<html>
<body>
<font size=3><br>
earthfirstnews.wordpress.com Aug 21, 2010<br><br>
<a href="http://earthfirstnews.wordpress.com/2010/08/21/update-on-rod-coronado/" eudora="autourl">
http://earthfirstnews.wordpress.com/2010/08/21/update-on-rod-coronado/<br>
<br>
</a>by Ben Rosenfeld<br><br>
On August 3, 2010, Rod Coronado was sentenced to four months in
federal<br>
prison for allegedly violating the terms of his probation, i.e., for<br>
“associating” with Earth First! cofounder and former Greenpeace
U.S.A.<br>
Director Mike Roselle, by accepting his “friendship” on Facebook, and
for<br>
accessing an unauthorized computer outside his home. (There is no
current<br>
evidence that the FBI surreptitiously surveiled Mr. Coronado’s
Facebook<br>
account. Mike Roselle is a prominent environmental organizer and
author,<br>
active most recently in the campaign to ban mountaintop removal coal<br>
mining in Appalachia.)<br><br>
The probation terms Mr. Coronado is said to have violated were not
related<br>
to his most recent case, which resulted in a hung jury and a plea deal
in<br>
2008. In that case, a San Diego jury declined to convict Coronado
for<br>
answering a question after a talk in which an audience member asked
him<br>
how incendiary devices were made. (Coronado answered generally while<br>
holding up a jug of apple juice from the concession table; the<br>
government’s own presentation at trial contained far more detailed
and<br>
accurate information.)<br><br>
One probation term Mr. Coronado was accused of violating (the
association<br>
term) was left over from his federal conviction in Arizona in 2005
for<br>
trying to disrupt a mountain lion hunt through peaceful means. The
other<br>
(the computer monitoring term) was added by a federal judge in
Michigan<br>
after Coronado moved there to help raise is son. The San Diego judge
did<br>
not impose any computer conditions on Coronado, and had also told him
he<br>
was free to associate with Earth First!ers, in part to spread the
message<br>
that his views on activism had changed.<br><br>
In August 2006, Mr. Coronado wrote a Statement from Prison
renouncing<br>
property damage as a tactic and advocating social change through
other<br>
means. He wrote, in part: “What our world needs now is a whole lot
more<br>
love and a lot less violence. Nothing in this world will change
overnight.<br>
But if we live peace and teach our children well, they might still
inherit<br>
a world better than ours.”<br><br>
Mr. Coronado has not veered from this message. He is not accused of
any<br>
crime. He has been allowed to self-surrender to begin serving the
four<br>
month sentence locked away from his children, his partner, and his<br>
community. His three year term of probation will begin anew upon his<br>
release.<br><br>
Ben Rosenfeld is a San Francisco Civil Rights Attorney and Board Member
of<br>
the Civil Liberties Defense Center based in Eugene, OR
(<a href="http://www.cldc.org/" eudora="autourl">www.cldc.org</a>).<br>
<br>
<br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3 color="#FF0000">Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#008000">415 863-9977<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#0000FF">
<a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.Freedomarchives.org</a></font><font size=3> </font></body>
</html>