Hands Off Anti-War Activists
FightBack! News | Chicago U.S. Attorney office confirms ‘investigation is continuing’ against anti-war, international solidarity activists
Holy Land Foundation prosecutor now working on case
Chicago, IL – The Northern Illinois Assistant U.S. Attorney Barry Jonas stated that the “investigation is continuing” into the case of the anti-war and international solidarity activists who have been hit with FBI raids and grand jury repression. Barry Jonas played a leading role in prosecuting the leaders of the Holy Land Foundation while he was trial attorney for the Department of Justice Counter-terrorism Section.
“This is another confirmation of what we have been hearing all along from the U.S. Attorney’s office – they are going for multiple indictments of multiple activists,” stated Jess Sundin, a Twin Cities Anti-War leader whose home was raided by the FBI. “The government subpoenaed 23 international solidarity activists to a Chicago grand jury and the government is trying to jail veteran Chicano leader Carlos Montes. Jonas confirmed what we already knew – the government is trying to imprison anti-war activists on the grounds of ‘material support for terrorism.’”
The confirmation of the ongoing investigation came in a Jan. 24 phone call between Jonas and Bruce Nestor, an attorney who is representing some of the activists.
Nestor initially contacted Minneapolis Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Winter to view some of the sealed documents in the case. The grand jury proceedings against the anti-war activists are secret and the vast majority of documents relating to their case are under seal, meaning that they cannot be viewed by the targeted activists or their attorneys. Assistant U.S. Attorney Winter helped oversee the Sept. 24, 2010 raids and in recent months has represented the government on the issue of returning property seized in the raids. Winter told Nestor to contact Chicago Assistant U.S. Attorney Barry Jonas.
Jonas told Nestor the documents would remain secret “pending completion of the investigation.”
“That Barry Jonas is now involved in our case is an ominous development” said Sundin. “He is famous for one of the most appalling attacks on civil and democratic rights in the past decade – the prosecution of the Holy Land Five. “
The Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development was once the largest Muslim charity in the U.S. Its efforts were geared towards providing humanitarian aid to help the people of Palestine and other countries. In 2001 its offices were raided. Three years later, five people associated with the charity were indicted. The first trial ended with a hung jury. The second trial ended with convictions. The five defendants received sentences that range from 15 to 65 years in prison.
The trail included secret witnesses – the defense never got to find out who the witnesses were – the use of hearsay evidence and the introduction of evidence that had nothing to do with the defendants in the case, such as showing a video from Palestine of protesters burning an American flag, as a means to prejudice the jury.
As lead prosecutor, Barry Jonas played a key role in all this. He is now working under Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who is runs the federal grand jury attacking anti-war and international solidarity activists.
“That Barry Jonas is chasing peace activists means we have to be ready for every dirty trick in the book. The record is clear. The way he sees it, solidarity with Palestine is a crime. We need to push back as hard as we can.” said Jess Sundin.
Sundin urges all supporters of peace with justice to sign the pledge to take action (http://www.stopfbi.net/get-involved/pledge-of-resistance) in the event that international solidarity activists are indicted.
Stop FBI Repression Benefit Album & Concert
Stop FBI Repression Benefit CONCERT
400 Cedar Avenue South, Minneapolis
doors: 7pm | show: 8pm | 18+ / $5 Guante
- DJ Shannon Blowtorch
- James Houck
- Housepet
- The Running Riot
- Dead Skull
- Misty Rowan
Stop FBI Repression Album
The raids and subpoenas are an attack on anti-war and other progressive movements, our freedom to speak, our freedom to assemble with like-minded people, and our freedom to tell the government that their actions and policies are wrong.
Across the country organizations and individuals are standing together to protest the United States government’s attempt to silence and criminalize anti-war and international solidarity activists.
All proceeds from the album will be used to continue to build the fightback against FBI repression and to contribute towards the legal defense fund for those targeted in the September 24th FBI raids.
- Jen Waller feat. Jerome Jordan and the Heavens Bros
- Guante & Big Cats
- Housepet
- Cameron McGill & What Army
- Amanda Zimmerman
- Koba
- James Houck
- Bauer Effekt
- The Cold Joy
- Misty Rowan
Bring a resolution for civil liberties & against repression to your Feb. 7 precinct caucus!
On Tuesday, February 7 at 7:00pm, Minnesota’s political parties will hold their precinct caucuses. Anyone can attend their caucus, where they meet with their neighbors to discuss what issues their party should adopt for their platform, in addition to electing delegates to party conventions and stating their preference on candidates.
Anyone can bring a resolution on any issue to their caucus to attempt to get it approved there. The Minnesota Committee to Stop FBI Repression would like to encourage our supporters to take the following resolution to your caucus. Bringing the resolution to your caucus is an important way to educate folks about these dangerous attacks on our very rights to organize and speak out.
There is support for freedom of speech and assembly among people who participate in the Democratic, Republican, Green and Independence Party caucuses, which gives us an opportunity to tell the leaders of these parties that policies like the Patriot Act and the NDAA are not supported by their constituents.
If you don’t know where your precinct caucus is go to:http://caucusfinder.sos.
If you’d like background information on our case to help you feel more comfortable speaking to this issue you can print a basic info flyer here:http://www.stopfbi.net/
If your caucus approves the resolution, please let us know so we can publicize what precincts approved it! Contact us at mnstopfbi@gmail.com or 612-379-3585.
Good luck and thanks for your support!
The Minnesota Committee to Stop FBI Repression
______________________________
Resolution for Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Assembly, and Against Escalating Repression
Whereas the U.S. Congress passed and President Obama signed into law, on December 30, 2011, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which contains provisions allowing for the indefinite military detention of individuals, including U.S. citizens, without charge or trial, anywhere in the world including in the U.S.;
Whereas individuals gathering at Occupy protest sites around the nation to nonviolently protest inequitable government policies and widespread corporate greed have suffered repression and retaliation by police and government officials;
Whereas in September 2010, 23 well-known anti-war and labor union activists in Minneapolis and Chicago and additional individuals around the country experienced surprise FBI raids of their homes, confiscation of property, a list (had any agreed to talk to the FBI) of chilling McCarthyistic questions and subpoenas to testify before a grand jury purportedly investigating “material support” of groups labeled terrorist by the U.S. State Department (although no charges and no indictments have been produced since the first raids in September 2010, this case is but one example of the hundreds of such cases pursued by the FBI over the last decade — mainly targeting Muslims and Arab Americans — without any crime committed or evidence of the planning of any criminal activity);
Therefore, be it resolved that this Precinct of the ______________ Party reaffirm our commitment to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Be it further resolved that the ______________ Party opposes indefinite military detention and advocates that section of the NDAA be repealed;
Be it further resolved that the ______________ Party supports the right of the Occupy movement to peaceably assemble and protest without experiencing mass arrests, pepper spraying, and other forms of brutality and repression;
Be it further resolved that the ______________ Party supports the right of peace activists to organize against war without fear of being harassed, infiltrated, raided or accused of criminal behavior;
And, be it further resolved that the _______________ Party move forward to ensure these rights and provide for their protection within every precinct, town, city, county, state and federal jurisdiction.
Standing Up for Our Rights! USPCN Pledges to Defend Human and Civil Rights
The US Palestinian Community Network passed the following resolution at its planning meeting on January 6-8, 2012, committing itself to work for the civil and human rights of the Palestinian community, particularly those targeted for FBI repression and a grand jury investigation. Those targeted in the case include labor activists, antiwar organizers, and seven Palestinian USPCN members and leaders in Chicago. For more information on the case, please see the website of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression.
USPCN is circulating a Pledge to Defend Civil and Human Rights and calls upon all of its members and supporters to both sign the petition online AND at your events and activities. Send the signatures you collect to defend_peoples_rights@uspcn.org!
United States Palestinian Community Network (USPCN)
Strategic Planning Meeting
January 6th-8th, 2012
Santa Clara, CA
Standing Up for Our Rights!
Whereas, the USPCN’s mission statement includes the upholding of Palestinian rights around the world, including the protection of democratic rights in the U.S.;
And whereas, the FBI raids on homes and offices, and confiscation of property, in Chicago and Minneapolis, and the grand jury subpoenas served to 14 individuals in the Midwest, including one USPCN National Coordinating Committee member, in September of 2010, constituted an escalation of historical attacks on the Palestinian community, the Palestine solidarity movement, the anti-war movement, and democratic rights in the United States;
And whereas, the nine (9) grand jury subpoenas served in December 2010 were to six (6) additional Palestinians, all members and leaders of Chicago’s USPCN chapter, and 3 Palestine solidarity organizers;
And whereas, the FBI raid on Carlos Montes’ home in Los Angeles in May of 2011 constituted an additional attack on a leading immigrant rights, Chicano liberation, and Palestine solidarity organizer;
And whereas, Department of Justice and other U.S. government repression is being utilized to stifle critique of U.S. foreign policy and Israeli violations of the human, civil, and national rights of the Palestinian people, as evidenced by the cases of the Irvine 11, the Holy Land Foundation 5, Abdelhaleem Ashqar, Sami Al-Arian, and many others;
Therefore be it resolved that the USPCN calls on all Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims to sign the Pledge to Defend Civil & Human Rights at http://uspcn.org/pledge-to-
And be it further resolved that the USPCN calls on all of its chapters and other Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and solidarity institutions across the U.S. to establish Emergency Response Plans in preparation for the possible indictments and arrests of any of the Palestinians or Palestine solidarity activists raided and/or subpoenaed;
And be it further resolved that the USPCN calls on all of its chapters and other Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and solidarity institutions across the U.S. to identify supportive U.S. Congresspeople in their respective districts, and call on these legislators to demand from Attorney General Eric Holder and U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald an end to this investigation;
And be it further resolved that the USPCN calls on its chapters to help organize a speaking tour of the U.S. for one of its Chicago members, to build support around the case;
And be it finally resolved that, even in the face of the attacks on our movement, the USPCN calls on all Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and other people of conscience in the U.S. and around the world to continue organizing for, and demanding, self-determination, independence, full equality, and the Right of Return for the Palestinian people; and freedom for Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and Palestine solidarity political prisoners in Israeli, Palestinian Authority, U.S., and all other jails.
FightBack! News | Minneapolis protests detention without trial at Obama campaign headquarters
Posted on December 23, 2011 by FightBack! News
Protest demands veto of NDAA. (Fight Back! News/Staff)
Minneapolis, MN – More than 50 people jointed a Dec. 23 picket line here, at the Obama campaign headquarters, to demand the President veto the National Defense Authorization act, which contains provisions that allow indefinite detention without trial. The protest was organized by Occupy Minneapolis and local anti-war groups.
Critics of these provisions, which President Obama is expected to sign on Dec. 26, say the bill is a real threat to civil liberties and human rights. Several provisions in the NDAA give congressional authorization of indefinite military detentions without trial for people accused by the government of being terrorists. It codifies the powers claimed by both George Bush and Barack Obama based on the “2001 Authorization to Use Military Force” to declare people enemy combatants, indefinitely detain them without trial, gut habeas corpus and carry out assassinations.
Sam Richards of Occupy Minneapolis said, “The NDAA of 2012 is the largest assault on our rights since the Patriot Act. Obama ran as a champion of civil liberties, we are going to urge him to veto NDAA and protect our right to habeas corpus, among other things.”
Jess Sundin of the Anti-War Committee and Committee to Stop FBI Repression said, “We are protesting this effort by Congress to give the president the right to lock American citizens up indefinitely without trial. It’s a way of declaring people enemy combatants. We in the anti-war movement know firsthand how the government feels about those who disagree with them. This would give the government permission to not only investigate me for ‘supporting terrorism’ because of my activism, but to detain me based of accusation alone, lock me up and throw away the key. President Obama needs to do the right thing and veto this now.”
Sundin was one of the activists raided by the FBI last year and summoned to a Chicago Grand Jury investigating ‘material support for terrorism.’
Salon.com | The intellectual cowardice of Bradley Manning’s critics
Posted on December 24, 2011 by Salon.com
By Glenn Greenwald
After imprisoning Private First Class Bradley Manning for eighteen months, the U.S. Army last week finally began the preliminary stage of his court-martial proceeding, and that initial process ended on Thursday. Manning faces over 30 charges; the most serious — “aiding the enemy” — carries a death sentence (though prosecutors are requesting “only” life in prison for the 24-year-old soldier). The technical purpose of this week’s hearing was to determine if there is sufficient evidence to warrant a full court-martial proceeding; the finding (that there is such evidence) is a virtual inevitability. Manning’s counsel, Lt. Col. David Coombs, spent the week challenging the Army’s evidence, suggesting that his client may have suffered “diminished capacity” by virtue of his gender struggles and emotional instability, and finally, forcefully arguing that the leaks were an act of political conscience and that the Army has severely “overcharged” Manning in an attempt to coerce incriminating statements against WikiLeaks (Kevin Gosztola and The Guardian were at the hearing and have recaps of what happened over the last week; my general view of Manning was set forth in an Op-Ed in The Guardian last week, and my specific view of the gender defense is here).
For the moment, I want to make one narrow point about Bradley Manning. I’ve made it before but it was really underscored for me by a debate I had on an Al Jazeera program Thursday night regarding Manning with Daniel Ellsberg and the neocon activist Cliff May, who vigorously defended the Obama administration’s treatment of Manning (the video of our segment is embedded below; it was preceded by a short interview of P.J. Crowley):
Ever since Manning was accused of being the source for the WikiLeaks disclosures, those condemning these leaks have sought to distinguish them from Ellsberg’s leak of the Pentagon Papers. With virtual unanimity, Manning’s harshest critics have contended that while Ellsberg’s leak was justifiable and noble, Manning’s alleged leaks were not; that’s because, they claim, Ellsberg’s leak was narrowly focused and devoted to exposing specific government lies, while Manning’s was indiscriminate and a far more serious breach of secrecy. When President Obama declared Manning guilty, he made the same claim: “No it wasn’t the same thing. Ellsberg’s material wasn’t classified in the same way.”
One problem for those wishing to make this claim is that Ellsberg himself has been one of Manning’s most vocal defenders, repeatedly insisting that the two leaks are largely indistinguishable. But the bigger problem for this claim is how blatantly irrational it is. As Ellsberg clearly details in this Al Jazeera debate, he — Ellsberg — dumped 7,000 pages of Top Secret documents: the highest known level of classification; by contrast, not a single page of what Manning is alleged to have leaked was Top Secret, but rather all bore a much lower-level secrecy designation. In that sense, Obama was right: “Ellsberg’s material wasn’t classified in the same way” — the secrets Ellsberg leaked were classified as being far more sensitive.
To the extent one wants to distinguish the two leaks, Ellsberg’s was the far more serious breach of secrecy. The U.S. Government’s own pre-leak assessment of the sensitivities of these documents proves that. How can someone — in the name of government secrecy and national security — praise the release of thousands of pages of Top Secret documents while vehemently condemning the release of documents bearing a much lower secrecy classification?
Nor is there any way to distinguish the substance of the two leaks. While the Pentagon Papers exposed the lies from American leaders regarding the Vietnam War, the WikiLeaks disclosures have done exactly the same with regard to the Iraq War, the war in Afghanistan, and a whole litany of other critical events. Here is what Ellen Knickmeyer, the Baghdad Bureau Chief for The Washington Post during the Iraq War, documented about the Iraq War logs Manning is accused of releasing:
Thanks to WikiLeaks, though, I now know the extent to which top American leaders lied, knowingly, to the American public, to American troops, and to the world, as the Iraq mission exploded.
Is that not exactly what makes so many people view the Pentagon Papers leak as noble and just? Even some of Manning’s fellow soldiers in Iraq have hailed the WikiLeaks leaker as a hero. Beyond that, the diplomatic cables and war logs released by WikiLeaks revealed falsehoods and improprieties from the U.S. government (and other governments around the world) in a wide range of areas: its involvement in the covert war in Yemen; lies told by the U.S. Government regarding horrific, civilian-slaughtering incidents in Iraq; and, in general, numerous acts of abuses, deceit and illegality regarding much of what was done under the War on Terror rubric: exactly as the Pentagon Papers did.
Nor, if the U.S. Government’s evidence is to be believed, can there be any doubt about the similarity in motives between the two leakers. Just as Ellsberg repeatedly explained that he could not in good conscience stand by and have the world remain ignorant of the government lies he discovered about the Vietnam War (a war he once supported and helped plan), so, too, did Manning repeatedly state that these leaks were vital for informing the world about the depths of brutality, corruption and deceit driving these wars (including one war to which he was deployed as a soldier) — all with the goal of triggering what he called “worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms.” In the purported chats he had, Manning described how the intense worldwide reaction to the video of an Apache helicopter shooting unarmed civilians and a Reuters journalist in Baghdad “gave me immense hope”; that’s because: “i want people to see the truth… regardless of who they are… because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.” That is as pure an expression as possible of exactly what motivated Ellsberg as well.
Just as Ellsberg came to realize the evil of the war of which he was a part and felt compelled to act to expose it even at the risk of his own liberty, so, too, did Manning (in the chat logs Manning purportedly said: “im not so much scared of getting caught and facing consequences at this point… as i am of being misunderstood”). The Army Private also explained in the chat logs that he began to realize how heinous the Iraq War was when he discovered that “insurgents” being rounded up and imprisoned by the U.S. Army were doing nothing more than issuing “scholarly critiques” of the Malaki government’s corruption — only to find that his Army superiors ignored his discovery when he brought it to their attention. Both Ellsberg and (allegedly) Manning then did the same thing: turned over the information they discovered to a third party to select the parts that should be published to the world (The New York Times for Ellsberg and WikiLeaks for Manning).
What’s really going on here in this Manning v. Ellsberg comparison is pure intellectual cowardice. At this point — four decades after it happened — most people are unwilling to stand up and publicly condemn the Pentagon Papers leak. In progressive circles, it has long been entrenched dogma that Ellsberg’s leak was just and noble and that the Nixon administration’s efforts to prosecute Ellsberg were ignoble. Ellsberg has hero status, and deservedly so: he risked his life, literally, to expose to the world just how systematic and deliberate was the U.S. Government’s deceit about the Vietnam War and how heinous was the war itself.
As a result, very few people are willing to condemn what he did (even the neocon May, in this Al Jazeera debate, was afraid to say that what Ellsberg did was wrong). So in order to condemn Manning — and, as importantly, if not more so, to defend the Obama administration — it’s necessary for Manning’s critics to contrive distinctions between the Pentagon Papers leak and the WikiLeaks disclosure: of course I approve of what Ellsberg did — all Decent People do — but what Manning is accused of doing is radically different and just awful: he must be punished.
The clear reality, though, is that those who condemn Manning now and want to see him imprisoned for decades are the direct heirs of those who, in the early 1970s, wanted to see Dan Ellsberg imprisoned for life. Those who now condemn both Ellsberg and Manning — like those who support the executive power abuses and secrecy of both the Bush and Obama administrations — are authoritarians to be sure, but at least they’re sincere and consistent in their views; it’s those who support one but condemn the other who are incoherent at best.
As Ellsberg himself makes clear, everything that is being said now to condemn Manning — everything – was widely said about Ellsberg at the time of his leak. Back then, Ellsberg was repeatedly accused of being a traitor, of violating his oath, of endangering America’s national security, of aiding its enemies, of taking the law into his own hands; he was smeared and had his sanity continuously called into question. Had it not been for the Nixon administration’s overzealous attempts to destroy him by breaking into the office of his psychiatrist — the primary act that caused the charges against Ellsberg to be dismissed on the grounds of government misconduct — there is a real possibility that Ellsberg would still be in a federal prison today. He’s viewed as a hero now only because the passage of time has proven the nobility of his act: it’s much easier to defend those who challenge and subvert political power retrospectively than it is to do so at the time.
As the Walkely Foundation recognized last month when awarding WikiLeaks and Julian Assange Australia’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize: “the secret cables [] create[d] more scoops in a year than most journalists could imagine in a lifetime.” Those who want to see Manning punished and imprisoned for decades are driven by exactly the same mentality as those who wanted to see Ellsberg in prison back then: a belief that the U.S. Government has the right to use secrecy to hide its acts of deceit and illegality, and that those who expose such acts to the world are the real criminals. Just as the Obama administration’s obsessive persecution of whistleblowers has its roots in the secrecy-worshipping mentality of the Nixon administration — in her New Yorker article on the war on whistleblowers, Jane Mayer quotes Gabriel Schoenfeld as saying: “Obama has presided over the most draconian crackdown on leaks in our history—even more so than Nixon” — those demanding Manning’s punishment are, in every sense, the Nixonians of today. Manning’s critics are made from the same authoritarian cloth as those demanding Dan Ellsberg’s scalp in 1971. They should at least be honest enough to admit that, and stop contriving blatantly false distinctions between the two cases.
* * * * *
One unanswered question surrounding the charges against Manning has long been this: who, exactly, is “the enemy” Manning is accused of aiding? On Thursday, military prosecutors supplied the answer: Al Qaeda. Apparently, by disclosing to the world the U.S. Government’s bad acts undertaken in secrecy, one is legally “aiding Al Qaeda.” Gosztola, in his recap of the proceedings, details how dangerous that theory is to basic journalism, as did Law Professor Kevin Jon Heller back in March.
* * * * *
The New Yorker‘s George Packer emailed an objection to an item I wrote on Thursday, and I posted Packer’s objection as an update along with my own response; there is now additional information about the objection voiced by Packer, and this morning I posted it as a final update to that column.
* * * * *
The Al Jazeera segment is here:
UPDATE: There is one other glaring irony that should be noted here. If Manning is indeed the WikiLeaks leaker, then he did not only reveal critical truths to the world, but also achieved enormous good: exactly the results the purported chat logs reflect that Manning sought. Even the harshly anti-WikiLeaks former NYT Executive Editor, Bill Keller, credits the release of the diplomatic cables with helping to spark the Arab Spring by exposing the true depths of the region’s dictators, including in Tunisia. By highlighting atrocities committed by U.S. troops in Iraq, the diplomatic cables prevented the Malaki government from granting the legal immunity Obama officials were demanding in exchange for keeping troops in Iraq beyond the 2011 deadline and thushelped end the Iraq War. Ironically, it’s often the very same people who most vocally celebrate the Arab Spring and the end of the Iraq War who simultaneously support the imprisonment of an individual who helped bring those events about (the WikiLeaks leaker), while cheering for a government (the Obama administration) that propped up many of those Arab dictators andtried desperately to extend the Iraq war.
If he is the WikiLeaks leaker, history will judge Manning as kindly as it has Ellsberg — and will view his persecutors just as unkindly as Nixon officials are viewed today for what they tried to do in the face of the Pentagon Papers leak.
UPDATE II: In deciding which problem is larger — excessive secrecy or excessive disclosure — consider this year-end list from Electronic Frontier Foundation entitled: “2011: The Year Secrecy Jumped the Shark,” which details just some of the most extreme secrecy abuses of The Most Transparent Administration Ever™. Jay Rosen once said: “The watchdog press died; we have [WikiLeaks] instead”; one could just as accurately say: meaningful transparency died; we have Bradley Manning instead.
UPDATE III: Here is a good report from Al Jazeera’s Listening Post from this week on U.S. media coverage of the Manning story, featuring interviews with Amy Goodman, FAIR’s Peter Hart, former CIA agent Roy McGovern and myself:
Report-back from National Committee to Stop FBI Repression conference
Thursday, Dec. 15 @ 7:00 p.m.Walker Community Methodist Church 3104 16th Ave S, Minneapolis
Stop ALL Witch Hunts! EVEN NOW, Bush and Obama’s “Justice Departments” are investigating, subpoenaing, indicting, torturing, sentencing and imprisoning people for:
- Providing Humanitarian Aid
- International Union Solidarity
- National Liberation Struggles
- Anti-War Activism
- Immigrant Rights and Immigration Legal Assistance
- International Solidarity Work
- Being Arab or Muslim
- “Thought Crimes” (Really.)
We met with these people. We are these people. Serious and sobering information and updates were presented at the Nov. 5 conference in Chicago. We also formed new bonds for solidarity and resistance with Puerto Rican, Palestinian, Arab and Muslim fighters for justice, as well as other folks caught up in the U.S. criminal injustice system. Come to this important report-back from the conference to hear about imprisoned activists and the dangerous issues we all face for exercising what we thought were our rights. Please join us as we share legal, prison, legislative and organizing updates. It will take a movement to turn this around, before more get hurt. FFI: stopfbi.net
AWC Video | Human Rights vs. the IN-Justice System
Mark International Human Rights day with a discussion of the criminalization of human rights work and other activism. The community has rallied around the AWC as our members are investigated for charges of “material support to terrorism.” These charges are an attempt to silence voices against US policies of war and militarism, while also making it illegal to extend the hand of friendship to people in countries of conflict.
This same strategy is evident in the recent conviction of two Somali women, for the crime of sending $8600 in humanitarian aid to Somalia, where they are from. We also see it in the government’s threats to bring charges against participants in last summer’s Gaza Flotilla, which was carrying letters – messages of solidarity and friendship – to deliver to Palestinians living in Gaza.
Our discussion will include several other legal cases attacking human rights: The death penalty – Troy Davis, and Mumia Abu Jamal (now incarcerated for 30 years); Private Bradley Manning – imprisoned while awaiting charges related to the WikiLeaks release of classified documents exposing war crimes in Iraq, among others. Come hear about the important work being done to fight these legal attacks on our rights and our movements!
Children welcome. The library has a wonderful children’s book selection. Let us know if you would like an AWC volunteer to accompany your child there while you enjoy the program. Lunch will be provided – featuring soups home-made by our fantastic AWC chefs! Donations requested, no one turned away.
Organized by the Anti-War Committee | www.antiwarcommittee.org | 612-379-3899
Report-back from National Committee to Stop FBI Repression conference
December 15, 2011 | 7:00 – 9:00pm
Walker Community Church, 3104 16th Ave S, Minneapolis
Stop ALL Witch Hunts! EVEN NOW, Bush and Obama’s “Justice Departments” are investigating, subpoenaing, indicting, torturing, sentencing and imprisoning people for:
- Providing Humanitarian Aid
- International Union Solidarity
- National Liberation Struggles
- Anti-War Activism
- Immigrant Rights and Immigration Legal Assistance
- International Solidarity Work
- Being Arab or Muslim
- “Thought Crimes” (Really.)
We met with these people. We are these people. Serious and sobering information and updates were presented at the Nov. 5 conference in Chicago. We also formed new bonds for solidarity and resistance with Puerto Rican, Palestinian, Arab and Muslim fighters for justice, as well as other folks caught up in the U.S. criminal injustice system. Come to this important report-back from the conference to hear about imprisoned activists and the dangerous issues we all face for exercising what we thought were our rights. Please join us as we share legal, prison, legislative and organizing updates. It will take a movement to turn this around, before more get hurt. FFI: stopfbi.net
FightBack! News | Minneapolis City Council members condemn FBI, grand jury repression
Published on November 19, 2011 by FightBack! News
Minneapolis, MN – City Council members here signed a letter to Senators Amy Klobuchar, Al Franken and Representative Keith Ellison affirming constitutional rights of anti-war activists subpoenaed and raided by the FBI last year. The Committee to Stop FBI Repression published the letter on its website Nov. 15.
The letter states, “We are writing to share our concerns regarding reports about a Justice Department investigation of local Minneapolis peace and justice organizations and individual anti-war activists.”
The letter goes on to note, “This first came to our attention on September 24, 2010, when the homes of several Minneapolis residents were raided by FBI agents who confiscated computers, mailing lists, cell phones, passports, political literature, correspondence, and children’s drawings. That day the FBI also raided the office of the Anti-War Committee, an organization that the Minneapolis City Council, in 2007, publicly recognized as an important voice of nonviolence and political dissent. In connection with these raids, it appears that several Minneapolis residents have been investigated and served with subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury to testify regarding alleged material support for foreign terrorist organizations.
As elected officials we are committed to serving our constituents and our community. In that capacity we are formally sharing our concerns about the expansion of government surveillance of social justice organizations and anti-war activists in Minnesota as evidenced by this event. We are deeply concerned about the chilling effects these activities might have on completely nonviolent and legal activism as well as the threat it poses to the freedoms of speech and association and health of our democracy in general.”
The letter was signed by 12 of the 13 members of the Minneapolis City Council.
The letter is one of the many of statements that have been made by public officials, labor and community leaders opposing repression against anti-war and international solidarity activists.
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