RiseUp! Chicago - Pack the Courtroom! | NYC - Inside Private Prisons: An American Dilemma in Age of Mass Incarceration
In this issue of RiseUp!
▪ Chicago: Pack the Courtroom - Wednesday, November 29th ...
▪ NYC: Inside Private Prisons: An American Dilemma in the Age of Mass Incarceration with author Lauren-Brooke Eisen - Thursday, November 30
▪ From Puncture The Silence, Cleveland: Felony Charges Against Republican Convention Flag-Burners Dropped
▪ Cleveland Press release: Judge rules all 12 arrests unconstitutional violations of protestors’ First Amendment rights.
From Revolution Club Chicago
It's Right To Stand Up To Police Running Amok
Pack the Courtroom - Wednesday, November 29th, 9:00 am
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Be in court on Wednesday, November 29!
Trial Set To Begin For Members of the Chicago Revolution Club
This Wednesday, November 29th at 9:00 a.m., members of the Chicago Revolution Club will be in court room 303 at 555 W Harrison, Chicago, IL 60607. This is the day trial is set to begin for 3 members of the club arrested last summer. The charge is “interfering with a police officer”, the most serious class of misdemeanor which carries a penalty of up to a year in jail.
The case set for trial stems from arrests on July 21st when the Revolution Club dared to a defy the Chicago Police Department 7th District’s unofficial martial law in a south side neighborhood where the police had been running roughshod over people, particularly people who had stood with the Revolution Club, put on the club T-shirt and taken up the club’s call to “blow the whistle on police brutality".
Two of these three club members were arrested again in August for simply witnessing the police harass two men outside the Revolution Club’s Organizing Center. Due this they face a second charge of “interfering with a police officer”. In the second case, the police were so angry that club members dared to came out of their office to witness them harassing people, that they turned their ire on the club and arrested Revolution Club members when they refused to leave. There is a status hearing for this case in the same courtroom at the same time.
The case going to trial is a clear case of the police suppressing political speech they don’t like, especially speech that calls out the police intimidation, harassment and brutality against those on the bottom of this society. On the day of the arrest, Revolution Club members had been standing on the sidewalk during the hours that police had told community people that they could not be on out on the sidewalk---7am-3pm. An informal martial law. When the first club member was arrested in mid morning, the police swooped in with 11 cars, using the pretext that she had taped a hand written sign to a pole calling on people to stand with the community.
The two other club members were arrested close to noon just as rally was set to begin. This time more than a dozen police cars roared up. This rally had been well advertised in the community. Former Black Panther and revolutionary communist, Joe Veale, was scheduled to speak at this rally. The rally could not take place due to the preemptive arrests.
How do we know this is a clear case of attacking the content of message from the Revolution Club in violation of their first amendment rights and the rights of the people to hear this message? Simple. Because the Commander of the 7th district has repeatedly told us this to our face. At a press conference to protest these arrests he told Carl Dix [co-founder of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, and a spokesperson for the Revolutionary Communist Party], “Alright, look, I am not going to let you intimidate me in this. You have to move yourself from in front of the station. We made lawful arrests today." When Carl Dix challenged this that commander said, “In my opinion as district commander, yes, these arrests were lawful, legal and within the law. This is not a police brutality situation at all. The 7th district works hard at fostering relationships within the community. And I think what you are doing right now is totally antithesis to what’s going on in the streets.”
And when the 7th District commander was challenged the next day by an attorney that he could not simply suppress speech he didn’t like, the commander responded, “So I will do it legally, then! I will enforce every law I can find against this group.”
The revolutionaries are being singled out to punish them and to send a message to the people that this (and worse) is what will happen to you if you dare to join up with the revolution and stand up to the police and the system they enforce. This arrest became a big social question in the community and beyond. A video of the revolutionaries being arrested, taken by a member of the community, was viewed by 92,000 on Facebook.
Two other club members were also arrested on July 21st and charged with violating a sound ordinance. Their charges have been dismissed.
The fact that the state is pursuing these charges is very serious and an outrage. The Revolution Club calls on all people of conscience to oppose this attack and to support the rights of the people in the neighborhood to peacefully assemble and the rights of the Revolution Club members to stand up to an informal martial law and conduct a rally and speak-out against these police running amok on the south side neighborhood with out facing arrest. One woman suffered a cracked rib from her arrest and 2 of the 3 went to the hospital after release. Send letters, emails and call the State’s Attorney demanding that these charges be dropped (Kim Foxx, Cook County State’s Attorney, 69 W. Washington, Suite 3200, Chicago IL 60602, 312-603-1880, email [email protected].) Send copies to the Revolution Club at [email protected] and call us at 312-804-9121. Donate here to help pay legal fees. And for those in Chicago pack courtroom 303 at 555 W Harrison, Chicago 60607 at 9:00 a.m. this Wednesday November 29.
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Lauren-Brooke Eisen is Senior Counsel in the Brennan Center's Justice Program
Revolution Books NYC presents
Inside Private Prisons: An American Dilemma in the Age of Mass Incarceration with author Lauren-Brooke Eisen
Lauren-Brooke Eisen is Senior Counsel in the Brennan Center's Justice Program where she focuses on improving the criminal justice process through legal reforms, specifically how the criminal justice system is funded.
Date: Thursday, November 30
Time: 7:00 PM
Where: Revolution Books NYC, 437 Malcolm X Blvd/Lenox Avenue (at 132nd), Harlem, New York
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RNC 16 All Free! Victory in the RNC 16 Case
Felony Charges Against Republican Convention Flag-Burners Dropped
From Puncture the Silence, Cleveland
The flag burning political action at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on July 20 by the Revolution Club and their supporters was prescient - they were sounding the alarm even before the Trump/Pence regime came to power - and now as millions agonize as to what it does mean that they are now in the White House - the horrors it means for humanity and the potential destruction of the planet. The message from that day now must further resonate -In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept A Fascist America! The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!
More here ...
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October 24 Press release by RNC 16 defense committee
Cleveland Municipal Court Dismisses 12 Cases Against RNC Protesters
Judge rules all 12 arrests unconstitutional violations of protestors’ First Amendment rights.
CLEVELAND, OHIO ― On October 20, Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Charles L. Patton dismissed all charges against 12 activists who were arrested and charged with violations of aggravated disorderly conduct and obstruction ordinances after they participated in a flag burning action during the Republic National Convention in July 2016. Last fall, the protesters filed motions to dismiss the charges, arguing the arrests violated their First Amendment rights because the ordinances were unconstitutionally applied to them and their arrests imposed unconstitutional prior restraints on their freedom of speech and assembly.
Burning the flag has long been indisputably recognized as a free speech activity, protected by the First Amendment. At a January 2017 hearing on these motions, Chief of Police Calvin Williams acknowledged that flag burning was legal. Citing Supreme Court precedent, Judge Patton’s order reads, in part, “The government may not prohibit the verbal or nonverbal expression of an idea merely because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable, even where our flag is involved…If there is a bedrock principle underlying the first amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea without more that removes the idea from the First Amendment’s protection.”
“Judge Patton made the right decision in declaring these arrests unconstitutional and dismissing all charges, as the City of Cleveland targeted and arrested activists legitimately engaged in free speech,” said attorney Jacqueline Greene, partner at the law firm of Friedman and Gilbert and one of the lawyers representing the charged activists. “This should be read as a clear message to the City – and particularly to the police – that they must respect the First Amendment rights of protesters, whatever their message.”
“Our freedoms of speech and assembly are bedrock principles of this county. The City of Cleveland was obligated under the law to protect the rights of protesters; instead it charged them with crimes in retaliation for their speech, in an attempt to cover up the unconstitutional actions of the police. Such egregious attacks on our democratic principles cannot be tolerated,” said Sarah Gelsomino, also a partner at the law firm of Friedman and Gilbert and one of the lawyers representing the charged activists.
“We are thrilled that the Court saw these arrests for what they were: quashing dissent. We are proud of what we did at the RNC and that we stood up to the suppression of speech. Dismissal was the only just outcome after we suffered from the City of Cleveland’s aggressive arrests, days in detention, and almost a year and a half of ongoing prosecution -- when we had committed no crime,” said Noche Diaz, one of the 12 protesters whose charges were dismissed.
The events leading to these arrests and subsequent criminal charges occurred during the Republican National Convention, held in Cleveland, Ohio from July 18 through 21, 2016. On the afternoon of July 20, 2016, dozens of protesters gathered near East 4th Street and Prospect Avenue with the purpose of burning an American flag as an expression of their political views in protest of the Republican Party and then-presidential nominee Trump.
The City of Cleveland intervened immediately as the flag was lit. Chief of Police Calvin Williams and several other officers pushed into the circle of protesters. The Cleveland Division of Police subsequently arrested sixteen people, held them in jail for approximately 30 hours, and filed criminal charges. This intervention, as Judge Patton ruled today, violated their constitutional rights, including the rights to freedom of speech and freedom of association and assembly.
Every single criminal charge against RNC protesters has now been dismissed. In January 2017, the City of Cleveland dismissed criminal charges against two other RNC Protesters, including Gregory “Joey” Johnson, defendant in the 1989 Supreme Court case that declared flag burning to be protected speech activity under the First Amendment. In September, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Mike O’Malley dropped all felony charges filed against two protesters who also participated in the flag burning. The two protesters were charged with assaulting a police officer, obstruction, and resisting arrest.
“We stood at the gates of the RNC the same day Donald Trump was selected as the Republican candidate for president. We burned the American Flag and declared ‘America was Never Great!’ The State targeted us for our message and stopped us from exercising our rights in sounding the alarm on the unfolding nightmare of the Trump/Pence fascist regime,” Johnson said.
More than 40 local attorneys with the Ohio Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, the Cleveland Branch of the NAACP, and other affiliated lawyers volunteered to defend protesters’ rights during the RNC on a pro bono basis.
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