More Strange Fruit – The SF Chronicle and the SF8

The preliminary hearing for the SF 8 began today in San Francisco. There was a rally of supporters that started marching and chanting in front of the Hall of Justice at 8am. Strange thing – the San Francisco mainstream media with the exception of a reporter for KGO radio news seemed to be in absence. Which brings me back to the main topic of this post – the recent publication in the Sunday May 24th edition of the San Francisco Chronicle of an article which purported to link the 1971 murder of Mary Alice Willey to the SF8 case. I’m not all that experienced in journalism but this really seemed like some kind of planted story to benefit the prosecution and to give the public pause for thought about the nature of the SF8 defendants.

The story is inflammatory and prejudicial even in today’s more enlightened society but had this type of story been published over fifty years ago, it could have inflamed the ignorant and racist passions that were just under the surface of American society. So it makes one wonder – what kind of journalism is being practiced here and for what purpose? Is it another attempt to inflame and prejudice the public against the SF8? It sure seems like it. If so, how did this come about so near to the preliminary hearing and possible trial of the SF8? Like everything else about this case – there is a bad smell to it.

In today’s Chronicle, the head of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, Greg Delagnes, stated that at the time of the killing of Officer Young, the Black Panthers were at war against the Police in the USA. Well, yes, the same could be said about the Police conducting a war against black men during the same time and for the previous three hundred year period. There was a war. There were two sides. Violence was used by both. It is tragic – but Officer Young was a victim of that war. I don’t think that war was started by black men either. They were the victims of decades and centuries of “legal” abuse of their human rights. Suddenly, in the fifties and sixties, the black men decided to fight back and funny, things have changed in the past forty years.

Justice is a strange thing. For some reason it doesn’t seem to be there for an Idriss Stelley, Sheila Detoy, Larry Lumpkin or the many others who have been gunned down by the SFPD in very questionable circumstances. But I guess those cases don’t count. But then, how can we really ever have any justice? – even for Officer Young. The families of those victims have had to accept the failure of our system to bring true accountability and justice. It’s a very imperfect and flawed system. Maybe the SFPD, Jerry Brown and whoever else is pushing this case should consider that as well.

The life of Mary Alice Willey deserves more respect than to just use it to heat up the murder trial of the SF8. Will the SFPD give that murder case the same attention they have failed to give so many other unsolved murder cases? I really don’t want to defend the SF8 on this Mary Alice Willey case because that is just following through with what the Chronicle and whoever their plant is desires. But while I can’t speak about those of the SF8 in prison, the others appear to have led lives of work and involvement with family and the community. These are not the kind of people that would stab someone sixty five times and go on to live fairly decent, normal lives. They may have been warriors in a battle against repression and police brutality but the battles were long ago and should be left for the history books where there is still much more to be written about the oppression and many cases of justice denied to black men in America. This case should be put to rest.