VOICE OF DETROIT: The city's independent newspaper, unbossed and unbought

First-degree murder charges in 1968 case of State Police Detective Robert Gonser dismissed ‘without prejudice’ in 1969, 1982; pros. witnesses recanted

Wayne Co. Pros. O’Hair in 1982: “No factual, legal or ethical justification for proceeding with this case.” 

Darnell Summers in Germany.

Oct. 2020: Summers returns to Inkster from Berlin to film ‘No End in Sight;’ Mich. State Police stop him, seize cell phone, DNA saliva sample

MSP’s Mike Shaw:  “Summers still a suspect” in cop murder

MSP’s Shanon Banner:  “We don’t maintain research on militia groups” re: state’s racist right-wing organizations

“I could have been in prison for 52 years of my life–there are others who suffered that fate, and a lot of them are innocent.” –Summers

By Diane Bukowski

November 15, 2020

UPDATE: Support Darnell at Metro Airport Today Friday, Nov. 20, 2020: From Renee Lichtman

[Today], Darnell has to return to Germany; he does intend to come back to Detroit in the near future to finish his film. But Darnell really does not know what to expect at the airport when he plans to leave…

Will authorities take his passport, the way they took his phone when he arrived in Detroit? Will the authorities have some “results” from the DNA swab they took from him, with a warrant, attached, when he stopped at a gas station?

At Metro Airport, Darnell will be giving an update to friends and media at 3:30 PM, today, Friday, at Delta Airlines, in the McNamara Terminal.

We hope you can join us and support a fellow veteran.

In Solidarity, Rene Lichtman 248 986 3466,

renelichtman@gmail.co

Darnell Summers at: 1 313 948 2537, acrimprod@hotmail.com

Atty. Jeffrey Edison (center) speaks at Darnell Summers press conference outside DPSH Nov. 13, 2020. Summers covers the event at left.

DETROIT—Darnell Summers, a globally renowned documentary film-maker, musician, Vietnam veteran and war resister, returned to his boyhood city of Inkster, Michigan from Berlin, Germany last month to work on a new film, “No End in Sight.”

He discovered there is also no end in sight to a 52-year witch hunt by the Michigan State Police and the FBI, still seeking to re-charge him for the murder of MSP Detective Robert Gonser in Inkster on Aug. 8, 1968.  Charges against Summers were twice dismissed “without prejudice” (meaning they could be brought again) in 1969 and again in 1984 after both prosecution eyewitnesses recanted.

MSP Red Squad Det. Robert Gonser, killed Aug. 8, 1968 in Inkster.

Summers and his supporters, including attorneys from the National Lawyers Guild (Detroit) and the National Conference of Black Lawyers, and members of Detroit Will Breathe, spoke at a press conference outside the “Detroit Public Safety Headquarters” (DPSH) Nov. 13. The DPSH houses the headquarters of both the Detroit Police and the Michigan State Police Forensics Laboratory.

“This case is not just about me,” Summers pointed out. “It’s about the millions of people languishing in prisons in America and the tactics that are employed by this state, by this government, to imprison these people, to persecute these people, to oppress these people.

“They come from the oppressed sections of this country, and beyond the borders of this country, [the U.S.] also effects imprisonment, executions, assassinations. As a Vietnam veteran, I’m opposed to imperialistic wars, military interventions  by this country. I didn’t support it before the [Vietnam} war, during the war and after the war.”

He called on his supporters to fight for “millions of prisoners across America” still locked up as a result of government tactics. Tactics used in his case included witness coercion resulting in the recanted testimony, prosecutorial refusal to disclose evidence that would exonerate the defendant, including a report that Summers was elsewhere at the time of Gonser’s death, and the use of “dismissal without prejudice” verdicts to circumvent final freedom.

(Ed. Prosecutors and state and city police have continued with these tactics to the present day, resulting in an untold number of wrongful convictions, many of them directed at Black youths.  See box at right for examples, and story links below this article.

Summers, who is now 73, grew up in Inkster, Michigan. He served in the U.S. Air Force from 1966 to 1970. In 1968, while home on leave  before being sent to Vietnam, he helped create the Malcolm X Cultural Center in Inkster, in a city recreation facility.

Its young Black founders were part of a wave of civil rights and “Black Power” revolutionary uprisings across the U.S. calling for an end to the war in Vietnam, as well as the “War Against Black America.”

According to news reports from the time, two Inkster police officers were “shot at” near the Malcolm X center on the night of Aug. 7, 1968, after the city had ordered the Center’s sign removed.

The two fired their guns in response, wounding a civilian.

Later the same night, on Aug. 8, MSP Detectives Robert Gonser and Frederick Prysby were surveilling the area as part of their duties in the MSP’s “Red Squad” (political surveillance unit) when they also came under gunfire. Gonser was killed at 2:40 a.m.

Black youth James E. Matthews, 14, killed by police during manhunt, another wounded

James Matthews, 14, killed by squad of  police just after Gonser’s death. No charges ever brought.

At 3:15 a.m., police officers killed Black 14-year-old youth James E. Matthews,  less than a mile from the site of Gonser’s killing, causing outrage in the community.

An autopsy report indicated he died of wounds from two shotgun blasts fired at a distance.

Inkster resident Gerald Calvin Graham, 21 was injured by police in a separate incident and  treated for a shotgun wound in the left shoulder at Wayne County General Hospital.

The Facebook page “Keep Darnell Free” reports, “. . . not once in these 52 years did any law enforcement official lift a finger to charge and prosecute any cop for the cold-blooded murder of Jimmie Matthews that August night. In fact, on Friday, August 16, 1968, Wayne County Prosecutor William Cahalan issued a statement claiming that there was ‘no criminality in the slaying of James Matthews.’

“For more details about the murder of Jimmie Matthews, see the article ‘Will Detroit Burn?’ in the Michigan Daily, June 18, 1969 https://digital.bentley.umich.edu/…/mdp.39015071754233/170″

FACEBOOK PAGE “KeepDarnellFree”   https://www.facebook.com/KeepDarnellFree

War resister Darnell Summers (l) with the USAF in Vietnam

Policemen from Inkster and Westland, Wayne County Sheriff’s officers and Michigan State Police officers were questioned in Matthews’ killing by the Wayne County Prosecutor’s office.

A “police-prosecutor” investigative task force concluded Matthews’ death was a result of “mistaken identity” by cops conducting the manhunt,  in a report issued eight days after the shootings. Wayne County Prosecutor William Cahalan said “there was no criminality” in the shooting.

Multiple accounts of Gonser’s shooting indicate that eyewitnesses saw shots fired from a car with four Black men in it. But charges against Summers and two co-defendants, including a young woman, were not brought until June, 1969.

Police and prosecutors used the testimony of a sole eyewitness, Milford Scott, 22. Scott claimed he was in a car with the three defendants during the shooting, but later recanted his account, leading to the first dismissal of charges.

The female co-defendant told prosecutors she had been beaten by State Police. The second time charges were brought against Summers in 1982, she said she was in the car with Summers when he shot Gonser. But she recanted that testimony, causing the second dismissal of charges.

Above is Detroit Free Press article by Joe Swickard on the charges against Summers being dropped the first time. Below is an excerpt from a United Press International (UPI) release on the second dismissal, produced from CIA files.

After charges against Summers were dropped in 1969, and he completed his tour with the USAF,  he moved to West Germany and continued his activism on an international level.

He has been involved with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (Anti-Imperialist), the STOP THE WAR BRIGADE during the Gulf war, the Iraq Veterans against the War, the GI newspaper FighT bAck, and the “Just Say No Posse” aiding G.I. war resisters, among  other groups and alliances. He has also been active with immigrants from Turkey and the youth movement in Germany.

(L to r) John Sinclair, Darnell Summers, and the late Bernard Stroble (Shango of the Attica Brothers.)

Meanwhile, Summers remained active in the U.S., allying with political prisoners like John Sinclair of the White Panther Party, and Attica Brother “Shango,” who survived the vicious massacre of prisoners who rebelled at Attica State Prison in New York in 1971. Shango died in a suspicious shooting after his subsequent return to his hometown of Detroit.

Meanwhile, Summers has had a successful career as a professional  musician, filmmaker, actor, composer, cameraman, producer and sound technician, working on projects around the world.

Summers is the only alleged “suspect” the MSP has continued to target over the ensuing decades. The Michigan State Police played a major role along with the Detroit Police, the FBI and the CIA in surveillance of many thousands of anti-war and anti-racism activists over previous decades, and continues to do so today.

Darnell Summers in Europe, in band “Afrodisia.”

Atty. Jeffrey Edison of the National Conference of Black Lawyers called the ongoing campaign against Summers “police terrorism” during the press conference, noting that police brutality has many aspects.

“The surveillance itself is a manifestation of terror,” he said.

He noted that “Red Squads” were “an arm of the FBI’s COINTELPRO, whose specific objective was to neutralize the Black liberation movement,  focusing on the Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam, and the Republic of New Africa.”

Summers re-entered the U.S. in early October to visit Inkster and Detroit and Detroit and film his new documentary “No End in Sight.” He was not immediately aware that the MSP had tried to go to Germany to question him, yet were rebuffed by German authorities due to COVID-19 entry restrictions.

He was questioned at the airport by “unidentified law enforcement officials.” Meanwhile, the MSP had paid visits to his brother Bill Summers, a  noted jazz drummer, and to a friend in Inkster. The next day, the MSP visited him where he is staying.

Darnell Summers with youthful supporters of Iraq Veterans Against the War, in Germany.

Then, on Oct. 27, Summers, his son and a friend were stopped by the MSP while sitting in a car at a gas station in Inkster. The MSP cops produced a search warrant giving them authority to seize his cell phone and to take a DNA sample from him, which they did at the gas station.

On May 13, 2020, the MSP tweeted an account of Gonser’s killing as part of a memorial for  23 officers who had been killed in the line of duty. It still said Gonser’s killer is “unknown.”

But MSP spokesman Mike Shaw told Bryce Huffman, a reporter for Bridge Magazine, prior to the Nov. 13 press conference that Summers is “still a suspect” in Gonser’s killing.

Shortly afterwards, the Detroit News quoted MSP spokeswoman Shanon Banner in a Nov. 15 article, “Michigan’s history with militias is often dark.” The article covers right-wing, mostly white and often violent, murderous militias beginning in the 20th century. It includes the Black Legion, the KKK, and today’s “Wolverine Watchmen,” recently charged with a conspiracy to kidnap and possibly kill Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Banner said, “We don’t maintain research on militia groups as our only involvement would be if or when a group becomes involved in criminal activity.”

Above: Shushanna Shakur, sister of the late Republic of New Africa revolutionary Atty. Choke Lumumba, who supported Summers, reads statement from Ed Watson, a founder of the Malcolm X Cultural Center in Inkster, MI during press conference Nov. 13, 2020. 

RELATED STORIES:I

Link to a new article about Darnell that appeared in a major Berlin daily March 3o, 2021:

https://taz.de/Darnell-Summers-im-Visier-der-US-Justiz/!5758302&s=Darnell+Summers/

https://voiceofdetroit.net/2020/08/04/michigan-lifer-ricky-rimmer-bey-convicted-drug-dealer-cop-james-harris-framed-me-for-murder

https://voiceofdetroit.net/2020/05/05/time-to-free-carl-hubbard-ap-gonzales-jailed-key-pros-witness-after-he-recanted-at-trial/

https://voiceofdetroit.net/2020/04/05/mi-supreme-ct-grants-rehearing-to-thelonious-searcy-hitman-confessed-judge-ap-lied-to-jury/

Da’Monte Trevino of Los Angeles waves the American flag as people celebrate at Pershing Square the victory of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris in Los Angeles on Saturday, November 7, 2020. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News/ SCNG)

 Freedom Rider: The Real Resistance Begins 

Angela Davis speaks in Detroit Oct. 24, 2012.

Editor: In 2012, as the re-election of the nation’s first Black President Barack Obama was in the works, Professor Angela Davis spoke at a mass rally in Detroit Oct. 24. She supported Obama’s re-election, but cautioned that people must continue the battle in the streets to achieve real victory.

“People were waiting for Obama to emerge as new FDR,” she said. “But was it really FDR who gave us on his own accord unemployment insurance and social security? No, it was the masses of the people in the street, struggles led by communists in the 1930’s, sit-down strikes, marches all over the country, unemployed councils, eviction defense committees. . . .We will never elect a president who will lead us to the promised land.  We have to take it on ourselves. As the great Black poet June Jordan said, ‘We are the ones we have been waiting for.” VOD’s story on her talk is linked below this article.

Freedom Rider: The Real Resistance Begins

Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist

Margaret Kimberley

11 Nov 2020

“Kamala Auntie” and Joe from Scranton will do as little as possible so that “nothing will fundamentally change” that would halt endless wars and the Race to the Bottom.

When Pennsylvania announced that Joe Biden won in that state it became clear that he had enough Electoral College votes to become the de facto president elect. When the news became public, millions of people responded with spontaneous celebrations. There was quite literally dancing in the streets in many cities across the country. The public reaction was unprecedented in its scope and demonstrated the depth of antipathy towards Donald Trump, who is one of the most hated presidents in modern history.

Vice-Pres. Elect Kamala Harris and Pres. Elect Joe Biden.

The vagaries of that same Electoral College that put Biden over the top brought Trump into office in 2016 even though he lost the popular vote. The trauma of his victory, one we were told would never happen, was deep and was constantly aggravated by Trump’s own words and deeds.

The celebrations were difficult for those on the left. Obviously there was no feeling of connection for the awful team of Joe Biden, a right wing Democrat who once said he didn’t want his kids to “grow up in a racial jungle,” or Kamala Harris, the California prison matron who committed herself to locking up as many people as she possibly could.

“Dancing in the streets.”

The level of exaltation was reminiscent of the Barack Obama victory in 2008, when doubters were told not to bring skunks to the party. After the Trump experience, the imperative to support the new neo-liberal, imperialist administration will be even worse. Kamala Harris in particular is lionized as the first non-white vice president and the first female, too. The Democratic Party’s propagandists have gone into overdrive as they milk her ascent for all that it is worth.

U.S. Rep. James Clyburn listens as Pres. Elect Joe Biden speaks.

Biden and Harris are not the only people who must be resisted. The black political class, the misleaders, are being credited as “king makers” who brought victory to the entire race. Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina is one such individual, who did the dirty deed of deep-sixing Bernie Sanders and endorsing Biden, just as the party establishment wanted him to do. Clyburn acted on orders from the top and as such is a lackey, and not a king maker of any sort.

Clyburn isn’t the only misleader getting questionable praise. The closeness of the race in Georgia has burnished Stacey Abram’s credentials too. Even Biden’s small lead in Georgia is significant in this previously red state and Abrams is lauded for her work getting out the vote. The achievement is real, but it is not a good thing when we are given new political stars to adore and to worship. Abrams has her own presidential ambitions and invitations to globalist meetings such as the Bilderberg Group and the Council on Foreign Relations are a sign that her interests are not ours.

Clyburn is a lackey and not a king maker of any sort: COINTELPRO doesn’t figure into the Clyburn version of history.

Black Lives Matter protesters: “Defund the Police.”

None of these people pushed into prominence are working on behalf of black people. Clyburn is one of the leading recipients of Big Pharma campaign contributions and now says that the loss of Democratic House seats should be blamed on progressives.

“John [Lewis] and I sat on the House floor and talked about that ‘defund the police slogan’ and both of us concluded that it had the possibilities of doing to the Black Lives Matter movement and current movements across the country what ‘Burn Baby Burn ’ did to us in the 1960s. We lost the movement over that slogan. A lot of people don’t realize.”

Apparently COINTELPRO and the state’s well documented destruction of the movement doesn’t figure into the Clyburn version of history.

There was a half-hearted fake resistance movement after Donald Trump was elected in 2016. They said nothing when Democrats went along with Trump’s Space Force and other defense spending programs, but they did wear pink pussy hats. In short, they resisted very little.

Now is the time for serious push back against the duopoly, and that means Biden and Harris. Biden is already talking about “healing” the country but he is neither a physician nor a clergyman. No one voted for him to heal anything. He is just repeating what he told rich donors: “Nothing will fundamentally change.”

Trump is an outlier as a persona, but not as a president

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures and declares “You’re fired!” at a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, June 17, 2015. REUTERS/Dominick Reuter

“Kamala Auntie” and Joe from Scranton will do as little as possible. That is their goal after all, to fool people into thinking that there will be differences.

Trump is an outlier as a persona but not as a president. Biden and Harris will bring comfort to nerves frayed by four years of crazy tweeting and epic incompetence. It is their job to do what their voters want. Millions of people took part who ordinarily do not. They stood in long lines at polling places because they want change and not because they are enamored of Kamala Harris’s choice of suit color.

Of course, when Trump truly differed with the “resistance” by imposing sanctions that deprive people of medicine in Venezuela and Iran and Syria and Cuba, and assassinating Iranian generals, the pink pussy hat wearers were unconcerned.

They hit the streets in protest to protect old school segregationist Jeff Sessions because of a bizarre Russiagate theory, but said nothing when Trump passed the biggest tax cut for rich people in history.

The United States desperately needs a real resistance, people who will organize to defend themselves and to hold elected representatives accountable. If they want to party it can’t be because one of the most right wing Democrats in history will be president. We have already lived through phony change and emotional theatrics instead of political action.

Obama’s two terms in office gave us a health insurance bailout of the for-profit industry responsible for a failed system, the destruction of states like Libya, and Black people deprived of the little wealth they had. Unless the Democratic Party scam is called out, we will end up with more of the same.

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well at https://www.patreon.com/margaretkimberley and she regularly posts on Twitter @freedomrideblog. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

Related:

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/513377-biden-harris-is-the-most-regressive-possible-ticket

CRIMINALLY RESPONSIBLE AMERICANS VOTE FOR COMMANDER OF THEIR WORLDWIDE GENOCIDAL KILLING MACHINE

Maduro: US Withholding $5bn of Medical Supplies in ‘Criminal’ Measure

https://voiceofdetroit.net/2012/11/05/prof-angela-davis-in-detroit-peoples-struggle-not-just-elections/

Photos of the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Black Libyans, both resident and migrant, during the US-CIA led war against Libyan Jamahiriya Commander Muammar Gadhafi in 2011 and ongoing.

..Editor: I was stunned by the news today that a substantial number of U.S. citizens still voted for Donald Trump, regardless of the eventual outcome of this national election. They did so despite Trump’s genocidal handling of the coronavirus pandemic, his virulent racism and sexism, and clear evidence that every other sentence out of his mouth is a lie adding to the willful ignorance of a large portion of the U.S. public.

It was demoralizing until I read the column below by sometime VOD contributor Jay Janson,  which puts this country’s elections into a proper global perspective regarding the atrocities committed by both Republican and Democrat Presidents against the people of the Third World. VOD extensively covered the U.S./NATO war in 2011 that resulted in the brutal execution of Libyan President Muammar Gadhafi, and the slaughter by CIA-led rebels of untold hundreds of thousands of Libyans, especially  native Black Libyans and Black African immigrant workers, there at Gadhafi’s invitation to partake of the benefits of Libya’s oil wealth.

Remember: ALL U.S. PRESIDENTS, REPUBLICAN AND DEMOCRAT, HAVE COMMITTED WAR CRIMES AGAINST THE PEOPLES OF THIS PLANET!

Donald Trump or Joe Biden: global wars of extermination will continue.

AMERICANS VOTE FOR COMMANDER OF THEIR WORLDWIDE GENOCIDAL KILLING MACHINE

by Jay Janson / November 3rd, 2020

The good people of the Third World should not let themselves be taken in by worldwide satellite beamed CIA-fed media prattling on continuously about American democracy during ongoing presidential elections. Sadly, Americans are duped into participating in elections that back crimes against humanity ordered by the ruling genocidal Wall St. plutocracy which militarily and financially plunders 3rd World humanity and corrupts American society.

Savage torture and murder of Libyan Pres. Muammar Gadhafi by CIA-led “rebels.”

A great many Americans voting believe the lies their criminal corporate media pours out daily, and are therefore gung-ho proud of Americans killing media-designated ‘bad guys” all around the world.

These completely fooled Americans are happy to vote for the next commander-in-chief, but a substantial amount of Americans voting know they have been frightened into voting for what they hope is the lesser of two evils and are unhappy with what they feel is a mockery of the so called democratic process that has them voting for a choice that still represents evil.

Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, once the highest law officer of the USA, who helped write both important civil rights laws, speaks to his fellow Americans clearly, and meant that all the world should know this truth.

We’re not a democracy. It’s a terrible misunderstanding and a slander to the idea of democracy to call us that. In reality, we’re a plutocracy: a government by the wealthy.

One of the most internationally powerful plutocrats in US history, John Pierpont Morgan, in a candid moment admitted:

Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy.

In 1922, USA economist Thorstein Veblen wrote:

Image from Salon Magazine.

The current situation in America is by way of being something of a psychiatrical clinic...Perhaps the commonest and plainest evidence of an unbalanced mentality is to be seen in a certain fearsome and feverish credulity with which a large proportion of Americans are affected…. There is a visible lack of composure and logical coherence, both in what they will believe and in what they are ready to do about it.

Veblen assumed depression to  be the normal condition  in a business-enterprise economy, to be relieved in periods of excitation caused by stimuli not intrinsic to the system like war and expansion abroad. Veblen saw the modern business leader as essentially a latter-day predatory warrior.

Veblen’s observation is born out by Americans always having been willing to follow criminal orders and bomb, invade and occupy other people’s lands the world over.

Paul Craig Roberts, former editor of the Wall Street Journal, and Undersecretary of the Treasury under President Reagan, in his article, The Looting Machine Called Capitalism, wrote,

Americans are the least exceptional people in human history. Americans have no rights at all. We hapless insignificant beings have to accept whatever capitalists and their puppet government impose on us. And we are so stupid we call it ‘Freedom and Democracy America.’

Americans today are wildly mesmerized in avid interest in who will be president for the next four years. However, given the continual American wars in smaller countries and perpetual ramped up fear of nuclear Armageddon, it’s obviously of some greater significance who will serve as Commander-in-Chief of the American worldwide genocidal killing machine, because whether Americans realize it or not, they, each citizen, has a portion of citizen co-responsibility for the crimes of their fellow Americans ‘serving’ as soldiers following criminal, and therefore illegal, orders.

Yemeni children, victims of U.S.-backed Saudi war.

Those Americans voting, who believe the lies their criminal corporate media pours out daily and are therefore gung-ho proud of Americans killing media-designated ‘bad guys” everywhere and anywhere, believe US democracy makes them and all Americans to be above the law — above all law.

On the other hand, that substantial amount of Americans voting, who know they have been frightened into voting for what they hope is the lesser of two evils, are well aware of their tacit complicity in the crimes against humanity in other people’s countries. Some more modest amount of Americans voting, or refusing to vote, realize that they have already been prosecuted in the court of public opinion and in the hearts of parents of children blown to pieces or starved to death by the actions of Americans. Hopefully, this is what people overseas, especially in nations under American attack, understand.

At the same time a multitude of Americans vote, other Americans have been fueling, arming and target selecting for the Saudi airstrikes for five years. Already back in November 2017, Save the Children reported that 130 children were dying every day, with 50,000 children already believed to have died in 2017. The U.N. officials said more than 20 million people, including 11 million children, are in need of urgent assistance, with 7 million totally dependent on food assistance. The U.N. has called it the “worst humanitarian crisis in the world.”

President Donald Trump meets Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the Oval Office at the White House on March 20, 2018, in Washington, DC. Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images

US CIA controlled media is so sure of the headlock it has on the American public, its mainstream media can even inform of Yemeni children dying from bombs and starvation knowing its captive audience will not turn against their American killing machine.

Even the most eye-rebounding photos  published in wars supporting New York Times Yemen Girl Who Turned World’s Eyes to Famine Is Dead (Published 2018) and seen on PBS television channels did not put a dent in American solidarity with its government’s and military’s genocidal actions in Yemen – prosecutable genocidal crimes against humanity.

During the current presidential election campaign criminal war promoting news and entertainment networks are making no mention of President Trump’s veto of a bipartisan Congressional resolution that would have forced an end to American military involvement in Saudi Arabia’s civil war in Yemen a year-and-a-half ago.

In One American Ear and Out the Other

The late Rev. Jeremiah Wright was formerly Pres. Barack Obama’s pastor. Obama disassociated himself from Rev. Wright during his first election campaign.

In 2008, for two weeks the major networks telecasted as humorous, Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s cry, his finger pointed to the sky, “God bless America? No, no, God damn America for her crimes against humanity!”

In 2012, prime time news during the Republican debates of presidential candidates, candidate Rep. Ron Paul was heard denouncing “all US bombings and invasions beginning with those in Korea as illegal, unconstitutional and a horrific loss of human life.”

But nothing seems to effect a change in American dedication to their military and its military’s heritage (of gore, death and destruction).

American film maker Michael Moore castigates his fellow Americans as

“sick and twisted violent people that we’ve been for hundreds of years, it’s something that’s just in our craw, just in our DNA. Americans kill people, because that’s what we do. We invade countries. We send drones in to kill civilians.”

In one American ear and out the other.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a revolutionary who used mass civil disobedience to overturn an unjust system.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made bold headlines in newspapers throughout the world with, “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my government. In Vietnam we may have killed a million already, mostly children.”

King cried out, “Silence is treason!” but at home extremely few Americans spoke out in agreement,  many spoke against him, most were silent, and King was shot to death within the year.

This archival research peoples historian activist is convinced that no change will be coming from anywhere in the American led First World, especially now as it is hard pressed losing its hegemony to a future multipolar world with China’s economy now the largest.

Some of us work to somehow make this Americans killing millions of children come to be a topic of conversation in the Third World for the children’s lives that could be saved once enough people became enraged enough to demand prosecution and justice.

Once USA-EU loses world economic hegemony and can no longer sanction, the many nations that have seen their children murdered by Americans and their European allies will demand justice in the courts of a reconstituted and reorganized democratic United Nations. In the meantime let’s have faith that the astounding intelligence witnessed in the miraculous achievements in outer and inner space will eventually manifest itself in ending the five centuries of European and American genocide for money and power.

Thorstein Veblen, Douglas Dowd, 1966. []

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Jay Janson

Jay Janson, spent eight years as Assistant Conductor of the Vietnam Symphony Orchestra in Hanoi and also toured, including with Dan Tai-son, who practiced in a Hanoi bomb shelter. The orchestra was founded by Ho Chi Minh, and it plays most of its concerts in the Opera House, a diminutive copy of the Paris Opera. In 1945, our ally Ho, from a balcony overlooking the large square and flanked by an American Major and a British Colonel, declared Vietnam independent. Everyone in the orchestra lost family, “killed by the Americans” they would mention simply, with Buddhist un-accusing acceptance.

Jay Janson can be reached at: tdmedia2000@yahoo.com. Read other articles by Jay.

Related Articles:

https://voiceofdetroit.net/2011/09/02/u-s-nato-guilty-of-war-crimes-in-libya-says-cynthia-mckinney/

https://blackagendareport.com/confronting-bipartisan-repression-and-us-led-axis-domination-beyond-election-day

Darryl Woods Sr. with U.S. Senator Gary Peters. D(MI)

DARRYL WOODS, SR. , WHO ATTENDED RALLY FOR BIDEN WITH TROY RIENSTRA ON BELLE ISLE IN DETROIT OCT. 31, TOOK THE VIDEO ABOVE.  VOD downloaded video from  Facebook to its YouTube channel in order to feature it here. Woods and Rientstra each spent decades  in the Michigan Department of Corrections, are now activists for criminal justice reform, among other issues.

Complete C-SPAN video of event is below.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?477559-1/joe-biden-president-obama-hold-rally-detroit

PROPOSAL N IS JUST ANOTHER $250 MILLION PROPERTY TAX

Mike Duggan says taxes will not go up, but Detroit’s total debt will be further extended–do Detroiters want another bankruptcy?

Detroiters already over-assessed $600 MILLION in property taxes, Duggan has refused to give refund or property tax credit

By Agnes Hitchcock, Steward, Call ’em Out

October 30, 2020

One of hundreds of thousands of Detroit homes vacated due to foreclosures which profited banks and mortgage companies, drove out Black families.

DETROIT--Call ’em Out encourages all Detroiters to VOTE NO ON PROPOSAL N on November 3. It is a $250 MILLION PROPERTY TAX On homeowners in the poorest, Blackest city in America.

Detroit homeowners continue to be under merciless assault from the administration of Mayor Mike Duggan. On December 17, 2019 hundreds of Detroit taxpayers demanded that the City Council vote down Mayor Mike Duggan’s proposed $250 Million bond proposal to demolish 18,000 homes stating it was an enormous tax after being illegally taxed to the tune of $600 million, resulting in illegal foreclosures.

In the midst of both a COVID-19 and a racism pandemic, ravaging Detroit citizens, families, neighbors, loved ones, Duggan and these heartless city council members sneaked it through in our distraction.

In addition to Proposal N, property owners were over-assessed more than $600 million for over six years. The city of Detroit’s administration via Mayor Mike Duggan refuses to give property taxpayers a refund or a property tax credit.  Many Detroit property taxpayers have lost their homes for property taxes we never owed in the first place.

Proposal N is a Property Tax burden which our community should not be asked to fund.  Our city’s administration says these property taxes will further fund the Land Bank Authority.  Not only should we not be asked to fund this tax proposal, our community receives little to no benefit from the Land Bank Authority by way of improvement to our neighborhoods, contracts, jobs or small business development.

The Land Bank Authority has been the focus of local and state reviews and a federal criminal probe that culminated in bid-rigging charges. The Land Bank Authority plays a major part in the mismanagement of tax dollars and further gentrification in the city of Detroit.

A recent article in the Detroit News written by Christine Ferretti, “Audit of Detroit Land Bank Flags Weak Controls, Demolition Records,” provides further reason not to support this tax proposal.  This article appears to have been written based on findings in a report from Stout Risius Ross.

• unexplained bank reconciliations and transactions not recorded in the land bank’s ledger,
• unapproved vendor payments and payroll discrepancies.
• “inability of the land bank to provide a property-by-property accounting of amounts paid per demolished property” as well as the state-level reimbursements received under the federal program.
• The audit also flagged worries over controls for the land bank’s Demolition Advance Fund.
• The audit contends the land bank has been unable to account for the amounts it has paid contractors and received as reimbursements for property under the federal program.
• The audit identified $315 million in payments the land bank made to 629 different recipients over the review period. However, 79 recipients — comprising $50.8 million in funds — “were made to recipients not included on the DLBA’s approved vendor list,” the July 27 report contends.

Contractor Homrich, which profited from Duggan’s no-bid award, demolishes Detroit house in 2015. The city also hired Homrich to shut water off for thousands of Detroit families. 

Of the $50.8 million, about $24.2 million went to (demolition) vendors with names similar to those on the approved vendor list. The remaining $26.6 million, it says, was paid to other vendors “not on the approved vendor list in any capacity.”

“Even minor discrepancies in these details can be a red flag of fraudulent activity where an unauthorized payment is made but disguised as a legitimate payment to an approved vendor,”

The audit says the land bank was unable to demonstrate that the advance fund was used for its intended purpose or if it has controls to prevent misuse.

Proposal N is a property tax which Detroit property taxpayers must not be asked to fund under any circumstances. VOTE NO!!

Agnes Hitchcock: Detroit’s Fiery Black Activist Urges ‘No’ Vote On Proposal N

Selections from Bankole Thompson’s interview of AGNES HITCHCOCK:

AGNES HITCHCOCK: Mike Duggan and his administration rarely get the scrutiny heaped on prior Black administrations.  He is allowed conflict of interest passes such as the preferential treatment his administration gave to the Make Your Date program under its director Dr. Sonia Hassan and how the city directed more than $358, 000 in federal grants to the program, reports about bid rigging in the administration, Black contractors losing out on opportunity, cronyism passes, residency passes, shoddy accounting passes in the Detroit Land Bank Authority.

AGNES HITCHCOCK:  This situation we are in has and will set our community back for generations.  Homeownership is the foundation of our community’s wealth, which is the major avenue for starting to build wealth in our community. . . Selling a home seized from a Black homeowner for (unpaid) taxes and selling that home to a white person for 25% of its value and then providing restoration funds to the new white owner has the intended impact of Black removal.

https://voiceofdetroit.net/2020/03/18/arizona-vaughn-how-can-they-take-my-home-fights-wealthy-detroit-elite-treasurer-uchc/

https://voiceofdetroit.net/2014/11/15/detroit-bankruptcy-plan-genocide-in-usas-largest-black-majority-city-rich-get-95-9-poor-get-13-5/

https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/editorials/2020/10/20/vote-no-detroit-proposal-n-november-election/5857347002/

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2020/08/18/audit-detroit-land-bank-flags-weak-controls-demolition-records/5599557002/

SPEAKERS: People’s Atty. Victoria Burton-Harris; Hakim Littleton’s aunt, fiancee and her mother, Nakia Wallace of Detroit Will Breathe, ACLU Atty. Mark Fancher, NCBL Atty. Jeffrey Edison, W. Paul Jackson, Diane Bukowski

This is the complete livestream video from Detroit Will Breathe’s Facebook Page of the Hakim Littleton Tribunal October 25, 2020. The video is nearly 3 hours. A summary will come.

LaSonya Dodson, mother of Darrell Ewing, campaigns for her son outside Frank Murphy Hall in downtown Detroit July 2, 2020

Court affirms that bias from jurors’ introduction of “extraneous” internet, social media info on urban gangs, Black youth caused guilty verdict

Eight judges in four courts have now ordered new trial for Darrell Ewing, Derrico Searcy

Supporters say: call Wayne County Pros. Kym Worthy, AP Jon Wojtala to ask them to drop continued prosecution, at 313-224-5777

National journalist/producer Maggie Freleng publishes podcast on case, petition to free Ewing at https://actualinnocentprisoners.com/darrell-ewing

How many more convictions have been tainted by use of untrained DPD ‘gang’ experts who use Facebook, internet info against defendants?

DONATE TO VOD at https://www.gofundme.com/VOD-readers-up

By Diane Bukowski 

October 23, 2020 

Darrell Ewing

DETROIT — Darrell Ewing, sentenced to life without parole at the age of 21 in 2010, scored another victory Oct. 22 in his campaign for release and exoneration of what his supporters say was a wrongful murder conviction.

An appeals court unanimously upheld Wayne County Third Circuit Court Judge Michael Hathaway’s order one year ago which granted a new trial for Ewing and co-defendant Derrico Searcy.

The panel agreed that the verdict in the trial for the murder of J.B. Watson in 2009 resulted from “extraneous” information about urban gangs from social media and the internet, introduced by several jurors into deliberations. The prosecution’s theory of the case was that the murder resulted from a gang war, but no one testified to that effect at trial.

“Now four different courts  and eight different judges all agree the system blatantly denied my constitutional right to a fair trial,” Ewing told VOD. “I just thank Allah and everyone who throughout the years supported, rallied and petitioned on my behalf. When truth is on the manifest, falsehood flees for sure. I just pray that Kym Worthy and her office of injustice never do another individual as my family and I have been done all these years.”

Ewing’s defense attorney Christine Pagac of the State Appellate Defenders’ office told VOD, “Darrell has spent a decade fighting these charges and proclaiming his innocence. We are excited and joyful that the Court of Appeals affirmed the grant of a new trial.  We hope that the prosecutors are convinced by the well-reasoned opinion roundly rejecting their arguments to drop the appeal and ultimately the entire case against Darrell Ewing.”

Pagac said she has represented three defendants from Michigan who are now on the National Registry of Exonerations: Wayne Dabb, of Dickinson County, James Grissom, and Jimmie Nelson, of Iosco County. Nelson had been convicted falsely of murder.

See complete ruling at: http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/2-Darrell-Ewing-COA-opinion-10-13-20.pdf

Derrico Searcy and Darrell Ewing listen to former jurors’ testimony Aug. 26, 2019. Ewing’s atty. Christine Pagac is at Ewing’s right.

The state appeals panel agreed with Judge Hathaway, U.S. District Court Judge Denise Page Hood, and three Sixth Circuit Court judges on the issue of jury contamination.

“During deliberations, the members of a jury are permitted to consider only the evidence that was admitted in open court,” appeals Judges Patrick M. Meter, Douglas B. Shapiro, and Michael J. Riordan held.

“A jury’s consideration of extraneous information that was not introduced at trial constitutes a deprivation of a defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights of confrontation, cross-examination and assistance of counsel.”

The appellate ruling may lead to the review of hundreds of convictions obtained through the use of untrained “gang” experts by the Wayne County Prosecutor  and the Detroit Police Department. The late Judge Carole Youngbl00d, who presided over the Ewing/Searcy trial,  banned the testimony of DPD officer Terri Graves after hearing that she also relied exclusively on the internet and social media during her “expert” analyses.

Juror Kathleen Byrnes, the lone hold-out for a “not guilty verdict,” said during a months-long evidentiary hearing ordered by Judge Page Hood that the material caused her to change her vote to “guilty.”

She cited another juror’s argument based on her own internet “research” that Tyree Washington had sacrificed himself because of a gang “pecking order.” Washington’s written affidavit testifying in detail to the murder of J.B. Watson was entered at trial. Christopher Richardson, an FBI witness, testified that Washington had confessed to him while they were locked up together.

Byrnes broke down weeping at the end of her testimony over two days, saying that she had agonized for ten years over changing her vote to “guilty.” She brought the jury contamination to the attention of defense attorneys shortly after the 2o1o verdict.

“We also note that although Byrnes indicated that the gang-hierarchy information was the extraneous information that ultimately changed her vote, we cannot completely ignore the other external information brought into deliberations,” the panel of  Appeals Court Judges Patrick M. Meter, Douglas B. Shapiro, and Michael J. Riordan said.

Kathleen Byrnes

“For example, Byrnes testified that one juror found Facebook photographs of Ewing with a gun and shared that information during deliberations. Byrnes recalled one juror stating during that discussion, ‘You know they’re guilty of something.’ Notably, before trial Ewing successfully sought to suppress a photograph depicting him holding a gun.

“Similarly, the trial court also precluded the testimony of Terri Graves, a police officer who the prosecutor sought to present as an expert in gangs and gang signs. Yet, as the trial court reasoned after the evidentiary hearing, this is precisely the type of information that was brought into deliberations through the extrinsic material.”

Judge M Hathaway

“ . . .[I]t is just inescapable from [juror Kathleen] Byrnes’s testimony that the outside influences caused her to change her mind. . . that the information, particularly about gang culture, gang hierarchy, gang signs, etc., were highly prejudicial.  . . pretrial, the trial Judge disallowed evidence from a People’s so-called expert witness . . . Terry Graves who apparently is a police officer who fancies herself to be an expert in gang culture .  .  . Graves testified that much of the information that she has acquired to arm herself with expert’s credentials comes from the Internet.. . We can imagine much of the same information that juror Byrnes was exposed to inappropriately or improperly during the course of jury deliberations.” — 3rd CC Judge Michael Hathaway

The panel also upheld Judge Hathaway’s ruling that the evidence of guilt presented at trial, including shaky eyewitness testimony, was “not overwhelming.”

Nationally acclaimed journalist and producer Maggie Freleng published a gripping podcast Oct. 22  telling the story of the duo’s wrongful conviction. It includes an online petition calling for “the dismissal of all charges, complete exoneration and immediate release of Darrell R. Ewing, who has been wrongfully Incarcerated 3,611 days and counting for a crime he did not commit.”

 https://www.unjustandunsolved.com/post/episode-8-darrell-ewing.

Ewing’s mother LaSonya Dodson told Freleng, “When they started all of the growth in Detroit like fixing up and getting investors to come in, it seems like they took and just used kids to say they were cleaning up the city,  just grabbing people to arrest. Whenever  it seems to be young Black men in any kind of group, it could be a dance group, they’re considered a gang. I don’t want anything to do with it anymore, because of the way the media portrays young Black men.”

The publication of Ewing’s book “The Real Suffer the Most,” describing his life and his ordeal, is also imminent. VOD will publish a review of the book in a subsequent article.

At press time, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy’s representative Atty. Maria Miller said they are considering filing an application for leave to appeal with the Michigan Supreme Court. They have filed appeal after appeal since U.S. District Court Judge Denise Page Hood’s first order for a new trial based on jury misconduct in 2017.

A reading of the COA ruling makes it difficult to discern any grounds under which the Michigan Supreme Court could grant the application for leave to appeal.

The appeals panel struck down arguments by AP Jon Wojtala that it was bound by a previous panel’s denial  of relief (“the law of the case”), and that the prosecution had fulfilled its obligation under the previous courts’ rulings by holding the evidentiary hearing without complying with its resulting order.

“The evidentiary hearing ordered by the federal court to determine the effect of the extraneous information would have served no purpose if were bound to follow our prior ruling that there was insufficient prejudice to merit a new trial,” the appeals court said. “For these reasons, we conclude that the law-of-the-case doctrine does not apply to issues relating to defendants’ claim of extraneous influence.”

AP Jon Wojtala

The panel said that results of the evidentiary hearing constituted “newly discovered evidence” they were bound to consider.

Wojtala was promoted to Chief of Prosecutor Worthy’s division of Research, Training and Appeals in July of this year, after previous assistant prosecutors in that position had abruptly left the office or retired.

Ewing was convicted of first-degree murder, and Searcy of second-degree murder in the killing of J.B. Watson on Dec. 28, 2009 on Detroit’s east side.  No murder weapon was ever produced. Multiple witnesses testified that Ewing was at a family member’s funeral at the time of the killing.

An affidavit from Tyree Washington, confessing in detail to the killing, and testimony confirming that confession from Christopher Richardson, a confidential informant the FBI brought to AP Kam Town’s attention, were introduced at trial.

Washington has since confessed repeatedly to the murder, and given the audio interview below to private investigator Scott Lewis. If there is a new trial, he is expected to testify there. Ewing’s supporters say his testimony, without the biased jury in play, would be key to an acquittal.

Related documents

Michigan Court of Appeals ruling affirming order for new trial in Darrell Ewing, Derrico Searcy cases:

http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/2-Darrell-Ewing-COA-opinion-10-13-20.pdf

Video of Court of Appeals oral arguments: https://youtu.be/Uv8E73t_Nc4

U.S. District Court Judge Denise Page Hood’s order for a new trial:

http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Darrell-Ewing-habeas-corpus-grant-1.pdf

6th Circuit ruling on Michigan AG’s appeal of Judge Page Hood’s order

http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Ewing-6th-CC-2-5-19-compressed.pdf

Judge Denise Page Hood’s opinion on remand from Sixth Circuit Court:

http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Opinion-on-remand-Ewing_v_Woods__miedce-15-10523__0016.0.pdf

Transcript of Judge Michael Hathaway’s order for a new trial:

http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Darrell-Ewing-Derrico-Searcy-Remmer-Hearing-Transcripts.pdf

State AG objection to Darrell Ewing motion for emergency habeas relief:

http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/AG-response-Ewing_v_Woods__miedce-15-10523__0026.0-1.pdf

Darrell Ewing’s pro se response to State AG:

http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/DEwing-response-to-prosecutor-Ewing_v_Woods__miedce-15-10523__0030.0.pdf

Related stories:

https://voiceofdetroit.net/2020/09/29/fighting-for-his-life-darrell-ewing-in-court-again-despite-3-orders-in-3-yrs-granting-a-new-trial/

https://voiceofdetroit.net/2020/07/12/free-darrell-ewing-two-judges-have-ordered-new-trials-in-innocence-case-kym-worthy-still-appeals/

https://voiceofdetroit.net/2019/10/27/darrell-ewing-derrico-searcy-win-new-trial-in-murder-case-after-nearly-two-decades/

https://voiceofdetroit.net/2019/09/17/ewing-searcy-hearing-on-jury-use-of-internet-research-on-gangs-in-2010-trial-to-continue-oct-4/

https://voiceofdetroit.net/2019/08/27/juror-in-2010-ewingsearcy-murder-trial-verdict-tainted-by-jurys-gang-related-internet-research/

https://voiceofdetroit.net/2019/02/14/sixth-circuit-orders-evidentiary-hearing-instead-of-new-trial-in-darrell-ewings-2010-murder-conviction/ 

https://voiceofdetroit.net/2017/11/27/fed-judge-strikes-down-darrell-ewing-conviction-due-to-jury-discussion-of-gang-social-media