Labor resolution: ‘Free the SF8!’

The following resolution was adopted by the San Francisco Labor Council at the regular delegates’ meeting on Feb. 9.

Whereas, Herman Bell, Ray Boudreaux, Richard Brown, Henry (Hank) Jones, Jalil Muntaqim (Anthony Bottom), Harold Taylor and Francisco Torres, seven men collectively known as the San Francisco 8 defendants [charges having been dropped against Richard O’Neal], are a group of community activists who have devoted their lives to serving their communities and making a difference, and are fathers, grandfathers; and

Whereas, all of these men were members or associates of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP), a primary target of the FBI’s unconstitutional COINTELPRO program in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, a program designed to disrupt and destroy a number of progressive organizations in many United States cities; and

Whereas, in 1973, three Black activists—including one of the defendants—were arrested in New Orleans and tortured by local police, and interrogated by two San Francisco police detectives at intervals between the torture, which lasted several days, during which the three men were separated from each other, stripped naked, covered with wool blankets soaked in boiling water, beaten with slapjacks, suffocated with plastic bags tied over their heads, sleep deprived, kicked, beaten, shocked with electric cattle prods on their genitals, anus and under the neck; and

Whereas, statements resulting from the New Orleans torture were used to bring charges in the mid-1970s in several jurisdictions (including charges for the 1971 killing of a San Francisco police officer); all of these charges were dismissed when the judges learned that these ‘confessions’ had been coerced under torture; and

Whereas, in 2007, after 36 years, the prosecution refiled the charges against the San Francisco 8 based on the same tortured ‘confessions’ illegally obtained in 1973. By September 2007, 6 of the 8 who were eligible for bail were released thanks to the support of their families and supporters, who saw the case as a continuation of the COINTELPRO attack on the Black liberation movement; and

Whereas, this case was reopened based on questionable claims of “new” evidence; and

Whereas, the San Francisco District Attorney’s office declined to renew the prosecution of these community activists, but the California Attorney General imposed the current prosecution of this case, and the jail and court costs of potentially millions of tax dollars to be incurred by the City of San Francisco;

Therefore be it Resolved, that in the name of fairness, justice and human rights—and to express our outrage that this prosecution based on coercion and tortured ‘confessions’ in this 36-year-old case would be allowed to proceed—that the San Francisco Labor Council calls on California Attorney General Jerry Brown to drop all charges against the San Francisco 8 defendants;

And be it further Resolved that this resolution be forwarded to affiliates for concurrence and action.