By Caleb T. Maupin
Cleveland FIST
On June 16, 1976, the apartheid regime of South Africa faced the heroic Soweto Uprising.
Students in Soweto, a section of Johannesburg, marched peacefully against the imposition of the colonial language in the segregated Black schools. This language was an insult to the colonized population, on top of the horrific terror they faced in their everyday lives.
By Christopher Rykiel
Detroit, MI
Grand Circus Park is a small park in downtown Detroit bisected by Woodward Avenue. For four days and three nights, people stayed in that park for the People’s Summit and Tent City.
A wide variety of people attended. Differences in national origin and ethnicity, age, economic status, sexual orientation, gender, location and other differences served to unite people. They came from all around the country, including Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota, Indiana, Maryland, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey.
Report on the successful People’s Summit in Detroit LeiLani Dowell
LeiLani Dowell, a national FIST leader and Workers World managing editor, at the Workers World Forum, NYC, June 19, 2009
video at: http://blip.tv/file/2274940
By Caleb Maupin
Cleveland FIST
On May 7 and 8, African-American reporter Kathy Wray Coleman was tried in Municipal Court here on trumped-up charges of resisting arrest, sounding a false alarm, disrupting court proceedings and aggravated disorderly conduct. A jury found her not guilty on all except the resisting charge.
The charges arose from an incident after a tense foreclosure hearing on Coleman’s home on Aug. 7, 2008. As she walked out of the court, two deputies threw her to the floor. The court hallway then filled with more than 20 officers. Coleman began to panic as a crowd of police swarmed down on her.
