[News] Ohio Police Attack Long Walkers
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Fri Jun 6 11:05:34 EDT 2008
Ohio Police Attack Long Walkers
Posted by
<http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/brenda-norrell/2008/06//users/brenda-norrell>Brenda
Norrell - June 4, 2008 at 10:28 pm
By Brenda Norrell
COLUMBUS, Ohio Unprovoked Columbus, Ohio police
attacked Long Walkers, by first pointing a taser
at the head of Michael Lane and then forcing Luv
the Mezenger to the ground and handcuffing him.
The Longest Walk Northern Route was walking this
prayer through Columbus on Monday, June 2, when
police squad cars and arrest wagons arrived.
Without discussion of the purpose of the prayer
walk, or verifying that the Ohio Department of
Transportation had been notified of the prayer
walk, police attacked the walkers.
Michael Lane, who arrived on the walk with his
wife, Sharon Heta, Maori, and their children from
New Zealand, was targeted by police with a taser.
As dozens of police came at the walkers, a police
officer held a taser three feet away from Lanes head.
Luv the Mezenger from Los Angeles went to the aid
of Lane. At that point, police officers threw Luv
on the ground and handcuffed him. Luv has been on
the walk since it left California in February,
walking on snowshoes over a stretch of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Lane, who has a law degree from the Arizona State
University, said the worst part of being targeted
by a police officer with a taser was that it
terrified his daughters who only knew that a gun
was being pointed at their fathers head.
Across the continent, police-induced deaths from tasers have increased.
Luv suffered minor injuries from the police attack. Police made no arrests.
Govinda Dalton, broadcasting on the live Longest
Walk Talk radio on Earthcycles web radio, said,
They came to arrest the walkers with paddy
wagons without even having a discussion as to
what the walk is about, or the fact that the Ohio
Department of Transportation has already been contacted.
The harassment by Ohio police continued, Tuesday,
June 3, when police ordered Longest Walk drummers
off an area at the Ohio State Capitol. However,
the Long Walkers continued with their press
conference and aired statements on their loud speaker at the capitol.
It has been almost four months since the prayer
walk began on Alcatraz, on Feb. 11. Up until June
2, there had been no attacks on the walkers. In
fact, the majority of the governors in the states
that the northern route has walked through have
issued proclamations of support for the Longest Walk 2.
The Longest Walk 2 for Mother Earth and
protection of sacred places is being walked
thirty years after the original 1978 Longest
Walk, a prayer walk for Indian rights and the
recognition of the inherent sovereignty of Indian people and Indian Nations.
Earthcycles Longest Walk Talk Radio has archived
400 interviews with walkers and people along the
route since the walk left Alcatraz, on issues all across America.
The radio topics, voiced by people across
America, have included the rise of the police
state in the United States, the targeting of
American Indians by city, state and federal
police, the rise of xenophobia and the
television-fueled, fear-mongering by the Bush
administration. As a result of the
fear-mongering, the Bush administration has found
it easy to void federal laws, including waivers
of more than 30 federal laws to build the
US/Mexico border wall and seize private lands by
way of eminent domain for the border wall. Across
America, people are alarmed that the rights
guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, including free speech, have been violated.
On the Yankton Indian Nation, about 50 South
Dakota police units recently swarmed a group of
Yankton peacefully standing in defense of their
sovereign land from a corporate hog farm under
construction near the Head Start. About 40 Dakota
from Yankton were arrested in two waves of
arrests. The arrests and construction are now
being challenged in court, but the construction
of the disease-producing hog farm has accelerated.
The radio topics include global climate change,
nuclear testing and gold mining on Western
Shoshone lands and violations of treaty rights.
Another issue is the loss of Paiute traditional
hunting and gathering rights. Scientists are
battling Paiutes for 10,000 year old Spirit Cave
Man. Paiutes have gone to federal court in an
effort to rebury the remains with respect. In
Kansas, the Kickapoo are a nation without water
and having to haul all their water.
Other interviews focus on the proliferation of
censored news concerning Navajo coal mining and
relocation, Nazi-type forces at the US/Mexico
border and the destruction of Tohono Oodham
ancestors remains for the border wall. The news
has also been censored on ceremonial and
religious rights denied to Native inmates in U.S. prisons.
Those interviewed include Mohawks at the northern
border, Navajo from Big Mountain, Arizona, Apache
and Tohono Oodham from the southern border and
Maori from New Zealand. Indigenous Peoples also
discuss the continual oppression of Indigenous
Peoples, particularly from the four countries who
refused to vote for adoption of the U.N.
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The United States, Canada, New Zealand and
Australia did not vote for the Declaration, which
was adopted by the U.N. in 2007 and recognizes
Indigenous Peoples rights to their traditional
territories. Following the U.N. vote, New Zealand
police raided and arrested Maori in the
sovereignty movement there and new mining and
disease-producing energy developments
proliferated in Indigenous territories around the globe.
The newest threat to Indigenous Peoples survival
is carbon credits, a fictional concept which
allows polluters to continue polluting. The
carbon market is a scheme creating millionaires
which has increased the attacks and displacement
of Indigenous Peoples. The World Bank and
corporations are seizing Indigenous lands for
new projects, particularly in South America.
Indigenous Peoples were assassinated in Colombia
as land was cleared for a wind project.
On the Longest Walk Talk Radio, there are also
interviews on the economic collapse and war
profiteering in the United States, the
proliferation of power plants to enrich Bushs
corporate donors, profiteering by private
security contractors such as Blackwater and the
rapid expansion and construction of private
prisons to imprison migrants for profit. At the
Hutto migrant prison in Taylor, Texas, women,
children and babies are imprisoned. Women have
been sexually assaulted and children are deprived
and abused. The United States denied entry to the
prison by a United Nations Rapporteur documenting abuses of migrants.
Another reality voiced on the radio talk show is
the cost of the bogus war in Iraq. American
Indians and people of color, along with poor
whites, are considered expendables to die in Iraq.
Meanwhile, on the Longest Walk northern route, on
Wednesday, June 4, the walkers were all safe and
well, but with a great deal of wet camping gear,
after another night of lightning and rain in an
eastern Ohio campground. During the past four
months, walkers have camped in below freezing
temperatures in the west and then camped in weeks
of rain and winds from tornados in the Midwest.
Walkers on the northern route converge with
walkers on the southern route, now in Alabama, to
march into Washington on July 11. A four day
Cultural Survival Summit is planned for July 8
11 and rallies and events for July 12 13.
Listen to the latest interviews about the prayer
walkers attacked by Ohio police:
<http://www.earthcycles.net/>http://www.earthcycles.net/
More at: <http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/>http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
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