Opinion: NDAA Strips Citizens of Rights
Imagine for a minute that you’re living in a home in Seattle. Your eyes slowly navigating passed the bent corners of an old Noam Chomsky book as a cool northwest summer morning breeze blows in through your cracked window. Just as you’re about to prepare breakfast, you jump to attention to a loud “BANG” at your front door. Before you have a moment to collect yourself, FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force Agents rush through with battering ram in hand and guns out forcing you to the cold tiled floor of your kitchen as you and your roommates are handcuffed at gun point and held hostage in your own backyard.As you sit outside in the damp morning grass a search warrant is read to you as your home is viciously searched and torn apart with no regard for personal property. Books, artwork, and more thought-inducing items are taken as evidence as well as other belongings including clothing, much of it black. A subpoena is then served to you to testify before a Grand Jury in one week. This is not the life of George Orwell’s rebellious Julia from Oceania in the novel “1984,” this is the life of Leah-Lynn Plante – a 24-year-old anarchist from Washington.Plante was to be brought in front of a grand jury to provide testimony against other activists in the region, specifically on account of May Day protests surrounding Occupy Seattle. Some of the protestors involved vandalized some buildings and cars around Seattle – generally not crimes one would consider under the blanket of “terrorism.” Her subpoena demanded that she hand over any “anti-government or anarchist literature” in her home as well as any “flags, address books, cell phones and black clothing.” Plante released a statement saying the agents seemed to know that she was not “even in Seattle on May Day.” But that did not seem to matter.We live in a country today whose prison population as of 2008, according to the New York Times, is nearly as high as China and Russia combined and has risen by 500% since 1980. We live in a country today where a person’s beliefs, as opposed to their actions, can warrant arrest and bullying from our government. “They are trying to investigate anarchists and persecute them for their beliefs. This is a fishing expedition. This is a witch hunt,” said Plante.Following grand jury hearings in which Plante chose to exercise her Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, she was jailed and placed into solitary confinement for refusing to provide a testimony in regard to the activists in the region. She had no interest in hurting another’s life to save her own and despite never being charged with a crime was incarcerated in federal prison on Oct. 10 “to coerce cooperation.” These actions are allowable in grand juries as refusal to speak can be considered civil contempt, which may result in the person in question being jailed for the length of the grand jury trial. She was released one week later for simply being “different.” But her other two housemates remain in custody.Grand juries such as this one are often viewed as a tool for persecuting ones beliefs. And along with laws like the National Defense Authorization Act, or the NDAA, which allows for the indefinite detention of American citizens without trial, the beauty of living in a free country suddenly becomes a little uglier which each story such as this one. We cannot allow ourselves to sit idly by as our freedoms are stripped from us.Incidents like Plante’s often go unreported by the national media and to us may seem few and far between. But allowing them to be imprisoned into Facebook statuses and posts on forums is allowing a government intended to be by us and for us control us, and even if it’s just a select few, people like Leah-Lynn Plante are still one of us.“Today is Oct. 10th, 2012 and I am ready to go to prison.” Imagine for a minute these were your final words before being taken into custody for silence. Leah-Lynn Plante lived these words. The least we can do is listen.