||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ||| ||| ||| A N T I F A ||| ||| ||| ||| I N F O - B U L L E T I N ||| ||| _____ ||| ||| ||| ||| * News * Analysis * Research * Action * ||| ||| ||| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ***** ||/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\||/\|| || * -- ALERT -- * -- July 13, 1999 -- * -- ALERT -- * || ||\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/||\/|| U R G E N T A L E R T _____ _________________________________________________________________ DEFEND ANTI-KLAN ACTIVISTS IN MICHIGAN! _________________________________________________________________ * * * * ANN ARBOR ANTIRACIST DEFENSE CAMPAIGN * c/o NWROC P.O. Box 1092 Penobscot Station Detroit, MI 48231 Tel: (313) 730-3577 Web: http://www.umich.edu/~nwroc - Friday, 9 July 1999 - ----- _________________________________________________________________ STOP THE WITCHHUNT, No. 7 _________________________________________________________________ NO EVIDENCE - NO CASE! PRODUCE THE FENCE OR DROP THE CHARGES! FIGHTING RACISM IS NOT A CRIME! * * * On July 16 the people of Ann Arbor will have an opportunity to put an end to the disgraceful political witchhunt launched by their city government one year ago against antiracists who protested the May 9, 1998 Ku Klux Klan rally. On Friday, July 16 at 12 Noon, there will be an antiracist picket at the courthouse in downtown Ann Arbor. At 1 PM, an evidentiary hearing for ten antiracist defendants will take place in Judge Ann Mattson's courtroom. In the wake of the acquittal of Ryan Lang (see below) the Ann Arbor city government's witchhunt against antiracists is beginning to fall apart. This hearing is an opportunity to deliver what would likely be a decisive blow to the more than a year old witchhunt. Getting the ten misdemeanor charges dismissed on the heels of the powerful victory against the felony "riot" charge in Ryan's case could well finish off these prosecutions altogether. All antiracists and all who care about civil liberties should attend. VICTORY! On Friday, June 4, just after 7 PM, an all-white six person jury found 16-year-old antiracist Ryan Lang not guilty of "Riot" and all other charges. The jury deliberated for less than an hour after the three-day trial. The jury refused to even convict Ryan of the frivolous lesser included misdemeanor "Disturbing the Peace." The verdict drew a burst of applause from the crowded courtroom gallery as it was read. One juror, immediately following the not guilty verdict said: "I can put it in a nutshell for you. They had no evidence - no evidence at all." In sharp contrast to the prosecution case (which made up for having what jurors called "no evidence at all" with an effort as relentless as it was ineffective to convict Ryan on the basis of guilt-by-association) the defense case was truthful and compelling. A long and diverse series of witnesses all testified to the central proposition of the defense: there was no riot on May 9, 1998. The ten defendants are some of the hundreds of antiracists who protested the Ku Klux Klan rally in Ann Arbor on May 9, 1998. They are accused of having damaged the chain link rental fence erected by the city government as part of its $137,000 project to protect and stage the KKK's rally. The charge is a misdemeanor called "Malicious Destruction of Property Under $100." Given that the only physical evidence in these cases - the chain link fence itself - was destroyed with the authorization of the police, the evidentiary hearing to determine whether and if so, when, how, where and by whom the fence was damaged should prove very difficult for the prosecution. Among the defendants are prominent antiracists and leaders of the movement to defend affirmative action and the Defend Affirmative Action Party at the University of Michigan. NO EVIDENCE - NO RECORD The police and prosecutor's office are claiming that the fence was damaged, but the police department never made any assessment of the condition of the fence. The fence company made a casual and entirely cursory assessment of the fence. Knowing they had a standard blank-check insurance policy from the city for any assessment of material loss - they had a financial incentive to bend the stick in the direction of assessing damage. No record was ever made of the alleged damage by either the police or the fence company. The police then allowed the basis of these charges to be scrapped and melted down, leaving only the bill from the fence company as "evidence" of damage. This bill is now the lynchpin of ten misdemeanor charges. The fence company, of course, could have no notion that the bill they wrote up on the basis of this cursory assessment of the condition of the fence would later be the central piece of evidence in criminal charges against ten people. The company has a vested interest in maintaining the position that the fence was damaged. Police photographs of the fence after the rally, still images secured from police video, eyewitness affidavits of neutral observers, including several Peace Team members, an expert witness affidavit from the owner/operator of a fence company who viewed the fence in question on multiple police videos all indicate that there was no damage done to the rental fence. In fact, the Peace Team re-erected the fence subsequent to it being pulled from the poles by the counter-demonstrators. Below is a quote from the introduction to the defendants' Motion to Dismiss the Charges. "There is, however, an even more weighty obstacle to proceeding with these cases than the demonstrable innocence of the accused. There is no evidence. The police authorized the removal and allowed the destruction of the decisive and the only piece of physical evidence -- the subject of the alleged crime itself -- the chain link fence. Without the fence there is no case. The police made no record of the damage they allege; no video, no still photographs, not so much as a leaf from a police notebook is to be found in the police reports that document the damage that defendants are alleged to have caused. It is bad faith for the police to pay the fence company to remove and destroy the very subject of charges and yet continue to pursue prosecution. "Not only does the nonexistence of the physical evidence make genuine, searching evaluation impossible for a future jury, it makes independent investigation impossible for the defendants. Justice, common sense and law dictate the impossibility of proceeding without this evidence." Please attend this evidentiary hearing and help make sure justice is done. PICKET AND ATTEND THE EVIDENTIARY HEARING Friday, July 16, 12 Noon, Downtown Courthouse (Huron & Main) * * * ANATOMY OF A WITCHHUNT Drop the Charges! Fighting Racism Is Not A Crime! The government of Ann Arbor has launched the largest scale political witchhunt in the history of the city. Its target is the entire active antiracist movement. The city government has spent the better part of a year and many tens of thousands of dollars pulling the witchhunt together. Twenty-one people have been arrested so far. Charges against one person were dropped, and Ryan Lang, a juvenile, was acquitted of the felony "riot". Nineteen remaining people face charges. They are people who share the conviction of a nearly unanimous majority of citizens of Ann Arbor who do not want the KKK rallying, recruiting, burning churches or murdering people in this community and who oppose the government spending fortunes in tax dollars to facilitate the growth of violent racist organizations. The men and women who are being dragged into court are among the hundreds of people who opposed the KKK on May 9th. Among them are prominent leaders of the movement to defend affirmative action and the Defend Affirmative Action Party at the University of Michigan. They are black, Asian and white, male and female; they include long time Ann Arbor residents, students from U of M and Huron High School; they range in age from 15 to 65 and come from all walks of life. Ten of the 20 people charged, including high-school-aged Ann Arbor youth, are facing 10-year felonies. Despite government bankrolling on May 9th, the KKK rally was shut down halfway through. This important victory was secured largely through the effort and coordination of NWROC and ARA. The charges against 9 of the defendants facing the possibility of 10 years in prison stem from police allegations of something most 13-year-old boys have done -- namely, throwing rocks at windows. On the basis of 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 destruction of 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 is probably the first time in the history of television that people's faces have been shown on TV in connection with misdemeanor allegations. Now, three months after the KKK's vile, bigoted event, the same government that said "cost is no issue" when it came to presenting itself as the defender of the civil liberties and free speech for the KKK is sparing no expense to suppress the civil liberties and free speech of antiracists. The same government that has not spent a dime challenging the KKK's "right" to rally at the city hall under the protection of an army of police is now gearing up to spend tens of thousands of dollars witchhunting the opponents of the KKK and Nazis. For months the Ann Arbor police department had two detectives working full time on the anti-Klan cases. They compiled hundreds of pages of police reports. They contacted police agencies around the Midwest to gather information on antiracist activists who have protested at other KKK rallies. They got four Peace Team members -- including one reverend -- to function as police informants, giving statements to the police and indicating people whom they thought should be arrested. In the name of this witchhunt, the government has gotten a school employee to inform against a student. They intimidated numerous Ann Arbor youth and questioned them about where they had been the day the KKK came to town. They showed young people photographs and pressured them to become police informants. Elected City Council member Elizabeth Daley is behind the effort to frame Michigan Student Assembly representative, and U of M NWROC and Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary leader Jessica Curtin on a 10-year felony charge. The same city attorney, Abigail Elias, who has opposed offering any legal challenge to the KKK has volunteered herself as a witness against black activist and NWROC leader Shanta Driver. 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 witchhunt has focused on known leaders of both groups and includes many individuals who are not part of either organization. It is a political witchhunt against the left in the interest of the far right. 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. DEFEND CIVIL LIBERTIES! In a June 16th meeting with representatives of the NWROC legal team, city attorney Abigail Elias and county prosecutor Brian Mackie indicated that their determination to pursue charges was conditional. If NWROC and ARA would renounce our convictions and toe the government's line in regard to the KKK, then the threatened witchhunt would be called off. They want the next KKK rally in Ann Arbor to face no opposition. The Republican Ann Arbor city government and Democratic prosecutor Brian Mackie have decided on a course of political witchhunt against the antiracist movement. Going through with this policy will mean a series of long, costly, bitter political show trials directed against the antiracist movement and the left -- a terrible throwback to days of government attempts to suppress Black Power and antiwar activists of the 1960's -- with the eyes of the nation watching. The KKK/Nazis are now and have always been organizations whose central purpose is genocidal, racist violence. The Ann Arbor city government knows about the murderous brutality of these groups and yet they have now spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and put in enormous effort making it easier for these racist killers to build an operation in this area. 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. * * * ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN (AFIB) 750 La Playa # 730 San Francisco, California 94121 E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * On PeaceNet visit ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN on pol.right.antifa Via the Web --> http://burn.ucsd.edu/~aff/afib.html Archive --> http://burn.ucsd.edu/~aff/afib-bulletins.html * ANTI-FASCIST FORUM (AFF) Antifa Info-Bulletin is a member of the Anti-Fascist Forum network. AFF is an info-group which collects and disseminates information, research and analysis on fascist activity and anti-fascist resistance. More info: E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://burn.ucsd.edu/~aff Order our journal, ANTIFA FORUM, cutting-edge anti-fascist research and analysis! 4 issues, $20. Write AFF, P.O. 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