Monthly Archive for September, 2011

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Leonard Peltier moved again

Leonard Peltier

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Leonard Peltier has been moved from Oklahoma City to the U.S. Penitentiary at Coleman, Florida.

The United States Penitentiary I in Coleman is a high security facility located in central Florida approximately 50 miles northwest of Orlando, 60 miles northeast of Tampa, and 35 miles south of Ocala.

LEONARD PELTIER #89637-132
USP COLEMAN I
U.S. PENITENTIARY
P.O. BOX 1033
COLEMAN, FL  33521

This is nearly 2,000 miles from Leonard’s Nation,
the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians,
in North Dakota!

Tell the Federal Bureau of Prisons
that the only acceptable transfer
is one to a medium security facility
in close proximity to
(within a 500-mile radius of)
his family and Nation.

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Plowshares activist released from prison; promptly arrested for alleged probation violation

From the Disarm Now Plowshares blog

A Plowshares activist was released on September 12 after serving the majority of her sentence, only to be promptly arrested for allegedly violating the terms of her probation.

Lynne Greenwald was released earlier today from the SeaTac Federal Detention Center in Washington State after serving five and a half months of a six month sentence for her participation in the 2009 Disarm Now Plowshares action at the Bangor Trident nuclear submarine base and Strategic Weapons Facility, Pacific.

Greenwald is a grandmother, retired social worker, peace activist, and until her time in prison worked at Irma Gary House, a transitional house for women recently released from prisons in Washington State.

Greenwald arrived at the Federal Progress House (the organization that was to provide community supervision while she is under house arrest for the remaining two weeks of her sentence) before noon as she had been instructed by Bureau of Prisons (BOP) officials. While working through her paperwork U.S. Marshals arrived and arrested Greenwald for allegedly violating her conditions of release. They transported her to a holding cell in Tacoma awaiting transport back to the SeaTac Federal Detention Center this evening.

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Time served for Gump; 3 months for Bichsel

Jean Gump over the line at Y-12, July 5, 2010. Photo by Felice Cohen-Joppa

Y12 Resisters’ Sentencing Begins

report from the website of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance – http://orepa.org/first-report-on-sentencing-of-y12-resisters/

MONDAY morning, September 12, 2011 • Jean Gump

Jean Gump was the first of the July 2010 Y12 Resisters to be sentenced in federal court in Knoxville.  Jean was not present, but was represented by Francis Lloyd. After hearing from the prosecution, which requested a four month prison term to be followed by five years supervised probation, judge Bruce Guyton sentenced Jean to time served and ordered to pay a fine of $500 (along with a “special fee” of $25).

The prosecution sought to twist Jean’s absence into some kind of defiance of the court: “She shows her remorse and lack of contrition by her absence,” and asserted that her actions at Y12 put the safety of many people at risk as well as threatened our national security. The prosecutor berated Jean for traveling to Europe while awaiting trial but then being unable to attend court for her sentencing. Finally, she derided Jean’s “presumptuous” attempt to “create her own sentence,” by going to jail for a month. The government asked the judge to sentence Jean to four months in prison and five years’ supervised release.

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Helen Woodson Released from Prison!

After  27 years in federal prison for her anti-nuclear witness (and subsequent actions), Helen Woodson arrives in Kansas City on September 10, 2011.

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~ From the Irwin County Detention Center, by Steve Baggarly

Reprinted from the Catholic Agitator, newsletter of the Los Angeles  Catholic Worker. Steve Baggarly will be sentenced September 20 in  federal court in Knoxville, Tennessee, for trespass July 5, 2010 at the Y-12 nuclear weapons complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Last night as I prepared to turn in, at the foot of my upper bunk, a  young Aryan Nation member began to pummel my neighbor’s face.  All I  could do was lean over the edge of my bunk, shout, “Hey, hey, hey!”  and stick my hand between them momentarily as David punched Everett  on past my bunk towards the next.  Somehow the guards burst in and, yelling, stopped the beating almost as quickly as it began. It seems Everett had just been outed as a pimp of under-aged girls and David, who was abused as a child, fashioned himself an avenging angel.

The blood splattered on the floor around my bunk reminded me how easily dismissed is Jesus’ nonviolent way in favor of the seeming efficacy of violence. A deeply held faith in violence as necessity pervades not only jail culture, but the nation as well. Indeed, the Y-12 nuclear weapons complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee is an icon of our national commitment to use brute force – heat, blast and radiation – against human flesh. Part of the World War II Manhattan Project, Oak Ridge enriched the uranium used in the first atomic bomb, dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, August 6, 1945.

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~ From FMC Carswell, Max Unit, by Helen Woodson

Silo Pruning Hook activist Helen Woodson is due to be released September 9 after serving nearly 27 years in prison for that and subsequent actions against war and other assaults on human dignity, peace and the environment.

July 23, 2011

Dear Jack & Felice,

48 days – and then I’ll emerge, Winkle-esque, into a very different world. I’ve always been a troglodyte and came to prison never having laid eyes on a TV remote control. Now the federal prisons have e-mail! I am not permitted to use it, but I did have to acquire rudimentary computer skills to access my address list and commissary account.

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