legal

Yesterday Tuesday April 12th 2011, Askia Sabur and Tanya Yates, 2 victims of recent violent attacks by 19th district cops went to court for a pretrial hearing. After waiting for over four hours for the judge to even show up, the court session started with business as usual. Case after case all involving drugs, their consumption and their sale. Like a plea deal factory worker on a bureaucratic assembly line, Judge Means rubber stamped every coerced plea, sending folks from the most struggling neighborhoods away with the necessary paperwork to facilitate whatever deal the DA chose to offer them.

Maroon needs your help now to get into general population! 

After 10 years of tactical begging, cajoling, harassing and embarassing DC politicians to pass the Local Community Radio Act, the Prometheus Radio Project took to desperate hip oscillating measures in their quest for community radio. Targetting the National Association of Broadcasters (nab), whose own lobbying efforts upheld the bill's passage, Prometheus and other low power radio extremists took out their hula hoops in protest.

WHAT DOES MUMIA FACE LEGALLY AFTER THE NOVEMBER 9, 2010 HEARING BEFORE THE THIRD CIRCUIT?

The only legal options that were considered by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, a federal court immediately below the US Supreme Court, at the November 9 hearing were whether Mumia Abu-Jamal is to be executed or get life in prison without parole. The question of Mumia's guilt or innocence and the opportunity of a new trial was not part of this hearing. The Third Circuit decided that issue in March 2008 in a decision made by the same three judges who conducted this hearing.

On May 1, 2010, eleven people were indiscriminately arrested in downtown Asheville, North Carolina and accused of breaking windows in a nearby tourist district. They were held on $65,000 bail each and charged with 10 misdemeanors and 3 felonies; their trial is scheduled for January 2011. In an effort to discredit radicals of all stripes, the eleven have been aggressively demonized by police and corporate media. Although support for the defendants has been growing steadily, the District Attorney Ron Moore is stubbornly clinging to this opportunity to defame and demonize anarchists.

Well over a year after Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell lifted the moratorium he imposed on the PA Board of Probation and Parole in conjunction with the Department of Corrections (DOC) to bring to a complete halt all prisoner releases, parole eligible prisoners at SCI Greene, located in southwestern Pennsylvania, who fall under the classification of violent offenders are still feeling the ramifications of Governor Rendell’s actions. Sadly, they have become pawns in the quest for continued prison expansion here in PA.

From the Human Rights Coalition

On August 2, former prisoners LuQman Abdullah and Nathaniel Lee testified at a Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee Hearing about abusive conditions inside solitary confinement units (also known as the “hole”) in PA’s state prisons. The hearing also featured testimony by human rights investigator Bret Grote, Pennsylvania Prison Society Executive Director William DiMascio, and Department of Corrections Deputy Michael Klopotoski. The former prisoners, who are both now social workers, gave detailed accounts of Pennsylvania’s use of solitary confinement, which is the practice of holding prisoners 23 or more hours a day in small bathroom-sized cells with little or no contact with other people.

In July, a judge changed Lynne Stewart's prison sentence from 28 months to 10 years, effectively giving the 70 year old lawyer who suffers from health issues a death sentence.

In 2005, Stewart was convicted of providing support to a terrorist organization. While defending a known terrorist, she released a statement from her client to the press. In doing so, she violated an agreement with the US government to not pass information between her client and the outside world. Many lawyers view Stewart's conviction as a government attack on defense lawyers that severely restricts their ability to properly represent their clients.

Greetings from California, Comrades!

As many have heard, a relentless anti-police movement has grown from the tragedy of Oscar Grant's murder on January 1, 2009 by former officer Johannes Mehserle.* Recently, Mehserle was convicted of the deplorable charge of involuntary manslaughter, a weak charge which carries a sentence of probation to four years in prison.?

On the night of July 10th, a few of us from defenestrator hung out at Tattooed Mom's, tossing back beers and making plans for insurrection, like we usually do. It was a good time. When we left the bar around midnight, however, we stumbled onto a  chaotic scene on South Street that dissolved our good spirits. Groups of black youth were walking very quickly westward. There was a lot of shouting. There was almost no car traffic. We saw the rows of cops marching toward us. They were shutting down South Street.