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-- GEORGE -- JACKSON: LIVES!

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DEDICATION

This issue of the Black Panther Intercommunal News Service is devoted to our Comrade, Field Marshal of the Black Panther Party, George Jackson, who fell August 21, 1971, in a revolutionary, heroic manner. The ideas and direction, the love he gave to our Party, to our lives strengthened us and guided us in our task to serve the interests of our Black people, of all oppressed peoples. He cannot be replaced; and there is no price the oppressor can or will pay that will justify his death. For his genius, his untiring love for the People, his unending commitment to our freedom, his beauty were very special, indeed. His life is gone; his burden is lifted. But, we who are left to struggle shall take the ideas he gave, forge them into the mighty weapon of the People and overcome all obstacles to win our freedom and liberation. It is through this organ that those ideas can be expressed, and for this reason we dedicate this entire issue of our Party's news organ to our beloved Comrade and Brother, George Jackson.

ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE

"If I leave here alive, I'll leave nothing behind. They'll never count me among the broken men, but I can't say that I'm normal either. I've been hungry too long, I've gone angry too often. I've been lied to and insulted too many times. They've pushed me over the the line from which there can be no retreat. I know that they will not be satisfied until they've pushed me out of existence altogether. I've been the victim of so many racist attacks that I could never relax again…I can still smile now, after ten years of blocking knife thrusts, and the pick handles of faceless sadistic pigs, of anticipating and reacting for ten years, seven of them in solitary. I can still smile sometimes, but by the time this thing is over I may not be a nice person. And I just lit my seventy-seventh cigarette of this twenty-one-hour day. I'm going to lay down for two or three hours, perhaps I'll sleep…

From Dachau, with love,

George"

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REVOLUTIONARY MEMORIAL SERVICES FOR GEORGE JACKSON, FIELD MARSHAL, BLACK PANTHER PARTY

TO BE HELD AT ST. AUGUSTINE'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH
27TH AND WEST STREETS
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA

11:00 AM - SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 1971
"If we must die let it not be like hogs,

hunted and pinned in an inglorious spot,

while around us bark the mad and hungry dogs

making their mock at our accursed lot;

If we must die then let us nobly die,

so that our precious blood may not be shed in vain.

Then even the monsters we defy

shall be constrained

to honor us though dead.
We kinsmen must meet the common foe,

though for outnumbered, let us show us brave,

and for their thousand blows,

deal one death blow.

What though before us lies the open grave,

like men we'll face the murderous pack,

pressed to the wall, dying,

but fighting back.

-Claude McKay

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GEORGE JACKSON: P.S. ON ULYSSES

Comrade Ulysses McDaniel, prison camp number A-64486, was captured at about the same time that they captured me. He was thrown into the State's prison a bare two months after my own imprisonment. My number is A-63837. In other words, 649 other numbers, representing people, passed between us. Most of them were Black; all were working or lumpen class. I was counting and asking questions then also. Our numbers were stamped on us in the early months of 1960, eleven years ago. Like myself, he has never seen the night sky since.

When I left Chino Reception Center for Soledad, Ulysses was leaving for San Quentin. He entered San Quentin on the tail end of one of the largest administration-provoked race wars of the decade. Eleven men died in eleven days. Shortly after the man-hunt, attrition-type war that goes on "all the time" inside these places, there was an uneasy period of calm in which all sides carefully mobilized a mass basis for defensive and retaliatory violence: the Blacks against the white cons; the Black and white guards; the Mexicans, who then identified with the white cons, because they out-numbered us and made regular canteen draws. The flash-point was reached in early 1961. Several dozen right-wing shock troops moved against the ten or twelve Blacks who dared to come out of their cells after the word was passed that no niggers would be allowed on the prison yard that day.

The opposing forces met on the lower yard, where the guards would have to take longer shots and risk hitting a white inmate. The brothers knew who the guards would be shooting at and they reasoned that if they closed fast, stayed in the middle of things, the most they had to worry about was being outnumbered on the ground. The Blacks went immediately to the lower yard and made preparations. If the fascists wanted to carry out their threat, they had to go to the lower yard. In other words the guerrillas drew them to grounds favorable to neither side. The unrighteous came with knives and pieces of plumbing pipe; the guards pretended not to be aware of what was going on, but casually cleared out of range of any fire that would come from the gun walks and towers. Each Black had secretly checked out a baseball bat and concealed it nearby. When the fight ended, one "Hitler's Helper" was goose-stepping in that big pig-pen in the sky and a couple of dozen others were in desperate need of extensive medical treatment. "Patches" of hair were found all over the baseball diamond.

Comrade Ulysses and several other brothers were put in the hole. That was ten years ago. Since then, Comrade Ulysses has spent only several months out of the hole, or maximum security wings of the prison system.

Ironic in the case of Ulysses McDaniel is that he entered prison with a term of from one year to five years. In fact, he was doing no more than a 5-year term. Ordinarily a prisoner with such a term does 18 months in, and three and a half years on parole. But…

In 1963 (the year after I was rushed to San Quentin from Soledad as a result of another battle in protracted war), Captain Hacker and the prison's staff of Right Wing Lieutenants set up and assassinated a brother named Booker, with three accidental rifle shot wounds in the back. The rifle that killed Booker was a lever action deer rifle, so I don't think anyone believed that all three of the holes through his heart were accidental. Two of the men in on the set-up were attacked by a Black partisan, beaten and left for dead. Comrade Ulysses was tried in Marin and convicted on convict testimony and given a new life-top sentence.

You comrades would get battle fatigue if I related all of the occasions that the prison system forced this brother into a defense of his person or others victimized as all here are.

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In 1964, he was sent to Folsom. The guards there poisoned him, shot at him each time the circumstances allowed, gassed him, beat him and denied him all medical attention, until finally his health broke. He contracted terminal disease in his intestines, fell from 200 pounds to 120 pounds and was transferred back to San Quentin's hospital to die. Actually the doctors offered him an operation, with a 75% chance of recovery - as an invalid, or a quiet year in the hospital maximum ward - and death. He refused the operation, started doing special ancient Eastern exercises, ate only the foods that other Black partisans could steal for him.

From his situation, he wrote me (then locked in a cell with an extra lock welded above the two original locks) these lines that we still use on new partisans:

If ever I should break my stride, Or falter at my comrade's side, This oath will kill me!
If ever my word should prove untrue,
Should I betray the many or you few,

This oath will kill me!

Should I be slow to make a stand,

Or show fear before the hangman,

This oath will kill me!

Should I misuse the people's trust,

Should I submit ever to greed or lust,

This oath will kill me!

Should I grow lax in discipline,

In times of strife, refuse my hand,

This oath will surely kill me!

U.

When the year was half gone, the brother had gained 25 pounds, without eating (they thought). The doctors and the rest of the prison administration was soincensed that they asked Sacramento to return him to Folsom lockup. They did, He's lived on borrowed moments for six years. Last March he was again told by the prison's medical staff that he could live no longer than a year without their operation; the parole board has out-right told him to accept the operation or forget parole. They want to kill him under the knife. Or render him useless to the people.

Over the six years that he's lived with death, the symptoms coming and going in alternate periods, marked by rapid loss of weight and slow partial recovery, the brother's mind and determination to stay in the fight have never once weakened. A brother who refuses to stop his resistance, refuses to stop learning, refuses to diel

The last irony in his case is that now he lives right next to me in a cell unfit for the healthy. He'll probably die this time; I can smell death on him and hear it in his voice. The Soledad Defense Committee or the Black Panther Party will pay all fees to any combination of lawyer and doctor who can get into San Quentin to give this comrade the benefit of knowing at least what it is that's killing him - outside of over-oppression, that is. Men who contract terminal diseases in prison are generally released shortly before they are expected to die. They will not release this brother, because he still has possession of his mind and is pledged to use it in our struggle.

George Jackson

San Quentin Prison

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INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE

The following are excerpts from an interview with Comrade George Jackson in March of this year:

INTERVIEWER: In the past 6 months, a profound change has occurred in the prison population, in terms of the consciousness of the inmates, whereas before they had been easily divided by racism, which was instigated by the prison authorities. At that time they were beginning to see the prison authorities as their enemies and inmates of all races as their natural allies. Can you tell us how that consciousness developed, how extensive it is; and what forms it took.

GEORGE: Well to begin with, of course, the recent influx of the political teachers, the political animals, from the Black Panther Party - I think they were first instrumental in the changes from conservatism, the normal conservatism that prisoners in the prison population and people, in general, here in fascist America live in. At one time the prison population, the prisoner class could have been considered one of the most conservative classes in the country. The changes that have gone down within the last year, the changes that we've tried to effect, let's say, we'll give credit first to the Party, and to the system for placing political teachers at our disposal here. Secondly, the support that our movement has gotten from partisans from the street, from the outside. The average convict considers himself the doomed man right from beginning. And that ray of hope, or sense of community created by the recent expressions of solidarity from the street, that (ray) found effect on the revolutionary consciousness inside the joint. It's always been my contention that if we could raise the hard-left military and political cadre in fascist America, that cadre would come from either the prisons or the dissident elements within the armed forces.

QUESTION: What forms did this new consciousness take?

GEORGE: To clear that up first, I'll have to go into a little background. Some years ago, the rise of the Black revolutionary - I'm talking about nationalistic, well let's say tending-towards-the-right Black, revolutionary nationalistic, fervor - created situations here in the joint that caused polarization between all Blacks and all Whites regardless of status. And by status I mean convict-cop, convictpig. In other words, I'm saying that the prisoner code broke down as a result of the White convicts being threatened by the political thrust and the open antipathy demonstrated by Blacks against Whites in general. At the time I guess I was part of it too. At the time we made no efforts to distinguish between the White convict and the White guard. Because the White convicts identified openly and clearly and without reservations with right-wing ideas, and racism. So when we'd strike, we'd strike with both barrels: one at the convict, and one at the pig. And some of it is our fault. Of course, revolution is a process. We're going through a process. And well, that's the background.

The new consciousness stems from the fact that like I said, the political teacher, the Black Panther "concentration camped", as a result of the political thrust on the street, brought new ideas. You know revolutionary, scientific socialism, and anti-racism. And we attempted to make them understand that we're all equally uniformly repressed by the administration.

QUESTION: How wide-spread was this throughout the California penal system, when you had some success?

GEORGE: The Black vanguard within the Black political machine, within the joint is state-wide; is state-wide.

QUESTION: How extensive is the cooperation, the consciousness to cooperate among Black, White and Chicano prisoners; to what extent has that been successful?

GEORGE: It varies from joint to joint. In Soledad, we were doing well, because the joint is set-up differently - security wise. And it was easier to disseminate our line. And the pigs in that area seemed to be generally, let's call them, provincial. The typical, rustic, provincial mentality. And they weren't able to cope with the situation. Here in San Quentin, it's different. These pigs are drawn from the metropolitan

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area around here in the Bay Area. And they're clearly very, very highly politicized to the right. There's an infrastructure here, inside the joint. Well actually, there's really a conflict in the infrastructure, I'm talking about the pig infrastructure. There's one group of pigs, headed by Park, James Park, the Assistant Warden, who would like to convey to the public, to the people outside, that actually things are alright in here, and, that they're going as well as circumstances could allow, as circumstances allow. Then there's the other element, the hardliners, the out-and-out fascist cats, who really identify with the John Birch and the open fascist ideology. They're the lieutenants. I will name some of them: Stevenson (now dead) used to lead the clique. He persecuted me for years and years; Loriano was one; he graduated to the Board, I had to go to the Board in front of this fool three times in a row; he shot me down three times in a row. Then we have Lieutenant Jamerson, Lieutenant Doverman, Lieutenant Zanker, Sergeant Hankins, Sergeant Shanks and a few others that I missed. I certainly shouldn't neglect to mention Assistant Warden Jacobs, who is, I would say, the real motive force behind the whole hard-line, right-wing political idea. Their goal is diametrically opposed to the Park line. Like I said, Park would like to convey to the public, things are going smoothly, and they are handling the animals here just as well as they can with as little force as possible, blah, blah.

QUESTION: Things haven't been going smoothly in San Quentin, lately. Was it provoked by the guards; and if so how?

GEORGE: The hard-liners took over from Park; the lieutenants took over from Park. They saw that Park's line was failing; they saw that Park's line wasn't effective. And so they just moved in and took over. Their vehicle for the take-over and for creating the contrapositive mobilization of convict revolutionary consciousness was the right-wing convicts, who do not consider themselves as convicts, really, they consider themselves right-wing political animals. And one word from any one of these right-wing pigs can start a debacle. And that's just exactly what happened here recently. They attempt, through us, to convey to the public that the convicts are animals, and that extreme measures are necessary to keep them in line.

QUESTION: When the right-winged provoked this, was what followed actually through fighting or stabbings and things between Black and White and Chicano convicts. That is, did their reaction go beyond what the right-winged convicts started.

GEORGE: Their reaction was perfect. This was just the sort of thing that they wanted. If I was on the mainline, or I had closer contact with the comrades on the yard, it wouldn't have happened that way. When the first brother was attacked, my inclination would have been to march on the porch, not march on the right-winged cons. Go right directly at the source of the problem. March on the porch, where these right-winged pigs have their offices. You understand what I'm saying.

QUESTION: What do you see as the future in the prisons? What's the relationship between the prison movement and the outside movement?

GEORGE: I'll reiterate that I feel that the building of revolutionary consciousness of the prisoner class is paramount in the over-all development of a hard left revolutionary cadre. And I repeat- cadre. Of course the revolution has to be carried by the masses. But we need a cadre; we need a bodyguard; a political worker needs a bodyguard. We see ourselves as performing that function. The terms of existence here in the joint conditions the brothers for that type of work. Although I have become more political recently, from listening to Comrade Newton, and from reading the Party paper, I've gained a clearer understanding of the tie-in between political and military activities. I still see my function as military.

I would also like to add that there's a distinction between types of military action. I'm not saying that any part of society should act for or consider itself above any other part of society-you know, the Robert Owen thing, the idealistic thing. What I'm saying is that at the outset. Because I do, I do seriously feel that fascism has taken over this country. And this country actually is the episodically logical conclusion of the fascist movement. I mean with all its disguises, the cooperative idea at its apex. I feel that any movement on our part, political, will have to be accompanied by a latent threat. And all the projects for survival that Comrade Newton has started and developed, I think that they're going to have to be defended. And that defense is going to depend upon cadre, cadre violence, secret sort of stuff, that we can't go into here too extensively.

QUESTION: More concretely, people on the outside are asking what kinds of things can they do, that will really be effective, to support the movement in the prisons.

GEORGE: That, of course, depends upon their level of commitment, and their consciousness. I understand, everybody, we have to all understand, that everybody's interest in the thing that's going forward isn't exactly the same, although our direction is, of course, the same. The interest, the individual interest, when you bring it down to that existential level, individual interests aren't the same. And we have to consider subjectivism, you know, thought objects. We have to consider subjective consciousness. My opinion is, you know, from all according to their ability, of course. We have some hopefully, who will be a little more aggressive, and will do the things that must be done here and there. And I speak of violence here. I hope that when they do move within that particular area, that they'll move well within a political matrix; well, within the political framework. Perhaps at first the little moves, or movements here and there, like August 7th, (being decentralized things). But later on we'll search each other out, and build a People's Army. Build a People's Army from these small decentralized groups. But right now, they'll have to be autonomous. And we can't tie them too closely to our political structure, because it gives the pigs the unjustified, but justifiable, excuse to attack our political projects -

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which they're going to do anyway. But we don't want to give them any propaganda edge on us to begin with.

I feel that the military thing will grow as we give the people these projects, or these programs, that they'll consider their own, that they'll protect, when we can't protect them. There're no two ways about it. The ideal or the simple, foolish notion that violence won't work in America is ridiculous. When we have the tools - a shotgun is the deadliest weapon in the world for close, city fighting; and a child can use one. All you do is point the thing; and if the thing you want to shoot is moving, you just follow through with your swing. But we have to study these things. And it's a process; it's going to take time.

But to answer your question more directly the time hasn't passed for rallies and demonstrations. But there is a diacritical altering of what the demonstration has meant in the past-you know what the demonstration and rally has meant in the past, and what it should mean, and what it's going to mean in the future. I feel that in the future the demonstrations and the rallies should be events to be used as occasions for intensive organization. I mean the political cadre should go down among the people, with clip-board in hand, and pen in hand, and ascertain, painfully ascertain, just exactly what each, each of the people can contribute to the building of the commune. If we conduct the demonstrations as we have in the past, with a few speeches and clenched fist and a pamphlet, two hours later the people will be Americans again, instead of people. But going down among the people, finding out what they can contribute, what they will contribute, what they can do, from ability; go down among the people, find out what they can do and what they need, and place them in clearly defined, objective political programs, we'll build a commune from there. There is a place, there still is a place for demonstrations and rallies. But we'll just use them differently than the other folks have been using them.

QUESTION: In a recent article in the Black Panther Paper, you refer to yourself as a member of the Black Panther Party, which I don't think you had stated publically before. And you also indicated that Jonathan had been a member of the Party. Can you tell us how long you've been a member of the Party; and why you chose this particular time to reveal your Party membership?

GEORGE: Well, I've been a member since Comrade Newton appointed me to perform a particular function within the joint, within the prisons here. It was a couple of years ago; it's been some time. Right now, I consider my job as one of proving to the fascists and to the world, and to this particular society right here that the concentration camp technique will not work on Blacks. Yes, Jonathan was very definitely a member of the Black Panther Party. It was not necessary for us to publicize those things. At the time of his participation, it wasn't wise to publish, because of his function. But well he's dead now; and I don't feel that the pigs have much to fear from him, except his ideas, his example. So yes, he was a member of the Party, as all of the brothers who weren't so lazy, afraid, intimidated. You'll find it true that most of the brothers here identify with the Party. And although they aren't officially members in spirit, they are Black Panthers…

QUESTION: One of the problems for a lot of people trying to understand and deal with the charge coming out of Algiers is that as happens often in these cases, there are a lot of different levels and a lot of different kinds of charges and criticisms that are just utterly fantastic. Are there valid criticisms, that the Party sees, that you see, that the Party is making of itself and should be making of itself, aside from the kinds of charges that are coming out of Algiers?

GEORGE: Are you asking me is self-criticism important? Of course. But the charges coming out of Algiers are ridiculous. And I won't even consider stuff like that. I'll clear this up right now. David Hilliard, I love him. David Hilliard is the finest, most dedicated individual, or one of the most dedicated individuals, in the Party. At the time that they accuse him of laxity, he was putting our whole case together and trying to hold the Party together by himself. The man deserves applause. And the charges against him I consider ridiculous. He put our whole case together. The Soledad Brothers' case together. He put our whole case together. Now let me clarify that, too. The Soledad Brother thing extends beyond the three of us. But the state-wide thing would have never come to fruition without Comrade David Hilliard's assistance. He worked day and night. I couldn't understand where was he sleeping, where was he resting, what time was he giving to study. He was holding the Party together, the National Party together and at the same time, creating the prisoners' movement, giving us the impetus and support and other things that we needed to effect the changes that were going down inside the prison. And our case, the three of us, has grown into a massive thing. And that credit goes to David Hilliard. If we're going to consider it important that we demonstrate to the fascists that the concentration camp technique won't work on us, that it will not destroy our revolutionary fervor, and that we're not going to allow ourselves to be herded to prisons, and that we're not going to give in, we're not going to be passive, if that's considered important and I do consider it important myself; personally - then his efforst in our behalf were vital. That was Hilliard; that was David. The charges leveled against him are ridiculous. And perhaps the people who made the charges were unaware; perhaps it was calculated; and then, perhaps, the power struggle was an egotistical motivated power struggle, was the sole reason behind the attack. But an attack on the man's capabilities, an attack on the Brother's commitment and his judgement is absurd…

QUESTION: What signs do you see within the United States that the Party is still a vital force. You seem very hopeful for its future. Can you give me some examples of why.

GEORGE: Of course, they represent the

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only means of Black liberation. They represent the only means of raising a Black revolutionary consciousness against the forces of the Black political right and the fascists, the White fascist regime. The leadership, the Central Committee and the young Black workers that we're going to be trying to reach, and the issues that we're going to get behind. I feel that the new direction that we're going to take is the only direction towards, first, survival of the Black community. Survival of the Black population, the building of a commune, communizing the colony.

QUESTION: Are there any specific things that you see right now that they're doing that makes you convinced that the potential of the Party is going to be carried out?

GEORGE: Of course. All the programs that people seem to misunderstand, misinterpret, the programs such as, well the first thing that comes to mind is the Breakfast for Children Program, but the, the clothing programs, the clinics, like I say, the rallies where we're going to be recruiting people to fill in, and do the necessary political work, on these projects, I see these things as the beginning of an infrastructure for the Black commune that we envision for the future.

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PETITION: FOR CROSS SECTION OF COMMUNITY ON JURIES AND FOR PROBATION OR APPEAL BAIL BOND FOR BROTHER DAVID HILLIARD:

WE, THE UNDERSIGNED COMMUNITY PEOPLE, DO HEREBY PETITION THAT BROTHER DAVID HILLIARD, CHIEF OF STAFF OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY, PRESENTLY HELD BY ALAMEDA COUNTY AS A POLITICAL PRISONER, BE GRANTED HIS CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT OF AN APPEAL BAILBOND OR PROBATION, PENDING APPEAL OF HIS CASE TO A HIGHER COURT.

THE U.S. CONSTITUTION STATES THAT JURIES SHALL REFLECT A CROSS-SECTION OF A COMMUNITY, OR A PEER GROUP. THERE WERE NO BLACK PEOPLE ON THE JURY IN THE CASE OF BROTHER DAVID HILLIARD, ALTHOUGH 38% OF THE OAKLAND COMMUNITY IS BLACK. FIVE BLACK PEOPLE SAT ON THE JURY IN THE RECENTLY DISMISSED CASE OF BOBBY SEALE AND ERICKA HUGGINS, EVEN THOUGH ONLY 9% OF THE NEW HAVEN COMMUNITY IS BLACK. THEREFORE, THE CASE OF DAVID HILLIARD, PARTICULARLY, CLEARLY POINTS OUT THE NEED TO HAVE PROPER REPRESENTATION ON JURIES THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY.

IN THE LIGHT OF THESE FACTS, WE THEREFORE PETITION THAT DAVID HILLIARD BE GRANTED HIS CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT OF AN APPEAL BAILBOND OR PROBATION, PENDING APPEAL OF HIS CASE TO A HIGHER COURT, AND THAT THE RE-TRIAL JURY REPRESENT A TRUE CROSS-SECTION OF THE COMMUNITY.

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--GEORGE-- JACKSON LIVES!

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August 22, 1971

Our position is in support of the action of George Jackson. The first rule when a people's soldier is captured is to immediately start planning his escape. His action was a political statement because he set the standard for all political prisoners. He took the only available avenue of redress against state murder. The state created the violent situation that exists in San Quentin today. The state gives itself the arbitrary privilege of taking life, the right to kill, capital punishment, sanctioned violence which leaves no room for redress. Redress of grievances is the contract between the people and the state in relationship to the laws of the land. People will respect laws that serve them and will tolerate those that they do not as long as there is an avenue for redress and change. Voting and petitioning and other civil actions are redress vehicles, but when capital punishment is legislated, the natural relationship regarding life between the people and the state breaks down. The person being threatened with death by the state has no alternatives but to defend himself. All living things have an inalienable right to protect their own lives. If the state decides it can take life then the people can defend life. The basic integrity of man is predicated upon respect for life. The state does not have the right to take life, every man has a right to preserve his own life. The state is supposed to represent the basic integrity of the individual. We should all hold life sacred, and no one including the state, should have the right to snuff out life. Only through natural forces and acts of God should man give life up; and science through its research and production of medicines is trying to combat the thing we call death. If there is no capital punishment on the intercommunal level this would stop all wars of aggression, because the only time one could take life is in the defense of life, never in a retaliatory posture.

George Jackson, Field Marshal for the Black Panther Party - a soldier in the people's army - gave his life in an attempt to free political prisoners and to preserve his own dignity and manhood. Field Marshal George Jackson moved in a defensive manner; the state had threatened to take Brother George's life, the executioner already had a hood over his head, a glass cage had been built and euphemistically called a courtroom. The shackles were locked. George broke the shackles, spurned the glass cage and defended his manhood in the spirit of freedom.

George Jackson was a Supreme Servant of the People because he gave his life, all that any human being can give, when struggling for all oppressed people.

Huey P. Newton

Servant of the People

Black Panther Party

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ANOTHER SOLEDAD BROTHER'S FAMILY HARASSED

The California Penal System, a complex of maximum security, slave labor camps throughout the state of California, has long been notorious for its barbarous and inhuman treatment of its prisoners. This treatment has even been extended to prisoner's family members, friends and legal assistants.

San Quentin Prison, located in the rural, lily-white town of Tamal, California, has been the most repressive because it has been utilized to contain the most political, the most revolutionary members of the prison community. For the past six months the harassment of prisoners and their visitors has been intensified.

Visitors are often made to wait two to three hours; they are desrespected, insulted and have even their rights to visit taken away at the whim of the fascist administration. The families, friends and legal assistants of those brothers whom the fascist consider "incorrigible", those brothers who resist their barbarism most fiercely, are the visitors who receive the brunt of the administration's repression.

On August 12th of this year, Derrick Maxwell went to San Quentin to visit his brother, John Clutchette. He was insulted by a guard at the reception desk, Scarborough, when he asked what the reason was that he had to wait so long to see his brother. He had been waiting for over two hours. After being threatened and insulted by a second guard, he was finally told that they had found enough guards to bring his brother down for the visit. But, on August 20th, he received the threatening letter shown above from prison authorities.

These letters and tactics have been common in the last six months, particularly, as family members, friends and legal assistants have been turned away or suspended from visiting inmates for indefinite periods and indefinite reasons sanctioned by spurious charges.

The fascist terrorists at San Quentin saw that the walls were already coming down because the prison community and the Black community were becoming one through the mutual strength and love that flows between them. And now, Comrade George Jackson's valiant and courageous defense of the Black prison community has been used as an excuse by the San Quentin terrorists to do what they have wanted all along -- to cut off most, if not all, communications links between the prisoners and the community, as they have instituted new and ridiculously absurd restrictions on all visits, including those of legal assistants.

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GEORGE JACKSON: P.S., ON DISCIPLINE

Both Mao Tse Tung and Frantz Fanon observed and commented on the need for psychological, regenerative instrumentalities for the masses. Both also sensed the need for dealing individually with the psychic disorders that occur normally in the hidden sections of an oppressed man's mentality.

To copulate Fanon's remedy in his thesis on violence… "two men die with the stroke that slays the slave-master: the slave-master dies in a way that he can do no man any further harm; and then the slave mentality of the former victim dies." Mao's comments in his essay "On the proper handling of contradictions" were aimed at regeneration on the mass level. In "Combat Liberalism" he brought the theme of regeneration and discipline down to the core of individual and Party interrelations:

"Liberalism manifests itself in various ways…Not to obey orders but to give pride of place to one's own opinions. To demand special consideration from the organization, but to reject its discipline…Liberalism stems from petty-bourgeois selfishness, it places personal interests first and the interests of the revolution second, and this gives rise to ideological, political and organizational liberalism.

"People who are liberals look upon the principles of Marxism as abstract dogma. They approve of Marxism but are not prepared to practice it or to practice it in full. They are not prepared to replace their liberalism by Marxism. These people have their Marxism, but they have their liberalism as well. They talk Marxism but practice liberalism; they apply Marxism to others, but liberalism to themselves. They keep both kinds of goods in stock and find a use for each. This is how the minds of certain people work.

"Liberalism is a manifestation of opportunism and conflicts fundamentally with Marxism. It is negative, and objectively has the effect of helping the enemy; that is why the enemy welcomes its preservation in our midst."

We find a thread of psychoanalysis running throughout our study of the literature, bearing on the new Socialist Revolution. Oppressed man lives with and developes unconscious mental processes that can diminish his value to, and function within, communal groupings. The effects of 300 to 400 years of racism, capitalism and economic centralization have in fact been most conductive to a whole set of mass and individual psychoneuroses. Thus we find (if we look) both the positive and the negative, eco-social and psycho-social, aspects in the building of revolutionary consciousness in class society.

The negative aspects of developing a revolutionary condition must never be overlooked. To do so is itself a form of liberalism. Facing negatives, problems, and guarding against their recurrence is a prerequisite of revolutionary growth. We must address our efforts to the destruction of the enemy within as well as the outside enemy. The enemy within can be isolated in a simple way: any individual or thing that disrupts communal interests. The thing will always be a product of the individual. It will begin as an idea or attitude. It will either the incorrect or self-seeking. It will persist and ripen into a contradiction and disruption of communal interest through lack of discipline. Lack of discipline manifests itself through failure of the individual to moderate his self interest in accordance with the demands placed upon him by the commune.

But all things are connected in some way. The materialist searches for these connections to clarify strategy and tactics, to solve problems and arrive at validity. We want to understand the objective conditions that give cause to the subjective attitudes controlling objective human behavior along lines that are self-destructive, disruptive of the common interest, or neutral, empty of meaning and consequently tending to be

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conservative. The simplistic explanation that we receive from the revisionist circles of the old guard, that failed, goes no further than stating that these conditions are not right for revolutionary practice and "forgets that it is men that change circumstances and that the educator himself needs education", and that "the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionising practice."

We want to understand all the objective conditions and forces that are said to be not right, since they are tied into subjective attitudes (consciousness), attitudes, into activity. "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it." We know that failure to make changes is always the fault of the vanguard parties; the failures of the vanguard elements that went before us are the proof of this. But they weren't exactly autonomous and forceful. We will not repeat their mistakes. A retreat to the comfortable position that conditions aren't right, really isn't possible here in the Black commune. "One third of the population will always be ill-housed, ill-clothed, and ill-fed; many urban problems are really conditions that we cannot change or do not want to incur the disadvantages of changing." (Lt. Governor of California). A voice from inside the Fourth Reich speaking in public on poverty.

His one-third statement was a calculated understatement. If food, clothing, and shelter are among the objective conditions for a fight, then, we cannot rationally excuse ourselves with slogans that turn on the issue of objective conditions. I am not here committing the same error that I condemn. I am not disconnecting the depressed Black commune from the over-all process of interacting Amerikan relationships. I'm merely stating that the very basic objective conditions for revolutionary activity have long been present in the Black commune. There are other objective conditions. It's just that when we come to this issue, we're ahead of everyone else.

If we want to retreat, we can't base the retreat on the issue of objective conditions. In the very basic sense, we do have a very nearly uniform community of interest there. It is this greater community of interest and near uniform repression that gives the Black commune its vanguard role.

The only possible retreat from the glaring fact that conditions are ripe for revolutionary activity in the Black community is into subjective attitudes, "the people aren't ready". The "thought objects" are not ripe. This could only mean that the people are not ready to act in their own interests; that they are unwilling or unable to meet and overcome the resistance to their movement; that disciplined and principled objective activity is beyond us, because of some conscious or unconscious blockage in the area of thinking, or better, collective thinking.

This is a very appropriate time to consider whether we are capable of freedom. We do see in our attitudes and history both "an intense longing for and fear of freedom". After over 300 years of slavery and capitalism and three decades of totalitarian fascism, we've finally succeeced in raising from our midst a revolutionary vanguard party of nationally and international . The Black Panther Party has survived and grown, in spite of the fact that fascism allows for no above-ground revolutionary political activity, for one simple reason, the Black people willed it into existence and protect it with conscious motive force and blood. Its existence reflects an "intense longing for freedom." It's a reflection of us, our health, our regeneration. If we allow unprincipled, undisciplined, self-seeking egotism to destroy any parts of its strength, it may be an indication that we are incapable of freedom. It will mean that the people on their own, acting for themselves, through their vanguard elements, are sufficiently strong to survive counterrevolutionary murder, prison death camps, and propaganda, but not the enemy inside us.

Final recognition of this possible dual nature of oppressed people - a concomitant love and hatred for the life style set-up by the oppressor; then, the great community of interest that fascist centralization has worked among the upper class and its governing elite forces us to considerations of building a "sense of community" of our own for the oppressed classes. Revolution must advance in communal form. There is simply no other "revolutionizing practice." It must be armed, true, "a shotgun for every hand in every household", and the minimum and maximum levels of violence (i.e. cadre or massive organized violence) must both be accepted as the only means of supporting the people's righteous demands. But there will be no spontaneous revolution; no spontaneous appeal to arms. A "sense of community" is a prerequisite to revolution, after the fact of fascist demobilization. They will never hand us a ready-made revolutionary situation. The level of our existence will grind on as it is, forever, with each year bringing a few more "things" from the flea market, and each recession taking them all away. The illusion of prosperity or in our case the hope of prosperity will always be programmed into the system; they have learned to fear us.

There will be a need for selective, retaliatory and defensive military activity from the outset. We have the willing hands to carry out this level of violence - now. However, the objective is to move our numberless masses into a significant challenge of the property rights enjoyed by the oppressor class. A simple direct attack at the fortified entrance of the productive plant forgets the question with whom? and what? A contented, convinced tascist?! A pamphlet?!

We must rebuild the "sense of community", class consciousness. It was destroyed with the emergence of fascism and its expanding military-industrial based economy, and the consumer's flea market - the basis of continued compromise. If we give the people something to hold, if we address ourselves to their needs, they will act in defense of the communal projects as they extend into the economic interests of the enemy-state. The flea market does not meet all of the people's demands; every vacuum that exists is a political issue. Politics and war are inseparable in the fascist state.

WAR TO THE KNIFE

George Jackson

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COMRADE GEORGE JACKSON ON WITHDRAWAL

SYLLOGISM: n. argument with two premises and a conclusion. A logical scheme of a formal argument consisting of a major and minor premise and a conclusion which must logically be true if the premises are true. (from Merriam-Webster)

In theorizing on revolution, after revolution has failed, all questions center around "how" will a new revolutionary consciousness be mobilized out of a different set of class antagonisms, an advancement in the authoritarian process of the old bourgeoisie revolution and, its reign of terror then, at which level of social, political and economic life will this new attack begin.

We must concede first that the old worker's revolution and its vanguard parties have failed to deliver the promised changes in property relations or any of the institutions that support them. It must be conceded without bitterness, name calling, or the intense rancor that is presently building. It must be conceded by the older partisans of the socialist revolution, the new partisans and certainly the Black partisans and their vanguard party. There have been two depressions and two great wars, a dozen serious recessions, a dozen brush wars, crisis after economic crisis has come and passed, the mass psycho-social national cohesiveness has trembled on the brink of disruption and disintegration repeatedly over the last 50 years, threatening to fly apart from its own concentric inner dynamics. But at each crisis it was allowed to reform itself; with each reform, revolution became more remote. We cannot have a complete definition of fascism. It's thing in constant motion, showing a new face to fit any particular set of problems that may occur to threaten the predominance of a traditionalist, capitalist ruling class. But if one were forced for the sake of clarity to define it in a word simple enough for all to understand, that word would be "reform". If we then progress to a two word definition, we could attach one other word - "economic". "Economic reform" comes very close to a simplistic definition of fascist motive forces.

Though such an over-simplification may serve to clarify things a bit, it leaves a great deal unexplained. Each economic reform that perpetuated ruling class hegemony had, of course, to be disguised as a positive gain for the up-thrusting masses. Disguise enters as a third concretion in the emergence and development of the fascist state, altho the days of Thorstein Veblen's "conspicuous consumption" have not been positively frightened away by mass resentment. The modern industrial fascist state has found it essential to disguise its ruling class leisure existence by providing the lower classes with a mass consumer's flea market of its own, and then the economically expedient currency control or minimum wage limit (and minimum wage increase) to allow a sizable portion of the "new state" to participate in this flea market. We cannot isolate any stage in the development of fascism and identify it as representative of the whole movement itself.

If we inspect or allow our attention to lock itself on the spectacular period conjured up by Hollywood screen writers (a wing of the opinion-molding institute) that pictures German "SS agents" or Italian "Black shirts" kicking in doors or herding Jews and communist partisans to death camps; or, to bring it closer to our own problem, if we interpret fascism as the period of Peg Leg White's "Black Legion" terror, or that of the "Guardians of the Republic" and their offspring, (periods which) legitimized the Federal Bureau of Investigation. To isolate the outstanding period of a fascist regime, when it is yet insecure or in the process of crushing the vanguard elements, and call that one phase fascism, is to fail to see the essence of the process. After the killing and disbanding is done, the nucleus of the threat removed, the ruling class goes on about the business of making profits as usual. The signifance of the "new fascist arrangement" lies in the fact that this business-as-usual is accompanied by concessions to the degenerate segment of the working class, with the aim of creating a buffer zone between the still potentially revolutionary segments of the lower classes and itself. Corporative ideals reached their logical conclusion in the U.S. The new corporate state has fought its way through crisis after crisis, established its ruling elites in every important institution, formed its partnership with labor (through its elites), erected the most massive network of protective agencies (replete with spies, technical and animal) to be found in any police state in the world or the history of the world. The violence of the ruling class of this country in the long process of its trend toward authoritarianism and its last and highest state, fascism, cannot be measured for its excesses against any other nation on earth today or in history.

With each advancement in the authoritarian process and strengthening of the ruling class's control over the system, there was of course a corresponding weakening of the people's and worker's movement. It follows naturally.

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Reform (the closed economy) a new direction for capitalism to temporarily develop or recover Fascism! The dilemmatic question in intellectual circles it seems is did it happen in the U.S. too. The questioning of the obvious characterizes a long habit of the amerikan left of flight from reality, a flight from any truly extreme position, actually a part of the historical, authoritarian process seeping into its own psyche. It happened in the biggest way possible in the U.S. Questioning the existence of a fascist arrangement, and the accompanying centralization of power, and the largest part of the Gross National Product into the hands of a minute portion of the population allows us also to continue to question whether or not revolution has failed. It relieves us of the responsibility of admitting failure, and quit. For reformism can only work against us, if we allow it, if we make concessions, if we compromise with the enemy state and its ruling class. A compromise was made in the past, in the 30's, the 40's, the 50's. The old vanguard parties did make gross strategic and tactical errors. This must be faced without emotionalism, petty squabbles; and must be re-riposted with clinical disregard today. Errors were made, opportunities allowed to slip past, and for various human reasons - some honest, some dishonest. In some cases the members of the old vanguard were clearly forced into the existential moment, the last revelation about oneself. Some did not want to risk their whole futures, their lives, to alter the conditions that Huey P. Newton describes as "destructive of life".

Reformism was allowed. The basis of the compromise that worked the destruction of the degenerate elements of the working class was first. The nationalistic fervor created by a capitalistic war adventure, supported even by most of the vanguard parties of the time (WW II), and then the mass consumers market that followed the close of the war, the flea market that is, meeting some of the workers muted demands-slowly.

We are today faced with a clearly different set of class antagonisms, the complexities of a particularly refined fascist economic arrangement, where the controlling elites have extended down into and co-optively sucked up portions of the lowly working class. When we ask ourselves today "where will we attack the enemy state?"; and we receive the answer "at the productive point", the next logical question must be "with whom and what?" With whom will we attack the fortified entrance of the productive and distributive system in a nation of short-sighted and contented, conservative workers? The fascism movement is counter-revolution at its center. A calculated response to the classic, scientific socialist approach to revolution through positive mobilization of the working classes. The fascist arrangement is dated from its very start as an attempt to create the illusion of a mass society in which the traditional capitalist ruling class would continue to play its leading role. A mass society that is not a mass society; a mass society of authoritarian idiots who's opinionated consensus centering around their "short-term" material interest would be conclusive to the perfect totalitarian state and centralized economy. Fascism, then, as closely as we can define it in understandable terms, is "scientific capitalism", "controlled capitalism", a sophisticated, totalitarian, "learned" response to the challenge of egalitarian, scientific socialism. After the fact of its successful establishment, as in Spain, Portugal, Greece, South Africa, the United States of America, we are faced with the obvious question, "how to raise a new consciousness".

We are faced with the task of raising a positive mobilization of revolutionary consciousness in a mass that has "gone through" a contra-positive, authoritarian process.

The new vanguard elements seem to agree that withdrawal from the enemy state and its social, political and economic life is the first step in its destruction. The new vanguard elements seem to agree that the new revolutionary consciousness will develop in the struggles of withdrawal. However, after this point, agreement grows vague, dims, and all but drowns itself out in a sea of contradictions.

The contention turns around one primary question - the scope and range of violence within the revolutionary process.

After the lengthy and clearly unnecessary ideological battle that laid to rest a direct approach to revolution through the White or Black worker, there now looms large in the near future an equally unnecessary ideological battle as to which of the various communal (revolutionary cultural) approaches has the stronger revolutionary validity.

There is the almost apolitical withdrawal

-- 17 --
of the growing Weatherman faction. The withdrawal of their natural, but estranged allies on campus or in their organic food gardens; and the still slightly different withdrawal to the countryside communes, where the theme is sex, music and drugs. A sort of Nietzschean-Hegelian withdrawal, actually, and very typical of the European historical experience of the last five generations. In our equation this must be considered the minor side of the syllogism. Though revolutionary in a fashion, the realistic, cohesive synergism seems as yet impossibly remote.

On the other side of the equation, we have the Black Panther Party's central city communal ideal. And I repeat, the contention, if it develops, will develop around the scope and range of violence in the present state and total revolutionary process. Huey Newton's concept of a Black commune or communes set well within the huge population centers of the enemy state imply the acceptance of the minimum or maximum level of violence necessary to enforce the demands that the people and workers will be making on the system. The ultimate demand and expression of revolutionary consciousness is that the disproportioned class of rulers and wealth holders disband. This demand, throughout history, has always occasioned violence.

The concept of Black central city communes tied to one another by a national and international vanguard party, then further tied to the world's other revolutionary societies, meets all the theoretical questions, problems, and promise of an amerikan revolution in as much as that revolution must be carried by Black people principally.

The questions I've asked myself over the years run this way: Who has done most of the dying? Most of the work? Most of the time in prison(Maximum)? Who is the hindmost in every aspect of social, political and economic life? Who has the least short-term interest- or no interest at all - in the survival of present state? Can our condition await the arrival of a new generation of enlightened fascists who will dismantle the basis of their heirarchy? Or will they too very logically begin to feel somewhere in their educational process that they can. Just how many Amerikans are willing to accept the physical destruction of some parts of their fatherland so that the rest of the land and the world might survive in good health? How can the Black industrial worker be induced to carry out a valid worker's revolutionary policy? What and who will guide him? The commune, The central city-wide revolutionary culture. But who will build the commune that will guide the people into a significant challenging of property rights? Carving out a commune in the central city implies the claiming of certain rights as our own - out front. Rights that have not been respected to now. Property rights. It implies the building of a political, social and economic infrastructure, capable of filling the vacuum that has been left by the established ruling class, "and also" pushing from our midst any occupying forces that represent this enemy culture. In other words the implementation of new social, political and economic programs that will feed and comfort all the people on at least a subsistence level, while at the same time forcing land, tool and market "owners" of the enemy bourgeoisie culture to either tie their whole fortunes to that of the communes, the people, or leave the land, the tools, the market. The theme of such an undertaking will be the shotgun and the antitank rocket launcher!! Who will build on an ideal that begins with force? The Vanguard Party is now nation-wide. But vanguard parties cannot build-revolutions alone. Nor can a vanguard party expect full party line agreement before it moves in the direction of the people. Revolution is illegal. It's against the law. It's prohibited. It will not be allowed. It is clear that the revolutionary is a lawless man. The outlaw and the lumpen will make the revolution. The people, the workers will adopt it. This must be the new order of things, after the fact of the modern industrial fascist state.

In Blacks the authoritarian traits are mainly the effects of terrorism and lack of intellectual stimulation. The communal experience will redeem him. The Black worker is simply choosing the less dangerous and complicated strategy of survival. All classes and all people are subject to the authoritarian syndrome, its an atavistic throwback to the herd instincts. It requires only the proper trauma, the proper eco-sociological set of circumstantial pressures to re-establish the opposite consciousness up from the herd again.

Racism enters, on the psycho-socio level, in the form of this morbid, traditional fear of Black, and revolutions in general. The resentment of Blacks, and conscious or unconscious tendencies to mete out pain to Blacks, throughout the history of our contacts with Amerika's slave systems, all came into focus when Blacks began the move from South to North, and from countryside to city to compete with Whites in industrial sectors, and, in general, status competition. Resentment, fear, insecurity, and the usual isolation that occurs with and is patterned into every modern, capitalist

-- 19 --
industrial society(the more complex the products, the greater the division of labor; the higher the pyramid, the broader its base and the smaller the individual brick tends to feel) is multiplied by ten, when racism, race antagonism is also a factor. There is certainly no lack of evidence to prove the existence of an old and built- in character assassination of programmed racism (what class controls the nation's educational facilities, prints the newspapers and magazines that carry the little cartoons; omits, or misrepresents us to death) has always served to distract and defuse feelings of status deprivation suffered by the huge sectors just above the black one. Then also to account for the seemingly dual nature recognizable in the authoritarian personality (conformity, but also a strange latent destructiveness), racism has always been employed as a pressure release for the psychopathic destructiveness envinced by a people historically processed to fear, to feel the need for a decision maker, to hate freedom.

The revolutionary is outlawed. The Black revolutionary "is a doomed man". All of the forces of counter-revolution stack up over his head. He's standing in the tank-trap he has dug. He lives in the cross-hairs. No one can understand the feeling but himself. "From the beginning" of his revolutionary consciousness he must use every device to stay alive. Violence is a forced issue. It's incumbent on him. The very first political programs have had to be defended with duels to the death. The Children's Breakfast programs haven't been spared. The next round of commune building could cause the third great war of the century.

Unless this fundamental fact is now taken into account by other revolutionary people - that Blacks must build with the fingers of one hand wrapped around a gun (an anti-personnel weapon) and that we cannot leave the central city - there will be no logical conclusion reached. Only an argument. The war will be fought in the nerve centers of the nation: the cities, where Angela was found hiding (and still working) by the government where Huey was found hiding and working by the government's propaganda institution. We cannot withdraw. If the exponents of simple rejection or withdrawal are to reach revolutionary syllogism, validity, a true intercommunalism with the forces of Black liberation, a way must be found to either win more convinced fascists into withdrawal or discover a way to make withdrawal attract some of the gun fire away from the Black commune as it builds.

A BLADE FOR THE THROAT OF FASCISM

George Jackson

Black Panther Party

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A STATEMENT ON OUR FALLEN COMRADE, GEORGE JACKSON: By Angela Yvonne Davis

August 23, 1971

An enemy bullet has once more brought grief and sadness to Black people and to all who oppose racism and injustice and who love and fight for freedom. On Saturday, August 21, a San Quentin guard's sniper bullet executed George Jackson and wiped out that last modicum of freedom with which he had perservered and resisted so fiercely for eleven years.

Though deprived so long of the freedom of movement enjoyed by his oppressors, even as he died George was far more free than they. Like he lived, he died resisting. A Field Marshal of the Black Panther Party, George belongs to a very special breed of fallen Black leaders, for his struggle was the most perilous.

He was recognized as a leader of the movement which sought to deepen the political consciousness of Black and Brown prisoners who constitute 30 to 40% of California's prison population. His impact on the community outside was and continues to be boundless. George's example of courage in the face of the spectre of summary execution; his insights honed in the torment of seven years of solitary confinement; his perserverance in the face of overwhelming odds will continue to be a source of inspiration to all our sisters and brothers inside prison walls and outside.

His book, Soledad Brother, a stirring chronicle of the development of the highest form of revolutionary fortitude and resistance, serves as a primer to captured brothers and sisters across the world. Equally important, this volume, perhaps more than any other, has given impetus and shaped the direction of the growing support movement outside the prisons. George, from behind seemingly impenetrable walls, has placed the issue of the prison struggle squarely on the agenda of the people's movement for revolutionary change. His book reveals the indivisible nature of the struggle on the outside of the prison system with the one inside. Whether in prison or not, Black and third world people are the victims and targets of a common system of oppression and exploitation. Only the methods used are different.

The prevailing conditions of race and class exploitation invariably result in the captivity of a disproportionate number of Black and third world people. Our brothers and sisters are usually locked up for crimes they did not commit, or for crimes against property - crimes for which white youths receive prosecutorial, judicial, and penal leniency. George himself was an 18 year old man-child when he was sentenced to serve from one to life for a robbery involving $70 - one to life - or eleven years' enslavement and sudden death. Through George's life and the lives of thousand of other brothers and sisters, the absolute necessity for extending the struggle of Black and third world people into the prison system itself becomes unmistakably clear.

The legacy left us by George and his dead brother, Jon means that we must strengthen the mass movement which alone is capable of freeing all of our brothers and sisters in prisons. We know that the road to freedom has always been stalked by death. George knew that the price of his intense revolutionary commitment was having to live each day fighting off potential death blows. He had repeatedly seen death used as a standard reprisal for blacks who "stepped out of line." In January of 1970, he had seen his brother prisoners, Nolan, Miller, and Edwards, warrantlessly and viciously murdered in the Soledad Prison yard. In Soledad Brother, George graphically told of the manner in which he had learned to thwart the many past attempts to murder him.

The dimensions of the task which lie ahead of us are clearer now, but the price of our new vision has been the death of two brilliant and brave revolutionaries, brothers in blood. Associate Warden Park promises us that the new wave of repression which has been unleashed within San Quentin will not halt with George's death. Rather, he has ushered in new terrorism by openly inviting guards to make a show of force and fully exhaust their vengeance on the prisoners themselves. Efforts to squelch revolutionary prison activity will not stop with one murder Park tells us, but will continue until San Quentin is purged of all revolutionaries and every revolutionary thought. The newspaper of George's party, the Black Panther Party, is hereafter forbidden within San Quentin's walls. "Old-fashion prison methods," namely raw brutality, without its cosmetic dressings, is officially the new regime. Brothers Ruchell Magee, Fleeta Drumgo, and John Clutchette are identified targets; others in the so-called Adjustment Center who have taken sides are equally in danger. Our responsibility extends to all these brothers upon whom war has been declared - the people must secure their safety, and ultimately their freedom. Prison authorities seek only to cover up their own murderous crimes by attempting to initiate new frame-ups. These efforts must be swiftly and forcefully

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countered.

The Jackson family must be saluted. Their grief is deep. In little more than a year two of their sons, George and Jonathan, were felled by fascist bullets. I express my love to Georgia and Robert Jackson, Penny, Frances and Delora.

For me, George's death has meant the loss of a comrade and revolutionary leader, but also the loss of an irretrievable love. This love is so agonizingly personal as to be indescribable. I can only say that in continuing to love him, I will try my best to express that love in the way he would have wanted - by reaffirming my determination to fight for the cause George died defending. With his example before me, my tears and grief are rage at the system responsible for his murder. He wrote his epitaph when he said:

Hurl me into the next existence, the descent into hell won't turn me. I'll crawl back to dog his trail forever. They won't defeat my revenge, never, never. I'm part of a righteous people who anger slowly, but rage undammed. We'll gather at his door in such a number that the rumbling of our feet will make the earth tremble.

-- [20] --