St. Patricks Four to be Sentenced This Week!

international | anti-war / imperialism | news report

Monday January 23, 2006 12:40

by SP4

Binghamton, New York, USA

They're in Jail for Us, We're on the Loose for Them!

On St. Patricks Day 2003, four Catholic Workers from Ithica, New York, occupied their local recruitment centre pouring human blood over recruitment propaganda. They conducted a nonviolent sit in and were arrested. At the initial district court trial, the response was a hung jury.

Three of the activists decided to travel to Dublin to support the Pit Stop Ploughshares at their original trial in March '05. Shortly before departing the U.S. for Ireland, the houses of the four defendants were visited by the FBI. The four were hit with new felony charges for the original action. When they returned from Ireland for their original court appearance, the Prosecutor argued that their travel should be restircted to the disrict of the court "because the three were recently in Ireland involved in ongoing criminal activity" (attending the Pit Stop trial. Go Figure?). Their trial was set for October 2005 in Bingamton Federal Court. Local indy reporter Robbie S attended the trial and will post some links of interviews he conducted on this posting

They beat the most serious charge "interfering with a Federal Officer in the course of his duty (max 6 years)" due largley to the evidence of former U.S. Marine recruiter & Iraq war veteran Jimmy Massey. Jimmy gave evidence that part of one's duty runnning a recruitment centre for the USMC is handling peaceniks, so you could hardly call it interference since its part of the duty etc. Jimmy is in Dublin later this week to speak at Afri's peace fetival on the weekend.

The St. Patrick's Four were found guily of other charges (max 18 months) and are to be sentenced this week. Vietnam veteran Peter Grady DeMott & Clare Grady both served significant prison time in the 1980's for plowshares actions

Dear Friends,

As we begin the week of sentencing of the St. Patrick's Four, the war making and planning of
war continues. Since the beginning of the Iraq war
there are 2,423 coalition forces dead, 2,222 of them US forces. Katherine Shrader, wrote for the Washington Post, "US Has Detained 83,000 in War on Terror" (11/16/05), since the war on terror began. Most of the 14,500 detainees being held today in US custody are in prisons like Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Bagram in Afghanistan.

Torture has become the norm in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and in the clandestine prisons of Europe and other places, recently revealed to the world. http://witnesstorture.org

Empire continues on it's quest for total global
domination, of people and the earth's resources.
We are called to continued peacemaking and resistance to empire. Pope John Paul II wrote, "There is no peace without a passionate love for peace. There is no peace without a relentless determination to achieve peace." Let us renew
our passionate love for peace and relentless determination to achieve peace.

We, of the Ithaca Catholic Worker Community, invite you to read below, the Global Call to Action, with 5 dates chosen, with many, such as Cindy Sheehan, being the signers and participants. Check out their web site below.

We invite you to join us this week in Binghamton for the sentencing of the St. Patrick Four and continue the local witness for peace. On behalf of the St. Patrick's Four, we thank all of you who put your love and unbelievable energy into making the trial and the tribunal a tremendous victory in so many ways. We thank all of you who supported from afar as well. We felt your support and prayers buoy us through it all. If your able, we'd love to see you on Sunday, Jan. 22, to gather once more in a Festival of Hope or at the court during the week.

Peace,
Mary Anne Grady Flores
St. Patrick's Four Support Team
http://www.stpatricksfour.org

Global Call to Action
http://www.aglobalcall.org
From:
* Nobel Peace and Literature Laureates
* Cindy Sheehan and other peace and human-rights activists
* Religious leaders of various traditions
* Prisoners of conscience
* Former government ministers
* Poets, authors, journalists
(Please see our web site for the full list of signers and their identification)
We, the undersigned, invite peace-makers throughout the world to participate in an international campaign of massive, nonviolent civil resistance to stop the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. These actions could be organized to include both non-violent civil resistance and legal demonstrations.

The killing of tens of thousands of civilians, the wounding of perhaps 100,000 or more people, the torture and murder of prisoners in U.S. custody-these and other realities of the occupation are evidence of the massive state terrorism being perpetrated against the people of Iraq. At the same time, we mourn the deaths of over 2,300 soldiers of the "coalition forces," while we denounce the lies (weapons of mass destruction, ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda) proclaimed in an effort to justify the invasion.

First Date of International Actions: Monday, March 19-20, 2006, the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. The subsequent days of action are specified on the web site.

Sentencing Info.
You are invited to join us at the
Binghamton Federal Court
15 Henry St., next week as
the SP4 appear before Judge McAvoy.

The schedule is as follows each day at 9:15 am.

Monday, Jan. 23rd - Danny Burns
Tuesday, Jan. 24th - Peter DeMott
Wednesday, Jan. 25th - Clare Grady
Friday, Jan. 27th- Teresa Grady