Ann Arbor city officials recently sent out two hefty bills - for $36,000 each.
One unhappy recipient, the Ku Klux Klan, said it intends to reply by slapping the city with a lawsuit. The National Women's Rights Organizing Coalition will be protesting at the next City Council meeting.
The KKK is also suing the city for $1.6 million in related damages in an independent suit.
The bills were sent to the KKK and NWROC requesting reimbursement for $72,000 the city spent in relation to policing efforts at a June 22 Klan rally and the coinciding anti-Klan rally held at the Guy C. Larcom Municipal Building.
"I ultimately made the decision after consulting with the city attorney," City Administrator Neil Berlin said yesterday. "(The billing) has nothing to do with what (the groups) said. It has to do with actions."
Berlin said there was a lot of violence at the rally that extended past the aegis of freedom of speech rights, under which both groups said they rallied. Berlin said the city relied on police officers' reports and eye witnesses' accounts to determine the billing amounts.
"The billing is based on a review of the actions of both groups," City Attorney Abigail Elias said. "We feel we're justified under the circumstances and given the actions of both groups."
Klan National Imperial Wizard Jeff Berry said in a telephone interview last night that a Klan lawsuit against the city is imminent. "(The city) just opened their doors to a lawsuit," he said.
"We're going to slap a $1.6 million lawsuit on them for letting somebody bust my wife's head open."
Berry's wife, Edna, was the only Klan member treated for injuries after the rally. She was hospitalized after a rock hit her in the head.
Berry said he plans to file an additional lawsuit for freedom of speech violations stemming from the billing. "It's against the constitution. Nowhere in the United States has any black, Jewish, Japanese or white American been charged for a rally. We have a right to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly."
Lawyers for the Klan have set the legal paperwork in motion, Berry said. He also said he expects to talk to Ann Arbor city officials about the matter today.
"The city is not aware of (any suit)," Elias said yesterday. "There is no basis for such a claim."
NWROC members said they think the billing is ridiculous.
"The charge is outrageous," said NWROC member and Detroit resident Luke Massie, who attended the June 22 rally. "They say we should pay for the service of being pepper-sprayed and tear-gassed. The overwhelming majority (of anti-Klan protesters) weren't even NWROC members.
"They can shove their charge up their ass," Massie said.
He said the billing is just one of a number of mistakes Ann Arbor officials made in dealing with the Klan's petition to rally, specifically in their decision to provide police protection to Klan members. "It's outrageous (the city) went so far afield in staging and lavishly subsidizing the rally in the first place."
Massie said he believes the Klan should be not be billed either. "They shouldn't be charged because they shouldn't have been there in the first place."
Ann Arbor Organizing Against the Klan (A2 OAK), a grassroots organization of University students and Ann Arbor residents, was not billed by the city, even though they co-organized the anti-Klan rally with NWROC.
Berlin said the actions of A2 OAK members did not warrant billing the group.
Barbara Pliscow, an organizer for A2 OAK, said she felt the city was unfounded in its billing of NWROC. "It really is outrageous that people cannot distinguish between murderers and terrorists and people who protest murder," she said.
"NWROC did not ask the police to protect them or to put the Klan on top of City Hall, and they certainly didn't ask to be tear-gassed or pepper-sprayed," Pliscow said.
Pliscow said she thinks NWROC should seek legal counsel against the city. George Washington, a Detroit attorney, defended several of the eight anti-Klan protesters arrested on June 22 and said he would likely work on the legal issues of the billing.
"It's outrageous to bill them and prosecute eight people," Washington said. "It's what towns in rural Mississippi tried to do to the NAACP 30 years ago and Ann Arbor is following in those footsteps."
"In my opinion, there's no way (the billing will) hold up in court," Washington said.
Berlin said he had no reason to think the city could not collect on the bills. "We wouldn't have done it if we thought it would be futile," he said. "I don't believe there's a precedent in Ann Arbor, but I know other cities have charged for services associated with rallies."
Another Klan rally and counter-rally took place in Saginaw shortly after the Ann Arbor rally. A large contingent of Saginaw and State Police officers also monitored that rally.
Saginaw City Attorney Catherine Ginster said Saginaw has no pending litigation against the Klan or protest groups, and no plans to initiate any such litigation.
Massie said NWROC members will make their concerns known to the councilmembers at the City Council meeting on Monday. "We're going to say to the free world what an attack on anti-racist free speech this is," he said.
Berlin said possible law suits and protests were not factors in the decision to bill. "Decisions like this aren't based on what people might do. We were not privy to the thoughts or concerns of either group."
The rally fell into the national spotlight after Keshia Thomas, a black Huron High School student, used her body to shield Albert McKeel Jr. from the blows of angry anti-Klan protesters. McKeel is white and was wearing a shirt bearing the Confederate flag. He said he was not associated with the Klan.