Group seeks aid for `political' prisoners
By Michele McPhee
Monday, February 28, 2005

One of the missions Anarchist Black Cross Federation heralds is the support
of "political prisoners," urging sympathizers to send money, stamps and
letters to convicts, including two notorious revolutionaries imprisoned in
Massachusetts jails.

William "Lefty" Gilday, a one-time minor league baseball player from
Amesbury who joined the Weather Underground while attending Northeastern
University, is serving a life sentence at MCI-Shirley for killing Boston
police officer William Schroeder in a 1970 bank heist.

Schroeder, a father of nine, interrupted a robbery at a Brighton State
Street Bank branch by Gilday and other armed revolutionaries, including
Brandeis University student Katherine Ann Power, to fund an uprising against
the U.S. government.

Gilday was convicted of shooting Schroeder in the back. In 1984, Gilday was
convicted of running a credit-card fraud operation using the prison's phones
and defrauding American Express of $4,000.

Another revolutionary ABCF supports, Jaan Karl Waaner, writes a Web site
magazine, http://www.4strugglemag.com, from his cell at MCI Cedar Junction
in Walpole, where he is classified as a security-threat prisoner.

Waaner, who grew up in Roxbury and was a martial arts trainer with the
Amandla Peoples security firm, is serving a long sentence for a series of
bombings, including a 1976 blast at the Suffolk County Courthouse that
injured 22 people.

Last week, state Department of Correction spokeswoman Diane Wiffin said
Waaner's magazine is not approved.

"It is not sanctioned by the DOC," said Wiffin. "We monitor this material as
much as possible."

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