DEFEND ALL TARGETS OF STATE REPRESSION: SOLIDARITY TO CARRIE FELDMAN AND SCOTT DEMUTH
from the RNC 8 Defense Committee (www.rnc8.org)

Since the RNC 8 were first arrested and charged with terrorism last year, we have understood that they are not the first nor the last to be targeted by overzealous authorities for their effective political organizing.  Furthermore, we believe in defending all targets of state repression.  Specifically, we extend our solidarity to Scott DeMuth and Carrie Feldman, two friends and comrades trapped in a “terrorism” witch hunt in Iowa, and ask you to do the same.

In 2004, anonymous activists destroyed a vivisection lab at the University of Iowa and rescued 400 animals, a so-called crime which the FBI has been unable to solve.  Grasping at straws, the government subpoenaed Feldman and DeMuth to a secretive grand jury investigating the incident.  The pair were 15 and 17, respectively, in 2004; neither were animal rights activists.  But both were unlucky enough to come to the FBI’s attention as part of the massive  intelligence gathering operation around the RNC.

Refusing to be complicit in the government’s fishing expedition by testifying before the grand jury, Feldman was sent to jail, where she remains.  DeMuth was also jailed for refusing to testify, but then became the first Midwest activist charged under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA)–just one day before the action’s statute of limitations was to expire.  He is now out of jail, at home in Minneapolis and awaiting trial.

Support Scott and Carrie: http://davenportgrandjury.wordpress.com
More Info on Grand Juries: http://grandjuryresistance.org/
More Info on the AETA: http://abolishtheaeta.org

“That’s Absurd!”

At a recent hearing debating Carrie’s release, federal prosecutor Cliff Cronk admitted there was no possibility she would be prosecuted: “She was, what, 15 at the time?” he sputtered. “That’s absurd!”

Indeed, Carrie and Scott’s case reminds us that absolutely nothing is too absurd for the state to justify its behavior with it.

In the RNC 8 case, authorities claim that their investigation into the RNC Welcoming Committee began with the release of the infamous “We’re Getting Ready” video.  The video featured Feldman and others turning tired, stereotypical symbols of anarchist action upside down: a molotov cocktail was thrown into a barbecue grill; bolt cutters became hedge clippers; a bowling ball juxtaposed with an Army recruiting station window smashed playfully into a set of bowling pins set up on the sidewalk.  And yet after the RNC, with straight faces, prosecutors played the video time after time before cheek-biting audiences in court, attempting to cast anarchists as uniformly violent, humorless and vile.

Meanwhile, the only known alleged “evidence” against DeMuth in his AETA case is said to have come from the raid on the Food Not Bombs house in Minneapolis on August 30, 2008–the same raid in which RNC 8 co-defendant Nathanael Secor was arrested.  Furthermore, mirroring the logical prowess of Ramsey County’s Bob Fletcher, DeMuth’s prosecutor Cronk argued that because Scott is an anarchist, “therefore, he is a domestic terrorist.”

The AETA, like the PATRIOT Act and its Minnesota counterpart, essentially redefines any political action disliked by government and industry as potential terrorism.  The RNC 8 originally faced charges “in furtherance of terrorism” for opposing the war, economic injustice, bigotry and environmental destruction perpetrated by RNC delegates, whom many would call the real terrorists.  Now, some corporate media are labeling DeMuth’s case with the Orwellian phrase “animal terrorism.”  Who exactly was terrorized?  Were the animals in the UI vivisection labs terrorized by the activists who liberated them?  Or was the animal research industry terrorized by the loss of profits and declining public image resulting from both above- and below-ground organizing?”

It is clear that the real conspiracy at the RNC was to suppress dissent, and that the witch hunt in Iowa is an equally phony attempt at manufacturing a villain.  Such phony villains are necessary for the state to justify its worst deeds, whether wars, war-like deployments in the streets of St. Paul, or the construction of expensive underground bunkers in which to torture and kill “research” animals in private.

In California, the “AETA 4″ (http://www.aeta4.org) are facing the same charges as Scott after being accused of sidewalk chalking and protesting peacefully. We have a history for making jokes, but this saga isn’t one of them.  It’s true: the state’s attempts at villain-making play like a bad movie.  It would be laughable if wasn’t real life, and if each of us might not be next.

“We will not be intimidated. We will not cooperate.”

As Carrie said before the grand jury, we will not cooperate.  In the RNC 8 Defense Committee, we have two goals: keeping the RNC 8 out of jail, and building the movements which they support.  Cooperating with state repression against anyone–either actively or by inaction–would make both goals substantially harder to attain.  Thus, we ask for your action, too.

Both Carrie and Scott are strong members of our community whom we love and admire.  Carrie was a member of Coldsnap Legal Collective, the first call from jail for many of the 818 RNC arrestees.  She and Scott were both organizers for the Jack Pine Community Center in south Minneapolis and are members of Earth Warriors are O.K.! (EWOK!), a political prisoner support organization.  Scott is part of the editorial collective for the Dakota journal Anpao Duta, a Dakota language student and sociology graduate student at the University of Minnesota, studying social movements.

Their persecution is a call for all of us to re-examine our commitment to systemic social change.  As DeMuth said before facing the grand jury, “Being part of a community means we help each other. We support each other. We strengthen each other. And sometimes, we must make sacrifices for each other.”  It’s time we put those words into practice, too.

As the RNC 8 wrote, “The best solidarity is to keep the struggle going.”

• Begin by donating to Scott and Carrie’s legal defense at http://davenportgrandjury.wordpress.com

Tags: AETA, carrie feldman, cliff cronk, FBI, green scare, rnc 2008, scott demuth, state repression