An army of support for Chuck Turner Expulsion vote expected tomorrow

An army of support for Chuck Turner
Expulsion vote expected tomorrow
By Dave Wedge  |   Tuesday, November 30, 2010  |  http://www.bostonherald.com  |  Local Politics

Photo by Ted Fitzgerald (file)

An army of left-wing radicals is flooding city councilors’ e-mail in-boxes with calls to keep Councilor Chuck Turner on the job as the Roxbury lawmaker faces an expulsion vote tomorrow.

“Why would they go after a 67-year-old man except to shut my mouth?” Turner said yesterday. “This is all about the U.S. government trying to silence a black man who stood up for 44 years and spoke truth to power. And now the council is being asked to go along with the plot to silence me.”

Petitions to “keep Chuck Turner on Boston City Council and out of jail” have been posted on the leftist Web site RevLeft.com as well as the International Action Center, a New York-based social justice organization. Several city councilors have been bombarded with hundreds of e-mails from across the country.

“We think this is a huge political attack by the FBI,” said Edward Childs, a spokesman for the International Action Center’s Boston chapter. “This is a political attack on the civil rights movement in this country — no different than they did with Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and many others.”

The petition calls for supporters to e-mail everyone from President Obama to the council, as well as the federal judge sentencing Turner. Turner, who was convicted last month of taking a $1,000 payoff and lying to federal agents, was re-elected last year and supporters want him to be allowed to finish his term.

“Mr. Turner’s prosecution must be seen as part of a national campaign to oust African-American elected officials by demonizing them and prosecuting them,” the petition states. “The Boston City Council need not and should not lend itself to being any part of this ugly conspiracy.”

The council is set to vote tomorrow on a motion by council President Michael Ross to boot Turner from office. Childs said a large crowd of protesters is expected at the hearing.

“We are not above the law and none of us is above the rules,” Ross wrote in a three-page memo calling for Turner’s ouster. “If we act as if we are, this body loses its credibility.”

Councilors John Connolly and Mark Ciommo each said they’ll vote to expel Turner, while others didn’t respond to inquiries.

dwedge@bostonherald.com

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