Nazis win fight to hold rally

Press, 24 June 1978, Page 9

Nazis win fight to hold rally

NZPA Chicago American Nazis have called off a planned march on Sunday through the heavily Jewish suburb of Skokie, averting a confrontation with Jewish demonstrators. A Chicago Nazi leader. Frank Collin, said he was cancelling the march through Skokie — home of thousands of Nazi concentra-tion-camp survivors because his group had won the right to rallv instead on July 9 near their headquar-. ters on Chicago’s south-west 1 side. "Because we agitated for free speech and won our right to free speech back completely. the demonstration scheduled for Sunday in Skokie is henceforth cancelled," Mr Collin told a press conference. The announcement calling off the Skokie march had' been expected after a Feder-, al judge this week ordered 1

■ Chicago to grant the Nazis a permit for a “white-power” rally on July 9 in the city's Marquette Park. The march through Skokie was fought by Skokie lawvers up to rhe Uni’ed Siam’s Supreme Court. The Court ruled, with two of the nine ; justices dissenting, that it would not grant a temporary injunction against the ■ march. The Nazis have been defended by the American .Civil Liberties Union, for I whom the issue rested on Ithe First Amendment of the American Constitution which guarantees the rights of free speech and assembly to everyone, even to citizens whose views are generally ! detested. The A.C.L.U. stand has cost it dear: in less than a year 30,000 members, or about 15 per cent of the II membership, have resigned ■ jor have silently allowed 11 their subscriptions to lapse.