Drop the Charges Against Grant Newburger and Everyone Arrested!
They want to punish a Revolutionary and make you afraid to stand up!
December 13, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
The following is a leaflet from the Chicago Revolution Club:
It was the day before Thanksgiving and Chicago saw the first arrests in the protest against the grand jury’s decision not to charge the murdering cop who stole Mike Brown’s life.
Grant Newburger was charged with aggravated battery against a cop—a felony charge that carries a possible 17 year prison sentence.
Grant was deliberately assaulted by cops using their bicycles as weapons. He was knocked to the ground, striking his head hard against the pavement. What was he attacked for? For walking with two others into a downtown intersection when the light was green holding a banner that read “Justice for Mike Brown!” The other people who were holding the banner were roughed up, arrested and charged with misdemeanors. Grant and one of the other protestors went to the hospital to seek medical treatment. A legal observer and video and photographic evidence document that Grant is innocent and it was he who was assaulted.
Police in court hearings admitted, and the police report confirms that no cop had been injured. At the court hearing to determine probable cause for continuing the case prosecutors changed the charge to “aggravated battery to a police officer by knowingly making physical contact of an insulting or provoking nature.” Even this reduced charge is a serious Class 2 felony carrying up to 5 years in jail. The fact that the charges were not just thrown out—given how trumped up they are—is further indication that this attack on Grant is deadly serious.
Grant was arrested and brought up on felony charges because he is a revolutionary who is leading protest out in the streets, not because he assaulted any cop. The authorities are attempting to make an example of him. They intend to send a message to others who are stepping into the fight against police brutality and the movement for revolution that anyone doing so will pay a heavy price if they keep it up.
In August determined people in Ferguson, MO stood up and, defying the powers-that-be, broke out of protest-as-usual after a murdering cop killed Mike Brown. They stood strong in the face of teargas, tanks, rubber bullets and machine guns. Youth who have been cast off and criminalized by the system were in the very front lines. This set an example for people everywhere. The rulers of this country are very, very afraid of that defiant “Ferguson spirit” spreading.
After the grand jury let Darren Wilson, the cop who murdered Mike Brown, walk a call went out to “Bring AmeriKKKa to a halt.” The powers-that-be really hated that and they hate the role Grant and others like him played in the protests that erupted.
Grant is well known and respected on the South and West sides of Chicago for bringing the revolution to people and helping to form the Revolution Club of Chicago—bringing together people who are fighters for the emancipation of all humanity. He is known to friend and foe alike for many years of fighting against police brutality and murder and for building a movement to make a revolution at the earliest opportunity. A revolution that would sweep aside a system soaked in a bloody history of centuries of oppression of Black people; first slavery, then Jim Crow and now the NEW Jim Crow of mass incarceration, police murder and brutality.
Grant was returning from Ferguson in late August with family members of people killed by police in Chicago—family members who had gone to Ferguson to support people standing up there—when he learned about the police murder of Rashod McIntosh. He and the carload of family members went directly to the West Side to stand with the outraged people in the community who were facing off with police. As people confronted the cops chanting “Hands up! Don’t Shoot!” Grant was grabbed out of the crowd and arrested. At the police station he was told by a commanding officer that the police were going to press the “heaviest charges possible” against him. One detective explained “We aren’t having Ferguson in Chicago” while another detective clearly expressed how the police see things shouting, “What the F_ _k were you thinking stirring up the savages?”
For years Grant has fought to expose CPD murder of person after person, uniting with the families of people killed by and people in the communities to stand up against these outrages. The banner that says “Murdered by Police” with pictures of just some of the people whose lives have been stolen by murdering Chicago police is widely recognized and hated by police. Grant is well known for organizing the annual October 22nd National Day of Protest against Police Brutality which, in 2014, saw 500 people march downtown.
The powers-that-be are terrified of people rising up and not staying “in their place”... inspiring others with their rebelliousness and defiance—especially those trapped on the bottom of society who catch the hardest hell every day. And most of all, the rulers are afraid of the defiant ones coming together as an organized revolutionary force to overthrow their system. It is not surprising that Grant is hated by the police who want to take him off the streets altogether and who want to send a message to intimidate and threaten others who yearn for a different world.
We have to turn Grant’s case into a further indictment of a system that lets cops kill Black and Latino people with impunity but arrests those who righteously call out the whole system as illegitimate. We have to fight to defeat these charges against Grant and against everyone arrested in conjunction with protests in Chicago and all across the country.
In response to these efforts to derail and intimidate more and more people, many more need to step into the protests against police murder and brutality. Very importantly, many more need to step into the movement for revolution that is fighting for a world where these things never happen again. A world where the police, courts, prisons and military are dismantled, where the domination and exploitation of whole countries by the U.S. is ended; where white supremacy and patriarchy (the oppression of women) is being radically dug up and where, together, we fight for a whole different future for our youth.
Come to Court:
Next hearing for Grant is Wed, December 17, 9:00 am
at the Cook County Courthouse (26th & California)
For more information contact Revolution Club Chicago at 312-804-9121
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