Good News!

by Polly Mann and Lisa Ann Pierce, WAMM

Peace Activists Receive Award for Parade Presence
Fifty members of the Greensboro, North Carolina Peace Coalition marched in an Independence Day parade under a large banner that said “Not in Our Name.” Carrying posters of Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, Frederick Douglass, and Martin Luther King, they distributed flyers with a pledge of resistance on one side and a peace statement on the other. Along the parade route they received much applause and encountered very few hecklers. The group received an award for the “Best Interpretation of Theme” in the parade.

A Taste of Freedom (and Bubblegum)
On July 4, 2002, about 20 activists gathered at the Taste of Minnesota to celebrate their freedom and oppose the School of the Americas. Using creative protest tactics, like puppets and free bubblegum attached to informative leaflets, the activists exposed the Taste of Minnesota crowd to a new kind of Independence Day celebration. When asked to leave the state capitol grounds, they found a busy corner with significant auto and pedestrian traffic. WAMM member Diane Peterson wrote to organizer Pepperwolf, “Thanks for making my July 4th meaningful.”

DoE Drops Plan to Ship Plutonium in Unsafe Cans
This spring the Department of Energy announced it would no longer ship plutonium from the Rocky Flats, Colorado, facility to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in DT-22 canisters#45-gallon cans that fail the government’s “crush test” and could rupture in a highway accident. The Tri-Valley CAREs lawsuit, represented by attorneys from Earthjustice, challenged the safety of the containers. Likewise, the government cancelled plans to ship plutonium in DT-22s from Rocky Flats to Savannah River, South Carolina.

Indigenous Group Sends U.S. Oil Giant Packing
This spring, the U.S. oil giant Oxy, after spending more than $100 million, said it would leave northeast Colombia “for technical reasons” and return to the country its concession to drill. This followed a most bizarre campaign waged against the corporation by the U’wa, one of the world’s remotest and oldest tribes whose ancestral lands lie in the cloud forests and plains of the area. Test wells, drilled to a depth of more than 3,600 meters revealed only faint traces of gas and water, though one U.S. geologist said, “It is not unusual to find no oil on the first attempt, but you would expect them to keep looking.” The U’wa believe that their spiritual leaders (werjayas) and medicine people (karekas) “hid the oil” from the company’s drill by praying and fasting for months.

Israeli Advisor Criticizes Hebron Violence
Moshe Givati, chief adviser to the Israeli government on relations with the settlers, told the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz that the recent violence in Hebron, during which a 14-year-old Palestinian girl was killed, was not set off by Palestinian stone throwers as Israeli settlers claimed. Instead, he called it a “pogrom against the Arabs of Hebron, with no provocations on the Palestinian side.” Directly contradicting settlers’ explanations for the rioting, he said that he saw “at very close range” that those who attacked the Palestinians carried army-issued weapons and “fired sustained bursts at Palestinians’ houses” (Star Tribune, July 31, 2002).

Courtroom Activists Take on War
Stanley Cohen, an attorney from New York, recently filed a lawsuit against Israel, Ariel Sharon, George W. Bush, Colin Powell, several U.S. arms manufacturers, and some U.S. Christian and Jewish communities that have supported West Bank settlements. Plaintiffs include Palestinian Americans directly affected by violence and property destruction in the occupied territories. Cohen’s suit seeks damages and injunctive relief for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and racketeering.
Similarly, Stanley Hilton, San Francisco attorney and former aide to Senator Bob Dole, filed a $7 billion class action lawsuit against the likes of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and Norman Mineta. According to William Rivers Pitt, “Hilton’s suit charges Bush and his administration with allowing the September 11th attacks to take place so as to reap political benefits from the catastrophe.” Hilton’s plaintiffs include the families of fourteen victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Reuters reported in July that “a Florida jury found two retired Salvadoran generals liable for the torture of three civilians by their troops during the Central American nation’s civil war and ordered them to pay $54.6 million in damages.” Generals Jose Guillermo Garcia and Carlo Eugenio Vides Cassanova each served for a time as defense minister in the U.S.-backed Salvadoran government. Like plaintiffs Carlos Mauricio, Neris Gonzalez, and Dr. Juan Romagoza, the two defendants now live in the United States. Plaintiff’s attorney James Green said, “This verdict sends a message to commanders everywhere that they are responsible for the abuses of the troops they command and they cannot come to the United States to seek a haven from punishment.”