Communist Rally Demands Release Of Angela Davis

More than 150 demonstrators picketed the JFK Building in Government Center yesterday to demand the release from prison of Angela Davis, a black philosophy professor and member of the Communist Party.

The demonstration, jointly sponsored by the Young Workers' Liberation League (YWLL) and the Communist Party (CP), demanded that New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller refuse to sign the extradition papers requested by California Governor Ronald Reagan.

Davis, accused of assisting in the murder of a California judge, two convicts, and an accomplice, is presently being held without bail in New York, pending a Nov. 9 hearing on the extradition.

Peter Halfkenny, a black spokesman for YWLL, a Communist organization started last February, said that Angela Davis had three counts against her:

"She is a black, which is illegal; she is a woman, which is illegal; and she is a Communist, which is illegal."

Ed Teixeira, spokesman for the Communist Party and member of the Party's National Committee, said he doubted that Davis could get a fair trial anywhere.

"She was publicly hanged before the trial, before any charges were brought against her; she was the target of every police agent and nut in the country," he said.

Teixeira added, however, that Davishad better chances of a fair trial in New York than in California, where Reagan had been conducting "a campaign against her for at least two years."

To create international pressure for the release of Davis, the Coalition to Fight Political Repression, which includes members of YWLL and the CP, is circulating a petition which will be presented to the United Nations this November.

The petition claims that the UN's Cenocide Convention has been "flagrantly violated by the government of the United States" because of the "racist planned and unplanned terror suffered by 40 million blacks, reds, browns and yellows," in this country.