BY NORTON SANDLER
DES MOINES, Iowa - On September 7 officials of the Iowa State Board of Parole will meet with Mark Curtis's attorney William Kutmus and several supporters of the imprisoned union and political activist. Curtis's backers will urge the board to grant Curtis a 1995 hearing and release him on parole.
Supporters planning to attend the meeting in addition to Kutmus are farm activist Larry Ginter; Frankie Travis, a unionist who has been locked out at A.E. Staley in Decatur, Illinois, for the last two years; Jake Edwards, a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers union in Cherokee, Iowa; Max Exner, a retired Iowa State University professor; longtime defense committee activists Hazel Zimmerman, John Studer, and Julia Terrell; Curtis's wife, Kate Kaku; and Harold Ruggless, president of United Auto Workers Local 270 in Des Moines.
Curtis was framed up on rape and burglary charges in 1988 while he was involved in a struggle to defend 17 Latino co-workers who were dragged out of a meatpacking plant in Des Moines in handcuffs during an immigration raid.
Prisoners don't always get a hearing
In 1993 the Iowa legislature gave the parole board the
authority to use its own discretion on whether or not to
grant inmates a parole hearing. Before that law was enacted,
the board met annually with each inmate. Curtis was denied
hearings in 1993 and 1994. He has served seven years in
prison. He fulfilled the requirement for time served on the
phony rape charge in 1993, and is now being held on the
burglary charge tacked on by the cops and prosecutors
several weeks after his original arrest.
Among those convicted of the same burglary charge as Curtis who were paroled in 1994, the average time served was 76.2 months. Curtis has already served 84 months. The board will announce in October whether or not Curtis is granted a formal parole hearing.
At the meeting, Mark Curtis Defense Committee supporters will deliver messages to the board sent in from around the world demanding Curtis's release. These will include 5,000 letters written by delegates at the July convention of the Movement of the Landless Rural Workers in Brazil, plus several dozen already collected in the United States and other countries around the world.
The defense committee is urging supporters to get as many letters to the defense committee as possible prior to that meeting. The committee will continue collecting letters through October 1. A new brochure in Spanish is now available detailing the parole campaign for Curtis.
New support around world
Hundreds of workers and youth learned about Curtis's
fight during the recent "Cuba Lives" festival. Youth from
many countries traveled to Cuba for the event and stayed in
the homes of working people during their week there. A Cuban
banana farm worker wrote the defense committee to say he is
organizing a group of young people there to publicize the
parole effort and win new support.
Stanley Ofari, the general secretary of the Ghana Students Union of Cuba, wrote to Curtis directly expressing his support. "We ... are very proud of you, because with you, we are aware that there is something that cannot be bought and that is ... the dignity of a determined people," stated Ofari.
"With the experience we have with people like [Nelson] Mandela of South Africa, we hope that one day, the truth about your case will come out and, once again, the oppressed will gain victory over the oppressor."
Joining Curtis defense committee endorsers is Larry Quinn, editor of the Irish People, published in New York. An Phoblacht/Republican News, published in Ireland, recently reviewed several titles from Pathfinder Press, including the booklet Why is Mark Curtis Still in Prison?
"The pamphlet exposes in detail the systematic framing of Curtis in a stage-managed arrest and show trial," writer Neil Forde stated. "It's a pamphlet you can read in one sitting and then read again in disbelief at such a deliberate miscarriage of justice, and with sympathy because of its similarity with cases in Britain and Ireland."
Curtis defense committee backers have attended a number of recent conferences to win support for Curtis's release. Bill Kalman from the committee in Des Moines made a presentation on the case to farm activists attending the Federation of Southern Cooperatives meeting in Epes, Alabama. Supporters from Seattle, Des Moines, and Portland, Oregon, attended the National Lawyers Guild Conference in Portland in August.
The Mark Curtis Defense Committee is requesting that supporters write to the Iowa State Board of Parole, 523 East 12th St., Des Moines, IA 50319 urging it to grant parole to Curtis. The letters should be sent to the Mark Curtis Defense Committee, Box 1048, Des Moines, IA 50311 or faxed to (515) 243-9869. The defense committee will arrange to deliver the messages to the board.