RaiseTheFist -

[mexika]

Jan. 24, Los Angeles, CA -- The home of RaiseTheFist.com, a prominent LA-based news and organizing website, was raided by heavily-armed agents of the Los Angeles Joint Terrorism Task Forice - FBI, Secret Service and LAPD - serving a search warrant this afternoon. The Feds confiscated computers, software, and political literature, and shutdown the web site.

Los Angeles FBI spokesperson Cheryl Mimura confirmed the raid, saying the web site is under investigation for "computer fraud and abuse" as well as "distribution of information related to explosives, destructive devices, and/or weapons of mass destruction." Because no one was arrested, Mimura declined to release the name the individual(s) under investigation.

RaiseTheFirst.com, a radical political news and advocacy site, has been in existence since 1999. It accepted countless uploaded articles and multimedia from contributors, and specialized in coverage of resistance movements, economic exploitation, police brutality, and all forms of injustice and imperialism. It hosted informational pages for various "affinity groups," such as the Revolutionary Grafitti Front, as well as sub-sites including LA.RaiseTheFist.com, for local news, and ClassWar.RaiseTheFist.com, for discussion of the philosophy and tactics of class war. Special features included a compilation of photos of undercover agents assigned to political activists and demonstrators.

RaiseTheFist.com founder "Sherman," who is currently laying low at a friend's house in Los Angeles for a few days, stated, "It's not yet known at this point if the site will be back up. As of now, we have nothing. No more servers, no more network, nothing. My room remains completly ransacked. My neighbors remain shaken up by what happened. I most likely won't be getting any of the equipment back. They also took a lot of my political litature. Apparently, their excuse for shutting it down was the 'militancy' portrayed on the site. This is not true. This was an excuse. This same 'militancy' they were concerned about is portrayed on at least a thousand other web sites across the internet, and they havn't been touched by the federal government, with the exception for remote monitoring.

"RaiseTheFist.com was progressive. It was going somewhere. Kids started creating clubs in their schools called 'RaiseTheFist.' People started utilizing the collective as a powerful resource for the activist/anarchist community. The federal government has been investigating me, and the site very closely, long before 9-11, and long before such militancy was even portrayed on the site. They knew the site had potential, that it was turning into something more than a site, but a strong collective utilized by activists throughout the world committed to social justice. And that's become a crime. Justice has become a crime. Freedom has become a crime. Anyone activly disagreeing with policies of the U.S is now automaticly rendered a 'terrorist' in the eyes of national security.... Where RaiseTheFist.com will go from here, I don't know. Based on what I've been told, I'll most likely be in jail, so most of my focus will be towards getting an attorney."

According to webpostings, Sherman is just a kid who lives with his parents; he has not yet been reached directly for comment. Concerned Los Angeles activists are now mobilizing support for RaiseTheFirst.com.


http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/1/26/112847/742