Earth First! descends on Gore campaign office

By D.D. Halbrook

Knoxville, TN, July 10— Earth First! activists took over Vice President Al Gore’s East Tennessee campaign office Monday, chaining themselves together for about three hours before leaving peacefully with no arrests. The action came at the end of the Round River Rendezvous (RRR), a week-long national Earth First! (EF!) gathering in the Cherokee National Forest of east Tennessee.

Earth First! and its annual RRR is now in its 19th year. Katuah EF! hosted the 1994 RRR in the Pigsah National Forest of North Carolina. Three hundred dedicated eco-activists, anarchists, and biodiversity defenders from around the continent held discussions, shared activist skills such as tree climbing and forest monitoring, and participated in plenty of night-time campfire revelry. Local old-time musicians held a hugely popular Contra dance, and Asheville’s West African drumming and dancing group, Common Ground, performed as well. Campers explored the local forest ecosystem, adventuring and celebrating wild nature by braving two days of torrential rain and flash flooding.

County sheriffs and Forest Service law enforcement officers from the local ranger district maintained a presence at the site, showing up unannounced several times to walk through the camp, and giving two citations for nudity. Each visit was accompanied by an entourage of EF!ers, some of whom were threatened with arrest for publicly announcing their presence. The Katuah EF! host committee has promised to rehabilitate the site from the week of use.

When the Knoxville office opened at 10am four women entered and linked themselves together with a motorcycle chain and several bicycle locks. At the same time, about 100 others moved in front of the two-story building’s entrance and several more barricaded themselves on the two-story roof with banners that said, “Presidency for Sale” and “End Corporate Governance.”

Anarchist Cheerleaders squeezed into the office foyer to support the lockdown with chants and cheers like “Al Gore’s a corporate whore!”. Out in front of the building, Earth First!ers from around the country sang songs such as Phil Ochs’ “Love Me I’m A Liberal” and made speeches about corporate exploitation on the US-Mexican border, and Gore’s involvement in Indian genocide in Ecuador and Colombia. Gore’s family owns $500,000 of stock in Occidental Petroleum, an L.A.-based oil company that is poised to expand a drill site on the traditional territory of Colombia’s U’wa Indians. U’wa people occupied the site for half a year, pledging resistance to the scheme, but on June 24 and 25, the Columbian military, funded by US “drug war” money, attacked the encampment using tear gas and physical force, injuring 28 people.

International solidarity has helped keep the pressure on Occidental, and Gore has become a major target of indigenous rights and ecological movements over the U’wa issue. The presidential hopeful’s campaign speeches have been disrupted several times in the past few months.

The protesters in Knoxville represented several groups who have campaigned on a wide variety of issues over the past year, including protests against the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund, and for protecting the environment. Activists are focusing on the hypocrisy of Clinton and Gore’s policies concerning ecological issues, to show how little difference exists between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to increasing corporate profits.

“I did this because I feel it’s important to expose the fact that the two-party system doesn’t work,” explained one of the chained women, Leigh Scherberger, 23.

The office occupation came just weeks before Republicans and Democrats hold their presidential nominating conventions, events expected to draw thousands of activists and protesters. The RNC will be held the first week of August in Philadelphia, with a mass protest called for July 30. Los Angeles will be the host of the DNC in Mid-August. Earth First! promises a strong resistance to the corporate-sponsored “republicrats” at both conventions.

Asheville group calls for death penalty moratorium

By Kendra Sarvadi

Asheville, North Carolina, July 12 — On Wednesday evening members of Western North Carolina’s People of Faith Against the Death Penalty (PFADP) chapter were joined by others opposed to capital punishment at Vance Monument to call for a moratorium on executions in North Carolina.

About 75 people of all ages attended the rally. Demonstrators cited a variety of reasons for supporting a moratorium on or the abolition of the death penalty, including the potential execution of innocent people – increased in recent years as prisoner appeals are given less attention — and the unfair, racist, and discriminatory manner in which the death penalty is applied.

Support for the anti-death penalty movement has increased over the past year, and members of WNC PFADP want to build upon that momentum. A moratorium would suspend executions for a re-evaluation of its application under the current system. Scott Barber, a member of the WNC PFADP steering committee, recognizes a trend toward “Stepping back and taking a hard look at the death penalty, [which includes] people who generally support it but are concerned about deep flaws within the system.”

The WNC Moratorium Now! Campaign, initiated by WNC PFADP, will focus on educating people “about the structural inequalities that feed the death penalty’s use and perpetuate its inequalities,” according to their written statement. Noel Nickle, another steering committee member, feels that this is a critical time for the anti-death penalty movement, and that it is important to “seize the moment and take advantage of the momentum…to let our voices be heard by the state legislature.” Members of the group plan to begin meeting with Asheville City Council members in the coming weeks to discuss the possibility of a city resolution in support of a moratorium.

For more information, please contact WNC PFADP at 274-8798.

Another massacre as Colombian Army prepares to receive US military aid

Statement of Amnesty International

La Union, Colombia, July 10— “How many times do killings committed by the security forces or their paramilitary allies have to be denounced before the Colombian government brings the perpetrators to justice?” asked Amnesty International as six men were killed and 63 families of La Unión have begun to flee their homes.

In the wake of yet another massacre against inhabitants of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, Amnesty International urged the international community to stop being a bystander and to take effective action to stop the killings.

At least six men from the village La Unión were shot dead on July 8. On that same day approximately 20 hooded men had entered the village, which is part of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó. Reportedly, a helicopter belonging to the XVII Brigade of the army had flown overhead and troops attached to the XVII Brigade were camped nearby.

The soldiers searched each house in La Unión and took the inhabitants to the center of the village where the men were separated from the women and children. After shooting the six men, the community was then ordered to leave: “You have 20 days to leave the region, because we are not having any more of this.”

While this was happening in La Unión some peasant farmers traveling on the road between Apartadó and San José de Apartadó were reportedly detained by the army. Two of them were threatened and reportedly told that the soldiers were operating with paramilitary forces: “We are together and we are going to finish this off.”

On the day of the massacre the military personnel camped around La Unión reportedly stated several times that there were guerrillas within the village. Two days earlier, in another village belonging to the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, military personnel had stated that: “The Peace Community is a community of guerrillas. We are going to go in with the paramilitaries.”

Military authorities denied having any presence in the La Unión area when notified of the massacre by national and international representatives. In response, they said they would send Counter-Guerrilla Battalion No. 35 Díaz López.

On Monday, July 3, a large number of troops belonging to the Bejaranos Battalion and Counter-Guerrilla Battalion No. 35 Díaz López, both attached to the XVII Brigade of the Colombian Army, marching along the road between Apartadó and San José de Apartadó were observed on their way up the Abibe mountain range. At least two armed men wearing army-style uniforms, but wearing no insignia, were also seen amongst the soldiers.

“The Colombian government must urgently bring human rights violators to justice, to break the links between the armed forces and illegal paramilitary groups and dismantle paramilitary organizations in line with repeated UN recommendations,” Amnesty International urged.

“The human rights clauses built into the US military aid package are meaningless unless decisive steps are taken immediately. The international community must act now before the human rights crisis is deepened by the increased military aid. With no controls, the military aid could deepen the crisis by boosting the confidence of the Colombian armed forces in the implementation of its counter-insurgency strategy, characterized by the widespread and systematic violation of human rights.”

San José de Apartadó is made up of 32 communities. It is the community’s location and the frequent presence of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the area which has resulted in the inhabitants of San José de Apartadó being labelled subversives or subversive sympathizers by the security forces and their paramilitary allies.

Faced with the constant threat of forced displacement and further human rights violations, the communities sought the support of the Catholic Church and Colombian human rights organizations to examine strategies which would enable the community to resist forcible displacement. This led to members of 17 of the communities of San José de Apartadó declaring themselves a Peace Community on March 23, 1997. This declaration represented a call to the warring factions on both sides of the conflict to respect the right of the civilian population not to be drawn into the conflict and to respect the communities’ right to life.

Over 60 members of the community of San José de Apartadó have been killed by members of the Colombian Army, their paramilitary auxiliaries and by the FARC, since March 1997. The army and their paramilitary allies have since labeled members of the community as guerrilla sympathizers while guerrilla forces have accused them of siding with their enemies.

Source: Amnesty International: www.amnesty.org