[News] Ohio Police Attack Long Walkers

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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 Lane’s 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 father’s 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 O’odham 
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 O’odham 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 Bush’s 
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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