Workers Vanguard No. 1023
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3 May 2013
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Free Tinley Park Anti-Fascists!
(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)
Last May, some 18 anti-racist militants broke up a gathering of
fascists in the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park called to organize a “White
Nationalist Economic Summit.” Among the vermin sent scurrying were some with
links to the Stormfront Web site run by a former Ku Klux Klan grand dragon. Such
fascist meetings are not merely right-wing discussion clubs but organizing
centers for race terror against black people, Jews, immigrants, gays and anyone
else the white-supremacists consider subhuman. For their basic act of social
sanitation, five of the anti-fascist fighters were sentenced by a Cook County
court to prison terms of three-and-a-half to six years on charges of “armed
violence.” (See “Freedom Now for Tinley Park 5!” WV No. 1018, 22
February.)
The Spartacist League and the Partisan Defense Committee stand by
these militants and call on workers, leftists and anti-racist fighters to demand
freedom for the Tinley Park Five. The fascists are a deadly threat to the
integrated labor movement, which should be in the forefront of efforts to crush
them in the egg. Four of the five who were sentenced—Jason Sutherlin, Cody Lee
Sutherlin, Dylan Sutherlin and Alex Stuck—have agreed to receive $25 monthly
stipends the PDC sends to class-war prisoners. The PDC program, which includes
additional gifts during the holiday season, serves not merely to alleviate some
of the harshness of incarceration but also as a message of solidarity from those
outside prison walls.
The courage of the Tinley Park defendants was seen in their
principled response to the government vendetta. Each of the five was initially
charged with 37 felony counts, including armed violence, property damage and mob
action. The cops and prosecutors applied continuous pressure to try to get them
to give up names of those involved in sending the fascists scattering, which the
five steadfastly refused to do. Unable to meet the exorbitant bonds, which
ranged up to $250,000, they spent seven months in Cook County Jail. Facing the
prospect of up to another year behind bars awaiting trial, they accepted a
non-cooperating agreement in which each pleaded guilty to three counts of armed
violence in return for guarantees of time off for good behavior.
In their letters agreeing to receive PDC stipends, the four
expressed appreciation for the contributions and also for the issues of
Class-Struggle Defense Notes and Workers Vanguard that they have
received. One noted that his fellow inmates lined up to read the WV
article about their case.
Initiated in 1986, the stipend program takes as its model that of
the International Labor Defense (ILD), affiliated to the early Communist Party,
which provided stipends to over 100 prisoners of the class war. As James P.
Cannon, founder and first secretary of the ILD, wrote, “The class conscious
worker accords to the class war prisoners a place of singular honor and esteem”
(“The Cause That Passes Through a Prison,” Labor Defender [September
1926]). Past PDC recipients worldwide include an Irish Republican Socialist
Party militant, members of the British National Union of Mineworkers and members
of the U.S. miners, Teamsters and Steelworkers unions. Now, the Tinley Park
anti-fascists are joined in the program with America’s foremost class-war
prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier,
radical lawyer Lynne Stewart, former Black Panther supporters Mondo we Langa and
Ed Poindexter and imprisoned members of the Philadelphia MOVE commune.
We urge WV readers to contribute to the stipend program by
sending checks payable to the PDC and earmarked “prisoners stipends fund” to:
PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal St. Station, New York, NY 10013-0099. Letters to the
Tinley Park Five can be sent to: Alex Stuck M34020, 2600 N. Brinton Avenue,
Dixon, IL 61021; Cody Sutherlin M34021, 13423 E. 1150th Avenue, Robinson, IL
62454; Dylan Sutherlin M34022, P.O. Box 7711, Centralia, IL 62801; Jason
Sutherlin M34023, 100 Hillcrest Rd., East Moline, IL 61244; John Tucker M34024,
P.O. Box 900, Taylorville, IL 62568.
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