[Pnews] NATO 3 - Locking The Public Out Of Public Trials In Chicago - Your Rights Aren’t Worth Crap

[Prisoner News]

January 21, 2014
*http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/21/your-rights-arent-worth-crap/*


*Locking The Public Out Of Public Trials In Chicago *


  Your Rights Aren’t Worth Crap

by CHRIS GEOVANIS

Public trials are one of the fundamental tenets of American democracy. 
And they’ve been cancelled in Chicago, at least for the trial of the 
NATO 3 <http://freethenato3.wordpress.com/about/> — three defendants 
battling terrorism charges for alleged ‘crimes’ wholly instigated, 
manufactured and advanced by undercover cops in a blatant case of 
entrapment. But you’ll be hard pressed to determine this for yourself, 
since you’re essentially banned from the courtroom unless you’re willing 
to surrender your right to privacy, your right to even a glimmer of free 
expression, or your right as a non-corporate reporter to cover the case 
in real time like your corporate colleagues can.

Government officials are forcing every member of the public seeking to 
observe the NATO 3 trial to ‘pre-register’, produce a government-issued 
ID, submit to a criminal background check — and, of course, trust them 
with your data.

This last bit is spectacularly hard to swallow, as news continues to 
come out about the extent of government spying 
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175795/> and data-mining on perfectly 
lawful activity like talking on the phone. Government agencies have 
surveilled and disrupted the Occupy movement 
<http://progressive.org/spying-on-ccupy-activists>, to which the 
defendants had a loose affiliation, simply for existing, and we’ve 
barely begun to plumb the depths of cop spying 
<http://interoccupy.net/blog/chicago-judge-orders-state-to-hand-over-info-about-police-spying-on-the-nato-3/> 
in the run-up to Chicago’s NATO protest — and beyond 
<http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/16488-undercover-police-officer-connected-to-nato-5-case-still-spying-on-protest-in-chicago>. 
For Chicagoans, this comes in the wake of the Chicago cops’ notorious 
history 
<http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/confessions-of-a-red-squad-spy/Content?oid=3293807> 
of political spying, disruption and assassination 
<http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/4/the_assassination_of_fred_hampton_how> 
going back to the days of the infamous COINTELPRO 
<http://www.democracynow.org/topics/cointelpro> Red Squad 
<http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1049.html>.

In fact, there would be no criminal case against the three defendants if 
the city’s autocratic 
<http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0407/p02s01-uspo.html> former mayor, 
Richard M. Daley, hadn’t finally succeeded in convincing the federal 
court in 2001 <http://www.themilitant.com/2001/6506/650652.html> to 
effectively gut the Red Squad 
<http://www.wbez.org/series/chicago-amplified/chicago-history-museum-red-squad-symposium-part-1-107524> 
Consent Decree banning police spying, infiltration, harassment, 
intimidation and undercover disruption of political activity. The 
hollowed out decree was ultimately dissolved in 2009 
<http://www.aclu-il.org/dissolution-of-red-squad-consent-decree-does-not-negate-need-to-protect-first-amendment-rights-in-chicago/>.

Attorneys for the NATO defendants have argued in a court finding that 
the ‘terrorism’ scheme they’re charged with is based on “idle chatter, 
laced with bravado and abetted, encouraged and egged on by the 
undercover police agents.” There was no actual act of vandalism 
committed, and there certainly was no act of ‘terror’ committed — unless 
you’re feeling terrorized by the prospect of undercover cops inciting 
thought crimes to dirty up your political beliefs. But there was, 
essentially, a law enforcement scheme to incite crime where no crime had 
been committed, wholly fomented by undercover cops engaged in 
manufacturing criminality — cop behavior that would have been illegal 
under the Red Squad consent decree.

Meanwhile, public officials continue to invoke the ‘terrorism’ meme in 
the NATO trial as part of a criminal prosecution that has consistently 
conflated dissent with criminality. And they’re taking no chances on 
uncontrolled spin in the case.

Besides making members of the public surrender their privacy rights to 
attend the trial, they’re enforcing the courts’ recently imposed ban on 
cell phones 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/13/court-cell-phone-ban-chic_n_3075891.html>, 
lest people who CAN get in report from the ground, and have told those 
who are willing to ‘pre-register’ that officials are giving priority 
seating to those who then RE-register to attend a day before each trial 
date. You don’t re-register? You take your chances at getting a seat the 
following day. At one point, the judge even considered banning pencils 
and paper from the courtroom.

New rules for non-corporate reporters are equally extreme. Officials are 
imposing restrictions that effectively ban freelance reporters and 
reporters with non-corporate and non-traditional media from the kind of 
access and privileges — including the right to carry their cell phones — 
that corporate reporters will be afforded.

“It is my sense going into this trial that the Cook County Sheriff’s 
Office will be putting on a trial that undermines the public’s right to 
access much more than the US military did during Manning’s court 
martial,” writes Firedoglake reporter Kevin Gosztola. He should know, 
since he covered the Manning <http://www.bradleymanning.org/> trial 
daily — and his most recent piece 
<http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2014/01/20/why-is-the-state-of-illinois-not-the-us-government-putting-nato-3-on-trial-for-terror-conspiracy/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter> 
on the NATO 3 trial is a compelling and disturbing summary of the 
state’s dubious basis for its terrorism allegations.

The state’s scheme to effectively ban the public from a public — and 
publicly funded — trial is part of a long-standing official pattern to 
harass, arrest and undermine 
<http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/01/22/mayor-1s-new-rules-try-to-thwart-protest-while-groundswell-of-dissent-grows/> 
those who dissent in Chicago. For years, activists in Chicago had to 
fight in court for permission to rally and march against the Iraq war, 
and protesters have routinely been subject to arrest simply for 
attempting to exercise <http://rt.com/usa/chicago-police-city-law-035/> 
their First Amendment rights. More broadly, the restrictions that local 
government overlords have imposed on public access and public oversight 
in the NATO trial are part of a national effort to rebrand dissent as 
inherently dangerous.

The judge in the NATO 3 case, Thaddeus Wilson, prominently displays a 
picture of Martin Luther King behind his bench. If he were able, King 
would be spinning in his grave at some of the rulings Wilson has issued 
in the case. Wilson refused, for example, to dismiss a juror for cause 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_for_cause>, even though she 
routinely teaches at the Chicago police academy, and is married to the 
law enforcement officer who supervised the undercover operations of 
state police during the NATO protests. Despite the fact that police 
spying and its abuses lie at the heart of the NATO 3 case — and that 
this prospective juror’s very livelihood and family economy is grounded 
in police collaboration — Wilson ruled that there was no reason to doubt 
her ability to serve objectively.

That’s like saying that the chairman of BP is perfectly fit to serve on 
a jury weighing criminal negligence in the Deepwater Horizon 
<http://earthjustice.org/features/preventing-more-bp-type-oil-disasters> 
disaster. Defense attorneys were forced to exercise a peremtory 
challenge to keep her off the jury.

Judge Wilson has also issued a disingenuously named ‘decorum 
<http://www.cookcountycourt.org/Portals/0/Criminal%20Division/Rulings/Wilson,%20T/Trial%20Decorum%20Order%20NATO3%20-%20Comprehensive.pdf>’ 
order that sets the stage for massive courtroom repression. The edict is 
so sweeping that one could conceivably be ejected from the courtroom and 
cited for criminal contempt for the ‘crime’ of raising your eyebrows or 
shaking your head at testimony — or even smiling at a defendant. The 
order also bans political buttons, t-shirts, armbands and perhaps even 
particular colors — we won’t know until we show up wearing red or black 
or both. If you get up to take a leak, you can’t get back into the 
courtroom until the judge calls a recess — and in the jury selection of 
the phase, court sometimes ran past 9PM, so empty your bladder early.

Wilson has also consistently ruled in the prosecution’s favor in terms 
of what evidence will and will not be admissible. And in one of the 
judge’s worst rulings, Wilson has asserted that that police are included 
under the terrorism definition of the state statute under which the 
defendants are being tried, which defines terrorism as “intent to coerce 
a significant portion of the civilian population.”

In short, the testimony of the undercover cops who manufactured the 
conditions for a ‘crime’ to be alleged should be treated like any 
testimony from any ‘civilian’. Jurors could essentially be asked to 
embrace the legal fiction that these undercover cops felt ‘coerced’ into 
the self-same crime they themselves were attempting to create and 
incite. This ruling essentially privileges testimony from cops in a 
police department whose officers routinely tell flat-out lies 
<http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20131219/river-north/special-report-rule-14-cops-who-lie-testing-public-trust> 
with impunity to bolster their cases.

It bears emphasizing that the undercover cops at the heart of this case 
are not civilians. They’re the undercover cops who told court officials 
they ‘lost’ a shitload of text messages that could have been exculpatory 
for the NATO 3 defense team — this in an age when virtually any 
electronic traffic anywhere lives somewhere, including in the NSA’s vast 
databases. Except when the NSA’s pals in the Chicago police department 
lose that electronic traffic. They’re the undercover cops who actually 
manufactured the conditions in which they could allege a crime under the 
notoriously vague 
<http://peopleslawoffice.com/nato-3-defendants-file-challenge-to-illinois-terrorism-statute/> 
and little used state terrorism statute under which the NATO 3 are 
charged.* *

This is just as dunderheaded as the only other instance in which this 
state terrorism statute has been used to charge someone. In that case, 
the state convicted a college student for making a terrorist threat — 
even though he actually did no such thing 
<http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2014/01/20/why-is-the-state-of-illinois-not-the-us-government-putting-nato-3-on-trial-for-terror-conspiracy/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter> 
— after cops searched his unoccupied car and found some crappy and 
inflammatory rap lyrics scribbled on a piece of paper. The state circuit 
court in that case sentenced the student — a Black man in a largely 
white community — to five years in prison. An appellate court later 
tossed out 
<http://bigstory.ap.org/article/student-rappers-conviction-threat-case-tossed> 
that conviction. Blacks, dissidents — hey, this state terrorism statute 
is perfect for Illinois’ law enforcement community!

Secret trials are abhorrent 
<http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/25017683-452/chicago-nato-3-trial-limits-public-access.html>. 
That’s why the nation’s founders, whatever their other manifest flaws, 
banned them. Secret trials built on the testimony of undercover cops 
given broad license to manufacture and incite criminal activity to 
entrap defendants is particularly revolting and deeply dangerous to all 
of us.

“The NATO 3 trial is not about terrorism,” says Andy Thayer, who helped 
organize 2012’s protests against the NATO meeting. “This trial is about 
the government using hype ABOUT terrorism to pursue a political agenda, 
and as such represents a fundamental mis-use of the justice system, if 
we are to believe the words of the U.S. Constitution.”

The political agenda of the Cook County States Attorneys Office — the 
prosecutors of record of the NATO 3 and others criminally charged around 
the 2012 NATO protests — has included a stubborn commitment to defend 
its own most egregious miscarriages of justice 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/11/anita-alvarez-60-minutes-_n_2273017.html>. 
Cook County States Attorney and career Chicago prosecutor Anita Alvarez, 
who’s not been shy about chasing media face time in the NATO cases, has 
historically embraced the worst sorts of police excess and abuse — 
including cops who torture 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/g-flint-taylor/unholy-alliance-seeks-to-_b_4103757.html>, 
lie 
<http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2012/12/cook-county-states-attorney-alvarez-humiliates-herself-on-national-tv.html> 
and murder 
<http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-11-06/news/ct-met-chicago-cop-fatal-shooting-1106-20131106_1_officer-gildardo-sierra-flint-farmer-previous-shootings>.

Alvarez’ local prosecutorial agenda dovetails with allied schemes in 
national and local government to support increasingly militarized police 
forces which hustle funding for their agencies on the public dime, and 
promote the careers of “security” industry professionals — many of whom 
are former members 
<http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/chicago-nato-summit-prairie-district-neighborhood-148624575.html> 
of these self-same militarized police forces.

Those self-same law enforcement agencies are also perfectly happy to 
collude with corporations to suppress dissent that those corporations 
deem unhelpful — what journalist Naomi Wolf has described as “totally 
integrated corporate-state repression of dissent 
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy>.”* 
*

To support this agenda in Chicago, authorities are using the tried and 
true tactic of terrifying people into signing off on their most 
fundamental civil liberties — including any vestiges of privacy rights — 
for the ‘privilege’ of attending a public criminal trial rooted in 
police misdeeds. More than a few activists who assembled in Chicago in 
May 2012 to oppose the murderous war agenda of NATO have said they 
simply will not submit to the state’s draconian terms to attend the NATO 
3 trial. And in that respect, the state has succeeded in locking out 
some of the people with the most at stake in a ‘public’ trial in which 
defense attorneys have been consistently thwarted in their effort to 
expose law enforcement’s schemes to derail dissent and manufacture crime.

The Chicago police and their overlord, Rahm “Mayor 1%” Emanuel, worked 
mightily to make the city safe during the NATO protests for the worst 
sorts of corporate criminals 
<http://truth-out.org/news/item/9314-boeing-hq-shut-down-by-anti-nato-summit-protesters-to-cap-week-of-action> 
and their military backers. Emanuel and Alvarez remain strong allies 
<http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/2013/03/27/no-to-hb2265sb1003-rahm-emanuel-anita-alvarez-team-up-to-wreak-more-havoc/> 
in a shared dystopian vision of civic life in a city that routinely 
criminalizes people of color and undermines the fundamental tenets of 
economic and social justice 
<http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2013/12/opinion-aja-lydersen-two-chicagos.html>. 
It’s no accident that Mayor 1% backs privatization schemes in critical 
public endeavors that range from education 
<http://jonathanturley.org/2013/06/23/rahm-emanuels-reform-of-the-chicago-public-schools/> 
to health 
<http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/mayor-emanuel-closes-city-mental-health-clinics/Content?oid=9145051> 
— just as States’ Attorney Anita Alvarez backs privatizing this 
critically important public trial.

So, who are the real terrorists?

/*Chris Geovanis* is a Chicago media activist, advocacy journalist and 
member of the HammerHard MediaWorks <http://hammerhard.org/> collective. 
You can reach her via Twitter @heavyseas, via her Facebook 
<https://www.facebook.com/christine.geovanis> page or at 
chrisgeovanis(at)gmail.com <http://gmail.com/>/

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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