Thursday, January 14, 2016

Grandma Drone Protester Remanded to Jail for 6 Months

Jan. 13, 2016

PRESS RELEASE
For immediate release

Contact: Mary Anne Grady Flores   607-280-8797
              Carol Baum   315-383-5738
               
Grandma Drone Protester Remanded to Jail for 6 Months

 Mary Anne Grady Flores to be taken into custody Tuesday, January 19

  Ithaca, NY.  On January 12, the National Day of Action to Stop Killer Drones, grandmother and drone resister Mary Anne Grady Flores learned that she is to go back to jail for six months starting Tuesday, January 19. She is to report to the Dewitt Town Court (5400 Butternut Drive, East Syracuse, NY) at 5 pm to be remanded to Jamesville Correctional Facility, East Syracuse NY.
Mary Anne had been out on appeal of a lower court convicting her of violating an order of protection. 
  
   It had been given on behalf of Col. Evans of the Hancock Air National Guard Base 174th Attack Wing (in Syracuse, NY), to “protect” him from nonviolent anti-drone activists. She had been charged with violating the order while taking pictures of eight Catholics protesting the US drone assassination program at Hancock on Ash Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2013.  Onondaga County Court Judge Miller upheld the lower court conviction. Of note is that all eight Catholic drone resisters were acquitted because they went to uphold law, not break it.

   Orders of protection,  typically given in domestic violence situations, have been used by the Court and the Base in an attempt to deter protest and suppress free speech. Judge Miller also upheld a lower court ruling on the Hancock 17, seventeen nonviolent drone resisters given orders of protection, jail time, and fines.

  Mary Anne, a grandmother of three, has been a part of The Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars, resisting the drone assassination program since 2011.  According to leaked military documents called the Drone Papers sent to the Intercept, 90% of drone assassinations target and kill civilians, including children.  On the National Day of Action, drone resisters were arrested at Creech Air Force Base (Nevada), Beale AFB (California), and Volk AFB (Wisconsin), and Ramstein AFB, Germany and in Pakistan, all a part of the worldwide resistance to drones.

   Mary Anne received the verdict and sentence by mail, even though she was originally told to appear in County Court on January 22 to hear the court's decision. This may have been an attempt to prevent a full courtroom and press with cameras from attending, as occurred at the time of her original sentence.
                                                            www.upstatedroneaction.org
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Mary Anne Grady Flores
Ithaca, NY 14850 1-607-280-8797
Ithaca Catholic Workers  /  Los Obreros Catolicos de Ithaca

"If you think one person can't be effective, you've never been 
in bed with a mosquito" -War Resister's League 
"Si usted piensa que una persona no puede ser eficaz, nunca 
he estado en la cama con un mosquito" Liga de Opositores de Guerra 

"Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely 
essential to it"   Howard Zinn (1922-2010)     
"La protesta más allá de la ley no se aparta de la democracia, es 
absolutamente esencial para que" Howard Zinn (1922-2010)

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic.  It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness...
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.  If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction...And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future.  The future is an infinite succession of presents and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."  -- 
Howard Zinn

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs


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