Anarchists in Washington, DC

via DC Anarchist email list

On February 28 in Lane County Circuit Court the re-sentencing hearing for Jeffrey Luers took place in front of Judge Billings. This followed an Oregon court of appeals ruling in February 2007 that Luers original sentence of 22 years 8 months by Judge Lyle Velure was illegal, and the appeals court remanded the case back to Lane County Circuit Court for re-sentencing. Following the appeals court decision, negotiations have resulted in the decision today to reduce Luers sentence to 10 years, bringing his release date to late December 2009.

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In support of the call to action issued by the RNC Welcoming Committee, Unconventional Action is seeking endorsements for the strategy consensed upon at the “pReNC,” a national planning consulta a year in advance of the Republican National Convention.

• RNC Welcoming Committee Call to Action
• pReNC Reportback

If your group endorses this strategy, please contact Unconventional Action at unconventional_action@mountainrebel.net. Groups that respond by mid-October will be listed in the print version of the call to action, which will be circulated nationwide; all endorsements will be listed at Unconventional Action as they come in. Specify whether you desire contact information to appear with your endorsement.

It is important for a strategy like this to be publicly endorsed by groups that hope to see it succeed. This gives the strategy visibility and shows that many people are invested in it, which in turn enables others to invest themselves in its success.

Send endorsements, questions, and requests for further information to:
unconventional_action@mountainrebel.net

If you are one of the 175 people who were arrested mid-morning on December 1, 1999 at Seattle’s Westlake Park:

A lawsuit was settled with the city of Seattle, but the lawyers are having difficulty getting in touch with the people who are eligible to get money from the lawsuit (since it has been 8 years, people have moved around and addresses have changed).

If you are one of those people, you must fill out and submit a claim form by August 28, 2007.

• Notice of the lawsuit
• Claim form

Instructions from the lawyers: The notice [linked above] describes in detail the settlement, the process for any objections and submitting claims, and the various deadlines. Hopefully all of your questions are answered there. If not, there are several avenues, as listed in the notice of the settlement, for you to ask questions and receive answers. If you were arrested at Westlake Park on December 1, 1999, the deadline for returning your claim form is August 28, 2007.

Eric McDavid is a political activist who has been in jail for 14 months after being accused of “conspiring to damage or destroy by explosive or fire” cell phone towers, power plants and US Forest Service facilities. He has not yet gone to trial, but faces 5-20 years in prison if convicted.

His family needs help paying for his legal defense. $9000 has been raised so far, but they need an additional $6000 before his trial in September.

Please read the June 19 update from Eric’s friends and family for more details.

Back ground information is at SupportEric.org.

We got an email from Lauren, who is a journalism student at the New School University. She is writing an article about World Bank protests and is looking for folks to answer a few questions for her (see below). If you want to talk to Lauren, you can either email us and we can pass on your contact information to her, or else just email us the answers to the questions and we can forward to her.

* Please note that we do not know Lauren, and as usual you should be careful when talking to strangers about specific activist activities that might get you in trouble!

Here are her questions:

1. Are you planning on protesting the April 2007 World Bank meeting? Why or why not? Do you know of any groups that are?

2. Do you think interest in stopping the World Bank [or at least exposing them] has increased or decreased over recent years? Why?

3. Do you know of anyone else who might be willing to talk to me?

Check out their Support Website: Committee for the Defense of Human Rights
http://www.cdhrsupport.org/
You can help: Write letters to the prisoners;
Join the email list to stay informed; and donate funds!

Murder Charges Against Former Black Panthers Based on Confessions
Extracted by Torture

Eight former Black Panthers were arrested January 23rd in California, New
York and Florida on charges related to the 1971 killing of a San Francisco
police officer. Similar charges were thrown out after it was revealed that
police used torture to extract confessions when some of these same men
were arrested in New Orleans in 1973. Richard Brown, Richard O’Neal, Ray
Boudreaux, and Hank Jones were arrested in California. Francisco Torres
was arrested in Queens, New York. Harold Taylor was arrested in Florida.
Two men charged have been held as political prisoners for over 30 years –
Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim are both in New York State prisons. A ninth
man — Ronald Stanley Bridgeforth – is still being sought. The men were
charged with the murder of Sgt. John Young and conspiracy that encompasses
numerous acts between 1968 and 1973.

This new flyer is a list of various community and radical spaces, collectives, and other resouces with a radical slant in Washington, D.C. It will be updated regularly, and the creator is accepting additions and suggestions for edits - if you have something to add. You can view and print it (to make copies and distribute it) here.

I’ve finally gotten around to putting up the archive of the old AbolishTheBank.org site. This was the website of the DC Anti-Capitalist Convergence between 2001-2003. Click on the link in the right column and you can see most of the content that was posted on the site during that time. This includes info on protests that the ACC organized, including The People’s Strike in September 2002, and the IMF/World Bank protests in September 2001.

Submitted by the Ink and Paper Collective

What comes to mind when you see pictures of Huey P. Newton holding a shotgun? Or the images of mass marches against the Vietnam War? Or how about the students taking over Columbia University in ‘68?

Our generation has grown up in the shadow of the 1960s. The War on Iraq strongly parallels the situation this country faced as it was bogged down in Vietnam. The Bush administration continues its attack on a woman’s right to choose, a victory that arose from the Feminist Movement. And many people are calling the current struggle for immigrants’ rights the modern equivalent to the Civil Rights Movement.

But how does our generation of political activists view the 1960s? What were its strengths? What were its weaknesses? What did it achieve and what was left out? Why did the momentum of that time finally die? And what happened to that generation of activists and revolutionaries? There has yet to be a collective voice from our generation that has openly attempted to answer those questions.

Young political activists today face a complicated political climate. Change is possible, but not easy. What lessons, both good and bad, can we learn from the social movements of the 1960s to make sure our contemporary activism does not go in vain?

Our goal is to compile a thorough analysis of this era. That’s why we in the Ink and Paper Collective are calling for young (30 and under) activists, organizers, and revolutionaries of all stripes to submit letters that are serious reflections on the 1960s. We want submissions to cover all the particular parts of that era whether it be the Black Power movement, the French
revolt of May ‘68, SDS, the fight for ethnic studies in our schools, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the Feminist movement, the Chicano movement, the Native American movement or whatever issue you feel most passionate about. If you have something to say, we want to hear it!

Send your submission (anywhere from 1,000 to 3,500 words), along with a brief bio (around 75 words) to: inkandpapercollective@gmail.com

Submissions due: February 1st, 2007

The Ink and Paper Collective is Sam A., Javier A., and David Z. We were founded out of anti-war, labor, and independent media activism in our local communities. Some of this activism includes our participation with and dedication to work done by groups like UCSC Students Against War, the Student and Worker Coalition for Justice, the Labor Film Collective, and Colectivo Media Insurgente, as well as many others.

This site has information for anarchists in Washington, DC. Some of this information has been compiled from Abolishthebank.org and Anarchistresistance.org, two sites that previously belonged to anarchist groups in DC. Nobody but me has expressed an interest in maintaining those sites, and since we can no longer get free hosting, I have consolidated everything that’s relevant into this (small) site.

I have saved everything from those sites — if there’s any interest, I can try to find a place to put them back up. Let me know. There’s a lot of intersting info about the Anti-Capitalist Convergence (ACC) during 2001-2003, and the inaugural protests in 2005.