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CHICAGO RAID: “CONSPIRACY TO DISCREDIT B.P.P.”
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Editorial: MITCHELL AND STANS INNOCENT?
Former Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former Secretary of Commerce Maurice
Stans, the two highest officials in the Nixon administration to be indicted
in Watergate-related cases, have been found innocent of charges of conspiracy,
obstruction of justice and perjury.
This result comes as no surprise to us. A month ago, in the March 30 issue of THE BLACK PANTHER, we predicted as much. In a centerfold editorial article under the title "Mitchell-Stans Trial A Fraud," we wrote: "…instead of Stans and Mitchell being properly tried for the crimes they committed against the American people and against our entire electoral system, we are witnessing a clever legal conspiracy by the defense, the prosecution and the judge -- in this case, Lee P. Gagliardi -- to remove blame from the defendants."
Behind such a conspiracy, one element of which that article exposed, it is no wonder the Mitchell-Stans jury of nine men and three women found the two innocent. One juror speaking to the press following the announcement of the verdict said that he searched carefully for the evidence that could convict the two conspirators of any of the charges, but the government (prosecution) failed to provide it.
So, once again we see the long arm of the law, as represented by the courts, the prosecution and the defense, cleverly manipulating the judicial system to protect the rich and powerful; those whose exposure and conviction would seriously implicate the President of the United States in crimes against the American people.
The verdict in the Mitchell-Stans case is a warning to the American people. The conspiracy to continue to cover-up the Watergate affair and related matters of great importance to this country continues. Richard M. Nixon is not the only guilty party. He is being assisted by certain courts, certain attorneys and many others, most of whom remain invisible.
Mitchell and Stans got off this time because part of the conspiracy was big media's role in ignoring the trial in the press and on radio and TV. Full, public, television and radio coverage should be demanded of all Watergate-related inquiries and trials.
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Letters to the Editor
Greetings Comrades,
Holman Unit guards have done it again. They have cold out murdered another brother. Comrade Tommy Lee Dotson was killed trying to uphold his manhood as well as his rights. Brother Dotson was beaten to death by correctional officers.
This brother was a sincere, military guerrilla warrior. He rebelled against inhuman conditions and injustice for prisoners. This is another one of their racist pigs' victims. Yes. They had it in for the brother, just like they had it in for Brother Doblins.
He is through with us. There are more dedicated brothers that are victims of the prison correctional officers. Yes, they have us picked out. But I think every brother here knows this, and knowing death is awaiting them, they will and would do anything necessary to protect their Blackness and life.
We will not give up. We will fight to our death or victory! So. I think this brother and all leaders should be pledged and always remembered, and that all Third World people carry on their work against inhuman conditions.
So. I stop and say Power to the Death!
Comrade Hekimi
Holman Prison, Alabama
Dear Comrade,
My name is Said Abdus Salaam, alias Clarence Duncan #73A-349. I am a Black revolutionary brother, presently incarcerated behind the oppressed walls of Attica Koncentration Kamp.
At the moment I and a few other (a very few. 6) Brothers are struggling to be free of the oppressor's chains and educate the people to the full awareness of what the oppressor is doing to them.
Right now, I and two more Brothers are in "segregation" or confinement for no real reason. Whenever the administration sees unity here, they try to put a stop to it at all costs. Whatever they do to me or the rest of the Brothers, the struggle will still go on.
In this letter you will find a correspondence form for any Sister or Brother who is concerned with what's happening here. I want to inform you and be informed of the struggle, because at the present, if something should happen to me, no one would give it a thought. It seems like no one cares about the Black man behind bars.
Upon my release, I hope to come to California.
Your Brother and
Comrade in Struggle
Said Abdus Salaam
Attica Prison, N.Y.
P.S. I would like if possible to receive THE BLACK PANTHER paper.
Dear Sir,
I am shocked to learn that Huey Newton is on the S.L.A. "hit list," slated by them for assassination -- but I am not at all surprised. And, to me, the reason is obvious. The forces of fascism (by which I include all oppressors of the people) wish to murder Huey Newton for the same reason they murdered Martin Luther King -- and that reason is that he and the party he represents have a good chance of success in their efforts to show a better way of life to the people.
Some -- but not all -- points to back up this statement are as follows:
1. The Survival Programs, on a comparatively small scale, have shown what the people can do to help themselves -- outside the establishment -- even before our society and economic system have been changed for the better. And all this with no violence or harm to anyone but by cooperation and hard work.
2. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, like Dr. King and Malcolm X, have stood up to the severest kind of persecution without losing their heads, without wishes for personal revenge, and without losing a true vision of the decent life which should be available to all people.
3. And that does not at all suit the role which the forces of fascism wish, and expect, them to play. Radicals, to the mind and purpose of the fascists, must be revenge-filled, wild people who throw terror around and rub out those who don't agree with them.
Unfortunately, violence must be used to defend against violence -- and certainly if the people set up a new society, they have the right and duty to defend it against violent destruction -- and two very sad facts of history are that the people in Spain and Chile did not have enough force to withstand the assault on their people's governments by fascist force. But violence has not been the means by
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which the Panther program has been pushed, and that is a truth
I try to make clear to as many fellow Whites as I can.
5. So, according to the fascist mentality, the Panthers absolutely have to go! And they have assigned Huey Newton, a decent and humane man like Martin Luther King. Malcolm X, and Premier Allende of Chile, to be the first to be crased from the scene.
Some rough times may be ahead for the Panthers, due to particular reasons all to your credit. But hang tough, and you will first survive and then prosper.
Sincerely,
Paul H. Dubnar
Seattle, Washington
(Disabled veteran of W. W. II and
trash hauler deluxe for a Seattle
department store)
P.S. For honest democracy in action, compare Bobby Seale's campaign for mayor of Oakland with Nixon and the Watergate gang.
Dear Editor,
In regard to the mass of people incarcerated here and our comrades throughout this prison system, we would like for our necessities to be known to the people via the Black Panther Party newspaper.
These are the main problems we should have as dignified Humans solved.
1. What is being done about the inmates being assaulted on by max security guards?
2. Why don't we receive wages for our labor? Institution shops gross high in the thousands.
3. Why don't we have counsel at disciplinary boards since we are subject to injustices where lots of good time is lost due to miscellaneous charges?
4. Why are we being exhibited at "Parade Rest" as specimens for military tours in max security?
5. Why are we being fed cereal boxes dated 1963 and older, who knows what else given to us as food is that old? Seems to be society rejected items.
6. Why do we receive this undue harassment that is unnecessary and inhuman?
7. Why don't the prison officials obey our rights as human prisoners and not animals?
8. Why do we have to abide by military rules and regulations having been given bad discharges?
9. Why don't we have laundry service to press our prison browns? They do have this type of facility which instead is used to press clothes belonging to military personnel on post.
U.S.D.B. Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
These 9 points are merely part of our rights as prisoners in this so-called American democratic society.
Right on
Bro. P.R.
P.S. I would also like to receive the Black Panther Party newspaper. It is a rare opportunity that I read one since I'm in Max (the Hole). Bill me for it.
Mailing address is:
Jose A. Colon 107467580
A Drawer
Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas 66027
In the name of Allah (God) and His Last Messenger. The most Honorable Elijah Muhammed.
As-Salaam-Alaikum,
My Dear Black Brothers and Sisters,
I'm writing this missive in behalf of all the brothers and sisters here incarcerated in these "tombs" in the state of Alabama, specially for the inmates here at Atmore Prison Farm and Holman Unit Prison.
There are several brothers along with myself who are charged with murder and two are here at Holman Unit and along with myself makes three, also two at Mt. Meigs and three or four at Atmore Prison. And you know, we will be used as scapegoats if we don't get the support we need.
I'm sure the brothers and sisters have answered many, many calls, but we really need the brothers and sisters to help answer this one, for the justice we are fighting for.
Much is needed as you know, so if the brothers and sisters will send us advice, financial or if possible legal aid and some addresses (to me at Holman Unit Prison, Route 2, Box 39, Atmore, Ala., 36502 addresses of brothers and sisters you think will give to this cause of justice.
Write back and let us know you received this missive, ok. We have to face the lynch mob many times, but we need help this time.
I don't feel that it's necessary for me to go into a longer detail of this matter, but for more information write to, with a donation, the Family For Action, 1320 Ave. T., Ensley, Birmingham, Ala. 35218 or Family For Action, 802-6th St. No., Birmingham, Ala. 35204.
May Allah (God) unite us back together!!
As Salaam-Alaikum
From Your Brother,
Frank X. (Moore)
P.S. Unity is the Key!!
Dearest Comrades,
I have been focusing in on the Party ever since it originated, and I've witnessed the progress and effects that the Party has had and still has on the people and me. You have educated me and the people about things that have occurred and that are still happening within the system, which I greatly appreciate. I see the progress that you've made with the Youth Institute, teaching children at two years of age to read, write, and comprehend. Also, the children that were "said" to be intolerable in society's schools are being taught things at your school that they can identify with (reality).
I am hoping that there will soon be a Youth Institute here, also for the community. I have a request to ask of you. I would like to know the procedures used in teaching young children around two years old and older, and certain materials and books you would recommend in teaching them. I have an 18-month-old son and friends who also have younger children. I would like to equip my son at the very beginning, being that I am with him now. I and the Sisters in the community would appreciate this information. So if and when you can, you have my sincere gratitude.
Sincere Comradely Love In Struggle,
Sheila McCall
Chicago, Ill.
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COMMENT: “POLICE ON THE PROWL”
The following comment has been excerpted from a much longer editorial which
appeared in the April 27 issue of the San Francisco Bay Guardian newspaper.
Focusing on the wave of hysteria and confusion currently being fostered in the
Bay Area, the article presents very believable insights into police represion,
the strong arm for the anti-Black, anti-people forces.
The police manhunt in the Zebra case was bad enough on its face, with its overtones of racism and heavy-handed harassment. But there's much more beneath the surface. Over the past week, Guardian reporters have interviewed police officers, movement people, public officials and attorneys in the East Bay and San Francisco. What their reports all add up to is that a new atmosphere exists in which severe repression, organized and accomplished through the various levels of police with the tacit approval of local government, has become an ominously believable prospect.
The raid on the Panthers in Oakland is an excellent starting point. The official story on this raid has such glaring holes that it's difficult to interpret it as anything but a conscious effort at harassment. Consider:
Why did the police bust that house at 1524 29th Ave, in Oakland? The Berkeley police who initiated the April 16, 5 a.m. raid got a search warrant to try to find one person, Leonard Colar, alleged participant in a beating in Berkeley the night before. The hitch: Colar lives at 846 31st St., in Oakland, clearly stated on his driver's license and car registration, both current. Instead of obtaining his address through the normal DMV channels, though, the Berkeley police say they got it from a security officer at Grove St. College, where Colar works. Charles Garry, attorney for the Panthers, says Colar denies having listed the 29th Ave. house as his address on any form he's ever filled out.
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Since it wasn't Colar's house, the nine police (four Berkeley, five Oakland) didn't get their suspect. But, as they must have known they would (since the house was known as a Panther house), they found a number of Black Panther members on the premises.
The next day, with an SLA bank robbery and a new Zebra killing all over the news, the Panther story fit right into the image of terrorism, with all the press carrying a photo showing row after row of weapons, a virtual armory, confiscated in the raid. Nobody mentioned that the photo was a police photo, not a press photo. Nobody mentioned that, as Berkeley Police press officer Richard Berger told the Guardian, no reporter or press photographer even saw the alleged confiscated material. And as of our press time, more than a week later, the police have yet to release a full inventory of what was taken from that Panther house.
Remember: The charges were all dropped for "lack of evidence." But the public memory of all those guns remains, right in tandem with the Zebra and SLA stories.
Why did the police conduct the raid in this manner? As the Panthers point out, this kind of police action has resulted in deadly shootouts in L.A. and Chicago. To forestall such attacks, the Panthers have had a
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standing agreement with Bay Area police that Charles Garry
would be contacted and would surrender any Panther named in an arrest warrant.
Ed Howden, of the Justice Department's Civil Rights section, told us he worked
that agreement out with Garry and the police four or five years ago: "There
was nothing in writing…It was hopefully a good faith understanding…to
try other channels than the kinds that led to the shootouts."
In this latest raid, Garry charges, the police acted "like fucking Gestapos. Their conduct was reprehensible."
Was this just an isolated incident of overzealous police work? Listen to the police we talked with: "we blew this one, but we have public support now. The public wants these revolutionaries behind bars and we're going to do what the public wants"…(Oakland police officer).
That same kind of police spirit, unfortunately, seems all too common in SF, heightened by the Zebra situation. And if going to the wrong house in Oakland and arresting the wrong 14 people sounds like harassment against Panthers, it's obvious why a virtually all-encompassing dragnet sounds like harassment against the entire Black community.
"Some guys run rampant in the Black community a great deal of the time," says a member of Officers for Justice of White members of the force, "and with an excuse like this, with everybody behind them, it's bound to be worse."
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CHICAGO RAID: “CONSPIRACY TO DISCREDIT B.P.P.”
CLOSED OFFICE RAIDED
(Chicago, Illinois) - In a reemerging pattern reminisent of 1968 and 1969, Chicago police raided a closed office of the Black Panther Party here last Thursday morning. They claimed they found "6,000 rounds of ammunition, shotguns and other military equipment."
Blasting the raid as "part of the whole pro-Nixon, anti-impeachment campaign," Black Panther Party Illinois Coordinator Bob Rush said: "This raid, like the one in Oakland a week earlier, is part and parcel of the whole overall national conspiracy to discredit the Black Panther Party."
Brother Bob indignantly insisted that any ammunition or guns found by police in the southside office "were brought there by them in an effort to frame and discredit the Black Panther Party."
INVESTIGATION
Police claim that the raid was part of an investigation into reports that a group of juveniles were seen carting away from the office "large quantities of guns" late Wednesday night. The police have since said that five youths between the ages of 12 to 17 have been charged with burglary.
In a statement to the press shortly after the early-morning raid, Bob Rush said: "The Black Panther Party's office has not been occupied since January. On my last visit there was no ammunition of any kind in the office.
"On Wednesday evening I received a call from one of the parents who had become alarmed. The parent stated that there had been a burglary. When I arrived three windows were broken out. Two bicycles, a color TV set and shoes from our Free Shoe Program had been taken from the office.
"I believe that this is the action of police agents who really broke into the office and placed ammunition in the office when it was vacant. There was no -- again I reiterate -- there was no ammunition or weapons in the office the last time I was there. All I know that is missing is the two bicycles, the TV set and the shoes from our Free Shoe Program."
After initial police statements -- carried by media services throughout the country -- that large quantities of guns and ammunition were seized in the raid, Commander Moore of the Chicago Police Department made a statement greatly qualifying the earlier police claims.
He told WVOM's Bill Maloney that various caliber ammunition was confiscated "along with a couple rifles." Moore alleged that police investigations led police to the conclusion that the youths had removed large quantities of various weapons and they were now engaged in the effort to locate those weapons.
Police also claimed to have confiscated "27 military manuals containing sections about making explosives," and another manual
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on urban guerrilla warfare along with "several gas masks."
However Moore's later statement made no reference to literature or gas masks.
Bobby Rush told THE BLACK PANTHER later that he and our attorneys in Chicago over the past weeks have been attempting to secure a statement from the FBI agent who was in charge of the FBI end of the 1969 police raid on the Chicago headquarters of the Black Panther Party that resulted in the police murder of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.
This effort is in connection with a civil suit that has been entered in the interests of the families for damages. Rush said that the morning raid occurred on the same day that attorneys were scheduled to take depositions from the FBI agent involved in the 1969 raid.
Asked if he believed there was a connection between last week's raid and the efforts to secure the statement from the FBI agent, Bob answered "Yes. The way I see it it's just a part of the whole pro-Nixon, anti-impeachment campaign which illustrates that credibility has dropped to the level of raids on Central Headquarters and our headquarters and allows police agencies all across the country to try to destroy the Black Panther Party in the name of national security; all this to stop an impeachment trial."
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COURT ORDERS END TO ZEBRA MANHUNT
MASSIVE COMMUNITY PROTESTS RESPONSIBLE
(San Francisco, Calif.) - As a result of a lawsuit filed on behalf of the besieged Black community of San Francisco, the intensive "Zebra" Black manhunt was stopped by the order of U.S. District Court Judge Alphonzo Zirpoli last week. The end of the wholesale questioning, harassment and arrests of Black men by the San Francisco police, allegedly looking for a killer of 14 White persons, was a significant victory. It was also a relief to the Black men who endured the hundreds of sweeping stops by policemen.
The lawsuit, which took Mayor Alioto, the police chief and the city administrator to court was filed by attorneys for the NAACP with the support of other organizations and individuals in the Black community. The successful court action set an example for Black communities in other cities taking legal and political paths to combat similar attempts by local police departments at violating the Constitutional rights of Black people.
The city administration and the police are appealing the court ruling in an effort to re-establish the police state imposed upon the Black community for eight long days.
Political action groups and leaders from all segments of the Black community had united in protesting against the Zebra manhunt. At its height over 1,000 angry picketers protested against the dragnet outside of city hall; Mayor Alioto was spat upon and hit with picket signs. Letters and telegrams condemning the manhunt flooded city hall and the offices of government officials. The American Civil Libertes Union also filed a suit against the city.
Prior to Judge Zirpoli's ruling, a major press conference was held last week by the Political Rights Defense Fund (PRDF) and other Black supporting organzations to denounce the Zebra manhunt and to detail the filing of a lawsuit by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the Young Socialist Alliance defending fundamental political liberties and Constitutional rights. A press
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statement was read by James Lewis of the PRDF and was supported
by Maceo Dixon of the Detroit SWP, a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Nixon and
other government officials, and Robert Chrisman, editor of The Black Scholar.
Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party, San Francisco schoolteacher/activist
Yvonne Golden and attorney Howard Moore also supported the press statement and
demands, although unable to attend the press conference.
The statement demanded: "(1) The immediate cessation of police harassment, surveillance and disruption; (2) The release of all files, dossiers and documents that the Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco police hold on all Black groups and individuals; (3) Full support to the National Commission of Inquiry called for by Reverend Jesse Jackson into the assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton."
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THE BLACK PANTHER BEGINS EIGHTH YEAR
"A newspaper is the voice of a Party. The voice of THE PANTHER must be
heard throughout the land."
-- Huey P. Newton
Headlining a front page story, "Why was Denzil Dowell killed," the first issue of THE BLACK PANTHER, four pages of mimeographed copy, hit the streets of the Black communities of the Oakland-Richmond-San Francisco Bay Area on April 25, 1967.
Today, as we enter our eighth year of continuous publication, providing factual information and scienfitic analysis of vital importance to Black and other oppressed people in this country. THE BLACK PANTHER thanks our readership for listening to the voice of THE PANTHER and deciding that it speaks their language, the people's language…the truth in service to the people.
ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE
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YOUTH INSTITUTE: GROUP 7: METHOD IS VERY IMPORTANT
This week, THE BLACK PANTHER concludes its series of articles on the skills
groups at Oakland's model school, the Intercommunal Youth Institute. The series
has attempted to explain, in-depth, the type of quality education that can be
provided by an alternative school. Group 7, children ages eight through 11,
are featured in this article.
(Oakland, Calif.) - Group 7 at the Intercommunal Youth Institute is the most advanced level of students at the school. As the youth at the Institute are grouped according to both age and performance, it is not unusual that the ages of these eight students range from eight to eleven years.
The youth are engaged in an integrated academic, cultural and self-cultivating program which includes: mathematics, language arts, political education, art, drama, music and environmental studies. As mathematics, language arts and political education are the three basic disciplines upon which the mastering of other skills depend, they are emphasized.
In mathematics, the students in Group 7 are tightening their skills in the four basic arithmetic operations -- addition, subtraction multiplication and division. Fractions, logic and algebra are also part of their math curriculum.
When new mathematical concepts are introduced, real, concrete objects and materials and methods are employed. In this way, when the youth are asked to abstract, they have something tangible -- some point to which they may refer.
For example, the "Clue" game is used when the students are introduced to "deductive reasoning." Thought and action become one -- a process which enhances their development. The youth in Group 7 showed their understanding and appreciation for practical mathematical application when they created their own "Multiplication Lotto" game.
The youth also understand that in mathematics, "method" is very important. "Quickie" solutions without detailed methods are not encouraged. Their mathematic problems are somewhat analogous to their struggle for survival: It is known that more and better things will allow us a better quality of life; some answers are quite apparent, yet it is the long process that culminates in humankind's liberation. These problem-solving methods also show how mathematics and political education are integrated.
Creative writing, grammar, reading and vocabulary comprise Group 7's Language Arts program. In creative writing, the students draw upon their own experiences to produce, in prose or poetry, meaningful expressions of their lives as Black youth. Most of the students have very few problems with reading and even use it as recreation.
Group 7 joins Group 6 for Political Education classes. Together these two groups make investigations of historical and contemporary human events. The students are presented facts and an analytical framework, a method of thinking. They then draw their own conclusions.
Their ideas and feelings about phenomena in their environment are manifest in their writings to political prisoners and their practices of following political trials and petitioning against absurdities, such as the local murder of Tyrone Guyton.
Political education classes also enable the youth to internalize certain values: criticism and self-criticism, self-discipline, self-reliance, responsibility and cooperation. The students utilize these principles as they engage in their daily work and interpersonal relationships.
The classroom is an open and structured environment. The instructor serves primarily as a demonstrator and a reference. As in other classes at the Institute, knowledge is nothing to keep secret. The students have the responsibility to see that everyone comprehends -- "Each One Teach One" -- a collective learning responsibility.
The oldest student helps the instructor, Ms. Kay Casey, plan lessons. She also does some of the typing and duplicating. The other students understand that she has this responsibility because of her leadership qualities. Emulation, not competition, is the general atmosphere in Group 7's classes.
As all of the students have had negative experiences in public school, they may truly appreciate "their" school. Their responses and their actions are true manifestations that Group Seven and the entire Intercommunal Youth Institute may serve as a model for a basic, humane and rewarding educational program.
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PENAL SYSTEM A “FAILURE”
(Omaha, Neb.) - E. Howard Hunt, Jr., the former CIA agent who was sentenced
to two and one-half to eight years for his part in the Watergate break-in, has
said that the year he spent in federal prison was "the most incredible
period of my life." Hunt called the penal system unjust and a failure and
urged that it be overhauled.
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BLACK HISTORY
MAY 1, 1863
On May 1, 1863, the Confederate Congress, reacting to the enlistment of Black soldiers in the Union Army passed a resolution condemning Black troops and their officers as "criminals." The resolution had the effect of dooming captured Black troops to slavery or death.
MAY 1-3, 1866
Having been defeated in the Civil War, Whites in Memphis, Tenn., reacted with vengeance. From May 1 to 3, 1866, Memphis Whites rioted, killing 46 Black people and two White liberals. They also were responsible for the burning of 90 homes, 12 schools and 4 churches.
MAY 1, 1867
Howard University first opened its doors for student enrollment on May 1, 1867.
MAY 4, 1961
On May 4, 1961, thirteen, "Freedom Riders," all members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), including their national director, set out on a courageous bus trip through the South, testing local compliance with federal travel laws.
APRIL 28, 1967
On April 28, 1967, the World Boxing Association and the New York State Athletic Commission issued their racist "guilty until proven innocent" verdict and withdrew their recognition of Muhammad Ali as the world heavyweight boxing champion because of Ali's refusal to serve in the U.S. armed forces.
MAY 2, 1967
On May 2, 1967, thirty Black Panther Party members, twenty of whom were armed, conducted a political demonstration in the state capitol building in Sacramento, Calif., protesting antigun legislation under consideration (Mulford Act) and asserting Black people's right to self-defense.
MAY 1, 1970
Over 25,000 people demonstrated in support of eight incarcerated Black Panther Party members, including Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins, on a courthouse green in New Haven, Conn., on May 1, 1970.
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VICTORY FOR SICKLE CELL ANEMIA DRIVE
(Vallejo, Calif.) - The Son of Man Temple, the Sunday community forum in East
Oakland, has won an important court victory involving the right of its survival
workers to collect donations in this city for the Sickle Cell Anemia program
it sponsors.
The case began in January when three Son of Man Temple survival worker volunteers -- Lorenzo Green, 24, Leslie Wayman, 20, and Mack Wilson, 21 -- were ordered by Vallejo police to stop soliciting funds on the sidewalks in front of three banks in the city.
The three, all wearing prominently displayed ribbons with attached identification cards authorizing them to collect donations for the Son of Man Temple's People's Free Medical Research Health Clinics, refused to halt their solicitation on the grounds that the police had no legal or Constitutional grounds to make them stop.
The three were then arrested, charged with "soliciting without a permit," held in jail for 24 hours and released on $25 bail. At the trial on April 22, a Vallejo Municipal Court jury found them not guilty.
The Son of Man Temple survival worker volunteers argued at the trial that they needed no permit to collect donations because such work was part of the practice of their religion and they were protected of their rights by the First Amendment to the U.S.
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Constitution, which guarantees religious freedom.
The city attorney contended that the Son of Man Temple was not a religious, but a charitable organization, and therefore legally required to obtain a permit.
However, the defendants introduced the Son of Man Temple Statement of Purpose, as well as bulletins and booklets, which described the Temple's survival programs and philosophy as evidence of their religion.
Testifying on their own behalf, the Son of Man Temple volunteers pointed out that the survival programs are a means of solving the problems faced by oppressed human beings, all of whom have a right to long life and freedom. There is still no cure for Sickle Cell Anemia, they argued, a deadly blood disease 98 percent of whose victims are Black.
As well as the People's Free Medical Research Health Clinics, the Son of Man Temple programs include: the Free Food Program; People's Free Shoe Program; Free Pest Control Program; Legal Aid and Educational Program; Seniors Against a Fearful Environment (S.A.F.E.) Program, Child Development Center and others.
Leslie Wayman and Mack Wilson were representd by R. Minkoff, a local public defender, and Lorenzo Green acted as his own counsel during the trial.
The case is expected to set an example for other northern California cities in which the Son of Man Temple's Sickle Cell Anemia volunteers have been unconstitutionally harassed and arrested for carrying on this important work.
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HUEY P. NEWTON URGES RELEASE OF GEORGIA'S UNJUSTLY IMPRISONED
(Oakland, Calif.) - In a letter to the governor of Georgia, Huey P. Newton has
urged a case-by-case review of all inmates now in Georgia prisons and the immediate
release of those found to be unjustly incarcerated.
The leader of the Black Panther Party was responding to a request from the Commission for Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ for support to its efforts to win the release on parole of all minor inmates in Georgia prisons.
On March 30, 1974, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole ordered that 33 women be released from incarceration at the Women's Prison in Milledgeville under its "early release program." The group included 20-year-old Eve Pearson, convicted for taking a $5 rocking chair from an abandoned house and sentenced to a year in jail.
Revelation of the facts of Ms. Pearson's case prompted the church group to make its appeal to the Georgia governor, Jimmy Carter. In a letter received by the Black Panther Party, the Commission suggested that the release of Ms. Pearson "may be an injustice to other `Eve Pearsons' still incarcerated."
Brother Huey Newton says in his letter to the Georgia govnor:
"We join the Commission for Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ in petitioning you and the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole to immediately initiate a case-by-case review of all inmates incarcerated in the state prison system with the aim of releasing all those whose continued incarceration would clearly be unjust.
"It is our conviction that not only are women who have committed minor offenses being held unjustly in Georgia prisons [as the case of Eve Pearson so dramatically demonstrates], but that a prison system in which 70 per cent of the women being held are Black clearly demonstrates that cruel injustice has been done to Black women in the course of apprehension, judicial and sentencing procedures in the state of Georgia.
"Your decison to act in the cases of the 33 women released recently demonstrates both the validity of this request and the ability of the state of Georgia to act on it. Georgia could be a trailblazing example to the other 49 states of the Union by taking the next, logical step; a case-by-case review and the release of unjustly held inmates.
"All Power to the People,
Huey P. Newton"
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A confidential report to Gov. Carter by the state Office of Planning and Budget discloses that 70 per cent of the inmates at the Women's Prison at Milledgeville are Black, 12 per cent are 20 years old or younger and 24 of the 39 jailed for misdemeanors had no previous criminal records.
The report also revealed that the largest percentage, 31 per cent, were in the 21-25 range in age.
The Atlanta Constitution reports that at a press conference Mrs. Jeanne Cahill, chairwoman of the Georgia Commission on the Status of Women, recommended that the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles visit the prison immediately and hold clemency hearings in the prison; automatically hold clemency hearings for misdemeanants and youthful offenders within 20 days of their confinement and explain in writing its reasons for denying clemency pleas.
In the Commission for Racial Justice letter to the Black Panther Party, its Executive Director, Charles E. Cobb writes:
"The Commission for Racial Justice joined with the Clearing House on Georgia Jails and Prisons, the Georgia Commission on the Status of Women, the American Civil Liberties Union and others on March 22, 1974, in urging the Governor to take the action that we have described. To date we have received no reply. Although the release of the 33 women was early and represents a `victory of sort' for us, we still believe that stronger action is necessary. We encourage you to support our request to Governor Carter and the Georgia Board of Parole and Pardons."
-- 5 --
CHARGE AGAINST YVONNE GOLDEN DISMISSED
(San Francisco, Calif.) - The trumped-up charges against activist teacher Yvonne
Golden, of inciting a riot at a San Francisco Board of Education meeting disrupted
by Nazis, were dismissed last week at the beginning of her second trial. Municipal
Court Judge Harry Lowe granted a motion by attorney Terence Hallinan, saying
that a second trial on the same charges would constitute double jeopardy and
would be illegal.
The dismissal is a great victory for Ms. Golden, who had pleaded not guilty to charges that she "incited a riot" at the January 8 board meeting when 13 members of the American Nazi Party attacked radicals protesting their presence at the meeting.
Attorney Hallinan is contemplating filing legal charges of malicious prosecution against Board of Education President Eugen Hopp, false arrest against the city and misconduct charges against Assistant District Attorney Thomas Crary with the State Bar. Ms. Golden and supporters are continuing a recall movement against Hopp.
Charges against the radicals attacked in the scuffle are still pending. No charges were brought against any of the Nazis.
-- 6 --
BLACK VETERANS CONFERENCE TO BE HELD IN MILWAUKEE
(Milwaukee, Wisconsin) - The National Association of Black Veterans (NABV),
based in Milwaukee, will host a three-day convention starting on May 1, 1974,
through May 3, 1974. There will also be a National News Conference and a fund
raising banquet and award ceremony held on May 3.
The entire affair will be held at the Pfister Hotel and Tower, 424 East Wisconsin Ave., Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The three-day event is the NABV's first annual convention, and is themed, "Positive Life-style for Veterans." The workshops offered include. "Economic Development," "Less-Than-Honorable Discharges," and "Orphans of Black G.I.s."
According to a NABV news release, some of the following problems and solutions will be discussed:
"1. An examination of the fate of thousands of `War Orphans' who remain behind is South Vietnam;
"2. The injustice of thousands of unjustified and prejudicially issued `Less-Than-Honorable Discharges,' which handicap veterans unnecessarily and unfairly;
"3. The variety of solutions to the problems of organizing a 'Nation-wide System' of service delivery to veterans.
"The National Association of Black Veterans was conceived out of necessity to try and fill a void that for too long has been ignored," states an NABV "Abstract of Organization." "Black Americans have fought and carried the American banner high in every war this country has fought. From Crispus Attucks, the first victim of the Revolutionary War, down to the present disgruntled Vietnam Era Veteran.
"The void that has been unfilled is the same void that was filled by the American Legion, V.F.W., etc., for most White Veterans. It is the same void that was filled by the Jewish War Veterans or Polish War Veterans for specialized ethnic groups. The void is one that an organization which actively works to take care of its veteran must fill…
"…For the returning Black Veteran all the problems of the Black people are present, but compiled for him because of the loss of time, perhaps the loss of an appendage and too often the loss of employment opportunity because of a less-than-honorable discharge…
"…The prime concept of NABV is to fill the void in the area of benefits to minority group veterans. The organization itself does not exclude membership to any race, color, or creed. In fact, Americans of other ethnic backgrounds are encouraged to attend…"
The NABV's organizational programs are broken down into two
-- 10 --
main categories -- social and economical. The social programs
include:
1. Creation of a nationwide system of service delivery;
2. Feeding needy families;
3. Bringing home minority offspring left overseas;
4. Total review of all other-than-honorable discharges;
5. Devising a system of education to inform our youth and membership of the varied factors that play major roles in their lives.
Economical programs include:
1. Organizing BINGO in the states where it is legal;
2. Starting a "Fraternal Insurance Company";
3. Promoting social events;
4. Sales from our post lounges.
-- 6 --
INSIDE OUT: STRANGE ANTICS OF CHATTANOOGA'S ED OWENS
(Chattanooga, Tenn.) - The Black community is puzzled by the strange antics
of Ed Owens, also known as Eddie Billups, manager of the Soul Au Go Go Club
in Chattanooga and one-time recording artist.
When the Elanger Hospital employees walked off their jobs in protest of the hospital's racist policies, Ed Owens immediately came on the scene and personally made a call from a pay telephone to the Reverend Jesse Jackson of Operation PUSH, and began spreading rumors that Jesse Jackson was coming to Chattanooga, within a week, to help the hospital workers in their struggle. Then it was spread that Corretta King (window of Martin Luther King) was also coming.
It didn't take long for the people to see through Ed Owens' lies, but they are wondering if his motives are to sabotage the employee's strike; especially, since Owens' wife works at the hospital and is still on the job.
Last week, he came to a community rally in support of the hospital employees and tried to defend Dr. Levi Patten, the lone Black member of Erlanger Hospital's Board of Directors, who has been silent on the issue, and the people almost threw him out bodily.
Owens then held his own private press conference with the newsmen who had come to cover the rally, spouting madness about how the black community did not support the hospital employees and how he had planned to get somebody from Chicago or New York who could get the people together.
Well, the people are wondering if Ed Owens is together in the head or if Erlanger Hospital is paying him to disrupt the unity in the community.
-- 7 --
JOHN LEWIS: “DON'T VOTE FOR WALLACE”
(Selma, Ala.) - John Lewis, noted civil rights leader, has retuned to this city
to urge Blacks not to vote for the re-election of Alabama Governor George Wallace
to a third term. Brother Lewis said that Blacks all over the United States would
be watching on May 7, the date of the Alabama Democratic primary, "to see
if you will destroy the dream that was won by blood."
Brother Lewis, head of the Atlanta-based Voter Education Project, was speaking in a church only a few blocks from the bridge where hundreds of Blacks were whipped and clubbed on March 7, 1965, as they tried to march from Selma to Montgomery to win voting rights.
Brother Lewis recently came to Alabama with a number of civil rights leaders who had been deeply disturbed by reports that Governor Wallace might win the support of some Black politicians including a mayor and judge in Alabama.
Among those accompanying Brother Lewis were Julian Bond, Georgia State Representative; Leon Hall, an education specialist for the Southern Regional Council and the Rev. Hosea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
The Black mayor of Tuskegee, Johnny Ford, and the state's only Black judge, William M. Branch of Greene County, have come out in support of Wallace. It is well known that these two Blacks are backing Wallace solely because he controls state and federal funds. Ford, in fact, has been severely cirticized for trying to sell out the votes of the Black community.
-- 20 --
Although Wallace almost surely does not need Black support to win re-election, he is seeking it because he wants to convince national politicians that he has the ability to draw votes all across the political spectrum -- a prerequisite for running for national office.
In speeches throughout half a dozen cities and towns, Brother Lewis and the civil rights leaders accompanying him told Black Alabamians that a vote for Wallace was a traitorous step backward. "Too many people have died. Too many people have suffered for us to sell our vote for 30 pieces of silver, for an opportunity just to sit in the state capitol or visit the governor's mansion," Brother Lewis told the cheering congregation.
-- 7 --
HOUSTON: BLACK CANDIDATE CHARGES CORRUPTIO IN HARRIS COUNTY
(Houston, Texas) - Charges of large scale embezzlement against Harris County
Clerk Bob Turrentine, Jr., and other Harris County officials, could result from
information uncovered by the research staff of Brother Frederick L. Kay, the
state's first Black candidate for Harris County Clerk in the upcoming May 4
muicpal elections.
Brother Kay is a 26-year-old native Houstonian who until January 9, 1973, held the position of Deputy Clerk in the County Clerk's office of the Probate Courts Department in Houston.
The research, conducted by Brother Steve Edwards, Coordinator of the Houston Chapter of the Black Panther Party, acting as coordinator of Brother Kay's research staff, shows that as of the fiscal year 1972, there was $4.5 million of unaudited funds in the county clerk's office.
The county clerk's office has not been audited in over 12 years. This is in violation of Statute 1614D of the Texas Civil Code. There are also $2.5 million of unaudited money in the trust fund of the county clerk's office. This is also in clear violation of 1614D.
In addition, there are $4 million of unaudited funds of the Port of Houston Authority. Between the county clerk's office and the district clerk's office there is supposed to be $10.5 million in the Houston National bank. The existence of this fund is in question and if the money exists in full, it is unaudited.
The Houston Chapter of the Black Panther Party has placed the full weight of its organization and prestige behind the candidacy of Brother Frederick L. Kay.
Brother Kay, a former instructor of history and government in the Houston Independent School District, is married and has three children. He is a member of the Harris County Council of Organizations and was formerly faculty representative of the Houston Teachers Association. He is a graduate of Texas A & M University in Political Science and also attended the Texas Southern University Law School.
The local KXYZ radio station in Houston, alerted by the research staff of Brother Kay, ran a series of radio editorials exposing these and other facts that suggest embezzlement of county monies by Harris County officials. KXYZ reporter Brother Thomas Wright is responsible for the investigative research which was a basis for the editorials.
The response was immediate. Six county officials requested and were granted time on KXYZ to repay. County Judge Bill Elliott, County Commissioner Jamie Bray and County Treasurer Hartsell Gray did make individual replies. The other three cancelled out at the last moment.
As a result of the grass-roots organizing carried out by the campaign staff of Brother Frederick Kay, these latest revelations have greatly enhanced the odds of Brother Kay's victory. Among organizations now endorsing his candidacy are the Harris County Women's Political Caucus, the 20th Century Council of Organizations and the Harris County Democrats, the official body of the Texas Democratic Party.
-- 8 --
CHARGES DROPPED AGAINST 34 OF MENARD 38
RE-INDICTMENTS EXPECTED
(East St. Louis, Ill.) - The state of Illinois has dropped its charges against 34 of 38 Menard State Penitentiary inmates who were involved in a peaceful protest on April 30, 1973. However, this dismissal will probably be disregarded and the 34 men re-indicted once the community's interest in the case and support for the defendants has declined.
Competent legal assistance was provided to the brothers only through massive community involvement in fund raising efforts to defend them. News reports following the original incident aroused the public throughout the state and country. According to the Committee for the Defense of the Menard 38, the state would have been unable to convict the brothers had they been brought to trial as planned. Fund raising benefits and contributions from nonprofit organizations, relatives and friends had poured in, making possible several court actions designed to end illegal and tortuous treatment of the 38 while under indictment.
RESOURCES SLOWED
This tremendous outflow of justice-bearing resources has slowed to a trickle. Encouraged to over confidence by the apparent victory of dismissal, the defendants' supporters have turned their attentions to other matters. The news media have not covered the latest developments in the trial and Defense Committee's treasury has emptied.
The 34 Menard inmates who were cleared of the charges have also been transferred to other facilities within the Illinois corrections system. The men were sent to Statesville, Joliet, and Pontiac prisons as well as to the experimental, controversial and psychologically-harmful "Special Program Unit," which makes use of so-called behavioral modification. This transfer tactic has had the effect of breaking the men's lines of communication to all but their closest contacts both inside and outside the institution. Publicity was further curtailed and unity was broken. Defense preparations had to be slowed down as the men re-ordered their lives.
Meanwhile, the state has continued carefully knitting and building its case against the entire 38. The Defense Committee believes that the state will re-indict the dismissed men when the defense movement has grown old and "lost its teeth," when the defendants are at a disadvantage, "systematically created by the state to insure conviction of the 38."
Last year's demonstration in the prison commissary was staged to protest inadequate facilities, unhealthy conditions and inflexible, unreasonable rules. Since that time there has been no relief from any of the grievances. In fact, the protest suspects have fallen victim to severe beatings, no medical attention following the beatings and other harassment. They've been handcuffed for hours to the cells bars from inside the cell and sprayed with pepper gas, chemical mace and high powered water hoses as a means of torture.
-- 8 --
PEOPLE'S PERSPECTIVE
FBI RECORDS RULING
(Washington, D.C.) - The FBI must remove a person's arrest record from his/her files if the arrested person was cleared and released without charge, a U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled here.
300 COWS KILLED
(Clark Mills, N.Y.) - Three hundred dairy cows were slaughtered here last week to force an increase in wholesale milk prices. The local farmers' action was part of a nationwide conspiracy to eliminate 30,000 dairy cows. Participating farmers expect the action to create a milk shortage that would increase their profits.
COP PATROL PROTESTED
(Philadelphia, Pa.) - Sign-carrying demonstrators chanted, "Keep the police out of our communities," outside of a church last week where Philly Mayor Frank Rizzo announced the beginning of a $1 million federally-funded police foot patrol program in the "high crime areas" of North Philadelphia, a predominantly Blackcommunity.
INDICTED FOR MURDER
(Allendale, S.C.) - As a result of community pressure, five White men have been indicted for the shotgun murder of an 18-year-old Black man here four years ago. The five men were released on a meagre $15,000 bond.
POLICEWOMAN A NAZI
(San Francisco, Calif.) - Twenty-year-old Sandra Silva, an employee of the San Francisco Police Department, has been exposed as a member of the National Socialist White People's Party (Nazi Party). "They should send Blacks back to Africa -- of course, Blacks there would eat them up," she told the press here recently.
-- 9 --
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM ABSOLVED
(Washington, D.C.) - The Justice Department has absolved Representative Shirley
Chisholm and her presidential campaign committee of charges of mishandling funds.
A Justice Department spokesman said that charges of alleged misconduct were
not substantiated, and that other charges, including failure to keep records
of contributions and expenditures, had since been remedied.
-- 9 --
BLACK SAILORS EXPLAIN “RIOT” ABOARD U.S.S. LITTLE ROCK
(Naples, Italy) - The U.S. Navy has been the branch of the armed services that
has had the most publicly racial conflict in recent years. Protest demonstrations
and violent fighting have disrupted several ships in fleets and naval bases
scattered throughout the world. The first well-known incident occurred aboard
the U.S.S. Hassayampa, a Navy oil ship, off the Phillippine coast.
This incident was followed by a string of similar but larger skirmishes. The giant aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk and Constellation were riddled with conflict during operations in Vietnam and San Diego, California.
All these and other incidents were marked by one common cause and one common result. Black sailors had been forced in every case to the limits of their endurance by institutional racism in the Navy. They were, in some cases, actually attacked by White racists as tension turned to physical contradiction. Finally, when relative peace returned to the embattled warships, only Blacks were arrested, charged and court-martialed for the disturbances.
On November 8, 1973, the U.S.S. Little Rock was cruising on alert in the Mediterranean for possible Mid-East war duty. Suddenly, the vessel, flagship of the 6th fleet, was engulfed in struggle between its Black and White crewmen. The ship tossed and rolled in a conflict that was started when White Seaman William Linley struck Brother Eulie Jessie in the head with a wrench cand called him a "nigger."
Eleven Black -- and no White -- seamen are now standing trial for assault and riot in the incident.
One of them, Seaman James Shelmpert, says that, "A person that is Navy would say that it is all in the line of duty, but a person that's in in the Navy -- be he Black or White -- can see that this is nothing more than common prejudice."
RACISM
Says Seaman Martin P. Williams, "I reported on board the Little Rock on July 6, 1973, and up until November 8, I discovered the true meaning of racism…It is my belief that he (the military judge), like all the other highranking officers, fears the future degradation if this case were seen for what it really is -- just a group of Blacks who dared speak up for themselves."
Seaman Jessie reports that, "The captain of the U.S.S. Little Rock (Captain P.K. Cullins) has been and still is lying about the incident."
Since their trial started in Naples, Italy, far from the eyes and support of their Black communities back home, the 11 brothers have faced constant harassment. Seaman Shempert continues, "…petty officers in charge of us are writing us up on jive tips… and whether we were right or not the captain would burn us…the captain always says, `those are my pettyofficers and I stand behind them 100%'"
The men also see the link between the military judge, his rulings and the Navy's instructions to him.
Brother Jessie, whose White attacker admitted at his own court-martial that he struck Jessie
-- 20 --
with a wrench, says, "I am a Black American. I am proud
to be American. This is why I joined the Navy. I wanted to serve my country.
But this special courtmartial has turned me against the Navy and the government."
Seaman Shempert's conclusions are similar, "As long as there is breath in my body I will fight the man and his system until it changes or until I die, whichever comes first."
-- 9 --
DANGEROUS POLITICS, MR. ALIOTO !
The statement of San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto that 80 "Zebra-type"
murders have occurred in California since 1971, is highly irresponsible, dangerous
and a deliberate provocation against the Black communities of this state and
the nation.
Such a gross charge eliminates the widely held assumption that one or two probably deranged persons may be responsible for the recent San Francisco killings and assaults, and strongly suggests the existence of a deliberate conspiracy to murder Whites, organized and carried out by some Black group operating throughout California.
The immediate reaction of some police officials around the state was to challenge Alioto's contention, refusing to use the Zebra scare as a pretext for disposing of unsolved murders all over California. Long Beach Police Chief Jim Lynch said there were significant differences between the unsolved murders of Whites by Blacks in the Long Beach area and the San Francisco killings.
Sacramento Sheriff's office spokesman Bill Miller said there was "nothing to directly connect" the Nation of Islam defendants in the recent shootings in that city with the assaults in San Francisco. And, California Attorney General Evelle younger, the state's most ardent "law and order" advocate, has publicly challenged Alioto's claim.
Notwithstanding these challenges, the severe harm of Alioto's claim has been done. The charge that 80 White persons have been indiscriminately murdered in California since 1971 by Black persons certainly could ignite White indignation and, from certain fascist elements in this state, violent reactions against Black people and the Black communities.
Such a reckless and potentially explosive charge by Alioto can only be viewed as an attempt by him to gain public support for his unconstitutional and racist stop and search dragnet -- disallowed by the courts -- and at the same time boost his gubernatorial campaign among the state's majority population at the expense of its minority, Black and Brown citizens.
This is extremely dangerous politics, Mr. Alioto!
-- 10 --
INVESTIGATION UNCOVERS WIRETAP OF WOUNDED KNEE LEADERS
(St. Paul, Minn.) - An investigation conducted at the request of Wounded Knee
defendants Russell Means and Dennis Banks has revealed in U.S. District Court
here that the FBI illegally tapped the phones of Means and Banks.
In addition, attorneys for the defendants reported that an Associated Press (AP) photographer, James Mone, doubled as an FBI agent during the Wounded Knee siege of last year. When Mone's superiors discovered his activities, he was suspended by the AP, and his conduct was labeled "improper" for a newsman.
U.S. government lawyers denied that a telephone set-up at a federal road block during the 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee was used as an illegal wiretap. However, Assistant U.S. Attorney General David Geinapp admitted that the telephone was a two-party line for the area and, therefore, conversations could be overhead.
Seeking to justify the wiretap, a clear cut violation of the defendants' Constitutional rights, Geinapp said the tap was "totally irrelevant" and that there was no evidence of the FBI's use of the phone for any purpose other than "overhearing" coversations. In explaining the FBI's reason for not using the phone for ordinary telephone purposes, Geinapp said, "If someone else is constantly on that line, it can't be used."
An FBI teletype report recently entered into evidence in court quoted an unidentified source as supplying an estimate of the numerical and logistical strength of the Native American defenders. Mone, who was permitted entry into the city as a press representative, has admitted to having been this source.
In a related development, a complaint challenging the legality of the February 7 tribal election on the Pine Ridge reservation has been filed in federal court on behalf of Means and 28 named voters of the Oglala tribe.
The complaint charges that tribal president Richard Wilson and his agents deprived the Oglala people of a free election, contrary to their due process and equal protection rights under the 1968 Indian Civil Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1871, and seeks a new independently supervised election within 45 days of judgement.
Named in the complaint are Wilson, several members of the tribal council, the tribal election board, and others within the Wilson administration. The suit maintains that a conspiracy existed to assure Wilson's re-election through deliberate disregard for tribal election procedures, violation of the Indian Civil Rights Act and the intimidation of anti-Wilson Native Americans who would stand up for their political and civil rights.
-- 11 --
IN SEARCH OF COMMON GROUND
CONVERSATIONS WITH ERIK H. ERIKSON
AND HUEY P. NEWTON
In Search of Common Ground is the transcript of a series of discussions which took place in 1971 between Huey P. Newton, leader of the Black Panther Party and Erik H. Erikson, Professor Emeritus of Human Development at Harvard University. The following excerpt from those talks took place at Brother Huey's apartment in Oakland, California. Brother Herman Blake and Kai Erikson, two noted sociologists, also participated.
EHE: O.K., would you also include in this a certain faction that seems to want to destroy the whole system so that it can be reborn? And these people are willing to sacrifice all technological achievements in order…
HPN: To negate the whole thing, I didn't understand it at the time, but Trotsky always talked about there being no such things as particular kinds of culture, there was only continuity. So at some times a gun is quite necessary and at other times it would be proper to use other strategies, whatever will promote the victims' move toward freedom. But the Oedipus complex is as much as anything else a symbolic fight of the victim against the controller.
OEDIPUS COMPLEX
EHE: I wrote a paper on dissent recently for the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, and I took that occasion to point out that we always talk about the Oedipus complex as if only the boy's hostility was involved. But we never talk about Laius, the father of Oedipus, and ask what "complex" made him so ready to believe the oracle that his little boy was going to kill him someday. He believed it so strongly that he put the baby Oedipus out, exiled him. We won't understand the repetitiveness of this pattern unless we realize the importance of the fact that the king believed in the son's potential threat instead of trusting his own ability to bring up the little boy in such a way that the oracle would have been disproven. That would not make a myth, I know, but it might make history.
Why do we not point to the ways in which every establishment and every established organization, out of a fear that the young will overcome them, limit the identities of the young and permit them access to adulthood only by way of confirmations, communions, inductions, and so on -- every one of which limits the young to a particular identity and threatens transgressors? And, of course, war comes in here in the sense that every pseudospecies would put their young into particular uniforms and try to impress them by way of historical mythology that the highest affirmation of life would be a heroic death for the system. If you die well, you're going to be immortal -- and all the more so if you first kill many representatives of the other pseudospecies ad majoram gloriam of your own pseudospecies.
KTE: Who are also young.
EHE: Who are also young. They kill each other off, then, and at the end the two systems make peace with each other, having killed enough of the best fighters in each other's younger generation to have avoided a certain potential for rebellion in their own country.
KTE: Boy. That's quite a thought.
HPN: Yes, it is.
EHE: There is something to that, don't you think? But nowadays the young of countries that a very short time ago were ready to do this to each other periodically, like the Germans and the French, are suddenly beginning to recognize that they are in many ways closer to each other than they are to their respective parents.
HPN: That is because they are becoming one community. That is what intercommunalism is all about.
KTE: The people to who this is becoming most obvious -- in this country, at least -- are the young who realize that it is always other young people they go to war with and Blacks who realize that is it usually exploited people they go to war with.
HPN: That's right.
EHE: There is another matter that we may not want to try to get at today, but which we should mention as a background for the future. Once the young have agreed on standing up against a system that imposes a form of filicide on the young of the world, there may well follow a tendency toward fratricide, which is probably part of all revolutions. You mentioned Trotsky: remember how -- in spite of Lenin, who was probably the most balanced of all those men -- how in the end Stalin made of himself (again) the one father, the traditional "little father," heir to the Russian tradition with all its capacity for tyranny?
Now maybe the world is closer today to a revolutionary fraternity and sorority: but what are people going to do to keep one another from assuming the roles of older brothers and sisters?
The question always is: When you gain a new measure of freedom, who can claim the right to sanction it?
The fact that man has such a long childhood may be the evolutionary origin of his tendency to always search for an older figure who will sanction whatever license he takes. Even if rebels first kill the father and then kill each other, there always comes the question -- who is going to be that charismatic older brother who sanctions the license you took and confirms your right to have taken it? And then some of
PAGE NO. 18 NOT AVAILABLE.
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THERE IS ONLY ONE PEOPLE'S FIELD MARSHAL-GEORGE JACKSON
LETTER TO JOHN GERASSI
The following letter, written by Brother George Jackson to progressive author John Gerassi, is the third of a five part series of articles entitled, "There Is Only One People's Field Marshal -- George Jackson."
Of significant interest in this letter, written in mid-1971, is Comrade George's severe criticisms of Eldridge Cleaver and Cleaver's cultist "war against the pigs" type of analysis seemingly being put into practice by the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Dear John Gerassi:
As you know, I'm in a unique political position. I have a very nearly closed future, and since I have always been inclined to get disturbed over organized injustice or terrorist practice against the innocents -- wherever -- I can now say just about what I want (I've always done just about that), without fear of self-exposure. I can only be executed once. No matter what I do, they will always explain me away with the fact of my eleven years in prison and my supposed loss of contact with objective reality. So I rage on aggressive and free (the action on April 6).
When I am denied or corrected -- I always understand -- but rage on. All on the principle that the ideal must be demonstrated, that the oppressed mentality must be taught by example to escape the myth, the hoax that repression can work against the collective consciousness of the commune, and to prove that ideals cannot be killed with violence. So -- I'm duty bound to take the occasion of your letter to respond with what an Irishman once termed "the sweet taste of sedition."
"THE OUTLAW"
I'll go straight back to our visit and the hour they allowed us to deal with all the years. I took your casual remark concerning "the outlaw" back to the cell with me, tooled with it a bit, and clarified it in my own hand. I have a hundred related questions (I am alive and learning!). Outlaws, of course, I thought. Revolution will not be tolerated, it is against the law in the totalitarian corporative state. The revolutionary must certainly reconcile himself with one day becoming an outlaw.
Then my thoughts turned to the oppressive contract in general. It's the nature of cancer to expand. You've seen a great deal of it firsthand -- U.S. expansionism since World War II -- I've only studied it vicariously. But we see the same conclusions: millions of outlaws in the Union of South Africa, Jordan, Indochina and here. Summary executions not of uniformed soldiers but ordinary people. First women and children in a ditch in Vietnam, ultimately executions in the civic centers of every look-alike county in this country.
And that's the principal contradiction of monopoly capital's oppressive contract. The system produces outlaws. It also breeds contempt for the oppressed. Accrual of contempt is its fundamental survival technique. This leads to the excesses and destroys any hope of peace eventually being worked out between the two antagonistic classes, the haves and the have-nots. Coexistence is impossible, contempt breeds resistance, and resistance breeds brutality, the whole growing in spirals that must either end in the uneconomic destruction of the oppressed or the termination of oppression.
History is clearly a long continuum of synthesizing elements. The imbalances of the oppressive contract, ideals so fundamentally contradictory, and forces so mutually exclusive can only result in the dissolution of the agents of that contradiction.
The corollary of the contract is quite simply malignancy. It strikes first of all in the region of the brain. A search for a nondiseased mind throws one hard against one of the greatest historical/biological calamities imaginable.
Excuses can be made for some workers -- blind defense for the system that is victimizing them, brainwashed by the National Advertising Council's portrait of the silent majority as well-off in comparison to the barbarian world. Their mindless behavior can also be explained by their ignorance of labor history. But even the nationalistic conditioning received in massive doses from birth cannot completely explain why man would turn against himself. Even the workers' short-term economic advantage is only a partial explanation.
BLUE COLLAR WORKERS
We must look for the root causes in the psycho-social effect of competitiveness and racism. The huge mass of blue-collar workers seem to be working totally against themselves in their support of a system owned and controlled by a tiny minority. Actually, their contradictory behavior is explained by feelings of loyalty to race, by their identification with the White hierarchy and by their economic advantage over the oppressed races. They may be oppressed themselves, but in return they are allowed to oppress millions of others.
The economic nature of racism is not simply an aside. Built-in physical features exclude Blacks from participation, exclude them forever. These features cannot be changed. It is the relationship that must change. Racism is a fundamental characteristic of monopoly capital.
When the White self-congratulatory racist complains that the Blacks are uncouth, unlettered; that our areas are run-down, not maintained; that we dress with loud tastelessness (a thing they now also say about their own children), he forgets that he governs. He forgets that he built the schools that are inadequate, that he has abused his responsibility to use taxes paid by Blacks to improve their living conditions, that he manufactured the loud pants and pointed shoes that destroy and deform the feet. If we are not enough like him to suit his tastes, it's because he planned it that way. We were never intended to be part of his world.
DIFFERENCES & DEFORMITIES
It's a silly contradiction for him or us to dwell on the subject of comparisons between the enemy culture and its creation, the subculture. The only way the exploiter can maintain his position is to create differences and maintain deformities.
It is the sense of the finality of their exclusion from solid social-economic participation that forces our youth away from the crippled family unit into the streets. It causes the excessive importance of meaningless relationships and the prevalence of anticommunal behavior which is a psycho-social response to the loss of -- and longing for -- community.
The diseased mind… it's slowly spreading throughout the oppressed organism. Even the "magnificent savage," the mindless overman is dying from the almost total anemia. Where is the Black Man? I see him inseparable from the Black Female, but where is he now? How he has survived at all is almost beyond any rational explanation.
Early I understood the alternatives of the Black situation: assimilation, meaning acceptance of the oppressive contract; ossification or life below, beyond, outside of society or revolution. But John, I admit to some confusion over the issue of White racism growing out of my experience in prison. My mind has vacillated between the historical references: African feudalism and African communalism -- I know that we Africans were the first communists (J. Edgar Hoover calls it "primitive communism" in one of the glossaries of his anti-people books). Dr. Du Bois dealt with it in The Philadelphia Negro I think (I can't quite remember now) in a positive manner, so I never had any of the really serious hang-ups in accepting revolution.
But -- I think for a while I sincerely felt that Europeans were not capable of communistic unitarian behavior. I felt this, however, only briefly, since unitarian, progressive conduct seems to be a problem for all of us after hundreds of years of steadily centralizing capitalism and, in some areas, after thousands of years of hierarchy. I've always understood that the new cultural-nationalist attempts to return to the pre-slavery past of African feudalism can only leave the average Black man more uncertain and insecure than ever. It is difficult to undertsand why such negative, academic and obscure exoticism exists when
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there are definite examples of historical contributions which
could be used to analyze and give meaning to our present and our future.
The commitment to total revolution must involve an analysis of both the economic motives and the psycho-social motives which perpetrate the oppressive contract. For the Black partisan, national structures are quite simply nonexistent. A people without a collective consciousness that transcends national boundaries -- freaks, Afro-Amerikkkans, Negroes, even Amerikkkans, without the sense of a larger community than their own group -- can have no effect on history. Ultimately they will simply be eliminated from the scene. Without the collective sense of community, without its movement (Bobby Hutton, the shoot-out on Central, August 7) institutions (our survival projects that will now grow into infrastructure), we simply never will be an effective force.
NATIONALIST PERIOD
During the nationalist period of the collective oppressed mentality promoted by the establishment, the movement is frozen, static. This is the level of development favored by the oppressor, the artless empty ideals of the pseudo-nation, love and respect for a flag, a nationalistic song or beat, the fervent belief in a bond or organization which arises out of a thwarted longing for real community.
The establishment does everything in its power to ensure that revolutionary rage is redirected into empty outlets which provide pressure releases for desires that could become dangerous if allowed to progress. At this stage in the development of monopoly capitalism, there are two alternatives: aggressive revolutionary activity or calcification. Conservative society, Black or White, is decadent society; due to the absence of creativity and movement, conservative society always burns itself out.
Your letter got right at the heart of that principle. The whole ideal of cultural nationalism has been all but smothered now. It was basically contrived out of the loss of community and the terms of the oppressive contract -- coercive conformity and indulgent flexibility to the demands of hierarchy. But we must all realize that the oppressive contract cannot be broken as long as any sort of hierarchy exists to perpetuate the sensitized relationships of Amerikan tribalism, classism and racism. Society is rendered impossible by such relationships. The establishment of society through intercommunalism will require that the social contract be completely altered. Clearly alteration cannot take place unless hierarchy is destroyed. Can we expect the hierarchy to do away with itself???
Then the real undertaking at present is the unconditional freeing of the people. We plunge beyond ideological debate before this immediate task. The Black man and the Black female must be, as I have mentally ordered things, completely joined together in the act of liberation! I accept my Black mama with all her fears for my life that border on hysteria at times. But I also realize that it is the "role of the living," of all the innocent, to discover unitary practice and conduct and move against the institutions that close on the oppressed.
Those who have more regard for their own egos or self-interest than they have for building a united progressive left, and those who abandon community altogether in favor of petty interests, are in direct opposition to our real interests. They are attempting another form of escapism. They're fleeing the objective conditions of their real life and will eventually reach the ultimate contradiction of facing their father or brother, or old classmate, comrade, or wife, over the barrel of a gun. Or they will find themselves in no man's land, cast out by the people, suspected by their crime partners. But, regarding the crisis (just past) in the Party, as Huey Newton reminds us, there is always a positive side to each negative. The confused resentment and reverse racism of the Black partisan will eventually lead to a new, more productive and creative contribution.
PARTY GROWS STRONGER
Already we realize that there was no split in the Party, only a defection. The Party has come out of it stronger. We can now bring our strategy and tactics into a realistic conformity with our total objective situation. Recall we discussed Jonathan and guerrilla strategy in the urban situation at length over that piece of paper with circles and lines, arrows and question marks.
I guess now that he is dead, and the guilty are safe from the muscle of his mind and arm, it is safe to reveal some of his thoughts and functions within the matrix of the Party and movement. He felt as I did that the military and political branches, though married in purpose and direction, in these opening stages should function separately from each other for very obvious reasons.
In undeveloped countries, the establishment's military-strike forces are not more than thirty miles down a dirt road in the provincial capital. They're always within a few moments of strike. The urban guerrilla, however, can mingle with the enemy and remain invisible and invulnerable. In our present situation there is no contradiction between the military thinking and action and the primacy of politics. The situation allows for such activity as the August 7th movement, because it can be accomplished without giving the enemy-state forces the pretext they need to move in and destroy the political apparatus -- under the very convenient and much used Anglo-Saxon conspiracy laws. The primacy of politics will continue as long as the military reads, picks up and works well within the prevailing political matrix. So Jonathan's raid on the military and judiciary that Friday was at once an expression of his own aggressive consciousness and that of the Party. It is easy to infer all of this in retrospect that Jonathan was head of a clandestine army which saw the Black Panther Party as its political leader. Operating on his own, he was able to at least attempt to support some of the minimum demands of the people without placing Huey Newton and David Hilliard in jeopardy of loss of movement or death, i.e., persecution in courts.
That this is our only recourse at the present level of development is too obvious to even dwell on. It will not be possible, however, in the advanced stages of revolution. Just a glance at the present level of consciousness and the status of the survival infrastructure will reveal the error of Cleaver's analysis that no separation should exist even now between military and political
PRINCIPLED DISCIPLINE
You know I sent him a message suggesting that unitarian conduct depends on a principled discipline and submission to democratic centralism instead of the egoism that sent him first against his Muslims (through the Sacramento Bee Pig press that time), then against the Peace and Freedom Party, even against the progressive elements of the C.P. through his unreasoned attack on the magnificent Angela Davis. Recently he has even attacked the dedicated, overworked and brilliant Charles Garry. It seems to be a pattern with the man. You recall the attack he launched against Fidel and Cuba, and those accounts that seemed disparaging of his hosts which have reached the pig press here from time to time.
My personal message to him was mild, considering that he was in fact leaving his old comrades open to attack again. I sent a letter reminding him that his behavior while in prison was far from exemplary and had that section of it signed by Ulysses McDaniel and Clifford Jefferson, two of the oldest (time in) and most respected Black partisans in the California concentration camp system. I then listed some of his behavioral patterns since his release -- a more complete list than the one just given -- that did not indicate that he had changed much. I finally asked him simply to show proof that he was not a compulsive disrupter or agent provocateur. A very mild request, I feel. He returned with a very scurrilous and profane set of invectives -- in short, a piece of vendetta. Tell him that seven thousand miles, the walls of prison, steel and barbed wire do not make him safe from my special brand of discipline, tell him that the dragon is coming…
The substructured prison movements are gaining momentum. My trial is set for early August, 1971, there'll be hearings in between of course. If they are at all like the last, you'll get to see my special bastardized style of martial arts. I'm working hard to stay in form. I wasn't at my best at the last showing. I'll clean them all next time they attack. Attend -- let me see your style.
Your comrade in arms -- "He who does not fear the death of 1,000 cuts will dare unseat the emperor."
George Jackson
GEORGE JACKSON LIVES!
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THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY PLATFORM
MARCH 29, 1972 PROGRAM
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 illness, 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 aggressors.
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, inhuman 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 bonds 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 ablolish it and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such a way 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, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, then 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: P.A.I.G.C. REJECTS ANY UNION WITH PORTUGAL
COUP BRINGS NO CHANGE IN POLICY
(Conakry, Rep. of Guinea) - "We will continue our struggle for the complete and total independence of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau," declared a spokesman for the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde Islands (PAIGC) here, in reaction to the news of the military coup d'etat that overthrew the government of former Premier Marcello Caetano in Portugal last week.
The spokesman declared that the African peoples of Guinea-Bissau will never agree to any kind of federation or association with Portugal and will continue the fight to complete independence, according to a British Broadcasting Corporation World Service broadcast.
The new Head of State and former Chief of Staff of the Portuguese armed forces, General Antonio Sebastian Ribeiro de Spinola, led the coup on the theme of peace in the African "territories" of Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau.
However, Spinola's formula for peace involves a projected commonwealth arrangement in which Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau would have "equal status with metropolitan Portugal." This theme was elaborated on in his book, Portugal and the Future.
UNSUCCESSFUL COUP
It was the publication of this book, in concert with public statements sharply critical of the Caetano regime's policy in Africa, that led to Spinola's removal as Chief of Staff on last March 14. An unsuccessful coup attempt followed that ended with the arrest of a number of military men and increased tension throughout Portugal.
Last week's overthrow of Caetano is a direct victory for the African liberation forces of Mozambique, primarily FRELIMO, of Angola, primarily MPLA and, of course the PAIGC of Guinea-Bissau, together with all the militant African forces that supported them.
Their determination, their courage and their military and political organization and activity made impossible hopes for a military victory by the Portuguese in Africa. This continuing situation intensified the contradications between elements of the ruling elite of Portugal. Caetano represented the fascist diehards of the regime, prepared to commit wholesale genocide against the African people if necessary to maintain the African territories.
Spinola, on the other hand, represents the "enlightened" elite of the military, prepared to grant peace and token independence in some alleged federation or commonwealth arrangements, while maintaining control over the rich natural resources and exploitation of them in these massive African lands. This is the neo-colonialist pattern.
In the recently proclaimed Republic of Guinea-Bissau, the Portuguese forces were defeated over four fifths of the territory, and remain today surrounded, occupying the few coastal towns. The new Portuguese Head of State, Spinola, was both Commander-in-Chief and Governor in Guinea-Bissau from 1968 to 1972. As such he witnessed the almost complete overthrow of Portuguese power in that West African country of some 500,000 souls.
During his governorship in Guinea-Bissau, Spinola was responsible for launching a ruthless
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PORTUGAL STEPS UP TERROR CAMPAIGN IN MOZAMBIQUE
(Dar es Salaam, Tanzania) - Frustrated by repeated defeats and heavy losses
in both men and materials, the Portuguese government has intensified its terror
campaign against Mozambican villagers. A recent FRELIMO communique issued here
reveals that Portuguese soldiers massacred 28 people at Chirima, near Tambara
village, in Manica e Sofala province.
The communique said the massacre took place after the Portuguese had plundered and destroyed all the crops in the region.
The success of FRELIMO is indicated in the recent rank-and-file military protests against the Portuguese government's colonial wars in Africa and last week's military overthrow of the regime of Portuguese Premier Caetano. (See article, page 15.) Between September, 1973, and January, 1974, FRELIMO has attacked posts and concentration camps in Manica e Sofala province and executed many successful ambush and guerrilla operations. Six trains were derailed. Thirty Portuguese soldiers were killed.
The FRELIMO communique also reports that on September 13, 1973, six Portuguese soldiers were killed during an attack on the concentration camp in Capanga, Ciramba region. On November 13, FRELIMO guerrillas attacked the concentraion camp at Tambara where five Portuguese soldiers were killed. In an attack carried out on December 3 against the concentration camp at Goe, two tractors were destroyed.
The intensive campaign being conducted in Manica e Sofala province has not been conducted at the expense of slowing down FRELIMO activity elsewhere. Tete province has been the site of numerous FRELIMO victories. Between November of last year and January of this year 90 Portuguese soldiers were killed; one plane was shot down; three boats were destroyed; 14 military vehicles and two bridges were wrecked.
On January 10, a concentration camp in Mandie region was stormed. In this operation numerous people were freed, 15 Portuguese soldiers were killed and rifles, hand grenades, and a mortar shell captured, the FRELIMO communique said. The Portuguese aircraft shot down in Kanyama zone on December 24 was a reconnaissance plane.
Most of the Portuguese casualties have resulted from FRELIMO ambushes and guerrilla operations. In two of the ambushes carried out on January 18 and January 21, 24 Portuguese soldiers were killed.
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“SELF-RELIANCE, NATIONALIZATION, MAJORITY PARTICIPATION”
GUYANA'S PRIME MINISTER INTERVIEWED
The following interview with Prime Minister Forbes Burnham of the Republic of Guyana by Godefroid Tchamlesso of Presna Latina, a Cuban press service, took place ten days after the festivities commemorating the fourth anniversary of the country's independence. Since 1970, Prime Minister Burnham, 51, has promoted an economic policy based on self-reliance, nationalization and state majority participation in foreign-owned industries. He has fostered national unity by trying to firmly unite the three ethnic groups that compose the Guyanese nation.
Q: Excellency, your country has just celebrated its fourth anniversay as a Cooperative Republic in the English-speaking West Indies and will soon complete eight years of independence. Could you describe the achievements of that period and the problems which still need to be overcome?
FB: During recent years Guyana's people have enjoyed a greater amount of self-reliance and dignity. Another achievement, of course, is that the government is going forward with the support of the people to own and control all their natural and other resources of Guyana. As you noted, we are called a cooperative republic, which means the emphasis is on putting the economy into the hands of the small man, using the cooperative as the mechanism for achieving that. We have had a number of successes in this field, but we have also had a number of failures.
We find in many cases that people have been enthusiastic but they have not been sufficiently trained and grounded in the running of these cooperatives, so that some of them have been failures while others have been successes.
Another problem which still remains in Guyana is the fuller or greater development of our resources.
SELF-RELIANCE
Q: Under your leadership, as part of the economic policy of self-reliance which you favor, the former ALCAN, now Guybau, bauxite mines were nationalized. What advantages has the State obtained from this experience?
FB: The first advantage we had was that it gave our men, our people, the opportunity of running a large complex. Before the attitude on the part of our exploiters was that Guyanese could never run as large a complex as that. You might have seen the operations yourself. I certainly remember that your Prime Minister Fidel also saw those operations when he was here in September. It is now completely run by Guyanese from top to bottom.
So far as the taking over of Reynolds is concerned, we will also be in a better position to operate that complex successfully because we have gathered a great deal of experience in the operations and I think that when it is taken over it will mean a great deal to the people of Guyana psychologically in that the final multinational which has been in every way related to the exploitation of our natural resources, will have left Guyana.
We hope to do so in terms of an agreement or consensory arrangement, but in any case we are determined to do it. This is in fulfillment of our policy of ownership and control of the natural resources of Guyana by the Guyanese and for the Guyanese.
Q: The problems you are now confronted with also emerged when you nationalized the ALCAN subsidiary, starting talks with them on introducing majority participation for the State. In that case, the final outcome was the taking over of the company and putting it under state control. What would be the outcome if similar problems arise in connection with Reynolds?
FB: Quite frankly speaking, I would think that Reynolds is not prepared to give us majority participation. And I think that since we have already started to move in that direction, we shall now have to discuss the terms in which we take it over completely.
The second advantage we have had is that it has given us a greater experience in the field and allowed us to find new markets for our products, into which markets ALCAN did not sell before. Thirdly, it has given us the opportunity of integrating the industry into the rest of the economy.
To give an example, prior to the nationalization of Demba, which was ALCAN-owned, her susidiary, the flocculent or catalyst that used to be employed for the conversion of bauxite into aluminum was wheat flour imported from abroad.
MADE LOCALLY
Now, since we have taken over, the flocculent that is used is cassava starch, made locally. To that extent there has been an integration. And in so far as retooling of parts is concerned, that is now done here, where before it used to be done abroad. Further, as a result of the experiments we have carried out we have now found economic uses for the red mud which is a waste of the bauxite industry and we have also discovered large deposits of caolin found in conjunction with the bauxite which we shall soon be exploiting on our own.
Q: Recently you also spoke of negotiations with the subsidiary of Reynolds Metals with the object of obtaining a majority participation for the State, and there was expectation that the nationalization process would be completed for the fourth anniversary. What will the taking of the last bastion of the foreign mining companies mean to the people and government?
FB: In the first place, it was hoped that by now we would have finished discussions with Reynolds as to the government's take-over; however, the discussions have gone on longer than we had anticipated.
It seems to me that Reynolds is not disposed to give us majority participation and therefore the discussion that will proceed from here on will be with a view to taking it over completely and arranging the terms of compensation.
TO BE CONTINUED
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Africa In Focus
UNITED NATIONS
The United Nations Special Committee of 24 on Decolonization called on Britain on April 2, "to take all effective measures to terminate the illegal racist minority regime" in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) and to ensure the political and human rights of the African people. It also called for actions to strengthen the U.N. Security Council's sanctions against the regime in Salisbury, including steps by the U.S. to put an end to the operations of certain Rhodesian agencies in the United States.
O.A.U.
The U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate have voted to give the President authority to extend to the Organization of African Unity (OAU) the same privileges and immunities enjoyed by international organizations in which the U.S. participates under treaty or as authorized by Congress.
MOZAMBIQUE
Sweden will triple its aid to the FRELIMO (Front for the Liberation of Mozambique) guerrillas fighting against Portuguese rule in Mozambique, it was announced recently. A government spokesman, who recently met FRELIMO representatives, said aid for the 1974-75 year would total 15m kronor (about $3.5 million), compared with 5m kronor (about $1.2 million) last year. The government also announced that it would increase its financial support to African nationalist movements in South Africa.
GUINEA-BISSAU
Freedom fighters in Guinea-Bissau brought down their 40th plane this year according to a recent communique. The African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands (PAIGC) said the Portuguese plane was a Fiat G-91.
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FOOD AID APPROVED FOR AFRICAN LIBERATION MOVEMENTS
(United Nations, N.Y.) - In an important victory for the African people struggling
against the remains of colonialism, the World Food Program has decided, despite
U.S. opposition, to make food aid available to African freedom fighters and
people in the liberated areas of Africa's colonial territories.
The decision came at a meeting of the World Food Program's governing council at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) world headquarters in Rome on April 26. The decision was made to support the peoples of Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau, struggling against fading Portuguese domination.
The Organization of African Unity had requested "that the question of food aid to freedom fighters in Africa be considered by the World Food Program's governing body," according to an FAO communique released at the United Nations.
"During the debate…in which most of the members of the committee present took part, full support to the humanitarian needs of the affected peoples was expressed," said the communique, although "some members held that there were legal constraints in the existing World Food Program regulations which prevented liberated territories being treated on a par with the member countries of the FAO and the United Nations, who are entitled to receive aid."
U.S. OBJECTIONS
Nevertheless, the World Food Program committee decided, despite U.S. objections, "to invite the FAO to begin immediately through the Organization of African Unity an interim program of aid on an emergency or quasi-emergency basis to peoples in the liberated areas in the colonial territories of Africa and their national liberation movements."
The World Food Program, cosponsored by the FAO and the United Nations, is a 10-year-old organization that has been aiding hunger-stricken areas in India and Bangladesh. It also provides food that is disbursed in lieu of wages to workers on road-building, irrigation projects and the like.
This marks the first time the organization has sent aid directly to African liberation movements. On January 1, it provided $8.3 million worth of food to 125,215 refugees who had fled from Portuguese terrorism in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau to adjoining countries -- through which the aid was channeled.
The FAO last year recognized the proclamation of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau by the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands (PAIGC).
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AFL-CIO, CIA CONSPIRE TO PREVENT DEMOCRACY IN LATIN AMERICA
An inquiry is underway to determine the extent to which the AFL-CIO is involved
with CIA operations in South America. The investigation was sparked by evidence
that the U.S. trade union leadership has actively supported the CIA in interfering
with the political processes and disrupting democracy in Chile and other Latin
American countries. NICH, Non-Intervention in Chile, a progressive Berkeley-based
group has provided us with the following information.
(Berkeley, Calif.) - Is the AFL-CIO involved with multinational corporations and the CIA in supporting right-wing subversion of the labor movement in Latin America? A 46-page report authored by the Emergency Committee to Defend Democracy in Chile (ECDDC) of San Jose, provides substantial documentation for such charges, and is being taken seriously by labor groups who are pressing for an investigation.
The report, "An Analysis of our AFL-CIO Role in Latin America, or, Under the Covers with the CIA," focuses on the activities of the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) in Latin America. Formed in 1962 as a nonprofit corporation, the AIFLD is headed by George Meany and receives ideological leadership from Jay Lovestone, head of the AFL-CIO's Department of International Affairs and professional anti-communist. Chairman of the Board of Trustees is J. Peter Grace, chief executive of W.R. Grace Lines, while among the AIFLD's corporate supporters are Anaconda and Kennecott Copper Companies, Readers's Digest, IBM, and the Rockefeller corporations, all with interests in Latin America and in Chile in particular.
CORPORATE TIES
The ECDDC report documents AIFLD's corporate and government ties -- according to William C. Doherty, Jr., Executive Director of AIFLD, 92% of his budget comes out of government funds, while the rest is provided by the AFL-CIO and "some 95 business establishments with interests in Latin America." It also documents AFL-CIO and later AIFLD complicity in right-wing activities in Cuba, Guatemala, Chile and elsewhere. (Doherty admits, for example, that the Brazilian military coup was aided by the AIFLD.)
In the case of Chile, treated in most detail in the report, evidence is given of increased funding (through AID) and a corresponding increase in their "anti-communist" activities in Chile after Allende's election -- although Chile received an almost total news blackout in the AIFLD Report during this period. The AIFLD activity is specifically linked to a number of the most reactionary professional organizations and "gremios" (bosses' unions), and to CIA funding and activities in Chile.
The ECDDC report was presented to the Santa Clara County Central Labor Council at their March 4 meeting, and after some debate a resolution was adopted calling on the AFL-CIO to "respond and provide information" on the charges contained in the report. The resolution was then sent to George Meany and national officials of the AFL-CIO. An effort is also being made to gain support for this inquiry into AFL-CIO international policy and the AIFLD from other labor groups around the country.
The ECDDC report with its thorough documentation and vigorous language provides a real boost to the Chile Solidarity Movement in its attempt to strengthen ties between the Chilean and U.S. workers' movements.
The report is still available to anyone working with trade union groups. It can be ordered from the Emergency Committee to Defend Democracy in Chile, 316 South 19th Street, San Jose, Calif. 95116, at $1.00 each.
Page No. 18-19 are missing.
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SPORTS: ARTHUR ASHE: SOUTH AFRICAN VISIT AIDED REGIME
The March issue of Sechaba, the magazine of the African National Congress of
South Africa, and the February issue of Southern Africa, published by the New
York Southern African Committee, contained articles questioning the reasons
behind Black tennis star Arthur Ashe's playing before segregated crowds in the
South African Tennis Open last November.
Sechaba stated that Ashe's appearance aided "the cause of White supremacy," and quoted Mr. Abdul Bhamjie, secretary of the nonracial Southern Transvaal Soccer Union, as saying to foreign Black sportsmen, "If you keep on coming to South Africa, we won't get nonracial sports in a hundred years. They think they are opening avenues for us… They are doing far more harm than good."
Southern Africa points out that these sporting events are termed "breakthroughs" because they give the appearance that South Africa is really changing its racist policy of blatant apartheid while no real changes take place.
Although Ashe had stated before his visit that the spectators
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of the tournament should be integrated, the crowd was segregated
as usual. Also, in order to be allowed to come into the country, the once outspoken
Ashe had agreed to make no public comment on South Africa's racist regime.
The most positive outcome of Ashe's visit was possibly the tennis clinic he gave in the squalid Soweto township and the meetings he had with South Africans from a relatively broad cross-section of the political spectrum.
But all of the positive aspects seem to be heavily outweighed by the political push given to South Africa's false propaganda of "progressive change." The visit by Ashe and heavyweight boxing champion Bob Foster has been termed "one of the single most vital political decisions in the realm of sports ever made by a government."
BREAK APARTHEID
In an interview with THE BLACK PANTHER last September, Ashe told this reporter that he would go to South Africa if given a visa in November because he strongly felt it would help break the country's wall of apartheid. He expressed some reservations as to the outcome of such a visit, but said that friends and politically aware associates had recommended that he go.
It is now evident that Ashe's visit primarily served as a propaganda tool of the South African government, and did not even serve to integrate the spectators at the tournament in which he played. If the government treated all Black people with the respect given to Ashe during his visit, the situation would be totally different.
Mr. Hassa Howa, President of the South African Cricket Board of Control, stated that during a conversation with Ashe before he left the country, he asked him, "Was your treatment special?" After Ashe responded affirmatively, Howa replied, "If that is so, I leave it to your conscience whether you should return or not."
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SPORTS AND THE AMERICAN EMPIRE
INTEGRATION A FACADE OF RACIAL EQUALITY
The following excerpt is from an article entitled "Sports and the American Empire," written by Brother Mark Naison, an instructor at the Afro-American Institute at Fordham University in New York. We are presenting here an abridged version of the original, which first appeared in the periodical, Radical America. In Part II, Brother Naison takes an in-depth look at the "integration" of professional baseball by Jackie Robinson in 1947.
The experience of Black Americans in professional sports has followed a similar dynamic of assimilation and resistance. The integration of Black athletes into the major leagues had been fought for years by the Black press and the organized Left (the Daily Worker and the Harlem People's Voice had been particularly active in the fight), but its implementation took the form of a calculated edict from the top designed to reinforce the legitimacy of American institutions.
Branch Rickey's "pioneering act," carefully cleared with Truman administration leaders, New York City politicians and local community leaders, was one of a variety of coincident decisions (the Executive Order desegregating the armed forces and the Truman Civil Rights Act were others) designed to adjust American society to the requirements of the post-war world and to help bring a strategically located Black population (increasingly urban and industrial) into the mainstream of American society.
With the U.S. economy increasingly dependent on the penetration and control of the emerging nations, racial segregation had become a political embarrassment which could be exploited by the Soviet bloc or anti-colonial revolutionaries to mobilize resistance to U.S. aims. The more far-sighted American leaders saw the need to create at least a facade of racial equality and harmony in key American institutions, and were willing to use sports to get that message across to both the American public and the large international audience.
From the perspective of the Black community, integration in sports (as in other areas of life) represented both an opportunity to get a larger share of the rewards of industrial society and an end to irksome racial prohibitions. The Black community had its own professional sports leagues ever since it urbanized (after World War I), but they were poorly financed, poorly organized, and unable to provide their players with anywhere near the income of their counterparts in "the majors."
When Jackie Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, it thus symbolized to Black Americans the opening of a whole new era, filled with opportunities and dangers. They were excited by the chance their best athletes would be getting to "prove themselves" on the ball field and get into the big money, but were concerned about the insults, humiliations and internal tensions they would have to endure as they confronted White society.
JACKIE ROBINSON
The "case" of Jackie Robinson put all these competing pressures and emotions on the line. When Robinson was chosen to integrate professional baseball -- then far and away the most popular American spectator sport -- he was faced with incredible mental pressures that almost thrust the question of his physical ability into the background. To succeed, Robinson had to maintain his concentration, his self-discipline, and his enthusiasm for the game in the face of threats, insults, ostracism, and condescension, and to live with the knowledge that the hopes of millions of Black people were invested in his performance while millions of Whites were hoping he would fail.
Robinson was selected for this task not because he was clearly the best Black ball player (Sam Jethroe and Larry Doby had equivalent reputations, and Satchel Paige was a household word), but because he was deemed best equipped to stand the pressure and function as a symbol of the Black community. College-educated, articulate by White standards, possessed of great personal dignity, Robinson survived his ordeal well enough
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to win "Rookie of the Year" honors and make the
All-Star Game. To many Black people, he became the definitive symbol of their
arrival into the mainstream of American life.
But, if Robinson's experience represented a vindication of Black hopes for a new era in race relations, it also reflected the rather restriced boundaries within which the system intended "racial integration" to occur. To liberal Whites, Robinson was the archetypical "acceptable" Negro, a person who fit all the standards of White society and would not rock the boat.
In the press, the radio, and the bulletins of the USIA and the Voice of America, he was presented as an example of America's racial progress and of Black people's loyalty to the American political system. When Paul Robeson made his famous speech saying that Black people would not fight on the U.S. side in a war with the Soviet Union, Robinson was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee to assert that Black people identified completely with America and would repudiate Robeson. Under such conditions, Whites could easily see racial integration in sports as an opportunity for self-congratulation.
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THE SEATTLE LEGAL AID PROGRAM
Busing Schedule
Provides Free Transportation to:
MC NEIL ISLAND FEDERAL PENITENTIARY
Leaves each Saturday at 9:30 a.m.
PURDY PRISON FOR WOMEN
Leaves each 1st and 3rd Sunday at 11:30 a.m.
Leaving the Sidney Miller Free Health Clinic 169 19th Ave.
WASHINGTON CORRECTIONAL CENTER AT SHELTON
Leaves each 2nd and 4th Sunday at 8:00 a.m.
MONROE REFORMATORY
Leaves each Monday at 5:00 p.m.
Law and Rights Classes on the
Criminal Justice System
Some of the topics discussed are:
Arrest Rights. Court Rules. Landlord/Tenant Relations.
Every Monday at the Sidney Miller Free Health Clinic at 7:30 p.m.
For further information, call [206] 322-1038
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REPORTER FIRED OVER HANDSHAKE
(Chicago, Ill.) - Karen Kelley, a reporter for the West Surburban Pioneer in
Chicago, was fired after she refused to shake hands with congressional candidate
Edward Hanrahan. Hanrahan as States Attorney ordered the police raid in which
Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were murdered in December,
1969.
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A PROGRAM FOR SURVIVAL
PEOPLE'S FREE
MEDICAL RESEARCH
HEALTH CLINICS
Provides free medical treatment and preventative medical care for the people.
THE SICKLE CELL ANEMIA RESEARCH FOUNDATION
Established to test and create a cure for Sickle Cell Anemia. The foundation informs people about Sickle Cell Anemia and maintains and advisory committee of doctors researching this crippling disease.
PEOPLE'S FREE DENTAL PROGRAM
(Being Implemented)
Provides free dental check-ups, treatment and an educational program for dental hygiene.
PEOPLE'S FREE OPTOMETRY PROGRAM
(Being Implemented)
Provides free eye examinations, treatmen