Note: Mao suffered from Parkinson’s disease prior to his death in 1976 at 82. Since then, the Communist Party has taken the capitalist road and is no longer communist or socialist in practice. So I rarely use the word “communist” anymore, but replace it with “revolutionary,” because its meaning has been so distorted over the decades. In any case, Mao was the greatest revolutionary leader of the 20th Century, having liberated women and nearly a billion peasants in China, declaring victory after the incredible Long March in 1949. Mao also gave active support to the independence struggles in Africa. He gave Africans the first and only interest-free loan, and provided Chinese workers to work along side African workers at the same pay building the Tan-Zam railway linking the landlocked Zambia to the Port of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Revolutionary culture is a powerful revolutionary weapon for the broad masses of the people. It prepares the ground ideologically before the revolution comes and is an important, indeed essential, fighting front in the general revolutionary front during the revolution.
“I have a plan, I will give, and give, and give of myself until it proves our making or my end.”
As we honor the birthday of our beloved, Comrade George Jackson, Field Marshall of the Black Panther Party behind prison walls, may we remember his revolutionary ideas and practice, his mentors and his sacrifice.
Author of two books, Soledad Brother: the Prison Letters of George Jackson, a 1970 bestseller reprinted three times and translated into several languages, and Blood In My Eye, published posthumously and recently reprinted. In a New York Times editorial titled, Death of a Brother, Tom Wicker described George as a “talented writer, a sensitive man, a potential leader, and a political thinker of great persuasiveness.”
In perusing my files re Haiti, I found this commentary and decided to put it online since it has good information on recent Haitian history. Here is the link to the show, Freedom Is A Constant Struggle, 9/19/13 on Haiti with an update from guests recently returned from the neighboring Caribbean island- Ayana Labossiere, Aimee Riechel and Ruth Beyene of Haiti Solidarity Club at Mission High School. http://www.bavc.org. Freedom Is A Constant Struggle.
Commentary on Haiti for KPFA, Berkeley, 3/14/1992, by Kiilu Nyasha.
Thousands of Haitian boat people picked up by Coast Guard cutters have been detained at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. After fleeing Haiti’s newest military dictatorship, the Caribbean refugees are being imprisoned in tents on a hot airfield fenced in by barbed wire and fed army rations. Only a small percentage has been granted political asylum. They’ve been held virtually incommunicado with no access to lawyers, telephones or postal services. To date, nearly 9,000 men, women and children have been sent back to Haiti where they face arrest, torture and even death.
U.S. Involvement in Haiti has a long history. In 1915, it was invaded by U.S. Marines and occupied for 19 years during which the U.S. trained a joint military-police guard that evolved into today’s Haitian army. For nearly 30 years, the U.S.–backed military dictatorship of Francois Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, succeeded by his son Jean-Claude, or Baby Doc, looted the national treasury, trafficked in cocaine, and terrorized Haitians with their Tonton Macoute (Creole for bogeymen). Yet the dauntless Haitians ran Baby Doc and his entourage out of the country in 1986, when the U.S. had to airlift them to France for safety.
August
21, 2013, marks the 42nd anniversary of the assassination of our
beloved Comrade George Lester Jackson.
Here are quotes from his two books: the bestseller, Soledad
Brother: the Prison Letters of George Jackson (1970) and Blood In My Eye, (1972), published
after his death . It’s remarkable
that these statements are as pertinent today as they were 42 years ago, perhaps
more so.
"International
capitalism cannot be destroyed without the extremes of struggle. The entire
colonial world is watching the blacks inside the U.S wondering and waiting for
us to come to our senses. Their problems and struggles with the Amerikan
monster are much more difficult than they would be if we actively aided them.
We are on the inside. We are the only ones (besides the very small white
minority left) who can get at the monster's heart without subjecting the world
to nuclear fire. We have a momentous historical role to act out if we will. The
whole world for all time in the future will love us and remember us as the
righteous people who made it possible for the world to live on. If we fail through fear and lack of aggressive
imagination, then the slave of the future will curse us, as we sometimes curse
those of yesterday. I don't want to die and leave a few sad songs and a hump in
the ground as my only monument. I want to leave a world that is liberated from
trash, pollution, racism, nation-states, nation-state wars and armies, from
pomp, bigotry, parochialism, a thousand different brands of untruth, and
licentious, usurious economics." (Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of
George Jackson).
A correction to my piece: I misread a statement about Trayvon's age; It was 21 days before his 17th birthday, not 21 days after his 16th birthday. Nevertheless, he was 16 at the time of his death.
The long-awaited verdict in the Zimmerman trial was incredible -- "not guilty."
Listening carefully to the trial judge's detailed instructions to the 6-juror panel (amazing in itself), including complete definitions of 2nd degree murder and manslaughter, I was convinced that were they to follow her instructions, the verdict was bound to be guilty as charged or at least the lesser charge of manslaughter. After over 12 hours of deliberations, my worst-case scenario was a hung jury.
Yet how could I forget that this trial took place in a judicial system I’ve longnown (through experience!) represents white-supremacistinjustice; and one the most racist states in the country – Florida, the nations’ second highest incarcerator and state executioner of Black men.
Off the top, how many other cases come to mind of a young Black man senselessly murdered by so-called law enforcers? Oscar Grant, Allen Blueford, Kenneth Harding, Amadou Diallo. In fact, a Black person is murdered by law enforcement every 28 hours, Are their lives valued?
An endangered, stereotyped group, Black and Brown male human beings top the prison populations and those slated for state murder. Black women and mothers are swiftly gaining a similar fate as more and more Black babies are literally born in prison.
It was 45 years ago when our beloved freedom fighter, Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in what we believe was a conspiracy by
the government, particularly the FBI.
I remember exactly where I was when the news came over the
radio that Dr. King had been shot.
I was in New Haven, Conn. driving my 8-year-old son and his
friends from Rock Creek Road to a drive-in movie. I turned the car around
and went straight back home. We learned on arrival the shot was fatal and the
King of Love was dead. I was devastated.
The
following quotes from our beloved freedom fighter, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
are as pertinent today as they were when he spoke them, at least 45 years
ago.It now amazes me that he was
only 39 years old when he was assassinated in the Spring of 1968. He had wisdom
beyond his years.
“In the End, we will
remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
“We must develop and
maintain the capacity to forgive. [S]he who is devoid of the power to forgive
is devoid of the power to love.”
“Never forget that
everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”
“Freedom is never
voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
"I
look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by
the content of their character."
When I first heard the news
of so many children, 20, none over 7, being killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School, I was so stunned I could
feel no emotion, just a kind of numbness. I’m a parent.
Not another mass murder.
Later, on hearing of the
heroism displayed by six slain teachers, I was buoyed.Then came the anger, the rage I’ve
learned to control, hone, and use as a weapon, the pen being mightier than the sword.
Barack Obama,
leader of the most violent nation in world history, dabbed at dry eyes as he practically preached a
sermon on the latest domestic killing spree.Hypocritical is
an understatement.
I have been in physical pain at least some of which I owe to the stress
of this incredible voter turnout -- an overwhelming mandate for fascism
(corportavism/militarism).
The only contradiction that proved a positive is the clear demonstration
-- at last -- of our multicultural diversity and the minority that is
the while ruling class and all their white lackeys (liberal and
conservative).
Unfortunately, the multicultural diversity has multifaceted,
convoluted politics.
If voting could change the system, they would make it illegal. (Jamil
Al-Amin, aka H. Rap Brown)
Here are a few
arguments for those who insist on voting for the lesser of evils.
One of the first
things Black folks say is, “We fought and died for the right to vote.”
Yes, having fought
in every war beginning with the revolutionary war of independence from Britain,
we have always done the dying; we've always been on the front lines of struggle
in this country. SNCC, Fannie Lou Hamer, and all the valiant freedom
fighters of the civil rights movement are to be honored and revered for their
uncompromising fight for our right to vote.
However, after we
won that particular battle in1965, the reactionaries in power initiated new
ways to suppress and vacate our vote -- new rules and laws of
disenfranchisement, such as denying prisoners and felons the vote, fraudulent
registration procedures, vote tampering, rigged voting machines, new photo ID requirements, etc. Eric
Nielson writes that since 2010, 11 states have passed laws that make it more
difficult to vote. Citing a report from The Sentencing Project, 5.85 million
people are now barred from voting because of a felony conviction, about 2.5
percent of the total population. The principled position would be all of us or none or all for one and one for all.
The systematic disenfranchisement of Black
voters in Florida, 2000, and elsewhere across the country validates the
following statement:
"...the two
parties have combined against us to nullify our power by a 'gentlemen's
agreement' of non-recognition, no matter how we vote...May God write us down as
asses if ever again we are found putting our trust in either Republican or the
Democratic parties." (W.E.B. DuBois)
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.
RAPE IGNITES A NATION DURING CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT by Carmen Rivera
Introduction by Kiilu Nyasha:
As a Black woman who grew up in the 1940s, ‘50s, and 60s. I’m fully aware of the treatment of colored girls and women not only by White men, but men of every description. I’m old enough now not to be too embarrassed to state that I was raped numerous times and didn’t even know it was rape. It was referred to as Bogarting when men forced you into sex against your will in those days. There were no phrases like “date rape,” or “sexual harassment,” though both were quite common, the latter mostly in the work place. Black women were singled out particularly due to the prevailing racist notion that we were animal-like and oversexed.
Yogi's board hearing has been postponed another year due to CDCR's new gang validation rules. Uncommon Law, the firm of Keith Wattley, is handling Yogi's case and they think they can get some relief for him under the new rules. So let's take this year to do everything we can to support Yogi and help him to stay strong in that hell hole for another year.It would be a good thing for those with resources to check with Att. Wattley to see if Yogi needs financial assistance in covering legal fees.
Book Review, by Kiilu Nyasha March 19, 2012 Dorothy Roberts’ new book, Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the 21st Century is a must read for all human beings desiring to witness the beginning of the end of racism. “We have long had scientific confirmation that race is a political and not a biological category. The recreation of biological race in genomic science today, like its invention by scientists in past centuries, results from an ideological commitment to a false view of humanity,” writes Roberts.
In 2000, The Human Genome Project mapped the entire human genetic code, proving that race could not be identified in our genes, that we are not naturally divided into genetically identifiable racial groups, that there is one human race.
Roberts explains and elucidates race as a political division, not a biological one. And details how the new science and technology of racial genetics is threatening “to steer America on a course of social inhumanity that already has begun to dominate politics in this century. Government policies that have drastically slashed social services…accompanied by particularly brutal forms of regulation of [so-called] racial minorities: mass imprisonment at rates far exceeding any other place on Earth or any time in the history of the free world; roundup and deportation of undocumented immigrants, often tearing families apart; abuse of children held in juvenile detention centers or locked up in adult prisons, some for the rest of their lives;…torture in police stations and prison cells; and rampant medical neglect that kills.”
"Slavery 400 years ago, slavery today. It's the same, but with a new name. They're practicing slavery under color of law." (Ruchell Cinque Magee)
The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution retained the right to enslave within the confines of prison. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Dec. 6, 1865.
Even before the abolition of chattel slavery, America's history of prison labor had already begun in New York's State Prison at Auburn soon after it opened in 1817. Auburn became the first prison that contracted with a private business to operate a factory within its walls. Later, in the post Civil War period, the "contract and lease" system proliferated, allowing private companies to employ prisoners and sell their products for profit.
In the age of globalization, Blacks, Immigrants, and resisters are
targeted for elimination and enslavement by the power brokers, fearful
of losing their wealth, privilege, and whiteness. Central to this
process is the school to prison pipeline, high unemployment,
homelessness, and the so-called war on drugs that supply the prison
system with its oppressed population. In this presentation, we explore
some of the facts that characterize this system—no less insidious than
past forms of slavery—and some of the narratives, policies and practices
that work in the interest of the dominant corporate plutocracy.
To accompany this new video of Kiilu addressing the University of Wisconsin, she has released an updated version of her 2006 essay entitled "Slavery On The New Plantation" (Read the full article here), where Kiilu writes:
Chattel slavery was ended following prolonged guerrilla warfare between
the slaves and the slave-owners and their political allies. Referred to
as the “Underground Railroad,” it was led by the revolutionary General
Harriet Tubman with support from her alliances with abolitionists, Black
and White. It only makes sense that this new form of slavery must
produce prison abolitionists.
As George Jackson noted in a
KPFA interview with Karen Wald (Spring 1971), "I'm saying that it's
impossible, impossible, to concentration-camp resisters....We have to
prove that this thing won't work here. And the only way to prove it is
resistance...and then that resistance has to be supported, of course,
from the street....We can fight, but the results are...not conducive to
proving our point...that this thing won't work on us. From inside, we
fight and we die....the point is -- in the new face of war -- to fight
and win."
SOLEDAD BROTHER: MEMORIES OF COMRADE GEORGE (updated 9/23/11)
By Kiilu Nyasha
It’s hard to believe that our beloved Comrade, George Lester Jackson, would be 70 years old this date, September 23, 2011.
On reading his first book, a 1970 bestseller, “Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson,’ I felt a kindred spirit with George’s rage and resistance, but thought he contradicted himself on women. So I began a correspondence with him from New Haven, Connecticut, where I was a member of the Black Panther Party, and working for the lawyers defending Chairman Bobby Seale, Ericka Huggins, and Lonnie McLucas, as well as organizing community and national support for their freedom.
(ABOVE: Painting of George Jackson by Sundiata Acoli)
The SF Bay View Newspaper has published Kiilu's new article reflecting on the 40-year anniversary of George Jackson's assassination. An excerpt is featured below, but you can read the full article here.
This Black August, let us honor our martyred freedom fighter, Comrade George, as well as those who recently joined the ancestors: Donald Cox, Michael Cetawayo Tabor and geronimo ji Jaga. And let us not forget all those who remain captive after many decades: Mumia Abu-Jamal, Sundiata Acoli, Herman Bell, Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald, Ruchell Cinque Magee − sole survivor of the Marin Courthouse Rebellion of Aug. 7, 1970 − Jalil Muntaqim, Albert Woodfox, Herman Wallace, Leonard Peltier, Oscar Lopez-Rivera and exiled freedom fighter Assata Shakur, to name just a few.
“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.”
Freedom is a Constant Struggle TV show, November 28, 2008.
Our guest, Robert Hillary King, (aka Robert King Wilkerson), one of the "Angola Three" (members of a prison chapter of the Black Panther Party), along with Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, was serving a life sentence at Angola State Penitentiary. In February 2001, after 31 years of imprisonment and 29 continuous years of solitary confinement, King walked out of the gates of Angola a free man. King continues to struggle for the release of his comrades and all political prisoners. He has also written a book, From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Black Panther Robert Hillary King, with an introduction by Terry Kupers, M.D., M.S.P. (PM Press).
For more information, visit www.kingsfreelines.com, www.angola3.org, and www.angola3news.com
(This show begins with commentary by Mumia Abu-Jamal)
Freedom is a Constant Struggle TV show, November 21, 2008.
Pierre Labossiere, a Haitian national, co-founder of the Haiti Action Committee, has been a long-time social-justice activist and advocate for the Lavalas Party of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, currently exiled in South Africa. Pierre has also been active in the campaigns to free political prisoners in Haiti and the U.S.
Learn more at: www.haitisolidarity.net and www.haitiemergencyrelief.org
(This show begins with commentary by Mumia Abu-Jamal)
Freedom is a Constant Struggle TV show, September 26, 2008.
Pam Africa is the Minister of Confrontation for the MOVE Organization and the Coordinator of the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Ramona Africa is the Minister of Communication for the MOVE Organization and the sole adult survivor of the May 13, 1985 massacre. On that day, a State Police helicopter dropped a C-4 bomb, illegally supplied by the FBI, on the roof of the MOVE Organization’s house at 6221 Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia. The bomb started a fire that was allowed to burn, and eventually destroyed 61 homes, leaving 250 people homeless: the entire block of a middle-class black community.
The Philadelphia Special Investigation Commission (The MOVE Commission), appointed by Mayor Wilson Goode, documented that when the occupants of the house tried to escape the fire, police shot at them, blocking their escape. In the end, six MOVE adults and five children died. Ramona Africa and 13 year-old Birdie Africa were the only survivors, after successfully dodging the police gunfire.
For more information about death row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, visit www.freemumia.com and www.abu-jamal-news.com and read/listen to his essays at www.prisonradio.org
For more about MOVE and the struggle to free the MOVE 9, visit www.onamove.com and move9parole.blogspot.com
Freedom is a Constant Struggle TV show, September 12, 2008.
Our guest, Attorney Dennis Cunningham, established the People's Law Office in Chicago, from which he and young Attorney Jeffrey Haas conducted a landmark civil rights lawsuit, "Hampton v. Hanrahan," on behalf of the families of slain Black Panther Party (BPP) leaders Mark Clark and Fred Hampton, and the survivors of the Dec. 4, 1969 police raid on the apartment of Illinois BPP Chairman Fred Hampton, at 2337 West Monroe Street in Chicago. The civil rights lawsuit lasted for almost 13 years, but ended with a $1.85 million settlement paid equally by the city, county, and federal governments--although Chicago's killer cops were never criminally charged.
Dennis continued doing civil rights cases over these 40 years, during which he also worked on the long-running class action for the prisoners who rebelled and survived the massacre at New York's Attica State Prison in 1971, and the Earth First case resulting from the 1990 bombing of Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney in Oakland, among many other defenses of protesters and victims of police misconduct, brutality and/or murder.
Freedom is a Constant Struggle TV show, September 19, 2008.
Pierre Labossiere, a Haitian national, co-founder of the Haiti Action Committee, has been a long-time social-justice activist and advocate for the Lavalas Party of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, currently exiled in South Africa. Pierre has also been active in the campaigns to free political prisoners in Haiti and the U.S.
Learn more at: www.haitiaction.net and www.haitisolidarity.net
Dylcia and Cisco on Panthers and Independistas
--SF8 Hearing on March 2
By Kiilu Nyasha and Angola 3 News
This February 26, 2011 episode of Freedom is a Constant Struggle features Dylcia Pagan and Francisco Torres.
Dylcia Pagan is a Puerto Rican freedom fighter and Independista, who spent nearly 20 years in Federal prisons on charges of seditious conspiracy for her role in the underground wing of the Puerto Rican independence movement.One of 11 Puerto Rican political prisoners granted clemency in 1999 by President Clinton, she was paroled to Puerto Rico, where she has continued to struggle against U.S. colonialism nonviolently.Born and raised in New York City, Dylcia studied psychology, political science, and Puerto Rican studies at BrooklynCollege where she founded the Puerto Rican Students Union.Her culture and politics are expressed through painting, ceramics, poetry, writings, and film.
She has participated in the production of a video about her life and compañeros in the struggle; and while in prison, she helped direct a documentary about Puerto Rican Women Prisoners of War.Her biography has been published in Puerto Rican Women: A History of Oppression and Resistance and she appears in the new film Machetero (view a clip with Dylciahere).
Francisco Torres (Cisco), 58, of New York City, was born in Puerto Rico and raised in New York City. He is a Vietnam Veteran who fought for the grievances of Black and Latino soldiers upon his return to the states. A former Black Panther, he has been a community activist since his discharge from the military in 1969. Cisco continues to work with troubled youth in his Queens community.
Cisco is the last of the San Francisco Eight to still be facing charges. As Cisco discusses in this interview, he had an evidentiary hearing scheduled for March 2, 2011. However, three days after the interview, on February 28, this hearing was canceled. A short update published on the SF8 website states: "An evidentiary hearing had been planned to take up the question of wiretaps, whose existence had long been denied by the prosecution. It now appears that the question may be settled without a hearing. Details to be posted here as soon as available...Stay tuned for future court dates." For the latest developments in the case and what you can do to help, please go to www.freethesf8.org.
--This episode of Freedom is a Constant Struggle is a collaborative project by Kiilu Nyasha and Angola 3 News, which is a project of the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3. Our website is www.angola3news.com where we provide the latest news about the Angola 3. We are also creating our own media projects, which spotlight the issues central to the story of the Angola 3, like racism, repression, prisons, human rights, solitary confinement as torture, and more.
