Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 17:41:21 +0200
From: Robert Malecki <malecki-AT-algonet.se>
Subject: M-FEM: Defend the Chicago Anti-Klan 3! 


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                              *****
 
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|| * --  ALERT -- * --   April 15, 1997  -- * --  ALERT  -- * ||
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                        **  A L E R T  **
 
                                *
_________________________________________________________________
 
               DEFEND THE CHICAGO ANTI-KLAN THREE!
_________________________________________________________________
         
 
     The trial of Gene Herson (Partisan Defense Committee Labor
Coordinator), Jeff Lyons (a Refuse & Resist supporter) and Dennis
Glass (a young black worker) -- who were arrested last June 29
for participating in an anti-Klan protest in Chicago -- is set to
begin May 5. The Chicago police are prosecuting these three anti-
racist and anti-fascist activists to justify their vindictive and
brutal assault that day against the demonstrators. Mayor Daley
Jr., emulating his father, was using the Klan rally the
demonstrators were protesting as a 'test run' for suppressing,
controlling and preventing any radical political expression
against the Democratic Convention that nominated Clinton, to help
ensure his election.
 
     The June 29 united-front anti-fascist demonstration,
initiated by the Partisan Defense Committee, spiked a violent
racist provocation by Klansmen armed with bolt-studded shields
and long flagpoles. When the protesters moved to defend
themselves as the Klansmen marched toward them in military
formation, the Klan wielded their flagpoles as lances and
chillingly taunted one black protester to "come and get it, boy."
After the protesters had successfully stopped the potentially
lethal assault by the fascist KKK lynch-rope artists, the cops
intervened to protect the Klan and to exact revenge against the
anti-Klan protesters. Herson was pepper-sprayed directly in the
face by Commander Patrick McNulty, the top police official on the
spot. 
 
     At the preliminary hearing, Sam Willis, a volunteer in the
AFL-CIO's "Union Summer" program, testified that even after the
Klan had been escorted away by the police, a phalanx of cops
swinging nightsticks waded into the anti-Klan protest. Willis
described how Glass was simply snatched by the cops for no reason
and how Lyons was spread-eagled on a car after protesting the
arrest of another "Union Summer" participant.   
 
     The trial comes in the context of a wave of anti-Semitic
incidents and racist police corruption and brutality in the area.
Lincoln's Tomb in Springfield was defaced with swastikas. On
March 4, police invaded and shot up the Cabrini-Green housing
project in Chicago, shooting and beating the residents and
shocking the city. In previous months, the Chicago police were
exposed as engaging in outright frame-ups (Rolando Cruz case);
murder (Jorge Guillen); and drug-dealing (Austin affair). And
Northwestern University engineering instructor Sheldon Epstein
was fired recently for challenging in public the ideas of his
tenured colleague, holocaust revisionist and white racist Arthur
Butz.
  
     The call to "Drop the Charges Against the Anti-Klan Three"
has already been taken up by a wide range of labor unions and
officials, including Steelworkers Local 1010 and Amalgamated
Transit Union Local 308 in Chicago. As Gene Herson declared: "The
Klan are the sworn and deadly enemies of blacks, immigrants, gays
and all of the oppressed. If the cops get away with framing up
those of us who took a stand against Klan terror, it will further
embolden these nightriding fascists in their genocidal aim of a
'racially pure' America where trade unions don't exist." 
 
     We, the undersigned anti-fascist computer activists, believe
that all opponents of fascism and racist terror must rally to the
defense of the Anti-Klan Three. We urge sending protest
statements demanding that the charges against the Anti-Klan Three
be dropped to: 
 
     Richard Devine, State's Attorney of Cook County 
     Richard J. Daley Center 
     55 W. Randolph Street
     Chicago, IL 60602
 
     Legal defense donations and copies of protest statements
should be sent to: 
 
                    PARTISAN DEFENSE COMMITTEE
                         P.O. Box 802867 
                      Chicago, IL 60680-2867
                        tel: (312) 454-4931
 
                or to their New York headquarters:
 
                    PARTISAN DEFENSE COMMITTEE
                           P.O. Box 99
                       Canal Street Station
                      New York, NY 10013-0099
                         tel: (212) 406-4252
                 e-mail: 75057.3201-AT-compuserve.com
 
                                *
 
Tom Burghardt <tburghardt-AT-igc.org>, editor, ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN,
proponent: UseNet news group <soc.politics.anti-fascism> etc.;
  
John Holmes <jdholmes-AT-igc.apc.org>, labor activist and historian,
proponent: UseNet news group <soc.politics.anti-fascism> etc.;
 
Paul Kneisel <tallpaul-AT-nyct.net>, originator: VOTE NO CAMPAIGN
[against rec.music.white.power]; proponent: UseNet news group
<soc.politics.anti-fascism> etc.;
 
Ron Painter <ronp-AT-nyct.net>, anti-fascist activist, computer
professional; proponent: UseNet news group
<soc.politics.anti-fascism> etc.

Bob Malecki <malecki-AT-algonet.se> Editor for Cockroach!

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