The District Attorney of Alameda and Oakland brought charges against anti-war demonstrators, and went after Mario Savio and the Free Speech Movement – as well as the Black Panther!

In 1967 while taking a bus from L.A. to Oakland I was detained for being a professional Demonstarer and held in a cop room inside the greyhound Station. I was aksed if I was going to the demonstration in Oakland. I told the plain-clothes officer I knew nothing about a demonstration, I live there. This cop took out his truncheon and was going to work me over, when his superior walked in and told him to “Knock it off!”

Coakley was close with Ed Meese and Erl Warren, thus this appears to be a conspiracy headed by the U.S. Government. It is my intent to put all radical and liberal agendas under the umbrella of organized religion due to the holy Jihad being directed from Israel at our Freedoms – and backed by Republican Senators and Congressman who are guilty of Treason!

Call for an investigation of Israeli agents who call for Americans to go to war, whle at the same time they dmeonize the Peace and Freedom Movement. If these religious zealots had been watching the Bankers of the World, then millions of people would not have lost trillions of dollars. What damage to America did those who want Peace and Freedom of Speech, do? Bras were burned. How immodest! A trillion dollars went up in smoke! How obscene!

Jon the Nazarite

Throughout the last three years, his religious-right coalition has commanded a lead in the polls that Kadima and the other splintered remnants of the opposition have struggled ineffectually to erode. Most Likud voters nowadays are middle-class and secular or traditional, and Bibi’s traditional alliance with the religious and ultra-Orthodox parties may turn out to be his most vulnerable spot – in many ways, it brought about his downfall in 1999.
If religious issues come to dominate the next election, it will certainly not be in Netanyahu’s favor and there will be a delicious irony to that, as Bibi’s current strategy for remaining in power is based on religious extremism. He relies on the growing ranks of Jewish religious extremists in Israel to continue propping up his coalition, and on their ideological counterparts in the Diaspora to provide financial and vocal support for the right-wing view that Israel can do no wrong, shutting out other Jewish voices which believe that Netanyahu and his predecessors have a share of the blame for the situation we are in. He needs the specter of Islamic extremism, in the shape of the Islamist parties that have been winning elections in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, to reinforce the Israel-cannot-budge-because-all-the-Arabs-around-us-hate-us rhetoric, which excuses his inaction on the diplomatic front and Israel’s growing isolation.
Netanyahu’s nemesis
And he is banking on the Christian religious extremists in the United States to topple his nemesis Obama this November.
Indeed, 2012 could become the year of religion. In Israel, the wider Middle East and the United States, religious leaders and religious parties will play a central role in political developments and the faith and faith-related policies of candidates will become a major election issue and primary consideration for many voters. Netanyahu is certainly banking on that – but it could backfire on him drastically. The campaign against undue Haredi influence in the Knesset and religious extremism on the streets and buses of Israel could gather steam and lead to a public momentum that would chip away secular votes from Netanyahu and the right-wing block.

The realist no. 86 [featuring] The Oakland 7 by Frank Bardacke.
Krassner, Paul, editor
Price: 17.00 USD

New York: the monthly, Nov.-Dec., 1969. 32p., slightly misfolded with a short crack where the spinefold is rolled into a tube, edgeworn and browned. The Frank Bardacke essay runs eight full double-column pages. The Oakland 7 was the most important anti-draft demo of the period. His account “contains,” he starts, “some hitherto unrevealed dirt, a few laughs, a smattering of politics, and a confession or two. I have been an Oakland 7 for some time now, and as you read on, you will learn a lot about me. But this is not a story of my life.. Alameda County District Attorney J. Frank Coakley created the Oakland 7 a year and a half ago. He indicted seven leaders of October 1967’s Stop the Draft Week for conspiracy to commit three misdemeanors..” Story is accompanied by a Beetle Bailey lampoon (Beetle killed with his guts hanging out). // There’s a second cover story by Hugh Romney [Wavy Gravy] on Hog Farm

Notes from a Political Trial
July 10, 1969
Emma Rothschild

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The Oakland Seven were acquitted at 10:20 on the evening of Friday March 28 by four housewives, two Post Office clerks, a retired Colonel of the Marines, a statistician, a carpenter, an assembly-line inspector at General Motors, a defense plant tool and die maker, and the supervisor of construction in a radiation laboratory: by twelve people who the courtroom bailiff called “really a cross-section of life.” Juror number 12, a huge blonde lady who wore a sailor suit and sucked Tropical Fruit Lifesavers, had held out three days for conviction.
The Oakland Seven are young, white, and full-time politicians. The night they were acquitted, two of the Seven were in jail. Jeff Segal, who used to be anti-draft co-ordinator for national SDS, was serving a four-year sentence for refusing induction into the army. Mike Smith was in jail for sixty days for committing trespass and being a public nuisance during a demonstration in 1966. In 1968 Mike Smith starred in a movie about himself called The Activist. He worked in the Free Speech Movement, and spent six months with SNCC in the South. Five of the Oakland Seven had been Berkeley students. Four, including Mike Smith, were suspended for political activities.
Terry Cannon is twenty-nine, the oldest of the Seven. For two years he was an organizer for SNCC: he has written books about mathematics and he founded the newspaper The Movement. He is about to serve three months in jail for using profane language during a demonstration. The evening of the verdict, Frank Bardacke brought a television set into the courtroom and watched the San Francisco vs. Los Angeles basketball game. Frank Bardacke occasionally teaches political science. He is a political leader in the Berkeley radical community. Steve Hamilton was active in the Free Speech Movement. He lives in Richmond, an oil-town on the North Bay, and organizes among white oil-workers. Bob Mandel worked in SNCC for two summers. He used to be a full-time anti-draft organizer in Berkeley. Before the trial, Reese Erlich worked for the Peace and Freedom Party. He was almost late for the verdict on Friday night. The defense said they would start without him, but he arrived as the jury was walking in the door.

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The Oakland Seven were prosecuted for conspiring to commit misdemeanors in October 1967, during Stop the Draft Week at the Oakland Induction Center. Stop the Draft Week was a week of demonstrations against the war and the draft: the Oakland Seven were tried for planning the demonstrations. Some of them had been on the Stop the Draft Week Steering Committee, some were Monitor Captains in the crowd. They were charged with conspiring (and combining, and confederating, and agreeing together) to violate Section 602(j) of the California Penal Code, Trespass, and Section 148, Resisting Arrest, or stopping a police officer from properly discharging his duty.
Under a California Statute, conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor is a felony. Resisting arrest is only a misdemeanor but agreeing to resist arrest …

Black Panthers and Oakland Seven
In 1968, he was retained by the Black Panther Party as their chief counsel, and to defend Huey P. Newton in the 1967 slaying of Oakland Police Officer John Frey.[2] Newton was convicted on the lesser charge of manslaughter.[1] Subsequently, he defended Black Panther Chairman Bobby Seale. Garry was famous for flair and courtroom dramatics, and one policeman, under intense questioning, jumped from the witness stand and pulled his gun on Garry.[3]
In 1969, he defended the “Oakland Seven”, a group of San Francisco Bay Area anti-Vietnam War activists who were involved in the planning of the 1967 “Stop the Draft Week.”[4] After the turbulent era of the 1960s came to an end and with the demise of the anti-war and Black Power movements, Garry took on a new set of clients.[5]
[edit] Peoples Temple
Further information: Peoples Temple, Peoples Temple in San Francisco, and Jonestown
In 1977, amidst media scrutiny and potential litigation, Garry began representing the controversial Peoples Temple, led by Jim Jones,[2] in a number of suits, including several by and against Timothy Stoen.[6] Garry’s political philosophy meshed at least to some degree with that of the Temple, a communist organization, and many felt that Garry’s representation added credibility to the Temple as a political organization.[2] Garry believed that the Temple had managed to establish in Jonestown what Garry himself referred to as “paradise.”[7] Garry believed that the Temple picked up where the Movement of the 1960s left off, and that Jonestown was like “socialized society.”[7]
After listening to Temple members discuss the history of the case, Garry initially announced on September 8, 1977, that “[w]e’ve come to the conclusion that there is a conspiracy by government agencies to destroy Peoples Temple as a viable community organization.”[2] After further experience with the Temple, including reviewing the results of several Freedom of Information Act requests, Garry eventually changed his conclusion to the belief that there was little government interest, let alone a conspiracy.[2]
Throughout his representation, Garry argued with members of the Temple.[8] Garry had a tumultuous relationship with another Temple attorney, Mark Lane, because Garry felt that Lane repeatedly interfered in Garry’s areas of representation and made too high profile the Temple’s claims of a conspiracy against it.[9]
Garry and Lane accompanied Congressman Leo Ryan and his delegation on their investigation of Jonestown in November 1978.[10] On November 18, 1978, Garry and Lane escaped potential harm at Jonestown by talking their way past Temple security at a house to which they were sent that was located some distance from Jonestown’s pavilion.[11] That day, 918 people died in Jonestown and Georgetown, which comprised the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until the incidents of September 11, 2001.[12][13][14] In addition, five people were murdered by Temple members at a nearby airstrip, including Congressman Ryan, who became the only Congressman murdered in the line of duty in United States history.[15]
[edit] Later life
Garry continued to practice law after the Jonestown incident, his clientele changed and his chance for further national acclaim had passed.[7] His post-Jonestown press conferences of November/December 1978 served as his final public acts.[7] Garry died of a stroke[7] in August 1991, at the age of 82 in Berkeley, California.

Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, addresses a crowd of supporters in front of the Alameda County Courthouse in Oakland. August 5, 1970. Roy Williams, photographer. Gelatin silver print. Collection of Oakland Museum of California. The Oakland Tribune Collection. Gift of ANG Newspapers.

http://museumca.org/picturethis/pictures/four-young-men-try-move-car-slashed-tires-middle-street-downtown-oakland

http://museumca.org/picturethis/pictures/stop-draft-week-trial-defend-oakland-seven

After much uproar and delay, the bringing to justice of the whole eight hundred some-odd who were arrested in Sproul Hall had finally gotten off the ground in early March, 1965. The main disagreements revolved around whether we were to be tried collectively or as individuals. The opening statement was made by the district attorney, J. Frank Coakley, who wanted blood.195
Mario instantly got himself into hot water by making a comment to Judge Crittenden about “shameless hypocrisy” that netted him two days in stony-lonesome for contempt.
http://texts.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt687004sg;NAAN=13030&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=d0e9207&toc.id=0&brand=calisphere

http://www.oac.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt4580036x&brand=oac4&doc.view=entire_text

Burnstein
Good morning, your Honor. As to the matter of attendance, Your Honor, going over this question with the District Attorney’s Office prior to opening Court this morning, and as to all defendants but twenty, their absences are for the reasons previously given to the Court and the District Attorney’s Office, and I understand that their absences will be excused by stipulation. As to the other twenty defendants, we will furnish the Court and the District Attorney’s Office a list after the noon recess for whatever disposition the Court wishes.

Jensen
We would stipulate, Your Honor, we asked this morning that Mr. Coakley be excused, and I assume Mr. Golde and Mr. Buxbaum?

Burnstein
Yes.

Court
They may be excused, the question of the unexcused absences, the Court will take this up at 2:00 o’clock. Ready to proceed Mr. Jensen?

Jensen
Yes, Your Honor.

Court
All right.

Mario Savio
Mario Savio called as a witness on behalf of the defendants, having been previously sworn, testified further as follows:

Jensen
Is it your testimony that you never discussed the question of trespass in relation to sitting in on a University building?

Savio
We discussed the matter of trespass with regard to sitting in, I don’t — I can’t pinpoint when it was discussed, I think it was discussed more than once but not that the — you know, that this would — that this would likely not to be the kind of a test that we would want in terms of political activity rules, but that if a protest were to be held in the form of a sit-in in one of the University buildings, that it might well be a first amendment protected protest and not a — not subject to trespass laws if the Court would recognize it as a form of petition.

Jensen
So part of your discussion was the fact that there was a trespass law in reference to public buildings, and you were discussing whether or not you would be protected by the constitution if you went in and committed a trespass in that building, is that right?

Savio
Well, if he were protected by the constitution and clearly, we would not have committed a trespass.

Jensen
Were you aware of the fact there was a trespass law which applied to persons remaining in University buildings?

Leonard
It is objected to, if Your Honor please, on the grounds that it asks for a legal opinion and conclusion,

― 9 ―
that is one of the very issues we are determining in this case, whether a trespass law that does apply to this building, it assumes the outcome of this case in the question and I hope we haven’t been here for six weeks so the prosecution can assume the outcome of this case.

Savio
The motions were usually very complex and involving in them

― 12 ―
all sorts of directions to the steering committee concerning how the motion — how the kernel of the motion was to be implemented so the motion would include — the motion would surely have included provisions to contact Joan Baez to make leaflets to hold the rally, to see to it that provisions were made for food, all the details. Now, I don’t know if that particular motion, how much of the detail preparation was left simply to the discretion of the steering committee and how much was included explicitly in the motion. The substance of the motion was that there should be a sit-in in Sproul Hall beginning December the 2nd.

Jensen
So within the text of the motion you named Sproul Hall as the particular site for the sit-in, is that right?

Savio
That’s right.

In these times of disrespect for our tangled legal institutions, one man reminds us of how American justice worked before it unraveled. J. Frank Coakley’s era saw the beginning of our current problems. For The People: Sixty Years of Fighting for Law & Order captures the clear-eyed view of “simple justice” that once was the objective of our legal system. In this memoir Coakley, America’s leading DA of his day, chronicles more than sixty of his most important cases–many with far-reaching national impact.
This is the story of sixty years in the on-going war against crime and corruption, of how righteous public prosecutors won conviction after conviction in spectacular cases that made headlines all over the country. It is also the story of how the rules have changed, of how the higher courts have sometimes confounded or perverted justice to further the cracked ideological agenda of the so-called “civil liberties” crowd. . . and how clever prosecutors have adapted and fought back. It is a story only someone with Frank Coakley’s impeccable credentials and extensive criminal trial experience could write.
Having assisted then-DA Earl Warren in the thorough-going investigations and vigorous prosecutions that made Alameda the cleanest county in the nation during the 1930’s–a jurisdiction that professional crooks avoided like the plague–Frank Coakley became Earl Warren’s successor as DA in 1947. As one of Warren’s top assistants, Coakley had prosecuted a majority of the important cases in Alameda County during the 1920’s and 30’s. As District Attorney he would direct the office during the most turbulent period in its history: A crooked state attorney general would try to set up a statewide protection racket, smut peddlers and drug dealers would assault the moral fabric of society, leftist student agitation would turn Berkeley into a cauldron of revolutionary violence, and the Black Panther Party’s national headquarters in Oakland would threaten racial war in the streets.
As is always the case, the war between law enforcement and criminals ultimately meant battle between lawyers. Training prosecutors for courtroom combat was a top priority for Frank Coakley. He led the charge by founding the National District Attorneys Association and the National College of District Attorneys. Respected nationwide as America’s top public law office, the Alameda County DA’s Office became known as “Coakley College,” training hundreds of young deputies who have become leaders in America’s law enforcement and judicial communities. This book reflects a lifetime commitment to justice… For The People.

Throughout the last three years, his religious-right coalition has commanded a lead in the polls that Kadima and the other splintered remnants of the opposition have struggled ineffectually to erode. Most Likud voters nowadays are middle-class and secular or traditional, and Bibi’s traditional alliance with the religious and ultra-Orthodox parties may turn out to be his most vulnerable spot – in many ways, it brought about his downfall in 1999.
If religious issues come to dominate the next election, it will certainly not be in Netanyahu’s favor and there will be a delicious irony to that, as Bibi’s current strategy for remaining in power is based on religious extremism. He relies on the growing ranks of Jewish religious extremists in Israel to continue propping up his coalition, and on their ideological counterparts in the Diaspora to provide financial and vocal support for the right-wing view that Israel can do no wrong, shutting out other Jewish voices which believe that Netanyahu and his predecessors have a share of the blame for the situation we are in. He needs the specter of Islamic extremism, in the shape of the Islamist parties that have been winning elections in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, to reinforce the Israel-cannot-budge-because-all-the-Arabs-around-us-hate-us rhetoric, which excuses his inaction on the diplomatic front and Israel’s growing isolation.
Netanyahu’s nemesis
And he is banking on the Christian religious extremists in the United States to topple his nemesis Obama this November.
Indeed, 2012 could become the year of religion. In Israel, the wider Middle East and the United States, religious leaders and religious parties will play a central role in political developments and the faith and faith-related policies of candidates will become a major election issue and primary consideration for many voters. Netanyahu is certainly banking on that – but it could backfire on him drastically. The campaign against undue Haredi influence in the Knesset and religious extremism on the streets and buses of Israel could gather steam and lead to a public momentum that would chip away secular votes from Netanyahu and the right-wing block.
The swing necessary to deny him another term in office is not major – losing three or four Knesset seats is all it would take. And if Netanyahu manages to win the election in Israel, or decides to hold them in 2013, he could still lose the American election due to religious extremism. The Christian fundamentalists may not be able to marshal enough support for Mitt Romney the Mormon, or Newt Gingrich the lapsed Catholic, or their attacks on Obama could turn off many Americans. Either way, whoever emerges as the Republican candidate, if Obama gets four more years in the Oval Office, free from electoral constraints and with a justified feeling of vindication against the foreign leader who aligned himself so clearly with his political rivals, Netanyahu will be the loser.
An Obama administration in 2013 will mean a whole new ball game in the Middle East. If a fairly stable government emerges by then in Egypt, dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood party and allied with both Hamas in Gaza and Erdogan’s AK party in Turkey, an American decision to negotiate with Hamas is not inconceivable. What will Bibi say then to Obama – that you can’t talk with religious extremists?