Crackdown on Protests

Judge David [...] sentenced Mary Anne Grady Flores, a 58-year-old grandmother from Ithaca, New York, to one year in prison on July 10. Her crime? Participating in a nonviolent anti-drone protest at an upstate New York military base after being ordered by the local courts to stay away from the site. The base is used to train drone pilots and technicians, and to control drone surveillance and strikes in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Such Orders of Protection typically protect victims of domestic violence from their abusers and witnesses of violent crimes from threats of retribution. Grady Flores’ one-year sentence is the result of a strange legal sleight of hand that positions the Hancock Air Base commander, Col. Earl A. Evans, as the victim of protests. [A]nti-drone organizers around the world are coordinating their efforts, declaring October 4 the first Global Action Day Against the Use of Drones for Surveillance and Killing.

  Bill Moyers