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All Black People Got to Seize the Time for Unity!

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ALL BLACK PEOPLE GOT TO SEIZE THE TIME FOR UNITY!: THE ENTIRE COMMUNITY WILL DECIDE THE RESULTS OF THE GARY, INDIANA NATIONAL BLACK POLITICAL CONVENTION

INTRODUCTION: BY HUEY P. NEWTON, SERVANT OF THE PEOPLE, BLACK PANTHER PARTY

Since Black people in the United States were hurled from so-called Emancipation to make-do in a hostile environment, and since suffering through the false hopes of the Reconstruction Era to endure the thousands of indignities presented by a racist America, we have been unable to bring ourselves to make an organized thrust for our long-sought liberation. At present, we still suffer the centuries-old problems, barely surviving our current situation. Although the mighty storm is rising, when we Black people, along with other poor and oppressed people, overturn all obstacles to our liberation with our great and stored-up collective power, the tide is still low and things are too much the same: still hungry, still tired, still powerless.

Therefore, when, for three days last March (March 11, 12 and 13, 1972), thousands of Black people gathered in Gary, Indiana, representing a wide variety of political leanings, to unite on the common issue of our oppression, it could only be called a good thing. The tasks this National Black Political Convention set before itself were monumental. The concrete conditions that must be overcome and transformed are monumental. Nevertheless, there was the unity of will, to survive, to gain liberation, and monumental tasks could be discussed, as they had to be.

The Black Panther Party, since its inception in 1966, has been driven by and was organized to institute one basic phenomenon, the united thrust of Black people, primarily, to seize power. We have said it so many times, "All Power to the People". We have implemented programs of action, from the early self-defense groups to the current survival programs, with the vision before us of unity in our community, to bring about our complete liberation. With this in mind, we must applaud the gathering at Gary, which proposed the beginnings of that united thrust for power for Black people. Without the unity, all discussions are mute.

There, at Gary, Black people from all walks of life came together, to state the problems and propose the solutions. During the three days, the chief organizers of the Convention outlined a program and called for votes on the wide variety of topics which affect out lives. The subjects were wide-range, for we need so much, lack so much. As the various speakers came forward, announcing, calling for a particular vote, putting forward a particular program, for three full days, those who attended and those who watched from afar could hear the theme reverberate and fill the meeting places: unity, unity in the Black community.

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From these various platforms, a document was drawn up, combining what was proposed with what was resolved. This document became the National Black Political Agenda, expressing a program to be enacted as a result of the Convention. It was to have been presented, after various amendments by the Convention Steering Committee, to the masses of people on May 19, 1972, the birthdate of Brother Malcolm X. This final document will certainly represent an historic record of what Black people tried to do or thought about doing in the year 1972. Of course, only the will of the people and History will declare its validity.

The outcome of Gary, as we have indicated, will be told by the masses of people, by what actually takes place. Therefore, what we say and feel can only be represented by what we do. However, if the action is to be progressive, it must be guided by correct thinking, and the idea, then, must closely reflect the real and concrete condition, with a progressive thrust toward future events. Because we, the Black Panther Party, have been able to criticize ourselves, openly and without hesitation, we understand that the way to achieving our liberation, toward implementing the program for liberation, must be lit by correct ideas and corresponding, correct action. We can never be too arrogant for that. Our lives are at stake, our survival is at stake, our unity is at stake. We must unite, with the knowledge that unity cannot be accepted if it is unprincipled. History challenges us and time is of the essence.

Let us review, then, with the interests of our people, of ourselves, in mind, the National Black Political Convention, using that experience to help us in the future. The overwhelmingly positive unity that was a reality by the very fact of the Convention, the basic theme of unity was overclouded by the condition at the Convention of chaos and disorder for three entire days. We were there and ready to talk business, but the organizers left us in a state of confusion. The groups and organizations that came to help, to work were shuffled around to vie for a spot on the program, while the chief organizers commanded the program. In particular, the Black Panther Party, which certainly represents a viable and active force in the Black community, was relegated to express its program for voting in conjunction with the singing of Isaac Hayes. Brother Isaac Hayes is a fine, Black entertainer, but Chairman Bobby Seale neither sings nor dances. As a matter of fact, when Chairman Bobby Seale and myself walked the streets of Oakland, California, back in 1966, armed against the aggressors, we were alone, and Isaac Hayes hadn't sung a note of "Let's Stay Together".

The point is that when our Chairman, representing our entire Party membership; representing our beloved Comrades who have given their lives to bring about unity and complete liberation of Black people, George Jackson and Bunchy Carter and Jon Huggins and L'il Bobby Hutton, and too many more; representing the Comrades in the Black Panther Party who've suffered in the various prisons and jails for their political beliefs and actions, Brothers David Hilliard, Chief of Staff of the Black Panther Party, and Romaine Fitzgerald and Johnny Spain, all of them; representing 20 Survival Programs which have provided the food, clothing, shoes, medical care, legal aid, education, etc., to thousands of Black and poor people, when the Chairman of the Black Panther Party, of the Vanguard Party, came to offer our suggestions and comments to join and unite with the other delegates, he should not have had to speak over band music in a near-by room or be a part of the program that had been set aside for entertainment. We criticize the leaders of the Convention for this action.

Finally, there is the agenda, the National Black Political Agenda. In total, it is a positive agenda, expressing a desire for Black people to gain political and economic power. It deserves our appreciation and our effort to implement its overwhelmingly positive aspects. It is because the Black Panther Party supports the activity of Black and poor and oppressed people to move progressively toward our liberation that we print the National Black Political Agenda here, at this time, to offer it to the masses of our people, who are the only true voices that can approve such an agenda. It has long been our belief that action is the vanguard. We know, therefore, that only with the knowledge and will of the masses of our people can such an agenda be truly adopted, for it is only through the will, desire and power of the people that the action will occur.

We offer our entire newspaper to the printing of this agenda, for those who will, to read, to study, to accept, to reject. We know that only the wisdom of the masses of our people will decipher every word, and decide what is in our best interests. The National Black Political Agenda speaks of bringing about fundamental change, and the Black Panther Party agrees that only a basic change in transformation of the existing order will deliver Black people, all oppressed people out of oppression. In the last analysis, we believe that this change will come when the contradiction between Black people, all oppressed people and our oppressors is ultimately resolved, which we believe will be through violent conflict. It is with these ideas in mind that we offer this Agenda for the masses of Black people, for, as we have stated before, "… when (the people) are ready to pick up the gun, serious business will happen."

ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Huey P. Newton
Servant of the People
Central Committes
Black Panther Party NATIONAL BLACK POLITICAL AGENDA

Introduction

The Black Agenda is addressed primarily to Black people in America. It is our attempt to define some of the essential changes which must take place in this land as we and our children move to self-determination and true independence. It assumes that no truly basic change for our benefit takes place in Black or white America unless we Black people organize to initiate that change. It assumes that we must have some essential agreement on overall goals, even though we may differ on many specific strategies. Therefore, this is our initial statement of goals and directions, our first definition of some crucial issues around which Black people must organize and move in 1972 and beyond. Anyone who claims to be serious about the survival and liberation of Black people must be serious about the implementation of the Black Agenda.

What Time Is It?

We come to Gary in an hour of great crisis and tremendous promise for Black America. While the white nation hovers on the brink of chaos, while its politicians offer no hope of real change, we stand on the edge of history and are faced with an amazing and frightening choice: We may choose in 1972 to slip back into the decadent white politics of American life, or we may press forward, moving relentlessly from Gary to the creation of our own Black life. The choice is large, but the time is very short.

Let there be no mistake. We come to Gary in a time of unrelieved crisis for our people. From every rural community in Alabama to the high-rise compounds of Chicago, we bring to this Convention the agonies of the masses of our people. From the sprawling Black cities of Watts and Nairobi in the West to the decay of Harlem and Roxbury in the East, the testimony we bear is the same. We are witnesses to social disaster.

Our cities are crime-haunted dying grounds. Huge sectors of our youth -- and countless others -- face permanent unemployment. Those of us who work find our paychecks able to purchase less and less. Neither the courts nor the prisons contribute to anything resembling justice or reformation. The schools are unable -- or unwilling -- to educate our children for the real world of our struggles. Meanwhile, the officially approved epidemic of drugs threatens to wipe out the minds and strength of our best young warriors.

Economic, cultural, and spiritual depression stalk Black America, and the price for survival often appears to be more than we are able to pay. On every side, in every area of our lives, the American institutions in which we have placed our trust are unable to cope with the crises they have created by their single-minded dedication to profits for some and white supremacy above all.

Beyond These Shores

And beyond these shores there is more of the same. For while we are pressed down under all the dying weight of a bloated, inwardly decaying white civilization, many of our brothers in Africa and the rest of the Third World have fallen prey to the same powers of exploitation and deceit. Wherever America faces the unorganized, politically powerless forces of the non-white world, its goal is domination by any means necessary -- as if to hide from itself the crumbling of its own systems of life and work. But Americans cannot hide. They can run to China and the moon and to the edges of consciousness, but they cannot hide. The crises we face as Black people are the crises of the entire society. They go deep, to the very bones and marrow, to the essential nature of America's economic, political, and cultural systems. They are the natural end-product of a society built on the twin foundations of white racism and white capitalism.

So, let it be clear to us now: The desperation of our people, the agonies of our cities, the desolation of our countryside, the pollution of the air and the water -- these things will not be significantly affected by new faces in the old places in Washington, D.C. This is the truth we must face here in Gary if we are to join our people everywhere in the movement forward toward liberation.

White Realities, Black Choice

A Black political convention, indeed all truly Black politics must begin from this truth: The American system does not work for the masses of our people, and it cannot be made to work without radical fundamental

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change. (Indeed, this system does not really work in favor of the humanity of anyone in America.)

In light of such realities, we come to Gary and are confronted with a choice. Will we believe the truth that history presses into our face -- or will we, too, try to hide? Will the small favors some of us have received blind us to the larger sufferings of our people, or open our eyes to the testimony of our history in America?

For more than a century we have followed the path of political dependence on white men and their systems. From the Liberty Party in the decades before the Civil war to the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, we trusted in white men and white politics as our deliverers. Sixty years ago, W.E.B. DuBois said he would give the Democrats their "last chance" to prove their sincere commitment to equality for Black people -- and he was given white riots and official segregation in peace and in war.

Nevertheless, some twenty years later we became Democrats in the name of Franklin Roosevelt, then supported his successor Harry Truman, and even tried a "non-partisan" Republican General of the Army named Eisenhower. We were wooed like many others by the superficial liberalism of John F. Kennedy and the make-believe populism of Lyndon Johnson. Let there be no more of that.

Both Parties Have Betrayed Us

Here at Gary, let us never forget that while the times and the names and the parties have continually changed, one truth has faced us insistently, never changing: Both parties have betrayed us whenever their interests conflicted with ours (which was most of the time), and whenever our forces were unorganized and dependent, quiescent and compliant. Nor should this be surprising, for by now we must know that the American political system, like all other white institutions in America, was designed to operate for the benefit of the white race: It was never meant to do anything else.

That is the truth that we must face at Gary. If white "liberalism" could have solved our problems, then Lincoln and Roosevelt and Kennedy would have done so. But they did not solve ours nor the rest of the nation's. If America's problems could have been solved by forceful, politically skilled and aggressive individuals, then Lyndon Johnson would have retained the presidency. If the true "American Way" of unbridled monopoly capitalism, combined with a ruthless military imperialism could do it, then Nixon would not be running around the world, or making speeches comparing his nation's decadence to that of Greece and Rome.

If we have never faced it before, let us face it at Gary: The profound crisis of Black people and the disaster of America are not simply caused by men nor will they be solved by men alone. These crises are the crises of basically flawed economics and politics, and of cultural degradation. None of the Democratic candidates and none of the Republican candidates -- regardless of their vague promises to us or to their white constituencies -- can solve our problems or the problems of this country without radically changing the systems by which It operates.

The Politics of Social Transformation

So we come to Gary confronted with a choice. But it is not the old convention question of which candidate shall we support, the pointless question of who is to preside over a decaying and unsalvageable system. No, if we come to Gary out of the realities of the Black communities of this land, then the only real choice for us is whether or not we will live by the truth we know, whether we will move to organize independently, move to struggle for fundamental transformation, for the creation of new directions, towards a concern for the life and the meaning of Man. Social transformation or social destruction, those are our only real choices.

If we have come to Gary on behalf of our people in America, in the rest of this hemisphere, and in the Homeland -- if we have come for our own best ambitions -- then a new Black Politics must come to birth. If we are serious, the Black Politics of Gary must accept major responsibility for creating both the atmosphere and the program for fundamental, far-ranging change in America. Such responsibility is ours because it is our people who are most deeply hurt and ravaged by the present systems of society. That responsibility for leading the change is ours because we live in a society where few other men really believe in the responsibility of a truly humane society for anyone anywhere.

We Are The Vanguard

The challenge is thrown to us here in Gary. It is the challenge to consolidate and organize our own Black role as the vanguard in the struggle for a new society. To accept that challenge is to move to independent Black politics. There can be no equivocation on that issue. History leaves us no other choice. White politics has not and cannot bring the changes we need.

We come to Gary and are faced with a challenge. The challenge is to transform ourselves from favor-seeking vassals and loud-talking, "militant" pawns, and to take up the role that the unorganized masses of our people have attempted to play ever since we came to these shores: That of harbingers of true Justice and humanity, leaders in the struggle for liberation.

A major part of the challenge we must accept is that of redefining the functions and operations of all levels of American government, for the existing governing structures

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-- from Washington to the smallest county -- are obsolescent. That is part of the reason why nothing works and why corruption rages throughout public life. For white politics seeks not to serve but to dominate and manipulate.

We will have joined the true movement of history if at Gary we grasp the opportunity to press Man forward as the first consideration of politics. Here at Gary we are faithful to the best hopes of our fathers and our people if we move for nothing less than a politics which places community before individualism, love before sexual exploitation, a living environment before profits, peace before war, justice before unjust "order", and morality before expediency.

This is the society we need, but we delude ourselves here at Gary if we think that change can be achieved without organizing the power, the determined national Black power, which is necessary to insist upon such change, to create such change, to seize change.

Towards A Black Agenda

So when we turn to a Black Agenda for the seventies we move in the truth of history, in the reality of the moment. We move recognizing that no one else is going to represent our interests but ourselves. The society we seek cannot come unless Black people organize to advance its coming. We lift up a Black Agenda recognizing that white America moves towards the abyss created by its own racist arrogance, misplaced priorities, rampant materialism, and ethical bankruptcy. Therefore, we are certain that the Agenda we now press for in Gary is not only for the future of Black humanity, but is probably the only way the rest of America can save itself from the harvest of its criminal past.

So, Brothers and Sisters of our developing Black nation, we now stand at Gary as a people whose time has come. From every corner of Black America, from all liberation movements of the Third World, from the graves of our fathers and the coming world of our children, we are faced with a challenge and a call: Though the moment is perilous we must not despair. We must seize the time, for the time is ours.

We begin here and now in Gary. We begin with an independent Black political movement, an independent Black Political Agenda, an independent Black spirit. Nothing less will do. We must build for our people. We must build for our world. We stand on the edge of history. We cannot turn back.

BLACK AGENDA FOR ACTION

POLITICAL EMPOWERMENT

The Problem and the Choice

The bondage of Black people in America has been sanctioned and perpetuated by the American political system -- for the American political system is one of politics dedicated to the preservation of white power.

It was white politics that enslaved Black people and disfranchised them without a second thought.

It was white politics that enlisted Black men into the Union Army in the Civil War and then cruelly betrayed them when the white Republic was restored.

It was white politics that condoned the lynchings of Blacks and the criminal theft of their land.

It was white politics that marauded Mexico and plundered the Philippines, raped Latin America and sought greedily to possess Africa and subject Asia to its will. It is white politics that daily exposes itself as a politics of bribery, corruption, special privilege and moral dishonor. And it is white politics that now has brought America to being sneered at and despised by the majority of the world's peoples.

White politics is the politics of racism. It cannot be made to work on behalf of the aspirations and ideals of humane justice; it can only be a politics of racism. It cannot deliver Blacks from the clutches of Babylon.

At this moment in history then, Black people must decide whose side they are on. Are they for or against this system? This is the question of our future and of America's which Blacks must honestly face with all its implications and with all its meanings.

The Direction

The plight of Black people is the result of the workings of the American system. Our political agenda then must

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transcend this system; it must speak boldly and without reservation to the problems of Black people in the '70' s.

The Black politics we need goes far beyond electoral politics and far beyond 1972. WE NEED A PERMANENT POLITICAL MOVEMENT THAT ADDRESSES ITSELF TO THE BASIC CONTROL AND RESHAPING OF AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS THAT CURRENTLY EXPLOIT BLACK AMERICA AND THREATEN THE WHOLE SOCIETY. The unifying objective of this political movement must be the empowerment of the Black community, not simply its representatives. It must offer basic alternatives to all the existing American political, economic and cultural systems.

The Gary Convention must establish a national research arm to provide the on-going structure with the capacity to develop information, positions and data necessary for achieving the political, economic and social changes necessary for Black empowerment.

The Gary Convention must pledge itself to organize and mobilize such a community-based movement directed towards amassing the needed resources and power to achieve full Black empowerment.

We must have:

1. Black Congressional representation in proportion to our presence in the national population. We are at least 15 per cent of the population. Through Constitutional amendment -- or any other means necessary -- we ought to have a minium of 66 Representatives and 15 Senators; and until such time as the House and Senate represent Black people fairly, our due seats are to be filled by persons elected at-large by the national Black community. The same principle shall obtain for state and local governments.

2. Proportionate Black employment and policy control at every level of federal, state and local government -- including the judicial system.

3. A Black commission, created by the continuing structure of the Gary Convention, to study reapportionment and redistricting and to develop and implement strategies for striking down gerrymandering by whites designed to destroy Black political power.

4. Community control over the police, schools and other institutions that affect the lives of Black people, and the establishment of residence requirements for officials and employees of the same.

5. A Bill of Rights for all Black people caught in inequities of America's "criminal justice" system, guarantee of trial by a jury of peers, right of lawyer of choice to be paid for by the state, extension of federal wage laws to cover prisoners, establishment of prisoners' unions, the right to a speedy trial, the right to bail procedures, full human rights while in jail and prisons, full restoration of all rights upon release from incarceration. The release of all political prisoners, including draft resisters.

6. The elimination of capital punishment for any and all crimes and the remanding of Blacks convicted of criminal offenses to penal rehabilitation centers housed in or near the Black community. The establishment of local community control over courts and prisons.

7. The termination of political surveillance of Black

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people by the FBI, the CIA and the Department of Defense and the shifting of their attention to ending organized crime and the drug traffic in the United States. If the FBI is unable to make effectual in-roads on the drug traffic in the next two (2) years it should be phased out of existence as an irrelevant and worthless tax liability.

8. The termination by the U.S. government of foreign trade and financial assistance to those countries which supply and process raw materials ultimately used in the U.S. drug traffic. A maximum sentence of life imprisonment for drug pushers in the Black community.

9. The initiation by the continuing structure of the National Black Political Convention of a national voter education and registration drive among Black voters.

10. Two-way Black political accountability in which the Black community gives financial support to Black candidates and they, in turn, when elected, faithfully represent the Black community.

11. The right to have cities with Black majorities whose population exceeds the population of the smallest state in the Union hold plebiscites to determine whether or not they want to assume the status of a state.

12. Political guarantees that regional and metropolitan governmental arrangements do not disenfranchise or deny majority Black cities and Blacks in other jurisdictions the right of self-government, self-determination and control of their communities and of federal and state resources provided within metropolitan areas.

The Responsibility

We advance these programmatic ideas with no real notion that white politics can endorse their direction. That is up to us. These ideas and the many thousands more that will arise from the specific conditions of our people are the evolving power, hope, and future of the Black political agenda. For them to become real, we must organize to demand them, not as temporary protest or pressure group faction, but as a new political force in American life whose time has come.

ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT

The economic impoverishment of the Black community in America is clearly traceable to the historic enslavement of our people and to the racist discrimination to which we have been subjected since "emancipation". Indeed, much of the unprecedented economic wealth and power of American capitalism has obviously been built upon this exploitation of Black people.

Therefore, an incalculable social indebtedness has been generated, a debt which is owed to Black people by the general American society. So, while the moral horrors of slavery and the human indignities visited upon our people by racial discrimination can never really be compensated for -- we must not rest until American society has recognized our valid, historic right to reparations, to a massive claim on the financial assets of the American economy. At the same time, it is necessary that Black people realize that full economic development for us cannot take place without radical transformation of the economic system which has so clearly exploited us these many years.

It is against the background of such realities that we move to a Black Agenda for Economic Empowerment.

1. Recommendation:

That there be established a national Black commission (chosen by the Black Convention or its successor body) to determine a procedure for calculating a reparations schedule in terms of land, capital and cash, and to explore the ways in which the Black community prefers to have this payment implemented.

Pending the completion of the report of this Commission on Reparations, a continuing effort must be waged to empower the Black community in ways which will enable us to protect ourselves and to make our maximum contribution to the human family.

2. Recommendation:

That an independent, non-profit, publicly-funded National Black Development Agency be established

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under Black leadership and control -- replacing the existing Small Business Administration -- for the purpose of facilitating business ownership and control over the full range of business and service enterprises now serving the Black community. This is to include but not be limited to public transportation, communications, health housing day care, educational, commercial and financial institutions. Further, that local Community Development Corporations as now chartered by the implementing agency should be abolished and the new effort should be supported with multi-year funding and an initial budget of $5 billion for each of the five years commencing in 1973.

3. Recommendation:

The creating of a new Homestead Act, to make use of the billions of dollars worth of land now owned by the Federal Government. This property must not move into hands of private for-profit developers when there is such drastic need for human housing and land use where Black people live. Further, the Federal Government shall use its power of eminent domain to acquire land for Black people.

4. Recommendation:

That pension funds holding sizeable Black assets be required to place a reasonable percentage of Black persons in positions which exercise-control over the use of these assets, or alternatively to place a reasonable percentage of their assets under the direct control of Black persons exclusively. A reasonable proportion of the total deposits must be maintained in Black banks.

5. Recommendation:

That private foundations (exceeding $500,000 in assets) shall be obligated by law to disburse at least 10 per cent of their assets annually, with no less than half directed to the Black community.

That a Black United Fund be established with regional and representative Black leadership. All Black persons will be solicited to contribute toward this fund in proportion to their annual income, with the proceeds to be used for Black charitable and development purposes.

7. Recommendation:

That Black consumers be encouraged to spend as much of their purchasing power as possible in Black-owned and operated stores, and to avoid firms having a negative impact on the Black community.

8. Recommendation:

That where racial discrimination exists in labor unions, Black parallel unions be formed and automatically afforded the same privileges as those enjoyed by the discriminatory unions.

There shall be a rigidly enforced federal requirement that Black employees as a proportion of the total on all federally supported construction projects be equal to their ratio to the total population in the local government jurisdiction.

9. Recommendation:

That the government guarantee a minimum annual income of $6,500 for a family of four. This will be implemented by raising the minimum wage to $3.13 per hour and $2.50 per hour for persons under 18 years of age, combined with a guaranteed suitable job for every employable worker. Those unable to work will receive this sum as an income allotment. Within three years the support level and minimum wage will be raised to provide every American family of four with an income not less than that defined as the Lower Standard Budget at that time (currently $7,200).

10. Recommendation:

That the defense and space budgets be curtailed by a minimum of fifty per cent and savings transferred to programs of social, education, economic and political development.

11. Recommendation:

That fares on mass transit systems so vital to Blacks in reaching jobs, where they are available, be lowered to token levels, or subsidized to permit free public transportation.

12. Recommendation:

That the enormous welfare programs given to big agriculture and big business be selectively reduced by roughly the same order of magnitude (50 per cent).

13. Recommendation:

That loopholes in the federal tax law be closed and its provisions thoroughly reformed so as to render the overall tax structure favorable to the Black community's development, abolishing tax obligations for those whose gross income falls below $4,500 plus $750 per child or other dependent,

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and insuring that all those whose income exceeds $25,000 per year must bear some part of the federal tax burden.

14. Recommendation:

That the estate and gift tax be increased to maximum rate of 90 per cent, ending forever the inter-goverational perpetuation of the ownership of unearned white fortunes. Taxpayers shall be allowed a full Federal Income Tax credit for inheritance and gift taxes paid to the state.

15. Recommendation:

That a much expanded system of federal grants-in-aid be made directly to local governments, largely in the form of grants tied to enforceable agreements requiring that all funds be based on local human needs and not be contingent on matching state and local funds.

16. Recommendation:

That expanded anti-trust legislation be enacted and effectively enforced, with provision made for transferring the ownership and control of divested companies to Blacks and other minority groups.

17. Recommendation:

That the continuing body encourage exploration of alternative forms of economic organizations and development of an economic system that promotes self-reliance, cooperative economics, and people ownership and control of the means of production and the distribution of goods.

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

In every phase of our history in America, the Human Development of the Black community has been seriously impeded because of the essential commitment of America to anti-humanistic goals and purposes, because of the racism rampant in the general society, and because we did not control the instruments and institutions for our social, cultural and educational development. We have been -- and are now -- a colony in the midst of a society committed to values other than the development of the human spirit.

Therefore, if the development of the Black community is to lead to the creation of new levels of Black humanity, we must break the bonds of our colonization, we must create

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and direct new institutions, and we must wrest control of some existing institutions from the hands of white America. We must define the human development we need, and we must move to create the necessary conditions for its realization.

With such goals in mind, we put forward these elements of an Agenda for Black Human Development, recognizing the centrality of the Black Family to all aspects of our growth.

1. Establishment of a National Commission/Foundation for Black Education, funded from public and private sources (including funds generated, controlled and disbursed by Black people), to develop and encourage national and local research, planning and experimentation toward the creation of new models of Black education at all levels. Under the auspices of such a Commission/Foundation, it is necessary to work toward the creation of a National Philosophy of Black Education, growing out of the experience of the Black Family.

2. Establishment of free academic and technical education for all Black people up to their highest attainable level, Special federal support for Black-controlled higher and pre-college education (public and non-public) at a level of at least 20 per cent of the annual expenditures in this area. Funds to be granted to Black college students based on the per capita income of the students and for their families.

3. Establishment of mechanisms to prevent "mergers" or takeovers of predominantly Black institutions of higher learning which result in the displacement of Black educators and the cultural educational and identify genocide against Black students. Similar mechanisms to be established for the protection of Black high school and elementary school students.

4. Establishment of a system of National Health Insurance for all citizens from birth until death, with free medical care for all families with incomes of less than 10,000 dollars.

5. The utilization of Fourteenth Amendment guarantees of an "equal educational opportunity" for each child, regardless of his/her race, national origin or economic circumstances in providing

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quality education.

6. Establishment of community-oriented programs and policies supportive of Black parents who take the responsibility for the development of a strong Black identity and the understanding of the Black struggle prior to enrolling their children in school.

7. A minimum increase of 100 per cent in Social Security benefits for all persons with the availability of full benefits at age 50.

8. The establishment of a national network of community health centers to deal with the problems of the delivery of health care services to Black communities. Funding and training of a cadre of "street medics" in order to deal with emergencies and the shortage of health personnel in Black communities.

9. The development of mechanisms for Black control of the schools where Black children are educated, moving beyond the sterile issue of "bussing" to the basic issue of the redistribution of educational wealth and control.

10. The creation of comprehensive, Black-controlled publicly-funded 24-hour day care centers with provisions for nutritional services, family consultation, diagnostic and treatment programs and facilities for creative play.

11. Adjusting of eligibility standards for social security pension and retirement funds for Blacks so that they are based on the life expectancy of Blacks, rather than that of whites.

12. The development of educational programs for Black youth in prisons and other correctional institutions that are meaningful both to them and to the Black communities to which they must return.

13. Establishment of drug information programs geared toward Black youth and controlled by the Black community.

14. Establishment of job development programs for Black youth with meaningful employment in the

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community all year round, not just during the "hot summer".

15. Establishment of support mechanisms for a National Black Youth Political Lobby, a Political and Social Research Information Clearinghouse, and an Opportunity Clearinghouse for apprising Black youth of educational, economic and other opportunities open to them.

RURAL DEVELOPMENT

Rural Blacks have historically been subjected to the lash of Southern oppression and terror. We live under a political and economic system which limits rights of political and economic participation, and circumscribes our capacity for growth and development. Governmental policy and practice has historically sought to repress our self-determination, manage and control our rate of progress, and often deny our very existences. Our material environment is characterized by the worst the American social system has to offer.

Our housing is poor and structurally unsound and we control none of the housing production process. We are mainly tenants rather than owners. Even the land we toiled for centuries has seldom been ours to own, control, or pass on to our heirs. Health services, when they are available, are of low quality, high cost and outside the control of our communities.

The rather recent technological revolution in agriculture has been particularly vexing for Black agricultural labor. This labor, long a valued commodity, has been rendered virtually useless. When other jobs are available for Blacks, they are generally low-waged, debasing, and short-lived. Many of us are without any income at all.

Faced with these conditions, we are left with few real options, Millions have fled in a forced exodus from the rural south, seeking refuge in Northern cities. Others, perhaps a quarter of the nation's Black population, have remained to eke out a living as a landless class with no rights that must be respected by the dominant society.

Causes:

The "human condition" of Blacks existing in rural America is a product of racism and aggravated by economic dependency. The absence of sovereignty and a land base also contributes substantially to our condition of powerlessness, and powerlessness leads to serious disparities in the allocation of capital resources, services, and social overhead investments to Black communities.

While much of what constitutes our condition is clearly the work, design, and capriciousness of our oppressors, we must not totally remove ourselves from blame. Far too often we choose to support economically white enterprises, ideas, plans and programs which are detrimental to our own self-interest as a people. It is therefore incumbent upon us to organize and mobilize to develop and support our own enterprises. Nothing less than our total resolve, resources, and energy is required to save and rebuild our Black communities.

Recommendations:

The following represent short- and long-range programmatic recommendations addressed to some of the most vexing problems confronting Blacks in rural areas.

1. A national policy and program of land reform must be instituted for Blacks, providing tracts of sufficient size to be economically viable. Blacks when selling land should first offer it to other Blacks to help decrease the volume of land loss. Set up a structural body manned by Blacks to provide guidance concerning the selling of one's land.

2. The reorganization of the U.S. Department of Agriculture with a reorientation to solving problems confronting small- and medium-size farms and cooperatives.

3. Adoption and implementation of a National System of Health Insurance for all citizens, providing tree and adequate medical care. A redress must be given for those not receiving adequate care.

4. The allocation of sufficient funds for the training of adequate numbers of Black medical and para-medical personnel to expand health delivery systems controlled by Black people in their communities.

5. A sound, safe, and sanitary home must be provided every rural family on the basis of need rather than ability to pay, whether they are tenants, renters, or home owners.

6. A Tennessee Valley Authority-type vehicle should be established to function as a planning, coordinating, and management structure for a rural industrial development program in the Black Belt. This institution should be publicly funded, Black-controlled and emphasize cooperative-type ventures.

7. Proportional representation in all rural governmental and quasi-governmental institutions at every level.

8. Encouragement and expansion of linkages between Blacks in rural and urban areas in the conduct of their common struggle. In this regard, a vertically integrated food processing and distribution network with an education and land bank component should be developed.

9. Financial and political support for the further development by Blacks of new communities in rural areas.

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10. Adoption and implementation of a national program of financial support and vocational training for those Blacks who are/were displaced by rural technology.

11. Establishment of Land Banks to assure continual Black ownership and control of land to be used for cooperative crop production, soil fertilization research and animal husbandry.

12. Creation by the continuing structure of a Council on Rural Development to lend technical assistance to Black farm owners, to create cooperative marketing ventures, to develop ways of creating food processing plants in the South, to conduct research into modern farming methods, and to plan a national design for rural development.

13. Encouragement of young Blacks through scholarships, fellowships and other aids to pursue career training in food technology, parasitology, bio-medical research, and agricultural management to provide the technicians for the Council on Rural Development.

14. Mounting of a major organizational effort to develop cooperative farms across the country in conjunction with Black groups and organizations functioning in rural areas.

FOREIGN POLICY AND BLACK PEOPLE

The Problem:

Because the history and culture of Black people is fundamentally related to our African birthright, we are concerned about the movement of colonized African countries from subjugation to independence and from neo-colonized states to fully independent ones. In the southern African areas of Azania (South Africa), Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), Namibia (South West Africa), Angola, Mozambique and Guinea Bissau, African people are dominated, exploited and brutalized by Europeans, and particularly the NATO powers. This situation manifests itself not only in Africa but also in Vietnam, the Middle East, the Caribbean and other places in the Third and Pan-African World. It is world-wide military imperialism.

The Causes:

This situation of global white oppression arises because the European countries, supported by the United States, need to expand their control of sources of cheap labor and raw materials into Africa and the Third World in order to continue to reap profits. These white countries seek to protect their domination and exploitation by the establishment of treaties which provide for military bases and communications facilities used to suppress Africa and Third World revolutions and maintain the racist status quo.

Therefore: Black people will no longer abdicate their international responsibilities but will support a foreign policy agenda designed to:

1. Further the progress of provisional governments and the revolutionary movements in Africa, especially in Azania, Namibia, Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe, and Guinea Bissau, and to assist other African countries in their movement toward meaningful political independence.

2. Promote African economic independence and help these countries achieve self-sufficiency, thus ending their role as the suppliers of labor and raw materials for European and American capitalists.

3. Affect the world-wide disintegration of the economic and political control and racist exploitation of African and Third World peoples by Europeans.

In order to make such a policy operational we must:

1. Support the African provisional governments and the revolutionary movements, including the utilization of Black resources and the adherence to the 1971 Organization of African Unity position opposing dialogue with South Africa.

2. Demand that the United States in all theaters of international action, cease its complicity with European countries seeking to politically or economically control African and Third World peoples.

3. Support the development of economic programs designed to restore the wealth of Africa, especially the Africanization of management and joint local participation in foreign corporate investments in Africa.

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4. Resist vigorously all attempts by the United States policy-makers or corporations to use the talents of Black people to perpetuate the exploitation and subjugation of Africa and the Third World.

5. Support the Organization of African Unity and a Pan-African philosophy with concrete programs of cooperation and development designed to stress the interdependence of African freedom with Black liberation in the United States.

6. Demand that the United States government withdraw from southern Africa and other African and Third World countries, communication facilities, military bases and material which contribute to the dehumanization or subjugation of those countries' citizens.

7. Recognize the importance of the models provided by Tanzania and the Peoples Republic of China for fundamental political and economic transformation of African and other Third World states.

8. Support a policy of massive economic assistance to Africa, the Caribbean and Black populations of Latin America and the development of Black technical assistance programs to cooperate with these countries.

9. Support the complete self-determination of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and the elimination of overt and covert intervention by the United States into the domestic affairs of the Caribbean countries.

10. End the war in Vietnam and withdraw all foreign troops from African and Asian soil immediately; denounce and withhold Black participation in wars which suppress revolutionary struggles in the Third World.

11. Any organization that develops out of the NBPC (National Black Political Convention) should educate Blacks in the community about foreign policy affecting Africa; it should seek Observer status in the Organization of African Unity, and be accredited as a Non-Governmental Organization of the United Nations.

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION

The major consequence of the present policies and practices of industrial plants, slumlords, and governmental agencies is that the powerful pollute, while the powerless suffer the atrocities of that pollution. For example a child living within 200 feet of a high frequency traffic area or a freeway could get lead poisoning by swallowing daily less than one sixth of a gram of atmospheric particulate fallout, an amount of soot and dirt equal to one-twenty-fourth of a teaspoonful. The residue from leaded gasoline as emitted by motor vehicles accounts for more than 90 per cent of the carbon monoxide found in cities. Carbon monoxide blood poisoning can result from the continuous inhalation of such pollutants.

City street noise, which has been increasing at the rate of one decibel a year, often exceeds the minimal safety levels set for industrial workers.

Inadequate and irregular solid waste disposal forces inner city residents to frequently use pesticides to kill roaches, flies, and other pests. DDT, a basic element in most pesticides, is subsequently ingested by the house-hold occupants and remains in their tissues at levels which may eventually lead to death.

Food products with excessive chemical additives are among the standard items in the nutritionally limited low-income diets.

The automobile is clearly the major producer of the air and noise pollution dumped on the inner city. As much as 60 per cent of these two types of automobile pollutants come from "outside" traffic.

Rat bite fever, salmonellosis and murine typhus, rather common among the inhabitants of inner city areas, are indeed alien to residents of the suburban areas.

Principal Recommendation:

The quasi-public corporation under Black management and control should be set up and capitalized with Environmental Protection Agency funds and matched by the Black nation on a 99 to 1 basis (i.e., for every $1 from the Black community, $99 would be provided by the government). The corporation should:

1. Educate Black community residents on the causes and effects of pollution.

2. Set community standards for air pollution, water effluent discharges, noise levels and other sources of pollution with a focus on the "special impact of all such pollutants separately and in combination with each other".

3. Guarantee the authority, either independently or in conjunction with local governments, to ban all through traffic from inner city streets whenever air pollution levels approach dangerous heights.

4. Provide technical training and public service employment in solid waste management, sanitation engineering, sanitation services, environmental health and air pollution control for the optimal number of Black community residents. Such a measure would foster their timely entry into Environment

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Protection occupations and facilitate their employment in community controlled programs which improve the quality of life through environment protection activities.

5. Assist individuals who bring suit against corporations and other entities that pollute.

6. Issue cease and desist orders enforced by the courts against major polluters.

ENVIRONMENTAL PLANNING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

The issues relative to population density, urban housing and rapid transit should obviously be part of any meaningful discussion regarding environmental planning and community development.

In the core of the fifty-odd major American cities urban blight, the prevailing circumstance, is compounded by the concommitant circumstance, extraordinarily high population density. The negative yield from these circumstances is abnormal incidence of such social diseases as alcoholism, tuberculosis, hypertension, narcotics addiction and mental illness. Moreover, the millions of substandard housing units within the core of most of these same cities are inhabited primarily by low-income Blacks or members of other minority groups. Substandard housing denies its occupants the minimal requirements for health and human decency. It is now recognized that the manifold adversities currently found in most urban areas will not be alleviated until such time as environmental planning and community development activities are initiated and controlled by community residents.

The Federal Government has acquired through default a good many parcels of real estate in a number of urban areas. Instead of the usual auctioning off of these real estate properties to private firms or developers for speculative ventures, such properties might be entrusted to a community controlled development bank empowered to use the properties in a manner which can most appropriately meet the needs and expectations of the community.

Principal Recommendation:

That a Black controlled community development bank be established to facilitate the planning and building of a substantial amount of medium density, low to moderate income housing with maximum provision for open space; community facilities for education, recreation and personal services; "clean"/light industrial development; and rapid transit in the major urban areas.

COMMUNICATIONS

From the beginning, those who enslaved and coloured us understood that by controlling communications they could control our minds. Over the years, as the white communications forces continued to tell the world lies about us, the Black newspaper became our primary agent of communication. From its inception in 1827, it kept us informed about ourselves, because we owned it. It brought us pouring into northern cities and it helped us keep in touch with our brothers and sisters who had not left the South; it told us about lynchings and our treatment in the army, and it fought to preserve our culture.

Then four years ago the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders told the country what we already knew: The white-controlled mass media had not been responsive to our needs. The changes since have been minimal. A few more token Blacks in visible positions here; a few more news stories or entertainment programs involving Blacks there. As the Congressional Black Caucus has said: "… it is still impossible to find in the media anything like an adequate picture of Black culture and Black lifestyles." With these realities in mind, we move toward a Black Agenda for Communications:

1. There is no substitute for the control of our own communications. Black publications and Black controlled electronic media must now be made to serve the Black masses more adequately in our struggle for liberation. They must be catalysts for social change. The Black press and other media have a responsibility to the community to report the news accurately and intelligently, while the Black community has a responsibility to the Black Media to strengthen and support it.

We must control television and radio outlets. Of the approximately 355 Black-programmed radio stations in America, 345 are owned by whites, some of whom have become millionaires through the exploitation of the Black

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public. At this stage, there are no Black-owned television stations in the country.

2. As we work to control our own communications, we must also convince the white-owned mass media they can no longer invade our communities and lie about us at will. We echo the call of the Congressional Black Caucus for local Black organizations to form Media Watchdog Committees, to document unfair media practices in hiring, news coverage, entertainment and advertising. Black lawyers working closely with such Watchdog Committees should file lawsuits to challenge the racist use of the public airwaves, newspapers and magazines.

3. Cable television offers a relatively low cost way both to control information coming into our communities and to channel what would have been white profits into community development. We must see to it that no cable television comes into our communities unless we control it. Our minds and the minds of our children are at stake.

4. At least three Black persons must be appointed to the Federal Communications Commission. The media should not be allowed to operate without serious Black monitoring.

5. It is necessary to move towards the transfer of certain local and national radio and television properties (including cable TV) to Black community control, through appropriate government actions. We must insist on the hiring of Blacks in all print, radio and TV media in proportion to population figures. We have been the main sufferers from white racist communications and the chief creators of profitable alternatives. We must develop and control as well as create. We must tell our own story to our people.

6. In a country having the technological capability of the United States, the right of free speech is meaningless unless Black people are not only able to say what they want to say but also have genuine access to the tools for communicating with themselves and with others. The federal government has the responsibility to ensure that right. To date it has failed in that responsibility. Therefore, we must insist that Black people have guaranteed access to the control of their own modern communications media.

7. Black people must organize to achieve federal and private support of cable TV system ownership by Blacks as well as federal recognition of and response to Black communications watchdog organizations.

8. Blacks must organize to insure that the FCC develops an Ombudsman program to advise and assist Blacks attempting to obtain access to control of and influence on communications media through such actions as petitions to deny licenses, complaints and lawsuits.

9. The 1934 Communications Act, which gave to FCC the job of regulating the broadcast media must be amended immediately to do the following:

-- Networks and all program producers of licensed stations should be made to abide by the Fairness Doctrine and FCC's Equal Employment Practices.

-- FCC should be made to set up a division to help people file complaints against individual stations.

-- Print media should be brought under the same regulatory control as are broadcast media.

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10. The Congressional Black Caucus should introduce legislation allowing non-profit community organizations to receive from HEW's (Health, Education and Welfare) Educational Television Funds 75 per cent of the money necessary for funding community production centers.

11. The United States Information Agency must begin to broadcast the truth about Black community life to Africa. USIA must begin immediately receiving newsworthy items from responsible Blacks, and transmitting

SELF-DETERMINATION FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

The Problem

The nearly 800,000 residents of our Nation's Capital have the dual distinction of being the only citizens of our nation who are by law denied the right to self-government (the last colony) and the only major city in this country with a 72 per cent Black population. These two fact are not unrelated.

No National Black Political Agenda would be complete without a call to the entire Black Nation to rally to the support of the Black majority population of Washington D. C. in their efforts to achieve full self-government and voting representation in the Congress of the United States.

That cause has achieved considerably high visibility this year. The city has its first Delegate, albeit novoting, in the U.S. House of Representatives in nearly one hundred years. He is a Black man and a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. Since coming to office he has developed with the people of the city through a series of hearings held in each of the city's eight wards a "People's Home Rule Bill". That bill was introduced in this the 92nd Congress and on October 12, 1971 the Senate passed a home rule bill very similar to it by the largest margin ever given a home rule proposal. Moreover, a bill granting full voting representation in the Congress to the citizens of the Nation's Capital, with two Senators and two Representatives, has passed the House Judiciary Committee and awaits action by the full House and the Senate. But these initiatives toward liberating our majority-Black Capital are menaced by the same racist reactionary forces that have doomed earlier legislation.

Only an affirmative vote by a majority of the members of both Houses of the Congress and affirmative action by a President of the United States will wrest from Southern-dominated Committees of the Congress their dictatorial authority over the lives of this Black majority population and free them from the tyranny of "taxation without representation".

Recommendations:

1. It is recommended, therefore, that Blacks across the nation obtain commitments to support self-determination for the District of Columbia from all who seek their votes for the Presidency of the United States or membership in the U.S. Congress.

2. In the interim, until self-government is secured, it is recommended that Blacks obtain commitments from United States policy makers for support of the Washington Agenda prepared by the citizens of the District of Columbia and their Delegate to the Congress, and by the District of Columbia Delegation to this convention. That Agenda includes steps that the President and the Congress must take to relieve the problems in the areas of Health, Criminal Justice, Housing and Economic Development, Environment and Transportation, the Elderly, Jobs and Income, Education, Civil Rights and Labor Relations confronting the people of this, the Last Colony.

To those who say that such an Agenda is "visionary", "utopian", and "impossible", we say chat the keepers of conventional white politics have always viewed our situation and our real needs as beyond the realm of their wildest imaginations. At every critical moment of our struggle in America we have had to press relentlessly against the limits of the "realistic" to create new realities for the life of our people.

This is our challenge ac Gary and beyond, for a new Black policies demands new vision, new hope and new definitions of the possible. Our time has come. These things are necessary. All things are possible.

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Blood in My Eye

Let this be his epitaph.

George Jackson

(author of Soledad Brother)

This angry, passionate, eloquent book--which takes up where Soledad Brother left off -- was completed only days before George Jackson was shot to death at San Quentin prison during an alleged escape attempt last August.

George Jackson spent the last eleven years of his life behind prison walls, seven of them in solitary confinement. During that time he developed a radical world view, a deep understanding of politics and history in relation to social change, as well as a remarkable voice as a writer. Blood in My Eye speaks out to the poor, the black, the jailed, the disenfranchised throughout the world. Born of a spirit that refused to be crushed, yet filled with a prophetic sense of his own impending doom, this powerful book from prison presents George Jackson's burning vision of the world that could be -- a world reshaped by "total revolutionary war."

George Jackson lived and died for the revolution. Blood in Eye explains why.

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PEOPLE'S PETITION: FOR IMMEDIATE PAROLE OF BROTHER DAVID HILLIARD FROM THE CALIFORNIA PRISON SYSTEM OR AN APPEAL BAIL BOND WITH A RETRIAL JURY OF HIS PEER-GROUP

WE THE PEOPLE, RESIDENTS OF THE WORLD COMMUNITY, IN THE SPIRIT OF REVOLUTIONARY INTERCOMMUNALISM, DO HEREBY REDRESS OUR GRIEVANCE AND PETITION THE COURTS OF AMERICA AND THE CALIFORNIA STATE GOVERNMENT AND PAROLE BOARD: THAT DAVID HILLIARD BE RELEASED FROM HIS PRISON INCARCERATION IN THE CALIFORNIA PENAL SYSTEM TO THE PEOPLE OF OUR COMMUNITIES ON PAROLE OR AN APPEAL BAIL BOND.

BROTHER DAVID HILLIARD, POLITICAL PRISONER AND CHIEF OF STAFF OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY, WAS IN FACT WRONGFULLY CONVICTED ON FALSE CHARGES BY A PREDOMINATELY WHITE RACIST JURY, AS ALL MEMBERS OF THE OAKLAND BLACK COMMUNITY WERE SYSTEMATICALLY ELIMINATED FROM THE JURY SELECTION PROCESS IN HIS TRIAL.

IN LIGHT OF THESE FACTS, WE THE UNDERSIGNED, THEREFORE PETITION THAT DAVID HILLIARD BE GRANTED HIS HUMAN AND CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS, THAT IS, PAROLE FROM PRISON OR AN APPEAL BAIL BOND BY THE AMERICAN COURTS PENDING APPEAL OF HIS CASE BEFORE HIGHER COURTS, AND THAT HIS RETRIAL JURY BE OF HIS PEERS, A TRUE REPRESENTATION OF A CROSS SECTION OF THE COMMUNITY.

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This Year, I Think I WILL Vote.