Judge denies motion
to dismiss
BY JOHN LAFORGE
A group of 12 anti-war activists were found guilty
of trespassing Dec. 12 by Hennepin County District Court Judge Lorie
Gildea after a half-day trial. The group had been charged during
a July 13 protest at the headquarters of Alliant Techsystems, Minnesota’s
biggest weapons merchant and the object of relentless protest over
its manufacture of rocket motors, machine guns, bullets and so-called
depleted uranium munitions—the internationally-condemned toxic,
radioactive shells used to smash hardened targets.
The 12 radical pacifists, convicted of violating
a new Edina City ordinance, were each ordered to pay a $142 fine
or do 24 hours of community service.
(On Dec. 15, Judge Gildea, 44, who’s been
a District Judge only since September, was appointed to the Minnesota
Supreme Court by Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Gildea’s husband Andrew
is a Republican Party functionary.)
The trespass convictions came in striking contrast
to identical trials that took place this time last year. On Dec.
10 and Dec. 14, 2004, two separate Hennepin County juries found
two groups of protesters not guilty of state trespass charges. During
the separate four-day trials, the defendants successfully argued
that Alliant’s uranium weapons are illegal to produce and
that federal and international law made what otherwise appeared
to be nonviolent trespass an excusable act of “crime prevention.”
Likewise, a jury in October 2003 acquitted a
group of 18 Alliant weapons protesters who argued that the company’s
production of land mines was illegal. The three embarrassing defeats
for Hennepin County prosecutors led the City of Edina to hurriedly
enact a local trespass ordinance that, as a petty misdemeanor, does
not allow for a jury trial.
The new ordinance also redefines the “claim
of right” section of the law—used successfully by anti-war
defendants to explain the outlaw status of Alliant’s weapons—eliminating
references to or respect for prevailing constitutional and international
law.
The hastily-enacted ordinance was the first issue
taken up at trial Dec. 12. Judge Gildea appeared to consider a “motion
to dismiss,” presented by attorney Kenneth Gleason and defendant
Bob Burns.
Gleason and Burns, who spoke on behalf of all
the defendants, argued that the ordinance was incompatible with
the state statute (unconstitutionally restricting a defendant’s
“claim of right”), and that the City Council had violated
the city code in the process of adopting the new rule.
The judge denied the motion and proceeded with
the bench trial (a trial without a jury).
The defendants included Burns, Jane McDonald,
Elizabeth McKenzie, Barbara Vaile, John Schmid Jr., Tom Bottolene,
Elizabeth Pepperwolf, Sam Foster, David Harris, Bonnie Urfer, Kathleen
Ruona and this reporter.
According to its website, Alliant Techsystems
is a $3 billion military contractor with 13,700 employees in 23
states. In April this year the company—the country’s
No. 1 bullet maker—boasted that it had produced 1.2 billion
bullets for the Army in a single year. U.S. wars on Afghanistan
and Iraq account for a heavy increase in government orders. Alliant
claims to have ceased its production of anti-personnel land mines
and cluster bombs.
AlliantACTION!, a local coalition of peace, environmental
and human rights activists, has conducted a long-standing campaign
of protest and resistance to the contractor’s war profiteering.
Alliant Tech claims to have produced 16 million
30mm uranium shells for use by the Air Force and the Army. The Wall
Street Journal reported Jan. 30, 2001, that the small-caliber shells
bring $21.50 apiece.
“Depleted” uranium (DU) weapons are
armor-piercing shells made from waste uranium-238, which is left
over in huge quantities from the manufacture of nuclear weapons
and fuel for nuclear reactors. When the weapons smash armor plate,
the uranium burns at high temperatures and turns to dust that can
be inhaled or ingested. Internal DU contamination has been blamed
for skyrocketing increases in birth abnormalities in Iraq’s
civilian population, and among children of Gulf War veterans. DU
poisoning is also alleged to play a major role in the devastating
symptoms known collectively as Gulf War Syndrome that are plaguing
hundreds of thousands of veterans.
While anti-uranium weapons activists may be unable
to explain their case to juries for now, civil society is moving
ahead to abolish DU.
On Nov. 17, the European Parliament for the third
time called for a halt to the use of DU. The resolution says the
EP “reiterates its call for a moratorium—with a view
to the introduction of a total ban—on the use of so-called
‘depleted uranium munitions.’” The EP previously
condemned DU in February of ’03 and January of ’01.
In September, the prestigious Physicians for
Social Responsibility, winners of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize, issued
a 21-page report on DU which declared that “the use of DU
weapons that leaves a persistent noxious environmental and public
health hazard is unconscionable.” The physicians further demanded
that DU weapons “be withdrawn from military arsenals,”
and that “the U.S. military support independent studies of
the longer-term health effects of battlefield use of DU on combatants
and on the Iraqi population exposed to DU.”
The United Nations Subcommission on Prevention
of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities has twice resolved
that the use of DU is a violation of binding humanitarian law, and
that “all states … need to curb the production and spread
of … weapons containing depleted uranium.”
Another group of 42 activists, who were cited
for trespass on Oct. 24, are scheduled for arraignment in January,
with a bench trial to follow. The October date was the 50th anniversary
of the adoption of the United Nations Charter outlawing wars of
aggression.
Campaign Against Depleted Uranium—<www.cadu.org.uk>
Military Toxics Project—<www.miltoxproj.org>
Nukewatch—<www.nukewatch.com>
John LaForge is on the staff of Nukewatch, a
peace and environmental action group based in Wisconsin.
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