I-69 Treesit Platform

From www.mostlyeverything.net (links added):

“Indiana State Police [ISP] today [July 9] widened its case against I-69 resistance to target yet another individual. Apparently not content pinning years’ worth of diffuse intentions and attempts from myriad actors onto just Tiga and Hugh, the state served Philip Shelton a search warrant authorizing his forceful detainment for the purpose of obtaining photos, fingerprints, and DNA samples. Four officers (2 ISP detectives, a uniformed ISP officer and another from the Department of Natural Resources) surprised Philip at his near-westside Bloomington home early this morning and escorted him to the State Police post. There, they executed the search warrant while repeatedly offering to buy him soda, then invited him out to lunch. Despite their buoyant charm, Philip declined and was driven back home.

“Shortly thereafter, the probable cause affidavit requesting the search warrant was obtained from the Pike County Circuit Court, and the nature of the state’s interest in Philip further revealed. This document states that there are three reasons to believe that Philip ‘participated in the planning and/or execution of the July 9, 2007 office invasions’ (during which supplies in various I-69 planning offices throughout the state were moved outside, in protest of evictions along the proposed I-69 route). These are, rather explicitly, that Philip is alleged to live with Hugh Farrell, that he was last spring stopped by police while providing information about I-69 to residents living around its proposed corridor, and that someone in a car registered to Philip allegedly visited an I-69 planning office to inquire about the project.

“In posting this affidavit, we do mean to highlight the absurdity of the state’s legitimating a forceful seizure of a DNA sample with a list of quite clearly legal acts. But the accusations levied against Philip are consistent with those of the larger case against I-69 resistance (and the years of surveillance upon which it is based), trends which ought give greater pause than a run of the mill ‘breach of civil liberties.’ What is being actively pursued is the criminalization of those social relationships, relationships already existing between friends and those being sought after, which, in their struggle to constitute other existences, are threatening to the projects of the state. As its collection of surveillance records unfolds (while, we’re reminded today, being built up further), one can see this increasingly well. In the language of the court’s ‘discovery’ and the mutterings of the detectives, with their talk of conspiracy, their fixation on rooting out individuals as members of some group (‘roadblock earthfirst’ – rarely defined but through internet citings), and their targeting of attempts to communicate, their intentions are clear and not to be taken lightly.”

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