Briana Waters is a friend of mine. Let me start out by saying that. I met her at the Renaissance Faire, where she played wild gypsy violin. We were all studying music there, under an old Persian music master who held court on Zantour, a form of hammered dulcimer. I was torturing the doumbek, a hand drum, trying to keep up with these haunting and intricate melodies played with such ease by our master and Briana. Eventually we developed the easy camaraderie shared by those who perform together, and, in the breaks between sets or in the long summer night, we would tell each other the tales of our lives.
Time passed, I was already raising a family, and Briana got married, and had a kid. We continued to meet at the different events we worked, and shared good family time together. Turns out Briana went to Evergreen college, where she was a peace advocate, and an environmentalist. Briana loved a young hothead, who, like other hotheaded young men before him dreamed of revolution in a glorious cause.
Briana heard about a valley up north, where there were loggers going broke, and homesteaders going broke, and a big logging company coming through like some glad handed politician, with promises and allusions to future benefit. The logging company wanted to clear cut the area.
Now, I don't know if you've ever seen a clear cut, but it's like the hand of satan came through and played 52 pick up with the forest. Havoc reigns supreme, and nothing lives, other than the 'lucky' tortured matchsticks that are left. Talk about the original terrorists. Imagine, a whole forest full of living things eradicated in the space of a day or six. Imagine the devastation to the very architecture of the forest. Now image you are a poor isolated valley that would flood from the previous years clear-cuts, and mudslides would come after that to cut off this small town from 'civilization'. The last thing these poor people needed to hit their back yard was one more clear cut.
Now imagine these people approached by some corporate logging firm. Imagine they were glad-handed, and promised future progress and unspecified benefits, in return for letting these corporate goons decimate their ability to make a living or even merely eat out of the forest. That's right, they wanted another clear-cut. As is the way of corporate raiders, they had each 'side' of the valley, the loggers and the homesteaders, pointing fingers at the other side, and claiming each other was evading progress, or threatening the other's livelihoods. Divide and conquer at it's finest.
Well, youth is fleeting, precious and precocious. Don't'cha know it, Briana, for a senior project in school took a film crew and make a documentary about the peace process. Through the sheer bravado of youth, along with some incredible music from her violin, Briana got the sides to talk to each other, and, ya know what? They were a lot more alike, those folks , then they thought. They each had families, and people they loved, and a living to make from the forest. They started talking to each other,working together, and by golly, the valley was saved. That's the kind of person Briana is. She just thinks about what needs to be done, and does it with style.
Now I'm a pernicious person, and I've been known to tear the paint off of the broad side of a barn with my tongue (even when it's firmly planted in my cheek;-). Occasionally, as tiredness overtakes control, I've been know to say some pretty stupid and thoughtless things. I never heard one word of violence out of Briana, ever. She is one of the most peaceful people I know, both in word and deed.
Anyway, peaceful Briana loved a young hothead who was enamored with the ELF, that's the Earth Liberation Front, to the uninitiated. These young hotheads, as is the way of young hotheads everywhere wanted to use all that excess adrenaline to good use, and would create confrontational solutions to their perceived problems of rampant environmental degredation. Well, Briana went about her business, starting to teach the violin and all, and young hothead heard about a supposed lab at the UofW which was supposed to contain embryonic GMO trees, or at least the fixin's. Young hotheads decided to burn the lab to the ground. In retrospect, of course, there had to have been better solutions. Turns out it was the wrong building, and they did millions of dollars worth of damage to the University.
Well, young hotheads need to be brought to justice, and these certainly were. They were duly questioned by the FBI, and were asked for any accomplices, in exchange for the usual plea bargaining to a lighter sentence.
No one mentioned Briana in the first round of questioning. Of course, because emerging fascist societies (surely this doesn't describe us?) need an enemies list, the feds weren't satisfied with the initial confessions. Surely there must be something more? Seems like Briana's name came out of the hat in the second or third round. Well, she was subpoenaed, and showed up in court. She, thinking of her youthful experiences, thought, 'well, I'll just go tell them I'm innocent then".
What happened next shouldn't happen in a free society, although mistakes are made, I hear tell. I think the big difference between a free and fair society and one which is closing down is that the free one will seek to correct it's mistakes, and then fix things so these mistakes don't happen again. Anyway, Briana got her trial, taking her carpenter husband and her three year old baby to Seattle with her.
Briana had physical evidence to prove she was elsewhere, and, quite frankly, I've never known her to lie, and she never said she did this thing. Facts were tossed back and forth, the evidence was mostly circumstantial and hearsay. The jury adjourned for deliberation.
Funny. If you can call it that. During the deliberation portion of the trial, a block of brand new, but unsold, ecologically 'green' homes burned to the ground. Someone conveniently left a sign on a piece of four by eight that somehow escaped the inferno. It was signed ELF. Maybe there's more members out there, I wouldn't know, I was never one of them, but I don't think that someone who is so careful of trees would do something like that to someone like Briana. Doesn't seem to add up somehow.
I can understand, however, that if I was a fascist in the slightly-past-nascent-takeover-phase, that one of the scariest things to my regime would be someone who enabled people to talk to each other. I can see how Briana (who weighs maybe 130 in fighting violin) could be so dangerous that they would have to manipulate the perception of reality like this. Of course, it's probably not really personal, with Briana, at all. They aren't convicting Briana-the-actually-bad, they are symbolically scape-goating the innocent, so the hopefully entranced public will see the shadow puppet and not the stark reality of more corporate loss of both freedom and environment.
I have had this on my mind for some time, but I promised I wouldn't write about this until Briana's sentencing.
Briana was sentenced today for 6 years hard time. Her daughter will be near 10 years old when she gets out, if appeal fails. Thankfully, Briana is being moved to Dublin, California, closer to family and home. I have hope that we here in the great state can bring justice to an innocent woman. Because if we can't, who's to bring justice to us, when the knock comes upon our own door?
Truth is hard. It requires a responsibility to oneself and others. Peace can only come through truth. Briana Waters, la Paloma, you will be free, in quantum peace.
update: Briana Waters was moved to a correctional institution on the East Coast, far away from her family. Apparently there are so many green scare prisoners that all the west coast prisons were taken—homeland security will not let them stay in the same prison, as they are accounted terrorists, and must be kept seperate. This makes it extremely difficult for Briana's family to visit, and for the appeals process. Letters to your favorite politician would be appreciated.
UPDATE! October 14th, 2010. Briana Waters has won her right to appeal, and is released from federal prison, and back in the arms of her family today. This is a great wrong that has been righted, and while nothing can give Briana back the time that she lost with her young daughter, the fact that the great federal machinery of justice moved at all is a miracle. Thanks to God, and may Briana experience nothing but the quiet love of her family and freedom hereafter.
In quantum peace...
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