(San Diego, CA, 16 June 2009) Six leaders of the self-style Homeless Army of Americans were arrested by a combined FBI, state and local police task force this morning minutes before the HAA organizers were to take the podium at a group rally at which attendance was estimated to be well over 100,000 people.
Those arrested include Sam Stross, 42, Peter Humphries, 43, Gerry Torres, 31, all residents of the San Francisco Bay Area, Gemma Lam, 33, of San Diego, Diego Stevens, 38, of Santa Fe, NM, and Bankos Hamesh of New York City. Their attorney, Jorge Chen, told this reporter that more than four hours after the six were taken into custody he had yet to be allowed any communication with his clients.
“Today’s action by the McCain Administration violates both the First Amendment as well as constitutional protections and other legal protections but are in no way a surprise to any supporter of the Homeless Army,” Chen said during a phone conversation. “In the five months since John McCain took office over nine million Americans have lost their homes and he has done nothing except staff up local and federal police forces and begin construction on what can only be enormous holding camps, with today’s illegal arrests only the first of many.”
Before news of the HAA 6 arrests became public, thousands of police officers from San Diego and surrounding areas, California State troopers and California units of the Army National Guard were deployed to the streets and the rally participants were herded down prepared paths to be dispersed out of the downtown area.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation would not provide a spokesperson to answer media questions but instead released a statement on the FBI press release website, which begins:
“No American’s rights were illegally impeded in San Diego today and any physical force used by law enforcement officers was in response to explicit physical attacks by this unauthorized gathering. The six individuals arrested prior to their participation in this unauthorized gathering were detained on charges of conspiracy to incite terroristic violence, threats of violence against the elected leadership of the United States and conspiracy to commit fraud.
“[The arrested individuals] are charged under the recent revisions to the Patriot Act and as such have been detained without access to counsel until the investigating officers determine that all participants in this complex conspiracy have been identified and, to the extent possible, arrested to stand trial with their comrades. Neither the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice nor local or state police commands will have further comment on these individuals until further notice.”
Stross, Humphries, Torres, Lam, Stevens and Hamesh have been very public faces of a movement that grew out of the debacle which last fall’s $700 billion bailout was supposed to prevent. The bill, according to the Bush Administration, was the only way to avoid a horrific economic crash; since the measure did nothing to assist borrowers, though, the huge number of so-called toxic mortgages remained untenable for homeowners to repay and banks began foreclosing in massive numbers days before the new administration was inaugurated in January.
The Homeless Army has drawn support across the country and today’s rally was expected to be the first big showing by the group ahead of a political campaign to pressure Congress and the Administration to find a solution that would return homes to the millions of families forced out by armed squads of temporarily deputized private security company employees.
HAA.org attempted to post prepared remarks by Mr. Humphries, who is the group’s primary public spokesperson, but the site was unreachable due to denial of service attacks. He has previously issued calls for the impeachment of President McCain and Vice President Palin for executive orders that authorized financial instutions and other mortgage owners to obtain foreclosure and eviction orders despite state laws that would otherwise protect homeowners for at least some period of time.
Miss Lam has written articles for the Huffington Post website laying out a case for the prosecution of leaders of the previous Administration for what she termed “the most outrageous fraudulent, illegal transfer of wealth in modern economic history” when almost all of the bailout money went to wealthy individuals and the balance sheets of the handful of large banks that remain in the aftermath of last September and October’s string of failures and near-failures.
Senator Joseph Leiberman, R-CT, spoke to the issue on the floor of the US Senate late in the day: “The so-called HAA6 are not honorable people attempting to redress some great wrong but thugs leading a mob unwilling to accept the consequences of their own greedy decisions and ready to bring the great American nation down around them unless the majority of law-abiding capitulate to threats of violence and disorder. We will not be intimidated and this Administration and our brave president will not allow such threats to stand.”
Senator Joe Biden, D-DE, responded to Leiberman: “Barack Obama and I would have blocked the massive expulsion of many hard-working homeowning citizens had we not been tragically prevented from taking office. Our Administration would never have approved the trampling of the Constitution and the Homess Army of Americans would never been needed. These people should be released immediately and President McCain should see this as a wakeup call from the reality he strives so hard to avoid.”
White House Press Secretary Gail Gitcho told reporters that the President had nothing to add to the FBI statement and would not be answering questions from the media, unsurprising as he has not met directly with reporters since three weeks after taking office and addressing the nation only sporadically and briefly in that time.
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