Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror.

[reprehensor]

The Case of Sherman Austin

Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror

By JOSHUA FRANK
and MERLIN CHOWKWANYUN

On the afternoon of January 24, 2002, approximately 25 federal agents, guns in hand, stormed the home of Sherman Austin, a Sherman Oaks, California activist who founded www.raisethefist.com, an online site that hosted many political activists' websites. The federal agents, who had been monitoring Austin's Internet activities for several months, seized his computers and other personal belongings, including anti-war and anti-globalization literature.

"They showed me a search warrant, and I just glanced at it They just went into the house. They searched all the rooms in the house. They knew where my room was. They went back there, looked at all the computers, asked me to come in and tell them what all the computers were for specifically so they knew how to dismantle the network I had been running," Austin recalled. "They searched the garage, pretty much everywhere with their guns still out and drawn. They still had people surrounding the house with their weapons drawn."

snip

"The positive thing about this," she explained, "is that there's a passionate community out there that has offered me their undying support. On a spiritual level, I feel I have evolved tremendously. I have met some amazing people, especially young people. I really feel this world has a chance for surviving," Martin said. "These kids are good people. They are trying so hard to create change in our world."

Sadly, media outlets of both mainstream and leftist persuasions continue to ignore Austin's case and its implications for the fate of civil liberties in the United States. Despite increasing criticism of the USA Patriot Act, few commentators from the left- including magazines like The Nation and organizations like the ACLU, MoveOn-mentioned Austin's case or Clinton's Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act in any of their writings on recent civil liberties infringements. However, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a smaller-budgeted and more radical civil rights group, did offer their services. But perhaps the collective ignorance concerning Austin's ordeal by mainstream liberal publications and organizations stems from the fact that Democratic congressional leaders, including Austin's own California senator, penned and supported the very legislation that helped seal Austin's unfortunate fate.

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[AX10]

1. "Well gee, why don't they just taser him a few hundred times....

beat him with a stick, and throw his corps into the ground" (sarcasm off)

Seriously, when are all those (pro law "enforcemt") types going to come around to defend this?!?

:eyes:

Facism is the most serious threat we Americans face today.

[rodeodance]

2. he is right--this should have been discussed in the Patriot/civil rights

meeting (Sensenbrenner and Conyers-), but i did not see any witness bring it up.

[rodeodance]

3. the Denver 3--are part of this also

this was posted on DU ealier

Jun-12-05 04:12 AM
Released files indicate FBI spying on activists (Yes! Weekly / NC)



Jordan Green
Staff Writer

<snip> An FBI file released by the agency on Sarah Bardwell, an anti-war organizer and member of the Denver chapter of Food Not Bombs, indicates the agency’s interest in the group’s connection with various protests and other activist groups, along with a suspicion that the group might be connected with plans to disrupt the Republican and Democratic conventions and the 2004 presidential election. Bardwell obtained the file through a Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, request. <snip>

The synopsis for a subsequent report filed on Dec. 7, 2004 is stated as: “to document information regarding Sarah Bardwell and Food Not Bombs.” The report notes that Colorado has four Food Not Bombs groups, that three individuals were arrested at an anti-war protest at which Bardwell was listed as ‘a point of contact,’ and that her home address was associated with Food Not Bombs and Derailer Bicycle Collective.

Bardwell could not be reached for comment on May 19. A person who answered the phone at her home in Denver said told YES! Weekly that Bardwell was possibly visiting family in the Asheville area of North Carolina. Contact persons at the Asheville and Boone chapters of Food Not Bombs said they were not aware that she was in the state.

Food Not Bombs describes itself as “part of a larger, growing revolutionary movement” and an organization whose “hundreds of autonomous chapters share free vegetarian food with hungry people and protest war and poverty.” The organization is opposed to economic globalization, restrictions on immigration and ecological destruction. <snip>

http://www.yesweekly.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectio...

[reprehensor]

4. Thanks for posting.