Justice for Tawana Brawley! Anti-racist mov't impeded while case is deadlocked

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NEW YORK-On Nov. 28, 1987, Tawana Brawley, a 16-year-old high-school student and cheerleader from Wappingers Falls, N.Y., was found barely alive, partly naked, and wrapped inside a plastic bag. She had been missing for four days. Patches of hair had been cut from her head and she had been smeared with dog feces. The words "nigger" and "KKK" had been written on her stomach and chest.

In the brief police investigation, Brawley stated that she had been abducted by a group of white men, one of whom had identified himself as a police officer. The family alleged she had been raped, sodomized and beaten.

From the start, police and government officials have shown no interest in seriously investigating the case. Only the Black and left presses initially covered the case, linking it to a pattern of KKK, racist vigilante, and police violence in the Hudson Valley area.

"Justice for Tawana Brawley" was a prominent demand in Martin Luther King Day demonstrations around the country.

"Special prosecutor"

Alton Maddox and C. Vernon Mason, two attorneys retained by the Brawley family, have called for a special prosecutor in the case-operating independently of the local district attorney's office.

Maddox and Mason point to facts implicating local law officers in the Brawley case. They contend that the local D.A.'s office cannot be relied on to undertake the wide-ranging investigation that is needed.

After meeting with Maddox and Mason, Gov. Mario Cuomo appointed State Attorney General Robert Abrams special prosecutor in late January. Soon after his appointment, however, Abrams abruptly announced that he had no intention of assuming personal, day-to-day responsibility for the case.

Instead, Abrams said he was assigning the case to District Attorney John Ryan, the very officer that Maddox and Mason, in their negotiations with Cuomo, had previously rejected as being inexperienced.

Maddox and Mason, with the support of Brawley and her family, have withdrawn the cooperation of their client until such time as a new special prosecutor is appointed. Despite threats by the D.A.'s office to jail Brawley for any refusal of subpoenas, the attorneys are holding fast.

Democrats avoid the heat Meanwhile, there has been very little action in the case. In the absence of any breakthrough, The New York Times, among other newspapers, has published articles questioning whether the incident "really happened," conveniently taking the. heat off Cuomo and the DA's office.

Rather than calling on the D.A.'s office to investigate the leads that already exist, Democratic Party tops have spent most of their energy seeking to divide the anti-racist movement through attacks on Maddox and Mason. It is the attorneys, they argue, who are preventing the case from going forward, rather than Cuomo, Abrams, and other Democratic Party officials.

A division of labor has emerged, with Cuomo taking credit for appointing a "special prosecutor," even though day-to-day work is assigned to District Attorney Ryan. Jesse Jackson, when he was campaigning in New York state, added his own words of "confidence" in Cuomo's handling of the affair.

Meanwhile, Ryan can sit on his hands, citing the non-cooperation of Brawley. This, despite the fact that, according to Maddox and Mason, numerous leads exist, gained through Brawley's statements to police in the days immediately following the incident.

Several important demonstrations have occurred in this period. In Brooklyn on March 17, over 2000 people demonstrated for justice for Brawley. In a smaller but no less important show of support, 350 women-white, Black, and Latinomarched in midtown Manhattan on March 11. The demonstration was called by a feminist organization, New York Women Against Rape.

But increasingly, the legal maneuvers behind closed doors have left activists confused about what to do. In one twoweek period, for instance, Maddox and Mason's statements on the case shifted from notes of defiance, to praise of Cuomo, to expressions of hate for Cuomo's racism.

This case and Howard Beach In the Howard Beach lynch-mob case, it was the fear of an independent mass movement that drove Cuomo to agree to the demand for a special prosecutor, after having used every opportunity to play one group of Black officials against another and against community organizers.

Special prosecutor Charles Hynes' work led to manslaughter convictions of the Howard Beach defendants. Maddox and Mason's praise of Hynes was widely publicized in the big-business media. Of course, the real hero in the case was not Hynes but the energy and vigilance of the masses in the streets, without which even the shred of justice obtained in the trial would not have been possible.

Maddox and Mason have not been so successful in pushing for an independent prosecutor in the Brawley case. This is partly because the facts of the case are not so clear. But another reason is that the ruling class has skillfully integrated into this case some of the lessons (from their point of view, to be sure) of the Howard Beach mobilizations Key has been their use of the demand for a special prosecutor in such a way as to at least partially separate the case from the struggle in the streets. They have also, to some extent, separated the movement around justice for Brawley from the larger fight against all acts of racist injustice.

Given the present impasse in the case, some activists are pointing to the limits of such a strategy. Of special concern is the perceived loss of momentum in the antiracist movement since New York's "Days of Outrage" mobilization in December.

Reassessment of strategy and tactics by the lawyers, in consultation with the antiracist movement, may yet end the deadlock in the case. Prosecution by an "anti-racist" special prosecutor appointed by Cuomo may yet lead to convictions. But the antiracist movement must keep up the pressure—in the streets, if need be.

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ARRES ERIOR KKK COUM THAT KALD AND TALIZED: WANNA BRAWLEY