Free Lamont "Dee" Allen

To the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office

On behalf of Lamont (Dee) Allen

Members of the Minuteman Project have visited San Francisco twice in the past few months to spew their white supremacist drivel in front of City Hall. (Although the Minutemen shrewdly welcome haters of all races and ethnic origins into their ranks, their rhetoric leaves no doubt as to what they stand for.)

These visits have been prompted by recent concerted attacks levied by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Newsom administration against San Francisco’s 20-year-old sanctuary ordinance. On July 30 and again on September 25, the Minutemen rallied under the auspices of the Newsom administration.

They were opposed by a large and spirited crowd of counter-demonstrators on both occasions. Yet, the conduct and very physical posture of law enforcement officers on the scene made it clear that the counter-demonstrators - not the Minutemen - were regarded as suspect by City government.

We, the undersigned, stand in solidarity with student, activist and poet Lamont (Dee) Allen, who was singled out and arrested for no good reason while participating in the July 30 counter-demonstration against the Minuteman Project. Mr. Allen was booked on trumped-up misdemeanor charges and held in police custody for nearly two days before his eventual release.

The City is now prosecuting - and seems bent on making an example of - Mr. Allen, whose only “crime” is having the courage, as a Black man, to stand up against an aspiring lynch mob. We are outraged that the City is pressing charges against Mr. Allen and demand that the charges be dropped.

• The Gray Panthers, San Francisco Chapter

• La Raza Centro Legal

• The Idriss Stelley Action & Resource Center

• Education Not Incarceration, San Francisco Chapter

• Black & Brown Equitable Drug Policies Coalition

• The Uhuru Solidarity Movement

• Poor Magazine

• Colored Ink

• The African People’s Solidarity Committee

• The San Francisco Bay View

• Deporten a la Migra

• St. Peter’s Housing Committee

• Phil Horne, Civil Rights Attorney

• Modesto Anarcho

• San Francisco Tenants Union

• HackBloc

• San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness

• Avalon Autonomous Free State

• Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, San Francisco Bay Area Chapter

• Ben Rosenfeld, Civil Rights Attorney

• Ramsey Kanaan, Publisher, PM Press

• Tommi Aviccoli Mecca, Volunteer Coordinator, San Francisco Housing Rights Committee

• Iraq Veterans Against the War Chapter 10, San Francisco Bay Area

• San Francisco Food Not Bombs

• American Indian Movement West

• Veterans for Peace, Chapter 69, San Francisco

• Patrick Reinsborough, smartMeme Strategy and Training Project

• San Francisco Living Wage Coalition

• SF_COPWATCH

Write DeeAllenDefenseCommittee [at] gmail.com for more information.