The Nation - News from Feb. 28, 1988

About 500 demonstrators chanting “No justice, no peace” marched on the county sheriff’s office in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., demanding new prosecutors in the case of a black teen-ager who contends six white men raped her. A caravan of about eight buses loaded with protesters converged downtown to rally to the cause of Tawana Brawley, 16. Brawley, from the nearby village of Wappingers Falls in Dutchess County, was found near her home Nov. 28, dazed and wrapped in a plastic bag, her body smeared with feces and racial slurs scrawled on her torso. Her lawyers, Vernon Mason and Alton Maddox, have refused to allow Brawley to cooperate with state Atty. Gen. Robert Abrams, accusing him of conflicts of interest.