Oakland transit cop murders man handcuffed, lying on the ground

Brace yourself for the following video footage. Here’s the latest known murder of a minority by a member of the gang of trained killers, this time in California.

Oakland transit cops came to a subway station to break up a fight. They had a 22 year old man named Omar Grant handcuffed and on the ground when an officer shot him point blank in the head.

A person who witnessed the horrific execution also filmed the shooting as it happened.

Happy Malcolm X Day

“Brothers and sisters, if you and I would just realize, that once we learn to talk the language that they understand, they will then get the point. You can’t ever reach a man if you don’t speak his language. If a man speaks the language of brute force, you can’t come to him with peace. Why goodnight! He’ll break you in two, as he has been doing all along. If a man speaks French, you can’t speak to him in German. If he speaks Swahili, you can’t communicate with him in Chinese. You have to find out, what does this man speak? Once you know his language, learn how to speak his language. He’ll get the point, there will be some dialogue, some communication, and some understanding will be developed. You’ve been in this country long enough to know the language the Klan speaks, they only know one language. What you and I have to start doing in 1965, I mean that’s what you have to do because most of us have already been doing it, is start learning a new language. Learn the language that they understand, and then when they come up on our door step to talk, we can talk.”

“It is a duty, it is your and my duty, as men, as human beings, it’s our duty to our people, to organize ourselves. Let the government know if they don’t stop that Klan, we’ll stop it ourselves. Then you’ll see the government start doing something about it. But don’t ever think they are going to do it on some morality basis, no. So I don’t believe in violence, that’s why I want to stop it.”

“I am not a Republican nor a Democrat, nor an American, and got sense enough to know it. I am one of the 22 million Black victims of the Democrats, and one of the 22 million Black victims of the Republicans, and one of the 22 million Black victims of Americanism…. You and I have never seen Democracy, all we’ve seen is hypocracy…. If you go to jail, so what. If you are Black, you were born in jail. If you are Black, you were born in jail, in the North as well as the South. Stop talking about the South. As long as you are South of the Canadian border, you are South.”

When Pigs Attack

The latest case of police brutality caught on tape comes from the city of brotherly love.

A half-dozen cops pull 3 men from a car and proceed to beat all of them. They are kicked, punched and hit with a baton.

Needless to say, this gang of trained killers will not spend a day in jail.

Book Asserts Black Reporter Didn’t Kill White Cop in ’81

nytimes.com

Book Asserts Black Reporter Didn’t Kill White Officer in ’81
By JON HURDLE

PHILADELPHIA — A book published on Thursday asserts that a black radio journalist convicted of murdering a white Philadelphia police officer more than 26 years ago is not guilty of the crime and that it was actually committed by another man who is now deceased.

The book, “The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal,” by J. Patrick O’Connor, asserts that Officer Daniel Faulkner died on Dec. 9, 1981, from shots fired by Kenneth Freeman, a business partner of the brother of the convicted man, Mr. Abu-Jamal, who has been on death row for 25 years for a crime he says he did not commit.

The book, published by Chicago Review Press, is the latest to cast doubt on the conviction, which critics have said was tainted by racism, police corruption and judicial bias, turning Mr. Abu-Jamal
into a cause célèbre for death penalty opponents.

“Abu-Jamal’s trial was a monumental miscarriage of justice,” Mr. O’Connor writes, “representing an extreme case of prosecutorial abuse and judicial bias.”

The police charged Mr. Abu-Jamal with the murder, the book says, because he had antagonized them as a Black Panther and as a radio reporter.

Hugh Burns, chief of the appeals division in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted the case in 1982, dismissed the new accusations, saying, “There is zero credible evidence Freeman was involved.”

Mr. Burns also rejected the book’s assertion that two key prosecution witnesses had changed their stories after inducements from prosecutors determined to prove their case.

In March, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Mr. Abu-Jamal’s conviction but said his sentence might be reviewed.

Justice for Sean Bell

Obama “respects” Bell verdict

For those who are under the effects of Obama mania or perhaps in self denial, here’s another example of what Obama truly represents. In addition to his support for the death penalty, he accepts the racist verdict in the Sean Bell case.

No matter if it is McCain, Clinton or Obama, at the end of the day they all support the police state and its use against Black, Latino, and every poor working person.

washingtonpost.com

By Alec MacGillis

INDIANAPOLIS — Sen. Barack Obama weighed in today on the acquittals of New York City police detectives charged in fatally shooting an unarmed black Queens man, Sean Bell, saying he believed that the verdict needed to be respected and urging those who disagreed with it not to resort to violence. That would be “completely unacceptable and counterproductive,” Obama said.

“Well, look, obviously there was a tragedy in New York. I said at the time, without benefit of all the facts before me, that it looked like a possible case of excessive force. The judge has made his ruling, and we’re a nation of laws, so we respect the verdict that came down,” he said in response to a question at a gas station in Indianapolis, where he was holding a news conference.

“The most important thing for people who are concerned about that shooting is to figure out how do we come together and assure those kinds of tragedies don’t happen again,” he continued. … “Resorting to violence to express displeasure over a verdict is something that is completely unacceptable and counterproductive.”

3 NYC cops acquitted in Sean Bell murder

A new all time low in the annals of police brutality and police criminality in New York.

The slaughter of minorities continues unabated as the executioners are free to kill with full legal backing.

3 NYPD detectives acquitted in 50-shot killing

By TOM HAYS, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK – Three detectives were acquitted of all charges Friday in the 50-shot killing of an unarmed groom-to-be on his wedding day, a case that put the NYPD at the center of another dispute involving allegations of excessive firepower.

Justice Arthur Cooperman delivered the verdict in a Queens courtroom packed with spectators, including victim Sean Bell’s fiancee and parents, as at least 200 people gathered outside the building.

As word of the verdict spread, many outside the courthouse began crying and yelled “No!” Some briefly jostled with police officers.

Bell, a 23-year-old black man, was killed in a hail of gunfire outside a seedy strip club in Queens on Nov. 25, 2006 — his wedding day — as he was leaving his bachelor party with two friends.

The officers, complaining that pretrial publicity had unfairly painted them as cold-blooded killers, opted to have the judge decide the case rather than a jury.

Officers Michael Oliver, 36, and Gescard Isnora, 29, stood trial for manslaughter while Officer Marc Cooper, 40, was charged only with reckless endangerment. Two other shooters weren’t charged. Oliver squeezed off 31 shots; Isnora fired 11 rounds; and Cooper shot four times.

A conviction on manslaughter could have brought up to 25 years in prison; the penalty for reckless endangerment, a misdemeanor, is a year behind bars.

The case brought back painful memories of other NYPD shootings, such as the 1999 shooting of Amadou Diallo — an African immigrant who was gunned down in a hail of 41 bullets by police officers who mistook his wallet for a gun. The acquittal of the officers in that case created a storm of protest, with hundreds arrested after taking to the streets in demonstration.

The mood surrounding this case has been muted by comparison, although Bell’s fiancee, parents and their supporters, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, have held rallies demanding that the officers — two of whom are black — be held accountable.

Cops’ killing spree against Latinos

colorlines.com

Killed by Cops: Police Shootings Run Rampant

The Phoenix metropolitan area is the most dangerous in the nation for Latinos.
By Jessica Hoffmann

It was hot and quiet in Mesa, Arizona, as a crowd gathered outside the headquarters of the police department on Aug. 25, 2007. On this day in 2003, the parents of 15-year-old Mario Madrigal Jr. called the police in a panic because their oldest son was threatening to kill himself with a kitchen knife. Within hours, they found themselves watching helplessly as Mario Jr. was shot and killed by police officers, who say he had threatened them with the knife.

Four years later, about 100 people, most of them wearing black T-shirts, joined the family in insisting that Mario was a threat to no one but himself that night and that he was killed by a police force ill-equipped to engage with mental-health crises and Mesa’s growing Latino community. “We need changes in how officers approach us Hispanics,” Mario Madrigal Sr. said. “They should be much more educated [in] knowing our culture…and understand that we are human beings.”

No one from the Mesa Police Department emerged to face the crowd. The crowd was literally speaking to a brick wall as they chanted “justice for Mario” and cheered Mario Sr.’s insistent statement, “The case is not closed.” Although the Mesa PD’s internal investigation cleared the officers who shot Mario Jr. of any wrongdoing, the family is involved in an independent investigation, and a federal district court judge has set a date in September 2008 for the Madrigals’ civil case to be brought before a jury. The family hopes they will be more responsive than local authorities have been.

The Madrigals are hardly the only family in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area that feels like they’re talking to a brick wall as they seek justice in the police killing of a loved one.

In March 2006, Malissia Clinton’s younger brother, James Deon Lennox, 35, was shot by a police officer outside his apartment in Mesa. According to the story Clinton and her mother have pieced together from witnesses’ accounts, Lennox and his girlfriend had returned home late after a night out and began arguing about where to park the car. Within minutes, a police officer arrived. Then two more officers appeared. For reasons none of the witnesses can be sure of, Lennox and one of the officers got into a physical fight. Then, Officer David Kohler shot Lennox twice — once in the shoulder, once in the chest — and James Deon Lennox died.

Mesa police spokesmen say Kohler felt his life was threatened — that Lennox had already hit him with a lawn chair and that he fired his gun when Lennox picked up another one. Neighbors say the chairs in question were cheap, flimsy ones-not life-threatening — and the autopsy report by the county medical examiner says that both shots came from a distance. The city of Mesa denied a claim of wrongdoing filed by Lennox’s family, and the county attorney’s office has not filed criminal charges against Kohler. An internal police investigation into the shooting is still under way.

According to Lennox’s family, two witnesses have said that one of the officers called him a “nigger” the night he was killed. Malissia Clinton, an attorney in California, thinks her brother was “just tired of playing by rules that are unfair.” He’d been arguing with his girlfriend, he’d had a little bit to drink, it was late and suddenly there were police officers on the scene.

“As a Black man,” Clinton said, “you know what you are supposed to do and what you’re not supposed to do with the police. There are rules that are kinda unspoken, but everybody understands that you could lose your life, so you need to really be careful. That’s a given — my husband knows it, Barack Obama knows it…everybody knows that.” So what happened that night? “I just think that he was tired, he decided that this guy was not gonna put his hands on him — if he wanted to talk to him like a man, that was fine, but if he wanted to play physical at all, he was just not gonna stand for it. And so, he decided to take a stand, and I think that that’s why he lost his life.”

Lennox and Madrigal were just two of the many civilians who have been shot to death by police from various departments throughout the multi-city Phoenix metropolitan area — in the city of Phoenix alone, an average of more than one per month since 2000, making it among the worst cities in the nation for police shootings.

Phoenix had the highest rate of fatal police shootings from 2000 to 2005 among the 10 U.S. cities with more than one million people, according to federal data. In fact, Phoenix ranked second in total number of fatal police shootings, just behind New York City and ahead of much larger cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles. During those years, more Latinos were killed by police in Phoenix than in any other large city that tracked victims’ ethnic identities. (In federal reporting, Hispanic/Latino is considered an ethnic rather than a racial category.) Neighboring police departments in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area — notably Mesa, Scottsdale and Chandler — have also attracted attention for a series of fatal shootings of civilians. In Mesa (which has a population of approximately 460,000), 45 civilians were shot by police between January 2000 and August 2007, according to the Mesa Police Department. (The department was unable to indicate how many of those shootings were fatal.)

Maricopa County’s largest urban area is one of the most dangerous places in the nation to be a Latino person interacting with law enforcement. Among the 27 cities with more than 250,000 people that tracked victims’ ethnicities during this time, 23 out of 137, or one in six, Hispanic victims of police shootings were killed in Phoenix, although Phoenix had just 6 percent of the total population. As the region’s Latino population grows, local police departments remain majority white, and community organizers feel shut out of civilian review processes ostensibly created to include them. Further, despite programs touted for reducing the shooting rate or improving police-community relations — the introduction of Tasers to many local departments’ arsenals, Spanish-language initiatives, and increased training in dealing with people who live with mental illness — shootings of civilians by police persist throughout the Phoenix metropolitan area. And, across cities and departments, police officers rarely suffer any consequences for choosing to fire.

* * *

Phoenix is one of the fastest-growing, and fastest-changing, metropolitan areas in the United States. The urban center of Maricopa County (which has experienced the largest numerical increase in population of any U.S. county since the 2000 Census) encompasses the city of Phoenix as well as numerous adjacent cities such as Mesa, Scottsdale and Chandler. Since the 1990s, the Hispanic/Latino population in particular has grown rapidly, with Phoenix proper going from 20 percent Latino in 1990, to 34 percent in 2000, to 41.8 percent in 2005.

Yet police department demographics have been much slower to change. A Department of Justice report on police personnel showed a Phoenix Police Department that was 81 percent white in June 2003. (12.7 percent of officers identified as ethnically Hispanic.) Four years later, despite the department’s stated efforts to diversify, the Phoenix PD is 77.9 percent white, with only 14.8 percent of officers identifying as ethnically Hispanic. In fast-growing Mesa, where, according to the city, the “ethnic/minority” population grew by 20 percent between 1990 and 2000 and Hispanics today represent 25 percent of the total population, only 14.2 percent of police officers in the field identify as Hispanic. “Whenever you have bilingual, bicultural police, usually you have better police-community relations,” said Salvador Reza, an organizer with the indigenous community-development organization Tonatierra who works with immigrant day laborers in Phoenix. “When you don’t have that, then there’s the language barrier, then on top of that, there’s a cultural barrier. [Among Latinos in Phoenix] the police are not seen as to protect and to serve, they’re seen as to harass and make sure that you get to jail so you can get deported.”

Indeed, said Reza and other local activists, any consideration of Phoenix Latinos’ relationship to the police must be looked at in the context of the broader climate of anti-immigrant/anti-Latino xenophobia in the area. In July 2007, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio (aka “America’s Toughest Sheriff”) created a hotline for people to call in information about undocumented immigrants.

The Phoenix Police Department does have several community advisory boards meant to connect police to specific local communities. But Reza noted that the members of these boards are “more like yes men, instead of asking the hard questions. They do have a review board, but they don’t have any power.”

That may partially explain why, in a Department of Justice report about citizen complaints of police use of force in 2002, only 17 were recorded for Phoenix. Cities with similar populations and police-department sizes had about eight times as many — 133 in San Antonio and 132 in San Diego. It may also explain why Phoenix attorney Augustine Jimenez gets calls about police brutality “about twice a week” — “but there are very few cases we can take on,” he said. “[I get] calls all the time from poor Mexican people who get beaten up by police, but the sad reality is, unless you have some videotape or witnesses who are white…The cases we’ve taken and been successful on, we’ve had strong physical evidence to support our claim.”

* * *

In spring 2001, Gerardo Ramirez-Diaz got into a fight with Phoenix police after his roommate called the cops because he’d attacked him. The roommate, aware that Ramirez-Diaz was living with schizoaffective disorder, wanted the police to help get Ramirez-Diaz into treatment. But when police arrived, Ramirez-Diaz wouldn’t comply with their orders-he threw things at them and repeatedly shouted “stay away from me.” In the ensuing struggle, a Phoenix police officer shot and wounded Ramirez-Diaz, whose family was eventually paid $699,000 in damages by the city. Despite a jury’s decision to award damages for excessive force, the police department’s internal review found the use of force “in policy.”

Ramirez-Diaz’s attorney, Augustine Jimenez, sees his client’s case as one example of a larger problem: “Officers deal almost on a daily basis with individuals who suffer with mental illnesses. Officers demand that you comply with their orders, but these people who are mentally ill don’t always understand the officers or are in some kind of psychotic event or episode.” Another local attorney, Richard Treon, anecdotally connects this dynamic to the “excessive number of shootings going on in the Phoenix area” in recent years, saying, “It seems like it most frequently happens when police are on a 911 call to deal with someone who is mentally ill.”

Although every police officer in Arizona receives training on dealing with people who are mentally ill, and Phoenix has a unique 40-hour training block on mental illness, the stories of Ramirez-Diaz and Mario Madrigal Jr. suggest this may not be enough. “It’s a tough situation for the cops because they’re not trained to be social workers; they’re trained to be almost automatons who react almost like a military force,” Treon said.

Martha Madrigal, the mother of Mario Jr., urges people not to call the police when loved ones are in crisis. In the wake of her son’s death, she created a postcard that reads, “If your son, daughter, or loved one is suicidal, [or] under the influence of drugs or alcohol, do not call police for help.” On the back, she has listed national hotlines that address suicide, drugs and alcohol, domestic violence and depression.

The Phoenix PD’s Sgt. Joel Tranter rejects the notion that officers are trained as “automatons,” emphasizing that each officer goes through simulation training to practice responding to a range of different situations. “As far as being one canned response, that’s not true, each response from officers is tailored to that situation.”

Yet communication breakdowns between police and civilians are not uncommon.

They happen across differences of mental states — as well as across language barriers.

Although the state’s basic training includes some modules on interacting with people who do not speak English, there is no Spanish-language requirement in officers’ basic training, despite the fact that 28.5 percent of the state’s reported population is ethnically Hispanic.

In summer 2007, all first responders on the Phoenix PD received 10 hours of Spanish lessons. But, Lt. Dave Kelly noted, while most of the participants appreciated it, there was “very vocal” protest from “about 25 percent” of them who did not. And so, from now on, Spanish-language education will be available only as an option to Phoenix police officers.

The impact of lack of mandated Spanish-language education on police shooting incidents is difficult to measure. But it’s clear that any communication gap may be part of a deadly equation when a commonly cited reason for use of force is an individual’s failure to comply with an officer’s orders.

* * *

Most officer-involved-shooting cases in the Phoenix area are handled entirely within police departments’ internal review processes, and the outcome of those internal investigations is murky. In Phoenix, the police department’s Use of Force Review Board, which includes officers’ commanders and peers as well as two citizens (selected by police and the city manager’s office), reviews every incident in which an officer intentionally shoots a gun-regardless of whether anyone is hurt. From 2000 to 2005, that board reviewed 110 shooting incidents and found 11 of them to be “out of policy.” Those findings were relayed to the police chief as “recommendations,” and the chair of the Use of Force Review Board isn’t sure what ultimately happened to the 11 “out of policy” cases. Assistant Chief Kevin Robinson, who chairs the Disciplinary Review Board, is similarly unsure about what happened to those cases. All he could say in a July 2007 interview was, “I’m not aware of any that resulted in termination.”

Although there were more than 100 incidents of officer-involved shootings in the city of Phoenix alone in the last five years, and numerous shootings in neighboring jurisdictions, only one shooting in the county (involving the Chandler Police Department) has resulted in criminal charges being filed against the officer who fired — and that was for the fatal shooting of a white woman. Even in that case, the state standards and training board decided against revoking the officer’s status after a jury found him not guilty. (The city of Chandler did decide not to reinstate him as a police officer.) Of the many cases that did not go to criminal trial, the city of Phoenix paid on civil settlements related to only three fatal officer-involved-shooting cases from 2000 to 2005. The consequences to police officers involved in the other 65 fatal shootings of civilians in Phoenix in that period are unknown. In Mesa, only three city payouts for police shootings by gun were made between January 2000 and August 2007, although police shot 45 civilians during that time. (The Mesa city attorney’s office has not responded to queries about whether any of the payouts were for fatal shootings.)

James Deon Lennox’s family is still waiting to see whether the city of Mesa will pay damages to help support his four children. The city of Mesa denied their initial claim of wrongdoing, and the Maricopa county attorney’s office has no plans to take action on the case. The family’s lawsuit against the city is in the discovery stage. The family of Mario Madrigal Jr., dismayed by the Mesa Police Department’s finding that the officers who shot their son committed no wrongdoing, are waiting to see whether a federal jury might take a different view of the case.

Will fatal shootings by police continue to occur in and around Phoenix, averaging more than one a month as they have for years, with no clear cause or consequence? “You just get the sense that it’s more permissive in that area,” said Malissia Clinton. “You can’t look to, necessarily, the judicial system. You can’t look to the prosecutors…I’m not sure you can look to the citizens. And so if no one’s gonna do a sanity check, then that means the police are running around unchecked.”

Waiting ‘Til The Midnight Hour

Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour re-imagines the Black Power Movement, beginning a decade before Stokely Carmichael’s defiant call for “Black Power!” in the stifling heat of Mississippi in the late spring of 1966. Along the way readers are introduced to a cast of historical characters—both iconic and obscure—that are international in scope.

These include William Worthy, the globe trotting foreign correspondent, Dan Watts, the maverick publisher and activist, Albert Cleage, the radical clergyman from Detroit, and James Baldwin, the novelist whose essays came to distill the very essence of American racial life in the waning days of the New Frontier. Malcolm X was the common denominator that united black radicals from far-flung corners of the nation and, over time, the world. Covering the years 1955-1975, Waiting Till the Midnight Hour is a sweeping reinterpretation of the Black Power Movement. On virtually every single page, the narrative uncovers buried intimacies of a tumultuous era.

We follow Malcolm X from urban street corners to Ghanaian Universities and back. Malcolm’s relationship with local activists introduces us to a world where black militants waged political war in urban settings far from the national spotlight. A detailed narrative of the Meredith March uncovers historically obscured connections between Martin Luther King and Stokely Carmichael, while its aftermath reveals a federal intelligence bureaucracy intent on neutralizing the Black Power Movement’s most charismatic spokesman. We witness massive race riots in 1967 juxtaposed against Stokely Carmichael’s remarkable international speaking tour.

We experience domestic and international shockwaves of 1968 through the buildup to Huey P. Newton’s murder trial and the Black Panther Party’s short-lived alliance with SNCC. We witness Black Power’s high point during the early 1970s, through parallel narratives that focus on Black Panther co-founder Huey P. Newton and black nationalist poet turned activist, Amiri Baraka.

Along the way the Black Power Movement is placed in its appropriately rich and historic context: The struggles to redefine black identity through art and culture; Political movements for self-defense and community control; Pan-Africanist impulses that connected domestic freedom to African decolonization movements; and tactical alliances between black nationalists and elected officials.

Official Website

The Memorial Day Massacre of 1937

Carl Bunin
Peace History

1000 striking steel workers (and members of their families), on their way to picket at the Republic Steel plant in south Chicago where they were organizing a union, were stopped by the Chicago Police.

In what became known as the “Memorial Day Massacre,” police shot and killed 10 fleeing workers, wounded 30 more, and beat 55 so badly they required hospitalization.

The Memorial Day Massacre of 1937

The 1930s was a period of economic unrest for the United States. Following the prosperous “roaring twenties”, the Great Depression hit the general population hard. Many employees were fired and those who were not lost much of their former salary.

Then, in 1933, as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, the National Recovery Act was passed. One of its most important concessions to laborers was the right to organize and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing.

The number of strikes nationwide grew to the highest amount in American history.

When the National Recovery Act was declared unconstitutional in 1935, Congress was still sympathetic to the young labor unions that had been formed under it. They soon passed the Wagner Act, or National Labor Relations Act, to reassert the rights of the laborers.

By the 1930s the steel industry had survived much adversity, yet there were still changes to come.

The Committee for Industrial Organization, (CIO), was founded in November 1935.

Encouraged by the CIO, the steel industry became one of the first to begin organizing under the Wagner Act. Accordingly, on June 17, 1936 The Steel Workers Organizing Committee, (SWOC), was created.

The industry itself did not accept this movement.

Many companies began to stock up on tear-gas, firearms, and ammunition as well as, refining their espionage and police systems.

After a long struggle for further organization and acceptance within the steel industry, the United States Steel Corporation, (the leading producer of steel, dubbed “Big Steel”), signed an agreement recognizing SWOC.

This contract allowed for five dollar a day wages in addition to a 40-hour week with time-and-a-half for overtime. By May 1937, there were 110 firms under contract.

Still, some companies refused to sign. In response, SWOC called its first strike involving 25,000 workmen against Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation. Thirty-six hours later, the corporation agreed to a Labor Board election.

The union won 17,028 to 7,207.

Despite this enormous victory, a combination of “Little Steel” companies including Bethlehem Steel, Republic Steel, Inland Steel, and Youngstown Sheet & Tube, refused to sign.

Their leaders had strong anti-union attitudes and felt that the U.S. steel decision to “surrender” to SWOC was a betrayal. Tom Girdler, chairman of the Board of Republic Steel, was one particularly influential anti-union spokesperson.

The company anticipated a strike so they placed a stockpile of industrial munitions at various plants of Republic Steel.

Then, on May 26, 1937, SWOC decided to strike three of the “Little Steel” companies: Republic, Youngstown Sheet & Tube, and Inland. Most of the plants ceased production during the strike; they were willing to wait it out because the steelworkers’ union strike benefits were meager.

Picket lines were set up at these plants to prevent any attempt to reopen them.

However, Republic Steel remained defiant and refused to close all of its plants. They even housed non-union workers in the plant, so they could continue working without the hassle of picket lines outside.

One of these plants was the Republic Steel South Chicago Plant.

One half of this plant’s 2,200 employees had joined the strike. When the walkout began on May 26, the police interfered in an attempt to prevent other non-committed workers from joining the cause.

The SWOC organizers attempted to form a picket line in front of the gate.

Police Captain James Mooney, despite the fact that the picketers were peaceful, broke up the line and arrested 23 people who refused to move. The rest were forced to 117th Street, 2 blocks from the plant.

Because of this action, the police no longer played an impartial role in the strike. Instead, they were clearly supportive of Republic.

Strike headquarters were established in Sam’s Place, at 113th and Green Bay Avenue.

Chicago mayor, Edward J. Kelley, announced in the Chicago Tribune that peaceful picketing would be permitted.

In response to this article, the strikers attempted to establish pickets, but were turned away.

On the next day, at around 5:00 PM, another attempt was made to picket. The marchers marched from Sam’s Place to 117th Street. There were a few policemen present, but the marchers continued west towards Burley Avenue.

Once the marchers reached Buffalo the police line had strengthened a great deal. The workers continued and fighting broke out. The police used clubs to fight the workers back. A few had drawn revolvers without orders and discharged them in the air. No one was killed, but there were several bloody heads.

May 28 was a quiet day, but the marchers were upset with police actions.

Nick Fontecchio, a Union leader, called for a mass meeting at Sam’s Place the next day, Memorial Day Sunday. Captain Mooney received an anonymous report that on Sunday an attempt would be made to invade the plant to drive out the remaining non-union workers. He did not check the rumor, but proceeded to station 264 policemen on duty at the Republic Steel Mill.

By 3:00 p.m. on May 30, 1937, a crowd of around 1500 strikers had gathered. It was a sunny, warm day with the temperature at around 88 degrees.

Many of the union members and supporters had brought along their wives and children to join in this almost festive gathering organized by SWOC leader Joe Hunt. Several speakers addressed various labor issues most importantly, the right to organize and picket.

Some resolutions were approved to send to government officials concerning police conduct at the Republic plant. It was then moved to march to the plant and establish a mass picket.

When this was approved about 1000 people went into formation behind two American flags. Instead of marching south down Green Bay Avenue, they turned onto a dirt road across a open prairie chanting, “CIO, CIO!”

When the police, saw this they moved their position from 117th street between Green Bay and Burley Avenue to across the dirt road, just north of 117th on Burley.

The 200 police were in double file and watched the approaching marchers with their clubs drawn. The Republic mill had armed some of the officers with non-regulation clubs and tear gas.

The marchers met the police line and demanded that their rights to picket be recognized by the police letting them through.

They were “commanded in the name of the law to disperse”, but the picketers persisted. This continued for several minutes. While marchers armed themselves with rocks and branches, foul language was passed between the two parties. Tension was mounting.

Recording all of this was cameraman Orland Lippert. Unfortunately, he was changing lenses at the start of the actual violence. This has caused some dispute as to which side initiated the fighting. The following account, determined at the hearings under Senator Robert LaFollette, is generally accepted.

Police were trying to prevent marchers from outflanking their line.

As some strikers began to retreat a stick flew from the back of the line towards the police. Instantaneously, tear gas bombs were thrown at the marchers.

The next few moments were total chaos.

More objects were thrown at the police by the marchers.

Acting without orders, several policemen in the front drew their revolvers and fired point blank at the marcher’s ranks, many of whom were beginning to retreat.

The actual shooting only continued for fifteen seconds, but the violence did not end there.

Using their clubs, the police beat anyone in their paths, including women and children.

During this time, arrests were also made. Patrol wagons were filled to twice the mandated capacity of 8 prisoners. The injured were not even taken directly to local hospitals.

As a result of this atrocity, four marchers were fatally shot and six were mortally wounded. Thirty others suffered gunshot wounds.

Thirty-eight were hospitalized due to injuries from the beatings and still thirty more required other medical treatment.

It is noteworthy that all but four of the fifty-four gunshot wounds were to the side or back and one victim was shot four times.

There were minor police casualties with thirty-five reported injuries, (no gunshot wounds), but only three needed overnight hospital care.

After the riot, sympathetic strikers fervently protested the police brutality. On the other hand, the press, especially the Chicago Tribune, portrayed the marchers as communist conspirators who had essentially attacked the police and attempted to throw out non-union workers.

The LaFollette Committee investigated this tragedy and came to four conclusions.

First, the police had no right to limit the number of peaceful pickets and that the march was not aimed at freeing remaining plant workers.

Second, the police should have halted the march with limited violence, if this action is even justifiable.

Third, the force used by the police was excessive and the marcher’s only methods of provocation were abusive language and throwing of isolated missiles.

Fourth, the police could have avoided the bloodshed.

In addition to those killed in the Memorial Day Massacre, 6 other union members lost their lives in pickets of the “Little Steel” strike of 1937.

In fact, the “Little Steel” strike is surpassed by few in the areas of viciousness, press distortion, suppression of rights, and police brutality.

The strike was called off when the many hardships suffered began to demoralize union workers. However, in August of 1941, under legal pressure, the Little Steel companies agreed to cease the committing of unfair labor practices.

A year later, they signed their first contract recognizing the new union, United Steelworkers of America.

The massacre has been referred to as the “blackest day of modern labor history”, but the sacrifices of these workers were not in vain. Little Steel had only delayed the inevitable march of unionism in America.