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Editorial: VIOLENCE AT HOLMESBURG
A year ago, a three-judge Common Pleas Court panel ruled that confinement in
the 77-year-old Holmesburg prison in northeast Philadelphia constituted unconstitutionally
cruel and unusual punishment.
Don Haskin, columnist of the Philadelphia Daily News writes that violence, drug abuse and homosexuality have been as much a part of life at Holmesburg as bad food and boring work. It was at Holmesburg that four prison inmates were roasted to death in the infamous "Klondike cells" heat treatment punishment in 1938.
Is it any wonder then that the Warden, Patrick Curran and Deputy Warden, Robert Fromhold, should have been the victims of such conditions? Brothers Frederick Burton and Joseph Bowen, the attackers, acting out the frustrations and desperations of the more than 1,200 prison inmates crowded into antiquated facilities built for 660, had had enough of being the victims.
The violence originates from the prison conditions and the prison authorities. Even now Joseph Bowen lies near death from the vicious beating he received from a small army of guards following the attack. An eyewitness told the Philadelphia Tribune: "A lot of guards ran into the office. They jumped all over the two men who did the stabbing. They beat them with a chair and blackjacks. They kept beating them over and over again until they were unconscious."
"Killings Assure House Vote To Restore Death Penalty" screams the Philadelphia Inquirer the day following the incident. "This is a good case for a death penalty test", Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo tells reporters at the gates to Holmesburg prison. But, the death penalty will do nothing to relieve the frustrations and the desperation of men and women subjected to dehumanizing prison conditions.
Imposing the death penalty is comparable to spreading the desperation, violence and murder that proponents of the death penalty claim its reinstitution will cure. To protect the lives of prison inmates as well as wardens and guards there is only one solution: Do away with prisons as they exist today throughout America, rid the judicial system of its injustices toward Black, poor and oppressed citizens and create economic, political and social justice for all American citizens.
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LETTER TO A WOMAN'S DETENTION CENTER
(Washington, D.C.) - The following words were authored by Chuck Barrett, a former
employee at the Women's Detention Center (WDC) in Washington, D.C., who has
come to understand the quality of his life, his freedom, in terms of the life
and freedom of others. He writes, to the women prisoners with whom he worked
at the WDC, a farewell letter which we here in part reproduce:
TO THE WOMEN AT WDC:
I am leaving my official duties at WDC to take a job I have been seeking since June. My last day is March ninth. I want to tell you about it, and about some of my feelings at this point…
I have been deeply and profoundly moved by your support for my work here at WDC. You are beautiful people. You have taught me a great revolutionary lesson. You have taught me that the beat of my heart is not my own. The fact that I go home at night is not a sign of my freedom. The fact that I return, and will keep returning, that is the sign of freedom. For freedom is not real until it is freedom for something, for someone. Freedom from something is false freedom, which is another word for slavery, another word for death.
Your jailors have taught me something too. They have taught me that revolutions are won day by agonizing day, like the dripping of a slow leaking
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faucet. For they are victims too. The system is enslaving
captor and captured alike. We merely live in different jails. Long before the
revolution comes, long before it is over, we will all be staring empty miles
up at a vacant sky.
Mere release from jail is not freedom. The monster of unfreedom is anywhere and everywhere. His lethal sinews are made of courts, judge's robes, disciplinary reports, lawyer's fees, bars, jails, "rehabilitation", heroin, knives, guns, money, fast money, work -- they are all forms of death. But there is also an active power of life in the world. It overcomes death. It denies the power of judges. It does not need jails. It hates addiction. It is not impressed with "programs." It is the power of Love, of Resurrection.
And when I have looked into your faces, I have seen it.
May you always grow in Freedom!
Chuck Barrett
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“OPERATION GEMSTONE: THE GREAT WATERGATE CONSPIRACY”
Conspirators on the road to absolute power is the essence of "Operation
Gemstone"; the Watergate scandal is an unexpected, sharp and dangerous
curve on that road. Unless the democratic institutions of the people are made
to work, the conspirators will successfully manipulate that curve and press
on to fascism.
"Operation Gemstone, The Great Watergate Conspiracy", is a work in progress by the radical Citizens' Research and Investigating Committee (CRIC), headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. THE BLACK PANTHER has been given exclusive publication rights to print excerpts from the work.
Part I, which appeared last week, introduced the broader implications of Operation Gemstone. This week's excerpt deals briefly with some background leading up to Watergate and details the creation of Gemstone's chain of command.
PART II
The GOP did badly in the Congressional elections of 1970 despite extensive campaigning by Mr. Nixon and Vice-President Agnew. During a final West Coast swing the President was pelted with eggs and stones as he entered his limosine following a speech in San Jose, California. Within days the Chief of Police and congressman Paul McClosky, Republican of California, revealed that the "militants" were actually members of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), an ultra-conservative appendage of the right-wing of the GOP, posing as violent anti-war demonstrators. This relatively unnoticed incident in 1970, marked one of the earliest rehearsals of Operation Gemstone…
The first entry proper in this Watergate log book is Spring of 1971. But it is important to remember that almost all of the highest ranking names implicated in the exploding scandal in the Spring of 1973 were not only operating in the final ugly days of the 1970 campaign, but were actually indicted by the California Supreme Court in 1962 for corrupt and unfair campaign practices in Richard
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Nixon's unsuccessful run for the governor's office. Haldleman,
Stans, Kalmbach, Klein, Sagretti, Weinberger, Chotiner were the names of those
found guilty in 1962 but the court stressed, the man who directed and controlled
the violations was the candidate himself, Richard M. Nixon.
But that was 1962. A decade later something happened in the middle of the night at Washington's swank Watergate Hotel that triggered ever widening circles of revelations that would dwarf not only the event in California of '62, but the greatest previous political scandal in the nation's history, the Teapot Dome Affair during the Harding Administration. In Harding's day they traded power for money; the men of Gemstone gave money away - ten million dollars of it! - in return for power.
The story, then, begins at the Watergate. But the Watergate affair, it became increasingly obvious, was merely the thin end of the wedge. It is necessary to grasp that Watergate wedge firmly in order, presently, to crack open the huge, secret, and frozen mass of Operation Gemstone itself.
Paramount to a clandestine operation, like Gemstone, is the chain of command and compartmentalization, as it is called. Here is how Gemstone actually functioned:
Richard M. Nixon ordered his aide John Erlichman to "get Ellsberg", the hero of the Pentagon Papers, and to "stop the New York Times". Then Nixon ordered his special counsel Charles Colson to trouble-shoot all re-election problems. Both executive aides turned to their chief of operations, E. Howard Hunt. He was their "Cutoff"; they were Nixon's.
The same process involved Mr. Nixon's personal security agent John Mitchell, who was then Attorney General and soon to be head of Nixon's election campaign, and H.R. Haldeman, White House chief of staff. Mitchell, Haldeman and Erlichman were the equivalent of diplomatic heads of an American mission, while Colson played the role of "Station Chief". To the "diplomats" went the task of coverup and subversion of the Justice Department, the FBI, etc. The plan seemed foolproof. But of the four Nixon agents - Mitchell, Haldeman, Erlichman, Colson - one of them had a divided loyalty, was a double agent of a kind, and, in the end, set all of them up - including the President!
As soon as the Nixon team moved into the White House in 1969, the power maneuvering began. Nixon drafted Charles Colson and Colson signed up E. Howard Hunt. Then the attempt to take over the biggest intelligence agencies, the FBI and CIA, was made. Richard Helms, Director of the CIA was removed, but J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI was too tough for Mr. Nixon. He had too much compromising evidence - reaching all the way back to the Alger Hiss case and Nixon's witch hunting days as a senator in the 1950's - and the administration had to wait for him to die before bringing in the Nixon agent L. Patrick Gray.
To understand Operation Gemstone it is necessary to disregard the very dramatic but completely arbitrary starting points of the Watergate break-in and the break-in of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. These violent, illegal acts must be seen as merely incidents of the larger scenario, that have surfaced and provided natural rallying points for the media.
The reorganization of the FBI, CIA and Secret Service provide the superstructure for Gemstone; the "dirty tricks" of the agents in the field and the cover-up are the less important fall-out or examples of the overall plan. It is the superstructural subversion that would have stretched forward for decades long after the easy electoral victory of 1972. The same larger vision is required for insight into the funding of Gemstone. For now, in Part I, our task is a close-up of only the infra-structure of the conspiracy.
CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
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COMMUNITY CONTROL OF POLICE CONFERENCE A RESOUNDING SUCCESS
WORKSHOPS POINT THE WAY TOWARD GOAL
(Chicago, III.) - The two-day Community Control of Police Conference held here, on June 1st and 2nd, and sponsored by the City-Wide Campaign for Community Control of Police, has ended. Conference participants are now even more firmly resolved to roll up their sleeves and begin the hard work necessary to realize their goals.
The conference was held at the University of Illinois, Circle Campus, near Chicago's downtown area. Over 1,000 people packed the University's Illinois Room during the two-day conference to hear an impressive list of speakers that included: Bobby Seale (who flew in from Oakland, California, taking the place of scheduled speaker Huey P. Newton, who was unable to attend); Mayor of Gary, Indiana, Richard Hatcher; Fannie Lou Hammer, southern community activist; Dick Gregory and Dr. Benjamin Spock.
The most important aspects of the police control conference were the six workshops. Each workshop was designated the task of forming conclusions on the feasibility of proposals arrived at during the conference and making suggestions on how to set-up the practical structure for the implementation of community control of police in Chicago. The six workshops were:
1. Community Control of Police - A Definition
2. Community Control of Police - One Step Towards Community Control of Schools, Health Care, Courts, etc.
3. Community Control of Police - A Tool for Unity in Grassroots Politics
4. Cooperative Economics and Grassroots Politics
5. Ward Redistricting
6. Voter Registration
On the second day of the conference reports from the various workshops were given to the racially mixed, but predominately Black audience, assembled in the Illinois Room of the University of Illinois. From the workshops' reports, suggestions and conclusions, the City-Wide Campaign for Community Control of Police will begin to implement the structure needed to put the muzzle on Chicago's Police Department.
The Community Control of Police - One Step Towards Community Control of Schools, Health Care, Courts, Etc., workshop was coordinated by former Chicago Alderman Sammy Rayner. It made the following suggestions at the conference's climax:
-- A first step would be made through organization, through door-to-door voter registration. People should be placed on boards of each district (precinct) in order to organize. They will have the job of being "watchdogs", passing out leaflets and establishing precinct structures.
-- It was decided that through the organization of Community Control of Police it would be possible to obtain control of the following institutions: recreation, schools, prisons, factories, courts, medical care, welfare, housing and communications.
Strategies discussed were: mass demonstrations, passage of certain
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favorable legislation, involvement in electoral politics at
the precinct level and working along with other progressive organizations for
the realization of the conference's goals.
Community Control of Police - A Definition, concerned the control of the police draft ordinance and its essential points, with an eye toward defining, with even greater insight, exactly what problems are involved and how to work them out. Coordinating this workshop was progressive Black Chicago lawyer, Kermit Coleman. Suggestions from this workshop were:
-- Representatives who would sit on the various community police control boards and commissions should be selected by the voting process, elected in non-partisan elections which are paid for by tax money.
-- Policemen must live in the district where they work.
-- New progressive testing procedures and psychological examinations to determine those actually qualified to serve as policemen.
-- Implementation of citizen's grievance boards to deal with police abuse of the community.
-- Community control of the Chicago Police Department's $300 million yearly budget.
-- An open-door policy in the Chicago Police Department, regarding public disclosures of police affairs of concern to the community.
Mike Magee of the Divine Light Mission coordinated the Cooperative Economics and Grassroots Politics workshop. It's suggestions were:
-- Formulation of food buying clubs that would work with existing food co-ops and food wholesalers.
-- Establishment of food ordering practices that meet the needs of the people.
-- Formulation of a cohesive unit that would raise the consciousness of the community to the advantages of collective food buying on the precinct level.
The last three workshops, Voter Registration, Ward Redistricting and Community Control of Police - A Tool for Unity in Grassroots politics, were combined into one. Heading this triple - edged workshop was Sam Patch, Chairman of the Illinois Black Political Caucus. The suggestions were:
-- Ward Redistricting - To obtain the representation necessary in proportion to Chicago's population for community control of police. Based on Chicago's population, there should be a minimum of 19 Black wards, 3 Latino wards and 5 independent wards. Together this would make 27 wards. The point is that if 27 wards are controlled by the people, then the City Council is also controlled by the people. This means that the City Council would not be able to shelve, by underhanded tactics, an adopted Community Control of Police ordinance.
-- There should be organizations on the precinct level, called Precinct Committees. Every precinct would have such a committee.
-- A structure for politically educating those people who will organize Precinct Committees must be set up.
-- Organizing Precinct Committees will be done through establishing positive programs that meet the needs of the community. Precinct organizers will also address themselves to issues of importance in a particular precinct and organize around them.
-- The Black Panther Party should develop a Resource, Talent and Data Bank, that community control of police organizers can draw upon as the occassion dictates.
It is clear that the Community Control of Police Conference was a resounding success. The people of Chicago now stand on the threshhold of gaining control over one aspect of their lives - the brutal and murderous police. May the example the people of Chicago have set serve as a guiding light for similar actions in oppressed ghettoes across this racist country.
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CHICAGO POLICE BID TO SABOTAGE MEETING FAILS
(Chicago, Ill.) - On Thursday morning, May 31st, last weekend's highly successful
Community Control of Police conference was in serious jeopardy. That morning,
at 10:15 a.m., Chicago police surrounded the headquarters of the City-Wide Campaign
for Community Control of Police, at 4233 South Indiana Street. They took positions
on rooftops of buildings adjacent to the headquarters and many were dressed
in what Chicagoans know well as "attack" uniforms. They knocked harshly
and belligerently on the front door and demanded entrance into the office.
Hundreds of curious and concerned Black people in the neighborhood left their homes and congregated in the street. Had not cooler heads prevailed, particularly the quick thinking of attorney Thomas Todd and Brother Bob Rush, serious trouble might have followed.
The police claimed to be looking for a brother they had been following and who had been seen entering the office but who they claimed never left. A set-up was obvious. Less than five minutes before, a Black man who exactly fitted the description the police gave had, in fact, come into the office asking questions concerning the upcoming conference. This was not unusual, many Black and poor Chicagoans had expressed their desires to attend the conference as well as participate in the city-wide campaign. Countless people came into the office everyday. This particular brother,
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who office workers remember was unusually polite, had been
given literature about the issue of community control of police and left the
office smiling strangely and thanking everyone. Shortly after the police appeared.
Having no search warrant, the police were not allowed into building. Though this has not stopped Chicago police before, the quick emergence of many members of the community from their homes, as well as the quick arrival of Brothers Rush and Todd made a critical difference. Attorney Todd first asked the ranking official, Strazanette, from the States Attorney's office, if the police were in "hot pursuit". The first reply was "No". Then, minutes later, when the chances of obtaining a hastily signed search warrant became even more remote the answer became "Yes". (If police are in "hot pursuit" they don't need a search warrant to legally enter a private building.) After conferring with Brother Rush, the coordinator of the city-wide campaign, Attorney Todd, a leading member of P.U.S.H. (People United To Save Humanity), a Chicago based human rights organization, replied that they "objected" but would not "resist" and requested that only Black policemen carry out the search. Of the many Chicago police gawking about, only two, a Sergeant Anderson and another were Black.
After searching the building from top to bottom, the two left, reporting their non-findings to their superiors. Moments later, the police were gone. The message was clear. Chicago police, fearful, arbitrary and racist in their policies and practice, are not going to allow the rightful and lawful process of their control by the community to unfold without a battle. Thursday's confrontation was only the first of more attempts at harassment and intimidation which are sure to follow.
This incident was successfully resolved. The next time, who knows? The memory of the murders of Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in 1969, as well as the sorrows of countless tragic police murders of Black and poor people, haunt the city of Chicago. They haunt the Black and poor communities that overwhelmingly support the City Wide Campaign who are fearlessly moving forward to place community control of police on the ballot in 1975. They also haunt the Chicago police, who, reacting to their own fears of a united community, continue to blindly lash out in frustration.
ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE
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DAVID HILLIARD'S PERSONAL PHYSICIAN INSULTED
(Berkeley, Calif.) - Dr. Beverly Williams, an attractive Black woman and a highly
qualified internal disorders specialist, was insulted and interferred with by
Vacaville Prison authorities when she attempted to see and examine David Hilliard
at the prison recently. David suffers from a chronic ulcer condition and has
been granted a court order authorizing doctor's visits.
Sister Audrea Jones, Director of the George Jackson Free Medical Research Clinic in Berkeley (a facility of the Black Panther Party), who accompanied Dr. Williams on the visit, has reportedly been denied visiting privileges for 30 days for "disrespectful language" allegedly used while protesting the insults to Dr. Williams and herself.
Dr. Williams is replacing Dr. Tolbert J. Small as David Hilliard's personal physician. She was making her first visit to examine David on Saturday, May 26, when the racist prison authorities, totally unable to deal with the reality of an attractive Black woman who is a qualified physician, acted out their racism.
From the moment Dr. Williams and Sister Audrea appeared at the reception desk at Vacaville, Dr. Williams was subject to repeated questions about her qualifications, insulting and insinuating remarks and deliberate delay. The only procedure during the medical visits of Dr. Small was to sign the visitors book. He was then shown to a private room where he was able to examine David without any time limitation.
However, Dr. Williams was required repeatedly to produce her California Medical License, her driver's license and was even asked to produce her Social Security card. She was required to fill out several forms and was then told she could only spend half-an-hour with David for her examination "between the gates".
When Sister Audrea protested against this unjust and arbitrary decision, a Lt. Steves replied in a most insulting way, "I'm in charge here. I've decided". After thoroughly searching through Dr. Williams' medical bag, it was taken from her and she was not permitted to take it with her when she finally saw David.
Sister Audrea told THE BLACK PANTHER later in her office at the George Jackson Free Clinic: "I was furious! It was a deliberate act of intimidation and harassment. It was thoroughly unjust. The manner and attitude of Mr. Steves and all the rest was racist and insulting. And now I understand they are forbidding me to visit David for 30 days…"
A letter is reportedly in the mail from the Vacaville authorities to Sister Audrea informing her of this "disciplinary" action. She told us that she is already drafting her reply to protest the decision to ban her from visiting David.
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ADULT AUTHORITY: NEW POLICIES HIT POLITICAL PRISONERS
(Sacramento, Ca.) - On March 27, the California Adult Authority adopted a new
policy statement, redefining and clarifying the Adult Authority's priorities
for granting a parole to prisoners.
Policy statement No. 24 lists four criteria for prisoner release. They are "in order of importance":
"1. The protection of society; 2. The punishment of offenders, to make the punishment fit the criminal rather than the crime; 3. The deterrence of the offenders (by the punishment imposed) and of others (by example of the punishment imposed on the offender); 4. To rehabilitate those who are amendable to and capable of it."
The Adult Authority presently has broad ranging powers over prisoners in state custody. This will soon be challenged in the state's courts. Primary among these powers is determination of the length of each prisoner's term of incarceration. Unlike many other states, California sentences its victims to indefinite prison terms, leaving length of confinement time solely to the Adult Authority. The Authority's policy statements therefore are of great importance to the lives of the thousands of men and women locked away in
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California prisons.
Examining the application of the priorities layed down by the Authority reveals the injustice that is institutional in the penal court system of California. The protection of society means the protection of big business interests to the C.A.A. "Punishment of offender" means the person pays with his/her dignity and humanity for transgressions against the state's power or for not having enough money to hire a way out of being the ones chosen to pay.
Making the punishment "fit the criminal rather than the crime" means punishing Blacks, members of other oppressed minorities and political prisoners, such as David Hilliard, more severely than white and middle class prisoners who somehow missed court acquittal. "Deterrence of offenders" is a myth, proven to be false by the high percentage of ex-convicts who return to prison and by the continued high incidence of crime from day-to-day. Rehabilitation is mentioned last, since the Authority thinks little of this concept, a fact that is evidenced in the complete lack of realistic rehabilitation services within the prison system.
There are several efforts under way to change the unfair and unconstitutional procedures of the California Adult Authority's parole hearings. These hearings presently deny prisonerseven the basics of "due process of law", such as the rights to have legal counsel, call witnesses, face accusers, be judged by peers, etc. The nine ruthless figures who sit on the Authority violate rights "guaranteed" by the U.S. Constitution at every hearing. Even in their policy statement they admit that even those prisoners "charged with criminal behavior which does not result in a court conviction" shall be "reviewed very critically", a clear violation of the fifth, thirteenth, and fourteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Arbitrary and unconstitutional prison rules, unwritten and unknown, are used by the Authority to entrap prisoners. Unconstitutional parole hearings then confine the victims to longer sentences for violations of rules the victims never knew existed. This is how George Jackson was kept in prison for eleven years, prior to his assassination, for the $70,00 robbery he was charged with as a youth. This is how they hope to hold David Hilliard, another member of our Party, another enemy of the power elite.
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DUBOIS PAPERS PRESENTED TO U. MASS.
(Amherst, Mass.) - In an impressive and moving ceremony at the New Africa House
at the University of Massachusetts here on Sunday, May 27th, the vast collection
of papers and correspondence of Dr. W.E.B. DuBois were formally presented to
this public institution of higher learning of his home state.
Dr. DuBois' widow, Mrs. Shirley Graham Du Bois, flew in for the occasion from Cairo, Egypt, where she is now resident. On the day before at the commencement exercises of UMass., Mrs. DuBois had been awarded the Honorary Degree of Humane Letters. Her son, David G. DuBois, now living in Oakland, California, and lecturing at the School of Criminology, University of California, Berkeley, was also present.
Also, the University of Massachusetts Press took the occasion to announce the publication of the first volume of the unpublished works of Dr. DuBois, The Education of Black People, Ten Critiques, 1906-1960, edited by a long time friend of Dr. DuBois, and foremost authority on his writings, Dr. H. Aptheker.
The ceremony was hosted by the Chairman of the W.E.B. DuBois Department of Afro-American Studies of UMass, Michael Thelwell, resplendent in a floor-length Ghanaian kente cloth of gold. Dr. Herbert Aptheker and his wife Fay were on hand, as was Randolph W. Bromery, Chancellor of U Mass., who was instrumental in convincing the University to obtain the DuBois papers. Dr. Bromery is one of the very few Black Chancellors of a major, predominately White, State University.
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The University of Massachusetts Press also announced the August publication of the first volume of the Correspondence of W.E.B. DuBois 1877-1934, also edited by Herbert Aptheker. Beginning with a brief note to his grandmother written when he was nine years old, the volume includes letters to Marcus Garvey, Albert Einstein, Paul Robeson, Gandhi, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Countee Cullen, Eugene O'Neill, Ralph Bunche, Langston Hughes, William and Henry James, A. Philip Randolph and many, many more.
Dr. Aptheker is currently preparing Volume II of the correspondence of Dr. DuBois, and will be editing forty volumes of the entire body of Dr. Dubois' published and unpublished writings.
The University of Massachusetts, located some 40 miles from Great Barrington, Mass., Dr. DuBois' birthplace, is currently completing the construction of a new, 25-story library on the Amherst campus. A section of the 23rd floor will house the DuBois Papers making them available to scholars and interested persons for research and study.
The volume The Education of Black People, copies of which were available at the ceremony, contains the ideas of Dr. DuBois on higher education for Black Americans, beginning with an address at Hampton Institute when he was 38, and concluding with a speech at Johnson C. Smith University when he was 92. An exhaustive bibliography of the writings of Dr. DuBois on education, prepared by the editor, completes the volume.
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AARON AND BELL BRACE FOR NEW TEXAS FRAME-UP
(Houston, Texas) - Political repression in the state of Texas is on the increase,
as can be witnessed in the cases of Brother James Aaron, a member of the Black
Panther Party, presently incarcerated in the Harris County Rehabilitation Center,
and Brother Fred Bell, a Black Texas community organizer who was recently forced
to turn himself over to the FBI here.
A train of political frame-ups began for James Aaron in July of 1970, in Houston, Texas. James was falsely accused of assault on a police officer with a deadly weapon (alleged to be a shotgun). A "trial" proceeded and an all-white jury was selected, which deliberated only 8 minutes, arriving at a judgment of "guilty". James received the maximum sentence that could be given -- a $10,000 fine and two years in prison. He was sentenced on September 22, 1971.
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Even before the end of Brother James Aaron's so-called trial on the phoney charge of assault, the Houston police had set their machinery in motion to stop James' and the Black Panther party's organizing efforts in Texas. In the first week of June 1971, Houston police raided the Office of the Black Panther Party. James Aaron was not in the office at the time of the raid, but arrived shortly thereafter when he heard news of the raid's progress on a car radio.
James, who was out on bond from the assault charge, was promptly arrested when he arrived on the scene. He and two other members of the Party, Vernon Benton and Claude Frost, were charged with burglary, felonious theft and possession of stolen weapons. During the resulting trial, which only took five days, the police found their charges so difficult to prove that only one charge remained -- possession of stolen weapons. All three were convicted of this false charge. James received 10 years probation.
When James was convicted of the assault charge a few months later, appeal proceedings immediately got underway and he was briefly released on appeal bond. He remained free for one year. The appeal for a new trial was denied and James began serving his two year sentence. Also, the court changed James' earlier 10 year probation sentence to an actual 10 year sentence in prison.
Recently it was discovered that James Aaron has been transferred from Harris County Jail to the Harris County Rehabilitation Center. This was done because James refused, even at gunpoint it was disclosed, to cease his organizing efforts in the former jail. Presently, he is kept in a cell isolated from the rest of the prison inmates in a unit at the center.
The case of Fred Bell shows an equal amount of repression. Fred is a former Texas organizer for the now defunct Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (S.N.C.C.). Because of his efforts in behalf of the Texas Black and poor community, he was railroaded to prison on a "bank robbery" charge, on July 21, 1971.
Facing a maximum sentence of 90 years and a minimum of 25, Fred was convinced, under pressure, to plead guilty to a crime he did not commit after he was told that if he did so, he would only receive 5 years.
The case was appealed, however, and Fred received a new trial. In this trial, he was correctly found innocent and acquitted. Upon being released from prison, he went immediately back to organizing in the Black community, involving himself in people's struggle. Because of this, the Texas F.B.I. put out a warrant for his arrest recently, THE BLACK PANTHER has learned. The last information reported is that the FBI has charged Fred with perjury in his first trial. By this they evidently mean that Fred, since he pleaded guilty in his first trial but was found innocent in a second, is guilty of not being guilty when he said he was guilty, or something equally as absurd.
Both James Aaron's and Fred Bell's only "crimes" were speaking out in behalf of and acting in the interest of the oppressed communities of Texas. The state hopes that we will forget these two exemplary Black men, by locking them away. The state, as always, is wrong.
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RUTGERS HONORS PAUL ROBESON
Paul Robeson, Black actor, singer, and People's Advocate, was awarded an honorary
Doctor of Humane Letters degree by Rutgers University recently. Brother Robeson
graduated with honors from Rutgers in 1919 at a time when very few American
Black people were successfully able to overcome the difficulties involved in
completing a college education.
Paul Robeson was known throughout the world for his exceptional abilities as actor and singer. However, when he publicly praised the many advances he observed being brought about through socialism in the Soviet Union of the 1930's, he was denounced by the American ruling elite. When he left his career in 1947 to "talk against prejudice", the House Committee on Un-American Activities attacked him as a Communist sympathizer and had him blacklisted from the American cultural scene for years.
Paul Robeson was a football star in college, an entertainment star after, and a people's star throughout his life. It is appropriate that Rutgers should finally honor Paul Robeson after many years of neglect.
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D.C. PEOPLE'S FREE CLINIC OPENS
BLACK PANTHER PARTY INAUGURATES DOOR TO DOOR HEALTH SERVICES
(Washington, D.C.) - The Washington, D.C. Chapter of the Black Panther Party officially announced the opening of a People's Free Health Clinic at open house activities on May 20th. The joyous grand opening was held to inform the community of this valuable new medical service center and to encourage doctors and nurses to volunteer their services to the clinic. A wide cross-section of the community attended the affair; included were many medical students, physicians and representatives from community-service organizations.
The clinic had already been serving the people of Washington for seven weeks before the open house. It is located at 4025 9th Street (Southeast). It is presently open Wednesday evenings from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., and will soon operate five nights a week. There are now sufficient nurses aides, senior pharmacy and medical students, technicians, community health workers and receptionists to operate the facility five evenings a week. However, the clinic is in need of more licensed physicians to staff the four examining room facilities and to supervise the work. The People's Free Health Clinic is only a part of the free health services of the Washington, D.C. Chapter of the Black Panther Party. Other services are a Free General Physical Screening Program to provide medical services on a door to door basis; a door-to-door Sickle Cell Anemia Testing Program and a referral service to other institutions for those patients whose medical problems the clinic cannot handle.
At the open house ceremonies, Ms. Willie Hardy, long-time community activist and friend of the Party, welcomed the guests and spoke to them concerning the dire need for free health clinics throughout the D.C. area. She pointed out that D.C. General and Freedmen's Hospitals would have to begin using the clinic as a referral facility because these overcrowded and under-staffed hospitals will not be able to handle their work loads as more affluent hospitals continue to direct heavy concentrations of poor people to them.
The guests were then given a tour through the clinic by attractive hostesses to view the various equipment and facilities in the examining rooms. Ms. Hardy and members of the Party spoke to the press, explaining the purpose and need for the clinic, and describing the services provided.
The opening of the clinic comes during a period of desperate need for medical services in Washington. Several hospitals have ended their programs of low-cost medical care for impoverished families and have stopped providing services to over 25,000 poor patients annually. The city's largest hospital, Washington Hospital Center, has already closed its emergency doors to ambulance services, has closed 56 beds and plans to fire
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100 employees, including highly trained nurses and technicians.
More hospitals are planning to curtail emergency department operations by closing doors to ambulances. They are largely seeking patients needing surgery, for this means more income for the hospital. Hospital officials claim the cuts are due to "rising costs and federal controls of their patient rates".
During this period of Nixon's federal cutbacks, survival programs provide alternative aids for our impoverished communities, and will grow and develop with the support of the people. For further information and donations of services and funds to the D.C. Free Health Clinic, contact the People's Free Health Service, 1610-7th Street (Northwest) or call (202) 462-9360.
ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE
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FAMILY BEATS MAYFAIR IN COURT-SISTER THREATENED
After a five-month boycott of Mayfair Market on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland,
Mrs. Bobbie Johnson and her sons have been absolved of blame by the local courts
in connection with a dispute with a security guard at the store in December.
Because of the overwhelming evidence proving that the charges of assault and disturbing the peace were false, because of the political pressures created by the boycott, Mrs. Johnson and her son, Andre Patterson, were acquitted on May 11, 1973. The cases against two other sons, Charles and Sam Patterson, were dismissed by the District Attorney.
The charge stemmed from an incident in which a white Mayfair security guard insulted Mrs. Johnson and struck Samuel with a night stick when he protested. (See THE BLACK PANTHER, January 27, 1973.) The community, in response to the false charges, began the boycott of the store.
The ending of the case comes as a great victory to the family, who led the boycott and fought hard to expose the abusive practices of Mayfair security guards and the negligence of the store officials who failed to resolve the community's demands.
However, Mayfair Stores, a giant chain, continues to employ hostile security police. THE BLACK PANTHER has learned from Waynette Lansing, an active member of the Community Committee to Save Our Children in Oakland, that she was threatened and insulted last Monday by a security guard at the Mayfair Market on East 18th Street. The guard, Gordon Ferrell, threatened to shoot Waynette because he claimed she short-changed him. During the exchange of a dime for two nickels, Waynette had dropped the dime into his hand which was already full of change. When she turned to leave, Ferrell told her, "You better give me my dime, or you ain't gonna leave this store."
When she told him that she had indeed given him a dime, he pointed to his handcuffs and pistol and said, "This is what you're going to get if you walk outside this store."
When she saw the insane way Ferrell was acting, she called the Oakland Police, who upon arriving claimed that they could do nothing about a dime. While the police were talking with Ferrell, Waynette was finally able to leave after being detained for two hours.
She complained about her mistreatment to Richardson's Security Agency, which employs Ferrell, and informed them she might sue. They rudely told her that there was no need in her calling them. She is now planning a civil suit against Ferrell. Waynette, in telling this reporter of her harassment, stated, "This security guard and the one at the Mayfair on Telegraph who harassed Mrs. Johnson have no respect for customers. If the security agencies would employ people from the communities where they work, and enforce penalties when guards violate customer's rights, consumers wouldn't have to suffer such intimidation."
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GLENDA SMITH FIGHTS WELFARE DEPT. CUTS
Sister Glenda F. Smith, an Oakland resident, has no children of her own, yet
the Welfare Department maintains that she is the sole support of four children
and should use her salary exclusively to care for them.
When her sister, Billie Sue Daliney, died in April 1972, Glenda agreed she would try to raise her sister's four children. They are: Eugena - 9, Andre - 6, Donyale - 4, and Djuan - 8. However, for the past year Welfare officials have told Sister Glenda not only how she must live, but how she must spend her salary as well. Although she has not adopted the children, Sister Glenda was informed by a social worker that she had sole support of the children and would not receive anything from Welfare because she is earning a salary.
Sister Glenda works eight hours a day and she is attending school at night so that she may continue to survive through life. She is only 24 years of age and looks towards a brighter future filled with a family of her own. But, she insists that this is impossible when every cent she makes must be used for her sister's children.
"It isn't fair that I have to sacrifice everything I own or care to get out of life because the Welfare Department is counting the dollars I earn for myself and my future", she says. "I might as well quit my job and go on welfare since they're treating me as if I'm the mother or father of these four kids."
While, according to Welfare, the cost of living for four people is $218.00 per month, Glenda spends $200.00 per month on child care alone. (She spends her check on the children because she wants to.) "I've gotten fed up with the Welfare system", she declares. "If I do wrong, stealing, prostituting,
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etc. and go to jail, they would wonder what's wrong with that
woman." She says, "I'm not planning on doing anything wrong, but if
something is not done soon, the state can have the kids so that I may live my
normal life as before."
The Black Panther Party, having offered to assist Sister Glenda, has secured a lawyer for her for the hearing with the Welfare Department she was recently granted.
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FT. LEAVENWORTH: BROTHER BEATEN BY 8 GUARDS
May 9
Dear Bro. Steve,
I don't know how to say this, but I need a lawyer real bad. Some dude got beat up and they are charging me for the assault. They want to court-martial me again, you see, by me being Black, they don't want to let me go. They want to bust me. Also, these guards in the base assaulted me when I came down here. About eight of them worked me over. But I'm alright now…
(Fort Leavenworth, Kansas) - Brother Ray Rasak, a soldier held in Fort Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks, is suing his base commandant for $50,000 in a suit filed because he was beaten by prison guards there. Brother Ray is himself being court-martialed on assault charges.
Details of his account were supplied to THE BLACK PANTHER by Brother Steve Rees of San Francisco, a friend of the prisoner.
Brother Ray, due to be released from the military stockade in October of this year, was taken from his cell and brutally beaten by eight guards on April 22nd.
Within two weeks, in early May, he was charged with assault in the beating of another inmate. Brother Ray asks how they intend to prove he is responsible when the prisoner who was beaten cannot positively identify Ray as the assailant. The prisoner had been attacked by three men, all of whom were wearing masks.
Ray Rasak knows nothing of the attack but realizes that the beating he himself received is linked to his being charged with assault. Apparently the military has a grudge against him and is not content with brutally beating him. It is even possible that the three masked men were guards themselves, attacking one inmate and blaming it on another.
Brother Ray has faced constant threats against his life by the guards. He knows of at least one case, in 1969, when a prisoner was hung in his cell by guards and the homicide was then labeled suicide for the benefit of outside observers.
Another fear he feels is the fear of a speedy trial on a fast train, a railroad driven by his own court-appointed military lawyer who has no concern about a poor Black prison inmate. The military prison doctors didn't care enough about this Black man who had come to "serve his country" to give him medical care when he was himself stripped naked and stomped in the April 22nd incident. Military courts are known to Black G.I.s by experience, and have been proven to the impartial observer by statistics, to send Black suspects to the stockade faster and more regularly than White soldiers.
Ray Rasak is filing suit against the racist base commandant for the beating he received in hopes that this and any publicity his case receives will help set him free. When his present release date comes up in October.
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HUEY NEWTON CONGRATULATES BRADLEY
Thomas Bradley, Black Los Angeles City Councilman, defeated 12-year incumbent
Samuel Yorty on May 29th, in that city's hotly contested mayoralty election
which was characterized by bitter verbal battles between the two candidates.
In winning, Bradley emerges as the first Black person to run an American supercity.
Los Angeles, California, is the third largest city in the nation.
The turn-out in the municipal election was light, about 65%. Bradley won by a margin of 56% of the vote total over Yorty's 44%.
During the election, Mayor-elect Bradley denounced the support of Huey P. Newton and the Black Panther Party, which was given in the spirit of solidarity and brotherhood. Regardless of this, in a further expression of solidarity and brotherhood, Huey P. Newton, in the name of the Black Panther Party, sent a congratulatory telegram to Mr. Bradley. The text of that telegram follows:
Despite the unkind statements made against our Party during the Los Angeles Mayoral campaign, the Black Panther Party views your taking of the Los Angeles mayor's seat as a victory for all people. We hope that you, Mr. Bradley, will bring us all closer to true freedom and justice in Los Angeles and elsewhere in America.
We are very happy that a man, Samuel Yorty, who has long perpetuated injustice and criminality throughout Los Angeles while supporting such a policy on a world-wide level, has finally been defeated.
On behalf of our entire Party, I would like to congratulate you, Mr. Bradley, and the people of Los Angeles.
Sincerely yours,
Huey P. Newton
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PEOPLE'S PERSPECTIVE
1st BLACK NEWS NETWORK
(New York, N.Y.) - The first Black owned and operated radio news network, the National Black Network, will begin on July 1st providing eighteen news, public affairs programs, interviews, panel discussions and sports of interest to the Black community daily, to approximately fifty Black-oriented radio stations around the country.
ANOTHER OUST NIXON BID
(Erie, Pennsylvania) - People to Preserve the Dignity of the Presidency, a community group formed in Erie, is circulating a petition calling for the impeachment of Richard Nixon. "We feel enough substantial evidence has been exposed by the news media and others to seriously question Richard M. Nixon's privilege of elective office as President of the United States of America", the petition declares. "Trust in the American system must be restored… Congress must act for us… THE PEOPLE must be heard."
COURT RULES FOR SAFEWAY
(San Francisco, Calif.) - Superior Court Judge Ira Brown ruled recently that the class action suit filed against Safeway Stores, Incorporated, by the Interfaith Committee to Aid the Farm Workers could not be considered as a "class action" suit, but only as an individual suit filed by individual plaintiffs. The Interfaith Committee will appeal this decision. The suit seeks $80 million in damages from Safeway for it's practice of purposely mislabeling meats in order to charge more for less. The $80 million figure will be reduced to several thousand if Judge Brown's decision stands.
CHENOWETH TRIAL OPENS
(Treasure Island, Ca., Naval Base) - The court-martial trial of Navy fireman Patrick Chenoweth started this week. Chenoweth, charged with "sabotage in wartime", faces 30 years in prison if he is convicted of having thrown bolts into the gears of the aircraft carrier Ranger causing $800,000 damage. The charges are being contested in this case as the ship was not officially "at war" while patrolling the waters off Vietnam, since no declaration of war was ever made with Vietnam.
100,000 ITALIANS MARCH
(Milan, Italy) - 100,000 people marched and rallied in the streets of Milan protesting the U.S.'s continued involvement in the Vietnam conflict and the disrespect shown the Paris peace agreement by the U.S. This May 12th event was the largest anti-imperialist rally ever assembled in Italy.
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REVOLUTIONARY SUICIDE: “I AM WE” -- THE EPILOGUE
BY HUEY P. NEWTON
The following presents the readers of THE BLACK PANTHER with the inspiring and moving epilogue of Revolutionary Suicide, the latest book by Huey P. Newton. An epilogue is an additional or concluding chapter of a book which usually tells the fate of the characters described within. Going by this definition, this essay, as well as the entire book, stands as a forceful and poetic affirmation of the fate of humankind.
Brother Huey reveals to us the depth and majesty of a commitment he and others have chosen to guide their lives. A commitment to the goals of freedom and liberation which, in the course of acting against the forces and reactionary conditions which seek to destroy us all, bring us all, Black and oppressed people everywhere, closer toward one another. Our struggles and in fact, our lives, become one, intimately and intricately bound together, as the human rights movement surges onward and upward.
"I Am We", the title of this essay, is the first of a series of excerpts from Revolutionary Suicide which will appear periodically in THE BLACK PANTHER.
There is an old African saying, "I am we." If you met an African in ancient times and asked him who he was, he would reply, "I am we." This is revolutionary suicide: I, we, all of us are the one and the multitude.
So many of my comrades are gone now. Some tight partners, crime partners, and brothers off the block are begging on the street. Others are in asylum, penitentiary, or grave. They are all suicides of one kind or another who had the sensitivity and tragic imagination to see the oppression. Some overcame; they are the revolutionary suicides. Others were reactionary suicides who either overestimated or underestimated the enemy, but in any case were powerless to change their conception of the oppressor.
The difference lies in hope and desire. By hoping and desiring, the revolutionary suicide chooses life; he is, in the words of Nietszche, "an arrow of longing for another shore". Both suicides despise tyranny, but the revolutionary is both a great despiser and a great adorer who longs for another shore. The reactionary suicide must learn, as his brother the revolutionary has learned, that the desert is not a circle. It is a spiral. When we have passed through the desert, nothing will be the same.
You cannot bare your throat to the murderer. As George Jackson said, you must defend yourself and take the dragon position as in karate and make the front kick and the back kick when you are surrounded. You do not beg because your enemy comes with the butcher knife in one hand and the hatchet in the other. "He will not become a Buddhist overnight."
The Preacher said that the wise man and the fool have the same end; they go to the grave as a dog. Who sends us to the grave? The unknowable, the force that dictates to all classes, all territories, all ideologies; he is death, the Big Boss. An ambitious man seeks to dethrone the Big Boss, to free himself, to control when and how he will go to the grave.
There is another illuminating story of the wise man and the fool, found in Mao's Little Red Book: A foolish old man went to North Mountain and began to dig; a wise old man passed by and said, "Why do you dig, foolish old man? Do you not know that you cannot move the mountain with a little shovel?" But the foolish old man answered resolutely, "While the mountain cannot get any higher, it will get lower with each shovelful. When I pass on, my sons and his sons and his son's sons will go on making the mountain lower. Why can't we move the mountain?" And the foolish old man kept digging, and the generations that followed after him, and the wise old man looked on in disgust. But the resoluteness and the spirit of the generations that followed the foolish old man touched God's heart and God sent two angels who put the mountain on their backs and moved the mountain.
This is the story Mao told. When he spoke of God he meant the six hundred million who had helped him to move imperialism and bourgeois thinking, the two great mountains.
The reactionary suicide is "wise", and the revolutionary suicide is a "fool" a fool for the revolution in the way that Paul meant when he spoke of being "a fool for Christ." That foolishness can move the mountain of oppression; it is our great leap and our commitment to the dead and the unborn.
We will touch God's heart; we will touch the people's heart, and together we will move the mountain.
-- A --
OAKLAND - A BASE OF OPERATION!: WORLD AIRWAYS HANGAR AND MINORITY JOBS?
Since slavery, the demand for full and decent employment has consistently been
voiced by Black communities throughout the country. As the country has developed,
from an agricultural economy to the factory assembly-line and then on to the
ultra-modern complex dominated by the world of technology and computers, our
calls for jobs have not diminished. Now "The Boss" has slaves who
wear neck ties and have college degrees; while, within Black communities, unemployment
rates continue to mount, with no end in sight. Local state and federal government
employment policies and guidelines, affirmative action and others, have been
meaningless words on eraseable paper.
This week, in Part 46 of Oakland - A Base of Operation!, THE BLACK PANTHER examines one more tale in this latest saga of broken promises and lies. Again we visit the Port of Oakland, but this time we stop at the new, giant maintenance hanger constructed by World Airways. Here, 1,200 permanent jobs have been created. Here, the assertion of more jobs for Oakland's unemployed is exploded in our faces as another fairy-tale myth.
On May 7, 1973, in a ceremony attended by 2,000 of Oakland's most "upstanding" and "prominent" civic, business and government personalities, the new World Air Center hangar was properly and officially dedicated. The new $14 million jet maintenance complex, occupying 60 acres of city land, was built by the Port of Oakland for World Air Center, fully owned and controlled and also a subsidiary of World Airways, an Oakland based aviation firm with worldwide connections. World Airways boasts that the new installation is "large enough to house four 747 Superjets or six DC-10's simultaneously". World Airways also boasts that 50% of the 1,200 permanent jobs created by this hangar will go to minority residents. This last assertion is a bold-faced lie.
In 1966, the Economic Development Administration (EDA) gave World Airways a $6.39 million grant and a $4.26 million loan (totaling $10,650,000) for the construction of a new, spacious maintenance hangar at the Port of Oakland. Although the underlying philosophy of the EDA is "to create a climate conducive to the development of private enterprise…",
-- B --
funds are granted on condition that recipient corporations
not simply train the unemployed, but provide a substantial number of new, permanent
jobs for the hardcore unemployed as well. Following these guidelines, the new
hanger was to be constructed by a work force comprising at least 50% minority
Oakland residents. Permanent jobs at the hangar would be reserved for Oakland
minority residents in the same proportion. According to World Airways itself,
"Fifty per cent had been set as the figure for minority employment as it
approximates the minority composition of Oakland."
The probability that 50% of the permanent work force at the new World hangar will be minority residents is close to zero. Although the head of equal employment opportunities at World Airways, Charles Patterson, as well as the out-going director of the Oakland EDA office, Hugh Taylor, both state that World Airways has a contractual arrangement with the East Bay Skills Center for job training of Oakland minority residents in the aviation maintenance field, the number of training slots is a great deal less than 600 (50% of the total). In fact, it appears to be more in the range of 50 jobs altogether! If training began next week, the Skills Center might be able to prepare about 25 people for aviation maintenance employment by the end of 1973, and perhaps another 20-25 people by the summer of 1974. Moving at this projected rate, 600 Oakland minority persons would be prepared and ready to be employed by World Airways by 1985, some 12 years from now. Meanwhile, the super-deluxe hangar, has been already built and dedicated; full-scale operations are about to begin. What of World Airway's promises now? What, in fact, of World Airway's compliance with the law?
This bogus situation can, however, be effectively challenged. First of all, World Airways has received considerable and favorable media coverage of their alleged commitment to minority hiring, coverage built up over the last six years. Not only is this coverage undeserved, both World Airways and those media who continue to broadcast their lies can be challenged.
Secondly, World Airways commitment to minority employment, like that of the City Center Project (see last week's THE BLACK PANTHER) has been closely associated with Mayor Reading and his corrupt administration. City Hall has been a notorious standard bearer, of the myth of long-term, permanent employment for Oakland residents; the City Council can provide a proper community forum to raise our questions and objections.
Thirdly, wholly apart from the EDA grant and loan, World Airways is a large federal contractor in its own right. In 1969 alone, World Airways held $52,000,000 in defense contracts, primarily in its capacity as a "supplemental charter airlines" shipping bodies back from Vietnam. This means that World Airways has particular federal affirmative action obligations by virtue of these contracts. In this regard, the FAA (Federal Aviation Agency), has been stubbornly reluctant to confront the real situation, ground World Airways and force compliance with federal affirmative action policies. Recently, in response to an Alameda County Legal Aid request for the FAA to send them up-to-date information on World Airways, the FAA sent materials which did not even refer to the new hangar and did not include information related to goals or timetables insuring 50% minority hiring.
Fourth, the Port of Oakland has the right, not only as World Airway's landlord, but as a federal contractor itself to force compliance. As a federal contractor, the Port should not, under law, do business with any company which is not in compliance with affirmative action laws. This definitely includes World Airways.
In summary: World Airways will neither formulate, nor take any concrete steps toward implementing affirmative action policies nor substantially participate in any program which involves the hiring of Oakland's vast unemployed population. A farce which began over six years ago in Oakland is fast being revealed in all its inglorious and insincere splendor. Another trick has been played upon the Black people of Oakland, a trick which we can backfire in the faces of those who have laughed at our plight and our poverty for too long.
-- B --
PROBLEMS IN VOTING?
Many Oakland residents have reported difficulty in voting or not being allowed
to vote at all on May 15 (election day). If you, or someone you know had such
problems, please report them to one of our community information centers or
call: 532-6566.
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COMMUNITY INFORMATION CENTERS NEAR YOU:
493-62nd Street
658-8193
4421 Grove Street
658-9547
5229 East 14th Street
536-1420
8129 MacArthur Blvd.
636-0840
601-98th Avenue
632-1605
1524-29th Avenue
532-6566
2100 Market Street
763-5629
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BLACK PANTHER PARTY PROGRAM MARCH 29, 1972 PLATFORM
WHAT WE WANT, WHAT WE BELIEVE
1. WE WANT FREEDOM. WE WANT POWER TO DETERMINE THE DESTINY OF OUR BLACK AND OPPRESSED COMMUNITIES.
We believe that Black and oppressed people will not be free until we are able to determine our destinies in our own communities ourselves, by fully controlling all the institutions which exist in our communities.
2. WE WANT FULL EMPLOYMENT FOR OUR PEOPLE.
We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every person employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the American businessmen will not give full employment, then the technology and means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.
3. WE WANT AN END TO THE ROBBERY BY THE CAPITALIST OF OUR BLACK AND OPPRESSED COMMUNITIES.
We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules were promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over fifty million Black people. Therefore, we feel this is a modest demand that we make.
4. WE WANT DECENT HOUSING, FIT FOR THE SHELTER OF HUMAN BEINGS.
We believe that if the landlords will not give decent housing to our Black and oppressed communities, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that the people in our communities, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for the people.
5. WE WANT EDUCATION FOR OUR PEOPLE THAT EXPOSES THE TRUE NATURE OF THIS DECADENT AMERICAN SOCIETY. WE WANT EDUCATION THAT TEACHES US OUR TRUE HISTORY AND OUR ROLE IN THE PRESENT-DAY SOCIETY.
We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If you do not have knowledge of yourself and your position in the society and the world, then you will have little chance to know anything else.
6. WE WANT COMPLETELY FREE HEALTH CARE FOR ALL BLACK AND OPPRESSED PEOPLE.
We believe that the government must provide, free of charge, for the people, health facilities which will not only treat our illnesses, most of which have come about as a result of our oppression, but which will also develop preventative medical programs to guarantee our future survival. We believe that mass health education and research programs must be developed to give all Black and oppressed people access to advanced scientific and medical information, so we may provide ourselves with proper medical attention and care.
7. WE WANT AN IMMEDIATE END TO POLICE BRUTALITY AND MURDER OF BLACK PEOPLE, OTHER PEOPLE OF COLOR, ALL OPPRESSED PEOPLE INSIDE THE UNITED STATES.
We believe that the racist and fascist government of the United States uses its domestic enforcement agencies to carry out its program of oppression against Black people, other people of color and poor people inside the United States. We believe it is our right, therefore, to defend ourselves against such armed forces, and that all Black and oppressed people should be armed for self-defense of our homes and communities against these fascist police forces.
8. WE WANT AN IMMEDIATE END TO ALL WARS OF AGGRESSION.
We believe that the various conflicts which exist around the world stem directly from the aggressive desires of the U.S. ruling circle and government to force its domination upon the oppressed people of the world. We believe that if the U.S. government or its lackeys do not cease these aggressive wars that it is the right of the people to defend themselves by any means necessary against their agressors.
9. WE WANT FREEDOM FOR ALL BLACK AND POOR OPPRESSED PEOPLE NOW HELD IN U.S. FEDERAL, STATE, COUNTY, CITY AND MILITARY PRISONS AND JAILS. WE WANT TRIALS BY A JURY OF PEERS FOR ALL PERSONS CHARGED WITH SO-CALLED CRIMES UNDER THE LAWS OF THIS COUNTRY.
We believe that the many Black and poor oppressed people now held in U.S. prisons and jails have not received fair and impartial trials under a racist and fascist judicial system and should be free from incarceration. We believe in the ultimate elimination of all wretched, in human penal institutions, because the masses of men and women imprisoned inside the United States or by the U.S. military are the victims of oppressive conditions which are the real cause of their imprisonment. We believe that when persons are brought to trial that they must be guaranteed, by the United States, juries of their peers, attorneys of their choice and freedom from imprisonment while awaiting trials.
10. WE WANT LAND, BREAD, HOUSING, EDUCATION, CLOTHING, JUSTICE, PEACE AND PEOPLE'S COMMUNITY CONTROL OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY.
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordigngly, all experience bath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
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INTERCOMMUNAL NEWS: Africa In Focus
(Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) - The recently concluded conference of the Organization
of African Unity (OAU) succeeded in easing a serious deadlock between Ethiopia
and Somalia, over a border dispute. Somali President Mohammed Siad Barre and
Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selasie both agreed to permit a newly-formed OAU committee
of heads of state to seek solutions to the dispute.
(Oakland, Calif.) - Bobby Seale and Elaine Brown, responsible members of the Black Panther Party, met last week with Pearce L. Gqobose, Acting Treasurer-General of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) of Azania (South Africa). Brother Gqobose, a founding member of PAC and member of the National Executive Committee, is currently in the U.S. on a fund-raising and support-gathering mission. They discussed ways and means of developing cooperation between PAC and the Black Panther Party in our common struggles for liberation.
(Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) - At its final session the Organization of African Unity (OAU) issued a warning to Israel that continued agression against Arab nations might lead to collective political and economic reprisals by OAU members. Israel has worked vigorously to develop political and economic ties with individual African states. Implementation of reprisals would seriously undermine Israel's propaganda efforts in Africa.
(Kampala, Uganda) - In a clear demonstration of U.S. "aid" pressure and retaliation, it has been learned that the U.S. will halt all aid projects in Uganda by June 30. Some 30 U.S. officials and about 50 of their dependents will be withdrawn and eight projects -- involving agriculture, population control, maternal and health training -- will be terminated.
(Mbabane, Swaziland) - 73 year old King Sobhuza II, ruler of this enclave African nation surrounded by racist South Africa, has scrapped Swaziland's constitution and taken over direct rule of this land of nearly 500,000 Swaziland peoples. The action has been protested by Southern African liberation movements and threatens to erupt into internal conflict.
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INTERCOMMUNAL NEWS: “FREEDOM IS WORTH MORE THAN LIFE”
FRELIMO MESSAGE TO NORTH AMERICAN BROTHERS AND SISTERS
The U.S. top policy-maker on African affairs, David Newsom, has just completed a visit to Lisbon, capital of Portugal, where he held discussions with Portuguese government officials.
The London Times newspaper has reported that the Portuguese are planning to deploy 10,000 more troops, mostly specially trained infantry soldiers, in Mozambique before the end of the year.
The Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) continues to win victories in its war of liberation. The following statement is a message from FRELIMO to its brothers and sisters in North America:
"The world does not end at the threshold of your house, nor at the stream which marks the border of your country, nor in the sea in whose vastness you sometimes think you have discovered the meaning of the infinite. Beyond your threshhold, beyond the sea, the great struggle continues! Men with warm eyes and hands hard as the earth at night embrace their children and depart before the dawn. Many will not return. What does it matter? We are men and women tired of shackles. FOR US, FREEDOM IS WORTH MORE THAN LIFE.
"From you, brother and sister, we expect, and to you we offer, not the hand of charity which misleads and humiliates, but the hand of COMRADESHIP, committed, conscientious. How can you refuse, sister and brother from the West?"
FRELIMO, 1973
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ARGENTINA RE-ESTABLISHES TIES WITH CUBA -- FREES POLITICAL PRISONERS
(Buenos Aires, Argentina) - The quick re-establishment of diplomatic relations
with the Republic of Cuba is perhaps the move which more significantly than
any other characterizes and highlights the new, two week old, civilian government
in Argentina. Headed by President Hector Campora, the newly elected government
marks the end of seven long and frustrating years of military dictatorship.
Mr. Campora has declared, "A new era has begun".
Not since 1966, when strong-arm military rule under the leadership of General Alejandro Lanusse seized power, had the Argentinian people been allowed to participate in popular elections. And, not since 1962, when the U.S.-controlled Organization of American States (OAS) ousted the Castro government, had Argentina chosen to defy the diplomatic embargo on Cuba.
In another series of quick reverses, all of which appeared to enjoy near-complete support among the Argentinian people, President Campora freed 600 guerrillas and political prisoners, allowed the Communist Party to return to political life and abolished the special antisubversive court. The swiftness of these dramatic and progressive changes has astounded many. They were all accomplished within the four-day period between Campora's inauguration on Friday, May 25th and Monday, May 28th.
Prior to the announcement of the re-establishment of formal ties between Cuba and Argentina, Campora, a Peronist, met for over an hour with Cuban President Osvaldo Dorticos. President Dorticos, as well as Marxist President Salvador Allende, of Chile, had been honored guests at Campora's inauguration ceremonies during which over 500,000 jubilant and cheering Argentinian people jammed downtown streets. On nationwide television President Campora asked these two highly respected Latin American presidents to sign the certificate of inauguration as witnesses.
-- 12 --
SUPPORT THE SAMUEL L. NAPIER INTERCOMMUNAL YOUTH INSTITUTE
The Samuel Napier Intercommunal Youth Institute is a school designed to help
our children think. It is located in the Oakland Bay Area and it points out
through example that other schools have provided only the most basic courses;
courses that have little relevance to the survival of poor people. We are trying
to expand the concept that the whole world is the children's classroom.
The youth at Samuel Napier receive instruction in language arts, mathematics, science, health, physical education, political education and people's art. All of these courses are geared to the development of a well-rounded human being.
We need the help of all interested people in making our school run smoothly. Since its inception in 1970, its enrollment has rapidly increased. We need more instructors; instructors with everchanging ideas to cope with the everchanging ideas of the children.
If you have teaching skills and can donate some of your time, please contact the Black Panther Party at 8501 East 14th Street, Oakland, California; or phone 638-0195. The children, our youth, are our future. Without their growth, we, as a people, cannot survive.
ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE
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Features: ATTORNEY EXPOSES U.C.L.A. “VIOLENCE CENTER”
PSYCHOSURGERY PLOT UNFOLDS
Attorney Fred Hiestand, at the request of the Black Panther Party and concerned groups, set out to discover the truth about the proposed Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence at U.C.L.A. His findings are most disturbing. Hiestand discovered that the Center would sponsor and engage in psychosurgery, a type of brain surgery done for the purpose of altering or modifying certain kinds of violent behavior. "Certain kinds", Hiestand found, here refers to the behavior of the discontented urban poor, who if operated on, would be transformed into psychologically imbalanced vegetable-like beings.
Part II of Hiestand's testimony concerning the proposed center which he delivered before the California State Health and Welfare Committee follows:
First, the Boston Project was quite critically evaluated by its own funding source, the Federal Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), for being scientifically unsound and for misusing federal monies. Specifically, the project was criticized for purchasing, on a non-competitive basis, equipment for the company in which one of the project participants, Dr. Frank Ervin, was a stockholder. In addition, large consulting fees - $250.00 per day - were paid by the project without obtaining prior approval as required by LEAA. The LEAA memorandum evaluation of the Boston Project observed that these "financial manipulations…appear to demonstrate an attempt to use government funds to the advantage of the grantee, rather than with any feeling for the advantage of the public." For these reasons, LEAA refused to fund the Boston Project further.
Second, Dr. Frank Ervin was criticized for leaving his position at the Boston Project prematurely to accept a position at, surprise of surprises, UCLA!
Third, the early drafts of the proposed UCLA Center, specifically drafts one and two out of a total of five, mention Dr. Frank Ervin under the caption "research proposals received or in preparation from present faculty." The same draft proposals also cite his best known co-authored work, Violence and the Brain, on an attached bibliography. The proposed UCLA Center is also seeking funds from the LEAA, which will be funneled through the California Council on Criminal Justice (CCCJ).
Fourth, though Dr. Ervin's name was deleted from the final proposal submitted to the CCCJ, there appeared a research component that was not mentioned in the fourth, but suggested in the first draft, to wit:
"Research in the biology of aggression in primates will be planned…but will not be activated during the first year of the operation of the Center."
During the past few months, interestingly, Dr. Ervin has been conducting research in the patterns of violence of monkey colonies in Africa and the Caribbean.
Fifth, and finally, the proposal submitted to LEAA by the Boston Project is practically identical in terms of its individual research components to the UCLA-Health and Welfare proposal. Both proposed violence centers speak in terms of undertaking an "epidemiological study of individual violence"; both have research components purportedly seeking to learn the causes of crime that bare the following labels: genetic, endocrinal, psychological and neurophysical. (The UCLA proposal differs slightly in that the neurophysical label is changed to "neuropsychological and neurophysical" and the psychological label was broadened to "psycho-social".) The difference between the two proposals is slight but ironic: The Boston center proposal is more detailed than the one for California, although California's is broader in scope and more expensive.
One cannot help but conclude by application of a law of parsimony to these facts, that Frank Ervin or Frank Ervin's work, has been instrumental in the formation of the UCLA center. In making these remarks, I have no desire to pillor Dr. Ervin, who I do not know personally. My concern is with the influence that Dr. Ervin has or had upon the UCLA proposal, particularly given his previous record at the Boston center and the nature of his life's work -- psychosurgery.
CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
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Calif. SENATE COMMITTEE REJECTS FUND REQUEST
THE BLACK PANTHER has recently learned that the California Senate Committee
on Health and Welfare has rejected the latest proposal to provide funds for
the establishment of a Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence on the
campus of U.C.L.A. Within five crucial areas of the project's scope -- Project
Control, Specific Project Proposals, Safeguards against the potential abuse
of human subjects, Funding and Peer Review -- the senate committee has found
serious questions which are left unanswered. They state that these questions
"must be resolved before any state or federal funds are approved".
In their letter to Robert Lawson, Executive Director of the California Council
on Criminal Justice (CCCJ) the committee states, "Our stated concerns should
not be interpreted as outright opposition… although there is skepticism
among some of our members concerning the usefulness of such a center, and the
practicality of studying violence isolated from the social conditions which
often cause it." The letter concludes by adding that the senate committee
considers approval of the center "ill-advised".
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NEW NEWSPAPER: LU PALMER'S “BLACK X-PRESS” GETS WARM WELCOME
(Chicago, Illinois)-"Black X-Press will be an organ through which flows
information and knowledge that will contribute not only to the well being of
Black people but also to our survival and ultimate liberation", writes
Black X-Press Editor and Publisher Lu Palmer in the first issue of this new
weekly publication.
First appearing on May 19th, the Chicago based publication is, according to Palmer, "partly a newspaper, resembles a magazine, and has some characteristics of a scholarly journal." Each week it will include articles on education, economics, history, politics, culture, mental health, religion, health, social welfare, law and prisons, and world views.
Although Black X-Press is new, Palmer's association with the press is not. After having worked 22 years with several newspapers, nine years of which have been on White establishment papers, it became evident to him that his viewpoint would not be respected or allowed full expression by White editors. After a series of racist incidents on the Chicago Daily News, for which he was a columnist, he resigned on January 13, 1973.
The editors had not only changed but edited out his columns completely. A column he wrote, which was not published, concerned the community control of police conference. This was the final incident that led to Palmer's decision to resign. Lu Palmer is convined the column did not appear because it dealt favorably with the Black Panther Party. The column appears for the first time in the first issue of The Black X-Press.
A yearly subscription to Black X-Press costs $12.00. It can be obtained by writing: Lu Palmer Productions, 449 East 35th Street, Room 4, Chicago, Illinois, 60616.
-- 16 --
Aid The Farmworkers
On April 16th, the hard-fought contracts which the United Farm Workers Union
had won only two years before from California's grape growers expired. Immediately
afterwards, the rich and racist growers signed contracts with the notorious
Teamsters Union, despite strong protest from the UFW and the farmworkers themselves.
The UFW, led by Cesar Chavez, promptly announced that another grape strike had
begun; a lettuce strike was already in progress. Nationwide boycotts of both
products are underway and are growing daily.
The farm workers need our help. Their struggle is our struggle. To aid the farmworkers is to move us all closer to the goals of freedom and dignity.
-- 16 --
WRITE US
THE BLACK PANTHER is your newspaper, so let us know what you think about the
opinions expressed in our columns. Write us. The Editor and staff are eager
to know your reactions. As space permits we will share your letters with our
readers.
-- 17 --
A PROGRAM FOR SURVIVAL
Free Breakfast Program
Provides children a free, hot breakfast every school morning.
People's Free Food Program
Provides free food to Black and other oppressed people.
Liberation Schools
Provides free educational facilities and materials to Black and other oppressed children to promote a correct view of their role in the society.
Intercommunal Youth Institute
Provides Black and other oppressed children with a scientific method of thinking and analyzing things, basic skills for living in the society and a concrete alternative to established learning institutions.
Legal Aid Educational
Program
Provides full legal assistance to those involved in legal problems, as well as legal aid classes.
Free Busing to Prisons
Program
Provides free transportation to prisons for families and friends of incarcerated men and women.
Free Commissary for Prisoners
Program
Provides imprisoned men and women with the funds to purchase necessary commissary items inside the prison.
David Hilliard People's Free
Shoe Program
Provides free shoes to the people made at the David Hilliard Free Shoe Factory and elsewhere.
Seniors Against A Fearful
Environment (S.A.F.E.) Program
Provides free transportation, and escort service for senior citizens to and from community banks the first of each month.
People's Free Community
Employment Program
(Being Implemented)
Provides free job-finding services to poor and oppressed people who cannot find work.
People's Free Medical Research
Health Clinics
Provides free medical treatment and preventative medical care for the people.
People's Free Plumbing and
Maintenance Program
Provides free plumbing and repair services to improve people's housing conditions.
Community Cooperative
Housing Program
(Being Implemented)
Provides decent housing, cooperatively owned and managed by the resident families.
People's Sickle Cell Anemia
Research Foundation
Instituted to test and establish a cure for Sickle Cell Anemia, to create better educational programs around Sickle Cell Anemia and maintain an advisory committee of doctors already researching Sickle Cell Anemia.
People Free Clothing Program
Provides new, stylish and quality clothing free to the people.
Intercommunal News Service
Provides news and information about the Black and other oppressed communities throughout the U.S. and the world.
Free Pest Control Program
Free household extermination of rats, roaches, ants and other disease carrying pests and rodents.
People's Free Ambulance
Service
(Being Implemented)
Provides free, 24-hour speedy transportation to people in need of emergency medical care.
People's Free Dental
Program
(Being Implemented)
Provides free dental check-ups and treatment for the people, as well as an educational program for dental hygiene and preventative dental care.
People's Free Optometry
Program
(Being Implemented)
Provides free eye examinations, treatment and eye correctional equipment (glasses, etc.) for the people.
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