Violence Against Aim

LEADING A RIOT

S .1 provides for a three year sentence and / or $ $100,000 fine for the “movement of a person across a state ” line, or for the use of the of mails or telephone “in the course of planning , promotion” of a “riot .”A “riot” is defined as “an assemblage of five” which “creates a grave danger” to “property.”

WIRETAPPING

 S .1 permits the President to wiretap domestic activities which he thinks are a “danger to the structure” of the government. Expands the Attorney General's authority to wiretap alleged offenses related to First Amendment protection actions, and permits 48 hour “emergency taps without approval.” in addition, it forces telephone workers and landlords to cooperate “forthwith” and “unobtrusively” with government wire tappers.

DEMONSTRATIONS 

S.1 threatens with severe penalties virtually every kind of civil rights, peace and other protest actions under a series of vaguely drafted infringements on the right of assembly, including severe restrictions on the right of demonstration adjacent to wherever authorities may declare to be the “temporary resident” of the President.

SECRECY

S.1 provides a three year and/or $100,000 fine for a federal employee who “communicates ...classified information” to an unauthorized recipient , even if data “was not lawfully subjected to classification at the time...”

The bill also institutionalizes and gives legislative sanction to the executive classification system of documents; conflicts with the Freedom of Information Act; and provides a seven year sentence and/or $100,000 fine for a person who received “National Defense Information” and “fails to deliver it promptly” back.

SABOTAGE 

S.1 provides the death penalty or life imprisonment in some cases, 20-30 years and/or $100,000 fine in others, for activity that “damages, tampers with...” almost any property, facility, or service that is or might be used in the National Defense, with intent to “interfere with or obstruct the ability of the US or an associate nation [e.g. South Vietnam] to prepare for or engage in war or defense activities.”

CONTEMPT

S.1 increases the penalty for refusal to cooperate with congressional committees to three years and/or $100,000 fine. 

OBSCENITY 

S.1 makes criminal of all persons who in any way disseminate material describing sexual intercourse or depicting nudity. 

In addition, Bill S.1 rejects national control of hand guns, allows an officer to use “deadly force” to prevent the escape of a person arrested for an allegedly dangerous crime, without regard to the danger to the lives of others; fails to punish economic measure taken against people exercising their civil rights; makes the use or possession of marijuana a criminal offense. 

Violence Against Aim 

Russell Means, principle American Indian Movement organizer, is still in jail in Rapid City, South Dakota, being held on astronomically high ransom for a murder charge that AIM says is as phony as the treaties the US signed with the Indians. 

Meanwhile, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, violence directed against AIM and their supporters has reached a terrifying pitch. 

Last March 23, Edith Eagle Hawk, 37, her 4-month-old daughter Linda, and 3-year-old Earl W Janis, Jr. were killed when a car driven by Albert Coomes repeatedly bumped and rammed the Eagle Hawk car from the rear causing the accident. 

Edith Eagle Haw was eyewitness in the Josh Steele shooting incident of Mar. 19. Jerry Bearshield, 24, has been charged with the murder of Steele, an AIM supporter. 

Another shooting death occurred on the Pine Ridge Reservation when Jeanette Bissonette was killed March 26 as she returned from a wake in Manderson, SD held for Stacey Kotier, 18, who was shot March 20. 

Susan Saxe Arrested In Philly 

Susan Saxe, a 26-year-old fugitive radical who has stayed on the FBI’s ten most wanted list for the past four and a half years, was arrested March 27 in Philadelphia. Saxe, along with another fugitive, Katherine Power, is charged with robbery and murder in connection with a 1970 Boston bank robbery in which a guard was killed. She is also charged with interstate flight to avoid prosecution. 

Saxe, who had been living under the names of Val Woolf and Arlene Hellman, was held in lieu of $350,000 bond pending arraignment on April 7. She is also wanted in Pennsylvania on bank robbery charged, so it is not yet clear where she will stand trial. 

Although the FBI claims that Saxe’s arrest was just a result of persistence and good luck, there is speculation that it was the result of information obtained through an informer, an FBI plant, or a telephone tap, and that more arrests will follow. 

Before the bail hearing, Saxe supporters, included members of the Women’s Health Collective in Philadelphia, issued statement charging the FBI with harassment, stating the agency had used its search for Saxe and Power to infiltrate feminist communities in Connecticut and Kentucky. 

In New Haven and Hartford, Connecticut, and Lexington, Kentucky, people who have refused to talk to the FBI have been subpoenaed by grand juries, granted “immunity” and then put in jail after refusing to testify. Eight people are currently in jail due to this tactic, which violates the 5th amendment.