An Arresting Karl Rove Story

This one from Frank Cordaro and the Happy Warriors from the Des Moines Catholic Workers...

Catholic Workers Attempt to Arrest Karl Rove

Des Moines Catholic Workers Kirk Brown and Mona Shaw attempted to make
a citizen's arrest on Karl Rove at the opening of his talk on Sunday
March 9th talk in Iowa City. Shaw and Brown stood before an audience
that included about 200 protesters decrying Rove's appearance. The
message of the protesters included written and spoken exposes of
Rove's criminal and traitorous acts as well as shaming the University
of Iowa for providing a climate of legitimacy for a man they believed
should instead be indicted. Protesters showed up to expose Rove for
the criminal and traitor that he is, to call shame on the University
of Iowa for paying Rove $40,000 to speak and providing him a venue of
legitimacy on the University of Iowa campus.


In a speech at a protest rally held before Rove's talk, Des Moines
Catholic Worker Frank Cordaro submitted the reasoning behind the need
to attempt citizen's arrests of Rove whenever the opportunity arose.


"Iowans need to ask the bigger question of why Karl Rove is an
un-indicted war criminal and a free man. Isn't it because of our
gutless Congress, unwilling to do its duty and start impeachment
proceedings on Bush and Cheney and to start a war crimes case against
Rove 'the architect' to Bush's War on Iraq? Isn't it because our
judicial system, starting with the Supreme Court has been bought off
or scared off by the national security interest running our country?
And in our democracy when the Presidency is controlled by an criminal
gang and the Congress and Judicial branch or our government are
unwilling to do the right and just thing, it is left up to ordinary
citizens to step into the breach and attempt to make citizens arrest
of people like Karl Rove."


Brown and Shaw attempted such a citizen's arrest immediately following
Rove's introduction. Both held and began to read a written "Citizen's
Arrest Complaint" that cited Federal Criminal statutes and the Iowa
Code. Before they could finish reading the complaint, they were taken
into custody by University Police, informed they were under arrest,
and removed from the hall. Both were released in the foyer leading to
the hall and not allowed to return to the talk.


It is time for other citizens of conscience, as well, to take up the
challenge and bear our civic obligation to attempt citizen's arrests
of Karl Rove whenever the opportunity arises. This should be done so
Rove will always know that even though he and his friends in the White
House may have silenced the Congress and Judicial branch of our
government, they have not silenced the People who know of their crimes
and will not rest until justice is done.


---------------------------------------------------

Citizen's Arrest Complaint

United States of America, plaintiff
v.
Karl Christian Rove, defendant



Under the authority provided private citizens by Iowa Code: 804.9.2,
you, Karl Christian Rove, are being placed under arrest for high
crimes against the people of the United States committed during your
role as Deputy Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush as well as
while serving as a campaign consultant during the U.S. presidential
elections of 2000 and 2004.


You are charged with willful violation of the following federal codes
between the dates of January 1, 2000 until the present.


US Code: Title 42, the Voting Rights Act, for ELECTION FRAUD in the
2000 and 2004 presidential elections US Code, Chapter 19.371,
CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT OFFENSE OR TO DEFRAUD UNITED STATES, for false
information leading to the War in Iraq,


Several sections of US Code, Chapter 115, TREASON, SEDITION, AND
SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES including, but not limited to submitting and
fomenting false information leading to the War in Iraq, illegal
detainment and torture of prisoners in Guantanamo and elsewhere, and
other fraudulent acts leading to the deaths of nearly 4,000 U.S.
military personnel as well as approximately 300,000 Iraqi civilians.


Further, you may also be indicted for other violations of federal code
not listed in this complaint.


Any United States Marshall or any authorized U.S. Law Enforcement
Officer present is obligated under the provisions of Iowa Code 804.9.2
to take you into custody and bring you forthwith before the nearest
magistrate to answer these charges and to advise you of your rights
which include:


You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be
used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an
attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If
you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government
expense.


Respectfully submitted by and for citizens of the state of Iowa
On this 9th day of March, 2008.

Kirk Brown, DM Catholic Worker Community
1310 7th Street, Des Moines, IA 50314
kbmw36@yahoo.com


Mona Shaw, DM Catholic Worker Community
1310 7th Street, Des Moines, Iowa 50314
MonaShaw@aol.com

Frank Cordaro Last Report From Bridewell

Thanks again to Mona Shaw for forwarding these:

Fourth Report from Bridewell

By Frank Cordaro


October 25, 2007

Doing Time at Bridewell

In a confined space shared by 64 others and where one's basic needs are met, the most challenging concerns can be the social ones. The inmate population here is not much different from the inmate populations in other county jails. The most common characteristic shared by the inmates is poverty. The difference between locked up or out on the streets is money.

The old say, "You get all the justice you can afford."

That truth holds here, and these men can't afford much. Most of the inmates have yet to be sentenced. They are somehow caught in legal limbo, waiting for their case to be settled, waiting for a parole or probation violation to get sorted out, or waiting for a determination of their incarceration status. Most are non-violent offenders, charged with crimes that are drug or alcohol related. The more serious or violent offenders are kept back in the Polk County Jail. The racial composition here is at least 20% African American, a few Latinos, and the rest are white.

Dealing with foul and hateful language is difficult. Its use is common and filled with misogyny and homophobia. The hate speech is so frequent and common that many don't seem to notice it. While it's spoken primarily by younger inmates, there are a lot of them (the median age is 25); and this contributes to its frequent use. Though some older inmates, too, can be just as foul and hateful in their speech.

This speech added to the lack of privacy, the blare of the t.v. from 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., and the constant human chatter creates a din that is nerve rattling. Time for prayer or reflection is tough to manage.

Of course, there are times when the guys are disrespectful such as making noise during sleep hours, and fights do break out once in awhile. What is truly amazing, given the situation, is that most actually get along.

Thirty days is not enough time to carve out a regimen or the discipline for prayer, reading, writing, or exercise. The setting simply limits the possibilities. The first two weeks my primary reading material was the King James Bible, not my favorite translation. I try to frame my experience as an opportunity to learn to be present in the "now," the immediate moment.

In jail, it is easy to get lost in your own emotional issues and not be in the "now." Though in reality, I'm here in a small space with 64 others, I'm tempted to hide and spend most of my time inside my own mind thinking about things over which I have no control, worrying about what is happening on the outside, thinking about all the work I left behind, and all the work I have to do when I get out. The self-absorption can become all-consuming.

To offset this, I try to make myself available to those with whom I'm sharing this time and space. It did not take long for the guys to learn who I am and why I'm here, especially since a few have been guests of the Catholic Worker house (plus a few Des Moines Register newspapers with stories about me were passed around). Soon, I was spending a lot of time talking one-on-one with guys, hearing their stories, and actively listening.

It comes as no surprise that most come from difficult and broken lives. A lot of their troubles they bring on themselves, and a lot are brought on by factors beyond their control. Each story is far more complicated than it would seem on its surface, and none lend themselves to easy, pat answers. Sometimes just listening and caring seems to fill a real need.

I'm certainly not the only guy in our Pod offering a caring ear. One man stands out for me here as someone who went beyond listening and caring to serve as the Pod minister. Jerry Carr is 57, African American, and from Des Moines. Coincidentally, Jerry is one of those who has been a guest at the Catholic Worker house. Jerry has spent a lifetime on and off drugs and in and out of jails and prisons. He tells me he didn't have a "real" job until he was in his 50s. His physical bearing alone tells you his life has been hard and rough. He's lost half of his teeth, and this causes a slur when he talks.

I first noticed Jerry as the guy doing a daily Bible study in the Pod. Sometimes as many as 12 men attended his study group, most of them younger African American men, but not all. He also had a steady stream of men visiting him on his bottom bunk. So, Jerry was the man I approached about getting a Bible. That's when he invited me to join his group, and I gratefully accepted.

Jerry finally sobered-up a few years ago. He secured a minimum wage job and lives with his mother, who's been praying for him for years. He now attends church regularly and reads his Bible daily. He has two grown daughters and several grand kids and describes himself as "one of the richest men" he knows because he's survived and now has the love of God in his life. His greatest joys are being with his family, especially those grand kids. And, while he acknowledges he can't do anything about the chunk of life he's wasted; he's determined to make the best of the remaining years he says God has given him.

Jerry found himself back in jail after the driver of a car in which he was a passenger was pulled over for a minor traffic violation. The officer ran Jerry's name through their system and discovered a warrant for an unpaid fine in Las Vegas from several years ago that he'd forgotten. Jerry embraced this return to jail as an opportunity to study his Bible and to reach out to others about the life lessons he had learned and what his newly-found faith had taught him.

Jerry is not an academically learned man. I can barely understand him when he talks. Yet, he speaks from his heart and has a way of speaking directly and effectively to the young men who attended his Bible service.

Jerry left a few days ago. The day before he left, he shared with me his hope of starting a faith-based recovery meeting in Des Moines. He says his time in jail and his experiences with leading the Bible study group have boosted his confidence and his call to do so. He's promised to visit us at the Catholic Worker. I hope he does. I also hope he starts his faith-based recovery group. He has much to teach and share.

This is Frank's last report from Bridewell. He is scheduled to be released November 3, 2007.

Frank Cordaro - Prisoner for Christ's Sake!

I received a handwritten letter from Frank Cordaro from Bridewell Detention Center yesterday. It was on yellow legal paper and was signed "Frank Cordaro, Prisoner for Christ's Sake!". Whether that was intended to be ironic, I shall have to ask Frank when he is released on November 3rd.

In any case he was happy to hear from me and related that a blank postcard I had sent in my letter to him with the statue of liberty on it was confiscated as contraband--now that is ironic!

In any case, Frank looks forward to returning to the Catholic Worker's House in Des Moines and looks forward to visitors there.

Frank Cordaro's Latest Report from Bridewell

Thanks to Mona Shaw at the School of Moral Courage for providing this latest update from Frank Cordaro who is serving time for his participation in a sit-in at Se. Charles Grassley's Des Moines office:

We Build Them. We'll Fill Them.

Polk County (along with most county jails in Iowa) has had an over-crowding problem for years. I remember Blessed Bishop Dingman leading the community call to build a new eight-floor jail in the 1970s. I also remember we Catholic Workers disagreed with the good Bishop on that call.

(This was one of a few times we've disagreed with Dingman.)

We told the Bishop that if we built it, we would fill it. Catholic Workers believed that what we needed were more community-based correctional options. This was before the national move away from a rehabilitation-driven prison system to one that is strictly punishment-based. It was also before Ronald Reagan's war on drugs and the national push for mandatory sentences.
Thirty years later, the war on drugs has been lost; our justice protections have been gutted; and we have a prison population that is exploding. (In fact, the prison system is one of a very few growth industries in Iowa.) Local, County, and State governments continue pouring our limited tax dollars into the bottomless hole of building and maintaining more and more prisons.

It wasn't long after the 1970s that the newly-constructed Polk County Jail was filled to capacity and that the overflow of prisoners was then transferred to other county jails in Iowa. This transferring continued until Polk County figured it made more fiscal sense to add the Annex—an old warehouse located two blocks from the "new" jail that was converted into additional incarceration space. This "fix" didn't last long. Soon, both the new jail and the Annex were overflowing, and inmates were again being transferred to other county jails. They were, that is, until it was discovered that it was cheaper to transfer overflow prisoners out of state to a private, for-profit prison in Pattonsburg, Missouri. The decision was such a hit that the Polk County Land and Leasing Group (LLC) built another for-profit prison in 2004 in Bethany, Missouri.

My short stay in the Polk County jail lasted for just two nights. On Sunday, October 7, I was loaded into a van with eleven other inmates and driven to Bethany, Missouri, and the Bridewell Detention Facility (www.bridewelldetention.com). An hour and a half out of Des Moines, we were in Bridewell's Receiving and Delivery Unit, where we were issued a new set of jail clothes, reporting to medical staff, and assigned to a pod and bunk. I was assigned, then taken to Pod Two, Bunk 80.

I've spent time in many county jails through the years. They are all fundamentally warehouses for human beings. Phil Berrigan used to call them "human dust bins." Some are certainly better than others. None of them are good.

There are no educational programs, no inmate work assignments (except for trustees), little or no outdoor access or exercise space, limited religious services, and paltry libraries or access to reading materials. The food is always poor and nutritionally inadequate. People are just stored in very small, crowded spaces locked down, out-of-sight from the rest of society.

I would rate the Bridewell Detention Facility on the high end of incarceration facilities. A large, metal-framed, steel building, it doesn't look like your typical jail. It sits just off Interstate 35 on the north side of Bethany in an industrial zone. The facility has four separate wings called "Pods" in which most inmates are placed. Inmates can also be held in the "Hole" (or the disciplinary cells) and lately in the recreation room, a place for the overflow of inmates that Bridewell, too, is experiencing.

Each Pod has 32 steel, two-tiered bunk beds and holds 64 inmates. Pod Two is 80-by-20-feet with a 20-foot ceiling. There is a wall-mounted television and eight steel tables with benches. Each table seats eight. There is a row of eight urinals and two toilets along the wall in one corner and six showers along the other wall in the same corner. There is a bank of ten sinks that also serves as a four-foot partition wall for the showers and toilets. There are two telephone polls with four phones on each. Each Pod has a door that leads to an outdoor 20-by-40-foot smoking area. There is an Officers' Station in each Pod.

What first impressed me was the Pod's cleanliness. Each Pod is well-lighted, and, with its high ceiling, you don't experience the claustrophobia that usually comes with time in jail. Bridewell provides plenty of clothing, i.e. you get three clothing changes per week and a weekly bedding change. Toilet paper and cleaning materials are replenished promptly.

The food earns a poor rating (as it does in all jails). The meat is the poorest quality. There is far too much starch in the diet, and nearly everything comes in a can. The dietary highlight of the day is the banana or orange served at breakfast.

Those who receive money from home (not all inmates do) can also buy things at the Jail Commissary. The Commissary list is very limited, and there are no healthy food items on it. It's also very expensive. A three-ounce bag of Ramen Noodles is $.75 and a stamped-envelope is $.60. This routine pricing for jail commissaries is also a way to unfairly tax or punish low-income families who send money for these items to inmates—families who've done nothing wrong but care about someone in jail. Someone is making a lot of money off of their love. One good thing, however, about the Bridewell Commissary is that inmates may place orders seven days a week, and their orders are filled the following day.

The biggest plus--for most inmates--that Bridewell offers are its liberal smoking privileges. Inmates are permitted smoke breaks every two hours between 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. Since many facilities don't allow smoking at all (and while I don't smoke, at least 80% do), the privilege is quite appreciated. Add to this the cable television (of course the only way to broadcast television inside any facility is through a cable system), and daily movies (sadly the most popular films are also the most violent); a lot of guys are doing rather well here.

The inmate-friendly policies, however, are not driven by concern for the inmates. The motivation for these "liberal" policies is to create a safer and more efficient environment for the guards. A distracted and less-agitated inmate population is easier to manage.

I am most impressed here by how well the guards interact with inmates. They are friendly, professional, and always pleasant. At least one guard is present in the Pods at all times. Usually, though, there are more, especially at meal times, during head counts, and when clothing and bedding are exchanged. There is always at least one guard on-duty in the smoke break area. Since most of the guards are smokers, this duty seems to have mutual benefit.

If there is any sign of trouble, support guards are always on-hand to assist the guard assigned to the Pod. So far, their tactics to maintain order are effective without being Draconian. Very impressive.

There are downsides to being held at Bridewell. It is 75 miles from Polk County, and the distance makes it harder for inmates to stay connected to their families and support. It's far more difficult to do legal work for one's case or to have access to attorneys from here. Making the trip to visit is hardly worth the effort, since the maximum length permitted for a visit is twenty minutes and can be limited to as few as ten minutes. This means a visitor would usually spend between two and three hours on the road to spend a few minutes talking to someone on the phone through a plate glass window.

Not that the option of making phones calls to home is a financially feasible one for many. The cost for phone calls (which is typical of most jails and prisons) can be called immorally obscene. It costs a dollar per minute to place a collect call (another way to burden families who are already financially stressed). Phone cards may also be purchased through the commissary at the "bargain" price of fifty cents per minute.

The comprehensive downside of it all for Polk County is all about the money it's costing all of us. At it stands now, Polk County is filling its own jail, its Annex, the two for-profit centers in Missouri, and still farming out inmates to other jails as well. The County's present solution to the problem is the soon-to-be-completed and second "new" jail on the north side of Des Moines.
Despite all the promises and hype made about the new jail, we in the Catholic Worker community still maintain, "We build them. We'll fill them."

"Free Frank" Message of the Day

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

Winston Churchill (1874-1965) British politician.

Free Frank Cordaro

Pictures from yesterday's war protest. Frank Cordaro is being held in a private jail in Missouri for protesting the war by sitting-in at Senator Grassley's Des Moines Office.

Free Frank Cordaro

Friends,

Anti-War Hero Fr. Frank Cordaro was arrested for sitting in at Senator Grassley's office in Des Moines and sentenced to 30 days at a corporately-owned jail in Missouri. It is up to each of us to raise our voices to protest his incarceration and the war. In a very real sense, Frank is being made an example of, and for that reason alone, we must not be silenced. A way we can show our solidarity with Frank is to continue to protest the war and bring a "Free Frank Cordaro" signs with you to hold up and/or pass out.We meet at 5:15 on Clinton/Washington St. tomorrow (Friday).

Frank is a P.O.W., we must be his voice.

PS you can click on the photo above to make your own Free Frank sign.

Peace,

Garry

Protester Frank Cordaro Privatized in a Missouri Lock-up

"Novice" Mona Shaw at the Catholic Workers House in Des Moines writes:

Last night Frank was transferred from the Polk County Jail to Bethany Missouri. He is doing fine, but will miss the visits he could have had here in Des Moines.

Send your mail and/or US Money Order to:

Frank Cordaro, Pod 2, Bunk 80
Bridewell Detention Facility
4203 Roleke
Bethany, MO 64424

It is nice to know that citizens can be held in privately run jails, particularly this one that looks like a commercial hog containment lot:

More about the "Bridewell Experience"

The Bridewell LLC Detention Facility provides it's service to the private corrections sector and houses an excess inmate population from surrounding counties and/or states. We seek to add clients from around the Midwest as well as pursuing a federal contract. Bridewell LLC was incorporated in January of 2004, as a wholly owned subsidiary of Polk County Land and Leasing Group LLC. Initially, the first client that enterd into an agreement was Polk County, Iowa.

The Bridewell Detention Facility management is based upon "Direct Supervision" jail philosophy, a more modern and humane approach over a traditional linear-style institution. Direct Supervision philosophy is a combination of management style and architectural design which facilitates increased staff and inmate contact and works to reduce tension and improve security within the correctional setting.

These facilities like the Bridewell Detention Facility are known as "Direct Supervision" jails, and they are generally regarded as the state of the art in jail design. In form, function, and style, they are significantly different from the old traditional jails. They have proven to be secure, safe, and cost-efficient places for inmates to live and for staff to work.

Contact Information
Bridewell Detention Facility
4203 Roleke Drive
Bethany, Missouri 64424

Phone (660) 425-7663
Fax (660) 425-7378
E-mail info@bridewelldetention.com