The Crime of Politics
Rothschild, Matthew
The Crime of Politics BY MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD Are there political prisoners in the United States? The answer depends on whom you ask, and how you define terms. Amnesty International says no, not...
...He ruled that the prisoners' First Amendment rights had been violated since they were held in the unit because of their political beliefs...
...Government...
...Many times prisoners didn't commit the crime they were convicted of but since the United States doesn't recognize that it has political prisoners—the U.S...
...The Government is now in court against the Ohio 7, charging them with "seditious conspiracy...
...I was making a symbolic statement about nuclear weapons...
...The fourth category—persons who commit violent acts that are politically motivated—covers a range of prisoners, including Native American activists, black nationalists, Puerto Rican independentis-tas, antiracist organizers, and opponents of U.S...
...But it added: "Amnesty International is not in a position to determine his guilt or innocence of the criminal charges against him and therefore has not adopted him as a prisoner of conscience...
...Amnesty International says no, not strictly speaking...
...She was sentenced to fifty-eight years in prison...
...Government has recently dusted off the charge of "seditious conspiracy...
...A Klansman was convicted of a similar charge," Aiyetero notes, "and he only got a seven-year sentence...
...And the Movement Support Network, a project of the Center for Constitutional Rights, recognizes more than 100 political prisoners in the United States...
...Helen Dery Woodson threatened to sue them if they designated her as a political prisoner," Day says...
...policy in Central America and South Africa or have worked to combat racism and the abuse of prisoners...
...The only motivation that I can see is that the Government craved the ability to resurrect this very dangerous statute...
...Your entire staff and half the Democratic Party are probably guilty of it," he told me...
...According to Samuel H. Day Jr., the director of Nukewatch and a friend of Woodson, she was not happy about Amnesty's interest in her case...
...Amnesty International is concerned in case irregular conduct by the prosecuting authorities may have jeopardized Elmer Pratt's right to a fair trial in violation of internationally agreed standards for the protection of human rights," the report stated...
...There was more to it than that...
...See Page 24...
...Such treatment, Amnesty said, contravened the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...
...We define political prisoners as people who have made conscious political decisions, and acted on them, to oppose the United States Government, and who have been incarcerated as a result of those actions," the authors write...
...Freedom Now (the National Campaign for Amnesty and Human Rights for Political Prisoners) lists 132 political prisoners and is investigating sixty additional cases, says Maggie Smith, who works with the organization...
...Last year, 4,130 persons were arrested in the United States for nonviolent protests against the nuclear arms race...
...They refused to cooperate, they asked for the largest sentences, and they refused to desist from further actions...
...The last U.S...
...Susan Rosenberg, a radical feminist and anti-interventionist, was arrested in 1984 and convicted of possession of explosives...
...political prisoners, it may be helpful to draw distinctions between those who are prosecuted strictly for political "thought crimes," those who are framed on non-political charges, those who commit nonviolent "symbolic" acts that are politically motivated, and those who commit violent acts that are politically motivated...
...But not everyone who works on issues of prisoner rights draws such a fine line...
...Government...
...In July 1988, Federal District Judge Barrington Parker ruled against the Federal Bureau of Prisons and noted that political discrimination had occurred...
...At least ninety of these were sentenced to terms ranging from two weeks to seventeen years, according to The Nuclear Resister...
...All have been convicted on previous charges...
...Many of the convicted protesters view themselves as political prisoners...
...Government...
...It wasn't her beliefs but her actions that put her in jail...
...Bureau of Prisons to send any male inmate who disrupts "the orderly operation" of a prison to Marion...
...From one perspective, these nonviolent protesters appear to be exercising symbolic speech rights, which could be construed as being covered by the First Amendment...
...or if two or more persons] oppose by force the authority of the United States, or oppose by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States," then those persons are guilty of seditious conspiracy, a crime punishable by up to twenty years in prison...
...This prosecution has no justification in the world...
...In prison, "they are relegated to the most severe and restricted environments," Aiyetero says...
...Amnesty International investigated Pratt's case and issued a report in May 1988...
...But consigning anyone to a high-security unit for past political associations they will never shun unless forced to renounce them is a dangerous mission for this country's prison system to continue...
...Levasseur underscores the broad dangers of seditious-conspiracy prosecutions...
...He says he was framed by the FBI as part of its Counter-intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) because of his leadership in the Black Panther Party...
...There clearly are political prisoners in the United States," says Adjoa Aiyetero, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union and director of legal and community affairs for the ACLU's national prison project...
...Some of the protesters were arrested for criminal trespass...
...The third category—persons who commit nonviolent "symbolic" acts that are politically motivated—consists largely of nuclear-weapons protesters...
...The FBI reportedly concealed documents negating the ballistics testimony that was used to convict him...
...Pat Levasseur has no doubt that if she is convicted, she will be a political prisoner...
...Amnesty International requires that persons be imprisoned "solely because of their beliefs" to qualify as political prisoners...
...We have no adopted prisoners of conscience" in the United States, says Mandy Bath at Amnesty's headquarters in London...
...He was, in fact, a target of COINTELPRO...
...The existence of political prisoners is a fact of life in these United States...
...The official position of the United States Government has been that there are no political prisoners among over half a million people in United States prisons," writes the Reverend S. Michael Yasutake, director of the Prisoners of Conscience Project of the National Council of the Churches of Christ, U.S.A., in the preface to Can't Jail the Spirit...
...Government tolerates white supremacy" but won't tolerate "an avowed revolutionary opposing the basic principles of the U.S...
...Aiyetero concludes that "the U.S...
...Matthew Rothschild is the managing editor of The Progressive...
...The authors of Can't Jail the Spirit include persons in this fourth category as political prisoners...
...It's one thing to place persons under greater security because they have escape histories and pose special risks to our correctional institutions," Judge Parker ruled...
...Discrimination against politically oriented prisoners does not end with their sentences...
...It was a thought crime...
...others for destruction of Government property...
...But at the time of his trial, neither he nor his defense counsel were aware of this...
...The second category to consider is the political prisoner who has been framed on nonpolitical charges...
...I considered myself a political prisoner," says Barb Katt, who was sentenced to six months in prison for participating in a protest at the Strategic Air Command in Omaha, Nebraska, in December 1986...
...No matter how you define political prisoners in the United States, there is little doubt that persons convicted of politically related offenses are often more severely punished than non-political prisoners...
...military intervention...
...prison system...
...The four members of this group—Helen Dery Woodson, Father Carl Kabat, Father Paul Kabat, and Larry Cloud Morgan—damaged the lid of a nuclear missile silo on Veteran's Day, 1984, and received sentences of eight to eighteen years...
...Peltier's appeals have been unsuccessful...
...The FBI also planted three informants on Pratt's defense team...
...The most recent case in the United States that Amnesty looked into involved the Silo Pruning Hooks...
...Amnesty International sent an observer to investigate the unit in June 1988 and found conditions there "deliberately and gratuitously oppressive" and the treatment of the three prisoners to be "cruel, inhuman, and degrading...
...This clause is widely interpreted to include political organizing or agitating behind bars...
...The Committee to End the Marion Lockdown and the National Committee to Free Puerto Rican Prisoners of War last year published Can't Jail the Spirit: Political Prisoners in the U.S., A Collection of Biographies, which lists sixty-seven political prisoners...
...People are in prison because they are active in organizing against actions of the U.S...
...Political prisoners in general tend to get longer and harsher sentences," says Ai-yetero of the ACLU...
...Government is not quite so honest as other governments—it frames people on charges that are not political on their face," says Aiyetero of the ACLU's national prison project...
...If that becomes acceptable, that people can do time for this, it will go a long way in repressing the population," she says...
...There are fourteen Puerto Ricans convicted of seditious conspiracy in the United States right now," says Jan Susler, an attorney at the People's Law Office in Chicago...
...When you're charged with seditious conspiracy, it's extremely political," she says...
...Peltier, a leader of the American Indian Movement, was tried and convicted of the 1975 murders of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota...
...In the first category ("thought crimes"), the U.S...
...In sorting out the issue of U.S...
...Indeed, it is the policy of the U.S...
...The first three women who were placed in this unit—Susan Rosenberg, Alejandrina Torres, and Silvia Baraldini—had all been convicted of politically motivated offenses...
...Some of these prisoners admit that they took up arms against the U.S...
...Those of us who have been in contact with political people in prisons, their supporters and their families, know otherwise...
...prisoner of conscience that Amnesty recognized was Stacey Merkt, who served a six-month term in 1987 for her part in helping Central American refugees to seek sanctuary in the United States...
...I don't have to have done anything...
...The Ohio 7 are political individuals who have participated in protests against U.S...
...It is an extraordinarily rare charge and when invoked it has always been used— with one exception—against progressive political people," Newman says...
...others deny the charge...
...We did investigate the case of the Silo Pruning Hooks," says Bath, "but we concluded that the case did not fall within our guidelines as prisoners of conscience...
...Male prisoners typically end up at the Federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, notorious for being the most repressive in the U.S...
...I don't have to have taken any political action myself in order to be found guilty...
...The "seditious-conspiracy" statute of 1861 says: "If two or more persons conspire to overthrow, put down, or destroy by force the Government of the United States...
...Women prisoners who are politically active are usually sent to the penitentiary at Lexington, Kentucky, where the Bureau of Prisons opened a high-security unit in September 1986...
...the FBI identified him as a "Key Black Extremist...
...Newman notes that the historical antecedents for this law are the Alien and Sedition Acts (which Congress chose not to renew in 1801 because they were too dangerous to civil liberties) and the Runaway Slave Act...
...What's more, the chief prosecution witness was an FBI informant, though he denied being one during the trial...
...The two most famous cases of possible frame-ups are Leonard Peltier and Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt...
...Pratt was convicted of murder in July 1972 and sentenced to life imprisonment...
...I just had to think something—the overthrow of the U.S...
...You can't get more political than seditious conspiracy," says William Newman, who represents Pat Levasseur, one of the Ohio 7. "It's a thought crime...
...Government or its policies...
...Those are just the most overt cases...
Vol. 53 • May 1989 • No. 5
