As 25,000 people protested at the School of Assassins in Fort Benning, Georgia, 300 protested torture training at Fort Huachuca in southern Arizona
November 18, 2007
By Jack or Felice Cohen-Joppa
Three Arrested as 300 Protest Torture at Ft. Huachuca
More than three hundred people rallied against torture today outside the gates of Ft. Huachuca, Arizona, home of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and school for interrogation.
Three people were arrested during the rally as they tried to enter the base and meet with enlisted personnel and officers to continue a dialogue begun three days earlier about the interrogation techniques taught there.
Betsy Lamb, Mary Burton Riseley, and Franciscan Fr. Jerry Zawada were taken into custody at the main gate about 1 p.m., and charged with criminal trespass on a military installation (18 USC1382), conspiracy (18 USC 371), and failure to comply with a police officer (Arizona Revised Statutes 28-622, as assimilated by the Federal Assimilative Crimes Act 18 USC 13 & 7). They were released a few hours later with a summons to appear in federal court in Tucson on December 4 for their arraignment.
Last Thursday, Riseley and Zawada met with officers at the base and began the dialogue they sought to continue today. Before the three entered the Fort, Betsy Lamb explained the concern for the soldiers that she shares with Riseley and Zawada: "Torture is inhuman. It is too 'up close and personal' for either victim or perpetrator to escape unharmed. For me, it represents an ultimate hardening of its perpetrators, leaving little left they couldn't be talked into doing. It is a morally bereft act capable of creating morally bereft people."
Biographical information about the three people arrested follows this press release along with the text of the flyer they brought onto the Fort to distribute.
Today's demonstration at Ft. Huachuca took place in conjunction with the annual vigil at Ft. Benning, Georgia, where 25,000 people vigiled today and 11 were arrested as they called for closing the infamous School of the Americas (now named the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). Dozens of Latin American military leaders who trained at the "School of Assassins" have since been convicted of torture, murder, and other heinous crimes in their own countries.
Fr. Louie Vitale and Fr. Steve Kelly, two priests who were arrested at last year's demonstration at Ft. Huachuca, are currently serving a five month prison sentence. For more information see http://tortureontrial.org/.- 30 -
BIOGRAPHIES
Mary Burton Riseley, 65 years old Mary is a fourth generation New Mexican, a Quaker and a war tax resister. She has been active in peace and anti-nuclear issue since 1970. She was the co-founder of the Los Alamos Study Group in1990, and spent five weeks in Iraq with Voices in the Wilderness in the winter of 2003. She's a member of an agricultural land trust community on the Gila River in Cliff, New Mexico. She has one wonderful daughter who does community garden support work in New York City.
Betsy Lamb, 69 years old Extensive travel in Latin America made Betsy aware of the violence - including torture - being perpetrated on the people therein support of U.S. interests. In 1989, Betsy first risked arrest in nonviolent direct action when six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter were ruthlessly massacred in El Salvador by soldiers trained at the School of the Americas. With a M.A. in Theology, Betsy then worked for many years developing small parish-based Catholic communities for putting faith into action. In 2004, she completed a six-month prison sentence for her nonviolent action to close the School of the Americas/WHINSEC atFt. Benning, Georgia. "Retired," she is currently involved in the peace community in Bend, Oregon, serves on the Witness for Peace Northwest board of directors, and is a war tax resister.
Jerry Zawada, 70 years old A Franciscan priest currently living in Las Vegas, Nevada. His first years in the priesthood were spent in the Philippine Islands. From the 1980's through to the present, he has joined others in acting to end torture, the nuclear threat and the wars in the Middle East and other forms of violence both locally and abroad. Among his involvements were the sanctuary movement, joining Voices in the Wilderness for several months in Iraq, and working to close the U.S. Army's School of the Americas. His activities have earned him 4 and 1/2 years in federal and county prisons and jails.
Text of flyer brought to Ft. Huachuca:
November 18, 2007
Today we join many who call for an end to our country' s use of torture in interrogations at Guantanamo Bay, in Iraq, Afghanistan and in secret prisons elsewhere. We stand near the main gate of Ft.Huachuca, a U.S. Army post in southern Arizona, home base for Army intelligence and where all Army interrogators are trained. We are here because we can no longer tolerate violations of fundamental human rights such as detention without trial and acts of torture committed in our names behind the vast secrecy which the present administration has instituted. Although Colonel Jeff Jennings and other training staff at the fort seemed sincere in telling some of us that waterboarding, sleep deprivation and stress positions are prohibited at Ft. Huachuca, we continue to believe that these brutal and dehumanizing methods are still happening at the hands of U.S. interrogators deployed abroad.
These acts and the secrecy surrounding them contradict our understanding of the U.S. Constitution and our treaty obligations as a signatory to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. They are deeply unacceptable to our personal moral consciences.
There has been widespread opposition to our current government's imperial policies of pre-emptive war, unwarranted telephone and Internet-based surveillance, the sending of invasive national security letters, rendition of many times mistakenly suspected foreigners to countries known to practice torture and the selective abolition of civil rights like habeas corpus. We have filled the streets; we have filled the Internet and telephone lines, the op-ed and letters to the editor columns as well as Congressional mail bags.
Some of us have refused war taxes. And yet unspeakable, illegal and immoral acts are committed daily in our names as American citizens. Gates and sentry posts always relate to greed, the desire to hold on to what we have and to keep people less fortunate than we are from claiming their share. It is not true that military people are more greedy than the rest of us, but they have accepted the charge of protecting our abundance with weapons of unprecedented killing power.
They are enforcing the projection into the world of our unwillingness to share. We cannot reconcile gates, guns or sentry posts with the Sermon on the Mount. Gandhi spoke of nonviolent direct action as an experiment in truth or satyagraha. We ask ourselves: how can we best honor our need to withdraw our complicity with our government's actions?
Our simple ritual of approaching the gate of Ft. Huachuca expresses our willingness to undergo suffering rather than to inflict it, and our longing to bring our country to openness and accountability. We seek to meet with enlisted personnel and officer son Ft. Huachuca to continue a dialogue about the interrogation techniques they are learning, how easy it has been for others trained before them to fall into cruelty, and to explore with them what they each might do to prevent themselves from repeating the horrible errors of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. We may be arrested. We ask for your prayers, and we ask also that you escalate - in any nonviolent way you are led - your own efforts to end torture and the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Love, peace, joy. Betsy Lamb mary burton riseley Jerry Zawada, OFM
November 18, 2007
Indigenous Peoples' Sunrise Gathering Alcatraz
Indigenous Peoples' Sunrise GatheringThursday, November 22, 2007
Indigenous People's Sunrise Gathering and Community Feast at Intertribal Friendship HouseThe Indigenous People's Thanksgiving Sunrise Ceremony commemorates the 1969-1971 occupation of Alcatraz Island by the "Indians of All Tribes."This event is one day, Thursday, November 22, 2007.
Ticket sales and boarding begins at 4:00 am. The first departure from Alcatraz Landing is at 4:15 am with 5 additional departures leaving Alcatraz Landing approximately every 15 minutes. The last departure from Alcatraz Landing will be at 5:30 am.Boats begin returning from Alcatraz Island at the conclusion of the Sunrise Gathering Ceremony. Participants are welcome to stay on Alcatraz to take the award-winning cellhouse tour beginning at 9:00 am. The cell-house tour is not offered before 9:00 am.
Tickets can be purchased:
http://www.alcatrazcruises.com/website/sunrise-gathering.aspxor by calling 415 981-7625 or at the Pier 33 Ticket Booth.The ticket booth opens at 4:00 am on Thursday, November 22, 2007. Tickets are $12.00 per person. Children 5 and under are free.
Free community dinner to be held afterwards at Intertribal Friendship House
Dinner is from 1:00- 4:00 PM. Bring a side dish to share!523 International Blvd. Oakland, CA 94606Volunteers to set up/clean up cook and serve are still needed.1:00 - 4:00 p.m.
If you would like to volunteer come before 12:00 noon to help serve and we need help to clean up!If you would like to contribute please contact Morning Star Gali at: mstargali@gmail.com
Sadness and outrage over border wall on Indian lands
By Brenda Norrellhttp://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
SAN XAVIER, TOHONO O'ODHAM NATION (Arizona) -- With heavy hearts, a delegation to the US/Mexico border return after viewing their fellow Indigenous brothers and sisters, Mayans, under arrest, and then packed quickly into the back of a truck. The delegation, including Mohawks, Oneida and Lakota in photo, expressed sadness and outrage at the border wall (in photo overhead) under construction on Tohono O'odham Nation land. The construction has already led to Boeing digging up O'odham ancestors on O'odham land. The border wall will be a barrier dissecting the traditional O'odham ceremonial route.
Special thanks to Bill Means, Lakota, and the summit gathering on Nov. 9, 2007, for their public support of the articles on this Indigenous delegation to the border, which appeared on the Censored Blog and were republished in the international media.
Listen to this report online at the Indigenous Border Summit, day two (hour six)
http://www.earthcycles.net/
November 17, 2007
White Clay People, Life Interrupted
White Clay People, Life Interrupted
Part III
By Brenda Norrell
Special to Navajo Times
HAVRE, Montana – Memories of the Seven Generations Singers Drum Group on the Kumeyaay Nation in California, travels in Greece and completing his autobiography in Mashantucket Pequot territory, are the solace of Jim Main, Jr., whose childhood was spent in the idyllic mountains of his Gros-Ventre homeland in northern Montana.
"Those were chapters in my life's book," Main says from the other side of the glass, with his long grey ponytail trailing to the waist of the orange jumpsuit, at the Hill County Detention Center in Havre.
Main has been charged with murder in the November 25, 2006, death of a man in a Havre home and scheduled for trial in January, 2008. Main maintains his innocence.
In this bordertown, positioned between Fort Belknap's Gros-Ventre and Assiniboine lands and Rocky Boy Chippewa Cree lands in north-central Montana, American Indians are watching to see if a fair trial is possible.
Rose Main, Jim's sister, has just driven two hours from their Gros-Ventre homeland to visit her brother in jail. Rose's time and energy is stretched between caring for her father, Jim, Sr., in the
last stages of congestive heart failure, and her mother, recovering from multiple surgeries.
Rose’s brothers, Harold Jiggs and William “Snuffy” Main, have also been making the long journey to Havre to visit their brother.
Jim Jr. served as the primary caregiver for his mother, Vernie White Cow Main, before his arrest. Jim Jr. had traveled with his mother by train for her parathyroid surgery in St. Paul, Minn. Later during recovery, her intestines ruptured and her respiratory illness became
severe. Jim Jr. taught himself nursing skills to care for her.
However, even in the worst of times, the Main family remembers the best of times. In the Havre Detention Center, Jim Jr. remembers those good years. When Jim Jr. was hired as a youth counselor for the Kumeyaay, little did he know that the hollowed-out cottonwood trunk, which he fashioned into a drum, would give birth not only to a new wave of young Indian
singers, but also to a renaissance for Bird Singers.
During his decade in southern California, his Indian family expanded.
"I was like family to most of those kids," Jim Jr. remembers with a smile.
While working at the La Posta Substance Abuse Center with Kumeyaay youths, he organized the Seven Generations Drum Group, with the youngest singer only four years old. After performing locally with support from Kumeyaay Bands in southern California, the young group of singers was in demand. They appeared across the southwest, from the California Indian Leaders Conference in Reno, to national Indian youth conferences.
Jim Jr. learned about life in the borderzone and the Kumiai living across the international border in Baja, Mexico.
"The people are so poor on the other side of the border," he said. While in southern California, another door opened for Jim. This time it was the opportunity to travel to Athens, Greece, and perform with some of Indian country's finest dancers.
However, while the Greeks opened their hearts to the Indian performers, trip sponsors panicked over financial arrangements as the money poured in. The sponsors fled the country, leaving the dancers to fend for themselves.
Now, Jim Jr. remembers one of the newspaper headlines, "Cowboy leaves Indians stranded in Athens."
However, the emergency brought out their best. "It pulled us together and the leadership came out. It opened the doors."
The Greeks responded with an outpouring of admiration and aid for the stranded group of Gros-Ventre, Assiniboine, Navajo, Apache and others who gained notoriety for their dances and cultures in Greece.
Remembering the performers, adored by the Greeks, Jim said, "It was almost like a rock band." Jim remembered the screenplay he coauthored with French playwright. He smiles remembering the allure of Hollywood, where he appeared a few days as an extra on film sets. However, looking back, he says Hollywood was not his destiny. His travels took him to the Cannes Film Festival in France.
Jim Jr.'s brush with Hollywood and his travels, along with the history and culture of the Gros-Ventre, White Clay People, are detailed in Jim Jr.'s recently finished autobiography, which awaits publication. The next chapter in his life is filled with emotion.
"I came home to stay with my folks. They were both terminally ill," Jim Jr. said of his return to his family's home, surrounded by a warm flowing creek where the family trapped beaver and rode the wild horses coming down from the mountains.
Before his incarceration, Jim Jr. spent six months caring for his mother. He changed the fluid bag of his mother and kept the wood fire going in the cold. Already, his father had a close call with life and death, when he survived open-heart surgery.
Suddenly, at the Hill County Detention Center, Jim Jr.'s 20 minutes for the visit is up. The telephone of the visiting cubicle goes dead.
Walking out of the waiting room, Jim Jr.'s sister Rose looks back at more than a dozen Indian women, surrounded by children, all with faces lined with grief.
"You should have taken a picture," she says. "All those Indian women lined up there. It tells you who is here in jail."
The Gros-Ventre, White Clay People, survived the smallpox epidemics brought by the whites, which nearly decimated the tribe. The White Clay People survived the starvation that resulted from the eradication of the buffalo herds, which covered the Plains like dark rolling waves.
For the Main family today, their spiritual belief gives them hope and strength.
In the old stories and ceremonies of the White Clay People are the lessons: Be kind to the horses, for they represent kindness; the bitter cold that comes in winter also brings healing to the land and suffering brings appreciation and one closer to the Great Spirit.
The stories tell how the buffalos' hooves kept the plains plowed and the hooves carried the grass seeds, sowing new grass. These stories tell how the smallpox came and swiftly killed thousands. The Plains were covered with the bones of the buffalo and the remains of the White
Clay People.
Driving across the peoples' ancestral lands, Rose remembers the story of the white man who told the White Clay People that he was bringing them a gift. He left a box full of rags and vanished. When the people gathered for their gift, opened the box and sorted through the
stained cloths, they pondered what this gift was, unaware of the smallpox – the harbinger of death – within.
Driving across Fort Belknap and close to her family home, Rose tops a hill, looks out and remembers that it was here, where the highway cuts across the sloping hills, that the burial sites of the White Clay Peoples were bulldozed when the highway was built. The remains of her
people were scattered.
However, riding across this land with her father, there are good memories too. There are stories of traveling for the promotion of Indigenous rights and memories of breaking horses, hunting deer, basketball and hand games.
The joy is short-lived. Between visits to her brother in jail, Rose finds her mother seriously ill. Once again, in the night, Rose gives her mother a breathing treatment, places her socks and scarf on her head, and the heavy navy blue coat on her shoulders. Then, her mother
is hospitalized.
Once again, Rose gives her father his shot and medications at the nursing care facility. Once again, Rose returns home late in the night, after 1 a.m., worried how she will raise the $25,000 for her brother's bail, so Jim could be released until the January trial.
In the morning, Rose grinds coffee beans and makes wheel bread, turning the circular dough, with the hole in the center, in the iron skillet. She turns on the radio and powwow sounds fill the morning air.
One the table are Jim Jr.'s pencil drawings, which are now being made into a calendar, and Jim's autobiography awaiting a publisher.
Once again, Rose begins again.
UPDATE: There is new evidence in this murder case concerning one man arrested, Kim Norquay, Jr., who feld the scene and the woman, Melissa Snow, who lied to police officers:
http://www.greatfallstribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071115/NEWS01/71115023/
Photos: In Jim Main Jr.'s room at home on Big Warm Creek on Gros-Ventre land in Montana, Rose Main looks at a poster of the Kumeyaay's Seventh Generation Singers that her brother helped organize. (Photo 2) Rose looks through her brother's autobiography. It holds the history of their people, the White Clay People, along with the Main family history. Photos Brenda Norrell
Part I: In Montana, Indians are guilty until proven innocent
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2007/11/in-montana-indians-are-guilty-until.html
Part II: On Big Warm Creek, living as a free people
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2007/11/on-big-warm-creek-living-as-free-people.html
Part III
By Brenda Norrell
Special to Navajo Times
HAVRE, Montana – Memories of the Seven Generations Singers Drum Group on the Kumeyaay Nation in California, travels in Greece and completing his autobiography in Mashantucket Pequot territory, are the solace of Jim Main, Jr., whose childhood was spent in the idyllic mountains of his Gros-Ventre homeland in northern Montana.
"Those were chapters in my life's book," Main says from the other side of the glass, with his long grey ponytail trailing to the waist of the orange jumpsuit, at the Hill County Detention Center in Havre.
Main has been charged with murder in the November 25, 2006, death of a man in a Havre home and scheduled for trial in January, 2008. Main maintains his innocence.
In this bordertown, positioned between Fort Belknap's Gros-Ventre and Assiniboine lands and Rocky Boy Chippewa Cree lands in north-central Montana, American Indians are watching to see if a fair trial is possible.
Rose Main, Jim's sister, has just driven two hours from their Gros-Ventre homeland to visit her brother in jail. Rose's time and energy is stretched between caring for her father, Jim, Sr., in the
last stages of congestive heart failure, and her mother, recovering from multiple surgeries.
Rose’s brothers, Harold Jiggs and William “Snuffy” Main, have also been making the long journey to Havre to visit their brother.
Jim Jr. served as the primary caregiver for his mother, Vernie White Cow Main, before his arrest. Jim Jr. had traveled with his mother by train for her parathyroid surgery in St. Paul, Minn. Later during recovery, her intestines ruptured and her respiratory illness became
severe. Jim Jr. taught himself nursing skills to care for her.
However, even in the worst of times, the Main family remembers the best of times. In the Havre Detention Center, Jim Jr. remembers those good years. When Jim Jr. was hired as a youth counselor for the Kumeyaay, little did he know that the hollowed-out cottonwood trunk, which he fashioned into a drum, would give birth not only to a new wave of young Indian
singers, but also to a renaissance for Bird Singers.
During his decade in southern California, his Indian family expanded.
"I was like family to most of those kids," Jim Jr. remembers with a smile.
While working at the La Posta Substance Abuse Center with Kumeyaay youths, he organized the Seven Generations Drum Group, with the youngest singer only four years old. After performing locally with support from Kumeyaay Bands in southern California, the young group of singers was in demand. They appeared across the southwest, from the California Indian Leaders Conference in Reno, to national Indian youth conferences.
Jim Jr. learned about life in the borderzone and the Kumiai living across the international border in Baja, Mexico.
"The people are so poor on the other side of the border," he said. While in southern California, another door opened for Jim. This time it was the opportunity to travel to Athens, Greece, and perform with some of Indian country's finest dancers.
However, while the Greeks opened their hearts to the Indian performers, trip sponsors panicked over financial arrangements as the money poured in. The sponsors fled the country, leaving the dancers to fend for themselves.
Now, Jim Jr. remembers one of the newspaper headlines, "Cowboy leaves Indians stranded in Athens."
However, the emergency brought out their best. "It pulled us together and the leadership came out. It opened the doors."
The Greeks responded with an outpouring of admiration and aid for the stranded group of Gros-Ventre, Assiniboine, Navajo, Apache and others who gained notoriety for their dances and cultures in Greece.
Remembering the performers, adored by the Greeks, Jim said, "It was almost like a rock band." Jim remembered the screenplay he coauthored with French playwright. He smiles remembering the allure of Hollywood, where he appeared a few days as an extra on film sets. However, looking back, he says Hollywood was not his destiny. His travels took him to the Cannes Film Festival in France.
Jim Jr.'s brush with Hollywood and his travels, along with the history and culture of the Gros-Ventre, White Clay People, are detailed in Jim Jr.'s recently finished autobiography, which awaits publication. The next chapter in his life is filled with emotion.
"I came home to stay with my folks. They were both terminally ill," Jim Jr. said of his return to his family's home, surrounded by a warm flowing creek where the family trapped beaver and rode the wild horses coming down from the mountains.
Before his incarceration, Jim Jr. spent six months caring for his mother. He changed the fluid bag of his mother and kept the wood fire going in the cold. Already, his father had a close call with life and death, when he survived open-heart surgery.
Suddenly, at the Hill County Detention Center, Jim Jr.'s 20 minutes for the visit is up. The telephone of the visiting cubicle goes dead.
Walking out of the waiting room, Jim Jr.'s sister Rose looks back at more than a dozen Indian women, surrounded by children, all with faces lined with grief.
"You should have taken a picture," she says. "All those Indian women lined up there. It tells you who is here in jail."
The Gros-Ventre, White Clay People, survived the smallpox epidemics brought by the whites, which nearly decimated the tribe. The White Clay People survived the starvation that resulted from the eradication of the buffalo herds, which covered the Plains like dark rolling waves.
For the Main family today, their spiritual belief gives them hope and strength.
In the old stories and ceremonies of the White Clay People are the lessons: Be kind to the horses, for they represent kindness; the bitter cold that comes in winter also brings healing to the land and suffering brings appreciation and one closer to the Great Spirit.
The stories tell how the buffalos' hooves kept the plains plowed and the hooves carried the grass seeds, sowing new grass. These stories tell how the smallpox came and swiftly killed thousands. The Plains were covered with the bones of the buffalo and the remains of the White
Clay People.
Driving across the peoples' ancestral lands, Rose remembers the story of the white man who told the White Clay People that he was bringing them a gift. He left a box full of rags and vanished. When the people gathered for their gift, opened the box and sorted through the
stained cloths, they pondered what this gift was, unaware of the smallpox – the harbinger of death – within.
Driving across Fort Belknap and close to her family home, Rose tops a hill, looks out and remembers that it was here, where the highway cuts across the sloping hills, that the burial sites of the White Clay Peoples were bulldozed when the highway was built. The remains of her
people were scattered.
However, riding across this land with her father, there are good memories too. There are stories of traveling for the promotion of Indigenous rights and memories of breaking horses, hunting deer, basketball and hand games.
The joy is short-lived. Between visits to her brother in jail, Rose finds her mother seriously ill. Once again, in the night, Rose gives her mother a breathing treatment, places her socks and scarf on her head, and the heavy navy blue coat on her shoulders. Then, her mother
is hospitalized.
Once again, Rose gives her father his shot and medications at the nursing care facility. Once again, Rose returns home late in the night, after 1 a.m., worried how she will raise the $25,000 for her brother's bail, so Jim could be released until the January trial.
In the morning, Rose grinds coffee beans and makes wheel bread, turning the circular dough, with the hole in the center, in the iron skillet. She turns on the radio and powwow sounds fill the morning air.
One the table are Jim Jr.'s pencil drawings, which are now being made into a calendar, and Jim's autobiography awaiting a publisher.
Once again, Rose begins again.
UPDATE: There is new evidence in this murder case concerning one man arrested, Kim Norquay, Jr., who feld the scene and the woman, Melissa Snow, who lied to police officers:
http://www.greatfallstribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071115/NEWS01/71115023/
Photos: In Jim Main Jr.'s room at home on Big Warm Creek on Gros-Ventre land in Montana, Rose Main looks at a poster of the Kumeyaay's Seventh Generation Singers that her brother helped organize. (Photo 2) Rose looks through her brother's autobiography. It holds the history of their people, the White Clay People, along with the Main family history. Photos Brenda Norrell
Part I: In Montana, Indians are guilty until proven innocent
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2007/11/in-montana-indians-are-guilty-until.html
Part II: On Big Warm Creek, living as a free people
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2007/11/on-big-warm-creek-living-as-free-people.html
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