New Hampshire Activists Look to a Legal Revolution

Below is a reprint of a Boston Globe article which reciently came across my desk.



Associated Press / April 17, 2006

Concord N.H. -- The peace activests arrived at Senator Judd Gregg's office with cookies for the staff and planned to atay until the senator responded to their request for a meeting. At the end of the day, they left in handcuffs.

Now they plan to invoke the New Hampshire Constitution's right of revolution in their legal defenst.

The court case against eight activists arrested in Gregg's Concord office in December has been building for almost a year.

Members of New Hampshire Peace Action have been trying to get the Republican senator to hold public meetings to discuss exit stratigies from Iraq. In addition to letters, petitions, and protests outside Gregg's office startibg last April, two delegations have been arrested during the past nine months for refusing to leave the office at closing time.

Gregg has responded with a couple of letters, including one last month.

"As your arrests and protests have certainly made (your) unalterable commitment to your position clear, a public event as a further stage would seem to have no practical purpose," he wrote to Eileen Reardon, who was arrested last summer.

The activists beg to differ.

"People are being killed every day and the prblem remains," said David Van Strien, a retired Unitatian minister from Petersborough who was among those arrested in December. "He should be willing to discuss it with us and to listen to un...Give and thke -- that's what Democracy is susposed to be."

Guy Chichester, a long time activist who was also attested, agrees. "He's ducking his responsibility when he ducks meetings eith his constituents," he said,. Just sending letters is "Insufficient and unacceptable."

Gregg's chief of staff, Joel Maiolo, said in a statement that Gregg meets regularly with New Hampshire residents on a variety of issues. He has been clear about his support for administration policy in Iraq and he understands the position of the protesters.

Similar conflicts between Republicans and activests have happened around the country. In Maine, 19 people were arrested for obstructing a hallway.

Members of Peace Action Maine say they staged eight office occupations involving members of Maine's congretional delegation but were only arrested once, in December. They didn't contest the charge and were sentenced to community service.

In New Hampshire, the activists arrested in June were convicted of tresspassing and fined. But those arrested in December go to court next month, they plan to rely on an unusual provision of New Hampshire's constitution, the "right of revolution."

"Government being instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the whole community and not for the private interest or emoulment of any one man, family, or class of men;therefore, whenever the ends of government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered and all other means of redress are ineffectual, the people may, and of right ought to reform the old or establish a new government. The doctrine of noresistance against arbitray power, and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind," article 10 reads.

"It is an incredible thing that it is in our constitution and it perfectly fits our condition," said Jamills El Shaife, one of those arrested.

Lawyer Steve Cherry, who is not charging for his work, is beginning his research.

"I don't expect to find a lot of case law, but I think it's highly significant that it's in the state consitution," he said.

Richard Hesse, a retired professor at the Franklin Pearse Law Center, the right of revolution was common was common when the constitutions were drafted in Colonial times, but most states have since dropped it.

Though the right is invoked occassionally, Hess doubts it will win the day for the activists.

"The way the courts have interpretedit, as long as the ordinary avenues of redress of grievance remain, there's no right to overthrow th government," he said.

In the case of an unresponsive elected official, people could vote him out.
Chichester said he used the right of revolution successfully years age when he sawed down a pole whil protesting construction of a Seabrook nuclear power plant. But that case went before a jury and not a district court judge.

 

We need more people willing to go to jail for what they believe.