Also on the platform were Tony Van Der Meer, adjunct professor of Africana Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston campus, and Maggie Trowe, chairperson of the Boston branch of the Socialist Workers Party.

Van Der Meer is facing trial on frame-up charges of assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest. In April, while carrying out antiwar activity and commemorating the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., on the campus, a National Guard recruiter verbally threatened Van Der Meer and a student. Van Der Meer was subsequently assaulted by a campus police officer, who then charged the professor with attacking him. “They have declared war on us, and we have to understand that that is terrorism,” Van Der Meer said.

Jubran, an activist in the New England Committee to Defend Palestine, was arrested last November in his Rhode Island home, held for more than two weeks, and ordered deported over technicalities in his immigration application. At a recent hearing attended by dozens of Jubran’s supporters, Jubran’s attorney charged federal authorities with tampering with witnesses in the case .

Charles Welch, from the July 26 Coalition, appealed for support for five Cuban revolutionaries who are being held in U.S. prisons for their efforts to prevent rightist attacks on Cuba.

More than 30 people attended the event held at the Zumix Youth Music Center in East Boston. Fifteen were present at a meeting in the Spanish-language Nobel Bookstore in Lawrence, a mill town north of Boston.

Participants in the meetings contributed $650 to help replenish the Political Rights Defense Fund, which backed Calero’s case.

Calero was interviewed on a Lawrence Dominican radio program, and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology public radio show. Reporters from the Boston Globe and El Sol weekly covered the East Boston meeting. The August 17 Globe carried an article on the event.
 
 
Related article:
Calero meets striking workers in Canada  
 
 
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