FBI attempts to question Chicago international solidarity activists. Don’t talk to FBI!
On November 15, three FBI agents came to the Chicago home of an international solidarity
1. Appeal for Rasmea Odeh from Meredith Aby
Happy Holidays To Our Friends and Supporters,
On September 24, 2010 my life changed as the FBI rummaged through my home looking for evidence of “material support for terrorism” as I stood holding my 18 month old. I felt alone when they came to my home but I have not felt alone since. Locally and nationally the response from the peace and justice movements has been amazing. Thank you for standing with me and the other 22 anti-war and international solidarity activists who were raided and subpoenaed in 2010.
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression plays a key role in leading the national effort to defend the Anti-War 23. It coordinates our national outreach and organizing on our case and against state repression. Our activists speak out against surveillance and political repression on the national and local level at conferences and protests. We are on the forefront nationally and locally in defending our rights to protest and to show solidarity.
Currently we are organizing support for Rasmea Odeh, the newest activist to be caught up in the crosshairs of the FBI’s investigation of Midwest solidarity and anti-war activists. We continue to be concerned about the FBI’s continued investigation into our movement but we are not afraid to organize against war! Thanks for standing with us!
Your Support is Key!
We could not have kept the Anti-War 23 out of jail, stopped the attack on Carlos Montes, or continued our grassroots organizing for civil liberties with out YOUR support. Thank you.
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression is a grassroots all volunteer national organization. We hope you can support our work by contributing financially to support this important work. Your contribution will be spent organizing against state repression, funding our legal support of Rasmea Odeh and our continued activism around the case of the Anti-War 23.
Peace,
Meredith Aby-Keirstead
Donate here
2. Take Action for Rasmea Odeh at StopFBI.net
A Palestinian woman, Rasmea Odeh, was arrested at her home in Chicagoland on Oct. 22, 2013 by agents of the Department of Homeland Security.
She is charged with immigration fraud. Allegedly, in her application for citizenship, she didn’t mention her arrest in Palestine 45 years ago by an Israeli military court that detains Palestinians without charge – a court that has over 200 children in prison today and does not recognize the rights of Palestinians to due process.
The arrest appears to be related to the case of the 23 anti-war activists subpoenaed to a grand jury in 2010. Well-known labor, community and international solidarity activists around the Midwest had their homes raided by the FBI when the U.S. attorney alleged that they had provided material support to foreign terrorist organizations in Palestine and Colombia.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Barry Jonas is leading the investigation against the 23. He was at the courtroom in Chicago, consulting with the assistant U.S. attorney who was presenting the indictment against Rasmea Odeh to the judge. Jonas was also the prosecutor in the case of the Holy Land Five, the heads of the largest Muslim charity in the U.S. before 9/11. Jonas was successful in getting prison sentences for as long as 65 years for the five men, who provided charity to children in Gaza.
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression (CSFR) denounces this attack as another example of the continuing repression of Palestinians and people who stand in solidarity with them. Homeland Security, the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Attorney’s office now are carrying out enforcement of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Odeh appeared in court in Detroit on Nov. 13th, represented by Jim Fennerty of the National Lawyers Guild. More than 100 people protested outside the court arraignment and 12 other cities held solidarity rallies. The Committee to Stop FBI Repression is urging people to attend the proceedings at the Federal Court in Detroit in her defense or to hold local solidarity rallies on the first day of Rasmea Odeh’s trial in the late winter or spring of 2014.
Please Take Action Now!
1) Sign the petition to drop the charges against Rasmea Odeh:
2) Host a fundraising dinner or party for Rasmea Odeh
3) Call and send photos of support for Rasmea!
4) Join the Facebook page: Drop The Charges Against Rasmea Now!
5)Tweet using #justice4rasmea
6) Mobilize to support Rasmea at her next hearing in Detroit in 2014.
7) Have your organization sign or write a solidarity statement (email to [email protected])
3. Lynne Stewart: “Help bring me home for the holidays”
A life and death appeal from renowned people’s attorney Lynne Stewart.
“I need to ask once again for your assistance in forcing the Bureau of Prisons to grant my Compassionate Release. They have been stonewalling since August and my life expectancy, as per my cancer doctor, is down to 12 months. They know that I am fully qualified and that over 40,000 people have signed on to force them to do the right thing, which is to let me go home to my family and to receive advanced care in New York City.
Yet they refuse to act. While this is entirely within the range of their politics and their cruelty to hold political prisoners until we have days to live before releasing us – witness Herman Wallace of Angola and Marilyn Buck – we are fighting not to permit this and call for a BIG push.”
–Lynne Stewart, FMC Carswell
Take action now! Call and write to:
CHARLES E. SAMUELS, Jr., Director Federal Bureau of Prisons
(202) 307-3250 or 3062; [email protected]
ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER, U.S. Department of Justice
(202) 353-1555; [email protected]
Contact U.S. Embassies and Consulates in nations throughout the world
LET US CREATE A TIDAL WAVE OF EFFORT INTERNATIONALLY.
Notes:
In a new 237-page report entitled “A Living Death,” the American Civil Liberties Union documents unconstitutional practices permeating federal and state prisons in the United States.
Focused on life imprisonment without parole for minor offenses, the ACLU details conditions of 3,278 individual prisoners whose denial of release is deemed “a flagrant violation of the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment” occurring on an increasing scale.
The ACLU labels the deliberate stonewalling as “willful,” a touchstone of the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Justice flagrant violation of the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
These conclusions corroborate the findings of Human Rights Watch in 2012: “The Answer is ‘No’: Too Little Compassionate Release in U.S. Prisons.”
The Report is definitive in exposing arbitrary and illegal conduct that infuses every facet of the treatment accorded Lynne Stewart.
“…the Bureau has usurped the role of the courts. In fact, it is fair to say the jailers are acting as judges. Congress intended the sentencing judge, not the BOP to determine whether a prisoner should receive a sentence reduction.”
Lynne Stewart’s medical findings show less than twelve months to live as stipulated by her oncologist at FMC Carswell.
The Federal Bureau Prisons has failed to file the legally required motion declaring solely that the matter is “with the Department of Justice.”
Sign the petition
4. Solidarity with NYC student anti-war activists
We of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression at www.StopFBI.net stand in solidarity with student activists at the City College of New York (CCNY) and City University of New York (CUNY) in their campus protests of US war criminal General Petraeus. We oppose the severe repression dealt out by CUNY administrators and the NYPD. It is Petraeus who needs arresting and imprisonment, not student leaders.
CUNY students expose the war criminal Petraeus
CUNY students began protesting this fall semester against CUNY granting a teaching contract to the war criminal General Petraeus. Petraeus is responsible for war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. People will remember the US torture photos of Iraqi men involving electric shock, naked sexual positions, and dogs from Abu Ghraib prison. Also the killing of civilians and journalists by US helicopter gunship that was exposed by Wikileaks and the now imprisoned Bradley Manning. Finally the CIA escalation of drone attacks that target and kill civilians—at home, at weddings, and at funerals–especially in Pakistan. General Petraeus is responsible for all of these and more.
On the college campus of CCNY, bold and dramatic videos show students hounding Petraeus for his war crimes, and shining a light on CUNY administrators attempt to normalize and rehabilitate him. The students are right to expose this outrage. We need more students like them. We praise the student leaders for their bold action!
The war at home, leaders targeted for arrest
At one of the first protests, on September 17, 2013, the NYPD brutalized and arrested six students protesting outside of the building where Petraeus was teaching. It is clear from the video that particular student leaders were targeted and that the police came with the intent to arrest them no matter what. We demand all charges be dropped against the CUNY 6!
Retaliatory raid, campus security seizes the Morales/Shakur Center
In retaliation for organizing protests against General Petraeus, campus security raided and seized the student activist Morales/Shakur Center at CCNY on Sunday, October 20, shutting it down. They locked down the campus, locked students out of the library, and arrested former student leader, teacher and US army veteran David Suker who sat in to protest the raid.
On Monday, 200+ students rallied outside, followed by another rally on Thursday, October 24, the administration and the police arrested David Suker again, while suspending student activists Khalil Vasquez and Tafadar Sourov, followed by an order later that week to present themselves to be arrested for the protests. Jailed for 24 hours, they were slapped with inciting to riot, riot in the second degree, obstructing governmental administration, and two counts of criminal mischief –for helping lead student protests against War Criminal General Petraeus and against the militarization of their college.
Act now:
Call CUNY Chancellor William Kelly at 646.664.9100 / [email protected],
Call CCNY President Coico at 212-650-7285 / [email protected]
Demand:
(1) Student protests are not a crime! Drop the criminal charges now!
(2) Restore the Morales/Shakur Center to student and community members. Return all seized items.
(3) Dump war criminal General Petraeus and stop the militarization of the CCNY and CUNY campuses.
Donations for the CUNY students’ legal defense can be made at http://defendthecuny6.wordpress.com/.
Statement of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression at www.StopFBI.net
5. Free the Holy Land Five – new video
Free the Holy Land Five! Five years is too long! Free the Five now!
A new video from the families and friends of the Holy Land Five
6. Free Nestora Salgado, imprisoned in Mexico
Free Nestora Salgado!
Join the international movement to free Nestora Salgado, brave indigenous woman and U.S. citizen who is working to help her people by exposing corrupt public officials and is paying for it. This strong, dynamic leader has been in prison in Mexico since August 21, 2013. Her crime was working with residents of her hometown in the state of Guerrero to exercise their legal right to form a community police force to protect themselves from violent drug traffickers, criminal gangs, and unscrupulous officials.
Learn more about Nestora Salgado