Baltimore bus fare struggle
City Council, AFSCME weigh in
By WW Baltimore bureau
At a July 14 Baltimore City Council meeting,
Council President Sheila Dixon and a majority of the members
introduced a resolution requiring hearings and an inquiry into
why police arrested one activist and wrote citations against
eight others during a recent protest of the bus fare
increase.
Jeff Bigelow, a union organizer for AFSCME Council 92, is
facing 10 years on assault charges. The other eight community
activists were given criminal citations for the use of a
bullhorn and are facing a total of $4,000 in fines.
Sharon Ceci, a volunteer organizer with the All Peoples
Congress, called tonight's resolution a clear victory for
community activists seeking justice.
The next step will be for the council to set up public
hearings to gather testimony. The resolution also calls for
Baltimore City State's Attorney Patricia Coates Jessamy and
newly appointed Police Commis sioner Kevin Clark to appear
before the council's Judiciary and Legislative Invest igations
Committee.
Ceci stated, "We intend to wage a cam paign to have all
charges dropped and to defend our right to protest. The
overwhelming presence of scores of police, including city,
state and MTA police, along with special SWAT teams and a
helicopter, at the recent protest is meant to intimidate and
criminalize dissent.
"The unprecedented number of police dispatched to a clearly
legal and peaceful protest is an outrageous expense at a time
when many in our city go hungry at night and have nowhere to
sleep. It is too costly when school children are in need of
books and teachers.
"Too often youth in the poorest of communities are targeted
for increased police harassment. Their rights have also been
denied. In our community work and at the recent council
hearings on citations, we heard painful and horrendous accounts
by Baltimore city residents who testified to incidents of
racism and abuse by Balti more's police department," she
concluded.
AFSCME Council 92, representing 30,000 state and county
workers, has voted formally to support the case of Jeff
Bigelow.
Reprinted from the July 24, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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