Jeff Lyons and Dennis Glass were acquitted by the jury on May 8. Charges against Gene Herson had been dropped earlier in the trial. more info soon.
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: [email protected]
*Tom Burghardt [email protected], editor, ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN, proponent: UseNet news group soc.politics.anti-fascism etc.;
John Holmes [email protected], labor activist and historian, proponent: UseNet news group soc.politics.anti-fascism etc.;
Paul Kneisel [email protected], originator: VOTE NO CAMPAIGN [against rec.music.white.power]; proponent: UseNet news group soc.politics.anti-fascism etc.;
Ron Painter [email protected], anti-fascist activist, computer professional; proponent: UseNet news group soc.politics.anti-fascism etc.
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