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July 11, 2002
David Krieger
Law vs.
Force
David Vest
Fountain
of Foo:
Strike Three Called
Irit Katriel
A Deep
Ideological Crisis
Richard Glen Boire
Dangerous
Lessons:
Public School Drug Testing
July 10, 2002
CounterPunch Wire
Third Party
Woes
South Carolina Denies Kevin Alexander Gray Ballot Status
Nassar Ibriham &
Majed Nassar
Bush's
Middle East Plan: Always Changing, Never Changing
Robert Fisk
Ain't That
America:
A Strange Kind of Freedom
Dave Marsh
The Return
of CREEP:
Record Cartel Accounting
Bernard Weiner
Hope and
Despair in
the Body Politic
Gary Leupp
European
Worries and
Bush's Terror War
July 9, 2002
St. Clair / Cockburn
The Atomic
Clock is Ticking:
All Roads Lead to Yucca Mtn.
Jack McCarthy
Florida:
a Terrorist Sanctuary for Bush's Bloody Pals?
Robert Fisk
How a Saudi
Billionaire
Does Beirut
Stanton and Madsen
God, Incorporated
Kurt Nimmo
IDF, Gangbanging
with Tanks
Bill Christison
Disastrous
Foreign Policies
of the US Part 3:
What Can We Do About It?
July 8, 2002
Rick Mercier
Yucca
Mountain Bound
Lev Grinberg
The
BUSHARON Global War
Tariq Ali
How Bush
Used 9/11 to Remap the World
Lori Allen
The Tugs
of War:
Palestinian Life Under Curfew
July 7, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
White
House Crooks
July 6, 2002
Gavin Keeney
Loose
Lips:
Liberty, Democracy & Bush
Michael Neumann
What's
So Bad About Israel?
Steve Baughman
Ashcroft's
Vendetta:
Lynching John Lindh
July 5, 2002
Ahmad Faruqui
Bush Freezes Peace Process
Todd May
Independence
and Terrorism
Rahul Mahajan
Why I
Won't Celebrate the Fourth of July This Year
July 4, 2002
S. Brian Willson
What
the Flag Means to Me
Philip Farruggio
Independence Day and
the Working Poor
Tom Gorman
The Uncommon
Pledge
of Allegiance
Chris Floyd
Jungle
Fever:
Bush's Bolivian Mercenaries
July 3, 2002
Francis Boyle
The Death
of the Oslo Accords
Mokhiber / Weissman
Cracking
Down on Corp. Crime
Robert Jensen
Lynne
Cheney's Primer
Behzad Yaghmaian
An Alternative
to the G-8s Africa Initiative
Toward a Global AIDS Fund and a Living Wage
John Borowski
Public
Schools Under Seige
Norman Madarasz
Brazil,
the Workers' Party and the Financial Times
July 2, 2002
Leah Wells
The Wedding
Was a Bomb
CounterPunch Wire
Trial of
the SOA 37
Edward Hammond
Bombing
the Mind:
The Pentagon's Drug Warfare
Sam Bahour
Ramallah
Occupied:
Uninvited Guests Become Neighbors
July 1, 2002
Norman Madarasz
Brazil's
Triumph
June 28/30, 2002
Kathleen Christison
The True Story of Resolution
242 or How the US Sold Out
the Palestinians
Cockburn / St. Clair
Death,
Juries and Scalia
Tarif Abboushi
Bush's
Double Standard
on Israel
N.D. Jayaprakash
Seething
with Rage:
The Palestinian Saga
Michael Yates
Taking
the Pledge:
Teachers and the Flag
Stephen Zunes
Bush's
Speech a Setback
for Peace
Walt Brasch
The Pledge
v. The Constitution
Cockburn / St. Clair
Strikers
as Terrorists?
Tom Ridge Calls Longshoremen
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
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Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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July
11, 2002
Arrested by the Chamber of Commerce
a Brief Account
of How I Lost My Constitutional Right to Petition
by Lloyd Marbet
I live in the country, 10 miles from Estacada,
Oregon, and 25 miles from the city of Portland. Since September
of 2001, I have been gathering signatures on a state wide initiative
petition proposing to amend Oregon's Constitution in order to
enact Campaign Finance Reform. I am chief petitioner on this
initiative along with Harry Lonsdale and former Congressman James
Weaver. The political committee responsible for managing this
initiative campaign is Money Is Not Democracy and I have been
its Campaign Coordinator.
By law, we are required to gather 89,048
signatures of valid registered voters in order to place our initiative
on the ballot. These signatures must be turned in to the office
of the Secretary of State's Election Division by 5:00 PM, on
July 5, 2002. Since the Elections Division uses a statistical
sample of all the signatures that are submitted to determine
whether an initiative makes the ballot, it is important to gather
more signatures that are required in order to account for signatures
that may not be valid. Our goal was to turn in at least 111,000
signatures. On July 3rd we had approximately 105,221 signatures
that had been turned in to us, and since we were still short
of our goal we organized a petition drive to gather the remaining
signatures we needed at the various events across the state celebrating
our nation's Independence Day.
One of these events was a widely advertised
Fourth of July celebration being held at the City of Estacada's
Timber Park. On that day, my fiance, Cathryn Chudy, and I decided
to gather signatures at this park after she got off work, since
it was close to where I live. At approximately 4:30 PM, we drove
in my car to Estacada and followed the signs along the highway
to the park entrance where people were collecting a five dollar
fee for parking. This fee also provided the occupants of the
car admittance into this event. When I was approached by a woman
collecting this fee, I told her that I wished to attend this
event and collect signatures on my initiative for Campaign Finance
Reform. I assumed that there would be no problem in doing so.
She asked me to pull my car off to the side of the road while
she checked with the head of security.
When the head of security came to the
front gate, I got out of my car to meet him. He introduced himself
as "Steve" and I told him who I was, that I was a Chief
Petitioner on an initiative petition to adopt Campaign Finance
Reform, and that I wished to gather signatures at this July 4th
celebration. He told me absolutely not, that he would not allow
me to talk politics and harass the people that were attending
this family event. He also told me that this park was owned by
Portland General Electric, leased by the City of Estacada, and
rented to the people holding this event.
I told him that the City of Estacada's
control of this property made it "public" and that
I had a constitutional right to petition my fellow citizens on
public property at a public event regarding an issue that I considered
to be of great importance. He told me that this was a private
event and if I wanted to gather signatures that I could go up
the road, in the opposite direction from the entrance to this
park, and try and stop the cars coming into this event in order
to get the people inside to sign my petition. At that point I
called my attorney, Dan Meek, on my cell phone to seek his legal
advice. During the course of this telephone conversation I was
asked by security to remove my car from the entrance to the park
and take it to an adjacent parking lot. I immediately complied
with their request.
Following my conversation with Dan Meek,
I decided to return to the entrance gate and get the last name
of the man that I had just talked with. My fiance went with me.
Since "Steve" was no longer at the entrance gate, I
asked the security people standing there what his last name was
and they told me they did not know. I was then asked if I intended
to petition at this event. I answered yes, and was told that
they would call the police and have me arrested. I remained standing
in place with my petitioning material and eventually four Clackamas
County Sheriffs showed up--Officers Napoli, Westerman, Rippe,
and Zacher, two on motorcycles and two in patrol cars. Officer
Rippe explained to me that if I did not leave I would be put
under arrest and I explained to him that this was a public event,
on public property and I had a constitutional right to gather
signatures on my petition.
I was willing to pay the five dollar
entrance fee but I was told by both the security people and by
Tonya Phillips of the Estacada Chamber of Commerce that they
would not accept my money. At that point I walked just inside
the entrance to the gate to gather signatures and Tonya Phillips
asked me to leave. When I refused to do so, she conducted a citizen
arrest on behalf of the Estacada Chamber of Commerce and I was
handcuffed and escorted to a police car with the Star Spangled
Banner playing over the loudspeakers.
I was taken to the Clackamas County Jail
in Oregon City and after being processed, interviewed, fingerprinted,
and photographed, I was released from jail on my own recognizance
at around 7:30 PM, approximately three hours later.
Lloyd Marbet
is a longtime Oregon environmental activist and anti-nuke organizer
and a founder of the Pacific Green Party. He can be reached at:
marbet@mail.com
Today's
Features
David Krieger
Law vs.
Force
David Vest
Fountain
of Foo:
Strike Three Called
Irit Katriel
A Deep
Ideological Crisis
Richard Glen Boire
Dangerous
Lessons:
Public School Drug Testing
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