Category Archives: U.S. Oppressed Nations and Nationalities

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

Posted on June 5, 2012 | Leave a comment

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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Posted in Anti-War / Anti-Intervention, Chicano Liberation, Immigrants Rights

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

Posted on May 15, 2012 | 1 comment

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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Posted in Anti-War / Anti-Intervention, Chicano Liberation, Immigrants Rights

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FBI harasses anti-NATO activist in Utah

Posted on May 13, 2012 | Leave a comment

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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Posted in Anti-War / Anti-Intervention, Chicano Liberation, FRSO, Immigrants Rights

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

Posted on May 8, 2012 | Leave a comment
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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Posted in Action Alerts, Anti-War / Anti-Intervention, Chicano Liberation

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Carlos Montes: Never Stop Fighting

Posted on March 22, 2012 | Leave a comment

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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Posted in Anti-War / Anti-Intervention, Chicano Liberation, FRSO, Immigrants Rights

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Petition: Drop the Charges Against Carlos Montes

Posted on May 29, 2011 | Leave a comment

Door kicked down by SWAT team at Carlos Montes' home. (Committee to Stop FBI Repression)

The following is being posted here from the International Action Center website. To see the petition please go here:

Petition Text

To: U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, President Barack Obama, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder,

cc: Vice President Biden, DOJ Inspector General Fine, the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, Congressional Leaders, the Congressional Black Caucus, U.N. Secy Gen Ban, and members of the media

** Drop All Charges against Carlos Montes, and immediately return all of his property!

** Stop the attack on the Chicano and Immigrant Rights Movements!

** Call Off the Chicago Grand Jury and Stop the Expanding Witchhunt against Anti-war and International Solidarity Activists!

** Hands Off Palestine Solidarity Activists!

** Throw Out the reactiviated subpoenas against Tracy Molm, Ann Pham and Sarah Martin in Minneapolis, and ALL of the 14 subpoenas from the September 24 FBI raids of homes of anti-war and international solidarity activists.

**Immediately return all confiscated materials: computers, cell phones, papers, documents, etc.

**End the grand jury proceedings against anti-war activists.

I am writing to oppose the continuation and expansion of the FBI campaign of harassment of immigrant rights, anti-war and Palestine and other International Solidarity Activists, including the raid on the home of Carlos Montes and his arrest and the confiscation of his property, the 9 added subpoenas in the Chicago area, and reactivation of 3 of the original 14 subpoenas from the September 24 FBI raids of anti-war and international solidarity activists’ homes.

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Posted in Action Alerts, Chicano Liberation, FRSO, Immigrants Rights

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FBI and Los Angeles County Sheriff raid veteran Chicano activist Carlos Montes

Posted on May 19, 2011 | Leave a comment

Door kicked down by SWAT team at Carlos Montes' home. (Committee to Stop FBI Repression)

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

Los Angeles, CA – On May 17, 2011 at 5:00 AM the SWAT Team of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and members of the FBI raided the home of Carlos Montes, a long time Chicano activist and active member of theCommittee to Stop FBI Repression. The SWAT Team smashed the front door and rushed in with automatic weapons as Carlos slept. The team of Sheriffs and FBI proceeded to ransack his house, taking his computer, cell phones and hundreds of documents, photos, diskettes and mementos of his current political activities in the pro-immigrant rights and Chicano civil rights movement. Also taken were hundreds of historical documents related to Carlos Montes’ involvement in the Chicano movement for the past 44 years.

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