BY JOHN COX
DES MOINES, Iowa - Supporters of imprisoned union and
political activist Mark Curtis met September 5 at the Forest
Avenue Library here to discuss final arrangements for a
delegation to the Iowa State Board of Parole demanding that
Curtis be freed. The committee meets weekly to discuss the
progress of the defense campaign, answer the mail, and
organize for the next week's work.
On September 7 Bill Kutmus, Curtis's attorney, will lead the delegation of Des Moines area unionists and political activists to meet with the board. They will carry hundreds of letters from around the world, along with a special bundle of 5,000 letters from landless peasants in Brazil, petitioning the board for Curtis's release.
Over the past week, committee coordinator John Studer reported to the meeting, dozens of new letters have come by mail and by fax into the defense committee office to make it in time for the delegation to deliver them. The committee will continue to gather and deliver letters through October 1.
Studer pointed to a number of the new letters as examples of the expanding support for Curtis.
"On behalf of the Coal Employment Project, a group of women miners, we want to ask you to grant Mark Curtis a parole hearing and to release him from jail," he read from one letter. "We feel he has been unjustly jailed for all this time, and now is the time to do the right thing." The letter was signed by Cosby Ann Totten, Director of the Coal Employment Project.
Bill Breihan, president of United Steelworkers Local 1343, and Stan Yasaitis, president of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 82 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, sent a joint letter, noting that they both learned of Curtis's case in 1988 after he was arrested and became convinced that he was not guilty.
"Imagine our shock and disbelief when we discovered recently that Mark Curtis is still in prison. Can this be? So many years behind bars... for crimes many believe he did not commit. Literally hundreds of thousands of people in this country and around the world know of Mark Curtis's plight and must be asking the same question, `Just what goes on there in Iowa?'
"We have only one request to make of you: Let Mark Curtis go! Grant him parole," the two union officers conclude.
A number of letters, Studer noted, have come from unionists around the world. "I am writing in respect to Mark Curtis, an inmate at Iowa State Penitentiary," wrote J.R. Evans of the Meat and Related Trades Workers Union of Aotearoa Inc., in New Zealand. "I understand that he meets the requirements for release on parole and has done so for some years. Further to my earlier requests I would urge you to grant him parole this time."
Thirteen members of the New Zealand Meat Workers' & Related Trades Union in Auckland, including the branch secretary and site delegate at the Astelys Tannery, wrote on union stationary: "We the under-signed, members of the above union, ask that you give a fair and open-minded hearing to Mark Curtis and his legal representatives when they present the case for your granting him parole."
Gertraud K. Weber, vice president of the United Transportation Union local in Elma, New York, ended her letter to the board by saying, "Hoping you will finally see to it that Mark will receive justice."
Studer also pointed to growing support for Curtis's fight for freedom among activists in the movement to end British occupation of Ireland. One recent letter to the parole board came from William Hughes. "I believe that Mark Curtis, a union organizer and fighter for human rights, has suffered enough. The facts and circumstances surrounding his arrest, indictment, conviction and sentencing cry out for justice from this honorable Board.
"There is ample evidence on the record that Curtis was targeted for prosecution because of his political activism. The fact that he could win a civil rights suit against some of the policemen, who brutalized him after his initial arrest, is convincing proof that the cards were stacked against him almost from the beginning.
"I believe this honorable Board, in the name of decency and fair play, should grant Curtis a full parole," Hughes says.
On his weekly radio show on WBAI in New York City September 2, Hughes started the program: "Free Mark Curtis: Political Prisoner. Mark Curtis, whose name is very familiar to our WBAI audience, is a union organizer, in the mold of our own James Connolly. He is also a fighter for human rights. Curtis was wrongfully convicted in Iowa, in 1988, on trumped up sexual abuse and burglary charges, He recently won a civil rights case against the police who brutalized him. Curtis is up for parole. Anyone who would like to help him, please send a fax to the Iowa Parole Board, c/o Mark Curtis Defense Committee at (515) 243-9869."