Refusing to pay a hefty fine and threatening a law suit, about 30 members of the National Women's Rights Organizing Coalition lifted signs and voices at city hall last night.
The Ann Arbor City Council heard accusations of police harassment and racial intolerance from NWROC at the council's weekly meeting.
NWROC members registered their complaints with the council after the group received a bill from the city for more than $36,000. City officials charged both the Ku Klux Klan and NWROC a total exceeding $73,000 to control a June 22 Klan rally and the consequent anti-Klan rally at city hall.
Luke Massie, an elected member of NWROC's local steering committee, said his group will not pay the city's bill.
"I'm sure we'll be successful in not paying the $30,000 and change to be pepper-sprayed," Massie said last night. "The joke is, if you have to pay $30,000 to get pepper sprayed, is getting shot extra?"
Massie also said NWROC's focus on stopping further Klan rallies would rest in the hands of young protesters.
"We want to rebuild a mass movement of young people and workers against racism," Massie said. "We want the complete and historical defeat of the KKK."
City Administrator Neal Berlin said he had no further comment on the city's reason to bill the Klan and NWROC, but said he would have more information in a few weeks.
"There's no specific date to collect (the money)," Berlin said. "Time will determine the outcome."
NWROC members and supporters considered the issuance of the bill as a slap in the face to the organization.
"It's the fact that they would have the gall to further attack us and to punish the leaders who fought against the KKK," said LSA senior Jessica Curtin, an NWROC member.
"Their main reason for trying to sue us for the money is because they want to pin the blame on us," Curtin said.
NWROC's attorney, George Washington, asserted that the city's motive for the billing was to find scapegoats. Washington also defended several of the eight people arrested during the June 22 rallies.
"With all of the people who were there, how is it that NWROC got a bill for $34,000?" Washington asked. "The answer is simple. Somebody in city council, the city manager, doesn't like NWROC.
"It's political vendetta," Washington said.
Washington compared the billing to tactics that Southern segregationists used to crack down on the 1960's civil rights movement in the South.
"This bill will never be paid," Washington said. "We will make the city of Ann Arbor synonymous with Selma, Ala. and Biloxi, Miss."
KRISTEN SCHAEFER/Daily
First-year student Roshani Deraniyagale protests outside City Hall. She says she's outraged that Ann Arbor would allow the KKK to hold a rally in the city.