CANCELLED - Attend Long Haul Court Case Against the Police

Long Haul supporters and anyone interested in limiting police raids against activist community centers are invited to attend the first Court hearing on Long Haul’s court case against the FBI and UC Berkeley police. The hearing is set for September 4 at 9 a.m. before Judge White, 450 Golden Gate, courtroom 11 on the 19th Floor.

Long Haul and East Bay Prisoner Support filed a federal lawsuit January 14 in response to an August 27, 2008 police raid on the Long Haul community center in Berkeley by a joint terrorism task force composed of University of California police, sheriffs and the FBI. The police seized all computers at Long Haul after breaking in with guns drawn to execute a search warrant as`part of an investigation of allegedly threatening emails allegedly sent to UC Berkeley animal researchers from a public-access computer connected to the internet at Long Haul.

It is clear that the police never would have gotten such a broad search warrant to seize every computer at the Berkeley Public Library if the email in question had come from the public library, rather than from a radical Infoshop.

The lawsuit contends that the police violated the first and fourth amendment (freedom of assembly/speech and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures) as well as the federal Privacy Protection Act, which protects publishers from search and seizure except in the most narrow circumstances. Long Haul publishes Slingshot newspaper / East Bay Prisoner Support publishes a newsletter.)

On July 2, the government defendants filed a motion to dismiss the case. On July 24, Attorneys from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union representing Long Haul and East Bay Prisoner Support filed an opposition to the motion which argues the merits of the case.
Click here to see the attorney's filed opposition.

Beating the government’s motion to dismiss is the first step in prosecuting the lawsuit against the outrageous police raid on Long Haul.

On September 4, join us in the Courtroom while we resist police raids on our communities.