Sept 26, 2001
ASHLAND, Wisc. - Trespassing charges were dismissed against four anti-nuclear protesters the day prior to their scheduled jury trial in Ashland County Circuit Court.
Ashland County D. A. Michael Gableman moved the court for an order dismissing the four cases on the grounds that the cases were "more appropriately venued in Federal Court, and the State intends to refer the same for federal prosecution."
Circuit Court Judge Robert Eaton then ordered the dismissal Sept. 25.
The activists, two from Duluth, Minn. and two from Luck, Wisc., had been ticketed for trespassing during a May 12, 2001 demonstration at the Navy's submarine communications system Project ELF near Clam Lake, Wisc. More than 575 trespassing citations have been issued to protesters at the site since the end of the cold war. Some 48 nuclear weapons resisters have served a total of more than 48 months in jail for refusing to pay fines imposed for walk-on demonstrations at the site.
The ELF (for extremely low frequency) transmitter sends one-way signals to submerged missile-firing submarines around the world.
One defendant, Jane Hosking, of Luck, served 60 days in jail in 1999 for refusing to pay and ELF trespass fine. Another, John LaForge, also of Luck, served 7 1/2 months in 1995 and 60 days this spring for refusing to pay trespass fines. Another, Kurt Greenhalgh of Duluth, served 60 days in 2000 for the same refusal.
In an interview in his courthouse office, Gableman told the defendants today that he didn't see what was to be gained by prosecuting the case.
"We've definitely turned a corner in the campaign against ELF," said LaForge, one of the defendants and a staff member of Nukewatch, a peace group that has organized dozens of protests at the Navy facility.
"The County is no longer willing to carry water for the federal government and prosecute our nonviolent resistance to nuclear madness," LaForge said.
In 1996, two protesters, Donna Howard and Tom Hastings, who actually cut down three of the 4,000 telegraph poles that hold the ELF antenna were found not guilty of sabotage, after the defendants showed that the Trident submarine fleet cannot act in defense of the United States but only in an aggressive, first-strike or illegal nuclear attack.
IN RELATED NEWS:
The ELF system is currently the subject of a series of public hearings sponsored by Hayward, Wisconsin's Lac Courte Oreilles Tribe's ELF Public Participation Project. The hearings are designed to educate the public about the possible human health and environmental hazards caused by the ELF system. The hearings are free and the public is urged to participate.
Over 40 peer-reviewed studies now point to a link between long-term exposure to ELF electromagnetic radiation and the incidence of childhood leukemia and other cancers.
Written comments are welcome also, and will be included in the record of the proceedings. Write to: D. Peterson, LCO Community Health Center, 13390; W. Trepania Rd., Hayward, WI 54843.
One hundred people attended the Sept. 18, hearing at the Great Lakes Visitor
Center in Ashland, WI.
