Dr. Paul Bermanzohn, a survivor of the Greensboro Massacre speaking in Rochester

In Greensboro, North Carolina, an anti-Klan march and educational conference were planned for Saturday, November 3, 1979.

Neither the march nor the conference ever occurred. Minutes before the march was to begin, a nine-car caravan carrying thirty-five heavily armed Klansmen and Nazis drove into the heart of Greensboro's black community where marchers were assembling. They opened fire on the crowd, killing five people and wounding eleven.

Those killed were successful and uncompromising organizers of low-wage Black and white textile and hospital workers. Their murders set back for decades progress for a decent standard of living and safe working conditions for those who labor in the area's mills and factories.

The police were pulled back from the march area on the day of the massacre.

The Klan was in contact with the Police and the FBI before the brutal murders.

The FBI had been monitoring the activities of the Workers' Viewpoint Organization, the organizers of the march, because Workers' Viewpoint had socialist politics.

It took six years to convict the killers and the cops. The initial prosecutor said things like “Most of the people in Greensboro think the communists got what they deserved.”; and “I fought in Vietnam and you know who my enemy was.”

In 1979 the U.S. government was still putting communists in the crosshairs. Now the focus has shifted from "communism" to "terrorism". Ashcroft is leaving office without having successfully prosecuted any of the 5000 Arabs in detention under the Patriot Act. And yet men still languish in jail.

Tens of thousands have died in Iraq in this war on "terrorism" and yet we are less safe than before.

Location:
324 Crossman Terrace
Friday, November 19th @7pm

Interview with 2 survivors of the Greensboro Massacre on Democracy Now!:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/18/1515255