HRP DEMANDS POLICE INVESTIGATION

HRP DEMANDS POLICE INVESTIGATION

As part of a continuing Human Rights Party investigation into the police department, Councilmember Jerry DeGrieck is demanding a public hearing, charging that police misconduct and brutality occurred at the crater digging on June 17.

When they attempted to dig a symbolic bomb crater, thirty-five people were arrested and charged with malicious destruction of property. Ten of these people are also charged with resisting arrest or disorderly conduct.

DeGrieck was an eye-witness to the actions of the police on the diag on Saturday. He said that the Human Rights Party is gathering photographs and testimony to prove its charges.

Jerry and Nancy are also demanding a thorough report from the city administrator, Guy Larcom, on the city's role in the crater busts. His totally inadequate response to their last request for information about the Bomb Crater 4 bust, was to give them a police and a University of Michigan press release. (Just what we needed to hear, the public lies of the two culprits themselves!)

When Jerry called for a public hearing on police brutality. Democratic Councilmember Faber responded, "This is a matter for a report, not a public hearing." Jerry said, "I recall one of Mayor Harris's principles is that if any council member requests a public hearing, there will be a public hearing."

Republican Councilmember Fairbanks didn't feel capable of making a decision as he said, "Well, if Mayor Harris wants to have a public hearing, we'll have one, otherwise we won't. (Let the almighty Harris decide.)

Jerry and Nancy will also introduce a resolution urging the University of Michigan to drop its charges against the crater-diggers.

The craters were dug to protest the U of M's war research and to express solidarity with the North Vietnamese people. The HRP is now asking all our other elected representatives on City Council to express their solidarity with us by demanding the University drop its ridiculous charges.

ANTI-WAR ORDINANCE DEFEATED

"There is a responsibility which the City Council of Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor corporations, and the University of Michigan ... must face up to, that is, responsibility for condoning and abetting the continuing role of the University of Michigan ... in the automated destruction of S.E. Asia and its peoples."

Dave Gordon's speech to City Council -- June 19,1972

The Democrats on City Council have joined with Republicans to defeat Anti-War ordinances and resolutions introduced by the Human Rights Party. Even though they have publicly denounced the war, they refuse to take any action against local producers of war materials.

They voted no on an ordinance declaring producers of war material a public nuisance, and on resolutions condemning U.S. escalation of the war, declaring Ann Arbor a sanctuary for deserters and resisters, and assigning the city attorney to aid deserters and resisters.

Consequently, it will be difficult to discover if an employer is breaking the watered-down anti-strike breaking ordinance which was passed.

The Democrats have also made their pro-management, anti-labor position clear. They voted down HRP anti-strike breaking amendments which would have given striking workers protection against the loss of their only security -- their jobs.

At the end of the June 12 City Council meeting, HRP member David Cahill "rich professors, lawyers, and shopkeepers now representing the Democratic Party on Council."

"It is sad to see that the Council members elected as liberals take positions which would cause Walter Reuther to turn over in his grave. But the combination of Mayor Harris's 'reactionary legalism' and the other Democrats' political paralysis means that even the most minor and ineffective proposals for change in city policy are met with fierce opposition, not only from the Republicans -- where it s expected -- but from the supposedly progressive Democrats as well ... It is also sad to see Democrats did not dare give any reasons for opposing the anti-war ordinances and resolutions. Their silence condemns them for what they are -- supporters of the War Machine."

Linda Ross