6/8 SF8 Hearing/Help Respond to Media Lies!

[nattyreb]

GET INVOLVED!
via: Free the SF 8!
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PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD FAR AND WIDE!
SF 8 PRELIMINARY HEARING STARTS MONDAY JUNE 8

8 AM RALLY TO DROP THE CHARGES
9 AM COURT HEARING
850 Bryant St. @ 7th., San Francisco

The SF 8 are Black community elders and activists arrested in January 2007 on charges related to the 1971 killing of a San Francisco police officer. The case against the SF8 is a frame up based on torture-induced "confessions" and fabricated evidence. The same case was thrown out of court 30 years ago but was revived after 9/11 with money from Homeland Security. After two and a half long years, the preliminary hearing is finally starting on June 8 and is expected to last for three months. The hearing will determine whether or not the SF8 will go to trial.

In an effort to bolster the very weak case against the SF8, the San Francisco Chronicle just published a sensationalistic article filled with racist innuendos and unsubstantiated implications. Without offering one shred of evidence, the article (John Koopman, 5/24) implies that the murder of a young white woman in 1971 is somehow linked to the SF8. We must demand that the Chronicle and other corporate media stop circulating such blatant misinformation!

Idealist's slaying in '71 still haunts today

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP:
• Attend court during the preliminary hearing from June to September
• Sign the open letter demanding that Attorney General Jerry Brown drop the charges against the SF8 - What You Can Do to Free the SF8
• Write the SF Chronicle demanding that they retract Koopman's inflammatory article (letters@sfchronicle.com)
• Invite a speaker from the SF 8 Defense Committee to your school or organization
• Donate to support the work to free the SF8 - Donate to Free the SF8
• Sign up to get regular information and updates about the SF8 case - Cdhrsupport Info Page

FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL 415-226-1120 OR GO TO Free the SF8 - Committee for the Defense of Human Rights
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I sent a letter to the Chronicle yesterday regarding their terrible article. Although they may not publish any letters, I think it would be good for as many people as possible to send a quick message expressing outrage over their article. This could help get a meeting with them or support effort to get an op ed supportive of the 8 published. Letters can be sent to letters@sfchronicle.com or through their website comments section.

Below are letters from Stuart Hanlon & Michael Lyon which they sent and could help people frame their comments although I don't think each letter needs to be that detailed since the point is more to register our disgust.

Diana Block
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From Stuart Hanlon, attorney for Herman Bell

I am one of the attorneys for the seven former Black Panthers charged with the 1971 murder of a S.F. police officer. Your article "Idealist Slaying Still Haunts Today," not only is misleading , but contains outright lies and is based on nothing but the speculation of your writer or others who know nothing about this case

We have received hundred of thousands of pages of evidence and there is no evidence whatsoever that links this young woman to the killing of Sgt Young, or her killing to those seven men facing charges, or the Black Panther Party or any other organization connected in any way to the case. Yet your article says she was likely involved and that the seven men facing charges are responsible for her death.

It is difficult to imagine any reason why you would print such an article filled with these false innuendos linking the sad and tragic death of this young woman with this group of men facing a trial for something that happened close to forty years ago other than a blatant attempt to bias the prospective jury pool against the seven men on trial. It is difficult enough to get a fair trial thirty-eight years after a crime, when evidence is destroyed, witnesses dead or senile, and all memories faded by time and age. Your article makes the possibility of a fair trial even more remote.

This case is being prosecuted by the Attorney General of California and investigated by the FBI and SF police department. They don't need any more help trying to falsely convict these men from a biased and misinformed writer and a paper that cares nothing about truth or justice.

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Editor,

Your sensationalist May 24 article, “Idealist’s slaying in ’71 still haunts today,” shows just how baseless the State’s prosecution of the SF8 for the 1971 killing of a SF policeman is. This prosecution is based only on “confessions” tortured out of the defendants by New Orleans police in 1973, but the Chronicle shamelessly helps prosecute the case by insinuating that the SF8 also killed a young woman whom the Chronicle says cooperated in the policeman’s killing. The story says a woman was discovered murdered 37 years ago in Stanislaus County, but gives questionable evidence that she is missing Panther sympathizer Mary Alice Willey, and no evidence that the woman who entered the Ingleside Station to file a stolen purse police report before the killing was Willey, or even an accomplice at all. It’s all spin. This entire SF8 case, with its missing murder weapon, its misplaced records on fingerprints which failed to implicate the SF8, and its DNA evidence which fails to implicate the SF8, is a plan to promote racist conspiracy theories, in hopes of stalling future movements against police brutality and burying the anti-racist struggles of the 1960s and 1970s. Drop the charges against the SF8 in their Preliminary Hearing on June 8th.

Michael Lyon
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Please support these brothers by sending a donation. Make checks payable to CDHR/Agape and mail to the address below or donate on line:

Donate to Free the SF8

Committee for the Defense of Human Rights (CDHR)
PO Box 90221
Pasadena, CA 91109
(415) 226-1120
FreetheSF8@riseup.net

Free the SF8 - Committee for the Defense of Human Rights