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Lawsuit To Stop Racist Placement In Schools: BIASED I.Q. TESTS LABEL BLACK CHILDREN MENTALLY RETARDED

(San Francisco, Calif.) - A major class action lawsuit challenging the use of culturally and racially-biased I.Q. tests to place Black elementary students in classes for the mentally retarded is finally going to trial on October 11.

The six-year-old lawsuit, Larry P. vs. Riles, will test in federal court Black parents' long-standing contention that standard I.Q. tests are biased against Blacks, and that they systematically underestimate the learning ability of Black school children.

As a result, thousands of Black children both in California and throughout the country have have been subjected to a second-rate education and are forever saddled with the stigma of mental retardation.

Larry P. vs. Riles seeks relief for all Black elementary school children in California who have been wrongfully placed in classes for the so-called "educable mentally retarded" (EMR) because of individual intelligence tests."

The plaintiffs -- Black children and their parents -- are being represented in court by the NAACP and Public Advocates, Inc. The case will be conducted in the courtroom of federal District Court Judge Robert Peckham on the 19th floor of the Federal Building, 450 Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco, beginning at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday, October 11.

Specifically, the plaintiffs in Larry P. vs. Riles assert that I.Q. tests, such as the WISC-R and the Standard-Binet, improperly evaluate Blacks

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by unduly emphasizing verbal skills and by failing to take into account the cultural background of Black school children.

The plaintiffs agree with the conclusion of sociologist Jane Mercer that "present psychological assessment practices in public schools violate five rights of children:

"(a) their right to be evaluated within a culturally appropriate normative framework; (b) their right to be assessed as a multi-dimensional human being; (c) their right to be fully educated; (d) their right to be free of stigmatizing labels; and (e) their right to ethnic identity and respect."

Already the lawsuit has revealed a dramatic racial imbalance in EMR classes in California, resulting in a preliminary injunction barring the use of I.Q. tests in EMR placement.

ELEMENTARY STUDENTS

When Larry P. vs. Riles was first filed in 1971, 66 per cent of the elementary students in EMR classes in San Francisco were Black, while Black students comprised only 28.5 per cent of the San Francisco school population.

Statewide, the imbalance was even greater. Although Black students were only 9.1 per cent of the school children in California, more than 27 per cent of the children in programs for the mentally retarded were Black.

In 1974, Black children comprised 59.5 per cent of the students in San Franciso EMR classes, but only 30 per cent of the city's school population. Statewide, 25 per cent of EMR classes were composed of Black children, while Blacks were only nine per cent of the total state school population.

Presently, 5,700 Black school children are illegally placed in EMR classes in California.

During the long course of the litigation, the state has done little to explain the racial imbalance in EMR classes.

At one point, state education officials suggested that since Black people tend to be poor, and poor people tend to suffer from inadequate nutrition, it was possible that the brain development of many Black children has been retarded by their mother's poor diet during pregnancy.

However, the main undercurent of the state's position has been the racist proposition that Blacks are genetically inferior to Whites.

Indeed, in papers filed with the court in August, 1977, the state defendants suggested that the racial imbalance in EMR placement is caused by differences in the inherited intelligence of the races.

In the upcoming trial, the plaintiffs not only intend to prove that the marked racial imbalance of EMR classes is the result of culturally-biased I.Q. tests, but also that this bias is not accidental -- that it is built into American I.Q. tests from their original make-up.

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EDITORIAL: GUNS vs. BUTTER

"Guns vs. Butter" has long been a thorny contradiction for America's legislators. All too often, as history has recorded, "guns" won out, as self-righteous U.S. businessmen whistled "Yankee Doodle Dandy" while raining a holocaust of terror and destruction upon the world's people. "If "butter" was too expensive on the domestic scene, well, you were forced to eat your dreams. Besides, "butter" is fattening the commercials intone, and dreams are cheap…if you are Black or poor.

And once they decided on a national policy of "Kill," the killing became easier, more sophisticated, more "anti-ballistic," more "anti-anti," and more expensive too.

Just think, one day we can tell our grandchildren that way back in 1977, only $43 million was allocated by Congress to develop the ultra-insane neutron bomb, capitalism's ultimate weapon, cruelly slaughtering human beings while leaving property undamaged. That same year, only 3.27 billion was allocated for additional research into weapons that will leave the ashes of the once-living dangerously radioactive for only 24,000 years.

During his disasterous 1972 Presidential campaign, Senator George McGovern proposed a "peace priorities" plan which would have reduced superfluous military spending by $8 billion per year, or down to $55 billion by 1976. "Guns versus Butter." Well, in 1976, the actual military budget was $96.2 billion.

To its credit, and uncommon collective good sense, the Oakland City Council last week endorsed a resolution calling for a "Reordering of our National Priorities."

With more "guns" on the horizon, with a New Right, and a new scent of "kill" -- Zimbabwean "communist" guerrillas; New York City "looters," "criminal" prison inmates -- in the air, resolutions such as this, and the proposed Transfer Resolution to reduce military spending in order to meet human needs, deserve a groundswell of support.

If not, the most popular tune in town won't be "When Johnny Comes Marchin' Home," but "Home Is Where The Hatred Is."

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Letters to the Editor

SEEK JUSTICE FOR CONNECTICUT PRISONER

Dear Editor:

On Saturday, July 9, 1977, between 12:15 to 12:45 p.m. up to Sunday at 1:00 a.m., on July 10, 1977, prisoner Dennis Leary was brutally beaten by correctional officers. This happened on the 12:00 -- 8:00 shift in the old building at 1106 North Avenue. He was pushed and kicked by the sergeant and guards (three all together) while he was in an administrative segregation unit.

There were a number of eyewitnesses to the brutal beating on this prisoner. Dennis Leary has a great deal of problems, mostly mental. Leary is on a drug called lthium which is a stabilizing drug used mainly in the treatment of manic-depressives. Leary lost his house and on top of that received a letter and visit of a "Dear John" from his wife. This even made his problems worst. The administration here did not try to help this prisoner at all.

On Sunday morning at 1:00 a.m. Dennis Leary was taken out of administrative segregation to the hole and still was being brutally beaten. He was kicked in the face and body several times.

I would like you to print this outrageous case in the newspaper or radio station you might have. He was wrong with him -- which is totally a lie because I had a personal talk with him about his problems on a one to one personal level. Plus he spoke recently at the A.A. meeting in front of outside guests here in the jail. He also spoke with the A.A. counselor, Jack Connors, here at this correctional center. He does have a lot of problems and he needs help. He is

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not crazy; he just has a great deal of personal problems. One guard has had Leary placed in administrative segregation. The administration as well as a lot of prisoners were making fun of this man's problems. He has been beaten by guards as well as prisoners.

So I hope you can expose this case to the media and the community. I hope to hear from you soon, brother.

In struggle for the people always,
Bro. Muhammad S. H. K. Zakee
Community Correctional Center
Bridgeport, Conn. 06604

PENNSYLVANIA INMATE VICTIM OF RACISM

Dear Friend,

If there is one unifying understanding that we prisoners all share it is knowledge that the state acts on behalf of the wealthy, and that whenever and wherever prisoners' struggles occur, that state apparatus will be used to repress those movements. However, it is those same masses of people who will eventually destroy, not only the vicious tools of the capitalists, but the capitalist system itself.

Racism is clearly manifested inside prisons, as illustrated by vicious murders, beatings, harassment and parole denials.

As prisoners, we are not deceived by the lie that prisons and the criminal justice system exist to rehabilitate humans. They are means of punishment and control. We are also aware that the cops are the strongarms of the capitalist class.

This atmosphere cannot continue to exist, nor will it. The human mind and body can only take so much of this mistreatment in prison. "We Remember Attica."

Justice? She gapes her legs only to those who can pay the price. I've never known the lady, and being that I'm Black and poor, I doubt that I will, ever!

Why? This society is built upon injustice and racism. The only crime I and other people are guilty of is being Black, poor, unemployed or uneducated. In essence we, the prisoners, are the victims.

Deprived of my rights as a human being,
R. Reed #F-1671
State Correctional Institution,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

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COMMENT: Congressional Black Caucus Report To The People: By Parren Mitchell

In the following commentary, Representative Parren Mitchell, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, provides a report to the community on his assessment of the status of Black America.

One of the more frightening aspects of cancer is that far too often the victim is unaware of the disease and hence does not seek medical help until the illness has reached the crisis state.

Black Americans are the victims of a two-pronged cancer that is growing at our vitals, but too many of us are unaware of, or unwilling to admit to, the conditions.

One prong of the cancer is the chronic, systematic, structural unemployment that devastates our communities, and against which no significant federal government action has been advanced.

The Black unemployment rate is staggeringly high and causes crime, juvenile deliquency, drug/alcohol abuse, and other socio-psychological pathologies.

Perhaps the most damaging feature of forced unemployment on Blacks is the loss of a sense of personhood. Such a sense of loss prevents one from fulfilling positive roles, such as father, mother, community worker, etc., in the Black community.

In turn, a significant absence of positive role models adversely affects the lifestyles and aspirations of Black youth.

So it is that forced unemployment impacts negatively on the life of another generation of Black Americans, who have not yet reached age 25.

The only meaningful answer to forced unemployment is a comprehensive full employment program -- one that guarantees work, in either the private or the public sector, to all who want to work. Timid, cautious, piecemeal approaches to Black unemployment simply will not solve anything.

The second prong of the cancer

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is the deliberate, sustained, carefully planned attacks against affirmative action progress. Without these programs we Blacks could not have realized the limited gains made in the last 10 years.

REVERSE DISCRIMINATION

The "reverse discrimination syndrome," initially found only in the professional school educational arena, has now spread to the point that it is having disastrous effects of Black America.

The reverse discrimination syndrome retards employment opportunities in the public and private sectors. It limits educational opportunities below the professional school level.

I am appalled at the extent to which many of the White media have joined in the attacks on affirmative action. Using ridicule, out-of-context illustrations, and attempting to smear effective action programs, the White media have joined in the fight against us.

That is the situation. What is being done? Are there any encouraging developments? Much is being done, and there are positive developments.

In June I sent to Black leaders and Black organizations the chairman's six-month report on the Congressional Black Caucus. The report shows clearly that we are effectively engaged in attempting to kill the cancer. Caucus members serve on all the key committees of the U.S. House of Representatives, and therefore we are able to score successes as we advance our 10 priority issues.

They are: Full Employment; Health Care' Urban Revitalization: Rural Development; Civil and Political Rights; Education; Welfare Reform/Social Insurance; Economic Development/Aid to Minority Business; the Economy; and Foreign Policy.

As chairman, I view the formation and operation of Black Brain Trusts as the single most important development in the last six months.

The Black Brain Trust embrace such areas as: (1) Administration of Justice; (2) Education; (3)Health; (4) Communications; (5) The Black Aged; (6) Minority Enterprise, Economic Development and Housing; (7) Foreign Policy; and (8) Voter Participation.

They convene quarterly and serve four major functions which are: creation and evaluation of national legislation; recommending and monitoring agency regulations; lobbying; and future planning.

All four functions operate from the Black perspective, of course. Each Brain Trust is composed of Black experts who are activists, researcher, paraprofessionals, professionals, communicators, etc.

These Brain Trusts create a Black, national communications network -- a Black national constituency whose full political clout can be brought to bear on an issue in a short period of time. In the near future we expect to have 16 such Brain Trusts, each with a minimal membership of 600.

Give us that army of Black expertise, with its skills and resources, and it is inevitable that we Black Americans shall conquer our two present enemies, joblessness and loss of affirmative action.

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DEMAND FOR GOVERNMENT FILES CONTINUES: REVEAL PACIFIC TELEPHONE INSTALLED SECRET TAP FROM HUEY'S PHONE TO F.B.I.

(Oakland, Calif.) - Despite the shocking revelation that the Pacific Telephone Company secretly installed a direct line from Black Panther Party President Huey P. Newton's telephone leading directly to FBI regional headquarters in San Francisco, an attorney for five federal government agencies argued in court here last week that defense subpoenas for other documents be quashed.

Representing the U.S. Attorney's office, the Organized Crime Strike Force of the U.S. Attorney's office, the FBI, the CIA and the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) Division of the U.S. Treasury Department, attorney John Bard provided the most telling performance to date of the federal government's posture in the frame-up case against the respected BPP leader -- that is, to continue the cover-up.

The Tuesday, October 4, hearing was a follow-up to Oakland-Piedmont Municipal Judge Courtland Arne's order that the federal agencies had until September 29 to respond or comply with five identical subpoenas served against them earlier last month by Huey's defense team, headed by attorney Sheldon Otis.

As attorney David McNeil Morse, Otis' assistant, commented after the hearing, the government's refusal to act in good faith and to hand over the requested documents is absurdly untenable in light of the fact that a sixth subpoena, one to Pacific Telephone, resulted in such a telling disclosure.

(Although the document has yet to be presented in court, it appears that the direct line tap on Huey's phone was placed, at the request of the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, around the same time discredited U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell approved an illegal break-in and "microphone surveillance" of Huey's apartment.)

Taking his line from Alameda County prosecutor Tom Orloff -- who had previously argued against disclosure of files from 17 county, state and federal law enforcement agencies -- government attorney Bard argued in court that the subpoenas were "too broad," that they sought "mountains of material, practically from the cradle to the grave."

(Observers in court, commenting on Bard's shabby presentation, later pointed out that his reference to "the grave" was a significant slip, since, despite the government intent Huey P. Newton is far from being dead. "Huey's alive, well and organizing

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Oakland," one person said.

Presenting the defense's justification for seeking the subpoenas, attorney Morse forcefully repeated Huey's position that he is innocent of all charges and that, in fact, the case is just one more attempt to "disrupt, discredit and destroy" the Black Panther Party and Huey in particular.

"No legitimate argument has been made as to why they (the government) should withhold this information," Morse said.

"Everytime we succeed in obtaining documents from the FBI" and other agencies, the scope of the secret war against Huey and the BPP deepens.

As an example, Morse cited the recent revelation that the building engineer where Huey formerly resided at 1200 Lakeshore was a paid FBI informant who installed listening devices in the walls of the apartment adjacent to Huey's.

This man, named Rodger DuClot, Morse said, not only testified against another BPP member when it was unknown he was a paid informant but was listed as a prosecution witness in Huey's case. Certainly the defense had a right to know the extent of DuClot's activities with the FBI.

Morse characterized the government's motion to quash the subpoenas as "another episode of the conspiracy."

Specifically, the five subpoenas seek "information, records, documents, or other writings" in 13 areas of concern. Since it is known that all five agencies conducted illegal, secret surveillance of Huey before he went into forced political exile in August, 1974, "The burden should not be on Mr. Newton to know the fruits of this surveillance."

After listening to both sides, Judge Arne said that he would take the government's motion under consideration and would issue a ruling in the near future.

The preliminary hearing in Huey's case is still scheduled for October 14, at 8:45 a.m., in Department 6 of the Oakland Municipal Court.

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COMMUNITY QUESTIONS STATE OFFICIALS AT “TOWN MEETING”: Elaine Brown Blasts National Guard “Employment” Plan

(Oakland, Calif.) - A proposal by the administration of Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr., to utilize a new National Guard base here to hire the city's predominantly Black unemployed population was denounced last week by Elaine Brown, vice president and chairperson of the Black Panther Party.

The unpopular proposal was discussed at a "town meeting" sponsored by the governor's office held on September 28 at East Oakland's Castlemont High School and attended by some 40 state administrators as part of Brown's efforts to take state government to local communities in California. Nearly 1,000 people turned out for the event, the third such "town meeting" conducted by the Brown administration.

As explained by Major General Frank Schober, commander of the state Military Department, the proposed federally funded "storefront National Guard armory" would employ 200 to 500 youth and train them in civilian-related skills.

Elaine, who was instrumental in organizing the meeting termed the proposal "disgusting." She told Oakland Tribune reporters:

"It's a shameful statement on the government and private business that we can't provide jobs except through the military. I just hope they won't try to turn our Oakland brothers and sisters against each other as they have in the past."

Criticism of the program was initially raised by Jerry Jackson, president of the Oakland Citizens Committee for Urban Renewal (OCCUR), during the question-and-answer period, when Oakland citizens had the opportunity to express their concerns to the various governor-appointed state officials on hand.

Jackson recalled the repressive role played by the California National Guard in Watts in the 1965 Black rebellion there, in People's Park in San Francisco and that of the Ohio National Guard at Kent State in 1970.

"It's difficult to imagine our youth relating to any military operation," Jackson said.

The often heated meeting was attended by locally elected and

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appointed officials such as Mayor Lionel J. Wilson; state Assemblymen Bill Lockyer and Tom Bates; Alameda County Supervisors John George and Fred Cooper; Oakland City Council members Carter Gilmore, Mary Moore and Frank Ogawa; and Oakland Board of Education members James Norwood and Mel Caughall.

Among the high-ranking state officials on hand were state Secretary of Health and Welfare Mario Obledo; Secretary of Business and Transportation Richard Silberman; Department of Corrections Director J.J. Enomoto, and Percy Pinkney, special aide to the governor.

OCCUR Executive Director Paul Cobb started the evening by thanking the organizations responsible for organizing the meeting. They included the Black Panther Party; Displaced Homemakers Center, Inc., Intertribal Friendship House; Mills College Upward Bound; Narcotics Education League; Oakland Community Organizations; OCCUR; Progressive Senior Citizens; Project Threshold; The International Institute; New Oakland Committee; Golden State Business League; and the Minority Contractors Association.

Mayor Wilson, in his brief remarks, noted the large turnout and thanked the community for "taking time out to be with us this evening." He praised Governor Brown for initiating the opportunity for "meaningful dialogue between the people and the governor."

Turning to the "monumental problems" that face the city of Oakland, the Black mayor pointed out the importance of bettering the quality of education in the public schools.

"It doesn't matter what you do in City Hall, in the county … or anywhere else unless you can do something for the children and the young people … Unless we come to grips with the problem of providing basic education for our children, we're not going anywhere very fast with anything."

Wilson cited the state award-winning Oakland Community School for "doing some fantastic things with some of the little children who come out of the same ghettos, who have the same problems and the same disabilities" as children in the city's public schools.

"We need to have the greatest for our children, and the same things that are being done in the Oakland Community School we're going to see done in our public schools," Wilson said.

Gray Davis, Brown's executive secretary and chief of staff, who introduced each official present, served as moderator for the program.

Surfacing repeatedly among the numerous questions raised by the community was the problem of skyrocketing unemployment in Oakland. The audience criticized the state officials for failure to provide programs and funds for employment programs, particularly for minority people as well as the threatened cutbacks in services for the physically disabled and senior citizens.

Several officials, including Obledo, promised to meet with various individuals and group to discuss their concerns.

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FOUR TIMES A WEEK: NEW DOCTORS' HOURS AT GEORGE JACKSON CLINIC

(Berkeley, Calif.) -- The George Jackson Clinic is expanding its services of free, preventative medical care in its continuing efforts to provide quality health care to the community.

Following is the weekly schedule for doctors who will be at the clinic providing professional medical care:

Monday -- Pediatric Clinic, 6-8 p.m.;

Tuesday -- Pediatric Clinic, 2-5 p.m.;

Wednesday -- Podiatry Clinic, 2-4 p.m.; and

Thursday -- Gynecology, Pre-Marital and V.D. Clinic, 7-10 10 p.m.

These additional services are offered throughout the week at the George Jackson Clinic:

Drug and Alcohol Abuse Awareness Program:

Nutritional Counseling:

Hypertension (high blood pressure screening):

Sickle Cell Anemia Counseling and testing:

Visiting Nurses Program (for senior citizens, the disabled and the bed-ridden): and

Blood Bank Drive -- to be held on Friday, November 18, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

For more information on the services of the George Jackson Clinic, or if you wish to volunteer your services or contribute funds, please contact the George Jackson Medical Clinic, 3236 Adeline Street, Berkeley. California 94703, (415) 653-2534.

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This Week In Black History

October 8, 1775

The Council of general offices decided to prevent slaves and free Black people from joining the so-called American revolutionary army on October 8, 1775.

October 7, 1800

A storm forced the suspension of the attack on Richmond, Virginia, by Gabriel Prosser and some 1,000 slaves. The conspiracy to launch a full scale slave insurrection was betrayed by two slaves. Prosser and 15 of his followers were hanged on October 7, 1800.

October 2-4, 1935

On October 2-4, 1935, Italy invaded the only independent state on the African continent, Ethiopia. Black American groups protested and raised funds to aid Ethiopia.

October 4, 1973

On October 4, 1973, U.S. District Court Judge Frank Johnson ordered the state of Alabama to "immediately improve its prison medical services for inmates." Johnson stated. "The present services in Alabama's prisons constitute a willful and intentional violation of the rights of prisoners guaranteed under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments."

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Oakland Endorses “Reordering National Priorities”

(Oakland, Calif.) - On Tuesday, October 4, the Oakland City Council formally adopted a progressive resolution to "Recorder National Priorities," specifically calling upon the Carter administration and the Congress "to redress the imbalance between domestic expenditures and expenditures for the Pentagon."

Strongly supported, in speeches before the Council, by a host of community leaders and civic representatives, including Black Panther Party chairperson ELAINE BROWN and Oakland Mayor LIONEL WILSON, the resolution, already adopted by the National Mayor's Conference, passed by a 7 to 1 vote, with only Councilman GEORGE VUKASIN voting against the measure.

See next week's issue of THE BLACK PANTHER for the full story on the City Council's vote and the "Recorded Priorities" plan.

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BIRMINGHAM INDICTMENT: Avowed Racist Surrenders In 1958 Black Church Bombing

(Marietta, Ga.) - Avowed racist J.D. Stoner surrendered here last week on charges that he participated in the bombing of a Black Birmingham church in 1958.

He immediately said he would fight extradition back to Alabama and was released on $10,000 bail.

Stoner's indictment was one of three handed down by a special grand jury investigating at least 50 acts of terrorism against Blacks in the Birmingham area in the 1950's and `60's.

A 73-year-old White bigot, Richard Chambliss, was previously arrested for the 1963 Birmingham church bombing which took the lives of four young Black girls. The third indictment is believed to have been lodged against a Thomas Blanton, Jr., who is said to have taken part with Chambliss in the September 15, 1963, bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church, killing the four young girls and wounding at least 20 others.

Stoner's indictment (actually there were two) accuses him of exploding dynamite "in, under or dangerously near an inhabited dwelling."

The dwelling in this case was the Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham, pastored at that time by the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a close associate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and a leading civil rights activist in the city.

Stoner, 52 years-old and a lawyer, has often represented the Ku Klux Klan in court. He heads the National State's Rights Party, an ultra-conservative, right-wing

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group, among whose members was Fred Cowen, a neo-nazi madman who murdered four Blacks in cold blood earlier this year in New Rocbell, New York, before taking his own life.

Appearing before state court Judge James L. Bullard, Stoner offered to identify -- but only in Georgia courts -- an FBI undercover agent and a Birmingham detective, who, he claimed, would kill him if he's sent back to Alabama to stand trial.

$25,000 OFFER

Stoner said the pair offered him $25,000 to have the late Dr. King killed in 1956 or 1957, adding that the FBI agent offered him $2,000 to burn Bethel Baptist Church in "an obvious trap."

The work of the grand jury in handling down the indictments was made possible when public pressure forced the FBI to release its file on the Birmingham bombings in 1975. For close to 10 years, the FBI refused to disclose the contents of its file to Alabama state authorities, claiming fear that the identities of its informants in the KKK would be disclosed.

Meanwhile, a former mayor of Birmingham, Art Hanses, has taken over Chambliss' case. Hanes said the extremist/segregationist "intends to plead not guilty."

At the time of the bombing, the 16th Street Baptist Church was used as a headquarters by Dr. King and as a staging ground for the massive civil rights demonstrations which rocked the lily-White authorities in Birmingham in the early 1960's.

Cynthia Wesley, Carol Robertson and Addie Mae Collins, all 14 years old, and Denise McNair, 11, were all killed when a dynamite blast tore through the church just as the Sunday school hour was coming to a close.

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COMMUNITY CRIES “WHITEWASH” IN LAKESIDE PARK INCIDENT: OAKLAND COPS “CLEARED” OF BRUTALITY CHARGES-PROTEST GOES ON

(Oakland, Calif.) - In a blatant whitewash, two Oakland police officers -- one White and one Black -- last week were cleared of any wrongdoing in an August 28 incident at Lakeside Park during which the White officer unjustly drew his gun on the predominantly Black crowd who witnessed the brutalization of two Black men.

As several Black people who attended a special hearing conducted last week by the Public Safety Committee of the Oakland City Council listened in disbelief, police chief George Hart said an "investigation" by the Internal Affairs Division of the Oakland Police Department (OPD) found that the two officers followed established police procedures.

The two policemen, an Officer Ridgeway and an Officer N. Smith, were exonerated despite the testimony of numerous eye-witnesses who saw Ridgeway, the Black officer, unnecessarily harass a Black man he arrested for having no identification and beat and arrest the brother of the first man who protested the treatment of his brother. (See THE BLACK PANTHER, September 17, 1977.)

Repeating his call for a citizen's police review board, made at the City Council meeting on September 13, Black attorney Leon Rountree, Jr., also an eyewitness to what he termed a "near riot" brought on by the policemen in Lakeside Park, said:

"The crux of the problem is not so much what happened in Lakeside Park. Black people in Oakland have the feeling that they should be treated as human beings. Blacks who live in Oakland have trouble getting along with the police…

"It is too much conflict for the police to police themselves. We need a police review board."

Questioned by Public Safety Committee members, Carter Gilmore -- who said he did not accept the findings of the OPD's investigation -- Mary Moore and George Vukasin, Hart maintained that the White officer, Smith, who told the Black people in the Park to "get back, you Black motherfuckers," was justified in drawing his gun because he believed that the crowd was about to attack

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him and his Black partner.

Macklin Martin, chairperson of the Law and Justice Committee of Oakland Citizens Committee for Urban Renewal (OCCUR), blasted City Manager Cecil Riley for misleading the public concerning Smith's drawing of his weapon.

At the September 13 City Council meeting, Riley said that the "preliminary" investigation of the Lakeside Park incident revealed that Smith had not drawn his gun. "Riley attempted to hoodwink the City Council," Martin angrily said.

Among the 15 witnesses Hart said the OPD interviewed regarding the case were the two Black men brutalized and arrested in Lakeside Park. One of the two, Hart alleged, verified Smith's story that the crowd was going to attack him.

Ironically, one of the two brothers, held in jail since the incident, was released the day of the Public Safety Committee hearing.

In addition to Rountree, who spoke on behalf of the Concerned Citizens Committee for Equitable Treatment, Dorothy Cato and Shirley Mahoney, both of whom witnessed the incident, said that at no time did the Black people in the park threaten the officers.

Ms. Cato criticized the heavy police presence in the park on the weekends, the times when Black residents of the area frequent the park in the greatest numbers.

Local Black activist Nathaniel Everett, who lives near the park, said he saw "a gang of police" in the area on August 28. He charged that "they (the police) want to stop us Black folks from being in the park."

Councilwoman Moore was critical of the police report because of its confidential nature. Under the policies of the Internal Affairs Division of the OPD, the names of witnesses cannot be revealed, nor is the report available to the public for scrutiny.

V. Hap Smith, the Black director of Oakland Parks and Recreation, explained that his office had enacted strict regulations governing use of Lakeside Park and had requested more police assistance last year due to the rising crime in the park and its heavy "traffic."

Questioned by Councilman Gilmore, Smith maintained that the regulations for Lakeside are applicable to all Oakland parks. Two speakers, however, disagreed with Smith as did several people in the audience.

Denise Duhms, speaking on behalf of Young Black Professionals, criticized the City Council for failing to implement the proposals it received from numerous community groups in 1975 concerning police brutality. At that time, a number of public hearings, organized by the East Oakland Clergy, the Black Panther Party and other groups, were held on the rising police violence in Oakland.

Councilwoman Moore said that the Public Safety Committee will study the 1975 proposals and in the future will make recommendations to the full Council concerning a citizens' police review commission.

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BLACK MOTHER IN CHICAGO: “My Children Are Just As Good As Theirs”

"My children are just as good as theirs. And I want them to have the best."

(Chicago, III.) - Such is Ms. Marlene Buckner's determination to provide her children with a quality education.

Ms. Buckner, 28, is the mother of two daughters, Michelle, 6, and Toyia, 9, both of whom participate in Chicago's voluntary transfer plan.

"Overcrowding" was the main reason Ms. Buckner wanted her children to be transferred from predominantly Black Barton Elementary School to the previously nearly all-White Stevenson Elementary School.

"Toyia's a bright student," she said. "A fifth-grader, she's a year ahead of her age. But at Barton she was able to skip three days a week of school and still be ahead."

Michelle, a first-grader, has different needs, Buckner told me, "She is a quieter child who knows the work but won't volunteer. She's the type of child you have to pull the answer out of."

With seventy-three kids in Toyia's classroom last year, Buckner said, "there was no competition. She was getting bored.

"When they came out with the transfer, Toyia asked for it, because she's the type of child that needs a challenge."

And in Michelle's case, her teacher told Ms. Buckner that "the classroom is so crowded, I can just ask the kids who know to put their hands up and I'll test them. But Michelle wouldn't volunteer anything."

"You have to ask her, "Buckner

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pointed out, "and with forty or fifty kids in the classroom, you really can't blame the teacher for not going to each child individually and testing them the way it's supposed to be."

At Stevenson, things are better. The smallest classroom holds twenty-seven and the largest thirty-one.

Toyia, Michelle, and the other Black transfer students from Barton love their new school, Buckner said. "I asked one girl what she likes about it, and she simply answered, "I'm learning.'

"That's important. They're learning, and they see it. My daughter never had social studies at Barton.

"The little boy across the street never had his own book. They shared books. One week he would get to take it home and the next week another child would get to take it home."

Toyia and Michelle had to pass through a gauntlet of anti-Black protesters during their first week in school. Now police have ordered desegregation foes across the street. But they are still picketing every morning as the transfer students get off the bus.

What did Ms. Buckner think about having her kids face these bigots?

"Toyia wanted to learn. That's the only thing I really dealt with, the educational factor," she told me. "Shes a bright child, and I'm not going to let anything hold her back.

"At Barton she was regressing instead of progressing, and I couldn't have that. I couldn't afford private school and I had no other alternative."

Ms. Buckner herself has been bused into Stevenson twice to attend PTA meetings (the school is located in an area where Black motorists have been the victims of frequent racist violence.) She knows firsthand the kind of bigots who picket outside the school.

"They are not dealing with education or Black children at all," she said.

-- 7 --

“SUICIDE” CLAIMED: Buffalo Police Murder Puerto Rican Man In Jail

(Buffalo, N.Y.) - Residents of Buffalo's predominantly Black, Puerto Rican and poor White First Ward are incensed over the recent police murder of a young Latino man, Tony Vives, following his arrest on minor charges of "creating a disturbance" and "resisting arrest."

Police claim that Vives hanged himself in his cell while confined at Buffalo's infamous Precinct 7. However, First Ward residents suspect that Vives was murdered after he had been brutally beaten by Buffalo cops.

News of the killing sparked two nights of militant protests. Angry residents took to the streets, throwing debris at cops, tossing firebombs at the police station, and spray painting Vives' name, "No. Seven are murderers," and "Pay back" all over the area.

Dozens of area residents were wearing black arm bands for several days as a sign of resistance to the brutality of the cops.

Precinct 7 has a long and notorious record of harassing this community. Everyone living here interviewed by Workers World recently spoke about cops who "will stop and push you around for no reason."

Vives was arrested by Officer Terry Adams on September 8 while relaxing with some friends on the front steps of a house at Fulton and Red Jacket Streets. Adams chased Vives into the house, and threatened, "I'll blow your brains out right now."

Officer Adams had previously been heard to tell Vives on several occasions, "I'm gonna get you," according to many of his friends.

-- 7 --

JOSE CAMPOS TORRES BEATEN, THROWN IN BAYOU: HOUSTON KILLER COPS STAND TRIAL FOR MURDER OF CHICANO

(Houston, Tex.) - Two Houston police officers are presently on trial here on murder charges for brutally beating 23-year-old Jose Campos Torres and throwing him into a river last May, causing him to drown.

Murder charges have been brought against two of the six policemen involved in the vicious killing, Officers Steven Orlando and Terry Denson.

Another officer was charged with a misdemeanor, two were granted immunity from prosecution and the sixth has agreed to testify against the two indicated officers.

Officer Carless Elliot testified that he and the others arrested Campos on a public disturbance charge and took him to a secluded area overlooking the Buffalo Bayou, a stream running through Houston.

There says Elliot, police "made a semicircle" around Campos, who was handcuffed, and "cursed and beat him."

Elliot testified that they then drove Campos to the city jail but the jail supervisor refused to admit him since he was so badly beaten. The officers were supposed to take Campos to the hospital but they instead took him back to the bayou and beat him again.

Then, Denson removed the handcuffs and said, "Let's see if this wetback can swim."

Campos was then thrown over a 16-foot embankment into the river. Campos' body was found two days later.

Elliot, a rookie, had been on the Houston police force for only two months and reported the incident to his superiors.

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would want the truth to be known.

"I couldn't stay on the police force for another 20 years living a lie."

In order for Orlando and Denson to be convicted, the prosecution must prove, in the eyes of an all-White, Huntsville, Texas (where the trial has been moved) jury, that the two officers had intent to seriously injure Campos.

One of the officers (now fired) involved in the incident, Glenn Brinkmeyer, testified that Campos was thrown into the river "to scare him a little first."

When it was obvious that Campos was sinking into the bayou, Brinkmeyer claimed that the reason he didn't attempt to rescue the Chicano himself was because "I didn't think that the officers down there would think too much of me."

Other testimony in the sensational trial revealed that Orlando and Denson had to have been fully aware that Campos would have had great difficulty swimming out of the bayou.

Tex Martin, a driver for the Harris County Sheriff's Department, described the bayou as being "black" with pollution and full of crabs, junk and a few snakes. At the end of the 16-foot retaining wall over which Campos was thrown steel cable jet up from an underwater ledge.

Also, earlier testimony has shown that Campos was intoxicated and was wearing heavy combat boots and pants when he landed in the water, making it impossible for him to swim.

-- 7 --

DEMAND FEDERAL PROBE: The Fight Goes On For Barlow-Benavidez Committee

(Oakland, Calif.) - The Barlow Benavidez Committee Against Police Crimes (BBCAPC), formed after the June 11, 1976, murder of young Jose Barlow Benavidez, is seeking support in its efforts to insure that a "thorough" federal investigation is made into the case.

Following a mailgram letter writing campaign in which 70 organizations endorsed the BBCAPC's demands for a federal probe of the Benavidez police murder, the U.S. Justice Department claimed that such an investigation would be initiated at the beginning of the past summer. However, no concrete action has as yet taken place.

Barlow Benavidez was shot in the back of the head, point blank, with a riot shotgun by Oakland rookie cop Michael Cogley.

Benavidez was stopped by Cogley as an alleged robbery suspect. While Cogley was searching Benavidez, with his shotgun jammed into the back of his neck, the weapon discharged, literally blowing the young Chicano's brains out of his head.

The Oakland Police Department claimed that the death was "accidental" and that Cogley had followed "routine procedure." However, the Chicano community and other progressive forces have consistently demanded that Cogley be prosecuted for the murder of Barlow Benavidez.

Mass protests at the Oakland police headquarters, at Oakland City Council meetings and a march

-- 8 --
and rally through the predominantly Black and Chicano East Oakland community have yet to bring justice.

The BBCAPC feels that any "thorough" investigation of Benavidez's murder should include the following points:

1.) An examination of the circumstances regarding the incident of June 11, 1976, and the credibility of conflicting evidence;

2.) Evidence related to Cogley's background, training, attitudes and fitness as a police officer, as they relate to the events of June 11, 1976;

3.) The biased response of local authorities, the continuing violation of civil rights and the necessity for federal intervention;

4.) Policies, patterns and practices of the Oakland Police Department as they relate to this case.

For more information, contact Ed Roybal, 261-3721, or Gilbert Mendoza, 261-5948, or write to the Barlow Benavidez Committee Against Police Crimes, c/o Central Legal De La Raza, 1315 Fruitvale Avenue, Oakland, California, 94601.

-- 8 --

AIM TO AID LOW AND MIDDLE INCOME FAMILIES: OAKLAND BETTER HOUSING GROUP REVITALIZES DECAYING HOMES

(Oakland, Calif.) - Throughout Black and minority communities in this country, vacant and abandoned delapidated housing stands as a stark reminder of the neglect and decay faced by the working poor. The problem is everywhere.

But here in Oakland, a nonprofit, community-based group is trying to change all that. It's name is Oakland Better Housing, Inc. (OBHI), and it's game is housing rehabilitation/renovation -- changing the eerie sounds of broken glass and creaking wood to the sound of children laughing.

Just one year after its formation through a merger of two nonprofit corporations operating similar programs -- the Oak Center Better Housing Corporation (OCBHC) and Oakland Rehab, Inc. (ORI) -- Oakland Better Housing, Inc. has emerged as a strong asset in achieving decent housing for all local residents.

GOALS

OBHI's goals are straight-forward:

(1) providing decent housing to low and moderate income families;

(2) improving minority involvement in construction trades;

(3) saving the existing housing stock;

(4) preserving the unique character of Oakland's neighborhoods; and

(5) assisting in the stabilization of communities.

Under OBHI's program, vacant and abandoned houses are acquired, rehabilitated and resold to needy families. The group is involved in virtually every phase of the process, including negotiating for purchase of the properties -- hiring construction workers; purchasing materials, arranging financing and locating families to purchase the properties.

Sale prices for OBHI homes tend to range between $20- to $35,000. By qualifying for Federal Housing Administration loans under its 235 (b) program, downpayments range from as low as three per cent to 20 per cent. Veteran Administration loans with no downpayment for those eligible and conventional loans are also investigated.

Monthly payments are determined by the sale price of the property, the interest rate, property taxes, insurance and the amount of downpayment.

A key stipulation is that buyers must live on the premises.

Working under a $500,000 revolving loan fund from the Oakland Office of Community Development, OBHI acquires vacant properties through a variety of sources.

Special emphasis is given to acquiring properties located in areas where rehabilitation and other neighborhood improvements are already in progress, or at those locations identified as particular problems by local residents.

The renovation of the homes includes painting the outside and inside, installing new plumbing and electrical wiring, roofing, new or reconditioned heating, new or refinished flooring, foundation work, landscaping, and room remodeling or additions.

Most of this work is done by Oakland residents of all levels of skills who receive on-the-job training.

All properties must get certificates of occupancy from the city of Oakland and termite clearance.

For further information, contact Oakland Better Housing, Inc., at 1027 Adeline Street, or call (415) 465-9911.

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PEOPLE'S PERSPECTIVE

Exxon
Bribes

(Washington, D.C.) - Exxon Corporation consented last week to federal charges of paying more than $56.5 million in bribes and illegal political contributions in Italy and 15 other countries and keeping a Japanese parliamentarian on its payroll. Exxon, the world's largest corporation, agreed to an injunction filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in U.S. District Court which forbids the payments to continue.

Compton Cop
Cleared

(Los Angeles, Calif.) - The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office has refused thus far to file charges against a White, off-duty Compton policeman who was arrested recently in the fatal shooting of a Black security guard. Officer Jim Perry was booked on suspicion of murder after R.E. Anderson was shot to death in his home.

Slavery In N.Y.

(New York, N.Y.) - Two White crew leaders were recently arrested and charged following an investigation which exposed farmworkers being held in slavery in upstate New York. "No one we talked to got any money," said Albert Bacharach, Jr., a member of a legal team that exposed the conditions on a farm owned by Bradley Fisher, a White man. "They all were in debt to the crew leader…if they try to leave, they send people to bring them back," Bacharach said.

Wilmington 10
Honored

(Washington, D.C.) - The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) last week paid tribute to the Wilmington 10 with an award acknowledging their "historic contribution…to the cause of justice and human rights for Blacks everywhere." The CBC conveyed the George W. Collins Award for Community Service to the incarcerated civil rights activists at their annual fundraising banquet. President Carter, who attended the CBC affair, offered no comment.

-- 9 --

ANTI-BLACK, ANTI-POOR FORCES ORGANIZING: “RADICAL RIGHT” ON THE RISE

(Washington, D.C.) - In a private dining room of the Capitol Hill Club, a Republican oasis in a Democratic preserve, a group of 30 staunch conservatives of both parties met in September to celebrate a crucial victory for which they claimed substantial credit.

Paul Weyrich, director of the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, awarded gleaming brass plaques to Republican Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada and Richard Viguerie, the movement's genius of the direct-mail campaign. Their combined efforts, exulted Weyrich, had defeated Jimmy Carter's bills for election-day registration and the public financing of senatorial elections, which would have bolstered the Democratic vote.

The plaques were inscribed with the tribute: FOR LEADERSHIP IN PRESERVING FREE ELECTIONS.

Those bronze plaques will doubtless be followed by many more accolades, for the conservatives are seeing a new day dawning.

GROWING MAJORITY

All surveys show that a growing majority of the American people consider themselves to be conservative. There clearly is continuing discontent with big government and big spending.

Beyond these basic concerns, a burst of new emotional issues are swelling conservative ranks and stirring their rhetoric. The Panama Canal treaty may be the most prominent concern of the moment, but the movement is thriving on such life-style issues as abortion, pornography, gay rights, "looting" and racism.

They claim to be the New Right, but several of the themes -- and faces -- are old.

In 1972, Richard Nixon buried his New Left opponent with the help of some of the same issues that are current today. Many of the leaders are familiar: Ronald Reagan, 67, Barry Goldwater, 68, North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, 55.

And there is a different breed of conservative coming on the scene now.

These include Laxalt, 55, and Viguerie, 44, and a group of aggressive Republicans: Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, 43; Illinois Congressman Phil Crane, 46; and California state Senator Bill Richardson, 49.

Like the liberals, the new New Right leaders dismiss past conservatives as "reactionaries." Scoffs Lyn Nofziger, a long-time Reagan aide: "The old right were talkers and pamphleteers. They would just as soon go down in flames as win. But the New Right has moved toward a more pragmatic goal of accomplishing things."

Their chief tool, in fact, is not new at all: the U.S. Postal Service. Through direct-mail bombardment, the right alerts its friends to a particular cause and adds to its converts.

In this letter-box war for American minds, the top general is Viguerie, who is considered by friend and for alike the "godfather" of the New Right.

At his office in Falls Church, Virginia, some 300 people crank out 100 million letters a year (200 million in an election year) to five million conservatives whose names are on computer tapes.

Says Viguerie: "The Left controls all communications except one: direct mail."

Often outmaneuvered by the left during the 1960's, the right has now copied the enemy's tactics. Like COPE, the political arm of the AFL-CIO, the New Right has plunged into the grass roots, ringing doorbells, phoning and passing out leaflets. Like the student left, the resurgent right has taken to the streets to demonstrate.

And they can pack a meeting. Feminists everywhere were in an uproar last summer when they found that their state caucuses for the International Women's Year were infiltrated and sometimes taken over by conservatives deriding ERA and opposing abortion.

-- 9 --

Berkeley Police Called “Racist” By Review Commission

(Berkeley, Calif.) - Berkeley's Police Review Commission, by a 4 to 1 vote, has concluded that Berkeley police personnel practices are racist following hearings on the case of Asian police officer Bob Jung, who charged that he had been unjustly dealt with in disciplinary matters.

In a series of hearings last week, Jung cited 11 instances in which he was dealt with more harshly in disciplinary matters than a White officer would have been in a similar situation. Jung's charges were supported by four other minority officers in the Berkeley Police Department.

Commissioner Walter Edwards remarked, "I think there is racism in Berkeley, and I think there is racism in the Berkeley Police Department."

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, the predominantly Black Officers for Justice continue to make progress in their four-year-old bias suit against the San Francisco Police Department.

When the suit was filed in 1973, the San Francisco city attorney's office agreed to provide the lawyers for the Officers for Justice with regular reports on the number of minority and female officers. U.S. District Judge Robert Peckham stated last week that the city attorney's office had been so uncooperative that he would name an independent auditor to asume the task.

This will be done at the city's expense, said Peckham, and other "sanctions" will be determined later.

-- 9 --

K.K.K. Infiltrates Louisville Police

(Louisville, Ky.) - While national attention has focused on Louisville, Kentucky, as the scene of often violent protests against school busing, local Blacks and others have accused the police of condoning, if not instigating, much of the violence.

Now FBI documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act have confirmed that the Louisville Police Department has become a hotbed of Ku Klux Klan activity.

According to the documents, the United Klans of America opened a new Klavern (cell) in the Louisville area early in 1976. Members in this particular Klavern had more than White sheets and racist ideology in common. FBI information indicates that the Klan unit enlisted "exclusively persons employed with local law enforcement…

"Unit reportedly was to be chartered by William Chaney, Grand Dragon, UKA Indiana Realm," the FBI report continued, "with members reportedly

-- 25 --
including officers employed by both the Louisville Division of Police (LPD) and Jefferson County Police Department."

At the end of February in 1976, two Louisville cops attended a Klan educational meeting in Kokomo, Indiana, at which Grand Dragon Chaney announced that one Louisville police officer had been promoted to Exalted Cyclops and Kleagle (recruiter) in the Klan cell, Liberation News Service reports.

The documented Klan infiltration of the police department came as no great shock to many Louisville residents. In a city where more than a quarter of the population is Black, the police force is 92.5 per cent White.

-- 10 --

OVER 1,000 OPERATIVES USED: F.B.I. ADMITS PAYING $1.7 MILLION TO S.W.P. INFORMERS

(Oakland, Calif.) - Recently released information reveals that the FBI spent $1,683,000 in cash to pay a portion of the over 1,300 people who were informers against the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA) between 1960 and 1976.

Last month the FBI revealed its payoffs to informers in answer to questions posed by the SWP and the YSA in their $40 million lawsuit against the federal police agency. This information covers only 309 informers who were used by the FBI between 1960 and 1976.

Of the 309, only eight were not paid. One operative, reports the Militant, collected $46,383.15 during a seven-year period, taking in $11,000 in one year.

All of the 309 informers were agents-provocateur -- members of the SWP and YSA between 1960 and 1976. The remaining 1,000 are suspected to be landlords, bank officials or other people who attended public meetings of the two affilated political groups. The FBI has released no information on these non-member informers.

The SWP and the YSA had demanded this information "as part of their legal offensive against the government's use of political informers," the Militant reports.

As a first step toward getting the files of all 1,300 informers, the SWP and YSA have demanded a cross-section of the informer network.

Federal Judge Thomas Griesa has ordered the FBI to show the eighteen files to the SWP attorneys, but the government has appealed this ruling.

In its attempts to avoid turning over the files, the FBI has resorted to maneuvers ranging from massive legal briefs to publicity stunts.

About a year ago, for example, the Justice Department declared its "investigation" of the SWP and the YSA over. The FBI then publicly ordered its informers out of the two socialist organizations.

Syd Stapleton, national secretary of the Political Rights Defense Fund (an organizing arm for the SWP/YSA lawsuit), comments, "At the very least, American citizens have a right to see the product of this outrageous expenditure and to examine the FBI's files for themselves. That will be a major step toward stopping this kind at attack on democratic rights."

-- 10 --

BEHIND THE WALLS

Lethallnjections
In Texas

(Huntsville, Texas) - With America's first legal execution by lethal injection scheduled to occur in Texas later this month, knowledgeable opponents of the death penalty fear that growing acceptance of the new "civilized" killing method could plunge the country back into capital punishment on its largest scale in decades.

Bills replacing electrocution with drugs were introduced last spring in several states. Governor David Boren of Oklanhoma signed the first such measure into law on May 10, and a similar law was enacted the next day in neighboring Texas. The lethal injection method may well take hold in many more states this year.

Texas has 59 convicted murderers at the Ellis Unit near Huntsville, ranking it behind Florida (87), Ohio (71) and Georgia (60) in death-row populations. It convict-built electric chair has killed 361 men since it was first plugged in 53 years ago.

Texas state Representative Ben Grant and state Senator Bill Braecklin sponsored the latest death measure. Grant calls the electric chair a "medieval torture chamber." He ascribes his interest in lethal injection to some testimony he once heard on the liquidation of unwanted pets.

Milwaukee jail
Beatings

(Milwaukee, Wisc.) - Four Black inmates and one former inmate who is Black recently charged sheriff's personnel at the Milwaukee County Jail with unprovoked beatings, and for being chained for up to two weeks in solitary confinement and forced to lie in their bodily wastes. The inmates. Frank Lowe, James Sykes, Gregory Allen and Roy Foster, and Andrew Martin, now released, made the charges in three separate letters to the Milwaukee Courier. Lowe said he was beaten by several deputies, put in "belly chains," and kept in solitary for two weeks where he had to sleep on the concrete floor. "Inmates are sometimes forced to remain locked up like that for five or 12 days at a time," Sykes revealed.

-- 10 --

“A GUN SEPARATES YOU FROM THE PEOPLE”: Unarmed Black Sheriff Respected By Alabama Community

(Eutau, Ala.) - Greene County's Black sheriff, Thomas Gilmore, through establishing close and meaningful ties in his community, is able to patrol this predominantly Black rural community without using a gun.

Gilmore, respected by Blacks and Whites alike as a preacher and long-time civil rights activist, wears no gun, badge or uniform. He is called the "Reverend Sheriff" since he preaches at two Baptist churches on alternate Sundays.

Gilmore has a strong belief in law enforcement without a gun, explaining, "Fighting fire with fire won't work. What I do is constantly make myself seen and heard -- in homes, churches and schools.

"You have to let people know," says Gilmore, "who you are. A gun would separate me from society. It's the fear of the unknown that sometimes causes people to react violently."

Gilmore was arrested twice, in 1965 and 1966, as a young civil rights activist demonstrating for quick implementation of the newly enacted Voting Rights Acts.

"I bet I'm the only sheriff," says Gilmore, "who once was locked up in his own jail."

Gilmore was first elected in 1970 when he defeated White incumbent Bill Lee (who once hit the Black sheriff with a cane during a sit-in protest) by 100 votes. His election paved the way for Black citizens to take over the county government in 1972 -- the fruits of a massive voter registration campaign.

Greene County, with a population of 13,462, has all-Black commissioners and its probate judge is Black. Five of Gilmore's six deputies are Black, including the only woman deputy.

-- 11 --

Widows Of 15 Coal Miners Killed In Explosion Lose Damage Suit: Health Care Crisis Adds To U.M.W. Woes

(Oven Fork, Ky.) - U.S. District Court Judge H. David Hermans-dorfer recently dismissed a $60 million suit against Blue Diamond Coal Company filed by the widows of 15 coal miners who were killed in a mine explosion here last year after five days of court hearings.

Attorneys for the 15 widows said they will appeal.

The case dates back to March 9, 1976, when an explosion at the Scotia mine in Oven Fork, Kentucky, killed 15 miners. Two days later, eight miners and three federal inspectors met the same fate while inspecting the scene of the first blast.

Miners and most others blamed Blue Diamond's flouting of safety laws, which allowed methane gas to accumulate in the mine.

But Blue Diamond and other Kentucky industries had prepared for just such situations by pushing through legislation some years before exempting companies from damage suits if the companies paid into the state's workmen's compensation fund.

In 1960, however, Blue Diamond had pulled a fast one that left the company at least dangling on a hook as far as the 15 widows are concerned. In order to get in on some tax breaks, but probably in the main to keep the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) out of the Scotia mine, Blue Diamond set up a separate Scotia Coal Company to run the mine.

Thereafter, the widows' suit charges, Blue Diamond acted as a

-- 25 --
sales agent for the coal Scotia mined. And Scotia paid Blue Diamond for advice on management. mine safety, and ventilation.

Because Blue Diamond was not the employer of the miners killed, it can't claim immunity from liability lawsuits. But because it did advise on safety and ventilation, it can be held responsible for the deadly explosion.

Chief attorney for Blue Diamond is Bert Combs, former governor of Kentucky and once a judge for the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Part of the evidence introduced to show Blue Diamond and Scotia were separate corporations was an October, 1960, confidential memorandum by Blue Diamond President Gordon Bonnyman. "We [Blue Diamond] will want to operate this property [Scotia] under a different corporation because of our labor contract with the UMW," Bonnyman wrote.

FEDERAL REPORT

After court recessed, Hermansdorfer said that his order to suppress a federal report on the Scotia disaster still stands.

The Mining Enforcement and Safety Administration (MESA) was about to issue its findings on the explosions last month when Blue Diamond asked Hermansdorfer to keep the report under wraps. Hermansdorfer now claims to be waiting for more information from MESA before he will consider lifting his ban.

Meanwhile, the drastic cuts in health care benefits by the UMW union which resulted in the recent 10-week wildcat strike that involved up to 85,000 miners has caused a crisis among the hundreds of thousands of miners, the poor and jobless of Appalachia who are being denied needed medical care.

In July, the United Mine Workers health and retirement fund -- presided over by three trustees, one of whom represents the coal operators -- cut off payments to union-subsidized clinics and hospitals in the impoverished Appalachian region. At the same time, the health care system's primary users -- 800,000 fund beneficiaries -- coal miners and their families, also had their medical benefits curtailed.

Coal workers' families now have to pay 40 per cent of their clinic and doctor bills up to $500 a year. The fund used to pay the whole bill.

-- 11 --

REFUSE TO END SUPPORT OF REPRESSIVE REGIMES: PROGRESSIVE SHAREHOLDER RESOLUTIONS REJECTED BY DEL MONTE

(San Francisco, Calif.) - Conservative Del Monte Corporation shareholders affirmed their support of South African apartheid and martial law in the Philippines last week by defeating three resolutions which dealt with the huge food processing company's overseas corporate police of supporting reactionary regimes.

The Northern California Interfaith Committee on Corporate Responsibility (NC-ICCCR), a coalition of 60 Protestant and Roman Catholic church-related institutional and individual investors, were responsible for raising the resolutions. All three were overwhelmingly rejected.

The resolutions were:

1) That Del Monte draft a public report on its involvement in South Africa, including corporate assets and profits, employee positions and salaries, and taxes paid to the South African government since 1965;

2) That a board be appointed to investigate company wage practices, land acquisition practices and any involvement by the company with the Philippine government, the fascist, martial regime of Ferdinand Marcos;

3) That a list of any "political bribes or other questionable payments" made by or on behalf of the corporation be made available.

Rozell (Prexy) Nesbitt of the American Committee on Africa told the gathering of 250 shareholders and corporation officers at the Fairmont Hotel here that "Del Monte, like the Carter administration, is on the cutting edge in this horrendous situation (South Africa's apartheid system)."

Nesbitt said South Africa "is becoming a high risk business investment" because of the violence caused by apartheid.

He charges that "the current $1.7 billion of U.S. direct investments in South Africa by some 400-odd U.S. Companies supports and legitimizes apartheid -- a system of slavery."

Rev. Bruno Hicks of the American Friends Service Committee and Walden Bello, a Filipino, challenged the company's land and labor policies in the Philippines, and asked for more information about them.

"Since Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law five years ago, the country has been a haven for foreign investors and a living hell for Filipinos," said Bello.

While the NC-ICCR's shareholder proposals were being discussed, several hundred demonstrators staged a protest outside the Fairmont demanding:

Del Monte end its theft of Namibian resources and its support for South African apartheid;

-- 12 --

Del Monte end its land-grabbing operation in the Philippines and its support for the Marcos dictatorship: and

Del Monte and its sexist and racist labor policies in the U.S. and provide decent wages and working conditions for all workers.

The protest was organized by the Southern Africa Solidarity Committee, the Bay Area Namibia Action Group, the Campuses United Against Apartheid, the People's Food System Organization and the People's Cultural Center.

The coalition specifically charged Del Monte with profiteering in Namibia and South Africa and having "land-grabbing" operations in not only the Philippines but throughout the Third World.

While all of the proposals were soundly defeated, it is certain that these issues will be brought up at next year's shareholder meeting.

-- 11 --

U.F.W. Setback In Major Union Election

(Delano, Calif.) - Using tactics of coercion and intimidation the owners of the huge Giumarra owners of the huge Giumarra grape ranch thwarted an attempt by the United Farmworkers (UFW) Union to unionize workers in a labor election held this week.

The final count in the very important election was 673 votes for the UFW, 900 for no union. The Giumarra family achieved this victory by openly intimidating workers and threatening to fire and evict them from ranch owned housing.

The UFW has filed over 90 charges of unfair labor practices against Giumarra with the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB). One UFW member described the blatant coercion of workers "incredible." Over 1,000 had signed UFW union cards but many were afraid to vote.

During the election there was at attempt by Giumarra to have union sympathizers deported. Raids by the Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS), "la Migra," suddenly began last month at Giumarra ranches in the Delano-Bakersfield area.

The fact that no raids were made at other ranches clearly points to a conspiracy between the INS and the Giumarra family -- the same growers who were responsible for financing the bloody field war of the 1973 strike here that left two UFW members dead, dozens badly injured and hundreds jailed.

Striker Juan de la Cruz died on Guimarra land during the strike, reports People's World, shot by a goon the Guimarra family is suspected of hiring.

In the September raid carried out by the INS, virtually every UFW supporter without documents on Guimarra's payroll was caught and carried to a deportation center. Included were most of the 150 Giumarra workers who led a march at the union convention in Freson. At the same time Guimarra foremen were spreading the lie among remaining workers that the UFW itself called the INS.

Instantly, the UFW headquarters in La Paz, California, organized a massive mailgram campaign which flooded the Washington, D.C. office of INS Director Lionel Castillo with angry messages from around the country. The following day, INS agents in central California were ordered by Castillo to release all Guimarra farmworkers.

-- 13 --

REVOLUTIONARY SUICIDE: Huey P. Newton

"Release"

In this portion of the chapter "Release" from Revolutionary Suicide Black Panther Party Founder and chief theoretician Huey P. Newton continues to describe the aftermath of his release from prison on August 5, 1970, after close to three years of false imprisonment.

Before I saw my mother, I went to a friend's house, got out of my prison clothes, and went to a news conference at Charles Garry's office. The news conference was unusual. Because it included a lot of movement people I had come to like over the months in jail, it was anything but the kind of cool encounter I usually have with the regular news media.

A question would come at me, and when I started to answer I would suddenly realize that this was a person I wanted to rap with personally. This happened over and over again with people there that day. Some of the Establishment press came, but it was 90 per cent underground press. At this press conference I offered Black Panther troops to the National Liberation Front of the People's Republic of Vietnam.

NEWS CONFERENCE

When we left the news conference, I went to the hospital to see my mother. It was a joyous reunion. Later, when my father and I met, he was deeply moved, and wept. He told me he had not expected to live long enough to see me freed from prison.

During the first few days out of jail, I wondered when reality would come again -- in relation to myself, to the world around me, to all that was happening to me. I had literally forgotten how to live outside.

I had to develop all over again my old reflex actions to avoid being startled or puzzled by certain phenomena. People who have never served time in prison do not realize that a large percentage of their behavior is a conditioned response involving no reasoning process. They instinctively react in the right way because they are used to the familiar patterns in their lives. Social stimuli and social forces do not baffle them.

Cut off from all this for a few years, life around me at first seemed jerky and out of synchronization. All the sounds, movements and colors coming on simultaneously -- television, telephone, radio, people talking, coming and going, doorbells and phones ringing -- were dizzying at first. Ordinary life seemed hectic and chaotic, and quite overwhelming. I even had to figure out what to eat and what time I was going to bed. In prison, all this had been decided for me.

Walking through the streets was an indescribable experience, the closest I have ever felt to being truly free, with people walking by, recognizing me, and waving. I went everywhere, visiting people in the community, to the surprise of many who never expected to see me on the street, only on television or maybe in Hollywood after I was released.

But I was determined to get back among them. I walked in Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond and San Francisco. I went to Seventh Street, Sacramento Avenue, Potrero Hill, Hunter's Point, Richmond, North Richmond, West Oakland, Peralta Street, Cypress Street, East Oakland, and Parchester Village. I visited several bars, where I had done a lot of recruiting. And everywhere I got the same reaction: people wondered why I had come back to them. I explained that neither news reporters nor television cameras had got me out of prison: the people had freed me, and I had come back to thank them and be with them.

At Father Earl Neil's church, St. Augustine's, I talked to members of his congregation. That, too, was a warm experience. Father Neil is a young Black Episcopal priest who has worked with the Black community and the Party since coming to Oakland. We consider him our chaplain. He was involved in civil rights in Mississippi in the early 1960's, and he knows all about brutality and violence. During my trial he came often to the courtroom to lend his support.

Although people received me warmly, I was at first a symbol; Our relationship had changed. There was now an element of hero worship that had not existed before I got busted. But I wanted our rapport to get back to where it was before I went to jail, that is a relationship based on face-to-face communication between people working together for survival.

I think their faith and trust in me was restored, although perhaps it will never be the same again: the earlier close family tie has been enlarged by an image of me created through publicity an the media. So much had been written, so much said, that I was distanced from them; there was a slight estrangement. It would be overcome.

All this time I was under immense pressure to give interviews, to fill speaking engagements, to appear on talk shows and television programs, but I accepted none of these for about six months. I even received a brochure from some Hollywood outfit.

It contained newspaper clippings about me and a letter saying, "You're star quality," or something like that, which would have been amusing had it not been such an overt capitalist attempt to co-opt the revolution. Too many so-called leaders of the movement have been made into celebrities and their revolutionary fervor destroyed by mass media. They become Hollywood objects and lose identification with the real issues. The task is to transform society; only the people can do that -- not heroes, not celebrities, not stars.

A star's place is in Hollywood; the revolutionary's place is in the community with the people. A studio is a place where fiction is made, but the Black Panther Party is out to create nonfiction. We are making revolution.

TO BE CONTINUED

-- 14 --

“Insane”: CONGRESS PASSES N-BOMB FUNDS

(Washington, D.C.) - By a 297 to 109 vote, the U.S. House of Representatives last week voted to approve funds for research and development of the nightmarish neutron bomb, the nuclear weapon which kills people but leaves buildings intact.

The House vote, taken after two days of emotional debate, supported the Carter administration position and defeated an amendment authored by New York Representative Theodore Weiss baring funds for the N-bomb production. The N-bomb funds, estimated at around $43.4 million, came as part of $2.67 billion legislative package for nuclear research programs of the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), whose 1977-78 funding year began October 1.

President Carter urged Congress to approve funds for continued development, but has delayed announcing his decision on whether to produce and deeply the "clean" nuclear weapon.

House opponents of the "enhanced radiation weapon" argued to no avail that the N-bomb warhead's precision -- producing less blast, less heat, less fallout, but higher emission of steel-penetrating radioactive neutrons -- invited use.

"Since the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the use of nuclear weapons has been regarded as the last resort. The neutron bomb changes all that. It is ballyhooed as a weapon that can be used in a limited war. This kind of thinking drops the threshold point for nuclear weapons from a `last resort' situation to a tactical, field situation," Weiss argued.

In an emotional statement, Bay Area Congressman Ron Dellums said he sat listening to the debate "with my heart palpitating…If we go forward with this insanity, we make nuclear war thinkable, acceptable, possible and inevitable."

For Representative Elizabeth Holtzman, her voice rising: "The argument isn't whether this is better or worse than what we have, but why are we recommitting ourselves to a policy of nuclear holocaust."

Other opponents spoke grimly of the "inhumanness" of death from neutron radiation, slow and painful.

According to Army documents revealed by the Washington Post this spring, a one kiloton N-bomb will yields 8,000 rods of deadly neutron radiation at the target site:

"Personnel will become incapacitated within five minutes of exposure and for physically demanding tasks will remain incapacitated until death…in one or two days."

At one-half of a mile away, the neutron radiation yield will drop to 3,000 rads. Persons will become incapacitated and remain so for 30 to 45 minutes: "Personnel will then recover but will be functionally impaired until death…in four to six days.

At three-fourths of a mile away, neutron radiation drops to 650 rods, with functional impairment within two hours: "Personnel may respond to medical treatment and survive the dose; however, the majority of exposed personnel will remain functionally impaired until death…in several weeks."

Proponents of the N-bomb argued that property damage would be minimized and that U.S. troops could move into the N-bomb area within hours, instead of months.

In a related move, the House Appropriations Committee refused to cut $463.4 million from the Pentagon's budget for the construction of six B-1 bombers. The 34 to 21 vote rejected President Carter's proposal to eliminate funds for the controversial plane.

-- 14 --

Hayakawa Insults Blacks

(San Diego, Calif.) - In a racist speech given here last week at the state Republican convention, right-wing California Senator S.I. Hayakawa boldly claimed that there is a permanent class of Black people "who are dependent on somebody else for their welfare and livelihood."

In his speech Hayakawa charged, "Liberal Whites and, I am sorry to say, a majority of Black politicians, are destroying the Black people by creating a state in them of permanent dependency.

"A coalition of White opportunist and Black opportunists, " said Hayakawa, is responsible for the perpetuation of a "permanent class of Blacks who are dependent on somebody else for their welfare and livelihood."

According to the arch-conservative California senators, other minority groups "didn't have special programs, but they started at the bottom of the ladder. But there isn't anything at the bottom of the ladder now -- nothing except welfare -- and that is what destroyed them (Black people)."

Hayakawa's insulting speech was well-received by an audience of 1,000 delegates, nearly all of whom were Whites. Ironically, Hayakawa was calling for greater participation in the Republican Party by what he called "the great Black middle class."

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., the Senate Finance Committee voted last week to let states force welfare recipients to work off their benefits at special jobs -- paying below the federal minimum wage in many cases.

The provision, strongly opposed by welfare rights groups, was part of a package of welfare law changes sent to the Senate floor by an 8 to 3 vote of the Committee, chaired by arch-conservative Senator Russell B. Long of Louisiana.

The provision passed by the Finance Committee is reportedly a longstanding pet project of the group and applies only to those in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program.

Under the plan, a state welfare agency could require adults receiving AFDC benefits to work off the payments at the locally-prevailing wage for work such as clean-up, yard tasks or other unskilled labor, or at the state minimum wage, whichever is higher.

In many areas, both the "prevailing wage" and the state minimum are lower than the federal minimum wage.

Refusal to take the often degrading jobs would result in a cutoff or lowering of AFDC benefit payments.

-- 15 --

S.W.A.P.O.'s NUJOMA OUTLINES STRUGGLE IN NAMIBIA

In the following exclusive interview by Guardian correspondent Sara Rodriques in Angola, SWAPO President Sam Nujoma discusses the development of the Namibian struggle over the past decade.

Q: When the South-West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) launched the armed struggle on August 26, 1966, the situation was very different from what it is now. Portugal still ruled Angola, imperialism still had a free hand in southern Africa. What have been the main phases in the struggle for national liberation?

NUJOMA: The formation of SWAPO in 1960 as a vanguard movement was dictated by the absolute need to accord the anticolonial struggle of our people a unified political expression and a clearly defined goal to achieve. Colonialism had been firmly entrenched in the entire subcontinent so the founders of SWAPO strove to create an alternative political force capable of withstanding all sorts of attacks by providing the masses, the working class and the peasantry in particular, with revolutionary political orientation, thereby preparing favorable conditions for the following phase.

In pursuit of this strategy, the first six years were largely devoted to the political mobilization process of the broadest sector of our oppressed people, whose solid unity of purpose constitutes today a formidable wall of resistance against colonialism and racism in our country. Since 1966 the Namibian people have waged a bitter and protracted armed struggle to end the armed occupation of our country by racist South Africa and achieve genuine national independence. Armed struggle is an advanced form of political battle, and it is being spearheaded by the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) with.

We have scored many victories of both strategic and tactical importance against the heavily armed South African occupation army support from the overwhelming majority of our people in Namibia. Apart from the thousands of enemy soldiers and their mercenary allies from Europe and North America put out of action, we have captured large quantities of weapons and destroyed military bases and posts in the eastern, northern, northeastern and north-western zones of Namibia. SWAPO now has large some-liberated areas in the northeastern part of our country where units of PLAN are carrying out semi-administrative functions.

As a direct response to PLAN's mounting action, the enemy has deployed more than 50,000 troops around the country resulting in constantly increasing military appropriations bills. Then there is the South African racist strategy of moving people from their living areas of deny SWAPO guerillas access to the people. We have mined all the roads in the northeastern area and they cannot enter this area now, even on foot; they have to move in helicopters. They are arriving in helicopters and forcing the people into them and removing them by air. In April and May this year those operations were intensified. A lot of brutality is going on as these people they forcible remove are then taken to concentration camps.

-- 15 --

TALKS WITH WESTERN NATIONS BREAK DOWN: South Africa Refuses To Withdraw Troops From Namibia

(Pretoria, South Africa) - High-level talks on the future of Namibia (South West Africa) broke down here recently as the South African government and representatives of five Western nations clashed over the issue of withdrawal of South African troops from the illegally ruled territory.

Talks between the South African delegation, headed by "Prime Minister" John Vorster, and the five Western nation members of the United Nations Security Council -- Great Britain, France, West Germany, Canada and the U.S. -- ended abruptly after a two and one-half hour morning session on September 22. None of the delegates on either side, who held separate talks in the afternoon, would comment on the session, but informed sources said that breakdown indicated a serious disagreement had developed, Reuters reports.

The White apartheid regime and the Western delegates have held several rounds of talks over the past months in an effort to agree on a plan for bringing Black majority rule to Namibia, which South Africa continues to rule in violation of numerous U.N. resolutions.

An informed source said that the major item on last Friday's agenda was the continued presence of thousands of South African troops in Namibia. The Western nations favor a phased withdrawal of South African troops and the introduction of a U.N. Peacekeeping force. The Vorster regime, however, has maintained Namibia is necessary to protect the White settler population prior to the election establishing Black majority rule.

The South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO), which is leading the armed struggle against the White minority government in Namibia, in a recent meeting with the Western delegates reaffirmed its demand that South African troops completely withdraw from Namibia before elections.

At previous meetings between South Africa and the Western delegates, it was agreed that an administrator-general would be appointed for Namibia -- which has been denounced by SWAPO -- and that the territory would become independent no later than December, 1978.

In announcing recently that there will be an "electing" in South Africa in November, (see last week's BLACK PANTHER), Vorster said that the new 171-seat parliament will exclude the six White deputies from Namibia for the first time since 1950.

Meanwhile, the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), the armed forces of SWAPO, announced recently that they wiped out over 800 enemy troops during the first half of this year.

A SWAPO war communique issued from Dares Salaam, Tanzania, said that PLAN guerrillas destroyed over 90 enemy vehicles, shot down or destroyed on the ground 30 enemy aircraft and captured large quantities of war equipment.

-- 16 --

THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY PROGRAM: MARCH 29, 1972 PLATFORM: WHAT WE WANT, WHAT WE BELIEVE

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

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

2. WE WANT FULL EMPLOYMENT FOR OUR PEOPLE.

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

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

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

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

We believe that if the landlords will not give decent housing to our Black and oppressed communities, then 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 OPPRESSED PEOPLE NOW HELD IN U.S. FEDERAL, STATE, COUNTY, CITY AND MILITARY PRISONS AND JAILS. WE WANT TRIALS BY A JURY OF PEERS FOR ALL PERSONS CHARGED WITH SO-CALLED CRIMES UNDER THE LAWS OF THIS COUNTRY.

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

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

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unallenable 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, when ever 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 translent 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: U.N.I.T.A. And South Africa Mobilize Against People's Angola

(Luanda, Angola) - Who wants to "destablize" Angola? With the liberation forces gaining ground throughout southern Africa, there are more reasons for imperialism to move against Angola today than ever before.

And now, in the original target period for the West's "Operation Cobra" plan to overthrow the progressive MPLA-led government, a new attack is being mounted. At the center of this drive is the defeated UNITA-South Africa alliance -- with powerful backing from the West, Guardian correspondent Sara Rodrigues reports.

The goal is to destroy both Angola and the Namibian fighters of the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO), while artificially prolonging the life of the moribund Ian Smith regime in Rhodesia. This done, imperialism's African kingpin -- South Africa -- would be given the time and territory it needs to insure survival.

The effort to dismantle the revolutionary base area Angola provides in the region is being intensified as the military and

-- 24 --
political situation deteriorates for the racist minority regimes.

UNITA, the Angolan "liberation group" which last year joined with South Africa and the CIA-sponsored FNLA in an attempt to take over the Luanda government, is once again being brought to center stage.

UNITA, led by Jonas Savimbi, retreated from Angola to sanctuary at South African army bases in neighboring Nambiia.

Since the beginning of the year, UNITA has been staging terror raids against the civilian population and committing economic sabotage in southern Angola. The campaign, also directed against SWAPO rear bases inside Angola, is being carried out with South African weapons, training and "advisers" -- aid openly acknowledged by UNITA leaders.

And now, Savimbi is moving to set up a Pretoria-backed secessionist "state" in southern Angola -- the "Black and African Socialist Republic of Angola."

The idea is simple, and dates back to South Africa's stated "minimum option" during its 1975-76 invasion of Angola. The immediate aim is to create a buffer state between free Angola and South African-occupied Namibia.

-- 17 --

SECRET HANGINGS CONTINUE: SMITH REGIME EXECUTES BLACK RHODESIAN ACTIVISTS

(London, England) - At least 11 Zimbabwean (Black Rhodesian) political activists, including two leading officials of the African National Council of Zimbabwe (ANC/Z), have been secretly executed by the Rhodesian government since the beginning of July, reports Focus on Political Repression in Southern Africa.

Robert Bhebe, a deputy provincial secretary of ANC(Z), which is an affiliate of the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), was hanged by the Ian Smith regime on July 13. A month later, on August 12, Painos Zehama, the group's central provincial organizing secretary, was hanged, also in secret.

With the exception of the public announcement in January of this year of the hanging of eight supporters of Bishop Abel Muzorewa, the Smith regime's confirmation of Bhebe's execution was the first time it had officially confirmed an execution since April, 1975.

Bhebe, who was in Umtali at the time of his arrest and trial, had a long history of involvement in the nationalist cause. He spent several years in detention, including a period of 17 months in solitary confinement at the Buffalo Range prison camp in the early 1970's. He is believed to have suffered interrogation and torture.

At the end of 1974, Bhebe was released by the regime to take part in talks in Lusaka, along with other nationalists. He subsequently moved to Umtali with his family to start a pig and poultry co-operative farm. On March 10, 1977, he was sentenced to death by a Special Court in Umtali on conviction of recruiting or encouraging others to go for guerrilla training.

According to the evidence before the court, Bhebe had directed four people from Inyazura to the ANC(Z) office in Bulawayo, from where they would be sent on to Botswana.

His appeal was dismissed by the chief justice, Hector Macdonald, in June. A petition for clemency to the Smith regime's president, John Wrathall, was also turned down.

Subsequent attempts to save Robert Bhebe's life included a request from Shridath Ramphal, the Commonwealth secretary-general, to the International Committee of the Red Cross to "use its good offices" to prevent "the clandestine execution of Zimbabwean nationalists by the illegal regime."

On Wednesday morning, July 13, however, relatives of Bhebe were informed when they arrived at Salisbury prison to visit him that he had already been hanged. The execution was confirmed on July 15 by the regime's secretary for the "Ministry of Justice," M.F. Garnett.

It is believed that two other activists were hanged together with Bhebe, although the regime refused to confirm this.

Zehama was a full-time employee

-- 24 --
at the ANC(Z) office in Highfield, Salisbury. He was sentenced to death by the High Court in Salisbury on April 26, 1977, on conviction of recruiting for guerrilla training. His appeal was dismissed in July by Chief Justice Macdonald, and as in Bhebe's case, an unsuccessful petition for mercy was addressed to the Rhodesian president.

On August 12, 1977, the London office of ZAPU received news by telephone from Salisbury that Zehama and seven other Zimbabweans had been hanged the previous day. As far as is known there has been no official confirmation by the government.

Since April 21, 1975, the date on which the Smith regime ceased issuing formal announcements of hangings, 96 people are known to have been sentenced to death on charges under the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act. A further eight people were sentenced to death in the weeks immediately preceding April 21, 1975, but no report of their execution had appeared by that date.

Of this total of 104 people, only six are known to have been successful on appeal in having their sentences commuted to life imprisonment or less.

Appeals have been dismissed in the cases of Isaac Mabika, Jameson Kasili, Rabson Mushonja and Talphanos Moyo, while Kunemoto Mafurere, an 18-year-old youth, had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment.

-- 18 --

BANTU EDUCATION SYSTEM UNDER ATTACK: AZANIAN STUDENTS INTENSIFY STRUGGLE AGAINST APARTHEID

(Johannesburg, South Africa) - The two-month-old school boycott launched by Azanian (Black South African) youth in urban areas throughout the country has become the basis for a massive Black uprising against the White apartheid regime of South Africa.

The battle lines are firmly drawn. Day after day, armored police trucks rumble along the dusty streets of the vast Black "township" of Soweto outside Johannesburg. Students, led by the Soweto Students Representative Council (SSRC), pelt the police with rocks. The police retaliate with tear gas and birdshot.

At least 20 Anzanian youth have died during demonstrations in a protest that appears to be without end, writes Paul Iredale for Reuters.

But like last year, when hundreds of Azanians died in a week of bloody clashes in Soweto, for every one student that falls there seem to be 10 to take his or her place.

Last year the specific protest was about the use of Afrikaans, the language of 60 per cent of White South Africans, as a medium of instruction for Blacks. This year it is about the whole system of Black, or Bantu, education.

Student leaders in Soweto have called for a total boycott of classes until the second-class system of Bantu education, with per student cost of less than one-tenth of the money spent on White education, is abolished.

Recently, police and administrators have replied by taking over the administration of Soweto schools and taking a tough line with student agitators. The threats, however, have had no effect on the 27,000 students in Soweto's 42 secondary schools.

The objections to Bantu education are clearly justified. Although the government has repeatedly said that the Black and White educational systems are equal, what this means is that all students, regardless of color, have to take the same exams at the end of their school career.

The Department of Bantu Education, the government body that controls teaching of young Azanians, has been forced to admit that there are some startling discrepancies between the Black and White systems.

According to G.J. Rousseau, the top civil servant in the Department, the average annual per capita spending on a Black student is about $52. This compares with the amount the government spends on each White student -- about $520 a year.

The teacher-pupil ratio, too, varies markedly between the races. For Whites it is estimated to be about one to 20, while for Blacks it is around one to 49.

The Department of Bantu Education alleges that it is limited by the amount of funds the central government of "Prime Minister" John Vorster is prepared to allocate to teaching Blacks. It maintains that the quality of education it can provide for young Blacks is also restricted by the number and standard of Black teachers in South Africa.

-- 22 --

In general, the White apartheid regime turns out Black teachers who are less qualified than Whites because they receive an inferior education. Many barely have minimum teaching qualifications. With some 250,000 new pupils coming into the Azanian educational system in South Africa every year, there just are not enough teachers to go around.

Black students argue that Bantu education is modeled on the system of the late "Prime Minister" Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd, who said of the old, multiracial education policy:

"By blindly producing pupils trained on a European model, the vain hope was created among `natives' that they could occupy posts within the European community despite the system of apartheid."

The students say the "education for domestication" he then produced is still the cornerstone of Bantu education. Black students also object to the fact that the age at which children can be admitted to school is five for a White child and seven for a Black child.

Silkie Kambule, Black principal of Soweto's Orlando High School, whose students are in the vanguard of the present protest, says the government will not meet the students' demands to abolish Bantu education.

"It touches at the very core of our system. The establishment's remote fears are that if Bantu education, which has a complete ministry, can be scrapped, then the repercussions will be serious. One breakthrough can crack the whole structure," he said.

Kambule's school, where young Azanians are taught from the ages of about 12 to 19, is meant to have 900 students. During the past few weeks, only about 20 per cent of them have been turning up.

Each of the secondary schools in Soweto elects two representatives to the SSRC and it is this body that is most influential in the Soweto population of over one million.

It is not only in the field of education that the SSRC controls Soweto. Recently, the body instructed Blacks in the "township" not to pay rent increases authorized by the White authorities. The increases remain unpaid.

Meanwhile, compromise seems more and more unlikely. Even the more liberal members of the ruling National Party are more outspoken than ever in their determination to crush the unrest with force.

The problem, however, will not go away. Behind the 27,000 pupils at secondary schools in Soweto, there are 145,000 more in junior schools in the "township."

-- 18 --

AFRICA IN FOCUS

United States

(Pittsburgh, Pa.) - Carnegie-Mellon University here is training 25 Rhodesians, 19 of them Black, in a one-year graduate program in Urban and Public Affairs, the New York Times reported last week. The students have each signed a pledge to return to Rhodesia and make their skills available to the Black majority government that is expected to take control next year. The $100,000 program has close ties to U.S. big business as it was conceived by E.F. Andrews, a vice-president of the Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Ludlum Industries, Inc., whose steel division produces stainless steel heavily dependent on Rhodesian chromium. Andrews, who has traveled frequently to Rhodesia, is typical of the American businessmen who wish to retain U.S. influence in Rhodesia after Black majority rule is established. In June of this year, Otto Davis, dean of the Carnegie-Mellon University Graduate School of Urban and Public Affairs, presented a proposal at a meeting in New York to 15 unnamed potential contributors who sought assurance that the University would train Rhodesians qualified to return to the breakaway British colony and enter government service. The students take such courses as economics, cost benefit analysis, accounting and management and information systems.

Kenya

(Nairobi, Kenya) - The Kenyan government recently opened a new $1.1 million complex for research on early man in Africa. The three-story center, containing laboratories, offices and fossil storage facilities, is called the International Louis Leakey Memorial Institute for African Prehistory. The creation of the Institute is expected to provide a boost for scientific studies of the evolution of the human species, especially in East Africa, widely regarded by archeologists as the birthplace of humankind. It was in East Africa where the late Dr. Leakey made numerous fossil and stone-tool discoveries of ancient civilizations.

-- 18 --

Missing Division Label

"WHEREVER DEATH MAY SURPRISE US, LET IT BE WELCOME PROVIDED THAT THIS, OUR BATTLE CRY, REACHES ONE RECEPTIVE EAR, THAT ANOTHER HAND REACHES OUT TO TAKE UP OUR ARMS, AND OTHER MEN COME FORWARD TO INTONE OUR FUNERAL DIRGE WITH THE STACATTO OF MACHINE GUNS AND NEW CRIES FOR BATTLE AND FOR VICTORY."

-- CHE

On October 8, "The Day of The Heroic Guerrilla," the Black Panther Party joins with the world's people in commemorating the life and memory of ERNESTO "CHE" GUEVARA, a true intercommunal revolutionary.

Venceremos

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BLACK “GUERRILLA” KILLED IN SOWETO: STEVE BIKO'S FAMILY PLANS TO SUE SOUTH AFRICAN POLICE

(Johannesburg, South Africa) - The family of Steve Biko said last week that it may sue the security police and "Justice Minister" James Kruger after the autopsy report of the murdered Azanian leader is made public.

Meanwhile, South African police shot and killed a Soweto man whom they described as a "guerrilla" and a Black youth in Dimbaza "township" outside King William's Town, where over 20,000 people attended Biko's funeral on Sunday, September 25.

According to the source, Biko, the 30-year-old founder of the Black Consciousness Movement who was murdered on September 12 while in detention, had suffered three broken ribs before his death. He also had several lesions on his body, the source said, who explained that a blow on the left side of Biko's skull caused the fatal brain hemorrhage.

An independent neurosurgeon and other specialists are studying slides of Biko's brain cells, the source said. The autopsy report is being written by the state pathologist. A pathologist for the Biko family who attended the autopsy will check and duplicate the state's report.

Meanwhile, the whereabouts of Peter Jones, the friend with whom Biko was driving when he was arrested on August 18, are being sought. Jones, like Biko, was arrested under the apartheid state's "Suppression of Terrorism" laws. It is presumed that if he is still alive, he is being held incommunicado.

The last mention of Jones, a top aide to Biko, came from Kruger, who said police "finished questioning the other person (Jones) on September 5 and began interrogating Biko."

On September 26, the day after Biko's funeral, shooting broke out in Soweto before dawn when police surrounded a home after receiving a tip about alleged "terrorist activities."

An unidentified Black man inside the house opened fire with an automatic weapon, police said, injuring a police major in the shoulder and hip and slightly wounding a constable. Police returned the fire and killed the man, whom they said was a trained guerrilla armed with a Czech machine gun and a Soviet

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machine pistol.

Five hundred miles away to the south in Dimbaza "township," near Biko's home, a crowd of Black youth burned down the offices of the Bantu administration board that runs the "township," stoned buildings and overturned a police truck.

A police official said that when the youth tried to set fire to a factory, his men "were forced to open fire on the mob." One unidentified youth was killed.

In the aftermath of Biko's death, Black protest against the brutal apartheid system continues to mount. "No one person has had so much influence on the course of events in South Africa during the last eight years as Steven Biko," reports the Guardian.

Like Amilcar Cabral, the assassinated founder of Mozambique's FRELIMO, Biko "understood the structural economic basis of racial and colonial oppression and other forms of exploitation," the newspaper said. In 1970, Biko said:

"…the Black people of the world, in choosing to reject the legacy of colonialism and White domination…have at last established a solid basis for meaningful cooperation among themselves in the larger battle of the Third World against the rich nations."

In a statement made in January, 1971, Biko, founder of the South African Students Organization (SASO) and the Black People's Convention (BPC), pinpointed one of the key issues in the Azanian liberation struggle:

"It has never occurred to the liberals that the integration they insisted upon as an effective way of opposing apartheid was impossible to achieve in South Africa. One has to overhaul the whole system before hoping to get Black and White walking hand in hand to oppose a common enemy."

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MUGABE INTERVIEW: Z.A.N.U. Secretary -- General Pushes Single Army For Patriotic Front

During his recent two-month trip to Africa, Steve Talbot interviewed Robert Mugabe, coleader of the Patriotic Front, the main nationalist alliance in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia). Mugabe, 51, a Marxist with six college degrees, is also the secretary-general of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), the Mozambique-based guerrilla group.

(Dar es Salaam, Tanzania) - Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo, the leaders of the two guerrilla armies fighting Rhodesia's White-minority regime, met in Mozambique in September to discuss unification of their armies. Earlier this summer, Mugabe said, "If we make this attempt at unity and it fails, we fail the people of Zimbabwe."

In an interview in Tanzania Mugabe emphasized that his goal is an "absolute merger" of ZANU with Nkomo's ZAPU forces.

Long-time rivals, ZANU and ZAPU formed a tactical alliance last October to participate in the British-sponsored Geneva conference on Rhodesia. Skeptics predicted the uneasy alliance -- the Patriotic Front -- would soon fall apart.

On the contrary, ZANU and ZAPU have managed to maintain their political alliance and have won the endorsement of the Organization of African Unity as the sole legitimate liberation movement in Zimbabwe.

Mugabe said ZANU and ZAPU are attempting to reconstitute the

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Zimbabwe People's Army (ZIPA) -- a force put together nearly two years ago by ZANU and ZAPU commanders but splintered early last year by factional fighting. ZANU guerrillas are currently based in Mozambique, while ZAPU forces are in Zambia.

"We realized that operating from two different camps has created certain difficulties," Mugabe acknowledged. The process of integrating our forces may not be as easy as some people imagine. That is why we want thorough preparation for the merger."

The first step, Mugabe said, was to establish a subcommittee of the Patriotic Front to examine all aspects of forming a combined guerrilla army.

That step was taken last January when ZANU and ZAPU signed a unity agreement in Mozambique. (Several days later, the ZAPU representative who signed the agreement, Jason Moyo, was assassinated by a letter bomb. Moyo, was a longtime advocate of ZAPU-ZANU unity. Patriotic Front leaders blamed Rhodesian agents for the killing.)

Asked if there were any continuing ideological differences that might undermine ZANU-ZAPU unity, Mugabe replied.

"No. We have both agreed that socialism is the system that we shall be pursuing once our country is independent. And we are agreed that our common enemy just now is imperialism and colonialism. We must demolish the present system in Rhodesia -- a system of exploitation and racism -- and create a national, democratic state. All forces in Zimbabwe that agree with this must be united at this stage, regardless of their other differences."

One issue that has divided ZAPU and ZANU in the past is the Sino-Soviet split. Joshua Nkomo and ZAPU received backing from the Soviet Union. (Nkomo at times has also had the support of the United States.) ZANU was once strongly identified with China. However, ZANU has moved away from Peking since the Chinese sided with the U.S. and South Africa against the leftist MPLA in Angola.

"We do not want to be confused by the conflict between other people," Mugabe stated. "The Sino-Soviet dispute must not be imported into our relations, the relations between ZANU