The Very Brief Vigil
21 March, 2007 at 9:00 am Today begins a vigil which will continue until my son is released from prison. It will undoubtedly begin as something small, a gnat in the face of an elephant. That’s how it always happens. I’ll sit in front of the Federal Building in San Francisco at Larkin and Golden Gate, with whomever chooses to join me from nine to five, five days a week for the sake of reminding a guy called Alsup that my son is one of many people he has put behind bars. Maybe he’ll notice me. Maybe not. Maybe his friends and colleagues will comment. Maybe not. It begins small, after all.
My son is in jail for refusing to become a government informant in the context of a political witch hunt. He is in jail for practicing journalism with a full regard for ethics but without a corporate license. There is no question about any of this, no reasonable controversy. Some have said he is not a journalist. The Society of Professional Journalists, Reporters without Borders, National Press Club, Newspaper Guild, Rolling Stone, and the Bay Guardian say otherwise. He is fully protected by the California Shield Law and enjoys the support of a great many lawmakers and elected officials including notably Kamela Harris, who is the District Attorney for San Francisco where the incident he taped occurred. As they have done with other San Francisco and California laws, such as propositions 215, 420, and gay marriage, the Federal government has chosen to ignore the California Shield Law along with the ninth and tenth amendments of its own Constitution. They have no valid jurisdiction in this case which occurred within the City and County of San Francisco, involved property and personnel from this City and County, and in no way entailed any Federal crime whatsoever. Their flimsy claim to jurisdiction, resting on the broken tail light of a police car allegedly purchased from federal funds is spurious since San Francisco has never used Federal funding for the purchase of police cars. All of this is obvious. It is so obvious that even those who wish to belittle Josh’s journalistic accomplishments or standing inevitably conclude he nevertheless should not remain in Federal Custody.
And so I will sit here until he is released, beginning modestly with whomever chooses to join me for eight hours a day five days a week. It should be understood that I am not sitting here for Josh alone, nor do I ask you to join me for the sake of my son only. As such things go, he’s not suffering greatly.
There are tens of thousands of other young Americans being killed, wounded, and scarred for life in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis whose fate is worse yet.
Terminally ill patients have been put in Federal prisons, some right across the street from my son, because the medicine prescribed to them by their physicians isn’t recognized by this same benighted government in spite of volumes of research to the contrary.
In Guantanamo and elsewhere the routine practice of physical and mental torture by the United States has driven people to madness and suicide, turning some, like Jose Padilla, into vegetables.
Kevin Kjonaas, a member of the SHAC 7 has been sentenced to six years for the crime of maintaining a Web site. The remainder of this group have also been sentenced to up to thirteen years in prison. Their most serious crime was petty vandalism although the “victims” of their demonstrations against animal cruelty claimed to fear for their lives in spite of the fact that not one animal or human has ever been killed or even injured by any animal rights activity.
Confined with my son at FDC Dublin are numbers of “Paisas” whose crime was reentering the United States illegally from Mexico. Although many have lived here since childhood and most have neither friends nor family in Mexico, they face ever increasing sentences every time they cross the border after their release, beginning with thirty months, increasing to sixty, and continuing on from there. While imprisoned they must work for pennies an hour, but, at the end of their sentence, the cost of “reparations” precisely equals the money they earned, making them nothing more nor less than slaves. At present the prison industrial complex is the most vital growth industry in America, which imprisons more people, both in total numbers and per capita than any other nation on earth. Prison labor is cheaper than that in even the poorest countries. There is no possibility of organization or strikes. It is a very attractive economic proposition for companies as well-known as Microsoft, Toys R Us, Honda, TWA, and AT&T. Welcome to the land of the free.
It is for all these reasons and all these people that I sit here today, not just for my son. It is for many others as well whom I will discuss on this blog going forward as this thing builds, for it will build. It will build in numbers and it will build in commitment. Watch and see. And join me, if you can.
You see there’s only two reasons that the evils of this nation can continue, and make no mistake, if ever there was an evil nation, it is this one. Founded on genocide as great as any other and continuing for hundreds of years, it has created more death, maiming, and suffering than any other in the history of humanity. It hides its true nature behind the façade of noble ideals that are at best imperfectly realized for some few within its borders at the cost of their direct contradiction everywhere else on the planet. With five percent of the world’s population, this nation enjoys twenty-six percent of the world’s production of energy and finished goods. In a world where one billion people are starving, this is unconscionable. Worse yet, even within its borders, huge swaths of its population face deep poverty while being continuously propagandized by the values of consumer culture. Is it any wonder we see crime and drug addiction arising from this?
One of the reasons this continues is the pervasiveness of the propaganda. The real facts are frequently unknown and like as not the most hyped stories on any given day are the deaths, rehab attempts, affairs, and divorces of celebrities. People know far more about the life and death of Anna Nicole Smith or the foibles of Britney Spears than they do about the Paisas or Microsoft’s use of prison labor. A Google news search on SHAC 7 yields not a single article. The same search on “Josh Wolf” produces 175 hits today, while “Anna Nicole Smith” comes back with 26,708 entries.
Josh is one of the privileged people on a global scale. He is college educated, computer literate, and owns a high-end Mac, a three chip prosumer video camera, Final Cut Pro, and multiple internet domains with a generous hosting plan. He is able to translate what he sees into video that other privileged people can watch. He, like me, is able to write to anyone with access to the internet. Because of this, he has become known to many; and, aside from whatever his current presence is on Google news links, there are a half million or so links to him and his case and cause on Google itself. Josh knows about most everything I’ve written about here. In fact it was he who alerted me to the plight of the paisas. He, along with a great many others, has been actively working for years to make information like this known to many, fighting that pervasiveness of propaganda. I think anyone who is reading this has probably come across some of the unreported truths the US would rather we didn’t know or think about.
But pervasive propaganda is only half the picture. The other half is fear and complacency. People seem to miss the reality that all power flows directly from the consent of the governed. They seem to think they are helpless, that they can do nothing. Worse yet, if they dare do anything that meets with the slightest governmental pressure, they run in terror. Welcome to the home of the brave.
Josh is different and for this I salute and respect him. He dared to stand up against the star chamber called a “federal grand jury” and has spent over 200 days in a federal jail because of it. It’s about time anyone and everyone else who understands what’s really going on stand beside him in this very safe and very minor way. I’m here and I’d like you to join me. I don’t care whether you join me because you think Josh’s case is important or not. It isn’t the biggest elephant in the living room nor the most egregious miscarriage of that much-misused term “justice”. It is only one of many. Stand with me because you know of others. Stand with me for those killed and maimed in a war for profit. Stand with me for the terminally ill put behind bars and denied medication. Stand with me against torture. Stand with me against prisons. Stand with me for the paisas and the poor everywhere. Stand with me because it’s time to take our country back and put it on a course that is humane and sustainable. We’ve been divided far too long while those who profit from our division wage their own internecine power struggles with kid gloves. “Impeachment is off the table” said the woman who supposedly represents San Francisco which voted to impeach both Bush and Cheney. The newly formed Democratic majority criticizes a war their constituents vehemently oppose while continuing to support its expansion. Let the spark ignite here. Sit with me, stand with me, speak your piece, tell the world. You at least are free. Do you dare to be brave as well?
*****
8 August, 2007 at 11:53 pm
This is the end of the second week of the vigil, nine days now. Haven’t had time to report back till now, so this will cover a lot of ground. A week ago Monday I carried my still virginal banner made by Howard Vicini, to the front of the US Federal building, uncertain of how many days would be ahead of me, but confident that if this could make a difference I would make it do so.
Two weeks later, the difference it makes is clear,
It is now August 8. Josh was released before I had time to write about the vigil. Had I a laptop, I would have documented it during the day. As it happened, there was just too much going on to find time to write a blog at end of day. Of course, had I a laptop, I don’t think it would have been the same…now someone who would stand with me who did have a laptop would have been great. ‘Cept he was in jail at the time, which is why I was there in the first place….
*****
9 August, 2007 at 12:36 am Whether the vigil applied any leverage to the Justice Department’s desire for a settlement I don’t know. At the time the settlement was reached support had been growing steadily and the conversations going on were becoming powerful indictments of what has become a rogue state even toward its own people. If a settlement had not been achieved on that day, there would have been several hundred people gathered with me on the following days. Josh had become a symbol for many people and was acting like a seed crystal to unify the frustration and anger all of us feel about this government. But now things move on…