Talk about heavy-handed, even perhaps, I dare call tactics like these facist. As they seemed designed soley to stifle dissent and discourage peaceful civil disobedience.
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Florida Greenpeace protest brings federal charges under 1872 law
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The cargo ship Jade, carrying 70 tons of mahogany harvested from the Brazilian rain forest, lowered a 50-foot ladder over its side about three miles off Miami Beach on the afternoon of April 12, 2002. A harbor pilot climbed on board to steer the 965-foot ship into the Port of Miami.
Two uninvited visitors followed.
Scott Anderson, 28, and Hillary Hosta, 29, expert "climbers" hired by the environmental group Greenpeace, leaped from a pair of Zodiac inflatable boats and clambered up the ladder, toting a banner with the message: "President Bush, Stop Illegal Logging."
So began a routine protest resulting in an unusual federal prosecution that, legal experts say, threatens to chill free speech and profoundly change the rules of peaceful protest.
The ship's radio crackled, "This is Greenpeace. We are conducting a peaceful demonstration alongside your ship. We are protesting cargo from Brazil. We also have personnel on your ship."
Hosta and Anderson were stopped before they could unfurl the banner. By nightfall, six Greenpeace activists were under arrest. Anderson and Hosta, along with four others, spent the weekend at the Federal Detention Center in Miami.
They pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor, an obscure charge of "sailor-mongering," and paid fines ranging from $100 to $500.
Normally, that would have been the end of it, "another day at the office for Greenpeace," said Scott Paul, 38, one of the arrested demonstrators.
It was just the beginning. In July, some 15 months after the arrests, a federal grand jury in Miami indicted Greenpeace itself — under a 19th-century federal law enacted to stop pimps from clambering aboard ships entering port.
It was the first time a public-interest organization has faced criminal charges over the protest activities of its members, the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Council and the American Civil Liberties Union said in court briefs.
Environmentalists call the charges a heavy-handed attempt to retaliate against Greenpeace for previous in-your-face protests against the Bush administration.
The 1872 law was enacted to keep brothel operators from infiltrating ships "about to" dock. Pimps and others from brothels would row out to the vessels and persuade the sailors to jump ship with them or come over after docking. The sailors were then wined, dined and separated from their money.
According to the indictment, Greenpeace supplied money and people for the Florida protest. A Greenpeace corporate credit card was used to rent the rafts and small boats used to intercept the Jade.
Greenpeace maintains a ship moving at 10 mph three miles at sea is not covered by the "about to" dock requirement. The prosecutor retorted that an 1890 conviction was based on a boarding at the mouth of Oregon's Columbia River 50 miles from its dock in Portland. In the only other conviction on record, a New York judge who examined the law the year it was enacted called its language "inartistic and obscure."
In December, Greenpeace asked U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan to dismiss the charges. The case "implicates the fundamental rights of all Americans to engage in peaceful protest," Greenpeace attorney Jane Moscowitz argued in court papers.
Jordan indicated he would rule in early 2004 and, depending on his decision, a trial could follow in May.
For the government, United States of America v. Greenpeace Inc., is a test case. For Greenpeace and other activist groups, it could be a disaster.
If convicted, Greenpeace could be fined $10,000 and placed on five years' probation, which the group says would chill its activism. By being required to report to a federal probation officer, Greenpeace says, it would face unprecedented government scrutiny of its tactics and membership rolls.
A criminal conviction also could cost Greenpeace its tax-exempt status, the group's lawyers argued. They said the government is trying to put Greenpeace out of business.
"They're trying to silence us," said Tom Wetterer, general counsel for Greenpeace, which has offices in Washington and San Francisco.
Defending the prosecution in court last month, Assistant U.S. Attorney Cameron Elliot insisted, "There is no evidence that the government has discriminated against Greenpeace because of its political views."
The group's vocal opposition to the federal government "makes it no different from thousands of other political advocacy groups," he said.
Greenpeace simply broke the law, Elliott argued in court papers. "The heart of Greenpeace's mission is violation of the law," he wrote.
Greenpeace began in 1971 and now claims more than 250,000 individual supporters.
Perhaps best known for sailing its boats into restricted waters and interfering with whaling ships and other vessels on the open seas, the group has been bothersome to Bush since shortly after his inauguration, when members put up a banner near his Texas ranch calling him the "toxic Texan."
Others have built a pile of coal outside Vice President Cheney's Washington residence, protested near missile bases, issued investigative reports and even inspected Iraqi nuclear facilities.
Greenpeace claims its Florida protest called attention to the crime of logging of big-leaf mahogany in the Brazilian Amazon and the Bush administration's failure to enforce an import ban contained in an international treaty. Greenpeace contends roads built by mahogany loggers are the root cause of Amazon deforestation.
The Greenpeace prosecution is moving forward at a time when edgy law-enforcement officials have zero tolerance for acts of civil disobedience.
The city of Miami also is facing criticism and has been threatened with lawsuits over an allegedly heavy-handed police response to protests at November's meetings of the Free Trade Area of the Americas.
None of Greenpeace's supporters deny the need to protect ports in a post-Sept. 11 world. But, said John Passacantando, the group's executive director, "This was an entirely peaceful action." He asserted that Attorney General John Ashcroft is "hiding a political agenda" behind national-security concerns.
The case also is alarming other defenders of free speech, who think the charges are intended to muzzle critics of the government.
Constitutional scholars say the charges run counter to the rich American tradition of civil disobedience as seen during the abolitionist, suffrage, civil-rights and anti-war movements.
"Greenpeace is an advocacy group. It is important that they be as free as possible to engage in their advocacy," said First Amendment expert Floyd Abrams.
Activists are routinely arrested under long-established "rules of engagement" for peaceful civil protest; they expect to be jailed, considering it a "badge of honor," explained Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who has written about the case.
But by filing charges against Greenpeace Inc., federal prosecutors stepped into uncharted territory.
"Until the federal indictment, this episode was a routine example of civil disobedience, essentially a sit-in on the high seas," said Bruce Ledewitz, who teaches First Amendment law at Pittsburgh's Duquesne University.