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Stop the
Witchhunt—No. 3
Fighting Racism is not a Crime! Stop the Witchhunt Against Anti-Racists! Drop the Charges!
The KKK/Nazis are an
issue to take sides over; they mean to organize genocide. The witchhunt against the
antiracist movement must be defeated. The First Day of Preliminary Exams The first court proceeding was held for four of the defendants on Wednesday, August 12th. A very successful picket of about 60 people was held before the court hearing began. To their credit, some members of the "Peace Team" showed up to demonstrate their opposition to the witchhunt. From the beginning, the whole legal proceeding was a mockery of justice. The judge had decided to bind the people over for trial before he entered the courtroom. He bound them over despite utterly paltry evidence and an illegally obtained confession. The exams were deliberately held in a courtroom that was so small that it forced the majority of people to stand in line, waiting to see what were supposed to be public proceedings. Many of the people never even made it into the courtroom. The judge, Timothy Connors, a conservative ideologue lackey of the prosecutor consolidated the four exams into one, refusing to allow the defendants each their own exam. In monarch fashion the brainless, right-wing judge kicked the public out of the courtroom half-way through the exam! In addition to all this, he refused an absolutely routine request for delay of one week on one defendant’s preliminary exam. Contrary to the official government claim that politics play no part in the prosecutions, the politics of the demonstration that shut down the KKK rally on May 9th hung in the courtroom virtually unstated yet omnipresent. In responding to the prosecution’s motion to bind the defendants over for trial, the judge skimmed over questions of law, fact and identification with a demeanor of carefree disregard. Despite the conspicuous absence of previous testimony on the subject, the judge introduced the politics of the demonstration with a tone of "here’s why we’re all here" by reading a substantial portion of the text of an NWROC banner from a police photograph. With this introduction of the political "evidence" (Look(!)—right here it says "Smash the KKK" and "Shut down fascist recruitment rallies by any means necessary", and "Build a new militant integrated civil rights movement") the judge pretended to convince himself that there was definitely criminal activity afoot. He read the political slogans in his summation despite the fact that the politics of the demonstration have (of course!) "no relationship" to the charges whatsoever. In doing this he made entirely clear the real basis of all the charges: political witchhunt. Defense attorney George B. Washington was quoted in the August 13th Ann Arbor News as saying "He would have bound these people over for trial if the charges had been beamed down from Venus. This was a kangaroo court, and these are kangaroo charges." The day, however, was very
positive, in spite of the judge’s disregard for justice and law. Both the high morale
of the defendants and their supporters before and after the hearing and the defense
attorneys’ fight in the courtroom makes clear the growing power of the campaign
against the witchhunt. The witchhunt character of the charges was roundly confirmed.
Without that political leg to stand on, the charges fall. The Charges: Frivolous & Bogus Twenty-one people have been arrested so far, including one juvenile. The police are still looking for 17 unnamed, charged "suspects". The charges against 9 of the defendants facing the possibility of 10 years in prison stem from allegations of something most 13-year-old boys have done—namely, throwing rocks at windows. For this allegation, police arrested one 17-year-old Ann Arbor youth bursting into his grandparents’ house with a drawn gun. On the basis of this allegation a foreign student (also 17) is threatened with deportation. One defendant is charged with the 10-year-felony "Inciting to Riot" for allegations that consist of speech alone! Sixty feet away the Ku Klux Klan was urging mass murder of minorities in transparent, coded language—under the protection of an army of police! Ten of the 12 misdemeanor charges stem from allegations of pulling on the rent-a-fence. There are three allegations of assaultive crime: two against "Peace Keepers" and one on a police officer. The police reports indicate that there are no injuries of any seriousness whatsoever associated with these charges. The bulk of the charges center on allegations of the damage to city property—yet the police themselves have valued the damaged property at less than 1/27th (!!) of the tax money that the city government shelled out to stage the racists’ rally in the first place—now, over 100 years of prison time is threatened! A handful of broken windows is no cause. The motive is political. The police insist that they are "handling this just like any other charges"—but the facts speak louder. The "riot" charge has not been brought in Michigan for over 25 years! Fourteen people who are accused of misdemeanors alone have had their photos shown repeatedly on cable access TV—America’s Most Wanted style. This may well be the first time in the history of television that faces have been shown on TV in connection with misdemeanor allegations. The only real "crime"
of these "suspects" is opposing the government-bankrolled attempt by the Ku Klux
Klan to set up their hateful operation here in southeast Michigan. Drop the Charges! The charges provide cover for a McCarthyite witchhunt. This witchhunt is an attempt to cripple or destroy the only two active antiracist and antifascist organizations in the Midwest: NWROC and ARA. The racist round-up of black men during the man-hunt for the serial rapist several years ago set the context for the current trampling of civil liberties. The fight-back that should have happened then must happen now. We must not allow the city government to set the precedent of silencing their political opponents through threats of persecution. We urge all those who care about maintaining civil liberties to demand an end to the political witchhunt.
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[Back to HOME] Ann Arbor Antiracist
Defense Campaign www.umich.edu/~nwroc * nwroc@umich.edu
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