Protest on Liberty

Press, 12 May 1980, Page 8

Protest on Liberty

NZPA-Reuter New York Men using /rubber suction tups and mountaineering gear have climbed a third of the way up the Statue of Liberty in .a - political ''protest; and park officials watching from the ground {aid the men had hammered mikes through the statue’s thin copper skin. They were . identified as Edwin Drummond, a native of Wolverhampton, England, and now of San - Francisco, and Stephen. Rutherford, prummona has protested in this way before. : The two lifted themselves np a sheer stone wall on the jtatue’s pedestar at 10 a.m. and climbed up its right heel and the furls of its toga, hsing ropes and the spikes, gnd carrying canteens. By the time park officials, discovered the men, they were tub of reach.

Soon-after, they unfurled an 18m red and white banner with the words: “Liberty was framed. Free Geronimo Pratt.” Thousands of angry ’ tourists below heard the sound of loud hammering on the 100 m high statue. Leaflets dropped - to the tourists; who park officials had ordered out of the statue, said the climbers were ; protesting against the decision of a Californian court to dismiss an appeal by , Elmer Pratt, a former Black Panther convicted in July, 1972, of killing Caroline Olsen, a schoolteacher, while she played tennis in Santa Monica in 1968. Pratt, aged 21, has served seven years of a seven-year-to-life sentence. Last November, lawyers' for Pratt petitioned for a new trial, saying that he had been a target of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s

Cointelpro programme. Cointelpro was an undercover counter-intelligence activity that used illegal tactics, a Senate committee disclosed in 1976. A third demonstrator was arrested by the National Park police on the lawn of Liberty Island, after, they said, he became involved in a scuffle with an enraged tourist while handing out leaflets. Mr David Moffitt, the superintendent of the national monument, said that the man, who refused to give the police his name and carried no identification, would be charged with conducting an illegal demonstration on Federal property. Mr Moffitt said that although demonstrations had frequently been held on the island.in recent years, this was the first time protesters had climbed on the statue’s exterior, which he said was 2.38 cm thick.

“It may look strong, but the skin is. terribly fragile; he said.