“Cops and Klansmen … Colleagues?”
Cops survey a scene of conflict, a struggle between fascists and anti-fascists. Blood is on the ground, and webcam recordings show images of members of the Ku Klux Klan and related groups not only armed with knives but actually showing some men stabbing downward at rising bodies on the ground.
One side has knives. One side has signs. Guess which side received charges of violating the law? Guess which side had been surveilled by state and federal agents long before the events of the day? I’ll give you a hint. It wasn’t the Ku Klux Klan.
According to reports published in The Guardian of London, police accounts concentrated on two major groups: anti-fascists and members of Black Lives Matter.
In June 2016, anti-fascists assembled at a Neo Nazi rally in Sacramento, CA. As expected, this rally was the site of high emotions. Violence erupted between the two sides with at least eight anti-fascists either stabbed, beaten, or both.
How did it happen that none of the Neo Nazis were charged, with anything while anti-fascist were charged with everything? The answer is Donovan Ayers, a California highway patrolman who was ordered to investigate the melee.
He wrote hundreds of pages of notes, advocating charges against the anti-fascists. As for the Neo Nazis? Nothing. They have every right to protest.
But what of those who opposed them? They, it seems, are simply troublemakers. Ayers did extensive online research on the anti-fascists, including email, Facebook, and even metadata. His research included Native American and Chicano groups who were anti-fascists.
At the end of a hearing where Ayers testified, the DA was thanked by one courtroom observer for protecting white supremacists.
One wonders how does such a thing as this happen, and history provides a telling answer, for police and fascists have ever been brothers beneath their uniforms.
During the 1930s when the economy was in free fall, groups like the Industrial Workers of the World, known as the IWW or Wobblies, tried to organize agricultural workers, especially in California ‘s fertile Central Valley.
To protect the profits of the landowners, police and Klansman joined hands to attack Wobblies by beating, shooting, and arresting them as Klansmen attacked and assaulted their children.
During this same period, as communists tried to organize black agricultural workers in Alabama, cops and Klansmen joined hands to repress and terrorize them, again, on behalf of wealthy landowners.
One need only read No One is Illegal by Justin Akers Chacón and Mike Davis or Robin D.G. Kelley’s multi-award winning book of history known as Hammer and Hoe.
Once again, fascists have friends among American police in California, in Oregon, and beyond.
From imprisoned nation, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
![Prison Radio is sharing an abbreviated version of a press release covering recent racist incidents at SCI Rockview in PA and the organizing to demand accountability. We are reaching out to people incarcerated at Rockview as well as recently transferred folks, inviting them to call, in hopes of hearing commentaries from them.
Benner Township, PA.-
On November 24th, 2023, imprisoned people at SCI Rockview found two nooses hanging in the CO’s office, displayed visibly for many prisoners to see. When the prisoners asked the staff why the nooses were hung, they were told it was a joke.
By December 4th, prisoners filed a grievance to document what they saw, noting that the hanging of the nooses was “unethical, racially motivated, hateful, [a] deliberate debasement of black inmates" and “unsafe for inmates, staff, [and] the whole prison in general.” In the grievance, they demanded that Sgt. Mosser and CO Richard be fired and investigated for a hate crime, and for CO Kirchner to get therapy. Captain Andrews, the head of security, denied the grievance.
The sergeant and COs are still working in the prison to this day, with no repercussions...
As of March 10th, prisoners have reached out to Pennsylvania officials at the Dept. of Corrections in a letter campaign, sending 100 copies of the grievance. Copies of the letter also were mailed to Governor Shapiro, Senator Fetterman, Senator Street, and various advocacy groups. The demands for relief in the original grievance have now become the platform of demands for this campaign. About 20 of the 100 letters were withheld by the prison.
Activists on the outside are joining forces with prisoners to elevate their demands, flooding the phone lines of DOC offices, assisting with outreach to media, and circulating the stories of prisoners who have found unity in opposition to the facility's virulent institutional racism.
In any other workplace, hanging a noose would be grounds for immediate termination. However, Nicki Paul, the superintendent's assistant and "grievance coordinator" informed the public that they self-investigated their staff and found they did nothing wrong.
Read the full article at i
https://conta.cc/4ayDxlB](https://www.prisonradio.org/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)