Criminal Dissent - Thanks, Mr. Ashcroft!

[reprehensor]

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=16469v

In the early 1970s, Guy Goodwin, a Special Prosecutor working for U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell -- who was soon to become a star player in President Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal -- convened grand juries across the country to target radicals, anti-war activists, unions, and others. Goodwin, characterized by the Center for Constitutional Rights as the "grand inquisitor of the politically motivated grand jury," was a man on a mission.

Unlike thirty years ago, the convening of grand juries by John Ashcroft's Department of Justice is only one weapon in the administration's anti-dissent arsenal, Michael Avery, President of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) told TomPaine.com in a telephone interview.

"This administration is trying to criminalize dissent, characterize protesters as terrorists and trying to intimidate and marginalize those opposed to its policies," Avery said. It has opened the floodgates to all kinds of investigative activities and now "police agencies across the country are actively engaged in spying and compiling dossiers on citizens exercising their constitutional rights."

In early February, several decades after Goodwin's salad days, a federal judge in Iowa ordered officials at Drake University to turn over records about a mid-November anti-war forum held on its Des Moines campus. Subpoenas were also served on four activists who attended the forum and the University's chapter of the National Lawyer's Guild. The subpoena, which sought records identifying the officers of the Drake chapter in November 2003, the current location of any local offices, as well as agendas, "has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with intimidating lawful protestors and suppressing First Amendment freedom of expression and association," Heidi Boghosian, Executive Director of the Guild, pointed out in a Guild press release issued February 6.

More at link.

[waterman]

1. I am so glad something like this hasn't happened to me yet, or someone

I care about. I'm not sure I could contain my rage. And I turn into a real prick when that happens.

[reprehensor]

2. I hope...

You are somewhere nearby if they come to take one of your friends away. A favorite trick of the KGB was to come in the middle of the night when all of your neighbors are asleep. The victim is usually still half asleep, disoriented, and unlikely to put up much of a fight or a fuss, and the way that some people sleep (deeply) it wouldn't matter how much of a fuss you make.

Be ready.

{reprehensor reaches up to tuck tin-foil down tighter...}