Beginning tomorrow, Tuesday Aug 9, the estate of reggae artist Peter Tosh is joining with Amnesty International in a campaign to draw attention to the plight of Mexican human rights defender Lydia Cacho.  Amnesty is offering a free download of Tosh’s anthem, “Get Up Stand Up,” to people taking action in her case at http://bit.ly/standupforlydia. Cacho, a Cancún-based journalist and human rights defender, has received numerous death threats by phone and email, and there are serious fears for her safety.

Tosh–the most outspoken of Jamaica’s reggae pioneers – helped popularize  “Get Up, Stand Up” (co-written with Bob Marley) which has become a standard at Amnesty International rallies and at civil and human rights fundraisers, large and small, around the world. 2011 marks the human rights organization’s 50th anniversary

In the weeks to come, Tosh’s music will also be used in campaigns from Greenpeace International, (now in its 40th year), Students for a Sensible Drug Policy and the Marijuana Policy Project.

Students for a Sensible Drug Policy will use Tosh’s “Legalize It” in efforts to support new federal legalization legislation introduced in Congress in July.

The union of Tosh’s music and  activist campaigns follows the release of the expanded Legacy Edition reissues of Tosh’s seminal solo albums Legalize It (1976) and Equal Rights (1977), both available online.

The release of Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung Suu Kyi yesterday after spending 15 of the past 21 years in prison or under house arrest was thrilling, uplifting. Pressure on the Burmese government came from many angles, economic, diplomatic. And from the voices of people around the world lifted in song.

One cannot discount or ignore the power of that rock n roll played in Suu Kyi’s release. Over decades U2 has championed human rights, specifically through Amnesty International. For their monumental, astounding super-gianormous 360 Degrees tour which began in 2009 and continues through 2011, U2 staged a specific tribute to Aung Suu Kyi  and Amnesty International during the song “Walk On,” recounting her history as the democratically elected leader of Burma (Myanmar) and then as a prisoner of the military which took control of the country.  (wonder what they’ll do now for that part of the show?)

Weird side note: In his book Decision Points, George W. Bush recounts how he met with Bono to discuss financial aid for Third World countries. The twoo had a great chat, and after Bono left,  one of his staff asked if he knew who Bono was. Bush said that of course he did — he was the rock star who

used to be married to Cher.

U2′s 360 Degree tour set attendance records; in 2009 the show was seen by over 3 million people; the 2010 has been equally as well received. That’s a lot of people around signing postcards for Amnesty’s campaign to free  Suu Kyi.

U2 fan wearing Suu Kyi mask at concert

Amnesty International has storied history in Ireland; one the NGO’s founding members, Sean MacBride, was the son of Irish revolutionary–and muse of William Butler Yeats–Maud Gonne and Major John MacBride who was executed for his part in the 1916 Easter Uprising which led to the Republic of Ireland’s independence from England.

At 15, Sean MacBride joined the Irish Volunteers and was imprisoned in 1921. Released in 1924, he studied law and eventually became an Irish politician, and worked throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s for human rights worldwide. MacBride was appointed to number of positions at the United Nations including Assistant Secretary General,  President of the General Assembly, High Commissioner for  Refugees and High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Yeah, rock ‘n roll changed something in world. Well, many things.

Redwood baron William Carson's mansion, now an exclusive club

So, one of the people I got to spend  time with here in Humboldt kinda blew me away. He was friend from school but we’d lost touch over the years, so when this came up in passing during a drop-by visit, I was sort of jaw-droppingly stunned, though modestly he claims the lawyers did all the hard work.

In September 1997, Eric Samuel Neuwirth was the first victim of pepper application directly and purposefully to the eyes by law enforcement during a non-violent protest.  Part of Headwaters Forest Defense, a timberland protection group, Neuwirth and six other protesters chained themselves together inside the offices of Pacific Lumber in Scotia, California. They were connected with their arms encased by metal pipes, their wrists attached to rods inside the pipes in such a way they could they could release themselves.  While they were trespassing, they posed no threat to law enforcement or to those in the building.

Neuwirth did not release himself from his peaceful and passive position of civil disobedience, despite what the 9th Circuit Court later ruled was excessive use of force by law enforcement personnel, and what several major newspaper editorials and Amnesty International called torture: The use of severe physical or mental pain or injury to punish or coerce.

Officers first applied pepper spray to corners of his eyes as an example, then to those of the other protesters who did not release from their devices. The chemical was then reapplied and officers sprayed the protesters’ eyes with water for an hour while they remained chained together. Eventually Neuwirth and others were carried out of the offices and the pipes holding them together taken off using a grinder, the standard practice by law enforcement. Which they could have done in the first place, actually.

The law enforcement tactic of applying pepper spray to non-violent protesters who were fastened together continued at two other old growth forest protests. Uniformed police performing this action were videotaped in the offices of  then-Congressman Frank Riggs, yanking  back chained protesters’ heads,  lifting their eyelids and using a cotton swab to put the caustic chemical directly on the eyeball, as well as pepper spraying the victims from as close away as three inches. In the three incidents, there were eight plaintiffs total, each of whom, after a seven-year series of trials and appeals, received a symbolic $1 in damages from the jury.

For Neuwirth, the case was about our civil rights and liberties, and making sure that others who protest non-violently could do so safely, as well as drawing attention to the logging of old growth redwoods. Until this case the Eureka Police Department considered any form of civil disobedience to be “active protesting,” thus justifying the use of excessive force, that’s a mindset that needed to shift. And not spread!

Had Neuwirth and the other plaintiffs not prevailed, the door would have been wide open for law enforcement across the country to utilize pepper spray in this manner on protesters whenever they chose.

A couple days ago I wrote about how there are more logging trucks with logs on the road now. Yesterday  I overheard a conversion in the local cheese aisle at the Co-Op (I may be going native!) that Green Diamond Resource Company has been doing some clear cutting in the nearby Jacoby Creek watershed area, and there was a blockade.

So I checked and yes, Redwood Defenders last week blockaded the road with 60-foot high rope structures, called sky pods, made in such a way that that if moved or damaged, the activists could fall from a considerable height. Several pickup trucks and a van full of workers had to turn back when they arrived. By Friday, the timber company had stopped supporters from bringing in food and water to the activists, one of whom was arrested.

(In a weird side note to the pepper spray case, U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker of Prop 8 fame, first heard the original trial in 1998,  which deadlocked 4 to 4.  At the second trial, Judge Walker threw out the case against the Humboldt County Sheriffs and Eureka Police Department saying that threw the case out on the defendants’ summary judgment motion, saying no reasonable juror could find in favor of the plaintiffs.)

Neuwirth at Carson Mansion. We plead the 5th on whether we trespassed.