[Ppnews] 40th Anniversary - Marin Courthouse Rebellion

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    /To the Man-Child, Tall, evil, graceful, brighteyed, black man-child
    ­ Jonathan Peter Jackson ­ who died on August 7, 1970, courage in
    one hand, assault rifle in the other; my brother, comrade, friend ­
    the true revolutionary, the black communist guerrilla in the highest
    state of development, he died on the trigger, scourge of the
    unrighteous, soldier of the people; to this terrible man-child and
    his wonderful mother Georgia Bea, to Angela Y. Davis, my tender
    experience, I dedicate this collection of letters; to the
    destruction of their enemies I dedicate my life.

    /

*George L. Jackson

*
August 7, 1970, just a few days after George Jackson was transferred to 
San Quentin, the case was catapulted to the forefront of national news 
when his brother, Jonathan, a seventeen-year-old high school student in 
Pasadena, staged a raid on the Marin County courthouse with a satchelful 
of handguns, an assault rifle, and a shotgun hidden under his coat. 
Educated into a political revolutionary by George, Jonathan invaded the 
court during a hearing for three black San Quentin inmates, not 
including his brother, and handed them weapons. As he left with the 
inmates and five hostages, including the judge, Jonathan demanded that 
the Soledad Brothers be released within thirty minutes. In the shootout 
that ensued, Jonathan was gunned down. Of Jonathan, George wrote, "He 
was free for a while. I guess that's more than most of us can expect."

************************************************
*


  **Ruchell Cinque Magee: Sole Survivor Still

  **


    **by Mumia Abu-Jamal**

    *Slavery is being practiced by the system under color of law –
    Slavery 400 years ago, slavery today; it's the same thing, but with
    a new name. They're making millions and millions of dollars
    enslaving Blacks, poor whites, and others - people who don't even
    know they're being railroaded. -- Ruchell Cinque Magee
    *
    *(from radio interview with Kiilu Nyasha, "Freedom is a Constant
    Struggle," KPFA-FM, 12 August 1995)

    *

*If you were asked to name the longest held political prisoner in the 
United States, what would your answer be?

Most would probably reply "Geronimo ji jaga (Pratt)," "Sundiata Acoli", 
or "Sekou Odinga" -- all 3 members of the Black Panther Party or 
soldiers of the Black Liberation Army, who have been encaged for their 
political beliefs or principled actions for decades. Some would point to 
Lakota leader, Leonard Peltier, who struggled for the freedom of Native 
peoples, thereby incurring the enmity of the US Government, who framed 
him in a 1975 double murder trial. Those answers would be good guesses, 
for all of these men have spent hellified years in state and federal 
dungeons, but here's a man who has spent more.

Ruchell C. Magee arrived in Los Angeles, California in 1963, and wasn't 
in town for six months before he and a cousin, Leroy, were arrested on 
the improbable charges of kidnap and robbery, after a fight with a man 
over a woman and a $10 bag of marijuana. Magee, in a slam-dunk "trial," 
was swiftly convicted and swifter still sentenced to life.

Magee, politicized in those years, took the name of the African freedom 
fighter, Cinque, who, with his fellow captives seized control of the 
slave ship, the Amistad, and tried to sail back to Africa. Like his 
ancient namesake, Cinque would also fight for his freedom from legalized 
slavery, and for 7 long years he filed writ after writ, learning what he 
calls "guerrilla law", honing it as a tool for liberation of himself and 
his fellow captives. But California courts, which could care less about 
the alleged "rights" of a young Black man like Magee, dismissed his 
petitions willy-nilly.

In August, 1970, MaGee appeared as a witness in the assault trial of 
James McClain, a man charged with assaulting a guard after San Quentin 
guards murdered a Black prisoner, Fred Billingsley. McClain, defending 
himself, presented imprisoned witnesses to expose the racist and 
repressive nature of prisons. In the midst of MaGee's testimony, a 17 
year old young Black man with a huge Afro hairdo, burst into the 
courtroom, heavily armed.

Jonathan Jackson shouted "Freeze!" Tossing weapons to McClain, William 
Christmas, and a startled Magee, who given his 7 year hell where no 
judge knew the meaning of justice, joined the rebellion on the spot. The 
four rebels took the judge, the DA and three jurors hostage, and headed 
for a radio station where they were going to air the wretched prison 
conditions to the world, as well as demand the immediate release of a 
group of political prisoners, know that The Soledad Brothers (these were 
John Cluchette, Fleeta Drumgo, and Jonathan's oldest brother, George). 
While the men did not hurt any of their hostages, they did not reckon on 
the state's ruthlessness.

Before the men could get their van out of the court house parking lot, 
prison guards and sheriffs opened furious fire on the vehicle, killing 
Christmas, Jackson, McClain as well as the judge. The DA was permanently 
paralyzed by gun fire. Miraculously, the jurors emerged relatively 
unscratched, although Magee, seriously wounded by gunfire, was found 
unconscious.

Magee, who was the only Black survivor of what has come to be called 
"The August 7th Rebellion," would awaken to learn he was charged with 
murder, kidnapping and conspiracy, and further, he would have a 
co-defendant, a University of California Philosophy Professor, and 
friend of Soledad Brother, George L. Jackson, named Angela Davis, who 
faced identical charges.

By trial time the cases were severed, with Angela garnering massive 
support leading to her 1972 acquittal on all charges.

Magee's trial did not garner such broad support, yet he boldly advanced 
the position that as his imprisonment was itself illegal, and a form of 
unjustifiable slavery, he had the inherent right to escape such slavery, 
an historical echo of the position taken by the original Cinque, and his 
fellow captives, who took over a Spanish slave ship, killed the crew 
(except for the pilot) and tried to sail back to Africa. The pilot 
surreptitiously steered the Amistad to the US coast, and when the vessel 
was seized by the US, Spain sought their return to slavery in Cuba. 
Using natural and international law principals, US courts decided they 
captives had every right to resist slavery and fight for their freedom.

Unfortunately, Magee's jury didn't agree, although it did acquit on at 
least one kidnapping charge. The court dismissed on the murder charge, 
and Magee has been battling for his freedom every since.

That he is still fighting is a tribute to a truly remarkable man, a man 
who knows what slavery is, and more importantly, what freedom means.

FREE CINQUE !!

May 27, 1997   © 1997 Mumia Abu-Jamal - All Rights Reserved
*****************************************************************

 From the Forward to Soledad Brother (1994) By Jonathan Jackson, Jr.

*I was born eight and a half months after my father, Jonathan Jackson, 
was shot down on August 7, 1970, at the Marin County Courthouse, when he 
tried to gain the release of the Soledad Brothers by taking hostages. 
Before and especially after that day, Uncle George kept in constant 
contact with my mother by writing from his cell in San Quentin. (The 
Department of Corrections wouldn't put her on the visitors' list.) 
During George's numerous trial appearances for the Soledad Brothers 
case, Mom would lift me above the crowd so he could see me. 
Consistently, we would receive a letter a few days later. For a single 
mother with son, alone and in the middle of both controversy and not a 
little unwarranted trouble with the authorities, those messages of 
strength were no doubt instrumental in helping her carry on. No matter 
how oppressive his situation became, George always had time to lend his 
spirit to the people he cared for.

A year and two weeks after the revolutionary takeover in Marin, George 
was ruthlessly murdered by prison guards at San Quentin. Both he and my 
father left me a great deal: pride, history, an unmistakable name. My 
experience has been at once wonderful and incredibly difficult. My life 
is not consumed by the Jackson legacy, but my charge is an accepted and 
cherished piece of my existence. It is out of my responsibility to my 
legacy that I have come to write this Foreword to my uncle's prison 
writings.

Today I read my inherited letters often ­ those written from George to 
my mother with a dull pencil on prison stationery. They are things of 
beauty, my most valuable possessions, passionate pieces of writing that 
have few rivals in the modern era. They will remain unpublished. 
However, the letters of /Soledad Brother/ demonstrate the same insight 
and eloquence ­ the way George's writings make his personal experience 
universal is the mainstay of his brilliance.

When this collection of letters was first released in 1969, it brought a 
young revolutionary to the forefront of a tempest, a tempest 
characterized by the Black Power, free speech, and antiwar movements, 
accompanied by a dissatisfaction with the status quo throughout the 
United States. With unflinching directness, George Jackson conveyed an 
intelligent yet accessible message with his trademark style, rational 
rage. He illuminated previously hidden viewpoints and feelings that 
disenfranchised segments of the population were unable to articulate: 
the poor, the victimized, the imprisoned, the disillusioned. George 
spoke in a revolutionary voice that they had no idea existed. He was the 
prominent figure of true radical thought and practice during the period, 
and when he was assassinated, much of the movement died along with him. 
But George Jackson cannot and will not ever leave. His life and thoughts 
serve as the message ­ George himself is the revolution.

The reissue of /Soledad Brother/ at this point in time is essential. It 
appears that the nineties are going to be a telling decade in U.S. 
history. The signposts of systemic breakdown are as glaringly obvious as 
they were in the sixties: unrest manifesting itself in inner-city 
turmoil, widespread rise of violence in the culture, and international 
oppression to legitimize a state in crisis. The fact that imprisonments 
in California have more than tripled over the last decade, supported by 
the public, is merely one sign of societal decomposition. That systemic 
change occurred during the sixties is a myth. The United States in the 
nineties faces strikingly analogous problems. George spoke to the issues 
of his day, but conditions now are so similar that this work could have 
been written last month. It is imperative that George be heard, whether 
by the angry but unchanneled young or by the cynical and worldly mature. 
The message must be carried farther than where he bravely left it in 
August of 1971.

Over the past twenty-five years, why has George Jackson not been an 
integral part of mainstream consciousness? He has been and still is 
underexposed, reduced to simplistic terms, and ultimately misunderstood. 
Racial and conspiracy theory aside, there are rational reasons for his 
exclusion. They stem not only from the hard-line revolutionary aspects 
of George's philosophy, but more importantly from the nature of the 
political system that he existed in and under.

Howard Zinn has pointed out in /A People's History of the United States/ 
that "the history of any country, presented as the history of a family, 
conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often 
repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, 
capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated." U.S. history is 
essentially that type of hidden history. Without denying important 
mitigating factors, the United States of today is strongly linked to the 
values and premises on which it was founded. That is, it is a settler 
colony founded primarily on two basic pillars, upheld by the 
Judeo-Christian tradition: genocide of indigenous peoples and slave 
labor in support of a capitalist infrastructure. Although the Bible 
repeatedly exalts mass slaughter and oppression, Judeo-Christian 
morality is publicly held to be inconsistent with them. This dissonance, 
evident within the nation's structure from the beginning, informs the 
state's fi rst function: to oversimplify and minimize immoral events in 
order to legitimize history and the state's very existence simultaneously.

Ironically, traditional Judeo-Christian morality is a perfect vehicle 
for genocide, slavery, and territorial expansion. As a logical 
progression from biblical example, expansion and imperialism culminated 
in the United States with the concept of Manifest Destiny, which held 
that it was the colonists' inherent right to expand and conquer. Further 
it was a duty, the "white man's burden," to save the "natives," to 
attempt to convert all heathens encountered. Protestant Calvinism 
provided a set of ethics that fit perfectly with the colonists' 
conquests. Max Weber, in his definitive study on religion, /The 
Sociology of Religion/, wrote, "Calvinism held that the unsearchable God 
possessed good reasons for having distributed the gifts of fortune 
unevenly"; it "represented as God's will [the Calvinists'] domination 
over the sinful world. Clearly this and other features of Protestantism, 
such as its rationalization of the existence of a lower c lass, ^1 
<http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/soledadbro.html#NOT0> were not 
only the bases for the formation of the United States, but still 
prominently exist today. "One must go to the ethics of ascetic 
Protestantism," Weber asserts, "to find any ethical sanction for 
economic rationalism and for the entrepreneur." When a nation can't 
admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything 
but delusion be a reality? "The monopoly of truth, including historical 
truth," stated Daniel Singer in a lecture at Evergreen State College 
(Washington) in 1987, "is implied in the monopoly of power."

Clearly, objective history is an impossibility. This understood, the 
significant problem lies in how the general population defines the term; 
/history/ implies that truth is being told. It is an unfortunate fact 
that history is unfailingly written by the victors, which in the case of 
the United States are not only the original imperialists, but the 
majority of the "founding fathers," dedicated to uniting and 
strengthening the existing mercantile class among disjointed colonies. 
There can be no doubt that from the creation of this young nation, 
history as a created and perceived entity moved further and further away 
from the objective ideal. Genocide, necessary for "the development of 
the modern capitalist economy," according to Howard Zinn, was 
rationalized as a reaction to the fear of Indian savages. Slavery was 
similarly construed.

The personalization of history, the process by which we construct heroes 
and pariahs, is a consequence of its dialectical nature. Without fail, 
an odd paradox is created around someone who, by virtue of his or her 
actions, becomes prominent enough to warrant the designation "historical 
figure." There is a leap on the part of the general public, sparked by 
the media, to another mindset. Sensational deeds are glorified, horrible 
acts reviled. A few points are selected as defining characteristics. The 
media, conforming to their restrictions of concision (which make 
accuracy nearly impossible to attain), reiterate these points over and 
over. Schools and textbooks not only teach these points but drill them 
into young minds. Howard Zinn comments that "this learned sense of moral 
proportion, coming from the apparent objectivity of the scholar, is 
accepted more easily than when it comes from politicians at press 
conferences. It is therefore more deadly."

A few tidbits, factual or not, incomplete and selective, are used to 
describe the entirety of a person's existence. They become part of 
mainstream consciousness. We therefore know that Lincoln freed the 
slaves, Malcolm X was a black extremist, and Hitler was solely 
responsible for World War II and the Holocaust. All half-truths go 
unexplained, all fallacies go unchallenged, as they appear to make 
perfect sense to the everyday, noncritically thinking American. The 
paradox has been created: The more famous a person becomes, the more 
misunderstood he or she is. This accepted occurrence is incredibly 
counterintuitive: the public should know more, not less, about a 
noteworthy individual and the sociopolitical dynamics surrounding him or 
her.

This historical mythicization is not, for the most part, a consciously 
created phenomenon. The media don't go out of their way to mislead the 
public by constructing false heroes and emphasizing the mundane. Fewer 
"dimly lit conferences" take place than conspiracy theorists believe. It 
is the existing political system that is responsible for the information 
that reaches the general public. The state's control of information 
created the system, and it continually re-creates it. Propagated by 
schooling and the media, information that reaches the public is subject 
to three chief mechanisms of state control: denial, self-censorship, and 
imprisonment.

Denial is the easiest control mechanism, and therefore the most common. 
If events do not follow the state's agenda or its ecumenical ideology 
and might bring unrest, they are denied. Examples are plentiful: prewar 
state terrorism against the people of North and South Vietnam and later 
the bombing of Cambodia; government funding and military aid to the 
Nicaraguan Contras; and support of UNITA and South Africa in the virtual 
destruction of Angola, among many others.

Denial goes hand in hand with self-censorship. The media emphasize 
certain personal characteristics and events and de-emphasize others, in 
a pattern that supports U.S. hegemony. The information that reached the 
public after the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989 is telling. It was not 
until much later, after the heat of controversy, that the average 
citizen had access to the scope of the devastation. The effectiveness of 
self-censorship in this case was maximized, as the full details of the 
Panama invasion were patchwork for years.

While we may assume that the media have an obligation to accurately 
convey such an event to the public, the media in fact perpetuate the 
government's position by engaging in their own self-censorship. Noam 
Chomsky points out in /Deterring Democracy/, "With a fringe of 
exceptions ­ mostly well after the tasks had been accomplished ­ the 
media rallied around the flag with due piety and enthusiasm, funnelling 
the most absurd White House tales to the public while scrupulously 
refraining from asking the obvious questions, or seeing the obvious facts."

Denial and self-censorship create a comfort zone for the U.S. citizenry, 
generally uncritical and willing to accept digestible versions of 
historical personalities and world events. The reasoning behind denial 
and self-censorship: do not make the public uncomfortable, even if that 
means diluting, sensationalizing, or lying about the truth.

Ultimately, when denial and self-censorship may not be sufficient for 
control of information, the state resorts to imprisonment. All 
imprisonment is political and as such all imprisonments carry equal 
weight. Society does, however, distinguish two categories of 
imprisonment: one for breaking a law, the other for political reasons. A 
difference is clear: American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier, 
serving a federal sentence for his supposed role at Wounded Knee, is 
considered a different type of prisoner than an armed robber serving a 
five-to-seven-year sentence.

State policy reflects institutional needs. When the state as an 
institution cannot tolerate an outside threat, real or perceived, from 
an individual or group, the consequences at its command include 
isolation, persecution, and political imprisonment. All may occur in 
greater or lesser form, depending on the degree of threat.

Political incarceration removes threats to the political and economic 
hegemony of the United States. Even though in 1959 George Jackson 
initially went to prison as an "everyday lawbreaker" with a 
one-year-to-life sentence, it was his political consciousness that kept 
him incarcerated for eleven years. In 1970 George wrote:

International capitalism cannot be destroyed without the extremes of 
struggle. The entire colonial world is watching the blacks inside the 
U.S., wondering and waiting for us to come to our senses. Their problems 
and struggles with the Amerikan monster are much more difficult than 
they would be if we actively aided them. We are on the inside. We are 
the only ones (besides the very small white minority left) who can get 
at the monster's heart without subjecting the world to nuclear fire. We 
have a momentous historical role to act out if we will. The whole world 
for all time in the future will love us and remember us as the righteous 
people who made it possible for the world to live on. If we fail through 
fear and lack of aggressive imagination, then the slaves of the future 
will curse us, as we sometimes curse those of yesterday. I don't want to 
die and leave a few sad songs and a hump in the ground as my only 
monument. I want to leave a world that is liberated from trash, pol 
lution, racism, nation-states, nation-state wars and armies, from pomp, 
bigotry, parochialism, a thousand different brands of untruth, and 
licentious usurious economics.

Nothing is more dangerous to a system that depends on misinformation 
than a voice that obeys its own dictates and has the courage to speak 
out. George Jackson's imprisonment and further isolation within the 
prison system were clearly a function of the state's response to his 
outspoken opposition to the capitalist structure.

Political incarceration is a tangible form of state control. Unlike 
denial and self-censorship, imprisonment is publicly scrutinized. Yet 
public reaction to political incarceration has been minimal. The U.S. 
government claims it holds no political prisoners (denial), while any 
notice given to protests focused on political prisoners invariably takes 
the form of a human interest story (self-censorship).

The efficacy of political incarceration in the United States cannot be 
denied. Prison serves not only as a physical barrier, but a 
communication restraint. Prisoners are completely ostracized from 
society, with little or no chance to break through. Those few outside 
who might be sympathetic are always hesitant to communicate or protest 
past a certain point, fearing their own persecution or imprisonment. 
Also, deep down most people believe that all prisoners, regardless of 
their individual situations, really did do something "wrong." Added to 
that prejudice, society lacks a distinction between a prisoner's actions 
and his or her personal worth; a bad act equals a bad person. The bottom 
line is that the majority of people simply will not believe that the 
state openly or covertly oppresses without criminal cause. As Daniel 
Singer asked at the Evergreen conference in 1987, "Is it possible for a 
class which exterminates the native peoples of the Americas, replaces 
them by raping Africa for humans it then denigrates and dehumanizes as 
slaves, while cheapening and degrading its own working class ­ is it 
possible for such a class to create a democracy, equality and to advance 
the cause of human freedom? The implicit answer is, `No, of course not."'

How does a person ­ inside or outside prison ­ confront the cultural 
mindsets, the layers of misinformation propagated by the capitalist 
system? Sooner or later, what can be called the "radical dilemma" 
surfaces for the few wanting to enter into a structural attack/analysis 
of the United States. Culturally, educationally, and politically, all of 
us are similarly limited by these layers of misinformation; we are all 
products of the system. None of us functions from a clean slate when 
considering or debating any issue, especially history as it pertains to 
the United States.

George Jackson struggled against the constraints of denial and 
self-censorship, to say nothing of his physical and communicative 
distance from society. Political prisoners are inherently vulnerable to 
an either/or situation: isolating silence or elimination. For George, 
his vociferous revolutionary attitude was either futile or 
self-exterminating. He was well aware of his situation. In /Blood in My 
Eye/, his political treatise, he wrote:

I'm in a unique political position. I have a very nearly closed future, 
and since I have always been inclined to get disturbed over organized 
injustice or terrorist practice against the innocents ­ wherever ­ I can 
now say just about what I want (I've always done just about that), 
without fear of self-exposure. I can only be executed once.

George was equally aware that revolutionary change happens only when an 
entire society is ready. No amount of action, preaching, or teaching 
will spark revolution if social conditions do not warrant it. My 
father's case, unfortunately, is an appropriate indicator. He attempted 
a revolutionary act during a reactionary time; elimination was the only 
possible consequence.

The challenge for a radical in today's world is to balance reformist 
tendencies (political liberalism) and revolutionary action/ideology 
(radicalism). While reformism entails a legitimation of the status quo 
as a search for changes within the system, radicalism posits a change of 
system. Because revolutionaries are particularly vulnerable, a certain 
degree of reformism is necessary to create space, space needed to begin 
the laborious task of making revolution.

George's statement "Combat Liberalism" and the general reaction to it 
typify the gulf between the two philosophies. George was universally 
misunderstood by the left and the right alike. As is the case with most 
modern political prisoners, nearly all of his support came from 
reformists with liberal leanings. It seems that they acted in spite of, 
rather than because of, the core of his message.

The left's attitude toward COINTELPRO is a useful illustration. 
COINTELPRO, the covert government program used to dismantle the Black 
Panther Party, and later the American Indian Movement, is typically 
cited by many leftists as a damning example of the government's 
conspiratorial nature. Declassified documents and ex-agents' testimonies 
have shown COINTELPRO to be one of the most unlawful, insidious cells of 
government in the nation's history. COINTELPRO, however, was really a 
symptomatic, expendable entity; a small police force within a larger one 
(FBI), within a branch of government (executive), within the government 
itself (liberal democracy), within the economic system (capitalism). 
Reformists in radicals' clothing unknowingly argued against symptoms, 
rather than the roots, of the entrenched system. Doing away with 
COINTELPRO or even the FBI would not alter the structure that produces 
the surveillance/elimination apparatus.

In George's day, others who considered themselves left of center, or 
even revolutionary, concerned themselves with inner-city reform issues, 
mostly black ghettos. The problem of and debate about inner cities still 
exists. However, recognition of a problem and analysis of that problem 
are two very different challenges. The demand to better only 
predominantly black inner-city conditions is unrealistic at best. In the 
capitalist structure, there must be an upper, middle, and especially a 
lower class. Improving black neighborhoods is the equivalent of 
ghettoizing some other segment of the population ­ poor whites, 
Hispanics, Asians, etc. Nothing intrinsic to the system would change, 
only superficial alterations that would mollify the liberal public. As 
Chomsky asserts in /Turning the Tide/:

Determined opposition to the latest lunacies and atrocities must 
continue, for the sake of the victims as well as our own ultimate 
survival. But it should be understood as a poor substitute for a 
challenge to the deeper causes, a challenge that we are, unfortunately, 
in no position to mount at the present though the groundwork can and 
must be laid.

Failure to understand the radical, encompassing viewpoint in the sixties 
led to reformism. In effect, the majority of the left completely 
deserted any attempt at the radical balance required of the politically 
conscious, leaving only liberalism and its narrow vision to flourish.

Nobody comprehended the radical dilemma more fully than George Jackson. 
Indeed, he developed his philosophy not out of mere happenstance, but 
with a very conscious eye upon maintaining his revolutionary ideology. 
He writes in /Blood in My Eye/:

Reformism is an old story in Amerika. There have been depressions and 
socio-economic political crises throughout the period that marked the 
formation of the present upper-class ruling circle, and their 
controlling elites. But the parties of the left were too committed to 
reformism to exploit their revolutionary potential.

George's involvement with the prison reform movement should therefore be 
seen as a matter of survival. Unlike the reformist left, prison 
oppression was /directly/ affecting him. His balanced reform activities 
­ improving prisoners' rights while speaking out against prison as an 
entity ­ were required to make living conditions tolerable enough for 
him to continue on his revolutionary path. Simply, he did what he had to 
do to survive ­ created space while simultaneously pursuing his radical 
theory.

The reform George Jackson did accomplish was and still is incredible, 
transforming the prison environment from unlivable to livable hell, from 
encampments that he called reminiscent of Nazi Germany to at least a 
scaled-down version of the like. With his influence, these changes 
occurred not only in California, but throughout the nation. Only now is 
his influence beginning to slip, with reactionary politics bringing 
about torture and sensory deprivation facilities such as Pelican Bay 
State Prison in California, as well as the reintroduction for adoption 
of the one-to-life indeterminate sentence. This type of sentence is 
fertile ground for state oppression, as it is up to a parole board to 
decide if an inmate is ever to be let go. A prison can easily and 
effectively create situations that transform a one-to-life into a life 
sentence. (Tellingly, the indeterminate sentence is being promoted not 
by the right, but by a California senator formerly associated with 
mainstream libera l causes.)

Politically, George Jackson provided us all with a radical education, a 
viable alternative to viewing not only the United States but the world 
as a political entity. He gave the disenfranchised a lens through which 
they could clearly see their situation and become more conscious about 
it. He wrote in April 1970:

It all falls into place. I see the whole thing much clearer now, how 
fascism has taken possession of this country, the interlocking 
dictatorship from county level on up to the Grand Dragon in Washington, 
D.C.

Crucially, George's treatment is a concrete, undeniable example of 
political oppression. Race is more times than not the easy answer to a 
problem. Among people of color in the United States, the quick fix, 
"blame it on whitey" mentality has become so prevalent that it shortcuts 
thinking. Conversely, stereotypes of minorities act as simple-minded 
tools of divisiveness and oppression. George addressed these issues in 
prison, setting a model for the outside as well: "I'm always telling the 
brothers some of those whites are willing to work with us against the 
pigs. All they got to do is stop talking honky. When the races start 
fighting, all you have is one maniac group against another." On the 
surface, race has been and is still being put forth as an overriding 
issue that needs to be addressed as a prerequisite for social change. In 
fact, although it seems to loom as a large problem, race as an issue is 
again a symptom of capitalism. Of course, on a paltry le vel and among 
the relatively powerless, race does play a part in social structure (the 
racist cop, the bigoted landlord, etc.), pitting segments of the 
population against each other. But revolutionary change requires class 
analysis that drives appropriate actions and eliminates race as a 
mitigating factor. Knowing these socioeconomic dynamics, George Jackson 
was first and foremost a people's revolutionary, and he acted as such at 
all times without compromise. His writings clearly reflect his belief in 
class-based revolutionary change.

Considering the many structural elements affecting him, it is easy to 
see why George and his message have been misinterpreted. The quick takes 
on him are abundant: it's assumed that he was imprisoned and oppressed 
because he was black, because he had publicized ties with the Black 
Panther Party and was a well-known organizer within the prison reform 
movement. Although George became a "prison celebrity," a status that 
certainly didn't help him in terms of acquittal and release, ignorance 
of the actual forces responsible for his prolonged imprisonment is 
inexcusable. The radical viewpoint is absolutely indispensable when 
regarding both George's life circumstance and philosophy. His life 
serves not as a mere individual example of prison cruelty, but as a 
scalding indictment of the very nature of capitalism.

In these times, there are two very different ways to be born into 
privilege. First and most obvious in the system of capital is to be born 
into wealth. Second, and not precluding the first, is to have an 
intellectual, politically conscious base from which to grow as a person 
philosophically and spiritually. Radical figures in modern society ­ 
Lenin, Trotsky, Ché Guevara, my father, Jonathan Jackson, and my uncle 
George Jackson ­ have the capability of providing this base through 
their examples and writings.

Those not born into privilege can achieve a politically conscious base 
in different ways. No veils separate the lower class from the realities 
of everyday life. They have been given the gift of disillusion. 
Bourgeois lifestyle, although perhaps sought after, is in most cases not 
attainable. Daily survival is the primary goal, as it was with George. 
Of course, when it finally becomes more attractive for one to fight, and 
perhaps die, than to live in a survival mode, revolution starts to 
become a possibility. Not a riot, not a government takeover by one or 
another group, but a people's revolution led by the politically conscious.

This consciousness doesn't simply appear. Individuals must grow and work 
into it, but it's an invaluable gift to have insight into and access to 
an alternative to the frustration, a goal on the horizon.

The nineties are an unconscious era. The unimportant is all-important, 
the essential neglected. What system than capitalism, what time period 
than now, is better suited to naturally create the scape-goat, the 
seldom-heard political prisoner, misunderstood in his 
cult-of-personality status, held back in a choke hold from society? It 
is not only our right, but our duty, to listen to and comprehend George 
Jackson's message. To not do so is to turn our backs on one of the 
brilliant minds of the twentieth century, an individual passionately 
involved with liberating not only himself, but all of us.

Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our 
situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are 
dying who could be saved, that generations more will die or live poor 
butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover 
your humanity and your love in revolution. Pass on the torch. Join us, 
give up your life for the people.

*­/George Jackson/*

*Jonathan Jackson, Jr.*

*San Francisco*

*June 1994*





*

*Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org <http://www.freedomarchives.org/> *

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