by Tony Zaragoza

I was at the Dead Prez show on the night of Thursday, Feb. 14, and have been a fan of rap/hip-hop since the mid ’80s. I arrived at Thursday night’s show around 10 pm. Through the night I saw nothing happen at the concert that was out of the ordinary. I didn’t see any of the scuffles that are mentioned in the accounts below. I left at 12:40 am, and as I was exiting the CRC I saw a female officer standing and talking with a white man who was seated on the ground. At that moment I wondered what was going on, but I couldn’t imagine what would happen later, and was quite surprised . . .

by the Olympia Civil Liberties Resource

On February 11, 2008, trial began in the federal government’s case against Briana Waters. Ms. Waters, an Evergreen State College graduate and former Olympian, is accused of conspiring to set fire to the University of Washington’s Center for Urban Horticulture in 2001. Specifically, the government accuses Ms. Waters of acting as a lookout. Ms. Waters, a violin teacher and 32-year-old mother of a little girl, steadfastly maintains her innocence.

by Chris Allert

Jen Marlowe is the author of Darfur Diaries: Stories of Survival (Nation Books), which is included in the Best American Non-Required Reading Collection 2007. (http://www.darfurdiaries.org ) She is directing and editing Rebuilding Hope, a film about South Sudan, ( http://www.rebuildinghopesudan.org ) and writing a book and a play about Palestine and Israel. Her previous film was Darfur Diaries: Message from Home. She serves on the board of directors of The Friends of the Jenin Freedom Theatre ( http://www.friendsofthejeninfreedomtheatre.org ) and is a founding member of the . . .

by Therese Saliba

For the last twenty years, Michel Shehadeh was accused by the US government of being a terrorist. In 1987, he was arrested in an early morning raid by armed federal agents in Los Angeles along with 6 other Palestinian men and a Kenyan woman. They were jailed for 23 days in a maximum security cell, then released while the government tried to deport them. Through numerous court rulings and appeals, their case made it to the Supreme Court . On October 30, 2007, after what Shehadeh describes as “20 grueling years,” the federal government dropped all charges against the LA-8.