Civil Liberties, Civil Lies Lorenzo Komboa Ervin Recently, I read an excerpt of Loretta Ross's contribution from a 1995 book on the internet: "The Price We Pay: The Case Against Racist Speech, Hate Propaganda and Pornography" [by Laura Lederer and Richard Delgado, Hill and Wang Publishers]. MS. Ross's excellent article "Hate Groups, Africans and the First Amendment" not only made me think it made me mad as hell! The idea that the American Civil Liberties Union on more than one occasion has protected the rights of the Ku Klux Klan and other White racists to burn crosses to intimidate Black folks, and that the courts would then defend the rights of these racists as expressions of "free speech" really burns me up. But think about this; the ACLU defends these white racists in criminal court with black attorneys no less! They did it in Texas, as described in MS. Ross's article, but they have also done it on several other occasions, including in Virginia earlier this year. What really angers me about all this is because I know first hand just how hypocritical the ACLU really is in defending white racists, in fact throwing hunderds of thousands of dollars of legal resources for their defense, while they won't get involved in the cases of Black activists hardly at all, even when those activists are placed in a similar set of legal circumstances. I know this first hand because I have been victimized by the ACLU's support to the racists, but then claiming their "hands are tied" when it comes to the cases of Black activists in my very own case. I'm originally from Chattanooga, Tennessee, a small Southern town on the Georgia border. It has a history of police brutality and vicious Ku Klux Klan attacks on Blac. In fact, in 1980, Klan snipers shot five elderly Black women in the back, wounding them severly with shotguns and deer rifles, and when captured were put on trial by an all-white jury, and either acquitted or found guilty of minor misdemeanors. The Black community rose up in a two week long rebellion, which had to be put down by the US Army and the state national guard. A few weeks later, another group of Klansmen were discovered in a Black neighborhood with sniper rifles, silenced pistols, and bow and arrows, and arrested to protect then from angry folks in the Black community. Know who defended several of the Klansmen at a later trial? The Tennessee ACLU and the Chattanooga Legal Aid Society. Several years later, when the Ku Klux Klan wanted to abrogate an earlier court ruling banning the Klan from its racist activities in the city of Chattanooga in 1987 by holding a down town rally, it was attorneys retained by the ACLU who defended their "rights" to do so. Over and over again, the ACLU was there to defend the First Amendment rights of white racists, but not the Black people victimized by racists. But in 1993, when myself and several other activists were arrested by local cops in front of the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Courts Building for protesting against police brutality, in what was clearly a First Amendment case, the ACLU of Tennessee refused our request for assistance. The eight predominately Black activists, known as the "Chattanooga 8",were being prosecuted under a rarely-used "disruption" law, which called for six months in prison and a $1,000 fine for street demonstrations. This Tennessee disruption law is clearly in violation of the right to picket and the free speech provision of the First Amendment of the United States constitution, but because the protesters are Black and are protesting police brutality against the Black community, phony liberals like the ACLU will not get involved in the case. As is usually the case with these sellout libverals , we had to fend for ourselves, and did raise enough money to hire a local attorney, and several of us were acquitted in 1994. I was convicted because I was the real target of the prosecution from the outset as the leader of the anti-racist campaign. That case is now before the Tennessee Supreme Court. In May 1998, myself and two other activists,[popularly known as the Chattanooga 3] were arrested under this disruption statute for leading anti-racist protests at City hall, where we demanded the right to speak about the then recent deaths of two Black men by Chattanooga cops. We had been told in advance that this was possible, but instead, we were attacked and arrested by cops after City Council members called the Chief of Police. We now face a criminal trial on January 9, 2001 for "disrupting" a city hall meeting, a place where political speech is supposed to be protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. The proseution is clearly tainted by local redneck politics, and dominated by the most vulgar forms of open racism. Yet, the ACLU vehemently refuses to lend any legal support to our defense, and we are forced to go to trial with the County Public Defender and other court-appointed counsel. In a very personal way, I fully understand what MS. Ross is saying when she says that the rights of Black people and that of racist hate speech, guaranteed under the First Amendment, are incompatible, and such speech should not be defended. But it is now popular for civil libertarians to defend white supremacists, even with Black lawyers, but when it comes to Black people needing legal defense against racist and politically-contrived prosecutions, they are nowhere to be found. The whole system is rigged and hypocritical. White racist vigilantes can burn a cross on your lawn, and they call that "free speech, but if you protest against Klan racism or police brutality, they call that a crime. That's not civil liberties, that's civil lies! ACLU means "Always Lying, Crying, and Underhanded". Back to Anarchism And The Black Revolution