DPOR NewsChargesDropped

Some protesters' charges dropped; group gets meeting with DeWine

By Kristy Eckert
e-mail address: keckert@coxohio.com
Columbus Bureau

COLUMBUS All they wanted was a meeting. It took 2 1/2 years, 30 hours in jail and a trial.

On Tuesday, charges in Franklin County Municipal Court were dismissed against eight of 10 peace activists — including a couple from Dayton — arrested April 30 when they refused to leave U.S. Sen. Michael DeWine’s office after trying to schedule a meeting.

About 10 days ago, the senator offered the group a 45-minute meeting in August to discuss the effects of U.S. policy in Colombia — something they said they have sought and been refused for more than two years. The meeting was offered after the group’s attorney sent DeWine a letter.

"I am energized personally today. I just got back last night from 10 days in Colombia. I’m just gushing with concerns . . . and I look forward to sharing that with the senator," said one of the protesters, John Ewers of Dayton.

Ewers and the others said they think that $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid to Colombia — given through a bill DeWine helped write — is destroying the South American country.

Chemicals sprayed to kill drug plants destroy the environment, contaminate water and abuse human rights, according to the group, mostly Oberlin College students who have visited Colombia.

The judge dismissed charges of criminal trespassing and resisting arrest, in conjunction with requests from DeWine’s office, which meant that each group member avoided 90 days in jail and fines of more than $750.

After the verdict, the group — all age 22 and younger except for Ewers, 67, and his wife, Paula, 66 — was all smiles.

"This really puts us in a really good position," Mrs. Ewers said, noting that their time can now be spent speaking to groups.

Jackie Downing, who graduated from Oberlin in May, was pleasantly surprised by the ruling.

"I feel like we’re on the right track now," she said.

Mike Dawson, DeWine’s spokesman, didn’t comment to the judge, but hurried from the courtroom and handed reporters a copy of the senator’s letter to the group’s attorney — complete with a meeting date listed.

"All we wanted them to do was leave the office when our office was closing," Dawson said.

The group’s attorney, William Owen, worked the case for free and was impressed with his clients.

The group seemed to think the cause was worth the trouble.

"If this raises a lot of awareness about what's going on in Colombia and holds our legislators accountable to that, then it's worth it," Downing said.

Of the remaining protesters who were arrested, one is in Colombia and the other goes on trial Thursday in Columbus.

Contact Kristy Eckert at (614) 224-1625 or keckert@coxohio.com

CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER

Jailed activists finally
to meet with DeWine

Sandy Theis, Plain Dealer Bureau Chief
Columbus, Ohio, July 10, 2002

After more than two years of effort, 30 hours in jail and a day in court, a group opposed to U.S. foreign policy in Colombia will meet with U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine.

Ten members of the group were jailed April 30 and charged with resisting arrest and criminal trespassing for refusing to leave DeWine's Columbus office until a meeting date had been set. DeWine's office called Columbus police when the protesters refused to leave.

Yesterday, with DeWine's consent, the charges were dropped in Franklin County Municipal Court, and DeWine announced he would meet Aug. 13 with a delegation from the Ohio Working Group on Latin America.

"I'm glad there's going to be a meeting, but it's a shame we had to spend two days in jail and go through all this just to meet with our elected representative," said John Durkalski, an Oberlin College student and native of Lakewood.

Durkalski and other Working Group members said they tried for more than two years to meet with the Republican senator but could get meetings only with his staff.

DeWine spokesman Mike Dawson said he did not know when the meeting requests began but he found it "hard to believe" they date back two years.

Dawson also insisted that DeWine's staff committed to a meeting on the date of the arrests but could not set a specific date until DeWine's calendar had been set.

The organization opposes DeWine's support for "Plan Colombia," the U.S. government's policy of providing military equipment to battle Colombia's drug trade.

DeWine believes that America's help is needed to curtail drug traffic and curb violence in the region. Opponents, however, say that the policy is causing more violence and that herbicides sprayed on coca plants are harming children and other crops.

Protester John Ewers said he has met several times with DeWine's staff, including Sarah Sofia, a foreignpolicy aide. During a March meeting, he quoted Sofia as saying the senator "never" would meet with the group. "She said, 'That's what staff are for,' " recalled Ewers, a 67 year old retiree from Dayton.

Dawson said he was pleased by the outcome of the case, but he downplayed the senator's role in having the charges dismissed.
Early in the day, Dawson was asked if he wanted the charges dropped. "They're not our charges," he said. "They're the prosecutor's."

After the dismissal, Judge Anne Taylor credited defense lawyer Bill Owen and DeWine and his staff for the happy ending. "My understanding . . . is the prosecutor's request to dismiss was from your wishes and the wishes of the senator's office," Taylor said to Dawson.

"That's correct," he replied.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: stheis@plaind.com

Vince Ramos is happy that criminal charges were dismissed this week against eight fellow protesters arrested during a sit-in at Sen. Mike DeWine's Huntington Plaza office.

Ramos is even more excited members of the Ohio Working Group on Latin America are scheduled to meet with DeWine next month to discuss their concerns about U.S. foreign policy in Colombia.

"That was our whole point from the start,'' said Ramos, a student at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Bexley.

Ramos and the others were arrested April 30 when they refused to leave DeWine's office because they couldn't get an appointment to see the senator, who was in Washington.

DeWine's staff indicated then that the senator was willing to meet with the group once he returned to Columbus, but the group wanted a date and time for the meeting.

Each of the protesters was charged with resisting arrest and criminal trespass. Charges against eight of the protesters who appeared in Franklin County Municipal Court on Tuesday were dismissed, with DeWine's consent, said William J. Owen, the attorney representing the protesters.

The charges against Ramos, who was out of state yesterday, are still pending, but Ramos' attorney expects them to be dismissed. Ramos' case is set in front of Judge Mark Froehlich today.

"I don't have the official word on that yet,'' said attorney Fred Benton. "But they would be hard pressed to explain why they dismissed the others and not his.''

The 10th protester, Cheryl Sanchez of Groveport, pleaded guilty May 31 to criminal trespass and was placed on probation. The resisting arrest charge was dismissed.

Two years ago, Congress approved $1.3 billion worth of aid to Colombia, including funds to fumigate coca crops. Plan Colombia provides U.S. equipment to battle drug trafficking.

Opponents say the plan is creating human-rights abuses, harming the environment and displacing Colombian citizens.

LOUISVILLE — Charges have been dropped against eight Ohio human-rights activists who refused to leave the office of a U.S. Senator who wouldn’t meet with them to discuss the government’s military aid to Colombia.

Two of the eight — part of a group of 10 arrested on April 30 in the Columbus, OH, office of Sen. Mike DeWine — were Presbyterians John Ewers, 67, and his wife, Paula, 66, who worship at College Hill Community Presbyterian Church in Dayton, OH.

DeWine, a Republican, is one of the architects of “Plan Colombia," an appropriations act signed into law by President Clinton in 2000 that provides more than $1 billion a year to Colombia — three-quarters of it to support military and police forces.

U.S. and Colombian churches have protested the package, noting that Colombian military and police officials have often violated the human rights of Colombians, including innocent civilians. They also object to Colombia’s aerial spraying of coca crops with herbicides, which they claim is harmful to humans.

The biggest grant included in the aid package is $328 million for helicopters to be used in a campaign against drug producers and traffickers in southern Colombia.

Church activists argue that it is poverty, not coca — the raw material for cocaine — that is the primary cause of political violence in Colombia. They say the focus of “Plan Colombia" should be the development of alternate crops for poor farmers who now cultivate coca because it is their only viable source of cash.

The charges against the eight Ohio activists were dropped on July 9 at the joint request of the Columbus city prosecutor and DeWine’s office. The Senator also agreed to meet with a group of constituents on Aug. 13 to discuss the issue — which he had refused to do for two years.

“My daughter’s reaction is that we hit a home run," said Ewers, who has visited Colombia numerous times through a partnership between Miami (Ohio) Presbytery and the Presbyterian Church of Colombia. “We got the charges dropped, and we got the face-to-face meeting we’ve wanted for two years."

He added: “We had a sympathetic and joyous judge (Anne Taylor), who closed the proceedings by saying, ‘Let us all pray for peace in Colombia.’"

Ewers said the Ohio Working Group on Latin America (OWGLA) wants more than a single meeting with DeWine. “We’re hoping to build a bridge for continuing dialogue," he said, adding that he thinks the meeting can be held without rancor. “I hope that’s what is going to happen. I don’t know why it shouldn’t."

DeWine’s office did not respond to a request for comment from the Presbyterian News Service.

According to the Rev. Milton Mejia, a spokesperson for the Presbyterian Church of Colombia, the effect of the U.S. military aid is the opposite of what its patrons envisioned.

“There is more planting of coca," he said. “The war is more intense. The army has more weapons. … ‘Plan Colombia’ is not helping anything. … We are more in danger than before."

Mejia said advocates of the human rights of Colombia’s poorest people, including union leaders and church workers, are being labeled “terrorists" by right-wing elements such as wealthy landowners and paramilitary forces supported by the military.

According to the Latin American Working Group (LAWG), a church-based lobby in Washington, DC, the U.S. aid supports the fumigation of coca fields in southern Colombia despite evidence that the spraying harms other food crops, schools, livestock, water supplies and homes.

LAWG says 37,000 families in the state of Putumayo signed pacts with Colombia’s government last summer to manually eradicate cocoa in exchange for development money and an end to the fumigation. But by February 2002, fewer than 30 percent had received any aid — although the spraying continued.

“The funding for alternative (crop) development has been implemented extraordinarily slowly," said Lisa Haugaard, an LAWG spokesperson.

Ewers, who returned from Colombia on July 8 to attend his sentencing hearing, served six months in federal prison last year for trespassing on federal property during a non-violent demonstration at Fort Benning in Columbus, GA.

Fort Benning houses the U.S. Army’s Spanish-language training facility for Latin American military personnel, long-known as the School of the Americas, whose graduates have been implicated in a series of human-rights abuses. The school’s defenders claim its curriculum now includes instruction on the preservation of human and civil rights.

AFTER MEDIA INQUIRIES,
SEN. DEWINE DROPS CHARGES

On Tuesday, Ohio's "Colombia 8," a group of activists who had been trying for more than two years to meet with Sen. Mike DeWine to express their concerns about U.S. policy in Colombia, went to trial in Columbus. They were charged with criminal trespass and resisting arrest in Republican DeWine's Columbus office on April 30. But after his office was bombarded by the news media, DeWine asked that charges be dropped, and the judge complied.

The Colombia 8 represent civic groups throughout Ohio that have tried for two years to meet directly with DeWine -- always unsuccessfully -- and who belong to the Ohio Working Group on Latin America (OWGLA), a statewide coalition of peace and solidarity organizations and individuals working to address escalating U.S. intervention in Latin America.

On April 30, they insisted, as Ohio citizens, on a definite date for a meeting with the senator -- and they refused to leave his office without the promise of a timely appointment. That promise never came, and they were arrested and spent 30 hours in jail.

"Six of us arrested at Senator DeWine's office have traveled to Colombia and personally witnessed the devastating effects of U.S. military aid on the Colombian people and environment," says John Durkalksi of Lakewood, an Oberlin College student. "For more than two years, DeWine, an outspoken advocate for the aid, has refused to meet with Ohioans concerned about Colombia … and we were arrested when we went to DeWine's office to politely request a meeting. Whatever your political beliefs, all Ohioans should be outraged at DeWine's unwillingness to dialogue with constituents, because each one of us has a Constitutional right to communicate with our elected representatives."

Members of the Colombia 8 include: John and Paula Ewers of Dayton and Oberlin College students Jackie Downing, Kate Berrigan, Sarah Saunders, Anna Hendricks, Jyuti Bhatt and Durklaski. Each faced 120 days in jail and a $1,000 fine for attempting to schedule the meeting with DeWine until the charges were dropped.

"Now we can go back to working to tell about what's happening in Colombia," says Jackie Downing.

DeWine helped to craft "Plan Colombia," which provided $1.3 billion in mostly military aid to Colombia, and currently supports the Bush administration's efforts to further increase this military aid, as well as efforts to chemically eradicate coca crops.

The Colombia group maintains that evidence on the ground in Colombia proves that U.S. policies are killing and displacing rural civilian populations, many of whom are living over vast coveted oil reserves.

DeWine, who has visited Colombia three times, is playing a key role in helping the Bush administration formulate its plan for boosting U.S. involvement in Colombia.