10-09-2009, 07:16 AM
What Kind of Sick Society Convicts A Humanitarian Volunteer for Handing Out Water In A Desert? The United States of America
September 1, 2009
‘No More Deaths’ is an organization that leaves plastic water jugs in the desert along the US/Mexico border to help keep immigrants from dying of dehydration. US authorities are targeting the humanitarian activists for prosecution. In the desert the only source of drinkable water is what people can carry. Between 1998 and 2008 five thousand immigrants, men, women and children, died while trying to cross north into Arizona. Border fences south of San Diego and along other border towns channel Immigrants to remote areas like the dangerous and isolated, 110 degree, Sonoran Desert, creating a death trap by US authorities against immigrants. Volunteer Walt Stanton was sentenced August 11th, 2009 for littering for leaving water jugs in the desert. The Judge stopped Staton from defending himself by arguing that his actions were humanitarian and far outweighed the so-called charge of littering. The prosecution against the ‘No More Deaths’ volunteer was highly political. Federal Prosecutors claimed that by leaving water the activist was aiding people entering illegally into the United States. This summer thirteen more ‘No More Deaths’ volunteers have been charged with littering.
You can read this article on line by clicking on this link:
http://revcom.us/a/174/no_more_deaths-en.html
–Bill Gibbons
September 1, 2009
‘No More Deaths’ is an organization that leaves plastic water jugs in the desert along the US/Mexico border to help keep immigrants from dying of dehydration. US authorities are targeting the humanitarian activists for prosecution. In the desert the only source of drinkable water is what people can carry. Between 1998 and 2008 five thousand immigrants, men, women and children, died while trying to cross north into Arizona. Border fences south of San Diego and along other border towns channel Immigrants to remote areas like the dangerous and isolated, 110 degree, Sonoran Desert, creating a death trap by US authorities against immigrants. Volunteer Walt Stanton was sentenced August 11th, 2009 for littering for leaving water jugs in the desert. The Judge stopped Staton from defending himself by arguing that his actions were humanitarian and far outweighed the so-called charge of littering. The prosecution against the ‘No More Deaths’ volunteer was highly political. Federal Prosecutors claimed that by leaving water the activist was aiding people entering illegally into the United States. This summer thirteen more ‘No More Deaths’ volunteers have been charged with littering.
You can read this article on line by clicking on this link:
http://revcom.us/a/174/no_more_deaths-en.html
–Bill Gibbons
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass