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The following article related to grand jury witch-hunts appears in the
<br>
latest issue of "Turning the Tide: Journal of Anti-Racist
Action," Volume <br>
18 Number 3 July-August 2005. You can get a free sample of the whole
issue <br>
(print tabloid) by writing to ARA, POB 1055, Culver City CA 90232, or by
<br>
email to antiracistaction_la@yahoo.com<br><br>
"You have the right to remain silent." We hear it over and over
again on <br>
the streets and on every cop show on TV. Yet in the chambers of a Grand
<br>
Jury, under the control of a federal or state prosecutor, you can be
<br>
stripped of your right to silence and forced to testify. A presiding
judge <br>
will send you to prison for at least the life of the grand jury if you
<br>
refuse to talk. Neither the first amendment guarantee of freedom of
speech <br>
and the press, nor the fifth amendment protection against testifying
<br>
against yourself, is accepted as a reason not to speak. The highest
profile <br>
federal Grand Jury in the country recently subpoenaed Judith Miller of
the <br>
NY Times and ordered her to testify about her sources for a story she had
<br>
worked on about the disclosure of the identity of CIA operative,
presumably <br>
by someone at the White House. While this attack on news-gathering has
<br>
drawn headlines, many less well-known, but more anti-establishment <br>
individuals are also facing prison for a refusal to collaborate with
grand <br>
jury witch hunts in California.-Editor<br><br>
Grand Jury Witch-Hunts Stalk Activists in California<br>
by<br>
Silas Weatherby<br><br>
Over the last few months there have been increased attacks against
<br>
communities and movements around California by the FBI, homeland
security, <br>
and state and federal grand juries. One grand jury ended in San
Francisco. <br>
It is believed to have been a state grand jury investigating the fatal
<br>
shooting of a police officer at Ingleside station in 1971, and possibly
the <br>
death of a police officer in a bombing at Park police station in 1970.
The <br>
bombing immediately followed the conviction of the Chicago 8, who were
<br>
charged with "organizing" demonstrations at the 1968 Democrat
convention, <br>
which turned into a much publicized police riot. Before and during
the <br>
grand jury, the FBI attempted to question activists and political
prisoners <br>
from the Black Liberation movement and the anti-imperialist movement of
the <br>
1960s. At the time of this writing, there were no indictments,
although <br>
since this was at least the third grand jury around these two actions, it
<br>
is unlikely that this will be the last gasp in the state's attempt to
bring <br>
old charges against activists.<br><br>
A new grand jury began in the Bay Area. In June, ten
activists from the <br>
environmental and animal liberation movement were subpoenaed to a grand
<br>
jury after police raids failed to bring evidence of criminal acts.
Both <br>
the raid and the grand jury targeted the public movement, claiming that
<br>
they were looking for Daniel Andreas San Diego, a Bay Area animal <br>
liberation activist. In 2003 San Diego was charged with
putting small <br>
explosive devices at Chiron and Shaklee corporations because of their
ties <br>
to Huntingdon Animal Sciences, which tests cosmetics and drugs on about
<br>
70,000 animals a year.<br><br>
On the date of the first hearing on June 22, one of the people
subpoenaed, <br>
Nadia Winsted, read a statement denouncing the grand jury as an attack on
<br>
the public animal rights movement, and said she would, on principle,
refuse <br>
to testify. Over 100 activists from the animal rights movement, with
<br>
support from anarchist and anti-imperialist activists, demonstrated
against <br>
the grand jury outside the Federal building. Several of those
people <br>
subpoenaed said they would refuse to testify under any conditions, and
were <br>
prepared to go to jail for their principles. Events, speak-outs,
articles <br>
and radio appearances have been used to build support for the <br>
activists. Here's what Josh Trentor, one of those subpoenaed, has
to say.<br><br>
"Near the beginning of April, I awoke at six in the morning to the
sound of <br>
repeated doorbell rings. As one of my roommates peeked out of the
curtains <br>
of our apartment, floodlights lit up the front of our building and loud
<br>
voices shouted up at us from below, 'FBI, open up!' Agents stormed
through <br>
our home with their guns drawn and pointed at us. We were handcuffed and
<br>
ordered into our living room. One of my roommates was arrested and
forcibly <br>
removed from our home. We were told that she had been arrested on an
<br>
outstanding warrant, issued for the unauthorized use of a bullhorn during
a <br>
demonstration in November 2004. Across the Bay agents clad in ski
masks <br>
and armed with assault weapons were simultaneously violating the home of
<br>
one of our friends in Oakland. For eleven hours agents representing
the <br>
FBI, ATF, Secret Service, Coast Guard, Joint Terrorism Task Force, US
<br>
Marshals, and local police ransacked our homes seizing computers,
journals, <br>
photo albums, books, music CDs and everything else they could get their
<br>
hands on. While the two houses were being picked through, a third group
of <br>
agents detained an individual across town. They attempted to lie, <br>
intimidate, and coerce her into supplying them with a DNA sample. <br>
Fortunately we were able to mobilize legal support quickly. One of our
<br>
attorneys swiftly intervened and removed her from the
situation."<br><br>
"In the latest round of the FBI's campaign of harassment and
intimidation, <br>
" Josh continues, "I and nine other individuals have now been
subpoenaed to <br>
appear before a federal Grand Jury in San Francisco. Once used to protect
<br>
citizens from unreasonable and malicious prosecution by the state, the
<br>
Grand Jury system is now used to destroy social movements. Grand Juries
<br>
thrive on their ability to operate in complete secrecy. Witnesses who are
<br>
forced to appear are stripped of their 5th amendment right to remain
silent <br>
and are denied their right to be represented by an attorney within the
<br>
Grand Jury room. Grand Juries are used to divide, isolate, intimidate and
<br>
collect information on social movements, as well as to imprison their
<br>
activists. They have been used extensively to harass and target <br>
abolitionists, Puerto Rican independence activists, Black Panthers, as
well <br>
as the environmental and animal liberation communities. Those refusing to
<br>
cooperate face many months, and even years in prison."<br><br>
"As we speak, a young man named Peter Young sits in jail in
Wisconsin <br>
awaiting trial. He has been charged with Animal Enterprise Terrorism for
<br>
allegedly trespassing at fur farms, pulling down fences, opening cages,
and <br>
allowing the animals contained within them to escape to freedom. For this
<br>
"crime", Peter is now facing a sentence of up to 82 years in
prison. At his <br>
last hearing, Bob Anderson, an assistant US attorney, said Young
committed <br>
"an act of terrorism" by trying to impose his will on others by
using <br>
violence. In New Jersey, six animal liberation activists are currently
<br>
being tried on charges of Animal Enterprise Terrorism, interstate
stalking, <br>
and conspiracy. In essence, they are accused of little more than
operating <br>
a website opposed to the contract animal testing laboratory Huntingdon
Life <br>
Sciences (HLS). If convicted, they each will face up to 24 years in <br>
prison. As the government continuously redefines words such as
violence <br>
and terrorism to include the opening of cages, the running of websites,
and <br>
the fight against oppression, they further their ultimate goal of
outlawing <br>
dissent altogether. It is imperative that we stand up to this type of
<br>
thuggery and in support of those who find themselves the targets of <br>
government harassment. I refuse to cooperate with this grand jury, or
with <br>
any other despite what I may face. In the coming months many of us will
<br>
need your support. Protests will be held outside of the San Francisco
<br>
federal courthouse at each and every date that individuals are scheduled
to <br>
appear. "<br>
"As we show our resistance inside the Grand Jury room, we ask
that you <br>
join us and demonstrate your resistance and solidarity outside of the
<br>
courthouse."<br><br>
As this resistance stymied the inquisitors, another grand jury
began. In <br>
late June, the activist community in San Diego, CA was the target
of an <br>
intense campaign of harassment by federal law enforcement
agents. Several <br>
activists were given only 24 hours notice to appear at a federal grand
jury <br>
in San Diego. Activists believe the subpoenas are in relation to a
federal <br>
investigation of the 2003 burning of a La Jolla apartment complex, which
<br>
the Earth Liberation Front claimed responsibility for, and which the FBI
<br>
has admittedly little evidence or credible leads. Those subpoenaed in San
<br>
Diego included Rob "Ruckus" Middaugh, a Chicano-Mexicano <br>
anti0-authoritarian and former political prisoner in the Los Angeles
area. <br>
The effort to force him to appear in San Diego was eventually
dropped.<br><br>
An East Bay police investigation was resurrected. A cold case <br>
investigation into the shooting of a Berkeley policeman in the early
1970s <br>
led the Berkeley police to ransack the homes of two Black activists from
<br>
that period. Computers, address books, photo albums, and other
materials <br>
were taken from the houses. Previously, an African American man
already <br>
held in a California prison was charged with the shooting, then released
by <br>
the DA the next day because of lack of evidence. Two sisters
were also <br>
arrested and charged, then released for lack of evidence. The
policeman <br>
in charge of the investigation made it clear that he would continue the
<br>
harassment until he was able to convince the DA to press charges against
<br>
someone.<br><br>
The Muslim community was targeted by the FBI in Lodi, California after
the <br>
arrest of two Muslim Americans. The FBI initially claimed
that US-born <br>
Hamid Hayat had attended a "terrorist training camp" with
"hundreds of <br>
other terrorists," and that Hamid and his father Umer Hayat, a 47
year old <br>
ice cream truck driver, were planning to bomb "hospitals and large
food <br>
stores." Newspapers trumpeted this "news" in doomsday
type, but when the <br>
actual charges were brought, the Hayats were charged only with lying to
the <br>
FBI about the youth's trip to Pakistan. Three other Muslim
men from Lodi, <br>
among them two respected imams, were also detained on suspected visa
<br>
violations. One of the imams had<br>
actually been the target of FBI surveillance beginning three years
ago <br>
when a secret court used the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)
<br>
to approve wiretapping of Mohammed Adil Khan.<br><br>
Two Muslim activists who went to Lodi called the situation "a near
state of <br>
siege", and said that "FBI harassment is not at all a secret
<br>
investigation: it is an overt act of intimidation of the community
at <br>
large". Dozens of Muslims were questioned without
attorneys present, and <br>
"Pakistanis who attended "Know Your Rights" workshops held
by CAIR in <br>
Stockton, Lodi, and Pleasanton were all subject to obvious FBI <br>
surveillance," according to Veena Dubal and Sunaina Maira of <br>
<a href="http://www.amuslimvoice.org /" eudora="autourl">
www.amuslimvoice.org </a> They wrote: "As soon as we stepped out of
our car in <br>
Lodi, we were made aware of the FBI's presence. Not only is the
entire <br>
Muslim community being surveilled by the FBI, which had interviewed many
of <br>
its members, sometimes without an attorney present, in the days following
<br>
the arrest - so are the attorneys and activists who are making sure that
<br>
constitutional rights are upheld."<br><br>
Clearly, the FBI and other repressive forces of the state are taking
every <br>
opportunity to seek to gather information, to intimidate and break the
<br>
resistance of any community or movement whose solidarity and resistance
<br>
impedes the war-making plans of imperialist system. But the clear lesson
of <br>
the similar attempts in the 1980's, directed against the Puerto Rican and
<br>
Chicano-Mexicano movements, when activists across the US took a
principled <br>
stance of non-collaboration, and eventually broke the back of the grand
<br>
juries - although it took many serving time for contempt to do it - is
that <br>
solidarity, resistance, non-collaboration, and an assertive defense of
the <br>
political right to silence as a corollary to the right to free speech are
<br>
the only ways to defeat such repression and build our movement's capacity
<br>
to resist and advance.<br><br>
For more information, check out:<br>
<a href="http://www.fbiwitchhunt.com/" eudora="autourl">
www.fbiwitchhunt.com/<br>
</a><a href="http://www.amuslimvoice.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.amuslimvoice.org/<br>
</a><a href="http://www.nocompromise.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.nocompromise.org/<br>
</a><a href="http://www.attica2abughraib.com/" eudora="autourl">
www.attica2abughraib.com/<br>
</a><a href="http://www.organiccollective.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.organiccollective.org<br>
</a></font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
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522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br>
(415) 863-9977<br>
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<a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">
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