Typical Greenpeace Protest Leads to an Unusual Prosecution

Three miles off the Florida coast in April of 2002, two Greenpeace activists clambered from an inflatable rubber speedboat onto a cargo ship. They were detained before they could unfurl a banner, spent the weekend in custody and two months later were sentenced to time served for boarding the ship without permission.

It was a routine act of civil disobedience until, 15 months after the incident, federal prosecutors in Miami indicted Greenpeace itself for authorizing the boarding. The group says the indictment represents a turning point in the history of American dissent.

"Never before has our government criminally prosecuted an entire organization for the free speech activities of its supporters," said John Passacantando, the executive director of Greenpeace in the United States.

In court papers, the organization's lawyers warned that the prosecution "could significantly affect our nation's tradition of civil protest and civil disobedience, a tradition that has endured from the Boston Tea Party through the modern civil rights movement."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/11/national/11PEAC.html

If a Catholic protests against abortion, will they charge the Catholic church?

What about companies who employ people who protest?

Charge Ford with a crime when a Ford employee does something illegal?

Of course not, because it will only be used against those who don't support Bush.

Christian backers, Robertson, Falwell, Graham, Limbaugh...

I'm sure they are destroying our country but it makes me said that the media and citizens are letting them do it.

Big Brother on the march! It matters not whether the organization is one I support (Greenpeace) or a movement I abhor (Kahanism): the Bush administration is abrogating power to itself for full-fledged fascism.

We'll need luck to endure it, let alone even rebuild democracy here. The Democrats had better nominate a firebreather with distinctly non-Bush tendencies (read: not Lieberman) if we are to have hope.

Greenpeace could turn this to its advantage.