From the moment he was charged with accepting a $1,000 bribe from an undercover FBI informant in November of 2010, former Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner’s dwindling time in his City Hall seat has been contentious.
Thursday night was no different – in his last night as a free man before starting a three-year prison sentence, Turner chose to fire back at his accusers one final time as some of his supporters shed tears and chanted his name in Dockers Hall at Northeastern University.
“One of the reasons I’ve done the work that I’ve done over the years is that it was my therapy,” Turner said. “It was a way I could keep from going crazy in a crazy world.”
In a phrase he would repeat often that night, Turner told his audience of about 130 supporters that, “we have to find a way to make justice the hallmark of our justice system.”
As he has for months, Turner reiterated his point that he believed the federal government was involved in a conspiracy to try to silence black, community activists such as himself.
Turner also continued accuse former U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Michael Sullivan of targeting him and former State Sen. Diane Wilkerson, who was also sentenced to a three-and-a-half year prison sentence for accepting $23,500 in bribes.
“The reality is that we can’t have the housing and education and health resources if we have a group of people, a group of prosecutors that have the power and authority…to ensure that an oligarchy state is in power,” Turner said.
The embattled former city councilman hinted at his reasons for doing an event such as this, even as he would be carted off to jail the next day.
“Prosecutors have the ability to send incriminating pictures before your lawyers can even respond. There’s no way to protect yourself in the court of public opinion,” Turner said. “I believe I had no option but to fight back verbally.
After his speech, Turner briskly walked out of the lecture hall, but was immediately met by more supporters crowded into a narrow hallway. Turner was stopped by at least one woman, who, as she openly wept, could be overheard saying that “if there was anything [Turner] needed,” she would do.
Turner was also confronted by the father of Tarek Mehanna, a 27-year-old Egyptian-American who was jailed, according to event speaker Laila Murad, for refusing to become an FBI spokesman.
Mehanna’s father grasped Turner’s forearm as he shook the former councilman’s hand. He expressed his support for Turner, stating that his son was in a similar situation. Turner warmly greeted the man and stopped for a moment to speak with him, but soon after rushed down the hallway to meet his supporters waiting outside the building.
Before the event, members of U.S. Attorney Watch, the group that was hosting Turner and several other speakers, was railing against what they perceived as censorship from Northeastern.
According to USAW officials at the event, Northeastern administrators did not inform the group that the university would be limiting the number of people allowed in the classroom in which the event was held. The group claimed it was not informed of this until the night before Turner’s lecture, even though it had been planning the event for six weeks prior.
One USAW member noted that hundreds more people, like those waiting outside and in the building’s front hallway, could have fit in the rooms adjacent to the lecture hall housing Turner and still heard the speeches.
USAW members also took issue with Northeastern’s requirement that campus police be at the event – according to them, the group was billed for the officers’ overtime pay.
“We consider [the audience restrictions and police presence] to be illegitimate and their selective application to this forum discriminatory,” the group stated in a flyer handed out at the event.
USAW claimed that the restrictions, “would have led [it] either to organize community forces to fight the policy or reschedule somewhere else.”
Before the event began, Northeastern police department officers barred the doors of the building to dozens waiting outside, stating that allowing any more people in would violate the building’s fire code. Others waiting inside the front hallway were also told that they would not be allowed to move past this area, to which many responded angrily.
“You’re infringing our rights to free speech,” one African-American woman shouted angrily as dozens more people jockeyed for position in the crowded hallway.
Northeastern officials did not respond with an official statement before press time.
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