By Mark Anderson
Texas resident Rudy Davis, a Christian-conservative activist with a big heart for the plight of prisoners in the United States, is familiar with the oft-repeated claim that “there are no political prisoners in America.” The truth is, however, political prisoners are not only found in places like North Korea and China, and a handful of other communist or similarly authoritarian countries.
Davis, in his initial interview with AFP for this first installment of a series on political prisoners in America, said he knows better, and wants patriots to remember those who are, or were, imprisoned solely or chiefly for their beliefs and/or political actions. This is regardless of whatever pretense government officials invent to cloak their crackdown against political dissidents behind a facade of orthodox “law enforcement.”
A visit to Davis’s website, “I Hate the FBI,” takes you to an adjoining site (“Year of Jubile”) consisting of, among other things, a front page biographical gallery of those that Davis considers to be American political prisoners. His main gallery consists of 27 prisoners, though, thankfully, 10 of them have been released in recent years.
The website also includes an additional list of 52 more prisoners. While 11 of those have been freed, the remaining ones are in need of pen pals. Two of them are on death row, while six are officially serving life sentences, or their sentences are so long, they might as well be defined as “lifers.”
Davis explained:
The ones on the front page have been vetted by me as political prisoners, and I strongly believe in their cause and they should be let out of prison.
As for the others, I believe generally in their integrity; they need Christian ministry but I haven’t had time to fully vet all of them yet. Although, I do believe in Jeremy Brown. He’ll soon be moved to the front page. He’s like a young Ron Paul who was targeted for his beliefs.
He added:
Jeremy Brown is a Green Beret and he’s on the level of Schaeffer Cox [the first political prisoner shown in the gallery]. They are both men of integrity who will not compromise their beliefs. Both were running for political office, which goes along with my factual narrative that the FBI scans the political landscape and targets anyone who’s a threat to the establishment.
Notably, FBI Special Agent Jack Ryan, quoted via a video clip on Davis’s website, states, “The prime function of the FBI is to handle political dissent.”
In Brown’s case, the FBI tried to recruit him to infiltrate a militia. But he managed to record the agents as they tried to coax him into being an informant. When he refused, the government trumped up a gun-technicality charge. [See the website “Jeremy Brown Defense” for more on his situation—Ed.]
As for Cox, he was hit with charges along the lines of “conspiracy to solicit murder” and “conspiracy to murder government officials.” He also resisted the efforts of Child Protective Services to take his child away. “He was the head of a militia who ran for political office. But he did not have a history of violence. The government will say he had a hit list, but that only belonged to his friend and Schaeffer had nothing to do with it,” Davis said. Others in the gallery include:
- New Hampshire tax-resister Ed Brown. Davis considers him a “prisoner of war” who, in 2007—in developments covered by AFP at the time—was sent to federal prison for the rest of his active life; and
- P.F. Lazor, who’s been languishing in California’s prison system for decades in an ungodly unjust situation that AFP has recently covered. (See sidebar at right.)
Davis reflected:
There used to be a time when a man’s freedom was valued on the same level as his life. Ed Brown stood up to the IRS [not only because he maintained there is no law requiring individual citizens to file a federal income tax return] but because the government is trying to create a credit system that would treat us like farm animals.
Davis continued:
Because Ed is a constitutional expert who fights for our freedoms under limited constitutional government, he’s being kept in prison and they won’t let him out because he’s considered a leader. Meanwhile, they let everyone else out from the New Hampshire event, all of whom were put away for the same charges as Ed—his wife Elaine Brown [who was a successful dentist], Jason Gerhard, who’s trying to run for office, and Daniel Riley, a talented painter and constitutionalist.
Furthermore, in the trials of Cox, Ed Brown, and another inmate, Anthony Troy Williams, the defense was disallowed to read from the Constitution that government officials themselves take an oath to uphold and defend—nor could The Bible be referenced in Williams’s case. Schaeffer’s militant prosecutor maintained that Cox is “beyond rehabilitation” because “he puts God’s law over man’s law” and that part of the argument, which discriminates against religious conscience, helped put Cox in prison for 26 years, Davis explained.
Stay tuned for more on that and myriad other aspects of political prisoners in America in upcoming installments of this series.
