ACTIVIST SUPPRESS 2

see main for older 2/17

see ACT SUPPRESS 3 519

getting hard to track so many, types

see eco-terror

shd be sep cat for "public hearing eg josh fox?

related to privacy

aha/ omg amazing # tags 4/19 capt txt, arguably not complete list 22?

kpfa 7/11/19 7 am upfront

beanbag/ round brain injury occupy oakland police riot after occupy tried t retake camp; casual flashbang tossed at ppl trying to help (no offical ID on beanbag shooter, but grenade discipline reversed?!}

we keep ticking off the boxes to fascism, but attacking political enemies certainly rate, not 1st time/ pro-immigrant activists deported? CRIMINALIZATION? "lock her up!"

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/despite-arrest-by-homeland-security-79-year-old-immigrant-rights-activist-vows-to-keep-protesting-report/

https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/texas-bill-would-make-protesting-pipelines-a-felony-on-par-with-attempted-murder/

A bill making its way through the Texas legislature would make protesting pipelines a third-degree felony, the same as attempted murder.

“It’s an anti-protest bill, favoring the fossil fuel industry, favoring corporations over people.” — Frankie Orona, executive director of the Society of Native Nations

H.B. 3557, which is under consideration in the state Senate after passing the state House earlier this month, ups penalties for interfering in energy infrastructure construction by making the protests a felony. Sentences would range from two to 10 years.

The legislation was authored by Republican state Rep. Chris Paddie. It passed the state House May 7 on a 99 to 45 vote, with two abstentions. The bill is being cosponsored in the state Senate by Republican state Sen. Pat Fallon.

In remarks on the state House floor during the bill’s passage, Paddie sought to assuage the fears of those who believe the legislation will target non-violent protest.

“This bill does not affect those who choose to peacefully protest for any reason,” said Paddie. “It attaches liability to those who potentially damage or destroy critical infrastructure facilities.”

But opponents of the measure don’t agree, pointing to the bill’s language.

“It’s an anti-protest bill, favoring the fossil fuel industry, favoring corporations over people,” Frankie Orona, executive director of the Society of Native Nations, told The Austin American-Statesman.

The legislation is “is criminalizing conscientious, caring people who are the canaries for their communities,” activist Lori Glover told *The Texas Observer*.

A hearing on the law in the state Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Economic Development on Wednesday drew opponents of the measure to speak out against the law, but it’s unclear if their testimony will make a difference.

The Texas bill is just the latest piece of legislation at the state level to target pipeline protests. In the wake of a spike in anti-pipeline actions over the past few years, Gristreported Tuesday, a number of states have come down on environmental activists.

The effort to punish pipeline protestors has spread across states with ample oil and gas reserves in the last two years and, in some cases, has garnered bipartisan support. Besides Louisiana, four other states — Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa — have enacted similar laws after protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline generated national attention and inspired a wave of civil disobedience.

The bill is drawing national attention as well.

“Texas aims to make pipeline protest a third-degree felony, same as attempted murder,” climate activist Bill McKibben tweeted on Friday.

In a tweet, the advocacy group Public Citizen described the legislation as “an oil and gas backed effort to squash environmental protest.”

“This needs to be a nation-wide story,” the group said.

:{What Is Happening at the Venezuelan Embassy Is an Outrage:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

Medea Benjamin - May 7, 2019 - Local Peace Economy

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2019/05/07/what-is-happening-at-the-venezuelan-embassy-is-an-outrage/

Right here in Washington, D.C., an unprecedented showdown is unfolding. Venezuelan supporters of self-declared interim president Juan Guaido have been trying to take over the Venezuelan Embassy. This goes against international law, the wishes of the government in control in Venezuela, and the dogged determination of a group of U.S. citizens called the Embassy Protection Collective, who have been living in the embassy since April 15.

A takeover of the embassy of a sovereign nation whose government holds power and is recognized by the United Nations would be illegal according to the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which says that diplomatic premises are inviolable and the receiving State must protect the premises against any “intrusion, disturbance of the peace or impairment of its dignity.”

This has nothing to do with whether one likes Nicolás Maduro or considers the Venezuelan elections fair. My Saudi friends in Washington, D.C., hate Mohammad bin Salman—a man who has never been elected by anyone—but the U.S. government would never let them take over the Saudi Embassy. Chinese dissidents say that “winners” of Chinese rigged elections—with only the Communist Party allowed to exist—should not be recognized by the rest of the world, but they would never get access to the Chinese Embassies. Likewise for dissidents from Egypt, Honduras, Syria, Zambia, Congo, Romania, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, etc.—all countries with highly questionable elections, to put it mildly.

The inflammatory act of handing over the Venezuelan Embassy to Guaidó supporters would also have the potential to dramatically escalate the conflict between the United States and Venezuela. If the Trump administration were to allow this, the Maduro government would likely reciprocate by taking over the U.S. Embassy. This could be just what war hawks John Bolton and Elliott Abrams are looking for as a justification for a U.S. military intervention.

Determined to avoid another war, a group of U.S. peace activists sought and received permission from the legitimate Venezuelan government to form an Embassy Protection Collective. Since April 15, a group has been living in the embassy, sleeping on couches and floors, while outside supporters have been providing supplies and joining them for meals and educational events.

At first the Venezuelan diplomats were still working in the building, but the State Department ordered them to leave the country by April 25. Since then, we have been alone, holding the embassy so that a diplomatic solution can be worked out similar to the situation with Iran, where the U.S. Interests Section in Tehran has been operating under the Swiss Embassyand the Iranian Interests Section in Washington, D.C., is operating under the Pakistani Embassy.

On May 1, however, our peaceful presence was violently besieged by angry Guaidó supporters. Designed to coincide with Guaidó’s call for a May 1 uprising, his U.S. representative Carlos Vecchio showed up for a press conference and quickly left, leaving behind an unruly, violent mob. This group has been surrounding the embassy since then, creating mayhem and not allowing food, medicines or supplies to the people inside.

Even more shocking, the Secret Service, which is tasked with guarding embassies, has allowed this to happen. They have had a constant presence at the embassy since May 1 but have stood by as this group damages the building and threatens the peace activists inside and outside. They have allowed the opposition to bang on the doors with sledgehammers to try to break in, post signs all over the property against the wishes of the legal owners, physically attack people trying to get food inside, and destroy and steal the property of the Embassy Protection Collective (food, placards, signs, canopy). In violation of the city’s noise ordinance, the mob has been blasting sirens all day long at decibels so high that even the Secret Service police have been wearing earplugs. They block the sidewalks and all public passages. They have set up 10 canopies and 3 tents to surround the entire building. When we tried to set up a canopy, we were attacked by Guaidó supporters, but it was our member, Tighe Barry, who was arrested and accused of pushing a Secret Service officer.

The Secret Service has a public statement saying that no individuals, medicine or food have been prevented from entering the building. We ask anyone who believes this to go to the embassy and try to deliver a package to the people inside.Even packages sent by the U.S. Postal Service are not allowed in.Every entrance is blocked by opponents, and the Secret Service does nothing to stop them. On the contrary, supporters who have tried to bring food have been arrested. This was the case of CODEPINK organizer Ariel Gold. When she found all entrances blocked, she threw bread into an empty ramp outside a door and was arrested for “throwing missiles.” When we tied a package to a rope to send food up through a window,three of us were physically assaulted, and despite clear video evidence, the police refused to arrest our attacker.

Our people inside are without sufficient food and other critical supplies. They are not allowed to freely exit and enter the building. They sleep at night with a terrible sense of insecurity, worried that the angry mob will break in and attack. But we remain resolute, those of us on the inside and those of us supporting them on the outside, and we demand that our government respect U.S. and international law. The Secret Service must protect the embassy and the people who are lawfully on embassy property until the two governments come to an agreement about their premises. At that time, the Embassy Protection Collective will happily dissolve and leave the embassy, happy because we can go back to our lives but happy, most of all, because we will have helped to give John Bolton and Elliott Abrams one less reason to drag our nation into another war.

Medea Benjamin is the co-director of CODEPINK and a member of the Embassy Protection Collective.

Source: Independent Media Institute

This article was produced by :{Local Peace Economy:(style="border:0px;margin:0px;padding:0px"):}:, a project of the Independent Media Institute

Homeland Security Used a Private Intelligence Firm to ... - The Intercept

https://theintercept.com/2019/04/29/family-separation-protests-surveillance/

3 days ago - LookingGlass Cyber Solutions, a Virginia-based firm, gathered ... Homeland Security Used a Private Intelligence Firm to Monitor Family Separation Protests ... Day Protests' across the US on June 30,” the analyst's email read. ... the administration was instead spying on them for expressing themselves.” ...

...The calls for action were mounting. It was mid-June, and the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which saw thousands of migrant children separated from their parents, was producing waves of outrage. By the end of the month, hundreds of protests were planned in towns and cities across the country. As the plans moved forward, others took notice.

In the days leading up to the protests, a private intelligence company that works with the Department of Homeland Security was monitoring the activity on the ground. Documents shared with The Intercept by the American Immigration Council, obtained through a freedom of information request, show thatLookingGlass Cyber Solutions, a Virginia-based firm, gathered information on more than 600 demonstrations across the country, information that was then shared with DHS and state-level law enforcement agencies.

Read Our Complete CoverageThe War on Immigrants]

Tracking Facebook accounts affiliated with the protests and disseminating the intelligence to law enforcement fusion centers nationwide, the operation drilled down on physical locations where demonstrations were planned: a high school in Sebring, Florida; a church in Carbondale, Illinois; the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City; a Denny’s in Carlsbad, California; and “the old Kmart parking lot” in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. All were logged by street address and the time of the planned demonstrations.

A “Threat Analyst” in Reston, Virginia, sent the finished intelligence to a “LookingGlass Shared Services” address on June 28, two days before the protests were set to begin.

“LookingGlass has compiled a spreadsheet forState Fusion Centers detailing over 600 planned ‘Family Separation Day Protests’ across the US on June 30,” the analyst’s email read. “These originated from Cyber Threat Center (CTC) and are broken out by City and State; they provide physical location and the Facebook event ID.”

The following morning, the headquarters of DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis disseminated the information to its staff, which was later circulated among Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel.

In a statement, LookingGlass Chief Marketing Officer Joy Nemitz told The Intercept, “As a matter of company policy and confidentiality, we do not comment on matters pertaining to clients or work performed and refer all queries to the company in question.” A DHS official, speaking on background, described the information LookingGlass collected as “unsolicited.”

“The Department of Homeland Security, Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) works with federal partners, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and state and local law enforcement through the National Network of Fusion Centers to assess threats and analyze trends in activity,” the official said in an email. “In this particular instance, a private sector entity shared unsolicited information it collected through publicly available channels with DHS I&A on protests that were scheduled to take place near Federal facilities. Throughout the summer of 2018, the Department was at a heightened state of security due to ongoing protests outside of Federal facilities and physical threats to DHS employees which did result in a least one arrest.”

The official added: “When DHS I&A receives this type of information, we are required to share it consistent with DHS policy to ensure stakeholders have appropriate situational awareness regarding personnel, facilities, suspicious activities, emerging threats, incidents, operations, and operational capabilities affecting the Department or the Homeland Security Enterprise.”

Jess Morales Rocketto, co-chair of Families Belong Together and a lead organizer of last year’s protests, condemned the monitoring of the demonstrations. “Those protests represented the best of democracy,” she told The Intercept. “It’s especially concerning given that these protests were basically thousands of moms and their kids, thousands of families, and that the Trump administration’s response to that was to put them on a watch list.”

The emails confirming the protest surveillance were released in an ongoing freedom of information battle that the American Immigration Council, or AIC — in collaboration with the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, the National Immigrant Justice Center, Kids in Need of Defense, Women’s Refugee Commission, and Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP — is waging to pry documents surrounding family separation from the government.

“We’ve been getting them in drips,” Emily Creighton, deputy legal director at the AIC, said of the documents beginning to surface as a result of the litigation. “We have been told in litigation that ICE, DHS, and CBP have hundreds of thousands of responsive records.”

For immigration attorneys working with families directly impacted by the administration’s “zero tolerance” regime, news of protests being monitored makes an ugly situation even worse.

“The public rightly expressed outrage when they learned of the Trump administration’s shocking policy of ripping children away from their parents,” Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and lead attorney in a lawsuit challenging family separation, told The Intercept. “They’ll again be outraged to learn that, rather than focusing resources on reuniting these families, the administration was instead spying on them for expressing themselves.”

Intel for Profit

As an operation, LookingGlass Cyber Solutions appears to fit squarely in the larger universe of for-profit intelligence providers pitching services to law enforcement in a post-9/11 world.

In 2015, the company acquired Cyveillance, “a leader in open-source threat intelligence” that, according to the firm’s website, “delivers an open source intelligence-led approach to security through continuous, comprehensive monitoring and analysis of millions of online data sources to protect client information, infrastructure, and employees from physical and online threats.” Records indicate that Cyveillance previously provided contract work for the U.S. State Department.

In a jargon-heavy brochure, LookingGlass describes its “DHS Cybersecurity Shared Services Program for State Fusion Centers” as a combination of services and platforms designed to provide “insight and technical indicators to support a range of activities from high-level situational awareness to actionable recourse.” The company touts the expertise of its analysts and their ability to provide “deep-dive analysis, technical indicators, and situational awareness reporting,” while highlighting the role of its Cyber Threat Center as “an aggregator of global news, social media, and physical security events aligned to an organization’s area of interest.”

“CTC can be configured to provide analysts with cyber news matching topics of relevance and physical incident alerts in user-defined proximity ranges around a given point on the map,” the company reports. “Since global events can have impacts at local levels, analysts utilizing CTC will benefit from the data collection breadth of global sources from the surface web and Deep and Dark Web.”

Stood up in the wake of the September 11 attacks as another node in the war on terror, the fusion centers that companies like LookingGlass cater to have long been the target of criticism.

In a withering 2012 report, congressional investigators found that “DHS-assigned detailees to the fusion centers forwarded ‘intelligence’ of uneven quality — oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already-published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism.” The report was particularly hard on DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis — the office that saw fit to distribute LookingGlass’s monitoring of family separation protests.

“This document shows that DHS accepts and distributes surveillance of protest activity on social media, including to fusion centers, which have a track record of monitoring innocent and constitutionally protected conduct,” Hugh Handeyside, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Security Project, told The Intercept, after reviewing LookingGlass’s work product.

“It also demonstrates the reach of surveillance contractors and the products they’re peddling,” Handeyside added. “We need to know a lot more about these products and how the government is using them.”

Targeting Critics of the President

In the last two years, law enforcement agencies executing the Trump administration’s immigration agenda have cracked down on critics of the president’s policies.

In Arizona, the U.S. Border Patrol and Trump administration attorneys have aggressively targeted humanitarian volunteers providing food, water, and medical aid to migrants trekking through the desert with criminal prosecutions. And in the San Diego-Tijuana area, Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol, and counterparts in Mexican law enforcement have run a sweeping intelligence-gathering operation targeting immigration attorneys, journalists, and activists working with, and around,migrant caravans.

The monitoring of last year’s family separation protest now adds a private intelligence firm to the mix.

“This is a chilling revelation, but follows an even scarier trend of constant government surveillance and policing of immigrant communities, and targeting of activists and journalists,” Jesse Franzblau, a senior policy analyst with the National Immigrant Justice Center working on the FOIA litigation that led to the latest revelations, said in an email to The Intercept. “The new records unveil how the administration views voices of dissent as a threat to its disinformation campaigns. Congress should be asking questions about why DHS resources are going towards efforts to target opposition to hateful anti-immigrant policies.”

Morales Rocketto, the organizer with Families Belong Together, agrees. Within the immigrant rights community, Morales Rocketto said, it is well-known “that the administration has been harassing some of the most vocal activists, lawyers, and journalists.”

“The DHS inspector general should investigate this,” she said. “Congress should demand answers about this, because the government should not spy on Americans who are exercising their First Amendment rights.”

in New York City, activists from over 30 groups took over the prestigious Whitney Museum Friday to call for the removal of Vice Chair Warren Kanders, CEO of tear gas manufacturer Safariland, from the museum’s board. The protest launched a 9-week series of actions organized by Decolonize This Place. Democracy Now! spoke to one of the activists at Friday’s action.

Marz Saffore: “My name is Marz Saffore, and I’m with MTL+ Collective and Decolonize This Place. Today we’re here for week three of the 'Nine Weeks of Art and Action' at the Whitney Museum, demanding the removal of Vice Chairman Warren Kanders. Warren Kanders is the CEO ofSafariland, an international weapons manufacturer who manufactured the tear gas used against migrant families at the border, water protectors in Standing Rock, black folks in Ferguson, Palestine, Oakland, Turkey, Egypt, and the list goes on.”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/these-laws-are-chipping-away-at-democracy-around-the-world/

hmmn, maybe miscat?

Chrystie Flournoy Swiney,

Democracy seemed ascendant after the rivalry between communist and democratic states subsided in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. As elected governments replaced many toppled totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, the number of democracies rose.

Yet with rare exceptions, authoritarian leadership and other undemocratic governments have been the norm throughout human history. So perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that democracy seems to be losing ground after its post-1991 surge. The rise of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, and Donald Trump in the U.S. are among the most visible examples.

As a human rights attorney completing my Ph.D. in international relations, I’m researching why democracy appears to be declining around the globe. In addition to the growing number of far-right, authoritarian-leaning leaders who certainly bear responsibility,lawmakers in historically strong democracies are proposing and passing legislation that adds new layers of red tape, restricts access to foreign financial support, and makes it harder and riskier to engage in peaceful protests.

From India to Poland to Israel, legislators are limiting the freedom of independent nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations. Many of these groups are responsible for holding governments to account, standing up for minority rights and providing services to the indigent, among other critical roles.

New restrictions

My research focuses on the spread of undemocratic civil society laws in historically democratic states. These laws include bills that impose new restrictions on forming, operating and funding civil society organizations. They are limiting the activities of charities, watchdog organizations, protest movements and nonprofit service providers, such as health care clinics depended on by people lacking access to affordable health care.

For nearly a decade I’ve tracked and documented the spread of these laws. By my count, at least 58 percent of the world’s strongest democracies have adopted at least one restrictive civil society law since 1990. Counting proposed laws, another 5 percent are in this growing category.

I’m not talking about similar legislation passed in non-democratic and weakly democratic states like Russia, Egypt and Turkey. These laws are also problematic and troublesome for global civil society, but are not the primary focus of my research.

Consider what happened after Russia enacted a law in 2012 that requires all nonprofits wishing to receive any amount of foreign donations and that are engaged in what the government defines as political activities to register as “foreign agents” – a toxic term in the Russian context.

Since then, elected politicians have passed measures with similar objectives in countries with democratic governments, including Israel, India, Austria, Hungary and Poland.

In trouble

Democracy experts like the independent watchdog Freedom House generally agree that democracy is in trouble around the world. They no longer debate whether democracy is imperiled, but by how much and whether it’s reversible.

Democracy scholars, such as William Galston at the Brookings Institution – a centrist think tank, political scientist Yascha Mounk and columnists like Nicholas Kristof tend to focus on the rise of populist and far-right leaders when explaining global democratic decay.

But in democracies, the law, not the president or prime minister, is critical to maintaining the pillars and foundations upon which democracy rests. That is why I consider an Austrian law that curbs access to foreign funding to all Muslim organizations so troubling.

I’m also concerned about a Polish law that consolidates all power over nongovernmental organization funding, whether foreign or domestic, into the hands of a single individual appointed by its prime minister. And I find a Hungarian law, which requires nongovernmental organizations that get more than $28,000 of their funds from other countries to label themselves as funded from abroad on all of their publications, worrisome.

When laws are passed that undermine democracy’s critical foundations, democracy weakens. Laws restricting the independence and strength of nonprofits are one example of this.

[dynamic list ]

United States

Restrictive laws are even appearing here in the United States, so far only at the state rather than the federal level – aside from a handful of obscure measures. These laws are designed to curb what nonprofits and activists can do.

For example, over the past decade, more than half of all states have introduced so-called“ag-gag laws,” measures designed to silence whistleblowers who reveal animal abuses on industrial farms. However, the U.S. system of checks and balances is slowing and reversing their impact. American courts are finding many of these laws to be in violation of the Constitution.

At the same time, ag-gag laws remain on the books in at least seven states.

[map]

Initiatives at the state and federal level since November 2016 that aim to restrict the rights of Americans to protest are all over the map.

International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL), CC BY-SA]:{

Similarly, since November 2016, legislators in 35 states have considered more than 91 bills designed to restrict protest activities. For example, a growing number of states, including Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio and Washington have introduced harsh new criminal penalties for protesters who wear hooded jacketsor otherwise disguise their identities while protesting. What’s more, states, including Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina and Texas, have proposed laws shielding motorists from liability if they end up injuring or killing protesters who block traffic.

Few of these anti-protest measures, only 11 of 91 considered, have been enacted. Legal challenges could topple many if not all of them. But these measures do, in my view, have the potential to erode American democracy. $7,054,371| 1989 - 2014 Total Spent: | $6,773,178 |

Debts:	$97,480
Last Report:	Sunday, March 31, 2013

Top 5 Contributors, 2010 - 2014

Contributor	Total	Indivs	PACs
Club for Growth	$347,551	$346,551	$1,000
In Progress	$59,535	$59,535	$0
Greater Houston Anesthesiology	$56,150	$56,150	$0
Johns Hopkins University	$54,875	$54,875	$0
First Colonies Anesthesia Assoc	$39,729	$27,829	$11,900

...view more data

Top 5 Industries, 2010 - 2014

Industry	Total	Indivs	PACs
Health Professionals	$1,250,188	$773,788	$476,400
Republican/Conservative	$449,469	$383,169	$66,300
Retired	$449,423	$449,423	$0
Real Estate	$223,687	$213,687	$10,000
Leadership PACs	$206,502	$8,706	$197,796

...view more data

Click here for 6 full quotes on Energy & Oil OR background on Energy & Oil.

The answer is drilling at home. (Nov 2010)
Voted YES on opening Outer Continental Shelf to oil drilling. (May 2011)
Voted YES on barring EPA from regulating greenhouse gases.(Apr 2011)
Signed the No Climate Tax Pledge by AFP. (Nov 2010)
Cap-and-trade has no impact on global temperatures. (Jul 2010)
Explore proven energy reserves & keep energy prices low. (Jul 2010)

Andy Harris on Environment
Click here for 3 full quotes on Environment OR background on Environment. Stop considering manure as pollutant or hazardous. (Sep 2011) Member of House Natural Resources Committee. (Mar 2011) Rated 25% by HSLF, indicating an anti-animal welfare voting record. (Jan 2012)

Andy Harris on Environment

Click here for 3 full quotes on Environment OR background on Environment.

Stop considering manure as pollutant or hazardous. (Sep 2011)
Member of House Natural Resources Committee. (Mar 2011)
Rated 25% by HSLF, indicating an anti-animal welfare voting record. (Jan 2012)

Josh Fox, director of the Academy Award-nominated documentary "Gasland" was taken into custody by Capitol Hill police this morning, along with his crew, after Republicans objected to their presence, according to Democratic sources present at the hearing. The meeting of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment had been taking place in room 2318 of the Rayburn building.

--career;

Club for Growth	$347,551	$346,551	$1,000
In Progress	$59,535	$59,535	$0
Greater Houston Anesthesiology	$56,150	$56,150	$0
Johns Hopkins University	$54,875	$54,875	$0
First Colonies Anesthesia Assoc	$39,729	$27,829	$11,900
Peroutka & Peroutka	$35,900	$35,900	$0
American Society of Anesthesiologists	$35,500	$0	$35,500
Every Republican is Crucial PAC	$35,000	$0	$35,000
American Medical Assn	$32,500	$0	$32,500
American Assn of Orthopaedic Surgeons	$32,000	$0	$32,000
American College of Radiology	$31,500	$0	$31,500
Merritt Properties	$31,100	$31,100	$0
American Interventional Pain Physicians	$30,000	$0	$30,000
Citizens United	$30,000	$0	$30,000
Anesthesia Service Medical Group	$29,000	$10,500	$18,500
Harrison Group	$27,750	$27,750	$0
Associated Builders & Contractors	$27,500	$0	$27,500
American Academy of Otolaryngology	$26,500	$0	$26,500
Koch Industries	$25,000	$0	$25,000
American Academy of Ophthalmology	$24,500	$0	$24,500

Club for Growth	$347,051	$346,051	$1,000
Greater Houston Anesthesiology	$52,150	$52,150	$0
Johns Hopkins University	$51,375	$51,375	$0
Peroutka & Peroutka	$33,400	$33,400	$0
First Colonies Anesthesia Assoc	$32,179	$22,779	$9,400
Every Republican is Crucial PAC	$30,000	$0	$30,000
Anesthesia Service Medical Group	$28,500	$10,000	$18,500
Rothschild Capital Management	$26,995	$26,995	$0
American College of Radiology	$26,000	$0	$26,000
American Interventional Pain Physicians	$25,000	$0	$25,000
American Medical Assn	$25,000	$0	$25,000
Citizens United	$25,000	$0	$25,000

13 green energy cuts U.S. clean energy initiatives in other countries. The EERE's international program partners with global leaders and organizations to develop renewable energy and efficiency measures mainly in poorer countries. This amendment cuts off funds for the program, and it cites Obama's plan to spend $600,000 to help China and India build sustainable cities as the leading reason. Sponsor: Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.)

Do we really want our elected representatives set up as puppets of groups from outside Maryland? Rep. Andy Harris is one such puppet! The following is a post on RightWingWatch.org, from 2008, about our Congressman, Andy “Dr. No” Harris. It shows how misleading his support was and how he still panders to outside forces, instead of working on issues that matter to his constituents. He has given in to being a puppet of the extreme right-wing radicals who have funded his campaigns and ordered him how to vote in Congress, not for the best interests of his district, but for the social agenda of those puppeteers, who are based outside of Maryland.

This week, the Club for Growth declared victory, as incumbent Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, lost the Republican primary to the Club’s handpicked candidate. The Club’s PAC, which has carved out a niche for itself, with right-wing primary challenges, spent more than $600,000 on the race, mostly with TV ads calling Gilchrest a “liberal.”

But the Club for Growth, known for its hard-line supply-side economics, wasn’t the only outside group giving a boost to challenger Andy Harris. “It is imperative that Dr. Harris win this contest!” declared Focus on the Family founder, James Dobson, who trumpeted right-wing complaints about Gilchrist.

http://www:{.sourcewatch.:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:org/index.php?title=Andy_Harris

stub:

Andrew P. Harris is the Republican candidate in the 2008 congressional elections primary for the 1st Congressional District (map) of Maryland. On February 12th he defeated incumbent Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-Md.).^[1]

Contents

Positions, record and controversies

Bio

2008 elections

Harris won the Republican nomination by defeating Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-Md.) in the 2008 congressional primary.^[2][3][4]

Money in politics

Information on this candidate's 2010 fundraising is not yet available.

Committees and affiliations

Committees

Harris will be assigned committees if and when he is elected to Congress.

Affiliations

More background data

Contact

Andy Harris for Congress

122 South Main Street

Bel Aire, MD 21014

443-553-4794

Email: info@andyharris08.com

Articles and resources

Sources

↑ "2008 Primary Results," The Baltimore Sun, February 13, 2008.
↑ 2008 Race Tracker page on Maryland's 1st Congressional District
↑ Andy Harris campaign website
↑ "2008 Primary Results," The Baltimore Sun, February 13, 2008.

Wikipedia also has an article on Andy Harris. This article may use content from the Wikipedia article under the terms of the GFDL.

External resources

External articles

Tom LoBianco, "Funds soar for Gilchrest's seat," Washington Times, July 10, 2007.

Categories: Maryland and the U.S. Congress | Defeated 2008 House candidate | Congresspedia | Stubs | Republican Party (USA)

Congressman Andy Harris Is Terrible

You know who's terrible? Congressman Andy Harris, of Maryland, is terrible. Here's why!

Harris, a freshman House Republican, served in the Maryland Senate for thirteen years, where he spent much of his time posturing for national office. After establishing his culture war bonafides, he decided to run for Congress in 2008. He primaried the 18-year congressional veteran Wayne Gilchrest, one of the last moderate Republicans around. Gilchrest held some awful policy positions, in Harris' view: He wanted to end the Iraq war at some point in the future, and he didn't think the Chesapeake Bay should be converted into a sludge pit. Harris successfully defeated Gilchrest, but then lost the safe Republican seat in the general election to Democrat Frank Kratovil. This was in a district which John McCain won by 19 points.

Harris returned to the Maryland Senate but never really stopped campaigning for national office, and he was quick to attach himself to whatever useless wedge issue bullshit he could. Here's a delightful example. When the Maryland state government was in its final days of the 2009 legislative session, working quickly to reach a difficult budget compromise, Harris heard that some students in a club at the University of Maryland were planning to screen the big-budget porno Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge on campus, with some dumb college-y panel about sex and gender and whatever afterwards. You know, just the usual college kids watching nakey-people stuff. Harris, however, was so offended by this that he threatened to withhold the university's entire $424 million in state funding unless the screening was canceled. He was ultimately victorious, but not after annoying all of his colleagues and holding up a budget agreement.

Harris ultimately was able to ride the Tea Party wave to victory last year in his second congressional run. He almost instantly made a terrible name for himself, when he was caught whining about having to wait a couple of weeks for his sweet congressional health insurance policy to kick in during one of the new House Republican majority's first meetings.

And now Andy Harris is back in the news as one of the anti-compromise Tea Party Republican holdouts who humiliated Speaker John Boehner last night with his terrible demands. One of them, The Hill reports, was that Boehner's debt ceiling bill offered too much money for Pell Grants, the cheap program that gives poor people some money to go to college:

Legislation crafted by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to raise the debt limit by $900 billion would directly appropriate $9 billion for Pell Grants in 2012 and another $8 billion in 2013.

This has shocked some conservative House freshmen who say they were elected to cut spending, not increase it. Some House Republicans think of it as being akin to welfare.

"I really don't understand why we're increasing spending in a bill supposed to be cutting spending," said Rep. Andy Harris, a freshman Republican from Maryland. "It was negotiated without the input of a lot of members."

Andy Harris is terrible.

http://gawker.com/5826041/congressman-andy-harris-is-terrible

RICO!

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22012019/greenpeace-racketeering-lawsuit-rico-claims-dismissed-federal-court-resolute-forest

U.S. judge on Tuesday dismissed the most serious claims in a lawsuit brought by a Canadian logging company that accused Greenpeace and another advocacy group of running a criminal enterprise to damage the company.

The case, and a similar one filed later by the developer of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, had gained the attention of civil liberties and environmental advocacy organizations who warned it could set a dangerous precedent if it were allowed to proceed.

(Read: :{Industry Lawsuits Try to Paint Environmental Activism as Illegal Racket:(style="box-sizing:inherit"):}:)

These groups argued that the lawsuit, filed by Resolute Forest Products, aimed to silence legitimate advocacy by characterizing the basic elements of activists' campaign work as a criminal conspiracy.

By invoking the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, a federal conspiracy law that was devised to ensnare mobsters, the lawsuit threatened the defendants with a lengthy and complex legal battle and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. "

"The judge's decision to throw out the abusive racketeering charges is a positive development and a win for advocacy," said Tom Wetterer, general counsel for Greenpeace USA, in a statement. "From day one, it was clear Resolute intended to bully legitimate advocacy organizations and forest defenders by abusing laws designed to curtail the mafia."

While U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar dismissed the racketeering claims, he also ruled that defamation and unfair competition claims against Greenpeace could continue. All of the claims again the other organization, Stand.earth, were dropped.

This was the second time Tigar has ruled in the case. In 2017, he dismissed the entire lawsuit but allowed Resolute to refile the allegations in a more focused complaint.

The environmental groups had been campaigning against Resolute for years, arguing that its logging practices were particularly damaging. The lawsuit grew out of statements Greenpeace made in which it erroneously said Resolute was logging in a particular protected forest. Greenpeace later retracted the statements. The judge ruled the defamation case over this question could proceed.

Michael Bowe, a lawyer representing Resolute, welcomed that development.

"We are pleased that the Court has correctly held that Resolute has properly alleged defamation and unfair competition claims and we will be proceeding aggressively through discovery to trial," Bowe said.

In the Dakota Access case, a federal judge in North Dakota dismissed the racketeering case against some defendants, but the charges against Greenpeace are still pending. Wetterer said he's optimistic that Tuesday's ruling in federal court in California will deal a blow to those claims.

PUBLISHED UNDER:

ACTIVISM

BUSINESS AND ACCOUNTABILITY

LITIGATION

2x? august

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22082018/pipeline-protest-laws-felony-free-speech-arrests-first-amendment-oklahoma-iowa-louisiana

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/11/15/vermont_immigrant_rights_group_sues_ice

major new federal lawsuit claims that immigration agents are targeting undocumented organizers for their activism in Vermont. The suit accuses Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security and the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles of carrying out a multiyear campaign of political retaliation against members of the group Migrant Justice. According to the lawsuit, Migrant Justice was infiltrated by an informant, and its members were repeatedly subjected to electronic surveillance. At least 20 active members of Migrant Justice have been arrested and detained by ICE. We speak with Will Lambek, an organizer with Migrant Justice, a Vermont-based group founded and led by immigrant farmworkers.

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/army-documents-antifa-national-security

Wednesday, The Daily Beast reported that newly released Army documents from 2017 show military officials tried, unsuccessfully, to prove that "antifa" protestors are a threat to national security.

"The Army assessments, dating from mid-2017, were meant to alert servicemembers to potential risks anti-fascists posed to military or military installations. But they also stated that the U.S. Military is "not aware of any threats from Antifa directed at the Army or DoD [the Department of Defense] in general." The heavily redacted documents, marked unclassified, were provided to The Daily Beast by the transparency nonprofit Property of the People and are believed to be the first public disclosures of Defense Department references to antifa.

The documents showed the Army struggling to characterize antifa, or antifascism, a decentralized movement that confronts extremist right-wing forces. Despite conceding that antifa is not connected to any known threat facing servicemembers, the documents showed the Army is encouraging servicemembers to "maintain situational awareness" of the movement, whose profile has soared after the election of Donald Trump — and which mainstream Republican politicians demagogically describe as a Democrat-aligned mob.

The documents paint antifa in broad strokes, at one point describing them as a "network of left-wing anarchist group [sic] whose goal is to 'smash fascism in all its forms,'" (some antifa groups are anarchists, but not all of them are), while defending their opponents as "not affiliated with racist nationalists" (the deadly alt-right demonstrations in Charlottesville went on to prove they very much were).

It is unsettling to see the military seemingly try to endorse the far right's attacks on their political opponents, and it reflects a broader, worrying trend of our government institutions taking right-wing political stances under the auspices of national security. Last year, the FBI targeted civil rights protestors marching against police brutality as "black identity extremists." And more recently,Border patrol agents attended a private screening of the white nationalist propaganda film "Killing Free Speech," after which theagents' union endorsed the film.

Much worry has been devoted to the threat to the rule of law if President Donald Trump chooses to shut down the special counsel probe into Russia, an act that would be seen by many as seizing political control of the justice system. But the fact is, such a move would only be the latest piece of a long-running erosion of the security state's independence in the Trump era — and we are already facing the consequences of that erosion.

===

https://www.salon.com/2018/09/17/an-errant-screenshot-reveals-massachusetts-police-monitor-liberal-groups/

salon no lnx

A social media blunder by the Massachusetts State Police last week has raised questions around how and why the agency appeared to be monitoring liberal activist groups.

“It is indeed alarming,” Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Program of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts, told Salon.

Last Thursday evening, Massachusetts State Police tweeted a screenshot in regard to a natural gas emergency that affected nearly 8,000 people around the state. The agency’s tweet was meant to display a map of responses to fires and explosions, but the uncropped screenshot showed that the police computer's browser had bookmarked a select group of left-wing activists, including some police brutality watchdog groups. Facebook groups for Mass. Action Against Police Brutality (MAAPB), the Coalition to Organize and Mobilize Boston Against Trump (COMBAT); and the "Resistance Calendar," which shares upcoming anti-Trump protests across the country, were among the list of bookmarked tabs on the police computer browser.

Massachusetts State Police deleted the original tweet, and shared another one — a cropped version in which the browser bookmarks were not visible — an hour later, according to WBUR.

The agency released a statement stating they have a “responsibility to know about all large public gatherings of any type and by any group, regardless of their purpose and position, for public safety reasons.”

The statement, provided by David Procopio, Director of Media Communications, said the agency does not “collect information about -- nor, frankly, do we care about -- any group’s beliefs or opinions.”

“We, obviously, need to know if large numbers of people, for whatever reason, are going to be on public roadways or public spaces, so that we may ensure the safety and rights of those who have gathered as well as of the members of the public around them,” the statement concluded. “That is a common – and common-sense – function of any police department.”

Crockford of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts told Salon such an explanation “falls flat” for several reasons.

“Massachusetts State Police doesn’t have jurisdiction over the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” Crockford told Salon. “Unless a protest is on a highway or at the airport or public location it is none of their business if someone is having a protest. In most areas Massachusetts State Police is not responsible for ensuring public safety, it is local police.”

“The other issue is I’d like to see a list of the groups Massachusetts State Police is monitoring for this purpose," Crockford added. "It seems strange to only monitor a few that only might have a protest someday.”

Massachusetts State Police has not responded to Salon’s repeated requests for additional details on all organizations being monitored by the agency, and whether they kept browser tabs on any right-wing activist groups.

A peculiar detail regarding the incident is that the screenshot, as mentioned by the state police’s account, was taken at the Commonwealth Fusion Center, an information-gathering center in Maynard, Massachusetts. The center, which was opened in 2005, “collects and analyzes information from all available sources to produce and disseminate actionable intelligence to stakeholders for strategic and tactical decision-making in order to disrupt domestic and international terrorism,” according to its mission statement.

“These fusion centers were created in wake of 9/11, and now there are 80 of them nationwide run by state and local law enforcement to fight terrorism, but instead they are focused on policing left-wing political organizations, and fighting the war on drugs,” Crockford added, explaining that police viewing left-wing groups as extremists likely dates back to the Red Scare.

One of the groups bookmarked, Coalition to Organize and Mobilize Boston Against Trump (COMBAT), released a statement regarding their inclusion on Facebook.

“Though COMBAT has not met in over a year and has become an inactive campaign, its social media pages remain online,” the statement said. “The fact that state police, who are funded by our tax dollars, are spending time monitoring groups on Facebook who oppose racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic violence instead of those groups who perpetuate such violence is abhorrent and should be examined with scrutiny.”

Tom Arabia, A former member of COMBAT, who noted he is not speaking on behalf of the organization, told Salon there is no history between COMBAT and Massachusetts State Police, but he was not surprised to see COMBAT bookmarked.

“I think they have a practical and personal interest in left-wing organizations because we have their number, so to speak... organizations like COMBAT are being vigilant about their role in generalized oppression and brutality and literally some cases how they are literally getting away with murder,” Arabia said.

...

100 activists kia this year

(indigenous?)

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/10/12/headlines/colombia_environmental_leader_assassinated_amid_spate_of_activist_murders

ACLU Fights Back as Trump Pushes 'Stealth Proposal' to Limit Public's Right to Protest Outside White House

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07092018/protester-surveillance-anti-terrorism-training-keystone-xl-pipeline-aclu-lawsuit-federal-law-enforcement

This story follows an in-depth ICN report on efforts to pass laws in 31 states to crack down on protests.

The Keystone XL pipeline is expected to draw protests from indigenous and environmental activists when construction begins, and many activists are worried law enforcement agencies may be planning surveillance and a militarized response. Now, the American Civil Liberties Union is accusing federal agencies of trying to hide the extent of these preparations, which the group says are clearly underway.

The ACLU and its Montana affiliate sued several federal agencies this week, including the Departments of Justice, Defense and Homeland Security, saying the agencies are withholding documents that discuss planning for the expected protests and any coordination among state and local authorities and private security contractors.

Fears about the law enforcement response follow the 2016 armed crackdown on people protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline, where authorities used tear gas and turned water cannons on protesters in freezing temperatures. Since then, dozens of bills and executive orders have been introduced in at least 31 states to clamp down on protests. Activists say the bills are part of a concerted campaign by energy companies and their allies in government to suppress these protests by increasing criminal penalties for minor violations and in some cases trying to use anti-terrorism laws against activists.

The ACLU says documents it obtained from state agencies in Montana suggest law enforcement agencies have begun extensive trainings in preparation for the Keystone XL project, and that federal agencies are involved. The records raise concerns that law enforcement agencies are preparing to stifle any protests even before they've begun, said Alex Rate, legal director of the ACLU in Montana.

"What we're concerned about is the surveillance and crackdown on peaceful protesters," Rate said. The records suggest law enforcement officers were given anti-terrorism and social media trainings in preparation for anticipated construction of Keystone XL and any related protests. "I think it would come as news to many people that the government is doing this to prepare for environmental protests about legitimate issues," he said.

The group submitted public records requests to six federal offices and agencies in January, but received only a small number of records in response so far. Some agencies have said they have no records matching the request, while others have yet to respond. The Army Corps of Engineers provided some records but withheld others, saying they were exempt from disclosure because they would interfere with a law enforcement proceeding, among other reasons.

Montana Official: We're Just Doing Our Jobs

Documents that have been released suggest federal and state agencies have created an interagency team and have been conducting trainings for local law enforcement on how to handle the protests. One email from an intelligence specialist in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Montana to a state official said the office would be hosting an anti-terrorism training event in August.

A January email from David Loewen, head of the law enforcement division of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, said the state's Division of Criminal Investigations had been in touch with officials in North Dakota "to learn what worked and what didn't" at Standing Rock during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. The email noted that while "man-camps" to house workers would come along with pipeline construction and bring law enforcement challenges, "the primary enforcement focus is protest activity."

In an interview, Loewen said the ACLU's concerns about law enforcement agencies suppressing protests were "a bit silly."

"Our job is to prepare and train, that's what law enforcement does all the time," he said. "If we have a protest coming, chances are things are going to be peaceful and fine and dandy. But on the outside chance that they're not, we want to be prepared."

Leif Johnson, assistant U.S. attorney in Montana, confirmed the anti-terrorism training was held in August and said it was unrelated to Keystone XL. Burke Honzel, head of preparedness for Montana Disaster & Emergency Services, said his staff attended the training and that it "did not discuss Keystone XL or protests and was geared towards overseas terrorism tactics."

First Amendment Rights and Protester Arrests

Environmental and indigenous activists have describe harsh treatment by law enforcement and security officers in Louisiana, where at least 13 people have been arrested under a new law since it went into effect on Aug. 1, including four activists who were detained on Tuesday.

The law created a felony charge with up to five years in prison for anyone who trespasses on a pipeline easement, and many of the arrests came under questionable circumstances. Activists posted photos and video of the most recent arrests on Facebook, including a video showing two uniformed officers assisting a man who was not in uniform and who is holding a protester against the ground, his arm across her throat, while putting her hands in cuffs behind her back.

The records obtained by the ACLU in Montana echo others in Oklahoma, Louisiana, Virginia and other states that have shown law enforcement agencies focusing anti-terrorism resources on environmental activists and, in some cases, cooperating with private security companies employed by pipeline companies to surveil and arrest protesters.

In a blog post announcing the organization's lawsuit, Jacob Hutt of the ACLU said the organization hopes to determine from the documents its requested how and whether federal agencies are "thwarting, surveilling, and otherwise engaging with indigenous and environmental activists" opposed to Keystone XL.

"The First Amendment protects political speech from the threat of undue government scrutiny, and the extent of such scrutiny is currently unknown," he wrote. "If the government is planning to prevent or monitor indigenous and environmental protests, the activists involved have a right to know about it."

PUBLISHED UNDER:

ACTIVISM

OIL SPILLS/PIPELINES

DAKOTA ACCESS PIPELINE

KEYSTONE XL

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/activist-arrests-india-are-part-dangerous-global-trend-stifle-dissent

On Tuesday morning, the police from the Indian city of Pune (in the state of Maharashtra) raided the homes of lawyers and social activists across India and arrested five of them. Many of them are not household names around the world, since they are people who work silently on behalf of the poor and oppressed in a country where half the population does not eat sufficiently. Their names are Gautam Navlakha, Sudha Bharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira and Varavara Rao. What unites these people is their commitment to the working class and peasantry, to those who are treated as marginal to India’s state. They are also united by their opposition, which they share with millions of Indians, to the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Gautam Navlakha, a writer, was brought before the Delhi High Court. One of the two High Court judges—S. Muralidhar—was puzzled by the documents produced by the Pune Police. Some were in Marathi, which the judge could not read, while others seemed indecipherable. “It is not possible to make out a case from the documents placed before us,” he said. “What is the specific allegation against him?” the judge asked. The police remained silent. The others are to be moved to Pune. Their fate is uncertain.

Trespassing Near 'Critical Infrastructure'

Traditionally, trespass charges are relatively low-level crimes often punishable by little more than a fine.

The law turning trespassing — if it’s near “critical infrastructure” or construction sites for critical infrastructure — into a felony carrying a sentence of up to five years went into effect on August 1. It specifically amended the Louisiana criminal code to include oil and gas pipelines under the definition of “critical infrastructure,” and included “conspiracy” charges to enter or damage these sites with harsh penalties both in terms of prison time and fines.

Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the Bayou Bridge pipeline, supported the bill elevating “critical infrastructure” trespassing to a felony, a local ABC News affiliate reported in April.

Another ALEC Bill Now Law

The Louisiana law is similar to a bill pushed nationwide by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate-funded bill mill whose members include oil and gas companies like Chesapeake Energy and Continental Resources. Energy Transfer Partners has twice supported ALEC’s annual conferences, according to Sourcewatch.

Part of the reason that trespass charges are rarely serious is that it can be a complex legal issue to sift out who exactly owns a piece of land, especially if ownership is disputed. The owners of land where Bayou Bridge construction is currently underway have said that the company never obtained an easement or seized their property through eminent domain, meaning that they believe the construction is illegal.

Bayou Bridge opponents predicted that the bill would be used to target their campaigns — particularly if there’s a risk of being arrested for a felony even when you reasonably believe you are not trespassing.

“Clearly the purpose is to chill lawful dissent,” New Orleans-based environmental activist Meg Logue told The Advocatein April.

Other reports of police misconduct and the blurring of the lines between public officials and private security at Bayou Bridge sites drew a warning from lawyers from three prominent civil liberties organizations in late July.

Police stood by while company “[c]onstruction workers [used] chainsaws on the very trees these individuals are sitting in,” William P. Quigley, law professor and director of the Loyola Law Clinic; Pam Spees, senior staff attorney at Center for Constitutional Rights; and Lauren Regan of the Civil Liberties Defense Center wrote in a July 28 letter to Louisiana’s governor. “We also have reports that various state employees from the Department of Public Safety, Corrections, and Probation and Parole are working as private security in this matter.”

DeSmog has previously reported that legislatures in at least three other states have begun considering laws similar to ALEC’s model bill. So far this year, “critical infrastructure” bills have passed either the state House or Senate in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. Similar bills have also been introduced in states including Virginia, New York, Ohio, and Minnesota, and Colorado and Washington state have also considered related measures.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22082018/pipeline-protest-laws-felony-free-speech-arrests-first-amendment-oklahoma-iowa-louisiana

The activists were ready for a fight. An oil pipeline was slated to cross tribal lands in eastern Oklahoma, and Native American leaders would resist. The Sierra Club and Black Lives Matter pledged support.

The groups announced their plans at a press conference in January 2017 at the State Capitol. Ashley McCray, a member of a local Shawnee tribe, stood in front of a blue "Water is Life" banner, her hair tied back with an ornate clip, and told reporters that organizers were forming a coalition to protect native lands.

They would establish a rural encampment, like the one that had drawn thousands of people to Standing Rock in North Dakota the previous year to resist the Dakota Access Pipeline.

The following week, an Oklahoma state lawmaker introduced a billto stiffen penalties for interfering with pipelines and other "critical infrastructure." It would impose punishments of up to 10 years in prison and $100,000 in fines—and up to $1 million in penalties for any organization "found to be a conspirator" in violating the new law. Republican Rep. Scott Biggs, the bill's sponsor, said he was responding to those same Dakota Access Pipeline protests.

The activists established the camp in March, and within weeks the federal Department of Homeland Security and state law enforcement wrote a field analysis identifying "environmental rights extremists" as the top domestic terrorist threat to the Diamond Pipeline, planned to run from Oklahoma to Tennessee. The analysis said protesters could spark "criminal trespassing events resulting in violence."It told authorities to watch for people dressed in black.

An FBI team arrived to train local police on how to handle the protest camp.

McCray recalls a surveillance plane and helicopters whirring above the Oka Lawa camp. Demonstrators were pulled over and questioned on their way in or out, though the local sheriff said people were only pulled over for violating traffic laws. In May the governor signed the bill to protect critical infrastructure. Merely stepping onto a pipeline easement suddenly risked as much as a year in prison.

"That was really pretty successful in thwarting a lot of our efforts to continue any activism after that," McCray said.

Oka Lawa never drew the kind of participation and attention that made the Dakota Access Pipeline a national cause, and the Diamond Pipeline was completed quietly later that year.

McCray has since channeled her energy toward politics, running for a seat on the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which regulates the energy industry. But even as a candidate, McCray says, she now watches her words and her Facebook posts, afraid of being implicated as a conspirator if someone were to violate the law, even if she doesn't know the person. "I don't feel safe, honestly," she said.

In Louisiana, which enacted a similar law in May, at least nine activists have been arrested on felony charges stemming from the new law since it went into effect on Aug. 1.In one incident, three people were pulled off a canoe and kayak after they maneuvered the boats on a bayou to protest construction of an oil pipeline. The arrests were conducted by off-duty officers with the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections who were armed and in uniform, but at the time were working for a private security firm hired by the pipeline developer.Across the country, activists like McCray are feeling increasingly under assault as energy companies and their allies in government have tried to turn the law—and law enforcement—against them.

Dozens of bills and executive orders have been introduced in at least 31 states since January 2017 that aim to restrict high-profile protests that have ramped up as environmentalists focus on blocking fossil fuel projects.

In addition to Oklahoma's infrastructure bill and similar legislation enacted in two other states, these bills would expand definitions of rioting and terrorism, and even increase penalties for blocking traffic. Twelve have been enacted, according to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law. The bills have all come since the election of President Donald Trump, who openly suggested violence as a way to handle protesters on the campaign trail, and once in office called the nation's leading news organizations "the enemy of the American people."

At the same time, law enforcement and private companies have conducted surveillance on campaigners, while some federal and state officials have suggested pipeline protesters who break laws be charged as terrorists.Corporations have hit landowners and environmental groups with restraining orders and hundred-million-dollar lawsuits.

Some pipeline opponents have conducted dangerous and illegal stunts, cutting pipelines with oxyacetylene torches or closing valves. But most protests have been peaceful. If they've broken laws by trespassing, activists say, they've done so as part of a tradition of civil disobedience that stretches to the nation's colonial roots.

"All of the social progress we've made has depended, over the entire history of this nation, from the very beginning, on that ability to speak out against things that are wrong, things that are legal but should not be," said Carroll Muffett, president of the Center for International Environmental Law."This country, for all its failing, has long respected the importance of that. These bills put that fundamental element of our democracy in jeopardy."

In an Age of Terrorism

The modern environmental movement sprung out of mass protest, when millions took to the streets for the first Earth Day in 1970. In the decade that followed, civil disobedience emerged as a core tactic as greens joined with anti-war protesters to launch anti-nuclear campaigns.

The movement returned to those roots with its fight to stop the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Beginning in 2011, activists staged sit-ins ending in arrests that galvanized the movement and drew national attention to what had been the mundane work of building pipelines.

Across the country, people began physically obstructing fossil fuel infrastructure. Protestersblocked train tracks carrying coal and oil in Washington state, halted trucks at thegates of a gas storage facility in upstate New York and kayaked in front of an oil rig in Seattle. This was before hundreds were arrested at Standing Rock.

In the absence of a clear federal energy plan, fossil fuel projects effectively became the policy, locking in oil, gas and coal infrastructure—and their greenhouse gas emissions —for generations. They became the focus of environmental groups, who found common cause with tribes and landowners fighting to protect their land and water. The groups launched campaigns that delayed or blocked several major coal export facilities, pipelines and other projects, costing energy companies millions or even billions of dollars.

To push back, the industry turned to its supporters in government.

Soon after Oklahoma's critical infrastructure bill passed last year, the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) used it to write model legislation for other states.

In at least six more states, lawmakers introduced similar bills that would impose steep penalties for trespassing on, or tampering with, pipeline property and other infrastructure. Two were enacted this year. Two others are pending.

[map pipeline]

In Wyoming, one bill was openly proposed on behalf of energy companies. In other states the ties are barely hidden.

Louisiana state Rep. Major Thibaut, a Democrat, introduced a bill that followed ALEC's model by adding pipelines to a list of critical infrastructure facilities. When he presented it to a Senate committee in April, he brought Tyler Gray, a lobbyist for the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association. During the hearing, Gray answered most of the questions. At one point, he leaned over to Thibaut to recommend that he accept an amendment. Neither Thibaut nor Gray responded to requests for comment.

Gov. John Bel Edwards signedit into law in May, after an amendment removed the threat of conspiracy charges.

Iowa enacted a law that makes "critical infrastructure sabotage" a felony. Lawmakers in Wyoming and Minnesota also approved critical infrastructure bills this year, but the governors there vetoed the legislation. Similar bills are pending in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The bills may get their first test soon in Louisiana after the arrests of the three activitists on the bayou. Activists had been conducting tree-sits and other actions for weeks and were careful to stay off the pipeline easements once the new law took effect, said Cherri Foytlin, an activist organizer in the state. The three who were taken from their boats, for example, claim to have been in navigable waters, which are supposed to be public. The definition of what's navigable has been the subject of much debate and legal wrangling in the state, however, and the off-duty officers pulled the activists off their boats to arrest them.

"It was really scary," said Cindy Spoon, one of the activists, in a video posted to Facebook. "They grabbed my wrist, grabbed my waist and they started to pull one of my arms behind my back and put me in a stress position."

The local district attorney has not yet formally filed charges. If the case proceeds, the activists will challenge the law itself, said William Quigley, a professor at Loyola University College of Law in New Orleans who is representing them pro bono. They could face up to five years in prison if convicted.

Two more incidents occurred over the weekend involving activists who had erected a stand high in the trees to block construction. Quigley said the group had permission from property owners to be on the land. But deputies with the St. Martin Parish Sheriff's Office arrested six people, including a journalist. The property is co-owned by hundreds of parties, and some of them have not signed easement agreements with Energy Transfer Partners, the primary owner of the pipeline.

The St. Martin Parish Sheriff's Office did not return requests for comment on the weekend arrests.

"I think this shows how ridiculous this law is if this is the way it's going to be applied," Quigley said.

The legislation is not without precedent. Since 1990, nearly a dozen states have passed bills known as "ag-gag" laws that prohibit surreptitiously recording inside feedlots and breeding facilities. Many came after exposés of horrific conditions and animal abuse. Three of those laws were subsequently overturned by courts.

But environmentalists and free speech advocates say the new bills are part of a broader effort to recast environmental activists as criminals, even terrorists.

For example:

In May 2017, theAmerican Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturerspublished a blog post about activists who vandalized pipelines, under the headline: "Pipelines Are Critical Infrastructure—and Attacking Them Is Terrorism."
Last year,Energy Transfer Partnersfiled a federal lawsuit against Greenpeace and other groups seeking hundreds of millions of dollars. The complaint accuses some of the nation's leading environmental organizations of operating an "eco-terrorist" conspiracy at Standing Rock. (A judge dismissed the case against one of the defendants last month, but has yet to rule on a motion to dismiss the case against Greenpeace.)
Another industry group launched a database to track "criminal acts on critical energy infrastructure," claiming eco-terrorism incidents were on the rise.
In Congress, 84 members wrote a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions asking if protestors who tamper with pipelines could be prosecuted as domestic terrorists. Sponsors of the state pipeline bills have also invoked terrorism.

Supporters of the bills say they do not suppress lawful protests.

"There's a legal process to stop something," said Oklahoma state Rep. Mark McBride, who sponsored another bill that assigns civil liability to anyone who pays protesters to trespass. "But if you're chaining yourself to a bulldozer or you're standing in the way of a piece of equipment digging a ditch or whatever it might be, yes, you're causing harm to the project and to the person that's contracted to do that job."

Advocacy groups say the bills are unnecessary—trespassing and vandalism are already unlawful, and protesters who have disrupted operations have largely been charged under existing statutes. They fear the legislation uses a handful of dangerous incidents as a pretext to intimidate mainstream advocates and target more widespread acts of peaceful civil disobedience, like temporarily blocking access to a construction site. Several environmental and civil liberties organizations are now in talks about how to respond to the industry's actions.

"The clear attempt there is to bring environmental justice, environmental advocacy organizations into a realm of criminal liability," said Pamela Spees, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents activists in Louisiana. "They're basically trying to silence and minimize the impact of environmental organizations."

Afraid to Speak Up at the Pipeline Crossroads of the World

Ever since the state's first gusher began spurting crude in 1897, oil has dominated life in Oklahoma. Today, it is home to fracking pioneers, including Continental Resources. The town of Cushing, the self-dubbed "pipeline crossroads of the world," is a critical oil trading hub. "Environmental activist" is not a badge many wear openly in Oklahoma.

Dakota Raynes spent the past few years at Oklahoma State University writing his dissertation about how people have responded to a fracking boom that's literally shaken the state. As drillers began injecting more wastewater into wells from 2010-2015, the number of earthquakes jumped more than 20-fold to 888.

Raynes interviewed dozens of activists, lawmakers, regulators and ordinary citizens. He found that almost everyone is reluctant to speak publicly against the industry. They fear neighbors or colleagues or parents of their children's friends will catch wind and shun them. Raynes said he's attended events with activists who have returned to their cars afterward to find screws driven into tires.

"Many people read Oklahoma as a hostile context in which to engage in any kind of pro-environmental work," he said. "And they all link that back to the phenomenal amount of power that the oil and gas industry has, both as a cultural force, as a legal force, as a political force."

Standing Rock changed that deference,said Mekasi Camp Horinek, a member of the state's Ponca tribe.

[great pix]

Thousands of protesters from across the country traveled to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's reservation in North Dakota to speak out against construction of the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016 and 2017. Police set up armed blockades and at one point turned water cannons on protesters in sub-freezing weather. Credit: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

Horinek grew up on tribal land near an oil refinery and a factory that produces carbon black, a sooty petroleum product. He blames the facilities for contributing to disease and deaths in his community. When the call came to join the resistance at Standing Rock, he became a leading organizer. (The Ponca's ancestral land in Nebraska lies in the path of the Keystone XL pipeline, another project he's fought.)

"I think the state of Oklahoma felt threatened and was worried that people would rise up," he said about the critical infrastructure bill. "And they should be."

Horinek says he remains undaunted, but he said the new law had an immediate effect on others.

People were suddenly threatened with long prison terms if they crossed onto pipeline property. "That definitely weighs heavy on a person's thoughts," he said.

Oklahoma has 39 American Indian tribes, most forced to move there during the Trail of Tears in the 19th Century, and indigenous activists led the fight against the Diamond Pipeline. "They can't risk a six-month sentence for trespassing. Who's going to take care of their kids, their parents, their grandparents?" he said.

Biggs, the state representative who sponsored the bill, now works for the federal Department of Agriculture. He declined to comment for this article. The Oklahoma Oil and Gas Association also declined to make anyone available for an interview.

Activists say the bill was a clear assault.

The Sierra Club has a policy against engaging in civil disobedience. But the bill's conspiracy element—which says a group can be charged with 10 times the fines given to a person who violates the provisions—worries the organization's Oklahoma director, Johnson Grimm-Bridgwater. He was among those who spoke at the 2017 press conference. While Grimm-Bridgwater says participating in a press conference should qualify as constitutionally protected speech, there's no telling how a prosecutor might apply the new statute.

"The law is punitive and is designed to create friction and divisions among groups who normally wouldn't have a second thought at working together," he said.

Brady Henderson, legal director for the Oklahoma chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said there's widespread concern in both liberal and libertarian circles about the law, and he's fielded questions from several nonprofits about the conspiracy clause.

The ACLU in Oklahoma is considering legal challenges, but may have to wait until a district attorney tries to use the new law. Still, Henderson said, the language is so broad that it can apply to almost anything.

"By equating those kinds of things together, essentially political speech on one end and on the other end outright terrorism," he said, "the bill is a pretty gross instrument."

Protesters Under Surveillance

As activists were fighting the Diamond Pipeline in Oklahoma, Energy Transfer Partners was planning another oil pipeline at the southern end of its network.

The Bayou Bridge pipeline is slated to run from Texas to St. James Parish, Louisiana, already home to many petrochemical facilities. Along the way, it crosses through the Atchafalaya Basin, the nation's largest river swamp and a center of the state's crawfish industry.

Environmentalists were alarmed by the risks the project posed to residents of St. James Parish and the swamp's fragile ecosystem. And they quickly felt as if law enforcement agencies were working against them. For one thing, some officials openly supported the project. Joseph Lopinto, now Jefferson Parish sheriff, last year on behalf of the National Sheriffs' Association and urged regulators to approve the pipeline.

Anne Rolfes, an organizer of the pipeline resistance and founder of the advocacy group Louisiana Bucket Brigade, said activists also suspected they were being watched.

During the protests at Standing Rock, a private security company hired by Energy Transfer Partners had compiled daily intelligence briefings and coordinated with local law enforcement, as detailed in reports by The Intercept.

Rolfes' group this year also obtained a handful of documents through a public records request that indicate state officials were tracking their efforts.

One state police report from November said the agency sent an investigator from its criminal intelligence unit to a hearing where activists had allegedly planned a protest, and that alocal sheriff's office planned to send a plainclothes officer.Rolfes said no protest was planned; activists merely intended to speak at a public hearing.

In the following months, an intelligence officer with the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness sent two emails to colleagues describing environmental groups' priorities, quoting Rolfes' newsletter and an article about the groups and adding a photograph of her.

Louisiana State Police declined to comment. Mike Steele, a spokesman for the state Homeland Security Department, rejected the notion that his agency spies on activists. He said this type of open-source tracking was similar to what they conduct ahead of football games or festivals. "We do that with any type of event, because safety is the number one concern," he said.

Energy Transfer Partners spokeswoman Alexis Daniel issued a statement saying, "any claims that our company or our security contractors have inappropriately monitored protestors in false." It's unclear what surveillance, if any, the company or its contractors have deployed in Louisiana. Energy Transfer Partners has also been accused of spying by a family in Pennsylvania.

pix

Rolfes said Louisiana officials are treating activists like criminals. "We're going to be followed while we participate in the democratic process?" she said.

The arrests in August of the three protesters on boats who were detained by off-duty officers only deepened the activists' feelings that the state and energy industry were working against them. While the arresting officers were working as contractors, they wore their state uniforms and badges and carried weapons.

Spees, with the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the incident represented a problematic melding of public and private authorities. After the industry-supported bill was enacted by the state, she said, state employees acted on behalf of an energy company to detain activists under the new law.

"It's as though they've become the hired hands for private oil companies and pipelines companies," she said.

Activists in Virginia, where two gas pipelines are drawing protests, have also been tracked by that state's Fusion Center—which shares information across agencies to combat terrorism and crime—according to a report by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

In Washington state, a local sheriff's office has monitored activists opposed to a major pipeline project that connects with Canada's tar sands, sharing information with that state's Fusion Center, documents obtained by The Intercept show. Protest groups there already tried to block tanker traffic associated with the project, and local authorities have conducted trainings to prepare for mass protests.

The nation's intelligence community has a dark history of tracking political movements, including the FBI's COINTELPRO, which snooped on Martin Luther King, Jr., and others. Earlier this decade, FBI agents monitored opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline, according to The Guardian,yyy and the bureau had at least one informant at Standing Rock.

Even if local law enforcement agencies today are doing little more than collecting news articles and other open source information, covert surveillance risks equating political protest with criminal activity, said Keith Mako Woodhouse, a historian at Northwestern University who wrote a book about radical environmentalists.

"It gives a sense that law enforcement is, if not on the side of, at least more sympathetic to the industries and practices that are being protested," he said. "Presumably they're not surveilling the energy companies."

Pipeline companies have cultivated that relationship. They have reimbursed state law enforcement millions of dollars for providing security for their projects in North Dakota, Iowa and Massachusetts, for example. Most major pipeline companies also run charitable campaigns that have contributed millions of dollars to local emergency responders and other agencies and groups along their routes. The National Sheriff's Association, in turn, supported the Bayou Bridge and Dakota Access pipelines while it called protesters"terrorists."

A Worrying Trend

Over the past decade, the sense of urgency around climate change has intensified. Scientists say there is little time before the planet is committed to potentially devastating warming. The only practical way to avoid that is to largely eliminate fossil fuel use over the next several decades.

The government's response has been minimal, "so the next step is civil disobedience," said Woodhouse, the historian. "And if anything, it's surprising that it hasn't happened sooner and at a greater scale."

Woodhouse said efforts to suppress environmental protest trace back to the rise of radical environmental groups in the 1980s and `90s, when public officials slapped names like "eco-terrorism" and "ecological terrorism" on activists who vandalized equipment or animal testing facilities.

Now, Woodhouse said, environmentalists are threatening one of the country's most powerful industries. Some advocates say the new push against activists seems more widespread and unabashed.

"I think there is a very worrying trend—and the trend is on both sides of the political aisle to be perfectly frank and candid—a trend of trying to suppress political speech that you don't agree with," said David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition.

"I think a lot of people feel a lot more threatened than they have in a long time," he said, "and I think that's true on all sides of the political spectrum. And when people feel threatened, they tend to lash out."

The reach of these technologies is astonishingly broad: governments can listen in on cell phone calls, use voice recognition to scan mobile networks, read emails and text messages, censor web pages, track a citizen’s every movement using GPS, and can even change email contents while en route to a recipient. Some tools are installed using the same type of malicious malware and spyware used by online criminals to steal credit card and banking information. They can secretly turn on webcams built into personal laptops and microphones in cell phones not being used. And all of this information is filtered and organized on such a massive scale that it can be used to spy on every person in an entire country.

This is a phenomenon that spans the globe and implicates dozens of corporations. Over the past year, and partly in response to the uprisings that have swept the Arab world, concerns about these exports have been amplified in media reports and by digital rights organizations, sparking a debate as to the appropriate course of action.

For example, Narus, a Boeing subsidiary, was revealed to have sold to Egypt sophisticated equipment used for surveillance. California’s BlueCoat Systems, Inc was found to have equipment being used in Syria.

Germany-based Trovicor has sold technology to a dozen Middle Eastern and North African countries, including Bahrain, dozens of activists were tortured before and after being shown transcripts of their text messages and phone conversations captured from this technology.

Cisco Systems is facing litigation in both Maryland and California based on its alleged sales of surveillance equipment to the Chinese to track, monitor and otherwise facilitate the arrest, detention, or disappearance of human rights activists and religious minorities who have been subjected to gross human rights violations. EFF has issued a petition calling on Cisco to stop aiding China's human rights abuses.

https://www.ecowatch.com/environmental-activists-killed-2589828107.html

A Record 207 Environmental Activists Were Killed Last Year

More than 200 environmental activists were killed in 2017, according to the latest report from global rights watchdog Global Witness.

The troubling report revealed that 207 men and women across 22 countries were murdered last year defending their land and resources, making it the worst year on record.

Agribusiness was the industry most associated with these attacks—highlighting the devastating cost of the food we eat and the products we use.

"For the first time, agribusiness surpassed mining as the most dangerous sector to oppose, as 46 defenders who protested against palm oil, coffee, tropical fruit and sugar cane plantations, as well as cattle ranching, were murdered in 2017," the report said.

Global Witness cited Hernán Bedoya of Colombia, who was shot by a paramilitary group 14 times in December for protesting the expansion of palm oil and banana plantations in his community.

In the Philippines, during a December massacre near Lake Sebu, eight villagers were killed by the Philippine army over a coffee plantation expansion. Five more were wounded and another 200 were forced to flee.

"As global demand for these products increases, there's a scramble by business actors to get the massive amount of land they need to grow these products," Ben Leather, senior campaigner at Global Witness, told AFP. "When people dare to stand up for their rights and demand that the environment be protected they are silenced in the most brutal way."

The vast majority of murdered activists were from Latin America, accounting for 60 percent of those killed in 2017. Brazil was ranked the most dangerous with 57 murders alone.

...

AG claude walker team blue triggered retaliation against rockefeller fdn, fail

also press sup?

MMA

Manuel Duran is a Salvadoran journalist and undocumented immigrant who has been living in the United States since 2006. He was arrested in April by the Memphis Police Department as he was covering a protest against local law enforcement’s alleged cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE"). While Duran was quickly cleared of criminal wrongdoing, he is nonetheless now trapped in an ICE detention facility as lawyers work to stop his deportation back to El Salvador, the country he fled over a decade ago because, he says, he feared for his safety.

Simon Maloy did a deep dive into Duran's story and found that in almost every interaction with law enforcement -- from the local police to federal immigration authorities -- Manuel Duran has had his rights violated and freedoms abrogated.

That is a horrifying tragedy on its own, but it gets worse. Duran's story has been ignored by almost everyone in the media. Major newspapers, broadcast networks, and cable news channels have mostly ignored it. This coverage blackout endures despite journalism groups and press activists launching and supporting campaigns on Duran’s behalf.

===

seriously? kneejerk autoresponse? "what about...?" scam?

https://theconversation.com/green-baiting-lawmakers-are-accusing-environmentalists-of-doubling-as-foreign-agents-98924

green-baiting

Two congressional committees led by prominent Republicans are looking into whether some U.S. environmental groups are acting on behalf of foreign countries.

As an environmental lawyer and professor with ample international experience, this probe troubles me. I’m concerned that these efforts may mark the start of an attack on free speech that discourages efforts to improve American environmental policies.

The probe

News of this investigation broke when Rep. Rob Bishop, who chairs the House Committee on Natural Resources, and Rep. Bruce Westerman, who leads the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, formally notified the Natural Resources Defense Council of their concerns in early June.

Their letter accused the NRDC, one of the nation’s biggest environmental groups, of criticizing U.S. environmental policies while engaging in “self-censorship” regarding China and the “ruling Chinese Communist Party.” If it is acting as an agent for Chinese interests, the lawmakers said, the group should register as such as required by law.

Their letter also requested information related to the group’s disclosure policies.

Bishop and Westerman sent the Center for Biological Diversity a similar query pertaining to that environmentalist group’s advocacy regarding the U.S. military base in Okinawa, Japan.

And the two Republicans have asked the Pentagon for details and documents regarding the nonprofits suing the military on environmental grounds. The lawmakers acknowledged that these lawsuits may “represent sincere and justified concerns about the effect of federal actions on the environment.” But they also speculated that “foreign adversaries” can perhaps leverage these legal actions to “reduce U.S. defense capabilities.”

Bob Deans, the NRDC’s director of strategic engagement, denied that it was doing a foreign country’s bidding. Instead, “we work on behalf of every American to protect our people against dangerous pollution and leave our children a livable world,” he said.

Rather than just refute the allegations, Center for Biological Diversity Executive Director Kierán Suckling questioned the motives for this investigation. He called on Bishop “to release all communications between himself and industry groups seeking to destroy America’s natural heritage” and suggested that the Utah Republican was attacking conservation groups at the behest of fossil fuel companies.

The probe could spread to other environmental groups, The Hill reported.

Chinese activities

The NRDC is a U.S.-based nonprofit with offices around the globe with an official mission“to ensure the rights of all people to clean air, clean water, and healthy communities.”

The group’s priorities in China are generally the same as what it calls for in America and elsewhere: boosting energy efficiency, cutting coal consumption, and cleaning up ports and waterways.

I am somewhat familiar with the NRDC’s work in China because I traveled there in 2014with two other U.S. environmental lawyers at the NRDC’s request. The group had asked us to meet on an informal basis with Chinese government officials. The purpose of these meetings in Beijng was to explain how the U.S. government handles violations of environmental laws and damages to natural resources. In light of China’s own “war on pollution,” their government was looking for good models and guidance.

The National People’s Congress subsequently amended Chinese environmental laws, incorporating some of the concepts we discussed – all of which were modeled on the U.S. legal system.

There was no hint or suggestion during those meetings that our access to Chinese officials was conditioned on anyone speaking favorably of China’s environmental efforts. Nor was there any reason to expect the NRDC to take any particular political stance back home in the U.S. because of those interactions.

Not surprisingly, the NRDC has complimented China for strengthening its environmental laws. But the NRDC has also criticized China’s staggeringly dirty air and water and its vast greenhouse gas emissions.

At the same time, the NRDC has gone out of its way to oppose the Trump administration’s environmental deregulation policies – like most of the nation’s big green groups.

Okinawa dugongs

The Center for Biological Diversity allegedly inappropriate overseas activities have to do with dugongs. The endangered marine mammals, which resemble manatees, inhabit the waters surrounding the Okinawa Islands.

The center, which opposes U.S. military plans to build a new American airbase in Henoko Bay, has been leading coalitions of U.S. and Japanese environmental groups that have filed lawsuits that have delayed and could prevent the planned airbase construction.

:{Japanese protesters objecting to American military construction in Okinawa are concerned about the potential impact on dugongs, marine mammals that resemble manatees.:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:transparent"):}: :{:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:transparent"):}:AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi

The letters to both green groups call on them to comply with the Foreign Agents Registration Act. That law requires all people and organizations acting in the U.S. on behalf of foreign countries to register with the Justice Department as foreign agents.

Failing to do this is a crime, but prosecutions have been rare since 1966. The case against former Trump presidential campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his aide Rick Gates, who are accused of violating this act, is the biggest in years.

I believe that requiring these groups to register as foreign agents might hamper their work within the U.S. for two reasons. First, policymakers and lawmakers might suspect that they were more interested in working on behalf of foreign governments and interests than protecting the environment. Second, there could be repercussions in terms of these nonprofits’ funding, finances and reputation.

This new GOP strategy can be compared to red-baiting, the practice of persecuting and undermining people by accusing them of being communists, socialists or anarchists, that began in the Cold War. I believe these Republicans are “green-baiting” environmental groups to persecute them. At the same time, they are casting doubt on the real goals of these groups’ advocacy, thereby undermining it.

Ultimately, the most dangerous thing about this probe may have to do with free speech rights. Because praising a foreign country’s environmental record while criticizing U.S. policy is possible without committing treason, the only rationale I can find for this investigation is that it might stifle environmentalists.

hooray

More than three dozen defendants in the year-long #DisruptJ20 trial celebrated Friday evening after prosecutors dismissed all remaining charges against them, following a number of failures to prove the protesters were guilty of wrongdoing.

"The state failed at silencing dissent and today our movement is stronger than it was on #J20," tweeted Dylan Petrohilos, who was charged with conspiracy, rioting, and destruction due to his participation in planning to protest—even though he did not attend. "I'm proud of all my co-defendants, and everyone in the streets who resisted fascism and state violence."

The Department of Justice (DOJ) dropped charges against 38 people who were among the 234 arrested on January 20, 2017 at a protest against President Donald Trump's inauguration. Some of the charges had carried sentences of more than 60 years in prison. The government initially charged the protesters with felony rioting, but were able to secure only one guilty plea to the charge. Twenty pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges.

The protesters have been tried in groups, with six defendants acquitted late last year after prosecutors failed to convince a jury that the protesters were responsible for the property damage they were accused of committing.

Prosecutors also came under scrutiny for relying on videos shot by the right-wing group Project Veritas to build their case—leading to a judge's ruling in the trial of 10 protesters in May, that the government had withheld evidence.

"I do think it's a serious violation," Wasington D.C. Superior Court Chief Judge Robert Morin said of the prosecution's failure to disclose the entirely of Project Veritas's undercover video of a meeting about the protests.

The protesters and

4/26/18? kpfa?

8 states law enforcment act suppress drive?

https://www.ecowatch.com/environmental-activists-amnesty-international-2563882266.html

Environmental Leaders Under Threat in Paraguay and Peru, Amnesty Reports

Authorities in Paraguay and Peru are unjustly criminalizing activists who speak out to protect their environment and land, an Amnesty International report released Thursday revealed.

The report, *A Recipe for Criminalization: Defenders of the Environment, Territory and Land in Peru and Paraguay*, outlined the three "ingredients" both countries use to undermine the efforts of activists. First, they delegitimize activists through smear campaigns. Second, they apply laws and regulations that allow for forced evictions. And, third, they misuse the criminal justice system to prosecute activists for unfounded reasons.

"Those who bravely stand up to defend their land and the environment are frequently targeted because of their work. These attacks have a devastating impact on their physical, mental and emotional wellbeing, as well as that of their families and communities," Amnesty International Americas director Erika Guevara-Rosas said in a press release.

The report included examples of how these ingredients combine on the ground.

old?

https://www.thenation.com/article/5-tools-police-are-using-their-war-against-activists/

4/18 alec conf

piece of priority legislation for the companies is ALEC’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Act. The bill, a punitive measure designed to frighten protestors with stiff penalties and discourage large-scale demonstrations like the Dakota Access Pipeline protests,was adopted by ALEC’s Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force in 2017. Similar bills have been signed into law in Oklahoma and Iowa and introduced in Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, and Ohio. Wyoming’s bill passed the legislature but was vetoed by Gov. Matt Mead.

“Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen a number of powerful examples of people publicly coming together to raise their voices and push for change—from water protectors and their allies challenging pipeline construction near Standing Rock and elsewhere, to racial justice advocates taking to the streets to protest police shooting deaths,” said Vera Eidelman, Legal Fellow with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “And yet, rather than respond to the protesters’ substantive messages…many elected representatives are instead introducing bills that would label them ‘terrorists’ or ‘saboteurs,’ chill their speech, and discourage others from associating with them.”

In Michigan, ALEC politicians will be asked to vote on new bills that advance the interests of the industry, including the Resolution Supporting States Ability to Permit andRegulate Oil and Gas Development on Federal Lands within their Borders and the Gas Tax Transparency Act.

The oil and gas permitting bill is the latest from ALEC in its push to hand over America’s public lands to the fossil fuel companies that started almost 20 years ago. The latest resolution calls on Trump and Congress to hand over the power to regulate and permit fossil fuel development on public lands to the states, where the industry has its greatest power and influence over government.

The Gas Tax Transparency Act requires fuel tax stickers to be placed on gas pumps detailing state and federal taxes to promote “transparency.” ALEC hopes that voters will be up in arms about the taxes and will pressure their representatives to lower them.

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/04/06/bayou-bridge-protesters-arrested-louisiana-advances-bill-toughening-penalties-pipeline-protests

no linx many

Bayou Bridge Protesters Arrested as Louisiana Advances Bill Toughening Penalties for Pipeline Protests

By Julie Dermansky • Friday, April 6, 2018 - 16:29

Protester chained to a barrel in the road

On Thursday, April 5, opponents of the Bayou Bridge pipeline attempted to shut down its construction by blocking an industrial supply company’s facility in Iowa, Louisiana, just outside of Lake Charles on the same day a bill spelling out harsher penalties for pipeline protesters was advanced to committee during the Louisiana legislative session.

For about two hours starting at 6:30 a.m., roughly 20 protesters blocked the entrance to Yak Mat, an industrial yard that supplies access mats used to create temporary roadways at pipeline construction sites and enable trucks to pass through muddy areas. The site is close to the starting point of the Bayou Bridge pipeline, which spans south Louisiana from Lake Charles, near the Texas border, to St. James, along the Mississippi River. The pipeline is the tail end of Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access pipeline network, which begins in North Dakota.

Renate Heurich, locked to a barrel, being rolled out of the entrance to the Yat Mat lot in Iowa, Louisiana, during a protest against the Bayou Bridge pipeline.

Louisiana joins several states, including Wyoming, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, in introducing a bill specifically making the types of protests increasingly common at oil and gas pipeline construction sites criminal acts with harsher penalties.This latest proposed legislation parallels an anti-protest law that passed in Oklahoma in May 2017. Protests against the Dakota Access pipeline were cited as the inspiration for these “critical infrastructure” bills, which liken the actions of pipeline protesters to “terrorist activities.”

Shortly after police arrived on Thursday, the protesters dispersed, except two New Orleans residents, both educators. Renate Heurich and Susan Prevost chained themselves into barrels fastened to the ground at the entrance to the mat supply yard. Both women started the day in crawfish costumes to emphasis the oil pipeline’s threat to the wild crawfish habitat in the Atchafalaya Basin, a National Heritage Area which the pipeline is being built through, despite an ongoing legal challenge.

Law enforcement at the anti-pipeline protest

Law enforcement officers waiting to move in on the protesters in Iowa, Louisiana. There were more members of law enforcement at the protest than protesters.

Protester dressed as a crawfish

One of the Bayou Bridge pipeline protesters, dressed as an iconic Louisiana crawfish, in Iowa, Louisiana.

Prevost stressed the importance of protecting Louisiana’s heritage. She worries that an oil spill in the basin will mean that future generations of local Louisianans won’t know the joys of traditional crawfish boils. A spill in the basin could decimate the wild crawfish population. “Can Louisiana really afford the Bayou Bridge pipeline from the company that has the worst record on pipeline accidents?” Prevost asked me the night before the protest.

Heurich, a founding member of 350 New Orleans, believes it is imperative to take a stand against climate change. She believes direct actions against the pipeline are necessary because tremendous public outcry against the permitting of new fossil fuel projects and ongoing legal challenges against the pipeline have not succeeded in stopping its construction.

“Six Democratic New Orleans city council members recently voted in favor of a new gas plant and Democratic governor John Bel Edwards still won’t acknowledge man’s role in climate change,” she said, “but they all know humans are responsible for climate change. I don’t believe they’re dumb. It is absolutely about the money.”

Anti-pipeline protester Renate Heurich

Renate Heurich, a retired teacher and member of 350 New Orleans, protesting against the Bayou Bridge pipeline in Iowa, Louisiana.

A large group of law enforcement officers and protesters at the site of the demonstration

Protesters move back when police move in and tell them to disperse. All but the two who remained in the barrels complied.

Heurich also wants to protect Louisianans from the pollution oil and gas industry sites produce which sicken many people in fenceline communities, like St. James, a small town where the Bayou Bridge pipeline will end. She told me that people she knows are already dying of illnesses associated with toxic emissions from industrial sites in the area, including Keith Hunter, a retired carpenter, whom she met at an anti-pipeline meeting in St. James. Others she met a year ago in St. James have been diagnosed with cancer.

After sheriff’s deputies managed to move Heurich’s barrel out of the way, operations were able to resume. The deputies offered Heurich and Prevost a deal: If they unlocked themselves on their own, they would be charged withfelony trespass, but avoid being taken to jail.Heurich unlocked herself, while Prevost remained in her barrel until noon, deciding to unlock herself after two trucks passed dangerously close to her.

Truck loaded with mats passes next to protester chained to a barrel in the road

Truck loaded with mats returning to the yard passing dangerously close to Susan Prevost who was locked into a barrel fastened into the ground.

Susan Prevost removes herself from the barrel she chained herself to

After conferring with a lawyer, Susan Prevost removes herself from a barrel she attached herself to in order to block work on the Bayou Bridge pipeline.

Susan Prevost is led away by two police officers

Susan Prevost being led away by police after her arrest during a protest against the Bayou Bridge pipeline.

Cherri Foytlin, one of the founders of the anti-pipeline L’eau Est La Vie Camp (Water Is Life), was also arrested after live-streaming the demonstration for over an hour at the end of the driveway, which she thought was a public road. “I complied with what the officers told me,” she wrote in an email. When the police came after her, others from the camp pleaded with the officers to let her go, explaining she hadn’t heard them tell her to get off the driveway.

Another activist who took part in the protest was accused of stealing a car. All were released later the same afternoon but face charges.

Cherri Foytlin in the back of a police car

Cherri Foytlin, in the back of a police car being taken to jail for trespassing during a protest against the Bayou Bridge pipeline.

Protester escorted by two officers

Protester being taken away.

Heurich found it ironic that their direct action took place hours before the state legislature advanced to committee the bill HB 727, which would strengthen punishments against pipeline protesters. She said the attorney for the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, who reportedly helped draft the bill, sat next to its lead sponsor during the session. “The oil and gas industry writes a law to protect its interest, in order to keep Louisiana a sacrifice zone while at the same time taking away our First Amendment right to protest its actions,” she said in dismay, “and our legislators support it.”

Louisiana law already prohibits trespassing at sites known as “critical infrastructure,” including power plants, oil refineries, chemical plants, water treatment facilities, and natural gas terminals. House Bill 727 adds pipelines and their construction areas to the list of critical infrastructure sites, a move in reaction to growing pipeline protests nationwide.

HB 727 is based on a model bill produced by the conservative, corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). “But it is ALEC-plus” Pam Spees, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing a coalition of groups against the Bayou Bridge pipeline in a variety of legal challenges, said. “People not involved in an action, who don’t protest, damage, or injure anything or anybody, can still be held accountable for being associated with activists.”

The bill increases the penalties for any damage to or interference with pipeline and other critical infrastructure sites. Sentences range from one to 15 years in prison with a $10,000 fine or six to 20 years plus a $25,000 fine if the damage could threaten human life or disrupt site operations. In addition, this state bill criminalizes “conspiracy to commit trespass.” Anyone involved with organizing a protest like the one on April 5 could face a year in prison. And anyone connected to an action that involves damaging the infrastructure couldend up with a prison sentence of 20 years and fines of up to $250,000 if a judge rules that they are part of a conspiracy that threatens life or the operation of critical infrastructure.

“The language concerning conspiracy is worrisome,” Spees told me during the protest in Iowa. “The conspiracy provision makes it possible for law enforcement to arrest people before they have actually done anything wrong, even if they are just planning a nonviolent protest.” After Thursday’s protest, Spees traveled to the jail to help make sure everyone arrested during the demonstration was released.

Along with a handful of others, Meg Louge, a member of 350 New Orleans, spoke out against HB 727 at the state capitol in Baton Rouge. Many of them objected to the proposed law because existing trespass laws are already in place. Some argued during Thursday’s legislative session that the new law is meant to quash dissent against oil and gas pipelines. “The representatives who spoke in favor of the bill cited the protests in North Dakota a couple of times and how they don’t want Louisiana to ever have a ‘Standing Rock’ type situation,” Louge said.

Though Louge was not pleased the bill was moved to committee, she said that she was glad that Rep. Valarie Hodges, one of the bill’s sponsors, agreed to amend the conspiracy language during the session, before the bill is voted on in committee.

While Thursday’s pipeline protest didn’t go as planned, Heurich was not discouraged. “Today’s action was a success,” she said during a call. “One of our goals is to get the word out that climate change is a huge issue and that there is real opposition in Louisiana.”

https://theintercept.com/2018/03/21/pipeline-protest-necessity-defense-tar-sands/

AN ACTIVIST IN Montana was sentenced on Tuesday in a case that has become both a touchstone for industry-friendly legislators pushing to increase penalties for pipeline protest and a measure of the U.S. legal system’s ability to recognize the emergency presented by climate change.

On October 11, 2016, while the Dakota Access pipeline protests were in full force, climate activists approached above-ground valve sites on five tar sands pipelines in Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, and Washington state. After calling the pipeline companies to give warning, they turned the valve wheels in a coordinated attempt to stop the flow of tar sands oil.

Tuesday’s sentencing hearing tested a Montana court’s willingness to apply the severe penalties already available for use against pipeline protesters. For halting the flow of oil through Enbridge’s Express pipeline for several hours,Leonard Higgins, a 66-year-old retired information technology manager for the state of Oregon, faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $50,000 fine for charges of misdemeanor trespass and felony criminal mischief. Higgins was sentenced to three years’ probation and $3,755 in restitution to the pipeline company.

“I’m relieved and actually a bit bewildered. It’s unexpected to me. I came very much prepared and expecting to do some jail time at least,” Higgins told The Intercept. “This is a case where both in terms of the severity of the charges and the large amount of claimed damages, I think they were using it to chill the possibility that others might do similar protest.”

Enbridge had initially claimed more than $200,000 in losses, a figure later reduced to $25,630, including $16,000 worth of replacement chains to secure valves along the pipeline against future tampering.

“The courts and the juries are not hammering individuals in the way these corporations would like to see, so they attempt to use the restitution process to grossly inflate their damage numbers with hope that threatening the citizen with $200,000 might chill others from committing similar acts,” said Lauren Regan, Higgins’s attorney.

“Enbridge respects the court’s decision,” said company spokesperson Michael Barnes. “It is our intention to donate any court-ordered payment in this case to local area first responders. … We believe it’s important to support the people who every day focus on the safety and wellbeing of the community and the environment.”

Although the sentence is lenient in light of the possible penalties Higgins faced, it does not represent a full win for the activists. Higgins’s legal team had hoped Judge Daniel Boucher would allow them to argue that, given the severity of the climate threat, he had no choice but to act — a strategy known as anecessity defense. But Boucher said that since Higgins appeared to fear harm to his children and grandchildren, rather than an imminent threat to his own life, the defense could not apply. In his denial, Boucher wrote, “The energy policy of the United States is not on trial, nor will this court allow Higgins to attempt to put it on trial.”

Since a goal of the valve action was to set legal precedent for future climate protesters, Higgins’s legal team plans to appeal the denial, demanding a retrial. The move would not open the door to a more severe sentence. Judges assigned to valve turner cases in North Dakota and Washington also rejected the necessity defense, and the activists’ legal teams are also appealing.

The valve turners’ best chance lies in Minnesota, where a judge has made the unusual decision to allow the necessity defense to be used at trial. Emily Johnston and Annette Klapstein are facing felonies in the state for shutting down Enbridge Lines 4 and 67. Steve Liptay, who filmed their actions, and Ben Joldersma, who provided additional support, also face charges. The four activists have to prove that “the harm that would have resulted from obeying the law would have significantly exceeded the harm actually caused by breaking the law, there was no legal alternative to breaking the law, the defendant was in danger of imminent physical harm, and there was a direct causal connection between breaking the law and preventing the harm.” Enbridge is appealing the judge’s decision.

Higgins said that if he had any regret about his effort to disrupt the Montana pipeline, it would be that he failed to anticipate that those filming would face charges alongside those turning the valves. Reed Ingalls, a 23-year-old student at Evergreen College, who livestreamed Higgins’s action, still faces trespassing and criminal mischief charges. “I wish we had not been so naïve as to think the journalists and folks doing the livestreaming would be protected by the First Amendment and would not be arrested,” Higgins said. Sam Jessup, a 32-year-old carpenter from Vermont, recently received a suspended two-year sentence, to be served as probation, for livestreaming the valve action on the Keystone pipeline in North Dakota.

“The act itself was out of a sense of desperation that we don’t have time for incremental change,” Higgins told The Intercept. “It’s possible we already squandered the chance we had. We’re walking right along the edge of the cliff.”

WHILE THE VALVE turners have asked the justice system to recognize their actions as a rational response to a climate emergency, legislators, law enforcement, and oil and gas industry operatives have used the shutdowns as justification to frame environmental activists as terrorists.

The valve turners were recently mentioned in a letter sent by legislators toJeff Sessions, asking if pipeline activists could be charged under terrorism laws.Meanwhile, theAmerican Legislative Exchange Council cited the valve turners in urging states to pass the “Criminal Infrastructure Protection Act,” a new model bill that would create harsher penalties for attempts, even if unsuccessful, to inhibit the operation of infrastructure like pipelines. Laws similar to the model have been introduced in Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Ohio, and Wyoming.

It’s a theme that surfaced in another valve turner’s case in North Dakota. Michael Foster, a 53-year-old mental health counselor and father of two from Seattle, was sentenced to one year imprisonment and two years of probation, for halting the flow of oil through the Keystone pipeline for eight hours. He had faced a maximum sentence of more than 26 years.

In his closing statement, prosecutor Jonathan Byers compared Foster to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber,who justified murdering three people and injuring 24 with a rambling 35,000-word manifesto. “He thought that the industrialization of the U.S. and of modern society was going to create a disaster, so, because of his belief in his cause, he decided to do some of these things. It actually resulted in people’s death,” Byers said.

Byers then moved into a bizarre reflection on Sharia, or Islamic law.“Will we allow people who have a belief in Sharia law to allow people to commit honor killings because they believe that it will save them — is that what our society is going to be that we’re going to redraw the line to allow killing of even your own children?” he asked. Sharia says nothing about honor killings and does not endorse murder. In the U.S., it’s commonly invoked to stoke fears of immigrants and Muslims.

The valve turners, of course, neither murdered nor physically harmed anyone. And their motivations largely came from climate data. In Foster’s case, the judge declined a defense request to allow climate scientist James Hansen to testify. Hansen, director of the Climate Science, Awareness, and Solutions program at Columbia University, wrote an influential New York Times op-ed in 2012 stating that if Canada’s tar sands were fully exploited, “It will be game over for the planet.”

Hansen’s prepared testimony had described some of the analysis that the valve turners argue made their actions justifiable. “We are indeed in an emergency situation — even though the most severe climatic consequences have only just begun to be visited on human and natural systems,” he noted.

“If fossil fuel emissions are not systematically and rapidly abated, then young persons and future generations will confront what reasonably only can be described as, at best, an inhospitable future,” Hansen wrote. “That future may be marked by rising seas, coastal city functionality loss, mass migrations, resource wars, food shortages, heat waves, mega-storms, soil depletion and desiccation, freshwater shortage, public health system collapse, and the extinction of increasing numbers of species.”

Foster and Higgins, each interviewed before their sentencing, said that over years of climate activism, they had become disillusioned with government institutions’ inability to adequately address climate change. Both got involved in climate organizing late in life, Foster in his 40s and Higgins in his 50s. They each became involved in an array of climate organizing activities around the Pacific Northwest, from lobbying legislators to cut carbon emissions to providing volunteer support for a lawsuit that a group of kids brought against the state of Washington for failure to sufficiently protect them from the threat of climate change.

But although many of the campaigns saw big wins — the children’s lawsuit forced Washington to move more quickly on its greenhouse gas emissions reductions, for example — Foster could see they were not translating into the energy transition scientists were calling for. “I watched the system refuse to change,” he said. “There was no institution that was responsive to the emergency.”

Higgins said he increasingly saw a special responsibility for people like him to participate in civil disobedience. “Our niche is that we are privileged, middle-class, older white people who we look at as having the biggest obligation. We’ve benefited the most, and we will continue to be protected from the worst effects until the very end when it will probably be too late,” he said.

A May 2017 report co-written by the Department of Homeland Security and several state intelligence fusion centers, obtained by The Intercept via a public information request, invoked the valve turners’ actions as an example of the kind of tactics law enforcement and emergency management officials might expect to see “environmental extremists” carry out across the U.S. in the coming year.

“It’s fascinating to me that the Department of Justice and the executive branch’s lawyers and other people want to get involved and try and paint us as organized crime or domestic terrorists bent on destroying national security,” Foster said. Climate change “will certainly destroy our national security if it’s allowed to continue operating.”

But Foster didn’t deny that part of the point was to inspire people. “We hoped that other people would take similar actions all over the place,” he said. “I have to say, after over a year since our action, it’s starting to feel it was a failure, because it’s still the biggest coordinated action in our history and we don’t have time.”

Foster is currently incarcerated at the Missouri River Correctional Facility, a minimum-security prison known as the “farm.” Its most desirable and private living quarters are located inside a portable unit that once housed workers in a “man camp” in the Bakken oil patch, a center of the U.S. fossil fuels boom.

The day before his sentencing hearing last month, Foster told The Intercept, “For this one moment, maybe I’m standing on the right side of history. If there’s going to be future historians, and they’re going to be writing anything, chances are it’s because we succeeded.”

https://www.opb.org/news/article/washington-valve-turner-activist-sentenced-to-prison/

Washington climate activist is the first “valve turner” to go to prison for shutting off the flow of oil from Canada’s tar sands region into the U.S.

In October 2016, five activists got fed up with the usual ways to fight climate change. They decided to take direct action and coordinated a protest by shutting off oil pipelines carrying tar sands oil into the U.S.

The “valve turners” coordinated efforts to shut off pipelines in Washington, Montana, Minnesota and North Dakota.

Now, one of those activists is going to prison for the protest. Seattle residentMichael Foster was sentenced to three years in prison— with two of those years deferred — for his role in shutting off TransCanada’s Keystone pipelinein North Dakota.

...

3/18 guy got $3700 fine but no jail?

15% shut down S capacity? co wanted big damages

On Friday, February 9, Lissa Lucas — a Democratic Party candidate for West Virginia's House of Delegates — was forcibly removed from a Senate hearing for calling out how many thousands of dollars legislators backing a pro-oil and gas industry bill have received from that very industry.

The video of Lucas's public comment and removal has gone viral and served as a launching pad for her campaign, which has raised more than $46,000 since the incident. Previously, she had raised just over $4,000. Coincidentally, Lucas supportsa publicly funded campaign finance system.

The bill (HB 4268) she opposed, however, has passed in the West Virginia House of Delegates.

That law, “forced pooling” legislation which makes it easier for the oil and gas industry to obtain mineral rights from private landowners as a precursor to drilling, has the support of the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association. It enables oil and gas companies to perform more hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) on private land in the state by mandating that, rather than securing land lease contracts from all landowners, companies only need 75 percent of those living in an area to sign leases and are granted the remaining 25 percent by default.

Appalachian Storage Hub Advances

Beyond HB 4268, in the days surrounding Lucas's removal from the hearing, both the West Virginia legislature and congressional delegation took steps to advance a proposal that would create a petrochemical storage and refining hub in the state, which would be fueld by fracked oil and gas development in the region's Marcellus and Utica shale basins.

That hub is set to receive $83.7 billion in capital from China, an agreement finalized in a ceremony overseen by President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping and which took place during a U.S. Department of Commerce trade mission to China in November.

On February 7, one day after DeSmog published an investigation on the proposed Appalachian Storage Hub, which would also cover Kentucky, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, the West Virginia House of Delegates introduced a resolution (H.R. 7) calling on Congress to pass various pieces of legislation which would create favorable regulatory conditions for the hub. This was also one day before Lucas was ousted from the hearing on the forced pooling bill.

The same day as the Lucas incident, U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), a major backer of the federal bills, co-wrote a letter asking the Senate Appropriations Committee to support and continue funding the Department of Energy's Title XVII loan guarantee program, which came under scrutiny after providing a $535 million loan to the ill-fated solar company, Solyndra. The Energy Department, as DeSmog previously reported, is considering offering a $1.9 billion loan guarantee to develop the petrochemical hub in West Virginia, a move lauded by Manchin, who is up for re-election in November.

In his office's press release about the letter supporting the loan guarantee program, Manchin explicitly linked the funding request with the prospective creation of the petrochemical hub in his state.

“The Title XVII Innovative Loan Guarantee has a successful track record of helping finance innovative American energy technologies,” reads the press release. “In 2017, Senator Manchin introduced the Capitalizing American Storage Potential (CASP) Act to ensure a regional storage hub, like the proposed Appalachian Storage Hub, is eligible for the Department of Energy’s successful Title XVII loan guarantee program.”

The proposed state bill, H.R. 7, requests that Congress “renew its support for and fully fund the Department of Energy’s highly successful Loan Programs Office.”

...

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/01/17/community-environmental-legal-defense-fund-pennsylvania-grant-township-fracking-waste-ban

In early January, a federal judge ordered the nonprofit law firm Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) to pay $52,000 to an oil and gas exploration company for defending a rural Pennsylvania township’s ban on underground injections of frack waste.

This sanction comes at the request of Pennsylvania General Energy Company (PGE) and the Pennsylvania Independent Oil &Gas Association, but is part of a growing trend to prevent municipalities across the nation from pushing back against state and federal attempts to overrule them.

Starting in 2012, PGE proposed an injection well which, according to Grant Township’s Board of Supervisors, “would receive 30,000 barrels [1.26 million gallons] of frack wastewater per month for 10 years.” The board of supervisors for this small community near Pittsburgh warns that the injection well “threatens to subject every resident of Grant Township to a slow poisoning, and threatens thousands more who depend on Grant Township’s watershed for clean water.”

The community’s law, they go on, bans the injection well “as a violation of our basic civil rights.” PGE operates multiple gas-extraction wells in the township.

Rights of Nature, Local Governance

CELDF, which has defended Grant’s efforts to prevent waste injection wells for over three years, has worked with some 200 municipalities in the United States to defend local laws challenging similar corporate projects. The group aims to drive state constitutional change to bolster the rights of local residents and ecosystems against what it calls regressive state preemption and corporate personhood.

Grant Township, for example, is elevating a “right of self-government,” rights “to clean air, water, and soil” and “ecosystem rights” above corporations’ “rights” to inject waste from oil and gas extraction in the township.

These types of local laws often face substantial legal pushback from private corporations and states which claim authority over issues such as fossil fuel production. Along with the sanctions against CELDF,PGE is suing Grant Township itself, population 741, for damages that would likely be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.Among its claims: The injection well ban violates the corporation’s rights as a “person” under the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments; the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; and the Contract Clause and Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Grant Township is the fourth local government CELDF has defended in federal court.

‘Frivolous’ Legal Arguments

At the heart of the court’s decision awarding PGE sanctions against the legal nonprofit (the company originally asked for $500,000) is an argument that the sanctions are justified because CELDF’s legal arguments are contrary to “settled” law and therefore “frivolous.” This reasoning asserts that corporate personhood and Pennsylvania’s authority over municipalities on issues affecting drinking water and fossil fuel development is settled, and therefore CELDF’s defense of Grant’s claim to the contrary is “clearly unreasonable.”

Grant Township, the court writes, “seeks to disavow constitutional rights afforded corporations so as to prevent PGE from the lawful exercise of its right to pursue gas extraction related activities within its borders.” On top of all this, Grant’s law recognized legal rights for a local ecosystem. CELDF’s attempt to represent that ecosystem in court, the judge ruled, violates the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a set of rules that govern how legal proceedings take place in United States district courts.

Local Governments Sanctioned Across US

CELDF is not alone in facing sanctions for challenging so-called settled law on similar issues. Defend Local Solutions is a campaign led by Tallahassee’s Mayor Andrew Gillum which is aimed at expanding the powers of municipalities in Florida. The campaign says at least seven states have “super preemption” bills on the books that sanction local officials who dare challenge specific state preemption bills that rescind powers from municipalities.

In Florida, for example, Gillum personally faced the threat of sanctions after he refused to repeal a local law that banned fire arms in public parks (even though the ordinance wasn’t being enforced).

New bills, such as Texas’s highly controversial “show me your papers” and sanctuary city preemption bill (SB4), also include punitive language for municipalities pushing back against state and federal authority.

Texas’s bill would fine local officials and employees $25,000 per day or even remove them from office if they defy the law, according to the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. Parts of this section of the law, however, are hung up in court. However, the court ruled that local officials can be sanctioned if they outright ban police from asking for people’s immigration papers, and other sections of the bill are in effect, including a section that threatens punishment for local jail officers. The concept of economic retribution for noncompliance is spreading.

Georgia’s 2017 bill, HB37, removes funding from any private college that “prohibits or restricts officials or employees … from communicating or cooperating with federal officials or law enforcement officers with regard to reporting [immigration] status information.” And in 2016 Arizona passed a bill which withholds state funds from localities that enact policy that challenges the state’s claimed supremacy.

In CELDF’s sanction case, the court acknowledges that sanctions can have the effect of “chilling novel legal or factual arguments.”

Thomas Linzey, CELDF’s director and one of the two attorneys being personally sanctioned, says “that’s exactly the point. For years, the oil and gas corporations believed that they could stop the community rights movement by suing municipalities to overturn their local laws; but having failed to do so, they’re now coming after the lawyers who are helping those communities to stop drilling. In many ways, the industry’s filing for sanctions against us is just proof of how strong the community rights movement is becoming.”

In court records, CELDF points to Brown v. Board of Education (which overturned “separate but equal” schools for Black and White students, 1954), courts striking down bans on gay marriage, and other novel legal arguments as evidence that sanctions against lawyers who challenge “settled” law could set a dangerous precedent.

“We understand that the real problem isn’t the injection well, but the system of law that keeps trying to shut us down,” the Grant Township Board of Supervisors said in a statement. “We’re not going anywhere.”

no link many

Bayou Bridge Pipeline Opponents Say Louisiana Governor's Office Is Surveilling Them

By Julie Dermansky • Wednesday, March 7, 2018 - 16:43

Louisiana Bucket Brigade founder Anne Rolfes at a press conference protesting Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards' treatment of anti-pipeline activists.

Opponents of the Bayou Bridge pipeline accused Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards of meeting with representative of the oil and gas industry while refusing to meet with activists and communities affected by the pipeline’s construction. They further allege that the administration has instead placed them under surveillance, pointing to similar treatment of Dakota Access pipeline opponents in North Dakota in 2016. Their claims are based in part on emails and other public records released by the state.

The activists brought their grievances to the Democratic governor’s home and office on March 1, holding a press conference in front of the Governor’s Mansion in Baton Rouge and then occupying the foyer to his office in the State Capitol for over an hour.

“The Bayou Bridge pipeline should be called the John Bel pipeline,” Louisiana Bucket Brigade founder and director Anne Rolfes declared at the press conference. In her view, “any accidents that will happen” related to the pipeline lead back to the Governor. He had the power to stop it, she said, but chose not to.

At the press conference, representatives from the HELP Association, 350 New Orleans, L'eau est La Vie (Water Is Life) camp, and the Center for Constitutional Rights also expressed disappointment in what they described as the state government’s cozy relationship with industry.

Louisiana Bucket Brigade read aloud emails about the Bayou Bridge pipeline from the Edwards administration and industry that were obtained by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a New York-based legal and educational nonprofit.

Pastor Harry Joseph of Mt. Triumph Baptist Church in St. James, Louisiana

Pastor Harry Joseph of the Mount Triumph Baptist Church in St. James, where the pipeline will terminate, speaking at the press conference in Baton Rouge.

Security staff at the Louisiana Bucket Brigade press conference March 1

Security next to the press conference in Baton Rouge.

The governor, who voiced his support for the pipeline early on, has not commented on a federal judge’s recent ruling halting construction of the project through the Atchafalaya Basin, an environmentally sensitive National Heritage Area.

The pipeline is a joint venture between majority stakeholder Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the Dakota Access pipeline, and Phillips 66 Partners, LP. Pipeline construction along its route from Lake Charles, near the Texas border, to St. James, about 60 miles west of New Orleans, began in January.

CCR attorney Pamela Spees grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana, one of the communities affected by the pipeline. She said in a press release that the emails show how “the deck is stacked against people in Louisiana who stand in opposition to the ongoing destruction and harm caused by the Oil and Gas industry. The indications of monitoring and surveillance of local advocates and small organizations by the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness are particularly concerning. It is astounding that the resources of so many law enforcement agencies are trained on watching these organizations and communities trying to exercise their rights to be heard.”

In addition, Spees found it “deeply troubling that not one email released by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality contained any discussion of or expressions of concern by people in the agency about the alarming accident history of the companies involved in the Bayou Bridge project.”

CCR is still fighting to get other public records related to the Bayou Bridge pipeline, and has appealed two cases it lost. One is against Bayou Bridge Pipeline LLC, in which the nonprofit sought records concerning the company’s use of eminent domain. And the other is against Louisiana’s St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Office and Sheriff Greg Champagne for failing to release public records related to trips he and some of his deputies took to North Dakota to observe how law enforcement was responding to the Dakota Access pipeline protests.

“We saw a dangerous blurring of the lines between law enforcement and private corporations at Standing Rock,” Spees said. “Louisiana residents have a right to know what role local officials played in that situation and how it relates to events playing out closer to home.”

Surveillance of Opponents of the Bayou Bridge Pipeline

Dominic Renfrey, a representative with the Center for Constitutional Rights, informed me that Bayou Bridge Pipeline LLC is employing the firm Hub Enterprises to provide security for the company, based on sightings at pipeline construction sites.

Energy Transfer Partners spokesperson Alexis Daniel told me, “The safety of our employees and the communities in which we live and work is our top priority. In order to ensure that, we do have security plans in place and we do communicate with law enforcement agencies as appropriate. Beyond that, we do not discuss details of our security efforts.”

CCR’s Renfrey also said that documents released last week indicate the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP) “might be involved in surveillance.” The GOHSEP director sent an email about the Louisiana Bucket Brigade to state regulatory and law enforcement agencies, including the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), the Department of Natural Resources, the Louisiana State Police, and the Louisiana National Guard. The agency also prepared a report about the L'Eau Est La Vie Camp, contrasting it to the resistance camps against the Dakota Access pipeline.

Hub Enterprises security personnel near a Bayou Bridge pipeline construction site

Hub Enterprises security personnel across the street from a Bayou Bridge pipeline construction site that activists shut down temporarily on February 26 during a direct action leading to the arrest of three protesters.

GOHSEP Communications Director Mike Steele told The Advocate that there’s nothing sinister about his agency’s role. “The agency keeps an eye on issues that may, at some point, draw big crowds requiring security, traffic control, or crowd control. Homeland security may have an ominous connotation,” he said, “but they aren’t spies.”

“It’s not surveillance. It’s letting these agencies know that these matters are ongoing,” Steele said.

There was plenty of security on hand at the March 1 press conference and impromptu visit to the governor’s office. Some of the security personnel were impossible to identify because they remained in vehicles with tinted windows.

Anne Rolfes tries to catch who is inside an apparent security vehicle

Anne Rolfes, founder of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, trying to figure out who was in an SUV monitoring the press conference across from the Governor’s Mansion.

Security inside the foyer of the Louisiana governor's office during an anti-pipeline protest

Security inside the foyer in front of the governor’s office.

The documents so far obtained by CCR don’t indicate that any state agency hired a private security firm to surveil opponents of the pipeline. However, if one did, it wouldn’t be the first time a government agency in Louisiana hired a private firm to supplement its resources.

Last year, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration hired Trident Response Group, a private security firm based in Texas, for risk assessment, surveillance, intelligence gathering, and extra security at sites where Confederate monuments were slated for removal.

Landrieu’s administration defended the move to hire a private security firm after documents from an open records request showed the city paid over $700,000 dollars to Trident in May while the city prepared to remove the monuments. While denying that the city spied on local groups on either side of the issue, the city has not been transparent about what services Trident provided.

Take ’Em Down Nola, the group pushing for the removal of the Confederate monuments, suggested that Trident may have hacked some of its members’ emails and social media accounts and possibly infiltrated the group.

Trident shares similarities with TigerSwan, one of the private security firms employed by Energy Transfer Partners in North Dakota, and Hub Enterprises. All three companies’ websites tout staff that include former military personnel.

TigerSwan’s license application with the Louisiana State Board of Private Security was turned down last year. The denial was based on the pending litigation against the company for allegedly operating in North Dakota without a permit.

Some Bayou Bridge opponents believe the company was working in Louisiana without a license before its application was turned down.

In February 2017, James “Spider” Marks spoke in favor of the Bayou Bridge pipeline at a permit hearing. He identified himself as a retired U.S. Army major general and president of a corporate advisory firm, but did not disclose that he also sits on TigerSwan’s board of advisors.

The Louisiana Bucket Brigade says that emails from GOHSEP reveal Louisiana officials are aligned with a growing national trend of surveillance intended to intimidate citizens exercising their First Amendment rights, a finding the group considers alarming.

“Since the Standing Rock camp opposing the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota was disbanded last year, 56 bills that heighten the risk and criminal penalties of dissent have been introduced across 30 states,” reads a press release from the organization. “Many of these bills seek to frame protests as ‘riots’ and activists as ‘terrorists‘ or ‘jihadists,’ in attempts to criminalize protected free speech activity.”

Several states have even gone as far as introducing or passing bills that critics say would specifically criminalize pipeline protests.

“The documents reveal an unacceptable disparity in the public agencies’ treatment of pipeline and industry representatives in contrast to the communities they're obligated to serve,” Spees said. She told me that CCR will continue to seek more information from Louisiana’s public agencies because the documents already obtained suggest there is more to the story.

Energy Transfer Partners spokesperson Alexis Daniel told me, “The safety of our employees and the communities in which we live and work is our top priority. In order to ensure that, we do have security plans in place and we do communicate with law enforcement agencies as appropriate. Beyond that, we do not discuss details of our security efforts.”

I asked Governor Edwards’ office what he would say to those who feel he is willing to meet and listen to representatives of the oil and gas industry but not the Bayou Bridge pipeline’s opponents, including those directly impacted by the project. Shauna Sanford, a representative from the governor’s office, said, “We don't have a comment at this time.”

...a Latina activist on reproductive justice was detained this week after she visited the Immigration and Customs office in Tucson, Arizona. The report noted that the check-in had been planned and scheduled in advance but when activist Alejandra Pablos came to the office, she was detained by ICE members. People close to Pablos point to her activism as the possible reason behind her detention.

Pablos, who is affiliated with the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health (NLIRH), also works for the pro-choice program known as "We Testify" which shares stories and accounts on abortion access through the National Network of Abortion Funds. Her network NLIRH condemned her detention and released a statement on Wednesday. The group said, "Our hermana en la lucha and poderosa Alejandra was detained in Arizona earlier this morning by ICE. Alejandra is a powerful immigrant and reproductive justice organizer who has done incredible work for the Latinx community in Arizona and Virginia. Right now, we are asking you to join us in supporting Alejandra so that we can bring her home."

On Facebook, Pablos' video circulated among her allies in which she says that ICE misled and detained her at the Tucson office. She added that office was "trying to really separate me and tear our movement apart, tear our community apart, and I’m not letting that happen." Originally from Mexico, Splinter News wrote that Pablos' activist background could put her in a particularly precarious situation if she is deported. In April 2017, The Nation published a report on the dangers Mexican activists face after deportation, including "no support from the [Mexican] government."

Yet Pablos isn’t alone. Under Donald Trump's increased ICE operations, activists like Maru Mora Villalpando, Eliseo Jurado, Jean Montrevil, and Ravi Ragbir have been targeted, according to the Detention Watch Network. These series of arrests and attacks suggest a broader and more worrisome theme, according to NLIRH. The organization spoke with Rewire News and said that the pattern pointed to a deliberate practice of targeted intimidation, harassment, and isolation led by the government.

"Alejandra isn’t the only one. Detainment is also evidence of ICE’s pattern of singling out immigrant leaders for being outspoken and fearless community mobilizers. In recent months, ICE detained prominent immigrant activist Maru Mora-Villalpando for her 'extensive involvement with anti-ICE protests and Latino advocacy programs,'” NLIRH said.

...

https://www.ecowatch.com/monsanto-avaaz-glyphosate-2538134798.html

Monsanto 'Commands' Civic Group to Turn in All Communications Over Glyphosate

Avaaz, a civic campaigning network that counts roughly 45 million subscribers around the world, has been served with a 168-page subpoena on behalf of agribusiness giant Monsanto.

The document, dated Jan. 26 and sent from New York Supreme Court, "commands" the U.S.-based organization to turn in a decade's worth of internal communications by Friday, Feb. 23.

The subpoena specifically seeks a trove of documents and communications related to Avaaz's campaigns around regulating glyphosate—the controversial star ingredient in Monsanto's blockbuster weedkiller, Roundup. The organization says this includes their 2017 effort to stop the European Union from re-issuing a 15-year license for glyphosate; its 2013 effort to block a Monsanto genetically-modified seed factory in Argentina; and an ongoing campaign to stop the mega-merger between Monsanto and Bayer.As founder Ricken Patel and his team pointed out, that's "pretty much every single private email, document, note, chat or anything else that any Avaaz staffer has ever written or done on our campaigns to ban Monsanto's key herbicide, glyphosate."

...

[docs]

Avaaz worries about the scope of the subpoena, as it would also include the names and email addresses of members who have signed Monsanto petitions. GM Watch noted that one of its petitions calling for a moratorium on glyphosate garnered more than 2 million signatures.

The subpoena was issued as part of a class-action lawsuit against Monsanto in which plaintiffs around the country claim that they or their loved ones developed non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma due to exposure to Roundup.

Avaaz is now fighting back and is raising funds for the defense effort. The group will be represented by the New York firm of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady, LLP.

"This is big," Avaaz writes in a new petition. "[Monsanto's] a $50 billion mega-corporation, infamous for legal strong-arm tactics like this. They have unlimited resources. If they get their hands on all our private information, there's no telling what they'll use it for."

Emma Ruby-Sachs, Deputy Director of Avaaz, said Monsanto's demand for internal communications is a "violation" of first amendment rights.

"There are millions of people around the world who have a deep and genuine concern that Monsanto's glyphosate is making us and our environment sick," she added. "That is the sole reason our members have called on governments to regulate it based on independent science. We're not going to let this legal attack slow down that essential work one bit."

Blocked From Discussing Climate Change, Valve-Turner Faces 10 Years in Prison After Felony Conviction

By Julia Conley

After a judge refused to allow him to share his reasons for shutting off a tar sands pipeline valve in a protest of fossil fuel mining, 65-year-old climate activist Leonard Higgins was found guilty of criminal mischief—a felony—and misdemeanor criminal trespass. Higgins faces up to 10 years in jail and as much as $50,000 in fines.

"I'm happy for the opportunity to share why I had to shut down this pipeline, and I really appreciate the time and dedication of the jury and the judge," Higgins said. "I was disappointed and surprised by the verdict, but even more disappointed that I was not allowed a 'necessity defense,' and that I wasn't allowed to talk about climate change as it related to my state of mind. When I tried to talk about why I did what I did I was silenced. I'm looking forward to an appeal."

Supporters spoke out on social media after the verdict was handed down in a Montana court room, following a trial that lasted less than two days...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/opinion/how-prosecutors-turn-a-protest-into-a-riot.html

aclu helps j20

https://www.alternet.org/environment/6-environmental-activists-killed-trying-protect-planet

A disturbing number of people are losing their lives in an effort to protect undeveloped land, preserve natural resources and defend community rights, according to a report released this summer. Environmental protectors and indigenous rights leaders were killed at a rate of nearly four per week in 2016, totaling 200 globally, says the watchdog group Global Witness.

That makes 2016 the deadliest year ever recorded for environmental and indigenous activists, and Global Witness warns that this sinister trend is creeping into more countries across the world. Such violence against activists is often backed up by force—police and soldiers are suspected perpetrators in at least 43 recorded murders, and state actors are often behind landgrabs in indigenous communities that lead to violent conflict and loss of life.

...

whew but nb 2nd trial:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/laughing-jeff-sessions-case-dropped_us_5a00f081e4b0368a4e868e0c

Justice Department prosecutors have dropped their case against a woman who laughed at now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions during his confirmation hearing. Desiree Fairooz was scheduled to face trial for a second time next week, but a DOJ prosecutor entered a nolle prosequi filing in the case on Monday indicating the department is dismissing the charges.

Fairooz, a retired children’s librarian and demonstrator affiliated with the organization Code Pink, let out a laugh during a Senate hearing back in January after Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said Sessions had a “clear and well-documented” record of “treating all Americans equally under the law.” (Sessions had faced strong opposition from civil rights organizations and was rejected as a federal judge in the 1980s over concerns about his past comments on race.)

A rookie Capitol Police officer fresh out of the academy who had never made an arrest before nor covered a congressional hearing decided to take Fairooz into custody. Fairooz loudly objected. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, which prosecutes cases in both federal court and local D.C. Superior Court, pressed two charges against her.

...

win

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16102017/climate-change-activists-arrest-pipeline-shutdown-necessity-defense

A judge in Minnesota has cleared the way for an unusual and potentially groundbreaking defense, allowing climate activists to use the "necessity" of confronting the climate crisis as justification for temporarily shutting down two crude oil pipelines last year.

Robert Tiffany, a district court judge in Clearwater County, Minnesota, ruled on Oct. 11 that three activists who were arrested and charged with felonies last year can argue that they violated the law in order to protect citizens from the impacts of global warming and that they had no legal alternative.

"It is extremely unusual for a court to allow presentation of the necessity defense by environmental protesters," said Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. "It will be fascinating to see how this trial goes and how much evidence the court allows."

The ruling is the third recent case in which a judge in the United States has allowed for such a defense in a climate case in a jury trial. A case in Massachusetts in 2014 did not go to trial afterthe prosecutor dropped the charges. A judge allowed the necessity defense in a Washington State case in 2016 but then instructed jurors theycould not acquit on necessity. There was also a recent non-jury case in which a county judge in Slate Hill, New York, allowed a necessity defense for climate activists charged with misdemeanor trespassing, but he issued a guilty verdict in June, stating the defense failed to prove "imminence", or immediate harm posed by climate change.

In the Minnesota case, Emily Johnston, Annette Klapstein and Benjamin Joldersma are charged with felonies over the shutdown of two pipelines there on Oct. 11, 2016. A fourth defendant, Steven Liptay, who filmed the pipeline shutdowns, is charged with two gross misdemeanors.

Enbridge Inc., the Canadian company that owns and operates the two pipelines, said at the time of the shutdowns that the actions were "reckless and dangerous" and that the company would "support the prosecution of all those involved," according to news reports.

An Unusual Legal Tactic for Protesters

Use of a necessity defense is typically used not for protests but for more clear cut cases of individuals intentionally committing a crime to prevent imminent danger, such as breaking into a house where someone is being held hostage, Gerrard said.

Political activists have, however, used the necessity defense in the past in opposition to issues including the Vietnam War, nuclear weapons and abortion.

The defense tactic is widely seen as an attempt to focus attention on controversial government policies by forcing jurors to pass judgment on the morality of such policies and of individuals' resistance to them.

The pipeline shutdowns in Minnesota were part of a multi-state protest by the group Climate Direct Action to protest the flow of tar sands crude into the U.S., and to show solidarity with the Dakota Access pipeline protests in North Dakota.

A Greater Risk than Climate Change?

"I think it's a sensible ruling that will allow the jurors to take into consideration all of the information that they really need to rule on this case properly," Marla Marcum, director of the Climate Disobedience Center, said.

Marcum's group is collaborating with the defendants in the Minnesota case and other "valve turner" cases on trial strategy.

Ken Ward, who shut down a pipeline in Washington state, was convicted of second-degree burglary in June and received30 days of community service. Activists who shut down a pipeline in North Dakota were convicted on felony charges earlier this month and are awaiting sentencing. Activists in Montana are still awaiting trial for a similar act.

The case in Minnesota may center around whether the actions taken by the protestors—shutting down valves on an active pipeline—presented an equal or greater risk than that posed by climate change.

"You are getting close to threats to public health, welfare, safety, when you start actually damaging the infrastructure itself," Patrick Parenteau, an environmental law professor at Vermont Law School said.

"The equation here is, did the defendants take action appropriate to draw attention to the problem, or does the balance tip against them and in favor of protecting public health and safety. The prosecutor will probably put people on the stand who will say, this is dangerous," Parenteau said.

Soon after the pipeline shutdowns last fall, Carl Weimer of the Pipeline Safety Trust, an industry watchdog, characterized the activity as a "dangerous stunt" according to news reports. Marcum said that in each case, pipeline operators were notified of the valve closures several minutes before they occurred so the companies could shut down the compressors that pump the oil through the pipes to safely shut the pipelines down.

Courts Are Considering Climate Risk

In his ruling, Judge Tiffany stated that Minnesota's standard for the necessity defense is high: "To successfully assert the defense, a criminal defendant must show that the harm that would have resulted from obeying the law would have significantly exceeded the harm actually caused by breaking the law, there was no legal alternative to breaking the law, the defendant was in danger of imminent physical harm, and there was a direct causal connection between breaking the law and preventing the harm."

Gerrard said the decision to allow a necessity defense may be part of a growing awareness in the courts of the risks of climate change, including recent rulings on coal leases and natural gas pipelines, that went in favor of closer scrutiny of environmental considerations.

"What we are seeing in some courts is there is such frustration at the failure of the executive and legislative branches to act on climate change that some courts are becoming willing to step in," he said.

PUBLISHED UNDER:

ACTIVISM

https://www.alternet.org/aclu-speaks-out-against-rules-shut-down-criticism-against-lapd

Los Angeles Police Department has apparently been arresting residents for speaking 20 seconds longer than their allotted time at public city hearings. Now the ACLU of Southern California is fighting an ordinance that could make it even harder for residents to speak out—especially those who dissent against the practices of the LAPD. If passed, the ordinance will make it "an arrestable offense to violate any posted rules of public facilities” and would empower law enforcement to make criminal trespass charges, tighten restrictions on speaking time and shut down criticism at meetings.

Pushing back on the proposed restrictions, the ACLU is circulating a petition targeted at councilmembers and tweeted out a call to action Wednesday morning:

...

https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-october-23-2017/

Today our host Christina Aanestad, filling in for Mitch Jeserich, is in conversation with three climate activists about their involvement in and perspectives on climate-related civil disobedience, particularly in terms of the defense of “necessity” in criminal law. We speak with Kelsey C. Skaggs, Executive Director of the Climate Defense Project, Tim DeChristopher, founder of the Climate Disobedience Center, and Annette Klapstein, an activist for Climate Direct Action. With them, we also discuss climate-related precedents in order to better understand the ongoing cases against Standing Rock protestors.

fbi cointelpro 2

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/16/cointelpro_2_fbi_targets_black_identity

cointelpro "extremist"

https://www.alternet.org/environment/energy-transfer-partners-company-behind-dakota-access-pipeline-strong-armed-landowners

Four Pennsylvania residents filed a federal lawsuit this week against Texas-based pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), claiming the Fortune 500 company and its subsidiaries violated their constitutional rights by engaging in illegal surveillance and harassment against landowners and pipeline protestersand caused emotional distress and other harm.

The suit, which seeks compensatory damages, also names ETP's private security provider, North Carolina-based TigerSwan, as well as local law enforcement officers who arrested pipeline opponents on charges that ultimately were not prosecuted. It claims that energy companies like ETP are increasingly relying on de facto public-private partnerships with government to "strong-arm" opponents into silence with false arrests and malicious prosecution.

"Since May of 2015, every day of my life has been affected by the plans to build this pipeline, and the lengths that Energy Transfer Partners will go to in the pursuit of profit," said plaintiff Elise Gerhart, who lives on property that will be crossed by the pipeline. "We've been needlessly harassed by agencies and violently threatened by individuals who've been intentionally incited and mobilized."

The lawsuit centers on ETP's Mariner East 2 pipeline project that would carry fracked gas from the Marcellus and Utica shale regions of West Virginia, Ohio and western Pennsylvania to refineries near Philadelphia, with much of the product to be exported overseas for making plastics. ETP is also behind several other controversial petro pipeline projects including the Bayou Bridge pipeline in Louisiana, the Trans-Pecos in Texas and the Dakota Access in North Dakota, the target of massive demonstrations last year in which Native American protesters and their supporters faced attack dogs, rubber bullets, mace and water cannons. Pipelines are a growing concern across the South: Of the 56 interstate pipeline projects that have sought permits from federal regulators since 2013, 31 run at least partly through Southern states.

Elise Gerhart's mother, Ellen Gerhart, also a plaintiff in the lawsuit, has owned a 27-acre property in central Pennsylvania's rural Huntingdon County with her husband, Stephen, since 1983 and has cared for it according to the principles of the state's forest stewardship program, which encourages private landowners "to implement sound forest management practices." In 2015, Sunoco, which has since merged with ETP, filed a declaration of taking in county court in order to gain access to a wooded part of the property to begin clearing trees for the planned pipeline. The court granted the company's request in March 2016, establishing an easement on the property and barring the Gerharts from interfering with access. There's currently a lawsuit working its way through the state courts over whether the taking was legal; it comes at a time of growing controversy over how pipeline companies are gaining access to private lands.

At the time the court granted Sunoco/ETP access rights to the Gerhart property, the Mariner East 2 project had neither the necessary state permits for construction nor what's known as "possessory interest" in the easement, which wasn't granted by the county court until April 2017. The lawsuit claims that, without possessory interest, the company had no legal right to exclude anyone from the easement — but that's not what happened.

Arrest to silence?

In late March 2016, shortly after the court granted the easement, the Philadelphia-based environmental advocacy group Clean Air Council posted a public event to Facebook encouraging people to oppose the tree-cutting planned for the Gerhart property. On March 29, 2016, dozens of protesters arrived and set up an encampment,with some sitting in trees to block their removal.

Agents of ETP/Sunoco bearing chainsaws also arrived on the land, escorted by state police and officers from the local sheriff's department. They were eager to begin work as U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regulations prohibit cutting trees on the Gerhart property after March 31 to protect migratory birds and an endangered bat.

Three of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit were arrested that day:

Protester Alex Lotorto of Milford, Pennsylvania, claims he was using a walkie-talkie to let other protesters know where the tree cutters were but law enforcement officers accused him of using it to disrupt work at the site. Arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and criminal contempt, he was held on a $200,000 bond he could not afford to pay and stayed in jail for three days. Once the tree-cutting stopped on April 1, his bond was reduced to $5,000 unsecured and he was released.

Protester Elizabeth Glunt of Altoona, Pennsylvania, entered the easement only briefly to warn tree cutters that they were getting too close to tree-sitting protesters, according to the lawsuit. She was charged with disorderly conduct and criminal contempt. Held in jail until her family raised the money to pay her $100,000 bond, Glunt was strip-searched and claims she suffered emotional distress as a result.

The lawsuit states that Ellen Gerhart approached but did not enter the easement area to warn tree cutters that they were too close to tree sitters. She was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and indirect criminal contempt and released on a $5,000 unsecured bond.

Just over a week later, on April 7, 2016, Ellen Gerhart was arrested again on the same charges when tree cutters returned to her property unannounced and she approached them to warn that they were violating federal wildlife regulations. Elise Gerhart was also arrested for climbing a tree and charged with disorderly conduct.

Smears of Russian ties

All of the charges against the plaintiffs were ultimately dismissed.The lawsuit says that's because the arrests weren't part of a legitimate pursuit of justice but rather an effort to "arbitrarily and maliciously send a message to the Gerhart family and their supporters to discourage their opposition to the pipeline and its construction and thereby chill their First Amendment rights."

The lawsuit also takes aim at TigerSwan, ETP's private security provider, based in the town of Apex near Raleigh, North Carolina. The company was founded in 2008 by retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and Delta Force operator James Reese.

According to company documents obtained by The Intercept, an investigative news outlet whose reporting is cited in the lawsuit, TigerSwan's tactics against pipeline protesters in five states — North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, and Texas — included military-style counterterrorism measures such as aerial surveillance, radio eavesdropping, and infiltration of camps and activist circles.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit say similar tactics are being deployed against Mariner pipeline opponents, who cite helicopters and drones flying low over the Gerhart property outside of the easement, and unmarked vehicles parking nearby and shining high-beam lights onto the land. TigerSwan has been operating in Pennsylvania at least since April 2017.

The suit further charges that ETP and TigerSwan have repeatedly sent an agent to the Gerhart property to attempt to infiltrate the protest encampment. While there, the lawsuit says, the agent took photos that were later posted to the Facebook page of a shadowy group called PA Progress to identify Ellen and Elise Gerhart. Other PA Progress posts called Elise Gerhart an "anarchist" and falsely accused her of sabotage. The lawsuit suggests that the page, which has since been taken down, was connected to TigerSwan.

The campaign against the protesters also deployed misleading propaganda in other ways. For example, the chair of TigerSwan's advisory board, retired Army Major General James "Spider" Marks, had an op-ed published on the news website PennLive.com in May warning that Mariner pipeline opponents would engage in violence and cause environmental damage. However, he did not identify his connection to TigerSwan and its interest in the pipeline project. The website has since added a note to the op-ed disclosing his position and stating that Marks' work will not appear there again.

The lawsuit further claims that the Gerharts were the targets of misinformation spread online, which it also connects to TigerSwan. For example, it points to posts atBlack Badger Report — a pseudonymously written website that claims to be concerned about the proliferation of "fake news" but whose front page features just six stories since June, all of them critical of pipeline protesters except for one condemning The Intercept of Communist ties — falsely accused Elise Gerhart and other protesters of being fronts for Russian government attempts to disrupt U.S. energy markets. The lawsuit ties the online attacks to TigerSwan through a web of internet connections involving TigerSwan Vice President Derek Borror.

The inaccurate posts not only caused "reputational harm," the lawsuit says, but "have incited commenters to threaten to injure or kill Elise Gerhart and her supporters," which in turn have caused her "mental anguish and emotional distress."

The plaintiffs are asking for a jury trial. Neither ETP nor TigerSwan responded to a request for comment.

Sue Sturgis

http://www.alternet.org/activism/st-louis-cops-taunt-demonstrators-chilling-chant-after-clearing-streets

Police officers in riot gear gathered alongside a St Louis boulevard late on Sunday night, chanting “whose street, our street”, a common refrain used by those protesting the acquittal of a white former officer in the death of a black man, after successfully clearing the street of demonstrators and onlookers.

Hundreds of officers had mobilized after another day of peaceful protests over the acquittal of Jason Stockley in the death of Anthony Lamar Smith. After nightfall there were reports of property damage and vandalism in the streets.

Authorities said police made more than 80 arrests, after people ignored orders to disperse after the peaceful protests. The St Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Mayor Lyda Krewson told reporters early on Monday “the days have been calm and the nights have been destructive”. Krewson said that was “unacceptable” and that “destruction cannot be tolerated”.

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense**/2016**/07/the_rnc_and_dnc_protesters_field_guide_to_circumventing_surveillance.html

...Republican and Democratic conventions have a history of strong activist presence, and they’re typically punctuated with hundreds of arrests. The 2004 Republican National Convention in New York led to more than 1,800 arrests. And after the 2012 Democratic convention, the city of Denver losta lawsuit brought on by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado following the indiscriminate mass arrest of more than 100 people during a march.

This year’s conventions could be significantly more contentious. In the shadow of the deadly police shooting in Dallas earlier this month and the one in Baton Rouge just this weekend, Cleveland law enforcement and Ohio state police are on high alert. They’re not working alone. The FBI is in town, along with the Department of Homeland Security and a full alphabet soup of federal and local agencies. The city prepared space in the jail to process as many as 1,000 people in a single day.

While most people won’t get arrested, everyone in the area will get caught in law enforcement’s surveillance dragnet.Federal officials have the equipment to intercept calls and texts. Ohio police and the FBI have cameras that run through face recognition databases. They can monitor location data, as well as specific cars. (It’s not clear that all of this technology will be used during the conventions, but protesters should be aware of all possibilities.) Furthermore, hosting a national political convention usually gets a city a $50 million grant from Congress to buy equipment it may need, which typically includes a wide array of cameras, surveillance trailers, and other high-tech spy gear that can stay with a police department for years. Furthermore, according to the ACLU of Ohio,under the city’s flash mob law, if you show up to an event you learned about on social media “to commit a crime,” your cellphone is classified as a criminal tool, and you can be arrested for using your phone.

In the months leading up to the RNC, the city of Cleveland released a PowerPoint detailing a local coordination center established just for the convention that receives the feeds from more than 100 cameras installed throughout the city. All that information is likely also processed at the:{ :(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{Northeast Ohio Regional Fusion Center:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:, an information clearinghouse set up by the Department of Homeland Security that shares intelligence between the National Security Agency, the FBI, and state and local law enforcement, all in the name of preventing terrorism. DHS runs 78 fusion centers across the country.

If you’re in the Cleveland area this week or plan on attending the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia at the end of the month, expect to be surveilled, whether or not you’re taking part in demonstrations. If you do plan to protest, here are some tips for staying safe and coming prepared—not only to protect your privacy, but also to document in case something goes wrong.

Lock your phone

While the police will likely confiscate your phone if you’re arrested, according to the Supreme Court, they’re still supposed to get a warrant to search it if the screen is locked.

If you have an iPhone, you should create a strong passcode (the newest iOS requires a minimum of six characters, but you can also switch to a custom alphanumeric passcode that can be longer) and disable the biometric Touch ID function. Some courts have ruled that law enforcement can force you to use your fingerprint to unlock a phone, but they can’t force you to reveal your password.

Just go to Settings then Touch ID & Passcode and enter an unpredictable alphanumeric code. Apple also gives the option of bricking your phone after 10 failed passcode attempts. Enable this feature if you have sensitive information you don’t want seen if your phone is seized or stolen; choose Erase Data in the Touch ID & Passcode window.

If you have an Android phone, go to Settings then Security and choose to use a PIN or password to lock your screen. Don’t pick anything predictable, such as 8888 or your cat’s name. Make it something you’ll remember and at least six characters long, but try not to use personal information or recycle a password from another account.

For both iPhone and Android users, be sure to revoke access to all notifications when your screen is locked. If the police take your phone, you don’t want them reading texts on your lock screen. And if you’re at a protest, opt to have your phone lock immediately in case it gets confiscated.

Use encrypted messaging

Texting is often the best way to stay coordinated, but since the RNC and DNC are both such high-profile political events, it’s best to assume law enforcement will be using a piece of technology called a stingray to surveil calls and texts. Stingrays mimic cellphone towers to trick phones to link to them, enabling police to collect location information and data on who you called and when and for how long. While law enforcement is extremely secretive about how they use the tech, documents obtained by the ACLU show stingrays are capableof recording the content of your texts and calls. The ACLU has been mapping known uses of stingrays by state and local police, but it doesn’t currently have information about their use in Ohio—and federal agencies definitely have them.

https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/surveillance-technologies/stingray-tracking-devices-whos-got-them?redirect=map/stingray-tracking-devices-whos-got-them CA tx

The best way to circumvent fake cell tower surveillance by using an encrypted communication app. IMessages are encrypted end-to-end, but only if the person you’re texting has an iPhone too. If you want ensure that all texts and calls are encrypted no matter whether the person on the other end is an Android or an iPhone user, download Signal and have everyone you plan to text during the event do the same. Signal is a free app that encrypts your texts and phone calls, as well as photos and videos you send, making them unreadable to an unintended recipient. And importantly for activists in the field, there’s an option to start encrypted group messaging that will also be unreadable if collected by surveillance tech.

Be prepared to film

Finally, filming the police is a First Amendment activity and can help protect victims of violence from wrongful accusations. If you see something happening that you think needs to be documented, it’s your right to capture it. You can use your phone’s camera, but be sure to save the footage and share it with someone or on social media right away in case your phone gets confiscated or damaged during a confrontation.

It’s also not uncommon for a nervous or angry police officer to try totake your phone or stop you if you’re filming, which means two things: a) be sure you set your lock screen to activate immediately if you think you might film, and b) consider airing a live broadcast. If you’re a Facebook user, you can livestream on Facebook via the mobile app. If you prefer Twitter, livestream using Periscope, but you’ll want to download the app and link it to your Twitter account before you go to your event.

This isn’t comprehensive—law enforcement may have other technologies and methods that we don’t know about. At the same time, some of this may sound a bit paranoid. But if you’re going to protest at the conventions, you should prepare to protect yourself, given the charged atmosphere between demonstrators and law enforcement right now.

Oh—don’t forget sunscreen.

This article is part of Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/pennsylvania-man-arrested-after-asking-sen-pat-toomey-question

Pennsylvania man who asked a terrible question at a town hall event held by Sen. Pat Toomey found that the worst response isn’t derision — it’s arrest.

Simon Radecki, 28, was arrested last week after trying to ask Toomey a question about DACA,using the Republican’s daughter as his hook. Radecki wanted to make personal the plight of immigrants, who have reportedly been rounded up by immigration officials. That plan backfired on him, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported:

After thanking Mr. Toomey for appearing, Mr. Radecki said, “We’ve been here for a while. You probably haven’t seen the news. Can you confirm whether or not your daughter Bridget has been kidnapped?”

The ensuing four-second pause was punctuated by Mr. Toomey uttering “uhhhh,” before Mr. Radecki added, “The reason I ask is because that’s the reality of families that suffer deportation . . .”

As Mr. Toomey called that a “ridiculous question,” Mr. Radecki himself was removed by Bethlehem police, who later said he’d be charged with disorderly conduct and disrupting a public meeting.

Radecki’s question — he admitted that he went “off script” and didn’t ask the question he initially submitted — brings to mind the famous question asked to Michael Dukakis during a 1988 presidential debate: “If [your wife] were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?”

But the difference is that the questioner, Bernard Shaw, wasn’t arrested for his question. And even though a Toomey spokesperson called the question “inherently threatening,” Radecki wasn’t arrested for making threats. He was arrested for disturbing a meeting, but civil liberties experts say that didn’t happen.

“He didn’t disturb the meeting,” said an ACLU leader told the newspaper. “He was trying to ask a question.”

The Bethlehem Police Department said no charges would be filed against Radecki. But even the thought of it — charges for “disrupting a public meeting” — should send shivers down the spine of civil libertarians, no matter how bad the question may be....

DN BB

I should note, what’s really important about all of this is that the Team Themis thing was actually stumbled upon by several different people at once. This was a great example, one of several great examples, of crowdsourced journalism. Later on, we went on to document, you know, further abuses both by HBGary and by Palantir,showed that Palantir was lying when they claimed they—you know, this was a low-level person only that was involved in this, and they didn’t—you know, they didn’t approve of it, when in fact their chief counsel and a number of other employees were in on those emails.

There were other projects, as well, that are also, I think, very indicative not just in what it says about how the state operates with these interests, but also what they can do now. Persona Managementwas one particularly frightening technology, that involves fake online personas, that the military—CENTCOM, in this case—can operate. These are provided by private companies, which can turn around and sell them to whoever else, including foreign despots, immoral corporate actors across the world. We’ve seen this over and over again with additional hacks that have shown, you know, how Tunisia, for instance, was being assisted by the French government in repressing its citizens. We see a company called Qorvis in D.C. that assists Bahrain in smearing dissidents.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/feds-want-1-million-anti-trump-ip-addresses-to-prove-riot-conspiracy

Federal prosecutors want identifying information on more than 1 million people who visited an anti-Trump website.

The website-hosting company DreamHost must turn over records related to visitors to disruptj20.org, according to a warrant issued last month. . Disrupt J20 was a hub for people who planned to Trump’s J inauguration in Washington, D.C. and hosted maps, legal resources, and art for demonstrators. But after some protesters broke windows and damaged cars, police swept up over 200 people in a mass arrest, including journalists and self-described peaceful protesters.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. has aggressively prosecuted the defendants, indicting more than 200 people on riot charges, in some cases solely on the basis that some people wore “black or dark colored clothing,” or chanted anti-capitalist slogans.

But prosecutors are attempting to prove that demonstrators conspired to riot in advance. Their investigation has led to the seizure over 100 defendants’ phones, at least two of which investigators have been able to crack, giving them access to call logs, messages, web history, and pictures, The Daily Beast previously reported. The court has also subpoenaed records from the Apple account of a non-defendant who is friends with a defendant, a person close to the case told The Daily Beast. The U.S. Attorney’s office declined to comment on this claim.

And last month, the case expanded to the million-plus IP addresses that visited the Disrupt J20 website. DreamHost emailed the owner of disruptj20.org to break the news last week.

“DreamHost was served with a warrant from the US Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C. regarding your website disruptj20.org,” the email sent to The Daily Beast read. “We initially refused to produce the materials. On July 28th we were served with a ‘Motion to Compel’ and we will be filing arguments in the next few days.”

The email to Disrupt J20 followed nearly a month of private efforts by DreamHost to protect its userdata. The U.S. Attorney’s Office demanded the company turn over “logs showing connections related to the website … including records of session times and durations, log files, dates and times of connecting, methods of connecting, and ports,” the warrant, which DreamHost posted online on Monday read.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/has-liberal-media-enabled-nationwide-crackdown-trumps-political-enemies

...

The Crackdown

The Trump administration’s crackdown began on Inauguration Day, January 20, in Washington, D.C., when police staged a mass-arrest of 231 anti-Trump protesters. With cumulative charges of inciting or urging to riot, conspiracy to riot and destruction of property, the “J20” arrestees face sentences of 75 years in prison.

Last month, officials intensified pressure on the activist community, as officers served North Carolina anarchist Katie Yow a subpoena to appear before a grand jury investigating an attack on a GOP office in Hillsborough. Yow has refused to comply, likening it to “fishing expeditions to attempt to coerce testimony on First Amendment-protected information." The North Carolina GOP is calling for Yow’s arrest pending cooperation.

The FBI is also investigating Jayden Sevino, who has similarly refused to cooperate with the state. She likens her case to Yow's: “These seemingly unrelated cases appear to be parts of separate investigations, but the parallels paint a picture of increased and possibly coordinated targeted repression of anarchists in this part of the country.”

On July 18, 2017, police arrested California activist Yvette Felarca. An organizer with the antifascist group By Any Means Necessary, Felarca is outspoken about confronting violent white supremacists in the streets. She has been charged with assault, participating in a riot and inciting a riot in connection with clashes between fascists and antifascist counter-protesters in Sacramento on June 26 last year. Fellow counter-protesters Porfiro Paz and Mike Williams were arrested during the standoff as well.

Amidst these arrests, civil rights attorneys and activists have sharply rebuked law enforcement’s militant defense of alt-right demonstrations. During a June 4 rally in Portland, Oregon, which came a week after a racially motivated double-murder, police cleared a mostly peaceful counter-protest with tear gas, rubber bullets and pepper spray, while facilitating the safe exit of alt-right demonstrators. A similar incident occurred on July 8 during a separate Klan rally in Charlottesville, which preceded city's Unite the Right rally.

'State Repression Is Expected'

Escalating tensions last month, the New Jersey Department of Homeland Security has listed Antifa as an “anarchist extremist” group, one of the categories named alongside white supremacists as a “moderate threat” in the 2017 “Terrorism Threat Analysis.” On their website, DHS cites antifascist tactics like doxxing fascist leaders and protesting fascist events, omitting the alt-right’s recent string of murders, bomb threats, and targeted harassment of women and people of color.

The Trump administration's targets are not limited to the Antifa movement. Daryle Lamont Jenkins, founder of the One People's Project, believes the administration is going after a larger number of groups that line up with the enemies of the far right, including, “the targeting of Muslims and the spying on Mosques, they are already targeted as terrorists, and of course black people being profiled.” According to the anarchist website It’s Going Down, which has drawn the ire of far-right groups for publishing articles by Antifa and anti-racist groups, “law enforcement seeks to neutralize forces which create disorder, which would be us, because the far-right people are getting permits and everything.”

“When it comes to antifascist work, state repression is expected, since they are doing it to other people,” Jenkins told AlterNet.

The extent of state repression is startling, observes Joe Lowndes, a professor at the University of Oregon who researches the modern far-right and its ties to the U.S. government. “There is of course a long history in the U.S. of criminalizing the left,” Lowndes told AlterNet. “But the intensity of the attack on Antifa is ominous. It looks like the coordination between the FBI, DHS and local police departments put in place to contain Occupy and then Black Lives Matter is being deployed against Antifa with alarming speed and velocity.” [ https://www.jacobinmag.com/author/joseph-lowndes/ ]

'Make Hay While the Sun Is Shining'

Despite a recent surge in far-right violence against trans people and Muslims, including the bombing of a mosque in Minneapolis on August 6, the Trump administration has resolved to focus on “Islamist terrorism” by cutting all grants associated with the Countering Violent Extremism program that extends support to communities threatened by white supremacists. Trump’s tweet banning trans people from military service has signaled further targeting of the LGBT community.

The refocusing of counterterrorism efforts on Muslims has only emboldened fascists and radical right-wing groups. In Seattle, a Trump supporter shot a member of the IWW attempting to de-escalate tensions during a January 20 protest of former Breitbart journalist Milo Yiannopoulos. Since then, alt-right associated groups like the Red Elephants and Proud Boys have attacked leftists, disrupted left-wing events, and vandalized socialist spaces in Southern California, New Mexico, Florida, Texas, Washington, D.C., New York, and Nova Scotia.

Law enforcement has also coordinated with the far right to suppress left-wing antifascists. In late May, 28-year-old professor Eric Clanton was arrested and charged with attacking a man with a bike lock at a rally in Berkeley, California, on the basis of dubious information from the online message board 4chan, a home base for the alt-right. On June 4 in Portland, Oregon, an armed militia and federal law enforcement worked in concert, as DHS officers called for assistance from a member of a local Patriot group in arresting an antifascist.

James Buchal, head of the Multnomah County GOP, gave a recruitment speech at the latter rally and has since officially declared his intention to invite Three Percenters and Oath Keepers to provide official security for Republican Party events. The event’s organizer, Islamophobic and anti-LGBT activist Joey Gibson, has led a number of other rallies in the Pacific Northwest since Trump’s election, including a recent gathering calling on DHS to make Antifa a terrorist organization.

Reflecting on these developments in his alt-right podcast Fash the Nation late last month, Mike Peinovich declared, “[Trump’s] going to give us space to operate, and frankly, it is space to destroy.” His co-host responded, “Now is the time that we have to make hay while the sun shines… while these investigations of ‘domestic terrorist groups’ are not being funded by the government, they’re not being pushed by the Department of Homeland Security.”

There are mounting signals that far-right groups and the Trump administration are open to collaboration. Activists have pointed to the roles of Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller in the White House as an indication of a tacit partnership. The former head of alt-right media platform Breitbart, Bannonis linked to an international reactionary Catholic network and cites fascists like Julius Evola and Alexander Dugin as some of his most formative influences. Miller and alt-right leader Richard Spencer were close while members of the Conservative Union at Duke University, according to Spencer, and worked together to bring notorious white nationalist Peter Brimelow to campus for a debate on immigration in 2007. More recently, White House advisor Sebastian Gorka has played down the threat of white nationalists.

'They’re Coming For You Too'

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Pacific Northwest correspondent David Neiwert told AlterNet that there is reason to be concerned about the “symbiotic relationship” between government officials, the alt-right and militia groups.

“Trump is such a clear and unmistakable authoritarian leader. He has a clear social dominance orientation and has formed a lethal alliance with right-wing authoritarians,” Neiwert said. “A lot of them are discussing strategies. A lot of them are ready to take up arms and defend Trump.”

Similarly, Jenkins adds, liberal groups have been all-too-willing to throw Antifa and anti-racist activists under the Trump train to preserve the status quo. “Liberal groups cling to institutions, and just like any conservative they feel the need to maintain these institutions for better or for worse,” Jenkins said.

“Because we buck that and say we have to fight back against these guys, those liberals will actually help this current administration even while denouncing it.”

According to Neiwert, who has been to numerous far-right protests contested by antifascists, there is a concomitant tendency in the media to pursue the campaign against Antifa. “The media is very happy to portray these guys as violent thugs,” he said. “My own observation is that very few of them are violent thugs. In fact very few of them act thuggishly, but they react angrily to certain provocations. So there is a risk of violence. I would say that the vast majority of Antifa people that I’ve observed have been nonviolent and are just there to voice their opposition.”

Despite this, recent articles in the Atlantic and Politico have pointed to a growing consensus condemning antifascist community defense as responsible for increased far-right violence. To the website It’s Going Down, the pattern is clear: “The right is victimizing itself and vilifying us. There’s a reason why we’re being demonized at the same time as we’re being repressed.”

It’s Going Down's message for liberals is simple: “They’re coming for you too.”

scotus 5

whew

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/five-face-sentencing-monday-for-supreme-court-disruption/2017/07/23/54f9a392-6e38-11e7-9c15-177740635e83_story.html

...U.S. prosecutors had asked U.S. District Judge Christopher R. “Casey” Cooper in Washington to order 10-day jail sentences for the defendants, members of an organization called 99Rise. They had stood and spoken one-by-one just after the court was gaveled into session April 1, 2015, about a year after the justices had struck down overall limits on campaign contributions.

“Money is not speech. One person, one vote!” shouted defendant Matthew Kresling, 43, of Los Angeles, before being led away in 2015. David Bronstein, 30, of the District, sang, “We who believe in freedom shall not rest.” A third defendant demanded that the court overturn its campaign finance decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

**[Law restricting protests during Supreme Court proceedings is upheld]

Cooper said that he appreciated the defendants’ commitment, public participation and community contributions and that the sentence had nothing to do with their views or exercise of free speech, only “how, where and when” they exercised that right.

...Immediately after the protests, a court audio recording captured Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. saying, “Oh, please,” and Associate Justice Antonin Scalia grumbling, “Give them stiff, stiff sentences.”

[Protest at the Supreme Court. Only problem? Few reporters were there to see it.]

Defendants, whopleaded guilty May 4, had asked to be sentenced to the 30 hours of jail time they had served after their arrest, and after Monday’s sentencing voiced sentiments ranging from relief to irritation at the government resources spent on the case against them....

lest we forget:

http://www.alternet.org/environment/environmental-and-land-activist-killings-hit-all-time-high

Last year was the deadliest on record for environmental activists, according to new figures released by the UK NGO Global Witness.

The organization’s latest report documents a “crisis” spreading globally as the number of countries in which killings were recorded countries shot up from 16 to 24. 60% of deaths occurred in Latin America, which means that the region remains the most dangerous one in the world in which to oppose environmental degradation.

Yet again, Brazil, which has witnessed particularly bloody land conflicts in recent months, ranks first with 49 murders. Nicaragua has the highest rate of killings per capita: 11. And in Colombia, figures hit an all-time high: 37.

“This report tells a very grim story. The battle to protect the planet is rapidly intensifying and the cost can be counted in human lives”, says Ben Leather, a campaigner at Global Witness.

In Asia, resistance to big mining projects in such countries as India and the Philippines has been met with state-sanctioned repression and violence. India has witnessed a three-fold increase in killings and thePhilippines,where 28 activists were killed last year, stands out as the most lethal country in the region.

Logging and agriculture, including extensive cattle ranching, are two other main drivers of conflict, the report says.

Peace is dangerous for Colombia

Last year, as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) gave up control of swathes of rural territory as part of a historic peace process, deforestation and environmental degradation increased.

Deforestation rose 44 percent in 2016, encompassing an area of 690 square miles, as criminal groups moved into areas vacated by the FARC and engaged in illegal logging and mining, according to figures released by the Colombian government’s Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies (IDEAM). The Amazonian regions of Putumayo, Caquetá, Meta and Guaviare, in the south, were the worst affected.

“They [the FARC] weren’t environmentalists, but they did regulate activity, and—since they had the guns—people complied”, activist Susana Muhamad recently told *The Guardian*.Under their watch, they limited deforestation by civilians to 2 hectares per year, so as to maintain forest cover which helped their protection from government forces.

Along with rising deforestation, killings of those defending land and the environment have also increased. “The peace process in Colombia has paradoxically fueled more violence against those who defend their land and the environment against destructive industries”, says Billy Kyte, leader of Global Witness’ land and environmental defenders campaign.

Kyte explains that communities returning to reclaim lands lost during the armed conflict are now facing paramilitary groups, large landowners and criminal gangs eager to profit from Colombia’s rich natural resources.

It is the Colombian government’s responsibility to promote the rule of law in rural Colombia and make areas safe for communities, Kyte adds, before promoting environmentally degrading development projects.

Earlier this year, at least one expert questioned Global Witness’ methodology in a special report profiling the situation in Honduras. He argued that it conflated killings of environmentalists and victims of agrarian conflict.

Methodology questioned

“Global Witness’ report doesn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny,” José Herrero, vice-president of the conservation foundation FUCSA, arguing that the “confusion” of the categories of victims in the report inflated the figures.

Kyte, who was intimidated and threatened with arrest for promoting the report in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, defends Global Witness’ data collection methods: “We compile data on land and environmental defenders – people who defend land or environmental rights. Our definition and criteria for inclusion is and always has been very clear – we don’t just record killings on environmentalists,” he says.

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/7/10/headlines/nyt_mexican_govt_surveilled_international_investigators_probing_ayotzinapa_case

The New York Times is reporting that the Mexican government used an Israeli-made spy software to surveila team of international investigators who had been dispatched to Mexico to investigate the high-profile disappearance of 43 students at the Ayotzinapa teachers’ college in Guerrero in 2014. The international investigators included some of Latin America’s most prominent lawyers, who had been granted a form of diplomatic immunity to carry out their investigation. The Times has also reported the Mexican government also used the spying software called Pegasus to spy on Mexican human rights activists and journalists.

activist suppress

On June 19, Louisiana’s Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards signed a bill into law which will enter his state into the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC).

EMACis the compact which last year gave out-of-state cops the legal authority to flood into North Dakota during the protests against the Dakota Access pipeline, owned by Energy Transfer Partners. The Louisiana bill, SB 151, was signed as Energy Transfer Partners has another pipeline proposed to run through Louisiana, the Bayou Bridge pipeline. Bayou Bridge is an extension of Dakota Access, set to run from Nederland, Texas, to refinery markets and export terminals in Louisiana.

The compact, signed into existence by President Bill Clinton in 1996, was created in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew with the intent of expediting and bolsteringnatural disaster response efforts. But the federal legislation creating the compact also has language allowing for a governor of a state to issue an emergency order in the case of the rise of an “insurgencyor enemy attack.”

https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/06/22/exclusive-pa-lawmaker-working-curb-pipeline-protestors-tied-shadow-lobbyists-company-behind-project

recent intensification in protests againstWilliams Partners’ planned Atlantic Sunrise pipeline in Pennsylvania prompted a state senator to propose legislation aimed at limiting demonstrations.}:

Last month, Pennsylvania Republican Senator Scott Martin announced his intention to introduce legislation that would pass the costs of law enforcement responding to protests onto the demonstrators. Martin also helped introduce a different bill that would criminalize protests at natural gas facilities.

A DeSmog investigation has found, however, that Martin is intimately tied to an obscure group of lobbyists recently hired by Williams Partners.

State Legislators Against Pipeline Protestors

The Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Williams Partners plans to construct the Atlantic Sunrise pipeline through its subsidiary, Transco. The $3 billion 200-mile project, which would transport fracked gasfrom the state’s northern shales southward to the company’s interconnecting pipeline systems, received federal approval earlier this year but still requires several state permits.

Grassroots and citizen opposition to the pipeline, which has been ongoing since the project’s original proposal in 2014, has intensified in recent months. In February, activists built an encampment on the planned route near Conestoga in Lancaster county, which Scott Martin represents.

Led by the group Lancaster Against Pipelines, they signaled their willingness to engage in nonviolent direct action.

Yet in early May, a day after arranging a conference call between local first responders and North Dakota law enforcement officials who dealt with the Dakota Access pipeline protests, Senator Martin published a legislative memo detailing his plan to propose a bill penalizing protestors. The memo, which directly referenced the Dakota Access pipeline demonstrations, is aimed at “shielding taxpayers against the additional costs resulting from protests.” Martin is currently seeking cosponsors for his legislation.

Two weeks earlier, Martin was among a group of senators advancing a bill sponsored by Republican Senator Mike Regan seeking to essentially criminalize civil disobedience and other forms of demonstrations at critical infrastructure sites, including gas pipelines and facilities. According to the bill, those who “impede or inhibit” the operations of the facility will be charged with a felony, face imprisonment, and pay hefty fines.

Williams Hires Secretive Group with Ties to Sen. Martin

A recent disclosure by Transco to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) reveals that last year the company hired an entity generically called the Pennsylvania Advocacy Group LLC.

From Transco’s latest financial report to FERC, showing a payment to Pennsylvania Advocacy Group LLC

State corporate records reveal that Pennsylvania Advocacy Group LLC was created in 2014 by five lobbyists from two different firms: Alan Novak, Angela Leopold, and Dan Hayward from Novak Strategic Advisors, and David Feidt and Michael Musser from Community Networking Strategies LLC.

Novak, Leopold, Hayward, and Feidt are also long-time top Pennsylvania republican operatives. Musser runs a political action committee that supports politicians from both parties.

Although it does not have a website, state corporate records indicate that Community Networking Strategies is a subsidiary of the Harrisburg-based legal and lobbying firm McNees, Wallace & Nurick. While Community Networking Strategies is not officially registered as a lobbying firm in Pennsylvania, state disclosure records show that McNees, Wallace & Nurick is currently lobbying for several fossil fuel entities, including Gulf Oil Ltd, Industrial Energy Consumers of Pennsylvania, and Sunoco Logistics.

Scott Martin is closely tied to Community Networking Strategies. According to his state senate financial disclosures, Martin worked at Community Networking Strategies immediately before starting his tenure as legislator in January this year.

Disclosing a position of “vice president,” Martin described his professional activities in the company as “business development.” The address he provided on the disclosure matches McNees, Wallace & Nurick’s address for the firm’s Lancaster Pennsylvania branch.

img

From PA Senator Scott Martin’s financial disclosure, showing his work for the lobbying firm Community Networking Resources, a subsidiary of McNees, Wallace & Nurick

Martin’s LinkedIn profile states that he worked for Community Networking Strategies between January 2016 and January 2017.

Community Networking Resources Fundraises for Senator Martin

Apart for its business lobbying, Community Networking Resources also engages in political campaigning. According to Pennsylvania campaign finance records, in recent years the company has provided political support and fundraising services – including for Scott Martin.

Michael Musser, whose two hats include Community Networking Resources and Pennsylvania Advocacy Group, runs a PAC called Better Government for PA. A review of the PAC’s records show that since 2008 it has contributed over $36,000 to Martin’s PAC, Friends of Scott Martin. At the same time, Friends of Scott Martin hired Musser’s Community Networking Resources on several occasions for fundraising services when Martin served as Lancaster County Commissioner.

Lobbyist David Feidt, also of both Community Networking Resources and Pennsylvania Advocacy Group, is registered as the treasurer of Better Government for PA PAC.

By contracting with Pennsylvania Advocacy Group, Transco can potentially benefit from its deep ties to the state’s GOP. From the Novak Strategic Advisors side of the firm, Alan Novak is former chairperson of the Pennsylvania Republican Party, while Dan Hayward served as the party’s Executive Director. Angela Leopold served in the past in the Republican State Committee of Pennsylvania.

From the Community Networking Resources side, David Feidt currently serves as chairperson of the Dauphin County Republican Committee. Feidt’s twitter account continuously promotes the use of natural gas, including support for the Atlantic Sunrise pipeline.

In a conversation with DeSmog, Michael Musser confirmed that Pennsylvania Advocacy Group was formed jointly by the firms Community Networking Resources and Novak Strategic Advisors, but said his involvement in the company is minimal. He referred DeSmog to Dan Hayward from Novak Startegic Advisors. Hayward did not reply to several requests for comment. A spokesperson for Transco did not provide comment either.

Senator Martin denies his previous work for Community Networking Resources had any effect on his legislative efforts concerning pipeline protests. In an email to DeSmog, Martin responded to a series of questions:

Have you ever provided work for Transco as part of Pennsylvania Advocacy Group and/or in any other capacity?

“I have never provided work for Transco in any capacity and haven't done work for Pennsylvania Advocacy Group.”

As senator, were you ever contacted by employees of Pennsylvania Advocacy Group and/or Community Networking Resources and/or Novak Strategic Advisors in relation to Transco's gas projects?

“As Senator, I was never contacted by these groups in relation to Transco's gas projects.”

Did your ties to Community Networking Resources have any effect on your recent legislative efforts related to pipeline protesting?

“No, Community Networking Resources had no effect or involvement on my protestor legislation being worked on. I started that initiative to try to be proactive in our community having seen the aftermath and costs of the NDAPL protests. Having been heavily involved with Emergency Management as a commissioner and concerned about costs and impacts on our community is what motivated me to look at this legislation.”

Do you currently receive any compensation from Community Networking Resources and/or its parent firm, McNees, Wallace & Nurick?

“I receive no compensation from any source except for my job as State Senator.”

Can you describe your relationship with Mike Musser of Community Networking Resources? According to state campaign finance records, Musser's PAC contributed to your PAC in the past, while Community Networking Resources provided political consulting and fundraising for your PAC.

“Mike helped organize my annual fundraisers throughout my time as county commissioner. I was employed by CNR [Community Networking Resources] for a year after I left being a county commissioner, before starting with the Senate.”

http://www.alternet.org/activism/indigenous-woman-facing-federal-charges-protesting-dakota-access-pipeline

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/5/2/headlines/j20_inauguration_day_protesters_facing_up_to_75_years_in_prison

In Washington, D.C., prosecutors have filed a slew of additional felony and misdemeanor charges against more than 200 people who were arrested at protests during President Trump’s inauguration on January 20. While most of the protesters were already charged with felony rioting, the new charges also include inciting or urging to riot, conspiracy to riot and multiple counts of destruction of property. The legal support group Defend J20 Resistancesays the new charges mean protesters are now facing up to 75 years in prison.

http://www.alternet.org/activism/unprecedented-court-escalation-trump-protesters-could-be-facing-decades-prison-their

Nearly six months after Donald Trump was sworn into office, more than 200 protesters who gathered in Washington, D.C. to protest his inauguration are facing felony charges that carry sentences of 70 to 80 years.

According to Al Jazeera, the 212 protesters were arrested by the Metropolitan Police Department and initially charged with felony rioting, a crime that carries a 10-year prison sentence and a $25,000 fine. On April 27, the Superior Court of the District of Columbia added additional charges that include urging to riot, conspiracy to riot and destruction of property.

The possibility of long-term prison sentences for these protesters could have a chilling effect on participation in future rallies, particularly at a time of heightened levels of anti-Trump activism. While it's unclear whether police departments will respond to large-scale political protests in a similar fashion, a dangerous precedent has been set. These legal actions may also infringe on the demonstrators' First Amendment rights, as they directly target anti-Trump protest movements.

Olivia Alsip, a 23-year-old from Chicago, told Al Jazeera she never envisioned participating in the anti-Trump protests on inauguration day could leave her facing an 80-year prison sentence: "It seems that innocent until proven guilty is a falsehood—all the way from the prosecution and police to the people who had previously supported me in my activism.”

Alsip and the other defendants face the additional strain of having to pay for travel expenses to and from Washington for each of their court hearings before they go to trial. "Most of us don't have a whole lot of money," she said. "Generally we are fighting the rich because we are economically or politically disadvantaged and don't have a lot of capital."

As political protests and civil disobedience reach their highest levels since the 1960s, 18 states have responded by proposing over 30 bills aimed at suppressing demonstrations by increasing and expanding penalties for protesters. A new law in Missouri prohibits protesters from covering their faces with masks or other disguises. Florida, Tennessee, Georgia and Iowa have introduced bills that call for increased penalties for blocking traffic and demonstrating on private property.

The American Civil Liberties Union has called these new laws “unconstitutional,” vowing to “fight in statehouses against any bill that violates the First Amendment.”

While several defendants have pleaded guilty to shorten their sentences, about 130 of the defendants have joined a "points of unity" agreement pledging to reject any potential plea deals and cooperation with prosecutors. On May 26, 21 defendants filed motions to have their cases dismissed.

Following the January 20 arrests, lawyers for some of the arrested protesters filed a class action lawsuit against the MPD alleging that law enforcement engaged in excessive use of force and conducted false arrests. The Office of Police Complaints, a D.C. government agency, has called for an independent investigation evaluating the actions of MPD officers that day.

https://boingboing.net/2017/05/27/provocateurs-and-drones.html

Tigerswan, a secretive private mercenary company, was hired by Energy Transfer Partners to run campaigns against Dakota Access Pipeline protesters in five states, including states in which they were not licensed to operate -- the measures they deployed were developed as counterterrorism tactics, including

Tigerswan prepared reports that called the indigenous-led protests "an ideologically driven insurgency with a strong religious component" and compared them to jihadi fighters. The reports were leaked by a Tigerswan contractorto The Intercept, who supplemented the with thousands of pages of documents secured through public records requests.

Tigerswan appears to have also run an online disinformation campaign, "creating and distributing content critical of the protests on social media."

Tigerswan conducted substantial infiltration and provocateur operations against the water protectors. These infiltrators engaged in "exploitation of ongoing native versus non-native rifts, and tribal rifts between peaceful and violent elements."

Perhaps one of the most striking revelations of the documents is the level of hostility displayed by TigerSwan toward the water protectors. TigerSwan consistently describes the peaceful demonstrators using military and tactical language more appropriate for counterterrorism operations in an armed conflict zone. At times, the military language verges on parody, as when agents write of protesters “stockpiling signs” or when they discuss the “caliber” of paintball pellets. More often, however, the way TigerSwan discusses protesters as “terrorists,” their direct actions as “attacks,” and the camps as a “battlefield,” reveals how the protesters’ dissent was not only criminalized but treated as a national security threat. A March 1 report states that protesters’ “operational weakness allows TS elements to further develop and dictate the battlespace.”

In one internal report dated May 4, a TigerSwan operative describes an effort to amass digital and ground intelligence that would allow the company to “find, fix, and eliminate” threats to the pipeline — an eerie echo of “find, fix, finish,” a military term used by special forces in the U.S. government’s assassination campaign against terrorist targets.

TigerSwan pays particular attention to protesters of Middle Eastern descent. A September 22 situation report argues that “the presence of additional Palestinians in the camp, and the movement’s involvement with Islamic individuals is a dynamic that requires further examination.” The report acknowledges that “currently there is no information to suggest terrorist type tactics or operations,” but nonetheless warns that “with the current limitation on information flow out of the camp, it cannot be ruled out.”

LEAKED DOCUMENTS REVEAL COUNTERTERRORISM TACTICS USED AT STANDING ROCK TO “DEFEAT PIPELINE INSURGENCIES” [Alleen Brown, Will Parrish and Alice Speri/The Intercept]

...

http://www.alternet.org/media/jailed-facebook-post-how-us-police-target-critics-arrest-and-prosecution

Robert Peralta’s life was derailed by a single Facebook comment.

When the San Franciscan saw a well-known local activist had posted about being “choked” and “slammed” by a sheriff’s deputy at city hall, Peralta fired off a short response: “Wow, brother they wanna hit our general. It’s time to strike back. Let’s burn this motherfucker’s house down.”

Peralta, a 35-year-old activist and musician, didn’t think twice about the 23 January Facebook thread until two months later, when he learned that police had issued a warrant for his arrest – accusing him of threatening to kill law enforcement.

“Why waste all of the county’s money on this?” said Peralta, who turned himself in and was booked into jail, despite having no criminal record. “You’re going to take me to jail … for Facebook?”

Peralta’s felony criminal case is part of what civil rights campaigners say is a disturbing trend of police and prosecutors targeting activists for social media posts, arresting users over innocuous political messages that constitute free speech.

“For a country that purports to be guided by democracy and guided by civil rights, this is a very dangerous and very slippery slope,” said Malkia Cyril, the executive director of the Center for Media Justice. “Black activists are expressing anger, rage, hatred even about the conditions that threaten their daily lives, and they are being held liable for how they express that anger, even though they’ve committed no crime.”

Peralta’s charges have come at a time of heightened concerns about threats against law enforcement following a number of police killings – most notably a Dallas shooter who shot five officers last year. Donald Trump has also lamented a so-called “war on police”, and there has been a wave of “Blue Lives Matter” bills seeking to classify police as a protected class. Government statistics, however, suggest there is no surge in violence against police.

Critics say that digital surveillance is also plagued by racial biases, with law enforcement devoting significant resources to spying on specific activist communities, while ignoring complaints from minorities and women who face violent online abuse.

When Peralta commented on the Facebook post about alleged police violence in January – which included a photo of the officer’s arms around the activist’s neck – he said he knew nothing about the identity of the law enforcement official.

“On Facebook, you comment on so many things in minutes,” he said in a recent interview. “I didn’t even mean it.”

Robert Peralta’s Facebook post. Photograph: Facebook

He later learned that an investigator had obtained a search warrant for his Facebook and was able to comb through his personal account.

Peralta thought it was a simple misunderstanding he could clear up by talking to police. But instead, prosecutors jailed him, saying the threat was “made so unequivocally, unconditionally, immediately and specifically as to convey to the person threatened a gravity of purpose and an immediate prospect of execution”.

His bail was set at $25,000.

“In jail, you just want to get out. You can’t deal with the environment,” he said. “I was not feeling like I was treated like a human.”

A friend helped Peralta post an initial $750 payment on the bail so he could be released, and eventually prosecutors agreed to dismiss the charge in exchange for Peralta giving a presentation to youth about responsible social media use.

Although he is on track to have the case wiped from his record, the prosecution has taken a serious toll on his life, Peralta said. He is still on the hook for $2,500 and is now paying monthly installments that are difficult to afford, given that he has a fixed income from disability payments. The sheriff’s office also seized his phone, which has his music on it, and won’t return it until the case is formally dismissed later this year.

“I’m still dealing with the repercussions,” he said.

A spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office noted that Peralta apologized to the deputy, adding, “It’s an excellent resolution to the case.”

Alex Bastian, spokesman for the San Francisco district attorney’s office, which prosecuted the case, noted that family members of the deputy had reported Peralta’s Facebook comment. He added in an email: “The first amendment is very sacred to us. At times, people make statements that infringe on another’s freedom to live free from fear. We are always striving to find the right balance between those two important considerations.”

Activists said Peralta’s story is not unique. After the Dallas police shootings last year, there was a spike in arrests across the country of people who criticized police on Facebook and Twitter, according to the Intercept. In March, police won a warrant to search a Facebook page of a Dakota Access pipeline protest group, leading to an ACLU challenge.

Chris Wahmhoff, a 38-year-old Michigan activist who was convicted of a felony for an oil pipeline protest action, got into trouble last year when he criticized governor Rick Snyder on Facebook amid the Flint water crisis, writing: “So when y’all are ready to march in and take his ass across the street, I have my torch, I got warm socks. I’m waitin on y’all … ”

Chris Wahmhoff’s Facebook post. Photograph: facebook

The comment led to a probation violation charge for “threatening behavior”, even though Wahmhoff insisted that he was trying to argue for the governor’s arrest – that he be taken from his office across the street to the police department.

“I really felt we should have marched and did whatever we needed to do – non-violently – to get him in jail,” Wahmhoff said in a recent interview, adding that he felt his Facebook was targeted because of his previous protests. “They come after you if you become an activist just for the needs of control. They are going to keep pushing. It’s as simple as a bully.” The charge was later dropped.

Landon Davis, a San Francisco public defender, noted that the courts have granted citizens broad protections to criticize public officials, even if the comments are repulsive or shocking. Davis recently represented a man accused of making racist threats against a black police chief on Twitter, but ultimately convinced a judge to drop the charge on free speech grounds.

“As offensive as his statements were, if you look at the entire context, it was completely political,” said Davis, who is black.

Sometimes when police allege threats, Davis said, it seems they lack any evidence of danger and are simply pursuing charges because they were offended by the comments: “They use that as a basis to prosecute someone either they don’t agree with or don’t like … It can have a huge chilling effect on people’s expression online.”

Sam Levin is a journalist currently living in Oakland, CA, where he works as a staff writer for the East Bay Express.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/04/02/un-americans-right-protest-grave-danger-under-trump

apr 2, some defeated?

At least 19 U.S. states have introduced bills that attack the right to protest since Donald Trump's election as president, an "alarming and undemocratic" trend, U.N. human rights investigators said this week.

Maina Kiai and David Kaye, independent U.N. experts on freedom of peaceful assembly and expression respectively, are calling on lawmakers in the United States to stop the “alarming” trend of “undemocratic” anti-protest bills designed to criminalize or impede the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and expression.

"The trend also threatens to jeopardize one of the United States’ constitutional pillars: free speech," they said in a statement, calling for action to reverse such legislation.

“From the Black Lives Matter movement, to the environmental and Native American movements in opposition to the Dakota Access oil pipeline, and the Women’s Marches, individuals and organizations across society have mobilized in peaceful protests, as it is their right under international human rights law and US law,” Kiai and Kaye said.

The Arizona State Senate in February voted to expand racketeering laws to allow police to arrest anyone involved in a protest and seize their assets, treating demonstrators like organized criminals.
Portland, Oregon activists organizing against police killings of Black men, white nationalist politicians, and the countless systems of racism throughout our local, state, and federal governments **are now considered****“:{domestic terrorists”:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:** by Department of Homeland Security.
In January, North Dakota Republicans proposed legislation to legalize running over protesters if they are blocking roadways. (The legislation failed, for now.)
Missouri lawmakers want to make it illegal to wear a robe, mask or disguise (remarkably, a hoodie would count) to a protest.
In Minnesota, following the police shooting death of Philando Castile, protests caused part of a highway to shut down. Then, at the beginning of the state legislative session, Minnesota legislators drafted bills that **would punish highway protestors** with heavy fines and prison time and would make protesters liable for the policing costs of an entire protest if they individually were convicted of unlawful assembly or public nuisance.
Republicans in Washington state have proposed a plan to reclassify as a felony civil disobedience protests that are deemed “economic terrorism.”
Lawmakers in North Carolina want to make it a crime to heckle lawmakers.
In Indiana, conservatives want to **allow police to use “any means necessary”** to remove activists from a roadway.
Colorado lawmakers are considering a big increase in penalties for environmental protesters. Activists who tamper with oil or gas equipment could be, under the measure, face felony charges and be punished with up to 18 months behind bars and a fine of up to $100,000.
A **bill** before the Virginia state legislature would dramatically increase punishment for people who “unlawfully” assemble after “having been lawfully warned to disperse.” Those who do so could face a year in jail and a $2,500 fine.

The experts took particular issue with the characterization in some bills of protests being “unlawful” or “violent”.

“There can be no such thing in law as a violent protest,” the experts said. “There are violent protesters, who should be dealt with individually and appropriately by law enforcement. One person’s decision to resort to violence does not strip other protesters of their right to freedom of peaceful assembly. This right is not a collective right; it is held by each of us individually,” the experts stressed.

“Peaceful assembly,” they added, “is a fundamental right, not a privilege, and the government has no business imposing a general requirement that people get permission before exercising that right.”

The experts also emphasized that legislators should be mindful of the important role that the right to freedom of peaceful assembly has played in the history of American democracy and the fight for civil rights.

“We call on the US authorities, at the federal and state level, to refrain from enacting legislation that would impinge on the exercise of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, expression and opinion,” they concluded.

http://www.globalpossibilities.org/when-protests-are-powerful-the-powerful-punish-protest/

When people feel powerless — locked out of decision-making, bypassed by real governance — they turn to protest. Especially for the disenfranchised and oppressed, protest is often the only way to exert power and affect policies and practices that impact their lives and communities.

With Donald Trump in the White House and the Republican Party in control of both houses of Congress and a majority of statehouses around the country, protest is now a key avenue of resistance.

We can’t expect an agenda that puts people and planet first to come from above, so people are taking to the streets. The first hundred days of the new administration have been marked as much by protest as by Trump’s demagoguery and appeals to hate and fear.

So it is no wonder that there is a new wave of anti-protest laws being implemented across the country. When protests are powerful, the powerful punish protest.

Oklahoma’s Anti-Protest Law

On May 9, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin signed a bill into law that increases fines for civil disobedience, and seeks to punish “conspirator” organizations. The ordinance, HB 2128, targets protests that disrupt “critical infrastructure” with felony charges and a minimum of $10,000 fine. There are further fines of up to $100,000 and up to ten years in jail for those found damaging facilities. Organizations that “compensate” such protests could face up to $1 million in fines.

Public Radio Tulsa reported part of the debate in the Oklahoma House:

Rep. Mark McBride faced a barrage of questions from Democrats, including Rep. Cory Williams, who asked what constitutes “compensation” under HB2128.

“It means just what we want it to on this bill. How about that?” McBride said.

“I’m sorry, what?” Williams said. “Is it a check? Is it money? Is it staying at somebody’s house? Is it some other benefit conferred?”

“That would be for the courts to decide,” McBride said.

“All due respect, we’re supposed to be writing laws. They interpret them. Our laws should have definitions in them,” Williams said.

Rep. Collin Walke bristled at a provision saying an arrest — not necessarily a conviction — is enough to create that liability.

“And if that doesn’t cause you concern as a small-government conservative, that we are punishing legal activity, then I question your status as a small-government conservative,” Walke said.

Curbs Nationwide

In Oklahoma, oil and gas are king. The goal of these measures is clear: dissuade protests against oil, gas and pipeline facilities and interests.

But Oklahoma is just the latest example of an attempt to punish protest. At least 19 US states have introduced measures to curb the right to protest since Donald Trump’s election.

In North Carolina, there was a proposal to punish heckling of politicians with five years jail time. In Arizona, legislation was ultimately dropped that would have seized homes and other property from protesters. North Dakota state Rep. Keith Kempenich proposed a bill that would make a driver who hits or kills a protester who is obstructing traffic free from punishment!

This trend even caught the eye of the United Nations. Maina Kiai, UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, and David Kaye, UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, issued a report about the wave of anti-protest legislation in theUS:

“The bills, if enacted into law, would severely infringe upon the exercise of the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly in ways that are incompatible with US obligations under international human rights law and with First Amendment protections. The trend also threatens to jeopardize one of the United States’ constitutional pillars: free speech.”

Why Does Protest Matter?

One has to wonder why those in power are so worried about protest. Giant mega-corporations have all the money and influence. Corporate allies and henchmen dominate our legislatures and government offices. It would seem they have all the power. So why punish protest — why not just ignore it?

Because protest works. Even in the face of massive wealth and political influence, protest has the ability to change the conversation, to educate the public, change facts on the ground, and mobilize opposition.

When a police officer shot Michael Brown to death in Ferguson, Missouri in August, 2014, spontaneous protests by local Black young people turned what would have been yet another unnoticed police shooting into a national movement declaring “Black Lives Matter.”

In 2016, thousands of American Indians gathered near Cannonball, North Dakota through summer heat and bitter winter cold, to stand in prayerful opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline. The pipeline project ignored the concerns and sovereignty of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, and bypassed government procedures and environmental regulations. In the end the pipeline went through, but not before winning the hearts and minds of the world and sparking a new upsurge in Native organizing.

On January 21, millions took to the streets of Washington DC and around the world for the Women’s March, setting records for mass protest, one day after the Presidential inauguration. The march galvanized opposition to Trump and reframed his agenda as an affront to the majority of people in the US

Tens of thousands of people have packed town halls and forums across the country to express outrage over GOP plans to gut healthcare for millions. These protests blocked the first attempt to present the bill to repeal healthcare in the House, and derailed the second attempt.

Even though the House passed their “Trumpcare” bill on May 10th, millions are still making their voices heard, and the bill faces massive public opposition as it enters consideration in the Senate.

New Era of Protest

We are in a new era of protest, and state laws aimed at stopping it are bound to fail.

Corporate apologists, who have bought and sold influence in this country for so long, and their friends in government simply can’t understand there is a kind of power that can’t be bought.

When they see massive turnouts at town halls and in the streets, they imagine it must be paid for, just as they are accustomed to do. But authentic protest is an expression of people’s power — which in the end can’t be stopped with SLAPP suits, fines or “free speech zones.”

During the civil rights movement, thousands of people put their lives and livelihoods on the line to bring about a massive sea change in attitudes. No laws or even violence could turn this tide, once people took hold of protest as their road to change.

We are likely to see more State laws aimed at curbing protest. But we are going to see a lot more protest too. It’s our only option.

Libero Della Piana

Libero Della Piana is a senior organizer at the Alliance for a Just Society.

https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2017-04-28/north-carolina-house-votes-to-protect-drivers-who-hit-protesters

also traffic cam 500$ fine

The North Carolina House of Representatives approved legislation in a lopsided 67-48 vote Thursday that would shield drivers from civil liability if they collide with protesters.

Opponents say the legislation is unnecessary and may give drivers the false impression they can maliciously run over activists. One Democrat warned it would make the state the butt of jokes about being full of “dumb rednecks.”

But Republican proponents, who sent the measure to the state Senate by a veto-proof margin, say recent encounters between activists and drivers makes the reform both sensible and necessary.

Last year, people protesting the fatal shooting of Keith Lamont Scott by a Charlotte police officer blocked roadways during at-times chaotic protest-related activities.

“These people are nuts to run in front of cars like they do … and say, ‘Me and my buddy here are going to stop this two-and-a-half-ton vehicle,’” GOP state Rep. Michael Speciale said in support of the bill, The News & Observer reports. “If somebody does bump somebody, why should they be held liable?”

Democratic state Rep. Henry Michaux, however, points out North Carolina is one of just four states with a pure contributory negligence rule, which means it's already impossible to collect a payout if the injured party is even 1 percent at fault for an accident.

Michaux, an African-American attorney, tells U.S. News the bill therefore would not give drivers additional protection from liability. Instead, he sees it as an unconstitutional invitation to mow down protesters or weave through parades, and he feels the motivation behind the bill may be racial.

“Who demonstrates more than people of color?” Michaux says. “It would give some folks the idea,” he says, to intentionally run over people “because you’ve got a group of black folks out here or a group of Latinos out here.”

The idea of immunizing drivers appears to have originated in North Dakota, where state Rep. Keith Kempenich proposed a similar bill in January after his mother-in-law allegedly was swarmed on a roadway by protesters opposed to construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline. The measure was rejected in a 41-50 vote in February.

Tennessee lawmakers also took up the cause after a driver ran into protesters opposed to an action by President Donald Trump and wound up with "five or six" on his hood. Sponsors were tight-lipped amid negative press and the bill failed in committee in March.

The potential for bad press did not deter lawmakers in North Carolina, who passed the bill over a warning from Democratic Rep. Graig Meyer that it was inviting jokes about “those dumb rednecks” in the state.

The bill says drivers are not protected from liability if they are "willful or wanton" in plowing over pedestrians, but are protected if they are exercising "due care" and hit someone who is "participating in a protest or demonstration and blocking traffic in a public street or highway."

The measure includes language barring immunity if a driver strikes a pedestrian who has “a valid permit” allowing a protest in the public street "where the injury occurred."

Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's office did not respond to a request for comment, nor did thebill's sponsor, Republican state Rep. Justin Burr,or the state Senate's Republican majority leader, Harry Brown.

Republicans hold substantial majorities in both chambers of the state legislature and could make the bill law by overriding a potential gubernatorial veto. They overrode vetoes on two bills this week.

One Democrat voted for the protester-collision bill on Thursday, and three Republicans voted against it.

Michaux believes the legislation is likely to become law through an override vote and sees a lawsuit as the only way to keep it off the books. He looks to the 1969 Supreme Court ruling in Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham, which says it’s not always necessary to have a permit to march in the street....

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/5/4/headlines/codepink_activists_face_up_to_1_year_in_prison_over_jeff_sessions_protest

In Washington, D.C., three members of the activist group CodePink were convicted Wednesday over their role in a January 10 protest against a Senate confirmation hearing for Jeff Sessions as attorney general. One of the three, Desiree Ali-Fairooz, faces up to 12 months in prison on "disruptive conduct" charges, after she let out a burst of laughter when Sessions said he had a record of "treating all Americans equally under the law."

During the protest, the demonstrators wore white hooded robes and chanted "No Trump! No KKK! No fascist U.S.A.!" Sessions has a history of making racist comments, including reportedly saying he thought the Ku Klux Klan was "OK until I found out they smoked pot."

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/5/2/headlines/j20_inauguration_day_protesters_facing_up_to_75_years_in_prison

In Washington, D.C., prosecutors have filed a slew of additional felony and misdemeanor charges against more than 200 people who were arrested at protests during President Trump’s inauguration on January 20. While most of the protesters were already charged with felony rioting, the new charges also include inciting or urging to riot, conspiracy to riot and multiple counts of destruction of property. The legal support group Defend J20Resistance says the new charges mean protesters are now facing up to 75 years in prison.

stop LA cop surveil

gait, drive / plate reader, cams trifecta, dear john letters to red light district LA; palantir; stingray

Activist faces :{felony charge:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: in pipeline :{protest:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:

KFGO-Feb 4, 2017

Chase Iron Eyes could face up to five years in prison if convicted on the felony charge. He also faces a misdemeanor count of criminal trespass.

Dakota Access Pipeline :{protest:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: leader :{charged:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: with inciting a riot ...

Hot Air-Feb 3, 2017

15 and 23 yo flowers on meat

http://www.dailycamera.com/news/boulder/ci_30831919/activists-facing-felony-charges-boulder-meat-protest-turning

...

We evaluate the evidence and the law in filing charges," Garnett said. "We'll review this case and make an appropriate decision."

Police say Knight and Goldman entered the Ideal Meat Market, 1275 Alpine Ave., on Sunday evening and Goldman walked behind the meat counter and placed flowers on the raw meat.

Direct Action Everywhere — the animal rights activist group claiming responsibility for the protest — released a statement saying that Goldman and Knight were motivated by a recent investigation of a Whole Foods turkey supplier. Ideal Market is owned by Whole Foods.

...

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/22/politics/trump-inauguration-protesters-indictment/

CNN) A total of 214 people have been indicted so far on felony rioting charges in connection with the Inauguration Day protests in downtown Washington.

On the morning of January 20, protests over Donald Trump's inauguration turned violent when black-clad "anti-fascist" protesters smashed storefronts and bus stops, hammered out the windows of a limousine and eventually launched rocks at a phalanx of police.

Officers responded by launching smoke and flash-bang devices into the street to disperse the crowds. Six police officers were injured and 230 protesters were arrested that day.

On Tuesday, a grand jury in DC charged five individuals. This was in addition to the 209 other defendants who've been indicted on rioting charges earlier this month.

Felony rioting carries a maximum of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $25,000.

The indictment accuses the defendants of using a tactic called "Black Bloc" in which people conceal their identities with dark or black clothing and accessories such as scarves, sunglasses, helmets and masks.

They assaulted a limousine driver, smashed windows of local businesses, destroyed a government vehicle and committed "violent and destructive acts," according to the indictment.

The DC Police had said that the several hundred demonstrators who actively confronted officers were vastly outnumbered by the thousands of nonviolent protesters who swarmed the nation's capital for Inauguration Day and the Women's March, held the day after.

https://thinkprogress.org/federal-prosecutors-slap-felony-charges-on-more-than-200-inauguration-protesters-92e3154a8fd1#.sj74n2d5g

Some 230 people have been charged with felony rioting in Superior Court after Washington, D.C. police responded to a handful of property destruction incidents on Inauguration Day by rounding up everyone who was in the area at the time.

The charges and street tactics shocked legal observer groups that provide volunteer jail support around high-profile street protests in the nation’s capitol, where police have a long track record of handling demonstrators with a subtler approach. The decision by United States Attorney Channing Phillips leaves plainclothes marchers and provocation-minded radicals alike facing maximum punishments of 10 years in prison and a $25,000 fine.

Arrest reports show the department is using the exact same language to describe its reasons for arresting all 200-plus caught in the round-up, without offering specific allegations of individual property destruction.

There is no argument that some marchers near the area on Friday morning smashed windows, and that others lit small fires after police had “kettled” hundreds of reporters and marchers near a downtown park. But Phillips’ choice to collectively pursue a much larger group based on their proximity to the action strikes longtime protest legal observer Ria Thompson-Washington of the National Lawyers Guild as a dark turn away from the restraint that law enforcement have shown with protests and unrest in the past.

If I’m a bystander to this, and I know I’m being charged with a 10 year sentence…I’m going to plead out even if I’m innocent.

“The police here always give three warnings to protesters before they give any action. In this case, there was nothing,” Thompson-Washington said in an interview. “There was no order of dispersal, no warnings. They just immediately brought out their batons and pepper spray without any warning.”

One of the NLG-trained legal observers, who wear bright green hats or shirts so police can distinguish them from protesters, was pepper-sprayed straight in the face, said Thompson-Washington, and several other green-hatted observers were arrested and charged. The kettling tactic meant anyone who’d been inside the initial police perimeter was not allowed to leave as several hours passed before the arrests began.

At least half a dozen journalists are facing charges from Phillips’ office as well. Vocativ’s Evan Engel, 30, and RT’s Alex Rubinstein, 24, were among those rounded up Friday evening after police used “kettling” tactics to block hundreds of reporters and protesters into a small patch of downtown D.C. last Friday. The Guardian reported late Tuesday that another four of those charged are journalists, and that police have kept the cell phone of at least one of them

Scores of riot officers kept the group boxed in for hours, deploying both pepper spray and “sting-ball” grenades on the crowd. Engel’s camera was confiscated as evidence and had not been returned as of late Monday, a source familiar with his case told ThinkProgress.

...

Prosecutors in Washington have dropped felony rioting charges against four of the six journalists arrested while covering Inauguration Day protests, but charges remain in place against two others.

The six were among 230 people arrested during violent demonstrations that took place just blocks from the inauguration of Donald J. Trump, who was sworn in as the 45th president on Jan. 20. Some protesters smashed shop windows in downtown Washington and set a limousine on fire.

Charges against three of the journalists — Matthew Hopard, John Keller and Alexander Rubinstein — were dropped on Monday, according to Bill Miller, a spokesman for the United States attorney’s office for the District of Columbia.

Charges against a fourth — Evan Engel, a writer for the media and technology site Vocativ — were dropped on Friday.

In North Carolina, protesting your government could soon open you up to charges of “economic terrorism” under a measure proposed Thursday by two Republican lawmakers.

The bill would create a new**felony**charge applied to any criminal offense that leads to at least $1,000 in economic harm to any business, if the offender intended to intimidate the government or the public. Separate language in the proposal would make it illegal to block traffic as part of a protest or demonstration.

The proposal is so broad it could potentially be used to ensnare people like the Rev. William Barber II, a key leader of the state’s Moral Mondays protests.

“Many of these extremist legislators cannot stand protest because it doesn’t allow them to do in the dark the work they’re doing that’s hurting so many people,” Barber told ThinkProgress. “This is an old game. It is an attempt to malign movements that work and that challenge what the system is doing.”

The mass meetings Barber helps convene are rigorously peaceful, but numerous participants have been arrested for acts of civil disobedience or at the request of legislators. Such arrests could, under the broad language of the bill, be construed as felonies if a prosecutor linked the protest in question to an economically harmful boycott or street closure.

The proposal from state Reps. John Torbett (R-Gaston County) and John Faircloth (R-Guilford County) is the latest in a string of state-level proposals to roll back protester rights and raise the legal stakes of public dissent in the era of President Donald Trump.

Minnesota Lawmaker Launches Possibly Unconstitutional Attempt To Curtail Black Lives Matter…

thinkprogress.org

“No matter what your politics are, everyone should be concerned anytime that lawmakers seek to curb our fundamental constitutional right to not only protest, but to criticize our government,” American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina spokesman Mike Meno said in an interview. “This is one bill in a wave of legislation that we’ve seen across the country designed to criminalize peaceful protest and really have a chilling effect on our First Amendment rights.”

Washington state is weighing a similar “economic terrorism” measure. Arizona lawmakers want to treat protest organizers like mobsters. Minnesota legislators are pushing for the right to sue protesters to recoup the costs of police overtime incurred by demonstrations. At least four states have moved to criminalize roadway protests in recent months.

All these laws constraint protests in various ways, primarily by exposing demonstrators to new financial or criminal consequences.

“Any time tyrants try to stifle the voice of the people, it always backfires.”

But the North Carolina law also recasts a longstanding American right as a sinister usurpation of public order. Where the Constitution protects citizens’ rights to group together in public to dissent from its government’s actions, Torbett’s bill targets efforts to “[i]ntimidate the civilian population at large, or an identifiable group…[or i]nfluence, through intimidation, the conduct or activities of the government of the United States, a state, or any unit of local government.”

The law offers no detail on how officials would distinguish persuasion from intimidation when responding to protest activity. The state already has statutes on the books to punish rioting. Any law that requires cops and prosecutors to discern people’s intent creates a murky psychological task within a seemingly precise criminal procedure.

The language about protesters’ intentions struck Meno as particularly ironic, he said, since Torbett and Faircloth’s bill itself “seems designed to intimidate people who would want to protest their government.”

Police and civic leaders would not have to divine protesters’ inner thoughts in all cases under Torbett’s crackdown, however. The second a protest moves onto a roadway, for example, everyone involved becomes a criminal under the proposal. Blocking roads would be as serious a misdemeanor as crimes like sexual battery or assaulting a public official. Public officials would be automatically required to dispatch police to clear a roadway, by force if necessary, once “at least 10 persons obstruct vehicular traffic.”

To understand Charlotte’s rage, you have to understand its roads:{The long, winding history that led up to this week’s unrest.:(style="background:rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);-webkit-tap-highlight-color:transparent;display:block;vertical-align:middle;padding:20px;margin-top:-1px;margin-bottom:10px;max-height:120px;overflow:hidden"):}::{thinkprogress.org:(style="background:rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:transparent;display:table-cell;vertical-align:middle;padding:20px"):}:

The choice to single out traffic obstruction as a new and special offense is not random. Protests tied to the broad Movement for Black Lives have frequently targeted high-traffic roads and highways, gumming up a city’s normal flow as a means of calling the whole community’s attention to police abuse that would otherwise be easy for the white populace to ignore. (Roads are convenient targets, but also historically appropriate ones for racial justice movements in particular.)

The bill is unlikely to become law with Democrat Roy Cooper in the governor’s mansion, though Republicans do hold a veto-proof majority. Regardless, this will likely not be the last time lawmakers try to smear protesters.

“If thousands of people are marching to protest voter suppression laws, the people who passed those laws will say they’re disturbing the peace,” said Barber. “Even what happened in Charlotte, the people who wanted to use that as a scapegoat took the actions of a few people to try to malign the whole. That’s not new. That happened in [the 1968 sanitation workers strike in Memphis, Tennessee] just before Dr. King was killed.”

While Charlotte’s brief-but-cinematic rage last September captured great public attention, North Carolina is also serving as incubator to a more sustainable, less flashy form of populist dissent — one that could nonetheless run afoul of the broad criminalization of protest activity which Torbett proposes.

For nearly 4 years now, thousands of North Carolinians have regularly rallied at the state capitol for “Moral Mondays,” a movement anchored by Rev. Barber’s call to revive working-class solidarity in the face of economic and social inequality.

The movement has opted for rigorous state and local focus rather than the nation-wide activism of the Fight for $15 protests. It has rarely made the national headlines that often greet police protests. But it is rooted in an all-of-the-above moral urgency that links those two fights with dozens of other local and national causes — a broad, ambitious, and positively articulated vision of American social and political change that seems poised to blossom from statewide success to national significance.

Moral Mondays are so studiously lawful — despite hundreds of arrests that have been thrown out of court — that Torbett and Faircloth’s bill would seem not to immediately target its activities. But it doesn’t take much imagination to envision how an ideologically motivated prosecutor might seek to link peaceful civil disobedience to lost revenue for a business owner who runs afoul of protesters — and then depict dissenters as “economic terrorists” using the bill’s language.

Barber, who is confident the proposal would be struck down in court if it ever became law, welcomed the hamfisted attempt at chilling protest activity.

“What they will do with attempting to pass things like this is grow the movement. There is no fear. People are not gonna stand down,” said Barber.

“Any time tyrants try to stifle the voice of the people, it always backfires.”

ACTIVIST SUPPRESS 2

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Trespassing Near 'Critical Infrastructure'

Another ALEC Bill Now Law

In an Age of Terrorism

Afraid to Speak Up at the Pipeline Crossroads of the World

Protesters Under Surveillance

A Worrying Trend

A Record 207 Environmental Activists Were Killed Last Year

The probe

Chinese activities

Okinawa dugongs

Appalachian Storage Hub Advances

Rights of Nature, Local Governance

‘Frivolous’ Legal Arguments

Local Governments Sanctioned Across US

Monsanto 'Commands' Civic Group to Turn in All Communications Over Glyphosate

Blocked From Discussing Climate Change, Valve-Turner Faces 10 Years in Prison After Felony Conviction

An Unusual Legal Tactic for Protesters

A Greater Risk than Climate Change?

Courts Are Considering Climate Risk

Williams Hires Secretive Group with Ties to Sen. Martin

Community Networking Resources Fundraises for Senator Martin

Libero Della Piana

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