The flyers publicized a program last August featuring a panel of young people who attended the World Festival of Youth and Students in Caracas, Venezuela. The citations issued by the “green patrol” of the Department of Public Works were for leaflets in Spanish and English placed on four lampposts in the Mission District, where posting is prohibited.

“The Militant Labor Forum is a free-speech forum, organized by volunteers, that focuses on issues of importance to the labor movement and all working people,” forum director Elizabeth Stone explained at the hearing. Stone asked that the fines be waived because the flyers were posted without the knowledge or agreement of the forum’s organizers, the weekly program has limited resources to pay such a fine, and the forum series plays an educational role in the community.

Statements addressed to the hearing by workers who attend the forum underlined the harm that would be done by the fines. Brian Everette, an airline mechanic and member of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, spoke on the importance of the forum taking up labor issues, such as the current employer attacks on airline workers.

In a letter submitted to the hearing, San Francisco Chronicle pressman Kerry Garza wrote, “I especially appreciated a program sponsored by the forum that took up the efforts of my union, the IBT/GCIU San Francisco Web Pressmen & Prepress Workers Local #4, to win a fair contract with the San Francisco Chronicle. Given that the posting was done without the knowledge of those organizing the forums, to force them to pay the fines for the citations would be unjust as well as harmful to this educational activity.”

Milton Chee, a long-time participant in the forum and member of the United Transportation Union, attended the hearing and submitted a letter pointing to the forums being bilingual, “offering a chance for English and Spanish workers to state their views and exchange them.”

Militant Labor Forum supporters also submitted at the hearing a letter explaining the injustice of the citations they had sent to Supervisor Tom Ammiano in the city’s Ninth District, where the forum is located.
 
 
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