Councilor Turner Press Release 11/26/08
November 26th, 2008 | Category: statementsFor Immediate Release
Press Statement from Councilor Chuck Turner
11/26/08
Downtown Office (617) 635 3510
District 7 Office (617) 427 8108
Prologue to Press Statement 11/26/08
Before I read my statement for this press conference, let me thank all of you for coming today. Let me also thank you for all the wonderful expressions of support that you have provided me during this trying time. It clearly shows me that you love me as intensively as I love you.
However, it is important that you appreciate that while the thought of possibly going to jail is troubling, since I know I am innocent, I do not have the slightest fear that I will spend one day in jail. In fact given my life focus on organizing, teaching, and being an instrument of change, I literally find this the most exciting time of my 45 years of organizing and educating.
Ironically, the US Attorney has given me the greatest platform for speaking truth to power that I have ever had. Also, he has given all of us a tremendous opportunity to examine up close and personal how the American system of injustice actually works.
However, if we are to use this situation as a learning tool, we have to avoid their objective of demoralizing us and making us feel as if we are powerless to resist their oppression and psychological warfare.
So let me suggest a strategy that may help you keep focused. Whenever you feel the negative thoughts they are trying to project into your mind coming to the surface to the surface, take a deep breath, then say to yourself if Chuck is totally confident that he is not going to go to jail and sees this as an opportunity to study up close and personal how the American system of injustice works, I must support him by resisting their negative programming and focus on the learning opportunity we are being provided.
Let me now proceed to reading my statement that is the focus of this press conference/rally.
Press Statement Conference: 11/26/08
Monday on the steps of City Hall, I talked about press harassment; about reporters refusing to leave my porch even after I told them that they were trespassing. I talked about the fact that I had to call the police Sunday given the media harassment of my wife and I. To protect us from the oppression of the fourth estate, I had to have the police put up barricades in front of my house.
I could go on to talk about how the Channel 5 reporters who, when told by the police that they were trespassing and had to leave my porch, waited for the police to leave the street, and then again came onto my porch to demand that I give their bosses the information that they had been sent to get.
I could talk about how another media outlet, Fox News I think, drove up to my house at 4:30 a.m. on Monday morning as I was hurrying to get dressed and get to work before the media hordes returned. Fox News then had the audacity to make fun of me as their cameras focused on my fly, left unzippered in my haste to escape their unwarranted intrusion into my life.
But I’m not here today to talk about media harassment. I am here to talk about media incompetence. I chose to have this discussion in front of my District office because this office dramatically symbolizes the fact that Boston media ignore news when they think it is not in the interest of their bosses that it be printed or aired.
Ten years ago when running for office I told my constituents that if elected I would initiate a unique experiment in Boston political life. I told them that I was not interested in being an elected official if that position would not enable me to be an effective agent of change. I reminded them of the difficulty faced by our community councilors during the last twenty five years as they struggled as the only two councilors of color in a thirteen person Council.
I told them that my strategy to counteract this incredible imbalance of power was to fuse my community organizing with my political representation. In other words, I would use my organizing skills to build a base of power within my community and the city to strengthen the ability of Councilor Yancey and I to convince the Councilors that they dare not ignore the needs of the people we represent.
I promised them that in order to do that I would open an office in the District that would not only provide services to my constituents but also serve as an organizing base for our political agenda. I promised that if elected my wife, Terri and I would use my salary to keep the office open if fund raising didn’t produce enough cash. I also promised that I would sponsor what I called the District 7 Roundtable, a once month Saturday morning gathering, using Jesse Jackson’s Operation Push model.
For eight years the District 7 Roundtable provided a monthly opportunity for my constituents as well as activists from around the City to come together to discuss for two hours needs as well as strategies and then socialize while eating a lunch provide through the my fund raising as well as salary when necessary. If the media had been doing its job and talked to activists around the City about the Roundtable, they would have discovered that there was no similar process of energizing the activist base any where in the region.
In addition to the organizing and coordinating monthly meetings, the Board of the Roundtable initiated a variety of organizing initiatives during its eight year history. The most successful of those initiatives began in 2005 as an organizing drive to build an alliance of unemployed workers. This organizing initiative has resulted in the development of the Boston Workers Alliance, the only organization of unemployed workers in the region.
After three years of fighting for justice for those who have been incarcerated, the BWA moved out of my District Office this month into their own office in Grove Hall as they prepare to hire their second staff member and continue their fund raising in order to establish their own staffing agency so that they can have the capability of placing their members in temporary jobs as a short term economic strategy.
What to me is truly fascinating is that the media has not produced one story on the fact that I am the only Boston City Councilor who in the modern era has maintained an office in the community. There has not been one story around the fact that my campaign owes Terri and I $140, 000 because of our investment of our own resources in the maintenance of the District office.
There have been no media stories regarding my support in the development of the Boston Workers Alliance. In fact there was no story in the media regarding the fact that the Boston City Council passed in 2006 by a thirteen to zero vote, the ordinance I wrote which is the most progressive piece of municipal legislation in the country designed to protect the rights of formerly incarcerated workers to fair treatment.
There have only been three major media stories on my activities during my nine years in office. One focused on the fact that I did not shovel my walk after a snowstorm. The second focused on the fact that I had accumulated a number of parking tickets. Ironically, all of the tickets had been previously paid with personal money rather than campaign funds. The third focused on the press conference called by Sadiki Kambon and I where we shared with the press pictures that we thought might be legitimate photographs of the abuse of Iraqi women by American soldiers and asked them to check with the Office of the Secretary of Defense to find out whether these were the photographs of the abuse that had taken place in Iraqi prisons that Secretary Rumsfeld said he would not release.
It’s time for the media to become a source of truth and light. Unfortunately, at this moment they serve as a tool of their bosses and their bosses’ objectives. Perhaps this is the explanation for why the media has attacked me so viciously and denied me my constitutional right to be considered innocent until found guilty by a jury of my peers.
Addendum to Press Statement 11/26/08
A Message to the Press
Before I call this press conference to an end, let me answer a question that a fellow fourth estate member, Jim Braude, raised on his show last night with Barry P. Wilson, coordinator of my legal team. Let me paraphrase Mr. Braude’s question, “Your client, Chuck Turner, whom I’ve known for a number of years, has accused the media of trying him before he has had the opportunity of a trial before a jury of his peers. As reporters isn’t it our responsibility to report on the US Attorney’s case against him.
Yes, you’re right, Jim. The reporters in the press, radio, TV do have a responsibility to report the news whatever it is. When I said I the media was acting as my judge and jury, I was not referring to the reporters who are doing their job of reporting. I was referring to the columnists and commentators, many of whom have already publicly found me guilty. Jim, read the columns, listen to the commentators, and then answer the question of whether you think they are allowing me to be presumed innocent until found guilty.
Jim, I would point out that yesterday and today, the reporters joined the columnists and commentators in their manipulation of reality not by what they said but by what they didn’t say. On Monday, the US Attorney’s cooperating witness in the Dejavu complaints, Ron Wilburn, admitted to Boston Globe columnist Adrian Walker, that he did not go to the FBI as the complaint says, they came to him. In addition, he said that the statement in US Attorney Sullivan’s complaint against Senator Wilkerson that he knew that she had taken bribes from other businessmen was not true.
Let me quote Mr. Wilburn’s the most intriguing statement, “If other people aren’t looked at, realistically, something is radically wrong with the process”. Since he was wearing the FBI wire, isn’t he saying he can’t understand why the other people he entrapped have not been arrested?
I first heard of Mr. Wilburn’s admissions on the TV news shows between 6 and 7 and said I wonder when and how the media would approach the issue and what the US Attorney would say when ask to give a response to Mr. Wilburn’s accusations. However, I heard nothing more about the issue during the day. When I got home, Terri, my wife, said that she had watched all the news shows throughout the day and that not one of the stations carried the story after 8 a.m.
My response to the TV editors deciding the news was too hot to handle was that since a Boston Globe columnist had released the story there was no way for the Globe to avoid confronting the US Attorney and asking for a response to Mr. Wilburn’s statements that there were lies in the complaint.
However, I have scanned today’s Globe and Herald and I see no reporting on Mr. Wilburn’s revelations. Why? When I was accused of lying to the FBI in addition to extorting a $1000 from Mr. Wilburn, you hounded me day and night from the time I got out of jail in Worcester until my press conference on Monday. And yet you all are giving the US Attorney a free ride. Is he above the law? Is it not hard news that his wire is tearing the US Attorney’s case apart? Isn’t there a double standard at work here? Why?
Final Addendum to Press Statement 11/26/08
Brothers and Sisters, based on the reality that the media actively works to shape and create the public’s thinking to accept their view of reality regardless of the truth, we have to develop our skills to become critical thinkers so that we are not being psychologically programmed by those who want to hide the truth in order to retrain their power. Therefore, there is work is going forward on creating a Boston Network of Critical Thinkers. The US Attorney’s creation of a case against Senator Wilkerson and I will be used as the first case study. While details regarding the organizing of the network are still being worked out, our objective is to ask that each person who wants to help in our defense to form a study group with a group of ten or less friends, with the hope that each of the members of your group will agree to form a study group. These study groups will than be given analysis such as the one I have just given to sharpen their critical thinking skills. Brothers and Sisters, if we are to change the old world in order to build a sane, healthy society we have to sharpen our thinking skills since all creation is a product of the mind. In conclusion Brothers and Sisters go home and tell your family, friends, and neighbors, we’ve got work to do.
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