Public Housing Activist Assaulted By Police 
for Fighting CHA Evictions

November 10, 1996  7:08 pm
RE: Police attack on Mae Francis Johnson           From: VX

    Last fall, Mae Frances Johnson stood up to the Chicago Housing
Authority and HUD and refused to be forcibly relocated. It sparked
a struggle that broke into the local media.  Since then, the 63-
year old Horner Homes resident and her family have been subjected
to police surveilience, beatings, threats, and false arrests.  On
September 24, Mae spoke about this harassment at a press
conference for the "National Day of Protest to Stop Police
Brutatliy, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation."
When she was finished, Mae added, "because I'm here today speaking
it'll be taken out on my family."
    Those words, and Mae's picture, were carried in the Chicago
Defender, and later circulated through Horner in flyers.  Soon
after the press conference, the calls begain.  A disguised male
voice warning, "B*itch, you gotta watch your back."  Less than two
weeks later, she was physically attacked by Chicago Housing
Authority police.
    At 5:00 a.m., on October 7, Mae was slammed into a wall,
thrown to the ground, kicked in her back and had a gun put up
aginst her head by CHA police.  Mae demanded to know why they were
doing this.  "If you don't shut up muthafucka I will shoot you -
I bet you muthafucking shut up then," was a cop's response.
    This assault occured as the CHA was carrying out raids across
Horner in an action they called "Operation Blue Tornado."  66
busts for drugs were made, 52 of them Horner residents.  Mae's son
was one of those arrested, dragged out of his room butt naked,
slammed into a window, cuffed and only then allowed to put on
clothes before being taken to jail.  Mae says the charges are
false.
    Later that morning, Mae was again attacked by CHA police.
After she was examined at a hospital for injuries, Mae and some of
her kids went to the CHA management office to get the number for
brutality complaints.  As they left the office, the CHA police
grabbed Mae's son and slammed him into a car.  After Mae
protested, a cop barked, "B*tch you're going to jail!"  Mae was
again shoved to the ground.  When her face hit the gravel, she
momentarily blacked out.  She woke to a cop's foot in her back.
She's arrested, handcuffed and charged with disorderly conduct,
"for running off at the mouth" according to one CHA cop.
    Also arrested for disorderly are another one of Mae's sons,
who had rushed over when his mother was shoved to the ground.
Before they are both taken away to spend the rest of the day in
lockup, the police blurted out their real reason for the attack on
Mae and her family.  Revenge for speaking out.  "This will teach
you not to clown in front of the cameras," warned one of the cops.
"Now you can have your picture put in the newspaper again," said
another.
    Mae's attitude remains courgeous.  As far as she is concerned,
what she is doing is right and what she's saying is the truth.
She wouldn't let them silence her before. She will not be silenced
now.