[2003] 30-Y.O. Unsolved SF Murders Reopen [Weather Underground, Black Liberation Army, Ayers, Dohrn]

BAY AREA (KRON) -- The unsolved murder of two San Francisco police officers has languished as cold cases for 30 years until now. A federal grand jury has been looking into the murders. Many of the people now under investigation both as potential targets and witnesses in this case are scattered across the country. Many of them are now in their 50s and 60s. Investigators believe the crimes were politically motivated and committed by militant radical groups.

On August 29, 1971, sergeant John Young is killed in a barrage of gunfire when two men walk into the Ingleside police station and begin shooting at officers sitting behind the glass partition. It is the second unsolved police killing in 18 months.

On February 16, 1970, officer Brian McDonnell is killed when a bomb explodes at Park Police Station. Attorney Joe O'Sullivan, at the time was a young police officer. "It was just bedlam. I don't think we were able to get into the station. I think it was cordoned off. Nobody really knew the exact nature of the devastation," he says.

For three decades, the police murders remained unsolved. Evidence from the two crime scenes sat in the police property room.

KRON 4 News has learned that three years ago, San Francisco police secretly re-opened the case. Armed with new forensic technology and with State and Federal agencies helping, SFPD investigators began to work full-time on the murders.

And now, sources tell us, those investigators have identified potential suspects: former members of two militant groups in the '60s and '70s -- the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army, people who've been out of the spotlight for decades. The most prominent among them is Bernadine Dohrn, a former leader of the Weather Underground and now a law professor at Northwestern University in Illinois.

Chicago Annenberg Challenge
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) (also referred to as the Annenberg Challenge to Chicago) was a public-private partnership founded in 1995 that existed from intended to improve school performance by what it called "on the ground" investments in the form of professional development and technical assistance. Sponsored by the Annenberg Foundation, the CAC received a charter grant of $49.2 million in 1995.[1] The CAC's operations were closed in 2001, and subsumed into those of the Annenberg Institute for Social Reform.

(snip)

The Workshop had been established in the early 1990s by William Ayers who hired Mike Klonsky, a Chicago cab driver who had earned a Ph.D. in education from the University of South Florida, and former activist with Ayers in Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS. Klonsky had achieved limited notoriety in 1977 when he traveled to Beijing to seek the endorsement of Communist China for a political party he had helped establish in the United States, the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) [not to be confused with Communist Party USA (CPUSA)-ETL].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Annenberg_Challenge

"Michael Klonsky (born 1943) is an American educator and political activist, a leader of the New Communist Movement.

Klonsky's father, Robert Klonsky, had been arrested as a communist in the 1950s and convicted of violating the Smith Act.[1] In the late 1960s Michael Klonsky was the national secretary of the Students for a Democratic Society,[2] which he joined as a student at San Fernando Valley State College (now California State University, Northridge).[3] He was one of five S.D.S. members arrested on May 12, 1969, when prank phone calls sent police and firefighters to the S.D.S. offices in Chicago.[2] In the 1970s he headed the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) [not to be confused with Communist Party USA (CPUSA)-ETL)],[4] in which role he was one of the first westerners allowed to visit the People's Republic of China.[4][5]

More recently Klonsky has been a professor of education at the University of Illinois, Chicago;[6] his academic work focused on small school size as a solution to the problems of inner city schools. He is now the director of the Small Schools Workshop, a school outreach program associated with UIC.[7][8]..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Klonsky

Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist): Founded in May 1971 in Texas from the fusion of several Maoist splinters from SDS — the Los Angeles Marxist-Leninist Collective, Georgia Communist League, and several other ethnic-based groups. Originally named the October League in 1971, the newly created group soon gained new activists and formed several front organizations (Communist Youth Organization, National Fight Back Organization, etc).

In 1977, the October League was reorganized as the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) and former SDS activist Michael Klonsky became party chairman. Also in 1977, Klonsky traveled to China and the CPML was recognized by the Chinese Communist Party as its official sister party in America.

This was quite shocking to many, given the fact that the CPML was smaller than other Maoist organizations (including the Revolutionary Union). Combining their Maoism with workerist moralism, the CPML denounced "decadent 'counter-cultural' lifestyles," including homosexuality, free love, and drug use. Similarly, they also criticized feminism as a "petty-bourgeois ideology"; however, approximately half of the party's leadership was female.

Their were numerous polemics and battles between the CPML and the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) during the former's existence. The RCP attacked the "revisionist" policies of post-Mao China, while the CPML still maintained fraternal relations with the Chinese government and remained uncritical to the Chinse leadership. The CPML was also more critical of Black nationalism than the RCP. The CPML also more supportive of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). The CPML published Class Struggle and The Call and was active in anti-racism work, but its membership never exceded 500. Due to the continually worsening policies of the Chinese Communist Party, the CPML failed to grow and began a long period of infighting. In January 1981, Michael Klonsky resigned as party chairman, and the CPML disbanded that same year.

The previous Red Encyclopedia description of the CPML was incorrectly combined with that of the Communist Party USA (Marxist-Leninist).

http://reds.linefeed.org/past.html

____________________________________________________

Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party,USA

Revolution #63, October 1, 2006

Interview with Bill Ayers:
On Progressive Education, Critical Thinking and the Cowardice of Some in Dangerous Times

http://rwor.org/a/063/ayers-en.html

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.