with a master's degree in astrophysics named Jennifer Kolar. Both testified Waters was the lookout on campus that night.

Yet as Waters' defense attorneys pointed out, their initial statements to the FBI about the University of Washington fire contradicted one another. Kolar, who worked in high-tech jobs in Seattle and used her expertise to teach encryption at the Book Club meetings, apparently did not identify Waters as a co-conspirator the first time she was interviewed by the FBI in December 2005; instead, she named four others, giving their aliases. Neither did she identify Waters the next four or five times she spoke with the authorities.

During the trial, FBI special agent Anthony Torres acknowledged that nearly two months before Kolar named Waters as a participant in the arson, she'd been shown a photo of Waters and had identified her by name. But she did not say then that Waters had been involved. It was only several weeks after Kolar's first FBI interview, during the time she was seeking to trade information for an advantageous plea deal, that she told her lawyer that she suddenly "remembered" Waters had been at the Center for Urban Horticulture that night. A third cooperating defendant, Stanislas Meyerhoff, who had earlier implicated Phillabaum, his own fiancée, in the fire, told investigators that he was "familiar" with Waters but that she was "not involved" in the arson.

During the tense three-week trial, Waters' lawyers accused the prosecution of misconduct, including falsification of FBI reports to conceal evidence favorable to her defense. Documents produced in court reveal that FBI agents taking notes during their first conversation with Kolar dutifully recorded that she specifically named four collaborators. None of the four was Waters. A typed version of that interview, admitted into evidence in the trial, says only that Kolar identified "Avalon" (the code name of Rodgers) and "some others."

The jury was unconvinced that these inconsistencies constituted reasonable doubt. Although the jurors could not reach a unanimous decision on several counts -- including a "destructive device" charge -- they convicted Waters on two counts of arson, each of which carries a minimum sentence of five years (running concurrently) and a maximum of 20. She could spend as much as two decades behind bars for allegedly holding a walkie-talkie.

"Obviously we were thrilled by the verdict," says First Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Bartlett. "There is a price for people to pay for not showing any remorse, for not accepting responsibility. It will be up to the judge to determine how big a price that is."

Waters' lawyer, Robert Bloom, remains outraged. Prosecutors "used scare-mongering to get the jury to convict an innocent person," he says. "This is really a study in American prosecution. It was an absurdly slanted American prosecution."

If Waters encounters the full force of the government's anti-terror zeal, it will be when she is sentenced on May 30. Prosecutors have not yet decided whether to seek a "terrorism enhancement" -- a sentencing rule that was written into the federal sentencing guidelines in 1995, after the bombings in Oklahoma City and at the World Trade Center, and would allow the judge to add up to 20 years to her prison term if her crime can be construed as a terrorist act.

Prosecutors sought the enhancement for six of the 10 Operation Backfire arsonists, who have been sentenced already, a significant departure from legal convention. (Meyerhoff, despite his cooperation, received a 13-year sentence.) "Never before has the terrorism enhancement been applied where there were no deaths," says Lauren Regan of the Civil Liberties Defense Center.

If Waters spends more than the minimum of five years in prison, her sentence would be disproportionate to punishments received by other arsonists. "That would be a far harsher standard than fits the crime in a lot of arsons," says Heidi Boghosian, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild. James King, for example, a seasonal firefighter, set two fires in California's Cleveland National Park in the summer of 2001 in order to score some extra paydays. More than 50 acres of pristine wilderness were razed. King received a jail term of 30 months and a fine; he was also ordered to retire from the firefighting profession.

Today, as Waters sits in the Federal Detention Center in Seattle, awaiting sentencing, environmentalists and civil libertarians worry that her conviction may beat a path to more convictions, including of nonviolent protesters. In recent years, a number of states have passed laws aimed at eco-sabotage that could implicate law-abiding groups along with the lawbreakers. The American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-leaning, corporate-backed association of state legislators, has written legislation that defines any act of destruction aimed at protecting animal rights or punishing ecological despoilers as terrorism. At least 14 states have introduced bills since 2001 based on this model, and they have passed in Arizona, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The problem with such laws, says David Willett of the Sierra Club, is they can be used "to crack down on environmental groups engaged in legitimate activities as well."

Nonviolent protesters have already felt the heat. Documents obtained in 2005 by the ACLU reveal that the FBI has been surveying animal rights and environmental groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Greenpeace, sending undercover agents to activist conferences and cultivating inside informants. Some of the documents suggest that the bureau was also attempting to link those groups with the ELF and ALF. The National Lawyers Guild reports that it receives calls regularly from environmental and animal-rights activists all over the country who had been contacted by the FBI after attending political events. "It has a chilling effect on free speech," says Guild director Boghosian, "and that's where the real damage to the Constitution is happening."

On March 3, while jurors in the Waters trial were deliberating, three luxury houses for sale in a suburban Seattle cul-de-sac called "Street of Dreams" -- a plot of land surrounded by wetlands -- were destroyed by fire. A banner at the scene pointed to the culprit: the Earth Liberation Front. The FBI immediately announced that the fire "is being investigated as a domestic terrorism act."

-- By Tracy Tullis

Los Angeles Animal Rights Activists Sentenced

ELP has just received some good news from Laura Lungarelli's support group (Laura and her boyfriend Kevin, are the two American AR activists who have been jailed for non-AR reasons).


booksforlauralungarelli@yahoo.com wrote: "Laura was [let out] on work release TODAY. Kevin is unfortunately still at Twin Towers and is set to transfer to a prison within a few days."

ELP-Extra will bring you all the news on Laura & Kevin as we receive it.

Women's History Month for the Cuban 5

Join The Popular Education Project to Free the Cuban 5’s Women’s History Month Initiative. Starting from Sat. Match 1st-Monday March 31st we are calling on people to fax or mail out this letter to Louise Arbour The High Commissioner of Human Rights of the Office for Human Rights-United Nations Office at Geneva. We are asking her to intercede on behalf of the Cuban 5’s mothers/wives to pressure the U.S. government to grant them VISAs to visit their husbands/sons!!


Due to the U.S. government’s denial to approve visas, Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo and Rene Gonzalez Sehwerert have not seen their wives since their incarceration!! Others in the Cuban 5 have not seen their parents, wives and children with regularity, because the U.S. government has taken prolonged periods of time to issue them visas. The U.S. government’s denial of visitation rights is a cruel and horrible form of psychological torture. Their rationale for denial is ridiculous and baseless; none of these family members are a threat to national security.

The PDF format of the letter can be found at the Jericho Website: http://www.thejerichomovement.com/events5.html

PLease download sign and fax or mail out IMMEDIATELY!!

Arson attack on Greek activist centre

I know this isn't prisoner news, but I hope people will appreciate the reasons why I am forwarding it to this list.

For international solidarity

ELP Support Network

---

Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:27:03 +0000
From: greekelp@yahoo.gr
Subject: A report on the firebombing of Prapopoulou squat and more...
To: elp4321@hotmail.com

During the night of 24-25/3/2008, Prapopoulou Squat at Halandri, Athens was firebombed. Neighbours claim they saw three men running out of the building right before the explosion that wrecked large part of the building, the roof and the library. (photos: http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=846797).

Prapopoulou squat is managed by an open assembly, active in neighbourhood and environmental issues (for example, the protection of a local stream against privatization and constructions, activities against the sprawl arsons in Parnitha mountain, Athens etc). Their blog: http://protovouliaxalandriou.blogspot.com/

This arson came after a series of similar attacks against self-managed infoshops. Few examples:

24/12/2007: Second arson with an identical device containing mothball and bullets at Thersitis self-managed infoshop.

25/12/2007: Unknown persons broke in the offices of 4 base-syndicates, didn't steal anything, but messed stuff up.

1/1/2008: Unknown persons hurl a molotov coctail against Ypogeios at Kallidromiou social center (their blog: http://ypogeiws94.blogspot.com/).

4/1/2008: Arson at the Southern Suburbs Residents Initiative self-managed infoshop (their blog:http://www.prwkat.blogspot.com/).

Meanwhile, in the previous months, another 2 squats, Salamandra at Patissia and Millerou and Germanikou at Kerameikos were evicted by the police.

All these action, while evidence came to light proving the police's "special attention" (investigations and surveillance) on self-managed infoshops (Photos of the police reports: http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=846651) as well as the cooperation between nazi groups (that tend to undertake actions against infoshops and activists) and the official police (when they 're not the exact same persons, as in the case of this officer right here: http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=846633). One can see for example the photos of cops and nazis fooling around and working together (during the February 2 antifascist riots in Athens) at: http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=822697. Also, a document on nazi group leaders funding by the greek government, here: http://athens.indymedia.org/local/webcast/uploads/metafiles/ertzfzlyr.jpg

U.S. drug informant goes from pinstripes to prison stripes

By Gerardo Reyes

McClatchy Newspapers

5:26 PM CDT, March 23, 2008

PANAMA CITY, Panama — The man who helped the United States strike the hardest blow ever against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia expected to live a nice, quiet life on a cozy little island off the coast of Panama. Instead, he got a jail cell.

Convicted Colombian drug-trafficker Nelson Urrego was the key informant for a U.S. covert operation that ended in 2003 when the leadership of the FARC — Colombia's oldest and best financed leftist guerrilla organization — was finally indicted on drug-trafficking and murder charges.

Urrego's job was to hand the rebels several satellite phones that had been tapped by U.S. federal agents. He delivered, thanks to a friendship he had struck with a guerrilla leader in a Bogota jail. The feds started listening to the rebels' conversations and built a case against them.

Urrego thought he had bought himself a new life. He settled in Panama, where he purchased Chapero Island for $1.5 million.

He was treated as an important investor by the government and the business community. His companies were awarded both government and private-sector contracts. He became a Panamanian citizen, handled several sizable bank accounts and frequently traveled to Miami, Madrid and Beijing. He was even often seen in the company of DEA agent Art Ventura, the agency director in Panama.

Then Urrego rented out Chapero Island for CBS' "Survivor" TV series.

That's how the island became famous and coveted, and brought its owner down, Urrego told El Nuevo Herald in an interview from his prison cell.

On Sept. 15, Panamanian authorities landed on Chapero, confiscated it and arrested Urrego and his 19-year old girlfriend on money-laundering charges.

"I wanted to live a lawful life in this country, I wasn't doing anything illegal," Urrego says.

He claims that the charges leveled against him are a sham intended to strip him of his island after he refused to sell it. Several lawyers are working on obtaining his freedom and recovering his island, purchased in 2002, after he was released from a prison in Colombia, he said.

"I had the bad luck politicians and impresarios of this country liked my island," Urrego said. "A prosecutor has all the right and duty to investigate a person, but the investigation must be based on an objective and scientific analysis, not on a bunch of rumors to try to take away an island."

Considered a mid-level drug trafficker, Urrego served a sentence in Colombia for deriving income from dealing narcotics.

He claims that the money he used to purchase the island comes from the legal sale of some farms in Colombia and not from drug trafficking.

Urrego says the natural beauty of Chapero Island and the fame it got after being featured on "Survivor" attracted investors that made several offers to purchase it.

One of the interested investors was prominent Panamanian developer, Mayo Alfredo Aleman, who confirmed this during an interview with El Nuevo Herald.

Aleman says Urrego was not considered a suspicious person when they first met in 2005. He even came to their first meeting with DEA agent Ventura, Aleman says.

Panamanian justice has a different view.

Panamanian Prosecutor Jose Abel Almengor said in an interview with El Nuevo Herald that Urrego introduced $12 million in drug-money to Panama through bank transfers and human couriers. The investigation, he said, started in 2005, after Panamanian Banco Continental reported suspicious activities in Urrego's accounts.

Urrego's accounts had been open since 2002, when he had already been sentenced in Colombia and had pending charges in Florida. The bank, however, never objected to doing business with him, Urrego says.

What's more, the government also seemed to trust Urrego. One of his companies got a contract from the Panama Canal Authority to install the sound system in a museum dedicated to the Panama Canal.

Urrego says that before he was arrested, Panama's vice president, Samuel Lewis Navarro, made him an offer for the island. Urrego says Lewis spoke to him twice about the possibility of purchasing the island, once in Panama and once in Miami. However, Aleman and Ventura, both of whom were also at the Panama meeting, told El Nuevo Herald that Lewis did not attend that meeting.

Urrego's lawyer, Victor Almengor (no relation to the prosecutor), says Lewis will have to explain his interest in doing business with an individual that his government is investigating for money-laundering. Lewis did not answer El Nuevo Herald's calls to his personal phone number, or his public relations office.

sara jane olson back in prison

Freed SLA member Olson arrested again

By Todd Milbourn and Andy Furillo - tmilbourn@sacbee.com
Published 3:00 pm PDT Saturday, March 22, 2008

State corrections officials re-arrested Sara Jane Olson on Saturday - five days after she was released - and announced that they intend to keep her in prison for another year.

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Oscar Hidalgo said that officials miscalculated Olson's sentence and gave her a year's more time off her term than she deserved.

"We're launching an investigation to prevent this from happening again," Hidalgo said.

Hidalgo said that Olson, the former Symbionese Liberation Army member who was convicted of killing Myrna Opsahl inside the lobby of a Carmichael bank in 1975 and of trying to bomb police cars in Los Angeles, was detained Friday night at Los Angeles International Airport as she was preparing to fly to Minnesota, where her family lives.

Treva Miller, a spokeswoman for LAX, said Olson was detained between 11 p.m. and midnight without incident.

She was officially arrested late Saturday morning after authorities examined her sentence, reassessed her time credits and determined that she still had more time to do.

Olson had been released Monday from the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla.

Gabriel Villeneuve released

Some good news, the Canadian animal rights prisoners, Garbiel Villeneuve, has been released from prison. See below for more details.

from SHAC Canada (shaccanada@riseup.net):
*please crosspost freely*
Gabriel Villeneuve was liberated yesterday after 30 days in jail. He was
liberated under cotion (1000$ deposit and 5000$ without deposit) and under
a couple conditions:
- Not allowed to communicate or attempt to communicate, by any means
whatsoever with any SHAC members.
- Not allowed to be in Quebec City district unless for court appearance or
to meet with his lawyer.
- Not allowed to participate in any sort of protest.
- Not allowed to distribute flyers in regards of any of SHAC causes.
- Not allowed to organize or plan any activities related to any SHAC causes.
The focus of the court appearance was to get Gabriel out of jail and
unfortunately, that implied that he has to follow unjust conditions.
Gabriel will go to the supreme court of Canada to try to get those
unconstitutional conditions off.
Gabriel has to go back to court April 7 to know the date of his trial as
well as the one of the three other activists implicated in the case.
Because of all the legal court conditions Gabriel cannot write anything or
give any statement at the moment, we are working with the lawyers on legal
terms to see what can be done.
Thanks to everyone who gave him support, we’ll send you news next week.

Tacoma Anarchists Arrested in SF Need Support

from infoshop News

Solidarity is something very important to many of us anarchists especially when our friends and loved ones are put behind bars, or when we happen to find ourselves held captive there, being kept from those we care about. Yesterday, the 19th of March, more than one-hundred people were arrested in the streets and side walks of San Francisco at the DATW. Among those were three anarchists Bryan Riggins, Kenneth Pack and Mitch Inclin who where wrongfully arrested and are now being held at the Sheriff's Dept. at 850 Bryant St. These are people who have done amazing work within their communities and have no place behind bars. We wan't them back home as soon as possible. We have been told that their arraignment will probably be on Monday, and if not on Tuesday. We would like not only support from those who are anarchists but support for all of those who have been jailed and have had friends locked away standing up and saying no to those who think it is ok for them to put profit over people and bussiness over our communities.

As of right now the charges are as follows:

Mitch I.- one felony weapons charge, one felony conspiracy charge, and one felony asult of an officer charge. bail set at $40,000
Bryan R.- one felony weapons charge, one felony conspiracy charge, and one felony asult of an officer charge. bail set at $40,000
Kenneth P-one felony of concieled weapon charge. bail not known by those posting this.

We have heard that there is an other who also has not been released as of yet. This would be Kurt Therkslen who is facing a Felony charge and has had no arraignment date has been set. He is being held at the Sheriff's dept. at 850 Bryant as well. We do not know much info on Kurts specific charges or wheather or not Kurt will be arrained at the same time as the other three; however, we would strongly encurage support at Kurts arraignment as well. Kurt was arrested during the protests and should be showed solidarity and supported in court.

The SF Booking Centers # is (415) 575-4419
They would love to hear from every one and explain when our friends and comrades will have their arraignment and be released.

As of right now, the times of these arraignments are unknown, and when more specific details about their arraignments are released we will keep everyone updated to the best of our ability. In the mean time, please keep in mind the importance of solidarity in these situations. It would be greatly appreciated, especially to those who are being detained.

Update on three anarchists arrested in San Francisco

One of our three friends have been released. Kenneth P. is now free on bail while Mitch I. and Bryan R. remain in jail. Their arraignment will be on Tuesday, some time after 9 am, along with the other person arrested, Kurt. We have been told to go to room 101 at 850 Bryant St. to find out about when the arraignment is. That is thanks to the pressure put on the jail by those of you calling asking them all the questions they love hearing. Hope to see people there.

Again the number to those amazing people at the jail is (415) 575-4419. They would love to hear from every one with concerns and questions.

In solidarity,

-anarchist comrades

Update on three anarchists arrested in San Francisco

Thursday, March 20 2008 @ 05:27 PM PDT Contributed by: Anonymous Views: 118 This is an update regarding the three anarchists who where wrongfully arrested on the 19th of March. One of our three friends have been released. Kenneth P. is now free on bail while Mitch I. and Bryan R. remain in jail. Their arraignment will be on Tuesday, some time after 9 am, along with the other person arrested, Kurt. We have been told to go to room 101 at 850 Bryant St. to find out about when the arraignment is. That is thanks to the pressure put on the jail by those of you calling asking them all the questions they love hearing. Hope to see people there. Again the number to those amazing people at the jail is (415) 575-4419. They would love to hear from every one with concerns and questions. In solidarity, -anarchist comrades

Land Behind Bars

March 21, 2008
The Hidden Casualities of America's "War on Crime"
www. counterpunch. org
By MARLENE MARTIN

The number of people behind bars in the "land of the free" is grown as large as the combined populations of Atlanta, Miami, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Kansas City and Pittsburgh.


That's the shocking fact in a Pew Center on the States report showing that one in 100 adults in the U.S. are in prison or jail--more than 2.3 million people.


When it comes to locking up its people, the country that claims to be the "world's greatest democracy" is far ahead of every other nation--ahead of China, ahead of Russia, ahead of all the tyrannies that the U.S. government supports around the world--both in absolute numbers of prisoners and the rate of incarceration.


As has always been the case in a country founded on slavery, the inmates of America's prisons are disproportionately people of color. Among African American men over 18, one in 15 are in prison--between the ages of 20 and 34, fully one in nine Black men are behind bars. When those on parole, probation or otherwise involved in the criminal justice system are included, that statistic rises to one in three.


As staggering as these facts are, the stories of the individual human beings behind these statistics--men and women whose lives have been destroyed by the criminal justice system--are even more horrifying.


Mark Clements is one of them. Mark was 16 years old when Chicago police officers and detectives picked him up on suspicion of setting a fire that killed four people. The white cops worked for Jon Burge--Mark became one of the hundreds of African American suspects tortured until the "confessed" by Chicago police under Burge's command.


Mark was kept in lockup for a year until he was old enough to stand trial as an adult. During his sentencing, Mark pleaded before the judge for more than two hours that he didn't commit the crime--that the police had beaten him into confessing. The judge sat with folded arms, staring straight ahead--and after Mark was done, he imposed the "mandatory" sentence of life without the possibility of parole.


Mark is 45 today. He has spent two-thirds of his life in prison. And if the state of Illinois gets his way, he will die there.


* * *

For the past two decades, crime rates have been in long-term decline, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But the prison population has exploded during this same time.


To put this into proportion, between 2005 and 2006, the U.S. prison population rose by more than 65,000, an increase of almost 3 percent, which is on the low side for annual figures over the past 25 years. By contrast, in 1972, the total U.S. prison population was 196,092.


Who accounts for the vast number of people warehoused in America's jails and prisons? According to Justice Department statistics, more than half the people in the federal prison system and one in five inmates in state prisons were drug offenders--almost half a million in total.


Many of these prisoners were convicted of nonviolent offenses. More than a quarter of drug offenders in state prison are serving time for nothing more than possession. According to the Sentencing Project, arrests for marijuana possession accounted for 79 percent of the growth in drug arrests in the 1990s--despite the fact that not a single death has been attributed specifically to marijuana use, unlike such legal drugs as alcohol and tobacco.


David Ciglar pled guilty to growing marijuana seedlings in his garage in Oakland, Calif.--and received the state's mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years.


"My family is devastated," says David in the book Shattered Lives: Portraits from America's Drug War. "My wife is living every day wondering if she can make it financially and mentally. My kids don't know why their dad was taken away for such a long time. I have not even bonded with my youngest daughter. She was 2 when I left her.
"

Richard Nixon officially declared the U.S. government's "war on drugs" in 1971, but the drug war didn't really get under way until Ronald Reagan's presidency in the 1980s. The casualties have been mounting ever since.


One of the drug war's chief weapons has been the 100-to-1 rule that governs sentencing in convictions for possession and distribution of crack cocaine versus powder cocaine. Under the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act and another law passed in 1988, possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine (about the weight of two pennies) results in a mandatory sentence of five years, while it takes 500 grams of the powder form of cocaine to yield the same sentence.


Behind the disparity is an openly racist double standard: African Americans account for most of those convicted and sent to prison for offenses related to crack cocaine--including 82 percent of those prosecuted and jailed at the federal level--even though they are a minority of users.


Those ensnared in the drug war aren't typically high-level dealers, either, according to Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project. "By and large, these defendants are not the kingpins of the drug trade," Mauer wrote. "Data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission document 73 percent of the crack defendants had only low-level involvement in drug activity, such as street-level deals, couriers or lookouts.
"

The drug warriors' justification for the 100-to-1 rule was that crack was so highly addictive, and that its users became super-violent. Many of these stereotypes have been proven untrue, yet the bias in sentencing remains.


According to Carol Brook, deputy director of the federal defender program for the Northern District of Illinois, "These disparities exist, even though we know that the physiological and psychoactive effects of crack and powder cocaine are virtually identical. They exist even though the effects of prenatal exposure to crack and powder cocaine are identical. They exist even though the epidemic of violence and rapid spread to youth that crack was suppose to create never happened.
"

Despite the countless reports and studies, and the pleas from drug-war victims, their families and activists, Congress to this day has failed to change the 100-to-1 rule--though the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted last year to modify penalties for crack cocaine offenses.


* * *

The terrible impact of the "tough-on-crime" crusade can be seen in another disturbing statistic disclosed by the Pew report: More than half of all released offenders end up back behind bars within three years. Some commit another crime, but others are guilty of minor violations of the terms of their release--according to federal statistics, more than a third of people who entered prison in 2005 were arrested for parole violations.


This reality isn't altogether surprising given the 20-year trend of dramatic cuts to education programs for prisoners, which have been shown to be the single-most important factor in reducing recidivism.


Such programs grew widely as a result of the Attica prison uprising in 1971--as of 1995, there were still 350 programs that allowed prisoners to earn college degrees. But thanks to "law-and-order" measures passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by Democrat Bill Clinton, they began to disappear. Only 12 of these programs exist today.


There are finally some cracks appearing in the "lock 'em up and throw away the key" mentality of lawmakers. Sadly, however, many of the proposals under consideration now aren't driven by a change of heart, but by the financial crisis caused by states facing the burden of paying for incarcerating ever-growing numbers of people.


According to the Pew study, five states spend more of their budget on prisons than they do on higher education. Overall, between 1987 and 2007, "state spending on higher education has increased 21 percent, while corrections spending had more than doubled, increasing 127 percent," the Economic Policy Institute reported.


This economic burden is forcing some welcome policy changes. In Texas, for example, some drug offenders are being put into treatment programs instead of prison. Other states are also considering early release programs, and the guidelines on crack cocaine offenses accepted by the U.S. Sentencing Commission are being applied retroactively.


This is a move in the right direction, but it is taking place too slowly--and the lives of 2.3 million people are wasting away in the meantime.


Earlier in March, the writers of the HBO drama The Wire spoke for them in an essay in Time magazine. If asked to serve on a jury in a drug case, they would vote to acquit, the writers said. "No longer," they concluded, "can we collaborate with a government that uses non-violent drug offenses to fill prisons with it's poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.
"

MARLENE MARTIN is national director of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty (CEDP) and a frequent contributor to the Socialist Worker.

Olympia SDSer Arrested!

Free Forrest Student!

On Tuesday, March 18, local activist Forrest Student and member of SDS at The Evergreen State College in Olympia was targeted by Officer Perez of the Evergreen Police. Perez has a history of harassing and abusing students and other people on campus. When Perez approached him and started questioning him, the person said he had the right to have an attorney present and because of that, Perez arrested him for obstruction. Forrest continued in his refusal, demanding an attorney while in jail and at his arraignment. In response his charges were increased to misdemeanor criminal mischief. The judge refused to set bail and Forrest is still sitting in jail. He will not be released until he appears before a judge, which at the earliest will be on Friday.

Forrest has been very involved in local politics of late, participating in the Port of Olympia protests in November and being very vocal in his criticism of the conduct by the Administration on campus in the wake of the events on Feb. 14th. In the current environment of political repression on campus and elsewhere, this development proves significantly troublesome. Forrest has been held in jail and is facing charges for exercising a right protected by the Fifth Amendment, the right not to speak to law enforcement without representation.

If you would like to lend assistance to Forrest for legal matters, send check or money to:

Forrest Student
910 4th Ave. E
Olympia, WA 98506

Also, please call the Thurston County Jail and demand that Forrest Student be released as soon as possible. The number is 360 786-5510. You will be given a list of options to respond. It should take no more than a minute.
The more people call, the more the jail will get bothered and the quicker Forrest will get released. A little bit of pressure goes a long, long way.

Sara Olson is released!

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-olson21mar21,1,7135722.story

From the Los Angeles Times

Former SLA member leaves prison

Kathleen Soliah, a former Palmdale resident, served about half of her 12-year term for her role in a plot to blow up LAPD cars. She had been arrested in 1999 while living under an assumed name in Minn

By Joel Rubin

Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

March 21, 2008

Kathleen Soliah, a former member of the radical Symbionese Liberation Army, was released on parole this week from a California women's prison after serving about six years behind bars for her role in a plot to kill Los Angeles police officers by blowing up their patrol cars.

The white-haired convict, who has changed her name to Sara Jane Olson, had been sentenced to 12 years in prison. Like most Calif ornia inmates, Soliah earned credit against her sentence for working while in prison. She served on a maintenance crew that swept and cleaned the main yard of the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla, prison officials said.

The 61-year-old Soliah, who was released Monday, must now serve a three-year parole, although prison officials declined to provide the conditions of her release.

Reached at her family's home in Palmdale on Thursday, Soliah refused to comment. Her husband, Dr. Gerald Peterson, who was also at the house, said only that he was "relieved."

Soliah's attorney, Shawn Chapman Holley, said, "We're thrilled she's out and can return to her family. For someone who was not a danger or a threat to society, it was six years too long."

< face="Times" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Times">Los Angeles police see Soliah in far harsher light.

She "attempted to murder LAPD officers by bombing two police cars," said Tim Sands, president of the Police Protective League, which represents the city's 9,300 rank-and-file officers. "She needs to serve her full time in prison for these crimes and does not deserve time off for working in prison. Criminals who attempt to murder police officers should not be able to escape justice simply because they have good lawyers."

The child of a middle-class Palmdale family, Soliah joined the violent band of radicals best known for kidnapping newspaper heiress Patty Hearst in the mid-1970s. She was charged with taking part in a 1975 plan to plant pipe bombs beneath police cars in retaliation for a shootout with Los Angeles police that left six SLA members dead.

The nail-packed bombs didn't detonate when the triggering device on one malfunctioned. Not waiting around to make her case in court though, she fled.

She changed her name to Sara Jane Olson, left California and married Peterson, an emergency room physician. The couple lived for a while in Zimbabwe before settling in St. Paul, Minn. Soliah lived the quiet life of a homemaker and mother of three daughters in a Tudor-style home in an upscale neighborhood near the Mississippi River and performed in a local theater's Shakespeare productions.

Soliah's disappearance inadvertently led authorities to Hearst, who had joined the SLA after being kidnapped. Los Angeles detectives who were tracking Soliah raided two San Francisco apartments, where authorities found Hearst and other SLA members..

Soliah's second life came to an abrupt end in 1999 when she was apprehended soon after being featured on TV's "America's Most Wanted." Her case was moving toward trial on Sept. 11, 2001. After the terrorist attacks, Soliah struck a plea deal in the bombing attempt, saying she feared she would not get a fair trial in such an atmosphere.

Prosecutors scoffed at her reasoning, pointing to reams of documents, fingerprints and other evidence they had amassed against her. The deal aborted a trial that had promised high drama -- the saga of a fetching high school pep-squad member turned fugitive -- and a revisiting of the social tumult of the 1970s.

Soliah pleaded guilty to two charges of possessing a destructive device with the intent to murder and also struck a deal in a separate case, in which she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for participating in a Sacramento bank robbery where another SLA member killed a customer. For the murder conviction, she received a one-year sentence. For the botched bombings, Soliah initially was sentenced to five years and four months, but that term was extended to 12 years by a state prison board after the board designated her a serious offender.

Inmate W94197 reported for work in the prison yard shortly after 8 each morning. She earned 24 cents an hour emptying trash cans and tidying up. Soliah chafed under her placement in the security group "Close A," among the most intensely supervised inmates, who are denied privileges and required to be counted seven times a day. In interviews and letters sent to The Times, she said other inmates often confronted her, with one saying she was rumored to be a member of Al Qaeda. Peterson visited about 10 times a year, bringing at least one of the couple's three daughters each time. Prison rules allowed one kiss and one hug at the start of each visit and a second at the end.

Soliah had no discipline problems while in prison, according to Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. While on parole, she must remain in Los Angeles County, T hornton said, but has submitted a request to be allowed to live elsewhere -- presumably Minnesota, where her husband lives.

joel.rubin@latimes.com

Sara Jane Olson released from prison

Steve Rubenstein, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, March 21, 2008

(03-20) 23:50 PDT San Francisco -- Former Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson, who hid for years by posing as an ordinary housewife, was released from prison Thursday after serving time for attempted murder and second-degree murder in two separate cases, authorities said.

Olson, 61, formerly known as Kathleen Soliah, walked out of the Central Women's Facility in Chowchilla, prisons spokesman Bill Sessa said.

For almost 24 years, Olson was one of the nation's most sought-after fugitives - she disappeared in 1975, the same year two Los Angeles police cars were bombed. She changed her name from Kathleen Soliah and, over the years, lived as a mild-mannered Midwestern housewife. She married a Minnesota physician and became a celebrated cook and soccer mom in the St. Paul area.

She was captured in June 1999 on charges of planting the police car bombs. She subsequently pleaded guilty to attempted murder charges for the attempted car bombings. In 2004, a Sacr amento judge vacated the 14-year sentence for the car bombs given to Olson after ruling that the state Board of Prison Terms did not independently review her case upon sentencing her in 2002 for the bombings. After a review, her sentence was reduced by one year.

Olson was also serving time for murder.

In 2002, Olson had pleaded guilty to second-degree m urder for her role in the 1975 SLA robbery of the Sacramento area bank in which customer Myrna Opsahl, 42, was shot and killed. She received a sentence of six years.

In her 2002 probation report, police said Olson emerged as the leader of the SLA after a 1974 fire and shootout in Los Angeles in which six of the nine members of the SLA died.

Back when sh e was Kathy Soliah, Olson was president of the Palmdale High School Pep Club in Los Angeles County. Her mother said in an interview in 1975 that her oldest daughter was "into everything - Girl Scouts, the Rainbows, Sunday school."

Chronicle news services contributed to this report. E-mail Steve Rubenstein at srubenstein@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/21/MN29VO8Q3.DTL

Marie Mason released from prison

ELP Information Bulletin (21st of March 2008)

Dear friends

ELP has learnt that the American Earth First! activist, Marie Mason, who has been accused of involvement in two ELF arsons, has been granted bail on $75,000 plus electronic tagging.

There are also as yet unconfirmed reports that one of her co-defendants may be cooperating with the authorities in their investigation. It is ELP's understanding that Marie is maintaining her innocence.

++++++++++++++

Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network
BM Box 2407
London
WC1N 3XX
England
www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk

Sara Jane Olson Free!

We are happy to announce that Sara Jane Olson has been
released! Below is corporate media account about her
release. We wish he the best of luck!
LA ABCF


Ex-SLA member freed from Calif. prison

LOS ANGELES - After serving six years in prison for
trying to bomb police cars in the 1970s, former
Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson has
been released on parole and reunited with the family
she hid with for years.

Olson, 61, formerly known as Kathleen Soliah, walked
out of the Central California Women's Facility in
Chowchilla on Monday, state Department of Corrections
spokesman Bill Sessa said.

In 2001, Olson pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 14
years in prison for attempting to bomb Los Angeles
police cars in 1975 with the SLA, the urban guerrilla
group best known for kidnapping newspaper heiress
Patricia Hearst. She vanished soon after she was
charged and reinvented herself as a Minnesota
housewife.

Olson later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in
the 1975 shooting death of a customer during a bank
robbery in Carmichael, near Sacramento. She was
serving a concurrent, six-year sentence in that case.

Sessa said Thursday that Olson earned time for good
behavior and "wasn't treated any differently than
anybody else." He declined to discuss terms of her
parole, citing security concerns.

Olson's attorney, Shawn Chapman Holley, said she did
not know the terms of her client's parole but did not
think it would be a problem for Olson to eventually
return to Minnesota. Olson's family came to California
to be with her upon her release.

"Every time I've spoken with her, she just sounds
happy and relieved, and happy to be with her family,"
Holley said.

The SLA started in 1973 when no more than a dozen
white, college-educated children from middle-class
families adopted a seven-headed snake as their symbol
and an ex-convict as their leader. Their slogan:
"Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life
of the people."

Besides kidnapping Hearst, the group claimed
responsibility for the murder of a school
superintendent and was involved in an armed bank
robbery and other violent activities. Eventually those
activities caught up with the SLA members, including
Olson, who was charged in the attempted bombings.

Olson then went into hiding for nearly a quarter of a
century, changing her name, marrying a doctor and
becoming a mother of three in St. Paul, Minn. She was
arrested in 1999 after FBI agents acted on a tip from
TV's "America's Most Wanted."

After she was returned to Los Angeles for trial, Olson
pleaded guilty for her role in the attempted bombings.

Upon learning of her release, the union that
represents Los Angeles police officers issued a
statement expressing their disappointment.

"She needs to serve her full time in prison for these
crimes and does not deserve time-off for working in
prison," Los Angeles Police Protective League
President Tim Sands said in the statement.

Freedom Month Outreach Day!!

April Freedom Month 2008 Calendar

On April 4th, 2008 the Puerto Rican Political Prisoners will have completed 28 years in jail for FIGHTING PUERTO RICAN INDEPENDENCE!!

Every April, ProLibertad organizes a series of events to commemorate the arrests of our political prisoners. We use this month as a time to raise awareness around the prisoners and of Puerto Rico's colonial reality.

This year, we celebrate the release of Jose Perez Gonzalez, a Political Prisoner for his actions in support of the Vieques movement, and we denounce the arrest and incarceration of AVELINO GONZALEZ CLAUDIO!! Come to all the events and bring your friends and family!!

PROLIBERTAD FREEDOM CAMPAIGN OUTREACH DAY!! We are kicking off Freedom Month 2008 with a day of outreach and street education in the South Bronx!! We need volunteers to join us in handing out literature on the Puerto Rican Political Prisoners and Puerto Rican Independence in the South Bronx. Help us make the Puerto Rican Political prisoners a household name!!

Join ProLIbertad on SATURDAY APRIL 5^TH, 2008 FROM 12PM-3pm ON 149^TH STREET AND 3^RD AVENUE (take the 2 or 5 train to 149^th St. and 3^rd avenue stop)!! Look for the Puerto Rican Flags!!

Frank Ambrose Pleads Guilty and agrees to cooperate with Federal Authorities

March 20, 2008 Midwestgreenscare.org (Announcements and Advisories, Resources)

We have just been made aware that Frank Ambrose, one of Marie Mason’s co-indictees has plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit Arson. Page 10 point 7 of Franks plea agreement states in part that “The defendant agrees to fully cooperate with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the signatory US attorneys offices in their investigation of the charges contained in the indictment as well as the investigation of crimes for which they have actual or apparent jurisdiction.”

The complete plea agreement is here. We will continue to release any and all confirmed relevant information as it becomes available.

Love and Rage,
Got Your Back
Friends of Marie Mason
P.O. Box 19065
Cincinnati, OH 45219

Despierta B and Avelino Gonzalez Claudio

The ProLibertad Freedom Campaign
NEW WEBSITE: http://www.prolibertadweb.com
prolibertad@hotmail.com
718-601-4751
__________________________________________________________

Despierta Boricua Segment Friday March 21st, 2008

Interview with Angel Gonzalez, FMPR Support Comm. - NYC

by Ben Ramos, Despierta Boricua (& Mario Morillo's show)

Friday, March 21 - Masacre de Ponce anniversary

6:45 AM

Will give update on our Strike support work,

our campaign to educate & raise funds

for the Utuado 17, and

our upcoming speaking tour with

FMPR's Rafael Feliciano, Pres. and Tania, arrested teacher,

at Hunter College,

Apr 4, Fri, 6:30 PM

Room to be announced.

Spread the word.

Angel

718-601-4901

http://mysite.verizon.net/vze2kxcd/fmprsupportcommitteenewyork/

Avelino González . . . A Tireless Fighter

Avelino González Claudio 09873-000
287 Bilton Road
P.O. Box 665
Somers, CT 06071

In August of 1985, Avelino González, along with other Puerto Ricans and 2 North Americans, were accused of having participated in the planning and authorization of an operation to secure $7,117,000.00 from a Wells Fargo armored truck in Hartford, Connecticut on September 12, 1983. That operation was carried out by the then PRTP-Macheteros. They are accused of being part of the Central Committee and Political Commission of the PRTP-Macheteros. Avelino, his brother Norberto and Victor Gerena, the main person accused, could not be arrested at that time. Norberto and Victor remain underground to this day.

The charges against those arrested that year ended in a trial of a group of the accused (Carlos Ayes, Filiberto Ojeda, Juan Segarra, Norman Ramirez and Roberto Maldonado) in 1989 and finally led to a political-legal agreement in 1992 with the accused Orlando González, Hilton Fernández Diamante, Jorge A. Farinacci, Isaac Camacho, Elías Castro and Angel Días Ruiz and later led to another trial of the accused Ivone Meléndez Carrión. The legal agreement reached recognized the Macheteros as a political organization that fights for the independence of their homeland.

Avelino was born in the town of Vega Baja on October 8, 1942. Since his days as a student in the public schools of his country he established himself as a fighter for the freedom of his homeland. Upon entering the University of Puerto Rico he became a member of the Pro-Independence University Federation (Federación Universitaria Pro Independencia –FUPI), a student organization founded in 1956 that has stood out for its struggle for university reforms to improve conditions at the university for our people. Avelino became its vice-president. Avelino stood out as one of its best militants and as a person for whom no task was too small or too big to take on.

Since becoming a student he embraced socialist ideas as his own, becoming a constant student of the history of our working people and their struggles, as well as, studying the socialist ideological classics. He always stood out for his knowledge of the history of the workers’ international struggles and their revolutions.

He married in the mid-1960’s and had 4 children who today are part of the professional classes of our country. At that time he moved to New York City where he lived until the beginning of the 1970’s. He worked in Wall Street in that city while he carried out political work with the Puerto Rican community and organized part of the resistance of the revolutionary forces that were beginning to organize themselves in “the belly of the Yankee beast” and had begun to stand out by the end of the 1960’s. Avelino became part of the leadership of the Vito Marco Antonio Mission of the Movemento Pro-Independence (MPI) in New York.

Avelino returned to his homeland to integrate into the political work where he stands out as one of its most capable and disciplined leaders. At the time of the arrests in 1985 he was known for his role in the administration of the operations of the political magazine Pensamiento Crítico (Critical Thought). It is at that time that he becomes one of the Puerto Ricans most sought by the enemy and he transforms himself into the citizen José Ortega.

Upon getting to know Avelino as one of the leaders most committed with his ideas of freedom for our homeland and the program of struggle of his organization, we do not doubt that he has been in the heart of our people, struggling alongside them for their civil rights to freedom and social justice for its working classes. Many have been the trenches of struggle of this well-known leader and militant of the revolutionary struggles of our people and its movement for national liberation for the past 50 years.

Following the arrests of August 30, 1985, Avelino became part of the struggles of our people as “José Ortega”. For the past 22 years he alluded the enemy and was able to participate not only in the struggle for our peoples liberation but also as a worker and computer teacher where he realized work for the improvement of the services provided by the Department of Education of Puerto Rico.

Avelino is known for his calm tolerant manner but at the same time for his firmness in the _expression of his positions and political ideas. For him there is no room for hypocrisy when it’s time to combat ideas that he considers incorrect. His personality, his demeanor and his ideas regarding the necessity for unity in the liberation movement led him to always espouse that differences should not be a motive for divisions. He has never been heard to make mean-spirited or derogatory accusations of those he has political differences, either in his organization or toward those outside it with whom he has differences because of their political practice or strategy. He said in his first communication after his arrest, “ . . . Pandora left desperation out of her box and because of this they may chain and imprison my body, but never my spirit and my ideas”

Avelino today finds himself incarcerated in a state prison in the city of Hartford in conditions of “maximum security”. 23 hours in isolation in a jail cell, with one hour to get fresh air, with no access to his family and denied communication by telephone with his family members, his lawyers or friends. They propose to judge him, as they have his comrades in struggle, faraway from his Puerto Rican homeland.

The U.S. government must recognize Avelino’s status as a fighter for independence and a political prisoner, as he demanded in its imperial courts!

We know that Avelino is man in very good health at the time of his arrest and we hope that he remains so. Any change in his health condition will be the responsibility of his enemy jailers.

Let Us Support The Defense of Avelino!

Comité familiares y Amigos de Avelino González Claudio

Friends and Family of Avelino González Claudio

apartado postal #22282

San Juan. P.R.00931-2282

avelinogonzalezclaudio@yahoo.com

Youth arrested in America

Toledo, OH: Anarchist suspected in two anti-sprawl arsons
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20080318181320236

Lambertville youth caught in stakeout
By MARK REITER, BLADE STAFF WRITER
March 18, 2008

TEMPERANCE - A Lambertville youth accused of arson in the fires that
destroyed two unfinished homes in Bedford Township housing developments
started the fires to bring attention to the construction of new homes in
the area, authorities said.

Michael W. Sykes, 17, who was arrested during last weekend's police
stakeout to catch the arsonist responsible for the string of fires in
the Lambertville area, was arraigned yesterday in Monroe County District
Court.

He pleaded not guilty to one count each of arson and home invasion.
Judge Mark Braunlich ordered the teenager held in the county jail in
lieu of $1 million bond. He is scheduled to be back in court March 26
for a pretrial hearing.

Young Sykes, who lives with his parents at 7472 Canterbury Drive, was
taken into custody about 1:15 a.m. Sunday after he was accused of trying
to siphon gasoline from an unmarked Jeep Cherokee as Detective Tom
Redmond sat inside the parked SUV.

The arrest occurred during an undercover stakeout in which deputies sat
inside unfinished homes in the township in an effort to catch the
arsonist who destroyed two homes in separate fires days apart.

In interviews, the teen admitted to setting fires last week to an
unoccupied condominium on Fountain Circle in Crystal Waters Villas off
Douglas Road and setting a second fire two days later that destroyed a
home being built on Brentridge Lane, said Detective Redmond, who also is
an arson investigator.

He said the motive behind the teenager's actions was to discourage the
construction of new housing developments and curtail the growth of suburbs.

"He was tired of the growth and building of homes in the area," the
detective said. "He hates society. He wants to see society fail."

Detective Redmond said the teenager also confessed to taking an ax
Friday to an 80-foot utility pole along Sterns Road and stealing an
American flag last week from a residence in a subdivision near Sterns
and painting the anarchist symbol - the letter "A" inside a circle - on
it. The flag was found slightly burned in a wooded area near the
suspect's home.

The teen also confessed to a Jan. 12, 2006, arson fire behind the Kroger
store at Sterns and Secor roads in Lambertville that destroyed a semi
trailer and filled the store with smoke and torching a boat and trailer
that same year, authorities said.

Detective Redmond said the investigation began focusing on the Sykes
teen after the condo fire in Crystal Water Villas.

He said Detective Heath Velliquette offered him as a possible suspect
because of the fire two years ago at Kroger and a fire that was started
intentionally in a field several days later in Whiteford Township.

Detectives also connected the recent arson fires and the damaged utility
pole through a tread pattern of a tennis shoe print that was left as
evidence at the crime scenes.

The sole print matched the shoes that the Sykes youth was wearing at the
time of his arrest, they said.

The teenager's mother, Debra Sykes, said yesterday that her son was
wrongly being portrayed by the media as a "monster," and instead she
said he is a "good kid" who is ill and needs help.

"He loves nature. He loves animals, especially turtles," Mrs. Sykes said.

Under Michigan law, Sykes, though 17, will be prosecuted as an adult.
Detective Redmond said additional charges likely will be filed against him.

According to Family Circuit Court records, the Sykes youth, then 15,
served 24 days in the county youth center in 2006 for delinquencies in
connection with arson, running away from home, and larceny.

The arson charge stems from the fire he set to the field in Whiteford
Township, an act he told sheriff's detectives was "because he was tired
of seeing all the forest being destroyed," court documents said.

In July, the teenager was sentenced to 20 hours community service and
placed on probation by a Family Circuit Court judge for delinquency in
connection with misdemeanor disturbing the peace.

The Sykes youth, then a student at Bedford High School, was charged for
fighting with another student last May in the cafeteria during lunch.

According to his mother, the teenager transferred last year from the
high school to a private school in Toledo.

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080318/NEWS02/803180323

Los Angeles Animal Rights Activists Sentenced

> http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20080313131210726

Los Angeles Animal Rights Activists Sentenced

Thursday, March 13 2008 @ 01:12 PM PDT
Contributed by: Anonymous

Today, East Coast activist Laura Lungarelli was sentenced to one year in
state prison followed by 5 years of probation.

She and her boyfriend Kevin Olliff plead guilty to felony burglary
charges as a result of several months of surveillance by our good friend
at homeland security.

Kevin was sentenced to 16 months in state prison with 3 years of probation.

Collectively, the owe $856 in restitution.

Please consider making a small donation to cover commissary funds for
the next year and a half and to help them chip away at their
restitution. We're also looking for activists in California that can
offer any assistance they can upon their release. Keep in mind that
Laura is new to the west coast.

email Laura's support group at booksforLauraLungarelli@yahoo.com

Details will be available as soon as we get them about where to write
the two of them, and contact for Kevin's support group.

Help Troy Davis -- Unfairly Sentenced to Die

Hey all,

This person needs some serious intervention. The Supreme court just said
he can be executed, even though he is probably innocent.

Seven out of nine witnesses at Troy Davis' trial have since recanted or
altered their testimony with many citing police intimidation.

Please raise your voice to do something to stop this.

More info at:

http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=10022

Write to Daniel McGowan

From:    "Family + Friends of Daniel McG" <friendsofdanielmcg@yahoo.com>
Date:    Tue, March 18, 2008 10:25 pm


**Write to Daniel
**Limited Edition Rare BORF prints for sale
**2008 Certain Days Calendar still available
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Hi all,

It's been a long winter for Daniel and things have been a little slow
lately so we wanted to take this chance to ask you to send Daniel a quick
hello. He's been very busy with his Master's program (he's just about
completed the 2nd quarter), so responding to every single letter is still
tough. Nonetheless, he cherishes every piece of mail he receives so please
take some time to write to him at:

                   Daniel McGowan
        #63794-053, Unit I
        FCI Sandstone
        P.O. Box 1000
        Sandstone, MN 55072

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Limited Edition Artwork By D.C. Artist BORF Still Available



To mark two years since the arrest of environmental activist Daniel
McGowan and the U.S. Government's escalation of state repression of
environmental and animal liberation activists on December 7, 2005 - the
Brian MacKenzie Infoshop, in collaboration with Washington D.C. based
graffiti artist BORF; Just Seeds Visual Resistance Artists Cooperative and
Family and Friends of Daniel McGowan have coordinated a new fundraising
project to benefit Daniel McGowan.

A limited edition and rare five color print entitled 'Support Daniel' by
notorious Washington D.C. graffiti artist BORF is being sold exclusively
through Justseeds at www.justseeds.org. All proceeds will go directly
towards Daniel's commissary and education fund.

5 color silkscreen print
18"x24"
signed/numbered edition of 50

To view and/or buy the print go to:
http://www.justseeds.org/other_artists/04borf.html
To learn more about the Green Scare, go to: www.greenscare.org

Please spread the word about this project!

Special thanks to:
The Brian MacKenzie Infoshop (www.dcinfoshop.org), Ryan, BORF and Justseeds.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2008 Certain Days calendars still available at:
http://www.supportdaniel.org/morehelp/calendar.html



42 GORGEOUS FULL-COLOUR PAGES OF ART AND WRITINGS!
A MEANINGFUL GIFT FOR LOVED ONES AND YOUR COMMUNITY!


 Featuring Herman Bell, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Laura Whitehorn, Gord HIll, Joy
James, Safiya Bukhari, Emory Douglas, Daniel McGowan, Ward Churchill, Tom
Manning, Ashanti Alston, George Katsifiacas, David Gilbert, Carlos
Cortez, Noam Chomsky, Soffiyah Elijah and more!

The calendar also features art on each page from artists all over the world.

It's not too late. Get one here:
http://www.supportdaniel.org/morehelp/calendar.html






Daniel McGowan is an environmental and social justice activist.  He was
charged in federal court on many counts of arson, property destruction and
conspiracy, all relating to two incidents in Oregon in 2001.  Until
recently, Daniel was offered two choices by the government:  cooperate by
informing on other people, or go to trial and face life in prison.  His
only real option was to plead not guilty until he could reach a resolution
of the case that permitted him to honor his principles.  As a result of
months of litigation and negotiation, Daniel was able to admit to his role
in these two incidents, while not implicating or identifying any other
people who might have been involved. He was sentenced to 7 years in prison
on June 4, 2007 and began serving his time on July 2, 2007.

---------------------------------
Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile.  Try it
now.-------------------------------------------------------------------
Support Daniel McGowan: http://www.supportdaniel.org
Daniel on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/danielmcgowan

Family and Friends of Daniel McGowan
PO Box 106, NY, NY 10156
friendsofdanielmcg@yahoo.com

Donations:checks or money orders can be made out to "Lisa McGowan" and
sent to the above PO Box or online at http://tinyurl.com/8blde
----------------------------------------------------------

URGENT UPDATE/Marie Transferred

Date:    Tue, March 18, 2008
from:     freemarie@riseup.net
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

We have just (9:05 p.m. March 18,2008) received word that Marie has been
put on a plane.  We are unsure as to exactly where she is being taken
other than that it is somewhere in Michigan(most likely Grand Rapids).  We
will update everyone on Marie's situation as soon as humanly possible.

At this time we are requesting that everyone cease contacting the Butler
County Jail as she is no longer being held there.

It is especially urgent now as this situation proceeds that anyone who is
able donate all they can towards Marie's legal defense.  These proceedings
will go forward on a timeline dictated by the state, not us.  Therefore,
it is paramount that we are able to secure legal representation NOW.

Send funds in the form of a check or money order made out to “Books for
Prisoners”. Please put in the notes section "Marie" and/or include a
letter detailing that the enclosed funds are for Marie Mason's defense.


In The Struggle,

Got Your Back
Friends of Marie Mason
P.O. Box 19065
Cincinnati, OH 45219
freemarie@riseup.net

Itoiz Dam prisoners

It's correct. The sentence expired, so Julio left prison 5th December. Obviously, the sentence expired too for the other five who were in 'capture order'.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2008/3/18, ELP Support Network <elp4321@hotmail.com>:

Does anyone know if the Spanish Itoiz dam prisoners are still inside?

Someone has just told me "as far as I know [because] Julio was arrested more than 5 years after being sentenced, [the sentence has expired], so he was released a few months later."

Does anyone know if this is correct? Are all the Itoiz Dam defendants free because the sentence has expired, even though some of them are still 'on the run'?

For those who don't know. Back in the late 1990s a group of eco-activists sabotaged the controversial Itoiz Dam, causing so much damage they delayed its construction for a whole year!

The police accused a local environmentalist group, who were legally campaigning against the dam, of being involved with the sabotage. Knowing they wouldn't get a fair trial all of the defendants went on the run. However despite the fact they didn't have any defendants, the Spanish Authorities held their trial anyway and surprise surprise, without any defendants to plead not guilty everyone was found guilty and sentenced to just under 5 years inside.

Since then 3 of the defedants have been caught and as far as I was aware one of the defendants, Julio, still had a number of years to serve, with a second person, Ibai, having a year or so left to serve. But it sounds like they might be out!

News from Italy

BREAK THE SILENCE

(inspired by a few leaflets from ‘ Fuoriluogo’)

Saturday 13^{th October 2007 at around 4am: a girl is sleeping in piazza Verdi in Bologna (northern Italy). Police on patrol decide that the girl’s behaviour is ‘abnormal’ and must be corrected by compulsory sanitary treatment (TSO), which means internment in a psychiatric hospital and forced administration of psychotropic drugs. The cops call the ambulance while keeping the girl under their custody against her will.}

^{Five comrades of the anarchist place ‘Fuoriluogo’ witness the episode and cannot help expressing their contempt at the police. They do their best to prevent the arrest of the girl. The police’s answer is brutal: armed with truncheons and even guns they chase the comrades. As the latter flee, six more police vans are called on the scene and the short escape ends in piazza San Vitale. The 5 are handcuffed while being severely beaten by the cops. A few residents in the area are clearly indignant at the police’s behaviour but do not intervene.}

^{The accusations against the comrades are quite heavy: aggravated robbery (the cops have lost a pair of handcuffs), resistance and damage (of a police van in which one of the comrades had been taken). The 5 are immediately imprisoned in La Dozza prison. Two girls are eventually put under house arrest.}

^{That very night and the following morning the police search the houses of other comrades in Bologna with the pretext that they are searching for the disappeared handcuffs.}

^{In the evening a spontaneous march in solidarity to the arrested anarchists is carried out. Some of the demonstrators decide to express their solidarity also through ‘dangerous’ writings on the walls of the town. Caught by Digos officers, they are arrested and tried summarily: Juan and Bogu are sentenced to 10 months and taken to prison whereas Davide, Alessio and Belle are sentenced to 4 months and put under house arrest.}

^{All the arrested anarchists are inflicted high surveillance regime and censorship on their mail.}

^{In the following months, Cristian, Federico, Andrea, Madda, Manuela and Bogu are unlocked and put under house arrest without the possibility (in Bogu’s case) to receive mail, make telephone calls and see anyone who doesn’t live in the house. Juan, on the contrary, is still in jail and has been transferred from one prison to another a number of times. At the moment he is being held in Poggioreale prison (Naples).}

^{In February 2008 another three anarchists are arrested (house arrest) following the same investigation concerning the former.}

^{These are the latest in a long series of episodes that in recent months have brought about the adoption of suffocating repressive measures in Bologna. Prohibitions of all sorts are imposed all over the city and the centre is constantly patrolled by a massive presence of police. Houses and social squats are being evicted, camps of gipsy people are being demolished with excavators and all forms of social and political dissent are being criminalized. This is done in the name of ‘social security’ and to solve so called ‘social uneasiness’, topics that have been filling the front pages of the press with the intent of stirring a sense of social fear in the citizens and divert their attention from real problems, and of fomenting an atmosphere of cynicism, indifference and resignation. Right now that it is governed by a ‘leftist’ major, Bologna seems to be once again a laboratory where more and more refined and widespread techniques of social control are being experimented. It is the mayor of Bologna the father of the ‘security laws’ approved by the committee of Italian majors and eventually adopted at a national level thanks to home secretary Amato.}

^{In fact the ‘question of security’, far from being a local problem, has become the tour de force of all politicians in Italy, and a subject that gives left-wing and right-wing politicians the opportunity to be engaged in a game in which everyone tries to propose the most suitable solutions to suppress freedom. Day by day intolerance towards the ‘weakest’ categories is growing up. A system based on authoritarian subjugation establishes who are those to be protected and who are those to be persecuted, and inevitably exposes the excluded to cowardly violence: from the attacks against gypsy camps and the community of immigrants in general to the use of total institutions (prisons and psychiatric hospitals) and the more and more frequent raids carried out by gangs of neo fascists.}

^{This progressive and obvious devastation of social relationships is not carried out at random. On the contrary, we think it demonstrates that a well-thought process of restoration of order is under way, a process that is making giant steps in order to change the rules of this ‘democratic’ State. It is not a restoration directed to the past, it is rather a condition necessary to consolidate a political, economic and social system, which is strategically based on war. In fact, while the armies of all western States (including the British and the Italian ones) are engaged into massacring the poorest populations in order to ‘export democracy’ in every corner of the world, the suppression of any space where opposition and dissent can express themselves has become absolute priority at all levels, from the international one to the local one: massive militarisation of urban space, increase in the number of prisoners, deportation of immigrants and shameless persecution of all social struggles, from workers’ strikes to squatting of houses, from protests against eco-devastation to opposition to war. Obviously the most persecuted are those who openly declare themselves enemies of the State and its social order.}

^{Those people who don’t let themselves be deceived by the propaganda of the regime can therefore recognize the real causes of ‘insecurity’ and ‘social uneasiness’.}

^{Deaths at work and fires in workplaces that are occurring in Italy almost on a daily basis cause more dead and injured than any criminal activity. At the same time the impoverishment hitting most people does not depend on thefts and robberies but on wages that are more and more inadequate to the cost of living.}

^{The real insecurity is caused by the constant growth of precarious jobs, which are paid very poorly and do not offer any safeguard, by continuous dismissal of workers (due to the transfer abroad of businesses, where labour force is cheap enough according to the bosses’ needs), by unaffordable renting prices and by a welfare that cannot offer anything, on the contrary: in Italy people die because of wrong sanitary treatment or get intoxicated by rubbish left to accumulate in the streets.}

^{This is not only an Italian story: repressive strategies and social control aimed at preventing the excluded and exploited to unite against their common enemy are being adopted everywhere.}

^{This story, therefore, concerns all of us.}

^{SOLIDARITY TO THE ARRESTED IN BOLOGNA
LET’S PUT FIRE TO ALL PRISONS}

Austrian Animal Rights activist hospitalised

Urgent ELP Bulletin (17th of March 2008)

Dear friends

Last week a group of Austrian and Czech animal rights activists broke into a chicken farm to as part of an open "ploughshares style" animal rights action.

However during that raid one of the Czech activists, Michal, fell from a ladder onto a concrete floor. He was knocked unconscious, he broke his leg and badly injured his back.

ELP did not reveal the news at the time as we wanted to make sure Michal was okay before breaking the news.

The latest news is Michal has had to endure 2 operations and is still in hospital. However he is recovering but is said to be feeling very depressed. Since the accident Michal has received a few messages of support, from people who were told about the accident and these are said to be cheering him up.

Because e-mails are helping to cheer Michal up ELP has decided to go public with this story and we ask that everyone please help aid Michal's recovery by sending him an e-mail of support. The address to e-mail is realita.tv@gmail.com

Oh and there is some good news about this action. At least one hen was rescued during this action, despite the accident.

+++++++++

Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network
BM Box 2407
London
WC1N 3XX
England
www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk

March 2008: Prison Dispatch from Jeff “Free” Luers

What a long and strange journey this past year has been. I have been riding highs and lows as I have been struggling to regain my freedom and find a balance between my desires for this movement and my own personal happiness.

I’ve made no secret of my often conflicting emotions or my disappointment in radical struggles here in the United States. Yet, despite my confusion about my own part in this messy struggle that now sees so many of us locked behind bars—so many split once again into factions, while many others hearts are broken by the betrayals of friends and former heroes—I have strived to remain true to the ideals in which I believe. It is often difficult to carry your head high when the rest of your life feels like you are falling apart, but we must continue to do so because it is only with our heads high that we can meet the eyes of our enemy and let them know that while we may be afraid we are not cowards; that while we may be hurting we are not broken, and most importantly, that while we may be small we are not weak, we are still defiant and we can still be dangerous.

As many of you are aware, I was resentenced on February 28th, after years of fighting for a reduced sentence. I will soon be making the terms of my contract with the state available.

In the months preceding my resentencing I was faced with numerous obstacles and forced to make difficult decisions. Upon my arrival at Lane County Jail, I learned that not only had Judge Lyle Velure come out of retirement to resentence me but that the state was threatening to seek a 20-year sentence again. Judge Velure began suffering severe prostate problems and had to retire again. Upon receiving a new judge my luck began to change and for the first time I thought I just might have a chance.

Now, I must say that my original opinion of Erik Hassleman, the prosecutor assigned to my case, was that he is an evil prick. And as I’m sure he will read this, I want to say that in the end he impressed me and that I respect him as a person and an opponent.

As negotiations progressed it quickly became apparent that the state had a bottom line—I was not going to receive a sentence below 10 years. As part of that agreement the state wanted a written apology from me for my crimes. I wrote a statement acknowledging I was wrong to believe that arson could achieve the change I desired, though I added I was not ashamed of nor did I regret my actions.

My attorneys promptly edited and reworded my statement until it resembled a watered-down version of polite discourse. While many of the things I wanted to say were there the heart of my statement—that I was wrong but essentially not sorry—was missing. With some disgust I swallowed my pride and signed the damn thing and I will admit it is one of the harder things I’ve done because it made me feel defeated.

After all negotiations were said and done the state came back with a final offer of a 30 month sentence followed by a 90 month mandatory minimum, essentially a sentence of a guaranteed 9½ years. After I reluctantly agreed to this as the best I could get, Erik then maneuvered a restitution of $14,000 on top of the $56,000 judgment I just learned Romania has against me.

In a frantic and somewhat pissed off effort my attorneys spent the next month trying to get the restitution dropped without success. In the final days with my head admittedly hanging much lower than usual I decided I would have to accept the states offer, restitution and all.

Come February 28th, however, I would be surprised beyond my wildest imagination. Not only had Hassleman agreed to dismiss the restitution but he had decided to grant a sentence modification in my favor. The sentence would now be 90 month followed by 30 months run out of order so that I may qualify for programs and possibly be released later this year!

During the course of sentencing, Erik spent some time describing my progression as a person and even as an activist during my incarceration. He talked about my subtle shift from a fiery radical to one that acknowledged the failures of some aspects of radical struggle—my words not his—by embracing more mainstream methods of change. All of which is true.

He then went on to describe how I viewed and continue to view my actions as a necessary evil similar to acts such as the Boston Tea Party. Surprisingly, he seemed in agreement with this analogy and even admitted that good arguments have been made about the legitimacy of sabotage and arson to protest ecological destruction. But, he went on to say these acts are still crimes and need to be punished accordingly.

After Erik was done I was given an opportunity to read my statement, this time unedited except for some suggestions from my friend and attorney (in that order), Lauren Regan. Upon finishing my statement I looked to see a somewhat stunned Judge Billings. Admittedly, my first thought was “well I pissed off another one.” But, then by far the most surprising and ever vindicating thing happened.

Judge Billings told me that in his 35 years as an attorney and judge that my statement was the most sincere and passionate he’d ever heard. He told me he was impressed with me. He then went on to say that while some people might disagree, pointedly looking at Erik, that in many ways when I get out I would be considered an “elder statesman” or a “veteran returning from an ugly campaign.” He agreed that we desperately need change and said that I may be one of the people that have the ability to help create that change but that I needed to do so in a way that would keep others and me out of prison. He finished by wishing me the best of luck.

By far the most astonishing of the day was the atmosphere of the hearing. Last time I was sentenced I was condemned as an evil terrorist who needed to be locked away. The difference this time was quite frankly shocking. I was no longer a terrorist but someone respectable. My message was no longer one of rhetoric but one that needed to be listened to.

What I took away from that day is that in a subtle and elusive way our actions have had an impact on the conscience of the American public, and even on some of those who are our natural enemies. For sure it isn’t just our actions, but the truth behind them that has come to be understood. Messages about environmental dangers that years ago seemed fanatical are now accepted science.

There is a shift occurring in this country and it is one that we have very much helped shape. It is not a radical shift and is not enough of a change to correct society’s many wrongs. But it is a noticeable shift we must embrace and continue to push in the right direction.

Since my last dispatch many months ago people have written and expressed concern that I have retired from activism. That is a misconception. I have not retired I have simply sought a different way to create the change I want to see.

I still believe direct action and militancy have their place. But I also see quite clearly its failures and our failures. I’m also quite aware of the failures of mainstream channels of activism. We must find ways to overcome barriers and the obstacles that come in our path. It seems nearly impossible but it isn’t.

All we must do is seriously evaluate how each of us can make a difference; how we can each contribute to the changes that need to occur. In order to do that we must leave the rhetoric behind; we must step away from pigeon-holding ourselves into no-win situations. We have to recognize when to stand our ground and when to compromise. We must move beyond our comfort zones and embrace strangers as potential allies.

The very simple truth of the matter is that the environmental crisis facing us is going to affect all of humanity regardless of color, creed or political affiliation. It is the one thing that we must challenge together; if we fail in that we all fail.

If I’ve learned nothing else in the past 8 years, I have learned that we ourselves have to open our minds. We have to expand our thinking because our ways are not always right and even when they are right they might not be the best way for creating change.

We must learn to recognize our failures and learn from them. We must learn to think strategically, focusing on the larger picture, while also being willing to evolve and change. If change is going to start with us we must embrace the fact that we too must change.

There is lots of work to be done. There are many wounds to be healed. We have to start picking up the pieces and putting them back together. We have to remember our strength and face the challenges ahead. We have to again find our passion to act, our willingness to sacrifice, and increase our capacity to understand. There is no roadmap for us to follow. We are trailblazers in this and as such we must rise to the challenge.

I myself am confused but I’m not lost and I haven’t given up. Despite the ache in my heart I still have faith in us. I still believe we can fix these problems facing us if only we would act with determination and courage. I’m still here and I am not quitting.

- Jeffrey “Free” Luers

www. freejeffluers. org

Write to:

Jeff Luers
#13797671
CCCF
PO Box 9000
Wilsonville, OR 97070

GABRIEL VILLENEUVE UPDATES - SHAC ACTIVIST IN JAIL

ELP Information Bulletin (17th March 2008)

Dear friends

ELP has received the following mailout from Canadian Animal Rights Prisoner, Gabriel Villeneuve's supporters.

1-Message from Gabriel Villeneuve
2-First court appearance this Thursday - come to show your support!
3-Gabriel Villeneuve - political prisoner

-------------------
1-Message from Gabriel Villeneuve

Dear supporters,

Thank you for your kind words and your support. I have been receiving a
lot of mail from all over the world. It's amazing to see all the support
I get. You all make my time in jail a lot easier and help me to keep my
focus. I feel a lot less alone in my cell with tons of support of all of
you who fight for a common cause. You can't imagine how good it feels to
receive letters of support. It's the only thing that connects us
prisoners, to the rest of the animal right scene. Now I know that I'm not
alone.

I'm doing well here; the first five days were ruff because the jail staff
refused to give me vegan food so I starve until they realize I was not
going to eat unless I was served vegan food. So now I eat beans and salad
every single meal...at least I eat! I use this time to do positive things
like exercising, reading, writing, sleep and rest. I usually work more
than 60 hours a week on the SHAC campaign so it's appreciated rest but I
feel a lot of frustration that I'm stuck here and no longer useful for the
animals. However I know that when I will get out I will have more energy
and rage to fight even harder.

As for my arrest and my imprisonment, I obviously think it's totally
outrageous and a disgusting violation of the basic international human
rights and the freedom of speech act guaranteed by the Canadian
constitution. This situation is only making me stronger and more
determined as an activist. I have food, a place to go outside to work
out, people to socialize with, visits from my family, and even more
important, the insurance that one day I will be free. My situation is
luxury compared to what billions of animals have to go through every
single day. They don't have that opportunity to be released one day. For
them, the only way out is death. They only have us, animal rights
activists that have the ability to shut down those animal research labs,
fur farms, slaughterhouses and all the other industries that abuse not
only animals but humans and Mother Earth too. It doesn't matter if they
shut down because of boycott, political pressure, direct actions or other
means. What matters is that they shut down as quickly as possible. We
must use the most effective tactics to achieve our goals as there are
lives on the line.

A lot of people write me that I am an inspiration to them and even a hero.
I appreciate your kind words but seriously I am not special, I don't have
special skills or power; anyone can do what I do and a lot more. All you
need is determination. Even if you have a full time job or go to school,
making phone calls and writing letters to animal abusers scum bags or
participating one hour a week at a demonstration, is possible for anyone.
You don't have to work full time, all you need is consistency. This is
how we're going to achieve our goal. For me my heroes are people who have
families to take care, a full time job and bills to pay, and still take
the time every single week to end all forms of injustice. It is up to all
of us to act on our convictions.

I hope to hear from you soon and hear about all the great things you do
for animal liberation. Thanks again for your support, it is much
appreciated.

P.S. A lot of my mail is not given to me by the prison staff (or takes
weeks to be given to me) so don't worry if I didn't answer your letter
yet. I will write you back for sure as soon as I get your letter.

WORDS AND TEARS MEAN NOTHING, ACTION MEANS EVERYTHING!

UNTIL ALL ARE FREE!

Gab

---------------------------
2-First court appearance this Thursday - come to show your support!

Come to support Gabriel Villeneuve at his first court appearance and its
possible release from jail!

Where? Palais de Justice de Québec, room 2.10
When? Thursady March 20, 2008
Time : 9 :30am

If you need transportation, please contact us at 514-966-6460 /
shaccanada@riseup.net

Flyer in attachment
------------------------

3-Gabriel Villeneuve - political prisoner
(Flyer in attachment)

While out of town to give a talk and a workshop on direct action and SHAC
tactics, Gabriel Villeneuve and 3 other activists were arrested and thrown
in jail on Friday Feb. 22 in Quebec city, Canada (near Montreal) for
allegibly participating in a demonstration against a company that do
business with Huntingdon life Sciences. They presumably went inside a
company office armed with a megaphone banner and informative flyers. They
informed the workers and customers about the relation the company has with
HLS and left the property as soon as someone asks them to leave.

Apparently freedom of speech covered by the Canadian constitution doesn't
cover freedom to express our disgust against companies who see no problems
of paying and supporting the murder of 500 animals a day at HLS. Everyone
was eventually released out of jail after 3 days but authorities decided
to keep Gabriel for a much longer and not determined period of time
because the Judge didn't believe Gab when he said that he wasn't at the
protest and because of his activism history regarding animal rights
protests. Gabriel is a long time SHAC activist and is someone who, a few
years ago, decided to put everything aside in his life to dedicate his
life to help shut down HLS. He is a great source of inspiration for many
people, please support him.

You can send him postal cards, letters, pictures (no Polaroid), drawing,
news clip, internet articles, Canadian and international stamps and money
order. He is not allowed to receive books, magazine and other material.

You can also write him letters by email (at shaccanada@riseup.net)which
will be printed and sent to him by his prisoners support committee. He
would like to receive short letters more often than long letters only
once.

He would like to hear about all kinds of actions that is going on in your
area and everywhere else in the world. He likes DIY punk rock, hardcore,
black history, general activism causes and vegan raw nutrition. Gab
biggest wish while in jail is to see a rise in the amount of
demonstrations and all types of actions across the world against HLS.

Please take a few minutes to write him a letter!

Gabriel Villeneuve #HUL03299801
500, de la Faune
Case Postale 87130
Québec, Québec
G1G 5E4
CANADA

-
SHAC Canada

Canada west coast-VANCOUVER
#102 - 2250 Commercial Drive
Vancouver BC, V5N 5P9
Canada
778-554-SHAC(7422)

Canada East coast-MONTREAL
PO 47579
1550 rue de Maisonneuve
Montreal,QC
H3G 2V7
Canada
514-966-6460

shaccanada@riseup.net
www.SHAC.net

++++++++++++++++++

Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network
BM Box 2407
London
WC1N 3XX
England
www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk

Grant Barnes looking for reading material

ELP Information Bulletin (16th of March 2008)

Dear friends

ELP has received a letter from the American prisoner Grant Barnes asking if people can send him reading material. Grant is a vegan activist currently serving 12 years for a series of ELF arsons against SUVs. His reading material requests include:

Any material about the history of, or theory of, the Earth Liberation struggle.
Any material about the history of, or theory of, the Animal Liberation struggle.
Any well documented accademic studies about environmental climate change.
Any anti-fascist literature.
Any feminist literature.
Any social theory literature including writings about athropology, sociology, politics or economics.
Any literature about non-literate or non-agricultural societies.

However, Grant would welcome any reading material what so ever, including all and any letters of support.

Please send books, letters, magazines, etc., to:

Grant Barnes #137563
San Carlos Correctional Facility
PO Box 3
Pueblo
CO 81002, USA.

+++++++++++++++++++++

Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network
BM Box 2407
London
WC1N 3XX
England
www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk

Upcoming Events in Support of Marie Mason

From:    freemarie@riseup.net
Date:    Sat, March 15, 2008

Hey all, just thought it would be a good idea to post up a schedule of
events set up for Marie's support in the immediate future.  Most of these
are Cincinnati specific, so if you know of any events taking place
elsewhere, get in contact with us ASAP so we can publicize these events.

Cincinnati, OH, Saturday, 3/15/08: Benefit Show Featuring The Tillers @
The Crows Nest, 4544 W. Eighth St. (price hill), Cincinnati, OH, 45233
Cost: donation

Cincinnati, OH, Sunday, 3/16/08: Green Scare teach-in & Letter writing
party in support of Marie Mason, 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm, at the Industrial
Workers of the World (IWW) Union Hall located in Cincinnati's Northside
neighborhood at 4001 Hamilton Ave. It is at the corner of Hamilton and
Hoffner across the street from the BP gas station. There are IWW and B4PC
fliers and posters in the window. If the door is locked knock loud we
might be in the back.

Cincinnati, OH, Monday, 3/17/08: Benefit Show for Marie Mason, 9:00 @ the
Blue Rock Tavern, 4114 Hamilton Avenue, featuring Background Music and
acoustic sets by Tom Kappas and Andreas Chronis.

New York City, NY, Tuesday, 3/18/08: Letter Writing Dinner in support of
Marie Mason & Briana Waters to be held @ 1-2-3 Community Space, 123
Tompkins Avenue, between Myrtle & Vernon Avenues.  Food and Letter writing
materials will be available on-site.  Look here for directions to 1-2-3:
http://www.123communityspace.org/directions

Cincinnati, OH, Friday, 3/21/08: Benefit Show for Marie Mason, time T.B.A.
@ the Blue Rock Tavern, 4114 Hamilton Avenue, Featuring Defective Males
and others T.B.A.

Thanks again for all your support, we hope to see you at some of these
events soon and more in the future.  We will update continually as we hear
of more events in support of Marie.

Totally out of control,
-Andreas

Got Your Back
Friends of Marie Mason
P.O. Box 19065
Cincinnati, OH 45219
freemarie@riseup.net
www.midwestgreenscare.org
Listserve
freemarie-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

Marie Mason Update / Flyer

From:    freemarie@riseup.net
Date:    Sat, March 15, 2008

Download Flyer here

We were able to speak with Marie briefly (her phone calls are limited to
15 minutes a couple of times a day). Despite all thats happening she
remains in good spirits and is thankful for the love and support from
everyone.

Marie is presently being held in the Butler county jail awaiting transfer
to Michigan. Marie is a vegan and is not being provided with access to a
sufficient healthy vegan diet. In a recent phone call Marie described that
she was eating what she could and mentioned she was surviving on little
more than oatmeal. This is unacceptable. It is the jail's responsibility
to provide Marie with a healthy balanced diet. We are asking supporters to
call the Butler County Jail and explain Marie has strong ethical
convictions against the consumption of animal products and politely
request Marie be given access to a proper vegan diet. Listed below are the
various phone numbers to contact Butler County Jail.

Attached is a flier folks can download and get the word out about Marie's
current situation. Please distribute far and wide.

Warden's Office
513-785-1015

Sergeant’s Office
513-785-1104

Administration
513-785-1000

Love and Rage,
Got Your Back
Friends of Marie Mason
P.O. Box 19065
Cincinnati, OH 45219
freemarie@riseup.net
www.midwestgreenscare.org
Listserve
freemarie-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

Writing and Visiting Tre

From:    tre@riseup.net
Date:    Sat, March 15, 2008 

Tre is currently at Multnomah County Detention Center. It is possible that
he will be moved soon (and we will let you know if that happens) but in
the meantime, please feel free to write and visit him. Note the info below
and click on the links for more detailed instruction. You can speed
delivery of a letter by personally dropping it by MCDC.

REMEMBER THAT ALL CONVERSATIONS WILL BE MONITORED AND RECORDED AND ALL
CORRESPONDENCE WILL BE PHOTOCOPIED. ALL OF WHICH CAN BE USED AGAINST TRE.
THERE SHOULD BE NO DISCUSSIONS ABOUT HIS CASE (FACTS OR OTHERWISE) OR HIS
ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY. BE VERY CAREFUL WHAT YOU WRITE AND SPEAK OF!!!

Thank you all for your love, support, time and energy...now and in the
past! Namaste.



Visiting Tre
------------

Contact information and visitation rules for Multnomah Facilities:

Justice Center Jail (503) 988-3689
Inverness Jail (503) 988-5060

Please read these visitation rules for these facilities. Here is a link to
information concerning visiting an inmate in Multnomah County facility:
http://www.mcso.us/public/Inmate_visitors_guide.htm


*****If people want to visit Tre, they need to write him first at
tre@riseup.net and ask to be placed on his list. They need to provide
their date of birth and phone number.*****

Some visiting info:

1) The visiting hours at MCDC are: SATURDAY & SUNDAY HOURS - 9:00 am to
2:15 pm & 4:15 pm to 9:45 pm and WEEKDAY HOURS - 7:30, 8:30 & 9:30 pm

2) You will need to show a valid piece of identification.

3) He gets 2 half hour visits per week total, and up to and optimally, 3
people go in at once.

4) The visiting week starts on Sat and goes through the following Fri.

5) You just go with your 3 folks and you cannot book ahead - that is why
we are trying to coordinate (write us at tre@riseup.net) so that 2 groups
don't show up at same time.

6) Tre can change his own list at anytime and he needs 1-2 days to process
it.

      ____________________________________________________________

Writing Tre
-----------

Here's a link to information concerning sending mail to an inmate in
Multnomah County facility: http://www.mcso.us/public/inmate_mail_FAQ.htm

Letters, preferably on scrap paper, (Tre's choice), or tree-free, can be
written:

Tre Arrow (He was booked into MCDC under that name)
SWIS #640393
Multnomah County Detention Center
1120 S.W. 3rd Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97204

Letters can be mailed or dropped off at MCDC.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Press Release: (for those of you that didn't see it)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 29, 2008


  From: The Tre Arrow Defense Committee (TADC), Portland, OR
  Contacts:
  Paul Loney, Attorney, 503-234-2694;
  Bruce Ellison, Attorney, 605-391-6884;
  Shawna Scarpitti, Family Spokesperson, 408-802-6910
_____________________________________________________________________________
  --- Tre Arrow Arrives in Portland ---
  Friends and Supporters Welcome Him Back!

 Tre Arrow is being given a warm "welcome back" to Portland by his
many friends, family and supporters.  Tre is a grassroots
activist, known foremost for his environmental protection work in the forests
of Northern Oregon.  Following several years of peaceful activism by Tre, the
U.S. Government labeled him an "eco-terrorist" and charged him with multiple
counts of arson, conspiracy to commit arson, and possession of destructive
devices (i.e. incendiaries).

 Tre has been a prisoner for four years in Canada fighting
extradition to the U.S., fearing that he would not be given a fair
trial in light of the "eco-terrorist" label.  Tre is awaiting
trial in Portland, Oregon, vigorously fighting his criminal
charges.  Tre states, "As winter holds the land in its grasp, the
bare hardwoods stand strong and beckon the spirit of Spring.
Likewise, as my life enters a new season, my strength and life
force are flowing through my veins and invigorating my body, mind,
and spirit for the upcoming challenges. The time has come to
prepare for trial in Portland. I am returning from Canada ready
to assist my lawyers in this process."

 Tre has consistently denied any guilt and always asserted that he is
innocent of all charges.  Tre states, "I have maintained my innocence from
the onset of this ordeal. My legal team presented my plea for asylum in
Canada based on the political persecution I am facing. But, it is
abundantly clear that the Canadian Government is complicit in the
atrocities and injustices perpetrated by the US government.  My faith in
the Canadian authorities to act with a conscience in a fair and objective
manner has not been realized. The time has come to prove my innocence once
and
for all."

 Tre's indictment came only after three other individuals were
arrested for the arsons and began to cooperate with the
government. Tre's defense team stresses his innocence and asserts
that the three cooperating individuals are directing the blame on
Tre to escape punishment.  Tre states, "I am innocent of the
charges that the U.S.  government is trying to pin on me.  Just as
many activists have experienced, the government is targeting me
because I have chosen to challenge the status quo — not because I
am guilty."

 Tre continues to be known in Portland as the peaceful activist who
climbed the ledge outside the offices of the Regional U.S. Forest
Service headquarters in July 2000. Tre perched on that 9-inch ledge, 10
meters
above the ground, for 11 days. This attracted local, national, and
international attention to the former Eagle Timber Sale.  Tre and other
grassroots activists were ultimately so successful that the U.S. Forest
Service canceled the Eagle timber sale.  Today, the public continues to
enjoy the forest in the Clackamas River watershed for its natural beauty.
The forest functions as a back-up drinking water source for Portland and
surrounding communities.

 Tre's family, friends and supporters remark on his kindness,
passion and positive approach to activism.  Tre leaves a lasting
impression on everyone who heard his simple, yet important,
educational messages on social justice, the connection of people,
animals, the earth, and how humanity should take care of the
planet.

 In addition to environmental activism, in Portland, Tre helped
with animal abuse issues, worked as a childcare provider and ran
as a Pacific Green Party candidate for the U.S. House of
Representatives in 2000.  Tre's candidacy garnered more than 15,000 votes.

 Tre's sister Shawna Scarpitti is the family's spokesperson.  "My
family's hope is to get Tre's story known by the public to add to
the movement calling for him to be released. He is an innocent man
facing a life sentence in prison.  Tre has been fighting
extradition for nearly four years in British Columbia, Canada, and
is now returning to face trumped-up charges
for crimes he did not commit," says Scarpitti.

 Tre adds, "I thank the wonderful folks in Canada who have become
part of my family and helped in countless ways with my legal and
personal needs.  I thank you from the depths of my being and we
shall meet again! To all those in Oregon and beyond, to all those
helping to mount the needed support — I am coming home and will
see you soon. I will be free, and I will be vindicated! In the
words of Caitriona Reed, I declare, 'For the power of my anger,
transforming itself into love, for the beauty and integrity of all
life-forms, and for the bright energy of my passion for justice and the
health of all beings, I bow to you in gratitude and touch the Earth.'"

 For more information and how to support Tre Arrow, please contact
the website at: www.trearrow.org.

###

--
"Our work will be unfinished until not one human being is hungry or
battered, not one single person is forced to die in war, not one innocent
languishes imprisoned and no one is persecuted for his or her beliefs."
Leonard Peltier
Tre Arrow Defense Committee



Environmentalist and refugee hopeful, Tre Arrow has been incarcerated in
Canada since March 2004.
"I am innocent of the charges the U.S. government is trying to pin on me.
Just As many activists have experienced, I am being targeted by the U.S.
government and the FBI, not because I am guilty, but because I have chosen
to challenge the status quo."
-Political Prisoner Tre Arrow-

Collective Statement from from Got Your Back

From:    freemarie@riseup.net
Date:    Fri, March 14, 2008 10:18 pm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

With all thats been going on its hard to comprehend its only been 5 days
since our friend Marie was kidnapped from us. Over the past few days we
have have received an avalanche of emails, phone calls, and visits seeking
details on Marie and her case. In order to better utilize our energy and
support efforts for Marie we will continue to release updates and
information through public statements that will be disseminated through
the freemarie@lists.riseup.net. and midwestgreenscare.org. We encourage
folks to contact us with their own support ideas, projects, and offers to
help but due tho the sheer volume will likely be unable to answer each
individual question put to us.

Got Your Back, is the loosely based collective formed to support Marie. We
all agree on one thing we want Marie home and back into our community
yesterday. She is our friend and we got her back. That being said it is
important to note that we do not claim to speak for Marie in any shape,
way, or form.

We do not want to imply in anyway that the other known four are somehow
undeserving of support. Preliminary reports suggest they are all standing
strong and we hope to make contact with them soon. We also hope to see
others step up and help fill the void of support for Frank, Aren, and
Stephenie. Strong support now will help them better face any coming stress
and hardships. Its important that we do not allow the state to isolate our
brothers and sisters. If you are organizing such support please let us
know, we would love to share resources, combine and coordinate our efforts.
If we have ANY confirmed information about anyone in this case we will
make that public without delay. At this time we have no such relevant
information.

Understand that we have to be very mindful of what we say. Regardless of
their accuracy or relevance prosecutors have used statements made by
supporters against activists in bail hearings, during trials, and at
sentencing. To get a reminder of the lengths the state will go too recall
the Federal prosecutor using song lyrics from a CD insert against Sadie
and Exile during the west coast Green Scare trials. In the face of another
round of government repression let us not practice in the politics of
shadyness. We cannot emphasize the point enough that we want to encourage
people to avoid any speculation, rumors or hearsay. The FBI has already
attempted to spread disinformation amongst supporters when they contacted
a Cincy local claiming to be passing on information on Marie's behalf. We
understand people have questions. Believe me we have questions too, but
the best thing everyone can do for Marie right now is channel your energy
into the various support efforts and projects, or even start your own. If
you have not written Marie yet please take the time to do so. In a recent
phone call Marie wanted to express thanks for the outpouring of support
and wanted to let everyone know that she loves you all.

Love and Rage,
Got Your Back
Friends of Marie Mason
P.O. Box 19065
Cincinnati, OH 45219

freemarie@riseup.net
Updates on Marie and her case www.midwestgreenscare.org

Marie Mason Update

From:    freemarie@riseup.net
Date:    Fri, March 14, 2008



We want to extend our thanks to everyone that has offered support and
helped us navigate this treacherous path so far. One thing were learning
early on is Marie had a lot of friends. Its important we all do what we
can to let Marie know she is not alone and thar we got her back! Even
something as simple as a letter of support can make all the difference in
the world.

Marie has been attempting to call several friends from jail collect. We
have found out the hard way that cell phones and most digital phone
services will not accept collect calls from a correctional facility. Its
heartbreaking to get repeated phone calls from Marie and not to be able to
accept them or even communicate (outside of a slow moving physical letter)
why. Folks might want to consider checking to see if their phone provider
will accept collect calls from a correctional facility now rather then
finding out they will not during an emergency.

We drove up to The Butler County jail with Marie's daughter Thursday
(3/13/08) but were denied access because she had already been seen by a
visitor that day. Apparently Marie is only allowed 1 visiting session of
up to 3 people per session once per visiting day (Thursdays and Sundays).
While frustrating it shows our failure to foresee such an event and how
much more coordination needs to be done on a local level. Its natural and
healthy for Marie that locals are concerned about her well being and want
to visit her. In an attempt to learn from our previous mistake we ask if
you are planning on visiting Marie please get in touch with us first so
that we can set up a schedule and ensure she is getting the maximum amount
of visitors allowed per visit, that important information is getting to
her and that people aren't making the drive just to be turned away. On a
positive note we were able to confirm she has access to the funds we had
previously put in her commissary and we were able to put $50 more dollars
in her commissary account and buy her a $25 pre paid phone card.

Several folks have asked if they can send email letters that we can pass
on to Marie. I know from personal experience that when locked up the
physical act of receiving a letter from a friend, loved one or supporter
can be a real morale booster. If you are located in the USA we encourage
you to write Marie directly yourself. Marie's Mailing address and mail
rules can be found at www.midwestgreenscare.org. If you are outside the
USA or would still prefer to email letters we would be happy to forward on
any messages of support. Email all letters to freemarie@riseup.net. If you
haven't already I encourage everyone to write letters to Marie.

Though we have talked with close to a dozen attorneys since Monday we
still have not secured Marie legal representation. If anyone can help out
or offer us referrals on this front please get in touch.

I hate to ask folks for money but the small band of local friends running
Marie's support group has been hemorrhaging funds the past few days. If
you can donate to Marie's legal fund or just help us out with some of the
mounting expenses (commissary, jail house phone calls, gas funds,
etc...)it would be much appreciated. Note that we are not and will not be
using funds earmarked for legal defense for operational costs so please
specify. We hope to have the website with paypal set up by next week and
other donation options are listed below.

Love and Rage,
Steve
Got Your Back
Friends of Marie Mason
P.O. Box 19065
Cincinnati, OH 45219
www.midwestgreenscare.org
Listserve
freemarie-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

How you can help

1. We are currently collecting funds for Marie’s legal defense. One lawyer
told us it will likely cost between $20,000 - $60,000 to represent a case
like this. Its important we begin our fund raising immediately. We are in
the process of setting up a website (freemarie.org coming soon) where
folks will be able to use PayPal to donate direct but until then ask folks
to send funds in the form of a check or money order made out to “Books for
Prisoners”. Please put in the notes section Marie and/or include a letter
detailing that the enclosed funds are for Marie Masons defense.

We are grateful to have been contacted by an anonymous donor who will match
dollar for dollar up to $1000 for Marie’s legal defense fund. This offer is
good up until April 15.

2. We are looking for artists who are willing to donate their talent and
time to the cause.

3. If you know of any activist attorneys in the Grand Rapids, MI area please
pass along their contact info ASAP.

4. Web design. We recently purchased the domain freemarie.org and are
looking for talented web designers to help out.

4. Write Marie! Mail will be a life line for her during these troubling
times.

5. Web design. We recently purchased the domain freemarie.org and are
looking for talented web designers to help out.

Update on Mumia's case from Robert R. Bryan, lead counsel (unedited)

---

Dear Friends,
Mumia's case is so important, politically and legally, to all of those on
death rows across the country, to all political prisoners, and all
revolutionary and progressive activists.

This letter is from his attorney explaining the recent state court ruling
and the federal court appeal that was heard last May 17.

We must be ready to respond to the 3rd Circuit's ruling whenever it comes
out.

Liberation Now!
Gloria

March 10, 2008

Dear Friends:

This is an update on the case of my client, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has been on
Pennsylvania’s death row for over a quarter of a century.

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Philadelphia We continue to
await the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. I am
in contact with the court, and will alert everyone immediately upon the
issuance of a ruling. Oral argument was on May 17, 2007, thus people ask
why the court is taking so long. This is a highly complex case involving
issues of great constitutional significance and a voluminous amount of
material. In three decades of successfully defending people in numerous
murder cases involving the death penalty, I have not seen one more
complicated.

It is impossible to know how the federal court will rule, but the briefing
and arguments could not have gone better even though there have been
problems due to mistakes by prior counsel. If the federal court follows the
mandate of the U.S. Constitution, the decision should be favorable.
However, Mumia's remains in jeopardy because courts are so unpredictable.

The pending issues, as set out in our federal briefing, are:


*

Whether Mr. Abu-Jamal was denied the right to due process of law and
a fair trial under the Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments because of the
prosecutor’s “appeal-after-appeal” argument which encouraged the jury to
disregard the presumption of innocence and reasonable doubt, and err on the
side of guilt.
*

Whether the prosecution’s use of peremptory challenges to exclude
African Americans from sitting on the jury violated Mr. Abu-Jamal’s rights
to due process and equal protection of the law under the Sixth and
Fourteenth Amendments, and contravened Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79
(1986).
*

Whether the verdict form and jury instructions that resulted in the
death penalty deprived Mr. Abu-Jamal of rights guaranteed by the Eight and
Fourteenth Amendments to due process of law, equal protection of the law,
and not to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, and violated Mills
v. Maryland, 486 U.S. 367 (1988), since the judge precluded the jurors from
considering any mitigating evidence unless they all agreed on the existence
of a particular circumstance.
*

Whether Mr. Abu-Jamal was denied due process and equal protection of
the law under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments during post-conviction
hearings as the result of the bias and racism of Judge Albert F. Sabo which
included the comment that he was “going to help 'em fry the nigger”.

There are many scenarios of how the federal court might rule. Among these
are: (1) grant an entirely new jury trial; (2) order a new jury trial
limited to the issue of life or death; (3) remand the case back to the U.S.
District Court for further proceedings; or (4) deny everything, thereby
leaving the death judgment intact.

Pennsylvania Supreme Court For over two years we have been litigating
issues in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court regarding the prosecution falsely
manipulating eyewitness testimony and fabricating evidence. Recently the
court denied relief. (Commonwealth v. Abu-Jamal, ___ A.2d ___, 2008 WL
434567 (Pa. Feb. 19, 2008) .) Mumia and I talked just after the ruling on
February 19, and I then issued the following public statement:

"Mumia and I had a long conference this afternoon, shortly after the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court made its ruling. We were not surprised since that
court has a history of not addressing the racism and fraud that has
dominated the prosecution since its inception over a quarter of a century
ago. By dismissing the appeal on procedural grounds, the court avoided
dealing with the compelling facts establishing that the prosecution of my
client was based upon lies, half-truths, and bigotry. It is sad that the
state court used possible mistakes of the previous lawyers in the case as an
excuse to dodge the truth.

This state ruling has no bearing on the proceedings pending in the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. If the federal decision is
favorable, then the Pennsylvania Supreme Court judgment will be moot.
Otherwise, I plan to seek relief in the U.S. Supreme Court. I will not rest
until Mumia is free."

Germany On January 12, 2008, I spoke on behalf of Mumia at the annual Rosa
Luxemburg Conference in Berlin. As I concluded, the thousands in attendance
gave a long and enthusiastic ovation. It was a nice tribute to my client
who has become a symbol in the international struggle against the death
penalty and human-rights abuses. Mumia asks that I convey his gratitude to
the many good people in Germany who work so tirelessly for justice. These
include especially his longtime German publisher and confidant Jürgen
Heiser, the human-rights attorney Eberhard Schultz, Sabine Schubert, Petra
Siemering, Victor Grossman, George and Doris Pumphrey, the distinguished
actor Rolf Becker, the renowned Berlin filmmaker Thomas Giefer, the
prominent writer Sabine Kebir, and German PEN.

France Professor Claude Guillaumaud-Pujol has written an excellent book,
Mumia Abu-Jamal, un homme libre dans le couloir de la mort, which was
published late last year. It has Mumia's endorsement, and has sold well.
Claude has donated the proceeds from her book to help the defense of Mumia
in our struggle for his freedom. The author represents the highest standard
in the movement for she is totally committed to justice and the freedom of
Mumia, and does not seek to exploit my client. Mumia expresses his
gratitude to Claude, Jacky Hortaut, Mireille Mendes-France, Jacques Lederer,
the Collectif Unitaire National de Soutien à Mumia Abu-Jamal, Senator Nicole
Borvo Cohen-Seat, the Paris Bar, and the many others in France who have done
so much.

England Mumia asked that I also thank Niki Adams, the legendary Selma
James, and their colleagues at the Legal Action for Women, London, for their
ongoing work on behalf of justice not only in England but throughout the
world. I am particularly indebted for their extraordinary commitment that
has resulted in programs on Mumia in the Inns of Court and other British
venues, a petition for justice and a new trial signed by over 100 prominent
lawyers there, and drawning public attention to the injustice in this case.
And, of course, the efforts of Ian Mcdonald QC, Garden Court North Chambers,
an outstanding barrister and friend, have been significant.

In Prison My Whole Life, British film The new documentary film on Mumia, In
Prison My Whole Life, has been shown at a number of prestigious film
festivals, e.g., International Film Festival & Forum on Human Rights,
Geneva, Switzerland; Sundance Film Festival; Belfast Film Festival; London
Film Festival; Rome Film Festival; Copenhagen International Film Festival;
Dublin International Film Festival. It was also recently screened by
members of the House of Commons, London. Mumia and I are grateful to Colin
and Livia Firth, and their associates, for having the courage to make this
extraordinary film. They have my full support and that of my client, for
this worthwhile film which deals with the larger issues of the death
penalty, racism and injustice.


Donations in the United States for Mumia's Legal Defense With Mumia's
authorization, a process exists which guarantees that U.S. donations go only
to the legal defense, and are tax-deductible. Checks should be made payable
to the National Lawyers Guild Foundation (indicate "Mumia" on the bottom
left), and mailed to:

Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal

P.O. Box 2012

New York, NY 10159-2012

Conclusion The issues in this case concern the right to a fair trial, the
struggle against the death penalty, and the political repression of a
courageous writer and journalist. My goal is to win a new and fair trial
for Mumia, and a jury acquittal upon his retrial. I want him to go home to
his family. Nevertheless, Mumia is in great danger, for if all is lost he
will be executed. We must never forget that racism, fraud, and politics are
threads that have run through this case since the beginning and continue
today.

Your interest is appreciated.

Cordially yours,

Robert R. Bryan
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123-4117

Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal

Anarchist birthday Brigade List for March

March

RICHARD MAFUNDI LAKE 079972100 Warrior Lane #A-21-A
Bessemer, AL 35023-7299
March 1, 1940

HUGO L.A. PINELL
#A88401
SHH D3-221
PO Box 7500
Crescent City, California
95531-7500
March 10, 1945

JAAN K. LAAMAN
W41514 / Box 100
South Walpole, MA 02071
March 21, 1948

Support Marie Mason

Greetings,

As the new Defiant Spirit gets ready to roll off the press, the latest
news of our friend and fellow worker Marie Mason is below. Earlier this
week the FBI raided and arrested Marie at her Cincinnati home. There
are updates at www.midwestgreenscare.org Please consider sending Marie
a letter. It would really help.

In Solidarity,

Tom Kappas
CST - General Defense Committee

First we want to thank everyone who has expressed interest in
supporting recently arrested Eco defense organizer Marie Mason. Below
you will find the an overview of what we know as well as the latest
updates about Marie’s case and current situation and ways you can help
support Marie. A listserv has been established to keep supporters
updated. To subscribe send an email to: freemarie-subscribe@lists.
riseup.net Send Marie your letters of support! MARIE MASON #134001
Butler County Sheriff’s Office & Correctional Complex 705 Hanover
Street Hamilton, Ohio 45011 If you send Marie a letter and it gets
returned to you, please let us know about it so we can add any other
restrictions to the guideline list. When writing please use your common
sense; don’t write about anything that is likely to get a prisoner in
trouble in any way. Avoid discussing any details of her case and/or any
potential charges against her.

We were able to briefly speak with Marie Monday night (3/10/08) and
that is when we found out she was in the Butler County Jail and was
promptly placed on suicide watch on arrival. We were able to assure her
that her daughter was safe (her 16 year daughter was at Marie’s home
when the FBI, Homeland Security, and local Police served a search
warrant and detained her for over an hour), that her pets were being
looked after and several other personal affairs would be attended to.
Several of us drove to the Butler County jail the next day (3/10/08)
with the intention of putting money in Marie’s commissary account.

To make things more difficult the prisoner must add visitors names to
a pre-approval list prior to the visit and prisoners are only able to
update their visitors list once every 30 days. We quickly wrote Marie a
letter detailing all this and that we had deposited funds into her
commissary account as well as a list of friends #s she can call collect
at any time and dropped it off at the post office a few blocks from the
jail in hopes she would get the letter before visiting day. We got a
call from Marie’s Mother (3/12/08) today who had received a collect
call from Marie. Marie told her that she needed funds to obtain vegan
food as well socks and basic toiletries in prison. She asked her mother
to contact us to and request we put money in her jail commissary
account. This news was frustrating to us as we had already driven up to
the Butler County Jail and deposited ample money in her account and was
told she would be given a receipt of its deposit detailing her current
balance and she would have access to it by 3pm of the day of deposit.
Since we have not heard from her since Monday we assume she has not
gotten our letter with all the contacts yet and that as of 2pm today
had not been given access to the funds we placed in her commissary
account. The last thing we want is Marie to feel alone during all this.
We will be driving up to the Butler County jail tomorrow in hopes of
seeing her and at the least depositing more money into her commissary
account. We will keep everyone posted. How you can help:

1. We are currently collecting funds for Marie’s legal defense. One
lawyer told us it will likely cost between $20,000 - $60,000 to
represent a case like this. Its important we begin our fund raising
immediately. We are in the process of setting up a website (freemarie.
org coming soon) where folks will be able to use PayPal to donate
direct but until then ask folks to send funds in the form of a check or
money order made out to “Books for Prisoners”. Please put in the notes
section Marie and/or include a letter detailing that the enclosed funds
are for Marie Masons defense. We are grateful to have been contacted by
an anonymous donor who will match dollar for dollar up to $1000 for
Marie’s legal defense fund. This offer is good up until April 15.
2.We are looking for artists who are willing to donate their talent
and time to the cause.
3. Write Marie! Mail will be a life line for her during these
troubling times.

Its all about the Struggle, Got Your Back

Friends of Marie Mason P.O. Box 19065 Cincinnati, OH 45219
freemarie@riseup.net

Briana Update

Urgent ELP! Bulletin (12th of March 2008)

Dear friends

ELP has just learnt that the American prisoner, Briana Waters', attempt to be released today, prior to her sentencing later on this year, has failed. This means she will remain within prison.

Please send urgent letters of support to:

Briana Waters 36432-086
FDC - Seatac
Federal Detention Center
P.O. Box 13900
Seattle,
WA 98198
USA

Please remember, despite having been found guilty of her alleged involvement in an ELF action Briana maintains her innocence and is intending to appeal against her conviction. ELP regards Briana to be the victim of a miscarriage of justice.


++++++++

Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network
BM Box 2407
London
WC1N 3XX
England
www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk

Jeff 'Free' Luers has been transferred

ELP Information Bulletin (12th March 2008)

Dear friends

ELP has just learnt that the American environmental prisoner Jeff "Free" Luers has been transfered to a new prison. His new address is:

Jeff Luers #13797671
CCCI
PO Box 9000
Wilsonville, OR 97070
USA

Below is a statement from his support campaign

From: info@freejeffluers.org

Dear Friends,

We have just been informed that Jeffrey Free Luers has been transferred to
an intake processing facility at Coffee Creek Correctional Institution in
Wilsonville, Oregon. Jeff will be processed as a new prisoner and will
eventually be sent to another facility for the remainder of his sentence.
This transfer follows his resentencing of 2/28/08 in which his sentence
was reduced from 23 years to 10 years, making him eligible for release by
December 2009 with “good behavior”.

Although we do not know how long Jeff will be at Coffee Creek, it may be
several weeks, so please write to him and offer your support. Jeff has
also requested books be sent to him, and although he did not request
anything specific, he is not shy to admit he is a geek and loves fantasy
and vampire books. NOTE: Books must be *new* and sent directly from the
publisher or from online sites such as AKPress.com or Amazon.com.
If you have any questions about mail regulations, please consult the
Oregon inmate mail regulations here:
http://arcweb.sos.state.or.us/rules/OARS_200/OAR_291/291_131.html

And as you may expect, we are still fundraising to pay Jeff’s legal debt,
so please donate whatever you can through the various options at:
http://freejeffluers.org/donate.html

Jeff’s temporary address:

Jeff Luers #13797671
CCCI
Po Box 9000
Wilsonville, OR 97070

Thank you all for your amazing support these past few years. We are all
very ecstatic that the end is near!
-Friends of Jeffrey Free Luers

--
Friends of Jeffrey Free Luers
PO Box 3, Eugene, OR 97440
info@freejeffluers.org
www.freejeffluers.org

To donate to Jeff's legal costs, go to http://www.freefreenow.org/donate.html


+++++++++++++

Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network
BM Box 2407
London
WC1N 3XX
England
www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk

Government targets CISPES again, suggests FARA violation

*********

For immediate release

March 11, 2008

Contact: Burke Stansbury, CISPES – 202 521 2510 ext. 205; burke@cispes.org

Central American Solidarity Activists Dispute Department of Justice Order, Denounce Possible Repeat of Illegal Harassment

Grassroots Group Accused of Being Foreign “Agent” of Leftist Political Party in Lead-up to Contentious Salvadoran Presidential Elections

Washington DC: The Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), illegally targeted in the 1980’s by the largest FBI Internal Security investigation of the Reagan era, has in recent months again received threatening communications from the U.S. Department of Justice. Citing the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, a letter sent to CISPES in January questions the organization’s relationship with the leftist Salvadoran political party known as the Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation, or FMLN. CISPES received similar inquiries in the 1980s which eventually led to an illegal FBI investigation into its activities.

The letter cites the organization’s website and an article published in the Washington Post – which does not mention CISPES – following the December 2007 visit of the FMLN’s presidential candidate Mauricio Funes. It states that, “it has come to our attention… that the FMLN, and/or possibly its candidate for El Salvador’s 2009 presidential election, Mauricio Funes, hired your organization for the purposes of conducting a public relations media campaign to include political fundraising…” The Department of Justice gave no other evidence to back up the claim.

According to CISPES Executive Director Burke Stansbury, “CISPES has never had a contractual agreement with the FMLN or Mr. Funes, nor have we taken orders from the party to do publicity work in the U.S. Rather, we have a solidarity relationship based on shared political values that goes back to the struggle for democracy and economic justice that the people of El Salvador fought against a brutal U.S.-backed military regime in the 1980s.” CISPES was founded in 1980 at the height of the civil war between the US-backed Salvadoran government and the FMLN, at that time an internationally recognized guerrilla force.

“That the Department of Justice would wrongly evoke the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) to target this organization at this particular moment demonstrates the Administration's fear of progressive change sweeping Latin America . It is an effort to intimidate and stifle solidarity groups in the U.S. who oppose the Government's efforts to install puppet regimes against the will of the people of Latin America,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a lawyer from the Partnership for Civil Justice who is part of the team of attorneys assisting CISPES in this matter.

The Salvadoran FMLN and its candidate Funes have gained broad support 12 months ahead of the 2009 election, in large part due to the failure of U.S.-supported neoliberal policies like the U.S.-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

“This shows that the Bush Administration is terrified of another Latin American country electing a Left party,” said Stansbury. “People in the region want fair and transparent elections, free of outside intervention, and such actions by the Bush Administration show a dangerous tendency towards once again disrupting the electoral process of a sovereign country.” In 2004, the last time the FMLN had a chance to win the presidency, U.S. government officials issued statements showing clear support for the right-wing ARENA party and threatening to cut off money sent from Salvadorans in the U.S. to their families should the FMLN win.

In 1981 FBI investigated CISPES for allegedly acting as a foreign agent of the FMLN. When that claim proved baseless, the Department of Justice launched a full-scale investigation based on the claim that CISPES was a front for the “terrorist” FMLN. The FBI campaign of surveillance, harassment, and intimidation of CISPES lasted until 1987 and ultimately became a major embarrassment for the Bureau when CISPES and the Center for Constitutional Rights forced the release of FBI files under the Freedom of Information Act. Subsequent Congressional hearings showed the FBI to have conducted numerous illegal operations, led to an internal inquiry by the Bureau, and curtailed the scope of domestic surveillance activities which were later expanded again under the USA Patriot Act.

“In the 1980s the Department of Justice set out to intimidate and repress the powerful Central America solidarity movement,” said Angela Sanbrano, CISPES Executive Director during the FBI investigation of the1980s. “That infamous witch hunt was a complete failure, and yet the Bush Administration has the nerve to return to the original tactics of using an ambiguous law – FARA – to threaten CISPES again.”

CISPES has continued its work of supporting real democracy and human rights in El Salvador by taking delegations of elections observers to El Salvador; touring prominent Salvadoran labor leaders and human rights advocates in the U.S.; and working to prevent a repeat of past U.S. political intervention. CISPES has opposed the opening of the U.S.-sponsored International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA), claiming that it has served to export repressive U.S. policing tactics – including harassment of political activists from opposition groups – to Latin America.

“It’s no coincidence that the Bush Administration is targeting CISPES now for our solidarity with movements in El Salvador,” said Sha Grogan-Brown, CISPES’s Development Director. “As more and more progressive forces take power in Latin America, the State Department is looking for ways to bolster its few remaining allies and to thwart the rise of parties like the FMLN. But their dirty tactics of harassment and intimidation will not stop our solidarity work, as we refuse to submit to their pressure.”

- Go here to view the Department of Justice letter to CISPES

- Go here to view the CISPES response

- Go here for an article on the history of FBI harassment targeting CISPES in the 1980s

Five accused of arsons in Michigan

Urgent ELP! Bulletin (11th of March 2008)

Dear friends

News is coming in of a number of raids/arrests involving American environmentalists.

The raids appear to be linked to an arson at Michigan State University in 1999 and another arson at a logging site in 2000. Both arsons where claimed at the time by the Earth Liberation Front.

Well known American Earth First! activist, Frank Ambrose, (who has been wrongfully accused of ELF actions in the past) told ELP he has been charged on three counts of arson and conspiracy to commit arson. Other people listed in the indictment include Marie Mason, Aren Berthwick, Stephanie Sultz, and an "un-named participant known to the grand jury."

At this moment in time ELP is unaware of what has happened to Aren Berthwick or Stephanie Sultz, but we are aware that Maria Mason has also been arrested and is currently in custody in Ohio and is expected to be extradited to Michigan.

If anyone knows anything about Aren or Stephanie please contact ELP as soon as possible.

ELP will keep you up to date with this news as we get it. In the meantime please send letters of support to:

MARIE MASON #134001
Butler County Sheriff's Office & Correctional Complex
705 Hanover Street
Hamilton, Ohio 45011
USA

++++++++++++

Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network
BM Box 2407
London
WC1N 3XX
England
www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk

Jaan Laaman's new podcast.

Greetings all,
Jaan Laaman is now doing a radio commentary series on Kansas City Black
Liberation Radio (kclbr.org). You can listen on the website, or
listen/download the podcast at: electricrnb.podomatic.com

The first two episodes are up now, including an intro to U.S. political
prisoners and a support appeal for the Black Riders Liberation Party.

Please give it a listen, and don't forget to send Jaan a card for his
60th birthday, which is March 21st.

You can send correspondence to:
Jaan Laaman (W87237)
Box 100
South Walpole, MA 02071

Peace,
Dominic
JLLFF/Jericho

Briana's prison address

Urgent ELP! Bulletin (11th of March 2008)

Dear friends

As most ELP supporters will be aware, Briana Waters has been found guilty of two counts of arson relating to an ELF action. Following her guilty verdict Briana was outragiously taken immediately into custody (this is despite the fact Briana poses no flight risk what so ever).

ELP understands that Briana is appealing against this detention and will appear in court tomorrow. If she is lucky she will be released. If she is not she will remain inside.

ELP will bring you the news just as soon as we have it. In the meantime we can confirm Briana's prison address is:

Briana Waters
36432-086
FDC - Seatac
Federal Detention Center
P.O. Box 13900
Seattle, WA 98198
USA

Briana Waters' Detention Hearing this Weds. / Full update

Repost from Portland Indymedia:
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2008/03/373233.shtml

Briana's Detention Hearing this Weds. / Full update

This is an update for those who have been following the trial of Briana
Waters, a wonderful mother and violin teacher from the Bay area who to
this day maintains her innocence of these charges she was just convicted
of. We are going to continue doing our best to support her in the ongoing
legal battle for justice.

An important update is there is a detention hearing on Wednesday March 12,
at 1:30 at the Federal courthouse in Tacoma to determine if Briana will be
allowed to go home and take care of her life in preparation for her
sentencing on May 30th. We are reminding people to get there early, like
at 12:30, and people in Olympia will be carpooling from the Grocery Outlet
Parking Lot at 11:45. Obviously, if she is living at home over the next 3
months she will be better able to prepare for an appeal, as well as be
able to take care of her daughter. She and her lawyers are requesting as
many people as possible to come to show that she is part of a community
and NOT a flight risk. Though that should be obvious, as she has showed up
to every court date and hearing in 2 years. Join us then, at 11:45 to get
a ride up there and show that we are watching the so-called justice system
at work.

What happened in Briana's trial on Thursday was very upsetting for those
of us who hoped that common sense would prevail over fear and lies. It was
a very emotional and stressful time, knowing that the prosecution had done
their best to stretch and twist the evidence to their favor, and there was
also a lot of hope that the jury had seen through their antics.

The judge decided first that he would accept a partially hung jury, and
there was a question of whether the jury would be polled on the hung
counts... . I believe both Prosecution and Defense were pushing for this,
(the prosecution's reasoning being that they would have more info to go on
when they were deciding whether to re-try Briana on the hung counts).
Burgess struck out on his own in this one and didn't allow it, so nobody
knows what the ratio split was in the jury on the other 3 counts.

The jury was brought in, and the air was dense with anticipation. The
courtroom was packed, with Briana's supporters and a few media outlets on
our side, and a collection of FBI agents and other feds, and more media on
the other side.

It started to feel surreal, as the jury foreman passed the note to the
court clerk and she read the guilty verdicts on counts 5 and 7, or Arson
of a building used in Interstate commerce, and Arson of a building that
receives Federal funding. These 2 counts are for the same arson of course,
just various excuses for the Gov't to heap on extra charges. It was a very
emotional time for those of us who know she is innocent.

The jury was instructed not to talk to either side's lawyers about the
case at any point in the future, which seemed very unusual. Defense lawyer
Bloom argued that they would like to have the ability to determine if the
jurors had been influenced by the big arson fire in Woodinville on Monday
morning. They were wanting some idea how much that contaminated the jury,
with references made in initial news reports of devices and explosives(!)
found in the unburned houses, worries about Booby-traps(!!), and the
immediate pinning of those fires on the ELF and the requisite sound bites
about terrorism.

Though Bloom argued for the ability to contact the jury later to learn
this, Burgess wouldn't hear it, for no apparent reason (not unlike many of
this judge's 'decisions'). Needless to say, there are various groups that
are concerned about this sort of thing and wish we had more of this kind
of information.

One court observer was quoted saying "I thought justice was supposed to be
blind, not deaf and dumb... "

At the hearing on Thursday afternoon, Bob Bloom argued eloquently for
Briana to be released pending her sentencing hearing May 30th, citing the
character witnesses that had testified to her exemplary life, the fact
that she was absolutely No flight risk, and no danger to the community. He
also went over in some detail some of the main appellate issues. The judge
though, didn't seem to consider any of these points interesting, and
ordered her detained, though they scheduled the detention hearing for this
Weds. where his decision could be reversed.

So, out of all this are many, many grounds for an appeal of the verdict.
I'm not sure right now of the timeline for this, but we at Olympia Civil
Liberties and other friends and supporters of Briana will continue to post
and update people. Please join our low traffic listserve about this case,
and possibly other Civil Liberties/Green Scare issues, with carpool info,
etc. by going to www.olycivlib.org.

The first thing you can do is come to the Detention Hearing at the Tacoma
Courthouse this Weds. at 1:30pm. We have to arrive early! We will be
gathering on the Westside of Olympia at 11:45. Please be there!

Another thing is to write to Briana where she is being held right now. The
moral support that we can give right now is invaluable. The address is:

Briana Waters
36432-086
FDC - Seatac
Federal Detention Center
P.O. Box 13900
Seattle, WA 98198

There are a few guidelines for writing to her to keep in mind:
All letters must have a return address on the envelope.
Put your name and address on each page of a letter, as it will be opened,
and she may not get the envelope.
Written correspondence and drawings may be in pencil, standard ink pen,
typewritten, or computer generated. No felt pens, markers, crayon, or
colored pencil, etc.
Do not discuss her case or anything related to illegal activities. Keep in
mind that all mail is read by authorities.
Most facilities will NOT accept stamps or envelopes mailed to prisoners.
Avoid using white-out, stickers, tape, colored ink or glitter.
All personal artwork must be in black & white, copied pages can be in
color. Most facilities do not allow torn pages from books, magazine or
newspaper clippings. Photocopies, however, are accepted

And of course, there are many costs that have come up through the course
of this ordeal. Donations are needed by Briana and her family to continue
fighting for justice in this upcoming period. If you can, donate through
Briana's website: www.supportbriana.org Local donations can be arranged
through Olympia Civil Liberties by emailing us. Thank you!

We'll see you all on Wednesday!
Olycivlib

UPDATE - Cincinnati Greenscare

** UPDATE **

We have confirmed Marie is being held in the Butler County jail
(southwestern Ohio) pending transfer to Michigan. She is being held on
suicide watch which we believe is just another tactic of the state to
break her down and further isolate her from friends and family.

Federal agents are contacting people on Marie's cell phone list claiming
they are contacting folks on Marie's behalf to pass along information. We
want everyone to know this is bullshit. We were able to briefly speak with
Marie, who despite the current situation is in good spirits. Marie is not
asking the state to contact anyone on her behalf. Realize if you know/knew
Marie your contact information was likely seized when they raided her
house. Understand these are old-school COINTELPRO style tactics that have
been historically used to disrupt and confuse support networks and
activist circles. Stay focused, stay safe, and don't talk to law
enforcement no matter how innocent it may seem.

At this time there's a lot we don't know. Please understand speculation,
rumors, and hearsay help no one. We will be forthcoming with confirmed
information on Marie's current situation as it becomes available.

***

Friends are in the process of establishing a support network for Marie and
raising funds for any potential legal costs. To get in contact with
Marie's support crew email b4pcrew@riseup.net. More Information will be
posted as it becomes available.

ALERT - Cincinnati Greenscare Raids

At approximately 11:38 AM est. long time environmental activist and
community organizer Marie Mason was arrested by federal agents. At the
same time at a separate location Agents from the FBI, Dept. of Homeland
Security and Cincinnati Intelligence Unit executed a search warrant on
Marie's home, detaining Marie's 16 year old daughter for close to an hour
before releasing her. Agents left with several boxes full of items from
Marie's home as well as a computer.  Roughly two months ago, Marie and her
daughter were detained at gun point in their front lawn after discovering
a plainclothes officer from Cincinnati's Police Dept. Intelligence Unit
planting a GPS tracker on her car (See
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20080207224512963&query=cincinnati
). This represents the latest in a long and escalating line of harassment
by the agents of the state.  At the time of writing, she is being
transported by Federal Agents to Grand Rapids, Michigan. It is unknown at
this time what charges Marie is facing.

Friends are in the process of establishing a support network for Marie and
raising funds for any potential legal costs. To get in contact with
Marie's support crew email b4pcrew@riseup.net. More Information will be
posted as it becomes available.

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii46/b4pcrew/53650020.jpg

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii46/b4pcrew/53630002.jpg

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii46/b4pcrew/53650022.jpg

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Update 500 Women for the Cuban 5

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Monday March 10th, 2008

Benjamin Ramos

The Popular Education Project to Free the Cuban 5

freethecubanfive@hotmail.com

http://www.freethecuban5.com

500 Women for the Cuban 5!!

New York, NY- The Popular Education Project to Free the Cuban 5 has initiated the 500 Wonen for the Cuba 5 ampaign. We are asking women to send in the support letter to Louise Arbour and then email the PEPFC5 (at freethec_5@yahoo.com) and let us know if we can add your name to a press release that will be emailed to all press and political list serves.

The PDF format of the letter can be found at the Jericho Website: http://www.thejerichomovement.com/events5.html

The goal of adding your names it to show the breadth of support the Cuban5 moms/wives have. The press release/email list will be available to anyone who asks for it. This is the list of participants so far:

1. Roberta Frye
2. Margaret Dozier
3. Melinda Gonzalez (Poeta Guerrera)
4. Charlotte Kates, Co-chair, Middle East Subcommittee, National Lawyers Guild; New Jersey Solidarity-Activists for the Liberation of Palestine; Al-Awda
5. Gloria Rubac, Houston Federation of Teachers, Local 2415
6. Bonnie Kerness, Coordinator Prison Watch Project American Friends Service Committee
7. Anne Lamb, NYC Jericho Movement
8. Paulette D'Auteuil, NYC Jericho Movement
9. Maryloo Soued, Al-Awda
10. Margaret Gilpin, President, Kangaroo Productions, Inc.
11. Alicia Jrapko International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five National Coordinator
12. Maegan "la Mala" Ortiz Editor VivirLatino-Latino Life in Blog Form
13. Gloria La Riva for the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
14. Monica Somocurcio, ANSWER
15. Sally O'Brien, Cuba en Focus

FREE THE MOVE 9

ON THE MOVE PEOPLE,
I,ve been in contact with Phil Africa and the Move 9 parole hearing will be in 'early April' so now would be a good time to write to the parole board in support of their release.
Parole Board:-
Chairman Catherine C Mcvey
Charles Fox
Michael Green
Jeffrey R. Imboden
Mathew T Mangino
Benjamen A. Martinez
Gerard N. Massoro
Judy Viglione
Lloyd A.White
at PENNSYLVANIA BOARD OF PROBATION AND PAROLE
1101 SOUTH FRONT STREET
SUITE 5100
HARRISBURG, PA 17104-2517
CALL 001 -717-787-5699
Please help circulate this info.
FREE THE MOVE 9
FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS
DOWN with the rotten cyst,m
ON THE MOVE M

Number for Avelino Call IN Day

The ProLibertad Freedom Campaign has redesigned and republished our website!! CHECK OUT THE NEW AND IMPROVED:

http://www.ProLibertadWeb.com

The ProLibertad Freedom Campaign has translated this Report from El Comite de Familiares y Amigos de Avelino Gonzalez Claudio to keep our supporters and allies updated on his situation

ProLibertad is calling on all our allies and supporters to participate in the AVELINO GONZALEZ CALL IN DAY Wednesday March 12th, 2008 at 202-307-3198!

We are asking people to call the Bureau of Prisons Central Office on Wed. March 12th, 2008 from 9am-5pm and demand to speak to Director Harley G. Lappin and demand that Avelino Gonzalez Claudio be removed from Maximum Security (where he is in a cell 23 hours a day), he be allowed visitation rights, and receive telephone rights (so he can contact family and legal support).

PUBLIC PRESSURE CAMPAIGNS WORK!! WE HAVE THE POWER TO CHANGE THEIR CONDITIONS!!

PICK UP THE TELEPHONE FOR AVELINO ON WED. MARCH 12TH, 2008!!

______________________________________________________

Friends and Family of Avelino González Claudio, Puerto Rico

March 6, 2008

Avelino González Claudio was transported to Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and immediately appeared in court for identification and upon declaring himself indigent was appointed a public defense attorney. A new bail hearing was set for last March 4^th and was postponed so that his friends and family members could prepare for this hearing. He was imprisoned at the state penal institution in Connecticut. The address to write to him is:

Avelino González Claudio 09873-000

287 Bilton Road

P.O. Box 665

Somers, CT 06071

Avelino is in Maximum Security where he has not been allowed to use the telephone, even to call his lawyers or family members. He is in total isolation for 23 hours a day with 1 hour out of solitary confinement. Avelino has been denied his right to visitation by friends and family members.

The new bail hearing rules require that: (1) We identify witnesses to his character that can attend the hearing and (2) That we identify a person that can offer a guarantee of employment in Puerto Rico. We ask that you contact us if you know of anyone who can employ Avelino in some type of computer related work

It was decided that the Hartford law firm of Attorney Jim Bergueen and two of his fellow attorneys would take charge of the defense of Compañero Avelino. Bergueen participated in the defense team in the case of the 1985 arrests and was the lawyer for Compañero Carlos Ayes, who was absolved of all the charges against him.

We are making preparations for the court to accept the appointment of the attorneys selected for this case. For the time being, Avelino will remain incarcerated in Somers, CT, until he and his lawyers discuss and agree if they will request a transfer to another prison.

We recommend that you write to Avelino so that he can continue to feel the warmth of the solidarity that is so necessary when one is in solitary confinement. As his lawyers continue to demand better conditions for Avelino, a letter writing campaign to the prison will begin asking that he be placed in general population. We urge all those who can, to write to the address above in order to demand that he be released from solitary confinement.

Hilton Fernández, Spokesperson

Avelino Gonzalez Claudio Call in Day

The ProLibertad Freedom Campaign has translated this Report from El Comite de Familiares y Amigos de Avelino Gonzalez Claudio to keep our supporters and allies updated on his situation

ProLibertad is calling on all our allies and supporters to participate in the AVELINO GONZALEZ CALL IN DAY Wednesday March 12th, 2008!!

We are asking peopel to call the Bureau of Prisons Central Office on Wed. March 12th, 2008 from 9am-5pm and demand to speak to Director Harley G. Lappin and demand that Avelino Gonzalez Claudio be removed from Maximum Security (where he is in a cell 23 hours a day), he be allowed visitation rights, and receive telephone rights (so he can contact family and legal support).

PUBLIC PRESSURE CAMPAIGNS WORK!! WE HAVE THE POWER TO CHANGE THEIR CONDITIONS!!

PICK UP THE TELEPHONE FOR AVELINO ON WED. MARCH 12TH, 2008!!

_____________________________________________________________

Friends and Family of Avelino González Claudio, Puerto Rico

March 6, 2008

Avelino González Claudio was transported to Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and immediately appeared in court for identification and upon declaring himself indigent was appointed a public defense attorney. A new bail hearing was set for last March 4^th and was postponed so that his friends and family members could prepare for this hearing. He was imprisoned at the state penal institution in Connecticut. The address to write to him is:

Avelino González Claudio 09873-000

287 Bilton Road

P.O. Box 665

Somers, CT 06071

Avelino is in Maximum Security where he has not been allowed to use the telephone, even to call his lawyers or family members. He is in total isolation for 23 hours a day with 1 hour out of solitary confinement. Avelino has been denied his right to visitation by friends and family members.

The new bail hearing rules require that: (1) We identify witnesses to his character that can attend the hearing and (2) That we identify a person that can offer a guarantee of employment in Puerto Rico. We ask that you contact us if you know of anyone who can employ Avelino in some type of computer related work

It was decided that the Hartford law firm of Attorney Jim Bergueen and two of his fellow attorneys would take charge of the defense of Compañero Avelino. Bergueen participated in the defense team in the case of the 1985 arrests and was the lawyer for Compañero Carlos Ayes, who was absolved of all the charges against him.

We are making preparations for the court to accept the appointment of the attorneys selected for this case. For the time being, Avelino will remain incarcerated in Somers, CT, until he and his lawyers discuss and agree if they will request a transfer to another prison.

We recommend that you write to Avelino so that he can continue to feel the warmth of the solidarity that is so necessary when one is in solitary confinement. As his lawyers continue to demand better conditions for Avelino, a letter writing campaign to the prison will begin asking that he be placed in general population. We urge all those who can, to write to the address above in order to demand that he be released from solitary confinement.

Hilton Fernández, Spokesperson

Eric Update - 3.7.08

Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2008
From: sacprisonersupport@riseup.net

Dear friends,

Here are some quick updates on Eric's case and what you can do to support
him...

Hearing on Judgment of Acquittal and New Trial Motions

Yesterday Eric finally had his hearing on the motion for judgment of
acquittal and the motion for a new trial. These motions were heard by the
same judge who presided over Eric's trial, which was fraught with errors
and improper rulings and instructions. Not surprisingly, both of Eric's
motions were denied.

Sentencing

Eric's sentencing has been rescheduled for April 3 at 9 am. We realize
this date has been moved time and time again, but we are still asking for
folks to come show their support for Eric in the courtroom on this day.
The government is still asking for the outrageous sentence of 20 years,
and this could be a very difficult day for Eric and his loved ones.

PayPal

Some of you may have noticed that we recently removed the PayPal function
from Eric's website. In late January we received an email from PayPal
informing us that our account had been "limited". The "limit" on the
account makes it completely impossible for us to transfer funds that
people have donated from PayPal to our bank account. After numerous phone
calls, we still cannot get anyone from PayPal to give us any real
information about WHY our account has been limited. At this time, we are
asking that people discontinue using PayPal to donate to Eric's defense
fund (or, even better,
discontinue using it at all...).

SO... If you would like to donate to Eric's defense/support fund, you can
send a check or money order made out to Sacramento Defense Fund to the
following address:

SPS
PO Box 163126
Sacramento, CA 95816

Again, please make sure it's made out to Sacramento Defense Fund.
Otherwise we will be unable to deposit it.

For those of you who have made donations through PayPal in the last two
months, please don't despair! Your money will be refunded soon. If you
would still like to send a donation, please do so through the address
above.

Your Support Still Needed!

Please continue sending Eric your letters, your poetry, your thoughts,
your love. This time of year can be especially difficult and painful for
those who are locked in cages. As spring approaches and the days grow
warmer and more inviting, the absence of the grass under one's toes or the
sunlight on one's face can be felt ever more intensely. Please keep them
in heart and mind as you move through your days.

For more information on writing Eric, you can visit his website at
www.supporteric.org

Yours,
SPS

Paul Watson Shot

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/07/2183690.htm?section=justin

Sea Shepherd captain 'shot by Japanese whalers'

Posted Fri Mar 7, 2008 4:39pm AEDT
Updated 9 hours 29 minutes ago

The Captain of the Sea Shepherd anti-whaling ship, the Steve Irwin, claims he has been shot by Japanese whalers during a confrontation in the Southern Ocean.

Paul Watson says members of his crew threw stink bombs aboard the whaling ship, the Nisshin Maru, and the Japanese responded by returning flash grenades.
He says one of his crew was hit by a grenade and received minor injuries.
Mr Watson says he then felt a thud in his chest and found a bullet lodged in his bullet-proof vest.
"... but it also came through and I have this badge and it hit the badge and bent that too so it just left a bruise really on my chest - so it could have - if I wasn't wearing the vest it could have been pretty serious," Mr Watson said.
He says even before shots were fired, the Japanese whalers were acting recklessly in their confrontation.
"We were doing what we usually do, which is putting stink bombs on deck," he said.
"We go out of our way to make sure we don't throw them near anybody, but they were throwing the flash grenades directly at us."
Mr Watson says there is no justification for the whalers opening fire.
"These people are criminals, they're down here killing whales illegally in a place they're not supposed to be."
"Why are there armed coast guard people attacking Australian citizens and other citizens in Australian Antarctic territory?"
Japan's Coast Guard Agency has told the ABC in Tokyo that it received a report earlier today from its officers on board the whaling fleet that the Sea Shepherd had been obstructing one of the Japanese ships.
The Coast Guard says it will release a statement shortly detailing the current situation.
The Federal Government says it has received assurances that crew members on the Japanese whaling ship fired warning balls at the protesters, not gunshots.
Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith says Japanese officials have told the Australian embassy in Tokyo that warning balls or flashbangs were fired at the ship.
The devices are designed to make a loud noise but not to injure
Japan has also advised the Australian Embassy that a crew member on board the Japanese whaling boat fired a warning shot in the air.
Mr Smith has repeated his call for all parties in the Southern Ocean to exercise restraint.
He says he absolutely condemns actions by crew members of any boat that could injure anyone on the high seas.

CNN: 'Person of interest' questioned in letters to Congress

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/07/times.square/

 LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- The FBI announced on Friday that federal
agents in Los Angeles, California, are questioning a "person of interest"
about letters sent to members of Congress after an explosion in Times
Square in New York.

The "person of interest," however, is not a suspect in the bombing of the
Armed Forces Recruitment Center in Times Square, said Laura Eimiller, an
FBI spokeswoman in Los Angeles. It is not known whether the "person of
interest" is a man or a woman.

Investigators have made no arrests related to the bombing or the letters
sent to members of Congress, she said.

A small bomb exploded outside the military recruiting center in Times
Square about 3:45 a.m. Thursday. Several hours later, authorities in
Washington said several members of Congress had received letters that
raised concern.

 The letters contained photos of a man standing in front of the recruiting
center along with the statement "We did it," according to an e-mail from
a Senator's office.

Fewer than 10 letters were received by members of Congress, a
law-enforcement source said. All the letters were received by Democrats,
another law-enforcement source said.
advertisement

An e-mail sent to members of Congress from Capitol Police described the
letters as arriving in 5-by-8-inch manila envelopes. The e-mail warned
recipients not to open them, but to contact police immediately.

Authorities in New York said Thursday that they are searching for a hooded
bicyclist seen on a surveillance tape just before the blast.

FRIDAY in DC: Briana Waters Benefit w/ Ghost Mice, More...

Escape Empire Presents:

Freedom for Briana Waters!


A Benefit for Briana Waters and Food Drive for We Are Family
On the Eve of the National Conference on Organized Resistance


Friday, March 7th - doors 7:30 p.m. - show starts 8:15 p.m.
Ghost Mice (Plan-It-X Records)
Erik Petersen (of Mischief Brew)
From the Depths (new band with members of Requiem and Catharsis)
Sick Fix (DC)
Lars Din (FL)

Plus, Will Potter with an update on the case of Briana Waters and an
overview of the "Green Scare"

St. Stephens Church
1525 Newton Street NW, Washington, DC 20010.

$5-10 sliding scale to benefit Briana Waters


Briana Waters is a devoted, loving mother and partner, a dedicated
musician and violin teacher, and a caring friend to many. It has come as
quite a shock to everyone who knows her that she has been wrongly accused
of participating in a politically motivated arson at the University of
Washington claimed by the Earth Liberation Front. These charges carry a
draconian mandatory minimum sentence of 35 years in prison should she be
convicted. Her trial began on Feb. 11, 2008 and is expected to last one
month. All money raised from this event will go towards childcare and
other expenses incurred during the trial. Please support her however you
can. For more information: www.supportbriana.org



We Are Family is a local organization that serves low-income seniors in
Washington, D.C. Please bring a canned food item, or a donation of cereal
or peanut butter for their regular grocery delivery program.



Sponsored by the Brian Mackenzie Infoshop: www.dcinfoshop.org

Attack on Time's Square Armed Forces Recruitment Center

Thursday, March 06, 2008
bombsandshields.blogspot.com

New York, New York, U.S. - An early morning explosion blew out windows in the Time's Square Armed Forces Recruitment Center and shook buildings blocks away. No one was injured, but New York City police officers and firefighters now redirecting foot and vehicular traffic away from the area. The Time's Square subway station, a major hub that nearly a dozen train lines pass through was also shut down.

A witness reported seeing a large plume of smoke after the explosion and an individual wearing a hooded sweatshirt on a bicycle leaving the scene. Police believe that attack may be connected to a similar one that shattered windows in the Mexican consulate on the eve of the anniversary of slain anarchist journalist Brad Will's death last November.

The Time's Square center located directly across the street from a police station is a frequent target of anti-war protests. There are likely to be demonstrations at recruitment center as we near the fifth anniversary of the March 20th 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Tacoma Jury Convicts Woman of Arson; Hangs on Other Counts (Civil Rights Outreach Ctte.)

Civil Rights Outreach Committee

For immediate Release:  March 6, 2008
Contacts:  Kassey Baker, 360-561-5261
Lauren Regan, Atty, Civil Liberties Defense Center, 541-687-9180

Tacoma Jury Convicts Woman of Arson; Hangs on Other Counts

Tacoma, WA - A federal jury was unable to reach a decision on conspiracy
and transportation of a destructive device but convicted Briana Waters, a
32-year-old mother and violin teacher and former resident of Olympia of
arson. The government charged her with being a lookout in connection with
the May, 2001 arson of the Center for Urban Horticulture at the University
of Washington in Seattle. If convicted on all counts, Waters would have
faced a sentence of 35 years. The two informants who testified against her
in the case, who admitted to participating in the arson, face between
three and seven years.  Ms. Waters' sentencing is set for May 30.

Without any physical evidence linking Ms. Waters directly to the arson,
the government built its case on the testimony of the two informants, and
a number of pieces of circumstantial evidence. The defense argued that the
informants falsely accused Waters in order to avoid 35-year prison
sentences themselves, and that their testimony was demonstrably false.

Among the pieces of circumstantial evidence introduced by the government
was a folder with a note on the cover from Waters to one of the
informants, Jennifer Kolar, containing various radical pamphlets and
publications. Prosecutors highlighted the most sensationalist passages in
the articles, and sought to ascribe these views to Ms. Waters. Waters
testified that she did not write the materials, did not agree with them,
and did not pass them to Kolar. The defense argued that the informant must
have substituted other articles for the ones that Waters actually put in
the folder. While Waters' fingerprints were on the folder, they were not
on any of the articles. The government countered that Waters' boyfriend's
fingerprints were on the articles, and that he is a "fugitive" suspected
of one or more arsons. The defense pointed out that the boyfriend is not
on trial.

"The government's case was primarily based on character assassination and
guilt by association," said civil rights attorney Ben Rosenfeld, a member
of the Board of Directors of the Civil Liberties Defense Center. "Evidence
of other people's writings never should never have been allowed to be used
against her."

Briana Waters has maintained her innocence to all the charges. An appeal
is likely.

This trial is another chapter in the federal government's "Operation
Backfire," also dubbed the "Green Scare," in which the government has
hounded the environmental activist community, overcharged a number of
individuals with a federal firearms enhancement applying to bombs and
missiles, and branded them as terrorists, even though none of the events
resulted in a single injury.

Central to the jury's consideration of two of the charges against Ms.
Waters was the question whether she was responsible for helping to build
or transport explosive devices.  The jury deadlocked on these charges.
During the first stages of the investigation of the "Street of Dreams"
fires in a housing development in Snohomish County, WA, officials falsely
reported that explosive devices were found.  Later, BATF Spokesman Kelvin
Crenshaw made that no such devices were found.  "It is inconceivable that
officials could have made such a mistake.  It raises the question of
deliberate jury tampering by the government, and also calls into question
the reliability of the government's information in general," said
Rosenfeld.

Briana Waters has steadfastly maintained her innocence.
Copies of a press packet with current related articles and background
information are available from civilrightsoutreach@gmail.com. For more
information, go to www.cldc.org.   ###

Briana GUILTY on two arson charges!

Urgent ELP! Bulletin (6th of March 2008)

Dear friends

ELP has just learnt that the American, Briana Walters, has been convicted on two ELF arson charges. The Jury was deadlocked on the rest of the charges. The Judge has accepted this partial verdict and there will be a hearing later today to see if Briana gets to go home before sentencing or goes straight to prison. Based on the charges she has been found guilty of Briana faces 5-20 years imprisonment.

ELP will bring you more news as we get it. We also encourage everyone to check out her website http://www.supportbriana.org/

Please Note: Briana is maintaining her innocence and an appeal is likely.

Below is a statement from the Civil Liberties Defense Center about this conviction.


Civil Rights Outreach Committee

For immediate Release: March 6, 2008
Contacts: Kassey Baker, 360-561-5261
Lauren Regan, Atty, Civil Liberties Defense Center, 541-687-9180

Tacoma Jury Convicts Woman of Arson; Hangs on Other Counts

Tacoma, WA - A federal jury was unable to reach a decision on conspiracy
and transportation of a destructive device but convicted Briana Waters, a
32-year-old mother and violin teacher and former resident of Olympia of
arson. The government charged her with being a lookout in connection with
the May, 2001 arson of the Center for Urban Horticulture at the University
of Washington in Seattle. If convicted on all counts, Waters would have
faced a sentence of 35 years. The two informants who testified against her
in the case, who admitted to participating in the arson, face between
three and seven years. Ms. Waters' sentencing is set for May 30.

Without any physical evidence linking Ms. Waters directly to the arson,
the government built its case on the testimony of the two informants, and
a number of pieces of circumstantial evidence. The defense argued that the
informants falsely accused Waters in order to avoid 35-year prison
sentences themselves, and that their testimony was demonstrably false.

Among the pieces of circumstantial evidence introduced by the government
was a folder with a note on the cover from Waters to one of the
informants, Jennifer Kolar, containing various radical pamphlets and
publications. Prosecutors highlighted the most sensationalist passages in
the articles, and sought to ascribe these views to Ms. Waters. Waters
testified that she did not write the materials, did not agree with them,
and did not pass them to Kolar. The defense argued that the informant must
have substituted other articles for the ones that Waters actually put in
the folder. While Waters' fingerprints were on the folder, they were not
on any of the articles. The government countered that Waters' boyfriend's
fingerprints were on the articles, and that he is a "fugitive" suspected
of one or more arsons. The defense pointed out that the boyfriend is not
on trial.

"The government's case was primarily based on character assassination and
guilt by association," said civil rights attorney Ben Rosenfeld, a member
of the Board of Directors of the Civil Liberties Defense Center. "Evidence
of other people's writings never should never have been allowed to be used
against her."

Briana Waters has maintained her innocence to all the charges. An appeal
is likely.

This trial is another chapter in the federal government's "Operation
Backfire," also dubbed the "Green Scare," in which the government has
hounded the environmental activist community, overcharged a number of
individuals with a federal firearms enhancement applying to bombs and
missiles, and branded them as terrorists, even though none of the events
resulted in a single injury.

Central to the jury's consideration of two of the charges against Ms.
Waters was the question whether she was responsible for helping to build
or transport explosive devices. The jury deadlocked on these charges.
During the first stages of the investigation of the "Street of Dreams"
fires in a housing development in Snohomish County, WA, officials falsely
reported that explosive devices were found. Later, BATF Spokesman Kelvin
Crenshaw made that no such devices were found. "It is inconceivable that
officials could have made such a mistake. It raises the question of
deliberate jury tampering by the government, and also calls into question
the reliability of the government's information in general," said
Rosenfeld.

Briana Waters has steadfastly maintained her innocence.
Copies of a press packet with current related articles and background
information are available from civilrightsoutreach@gmail.com. For more
information, go to www.cldc.org. ###
+++++++++++

Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network
BM Box 2407
London
WC1N 3XX
England
www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk

Briana Waters guilty of two counts in UW ecoterror case

By VANESSA HO
P-I REPORTER

TACOMA -- A federal jury has found accused Earth Liberation Front arsonist Briana Waters guilty of two charges stemming from the firebombing of a University of Washington research center.

Both charges carry a minimum of five years in prison.

Waters

The jury deadlocked on more serious charges, including arson conspiracy and possession and use of a destructive device.

Sentencing is scheduled for May 30.

Waters, a 32-year-old violin teacher from Oakland, Calif., had flatly denied any involvement in the May 2001 arson that destroyed the Center for Urban Horticulture. The ELF claimed responsibility for the blaze.

During the 3 1/2 -week trial, Waters was accused of acting as the lookout while other radical environmentalists broke into the center located near the University Village mall and planted an incendiary device.

The blaze destroyed the building, irreplaceable botanical and ecological research materials, and killed specimens of rare and endangered plants. The UW spent $7 million to replace the building. No injuries were reported.

Waters testified during the trial that she had nothing to do with the arson, but two admitted ELF firebombers -- Lacey Phillabaum and Jennifer Kolar -- implicated her in their testimony.

Waters maintained that the government's star witnesses harbored biases against her and couldn't be believed. Bloom said they have a motive to lie -- sharply reduced prison time.

Prosecutors say phone records, rental car records and testimony indicate Waters was in contact with at least some of the other alleged conspirators around the time of the fire.

P-I reporter Vanessa Ho can be reached at 206-448-8003 or vanessaho@seattlepi.com.

Woman found guilty of arson in 2001 University of Washington fire

By Mike Carter Seattle Times staff reporter

Briana Waters

Related

• Archive | Trial in UW fire goes to jury
• Archive | UW arson suspect takes stand to deny role in 2001 incident
• Archive | Earth Liberation Front members plead guilty in 2001 firebombing
• Archive | Is ecosabotage terrorism?
• Timeline | Blazes linked to radical environmental groups

The defendants

U.S. attorneys say five people participated in the 2001 arson at the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture:

Briana Waters: Oakland, Calif., served as a lookout and helped rent a car for the team that set the fire. She was found guilty Thursday of two counts of arson, but jurors couldn't agree on a verdict for three other counts. She faces at least five years in prison for each arson count.

Lacey Phillabaum: Spokane, pleaded guilty to participating in the arson in exchange for assisting in the prosecution of others involved, including Waters. She faces a prison sentence of three to five years.

Jennifer Kolar: Seattle, admitted she used a knife to cut glass so others could get into an office at the horticulture center. She also assisted the government's prosecution and faces a sentence of five to seven years in prison.

Bill Rodgers: Considered to be one of the top organizers of the Earth Liberation Front who allegedly help set the firebombs inside the horticulture center. Rodgers, a bookstore operator in Prescott, Ariz., was taken into federal custody in December 2005, but later committed suicide in an Arizona jail.

Justin Solondz: Once lived on the Olympic Peninsula, allegedly helped assemble the fire bombs in an Olympia garage and joined Rodgers in setting the devices inside the horticulture center. Solondz is now a fugitive.

TACOMA — A 32-year-old violin teacher from California was found guilty this morning of two counts of arson for the 2001 fire at the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture.

A federal jury found that Briana Waters, a former Olympia resident, was among a group of ecosaboteurs who torched the center in the predawn hours of May 21, 2001, causing about $1.5 million in damage. The center was later rebuilt at a cost of about $7 million.

Waters faces at least five years in prison for each count of arson.

But the jury, which had been deliberating since Friday afternoon, couldn't reach a verdict on three other counts, including the most serious that would have resulted in a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years in prison.

In all, Waters faced five counts: two counts of arson, one count of conspiracy and two charges stemming from the possession and use of a homemade time-delayed gasoline bomb used to start the fire. Use of the device in a crime of violence carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years in prison.

The Earth Liberation Front claimed responsibility for the fire because it believed, mistakenly, that a UW researcher was genetically engineering trees.

Late Wednesday, jurors sent a note to U.S. District Judge Franklin Burgess that indicated they were unable to reach a unanimous decision on all counts and asked how to proceed. The judge asked the jurors if they had reached unanimous verdicts on at least some of the charges, and the jurors responded "Yes."

Prosecutors urged the judge to accept whatever verdicts had been reached, but Burgess refused and sent the jury home Wednesday night. Burgess this morning agreed to accept the partial verdictThe trial in U.S. District Court in Tacoma unfolded over three weeks, with jurors hearing contradictory testimony from Waters and some of the people who participated in the arson. Two women who had earlier pleaded guilty to the attack testified that Waters was an accomplice, while Waters acknowledged friendships with some of those accused of the Earth Liberation Front sabotage, but denied participating.

The government alleged that Waters helped rent a car used by the arsonists and stood lookout while others set the device.

On Monday, the jurors' first full day of deliberations, arsonists destroyed three multimillion-dollar homes in Snohomish County and damaged a fourth in what federal officials are investigating as crimes that may be linked to the Earth Liberation Front.

Burgess called jurors into the courtroom Monday morning to ask if any of them had read or heard news of an event that might cause them to be unable to continue deliberations, a reference to the arsons. No one withdrew.

Defense attorneys made an unsuccessful motion for a mistrial.

The trial was the first to result from a lengthy federal investigation into a series of high-profile arsons at a ski resort, wild-horse corral, a slaughterhouse, timber-company offices, the UW and other targets. The militants who carried out these actions claimed credit on behalf of the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front.

Eighteen people were eventually indicted on charges involving one or more of attacks, as well as what federal prosecutors claim was a broader conspiracy in attacks that caused tens of millions of dollars.

Twelve of those indicted opted to strike plea deals, with sentences ranging from probation to 13 years in prison. Four others fled and a fifth — Bill Rodgers, an alleged ringleader — committed suicide after being taken into custody.

Waters maintained her composure through the trial, which culminated in her taking the witness stand on her own behalf. Waters testified that she was never involved in planning or carrying out the UW arson and never supported arson as a militant tactic. She spoke of her fears of imprisonment and separation from her 3-year-old daughter.

The prosecutors had two key witnesses — Lacey Phillabaum and Jennifer Kolar — who had already pleaded guilty to being part of the five-person arson team that burned the UW building on May 21, 2001. Both testified that Waters acted as a lookout.

"There are days I thought I would rather kill myself than testify against Briana," said Phillabaum i