Tacoma SDS

The operator of the Northwest Detention Center, a private prison for immigrants on the Tacoma tide flats, is suing the City of Tacoma to block the release of documents set to be issued under a public information request. Fircrest-based attorney Joan Mell filed a petition in Pierce County Superior Court on behalf of her client, Texas-based GEO Group Inc., to block the release of building plans, structural data and other documents that GEO Group contends are exempt under federal laws.

This video provides a brief overview of the on-going "Sign Wars" and the "Adopt-A-Spot" strategy employed by the Bill of Rights Defense Committee-Tacoma

http://tacomasds.org/node/980

to monitor the Northwest Detention Center and the activities of the GEO Group,
Inc (TGGI) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). TGGI has now asserted that they own a 1.17 Acre traffic strip which is clearly City of Tacoma (COT) property according to both the City of Tacoma gov.ME website and the Pierce County Assessor.

TGGI forced the City of Tacoma to remove one of our Adopt-A-Spot signs and

I'm sure you remember this story:

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2008/07/377467.shtml

Well here is an email that confirms the place was being watched and that the TPD was passing information to the U.S. Army.

TACOMA, Wash. -- If it wasn't for Timothy Smith's intense opposition to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, the state might never have noticed that the private company that owns the facility was violating environmental rules.

The detention center - the federal government's prison-like complex in Tacoma that holds suspected illegal immigrants, often for months - was built near the former site of a coal gasification plant that left behind heavy pollution in the soil.

President Obama has announced the deployment of additional forces to Afghanistan today.
A portion of the 17,000 total will come from one of the Ft Lewis based Stryker Brigades. The
Brigade will deploy from either the Port of Olympia or the Port of Tacoma.

Soldiers from the 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, of Fort Lewis, Wash., will deploy to Afghanistan this summer as part of an increase in forces there, a senior Army official told Army Times.

On Friday, February 6, UR-SDS organized an occupation of Goergen Hall at the University of Rochester for peace and solidarity with the Palestinians. We made a list of demands of the administration (including divestment from weapons manufacturers, educational and humanitarian aid to Gaza, and scholarships for Palestinian students) and after intense and dramatic negotiations we signed a Joint Statement of Understanding/Action Plan resulting in a victory right before midnight on Friday!

The rough wording of the signed Joint Statement of Understanding/Action Plan is as follows:

AWOL GI held in county jail, to be transferred to Fort Stewart

U.S. war resister Cliff Cornell surrendered himself to U.S. border police on Wednesday after being ordered to leave Canada. He was promptly arrested for being AWOL from the U.S. Army, and is now being held at the Whatcom County Jail in Bellingham, Washington, twenty miles south of the U.S.-Canada border.

A very good ref 2008 RNC demonstrations can be found here.

Notice the use of social networking charts and associative analysis used to determine nodes and persons of interest. Also, the extensive monitoring and exploitation of open-source web-pages and email lists.

Some of the key documents can be found here. Note the large number of activist groups targeted in the Puget Sound Region:

http://cryptome.org/rl33616.pdf
http://cryptome.org/spy-protests-02.pdf

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The U.S. Army will report Thursday the highest level of suicides among its soldiers since it began tracking the rate 28 years ago, CNN has learned. Statistics obtained by CNN show that the Army will report 128 confirmed suicides last year and another 15 suspected suicides in cases under investigation among active-duty soldiers and activated National Guard and reserves. The confirmed rate of suicides was 20.2 per 100,000. In 2007, the Army reported 115 confirmed suicides, the highest level since 1980, when it began tracking suicides.