[Mb-civic] To President John Kerry on Leonard Peltier

[Barbara Siomos]

Message from Harvey Arden on Behalf of Leonard Peltier
 
Dear President Kerry,
 
Congratulations on your sweep of the debates and on your coming triumph
among the country's voters on election day. Thanks for restoring my
pride in America, and giving a new bright hope to our Nation's future.
  For the catastrophic last four years, the America I thought I knew
for my nearly 70 years seemed to have fallen away from the democratic
and human principles on which this country was founded. I know you will
bring rationality and compassion back to our nation's foreign and
domestic policies. I know you will help bring about the Great Healing so
desperately needed in America and around this fragile and endangered
planet of ours.   Yours is a truly historic mission. 
                
Among the great tasks now facing you, I ask, I pray, that you consider
the fate of one Native American man named Leonard
Peltier—USP#89637-132—-a symbol to millions around the world of
America's continuing injustice toward its indigenous Peoples. Now that
the dereliction of the FBI on 9/11 has been formally confirmed by the
Kean Commission, I recall with a chill how, in December 2000—-even as
the terrorists were already in our cities fine-tuning their attacks
against our Nation—-some 500 FBI Agents found the leisure and spare
time to spend a day staging an FBI march of intimidation in front of the
White House, demanding that President Clinton NOT grant long-expected
and well-deserved executive clemency to wrongfully imprisoned Native
American Leonard Peltier.

Mr. Peltier now serves his 29th year of incarceration at USP Leavenworth
for a 'crime' the whole world--and especially the FBI--knows he did not
commit. In the sorriest moment of his Presidency, Mr. Clinton acceded to
the FBI's intimidating demands.

Leonard remains in prison, torn from his People and his granddchildren,
recently refused by the courts even a hearing on parole until December
2008—even though he fulfilled all requirements for parole a dozen
years ago. His false imprisonment began when he was 31; he is now 60.

I am compelled to wonder if the efforts of those 500 FBI agents might
not have been better spent that day on protecting our Country against
our real enemies instead of continuing their 30-year unlawful vendetta
against a Native American man they know to be innocent, but whose false
imprisonment conceals the many many crimes of Agency personnel on the
Pine Ridge Reservation during the 1970's Reign of Terror authorized by
the FBI's illegal COINTELPRO program.

The Agency has spent countless thousands of hours over the decades
constructing a Wall of Lies & Silence against Mr. Peltier. For the sake
and safety of the America People, this shameful vendetta must cease.

I ask you, I plead with you, President Kerry, as part of your coming
re-organization of the FBI, that you immediately issue an order for an
absolute end to the Agency's ongoing and self-serving vendetta and
disinformation campaign against Leonard Peltier and other members of the
American Indian Movement. I pray you will give him immediate executive
clemency, or at least allow him a new--and this time fair and
unstaged--trial, which would clearly reveal the FBI's own innumerable
crimes against him and many others.

Also, the recent sham trial staged by the FBI in Rapid City to railroad
still another Native American man--Arlo Looking Cloud--to a life behind
bars, as well as to further defame Leonard Peltier and others of AIM,
should immediately be overturned by the courts or the executive
branch—-both of which have been complicit, if only out of FBI
intimidation,in allowing that Soviet-style mockery of justice to occur
in this Land.

President Kerry, I don't know if you know the Leonard Peltier case
personally. I ask that you grant a brief audience to myself and Chief
Arvol Looking Horse, 19th-Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo
Pipe of the Great Lakota Nation, so that we may deliver a message to you
on behalf of millions of good souls around the earth who plead for
Leonard's freedom, who see Leonard's freedom as The Sign that Democracy
and Justice and Love and Prayer still have a meaning in America.

I ask to read to you from Leonard's book PRISON WRITINGS: MY LIFE IS MY
SUN DANCE, of which I was privileged to be the editor. Please invite
Vice President John Edwards and others of your Administration so they
may hear Leonard's powerful and healing words.   I also ask to have
Leonard Peltier himself standing beside me in the Oval Office as I read
his words—-words Leonard would read to you himself if his locked jaw
would allow him to.

Mr. President, we await your strong hand in bringing to an end this
enormous and glaring injustice and stain on America's honor. Please
please please--FREE LEONARD PELTIER!

Let that be the truly noble and auspicious beginning to your Presidency.

Respectfully, 

Harvey Arden
harvey at haveyouthought.com
www.haveyouthought.com
 
P.S. I am sending you a copy of Leonard's spiritual testament PRISON
WRITINGS: MY LIFE IS MY SUN DANCE, and also of the brand new book ~HAVE
YOU THOUGHT of LEONARD PELTIER LATELY?~ which explains what the FBI has
yet to confess to the American People. 
********************************************** 
~EVERYone! Please distribute. With YOUR help we CAN reach the whole
world!~ 
********************************************** 
THE NEW BOOK ON LEONARD PELTIER IS NOW OUT! 
      **************************************** 
~HAVE YOU THOUGHT of LEONARD PELTIER LATELY?~            
    
A Living Memoir with Artifacts
by Harvey Arden, Edited & Compiled by George
Bowe Blitch 
with companion website
www.haveyouthought.com

with Special Contributions by
                        Leonard
Peltier
                        George
Blitch
                        Barry
Bachrach
                        Standing
Deer
                        Arthur
J. Miller
                        Lawrence
Sampson
                        Carter
Camp
                        Stephanie
M. Schwartz
                        Keith
Rabin 
      Please Order copies NOW for yourself & your friends
at: 
      www.haveyouthought.com 
      or send a check for $23+$5=$28 per copy ($5 s/h on one
copy; $2 s/h each   add'l copy) made out to 'Have You Thought' & mail
to: 
    Have You Thought
   1410 Blalock Road, #420
   Houston, TX 77055
 
      Booksellers, Libraries, Stores, Distributors, Pow-Wow
Vendors,   Prof'l Book Reviewers please contact
george at haveyouthought.com 
      **************************************** 
>From the desk of Harvey Arden 
            Author & Editor:
 
WISDOMKEEPERS: Meetings with Native American Spiritual Elders
DREAMKEEPERS: A Spirit-Journey into Aboriginal Australia 
NOBLE RED MAN: Lakota Wisdomkeeper Mathew King 
TRAVELS IN A STONE CANOE: The Return to the Wisdomkeepers 
~HAVE YOU THOUGHT of LEONARD PELTIER LATELY?
~ PRISON WRITINGS: MY LIFE IS MY SUN DANCE by Leonard Peltier 
WHITE BUFFALO TEACHINGS by Chief Arvol Looking Horse
 
contact harvey at haveyouthought.com or visit www.haveyouthought.com