Thurs., October 17, 2024,
6:30 pm,
Bed-Stuy Restoration Corp,
Main entrance – First floor,
1368 Fulton St. (off Marcy Av.),
Brooklyn, NY
Forty years ago, 500 members of the FBI’s Joint Terrorist Task Force launched what they called a “preventive strike” across four boroughs of New York City to arrest eight Freedom Fighters. Named the New York 8 (in alpha order) are Lateefah Carter, Coltrane Chimurenga, Omowale Clay, Colette Pean, Yvette Kelly, Viola Plummer, Jose Rios, Robert Taylor, and Roger Wareham. A number of their spouses were also arrested as Grand Jury Resisters, thus over called the New York 8+; these freedom fighters included Dorrie Clay and Wanda Wareham among others.
Held under the just passed “No Bail Reform Law,” which produced the longest bail hearing in the history of the U.S., the defendants faced over two hundred years if convicted of the charges that the government ultimately admitted never happened… but were merely “thought crimes,” or as the State put it, “conspiracies to commit conspiracies.”
The New York 8 defeated the goverment’s conspiracies and were found innocent of all the major charges that would have jailed them for decades. Come out to celebrate this historic people’s victory and its implications for the current fight against rising fascism, racial capitalism, and war. Lessons must be learned and won.