About Organizations
Black Panther Party
Black Liberation Army
American Indian Movement
FALN
Weather Underground
Earth Liberation Front
Animal Liberation Front
MOVE
Republic of New Afrika
Symbionese Liberation Army
Los Macheteros
United Freedom Front
May 19th Communist Organization
Young Lords
George Jackson Brigade
Students for a Democratic Society
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Industrial Workers of the World
Communist Party USA
Puerto Rican Nationalist Party
Brown Berets
Socialist Workers Party
African People's Socialist Party
Nation of Islam
About American Indian Movement
Founding in Minneapolis & the AIM Patrol (1968)
Trail of Broken Treaties & the BIA Occupation (1972)
The Custer Courthouse Confrontation (1973)
The Occupation of Wounded Knee (1973)
The Wounded Knee Leadership Trials (1974)
The "Reign of Terror" on Pine Ridge (1973–1976)
The Oglala Firefight & the RESMURS Prosecutions (1975)
The Cedar Rapids Acquittal of Butler & Robideau (1976)
The Leonard Peltier Case (1977– )
Later Prosecutions & AIM's Prisoner Legacy
THE CEDAR RAPIDS ACQUITTAL OF BUTLER & ROBIDEAU (1976)
Dino Butler and Bob Robideau were tried for the agents' deaths in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in the summer of 1976. The jury heard the full context of Pine Ridge — the GOON violence, the FBI's own memos, the climate of fear that made armed self-defense reasonable — and on July 16, 1976, acquitted both men, finding they could not be proven to have done anything but defend their camp in a firefight they did not start.
The verdict transformed the government's approach to the remaining defendant. Prosecutors and the FBI, as later-released documents showed, resolved to try Leonard Peltier before a different judge under far tighter evidentiary rules, and to "put the full prosecutive weight of the Federal Government" on him alone.