Freegan cop killers? Or feeding the homeless? Credit: Debrah Solomon
At first blush, Freegans hardly seem able to make it to class in the morning, let alone orchestrate a terrorist attack.
A call to the number on the Web site for Food Not Bombs, an organization that roots through Dumpsters for trash to feed the homeless, reached the private residence of a frustrated Boulderite who has been trying to get the group to correct the site for more than two years.
The group's blog has zero entries since going live six months ago.
The organizer of the meeting, Dawn Rewolinski, said the prospective chapter would have been part of the movement’s other wing, which writes letters to prisoners. The chapter was never established, Rewolinski said. “All we did is eat some cookies and talk about various prisoners and realize we didn’t have enough money for a P.O. box.”
Students of the University of Texas Law School also reported Supervisory Senior Resident Agent G. Charles Rasner posted a list of terrorist organizations that included Food Not Bombs during a guest lecture. The blog post of one attendee, a Mormon law student who ran the blog Probative, was replaced with the cryptic "[Chilled speech]". An article on IndyMedia by Elizabeth Wagoner, who attended the lecture, said:
Student Elizabeth Wagoner requested a copy of the PowerPoint presentation at the end of the class. Rasner refused, claiming the presentation was private government property. He then refused a request for the contact information of the FOIA officer in his bureau, saying it “was not worth [his] time”.
A copy of the PowerPoint presentation has been requested via the Freedom of Information Act. We will publish the presentation on Indymedia as soon as it becomes available.
When we followed up with Wagoner, she responded in email:
I didn't appeal the FOIA, I wish I had. But no reason someone else couldn't pick it up. As for Probative, I think at some point he decided to back down because the prof threatened to kick us out of class and basically publicly shamed us for having reported on it.
Wagoner included the FBI's response to her FOIA request:
To promptly respond to requests, we concentrate on identifying main files in the central records system at the San Antonio Field Office. No records responsive to your FOIA request were located by a search of the automated indices. You specifically have requested "a complete electronic and print copy of this entire PowerPoint presentation" that was presented at the University of Texas School of Law on March 8, 2006. An inquiry by a member of my staff, discovered that the presentation was not an FBI generated document, nor is it maintained in FBI files. We have been advised that the presentation was compiled with public source information from the website titled www.indymedia.com. I hope this information is helpful to you.
A call to Rasner’s office was not returned, but he seemed to suggest he was rethinking the categorization of FNB in the Times article.
It has always amazed me to hear about what kind of pacifists made the FBI's watch list back in the Red Scare days: Einstein, John Lennon, Martin Luther King, Jr. What makes the government, upon hearing the lyric, "Give peace a chance," think, "threat to the Republic"? It seems, the government hasn't gotten any better about recognizing real threats.
Comments
I was taken off a flight from London to Chicago by Homeland Security and questioned about my "role with the violent group Food Not Bombs." The FBI raided three of our cook houses a day before the Republican National Convention arresting and charging eight Food Not Bombs volunteers under the Patriot Act on conspiracy. While it seems odd to be considered a terrorist group for feeding the hungry I believe Americans should be concerned. The FBI has infiltrated Food Not Bombs and disrupted our effort to redirect taxes to human needs away from the military. Had the FBI not directed years and millions of dollars trying to stop our work it is possible that the American people would have been able to stop the war in Iraq or stopped the global economic crash two issues we have been trying to organize against. Visit www,foodnotbombs.net/spy.html to read wiretap memos and see some of the high lights of the government's campaign against the all volunteer global movement Food Not Bombs.
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