Download PDF of this full issue: v5n5.pdf (8 MB)

Mass Struggle Frees Lawton

By VVAW

A real peoples' victory was won on May 12th when Gary Lawton (VVAW/WSO member) was acquitted of murder charges stemming from the April, 1971 ambush slayings of two Riverside, California policemen. Lawton had been tried on these same charges in two previous trials but they ended with hung juries. Finally, after four years, two years in jail and three trials, Gary Lawton's freedom has been won!

This third trail began on March 6th in front of a six-woman jury and scores of Lawton supporters. The prosecution had no new evidence to introduce in this final trial, but again dragged out the same old trumped-up stories from cops, police informers and a variety of other characters. After deliberating for three days, the jury announced Lawton not guilty on their first vote. Jurors have since told the Riverside Political Prisoners Defense Committee (RPPDC) that they knew Lawton was being framed before even half the evidence had been presented. When the "not guilty" verdict was read, cheers were heard from Lawton supporters who were in the courtroom, and the court clerk reading the verdict openly wept for joy. The clerk later told Lawton, "If it had gone any other way than the way it did, I don't know what I would have done."

The struggle to free Gary Lawton began four years ago, following his arrest for the ambush killings of the two cops. Eye-witnesses to the slaying reported they had seen three white youths and teenaged Black fleeing from the scene of the shooting. At the time, Lawton, a Black man, was 32 years-old and looked nothing like the witnesses' descriptions of those involved in the killing. But the small group of people who rule Riverside had to have someone to pay for the killings, and Gary Lawton became their target. The state chose to frame Lawton on the murder charges because they were having a hard time dealing with the fact that Gary was playing a lead role in organizing Riverside's poor and minority communities to fight discrimination, police repression, and bringing people into a struggle against the Indochina war. Two other young black men were arrested along with Gary in the hopes of bolstering the prosecution's case, but charges against them were dropped during the first two trials for a "lack of evidence."

As the frame-up against Gary Lawton continued and intensified, the movement demanding his freedom also spread to communities around the country as far as Europe and Japan. It is this movement that is responsible for Lawton's freedom--not the so-called "justice" of the court system--and the victory in Riverside is the result of the mass struggle that has been building to fight police and political repression. When the state first set out to frame Lawton, they had the intention of suppressing and intimidating the struggle that was growing in Riverside. But their efforts failed.

The RPPDC was formed in 1971 and began taking the struggle to free Lawton to the Riverside community. In 1972, VVAW/WSO took up the struggle of Gary on a national basis, and as the news of the repression coming down in Riverside spread around the country, the numbers of people who became involved in the movement to free Lawton grew--a movement built through leafleting, petitions, forums, picket lines and demonstrations. As this struggle grew, repression mounted and in Riverside, over 50 Lawton supporters arrested, fined, lost jobs, or were imprisoned because of work around Gary's case; yet, 70 supporters showed up for closing defense arguments in his third trial.

Repression breeds resistance and the resistance has been growing not only in Riverside, but in cities throughout the country. This is because the frame-up of Gary Lawton and the repression in Riverside is not some sort of isolated event, but is just one example of the increased nationwide attacks coming down on minority people in particular, and on all working people in general. The freeing of Gary Lawton is a real victory, and the repressive and racist campaign waged against him has been defeated by the struggle of a united people; but similar attacks and increased police brutality will continue to be used by the state in the hopes of intimidating people into submissiveness and a fear of fighting back.

But people all over the country are resisting these kinds of attacks in the only way possible--by organizing to fight back against them. The masses of people of this country are refusing to be intimidated, because they can't afford to be. As the economy continues to crumble it will get harder for families to keep their heads above water and make any kind of decent life. Rather than submit to the increased repression, and rather than submit to the increased repression, and rather than sit back and allow the bosses to throw the burden of their crisis onto the backs of working and poor people, we're organizing and struggling against the attacks brought down by the ruling class--on the job, in the unemployment offices, at the VA, and within our communities as the fight against police repression builds in cities from Atlanta, to Los Angeles, to New York, to Seattle. It is in the interests of working and poor people to fight these kinds of attacks, and fight we will!

The struggle to free Gary Lawton teaches us many important lessons about we begin to throw off the boot of the ruling class from the backs of our necks. Gary Lawton wasn't freed by some sort of benevolent judge, nor was he freed because the "justice" system works (it works if you've got the money to pay it to "work"), and he wasn't freed because he had some fancy lawyer working for him. He was freed by the masses of people in this country who were demanding his freedom, who are building movements within their own communities to fight back against police repression. As a member of the RPPDC said after the victory in Riverside, "the state's attempts to hold back the peoples' struggle against repression did not and can not succeed. People are fighting back and winning!"