OCTOBER 1969 $192 VOL 5, NO.: 9 25~

in this issue:THE LIFE OF HO

BERNADETTE AT BERKELEY

STRI KE AT J,I. CASE

PANTHERS PUSH ON

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MORE ON WAYNE STATE"Wayne State University is a working class university in De­

troit ..."-so begins Dena Clamage in her article "Wayne StateStrike" (MOVEMENT, August, 1969). If to her the most importantthing about Wayne is its students' class origins, to me it is their color(90% white) and its location-near the heart of one of the nation'sgreat sprawling black ghettos. Only by ignoring these facts couldDena have written such a racist, self-righteous article, or could WayneSDS have supported a strike which was objectively racist, and econ­omist, to boot.

Mrs. Hilary. C.J. BoyleDublin Housing Action Committeec/o 30 Gardiner PlaceDublin I, Ireland

tilr, during the last year your countryhas seen and heard a lot of the troublesin the six occupied counties of our"most distressful country", and mostgenerously they have risen to sendfinancial aid. I wonder how many ofyou realize that we in the 26 countiessuffer under the same Imperialist junta?We are free only in name. In Dublinalone we have 10,000 homeless or housedworse than pigs or rats. There are lit­erally hundreds of large houses in perfector near perfect condition empty. Thesewill be bulldozed down with the con­nivance of, and at times direct profitto our government to build concreteoffices for. .the English. The govern­ment has the power to requisition thesehouses even when it does not directlyown them but it does not do so.

The Dublin Housing Action Committeeexists to help the victims. Last JanuaryMr. Dennis Dennehey was sent to prisonfor refusing to vacate the room (whichhe had done up and repaired) of a mil­l10l1!laire Englishman in a derilict Reg­ency house and put his family onto thestreets. Dublin turned out in force to pro­test and we were brutally batoned by thepolice,however, Jeventually we obtainedMr. Dennehey's release and a caravanon a Corporation site for him. Yesterdaythree more men were committed to gaolfor occupying a house owned by a veryrich elderly spinster who is selling itfor $23,000 to an English Propertydealer to convert into yet more offices.It would house in comfort at least tenfamilies and provide also half a dozenbedsitters for old age pensioners whohave an almost below the bread-lineincome. We are all poor working classpeople, and I venture to beg your readersto send even a quarter each to help sup­port the wives and children of these menand the others who very soon will be in thesame boat. Meanwhile, batons not with­standing, we will work to try to changeour country for the better.

All contributions will be gratefullyacknowledged.

I,e/tlnd

.t'lltoleo

THIS ISSUE IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF

HO CHI MINH

"To translate sorrows into revolutionary acts, strengthensolidarity' and channel all our will and forces into the greatcause of fighting and defeating the US aggressors." ':"'fromcommunique issued by the Central Committee of Viet NamWorkers Party, September 4, 1969.

The Oleo Strut staff

Yours in struggle,

Last summer a project was formedcalled Summer of Support which opened­up coffee houses near Army posts. Thecoffeehouses provide a plaCe where GIscan read radical papers, -talk,)o eachother, see films and plan for organizingon post. One of the Coffeehouses iscalled the Oleo Strut, located in KilleenTexas next to Ft. Hood.

As GI organizing has developed, theway the Strut can aid has changed also.The Strut is now opening a bookstore­military library; not one that is likeother Army town bookstores,_but onewhich will carry books on racism, im­imperialism, and the history of thepeople of this country, the things therulers of America DON'T want Gisto read.

We're asking that people send usbooks for the store and any bookson' military law for the library. We alsoneed a cash register that gives receipts,and an adding machine to tabulate taxes.We also need money.

Tax deductible donations can be madeto the United States Serviceman's Fund,430 W. 250th Street, New York, N. Y.USSF is a fund raising organizationfor all the coffeehouses. We hope every­one who reads this request will sendbooks etc, so we can get them into theGI's hands. Our address is Oleo Strut,101 Ave. D, Killeen , Texas. 76541

Thank you.

by Dan Hardy, Motor City SDS

'in imperialism and in the black colony isthe key to building revolutionary class­consciousness in our movement. Any"short cuts" which the movement maytry to make in order to involve greaternumbers of whites in a shorter timewillonly lead to a sell-out, revisionist move­ment which helps nobody but itself, andwhich will end up being swept away inthe rising of the worlds' oppressedpeoples.

letariat, and even large numbers ofmarginal unskilled and semi-skilledwhite workers would be most interestedin hearing that they are no different froma bunch of white college kids, who arelooking forward to jobs in the far upperreaches of the working class, and who arelikely to become very closely tied tobourgeois monopoly capitalist conscious­ness when they do so.

There is a vast difference between ob­jective class position, and one's con­sciousness and willingness to struggleill the interests of that class as a whole;just to tell students how much like theworkers they are doesn' t help win themto the class struggle. Instead, they mustcome to see, through struggle, thatonly by joining the world struggle beingled by the Vietnamese and the blacks, andby being ready to give up the advantageswhich skin color and "middle-class"cUlture have given them (2-s, grad.school, secure job, comparative wealth)can they form another front in the world­wide battle against imperialism.

As for "worker support" of the studentstrike; r can't see what Dena was soexcited about. Workers in Detroit justabout automatically refuse to cross anypicket line; they would probably haveresponded that way even for an OPENLYracist and national chauvinist strike.I don' t think that the -workers had it intheir class interest to support thisstrike; after all, the whole thing boileddown to a group of privileged kids askinga tax-supported institution to give themmore money, without trying to changethe racist and class-biased nature of theschool at all.

While this bullshit strike was going on,Detroit was seething with issues aroundwhich a true anti- racist, anti- imperialistconsciousness could be built. Two ofthese were: the contempt of court trialof a black revolutionary lawyer, whoturned the charges around, and held adaily "peoples' court" to indict thelegal system; and the building of aprogram around the expansion of WayneState further into the surrounding ghettoto build one of the largest researchparks in the country. The first issue,WSU-SDS ignored entirely; the second,they left to the tender mercies of thePL- WSA caucus.

The argument I that the Wayne SDSpeople made constantly was that Waynestudents woUld only become involved inissues which involved their immediateself-interest. This is bUllshit; our anal­ysis and practice tells us that the crisis

THE REAL STRUGGLE

It is amazing that so-called revol­utionaries in Detroit, a city where theracist honkie establishment is controlledby the United Auto Workers Union, couldwrite a leaflet saying "those of us livingin Detroit know the importance ofunions" !Surely Wayne SDS knows that the unionbureaucracy in this country has been keyin the sell out of the white working classon the questions of racism and imperial­i~m. Surely they know that the whiteworking class' acceptance ofthe narrow,institutional role of the American tradeunion led to the renunciation of thebroad class struggle in favor of strugglesfor particUlarist self- interest. How,thencoUld Wayne SDS be so opportunist as toevoke the image of the great union,fighting for the interests of the people,especially in a strike of white studentsfrom middle income backgrounds?

The WSU:'SDS line on privilege wasequally amazing. One leaflet said "Theuniversity wants its students to believethat they are somehow different from'real' workers ...as long as we're dumbenough to go along with them on this,they will keep us divided from workingpeople." Dena's white national chauv­inism comes on really strong here; theblack underclass, the international pro-

OPPORTUNISM

A little of' the history of the strike:one night, at a Wayne SDS chapter meet­ing, members of the regional staff weredebating with chapter members aboutwhether students at Wayne coUld be or­ganized around the issues of racism andimperialism, or whether the issues hadto "relate to the students' own oppres­sion" (as·if racism and imperialismdon't), and then the tie-in with racismand imperialism woUld be made by theSDS organizers. Suddenly, in rushed aguy who shouted out" If you really wantto help the Wayne students, and winthem over, help in the library workersorganizing drive." So electrifying wasthis rallying call that the chapter, withvery little debate, passed this as a mainpriority for the rest of the year.

For weeks, politics had to be keptunder the table, since the main task wasto get a majority of the student libraryworkers to sign a slip saying that theywanted union representation, and it wouldhardly do to talk revolutionary politicsin that situation. Even when SDS supportfor the student workers became open,the slogans they put up around the schoolranged from • mor~ pay for student work­ersH and "student workers make only$1.35 per hourH to various slogans aboutthe virtues of having a union.

Detroit Staff: NOC, Box 9571 North End Station, DetrOit, Michigan 48202.

Bulk orders at special rates available at all offices.Printed in San Francisco and New York

Los Angeles Staff: Ken dloke, Bob Niemann, Mike Davis, Judy Davis. 1657Federal Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90025 -- (213) 478-9509

New York Staff: SDS Regional Staff, 131 Prince street, New York, New V"rk1001a'-- (212) 674-8310.

Staff:· L~coln Bergman, Renee Blum, Gary Grimshaw, Frank CieClorka,Jerry Densch, Comalana Smith, Terry Cannon. POW: Jeff Segal

Chicago Staff: Room 204, 162 N. Clinton, Chicago, minois 60606--(312) 327­3681'.

THE MOVEMENT 1s pubilshed m'onthly by THE MOVEMENT PRESS, 330Grove -street, San Francisco, California 94102--(415) 626-4577

SUbscriptions -- $2.50 per year; $3.00 foreign (no Canadian posta.! moneyorder please.)

Joseph A. Blum and Arlene Eisen Bergman, Editors

the editors

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

Your response to our call for help was great. We don't havetime to thank each one individually, but we do want you to knowthat it's your support that is responsible for the fact that thepaper will continue to come out. POWER TO THE PEOPLE.

WELCOME HOME ROBERT WILLIAMS

PAGE 2 THE MOVEMENT OCTOBER 1969

THE VANGUARD QUESTION

This raises the question of following theleadership of the Panther Party. There'sa lot of discussion and debate over whetherthe Party is, in fact, the vanguard. A lot

CONTINl!ED ON PA.<»lJ~

of the people. And nobody had one. Beforethe Panthers, the idea ofa viable Marxist­Leninist party was remote, at best, andscorned at worst. Before the PantherParty, there was no national organizationthat raised the fact that "political powercomes from the barrel of a gun". Beforethe Panthers, there was no systematic ex­posure of the dangers of black capitalismand cooptation of "black power". Beforethe Panthers, there was no coherentanalysis that related the struggle in theblack colony to the struggle in the mothercountry and to the world wide struggle forliberatio,n. In short, the Pa,nthers haveadvanced the development of a strategyfor, revolution and a revolutionary organ­ization in the United States.

This is not meant to be an epitaph forthe Panthers. Because the Party, in manyways, continues to play a vanguard role.Also, precisely because the Party rep­resents this "great leap forward" in thedevelopment of a revolution in this coun­try, it is crucial that we not allow thepigs to make the Party only a memory.It would be an incalculable:set back forall of us. . '

We are faced with a choice. We can eithersit back and do nothing--and doing nothingincludes verbal support and doing only yourown political thing. (1 can picture readinga movement history in 20 years that de­scribes the current situation and becomevery angry that we were passive witnessesto the times). Or we can do as much as wepossible can. Fence-sitting is itself achoice to do nothing.

A GREJ\'LLEAP FORWARD

But things like numbers at rallies orletters are not the real indications ofprogress. It's easy now to criticize thePanthers, and a lot of the criticism, isjust. But a lot of the criticism is' notconstructive and seems to eclipse thegreat leap forward they have made forthe movement, and the people of theUnited states.~fore the Panthers, few people in the

movement thought of having a politicalprogram that would relate to the needs

expand, breakfast programs expand andnew programs are launched. Bobby's latestletter from jail suggests new programs forGI organizing, for example. To my know­ledge, Panther membership (in this area)is expanding. Bobby also emphasized:"Now it's time to further develop whatParty members are supposed to know to befunctional. All revolutionary politiciansmusf be able to (or develop to) write andspeak to the people, starting now!' Pol­itical education of Party members is alsobeing intensified. PE classes include ques­tions of day-to-day practice, the hottestissues of the day, as well as theoreticaldiscussions.

As for results. It's hard to judge. Re­cently the Panthers held a Labor Dayrally and picnic in East Oakland. About400 people came, almost all black. stu­dents in the liberation schools writeletters like these to Chairman Bobby:

"Dear Bobby,My name is Edward Brookes. 1 go

to Liberation School in Central Area(Seattle). 1 learned about the Ten Pointsof the Minister of Defense, Black Pan­ther Party. I hope you get alot ofletters from the black brothers andsisters. 1 love you and hope to belike you. ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE,Edward Brookes. .

PANTHERS STILL MOVE FORWARD:

Repression has definitely been taking itstoll. Not only in the obvious sense of puttingthe leadership out of action. The incrediblepressure the pigs have put on the Panthersalso has the effect of forcing the Panthersto make some mistakes - The Panthersjustifiably feel an urgency and justifiablyhave trouble relating to people who don'tshare a sense of urgency about the sur­vival of the Party. -This sense of urgencysometimes takes the form of unjustifiedattacks on other groups, black and white,sudden reverses in alliances etc.

But the Panthers recognize their mis­takes and correct them. They have ab­sorbed the principle of self-criticism.Remember Eldridge's cry of "pussypower"? The Panthers have recognizedthe male chauvinism of this slogan aswell as other practice. And Eldridge him­self has taken the lead in the struggleagainst male chauvinism within the Party."The sisters are our other half" • Recently,in a tape sent to Party headquarters, El­dridge warned the Party against arroganceand the need for tolerance. 'The Partyadmitted quite openly it had alot to learnfrom Eldridge.

Even more important, the Panthers haverecognized the need to intensify mass workin the black community. A month or soago there were always a lot of Panthersaround the national headquarters--doingoffice work, pamphlefs, reading, or justhanging around. Now, the only people inthe office are those doing essential work.The rest are out in the field, pushing thepetition for community control, teachingin liberation schools, working on thebreakfast program, leafletting for ralliesetc, etc.

The Panther'ship may have a few holes,but it is not sinking. All the time .that re­pression is intensifying, liberation schools

URGENC.Y A.ND CYNICISM

By now every.one knows that Bobby isin jail facing charges that could sendhim to the chair. But people have becomecynical. "Another Panther busted•..whatare we going to do tonight? How about amovie for a change?" By now it's routine.Vague headlines about outlandish crimes,the arrest, the denial of bail, the trial(" they've got to acquit"), the sentence.It happened to Huey, it happened to CharlesBursey, it happened to many other Pan­thers and is about to happen to BobbySeale. Connecticut is asking for the deathpenalty.

A lot of movement people have resignedthemselved to being witnes~es of thedestruction of the Black Panther Party.We chant" off the pig", but don' t mean it.We affirm support for the BPP, but givenone in practice. Some would like to pro­vide support, but don't know how. others,find all sorts of excuses for not support­ing the Panthers, "they're taking a badline", etc. Some are even honest enoughto use the rats-Ieaving-a-sinking-shipmetaphor. The Panthers have many fairweather ideologi,cal friends.

by Arlene Eisen BergmanThe other day we were doing

some work in the upstairs sectionof the National Headquarters ofthe Black Panther Party. The of­fice was practically deserted sincemost of the Party members whousually work in the office wereout in the field. Two of us fromTHE MOVEMENT and two tinychildren were, in fact, the onlyones in the upstairs room thatfaces the street. The children wereprancing around the room, playingwith discarded tapes, running andsinging liberation songs and occa­sionally reminding each other that"good comrades share" (toys inthis case).

As 1 watched them play, 1 couldn't helpbut glance at the armored windows andthink about the Berkeley pig department'splan to raid the office and annihilate allit's inhabitants. When the plans were firstexposed, Berkeley's Chief pig admittedtheir authenticity and almost braggedthat they had similar plans for some 40odd movement offices in Berkeley! (Sincethere ain't no 40 movement offices inBerkeley this must mean that raids areplanned for many homes.)

What was that quote? It went somethinglike this:

"When they came for the Panthers, 1didn' t defend them because 1 wasn't aPanther."When they came for SDS, 1 didn'tdefend them because 1 wasn't a memberof SDS."When they came for ... l didn't•.•"And when they came for me, therewasno one, left to defend me."

panther'sstru Ieis thepeople'sstru221e

OCTOBER 1969 THE MOVEMENT pAGE 3

OCTOBER 1969

day of the walk-out, it wasn't coincidence that he wasfired. The rest of the Case workers fouled up theunion leader's plan by walking out with Tony.

From the moment the wildcat occurred, the uniondid everything possible to get the men back to work.When the company fired ALL the strikers after about1 week, the union did nothing other than continue neg­otiations. For the entire 1 1/2 week strike, the unionsent down pickets from the union hall a total of 12hours. At a stewards council meeting, the entire,union leadership talked exclusively about students beingon the picket line and nothing about the substantiveissues of the strike. From the union president on down,the officials waved around the Solidarity Committee'sleaflet like it was one of McCarthy's list of "57 knowncommunists."

The Union leadership managed to screw the men Inyet another way. At first the men had high hopes thatthe women office workers would call In sick in solidaritywith their strike. The ILWU was supposed to send out

-an organizer to form an office workers union In orderto protect the women who refused to scab. Well, theydid send. out an organizer; a man. When asked if hedidn't think a woman could organize women better, hereplied, /la man can do the job better because womenrespect men more." Besides being a rank chaUvinist,he opposed students and blackworkers being on thepicket line. When he called a meeting of the officeemployees, none of them showed up. Later, someBerkeley Women's Liberation organizers attempted tocontact the office workers but the damage had alreadybeen done. The Case management played on the women'sfears of «violence" to turn them against the strikers.Indeed, one secretary phoned the wife of a striker anddemanded that he stop beating up supervisors. Betweenthe unions' chauvinism and the company's manipulation,any possibility of short run office worker-warehousemansolidarity was eliminated.

In a private meeting, the ILWU leadership attemptedto strike a bargain with the Case stewards. They saidthey would regularly send down pickets and give fullsupport to the strike if: l)no more leaflets were passedout anywhere (including the Berkeley campus)and 2)students got off the picket line. This dictum was metwith mixed feeling by the rest of the strikers. After aweek without wages and no progress in settling theWildcat, some men were willing to accept the deal.Those men had either really never liked the idea ofstudent, support or merely viewed students as a forcefor putting pressure on the company. When the ILWUheld out the possibility of even greater pressure-­at least, so the men thought- - they urged students to stayhome.

Other strikers with whom we had made more solidcontact resisted the union "deal". They made thetactical argument that the students were more reliablethan the union leadership--after all, the union had givenno support for a week and the students had been downevery day. But they also argued on principal that thestudents and strikers were fighting a common enemy.The understood that one of the Regents at Berkeleywas also connected with the corporate bigshots who ownCase. They argued it was wrong to think of the strikeas strictly a "union issue". Small numbers of studentscontinued to come down to picket and the more reac­tionary union bureaucrats tried to kick us off the line.The result was very sharp ,argument with many of thestrikers fighting for our right to remain. We stayed.

After one full day of "support" , the ILWU leadershipU settled" the strike with a common wildcat bustingtechnique: overt manipulation.

The Union president and business agents met withthe Distributors Association in private negotiationsFriday afternoon. None of the actual strikers were al­lowed in and when the negotiations concluded, theunion officials would not tell them what had happened.The union officials said only that all the strikers wereto show up for a meeting at 7:00 a.m. Monday morningat the hiring hall. Work at Case normally begins at

The ILWU has probably one of the most left-liberalreputations of any union in the country. The union lead­ership leads militant struggles for union rights, anILWU,business agent spoke out against pig atrocitiesduring People'S Park, and President Harry Bridgesoccasionally urges "workers of the world .• unite."Despite that image, the ILWU leadership is as tiedinto corrupt local politics as much as any union.Mayor Alioto rode to power at least partially becauseof ILWU support and now ILWU leaders sit on cityboards and the Harbor Commission. The ILWU lead­ership deals mercilessly with any insurgent group thatwould dare to challenge its power.

Although the RSU labor committee knew in general thepolitics of the ILWU, we really had no idea the schem­ing and corruption the leadership was capable of. We,along with the Case strikers, assumed that the ILWUleadership supported the strike, but was witholdingpickets until the militancy and radicalness cooled down.We didn't find out until after the strike was settledthat the union leadership was out to screw the strikers,from the very beginning.

Tony was known to some of the union leadership asa trouble maker. One top union official arranged withth e Distributors Association (the bargaining agent forCase and other warehouse management) to fire Tony.When Tony wa:'s jawing with the supervisor on the first

'THE MOVEMENT

lLWU

The minute we began talking with the workers, itbecame obvious that a radical had worked in the;Plant. They began talk~ng to us' about the rascisthiring practice of Case and that blacks should re­ceive preferential hf.ring. They knew about the Rich­mond Oil strike and the role students had playedthere. Animated discussions went on all night. Thesymbolic clincher'came when we found out that theBurns Guards protecting Case's property had just got­ten off duty guarding the fence at People's Park.

After several days on the picket line students andmembers of the Hayward collective showed the workersa draft of a leaflet. The Hayward Collective consistsof Berkeley 'and San Francisco radicals who only re­cently moved into this city south of Berkeley to doworking class organizing. (The leaflet is reprintedon this page) The strikers really dug the leaflet.They wanted to know where we got all the informationabout Case's corporate connections with Tenneco Corp.and Bechtel and how they could find out more. Theyeven offered to take up a collection among them­selves to help pay printing costs.

Later in the week three black workers showed up andbegan rapping with the Case strikers about the "avar­icious businessmen, demogogic politicians, and pigpolice forces that run this country." The strikers,almost all white, stood there with mixed expressionsof curiosity, intimidation, and support. The blacks camedown to the picket line several times and continuedwhat was probably the most educational experienceof the strike.

With the hardy approval of all the strikers, thenewly formed Alameda South County Solidarity Com­mittee (Hayward Collective) issued the leaflet. Inwhat was the high point of the strike, students andworkers took off on joint patrols and saturated the sur­rounding factories with leaflets. Supervisors and plantsecurity guards threatened leafleters with arrest;which naturally made the workers want the leafletsall the more. The father of one of the Case strikers,who worked at a nearby electrical plant, told us that"everybody at my place is talking about the Casestrike and THAT leaflet."

The strikers were young, militant, and had thebeginnings of radical consciousness. Yet after a 1 1/2week wildcat, the vast majority of men voted to returnto work without the main issue settled and five menfired. To understand how the men were forced intothat position, we must first examine the role of theILWU leadership.

PAGE 4

~LITANT WORKERS

After the first day, Tony contacted the BerkeleyRadical Students Union (RSU) labor committee. (TheRSU is split off from the PL-WSA chapter of SDS)Thre~ of us went down to the picket line and askedboth the wildcaters and the two business agents ifstudents could be of any help. Everyone seemed towelcome the idea of student support and we broughtdown 30 pickets that night. One of the strikers toldus "you'd better be prepared, because we may have todo some ass kicking tonight - if you know what Imean."

That night about 30 of us showed up and as one dormfreshmen put it, "I had no idea that workers could beas militant as us." The workers had 'already attemptedto smash the fence surrounding the plant by pushinga 'box car throtgh it. Nails and broken glass surroundedevery entrance, the agricultural combines sitting inthe parking lot had their windows smashed, and a super­visor got beaten up after driving a scab truck throughthe line and almost killing a picket.

by Reese Erlich"Students being on the picket line and

passing out those leaflets," said the head nego­tiator for J.I. Case Company, "changes thewhole nature of the strike from an economicissue to a political one." Union officials of the"liberal" International Longshoremen's Union(ILWU) Local 6 couldn't have agreed more.After a week of B_~r!teley students supportingthe wildcat strike of warehousemen, theILWU officials tried to kick students off theline aDd eventually forced the strikers toreturn to work. '

A former, student radical named Tony had begunworking at Case about six months ago. He quickly be­came shop steward. Tony laid a lot of groundwork byrapping about the Richmond Oil Strike, the Dow Chem­ical strike, the Third World strike at U.C. Berkeley,and the People's Park. He was also relating to theguy's immediate on-the-job needs. Case managementannounced that the non-union, women office workersand outside help would conduct inventory. The menrealized that the compnay was trying to "divide andconquer" by using the women as scabs. The lLWUcontract specifically stated that all warehouse workwas to be done by ILWU members for union scale.The men hoped the women would join the ILWU officew~ers union so that the women wouldn't be in­ti ,idated by Case if they refused to do inventoryw 'k.

, ny and the other steward consulted with union bus­inel'5 agents. These union officers told them that the 'onlyoff~lal means of settling the dispute would be to submitit tP arbitration. Arbitration would probably take sixmO(\ths; Inventory was scheduled in one week. Theb;''I)ess agents then Implied that a work stoppage byall he union men might get some action from the com­pan . Several days later all the warehousemen punched Inan :,*hen demanded to talk with the supervisor about theinventory question before they began work. Tony andsome of the other men got into verbal arguments withthe supervisor. The supervisor then singled out Tony andfired him. The rest ofthe men promptly walked off thejob and set up picket lines.

Once off the job, the men's built up frustrations withthe company exploded. The warehouse had inadequatelighting (Case issued the men flashlights to work insome areas) and the companywas screwing some ofthemen out of their vacation pay. Because of the anti­racist groundwork Tony had laid, the guys were evenpissed off that Case hadn't hired any blacks in theoffice or warehouse.

Teamsters refused to cross the, lines, but manage­ment tried to run out some parts on a company ownedflatbed truck. The striker's picket sign/baseball batssmashed the flatbed's windshield, headlights, and tail­lights. A similar fate met another scab truck whowent through later that night.

The J.I, Case Co. is a small farm machinery ware­house in San Leandro, California, just south of Ber­keley. Although this distribution center employs onlyfifteen warehousemen and about an equal number ofwomen office workers, Case is a multi-million dollarcompany with large plants in Racine, Wisconsin and Tor­onto. Case is owned by Kern County Land Co. whichin turn, is owned by Tenneco, 39th largest U.Scorporation. The San Leandro warehouse sits in themiddle of an industrial park; surrounding factoriesemploy over 10,000 workers. From the beginning ofthe strike, the student support committee developeda strategy of educating workers in nearby plants aswell as at Case. Thus despite. the small size of theplant, it had tremendous potential for radical organ­izing.

GROUNDWORK

How can we fight it?

ALL working people have an interest in winning this strike. It is a fight to preventthe bosses from breaking the union. It is a fight against the bosses' attempt to turn whiteagainst black and men against women.

I

._--- --~

CONTINUED ON PAGE 18

As a result of the Case strike, the RSU labor com­mittee learned to modify our goals somewhat. Al­though we had no collectively established strategy,everybody was hoping for a repetition of the Rich­mond or Mawah strikes. We would have Hked to seemass mobilizations of students to help win the wild­eaters' demands. We learned that in most situationsstudents can lend publicity, supplementary pickets,moral support, and consciousness raising discussionson the picket line; we can't set thetactics and strategy.

If we were able to relive the strike, we would con­centrate on establishing permanent contacts with the

CORRECT STRATEGY

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

The symbol on the right me~ns that if we sticktogether like a clenched fist we can fight moreeffectively for our rights and cannot be brokenlike the separate fingers of an outstretched hand.

Tenneco also specializes in tax dodges. Case has run in the red for a long time sothat Kern Land can buy farm equipment cheap while Tenneco writes Case off as a taxloss. One of Tenneco's directors owns the Bechtel Construction Corporation. Bechtelis the single largest contractor for Bay Area Rapid Transit. While every year wehave to pay higher taxes to meet BART's new troubles, Bechtel gets tax write off con­tracts for the construction it does in Vietnam. And Case fits right in: while Amer­icans are forced to fight and die in a war against people who are fighting for nation­al liberation,' Case sucks Vietnamese and American blood by marking up all DefenseDepartment orders by 50%.

Case is an old hand at fighting unions. Case is owned by Kern County Land Co., oneof the biggest agricultural companies in California. It has led the fight to keep the farmworkers from organizing a union. Kern itself is owned by Tenneco, the 39th largest~orporation in the"U.S.• Tenneco specializes in hiring and exploiting non-union workersin its Latin American oil fields while charging the normal high prices for gasolineback home. That's what imperialism is all about.

WITH SOLIDARITY We have to defeat this old divide and conquer game they're playing.If the bosses can bust one union, they can bust all our unions. If we .let them turn menagainst women and white against black the bosses will always win.

The ILWU members aren't going for this. They're helping women in the office organ­ize a union; not fighting them. They're insisting that Case hire blacks, not kick themoff their picket lines. They need our help in this struggle.

We urgtllthe men to hold a joint press conference withstudents and black workers, and discussed the possi­bilities of mass mobilizations of students at the plant.Although at the time most of the workers voicedgeneralapproval of these ideas, they were not ready to acceptthe possible consequences: excommunication from theunion.

Students' suggesting tactics was later exploited by theunion leadership. They claimed students were using theworkers. This argument mixed with threats of with­holding all union support if students continued pic-

What the bosses are doing at Case is no different from what happens to us on our jobsevery day. At Case the brothers said NO. But none of us can do it alone. Come downand join the Case picket line. Support the struggle there andlet':> start talking abouthow working people can get together and say NO to all the cor1lOrations that run thiscountry and exploit the rest of the world.

Case is playing the divide and rule game. They're forcing women office workers toscab on union men. They're playing on the fears of some older guys that they'll loseretirement. They refuse to hire black workers and then ask police to keep the blacksoff the lines because they are not emPloyeesi: They have taken court action to limitthe number of allowable pickets to two in order to keep SDS students and black workerswho support the strike from walking on the picket lines. This injunction cannot prevent"observers" from visiting the lines, however.

keting, led many of the men to oppose students beingon the line. The Arkansas born worker, for example,ended up in the anti-stUdent camp.

The strikers themselves were caught in a majorcontradiction. Being only 15 men out on a wildcatstrike, they had little power in the 7,000 memberlocal. Not having been in the union for very long,some of the young workers assumed - along withsome RSU members - that student support could sup­plant the union. It soon became clear to everyone~

however, that in a strike of this size, students couldn'thope to replace the bread and butter services of theunion : strike fund, recognition as the "legitimate~

. negotiator, and jobs if the men were fired.By the end of the wildcat, the strikers did realize

the vital functions the union plays in a small strike.But they did rio.t move effectively to the next step:carrying on a militant struggle within the union a­gainst the corrupt and reactionary leadership. Hadsome radicals been organizing inside the ILWU, theUnion leadership would not have been able to sellout the strike to easily.

II

L ALAMEDA COUNTRY SOLIDARITY COMMITTEE

Labor Donated

!-:1. CASE VS.~E PEOPLE - -- -- II ILWU local 6 members are on stike against J.I Case Farm Machine Co. Case insL.~ts ,

that "nbn-union women office employees,working at substandard wages, do inventorywork that supposed to be done by union men at union scale.

When the warehousemen raised a beef, their steward was fired and they were lockedout.

~SU SELF-CRITICISM

The RSU labor committee, the Hayward Collective, andmost of the wildcaters really dido't understand thetremendously powerful forces at work in the strike.Case Co. had managed to resist all unionization until1965 when their Racine plant finally was orgainizedintothe UAW. Several attempts to unionize the San Leandrowarehouse failed because Case intimidated and firedunion organizers. Case management fought very hardagainst the National Labor Relations Board electionsnine months ago and wasn't very pleased that the plantwent union. They saw this wildcat as the opportunityto fire trOUblemakers, intimidate the rest ofthe workers,and eventually bust the union. They at first refused tonegotiate claiming it was an "illegal strike~. then theymade an issue of "violence and destruction of property" ,and finally of "outside agitators~. They threatened tomove the entire plant to Salt Lake Cit y rather thanhire back the strikers. •

The union leadership picked up on exactly the sameissues in order to convince the men to return to work.They played on the men's fear of losing their jobs andthey wore them down with 24 hour picket duty with norelief from the hiring hall. During the entire Wildcat,corrupt union officials were scheming behind thescenes to make sure Tony was fired and the strikesettled - by any means necessary.

The ten member RSU labor committee came trippinginto this vice of power politics and managed to get prettywell squeezed. Like most sub-committees of radicalstudent organizations, we don't have a clear politicalstrategy. The students who were able to go down tothe lines most often would have good political rapsand help make tactical decisions, but the strategy was"do your own thing and see how the workers react". Wenever, for example, collectively decided to make solidcontacts with certain of the more advanced workers.Individuals from the labor committee would spend alot of time on the picket line, but did not relate theirexperience back to the collective.

As a result of these atomized discussions with theworkers, we tended to get an inflated view of theirconsciousness. For example, there is one white workerborn in Arkansas who had voted for Wallace last year.In the previous months of rapping with Tony and duringthe' strike, he came to believe that Case should hiremore blacks and that Black Panthers are" just workingguys like us~. Rather overcome with this example ofthe student's sterling ability to raise conSCiousness,we proceeded too quickly to the next step.

Students began suggesting tactics for the strike.

8:00 A.M.The men were given 45 minutes to decide to goback.

The union made it clear that everyone would be hiredexcept three, whose cases could be arbitrated. One ofthe business agents later told me why the men had beengiven such short notice to go back to work: "We didn'twant them running from pillar to post trying to makeup their minds. We didn't want any agitating going onover the weekend. ~

The men returned to work without any argument.When the men returned to work that morning, twomore were laid off and several days later the chiefsteward was hired back. The box score On the Wildcat:four firings, arbitration for two of them, and the inven­tory question unsettled. Clearly, most of the men wereweary after endless hours of picketing without unionsupport and discouraged after losing 1 1/2 weeks pay.

Many of the strikers succomed to the ILWU lead­ership's anti-student propaganda. We have managed tomaintain contact with others.

In one sense, the sell-out settlement at Case wasfated. Wildcats rarely conclude with settlements fav­orable to the men; the combined power of the com­pany and union is too great. Yet the radicals couldhave made more solid and permanent contacts withthe strikers as well as heightening contradictions withinthe union if we had a clearer political strategy.

OCTOBER 1969 THE MOVEMENT PAGES

by Larry Lockshin

The vanguard strike at San Francisco State left in its wake 700 stu­dents and community supporters facing trials. Since April, 167 of the435 arrested in the mass bust last January have been tried. Out of thesetrials, we have been learning a lot about self-defense as a vililble tactic inthe courtroom. This article is written for people who may be arrested forpolitical struggle and might think of defendfug themselves.

11

Why defend yourself?

Much good can corne from a self~efense

done well. A person who, in sell-defense,can present himself as a sincere andcommitted person can do much to counterwhatever slander the DA might throw atthe jury. Someone who has experience inpolitical struggle has distinct advantagesover a lawyer. We know what went downand understand the relevant politics. Tiltsis very useful in the courtroom and it'sthe rare lawyer who can vicariously pickup such knowledge and assimilate it erioughto be able to use it.

MOVEMENT AS COUNSEL

As the struggle intensWes, arrestswlllincrease. ThUS, there will be a shortageof lawyers. Most lawyers, when involvedin movement cases, don't see them aspolitical trials, but rather as criminalcases. They don't have any coherentgrasp of the politics, and given their classbackground, tr~, social posltlon,there

,is no reason tothlnkthat the average law.,yer wlll understand or be able to dea1' Witha political trial. . '

Lawyers who didn' t dig our politicshave been a primary factor in the largenumber of convictions handed down inthe SF State trials. Because ofthe numberarrested, and the amount of time involvedin each trial, we were forced to dependon public defenders. In addition to thelong-standing fact of their relathe incom­petance, the public defenders office wastremendously understaffed. So we putout a call to san Francisco law firmsand individUal practicioners to contributetheir time. Many of these lawyers' wereyoung and were either sent by their firmsor volunteeered because they wanted theexperience. Few carne because they under­stood and supported the politics of thestrike.

It's possible the some lawyers w111go through some changes and can be wonover to the movement. ,This'has happenedwith a few lawyers in the' State cases.Of course, it is necessary to build a cadreof legal talent committed to defending thosearrested in people's struggles. But in the

legal vaccuum created by wholesale ar­rests, it's absolutely' necessary that wetake on the burden of self-defense to.

. insure that the politics of our strugglesare not lost in the courtroom.

The movement has always had a hard.time relating to the courts. The battlein the courtroom is demoralizing and ap-

.pears isolated from what's happening in thestreets. This is partly because as defen-dants, people who have struggled areUSUally forced to take a passive role andlet the experts (lawyers) carry the ball.But when we defend ourselves, that role

.disappears. Also when "layemn" dare todo the job of "professionals" alot of theintimidating image of the courtroom isbroken down. Court procedure and, allthe legalistic jargon has traditionallyserved to obfuscate the issues and pre-'serve a distance between the people and"their servants" All professionalism isconservative. By defending. ourselves webegin to break down one of the barriersof privilege set up by the bourgeois systempf justice. ,

.PREPARATION

Once you decide to defend yourself, a lotof time is needed for preparation. It' svery useful to sit in on a number of trialsto check out how they operate. During thesevisits, it's important to pay special at­tention to the jury selection process,because once a jury is chosen the verdict is90% in. Also check out the grounds ofmotions which are made in the course ofa trial.

If you're part of a group trial, that cre­ates special problems of preparation. Inthe State cases, the mass of defendantswere broken down into groups of ten tostand trial. Not everyone in the groupmay want to defend thems~lves. The lawyerwlll almost certainly be oppOsed to aper­son in "pro per" (legal term for self­defense) and see him as a threat to hisab1l1ty to run the case according to hisown judgment. The other defendants mayalso be a bit hesitant, fearing that theirchances for acquittal may be jeopardized.

We should never give up the idea ofself-defense because of a lawyer's op­position, though we should make everyat­tempt to work with him during the trial.

But if the co-defendants are solidly op­posed to a self-defense, then it should bedropped. The solidarity of the defensegroup is more important than the advan­tages gained by an individual self-defense.Obvious disunity in the courtroom can onlyhurt our chances for acquittal. ,But, evenmore important, if the defendants aredivid,ed, then lawyers have a free reignto run the defense arbitrarily. This hap­pened in many of the state trials.

To avoid "dictatorship of the lawyers"group meetings are useful. In our group,meetings began shortly before the trialand continued twice weekly during the trial.In these meetings lawyers participated inthe group just like any other member.We made collective decisions on which jur­ors we wanted, the kind of informationto be brought out in cross- examination, theorder of defense witnesses etc. The meet­ings were also useful in educating thelawyers. Most important, we built unitythrough struggle in the meetings.

PROBLEMS OF STRATEGY

lit a lot of the State trials there wasn'ta clear concept of what constituted a rev­olutio~y political. defense. The prose­cutions' case, in whlcn there was neverany evidence against "individuals but onlyagainst the crowd at the rally, forceddefendants to prove their innocence. Theprosecution didn' t try to show that thedefendants were guilty of the crimes withwhich they were charged. Rather he triedto show that the strike spawned a greatdeal of. violence and that people supportingthe strike wanted to shut down the school.He argued that because we were a minorit}we had to violently intimidate people toclose the campus.

Broadly speaking, three different strat­egies emerged f-rom the trial to deal with.the prosecution' s line. The most commonone was an attempt to educate the jurythrough a combination of factual evidence,some minimal reliance on the first amend­ment, and a heavy emphasis on establish­ing the motivations of the defendants. Theytried to have the jury accept each defen­dant as an individually-motivated, moralhuman being, rather than a member of amOb, bent on destroying society.

This strategy is basically a passive de­fense. It never confronts the question ofthe origins of the violence. The wholeareas of state power resting on violenceand police brutality are avoided. (Mostlawyers were afraid the DA would turnit around and talk about rock-throwingstUdents). So they left no room to discusssell-defense against the pigs. Also, theymade little or no attempt to refute thelying assumption that a minority of stu­dents. supported the strike. The factis that 80% of the students were out of

.class the whole month of January. Also,they made little attempt to show that thepolice staged the mass arrest to breakthe strike because of its widespreadsupport.

A second strategy was put forth byProgressive Labor and its al11es in theWorker-Student Alliance. They called formany defendants to defend themselvesand mount a full attack on the courtswithin t.he courtroom. Theywantedtoshowthe jury that the court system is usedby corporate interests to defend imperial­ism and racism, and to smash peoples'movements. Lawyers are attacked asserving as second DA's. All courtroomprocedures are shams.

This is all true. But admitting all this,why and how do you make this the basis ofyour defense? What is your purpose andwho are you talking to?

A PL-WSA leaflet tried to answer thewhy question:

"If we expose the real nature of the legalsystem while also building support inthe community and on the campus, wecan more forcefully challenge the courtsthat are used to protect the few inpower. Our defense must rest in thejustness of the fight against racismand depend on the power of the people,united in mass action to continue thatfight...Only by relying on the masses-­fellow students and working people-­for support can we have the strength to

II

fight the courts and the corporate classthey serve.

But, in fact, PL has not organized anymass support around these trials, neitheron campus or in the community. The waythey implemented this political line, has,in fact , left them totally isolated fromeven the rest of the defendants. Theyleft themselves to fight in a vacuumand receive the stiff1st jail terms. TwoPL people received a year each in jail.

Who was PL talking to? Definitely notto 'its: fellow defendants who mostly rejectPL. To the jury then? It's sheer fantasyto believe that any juror is going to re­nmlOce all his previous beliefs merelybecause he receives a political lecturefrom the defendant. Jurors can be talkedto and moved politically in the courseof the trial. Many have, in fact, done so.But a revolutionary must first assessthe realities of the situation to see what'spossible. PL's absolutism and demand thatthe juror's become class conscious rev­olutionaries overnight was not only wrong,but turns out to be defeatist and to askfor martyrdom.

While it's true that we can't expectfair trials, it's not true that acquittalsare impossible. Out of 21 trials, about one­fourth have' been acquitted and anotherfourth have had hung juries.

Lastly, when you know your actions aredesigned to get you convicted, you shouldhave a pretty good rea/ion to justify theusefulness of heavy jail terms. Heavysentences will no doubt become morecommon as the contradictions in thesystem intensify. But we shOUldn't de­liberately ask for such sentences. ln thestate trials, the effect of heavy sen­tences did nothing to encourage furtherstruggle by sincere, but as yet uncom­mitted people. (Most people convicted oftwo or three misdemeanors were giventhe choice of 15-60 days in jail, 90 to 180days suspended, and one to three- yearsprobation OR 45 to 60 day s in jail. (Exceptfor the strike leaders and those chargedwith felonies, only PL people got a year injail).

.A BETTER STRATEGY

; The essence of a political defense liesin Us purpose: to educate the jury so thatthey will 'be able to interpret evidencebrought" forth in its proper political con­text; and that based on this w111 reacha verdict of not guilty because they haveat least an elementary understanding of thesocial forces in motion. What this meansconcretelY,obviou'sly,ts determined by eachindividual'set of circumstances. However,it can generally be show that whateverarrests were made were done so notbecause any crimes had been committed,but because the pigs were actingtofright­en and intimidate and smash a peoplesmovement. It also should be generally truethat the people arrested are on trial fortheir beliefs, not their actions, and thatconflicting class interests are involved.

In the mass bust trials, a politicaldefense involved first of all an explan­ation of the strike and a vigorous re­affirmation of thedefendantl:i'supportofthestrike. The defense had to show that thestrike was widely supported by stUdents,faculty, and staff, at the college. The con­tinual unfolding of the role of the policethat the evidence brought out, in terms ofthe massive violence they initiated andtheir attempts to break the strike was alsoimportant.'. Also, when we conduct political defense,we should still lay a factual basis anddeal with the specific charges made ag­ainst us. It's important to present wit­nesses and secondary materials (tapes,pictures etc) that w111 discredit the pro­secution. Then once this foundation islayed, it's logical to poin t out that thecharges are a frame and explain thatpeople are guilty of fighting for what theybelieve.

JURY SELECTION

Contrary to expectations, there is somepotential support from prospective jurors.While they may be biased against usfrom what they've heard in the mass media,

PAGE 6 THE MOVEMENT OCTOBER 1969

there are many who don't believe the mediaand can be talked to during the trial. It'snot crucial that all 12 jurors be solid.This is impossible anyway. But if one ortwo can be counted on to fight during thedeliberations, then the others may follow.

In any case, the DA will try to excludeall third world people and youth. The judgemay refuse to dismiss for cause thosewho deny their bias and the defense isforced to use up his challenges. At somepoint, try to get the jUdge to ask allthose who feel they are biased to risebefore they are questioned on the stand.In this way, some might be excused fromthe bench, conserving defense challen­ges.

There are no hard and fast rules forchoosing a jury. But generally, thirdworld people, youth and workers arepreferable. White collar workers shouldbe neither accepted or rejected automat­ically. Craft workers, especially fromracist unions, should be examined withthe utmost suspicion. Supervisors, ex­ecutives and elderly people are more},lad than good.

In addition to actually selecting the jury,the process itself (know as "voir dire")ts central in raising the issues ofthe trial.,The questions we ask the potential jurorsraise the political issues around the ar­rest and establish them as relevant to thetrial. Voire dire is one of the best op­portunities to politically educate the juryenough to look for reason to acquit ratherthan convict. You can educate some jurorsby exposing the racism and bias of others.·Would you be prejUdiced against me be­cause I support the 10 point program of theBlack Panther Party which states•.. "(Tryto keep goingwhen the DA objects. The jurygets interested)

The advantage of conducting the voir direyourself is that yO'll can begin 'to breakdown the image of the "defend'ant" whoisathing that sits at the table, never says aword, and has done something possiblywrong. You should talk directly to the jury­establish yourself as a human being very,much like the people on the jury or theirchildren with real feelings and motiva­tions. Talk about life-styles. Don't tryto pretend you're something you're not.Instead talk to the jury about why you livethe way you do. All of this can be arrangedinto questions: Do you have any children?Does you son have long hair? Would youaccept the word of a police officer morethan the defendant just because he's apoliceman? Do you think that cops everlie? Do you think that al!hippies are liars?

In the state trials, the riA plays a tape thatrecords some people at the rally chanting"Fuck California". So when choosing ju­rors, we used these words, or askedabout profanity partly to evaluate theirresponse, but also to accustom the jurorsto the profanity that would come up in thetrial. More important. we asked prospect­ive jurors if they,thoug!lt l students hadthe right to strike and'also about their ownunion experience. A question that doesn'tcall fo.r an opinion, but introduces a topicis also'valuable. "If testimonywere offeredthat said a policeman beat a stUdent, orarrested a student without provocation,would you tend to disregard such testi­mony merely because of its content?"

If the DA does exclude all third worldpeople and youth, you should note thenames of these excluded jurors for pos­sible appeal. We must wage struggles inthe courts for our right to a jury of ourpeers. ~lso, it might be possible tobring up the DA's racism during voirdire. In short, we must use every pos­sible chance to raise the political issuesof our struggle and many times we have tomake those opportunities ourselves, be­cause the DA won't give them easily.

PROSECUTION

The period when the prosecution is pre­senting his case can be the period when thestrongest foundation of the case can bemade. If the charges are a frame, as theywere in our case, effective cross-exam­ination can win the case. Without it,there is almost no chance for acqUittal.

During the cross-examination, watch forthe contradictions in the prosecution'scase. Witnesses may say things thatcontradict the testimony ofanother witnessor even his own. In our trial, for example,we know one witness (a pig) had'messedover lots of people and we wanted to getinto that. In a movie used by the prose­cution, there was a cry of "Doctor,Doctorl"coming from the people arrested. I usedthis as an' opening into the whole areaof brutality with the pig on the wit-

, ness stand during cross examination.-Q: Did you hear from the encircled crowd

a cry for doctors?

A: Yes.

Q: What did you do when you hear that?

A: Nothing.

Q: NOTHING!

A: Well, I thought my sargeant heard tileUland that it was his responsibility.

Q: Did you know for sure that he heard,them?,

A: No.

Q: Did you see people with bloody heads?

A: Yes.

Q: And you still did nothing?

A: No, nothing.,

Q: You mean somebody could have beenlaying there bleeding to death and you'would have just stood there'?

A: It wasn't my job.

THE DEFENSE ON THE STAND

When the defense is prese~ting itswitnesses, its good to have them arrangedso some sort of logical and consistantcase is being built. The high point is whenthe person defending himself is on thestand. This shOUld come at the end of thedefense, after a good foundation has beenlayec;L

Witnesses must prepare for the testi­mony they give , .on the stand. In theState trials;' many defendants blew it onthe witness stand because they couldn'tdefend their politics or their supportfor the strike artic~ately under D.A,cross-examination. People got especiallyhung up over not being able to explainthe violence, or the slogans."What doespower to the people mean?" It's wiseto anticipate the content of the DA'scross examination and be prepared forit. Rhetoric must be avoided - we shouldexplatn our politics in 'simple languagethat the jurors can understand.

The myth about trials is that t'l'iE!casewill be decided solely on the basis of thefacts. But, in the State cases, if the DAhad to rely only on the facts,he'd neverbe able to win. His strategy is to distortthe strike in a way that prejudices thejury so that the facts become irrelevant.The defense should counter this by pre­senting hard facts which highlight theirrationality of the prosecution and pro­vide a sharp contrast in the two casesthe adversaries present.

The politics of the case should bedrawn from the facts. The nature of

the conflicting forces and what each side·~tan9sfor must be clear. The people are'fighting racism and for self-determin­ation of third world people. The pigsand school administration are fightingfor ,the interests of the' corporate l)'iag­'rlates who make immense profits offthe exploitation of other people.

The question is how to bring this outat the trial. It' s a fact that the judge willcooperate with the D.A. and let him bringout all his politics. Any attempt by thedefense, however, to do the same willbe stopped. One could refuse the warningsof the judge to "stick to the issues", asin fact has been the approach of PL, butit's good to avoid hassles with the judge,when possible. For the most part, thejury respect the judge. Unless a judge isSo outrageouslv and oDenlvbial';ed thllHhl <;

can be turned around to the favor of thedefense, it's best not to attempt what isalmost impossible to accomplish. '

Still, the political points have to bemade, even against the opposition ofthe judge and the D.A. This requiresan analysis of what political points can bebrought out of what particular set of facts.After the case is thought through in thisway, then the facts must be deduced fromwitnesses and the political points made bythe nature of the questions asked ofthe witnesses.

For instance, an important point in theState trials was that the police made thearrests to break the strike. The factswere that the administration and police hada meeting three hours before the rallyand decided at that time to make thearrest. Police witnesses admit to that,more or less. The tactic of a massarrest in itself was a new one, neverbefore used on the campus. Moreover,the police made the arrests after the ad­ministration indicated their desire tomake the mass arrest. This too was achange in policy. And the chage of policycame because the administration realizedthat the strength of the strike was growing.

It was possible to bring most of thesefacts out of prosectuion witnesses oncross-examination. Once the facts wereout, then the obVious thing to ask was,"Isn't it a fact that the arrest was madeto break the strike?" It's not importantif the prosecution witness denies this.What is important is that the issue beraised continuously and the prosecution

CONTINUEP ON P~GE 19

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OCTOBER 1969 THE MOVEMENT PAGE 7

evans

------

ree. anmeAhmed Evans was sentenced to

die in the electric chair on Sep­};ember 22 for supposedly killing~hree pigs, on July 23, 1968. TheJuly 23 Defense Committee has'uccessfully fought for a stay ofexecution pending appeal of thecase. The movement somehowpverlooked this case until Evanswas sentenced. Publicity and agita­tion in Evans' defense is now longpverdue.

On July 23, 1968, a shootout in theJ,Jlenville section of Cleveland triggeredthree days of insurrection. The gun

lattle ·lasted only fifteen minutes.eventeen pigs were shot-three died.even black people were shot-one died.

While it is impossible to know who

~tuallY fired the shots, Ahmed was

harged. Ahmed has never denied hisarticipation in the "Battle of Cleve­

and." Four other black brothers facedimilar charges. One, Brother Non-Du,

s been sentenced to 100 years with nol;hance of parole.[HE TRIAL

Evans was tried by an all-white jury(one·third of Cleveland is black). Afeport documenting how white racismwas the underlying cause of the July 23~attle was withheld until after Ahmed'strial. A~thorities were afraid that thef'Masottl Report" (done by a liberalwrote professor) glight create some sym­pathy among the jury.

The grounds for appeal are racism.There were continual racist slurs duringthe trial. Example:

When Laurie, the prosecuting attor­pey, questioned May Louise Brown, ablack woman who testified that thecops tore her clothes during the inci­itent, molesting her, he said, "You hatelvhite people, don't you?"

When she replied, "No," he declared,"This country has been good to you.Didn't my color train your people?Wasn't it my color people that put upthe money for these programs?"

One of the defense lawyers immedi­,tely moved that the case be dismissedat this point, citing a whole series ofsimilar remarks. The motion was, oftourse, denied.

The judge was blunt in his reasons forsentencing Ahmed to death:

"Now you have caused really a dread­ful and awesome state actually to existin our community and our nation. You~now, actually, before we had this Glen- .

ville incident that has been adjudicatedas caused really by you, there was neverany open display anywhere by young­sters. Now, boys (!) of the same age asyour followers, and who are, however,college students (at Cornell), they nowfeel that apparently it is the properthing to do and the legal thing to do, tohave a show of rifles, shotguns, bando­liers, and basically these children arereally emulating the example that youset as part of this incident which is nowcoming to a conclusion."

(Medical witnesses at Evans' trial tes­tified that two of the pigs who werekilled were drunk at the time. The de­fense argued, in part, that the pigs killedeach other.)

SINCE THE TRIAL

While the judge may think that he"concluderl" the struggle for black lib­eration with the sentencing of Ahmed,Ahmed's statement says otherwise. Also,the pigs in Cleveland continue their waragainst the black community. In Aprilof this year, Ahmed's brother, William"Bootsie" Evans, was found shot todeath near the office of Evans' lawyer.The pigs claimed that Bootsie was killedduring a hold-up attempt and Cleve­land's police prosecutor ruled that the~hooting was "justifiable homicide."Black nationalists in Cleveland believehe was murdered by the pigs as a warn­ing to Ahmed's attorney and others.

The July 23 Defense Committee iswaging a campaign to free Ahmed andthe four other brothers railroaded forthe same crime. It needs money andhelp in getting out information to peo­ple across the country. Its address isP.O. Box 2404, East Cleveland, Ohio44112.

Ahmed Evans' Statement After SentencingAfter o~ of the most racist· trials in this coun­

try's history, AhrTJed E~ans ~as found guilty offi.rst degree murder in Cleveland by an all-whiteJury this week. He had been charged with con­spiracy to murder in a cas~arislng from the gun-

·battle shooting· of tbree wmte cops who invadedthe black neighborhood last July 23.

After several weeks of courtroom hysteria andenough {acist remarks by the prosecution to provokemost black people to justifiable rage, Mr. Evansaccepted the'verdict calmly-even. though his chiefdefense attorney, Charles W. Flc~ing,who had ex­pected acquittal or leniency, was Visibly shaken andnearly broke down.....Mr. Evans then proceeded quietlyand with ~reat dignity to utter the follOWing wordsjust' before the Judge sentenced him to die in theelectric chair.

"I don't think there is any doubt ,that the peopleof my race have every right in'the world and haveevery reason in the world to resist and to reach outand become what they were created, men - notsymbols, I mean-'not half anything, but whole asI am whole; ,

., I fully understand the ways of life as they arenow, and the truth of the matter is I have no regret.That is to say, I have no malice towards anyone,white people Or anyone else. Just the reality of thematter that counts....

"The electric chair or fear' of anything won'tstop the black man of today. Like, I fully understood~hat I .lnight encounter when I became a Black

.Nationalist; but I didn't be<;0me a Black Nationalist

.to. seli out my people... I became a Black National­ist because I wanted to help. I felt that I had some-thing to give them, to aid them, and J did.

" I .feel justified in that I did the best I could.And of course, concerning these charges, I am nota murderer. I don·t think that any,record I may havemade proves me to be a murderer.

"However. I want it to be fully understood thatall ,the men that I have known and all the peoplewhom I have assocated With, that they are on theright path because when you are on the right pathto righteousness in a world such ·as we now live in,you are bound to rlV'l into opposition, the likes ofthiS.

"This is to be expected. I mean. you just can'tsay that you are going to turn away from a worldat iniquity and walk along a red carpet. It is nottbat way. I mean, when you turn around from eviland wrongdoing, you are bound to run into thesetypes of oppositions; and I fully accepted them andI do now. Thank you."

RACISMSome examples from the first trial: the statement

of the prosecutor:"We are asking you to punish William Harvey so

that others may know that conditions such as thiscannot and will not be tolerated in the Marine Corpsor the military service . . . the accused stands as anexample and the government submits to the courtthat the sentence which the court will impose on thp.accused will serve as an example to other Marines ..."

An officer on the so-called trial panel was askedabout Daniels being a Black Muslim and said, "If Iknew in advance that a man assijW.ed to my com­pany was a Black Muslim and advertising this fact,this would to my mind mean trouble and I could see. .. I could foresee problems."

Recently, the two men described some of the con­ditions at the prison:

"In Portsmouth it is psychological slavery. Theytry to beat a man down in the dust so bad to makehim go along with the establishment knowing thatwhen he gets back out on the streets he won't take uparms against them. When a man is hurt and he needssomething badly, they more or less keep him ondrugs and keep his mind off the problem rather thantreat him."

The appeals court has not ~et decided whether ornot to send George Daniels and Bill Harvey back toprison. Publicity and protest can help them.

".clt "'1 ()n r,I.'The military has recently issued a whole

slew of regulations that are supposed to gov­ern the handling of GI protest, that are in­tended to stifle the militant revolt now goingon in the Armed Forces. Most of the regula­tions deal with the limits of dissent; you cangive a clenched fist salute so long as it is notduring official ceremonies or drills but only ingreeting other GIs. You can have an Afro solong as your hair in general is not over threeinches long and conforms.

But all this talk about the limits of dissent is bull­shit and the military dictatorship is still brutally re­pressing GI struggles. The public announcement ofsupposed constitutional regulations only serves tocover up how uptight the military is. Of all the pro­test and revolt in the military only a small amountleaks out, but what does leak is enough indication ofgrowing disillusionment with imperialism. And therevolt hits them where it hurts.SEDITION

George Daniels and Bill Harvey are two blackMarines who were sentenced to ten and six years inprison under a Smith Act charge of sedition in thesummer of 1967 for saying in private conversationswith other Gis that black men should not have tofight in Vietnam. They are currently out of jail on

PAGES'... Jrl.1 ~_ ~

appeal after serving two years hard labor at Ports­mouth Naval Prison. They could.be returned to serveout the rest of their terms if the appeal fails.

Private Daniels received a ten year sentence forallegedly "advising, urging, and attempting to causeinsubordination, disloyalty, and refusal of duty."Corporal Harvey was sentenced to six years for mak­ing "disloyal statements." They were not chargedwith committing any act-they were imprisoned fortheir words alone.

The following facts of the case are taken fromcourt martial records:

There was a bull session after noon chow among agroup of black and white Marines. Discussion turnedto the war in Vietnam and to the other war, the waragainst Black America . . . Detroit was in the news.National Guardsmen had iust heen dispatched tomany American cities in flames; any time now blackMarines might be ordered to murder their brothers.. During the same time there were several displays ofblack solidarity at Camp Pendleton ... such as whenan officer ordered two black Marines to run "on thedouble" as punishment for a minor infraction and thetwo Marines and several others walked slowly away.

There followed a period of interrogation and inAugust William Harvey and George Daniels werecharged. Harvey was charged with saying that "theblack man should not go to Vietnam to fight thewhite man's war," Daniels with saying, "the blackman should not fight in Vietnam because he wOJ,lldhave to come back and fight the white man "in theUnited States." Witnesses described tl1e gatheringwhere the men allegedly made the statement as a"barracks discussion," and "bull session," but thebrass was on the lookout for black revolt. Months

T.HE MOVEMENT

10' SeditionOCTOBER 1969 .

ON TO VICTORY

High on every terraced mountainRises rice of revolutionJoin us in the harvestWe shall win.

WE SAY

He lived to hearHis nieces and his nephewsSing the sOngs of revolutionAnd they sing.

He lived to seeThe building of the newRising ever higherAnd they build.

He lived to touchThe outstretched hand of freedomTo hold it in his handAnd they grasp it.

He lived to smQ(1The flowers of the childrenIn the air of independenceAnd they breathe.

lie lived to tasteThe fruits of victoryTo sip the tea ,f h, "pinessWe must win.

OC1'08£tt 1-'

II. HE SAID

I remember whenI became a manDespising oppressionDetermined to end it.

I remember whenI travelled and studiedThrough practice becomingA Communist.

And I remember whenImprisoned and torturedThe poetry of hopeBroke through the bars. .

It was not me, it was the peopleWe organized and foughtSo many fellBut fell in victory.

And eVen nowifhe struggle deepensFighting while we buildTo freedom.

III. WE SAY

Uncle, comrade, teacherPushed up fromOppression's soilTo march among us.

Uncle, comrade, teacherWe learn from youTo gather millionsWho will guard your memory

Uncle, comrade, teacherYou march among usLeader of the revolutionBringing power to the people.

Grief at firstl3ut it.is overcomeBy all that you have doneBy all that we must do.

-bvLiMeIR ........

TIIIl MOVEMDf'I'

'HE ,,I'HWHICH.lEI) ME ,fJlENINllMby

HfJ CHI MIN"

After World War 1, I made my living in Parisnow as a retoucher at a photographer's, now aspainterl of «Chinese antiqu1t1es~ (made in France!).I would distribute leaflets denouncing the crimescommitted by the French colonialists in' Viet-nam.

At that time, I supported the October Revolution onlyinstinctively, not yet grasping all its historic import­ance. I loved and admired Lenin because he wasa great patriot who liberated his compatriots; untilthen, I had read none of his books.

The reason for my joining the French Socialist Partywas that these "ladies and gentlemen~ - as I called

. my comrades at that moment-had shown their sympathytoward me, toward the struggle of the oppressed peoples.But I understood neither what was a party, a trade­union, nor what was Socialism or Communism.

Heated discussions were then takint place in thebranches of the Socialist Party, aQout the question ofwhether the Socialist Party should remain in theSecond International, should a Second-and-a-haifinter­national be founded, or should the Socialist Party joinLenin's Third International? I attended the meetingsregularly, twice or thrice a week, and attentively lis­tened to the discussions. First, I could not understandthoroughly. Why were the discussions so heated?Either with the Second, Second-and-a-haIf or ThirdInternational, the revolution could be. waged: What wastwhheatUshedofbearguing then? As for the First International

a corne of it? 'What I wanted most to know-and this precisely was

not debated in the meetings-was: Which Internationalsides with the people of colonial countries?

I raised this question - the most important in myopinion - in a meeting. Some comrades answered: Itis the Third, not the Second, International. And. a com­rade gave me Lenin's "Thesis on the National andColonial Questions, ~ published by L'HUMANITE,to read.

There were political terms difficult to understandin this thesis. But by dint of reading it again and againfinally I could grasp the main part of it. What emotion,enthusiasm, clear-sightedness, and confidence it in­stilled into me! I was overjoyed to tears. Thoughsitting alone in my room, I shouted aloud as if ad­dressing large crowds: "Dead martyrs, compatriots!This is what we need, this is the path to our liberation!"

After. then, I had entire confidence in Lenin, in theThird International.

Formerly, during the meetings of the Partybranek,I only listened to the discussion; I had a vague beliefthat all were logical, and could not differentiate asto who were right and who were wrong. But~om thenon, I also plunged into the debates and discussed withfervor. Though I was still lacking French words toexpress all my thoughts, I smashed the allegationsattacking Lenin and the Third International with noless vigor. My only argument was: "If you do not con-

, demn colonialism, if you do not side with the colonialpeople, what kind of revolution are you waging?"

Not only did I take part in the meetings of my ownParty branch, but I also went to other Party branchesto lay down «my position". Now I must tell again thatComrades Marcel Cachin, Vaillant Couturier, Mon­mousseau, and many others helped me to broadenmy knOWledge. Finally, at the Tours Congress, I votedwith them for our joining the Third International.

At first, patriotism, not yet Communism, led me tohave confidence in Lenin, in the Third International.Step by step, with participation in practical activities,I gradUally carne upon the fact that only Socialism andCommunism can liberate the oppressed nations and tbeworking people throughout the world from slavery.

There is a legend, in our country as well as inChina, on the miraculous "Book of the Wise". Whenfacing great difficulties, one opens it and finds a wayout. Leninism is not only a miraculous "book of thewise", a compass for us Vietnamese revolutionariesand people: it is also the radiant sun illuminatingour path to final victory, to Socialism andCommW1ism.

-1960

"AGE'

KIND-HEARTED AND SINCERE

By Terence CannonWhat kind of man was Uncle Ho?What kind of organizer?What did he teach?

\,.._..

"

\

Vo Nguyen Giap. The Japanese were still in the coun­try. The 19th of August 1945, in the largest part ofthe northern provinces, the Liberation Army attackedthe Japanese occupation forces. The people of Hanoi,the c,urrent capital of the Democratic Republic of VietNam, victoriously uprose. Throughout the country, theycreated people's committees to assume effective power.Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the Republic and he was incharge of writing a Declaration of Independence that,in a part, says: "All the chains they imposed on usto maintain slavery for more than a century, havebeen broken by our people in order to make of ourViet Nam an independent country. At the same ~ime,

our people have overcome the monarchic regime,established for dozens of centuries, to constitutethe Democratic Republic.

"For these reasons, we, members of the provis­ional government, in the name of the whole people ofViet Nam, declale abolished all the privileges abro­gated by the French upon our territory...

"We solemnly proclaim before the entire world:Viet Nam has the right to be free and independent, andin fact, it is a free and independent country."

President Ho read this glorious declaration the 2ndof September, 1945, in Hanoi, before an enthusiasticmultitude of a million people. It is said that that day,hours before the popular rally, his comrades realizedthat Uncle Ho did not have appropriate clothes forthe circumstances. He had nothing but the shorts thathe had worn in the jungle. He presented himself beforethe people wearing a khaki suit and sandals.

But his voice was vibrant. He announced to the peoplethat, after dozens of years of colonial slavery, springand dignity had returned, and now, the sun of the dem­ocratic republic was shining over them.

The 19th of December, 1946, the French government,betraying his people and violating the signed treaties,launched against the Vietnamese nation a militaryagression. The heroic resistance of the Vietnamesepeople lasted more than eight years, until the 10thof October, 1954, when the Vietnamese flag, cheeredby the people, waved in the sky of Hanoi. From 1954up to date, the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam hascarried out, in all aspects of its national life, decisivetransformations.

The epic resistance of the Vietnamese people from1946 to 1954 constitutes one of the most importantevents of this century. Today, the people of VietNam, in the south as well as in the north, are engaged in.a new heroic resistance which will undoubtedly endwiththe shameful defeat of yankee imperialists. They willsuffer, in their criminal policy of aggression and es­calation, a new Dienbienphu: Ho Chi Minh proved that coexistence and harmonywill never be possible between the colonized and thecolonizer. To recover its humanity, to recover theessence itself of its alienated social being, all thecolonized or semi-colonized peoples should destroy,by means of revolutionary violence, the relationscreated by the colonial fact.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11

OCI'OBER 1,.,

HD LIVES!it could be he. All I did was to engrave his image inmy heart.

"He missed no occasion to improve my education.Whenever he had some spare time, he went to see theguards or local inhabitants. He paid special attention tothe education of young people and children. From timeto time, children were seen peacefully pasturing theirbuffaloes, serenely humming some folk songs, but inreality, they kept their eyes and ears open, in order toprotect us. Our leader liked to repeat these teachingsto us:

"A revolution cannot be made by a single man.A large force is needed, the entire people must par­tiCipate. That is why it is necessary to have cadres forpropaganda, agitation and education. They must bekind-hearted, open- minded and sincere. They must helpone another as comrades, work together with the masseswithout whom they could not succeed in anythng. Eachgesture, each attitude must conquer people's hearts.

"The revolution requires in the first place theparticipation of politically conscious people. A man joinsthe revolution only when he understands that oppressionis the cause of his sufferings. Therefore, we cannotlie to the people. If we did, the fear of reprisals could,in difficult times, lead to treason, which would be dis­astrous. Before the people, a revolutionary cadre has noright to assume a haughty and arrogant attitude, as if hewere a feudal warlord. He must be modest."

***When I met with young NLF cadre in Budapest lastyear, of many things I was impressed most by theirbeing, their style: frank, generous, earthy and hum­orous, and carrying within themselves a stren~h andcalmness, a SURENESS, the more obvious in contrastto ourselves - uptight, nervous American radicals.It rubbed off for a while, until I came back to America,and felt the black bile from the belly of the monsterrising through my body and mind.

The hurricane of People's War raged aboutthem, andinside them the st111 eye of the hurricane, sureness inthe face of genocide. At first I ascribed their calmnessto victory. It is within their grasp, I thought, of coursethey feel good.

But the'memoirs of Ho's comrades tell a differenttale. In the depths of trouble, when Vietnam was underthe double yoke of Japanese and French imperialism,Ho was teaching - we must be kind-hearted, open­minded and sincere. His country ravaged, all contactbetween Central Committee members and local cadresevered, Ho played with the children and taught thempoems and songs.

Jailed by 'his "allies", the Kuomintang. he wrote:The rose at evening blossoms, and then it fades away.Its opening and its withering continue all unnoticed.But the fragrance of the rose floats into the depthsof the prison,Telling the inmates thereof life's injustice and sorrow.When Lenin died, Ho wrote:"As for us, we are deeply moved by this irretriv­

able loss and share the common mourning of all thepeoples with our brothers and sisters. But we believethat the Communist International and its branches,which include branches in colonial countries, willsucceed in implementing the lessons and teachings theleader has left behind for us. To dowhat he advised us,is that not the best way to show our love for him?

"In his lifetime he was our father, teacher,comrade,and adviser. Nowadays, he is the bright star showingus the way to the socialist revolution.

• Eternal Lenin will live forever in our work.·

CIJZ~

eos-.....o....o

..c::0.

HO LIVES!

THE MOV£IIIIWI'12

In 1941, Chu Van Tan, now Commander-In -Chiefof the' armed forces of the VietBac Autonomous Region,met Ho in the Vietnamese village of Pac Bo, near theChinese border.

.Comrades Le Quang Ba and Son Hung soon joinedus and led us towards the valley. I was captivatedby the landscape. Terraced fields all around. To theleft, a rushing stream coming from China wound roundthe mountain and ran through Pac Bo village. To theright, a small brook flowed towards the plain.

"Suddenly, a man with a goatee beard appeared,a slender and agile figure. Briskly, he shook hands witheveryone. His first words were to enquire about ourhealth, the incidents during our journey... lfelt a comfor­table warmth run through my body. What vitality, whatkindness on his face! 'He must be a top Party leader,I told myself. I did not dare to ask whether he was the

.. from the Comintera, I did not eyen think tbat

uncleho

For fifty years he labored, for fifty years he foughtand negotiated, attacked and appeased, advanced andretreated, betrayed by socialist friends and capitalistenemies.

To paraphrase Brecht:"For he went, changing his country more often thanhis shoes,In the class war, despairingWhen t,here was only injustice and no resistance.·Fifty years, brothers and sisters, to liberate in

his long lifetime half of his tiny nation, less than thesize of California.

His style was different than ours. When he calledfor armed struggle he meant it; when he signed agree­ments he honored them; he did not abstract his people,he loved them. He probably knew by heart that firstessay by Lenin, in which there is a paragraph thatbegins:

"The socialist revolution is not one single act,not one single battle on a single front, but a wholeepoch of intensified class conflicts, a long seriesof battles on all fronts, i.e. ,battles around allthe problems of economics and politics, which canonly culminate in the expropriation of the bourgeoisie.

HO THE ORGANIZER•

There are few personal accounts of Ho's practice.I will quote from them at length; they are worthy ofemulation. .

When he was 27, Le Quang Ba, now Chairman ofthe Committee of National~ties of the DRV, met Ho forthe first time. He had traveled to China to contactleaders of the IndoChinese Communist PaTtyl*!e wastold that "Uncle" was in a nearby town:

"That exceeded all our expectations. We were over­joyed. Since, the very first days of my revolutionaryactivities, I had heard of our leader Nguyen Ai QUoc(Nguyen the Pat$t--one of Ho's pseudonyms). TheFirst Vietnamese Communist, a great figure of theCommunist International. Our group headed back forTsingsi that very night, almost running. On ourarrival, shortly after mi9night, we were led toa small house and showed into a room where alight was st111 burning. We' came into the room.Uncle was sitting on a bed, waiting for us. Al­though the light was dim, we could see him clearlyenough. We were struck by his broad forehead, hissparkling eyes, and his features which bespoke greatkindness. So it was • he"! Our joy was indescrib­able and for a moment we remained speechless justloodng at him with deep emotion.·A few weeks later, Le Quang Ba, met again with

Ho at a training course for militants in anotherChinese town.

, .We are revolutionaries,· said Ho. "We must winthe people's affection and confidence; it is in theirinterest that we are struggling. We must educate thempolitically, gradually inst11l into them political con­sciousness. We must respect them."

I st111 perfectly remember everything he taught usthose days.

The "four recommendations" were as follows:1) To help the population in their daily work: huskingand m111ing rice, fetching water and firewood, lookingafter the children...2) To get acquainted with local customs and habits,to strictly respect all "taboos· observed in the re­gion and by the family with whom one is staying.3) To learn the local dialect, to teach the localpeople to sing, read and write, to win their sym­pathy and little by little, to conduct revolutionarypropaganda. '4) To win the population's confidence and supportthrough one's correct attitude and good discipline.

Tl}e "five interdictions" were as follows:1) Not to cause any damage to the crops and fields,not to deface or impair the population's furnitureand household articles.2) Not to insist on buying or borrowing what peopledon't want to sell or lend.3) Not to forget one's promises.4) Not to violate local customs, habits, and religiousbeliefs.5)Not to divulge any secret

VIEW FROM

black capitalismmeans colonialism

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petition for community control of thepolice. Now we say that voting, in theold way, for black people is a waste oftime. Ballots without bullets ain't hittinon a damn thing. But we don't want to beone-sided, we want to use all the lawsthat's in our favor, and then when thelaws go against it, well we say that theoppressor has no rights that we' reboundto respect.

So on the one hand we want to movea petition. A petition that wQ.Uld g1ve thiscommunity control over the. 'Pigs thatnow run rampant in this community. Onthe other hand, we still say that the finalsolution to the pig problem is some 12guage shotguns for everybody in theblack community.

So that everytime the pigs come in theblack community, every time they brut­alize a brother, every time they openfire on a brother for suspicion of GTA,the community can open fire on them.

And if we can make a petition to passa law to make these same pigs that workin this community live in this communitythen we'll be that much better off, wewon't have to shoot that far to get themin line. .-So we don't want to ruin one of the

.. occasions we have to be amongstthe mas-'ses, with too many long winded speeches.We can do :our fair share of fingerpoppin and pop our toes to the music...the Black Panther Party's still a polit­ical party. The repression is st1ll comindown. Huey's still in jail. Eldridge isstill in exile. The pigs have kidnappedBobby. Probably the only reason thatmost of us are still here is becausewe got wind of the pigs little ploy to wipeout our National Headquarters just intime.

We'll cut the speechmaking short.We want you to know the Black PantherParty is still your party, stUl the partyof the people, that it hasn't changed.We don't openly carry guns anymore, andHuey had admonished us not to cuss asmuch as we used to, but we st1ll yoursand we're very happy to be here. AllPower to the People. Thank you.

Time wise, its been three years sincethe Party started right here in the BayArea. Since that time they tried to murderHuey, and they railroaded him. Theytried to send Eldridge back to prisonso they could finish him off (but El­dridge beat that one, they still tryint 0 catch him). Since that time they'vegiven out a lot of time to a lot of Pan­thers, murdered Alprentice Bunchy Car­ter and John Jerome Huggins in L.A.,Sylvester Bell and John Savage in SanDiego. Been a lot of Panthers lockedup and qUit~ a few buried.

But we still here, and the only reasonwe still here is because of the strengthof the people. You people. And as therepression, as the shit that the pigsput on us grows worse, it becomesvery necessary for us to tighten our hand,cause the instances where we have to justmake our play out there in the streetsevery day become more and more. Al­ways a lot of people around murder­mouthin and raw-jawin about what they"gon do ,to the man", "later for thepigs" and "what they gon do to Whitey" .•.but it ain' t that many people actually DOINANYTHING.

We don't advocate no whole lot ofburnin' and throwin rocks because thatdon't get you nowhere. We DQ advocateorganized guns and force. We st1ll seethat the pigs are still shootin and mur­dering brothers, especially the TacSquad in San Francisco, pigs inQaklandand Berkeley--they ain't much different,they haven't changed.

So it is st1ll necessary for the peopleto understand that the way to controlthe pigs is to have shotguns stickinout of every window. Now we won'targue whether or not that's legal orillegal. We know its NECESSARY be',.cause the pi,SSain't gonna stop mistreat­ing black people, and the instances ofmistreatin white people are on the in­crease.

In the very same line with the sameobjective of dealin with these pig troopsthat occupy the black community, theBlack Panther Party's putting forward a

THE BLACK PANTHERSARE dUST A BUNCH

OF HOODLUMS!

Right on. All power to the people! On behalf of the Black PantherParty, I'd like to say that we're very glad to have the time to beamong the people today. It seems that we rarely have the time now­adays, with the pigs locking us up, shooting up our offices, busting usevery time we sell some papers.

It's been like three years now, and we're still here. And the onlyreason the Party's still here is because the people are still here.

SPEECH BY RAY MASAI HEWITT, MINISTER OF EDUCATION

OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY, ON LABOR DAY

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and, in hopes of getting more blackson company lends eight executives tcFisk University in Nashville to teachmanagement courses part-time. Theproblem is that black insurance compan­ies are losing men. One Negro group,the National Insurance Ass'n., even barswhite recruiters from its conventionsto prevent raiding! (Wall St. .Journal7-15-69)

Nixon's Office ot Minority BusinessEnterprise, in the Commerce Dept.,is faltering, though of course Rev. LeonSullivan managed to get a piece of thefirst million to be dished out, to pushhis black shopping center idea aroundthe country. Even Whitney Young hasdeclared (WSJ, 7..;10-69) that "Blackcapitalism is a shambles." One Nixongimmick was to try to con black groupsinto assuming jurisdiction over specificlines of business, for example, let COREhandle gas station training (!), the NAACPhousing, etc. Sullivan, of course, wouldget shopping centers. No sale. The mainpush is stUl to get more blacks into fran­chises for white companies, basically sothat a stronger native bourgeoisie canbe built in the colony, and the colonial­ists can sell more. The notion of puttinghard-core unemployed to work, and get­ting more sales in the ghetto, however,flies in the face of other governmentalpolicies making for tighter money. Asbusinesses cut back spending(due to highprices for credit) the first guys to get it

I will be in the ghetto. As always.

THE TOP

By Thorstein Smith

We may be coming to the end of anera that hasn't even begun; black cap­italism. While there are occasional suc­cess stories, mainly in the area ofcOl)sumer operations like stores (Free­domindustries " Inc., of Boston, a con­glomerate mainly operating supermar­kets, hopes to reach $7 mUlion in salesits first year), most producer operationsare either in trOUble, and/?rlosingtheirindependence to white colonialist ~rt:m_

terprises. The famous Wafts" 'factory,a SUbsidiary of Aerojet General, whichmakes tents (for the Defense Depart­ment), is in trouble even with the pro­tection of its affluent master. FIGHTON,Inc., organized by Rochester, N.Y.'sAlinsky--originated FIGHT, operates onthe promise of $500,000 worth of bus­mess from Xerox. The board includes

'representatives from FIGHT, Xerox, andlocal business executives. As of lastFebruary(NY.Times 2-9-69), FIGHTONhad only 30 hourly employees, but hopedto expand to 100 by the end of this year.The Xerox deal was hailed as "a MarshallPlan for the ghetto". Remember theMarshall plan? It tied the Western Eur­opean economy to the U.S after WorldWar II...

MeanWhile, there's a "Black braindrain" not only from the black collegesl:>ut also from such black enterprises as

. do exist. Prudential Insurance now has600 blacks on its sales force of 19,000;

~m<'

~

OCTOBER 1969 THE MOVEMENT PAGE 13'-

'1~ ;

•

We demanded that the governmentsettle the situation, that it start employ­ing people in Northern Ireland as theycould be employed. The system of em­ployment in Northern Ireland is suchthat our Minister of Commerce comesto America, and he tells all the goodAmericans that they should build theirfactories in Northern Ireland. They buildtheir factories in Northern Ireland for

BRITISH & AMERICAN IMPERIALISM

from the local councll, because very fewpeople in the country can afford to buytheir own houses, or even rent theirown houses from private owners, whenpeople applied to the council for a

.house, they did not ask them hoW longhave you been without a Muse,

;.how many kids have you, whatSlZe house do you need.•. they asked youwhat your religion was. This wouldinterpret then what way you would vote,and so he got out his little map and helooked not to where he could bulldhouses, but where that vote could beput so that it would not upset the bal­ance of power. This resulted in areaslike Dunnganon, which is a small ruraltown, not having built houses for atleast 5 years, while it had a waitinglist of some 500 fam111es. And theywere prepared to state quite openlythat they couldn't, despite the fact thatthey had the capital and the land, theycould not build houses for these 500fam111es because they were the wrongreligion to put on that plot of landThisis a simple kind of thing which we weredemanding the government shouldchange.

We were also demanding that everyman in the country had a right to work.The system of employment, or unemploy­ment in Northern Ireland is a delightfulsystem of how to make people work fornothing and think you're giving them theearth. The people of Northern Irelandsuffer from very high unemployment,they suffer from it natually because inthe first place the country is divided andboth sides of it are run by Tory govern­ments. Nevertheless, within the confinesof Northern Ireland it is possible tomake some sort of attempt to fullyemploy the people. To do this it wouldof course necessitate the breaking downof the system and the ruination of thegovernment...a point which we considervery minor when wethlDk .ofthenumberof people who were out of work and thatnobody in government was in fact outof work and U1at the individual membersof Northern Ireland's government are90 percent of the shareholders in allof foreign industry in Northern Ireland•..one begins to see the problem.

By keeping the mass of the peopleunemployed, they had a cheap pool oflabor. People in Northern Ireland con­sider a good wage to be 30 dollars aweek, that means you're earning morethan you would get if you weren't work­ing at all, because we have a welfaresystem, by courtesy of the British gov­ernment because we're all British cit­izens. We have this welfare state thatmeans if you don't work you get a min­imum allowance on which you can sur­vive, from the state. The Northern Ire­land government has as its minimumwage a weekly wage which is only abouttwo-thirds the minimum wage for un'­employed persons.Most people in Northern Ireland workfor a minimun wage, which means natur­ally that you are richer by sitting athome doing nothing than you are byslaving your guts out for 45 hours aweek, therefore there are those peoplewho quite rightly sit at home and thegovernment doesn't like them.

unfortunately resulted in a situationwhere they had set up what was tan­tamount to a Protestant party, so thatthe opposition party thought that the onlyway to beat them was to set up a Catholicparty. And the people who had foughtin 1916, the people who died in 1916,for the social revolution of Ireland, forthe creation of a 32 county republic inwhich all men would be equal... the thingsthat these men fought and died for werecompletely forgotten by the people whowere trying to beat the British out ofthe country, and they settled for...you canbe the Protestants and we'll be theCltholics. The ordinary people of North­ern Ireland were never consulted about·this gentlemen's agreement, but it wasallowed to continue for 50 years.

The means the government used forkeeping themselves in power were toactively discriminate against the Cath­olics, to keep them out of all jobsthat the government controlled...

Meanwhile, they exploited the Prot­estant working class, on the basis,very simllar to the situation in thiscountry between the black and the poorwhite. The Protestant working classin Northern Ireland have literally noth­ing, but nothing is at least better thanless than nothing, which they believethe Catholic working class to have.Our problems in Northern Ireland arenot problems of religion, they're noteven revolutionary problems...but prob­lems of a medieval government usingthe most malicious power it can tok~ep themselves in power and keep thepeople of Northern Ireland in poverty..:because it' s the only way in a verysmall country they can keep themselvesrich.

FROM CIVIL RIGHTS TO REVOLUTION

So when the civil rights movement in­Northern Ireland started, it made verysimple demands.•.demands which wereby themselves by no means revolution­ary...but they have proved that it takesa revolution in Ireland to bring themabout.

The first demand we made was thatany man had a right, in a so calleddemocratic country, to vote, and thatthat vote should be equal to anybodyelse's vote. And we' all. / had hopedthat the government elections, we couldall vote for the Parliamellt; but tlurtwo leading parties, the Unionist Partyand the Nationalist Party by gentlemen'sagreement had drawn up the electorialboundaries, counting Catholic and Prot­estant heads.

They'd worked out sealed constituen­cies, so that over the period of 50 years inNorthern Ireland, you can in fact pre­dict ten years in advance what politic­ian will sit in what constituency, simplyby counting the heads of the people wholive there. We demanded the electoralboundaries shOUld be changed, and ifwe were going to live under a demo­cratic system, we should have demo­cratic elections.

At local government elections, whichare much more important because theycontrol the important things in peo;;pie's lives .•.who' gets the work, amlwho gets the houses... in these localgovernment elections only the people whoalready had the houses were allowed tovote. This meant that people who don'town their own homes, people who werenot householders had no representationon the counCil, therefore the council didnot consider themselves under any ob­ligation to look after people who didn'tvote for them. But the situation was evenmore malicious than this, because whena person applied, as most people inNorthern Ireland have to apply for a house

CLASS QUESTION NOT RELIGIOUS

SO they set about fifty years ago thatthey could insure that practically everyProtestant in 'he country would supportthe Unionist Party and the Catholicswould be left to vote for whatever op­position parties they could manage. This-

We fought these gauant well disciplinedmen who had guns, machine guns and

. tear gas, which they used, and whichsome of you are probably famllarwith...they used non-stop for 40 hours on a"built-up" area. (Everybody now callsit a built up area, a residential area...before the 12th of August they called ita slum, and they preferred not to thinkthat it eXisted.)

So I'd like to tell you briefly what ourstruggle is in Northern Ireland, what thetruth of the matter is, what it is we'vebeen doing, why it is we've been doing it,and what we want to achieve as theultimate goal.

For fifty years in Northern Ireland,since the partition of the country, theNorthern Ireland government has beenthe Unionist Party of Northern Ireland.Fifty years ago they announced they wouldset up a Protestant state for a Protestantpeople. They never had any intention ofsetting ull a Protestant state for a Prot­estant people, but they were very clever.They looked at the division of NorthernIreland and they had seen that if youcounted heads on a religious basis,there were more Protestants than therewere ·Catholics. And therefore the wayto keep yourself in power was first ofall to state you were on the side of themajority, then by any means you could tokeep people voting on that one line which.made them the majority...and you couldalways be returned to power.

We who have been struggling in North­ern Ireland, we have been termed byev­ery newspaper in the world as hooligansor sectarian rioters. We prefer to callourselves an insurrection. An insur­rection we are, and we've created outof a situation which as usual has beenprovid~ for ~ by the police, a countersituatiQn which they can now do nothingabout. In the slum Catholic area ofDerry and the slum areas of Belfastand in other towns in Northern Irelandwe have hoisted the barricades. Theywere put up first of all as a matter ofdefense to keep out the hordes of armedand uniformed thugs who,~ca1ling them­selves the guardians Ofthepeace,stormedinto slum areas, in their own words, to"settle them once and for all". So wethrew up the barricades and we foughtthem, with all that we had to fightthem, which'Was stones and petrol bombs.

INSURRECTION NOT SECTARIANISM

~EECH;IY·BERNADETTEDEVLIN AT U.C. BERKELEY

·~e Pve.jlI.:rlv~(U'_ve started. off allthese meetings by saying good' eveningladies and gentlemen...r m not going tosay it today. . .

"The reason I've come here is to tellyou something that you probably knownothing about if you've been depending onth~ American press for information onthe Northern Ireland crisis. Since I'vecome to America r ve heard lots ofstories which I haven't in fact recog­nized to be the struggle that I camefrom, and that was that there were alot of Catholic and Protestant heathens inNorthern Ireland who couldn;t live to­gether and that all good people with anykind of perspective of the 20th centuryshould stay as far away from the strug­gle as possible and let us sort it outin the middle of medieval Ireland.

PAGE 14 THE MOVEMENT OCTOBER 1969

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COISPIIACY TO IICITE IIOTUnreal? Well maybe you're not hip to what'sbeen going down lately. The Law and Order apesand this senile dinosaur we call a governmenthave flipped out. Preventive detention, theno-knock clause in the new drug laws,appointment of Burger to the Supreme Court,and the extensive use of wire-tapping by theJustice Department are all part of a wave ofrepression.

Over 300 Black Panthers are now in jail in anational plot to destroy their organization.White radicals are being arrested. 'Undergroundnewspapers are being harrassed. G.l.s who speakout are receiving harsh sentences. The policehave been unleashed. Last summer in Chicago itwas clubs and tear gas; in Berkeley this spring itwas shotguns and buckshot.

The hard rain is already falling and it isn't justthe politicos that are getting wet. Read the list:Jimi Hendrix, MC-5, The Who, Phil Ochs, TimBuckley, Jefferson Airplane, Gra tefu I Dead, JimMorrison, Creedance Clearwater, The Turtles,Moby Grape, Ray Charles, The Fugs, Dave VanRonk, Joan Baez-all have been busted recently.Busted because the au thori ties wan t to destroythe cultural revolution in the same way theywant to destroy the political revolution. It's truethe above poster is made up, but if the

OCTOBER 1969

government wanted to it could bust rock groupson charges of conspiracy to incite rio.t. Last yearCongress passed an anti-riot act which made itillegal to urge people to go to an event at whicha riot later occurs.

The law makes it illegal to tral'el from state tostate, write letters or telegrams, speak on theradio or television. Make a telephone call withthe intention of encouraging people toparticipate in a riot. A riot meaning an act ofviolence occurring in an assemblage of three ormore persons. The people doing the urging neverhave to commi t an act of violence or know thepeople who do. They never, in fact, have to urgea riot. William Kunstler,. famed constitutionallawyer feels "rock and roll stars and promoterscould be pro~ecuted under this law if violenceoccurred at a show."

The law is currently being tested in theupcoming trial of eight movement activists:Rennie Davis, Dave Dellinger, John Froines,Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin,Bobby Seale, and Lee Weiner, all participants inthe demonstrations last August in Chicago. Youremember Chicago where the facade of a demo­;ratically run convention was washed down

the streets with the blood of young people.The Whole World Was Watching and what

THE MOVEJ\.1ENT

it saw was what the official Walker Reportlater termed a "police riot." Richard Nixonwants to put an end to demonstrations. MayorDaley wants revenge. They have decided to setan example to anyone who speaks out againstthe government by putting eight prominentactivists in prison for ten years.

If there is a conspiracy to end the war inVietnam, if there is a conspiracy to end racism,if there is a conspiracy to end the harrassment ofthe cultural revolution, then we, too, must jointhe conspiracy. The Conspiracy Eight mj.lst besupported, the law under which they are chargedmust be fought. If not, it won't be long beforewe are seeing posters like this all over thecountry., ..

I would Iik,' 111m,' info about til.: ConspiralY Trial••••••••

I would likl: to lllntribull' ••••••••dollars for kgal d,'fl:nsl::

Nalllt' :•••••••••••••••••••••.••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• • 0"

Addr~ss: ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••.

City: ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Organization or Group:•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••.

In addition to thl: moncy I will help by •••••••••••••••••••(h"ks should bl: mad.: payabk to:THE COMMITTEE TO DEFEND THE CONSPIRACY~R East Ja.:kson Bh·d.Chila~o, Illinois 60604

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PAGE 11

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political realities, in order to get blackcommunity control of police, white workingclass people must support the concept.The reaction of most white working peopleis "sure, community control ~f police isgood, fbr us- -but not for black people"-­the 'petition campaign is a good opportunityto' struggle against these racist attitudes.Is it playingup towhite skin, privilege totry to convince someone who voted againsta police review board in New York Citythat he should support the Panther petition?

Finally, the petition is the only form thathas been suggested so far that gives peoplethe opportunity to organize on a door todoor basis around one ofthe hottest issuesin the country. The ruling class calls it"law and order", we call it the col­onial occupation of the ghettoes, and blackltberation. If the movement can figure outanother way to reach large numbers ofpeople on this question, people who don'tusually relate to our activities, then RightOn. The point is that we must find ways toexpand our base. - .'

There are several ways people can sup­port the petition campaign, and, at thesame time, do whatever other work isnecessary to intensify the struggle. Thepetition can be taken wherever we go.There is no contradiction between passingout leafiets about a militant demonstrationand, at the same time, having a petitionwith you for people to sign. There isno contradiction between joining the pic­ket line of some militant workers' strikeand having a petition for the picketersto sign.

Also, people should try to particiPate inthe Committees to Fight Fascism and makethem function in an all round way to fightfascism. Committees could fight fascismon a number of levels in addition tothe petition campaign, if large numbers ofrevolutionaries participated in them. Alotof people reject the Committees becausethey're" full of revisionists" . Revisionismis a real problem, but it will never bedefeated just by bad-mouthing and avoid­ance. We should struggle actively againstthe revisionists and seize control of theCommittees from the revisionists, wherethose committees are controlled by them.

FREE H!J.EY, FREE BOBBY,

FREE LOS SIETE AND ALLPOLITICAL PRISONERS!

UNITY IN STRUGGLE

In sum a unified and determined enemyhas intensified its attacks against theleadership of OUR movement. The pigshave been the main weapon in this attack.We must respond with solidarity and byraising the struggle to a higher level.The defense of the Panther leadershipmust be used to further expose the natureof this decadent system and to take thepolitics of the black liberation struggleto the people. Second, it "is necessaryto educate the people on the role of thepigs in our society. The first step inthat is to raise the issue of their control

.by the people. As Huey Newton has point-ed out:

"The reason that I feel very stronglyabout dealing with the protectors ofthe system is simply because withoutthis protection from the army, thepolice and the military, the institu­tions could not go on in their racismand exploitation...Whenever we attackthe sysfein;the first thing the admin­istrators do is to send out their strong­arm men. If it's a rent strike, becauseof the indecent housing we have, theywill send out the police to throw thefurniture out the window. They don'tcorne themselves. They send the pro­tectors. So to deal with the corruptexploiter you are going to have to dealwith his protector, which is the policewho take orders from him. This is amust."A movement that fails to vigorously

rise to the defense of its leadership andto use that defense to expose and attackthe enemy and educate the people is amovement that will aid in its own destruc­tion and make the job of the enemy thatmuch easier.

t)~)~()~()--.<>..-.()~)~()~~()--.<)~()~()~()--.<)~().

of people correctly observe that the blackmovement is split and that the great major­ity of black people in this country are notactive Panther supporters. From thisobservation, they conclude that the Pan­thers are not the v:mguard. (or at least it' snot for us to decide - "black people willdecide" ).

While it's true that the Panthers are notthe vanguard in the sense just described,this doesn't mean that we should not acceptthe leadership of the Panthers. The Pan­thers are the vanguard in another sense,perhaps a more important sense, given theearly stage of development of the struggle.They are the vanguard in the sense that theyhave made a "great leap forward" in thedevelopment of the struggle. And while thePanthers make mistakes, they are still the'most together organization, black or white,in the country. Also, the fact that the Pan­thers are the indisputable vanguard inreceiving the shit the enemy has to dishout confirms that the enemy has decidedthat the Panthers are the most dangerouschallenge they face from the left. It'ssilly, in ~~context~epression to .talk about the Panthers being coopted.

Some Panther spokesmen say that ifyou really support the Party, you shouldsupport the petition for corn munity controlof pigs. While the petition campaign iscertainly open to criticism, to dismissthe campaign on abstract ideologicalgrounds is dogmatic. There are severalimportant reasons for supporting the pet­ition campaigp.

THE PETITION CAMPAIGN

. First, and this is why I discussed thevanguard role of the Panthers-#we shouldsupport the petition because the Panthers 'asked us to. While the Panthers are wrongin sometimes - claiming that the petitioncampaign is the ONLYway to fight fascism,whatever tactic is chosen to fight fascismmust have the full backing of all avail­able movement resources to maximize itseffectiveness. There are definitely otherways to fight fascism, and they should notbe abandoned, but it would be disastrousif each movement group and individualcontinued to "do it's own thing" in ahaphazard way. Our efforts must be un­ified.', second, some rnovenfeilt peoplehave re­jected the petition on the grounds that it'sreformist and maintains bourgeois il­lusions about the viability of the bour­geois democratic process. This objection

,has its roots in ourconcreteexperience withliberalism and is justified under certainconditions. But whether or not one useslegal tactics is not a principled decisionto be made in the abstract for all times.

'We need tactical fiexibility. More im­portant (and this has been done in everysucessful revolution--look at Vietnam) theuse of legal tactics doesn't preclude theuse of illegal ones. Very often they canbe effectively combined. The Panthershave not abandoned the principle of armedstruggle. (see Masai's speech in thisissue). They are waging the struggle onmore than one level. Given the, earlystage of the struggle, it is important thatthe Panthers not be forced to operate solelyunderground. Being able to speak to mas­ses of people openly is crucial until themasses of peoole are won over.

Some say:IWell, it's ok to have a pet­ition campaign with some people, but notour constituency, they would never reg­ister to vote and why should they". Thismay be true for a small number ot streetpeople' , but even for organizations whoseconstituency is only street people, thereare still reasons for' supporting thepetition campaign. It' s not like the petitionis the ONLYthing we should talk about withstreet people or anyone else. What aboutworking class youth on the streets talkingto their parents about the petition?

Third, alot of people have made ideo­logical attacks on the petition because itdoesn't differentiate the special status ofblack and third world communities fromwhite (working class) communities. Thisis certainly an ideological weakness ofthepetition. Organizing would be easier if thePanthers made clear the colonial status ofblack and brown people in the petition it­self. On the other hand, the weaknessbecomes less important in practice. Given

PANTHERS'STRUGGLE------------

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•

mQst advanced workers, educating workers in sur­rounding plants, and helping organize - or at leastneutralize - the women employees.

During the Case strike we made some attempts byinviting the men to an RSU picnic and having apartywith the Hayward Collective. Four strikers carne andwe had good raps in a friendly atmosphere. After thestrike settlement, we attempted to have a meetingbetween students and friendly strikers. The unionfound out and, by order of the President of the union,ILWU members were prohibited from attending. Wearecontinuing follow-up work on an individual basis, how­ever.

After the settlement, the Alameda South County Sol­idarity Comm. issued another leaflet to workers insurrounding plants. It described the settlement and howCase screwed the workers. We purposefully omittedoutright criticism of the union, feeling that it would bemore appropriate corning from ILWU members. Butmost of the leaflet talked about the upcoming Interna­tional Industrialist's Conference (lIC) and Case's con­nections with it. In a nearby Kellogs plant, one workerposted the leaflet in the locker room, only to have ittarn down by an outraged supervisor.

'We intend to continue leafletting the area prior tothe lIC conference and hope to have small numbers ofworkers, including Case strikers, participate in thestreet demonstrations in San Francisco.

The Case strike was an important educational exper­ience for both the workers and students. Given our goodfontacts from Case and other surroUnding plants, wethink we have established a beachead in an importantindustrial area ..:

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5

ca se ------:.--

As the MOVEMENT goes to press thedemonstrations against the Inter­national Industrialist's Conferenceare just beginning. We will have a

• full analysis of the struggle in thenext issue.

,11: "'t' 1\ ~IS 1/ INTERNATIONAL

AI(.K ,HE ~ ~ INDUSTRIALCJl' 'TME' / I CONFERENCE

D... .. '" C' ~C!~ , FAtRMONT HOTEL~UN~ ~~~. k~~~,

• •• •• •· , :•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

PAGE 18 THE MOVEMENT OCTOBER 1969

'N(;'I.' CONTINUED FROM PAGE 15

MOVEMENT: Have you been successfulin organizing in the countryside? Do youget a good reception, or do you runinto problems in areas that have beenpreviously un-politicized?

MARIO: The reaction has generally beena favorable one, but you always have tomove very slowly. There are many ethnicreligious and other differences among ourpeople. You have to be sensitive to thesedifferences.

Before we send' in guerrilla units toany area, we first send in teams to soundout the population, see how they feel aboutthings. Then, after a period of politicaleducation--not formal education, just talk­ing to people, raising questions, gettingTHEM to come up with the answers them­selves--they're sounded out again. Onlywhen we're sure that the people of anarea are really ready to' support guerr­illa action--and won't gIve way to their

fears when the repression comes--do wesend in the military units.

In terms of present support, I can saythat at this point we have more volunteersto fight than we can incorporate in theguerrilla units. We just don't have enoughguns yet for everyone who wants to fight.But those people help us in other ways.They provide supplies for us, and infor­mation. And when the time comes, they'llbe ready to fight.

MOVEMENT: When I first heard you wereactive in the leadership of the liberationstruggle of the Portuguese colonies inAfrica, I was very surprised. I didn'texpect to see a white man in your role,in a country and a movement that is al­most entirely black. Are. there manywhites active in the MPLAaruHhe other.African liberation organizations? Is itdifficult for whites to become incorpor­ated in the struggle?

MARIO: The rtIovementisprimarilyblack,and of 'course almost all of the leadersare black. But the real question is yourdedication to the struggle, to the revo­lution. Once you have proved yourselfthere is no question whether you are black,brown or white. But of course it is truethat it is much more difficult for a whitePortuguese settler to enter into anyof the revolutionary African organiza­tions. He can work within the organiza­tion, or for it, but he will not be sentoff to fight. But that doesn't mean thatthere aren't things that he can be doingwithin the cities.

I've never had any problems on accountof not being black. But I was involveddeeply in the MPLA from· a very earlystage.

MOVEMENT: What did you do after theattacks on the police stations and prisonsfailed?

MARIO: We settled in to do some long,hard political work, political education.We sent teams out throughout the country­side, speaking to people. It's a hard task-­harder than the actual armed struggle.

You have to speak to people very simply;about what interests them, about whatbothers them . A cadre goes into thecountryside, or into a small town. Heasks the peasant or the worker: "Whatkind of wages' do you get? (or "Whatprice for your pigs?") Do you think that'sa fair price? How much do you pay forfood? Can you bUy all the food and clothesyour family needs on the wages you earn?How much do you pay in taxes? Who getsthe taxes? Who pays for the new roadthat is being built? Who uses it? Do youhave a car? Who has cars around here?"When you get the answers you expected,you begin talking about WHY these thingshappen. And then later, slowly, aboutwhat you can do about it.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE MOVEMENT!

THE VERDICTIn my trial, the jury was hung, favoring

acquittal 9-3. Because the prosecution'scase was made up entirely of circum­stantial evidence, and because the DAnever presented any direct testimony a-

be made to go on the defensive.While many political points can be

,made this way, some can' t. This isespe cially true for bringing out the var­ious social forces opposing each otherin the conflict in question. A class anal­ysis can only be made coherently duringthe period when the person defending him­self is on the stand, and during closingargument. These are the two times duringthe trial when the judge and DA give themost leeway. On the stand, political anal­ysis comes under the heading of "stateof mind" as to why we did what we wereaccused of. In closing argument, all thestrands of the trial can and should bebrought together and the conclusion theylead to be stated.

During the course of the trial, it'simportant to be able to argue articu­lately when the DA objects to a defensetactic or testimony. In replying to theDA's objection, the point you want to makeshould be stated so that even if the ob­jection is sustained the jury will stillhave heard the information. Likewise,making objections to the DA gains therespect of the jury. However, we shouldn'tget caught up in the little games that law­yers play. By and large they're ridic­ulous, and turn the jurors off. But whenthe judge obviously is inconsistant on whathe sustains in favor of the DA, we shouldinsist that the DA is attempting to biasthe jury.

--

94133

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The New Critics Press Inc. is a newpublishing house organized by inlurpntsocial scientists aDd publishen of criticalsocial science in various fields.

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San Francisco State Legal DefenseCommittee,PO BOX 31158San Francisco, Calif. 94131

The State trials go on. A lot of peoplewho have been convicted are appealingand alot of those who face multiple felonyraps haven't been tried yet. Most bondsare being set between $1500 and $6200.The Legal Defense Committee needs allthe help they can get. Contributions canbe sent to:

gainst any of us, we rested the case withoutany ofus taking the stand. We had destroyedevery essential point of the prosecution'scase in cross examination and, at the sametime, layed out the defense case.

Because of the issues I raised in myself-defense and because our group wastogether, the defense lawyers were forcedto deal with the politics of the case. Afterthe trial we talked to the jurors and foundthat at least four of them believed thearrest was made to break the strike (notbecause it was an illegal assembly). Theyals~ believed that there was police bru­tality. Some jurors had been moved po­litically, and that was the best indicationthat we had accomplished our job in thecourtroom. .(For details on the SF State Strike itself,see THE MOVEMENT 12/68, 1/69,2/69and 3/69)

in court·

Next 12 issues of THE MOVEMENT.!\lalcolm X posters '($2.50)$1.00 EACH. ONLY .75t

to Movementsubscribers .'

AMI.

..

Please send me:

self defenseCONTINUED FROM PAGE 7

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·em STATE ZI' Scholu-critics are invited to IlIbmitmanuscripts for possible publication.Translaton of French, G~rman and ital­ian ue also invited to inquire:

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OCTOBER 1969 THE MOVEMENT PAGE 19

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