Blogger Josh Wolf Behind Bars 171 Days and Counting
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2007/02/139232.php
Freelance videographer Josh Wolf defied a federal grand jury's order in July to hand
over raw footage of anarchists clashing with police in San Francisco. He said he was
protected by the 1st Amendment. A federal judge said he was in contempt of court. On
Aug. 1, the 24-year-old blogger reported to the federal detention facility in Dublin,
Calif. He has been there ever since - except for a period in September when he was
freed while a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on the
legality of his incarceration. (The panel upheld it.)
As of Tuesday, he had been incarcerated longer than any journalist in modern U.S.
history.
Wolf's mother, a third-grade teacher from Wrightwood, will be on Capitol Hill today
to lobby members of Congress to help free her son. Liz Wolf-Spada also plans to push
for a federal shield law that would protect mainstream journalists as well as
independent journalists and bloggers like her son.
"I'm asking that they treat an independent journalist the same way they treat the
journalists who work for the Hearst Corp.," she said, referring to the company that
owns the San Francisco Chronicle and other papers.
One police officer was injured in the anti-globalization protest that Wolf filmed in
July 2005, and outgoing U.S. Atty. Kevin Ryan's office is investigating whether
protesters tried to torch a police car. Prosecutors argue that because federal money
helped pay for the police car, the matter should be heard in federal court. Ryan
spokesman Luke Macaulay said the grand jury needed the video to "determine what, if
any, crimes were committed."
In a statement posted on his blog Tuesday, Wolf - who sold some of his footage to San
Francisco television stations - explained his decision not to comply with the grand
jury's request.
"If the U.S. attorney can compel journalists to testify about what they've learned
through their work and to force them to turn over their unpublished materials, then
not only will the public be unable to trust reporters, but journalists themselves
will become de facto deputies and investigators," read the message attributed to Wolf
at joshwolf.net.
Supporters contend that his case is similar to that of two San Francisco Chronicle
reporters, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, who face up to 18 months in federal
prison for refusing to cooperate with subpoenas to name their confidential sources
for leaked grand jury testimony about steroid use in major league baseball. Last
month, two congressmen called on Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales to withdraw those
subpoenas.
California, like several other states, has a shield law that protects journalists
employed by news organizations from having to disclose unnamed sources or produce
unpublished materials. That state law does not apply to Wolf, however, because his
case is being tried in federal court.
Wolf's case has won the support of several media watchdog groups that see his
incarceration as an attack on press freedom.
Lucie Morillon, who heads the Washington office of the international group Reporters
Without Borders, said there was debate within her organization about Wolf's status as
a bona fide journalist. The group was convinced, in part, by the fact that he had
sold some of the footage to mainstream news organizations, she said.
"It's very hard to describe who is and isn't a journalist nowadays," she said. "We
believe in this case he behaved like a journalist, and that's why he deserves
protection."
Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the
Press, expressed a similar sentiment.
"He was essentially a freelancer," she said. "Oftentimes, prosecutors will go after
freelancers when they would never go after full-time mainstream journalists."
Federal prosecutors in San Francisco dismiss such allegations, referring in a Jan. 29
court filing to Wolf's "imagination that he is a journalist."
Today marks Wolf's 171st day in jail. The previous record for incarceration of a
journalist was held by freelance writer Vanessa Leggett, who spent 168 days in
federal custody in Houston for refusing to turn over notes about a murder
investigation.
Martin Garbus, Wolf's attorney, said his client was likely to remain in prison until
at least July, when the grand jury's term expires.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0208-09.htm
Immigrants in Detention
by William Fisher
Suspected illegal immigrants held in detention by the US Department of Homeland
Security are failing to receive timely medical treatment and adequate food, being
subjected to frequent sexual harassment, and having their access to lawyers,
relatives and immigration authorities improperly limited.
These are among the findings of the department's inspector general, based on an audit
of the US-owned and operated Krome Service Processing Center in Miami, a contract
Corrections Corporation of America facility in San Diego, and local jails and prisons
in Berks County, Pa., and Hudson and Passaic counties, N.J.
But critics of the agency called the report disappointing, contending that it watered
down recommendations and ignored the most serious allegations of abuse collected
since June 2004, which they said included physical beatings, medical neglect, food
shortages and mixing of illegal immigrants in administrative custody with criminals.
Mark Dow, author of American Gulag, a scathing expose of immigrant detention
facilities, goes further. He told us that the Inspector General's report "has helped
ensure that, for now, the mistreatment will continue."
He contends the reason is that the IG recommends that the DHS agency responsible for
the detention of immigrants, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE)
police itself.
"That is telling the agency responsible for the mistreatment of its prisoners, and
whose own inspections are deficient, 'ensure that periodic oversight and inspection
procedures are in place to address compliance with the Detention Standards.' The (IG's)
report neglects to mention that ICE has refused to promulgate its detention standards
as regulations because they would then be, at least theoretically, legally
enforceable," he says.
He adds: "The bottom line is that 'auditing' without truly independent enforcement is
meaningless."
His view is echoed by Mary Shaw of Amnesty International, USA. She told us, "While
the U.S. immigration system has always had its faults, it has become much worse since
the attacks of 9/11. Many of the people who enter this country are fleeing
persecution in other countries. They come here to seek asylum. We must not confuse
these victims seeking refuge with those who would enter this country to do us harm.
The US has every right to protect its borders. However, immigration policies must not
make it harder for victims of human rights violations to find protection in the
United States. We need to honor our country's commitment to protecting the
persecuted."
In response to the IG's report, more than a dozen national organizations have filed a
petition with the DHS to create enforceable regulations governing detention
standards. If the federal government agrees to the request, DHS will promulgate
binding standards for the safety, health, and conditions for thousands of detainees
around the country.
These advocates believe DHS regulations governing detention standards will ensure
effective protection of detainees' human rights. "Today's petition highlights our
unconscionable detention system. The reality is that county governments vie for
lucrative contracts with the federal government to warehouse non-citizens without any
binding standards of care."
The signatories included the American Friends Service Committee Immigrant Rights
Program, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, the Center for
Constitutional Rights, and the Seton Hall University Law Center for Social Justice.
Among the most significant issues raised in the IG's report was that detainees face
significant hurdles when attempting to make complaints about their conditions of
confinement. It further points to the current ineffectiveness of ICE's own annual
inspections of detention facilities. "The report exposes gaping holes in the
protection of detainee rights. We cannot trust the jail officials to address
detainees' concerns, and we cannot trust ICE to effectively review the jails'
practices.
Many of the detention centers for immigrants have been privatized and are being run
by such companies as the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Wackenhut. In
1999, the feds farmed out less than three percent of beds; but seven years later, the
number had reached almost one in five.
The boom in privatized prisons began shortly after the terrorist attacks of September
11, 2001, when the Department of Justice rounded up thousands of "Middle
Eastern-looking" immigrants and detained many of them for months, abusing many,
treating them as criminals, and denying them access to lawyers.
A 2003 report by the DHS Inspector General forcefully condemned the treatment of
immigrants inside various jails in its report, "The September 11 Detainees: A Review
of the Treatment of Aliens Held on Immigration Charges in Connection with the
Investigation of the September 11 Attacks." Infractions included routine abuse of
basic prisoner rights, mental and physical abuse, denial of health care and medical
treatment, prison overcrowding, and a lack of working showers, and toilets.
None of those held were ever charged with a terror-related crime. Some were deported
for immigration violations.
Privatized detention facilities have grown apace amid the clamor for a crackdown on
alleged undocumented immigrants. Contracts for these new jails flowed to the private
prison industry despite many previous allegations of mismanagement and scandal.
Detainee advocates accuse prison companies of cutting corners in training guards and
in providing basic services. The government has done little to regulate prison
administration, but has sanctioned exploitive labor practices and rip-off telephone
costs for inmates.
For example, a former detainee in a CCA facility in San Diego testified that: "The
guards would scream and shout at us as if we were little kids. If we would ask them
to stop, they would threaten to lock us down for a few days, which would happen
constantly. Three people being locked in a two-man cell, in a 12 x 7 room. This
happened a lot; sometimes as punishment for the actions of one or two inmates, the
other 105-115 detainees would suffer."
"Other times" he said, "It seemed 'just because.' A lot of the detainees would be
missing money on their accounts, which I was recently told by a detainee who keeps in
contact with me was being stolen by the staff, according to [an] OIG investigation.
We would get underserved during meal times. When we complained to the unit manager
she would say that we were given the right amounts, which in my opinion is the
appropriate portion for a ten or eleven year old. Some of the guards and staff would
curse at us. They would purposely lower the televisions so we couldn't hear them,
just to mess with us. During our free time they would take their time turning on the
phones so we wouldn't be able to call our families. Just to be cruel."
For the second quarter of 2005, CCA announced that its revenue had increased three
percent over the previous year, for a total of almost $300 million. CCA calculates
that it expenditure of $28.89 per inmate, per day allows it to make a daily profit of
$50.26 per inmate.
Meanwhile, on July 1, 2005, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement awarded
CCA contracts to continue running the 300-bed Elizabeth Detention Center in New
Jersey and the 1,216-bed San Diego Correctional Facility. Both of these contracts are
for three years with five three-year renewal options. In 2005 CCA also secured new
prison contracts with the Kentucky Department of Corrections, the state of Kansas,
and the Florida Department of Management Services.
Wackenhut has also shared in the private prison boom. Before 2001, Wackenhut, like
CCA, had been at the center of all manner of inmate-abuse scandals: Guards were
caught having sex with underage inmates, there were routine reports of extreme
mistreatment of inmates, and there was even a disproportionately high level of deaths
in their facilities.
After a CBS Television report exposed the repeated rape of a 14-year-old girl at a
Wackenhut juvenile jail and two guards were found guilty, its CEO said, "It's a tough
business. The people in prison are not Sunday-school children." Still more worrying
was Wackenhut's record with inmate-on-inmate killings. In 1998-99 alone, Wackenhut's
New Mexico facilities had a death rate of one murder for every 400 prisoners. For the
same period in all U.S. prisons, the rate was about one in 22,000.
Wackenhut's most public response was to change its name to the GEO Group. It
continues to win lucrative government contracts.
The corrections industry has routinely argued that privatizing prisons dramatically
lowers costs. A 1996 US General Accounting Office report concluded, however, that
there was no clear evidence supporting this contention. Prison companies do have
clear advantages over other corporations: They are able to save large amounts of
money on labor practices that would illegal under any other circumstances. Inmate
jobs in all prisons pay a pittance, but immigrant prisons are even worse. Because DHS
guidelines mandate that non-citizen prisoners cannot earn more than $1 per day, the
company gets janitors, maintenance workers, cleaners, launderers, kitchen staff,
sewers and grounds keepers at almost no cost.
Author Mark Dow says, "It isn't politically popular to speak up for alien inmates,
but Congress has a responsibility to establish independent oversight of the ICE
detention system. Congress should hold hearings on ICE detention -- with meaningful
follow-up." It should "Create a statutory-based ombudsman's office or independent
oversight body outside the Department of Homeland Security. It must have subpoena
power as well as authorization to make unannounced inspections of all facilities
holding ICE detainees."
"Eventually, the very nature of our immigration detention system must be reexamined.
We take it as a given that a visa violator, or an asylum seeker, or a thirty-year
lawful resident who has paid taxes but committed a non-violent misdemeanor decades
ago, should be strip-searched, dressed in a prison jumpsuit, and denied contact with
her children."
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I intend to last long enough to put out of business all *****-suckers
and other beneficiaries of the institutionalized slavery and genocide.
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"The army that will defeat terrorism doesn't wear uniforms, or drive
Humvees, or calls in air-strikes. It doesn't have a high command, or
high security, or a high budget. The army that can defeat terrorism
does battle quietly, clearing minefields and vaccinating children. It
undermines military dictatorships and military lobbyists. It subverts
sweatshops and special interests.Where people feel powerless, it
helps them organize for change, and where people are powerful, it
reminds them of their responsibility." ~~~~ Author Unknown ~~~~
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