ASHEVILLE, North Caroline — Paranoia? Not according to attorneys Arthur Kinoy and William Kunstler. Not if you’ve read the headlines for the past week. “I don’t want to sound like a Cassandra,” said Kunstler, speaking at a recent conference for movement lawyers, “but I don’t have to. It’s no longer a guess. It’s here.”
Chicago (/ ʃ ɪ ˈ k ɑː ɡ oʊ / shih-KAH-goh, locally also / ʃ ɪ ˈ k ɔː ɡ oʊ / shih-KAW-goh;), officially the City of Chicago, is the most populous city in the U.S. State of Illinois, and the third most populous city in the United States. 2 days ago The state’s seven-day test positivity rate for total tests is up to 5.1%. Health officials have said that a test positivity rate above 5% indicates rapid spread of the virus. The last time the state’s test positivity rate was more than 5% was in June, as the initial peak of the pandemic eased, according to state data.
Kinoy outlined a cluster of grim developments that had staggered him over a 24-hour period: refusal by the government to postpone the trial of the Chicago “Conspiracy Eight”; indictment of Bobby Seale on a first-degree murder charge — “the first time the chairman of a national political party faces the electric chair”; refusal by a referral district court to reduce the $100,000 bail of 17 defendants from the New York “Panther 21” by the counsel for the House of Representatives that it had no intention of following the virtually unanimous Supreme Court decision reinstating Adam Clayton Powell, and the district judge then issued no order, saying this country “suffers too much from government by judicial oligarchy”; and finally, withdrawal by the government of its Mississippi desegregation plan, which prompted the revolt or half the lawyers in the civil rights division of the Justice Department.
And Kinoy paused, stopped pacing, his hands gripped the table, and his voice dropped to a whisper: “What the hell is going on?”
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Kunstler, also of the Law Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, focused on Seale. Movement leaders no longer face minor penalties, misdemeanor charges, and a few worthy months in jail. Seale, said Kunstler, faces the very real likelihood of execution. “The fun has gone out of our practice. We now face a deadening responsibility.”
The government’s case is good. There is incontrovertible proof that Seale was in New Haven on May 19, the night Alex Rackley was allegedly tortured and beaten for informing on the “Panther 21”; Seale was speaking at Yale. Police say they have the murder weapon, a .45. Police say they have tapes of the kangaroo “trial” of Rackley. And police say they have telephone proof that Seale was in the New Haven house where the trial and torture took place. Finally, police now have George Sams’s affidavit, and George Sams’s affidavit is strong stuff.
According to Sams, Seale stopped by the Panther house and, when told of Rackley’s treachery, ordered him to be killed. Legally, that means murder one. There is no room for self-defense or non-premeditation. There is no room for a mitigating defense, no room for reduction to manslaughter, as with Huey Newton.
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Super win the game. Sams’s affidavit could be strengthened if corroborated by one or more of the Panthers in the New Haven house. There are six girls age 16 and under. Faced with the possibility of death for murder, it is not inconceivable that one or more might cop a plea, get 20 years, be out in seven — at the age of 23 — and testify that Seale did order the killing.
And finally, there is the sensationalism of the crime itself. Time travel deadmatch mac os. Rackley was reportedly tortured with boiling water. He was brutally murdered and dumped in a swamp. Seale himself was melodramatically picked up on a federal fugitive warrant for “unlawful flight to avoid prosecution,” at night, in his car, and arrested by about 20 FBI agents, with shotguns.
“These are enormous odds,” said Kunstler. ”I don’t know how we can overcome them. We need a major miracle, and that can only be the breaking of George Sams’s story.”
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Videoboxpro 1 5 4 equals. So far, little is known about Sams. He was expelled from the party for stabbing another Panther in the leg, but was returned at the request of Stokely Carmichael. The circumstances of his capture, indicated Kunstler, are extremely suspicious. All the Panthers indicted for the New Haven plot were picked up almost immediately. Only Sams remained mysteriously at large, months after the crime, prompting a series of raids of Panther headquarters across the country. Then, quite extraordinarily, Sams is found in Toronto, not the most likely refuge for a fugitive Panther.
This summer’s raids and persecutions of Panthers by the government may stack up as child’s play if Seale is convicted. No one knows how much of a scare this could put into the movement, and no one knows how much it might alienate the broader base of Panther support. But few at the conference disagreed with the importance of Kunstler’s call for a crusade to Connecticut.
The speeches by Kunstler and Kinoy marked the emotional watershed of the 10-day conference organized by the Southern Legal Action Movement (SLAM). About 160 movement lawyers and law students shared notes, conferred, debated, and partied in this picture-book retreat in the North Carolina Smokies, with ideologies from ACLU to SOS. The focus of the conference was the South, but topics of discussion included the military, poverty law, school strikes, narcotics, political repression, housing, and new life-styles for lawyers. ❖
This article from the Village Voice Archive was posted on October 16, 2020
CHICAGO (AP) — The barbs that have flown between President Donald Trump and his family and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot haven’t prevented either side from engaging in occasional niceties. Cudatext 1 83 136.
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Lightfoot in May called Eric Trump to express her support, according to text messages obtained by the Chicago Tribune through a Freedom of Information Act request. The mayor’s call occurred as civil unrest surged across the country following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. As the city was cleaning up from widespread looting, the younger Trump texted Lightfoot, remarking on a call he describes as “incredibly kind.”
“I have passed along your support to our team and residences. Please know, I and we truly appreciate you,” Eric Trump texted.
In a July text, Eric Trump said he was thinking about her.
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“I only imagine how difficult the situation is but know we are all rooting for Chicago . . . Did anyone win megabucks. I hope you are well. Eric T.”
Lightfoot referenced the text last month after another round of looting and Trump’s disparaging reference during a Wisconsin speech to Lightfoot raising bridges over the Chicago River to stop “hordes of rioters from ransacking the city.”
“One of the bridges we put up is near Trump Tower because our protesters and vigilantes would love nothing more than to attack Trump Tower,” Lightfoot responded at the time. “So those little notes that I get from Eric Trump after every time that we’ve protected that property, if they want us to stop, say the word.”
Lightfoot frequently throws barbs at Trump, who regularly invokes Chicago to bolster his “law and order” campaign theme.
Although the mayor has sparred with Trump, she also has made attempts to work him and his family. Before she was sworn in as mayor, Lightfoot had a meeting in Washington, D.C., with Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, and a White House adviser.
But the relationship between Lightfoot and the Trumps coarsened over time. Lightfoot ripped Ivanka Trump last year for a tweet about Chicago violence and slammed her husband, Jared Kushner, for his comments asserting a federal stockpile of medical supplies as not being for the states to use.
Trump tweeted in May during the unrest that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” which prompted Lightfoot to accuse the president of destabilizing the nation.
“He wants to show failures on the part of Democratic local leaders, to throw red meat to his base,” Lightfoot said at the time. “His goal is to polarize, to destabilize local government and inflame racist urges. We can absolutely not let him prevail. And I will code what I really want to say to Donald Trump. It’s two words. It begins with F and it ends with U.”