City pages | Secret government informer "Karen Sullivan" infiltrated Minnesota activist groups
By Nick Pinto, Wed., Jan. 12 2011 @ 12:59PM © City Pages 2011 ?The Twin Cities activists who had their homes
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AWC in the News
City pages | Secret government informer “Karen Sullivan” infiltrated Minnesota activist groups
By Nick Pinto, Wed., Jan. 12 2011 @ 12:59PM © City Pages 2011 ?The Twin Cities activists who had their homes
Read MoreUndercover FBI Informant Infiltrates Peace Movement
Press release from Minneapolis based Anti-War Committee: The anti-war and international solidarity activists who are being called before a grand
Read MoreDouble Standards Apply to Peace Activists
BY MARGARET SARFEHJOOYE
If you speak out against U.S.-sponsored human rights violations, and you are not rich or powerful, you might get a visit from the FBI. The recent “witch-hunt” against peace activists is expanding, and there are now 24 grand jury subpoenas served to peace activists based mostly in Minneapolis and Chicago. Although there have been no charges, the activists were informed that this investigation is about providing material support for foreign terrorist groups.
Read More“Don’t Spy On Us, FBI” Say Minneapolis Activists
It was a declassified FBI document that Lucia Wilkes Smith held up before a crowd of Minneapolis peace activists. It was declassified in name only because nearly every word on the dozen or so pages had been blacked out for national security reasons.
“The first letter I got from the FBI said ‘we don’t have anything on you’, said Wilkes Smith a well-spoken gray-haired woman. She had made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request of the FBI. The American Civil Liberties Union and others had urged her to file the request because the FBI had been spying on anti-war groups in Minnesota prior to and during the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul.
Read MoreFBI Expands Probe into Antiwar Activists
The FBI’s probe into antiwar activists is growing. In September, FBI agents raided the homes and offices of activists in Chicago and Minneapolis. Subpoenas that were withdrawn have been reactivated, and a new subpoena was served to a Palestinian solidarity activist in Chicago. We speak with two of the people targeted and two former FBI agents.
Read MoreMeredith Aby Interview on FBI Raids Against the Anti-War Movement
Meredith Aby has been an anti-war and international solidarity activist since 1994. She started out doing student activism at Macalester
Read MoreTerrorist by Association
September 24 began like any other Friday for Joe Iosbaker and Stephanie Weiner. Then, at 7 a.m., FBI agents knocked on the door of the Chicago couple’s house in the city’s North Side.
Armed with a search warrant, more than 20 agents examined the couple’s home, photographing every room and combing through notebooks, family videos and books, even their children’s drawings. Some items were connected to their decades of anti-war and international solidarity activism, but others were not. “Folders were opened, letters were pulled out of envelopes,” says Weiner, an adult education professor at Wilbur Wright College. “They had rubber gloves and they went through every aspect of our home.”
Read MoreJustice Department Prepares for Ominous Expansion of “Anti-Terrorism” Law Targeting Activists
In late September, the FBI carried out a series of raids of homes and antiwar offices of public activists in Minneapolis and Chicago. Following the raids, the Obama Justice Department subpoenaed 14 activists to a grand jury in Chicago and also subpoenaed the files of several antiwar and community organizations. In carrying out these repressive actions, the Justice Department was taking its lead from the Supreme Court’s 6-3 opinion last June in Holder v. the Humanitarian Law Project, which decided that nonviolent First Amendment speech and advocacy “coordinated with” or “under the direction of” a foreign group listed by the Secretary of State as “terrorist” was a crime.
Read MoreJustice Department Prepares for Ominous Expansion of “Anti-Terrorism” Law Targeting Activists
In late September, the FBI carried out a series of raids of homes and antiwar offices of public activists in Minneapolis and Chicago. Following the raids, the Obama Justice Department subpoenaed 14 activists to a grand jury in Chicago and also subpoenaed the files of several antiwar and community organizations. In carrying out these repressive actions, the Justice Department was taking its lead from the Supreme Court’s 6-3 opinion last June in Holder v. the Humanitarian Law Project, which decided that nonviolent First Amendment speech and advocacy “coordinated with” or “under the direction of” a foreign group listed by the Secretary of State as “terrorist” was a crime.
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