Grand Jury/FBI vs Activists: What's Up

Some hours ago I spoke with an old friend who is one of the peace and solidarity activists in the Midwest being targeted by the FBI and a Federal Grand Jury. Like many of us, I have been following the case with great concern from day one, but the conversation made it much clearer to me where things stand now in what is shaping up to be the worst legal assault on the US left in decades.

Some people who heard in the last month that the subpoenas had been withdrawn may be thinking that this happened as a result of the storm of protest that arose in the aftermath of the FBI raids on September 24.

Alas.

What happened is that lawyers made it clear to the Feds that all of those subpoenaed intend to take the Fifth Amendment, and the subpoenas were suspended. Lawyers have been informed that the subpoenas will be reinstated for 3 of the activists very soon.

What this means is that those three will very likely be offered immunity for anything they testify about, which means that they can no longer claim their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination to refuse to testify. If they then refuse to answer questions placed by the government—and all have stated that they will so refuse---they are subject to civil contempt charges which can and likely will result in their imprisonment for the remainder of the Grand Jury’s term, currently scheduled to end in mid-February.

If a Grand Jury in the case is then re-empanelled, they can be jailed again. They may also be subject to punitive criminal contempt charges, which carry a sentence of up to ten years.

So.

The immediate task before us is to raise a new and larger storm of protest when the renewed subpoenas are formally issued to the three activists, probably this Tuesday. Demonstrations should be held wherever possible in the days after, and the defense group which has been formed, the Committee to Stop the FBI will issue a call for other activities on its website.

If and when folks are called to appear before the Grand Jury and are held in contempt for non-cooperation, again immediate and forceful actions should be taken to defend those jailed and shine a spotlight on this brutal attempt to coerce testimony to be used against their fellow activists.

What then?

Those for whom the original subpoenas have not been reinstated are not off the hook at all. If serious protests now fail to halt the government’s legal steamroller, the next likely step is the indictment and trial of activists on charges related to supporting organizations on the Foreign Terrorist Organization list.

Note that I say activists and not “the activists.” It could be the thirteen originally subpoenaed, or two, or 23, or any number. At this stage very little is known about what the government’s intentions in the case are. All we have to go on is the incredibly broad list of materials in the subpoenas, which mention two organizations on the FTO list The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - People's Army (FARC-EP).

Charges, if made, will doubtless reflect the recent Supreme Court decision in the Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project case, a ruling in which “material aid” to so-called terrorist organizations is so broadly defined that even advising them to pursue their goals peacefully makes a US citizen subject to prosecution.

It’s hardly surprising that the folks hit in the first round of subpoenas and raids have been under extreme stress, initially reflected in symptoms like insomnia, eating disorders or return to long-defeated smoking habits.

Overall, though, they are holding up extremely well, considering. Considering that their homes were broken into by armed FBI agents and their books, papers, computers, passports and other possessions seized. Considering that several have small children and one is a great grandmother. Considering that employers and neighbors have been subjected to harassing visits by FBI agents. Considering, most of all, that the government seems intent on jailing them as supporters of terrorism for years to come.

Hold fast!

They are hanging tough. The rest of us better had, too. I wrote here at FotM about the surprisingly broad and rapid response among socialist and anarchist organizations of every stripe in the US in the days after the FBI raids. Unions, community organizations, civil liberties groups and others have also spoken against this attack in ringing terms. Folks seemed pretty clear that this is not only an attack on the anti-war and solidarity movements but an incredibly dangerous precedent which, if the government succeeds, will be turned against others in short order.

The longer term task here is to make sure those who have rallied around stay rallied, Issues and causes in the Internet era tend to blink in and out of existence like the virtual particles posited by physicists. If we let that happen here, the consequences will be grave. A national Committee to Stop FBI Repression has been formed, with over 170 people attending an inaugural meeting last weekend. Get involved.

Read more!

FBI Raids: Socialists & Anarchists Respond [Updated]

[UPDATE (11/14): I have, faced by a barrage of righteous indignation, pared down the who's-been-naughty list of groups who had not responded, as far as I could ascertain, at the time this was posted. Please read the comments (click on the link at the end of this article) for further details. Rather than do a full update here, let me refer folks to the even more impressive list, with links, at the website of the Committee To Stop FBI Repression. Included as well are a variety of other types of groups including labor organizations, among them, I am pleased to say, my old local, the New York Metro Area Postal Union. ]


A few days ago, I posted a piece here at FotM reflecting on the impact that the online social networking site Facebook had on the spread of news and analysis of the recent FBI raids. In it, I called the broad, swift and relatively unified response of the left to this outrage heartening.

We have seen more practical evidence of this as events unfold. More than forty protests around the country, almost all of them at Federal Buildings, have denounced these attacks—and that’s within a week of their occurrence! This video is simply the most recent I’ve seen, from Memphis, TN, yesterday (23 plus one infant at noon.)



More, a national Committee to Stop FBI Repression, including members of a number of left, socialist, anti-war, solidarity and civil liberties groups and concerned individuals, has convened its first conference call and will be working to provide direction to the movement to protest the raids and shut down the Grand Jury.

To look closer at this relatively unified response, I’ve collected a bunch of statements from national-level socialist and anarchist organizations in the US. (Students for a Democratic Society is also included, as SDS members are among those attacked.) All the statements denounced the raids as an extremely dangerous attack and a threat to all activists which requires the broadest possible unity to resist. Another common thread was the need to inform ourselves about our legal rights and be prepared for similar FBI harassment.

Who said—and didn’t say--what

While assembling them, I noticed some areas in which differences occur which may well be significant. Some statements mentioned the FRSO which was attacked—the one which publishes Fight Back!, not the one I’m in—others did not. Similarly some mentioned Colombia and Palestine and/or the FARC and the PFLP specifically—others did not.

Finally some targeted the Obama administration by name, while others made no mention of the president. The following table includes the results, with passing mentions indicated by a lower case x and anything slightly more detailed with an upper case X.

The obvious caveats apply. The evaluation is my own, as is the selection of excerpts. Some groups may not customarily issue organizational statements, but make their analysis and calls in their press (some of these are at the bottom of the list, marked with *.) Some statements were issued very quickly, others after a couple days of reflection.

Nota Bene: The text of other statements, or links to them, are welcome and could conceivably be included in an update.

(click to see enlarged version)

Groups with some 'splainin' to do

As far as I can tell, nothing has been heard from the following national groups save the sound, as they say on the Internet, of *crickets chirping*.

Progressive Labor Party
Democratic Socialists of America

Corrections or updates on this matter would be most welcome!

Excerpts from and links to organizational statements

FRSO/OSCL: Read the whole statement, it’s that good.

Solidarity: This record demonstrates important lessons. First, the U.S. government and its "intelligence" agencies are quick to strip individuals and organizations of their constitutional rights and ignore the basic rules of democracy in order to discredit and demoralize opposition from the left. Second, the most potent defense against this disruption has been the refusal to be intimidated, and the support to targeted individuals and groups provided by communities and movements.

Committees of Correspondence for Democracy & Socialism: We demand that the FBI cease and desist in these attempts to intimidate and divide, that the Grand Jury proceedings and subpoenas be vacated and stopped, and that the FBI return the belongings seized. We urge all Americans to repudiate this misadventure if they hold to the democratic values in our Constitution. Even if actions like these seem bizarre and aimed at relatively small groups, they must be nipped in the bud. An injury to one is an injury to all.

International Socialist Organization: So it should come as no surprise that members of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization are the most prominent target of the latest raids. If history is any guide, the FBI and federal prosecutors believe they can drive a wedge between socialists and the wider left, including liberals, and establish a precedent for further violations of civil liberties and political repression.

Socialist Party USA: Although the governmental repression following the attacks of September 11, 2001 did not target the left, it did serve to massively expand the security state. Today, more than 800,000 people are employed by the government to spy on, track and investigate. It is widely believed that the recent raids are the result of a "fishing expedition” by one or multiple parts of this expanded repressive apparatus. Taken together with the continued undercover governmental disruptions of large-scale protests such as the G20 demonstration in Pittsburgh, these raids represent the increasing disruption of civil liberties.

Freedom Socialist Party/Radical Women: There are various conjectures being put forth as to why the Obama administration is staging these raids now: to appear tough on terrorism before the Congressional elections; to chill activists before the antiwar demonstrations on October 9-16; or to take attention away from last week’s Justice Department admission that the FBI used false claims to mount “counterterror” investigations as a cover for spying and infiltration of activist groups across the country.

Socialist Alternative: The timing of the FBI raids and grand jury investigation was almost certainly designed to coincide with Obama’s meeting with new Colombian president Juan Manual Santos on Friday, which was publicly billed to include discussion on continued U.S. assistance in the war against FARC. The day before, the Colombian military gained U.S. headlines for their assassination of a prominent FARC leader. The assassination and FBI raids appear intentionally coordinated to provide a useful media back-drop for the Obama-Santos meeting, underlining the cynical and politically motivated character of this state repression. Hopefully these events will dispel any lingering illusions that Obama is a friend of the antiwar movement!

First Of May Anarchist Alliance: The dedicated organizing in defense of the RNC 8 in Minnesota is a good example that can be built upon. We should begin discussing what it would take to unite all those (excluding the fascists and white supremacists) that have faced state repression into some common action. From the Muslim community, to the targets of the “Green Scare”, to the spied upon anti war activists in Iowa, to those activists hit by these most recent raids – we need to push back together.

Bring The Ruckus: The state is an enemy of peoples' struggles for justice and freedom. These latest attacks on US activists demonstrate that we cannot depend on, or cooperate with, the state in our organizing. We encourage all activists and organizers to take their safety and security seriously and to in no way cooperate with law enforcement or grand juries as they go about their business of trying to destroy our movements.

Students for a Democratic Society: The FBI are apparently looking for evidence linking activists to "material support of terrorism" specifically liberation struggles in Colombia and Palestine. In addition to SDSers being harassed in Minneapolis, two SDSers in Milwaukee were also contacted by the FBI about their anti-war activism.

Organization for a Free Society: While resistance, revolutionary, and national liberation movements represent the "threat of the good example" abroad, likewise the U.S. government will not stand for the "threat of the good example" within its borders. They try to divide us because they know what each of us must remind ourselves: that we be many and they be few! Together our love is more powerful than any bomb, more powerful than any F.B.I. raid. They cannot stop us. But to be unstoppable, together we must reinvent the art of politics in the United States.

Fight Back! (published by FRSO [Fight Back!]] This suppression of democratic rights is aimed towards those who dedicate much of their time and energy to supporting the struggles of the Palestinian and Colombian peoples against U.S. funded occupation and war. The activists are involved with well-known anti-war groups including many of the leaders of the huge protest against the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN in September 2008. The FBI agents emphasized that the grand jury was going to investigate the activists for possible terrorism charges. This is a U.S. government attempt to silence those who support resistance to oppression in the Middle East and Latin America.


ANSWER statement (published at PSLweb.org, website of Party of Socialism & Liberation): The aim of the FBI raids is clearly the suppression of free speech and dissent. The government wants all activists to be afraid to speak out. And the Obama administration’s Justice Department is now leading the charge. But we cannot allow the government to stamp out the right of people to advocate for political beliefs that do not align with the aims of the Pentagon war machine. We cannot allow tem to continue to erode our civil rights and civil liberties.

Workers World (published by Workers World Party): On taking office President Obama made few changes in the Bush Justice Department, replacing only a few of the top personnel and keeping much of the racist, right-wing apparatus intact… Under the cover provided by Attorney General Eric Holder, this repressive agency has had an ever-freer hand, for example, to go after Black elected officials with all manner of spurious charges of corruption. Preventive detention and outrageous entrapment and frame-ups of Muslims have accelerated along with the continued campaign to execute Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Revolution (published by the Revolutionary Communist Party USA): This is a very sinister move by the government, one that should alarm and concern anyone who thinks the government should not be allowed to trample on people's rights, and who thinks it is important that there be opposition, and the freedom to oppose, what the government is doing here and around the world. This is a major escalation against the anti-war movements in particular.

People’s World (published by Communist Party USA): FBI raids spark free speech protests

Again, please leave any comments, additions and corrections in the comments section here.

And much respect to the website of the Kasama Project, where I found some of these. They've been posting and especially reposting a lot about the raids and their aftermath.

Read more!

Facebook and the FBI Raids

The outrageous FBI raids on international solidarity and anti-war activists in the Mid-West has triggered a heartening outpouring of solidarity on the left. It also demonstrated that we are in a new stage in the development of the ever-changing Internet. This was the first major attack by the FBI in the Facebook Era, when social networking reportedly comprises almost a quarter of every hour spent on the Internet, more than games or email or any other single use.

I’ll start with my own involvement. By a fluke I was not only online but on Facebook last Friday morning, September 24. I saw a status update posted five minutes before by Stef Yorek, a friend and a former comrade in FRSO/OSCL. It read:

The FBI is executing a search warrant on our house right now. The claim to be looking for evidence of material support for so-called Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The FARC and PFLP are mentioned by name. This is taking place in multiple cities across the country. I have been served with a warrant to appear before a Grand Jury. It's an outrageous fishing expedition.

I immediately posted it as my status (out of consideration to those who are not familiar with Facebook's structure, terms of art there are here italicized) and then, at the suggestion of Kay Kersplebdeb, posted it here on Fire on the Mountain and linked to it on my Facebook profile so that others there could share it more readily. In the first ninety minutes, at least six other people I know of shared the link and there were well over 200 visitors to this site.

Others were, I am certain, spreading the word as well. Thus, thousands of people around the country were alerted to the attack even as FBI agents were still in the activists’ houses, stealing their files and computers!

The story continued to dominate Facebook for the next few days, or at least the admittedly politicized corner of it where my friend list is based. In the course of tracking it, I noticed a few things I want to summarize here.

First, I saw the process of posts, reposts of the first articles from the mainstream media, and comments around the attack very quickly jell into a political consensus, a line which could be used to understand and organize around the raids. The attack was seen and summarized as aimed at solidarity activists rather than members of a particular organization. It was seen as a deliberate and unjustified move by the government (and in most people’s view the Obama administration) against the left and the anti-war movement.

The raids were seen as using the excuse of “fighting terrorism” to demonize activists and undercut basic Constitutional rights, and as posing a threat to anyone fighting this government’s foreign policy now or in the future.

As it shifted into the blogosphere--the previous center of gravity in the development of the Internet--this was reflected in almost all the pieces I read. (One site did initially choose to spotlight the presence of open members of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization [Fight Back] among those targeted, a mistake on two counts, I would argue. Factually, by no means all of those active in the solidarity groups named in the warrants are members of any group or even socialists. Politically, unless those attacked themselves decide to emphasize organizational matters, doing so tends to make it easier for the state and the media to slander and isolate them.)

As the activists targeted in the warrants, raids and subpoenas regained their footing, they produced a statement and a couple of YouTube videos like this that underscored the line arrived at on Facebook and in the blogosphere.

And in the final stage, this consensus was reflected in the commendable spate of statements produced by socialist, anti-war and progressive organizations, much faster than they might have been even a few years ago.

Second, I saw a very disparate group of individuals--liberals, progressives and revolutionaries, even some libertarians--move to inoculate themselves and their milieu against further attacks. Within the first hour, people were widely posting and linking the Center for Constitutional Rights pamphlet and then the ACLU's slightly shorter equivalent. Folks got the message:

If the FBI knocks: 1) Clam Up. 2) Lawyer Up.

Over the ensuing hours and days this was continued but also deepened and given nuance by further posts and comments. On the nitty-gritty end of the spectrum, at least one friend pointed out that anyone expecting to hear a Miranda warning these days has been watching too many cops shows. Far above street level, others pointed out the menacing effects of the Supreme Court decision only a few months ago in Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project, which rules that speech alone can constitute “material aid” to groups on the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list.

Third, this spontaneously collective process, while it produced an admirable consensus response and trained thousands in the appropriate stance for dealing with possible contact with the Feds, did not produce a program of struggle around the raids. At least it didn’t do so before those hit by the raids put out a call (or perhaps endorsed some existing ones—I’m not sure of the timeline) for folks to bombard Attorney General Holder’s office with phone calls and emails and to hold local demonstrations at FBI offices, Federal Buildings or similar targets. So far more than 30 protests have been held or called and I’ve spoken to at least three friends who went to one based directly on an announcement they read on Facebook.

Now, a couple quick words on the downside of the Facebook-centric rapid response that I’m general citing as a good thing here. For one thing it’s like trying to drink from a firehose if you have many friends or ones who post frequently. It’s decentered so there’s no way of ensuring that there is a common body of knowledge or practice--for instance, I learned in the last day of three demonstrations which were not on the best maintained list, that of the International Action Center--in Memphis, San Diego and Portland, OR. It has a wicked short shelf life--in the last half hour I have seen only six raid-related posts, while on Sunday that would have been dozens. The space for political discussion and education is limited--almost nothing on Facebook or in the blogosphere has dealt at all with the corrupt and brutal government of Colombia and the reasons the FTO-listed Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionaria de Colombia (FARC) have waged a decades long guerrilla war to smash the rule of the oligarchy.

Finally, a caution, which should be obvious. I am, of necessity, like Mao Zedong’s frog in the well here:

A frog in a well says, "The sky is no bigger than the mouth of the well." That is untrue, for the sky is not just the size of the mouth of the well.

For one thing I don’t use Twitter, and I’m sure a lot of this spread there as well. I hope that folks who have made it this far will chip in observations and thoughts based on what the sky looked like from the bottom of your particular well…

Read more!

Alert: FBI Raids On Activists [Updated 2X]

I just saw a Facebook post from Steff Yorek, whom I have known for many years, in Minneapolis. It reads, in full,

The FBI is executing a search warrant on our house right now. The claim to be looking for evidence of material support for so-called Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The FARC and PFLP are mentioned by name. This is taking place in multiple cities across the country. I have been served with a warrant to appear before a Grand Jury. It's an outrageous fishing expedition.

Steff further reports that they have lawyered up--and clammed up.

I have no way of knowing how broad this attack is and whether it is limited to supporters of the Colombian and Palestinian struggles, or if other groups on the FTO list are included. Please post any further information you have as a comment, and if they knock on your door, warrant or no, remember that YOU ARE NOT LEGALLY REQUIRED TO SAY ANYTHING TO THEM.

So don't.

UPDATE:

Early news stories say that six houses in Minneapolis and two in Chicago have been raided. No arrests at this point, but Grand Jury warrants served. A Facebook post reports workplace visits to harass activists as well.

This short description of your rights in such a situation, by the Center for Constitutional Rights, is a must read for everyone, even if you think you've never done anything that might attract the attention of the Feds.

UPDATE 2:

The group I belong to, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization / Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad (which is not the group whose members are among those under attack now) has issued a statement on these attacks which has been posted along with a timely warning about redbaiting.

Read more!