The SF 8 are Black community elders and activists arrested in January 2007 on charges related to the 1971 killing of a San Francisco police officer. The case against the SF8 is a frame up based on torture-induced "confessions" and fabricated evidence. The same case was thrown out of court 30 years ago but was revived after 9/11 with money from Homeland Security. After two and a half long years, the preliminary hearing is finally starting on June 8 and is expected to last for three months. The hearing will determine whether or not the SF8 will go to trial.
In an effort to bolster the very weak case against the SF8, the San Francisco Chronicle just published a sensationalistic article filled with racist innuendos and unsubstantiated implications. Without offering one shred of evidence, the article (John Koopman, 5/24) implies that the murder of a young white woman in 1971 is somehow linked to the SF8. In his response to the article, SF8 lawyer Stuart Hanlon said that "in hundreds of thousands of pages of evidence we have gotten from the prosecution, this woman has not been mentioned once". We must demand that the Chronicle and other corporate media stop circulating such blatant misinformation!