Baltimore: Race, Class and Uprisings

A protester on a bicycle thrusts his fist in the air next to a line of police, in front of a burning CVS drug store, during clashes in Baltimore, Maryland April 27, 2015. This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: http:/, Reuters

By Bill Fletcher Jr
TeleSUR via Portside

April 30, 2015 - A broad united front for justice and power, in addition to protesting atrocities, is guided by a sense of hope and a vision of a new day.

It is not enough for us on the Left to comment favorably on the right of oppressed to rebel, to validate the rage that took a very destructive form. Rather, we must support those that engaged in efforts to redirect the rage to preserve their communities as part of a larger movement for justice for Freddie Gray.

A protester on a bicycle thrusts his fist in the air next to a line of police, in front of a burning CVS drug store, during clashes in Baltimore, Maryland April 27, 2015. This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: http:/, Reuters,

There was little about the Baltimore uprising following the funeral of the murdered Freddie Gray that surprised me. Tensions had been building ever since word broke that he had died after his spine was severed while in police custody. It was not just that this atrocity had taken place under the most suspicious of circumstances, but that the city government appeared nothing short of anemic in its response.

It did not surprise me that Black youth took to the streets in rage or that there were opportunists within the mobs that took advantage of the strife in order to carry out thefts. It was a riot or uprising. It was not an insurrection and it had neither an ideology nor coherent leadership.

What I found most noteworthy in recent events is something that received limited coverage: the fact that there were organized groupings of men and women who were actively working to redirect the anger of the youth away from the destruction of their neighborhoods. The Nation of Islam, for instance, deployed its members to walk the streets, speak with the youth, and attempt to dissuade them from violence. It was not alone. There were other groups, including gangs as well as ad hoc community groups that set out to both protest the police killing of Freddie Gray but also to try to convince the young rebels that there needed to be a different path. (Continued)

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Why Baltimore Is Burning

By Kevin Powell
BK Nation

I am from the ghetto. The first 13 years of my life I grew up in the worst slums of Jersey City, New Jersey, my hometown. If you came of age in one of America’s poor inner cities like I did then you know that we are good, decent people: in spite of no money, no resources, little to no services, run down schools, landpersons who only came around to collect rent, and madness and mayhem everywhere, amongst each other, from abusive police officers, and from corrupt politicians and crooked preachers, we still made a way out of no way. We worked hard, we partied hard, we laughed hard, we barbequed hard, we drank hard, we smoked hard, and we praised God, hard.

And we were segregated, hard, by a local power structure that did not want the ghetto to be seen nor heard from, and certainly not to bring its struggles out in plain sight for the world to see.

Indeed my entire world was the block I lived on and maybe five or six blocks north south east west. A long-distance trip was going to Downtown Jersey City on the first of each month so our mothers—our Black and Latina mothers—could cash their welfare checks, buy groceries with their food stamps and, if we were lucky, we got to eat at Kentucky Fried Chicken or some other fast food restaurant on that special day.

When I was about 15 I was badly beaten by a White police officer after me and a Puerto Rican kid had a typical boy fight on the bus. No guns, no knives, just our fists. The Puerto Rican kid, who had White skin to my Black skin, was escorted off the bus gingerly. I was thrown off the bus. Outraged, I said some things to the cop as I sat handcuffed in the back seat of a police car. He proceeded to smash me in the face with the full weight of his fist. Bloodied, terrified, broken in that moment, I would never again view most police officers as we had been taught as children: “Officer Friendly”—

Being poor meant I only was able to go to college because of a full financial aid package to Rutgers University. I did not get on a plane until I was 24-years-old because of that poverty and also because I did not know that was something I could do. These many years later I have visited every single state in America, every city big and small, and every ghetto community you can name. They all look the same.

Abandoned, burnt out buildings. Countless churches, funeral parlors, barber shops, beauty salons, check cashing places, furniture rental stores, fried chicken spots, and Chinese restaurants. Schools that look and feel more like prison holding cells for our youth than centers of learning. Playgrounds littered with broken glass, used condoms, and drug paraphernalia. Liquor stores here there everywhere. Corner stores that sell nothing but candy, cupcakes, potato chips, soda, every kind of beer you can name, loose cigarettes, rolling paper for marijuana, lottery tickets, and gum, lots and lots of gum.

Then there are also the local organizations that claim to serve the people, Black and Latino people. Some mean well, and are doing their best with meager resources. Others only come around when it is time to raise money, to generate some votes for one political candidate or another, or if the police have tragically killed someone. (Continued)

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Nothing but a Northern Lynching: The Assassination of Fred Hampton, Dec 4, 1969

 

By G. Flint Taylor
Progressive America Rising via People's Law Office

At 4:30 in the morning of December 4, 1969, 14 heavily armed Chicago police officers, acting at the direction of Cook County State’s Attorney Edward V. Hanrahan, raided a tiny apartment on the west side of Chicago where local Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton and eight Party members were sleeping. Minutes later, Hampton and Peoria, Illinois BPP leader Mark Clark lay dead, several of the other Panthers were seriously wounded, and the survivors were hauled off to jail on attempted murder charges. http://peopleslawoffice.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/1970.Hampton-.Search-And-Destroy..pdf

I was a second year Northwestern law student working at the fledgling People’s Law Office when I received a call that “the Chairman had been murdered” and was directed to come to the apartment. The crime scene was shocking - - - the plasterboard walls looked like swiss cheese, ripped by scores of bullets from police weapons that included a machine gun, a semi automatic rifle, and several shotguns. A large pool of blood stained the floor at the doorway where Hampton’s body had been dragged after he was shot in the head, and there were fresh blood stains on all the beds in the apartment. I had met Chairman Fred only months before when I escorted him to the Law School to speak to the student body in venerable Lincoln Hall. He was only 21 years old, but he captivated the audience, as he always did, with his dynamic and analytical speaking skill, a mixture of Malcolm X, Dr. King, and Lupe Fiasco. http://peopleslawoffice.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Hampton.-20th-Anniversary-Booklet-1989.pdf

It was his unique leadership, together with the revolutionary politics he so convincingly espoused, http://www.blackpanther.org/TenPoint.htm that made him a primary target of law enforcement. Directly after the raid, State’s Attorney Hanrahan and his police loudly proclaimed that the “vicious Black Panthers” had instigated a “shootout” during which they fired a fuselage of shots at the raiders. http://mike-gray.org/multimedia/hampton.htm The cold and bloody crime scene made lie of this official story, and Panther members led thousands of people on tours of the apartment for the next ten days while People’s Law Office lawyers and staff documented the evidence that would later establish that the police fired 99 bullets while the Panthers fired but one. http://peopleslawoffice.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Hampton.-1970-FGJ-Report.pdf

A elderly African American lady best captured this reality when she said, while sadly shaking her head during the tour, that the raid was “nothing but a Northern lynching.” Confronted with the ballistics evidence, Hanrahan was forced to drop the attempted murder charges against the surviving Panthers. The Richard Nixon Justice Department investigated, but refused to indict. In response to community outrage, a specially appointed Cook County Prosecutor subsequently indicted Hanrahan, his first assistant, and a number of the raiding officers, not for murder or attempted murder, but rather only for obstruction of justice. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-chicagodays-pantherraid-story,0,3414208.

A Democratic machine judge acquitted Hanrahan and his co-conspirators on the eve of the 1972 election, but an inflamed African American electorate voted Hanrahan out of office, a story spawning a movement that paved the way for the election of Mayor Harold Washington a decade later. All the while, the People’s Law Office continued to litigate a civil rights lawsuit in federal court on behalf of the Hampton and Clark families and the survivors of the raid. Through the discovery process, we unearthed FBI documents showing that the FBI’s secret COINTELPRO program was behind the raid. http://watchamericangangster.com/american-gangster-season-3-episode-5-j-edgar-hoover/

The documents, which were suppressed by the FBI for years, together with independent toxicological tests, further revealed that an FBI COINTELPRO agent supplied a floor plan of the Panther apartment, complete with markings where Hampton slept, to Hanrahan’s raiders; that William O’Neal, the COINTELPRO informant who drew the floor plan, most likely drugged Hampton so that he could not defend himself; and that after the raid FBI director J. Edgar Hoover rewarded O’Neal with a $300 bonus for making the raid a “success.” http://peopleslawoffice.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Hampton.7th-Cir-Brief.pdf

In 1983, after an 18 month trial http://openjurist.org/600/f2d/600/hampton-v-hanrahan and 13 years of litigation, the City of Chicago, Cook County and the Federal Government all finally settled with the Hampton and Clark families and the survivors of the raid. http://peopleslawoffice.com/issues-and-cases/panthers/ While this financial settlement brought some modicum of justice, no one, except the Panther survivors, ever spent a day in jail. But the murderous raid, once falsely depicted as a shootout, is now rightly considered not only to be a northern lynching, but also an official assassination that was instigated by the FBI. http://www.hamptonbook.com/Hampton_Book/Home.html

And while we will never know what heights Fred Hampton would have reached as a leader had he lived, we do know, in the words first spoken in eulogy by People’s Law Office attorney Francis Andrew nearly forty three years ago, that the spirit of Fred Hampton continues to live on.

Flint Taylor is one of the lawyers for the family of slain Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.. For more information on the Hampton/Clark case, the history of Black Panther Party, and the FBI’s Program to destroy it, visit peopleslawoffice.com

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Chicago Cops Score 'One for Our Own'

Shocking Verdict in Morgan Trial

Photo: Morgan with his wife, Rosalind

By Ted Pearson
Progressive America Rising

People were stunned yesterday afternoon when jurors, after only 3 hours of deliberation, returned a verdict of “guilty” on all counts against Howard Morgan for the attempted murder of four policemen.  Morgan had been shot 28 times by these same policemen after a routine traffic stop at 1:00 am on February 21, 2005 in the Lawndale community on the West Side.  His $1 million bail was immediately revoked and he was taken away by Sheriff’s police, who refused to allow him to even hug his daughters in the courtroom.

The more than 25 mostly white uniformed Chicago policemen who had packed the courtroom before the verdict celebrated the racist verdict.  The Fraternal Order of Police web site posted also celebrated their “victory,” which they called “justice for our own.”

Observers noted that it is not uncommon in state criminal cases that bail is revoked pending appeals.  Attorneys representing Morgan said they would immediately file a motion for a new trial and were considering appeals of the verdicts in both state and federal courts.

Morgan was taken to Cook County Jail’s Cermak Hospital due to his damaged condition resulting from the police shootings.  He requires assistance in walking and regular medication.

I witnessed much of the trial testimony.  Upon learning of the verdicts, it is clear that this jury of ten white people and only two African Americans did not take any time to reviewing nine full days of testimony by witnesses for the prosecution or the defense.  They simply wanted to go home, so they did what was expected of them by the system – they quickly brought back the verdict of ‘Guilty.’ That in itself ought to be grounds for Morgan to be granted a new trial.

The police who tried to murder Howard Morgan should be dismissed from the force and the U. S. Attorney should immediately launch an investigation into the conspiracy to cover-up this heinous crime against humanity. No one, including the Chiefs of Police, Chicago’s Mayors, and the State’s Attorneys responsible for this ongoing conspiracy should be exempt from this investigation.  Current State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez especially should be brought before the bar of justice for her role in prosecuting this racist case.

This case reeks of the kind of white supremacy that shocked the nation 80 years ago when nine Black teenagers were falsely accused and sentenced to death in Alabama for the rape of two white girls on the flimsiest of evidence.  This case calls for the same level of national and international outrage that ultimately saved the lives of those men.  People who care about democracy and fairness will demand that Howard Morgan be freed immediately on bail, that he get a new trial, or that the ridiculous charges against him be dropped.

Only a loud massive public outcry can free Howard Morgan at this point.  The criminal justice system will not do it if left alone.  Just as in the case of Angela Davis, who inspired the founding of our organization 39 years ago and who was granted bail while being held on a capital murder-conspiracy charge, it will take a broad and irresistible demand by the people that Morgan be allowed to make bail during his appeals, and that the charges against him be dropped.

For the jury the case came down to whom to believe: four white rookie policemen who did all the shooting or Howard Morgan, the young African American woman who witnessed the police crime, and Morgan’s attorneys, both of whom are Black.  The testimony given by all the witnesses was essentially the same as that given in Morgan’s first trial 5 years ago, at which he was acquitted of aggravated battery with a firearm in the cases of all but one of the officers, but at which the jury was deadlocked over whether or not he had attempted to murder them.

Charice Rush was a young teenaged woman who was out late that night in February 2005.  She testified at the trial that she witnessed what happened as she sat in her parked car in front nbear the incident.  She saw the police pull Morgan’s minivan over and with their guns drawn forcibly pull him from the driver’s seat and throw him to the ground.  She said she saw them open fire on Morgan as he lay on the ground.  She said that she did not see Morgan with a gun in his hands at any time.

Morgan is an eight-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department and a thirteen year career policeman for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad.  He was required to carry a weapon on his job, and he normally carried it when on his way to and from work, as proscribed by Illinois law.

Morgan himself testified that he had been on his way to a family home he was remolding before he had to report for work at 6:00 am that day.  He pulled over to let a police squad car with its lights flashing behind him pass, and was surprised when instead they pulled up, got out of their car and approached his vehicle.  He said they pulled him out of his mini-van in an unprovoked attack, grabbed the gun he carried for work from his belt, and started shooting.  He tried to tell them he was a policeman to no avail.  He said he lost consciousness after several shots.

In contrast to the story told by Rush and Morgan, Policemen Timothy Finley and John Wrigley said they first observed the mini-van driven by Morgan going the wrong way down a one way street with its lights off.  They followed the van with their lights flashing as it made only “rolling stops” at three stop signs after turning onto 19th St.  Another squad car with Policemen Nick Olsen and Eric White came on the scene.  When the van finally pulled over Morgan got out of the van.  They got out of their car with guns drawn and ordered Morgan to place his hands on the side of the van.  As they patted him down he turned on them, drew a gun from his waistband and opened fire on them.  They ran for cover behind their cars and returned fire until Morgan ran out of bullets.

However, the testimony of the police, along with a lot of the evidence presented by the prosecution, was contradictory.  Some of the police testified that Morgan ended up lying on his back.  Some of them testified he ended up lying on his stomach.  No one testified that they had turned him over.

Photographs of the van taken by police evidence technicians all showed that the van was parked with its lights on.  The police testified that the lights were off all the time, which is why they said they were first drawn to the van.

The police said they stopped firing when Morgan ran out of bullets.  Officer Eric White, however, testified that he had stood over shot Morgan and shot him in the back and struck him in the head after the shooting stopped “to protect my fellow-officers,” as he lay on his stomach in the street.

The police all testified that several hours after the shooting they each engaged in “roundtable” discussions about the incident with police officials and attorneys from the State’s Attorney’s office.

The prosecution guaranteed that the jury would not pay attention by presenting a seemingly endless account of every shell casing and ever bullet fragment found at the scene in the greatest possible detail.  These included some casings and bullets fired from Morgan’s own gun.  Significantly, the police identified only three of the twenty-eight bullets taken from Morgan’s body by the surgeons who treated him at Mt. Sinai Hospital.  They did not say what happened to the other 25 bullets or if they had been kept.  They also did not keep or indentify any of the many bullets that pierced the mini-van, which they confiscated and had destroyed (crushed) before any forensic investigation of it could be done.

Since Morgan testified that the police had taken his gun immediately, and when everything was over that gun’s bullets had all been fired, it was a major error not to have preserved the bullets that hit Morgan and could have established that some of them came from his own gun fired by police.

An independent observer of the proceedings would have come away with a picture of what happened very different from that accepted by the jury.  Howard Morgan, after a dinner at home with his family where they were living on the South Side, decided to go to the family home he was renovating in Lawndale on his way to work that February 21 in 2005.  On his way he was pulled over by four very young, white rookie policemen just before 1:00 am.  They had been hyped up with warnings from their superiors that Lawndale was all Black, and was a “high risk” neighborhood.

They got out of their cars with guns drawn and pulled Morgan from his car.  They threw him to the ground.  One of them saw the pistol that he was legally carrying and shouted “Gun!” Perhaps he or another officer grabbed it from his belt.  The others immediately started firing and continued firing until they thought Morgan was dead.

They were terrible shots in their panicked state.  In addition to the 28 bullets that went into Morgan’s body collapsed on the ground they fired wildly.  Countless rounds pierced the side and rear of the van, and others ended up in furniture and walls in nearby apartments.  Two of their shots wounded their fellow officers.

In other words, they panicked and went on a rampage.  It is only because of their poor shooting and, as Morgan’s wife Rosalind always pints out, the grace of God that can be responsible for the fact that Morgan was not murdered.

Once they realized that Morgan was not dead and others arrived on the scene they had to invent a story to explain their behavior.  The “roundtable” discussions they held later that day with representatives of the State’s Attorney and the Fraternal Order of Police helped them get their stories straight.

They charged Morgan with attempted murder of the police and conspired to convict him, to save their careers, their department, and the City from the millions that would otherwise be due to their victim for the permanent damage and terrible suffering they have put him, his family, and his community through.

Morgan’s attorneys are Randolph Stone and Herschella Conyers are both Professors of Clinical Law at the Mandel Legal Clinic of the University of Chicago.  Stone was, for many years, the chief Public Defender of Cook County.

Ted Pearson is Co-Chairperson of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression,

People can support Morgan’s legal defense by sending checks or money orders to the Howard Morgan Defense Fund, c/o Church of God, 1738 W. Marquette Rd, Chicago 60636.

Morgan’s address is Howard Morgan 2012-0127254 Cook County Jail P.O. Box 089002 Chicago, Illinois 60608

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