From the ANSWER Coalition 

Demand the immediate release of Sami Al-Arian
Stop Bush’s war against civil rights and civil liberties

The government failed in its attempt to gain a conviction in any of the 51 charges against Dr. Sami Al-Arian. We join with people around the country in demanding that he be released immediately.

That’s right, he was found not guilty yet is still in prison until the government decides whether to seek a retrial. This is a travesty. He should be freed immediately. Plus, the government wants to deport him. Even though a jury found him not guilty or deadlocked on all charges. So what is their rationale for deporting him except nastiness and spite?

In a significant blow to the Bush/Ashcroft/Gonzalez assault on civil rights and civil liberties, especially against Arab and Muslim people and political activists in the U.S., on Tuesday, December 6 a jury acquitted Dr. Sami Al-Arian of the key charges leveled against him by the Justice Department. The jury deadlocked on other charges. Dr. Al-Arian has been an outspoken supporter of the Palestinian people’s right to live free from occupation and is political target of the U.S. government and the right wing.

This trial was a huge setback for the neocons. It was meant to showcase the new powers of the Patriot Act. Yet the jury rejected all of it. A jury in Florida.

In 2003, the Bush Administration touted the arrest of Sami Al-Arian as a significant use of their new Patriot Act powers, calling him a supporter and facilitator of terrorism. The prosecution of Dr. Al-Arian was also hailed as an important use of "foreign intelligence" in U.S. courts. The FBI reportedly traveled to Israel to accept information from authorities there which was used to prosecute this Palestinian activist. The government had harassed Dr. Al-Arian for nearly eight years prior to his arrest, which was finally undertaken after a crescendo of attacks from anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab voices and right-wing media outlets. After September 11, 2001, he was vilified and smeared by Bill O’Reilly on FOX news and immediately thereafter removed from his tenured position at the University of South Florida.

Despite having roots in the community and a family, Professor Al-Arian was denied bail. He has endured two years of solitary confinement in a maximum security penitentiary. Dr. Al-Arian was placed in 23 hour lock down in a windowless cell where the light was never turned off and was denied a clock or watch. He has been denied basic privileges, been chained and shackled, subject to strip searches and given limited visitation. 

"No human contact" conditions like these have been called torture by Amnesty International.

Dr. Al-Arian was a speaker at the first national demonstration against a war in Iraq on October 26, 2002, that was initiated and organized by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition. After his arrest, his daughter Laila Al-Arian spoke at the April 12, 2003, anti-war and anti-occupation demonstration organized by the A.N.S.W.E.R.

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"Imagine there’s no countries,
It isn’t hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the people
living life in peace…"

Time can fog things. Many back then hated Lennon because of his outspoken political views. The FBI monitored him and wanted him deported. Politicians attacked him. And he kept speaking out. Rebel with a cause.

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There’s been an major, favorable legal decision in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal - one that could lead to a new trial!

Read the letter from his lead lawyer plus links to further information on the case.

Tag: Mumia

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Police shouldn’t be the first responders when the obvious problem is mental illness. There’s a better way than shoot-to-kill. Someone close to me was once homeless and seriously unhinged because she went off her meds. A psychiatric intervention with a mandatory 72 hour hold worked. It gave her the wake-up call she needed and she’s now completely turned her life around.

According to a witness, Alpizar frantically ran down the aisle of the American Airlines plane, flailing his arms, while his wife tried to explain that he was mentally ill and had not taken his medication.

Air marshals confronted Alpizar and ordered him to get on the ground. They said he did not comply, and was shot.

He showed no weapons, his wife said he was off his meds. Did it have to end this way? And I bet police also wish situations like this were handled by mental health professionals and not by them.

Update: The LA Times this morning has a front page photo showing all the other passengers forced to walk off the plane with their hands on their heads. They’re criminals too? The air marshalls knew only one person was crazed, yet they treated everyone like a potential terrorist.

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Let’s mobilize

Gov. Schwarzenegger will hold a private hearing today on whether to grant clemency to Tookie Williams. If he does not grant clemency, Williams will die by lethal injection on Tues. Dec. 13 at 12:01 am.
 
Evidence points to frame-up in Tookie Williams case

Politics work against clemency

(Some) gangsters missed Tookie’s lesson

He said he’d been shot in the head and chest, he’s spent half his life locked up, and he’s read all Tookie Williams’ books, if maybe a little too late.

"They glamorize the gangs in movies," he said. "They glamorize gangs in rap. They glamorize criminals. You think doing life in prison is glamorous?"

Measure of a man’s life

A .45-caliber bullet didn’t lead Diego Garcia to give up the violent gang life he had known for years. Stanley Tookie Williams did.

From ANSWER LA

On the night of December 12, 2005, the state of California plans to execute Stan Tookie Williams at San Quentin Prison. Only the intervention of the people will force Governor Schwarzenegger to halt this execution. Find out more about this case and what you can do.

Who is Stan Tookie Williams?

A cofounder of the Los Angeles Crips gang in 1971, Williams was convicted of murder and robbery in 1981 and sentenced to death. Like so many trials in the racist, anti-worker U.S. criminal justice system, his was based on circumstantial evidence, no physical evidence, and a paid informant and the prosecution’s case was laden with racism. (The prosecutor in Williams’s case had already twice been censured for discriminatory behavior.) The prosecution’s removal of three African American jurors served to establish as “case law” the right for prosecutors to exclude jurors on the basis of race. Williams has maintained his innocence throughout.

Since his incarceration, Williams has become a hero for many in his community, working to end gang conflict through his Project for Street Peace and peer mentoring program, and writing several acclaimed children’s books that educate young people to avoid gangs. He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace and Literature prizes.

For more detailed information, go to http://www.savetookie.org/

Why we stand against the death penalty…

So-called "justice" in the U.S. is far from being unbiased. Virtually all death row inmates are poor people. Those who can afford a good lawyer almost never end up on death row. There are no millionaires on death row.

Study after study shows that racism is a dominant factor in who gets death sentences. People of color, African Americans in particular, are greatly over-represented on death row, as they are in all levels of the criminal justice system. Since the death penalty was reinstated in the 1980’s, 40% of those executed have been African American. Prior to that, over 50% were African American. While African Americans are six times more likely to be murdered in California than whites, when the victim of a homicide is white, the perpetrator is at least four times more likely to get the death penalty than if the victim is a person of color.

A small but important step toward true justice is the demand for a moratorium on the death penalty. Every time the state tries to execute another prisoner we must raise this demand.

What you can do…

Contact Governor Schwarzenegger today, demand clemency for Stan Tookie Williams!
Phone: (916) 445-2841
Fax: (916) 445-4633
Email: governor@governor.ca.gov

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Blair Watch has spearheaded the "I’ll print the Al-Jazeera memo" campaign. We need to get it on as many websites and blogs as possible. So far, over 300 have signed on.

Our pledge; we are just short if 300 sites who are prepared to publish now, and they are still coming in. I am not suggesting that we are going to make anything happen, but we are definitely making it harder to prosecute anyone who does publish the memo.

BBC Newsnight mentioned the internet campaign to publish, and the Times ran a rather optimistic piece suggesting bloggers [that means you] were making Lord Goldsmith’s position more difficult.

We are also keeping the story alive.

The best way to help is to put the ‘I’ll Publish the al-Jazeera Memo" button on your front page if you have the space and the inclination.

Here’s the cut-and-paste code.

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Perhaps it is time to state once again: America is not a Christian Nation. So say the founders:

"As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries." - Treaty of Peace and Friendship 11/4/1796

That isn’t some liberal opinion. That is a quote, a direct quote, from a treaty ratified by the Senate and signed by President John Adams.

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Sen. Conrad Burns and his staff met Jack Abramoff’s lobbying team on at least eight occasions and collected $12,000 in donations around the time that the lawmaker took legislative action favorable to Abramoff’s clients in the Northern Mariana Islands, records show.

The 2001 donations to Burns, a Montana Republican, included money directly from Abramoff and a key garment company executive in the Pacific islands who was part of the coalition paying Abramoff’s firm to fend off stronger U.S. regulations on the islands.

My take, he’s going down.

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