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Friday, Nov 27, 2009
Are the Philadelphia police using high bail to keep an activist leader away from the Democratic Convention?
Aug 8, 2000 | Last week in Philadelphia, San Francisco Bay Area activist John Sellers, director of the Ruckus Society, in Berkeley, Calif., was arrested on a series of misdemeanor charges including conspiracy and reckless endangerment. Bail for Sellers was set at $1 million. Activists and civil rights groups have decried the bail as astronomical. They claim that Sellers was picked out by police before the protests even began and is guilty of no crime.
While Sellers' attorney, Larry Frankel, said the bail figure was "absolutely ludicrous," Philadelphia Assistant District Attorney Cindy Martell said the figure was warranted because Sellers "facilitates the more radical elements to accomplish their objective of violence and mayhem."
More than 300 people were arrested last Tuesday alone during traffic-stopping demonstrations and sometimes violent conflicts with police. Officers say they confiscated piano wire and gasoline-soaked rags tied to chains, which they believe protesters planned to use to injure them. Meanwhile, jailed activists have complained of abuse, including long periods of time without food, water, bathroom breaks or medical attention. There are 325 still in jail along with Sellers.
At a hearing on Monday afternoon, a judge reduced Sellers' bail to $100,000. Three other activists are also being held on high bail bonds ranging from $400,000 to $500,000 on misdemeanor charges. The judge rejected bail reductions for them during Monday's hearing.
Bail is designed to make sure defendants show up for trial. But civil liberties lawyers say Philadelphia authorities are using the high bail illegally as a tool to punish civil disobedience and to prevent the activists from attending the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, which begins Aug. 14.
Ever since mass protests in Seattle last November shut down the World Trade Organization conference and prompted embarrassing police retaliation, law enforcement across the country has been nervous about the potential of activists to shake things up. Philadelphia Police Commissioner John Timoney recently called for a federal investigation into groups such as the Ruckus Society that demonstrate in major cities' streets during high profile conferences.
"There's a cadre, if you will," Timoney said Friday, "of criminal conspirators who are about the business of planning conspiracies to go in and cause mayhem and cause property damage." According to Timoney, Sellers is one of those people.
Critics of the police say Sellers isn't a conspiratorial mastermind. As director of Ruckus, he is simply one of many involved in the unprecedented cooperation between environmentalists, labor groups and other activists.
But interest in the Ruckus Society grew after the broadly organized WTO protests in Seattle. In addition, the group's Ruckus Camps -- which teach activists how to harness themselves to billboards, scale skyscrapers or form police-resistant human chains -- have received attention from activists, media outlets and law enforcement.
Founded in 1995 as a group to teach demonstration techniques to environmental groups such as Earth First! and the Rainforest Action Network, Ruckus has evolved into perhaps the best known group among protesters calling for a reduction in corporate influence in government.
Sunday, Salon spoke with Ruckus program director Han Sham, as Sellers awaited his bail reduction hearing Monday afternoon.
What do you think of the $1 million bail set for John Sellers?
It does seem pretty outrageous. One million bucks and he's being held on eight misdemeanors.
They're claiming that he shackled himself to a trash can, and all of these things that are just absolutely false. He has alibis for all day, every day that they accuse him of doing something illegal. Most of those alibis are his mom and a bunch of reporters whom he has been talking to. He spent the better part of Sunday and Monday with his mom. Monday and Tuesday he was with reporters with whom he had a rapport.
The police say that he was in the middle of the crowd Tuesday smashing things. Those charges are just false. They don't have any substance. When he was arrested he had a cellphone and a Palm Pilot on him. They're trying to show that he was behind the scenes as the puppet master, that he was the wizard behind the curtain telling people what to do via cellphone. They want to hold him responsible for everything that happened Tuesday. It's very troubling.
