FREE SPEECH IN LONG BEACH?

UPDATE ON THE LBAPN LAW SUIT

(excerpt)

Small Claims Court Judge Leon Emerson ruled against five Long Beach peace activists, ordering them to pay $1108.20 each for organizing the Rallies and March protesting war on Iraq. March 22, 2003, thousands marched along the streets of Long Beach while Bush was bombing Baghdad. The City claimed its costs were $7041. Judge Emerson found the $1500 charges for use of the beach not adequately "justified" and reduced the total to $5541.00. He ruled that each of the defendants (John Beacham, Sharon Cotrell, Diana Mann, Kathy Pliska, and Eugene Ruyle) is individually responsible for a pro-rated share.

Judge Emerson did not discuss the chilling effect his decision will have on free speech in Long Beach which was argued by the defendants and many other community activists who testified before him. The defendants will appeal this decision and LBAPN will ask the City Council to take steps to protect free speech in Long Beach. As defendant Eugene Ruyle, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at CSULB and Chair of LBAPN at the time of the rally stated, "The import of this issue goes far beyond the five of us." Los Angeles attorney Carol Sobel is filing a federal lawsuit on behalf of LBAPN. Sobel, a national expert in free speech law and Chair of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, successfully represented LBAPN and other community activists in an earlier case when Long Beach tried to charge prohibitive fees for a July 4th celebration and protest of sky-rocketing energy costs.

LBAPN is also asking all our supporters to write or call City officials to express their concerns about the First Amendment implications of this case. We will be calling meetings to plan a campaign and to pursue this issue.

District 1: Bonnie Lowenthal (562) 570-6919 district1@longbeach.gov
District 2: Dan Baker (562) 570-6684: baker@ci.long-beach.ca.us
District 3: Frank Colonna (Vice Mayor) (562) 570-6310
district3@longbeach.gov
District 4: Patrick O'Donnell (562) 570-6918 district4@longbeach.gov
District 4: Jackie Kell (562) 570-6932 kell@longbeach.gov
District 6: Laura Richardson (562) 570-6816
district6@ci.long-beach.ca.us
District 7: Tonia Reyes Uranga (562) 570-6139
district7@ci.long-beach.ca.us
District 8: Rae Gabelich (562) 570-6685 district8@longbeach.gov
District 9: Val Lerch (562) 570-6137 district9@ci.long-beach.ca.us
Mayor: Beverly O'Neill (562) 570-6801 mayor@longbeach.gov
City Attorney: Robert E. Shannon 562-570-2200 cityattorney@longbeach.gov


Informant: Annie

by Peter Kurth

Ladies and gentleman, citizens of the United States, former free persons and torches of Liberty! I don’t want to be the one who breaks this news to you, but somebody has to, and it might as well be me. Listen up, because this is terribly important. Not just your own future, but the future of all generations after you will depend upon it. You’re not scared enough. You’re not scared nearly enough. You should be frightened out of your wits and, apparently, you’re not...

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/July2004/Kurth0730.htm

DEUTSCHE SPRACHWELT
http://www.deutsche-sprachwelt.de

- PRESSEMITTEILUNG -

Vertrag oder Absichtserklärung?

Über die Rechtschreibreform gibt es keinen völkerrechtlich bindenden Vertrag

Richtigstellung der DEUTSCHEN SPRACHWELT

In der derzeit heftig geführten Diskussion um die mißlungene Rechtschreibreform hat sich der Irrtum ausgebreitet, daß ein Staatsvertrag bestehe, der die teilnehmenden Staaten verpflichte, die Rechtschreibreform umzusetzen. Die DEUTSCHE SPRACHWELT weist darauf hin, daß diese Auffassung falsch ist. Vielmehr besteht lediglich eine Absichtserklärung, die vor acht Jahren von Vertretern mehrerer Staaten unterzeichnet worden ist. Eine Absichtserklärung ist etwas völlig anderes als ein Staatsvertrag. Sie kann jederzeit aufgegeben werden. Mit dem Scheitern der Rechtschreibkommission ist die Absichtserklärung hinfällig. Außerdem haben die Kultusminister mit der geplanten Gründung eines "Rats für deutsche Rechtschreibung" die Grundlage der Absichtserklärung bereits verlassen. Für eine Rückkehr zur bewährten Rechtschreibung gibt es keinen staatsrechtlichen Hinderungsgrund.

[...]

Thomas Paulwitz
Schriftleiter der DEUTSCHEN SPRACHWELT

Den vollständigen Text der Richtigstellung finden Sie hier:
http://www.deutsche-sprachwelt.de/berichte/pm-2004-07-28.shtml
http://www.deutsche-sprachwelt.de/nachrichten/neues_detail.php?id=92


Die DEUTSCHE SPRACHWELT http://www.deutsche-sprachwelt.de ist mit rund 80.000 Lesern (Leserbefragung 2002) die größte deutsche Sprachzeitung. Sie erscheint vierteljährlich und ist Sprachrohr und Plattform einer ständig wachsenden Bürgerbewegung, die sich um die deutsche Sprache sorgt und für ein neues Sprachbewußtsein eintritt. Die DEUTSCHE SPRACHWELT kämpft für die Erhaltung einer lebendigen deutschen Sprache.

Schriftleitung: Thomas Paulwitz
DEUTSCHE SPRACHWELT
Postfach 1449
D-91004 Erlangen
Fernruf 0049-(0)9131-480661
Ferndruck (Fax) 0049-(0)9131-480662
http://www.deutsche-sprachwelt.de
schriftleitung@deutsche-sprachwelt.de


Neue Forsa-Umfrage: Mehrheit will Rücknahme der Rechtschreibreform
http://www.deutsche-sprachwelt.de/nachrichten/neues_detail.php?id=91

Of the delusions that US neo-conservatives perpetrated in their drive to take the United States to war in Iraq, the most durable has been the notion that they are committed to the spread of Wilsonian democracy...

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FG27Ak02.html


From Information Clearing House

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040709/news_lz1e9schubert.html


Informant: Harlan Girard

U.S. 'Correctional Population' Hits New High:

The number of Americans under the control of the criminal justice system grew by 130,700 last year to reach a new high of nearly 6.9 million. This is about 3.2 percent of the adult population in the United States...

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6553.htm

http://boston.indymedia.org/feature/display/23853/index.php


Informant: Friends

by Richard M. Dolan

Phenomena Magazine

07/14/04

We have had a quiet revolution that has not eliminated our Congressional representatives -- it's simply made them largely irrelevant. It's been a long journey to our current state of affairs. Not surprisingly, wars have been a major catalyst. Most wars fought by the United States have added power to the executive branch, while whittling power away from the legislature. ... I would select World War Two -- and its immediate aftermath -- as the real turning point when the American Dream went awry. This is ironic, since it was at that moment when America first sat atop the world at the pinnacle of power. And therein lies the problem. For this was when the American republic began its transformation into a national security state. Or, to put it another way, into an Empire...

http://tinyurl.com/42rla


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Judges Being Secretly Trained To Resist Arguments Based on Constitution

The Anti-Government Movement Handbook is a training manual for judges and court staff against pro se litigants, published in 1999 by the National Center for the State Courts (NCSC) in Williamsburg, Virginia.

To download go to: http://www.avoiceforchildren.com/documents/handbook/

From Elizabeth Wallace
(excerpt)

Judges Being Secretly Trained

Wednesday, June 02 2004 @ 02:12 PM CDT

Contributed by: SuiJuris

Judges Being Secretly Trained To Resist Arguments Based on
Constitution

Fearful of growing backlash from the public against arbitrary, prejudiced, and even malicious judgments that are protected by judicial immunity, judges have banded together under government sponsorship to devise means of defending themselves from aggrieved and increasingly militant pro se litigants.

Continuing Education Credit Prejudices Judges by June Wisniewski

The Anti-Government Movement Handbook is a training manual for judges and court staff against pro se litigants, published in 1999 by the National Center for the State Courts (NCSC) in Williamsburg, Virginia. This book, along with Dealing With Common Law Courts: A Model Curriculum for Judges and Court Staff, published in 1997 by NCSC, was developed from an Institute for Course Management (ICM) course on dealing with common law courts, held in Scottsdale, Arizona, February 5-7, 1997.

The curriculum and manuals for this course were prepared with a grant from the State Justice Institute: Award No. SJI-96-02B-B-159, "The Rise of Common Law Courts in the United States: An Examination of the Movement, the Potential Impact on the Judiciary, and How the States Could Respond." The State Justice Institute (SJI) is a non-profit, 501C(3) corporation that was started in 1986 and funded by Congress to develop courses and training manuals for state courts and judicial training organizations.

This course and training manuals were developed by a group of 27 judges, court clerks, court administrators, and prosecutors in Arizona who examined the history and procedures of the Common Law Court Movement (CLC) and created the training curriculum and responses that courts, judges, and court administrators can use when dealing with common law courts in their own jurisdictions. My contact at the conference said that one of its goals was to identify ways the courts can make preemptive strikes against the CLC movement.

Some of the keynote speakers who helped produce the CLC course in Arizona were Chief Justice Thomas Moyer of Columbus, Ohio, T.C. Brown of Columbus, Ohio (a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer), and Jonathan Mozzochi, Executive Director of the Coalition for Human Dignity in Seattle, Washington. Mozzochi, who distributed Guns and Gavels, a publication of the Coalition, was listed as "a nationally recognized expert on militias and hate group activity." The Coalition is like a west coast version of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

I originally found out about this course by watching a videotaped session of the 1996 combined conference of the Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ) and the Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA), held in Nashville, Tennessee in the summer of 1996 and called "Impact of the Common Law Court Movement on the Courts." More than 50 state Supreme Court justices and state court administrators attended the Tennessee conference. The CLC session was taped with a grant from SJI. Keynote speakers were Michael Reynolds, senior intelligence analyst for the SPLC, and James Reynolds, chief of the Terrorism and Violent Crime Section, U.S. Department of Justice.

The panel discussion included Susan Hansen, senior reporter with American Lawyer, Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Moyer (past president of CCJ), Utah Supreme Court Justice Michael Zimmerman, and Judges Jeffrey Langton and Gregory Mohr from Montana. The taped session was more than three hours long. At the end of the session, one of the speakers mentioned that there was funding for additional CLC conferences. I immediately called ICM, located at NCSC in Virginia, and asked about the additional CLC conferences. My contact told me that a Scottsdale conference was going to take place in about three days. Since those two conferences, there have been additional conferences sponsored by SJI with other organizations.

SJI sponsored a conference with the American Judicature Society in Scottsdale, Arizona in November, 1999 that was closed to the public and the press. There will also be an ICM course in Orlando, Florida on February 5-7, 2001 called "Increasing Access to Justice for Pro Se Litigants," with that organization's perception of what "access" means.

"Constitutionalists in Court" was held in the St. Paul-Minneapolis, Minnesota area in the summer of 2000 by the National Judicial College (NJC) of Reno, Nevada, and the same course was held again November 13-14, 2000, also at NJC in Reno. This course discusses the history of protest movements affecting the judiciary, identifies typical challenges and ways to handle them, anticipates courtroom security needs, and plans solutions and strategies.

NJC, together with the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), conducted a survey, developed material for their courses from SJI materials and grants, and published a brief report called "Right-Wing Extremist Challenges to the Authority and Jurisdiction of the Court" in 1998. This course and report contains a preemptive plan against pro se litigants and others who may disagree with the court, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Native American protest groups, religious organizations, and anyone else who may take issue with a court decision.

The information from NJC is so controversial that NJC has banned its course and conference materials from the public, but their library and the SJI repository is open to the public.

I originally started researching judicial training organizations in 1996 after I was denied an inheritance by the New Jersey court system when my parents died and was also denied entrance to a conference and course materials at NJC in May, 1996, called "The National Conference on the Media and the Courts: Working Together to Serve the American People."

The media conference was closed to the public. Only one New Jersey judge, Martin Kravarick, attended that conference. Judge Kravarick was elected president of the American Judges Association (AJA), a judge's organization under NCSC. AJA publishes a quarterly journal called Court Review, available in your local law library, by subscription, or through interlibrary loan.

I first found out about the judicial movement against pro se litigants and the CLC movement by reading Kravarick's "President's Message" in the Fall, 1996 issue of Court Review. I called Judge Kravarick for more information on what the CLC movement was all about, and he gave me some additional contact information. I called Mike Reynolds of SPLC, and he told me there were four conference proceedings and that the conference was taped. I waited over three months to get a copy of the tape, "Impact of the Common Law Movement on the Courts." That tape is available through interlibrary loan from NCSC along with the training manuals mentioned above.

Each state has an SJI repository for all publications put out by the organizations they have funded. For example, the repository in Nevada is at NJC in Reno. In New Jersey, the SJI repository is at the New Jersey State Library in Trenton. You can check out these training manuals with a New Jersey library card. You can also find out where your SJI repository is by looking it up on the Internet at
http://www.statejustice.org/ by calling SJI at 703-684-6100, or by writing to the State Justice Institute, 1650 King street, Alexandria, VA 22314.

SJI is funded by Congress with your tax dollars. If you don't like the courses and materials they are funding, you can write to your senator or congressman, or directly to SJI and ask them to stop funding these materials. SJI gets very few letters from the public, and I'm sure they would love to hear from you. When you get to their Web site, read and download the newsletters. Most of their new grants are in their newsletters.

The National Center for State Courts is an umbrella organization for several judges' organizations such as the National College of Probate judges (NCPJ), AJA, CCJ, COSCA, ICM and others. I have been a member of NCPJ since 1996 and have attended four judges' conferences. The most controversial and harmful material against the public is coming from NJC and NCSC materials, two agencies that compete with each other for SJI and federal government funding.

In the training manuals mentioned above, there are two sections in each book where the writers advise judges and court personnel such as court clerks and guards on how to handle pro se litigants using a step-by-step process. The writers of these manuals reveal a court that is biased and has a dangerous point of view about justice and equal access in the court system.

Copyright C 2001 June Wisniewski

The Author: June Wisniewski is a legal researcher and journalist in
Reno, Nevada, who can be reached renojune@judicialterrorism.com

She has written a number of articles on judicial subjects and is author of the book, The Coffin Chasers: An Aggrieved Litigant's Journey Through the Corrupt World of Probate. This article appeared in the January 5, 2001 issue of the Idaho Observer and is reprinted here with knowledge of the author. Its subject matter is the basis of another book, Unequal Justice: The Inside Story of the National Judicial College.

J. R. I.
http://www.court.to/

http://www.suijuris.net/main/suijuris/article.php?story=2004060214124768&mode=print

Informant: V

Let the Constitution Speak!