POP/ROCK - July 11, 1988

Country and Western singer Willie Nelson may have two picket lines to contend with when he performs at the Warwick (R.I.) Musical Theatre this month. Organizers announced earlier this month that police from across the state will converge on the facility July 29-30 to protest Nelson’s appearance. The officers will make it clear they did not appreciate Nelson’s appearing at a benefit concert last fall for Leonard Peltier, an American Indian convicted of killing two FBI agents in 1975 on the Pine River Reservation in South Dakota. But the Providence-based Mobilization for Survival said Friday it will hold a counter-protest. “We’re not promoting cop killing,” group spokeswoman Joyce Katzberg said Friday. “We’re attempting to raise people’s consciousness about the facts behind Leonard Peltier’s case and urge the police not to picket on a lack of knowledge.” Peltier’s supporters say he is innocent and that an FBI document obtained after Peltier’s 1977 trial showed the gun that killed the agent differed from the one Peltier carried on the of the shootout.