Newest US Political Prisoner: The State is a ‘Black Hole’ Seeking to Swallow Up People for Their Radical Beliefs
By: Kevin Gosztola,dissenter.firedoglake.com – “My convictions are unwavering and will not be shaken by their harassment. Today is October 10th, 2012 and I am ready to go to prison,” declared Leah Plante, in a statement issued before going to jail.
Plante was imprisoned at the SeaTac Federal Detention Center in Seattle on October 11 for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury. She entered a jail cell knowing she could be imprisoned until March 2014. But, she was resolute and chose to resist because talking to the grand jury would mean succumbing to fear and isolation. It would mean enabling the targeting of people in society for their political beliefs.
In the final week of July, the FBI raided homes in Portland, Oregon, and issued grand jury subpoenas to activists in Portland and Olympia and Seattle in Washington.
Plante eloquently described what happened in her statement:
On the morning of July 25th, 2012, my life was turned upside down in a matter of hours. FBI agents from around Washington and Oregon and Joint Terrorism Task Force agents from Washington busted down the front door of my house with a battering ram, handcuffed my house mates and me at gunpoint, and held us hostage in our backyard while they read us a search warrant and ransacked our home. They said it was in connection to May Day vandalism that occurred in Seattle, Washington earlier this year. However, we suspected that this was not really about broken windows. As if they had taken pointers from Orwell’s 1984, they took books, artwork and other various literature as “evidence” as well as many other personal belongings even though they seemed to know that nobody there was even in Seattle on May Day…
The raid came just over two weeks after Occupy Seattle organizers had been raided. In both raids, the FBI took books and the seizure of books was a result of the FBI’s interest in “anarchist literature.” It indicated the FBI was not interested in simply prosecuting those responsible for vandalism on May Day. The FBI was interested in casting a wide net to investigate anarchists and target them for their beliefs.
This suspicion was soon confirmed. A Freedom of Information Act request submitted by Lauren Regan, an attorney with the Civil Liberties Defense Center, uncovered a document showing the grand jury had been empaneled on March 2, 2012, two months before May Day and any property damage occurred.
On July 25, Plante was not one of the people subpoenaed, however, on August 2, she was issued a grand jury subpoena, along with another person, Dennison Williams. They made a statement that they would not be talking to the grand jury: Read more…
