To University of Massachusetts-Boston Chancellor Jo Ann Gora:

The Spartacus Youth Club strongly protests the arrest of UMass-Boston professor Tony Van Der Meer. Following a provocation by National Guard recruiters at that campus on April 3, when one recruiter told an antiwar student he “should be shot in the head,” Van Der Meer was arrested and hit with the bogus charge of “assaulting a police officer” after coming to the student’s defense. According to the students who witnessed the arrest, though, he never raised his hands or threatened the officer; instead three UMass-Boston police officers assaulted him, tackling him to the ground.

As the U.S. imperialists rain thousands of cruise missiles on Iraq and deploy over 200,000 troops for colonial occupation, the forces of the state are deployed in Boston to harass antiwar students and professors seeking to exercise their democratic rights. The attack on Professor Van Der Meer is part of the campaign to criminalize dissent as the government wages war abroad and ravages the working class, blacks and immigrants at home. Increasingly, the only “right” the government sees fit to grant students and working class youth is the right to enlist in a branch of the military as fodder for U.S. imperialism’s wars. We demand: Military recruiters off campus now! Drop the charges against Tony Van Der Meer!

Sincerely, Jesse AltSpartacus Youth Club