Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program-Seven –To Defend One’s Own

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program-Seven –To Defend One’s Own  

All hell was breaking loose in Mississippi in 1964 after they found those boys, those civil rights worker boys over in some ditch in Philadelphia (hell was breaking out before and after too but that year got everybody’s attention North and South, abolitionist and redneck, because a  showdown was coming no question). Even Jacob Block knew some hard-ass stuff was coming down as isolated as he was from white folks (and other black folk too) on his poor excuse of a share crop farm about fifty miles outside of Hattiesburg. As he thought about it afterwards, after all hell had broken loose in his little world and its environs, he should have known it would come to that, come to a confrontation with Mister, or Mister’s rednecks acting in his name. Hell, his great-grandfather on his mother’s side, Ezra Bond, had jumped his plantation over near Savannah, Georgia, to walk down and join Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s 2^nd South Carolina Volunteers and raise some hell with the boys in grey. And later some cousin had been lynched right in broad daylight down near Biloxi, a big feisty rabid white crowd watching on, watching on with glee from what he had heard just because that cousin had tried, shotgun in hand, to defense his woman when some white rascal got his lust habits on. Yes, he should have known, known it was in the blood that when the deal went down he had to do something, had to defend his own, his sweet Martha, and the little ones.                      

Jacob did not know how he had first found out they were coming, about the redneck rampage, maybe something overheard in Otis Junction when he went to get his monthly provisions, maybe from somebody at the Lord’s Worship Baptist Church over in Oxbridge that time he went for Jim Jackson’s daughter’s wedding. But no question either that they were coming, coming to throw the worst fear into every last “nigger” (their term, always their term even when directly speaking to a negro, just one more way to put the black man behind the eight ball) within one hundred miles of Hattiesburg once they heard that some blacks were going right to the farms to get other blacks, farmers and small town dwellers alike, to register to vote, to exercise their American-given right to have a say in things. He had never voted, never cared if he voted, and never even really tried once he had gotten wise to Mister Jim Crow and his ways even though he could, mother taught, read and write as well as any white man in the county, hell, maybe in the state of Mississippi. He wanted no trouble, wanted no part of Mister, no part of confronting Mister Jim Crow and just wanted to be left alone. And that was that.     

That was that until he heard about those Philadelphia boys, and until he had heard that they had, that white trash that had been put up to it by Mister and his damn White Citizens Councils, burned down Jack Lewis’ place, his beautiful little shack that he had spent half a life time trying to fix up, when he decided to lead his fellow church people to Hattiesburg to register to vote. Jacob still did not care whether he voted or not, registered or not, but since he was, the way things were going, to be targeted anyway just for being black, poor and nothing but a sharecropper well that was enough. Enough to get him and a few fellows, young bucks, sons of farmers he had met over the years although he did not know them or their sons well, and get ready to defend their land, come hell or high water, defend the land like some avenging angels arms in hand like they were heeding some ghost call from that old black abolitionist rabble-rouser Frederick Douglass with his call “to arms, sable warriors, to arms, the hour is at hand” to fight for freedom one more time. 

Yah, it had come to that, come to simple black manhood time, time to either keep that lifetime head bent down, or walk on two black feet. And when it came to that showdown they were ready as Ebby Johnson’s son, William, a veteran of Korea, showed them how to use their shotguns to effect. And that knowledge came in handy one night, one night when they heard that a gang of whites was heading up Traversville Road about ten miles from Jacob’s land in three cars shooting and slowly setting fires at random and watching their handiwork. Probably drunk too Jacob (and William) figured. So they set an ambush around Tyler Road, dark, with high ground and easy escape. And that night, whether it ever got recorded, reported, or noted, a small cadre of black men, black avenging angels (no niggers, nigras, or even negroes now) sent a fusillade of shotgun fire down at the three cars coming up that black night Mississippi road. And, you know, no marauding rednecks ever came within twenty miles of Jacob Block’s land again. And while he never took the time to register to vote when that became easier later he was always at pains to tell  everybody he knew that one sweaty fearful night he had  done all the voting he needed to do…         

The original "Ten Point Program" from October, 1966 was as follows:^[39][40]



1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black Community.

We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.



2. We want full employment for our people.

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



3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our black Community.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of black people. We will accept the payment as currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50 million black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.



4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.

We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.



5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.



We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.



6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.



We believe that black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.



7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.

We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves for self defense.



8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.

We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.



9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.



We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the black community from which the black defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the black community.



10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.



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



We hold these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program- Eight –No More Jail Cells

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program- Eight –No More Jail Cells   

Jesus, how did he, let’s leave him nameless at his request but his story is legion, legion in black ghetto America and brown Latino barrio America too ever since Mister and his damn cop justice system decided to go after drugs, small change drugs really, get caught up in the dragnet this time, just as he was starting to get things in his life under control, a little. His teenage years had been one hell after another once his father left, left rolling stone left with some woman not his mother and was down south somewhere according to his paternal grandmother and his mother had taken up, undivided attention taken up, with some Johnny Blade (not a bad guy really but not his father, no way, not a guy to talk to about his troubles since as he made plain his undivided attention was to his mother).

First thing was that first “clip” bust at thirteen (laughable when he thought about it now, some damn onyx ring, snagged under his shirt so cool he thought from over at Mister Earl’s  junk jewelry two- bit joint, a two-bit joint which had been in the neighborhood for as long as anybody could remember, even his grandmother over on Warren,  now with a big old monitor cruising the premises, that he just had to have for Shara’ s Valentine present, long gone and now forgotten Shara), then a couple more small robbery, burglary things (stealthy midnight creeps through back alleys and shimmied windows in the neighborhood apartments, close to home stealing ), then dropping out of school (that too to spent time with some Shara, although that was not her name, name now not remembered), then a “go to jail or go to the army, or else” thing from the that old whitebread judge who thought he was doing him a favor, getting him out of the hard streets harms’ way when he and two other confederates (who took the time, and had been taking time ever since for one thing or another) did one too many midnight creeps.  

The judge favor turned out being that he had two little purple hearts from two- tour Iraq courtesy of Saddam Hussein’s boys, or somebody nasty in Baghdad. Then back to the streets the down streets of Boston, really Roxbury, you know around Washington Street and Geneva his old home turf and its change from just a neighborhood, the ‘hood of child remembrance to something else, a free-fire zone of a different kind.           

And you know too that a guy, a black guy, even a purple heart black guy, without any real education, without some serviceable skill (nothing but a damn 11-Bravo to tout, nothing), and without some luck, real luck was up against it, up against it when the cops were always looking you up and down for just walking since he got back to the “real world” (he had been eye-balled and stopped twice right after he got back from Iraq and hell he was in uniform one time and they could see the damn purple hearts). So, you know, he took up “the life” again, the life this time meaning no small time Mr. Earl cheap jack jewel clips and midnight creep robberies (kids’ stuff) but working his way up the chain in the burgeoning local drug scene.

And he was doing okay for a while until one night they, and you know who the “they” was, came smashing down the door at the safe house over on Norfolk (somebody had snitched, somebody not alive right now if you want to know) and he was taken in. He did a year at South Bay for that one. It was there that he got “religion.” No, not some damn Black Muslim thing, or god holy roller thing, jesus, no, but, you know, wise to the hard fact that if he was going to make thirty (a milestone for a young black man according to some stuff he read from some report some foundation did while he was in and reading a magazine from the library after GED classes were over one day) his life flow was going against that prospect. And so he changed, changed a little, got a job through the VA, not much of a job, but steady, a short order cook and was moving along. Then this night of all nights he decided that he wanted to see a friend, not being exactly sure why but maybe a little wobbly on that straight and narrow,  from the old neighborhood, yes, bad move, the guy he visited related to the drug trade and he was just present when they came storming in. Thirty ain’t looking so good tonight…      

The original "Ten Point Program" from October, 1966 was as follows:^[39][40]



1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black Community.

We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.



2. We want full employment for our people.

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



3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our black Community.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of black people. We will accept the payment as currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50 million black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.



4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.

We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.



5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.



We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.



6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.



We believe that black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.



7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.

We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves for self defense.



8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.

We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.



9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.



We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the black community from which the black defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the black community.



10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.



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



We hold these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

The Summer Of Love-1967-California Dreamin'- Berkeley In The 1960's

Click below to listen to Stanley Nelson speak about his latest documentary –The Black Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution on the Terry Gross show Fresh Air on NPR (Sept 24, 2015)  

http://www.npr.org/2015/09/23/442801731/director-chronicles-the-black-panthers-rise-new-tactics-were-needed

DVD REVIEW

Berkeley in the Sixties, various interviewees, performers, etc., 1990

For those us of the Generation of '68 the political actions of the 1960's were essentially a youth-led effort. To the extent that anyone though about the situation as a separate political matter young students, mainly from the traditionally elite campuses, were the vanguard of those youth. And the vanguard of the vanguard? At least until 1969 a very strong case could be made, and is made in this documentary under review, that the University of California at Berkeley held that role. The whys and wherefores of that role are what makes this above-average documentary, complete with the inevitable `talking heads' that populate this kind of film, a very good source for what actually happened in the 1960's there for those who were around at the time and a primer on radical politics at the base of society for those who were not.

The disruption of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) meetings in San Francisco in 1960, various anti-racial discrimination actions in support of the growing national civil right movement in the early 1960's, the historic and well-known Mario Salvo-led Free Speech Movement of 1964 along with its trials an tribulations, the early anti-Vietnam War and anti-draft actions of 1965 and 1966, the drift toward an apolitical counter-cultural experience in 1967, the romance with the next door neighbor Black Panthers and the Free Huey Movement in Oakland and ending with the militarily defeated People's Park efforts in 1969. They are all resurrected here. All these events are, moreover, discussed from various later viewpoints by participants, adversaries and flat out ill-wishers. If you want a two hour capsule commentary of the highs and lows of the political and counter-cultural struggles as they occurred at Berkeley and spread to the East this is a very good documentary to bring you up to speed.

Some of the rhetoric may seem odd to today's cyberspace-driven youth. Some of the costumes, especially during the height of the Haight -Ashbury era and the Summer of Love in 1967, may be perplexing to today's fashion-conscious youth. Most of the politics may seem obscure. But know this- it may have not lasted long, we may have made every mistake in the political book, we certainly went off on more tangents that one could shake stick at but there was a fight going on then to change the nature of the way we do business in this society. Call us utopian, if you will, but we fought. A little of that spirit would come in very handy right about now. Many of the lessons of that time may be lost now. However, I sense a little of that same 1960's breeze starting to blow again in 2008 so look here for a guidepost.

I would not be a proper leftist politico if I did not mention that of all the scenes presented, all the discussions taped, all the `talking heads' giving their, seemingly sincere, takes on meaning of those times there was virtually no commentary on one very fundamental problem. Students, from elite universities or otherwise, cannot independently without joining up with some other social agency create the kind of just society that students were fighting for then. In no instant that I can recall during the course of this documentary did anyone attempt to draw the lesson that the working class, whatever its then current organization (or more correctly lack of it) and political consciousness came into play as a factor in history.

The closest anything came to understanding the need for an additional agency was the unequal, uncritical `alliance' with the Black Panthers. That is why, in the end, after the military defeat of the People's Park experiment Berkeley fell off the political map. But, my friends, the story did not end there for the 1960's. Some youth, although not nearly enough, drew that lesson about the lack of political power of students if left to their own devises and got serious about political theory and the working class. Some of us are still at that fight. From the later careers of the Berkeley interviewees credited at the end of this film that did not include most of them. They mainly people the "politically correct" professorariat of our university system. That tells the tale.

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!- Free Black Lieration Fighter Sundiata Acoli!

Click on the headline to link to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.

Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month

Markin comment

In “surfing” the “National Jericho Movement” Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a “The Rag Blog” post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.

That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matter here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.

Note: This list, right now, is composed of class war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!

******

Words from Assata Shakur

"I want so much for Sundiata to know how much he is loved and respected. I want him to know how much he is appreciated by revolutionaries all over the world. I want Sundiata to know how much he is cherished by African people, not only in the Americas, but all over the Diaspora. I want him to know how much we admire his strength, his courage, his kindness and compassion. Sundiata loves freedom and we must struggle for the life and freedom of Sundiata."

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!- Free George Jackson's San Quentin Six Comrade- Hugo Pinell!

Click on the headline to link to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.


Hugo Pinell was murdered in prison last year-RIP 

Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month

Markin comment

In “surfing” the “National Jericho Movement” Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a “The Rag Blog” post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.

That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matter here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.

Note: This list, right now, is composed of class war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!

*********

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

*Damn It- Free Hugo Pinell Now!

Commentary

This entry is passed along from the Partisan Defense Committee. I need add nothing more other than I remember back in the early days of the San Quentin Six when the Black Panthers were alive and struggling; when George Jackson was being feted on the left and when Jonathan Jackson led his famous freedom raid. That was also a time when Angela Davis was the subject of an international campaign for her freedom that every one with any pretensions to leftism came out to support. Now, a generation or so later, Hugo, an old still unbroken warrior remains behind bars. Where are the massive forces that should be fighting for his freedom? Honor the memory of George Jackson, Jonathan Jackson, Sam Melville and other class-war fighters. Free Hugo now.


Outrage! Hugo Pinell Denied Parole

(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)

On January 14, the California Board of Parole denied Hugo Pinell parole for the ninth time—and declared that he will not have another parole board hearing for 15 years! Pinell, the last of the San Quentin Six still in prison, is 63 years old and has been in prison since he was 19. Despite having no disciplinary write-ups for 27 years, he has spent the last 39 years in solitary confinement, 19 of them in the notoriously brutal Security Housing Unit of the Pelican Bay dungeon, where he is subjected to high-tech sensory deprivation: 23 to 24 hours a day in a small cell, no windows, no natural light, no contact visits and prolonged isolation. The capitalist rulers have kept Pinell locked down because he remains true to his vision of a society finally rid of racist repression.

Pinell, who immigrated from Nicaragua at age 12, was locked up in 1965. In the late ’60s he became a leader of a developing movement in the California prisons against wretched conditions and racist abuse. He was a student and close comrade of George Jackson, the imprisoned Black Panther spokesman. The prisoners’ movement, which was met with heavy repression, reflected the intense struggles taking place outside the prison walls, from the “black power” movement to radical protests against the war in Vietnam. Pinell and five others—the San Quentin Six—were framed up on charges of conspiracy murder stemming from the killing of three prison guards in the protests that erupted after the assassination of Jackson in the San Quentin prison yard on 21 August 1971. Pinell represented himself at the 18-month-long trial and was convicted of two counts of assault.

The parole board’s decision to deny Pinell parole for another 15 years was made possible by the grotesquely reactionary Proposition 9, passed in the November 2008 elections. Under previous California law, Pinell would have to be given another hearing within two years. Proposition 9, dubbed a “victims’ bill of rights,” rewrote a whole section of the state constitution, as well as state penal law, in order to bolster the repressive powers of the state and further eviscerate the rights of those charged or convicted by the racist capitalist criminal injustice system. The ballot initiative was bankrolled with $4.8 million by sleazy billionaire Henry Nicholas III, who last year was indicted on securities fraud and other charges, such as drugging his customers’ representatives. In 2004, Nicholas also pumped in $3.5 million in a last-minute campaign to defeat Proposition 66, which would have rolled back some of the provisions of California’s notorious, draconian 1994 “Three Strikes” law.

For over 20 years, Hugo Pinell has been one of the class-war prisoners supported by the Partisan Defense Committee’s monthly stipend program. As the PDC noted in a recent letter to the California parole board, in 2006 “a commissioner berated Mr. Pinell saying ‘you continue to show no remorse...’. This is a common ruse for denying parole for political prisoners. Mr. Pinell has no reason for ‘remorse’ for his commendable political convictions.” The fight to free Pinell and all the other class-war prisoners is part of the fight against the whole system of exploitation and repression inherent in capitalist rule. Free Hugo Pinell now!

Labels: BLACK LIBERATION STRUGGLES, BLACK PANTHERS, Chicano liberation struggles, George Jackson, Hugo Pinell, PARTISAN DEFENSE COMMITTEE, San Quentin Six

posted by Markin at 2:56 PM

1 Comments:
markin said...
Here is a tribute to a fallen Black Panther, one of Hugo's comrades

GEORGE JACKSON
Words and Music by Bob Dylan
1971, 1976 Ram's Horn Music

I woke up this mornin',
There were tears in my bed.
They killed a man I really loved
Shot him through the head.
Lord, Lord,
They cut George Jackson down.
Lord, Lord,
They laid him in the ground.

Sent him off to prison
For a seventy-dollar robbery.
Closed the door behind him
And they threw away the key.
Lord, Lord,
They cut George Jackson down.
Lord, Lord,
They laid him in the ground.

He wouldn't take shit from no one
He wouldn't bow down or kneel.
Authorities, they hated him
Because he was just too real.
Lord, Lord,
They cut George Jackson down.
Lord, Lord,
They laid him in the ground.

Prison guards, they cursed him
As they watched him from above
But they were frightened of his power
They were scared of his love.
Lord, Lord,
So they cut George Jackson down.
Lord, Lord,
They laid him in the ground.

Sometimes I think this whole world
Is one big prison yard.
Some of us are prisoners
The rest of us are guards.
Lord, Lord,
They cut George Jackson down.
Lord, Lord,
They laid him in the ground.

From The Archives From The Partisan Defense Committee- Black Panther Leader And Former Class-War Prisoner Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt) Passes

Click below to listen to Stanley Nelson speak about his latest documentary –The Black Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution on the Terry Gross show Fresh Air on NPR (Sept 24, 2015)  

http://www.npr.org/2015/09/23/442801731/director-chronicles-the-black-panthers-rise-new-tactics-were-needed

Workers Vanguard No. 982
10 June 2011

Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt)

1947–2011

Geronimo ji Jaga, a former leader of the Black Panther Party (BPP) in Los Angeles, died at his home in Tanzania on June 3 at the age of 63. The cause of death is not known at this time. From 1970 to 1997, Geronimo was America’s foremost class-war prisoner, trapped in prison hell after being framed up by the LAPD and FBI for a murder they knew he did not commit. Eight of his 27 years in prison were spent in solitary confinement. Throughout his imprisonment, Geronimo remained unbroken and committed to the cause of freedom for the oppressed.

Born Elmer Gerard Pratt, Geronimo grew up in KKK-infested southern Louisiana. He told WV: “The Klan killed a friend of mine. I think we were about nine or ten, swimming in the Atchafalaya River” (“Geronimo Pratt Speaks from San Quentin,” WV No. 382, 28 June 1985). His first jailing came at age 11 or 12, “for speaking to a white woman,” which “I didn’t even do because I grew up down there. I knew the rules.” With few job opportunities, at age 17 Geronimo joined the Army, serving two tours of duty in Vietnam, where he became a highly decorated paratrooper. After his first tour, Geronimo was sent to Detroit to help put down the 1967 ghetto rebellion. He recalled that his unit, 60-70 percent black, was supportive of the besieged ghetto, so “immediately they pulled us out of there.” He was then sent back to Vietnam.

Like many veterans, Geronimo was radicalized by the Vietnam War. After returning to racist America, he sought in the Panthers the vehicle to place his military experience at the service of the black freedom struggle. Along with Robert F. Williams and the Deacons for Defense, the Panthers rejected the turn-the-other-cheek pacifism of Martin Luther King Jr. and advocated armed self-defense. Geronimo immediately became a prime target of the FBI’s Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), in which 38 Panthers were killed and hundreds more imprisoned on trumped-up charges. One FBI memo spelled out, “Operation Number One is designed to challenge the legitimacy of the authority exercised by ELMER GERARD PRATT, BPP Deputy Minister of Defense.” On 8 December 1969, over 140 LAPD cops attacked the Panther headquarters where Geronimo lived. He survived the five-hour barrage but was later convicted on a minor weapons charge.

Geronimo was subsequently charged with the 1968 murder of Caroline Olsen in Santa Monica. He was convicted in 1972 on the perjured testimony of Julius Butler, an informant for the LAPD, FBI and District Attorney’s office, and sentenced to life in prison. Geronimo was nowhere near the scene of the killing. As early as 1985, former FBI agent Wesley Swearingen revealed the existence of wiretaps showing that when Olsen was killed, Geronimo was 400 miles away in Oakland, attending a heavily surveilled and wiretapped BPP leadership meeting. But because of bloody factional division fueled by COINTELPRO, no Panther leader except for Kathleen Cleaver testified on his behalf.

For refusing to confess guilt to a crime he did not commit, Geronimo was denied parole 16 times. To justify one such rejection, L.A. prosecutor Diane Vezzani declared that Geronimo was “still a revolutionary.” In the late 1980s, Geronimo played a pivotal role in enlisting the support of other former Panthers in the fight for freedom for death row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, which helped publicize Mumia’s case more broadly. In 1999, Geronimo endorsed the Partisan Defense Committee-initiated anti-KKK mobilization in New York City. In 2002, he endorsed an Oakland united-front protest against the USA Patriot Act and Maritime Security Act that was initiated by the PDC and Labor Black League for Social Defense.

The Spartacist League and Partisan Defense Committee long fought for Geronimo’s freedom. Geronimo epitomized our characterization of the Black Panther Party as the best of a generation of black militants who sought a revolutionary road to black equality. But the Panthers’ black nationalist perspective and program doomed them to isolation in the ghetto, cut off from the only road out of the nightmare of racist American capitalism: integrated working-class struggle led to victory by a revolutionary vanguard party.

Geronimo was able to find some years of contentment after settling in Tanzania. But we are bitter that over half his adult life was stolen from him, spent in prison under conditions that undoubtedly exacerbated his health problems and likely contributed to his untimely death. He will be missed!

*From The Marxist Archives- 1960s SDS Days- A Guest Commentary

Click on the headline to link to "Workers Vanguard", dated August 31, 2007, for the article on the subject noted above. 

Click below to listen to Stanley Nelson speak about his latest documentary –The Black Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution on the Terry Gross show Fresh Air on NPR (Sept 24, 2015)  

http://www.npr.org/2015/09/23/442801731/director-chronicles-the-black-panthers-rise-new-tactics-were-needed

  

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program-Nine - A History Of One's Own

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program-Nine - A History Of One's Own

Click below to listen to Stanley Nelson speak about his latest documentary –The Black Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution on the Terry Gross show Fresh Air on NPR (Sept 24, 2015)  

http://www.npr.org/2015/09/23/442801731/director-chronicles-the-black-panthers-rise-new-tactics-were-needed

 

What James “Big Daddy” Dixon did not know about history would fill a book said his boyhood friend Anthony Hilton. What Anthony meant by that, or what James thought he meant by that was the saga of the American experience was a book sealed with seven seals for him. James, not usually one to suffer a slight with a shrug of the shoulders, and he took the remark as a slight, a kidding slight, not to be avenged but a slight nevertheless, wanted to know more about what was on Anthony’s mind that cold February 1964 morning. Normally, James would not give a rat’s ass (a popular expression picked up by the kids, James and Anthony included, in the rat-filled tenement house on the corner of Washington Street in the high Roxbury ghetto where James and Anthony had grown up, and had come of age together before they parted company to go their separate ways in in this wicked old world) about what Mister George Washington did, or did not do, at Valley Forge. Or what madness Mister Andrew Jackson brought down on the English in front of New Orleans or whether Mister Davey Crockett was ill-advised to make that terrible, fateful last stand down in the Podunk Alamo or whether Mister Abraham Lincoln (Father Abraham in his grandmother’s home, a place where he was dumped more often than not when his late mother had her wanting habits on, wanting men habits on) meant to free the slaves or whether Mister Woodrow Wilson sincerely, hah, wanted to “make the world safe for democracy” when he send American boys (including a grand uncle) over to Europe to do some hellish fighting in a war that lasted forever some years back or whether Mister Franklin Delano Roosevelt did, or did not, sell out to Mister Joseph Stalin at Yalta in the last big war or wherever it was that he was supposed to have done the deed.

James relationship to history was more up to date, more existential if he had known the word, or had asked Anthony what it meant (and if he had known the word then six-two-and even that Anthony would have known what it meant, Anthony always knew what the words meant, always). His world history was based on how much liquor had been served at his High Hat Club the night before (and how much he had been clipped for by those thieving negro brothers he had running the place), how his numbers runners were doing and whether the latest shipment from Mexico with that grade A reefer, that Acapulco Gold, would get here this month. And he expressed those world historic concerns to Mister Anthony Hilton (as he had done on other occasions) in no uncertain terms. What concerned him just that moment was whether Mister Honkey (and he used that name freely in front of, and behind the backs of, his white associates) was going to continue to protect his operations in the neighborhood or not. And as he began to explain to Anthony (as he had also done many times before) the historical facts of his place in the sun in the Roxbury world Anthony stopped him short with this.

“James, doesn’t it matter to you that you could be descended from kings, from great warrior -kings back in Mother Africa, back before bondage times and that our people could erect great works before the bloody honkeys could figure out how to use a spoon to eat with(Anthony too , although college educated and ready to become a professor within a few years if things worked out right, maybe at Howard, could speak the language of private black rage when he was among kindred, and James was kindred), doesn’t it matter that our history has been denied us. Not only that we were warrior- kings, but that we more than paid our dues when we came to this land all shackled up and bedraggled, that we built this country as sure as hell. That we fought our share, our freedom share with old Nat Turner, and a thousand other slave revolts, that our brothers stood with that old prophet angel John Brown at Harpers Ferry fight to make Mister Whitey red with rage, that our proud forbears right in this city formed a regiment, the Massachusetts 54^th, to avenge our shackles in Civil War fight, and that we have put our brand on American culture from ….”

With that James, who also knew, knew from deep in his brethren soul, that Anthony was prepared to give him the whole entire panorama of the black experience on these damn shores if he didn’t stop him right then and there did so. Did it as he always did with his right arm extended out hand palm up- stop. And Anthony knowing the sign, ever since that one time fight to determine who was the king hell king of the tenement night, knew to stop. As he prepared to go James stopped him, handed him ten one hundred dollar bills from inside his suit pocket and said, “Use that for that damn Negro History project you are working on over a Boston University.”

After their good-byes and had Anthony left, and after James had figured up the previous night’s receipts and determined that those thieving negro brothers had only nicked him a little, he, in the quiet of his office, thought about what Anthony had said, about the warrior- king part of it, for in truth that was the only part he remembered. And the next time Anthony came by he was going to ask him more about that, a lot more and for just that minute James “Big Daddy” Dixon wished he had a known history, a history of his own…

***********

The Ten Point Program

The original "Ten Point Program" from October, 1966 was as follows:^[39][40]



1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black Community.

We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

2. We want full employment for our people.

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

3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our black Community.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of black people. We will accept the payment as currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50 million black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.

4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.

We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.

5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.

We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.

6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.

We believe that black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.

7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.

We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves for self defense.

8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.

We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.

9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.

We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the black community from which the black defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the black community.

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.

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

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program-Ten – A Peace Treaty Of One's Own

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program-Ten – A Peace Treaty Of One's Own

Click below to listen to Stanley Nelson speak about his latest documentary –The Black Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution on the Terry Gross show Fresh Air on NPR (Sept 24, 2015)  

http://www.npr.org/2015/09/23/442801731/director-chronicles-the-black-panthers-rise-new-tactics-were-needed

Jamal Pratt, English High School Class of 1965, was crazy to go into the military right after high school. In addition to that intense desire to prove his manhood, his righteous black manhood, to prove that he had what it took, he was having troubles with Ma at home (rolling stone Pa was long gone), you know the steady drumbeat of what are going to do with your life, why were you hanging out with who you were hanging out with, don't you know those corner boys of yours will just get you in trouble, the universal mother drill. Moreover he had no steady girlfriend since Sheila had moved back down south with her grandmother after her parents split up and he was just keeping his head above water when it came to that corner boy midnight shifter stuff his mother kept harping on. He was desperately in need of a change of scenery, no question.

Besides he wanted, English High proud wanted, to do his duty for his country against the communist menace that it was facing from a place called Vietnam, a place where, from all the reports, the citizenry was growing wild, and getting wilder and would take down the whole region with it. That, of course was part of it, part of what any red-blooded American, black or white, feared and Jamal thought rightfully so, although he was loose, pretty loose, on exactly what the hell was happening there. The big part though was that Jamal Pratt was smitten by a John Wayne Army Special Forces action film, The Green Berets, having seen it several times and having bored, bored there was no other word for it, his corner boys as they hung around in front of his apartment house over on the corner of Washington Street and Geneva Avenue in the high Roxbury neighborhood of Boston.

What got to Jamal was how smooth these guys were, these Special Forces guys (and how they he heard also got plenty of action from the girls around North Carolina and places like that who were ready to do just about anything to get their kicks with a Green Beret), how they were able to take on about ten gooks (yes, that was the term he used for them and a term of common usage, Charlie only came later when the deal went down in–country) and whip their sorry asses before they knew what hit them, about how they saved village after village when those crummy cowardly commie bastards tried to stake out their claim, and about how cool their weapons were that made quick victories possible. He wanted in, wanted in bad on that action, and since he had not planned to go to college anyway for lack of money and interest he figured that when he signed up down at the recruiting station he would try his luck as a Green Beret recruit even though his physical aspect (thin and short) was just inside the stiff Special Forces regulations. He figured if that didn’t work out, although he was pretty sure he had the stuff that the Green Berets were made of, he would pick a skill school and be all set for when after he got out.

Well Jamal’s dream, like a lot of things, and not just black things, in this wicked old world, didn’t pan out, the Green Beret part (strangely he couldn't pass the hearing test, although, strangely it did not disqualify him from the military as a whole), although he did gain a skill school, not exactly the one he had planned on, partly any way. He was assigned to be 11-Bravo, a grunt, a foot soldier, cannon fodder (although that thought term only came later, grunt was the word his used to his friends back on the block when he came home on leave the first time). He did take advantage of an opportunity to go to jump school, paratrooper school, down at Fort Benning in Georgia and was thereafter sent to Fort Bragg (where the Special Forces units were also located) down in North Carolina to be part of the 82^nd Airborne Division.

As luck would have it 1966 was a year that the action was getting hot and heavy in Vietnam and so units, including his unit, of the 82^nd were ordered to that hot spot. As stories started coming back in about the actual fighting situation in Vietnam and from the training he had received in how to kill gooks by the score (although that Mr. Charlie designation and constant rumors about how the night belonged to him was becoming more and more the term of usage among his fellow soldiers) Jamal started getting more anxious, anxious for a very good reason since he had met a girl, Tonya, from Fayetteville, the town outside the fort, and they had plans to marry and all. (Apparently girls, girls around Fayetteville anyway, were just as happy to get their kicks with airborne guys as with Green Berets or any other elite military units but that attraction is a question for another time).

Jamal did his time in 'Nam, did his rotation (a year and a month’s R&R), although he never did want to talk about it that much, about the killing, about the burning down of villages to save them, about having black sweats every night every single fucking night on the perimeter waiting for Mr. Charlie to come back and take his, and a few things he swore he would never tell anybody about what he had done there, about what had seen done there, and about who these peasants really were anyway.

What he did want to talk about was the sea-change in his own attitude, him and some of the brothers (a few white guys too but not from the 82^nd they, the white guys anyway, were still gung-ho), about how Cassius Clay turned Mohammed Ali was right-“that no Viet Cong ever called him nigger,” that he had no quarrel with those yellow-skinned people, that this red scare thing was a white man’s idea, a white man’s war, taking down poor black, brown, yellow-skinned peoples and making them like it, or trying to make them like it.

Well, when he got back to the "real world" he and a few brothers decided, after hearing their unit might be going back, that they didn’t like it, didn’t like it enough to say something about it, say it out loud, and say it in public. At that point, that 1968 point, especially after Charlie went wild during his Tet, a number of guys, dog soldiers like him, were raising hell, white guys too, but mainly brothers because wouldn't you know the brothers were taking an immense amount of the burden in all those hellish fire-fights. And so they wound up, fistfuls of service combat decorations and all, in that dreaded Fort Bragg stockade for a while before some publicity-conscious general decided that the best thing was to get him and the brothers out, give them undesirable discharges and be done with it. He didn’t like the deal but he took it (he would later fight to change it, get it upgraded when that was possible). He had had enough of Mister’s war, enough of killing, and enough of losing everything he held dear (his Fayetteville girl heeding her army father left him in the lurch too) but he had made his peace, his personal peace treaty with the world…

 The Ten Point Program

The original "Ten Point Program" from October, 1966 was as follows:^[39][40]



1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black Community.

We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

2. We want full employment for our people.

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

3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our black Community.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of black people. We will accept the payment as currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50 million black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.

4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.

We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.

5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.

We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.

6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.

We believe that black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.

7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.

We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves for self defense.

8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.

We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.

9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.

We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the black community from which the black defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the black community.

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.

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

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.