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 three months and tens of thousands of
dollars pulling the witchhunt together.
Twenty-one people have been arrested so far, including one juvenile.
The police are still looking for 17 unnamed, charged "suspects".
Ten of the 21 people arrested so far, including Ann Arbor youth, are
charged with felonies that carry a possible 10-year prison sentence.
The men and women who are being dragged into court are among the
hundreds of people who opposed the KKK on May 9th. They are black, Asian and
white, male and female; they include long time Ann Arbor residents and U of M students,
range in age from 15 to 64 and come from all walks of life.
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.
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
donenamely, 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 languageunder
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 propertyyet 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 placenow, 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 TVAmericas Most Wanted style. This is
probably the first time in the history of television that peoples faces have
been shown on TV in connection with misdemeanor allegations.
Now, three months after the KKKs 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 KKKs "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.
In the name of this witchhunt, the government has gotten a school
employee to inform against a student, a reverend, two social workers and four "Peace
Team" members to serve as police-informants for this political wrecking effort
against the antiracist movement.
Elected City Council member Elizabeth Daley is behind the effort to
frame U of M NWROC 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.
This is madnessit amounts to the Ann Arbor city government making
a covenant with the KKK.
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 governments 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 lefta
terrible throwback to days of government attempts to suppress Black Power and antiwar
activists of the 1960swith 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.
-August 1998