haight street blues p. 3 wildcats in chicago p. 6 cuban
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HAIGHT STREET BLUES P. 3WILDCATS IN CHICAGO P. 6CUBAN POEMS, PHOTOS P. 8
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THE MOVEMENT PRESS4A9 14TH STREETSAN FRANCisco, CA. 94103
by Karen Wald
Oakland, California --OUtside the Alameda County Courthouse
disciplined Black Panthers, men andwomen, lead a demonstration of thousands. Free Huey! Set our warrior free!Inside the seventh floor courtroom sitsHuey P. Newton, Ministe-r of Defense,charged with first-degre-e murder. Buteven as Huey Newton sits in the courtroom, it is America on trial.
Since July 15, the first day of thetrial, the Oakland Courthouse has beena scene from a police state. Armed,riot- hel meted guards stand guard atthe doors, letting in ~J those withsuitable identification and official business. On the first day twenty deputiesstood in the hall outside the courtroom.Since then, between twenty and fortyriot police are held in readiness in thebasement.
Members of Huey Newton's family wereforced to be fingerprinted and photographed before being allowed to enterthe courtroom. Lately the coP~. havesearche-d every person entering the courtroom. The police state atmosphere hasincurred the wrath of the press and this,combine-d with favorable impressions ofHuey Newton from interviews, has helpe-dmake the mass media coverage relatively fair up to now.
Focus On PoliticsIn Defense Atto.rney Charles GarrY's
opening statement, he explained to the jurythe entire history of the Black PantherParty, the Party's Ten Point Program, .and described their organizing in theblack community.
Given the t.one of the previous twoweeks of pre-trial motions and jury selection, all aimed at exposing the judicial system and understanding whiteracism, it came as no surprise thatthe focus of the defense, at the outset,would be on politics.
Before the first juror was asked aquestion, Garry moved co quash the entire master panel from which a juryis chosen. The motion was based on.the racism inherent in whites and thelack of ghetto and pOOr representationon a jury selected from voter registration lists.
Garry also pointed out in his motionsthat a jury selected by a system whichallowed the exclusion of those opposedto capital punishment would necessarilyresult in a "hanging jury" more readyto convict a black man than to acquit
him. Garry hammered not only at theracial composition but the economic classbias of the jury panel.
Expert TestimonyGarrY's pre-trial motions were based
on several days of expert testimony bysocial scientists. Dr. Jan Dizard of U.C.cited a study he had made of Oaklandand various national studies to indicatethat voting lists are a discriminatorymethod for jury selection.
Floyd Hunter, nationally prominent sociologist who is presently engaged in astudy of Oakland~ power structure, triedto explain the reasons for the discouragement of black people with governmentand the standard political processes, andoutline the differences between the WestOakland ghetto and East Oakland.
Jury Commissioner Schnarr was convinced of the method's fairness but histestimony revealed that "no response"was the chief eliminator of prospectivejurors, from people who had moved orcould not be located. Excuses for nonservice came most often from personswho "(ould suffer severe economic hardship; ihe poor are thus exluded.
Judge Monroe Freidman took a consistantly myopic view of the testimony.He constantly asked that the sociologistsconfine themselves to only AlamedaCounty, and voter registration. "If anyblack people are prevented from registering to vote in Alameda County, I wantto know about it" , said the JUdge.He didn't want to know about much else,or he would have listene-d to some ofthe psychological and sociological factors which effectively prevent black registration.
Capital Punishment
Dr. Hans Zeisel, of the University ofChicago, has done numerous jury studies.He testified that oppositon to capitalpunishment had been increasing amongall people, but that race remains a majordifferentiating factor in opinions on capital punishment; black people tend tooppose it. Those who favor capital punishment are more likely to oppose openhousing or move out of an lntegratingneighborhood.
He added that those in favor of capitalpunishment were more likely to vote"gu1lty" on the first ballot in criminalcases and would need less proof to arriveat a guilty verdict.
Laughter broke out in the courtroomat one point when Zeisel was asked bythe somewhat disconcerted judge, "Doyou think white jurors would wrongfullyconvict a Negro defendant?" Zeisel, whohad been trying to avoid strong condemnations and stick to clear evidence, said," It' s been rumored to have happened."
Zeisel's testimony on capital punishment included a description of what hasbeen termed the "authoritarian personality". His testimony was followed byNevitt Sanford, psychologist from stanford, an originator of the authoritarianpersonality test. He tesitified as to thelinkage between pro-cap!tal punishmel'tand prejudice.
While the judge again ignored this testimony and it provided no immediate answers as to how to keep racists off juries,it remains an important point for appeal.Large numbers of prospective jurClrswere eliminated "for cause" on the basisof their opposition to capital punishmentand nearly all prospective black jurorswho were eliminated for "cause" werechallenged because they opposed the deathpenalty.
White RacismPerhaps the most penetrating ~d pre
cedent- setting testimony was given byRobert Blauner, sociologist from U.C.,who studies racism. Blauner's testimony,widely reported as were the others, waseducation in its most practical sense.
Blauner distinguished hetweenobjectiveand SUbjective racism. Objective racismis an inescapable, structural and institutional part of this society; subjectiveracism is a question of attitudes. "Livingin this (objectively) racist society", hesaid, "it is not possible for white peopleto be free of sUbjective racism.",
photo by stephen Shames
Garry aske:i, "How do I find a jurorwho is not racist to the extent that hewill prejudge a black defendant?"
The most feasible way" , Blauner testified, "would be not to have whiteson thejury." (Exactly what the Panthers andGarry have argued from the beginning).If this was not done, Blauner suggested,there might be ways to eliminate the mostserious racists. The judge asked, "Isthere a test?".
Screen For Racists
Blauner came up with the following fourpoints. ._
(1) A white juror should have knowledgeof black history and culture.
(2) He should be aware of his ownprejudices and be working to overcomethem, rather than being unaware or il".different.
(3) He should have personal experienCt::with black and minority people--have liveda more equalatarian than segregated life.
(4) He should be actively concernedwith changing the racist structure ofsociety--in his job, his personal life-in some way making a commitment tochange.
In response to a question from DALowell Jensen, Blauner stated that although theoretically racism could be foundin blacks as well as Whites, in realitywhites in our society have a "monopoly"on it because of the objective situation.
Blauner, like Bernard Diamond, criminologist, doctor, law professor, and psychiatrist from Berkeley, responded toDA questioning that he, like everyoneelse, has some amount of racism in him.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 1 2
PAGE 2 THE MOVEMENT SEPTEMBER 1968
EDITORIAL TAKING CARE OF OUR OWN
u promised them Visions & Love & Sharingclap, hepatitis, fleas, begging and the gang bang
Many whites have flocked to the defense of blacks. We have no argumentwith this. But often whites refuse todefend victims from among their ownnumber, arguing that after all the repression is greater against the blacks.And it is.
We have heard people say, "Huey maybe put to death but the Oakland Sevenonly face three years." This is truebut it a voids the real question:
PEOPLE WILL NOT, IN FACT THEYSHOULD NOT, TAKE RISKS IF THEYARE NOT BACKED UP. If the whitemovement does not protect its own, itw1ll soon find that no one is w1llingto take any risks any more. Spokesmenw111 start toning down their criticismsof America, people will retire from themovement, drop back into the system,make their adjustments, quiet down. Andthey will do so out of real fear, fornothing is worse than being abandonedby your own.
Oh thinkThink about what you're tryin' to doto me.ThinkLet your mind goLet yourself be free.You need meAnd I need youWithout each otherThere ain't nothing either can do.ThinkThink about it baby.Think about it right now.
Who's Got It Worse?
Right now.
Stokely, Rap, Mao, Che, Fidel, Huey,Eldridge. Though they too work to avoida cult of th e personality they recognizethe need to project an image. The CubansseeChe as a person to EMULATE, asa positive model.
Compare the attitude of SDS men1berstoward their national officers and thatof Black Panther members toward theris.No banners with Jeff segal's photo areraised, no attempts to run him for Senator or President. The attitude is almostthat it's Jeff's fault he got·it in theneck. We haven't been able to come upwith forms of organization that rejectcurrent social forms and avoid past leftatrocities yet protect us from repressionand project our visions of organization.
Taking Care
In the long run the answer lies inthe development of a political and socialidentity. Then abandonment w1ll 'oot bethe price of leadership, and a greatertrust will arise among young people.This may not occur until the movementas a whole is threatened more than italready is.
,In the short run we have two suggestions. (1) It is a fact that even if a,personis a member of an organization, those
, who work hardest in his de fense whenhe's in danger are his FRIENDS. Therise of friendship or affinity groups andgangs reflects this. The Berkeley Commune, the 18th and Castro Gang, theMotherfuckers, the Free City Familiesare natural groupings of people who havebeen through struggles together, who arefriends and comrades. These will becomeimportant political forms in the future.
Whether or not these new kinds ofgroupings will be successful- -whetheror not we will succeed--depends on howwell the groups can tie in with eachother. We are dependent on each other.We must cement that dependence organizationally. The affinity groups, gangsand fam1l1es must be linked by localand national networks. And perhaps ourdeveloping tamilies- -like true fam1lies-must divide work and responsibility andmore consciously organize ourselves. Wecan no longer operate as if ready or nothere we come. We've got to be ready.
(2) A national defense organization similar to the Los Angeles Committeeto Defend the B1ll of Rights is in theprocess of being formed. This committeeshould have chapters in major citieswhich w1ll raise a general· bail fund,have lawyers on call, and take the jobof defending everybody's own. In a waythis is a professional eqUivalent for whatshould be a popular sentiment. When amoveml1nt does come into being, thedefense commtttee should be its legaldefense arm.
In the long run, we'd suggest everyonefollow sister Aretha's advice:
People walkin' around everydayPlayin' gamesTakin' scoresTrying to make other people lose theirmindsWell,Be careful you don't lose yours.
--- ARES
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Don't Follow Leaders
The anti-leadership, anti-hero strainin the white youth movement is generallyhealthy. It is a response to corruptleadership and manipulation in the past.It does not want a cult of personality.
other revolutionary groups are not asbashful. Oppressed nations are more willi,ng· to project "heroes" -- Malcolm,
revolt. We move from crisis to crisis.A brother who is perfectly willing to
save your life during a street actionor a riot may well have forgotten youor lost interest in the year betweenyour arrest and your trial. This is oneof the problems of the Oakland Seven.They are individuals who called for ademonstration a year ago. The ten thousand people who took the streets of Oakland were NOT members of an organization of which the seven were the leaders.Many young p~ople going to Berkeleythis year do not even know who theSeven are. Most of the Seven are notcampus figures. They are individualswho assumed leadership for the moment.Now they are paying the dues for theentire Stop the Draft Week. They areon trial for what the ten thousand did.
is it not time to admit that Hate as well as love redeems the world?there is no outside w/out inside .no revolution w/out blood.
Los Angeles -- Three members ofthe Black Panther Party were killedand two cops wounded in a shootoutnear Watts August 5th.
At this moment there is little detail.From police reports it looks like thefight began when poli~e pulled over fourmen in a car and jacked them up. Oneof the Panthers escaped and is stillfree. Black "community leaders" areurging him to give himself up to thepolice. Many blacks are afraid that ifcaught he will be executed by the po_lice.
The three men killed were StephenBartholomew, 21, Robert Lawrence, 22,and Thomas LeWiS, 18. The man whoescaped is Anthony Reno Bartholomew ,19.
Lieutenant Governor Finch, on hearingof the shooting, flew back to Californiato "assess" the situation. On learningthe everything was • under control" andthat no "virulent racial situation" existed he returned to the comfort of theRepublican Convention. There, Republicans fiddle while Miami burns, and thepigs killed three black brothers.
3 Panthers Killed
a revolutionary identity. But this identityhas many weaknesses.
Perhaps the main weakness is that ouremerging identity is expressed mainlythrough form and style rather than thecontent of revolt. The physical and CUltural trappings of revolt without an unnerstanding of why we revolt and who ourenemy is w1ll not destroy the environment which oppresses us. Forms of rebellion can be accomodated by our oppressors. Witness the mini-skirted airline hostesses, the Dodge tlRebell1on",the "come alive Pepsi generation", thenew top-forty rock stations. Americai s making money off the forms of ouridentity. We say fuck you, America. Butuntil we can f111 out our identity witha consciousness of who the oppressorsare and why we oppose them we willhelp America grow rather than to destroyit. Until then we will not be able toidentify our brothers and sisters--someof whom are over 30, not stUdents, andvery "straight" looking. We will not beable to take care of our own.
Editor's Note: This poem_was taken from a billboard nearthe Berkeley Commune table on Telegraph Avenue. We don'tknow the author but wI'! likp the poem.
can it be we warrior poets were right all along?can it be all the buddhas r hollow& like the Dali Lamau have been sipping butter tea upon a peacock throneas Tibetans perished in the snow?
sure you didn' t want to see the scene go that waybut that's how the shit went down.& i do not hear yr. howl.i do not hear exorcising demons.
yr. disciples are dying in the streets, gurus.u have been among the philistines too long.u have become their Spectacle.heal the sores upon thine own bodies, prophet!
rUling guru greybeard bardshaving new fun in yr. rolling rock renaissance.have you passed thru the Haighthave you seen yr. turned on kids?
for those pacifist poets
Another handicap is the process bywhich the young· are expressing their
From Crisis to Crisis
yr. word has brought them as far as the Haight.can you not carry them to the seashore?or is it your power and not theirs which has failed?
u told the congress that yr acidhad taught us how to luvthat finally bloodsoaked thieving swine of a cowboythe Others call their president.is there nothing left over for the kidssleeping on sidewalkswaiting to be carried off by the bikes?has yr. acid & cannibis power wilted like yr. daffodils?is there no compassion left over for the broken bodiesof yr. children's crusade?
The underlying black strategy is tounite their own people. Blackness isan identity. Black people have a commonhistory of oppression. When a black revolutionary says "We must defend ourblack brothers and sisters," a chordis . struck that even bourgeois blacksimbedded in the power structure respondto on some level. Black unity is at leasta theoretical possib1l1ty. Uncle Toms,no matter how bad·, can always returnhome. They will always be black. AsMalcolm pointed out: a black professorwith a Ph.D. is still a "nigger" to a lotof white folks.
The strategy of the white movementis to divide our own people. We mustmake a distinction between white oppressors and white oppressed.
This is crucial. It is the problemof developing a common identity amongoppressed whites. When we tall\: aboutprotecting OUR OWN, who do we mean?Fill in the blank: "Defend our --brothers and sisters." • White" ? Out ofthe question.•Movement"? But there isno movement! There are only organizations. We can say Defend our SDSbrothers and sisters. Defend our (PL,YSA, Free, Yippie, etc.) brothers andsisters.
Our realist identification of ourselvesis as YOUNG PEOPLE IN REVOLT.But to be in revolt against Americatakes on many forms. Sometimes it'spretty obvious like the Columbia fightor the riots in Berkeley. All of us knewthat people at Columbia were brothersand sisters. Perhaps more important,the folks at Columbia knew they hadbrothers and sisters throughout America.But the struggle against America isn'talways ·so obvious. Young people in revoltsometimes express their disaffectionthrough the clothes they wear--or don'twear--the length of their hair, the musicthey listen to, their failure to followthrough with middle class careers, theirrefusal to accept rules just because theyexist. In short, many young people arerefusing to accept what is consideredas America. They are in revolt and alife style is eml1rging around that revolt.This is as close as we come today to
Of all political groups in the country,the Black Panther Party seems to havebest countered the attacks against it.It has a chieved national prominence andis expanding for far more than sensationalistic reasons. The Panthers' acts andideas reflect strong dedication, combinedwith leadership, organization, organizing,discipline and program. .
They have made the best of violentand deadly repression. They have notstopped ed~cating and organizing.
What about us? White mother countryrevolutionaries (in name only perhaps)?Why the paralysis, demoralization andabandonment?
Back in January we editorialized aboutrepression, saying that the movementshould take the offensive in the face ofrepression. Now we have to ask ourselveswhat has happened to the DEFENSIVEmuch less the offensive.
Repression is cutting deeply into themovement, its leadership and Its ranks.This has been a selective process ofpicking and choosing, sometimes cuttingout the most radical spokesmen, sometimes laying the groundwork by attackingmore respectable elements. Not only hasit taken away valuable people, it hasaffected many others--Ieading to disillusionment, fear and acts of desperation.
Repression has not caused our weakness; it has exposed it. Perhaps wemust ask if a movement even exists.
The P lack Panther Method
This last month a .·lot has happenedin the Bay Area: white riots in Berkeleyand the Haight, the Huey Newton trialand developments in the Black PantherParty. This month we feel we have somereal questions to ask and suggestionsto milke.
Black Isn't White
The Oakland Seven have been forgottenby many, as have other conspiracy casesaround the country. Jeff segal, a nation·al officer of SDS and an editor of THE'MOVEMENT is in jail and may be there. 'for many years. .9leve Sellers of SNCC.is in jail. Many other draft resistersare facing years in prison. Forty youngpeople are in jail after being bustedin the Haight: they have not' been bailedout because ·political" people don't consider them "political". As each new persecution occurs, the victims of the lastone are easily forgotten. WE ARE ABANDING OUR OWN.
SEPTEMBER 1968 THE MOVEMENT PAGE 3
HAIGHT STREET BLUESby Jerry Densch
Image Not Reality
Along with. them came an increasein dope trade; dealers of every sort,some anxious only to turn other peopleon to some good weed, others out tosell whatever garbage people would payfor, in the best capitalist tradition. Andcops allover -- making sweeps, hidingunder long hair, making raids, dealing,busting heads, where's-your-ID-into-the-..
of them anxious to visit the Mecca fromwhich their new self was revealed to'them.
most beautiful city parks in the country,and near the center of a city madefamous by such fo~-heroes as Ker:qua~_
and Allen Ginsberg.Here was a place where people fed uP'
with American society could experimentwith new life styles with a minimum ofharassment, in an area where otherswere doing the same. Then the massmedia somehow discovered somethinghappening. Not knowing what it was, they
.created a sterotype, the Hippy; something tangible to generalize about. Theymade the Haight famous and defined thenew self-image of hundreds of thousandsof alienated kids across the country; many
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What Is The Haig~_~'~
The Haight-Ashbury District is sandwiched between a Black ghetto andstretches of white middle-class nothingness. It exists as a transitional area;a buffer between the two as it is transformed from one to the other. The particular stage of transition in which theneighborhood found itself a few years agono doubt had much to do with its becoming a center of the country's emergentyouth-cultural "revolution". Here was anarea with relatively tolerant people,moderate rents,' adjacent to one of the
open game as long as nothing is happen- .ing -- making sure the bottles won'tbe heaved at them as they pass, or hiddenaway for future use. Really hitting thejackpot as they find half-a-dozen bottlesleft by winoes on the steps of the HaightAshbury Medical Clinic, and half-a-dozenpiles of broken glass are left on thesteps.
Some difference, too, in the people,though one only knows this if he is awarethat some are still in jail, held by thepigs for ransoms - - which few couldraise, even if they hadn't been set especially high for the occasion. (City attorneys arguing: "Once they get out onbail, that's the last We'll ever see of ....them.") Few beyond personal friends, uiknowing or caring, as people are againtoo busy hustling or trying to :woidbeing the victim of any of a i.nousandkinds of hustles.
Paranoid Pigs
Some difference, perhaps, in the copsthemselves as they walk two, three, halfa dozen at a time, looking even moreparanoid than before. Cops taking it allout on bottles, smashing them into sliverswith their clubs -- skulls not being
A week after its second overt rebellion, Haight Str~et is all but back to normal.Not much noticable difference from two weeks before except for the plywood hastilytacked up across many of the store fronts; some over broken glass, but more, perhaps,as a preventitive measure. The Bank of America building, the second biggest target -a target because of some political understanding of what the Bank of America is aboutbut a target also because of the Bank of American's outstanding ability to treat ,peoplelike dirt -- now permanently equipped with sheets of hardboard in place of the smashedwindows; portending, perhaps, the look of the future for Bank of America buildingsall over the city.
Some difference in the appearance ofthe street itself, as a series of excavations which had dragged on for monthswas finished up in one day following thefirst night of fighting. This, part of asearch-and-destroy mission undertakenby the cops in which streets, rooftops,and garbage cans were surveyed in orderto find and carry away or destroy anythingwhich might have been used as ammunitionby the people. Some city folks weretreated for the first time to the sightof pigs. rootiIlg in garbage as any emptybottles which might have been thrownaway were sought out and broken.
Also missing, is the primary targetof the rebellion; an outhouse used bythe workers from the street job. Afterit was tipped over the first night ("Boy,the shit really hit the street tonight.")it became the object of a tug-of-warbetween the people and the cops. Firstthe people; jubilantly dragging it intothe intersection and trying with minorsuccess to get it on fire. Then the cops:rushing up, busting a few heads, draggingit off the street, standing around wondering what else to do for a while, thenleaving. Then the people ...
CANNON'S TALE.. ~r How They Beat My AssBY Terry Cannon
On July 18 of this year I agreed with a cop for the first time in my life. His namewas Fortenberry ap.d he had just dashed into a crowd on Haight street, grabbed meand pushed me into his prowl car.
As he moved in next to me and closed the door he said, "You shouldn't have beenin the Haight, Terry." -
"Oh, you know who I am?" I said, with a funny sinking feeling in my stomach.He answered my question by slamming his fist in my face. As I covered my face
with my arms I silently agreed with him. But the worst was yet to come.
TERRY CANNON, one of the Oakland Seven, after getting clobbered by copsduring last October's stop The Draft Week.
I had been arrested for protesting thearrest of a guy standing next to me,who turned out to be an S.F. Statestudent,Rick Epstein. Epstein and I were put inthe back seat between two Tactical SquadCops. Two more sat in the front.
They were hysterical and kept shouting"So you wanted to throw molotov cocktails!" and punching us, taking the longroute to nearby Park Precinct station.I was doing my best to assume the goodold non- violent foetal position with myarms in front of my face. This frustratedFortenberry, who stopped slugging meand grabbed the back of my neck, tryingto press the arteries and black me out.We spent five minutes in silent struggle, .me ~rying: to stay conscious. I won thatone: I was still awake when we got to .'Park Station.
In the Back RoomThey pushed and dragged us through
a crowd of about 30 cops in the mainroom; several swung at us as we staggeredthrough. Then they got us in a smallback room and went to work.
For about fifteen minutes they workedus over. I couldn't see much as I wascrouched over- trying to protect my faceand balls. At one point they knocked meto the floor and stomped on me. That'swhen they must have cracked my rib.I could hear Epstein screaming, "I can'tbreathe, I can't breathe!".
They told Epstein to put his right handon top of a filing cabinet and then bashedit again and again with a blackjack. Theymade a mess of his face -- this wasexplained in the police report: "The suspect, on leaving the police car, fell and hithis head on an iron pipe." Pigs never lie,nf course, so that must have been onefine iron pipe to black both eyes, bustup his nose and give him a swollen righthand.
More BeatingsAfter they finished we were booked.
I was charged with four misdeamenors:inciting to riot, interfering with an officer,resisting arrest, and profanity. We werethen locked up in the cells behind theback room.
For two more hours we could hearprisoners screaming in the next room.They were brought in one at a timeand beaten for 15-20 minutes. Six orseven were brought in to the cells afterward, all in pretty rough shape. Some ofthem are still in jail two and a halfweeks later as I write this. One has been
in solitary for two weeks.Some were Haight reSidents, some had
just come into the area or into town.One prisoner had been in San Franciscotwenty minutes and was walking down thestreet to the home of a friend when hewas arrested. Their attitude was angerand defiance; they were not Flower Children. - I - doubt that there are anYFlowerChildren anymore, except perhaps theweekenders from the suburbs. They havenot been able to escape America and aredetermined to resist it. I s},}~ now onIy
, of those who I met in jail '..The Haight, like all populations, has
its Toms and Quislings. We saw them outon the street, sweeping up broken glass,urging people to Cool It, putting outtrash fires and blaining "outside Berkeleyagitators" for the riot. Actqally. the Haightis happily free of uptight "political" or-
, ganizers.It would be easier to raise bail and get
lawyers to help if the Haight riots were"political". The liberal and left-liberallawyers and money people are .'<;luctantto help "hippies". It will be whilebefore they accept white riots as politicalacts.
Weaving a Pig SuitMeanwhile, several of us who were
beaten Thursday night at Park stationare suing the city and police department.We're aware that few brutality suitsare respected by the courts, but ourdocumentation and first-person witnesseshave put the cops uptight. Chief Cahill
. has ordered a complete "investigation".Cahill has his own problems inside thePolice Department right now around apatronage squabble with Mayor Alioto.
Also, four of his Tactical Squad weresuspended recently for beating up someyoung men while off-duty. When toldabout this case, Alioto said, "I wouldbe very, very sad if the charges v:eretrue -- I never heard of any chargessubstantiating police brutality."' He maybe getting a lot of substantiation in thenear future.
Not to Sound Naive....
Not to sound naive but I was reallysurprised by these events. I've beenclubbed by cops before, but that was onthe streets during .stop the Draft Weekand that was "normal" police action.Methodically beating up white kids insidethe police station after arrest is a newescalation on the part of the pigs. Allthe more reason to judge our actions'carefully and to plan ways of taking careof'our own.•
PAGE 4 THE MOVEMENT SEPTEMBER 1968
INDICTED FOR MURDER
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teenagers have to face in our society. 'The long range results of this agi
tation have yet to be seen. Nuccio hasbeen indicted for murder by a grandjury called by the State's Attorney. Yet,he is 'Jut of jail on his personal recognizance, and is'busting kids in the neighborhood on "civilian arrestsn. He continues to work for the police department, only now downtown.
While the Lvee is rethinking its position, and wondering how it got into allthis in the first place, community pressure for a real civilian review boardis growing. Local control of the policecan clearly be a very p.Jwerful issuein a community like this. And the' youthhave decided to get together asra moreorganized body, to protect themselvesand exert their considerable power.
A real defense committe2 against police harassment is a possibility. Workis being done on a coffee house kindof place where they could go to escapethe ever present police.
Specific directions for this work arenot yet clear, Hwugh many people seethe need to tie the demands for community control of the police closely tothose of the youth, namely that they begiven power in the community whichmost directly affects their lives. _
~~
Saigon - - Nineteen American and nineteen Thai soldiers were killed in fivehelicopter crashes around Saigon, as"allied forcesn intensified their driveto thwart another attack on the capital.
According to the U-:-S. command, fourof the Crashes were accidental.
The worst crash took place as U.S.copters were ferrying Thai troops.
Flying in poor weather, two copterscollided in the air. The resulting explosion knocked down a third oneflying close by.
All twelve American crewmen andtheir nineteen Thai passengers werekilled and the three copters were destroyed.
The "intensified combat sweep" wassuspended as more copters and recoveryteams were rushed into the ~rea.
The top- heavy Goliath had trippedover its own toes again. And then Davidpicked off a few more whirly birds.
.... And Abroad.... At HomeNew York -- Three off-duty pigs
shot it out on a city expressway on thenight of July 9th. The shoot-out beganas an argument over a stalled car.One was killed, one seriously wounded.
A car driven by patrolman John Dalton~41, stalled on the heavily crowded Bronxexpressway. Rookie pig Nicolo Danisi,21, who is training at the po} ice academy,was caught in the traffic jam. He ofcourse got out to investigate.
During an argument with Dalton, Danisiapparently reached into his pocket forhis identification badge. But Dalton,uptight and fearing an attack, pulled outhis service revolver and shot Danisiin the head.
Detective Frederick Gibson, 28, ofthe Police Special Services then arrivedon the scene. He ordered Dalton todrop his gun. When Dalton refused heshot him in the stomach.
U None of the officers knew each otherwas a police offiCer", said the actingchief of detectives. Danisi was killed.
Will there be a trial for murder?Guess.
COPS AND COPTERS
Hearing
The promised Open Hearing was heldtwo days before the inquest in spite ofgreat pressure and attempts from varioussources to have it delayed. A roomholding five hundred was overflowing.It was a mixed crowd, including workers, professionals, Southern whites, Puerto Ricans, and Blacks. The statementfrom a representative of the youth gota standing ovation. Commander Faheyof the 19th Police district was jeeredand shouted down when he said, - Rightor wrong, you obey the policen.
People cheered for those calling forNuccio's arrest, and for disarming thepolice. At the end of the meeting, aresolution w~s presented calling for acivilian review board having the powerto suspend and fire policemen. Youthwere to have one third representation,on the board. This so worried the sponsors of the hearing that they panicked,turned o~ the mikes, and told everyoneto go home.
They left behind a confused and angrycrowd. People had come to get somethingdone, not to just blow off steam. Manyleft with a far more clear idea of what
COP
Cops HarrassMeanwhile, the police were doing their
own organizing by continually harassingthe - ringleadersn. They stopped themfor no reason, arrested them on fabricatedcharges, threatened their lives, and warned them to "layoff the Nelson thingn.Some cases are outstanding. One guywas picked up on a warrant a year Old,under which someone else had alreadybeen charged. Another was stopped ata red light. When it turned green, hewas pUlled over, and arrested for goingthrough a red light. He spent the weekend in jan, without being allowed a phonecall. This same youth was pulled over,for no reason, on his way to 'the LVCCboard meeting. On seeing the leafletsabout the meeting in his car, the copsaid, "In my book, that's illegal. Youbetter not say. anything tonight aboutthe Nelson thing. If 1 find you aloneone night, your' e going to be dead inan alley too. n The youth was chargedwith driving without a license. The copwho arrested him was Nuccio's cousin.The night after the board meeting, thecops descended on the group's new hangout, surrounded the guys, and startedbeating them. Later charged with disorderly, battery, and resisting arrest,they tolO of more threats in the jail.One of the cops involved was againNuccio's cousin, and those inside thestation included his two brothers-in- law.
Intimidation served only to increasethe groups determination. Adefense groupwas established, with lawyers willing toaccept cases on an ability-to-pay scale.They began contacting the press immediately after being arrested. Support forthem mounted.
Demanding ActionWith only five days to prepare, the
youth formulated their demands, put outa leaflet, and through word of mouth
The twenty people were Ron's friends,an informal group of young people. Someare in high school, or drop outs, somein the service, a couple hippies, somein college; all are white. Friends withsome cops, enemies of others, none expected a murder, even though Ron andthe other guys had been threatened beforeby the cops. u1 have seen him (Nuccio)put a loaded gun to Ron's head to scarehim, and take a knife and cut downRon's arm, both tim'as in the policestationn. For the past couple of years,the cops have beaten them, pushed themaround, and taken them in on some real,some trumped up charges.
But these kids have guts. They're responsible for the first indictment of aChicago cop for murder in the last fif·teen years.
They did it by building the shootinginto an event which stirred and concerned the whole community (becauseof a long history of very bad policeaction in this neighborhood), and by usingthis grass roots pressure to force established community organizations to takea stand. It was the kids' ccllective actionwhich moved the others to act.
The night after the shooting, a grouppicketed the drive-in where ithadoccurred. Their signs included one saying" Kill,Nuccio, Killn. Several were arrested andbeaten. Still, nobody seemed much interested in their protest, or in hearingtheir side of the story.
This made them realize the need forbroader political action. Theymet, collected signed testimony in the presenceof a lawyer, and called a press conference with both local and city-widepapers. With this publicity as a base,they approached community groups. First,they met with a group of liberals representing various churches, and the HumanRelations Com mHtee of the Lake ViewCitizens Council (LVCC), the local community council. This committee agreedto disseminate their testimony, and toraise the issue at the next board ofdirectors meeting of the LVCC.
Witnesses
\.COMMUNITY
About twenty people were at the hot dog stand the night Richard Nuccio, cop, shotRon Nelson, 19, in the back, coldly, deliberately, from about 60 feet, on June 4, inChicago. Ron was running down an alley, running because he had been harassed byNuccio before and was afraid of what could happen that night. The owner of the standhad called the police because he hates the kids and wanted to get them off his place.No fight, no looting, no disturbance, nothing had provoked the shooting.
After Nelson fell the cop walked to and leafletting, drew two hundred angryhim, stood him up, dragged him, kicked people, including parents and represent-him. He was heard to laugh and say -1 atives from Anglo and Latin gangs, toshot the punk in the assn. Fifteen min- the board meeting. The board membersutes after the shooting, Ron was thrown present, including the Commander of thein a paddy wagon, and taken to the Town Hall police district. Captain Fahey,hospital, dead from loss of blood. The did all they could to duck the discus~
'cops later said Ron threw a knife as sion, or confine it to members of' thehe ran (from 60 feet, on the dead run,· board. However, shouting from the floorwithout turning around.) The twenty forced them to find out what the com-people present say he t~rew nothing. munity wanted. The people spoke out,
denouncing the police treatment of youthin the community, and demanding thatthe board act to pass the youth's proposals. These were (1) that Nuccio beremoved from active duty pending investigations (he was still patrolling, flashing the same gun that killed Nelson),and (2) that the LVCC sponsor an openhearing to give full pUblicity to the factsof the case, before the coroner's inquest. Only in this way would there bea chance of that being anything morethan a police contolled whitewash of thewhole thing. The LVCC, scared at seeing"the peoplen for the first time, acceptedthe demands.
SEPTEMBER 1968 THE MOVEMENT PAGE 5
••GETTING OFF THE INTERSTATE
or, Back Home in Heartbreak, USABy' Mike James, National Community Union
CuJturalOpen DoorsThe times are changing, and the media
of today does open up some possibilities.People hear different things, differentstyles and messages, different experiences. Don't write off cross-cultural fertilization, Dylan, in a CUltural way, hasdone an awful lot to open the door forradicals who might work with young working class kids. They hear him and theypick up and dig a lot of messages; poprock groups and C&W artists do his songsas well as Tom Paxton's, and the messagegets out. MORE THAN BEFORE.
And some white miadle-class musicalkids, picking up on C&W, might helpgenerate an INTEREST IN THE PEOPLEBEYOND THE MUSIC in the same waythat Bloomfield, Butterfield, Bishop, Goldburg, Miller, Gravenitis and Hammond(and others) did for the early civil rightsnlovement picking up on Black country,
CONTINUED ON PAGE 15
'"Skippa-Rope". Most aren't novelty songs,but typical of much of the music. Openings on race, the war, the job, malechauvinism, economic exploitation, andcultural and political alienation are there.Americans of basically rural country
. and western background, like most Americans, ARE WAITING ON THE MOVEMENT
There's bad stuff in C&W: let's startto think about why. Basically, Nashville(and New York) kept the music staticfor a time. reflecting and reinforcingwhat was happening to mlllions of whitesas a result of the workings of the political economy. Because people weren'torganized, didn't have power and controlover what happened to them, their ability to shape their own cultural expression was limited. (This was at a timewhen Black people were undergoing afar more intensive urbanization process,and it shows in their music--C&W todaymakes much more reference to rural or"back home" life, even when describinglife situations in an urban setting, thandoes Black music.) Another consideration is that the media (radio, t. v., moviesand records) weren't exposing people toa barrage of ,cross-cultural (class, ethnic,racial) musical influences, so people didn'tget told about what was happening to lotsof people in the country. And let's notforget that segregation was a fact. Thereis also a possibility that certain eliteshindered changes in the music. What didit mean to the music, and its influenceon the people, that C&W big-shot RoyAcuff (of Rose-Acuff publishers in Nashvllle) was a Governor of Tennessee, andthat another C&Wbig-name, Jimmy·Davis,was Governor of Louisiana? Somebodyshould dig deep into the manipulationof almost all musical forms in thiscountry by "Tin Pan Alley" and its intrinsic relationship to Wall street.
Maybe it's not fast enough, but thingsare changing. Musicians are often hipperon social and political questions than arethose they sing for, and musicians indifferent fields are picking up on eachother. C&W has its "love" songs--someoriginal, some new versions of recordingsin the rock and folk fields. Juke boxesare fllled with C&W renditions of songsby Black Rhythm and Blues musicians(Jim and Jessee have an entire album,"Berry Pickin", of Chuck Berry songs.)Don Rich, lead guitar for C&W big-starBuck Owens, states that his favoritealbum is the Beatles' "Rubber Soul"Otis Redding's band had two white musicians, out of the C&W bag; the C&Winfluence is ,obvious in his music and theentire "Memphis Sound". The "GrandOld Oprey" has in recent years produced .Black artists like Bobby Hebb(" Sunny") and Country Charlie Pride.There's something happening.
released just before Brown's benefit iIf,Chicago, but after his public endorsementof Hubert Humphrey, whom he ran cover.for in Watts after HHH was booed out onhis first attempt to "get-in" and speak.
But the negative is only half the point:we're about changing America, and changing it means understanding it and using it.C&W shows us good and bad in a big partof America. Listen to it, couple if.withexperience, and you'll learn a lot of thingsyou never learned (and they never taught)in school.
There is paradox in C&W, the paradoxof most of white America. C&W has itsversion of America's Horatio Alger myth,but beyond that individual!im there isa strong and real class consciousness.Most C&W albums have some songscharacterized by SUBJECTIVE INDIVIDUALISM, and others characterized by objectiv!'! reality--get that, OBJECTIVEREALITY. Most popular music in thiscountry has a lot of SUbjective individualism ; what',s important about the objective reality of C&W is that it makesclear a lot of what America is--hardand ruthless, messing over some (classesof) people a whole lot more than others.The music tells us that. Just as thereis paradox and contradiction in the livesof the people who write, sing and listento C&W, there is paradox and contradiction in the songs. We're not talkingabout political people, but rather peoplewho've been worked over politically. Manyreject politics; they know it's dirty business because they've lived in Americaand they've been done to. stonewall Jackson sings songs about little poeple, butalso about Minute Men r01l1ng over intheir graves in response to draft cardburning. The same is true of the truckdriving songs of Dave Dudley. Paradox,contradiction, inconsistency- - America.Don't hide, deal with it!
Listen To The MusicThe conditions, grievances and de
mands--te1l1ng of the potential for radicalore:anization--are conveyed in the music.Listen to Merle Haggard's jail songs("Branded Man"--"I payed the debt Iowed, but they won't let my story gountold . . ."); Waylon Jennings' "Livingin the Love of the Common People";Johnny Cash's" All Gods Children Aren'tFree" and "Roll Call"; Roger Mlller's"King of the Road"; Dave Rich's "PeaceStarts Today"; Dollie Parton's" my mistakes are no worse· then youts 'JustBecause I'm A Woman"; George Jones'« Small Time Laboring Man!"; BobbyBare's "Detroit City"; Jerry Lee Lewis'"What Made Milwaukee Famous has madea fool out of me"; and Hanson Cargill's
that it has, fro!Jl a radical potiit ofview, many negative aspects. But theseproblems are true in different degreesof all forms of "people's music" in
,America. A review of Black, Mexicanor Puerto Rican music (and Italian,Irish, . . . ) would also reveal alot of"bad shit". For example, take "soulking" James Brown's "I Am An American, America is my Home". Like where,else can you shine ';lhoe.s in front of theradio station and then own it--and havenice clothes too-and if you don't like ithere why don't you go someplace else,Ohhh, Ohhh, Ohhh. . . The song was
..•.... , ..,. · .... 'v,.
Earr~9!:lS, playingtfie banjo, and his -brother, HoraceScruggs, with the guitar. This photo was taken in the community where they lived-Flint Hill near Shelby, North Carolina.Earl started playing the banjo when he was five years old.
much. Too many people wUl be left out;there won't be the necessary power, andour hopes and efforts wUl be wrackedand plagued by the ploy of the rUling .class-.class obfuscation and racial division. Failing to have moved among andwith the people, but pretending we couldchange them only issuing' cultural andpolitical pronouncements and slurs insmall circulation newspapers and journals from hip-political student" communities", or by passing resolutions atconferences, we'll have no one to blamebut ourselves.
Realize that there's a potential fora new and radical America. Realize thatMalcolm X DIDN'T write a book thatBlacks read who then rebelled, but ratherhe ARTICULATED A THRUST, somethingthat was com.ing to be among his peopleafter years of oppression and exploittation. The roots of the Black movement go deep; remember Nat Turner,DuBois, Marcus Garvey and Malcolm.Look now. at the Black Panthers.Malt::olm's works, his life, were rootedin that history of exploitation and resistance; he worked out some contradictions,as many others were doing; he helpedgive his people's struggle shape at thetime it was becoming manifest.
Understand that there is potential amongyoung white working people. It hasn'ttaken a visible form yet; it's developing as people become organized and urbanization fails to make asphalt grassany greener., For whites, hostility andrebellion haven't taken collective form.While Black kids loot stores that haveraped them, white kids in groups oftwo and three jack-rOll victims in alleys,or strip cars, and continue to fight eachother instead of their class enemy. Butmilitant labor actions of young whiteworkers, and the committment of numbers of "hillbUly" kids who've marchedon cops and politically resisted the draftin places where radical organizers haveworked, are not isolated instances orfreaks. Young working class radical kidsare tied to their people; they're of theirpeople, acting in advance of their people.They wouln't have moved if they weren't.their', actions and committment ARTICULATE A POTENTIAL THRUST, Thatthrust can be a strong part of a radicalforce in American. It will only happenif the movement takess,teps HE LP MAKEIT HAPPEN,
About C&W,
the Media and TodayIt doesn't take much cultural or po
litical savy to realize that music ismanipulated by the Establishment. or
The PotentialC&W tells us of what capitalism has
done to mUlions of working whites,WHETHER OR NOT THEY LISTEN TOTHE MUSIC. The major segment of thatbody possesses a background that mightbe called "basically rural, country andwestern American culture". It's probablythe largest sub-culture in the nation.like Black people, they have agrarianroots, and are NOW COMING TO BECONCENTRATED IN AND AROUND URBAN CENTERS. They're not an ethnicgroup as are Blacks, Puerto Ricans,Mexicans or Indians, but they are' adistinguishable sub-culture, having similar child-rearing and life-style patterns,interests and occupationally based classdelineations. Their lives have a similarity forged by the structural forcesof capitalism. People whose lives arerooted in the historical experiences ofthis background aren't just "Southerners"or "Appalachian whites". Instead, they'represent among the population in largenumbers everywhere in America.
They're much of the blue-collar workforce in most cities. They're among therank and file , wildcatting labor insurgents,overlooked by too many radicals whocall workers (monolithically) "reactionary", who fail to distinguish betweendifferent segments of the working class,as well as between workers and laborbureacrats. We're talking of studentsin community, junior and state colleges,contributing heavily to what" some callthe "new working class" (teachers, technicians, low-level white collar employees, etc.) Some, whose parents work infactories, become teachers; others, whoseparents are white collar workers, become factory and construction workers.Many become soldiers for a time. Andsome are already in the movement, amongthe ranks of student activists in mostparts of the country.
Where radicals have been present andorganized, they are the people in neighborhoods and factories helping build consciousness, planting the seeds of radicalorganization. lf radicals will move amongthem, WHICH SOMETIMESMEANSGOINGBACK HOME, they wUl be people articulating past, present and possible: future'for their people as the U.S. attemptsto control the World falter and domesticconditions continue to change. "Hillbillies", "Arkies", "Oakies", "hicks","shit kickers", "ridge runners", "rednecks", and "white trash" are a people-a whole bunch of 'em. More radicals(not all radicals) must organize in neighborhoods and factories, either on thestreet or line, or using some Universityacquired skUl such as "teacher". Without a sense of movement among theworking class, the movement won't move
Country and Western music (C&W) is American; it reflects America, both the goodand the bad. "Pure" or modified by pop stars on radio, T. V. or in the movies, the jukeboxes' of bars and truckstops, C&W is everywhere. R's be~n around a long time andbeen listened to by millions, yet most American radicals--who" seek to change America"--have listened only cynically, BECAUSE THEY ARE CYNICAL ABOUT THE PEOPLE.They haven't dealt with what the music means to millions of Americans, nor with whatthe music says to radicals. For example, in a recent issue of THE GUARDIAN (May 18,1968) cultural buff columnist Pandora spewed forth a bitter and absurd criticism ofC&W. Pandora stated that C&W barely qualified as music, and described it as "a saccharine concoction of neurotic self-pity, hand-on-the-heart patriotism, Simon-pure religious fundamentalism and know-nothing machismo . . .Big city sophisticates tendto dig it as some kind of high camp, but poor dumb slobs who find their way into WhiteCitizens Councils in the South in some desparate search for identity take it straight."
Very simply, it's important for move-ment people to understand that C&W tellsus much about the impact of social,political and economic forces as theyhave arisen out of and shaped the livesof most white ,working people in thiscountry. No revolution will happen inAmerica unless these people are a partof it. No revolution will happen if radicalsreject these people, if they accept thewords of spokesmen of the cultural wingof the bourgeois left such as Pandora.Too many are living on the edges ofthis country, justifying their isolationby saying America is all crap. Too manyof us don't understand much about whatis America, defining too much of America as the enemy.
Too many on the left, sunk in thebead-culture ghettos of mass media andso-called" cultural centers" on the coasts,even scattered on campuses and a fewcities in between, have never gotten offthe interstate. They don't understand thepeople of America, for they have refused to break with the mechanisms thatkeep them fron looking and feeling. Thatmeans that many of us with an importanttask fail to understand the RADICALPOTENTIAL OF YOUNG WORKINGPEOPLE who can and must be integralto that task.
'> ; ••..:-,...:.-
PAGE 6 THE MOVEMENT
WILDCATS INSEPTEMBER 1968
CHICAGOby Noel Ignatin
Growi n9 PatternThe issues behind the strike are a
reflection of a grOWing pattern of labordisputes in which the fight of the wholerank-and-file for union m1l1tancy is linked with the fight for black workers tobe fairly represented in union leadership. In this case, the fight was spearheaded c'.r the black drivers, who makeup the overwhelming majority of theConcerned Transit· Workers, and the totality of its leadership. But the Concernedleaders made it clear that they arefighting for all the transit workers, anda number of white drivers, particularly
'the younger men, joined in the strike.As Benson said, "This is one time thatblack men are leading white men. Theyknow that what benefits us benefits them,The union isn't representing them anybetter than it is representing us."
The conflict, which had been brewing
Chica~o, July 7 -- An "unauthorized" strike of transit workers, which began hereTuesday morning, July I and which crippled the city's public transportation, appearsto have ended, at least for the time being.
After a seven and one-half hour meeting of thestrikerswith representatives of theChicago Transit Authority and Mayor Daley, it was announced that the strikers wouldresume work immediately. The terms of the settlement were not clear, but strikeleader Waymon Benson said that the men got Iteverything we asked for". Officialsof Local 241, Amalgamated Transit Workers, which covers the bus drivers, were notpresent at the meeting, but the Chicago Federation of Labor was represented. Unionpresident James J. H1ll had vowed not to talk with the strikers until they had returnedto work. Negotiations between the strikers and H1ll are to begin on Monday.
The walkout began after a union meeting for almost a year, was brought to alast Monday night at which H1ll declared head around the issue of pensioners'defeated, by voice vote, a motion to voting rights. A majority of the 8,340eliminate the right of pensioned employ- active, working drivers are black. Yet'ees to vote for union officials. When the votes of 3,600 pensioners, nearlyleaders of the rebel caucus, called the all white, have kept the black workersConcerned Transit Workers, demanded out of union leadership and maintaineda. standing vote or a secret ballot, Hill in office the do-nothing, conservativeadjourned the meeting. administration of Hill and his cronies,
On Tuesday morning 900 workers re- a continuation of the McNamara cliquefused to take their buses out, and the that ruled the local for decades. Nonenumber of strikers grew each day. Some of the local officers are black, and thereelevated motormen, represented by a are only four black workers on the twenty-different local, joined the strike in soli- six member executive board. Referringdarity. to the pensioner's voting power, Benson
It is difficult to gauge the effectiveness declared, "This is at the heart of theof the strike because of the holiday week- problem. As long as this continues, theend, when service is normally slow, black, lIlan won't have a chance to gain_but estimates ranged from 25% to 50% any positions of leadership in the unionshut down, with the CTA admitting a for years to come." Hill has answered-fare loss of $1,000,000 and loop busi- the demand that only active workersnesses suffering heavily. About 50 bus be allowed to vote for union officialslines were shut down entirely and 40 with an argument that the pensioner's rightothers reduced to partial operation. to vote is protected by the Landrum
Griffin Act.
Strikers' DemandsThe strikers put forward four key
demands, to the company and the unionofficials:(1) An end to the system of split shifts,whereby a driver may have to be outas long as 13 hours to get 8 hours pay.(2) The elimination of all unsafe andunhealthy facilities on the buses, suchas bald tires, broken heaters, etc.(3) No reprisals against striking drivers,and full pay for days lost in the strike.(4) The elimination of pensioners' votingfor union officials.
!,'rom the be~mning of the strike thepress portrayetl it as a blow at the"public interest" and a "black power"plot. Cops were assigned to ride thebusses and "protect" scabs from thestrikers. On Thursday a number of arrests were made when strikers sat down
at one of the barns to prevent scabsfrom taking the busses out. In, spite ofthis, strikers were able to board somebusses and persuade drivers to returnto the barn and join the strike.
Community SupportVarious churches and organizations in
the black community moved immediately'to support the strike. Big rallies wereheld, and Rev. Jesse Jackson of SCLC,the head of Operation Bre.adbastet. threatened a citY-'wide bus boycott if the 'strikewere not settled. The offices of OperationBreadbasket became the strike headquarters, and the situtation was rapidlyacqUiring the attributes of another Memphis, with the civil rights movementmobilized behind a labor dispute.
However there was another side tothis. When Benson, obviously under the'influence of the SCLC, called upon thestriking drivers at a rally not to goto the stations to stop the busses, butto "stay at home with your families",rumblings of displeasure could be heard,especially from younger black militants.It is quite likely that if the strike wereprolonged and the CTA continued itsattempt to operate the busses with scabs,the drivers would not have heeded SCLCinstructions. A situation could veryquicklydevelop of soldiers riding the busses,a boycott in the black community, andother actions tending to disturb the"peace" which Mayor Daley treasuresso highly th!s sum mer.
Under' these circumstances, with theDemocratic Convention only six weeksaway, already being threaten.ed by anIBEW strike, with a ShrinersT 'convention in towp~ (8,000 hotel reservations
,,",,-, for the Shniners' convention were canceled), the Mayor was moved by the urgentneed to settle this dispute, the implications of which could not be foreseen.For the time being he seems to havesucceeded, although there is no doubtthat if the real issues are not involved,the struggle will break out again.
Railway Express Walks OutSoon after, in the third week of July,
'drivers for the, Railway Express Agencywalked off the job in a Wild-cat strike.According to the TRIBUNE of July 20,2000 strikers stopped 'ALL express de-liveries in the city. '
The strike was directly inspired bythe wild-cat of the CTA bus drivers.
The REA strike was initiated by agroup of black workers, and quickly wonsupport from the rest of the workers.Negroes make up approximately 10% ofthe work force. As in the CTA strike,this one was directed at both the companyand the'union officialdom, in this casethe Brotherhood of Railway Clerks. Thestrikers put forward a ,list of twentytwo demands, relating to wages, arbitraryfirings and disciplinary procedures, working conditions, union democracy and sup-
'ervisory positions for black workers.The general feeling of most olthe strikerswas a desire to get out of the BRC andinto another unionj Teamsters was mostoften mentioned.
Almost immediately the company secured an injuntion to stop the strikersfrom picketing the depots. At this poiht,a number of radical students workingin industry for the summer went to,the strikers and offered to picket intheir place. The offer was gratefullyaccepted, and saturday, July 20, studentswere on the line. This led to some goodcontacts with a number of strikers.
Lesson Seems ClearHowever, difficulties developed. For
one thing, because of the Landrum-Griffinlaw and other legislation designed to"protect the democratic rights of unionmembers" the workers found it nearlyimpossible to get out of the BRC injust one or two work units, where the strikewas centered. Secondly, the ..,residentof the union, Dennis, promised to consider the strikers' grievances and madea number of promises in response totheir twenty-two demands.
At a meeting on Monday, July 22, thestrike leaders, basically an informalad hoc group, recommended that the mengo back to work. This proposal wasaccepted unenthusiastically and, for thetime being, the strike has ended.
For labor militants, the lesson seemsclear that the greatest re- vitalizing forcein the labor movement today is comingfrom the black liberation struggle, andthat any fight for union m1l1tancy mustinvolve a fight 'for union democracyagainst white supremacy, which has become the chief buttress of both the companies and the reactionary union bosses.
•
.,f/"/'"
• •
The fix was in, says another, SCLCdidn't know what to do next so they getuS in jail and let the cops close Resurrection City for them. Pm going home andorganize. And anything goes from hereon in,
The defections began when the permitexpired. A local trade union official,touring the campsite several weeks beforeits demise, asked: But if you stay whenthe permit expires, won't that be breakingthe law?
White liberal support -- food, lodgingsand money - - began falling off as thevoices in Congress who had clamored forthe expulsion of the poor from the capitalcheered the fUlf1llment of thei r demands.A young white campaigner told a laborsupport committee: You are the leadersnow. It' s up to you, in your unions, inyour communities, to lead the fight againsthunger and poverty. Because if you don'tif the unions and the churches and alldon't do it, there's a tot of desperatepeople going to destroy this country. Alocal labor leader responded: But whatcan WE do?
People are fed up, said an aide to aliberal Congressman. They aren't goingto stand fol' demonstrations and riotsany more. The whole campaign was a
Tmrt night the police, with the helpof the National Guard, occupied 14thStreet and 1600 federal riot troops weremoved into the city for potential use.The police moved in quickly to enforcea hastily-declared curfew, lobbing teargas ahead of them as they moved up thecrowded street. A white SCLC workerand a black folk- singer moved in frontof the police, trying to move the everangrier crowd away from a disastrousconfrontation. The singer turned andcaught an exploding tear gas grenade fullin the face. The Poor People'S Campaignheadquarters at 14th and U streets, N.W.,was repeatedly filled with gas.
That afternoon Rev. Andy Young announced phase two of the campaign -mass arrests followed by a consumerboycott in an effort to pressure thefinancial establishment into pressuringtheir congressmen. The plans were vagueand some of the campaigners felt thatthe leaderless leadership was just gropingfor a program. Many now feel that therecan be no program that works, and areincreasingly critical of SCLC ideas. Pmw1lling to get arrested, one campaignersaid. I've been busted 28 times, butwhile doing something that counts. Butjust to march up and say arrest me, thatain't my style.
OF
ready. The closing of Resurrection Cityhad begun.
Sheeit! spat a. black youth, standingnear a news car listening to the radioreports of the arrests at the Capitol. ~A
white mother and daughter, medical bandson their wrists, wondered aloud ifanotherdaughter was among those arrested. Theblack youth danced his way under a tree.All these cops here, he said, you couldrob a bank. I'm going shopping, he declared. A half-dozen others joined him.
Hey! cried out a young woman who hadsalvaged only the clothes on her backand her cigarette lighter, get somefeminine-type stuff, will you? Size 14.
An elderly woman stared at the police,shaking her head. Ain't it a shame?They won't let us alone. Ain't it a damnshame?
A quiet young Negro said to no oneand to everyone through tight lips: Thisis the end. This is the end of non- violence.
DEATH
A solid line of white-helmeted police lined the streets and sidewalks surroundingResurrection City. Canvas bags of tear gas grenades hung at their sides, next to theirguns and the long riot clUbs. Some wore face shields. None smiled. There were overa thousand of them, there to evict less than a hundred poor people from their shantiesalongside the reflecting pool in the capital of the United states. '
Perhaps a dozen people, mostly black, gathered on the grass facing the police lines,the Washington Monument rising through a light, early morning haze behind them.
Goddam! A black youth with a stockingcap protecting his conked hair spat on thegrass.
Cool it, man. A straw-hatted Resurrection City Ranger gently urged him back. Anelderly black man with a belly distendedfrom war wounds stepped closer, to thepolice lines. My wife and kids is in there,godammit, and everything I own. Youhit them, there'll be two celebrationstomorrow--my going to the penitentiaryand your funeral!
A motorcycle cop started his engine andmoved his machine across the grass, forcing the onlookers back. This thing weighs1100 pounds, he shouted, you wanna fuckwith it go right ahead. He turned, wheelsdigging into the turf, and stopped. He pickedup a tear gas grenade as the crowd camecloser, shouting their anger. The policeman tossed the round metal ball from handto hand and smilp.d. The crowd moved away.
In the distance, behind the double lineof police, the brown-vested eviction forcemoved into the campsite, riot guns held
by Michael Hill
SEPTEMBER 1968 THE MOVEMENT PAGE 7
CHICAGO CHICANOSANARCHO-CYNICISTS .ON THE THIN FINE LINE
The battle of Berkely has sparked some new forms of political activity. At the sametime a systematic repression has begun.
The Berkeley cops have lost their reput a tion as II better COpSH, and have begunan all out effort to clean up the Telegraph Avenue area south of campus.
Wayne Greene, a black Resistance organizer, has bee!! framed in the fire-bombingof the cop which took place on the first night of revolt in Berkeley. He faces chargesof attempted murder. It is weH-known that he- did not do it.
On July 24 Tim Conely, white and 21, was murdered by the cops on Telegraph Avenue,trying to escape from arrest after a set.,.up heroin deal.
There have been ,many busts for avariety of lesser charges: blowing a' eleyH many others view ·the idea of awhistle on the street to warn others Berkeley secession as utopian and im-of the pigs' presence; illegally putting possible in the context of the Unitedup posters; sleeping in a house that had states. These latter speak of "dual au-been condemned by the University (land- thorityH - - the existence of reactionarylord). Several ma,ss busts have been made, government along with a legitimized move-complete with beatings and assault ment aimed at eventual control. They re-charges.. One leaflet spoke of 'agirl who late a community struggle to a visionhad been beaten in an arrest growing of struggles for community control allout of a plainclothes cop being spotted-- over the United states."Gail Carter (she is an epileptic) had It is too soon to evaluate the forcesa fit and pigs didn't know what to do grwoing out of the Berkeley Commune.so one of them started kicking her to It is difficult to say whether the variousbring her outof it." groups will develop or dissipate. What is
A few weeks ago the Berkeley Barb clear is that they have grown out of anheadlined a group called the Berkely alienation from elitist political groups,Commune. But when one turned to the and speak of a humanization of politics.story there was little indication of what Many people on the street have beenthe Berkeley Commune was all about reached.
The commune seems to be many thing~ says the BARRICADE, "defense is ato many people. There are visible signs broad topic, and everybodY's business.of this activity : tables on Telegraph, Those most able are gathering infor-crash pads free food bail funds for mation on possibilities involving everypeople bust~ on the Avenue. There is thing from legal defense, counter-intelli-a wall-poster newspaper entitled BARRI- gence, street tactics, to survival materialsCADE, and leaflets called Barricade Bul- and self-sufficiency on the streets."lets. There are a number of affinity Defense is a broad topic. For whilegroups (similar in conception to tM New the somewhat amorphous nature of recentYork Up Against the Wall/Motherfuckers) activity in Berkeley makes it difficuU.some of whose names change every week. for the city to pinpoint or infiltrate, thisThere are coordinating committees mak- only serves to make them more uptight.ing contact with other political groups In addition, the University,A small group of people have begun t~ which owns everything in the area, istalk to workers, in the university and at expanding and wants the area cleanedlocal factories. out.
that happens we will grow in politicalconsciousness too."
They have held lectures and discussions and shown a number of films,all drawing in new members. "We areencouraged by the great interest ourbrothers and sisters have shown".
Politically, OLAS is establishing contacts with such other student groupsas SDS, Vanguardia (another Latin AmeriCllll student group at Chicago's CircleCampus of the University of illinois),The Black Tambwa, and the Loop's AfroAmerican Club. This summer a numberof OLAS members have beenworking withLADO (The Latin American· DefenseOrganization), a community organizationthat had its birth in the Division streetrebellions.
OLAS' s plans for the fall include expanding to other colleges and organizingin the High' SChools. Arrangements fora federation of Latin American studentsis presently pending organizational formation at Chicago's Crane, Wilson andWright City Colleges and the Universityof illinois Circle Campus.
Lopez said that "the biggest job thatfaces us is to be able to create a socialand political consciousness in the LatinAmerican students and to be effectivewith our actions in the Latin American.community as a whole. Venceremos."LATINOS AMERICANOSHablen con estudiantes Latinos en Chicagoeste Agosto Llame a LADO 384-3323
MARBLE AND HAMMER
thus begins the Revolutiona nation in painand we cannot remake ourselveswithout the painfor we are boththe Marble & Hammer. Youngblood
......
men fall before the bulletscltles melt before the fireseducationpoliticsreligionall knowledgemust stand before a critical questioning&that standing is filled with pain.youth dead, dying, or waiting to die in Nam,jails filling up with honest menrifleslawsbombsall warmust be lett behind&that separation is filled with pain.
BY Alba Sanchez of OLASIn the summer of 1966 the large Puerto
Rican ghetto on Division street went upin rebellion, the first in the country.Chicago's Latin American population isgrowing. Latin American students, growing in numbers in certain Junior colleges,have begun to develop an organization,The Organization of Latin American students, that will fight for the politicaland cultural interests of Latin Americanstudents. OLAS was founded in Aprilof this year by five stUdents, Mexicansand Puerto Ricans, at Chicago's LoopJunior College.
The founders, Omar Lopez, Frank Quinones, Carlos Heredia, Rey Lugo, andLupe Villarreal, have made it clear thatone of the specific aims of the organization is to get Latin American studentsto understand the importance of returningto the communities. Lopez stated that..one of OLAS' main concerns is therotten urban problems facing the overwhelming majority of Latin Americansin this city. OUr problems are many;they include discrimination, both economic and social; overly-competitiveAmerican culture; the language barriers;and the attempts by Anglos to rob theSpanish speaking people of their heritage. Quinones made clearer Lopez' position on the community: "We shouldn'tforget that we live in Chicago just becasue we are students. Or the USA,andthat we belcng with our people in thecommunities wher.:! they work and suffer,where many of us will be unless weforget who we are."
OLAS's position on culture is statedin their first newsletter: "Assuming ourresponsibilities as a minority group whoseculture is threatened by destruction, weundertake a task geared to all LatinAmerican students of rediscovery, preserving, and developing of our commonhistorical heritage. KnOWledge and understanding of our culture is for us, asall men, necessary to the understandingof our own selves." Heredia adds: "Weneed to rediscover our cultures, findourselves and be able to relate ourstruggle here in the United states withthe struggle of those fighting for selfaffirmation and freedom around theworld" •
A relatively new organization, OLASactive membership now numbers 25. Theorganization's growth corresponds withawareness of exploitation and growth ofcultural and political consciousness ofPuerto Ricans and Mexicans in Chicago'sghettos as a whole.
To date, a considerable portion of thegroup's activity has been to encouragethe re-affirmation of their CUlture; .. as
CITY
The ReactionThe reaction in the conservative sec
tions of the Berkeley com munity hasbeen laid on thick. A coalition of about400 representatives of 14 merchant andprofessional organizations is taking stepsto protect the city from" anarchy knockingat the door.H Mayor Wallace Johnsonspoke to the group, quoting from BARRICADE. He said he considered the criticism of the police all part of a racical's plot because" these anarchists syndicalistsH know that "the police are thethin fine line between Western Civilization and anarchy."_
ICTION
Boycott
In addition to these activities a boycotthas begun of all Telegraph Avenue merchants who are unsympathetic to thepeople of the street--opposed to a mall,hostile during the disorders. Near theCommune table is a large poster witha list of the stores to be boycotted.On the sidewalk in front of every unfriendly store is a large white X.
The Berkeley Commune is both a loosegroup of people as well as a projectionof the future. While some have tal'kedof working toward a II disaffiliated Berk-
fiasco. There's no more sympathy forthem anymore, in Congress or amongthe constituents.
Meanwhile, during all the confusion,all the anger, all 'the recriminations,babies are dying of starvation in theSouthwest. Men are replaced by machinesin the cotton fields of Mississippi. Shotguncarrying deputies are driving grapestrikers off the roads in California. Ratsare chewing off the fingers of childrenin New York.
Denied recourse through the legallyestablished means, the poor, in theirtotal desperation, will again explode ingasoline flames for another summer.And another. And the fear of genocidewill be reinforced as racist cops move infor the annual slaughter.
Isn't it terrible, a white suburban housewife said, isn't it terrible that thosepeople have guns? And Anthony Imperiale,boasting of his Newark North WardCitizen's Com mittee' 5 arsenal, appears ontelevision with his city's mayor.
Isn't it terrible, a citizen says of thelatest assassination, isn't it just terrible?Where' is this country going? We needlaw and order. We can't let those people
•burn down our cities.A young man, watching as the protectors
of the people began the leveling of Resurrection City, said: This is the end. Theywouldn't listen. _
ll~M~ w~@)M
1m~~~l(@You asked for my impressions on the
Poor People's Campaign so I'll tell youwhat I think. I think that what is goingon in D.C. is one of the most importantevents to happen in a long time. I don'tmean the petitioning of the governmentto address themselves to the problemsof the deprived of this country but whatis happening to the people (poor) whoare there and are learning what is goingon.
What I mean is that people out ofMarks, Mississippi (poorest county inAmerica) are having all of the things
theY've never had before (food, clothes,medicine, all which is free) and theY'reredefining themselves as to what theitlives should be about. They're not gonna·....ant to go back to Mississippi wherethey won't have these things and evenif they do go back I believe that they willbegin working to secure these essentialnecessities. Their attitudes are changingand that change is for the better.
It isn't important (only in the sensethat it will show that the governmentcan't REALLY address itself to the problems that beset the poor) if the government does make a gesture at solving someof our demands because the important·thing that is happening is going on aroundthe campfires, culture tent, and chow tent.What I mean is that poor from all overthis land are sitting down together andtalking about their lives and some of thethings they've done and want to do aboutchanging them for the better. I am awarewhat a liberal reformist bunch of shitthe whole Campaign is, but let me emphasize again the changes that the poorpeople are going through.
A lot of "radicals" are damning the PPCand SCLC and are standing on the outsidelooking in and I say to that "I wonder whothe radicals are"- - those who stand
Ji....~,.;v"~.~'...':'
theorizing about the PPC and laughingabout how liberal it is or those who makea radical break with the whole way theY'vebeen program med. One thing a goOd organizer learns is not to get ahead of thepeople you are working with and that' swhat most "radicals" are doing. Black,White, Mexican, Puerto Ricans, Indians,the entire spectrum of, poverty is theretalking and learning and it may not beradical enough for some but to me it isone of the most radical events P ve everbeen a part of.
The PPC isn't going to end when thebig march is over and all the speechesare orated, it isn't going to end when wehave to move out of the wooden city,it isn't going to end until the mastersand rulers stand before the TribUnalof The People and be judged for theircrimes against humanity.
I firmly believe that what is takingplace in Resurrection City will somedayresult in change of power that we are allworking so hard for; and because I havefaith in people I am willing to Walk, work,sleep, fight, and even die at the pace theyset.
youngblood
PAGE to THE MOVEMENT SEPTEMBER 1968
LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY REPRESSION: HAYMARKET
Editor's Note: The following article is by Ken Cloke, an attorney who spent last yearorganizing for the National Lawyer's Guild.
Some of our best friends haV( told us that reading the Movement can sometime's'be a beneficial chore. Some articles have been pretty heavy. We urge our readersto read this article carefully, for we feel it raises some of the central theoreticaland practical problems facing the movement today.
-There appear, during repressive peri
ods, two tendencies: the tendency to overestimate the power of the opposition,or alarmism, which frightens people needlessly, and reduces their capacity forstruggle, and the tendency to underestimate the repressive abilities of classpower, or adventurism, which is provocative, dangerous, and likewise reducesthe capacity of people to engage in prolonged struggle. Neither tendency usessuch events to uncover the class natureof repression, or organizes around defensefor political purposes, but both are confusing in their INDIVIDUAL approachto defense.
Both of these tendencies make currentanalysis of repression harmful, and prevent us from effectively organizing aroundquestions of defense. The first way inwhich both of these analyses are harmfulis that they concentrate too much attentionon the legal struggle, failing to recognize that the best legal defense, in casesof R~AL repression, is made by politicalorganizing. Both tendencies concentratetoo heavily on raising legal justificationsin the trial. The second mistake madein these analyses is their resultant pleafor unity in the face of danger, particularly in the case of the alarmist tendency, and the failure to relate politicallyto those who are profoundly disturbedby their first realization of hiddenbrutalityprimarily on the vart of the adventurists,by merely dismissing them as "inexperience". The plea for unity is incorrectbecause it overestimates the real dangerand does not form coalitions based onreal self-interest, but only out of a falsesense of danger. It means pulling thecovered wagons into a circle, and losingvaluable time, when we should be movingout and expanding; it means concern withself-defense as primary, rather than con.cern with building the mover.1 ?nt. It isadditionally wrong, however, not to recognize that because peoples emotionsare high, their grappling for new answer;.should not be ignored, but responded toin a responsible political way. Thereshould be constantly projected the necessity for class analysis, and for buildinga revolutionary movement. Events shouldbe interpreted and re-interpreted, makinganalogies to revolutionary struggles inother countries and other times, linkingthe issues of racism and imperialism,and demonstrating the connections betweenrepression and monopoly capitaIlsm1/ecannot merely assume that sensible peoplewill reach these conclusions on their own..Third, political priorities tend to be
.progressively less capable of mountingan all out attack. It does not understandwhere revolution has come from, since it.cannot recognize itself as the progenitor,and hence, is always just a little toolate. That margin is what we rely on.It is the margin between fascism andrepression. The use of mace at onepoint in the movement might crush itwhereas at another time it only bolstersresistance, and that socially determinedover-reaction is fascism.
Additionally, it is important for us tounderstand that the decision that we arethe enemy is made finally by the system,and not by us. The Tzar, in 1905, decided that the people were revolutionaries,and by his inability to negate himselfand rid the country of feudalism, by hisunwillinglness to relinquish power, inshort, by his reaction to their petition•.
,they became revolutionaries. But the1905 Revolution was neither fascismnor repression, but a weak systemdefending itself and, at the sametime, converting its own weaknessinto the strength of its enemies.Disillusionment in the orderly processes
of social change constituted an experiencewherein the system divided revolutionaries from reformists by deciding thatall reformists who would be effectivewere revolutionaries. The same can besaid of the evolution of SNCC from acivil rights orgaro.zation to advocacy ofblack power, since SNCC did not suspect,"hen it raised the slogan of Black Power
mat the government would react as itdid.
OUT OF HERE:
THERE MUST BESOMEWAY
Coercion and Cooptation
This same striation of political understanding is true when we begin to speakof repression, except that the importanceattached to repression, the force c~rried'
with it, is in inverse ratio to the radicalism of the movement. m addition, ourdegree of effective use of repression asa means of agitation is directly affectedby the way in which we see it. A revolutionary will understand that retaliationincreases revolutionary sentiment in asituation of decay, that history not onlymakes leaders, but prevents them frombeing effective, and that a system whichis falling apart wills, at the· same time,the destruction and multiplication of itsenemies. A system on the decline failsmore rapidly in :its attempts to defenditself, and by see-sawing between coercionand co-optation only exposes its bankruptcy all the sooner. Its self-defensebe~omes self-destructive, and it becomes
electoral activity to change society, tomake reforms. Because all that is beingsought is reform, there is no contradiction in electoral paticipation. Thesecond level, however, corresponding toradicalism, by negation, where evils areseen in relation to one another, involvesthe .refusal to participate in electionsout of a recognition of the impossibilityof reform. Radicalism does not yet saywhat is possible, however, and thereforerejects all possibilities. The third periodof revolutionary consciousness involves,by further negation, participation in electoral struggle; first, because it can bestbe demonstrated to people that the processis futile, through the process itself; andsecond, that it is a useful forum and aplace where people gather and can bespoken to, and, since it is no longerbelieved in, it cannot compromise effectiveness. Where a radical sees the §vstem' sstrength and totality (one-dimensionally)the revolutionary sees its internal contra-dictions and weaknesses. .
Electoral Politics
This differentiation of consciousnessis ~damental to every political questionwe face. For example, the question ofwhether or not to participate in electoralpolitics is a question which must be differentiated at these same three levels. Thefirst response, that of liberalism on firstseeing social evils, is to participate in
There are three fundamental periods ofdifferentiation in the development of masspolitical consciousness and understandingof the state: liberal radical and revolutionary. The first stage in this development of consciousness is adoption, as achild adopts the social attitudes of thosearound him. The second period, the pointof real differentiation, Is one of opposition (negation), of a radical antagonismagainst liberalism, but which, is, in real-"ity only the external expression of aninternal antagonism against what one oncebelieved. Having adopted the views ofothers, the real opposition is to the expression of these views internally, thusthe need for self-definlt1on is greatestamong those people who are confrontedwith beliefs which most closely resembletheir own, which force them to definethemselves through struggle in opposition to their 10Et1cal underpinnings. Themost violent conflict and the worst enemyis therefore always the one who is closest,who appears to say the same things, butis in fact saying something quite different.A revolutionary (read negation of thenegation) understands not only the patternof social oppression, and recognizes theevil, but also has defined more carefullythe way to overcome it. The revolutionaryis characterized by an analysis of thestate, which differs Irom the ra41cal'sview of the ·power structure", whichdiffers from the liberal's notion of ·the"power elitev, and posits the seizureand maintenance of that power as necessary to destroy it. There is a fundamental difference in conception betweenan • elite", a • structure" and an entiresocial fabric expressed in class termsas the enemy, and consequently, there isa difference in expectation of response.A liberal will be shocked and outraged bythe use of mace. A revolutionary willnot be surprised at it. This does not meanthat he does not oppose it, but that hisopposition takes a different form becauseof his understanding of it.
Liberal-Radical-Revolutionary
The most essential aspect of a definition of repression is that consciousnessof repression and understanding of thetreatment of this question within the movement as a whole is always a function ofthe level of political consciousness. Whatis repression to a liberal may hardly bean attack in the eyes of a radical, andthe agitational responses to repressionby a radical may differ drastically fromthe way in WhiC;l a revolutionary wouldapproach the question, because both radicalism and analyses of repression arerelated to one' s understandin~ of the state.
It has become commonplace today to speak of growing repression, and to hint forebodingly at the future of fascism in this country. No program or strategic discussionis held without reference to the SUbject, no movement newspaper is without continualreference to it, and few movement activists are without concern over it. But it hasbecome imperative that we have an understanding of the effects, both in consciousnessand in program, of several different analyses of repression. Ramifications of theseattitudes are beginning to be seen, and political consequences are starting to emergewhich necessitate close scrutiny.~ To begin with, - all existing' analysesof the repression of the movement areboth definitionally and functionally unsound. They fail not only to make distinctions between repression in the blackand white communities, which results inpart from a failure to understand thedynamic of coalition and the purposes ofdis-unity (struggle), but they also failto recognize a fundamental truth: thatconcern with and organization aroundrepression is a function of one's politicalposition. Primary, therefore, in any critique of a theory of repression ought tobe the inadequacies of present definitions.Both action and failure to act have significance in political movements.
There are, however, several objectivecriteria .for any functional definition ofrepression. Any minimal definition ofrepression must include the element ofattack, by sections of the state apparatus,formal and informal, on a givern tendecnyor part of the movement for the purposeof destroying its ability to operate offensively. Repression is the use of the coerciveapparatus of state power, which is classpower, to crush what appears to it tobe threatening, regardless of whether itis in fact threatening. It is characterizedby affirma.tive use of the law and legalinstitutions to provoke and to channelthe alternatives availabli:! to the movement.The. 'symbOl to which we attach the namerepression may be fascism in one contextand repression in another. This judgement .depends on a broader analysis of totalsocial direction, however, and is notsimply made. Furthermore, repression'is not just attack, it is also co-optation.Repression is not just jail, as somesettions of the movement hold; it is alsojobs.
Hangman and PriestThe fundamental purpose of ANY system
of class power is to determine, by law,the alternatives that are available, tolimit and co-opt, to buy off and destroy,but at all costs to moderate conflict tothe advantage of the ruling class, toreconcile irreconcUeables by making it"profitable" for people to cooperate. Allof social and private law operates thisway. The Selective Service System existsnot only to channel those who recognizeits authority, but also to determine thealternatives even for those who are inabsolute and fundamental opposition to it.The same is true of the university, andof every social institution. Lenin, inhis" Collapse of the Second International"wrote 'tha~ all oppressive classes andsocieties require two primary functionsto safeguard their power: those of hangman and priest. This formulation maybe re-written, in modern society, as thefunctions of law and order, of co-optationand repression, terror and justlflcation,force and rationalization, reality and official myth. The more sophisticated andtechnical the exploitation, the more complex are the expressions of hangman and .priest.
At the same time, we must understandthat a system does not function at onlyone level. Repression is not simple attaCk, but consists of a complex seriesof planned and unplanned assults which
:take place at all levels. Because it isa SYSTEM, its actions may be and frequently are, contradictory to one another.Furthermore, as a class system, internalcontradiction is its consistency, its reasonfor existance. It ,is also its nemisis, andthe only way we can destroy it. The internal contradiction between the tendencyto corporate liberalism and the tendencyto fasicsm is illustrated in current splitsin the ruling class over the war in Vietnam and is expressed as an external contradiction between the tendency to buy offopposition and the tendency to destroy it.Analysis of these tendencies must beginwith a fuller analysis of monopoly capitalism.
SEPTEMBER 1968 THE MOVEMEI';lT PAGE 11
SAID THEHANGMANTOTHE PRIEST
ferent kinds of repression. lt is alsotrue that they fail to see that the interestsof blacks and whites, at this point, aredifferent. The logic of colonial liberationalways involves the formation of crossclass political organizations, where thelogic of revolution involves the intensiveand bitter struggle of one cla!1s or sectionof a class against all others, formingalliances with other classes for expediencyand not out of an eventual self-interest.The Panthers are clearly representativesof the development of revolutionary sentiment out of the black liberation struggle,and they neither unequivocally supportnor do they inflexibly refuse to partici-
CONTINUED ON PAGE I 4
Seattle RepliesRoger Lippman of DR-S is less opti
mistic concerning the effect on the generalpopulation of a mass crack-down on the'movement, and sees a necessity to demonstrate the connections between the draftand other aspects of American imperialism. His reply states that "there is noeasy way out of the draft. Our only hopeis to fight the draft collectively. Weadvocate resistance to the draft but werealize that we will not be able to endthe draft before fundamentally changing.the Uiufed States.
"Either Ule draft is essential to American imperialism, or it isn't. If it is, thenwe can expect the full repressive forceof the enemy to come down upon us ifwe seriously challenge the draft. And atthis point we are certainly not capableof surviving such repression. On theother hand, if the draft is not necessaryto imperialism, the liberals will respondto our movement by replacing the draftwith a well-paid volunteer army whichcan better conduct the business of maintaining the empire.
"In either case, it is clear that todefine ourselves merely as an anti-draftmovement is insufficient. . .
"He who refused to cooperate with thedraft, therefore, only makes a beginning.He does not speak to the many otherinstitutions of imperialism. ,Indeed, inhis highly moralistic stand, he implicitlyDENIES THEIR EXISTENCE.
"Making the moral or political decision of non-cooperation with the draftdoes not automatically lead to antiimperialist consciousness. The functionof organizers is to move people fromtheir gut-level feelings of oppressionand alienation to a broaCier understandingof society. ,~
"ThUS, in addition to the above criticisms. we question the effectiveness of
necessitate a decision- making triumvirateof political leadership, lawyers, and clients, with political considerations alwaysbeing primarv. "
A further series of purposes of~ch,
an organization also revolve around pol- .itical education and the use of interpretation and exposure. Literature could beproduced explaining peoples rights andlack of rights at the same time, an organizers newsletter could be produced whichwould' explain, both politically and legally, current cases, laws etc.; local committes could be formed on particularcases, or for the defense of particularindividuals: legal and medical teams of"observers" could be organized for demonstrations; those in jail could be assisted in their organizing efforts inside, andin their political understanding of currentevents; political strategy could be developed around trials (whether or not topack courtrooms, disrupt, etc.); and lawstudents and lawyers can themselves formorganizations around such an attempt.
Movement defense, regardless of organization, must, if it is to be effective,project a political analysis of the reasons to a response which furthers thepolitical battle in question. On!>' a coherent and differentiated understanding ofthe class nature of law as not onlypeutral, but as part of what we considerto be the enemy, can present repression in such a fashion as to move people to an understanding of what causedthe repression, to an understanding ofits social base. Unfortunately, the organization outlined above awaits that understanding. We are'beginning to consciouslydirect our strategy and to realize whatmust objectively be done to convert movement defense to movement organizing.We must sooner or later begin to consciously direct our history, rather thanreacting to the brutalities ot the moment.Now is the time to build the movement.-
tJ,e
A dialogue between the National Office of The Resistance and Draft-Resistance- •Seattle, published in the latter's recent newsletter, raised questions conrerning strategy which are of importance to all groups doing draft-resistance work.
Different types of actions undertaken by the two groups arise from what is evidentlyan old-line pacifist-reformist stance of 5 Beekman street's New York office, as opposed to the attack on the entire system of American imperialism and injustice takenby the new-leftists of Draft Resistance-Seattle.
The New York office, in a recent civil rights movement got its trainingletter to Seattle, expressed concern that in federal prison during World War II.what they consider to be the most im- At that time, imprisoned CO's led workportant aspect of the draft resistance strikes and boycoTts-against segregatedmovement __ non-cooperation __ was prison facilities. In light of these con-being played down. Their position is ditions, we should also ask oUl'selvesthat "The Resistance ... is a nation- how effective can we be speaking towide movement built around the simple lower class kids if they know we liave atactic of absolute refusal to acquiesce II-S. How effective would the movementin any way to the rule of Selective Ser- be at all if the public knew we fakedvice. For the young man turning eighteen, 4- F' s?"this means open non-registration. For therest of us, this means terminatin:;- <illof our ties to the draft. We carry nodraft cards. accept no deferments. andrefuse to be inducted or -- ifwe were oneof the fortunate few who hold the coveted1-0 -- refuse to perform alternate civilian service.
"Our non- cooperation comes from arealization that deferments and exemptions are tools used by the military establishment to divide us, silence us, andprevent the growth of united resistance tothem ...
"By its own admission, Selective serviceuses deferments to create a technologicaleconomic-social base most conducive tothe neo-imperialist designs of the administration ...
"Non-cooperation, on the other hand,is one thing the government cannot tolerate. This has been especially true sinceevery act of repression has been metby further resistance . . . What a strongposition for the movement·: Punishmentcannot deter us. And, of course, theJustice Department simply cannot ignoremassive civil disobedience against thedraft.
"Non':'cooperation has made itself feltelsewhere. All non-cooperators face jail,and suddenly the oppressiveness of thedraft is felt by their friends and families . . . Being taken to jail is one thing,but being taken there from a community of concerned friends and relativeshas a radicalizing effect on that community.
"Critics of The Resistance often arguethat being in jail is being politicallyineffective ... Not all Resistance peopleare going to jail at once. And if for somereason there were a mass round-up,the movement would probably gain groundfrom the political polarization followingsuch a great act of repression. Furthermore, we should see our imprisonmentas a radicalizing and humanizing experience. Much of the leadership of the old
National DefenseWhat is :needed,.is a national organization
for movement defense, which would attempt to use the courtroom as a classroom, and turn legal controversy intopolitical education. There is no need toform another test case legal defenseorganization, since a number exist, including the Law Center for ConstitutionalRights and the Emergency Civil LibertiesCommittee (ECLC). which are quite good.What is needed primarily is concentrationon mass defense and self-defense; i.e.defense of large numbers of students,rioters, draft resisters, etc., and understanding that not everyone can be rep
-resented, and that there are towns wherethere are no adequate lawyers; the secon<:ifunction of an organization concerned withrepression ought to be to train peoplein legal self-defense. In many cases,the rules of evidence are less strictwhere defendants represent themselves,and the level of political material introduced atthe trial rises markedly.
From Defense to OrganizingBut the main function of such an organi
zation ought to be political education;of clients, attorneys, and the public asa whole. Since it is possible to statepolitical objectives through methodology,and to make political conclusions flowfrom forms of organization, th~re shouldbe a conscious linking of the defensesof students, blacks, and anti-imperialist,anti-war activists, at this stage. Furthermore, efforts should be made to expresssolidarity with persecuted revolutionaries
,- --in other countries, as a way of linkingthe objectives of those struggles, andcontributing to the raising of "inter-
'national" consciousness. International aswell as national movement defense would
is jailed.
of a state in decay, which sees enemieswhere none exist, and fails to recognizereal danger where it exists. A timecomes in the growth of every revolution,when even the most staid of reformistideas are outlawed, when everyone who isconcerned with social justice is brandeda criminal, and when everything done toproduce change is a crime. But a dec- 'laration that a given act is criminalalready, by negaHon, constitutes a recognition that there 'is a SOCIAL needto do that which is prohibited. Lawsagainst prostitution are an implicit recognition that the society has created aneed which cannot be met EXCEPT byprostitution. The same is true of repression, and the crime of revolution.Repression llnalysis, therefore, shouldlead people to revolutionary understanding, it should point back into thestreets, rather than into the courts, andshould politicize.
A Political OffensiveA further problem with both of the
analyses of repression mentioned, is thatthey are seldom used affirmatively. Noneof the defense motions around the Spock,ET AL case contributed much to theeffective organizing of draft resistance,whereas the Panther's handling of theHuey Newton case was a major factorin their organizing efforts and was integrated fully into the elaboration of apolitical line. Finally, both analyses areincorrect in that they tend to emphasizeconfrontation over organization and education. They tend to point toward copsas the enemy, rather than a system whichexpressed its will through cops. We arein a period of development of consciousness, organization, and forms of action,which necessitate definition through strug- 'gle. Social movements and political tendencies understand themselves and definetheir objectives, strategy and tacticsalways through struggle. This struggle,however, proceeds not just externally,but internally as well. It is found notonly in confrontation with the cops, butin inter-organizational battles as well.Recognizing that only a revolutionarymovement can effectively confront asystem, we attempt to use confrontationto build a revolutionary movement.
Recognizing these mistakes is only partof the remedy. We must also begin toformulate an approach to repJ:ession whichis expressly political, and which is organizationally continuous, not depending forits existence on the erratic behavior
pate in, the current spate of enthusiasmand support for black capitalism. Theirrepression, therefore, must be dealt withdifferently from the repression of whites,and even the repression of non-revolutionary blacks.
'[ttor
Law and ClassMoreover, these two approaches to
repression tend to give lawyers and legalconcerns too great a scope in the crucialdecisions which are made on a day today basis, to the detriment of politicalconcerns. They tend to emphasize a testcase approach to mass arrest situations,and to promote the efficacy of legalstruggle over political considerations.We have seen numerous movements destroyed in their "legal" phases, and inconcentration on courtroom battles overthe battles which first brought the movement to trial, the same class societyhas evolved extensive legal techniquesfor obfuscating and diluting politicalstruggle. Law is a "tyranny of definition" ,and exists not only to define the offense,but the defense as well. We should therefore relate to courtroom battles, exactlyas we do to repression itself, and converta struggle with the legal system intoan exposure of its connections with racismand imperialism, with capitalism. We mustmove people to an understanding of classjustice, and to a realization of the necessity for destroying the ENTIRE systemof capitalism, and not just its superficially most repressive parts. Lawyerstend to be motivated primarily by whatwill work in court, and are less ablethan the movement to demonstrate thatthe courts are part of the repressiveapparatus. The" law must be see.n to.ex!§!.. .not ~impliwherever there is conflict, but wherever' that conflict is irreconcileable. Landlord-tenant courts, forexample, exist when, where, and to theextent that the interests of landlords:and tenants are irreconcileable, to reconcile those interests in the name ofa "neutral, third party" entirely on theside of the landlord. For tenants to dobattle in, rather than with this courtis to have lost before the battle haseven begun.
In the same way, WP. have come tosee through the student power movementthat the administration exists when, where 'and to the extent that the interests ofthe students and the ruling class, asexpressed thr/)u~h the Regents or Trustees, are irreconcileable. Through struggle, we saw that the administration wasnot the primary enemy, and that itspretensions to being neutral are only aguise for serving the interests of the"business community". lt is also important to recognize the differences betweenthe black and white movements, in theirrate of development, as well as in thesubstance of their development. Areverseanalysis of black power leads us to arecognition of the importance of organizing around our own oppression, but doesnot and shOUld not prevent organizingaround someone elses repression. Theextra oppressive fact of racism makesthe charge of repression a qualitativelydifferent one in the black and whitecommunities. But both the views mentionedfail to distinguish between these two dif-
anti-war movement, or tba.t. others ol,!ghtto do what they are doing. Moreover,repression does not occur at the veryapex of the movement, but somewherefurther back from its tip, because thegovernment does not fully understand thedialectic of our development, and isalways, except in a period of fascism,hesitant to attack. Therefore, our organizing priorities should not be determinedby the government, or by its understandingof what we are up to, but out of an objective assessment of real needs.
determined by where the governmentmoves to protect itself, rather than whereit is necessary for us to build our movement. Both of the tendencies mentionedmistakenly assume that repression occurswhen you are being effective. From thisflows the preposterous conclusion thatin order to be effective, we have todo whatever the government will repress.
In fact, it is not OUR effectiveness,but THEIR fear which triggers repressiveaction, and while the two are often thesame, they are not necessarily synonymous. Merely because Dr. Spock andotfiers are indicted does not mean thatthey are the most effective part of the
PAGE 12 THE MOVEMENT SEPTEMBER 1968
HUEY, Continued from Page 1 COP WAR IN CLEVELANDIn the end, the 73 year old Judge
Friedman, without pausing to deliberate,ruled against all of Garry's motions onjury selection.
So far Garry's motions to expungeor reduce to a misdemeanor the priorfelony conviction of Huey Newton havealso failed. This motion is important-a felon who takes the stand in defenseof himself can have his testimony impeached. A prior felony make also makea difference in sentencing.
Questioning of Jurors.Political education continued with the
questioning of prospective jurors. Questions focused on the nature of whiteracism, on the concept of black power,on attitudes toward open housing andblack-white relations. Garry also soughtout attitudes twoard cops and the Estab..,I1shme!'lt. . '
Both Garry and the DA were allowedtwenty permptory challenges as well asan unlimited number who could be excusedfor "cause". After more than a weekof questioning prospective jurors a jurywas chosen. Motions made by Garryas to the unrepresentative nature of thefinally jury were denied.. -With some jury panelists Garry waswarm, friendly, curious, reassuring. Withothers he was openly hostile and aggressi ve. At first some observers becameuptight watching Garry bait a panelist.But his actons were far from purposeless. Over and over carefully controlledtight-lipped establishment-type racistsbroke their cool in response to Garry'sprobing--finally getting themselves excused for cause by the judge.
Every racist Garry could get eliminatedthis way meant one more peremptorychallenge left to get rid of those whomaintained their cool or lied consistently. In this way, Garry finally eliminated a woman who maintained her "impartiality". She had a longtime friend,a police officer, who, she eventuallylet out, had visited Heanes, the woundedofficer, in the hospital.
Garry also elicited the comment froman "unbiased" man that he had movedout of a neighborhood because "too manyblacks were moving in". He believedthat "everybody feels that way". Significantly, as the trial proceeded, fewerwhites denied they had heard of whiteracism, but many said they had firstheard or thought about it when Garryasked questions of previous jurors.
Prosecutor Jensen wound up using fewer peremptory challenges than Garry(who used all he had). One black manwas left on the jury, a former Armyofficer and now a lending officer atthe Bank of America. There is alsoone Japanese man, and two persons ofSpanish descent. Jensen eliminated allother black people, many on peremptorychallenges.
Put Politics in CommandThe decisions in running the defense
have been entirely poUtical--even wherethey called for actions contrary to thosea "smart" criminal lawyer might make.Primarily, this is because all final decisions ar e made by Huey himself. Whenone course of action seems to offer thebest hope for a strong defense, but another is clearly the action which should,for political reasons, be taken, Hueyinvariably makes the political choice.
It took a week and a half to select12 jurors and 4 alternates becasueGarry could not, as in a normal trial,settle for the "best available" jury.For months the defenses had worked toproduce evidence that the jury selectionsystem prevented a black man, of lowereconomic status, from getting tried bya jury of his peers. With a primarilyWhite, middle class, middle-aged jury,containing not one single member of theWest Oakland ghetto which is Huey'shome, sitting 'on the jury box beforehim, Garry had no choice but to challengeall those he could before his challengesran out. He could not .rest with whatwas merely the best possible panel under'the system. He had to try for a trulyequitable panel including a cross-sectionof the entire Oakland and West Oakland community, to show the court whatit should be providing.
Offensive DefenseIf Garry'S opening statement after the
pre-trial testimony is any indication, thetrial will continue to be more, and notless political. This stress is tied withthe total dedication to prevent the statefrom legally assassinating Huey, and todeal with the evidence and legal points.Politics is seen as primary, informingthe more strictly legal defense, and thusstrengthening it.
Garry traced the Party's history toshow why the Alameda and Oakland police are so '1ptight about the Panther'seducating black people to their rights. Heoutlined the result--systematic police
persecution of the Panthers and theirleader. "The Black Panthers became asymbol to the police, and the word wasout--Get Huey Newton."
Movement lawyers have been talkingabout taking the offensive in court cases,mounting a political defense. The Oakland Seven made a beginning in thisdirection, but the Huey Newton case isa milestone: the first to put theory intopractice on a large scale.
Within the legal defense itself thisposition is still maintained. Garry's firstwords in cross-examining Officer Heanes,who was wounded in the October 28incident were, "Did you shoot and killOfficer Frey?" He never only DEFENDED against the prosecution witnesses,always refocused the blame, turning thebasic issues into political ones at thesame time as shaking up the witnesses'testimony.
Outside The CourtroomOne of the most serious impediments
to previous attempts to make court appearances into offensive, political, andeducational actions has been the separation of street action from court action.Months later some people appear in court,accompanied by their attorney and a few
friends. The only real organizing thatis done is a few headlines in the leftpress, or pprhaps in a big case, somelocal rallies J.II fund- rasine:,
The reverse has been tr~~ of the Huey
1::
~iQ::::~o:8Pi
Newton case. A mass political organizingeffort was built from the time of hisarrest, through his many months in jail,to the present. Many people in the BayArea were first polticized in regardto the black liberation struggle throughexposure to the case. In rallying supportthe Panthers and Peace and Freedom haveeducated and organized people aroundblack liberation as well. The coalitionitself was first formed around the issueof Huey's defense.
Mass ActionsThe opening of the trial was met by
mass rallies in the part of West Oakland (re-named Bobby Hutton MemorialPark) and at the courthouse. Thousandsdemanded that Huey be set free. Theserallies were stirring: the depth of feelingexhibited by many blacks and whites,the beauty, dignity, and discipline ofthe Panthers.
But the Panthers have not gotten hungup on large demonstrations. Within thefirst week, they switched from picketingand chanting to holding their politicaleducation classes on the courthouse lawn.By the second week the major emphasiswas being channelled into the community.Panthers travelled with sound trucks,passed out leaflets and rang door bellsin the black community. They also spoketo numerous groups of whites, aidedby the Peace and Freedom Party. Severalwhite defense committees have sprungup, one putting out a mass circulationnewspaper entitled OAKLAND TRIBUNAL,and then planning large demonstrationsand door to door work in the whitecommunities of Alameda County and SanFrancisco.
Electoral CampaignsAt the same time the Black Panthers
have utilized other approaches They arerunning numerous political campaigns withfreeing their leader as a main politicalfocus. Eldridge Cleaver is runnin>; forPresident of the US on the P&F ticketin New York and California, and is acandidate for the national P&F nomination (See stroy, PJ3). Melvin Newton,Huey' s brother, is beginning a yearlong campaign for Mayor of Oakland.Bobby Seale and Kathleen Cleaver arerunning for assembly in thier districtsand Huey himself is being run for Congressin the Berkeley-Oakland 7th Congressionaldistrict. All P&F candidates have" FreeHuey" as a major plank. While thereare many other political focusses of allof these campaigns (they all, of course,seek to spread and implement the tenpoint program), all stress educating thepublic to the need and desirability offreeing Huey Newton.
At the same time, the defense and publicity has catalyzed a national formationof Black Panther Parties in several keyareas of the country, and the growth
by Tim Hallcleveland- -" Black people have assumed
the right to kill the oppressors." Onthe evening of July 23 an unknown numberof black nationalists engaged the Cleveland Police Department in a gunfight,killing three cops and wounding fifteen.Two nationalists were killed and onewounded. A leader of a nationalist group,Ahmed Evans, gave himself up on thescene, reportedly saying he organizedthe whole thing.
After the gun battle and on the nexttwo nightssome burning and looting tookplace. The National Guard was calledup the night of the 23rd, but the followingnight white police and Guard were removed from the riot area to let "community leaders" police the ghetto. Lootingreached such a level that the cops andthe Guard were called back in the following night and a curfew established, apparently at the request of local businessmen.
A huge political battle between rightand center has erupted since. with thepolice attacking the stokes administrationfrom the fight for allegedly providingmoney for Ahmed's guns through theCleveland Now buy-off program and forremoving the troops and cops from theghetto.
Murder and PayoffsThat's the outline of a pivotal event
in the black movement. Now some background.
Since the civil rights movement, organized activity in the Cleveland ghetto hasbeen centered around public and privateagencies and around several groupingsof cultural nationalists. During the springof 1967, fires and looting were very
of the Panthers in Oakland itself has beenremarkable.
To The United NationsThe Panthers took the struggle to an
international level by attempting to bringthe case before sympathetic members ofthe United Nations in JUly. CUban, Tanzanian and other delegates met with unifO.r.rned nag bearing Panthers followinga Panther press conference in the Churchof the United Nations. They have assuredthe Party members of their interest andsupport.
The Black Panthers are seeking NonGoverning Organization (NGO) status atthis time, so that they may. more fullybring their position before the UN. Asthey approached the UN Eldridge Cleaverexplained that since Huey is being accusedof running a "militarY" organization hiscase belongs in a military tribunal. Therehe should be tried by his peers--therevolutionary generals of the world: JomoKenyatta, Mao Tse-Tung, Fidel Castro,Ho Chi Minh. The proper people to choosethis jury, he Said, would be the revolutionary students of the world. The firstjuror would be chosen by the studentsof France.
While the battle inside the courtroomhas been focused on trying to impanela jury of HueY's civilian peers, the Panthers do not at all recognize the jurisdiction of the reactionary civil courtsto try Huey--nor the legitimacy of racistimperialist "law and order" •
Free Huey!It will be some time before the full
impact of this trial is felt and understood.How successful it has been as a programof political education remains to be seen.
Here' are already some indications ofits success. Press and spectators havebenefitted a great deal. Through the press,who have reported much of what Garryand the pre-trial expert witnesses havesaid, a large segment of the public hasbeen opened to new concepts and information concerning the judicial system,capital punishment, and racism. If theleft press is as successful in disseminating the information, and most importantly in projecting and analyzing the methods of defense and organization usedby the Panthers, the trial can have atremendous impact upon the future.
Free Huey. To understand what thathas come to mean for many, one wouldhave to understand the love of one manfor another, the love of a man fightingfor liberation for his leader, the loveof re"lolutionaries for a fellow revolutionary. Cleaver has said, " We wouldrather be witnesses AGAINST the execution of Huey Newton than witnessesOF it. If you try to kill Huey, you willhave to kill all of us first." The numbersof black and white revolutionaries who loveand respect Huey Newton has 'grown,as has their depth of feeling. As willtheir anger and revolt should Huey New-ton be taken from them. .
The trial has begun.•
heavy and it looked like the city washeaded for a major rebellion. Ahmedhimself predicted mystically that May 9was the day, but it didn't happen. Thecandidacy of Stokes, a liberal NegroDemocrat, for Mayor cooled things forthe rest of the summer and up until aweek ago. Ahmed and other nationalistseven joined the stokes campaign.
Incidents took place that forbode whatwas to come. Earlier in the Spring of1967, a young black man who had beeninvolved in one of the first nationalistgroups, the Jomo Kenyatta FreedomHouse, allegedly shot and killed a whitecop. He has been convicted and is headedfor the chair.
Ahmed's black culture shop was raidedseveral times and on the night of May 9
t a high official of CORE and an NBCcamerwoman, both from New York, werearrested there for a housing violation.Harrassment of the nationalists continuedunder the Stokes administration, and earlythis spring two defenseless kids werekilled while running from th e cops, oneblack on the East Side and one whiteon the West Side.
Meanwhile Stokes set up a whole seriesof buy-off programs in both black andwhite areas of town and many militantswent to work fo r them. The Hough AreaDevelopment Corp. this summer channeled funds to three nationalist groups,Ahmed's among them.
How the guns were purchased and whowas in the group is not generally known,but other militants say that Ahmed'sgroup had decided" to plan to do something"and were ready to die. The city government and FBI claim that they had advance word that someting was plannedbut they didn't know what.
OEOAnd CopsAs one story goes, Walter Beach, stokes'
black Youth Opportunities director and~ former Browns defensive back, was sent'to Ahmed's early in the evening of the, 23rd to settle a dispute over the eviction
the day before of Ahmed's cultural shopfrom its storefront. As Beach left, itis said, he stationed two black copsto watch Ahmed's. These cops were thenordered away from the area by the whitecops and the shooting began.
, Accorcing to Ahmed, he and his brothers,had just visited the nationalist shop in
Akron, where during recent visits the copshad barricaded the shop with men, womenand children inside, and had fired volleysof tear gas inside. Ahmed says he was lyingon his bed at 6 P.M. the 23rd when someone came in and said, "The beast is on
~ the scene." He looked outside and saw, the cops shoot down a black man who
was running away from them. Ahmedsays he took his gun into the bushesand began shooting. He kept firing untilhis gun jammed. He took the rifle apart,re-assembled it, and whenitstilljammed,he offered to give himself up.
In the cops' version, they were nevertold of any plans or arms caches, andon that evening one of their two truckswas innocently called to tow a car onAhmed's street, driven by two unarmedcivilians in police uniform. Whenthetruckarrived the driver was supposedly shotfrom an apartment house. His partnercalled for help. Car after car of copsarrived, without heavy weapons, the copsclaim, and cop after cop stepped into theline of fire and went down.
At a recent hearing yet another versionof how it started came out. Late in theafte~nnon of the 23rd, a police taskforce of plainclothesmen were stationedat each end of Ahmed's block. These copstestified that they saw some Nationalists:come out carrying guns and wearingbandoliers of ammunition; the cops thenran away. They did not report this tothe 5th District police station, but onlycalled other task force cops. So whenthe tow trucks arrived, the drivers didnot know there were people with heavyguns there.
At the same hearing a black cop testified that he was next toone of thewhitecops when the white cop was killed. Hewas allowed by the Nationalists to retreive the body and was not shot at.Later, in return, the black cop nushedthe nationalists from the building withtear gas and killed two of them.
Things reached such a state that copswere refusing to respond to calls overthe police radio and the central stationbroadcast a warning to them to examinetheir cars for boobytraps if they hadleft them alone. One police car was stolen and the driver fired at the cops ashe drove away. Nearly all squad carsin the city were sent to the area, leaving only one in each other district. TheGuard was alerted before the gunfightwas over. At one point, Ahmed calledout that he would surrender to a blackbut none could be found to arrest him,so he finally surrendered to a white.
The cops finally' killed two of the
CONTINUED ON PAGE 1-\
SEPTEMBER 196~ THE MOVEMENT ·AGE 13
NEW WIND IN BABYLON
"
t:c
Allied to this· projection of programand coalition is a vision--a positlve picture of what America might become werethe politics of the campaign to sparka' movement toward power.
The campaign hopes to build widersupport than has already taken place forHuey Newton. The importance of thisfacet of the campaign cannot be underestimated. It speaks to the question ofracism. It speaks to the confrontationbetween the most politically advancedgroup in the country and the powerstructure. It speaks to the injustice andracism of the courts, the treatment ofpolitical prisoners and the oppressionof the prison system. It speaks to therecognition of Huey Newton as a brotherand leader.
Finally, the Cleaver campaign believesthat a radical campaign with these goals,within the present context of major candidates with no answers, will help toexpose the present electoral system forthe closed-circuit slave of imperialsimthat it is.
The Real Nitty-Gritty
At the core of the campaign is ananalysis of American society. The majorfacets of thi.3 analysis should be familiarto MOVEMENT readers--last month'sinterview with Huey Newton added newdimensions to its meaning. The analysisis beginning to test its strength andaccuracy in practice.
The anlaysis contains two central features. First, it relates the movementfor national liberation in the black colonyof Ih(~ United States to the class strugglein the mother country. The goal is revolution in the mother country and liberationin the colony. Working coalitions canand must be made with white revolutionaries, to link the two struggles whosecharacter is different but whose commonand necessary goal is the same--the destruction of American imperialism.
CONTINUED ON PAGE i5
arguments. It makes clear that radicafchange can never come through electoralstruggle, but only through a people'smovement. Yet the campaign believesthat, at the present time, a straightforward campaign can be a catalyst formore widespread struggle in the future.
It will seek, through speeches, educational materials and participation inlocal issues, to present to a broadersection of america a systematic andconcrete program for radical action.
It hopes to begin to tie together movement networks and isolated groups whileprojecting the eventual alliance of black,brown and white in a principled coalition.Cleaver is one of tlte men most responsible fur the alliance in Californiabetween the militant Chicanos, the Peaceand Freedom Party, and the Black Panther Party. The alliance has proved tobe not only workable, but advantageousto all concerned.
to expand and modernize the scandalouslycrowded public health and mfmtal facilities, where adequate care is impossible.Fight to end government complicity withdrug companies, which results in pricefixing, exorbitant profits and inflated drugprices the poor cannot afford~ Fight fora National Health Program.)
Electoral PoliticsThere have been many movement argu
ments about the best way to relate toelectoral politics. Some argue thewhole process of running candidates, regardless of why or how, can only leadto contamination--playing in THEIR ballpark by THEIR rules. Others, who stresscommunity organizing, see electoral organizing as superficial, aimed at votesor certaiI. to end with the elections:
The Cleaver campaign recognizes these
9. PUBLIC TRANSPORT: Establish freefares on city buses, trams and SUbways.(SUpport the San Francisco fight for freeMUNI and BART fares, to be financedby taxing downtown corporations, notworking people.)
10. PRISONS: Abolish the archaic, inhumane prison system and replace itwith centers for real rehabilitation ofthose who commit crimes against persons.(Join the fight against 'capital punishment;against political imprisonment; for the.prisoner's minimum wage. Assistprisoners in organizing for drastic reformof the penal system.)11. CORPORATE EXPLOITATION: Organize people's resistance to the cor-poations and banks that control and exploittheir communities. (Support actions likethe Oakland economic boycott, the boycott of Lucky Stores, the boycott ofscab gragpes from Delano, and the comingP&F boycott of the Bank of America.)
12. THE DRAFT: Abolish the SelectiveSlavery system. (Support local actionsof draft resistance and organizing withinthe Armed Forces.)
union leaders; to fight the speed-upsin factores; to organize agricultural workers; to improve wages andjobcondi tions;to win decent job tenure and securityagainst lay-offs. Join the fight againstgovernment strike-breaking and "wageguidelines", and against the prohibitionon strikes by government emplovees.Support struggles like that of the Rheemworkers in Richmond, viciously attackedby strike-breaking police.
7. TAXES: Remove the tax load from ordinary people and put it on the corporations,which benefit from ~he "help business"spending policy of the government. (jointhe fight against sales and gasoline taxes,which hit us hardest; against the 10 percent war tax surcharge; against the telephone war tax.)
8. HEALTH: Guarantee free medicalcare·for every man, woman and child. (Fight
"t
~'"ro
::::Q>...,o-0..cil.
6. LABOR: Build a new labor movementrepresenting workers, not union bureacracies which make deals with management and sell out the workers. (Joinrank-and- file struggles to end discriminition in the unions; to obtain amnestyfor James R. Hoffa; to oust corrupt
5. GUN CONTROL:Take the guns fromthe cops and the Army, not from thepeople. Unless there is total disarmament,the people would be defenseless againstattacks by what is becoming an increasingly repressive police state. The Vietnamese would be enslaved today if theyhad disarmed while the US w~r machinekept its weapons. (Organize to defendthe Second Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing the citizen's rightto bear arms--one of our few remainingdefenses against tyranny.)
c. Build decent low-cost housing, for use not for profit, in such a waythat existing communities are not leveledor disrupted. (Demand community controlof all projects, tenant control of publichousing.)3.SCHOOLS: Quality education has priorfty, not gimmicks like bussing schemes.(Demand neighborhood control of schools;small classes; TEACHERS, not classroom cops; bilingual instruction; curriculum changes to include history of theblack and M.exican-American peoples;labor history, replacing the history ofrulers with the history of peoples. Support actions like the high school students'revolt in Los Angeles.)4. POLICE CONTROL: Disarm-and disbandpolice forces of the present type. Replace.them with public safety guardians, livingin the communities where they work andserving the people not propertied interests. (Demand civilian review boardsin the cities; aboltion of "tactical squad";and end to police use of Mace gas.Organize immediately community policecontrol boards to observe police andcollectively protest abuses. Support actions like the "Recall District AttorneyCoakley" and «Free Huey Newton" campaigns in Alameda County.)
2.HOUSING: a. Protect tenants and smallhomeowners victimized by exorbitantrents and taxes (while the Bank of America gets a $2.5 million ta)C break on itsSan Francisco headquarters), by setitingup community-controlled Rent and TaxControl Boards. (Support actions likethe San Francisco rent control/tax reliefpetition drive, and the Los Angeles housing marches against evictions.)
- b. End all "urban renewal"and "model cities" programs, designedfor corporate profit, which force poorand working people out of their communities. (Supoort struggles against local"redevelopment" boards.)
1. JOBS: Guarantee jobs to every adultAmerican able to work--useful jobs, whichbuild liveable communities on sound ecological principles, create schools andhospitals on a human scale. (Demand jobprograms under community control, withjobs for the enemployed, especially blackunemployed.)
Community Action ProgramsThe broad programmatic outlines of
the Cleaver campaign are tied to morespecific community action programs. Thecampaign hopes to function as a toolto actively support local struggles, aswell as beginning to relate local strugglesand groups to each other.
decent housing and public health facilities.Although the demand for federal spendingon people instead of munitions is reformistand falls far short of our objective ofpeople's control of all resources, it isa good interim demand--PROVIDED THEADMINISTRATION OF FEDERAL MONEYIS ENTIRELY IN THE HANDS OF GRASSROOTS COM MUNITY ORGANIZATIONS.We must continue to expose governmentAid programs controlled by bureaucratsin Washington or state capitals (or bylocal city halls and courthouse gangs)as ruses to dupe the people--ruses, infact, to increase the government's controlover our lives.
2.0N BLACK LIBERATION, CHICANOLIBERATION, AMERICAN INDIAN LlBERATION: Our goal is political and economic self-determination for our people.Over the years, the ruling elite hasproved unwilling to relinqUish its powerover our lives, unwilling to stop brutalizing us, incapable .of reforming itsrule in any fundamental way. OUr liberation w1ll r,:,quire a root change inthe political and economic structures ofthis country. taking power from the handsof the ruling elite and placing it in thehands of the people. While this is ourultimate goal, OUR IMMEDIATE AIMIS COMMUNITY CONTROL--control oflocal schools, police forces, and all publicagencies operating in our communities.The demand for community control buildsa strong local base, and is the logicalfirst step toward self-determination inthe larger society. Community controlincludes, of course, the people's rightof self-defense against attacks by agentsof the power .structure.3. ON THE U.S. ECONOMY: The USmust be forced to dismantle the warmachine, and put t'1e enormous savingsto work to meet the desparate humanneeds of .millions of Americans--forjobs, quality schools, free transportation,
Into The BreachIt's obvious that the controllers of
the United states are sweating this electionmuch more than usual. The ghetto revolts. Dissatisfaction rampant. Contemptfor property and spreading hatred of theenforcers of law and order. A losingwar in Vietnam. Youth in uproar. Thereare differences among the controllersas to which is the best method of control-and the best candidate.
And don't think for a minute that anymajor candidate doesn't fit into thisscheme. Powerful and reactionary business and government forces may wellsupport a man like McCarthy as thebest controller, the smoothest salesman.The man to keep imperialism alive andwell.
At the same time the movement hasnot taken advantage of the state of thenation or the divisions among its rulers.We are UNORGANIZED. The ideologicaland financial offensive that has begunin behalf of soft- sell imperialists whowish to cool the internal and externalcolonies has cut into our ranks. Repression has proceeded.
The Cleaver campaign sees itself within this context. It is focused on education and organization- -an effort to sharpenthe movement in a more united and coherent fashion than has been the case.It seeks to expose the realities of America, present a positive and radical program, clear the way for the tasks ahead.
The campaign began when Cleaver wasin jail. Since then it has built up a substantial following. Cleaver has been released for the time being--though hefaces charges of attempted murder inthe incident which led to the murder ofBobby Hutton.
The campaign has set forth the followinggoals and concrete programs.
The Goals1. ON THE AMERICAN EMPIRE: TheUS must be forced to withdraw troopsfrom Vietnam and throughout the world;dismantle foreign bases; cancel all military and other AID programs which serveto maintain American political-economicdominance. With withdrawal of US troops,bases, and military aid, the peoples ofthe world will wrest control of their ownresources from the stranglehold of UScorporations. When this occurs, the USshould extend no-strings-attached aid topeople's governments (not reactionaryoligarchies) in the underdeveloped world-not to build markets for US goods,not to maintain cheap raw material sourcesfor US industry, but to enable these peoplesto industrialize, mechanize agricultureand generally satisfy their OWN needs.These principles apply also to the internalcolonies of black people and other mi.norities in the United States. Without justice,there can be no peace. Without disarmingthe world's Number One warmaker, thf'recan be no justice.
Cleaver for President?These days, in martini-filled ruins, with principle swept under the wall to wall
bullshit carpet, bald-headed racist-imperialists are making the decisions which affectour lives.
Among these decisions: who is the best salesman at home and abroad? Buy Americandemocracy--it contains a special secret ingredient: exploitation.
As the Republican Convention platform shenanigans were taking place, as millionairecandidates tried to line up their horses in readiness for the opportunist horseracewe call electoral politics, somethingelse was happening in Babylon.
A man from the black ghetto, a man who has recieved his education in the prisons ofCalfiornia (so that he has what he calls a "higher uneducation"), the Minister of Information of the Black Panther Party, has been nominated for President by the Peaceand Freedom Parties of both New York and California.
Eldridge Cleaver for President?
SEPTEMBER 1968
He wili be travelling 0 Jtside the statespeaking and trying to gain as widespreadsupport as possible. Support or inquiriesmay be sent to John SUmrall, P,O, Box398, Quitman, Mississippi 39355.
Draft Board ResearchBoston (LNS) -- The Boston Draft
Resistance Group has prepared a sevenpage brochure,on draft board research.The Group says that such research is"absolutely necessary, first as an invaluable aid to counselling, and secondas a means of understanding the bureaucracy against which you are fighting."The brochure is available from the BDRGat 102 Columbia St., Cambridge, Mass.
Science Against.ManSan Francisco -- Strong evidence in
dicates that the government has had itscoterie of mad scientists and mindlesstechnicians working overtime in yetanother fiendish plot to suppress justand necessary dissent. The latest intheir seemingly endless succession ofdiabolical schemes is a draft card which,after careful testing by our own liberatedscientists, appears without doubt to bealmost non-flammable!
The first evidence of this latest outrage was noticed at a Resistance rallyhere in support of Dr. Spock and othersof the Boston Five on July 10, when itwas discovered that the ten cards tobe burned took nearly an hour to burnto an average of medium-rare.
Our chemists are working on the problem. In the meantime, it is suggestedthat a large number of the cards, whenproperly fastened together, will makea more than adequate hand protectorfor picking up hot tear-gas grenades.
THE MOVEMENT
ANTI-DRAFT NEWS, Continued from Page 11begin a new organizing project, based people we know have physicals or in-in the Greenlake area. The immediate ductions.aims of the project are twofold. Eirst 7) Following up the high school contactswe must begin to reach out systematically we have in the area, with an eye towardsto young people affected by the draft. working intensively at several schoolsWork in a particular neighborhood, as in the Fall.1 will describe below, seems to be a 8) Guerr,illa theater and music actiotrouble putting our own people to work. vities.People come into the office and offer to 9) Organizing adults (particularly par-help, and we don't know what to say. ents) around draft l'elated issues.The Greenlake project should create 10) Raising money, printing literature,meaningful and educational work in which typing, arranging for publicity, and manymany people can be involved. other essential tasks.
To get the project started we will ' Quitman, Mississippi - - Mississippibe opening a store-front office which Justice and the Selective Service Systemwill serve as a focal point for the pro- are working hand-in-hand to put awayject. From there we have in mind sev- another Black activist.eral different approaches to reaching' John Sumrall, who has been in thepeople, which I will briefly outline be- movement there since 1963 and was ar-low. rested many times in va'rious counties
1) With the help of the draft board, for his activities, has had the draftwe can obtain the names and addresses board on his trail since 1965. Until Mayof people who are I-A. Then we approach of 1967, pending court cases kept himthe I-A's by mail, phone, or in person, safe from the draft, but he then foundto talk about their relationship to the all his cases dropped. and an inductiondraft and the war. notice in his mailbox.
2) Leafletting about the draft in the Of his refusal to take that final stepcom munity in general. forward at the induction center, Sumrall
3) Spending time where neighborhood says: "Because Black people are system-kids hang around, such as beaches, bowl- atically excluded from not only Missis-ing alleys, and drive-ins, to get to know sippi draft boards, but most draft boardsthem and talk to them. in the country. Also, the reason for my
4) After extensive research into the induction in the first place was to getcomposition of the local boards, we should me out of the area where I was workinghave plenty of ammunition to aim at the because I was active in the Black Move-draft system. For instance, none of the ment. Also, I do not believe in U.S. for-members of board #1, 'Greenlake-Ballard, eign policy in Vietnam.
New DR-S Project lives within the boards's boundaries. Per- After his being sentenced to five yearshaps we could call for demonstrations at and fined $2500 by the Kennedy-appointed
The following description by Roger the homes or businesses of board mem- Judge Cox SUmrall appealed to the 5thLippman of a project getting underway bel's. Circuit ,co~rt where the conviction wasin Seattle is also reprinted from the 5) Offering draft counselling and using upheld. He i~ now appealing to the SU-DR-S Newsletter .(4126" Roosevelt Way it to build poI~tical consciousness. preme Court, and while he expects toN,E., Seattle, Washington'98105): 6) Leaflettmg and talking at the in- lose wants to give the case maximum
Draft Resistance-Seattle is about to duction center, especially on days when publicity.
your tactics in developing political consciousness. Draft card turn-ins havebrought and continue to bring publicityto the resistance movement, but otherwise their value has been small. Manypeople make the decision to turn intheir cards without a great deal of understanding of their relationship to the political order. And for whatever reason,that understanding has not been developedafter non-cooperation ceremonies. TheSSS has returned cards to many youngmen, who become frightened, keep theircards, and drift away from the movement. Furthermore, we have found' thatfamily and friends have NOT ralliedto the support of non-cooperation, norhave they begun to become a radicalforce. .
"Draft Resistance-SeattIe is workingwith high school students, at the University of Washington, and in two Seattleneighborhoods. Instead of engaging ina program of non-cooperation, we areorganizing around issues of imperialism,both foreign and domestic. We relatethe dx:pt to Vietnam (and other counterinsurgency operations); to the Black liberation struggle and the military respons~; and to the oppressiveness ofsuch institutions as the high school andthe university. We look toward buildinga strong radical youth movement whichcan be a part -. of a .radical movementof adults and youth strong enough tothoroughly restructure America."
PAGE 14
HAIGHT, Continued from Page 3 CLEVELAND, Continued from ·Page 12
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wagon.All the while, the original people be-.
coming disillusioned with the Haight andeducated by the cops and hustlers, findingout first-hand now what America is about.Some leaving, others moving in, they tot'>moving on, always becoming educated.Some dropping further out, deciding togo into the mountains; others vowingnot to be driven out; a few deciding todefend themselves if necessary. All thewhile, the new kids discovering that themass media image is little more thanthat.
The First Confrontation, .The major confrontation with the pigs
occurred last February. Then, late oneSunday afternoon, one of the gawkingtourists (" Oh, look at that one overthere . . . " "How very cute ..• howmuch did it cost you, dearie?" "Well,I never!!!! And right in public!!!") hitsomeone's dog. A group of people, deciding 'that dogs were nicer than cars,sat down in the street. More people,deciding that people were nicer thancars too, joined. The riot squad, already-convinced that Law and Order is nicestof all, started busting heads.
A few people, having read about JoanBaez and flower power and things, satdown in the street. Others, seeing theresults of that, started to defend themselves the best way they COUld. Bottlesrained down on the pigs, and the peopleretreated as the pigs kept coming.Macing, clubbing and grabbing peopletoo slow or naive to get out of the way.People back in the stre,ets, throwingbottles. On the roofs, throwing bottles.And just being there. Another sweep, .sporadically the pigs beginning to firetear gas at the people standing out oftheir reach. The people somehow notterrified at the gas, another surp-riseJor the pigs ..
Police WhistlesThe pigs finally managed to force the
people off the street with clubs, chemicalMACE, motorcycles, boots, a few bulletsthrough windows from which people daredto gaze upon their countenance, plentyof arrests, and finally a massive gasattack. But somehow they had failed towin the hearts and minds ofthe people, andfor days after, the people made sureno pig's presence went unnoticed. "PoliceWhistles" were passed out and shrillwarnings were heard up and down thestreet every time a load of pigs wouldcruise by (especially embarrassin[ tothe "plainclothesmen"), the pigs stoppingevery half block, looking frantically 'forthe people with the whistles, unable tospot them. __
Whatever more the rebellion may havebeen than· simply a demand for a "freestreet" . it wasn't articulated as any moreby the "leaders" with whom the cityclloseto deal. Setting a pattern later tobe followed in Berkeley. The issue ofcontrol over one's own life was reducedto having a street faii on Sunday and
resolved by a Mayor's proclamationwhich allowed this for two weeks whilethe people forgot.
During the following months the Haighthas steadily taken on more and more thelooks of a slum -- with winoes and.speed freaks becoming more in evidenceand with many of the earlier residentsleaving. Word gets around; not to everyone, but to enough people that most ofthe expected summer influx of kids hasn'toccurred. But resistance to the pigshas continued, with occasional bottles androcks heaved at the cruising cars andpaddy wagons
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to why a partiCUlar incident has developedinto a riot when things have cooled offany number of times when the pigs haveleft and not pushed a bad situation. Arethey just practicing for when the Blackghettoes go? Were they trying to divertattention from the Huey Newton trial?Does the riot squad have to keep busyin order to justify its existence? Whetheror not that was their purpose, the pigs'inept handling of a tense situation following a narcotics bust touched off therebellion which had been bUilding formonths.
People on the street are, from appear-ances, much less together now than following the February action. There were noleaders to articulate demands, or evenchannel energy into a street fair as then.There are no "police whistles" this timeand people seem to have already forgottenabout the riot itself, not to mentiondoing anything for the people still injail. If anything is happening, it is inthe communes and "families", off thestreet.~eople may not be talking about" affinity
groups" as centers of resistance, like theyare in Berkeley, but the groups arethere, and the potential for them to actin a politically meaninf,-t'ulway is certainlythere too. Small groups of peoPle, oftenliving under the same roof, in whichthere is a feeling of trust and brotherhoodnot found on the street, may soon becomethe source of. action in the Haight.
nationalists in the backyard of the apartment house and literally burned andblasted the house and the one next doorto the ground. (Two days later they weredigging up the rubble with a steam shovel looking for the remains of othernationalists. )
Early the next morning the Guard cameinto the city. By that time fires wereburning on 10-15 blocks of SUperior Ave.including some of the Muslim businesses), and several black people hadbeen shot and killed in other parts ofthe ghetto, one as a looter, anotherby white civilians. Altogether nine blackpeople died.
Guardsmen were deployed in smallnumbers in the ghetto that -day whileblack "community leaders" demanded tobe allowed to police the area'themselvesthat night. Stokes agreed to this, andGuardsmen patrolled the perimeter ofthe area while black members of theadministration, black cops, ministers,Cleveland Now program leaders and afew nationalists policed the community.
Cops ProtestNo one was killed or injured that
night (as far as we know) but lootingreportedly mounted up, apd the protestof the cops and the Guard officials thenext day was loud. That night, the 25th,a 9 0' clock curfew was set and theGuard went into the area. The actionwas over. There were Guardsmen orarmored personnel carriers on hearlyevery street corner.
The cops, the Guard and military intelligence meanwhile opened their attackon Stokes with grandiose conspiracyclaims. Maj,or disturbances, it was said,were to take place in Detroit, Chicago,and other places, and would concludein disruption of the Democratic Convention. Assassination plans were reported against Stokes and Negro councilmanfrom the gunfight area, Leo Jackson.Thenfollowed attacks for pulling out theGuard and cops" and for allowing Ahmedto get Cleveland Now funds. At one pointSafety Director McManamon, a Stokes
.man, refused to meet with the headof ,the Guard.
The papers interviewed cop after copabout how they were ill-armed and notforwarned, while the TV stations interviewed various black leaders about howthe money got to AHmed. Then two NBCcameramen announced that they had beenbeaten by the cops while filming an arrest.One has been charged with assault on acop (he's in the hospital with a rupturedspleen and a broken tailbone). The storygave strength to Stokes and the center.CWRU president Robert Morse spokefor the University Circle complex (bigbusiness and government research) andbacked Stokes. The head of the NAACPattacked the cops for racist profanityover the pol'ce radio during the rioting.The edge in the battle was retaken byStokes.
Last week, 600 cops met and unanimously demanded the resignation of McManamon, but Stokes supported him. Thepolitical situation is still in great flux,with Stokes bowing to the police demandfor guerrilla warfare training, increasedmanpower and added weaponry includingshields and heavy guns .
White ResponseAs for white response, Movement for
a Democratic Society and the ClevelandDraft Resistance· Union held a fiftyperson demonstration at City Hall the25th supporting the revoutionary acts.The Guard was leafletted intermittentlywith a fairly gooJ response. White peoplein working-class neighborhoods seemedboth scared and impressed by the nationalists' actions.
As a general conclusion, the actionsopened up new possibilities for motion.As in Detroit last year, a model cityblew its COOl, only this time it was themost advanced model, complete with arags-to-riches Negro mayor. Seriousblack organizing is now far more possiblethan it was, though a wide fear reactionin the ghetto against the nationalistswill probably require that that organizing be based primarily on a poltiicalprogram like that of the Panthers. Onthe other side of the color lien, it is
now easier to talk to whites about classunity with the blacks (that blacks, eventhe nationalists, are after the oppressor, not the white per se), although the
immediate consequence is a rise inWallace sentiment.
A story in the city edition of the Press,the more right -wing of the' two dailypapers, is a weird indication. It printsan interviev' with Ahmed followed I bya written statement in which he assertsthat he "killed no one". " The guiltyparty," he says, "in case you missedthe old gent, was at home in his easychair, smoking a twenty-dollar cigar'and contemplating the means to makemore ... " The story didn't make thesuburban edition.
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THE MOVEMENTSEPTEMBER 1968
COUNTRY AND WESTERN, Continued from Page 5PAGE 15
CLEAVER, Continued from Page 13
and learned stuff about Black peoplewhile seeing Butterfield play at SouthsideChicago's Blue Flame at 39th and Drexelwith Howlin' Wolf's old group. As themovement spread and developed on campuses in the sixties, a lot of those kidswere part of what was happening
The media ties into the developmentof a youth culture in this country. Thatyouth culture crosses class lines. It'snot more important than basic considerations of class, but it's an opening throughwhich some activists of middle -classbackground can come to know and workwith a particular people, leading to organization on the basis of class interest. .
On Hating AmericaMany movement. kids have grown up
with a general dislike for their surroundings. TOO OFTEN IT'S BEEN "THEPEOPLE" AND NOT THE "RULINGCLASS". America is not only "fascist",but "unintellectual". The University hasa ,funny way of reinforcing a dislikefor poor and working people. Afterall,that's one of its major functions. Formany of those from working class backgrounds who go through it, the universitydoes often castrate their desire and ability to talk with people where theycame from. Many of different" generationsof the left" just don't dig America. Eventhe hip-political student cultural scenewhere most are now situated becomesa drag.
The cynical, "do your own thing","where do you go-search for identitything", characteristic of too many, liesin part with what Todd Gitlin in "Cubaand the American Movement" (THEMOVEMENT, April 1968) calls "externalized good": "Generations on the American left have externalized good: we needed .to tie our fates to someone, somewherein the World, who was seizing the chancesfor a humane society; or WE NEEDEDAN EASY DIVERSION FROM THE HARDBUSINESS OF CRACKING AMERICA."It used to be Russia, now it's the obviously important Third World Revolu-tionary scene (CUba, VIetnam, China ...)Overcoming its failure to deal with therest of the world has been importantfor the New Left in America, but we mightjust tend to be overdoing it given ourtask at home. .
Hating people is a mistake; every timewe make mistakes in building our movement, we hinder the struggles of revolutionary brothers and sisters throughout the world. Building an isolated, ineffective and irrelevant movement willdamage our hope for winning, for thosewho will follow us, and the hope of peoplestruggling everywhere. Grasp the lessonlearned by one of us while visiting' Cubaduring the Cultural Congress: while IrwinSilber of SING OUT magazine was publiclycondemning virtually all American cultural forms (some will also recall hisearlier vicious attack on the electrification of Dylan) , Carl Davidson wasgetting worked over by a guide, a youngfighter in the revolution. She respondedto his put down of Americans with "whodo you think you are? You can never win
Second, the analysis links the struggle'for black liberation with the struggle ofcolonized people around the globe for
national liberation. It sees as its alliespeoples under the rule of imperialismand peoples who have already liberatedthemselves. This link is an importantone for it relates not only to thf! warin Vietnam but to the system whichcalled the war into being, and seesthe common goal as destruction of thesystem, not merely to end the war.
The campaign seeks to project thisanalysis and its potentialities for a unified movement throlighout the country.
Objections RaisedThe Cleaver campaign has been cri-'
ticized from two main directions.On one hand there are those inside
Peace and Freedom and those on theperiphery of the Democratic Party whosee the campaign as "too radical". Thosein Peace and Freedom argue for a moremoderate candidate, in order to drawinto the party people who become disillusioned with the McCarthy candidacyafter the Convention.
ThulSe outside P&F find the imageof Peace and Freedom Party itself as"too radical" and want to buUd a "fourthparty" tentatively the "New Party". ThisNew Party, planned in part by Raskinand Waskow, seeks to draw in dissidentDemocrats and build a mass base. Ithas no candidates as yet (both McCarthyand Hatfield have refused) but wantsa "credible candidate" by which it meansone with national status and one over35 (Cleaver is 33). It also seeks "inde-
if you hate the people." We can't forgetthat love of people is a helluva a lotof what being radical is all about.
An American revolution can only comewhen we have lived in America, reflectedit and come to understand its, essence.
Attack The System, Not The PeoplePeople put down the music because theyput down the people. But if you're human,Radicals, you don't reject a people whosekin survived going west with Grapes ofWrath, were always present in the battles of the CIO, WHO PROVIDED A GOODSHARE OF THE BACKS AMERICA WASBUILT ON. You shouldn't slander thesepeople you shouldn't reject them. Insteadyou ask" what happened, why, what is itthatwe must understand so that we can workbetter and change it ?" It's'a good andstrong people, wracked by tragedy injectedinto people by "the system" , yet possessedof as much or more radical potentialas any other group of people in the society. THE PROBLEM ISN'T IN THEPEOPLE, BUT IN THE CAUSES, THE ROOTSOF OPPRESSION.We're talking about Capitalism. The
forces influencing the growth, developmentand spread of C&Ware the same as thoseforces that have kept too many Americansof many backgrounds poor, exploited, oppressed and robbed of their human potential.
, Capitalism's educat-ional and communIcation arms have deprived working whites of an awareness,knowledge and understanding of positiveparts of their history. It's a history ofa running battle against oppression andexploitation, just to "keep on truckin''' ..A Southern woman in Chicago makes itclear: "The only thing I knew about mypeople's past was that we lynched niggers;in school they never told us that we werea part of one of the most militant labormovements in the history of the world."The denial of discovering history is blatant: in Kentucky High School History booksJohn L. Lewis of the United Mine Workersof America is described as " a laborleader famous for his bushy eyebrows" I
Too many radicals must start to takesteps to understand what Capitalism hasdone to them in making them contemp-tuous of C&W and, far more im-portantly, working people as a whole.Just why is it that most middle classradicals today have failed to deal seriouslywith poor and working white people?On the surface, for many, it' s becausein contrast to movement among middleclass youth, there hasn't been radicalmotion among very many young whiteworkers--the movement has failed toreach them, largely because it hasn'ttried. That signifigant motion hasn'toccured among young workers lies largely in Capitalism's ability to CONCEALFROM WORKING PEOPLE AN INTELLECTUAL UNDERSTANDING OF THERULING CLASS. But don't forget thatCapitalism iHASN'T' BEEN ABLE TOCONCEAL AN EXPERIENTIAL AWARE-NESS OF THAT CLASS. That experientialawareness has yet to become manifest,and a lot of that is because radicalshaven't helped to make it happen.
pendent Republicans". The New Partylooks forward to the "moral radical influence of Peace and Freedom". It isuncertain about the" Free Huey" position.-, On the other hand the Cleaver cam:paign has been criticized by those whothink that all electoral politics is illusory and divisive. While many of thesepeople, such as national SDS, give fullsupport to the Panthers program andper perspectives on coalition, they feelthat the Peace and Freedom Party isnot a possible vehicle for social changeand that, at best, the combination ofa Cleaver campaign with Peace andFreedom can only lend radical credibility to a party which, in part, is composed of persons seeking to make po_litical mileage on the left, in orderto lead it down a co-optable path.
Objections Countered __ ..TlIe campaign argues that elect
oral politics tend to g..ravitate towardthe center. Often the hope of uniting.more people behind a more moderateplatform has led to a dissolution ofpotential for real change. It feels thatonly a candidate and program who· represents a straightforward and well-articUl~ted radical position has the chanceof preventing this shift toward the center,of advancing the movement, and layinggroundwork for a more organized struggleafter November.
Further, the campaign argues that theradical position need not be alienatingto large sections of the American people(40% of whom do not vote already). Itcompares the Cleaver candidacy to theearly demand for IMMEDIATE WITH-
In contrast to this situation of intellectual and experiential awareness of theruling class on the part of young workers,let's get it straight that for the overwhelming majority of the middle class,Capitalism has hidden the visibility andawareness of the ruling class, both interms of intellectual understanding andactual life experiences. Oppression forthe middle class, inj(lndlng most movement people, hasti 't been in the form ofcops on the street,.qe.sperate economicsituations (including. 80nstantly being strung-out on all kinds of payments,) work-
'ing conditions, rotten educatio:lal, medicaland social services, etc., etc. Instead,it's pretty much be&n in people's heads.Sure, there's been THE THREAT of thedraft, alienating universities, some copaction on campus and hip-political community riots. What the student movementhas done is important, but it could become like a bee-hive-1t can be dealt·with, unless it can build alternatives.The student movement must begin to realize that its most important ally is everywhere.
Basing nascent theory only ON CURRENTI motion and experience, most of the movement actually lacks an analysis, and tendsto reject poor and working whites. Some
·"neW-left ideologues" attempt instead tocreate a class of their own,planning amovement based on alienation, age andwhat the society hasn't provided forOTHER people. These things, certainlynot utilized in organizing to the extentthey COUld, have allowed us to move kidson campuses. They're damn important,but we can't forget there's a lot of otherpeople out there and they possess muchof the power to stop the machine. Remember that many of them are young,alienated, anti-authoritarian, anti-military, anti-cop and THEY'RE SHORT-CHANGED A WHOLE LOT MORE ON THEMATERIAL END.
Learn The Real Enemy· The system runs deep, and it's prevented too many movement people fromgetting into and understanding people thathave got to be dealt with. It' s a tragedy that even when the activist from themiddle-class possesses the foundations ofa radical analysis, it too often playssecond fiddle to an emotional rejection ofnon-middle-class whites. This response,characteristic of many whites who werepushed out of the Black movement, results from a constant exposure to an extensive mis'-education system, "Nith it'sever- reinforcing liberal- mass- media.That media has in the past constantlyblamed poor and working whites for rac-
· ism, BOt racism's institutional causes.'The media works the other way too.Just as Blacks were told for years thatthey were inferior (and too many of themwere forced for too long to believe itand live it in their lives,) the media andeducational system has shaped working andpoor whites' perception of themselves." I' m a racist". It took Blacks and a lotmore whites a long time to get over
.the Amos and Andy bull shit. Tt willtake a lot of work and consciousl.ass
DRAWAL which many said would destroythe movement but which strengthened it.It compares the experience around theHuey Newton trial, where debates ragedon Fair Trial vs. Free Huey. Manyhave now come around to the FREEHuey position because of its inherentlogic and proven necessity.Finally, the campaign arguesthatthePanther program and Cleaver's articulationhave in fact drawn people into themovement, not alienated them. The Panthers and Cleaver manage to put intoforceful and understandable language manyof the most complex issues and relationships in this society, and have proventheir ability to relate to people usuallynot touched by radical mouthings.
In regard to thosewhotake a hands-offposition on electoral politics and findeven the conflicts in Peace and Freedomover candidates a reflection of the evils
.of American society, the campaign takes'a different position. It does not wantto blow itself up ·out of proportion, andstresses that electoral politics is notthe name of the revolutionary game.
It does feel, however, that it would bewrong not to assert the voice and buildthe pow'~r of the movement through utili- .zing the campaign. Given this position,it is felt that only by projecting a programand candidate that is uncompromisinglyrevolutionary can a movement be built.Otherwise they feel the movement w1llbe sapped by less COherent, less politicalor more moderate leaders. The bestway to fight those who wish to twistthe Peace and Freedom Party movementto the right is by supporting a candidatewhose influence will counter them':'·
building to purge the news, stories, movies, Beverly Hillbillies, etc. that havetwisted minds of working whites toolong.The detrimental influence of the media
on both classes (and radicals coming fromboth) flows from Capitalism, the enemy.That system 1s responsible for classfear and prejudice running much deeperin the middle class than most middleclass rooted activists--former acceptorsnow-rejectors of melting pot-classless·Capit.alist-ideology-- could ever haveimagined or been aware. Vocational vs.college preparatory classes segreg::.teworking and middle class children well.The middle class learns to fear physic.al violence (except on the demonstration)and stays clear of the big (working class)worlds where it's reality--for survival.All this while their own comfort and classbased opportunity is rooted in oppressiveviolence-once- removed- - they, don't haveto see what gives them their small privilege. Much of the movement is afraid,afraid to come to know, live with, workwith, and understand our potentially revolutionary brothers and sisters. Possessing a deep rooted sense of materialsecurity that compensates for and conceals the middle class variety of classbased personal insecurities, MANY ANXIETIES THAT PREVENT MOVING INTOA FRIENDSHIP AND ORGANIZING SITUATION WITH YOUNG WORKING PEOPLEARE REINFORCED. Unless the potentIalof young working people is understood,and some changes in where some radicalswork are made, the movement in the longrun could become little more than anincestuous mutual admiration society.
Pandora's last words in THE GUARDIAN on C&W were: "The pop music oftomorrow? . . . Could be. Sometimesthe punishment fits the crime." Let's getit straight: too many so-called radicalscommit a crime, an inhuman crime ofhating millions of people, and the punishment may well be detrimentally contributing to the building of an isolated,irrelevant mOvement, a punishment offailing to make of our lives and ourmovement, what they could be.
Get it straight: America IS a heartache,a heartbreak. It's a F;iant broken promise.But if we're going to make it, we hadbetter understand that and deal with it.We can't deal with Amerir.a from itsfringes; we can only deal with it by gettingoff the interstate and getting into KittyWell's (and a lot of other people's) corny"Back Home in Heartbreak, U.S,A.". _
,Cleaver for President
The movement prides itself on itsdisdain of personalities--and it is clearthat the candidacy of Eldridge Cleaveris not based on mass media coverageand artificial image. Yet the movementshould also recognize its leaders, examine their thought and abilities. In thisrespect Eldridge Cleaver stands as anartiCUlate, dedicated, and often instrumental spokesman.
The jail of the ghetto, the bars of thisnation, the prison itself, the politicalthinking and organization of the BlackPanther Party present a language andan experience, a rage and a humanity,that cannot help but speak eloquentlyto the need for a broad movement towardrevolution in this nation.
The national convention of the Peaceand Freedom Party will take place inAnn Arbor Michigan on Aug.17-18 ,Sureto be present there are many of the 'arguments raised in this article, as wellas new ones in a fast. changing politicalcontext. As yet there seems no one'clear-cut candidate for the Vice Presidency.
It is perhaps easier than many of ussuspected to get caught up in variousforms of that vile disease--electionfever--but it is also impOrtant that ata crucial turning point in the historyof our country and our movement that'we seek ways to reach out, clarify, andstrengtren the loose alliances and groupswhich we call the movement.
The campaign of Eldridge Cleaverhas its eyes on that prize. _
From A Digger Poem
I. The recent death of capitalism haseverybody fucked around and confused.Private enterprise laissez faire legallymurderous piracy GONE already buriedto be replaced by what?If it doesn't have a name, how can youtalk about it?And what about the garbage?WHO'S GOING TO COLLECT THE GAR-
. BAGE? -Now there's something, you can talkabout ...
II. America 1968 so incredibly wealthythat the local spiritual crisis is what'rewe going to do about the garbage.the economic crisis how to distributethe garbage, -the political crisis who's going to collectthe garbageand why should anyone want the job,while in the oblivious streets attentionhas suddenly exploded into flesh bodiesand the various ways of rubbing themtogether.The Evolutionary Credit & Loan Association has terminated our contract,stamped it PAID IN FULL, and the planetis ours at last.Sudden flashes that maybe those fivethousand years of time payments
-all those payments ON THE DOT-all those
food wars and social cipher contractswere gestures of empty anxiety.Now that it's ours and we can take acasual look around, well there's so muchGARBAGE,4 billion people camped in the planetarywinderness and somehow WE FORGOTABOUT THE GARBAGE.Our wilderness is turning sour.IT STINKS!No place in the cosmology of planetaryphysics for garbage.What?What an astounding oversight!What were our ancestors THINKINGabout?
III. America a nation in 1968 soincredibly wealthy that all morality isbased on the problems of EXCESS:fantasy executives and governmentalspies running wild-eyed downthe dorridors of c~nh:ol:
"There's too fucking much of it!""It's completely out of control!""Power leak! Power leak!"
The cells ot' power grow wild: undisciplined freedom cancer.Sudden flashes that the future of bureaucracy spy systems lies in garbagecontrol.People are USING it, picking it upFREE on the streets, living on it, theyno longer respond to the seductionofthe state, there's no way to get aHOLD on them.Pomposity suicided and rigidity machines put to work at a furious clip:all this garbage must be cataloguedand filed, garbage destruction teamstrained, parking lots on the tillableland, thousands of well-programmedgarbage experts march to work each dayto GET IT DOWN ON PAPER, enormousfactories hast1ly tooled for garbage conversion."By God, we'll make napalm out of it."Youngsters who don't understand it'sall been paid for already.are given guns!given napalml'and shipped to parts of the planet wherethere MAYbe people who MIGHT be
hip to OUR garbage and MIGHT WANTSOME OF IT FOR THEMSELVES.The situation complicates itself incredibly. Computer engineers make it worse:the machines don't UNDERSTAND power,sex, and control: the machines programuseable garbage and forbidden fantasiesof FREE.The secretary of Garbage Controlconsiders dropping acid and getting itover with,Syst'!ms of control grow schizophrenic ..they writhe and contort in involute paranoia.SYSTEMICIDE MAKES HEADLINES.
GARBAGEOR
NOTHING
IV. America a nation so incrediblywealthy in 1968 that all morality isbased on EXCESS:true American career counselors nowask only one question."Do you want to produce garbage ordo you want to collect garbage?"Industrialist or politician?Fishfarm or jUnkyard?The young people want no part of it,of course, what with garbage their naturalmatrix and medium.Produce it?Collect it?They want to fuck in it!The career counselors build marvelousconstructions of seduction and mystery,they tran- substantiate symbol money
into sexinto powerinto death insuranceinto pleasure.
But it's just THINGS, it's garbage, it'soverflow and the young people know it.They throw the career counselor outthe window.Who's going to collect the garbage?'who knows?who cares?Let's use it to act out our fantasies,use it for unimaginable gratification.A cellophane bag represents 5000-yearsof machine history. inventors suicidedby their inventions.aeons of garbagededication, paid for in cancer wombs,in fallen cocks. in the crazy waste ofour fathers.Generations dead of lacklove sold for29 cents.Your birth certificate is your final creditcard.._-'------,~~ ~~..Footnotes
The straight world is really seriousabout this. They are scared. In one weekin the San Francisco Chronicle we getthe following information:
San Francisco produces 1500 tons ofgarbage a day. -American makes 440,000tons of garbage a day. It costs more than$3 billion a, year to get rid of it.
There is a man named Richard D.Vaughan who is chief of the Health,Education and Welfare Department'sSOLID WASTES PROGRAM (There ISa Secretary of Garbage Control. seestanza III). He wants to make ski slopesout of garbage. He says:
"Hills with ski slopes. amphitheatersand soap box derby runs can be builton mounds of solid waste in pancakeflat areas of the country providing thecitizenry with unique experiences."
But there is another man in Japanwho wants to build cities out of it. TheUltimate anal-retentive act! We 01lotp.
from the Travel Editor:"If an inventive Japanese businessman
named Kunitoshi Tezuka has his way,you may someday be driving on garbage.living atop garbage, or working in abUilding made of garbage.
"Cities may be reclaiming land withgarbage and using blocks of waste tokeep back seas and rivers.
"Refuse", says Tezuka, "is treasure."He has invented a press that squeezes
garbage into a block. wraps it with chickenwire and dips it in hot asphalt. Theentire plant is automated. No one lli!~ totouch the garbage.
Mayor Daley of Chicago flew to Japanto discuss the Garbage Crisis with Tezuka.He's scared.
We at THE MOVEMENT feel that theproblem is even more serious than itfirst ·appears. The definition of garbageby the power structure is too narrow.They are only worried about commoditiesthat HAVE BEEN USED. But what of thegarbage before it is used? Most of ,theGross National Product is garbage!
What about the garbage cars, the garbagedining room sets for $299.95, the garbagehair straighteners, encyclopedias, newspapers, detergents? What about the garbage fashions, clock radios, books? Theyhave to be SOLD first! THEN they getto be carted away, squashed into blocks.burned, buried. sunk at sea. reconverted,melted.
After the Revolution -- think of allthe things we won't produce, becausenobody wants to ...
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