Diplomacy
"...On May 22, 1978...The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit...ordered the Village of Skokie to issue a demonstration permit to Frank Collin and the National Socalist Party of America..."
-David Hamlin
-David Hamlin
An Interview with David Goldberger
"Frank Collin (Jewish, Nazi)"- www.youtube.com by tomdagoy |
The NSPA had won their right to demonstrate, but only in Skokie. Nobody, including the neo-Nazis, wanted the march to occur in Skokie.
The U.S. Justice Department's Community Relations Service worked out a diplomatic solution, and offered Collin a way out. Collin gave up his plan to demonstrate in Skokie and the Justice Department cleared the way for the NSPA to march at Federal Plaza in downtown Chicago and, later, in Marquette Park. |
"I had told the client that, I think it’s something he knew, that there was incredible risk in going to Skokie. His position was that he didn’t care, he was going…I received a call in my office from the Community Relations service of the Justice Department and the fellow identified himself as Richard Salem…he said….he and his colleague would like to sit down with my client and see if they could persuade him not to go to Skokie.
So we scheduled a meeting…and Mr. Salem said, ‘what would it take to get you not to go to Skokie?’and much to my amazement, Collin said, ‘If you could do three things, I’d be happy to call off the march'… One of the things was to get him access to the parks in Chicago, where he’d been locked out basically. Well we’d already sued on his behalf to get him access to the parks and that suit was pending and it was well on its way. The other thing he wanted was to be able to have a public assembly in downtown Chicago and the third thing he wanted was to have a proposed hate speech legislation in the Illinois General Assembly withdrawn. Well, I knew how to do two of the three things myself. I knew how he could have a public assembly in downtown Chicago because I knew of a public forum, the Federal Plaza where no permit was required. I said I think there is a chance that I could get the judge to issue an order, compelling the Chicago park district to let Collin have the same access to the public park forums in Chicago that everybody else did but I couldn’t do anything about the Illinois general assembly. Salem said, ‘Well, I think I can get that legislation withdrawn,’ and he did. We got all three things taken care of and Collin scheduled a public assembly in downtown Chicago and he didn’t go to Skokie." -David Goldberger |