Incident

Incident Description

On Saturday, July 8th, 1972, the Buffalo unit of the American Communist Workers Movement(Marxist-Leninist)ACWM(M-L) opened the William Z Foster Center on 850 Tonawanda Street, centered directly in the heart of the working class district of Buffalo known as Riverside. The purpose of this center was to serve the working class of Buffalo by providing a local point of revolutionary proletarian activity through the dissemination of revolutionary literature. The center also contained a library of revolutionary works and served as an excellent location for mass meetings.

The afternoon of July 8th, several members of the Communist Party of Canada(Marxist-Leninist) joined their American Comrades in distributing the first issue of the Buffalo Red Star, as well as a leaflet celebrating the opening of the center itself. Everywhere comrades went, they were enthusiastically received by the people of Buffalo, who were eager to buy the paper and warmly greet the community. Hundreds of copies were sold within only a few hours. While the communists were engaged in mass work, Buffalo Police began to harass them and tried to suppress their fundamental right to disseminate literature. In various areas of the city, the police attempted to stop the distribution of the revolutionary leaflet announcing the opening of the center and the sale of the first local communist newspaper in Buffalo. In the Cheektowaga area, Buffalo Police arrested one American comrade and arrested, deported, and turned over to Canadian authorities two Canadian comrades for taking part in propaganda work.

Saturday evening, close to 50 people from the Riverside community and other working and oppressed people from Buffalo and many fraternal comrades from Canada attended the grand opening of the Williams Z Foster Center, Revolutionary Propaganda Center of the working class. During the course of the meeting, police cars gathered in front of and down the street from the center and the police several times engineered various disruptions of the meeting by mobilizing and uniting with a handful of local fascist elements to shout obscenities and try to enter the center and disrupt the meeting. At one point an off-duty Buffalo Police Officer demanded to see a license permitting them to operate such a Center. Once the proper paperwork was presented, he retreated to join the other “off-duty” Buffalo Police Officers sitting in their marked and unmarked vehicles.

One police collaborator proceeded to go around to the back of the bookstore and pile his garbage on the back doorstep and set it on fire. Several American comrades quickly put out the fire and removed the collaborator from the scene. Immediately two uniformed police man, shouted “You are under arrest” to the two comrades who had stopped this arsonist, and physically assaulted the comrades. The comrades resisted this attack and the one officer pulled out his gun and fired a “warning” shot into the air. When this failed to cower the comrades, he pointed his pistol at one of the American comrade’s head. With the aid of fellow Buffalo Police Officers, they then jumped upon the comrades, kicking and finally handcuffing them.

By this time the rest of the more than 50 people who had been at the evening ceremonies rushed out to give aid, and several more comrades were arrested. One comrade in the back of the patrol car again openly defied their brutality and repression and led all comrades in the singing of the Internationale. Within a couple of minutes, several more police cars and several paddy wagons had arrived. However, their sirens had brought with them the attention of several hundred people from the surrounding community.

With a fist in the air, one comrade shouted, “Death to the American monopoly capitalist class! Long live the American working class!” A Buffalo Police Officer “ordered” him to lower his fist and refrain from shouting death to the monopoly capitalist class. He refused and a “warning shot” was fired. One Buffalo Police Officer put his pistol to the temple of the comrade and threaten him with death. The comrade kept his first high, shouted slogans and challenged the officer to carry out his threat. Then a pack of Buffalo Police Officers jumped on the comrade, arrested him, and charged with “inciting a riot” and second “second-degree assault.”

The police switched their tactics, and claimed to all that they were protecting the communist from the attacks of the “people.” One Buffalo Police Officer arrested one American comrade taking part in one of the dozens of mass demonstrations which were springing up all over the neighborhood led by comrades from both countries, claiming that if the comrade didn't want to get “protected” (i.e. leave the people and hide in the Center), then he would arrest the comrade, which he proceeded to do when the comrade refused to budge. This is what police call “protective custody.”

Within minutes news of the fascist attack has spread throughout the neighborhood. Two blocks away, a bartender and several customers were overheard denouncing the police for the fascist attack, and the spirit and evidence there, like that overwhelmingly shown in dozens of discussions with the people who actually witnessed this fascist attack, was that the police and no one else was responsible for the violence, and that the Center had every right to exist.

The American comrades quickly prepared for any other attacks that the fascist Buffalo Police and their collaborators might make during the night, and began to write a leaflet to be distributed the very next morning to the broad masses of the neighborhood, stating that the entire attack, the entire assault was planned by the Buffalo Police and that the arsonist collaborator was nothing more than a footman of the police. In doing so the American comrades would actively combat the propaganda that the police were mounting that the attack was:

(a) an attack of the “people” on the communists, and

(b) that they (the police) were protecting the communists despite the latter’s protests.

The Buffalo news media the very next day clearly showed their class basis in reporting word for word the hysterics of the police.