INSIDE DC COURTROOM

Our trial inside DC Superior Court began at 9:30 am this morning. Nineteen of us are on trial for our March 19 anti-war protest outside the White House.

The judge ruled against our motions to dismiss and to have three witnesses appear on our behalf to testify about U.S. government violations of international law.

The ruling against the international law witnesses was made despite a beautiful statement by one of our defendants Richard Duffree who said, "We are entitled to present our grievances to the government somewhere." The point being where else can the people go to register their complaints about presidential war making when they have been repeatedly ignored at every level of government?

The judge did acknowledge that we had few "effective" alternatives available to us but stated that we had alternative "legal" avenues available to us.

There is a huge divide, an enormous wall, standing between the reality of our time and the ability to get an honest and fair hearing before the U.S. legal system which appears to exist primarily to protect our present corporate dominated oligarchy.

This trial is likely to take 2-3 days before it is concluded. I will try to keep posting as we go along.