“Phantom Control”: Israel’s Secret Service and the Occupation

Aug 26, 2012 by TheRealNews

Yael Berda’s new book The Bureaucracy of Occupation sheds light on
Israel’s more invisible control over the Palestinians. For more http://www.therealnews.com

Taking back Palestine’s streets: exclusive interview with underground Jerusalem graffiti artist

Maath Musleh, The Electronic Intifada, Jerusalem, 29 August 2012

[“There’s no voice greater than the voice of the intifada” (Image courtesy of the artist)]

Graffiti has been a tool of the Palestinian liberation struggle for decades; during the first intifada in the late 1980s and early ’90s, Palestinians painted graffiti on all the walls as a means of protesting the occupation. Graffiti artists were met with brutal suppression if caught.

Young Palestinians are carrying on the legacy of art as a form of resistance today. On 12 January, an unknown group penetrated the heavily-fortified heart of West Jerusalem overnight and painted graffiti bearing political messages on walls, doors, construction sites and other surfaces. Most of the paintings pictured a woman’s face masked with a kuffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian checkered scarf. Below some of the images was the word “revolt” in Arabic.

The group hit the walls of Jerusalem again five days later, and issued an anonymous statement vowing to carry on their action to send messages to the Israeli and Palestinian communities.

In the following weeks, other groups took up the spray can torch in various cities including Haifa and Jaffa.

And in June, the Jerusalem activists took a daring step by painting graffiti on the doors and walls of governmental buildings as well as the doorways of Israeli houses in Jerusalem and Palestinian houses occupied since the ethnic cleansing of 1948. They sent the same messages calling upon Palestinians in general, and Palestinian women in particular, to revolt. They also painted “Remember Gaza” across the wall of one of the buildings in big letters.

Underground graffiti artist speaks out

A member of the group, a confident young Palestinian feminist activist who operates under the pseudonym “Laila,” spoke to The Electronic Intifada on condition of anonymity. Laila has been active in street art in Palestine before the creation of the anonymous Jerusalem group, focusing on painting both the walls of West and East Jerusalem.

“Some of the street art I have done was in what has now become West Jerusalem in Jewish-dominated areas,” said Laila. “Some other stuff I have done is in East Jerusalem where messages have been more about feminist messages to [Palestinian] women, mostly to wake up and not be drowned out by the patriarchal nature of our society.”

Poor in India Starve as Politicians Steal $14.5 Billion of Food

[It is only right that we introduce the article below by remembering the poem “THOSE WHO TAKE THE MEAT FROM THE TABLE” by Bertolt Brecht. — Frontlines ed.]

 

THOSE WHO TAKE THE MEAT FROM THE TABLE
Teach contentment.
Those for whom the contribution is destined
Demand sacrifice.
Those who eat their fill speak to the hungry
Of wonderful times to come.
Those who lead the country into the abyss
Call ruling too difficult
For ordinary men

————————————————————————————————————————–

By Mehul Srivastava and Andrew MacAskill, Bloomberg – August 29, 2012

52-year-old Ram Kishen with his government provided ration card in Satnapur Village, Uttar Pradesh, India

Ram Kishen, 52, half-blind and half- starved, holds in his gnarled hands the reason for his hunger: a tattered card entitling him to subsidized rations that now serves as a symbol of India’s biggest food heist.

Kishen has had nothing from the village shop for 15 months. Yet 20 minutes’ drive from Satnapur, past bone-dry fields and tiny hamlets where children with distended bellies play, a government storage facility five football fields long bulges with wheat and rice. By law, those 57,000 tons of food are meant for Kishen and the 105 other households in Satnapur with ration books. They’re meant for some of the 350 million families living below India’s poverty line of 50 cents a day.

Instead, as much as $14.5 billion in food was looted by corrupt politicians and their criminal syndicates over the past decade in Kishen’s home state of Uttar Pradesh alone, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The theft blunted the country’s only weapon against widespread starvation — a five-decade-old public distribution system that has failed to deliver record harvests to the plates of India’s hungriest.

“This is the most mean-spirited, ruthlessly executed corruption because it hits the poorest and most vulnerable in society,” said Naresh Saxena, who, as a commissioner to the nation’s Supreme Court, monitors hunger-based programs across the country. “What I find even more shocking is the lack of willingness in trying to stop it.”

South African Miners charged with murder – of colleagues shot dead by police

Lawyers say 270 workers will not get fair trial over strike massacre and demand their release

Alex Duval Smith, The Independent (UK)

Thursday, 30 August 2012

State prosecutors have charged 270 strikers arrested at Marikana platinum mine with the murder of 34 colleagues. The arrests went ahead despite confirmation that the victims were shot dead by police, in the latest setback to prospects of peace in the South African mining industry.

The strike at Marikana that called for 3,000 rock drillers to have their monthly pay increased to 12,500 rand (£940) has led to a total of 44 deaths, including those of two policemen and two security guards. In shocking scenes on 16 August, police opened fire on a group of miners, killing 34 and injuring 78.

Lawyers acting for the detained men yesterday appeared for a third day at Ga-Rankuwa magistrate’s court to argue for them to be released on bail, after it emerged that state prosecutor Nigel Carpenter had increased the charges against the men from attempted murder and public violence to murder. Meanwhile, government mediators yesterday met representatives from the mine owner, Lonmin, and four trade unions in an attempt to sign a peace accord as a precursor to wage talks. The Marikana mine was at a standstill with only 7.7 per cent of employees reporting for work – the lowest figure since the strike began on 10 August.

South Africa: Class Struggle, State Repression, and the tarnished myth of “the people’s” ANC

The Marikana Massacre and The South African State’s Low Intensity War Against The People

by Vishwas Satgar, Defending Popular Democracy

On Thursday, August 16, police officers fired into the crowd with automatic weapons. When it was over, 34 miners lay dead. Here, police check the bodies of dead mineworkers.

The massacre of the Marikana/Lonmin workers has inserted itself within South Africa’s national consciousness, not so much through the analysis, commentary and reporting in its wake.  Instead, it has been the power of the visual images of police armed with awesome fire power gunning down these workers, together with images of bodies lying defeated and lifeless, that has aroused a national outcry and wave of condemnation. These images  have also engendered international protest actions outside South African embassies. In themselves these images communicate a politics about ‘official state power’. It is bereft of moral concern, de-humanised, brutal and at odds with international human rights standards; in these ways it is no different from  apartheid era  state sponsored violence and technologies of oppressive rule.  Moreover, the images of police officers walking through the Marikana/Lonmin killing field, with a sense of professional accomplishment in its aftermath, starkly portrays a scary reality: the triumph of  South Africa’s state in its brutal conquest of its enemies, its citizens.

At the same time, the pain and suffering of the gunned down workers has became the pain of a nation and the world; this has happened even without the ANC government declaring we must not apportion blame but mourn the dead. In a world steeped in possessive individualism and greed, the brutal Marikana/Lonmin massacre reminds us of a universal connection; our common humanity.  However, while this modern human connection and sense of empathy is important, it is also superficial.  This is brought home by a simple truth: the pain of the Marikana/Lonmin workers is only our pain in their martyrdom. They had to perish for all of us to realise how deep social injustice has become inscribed in the everyday lives of post-apartheid South Africa’s workers and the poor. The low wage, super exploitation model of South African mining, socially engineered during apartheid, is alive and well, and thriving. It is condoned by the post-apartheid state. This is the tragic irony of what we have become as the much vaunted ‘Rainbow nation’.

Internationalism and the revolution of the masses in India: an interview with GN Saibaba

[On 14th of April 2012, the  “Jan Myrdal great award, the Lenin award” was presented in a theatre in Varberg, Sweden. Individuals from different countries and from different parts of of Sweden came for the celebration. Many of participants stayed at Hotell Gästis in central Varberg, where Indiensolidaritet interviewed the secretary of the Revolutionary Democratic Front of India, G.N.Saibaba.]

Indiensolidaritet, Sweden, August 28, 2012

GN Saibaba

Interview with G.N.Saibaba in Varberg Sweden, 14-15th April 2012

Indiensolidaritet: Can you say something about the political work you do in India?

Saibaba: I work for an organization called Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF). It is a federation of revolutionary mass organizations working among different oppressed classes and sections of Indian society.  Revolutionary students and youth organisations, revolutionary peasants’ organisations, revolutionary workers’ organisations, revolutionary cultural organisations as well revolutionary womens’ organisations from different regions across India are constituents of RDF. Thus RDF is a large network of revolutionary organisations reaching out to all sections and strata of the society.

From the year 2009 onwards Operation Green Hunt began, the Indian state’s genocidal war on the poorest of the poor in India. All of us in our organization RDF work with other parties, groups, democratic organisations and individuals to raise our voice collectively and unitedly against the present military onslaught on the people and the extermination campaign against the people of India. We see this massive military operation as a continuation and the latest addition in the war waged by India’s ruling classes against the people of the subcontinent for last many decades be it in Kashmir, North East, Punjab, and now in central and eastern India. So we are at one level involved in the basic struggles of the people and at another we are working along with a large network of political forces and carrying out a countrywide campaign against Indian state’s anti-people policies, particularly Operation Green Hunt.

Indiensolidaritet: The way we see it, there are two lines regarding solidarity work in Europe. One line is trying to unite people on an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal basis and another one focuses more on Maoism. What do you think about this?

Saibaba: Yes, there is this perception and understanding of how to develop the solidarity movement for the peoples‚ struggles and the particularly the military attack on the people that is going on in India. So what I can see is that there are large sections who think that the large sections of the people of India and the larger confrontation is more important to focus on, to tell the world outside India. There is another section of organizations which hold that the present campaign by the Indian state is targeting the revolutionaries in India and therefore the revolutionaries should be supported directly. What is important today is that the people of India, the poorest of the poor 80 percent of the country who live an extremely perilous existence, are looking forward to a basic change in their lives. The poorest section of humanity in the world therefore is waging a defiant struggle in India under the leadership of the revolutionary Maoists who are from among their own. So if you take the larger picture of what is happening in India, you can see that this is a great resistance against the loot of the land and minerals by the corporate sector. Monopoly capital in its desperation to dominate the world’s resources would like to overcome its crisis by exploiting the cheap raw materials in India and other oppressed countries. It’s an attempt by the imperialists, by monopoly capital on the world scale, to transport their burden of the economic crisis upon the shoulders of the poorest of the poor in India.

Removing the people from their homes and hearths has become pertinent for the corporations backed by the government to capture the valuable mineral resources which are estimated to a value of several trillions of dollars.  So the resistance movement is built up by the indigenous people, the poorest of the poor, the millions and millions of the wretched of the earth. To crush this movement and to silence all the people the Indian government has sent more than 250,000 armed personnel to these regions backed by its air force and navy. You therefore can see the importance of the struggle. Of course the revolutionary forces are involved. They work in these areas and organise the people, but the question is much larger. It is an anti-imperialist struggle of the people, led by the revolutionary Maoists. This is a larger question because this resistance exists not only in the central and eastern parts of India where the Maoist movement has a strong presence, but extends to every part of India even where the Maoists are absent. 

Rachel Corrie denied justice from murderous Israeli state

Rachel Corrie’s death was an accident, Israeli judge rules

[Rachel Corrie in an interview with Saudi Arabian television on 14 March 2003, two days before she was killed. Photograph: Lorenzo Scaraggi/Getty Images]

Judge finds no fault in military investigation that cleared defence force of responsibility for protester being killed by bulldozer

Harriet Sherwood in Haifa

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 28 August 2012

The death of the pro-Palestinian activist Rachel Corrie was not caused by the negligence of the Israeli state or army, a judge has ruled, dismissing a civil lawsuit brought by the family.

Corrie’s death was an accident for which the state of Israel was not responsible, said the judge at Haifa district court.

There had been no fault in the internal Israeli military investigation clearing the driver of the bulldozer that crushed Corrie to death in March 2003 of any blame. The judge said the driver had not seen the young American activist.

Corrie could have saved herself by moving out of the zone of danger as any reasonable person would have done, said Judge Oded Gershon. He ruled that no compensation would be paid and the family would not have to pay costs of the case.

After the ruling was read out by the judge, the family’s lawyer, Hussein Abu Hussein, said: “We knew from the beginning that we had an uphill battle to get truthful answers and justice. But we are concerned that this verdict denies the strong evidence and contradicts the principles of international law.”

Japanese CEO faces anti-imperialist backlash and class struggle in India

Filipino-Canadian internationalists declare: Migrants are inseparable from the Canadian working class struggle

[Hundreds of millions of migrants worldwide, driven and displaced from their homelands by brutal repression, hunger, trafficking, and other crushing forms of oppression, are major parts of the exploited workforces in their new homes, where they continue to suffer racist and xenophobic attacks, brutalities, and exclusions in new conditions.  Historically, the struggle against such conditions has been framed by resistance to the oppressive treatment of migrants, by solidarity among migrants of different origins, and by steadfast support for the struggles in their homelands.  But, in time, these migrants have brought their anger and resistance–and their experience in struggle–into the peoples movements and class struggles in their new lands of residence, where they play an ever increasing role as transnationals in raising the banners of resistance, internationalism, and revolution.  Now, in Canada, an organized group of Filipino-Canadians, has announced their unity with a Maoist Canadian Party, the PCR-RCP (not to be confused with the RCP-USA which has no organizational or political commonality with the Canadian group).

    We are not able to assess other aspects of the Filipino-Canadian group, or of the PCR-RCP at this time; but we think this announcement is a potentially important development and crosssing of a threshold, in the relations between migrants and working class forces–not only in Canada, but in every country where significant migrant forces endure exploitation and oppression, and whose resistance is reshaping the class struggle to reshape the world in revolutionary and internationalist ways. — Frontlines ed.]

—————————————

http://theredflag.ca

Filipino Canadian Proletarians Join Forces With the PCR-RCP!
Partisan #25 • August 24, 2012

We, the Filipino Canadian Proletarian Committee of Cote-des-Neiges,
Montréal have announced our intention to add our forces to the
growing strength of the Parti Communiste Révolutionnaire –
Revolutionary Communist Party (Canada). The leadership and contributions
of the PCR-RCP are to be found in the building of the proletarian
movement that is needed in Canada and the necessary international
communist movement and it is with revolutionary pride and social
responsibility to the Canadian working class that Filipino Canadian
proletarians based in the west end of Montréal join the dynamism of
their Marxist-Leninist-Maoist comrades.

Since the 1970s there has been a rich revolutionary movement among the
Filipino Canadian proletariat, largely because of the solidarity built
around the struggle against Marcos’ dictatorship in the Philippines.
Through the 1980s and 1990s and early 2000s support and solidarity work
by Filipino Canadian comrades continued for the Philippine revolutionary
movement. As the consciousness of Filipino Canadian proletariat
continued to be raised about the struggle “back home” there was
a growing need to resolve the issues of the Filipino Canadian people as
part of Canadian working class.

Democracy Now: “Where is the evidence that Richard Aoki was an FBI informant?”

Part 1 of this interview:

Part 2 of this interview:

DemocracyNow.org, August 23, 2012

Explosive new allegations have emerged that the man who gave the Black Panther Party some of its first firearms and weapons training was an undercover FBI informant in California. Richard Aoki, who died in 2009, was an early member of the Panthers and the only Asian American to have a formal position in the group. The claim that Aoki informed on his colleagues is based on statements made by a former bureau agent and an FBI report obtained by investigative journalist Seth Rosenfeld, author of the new book, “Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals and Reagan’s Rise to Power.” But Aoki’s friends and colleagues, as well as scholars, have challenged the book’s findings. We speak to Rosenfeld, an award-winning journalist and author of the article, “Man who armed Black Panthers was FBI informant, records show,” published by the Center for Investigative Reporting; and to Diane Fujino, Aoki’s biographer and a professor and chair of the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Source:  http://www.democracynow.org/2012/8/23/was_bay_area_radical_black_panther

South Africa: “We are Living in a Democratic Prison”

Marikana shows that we are Living in a Democratic Prison

by Bandile Mdlalose

South Africa has the most beautiful Constitution amongst all countries. Its
beauty is well documented and respected. But we are living in a Democratic
Prison.We must acknowledge the fight of Doctor Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko and the
community struggles of the 1980s, the youth of 1976 and the workers of 1973.
The struggles of the past defeated the White Boers and brought us democracy
with all these beautiful rights on paper. We have so many documented rights,
like the right to housing and to protest. But every day our rights are
violated by the Black Boers. They vowed to protect our rights but the vow was
a fake vow.Instead of supporting the people’s struggles so that we can make democracy
real and make our rights real they are sending out their securities and police
to evict the poor, to lock us out of the cities and to smash our struggles.
Instead of working with the people to transform the society they are
repressing the people to protect the unequal society that they took charge of
1994.

Where’s the evidence Aoki was FBI informant?

[Last week’s “exposure” of the highly respected revolutionary Richard Aoki, veteran of the Black Panther Party, who died in 2009, as “an FBI informant” some five decades ago, has spurred great debate and demands for investigation of these charges, the details on which these accusations are based, and of those who have made these charges–their interests, their motives, and their methods.  Here, the author of the Richard Aoki biography takes a critical look at the charges that have been made.  Frontlines will present substantial materials on the investigation of these charges as they become available. — Frontlines ed.]

Diane C. Fujino, San Francisco Chronicle

Published Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Seth Rosenfeld‘s dramatic announcement that Richard Aoki was an FBI informant provoked an enormous response from Chronicle readers. Could it be true? Or was this a “snitch-jacketing,” a classic FBI tactic used to cast suspicion on a legitimate activist by spreading rumors and manufacturing evidence?

As a scholar, I insist on seeing evidence before concluding any “truth.” But as I read Rosenfeld’s work and cross-checked sources from my biography on Aoki, I realized Rosenfeld had not met the burden of proof. He made definitive conclusions based on inconclusive evidence.

If Aoki was an informant, when was he informing? How did he help the FBI disrupt political movements? What were his motivations?

I also questioned Rosenfeld’s motives. Rosenfeld’s piece, published the day before the release of his own book, gained him widespread media and public attention that surely will augment sales.

Rosenfeld offers four pieces of evidence against Aoki.

First, Rosenfeld cites only one FBI document, a Nov. 16, 1967, report. It states: “A supplementary T symbol (SF T-2) was designated for” – but the name was deleted. Following the now-blank space was the name Richard Matsui Aoki in parenthesis, and then the phrase “for the limited purpose of describing his connections with the organization and characterizing [Aoki].”

In the FBI pages released to me, only brief background material on Aoki is linked to T-2. Moreover, T symbols are used to refer to informants or technical sources of information (microphones, wiretaps). So was Aoki the informer or the one being observed?

Second, FBI agent Burney Threadgill Jr. said he recruited Aoki in the late 1950s, but we have no substantial evidence other than Rosenfeld’s reports, and Threadgill has since died.

Third, FBI agent M. Wesley Swearingen‘s statement, as quoted by Rosenfeld, is hardly compelling: “Someone like Aoki is perfect to be in a Black Panther Party, because I understand he is Japanese. Hey, nobody is going to guess – he’s in the Black Panther Party; nobody is going to guess that he might be an informant.” But more logically, Aoki’s racial difference made him stand out and aroused suspicion. Are we asked to simply trust authority figures?

Fourth, Aoki’s remarks, as seen in the video, are open to multiple interpretations, and Aoki denies the allegation. Anyone familiar with Aoki knows that he spoke with wit, humor, allusion and caution. Where’s the conclusive evidence?

India: Mass organisations stage protest demonstration against the arbitrary expulsion of hundreds of workers of Maruti Suzuki

Delhi Metro Kamgar Union:

“Efforts to buy industrial peace by covering up the real reasons for the incident

at the Maruti Suzuki will only lead to a greater unrest”

 New Delhi, August 21. Various mass organisations, unions and social activists staged a protest demonstration at Jantar Mantar today against the arbitrary expulsion of hundreds of workers Maruti Suzuki  by the management and the continued persecution of the workers. The protestors also submitted a memorandum to the union labour minister to revoke the suspension of the workers.

It is to be noted that tha Manesar plant of Maruti Suzuki has opened today itself after a month long lockout. However the management has announced the expulsion of the 500 permanent workers. Also the future of more than 1500 contract workers remains uncertain. The company has threatend to terminate more workers in future.

Despite heavy rainfall since morning, large number of workers and activists coming from Delhi, Ghaziabad, Noida and Gurgaon took part in the demonstration.

While strongly condemning the dictatorial decision of the Maruti Suzuki management, the speakers said that the anti-labour attitude of Haryana government and the Central government stands exposed through their support to this act of pushing the hundreds of workers and their families on the street.

The speakers mentioned that the incident of July 18 at Maruti Suzuki Manesar was not a planned act of violence but an explosion of workers’ anger against the company’s policies which had accumulated over a period of time. But the company has waged a campaign to brand the workers as a “murderous mob” and “criminals” and by puttting all the legal conventions on the back burner the police is on look out for the workers merely on the F.I.R. of one side. Nobody bothered to understand what caused the workers, who were increasing the company’s profit through their hard labour, to take the violent course.

When The Movement Was Strong And Culture Was A Weapon

[The following article, from the website of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, is about a time when popular entertainers often contributed to political movements and to the defense of targets of government repression, because of the strength and influence of the movements.  The case described, of Aretha Franklin coming forward to bail Angela Davis out of jail, largely out of solidarity and in opposition to injustice, is posted here as a good example of the times, in which support was given to such revolutionaries as George Jackson as well as to such members of the revisionist CPUSA as Angela Davis.  —  Frontlines ed.]

August 20, 2012, http://mxgm.org/when-the-movement-was-strong-and-culture-was-a-weapon/

From 1970′s Aretha to 2012 Beyoncé

by Kamau Franklin, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement

A 1970′s news article on Aretha Franklin’s heroic gesture to pay bail for then recently arrested Angela Davis has been circulating on face-book (link is at end of article). Aretha offered to pay bail stemming from the capture of Angela Davis in New York after a massive FBI woman hunt in 1970. Ms. Davis was charged with murder, kidnapping and conspiracy for allegedly supplying weapons for an attempted courtroom escape led by Jonathan Jackson to free his brother and revolutionary leader George Jackson.  Angela Davis already well known for her battles with then California Governor Ronald Reagan over her right to teach in California Universities after being identified as a communist sealed her image as a revolutionary icon in the Black movement.  The article has caught the attention of many because of Aretha’s striking and unapologetic stance in offering bail towards Mr. Davis release. Aretha Franklin states

“My Daddy (Detroit’s Rev. C.L. Franklin) says I don’t know what I ‘m doing. Well I respect him of course but I’m going to stick by my beliefs. Angela Davis must go free. Black people will be free. I’ve been locked up (for disturbing the peace in Detroit) and I know you got to disturb the peace when you can’t get no peace. Jail is hell to be in. I’m going to see her free if there is any justice in our courts, not because I believe in Communism, but because she is a Black woman and she wants freedom for black people. I have the money; I got it from black people – they’ve made me financially able to have it – and I want to use it in ways that will help our people”

For context Aretha is speaking during a time in the early 1970′s when the dominant ideological current in the Black community had shifted from civil rights to Black Power. With all the inconsistencies related to the Black Power slogan it is clear that a critical mass of Black people during that time internalized it as statement of Black pride, activism within the community, standing up and forcefully challenging white supremacy over black lives and the contemplation of different forms of struggle and ideological beliefs within while attempting unity to the public. Broad concepts because it lacked the crystallization of an actual program to gain “freedom” but nonetheless during that time the idea of “Black Power” set the tone for community actions and collective responsibility.

Aretha of 1970 states she has “disturbed the peace and has been arrested”. She is hinting to a political arrest not one for drugs, shoplifting or for domestic violence, but for advocating for her people. Aretha Franklin was as big as it gets in terms of mainstream artist during that time in the Black community. She was not touting her donations to charity but her personal involvement and desire to be a part of the movement to free black people and in particular her solidarity with another Black woman.

What makes these statements even more note worthy is that Aretha was more a product of the times than a devout revolutionary artist. She was moved to her position by what was happening around her. Just as today’s pop figures/ artist are also not devout revolutionaries and are moved these days by anything but a movement.  As time evolves you can see how in just one generation a figure like Muhammad Ali takes a stance against US military adventurism that costs him millions in personal wealth and prestige from the dominant power players to his daughter Laila’s promotion of US military adventurism in an upcoming television series that will probably earn her great sums.  Times and context will mostly dictate this outcome and activist types should not waste much time in a critique of the vast majority of popular artist for not being “political” but instead movement people should be critiqued for hoping that popular figures/artist in today’s context will themselves be committed to community action.

George Jackson, US political prisoner and Black Panther, executed by prison guards 41 years ago today

[In 1970–one year before he was killed by San Quentin prison guards–George Jackson wrote:“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 slaves 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.”]

August 21st marks the 41th anniversary of the execution of George Lester Jackson. The Chicago- born Jackson would have celebrated his 71th birthday on September 23rd.

Jackson was a prisoner who became an author, a member of the Black Panther Party, and co-founder of the Black Guerrilla Family prison organization. He achieved global fame as one of the Soledad Brothers before being executed by prison guards in San Quentin Prison.

 

 

George Jackson:

Video Based on an edited portion of Prisons on Fire by the Freedom Archives (2001) with video editing by Oriana Bolden.

Source: Freedom Archives