(warning: political opinion and/or commentary follows)
I’ve written about Josh Wolf a couple of times here trying to bring attention to the absurdity of his situation. Wolf has the unique distinction of being jailed for eight months for refusing to turn over his videotapes of a San Francisco street protest. In his own words:
When I was subpoenaed in February of last year, I was not only ordered to provide my unedited footage, but to also submit to testimony and examination before the secretive grand jury. Although I feel that my unpublished material should be shielded from government demands, it was the testimony which I found to be the more egregious assault on my right and ethics as both a journalist and a citizen.
Reading between the lines, I believe that the intent was to force Wolf to identify the protesters by name in order to provide the next lead to unraveling this little group of anarchists.
Wolf has published his unedited video. I have watched it. You should watch it, too. While I don’t agree with everything this group did or stood for, I respect their passion and also the fact that they initially complied with police requests to get out of the street. Unfortunately, as things escalated, so did they. There are some images that I will have difficulty forgetting — particularly the army of policemen armed in full riot gear marching behind this ragtag group. (Note: This is not a child-safe video)
Watch it for yourself. Post your reactions in the comments if you like. And if you agree that jailing Wolf for eight months in a Federal prison was an overreaction and overreaching abuse of power, consider making a donation to his defense fund. If you have difficulty loading from here, try the link on his blog. I suggest you stay away from the comments unless you enjoy mindless flaming — evidently Matt Drudge linked this from his site so there are lots of crazed Drudge Report flamers on there.
I suspect the US Attorney in Wolf’s neck of the woods is a ‘loyal Bushie’, since he wasn’t on the firing hit list of US Attorneys. And here I thought it was all about voting rights.
Technorati Tags: Josh Wolf, anarchy, protest, legal, civil rights, vblogging, US Attorney
