California Campaign: Freedom for Peltier! Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit ------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the November 6, 1997 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- SAN FRANCISCO: NATIVE GROUPS, STUDENTS BUILD RALLY FOR PELTIER By Tahnee Stair and Brenda Sandburg San Francisco Native communities and students on campuses throughout California have joined together to demand the freedom of Native political prisoner Leonard Peltier. They are organizing a Nov. 16 rally in San Francisco that will call on President Bill Clinton to grant Peltier executive clemency. According to rally organizer Judy Talaugon, Native people will be coming to the rally from the San Juan Bautista and Robinson rancherias, the Round Valley Indian Reservation and the Muwekma Tribe. "We're getting thousands of flyers to people at pow-wows," said Talaugon, "including one on Alcatraz Island, the scene of the historic takeover by AIM activists in 1968. This will be truly historic, because there is a great sense of unity and renewed spirit behind our brother Leonard." Peltier has been in prison for over 21 years, convicted of the 1975 killing of two FBI agents who participated in a raid on the Pine Ridge, S.D., reservation. Like Geronimo Ji Jaga, recently freed after 27 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, Peltier was prosecuted when the government's "domestic security" program COINTELPRO was in effect. COINTELPRO was a secret program that used any means to destroy progressive organizations. All Peltier's appeals have been denied. His only chance to win freedom is through an executive pardon. STUDENTS TAKE UP PELTIER'S CAUSE The National Peoples Campaign has been mobilizing students for the rally. After an NPC presentation at Humboldt State University, the American Indian Alliance there formed a committee to bring students to the rally and is sending a bus. A similar committee was formed by students at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Students are organizing at the University of California at Davis, the Native American University DQU, Sacramento City College and Stanford University. Students from the Latino groups MECHA and La Raza and the Pan African Student Alliance are out every week with informational tables at San Francisco State. The Black Student Union, the League of Filipino Students and the Chicano Education Project of Valley College have endorsed the rally, as has the Gay and Lesbian Association of Los Angeles City College. "I haven't seen such a reaction from students in a long time," said Amy Eng, a UC Berkeley student and NPC organizer. "Many students are learning about Peltier's case for the first time. They are shocked by the injustice and are signing up in droves to fight for his freedom." The Nov. 16 rally will feature Dennis Banks, a co-founder of the American Indian Movement. Banks participated in the 1968 occupation of Alcatraz Island when militant Native people held the island for three months demanding that unused federal land be returned to Native people. Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Peltier's lead attorney, will also be a featured speaker, along with poet and musician John Trudell, a director of AIM from 1972 to 1979. In 1979 Trudell led a march to FBI headquarters in Washington where he delivered an address on the bureau's war against Indians. He burned an American flag that he said had been desecrated by racist and class injustice. Early the next morning, a fire of "suspicious origin" burned down Trudell's home on the Shoshone Paiute reservation in Nevada, killing his wife, their three children and his wife's mother. Bear Lincoln of the Round Valley Indian Reservation in northern California will also speak at the rally. Lincoln was recently acquitted of first- and second-degree murder charges in an incident stemming from a police ambush in which a sheriff's deputy was killed. Despite his court victory, Lincoln still faces manslaughter charges. Many Native communities and others have rallied to his defense. A gag order on Lincoln was recently lifted and he is expected to speak on police murders in northern California. Other speakers will include Gloria La Riva, a coordinator of the Nov. 16 rally and the National People's Campaign; Cora Lee Simons of Round Valley Indians for Justice, who organized the victorious effort to defend Bear Lincoln; and Larry Holmes of Workers World Party, who will speak on the struggle to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. Mobilizing for the rally began in late September at a demonstration to halt logging of the ancient Headwaters redwood forest. Then singer Ani DiFranco invited student volunteers to speak at her Bay Area Halloween concert. In recent weeks, volunteers have plastered San Francisco with Peltier posters, have leafleted pow-wows and many other political and cultural events, and spoken at many forums. On Oct. 27, the National People's Youth Committee marched in Sacramento with Jesse Jackson and a coalition of civil rights groups to support affirmative action and denounce Proposition 209. They saturated the crowd with information about Peltier and the Nov. 16 rally. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@workers.org. For subscription info send message to: info@workers.org. 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