Boston rallies to support Leonard Peltier

BOSTON, June 26th--The movement for First Nation leader 
Leonard Peltier's freedom held a four hour rally on the 
Boston Common. MIM attended and distributed about 100 
copies of MIM Notes #236 including its front page article, 
"Leonard Peltier speaks on FBI misconduct." The FBI refuses 
to release over 6000 documents relating to Peltier's case. 
There is currently a push to get these documents released 
(see e.g. www.freepeltier.org).

Leonard Peltier has spent 25 years in prison for the death 
of two FBI agents in a firefight on the Pine Ridge 
reservation -- despite overwhelming evidence that he did 
not shoot them. In January, then President Bill Clinton 
refused to free Leonard Peltier with an act of executive 
clemency.

After the rally, MIM briefly interviewed one speaker, Glen 
from the Wampanoag people.

MIM: Did you think the FBI had any reason to be at Pine 
Ridge in the first place?
Glen: No.
MIM: Would you be in favor of the independence of the First 
Nations?
Glen: Yes. I'm for sovereignty.
MIM: How come none of the speakers touched on it today?
Glen: It never gets raised enough. If you go out to the 
Indian territories, that is what everyone is talking about. 
Every one is talking about sovereignty.

One of MIM's jobs is linking single issues to the bigger 
picture. The shooting of the FBI officers -- and Peltier's 
subsequent frame-up -- took place in the context of deadly 
FBI aggression against First Nation people at Pine Ridge 
Indian Reservation in South Dakota. In the years preceding 
the firefight, the FBI and their local accomplices carried 
out intensive surveillance and harassment at Pine Ridge. 
Sixty-four people were murdered in three years, most of 
them affiliated with the American Indian Movement.(2)

The FBI had no right to build up a heavy SWAT presence at 
Pine Ridge, and the two agents who were shot had no right 
to storm, armed, onto private land. But First Nation people 
certainly had the right to defend themselves. They also 
have the right to run their own communities and economies, 
free from Amerikan government intimidation. That's what the 
issue of sovereignty is all about.

As a final note: A white organizer of the event said, "I'm 
a humyn-being in training, as my brother would say." This 
is also the way MIM sees it. As we say in every issue: 
"U.S. citizens are criminals--accomplices and accessories 
to the crimes of U.$. oppression globally until the day 
U.$. imperialism is overcome. All U.S. citizens should 
start from the point of view that they are reforming 
criminals." A task of the dictatorship of the proletariat 
is the "re-civilizing" of the white people.