<html>
<body>
<font size=1>
<a href="http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?JServSessionIdr001=a55jxs4y51.app7b&page=NewsArticle&id=6333&news_iv_ctrl=1261" eudora="autourl">
http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?JServSessionIdr001=a55jxs4y51.app7b&page=NewsArticle&id=6333&news_iv_ctrl=1261<br>
<br>
</a></font><font size=3><b>News and Analysis<br><br>
</b>Arrest of former Black Panthers aims to erase revolutionary
legacy<br>
Wednesday, January 31, 2007 <br>
By: Sérgio Rodrigues <br><br>
Evidence based on torture<br><br>
On Jan. 23, police arrested eight men on charges relating to the 1971
killing of police sergeant John V. Young. Seven of the accused are former
Black Panther Party members. Young was shot through the speaking hole of
a bulletproof glass while sitting behind the visitor’s window of San
Francisco’s Ingleside police station.<br><br>
The men arrested were Ray Michael Boudreaux and Henry Watson Jones of
Altadena, Calif.; Richard Brown of San <br><br>
<img src="http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?JServSessionIdr001../images/content/pagebuilder/18771.jpg" width=200 alt="haroldtaylorpanther">
<br><br>
<br><br>
<br><br>
<br><br>
<br><br>
<br>
<i>Harold Taylor, center, was arrested in Panama City, Fla.</i> <br>
Francisco; Francisco Torres of Queens, NY; Herman Bell, and Anthony
Bottom, who are incarcerated in New York state; and Harold Taylor of
Panama City, Fla. <br><br>
Richard O'Neal, 57, of San Francisco, was arrested on conspiracy to
murder police officers, but was not charged as a participant in the
killing. Ronald Stanley Bridgeforth was charged in the case but has not
yet been arrested. (Los Angeles Times, Jan. 23) <br><br>
Taylor had been previously arrested for Young’s murder together with John
Bowman and Ruben Scott in 1973. However, the charges were dropped once
evidence surfaced that they were tortured by cops to obtain phony
confessions. New Orleans police used electric shock, cattle prods,
beatings, sensory deprivation, plastic bags and hot, wet blankets for
asphyxiation to extract confessions from the three men.<br><br>
"There were people from the forces of the San Francisco Police
Department who participated in harassment, torture and my interrogation
in 1973," the late Bowman had said. "None of these people have
ever been brought to trial. None of these people have ever been charged
with anything."<br><br>
Bell and Bottom, who together with Albert Washington are known as the New
York Three, have been political prisoners since the early 1970s, after
being falsely convicted of killing two New York City police officers. All
three men were mentioned in documents of the FBI’s Counter Intelligence
Program (COINTELPRO) as members of the Black liberation movement who had
to be "neutralized."<br><br>
Boudreaux and Jones were arrested in 2005 after refusing to testify in
the reopened Young case. Following their incarceration, the two men
helped found the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights to draw
attention to the abuses perpetrated by the government of the United
States and law enforcement authorities in an effort to destroy
progressive organizations and individuals. The two men have traveled the
country denouncing such police tactics. Boudreaux had recently printed a
pamphlet titled "Torture Methods Similar to Guantanamo and Abu
Ghraib used against members of Black Panther Party." (Los Angeles
Times, Jan. 23)<br><br>
Not surprisingly, government officials have no inclination to discuss
this history of torture and repression against Black activists. <br><br>
<b>Rewriting history<br><br>
</b>Following the arrests, the San Francisco Police Department’s deputy
chief of investigations, Morris Tabak, stated that members of the Black
Liberation Armyan underground offshoot of the Black Panther
Party"were bent on creating terror and chaos by assassinating
police officers" in the late 1960s and early 70s. Officials claim
that the men were BLA militants at the time of Young’s murder. (Los
Angeles Times, Jan. 27)<br><br>
Racist characterizations of the Black movementas "terrorists"
and "assassins"which the capitalist media faithfully
disseminates, are lies. It was the state apparatus that was "bent on
creating terror and chaos" in Black communities well before the
Black Panther Party or the BLA came into being. <br><br>
Rampant police brutality against Black communities was one of the
conditions leading to the birth and growth of the Black Panther Party.
Originally called the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, it responded
to the urgent need for organizing Black communities against state
violence.<br><br>
The Black Panther Party soon found itself in the crosshairs of the FBI’s
COINTELPRO, like many other groups deemed too "radical" by the
U.S. government. The persistent and often violent state repression
against the Black Panthers through infiltrations, frame-ups, arrests and
assassinations had a devastating impact on the organization. <br><br>
Some Black Panthers came to the conclusion that aboveground work was not
possible under such unbearable conditions and that an underground, armed
organization was neededan important factor in the formation of the
BLA.<br><br>
The Black Panther Party was considered "radical" not because of
its support for armed self-defense, but rather because it exposed the
bankruptcy of the capitalist system in a way that threatened its
stability. <br><br>
Actor Roger Guenveur Smith pointed out in Spike Lee's film, "A Huey
P. Newton Story," that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover believed
"It was not the guns, it was the [Black Panther Party’s] Free
Children's Breakfast Program that was the greatest threat to the internal
security of the United States of America." <br><br>
The Panthers strived to meet the needs of the working-class people in
their communitiessomething that capitalism is inherently unable and
unwilling to do.<br><br>
The decades-old Young case was reopened in 1999 under the alleged
discovery of "new" forensic evidence. Whatever rationale is
used to justify the charges, however, the real motivation is undeniably
political. <br><br>
No amount of slander and smear has been sufficient to erase the legacy of
resistance and struggle of the Black Panther Party. <br><br>
Plagued by inconvenient revelations of torture during the first trial,
state officials have decided to take another stab at locking up the Black
activists, labeling them as "murderers" while shamelessly
covering up the blood on their hands.<br><br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3 color="#FF0000">The Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br>
(415) 863-9977<br>
</font><font size=3>
<a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.freedomarchives.org</a></font></body>
</html>