There is a growing movement in this country to end the exploitation and oppression of the people in our own country and the people of the world. As it grows, so do the attempts to squash that movement and its supposed leaders.
The latest attempt is to blame the trouble that arose on the November 15 march on Washington on a conspiracy of the leaders of the New Mobilization Committee.
What are the tactics the pigs are using to repress the movement of the people? Police informers have entered the ranks of many organizations who later testify about meetings where supposedly plans were made to create disorders. After arrest, exceedingly high bails have been set, resulting in long unconstitutional jailings.
Last July a bomb exploded on the United Fruit Company’s Hudson River pier. The next target was the Marine Midland Grace Trust Company. In September New York’s new Federal building was bombed; in October the Whitehall Street Induction Center.
The press began to take note of the extensive damage and the bombers announced to the movement press that these were attacks against imperialism and its institutions. In November three imperialist targets, Standard Oil, The General Motors Company, and the Chase Manhattan Bank, were bombed. To prevent injuries against people telephone calls urged evacuation of the buildings. It was made clear that the bombs were aimed at peoples’ oppressors.
On November 17 a new indictment was brought against the Panther 21 in New York for conspiring to destroy the New York Botanical Gardens, the Long Island Railroad, and Macy’s, Alexander’s, Bloomingdale’s, Korvettes, and Abercrombie & Fitch during the height of the Easter Season this year.
The new indictment includes a 22nd Panther and a subway switching-control room target. The 22 are charged with first degree conspiracy, arson, attempted murder, reckless endangerment, possession – of illegal weapons, and criminal mischief.
The Black Panther Party is dedicated to serving the people and would not want to endanger places where so many of their own people are found. In the protest to this great ploy to destroy the Panther Party, while some 700 demonstrators were outside to support them, the defendants pleaded, “We plead guilty to being black in a racist America, that is what we plead guilty to.
The defendants have been held under maximum security in 7 different prisons for eight months. The astronomical bail $100,000 on each of the Panthers) is clearly no bail at all.
Lawyers and the defendants have not been allowed to meet as a group, and unable to prepare their case. A New York statute guarantees every defendant a trial within 180 days except in extreme cases. Their constitutional rights have been consistently violated.
Twenty-three Cambridge Weathermen SDS were charged on November 17 with conspiracy to commit murder, illegal possession of weapons and other charges. The Boston area group was arrested after a shooting incident in which two bullets were fired into the window of the Cambridge police station. The charges followed the arrest of a fifteen year old reform school parolee who had been hanging around with the Weathermen. Movement sources report that he was beaten by the police before implicating the Weathermen in the November 8 shooting.
As the trial of Bobby Seale and 11 Panthers for a frame-up murder charge begins in New Haven, Conn., preparations are being made to hide the operations of the Connecticut court from the eyes and ears of ordinary clean living people
The Connecticut court is worried that more people will wake up to the fact that the American judicial system is a joke. The Judge Aaron J. Palmer has forbidden sketching in his court to further limit the peoples’ knowledge.
The day after the triple bombing in New York a bomb exploded in the Criminal Court building, where the hearing for the Panther 22 was conducted. The night before the FBI picked up four Lower East Side residents who have been active in the radical movement. The four are Janie Alpert, who is on the staff of the Rat, an underground newspaper, John Hughey, an artist for the Guardian, a radical weekly, Sam Melville who worked for the former free store, and George Demmerle, active in the Crazies, a street anarchist group.
A fifth suspect was also named who is still at large, Pat Swinson, advertising manager for the Rat.
Bail for each was half a million dollars. The indictment was set for November 18, but on the 17th they were indicted secretly, no evidence was presented in public. They were charged with conspiracy to destroy government property. Following the indictment Demmerle was released on his own recognizance, without bail, at the prosecutions request. He has disappeared and presumably will turn up at the trial as “states evidence.”
Pig Justice is looking for someone to blame. The Red scare doesn’t work that well anymore. Something is happening, maybe its a conspiracy. They are afraid that the people, the whole country, will see that the real conspiracy is a conspiracy against the people.