August 2003
By Kiilu
Nyasha
 |
| Soledad Brother - George Jackson |
Black
August is a month of great significance for Africans throughout the diaspora,
but particularly here in the U.S. where it originated. "August," as
Mumia Abu-Jamal noted, "is a month of meaning, of repression and radical
resistance, of injustice and divine justice; of repression and righteous
rebellion; of individual and collective efforts to free the slaves and break
the chains that bind us."
Black
August International (2003) will not only honor our national freedom fighters
in the "belly of the beast," it will celebrate the bicentennial
anniversary of Haiti's Revolution, the first and only armed struggle whereby
Africans liberated themselves from chattel slavery.
It began in August of 1791
and ended in victory over Napoleon's crack troops in 1803 with the celebration
of independence, January, 1804. Nat Turner's slave rebellion began on August
21, 1831, and Harriet Tubman's Underground Railroad started in August. As Mumia
stated, "Their sacrifice, their despair, their determination and their
blood has painted the month Black for all time."
On this
24th anniversary of Black August, first organized to honor our fallen freedom
fighters, Jonathan and George Jackson, Khatari Gaulden, James McClain, William
Christmas, and the sole survivor of the August 7, 1970 Courthouse Slave
Rebellion, Ruchell Cinque Magee, it is still a time to embrace the principles
of unity, self-sacrifice, political education, physical fitness and/or training
in martial arts, and resistance.
How did the
concept of Black August originate?
The
concept, Black August, grew out of the need to expose to the light of day the
glorious and heroic deeds of those Afrikan women and men who recognized and
struggled against the injustices heaped upon people of color on a daily basis
in America. Black August represents the defining of socialist economics and
ethics as applied to transforming the decadent social values of capitalist
America and the people who suffer under and from the ill effects of these
destructive values.
One cannot
tell the story of Black August without first providing the reader with a brief
glimpse of the "Black Movement" behind California prison walls in the
Sixties, led by George Jackson, W. L. Nolen, Hugo Pinell, Kumasi, and many
other conscious, standup brothers.
As Jackson
wrote:
"...when I was accused of robbing a gas station of $70, I accepted a deal...but when time came for sentencing, they tossed me into the penitentiary with one to life. That was 1960. I was 18 years old. I've been here ever since. I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels, and Mao when I entered prison and they redeemed me. For the first four years I studied nothing but economics and military ideas. I met black guerrillas, George "Big Jake" Lewis, and James Carr, W.L. Nolen, Bill Christmas, Tony Gibson, and many, many others. We attempted to transform the Black criminal mentality into a black revolutionary mentality. As a result, each of us has been subject to years of the most vicious reactionary violence by the state. Our mortality rate is almost what you would expect to find in a history of Dachau. Three of us [Nolen, Sweet Jugs Miller, and Cleve Edwards) were murdered several months ago [Jan. 13, 1969] by a pig shooting from thirty feet above their heads with a military rifle."
In what has
been described by witnesses as a setup, eight White prisoners and seven Blacks
were sent to the yard in Soledad Prison whereupon the Whites attempted to take
the basketball court from the brothers already on it. Nolen was known as the
Marvin Haggler of the prison system, fearless and skilled, he was rarely
challenged one on one. But on this day, one of the Whites attacked him and
before Nolen could even hit back, he was shot. When Miller and Edwards tried to
aid him, they were likewise shot by the lone White tower guard and left to
bleed to death from wounds they could have survived.
The Black
Movement prisoners demanded the guard be tried for murder but were met with
resistance. Upon their continued insistence, the administration held a kangaroo
court and three days later, the Monterey Grand Jury returned a verdict of
"justifiable homicide." Shortly after this was announced on the
prison radio, a white guard was found beaten to death and thrown from a tier.
Six days later, three prisoners were accused of murder, and became known as The
Soledad Brothers.
"I am being tried in court right now with two other brothers. John Clutchette and Fleeta Drumgo, for the alleged slaying of a prison guard. This charge carries an automatic death penalty for me. I can't get life. I already have it."
On August
7, 1970, just a few days after George was transferred to San Quentin, his
younger brother Jonathan Jackson, 17, invaded Marin County Courthouse
single-handed, with a satchel full of handguns, an assault rifle and a shotgun
hidden under his raincoat. (We have since learned he was not supposed to go it
alone.) "Freeze!" Jonathan commanded as he tossed guns to William
Christmas, James McClain, and Ruchell Magee, "We're taking over."
Magee was
on the witness stand testifying for McClain, on trial for assaulting a guard in
the wake of a guard's murder of another Black prisoner, Fred Billingsley,
beaten and tear gassed to death. A jailhouse lawyer, Magee had deluged the
courts for seven years with petitions contesting his illegal conviction in
1963. The courts had refused to listen, so Magee seized the hour and joined the
guerrillas as they took the judge, prosecutor and three jurors hostage to a
waiting van. To reporters gathering quickly outside the courthouse, Jonathan
shouted, "You can take our pictures. We are the revolutionaries!"
Operating with courage and calm even their enemies had to respect, the four
Black freedom fighters commandeered their hostages out of the courthouse
without a hitch. What they failed to anticipate was the State's willingness to
sacrifice its own people to stop the escape. Jackson's plan was to use the
hostages to take over a radio station and broadcast the virulent, racist,
murderous prison conditions and demand the immediate release of The Soledad
Brothers.
But before
Jonathan could drive the van out of the parking lot, the San Quentin guards had
arrived and opened fire. When the shooting stopped, Jonathan, Christmas,
McClain and the judge lay dead. Magee and the prosecutor were critically
wounded, and one juror suffered a minor arm wound. Magee survived his wounds
and was tried originally with codefendant Angela Davis. Their trials were later
severed and Davis was eventually acquitted of all charges. Magee was convicted
of simple kidnap and acquitted of the more serious kidnap-for-extortion charge
by a jury whose acquittal was buried. Magee has challenged this coverup for
decades with a notarized declaration from the jury foreman, Bernard Suarez He
is also challenging the CDC regarding parole. After 40 years of unjust incarceration,
he wants nothing short of discharge so he can return to his home state of
Louisiana.
"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).
In the
latest edition of the 1970 bestseller, Jonathan Jackson, Jr. wrote in its
Foreword:
"...Failure to understand the radical, encompassing viewpoint in the sixties led to reformism. In effect, the majority of the left completely deserted any attempt at the radical balance required of the politically conscious, leaving only liberalism and its narrow vision to flourish."
Nobody
comprehended the radical dilemma more fully than George Jackson....He writes in
Blood In My Eye:
"Reformism is an old story in Amerika. There have been depressions and socioeconomic political crises throughout the period that marked the formation of the present upper-class ruling circle, and their controlling elites. But the parties of the left were too committed to reformism to exploit their revolutionary potential."
We
witnessed the so-called healthcare reform of the first Clinton Administration.
In a nutshell, there were approximately 37 million people without health
insurance in 1992; there are currently well over 44 million and climbing as the
insurance industry continues to profiteer from our most basic need for medical
care, while Medicare and Medicaid are threatened with privatization and
prescription drugs are out of control. "Welfare Reform" has resulted
in "Welfare DEform" as the social safety net is unraveled and
homelessness is institutionalized. While our taxes are spent lavishly for a
bloated military ($400 billion plus!), health care, housing, child care, food
stamps, and jobs disappear; and factories and plants are located behind prison
walls. California spends about $49,000 per year to incarcerate one prisoner. It
spends about $7000 to educate one student.
"It all falls into place. I see the whole thing much clearer now, how fascism has taken possession of this country, the interlocking dictatorships from county level on up to the Grand Dragon in Washington, D.A. Fascism has temporarily succeeded under the guise of reform." (George Jackson)
And so we
have it today, more obvious, much more blatant in the ghettoes and barrios -- a
form of fascism that has replaced gas ovens and concentration camps with death
rows and control-unit torture chambers; plantations with prison industrial
complexes deployed in rural white communities to perpetuate white supremacy and
Black/Brown exploitation. An obscene concentration of wealth at the top with
one percent owning more wealth than 95% of the U.S. population; individuals so
superrich their wealth exceeds the total combined budgets of scores of nations
-- as they plunder the globe in the quest for more.
"The fascist must expand to live. Consequently he has pushed his frontiers to the farthest lands and peoples. This is an aspect of his being, an ungovernable compulsion. This perverted mechanical monster suffers from a disease that forces him to build ugly things and destroy beauty wherever he finds it. I just read in a legal newspaper that 50 percent of all the people ever executed in this country by the state were black and 100 percent were lower-class poor. I'm going to bust my heart trying to stop these smug, degenerate, primitive, omnivorous, uncivil . . . and anyone who would aid me, I embrace you."(George Jackson)
At the time
Jackson wrote those words (1970), he was facing a mandatory death sentence even
if only convicted of assaulting a guard (Ca. Statute 4500), and was already in
solitary confinement where he spent most of the 11 years of his incarceration.
Although that particular law and the indeterminate sentence are no longer on
the books, the spirit of the law is being implemented through the no-parole
policies of Republicrat Gov. Grey Davis and a death row that now totals over
600 human beings slated for state murder. Nationwide, the figures are about
3600.
On August
21, 1971, in what was described by prison officials as an escape attempt,
George Jackson allegedly smuggled a gun into San Quentin in a wig. That feat
was proven impossible, and evidence subsequently suggested a setup designed by
prison officials to eliminate Jackson once and for all as they had tried
numerous times. However, they didn't count on losing any of their own in the
process. On that fateful day, three notoriously racist prison guards and two
inmate turnkeys were also killed. According to an eye witness, when Jackson was
shot while running on the yard, he got up instantly and dived in the direction
of some bushes. He was subsequently murdered while lying on the ground wounded.
Six Black
prisoners were put on trial -- wearing 30 lbs of chains -- in Marin County Courthouse
charged with murder and assault. Fleeta Drumgo, David Johnson, Hugo L.A. Pinell
(Yogi), Luis Talamantez, Johnny Spain, and Willie Sundiata Tate. Only one was
convicted of murder, Johnny Spain. The others were either acquitted or
convicted of assault. Pinell is the only one remaining in prison; all the
others were released years ago. But Yogi has suffered prolonged torture in
lockups since 1969, and is currently enduring his 13th year in Pelican Bay
Bay's SHU. He remains amazingly strong and revolutionary.
Let us
continue to build uncompromising unity and resistance through spiritual renewal
and revolutionary inspiration this Black August as we honor all those who have
fought and died for our freedom and self-determination.
In George
Jackson's words:
"Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already 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."
Free all political prisoners!
Venceremos!
Related
Links
Political
prisoner Hugo Pinell needs your support to be free after 39 years
Soledad
Brother: Memories of Comrade George
See also:
