Malcolm X: An Unyielding Revolutionary

Malcolm X: An Unyielding Revolutionary

By Esteban Morales
July 16, 2007

Cubanow.- In September 1960, Malcolm X became one of those world personalities linked to the Cuban Revolution, not only for his revolutionary position, and his unyielding solidarity with Cuba, but also by being linked very early with the top leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, at the Theresa Hotel, in Harlem, New York.

Forty-two years has passed since February 21st, 1965, when one of the brightest and most rational leaders of the 20th century was murdered.

He was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on May 25th, 1925 and christened as Malcolm Little. His father was a Baptist pastor; follower of Marcus Garvey’s ideals, and his mother was born on the Caribbean island of Grenada.

He adopted his Muslim name, Hajj Malik El Shabazz, after his pilgrimage to Mecca but was known worldwide as Malcolm X.

His social struggle was extremely intense and hard; by different and unconventional ways for his times, he reached a theoretical conception and a strategy for the struggle of Black North Americans, thus emerging as a leader in the world struggle against imperialism.

Malcolm X lived in Boston and New York, where he was arrested after having participated in larceny, drugs, gambling, and other misdemeanors. He was imprisoned in a Massachusetts jail until 1952.

During his prison stay he joined the Muslim organization, Nation of Islam, and it was then he took the name by which he became universally known: Malcolm X.

Prison had a positive influence on his youthful personality, a process in which his activist Muslim comrades helped him. Released, still only 27, he decided to change the erratic course of his previous life.

One year after being released he was appointed a Minister of the Nation of Islam organization.

By that time, the clearest idea of the meaning of religion for Malcolm X, in the context of his political ideas, was eloquently expressed in the following: “If I must accept a religion which doesn’t let me fight for my people, to hell with it” (See: Malcolm X Speaks: speeches, interviews and statements. Pathfinder Press, United States, 2002, p. 114, source of quotations used in this essay which are, however, retranslated from the Spanish.)

In 1963, Malcolm X lived through a very hard period in his political life, when he had to make the decision to leave the Nation of Islam, the organization to which he owed so much and that had so heavily influenced his initial training.

He made such a decision when he realized, from a private conversation, that its head and spiritual father, Elijah Muhammad, whom he had faithfully followed, exhibited morally inadequate personal behaviour. For his part, he reached the deep conviction that inside the organization the role of leaders was only to look after the interests, frequently spurious, of its top leader and besides, he had experienced its total lack of interest for political activity among North American Black people.

In fact, the Nation of Islam was not consistent with the principles it preached, in the midst of its top leader’s abuse of power and authority. This continually involved the organization’s hierarchy in covering up shameful actions to its economic benefit, coordinated through the KKK and other racist and fascist-like organizations.

From the moment Malcolm X left the organization, over such compromising reasons, he became a danger, both for the organization’s leadership as well as for the organization itself.

In fact, the Nation of Islam, with its bourgeois nationalist tendency and a leadership continually engaged in and committed to attaining space within the economy of the US capitalist system, was quite the opposite of what Malcolm X expected from any organization seeking to struggle for Black liberation.

Malcolm X intended to overcome such mentioned faults when he founded his two organizations: the Afro-American Unity Organization (AAUO), initiated in New York, in 1964, and what was called the Muslim Mosque, shortly afterwards. His intention was to cover both the religious and political concerns of black communities.

Malcolm X has frequently been labelled racist and violent. Many of those who don’t know him, or those who know him very well, especially these last, try to slander him, by comparing him with Martin Luther King; considering Malcolm the “red” demon, and King the “black” angel. A Manichean position widely used to introduce much confusion in understanding the real role of both personalities and their place within the Black struggle.

Malcolm X did not judge anyone by the color of their skin. Even when he spoke about Blacks, many times he was referring to non-white people (saying: “Blacks”, “Browns”, “Yellows” “Reds”, etc) to give a comprehensive view of the problem of white colonization of these peoples, in some ways slaves in their own land; like the North American Black, he never got tired of repeating, they didn’t arrive on the Mayflower. These concepts allowed him to expose the common enemy and forge the alliance and solidarity which has to exist between all the exploited of the world, Afro-Americans, Chinese, Indians, Latin Americans, etc.

This concept set him apart from either from the black or white racism affecting so many organizations at that time, and brought him closer to a true concept of what the struggle against any sort of racism and discrimination should be, including discrimination against women, an aspect to which he also paid attention.

Although Malcolm X did not worship violence, he was always against Blacks being called upon to be peaceful, when the most ruthless violence was used openly and continually against them. So he said about this: ” I myself would accept non-violence if it were consistent, if it were intelligent, if everyone were non-violent, if we were always non-violent. But I’m never going to accept… any sort of non-violence, unless the whole world is non-violent”. (op cit. p.142). Undoubtedly, one would be a fool to agree to be non-violent within a society overwhelmed by all sorts of violence against its Black and non-white populations, as North American society is even today, to try to inculcate an ethic which neither the police, nor the courts, and not even the government itself, put into practice in the United States of America.

Malcolm X by Ben Jones

He did not support violence, but he deeply understood that it was unavoidable, to the extent that its origin came from the marked intention of keeping Black people exploited at any cost, permanently condemning them to being second and third rate citizens in their own land. All the mechanisms, authorities and instruments of the North American political system collaborated towards this aim.

So Malcolm X was neither racist nor violent. It’s North American society that day after day is more and more racist and violent. Despite that, it can’t be said that the Civil Rights struggle made no progress at all.

From the beginning, Malcolm X was linked not only to the personal consequences of the Black struggle in the United States, but he also paid careful attention to the struggle of other oppressed peoples inside the U.S. and at world level. With his travels basically through Asia and Africa, he kept on enriching this perspective.

That’s to say, Malcolm X, from his origins as a revolutionary leader, also put forward in his training the strong internationalist component which always characterized him. So within his thought as well as his political action, the Black struggle in the United States was only part of the whole revolutionary endeavour of the liberation struggle at world level.

Even more, Malcolm X did not consider himself North American, but a victim of North Americanism. In 1964, he said in Cleveland, Ohio, “I speak as victim of this North American system and I see the United Sates through the victim’s eyes. I don’t see an American dream. I see an American nightmare”.

For Malcolm X, the North American system was a rotten, corrupt, exploiting one, which enlisted Blacks in the economic and political mechanisms of exploitation, discrimination and moral degradation.

He never used the expression “Our Government” nor spoke about “Our Armed Forces”, rather expressed himself “Don’t deal with Uncle Sam as if he were your friend… if he were your friend you wouldn’t be a second-rate citizen… we have no friends in Washington”.

Such starting points to qualify North American society make it very clear that North American Black people are really a people exploited and discriminated against within their own country, because the white people have appropriated it, leaving the immense majority of North American Blacks in a situation similar to Third World exploited peoples. Such terms also served to make him an extremely “dangerous” person, continually persecuted by the North American Special Services, until his assassination on February 21st, 1965.

With the introduction of “Black Capitalism” during Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration, and the demands achieved, as a result of the Civil Rights struggle, the situation would change; improvements in recognition of economic, social and political rights for Blacks arrived. The Civil Rights struggle hadn’t been in vain but the changes that took place were limited, within a capitalist and essentially racist society.

With Blacks enlisting in capitalist dynamics and using “Affirmative Action”, a new context emerged, inside of which a Black upper middle class, subordinate to the white oligarchy, became a paradigm for the huge majority of Black people. And the huge majority of Black people would follow that “carrot on the stick”, and the final result is that currently from 5% to 7 % (no more) of Black people enjoy a subordinate class position, exploiting Blacks themselves and also enjoying privileges of the system. Meanwhile, more than 90% of that population remain under the same conditions of exploitation and discrimination that haven’t substantially changed today.

In Malcolm X’s speeches, interviews and statements, it’s quite clear that he didn’t share the strategy of the Civil Rights struggle. He considered this kind of struggle was not the correct one. But, did this mean that Martin Luther King wasn’t right? In reality, it’s a very hard question to answer. So we prefer to focus on the drawbacks that both forms of struggle presented and the problems stemming from the national and international context in which such battles had to be fought.

Undoubtedly, Malcolm X was a more radical leader with a broader vision than King; but based only on this is it possible to affirm that the former was right? Not always in politics does radicalism equal the triumph of the strategy for struggle based on it. Neither, if a strategy for struggle failed, does it mean it was wrong. There are too many circumstances converging in a process of political struggle to be able to arrive at conclusions so easily.

Notwithstanding, the truth is that both strategies of struggle had their drawbacks.

What were those strategies? We’ll look briefly.

• For Martin Luther King, the Black struggle should have concentrated on claiming from North American society the civil rights corresponding to being part of the North American nation. Among these rights, as the fundamental one: to be treated as equals. This struggle was understood as strictly within U.S. territory, although not excluding the possibility of receiving international solidarity even though the form of struggle didn’t facilitate it. The method of struggle should be completely peaceful.

• For Malcolm X, the Black struggle didn’t exclude claiming their civil rights, but it should basically be concentrated on strengthening their communities, their political and religious organizations, in order to demand the rightful place of Blacks within North American society. This struggle was focused on the basis of what Malcolm called “Black Nationalism”; that is, considering Black people as a subjugated nation within its own country and the existing capitalist system as its enemy. Because of this, his struggle was part of the struggle of all the exploited of the world. The struggle should be peaceful, but not exclude the use of violence, if imposed by the exploiters.

Malcolm X considered that the United States, as well as Black people, had a very serious problem: Blacks were undesirable and the tendency was to treat them as second and third class citizens.

For Malcolm X, neither the Democratic or Republican parties represented an alternative in the search for support for the struggle within North American society.

The foregoing was expressed as: “…Every time you see yourself in the mirror, whether you’re black, brown, red or yellow, you’re seeing a person who’s a serious problem for the United States, because they do not want you here”.

So for him all these people should unite. But not only within the United States, rather with all their kind all over the world, and raise a great movement of vindication that he called “Black Revolution”.

This revolution had a common enemy. This enemy was the white colonizer, always European: Spaniards in America, British in Africa, French, Belgians, Portuguese, Germans; all whites, who had moved all over the world with their colonial enterprises, exploiting all the American, Asian and African peoples. These were the imperialist colonizers who did the same to everybody, including North American Blacks, those who didn’t arrive on the Mayflower, but on slave ships.

Conceiving of the North American Black population as it really was: a mass that hadn’t overcome its condition of slavery, unequally exploited in relation to the rest of the population, white workers, and discriminated against in the context of social life, Malcolm X was able to reach another very important conclusion: in reality it was a people suffering under a situation that didn’t differ at all from that of the exploited in the Third World, in Asia, Africa and Latin America, only that for North American Blacks this was happening shamefully inside the richest society of the world capitalist system, and of the whole known social universe.

At the same time, Malcolm X takes on pointing out the strong link existing between Blacks in the U.S. and Blacks in Africa, the continent from which the slaves were brought to North America. This underlined a close relationship between the ways the Blacks in Africa and in the United States were treated.

Because of this, according to Malcolm X, civil rights weren’t an adequate or real platform for the struggle of U.S. Blacks to win their demands, since they were limited to the national plane. This implied that the natural allies of North American Blacks stayed on the margins; something very convenient for the North American white exploiting elites.

Because of this, Malcolm X considered that the struggle of North American Blacks should be focused on the basis of human rights, because these had a more universal character, as well as the advantage of connecting the United States Black struggle with that of all the exploited at the world level. Thus it also offered a platform that permitted projecting internal battles into the debates on international stages like the United Nations Organization. While Civil Rights confined the struggle to the national plane, that is, inside the framework of North American sovereignty, reducing everything to an internal scenario where the North American oligarchy could get out of an international debate on exploitation and discrimination, besides controlling and limiting it to a purely domestic question. Like the Democratic Party always tried to do.

Such political clarity in Malcolm X’s approach concerning the framework in which to develop the Black struggle raised it to the stage of the anti-imperialist struggle, because it was solidly linked to the struggle of all the world’s exploited peoples, as well as to the complex aspect of understanding the existence of a common enemy, only differentiated by the different national masks it wears..

This was also to take the struggle to the level of necessary international solidarity between those directly exploited by their native oligarchies, which are nothing but subordinate classes of the international-trans-national oligarchy, inside of which the U.S. bourgeois monopoly class is the most powerful, best articulated and connected at world level. From this perspective, the exploitation and discrimination suffered by Blacks in the United States comes as an indirect result of U.S. imperialist action.

As well, such an approach offered the objective, practical and theoretical basis that allowed responding to the essence of a struggle that, all in all, must be global, although it takes place at a national level.

These ideas convert Malcolm X into a world leader of the anti-imperialist struggle. So he can’t be labelled only a leader of North American Black people. The truth is Malcolm perceived very early that keeping the Black struggle within the Civil Rights framework could only benefit North American white exploiting elites, who had early devised and put into practice a model of assimilation of the Black struggle into the dynamics of U.S. capitalism. Just as they’re doing now, faced with the reality that Hispanics are becoming the largest minority in North America.

These reasons allow us to affirm as well that the demands achieved by Blacks, as a result of their struggle for civil rights – neither few, nor unimportant – can’t be deeply understood if they’re not also seen as the high price the white elite was forced to pay in order to “calm down” Blacks and succeed in involving them in the economic and political machinery of capitalism in the United States.

When analyzing the matter of current poverty within that society we see clear evidence that the Civil Rights struggle did not mean a significant, essential change in the situation of Blacks in the U.S.

The United States is the richest society in the world, although the one having the most concentration of wealth and, as a consequence, the worst distribution.

Thus, the wealthiest 10% of the North American population owns 81.8% of real estate wealth, 81.2% of stock shares, and 88.0% of bonds. (Legt Business Observer, No. 72,,USA, April 1996, p.5 ).

But the situation becomes even worse when we know that only 1% of the U.S. population owns 60% of the shares and 40% of the total wealth. (The Ecology of Commerce, New York, Harper Business, 1993 ).

Then let’s look at some considerations, more particularly and closely related to the topic of “race”.

More than in any other developed capitalist society, poverty in the United States is clearly identified with a power structure, supported by various pillars of social, cultural and racial stratification formed from colonial times up to the definitive establishment of capitalism within North American society, and that have not been able to be overcome. In North American society there is a social structure in which, in general terms, “race”, class, social status and level of poverty are structurally linked:

Theoretically, it is possible for everyone to rise up the social scale, but, in practice, belonging to an ethnic group tends to equal social class.

We don’t want to expand on this, but there are statistics showing that beyond the problems of employment, health and education, other indicators going from levels of access to education, health, home ownership and justice enforcement, just to mention a few, work completely against the great mass of North American Blacks.

More recently, George Bush’s (son) administration has given eloquent examples of the measure in which the black population might be among its priorities. Just to mention three aspects:

• The total oblivion for the racial program, “Only One America for the 21st Century”, launched by William Clinton:

• Hurricane Katrina, that mainly devastated New Orleans, has left an insurmountable mark amid the lack of attention paid by the Bush administration.

• The Katrina tragedy, the most dramatic event lived by North American society in the latest 60 years, is not even mentioned in the 2006 State of the Nation Report.

The fact that Malcolm X’s strategy was crushed by his assassination has had disastrous consequences for Blacks in the U.S. The opportunity was lost, and today there are not Black leaders able to change the situation. The Black population has been definitely absorbed by the dynamics of capitalism, and there exists very little or almost nothing allowing a return to Malcolm X’s clear idea that the North American Black population could strengthen itself as an integrated community, to struggle for its place within North American society, achieving something more than being absorbed and becoming an instrument for “Black capitalism”, fragmented by the crumbs of social participation that Blacks have achieved through “Affirmative Action”, itself strongly questioned in recent years under attack as “reverse racism”.

Blacks have lost their strength as community; they have been used as one more sector dancing to the rhythm of music played and directed by the white trans-national oligarchy. Their only chance now would be to join a context of struggle, where many are unaware of the specific aspects of the structural inferiority Blacks are kept in within U.S. capitalist society.

Malcolm X with Maya Angelou in Ghana 1964

Inside a society with a political system hegemonically ruled by two parties, fragmented trade unions, and left parties without real possibilities of taking part in the electoral game, Blacks, as a social sector, in the huge majority, have no chance to increase their place within the North American social structure.

Malcolm X’s assassination was the result of a group of situations acting as a system, to eliminate a person who had become a real danger for the ruling white oligarchy’s interests from public life in North American society. The specific reasons justifying his physical liquidation are linked to the following aspects:

• Only 39 when he was murdered, he had become an unquestionable Black leader, both in the United States as well as at world level.

• His “black nationalism” strategy constituted a platform which independently mobilized the North American Black community, relying on their own forces, and not letting themselves be towed by capitalism dynamics.

• The international approach and solidarity with the revolutionary movement in Asia, Africa and Latin America, which stamped the strategy, made North American Black people a working unit in the anti-imperialist struggle at world level.

• He had broken with the Nation of Islam – not only over political, but ethical disagreements, which seriously affected the action and leadership of that organization. Then he founded organizations that turned out to be very efficient in the objectives they pursued: the Muslim Mosque and the OAAU, which represented a competition weighing heavily against the Nation of Islam.

• He advocated that the United States should be understood as a corrupt, exploiting, immoral society, which maintained an economic and political system that always ranked Black people as second and third rate citizens.

The truth is that Malcolm X was a much more dangerous leader than Martin Luther King. The latter, despite his honesty, his true dedication to the Civil Rights cause and his desire to benefit Blacks, had remained enrolled in the mechanics of the system, and in the end became exploited by purposes that weren’t those that had originally inspired him, although this didn’t save his life. Martin Luther King was a person too honest to betray his ideals, he was a honest and unyielding fighter for his people’s rights, but he wasn’t a revolutionary leader as such.

The 1954 Bandung Conference and the founding of the OAU (Organization of African Unity), the latter without doubt the most prestigious international organization of the African continent, strongly inspired Malcolm X.

But, as Malcolm X expressed, the most important thing is “…the motto of Afro-American Unity is by any means necessary. We don’t believe in fighting a battle in which… our oppressors are going to make the rules. We don’t believe we can win a battle where those who exploit us dictate the rules. We don’t believe we can keep on struggling trying to win the affection of those who have been oppressing and exploiting us for so long.” (p. 200).

From being almost non citizens, because Blacks had no right to vote, were not admitted to universities, they couldn’t join the Army, they were scarcely hired in industry, they moved forward to second rate citizens.

As a result of all this, the truth is today there is not a Black movement in the United States even similar to that of the 1960′s. Neither does there exist a Black political leadership able to attract Blacks nationwide to a broad struggle for their demands. Almost all the current black leaders are cogs in the North American political system.

Notwithstanding, other considerations aside, the plain truth is that Malcolm X, both by his political clarity and his theoretical consistence, as well as for the justice of his actions and aspirations, more than as a leader of the Black struggle in the United States, has been acknowledged as one of the strategists of the revolutionary struggle against imperialism at the world level. So his ideas and the battles he fought are still a considerable source of experience for the Black struggle in the United States, and for all the world’s exploited peoples.

Esteban Morales Domínguez, Dr. of Sciences
Centro de Estudios sobre los Estados Unidos (CESEU)
Centre of Studies of the United States of America (CESEU)
University of Havana. July 16, 2007

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s. e. anderson
author of The Black Holocaust for Beginners
www.blackeducator.org
www.blackeducator.blogspot.com
If WORK was good for you, the rich would leave none for the poor. (Haiti) 
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George Jackson: Black Revolutionary

 

By Walter Rodney, November 1971

To most readers in this continent, starved of authentic information by the imperialist news agencies, the name of George Jackson is either unfamiliar or just a name. The powers that be in the United States put forward the official version that George Jackson was a dangerous criminal kept in maximum security in Americas toughest jails and still capable of killing a guard at Soledad Prison. They say that he himself was killed attempting escape this year in August. Official versions given by the United States of everything from the Bay of Pigs in Cuba to the Bay of Tonkin in Vietnam have the common characteristic of standing truth on its head. George Jackson was jailed ostensibly for stealing 70 dollars. He was given a sentence of one year to life because he was black, and he was kept incarcerated for years under the most dehumanizing conditions because he discovered that blackness need not be a badge of servility but rather could be a banner for uncompromising revolutionary struggle. He was murdered because he was doing too much to pass this attitude on to fellow prisoners. George Jackson was political prisoner and a black freedom fighter. He died at the hands of the enemy.

Once it is made known that George Jackson was a black revolutionary in the white mans jails, at least one point is established, since we are familiar with the fact that a significant proportion of African nationalist leaders graduated from colonialist prisons, and right now the jails of South Africa hold captive some of the best of our brothers in that part of the continent. Furthermore, there is some considerable awareness that ever since the days of slavery the U.S.A. is nothing but a vast prison as far as African descendants are concerned. Within this prison, black life is cheap, so it should be no surprise that George Jackson was murdered by the San Quentin prison authorities who are responsible to Americas chief prison warder, Richard Nixon. What remains is to go beyond the generalities and to understand the most significant elements attaching to George Jacksons life and death.

When he was killed in August this year, George Jackson was twenty nine years of age and had spent the last fifteen [correction: 11 years] behind bars—seven of these in special isolation. As he himself put it, he was from the lumpen. He was not part of the regular producer force of workers and peasants. Being cut off from the system of production, lumpen elements in the past rarely understood the society which victimized them and were not to be counted upon to take organized revolutionary steps within capitalist society. Indeed, the very term lumpen proletariat was originally intended to convey the inferiority of this sector as compared with the authentic working class.

Yet George Jackson, like Malcolm X before him, educated himself painfully behind prison bars to the point where his clear vision of historical and contemporary reality and his ability to communicate his perspective frightened the U.S. power structure into physically liquidating him. Jacksons survival for so many years in vicious jails, his self-education, and his publication of Soledad Brother were tremendous personal achievements, and in addition they offer on interesting insight into the revolutionary potential of the black mass in the U.S.A., so many of whom have been reduced to the status of lumpen.

Under capitalism, the worker is exploited through the alienation of part of the product of his labour. For the African peasant, the exploitation is effected through manipulation of the price of the crops which he laboured to produce. Yet, work has always been rated higher than unemployment, for the obvious reason that survival depends upon the ability to obtain work. Thus, early in the history of industrialization, workers coined the slogan the right to work. Masses of black people in the U.S.A. are deprived of this basic right. At best they live in a limbo of uncertainty as casual workers, last to be hired and first to be fired. The line between the unemployed or criminals cannot be dismissed as white lumpen in capitalist Europe were usually dismissed.

The latter were considered as misfits and regular toilers served as the vanguard. The thirty-odd million black people in the U.S.A. are not misfits. They are the most oppressed and the most threatened as far as survival is concerned. The greatness of George Jackson is that he served as a dynamic spokesman for the most wretched among the oppressed, and he was in the vanguard of the most dangerous front of struggle.

Jail is hardly an arena in which one would imagine that guerrilla warfare would take place. Yet, it is on this most disadvantaged of terrains that blacks have displayed the guts to wage a war for dignity and freedom. In Soledad Brother, George Jackson movingly reveals the nature of this struggle as it has evolved over the last few years. Some of the more recent episodes in the struggle at San Quentin prison are worth recording. On February 27th this year, black and brown (Mexican) prisoners announced the formation of a Third World Coalition. This came in the wake of such organizations as a Black Panther Branch at San Quentin and the establishment of SATE (Self-Advancement Through Education). This level of mobilisation of the nonwhite prisoners was resented and feared by white guards and some racist white prisoners. The latter formed themselves into a self-declared Nazi group, and months of violent incidents followed. Needless to say, with white authority on the side of the Nazis, Afro and Mexican brothers had a very hard time. George Jackson is not the only casualty on the side of the blacks. But their unity was maintained, and a majority of white prisoners either refused to support the Nazis or denounced them. So, even within prison walls the first principle to be observed was unity in struggle. Once the most oppressed had taken the initiative, then they could win allies.

The struggle within the jails is having wider and wider repercussions every day. Firstly, it is creating true revolutionary cadres out of more and more lumpen. This is particularly true in the jails of California, but the movement is making its impact felt everywhere from Baltimore to Texas. Brothers inside are writing poetry, essays and letters which strip white capitalist America naked. Like the Soledad Brothers, they have come to learn that sociology books call us antisocial and brand us criminals, when actually the criminals are in the social register. The names of those who rule America are all in the social register.

Secondly, it is solidifying the black community in a remarkable way. Petty bourgeois blacks also feel threatened by the manic police, judges and prison officers. Black intellectuals who used to be completely alienated from any form of struggle except their personal hustle now recognize the need to ally with and take their bearings from the street forces of the black unemployed, ghetto dwellers and prison inmates.

Thirdly, the courage of black prisoners has elicited a response from white America. The small band of white revolutionaries has taken a positive stand. The Weathermen decried Jacksons murder by placing a few bombs in given places and the Communist Party supported the demand by the black prisoners and the Black Panther Party that the murder was to be investigated. On a more general note, white liberal America has been disturbed. The white liberals never like to be told that white capitalist society is too rotten to be reformed. Even the established capitalist press has come out with esposes of prison conditions, and the fascist massacres of black prisoners at Attica prison recently brought Senator Muskie out with a cry of enough.

Fourthly (and for our purposes most significantly) the efforts of black prisoners and blacks in America as a whole have had international repercussions. The framed charges brought against Black Panther leaders and against Angela Davis have been denounced in many parts of the world. Committees of defense and solidarity have been formed in places as far as Havana and Leipzig. OPAAL declared August 18th as the day of international solidarity with Afro-Americans; and significantly most of their propaganda for this purpose ended with a call to Free All Political Prisoners.

For more than a decade now, peoples liberation movements in Vietnam, Cuba, Southern Africa, etc., have held conversations with militants and progressives in the U.S.A. pointing to the duality and respective responsibilities of struggle within the imperialist camp. The revolution in the exploited colonies and neo-colonies has as its objective the expulsion of the imperialists: the revolution in the metropolis is to transform the capitalist relations of production in the countries of their origin. Since the U.S.A. is the overlord of world imperialism, it has been common to portray any progressive movement there as operating within the belly of the beast. Inside an isolation block in Soledad or San Quentin prisons, this was not merely a figurative expression. George Jackson knew well what it meant to seek for heightened socialist and humanist consciousness inside the belly of the white imperialist beast.

International solidarity grows out of struggle in different localities. This is the truth so profoundly and simply expressed by Che Guevara when he called for the creation of one, two, three – many Vietnams. It has long been recognized that the white working class in the U.S.A is historically incapable of participating (as a class) in anti-imperialist struggle. White racism and Americas leading role in world imperialism transformed organized labour in the U.S. into a reactionary force. Conversely, the black struggle is internationally significant because it unmasks the barbarous social relations of capitalism and places the enemy on the defensive on his own home ground. This is amply illustrated in the political process which involved the three Soledad Brothers—George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo and John Clutchette—as well as Angela Davis and a host of other blacks now behind prison bars in the U.S.A.

NOTE: George Jackson also authored Blood In My Eye which was published posthumously, or after this article was written.

CRIMES AGAINST AFRICAN PEOPLE

……Rise up Black Men, and take your stand. Reach up black men and women and pull all nature’s knowledge to you. Turn ye around and make a conquest of everything North and South, East and West. And then we you have wrought well, you will have merited God’s blessing, you will become God’s chosen people and naturally you’ll become leaders of the world. And as you bow down to the white man today, so will others bow down to you and call you a race of masters because of the intelligence of your mind and your achievements. No race has the last word on culture and civilization. They do not know what we’re capable of; they do not know what we’re thinking. They’re thinking in terms of dreadnaughts, battleships, airplanes and submarines. You know what we’re thinking about? That is our own private business. ~ Marcus Garvey

Stop! Stop and Frisk!

Stop! Stop and Frisk!

Stop! Stop and Frisk”, a project by the RDACBX, a Hip-Hop community center in the South Bronx, NY.

On February 2, 2012, NYPD murdered an unarmed 18 yr. old Rahmarley Graham in the Bronx, only 1 week after administering a Rodney King-style beating on another unarmed youth, 19 yr. old Jatiek Reed.

We demand justice for Rahmarley Graham and Jatiek Reed! Stop the racist Stop and Frisk policy! Fund Schools Not Prisons!
credits
released 18 February 2012
Produced by G1. Written and performed by G1, RodStarz, Vithym, and Luss.

‘Bitch Ass Niggers’ and ‘Fucking Coons’: Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, and the Protection of ‘Police Murder’ in America

Once again another young Black man has been shot and killed, under highly questionable circumstances, by a representative of law enforcement. Also once again, African Americans and our allies fear that justice will not be served on the perpetrator. Unfortunately, this fear is neither imagined nor an overreaction; it is grounded in concrete reality.

That reality is known as the “blue line:” the protection and support that members of law enforcement extend to one another automatically, regardless of facts, truths and ultimately, outcomes.

Even more upsetting is the fact that this line exists when clear and irrefutable evidence of racial antagonism/hostility is also present.

Seconds before Oscar Grant was shot in his back on Jan. 1, 2009, by Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Officer Johannes Mehserle, the words “Bitch Ass Nigger” were yelled to Grant’s face – twice – by Mehserle’s mentor and ‘Big Brother,” BART Officer Tony Pirone. Mehserle and Pirone brutally restrained an already-compliant Grant by kneeling on his head/neck and lower legs, before Mehserle stood over Grant and fired a bullet into his back from a Sig Sauer 9MM pistol. George Zimmerman, initially identified as a Neighborhood Watch captain who called 911 on Feb. 26, 2012, to report Trayvon Martin as “suspicious person,” complained to the 911 operator that “these fucking coons always get away with this.” Zimmerman was told by the 911 operator not to pursue Martin; Zimmerman ignored that directive and all but chased the teen down in his vehicle; confronted Martin and then shot the youth with his Kel Tek 9MM PF9 pistol once in the chest.

Mehserle was convicted of Involuntary Manslaughter in the death of Grant; he was sentenced to two years in state prison and released after spending one year, doing all of his time in county jail. As of this writing, four weeks after Trayvon was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, Zimmerman has not been arrested, indicted or arraigned on any charge.

THE BLUE LINE: WAYS THAT IT WORKS

By taking a cursory look at what we hope are facts reported by the media, we can gain a glimpse of how the “blue line” works to shield law enforcement personnel from heinous crimes:

1. Slow response to arrest the perpetrator

Johannes Mehserle was arrested for the death of Oscar Grant almost two weeks after the incident and, after a rebellion erupted in the streets of Oakland the day of Grant’s funeral; George Zimmerman has not been arrested, charged or indicted for any crime in connection with Trayvon Martin’s death four weeks after the incident. An announcement has now been made that a grand jury to investigate the shooting will convene in April, now that numerous virtual and real-world protests have taken place demanding that Zimmerman be arrested.

2. The perpetrator is not deemed a threat to the (Black) public’s safety.

George Zimmerman was known to authorities to be “fixated on crime and Black males” and carried a pistol on his person, yet he had a violent past that included an arrest for assault on a police officer and several incidents of domestic violence. Approximately six weeks before shooting the unarmed Oscar Grant, Johannes Mehserle violently assaulted Kenneth Carruthers (an African American male) for the latter’s criticism of the BART police force after his car was broken into at a BART station parking lot. Carruthers alleged that Mehserle and other officers “punched, kicked and eventually hog tied him,” and that on the way to a hospital to treat his injuries Mehserle asked him, “Well, have you learned not to mess with police officers?”

3. Legal statute shields the perpetrator before he is ever charged with a crime.

Immediately after shooting Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman told police who responded to the scene that he shot Martin in self-defense. Under such a claim, the Castle Doctrine or “Stand Your Ground Law” states that deadly force is justified if a person is gravely threatened whether they are in their own home or any place else they have a right to be. Further investigation into the incident may reveal that Zimmerman cannot claim the ‘Stand your Ground” law as a defense however, it was suitable enough to halt the police department from even beginning any investigation of Zimmerman. In California, the Peace Officer’s Bill of Rights Act (POBRA), in conjunction with different parts of the state’s penal code (‘the law of the land’), has blocked citizens from gaining access to the personnel files of police officers. Citing the officer’s right to privacy, we are unable to know if an officer has a history of shootings (warranted or not) and brutality complaints.

4. Legal requirements are either loosened, flaunted or thrown out altogether for the perpetrator

The “Offenses Section” of the police report filed on the Zimmerman shooting states that it was “an unnecessary killing to prevent an ulawful act.” It also references Negligent Homicide and Manslaughter, but he was not arrested. The form used by the BART Authority for officer involved shootings that Johannes Mehserle signed stated that it was an “intentional shooting.” This form was not allowed into court as evidence during Mehserle’s criminal trial in Los Angeles. Zimmerman was not tested for drugs or alcohol immediately after the shooting; Mehserle was tested but those results were also not allowed in court.

In spite of the Zimmerman police report listing the incident as a “needless killing,” Zimmerman was not arrested because his alibi was automatically excepted. BART officers involved in on-duty shootings are required to give an in-person interview to the authority’s internal investigators even though the contents of the interview cannot be used against the BART officer; Mehserle resigned from the agency on the day of his scheduled interview with investigators.

5. The victim may have had an unsavory background

Oscar Grant was on parole from state prison at the time of his arrest, and he ran from the police and was shocked with a Taser in the past. This information was somewhat responsibly reported in the media but it was spread wildly by police supporters and conservative groups. It was also officially entered into evidence in court, partly to show that Grant was “prone” to resisting arrest. Conservative groups have begun to insinuate that Trayvon Martin, who was under a 5-day suspension “due to tardiness and not misbehavior” at the time he was killed, may have been suspended for more serious infractions.

6. The victim was not a victim, but an aggressor

The group that Oscar Grant was traveling with on the BART train on New Year’s Day 2009 was involved in an altercation. One witness states that Grant had been held in a headlock with a man, David Horowitch, who later testified that he had not been in a fight with Oscar Grant. Other witnesses could not identify who the person was who had been in the altercation with Horowitch. Police supporters also stated that Grant had attempted to physically assault Officer Pirone by kneeing him in the groin. Trayvon Martin was said to have been on top of George Zimmerman punching him, which is why Zimmerman was observed with wet, grass-stained clothing and a bloody nose, after chasing and confronting Martin.

7. Because the victim was an aggressor, it was his own fault

Law enforcement supporters have stated (and continued to state that) had Oscar Grant not been “fighting,” “causing trouble,” or “resisting arrest,” he would be alive today. Trayvon Martin has been criticized for not answering Zimmerman’s questions demanding to know his identify, etc., once Zimmerman exited his vehicle and confronted Martin. One commentator on a conservative website even stated that the now-ubiquitous photo of a sweatshirt-hooded Martin, looking into a computer camera, was “menancing.”

8. “Questionable conduct” as “fellow officer sympathy and support”

A woman who came forward as a witness to some of what occurred in the Trayvon Martin killing says that when she told her story to an investigating officer that she heard Martin calling for help, she was corrected by the officer and told it was Zimmerman who had been calling for help. Officer Tony Pirone stated that he clearly remembered Mehserle state that he was going to Tase Oscar Grant, but did not clearly remember that Oscar Grant was trying to knee him in the groin. Additionally, Pirone and other officers testified that the scene of the incident was very unruly and that they feared for their lives to justify the shooting, when video evidence and witness testimony clearly showed that such was not the case.

9. “Benefit of the doubt” gets taken to an entirely new level

A lay or regular person who used a firearm to shoot and kill someone would have been automatically detained, arrested, and the case turned over to a district attorney who would then make the final decision of whether or not to file charges or drop the case against the perpetrator. George Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense was sufficient enough to send him home for the night. Johannes Mehserle refused to speak with BART investigators about what led to his shooting of Oscar Grant and he fled the state of California and went to Nevada. His bail was set by the court at a whopping $3 million dollars, which was paid for by a non-profit association of law enforcement officers, as well as his legal defense team.

10. Support remains regardless of the level of callousness and inhumanity

George Zimmerman used foul language and a racial slur in reference to Trayvon Martin; before shooting him to death, the 17-year-old Martin can be heard on the 911 tapes “wailing” for help. Oscar Grant who had also been cursed at and called a racial slur, can be seen on the videos taken by BART train riders as being on his knees, seemingly pleading with Officer Tony Pirone not to physically harm him. His head and neck would soon be pinned under the knee of the 200-plus pound officer, and a witness said he told the officer “he could not breathe.”

A White Supremacist Boys Club

George Zimmerman was initially identified in the media as being white. We have since learned that his mother is Peruvian and to many people he appears physically to be a Latino. His father, in an effort to defend him, wrote to the press that his son was “a Spanish-speaking minority” … “more like the boy he killed than people thought.”

Being a person of color in the United States does not make one immune to white supremacist ideology or acting on its behalf. Amerikkka has a long history of the thin blue line of law enforcement being completely erased when it comes to white terrorist violence against Black people.

Although reports have begun indicating that Zimmerman was not a part of an “official” neighborhood watch and that he had designated himself as “captain,” he was still allowed to operate freely – in spite of complaints by his neighbors that he took his job “too zealously” – obviously given clearance because he was seen as being “one of the boys.”

Both history and current reality continue to prove that boys will be boys.

- Thandisizwe Chimurenga

Walking While Black: The Senseless Killing of Trayvon Martin

The recent slaying of 17 year-old Trayvon Martin is yet another reminder of the every day presence of racism in the United States. I find it necessary to remind everyone that this is not an isolated incident, but one that occurs daily across America for most black men. The difference here is that the normal threats and harassment that Trayvon would typically encounter on any given day as a black man, turned into his innocent death. As Malcolm Gladwell discussed in the death of Amadou Diallo, an innocent black man in New York City who was mistakenly shot 19 times by 4 police officers (who fired a total of 41 shots), the decisions that George Zimmerman made about Trayvon Martin were done in a “blink of an eye”. His actions, on the other hand, were done in justification of his already conceived (and likely subconscious) thoughts about this young man rather than in response to Trayvon’s clearly non-threatening behavior. Any one of Zimmerman’s compilation of actions that fateful evening, if terminated, would have likely resulted in a different outcome, one where Trayvon would still be alive today. But Zimmerman is operating on societal-based stereotypes and assumptions of anti-black racial frames about black men that has been around since the mid-1600’s and continues in today’s white-dominated society.

I find it hard to understand why anyone would be foolish enough to discount the continuing assault on the black male presence. Black men have always been public enemy number one in white America, and that has not changed much in 400 years. Since slavery times, African American men were seen as threats to white manhood. Unrelenting white racial stereotypes around black male bodies provided the perfect justification for the incredible violence directed at them, whether in the cotton fields or working for his master in the big house.

Black men were clearly not on equal footing with other men, especially white men for centuries. The conditions, stories, received wisdoms and other discourses created by whites about black folk constituted predictable cognitive road maps or frames that white folks enacted on black bodies. Frames are patterned ways of thinking about human differences such as race that apply generally to people at large and influence our legal system, schooling, healthcare, unemployment and housing to name a few. The white racial frames created around “Black” were and remains anathema, which is certainly the case with Trayvon’s senseless death. The shooter, George Zimmerman, a man of apparent Latino heritage and self-proclaimed neighborhood watch captain, mystifies many white observers. Given that both black and brown people in American are oppressed, how could this be? What’s happening here is that Zimmerman is acting on the existing white racial frames that operate as unconscious scripts on how to interact with racial “others” in our society.

White racial framing of black male bodies is a large-scale centuries-old undertaking that not only affects white behavior toward Blacks, but black and Latino behaviors toward each other and themselves. These racial understandings have existed ever since Europeans first stepped foot on the Western shores of Africa and began a long and tortuous relationship with Africans. And this continues today where the steady stream of media portrayals of young black men as “dangerous” predators is too prolific in our society to ignore. Anyone reading this blog can certainly think of one or more stereotypes about black men. When you think of the face of crime, it is easy to conjure the image of Trayvon or another young man of color as the scary and dangerous “other” or the boogey man. Minorities are not immune to this frame or thought process. Latinos, Blacks and other Americans of color receive and act on many of the same white racial stereotypes and impulses, and Mr. Zimmerman is no exception.

Now, take the context of white society from its historical vantage point and see how it continues the play out (albeit less overt at times). Floridians have instituted a law that has resurrected the Wild Wild West, which allows an individual to take the law into his/her own hands. A law seemingly provoked by the looting that occurred following several Florida hurricanes. After filtered media images following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the assumption is that the people looting are black. Thus, the law can be interpreted such that if a black man is stealing, a white man can shoot and kill him. And the onus is placed on the victim from prove he was innocent of a crime before being shot. We have now gone even beyond the egregious “eye for an eye” and moved to a place where a heart can be taken for the loss of a finger, but no one seemed to care that the law implied it was the heart of a black man until it was taken literally. What results is that someone like Trayvon Martin has become caught in the crosshairs of a nation that has yet to truly reconcile its profoundly racist past.

While the nation continues to mount an all out and justifiable assault on the circumstances surrounding Trayvon’s death, let’s not forgot the conditions that gave rise to this young man’s death in the first place: white supremacy, or to put it nicely, a white dominated society. Rest in peace Trayvon Martin; may your death not be in vain.

Please sign this petition and forward to all concerned stakeholders.

ACTION ALERT! Trayvon Martin Protest Organizer Arrested in Memphis, Tenn.!

PLEASE CALL NOW AND REPOST BROADLY!

Trayvon Martin Protest Organizer Arrested in Memphis, Tenn.!

Long-time black community activist Minister Kennith Van Buren, organizer of the upcoming March 28 protest in Memphis, Tenn., of the murder of Trayvon Martin, was arrested by Memphis police this afternoon while he was working as a vendor at a local flea market. A Memphis police officer called my house a couple of hours ago and spoke to my husband, Lorenzo Komboa Ervin, and said Minister Van Buren had been arrested and that we should come and pick up the items he had been selling at the flea market. (I gave Min. Van Buren a ride to the flea market early this morning and was scheduled to pick him up.) The police officer would not tell Lorenzo what the charges against the minister are, and we haven’t been able to find out any details yet.

Lorenzo and I have been helping Min. Van Buren, who is executive director of the civil rights group, Direct Action, Inc. organize for the march, and we’re also working with him as organizers in the Memphis Bus Riders Union. Min. Van Buren is a long-time transit rights activist. His arrest is harassment, pure and simple, an attempt to stop Wednesday’s march and rally and also an attempt to stop the work of the bus riders union, which last week filed a federal civil rights complaint against the local bus company. City officials are very upset about the complaint that we filed to the Federak Transit Administration. We’ve also asked the Memphis City Council to conduct public hearings of the bus company, MATA, which operates one of the worst transit systems in the country.

Minister Van Buren first announced the march and rally in January. Memphis is the poorest big city in the U.S., and has a majority black population (about 63 percent). The purpose of the march and rally was to protest the high levels of black unemployment and poverty in the city. Meanwhile, big corporations like Fed Ex get away without paying their taxes while black people suffer. Memphis Mayor AC Wharton immediately took a hostile position on the march. City officials would not even allow Min. Van Buren to apply for a permit for the march, a clear violation of his First Amendment rights. About two days before the Feb. 18 founding meeting of the bus riders union, Wharton summoned the minister to his office, threatening to arrest him if he didn’t call the march and rally off. Wharton also told the minister that he would not allow the bus riders union to hold “illegal” protests at the bus terminals, such as the one that Direct Action did in the early 1990′s, when protesters blocked the buses from coming and going during a demonstration at the bus terminal downtown.

Today, there was an article in the local Memphis daily newspaper about Wednesday’s protest against the murder of Trayvon Martin. At the protest, the issues of the racial profiling and criminalization of black youth in and the high rate of black youth employment in Memphis are going to be raised.

We need everyone’s help to get Min. Kennith Van Buren out of jail ASAP. Flood the Memphis City Jail with phone calls, (901)636-5660. Tell the police you’re outraged about the arrest of Min. Van Buren, who is a dedicated community activist. Flood Mayor AC Wharton’s office with emails, phone calls and faxes: mayor@memphistn.gov; phone (901)576-6500, and fax, (901)576-6200. Tell the mayor you’re outraged that he would not even allow Min. Van Buren to apply for a permit for the march, in violation of his First Amendment rights, and you’re outraged that he would threaten and bully Min. Van Buran.

We will do everything in our power to get Min. Van Buren out of jail ASAP. However, if we don’t get him out buy March 28, the protest against the murder of Trayvon Martin will go on as planned! And furthermore, the work of the Memphis Bus Riders Union to get better transit service for its riders, 90 percent of whom are black and poor, will not be stopped!

Peace and love,
JoNina

Trayvon by Jasiri X

Trayvon by Jasiri X

Trayvon
by Jasiri X

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lyrics
It’s Sunday the God’s day a day of rest
The Nba all stars are playing next
But right outside that same city
The celebratory atmosphere would change quickly
Who watching the game with me you know lil Trayvon
Was reppin his home town D Wade and LeBron
He had just came up from Miami to see his daddy
Who knew such a great weekend would end so badly
In a place where you move because it’s safe for your family
But some people got a ingrown hate for your family
Halftime just a short brake from the slammin
Bout to go to the store lil cuz you want some candy?
Bet I grab you some skittles kid
I’ll be right back in a little bit

Paid for lil cuz’s skittles and a iced tea
walked out the store and felt the chill of the night breeze
it seemed a little colder than before
he didn’t know it was a boy like a soldier in a war
that was watching him clocking him thinking about stopping him
nine milly cocking them who’s this nigga walking in my neighborhood
he fits all the specifics of criminal statistics he looks suspicious
911, what’s your emergency
A black man’s walking through my hood purposely
stay clam, it’s just little Trayvon but he wanna be the hero so he put’s his cape on
George Zimmerman neighborhood block captain
loaded glock strapped in fake cop has been
got out the car ignoring what the cops asked him
They always get away this time that will not happin

George Zimmerman didn’t take his Ritalin
drunk off adrenaline says he making a citizens arrest
Trayvon looks at him vexxed
I just walked to the store nothing more nothing less
Just steps from his home he ignored his request
George grabs him, Trayvon swings and connects
Starts screaming out for help but Zimmerman see a threat
so he pulls out his gun and he points it at his chest
He fires but he misses Trayvon pleads for forgiveness
I didn’t do nothing this is senseless
but George Zimmerman was so vicious
he made sure the second shot hit em no survivor no witness
Trayvon never gave his cousin his skittles
missed the all star game didn’t see another dribble
And George Zimmerman wasn’t even arrested
the message is only white lives are protected
In America
credits
released 19 March 2012

Remembering the Real Dragon- An Interview with George Jackson May 16 and June 29, 1971

Interview by Karen Wald and published in Cages of Steel: The Politics Of Imprisonment In The United States
(Edited by Ward Churchill and J.J. Vander Wall)

Karen Wald: George, could you comment on your conception of revolution?

George Jackson: The principle contradiction between the oppressor and oppressed can be reduced to the fact that the only way the oppressor can maintain his position is by fostering, nurturing, building contempt for the oppressed. That thing gets out of hand after a while. It leads to excesses that we see and the excesses are growing within the totalitarian state here. The excesses breed resistance; resistance is growing. The thing grows in a spiral. It can only end one way. The excesses lead to resistance, resistance leads to brutality, the brutality leads to more resistance, and finally the question will be resolved with either the uneconomic destruction of the oppressed, or the end of oppression. These are the workings of revolution. It grows in spirals, confrontations, and I mean on all levels. The institutions of society have buttressed the establishment, so I mean all levels have to be assaulted.

Wald: How does the prison liberation movement fit into this? Is its importance over-exaggerated or contrived?

Jackson: We don’t have to contrive any…. Look, the particular thing I’m involved in right now, the prison movement was started by Huey P. Newton and the black panther party. Huey and the rest of the comrades around the country. We’re working with Ericka [Huggins] and Bobby [Seale, chairman of the BPP; at the time they were co-defendants in a murder trial in New Haven, Connecticut, on charges which were subsequently dismissed], the prison movement in general, the movement to prove the to the establishment that the concentration camp technique won’t work on us. We don’t have to contrive any importance to our particular movement. It’s a very real, very-very real issue and I’m of the opinion that, right along with the student movement, right along with the old. Familiar workers’ movement, the prison movement is central to the process of revolution as a whole.

Wald: Many of the cadres of the revolutionary forces on the outside have been captured and imprisoned. Are you saying that even though they’re in prison, these cadres can still function in a meaningful way for the revolution?

Jackson: Well, we’re all familiar with the function of the prison as an institution serving the needs of the totalitarian state. We’ve got to destroy that function; the function has to be no longer viable, in the end. It’s one of the strongest institutions supporting the totalitarian state. We have to destroy its effectiveness, and that’s what the prison movement is all about. What I’m saying is that they put us in these concentration campshere the same as they put people in tiger cages or “strategic hamlets” in Vietnam. The idea is to isolate, eliminate, liquidate the dynamic sections of the overall movement, the protagonists of the movement. What we’ve got to do is prove this won’t work. We’ve got to organize our resistance once we’re inside, give them no peace, turn the prison into just another front of the struggle, tear it down from the inside. Understand?

Wald: But can such a battle be won?

Jackson: A good deal of this has to do with our ability to communicate to the people on the street. The nature of the function of the prison within the police state has to be continuously explained, elucidated to the people on the street because we can’t fight alone in here. Oh Yeah, we can fight, but if we’re isolated, if the state is successful in accomplishing that, the results are usually not constructive in terms of proving our point. We fight and we die, but that’s not the point, although it may be admirable from some sort of purely moral point of view. The point is, however, in the face of what we confront, to fight and win. That’s the real objective: not just to make statements, no matter how noble, but to destroy the system that oppresses us. By any means available to us. And to do this, we must be connected, in contact and communication with those in the struggle on the outside. We must be mutually supporting because we’re all in this together. It’s one struggle at base.

Wald: Is the form of struggle you’re talking about here different from those with which we may be more familiar with, those which are occurring in the third world, for example?

Jackson: Not Really. Of course, all struggles are different, depending upon the whole range of particular factors involved. But many of them have fundamental commonalities which are more important than the differences. We are talking about a guerrilla war in this country. The guerrilla, the new type of warrior who’s developed out of conflicts in the third world countries, doesn’t fight for glory necessarily. The guerrilla fights to win. The guerrilla fights the same kind of fight we do, what’s sometimes called a “poor man’s war.” It’s not a form of war fought with high tech weaponry, or state-of-the-art gadgets. It’s fought with whatever can be had-captured weapons when they can be had, but often antiquated firearms, homemade ordnance, knives, bows and arrows, even slingshots-but mostly through the sheer will of the guerrilla to fight and win, no matter what. Huey [P. Newton] says “the power of the people will overcome the power of the man’s technology,” and we’ve seen this proven true time after time in recent history.
You know, guerrilla war is not simply a matter of tactics and technique. It’s not just questions of hit-and-run or terrorism. It’s a matter of proving to the established order that it simply can’t sustain itself, that there is no possible way for them to win by utilizing the means of force available to them. We have to prove that wars are won by human beings, and not by mechanical devices. We’ve got to show that in the end they can’t resist us. And we will! We’re going to do it. There’s never going to ever be a moment’s peace for anyone associated with the establishment any place where I’m at, or where any of my comrades are at. But we’re going to need coordination, we’re going to need help. And right now, that help should come in the form of education. It’s critical to teach the people out there how important it is to destroy the function of the prison within the society. That, and to show them in concrete terms that the war is on – right now! – and that in that sense we really aren’t any different than the Vietnamese, or the Cubans, or the Algerians, or any of the other revolutionary peoples of the world.

Wald: In an interview with some imprisoned tupamaros, urban guerrillas in Uraguay, the question was raised about the decimation of the ranks of tupamaros; comrades killed or imprisoned by the state. Those interviewed assured me that there were far more people joining the ranks than were being lost to state repression, and that the movement was continuing to grow. Do you feel the same confidence about the black panther party, about the revolutionary movement as a whole in this country?

Jackson: We’re structured in such a way as to allow us to exist and continue to resist despite the losses we’ve absorbed. It was set up that way. We know the enemy operates under the concept of “kill the head and the body will die.” They target those they see as key leaders. We know this, and we’ve set up safeguards to prevent the strategy from working against us. I know I could be killed tomorrow, but the struggle would continue, there would be two hundred or three hundred to take my place. As Fred Hampton put it, “You can kill the revolutionary, but you can’t kill the revolution.” Hampton, as you know, was head of the party in Chicago, and was murdered in his sleep by the police in chicago, along with Mark Clark, the party leader from Peoria, Illinois. Their loss is tremendous, but the struggle goes on. Right?
It’s not just a military thing. It’s also an educational thing. The two go hand-in-hand. And it’s also a cyclical thing. Right now, we are in a peak cycle. There’s tremendous energy out there, directed against the state. It’s not all focused, but it’s there, and it’s building. Maybe this will be sufficient to accomplish what we must accomplish over the fairly short run. We’ll see, and we can certainly hope that this is the case. But perhaps not. We must be prepared to wage a long struggle. If this is the case then we’ll probably see a different cycle, one in which the revolutionary energy of the people seems to have dispersed, run out of steam. But – and this is important- such cycles are deceptive. Things appear to be at low ebb, but actually what’s happening is a period of regroupment, a period in which we step back and learn from the mistakes made during the preceding cycle. We educate ourselves from our experience, and we educate those around us. And all the while, we develop and perfect our core organization. Then the next time a peak cycle comes around, we are far readier then we were the last time. It’s a combination of military and education, always. Ultimately, we will win. You see?

Wald: Do you see signs of progress on the inside, in prison?

Jackson: Yes, I do. Progress is certainly been made in terms of raising the consciousness of at least some sectors of the prison population. In part, that’s due to the limited victories we’ve achieved over the past few years. They’re token victories perhaps, but things we can and must take advantage of. For example, we’ve struggled hard around the idea of being able to communicate directly with people on the outside. At this point, any person on the street can correspond with any individual inside prison. My suggestion is, now that we have the channels for education secured, at least temporarily, is that people on the outside should begin to bombard the prisons with newspapers, books, journals, clippings, anything of educational value, to help politicize the comrades who are not yet relating. And we, of course, must reciprocate by consistently sending out information concerning what’s really going on in here. Incidentally, interviews like this go a long way in that direction. There should be much more of this sort of thing.

Wald: You disclosed a few months ago that you had been for some time a member of the Black Panther Party. Certainly, the work of the party in this state and elsewhere, the work to free political prisoners, and of course the party’s work within the black community have been factors which influenced your decision. But has the internationalism of the Black Party been one of the key aspects which attracted you to it? And, if this is so, is internationalism meaningful for people in prison, and is it therefore one reason why they’d relate to the party?

Jackson: Well, let’s take it a step at a time. Huey came to the joint about a year ago because he’d heard stories about the little thing we had going on already. He talked with us, and checked it out, and he decided to absorb us. Afterwards, he sent me a message and told me that. He just told me that I was part of the Party now, and that our little group was part of the Party as well. And he told me that my present job is to build, or help build, the prison movement. Just like that. Like I said, the objective of our movement is to prove the state can’t seal us off in a concentration camp so I accepted. What else could I do? It was the correct thing. Now, as to your second point, the people inside the joint, the convict class, have related to the ideology of the party 100%. And we’ve moved from… well, not we, I’ve always been an internationalist. And a materialist. I guess I was a materialist before I was born. I’m presently studying Swahili so that I will be able to converse with the comrades in Africa on their own terms, without having to rely on a colonial language. And I’ve been working on Spanish, which is of course a colonial language, but which is spoken by millions upon millions of comrades in latin America and elsewhere. I plan to study Chinese after that, and possibly Arabic. When I complete this task, I will be able to speak to something like seventy-five percent of the world’s people in their own tongue or something akin to their own tongue. I think that’s important.
The other brothers here are picking up on it. And there are some, especially those who are already politicized before they came inside, who are on top of it. But like I said, it’s of utmost importance that people outside bombard this place with material which will help prisoners understand the importance of internationalism to their struggle. It’s coming, but it’s still got a way to go before the educational process is complete. Ignorance is a terrible thing and being cut off from the flow of the movement is really detrimental. We must correct the situation as a first priority.

Wald: Can you receive mail and publications from other countries?

Jackson: Mail can be received from anywhere on the globe. I get stuff right now from Germany and England and France as a result of the book being published in these countries. And a few copies of Tricontinental [a Cuban revolutionary journal] have gotten in. They’ve helped broaden the scope, and explained a few things to comrades that they didn’t understand. This is something that really upsets the goons. In years past, every time a black prisoner would achieve and intellectual breakthrough and begin to relate our situation to the situation of the Cubans, say, or the Vietnamese or the Chinese-or anywhere else in the Third World-well these prisoners would be quickly assassinated. Now that’s become a little harder to do. So, I believe the people on the street should just start to flood the prisons with things like Tricontinental.

Wald: Despite a few peaceful victories in Latin America, such as that of Salvador Allende in Chile, many people still believe that armed struggle is the only way most Latin American countries are going to be free. Also, there’ve been some recent victories in the courts for members of the Black Panther Party, Los Siete de la Raza [seven Chicano activists from San Franciscocharged with murder in 1969; they were acquitted], and so on. Do you believe the victories in Chile and in the courts…

Jackson: They were appeasement. Allende… the thing that happened with Allende… look, it was not a “peaceful revolution.” That’s deception. Allende is a good man, but what’s going on in chile is just a reflection of the national aspirations of the ruling class. You will never find a peaceful revolution. Nobody surrenders their power without resistance. And until the upper class in Chile is crushed, Allende could at any time be defeated. No revolution can be consolidated under the conditions that prevail in chile. Blood will flow down there. Either Allende will shed it in liquidating the ruling class, or the ruling class will shed his whenever it decides the time is right. Either way, there’s no peaceful revolution.¹
Much the same can be said for the court cases you’re talking about. They’re an illusion. Every once in a while the establishment cuts loose of a case-usually one which was so outrageous to begin with that they couldn’t possibly win it without exposing their whole system of injustice anyway-and then they trot around babbling about “proof that the system works,” how just and fair it is. They never mention the fact that the people who were supposed to have received the justice of the system have often already spent months and months in lockup, and have been forced to spend thousands of thousands of dollars, keeping themselves from spending years and years in prison, before being found innocent. All this to defend themselves against charges for which there was no basis to begin with, and the state knew there was no basis. Some system. You get your punishment before your trial in this country if you happen to be black or brown or political. But they use these things to say the system works-which I guess it does, from their perspective-and to build their credibility for the cases that really count, when they really want to railroad someone into a prison cell. The solution isn’t to learn how to play the system for occasional “victories” of this order, although I’ll admit these sometimes have a tactical advantage. Winning comes only in destroying the system itself. We should never be confused on this point.

Wald: but the alternatives sometimes bear dire consequences. This raises the difficult question of the death of your brother, Jonathon, and whether his life may to a certain extent have been wasted.

Jackson: Well, that’s obviously a tough question for me because, emotionally, I very much wish my little brother was alive and well. But as to whether I think Jonathan’s life may have been wasted? No, I don’t. I think the only mistake he made was thinking that all of the 200 pigs who were there would have, you know, some sort of concern for the life of the judge. Of course, they chose to kill the judge, and to risk killing the D.A. and the jurors, in order to get at Jonathan and the others. It may have been a technical error. But I doubt it, because I know Jonathan was very conversant with military ideas, and I’m sure it occurred to him that there was a possibility that at least one pig would shoot, and that if one shot, they’ all shoot, and it’d be a massacre. Judge or no judge. It was all a gigantic bluff, you know? Jonathan took a calculated risk. Some people say that makes him a fool. I say his was the sort of courage that cause men of his age to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in somewhat different settings. The difference is that Jonathan understood very clearly who his real enemy was; the guy who gets the congressional medal usually doesn’t. Now, who’s the fool?
Personally, I bear his loss very badly. It’s a great burden upon my soul. But I think it’s imperative – we owe it to him – never to forget why he did what he did. And that was to stand as a symbol in front of the people – in front of me – and say in effect that we have both the capacity and the obligation to stand up, regardless of the consequences. He was saying that if we all stand up, our collective power will destroy the forces that oppose us. Jonathan lived by these principles, he was true to them, he died by them. This is the most honorable thing imaginable. He achieved a certain deserved immortality insofar as he truly had the courage to die on his feet rather than live one moment on his knees. He stood as an example, a beacon to all of us, and I am in awe of him, even though he was my younger brother.

Wald: The news today said that Tom Hayden² declared in front of the National Student Association Congress that there will be more actions like the one Jonathon attempted. Do you agree?

Jackson: I’ve been thinking a lot about the situation. I’m not saying that these particular tactics-even when successfully executed-constitute the only valid revolutionary form at this time. Obviously, they don’t. There must also be mass organizing activities, including large-scale nonviolent demonstrations, education of the least developed social sectors, and so on. These things are essential. The revolution must proceed at all levels. But this is precisely what makes the tactics necessary, and far too many self-proclaimed revolutionaries have missed the point on this score. Such tactics as Jonathon employed represent a whole level – an entire dimension — of struggle which has almost always been missing from the so-called American scene. And while it is true that armed struggle in-and-of-itself can never achieve revolution, neither can the various other forms of activity. The covert, armed, guerrilla dimension of the movement fits hand-in-glove with the overt dimension; the two dimensions can and must be seen as inseparable aspects of the same phenomenon; neither dimension can succeed without the other.
Viewing things objectively, we can readily determine that the overt dimension of the movement is relatively well-developed at this time. Over the past dozen years, we’ve seen the creation of a vast mass movement in opposition to the establishment in this country. I won’t go into this in any depth because I’m sure that everyone already knows what I’m talking about. It should be enough to observe that within the past two years, the movement has repeatedly shown itself able to put as many as a million people in the streets at any one time to express their opposition to the imperialist war in Indochina [this seems to be a reference to the November 1969 Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, staged in Washington, D.C.]. The covert dimension of the movement is, by comparison, very much retarded at the present time. In part, this may be due to the very nature of the activity at issue: guerrillas always begin in terms of very small numbers of people. But, more to the point, I think the situation is due to there having been a strong resistance to the whole idea of armed struggle on the part of much of the movement’s supposed leadership-particularly the white leadership-up to this point. I hear them arguing-contrary to history, logic, just plain common sense, and everything else -that armed struggle is unnecessary, even “counterproductive.” I hear them arguing in the most stupidly misleading fashion imaginable that the overt dimension of the movement can bring off revolution on its own. This is the sheerest nonsense, and “leaders” who engage in such a babble should be discarded without hesitation.
We may advance a simple rule: the likelihood of significant social change in the United States may be gauged by the extent to which the covert, armed, guerrilla aspect of the struggle is developed and consolidated. If the counterrevolutionaries and fools who parade themselves as leaders while resisting the development of the movement’s armed capacity are overcome-and the struggle is therefore able to proceed in a proper direction-I think we will see a revolutionary change in this country rather shortly. If, on the other hand, this leadership is able to successfully do what amounts to the work of the state- that is to say, to convince most people to shy away from armed struggle, and to isolate those who do undertake to act as guerrillas from the mass of support which should rightly be theirs – then the revolution will be forestalled. We will have a situation here much the same as that in Chile, where the establishment allows a certain quantity of apparent social gains to be achieved, but stands ready to strip these “gains” away whenever it’s convenient. You can mark my words on this: unless a real revolution is attained, all that’s been gained during the struggles of the past decade will be lost during the next ten years. It might not even take that long.³
At the present time, I see a number of very hopeful signs – very positive indications- that a true revolutionary force is emerging. Most notably, of course, the direction taken by the Black Panther Party is correct. But there are many other examples I could name. Even in the white community, we have seen the development, or at least the beginnings of the development, of what is necessary with the establishment of the Weatherman organization. We clearly have a long way to go, but it’s happening, and that’s what’s important at the moment. The very fact that Tom Hayden, who is of course a white radical himself, was willing to make the statement he made, and before the audience to which he made it, indicates the truth of this. So, yes, I tend to agree with him and hope we are both correct. Clear enough?

Wald: Yes. Do you see a relationship between what happened at the Marin County Civic Center, between what Jonathan and the other brothers did, and the kinds of things that happen in the Third world, say, in Latin America?

Jackson: Well, of course. Jonathan was a student … he was a military-minded brother. He was a student of Che Guevarra (sic) and Ho, and Giap and Mao, and many others. Tupamaros, Carlos Marighella. He paid close attention to other established guerrillas, other established revolutionary societies, revolutionary cultures around the world. He was very conscious of what was going on in South America and, well, let’s just say that about ninety-nine percent of our conversation was centered on military things. I knew him well. He understood.

Wald: I was going to ask if the Cuban revolutionaries had a significance for you and Jonathan in any concrete ways.

Jackson: Hmmmm … I don’t think it did for Jonathan. But it did for me, because I was in prison. I was just starting my time on this beat right here when Castro, Che and the rest carried the revolution there to a successful conclusion. And the alarm that spread throughout the nation, especially, you know, within the establishment and the police… well, let’s just say that as a newly-made prisoner I enjoyed that a lot. Someone else’s liberation at the establishment’s expense, it was a vicarious boost at a time when I most needed it. And I’ve always felt very tenderly toward the Cuban revolution as a result.

Wald: Then you weren’t an anti-communist when you came into prison?

Jackson: Oh, I’ve never been an anti-communist. I suppose you could say I didn’t have much understanding of communism when I came in, and so I wasn’t pro-communist in any meaningful way. But I was never “anti.”

Wald: But didn’t you initially find it terrible that Cuba had “gone communist”?

Jackson: No-no-no! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m trying to get across that I’ve alays been fundamentally anti-authoritarian. Communism came later. And when the Cuban revolution happened, the very fact that it upset the authorities here so bad made me favor it right off and made me want to investigate it much further. The idea was that if they don’t like it, it must be good. You see? And that’s what led me to seriously study socialism. I owe much of my own consciousness to the Cuban revolution. But that’s me. It doesn’t necessarily pertain to Jonathan. Okay?

Wald: Did the fact that such a tiny country so close to Florida pulled off a successful revolution give you a sense that, “If they can do it, we can do it”?

Jackson: Yes, both then and now. It caused me to consider the myth of invincibility. You know, the idea of U.S. military invincibility was just completely destroyed by the Cuban revolution. The U.S. supported Batista with rockets and planes, everything was needed, and he still lost. He was destroyed by guerrilla warfare, the same thing that’s taking place in Vietnam right now. And the U.S. is losing again. The Viet Cong, I mean they take these gadgets – the best things the best military minds in the western world can produce – they take them and the ball them up and throw them right back in the face of these imperialist fools. Cuba and now Vietnam; these things catch my attention. I try to learn the lessons from other peoples’ successes. Now, in that sense I’m sure the Cuban revolution had significance for Jonathan, too.

Wald: I see our time is almost up. Do you have any last remarks you’d like to make?

Jackson: Yes, I’d like to say POWER TO THE PEOPLE! And I’d like to say that by that I mean all power, not just the token sort of power the establishment is prepared to give us for its own purposes. I’d like to say that the only way we’re ever going to have change is to have the real power necessary to bring the changes we want into being. I’d like to say that the establishment is never going to be persuaded into giving us real power, it’s never going to be tricked into, it’s never going to feel guilty and change its ways. The only way we’re ever going get the power we need to change things is by taking it, over the open, brutal, physical opposition of the establishment. I’d like to say we must use, as Malcolm X put it, any means necessary to take power. I’d like to say that we really have no alternatives in the matter, and that it’s ridiculous or worse to think that we do. That’s what I’d like to say.

Notes

1. Editor’s note: True to Jackson’s prediction, the Chilean military – in combination with the CIA, Kissinger’s State Department, and transnational corporations (notably ITT and anaconda)- brought down the Allende government in September of 1973. More than 30,000 progressives and Allende himself were killed during the coup and the following three years. Many thousands more were driven into permanent exile. The Chilean people have been saddled with the neo-fascist regime of Colonel Augusto Pinochet ever since. Although demonstration elections did take place in 1989, Pinochet still remains in charge of the military. [back]

2. Editor’s note: This was the period before he totally sold out.[back]

3. Editor’s note: Actually, it was a bit longer; the Reagan administration of the 80s was required to validate Jackson’s prediction.[back]

Neva 4get

Pause and reflect… teach and ACT!