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Protest Unites Victims Of Americanism: 7,000 RALLY AT S.F. “PEOPLE'S BICENTENNIAL CELEBRATION”

(San Francisco, Calif.) -- For the 7,000 people who gathered in Delores Park here last Sunday, July, 1976, was certainly not a day to "honor" America's Bicentennial. Instead, the day marked the beginning of a new unity among the victims of Americanism, and those who joined the July 4th Coalition's memorable march and rally celebrated the coming together of this broad, multi-ethnic movement, while commemorating those whose sacrifice and struggle lay the foundation for the future victories.

Highlights of the Delores Park rally included speeches by: John Trudell of the American Indian Movement (AIM); Andres Torres from the Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP); Mrs. Mattie Shepherd, the mother of Tyrone Guyton; and Ericka Huggins, a leading member of the Black Panther Party. All the speeches, indeed, spoke to the need for positive social change, all stressing the three themes of the Coalition:

- "For Jobs and a Decent Standard of Living;

- "For Full Democracy and Equality;

- "For a Bicentennial Without Colonies --

Freedom for all Oppressed Nations."

Garfield Park, where the march started, began filling up as early as 8:00 a. m., and by the time the first contingent, led by AIM and the PSP, set out on the 12-block walk through the city's predominantly Chicano Mission District at 10:00 a.m., literally thousands were on hand to participate.

The park and the street of the Mission District were alive with the brilliant colors of

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banners, placards and huge puppets, as the spirited crowd chanted, sang and danced its way to Delores Park. For many, both young and old, the feeling -- "vibes," many would say -- during the march signaled a victory of sorts in itself. Seldom before had the city of San Francisco experienced something like this, as the warm reception of those along the march route mixed free and spontaneously with the unabashed enthusiasm of the marchers.

Once at the park, the crowd kicked back on the grass, and under warm, sunny skies sat through a two-and-a-half hour program that symbolized the new unity of the day.

Following a sincere welcome delivered by Alma Rendon of El Tecolte, a Mission District newspaper, a moment of silence was dedicated to all "our fallen comrades" who gave their lives in people's struggle (mentioning in particular Michael Krause, an active organizer in the Coalition and the June 28th Union, who was recently killed in a car accident.)

Next, John Trudell of AIM read a message from AIM leader Dennis Banks, who is currently being held in a San Francisco jail:

"I do not celebrate today, instead I mourn for all my brothers and sisters whose lives have been lost fighting for our freedom.

"On this so-called `Day of Independence' I ask you America, what does the concept of freedom mean to Anna Mae Aquash, and to Buddy La Mont, to Frank Crow Dog and to Little Joseph Stuntz, all of whom were killed by the federal gun…"

In his speech, Trudell, one of the two keynote speakers, re-emphasized the importance of Bank's message.

"Our enemy is the FBI," Trudell said. "They no longer wear the uniform of the Seventh Cavalry, but their actions are the same; all that has changed is technology.

"We must not talk to the FBI. They are the enemies of the people. They are the murderers, the thieves…"

Trudell went on, "We want to be liberated from their corrupt value system. Today, July 4, is just one more day of oppression…" When he finished, with the words "Free The People," Trudell received the crowd's sustained applause.

Before Ericka Huggins began her address, she also asked the crowd to stand, and to shout "All Power To The People," a move which set the mood for her frank and moving speech.

"We are not here to celebrate," Ericka said, "but to commemorate the lives and the struggles of poor people throughout this country.

200 YEARS AGO

"Two hundred years ago a country was born on the sweat, blood and tears of slaves. This country was taken from the Indian by savage adventurists. When the U.S. was founded, its flowery principles of democracy and freedom never included Black people. No one has the right to enslave another human being.

"In 1966, the Black Panther Party was formed, an oasis in the desert of America, a place where people could come to have a base of support, where we could move on our own everyday needs and work together to meet our most precious need, meaning freedom, to us by right of our birth. The same freedom that was fought for by the people of Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. The same freedom fought for in China, in Cuba and Korea. The same freedom people in Puerto Rico fight for today.

"The United States is the center of world imperialism. Its democracy is a lie. Freedom is not for all.

"Since the inception of an organization such as the Black Panther Party, America has developed various methods to stop our movement from going forward. The Counter-intelligence Program, COINTELPRO, was conceived in fear, and racism, and a warped sense of patriotism. In 10 years the Black Panther Party has suffered thousands of arrests and jailings. In 10 years, 31 members of the Black Panther Party, men and women, have been murdered by local police, the CIA, the FBI and all the other law enforcement agencies in this country.

"This July 4th is not to celebrate America's 200th birthday. It is to commemorate 200 years of suffering, the Middle Passage, the Trail of Tears, the Japenese concentration camps, the sad existence of us all.

"We are all at the bottom of the economy in this society. Our coming together today as a variety of oppressed by progressive forces is a unity with two main points -- the national liberation of Puerto Rico and the support of the American Indian Movement. It is the beginning of the creation of an effective force for fighting the government which has no interest in our freedom.

"Free Puerto Rico!

"Free the San Quentin Six!

"Fight, whoever you are, wherever you are, in whatever way you can, for freedom!"

When Ericka ended, the crowd was on its feet, and the chant "All Power To The People" again filled Delores Park.

For Mrs. Mattie Shepherd, the crusading mother of Tyrone Guyton, a 14 -year-old Black youth murdered by three White Emeryville cops on November 1, 1973, the message was pure and simple, from the heart: "We are in

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the struggle and we're not going to take anymore of this shit that's been coming down. We want justice!"

For Andres Torres of the PSP, the rally's other keynote speaker: "The July 4th Coalition has gathered the broadest and most powerful anti-imperialist coalition that this country has seen since the antiwar movement. Let there be no doubt about that.

"It is without question the most effective, organized opposition to the phony Bicentennial activities of U.S. imperialism. While tody monopoly capitalists glorify the so-called free enterprise system, we condemn the suffering and oppression of the great majority of poor and working class people in this country…"

In his driving, forceful conclusion, Torres commented:

QUESTION OF COLONIALISM

"We can rightly say that the question of colonialism over Puerto Rico has become one of the great social issues in the mass anti-imperialist movement in the 1970s.

"Come hell or high water, Puerto Rico will be free!"

Other speakers at Delores Park included: Estella Habal from KDP, the Union of Democratic Filipinos; Nancy Gashott from OPEIU, Local 29; Karen Shane, a gay activist; Rahema Amun, from the Committee to End Sterilization Abuse; a representative of the struggle of Undocumented Workers; and a representative from the San Quentin 6 Defense Committee.

Fine cultural presentations were performed by: the Berkeley/Oakland Women's Chorus; the KDP Singers, and EL Pueblo Unido.

(See next week's issue of THE BLACK PANTHER for news on the July 4th Coalition's major demonstration in Philadelphia, attended by over 60,000.)

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EDITORIAL: TRIBUNE LIES

When young Joe Knowland took over as publisher of the Oakland Tribune it was said that the biased, one-sided, boldly reactionary anti-Black articles which characterized that newspaper's contributions to the annals of "yellow journalism" would be brought to a halt.

Now, even that hope is shattered, as the Tribune has openly embraced the naked brutality of the Oakland Police Department's campaign of terror in the San Antonio Housing Projects, quoting the rank and boldfaced lies of OPD Chief George Hart and OHA Director Harold Davis as if they were gospel.

But the Tribune, caught in its own contradictions of moving to the right while faking left, has stumbled badly, leaving its backside open for a swift kick in the rear. (See letters, this page, page 25 and article on page 7.)

Two Oakland Tribune reporters, Lester On and Doug Eaton, know full well that the entire Tribune series is a bunch of lies and garbage. Lester On covered a recent heated meeting of the Housing Authority Commission. He heard, for two hours, five women from San Antonio both introduce themselves and then proceed to blast the OHA, OHA security guards, and the F-troop police units patrolling the projects for their insensitive harassment and brutality.

Doug Eaton sat in on a meeting at the Oakland Community Learning Center when the San Antonio Tenants' Union was formed. For over three hours, Eaton took notes on the almost continuous flow of criticisms and gripes vocalized against the OHA and the police department. Forty people in the room saw him sitting there the whole time; some were interviewed by Eaton before he left.

Eaton and On were there. Neither heard anyone deny the drug problem in the area. But both heard the tenants almost unanimously say that the police weren't effectively dealing with the drug problem, but were harassing innocent women and children -- that the real issues are decent housing and safety from the police and the pushers. If what has been written here is not true, let Eaton and On come forward. The question of why neither has stepped up already, rather than dignify the distorted Tribune series with their silence, is a sad comment on our times.

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EAST OAKLAND CLERGY DENOUNCES TRIBUNE ATTACK ON ELAINE BROWN

The following letter was written in response to a vicious editorial attacking Black Panther Party chairperson Elaine Brown that appeared in the July 1, 1976, issue of the Oakland Tribune.

The Oakland Tribune City Desk:

We, of United East Oakland Clergy, object to your attack on the integrity of a dedicated community activist, Ms. Elaine Brown. It is deplorable that the Oakland Tribune would fabricate an editorial more reflective of the National Enquirer. You appeared more interested in condemning Ms. Brown than the lifestyle of the owner of the alleged Rolls Royce.

We encouraged the development of plans for a housing commission meeting in San Antonio Villa with its residents. We believe this will be a creative and positive event for all concerned.

The people of San Antonio understand their need for police and security. That is not the point. The point is what kind are they getting, and how is it being administered? United East Oakland Clergy is interested in preventing denial of civil rights, as well as the conviction of drug pushers. The names of police officers have come up in the villa whom we've heard of in the past. We are interested in their behavior patterns anywhere they work in this city.

In your recent menagerie of articles, all of your resident sources are unidentifiable. We would understand if a few wished to remain anonymous, but all of them? This is questionable journalism to us, and rather eccentric. The validity of your statements is even more paradoxical, when our organization, in conjunction with the Black Panther Party, has heard complaints from San Antonio residents who are on record, standing up for their rights in public meetings.

You liberally quote Police Chief Hart, and selectively condemn Ms. Brown without presenting any quotes from Ms. Brown in any of your articles to establish why there is such a callous attack.

There is no security for the Black Panther Party. The FBI has publicly admitted committing illegal acts against them. They suffer the vestiges of a racist society perpetuated by institutions such as yours. Obviously, Ms. Brown's residence provides no formidable barrier against this evil.

On several occasions, THE BLACK PANTHER journalists have mentioned incidents between them and the police. It seems that freedom of the press is all right as long as it applies to the Oakland Tribune.

These are only a limited number of questions and concerns raised by your articles. Several times we had to ask if a Tribune reporter was present. Your articles led us to believe that they were not at meetings where we were present, because their interpretation was so different to us. Later, we were told you were present.

Michael H. Dunn, President
United East Oakland Clergy

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COMMENT: “Ideas Of Freedom Are Always Dangerous…”

By Elaine Brown
Chairperson
Black Panther Party

Elaine Brown, chairperson of the Black Panther Party, was recently asked by CounterSpy magazine to comment on the FBI's COINTELPRO (Counter-intelligence Program) directed against the Party. The conclusion of Elaine's remarks follow.

CONCLUSION

There are many long stories to tell, and they will be told, of the inconsistent and outright phony reports from the Church Committee -- cover-ups in themselves.

However, we can logically begin to examine one concept and draw certain generalities: If the FBI, by rearranging facts or by some working form of the art of illusion, is only indirectly responsible for certain events, and was working against all "Black militant" organizations, how do we reasonably explain that the FBI supposedly tried to divide the Black Panther Party from all other organizations, but not other organizations from each other?

Or that Karenga, for example, is responsible for four killings of Panther members, according to reports, but the Black Panther Party is not responsible for any deaths of United Slaves' members? Why is it that this sort of confrontation never took place between the P. Stone Nation and the Black Panther Party -- even though letters were sent -- or between the Panther Party and the Nation of Islam or SNCC?

The question can be logically answered. It was felt our Party was the most dangerous. The FBI sought, bought and paid for willing Black agents to help in our destruction, as they masterminded and contrived the raid and following assassinations of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.

Let us look at the Eldridge Cleaver business for a minute. I was part of what was purported to be a Progressive American Delegation to Korea, which had been put together by Cleaver in 1970. At the end of three months, after visiting not only Korea, but China, Vietnam, Moscow and Algeria, Eldridge Cleaver had

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personally threatened my life because I would not agree on phony ideological points that the Party was a "Breakfast for Children organization."

According to Cleaver, there needed to be more killing, more arbitrary violence, the Party was moving to the right, etc. There were no letters -- as the Church Committee purports to document -- no misunderstandings on the level of leadership.

Cleaver simply would have us go out to get killed for the purpose of media attention (while he safely sat in Algeria). He had no other program and frankly, it sounded piggish -- violence without reason where we'd all get killed and he could describe to history the meaning of our deaths. For three months, we argued. I was to kill and get killed, or just get killed.

Today, it's all out -- the closet door opened: Cleaver denounces Cuba, China, African liberation struggles and joins hands with Kissinger and Uncle Sam. All of this because the FBI sent notes? It is my belief that Cleaver too was as much a part of COINTELPRO then as now, as Karenga, as Roy Innis.

NEW PROPAGANDA

Why then, this new propaganda? Why this whitewashing of investigations, as we've seen in the past with Watergate, the Warren Commission, and others? The Black Panther Party stands today as much of a threat as before. There was never any question that the Black Panther Party, as one entity, could survive confrontation with any police agency, much less many agencies. (We even survived in Los Angeles in December, 1969, when we were attacked by 300 regular LAPD and SWAT members). That idea was only intensified by the establishment media: Panthers versus pigs

Our task has been, and still is, to spread the word, the good news as the old folks would say, that we can win over oppression and exploitation; that life in the U.S. is not what life can and ought to be; that it can be an experience where the basic requirements for living and breathing must be available to every person, and where peace and freedom will prevail; that if we unite all our forces, after we identify ourselves, we can put up the real battle to win, in the name of humanity and human progress; that with our victory will come a new day for people all over the world who suffer under the monster of U.S. imperialism.

Then humankind can get on with the business of discovering our true and harmonious relationship with the rest of nature. This is our message, this is the word we wish to spread, and will spread with our very lives on the line. And this is what makes us dangerous.

Today Party members are regularly arrested for no good cause; followed and watched by FBI agents (the FBI, I have discovered, comes weekly to my apartment building to collect license numbers from the parking lot manager of visitors' cars); great discrepancies are occurring in our bank accounts these days; our programs are being jeopardized by police harassment of participants and workers; and a few weeks ago 15 or more police cars came to our National Headquarters office in Oakland, California, at 3:00 a.m. to serve a warrant on a Party member for a failure to appear in court on a misdemeanor solicitation charge in Sacramento.

Before being forced into exile, Huey P. Newton's car was tampered with several times, his apartment was the subject of a phony robbery by three Blacks with pistols that had silencers (which are difficult for "non-police" to acquire), a contract was put out on his life by so-called Black businessmen, unknown assailants shot at him several times, and finally, he was falsely charged with murder. It has not stopped. They will continue.

We who truly hunger for freedom must not be sidetracked. Millions and millions of Blacks have died in this country at the hands of various forms of oppression; millions of people have no means of support, no place to live, no food to eat. The government program to maintain these oppressive, murderous conditions is far larger than COINTELPRO or other activity bent on destruction of one organization. It is this larger program of destruction we must halt; it is the architects of this program we must stop. We must transform our lives, our government, and our society completely and thoroughly.

The members of the Black Panther Party stand as ready today as ten years ago; serve the people through our various Survival Programs today as ten years ago; live every day of our lives today as ten years ago to overcome all obstacles to our total liberation by any means necessary.

And we will lay down our lives today as we have over these ten years to make these issues clear, for we know when the people understand, when the masses of oppressed American people take up guns, then, in the words of Huey P. Newton"…serious business will begin to happen."

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FRED HAMPTON MURDER TRIAL: Raid Survivor Details Scene Of Gunfire And Terror

(Chicago, Ill.) -- The sounds of machine gun fire and human groans, the smell of plaster dust and fresh paint, the feeling of being shot, laying in the cold and darkness -- so Ronald "Doc" Satchel described what it was like inside Fred Hampton's Westside apartment in the early morning hours of December 4, 1969.

Satchel was the first of seven former Black Panther Party members who survived the predawn police raid to take the stand in the $47.7 million Fred Hampton murder trial here, vividly detailing his experience under the gun.

Before going into his description of the scene at the apartment, Satchel, questioned by James Montgomery, lead attorney for the plaintiff, talked about his activities while a member of the B. P. P. Illinois State Chapter.

In 1969, Satchel said he was coordinator of the Chicago Chapter's Free Breakfast for School-children Program, which maintained five sites in the city's Black and poor communities: at the Better Boy's Foundation; St. Dominick's, a church in the Henry Horner Homes; another Baptist church; and at the Soul Cafeteria. Between 3,000 to 4,000 children per week received free,

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hot and nutritious meals each school morning.

Satchel was also responsible for the early development of the Spurgeon "Jake" Winters Free Medical Clinic, a BPP community health program named after a member of the Chicago Chapter killed by the police.

Despite constant harassment, when the Clinic opened in January, 1970, 20 doctors, 10 nurses and three lab technicians volunteered their services in an old Westside storefront, rehabilitated into a modern, attractive facility.

On December 3, 1969, Satchel said he returned to Hampton's 2350 West Monroe apartment after working an 18-hour day, toward the opening of the Clinic. Tired, Satchel related how he fell asleep in the living room, was later awakened by another Party member, and went into the front bedroom.

Around 4:30 a.m. -- although then he didn't know what time it was -- Satchel was awakened by loud knocking on the front door. He heard no voices. Suddenly, the shooting began.

Satchel stood up and reached for his pants which he had placed on the bureau a few hours before. Crouching down, he put them on. Satchel said he remembers seeing the reflection of the street lights from outside the building in the mirror on the opposite wall, but otherwise the room was in complete darkness and cold from the December weather.

Satchel related how he saw two forms asleep on the other bed in the room, which he had not noticed when he stumbled into bed. The shots continued, becoming almost continuous. He sensed plaster dust in the room and what smelled like fresh paint.

As the shooting continued, Satchel reached down and shook the bed telling the two people sleeping there to get down on the floor. Then he fell himself to the floor, his chest, abodomen and side against it, lying between two beds. He felt the two from the bed (Verlina Brewer and Blair Anderson), climb down to the floor behind him, also between the two beds.

As he lay in the darkness, the shots continued. Then he heard a voice come from somewhere outside of the room.

"Come out." Immediately the shots continued. Satchel heard eight or nine especially loud shots that irritated his ears, and he heard plaster falling.

"Come out, or we'll put something in there to get you out." Again the shots began immediately as the man stopped speaking. He thought about coming out, but did not because of the shooting. Then he was hit. He felt intense pain in his abdomen on the right side, in his leg and in both arms. He heard himself groan and yell and then heard Verlina Brewer and Blair Anderson groaning and yelling. At no time did he see the person who shot him, still lying in the dark room.

"We got 'em. We got em," someone said. "Come out."

"I'm shot, I can't move."

"Turn on the light."

LAMP PULL-CHAIN

Satchel reached for the lamp pull-chain behind him and turned on the light. He was forced to crawl and walk out to the police paddy wagon, handcuffed, where he rode in a sitting position to the hospital. At the hospital, he was told to get out of the wagon on his own power, although experiencing extreme pain, nausea and dizziness from four gunshot wounds. After lengthy surgery and hours in the recovery room, he was shackled to his bed and stayed in the hospital from December 4 to January 20, 1970.

While in the hospital he learned that he was charged with attempted murder, resisting arrest, aggravated battery, unlawful use of a weapon and armed violence. Lying shackled, with tubes down his nose, tubes into the hole in his side and barely able to move, he learned that his bond was set at $25, 000.

According to testimony, he never fired a gun, never heard anyone in the room fire a gun and in fact was never near a gun.

In May, after police lab evidence proved to have been falsified, the indictments against Ronald "Doc" Satchel were dropped, as they were against all the survivors of the raid. Illinois State Chapter BPP leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were killed in the raid. Hampton while he lay asleep in his bed.

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GARRY CHARGES “RACISM,” “HELLHOLE” CONDITIONS IN S.Q.6 TRIAL CLOSING ARGUMENTS

(San Rafael, Calif.) -- "Why haven't they told you the truth? Why hasn't the administration of the prison come forth and told the truth? Why hasn't there been an investigation of this case, of what happened on August 21st and the circumstances surrounding August 21st?

"Does it take some defense lawyers and defendants to be able to bring out the truth, to be able to bring out the fact that there was a counterconspiracy to destroy George Jackson, an international figure, an outstanding author?…

"One of the most famous human beings that I've ever had the pleasure of knowing was murdered, murdered by the state of California, planned and intended to be murdered, and we stand here, a small group of six men and their lawyers, telling you about it without the state of California, the Congress of the United States, doing the job that they should be doing -- investigating conditions that happened on August 21st because the conditions that happened on August 21st tell the story of brutality in prisons.

"The inhuman conditions, conditions that you wouldn't even raise a wild animal in, and the racism that's an integral part of the entire prison system…

"I wonder how many more San Quentin Sixes there are going to be, how many more August 21sts there are going to be before human changes take place.

"This is an aside, but I mean it very strongly. I hope to live to see the day when prisons will be torn down and we will find answers to the conflicts that we have in our society. Not only find answers, but to cure the conflicts that we have in our society …"

So spoke noted attorney Charles R. Garry before a stilled courtroom at the San Quentin 6 trial here last week, concluding his brilliant two-and-a-half day closing arguments with a penetrating attack against American racism and dehumanizing Adjustment Center prison conditions.

Concentrating the last day and a half on the witnesses he called in defense of Black Panther Party member Johnny Larry Spain, Garry's forceful arguments in reviewing and establishing their full credibility matched perfectly his devastating eloquence of the first day, when he refuted the prosecution's case as "contrived lies and garbage."

PARTICULAR IMPORTANCE

Of particular importance was Garry's review of the testimony of Black ex-agent Louis Tackwood, the former agent provocateur for the Los Angeles Police Department's Criminal Conspiracy Section, who unfolded the state's plot to set up and assassinate Black Panther Party Field Marshal George Jackson.

Turning to that crucial subject just prior to the Wednesday noon recess, Garry began by commenting: "Louis Tackwood, obviously, is not a paragon of virtue. He's a byproduct of our system. He is a byproduct of the hunger and the

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want, the depriviation that human beings are subject to."

Then, leading to a telling rhetorical question, which hung in the air for full emphasis, Garry said:

"Mr. Herman says he (Tackwood) makes his living by his wits. That's perhaps true. But who was paying him off? The defense? Or the public body that's sworn to uphold the law?"

Garry continued:

"Louis Tackwood had nothing to gain by coming here and testifying under oath, admitting that he was part of a conspiracy to kill George Jackson. And if you think that he endears himself to the men and women who knew George Jackson's writing and loved George Jackson, you are mistaken."

Throughout his discussion of Tackwood's testimony, Garry emphasized that despite the fact the ex-agent had named 17 or 18 people as involved in the conspiracy, the prosecution had not brought any one of them forward to rebut his credibility. "Just think about that," Garry remarked.

"Tackwood implicated and indicted CCS, CII, the FBI, the LAPD, and the Department of Corrections," Garry said, his voice rising, "but no one -- no one, I say -- came here to say that's not so."

Concerning the other defense witnesses Garry went over:

- Council McCoy, a Black former San Quentin guard who testified that he saw George Jackson wearing a blue knit cap during a visit on August 21, 1971, thus discrediting the prosecution's "gun-in-a-wig" theory. McCoy also vividly described guard brutality on the Adjustment Center lawn following the murder of George Jackson.

- William Hampton, a Black former San Quentin guard now transferred to another facility, who testified that he saw a .38 revolver in Johnny Spain's hand on the 21st. Hampton's statements corroborate Tackwood's story that CCS officers smuggled an inoperative .38 revolver into the prison on August 21, 1971, as part of the set-up plot. Tackwood testified that CCS later retrieved the .38, sometime during the week after the incident. The .38 Hampton swears he saw was never found.

- Charles Johnson, a prison "snitch" held in protective custody who voluntarily put his life on the line to testify in the San Quentin 6 trial that he saw an automatic gun in the back hip pocket of AC guard Paul Krasnes on the 21st. Hugo Pinell, one of the Six, testified that while looking through a mirror set up in his cell, he saw Krases pull out an automatic on George Jackson when the famous author/revolutionary returned to the AC from his visit with (now fugitive) attorney Stephen Bingham.

IMPAIRED CONSCIOUSNESS

- Garry also reviewed the expert witnesses he called to establish the defense position that Johnny Spain suffered from a state of impaired consciousness from the time his 1-AC-4 cell door opened until the time he dove into the bushes on the AC lawn.

Dr. William Rundell, Dr. Philip Zimbardo, Dr. Mary Sollek and Dr. Jane Olden all gave irrefutable evidence to the fact that AC confinement is dehumanizing; that the AC was, in Garry's words, "a human warehouse," "a hellhole."

In this regard, when Garry concluded his eloquent arguments, he reminded the jury of Johnny Spain's personal background, recalling the words of his mother that, as a Black child in Mississippi, "I stood between him and the world."

Following, THE BLACK PANTHER, presents Part 1 of the full transcript of attorney Charles Garry's brilliant two-and-a-half day closing arguments.

MR. GARRY: "If the Court please, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Mr. Herman and Mr. Boren, and my colleagues and the defendants.

"It's my responsibility now to address you and talk to you about this case. I'm going to be as frank and as brutal as I can, and analyze the evidence with you.

"I do not intend to go outside of the record in any way.

"It's been a long, long time. When I volunteered to come in to represent Mr. Spain, little did I think that I was going to spend my 66th and 67th birthdays in the courtroom.

MANY REPORTS

"When I came into this case, I reviewed the many, many reports that were made available by the prosecution to the various defense lawyers. I studied those reports like my colleagues defending the other defendants. We had to analyze the evidence.

"There are things that bothered me, and I'm going to talk about it with you preliminarily. There was no question that six men were killed on August 21, 1971. Six men were killed unnecessarily. They should not have been killed. Why did it happen? That's the question that I asked myself. That's the question that you are going to have to ask yourself when you go into your jury deliberation room.

"You are going to have to determine why August 21st happened. What were the circumstances? There are 27 men at the Adjustment Center, and according to Dr. Zimbardo, any one of those 27 could have done what happened on that day. Any one of the 27. Any one of the 27 could have done it.

"I'm reminded that when we were picking the jury, and it was an extensive voir dire of the jury, it took three and one-half months before 16 of you were finally seated, 12 jurors and four alternates. We asked you an awful lot of questions. Some of it was personal. We invaded your privacy, because it was necessary for us to be able to see where your thinking came from, what made you tick.

"One of the questions that was asked you time and time again, was the fact that if you had any problems with the presumption of innocence, and, of course, everyone of you said you didn't. Every one of you accepted the fact that the prosecution had the burden of attempting to prove these defendants guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and to a moral certainty. No problems with that.

"But we also asked you questions such as, if at the end of the prosecution's case, and at the end of the entire case, you are satisfied that you have the strong suspicion, a strong suspicion that one or more of these defendants are guilty, but you have a reasonable doubt as to that person or persons' guilt or innocence, what type of a verdict would you bring in. Every one of you said you would bring in a verdict of not guilty.

"What I'm saying is, that just because you feel down deep that persons did do something, aiding and abetting, conspiracy -- or whatever you have strong suspicions about -- that's not going to be sufficient."

TO BE CONTINUED

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Ericka Huggins Sworn In On County Board Of Education

(Pleasanton, Calif.) -- Oakland Community School Director ERICKA HUGGINS was sworn in last Thursday, July 1, as the first Black member of the Alameda County Board of Education at a special ceremony held here at the Castlewood Country Club.

Also sworn in were JOHN PENNA (left), who will serve as vice president of the Board for the coming year, and ART BRISCO (right), the new president of the Board.

Ericka, who is a leading member of the Black Panther Party, has served as the director of the five-year-old, model elementary level school in East Oakland since 1973. The School has been hailed for its innovative techniques in educating Black and poor youth by progressive educators as well as numerous state officials, including California Secretary of Health and Welfare Mario Obledo, and is the recipient of a plaque of commendation from the Alameda County Board of Supervisors.

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400 JAM PACK OAKLAND CITY COUNCIL SESSION IN SUPPORT: FAMILY DEMANDS INQUIRY INTO POLICE MURDER OF JOSE BENAVIDEZ

(Oakland, Calif.) -- Over 400 friends and supporters of the family of Jose Barlow Benavidez, 27-year-old Chicano murdered on June 11 by a White Oakland policeman, jammed last Tuesday's City Council meeting, strongly backing a list of four demands presented to the Council by the slain man's mother and sister.

Speaking before the packed yet hushed Council session, Mrs. Raquel Benavidez, a mother of eight, of whom Jose Barlow was both the oldest and the only male, read the list of demands:

- That the City Council ask District Attorney Lowell Jensen to prosecute the murderer of her son, a White cop named Michael Cogley;

- That the City Council initiate a policy directing the OPD to suspend without pay any police officer who kills a civilian until a full and independent investigation can be conducted. "We specifically request this policy be implemented with regards to the murderer of Jose Barlow Benavidez";

- That the Council appoint one of its members to work with representatives of the Tyrone Guyton and Banavidez committees to establish a Citizens Police Review Board (CPRB) within six months. Guidelines for the CPRB would be established by this investigative body; and

- That the Council order police chief George Hart "to stop the continuing harassment of eyewitnesses to the Benavidez slaying and of other members of the Raza community."

DETAILS

Following her mother to the podium, Ms. Andrea Benavidez, one of seven daughters, related details of the slaying incident to the Council.

Jose Barlow was stopped in the 4400 block of E. 14th Street, Ms. Benavidez said, merely because the car he was driving matched the description of the getaway car involved in a robbery.

She said that her brother, after being stopped, got out of the car, put his hands on the roof and allowed himself to be searched. Cogley held the shotgun with one hand, his finger on the trigger, while giving Jose Barlow a pat-down.

It was during the search that the shotgun was fired, Ms. Benavidez said, killing Jose Barlow instantly. She charged the police department, in conducting its own investigation (which concluded that the killing was "accidental") as having acted as "judge, jury and executioner" of her brother.

Also addressing the Council was Daniel Turner, a spokesperson for the Coalition Against Police Crimes (CAPA), the group which sponsored a spirited demonstration in front of City Hall prior to the session.

"Historically, the police department has not protected the interests of minorities and the poor," Turner said, citing the fatal shooting of Tyrone Guyton in West Oakland and several other incidents.

In response to the demands, the Council passed a resolution demanding a "thorough" investigation of the district attorney's

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office; reaffirmed the policy of the Council that it does not condone police harassment of eyewitnesses; referred to staff a demand for an explanation of why the police department allows the use of shotguns by its officers; and referred to the Council's Public Safety Committee the policy request of suspension without pay.

During the protest demonstration, many in the crowd carried signs reading, "Stop the Killing -- Basta Ya (Enough)," "Jail Officer Cogley" and "Barlow Lives -- Viva Barlow."

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THIS WEEK IN BLACK HISTORY

July 10, 1775

On July 10, 1775, even before the birth of this country, the seeds of racism were firmly planted when Horatio Gates, George Washington's adjutant general, issued a general order banning all Blacks from serving in the American army.

July 4, 1876

The Declaration of Independence, famous for its statement that " … all men are created equal …" conveniently omitted the question of the status of Black slaves. When the document was passed by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, the section denouncing the slave trade was struck out at the request of South Carolina and Georgia. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration and third President of the United States, was himself a slave owner.

July 6, 1868

On July 6, 1868, the First General Assembly of the South Carolina Reconstruction government met in Janney's Hall in Columbia. Eighty-four of the 157 legislators were Black.

July 10, 1875

Mary McLeod Bethune was born on July 10, 1875, in Mayesville, South Carolina. Dr. Bethune was a figure of national prominence as a speaker and organizer in the civil rights movement during the 1930s and 1940s. She was also the founder and first president of Bethune -- Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida.

July 10, 1972

The trial of former Cook County State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan, one of his assistants and 12 police officers assigned to Hanrahan's office began in Chicago on July 10, 1972. The 14 men (who were later acquitted) were charged with conspiring to obstruct justice in connection with the December 4, 1969, raid by Chicago police -- aided by the FBI -- which resulted in the murders of Illinois Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.

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Black Mental Patient Gunned Down By S.W.A.T. Team

(Los Angeles, Calif.) -- A Black mental patient, 38-year-old Anthony Brown, was shot and killed in his mother's house recently by the Los Angeles Police Department's (LAPD) SWAT (Special Weapons And Tactic) team.

Brown, a former high school football coach and U. S. Army lieutenant, had become known to persons in the area, including police, for his erratic behavior. The police officers who killed him came at the request of his mother, Mrs. Alyce Brown, who feared for her life.

"Anthony had threatened me with a knife, as he had done many times before when he was depressed," Mrs. Brown told the Los Angeles Sentinel, "and I called the mental health clinic… to come and get him. They told me," she said, "they would have to get the police to come with them for protection and to help get him out."

The next day, after a mental health worker was not able to persuade Brown to turn himself in, the LAPD arrived.

"They kept persuading him," said Mrs. Brown, "and one officer told him he would take off his weapon because 'You can't beat me fighting.'"

According to Mrs. Brown, one of the officers must have known Anthony because he was telling him, "`I know you speak nine languages and you were a legal counselor in the service…'"

Mrs. Brown pointed out that at one time during this discussion, her son said he would leave town as soon as he washed his clothes. But this "friendly" conversation ended when the troubled man

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allegedly hit an officer with a candleholder he had thrown. A police lieutenant named Stone then told Mrs. Brown that her son would be taken to jail and charged with assault on an officer.

When the SWAT team came, Mrs. Brown was taken out of the area, and hours later Anthony lay dead at the bottom of an outside, two-story stairway.

Witnesses said Brown came out of the house after tear gas had been thrown in, with his hands against his face. He appeared to be dazed, they said, and suddenly he lurched forward against a bannister, apparently shot by one of the SWAT cops.

Police claim that Brown was shot when he attacked an officer with a knife, but according to television film no knife appeared to be in Brown's hand and no officer was near when he came out of the house. One cop, wounded at the scene by a police bullet, was rushed to a hospital while Anthony was dragged down the stairs and lay there unattended until he died.

Mrs. Brown charges that the Los Angeles police could have apprehended or arrested her son without killing him.

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SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS DEATH PENALTY

(Washington, D.C.) -- The movement to abolish capital punishment in the U. S. received a serious setback last week when the Supreme Court ruled by a vote of 7-2 that the death penalty is Constitutional in murder cases.

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund -- which represents nearly half of the 602 men and nine women on death rows across the country -- and other attorneys said that about half of these inmates may be executed as a result of the Court's decision. Jack Greenburg, director-counsel of the NAACP Fund, said the ruling "may pave the way for execution of 100 to 140 persons" in addition to those already on death row.

611 AMERICANS

Of the 611 Americans presently on death row, 312 are Black men. Black and other civil rights leaders who have long contended that the death penalty is disproportionately handed out to Black and other poor people, blasted last week's ruling.

The decision was a reversal of the high Court's position of 1972. In the earlier decision the Court, ruling in the case of Furman vs. Georgia, held that capital punishment as it was then practiced in America violated the Constitution's Eighth Amendment ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" and cited the arbitrary and "freakish" ways in which some defendants were sentenced to die while others were allowed to live.

In its July 2 decision, however, the high Court, in reviewing the death penalty statutes of Georgia, Florida, Texas, Louisiana and North Carolina -- all of which were passed in response to the 1972 ruling -- found that judges and juries may impose capital punishment provided they have been given adequate information and guidance for determining whether the sentence is appropriate in a particular case.

In a related decision, the nine justices voted 5-4 that states may not impose "mandatory" capital punishment laws by requiring the death penalty for every person convicted of murder. The death statutes of North Carolina and Louisiana were ruled un-Constitutional on these grounds while those of Georgia, Florida and Texas were upheld.

The seven justices who voted to reinstate the death penalty varied in their opinions as they did in 1972. The distinction drawn between mandatory death laws and those that allow "guided discretion" was the opinion delivered by Justices Lewis Powell, Potter Stewart and John Stevens. In upholding the Georgia death penalty statute, Justice Stewart wrote that the state had effectively "channeled" the discretion of the jurors in death cases by requiring them to consider specified "mitigating" (less severe) and "aggravating circumstances" before passing sentence on each first-degree murder.

Justices Thurgood Marshall, the only Black member of the Court, and William Brennan voted to completely abolish capital punishment. In this opinion, Justice Marshall severely ridiculed the belief that the death penalty represents, the popular will of the American people. He said that it has been so long since anyone was executed that "the American people know little about the death penalty" and are ill informed.

"The mere fact that the community demands the murderer's life in return for the evil he has done cannot sustain the death

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penalty," Justice Marshall wrote. He also refuted the common argument of law enforcement officials that the death penalty is needed as a deterrent to crime.

No one has been executed in the U.S. since June 2, 1967, when Louis Jose Monge, a middle-aged Mexican-American, died in the Colorado gas chamber on charges of murdering his pregnant wife and three of their 10 children.

Fifty-seven men and one woman are on death row in California, and their fate will remain uncertain until the state supreme court makes its ruling. Rejecting the Supreme Court's 1972 ruling, California voters later that year passed an initiative restoring capital punishment in the state after which the state legislature passed a law revising the death penalty.

Among the crimes which now carry a mandatory death sentence in California are murder for hire; killing of a police officer; murder to prevent a witness from testifying; killing during commission of a robbery; kidnapping; rape; lewd conduct with a child or during a burglary, or when the defendant has been convicted of more than one murder.

Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California, condemned the Supreme Court's decision as a return to barbarism. "It is ironic that on the eve of our 200th birthday celebrating freedom that such a monstrous injustice could again be revived in this country."

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Court O.K.'s Chicago Minority Police Plan

(Chicago, Ill.) -- Federal revenue-sharing payments will resume to the city of Chicago next week in the aftermath of a city attorney's report showing that the city is complying with a decree handed down by federal Judge Prentice Marshall on the hiring of minority police officers.

Marshall stated that he would sign the order provided that he and other plaintiffs in the six-year discrimination case against the Chicago Police Department were satisfied by a review of the compliance report.

FILED SUIT

The Afro-American Patrolmen's League (AAPL) originally filed suit against the Department in 1970, and the Justice Department joined as plaintiffs in 1973. In November, 1974, Marshall issued a preliminary order finding the city guilty of racial and sex discrimination in the hiring and promotion of Blacks, Latinos and women.

Marshall issued a permanent decree on January 5, 1976, ordering the city of begin hiring new officers according to racial and sex guidelines he established -- 42 per cent Black and Latin males, 16 per cent women and 42 per cent White males.

The city of Chicago, led by Mayor Richard Daley, adamantly refused to follow these guidelines and $114 million in revenue-sharing funds were impounded -- most of which was to go to the city's police and fire departments. However, last month, the city made an about-face as Earl Neal, special assistant corporation counsel for Chicago and chief lawyer in the discrimination case, admitted. "The city needs the money and can't do without its revenue-sharing payments any longer."

According to Neal, the city of Chicago will soon hire 400 new officers according to the quota guidelines.

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ALAMEDA COUNTY NURSES STRIKING FOR SAFE HEALTH CARE: Black Nurse Terms Situation “Racial Matter”

(Oakland, Calif.) -- Striking Alameda County nurses marched to the offices of the Oakland Tribune last week to deliver a statement demanding equal pay and upgraded working conditions at county hospitals.

The statement -- which the Tribune refused to print -- read read, in part:

"The (Alameda) County nurses are striking for safe health care. We feel that without comparable salaries, benefits and working conditions, the country's experienced nurses will slip away into the waiting vacancies of the private hospitals and the new graduates will have no reason to apply.

Staffing was already down before the strike. The Board of Supervisors has been politicking with our jobs and the public's health care."

Also included in their statement was a table which showed how county nurses trailed their counterparts in private hospitals in every job category.

Registered nurses (RN) in county hospitals earn $1, 057.33 monthly compared to the $1,156 made by RNs in private hospitals. In the Licensed Vocational Nurses (LVN) category, county nurses trail LVNs in private hospitals $754 to $805.52. The gap is even bigger in regards to nursing assistants with average assistants in private hospitals making $846.26 a month compared to $659.73 by nursing assistants employed by the county.

BENEFITS LAG

In the area of benefits, county nurses again lag behind nurses in the private sector. A major grievance held by county nursing employees is that most private hospitals allow five paid days courses of study connected to their work, sometimes with the hospital also paying for tuition. But in county hospitals, the nurses argue, the county not only doesn't pay tuition but the nurses aren't given time off with pay to attend these courses, which are vital to keep up with developments in the nursing profession.

In a recent interview with THE BLACK PANTHER, Black High-yearly for nurses to pursue land Hospital RN Barbara Alangan added a new perspective.

"It is a racial matter, also," she said, "because 85 per cent of our patients are Black. The Board of Supervisors don't really care about the strike because they don't go to county hospitals."

There are special problems confronting Black nurses at Highland she explained, primarily in terms of promotion and advancement. According to Ms. Alangan, a Black nurse is always at a disadvantage when vying for a higher position.

Before working at Highland, notorious for its poor health services, Ms. Alangan worked for 20 years in a private hospital. She notes that a major difference is that, "Nurses have more responsibilities at Highland and are paid less money."

Many times nurses are forced to work in several different units rather than concentrate in one area like in other hospitals.

She acknowledged the inadequate health care at Highland but stressed that a primary cause of this situation is understaffing.

Ms. Alangan blames this understaffing on the fact that experienced nurses leave Highland for better pay and because hiring is done only at certain times, even if there is an acute personnel shortage.

Commenting on the strike, Ms. Alangan emphasized they have strong support from unions, and organizations but warned that "the Black community must be aware of the situation at Highland," which, for many, is the only access to health care.

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EYES ON CITY HALL

Promise $$$ For
Schools

Progressive East Bay Assemblyman Ken Meade last week gave the California state legislature's Democratic majority its pivotal vote in passing a $250 million educational aid package. Meade did not agree to vote for the bill until after Assembly Speaker Leo McCarthy promised to see the $13 million was added to the bill for financially troubled school districts, which would mean the city of Oakland's share would increase from $2.3 to $3.2 million.

School Budget
Cuts Benefits

The Oakland School Board balanced its tentative 1976-77 budget last week by cutting employee fringe benefits by $3.1 million. School Superintendent Dr. Ruth Love said the cuts will probably be restored before the final budget is approved in August. Since state law requires that the city's new $88.5 million tentative budget be balanced before it is adopted. School Board trustees agreed to Dr. Love's suggestion that the tax-sheltered annuity program be cut by more than three-fourths. The school district has been threatened with loss of federal funds if it continues with plans to teach the mentally retarded in separate, inacessible schools.

Grand Jury
Criticizes B. A. R. T.

The outgoing Alameda County Grand Jury last week issued a harshly critical report on the private expense account practices of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Board of Directors. In a probe-begun last year when Board President Elmer Cooper, who is Black, and his White predecessor, Richard Clark, were singled out by their fellow Board members for allegedly running up soaring expense accounts, the Grand Jury made 11 recommendations to reform and tighten up spending policies, including an adequate "checks and balance system."

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I.R.S. To Tell Victims Of Illegal Surveillance

(Washington, D.C.) -- Bowing to pressure from a Congressional subcommittee, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has announced that it will notify over 700 American taxpayers that they were among a group of over 10,000 individuals and groups -- including the Black Panther Party -- illegally targeted for surveillance during the Nixon-Ford administration because of their political beliefs.

IRS Commissioner Donald Alexander said in a letter to New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug, head of a House of Representatives government operations subcommittee, that the notifications would be sent to 775 people whose cases the IRS" allegedly defunct Special Services Staff (SSS) unit had referred to field offices for some type of action.

The SSS, originally called the Organizations Project, was created by the IRS on July 24, 1969, for the purpose of monitoring the tax records of progressive individuals and organizations that were opposed to the Nixon (and later) Ford administrations.

From its inception until its alleged disbanding in August, 1973, the SSS collected information from other federal agencies on civil rights, antiwar and other progressive groups described by a Senate committee in a recent report as "the principal instance of the use of the IRS for a fundamentally nontax purpose."

Documents made public in 1974 revealed that the Black Panther Party was one of the first targets of the SSS when it began operating in 1969. In an effort to discredit the Party and its leader and chief theoretician, Huey P. Newton, the tax unit used the pretext of investigating Huey's tax returns in order to get information on Party contributors.

In his letter to Congresswoman Abzug, Alexander -- one of the defendants in the Party's lawsuit against the IRS -- said that with some exceptions, the persons notified about the illegal IRS activities would be able to obtain their files upon request. Abzug is the sponsor of a bill that would require government agencies to inform individuals who have been subjected to improper surveillance that files relating to them are in existence.

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TRIBUNE LIES AID POLICE TERROR IN SAN ANTONIO PROJECTS

(Oakland, Calif.) -- A series of one-sided, jaded articles in the Oakland Tribune, this city's daily contribution to "yellow journalism," has aided the ongoing reign of police brutality in the San Antonio Housing Projects, distorting the real issue within the dilapidated 178-unit facility -- decent, quality housing for Black and poor tenants.

According to the bogus Tribune series, authored by several "reporters," at least one of whom regularly writes the police beat, Harold Davis, the "Black" executive director of the Oakland Housing Authority (OHA), requested the beefed-up police units into San Antonio to combat an alleged $10,000 a day "heorin supermarket" in the projects.

"UNDERWORLD" SOURCES

The articles liberally quote Davis, police chief George Hart, and a variety of highly suspect "underworld" and "anonymous" sources who all approve of the police activities, never mentioning instances of harassment, brutality, or, in fact, the deplorable housing conditions. In several of the articles, in fact, Davis accuses the San Antonio residents of creating the conditions in which they are forced to live, begging off any and all OHA responsibility.

In a recent scurrilous editorial, the Tribune went so far as to personally attack Black Panther Party chairperson Elaine Brown as instigating charges of "police brutality" improperly. (See letter to Tribune, page 2).

Of particular significance, the Tribune series, which began in the aftermath of a pair of exposes on police terror and indecent housing conditions published in THE BLACK PANTHER, never mentions the names of its "sources," claiming they are afraid.

Yet, in THE BLACK PANTHER series, each and every article has contained names and photographs of tenant residents who have experienced or eye-witnessed incidents of police brutality, presenting their criticisms of Davis and the housing conditions with unflinching detail. (See last week's issue of THE BLACK PANTHER, "San Antonio Residents Unite -- Tenants' Union To Combat Indecent Housing, Police Terror.")

For example, when asked by BLACK PANTHER reporters, "What do you think about housing conditions in San Antonio? Do you feel there is police harassment?" the following were some responses:

- Darryl Dixon: "I see young kids getting harassed, police stopping them and asking for their I. D. when they're not old enough to have an I. D."

- Terry Dixon: "I think they need to clean up the projects, paint them and get it together. I don't think the Housing Authority is dealing with the situation correctly, the way they should be dealing with it."

- Earl McCoy: "I don't feel they (the police) are dealing with it. It's more or less like they're coming our harassing the people instead of doing the job they're supposed to be doing, what they are paid to do. I'm walking down the street myself, minding my own business, and the next thing I know somebody is calling me over to the side, wanting to check me out. I live here and haven't done nothing to nobody.

- Diane: "I don't like it (the conditions). It's unsafe, unsanitary. If they (the OHA) are so concerned, why don't they try to do something better, because to me, they're just not doing nothing. As far as the police go, I think they are just here to harass people and shake them up. I've seen the police stopping anybody and everybody."

Meanwhile, the newly formed San Antonio Tenants' Union will be holding its first meeting soon in an attempt to combat some of the many problems plaguing the residents. The Tenants Union, formed at a recent meeting led by Elaine Brown and East Oakland Clergy President Michael Dunn, is an organized step on the part of the tenants to improve the housing conditions in the area and halt the police abuse.

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SAN QUENTIN DRAMA WORKSHOP TO PERFORM PRISON PLAY: “THE CAGE” TO HIGHLIGHT MILWAUKEE B.P.P. FREE BUSING TO PRISON BENEFIT

(Milwaukee, Wisc.) -- The Cage, a play about prison life performed by the renowned San Quentin Drama Workshop, will be featured in a benefit for the Free Bussing to Prison Program of the Milwaukee Chapter of the Black Panther Party here on Sunday, July 11.

The Cage, the first contemporary play to have been written and first performed behind prison walls, will take place at Century Hall, 2340 N. Farwell, beginning at 8:00 p. m. Also appearing in the benefit program will be the OSB Band, featuring Charles James, who will perform at 9:30 p. m.

Written by Rick Cluchey -- who founded the San Quentin Drama Workshop in 1957 while serving a life sentence in San Quentin Prison without possibility of parole -- The Cage was first performed in San Quentin in 1965. Described by the Chicago Tribune as the "scariest, most gripping, most claustrophobiac prison drama "ever experienced," the play is the story of three inmates: Hatchet, a clinically psychotic mass murderer; Al, a crippled homosexual, and Jive, a new and naive inmate who is thrown into a maximum security cell with Hatchet and Al and who is eventually murdered by the schizophrenic Hatchet.

When The Cage was first presented in San Quentin, it had six characters and was set in a French prison in order to escape prison censorship. After its opening, the warden of San Quentin was quoted as saying, "I didn't realize conditions in French prisons were that bad."

Cluchey was paroled from San Quentin in 1967 and since then has been leading productions of his play in major American cities; universities and colleges of 48 of the 50 states; numerous European countries; before the Senate Select Committee on Crime in the Great Hall of Justice in Washington, D. C.; the West German Ministry of Justice members and the West German Parliament in Bonn, and before the members of the Hawaii Supreme Court.

The Cage is performed by ex-prison inmates, many of whom belonged to the San Quentin Drama Workshop before being released from prison. "We wanted to tell people what was going on behind the walls, and if they cared, to do something about it," Cluchey said in an interview. He directs and performs in most of the productions of The Cage and is the author of several other plays.

Cluchey, 42, was recently honored by the government of

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West Germany for "artistic achievement" and has been invited to return to West Berlin for a year as an artist-in-residence under the auspices of the German Academic Exchange Service and the city of Berlin.

The Free Busing to Prison Program of the Milwaukee Chapter of the Black Panther Party has been transporting relatives and friends of Wisconsin inmates to visit their loved ones since 1972. Buses go every two weeks to Green Bay and alternate weeks to Fox Lake, Waupun, Central State and Farm One.

Anyone wishing further information about the benefit or the Busing Program should contact the Committee for the Survival of Prisoners, Inc., 2013 W. Hopkins, Milwaukee, Wisc. 53206 or phone (414) 445-5307.

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Protest Mounts Over New Prison Regulations

(Seattle, Wash.) -- The Washington state correctional department recently proposed "emergency" changes in the state's visiting procedures for penal institutions under the guise of a "drug" problem.

In order to enter any penal institution in the state of Washington, all persons must now submit to a search by going through a metal detector, and are subject to a physical search, sometimes a skin search, if they are "suspected" of bringing in contraband.

The new rules proposed by the state's Department of Social and Health Services require that a person must submit to these searches or may be banned from visiting the institution for no more than 90 days.

If a person refuses to be searched a second time, he or she can have their visiting rights denied permanently, unless they are restored by the superintendent of the institution.

Also, these new rule changes are to be included in a visitor's questionnaire which must be filled out by all visitors. The form asks questions such as, "Have you ever been evolved in illegal or criminal activity with the above-named resident?"

A public hearing on the rule changes is to be held on July 22 at 10:00 a. m. in the auditorium of the State Office Building at 12th and Jefferson in Olympia, Washington. All concerned individuals are urged to attend. The state, however, is trying to enact these proposed changes on an "emergency" basis before the hearing is even held.

The Seattle Chapter of the Black Panther Party urges all citizens to send letters of protest to: Milton Burdman, Deputy Secretary, Department of Social and Health Services, Olympia, Wash. 98504.

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PEOPLE'S PERSPECTIVE

Racist Judge Indicted

(Tallahasee, Fla.) -- G. Harrold Carswell, a former federal judge whose U. S. Supreme Court nomination was rejected by the Senate in 1970, was indicted by a grand jury recently on charges of attempting a homosexual act with a plainclothes vice squad police officer. The two-count indictment charged that Cars-well committed battery on and atempted an. "unnatural and lascivious act." Opponents of his Nixon-proposed Supreme Court nomination charged Cars-well with being a mediocre judge and having openly endorsed racial segregation.

False "Apology"

(New York, N.Y.) -- In response to a protest against his "apology" for recently revealed illegal FBI activities, FBI Director Clarence Kelley revealed that the apology was only meant to calm down public opinion. He explained that he thought the apology was a good tactic "because I believe this action might well prevent or at least somewhat retard" efforts to control the secret police agency.

Cannery Strike

(Oakland, Calif.) -- Northern California cannery workers, predominantly Chicano, have overwhelmingly turned down a wage-benefit offer from the owners and have authorized a strike if they have no contract agreement by 6:00 a. m. Saturday, July 10. Freddy F. Sanchez, president of the California Council of Cannery and Food Processing Unions, said the workers have been hit by a 13 per cent loss of purchasing power in the present three-year contract due to inflation. The processors' offer falls far short of remedying this, Sanchez said.

Reagan Praises
Israeli Raid

(Los Angeles, Calif.) -- Republican Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan praised last week's Israeli raid on Uganda's Entebbe airport near Kampala. "They acted like Americans used to act. It was magnificent to have done what they did," the right-wing, ex-California governor jubilantly said. First reports indicated that at least 31 people, including 20 Ugandan soldiers, were killed in the eight-hour battle.

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SIT-IN: N.A.P.A. Protests “Human Slavery” Of Mental Patients

(Sacramento, Calif.) -- Demanding "the elimination of human slavery in California psychiatric institutions," over 50 members of the Networks Against Psychiatric Abuse (NAPA) began a sit-in protest here on June 29 in the offices of Governor Jerry Brown to urge his support of legislation that would require payment of the minimum wage to patients who work in state hospitals and to expose the use of force and violence in psychiatric institutions

A press statement issued by NAPA, which is headquartered in San Francisco, said in part:

"Each year in the state of California, more than 5,100 patients in state mental hospitals are forced to work without pay for more than 910,000 hours to maintain the institutions that deprive them of basic human liberties.

"Psychiatric inmates must clean toilets, mop floors, run the kitchens, and operate the laundry in order to be allowed out of locked wards and onto the grounds for fresh air. They are not even paid for this forced labor -- even though lack of income is one of the two most important factors leading to hospitalization. Poor people are locked up because they are poor and are kept poor by not being paid for the work they do.

"Any refusal on the part of inmates to perform these menial tasks can be considered `resistance to therapy' and decreases their chances for release.

"Slave labor is slave labor and is a moral outrage. The state of California spends more than $600 million a year on its mental health system, most of which goes into the pockets of the employees who incarcerate and assault the inmates. This year California will have an estimated surplus of $800 million.

"Nevertheless, Governor Brown's administration has decided that it cannot pay two million dollars a year in wages to the inmates whose work keeps the institution running.

"Forced labor without pay is only the tip of the iceberg,

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however. NAPA will `sleep-in' at Governor Brown's office to expose the entire system of psychiatric slavery, a system based on the mythology that psychiatrists are able to help people by assaulting their minds and bodies with drugs, shock and lobotomy and to demand that the governor take action to correct these injustices."

Quin Denvir, deputy director for legal affairs for the state Department of Health, told the NAPA demonstrators, led by spokesperson Wayne Hudson, that he would relay their demands to Brown and that a policy presently being developed by the Department may include some pay. However, he said, such pay would be nominal, not minimum wages.

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RICHMOND BLACK FAMILY TAKES STAND AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY: 15 -- Year-Old Girl Beaten, Kicked, Humiliated

(Richmond, Calif.) -- A crowd of over 100 concerned and angry Black citizens met here last week to organize a community protest against the vicious police beating of 15-year-old Donyale "Binky" McCollins.

The well-attended meeting was held at the Easter Hill Methodist Church, which is pastored by the vocal minister and community leader, Rev. James King. Although the meeting was called on short notice, community residents showed up to find out about the plight of the McCollins family.

After thanking everyone for attending the meeting, Donyale's father, Robert McCollins, introduced his daughter, who then explained to those in attendance the cruel experience she endured.

Donyale told of how she was teaching her two younger brothers, Derek and Darien, how to swim at the Richmond Plunge when se and other swimmers were ordered to leave the pool for no apparent reason. Then, she continued, a lifeguard threatened her by saying that he was going to "count to five" and by then se "had better be out of the pool."

Then, because she was moving "too slow," Donyale said a lifeguard forced her to the side of the pool where a White policeman grabbed her by the hair, lifted her out of the pool and began to kick her in the stomach. While all this was going on, the lifeguard was twisting her arm.

After shamelessly beating young Donyale in public view, the policeman took her to the pool office where she said the lifeguard and officer continued their brutal assault and literally "threw assault and literally "threw her all over the office." After she was taken into custody at the Richmond police station, police officers taunted and laughed at her as she sat in the station shaking and trembling.

The next speaker at the meeting, Noble Phillips, was an eyewitness to the brutality of the Richmond police and interceded on Donyale's behalf by climbing through the window of the pool office to stop the assault against the teenage girl. Phillips told everyone, "I probably would not have hesitated if it had been my child. I told the police I was in my place as a man to protect this child (Donyale)."

Phillips explained that his wife, who works at the pool, called him and he rushed to the scene where, he said, the police had created a "riot situation." He said that it was unbelievable that the police would manhandle a 115-pound, 15-year-old girl in such a manner.

Donyale's father described the complete arrogance of the police. He pointed out that when he and his wife went to the police station, they asked whether or not their daughter had been beaten. One officer told them, "Yeah, I kicked her butt good, twice."

McCollins explained that he called the meeting because he "didn't know what to do" and needed the assistance of his community. He said he had met with the chief to police, Leo Garfield, who claimed he was reluctant to take action against the offending officer because it would seem that he (Garfield) would be "bowing to community pressure."

Rev. King correctly pointed out to the McCollins family that "their problem was no longer just their problem but the whole community's problem." After a discussion was held in which people spoke out against the injustice committed by Richmond police that they (the community) had suffered or witnessed, it was decided that:

- A group of concerned citizens would accompany McCollins to his next meeting with Garfield;

- The case would be brought before the Richmond City Council;

- A fund will be set up to deal with legal expenses; and

- A mechanism will be established by which to inform everyone at the meeting of the latest developments in the case.

Rev. King stressed that although it was proper to use legal channels to obtain justice, pressure against the police must be exerted immediately and forcefully.

-- 9 --

Protest Rehiring Of S.F. Killer Cop

(San Francisco, Calif.) -- Over 60 chanting and sign-carrying people demonstrated here recently in front of the home of killer cop Michael O'Brien at 4587 18th Street, following his reinstatement on this city's police force after being fired for the 1968 murder of a Black man, George Baskett.

On the night of September 28, 1968, O'Brien, who was drunk at the time, declared, "I want to kill a nigger so bad I can taste it." Shortly afterwards, while off-duty, he murdered Baskett in cold blood -- an incident which outraged the local Black community.

O'Brien was acquitted on murder charges and requested reinstatement on the force. He is presently working in an office job without a gun or a badge. The San Francisco Police Commission, after numerous meetings, has yet to make a final decision in his case.

Baskett's widow and son Floyd were among the protesters.

-- 11 --

Seattle Black Prison Activist Framed

(Seattle, Wash.) -- Black prison activist Mark Cook was convicted by an all-White jury here last week on federal bank robbery charges and various conspiracy charges and now faces a possible 85 years in prison.

Cook was convicted on false charges of shooting a policeman, helping a prisoner to escape, and committing a felony with a gun during a bank robbery earlier this year. He could be sentenced to 40 years for parole violation and 45 for the other charges.

Mark Cook has spent 18 of his 39 years as a prisoner in Washington state institutions and when he was released in 1973, he vowed to work for prison reform. He formed an organization called Convention that is dedicated to alleviating prison abuse in which ex-inmates come together to discuss common problems and potential solutions.

Later, Cook became a member of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and soon headed its justice committee. People who work with the AFSC stated that Mark was quite comfortable with the Quaker organization's discipline of nonviolence and articulated that position sincerely.

CHARGES

The charges against Mark stem from an armed robbery of a Tukwila, Washington, bank on January 23 of this year in which he allegedly aided in the escape of John Sherman, a member of the so-called "George Jackson Brigade." Sherman was captured during the alleged robbery attempt. Although it was never mentioned in court, Cook was also charged with freeing prisoners at Walla Walla State Penitentiary and McNeil Island Penitentiary.

The prosecution's chief witness, Autrey ("Scat Man") Sturgis an alleged heroin addict, testified that Cook allegedly told him of the robbery after it had taken place. However, Sturgis' girlfriend, Suzanne Akers, testified in court that the Seattle police had offered Sturgis $20,000 if he would help to convict Mark Cook.

Defense witness Edward Mean, a self-professed member of the George Jackson Brigade, testified that Cook was not a member of the "underground"

-- 25 --
organization and therefore was not involved in its activities.

Cook was charged with firing at Seattle police officer Joseph Matthews, but Dr. Edward McClean testified that Cook is so seriously near-sighted that he has difficulty seeing beyond 25 feet. Police claimed that Cook fired at Matthews from 90 feet away, across the street from the bank.

Two other defense witnesses testified to seeing Cook at various times on January 23. Also, throughout the trial none of the prosecution's witnesses remembered seeing Cook with a beard; he has one that is full grown.

After one week of testimony, the all-White jury turned in a guilty verdict on all counts. Defense attorney Robert Czeisler has indicated he will ask for a retrial on the grounds that the jury was not composed of members of Mark's peer group and because there were several instances of trial misconduct by the judge and the prosecutor.

-- 11 --

DEFENSE OPENS IN PINE RIDGE MURDER TRIAL: F.B.I. Director Clarence Kelley, Two Congressmen Subpoenaed

(Cedar Rapids, Iowa) -- In a recent startling move in the Pine Ridge FBI murder trial here, Judge Edward McManus issued subpoenas to FBI Director Clarence Kelley, Senator Frank Church and Representative Otis Pike to appear in court as defense witnesses.

American Indian Movement (AIM) leaders Darelle "Dino" Butler and Robert Robideau are on trial for the June 26, 1975, murders of FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams who were slain on the Pine Ridge (South Dakato) Indian reservation. In addition to Butler and Robideau, the government also indicted Native Americans Jimmy Eagle and Leonard Peltier. Eagle is now in prison and Peltier is fighting extradition from Canada.

Defense attorneys in the case insist that the testimony of Kelley, Church and Pike is essential in order to conduct an "effective defense." Each of the three men was ordered to bring whatever documents he is in possession of that relate either to the defendants or AIM. The defense has persistently demanded the appearance of the three officials in order to introduce concrete evidence of a government conspiracy to destroy AIM.

William Muldrow, a U.S. Civil Rights Commission investigator, testified in the opening of the defense's case that conditions at the Pine Ridge Reservation were so fearful last summer that it was logical for individuals to be carrying weapons to defend themselves against attacks from former Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Director Dick Wilson's "goon squad" or the FBI.

Cleo Marshall, a Pine Ridge health worker, and Ethel Merival, a tribal attorney, each supported Muldrow's findings in their testimony. Ms. Marshall based her opinions on the threats and harassment she had received while Ms. Merival recounted several incidents of harassment, including sexual threats and shootings, that she and her family have suffered.

AFRAID

Almost in tears, Ms. Merival said, "I am afraid to go back (to Pine Ridge) if I testify here."

The government ended its case as its final witness, James Harper, alias David Harden, said that he lied to defendant Butler to gain his confidence. The AIM official, Harper claimed supposedly told him the entire Oglala shootout story.

A defense witness, Thelma Hess, testified that Harper told her he would do anything, even kill, to avoid being railroaded to Texas for charges pending against him there.

-- 11 --

Benefit Basketball Game For Gary Tyler

(New Orleans, La.) -- Over 350 people turned out here recently to watch an exciting basketball game held to benefit the Gary Tyler Defense Fund, in which the renowned FREE SOUTHERN THEATER (dark trunks), sponsor of the event, went down to a narrow 47-44 defeat at the hands of the CENTRAL CITY EOC (white trunks).

The Gary Tyler Defense Fund is trying to raise funds to overturn a lower court decision which denied a new trial to the 17-year-old Black youth, who is now on death row on a false murder conviction. In attendance at the game was Gary's mother, Mrs. Juanita Tyler, and numerous other individuals and organizations who are working for Gary's freedom.

-- 12 --

…And Bid Him Sing

By David G. Du Bois

Exciting Novel Examines Lives Of
Black Americans In Egypt

Black revolutionary leader Malcolm X talks to the novel's character, Bob Jones, a Black American journalist living in Cairo, Egypt, in the following section of …And Bid Him Sing. This portion of the novel by BLACK PANTHER Editor-in-Chief David G. Du Bois recounts Malcolm's famous 1964 visit to Cairo where he presented a document to the Organization of African Unity (OAU) concerning the racism endured by Black Americans -- a document that was instrumental in Malcolm's assassination a few months later.

PART 37

"Brother Suliman and Brother Kamal came by the boat and picked up their brochure the day after the three of you were there." Malcolm hesitated. "Has Kamal had any trouble with the Egyptian authorities?"

"Not so far as I know," I answered, "not yet. But he's heading for it with that public relations act he's putting on. I've tried to warn him. But he thinks he's clever."

"There are a lot of brothers like him in The Nation…and in the streets," he said thoughtfully. "And some of them are clever. They're simply trying to make it on their own terms. It's unfortunate, though, that he's trying to take the wrong people. He should listen to you. I'll tell him that."

He sat silent for a moment, looking at a spot on the carpet just in front of his slippered feet. Just as I was about to ask he looked up and said: "It has been made possible for me to present a memorandum on behalf of our brothers and sisters in the States to the OAU heads of state conference. I've been working on it. It's an important opportunity for us.

"I've also been given observer status to represent the Organization of Afro-American Unity at the conference. I don't know yet if I'll be able to read my statement before the conference or just have it distributed along with conference documents. In either case, I'll have to have copies mimeographed. Could you help me to get this done?"

"Yes, of course," I said, pleased that I could be of some use.

"I should finish it tonight. If you could come by tomorrow sometime…I don't type -- been planning to learn but haven't had the time -- it's written in longhand. Should be about eight pages, typed."

"I'll check with an office I know that does stencils and mimeographing this afternoon. It doesn't take long to get a thing like this done here if we're willing to pay a little extra. How many copies do you think you'll need?"

"I think a hundred will be enough, and I'll take care of any expense you have. That's not a problem." He rose, went to the desk and fingered through the sheets of tablet paper. "If you could come by in the morning, before ten if possible -- if not, I'll leave it in an envelope for you at the reception desk. I'll be attending tomorrow morning's session."

WORKING

I rose from my chair and walked toward the alcove. He continued, "I'll be working on it through most of the night, I guess. I hope they'll be able to read my handwriting."

"I'll type up a copy for them to make the stencils from. Some of the typists at these offices only know English well enough to copy what they see in front of them. Handwriting is usually difficult. It'll be easier for them from a typed copy."

"That's very kind of you, brother," Malcolm said, looking steadily, appreciatively into my eyes.

"I returned his gaze. "I'm not being kind, Malcolm," I said "I believe in you and I want to help you in what you're doing, in any way I can. You're going to need all the help you can get. By helping you I help myself."

Malcolm dropped his eyes from mine to the sheets of paper on the desk. He began to speak…was silent, and then said, "A lot of brothers and sisters believed in me once…and I led them wrong. I'm now in the hands of Allah. I believe he will help me travel the right road." He paused. "I --" A musical gong sounded throughout the suite. "That will be the tea," he said. "Excuse me."

Malcolm returned with a very black man in a white robe falling to his ankles carrying a large tray at shoulder height. The waiter smiled at me but said nothing. With his free hand he removed an ashtray from a low table between the two armchairs and placed on it a gleaming silver teapot, a silver creamer and sugar bowl, another elongated silver pot containing lot water, and a cup and saucer of fine china at each place.

He placed two large linen napkins beside each cup and saucer, moving quickly and efficiently. Malcolm was standing beside his chair. When the waiter finished he stepped backward two steps and said to Malcolm in unaccented English, "Is there anything else, sir?"

"No, sir. Thank you very much," Malcolm replied, handing him the signed check. With a slight bow and a large smile the man said, "Thank you," turned, and headed for the door. Malcolm followed him.

When he returned Malcolm said, "He always refuses to take a tip, even when I insist. He's very firm about it. Is it customary?"

"No, not in hotels. But among the people it is."

Malcolm sat down on the edge of his chair and proceeded to pour out the tea. He moved methodically, carefully and thoughtfully. "Cream and sugar?" he asked.

"No cream: two sugars, please," I replied.

When he finished, took up his cup and sat back in his chair, I said, "Your Organization of Afro-American Unity that you mentioned earlier; is it to be an Islamic organization -- I mean, a religious body?"

TO BE CONTINUED

-- 13 --

REVOLUTIONARY SUICIDE

By Huey P. Newton
"Raising
Consciousness"

As we continue with the chapter "Raising Consciousness" from Revolutionary Suicide, Black Panther Party leader and chief theoretician Huey P. Newton reveals how the Party coined the term "pig" for policemen and the far-reaching effects it has had on the Black community as well as White people and the police themselves.

PART 58

People once ashamed to be called Black now gladly accept the label, and our biological characteristics are sources of pride. Today we call ourselves Black people and wear natural hair styles because we have changed the definition of the word "black." This is an example of Nietzche's theory that beyond good and evil is the will to power.

In the early days of the Black Panthers we tried to find ways to make this theory work in the best interests of Black people. Words could be used not only to make Blacks more proud but to make Whites question and even reject concepts they had always unthinkingly accepted. One of our prime needs was a new definition for "policeman." A good descriptive word, one the community would accept and use, would not only advance Black consciousness, but in effect control the police by making them see themselves in a new light.

We thought up new terms for them. At first I figured that the reverse of god -- dog -- would be a good epithet, but it did not catch on. We tried beast, brute, and animal, but none of them captured the essential quality we were trying to convey. One day, while working on the paper, Eldridge showed us a postcard from Beverly Axelrod.

On the front was the slogan "Support Your Local Police"; there was a sheriff's star above the phrase, and in the center of the star was a grinning, slobbering pig. It was just what we were looking for. We began to show policemen as pigs in our cartoons, and from time to time used the word. "Pig" caught on; it entered the language.

WARFARE

This was a form of psychological warfare: it raised the consciousness of the people and also inflicted a new consciousness on the ruling circle. If Whites and police became caught up in this new awareness, they would soon defect from their own ranks and join us to avoid feelings of guilt and shame.

Nietzche pointed out that this tactic had been used to good effect by the Christians against the Romans. In the beginning the Christians were weak, but they understood how to make the philosophy of a weak group work for them. By using phrases like "the meek shall inherit the earth," they imposed a new idea on the Romans, on that gave rise to doubt and led to defections to the new sect.

Once Christians stated that the meek shall inherit the earth and won over members, they weakened the strength of those in power. They were to be the victors. People like to be on the winning side. We have seen the same principle work on college campuses in this country. Many White youths now identify with Blacks; the identification is manifested in clothes, rhetoric, and life styles.

Thus, even though we came to the term "pig" accidentally, the choice itself was calculated. "Pig" was perfect for several reasons. First of all, words like "swine," "hog," "sow," and "pig" have always and unpleasant connotations. The reason for this probably has theological roots, since the pig is considered an unclean animal in Semitic religions. In the English language well-established "pig" epithets are numerous.

We say that someone eats like a hog, is a filthy swine, and so on. In Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce uses swine as a destructive, devouring image when he describes Ireland as "an old sow that eats her farrow." So the word "pig" is traditionally associated with grotesque qualities.

The pig in reality is an ugly and offensive animal. It likes to root around in the mud; it makes hideous noises; it does not seem to relate to humans as other animals do. Further, anyone in the Black community can relate to the true characteristics of the pig become most of us come from rural backgrounds and have observed the nature of pigs.

Many of the police, too, are hired right out of the South and are familiar with the behavior of pigs. They know exactly what the words implies. To call a policeman a pig conveys the idea of someone who is brutal, gross, and uncaring.

"Pig" has another point in its favor: in racial terms "pig" is a neutral word. Many White youths on college campuses began to understand what the police were really like when their heads were broken open during demonstrations against the draft and the Vietnam war. This broadened the use of the term and served to unify the victims against their oppressors.

Even though White youths were not victimized in the same way or to the same extent that we were, they nonetheless became our allies against the police. In this case the ruling circle was not able to set the victims against each other, as the racists in the South had done by setting poor Whites against Black.

Our greatest victory, however, lay in the effect on the police themselves. They did not like to be called pigs, and they still do not. Ever since the term came into use, they have conducted a countercampaign by using slogans like "Pigs Are Beautiful" and wearing pig pins; but their effort has failed.

Our message, of course, is that if they do not want to be pigs, then they ought to stop their brutalization of the victims of the world. No slogan will change the people's opinion; a change in behavior is the only thing that will do it.

TO BE CONTINUED

-- 15 --

TEXT OF ELAINE BROWN'S JULY 4 SPEECH IN PHILADELPHIA: “Today We Mark The Beginning Of A New American Revolution”

The following is the text of the address by Elaine Brown, chairperson and leading member of the Black Panther Party, delivered at the July 4th Coalition's "People's Bicentennial Celebration" in Philadelphia.

"Friends and Comrades, All Power to the People!

"I hope that you will bear with me today as I take the time to repeat the message I am grateful to deliver in both English and Spanish. It is important for us to destroy all barriers, big and little, that divide us or separate us, including barriers of language.

"Today is the first time in eleven years that I stand on the streets of my childhood, my youth, here in North Philadelphia. This is the place of my birth, with its concrete playgrounds, its infested and dilapidated housing, its bitter memories of gang warfare and the overt fascist oppression of police rampant in our neighborhood. This is also the birthplace of the United States. That is appropriate. It is appropriate that I stand here today to witness for all who can hear that since the time of my youth, nothing has changed in Philly, except that the streets are dirtier, the housing is worse, that a cop who was a numbers-runner in South Philly is now the Mayor and that most of my friends are dead from being born in North Philly.

"It is fitting too that we should mention America's celebration of its bicentennial in the place where it all started, for it has been 200 years of bloodshed, oppression and degradation and all our friends are dead or dying from being born in America.

"It is fitting that we stand here in the birthplace of America where 200 years ago it was said this country stood for freedom from exploitation and oppression and where men said they had fought and died to be free from colonialism, to remember that working people in this country are more exploited than ever, that people of color are daily oppressed in our communities in the entirety of our lives and that in the name of freedom this government maintains colonies abroad, like the colony of Puerto Rico.

"Is this what America insists that we celebrate, here in her birthplace?

"That we own nothing.

"That we do not control the institutions in our society, even in our own neighborhoods.

"That we are taxed without representation.

"That our homes are violated by armed police at will.

"That our ability to live is dependent upon the jobs they let us have, the housing they let us live in, the clothing they make available to us, at the prices they set and with the arrangements they make.

"That our right to information and knowledge is crushed by the inferior schools they've established for us and the misinformation reported in their media.

"That we Blacks and Puerto Ricans and Latinos and Asians and poor Whites and working people have no land, no rights, no control over our own lives.

"That it is the same for others, in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America, in Puerto Rico.

"The history of oppression in this country is as old as the time the first Europeans set foot on this territory and robbed it from its true natives, now called the Indian people. It is as old as the days when Blacks were forced from our native Africa to work for free. Thousands, millions were killed in those early years. From then on it is a history of barbarity, of murder and plunder; from the Indians on the Eastern seaboard, to the Blacks in the South, to the Mexicans and the Chinese in the West, murder and plunder; from the exploitation of other European immigrants to the spreading of exploitation throughout the world, a history of murder and plunder.

"This is the history we are to celebrate today? Today we can only look over this history and cry shame. Today we must mark the beginning of a New American Revolution or face years more of the same and ultimately the total destruction of us all at the hands of madmen, who, in the name of God and Freedom, shall destroy this very planet rather than lose the power they hold, which is rightfully all of ours.

"Let us mark this year, this time and this place as the end of the old and the beginning of the new. The Puerto Rican people here or in Puerto Rico have a right to what is theirs! The Indians in North Dakota, the Blacks in Pennsylvania, Illinois and Mississippi, the Chicanos and Latinos in Texas and Arizona, the Asians in New York and California, the poor Whites in Tennessee and Kentucky, the exploited multiracial peoples of Hawaii and Alaska, we all have a right of live! America must give it back! You are weak, but we are strong!

"Let us celebrate today, let us celebrate today the beginning of our new-found strength, with the words of a poem I was taught by my grandmother -- who came from Virginia to the birthplace of America to die only ten blocks or so from this very place, a poor and forgotten human being:
"If we must die, let it not be like hogs

hunted and penned in an inglorious spot

While around us bark the mad and hungry dogs

Making their mock at our accursed lot.

If we must die then let us nobly die

So that our precious blood may not be shed in vain

Then even the monsters we defy

Shall be constrained

To honor us though dead…
"We kinsmen must meet the common foe

Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave

And for their thousand blows

Deal one death blow.

What though before us lies the open grave

Like men we'll face the murderous pack

pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back…"

-- 16 --

THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY PROGRAM: MARCH 29, 1972 PLATFORM

WHAT WE WANT, WHAT WE BELIEVE

1. WE WANT FREEDOM. WE WANT POWER TO DETERMINE THE DESTINY OF OUR BLACK AND OPPRESSED COMMUNITIES.

We believe that Black and oppressed people will not be free until we are able to determine our destinies in our own communities ourselves, by fully controlling all the institutions which exist in our communities.

2. WE WANT FULL EMPLOYMENT FOR OUR PEOPLE.

We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every person employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the American businessmen will not give full employment, then the technology and means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

3. WE WANT AN END TO THE ROBBERY BY THE CAPITALIST OF OUR BLACK AND OPPRESSED COMMUNITIES.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules were promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over fifty million Black people. Therefore, we feel this is a modest demand that we make.

4. WE WANT DECENT HOUSING, FIT FOR THE SHELTER OF HUMAN BEINGS.

We believe that if the landlords will not give decent housing to our Black and oppressed communities, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that the people in our communities, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for the people.

5. WE WANT EDUCATION FOR OUR PEOPLE THAT EXPOSES THE TRUE NATURE OF THIS DECADENT AMERICAN SOCIETY. WE WANT EDUCATION THAT TEACHES US OUR TRUE HISTORY AND OUR ROLE IN THE PRESENT-DAY SOCIETY.

We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If you do not have knowledge of yourself and your position in the society and the world, then you will have little chance to know anything else.

6. WE WANT COMPLETELY FREE HEALTH CARE FOR ALL BLACK AND OPPRESSED PEOPLE.

We believe that the government must provide, free of charge, for the people, health facilities which will not only treat our illnesses, most of which have come about as a result of our oppression, but which will also develop preventative medical programs to guarantee our future survival. We believe that mass health education and research programs must be developed to give all Black and oppressed people access to advanced scientific and medical information, so we may provide ourselves with proper medical attention and care.

7. WE WANT AN IMMEDIATE END TO POLICE BRUTALITY AND MURDER OF BLACK PEOPLE, OTHER PEOPLE OF COLOR, ALL OPPRESSED PEOPLE INSIDE THE UNITED STATES.

We believe that the racist and tascist 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 bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

-- 17 --

Intercommunal News: 69 KILLED, HUNDREDS WOUNDED: U.N. Report Condemns Sharpeville Massacre

Published at the request of the United Nations Special Committee Against Apartheid, the following report, written by David M. Sibeko, was specially prepared for this year's International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination -- a day commemorating the infamous Sharpeville Massacre, March 21, 1960. Mr. Sibeko is the director of Foreign Affairs of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) of Azania (South Africa) and is its representative at the United Nations.

PART 1

"Half measures are no good in this wilderness any more than a leaking boat is any good in an ocean. One needs certainty, a sense of security, something solid to hold on to in the dangerous void -- and it has to be absolutely solid."

-- Alan Moorehead

The savage massacre of African patriots at Sharpeville and other places in South Africa on March 21, 1960, is of paramount significance in the struggle against apartheid and needs to be understood in its historical scope.

Sharpeville marked unquestionably a turning point in the struggle for liberation in Azania. As a respected African church leader, Canon Burgess Carr of Liberia, said, it was the watershed which spurred the outpour of revolutionary struggle against White minority rule and colonialism throughout southern Africa.

The fatal gunning down of some eight score peaceful African demonstrators and the maiming

-- 26 --
of several hundred others, in a callous and liver re-enactment of the Wild West, rightfully brought international public opinion against apartheid South Africa to a boil. So far the massacres at Sharpeville, Langa, Nyanga and Vanderbijl Park stand out prominently in the minds of people all over the world as the saguinary examples of apartheid barbarism. Within Azania, these massacres which form the darkest cloud in a long nightmare of brutal repression, are revered as a source of inspiration and rededication.

The militant Black students' movement, the South African Students' Organization (SASO), had one of its early brushes with the South African political police, the Special Branch, after declaring March 21 "Liberation Day" and arranging a meeting to observe the day at the University of Natal in 1973.

One of the nine SASO members now charged under the Terrorism Act, in the Pretoria Supreme Court at the so-called Palace of Justice, Dr. Aubrey Mokoape, was arrested and charged with organizing the commemoration of Sharpeville Day. As veterans of Robben Island prison will testify, political prisoners also defiantly hold special meetings to mark March 21 every year. Ever since 1960, from the eve of each anniversary of Sharpeville Day until after, police are put on alert throughout the Vaal triangle. This region in which Sharpeville is located is ringed off by heavily armed men, often with support aircraft hovering above the location itself. Anyone leaving or entering the place must show an official permit.

The reverence of the African people for this day grows from the fact that the political campaign launched to attack a fundamental cornerstone of apartheid colonialism, i.e., the pass laws, brought them far closer to the seizure of political power than anything attempted before. Conversely, the White minority regime dreads the memory of March 21, 1960, with the chain of staggering events which followed after that day.

In particular they hate to be reminded of those events which had the National Party government as perilously close to collapse as it has ever been.

Mr. Lewis Nkosi, South African journalist who left the country on an exit permit on 1961, was a political reporter with the Post, a newspaper aimed at the African market, when the Sharpeville massacre occurred. As is well known amongst Azanians, Mr. Nkosi was in the unique position of African professionals with good connections amongst Whites.

ASSESSMENT

His assessment of the situation in Azania at the time can therefore be considered balanced as it reflects opinion on both sides of the color line. Of the man who was the principal architect of the historic Positive Action Campaign against the pass laws, Mr. Nkosi wrote in 1963:

"… a tall distinguished-looking African prisoner, a university instructor and political leader who, at the age of 36, has a rare distinction of having scared Dr. Verwoerd's government out of its wits. As anybody knows by now, the South African government does not scare easily."

Continuing, Mr. Nkosi wrote:

"In March 1960, Robert Sobukwe, president of the banned Pan Africanist Congress, (PAC), helped to orchestrate a crisis that panicked the South African government and nearly brought about the kind of political anarchy which too often makes possible the transference of power overnight."

This report comes closest to the truth of what it looked like in Azania after the Pan Africanist Congress launched its campaign against the pass laws on March 21.

TO BE CONTINUED

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WIDESPREAD REPRESSION FOLLOWS SOWETO REBELLION: BLACKS ARRESTED IN RECORD NUMBERS IN SOUTH AFRICA

(Johannesburg, South Africa) - Black Azanians (South Africans) continue to be arrested in large numbers in the aftermath of the Soweto rebellion, under newly enacted fascist laws of the White minority government that permit indefinite detention without trial, The New York Times reports.

In a related development, the government announced last week that it had reached complete agreement with Soweto moderate leaders on the language dispute that sparked the uprising in 18 Black "townships" three weeks ago.

Typically, the White minority government has remained close-mouthed about the "large scale detentions" reported in the South African press. However, an official statement released before the latest number of sweeping arrests said that a total number of 1,298 people had been detained since the outbreak of the revolt on June 16.

Among the Black activists arrested were Victor Gallingi, an official of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Southern Africa, and Thomas Manthatha, an executive of the Black People's Convention (BPC), an organization that backs immediate, majority Black rule. Gallingi was arrested by government security police in Pretoria, capital of the racist regime, while Manthatha was arrested here in a simultaneous police raid.

Meanwhile, The Rand Daily Mail reported that the agreement reached between the moderate leaders of Soweto and the government provided for the ultimate phasing out of Afrikaans, the hated Dutch-based language, as a teaching medium in Black primary and secondary schools. Over 1,000 people were killed -- the overwhelming majority of them Black -- during the protests in the Black "townships" that were touched off when 10,000 Black schoolchildren in Soweto demonstrated against the government regulation requiring that half of the courses used in schools must be taught in Afrikaans.

The agreement was the result of talks held on June 30 between Soweto representatives and government officials. In a meeting that lasted for over eight hours, the Blacks warned the White officials that more widespread and violent uprisings would result in South Africa unless the apartheid (segregation) regime began to share power with Blacks. Internews reported that the Black representatives demanded the abolition of apartheid and called for the gradual inclusion of Blacks in the South African Parliament, which is now lily White.

Repression of Black students and others who protest government policies is expected to increase under the "Internal Security Act," passed into law last May. "Minister of Justice" James T. Kruger, in unveiling the bill, vowed to use its vast powers to combat what he alleged is an unprecedented threat of internal subversion of the government by radical Black and Christian groups and those in the news media who use their position to advocate revolution.

A recent report by the Christian Institute of South Africa, one of the organizations Kruger has threatened to suppress, estimated that at least 77 people, almost all of them Black, have been detained since the calming of the revolt.

An earlier estimate made by the International Defense and Aid Fund, a London-based group that campaigns for the release of political prisoners, said that the scope of arrests is much wider. In its booklet, South Africa: The Imprisoned Society, the Fund estimated that at least 14,000 people were detained between 1960 and 1967 under forerunners of the Internal Security Act -- the Suppression of Communism Act, the Terrorism Act and the Riotous Assemblies Act, all of which are still enforced.

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SALIM A. SALIM, CHAIRMAN OF THE SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON DECOLONIZATION: TANZANIAN U.N. AMBASSADOR INTERVIEWED

In Part 2 of the following interview reprinted from Africa magazine, Salim A. Salim, permanent representative to the United Nations from Tanzania and the highly respected chairman of the U.N. Special Committee of 24 on Decolonization, discusses the impact of U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's visit to southern Africa in May.

PART 2

QUESTION: As you know, the mood in southern Africa today is that the armed struggle against the minority regime in Rhodesia has to be intensified. Did you find unanimity on this point in all the countries that you visited? Some people have suggested that there is, among the four residents, unanimity on the objective methods of the struggle, but variance on the issue of tactics. Did you find this to be the case?

SALIM: We found complete unanimity on the need for intensification of the armed struggle. In fact, in Dar-es-Salaam, Lusaka, Gaborone and Maputo, the mission was impressed not only by the unanimity of the four presidents' views but equally of their total commitment to support that struggle now that possibilities for negotiated settlement which they unanimously strived to obtain has been completely blocked.

In our discussions with the four presidents, we found nothing whatsoever to give credibility to such suggestions. Altogether, the mission spent over six hours of discussions with the presidents and one of the firm impressions of the group is the degree of identity of the analysis, evaluation, and perspective of the four leaders in respect to Zimbabwe. In essence, their discussions with us were very much complimentary.

Indeed, if I may add, as we proceeded on our trip from Dar-es Salaam southwards, the first comment that was made to us by all the three presidents was that they fully concurred with what the chairman of the four frontline states, Mwalimu Nyerere, had told the group. In sum, therefore, we found concurrence of views in both strategy and tactics in support of the prosecution of the struggle in Rhodesia. And there was no less unanimity on the struggle in Namibia.

Q: Simultaneous with your mission was the visit of Kissinger to Dar-es-Salaam and Lusaka. What would you say was the impact of the visit on the general efforts to find a solution to the problems in southern Africa?

SALIM: It is yet premature to assess the impact of Secretary Kissinger's visit in the context of finding a solution to the southern African problems. There is no doubt that his statement in Lusaka was an important one and if put into practice would represent a significant positive shift of United States policy on southern Africa. Such a development should certainly be welcome, for if the United States were to genuinely support efforts towards majority rule in Zimbabwe and Namibia, the impact of such support is obvious.

Yet generally positive as Secretary Kissinger's Lusaka statement was, it remains a declaration of intentions. It is the implementation of that declaration that will determine the type of impact that Kissinger's visit will have in southern African. The first test would of course be on the repeal of the Byrd Amendment which permits the continued importation of chrome from Rhodesia in violation of Security Council sanctions.

Q: Are the Kissinger proposals, particularly the 10 points which relate to Rhodesia, acceptable to the Committee? If so, to what extent will your Committee coordinate its activities on Rhodesia with the American government?

SALIM: These proposals are generally welcome. If implemented, they would certainly be in keeping with the many United Nations decisions and resolutions. The statement by Secretary Kissinger in Lusaka is the most far reaching one ever made by a United States administration with respect to southern Africa in this decade.

Concerning the 10 proposals on Rhodesia, I would say that by and large they are in line with what the United Nations has been expecting of all its member states. We should therefore welcome United States cooperation with the Committee on the basis of some of these proposals. I should, however, mention one proposal which seems to be

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clearly unacceptable to t