[Ppnews] Comrade George Jackson Warned Us

[Political Prisoner News]

Comrade George Jackson Warned Us

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=473&Itemid=1

Wednesday, 19 December 2007

by Chaka

The American Prison Gulag is unique on the planet, both in size and 
racial composition. The martyred George Jackson (1941-1971) saw 
American fascism as the inevitable product "of genocidal 
extermination of indigenous peoples and genocidal enslavement of 
Afrikans." The logic of homegrown fascism is inseparable from the 
nation's original, formative sins. One million incarcerated Black men 
and women are captive testimony to the near-seamless transition from 
the "peculiar institution" of slavery and the "pioneering spirit" of 
mass murder, to the modern, industrial warehousing of human beings 
and relentless assaults on civil liberties: "Destruction of the 
prison industrial complex is a most critical front in our struggle 
for a radically more egalitarian world."


Comrade George Jackson Warned Us

by Chaka

"Comrade George recognized fascism and dared to challenge it."


<http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-1955>H.R 1955, 
"The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act" 
passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representative on October 23, 
2007.  I hope I have your full attention.

Years ago in 
<http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=JX7V2__KNtsC&dq=blood+in+my+eye+george+jackson&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=ER0K5A66RM&sig=lVA_qfLdXNfzZUcaFlR9y-1UAcg#PPR12,M1>Blood 
in My Eye, 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Jackson_%28Black_Panther%29>George 
Jackson wrote: "Death and prison for all who object - fascism in its 
final and secure state.  It has happened here." It has been happening here.

To understand what Comrade George was saying we have to rely less on 
establishment academics as to what fascism means. Most of them 
understand fascism as something that happened in Europe during the 
1930s. Comrade George tried to improve our understanding of fascism 
by daring to look beyond continental Europe.  He recognized US 
fascism by locating it in the history of genocidal extermination of 
indigenous peoples and genocidal enslavement of Afrikans. Comrade 
George also recognized that fascism continued into the present 
because he did not separate white supremacy from its logical 
conclusion: genocide.  Witness the attempts to destroy 
<http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=457&Itemid=33>public 
housing in New Orleans as homelessness there increases dramatically.

"Comrade George did not separate white supremacy from its logical 
conclusion: genocide."

US concentration camps - prisons and jails - are sites of terror and 
warfare. To some it seems undeclared, but the over 2 million people 
imprisoned reveals high-intensity, racialized and class-based 
warfare. Critically, this war against us is also highly 
gendered.  While Afrikan men are the vast majority of those 
incarcerated, Afrikan women are currently being incarcerated at 
higher rates. The 
<http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/usa/Rcedrg00-01.htm>incredibly 
disproportionate number of Afrikans and other racialized people in 
the 
<http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=86>US 
gulags should make clear our deadly reality.  The recent  ruling by 
the Supreme Court that asserts the right of federal judges to 
sentence individuals below the guideline recommendations in 
<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/12/10/supremecourt/main3597693.shtml>crack 
cocaine cases and the decision by the 
<http://www.ussc.gov/PRESS/rel0407.htm>Sentencing Commission to apply 
that ruling retroactively, should be a reminder of how much work we 
have left. The mandatory minimum terms imposed by Congress remain 
along with their devastating impact on our communities. Mass 
incarceration remains not only a means of social control for 
populations rendered surplus by changes in the global and US 
capitalist economy - US mass incarceration is genocidal.

On the frontlines trying to halt genocide were/are our freedom 
fighters.  Some of them organized themselves under the banner of the 
Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army; others formed the 
National Committee to Combat Fascism; and others were/are part of 
other revolutionary formations and collectives.  What they share(d) 
in common was a willingness to up the ante of struggle as the 
apparatus of US state terrorism intensified their brutality. 
Confronted with overwhelming state violence, often in the form of 
police assassinations, they resisted.  And those who dared to 
struggle have paid, are still paying, with their lives.

Today, our freedom fighter - <http://www.assatashakur.org/>Assata 
Shakur - remains in exile.  The terror mongers have placed a $1 
million bounty on her head.  Others remain exiled, suffering 
separation from loved ones, yet giving us hope, as they avoid direct 
repression. But many of our freedom fighters - Jalil Muntaqim, Herman 
Bell, Robert (Seth) Hayes, Mutulu Shakur, Sekou Odinga, Field 
Marshall Eddie Conway, Leonard Peltier, Sundiata Acoli, Marilyn Buck, 
Mumia Abu Jamal and many others- remain incarcerated.  They are 
political prisoners and prisoners of war, individuals who remain 
caged because they fought and continue to fight against the forces of 
US fascism.

"Confronted with overwhelming state violence, often in the form of 
police assassinations, they resisted."

In these times of global apartheid, 
"<http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050502/klein>disaster capitalism," 
and intensifying white supremacist violence we should call upon the 
spirit of George Jackson to "possess" us.  "As a slave, the social 
phenomenon that engages my whole consciousness is, of course, 
revolution," Comrade George stated boldly. This is what made him so 
terrifying to the ruling class. Comrade George recognized fascism and 
dared to challenge it.

The pressing task we face is to make revolutionary transformation the 
social phenomenon that engages our whole consciousness and that of 
more people.  Intensifying our struggle to emancipate all our 
political prisoners and prisoners of war and to permanently dismantle 
the prison industrial complex is a crucial aspect of this work.  It 
is also one of the most important ways we can challenge the forces of 
imperialism abroad and fascism at home.

Emancipating our freedom fighters is no easy task.  The US state 
refuses to recognize them as political prisoners and prisoners of war 
and keeps them locked up although they have already had decades of 
their lives stolen.  The criminal injustice system continues to be 
used to criminalize organizing for social justice and to prevent 
resistance to political repression and US state terror.  It is from 
this vantage point we must resist the "legalization" of 
"<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-giraldi/the-violent-radicalizatio_b_74091.html>The 
Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act."  As 
the 
<http://ccrjustice.org/learn-more/faqs/factsheet:-violent-radicalization-and-homegrown-terrorism-prevention-act-2007>Center 
for Constitutional Rights has pointed out this legislation is so 
broad and sweeping that it can easily be used as a tool for state 
repression. Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, kidnappings (extraordinary 
renditions), illegal wiring tapping, and the legalization of torture 
(e.g. water boarding) all reveal that the legal framework for 
increased repression is being rapidly expanded.

And, political repression continues to intensify. In fact, our 
freedom fighters continue to be subjected to human rights violations 
and political repression.  For example, in the aftermath of the 
attacks on the world trade center in September 2001, many of our 
freedom fighters already incarcerated were placed in solitary 
confinement.  The justification given was that they constituted a 
threat to the society.  More recently, we witnessed the renewed 
attacks on the members (past) of the Black Panther Party and the 
BPP's legacy of resistance to empire.  The 
<http://www.freethesf8.org/>San Francisco 8 case reveals that there 
is no action too reprehensible for the forces of repression.  Even 
though a Los Angeles judge, in 1975, dismissed a case brought against 
some Black Panther Party members because police had 
<http://mlyon01.wordpress.com/2007/12/06/the-san-francisco-eight-torture-in-america/>systematically 
tortured BPP member Harold Taylor, the police have re-opened this 
more than 30 year old case against Taylor and other activists. The 
struggle to end this specific attack continues.

Emancipating of freedom fighters is becoming more difficult.  The 
so-called "war against terror" is the fig leaf behind which US State 
terror and corporate plundering is being intensified.  They are using 
this as a means to expand the corporate warfare-police State and its 
systems of control, containment, repression and death.  To ignore our 
responsibility to our incarcerated freedom fighters is to lay idle as 
fascism intensifies.  And its intensification is not only at the 
level of the fascist State.

If Comrade George was correct in noting that the "fascist state has 
found it essential to disguise the opulence of its ruling-class 
leisure existence by providing the lower classes with a mass 
consumer's flea market of its own," the capacity to participate in 
this "flea market" is shrinking for the lower and middle classes as 
wealth inequality increases.  Consequently, the danger to racialized 
people, especially those who are poor, increases exponentially, given 
that the US continues to be a white supremacist social formation.

"To ignore our responsibility to our incarcerated freedom fighters is 
to lay idle as fascism intensifies."

State terror widely manifested in mass incarceration is today enabled 
by white acceptance of the "necessity" of Black social death and the 
societal retreat from racial justice.  (It is also enabled by our 
indifference; for the black political mis-leadership class, those 
incarcerated have largely become disposable.)  However, the dangers 
to Afrikans and other racialized people is amplified because the 
increase in white economic/social insecurity, real or imagined, will 
likely feed the growth of non-governmental white terrorist 
organizations (e.g. KKK, Minutemen etc.). This could easily lead 
whites to engage, as participants or spectators, in the anti-Afrikan 
pogroms (disingenuously called "race riots") of the 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Summer_of_1919>not so-distant 
past.  Unfortunately, at this time, the likelihood of massive white 
flight to even more explicit fascism remains more likely than the 
rejection of "whiteness" and its wages.  Witness the epidemic of 
nooses and police murders.

If this is so, there is a dire need for stronger resistance to 
genocide.  A multi-pronged effort to emancipate all the political 
prisoners and prisoners of war held in US gulags as well as to 
abolish prisons may serve to revive and build revolutionary 
consciousness.  Already, the 
<http://www.thejerichomovement.com/>Jericho Movement, the 
<http://mxgm.org/web/>Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Center for the 
Defense of Human Rights (CDHR), 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Resistance>Critical 
Resistance, ABCDF and others are forwarding the struggle to 
emancipate our political prisoners and prisoners of war.  It is 
imperative that we support them in realization that the emancipation 
of our PPs/POWs, securing the safety of our political exiles, along 
with the destruction of the prison industrial complex is a most 
critical front in our struggle for a radically more egalitarian world.
"Fascism has temporarily succeeded," but as Comrade George said, "the 
only way we can destroy it is to refuse compromise with the enemy 
state and its ruling class."



Chaka can be contacted at <mailto:nalsoja at yahoo.com>nalsoja at yahoo.com 
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need 
JavaScript enabled to view it .





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