Political Prisoner Correspondence and the FBI (Eric Mcdavid)

Recently we began receiving documents in response to a FOIA request
we filed with the FBI about Eric McDavid. The documents have uncovered a
few alarming pieces of information, but one in particular we felt it
necessary to share with the public as soon as possible. For years people
have been speculating that writing political prisoners would result in a
person being "put on a list." Unfortunately, it seems that those
speculations were not unfounded.

We have received perhaps hundreds of pages documenting Eric's
correspondence with other people. These letters are not just kept on
file - the Sacramento County Main Jail forwarded all of these letters to
the Sacramento FBI field office, which then forwarded them to local
field offices around the country (and to law enforcement
internationally) to warn the FBI in other cities of a "possible
environmental/animal rights extremist" or "a possible anarchist
extremist" in their community. Originally, the FBI's communications
included a statement that "Sacramento is forwarding this communication
for information purposes only." But later, they began including a much
longer statement which read, in part: "this information has been
determined to be of such a nature that some follow-up as to the
possibility of criminal activity is warranted..." These statements were
included no matter what was the content of the letter - often the
documents include the statement that the letter was "benign in nature."

It is unclear whether or not the FBI is still forwarding Eric's
correspondence to local field offices. We have not received any
documents dated after his move to a federal facility. It is also unknown
whether or not all correspondence with political prisoners is treated
in the same manner. What we do know is that if a person sent Eric a
letter to the Sacramento County Main Jail with their full name and
address on it, the local FBI field office more than likely now has that
information.

We are not sharing this information to raise alarm or spread fear.
We have every intention of continuing to write political prisoners, and
we urge others to do the same. That said, we hope to expose the FBI's
politically motivated investigations and, unlike the FBI, we believe
people have a right to know when they have been spied on. This kind of
government intrusion could cause the "chilling effect" so often thrown
about in conversations about 1st amendment activities. But when we give
in to those fears, political prisoners are the ones who suffer. And this
is exactly what the government wants. The state is constantly trying to
expand its reach by gathering information about social movements and
those who participate in them. Instead of letting this new information
scare us into silence, we should use it to make informed decisions about
how we support and prioritize political prisoners. This kind of
repression has implications for more than just people involved in
"activism." Millions of people are incarcerated in this country. It is
possible that the government uses similar tactics to investigate other
communities that they actively repress. Writing our friends, family
members and comrades should not be a justified excuse for investigation -
no matter who our friends are.

To view some of these documents, please visit:  http://ecoprisoners.org/news.htm

If
you would like to find out if the FBI has been collecting information
on you, here is a website that explains how to request information under
the freedom of information act.
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/press/information/topic.aspx?topic=how_to_FOIA

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"FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS NOW!"

Oregon Jericho
The Jericho Movement for Political Prisoner Amnesty
oregon.jericho@gmail.com
oregon-jericho.org
(503)-750-0523
P.O. Box 17420
Portland, Oregon 97217