The Man: Still Keeping Us Down
Peter Douglas
Staff Writer

Being a college student these days is pretty difficult. Being a college student while helping to run a self-sufficient, solar-powered, socially active, vegan cooperative is even more challenging. Doing all of this while the FBI, ATF, and police spy on you, impede your access to your own home, and confiscate your computer and files is definitely absurd. Yet this is exactly what the residents of the Regen Cooperative in Pomona, some of whom are students at Pomona College, Cal Poly Pomona, and CSU Fullerton had to deal with this past week. According to the FBI, one of the residents of the co-op, Josh Connole, was suspected of arson at a West Covina car dealership at the end of August, although charges have now been dropped. Although he is now a free man, both the arrest of Josh Connole and the treatment of the Regen Co-op’s residents by law enforcement agencies are egregious violations of justice.

Josh is an adamant pacifist who believes only in non-violent action, so the destruction of the car dealership would have run contrary to his deeply held beliefs. The videotape is the only evidence the law enforcement agencies had when they arrested Josh. An FBI spokesman at the co-operative on the night it was searched posited that gas containers and mason jars found in the house were evidence of Josh being a violent person. Probably two-thirds of home owners in this country keep these items in their house, and yet the FBI considered this sufficient evidence to arrest Josh as a potential “terrorist.” In light of all the evidence available, there was no reason to suspect Josh of committing this crime, let alone to arrest him. So why did the FBI accuse someone with no connection to this crime?

Due to the lack of evidence, it seems clear that he and his fellow co-op residents were targeted because they are environmentalists and progressives, who are actively opposed to the destructive policies and behavior of the current American regime. In many ways Josh’s arrest and the subsequent destructive search of the co-op was a threatening message to this group of activists that their entirely legal opposition to the war in Iraq and other U.S. policies would not be tolerated. The FBI dramatically disrupted the lives of not just Josh but everyone who lives at the Regen Co-op. As Xylem Dey, one of the residents relates, “The FBI conducted classic harassment techniques in the day and a half following Josh’s arrest, slandering us to the neighbors and dividing the group by telling some they could go into the house… and telling others that we could not go into the house or we would not be allowed back out. They detained the people inside the house for about eight hours before telling them they had to leave… They seized all of our personal computers and disks and environmental literature, including textbooks, notebooks and address books.” The other residents of the house were not suspects, yet their belongings were seized and their living spaces thrown into disarray during the course of the search. It is likely that computers being searched will not be returned to residents. As this story develops, it becomes increasingly apparent that law enforcement agencies used the pretense of arresting Josh to harass and intimidate the Regen Co-op, in order to disrupt and potentially end their activism.

At the same time, the FBI is an organization that is looking desperately to catch anyone they can label a terrorist. The war on terrorism is now two years old, yet no major terrorists involved with the September 11th attacks have been caught. Thus the FBI turned its attention to a domestic act of vandalism, labeled it eco-terrorism, and quickly found someone they thought fit the description of an eco-terrorist without really checking the facts.

So was the arrest of Josh Connole and the search of the Regen Co-op a quick and dirty attempt to gain credibility by an inept organization or part of a government plot to discredit and intimidate legitimate social activists? Probably both are true in part, but either way this event should alarm everyone at Pomona College. It is becoming increasingly apparent that anyone can be labeled a terrorist and have his or her civil liberties, and those of people around them, quickly discarded. I encourage everyone who wants to know more about this event to go to the website www.regen.org and to remain aware of the encroaching power of the government all around us.