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INSIDE

U.S. Court Upholds B.P.P.'s Right To Sue F.B.I.,

ELAINE BROWN -- "WE WILL PROVE THEY FORCED HUEY INTO EXILE"

PAGE 3

Carter Tightens Welfare Eligibility Requirements

ATTACKS MOUNT ON WHITE HOUSE PLAN

PAGE 5

Tanzanian Newspaper Editor Visits East Oakland

FERNANDEZ ROHINDA CALLS FOR CLOSER TIES BETWEEN BLACK AMERICANS AND AFRICA

CENTERFOLD

Castro Tells Dellums U.S. Must Lift Cuban Embargo

AMERICA AND CARIBBEAN REPUBLIC TO EXCHANGE DIPLOMATS

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LONG, HOT SUMMER STARTS EARLY: CHICAGO POLICE RIOT SPARKS LATINO RESISTANCE

(Chicago, Ill.) - Chicago's Dearborn Park Latino community erupted in open rebellion last Saturday evening when Chicago police overran a Puerto Rican Day celebration in the sprawling park here, killing two Puerto Rican young men and igniting pent-up frustrations and long-standing animosity towards their condition of life in a spontaneous hour-long revolt.

In addition to the two murdered men -- Raphael Cruz, 25, and Julio Osorio, 26 -- 116 people, including dozens of Chicago cops, were injured and 119 arrested. Also, 17 Chicago police vehicles were damaged, three of which were overturned and totally destroyed.

Contrary to early police reports which claimed officers were attempting to peacefully break up a fight between two rival gangs, the Spanish Cobras and the Latin Kings, when Osorio fired several shots at two Wood Street District cops, wildly missing but striking Cruz, Latino families in the park assert that the Chicago police suddenly charged into the area in a wild, club-swinging mass, arbitrarily beating Puerto Rican men and women, young and old.

Sources in Chicago have told THE BLACK PANTHER that the cops' mad dash may have been an officially sanctioned act of retaliation for a bombing earlier in the day at the downtown County Building.

The FALN (initials of the Spanish words meaning Armed Forces of National Liberation), a radical group advocating Puerto Rican

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independence, and the target of several grand jury witchhunts, claimed responsibility for the blast which caused close to $10,000 in damages on the fifth floor.

Adding to this belief, both the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune acknowledge that many of the families in Humboldt Park that evening support the broad-based Puerto Rican independence movement.

Other sources say that the police typically overreacted to both the fight and the boisterous spirit in the park Saturday evening.

WE WERE STAMPEDED

"We were stampeded," said one middle-aged Latino woman on the scene where the initial incident first broke out at California and Division Streets.

"They were talking to us like we were pigs, like we were animals," Ms. Lucy Garcia told the Sun-Times at St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital. Along with other friends, Ms. Garcia had helped carry Jose Santana and his wife Leony to the Hospital.

Ms. Garcia told reporters that she and a group of friends were standing around watching a fire when the police approached and beat Santana to the ground without warning. When his wife protested, she, too, was set upon by the cops who slapped, beat and kicked her.

At the hospital, Leony Santana was unconscious, with raw, red welts covering her face and one shoulder. Her husband's face was a bloody pulp.

A particularly poignant overview of the police riot and resulting rebellion is provided in a Sun-Times article:

"Her son is dead. Virginia Cruz sits on an old chair on the sidewalk in front of a used-appliance store and her screams ring up and down North Avenue.

"Her family stands around her, silent and angry. A mournful cluster of people in an almost empty street on a hot Sunday morning.

"Rafael Cruz, 25, was shot down in a riot in Humboldt Park Saturday, and his mother and his sisters and brothers and his nieces and nephews and friends all claim the police did the shooting…

"A friend, whose thick forearm, exposed by a tank-top shirt, carries the tattooed inscription "Born to Suffer,' said he saw Mrs. Cruz and her son in the park minutes before the shooting.

"She was walking arm in arm with Rafael. On her other arm was a younger son, Eddie, 17…

" `The cops were shooting crazy at us from about half a block away from us,' Eddie said.

" 'When he (Rafael) got shot, everybody went crazy in the park. That's when we started burning those buildings on Division. We tipped the cars over. We burned the paddy wagon.

" `I went crazy. I just started throwing stuff at the cops. Bricks, rocks, whatever I could find.'

"After the shooting, a nephew ran from the park to tell Rafael's family what had happened. He ran to the home of Virginia Cruz, which sits above the appliance store at 2547 W. North. There is a steep, dark flight of stairs to the apartment.

" `My mother just went crazy,' " said Evelyn Cruz, a sister. `She started talking crazy. She started crying. She went straight to the park, and I went after her. She was looking for him, to see if it was true. She was crazy. She kept asking people if it was true.' "

Violence also erupted for the second successive day with at least 13 Chicago police and four residents of the Humboldt Park community injured by flying rocks and bottles last Sunday evening.

Earlier in the day, community efforts to curtail unnecessary violence were betrayed when Chicago police broke into a meeting between several Latino groups -- including the Latin Kings and the Street Cobras -- and arbitrarily arrested 18 people.

Participants in the meeting, held in the offices of Claudio Flores, a member of the Chicago Human Rights Commission and editor of an influential Spanish language newspaper, report that prior to the arrests, the street gangs had agreed that if the police left the area "little by little" they would do likewise.

The agreement betrayed, before Sunday evening was over the flames of Molotov cocktails again blazed symbolic of Latino angers and frustrations.

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EDITORIAL: Pimped And Prostituted

As has been said time and time again, one of the unexpressed pitfalls of America's poor and oppressed is the limited options our communities are offered in order to create a meaningful and decent existence. Most recently, the Carter administration has, for many millions of us, boiled these already blighted choices down to a ruthless basic: work or starve.

The cold unreality of offering out hunger or jobs when there are no jobs -- as the plight of Black youth so vividly testifies to, either because of racism or because of technology gone wild -- as the two choices available suggests that Carter, like so many others before him, is enlarging his reputation as a hardline conservative at the expense of the poor. His administration's welfare proposals, which "out-conservatize Nixon" as one observer put it, demands, among its other reprehensible features, that the poor budget their poverty, and budget their friends' and relatives' poverty, too (see page 5), such that the federal poverty level of $5,500 becomes the standard for basing our relationships.

Imagine, if you live with mom and pop, but they earn too much, you will receive no assistance. The same applies to senior citizens who live with their children.

But then again Carter and his top boys are from the South, and Southern Whites, often dirt poor themselves, tend to harbor rather bizarre notions concerning welfare. His welfare proposals just may be serious -- and if so, look out.

So too, has the Supreme Court tightened the squeeze on welfare recipients with their recent ruling that states can deny payments to unwed mothers who refuse to "snitch" on the fathers of their children. Again, and in a most hypocritical manner, the outworn ethics of the Puritans are imposed upon the citizens of the 20th century. Again, the "blind" scales of U.S. justice have etched out a formula that pits love against survival, human relationships against cold cash.

Pimped by Carter, prostituted by the Supreme Court, millions of poor people in the U.S. are being forced to become streetwalkers in an all-American nightmare.

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Letters to the Editor

I.F.A.: "HUMANS MUST UNITE"

Dear Editor,

"!Our struggle is for family unity and the human rights of all humans.!"

Black/Native-Familyhood is about 112 years old as a concept and a process, and as an institution.

Black humans, the descendants of Abkubulan/Afrikan slaves have very little experience at togetherness, and equally less, at "familiness," Family-Unity!

Native humans, similarily have been victimized by alienation brought on through forced assimilation which has caused disassociation and cultural estrangement.

It is wrong, as it is unjust for anyone or any government to cause family separation, manufacture alienation and cause a people to become disassociated through assimilation.

Jails and prisons are used as tools to manufacture alienation, maintain oppression, disguise exploitation, and to further dehumanize/deculturize the poor (of every nationality), the defenseless and Black.

Prisons and jails are koncentration camps, where the victims of Amerika's injustice, inhumanity, economic deprivation, political manipulation, and cultural disassociation are found, is made manifest reality for miseducated humans.

Prisoners of war! The war of the have-nots versus the have-plenties!

Humans must unite to organize for the end of the systematic dehumanization process. Humans must unite in defense of all humans and human rights. Cease the alienation of families, loved ones and friends.

Humans must unite to organize to abolish all forms of cruel and (un)usual punishment inside Amerikan-controlled koncentration camps (so-called prisons/jails).

Humans must recognize the need to support alternatives to prisons! Humans must understand that the criteria being used to evaluate and determine the degree of criminality inherent in human beings is becoming more futile and have little merit when it results in only more human beings confined to cages. The classic sexist, fascist and imperial rulers of this nation are perpetrating a conspiracy against the human rights of the poor (the punished and the punisher). For so long as any human is in prison, no human is free!

We must recognize the conspiracy against our humanity! It is necessary to understand that we are all a product of the society that created us! As you discover the validity of this statement, you will begin to understand your/our responsibility to each other to correct the problems, and adequately prescribe correct methods of treatment of those who perpetrate ill against the human rights of the poor, the friendless, the ignorant, the miseducated, and the dispossessed of this nation.

If we are to become a nation of human beings working pridefully together in

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making progressive efforts to escalate the rise of our humanity from out of the muck and mire of degradation, dehumanization, disassociation and fratricide…

We must struggle to eliminate oppression and exploitation and colonization!"

"We must abolish all citadels of repression and dehumanization!"

"Support is needed from mature humans who understand! We thank you in advance."

For justice and peace,
IFA/Holman Collective
Bro. William "Sekou" Turk
Bro. Lincoln "Makau" Heard
Bro. Oscar "Gamba" Johnson
Bro. Charles Beasley
Bro. Rodney "Sefu" Robertson
Bro. Johnny Smith
Bro. Lazarus Young
Bro. Kelvin Harris
Bro. Charles Allen

LETTER FROM WHITE PANTHER

Comrades,

I have let my prisoner's subscription to THE BLACK PANTHER Intercommunal News Service lapse, and I would like to renew it. I have a parole date set for July of 1978 and I need the important information supplied through your paper to sustain me in the year I have left in this pit.

Give Michael Fultz my regards and tell him that I appreciate the community service he and the other members of the staff and workers accomplish with each issue of the Party's newspaper. One of the most cruel aspects of three years of penal servitude is being prevented from adding my energy to the struggles that take place each day in the Bay Area. The struggles here are geared as much towards survival as the struggles out there, but, unfortunately, in here we are controlled by an openly fascistic government no more concerned about our welfare than so many sacks of potatoes, except for the fact that our existence guarantees them jobs and wages. Therefore, the struggles in here (meaning D.V.I. exclusively) have taken the form of individual efforts which seldom get passed the scraps that the administrators throw off their tables.

The fascism within the CDC has taken full bloom in the description given by George Jackson, namely reform. But the reforms are so few and so pitiful that it is startling that people can really be taken in by them. For Tracy, I think it boils down to our isolation. No one wants to tackle a mad dog with long teeth and foam dripping from its mouth without some outside support. And Tracy's isolation makes that a virtual impossibility. The men in here need the support the Panther newspaper provides because it ties them in with struggles all over the country, but especially in the Bay Area where probably 25 per cent of the men hail from.

Although the free prisoners' subscription must present a real drain on your resources, I don't think you could find a more productive or useful service to provide the community. The problem of crime is most certainly paramount in trying to rebuild this messed up system, but that problem includes what to do with the criminal, and flushing them down the sewer pipes of this society is certainly not what I call a solution, especially when that sewer pipe will eventually open up right outside your door. The solution rests with "serving the people" as a revolutionary rehabilitation; as a means for reorienting persons raised in the selfish consciousness of the capitalist culture towards the sharing and trust of a revolutionary culture.

Terry Phillips
P.O. Box 600 E 207
Tracy, Ca. 95376

THANKS FOR THE CARDS

Dear Comrade,

I am truly grateful for the cards that you send me.

If there is some way that I can be of service to you and the people in any way, please let me know.

Since I've been here in isolation. I have discovered many of my hidden talents and I have even created a few. I say that to say this -- I would like to dedicate those talents to the service of the people.

You have given me sight and your BPP has shown me the light. So let me show my gratitude by doing something worthwhile for you. Maybe I can give you some more ideas for your greetings cards. Anything that I may be able to do behind bars. In closing I say thanks and keep up the struggle.

All Power To The People Comrade Moses Evans, Jr.

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COMMENT: An “Illegal Alien” Speaks His Mind

The following comment, written by a Haitian immigrant, vividly describes the double-edged plight of the millions of so-called "illegal aliens" presently living in the U.S. -- those fleeing the brutal oppression of their homelands only to discover ruthless exploitation in America.

My name is Jean Andre. I am 32 years old. I was born in Port-au-Prince in Haiti. I am an illegal alien in America.

In high school I had high aptitudes in math and design. I dreamed of studying architecture at the State University of Haiti. But my parents were poor and they were not counted as friends of the government. So, not having money. I had to give up my project. I started to work in a woodworking shop where I earned $50 a month.

I was married in 1969 and my wife and I had two children. After the death of Haitian dictator Francois Duvalier in 1971. I hoped for a serious change in the economic and political life of my country. When Jean-Claude Duvalier succeeded his father. I understood that I could not nourish too much hope.

People spoke of the "economic boom." We shouted to the four winds in hopes that the regime of the Tontons Macoutes (a private band of thugs, outside the police force, controlled by the Duvalier regime) was going to be liberalized.

Nothing in the economic structure of the country changed. I continued to get my meager $50 a month, and there was nothing to assure me of a better future. On the political scene, the Tontons Macoutes exhibited their pistols and blue uniforms less often, so as not to shock the tourists, but repression was as cruel as in Papa Duvalier's time. You saw someone put up against a wall and shot. It happened every day.

When I realized that Haiti offered me no future, I decided to leave. Where to go? I thought that the United States would help me solve my problems. I believed that it would be easy to put my papers in order, for work and study.

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I made great sacrifices to get the money for the trip: I had to buy an expensive passport (as much as my monthly salary); I had to promise to leave for good; I had to bribe the travel agents and functionaries in the office of immigration in Port-au-Prince. I had to sell off a hectare of land (about two and a half acres) that my parents had owned in the countryside.

In June, 1972, I stepped off the plane at Kennedy Airport. My tourist visa gave me a three-month stay in this country. After that, it was up to me to make do as best I could. Some friends from home lived in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, so that's where I went. Six of us -- all men -- lived together so we could share the costs of paying the rent and buying food. Some of us were "illegals," others had permanent alien status.

One of my friends from the apartment took me to a bakery in Coney Island. Since I did not have an alien card, I assumed I was taking a risk. But the bakery hired me right away, probably because the people in charge knew I would work for starvation wages.

But knowing the risk I was taking did not prepare me for the surprise at the end of a six-day work week: The owner paid me only $30. That was my baptism as an illegal. I worked in that bakery for two months for the right to get $30 for six days of work. On my last week of work there the owner did not pay me at all. He knew that I was an illegal and that I could not complain.

My next job was in an electronics factory. My salary was $75 a week. I was a diligent worker and before long I was entitled to a raise. But I was afraid to ask for it because as an illegal I ran the risk of being fired without any kind of due process.

I had to submit to many humiliations from the foremen. Sometimes they forced me to work overtime even though I didn't want to. In the section of the factory where I worked it was so cold in the winter that I had to wear two sweaters and a coat. I couldn't protest because I was an illegal.

Then the company left New York and it was difficult for me to find another job. I went to the unemployment office to try to get unemployment insurance. I was refused because I had no alien card to show them.

Despite everything, I never gave up my ambitions in math. So I inquired about admission policies at several colleges in New York. My last attempt was to study drafting at a technical institute in Manhattan. My native language is French, but my English is improving and I could study it while I took other courses. But no school would admit me because I had no alien card.

The worst of my suffering was not only being separated from my wife and children, but also being unable to support them financially.

I have tried to reassure myself that the administration of President Carter has promised a solution to the problem of illegals.

President Carter has presented himself to the entire world as a champion of human rights. That is to his honor. I hope he will use his influence to restore human rights in Haiti. I hope that he will not forget to fight for the rights of the oppressed in his own country. I hope he will bring justice to the thousands of foreign workers who pay taxes and work for the development of this country as Americans do. They deserve to be given permanent resident status.

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ELAINE BROWN: “WE'LL PROVE THE CONSPIRACY THAT FORCED HUEY P. NEWTON INTO EXILE”: DISTRICT COURT UPHOLDS B.P.P.'S RIGHT TO SUE F.B.I., C.I.A.

(Oakland, Calif.) - The Black Panther Party announced on June 8 an important ruling by a Washington, D.C., federal District Court upholding the right of the Party to sue the FBI, CIA and other government agencies for conspiracy to destroy the Party politically.

The suit, which seeks injunctive relief and more than $100 million in damages, was argued in federal court last week when the Justice Department tried to have the case dismissed.

But on May 26, the court denied the government's motion and ordered the parties in the lawsuit to finish discovery by September 15.

Elaine Brown, chairperson of the BPP, said, "This is an important victory because, in part, it will permit us to prove shortly the conspiracy that forced Huey P. Newton into exile."

In response to recent reports concerning Newton's return to the United States from Cuba where he has been in forced exile for almost three years, Elaine noted that, "We've been telling people for the last six months -- since we filed our lawsuit in Washington -- that Huey Newton will be back before 1978. That announcement was true then and it's true now. We do not intend to keep our founder's return a secret."

Elaine added that the principal criminal attorney in Huey's defense effort is Sheldon Otis of San Francisco, and that she is also on the defense team.

Attorneys for the Black Panther Party in the civil rights suit in Washington, D.C., are Fred Hiestand of Berkeley and Bruce Terris and Mark Lynch of Washington, D.C.

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FAKE LETTERS: Documents Reveal F.B.I. COINTELPRO Plot Against B.P.P., R.N.A.

(Jackson, Miss.) - Recently released documents from FBI files revealed yet another COINTELPRO plot in which the federal police agency attempted to cause dissension between the Detroit-based Republic of New Africa (RNA) and the Detroit Chapter of the Black Panther Party.

According to the documents, the FBI wrote a fake letter on RNA stationery and sent it to officials and members of the BPP.

The bogus letter said, "In the past the Black Panther Party has not helped Black people but has bled the Black community of respect and has organized prostitution and crime. It threatens with violence Black businesses

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who do not wish to support them and through acts of terror bring the wrath of the White cop on the innocent Black community."

Fake letters of this sort were also sent to RNA officials in other states accusing the president and information minister of the RNA, Imari Obadele, of misusing RNA funds. The FBI intended these letters to disrupt and discredit activities of Obadele and the RNA.

FBI Director Clarence Kelley had continuously denied that Obadele and the RNA were COINTELPRO targets.

CONFIRM CHARGES

The recently released documents tend to confirm the charges by Obadele that he and his supporters were victims of a conspiracy on the part of the FBI and government. Obadele is now serving a 12-year sentence in federal prison on conspiracy charges stemming from a police attack on RNA headquarters in Jackson, Mississippi, in August, 1971, where one police officer was killed and others wounded.

The documents also contradict a sworn statement submitted to U.S. District Judge Walter Nixon in 1973 (prior to Obadele's trial), stating that a search of the files disclosed no illegal activity by the government.

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Oldest Photos Of Black Slaves Found

(Cambridge, Mass.) - A Harvard archivist last week announced she had uncovered the oldest known photographs of Black slaves in America, daguerreotypes dating back over 127 years.

The 36 photos of naked slaves were taken in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1850 for studies of anatomy. Notes accompanying the rare pictures give not only the slaves' names and tribes or regions of birth -- all were born in Africa -- but also the name of the owner of the plantations on which they worked.

The slaves are identified only by first names such as Renty, Delia, Jem and Jack. Nonetheless, along with the accompanying documentation, the photographs present an abundance of new material for Blacks seeking their roots.

But Elinor Reichlin, 47, the White former archivist who found the photos in an unused cabinet in an attic at Harvard's Peabody Museum, isn't sure Blacks will relish seeing their ancestors as slaves.

"If these were my ancestors, would I want them to be seen this way?" asks Ms. Reichlin.

The dagguereotypes were taken as part of a research project directed by Louis Agassiz, a Swiss-born naturalist and scientist, and ordered through a friend, Dr. Robert Gibbs of Columbia.

Gibbs had inspected several plantations in the area in March, 1850, collecting evidence for Agassiz' pre-Darwinian theory -- later discredited -- that the different races resulted from separate human creations.

Although the 36 slaves, both men and women, are totally nude in the photos, the pictures, seven of which accompany an article by Ms. Reichlin in the June issue of American Heritage magazine, were released from the waist up.

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GREAT LEAP FORWARD FOR SOUTHERN LABOR: 30th ANNIVERSARY OF R.J. REYNOLDS TOBACCO STRIKE IN NORTH CAROLINA

"The union fights the battle for freedom, freedom, freedom.

"The union fights the battle for freedom -- And the bosses come tumbling down."

(To the tune of Jericho)

(Winston Salem, N.C.) - This week marks the 30th anniversary of a major strike victory by 10,000 Black and poor workers against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company here, a 38-day struggle which ended on June 7, 1947, in a great leap forward for Southern labor.

This victory was won by unity in a plant that was 80 per cent Black. It was won by a progressive CIO union -- the Food and Tobacco Workers -- in spite of one of the dirtiest anti-labor campaigns of redbaiting and racism that had disgraced the South up to that time.

It was won because the strike -- and a boycott of Reynolds' tobacco -- had splendid national support, with the rival AFL Tobacco Workers Union giving its blessing to the struggle. The victory, however, was finally undone by treachery.

The Reynolds family was never reconciled to President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. The tobacco company was established more than a century ago with money wrung from the sweat and blood of Black slaves.

Richard Joshua Reynolds, the company's founder, came to Winston-Salem from the family plantation in Virginia. There his father, Hardin Reynolds, had been "one of the three or four largest slaveowners in the country," says a study of the strike by Akosua Barthwell of Rutgers University, that was recently released by the American Institute of Marxist Studies.

The slavemaster's money has multiplied again and again in the Winston-Salem plants. Reynolds' assets now are crossing the four billion dollar mark. The profits are also flowing into other industries. Reynolds now owns a carrying fleet -- the Sea Land -- the country's biggest container-Company.

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Another branch of the family runs Reynolds Metals.

And some of the profits financed propaganda lies disputing Cancer Society findings that cigarettes bring heart attacks and lung cancer.

Robert Black, a Black Food and Tobacco union leader, talked about appalling conditions in the leaf-stemming department of the Reynolds plant where his wife and thousands of other Black women worked.

WOODEN BENCH

"…If you had a lunch," he said, "you put yours on a wooden bench with your shoes under that bench. Cockroaches and things were running over your food all during the time you were out there sweating and dying. Now when you came out of that plant your head was saturated with dust. There was dust all over you and nowhere to wash."

Brutal foremen were recruited from the chain-gang guards on the county roads. These thugs kept guns in their desks and sometimes tried to take sexual advantage of women.

The workers had no lunch facilities, no decent rest rooms, no sick leaves, no vacations, no seniority, no paid holidays and no job security.

The big union push did not begin until June, 1943, when a sick Black worker dropped dead on the job after a foreman refused to let him go home. A sitdown strike began in the victim's room. A spontaneous strike followed in many departments, and 7,000 Reynolds workers joined the union.

The push forward continued. Two-thirds of the workers voted union in a federal Labor Board election in August, 1943. Another two-thirds vote followed in December when Reynolds disregarded the first election, and a contract was granted in April, 1944. This contract, however, gave the workers nothing, except union recognition, and a meaningful union agreement was not ratified until 1946.

Meanwhile, Reynolds used its power against the union. Reynolds money dominated buslines and housing. Reynolds men were Sunday School superintendents. Reynolds controlled the newspapers. A Reynolds executive was chairman of the Winston-Salem School Board and directed the cuts in education.

But unionism was winning. The 1946 contract provided the largest wage gains in the history of the tobacco industry, as well as the 40-hour week with time-and-a-half overtime rates, paid vacations, paid holidays and grievance procedures.

The plant workers were reinforced by the victories of 13,000 tobacco leafhouse workers outside the city, 8,200 enjoying Food and Tobacco Association (FTA) contracts and 4,800 signing up with the AFL Tobacco Workers.

All FTA contracts were ratified by workers' votes. This was a democratic union in which Black women like Moranda Smith played a leading part. As Robert Black put it, "The Black women made the union possible."

The influence of this democratic union extended into other Southern states and helped the CIO's Southern drive.

And in Winston-Salem, the FTA went into politics and obtained the election of the first Black alderman since Reconstruction years.

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INTERCOMMUNAL SURVIVAL COMMITTEE: Serving The Oppressed White Community, Body and Soul

The following article describes the positive organizing activities of the Chicago Area Black Lung Association.

"When They Were Done With Us, They Just Threw Us Away."

The Black Panther Party had set an example of seeking and relating to the deepest needs of oppressed people. Utilizing a parallel approach, the Intercommunal Survival Committee (ISC) worked in the poor and working Whites communities. Just as the Party uncovered and made the disease of Sickle Cell Anemia a national issue, we found that the community was beset with diseases that affect mainly poor and working people and so do not concern the system.

Polio or cancer affect everyone, including the rich, and so billions of dollars are spent seeking cures and treatments, but diseases like Sickle Cell Anemia or Black Lung do not affect the children of the Rockefellers and only a few pennies are thrown their way. Even the doctors are ignorant because of lack of training in dealing with these "poor people's diseases."

The Chicago Area Black Lung Association began when several ex-miners and widows working with the ISC Survival Programs explained the need for some kind of program. Growing quickly among the many ex-miners and their families in Chicago's Uptown,

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the Association began to fight for benefits for its members.

Important victories had been won in the late '60s and again in the early '70s by massive strikes, protests and demonstrations carried out by the miners themselves. They brought to the attention of the nation that Black Lung disease, caused by unsafe levels of dust in the mines, affected most all men who worked in the mines that provide coal for the entire country.

No research had been done to find a cure for the fatal disease and the greedy coal operators showed no concern to lessen their profits by spending money to make the mines safe.

Bills were passed in Congress, because of the miners' powerful actions, but a few years later the coal companies' influence in the government turned the bureaucracies against the miners. It became almost impossible to get benefits. A thousand technicalities, forms, delays and "Catch 22's" were put in the way of the claimants. Conditions in the mines remain almost the same.

Especially in cities like Chicago where thousands of miners had been driven from the South to survive, the situation was critical. No union or associates of miners were there to fight the bureaucracy.

The Chicago Area Black Lung Association has moved with ISC staff and Association volunteers to attack the problem. A powerful group was organized that came to be recognized in Chicago, throughout the state and in Washington itself. Staff became more competent than the bureaucrats in regards to the law. Congressmen were brought into the community for hearings. Lawyers were provided for claimants. Doctors were organized to learn about the disease and to provide medical testimony for the claimants, providing an alternative to the coal company-controlled "certified" health officers. Funds were raised through community events to send people to meet with the heads of bureaucracies and to testify before Congress.

The Association also has become a force in the community, unifying hundreds of families first driven from the South and now being driven from the communities of Chicago. Mutual assistance programs -- low-cost food, free home medical visits by doctors and free transportation -- were developed. The Association participated in cultural events like the "country music Sunday" at the Uptown Community Service Center that further unified the community.

Finally, the Association has taken a leading role in fighting for decent health care for the entire community. In specific, it is fighting the city Board of Health's determination to keep the Cook County Hospital from establishing a family health care clinic in the neighborhood.

The Association believes and has shown that the city's only reason for keeping out the clinic is its "masterplan" intention to drive the low-income community in need of the clinic from the neighborhood. TO BE CONTINUED

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This Week In: Black History

June 10, 1940

Marcus Mojiah Garvey built the first mass movement among Black Americans. Garvey preached the gospel of a united Africa under Black rule. Thousands of Black Americans joined his "back to Africa" movement. Garvey gave his followers uniforms and pageantry; he glorified every Black person. Garvey collected more money (an estimated $10 million in a two-year period) than any other Black organization had ever dreamed of. He organized cooperatives, factories, a commercial steamship venture, the Black Star Line, and a private army. Arrested in 1925 on a charge of using the mails to defraud, Garvey was shipped to the Federal Prison in Atlanta. On June 11, 1940, his dreams shattered, he died in London.

June, 1957

In June, 1957, the famous Tuskegee boycott began. Black people boycotted city stores in protest against an act of the state legislature which deprived them of municipal votes by placing their homes outside of city limits.

June 12, 1963

Medgar W. Evers, the 32- year-old NAACP field secretary in Mississippi, was assassinated on June 12, 1963, in front of his Jackson home by a White segregationist.

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DISCRIMINATION O.K.'ED: Union Seniority Ruling Threatens Job Bias Cases

(Washington, D.C.) - As a result of the recent Supreme Court decision that union seniority systems are lawful even if they perpetuate racial discrimination forbidden by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, landmark job discrimination cases such as those in steel and communications might have to be reconsidered. (See THE BLACK PANTHER, Saturday, June 4, 1977.)

According to the New York Times, the high court's recent ruling -- which, in effect, says that "neutral" seniority systems can legally perpetuate favored employment for White males if the systems were in operation before the Civil Rights Act took effect in July, 1965 -- has caused some lawyers to conclude that dramatic group awards for discrimination will be less prevalent than before.

Examples of such cases cited were: the settlement between Black workers and several steel companies in which seniority systems were changed to give wider opportunity to Blacks trapped in the least desirable, lower paying jobs; and the settlement involving the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (ATT), in which ATT agreed to back pay for women and minorities subjected to discrimination and accepted stepped up hiring and promotion goals to equalize opportunities for them.

Corporations involved in such settlements may now successfully argue soon that they were compelled to violate seniority

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system unneccessarily in order to comply with previous interpretations of the Civil Rights Act.

Lawyers also feel that the court's decision will set a dangerous precedent for the upcoming Bakke case -- involving the allegation of Allan Bakke, a 36-year-old White engineer who charged that he was a victim of "reverse discrimination" when he was twice denied admission to a U.C. medical school where slots were reserved for minorities.

When the Bakke case went before the California Supreme Court, minorities argued that one of the reasons the university lost was because it did not admit to past discrimination. The high court's new ruling negates past affirmative action, thus dimming the prospect that the California high court's ruling will be overturned when it goes before the Supreme Court this fall.

Dissenters from the majority opinion in the latest high court ruling, Justices Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan, Jr., said that the recent ruling would mean that equal employment opportunities for a full generation of minority workers would remain a "distant dream."

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ATTACKS MOUNT ON WHITE HOUSE “JOBS OR STARVE” PLAN: CARTER TIGHTENS WELFARE ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS

(Washington, D.C.) - As details of the Carter administration's proposed welfare plan unfold, its cold and callous disregard for Black and other poor people who dominate the welfare rolls is becoming increasingly clearer.

A government consultant who specializes in welfare policy and who asked that his identity not be revealed, said concerning the proposed new welfare eligibility requirements:

"I just wish that they'd go out and meet some people on welfare instead of just talking to their computers."

Millions of people who now receive public assistance will lose all or most of their aid if they do not accept jobs, according to the proposals outlined two weeks ago by Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) Joseph Califano. (See last week's issue of THE BLACK PANTHER.)

Two key changes in eligibility requirements, revealed by the White House last week, give further substance to widespread charges that the Carter welfare plan is an outright attack on poor people in America.

As explained in the New York Times, the first change would expand the so-called "accountable period," which is the period of time over which a family's income is calculated determining whether it is eligible for relief.

The second would expand the "filing unit," which is the definition of what constitutes a family.

Now, most families become eligible for welfare as soon as their assets and monthly income drop below a certain level. Under the new proposal, the government would consider how much income the family had over the previous six months or year when deciding whether it could receive welfare.

The result would be that an unmarried mother who earned, say $800 a month for several months in a canning plant and then lost her job when the season ended might be ineligible for welfare for the next several months in which she earned no money.

White House officials said that such a family should be able to plan its budget so money would be available in the lean months. Outside experts said, however, that, while such discipline might be possible in theory, it would not be possible in fact.

"The whole stupidity of it is that you're telling somebody who's picking beans for four or five dollars an hour that they should save money," said Richard P. Nathan, who worked on welfare policy in the Nixon administration and is now at the Brookings Institution.

"In the real world of poverty, people don't know what their income stream is going to look like from month to month," he added.

Another element of the change in the accountable period, according to the officials, is that people on welfare would have to report to their local welfare office each month to declare how much income they received in the previous month.

Under the present rules, welfare recipients are expected to notify the welfare office if they have an increase in income.

One official said that the monthly reporting requirement would require people "to affirmatively commit a perjury" if they did not tell the authorities about increases in income.

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A private consultant who specializes in welfare policy said, "It would be absolutely absurd to report every month."

Such a requirement, he said, would mean the employment of many new case workers and would thus cost either the federal government or the states and communities much more than they now spend in administrative expenses.

Under the proposed changes in the filing unit -- the definition of what constitutes a family -- the government would count all the income earned by blood relatives in a household when deciding whether anyone in the household was eligible for welfare.

Now, for the most part, the government counts only the income of single parents when calculating elibility under Aid to Families with Dependent Children and only the income of the aged or disabled when figuring eligibility for Supplemental Security Income.

If the new rules were enacted it, would mean, for instance, that an unmarried teenager with no income who had a baby and continued to live with her parents would become ineligible for public assistance if her parents earned more money than the welfare cutoff.

The rules would also affect adversely some poor people who are aged, blind or disabled and who live with their grown children.

Those people who already received SSI would not have their benefits cut because of a so-called "hold-harmless" provision, but people who became aged, blind or disabled in the future would not be eligible for assistance if they lived with children who had an income above the welfare limit.

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Supreme Court: Welfare Cutoffs For Not Cooperating

(Washington, D.C.) - The U.S. Supreme Court last week joined the mounting "squeeze" on the welfare rolls led by President Carter in a reactionary ruling allowing states to deny welfare payments to unwed mothers who refuse to cooperate in seeking child support from the fathers of their children.

The court let stand a decision by a federal court in Washington last November that such requirements are valid.

In this latest attack on Black and poor people, the high court's ruling has given the supreme judicial sanction to what has seemingly become a main target of the welfare squeeze -- unwed mothers, whose children comprise over one-fourth of the children on welfare.

Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) Joseph Califano recently announced that unmarried mothers of teenage children would be required to work.

The latest government study, conducted in 1975, showed that 2.5 million of the 8.1 million children then on welfare were born of unwed mothers.

In 1975 Congress amended the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program (AFDC) to require unwed mothers to co-operate with state government officials who administer the program in locating fathers in order to be eligible for benefits.

CHILD SUPPORT

The legislation, aimed at obtaining child-support payments from the fathers, included a "good cause" exception for refusing to cooperate. Congress left it up to HEW to establish standards for such exceptions, but so far it has not done so.

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SOUTH SIDE “RECEIVERS”: Chicago Housing Group Stresses Tenant Control

(Chicago, Ill.) - The Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization (KOCO) here in Chicago, dedicated to establishing tenant-owned and controlled low-income housing, is beginning to make positive inroads in this Southside district.

Formed in 1968 as a code enforcement program, the organization began acquiring run-down housing in 1974 through housing receivership. Under Illinois law, a receiver must be appointed as a result of a class action on behalf of tenants to compel compliance with the housing code.

The normal procedure is for the court to appoint a professional receiver, usually someone from the real estate business. But KOCO has been able to use the receivership apparatus to save and improve low-income housing in Southside Chicago's Kenwood-Oakland community.

KOCO has two goals: (1) to keep structurally sound buildings standing (housing conservation); and (2) to provide housing for people who otherwise would not have it.

KOCO began to vigorously implement its program when it realized that "at the rate buildings and housing were being torn down, there may not be a community."

KOCO now has six buildings in receivership and manages two others. The active organization has gained control of some of their properties, ranging from six to 48 units, when landlords have simply abandoned buildings.

KOCO, however, has a very

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definite philosophy towards receivership. First, reports a newsletter published by the Chicago Tenants' Housing Organization, all rent, which is the only source of funds from the building, goes back into the building. The money is spent on maintenance, utilities and repairs. Absolutely no funds are paid to KOCO or the tenant organization which manages the building.

Secondly, the tenants must manage their own building, and for KOCO to take on the responsibility of receiver the residents must be tightly organized. Although KOCO sits on a board of directors with tenants, comprising 50 per cent of the board, tenants make the daily decisions about their building.

According to KOCO's Executive Director Bob Lucas, "You have to know what to do."

"You learn it from experience. You learn it by doing it. We have been doing it on a daily basis. I can't remember the number of times I've been to court.

"We have been open and honest," Lucas went on, "and we have a track record because we've been doing it a long time."

Lucas feels that KOCO's success can be duplicated by other community organizations but that the program will work only by giving tenants control of their buildings.

After this, he says, it is just a matter of gaining experience.

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BLACK STEELWORKERS FIGHT UNION RACISM

(Youngstown, Ohio) - Despite the fact that Black workers represent over 25 per cent of the workforce in the steel industry, Black members of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) are still fighting to gain a foothold in the union's leadership.

Jim Davis, head of the Ad Hoc Committee of Concerned Steelworkers and executive board member of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, gave an account of this ongoing fight in a recent Militant interview.

Davis, who left high school in 1946 to take a job here with the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company, has been working in steel mills ever since and has a special insight into the struggles of Black steelworkers for union representation.

"The Black workers, while they were permitted into the unions, and permitted to pay dues," Davis said, "were never really permitted to develop as a real part of the labor movement, and were never really equally represented.

"And because Black workers are underrepresented they're the most exploited group in the labor movement.

"They're on the dirtiest jobs. They're the first to the laid off regardless of seniority. They have the lowest-paid jobs regardless of qualifications," he said.

Davis explained that the problems confronting Black steelworkers were the same, if not worse, despite the 1974 consent decree that was supposed to end discrimination in the steel industry.

One problem, Davis said, is the power in the hands of union district directors to appoint the heads of the consent decree implementation committees. The person usually chosen is someone the director controls.

"It really puts the burden," Davis said, "on the Black worker to look at his particular situation and begin to fight whatever is wrong.

"Once we analyzed the steelworkers' union," he said, "we found that we had some power but the power was disorganized. We're probably the biggest minority group in the steelworkers' union.

"It's been around that question," Davis continued, "that we've tried to organize to have some input -- to make sure that Black workers attend those meetings, run for office, run for

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convention delegate, and be part of the policy-making bodies of their unions.

"There's a lot of power that can be had through the union when Black workers get together.

"Black steelworkers -- whether they called themselves caucuses or not -- were seeing the need to get together.

"That's what the struggle is about -- Black workers have to organize themselves to better represent themselves."

Under the David McDonald administration from 1953 to 1965 the USWA gave virtually no recognition to Black workers.

WHOLE DEPARTMENTS

"There were whole departments," Davis said, "that were all-White -- no Blacks at all -- in the international structure. The civil rights committee was a farce -- a committee in name only. There just wasn't any staffing and the union leadership shoved it to the side.

"Though we were 25 per cent of the total membership we'd never been able to get any representation on the executive board.

"We had a three-point program: full integration of every department; reorganization of the civil rights committee and a Black appointed to head the committee; and a Black on the executive board of the union."

When I.W. Abel challenged McDonald for the presidency of the union in 1964, the Ad Hoc Committee presented its list of demands to him. Abel agreed to back them and the Ad Hoc Committee campaigned to elect Abel.

"There was some movement under Abel," Davis said, "in terms of more Black staff, more Blacks in some departments -- even if token. But Abel resisted the idea of putting Blacks on the executive board of the union."

In the USWA election last February the Ad Hoc Committee backed the Steelworkers Fight Back slate, headed by Ed Sadlowski. Oliver Montgomery, a Black steelworker leader, was a vice-presidential candidate on the slate.

"They tried to claim Sadlowski was too radical," Davis explained, "but his program was not too radical for the workers.

"Sadlowski had to say what he said because he spoke to the issues. Next time around steelworkers will not be fooled. They'll tend to look a lot more deeply into what people are saying."

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SECOND PLACE WINNER DONATES $100 BACK TO O.C.S.: West Oakland Mother Wins $1,000 In S.O.S. Drive

(Oakland, Calif.) - "I still can't believe it!" These were the excited words of Mrs. Mary Thornton when she learned last week that she had won $1,000 as the first place winner in the Oakland Community School "Support Our School" (SOS) Donation Drive for the month of May.

Mrs. Thornton, who lives in West Oakland, was all smiles when she received her cash prize, presented to her by Donna Howell, assistant director of the East Oakland-based, model elementary level OCS. On hand for the happy occasion were Mrs. Thornton's two children, Shirelle and Felton.

Asked how she happened to purchase her winning ticket, Mrs. Thornton, who was too shy to be photographed, said that she was approached at a San Francisco BART station by one of the numerous volunteers who sell the two-dollar tickets to raise badly needed funds for the OCS.

"I only had five dollars that day, but I went ahead and bought a ticket anyway," Mrs. Thornton explained. Needless to say, she has no regrets about her decision!

Mrs. Thornton was invited to tour the facilities of the OCS with her children. Donna told them about the School's numerous services that are partially funded

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by the monthly SOS Drive -- including a top-notch educational curricula, field trips, free health care, three free meals a day, clothes and shoes.

Peter LaBrie, an employee at the Office of Community Development here, won the second place Donation Drive prize of $250. A frequent purchaser of the fundraising tickets, LaBrie generously bought five of them from an OCS volunteer who visited his office and thereby increased his chances of winning one of the three cash prizes.

Continuing a trend begun by Mrs. Beulah Ross, second place winner in the April Donation Drive, LaBrie donated $100 of his winnings back to the OCS. Mrs. Ross donated $125 of her $250.

PRIZE WINNER

The third prize winner of $100, Abner Rixner, was very appreciative of his winnings. A senior citizen who resides in East Oakland, Mr. Rixner said that he would use the money on food and clothing and other necessities of life difficult for senior citizens to purchase on the subsistence incomes they receive.

It is noteworthy that Mr. Rixner and Mrs. Ross, both senior citizens, contributed to the funding of the educational programs of the OCS despite the meager money they have to live on. It is through support such as this, demonstrated in the tremendous success of the monthly SOS Donation Drive, that enables the Oakland Community School to remain the innovative educational institution that it has been for the past six years.

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BERGMAN AND RAMIREZ TOPS IN INVESTIGATIVE FIELD: S.F. REPORTERS FIGHT POLICE LIBEL SUIT

(San Francisco, Calif.) - Two investigative reporters. Lowell Bergman and Raul Ramirez, who exposed a case of misconduct on the part of police in a May, 1976, San Francisco Examiner series, have been forced to form their own defense committee after being literally dumped by the Hearst newspaper empire.

Bergman is an investigative reporter of national stature, reports a local newspaper, a member of the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) team which has been researching corruption in Arizona. Ramirez is known as one of the Examiner's top reporters and is a veteran of such newspapers as the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.

EXAMINER PUBLISHER

Bergman approached Examiner publisher William Randolph Hearst in April, 1975, with an account of how the San Francisco Police Department used treachery and coercion to frame a Chinatown youth on murder charges. The youth, Richard Lee (then 19), had been convicted of shooting 22-year-old Poole Leong outside a Chinatown housing project in a "gang war."

Bergman had painstakingly gathered information that Lee had been railroaded to prison on testimony coerced from witnesses by police. Hearst gave the go-ahead for the story and assigned Ramirez to work with Bergman on the case. According to Examiner reporter Larry Kramer, who was present at the meeting, "Randy (Hearst) made a verbal commitment to Lowell's participation in the project."

After the series on Lee appeared in the paper last year, it appeared as if the Chinatown youth would get a new trial. However, the reporter's star witness, prisoner Thomas Porter, recanted a sworn affidavit and claimed Lee was guilty.

Quickly, three officials accused in the articles of forcing Porter to lie filed a $30 million libel suit against both the newspaper and the reporters. Bergman was later to be dropped from the Examiner's libel defense and Ramirez was forced to accept the legal services of corporate counsel Ted Kleines.

Ramirez later severed his case from the Examiner's since Kleines couldn't "represent my

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interest as opposed to the publishers."

Bergman and Ramirez then began work on a joint defense committee to raise legal fees and hired attorney Sheldon Otis.

Bergman, who faces $800 million in libel suits and is the most sued reporter in the U.S., commented on his legal hassles, "It gives you triple vision…I get the clear image (of what I write), and the image of what it could mean and of how it could be interpreted. It's kind of a legal halo…I'm not sure what I can say anymore."

The suit has only an extremely remote chance of winning and defense committee spokesman Bill Sohol commented. "The reason for the suit is that they (the plaintiffs) have to do it to preserve their reputations and the illusion that the police and district attorney are clean and aboveboard."

The case has gained national support from journalists throughout the country, but has caused a split in the Examiner staff.

The case may not go to court for another three years, if it ever goes to court, but in the meantime Bergman and Ramirez will have to endure financial strain on their resources along with mental stress -- and Richard Lee will remain behind bars for a crime he didn't commit.

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PEOPLE'S PERSPECTIVE

Chavez Blasts A.L.R.B.

(La Paz, Calif.) - Cesar Chavez, head of the United Farm Workers (UFW) Union, last week called for the resignation of Harry Delizonna, attorney for the state Farm Labor Board. Chavez charged that Delizonna's incompetence has resulted in delays of certification of UFW elections and has put some elections in jeopardy of being overturned. "Growers in the Coachella Valley are defying the Agricultural Labor Relations Act," Chavez said, "and the general counsel is either unable or unwilling to enforce the law."

Hanafi Muslims On Trial

(Washington, D.C.) - The 12 Hanafi Muslims charged murder in connection with their three-day siege of three buildings here in March went on trial last week in Superior Court with more than a score of followers looking on a jammed courtroom. Jury selection was begun in proceedings that were marked by constant clashes between presiding Judge Nicholas Nunzio and Harry Alexander, a former Superior Court judge who is defending Hamaas Abdul Khaalis, leader of the group.

Chicago Students Denied

(Chicago, Ill.) Nearly half the eighth graders on Chicago's poor and predominantly Black near Westside will be denied their diplomas the spring because they can't read at the 6th grade level. Recently published reading scores for the inner-city District Nine Crane High School. which had the highest dropout rate in the city, showed the almost complete failure of the school system to meet the needs of minority and poor students in that none could read at the high school freshman level and many were functionally illiterate.

A.I.M. Leader Sentenced

(Fargo, N.D.) - Leonard Peltier, a leading member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), has been sentenced to two consecutive life terms following his recent conviction here on false charges of murdering two FBI agents who attacked South Dakota's besieged Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. The AIM leader's defense attorney said he would appeal the sentence.

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Los Angeles Police Department Hit For Job Bias

(Los Angeles, Calif.) - The U.S. Justice Department accused the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) last week of discriminating against Blacks, women and Spanish surnamed people, renewing a threat to cut off $5.3 million in federal aid to the notorious police agency.

The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division filed the complaint against the LAPD in Los Angeles federal court, culminating more than 18 months of unsuccessful negotiations between the LAPD and the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) over local hiring and promotional practices.

The action comes scarcely two weeks after a Los Angeles federal judge ruled in favor of the LAPD in a four-year-old sex discrimination suit.

In that suit, brought on behalf of now retired LAPD Sgt. Fanchon Blake, U.S. District Judge Jesse W. Curtis held that the Department does not now and never has discriminated against women.

The new suit charges that as of December 31, 1976, of 7,383 sworn personnel within the LAPD, 5.9 per cent were Black, 2.2 per cent were female, and 8.8 per cent were Spanish-surnamed people.

The Justice Department said the LAPD, known across the country for its brutal treatment of Black and other poor people, has failed or refused to recruit minorities and women on the same basis as White males and that a written examination potential police officers must pass is discriminatory, particularly against Blacks and other minorities.

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The actions and policies of the LAPD, the suit charges, result in racial and sex discrimination. In addition to seeking an order that the LAPD adopt an affirmative action program, with goals and timetables for the hiring of the victims of past discrimination, back pay and retroactive seniority is asked for those persons never hired because of the Department's policies. Similar relief is sought for female employees.

More immediately, the filing of the action allows the LEAA to cut off $5.3 million of federal aid scheduled for the LAPD during 1976-77, beginning on July 19, unless a federal judge issues an order to the contrary.

Arch-reactionary police chief Edward M. Davis confidently asserted that his Department would win this suit, as it did the Blake case, but boasted that even if the federal court ruled against the LAPD, only one per cent of the Department's annual budget comes from LEAA.

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“U.C./U.S. OUT OF SOUTH AFRICA” -- “DEFEAT BAKKE”: 56 ARRESTED NI U.C. BERKELEY ANTI - APARTHEID STUDENT PROTESTS

(Berkeley, Calif.) - Protests against University of California (U.C.) investments in South Africa continued here last week on the U.C. Berkeley campus, with the arrest of 56 demonstrators who staged a sit-in in an administration building.

A week of protest culminated in a mass rally and teach-in last Friday, a day after the takeover of Sproul Hall. Sproul Plaza was filled with over 700 people as speaker after speaker denounced the university for its support of apartheid South Africa and for its lukewarm fight against the Bakke decision, which could put an end to special admissions programs for minorities and the disadvantaged.

On the day of the Sproul Hall sit-in protesters held the administration building for seven hours before they were given the option to leave or be arrested. Fifty-six of them chose to be arrested and were escorted by campus police through 500 chanting supporters to waiting police vans.

After the Sproul Plaza rally on Friday, protesters marched to California Hall where U.C. Berkeley Chancellor Albert Bowker has his offices. There seven representatives of CUAA (Campuses United Against Apartheid), sponsors of the protest, met with Vice Chancellor Michael Heyman. A 20-minute talk with him produced very little results.

After this everyone marched to Wheeler Auditorium for an afternoon-long teach-in that included speakers, slide shows and workshops.

The two main demands of the day's protest were "U.S./U.C. out of Southern Africa" and "Defeat The Bakke Decision."

Six other demands, reports the that U.C. President David Saxon must comply with CUAA

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demands;

that University of California Regents' meetings must be open to the public (the U.C. regents set the policies for the statewide university system);

that the university must reject the Parducer proposal for undergraduate admissions (this proposal calls for emphasizing Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT) scores, which discriminate against minorities);

that popular and progressive U.C. sociology professor Harry Edwards must be granted tenure;

that the university must support a Chicano Studies Library; and

that the school must hire more ESL (English as a Second Language) instructors.

PREVIOUS PROTESTS

In comparison to previous protests on the U.C. campus this demonstration had noticeably more Black and Third World students participating due to the coupling of the Bakke issue with the fight against U.C. investments in southern Africa.

Many feel that apartheid will be the issue to spark a rebirth of the student protest movement. Speaking at the rally, in fact, professor Edwards called the South Africa issue, "the most explosive situation in a decade on the U.C. campus.

"Next year," said Edwards, "is going to be the most explosive year in the U.C. system's history. Next year we will have more of the same, only better organized."

Austin Allen, Black Panther Party member and a newly elected member of the U.C. student senate, said, "The issue of apartheid is one that the Black community readily identifies with and one that the student movement should involve itself in with the same intensity and enthusiasm that was put into the successful effort against the war in Southeast Asia."

So far, the U.C. regents have made only one concession, sending letters to 37 companies in which it has investments linked with South Africa.

The letter called for the companies to end segregation and promote fair employment practices at their plants and other facilities in South Africa.

Yet the university still refuses to withdraw its investments in apartheid or to vote against the racist policy in stockholders' meetings.

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Native Americans Fight Cultural Genocide

(Kansas City, Kansas) - American Indians, already a decreasing minority imprisoned on land they once roamed freely, now face an intensified "cultural genocide" as well as physical genocide by U.S. officials using deceitful means to sterilize Indian women, reports the National Catholic Reporter.

In the first of a seven-part series, this national newspaper quotes Senate subcommittee evidence that many Indian children are being forcibly taken from their parents. Evidence shows that public and private welfare agencies operate as though Indian children would benefit from being reared by non-Indian parents.

The article quotes Senator James Abourezk of South Dakota, who told a Senate subcommittee, "Officials would seemingly rather place Indian children in non-Indian settings where their Indian culture, traditions, and entire way of life are smothered.

"The federal government… has allowed these agencies to strike at the heart of Indian communities by literally stealing Indian children… "

Indian parents who have their children taken away, which often occurs without warning or legal notification, often develop a sense of hopelessness and despair, becoming withdrawn and depressed, psychiatrist James Shore has noted. Twenty-five per cent of all Indian children are taken away from their families.

According to Dr. Connie Uri, a Native American, doctors are using poverty to justify indiscriminate sterilization of Indian women. According to Dr. Uri, sterilization is the result of "the warped thinking of doctors, who think the solution to poverty is not to allow people to be born."

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“ILLEGAL BEHAVIOR OF POLICE OFFICERS GLORIFIED”: TV COP SHOWS DETAIL POLICE CRIMES

(Washington, D.C.) - Kojak, Colombo and most other television detectives often trample on the Constitution and may be subtly persuading the public that such conduct is acceptable from real-life police officers, two law professors warned last week.

"Today even the most blatantly illegal and un-Constitutional behavior of police officers is glorified by an endless stream of television police dramas," wrote Stephen Arons and Ethan Katsh in a study of television crime shows.

"What started off as merely fictional entertainment has now begun to have the political effect of `softening up' public opinion and making it more accepting of such police conduct," they contended.

Mr. Arons and Mr. Katsh, professors of legal studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, monitored television crime shows from the fall of 1974 to the spring of 1976 to determine how legal and Constitutional issues were treated.

"In 15 randomly selected prime-time police programs televised during one week in March, 1976, we found 43 separate scenes in which serious questions could be raised about the propriety of the police action," they reported.

The incidents included 21 "clear Constitutional violations," 15 cases of police brutality or harassment, and seven cases in which there was no mention of a citizen's Constitutional rights.

Police Woman had the highest number of improprieties at seven and SWAT was the only one of the 15 episodes in which no improprieties were noticed.

The lawyers said that they found television crime shows projected an image "that is alien to the Constitution." They added:

"The facts would horrify the average judge if they were brought into court as real cases. Hardly a single viewing hour passes without an illegal search, or a confession obtained by coercion, or the failure to provide counsel. Warrants are not sought or issued, and hardly any mention is made of notifying suspects of their right against self-incrimination."

They cited a Kojak episode in which a doctor who owned a collection of toy soldiers was a murder suspect. Kojak wanted one of the soldiers to test for evidence, but he did not have a case strong enough to make an arrest or obtain a search warrant.

"C'mon, Crocker," Kojak told another detective. "I'll do the talking and you swipe the soldier."

In another show, Bumper Morgan of The Blue Knight demanded the key for a suspect's hotel room and the following exchange took place:

Hotel Clerk: "I assume you have a warrant for that, Morgan."

Morgan: "Yes, [shoe] size 13 EEE. Give me the key."

Clerk: "I'm going to testify that it was an illegal entry."

Morgan: "You do that." Police Lieutenant (later, at the police station): "Well, I've got to hand it to you, Bumper. That was good work."

Mr. Arons and Mr. Katsh said that they found that television crime dramas rarely showed that innocent citizens might be harmed by improper police conduct.

Nothing that the average citizen's primary exposure to police work might be through television, the professors said that they believed most viewers did not recognize the Constitutional violations portrayed on television and might not recognize such misconduct in real life.

"If crime show violations of the Constitution always turn out to be a good thing, then these TV morality plays may amount to nothing more than reactionary propaganda," the professors contended. "For television, the challenge is how to give sane, Constitutional values access to the TV crime scene."

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BEHIND THE WALLS

Hunger Strike

(Angola, La.) - A hunger strike was recently begun by inmates in the main block of Angola State Prison here to protest guard harassment, brutality and inhumane living conditions. According to correspondence received last week by THE BLACK PANTHER, the strike has 95 per cent participation and is quickly spreading to other parts of the prison. The prison administration has responded to the inmates' demands by locking up over 300 prisoners. The rest of the prison's population was recently locked into a grassy area and then beaten back into their cells by guards armed with night sticks, riot shotguns and M-16 rifles, according to the letter. Inmates have gone to the prison's mess hall only under threat of being transferred from medium to maximum security. Inmates at Angola are continuing their hunger strike and are actively seeking outside support.

Survival Programs

(Baltimore, Maryland) - The Maryland Penitentiary Intercommunal Survival Committee (MPISC) is seeking to establish a program here not only for inmates but for the broad community as well. Called the Intercommunal Survival Committee, the grassroots organization is intended to move toward the implementation of such community survival programs as daycare for visitors' children, prisoners' and community clothing drops, Free Food and Free Breakfast Programs, a job framework and sponsorship list for prisoners and other viable and desperately needed survices. Supporters of the MPISC are very enthusiastic about the MPISC's proposals and hope to begin the groundwork for such an organization in this area in the near future.

Folsom Lock-Up

(Represa, Calif.) - A general lockup was in effect last week at Folsom Prison here after guards allegedly found a weapon and ammunition, supposedly on a tip from an inmate. Several prisoners have been moved to security cells and prison authorities began a random search through the prison, claiming to be looking for other hidden weapons.

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Sirhan Interviewed -- “No Memory Of R.F.K. Killing”

(Soledad, Calif.) - Sirhan Sirhan, imprisoned here in Soledad Prison for allegedly killing Robert F. Kennedy, stated last week in an interview with two Los Angeles county supervisors that he has a total mental blackout concerning the assassination.

Sirhan, 33, met with supervisors Baxter Ward and Kenneth Hahn in the presence of his attorney, Godfrey Isaac. The supervisors said Sirhan was "very cooperative and friendly," but when they asked the Palestinian immigrant whether he had killed Kennedy or whether there had been a conspiracy, Sirhan pleaded a complete loss of memory, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

When asked why he was in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel on the night of the assassination and who told him Kennedy would pass through there, Sirhan responded, "I can't remember, I can't remember."

According to the supervisors, at one point in the discussion Sirhan told them that he had no knowledge of a conspiracy. But, interestingly, Sirhan did not reject the "Manchurian Candidate" theory that he had been programmed to commit the assassination without his knowledge.

Noted author Don Freed, in his thrilling book, The Killing of RFK, detailed exactly such a plot in which Sirhan was subjected to behavior modification and then set up as the "fall guy" for the assassination of Robert Kennedy. The fact that Sirhan cannot remember anything about his actions on the night of Kennedy's

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murder conforms perfectly with Freed's very plausible scheme.

Attorney Isaac commented that Sirhan agreed to the interview with Ward and Hahn since he would like to make peace with society, and that he wanted to refute charges that he "has refused to cooperate in an investigation of the assassination."

During his three-and-a-half month trial, Sirhan stated that he went into a trance shortly before Kennedy was killed and did not remember anything until later, when he was restrained by Kennedy aides.

"He (Sirhan) wants to go back to the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel," said Isaac, "so he can visualize it. He wants to know himself, did he or did he not kill Bobby Kennedy?"

-- 11 --

FORCED TO SLEEP WITH PIGS, LIVE IN CHICKEN COOPS: 4-H CLUB EXPLOITS FILIPINO YOUTH WORKERS

(Modesto, Calif.) - A group of 72 young Filipinos, who arrived in the U.S. two years ago expecting to receive on-the-job training and wages in a national 4-H Council program, departed for the Philippines here recently, bitterly disillusioned at the failure of the program to provide either training or wages.

The group complained that they did not receive training on the various farms across the country they were placed in. Instead, they were treated like laborers.

TRAINERS

However, the trainees did not even receive the wages of laborers. A 4-H spokesman acknowledged that $360,000 of the $410,000 the Filipinos earned in their two years on the farms was deducted for "expenses" by the 4-H Council.

The program, designed to train agricultural workers on a "self-supporting" basis, had promised to return any excess income over expenses to the trainees on their return to the Philippines. Most of the Filipinos were shocked by the paltry sums they actually received the left the country literally in tears.

Most of them had expected to take home more than $1,000 to their families -- instead, the highest check was $880 (which included a considerable number of overtime hours) and the lowest, $135.50.

According to the Tribune, many of the trainees were shocked and disappointed by the way they were treated by 4-H officials and their American "host" farmers.

"We had been told we were going to the States as scholars and would come home as specialists," recalled Manuel Gabaon, 25, a former agricultural economist in a Philippine bank.

Gabaon was to end up working 11-hour shifts, six days a week, on a swine farm, taking turns sleeping with the pigs two or three nights a week to care for farrowing sows.

Another trainee spent a year and four months living in a converted chicken coop on a Greenwood, Delaware, vegetable farm with only a bucket for a toilet and a pan of heated water for his bath.

Still other trainees spent most of their time on a St. Pauls, North Carolina, pig farm helping the owners build five new homes -- a far cry from learning modern farming techniques.

The Filipinos' situation came to light when some of them complained to Sister Reina Paz, a Stockton nun and native of the Philippines, Sister Paz arranged a meeting in Stockton with some of the trainees and aids to Congressman John McFall from Manteca. A spokesman for McFall has announced that his office has begun an investigation into the matter.

Sixty-seven of the Filipino trainees have authorized an attorney "to demand an accounting of the wages from the 4-H foundation and proceed to institute whatever legal proceedings he thinks appropriate."

4-H project manager John Pederson, when contacted about the scandal, commented: "They were here to learn, not earn…"

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BLACK PARENTS FIGHT BACK: Racists Continue Attacks On Boston Black Students

(Boston, Mass.) - Racist violence against Black students here at South Boston High has flared up once again under the direction of right-wing White bigots in the reactionary ROAR (Restore Our Alienated Rights) organization.

In recent weeks, there have been 18 arrests and numerous injuries resulting from these vicious attacks, Worker's World reports.

One teacher received a fractured nose and a student had his jaw broken. All of those arrested have been White South Boston residents, only three of whom were students.

Recently, Black parents, who filed the original suit in federal court which resulted in the court-ordered desegregation at this school three years ago, filed a new motion demanding that South Boston High School be closed and moved to a site more accessible to Blacks.

The parents and the Boston chapter of the NAACP gave as the reason for this new motion the continual attacks on the Black

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students within the school which have forced the students to attend school in fear and made a positive educational experience impossible.

Last month, Black students staged a highly successful boycott of South Boston High to support the court action. Only five Black students out of 200 enrolled attended school. Instead, they participated in a Solidarity Day at the African Heritage Institute in Roxbury.

At the African Heritage Institute, Dorothy Alleyne, spokesperson of the parents' group, said, "We are holding this Solidarity Day to show Judge Garrity that Black parents are concerned about their children and to let him know that we feel threatened."

Grace Richardson, a 17-year-old Black senior at South Boston High School, said, "We find it impossible to live in fear."

The 200 Black students went back to school and presented a list of demands to headmaster Jerome Winegar. In addition to the demand that the school be closed and moved to a neutral site, the students demanded the hiring of more Black teachers and aides, clarification of the discipline code (suspensions of Black students are six times the city average) and a guarantee of their safety within the school.

BOMB

Later, police received a call that there was a bomb in South Boston High. A search produced a stick of dynamite, though it was not wired to go off.

That same day the Black students requested permission to go to English High School in the Black community where Alex Haley, the author of Roots, was speaking, but they were denied permission.

Shortly thereafter, in an orchestrated attack on the Black students, fighting broke out on all floors and all sections of the school. When the Black students left the school to board buses, the racist mob outside surged through thin police lines to attack the bus.

Last fall the neo-fascist "antibusing" organization ROAR and its paramilitary wings, the South Boston Marshalls and South Boston Defense League, announced they would attack Black students "from within" the schools. They have distributed leaflets telling White students what to say if arrested during these attacks.

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REVOLUTIONARY SUICIDE: By Huey P. Newton: “The Penal Colony”

In this excerpt from the chapter "The Penal Colony" in Revolutionary Suicide, Black Panther Party leader and chief theoretician Huey P. Newton learns that he will be released from the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo after being falsely convicted for the murder of a White racist Oakland cop.

Fay Stender, who had worked with Charles Garry on my defense, sent word in May of 1970 that a decision would be issued shortly; she did not know what it would be, of course, but apparently the court had written a very long opinion. Usually, in the case of a public figure, a long opinion means a denial because the court wants to show the public that they have given careful consideration to every point of view.

So Fay sent word to expect a denial. Another attorney. Alex Hoffmann, held the opposite view. He argued with Fay that a long opinion could mean a reversal; the court might want to show very carefully that the reversal was based on legal technicalities rather than upon the weight of public opinion -- which in my case was felt by the courts and the correctional system. I sided with Fay and gave the appeal no more attention. I had other things to concentrate on.

And so, when the reversal of my conviction by the California Appellate Court was announced on Friday, May 29, it came as a complete surprise. I had spent the day in the visiting room, hearing nothing, and about four-thirty I was on my back to my cell when a prisoner stopped me and said that he had heard on his radio that my conviction had been reversed.

I did not believe him, and he could scarcely believe it himself, so I asked him to recheck. When I got back to the quad, the guard in charge of my tier got red-faced when he saw me. He said nothing, just turned the color of fresh-cooked lobster and fumbled with his key while locking me in my cell. Only then did I begin to suspect that something good had happened.

Outside in the yard, beneath my window, I heard a great commotion; a group of prisoners were gathered there, throwing up rocks and clapping hands. They were so happy and excited that I began to feel optimistic, too. Prisoners are not allowed to congregate in groups of more than two in the prison yard, but these men were defying the rule.

When the guards approached them, the inmates took their identification cards and threw them on the ground in violation of a regulation that requires inmates to surrender their identification cards to guards on demand. After they had thrown them in the dirt, they stood their ground without moving; the guards kept a distance and did not advance.

The prison officials were upset by the reversal and angry at the inmates for demonstrating in my support. They tried everything they could think of to dampen the enthusiasm that spread throughout the jail, but their efforts were unsuccessful. The only mention of my reversal ever made to me by prison officials was the question of how I could possibly be released before the new trial since bail was rumored to be set at $200,000.

The reversal by the Appellate Court was based on Judge Friedman's incomplete instructions to the jury. He had told the jury that I could be found guilty of murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree, manslaughter, or I could be found not guilty. But he neglected to tell the jury that there were two possibilities within the manslaughter category: voluntary or involuntary.

Voluntary would mean that the jury felt I had acted in the heat of passion and after severe provocation, but that I had killed the policeman. This was the verdict that the jury did return. There was also a possibility of involuntary manslaughter, which would mean I had been unconscious at the time as a result of shock and loss of blood, but that I acted without being aware of what I was doing.

The judge did not give this instruction to the jury, even though we had introduced expert testimony showing that the would I received and the subsequent loss of blood -- verified by hospital records -- was consistent with the possibility of neurogenic shock. Therefore, the Appellate Court ruled that since the jury had not been given all the possibilities for reaching a verdict, my conviction was to be reversed and I would have to stand trial once more. But I could not be tried for murder again, only manslaughter. If the jury had found me guilty of involuntary manslaughter, the court could not have imposed a jail sentence on me.

Even though I had to wait ninety days for the decision to become final, I began immediately to make plans for my departure. Needless to say, I was eager to get out, but also apprehensive about what my life would be like when I returned to Oakland. I felt I would not be ready to plunge back into things until I had a chance to look around and get a picture of the entire situation. I had been off the block for almost three years.

TO BE CONTINUED

-- 14 --

Fernandez Rohinda Visits Oakland Community School, Housing Projects, B.P.P. Headquarters: “TANZANIA DAILY NEWS” EDITOR URGES CLOSER TIES BETWEEN BLACK AMERICANS AND AFRICA

(Oakland, Calif.) - The need for closer ties between Black and other progressive people in the U.S. and the people of Africa was emphasized here last week by Fernandez Rohinda, editor of the influential Tanzania Daily News, in an exclusive interview with THE BLACK PANTHER.

Rohinda, 36, visited the Bay Area as part of a two-week tour of the U.S. Describing his mission to this country, the youthful editor of the Tanzanian government-owned, daily newspaper said:

"I have noticed that there is a growing agreement among the Black groups of the U.S. to report news on southern Africa. I am here to establish contacts with people in the news media so that I will be able to link up with them in order to wipe out the influence of the commercial communications media that have so much determined in the past what we in Africa know of the U.S. and what the U.S. knows of Africa.

"We feel that in the next four or five years there will be growing developments in southern Africa, and we would like to know what the Black community is going to be doing in the U.S. We would also like you to know what is happening in Africa from reliable sources through the contacts that we are going to establish. We feel that events in Africa are distorted and that this might affect your perspective of what is happening in southern Africa," the articulate Rohinda explained.

The 15-year veteran journalist holds a highly influential position in the African press, as well as within the Tanzanian government. As editor of the Tanzania Daily News, the official organ of the ruling TANU Party, Rohinda has a major responsibility in reporting and interpreting events in southern Africa because of Tanzania's role as a frontline state.

Indeed, not only is Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere spokesperson for the frontline states but Dar es Salaam, capital of the east African country, has long served as the headquartes of liberation movements throughout southern Africa -- providing a haven in the past for such groups as FRELIMO of Mazambique, the MPLA of Angola, the PAIGC of Guinea-Bissau, and presently the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) of Rhodesia and others as they fought to liberate their countries from colonial rule.

Rohinda's desire to establish ties with the Black press of America led to his visit to the editorial offices of THE BLACK PANTHER. (He also met with Steve Talbot, editor of the progressive Berkeley-based Internews.) He visited as well the model elementary level Oakland Community school (OCS), founded by the Black Panther Party in 1971. Accompanied by BLACK PANTHER Editor Michael Fultz, Rohinda toured the facilities of the East Oakland-based OCS, where he talked with School Director Ericka Huggins and several instructors concerning the efforts of the School to provide a quality education to Black and poor minority youth in this city.

The children of the School had several questions to ask their visitor once they learned that Rohinda came from Africa. The newspaper editor was surprised and delighted by the knowledge of Africa that the older children particularly had. African history and current events are emphasized in the Social Science curriculum of the OCS.

Rohinda next visited the San Antonio Villa housing project located a few blocks down the street from the OCS. African visitors to this country rarely have the opportunity to see firsthand the oppression suffered by Black Americans, and it was for this reason that Rohinda's stop at San Antonio Villa, a pitifully dilapidated housing project long neglected by the Oakland Housing Authority, was so significant.

Drug trafficking has long been a major problem in the predominantly Black populated housing project, and Rohinda arrived at the moment when a drug transaction was taking place.

Later, during his conversation with THE BLACK PANTHER, Rohinda was asked his impressions of the differences between the levels of oppression experienced by African people and their Black counterparts in America.

"I haven't seen much of what is oppression here in the U.S.," the perceptive Tanzanian journalist said, "but oppression is oppression. The people of southern Africa do not enjoy the civil rights that Black people in the U.S. enjoy, but the degree of exploitation is relative. People living in the U.S. in such a highly developed economy…might not be suffering the same as the people in a less developed country like South Africa. But to me, their oppression is the same."

Rohinda went on to explain that the masses of people in Africa due to Western propaganda, particularly movies, believe that Black Americans live affluently -- underscoring the vital need for the media links he is establishing that will expose such lies and distortions.

Turning to the current situation in southern Africa, Rohinda said concerning the U.S.-British peace proposals for Rhodesia, "The Americans say they are going to apply pressure on the White minority regime for Black majority rule. We say you are welcome to do so, but we are also saying that you should not ask those people already engaged in liberation struggles to lay down their arms."

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young recently returned from an extensive visit to Africa. When asked his analysis of the outspoken Black diplomat's statements on southern Africa, Rohinda pointedly replied, "I would not like to place emphasis on Andrew Young as an individual. It is U.S. policy that he represents. I think he has been appointed to do a job and he's doing it. It

-- 15 --
is unfair to cite him as an individual."

The likeable editor of the Tanzania Daily News -- which has a circulation of 50,000 -- added, however, that he believes Young's analogy of the 1960s' U.S. civil rights movement and the current liberation struggles in southern Africa is incorrect. While Black people in America are fighting to make the democratic rights of the U.S. Constitution applicable to them, Rohinda said, Blacks in southern Africa are seeking to destroy the racist, reactionary constitutions that cause their oppression.

Turning to matters in his own country, Rohinda elaborated on the problems experienced by Tanzania since it won independence from Great Britain in 1961. Tanzania became independent through negotiations, unlike its sister countries of Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Angola who had to wage protracted armed struggles to achieve their liberation.

"Gaining independence through negotiations is not viewed as an advantage in Africa," Rohinda noted. He went on to say that through armed struggle an African government "gains experience and can clarify its ideology" to the people. "In Tanzania," he added, "we have had to go through a long and arduous struggle to clarify socialist ideology to our people."

Since President Nyerere proclaimed the Arusha Declaration in 1967 -- the program under which Tanzania has undergone socialist transformation -- emphasis has been placed on developing the rurally-based economy of the country, Rohinda explained, as well as nationalizing previously Western-owned industries. While Tanzania still has "to do business with capitalist countries out of necessity," he said, trade with the West has been considerably lessened in the last 10 years.

In addition, agricultural production in the Tanzanian countryside has been significantly increased, with nine million of the country's 14 million people now living collectively in Ujamaa villages. The major crops grown by Tanzania include rice, maize, millet and bananas. Chief exports are cotton, coffee and saisal.

Politically, the TANU government is "reorganizing party workers and the peasants," Rohinda said. Interestingly, within the structure of TANU, party leaders are not permitted to own shares in capitalist countries, the editor of Tanzania's largest daily newspaper said. Overall, operating under the guidelines of the Arusha Declaration, the government is reorganizing the whole of Tanzanian society.

In addition, a recent anti-illiteracy campaign succeeded in reducing the illiteracy rate from 80 to 35 per cent.

Rohinda described his country's relations with its Black-ruled neighbors as good, noting the "very strong" ties between Tanzania and Mozambique. He had high praise for Samora Machel, president of Mozambique and leader of the ruling party of FRELIMO. "Samora Machel represents a new kind of leadership. Young people in Africa, even those in reactionary countries, identify with Mozambique and the example it has set."

Reflecting on the role of Black Americans and other progressive groups in the U.S. in the liberation struggles in southern Africa, Rohinda pointed out that "the next few years will be critical for Africa and Black Americans should be mobilized around bringing pressure on the U.S. government" to support Black majority rule. He also cited the constant need of the liberation movements for medicine and clothing and the "very favorable" campus demonstrations, such as the current ones on the statewide campuses of the University of California -- "events that are not reported in Africa." -- Rohinda explained.

As he concluded the interview, Rohinda repeated his desire to create meaningful contacts with the Black and progressive American press in order to advance the liberation struggles in Zimbabwe, Namibia and Azania (South Africa), thereby contributing to the liberation of oppressed humankind the world over.

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Nyerere Addresses Mozambican Rally

Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere was the first head of state to make an official visit to the People's Republic of Mozambique, visiting Tanzania's newly liberated sister country to the south from August 30 to September 7, 1975. Following, are excerpts from President Nyerere's inspiring speech of revolutionary solidarity delivered to the Mozambican people at a mass rally held in the capital city of Lourenco Marques on August 31.

"Mr. President, Brothers and Sisters of Mozambique:

"The 25th of June, 1975, was a great day for Mozambique. It was also a great day for Tanzania. And for the whole of Africa. That day saw your triumph over centuries of colonialism. It saw the victory for which thousands upon thousands of Mozambicans had given their lives or their health. It was the day on which the people of this country joined the ranks of free men in Africa.

"I want to offer all of you my heartfelt congratulations on this victory. It was achieved against tremendous odds, and after a herculean struggle. The roots of the fight for Mozambican freedom are long and deep. For the people of this country did not passively accept alien domination. They fought against the invaders. They rose up in revolt against their oppressors many times throughout the 500 years of colonial rule.

"But a nation divided is a nation defeated. It was only FRELIMO which enabled the people to defeat colonialism. For FRELIMO meant unity. Under the brilliant and far-sighted leadership of Eduardo Mondlane, FRELIMO united all those who genuinely wanted the freedom of Mozambique.

"I do not have to remind you that the road was long and hard. You made the journey. Membership of FRELIMO required a willingness to sacrifice self to the cause of freedom. It demanded 100 per cent commitment to the goal. It demanded great courage from everyone in the face of extreme hardship.

"We in Tanzania salute you. We who achieved freedom peacefully, pay tribute to the sacrifices of our brothers and sisters in this country. And we congratulate you all. You accepted extreme hardships and dangers. You suffered setbacks as well as making advances. And you never gave up. Even in the face of treachery and betrayals you, the people of Mozambique, persisted in the struggle. Your efforts were an example and an inspiration to all the freedom loving people of Africa. They are still an example of what African people can do when they have developed good leadership.

"We congratulate you. And we thank you. We thank you for what you have done for Africa, and for what you have done for Tanzania. When Ghana became independent in 1957, Kwame Nkrumah made a great statement. He said, `Our country's independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent.' Those words have been quoted many times. They have become a commonplace in Africa. But for us in Tanzania they are a statement of fact. They are not just a slogan. The freedom of Tanzania has truly been extended by the freedom of Mozambique…."

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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 fascist government of the United States uses its domestic enforcement agencies to carry out its program of oppression against Black people, other people of color and poor people inside the United States. We believe it is our right, therefore, to defend ourselves against such armed forces and that all Black and oppressed people should be armed for self-defense of our homes and communities against these fascist police forces.

8. WE WANT AN IMMEDIATE END TO ALL WARS OF AGGRESSION.

We believe that the various conflicts which exist around the world stem directly from the aggressive desires of the U.S. ruling circle and government to force its domination upon the oppressed people of the world. We believe that if the U.S. government or its lackeys do not cease these aggressive wars that it is the right of the people to defend themselves by any means necessary against their aggressors.

9. WE WANT FREEDOM FOR ALL BLACK AND POOR OPPRESSED PEOPLE NOW HELD IN U.S. FEDERAL, STATE, COUNTY, CITY AND MILITARY PRISONS AND JAILS, WE WANT TRIALS BY A JURY OF PEERS FOR ALL PERSONS CHARGED WITH SO-CALLED CRIMES UNDER THE LAWS OF THIS COUNTRY.

We believe that the many Black and poor oppressed people now held in U.S. prisons and jails have not received fair and impartial trials under a racist and fascist judicial system and should be free from incarceration. We believe in the ultimate elimination of all wretched, inhuman penal institutions, because the masses of men and women imprisoned inside the United States or by the U.S. military are the victims of oppressive conditions which are the real cause of their imprisonment. We believe that when persons are brought to trial that they must be guaranteed, by the United States, juries of their peers, attorneys of their choice and freedom from imprisonment while awaiting trials.

10. WE WANT LAND, BREAD, HOUSING, EDUCATION, CLOTHING, JUSTICE, PEACE AND PEOPLE'S COMMUNITY CONTROL OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political 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: WINNIE MANDELA BLASTS U.S.: Wife Of South African Black Leader Banned To Rural “Bantustan”

(Brandfort, South Africa) - Winnie Mandela, wife of imprisoned African National Congress (ANC) leader Nelson Mandela, said here last week that she doubts the sincerity of U.S. demands for Black majority rule in South Africa.

In an interview with the New York Times, during which she discussed at length her banishment three weeks ago to this rural area some 160 miles from her home in Soweto "township," Mrs. Mandela said:

"We have been let down so much, and our patience is exhausted. So any such change is bound to be viewed with suspicion. I mean, is it possible for people who have not been interested in our welfare for 400 years to suddenly be concerned now?"

Tears in her eyes, Mrs. Mandela surveyed the surroundings of her new home, a poverty-stricken "township" known as Phatakahle, meaning "handle with care" in the Sotho language. The 43-year-old mother of three cannot speak the Sotho language and is forced to live in a house with no electricity, bath or hot water.

"I've been subjected to so many kinds of dehumanization in the past, so many attempts to destroy my will. But this! It's so totally dispiriting. They're trying to reduce me to a state of complete helplessness," she said.

The highly respected heroine of the Azanian (Black South African)

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liberation struggle, maintains that the South African government has made her a "scapegoat" for the widespread Black political protests that rocked the country last year.

Earlier this year, two Black prisoners testified at a government inquiry that Mrs. Mandela plotted the Soweto rebellion. Under cross-examination, the two men admitted they lied after being threatened by police.

On May 16, South African security police raided Mrs. Mandela's Soweto home, removing her household goods and carrying her and her 16-year-old daughter Zindzi off to this Orange Free State town, favored for retirement by White Afrikaner farmers and civil servants.

Mrs. Mandela is not allowed to leave her home at night or on weekends or have visitors, other than relatives, without official permission. When her sisters stayed overnight recently, believing they had police permission, Mrs. Mandela was charged with a violation of her restriction. The charge carries a maximum penalty of three years' imprisonment.

Since her husband -- who is now serving a life sentence at the maximum Island near Johannesburg -- was convicted in 1964 on charges of sabotage and conspiring to overthrow the White racist government of South Africa, Winnie Mandela has only been out of confinement for 11 months. During 1969-70 she spent 19 months in jail on trumped-up charges of subversion. She was acquitted two subsequent trials.

Following her second acquittal, Mrs. Mandela was banned for five years. She was confined to her Soweto home and forbidden to leave her house at nights and on weekends.

Last August, she was arrested again and detained for four months.

In her new home, Mrs. Mandela is under constant police surveillance, including three or four visits per day. "They never leave my mother alone," said Zindzi.

Zindzi's sister Zeni, who is eight months pregnant, lives in Swaziland, a neighboring British protectorate. Zeni is the wife of a son of Swaziland's King Souza.

Recently, Kaiser Matanzima, "prime minister" of the Transkei "homeland" given "independence" by South Africa last year, made a personal plea to the South African government to allow Mrs. Mandela to visit her daughter in Swaziland for five days.

Mrs. Mandela, who was born in the Transkei, is considered a citizen of the territory by the South African government. Matanzima, her cousin, has offered her exile, and the South African apartheid regime has said that she may settle there or in Swaziland.

"I wouldn't give it a second thought," Mrs. Mandela said of the offers. "I mean, imagine the audacity of it! If anybody should leave, it's not me, it's the settler government."

-- 17 --

AGREEMENT MADE TO EXCHANGE DIPLOMATS: CASTRO TELLS DELLUMS U.S. MUST LIFT CUBAN EMBARGO

(Washington, D.C.) - California Congressman Ronald V. Dellums said here last week that Cuban Premier Fidel Castro views the lifting of the U.S. embargo against his country as the first essential step toward normalizing relations between the two countries.

"The embargo was our action. They (Cuba) don't feel the need to negotiate. It is our embargo and we must lift it. They say lift it -- and then we will talk," Dellums said at a press conference here upon his return from a four-day visit to the People's Republic of Cuba where he was a personal guest of Premier Castro.

Dellums' press conference was held less than a week before the U.S. and Cuba formally announced their agreement to exchange diplomats for the first time in 16 years.

Dellums led a group of 12 to Cuba, including Dr. Alvin Poussaint, well known Black psychiatrist and dean of students at Harvard Medical School; Oakland Black businessman Louis Barnett; and Dr. Ruth Love, the Black superintendent of Oakland schools.

The popular Bay Area Black legislator, who met privately with Premier Castro for five hours, said the Cuban leader plans to send 300 civilian medical technicians to Ethiopia.

The Carter administration has severely attacked the Castro government for sending 50 alleged military advisers to the northeastern African country. Castro told Dellums that the Cubans presently in Ethiopia are "diplomatic personnel."

Dellums explained that while the Cuban premier "did not preclude sending military advisers if they are requested, it is my conclusion and considered opinion, based on our conversations, that Cuba will send no troops to Ethiopia."

At a press conference held while Dellums was in Havana, President Carter issued a thinly veiled threat to the Castro government, suggesting that Cuba stay out of African affairs in order for there to be further improvement in relations between the U.S. and Cuba.

Dellums explained that Ethiopia has only 127 doctors to care for the 30-35 million people who live in the country and for that reason Cuba would send medical personnel to the African country. "One out of every three Ethiopians dies within the first five years," Dellums said.

The 8th California Congressional District representative described Premier Castro as a "brilliant," "well-read" and "visionary" leader concerned about world food, fuel, disarmament and pollution problems.

"Having talked to Castro, I have the impression that Cuba is not reacting to the United States but has its own perception of its role in the world," Dellums said.

Concerning the particulars of the U.S.-Cuban exchange of diplomats -- the first diplomatic relations the two countries have had since the late President Dwight Eisenhower closed the U.S. embassy in Havana on

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January 3, 1961 -- the eight to 10 Americans and their Cuban counterparts will be "interest sections."

The Americans will officially be part of the Swiss Embassy and the Cuban team part of the Czechoslovakian Embassy. Since diplomatic ties were severed between the two countries, Switzerland has taken care of U.S. affairs in Cuba and Czechoslovakia has overseen Cuban business in America.

Simultaneously with the State Department's announcement of the exchange of diplomats, Cuba released 10 Americans who had been held in Cuban jails.

Carter administration officials were careful to warn that full-fledged diplomatic relations with Cuba are still a long way off. Congressional opposition to normalized relations between the two countries remains strong. Republican Senator Robert Dole announced last week that he would introduce legislation barring diplomatic recognition of the Caribbean island republic unless certain conditions are met.

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POLYNESIAN PANTHER PARTY ORGANIZES DRIVE: PROGRESSIVE POLYNESIANS OPPOSE RACIST NEW ZEALAND IMMIGRATION LAWS

(Ponsonby, New Zealand) - New Zealand's immigration laws, which openly discriminate against Pacific Islanders, are under intense fire from the Polynesian Panther Party (PPP) and other progressive community organizations here who are demanding their repeal and amnesty for those who have been subjected to persecution.

Under these laws immigrants to New Zealand must register to obtain permits and can only stay in the country a specified period of time. Those who fail to register, like "illegal aliens" in the U.S., are constantly subjected to police abuse, harassment, arrest and deportation.

"Overstayers," or persons who stay past the limit specified by their permit, are subjected to the same treatment. The PPP and other progressive organizations rightfully point out these laws are only put into effect against Third World people from the Pacific Islands, not against Whites from Europe, Canada and the U.S.-- who make up the bulk of permanent immigrants and of those who are in the country on temporary work permits.

Figures released in 1974 showed that only 2.7 per cent of permanent immigrants and 40 per cent of those on work permits to New Zealand came from the Pacific Islands of Western Samoa, Fiji and Tonga. In contrast to this, figures released in 1975 revealed that 77.2 per cent of permanent immigrants to the country came from the United Kingdom (Britain) alone.

The racist rationale used by the New Zealand government is that Third World people are a burden on the economy and take jobs away from New Zealanders. However, a group such as Amnesty Aroha, which seeks amnesty for Pacific Islanders persecuted by immigration laws, contend that the New Zealand government, like the government and reactionary labor unions in America, are exploiting Pacific Islanders in order to revitalize their New Zealand economy.

While Whites are routinely allowed amnesty -- they are allowed to stay past the limits of their permit -- Pacific Islanders are subjected to arbitrary search and seizure and unwarranted police raids.

A middle-aged Tongan couple, Sione and Setarta, were once taken from their home at six o' clock in the morning (after police had stood over their beds while they dressed). The couple repeatedly told the police that although their work permits had expired, they had registered with the government.

The couple and two others were arrested while their youngest child, a six-year-old, was left at home crying. It was not until the next day that they were released when police finally realized they were registered as "overstayers."

In a visit to the Pacific Islands last year by New Zealand's minister of immigration, the governments of Tonga and Samoa clearly expressed their support for total amnesty for "overstayers." In Western Samoa, the immigration minister, a Mr. Gill, was given a very cold reception.

A meeting between Samoan Prime Minister Tupuola Efi and Gill was very heated, reports Panthers Rapp (a publication of the PPP) as New Zealand's immigration policies were denounced as "racist."

TONGAN PARLIAMENT

In Tonga, Gill received a letter from the Tongan Parliament which stated, "As representatives of the people we feel obliged to bring to your notice our grave concern over the long-standing problem of overstayers. Reports of recent random checks in Auckland (New Zealand) have intensified this anxiety.

"…It seems to us that it would be reasonable if you granted total amnesty similar to the Aust