Stop the Witchhunt—No. 1
Stop the Witchhunt
Against Antiracists!
Hands Off NWROC and ARA! Fighting Racism Is Not A Crime!
The government of Ann Arbor is launching 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 last two months and thousands of
dollars pulling the witchhunt together. In a belabored fabrication running some 169 pages,
police list 8 named and 31 unnamed, charged "suspects". Police have gone around
Ann Arbor with photographs trying to get people to ID unnamed "suspects".
Sixteen people have been arrested so far—with no end in sight. Six of the 16 people
arrested, including Ann Arbor youth, are charged with felonies that carry a possible
10-year prison sentence.
What is the crime of these "suspects"? Their only
"crime" is opposing the government-bankrolled attempt by the Ku Klux Klan to set
up their hateful operation here in southeast Michigan.
The men and women who are being dragged into court by the government
witchhunt are among the hundreds of people who opposed the May 9th rally by the
KKK in Ann Arbor. They are black, Latino, Asian and white, male and female, politically
affiliated and independent. They include long time Ann Arbor residents and U of M
students, range in age from 15 into their 50’s 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 making other attacks in the Ann Arbor/Ypsi community and who oppose the government
spending fortunes of tax dollars to facilitate the growth violent racist organizations.
These antiracists are the victims of a vast political witchhunt.
Two antiracist organizations have been targeted: the National Women’s Rights
Organizing Coalition (NWROC) and Anti-Racist Action (ARA).
On May 9th, the Ann Arbor city government shelled out
$137,000 of public money to stage the KKK rally (Up from $72,000 in 1996!). They provided
the violent racists with a police-chauffeured shuttle service. The city government rolled
out the red carpet. Despite government bankrolling, the KKK rally was shut down halfway
through. This important victory was secured largely through the effort and coordination of
NWROC and ARA.
Now, two months later, 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.
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. They arrested one 17-year-old Ann Arbor
youth bursting into his house with gun drawn. This is all an attempt to intimidate the
community out of expressing opposition to the racists.
This is madness—it amounts to the Ann Arbor city government
making a covenant with the KKK.
No Jasper, Texas in Southeast
Michigan!
The government of Ann Arbor hatched
this witchhunt in the aftermath of the June 7th racist murder in Jasper, Texas
of James Byrd, a black man beaten mercilessly, tied to the back of a truck and then
dragged to death by three local KKK supporters.
On June 27th the Ann Arbor police traveled to Kalamazoo to
make the first two arrests of the witchhunt: two ARA supporters in Kalamazoo to protest
the KKK rally there. Just six days later, in Las Vegas, Nazi skinheads murdered two ARA
members, Lynn Newborn, 24, black, and his white friend Dan Shersty, 20. Their bodies were
dumped in the desert near an area used by local fascists for shooting practice.
These murders reveal plainly enough the real character of the
"non-violent" groups the Ann Arbor police are so determined to defend. The Klan
and the Nazis are now and always have 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.
Drop the Charges!
The charges that provide cover for
the political witchhunt center on the destruction of city property and on allegations of
assaultive crime—yet the police reports themselves list no injuries of any
seriousness whatsoever and have valued the property damage at less that 1/27th
of the tax money that the city government shelled out to stage the racists’ rally in
the first place!
The charges are cover for a massive 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.
For this purpose 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 Dailey 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.
In launching this witchhunt, city administrator Neil Berlin and
Washtenaw Co. prosecutor Brian Mackie have embarked on a policy certain to polarize this
community more deeply than any event in recent memory. 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.
Anyone who cares about maintaining civil liberties must oppose the
witchhunt actively. If this outrage continues, and any of these frame-ups stick, it will
mean that the next time the KKK/Nazis are in Ann Arbor (which the government’s whole
policy has ensured) the organized opposition will be reduced and the fascists’
supporters will be emboldened. The Ann Arbor city government is attempting to
silence the antiracist movement in a way that, if successful, would serve as a model for
governments across the country. This must not be allowed to happen. Government
bankrolling of the KKK must be stopped.
Whether this witchhunt succeeds or fails will have a sweeping political
importance in Ann Arbor and throughout the Midwest. The KKK/Nazis are an issue to take
sides over; they mean to organize genocide. The witchhunt against the antiracist
movement must be defeated.