<img src="https://d2g8igdw686xgo.cloudfront.net/57649015_1625183116660796_r." alt="" width="100%" media_type="3" />
 Board of Director for the NAAVC, Clay Villanueva was arrested on August 23rd at Los Angeles International Airport, while boarding a plane to return to Peru for cancer treatment.  NAAVC Attorney Charles Carreon summarizes events in this case as follows: "Two weeks after Mr. Villanueva sued the DEA, Maricopa County, and the State of Arizona for civil rights violations, what did they do?  They raided my client’s home at gun point, convened a secret grand jury to issue a grand jury indictment, obtained a secret warrant that doesn’t even bear the name of the issuing judge, imprisoned him unjustly, and imposed excessive bail so he is literally starving and freezing to death inside the Maricopa County Jail.  Sadly, the rest of the nation likely sees this as Arizona justice at its finest.” Help us right this injustice against your community.  We're fighting for Clay's immediate release with more federal-court filings this week .  After that, we're still fighting.  Help us now.  View NAAVC filings here:  <a href="https://naavc.org/naavcs-dea-lawsuit" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Federal Court Filings &amp; Complaints</a> Clay Villanueva is a minister for a small ayahuasca visionary church in Phoenix, Arizona.  He describes his church as a religious center for the spiritual healing of people with addictions, grief, loss, and life challenges of all types including depression and PTSD resulting from war combat, “We’ve been here to help people heal the spirit, so they can heal their minds and bodies as well.  Our communion sacrament is ayahuasca.  Who can honestly say they have the authority to deny us our right to connect with God?” We will be posting a new video to further update you  this week. The small ayahuasca church, Arizona Yagé Assembly (AYA), and the North American Association of Visionary Churches (NAAVC) are actively suing the Drug Enforcement Agency in Federal District Court in Phoenix.  You can help us in our ongoing legal action as Plaintiffs against the DEA. In Spring of 2020, in partnership with NAAVC, AYA sued the DEA in order to bring the DEA into compliance with federal court mandate, federal statute, federal administrative law, and constitutional law. Quite seriously, the DEA had gone rogue and someone needed to call them on it.


Here’s some background. On February 21, 2006, the US Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision affirming the right of O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal, to continue their religious practice with the sacramental use of ayahuasca. That decision by the court, including a remand to a lower court, also established a legal frame requiring the DEA to establish an exemption process for visionary churches to practice with ayahuasca.


Since 2006, as part of that court mandate, the DEA has issued exactly zero exemptions. Exemption applications themselves have been sparse — not that surprising, since by applying, churches are required by the regulatory agency to agree under penalty of perjury to the stipulation that they not engage in their religious practice until the DEA has determined that they are, in fact, a sincere and federally approved religious entity. The court never granted the DEA this authority. No one has. For those of you who follow things like the US Constitution, the First Amendment grants the following: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . ” For this and a raft of other reasons the DEA lacks the authority to openly defy the federal court for going on 15 years now. So we sued.


To complicate matters for themselves, following our written petitions to the DEA, and the filing of our lawsuit in Federal District Court in the Spring of 2020, the DEA initiated a raid on the home of Clay Villanueva, one of the NAAVC’s board of directors. AYA makes a clear case in our suit that the raid was in retaliation for the temerity by the NAAVC and its board to demand that the DEA adhere to the law.


More pointedly, what the DEA had engaged in was intimidation of a religious community, in addition to witness tampering in an ongoing federal court case. Perhaps the DEA didn’t like our petition campaign, drawing public attention to their rogue shenanigans. That petition, sent to the DEA well in advance of our lawsuit and the raid on Clay Villanueva’s home currently has over 1500 signatures, as of this writing. Perhaps it looked to the DEA like visionary churches had become emboldened, and they wanted to send a message. Perhaps they reasoned that successfully ignoring one church at a time with a bogus exemption process was one thing, but dealing with a mass religious movement is quite another.


Perhaps the DEA didn’t reason at all. Both DEA action and inaction may simply be evidenced by an agency culture enmeshed in conscious indifference, all too willing to engage in stonewalling and intimidation, while refusing to respond to all written avenues of communication . . . until directed to respond under federal court action. That’s where we are today, federal court. Our case is currently being heard in United States District Court for the District of Arizona in Phoenix. Our judge is the Honorable Roslyn O. Silver. Judge Silver has already denied all the defense’s motions to dismiss this case as moot. The DEA is being given one final opportunity to make their case for dismissal. Should that fail, this case will be heard. Some of it will be decided by Judge Silver in summary judgement and other portions, most notably our civil rights claims, will go to trial.


Our case is earning its day in federal court. We have much farther to go in this case. Our objective is to free visionary churches across the US from agency intimidation, in addition to halting illegal seizures of our community’s religious sacrament. We’ve made great strides. We have much farther to go in this case, much of it uphill. We will not rest until our religious community is freed from the presence of seizures, threats, and intimidation. We’re demanding to stand on equal footing with every religion in this country. There’s strength in numbers. Stand with us.

Anonymous

Nathan Coury

Cassie Blalock

Kasia Sam

Ayla Peachy

eliyahu mishulovin

Danielle McConaughay

Regina Jakubauskas

Diana Yurkovich

Lauren Nopar

Anthony Piazza

shawn wright

George Seimon

Tracy Arsenault

AYA & NAAVC Legal-Advocacy & Defense Fund

platform

Platform is iOS

Android

Adyen Google Pay Development Audience

$opt_dummy_attribute

English only

Deprecate Stripe Legacy

dyn_template_ids

Adyen V6 Bene Transfer & MyMoney Campaign Organizers - test01

Bene transfer V6 and AdyenV6MyMoney Campaign Organizers - production

OneTrust next-app audience

fundCountryCode

NextDoor Share Option Users

Fundraisers with Reactions feature capability

fundCurrencyCode

US + Non-charity COs Only

locale

fund country is US and user language is English

personId

comms-internal-person-ids

Enhanced Story Experience Users

Suggested Goal Experience Users

user language is English and fund country: US, AU, DK, FI, IE, NO, SE, CA, GB; 

Poster share - new funds eligible (newest 9/18)

Streaming widgets beta user

paymentProcessor

3DS payment method

user language is English and fundCountry: US, AU, DK, FI, IE, NO, SE, CA, GB; 

GoFundMe Employees

ipAddress

Mark Rieth IP Address

Version 9.2.0 and above

Fund is in English speaking country

desktop

Android v12.11.0 and above

Platform is Android

paymentMethodType

checkoutType

Payment method type group to be vaulted on success

admin pr kit prod

EUR Donation Upsell

Share Text generation Skip Fundraiser

(prod) new funds eligible for amp12 (UGC gallery)

fintrac_cad_idv_form_v2 audience

paymentProcessorAccountId

fallback mode accounts

proCampaignId

p2p legacy startfundraising page

AMP24 New Funds Only PROD (DO NOT MODIFY)

countryCode

charityId

UKCharities

Federated Search Internal Testing

route.pathname community

US Donation Upsell audience 

Auto Thanks Feature Audience

Supporter Comments Eligible Funds

International Only

fundId

braze fundraiser group 

Payment Identity Transfers ATO Risk Check (Targeted) - Production

Fundraiser Saved Payment Method Rate Limit Bypass (Production)

leaderboard-partner-id-audience-givepanel

Version 9.2.1 and above

AUD Donation Upsell audience

fundraiserCountryCode is US/EN

Active Fundraiser - Smart Default Cadence

DAF Internal

Vault on success card payment method

Platform is iOS v11.0.0 and above

Desktop users

Person ids

United States (US) users

allow yuno fundraisers for test

Mexico country code

Posters INTL

NPO Profile Opted-In

iOS at or above 12.4.0

non-US recurring donors

Canada Campaign Owner Group

Fundraiser Without Meta Link

Scheduler payment tester gorup

charityCommunityId

Charities allow to be claimed unclaimed (PRD)

Canada (CA) users

currencyCode

UC Tipping v20250115 International

pymk_production_xplr_fe_team

Android at or above 12.2.0

Profile photo entry point audience

smart goals (fundraiser/manage) on test01

Activity Tracking v1 Beta Testing

writePath

Stream Notification

start gfm intl allowed locales

Platform is iOS v11.2.0 and above

unclaimed charities

prod_ach_audience

AI Chatbot Audience

amp13 only new funds (prod) (anyword auto)

UC Flow Enabled (Prod)

Payment Identity Beneficiary Verification - Production

shared notification bell audience

Custom users

ach frontend audience

Android v11.0.0 and above

Users Receiving Payments Paused Notifications

smart goals test01

Manage Coach - US English Organizers Only + new funds only

Team EGG - IP Address list

Fundraiser Without Instagram Deep Link

Native 11.4.0 and above

UC Tipping v20250107

Users Receiving Braze KYC Validation Failed

Native 11.3.0 and above

Influencer - Prod

US fundraisers and US users

ai_title_page

anyword

openai

control

manual_entry

userEmail

template_id

userId

fundUrl

isCharityCo

email

appVersion

shouldBucketIntoExperiment

partnerId

donationCadence

isActiveFundraiser

isPartner

isMobile

npoProfileOptIn

fundIsLinkedWithMeta

hasSessionDonation

isCampaignOwner

fundHasInstagramDeepLink

Native 11.4.0 and higher

New funds eligible - Video Sharing (PROD)

GB Donation Upsell audience 

Auto Thanks V3 Rollout Audience

Thank you V3 testing whitelist

isRecurringFriendly

Is Recurring Friendly

Excluded funds - Video Sharing

Logged In Users

CH Donation Upsell audience

Android v10.6.0 and above

userCurrencyCode

Localized Currency

v11.5.0 and above

testAudience

pathname

Survicate

appVersion is at or above 12.8.0

Non-charity fund

isChallengeFundraiser

challenge-fundraisers

Payment Identity Launch Verification - Production

New funds eligible - Posters v2

CAD Donation Upsell Audience

Braze Email Tester

NPO Profile Opted-Out

iOS App Version

hasKnownDonors

PYMK has donors

iOS v12.3.0 and above

AYA & NAAVC Legal-Advocacy & Defense Fund

Still $144,549 to go. Help us build momentum.