Category Archives: National Liberation

Victory Against Repression: Carlos Montes Court Case Ends in Victory!

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the LA Committee to Stop FBI Repression.

Los Angeles, CA – On June 5, 2012 Carlos Montes’ criminal court prosecution ended in a victory for Carlos and the movement.

Carlos Montes’ home was raided on May 17, 2011, by the combined forces of the LA County Sheriff’s Swat Team and the FBI, by crashing his door down at 5:00 a.m., with automatic assault rifles drawn, almost killing him. He was charged with 6 serious felonies with a possible jail time of up to 18 years.

With local and national support, via solidarity protests, call-in campaigns to President Obama and U.S. Attorney General Holder, local rallies and protests, and an offensive legal strategy, two felonies were dropped – this was a first partial victory. However the District Attorney still stated that they wanted Montes to do at least 5 years in state prison for the 4 felony charges remaining.

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Report from Montes’ court today – Trial moved to June 20

The following report from the Los Angeles Committee to Stop FBI Repression is from the email list of the National Committee to Stop FBI Repression.

Carlos Montes trial moved to June 20, due to new developments

Statement from the LA Committee to Stop FBI Repression

Carlos Montes and supporters at court

Los Angeles, CA – Over 100 supporters rallied in front of the Los Angeles Superior Court today, May 15, to demand, “Drop the charges against Carlos Montes.” The supporters included MECHA students, union members, teachers, vendors and community members as well as activists from the anti-war movement.

“With your help we will win this case,” Montes told the crowd. “The repression against me is an attack on all of our movements. Thank you all for your solidarity! Together we will win!”

Following this strong showing of solidarity, supporters then moved in to the packed courtroom. Montes was set for trial. Due to a new development in the case, the trial was moved to Wednesday, June 20, 2012. The new development deals with obtaining information needed to clarify the legal record. The defense lawyer, Montes, and the district attorney agreed to the June 20 date, to give enough time to investigate this information that would help defeat this attack against Montes and our movement.

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FBI harasses anti-NATO activist in Utah

The following article by Tom Burke is from Fight Back! News

Salt Lake City, UT – FBI agents are harassing anti-war and anti-NATO organizers as the big protest against the U.S.-led NATO military alliance approaches on Sunday, May 20, in Chicago. On May 11, Gregory Lucero’s mother awoke him in their family home, saying, “The FBI is here and would like to speak to you.” Lucero came downstairs to find three FBI agents, two white men and a white woman, who wanted to ask him questions about the upcoming protest against NATO.

Lucero is a founding member of the Revolutionary Students’ Union, a group with four Utah chapters affiliated nationally with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). In the past year he joined the Freedom Road Socialist Organization and is organizing to raise enough money to caravan across the country to the protest against NATO and the G8 in Chicago.

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Great new video online: “Hands off Carlos Montes!”

The following is from Fight Back! News

Los Angeles, CA – The Committee to Stop FBI Repression has created a great new video on the life of Carlos Montes, and the fight to beat back the attempt to jail him.

Montes is a veteran Chicano activist known for his leadership of the 1968 East Los Angeles student walkouts, the historic Chicano Moratorium against the U.S. war in Vietnam, and the recent immigrants’ rights mega-marches of 2006. Montes was a co-founder of the Brown Berets. In recent years he has be active in the anti war, Chicano, labor and immigrant rights movements. He currently one of the 24 anti war and international solidarity activists who have been targeted by the FBI, and is scheduled to go on trial May 15.

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Carlos Montes: Never Stop Fighting

The following article is being reposted here from Los Angeles Magazine:

The FBI has known about him since his days as a cage-rattling Chicano activist in 1960s L.A. A onetime fugitive and sometime company man, Carlos Montes has kept on confronting the system the only way he knows how. Now the system is closing in

By Ben Ehrenreich
3/1/2012

The first raid came at five o’clock in the morning last May 17. Carlos Montes awoke to a thud. It was the sound, he soon discovered, of his front door splintering open. The sun had not yet risen, and Montes’s bedroom was dark, but in retrospect, he says, he’s glad he didn’t reach for a flashlight—or for a gun. Montes, a retired Xerox salesman, had kept a loaded shotgun behind the headboard and a 9mm pistol beneath a pile of towels on a chair beside the bed since the day he had walked in on an armed burglar a year and a half before. That time a cool head had kept him alive: He persuaded the thief to drive him to a 7-Eleven, where he withdrew as much cash as he could from the ATM and refused to take another step. This time, fortunately, he was half-asleep: He stumbled toward the hallway empty-handed.

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ZANU-PF’s indigenisation and economic empowerment program

The following is from Zimbabwe’s Herald

PRESIDENT Mugabe yesterday said the indigenisation and economic empowerment programme would take centre stage at the Zanu-PF 12th Annual National People’s Conference, which starts in Bulawayo today.

Speaking during his photographic exhibition at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) last night, the Head of State and Government and Commander-In-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces said the time has come for ordinary Zimbabweans to have a say in the national economy.

He said the liberation struggle was fought in order to repossess the land from the white minority and empower black people economically.

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Syrian Communist Party (Unified) Denounces U.S. Interference in Syria’s Internal Affairs

The following is being reposted here form the Syrian Arab News Agency:

DAMASCUS, – The Syrian Communist Party (Unified) on Wednesday denounced the United States’ prompting armed groups to continue committing murders and not surrender their weapons after the amnesty announced by the government for those who turn in their weapons to the Syria authorities as long as they haven’t committed murder.

In a statement, the party said that the inflammatory US stance reaffirms the US administration’s involvement in the events taking place in Syria.

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