Former Prisoner at Secretive CMU Tells the Story of One Man Still There
Posted in Legal Issues, Prisoner Support on May 11th, 2010
Andy Stepanian of the SHAC 7 speaks out against secretive prisons called Communication Management Units.
Posted in Legal Issues, Prisoner Support on May 11th, 2010
Andy Stepanian of the SHAC 7 speaks out against secretive prisons called Communication Management Units.
Posted in Legal Issues on May 3rd, 2010
The federal Bureau of Prisons has quietly submitted a proposal to make the secretive, political prisons called Communications Management Units permanent.
As part of that process, there is a required public comment period, where individuals and organizations can register their opposition. This is a process required by the Administrative Procedures Act, and it should have [...]
Posted in Legal Issues on Apr 28th, 2010
Remember when someone set fire to so-called “green” mansions in a Seattle suburb? The builders of the Street of Dreams rushed to label it “eco-terrorism” by the Earth Liberation Front, and so did the FBI. They pointed to a banner left at the scene that said, “Built green? Nope Black!” At the time I wrote [...]
Posted in Legal Issues, Uncategorized on Apr 21st, 2010
The Supreme Court has struck down a federal law targeting “depictions of animal cruelty,” including dog-fighting and “crush” videos. And that’s a very good thing for animal rights activists.
Posted in Legal Issues, Prisoner Support on Apr 16th, 2010
This week we learned that the government has proposed making secretive prisons for “domestic terrorists,” which have been operating for 3 years on U.S. soil, permanent.
In this video Rachel Meeropol and Alexis Agathocleous, attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights, discuss the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Communications Management Units, or CMUs:
Posted in Legal Issues, Prisoner Support on Apr 14th, 2010
Secretive political prisons for “domestic terrorists” called Communications Management Units have been operating for more than three years on U.S. soil. Last week the federal Bureau of Prisons quietly submitted a proposal to make the experimental units permanent: a process that, by law, should have occurred before they were ever opened.
As a quick introduction, there [...]
Posted in Activists Arrested, Legal Issues on Apr 9th, 2010
An FBI affidavit has just been released in the investigation of the 2004 Animal Liberation Front break-in at the University of Iowa. It shows the stream-of-consciousness approach the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force took to the investigation, including surfing MySpace and Facebook and using an informant to identify activists on YouTube.
The affidavit from October, [...]
Posted in Activists Arrested, Legal Issues on Apr 5th, 2010
Photo from Flickr's antonychammond under Creative Commons license.Last week the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a lawsuit on behalf of multiple inmates housed in secretive prison facilities on U.S. soil called Communications Management Units. The suit is in addition to one previously filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, and marks an increased pressure on [...]
Posted in Legal Issues, Police Harassment & Abuse on Mar 15th, 2010
FBI raid of Salt Lake City house of animal rights activists. Photo by Jordan Halliday.FBI agents and law enforcement from multiple agencies have raided a well-known activist group house in Salt Lake City, Utah, today in connection with an investigation of Animal Liberation Front crimes in Iowa.
I just got off the phone with multiple housemates [...]
Posted in Activists Arrested, Federal Terrorism Laws, Legal Issues, Legislation on Dec 11th, 2009
As a follow up to David Pellow’s guest post, “My Student is a Sociologist, Not a Terrorist,” here is an update from his grad student facing terrorism charges, Scott DeMuth.
DeMuth has been indicted for conspiracy to commit “animal enterprise terrorism” in relation to the unsolved Animal Liberation Front raid at the University of Iowa. The [...]