Getu's Trial: Its Over! (Pittsburgh Indymedia)

http://www.indypgh.org/news/2002/12/421.php

Getu's Trial: Its Over!
by Dan Kyle Sunday, Dec. 22, 2002 at 9:37 AM
daniel_kyle@hotmail.com

The DA's office finally agrees that Getu Towalde, an Ethiopian immigrant, is not a terrorist. The DA also admits that grassroots pressure led to the prosecuter easing up on the initial trumped-up charges.

Ten months ago, Getu Berhanu Towalde was arrested at the Greyhound station in Pittsburgh. His brutalized face and uncommon name were broadcast citywide under the foreboding title �Possible Terrorist�. He was on his way to the Allegheny County Jail, and possibly Guantanamo Bay.

A legal immigrant from Ethiopia, Getu was beaten by the police and arrested after other passengers complained he was �acting suspicious�. According to Getu, he was trying to make friends during the lonely wait before departure. The arresting officer never identified himself and failed to produce a badge before taking him to the ground, disarming Getu of his perceived instrument of destruction: a pen.

The FBI refused to charge him, but Pittsburgh Police went forward with charges of making terroristic threats, causing and risking a catastrophe, and simple and aggravated assault. He was then jailed in the Mental Health pod of the Allegheny county jail and given 8 pills a day, without any attempt at justification. Possibly most disturbing of all, he was the third innocent minority arrested in Pittsburgh in the three months following the September 11th tragedy without any supporting evidence.

Today, Getu has a job. Yes, his name and face are still recognizable in Pittsburgh. He is known as a victim of race-based injustice, who has gathered countless friends in this city with his positive outlook and winning smile. Joe Heckyl from the prison society and Bob Sampson of East Liberty Presbyterian Church testified as a character witness on his trial date. On December 12th, the DA�s office finally agreed to drop all felonious charges, admitting he is not a terrorist. He plead guilty to three misdemeanors: disorderly conduct, harassment, and resisting arrest.
The result: eighteen months of probation. No fine. No additional jail time. No joining countless others rotting away in a concentration camp in violation of international law. Another result: nationally published progressive magazines have used his case as a living, breathing example that the witch-hunt for Middle Easterners has gone too far.

Organizers of the Free Getu Coalition call this a success story. Organizer Saleh Wasiruddin said of the campaign: �We showed that through spreading the word about what�s going on, and getting others to spread the word, we can bring support to our side not just at the grassroots level, but also even within the judicial system. The Allegheny County Public Defender�s office gave each of their lawyers a letter telling them how to fight the denial of Behavior Clinic exams Getu was subjected to.�

On December 5th, a fundraiser for Getu�s legal fees became an anti-racism concert and speak-out. The show featured folk, rock, rap, and jazz performers and several speakers who have been victimized by racism at work, in airports, and on the streets. Anti-racism organizer Pete Shell rallied those in attendance: �The DA�s office admitted the mobilization and letters (over 400) sent to their office led them to offer a favorable plea bargain. Without the mobilization, Getu may still be in jail today.� But is Getu happy with the outcome?

�Not exactly happy,� he laughed, clearly relieved the ordeal is finally over, �but happy for the judgment. That judge (Zatola), he did a good thing.� He is disappointed about probation partially because he still misses his life in Washington DC. Paperwork needs to be filed for him to leave the state. When you mention the Thomas Merton Center, however, his optimism and smile returns: �I really appreciate what the Thomas Merton Center is doing, not just for me, but for justice. They are changing the world in good ways.�

�I learned how people react to movements, how people get active around issues.� He said, looking back on the incident that exemplifies the Bush administration�s darkest intentions, �and I learned the police aren�t always right, that�s the bad side of what I learned.�

Organizers of the Free Getu Coalition remain focused on challenging the system that so badly mistreated Getu. "People often get frustrated and discouraged when they write letters and go to demonstrations, and don't see any direct results of their activism.� Pete Shell recently said, �Getu's case reminds us that activism and public pressure does pay off --not all the time but certainly in this case. Recently, several African-Americans have been killed by the police or housing authority officers in Pittsburgh. Let's keep in mind the important contribution that our activism can make as we struggle for justice for the victims of police brutality and against a war in Iraq." Sadly, there is no shortage of cases to take up.

Monty Clay, a featherweight champion boxer and full time jitney driver from Rankin was brutalized while unarmed by police from Braddock, Edgewood, and Swissvale on January 19th, 2002. Despite the fact Monty was not charged nor arrested for any misconduct that evening, his injuries were so severe he was unable to box for seven months. This has been devastating to the career of the two-time "Golden Gloves" champion of Pennsylvania, who was picked at the time to be a likely qualifier for the 2004 Olympic games. Ever since Monty filed charges against the police boroughs involved, police have not let him alone, harassing him and pulling him over every chance they can.

As embarrassing as Monty�s story is, the mysterious death of the Hill District�s Bernard Rogers is equally troublesome. Shot and killed while unarmed by the Pittsburgh Housing Authority, Rogers, just 26 years old, was reportedly just one month away from his degree from Duffs Business School. Recently, forensics investigators concluded that Rogers was shot in the back. This contrasts what the police officer origionally claimed: that Rogers was shot in a struggle for the officers firearm. Questions surround all these cases. Luckily, there are dedicated activists afoot who prioritize racial justice.

For more information, check out http://www.freegetu.org or http://www.zi-activism.net. Also, click http://www.thomasmertoncenter.org for more opportunities to help victims of race-based injustice.

www.freegetu.org

Specter of war treads lightly on campuses (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

http://old.post-gazette.com/localnews/20021124protest1124p4.asp

Specter of war treads lightly on campuses

Student bodies haven't been fully engaged by direct appeals to oppose Iraq attack

Sunday, November 24, 2002

By Bill Schackner, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Student activists who say their government is about to make an epic mistake gather every Friday around a table on the University of Pittsburgh campus and unfurl a sign with a simple message.

"Disagree with a war in Iraq?" asks the poster in the William Pitt Union. "Do something."

	Pitt senior Lindsay Liprando signs a letter to Presidnet Bush, urging him to reconsider war with Iraq. Andrew Schrock and Caset Currin are part of Students in Solidarity, which sponsored the table. (Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette)

Passers-by often do.

One recent afternoon, members of the anti-war committee of Students in Solidarity mustered 78 signatures, enough to build a pile of form letters urging the White House to reconsider its stand. One signer, sophomore Laura Wright, was adamant that the United States has no business attacking another country first.

"This will set an ugly precedent that a country has no right to sovereignty," said Wright, 20, of New Stanton. "Most people [who] I know are opposed to it."

On the surface, those words and signatures have a strong ring of solidarity, the kind that in the 1960s turned the nation's campuses into breeding grounds of dissent.

But elsewhere at Pitt, and on campuses nationwide, there are reminders that this is a different era, and that winning over minds this time won't be a walk through Woodstock.

Not far from the anti-war table, another group of undergraduates stands outdoors next to a bronze statue of Pitt's mascot Panther and agrees there is little buzz about the topic.

"I don't think there's a lot of support for the anti-war movement right now, especially after all the stuff that happened with Sept. 11," said Pitt freshman David Schaffner, who says war with Iraq is necessary. "The country is pretty solidly behind its leaders right now, just because it makes people feel safer."

Alisha Bhagat, 19, a student at Carnegie Mellon University, hands out leaflets in the Strip District yesterday protesting a possible war on Iraq. An anti-war rally was held at 21st and Smallman streets. (Tony Tye, Post-Gazette)

Schaffner's view, and the sharply different opinion held by Wright, pose a question for organizers as they gauge the movement's reach. If bombs start dropping, and U.S. servicemen die, will a topic now debated in dormitories and in classrooms become a full-blown, unified protest movement reminiscent of Vietnam?

Or will it be the same core group of student activists, presiding over sparsely attended rallies?

What's missing from the movement, some say, are the elements that ignited campuses in the late 1960s: A prolonged and televised bloody conflict in which a student's prospect of dying was as real as the draft.

For now, many area protests are noteworthy less for their size than their flair.

Instead of sit-ins or raucous street demonstrations, students on some campuses are employing a mix of artwork, impromptu guerrilla theater and other creative means to drive home their points.

At Carnegie Mellon University, activists unveiled an Axis of Evil game at an outdoor carnival. Participants in a parking lot tossed water balloons at people wearing T-shirts denoting civilian and military targets in countries such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq.

Whenever they hit a target, they were quizzed about some aspect of the country's society.

The message was "you're attacking people," campus organizer Syed Saleh Waziruddin said. "These are not just abstract points. They are societies that we should value."

Takkeem Morgan, vice president of Penn State Black Caucus, created a temporary outdoor sculpture on campus of five dead Iraqi children. The models were wrapped head to toe in trash bags. Information about them was posted nearby.

Students walking through Penn State's Hetzel Union Building recently came upon an exhibit showing the meager food supplies available to an Iraqi citizen.

Nationwide, there is little doubt that the hawkish tone from Washington has energized a core of students, including veteran protesters and newcomers. They are planning education campaigns, leafleting on and off campus, and making noise at rallies and marches.

The Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal Washington, D.C., think tank, estimates that 300 anti-war demonstrations have been held across the country. They range from 20 or so students at New York University who staged sit-ins to many thousands who marched in San Francisco; Washington, D.C.; and other cities.

E-mails arrive regularly from students intent on starting campus groups or professors interested in holding teach-ins, said Juliette Niehuss, student coordinator for the institute.

"We're doing this months before we even go to war," she said. "We haven't seen the bodies come back."

For now, though, the sharpest salvos by activists are being fired not on the streets, but on paper, and not all of the speeches are anti-war.

On some campuses, such posters as "No Blood for Oil" and "Drop Bush Not Bombs" are being matched by signs such as the one posted in NYU's student activities center to promote meetings of the College Republicans.

"Save the children," it reads. "Bomb Iraq."

In spots, the street theater seems straight from the days of Joan Baez, with its drum-playing protesters, students with dreadlocks and calls for civil disobedience. But those running the events carry pagers, and they're getting word out with help from e-mail and Web sites.

On area campuses, from Gannon University to Point Park College, dissent can be found, too -- but only to a point.

At Penn State, a handful of the campus's 41,000 students join monthly protests at the university's gates, and several hundred boarded buses for the Oct. 26 rally in Washington, D.C. -- numbers far short of the 4,000 students who showed up in April 2001 for a rally after several black students received death threats.

At Carnegie Mellon, 15 marchers on the 8,600-student campus set out for a rally Sept. 21 at Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall in Oakland and were joined by 15 others along the way. About 60 from campus traveled by bus to the Washington, D.C., rally.

Those numbers smack of apathy to graying hippies who saw campuses shut down by Vietnam protests. That may be true, observers say, but it's more complicated than that.

The '60s movement was years in the making, they say, and was fueled in large part by tens of thousands of U.S. casualties in Vietnam and fears of the military draft. The draft ended in 1973, and there is little tangible evidence that an Iraqi war now would affect students' lives any more than the Persian Gulf war did a decade ago.

"The war hasn't started. We have a volunteer Army. It's not quite real yet," said Arthur Levine, president of Teachers College at Columbia University and an author who researches student attitudes. "There is no indication that it is resonating with a wider audience."

Levine said the biggest protests as a percentage of campus population took place in the 1930s, when horrific memories of the carnage of World War I moved a generation of students to speak out against involvement in what became World War II.

"What this generation has seen was a war with Iraq in which the number of people who died was actually quite small, and we watched it on TV," he said.

Tom Hayden, former California state senator and a leader of the '60s campus movement, said he believed that anti-war organizers actually were further along today than their predecessors were in early 1965, before America's Vietnam involvement escalated. What will happen this time, he said, "depends on what kind of war we have."

In the '60s, as Vietnam divided the country, protest leaders who had honed their skills in the civil rights movement in the South overcame apathy among their campus peers. He draws parallels to today.

"You have a very well-educated minority of students who are organizing protests. They already have experience with the anti-globalization movement, with Seattle and with [World Trade Organization] protests," Hayden said.

They have something their '60s counterparts lacked, said Hayden, one of the Chicago Seven defendants accused but later cleared of charges related to street violence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. "We didn't have the right to vote," he said.

Eighteen-year-olds got the right to cast ballots in the 1972 presidential election, as the voting age was lowered from 21.

Of course, voting is a tool many college students in Pittsburgh and elsewhere do not use.

It's far from certain if a war with Iraq will change that. At Pitt, interviews with student groups ranging from the Black Action Society to the College Republicans suggest that the campus, by and large, has not been moved enough to mobilize.

Andrew Schrock, 21, acknowledged the same the other day as he sat at the anti-war table in the William Pitt Union with literature promoting peace.

"There is a level of awareness," he said. "I don't think it's all that high. I think it should be higher."

But, he said, there is time to overcome that.

"My goal is not to change policies right now," he said. "I'm more interested in changing people's minds, making them interested."

Some organizers got involved on their campuses through courses they are taking on topics such as peace movements. Others had been active in causes for years -- from the Cuban embargo to the environment -- or signed on after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks over what they saw as government infringements on civil liberties.

Hayden said the media wasn't picking up on the ground swell over Iraq. He said news outlets contrived unfair comparisons between this early-stage organizing and late-stage Vietnam demonstrations.

At Point Park, student organizer Chad Skaggs would seem to agree. He spouts statistics about corporate ownership of newspapers the way others rattle off baseball statistics, asserting that the media shy away from certain causes. He didn't hesitate when asked what would be needed for the anti-war movement to take hold on college campuses.

"A free and open press," he said.

But Schaffner, the Pitt student, offered a different suggestion, one he said was now commonly used to lure students to all kinds of events.

"You want a big turnout?" he asked. "You give people free food. It doesn't matter what kind."

Impending visit from Netanyahu provokes rallies (The Tartan, Carnegie Mellon University newspaper)

 

Activists Call for More Debate on Iraq Agenda (The Tartan, Carnegie Mellon University newspaper)

 

Anti-war rally gathers on Soldiers’ ‘ Sailors’ lawn (Pitt News)

https://pittnews.com/article/39547/archives/anti-war-rally-gathers-on-soldiers-sailors-lawn/ 

By JESSICA WADDELL
SEPTEMBER 23, 2002

As talks of a possible attack on Iraq continue, an anti-war movement is in full swing right… As talks of a possible attack on Iraq continue, an anti-war movement is in full swing right here at Pitt.

The Thomas Merton Center held an anti-war rally on the lawn of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Saturday afternoon. Nearly 100 community leaders, activists, students and concerned citizens attended the event.

Sayed Saleh Waziruddin, board member of the Thomas Merton Center, led a small march from Carnegie Mellon University to the scene of the rally. The marchers carried signs and chanted, “What do we want? Peace. When do we want it? Now. Bush says regime change. We say he’s deranged.”

As the rally commenced, participants held signs, some made with care and some quickly written with marker on fliers. Some sayings were: “Each life is good,” and “I love America. I hate its actions.”

The Reverend Todd Davis, a participant in the rally, said, “I am here because I believe Bush is going to get the U.S. in great trouble. He is alienating the U.S. from all the nations of the world by acting unilaterally.”

Concerned citizen, poet, and Thomas Merton Center volunteer Cecilia Wheeler expressed her reasons for participating.

“We are united here to stop a war on Iraq. We don’t think there’s been enough evidence to start a war,” she said. “We want sanctions against Iraq down. There’s been too much suffering for the people in Iraq since ’91.”

The protest consisted of rallying speeches given by guest speakers, such as a medical expert, a journalist, a teen-age activist, professors and religious leaders. There was also satirical music, created by Anne Feeney and Chris Chandler, often met with random outbursts of supportive chanting.

Ginny Hildebrand and Waziruddin quieted the protesters and introduced the speakers. Throughout the speeches, the protesters would show support for a point and after each speech, the crowd would applaud.

Iskander Langalibalele spoke for Azania Heritage International and Unite ‘N Resist. He voiced his reasons for believing war in Iraq is wrong.

“We have a president not democratically elected,” he said. “Why [is the Bush administration] attacking human beings?”

Langalibalele had a charge for the group.

“We have to change the whole system and the whole society. We need to bring about a change,” he said. “Where is the courage? We need to build this into a mass movement.”

Brother Yusef Ali from the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh voiced his beliefs about the protest.

“Americans have to create a climate so that people can be able to think and express themselves without being considered unpatriotic,” he said.

He continued, speaking about compassion. His final words became a chant, “Let’s make war no more.”

As a change of pace, Feeney, playing the guitar, and Chandler, vocalist with a megaphone, performed a song that related the administration to a hypothetical carnival. The song, which evoked a great deal of laughter, had a harsh undertone and made points regarding the economy and hypocrisy.

The Reverend Renee Waun, from the East Suburban Unitarian Universalist Church, said that she called the President and insisted that concerned citizens do the same.

“I am downright embarrassed and ashamed at what our president is doing,” she said. “This is our last opportunity to show moral leadership to the world.”

She expressed her ultimate fears as to what might happen as a result of an attack on Iraq.

“It’s going to be the beginning of a really awful time in history, and we’re going to be blamed for it,” she said.

In summation, Waun articulated the decision America has to make.

“We have a choice,” she said, “to seize the high moral moment or to be lost in the despair of immoral mayhem.”

Molly Rush, host and founder of the Thomas Merton Center, rallied more support.

“There is a strong movement against war in Iraq,” she said. “We are going to need to depend on each other. I am thinking about civil disobedience again.”

The rally ended after about an hour. As the participants dispersed, they picked up fliers with the phone numbers and addresses for congressmen and the White House.

Professors for Peace and Justice question, debate politics (The Pitt News)

https://pittnews.com/article/39699/archives/professors-for-peace-and-justice-question-debate-politics/

Professors for Peace and Justice question, debate politics

By JESSICA WADDELLStaff Writer
SEPTEMBER 18, 2002

Pittsburgh Professors for Peace and Justice are making efforts to reform political… Pittsburgh Professors for Peace and Justice are making efforts to reform political consciousness.

PPJ held an open forum on Sept. 13 in Posvar Hall to discuss the situation in Iraq and the anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001. Nearly 200 people, including professors, students, and local activists, attended the event.

PPJ was founded last year in response to the American treatment of Sept. 11, with the mission of researching events and sharing that research to further inform the public, according to members Mark Ginsburg and Clark Henderson. Its members include faculty from colleges in Pittsburgh, such as Pitt, Carnegie Mellon University and Carlow College, who meet to discuss issues pertaining to the war on terror.

According to Ginsburg and Henderson, recent meetings have been focused on the possible attack on Iraq. Ginsburg added that, typically, 15 to 20 faculty members attend the meetings and someone leads the topic of conversation, which requires that they share research.

Ken Boas and Kelly Happe led the first discussion, raising questions about the situation in the Middle East.

Boas and Happe addressed American favoritism of the Israelis and said they wondered if Americans could find sympathy for the oppressed Palestinians.

“To prevent catastrophe in the Middle East, isn’t it our responsibility to tell the stories that affirm the Palestinian people?” Boas asked.

To finalize the discussion, Boas said, “Why do we buy into the idea that war in the Middle East makes the world safer? Osama made his grievances to clear to the world: stop oppressing and destroying the Palestinians.”

In the second segment, speaker Carol Stabile discussed the media and patriotism and their effects in the war on terror, emphasizing the importance for the American public to seek education and alternative news sources.

In an interview, Stabile elaborated about the media, saying that “in the university, we have the responsibility to educate people about this; we have the knowledge. I have studied the media, and I have all this information. As researchers, we put together separate accounts.” She continued, saying, “Only one viewpoint is being offered and that’s the current administration’s. We must ask ourselves, why don’t we see alternative accounts?”

Stabile said she was impressed with the turnout of the forum and wondered if there were people all over the nation with the same concerns. She concluded, saying, “Things are changing as we speak.”

Following Stabile, Carrie Rentschler addressed the media’s handling of the anniversary. Rentschler re-emphasized the responsibility Americans have to be educated and outspoken.

After the debate, Rentschler spoke in regards to the way in which the anniversary of Sept. 11 was handled. “To focus on remembrance and mourning, didn’t provide space for dissent. People should talk about the war on terror.” She continued rather adamantly, “People within the White House have said that Sept. 11 is very important as an emotional basis for going to war with Iraq.”

Sayed Saleh Waziruddin, Muslim co-founder of the local activist group Zi and founder of the Free Getu Coalition, led the third segment. He spoke about the tension and life adjustments of American-Muslim population since Sept. 11.

Waziruddin felt that after Sept. 11, the calls for unity excluded the Muslim population, which he believed was suddenly seen as suspicious simply for looking different.

Waziruddin concluded with a charge for the group.

“There is hope since we are here today. Let’s spread the ideas,” he said.

President appointed to homeland security advisory council (The Tartan, Carnegie Mellon University newspaper)

 

Curiously, good sense prevails in smoking sneaker (Tony Norman column, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Curiously, good sense prevails in smoking sneaker

Tuesday, August 06, 2002

If someone had told me just a few short weeks ago that a Canadian citizen of Iranian descent could take a flight to Pittsburgh, set fire to his sneakers as the plane taxied to the gate and walk away with only a $300 fine for his trouble, I would've assumed that somebody was smoking crack in Attorney General John Ashcroft's America.

But that's exactly what happened at the tail end of a US Airways flight from Toronto on Saturday evening. A 17-year-old traveling with his father, but sitting apart from him, as teen-agers are wont to do during the awkward years, decided to burn the excess rubber from his sneakers with a lighter.

As we all know, burning dangling rubber particles from one's fresher-than-fresh Iversons ranks way up there with the elimination of acne as the main obsession of teen-age boys.

Recently, folks who fly for a living have been skittish about allowing burning shoe fetishes to take place, even in coach class. In December, Richard Reid, an exceptionally goofy British 28-year-old, gave the passengers and crew of a Paris-to-Miami flight quite a scare when he tried in vain to light a fuse leading to a bomb hidden in his sneakers.

Reid was overpowered on that American Airlines flight by folks who weren't in a mood to have Neil Young write dirges about them if they could help it. Fortunately, Reid's ineptitude as a terrorist undermined him as quickly as the bravery of the passengers. He surely would've had his name inscribed in the annals of "Stupid Criminals International" if investigators hadn't uncovered evidence of Reid's connection to al-Qaida operatives in Europe.

For once, even the textile industry protectionists among us are grateful that materials used in Third World sweatshops where most sneakers are stitched together are of such high quality. Can you imagine Uptowns, Royal Elastics or Wallabees bursting into flame like our old canvas PF Flyers? Certainly not! There's way too much street cred at stake for that to happen.

When an attendant on Saturday night's US Airways flight followed the stench of burning rubber to Row 18, where the 17-year-old sat flicking his lighter, she was determined not to stand for any of his teen-age surliness.

The passenger was obviously burning his shoes and immediately copped to it. As a colleague with a son the same age so memorably put it yesterday, he might as well have.

"There are only two things boys their age are interested in," she quipped, "sex and fire."

Still, it's a sign of "progress" in John Ashcroft's America -- not to mention Pittsburgh -- that a 17-year-old Canadian with an Iranian surname wasn't automatically given an orange jumpsuit, shackled like Hannibal Lecter and booked on a connecting flight to fashionable Camp X-ray at Guantanamo Bay.

The FBI, the Allegheny County police and the U.S. Transportation Security Administration quickly determined that the 17-year-old was more a threat to his family's dignity than to national security and released him to his father's custody.

It was a rare return to perspective and sanity in the wake of Sept. 11. Let's face it, federal and local overreaction to real and imagined threats have become entrenched thanks to the mullahs overseeing Homeland Security.

A junior pyromaniac may have dodged the bullet this time, but our civil liberties are still threatened as various bureaucracies struggle to differentiate terrorist threats from oddities in human behavior.

Recently, I wrote about the plight of Getu Berhanu Tewolde, an Ethiopian immigrant arrested at the Downtown Greyhound bus station for allegedly making "terroristic threats" during a bus layover. Getu was held in the Allegheny County Jail's mental ward for six weeks without benefit of legal counsel or a psychiatric evaluation. He'll go on trial in the fall.

Former Art Institute of Pittsburgh student Salam El Zaatari was indicted by the government after carrying an X-Acto knife through airport security. He spent two months in solitary confinement at the Allegheny County Jail, which might as well erect a sign above its door that reads: "Abandon Hope All Ye Foreigners Who Enter Here."

Perhaps times are finally changing for awkward young men who don't conform to our bland preconceptions. Really, we don't have to release John Walker Lindh to his father's custody to be fair to everyone in John Ashcroft's America.

Is This Man a Terrorist? (Pittsburgh Pulp Magazine Cover Story)

Is This Man a Terrorist?

Beaten, drugged and jailed: the strange story of Getu Berhanu Tewolde

By Jonathan Barnes
Photos by Shawn Brackbill

"Freaks!" yelled some passersby in Ozzy Osbourne t-shirts, hanging out the windows of their car and gawking as they drove by in rush-hour traffic. Cars screeched and halted, spewing out fumes that simmered in the humidity. Pedestrians walked around and at times walked through the peaceful protest of about two dozen people, and at least one passerby seemed angry that the collection of clerics, labor leaders, African-Americans and other activists had the temerity to assemble.

A slight breeze didn't take the edge off the protest, and maybe it was the heat that made the authorities so antsy. The group had been assembling across the street from the Greyhound bus station for 10 minutes when Vista Hotel security guards approached them.

Asking the organizers what was going on, the guards were given polite responses and went on their way. That left the few dozen activists to their protest of what they feel was ugly treatment by the Pittsburgh Police of Getu Berhanu Tewolde on his arrival in Pittsburgh on February 1. While traveling from Washington, D.C. to Denver, Getu, an Ethiopian immigrant, was arrested at the Greyhound station downtown. He was charged with making terroristic threats, causing and risking a catastrophe and aggravated and simple assault. This all occurred as a result of an incident during a layover in Pittsburgh.

Gathered downtown around the corner of 11th and Liberty on Thursday, June 13 during the dinner rush hour, activists from nine organizations and three churches toted signs reading "Free Getu," and chanting the same. By turns, they stood at a makeshift podium on the sidewalk to hammer the message of the grave wrong done to Getu.

"There's an old saying in labor -- that an injury to one is an injury to all," said John Lambiase, president of district six of the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America. "Getu is different from the authorities, he is not different from the people. People of integrity do not beat people, do not drug people and abuse power."

As the speakers took their turns at the podium, the obvious theme of freedom of speech and the less obvious notions of freedom of space and movement emerged.

During what should have been a brief stop in Pittsburgh on February 1, Getu brushed against a Greyhound employee, Angela Street, while returning to his seat at the end of the stop. Street yelled accusations at him and the driver told Getu to get off the bus, according to Getu. Once he was inside the bus station, someone ordered Getu to sit. He refused to sit and tried to calm the crowd that was gathering around him. A police officer was called and asked Getu to sit, but because he didn't identify himself as an officer and Getu didn't see any badge, he refused. The policeman attacked and beat him, according to Getu, "disarming" Getu of the pen he was holding in his palm.

This story has been told several times, but in the beginning many just saw quick clips of Getu on television and no doubt many thought he must be guilty. He was yelling crazy, terrorist-sounding stuff on a Greyhound bus, reportedly things like "I'm Jesus" and "the Lord of Lords asked me [to choose] life or death" and "Americans are going to die." He'd had the crap kicked out of him by the police. He was a foreigner, and an African at that. If we got a dozen more like him, some people certainly thought, it'd be a good start.

But such knee-jerk reactions to this gray situation, where it seems there's plenty of blame to spread around, might be potentially as destructive as accepting carte blanche Getu's version of events.

At the busy corner last week, the rumble of traffic and windy conditions intermittently drowned out the unamplified voices of the speakers, and at times it seemed they were preaching to themselves, as protesters sometimes do.

Amnesty International Pittsburgh's Pamela Jordan strode to the podium and declared Getu had been denied due process and subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. "The conditions of Getu's confinement were egregious," she said. "Given only two hours a week to leave his cell. The [forced] medication, in combination with his solitary confinement" constitute cruel and unusual punishment, she said.

While many go to jail because of drugs, Getu was detained partly through the aid of mind-altering substances. Local authorities intentionally hopped him up on goofy pills, he said.

After his beating, Getu was placed on Disciplinary Housing Status at the Allegheny County Jail. He was tucked into the Mental Health pod under 24-hour solitary confinement and given eight pills a day without a behavioral clinic examination. He was allowed only two hours per week to leave his cell and shower and couldn't meet with a public defender because he was in solitary confinement, according to the Free Getu Coalition's web site, www.freegetu.org.

The incident that led to Getu's arrest might have been avoided if a few jingoistic idiots hadn't felt threatened by this 5-foot-2-inch, 125-pound stranger, others in the rally said. Mary Zimmerle, an organizer of the gathering and a member of the Zi activist organization, called Getu's arrest "an example of unrestrained hysteria. When we treat people who are different as the other, we dehumanize them. This leads to horrible consequences."

Just after she spoke the words, a third carload of hecklers passed by. This group was wearing dirty workmen's clothes, and they sounded like they'd been drinking. "You suck!" they yelled, flipping the protesters the bird.

Pittsburgh NAACP president Tim Stevens wasn't swayed by the catcalls. "Part of patriotism is a commitment to make our nation better than it is," he said. "It is trouble when someone comes to our city and their first experience is handcuffs. That is a sad commentary."

As if to underscore the point, a couple of Pittsburgh Police officers rolled up in a car and started asking questions. "Everybody has a right to assemble, as long as people can pass by on the street," one of the officers said, and the two left.

Stevens picked up where he'd stopped without missing a beat, jumping back into his solo riffs with a jazzman's flair. "Obviously we have to be about protecting our nation. But we also have to protect what we are as a nation. We don't have to be intimidated because a couple people sat on the cement."

Getu's trial was postponed until March 15 because he had to be cleared by the behavior clinic due to the felony charge. After getting pressure from the Free Getu Coalition and the ACLU, Getu received an exam and a lawyer visited within the week of his preliminary hearing. He passed the exam, moving his case forward and leading to his release on bail.

The "simple assault" charge was dropped at the March 15 preliminary hearing. The "causing and risking a catastrophe" charge was dropped as well, but a second "terroristic threat" charge was added before Getu's formal arraignment on May 20. A pre-trial conference was scheduled before deadline, on Wednesday, June 19, during which Judge John Zatolla was to set a trial date.

In the meantime, Getu is sorting out his feelings.

Meeting Getu gives you a sense of who was wronged. The soft-spoken man bears little resemblance to the images of him captured on the local "breaking news" television segments, his face puffy and his eye blackened from the beating. He said last week that he was amazed by the support of so many Pittsburghers. On the one hand, he said in soft, sometimes halting English, Pittsburgh has some aggressive people by which he clearly means the officers who arrested him. On the other, he added, "I didn't expect that Pittsburgh had such kind people" as his supporters.

He attributed the ordeal to the fact that he looks different from many Americans. "On the bus when the woman swore at me, it was because I looked different," he said. "I even said sorry."

Why charge Getu with making terroristic threats? Contacted after the demonstration, Allegheny County district attorney's office spokesman Mike Manko would not speculate on what led police to charge Getu, deferring questions to Zone 2 commander Bill Valenta. "It was a police investigation, you'd have to ask them," Manko said.

Getu's supporters have asked the district attorney to drop the rest of the charges against him, but Manko was guarded on the question. "I'm not going to discuss whatever strategy we have before a case goes to trial," he said.

And though the tide of media opinion has turned in favor of Getu, Pittsburgh Police officials tell a far different story of the incident that led to Getu's arrest.

"In essence, Mr. Tewolde was in a bus station and there was an incident between him and another person on the bus," said Zone 2 commander Bill Valenta. "At some point in time, Mr. Tewolde said everybody on the bus is going to die. The police officer arrived in full uniform and Mr. Tewolde proceeded to attack him with a pen. It was the behavior of Mr. Tewolde that dictated his response. He chose to act in an aggressive manner and attacked our officer."

The incident led police to evacuate the bus station building, to search the building for bombs and to call in the FBI's local counter-terrorism team, Valenta said. "We probably had the involvement of 50 to 60 personnel hours, all because of this guy becoming upset on the bus."

Valenta said he is bothered by the media attention that has depicted Getu as an innocent. He also takes umbrage at the suggestion that he would allow his officers to brutalize anyone. "We have written statements by 10 people who witnessed [Getu] going off. I oversee 120 police officers and ensure that they follow the law the right way. I'm very comfortable with what we did, from start to finish."

Given the fact that the Pittsburgh Police Department is under a federal consent decree instituted in 1997 due to police misconduct, it's easy to see why African-Americans in Pittsburgh might be wary of what police say. Many citizens aren't aware that the consent decree is in place, though it is meant to help them, and others don't believe it will work. Despite widespread resentment of the decree among police officers, and rampant mistrust of police officers among African-Americans, city officials are negotiating an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice that would end the consent decree this summer, though there is a backlog of cases that the city's Office of Municipal Investigations has not dealt with.

The office was created from the former Office of Professional Standards and was physically moved out of police headquarters to facilitate the filing of complaints. But given that the consent decree was forced upon the city due to a long history of local police abuses that resulted in the deaths of Johnny Gammage, Maneia Bey and others, many people have little patience for OMI's backlog of cases. To the injured party, justice delayed always seems to be justice denied.

Even if what Pittsburgh Police officials say about Getu's case is true, the fact that he was detained for several weeks and drugged in a prison mental health facility should be cause for alarm, even among those officers who say Getu was treated fairly. It seems axiomatic that people, native or non-native, shouldn't get lost, Josef K.-like, in a trial put off forever by inscrutable bureaucrats.

Comments:

 

Although this article is very thorough and discusses some of the history of Pittsburgh's police brutality problems, one important detail was left out: Getu was cleared by the FBI, but arrested anyway because of the “totality of the circumstances”, according to Commander Valenta (Fox 53 10 O'clock News broadcast on February 1).

Bus-ted (Pittsburgh City Paper Feature Story)

(available at https://web.archive.org/web/20021027115742/http://www.pghcitypaper.com/nz61902.html)

NEWS FEATURE

Bus-ted
Post-Sept. 11 paranoia may be what landed Getu Tewolde in jail for six weeks over a bus-station fracas

Getu Tewolde is able to laugh -- a little -- today about his six weeks in the Allegheny County Jail this past winter, where he says his mistreatment included being medicated against his will. On June 19, he will finally learn his trial date on charges of making terroristic threats, aggravated assault and resisting arrest, all for a February incident that was, he says, a simple misunderstanding -- one that, in post-Sept. 11 America, can get a legal Ethiopian immigrant with heavily accented, uncertain English imprisoned.

On the early morning of Feb. 1, Tewolde was traveling from his home in Washington, D.C., to surprise his uncle in Denver with a visit. His carry-on luggage was four pieces of pita bread and a pen. But during a 12-minute layover he bumped into the night manager at the Greyhound station Downtown and hasn’t been able to leave the city since.

Today, Tewolde has difficulty understanding some questions and answering others. He looks American, in a jean jacket, dress pants, brown shoes and a button-down shirt with two pens in the breast pocket -- much the same as he looked on the Greyhound bus. But listening to him, it is hard to imagine how well he was able to communicate during an incident that eventually drew a crowd, the police, the bomb squad and the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Tewolde’s shoulder and chest struck Greyhound employee Angela Street as he re-entered the bus during a layover, he explains. He is a small man -- 5’2”, about 130 pounds -- but the bus aisle was crowded. “I just asked her right away to forgive me,” Tewolde says. “She left the bus and right away the driver told me to get off the bus. I was very shocked why he said it.”

Asked to sit down inside the station, Tewolde refused; he felt he had done nothing to warrant ejection or suspicion. Confronted by a crowd, he protested and tried to explain himself. Witnesses told police Tewolde mentioned religious topics or threats against America. “I actually say something to calm them down,” he counters. He is not certain of his exact words. He might have spoken about religion, he allows; born to an Orthodox Christian family, Tewolde now believes in a Creator although not in a particular faith, but the subject interests him. He was trying, he says, to allude to the atmosphere of suspicion in America today.

Attempting to duplicate what he said at just past 7 a.m. that February morning in the bus station, he stumbles over words in English, though he is perfectly calm: “Why we are hating each other since there is life?” he says he told the crowd. “Why are we choosing the way of [these] days?” But there is still one phrase he says he told the crowd that is unmistakable: “Why are you hitting?”

When the first police officer, Brian Sellers, arrived, he had already received two calls about Tewolde -- the first, according to his police report, about a “disorderly male,” the second that “the male was getting more violent.” Street, he says, claimed Tewolde had pushed her “several times.” Sellers found Tewolde “irritated and yelling,” saying “that people were going to die.” The officer hip-tossed Tewolde to the ground after he refused to put his hands behind his back. Then, Sellers says, Tewolde pulled a pen from his jacket pocket and attempted to stab him. Sellers punched Tewolde several times in the head and face, handcuffed him and placed him in the police car.

Tewolde, for his part, says he did not recognize that Sellers was a police officer -- saw no badge, no belt with gun and handcuffs, and no hat; he never heard Sellers identify himself. “I was unconcentrating,” Tewolde says. “I[t] was a very short time” for an officer to have arrived, and Tewolde was surprised. He was trying to protect his pen, he adds, not wield it as a weapon. “That’s when I knew he was police,” he says, “when I was handcuffed.”

Even though the bomb squad determined the bus wasn’t in danger and the FBI’s terrorism task force ruled the threat from Tewolde “negligible,” he was on his way to jail.

ANOTHER THREAT” read the caption under the Fox 53 news video of a small, dark man being led into a police van on Feb. 1. Carnegie Mellon University engineering researcher Saleh Waziruddin was watching the news that night and remembers the image. Waziruddin, 24, of Shadyside, is a member of the CMU activist group Zi, which has tried to assist in several other local post-Sept. 11 arrests involving terrorism accusations. He contacted Tewolde in jail and formed the Free Getu Coalition of local groups working for his release (www.freegetu.org).

The coalition is also led by Peter Shell, 38, of Squirrel Hill, a self-employed computer musician and former CMU employee who describes himself as “a campus troublemaker from way back.” Shell met Waziruddin in 1995 while working on a campus campaign seeking justice for Jonny Gammage, the black motorist who had died during a traffic-stop encounter with white Brentwood Borough police.

Seated beside Tewolde in an empty CMU classroom, Shell and Waziruddin still seem amazed at what happened to Tewolde.

“All he had was four pieces of pita,” Waziruddin marvels.

“And a very dangerous pen,” Shell adds. The Coalition is hoping the pen is mightier than the sword: They posted his bail and are holding pickets and gathering letters urging District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. to drop or at least explain the charges. Waziruddin says the DA’s office is considering a meeting; Mike Manko, Zappala’s spokesperson, says he has never heard of the coalition’s request.

“When I was in prison I was waiting [for] just a kind of help that came from anywhere,” says Tewolde. Without money even for stamps and without a single relative realizing he had set out on a journey (or knowing which state Pittsburgh might be in, Waziruddin says), Tewolde nearly missed learning about the coalition, too. It took weeks for him to connect with the group formed to help him, especially since he claims that he was placed in isolation in the jail’s mental health ward, given several kinds of drugs and let out for only two random hours each week to shower and attempt a phone call -- when the coalition’s contact person may or may not have been home.

Waziruddin finally got on Tewolde’s official visitors list and saw him at the end of February. Even then, Tewolde wasn’t able to communicate very well. His memory of jail is still not clear, thanks to the medications he says were given to him involuntarily.

“They force me to inject” once, Tewolde says, “four or five polices were over there and they force.” He was later given pills for about two weeks -- antipsychotics and mood stabilizers, according to the misspelled drug names he was given by a prison worker -- but he says he never knew what they were, or why he had to take them, and they made him feel dizzy and sick to his stomach. “I was afraid to refuse because of my experiences with the injection,” he says. He was able to stop taking the pills only when a magistrate ordered him to be seen by the jail’s behavioral clinic, in time for him to plead not guilty at his March 15 hearing.

Bruce Dixon, head of the county Health Department, which oversees mental health care at the jail, is unfamiliar with the case but says, “Nobody has a legal authority to force anyone to take medications” in county prison. “In all honesty [prison workers] may have been dogmatic in what they said to [Tewolde]. There may have been a communication problem.” It is unusual but not unheard of for someone to have been evaluated by the jail’s behavioral clinic, Dixon adds; usually the unit, an arm of the courts, evaluates prisoners’ competence to stand trial.

Tewolde’s pro bono lawyer, Mike Healey of the Downtown firm Healey, Davidson and Hornack, is “concerned that [the case] is a reflection of some post-Sept. 11 hysteria or overreaction. Does it reflect a tendency to target immigrants or persons of color for arrest and suspicion of detention?” Tewolde is hoping the charges can be dismissed, if not at his June 19 hearing then sometime before the trial, but he realizes one factor may have caused his arrest in the first place and may be driving the process still: He may have been mistaken for an Arab or a Muslim.

His native country, Ethiopia, across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia, is neither. It is a place whose military government he tried hard to escape, efforts that landed him in jail several times, where he says he was interrogated and beaten and forced to join the military before escaping to a Yemen refugee camp for nearly eight years.

“It’s about the same experience here,” he says, turning away to smile.

At least a dozen local social justice groups form the Free Getu Coalition. A recent coalition press conference in front of the Greyhound bus station finds Tewolde standing anonymously in the circle of supporters as speaker after speaker calls for justice. He seems delighted at the speeches, and can hardly repress a smile at the mention of his name, or when a sign calling for his freedom is lifted. If he notices the disappointing lack of television coverage, he doesn’t mention it.

“At every court date we’ve had a picket,” Waziruddin tells the group defiantly, “and at every court date we’ve had a charge dropped.”

“What happened to Getu has made none of us safer,” adds a fellow member of the CMU activist group Zi, Mary Zimmerle. Molly Rush, head of the Thomas Merton Center, notes that when Tewolde visited her East Liberty organization she left him alone in the building’s kitchen and returned to find him sweeping the floor.

As Tim Stevens, head of the local NAACP chapter, moves forward to speak, a police wagon pulls up behind him. Three officers get out. The crowd eyes them warily as they shoo protestors off concrete planters owned by the office building next door and ostensibly make certain the sidewalk is passable.

“I didn’t know if we were being intimidated,” Stevens says as the police leave. “It is troubling when somebody comes to our city, their first 12-minute experience is [being] handcuffed.” Stevens hopes, he says, “we don’t have to feel intimidated when we assemble to talk about intimidation, because a couple of folks are sitting on some cement -- please!”

Then Stevens realizes that Tewolde has been standing silently in the crowd for the past 45 minutes. “I didn’t know it was him!” Stevens says. “He looks threatening as hell to me. I thought I was a small guy.”

Finally, Tewolde himself gets a chance to speak. His voice is entirely drowned out by buses and another police motorcycle passing. But he continues speaking. He doesn’t seem to notice the irony. And he has yet another pen in his shirt pocket the entire time.

writer: MARTY LEVINE

Comments:

 

1. Receptionists at DA Zappala's office acknowledged on Monday, June 10, that the DA's office did receive the Coalition's letter requesting a meeting, and that the DA would have seen it by the next morning.

2. Getu was given pills for five weeks, from sometime during or after his first week in prison until his release on bail, even after Getu had successfully passed the Behavior Clinic exam.  The Behavior Clinic exam was ordered on February 11, and is supposed to be administered within 72 hours.  As of a month later, at the Coalition's formation on March 11, there was no sign that Getu would be getting the exam or be allowed to see a lawyer.  The Coalition's intervention through the ACLU lead to an exam on March 13 (two days before his March 15 preliminary hearing) which he passed. Getu was still given drugs after the evaluation, but he was successfully able to refuse them at that time.  At other times he felt pressured to take the drugs because of the force used with his initial injection, because of guards accompanying the nurses, and because he was ordered to swallow the pills by staff.  From the beginning of the administration of the pills Getu doubted that the pills were justified, felt sick from taking them, and did not want them.

3. What Getu told the crowd was “Why are you hating?”(the last sentence on paragraph #6) not “hitting”.

Zi Position Statement on Case of Getu Berhanu Tewolde

Delivered at the Free Getu Coalition Press Conference on June 13, 2002:

 

Since September 11, Americans have been asking themselves about the need to choose between “homeland security” and civil rights, between suspending the judicial process and using reason to distinguish actual danger from imagined threats.  The case of Getu Berhanu Tewolde shows that this is a false choice – what is being done in the name of counter-terrorism today has nothing to do with security or vigilance, because what happened to Getu has not made any of us safer.  Instead, it has everything to do with fear and hysteria, because we convince ourselves to be afraid of people who we think are different from us.

All Getu had to do to be considered a threat to “civilization” and “democracy” was accidentally brush up against a manager on a Greyhound bus in Pittsburgh.  When Getu apologized, the manager immediately treated Getu as a threat, and the police were called.  The situation was labeled a Class I Bomb Threat, and the Bomb Squad, SWAT Units, and the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force were called.  Getu left the bus when ordered by the driver.  At the station he was approached by a police officer who did not identify himself or show a badge.  Getu says that the man looked like he was out to attack someone rather than investigate the facts.  When the man ordered Getu to sit, Getu refused -- the officer's first actions were to physically attack Getu, giving him a black eye and “disarming” him of a pen he was holding away from the officer.

               

Of course, the police did not find any bomb at the Greyhound station, and the FBI cleared Getu and refused to charge him.  The Pittsburgh Police arrested him anyway -- because of the “totality of the circumstances,” according to Commander Valenta.  This admission shows that what really happened here is not vigilance against terrorism, where objective facts are used to find criminals.  Instead, people feared Getu because he seemed different from them.  They thought they would be safer if Getu was beaten up and locked away in jail.  So what has happened here is not an example of reasonable security measures, but unrestrained hysteria.  Getu maintains he neither said nor did anything threatening.  Even though no explosives were found, and the FBI cleared him, the Pittsburgh Police thought he should be arrested anyway.

 

When we treat people who we think are different from us as the “other” and as the “enemy,” we dehumanize them.  This leads to horrible consequences, where we treat others in ways we would never tolerate for “ourselves.”  In prison, Getu was treated as less than human.  He was kept in 24-hour solitary confinement, forced to take heavy doses of psychiatric drugs that were unjustified, and denied visits from a lawyer until the Free Getu Coalition and ACLU intervened.  This is not meting out justice or incarcerating a criminal -- it is abuse.

 

The courts, which we are told weigh the evidence and offer due process, were going to let Getu slip deeper into this nightmare.  They've done it twice before here in post 9/11 Pittsburgh.  An art student who was arrested at the airport for having an Exacto knife went through a similar experience and had to plea bargain to leave the country even though there is no evidence that he is a terrorist.  Another man was arrested at the train station for asking why bags were not being checked by security as someone could bring a bomb -- he faced similar charges as Getu, but plead guilty because he thought he would be treated worse if he fought what was happening to him. A system that can allow these people to be victims in this way is not a system of justice, but a system bent on prosecuting and persecuting as much as possible those who look or act “different.”

 

If we in Pittsburgh, and in the US, do not see that what is happening today is not about security but about racial fears and war hysteria, and that criminalizing people based on fear does not make us any safer, then there will be more Getus.  Zi asks that you join the Free Getu Coalition in spreading awareness of this case and the pattern of abuse it exposes, as well as in demanding that all charges against Getu be dropped.  Work with us to change our society.