[Freethe SF8] Jerry Brown & the SF 8

[SF-8 case]

AG Jerry Brown, the San Francisco 8, and The Big Chill - Repres

http://www.blackcommentator.com/257/257_represent_our_resistance_jerry_brown_sf8.html


“This racial dilemma poses a serious problem for 
white America
And the entire dark world is 
watching, waiting to see what the American 
government will do to solve this problem once and 
for all.” (Malcolm X, “America’s Gravest Crisis” October, 1963)
Democrat Jerry Brown and rock star Linda Ronstadt 
were the flower children of the media during 
Brown’s term as Governor of California.  This was 
back in the day, 1975 to 1983. Jerry Brown is 
still around, without Linda, of course.  In fact, 
back here in the Midwest, I was surprised when I 
was told Brown is, as of this year, the Attorney 
General of California.  Of course this is not 
news to folks in California, particularly people 
in Oakland, since Brown served as Mayor there 
from 1998 to 2006.  The point is - Jerry Brown is 
still around and, as Attorney General of 
California, he has focused his office’s attention on the San Francisco 8.

In 1992, Brown, running for president (third 
time) against Bill Clinton, according to Time 
Magazine, ran an “anti-establishment crusade” 
campaign against big-money. Brown seemed to the 
“vessel of protest against big-money politics” 
(Time April 6, 1992). The article continues,
“Brown - who, even his fondest admirers admit, is 
a political changeling constantly taking on new 
personas - has finally embraced a cause that 
returns him to his political roots as a 
post-Watergate clean-government crusader in California.”

Well, it seems Jerry Brown has changed 
again.  Brown, the ex-Flower child, ex-boyfriend 
of Linda Ronstadt, ex-Rock star politician is now 
very much the ESTABLISHMENT.

What’s Brown up to as California’s Attorney 
General? Well, ask any ex-Black Panther.  He’s 
hunting them down from New York to 
California.  Brown took office as AG this year 
and immediately had the ex-Black Panthers and 
supporters known as the San Francisco 8 arrested 
and imprisoned in January, 2007 for the 1971 murder of Police Sgt. John Young.

Keep in mind that, as Ron Jacobs in The Case of 
the San Francisco 8 reports, the “federal court 
ruled in 1974 that both San Francisco and New 
Orleans police had engaged in torture to extract 
a confession (see the Legacy of Torture video), 
and a San Francisco judge dismissed charges 
against three men in 1975 based on that ruling.”

In 2003, however, the U.S. Department of Justice 
re-opened the case, “using funds set aside for 
the Department of Homeland Security,” according 
to Ron Jacobs. Grand juries convened over the 
coming years, resulting in not a single 
prosecuting attorney willing to pursue the 
case.  Again in 2005, a Grand Jury was convened 
with no further evidence and this Grand Jury 
expired in October 31, 2005. DNA was taken from 
the men in 2006 and they were subpoenaed.  “We 
refused to speak,” Richard Brown, one of the San 
Francisco 8, told me. “We were held in contempt 
of court. I was in jail for six weeks.”

But then came 2007 and Jerry Brown was sworn in 
as Attorney General of California.  Round-e-up 
Jerry Brown has no qualms with confessions 
obtained through torture in 1971. He’s all about 
law and order in the new era of COINTELPRO.  The 
case of the San Francisco 8 is “green-lighted,” 
said Claude Marks, Committee for the Defense of 
Human Rights.  According to an affidavit from the 
AG’s office, Brown threw his weight behind a 
multi-taskforce comprised of the San Francisco 
Police Department, Federal Bureau of 
Investigation, California Bureau of 
Investigation, and the United States Attorney’s 
Office, and ordered the arrest of Richard Brown, 
65, Ray Boudreaux, 64, Hank Jones, 70, Richard 
O’Neal, 58, Harold Taylor, 58, and Francisco 
Torres, 58, on January 23, 2007.  Herman Bell, 
59, and Jalil Muntaqim, 55, already in prison for 
the last 30 years, were re-arrested for this 
case.  The men arrested were held until recently 
because they refused to cooperate with these 
Kangaroo kourt proceedings - still with no new 
evidence.  According to Steve Zelter, San 
Francisco Labor Planning Committee member, “if 
this case were up to the city of San Francisco, 
this wouldn’t happen.” Brown’s office, Zelter 
added, is “going along with the Federal 
government” on this case. The man who was a 
“vessel of protest against big-money politics” is 
on the side of “big-money politics” now and 
against those willing to protest injustice and inequality.

Let’s remember what Martin Luther King, Jr. said 
a year before he was gunned down:

It’s not merely a struggle against extremist 
behavior toward Negroes.  And I’m convinced that 
many of the very people who supported us in the 
struggle in the South are not willing to go all 
the way now.  I came to see this in a very 
difficult and painful way in Chicago
 And I came 
to see that so many people who supported morally 
and even financially what we were doing in 
Birmingham and Selma, were really outraged 
against the extremist behavior of Bull Connor and 
Jim Clarke toward Negroes, rather than believing 
in genuine equality for Negroes.  And I think 
this is what we’ve gotta see now, and this is 
what makes the struggle much more 
difficult.   (“The Other America” April 14, 1967)

And it has become difficult.
The corporate-controlled media compels us to look 
at the face of an “extremist”: Blacks looting and 
shooting for control of valuable city turf, 
Latino men reclaiming U.S. soil by taking jobs or 
raping little girls, and Muslims planning to 
attack local malls everywhere.  In 
gated-communities, white America hears the 
message: They are conspiring against you.

We are distracted, once again, with a simplistic 
debate about skin color as if the clocks have 
been turned back and we have not covered this 
ground before. The word “prejudice” re-surfaces 
and it is criminal, anti-American to discuss in 
any significant way the very real collective 
striving of white Americans, Republican or 
Democrat, right wing or liberal, toward the 
dominance of white supremacy.  The dominance of 
white supremacy is an absurd concept in a world 
populated by people of darker hue.  “You and I 
haven’t realized it, but we aren’t exactly a 
minority on this earth,” Malcolm told an audience 
in 1965! The word “equality” precipitated the 
“big chill” and scared some whites into running 
back to the ideals of their parents, who in turn, 
knew that the only solution to the idea of 
equality (social, economical, and political) 
required more than just shooting Black, Latino/a, 
and Native American leadership.

Consciously or unconsciously, they co-opted 
King’s “beloved community” and got to work, 
securing safe places (gentrification and 
sub-prime loans), securing the economy and 
employment (outsourcing for wealthy 
corporations), and educational opportunities 
(charter schools), along with promoting a war on 
drugs and a war on terror to contain domestic and 
foreign danger outside the “beloved community.”

White liberals and even notable Republicans have 
expressed “outrage” at the extreme behavior of 
King George, Darth Vader, and the Neo-Cons who 
are the Bull Conners and Jim Clarkes of today, 
but these same whites are still unwilling to consider racial equality.

Brown shows him a flag.  "It looks like an 
original flag from Castro's July 26 movement," 
said Marc Cooper, as he sits in the car of then 
Mayor Jerry Brown of Oakland, California (“Mayor 
Jerry, Take II, The Nation, March, 2002)."You got 
it," says the Mayor. "It was given to me by Che 
Guevara's widow one night after I spent eight 
hours talking to Castro. I'm taking it home from 
my office to keep it in a safe place."

Brown’s focus, writes Cooper, “seems to drift 
inward for a moment.” And Cooper hears Brown say 
quietly: "That was a long time ago," and Brown, 
Cooper writes, “starts the car and drives out of the City.”

Yes, that was a long time ago and for a very 
short time, as William Hurt’s character said in 
the 1983 film, The Bill Chill. It was a long time 
ago when we knew one another - whites and Blacks 
- and Malcolm and then King galvanized Blacks and 
whites to protest against war and poverty.  It 
was a long time ago and it did not last long 
because the idea of equality, human rights for 
all must be felt in a personal way, not just by 
the oppressed, but by the would-be supporters of 
human rights as well.  Campaigning for Mayor of 
Oakland, Brown vowed to work on reducing crime, 
re-vitalizing downtown, and establishing more 
charter schools.  As mayor, he talked about “the 
flow of capital” following the “rules of 
capitalism,” insisted that his job was to assure 
investors that they were making right decisions 
in their efforts to gentrify West Oakland where 
the majority population was Black. According to 
Cooper, when Brown was asked about the criticism 
by Blacks and others displaced by the “rules of 
capitalism,” Brown responded that he “no longer” 
knew what “they mean by gentrification.” He “no longer” knew! Such innocence!

Today, white liberals like Brown, along with the 
Neo-cons, talk about “crime,” building more 
corporate-operated detention centers, and 
conspiracies. "Now we can see it was part of a 
larger plan to kill cops," said David Druliner, 
prosecutor for the Office of the California 
Attorney General, referring to the San Francisco 
8 case.  Attorney General Brown is determined to 
enforce the federal prosecution of the San Francisco 8.

“Since when did you get so friendly with cops,” 
Hurts’ character in The Big Chill asked the 
character played by Kevin Kline.  The answer, 
when there was a huge summerhouse, wife, and 
children to protect. He couldn’t do it 
alone.   And who would expect those Blacks left 
to sort out the mess after the killings of 
Malcolm, Evers, King, and COINTELPRO executions 
and imprisonment of Black Panthers and their 
supporters.  Did anyone say it was “conspiracy” 
that wiped out the Black leadership?

Jerry Brown will be Jerry Brown.  We must call 
for justice! Along with the International Call 
for Justice (November 30, 2007) by Nobel 
laureates including South Africa Archbishop 
Desmond Tutu, we must call for charges against 
the San Francisco 8 to be dropped.  Contact 
<http://www.freethesf8.org/>freethesf8.org (the 
Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, P.O. 
Box 90221, Pasadena, California 91109).

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member 
Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has been a writer, for 
over thirty years of commentary, resistance 
criticism and cultural theory, and short stories 
with a Marxist sensibility to the impact of 
cultural narrative violence and its antithesis, 
resistance narratives. With entrenched dedication 
to justice and equality, she has served as a 
coordinator of student and community resistance 
projects that encourage the Black Feminist idea 
of an equalitarian community and facilitator of 
student-teacher communities behind the walls of 
academia for the last twenty years. Dr. Daniels 
holds a PhD in Modern American Literatures, with 
a specialty in Cultural Theory (race, gender, 
class narratives) from Loyola University, 
Chicago. 
<http://www.blackcommentator.com/contact_forms/jean_daniels/gbcf_form.php>Click 
here to contact Dr. Daniels.


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