Free the press, free Josh Wolf!

hey folks, this is just a very short post on a very deep topic. My man Josh Wolf has been locked up for months now without ever being convicted – or even accused – of a crime, all because he’s refused to turn over video footage he shot of a protest last year to the feds.

The case is important for a ton of reasons, freedom ofthe press and the right of journalists not to be forcibly conscrtipted as government spies being the big one that’s in the spotlights, but it’s also important because this case proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that ‘the rule of law’ is a myth in America. According to the constitution the government CAN NOT keep a person locked up indefinately without trial, and in fact has very specific limits on how long they can hold you; but that’s exactly what they’ve done to Josh.

Backstory: At an Anarchist rally in San Francisco July of last year police assaulted protestors (as they are fond of doing) and someone – no one knows who – fought back and kicked a cops head in. Now whether you agree that people have the right to defend themselves against violent assaults by gangsters posing as peace officers (ie the SFPD), the one thing that is clear and that no one is even attempting to dispute is that Josh didn’t have a damn thing to do with any violence of any kind. He was present as a reporter for indymedia.org, and as a member of the community, and caught at least some of the altercation on film. Acting as a journalist he published that footage online. All of this is fairly normal.

Where it gets weird is that the federal government, again in violation of the US Constitution, has claimed the right to subpeona the footage based on the fact that the SFPD had recently received federal funding for new equiptment – an assertion completely without precedent. If this is allowed to stand it will set a new precedent that could potentially federalize virtually all criminal investigations nationwide since virtually every major urban police department receives some degree of federal funding – something that should worry even the most conservative Americans. In the proccess of that investigation, the Federal grand jury found about the footage that Josh had published as a journalist, and demanded that he turn it over. Their justification is that since he’s not a “real” journalist – ie. he isn’t an employee of any major news corporation – he has no rights or protections as a journalist. Now that’s just plain stupid. According to this logic only for-profit news counts as news and hundreds of thousands of independant & freelace journalists – as well as bloggers and anyone writing for a non-profit publication – is not a journalist at all and loses access to all the legal rights that journalists normally enjoy. You want to talk about an assault on the Freedom of the Press, start here.

Josh, being a man of integrity and principles, has thus far refused to turn over the footage, and has been locked up for contempt of court for almost a year now. the latest news is that they’re now saying they’ll keep him till at least August 2007.

It’s time for everyone who still believes in the political proccess to ask themselves what kind of country are we living in when a man can be held without trial for an entire YEAR without ever being accused of a crime or going to trial – let alone being convicted.

Josh’s blog – with a whole lot more information then i’ve written here – is at http://joshwolf.net/ and the updates on this particular travesty-posing-as-justice can be found at http://joshwolf.net/grandjury/. He – and all of us – need people to write letters to your local papers/politicians/etc. about the case, throw benefits for his legal team, and organize protests in the streets. We need to do everyhting possible to stop this thing, NOW. Get Josh out of jail, and maybe buy us all a little more time before the thought police come knocking on all our doors.

Posted: January 23rd, 2007 under news.
Comments: none