Permaculture Education Bus Seized by Twin Cities Police at RNC

[moriah]

This was posted to an E-List I participate in, forwarded from Starhawk's e-list. The article has a request for donations, and I'm leaving it in here, but the main thing is that this was WRONG.

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Hey friends, we need your help! Our Earth Activist Training Sustainable Skills Bus has been seized without cause by the police. Below is an account from the Wilsons, who have been travelling in the bus for the last seven months doing trainings in permaculture and sustainability, including ways you can help. My own accounts from the action can be found on www.starhawk.org and I¹ll be posting daily as long as I can own list by emailing [e-mail]. If you¹re on that list, my own account follows. Please support these folks who have been doing such good work for us all. Thanks!

POLICE SEIZE PERMIBUS

Please Post Far and Wide including any Media Contacts You May Have

At approximately 6:25 pm on August 30, 2008 Minneapolis Police, Minnesota State Troopers, Ramsey County Sheriffs, Saint Paul Police, and University of Minnesota Police pulled over the Earth Activist Training Permaculture Demonstration Bus (Permibus) by exit 237 on Interstate 94. Initially the police told the people on the bus to exit. When the people on the bus asked if they were being detained they were told that they were but police were unable to provide justification. When asked why they pulled the bus over they refused to answer. After repeated requests to explain why the bus had been stopped Officer Honican of the Minneapolis Police explained that this was just a routine traffic stop though he did not explain the reason for the traffic stop. The police then told Stan Wilson, the driver and registered owner of the Permibus, that they were going to impound the bus in case they wanted to execute a search warrant later. After more than an hour of being questioned by Stan and Delyla Wilson as to the legalities of their detainment and the impoundment of the Permibus, the police then informed Stan that the bus, which is legally registered as a passenger vehicle in the state of Montana, was being impounded for a commercial vehicle inspection.

Shortly afterward Sergeant Paul Davis, a commercial vehicle inspector arrived on scene. Despite the polices insistence that the reason for impoundment was for a commercial vehicle inspection the Permibus crew were not allowed to remove anything from the bus including computers, toiletries, and 17-year-old Megan Wilson's shoes. The police finally allowed the animals to be removed from the Permibus before it was towed, leaving the Permibus family standing beside their chickens and dogs, homeless on the highway.

The Permibus was relocating from the Bedlam Theatre in Minneapolis, where they had spent the day teaching Urban Permaculture, to a friend's house in Saint Paul for a well deserved break. The Permibus has been in the Minneapolis area since August 2nd when the crew appeared at the Midtown Farmers Market for a morning of Permaculture education including Permaculture 101, chicken care, seed ball making for kids, and the Permi-puppet show. During the past month the Permibus has parked at several local businesses and, as a neighborly gesture of respect for local police, Mr. Wilson contacted the appropriate precincts just to let them know the Permibus was in the area and had permission from the business owners to be parked on their lot. Through this, as well as other casual discussions with Minneapolis and Saint Paul police officers, the Permibus crew found the local police to be interested and respectful. However on August 30th all that changed when, for no apparent valid reason the police pulled over and seized the Permibus. After the incident Stan Wilson said, "If the combined law enforcement of Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Ramsey County, and the State of Minnesota can pull over and impound a vehicle and home used to teach organic gardening and sustainability, one has to wonder what it is our government really fears. After all, we seek to teach people that the real meaning of homeland security is local food, fuel and energy production. For that we have had our lives stolen by government men with guns."

As of now, after repeated requests to be present at any vehicle inspection, with an list of what they are inspecting for, as well as requests to be served any warrants for searches of the vehicles prior to a search and to be present during the search the Permi-family has been unable to ascertain the current status of the Permibus. On site Mr. Wilson was told that Officer Palmerranky was the inspector in charge of the case and would determine if the Permi-family's rights protecting them from unreasonable search and seizure would be respected. Neither Officer Palmerranky nor his supervisor has yet to return Mr. Wilson's calls. The loss of her home and possessions is particularly difficult on seventeen-year-old Megan Wilson. Megan, a shining example of what this country asks of today's youth, has dedicated herself to making positive changes in the world. She was the youth keynote speaker at the Local to Global conference in Phoenix AZ, has taught conflict resolution at youth shelters and is the outreach coordinator for the Skills for a New Millennium Tour, the family traveling educational project. Megan believes that, "While I understand that the world we live in is not as it should be I strive to live and teach in a way that shows the world how life could be. What I don't understand is why I can't get dressed for an evening out with friends in my own home without armed men stealing my life out from under me." The Permi-family, along with their dogs and Permaculture super-hero chickens are currently being housed by folks in the Twin Cities.

The Skills for a New Millennium Tour is a family education project that travels around the United States teaching homesteading, citizenship, and life skills at farmers markets, community gardens, churches, intentional communities, schools, and in people's living rooms. The Skills Tour is a donation supported project dedicated to providing tools for sustainable living, including Permaculture, to anyone who is interested, regardless of income. "We believe that any solution that is not accessible to the poor and urban areas is not a real solution for the future," states Delyla Wilson.

Permaculture is a design system with ethics and principles that can be applied to food production, home design, and community building in order to increase sustainability in food production, energy production, and social systems. The Permibus is a rolling demonstration of small scale sustainable living with three people, three dogs, three chickens, and a box of worms as permanent residence. The chickens and worms are part of a closed-loop food productions composting system that supports the Permibus's traveling garden. For more information on the seizure of the Permibus, the Skills for the New Millennium Tour, or Permaculture, the Wilson's can be reached at 406-721-8427 or through email at [e-mail]. You can also see pictures and read stories about the last six months of their educational adventures at permibus.livejournal.com.

To our supporters: First we ask that as many people as possible contact:

Precinct one in Minneapolis, MN at 612-673-5701 and Mayor Rybak at Phone: [phone] or call 311 or call [phone] outside Minneapolis.

Also call the Ramsey County Sheriff - Bob Fletcher 651-266-9300

and demand the immediate release of the Permibus.

We are also in desperate need of donations. Though we do not yet know the full cost of getting the permibus returned we know that it will include tow fee, impound fees, and legal fees. To donate contact us directly for a local address or...

Donate On-line:

Go to: www.earthactivisttraining.org/donate.htm

Click on: Donate Now!

Under "Gift Information" write: Permibus

Under "Please send acknowledgment of this gift to" write: [e-mail]

Donate by Mail:

Make check payable to: A.C.T.
On the "For" line write: Permibus
Send check to: A.C.T. 1405 Hillmount St. Austin, TX 78704


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Starhawk is a lifelong activist in peace and global justice movements, a leader in the feminist and earth-based spirituality movements, author or coauthor of ten books, including The Spiral Dance, The Fifth Sacred Thing, Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising, and her latest, The Earth Path.

Starhawk's website is www.starhawk.org, and more of her writings and information on her schedule and activities can be found there.

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. Here's a video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh4iv3k1feU&feature=user

[moriah]

2. Thanks so much for posting the video!

As a "liberal tree-hugging pacifist hippie" (as I call myself, not in a derogatory manner but slightly tongue-in-cheek even though it is perfectly true, when I am about to give an opinion to a person who either I know is or who strikes me as a little more conservative than me), I very strongly support permaculture.

Self-sustainable agriculture is very important in this day and age of bio-engineered food crops (where the people who engineered the food usually also engineered it to not make seeds or sue people for re-planting the seeds, so that they can continue to make money selling the plants each year), chemical fertilizers (which cause problems when they enter groundwater supplies), and even worse pesticides (which have the same problem as the fertilizers). "Progress" has come with a horrible price tag -- lakes and streams that are unhealthy to eat fish from or even swim in, pollution of groundwater that affects both municipal water supplies and individual wells, and an overall increase in the cost of food production as the yields from bioengineered, patented food crops that cannot pollinate/sprout seed (or ones where you are legally obligated NOT to replant the seed) do not make up for the cost of purchasing the plants.

While I do not feel that everyone can or should "live off of the land" right now, I do think people should attempt to "tread lightly on the land". I have done both, and I do my best to continue to at least do the latter considering that right now I have to live in a city because the cost of gas and the length of commute for me to live out in the country where I would prefer to be is too prohibitive with my job. Since my company allows telecommuting for some positions, my hope is that I can eventually be able to telecommute and go back to living in a more self-sustainable manner.

Additionally, as a person who is very concerned about the police state that our country is becoming, the idea that police can pull over a vehicle, seize its contents, and then not tell the owners what they have done with the vehicle and its contents -- all without giving a legitimate reason -- really upsets me.

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. It's really appalling

I am an anti-war activist and while I despise the mistreatment we get from cops, I can understand why our message is not accepted by law enforcement. But these people in this bus are gardeners. It makes no sense at all, except to reinforce that homeland security police state bullshit.

[moriah]

4. The ONLY reason I can think of for it, other than just being jerks, is...

... that perhaps they have been inspecting any large vehicle to make sure it does not have explosives or something in it.

And still, one would still have to have probable cause other than that it's a big green bus!

Apparently Denver police were very suspicious of a vehicle there that ran off of vegetable oil.

http://www.denverpost.com/dncsafety/ci_10317020

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. Makes sense to me

There is a very active sustainable living community here and several of the members have biodiesel cars. And yes, they get pulled over a lot.