MESSAGE TO OBAMA: NO GUANTANAMO, NO BAGRAM, NO NDAA!!
Thirty-seven members of Witness Against Torture were arrested in front of the White House on Thursday, January 12 around 3 p.m. Dressed in the iconic Guantanamo orange jumpsuits and black hoods, and accompanied by a cage representing indefinite detention, the activists were warned to clear the sidewalk by National Park Police or risk arrest. After occupying the sidewalk for more than three hours, they were arrested one by one.
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Fr. William “Bix” Bichsel, SJ began a 3 month prison sentence at the SeaTac Federal Prison on November 10. The sentence resulted from an action at the Y-12 nuclear weapons complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee on July 5, 2010.
On January 10, Bix left SeaTac, and headed to a federal transition house in Tacoma, Washington for the last month of his sentence.
That evening, friends who are Buddhist monks with the Nipponzan Myohoji Order on Bainbridge Island, were part of a group who were walking and drumming on their way to attend a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day vigil and action at the Trident nuclear sub base in Bangor. Senji Kanaeda and Gilberto Perez decided to make a small detour to drum and pray in front of the house where Bix was now residing.
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from SOA Watch
SOA Watch activist Theresa Cusimano was sentenced on January 13, 2012 to the maximum prison term of six month for a trespass charge, and immediately taken into custody. She had crossed onto the Fort Benning military base in Georgia in November 2011 to protest the continued operation of the notorious School of the Americas / Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.
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From Ralph Hutchison, OREPA Thursday, January 6, 2012 marks the end of eight long months of imprisonment for Steve Baggarly, Mike Walli and Bonnie Urfer who are scheduled to be released today from prisons in Lisbon, Ohio; Morgantown, West Virginia; and Lexington, Kentucky. We celebrate their faithful witness against the destructive power of thermonuclear weapons, expressed so courageously at the Y12 Nuclear Weapons Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee in the July 5, 2010 resistance action. For each of them, the Y12 action was one of many compelling actions in which these resisters have stood to speak truth to power. Their odyssey through the legal system took them to jails and prisons in Knoxville, TN; Maryville, TN; Ocilla, GA; and Oklahoma City, OK in addition to the facilities from which they are released today.
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Iraqi-American physician and humanitarian Dr. Rafil Dhafir, jailed nearly nine years on charges involving his charity to the people of his native country during the years of economic sanctions between the 1991 and 2003 U.S.-led attacks, has been moved from the notorious Communications Management Unit into general population at the U.S. prison at Terre Haute, […]
This post is updated with links to each day’s report of the Article 32 hearings, through Day 6, December 21
Day 1 – Getting into the Courtroom
7:35 AM
Manning’s pretrial hearing (called the Article 32) began on December 16, 2011 at Fort Meade in Maryland. The weather was chilly and grey, but lightened as the day progressed. Members of the public and media who wished to attend the trial were processed through the main visitors entrance. Fort Meade prepared for an enormous turnout — designating a soccer-field sized parking lot for trial attendees and setting up an overflow spectator theater with video feed from the trial that could hold 100 people.
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Mic check reading of citizens' arrest warrant inside Entergy's office, from left, Frances Crowe, Susan B. Lantz, and Paki Wieland of Northampton, MA; Hattie Nestel of Athol, MA; Nina Swaim of Sharon, VT. Photo courtesy Marcia Gagliardi.
Eleven women of the Shut It Down Affinity Group occupied the offices of Entergy Corporation on Old Ferry Road, Brattleboro, Vermont, on Monday morning, December 12, and attempted to make a citizens’ arrest of the board and officers of Entergy, operator of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon.
All the women were arrested for unlawful trespass and directed to appear for arraignment on various January dates in Brattleboro Superior Court, Criminal Division.
Shut-It-Downers cited Entergy for “heedless disregard of public health, public safety, and the right of the citizenry to hear the truth.”
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Fr. Martin Newell, center, with codefendants Chris Cole and Sr. Susan Clarkson
Fr. Martin Newell of the London Catholic Worker community was sentenced to 24 days imprisonment on Friday 9 December 2011 at Highbury Magistrates Court. Martin was brought before the court for refusing to pay a fine arising from cutting into the Northwood Headquarters/ London
in December 2008. The anti-war direct action was timed for the “Feast of the Holy Innocents” on the Catholic liturgical calender. The feast day follows Christmas and commemorates the massacre of children in a search and destroy mission by King Herod who saw the birth of Christ as a threat to his power.
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The one thing which every jail and prison does more than anything else is counting people. We’re counted five times a day here. Three times we’re returned to our housing units to stand by our bunks and be counted, and they come through twice at night after lights out. We’re counted to the extent that when the announcement came over the intercom last night, “count time, back to your bunks for standing count” that one of the guys said, “Ok fellas, time to go to work”. In Tennessee and Georgia we were counted five or six times each day and always by two guards to ensure accuracy. They take great care lest even one of us be lost.
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