[Freethe SF8] Blast of echoes - SF8's Hank Jones talks about America's racist past

[SF-8 case]

http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/detail/blast_of_echoes/5693/


Blast of echoes



SF8's Hank Jones talks about America's racist past but steers clear 
of discussing the 37-year-old murder he's accused of committing

By 
<http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/detail/blast_of_echoes/5693//cms/story/author/andre_coleman/227>Andre 
Coleman 02/21/2008

Henry Jones was in the Marines in 1955 and stationed in Japan at the 
height of America's Jim Crow era. But even there he still faced 
discrimination and segregation, his resentment of it only fueled by 
what was done that year to Emmett Till.
The 14-year-old Till was dragged from a relative's home in 
Mississippi, severely beaten, tortured and then lynched after a white 
woman claimed Till had whistled at her.

"His mother wisely left his casket open so that people could see how 
they mutilated her son beyond recognition, and we got the pictures," 
Jones said of his time overseas. "That was a turning point in my 
life. From that point on, I became an activist. We began by 
desegregating the towns around the base. Before that, there were four 
or five locations we could go. Everything else was off limits to 
blacks, so we began to integrate. We felt if we weren't welcome 
there, then nobody is going to be welcome there."

More than 50 years later, the 72-year-old Altadena resident is once 
again speaking out against injustice and battling the government, 
only now he is also fighting for his life after being accused of the 
1971 murder of San Francisco police Officer John V. Young, gunned 
down after eight members of the Black Liberation Army allegedly 
stormed a police station, shooting Young and wounding a civilian clerk.

Police arrested Jones and fellow Altadena resident Ray Boudreaux on 
Jan. 24, 2007.

Richard Brown, Richard O'Neal, Francisco Torres and Harold Taylor 
were also arrested in different parts of the country that day and 
later charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder in relation 
to Young's death.

Two other men, Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim, have been serving life 
terms in New York State prisons since 1973 for murders committed in that state.

Jones and Boudreaux posted bail in September and earlier this month 
the conspiracy charges were dropped after a judge ruled that the 
statute of limitations had expired. The men are due back in San 
Francisco in April for a preliminary hearing.

Boudreaux declined to be interviewed for this story. And Jones 
refused to discuss specifics of the case. However, he is traveling 
the country speaking at colleges and events about the current 
post-Sept. 11 atmosphere. He also recently attended the Pan African 
Film Festival in Los Angeles for the premiere of the documentary 
"Legacy of Torture," which details his ongoing legal battles.

Jones will neither admit nor deny connections to the Black Panther 
Party or the Black Liberation Army, which authorities believe were 
responsible for Officer Young's death. Rather, Jones said he is 
simply an activist and organizer who is now being targeted by an 
overzealous post-Sept. 11 federal government that has "tagged" him 
and groups ranging from animal activists to artists as terrorists.

"The country has changed," Jones observed during an interview this 
week at his home. "The climate now appears to be much like it was in 
the '60s and '70s as far as progressive organizations are concerned. 
Anyone that dissents or protests is suspect and investigated and put 
on a list and monitored. Civil liberties are under assault."

San Francisco prosecutor Maggie Krell denies that the government is 
attacking the San Francisco 8 for past political leanings and affiliations.

"There has been a long, thorough, methodical investigation involving 
the San Francisco police, Department of Justice investigators and the 
FBI,"' Krell said during a press conference last year. "We didn't 
feel we had enough evidence until now. The investigation stretches 
across different counties, different states."

There is no statue of limitation on murder charges, she continued. 
So, "it's never too late to do the right thing. That's what we're 
doing by bringing these men to justice."

Born in New Albany, Miss., during the days of racial segregation - 
when black people had to go through back doors, couldn't try on 
clothes in department stores and had to step off the sidewalk when 
approaching white people - Jones later moved to San Francisco.

"Watching the protests on TV every day and watching the vicious 
assaults by the racist Southern police and the Klan, it made you want 
to get involved - I was from Mississippi and had experienced that 
stuff. I wanted to do something, but I could not run off and leave my 
family, so I got involved in the community in San Francisco 
organizing around the issues."

It wasn't long before the Panthers were deemed the greatest threat to 
the country's internal security by J. Edgar Hoover, who had just 
started COINTELPRO (counterintelligence program), which used 
infiltration and torture methods.

Frank McCoy and Ed Erdelatz were lead San Francisco police detectives 
on the Young case and almost immediately, according to Jones, began 
investigating activist groups, including the Panthers, the BLA and 
the Weathermen.

In 1973, Taylor, along with John Bowman and Ruben Scott, was arrested 
in New Orleans on an unrelated burglary complaint. While in custody, 
McCoy and Erdelatz showed up and allegedly questioned Taylor, who was 
later beaten with blackjacks and shocked with cattle prods until he 
confessed to Young's murder.

Two years later, a San Francisco judge dropped the charges against 
Taylor, ruling the confession was obtained illegally.

Twenty-eight years later, soon after Sept. 11, McCoy and Erdelatz 
were assigned to Homeland Security. That's when Jones was accused of 
being part of a terror organization, a charge dropped by prosecutors in 2003.

"They initially stated they were investigating white people," Jones 
said. "They asked me if I knew any white people and radical members 
like the Weathermen, the SDS [Students for a Democratic Society], and 
quickly it switched to the murder of the police officer in San 
Francisco and if I had any knowledge of that. It's been ongoing ever since."

In 2005, six of the men appeared in court but refused to cooperate 
and spent six weeks in jail until the grand jury adjourned. The group 
then started the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, which 
they hope to use to raise funds for their defense.

"What we are trying to do now is educate the youth and get these 
activists back out there confronting the wrongs in the system," Jones 
said. "You look around and you see the erosion of constitutional and 
legal rights and ... before you know it, you will be in a fascist 
state like Nazi Germany. You have to resist that, and it's 
everybody's responsibility to do that."



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