From Earth First News
The 9th Circuit Cout of Appeals reversed the conviction of Briana Waters on September 14th, 2010, based on their findings that her conviction was improper because important rulings by the trial court deprived her of a fair trial.
After serving 2 and a half years, she was released from prison today, October 14, 2010, pending a re-trial.
She is ecstatic about being reunited with her daughter, Kalliope.
Dear CFIR, 
Yesterday, one of CIRC’s and Colorado’s great leaders, Edgar Niebla, was detained by ICE while sleeping in his home at 6:30am. We are urgently generating faxes to President Obama, Janet Napolitano (DHS) and John Morton (ICE) to stop Edgar’s deportation and to ensure that Edgar’s struggle helps lead to the passage of just and humane comprehensive immigration reform in 2010 to prevent further deportations and family separations.
Click here to take action and send faxes now to stop Edgar’s deportation! and CALL PRESIDENT OBAMA TO TELL HIM TO STOP EDGAR’S DEPORTATION: CALL in English: 866-998-2910 between 7AM-3PM MST
Edgar’s story exemplifies all that is broken about our immigration system. He immigrated to this country at the age of seven, has grown up in Glenwood Springs, Colorado and become a pillar of the community, through his involvement in five youth groups in his church. Edgar has successfully completed Police Academy and completed the interview process at three different law enforcement agencies. He has been tirelessly organizing for immigration reform through CIRC, CASE and the Reform Immigration FOR America campaign, building relationships with hundreds of youth and community members across Colorado. He was on the bus to Washington, DC and Las Vegas, has lobbied both Colorado Senators and numerous Congressmen.
Click here to take action and send faxes now to stop deportation of Edgar Niebla!
I would like to ask for your assistance in publicizing Edgar’s case to win a stay of deportation and to highlight the urgent need for federal comprehensive immigration reform. On top of the student walkouts and rallies this week for reform and to denounce Arizona SB 1070, we are mobilizing vigils, press events and actions and communicating with Congressman Jared Polis’ office and working with some of the best immigration attorneys in Colorado to win a stay of deportation on Edgar’s case.
On behalf of CIRC, Edgar and his family and community, thank you for your support….and onward to victory!
Julien Ross
Executive Director
Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition
from Denver ABC
Tom has been released into General Population, D Unit, instead of SHU. He’s ecstatic; wants everyone to know. He says they have an art program at Coleman; hopes to get established. Right now it’s getting medical care, walking room, sunshine.
Dear friends,
Today Steve received a sentence of 60 months (5 years) and three years of supervised release. This is an incredibly difficult time for Steve and his loved ones. He is currently being held at the CDC in San Bernardino. We have no idea how long it will take for Steve to be transferred to a federal facility. Awaiting a transfer can be a particularly stressful time - Steve has no idea where he will end up, although we are hoping that he will be in Texas so he can be closer to his partner. Please take a minute to write Steve a note of support. His current address is:
MURPHY, STEVE JAMES
0910300841
CENTRAL DETENTION CENTER
630 EAST RIALTO AVE
SAN BERNARDINO, CA 92408
We will keep you updated about Steve’s whereabouts once he starts the transfer process.
Yours,
Steve’s Support Crew
As many of you know, a quick and severe response was generated against police violence in Portland during the last week. A cop killed somebody and the same night a riot took to the streets, smashing up things and clogging up traffic. Marches continue and portland indymedia provides a little less info than desirable.
Joel Dow was arrested at one of these marches and charged with:
ASSAULT II (B Felony) $250,000 Unsentenced
ASSAULT POLICE OFF (C Felony) $5,000 Unsentenced
RECK ENDANGER (A Misdemeanor) $2,500 Unsentenced
DISORDERLY COND 2 (B Misdemeanor) $1,500 Unsentenced
They need bail money fast, which you can donate via paypal
If you want to write Joel, his jail address is:
C/O Dow, Joel D.
SWIS ID: 745437
Multnomah County Justice Ctr
1120 SW 3rd Ave
Portland, OR 97204
Also, Joel is a vegan and IS NOT receiving vegan meals. CALL THE JAIL
and let them know we’re watching 503 988 5060!
Speaking of writing letters (see previous post), sending letters can be one way to work towards supporting political and other prisoners. Unchained Books offers a post office box return address for people wishing to not use their home address when writing to imprisoned people. Please contact us at unchainedbooks@riseup.net if you are interested in utilizing our address for receiving mail from people in prison.
We occasionally highlight particular political prisoners on this blog, and include address information, so that interested folks can send them a note, letter, or card.
Today, we mention two of the New Jersey Four: Patreese Johnson and Renata Hill, both currently imprisoned in New York prisons. Their mailing addresses are as follows:
Renata Hill #07-G-0636
Albion Correctional Facility
3595 State Road
Albion, NY 14411-9399
Patreese Johnson #07-G-0635
Bedford Hills Correctional Facility
P.O. Box 1000
Bedford Hills, NY 10507
If you’d like to write to Renata or Patreese but don’t know what to say, consider the following thoughts from Free the New Jersey 4: “Please send her thoughts, letters, art, poetry, and anything else that might help keep her spirit strong.”
Here is some background about the New Jersey 4 from Justice 4 New Jersey 4:
In the summer of 2006, seven young Black lesbians from New Jersey—Patreese Johnson, Renata Hill, Venice Brown, Terrain Dandridge, Chenese Loyal, Lania Daniels, and Khamysha Coates—were hanging out on the pier in New York City’s West Village when Dwayne Buckle, a man selling DVDs on the street, sexually propositioned Patreese. Refusing to take no for an answer, he followed them down the street, insulting and threatening them: “I’ll **** you straight, sweetheart!”
It is important to understand that all seven women knew of another young woman named Sakia Gunn, who had been stabbed to death under very similar circumstances—by a pair of highly aggressive, verbally abusive male strangers. At least some of the seven had known Sakia personally.
During the resulting confrontation, Buckle first spat in Renata’s face and threw his lit cigarette at her, then he yanked another’s hair, pulling her towards him, and then began strangling Renata. A fight broke out, during which Patreese Johnson, 4 feet 11 inches tall and 95 pounds, produced a small knife from her bag to stop Buckle from choking her friend—a knife she carried to protect herself when she came home alone from her late-night job.
Two male onlookers, one of whom had a knife, ran over to physically deal with Buckle in order to help the women. Buckle, who ended up hospitalized for five days with stomach and liver lacerations, initially reported on at least two occasions that the men—not the women—had attacked him. What’s more, Patreese’s knife was never tested for DNA, the men who beat Buckle were never questioned by police, and the whole incident was captured on surveillance video. Yet the women ended up on trial for attempted murder. Dwayne Buckle testified against them.
The media coverage was savage, calling the women such things as a “wolf pack of lesbians.” The pro bono lawyers for the young lesbians would later have to buy the public record of the case since the judge, Edward J. McLaughlin (who openly taunted and expressed contempt for the women in front of the jury all throughout the trial), would not release it. As of late August 2007, the defense team still didn’t have a copy of the security camera video footage. And after the better part of one year spent sitting in jail, four of the seven women were sentenced in June 2007—reportedly by an all-white jury of mostly women—to jail terms ranging from 3 1/2 to 11 years. The oldest of the women was 24, and two of them are mothers of small children.
http://prisonactivist.org/pps+pows/sekou-kambui-st.html
Sekou Cinque T. M. Kambui
Rather than using this forum to address my own personal needs for support, I would like to take this opportunity to address a crucial issue that involves all of us – the lack of national coordination among all our
individual defense/support groups. This lack of coordination is not the
fault of the small support groups whose interest is generally one
particular prisoner or small group of prisoners; this deficiency is
created by the lack of a specific, nationally organized committee to speak out against the growing and continued imprisonment of political prisoners and prisoners of war. For many years now, we have awaited a concerted effort by some of our better known national-level organizations; the response has continued to be weak, and the coordination fragmented and most often factional. Many of our brothers and sisters are without any support and almost no outside contact; our responsibility is to come to their aid as well as to the aid of our better-known prisoners. The growing brutality as evidenced by Control Units, maximum segregation units, and physical torture, the increased use of the death penalty – all signal the immediate demand for coordinated support on behalf of not only political prisoners and prisoners of war, but also the tens of thousands of our brothers and sisters presently brutalized by this racist, oppressive system.
The numerous independent support committees should give serious thought to establishing support for these brothers and sisters without any outside aid. Even letters of support for upcoming parole hearings or letters of outrage directed to wardens and superintendents of prisons are important for somebody to do. In this way, if and when a brother is suddenly locked down or transferred, somebody outside knows and responds to his need. Such immediate response may be the only thing standing between that brother and brutalization and/or death. Prisons hate outside interference, and we all need to insure that we provide that interference as often and as directly as possible.
On national levels, the organizations which have over the years called
themselves “the voice of the New Afrikan or Puerto Rican or Native
American” must take the responsibility to insure that our smaller defense committees are supported at parole hearings or in the governor’s office – or wherever might be necessary to indicate to these officials that our wives, loved ones, and supporters are not alone in their fight. No prisoner should be without support at a parole hearing; newspapers which concentrate upon specific groups of political prisoners and prisoners of war should insure that a representative is available at these meetings to report to the people the activities taking place at these hearings. Such activity, of course, demands that these national organizations know the parole dates and other specific dates of each prisoner that may concern the need for support, both physical and emotional.
Such coordinated effort is an absolute necessity in these days of even
more reactionary/oppressive government restrictions. The federal anti-
crime bill is screaming for prisoners to serve 85% of their terms before
gaining parole eligibility. States are being forced to accede to this time
frame if they hope to obtain federal funds. What is 85% of life? We can no longer sit back, depending upon our small support groups who are struggling to survive. We must speak out aggressively in a coordinated, supportive effort and make ourselves hear. Time magazine has just reported that for the first time in history, the number of prisoners (in the United States) has gone over one million – 1,012,851 to be exact. Such incredible numbers prove that there are also millions of potential supporters for all of us – the families and loved ones of these one million men and women.
One of the greatest problems faced by the support groups – most often family and loved ones of the prisoner – is isolation from other one another and from society in general. Nobody cares about prisoners, and nobody wants to hear abut our needs or the needs of our families. The criminalization of our communities, which includes our families, must be openly attacked if we are to raise a public consciousness around the whole issue of political prisoners and prisoners of war and imprisonment of so many New Afrikan citizens around the country. None of us have much money, but each of us can write letters, send faxes, mail a few stamps to a prisoner, or do some other small task that will help a fellow brother or sister to get through just one more day.
At present my own Support Group is in the midst of a Petition
Drive/Support Letter Drive for my parole hearing in April of this year. We actively encourage your participation and support by mail, fax, or phone contact. Copies of all petitions and/or letters should be sent to my support group in Birmingham as well as to the Parole Board at the address listed below. My four-year long lawsuit against the Parole Board, citing racial discrimination, lack of due process, and arbitrary/capricious rulings was just dismissed a few weeks ago; the appeal is now in process. Ultimately, however, my fate and the fate of all of us rests with the people, not with the racist courts, parole boards, and thousands of other government agencies/entities.
Now is the time for us to come together with one another, to organize, to speak out and speak up on behalf of each other. There is no time to waste, while we debate, define, and discuss; the enemy continues his genocidal plan. We need to bear in mind the Ashanti proverb: “Two men in a burning house must not stop to argue.”
Sekou C.TM. Kambui Defense Committee
ATTN: Aysha De’Jenaba Kambui
2233 Second St. South
Birmingham, AL 35205 (205)322-1047
from Green Is The New Red:
The following is a guest essay written by David Naguib Pellow, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota and faculty advisor of Scott DeMuth:
On November 17, 2009, Scott DeMuth was jailed for contempt of court, since he refused to answer questions posed to him by a federal grand jury in Davenport, Iowa. They were interested in questioning him about his knowledge of an unsolved Animal Liberation Front action in 2004 at the University of Iowa. Scott is a University of Minnesota graduate student and Dakota language student. Scott took a principled stand against the grand jury and paid for it with a contempt charge and, two days later, a charge of conspiracy to commit “animal enterprise terrorism.”
As a sociologist and Scott’s faculty advisor at the University of Minnesota, I am concerned about this case for many reasons. Scott is being targeted because he is a scholar who does research on some of the most important social movement struggles in our society and because of his affiliations with many such activists. In his work, he has researched and/or interviewed numerous activists from Native American struggles for sovereignty and land, and environmental and animal liberation movements in the U.S. Unfortunately, Scott is only the most recent scholar facing state repression whose research focuses on peoples’ movements. The U.S. boasts a long and shameful history of silencing and disciplining academics whose research and teaching emphasize the importance of collective efforts to effect radical social change. In recent years, professors studying various peoples’ movements (including the ones Scott focuses on) have been censored, demoted, fired, and jailed here in the U.S. This is an issue of academic freedom and I believe we should support scholars like Scott because of the importance of this kind of work for rethinking our history and for reimagining what kind of futures we can create for ourselves.
My own research on movements for racial justice, labor rights, environmental justice, and animal and earth liberation suggests quite clearly that the state and corporations spare no expense and rarely hesitate to engage in surveillance, infiltration, and other efforts to neutralize the power and reach of these groups. As a publicly outspoken scholar and activist, Scott DeMuth is at the center of these dynamics and is quickly becoming a force for common ground among people across various movements, organizations, and universities who believe that government power should always be checked and that scholars, citizens, activists, and ordinary folks must enjoy basic rights and freedom from coercion and repression. Support Scott, protect academic freedom, and let’s work to abolish the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act!
David Naguib Pellow is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota where he teaches courses on social movements, environmental justice, globalization, immigration, and race and ethnicity. His books include: The Treadmill of Production: Injustice and Unsustainability in the Global Economy, Resisting Global Toxics: Transnational Movements for Environmental Justice, and Garbage Wars.
Sign a petition supporting
From Cop15 Prisoner Support:
Two activists who have been in custody since the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in December, has been released. It is the Australian Natasha Verco and American Noah Daniel Weiss.
They had been remanded in custody with a deadline of today, when they appeared in the Copenhagen City Court, they were told that there is a charge made against them and that their case comes to court 16th and 19th March. Then they were freed, the police lawyer Dorrit Borgaard, the Copenhagen Police.
The two are accused by clauses in the penal code that deals with violence against an official, disturbance of public order, disruption of communications and vandalism.
Noah Weiss is an American citizen, but resident in Denmark, while Natasha Verco is an Australian citizen and married to a Danish citizen. She resides in Sweden.
Natasha Verco was arrested the day before the big “Reclaim Power” demonstration during the COP15 climate summit. Her imprisonment has caused great outrage in Australia.
Monday morning showed a small group of people in front of the Danish consulate in Sydney and demanded her release. The demonstrators appealed to the Crown Princess Mary, who is of Australian origin, to go into the matter for the Australian woman.
Jesse James Forrey, who just served 2 and a half months in jail for “damage to property” during the 2008 RNC in St. Paul, is still in the hands of Ramsey County, Minnesota. He is being held because of a warrant that was issued in California on November 5th, and only made it into the Ramsey County system sometime between Thanksgiving and November 30th. We assume this warrant is for an alleged probation violation in California. The situation is very uncertain and unclear, a rude shock from the expectation of a reunion, a reminder of the arbitrary power these people hold over us. We all thought Jesse would be released Monday morning, and only discovered he was being held while we were waiting for him outside the jail, when the other prisoners were set free and we saw no sign of Jesse.
On Monday, Jesse was moved from the Ramsey County Workhouse to the “Law Enforcement Center”, the jail in downtown St. Paul. This place has less amenities and the prisoners only get about 7 hours out of their cells each day. There is no recreation and no library, just a meager offering of tattered romance novels and bibles, or whatever they have in their wing. We’re not sure if the jail accepts books, but feel encouraged to send letters and zines or articles (without staples!). The address is:
Jesse James Forrey
ADC
425 Grove St.
St. Paul, MN 55101
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