NATO SUMMIT/PEACE PARK:
The federal government declined to prosecute William Thomas
following his arrest last April when the park opposite the White House
was cleared for the gathering of heads of criminal states...
ALDERMASTON WOMEN TRASH TRIDENT:
Rosie James and Rachel Wenham go on trial January 24, 2000
in Lancaster Crown Court, England, for causing a reported £100,000
damage to HMS Vengeance in the dock at Barrow last February. For details
of hospitality and trial and pre- trial events planned, contact Becqke
at Coventry Peace House, 311 Stony Syanton Road, Coventry, West Midlands,
UK, phone (01203) 663 031...
WHITE HOUSE:
Many of the 26 people arrested at the National Coalition
for Peace in Yugoslavia demonstration at the White House on June 3 returned
for trial July 21, to hear that charges against everyone who had not already
paid a $50 fine were dismissed...
SYRACUSE FEDERAL BUILDING:
Five people arrested in December 1998, for a graffiti protest
of renewed bombing of Iraq were convicted last fall in two separate trials.
Three men were sentenced to 50 hours community service, while two women
tried separately were sentenced to 100 hours community service and ordered
to pay $1,200 restitution. The women have appealed...
ANN ARBOR POST OFFICE:
Allegedly illicit leafletter and legitimate war resister
James Lupton was convicted of trespass on December 7, nearly a year after
his arrest in 1998 as the bombing of Iraq was resumed. He will be sentenced
January 20...
HANFORD:
Independent radiation researcher Norm Buske and the Government
Accountability Project have reached an agreement with the operators of
the eastern Washington nuclear weapons reservation allowing Buske to continue
sampling vegetation and water from the adjacent Columbia River shore and
flood plain for research into radiation pollution from the reactors and
waste storage tanks at Hanford. A trespass charge laid last summer as Buske
collected samples will not be prosecuted...
MILWAUKEE IRS OFFICE:
Four people arrested at a peaceful demonstration last April
15 outside the doors of the tax agency in the Reuss Federal Building took
different routes in court. Lincoln Rice pleaded out to a sentence of five
hours of community service. Ryan O'Rourke has his charge dismissed after
prosecutors improperly changed it from disorderly conduct to trespass.
At trial, Mary Pichelmann and Don Timmerman's charges were dismissed. In
his testimony, Timmerman observed the picture of Dr. Martin Luther King
on the judge's wall, noting that Dr. King was also opposed to military
spending and the use of violence to get one's way. The judge agreed, and
then ruled that the IRS office, although in a private building, is located
where the public is invited to come. He found the defendants' conduct to
be neither disorderly nor trespassing. The next day, the judge phoned Timmerman,
to remind the war tax resister that he was running for Supreme Court in
the State of Wisconsin...