“As a slave, the social phenomenon that
engages my consciousness is, of course,
revolution.”
(George L.
Jackson)
The Revision
of Black August
2012 marks the
33rd anniversary of Black August, first organized to honor our fallen
freedom fighters, George and Jonathan Jackson, James McClain, William
Christmas, Khatari Gaulden, and sole survivor of the August 7, 1970 Courthouse
Slave Rebellion, Ruchell Cinque Magee.
During these three decades, we’ve
witnessed a steady revision of the meaning of Black August and its inherent
ideology, the undisputed leader of which was our martyred Comrade, George Lester
Jackson.
Sadly, lots of individuals -- many
of whom are straight-up Black capitalists and Black nationalists -- have seized
upon Black August as a means of profiteering and lime-lighting,
self-aggrandizement, and promotion of their own agendas. For those reasons, I want to make very
clear the ideology espoused by George and Jonathan Jackson and their comrades.
First of all, George was
unequivocally an internationalist and a
socialist. He despised racism
and, along with his brother, Jonathan, eschewed cultural nationalism.
For example, in George Jackson’s
second book (published posthumously in 1972), Blood in My Eye, Jonathan
Jackson (17) was quoted as follows:
“They
say Gloves Davis – a black pig – killed Fred Hampton, while he was asleep. I certainly don’t have to mention all
the so-called defectors who are now [1970] appearing before government
committees testifying for the state.
They were infiltrators to begin with. The house-niggers who ran to the high sheriff as soon as
someone whispered revolt. I think
I hate them worse than I hate the sheriff, or the ‘owner.’
“I’m
just a young slave….but every time I think of [Gloves] Davis, Jess B. Simple,
Karenga and the rest of these murderous turncoat idiots, my trigger finger
fairly itches! Non-persons like
Karenga, LeRoi Jones [Amiri Baraka] and the other right-wing blacks are
intelligent enough to know what they are doing. We cannot excuse them with the
ease that we can excuse the average brother who has had no opportunity or
inclination to search. The mantle of ignorance doesn’t cover their
behavior. [my emphasis] They
have to know that when they attack socialism, the communist ideal, and
revolution that they are not logically…attacking all that is white, etc. They know that Ho Chi Minh isn’t white
or Chairman Mao, or Nkrumah, Lumumba and Toure. They know that there isn’t but
one fight going on across this planet, the one between the imperialist forces
of capitalism and its victims.
They know that it was for work that we were kidnapped – what else do you
feed a slave for? These Black,
Black, Black, Black men (if you can swallow their shallow shit) have had time
to study, some have traveled, they ‘know’ that it was capitalist agricultural
economics that first caused our pain, and that the only change since then is
the decline of the agricultural elite and the rise of the modern bourgeoisie. A
sweat-shop displaced the plantation.
[In 2012, it’s the prison industrial complex and outsourcing.] Could it have escaped their notice that all the African
states that really liberated themselves booted out the foreign businessmen and
are now socialist states?
[Unfortunately, the ‘foreign businessmen’ returned and there are no
African states that remained socialist]
“No,
I think the strongest suggestion is that they are working for the government,
the new house-niggers. And what
better way is there for them to sell themselves to us than to scream Black,
Black, Black, Black….”
George Jackson wrote, “We find ourselves forced into a
reexamination of the whole nature of black revolutionary consciousness and its
relative standing within a class society steeped in a form of racism so
sensitized that it extends itself even to the slightest variation in skin tone.
“The
great majority of blacks reject racism.
They have never found it expedient, wise or honorable to take on the
characteristics of the enemy.” (Blood In My Eye)
I wish that statement remained
true. But I think Comrade is
turning over in his grave at the anti-white hostility and white exclusion so
common today. We are now
witnessing Blacks embracing reactionary politicians, like Barack Obama, because
of their skin tones.
As former Panther and political
prisoner Larry Pinkney wrote:
“Barack Obama’s secret negotiations with
economic bloodsucking multinational corporations, his trillion dollar criminal
‘bailout’ of the corporate elite of Wall Street,… his ongoing wars in
Afghanistan and elsewhere, his bombing of Libya, North Africa, his feverish
clamp down on corporate and government ‘whistleblowers,’ and his infamous ‘Kill
List’ are but a few of the horrible actions that Obama, has and is engaging in
under the cover of insidious stealth
and beguilement.
Obama’s flagrant
violations of U.S. constitutional and
international law have, in less than four years, far surpassed even the
outrages committed by his predecessors.”
Larry has also noted that the Obama Administration
has not hesitated to “Murder women, men
and children with incessant predator drone missile strikes upon other sovereign
nations. Utilize a self-legitimized ‘kill list’ to commit extrajudicial murders
of Americans and non-Americans alike, without the bother of legitimate due
process. Sign into law the draconian NDAA [National Defense Authorization
Act]—which calls for the indefinite detention in this nation of U.S.
citizens—without charge, trial, judge, jury, or legal
defense. Continue operating the torture chamber at the U.S. gulag
known as Guantanamo.”
(Intrepid Report)
In
his first best seller of 1970, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George
Jackson, Comrade wrote, “The
government buys and trains these running dogs very carefully, and sends them
scrambling, tails and all, outward to represent the establishment. Whole kennels are sent to the African
nations…on the supposition that the people of these nations will be able to
relate better to a black face.”
George goes on to say that they throw up “one more barrier to the communion that we must establish with the
other oppressed peoples of the world.”
In
a letter written to a comrade, published in Blood In My Eye, George
wrote:
“We have finally arrived
at scientific revolutionary socialism….I was hoping that you wouldn’t get trapped
in the riot stage like a great many other very sincere brothers….They think
they don’t need ideology, strategy or tactics. They think being a warrior is enough.”
“You must teach that
socialism-communalism is as old as man; that its principles formed the basis of
mostly all the East African cultures (there was no word to denote possession in
the original East African tongues)….Any black who would defend an African
military dictatorship is as much a fascist as Hoover. Are you aware of how the people are living under these
so-called Africanized fascist cultures?
The Congo and the entire West Coast of Africa….are still slave states,
dominated by Westernized black right-wing puppets. I’m thoroughly sick of the old Jess B. Simples (young ones
too). They’ll be your main source
of opposition in communizing the black colonies here. The ‘good white people’
who own things will always give them a few inches in their papers or other
media. That’s how ‘fascism’ works influencing the masses and institutions through
elites.” [my emphasis]
George was adamantly opposed to
participation in electoral politics: ““The corporative state allows for no
genuinely free political opposition.
They only allow meaningless gatherings where they can plant more spies
than participants. They feel secure in their ability to mold the opinion of a
people interested only in wages.
However, real revolutionary activity will draw panic-stricken
gunfire. Or heart attacks.”
The
Origin of Black August
A
time to embrace the principles of unity and resistance, Black August
had its origins in the "Black Movement" behind California prison walls
in the 1960s, led by George Jackson, W. L. Nolen, James Carr, Hugo Pinell, Kumasi,
Howard Tole, Warren Wells, and many other conscious, standup brothers who
ultimately made it safe for Blacks
to walk the yards of California’s racist gulags.
As the decades passed, the
tradition of honoring our fallen freedom fighters – sparked by the August
events described below -- was expanded to include commemorating revolutionary
wars of resistance and self-determination, such as Harriett Tubman’s
Underground Railroad and the Haitian Revolution of August of 1791 culminating
in the first Black Republic of the world,
August 7, 1970, the
spectacular courthouse slave rebellion hit the front pages of
newspapers around the world.
Pictures of four, young Black freedom fighters emerging from Marin
County court with guns and hostages, provoked panic among white supremacists. But most Black folks took great pride
and inspiration from the sight of such courageous resistance to the ongoing
brutality and murder of Blacks inside and outside of prison.
“Freeze!” shouted
17-year-old Jonathan Jackson, “We’re taking over” -- as he tossed guns to
McClain, Christmas, and Magee.
With courage and calm they ushered their hostages to a waiting van,
planning to go to a radio station to broadcast the atrocities being committed
behind the walls against Blacks, and demand the immediate release of the
Soledad Brothers – George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo and John Clutchette.
What Jonathan failed to
anticipate was the State’s willingness to sacrifice one of its judges and the
lives of everyone else to stop that escape. As Jonathan tried to leave the parking lot, the San Quentin
guards arrived and opened fire, leaving Jackson, Christmas, McClain, and Judge
Harold Haley dead, State prosecutor Gary Thomas and Ruchell Magee seriously
wounded and one juror with a minor
injury.
One year later, on August 21,
1971, in what has been well established as a setup, George Jackson was
murdered on the yard of San Quentin by prison guards.
During this orchestrated
attempted escape, however, three guards were also killed, along with two inmate
“trustees.” This set the prison officials on fire and they’ve been exacting
revenge ever since upon Hugo Pinell whom they can’t seem to torture enough
-- even though he was not
convicted of murder in the case, as was Johnny Spain who was released in 1988.
Yogi, now 67 years old is
suffering his 48th year of incarceration, most in solitary confinement, the
last 22 in Pelican Bay’s SHU (Security Housing Unit) locked down at least 23
hours a day in a torture chamber -- no-contact limited visits, no phone calls, no
windows, restricted property. Fortunately, Magee’s legal expertise got himself
out of the SHU in 1994.
Yogi’s current attorney, Keith
Wattley of Uncommon Law, is trying to preclude a 15-year hit at his next board
hearing, and needs all the help he can get to proceed in his behalf. For more information, go to www.hugopinell.org.
Ruchell Magee is enduring his 49th
year in Corcoran’s maximum security prison – a classic case of this country’s racist
repression of Black men.
At 16, Magee was arrested, tried
as an adult, and incarcerated in the infamous Angola State Prison in his home
state of Louisiana (basically for associating with a white girl). Released after
8 years, but banished from the State, Magee lasted only 6 months in Los Angeles
before suffering an egregious and brutal encounter with L.A. police (over a $10
bag of weed) that put him back in prison.
An astute jailhouse lawyer, Magee continued to fight his case through
the courts for 7 years to no avail, or until he seized the hour and joined the guerrillas on August 7, 1970. Seriously wounded but still alive,
Magee was subsequently tortured and charged with everything they could throw at
him. He continues to fight his
case to this day. He said to me
decades ago, “As long as you remain in the fight, you never know who’s going to
win.”
“So
what is to be done after a revolution has failed? Asks George.
After our enemies have created a conservative mass society based on
meaningless electoral politics, spectator sports, and a 3 percent annual rise
in purchasing power strictly regulated to negate itself with a corresponding
rise in the cost of living. …What
can we do with a people who have gone through the authoritarian process and
come out sick to the core!!!
“Our
overall task is to separate the people from the hated state. They must be made to realize that the
interests of the state and the ruling class are one and the same. They must be taught to realize that the
present political regime exists only to balance the productive forces within
the society in favor of the ruling class.
It is at the ruling class and the governing elites, including those of
labor, that we must aim our bolts.”
(Blood in My Eye)
“We
must accept the spirit of the true internationalism called for by Comrade Che
Guevara….We need allies, we have a powerful enemy who cannot be defeated
without an allied effort! The
enemy at present is the capitalist system and its supporters. Our prime interest is to destroy
them. Anyone else with this same
interest must be embraced, we must work with, beside, through, over, under
anyone, regardless of his or her external physical features, whose aim is the
same as ours in this.” (Soledad Brother)
“Settle
your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation,
understand that fascism is already here, that people are dying who could be
saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to
act. Do what must be done; discover your humanity and your love in revolution.”
(Blood in My Eye)
Please send our brothers
some love and encouragement:
Hugo L.A. Pinell
A88401 D3-221
P.O. Box 7500
Crescent City, Ca.
95531-7500
Ruchell Cinque Magee
#A92051 C-8-117
P.O. Box
5246
CSATF/State Prison at
Corcoran
Corcoran, CA 93212
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