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Native American activist, Leonard Peltier, recently underwent surgery by a Maxillofacial expert at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Dr. E.E. Keller performed a five hour surgery on Peltier who had been suffering for the last four years from a severe condition which caused his jaw to be frozen open 13 millimeters. X-rays taken on Monday, March 20 showed that Leonard Peltier suffered from ankylosis on both sides of his mandible, meaning that his jaw was completely frozen and immobile, according to Keller. Keller reported that the surgery went smoothly and Peltier’s jaw has been returned to normal. He said that Peltier is happy and recovering comfortably.

Leonard Peltier was suddenly transferred from Leaven-worth Federal Penitentiary to the Rochester Medical Facility on Monday, March 20. Neither Peltier nor his attorneys knew that the transfer would take place. Prison authorities have denied Peltier’s attorneys access to Peltier by phone or visit thus far. Until today, they were given no information by the Bureau of Prisons about Peltier’s current situation.

These are excerpts from a speech delivered at a Columbus Metropolitan Club Luncheon Debate on Wednesday, March 29, 2000. Presenting the Refuge Opposition perspective was Madison County Commissioner David Dhume.

Hello, my name is Paul Dumouchelle. I am Secretary of Darby Creek Association, a local volunteer group of 150 citizens living throughout Central Ohio. Our mission is to preserve, protect and restore the entire Darby Creek Ecosystem. Darby Creek Association was founded in 1972.

The Michigan Law Reform Group and hundreds of activists in the state of Michigan are pushing a historic Personal Responsibility Amendment -- “Asserting the private jurisdiction of the individual!” -- to change the laws concerning private drug use and possession.

PRA2000 ends marijuana prohibition and forfeitures. PRA2000 will stop prosecutions, license suspensions and asset forfeitures for the limited adult or medical use and possession of:

• three mature cannabis plants (less than 10 ft. tall), seedlings, and three ounces of homegrown cannabis
• within theprivacy of a person’s private residence
• in a non-public manner not accessible by or visible to children.
• non-profit purposes only, and yes, you must be 21years old.

The initiative does not allow driving under the influence or the purchase/sale of marijuana. It earmarks other forfeiture for voluntary treatment and education and eliminates exposure of cannabis users to dealers.

Petitions are available online at www.ballot2000.net

Quietly, and very strategically, the ultra-right is making its way into classrooms across the country—and many here in Central Ohio. The “pro-family” mission to promote “community values” sounds innocent enough, but beneath the plastic smiles and glossy brochures is an anti-choice, anti-sexuality education agenda that seeks to dismantle and eventually ban basic sex education.

These small, but well-organized groups have big budgets and big buddies in state legislatures and on school boards. Locally, right-wing groups have spearheaded several attempts at discrediting the Ohio Department of Education’s comprehensive sexuality education curriculum and cutting off unrelated federal funding for health education. These moralist, fundamentalist leaning groups have denounced sex-ed curricula as “better suited for Hustler than for health class” which fuels their fervor for spreading abstinence-only curricula and “born again virgin” programs.

This is a testimonial, brothers and sisters, on behalf of the Rainbow Farm in Vandalia, Michigan, an institution keeping alive the dream of the rainbow people in the Hempstock nation. I’ve been to the festivals at the Farm and witnessed the sacred rituals and magical rites. There’s no better place to be in the Midwest on Memorial Day then somewhere floating over the Rainbow encampment thinking about our heroes and warriors that have sacrificed so greatly for freedom. Those who’ve been arrested or broken in the insane and reactionary war on a weed.

The freedom to enjoy music, to be left alone, not to be criminalized in the fascist war on drugs for smoking a joint. The freedom from mindless consumerism, materialism and selfishness. The freedom to establish our own liberated zones without being profiled by Rambos with a badge and a gun. The freedom to dream of a society with kinder and gentler buds and the widespread use of organic hemp.

Hemp is the proverbial “pot of gold,” riches beyond belief that can move us away from the artificial petrochemical culture. The miracle weed that we can wear, burn, eat and write on — can I get a “Right On” brothers and sisters?

“Yeah, they got us listed as subversive. We expect a police helicopter to follow the march,” James Moss, President of Police Officers for Equal Rights (POER) assured me as we lined up to march to the Stand Up For Justice Rally. At first I thought he was joking. What was so subversive about a bunch of black people marching for civil rights on the predominantly black Near East side from an attorney’s office to a church?

Marching from Hamilton Park toward East Broad Street with a black police helicopter hovering overhead seemed a bit odd in everyone’s all-American city, Columbus, Ohio. It did stimulate a quick flashback to my stint as an election observer and journalist in Suchitoto, El Salvador. But hell, I’d expected military and police helicopters to intimidate people in a repressive Third World sham-democracy undergoing its first real democratic elections. After we crossed Broad Street, we were treated to Soviet-era police state tactics: undercover cops in church parking lots, plainclothes officers lurking in alleys with videocameras and a massive display of squad cars on a street where crack houses usually operate openly.

My interest grew, and I took a couple of classes and learned how to operate a camera. Finally I was worthy of getting hit on the head with the bars and tone tape, making me an official ACTV volunteer. (Now maybe that was just done special for me, but the atmosphere was spontaneous and whimsical at that time.) Whenever I could make time, I would gladly volunteer to run a camera or the cranky chyron graphics generator for anyone who needed help and was willing to put up with a beginner. To my delight there were a number of producers who welcomed me.

A year or so later, some friends suggested that a group of us do our own show, and for over 10 years, Vast Wasteland was central Ohio’s (insert tongue in cheek here) video guide to pop culture. But in the fall of last year (1999), we made the decision to stop production despite the warm positive response we were still receiving from the majority of the viewing community. Anyone who has every participated in a public access production knows that the reward comes from learning that you have reached your audience and they have responded as you had hoped. Over the years we were well rewarded.

Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush — the son of former CIA Director George Herbert Walker Bush — found himself in trouble and faltering after his New Hampshire defeat to Senator John McCain. A shadowy, secretive and spooky network centered around right wing religious organizations and causes rushed to his rescue in South Carolina.

At the crux of this network is the Council for National Policy (CNP) founded in 1981 by the Rev. Tim LaHaye and T. Cullen Davis, members of the ultra-right John Birch Society with financial backing from Nelson Bunker Hunt. Currently, the clandestine CNP has over 500 members and serves as the Who’s Who network of the United States’ right wing. At the center of the CNP, with a seemingly endless supply of questionable cash, is self-proclaimed Messiah and mind control cult leader Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

Nearly five years after its purchase of ABC, the Disney Company made history in late March by subjecting a confused 6-year-old boy to a preposterous "interview." For ABC News superstar Diane Sawyer, it was all in a day's work. But former viewers of the Mickey Mouse Club had good reason to cringe. Whatever his failings, Mickey never engaged in such flagrant child abuse on national television.

For three days, "Good Morning America" featured excerpts from Sawyer's visit with Elian Gonzalez, a traumatized child whose departure from Cuba several months ago ended with a shipwreck that killed his mother. Sawyer sat on the floor with little Elian and eased into questions about whether he'd rather live in Cuba or Florida. The footage, repackaged for ABC's "20/20" show, was all grist for the ABC/Disney profit mill.