NEW YORK REPUDIATES KKK

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NEW YORKERS REPUDIATE KU KLUX KLAN

Hooded hoodlums massively outnumbered by multi-ethnic protestors; NYPD exploits spectacle to increase surveillance

by Bill Weinberg

On Saturday Oct. 23, following a frenzied series of court battles, the Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, an Indiana-based faction of the fragmented white supremacist movement, rallied in front of the state court house in New York City's downtown Foley Square. But the fifteen or so Klansmen were outnumbered hundreds-to-one by an ethnically diverse crowd of protesting New Yorkers.

The Klan compromised with the administration of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani--which had first sought to ban the march entirely and then invoked an 1845 state law against wearing masks in public protests--by wearing their hoods, but not masks. The row of of Klansmen in what appeared to be pointy white dunce caps were surrounded by a stiff phalanx of cops in full riot gear facing out at the sea of hostile, mocking, multi-ethnic New Yorkers.

The cops predictably tried to break the anti-Klan protesters up into small groups with barricades and bottlenecks--a tactic aided by the fact that Foley Square is the latest city park closed by the administration for renovations. A few anti-Klan protesters were arrested, and one maced, for trying to break through the barricades. One was even arrested for punching a Klansman in the face after bluffing his way through police barricades by pretending to be a Klan sympathizer.

The Giuliani administration typically exploited the controversy to expand controls on access to public space. The Klan sought a permit for 2 to 4 PM at Foley Square. A group of counter-protestors including State Assemblyman Scott Stringer, State Sen. David Patterson, State Comptroller H. Carl McCall, Rev. Al Sharpton and Jewish leaders are also demanded a permit. On Friday, city authorities pulled the Klan's sound permit after a federal appeals court overturned a lower court ruling and barred the Klan from marching with masks. On the morning of the march, the case actually reached the desk of US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who again upheld the anti-mask law. Stringer's group got the permit for Foley Square, while the besieged Klansmen held a vigil with no permit.

Attorney Norman Siegel of the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) represented the Klan, and actually secured amicus briefs supporting their right to march on First Amendment grounds from Rev. Sharpton and the weekly Amsterdam News, the city's largest black newspaper. "Our brief is not for the Klan," Sharpton told the New York Times. "It's against the Mayor."

But Sharpton and Stringer ultimately rejected a Siegel-brokered deal to have the Klan and the anti-Klan coalition share a sound permit, with the Klan getting the first hour and the coalition the second.

The Klan group actually tried to cultivate a "politically correct" image during the court battles. Imperial Wizard Jeffrey Berry of Butler, IN, told Long Island's Newsday, "We're a nonviolent, Christian civil-rights group... Rodney King said it best: 'Can't we all just get along?'" Meanwhile, the group's website (http://www.americanknights.com) boasts of a campaign to overturn an American system that "discriminates against Whites in favor of unqualified and lazy niggers," where "WHITE teachers and students are raped and robbed by niggers and other savages on a daily basis," and where "Jewish bankers and shylocks control the economy with an iron hand." Grand Dragon James Sheeley had actually been an inmate counselor at New York State's Wallkill Prison for 18 years. He was fired in 1997, after white supremacist literature was found in his locker. The inmate population at the prison is 85% non-white.

A second anti-Klan group, the Partisan Defense Committee (linked to a Trotskyist party called the Spartacist League), secured a permit for a park in front of city court at 100 Centre Street, half a block north of Foley Square. The PDC rally led chants of "NO FREE SPEECH FOR RACISTS!", oblivious to how the Giuliani administration was using precisely this sentiment to further his agenda of keeping all protesters off the city's streets.

As Bhairavi Desai, whose New York Taxi Worker's Alliance had battled the city in court for the right to conduct a cab protest motorcade last summer, told the New York Post: "He's denied permits to poor people, black people, working people, gays and lesbians, conscious people of New York City who are protesting his policy. He had a vested interest in denying the permits."

However, by 2:00, when the PDC marched down to Foley Square, the distinction between the two rallies broke down. It was just New Yorkers against the Klan.

The following day, NYCLU's Norman Siegel reported that the NYPD had affixed a Foley Square light pole with cameras and microphones linked to a satellite truck which beamed footage of the rally directly to police headquarters just a few blocks away. Siegel protested that this may constitute a violation of the Handschu agreement, which establishes guidelines for police surveillance of public protests.

The agreement was part of a 1985 settlement in class action suit brought by Barbara Handschu, Abbie Hoffman and 14 other plaintiffs on behalf on New York City political activists. The suit targeted the intelligence-gathering activities of the NYPD's notorious "Red Squad"--known in the 1960s as the Bureau of Special Services (BOSS), and today officially designated the Public Security Section of the Department's Intelligence Division. The agreement establishes a three-person Handschu Authority made up of the NYPD's First Deputy Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner for Legal Matters and a civilian appointed by the Mayor. Under the agreement, public protests can be videotaped only if there is a likelihood of criminal activity. The use of video tapes must be reported to the Handschu Authority within 48 hours.

The settlement was supposed top prevent "videos of peaceful demonstrators being used as a permanent record for files on political activists," Siegel told THE SHADOW.

"On Saturday I saw them taking a video of me while I was talking to my clients [the Klan], and made a complaint. They came back and said it was within the guidelines."

The NYPD's loophole is the claim that the equipment was only used for a live feed to One Police Plaza. "Handschu is silent on live feeds because nobody was even thinking about that in '85," says Siegel.

But what is to prevent the cops from making a copy of the live feed? "If its a live feed and a video, I say that's illegal under Handschu. If they kept a copy, they need to explain it to the Handschu Authority within 48 hours."

Siegel says a similar live feed was used at the Sharpton-led April 15, 1999 march over Brooklyn Bridge in protest of police brutality, and at the 1998 Million Youth March in Harlem.

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