Support environmental activists targeted by FBI
By Cheryl LaBash
Detroit
Michigan is known as the Great Lakes State.
The Great Lakes Basin holds 20 percent of the world's fresh
water. But who owns and controls this vital resource?
That issue is at the heart of the FBI harassment and grand
jury subpoena of Marie Mason and Frank Ambrose.
According to the Sweet Water Alliance website
(www.waterissweet.org), the acti vists were ordered to provide
DNA samples and fingerprints to a federal grand jury in Grand
Rapids, Mich., by Nov. 4. The deadline was extended after
complaints flooded the U.S. attorney's office denouncing the
FBI's intimidation tactics. A motion to quash the subpoenas
will be heard in Grand Rapids within weeks.
The focus of the federal grand jury is the alleged attempted
sabotage of an Ice Mountain pumping station in late
September.
Ice Mountain's parent company, Per rier, plans to pump 400
gallons per min ute of spring water that feeds the headwaters
of the Little Muskegon River. Perrier is a subsidiary of
Nestle.
Local activists have strongly opposed the corporate plan,
with both court action and demonstrations at the plant. Those
in the forefront of the opposition include three Native groups
of the Odawa, Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, as well as the Mich
igan Citizens for Water Con servation.
Mason and Ambrose are members of the Sweet Water Alliance
and the High land Park Human Rights Coalition. They united the
struggle against high water bills and racist water shut-offs
with the environmental fight to stop the diversion of Great
Lakes water.
This potentially powerful merger threatens to expose and
combat a global industry that has sucked wells dry in India to
provide water for Coca-Cola bottling plants and privatized
water distribution and sewerage treatment facilities originally
built for the public good.
Donations for Mason and Ambrose's legal defense can be made
out to "Water Defense Committee" and sent to PO Box 44173,
Detroit, MI 48244. Email endorsements (name and organization)
to vorps@yahoo.com.
Reprinted from the Dec. 4, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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