The Continuing War On Police
By Cliff Kincaid
May 11, 2009
On April 24, as I was waiting in the San Francisco Hall of Justice to cover a murder case involving members of the Black Liberation Army (BLA), a small group of BLA supporters was beginning to gather. Convicted lawyer Lynne Stewart greeted Ward Churchill, after the lanky and long-haired former Professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder strolled down the hallway. "Congratulations," she said, embracing him and referring to a jury verdict that he was wrongly fired. "Will you be reinstated?" Churchill answered, "It remains to be seen."
Stewart was convicted of aiding a terrorist group while representing Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, himself convicted of several terrorism charges relating to attacks planned on the United States and now serving time in the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, North Carolina. Stewart's guilty verdict is on appeal.
Churchill, who taught "ethnic studies," got into trouble after he wrote an essay describing 9/11 victims as Nazis. University administrators had charged him with shoddy research and plagiarism.
It looks like Churchill will either get his job back, or the university, which mishandled the case, will have to pay him not to show up for class after a judge forces his reinstatement.
Interestingly, a letter asking for his reinstatement is signed by "William Ayers, University of Illinois at Chicago," who is better known as Bill Ayers of the Communist terrorist group known as the Weather Underground.
National Police Week
But why are these people coming out in support of accused cop-killers? It's a question worth answering, considering that May 10-16 is National Police Week and that Attorney General Eric Holder, who was involved in the Clinton pardons of members of two major terrorist groups, is speaking at the National Law Enforcement Memorial on Wednesday night. Holder will lead the lighting of candles and read the names of law enforcement officers who have died in the line of duty.
The Holder pardons involved members of the Weather Underground and Puerto Rican FALN, groups which killed police officers and many others.
Stewart and Churchill were at the San Francisco hearing to show solidarity with Herman Bell and Anthony Bottom, members of the Black Liberation Army accused of killing San Francisco Police Sergeant John Young in 1971. One flashed a clenched fist to Stewart, Churchill and the others in the audience seated behind the defense table.
Already in prison for their role in the murder of two New York City police officers, Bell and Bottom are two members of the "San Francisco 8" alleged to be involved in numerous terrorist attacks on police and police facilities in the San Francisco area in the early 1970s.
Some of the evidence in the case is expected to come from Ruben Scott, a former BLA member with inside information about the group. The preliminary hearing in the case begins on June 8.
>> Continued -- Page 1 2 3 4
| 
