Black activist: ‘I believe in what I did’

“Win, lose or draw, I believe in what I did, and I reject any plea they give me. They said that if I pled guilty to second degree, I wouldn’t receive jail time, but I’m going to fight,” Shareef Aleem told this reporter on Oct. 24 before going into court, where he faced a trumped-up charge of second-degree assault on a campus cop of the University of Colorado.

What Shareef Aleem did was stand up during a Board of Regents meeting on Feb. 27 and say, “Do the students get the right to speak? Is this a democracy or not? If not, let’s stop calling it that.”

The Board of Regents meeting had been advertised as being public, but students were silenced and kept from voicing opinions in support of a university professor who was being criticized after he put the blame for the 9/11 attacks squarely on the shoulders of the U.S. government.

When Aleem stood up in the meeting, he was approached by a campus cop. The cop had earlier forced a student to leave who had begun to ask the same questions. However, Aleem, one of the few Black people in the crowd, was grabbed, had his camera shut off and eventually was pulled down on top of the cop. He was then bound and stunned with a Taser. Before it was over, nearly a dozen campus cops were on top of Aleem, and cops in full riot gear waited outside.

Aleem’s trial has been postponed until Feb. 27, 2006. Adams County has shown its willingness to proceed with this fraudulent trial even though there are a videotape and ample witnesses to attest to the sham nature of the charge.

After the professor’s remarks, conservative forces had pounced on him, attacking progressive and radical voices on campuses around the country and defending the ruling class brutality and plunder in the Middle East that has enraged Middle Eastern people and Muslims as far away as Indonesia.

Recently, another community activist challenged the professor and his followers for not supporting Aleem in his time of need, even though Aleem had the courage to support the embattled professor. Up to that point, only a small number of Denver activists had gone to court with Aleem. Now his support from the community in Denver, including those who supported the professor, is broader than before, and people are beginning to rally around this important anti-racist activist.

An attack on Aleem is an attack on everyone, especially on the right of oppressed people to self-determination. Aleem has worked tirelessly in the Black community, most notably against police brutality, and was instrumental in winning a suspension of a police officer who killed a 15-year-old mentally disabled Black youth. That suspension was overturned after the momentum was usurped by weaker leaders, who dismissed the outrage in the Black community and moved to work with the very cops who brutalize people of color.