Workers Vanguard No. 1023
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3 May 2013
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Defend the NATO 3!
Chicago
(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)
For nearly a year, Brent Betterly, Jared Chase, and Brian Jacob
Church have been locked away in Cook County Jail, facing possible 40-year prison
stretches on an array of “terrorism” and other trumped-up charges, with bail set
at $1.5 million each. Last spring, these Occupy activists traveled from Florida
to Chicago in the lead-up to protests against a May 20 summit of the
U.S.-dominated NATO imperialist military alliance. The city was under a virtual
state of siege orchestrated by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, with thousands of National
Guardsmen, troops and cops mobilized to shield the summit from over 10,000
protesters. On May 16, Betterly, Chase and Church—now known as the NATO 3—were
arrested for a supposed plot to make four Molotov cocktails and hurl them at
police stations and other targets. The highly publicized arrests were part of a
campaign to brand the protests as violent, in order to chill opposition to the
NATO war criminals who have the blood of untold thousands in Afghanistan and
elsewhere on their hands.
As the Partisan Defense Committee wrote in a 21 May 2012 protest
letter to the Cook County State’s Attorney (printed in WV No. 1003, 25
May 2012), “The arrests of Betterly, Church and Chase have all the earmarks of a
classic case of police entrapment and provocation.” The arrests came less than a
week after the defendants had posted a video on YouTube of a Chicago cop who had
pulled their car over, threatening them: “We’ll come look for you, each and
every one of you.”
In January, the NATO 3’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the
“terrorism” charges on constitutional grounds. The defense motion paints a
chilling picture of how undercover cops known as Mo and Gloves tried every trick
in the book to set the activists up:
“Despite a more than two-week continuing effort by the undercover
Chicago police officers posing as fellow members of Occupy to entice and
encourage the defendants to carry out some criminal act, the defendants never
did anything.... It was only in desperation, after two weeks of nothing to show
for their undercover infiltration of the defendants, and the untold resources
expended to facilitate those efforts, that the police suggested at least some
bottles of gasoline [Molotov cocktails] be put together. The defendants never
discussed a specific plan of what to do with these bottles, let alone a plan to
use them to intimidate or coerce a significant portion of the civilian
population. In fact, the bottles were always in possession of the under-cover
police who suggested their own provocative ideas for how to use the bottles.”
Just moments after the bottles were filled with gasoline, the
undercover cops sent a prearranged signal, and the police then raided the
apartment with guns drawn. They proceeded to ransack the place, confiscating
computers, cellphones and political literature.
The NATO 3 were not the only activists set up and slapped with
felony charges prior to the military summit. Sebastian Senakiewicz and Mark
Neiweem were charged with “falsely making a terrorist threat” and “attempted
possession of an incendiary device” respectively. Both took non-cooperating plea
deals and remain imprisoned. In all, over 100 anti-NATO protesters were
arrested, from pacifist liberals to anarchoid activists. Also arrested during
the weekend of the May 20 protest were the Tinley Park 5, anti-fascists who have
been convicted for helping break up a white-supremacist gathering in a Chicago
suburb (see accompanying article).
On March 27, Judge Thaddeus Wilson denied the NATO 3’s defense
motion to dismiss, in a court hearing that was clearly designed to intimidate
the defendants and everyone who came out on their behalf. Observers noted that
while the judge announced his ruling, the defendants were held in a separate
room, sealed off by soundproof glass and away from their supporters, with an
armed, uniformed cop for each of them. Meanwhile, four armed cops sat in the
audience. “It’s what a lot of scholars and people who pay attention to national
security call the ‘new normal’,” said Thomas Durkin, a lawyer for Chase. In
simple terms, the “new normal” is a creeping police state.
As the NATO 3’s motion pointed out, the Illinois statutory
definition of terrorism is so vague and broad that it could include “labor
strikes, peaceful occupations and sit-ins, political protests and boycotts.”
Ever since the inception of the “war on terror” in 2001, we have warned that
while the first targets were mainly immigrants, particularly Muslims and those
from the Near East, the ultimate targets would be the labor movement, black
people, the left and anyone who would dare to protest the depredations of U.S.
imperialism, at home or abroad. And indeed, leftist political activity of many
stripes has increasingly become a focal point of “anti-terror” repression.
In 2008, a host of undercover agents wormed their way into the
organizing of protests at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis,
entrapping activists on “terrorism” charges. One agent later infiltrated the
Minneapolis branch of the reformist Freedom Road Socialist Organization
(FRSO—publishers of Fight Back!). This led in 2010 to FBI raids and grand
jury subpoenas against 23 leftists and trade unionists in Chicago and
Minneapolis, many of them FRSO supporters, as part of a witchhunting
investigation falsely identifying solidarity efforts on behalf of Palestinian
and Colombian leftists with “material support to terrorism.” Last November, four
Cleveland supporters of the populist Occupy movement received prison terms
ranging from six to eleven and a half years for a plot concocted by an FBI
informant. Meanwhile police “red squads,” which had largely gone underground in
the wake of the social upheavals of the 1960s, have resurfaced in many cities
under the guise of investigating “terrorism.”
A dangerous vise is being tightened around political protest in
this country. First Amendment rights and other civil liberties are shredded in
the name of “homeland security,” while the state’s moles and rats cook up
felonious “plots” aimed at luring political dissenters close enough to slap
charges on them. This is a concerted, bipartisan effort. The use
of anti-terror laws against leftists has accelerated under the Democratic
administration of Barack Obama. From San Francisco, Oakland and Portland to
Minneapolis, Chicago and Cleveland, it has been Democratic Party mayors who have
led the crackdowns and witchhunts aimed at Occupy and other protesters.
The NATO 3 are scheduled for trial on September 16. The PDC, a
legal and social defense organization associated with the Marxist Spartacist
League, calls on the left and labor movements to join in demanding: Drop
all the charges now! The PDC has donated $200 to the legal defense of
the NATO 3 and encourages others to do the same. Donations can be made at
https://www.wepay.com/donations/nato-5-defense.
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