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Title: A Soldier’s Story
Author: Kuwasi Balagoon
Date: 2001
Language: en
Topics: black anarchism, revolutionary anarchism, Black Liberation Army, Black Panther Party, US
Source: Retrieved on 4th January 2021 from https://issuu.com/librarymachinebroke/docs/kuwasi_balagoon_-_a_soldier_s_story
Notes: Edited by Karl Kersplebedeb and Matt Meyer. With contributions from Albert Nuh Washington; Akinyele Umoja; David Gilbert; Joan P. Gibbs; Meg Starr, Sekou Odinga; Bilal Sunni-Ali; Kim Kit Holder; Danielle Jasmine; Amilcar Shabazz; Ajamu Sankofa; dequi kioni-sadiki; Kai Lumumba Barrow; Dhoruba Bin Wahad; Ashanti Alston; New Afrikan People’s Organization; Sundiata Acoli; Marilyn Buck; 117 Prisoners at Auburn.

Kuwasi Balagoon

A Soldier’s Story

Introduction to 2019 Edition

Close to twenty years after the publication of the first edition of this

collection of writings by Kuwasi Balagoon, his light and legacy shine

brighter than ever. The project to publish a new edition of A Soldier’s

Story was born out of expedience: the many printings of the previous

editions were running out, and over the course of time we accumulated

some new writings and much new commentary about this freedom fighter so

defiant of the state and all forms of oppression—and so defying of easy

definition and labeling. Even the word “anarchist” which graces the

subtitle of this book can in some circles be controversial: Kuwasi was

an active revolutionary nationalist whose love for his people (and all

people) was a central element of his being, as was his hatred of

authoritarian structures and styles. This new collection, then,

following the course of the previous collections, seeks to deepen our

understanding of the nuances that made up the life and thought of Kuwasi

Balagoon—and, in so doing, to help us prepare for the nuances so needed

in forging new fightback movements of resistance and revolution.

In the course of preparing this edition of A Soldier’s Story, the

editors received invaluable assistance from former comrades of Kuwasi’s,

some of whom still had in their possession writings by Kuwasi that had

never been published or widely circulated. The status of these writings

is unclear; we do not know if Kuwasi considered them complete or if they

were drafts he would have wanted to return to. In at least one case,

given that the document ends abruptly, it is clear that his intention

was to write more. We present them all here, with little editing, to

present as broad and wide a scope of Kuwasi’s contributions to radicals

who hold him in deep esteem, and to the many who are just learning about

this too often overlooked and complex revolutionary. Some of what is

included here are new reflections from those closest to him or those

influenced by him who in some way help carry on his work. Surely Kuwasi

would have rejoiced at some of the interpersonal openness not quite

acceptable in his day; surely he would have spent most of his time

working to free all political prisoners—including his still imprisoned

New York Panther 21 codefendant Sundiata Acoli—and to rid the world of

all injustice. If we are to remain true to his spirit, we would do well

to redouble our efforts along these very lines.

In a sense, this book is the result of almost twenty years work, as it

was the very end of the twentieth century when comrades first started

assembling some of these texts for what was then imagined would be a

pamphlet of maybe sixty or seventy pages, building on work that had been

done previously by the New Jersey chapter of the Anarchist Black Cross

Federation. Besides those listed in the contributors section of this

volume, we would like to thank those who were involved in Solidarity, a

short-lived Montreal-based publishing collective, Prison News Service,

and the Arm the Spirit collective based in Toronto (not to be confused

with the prisoner newspaper of the same name) for the contributions to

and work done on that first edition. Also, much thanks goes to J. Sakai,

without whose guidance and encouragement that first edition would have

never happened. For this most recent edition, we also thank the comrades

from Freedom Archives, and Mary Patten and the Madame Binh Graphics

Collective Archives, for their assistance in providing images and

documents for inclusion in this volume.

Introduction to the First Edition

Solidarity, Montreal 2001

This is a collection of writings by Kuwasi Balagoon, a man who many

anarchists, nationalists, and anti-imperialists may have heard of in

passing, but about whom very little has been made broadly available. As

you read on, this state of affairs may perplex or even anger you, for

certainly what we have here are important and eloquent words by a man

who devoted his life to the cause of freedom—freedom from colonialism

and national oppression for New Afrika and freedom from the mental

shackles we all wear around our minds.

A staunch advocate of New Afrikan liberation and the eradication of

capitalism, Balagoon was also an anarchist and a participant in armed

struggle. Serving a stint in the U.S. army in Germany, he and other

Black GIs formed a clandestine direct action group called De

Legislators, which set out to punish racist soldiers with beatings or

worse. Upon his return to North America he got involved with the Black

Panther Party for Self-Defense. Balagoon was one of the Panther 21, whom

the government attempted (unsuccessfully) to frame in 1969. Many of his

earliest writings can be found in the collective autobiography of the

Panther 21, Look for Me in the Whirlwind. As the Black Panther Party

disintegrated due to both outside pressure from the police and FBI and

internal contradictions between different personalities and political

lines, Balagoon joined that faction that became the Black Liberation

Army, an important formation that engaged in armed confrontation with

the state, breaking comrades out of prison, attacking the police, and

carrying out expropriations (aka robberies) of capitalists.

Throughout his political journey, Balagoon remained a critical observer,

often committing his thoughts and ideas to paper. Luckily, we have been

able to assemble at least a portion of his writings in this booklet. Our

goal in publishing this is not so much to tell people about an unknown

superhero or prophet of revolution—there are too many of those already.

We have no doubt that Balagoon had his faults and made errors just like

the rest of us, and indeed we are in no way claiming to agree with each

and every one of his ideas. Yet it is important that these words be

published together, at long last, not only as a tribute to someone who

provides a good example of what a freethinking and uncompromising

revolutionary can be but also for our own sake. As revolutionaries there

is a lot we can learn from Balagoon’s words, as well as from his deeds.

While hopefully keeping our own critical sense—how else would he have

wanted it?—there is much to be found in his observations, strategies,

and ideas that should be taken seriously and discussed by those who

fight for a better day now, almost fifteen years after his death.

B.L.A.

Albert Nuh Washington, March 14, 1986

Albert Nuh Washington was a member of the Black Liberation Army and

prisoner of war (one of the New York Three). He died of cancer on April

28, 2000, at the Coxsackie Correctional Facility prison in New York

State.

Kuwasi in the Twent-First Century

Maroon: Kuwasi Balagoon and the Evolution of Revolutionary New

Afrikan Anarchism

Akinyele Umoja

On October 20, 1981, Black revolutionaries and their white radical

allies engaged in an attempted “expropriation” of a Brink’s armored

truck in Rockland County, New York. That day Rockland police apprehended

three white activists and one Black man. A manhunt ensued, and on

January 20, 1982, Black revolutionary Kuwasi Balagoon was apprehended in

New York City. The alliance of Black and white radicals captured were

part of a radical formation called the Revolutionary Armed Task Force

(RATF) under the leadership of the Black Liberation Army (BLA). Balagoon

was the lone anarchist among the RATF defendants; others identified

themselves as Muslims, revolutionary nationalists, and

Marxist-Leninists. While Balagoon was closely aligned with and respected

by his comrades in the BLA and RATF, his anarchist position set him

apart ideologically.[1]

Informants told the U.S. government investigators that his BLA and RATF

comrades called Balagoon “Maroon.” The term “Maroon” originates from

enslaved Africans in the Western Hemisphere who escaped and formed rebel

communities in remote areas away from slaveholding society. Balagoon

earned this nickname due to his multiple escapes from incarceration.

This article will explore how Balagoon was also an ideological and

social “Maroon” in the context of the Black Liberation Movement and will

examine his legacy in the contemporary struggle for self-determination

and social justice.

From Donald Weems to Kuwasi Balagoon: The Development of a

Revolutionary

Kuwasi Balagoon chronicles his early life and political development in

the collective autobiography of New York Black Panther Party defendants

titled Look for Me in the Whirlwind. He was born Donald Weems in the

majority Black community of Lakeland in Prince George’s County,

Maryland, on December 22, 1946. Early experiences prepared young Donald

Weems to become an activist who would militantly resist white supremacy

and unjust authority.[2]

He was also inspired by the militant movement led by Gloria Richardson

in Cambridge in the Eastern Shore region of Maryland. Protests in

Cambridge evolved into violence in 1963. Blacks organized sniper teams

to defend nonviolent protesters from white supremacist violence. In June

1963, the National Guard was sent to Cambridge to quell the accelerating

disturbance and was deployed there for a year. U.S. Attorney General

Robert Kennedy and the Justice Department were forced to intervene and

negotiate a “treaty” between Richardson and the white power structure.

Nation of Islam national spokesman Malcolm X Shabazz would mention the

Cambridge movement as an example of developing “Black revolution” in his

legendary speech “Message to the Grassroots.” The militancy of the

Cambridge Movement inspired and impressed the teenaged Weems.[3]

Weems joined the U.S. Army after graduating from high school and was

stationed in Germany after basic training. Like most Blacks in the army,

he experienced racism and physical attacks from white officers and

enlisted men. Weems believed Black soldiers were unjustly and

disproportionately punished after altercations with whites. Black

soldiers formed a clandestine association called “Da Legislators,” in

his words, “based on fucking up racists … because we were going to make

and enforce new laws that were fair.” Donald prided himself in his

ability to exact revenge on racist war soldiers. In London, he also

connected with Africans and African descendants. He described the

experience of socializing with African descendants from around the globe

and other people of color in London as a “natural tonic,” which

motivated him to ground himself in Black consciousness and culture. He

stopped “processing” his hair, wore a more natural hairstyle, and also

“became more committed to Black Liberation.” He was honorably discharged

in 1967, after three years serving primarily in Germany.[4]

After his discharge and return home to Lakeland, Weems ultimately moved

to New York City, where his sister Diane lived. In New York, he involved

himself in rent strikes and was eventually hired as a tenant organizer

for the Community Council on Housing (CCH). The principal leader and

spokesman of the CCH was Harlem rent strike organizer Jesse Gray. Gray

used the rhetoric of militant Black nationalism to recruit lieutenants

for his activist campaigns. He once told a Harlem audience that he

needed “one hundred Black revolutionaries ready to die.” Gray exhorted:

There is only one thing that can correct the situation and that’s

guerrilla warfare …. [A]ll you Black people that have been in the armed

services and know anything about guerrilla warfare should come to the

aid of our people. If we must die, let us die scientifically![5]

“My father worked for the U.S. Printing Office, and my mom and Mary Day

worked at Fort Meade, Maryland. Their love for my other sister Diane and

for me, the only boy and the baby of the family—and the concept that

you’ve got to work somewhere, and all-suffering determination—enabled

them to rush to the job, and getting there, work and teach white folks

how to do the type of work encountered, and then watch them climb the

governmental ladder quickly, while they themselves rose slowly and

painfully step by slow step. They did that for twenty-five years, so we

could have food and clothes and goodies.” (From: Look for Me in the

Whirlwind [PM Press, 2017])

Like many of his generation, Weems was ready to join an uncompromising

movement for Black freedom and human rights. He joined Gray in

protesting the conditions in New York housing, particularly the

infestation of rats in public housing. In 1967, Gray, Weems, his sister

Diane, and two other tenant activists were arrested for disorderly

conduct in Washington, DC, where, unannounced and uninvited, they

attended a session of Congress and brought a cage of rats to the

assembly to highlight urban housing conditions. Due to the protests, the

CCH lost its funding and Gray his ability to pay his organizers.

After Weems left CCH, he participated in the Central Harlem Committee

for Self-Defense in solidarity with student protests at Columbia

University. The Committee brought food and water to students who

occupied buildings on the Columbia campus.

Weems would also associate himself with the Yoruba Temple in Harlem,

organized by Nana Oserjiman Adefumi. The Detroit-born Adefumi was

initiated in Cuba in the Lukumi rites of Yoruba origin. He saw the West

African religious and cultural heritage as a means to cultural

self-determination and peoplehood for African descendants in the United

States. Explaining the nationalistic aims of the Yoruba Temple, Adefumi

offered, “We must Africanize everything! Our names, our hats, our

clothes, our clubs, our churches … etc., etc., etc.” Many of the youth

of Weems’s generation rejected their “slave” names and adopted African

or Arabic names. Through his association with the Yoruba temple, Weems

was renamed. He would be Donald Weems no more, adopting an Ewe day name,

“Kuwasi,” for a male born on Sunday, and the Yoruba name “Balagoon,”

meaning “warlord.” He would later say that the name Kuwasi Balagoon

“reflects what I am about and my origins.”[6]

Revolutionary Nationalism: Balagoon and the New York Black Panther

Party

While Balagoon found his cultural bearing in the Yoruba Temple, he was

attracted to the Black Power politics of revolutionary Black

nationalism. The revolutionary Black nationalism of the Black Power

movement was a political expression that argued that Black liberation

would not be possible without the overthrow of the U.S. constitutional

order and capitalist economic system. Revolutionary Black nationalism

represented a confluence of ideological influences on the Black freedom

movement. Significant numbers of Black militants of the 1960s Black

Power movement did not see classical Marxism-Leninism as a framework

they could identify with. Many were inspired by the influence of Marxism

in the Chinese and Cuban Revolutions and other national liberation

movements in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, but were critical of the

racism of the Old Left and sought a theoretical vehicle and

self-definition that gave them ideological self-determination. A

significant number of Black youth identified with the direct action of

the Civil Rights Movement but were not committed to nonviolence as a way

of life. Some Black radicals also identified with Black nationalism and

rejected the integration and pro-assimilationist tendencies within the

Civil Rights Movement. Young Black Power militants also sought a more

insurgent political program than they observed from the Nation of Islam

and fundamental Black nationalists. As a new ideological development in

the Black freedom movement, the Revolutionary Black nationalism of the

Black Power movement incorporated the Marxian critique of capitalism,

the historic tradition of Black nationalism and self-determination, and

the direct action approach that characterized the Civil Rights

Movement.[7]

In his own words, Balagoon “became a revolutionary and accepted the

doctrine of nationalism as a response to the genocide practiced by the

United States government.” He began to read literature like the

Autobiography of Malcolm X, Robert F. Williams’s book Negroes with Guns,

and the newsletter The Crusader. SNCC leader and Black Power movement

spokesman H. Rap Brown also inspired Balagoon. Brown was elevated to

spokesman of SNCC in 1967. He became one of the most recognized voices

of the Black Power movement and the rebellion of urban communities of

the late 1960s. Balagoon also came to embrace the position that Black

liberation would only come through “protracted guerrilla warfare.”[8]

Balagoon would actualize his revolutionary nationalist politics as a

member of the Black Panther Party. Originally the Black Panther Party

for Self-Defense (BPP) had distinguished itself in Oakland, California,

by its armed patrols to monitor police abuse and its armed demonstration

at the California State Legislature in Sacramento on May 2, 1967.

Balagoon first heard of the BPP after the October 28, 1967, shootout

between BPP founder Huey Newton and one of his comrades and members of

the Oakland Police Department. The shooting left Officer John Frey

fatally wounded and Newton and Officer Herbert Heanes injured; Newton’s

companion fled the scene. Newton became a national hero to urban Black

youth after the shootout. While Newton was wounded in the exchange, the

thought that a militant Black Power activist actually survived a gun

battle with white police automatically propelled him to legendary

heights. After he was charged with Frey’s murder, the defense of Newton

and the call to “Free Huey” became a popular cause in Black Power and

left circles.[9]

The BPP came to New York in the summer of 1968. An alliance between the

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Revolutionary

Action Movement (RAM) had attempted to create a Black Panther Party in

New York in June 1966, but this grouping became dysfunctional due to

internal conflict.[10] The Oakland-based Black Panther Party for

Self-Defense became a national organization after the assassination of

Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968. The organization grew from a

regional organization with chapters in the California Bay Area, Los

Angeles, and Seattle to a national movement with thousands of members

and supporters throughout the United States. Building a chapter in New

York was one of the most important events of this development. The same

month as Dr. King’s assassination, national BPP Central Committee

members Bobby Seale and Kathleen Cleaver came to New York and appointed

eighteen-year-old SNCC member Joudon Ford as acting captain of defense

of the BPP on the East Coast. Ford was soon joined by forty-year-old

David Brothers to found the New York chapter of the BPP in Brooklyn in

the summer of 1968. The national leadership sent Ron Pennywell, a

trusted member of its cadre, to give direction to the New York chapter.

Pennywell had reached the rank of captain in the BPP ranks. Pennywell

was described as “a very grass-root brother, who would always ask the

cadre for suggestions.”[11]

Lumumba Shakur would found the Harlem branch of the New York chapter.

Shakur was the son of a Malcolm X Shabazz associate Saladin Shakur. The

elder Shakur also served as a mentor and surrogate father for many

members of the New York BPP chapter. Lumumba Shakur and his friend Sekou

Odinga traveled to Oakland in 1968 to learn about the BPP. Shakur and

Odinga met in prison in the early 1960s and embraced Islam and

revolutionary nationalism through the teachings of Malcolm X and under

the tutelage of Saladin Shakur, a member of Shabazz’s Muslim Mosque

Incorporated and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. After the

assassination of Malcolm X, both young men attempted to find a

revolutionary organization to replace the fledgling Organization of

Afro-American Unity. They returned to meet Pennywell and Brothers in

April 1968. Shakur was the section leader of Harlem, and Odinga was

assigned to organize the Bronx with Bilal Sunni-Ali, who had introduced

them to Pennywell. The New York chapter of the BPP would grow to be

among the largest, if not the largest, in the organization, with

approximately five hundred members.[12]

When Balagoon found out the BPP was organizing in New York, he located

the organization and ultimately joined. He had affinity with the BPP’s

ten-point program, which he believed was “community based.” He also

identified with the organization’s appropriation of Mao Zedong’s axiom

that political power “comes from the barrel of a gun.”[13] The assertion

of the necessity of armed struggle was not the only principle the BPP

borrowed from Mao. Mao and the Chinese Revolution profoundly influenced

the BPP, as it did other radical movements of the 1960s. The Chinese

Communist Party and its Leninist model of democratic centralism was the

model of organization for the BPP. The BPP’s National Central Committee

(NCC) was the highest decision-making body of the organization. The

first NCC was concentrated in Oakland, with the overwhelming majority of

the body composed of associates of BPP founder Huey Newton.[14] The BPP

also functioned as a paramilitary organization, with Newton, as Minister

of Defense, being the principal leader and with military positions

(e.g., Captain, Field Marshal, etc.) integrated into the organization’s

chain of command. The BPP system and style of governance would become a

factor in Balagoon’s attraction to antiauthoritarian politics.

Balagoon was able to engage in militant, grassroots organizing, combined

with revolutionary ideology, as a member of the BPP in Harlem. In the

Party he found comrades ready to participate in working with poor and

oppressed Black communities around basic issues and willing to challenge

the system with insurgent action. The New York City BPP engaged in

grassroots organizing. In September 1968, BPP members participated in a

community takeover of Lincoln Hospital. Lincoln was a “dilapidated and

disinvested public hospital in the [predominately Black and Latino]

South Bronx.” The BPP would ultimately align itself with the Puerto

Rican Young Lords and the Provisional Government of the Republic of New

Africa to take over and reform the Detox Program at Lincoln

Hospital.[15] New York Panther branches were also involved in tenant

organizing and in fights for community control of the school system and

of the police. BPP leaders, along with the Emergency Civil Liberties

Committee, Center for Constitutional Rights, and the National Lawyers

Guild, filed a lawsuit calling for decentralization of the police in

October 1968.[16] While Balagoon’s previous experience as a tenant

organizer helped him become a key member of the organization, he was

attracted to the military wing of the BPP.

Repression and BPP Internal Contradictions: Catalyst Towards

Antiauthoritarianism

Balagoon and New York BPP member Richard Harris were arrested in

February 1969 on bank robbery charges in Newark, New Jersey. On April 2,

1969, less than one year after the founding of the New York chapter of

the BPP, twenty-one Panther leaders and organizers (including Balagoon

and Harris) were indicted, twelve arrested on conspiracy charges in a

thirty-count indictment. This case became known as the case of the New

York Panther 21. The charges included conspiracy to bomb the New York

Botanical Gardens and police stations and to assassinate police

officers. After their arrest, most of the defendants were released on a

hundred thousand dollars bail. Balagoon was held without bail.[17]

A central charge in the indictment was the accusation that on January

17, 1969, Balagoon and Odinga planned to ambush New York police but were

interrupted by other officers coming on the scene. This charge was based

on testimony from a nineteen-year-old BPP member Joan Bird, who, defense

attorneys argued, had been beaten by police to elicit a statement to

favor the prosecution. Bird’s mother reported arriving at the police

station and hearing her daughter screaming. She was startled when she

was taken to her daughter, who had visibly been beaten, with a black

eye, swollen lip, and bruises on her face.[18]

Odinga escaped police and went underground on the day he was charged,

after hearing of Bird’s arrest and alleged torture. He escaped arrest on

April 2, when his comrades were apprehended, fled the United States, and

eventually received political asylum in Algeria. Balagoon was severed

from the case of thirteen of those who had been arrested originally, to

face charges in New Jersey. After over two years behind bars, the

thirteen defendants were acquitted of all charges. It only took the jury

one hour of deliberation to acquit. While this was a significant legal

victory, the incarceration of key organizers and leaders of the New York

BPP significantly crippled the organization’s momentum and activities.

After the acquittal of most of his comrades, Balagoon pleaded guilty to

the charge that he and an unidentified person did attempt to shoot

police officers, making him the only one of the twenty-one original

defendants to be convicted. If these charges were true, Balagoon had

committed himself to participate in offensive guerrilla warfare as early

as 1969.[19]

The BPP national leadership’s handling of the New York Panther 21 case

played a significant role in the transition of Balagoon from

revolutionary nationalism and democratic centralism to antiauthoritarian

politics. The members of the New York BPP, including the defendants in

the Panther 21 conspiracy trial, became disenchanted with the national

leadership in Oakland. Division between the Oakland-based national

leadership and the New York chapter increased after the purge of

Geronimo Pratt by the national leadership. Pratt, a U.S. Army veteran

who served as an Army Ranger in Vietnam, distinguished himself by

training BPP members and other Black liberation forces in paramilitary

tactics. He went underground to develop a clandestine apparatus but was

captured in Dallas, Texas, on December 8, 1970. On January 23, 1971,

Huey Newton, the BPP Minister of Defense, expelled Pratt from the

organization for “counterrevolutionary behavior.” Newton’s expulsion of

Pratt created confusion within the ranks of the organization. Many BPP

rank-and-file members considered Pratt a hero, and he was well-respected

in the New York chapter.[20]

The expulsion of Pratt is connected to a series of expulsions by the

national leadership of BPP members engaged in armed struggle. The

initial orientation of the BPP encouraged the development of an armed

underground capacity to wage guerrilla warfare. Combined with the image

of armed Panthers patrolling against the police, many Blacks who

believed in armed confrontation with the state were attracted to the

BPP. The New York BPP had developed an armed clandestine capacity from

its inception. One police officer reported at a congressional hearing:

“Members of the Panthers are not secret, with the exception of those who

have been designated ‘underground.’ This group are secret

revolutionaries and their identities are kept secret.” New York police

and the FBI suspected the BPP in an August 2, 1968, shooting of two

police officers in Brooklyn and an attempted bombing of a New York City

police station on November 2, 1968.[21]

Tensions also developed when the BPP national leadership sent Oakland

cadres Robert Bey and Thomas Jolly to New York to assume leadership of

the chapter. Years later, Balagoon publicly criticized the decision to

import a new leadership group to New York, as opposed to promoting

indigenous leadership from the local community. He saw this as critical

to destabilizing the revolutionary vitality of the organization. Other

New York BPP members shared Balagoon’s criticism of the NCC appointment

of supervisory leadership over Panther activity in New York and on the

East Coast. Unlike Pennywell, the newly imported leadership possessed a

more autocratic and hierarchical style of decision-making. In her

autobiography, Assata Shakur questioned the quality of some of the West

Coast leaders sent to New York. Shakur noted:

We [New York BPP members] had a bit of a leadership problem with Robert

Bey and Jolly who were both from the West Coast. Bey’s problem was that

he was none too bright and that he had an aggressive, even belligerent,

way of talking and dealing with people. Jolly’s problem was that he was

Robert Bey’s shadow.[22]

Members of the Harlem BPP branch, along with historian Kit Holder,

argued the “lack of indigenous leadership on the local level was one of

the major contributing factors to the initial differences of opinions

and misunderstandings” between the national leadership and the New York

chapter.[23] Holder argued these factors “inhibited the growth of the

Party.” One of the factors Holder identified was “cultural nationalism.”

Due to conflict with elements of the Black Arts Movement in the Bay Area

and the US Organization in Los Angeles, the California-based BPP

developed an aversion to African Americans who identified with African

culture. The New York group, on the other hand, embraced African and

Arabic names (e.g., Kuwasi, Afeni, Assata, Lumumba, Dhoruba, Zayd, etc.)

and African clothing. Some were Muslims or influenced by African

traditional religion. Holder reports that the national leadership barred

New York BPP members from participating in nationalist-oriented

community events or displaying the red, black, and green flag that

originated in the Pan-African nationalist Universal Negro Improvement

Association (aka the Garvey movement). The decision by nationally

appointed leadership to take emphasis away from the local activism of

the New York BPP around tenant issues and reassign cadre to “serve the

people” programs that were popular on the West Coast was also resented

by New York cadre.[24]

The incarcerated members of the New York BPP conspiracy case also

believed the national leadership did not provide sufficient financial

support for their legal defense. Balagoon would comment on how the

national leadership selectively determined who would be released on

bail. He stated: “Those who were bailed out were chosen by the

leadership, regardless of the wishes of the rank-and-file or fellow

prisoners of war or regardless of the relatively low bail of at least

one proven comrade.” It must also be noted that the U.S. government,

particularly the FBI through its Cointelpro program, worked to increase

the division within the national leadership of the BPP, the New York

chapter, and the New York Panther 21 defendants.[25]

After a series of attempts to send criticisms of the national leadership

to the Black Panther newspaper, New York Panther 21 defendants publicly

took what was interpreted as a critical position on the BPP national

leadership in an open letter to the Weather Underground published on

January 19, 1971. The Weather Underground was a clandestine organization

of white radical anti-imperialists who initiated a campaign of armed

propaganda by bombing U.S. government facilities in solidarity with

national liberation movements, particularly in Vietnam. The open letter

applauded the insurgent actions of the Weather Underground and

acknowledged them as part of the vanguard of the revolutionary movement

in the United States. Without naming the BPP national leadership, the

statement of the incarcerated New York Panthers also critiqued

“self-proclaimed ‘vanguard’ parties” that abandoned the actions of the

radical underground struggle and the political prisoners.[26] Balagoon

agreed with this criticism of the national leadership of the BPP.

Under their leadership, “political consequences” (attacks) against

occupation forces [police] ceased altogether. Only a fraction of the

money collected for the purpose of bail went towards bail. The leaders

began to live high off the hog … leaving behind so many robots [in the

rank and file] who wouldn’t challenge policy until those in jail

publicly denounced the leadership.[27]

The differences between the national leadership and the New York BPP

accelerated after the publication of the New York Panther 21 open

letter. Newton immediately expelled the Panther 21 on February 9, 1971.

The cover of the February 13 Black Panther newspaper would declare New

York BPP leaders and New York Panther 21 defendants Richard Dhoruba

Moore, Cetawayo Tabor, and Newton’s personal secretary Connie Matthews

“Enemies of the People.” Moore and Tabor, out on bail, went underground

rather than return to court proceedings. They would ultimately surface

in Algeria at the BPP international section. Later that month, members

of the New York BPP would hold a press conference and call for the purge

of Huey Newton and BPP Chief of Staff David Hilliard and the formation

of a new National Central Committee. The New York chapter officially

split from the national organization.[28]

Balagoon’s involvement in the New York BPP was an important part of his

political development. On the one hand, he was inspired to be a part of

a dynamic revolutionary movement with comrades that he respected, loved,

and trusted. On the other, Balagoon’s experience with the BPP national

leadership left him questioning its decision-making and the nature of

democracy in the organization. While acknowledging that state repression

disrupted this revolutionary nationalist organization, Balagoon wanted

to correct the internal and ideological weaknesses that compromised the

fighting capacity and solidarity of the liberation movement.

Besides his disenchantment with the BPP national leadership, Balagoon’s

receptivity to antiauthoritarian politics was also supported by his role

in organizing fellow inmates as a Panther political prisoner. His

comrade Kazembe Balagun argues that Kuwasi’s experience in prison

awaiting trial influenced his transition to anarchism. The New York

Panther 21 were incarcerated at a variety of jails in different boroughs

of New York City. Kit Holder called a series of inmate protests at each

of these institutions in 1970 a “coordinated rebellion.” Balagoon,

Lumumba Shakur, and New York Panther 21 defendant Kwando Kinshasa were

all incarcerated in the Queens House of Detention, where inmates

organized an uprising that took seven hostages, including a captain,

five correctional officers, and a Black cook, holding them from October

1 to 5, 1970. The slogan for the multiethnic (Black, Latino, and white)

inmate takeover was “all power to the people, free all oppressed

people.” The primary demand of the inmates was for speedier trials.

Instead of attempting to play a “vanguard” role in the decision-making,

Kazembe Balagun argued, even before formally declaring his commitment to

anti-authoritarian politics, Kuwasi Balagoon’s “primary concern was a

consensus process for all inmates in decision-making, including access

to food being brought from the outside.” He and the other incarcerated

Panthers in Queens were concerned that the weight of the Panther

leadership was too influential on the general consensus of other

prisoners, so Kuwasi and his comrades skipped general meetings to allow

prisoners to “determine what was true and what was bullshit.” The

Panthers also promised to go with the majority.

The prisoners formed committees to coordinate their uprising. The

inmates agreed to release the Black cook and one prison guard as a “sign

of good faith.” The prisoners ultimately released all of the hostages

and suffered physical abuse and charges from the uprising. Kazembe

Balagun argues that while Kuwasi was disappointed at the outcome, he

believed the power the inmate resisters felt by “holding the state at

bay” was a valuable experience. As an organizer, he saw the uprising as

“‘growing pains’ to those of us who believe oppressed people will rise

up and seek justice.”[29]

From Black Panther Party to Black Liberation Army

Balagoon’s experience in the BPP and the repression of the New York

chapter also convinced him of the necessity of being involved in a

clandestine fight against the state. He concluded that repression turned

the BPP away from grassroots organizing the Black masses around issues

that most affected their daily survival (housing, education, and police

abuse) to defending the political prisoners. Balagoon stated:

The state rounded up all the organizers pointed out to it by its agents

who infiltrated the party as soon as it had been organizing in New York.

It charged these people with conspiracy and demanded bails so high that

the party turned away from its purpose of liberation of the Black colony

to fundraising [for legal defense].

This experience convinced him that “to survive and contribute I would

have to go underground and literally fight.”[30] Balagoon was committed

to building a Black Liberation Army and saw his role in the Black

Liberation Movement as a clandestine freedom fighter.

On September 27, 1973, Balagoon would escape from New Jersey’s Rahway

State Prison shortly after his conviction for armed robbery in New

Jersey. Approximately eight months after his escape, on May 5, 1974,

Balagoon was captured attempting to assist New York BPP member and New

York Panther 21 defendant Richard Harris escape from custody while being

transported to a funeral in Newark. Balagoon and Harris were apprehended

after being wounded in a gun battle with correctional and police

officers. Risking being recaptured to free Harris demonstrated

Balagoon’s commitment to his comrades and willingness to sacrifice for

the liberation struggle.[31]

New Afrikan Anarchism

Balagoon’s imprisonment and expulsion from and disillusionment with the

BPP did not discourage his involvement or commitment to revolution. He

began to explore anarchist politics during his incarceration. Balagoon

received and studied literature from solidarity groups such as Anarchist

Black Cross, an antiauthoritarian organization that provided material

and legal support to political prisoners. Anarchism provided an

analytical lens to sum up his critique of his experience in the BPP.

According to Balagun, he worked to “apply the theories of Wilhelm Reich,

Emma Goldman and others to the Black liberation struggle.” He began to

ask critical questions about the practice of his comrades and himself in

allowing the national hierarchy to weaken the resolve and fighting

capacity of the BPP. He concluded:

The cadre accepted their command regardless of what their intellect had

or had not made clear to them. The true democratic process which they

were willing to die for, for the sake of their children, they would not

claim for themselves.[32]

He desired a democratic process that would unleash the revolutionary

potential of the masses and not make them prey to new oppressors.

It is to say the only way to make a dictatorship of the proletariat is

to elevate everyone to being proletariat and deflate all the advantages

of power that translate into the wills of a few dictating to the

majority …. Only an anarchist revolution has on its agenda to deal with

these goals.[33]

Balagoon clearly believed that true Black liberation could only be

achieved through anarchism.

While incarcerated he read and identified with certain radical

anarchists, particularly those men and women of action advocating

insurrection against the oppressive order and the necessity and right of

the oppressed to expropriate resources from their oppressors. One of his

inspirations was Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta, who exhorted that

revolutionary struggle “consists more of deeds than words.” Another

influence was Spanish revolutionary José Buenaventura Durruti Dumange,

who organized the anarchist guerrilla movement Los Justicieros (The

Avenging Ones ). Like their name, Los Justicieros were thought to be

involved in political assassinations in retaliation for political

repression and guerrilla raids on the military forces of the Spanish

dictatorship. Balagoon was also motivated by the example of Italian

exile Severino Di Giovanni, known for his campaign of bombing as armed

propaganda in solidarity with executed anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti.

Durutti and Giovanni both engaged in expropriation of capitalist

institutions as a mean of supporting the revolutionary movement.[34]

Another ideological influence on Balagoon was Russian immigrant and

pioneer of American anarchism Emma Goldman. Another advocate of

revolutionary armed struggle, Goldman supported the attempt by her

comrade Alexander Berkman to assassinate a wealthy industrialist, Henry

Clay Frick. The methods used by Frick to suppress the Homestead Steel

strike in Pennsylvania “justified the means.” Goldman’s encouragement of

“free love” also resonated with Balagoon, as he was open to sexual

relationships with both men and women.[35]

Balagoon continued to believe the original BPP position that Black

people were an internal colony of the United States and interpreted the

Black liberation struggle as a national liberation movement. Like other

BLA members, he also began to identify with the New Afrikan Independence

Movement. The Provisional Government of the Republic of New Africa

(PGRNA) viewed Black people as a “subjugated nation” within the USA. The

PGRNA was founded in March 1968 at a conference of five hundred Black

nationalists who declared their independence from the United States and

demanded five states in the Deep South (South Carolina, Georgia,

Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana) as reparations for the enslavement and

racial oppression of Blacks. “New Afrika” was declared the name of the

new nation and the five states as its national territory. Some New York

BPP members developed a political relationship with the PGRNA from its

inception. Kamau Sadiki (aka Freddie Hilton) of the Queens BPP branch

remembers PGRNA member Mutulu Shakur facilitating political education

sessions for him and other BPP members. Corona (in the borough of

Queens) BPP branch leader Cyril Innis remembers taking the oath of

allegiance to the New Afrikan nation in 1969, when the PGRNA and BPP

collaborated around struggles for community control of education in New

York’s public schools.[36]

Like many of the New York BPP and BLA comrades, Balagoon began to

ideologically unite with the political objective of the PGRNA for

independence and adopted “New Afrikan” as his national identity.

Balagoon believed that:

We say the U.S. has no right to confine New Afrikan people to redlined

reservations and that We have a right to live on our own terms on a

common land area and to govern ourselves, free of occupation forces such

as the police, national guard, or GIs that have invaded our colonies

from time to time. We have a right to control our own economy, print our

own money, trade with other nations …. We have a right to control our

educational institutions and systems where our children will not be

indoctrinated by aliens to suffer the destructive designs of the U.S.

government.

His position for Black self-determination was also combined with an

anti-capitalist perspective. Balagoon proposed that New Afrikans would

enter a workforce where We are not excluded by design and where our

wages and the wages of all workers cannot be manipulated by a ruling

class that controls the wealth.

The New Afrikan Independence Movement was consistent with Balagoon’s

belief in the necessity of national liberation of the colonized Black

nation. He identified himself as a New Afrikan anarchist to express his

national identity, aspiration for self-determination, and desire for

whatever type of society he wished to inhabit.

Balagoon’s identity as a New Afrikan anarchist set him ideologically

apart from Black Marxist-Leninists and revolutionary nationalists who

had the objective of seizing state power from the white power structure

of U.S. capitalism and imperialism. But he still desired a land for

Black people to achieve self-determination and space to build a society

based on antiauthoritarianism and freedom. His continued support for New

Afrikan politics also distinguished him from the majority of the

anarchist movement in the United States, many of whom opposed any form

of nationalism.

Balagoon would share his New Afrikan anarchist viewpoint and

ideologically struggle with Marxist-Leninist and revolutionary

nationalist political prisoners incarcerated with him. He recruited

soldiers for the BLA, as well as converts to antiauthoritarian and New

Afrikan politics. In Trenton State Prison, in New Jersey, his fellow New

York Panther 21 defendant Sundiata Acoli and BLA members James York and

Andaliwa Clark formed a political study group inside the

penitentiary.[37]

Political education behind bars became a vehicle for recruitment into

the BLA. Clark and Kojo Bomani were both inmates who had been

politicized by Balagoon and other political prisoners after being

incarcerated and recruited into the BLA.[38] Bomani was released in 1975

and arrested in December of the same year in a failed BLA expropriation

of a financial institution. A BLA member captured with Bomani was Ojore

Lutalo. Lutalo provides testimony concerning Balagoon’s influence on his

transition from Marxism-Leninism to antiauthoritarian thinking:

In 1975 I became disillusioned with Marxism and became an anarchist

(thanks to Kuwasi Balagoon) due to the inactiveness and ineffectiveness

of Marxism in our communities along with repressive bureaucracy that

comes with Marxism. People aren’t going to commit themselves to a

life-and-death struggle just because of grand ideas someone might have

floating around in their heads. I feel people will commit themselves to

a struggle if they can see progress being made similar to the progress

of anarchist collectives in Spain during the era of the fascist

Bahamonde.[39]

Like his teacher and comrade, Lutalo identified himself as a “New

Afrikan/Anarchist Prisoner of War.”

A New Afrikan Freedom Fighter: Balagoon and the Revolutionary Armed

Task Force

Balagoon would again escape from Rahway State Prison in New Jersey on

May 27, 1978. He would rejoin a clandestine network of BLA soldiers in

alliance with white radicals in solidarity with the Black Liberation

Movement and other national liberation struggles. This ideologically

diverse network of insurgent militants was known as the Revolutionary

Armed Task Force (RATF). The RATF was described as “a strategic alliance

… under the leadership of the Black Liberation Army.” The BLA members in

the alliance identified themselves as Muslims or revolutionary

nationalists and the white radicals as anti-imperialists or communists.

Balagoon appeared to be the sole anarchist in this formation. Balagoon’s

BPP comrade Sekou Odinga had returned from political exile in Algeria

and the People’s Republic of the Congo to be a major leader in this

formation. While Balagoon was critical of Marxism and nationalism, he

decided to join comrades he loved and trusted in a common front against

white supremacy, capitalism, and imperialism. He and his comrades in the

RATF also had political unity on the question of New Afrikan

independence. This wing of the BLA identified themselves as “New Afrikan

Freedom Fighters.” Balagoon, who was considered a “free spirit,” viewed

most nationalist formations as “too rigid.” His RATF comrades, despite

ideological differences and his sexual orientation, respected Balagoon

due to his commitment to revolutionary struggle and his history of

sacrifices on behalf of his comrades and for the liberation movement. In

terms of his sexuality, comrades stated, “That’s Kuwasi’s business.”

Differences over ideology and sexual orientation were tolerated and

subordinated to the pragmatic unity necessary to carry out the

clandestine work of armed propaganda, expropriations of resources from

capitalist financial institutions, or assisting comrades in escaping

from incarceration.[40]

The RATF came together in response to an increase in violent acts

against Black people in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including the

murders of Black children and youth in Atlanta and Black women in Boston

and shootings of Black women in Alabama. The increase in white

supremacist paramilitary activity, including the Ku Klux Klan, was a

related motivator for this alliance. The whites in the RATF participated

in intelligence gathering on white supremacist and right-wing activity

to ascertain its capability and connection with elements of the U.S.

military. The RATF also engaged in “expropriations” to obtain resources

to build the capacity of the Black Liberation Movement to resist the

white supremacist upsurge.[41]

The two most well-known actions of this New Afrikan Freedom Fighters

wing of the BLA and the RATF were the escape of Assata Shakur and the

attempted “Brink’s expropriation” in Nyack, New York. Assata Shakur was

a member of the New York BPP who was forced underground in response to

the repression of the organization. She was captured on May 2, 1973,

after a shootout with New Jersey state troopers and BLA members. State

trooper Werner Foerster and New York BPP member Zayd Shakur were both

killed in the shootout. Assata Shakur was wounded and paralyzed from the

shooting. Former New York Panther 21 defendant and BLA member Sundiata

Acoli was captured two days after the shootout, having escaped the

scene. The FBI identified Assata Shakur as the “soul of the BLA” and

hailed her capture as a significant event in “breaking the back” of the

Black underground. While forensic evidence proved she did not fire a

gun, and although she was paralyzed at the outset of the shooting,

Assata Shakur was convicted of the murder of Foerster and Zayd Shakur

and sentenced to life plus sixty-five years. She was considered a

political prisoner by human rights organizations in the United States

and internationally.

According to the FBI, an armed team of four BLA members, including

Odinga and Balagoon and two white allies, facilitated the escape of

Shakur from Clinton Correctional Institution for Women in New Jersey on

November 2, 1979. Prison officials stated the raid was “well planned and

arranged.” Shakur’s escape was hailed and celebrated as a “liberation”

by the Black Liberation Movement and demonstrated the continued

existence of the BLA.[42]

An attempt by the BLA and RATF to expropriate 1.6 million dollars from a

Brink’s armored truck in the New York city of Nyack on October 20, 1981,

led to an exchange of fire, resulting in the deaths of one Brink’s

security guard and two police officers. Three white radicals—Judy Clark,

David Gilbert, and Kathy Boudin—and one Black man—Solomon Brown—were

captured. A manhunt ensued for others who were believed to have escaped

the scene or assisted in the attempt. Physical evidence, electronic

surveillance, and informants led to arrests of other revolutionaries and

the death of BLA member Mtayari Sundiata. The Joint Terrorist Task Force

(JTTF) apprehended Balagoon in New York City at a Manhattan apartment

three months later. The JTTF was organized after the escape of Assata

Shakur to provide a coordinated investigation by FBI and local police.

The FBI believed Balagoon was a part of the BLA team that initiated the

expropriation attempt in Nyack. It was also believed that this wing of

the BLA had successfully expropriated funds from financial institutions

in a series of raids dating back to 1976. The funds had been utilized to

support the development of an underground infrastructure, families of

political prisoners, Black Liberation Movement political activities and

institutions, and freedom struggles on the African continent.[43]

New Afrikan Anarchist Prisoner of War

After his capture, Kuwasi Balagoon publicly spoke to the movement for

the first time since the publication of Look for Me in the Whirlwind

eleven years earlier, in 1971. Defining himself as a New Afrikan

anarchist, Balagoon represented New Afrikan and antiauthoritarian

politics in public statements. In captivity, he defined himself as a

prisoner of war not a criminal. Balagoon acted pro se (served as his own

attorney) at the Rockland County trial where he was charged with armed

robbery for the Nyack expropriation and the murders of the Brink’s guard

and two police officers. This gave him the opportunity to speak to the

public about his politics and to make his intentions clear for history.

In his opening statement, Balagoon declared:

i am a prisoner of war. i reject the crap about me being a defendant,

and i do not recognize the legitimacy of this court. The term defendant

applies to someone involved in a criminal matter …. It is clear that

i’ve been a part of the Black Liberation Movement all of my adult life

and have been involved in a war against the American Imperialist, in

order to free New Afrikan people from its yoke.[44]

Balagoon wanted it acknowledged that his armed actions were politically

motivated to win national liberation for New Afrikan people and to

eliminate capitalism, imperialism, and ultimately authoritarian forms of

government.

Once convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, Balagoon continued to

speak to New Afrikan/Black Liberation forces and anarchist gatherings

through public statements. As well as his continued support for armed

struggle, he advocated the building of an insurgent movement and

building of autonomous communities. On July 18, 1983, at a Harlem rally

for imprisoned New Afrikan Freedom Fighters, Balagoon’s statement was

read: “We must build a revolutionary political platform and a universal

network of survival programs.”[45] In another statement directed to

anarchists, Balagoon stated:

Where we live and work … We must organize on the ground level. The

landlords must be contested through rent strikes and rather than develop

strategies to pay rent, we should develop strategies to take the

buildings …. Set up communes in abandoned buildings …. Turn vacant lots

into gardens. When our children grow out of clothes, we should have

places we can take them, clearly marked anarchist clothing exchanges ….

We must learn construction and ways to take back our lives.[46]

He also challenged anarchists to move from theory to practice. In the

tradition of the insurgent anarchists of previous generations who

inspired him, Balagoon argued:

We permit people of other ideologies to define anarchy rather than bring

our views to the masses and provide models to show the contrary …. In

short, by not engaging in mass organizing and delivering war to the

oppressors, we become anarchists in name only.[47]

Balagoon also continued to organize and provide political education to

other prisoners. He died in prison on December 13, 1986, from

pneumocystis pneumonia, an AIDS-related illness.

Legacy

While Balagoon is not in mainstream discourse, his name is evoked in

some Black/New Afrikan, anarchist, and queer spaces. In 2005, the

Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM), a New Afrikan activist

organization, dedicated its annual Black August celebration to Kuwasi

Balagoon. That year MXGM highlighted the need for awareness of the AIDS

virus in Africa and among the African diaspora. A few radical hip-hop

artists, such as Dead Prez and Zayd Malik, also mention Balagoon’s name.

But Balagoon’s name is not commonly used, even in socially conscious

hip-hop, as much as other Black revolutionaries such as Marcus Garvey,

Huey Newton, Assata Shakur, Geronimo (Pratt) ji Jaga, and Mutulu Shakur.

Anarchist collectives have republished Balagoon’s statements. After his

incarceration and self-identification as an anarchist, a Canadian

antiauthoritarian collective that published the newsletter Bulldozer,

which later became known as Prison News Service, published Balagoon’s

writings. The Patterson Anarchist Collective in New Jersey reprinted his

trial statement and tributes to his life in 1994. The Quebec collective

Solidarity issued a Collected Works of Balagoon’s trial statements,

essays, poetry, and acknowledgements from comrades titled A Soldier’s

Story: Writings by a Revolutionary New Afrikan Anarchist; subsequently

reissued by Kersplebedeb. [The first edition of this book was published

in 2001; the most recent edition is the book you are holding in your

hands today, now copublished with PM Press.]

Radical queer liberation forces also embraced Balagoon’s legacy. He

acknowledged his bisexual identity within a primarily heteronormative

Black Liberation Movement. ACT UP, a direct action organization emerging

from queer liberation forces, joined forces with anarchists and

revolutionary Black/New Afrikan nationalists to commemorate Balagoon in

December 2006. His sexual identity has become a vehicle to challenge

homophobia within the broader Black Liberation Movement. Elements of the

queer liberation movement and their allies have criticized Black

liberation forces for being silent on Balagoon’s sexuality. Balagun, in

a posthumous statement honoring Kuwasi Balagoon, offered this:

One of the silences that engulfed Kuwasi’s life was his bisexuality. The

official eulogies offered by the New Afrikan People’s Organization and

others omitted his sexuality or that he died of AIDS-related

complications. These erasures are a reflection of the ongoing internal

struggle against homophobia and patriarchy within the larger society in

general and the movement in particular.[48]

This issue will remain so long as heteronormativity remains the dominant

sexual orientation of the Black Liberation Movement.

Kuwasi Balagoon is remembered and saluted by revolutionary nationalists,

radical anarchists, and queer liberation forces. He remains a “Maroon”

isolated from mainstream Black and left political dialogue and memory.

His legacy will only be secure with the survival and empowerment of the

political tendencies he represented. Balagoon’s name will only be saved

from obscurity when insurgent Black nationalists and anarchist

collectives take up his charge to organize oppressed people to build a

revolutionary program that challenges capitalism and institutional

racism in the United States.

This essay first appeared in Science & Society 79, no. 2 (April 2015):

196–220.

3 Haiku That Barely Suggest the Sparkle of Kuwasi Balagoon

David Gilbert, September 6, 2017

Coffee/dab-of-cream color. Maroon spirit. Laugh; irrepressible

Syncopated jazz whistle; surreal art; poetry—both sharp and touching

Lion heart courage but puppy dog loving heart, our freedom fighter

Kuwasi: A Virtual Roundtable of Love and Reflection

Compiled and coordinated by Matt Meyer, with Joan P. Gibbs and Meg

Starr, featuring Sekou Odinga, Bilal Sunni-Ali, Kim Kit Holder, Meg

Starr, Danielle Jasmine, Amilcar Shabazz, Ajamu Sankofa, David Gilbert,

dequi kioni-sadiki, Kai Lumumba Barrow, Dhoruba Bin Wahad, and Ashanti

Alston

Unique. The single word most often used to describe Kuwasi Balagoon when

discussing his life and legacy with those closest to and most affected

by him is “unique”—that Kuwasi’s way of living and looking at life set

him apart in special and wonderous ways. Even in the midst of amazing

friends and colleagues, and even while living and working in

extraordinary times, Kuwasi stood out. Distinctions surrounding other

labels and descriptors—New Afrikan revolutionary nationalist and

anarchist; gay, bisexual, and/or queer; poet, militant, housing

activist, Panther—can be discussed and debated and reflected upon, but

Kuwasi’s greatest quality was surely his lasting love for the people and

his ability to transform that love into tangible acts of resistance.

“I probably met Kuwasi in the spring or early summer of 1968,”

remembered Sekou Odinga, “and he was always a real energetic brother.

You were always going to hear him telling a story or joke or enjoying

one.” A fellow Panther and codefendant in the infamous New York Panther

21 case, Odinga noted that Kuwasi was always “full of life, always ready

to volunteer for any work that needed to be done: the more dangerous the

work, the more ready he was. He was real, sincere, and dependable. That

was what struck me early on. He was always ready to step up, even if you

didn’t need him. He would volunteer; it wasn’t something where you ever

had to go find him. He and his wife at the time were working on housing

issues—trying to get the landlords to do the right thing.”

Sekou and Kuwasi also shared an interest in building the clandestine

movement, and both were part of the formation of the Black Liberation

Army. Though Sekou recalled that the two of them “connected militarily,”

he added that “as much of a military inclination as Kuwasi had, he

had—as Che said—even more of a love for the people. He loved children

and the elderly and was always ready to help and talk with them. Kuwasi

lived with my family and I for a few months, and he’d get right down

there on the floor with the kids and became one of them—creating games

and playing. He was full of love, always wanting to participate in all

aspects of life.”

“My first impression of Kuwasi came from a poetry reading,” recalled New

York Panther and famed jazz musician Bilal Sunni-Ali. “The Black Panther

Party for Self Defense was at its early, infant stages—not to be

confused with the earlier New York Black Panthers organized by the

Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM). Sekou and I and Lumumba Shakur were

there, and this brother got up and read this poem called ‘Disrupt!’ I

don’t remember a word of the poem, but it described so well what power

we have—that we have the power to disrupt what was going on, to stop the

injustices. The delivery of the poem struck me so hard that I made it a

point of saying to Sekou and Lumumba, ‘Please reach out to that brother

who did that poem and get him in the Party.’ That was the spring of

1968.”

“Kuwasi was drawn to poetry, to Amiri Baraka and the Last Poets. He was

a very articulate brother,” added Sekou. “He always had a comeback, the

right thing to say. He had a comedic side as well, and always had a name

to call you. For example, I was known to control the finances pretty

tightly, while he was kinda loose with his money. Sometimes he’d have to

come to me to borrow some money, so he might call me the Banker!”

One of Kuwasi’s most striking and unique strengths was his ability to

articulate seemingly contrasting ideas in ways that made sense. “He was

definitely a Pan-Africanist,” noted Sekou, “and he was also a

nationalist, an anarchist, and very antiauthoritarian. He was a

revolutionary nationalist—an internationalist—and he didn’t just talk

it, he lived it. I don’t know anyone else who fit into those categories

like that. He was a contradiction himself: a real warrior but a

babysitter too. You’d want to leave the kids with him! He was one of the

few brothers whose nationalism had no basis in racism, and in a racial

USA that is a hard thing to say. Kuwasi had white friends growing up, in

the military, in school, and he always had an openness about all people,

even though he was very clear about America being very racist. He was,

way before the rest of us, really open to working with white folks.”

“He enjoyed getting high,” Sekou continued, “and would experiment with

any kind of drug except heroin. He used to tell me about drugs I’d never

even heard of! He was a living dude—all about getting the most out of

life. He loved music: jazz, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, heavy

metal, really eclectic stuff. That was the uniqueness of Kuwasi. He fit

into almost every category. You couldn’t put him into a category: Kuwasi

was Kuwasi.”

Professor Kim Kit Holder, whose dissertation The Black Panther Party

1966–1971: A Curriculum Tool for Afrikan-American Studies helped usher

in a new wave of academic interest in the Party, first remembers

becoming aware of Kuwasi at the time of the New York Panther 21 trial.

“I joined the Party a month later,” Holder reflected, “and looked at

Kuwasi in three categories: as a guerrilla, as a queer, and as an

anarchist—intersectionally. As a guerrilla, I put him up there with

Harriet Tubman and George Jackson. The first thing that made an

impression on me was the New York City 1970 jail uprisings, later

learning about his key role in it. I remember saying ‘Wow … we are going

to win this, because Panthers never give up the fight!’ It gave us

rank-and-file Party members strength; it didn’t matter where we were, we

were going to struggle. That was profound.”

Holder was struck by Kuwasi’s shift towards anarchism after the trial of

the 21. “At first, he insulted us, calling us ‘robots’, but at the same

time he gave us voice, articulating our problems with the leadership

structure and the people in it. I was just a kid in New York City when I

joined the Party, but remember one of the things that pissed me off was

that we earned five cents for every Panther newspaper that we sold,

while the West Coast folks got ten cents from the sale. There were a

bunch of other things, and while Kuwasi’s thoughts on anarchism weren’t

always taken up as a new philosophy, we could use them as tools in our

work. Kuwasi aligned himself with what made sense. The needs of the

people were more important than any particular ideology.”

Theory and practice collided intensely in the events of 1981, when the

attempted robbery of a Brink’s truck to fund clandestine work of the

Black Liberation Movement and their allies ended in disaster. Two police

officers and a security guard were killed, and those involved in the

movement—including Kuwasi and codefendant David Gilbert, as well as

Sekou Odinga and many others—were captured, tortured, tried, and

imprisoned. Many younger activists first learned of Kuwasi at this time,

including Free Puerto Rico Committee leader and author Meg Starr.

“Kuwasi was arrested the night before my twenty-second birthday,” Meg

sharply recalls. “I had met his codefendant Judy Clark and other white

anti-imperialists some scant six months earlier, through the Women’s

Committee Against Genocide. My roommates brought me some ice cream, and

we watched the news about the Brink’s Case on television. I spent most

of the night throwing up.” Shortly after that, Meg became a regular

visitor of Kuwasi, David, and Judy.

“It was a very difficult time,” reflects Meg. “In those years of rallies

outside of courthouses, wheat pasting posters on billboards across town,

and having our apartments broken into and covered in fingerprint dust,

you became used to a level of repression. In contrast, visiting these

political prisoners was inspiring. Kuwasi’s energy and passion lit up

the dank visiting room. He got out of me the fact that I loved punk

rock, even though I knew already that most of the older activists around

me thought that punk was ‘degenerate white music.’ But Kuwasi loved

punk. He connected to the part of me that was a natural nonconformist to

anything at all, including radical political correctness. He explained

things to me that I didn’t really understand till later. And he sent me

long amazing letters.”

One of those letters, from December 1983, revealed some of Kuwasi’s own

reflections on the intersection of political and social aspects of life,

and the tasks ahead.

Kuwasi wrote:

i had been led to believe i was an oddity. Even on the street, i had to

separate political from social dealings. The people i met at the Mud

Club and other clubs and the people i knew from the Liberation movement

were distinctly different! But there’s no separation in my mind about

cultural and political things, so i write you and want to see you and

convince you to aid me in being a more complete person. i not only

intend to survive but to grow, not only because to survive i’m gonna

have to grow, but also because i’ve resolved to deal with this condition

not merely as a fall, but as a step in the evolution of myself, just as

i am trying to influence the movements to transform this defeat into a

victory by using the information from the experience: to become what we

must to really transform the world.

The question of ideology and practice were also part of Meg’s in-person

communications with Kuwasi, as he tried to explain to this young,

lesbian, radical punk his own political journey. “I was too new to

political work to understand or imagine the compromises that led Kuwasi

to where he ended up,” Meg notes with some regret. “But a few minutes of

one visit stick out in my mind like a short and powerful video. Long

before I read or even heard of Audre Lorde, surrounded by the grey

walls, focusing on Kuwasi’s shining eyes, I listened intently to his

musings about how he landed exactly where he was, the trajectory to that

exact spot. Kuwasi said: ‘I am down with the Black nationalists because

I looked around, and they were the ones that were actually doing

something, that were really down to fight the state.’ My respect for

Kuwasi and the others was immense: they were actually engaged in

attempting revolutionary action, instead of just talking about it.”

One concrete action which the Women’s Committee Against Genocide took

was to help single mothers escaping from abusive relationships. The

matriarch of one such family became deeply involved in a relationship

with Kuwasi, remembered here by her grand-daughter, poet Danielle

Jasmine.

“My Grandma loved a man,” Danielle wrote, “who was a great many things

to a great many people, but to her: a man … a passionate, supportive,

inspiring man. I lost my Grandma many years ago and after she passed, I

came across her letters from Kuwasi from 1983–1985. Through them, I’ve

gotten a glimpse into what they shared and the love and support they

provided for each other. Throughout his letters, he offered support for

her sobriety, health, and family. We all have walls built up around us,

and my Grandma worked on dismantling the ones she could. I like to think

I’ve continued this process (for her and for me) in some of my writing.

“Beyonce’s song ‘Halo’ has been an anthem for me throughout this process

and I often listened to it while reading Kuwasi’s letters, feeling their

presence in the lyrics ‘remember those walls I built. Well, baby,

they’re tumbling down.’ All of Kuwasi’s letters end similarly, yet on

one particular day, in one particular letter, he asks my Grandma to give

her daughter, my Aunt, ‘a Halo hug for him.’ To balance the struggle for

freedom and justice with peace and light is a remarkable feat in any

case. That Kuwasi could understand and accomplish this, despite the

physical walls around him, is a remarkable thing, something he offered

to all of us in his life. As he ended each letter: ‘Love, Power, & Peace

by Piece.’”

Another young activist at the time of the Brink’s trial was Texas-based

Amilcar Shabazz, now chair of the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of

Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and

vice president of the National Council for Black Studies. By 1981,

Shabazz had already worked with leaders of the Republic of New Afrika

(including Minister of Education Fulani Sunni-Ali and New Afrikan

People’s Organization leader Ahmed Obefemi) and been given permission to

start a local chapter of the National Committee to Honor New Afrikan

Freedom Fighters. After Brink’s, that group changed its name from an

emphasis on “honor” to the National Committee to Defend, and Shabazz

moved to New York, became a volunteer paralegal, and worked with

Attorney Chokwe Lumumba on the cases of Kuwasi, Sekou Odinga, and the

rest. His thoughts of that time are much more than fond memories:

“Kuwasi was warm and generous in a way you would not believe.”

“I was able to get through the daunting security system at the jail

where Kuwasi, David Gilbert, and Judith Clark were being held,” Shabazz

recalled, “because I’d go in with an attorney working with Gilbert and

Clark. Kuwasi represented himself at trial, but he’d come to these

face-to-face legal meetings so that he and I could sidebar in the

meeting room. Under these conditions, we got to know each other and had

frank talks about how to reach New Afrikans about what this case was

really about, and who the real criminals were. In the first of these

meetings, Kuwasi expressed to me his dislike for the very name of the

National Committee. He did not like the term ‘freedom fighter.’ A fire

fighter is someone who fights fires. A crime fighter is someone who,

what? Fights crime. So, isn’t a freedom fighter someone who fights

against freedom? That was my first lesson in understanding Kuwasi’s

ironic wit and political nonconformism.”

Kuwasi and Shabazz became quite close, with Shabazz serving as liaison

between Kuwasi and the outside defense committees. Instrumental in

producing the original booklet of Kuwasi’s “Statement of a New Afrikan

Prisoner of War,” Shabazz notes Kuwasi’s intention “for his statement to

be a clear and truthful articulation of exactly who he was and why he

did the things he did.” It was here that Kuwasi first articulated the

now popularly cited adage that “repression breeds resistance,” and that

he called out the U.S. for many of the crimes against Afrikan peoples

that Kuwasi himself witnessed, as a soldier in Vietnam and as a housing

rights activist in the tenements of Harlem.

“Kuwasi was a warlord,” Shabazz concludes, “in the best sense of the

word. He did not elevate the revolutionary methods by which he fought or

the level of resistance he was best at above what others in the struggle

contributed. He gave us some of his ideas on ‘PT,’ or physical training,

in his handwriting with sketches of different exercises, especially what

could be performed in the tight confines of the small cells he spent

many hours, days, and years of his life locked up inside prisons and

devoid of human contact. His body was as solid as iron from his PT

practice, which was a key to his life and power to escape. ‘We are

human,’ he said, ‘and nobody wants to live under or bring offspring into

a confined atmosphere with an artificial sky.’ I have never met a

comrade that could make me think, laugh, and strive for liberation like

Kuwasi.”

Already a lawyer at the time of the Brink’s trial, Joan Gibbs was

employed by the National Lawyers’ Guild’s Grand Jury Project in 1981 and

was a member of Dykes Against Racism Everywhere (DARE). A supporter of

the Black Panther Party, Gibbs explains that she “never joined the Party

for a couple of reasons, among them their seeming militarism and the

hypermasculinity of some of their members.” In addition, she adds, “at

the time, I was more attracted to Marxism, Leninism, and Trotskyism. The

August 1970 publication of Huey P. Newton’s ‘To the Revolutionary

Brothers and Sisters about the Women’s Liberation Movement and Gay

Liberation Movements’ tempered but did not entirely erase my feelings

that because of my sexuality I would be not welcomed with open arms in

the BPP.” Years later, Kim Kit Holder would report that he used Kuwasi’s

life as an example, especially for LGBTQ people, to “show the

possibility of the universality” of Panther politics and to “use Kuwasi

as a badge to deconstruct the concept that armed struggle is a

hypermasculine phenomenon.”

But even in the more backwards 1980s, Brink’s, for a young, radical,

lesbian, NewYork–based Black lawyer, was impossible to ignore. “In the

aftermath of the Brink’s incident,” Gibbs recalls, “a federal grand jury

was impaneled in the United States District Court for the Southern

District of New York. Activists were subpoenaed to appear before it from

both in and outside of New York City. Consequently, at the Grand Jury

Project, I worked to educate organizations and individuals about federal

prosecutors’ abuse of grand jury subpoenas to harass and sometimes

incarcerate dissidents from the United States foreign and domestic

policies, and the risks of talking to the FBI. In DARE, we worked to

build support for both those arrested and those subpoenaed, an arduous

task as many of the people purportedly on ‘the left’ considered those

arrested to be, at best, ‘adventurists.’ DARE principally focused on

building support among LGBT folks. To this end, DARE, among other

things, organized forums on noncollaboration with the FBI and grand

juries and published leaflets on these issues. I believed, then and now,

that for revolutionaries the principle contradiction is between us and

the state. The contradictions among those of us working to fundamentally

transform the U.S. are secondary. For these reasons, I also support the

freedom of all U.S. political prisoners and prisoners of war.” Joan

Gibbs, it should be noted, has served as defense counsel to some of the

most significant BPP-related political prisoners of the past

half-century, including Jericho Movement cofounder Herman Ferguson and

former NASA mathematician Sundiata Acoli (still in jail as of this

writing, well over eighty years old).

“As for Kuwasi’s sexuality,” Gibbs recalled, “his arrest with his

transvestite lover garnered tabloid headlines. The circumstances of his

arrest were negatively greeted by some alleged supporters of the Black

Liberation Movement, including some alleged supporters of the Black

Liberation Army. And, if my memory serves me correctly, when he died in

December 1986, only a few openly spoke about the fact he had died from

an AIDS-related illness. None of this should be surprising given the

times. In 1982, when Kuwasi was arrested, and in 1986 when he died,

support for LGBTQ people was far less than it is today, in society

generally and also within the left and the Black Liberation Movement.

Heterosexism, homophobia, and transphobia were the norm.”

Reflecting on Kuwasi’s legacy, Joan has noted that “while I am not an

anarchist, his writings on anarchism have challenged and caused me to

rethink my beliefs with respect to the need for ‘a vanguard party,’ with

democratic centralism, and with the meaning of leadership itself. In

other words, his writings have deepened my understanding, as well as my

appreciation, of the theory and practice of anarchism—understanding its

popularity today, particularly among younger activists. Like Harriet

Tubman, Kuwasi should long be remembered for his steadfast, decades-long

commitment to the fundamental transformation of the U.S. Kuwasi

demonstrated his repeated willingness to risk liberty and life in

furtherance of the liberation of people of African descent in the United

States, by non-queer and queer people committed to that same goal. With

a white supremist, misogynist, homophobe in the White House, with the

far right, Nazis, and Klan rallying and marching unmasked, we especially

need people with Kuwasi’s revolutionary, free, loving spirit.”

Regarding Kuwasi’s sexual orientation, the ways in which he freely

expressed his love—spiritually and otherwise—has perhaps been the most

complicated aspect of his legacy; the prejudices, then and now, which

Joan Gibbs poignantly notes, are not the only reason for this. Questions

of self-determination—of how Kuwasi defined or would have defined

himself—need also be considered. Sekou Odinga, one of his oldest and

closest comrades, asserts: “I often hear people say that Kuwasi was part

of the queer community, but he never called himself that. Clearly, he

would not have called himself gay. From what I’m told—I didn’t know it

at the time—Kuwasi was bisexual; he had a homosexual relationship which

continued while he was in prison. I did meet [his lover] Chicky, but

didn’t know her much. I was out at their house but didn’t know that

Chicky was transsexual. Was Kuwasi a gender rebel? Yes. He wasn’t caught

up in people’s bourgeois ways of looking at things. He had his own way

of looking at things.”

Bilal Sunni-Ali remembered one time late in Kuwasi’s life when he had to

pick Kuwasi up at a hospital. “He told me that he had a sexually

transmitted disease, and he said he had a male partner. That was the

first and the only time that I heard him talk about his private life.”

This memory reinforces an assessment made by revolutionary educator and

lawyer Ajamu Sankofa, who concluded that “Kuwasi viewed sexual

expression as fundamentally a private matter, not to be regulated by

systems of domination.” Though he never met Kuwasi, Sankofa—a member and

leader of the African Liberation Support Committee, the National

Independent Black Political Party, the Socialist Workers Party, the

National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL), and the American Civil

Liberties Union (ACLU)—is one of many who have spoken and written about

the great impact Kuwasi’s life had on their own thoughts and practice.

Sankofa concluded that Kuwasi’s own fluid and liberated ways of

approaching relationships could serve as “a perspective that if fully

practiced could help lead humanity out of the horrible dungeons of

sexual oppression.”

Ajamu Sankofa remarked of his own experience, “Up until I encountered

Kuwasi’s writings, my only Black male radical role model was James

Baldwin and, of course, as a proud Gay Black man, I had to process the

fact that the mainstream Black-led civil rights movement hid Baldwin

from view whenever it could. I fervently hung on to the words of Huey P.

Newton, who said, “[q]uite the contrary, maybe a homosexual could be the

most revolutionary.” In the late 1980s Sankofa “became aware of Kuwasi

as an out Black bisexual prisoner of war of African descent who was

public with his transvestite lover.”

In Sankofa’s assessment, Kuwasi was “one who lived a life that put into

concrete practice an ever-evolving set of ideological principles that

rested within a dynamic pyramid of intention, where one point was

anti-imperialist anarchism, another was Marxism-Leninism, and the other

was revolutionary Black nationalism. Each point existed in dynamic

tension with the other recreating itself while influencing each other

point. I found that to be pretty unique indeed.” In 1989, several years

after Kuwasi’s death, Sankofa joined the staff of the ACLU Prisoners’

Rights Project, which filed lawsuits against state prison systems

because they were deliberating denying necessary health care to

prisoners with HIV/AIDs in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the

United States Constitution. At the same time, as Sanfoka experienced and

remembered, “The radical left held hateful and reactionary views towards

gay people. The Black community, especially the clergy, was notably

hostile towards gay people and prisoners.”

“During the decade of 1980s,” Sankofa continued, “the Black community

was under siege by the triple threat of drugs, violence, and AIDS. Black

people despised drug dealers in their communities, as opportunistic

politicians manipulated them to support mass incarceration. Accordingly,

during this period the prison population was disproportionately filled

with prisoners with HIV/AIDS due to the correlation of drugs, sex, and

HIV. Prisoners with HIV/AIDS terrified and repelled many prison medical

staff.” It is noteworthy that one leading exception to leftist denial of

and distancing from the AIDS epidemic and people with AIDS came from

within the prison system itself—and from one of Kuwasi’s closest

comrades and codefendants. White anti-imperialist David Gilbert, who

still languishes in prison at the time of this writing (and who did time

behind bars with Kuwasi during the last years of his life), pioneered a

peer-centered support and education program for prisoners with HIV/AIDs

in New York State. This program, used as a model for inmate education

across the U.S., was formally begun just one year after Kuwasi’s

passing; Gilbert’s instructive and challenging booklet AIDS Conspiracy?

Tracking the Real Genocide, was dedicated to Kuwasi: “a Black Liberation

warrior with a giant heart, who died of AIDS on December 13, 1986.”

Sankofa’s perceptions about Kuwasi’s legacy is that his story might lead

revolutionaries to “take a far deeper and humble dive into the physics

of small stuff, such that we are ever fortifying ourselves against

dogmas, against navel gazing, and for greater openness to new

revolutionary ideas.” He concluded that “Kuwasi’s definitions and

practice of revolutionary nationalism and anarchism seem to me to have

been ‘in formation.’ … They do provoke new thinking regarding the

existing meanings of ideological categories. This is very healthy for

vibrant revolutionary movements.” Finally, Sankofa asserted, “the

signature lesson that I glean from Kuwasi’s definitions is the necessity

to be authentic in your revolutionary practice.”

Authenticity, humility, and an openness to working across personal and

political categorization were also the key Kuwasi legacy points raised

by Sister dequi kioni-sadiki, coordinator of the Malcolm X Commemoration

Committee. “We can all learn from Kuwasi’s ability to work with all

kinds of people across the board,” observed dequi, “accepting people

from where they are and helping them develop without writing anyone off.

We don’t talk about the human side of our revolutionaries often enough,

but Kuwasi’s humanity shone through.” A cofounder of the Northeast

Political Prisoner Coalition along with her husband Sekou Odinga, dequi

reminisced that Kuwasi, like Sekou, was committed to “finding more ways

to work with people than reasons not to work with them.” That, she

noted, is a great legacy indeed.

In the words of Black liberation artist and Gallery of the Streets

founder Kai Lumumba Barrow, Kuwasi was no less than a contemporary

Maroon. As a performance and visual artist, Kai has incorporated

Kuwasi’s “character” into her theatrical and political work, including a

current piece titled [b]Reach: adventures in heterotopia. A multimedia

traveling act, [b]Reach works to “consider the notion of Black

fugitivity as a point of departure, a place to discuss the questions … a

third space—between confinement and freedom,” which situates Black

fugitivity as a “location of disobedience, consistent among resistance

movements for structural change.” As a founder of the prison industrial

complex abolitionist organization Critical Resistance, a leader of the

Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and Southerners on New Ground, and a key

activist with the Black Panther Newspaper Committee, INCITE! Women of

Color Against Violence, FIERCE!, UBUNTU, and the Student Liberation

Action Movement, Kai has been at the center of many of the major

strategic organizing efforts since the time of Kuwasi’s transition. “As

a queer Black feminist artist,” she wrote, “I was, and am, inspired by

Kuwasi’s life and example …. His escapes were operatic; his sexuality

the stuff of gossip and pride, and his practice, a model for aspiring

revolutionaries. Kuwasi’s trial statements were the work of a surrealist

shaman—Abracadabra and Whoop there it is—he transformed the kourtroom

into a space of political education, revealing the farce that is the

amerikkkan justice system.”

Bilal Sunni-Ali agreed with this larger-than-life imagery. During the

time when Bilal was released from California’s Soledad Prison in the

1970s and returned to New York, Kuwasi had masterminded one of his

prison breaks. “The newspapers,” Bilal recalls, “were describing someone

who was nine feet tall, leaping over two cars at a time while still

shooting at the police who were chasing him!”

Dhoruba Bin Wahad, Black Panther Party New York Field Secretary and a

New York Panther 21 codefendant of Kuwasi, vividly recalls how his

powerful words back then continue to echo in the struggles of today.

“Once on a run down south,” Dhoruba remembered, “Kuwasi was called upon

to bust a verse or two. He began his poem about ‘Black self-hatred’ and

ended it with an existential metaphor for white supremacy that, to me,

also presaged Black Lives Matter. He matter-of-factly juxtaposed ‘social

justice’ with racial equality as a question of ‘mind over matter’;

Kuwasi poetically proclaimed to all who were listening that from a white

supremacist mindset: ‘White folks don’t mind, and Black folks don’t

matter.’”

Former Black Liberation Army militant and political prisoner Ashanti

Alston, who adopted the moniker “Anarchist Panther” in the 1980s, speaks

of how he “was drawn to Kuwasi, because he seemed to have a daringness

not just to say bold things but to do things and to be certain ways

outside of the norm …. He opened up many doors at a time when it was

important for more and more people to see that they have a part to

play—whether they be queer, whether they be nationalist but still

critiquing top-down structures. [Former New York Panther 21 defendant]

Ali Bey Hassan and Panther political prisoner Bashir Hameed—the Jersey

crew—would tell stories of this great loyalty they had to one another.

One of them was in prison on a road work crew, and another was out … so

they were going to get their brother free. They organized some plan to

come by in a fast car and pick the one off the road! That’s how they

rolled, that kind of daringness—and if you’re going to have a

revolutionary movement, you cannot be passive about this, you cannot be

on the fence about what you’re going to do. Sometimes you’ve got to step

outside the box. And Kuwasi became that person willing to step outside

the box on many different levels.”

Ashanti, who served as national cochair of the Jericho Movement to Free

All U.S. Political Prisoners, noted that “how Kuwasi saw himself in

relation to other human beings, and his own sexuality, was in deep

contrast to the European concepts of sexuality and what is a man, what

is a woman. The Black nationalist movement just didn’t deal with that

and were in some ways aligned with the Western model which Kuwasi

challenged by the way he lived his life. The public statement Kuwasi

made was how he chose to live. How people look at these choices after

his death is like a piece of art: it is up to the viewer to get

something from that. It is like how people look at Malcolm X after his

death: some people may only focus on what Malcolm said about voting,

others focus on what he said about the land, and others just focus on

what Malcolm said about armed struggle.

“What do you get when you see the life of Kuwasi Balagoon?” Ashanti asks

us all. “That is what becomes important. In the times that we live in,

when so many people have been oppressed and repressed in so many ways in

terms of their very being, it is important to have someone like Kuwasi

saying, ‘You don’t have to fit that norm. You are trying to be free in

the spirit that you’re in, doing it in the course of struggle.’ That is

the importance of Kuwasi Balagoon; it is all in the course of the

struggle to change this world. His anarchism, his sexuality, all of the

parts of his life fit into the whole of his revolutionary-ness. That is

what I think people miss: it was still all him—as a revolutionary, but a

revolutionary who is also willing to be free in some areas that we might

not all have the courage to be free in.” No matter who Kuwasi loved from

one moment to the next, Kuwasi’s love—for the people as a whole and for

individual peoples of all kinds—was the revolutionary context for his

life of militant action.

Perhaps Sekou Odinga’s concluding words serve as the best summary of

all: “Kuwasi loved life! He clearly loved life and loved living life. He

was always ready to live …. He was a living dude, and most of us all

really loved him.”

Black Cats Named Kuwasi

A reflection by Kai Lumumba Barrow

Back in the day, we had a couple of black cats: Kuwasi and Merle, named

to honor Merle Africa, of MOVE, and Kuwasi Balagoon, BLA anarchist,

anti-imperialist, AIDS activist, and bisexual poet. Both Kuwasi and

Merle died in the underbelly of the belly of the beast and we wanted to

recognize their contributions to Black liberation. To quote Ashanti,

“There are Cats, and there are Cats …. There is Kuwasi Balagoon”

As a queer Black feminist artist and cat lover, I was, and am, inspired

by Kuwasi’s life and example. I never knew Kuwasi, but his reputation

was the stuff of legend. In my cadre, Kuwasi was described as bold,

brazen, wild, and sharp. His escapes were operatic; his sexuality the

stuff of gossip and pride, and his practice, a model for aspiring

revolutionaries. Kuwasi’s trial statements were the work of a surrealist

shaman—Abracadabra and Whoop there it is—he transformed the kourtroom

into a space of political education, revealing the farce that is the

amerikkkan justice system.

Kuwasi was a Trickster in our midst, a contemporary Maroon determined to

live free or die trying.

As if taking on the spirit of his namesake, Kuwasi the cat refused to

stay confined to the house. A frequent flier and escape artist, no

amount of threats, punishments, product, or cajoling would make that cat

behave. No solo act, he even learned how to open our Brooklyn brownstone

sliding door (the locks are on the bottom), unlocking the latch and

sliding the barrier aside so that both he and Merle could escape. “It’s

better inside,” I told him one day, after catching him on his way out

and trapping him back in the house. “It’s dangerous out there with cat

snatchers and roaming Toms and ruffneck felines on every corner. We’ll

give you toys and catnip and scratching posts and take care of your

basic needs,” I pleaded. “Just stay inside, and definitely stay away

from the upstairs apartment. The old lady who lives above is not a fan.

These are the rules,” I said walking away, hoping that the cat would

pick up what I was putting down, and pretty sure that he would not.

Minutes later, I peeked back into the room curious to see the effect of

my rules. Kuwasi was gone. And so was Merle. The door cracked open stood

as a reminder of Balagoon’s words, “This is the place to begin erasing

borders.” Kuwasi indeed, was one of them Cats.

Poetry

your honor

with no questions

secretary wattsJames Watts was the notorious “libertarian”

right-wing secretary of the interior during the Reagan administration,

who favored turning over public lands to oil and mining interests and

agribusiness.

spring comes

big benIn the 1980s, Benjamin Ward became the first Black police

chief of New York City. He was notorious as a hard-drinking front man

for the blue mafia.

i remember

life is rough

the klan marched

mother of pearl sky

rain

some solo piano or guitar

filtered through the roof

we’ve got to

when the world is stale

lock step

refused

rockland

Kuwasi Speaks

In the Other Army

Excerpted from Look for Me in the Whirlwind (PM Press, 2017)

I hit it off all right later in the third platoon, being a field soldier

in the field, and being in good understandings with the brothers. But

there was a lot of shit that had been bugging me for a long time.

Besides the ridiculous changes that all enlisted men went through, there

was an added factor: rampant racism on all levels. A captain who was

black was demoted to sergeant E-6 before our very eyes and shipped out.

Brothers would spend 34 or 35 months of a 36-month enlistment and then

get dishonorable discharges—white soldiers had to make successive

superduper fuck-ups before the same would happen to them (like throw a

German citizen off a bridge into the river in the month of January). If

a brother whipped a white boy, under just about any circumstances, then

disciplinary action was on the way—but not vice versa. And motherfuckers

were still rapping that A-Company/C-Company shit. I rapped

anti-American.

We blacks who felt we were marked men, on whom designs had been made to

take care of 208-style, looked at the injustices on the post, had a

secret meeting, and formed an organization based on fucking up racists.

We called ourselves De Legislators, because we were going to make and

enforce new laws that were fair. We were De Judge, De Prosecutor, De

Executioner, Hannibal, and De Prophet. We said we would go to jail for a

reason and not the season. We would get 208, but would make the brass go

gray and bawl and stay up a whole lot of nights giving it to us.

From then on, every time a racial situation appeared, we did. Every time

white GIs ganged a black GI, we moved to more than even the score. One

at a time we would catch up with them and beat and stomp them so bad

that helicopters would have to be used to take them to better hospitals

than the ones in the area. We were not playing. We would plan things so

that we could kick something off inside a club that would instantly tum

into a riotous condition—once everything was in chaos it was impossible

to pick us out. We then broke faces and bodies of whoever we planned to

get, and made our escape. Afterward we would have critiques, just like

in the end of war games; get our alibis together; and keep the whole

thing under our hats.

The CIDo began investigating us, and the Provost Marshal. We began to

want 208s but were beating motherfuckers up so bad they wouldn’t name

us. One of my partners, Huff, had a very high moral character, and broke

me out of the habit of talking about people’s mothers. He was an earnest

social student and passed on worthy literature. He and Rhodes were the

best of company. Rhodes was serious-minded about the struggle; and he

ofttimes related that he grew up with the four sisters who were murdered

by the racists in Birmingham in the explosion of the church. […]

There were some hip dudes in De Legislators. Hannibal had earned his

name by kicking ass. I had earned the name De Prophet by prophesying

that so-and-so was going to get fucked up in a predetermined amount of

time, and then going on and fucking the chump up. Brothers had asked how

come I had never got busted. First, we were careful; and second, we were

decisive, never saying, “One more ass to kick and then I’m going to

stop”—always five more asses to kick. I wish that I’d kept in touch with

the Legislators, and a few other brothers from that time, because

sincere comrades are hard to come by.

Statement at Preliminary Hearing

September 2, 1982

As an anti-imperialist and a warrior of African descent, dedicated to

the overthrow of the United States government, as an urban guerrilla in

the ranks of the Black Liberation Army, i will not only resist the

designs of a sham hypocritical system of law, but outright refuse to

take any part in court proceedings. At large, i do not pay taxes, aid

the fascist law enforcement authorities, or pass up reasonable

opportunities to strike the oppressors, and find no reason to change now

or any time in the future. As long as the United States government keeps

the masses of Black and other Third World people as cannon fodder, and

uses force to maintain its domination over us, and i am alive, i will

resist, knowing that my fate as a resister irregardless of the state’s

consequences is better than the fates of those who accept oppression and

pass it on to coming generations.

The gang of bullies under the banner of the American flag who practice

genocide against Black, Latin, and Native American peoples within its

confines, while harboring nazis and secret police from other fascist

regimes, and arming and training Ku Klux Klanners and domestic Nazis,

deserves no respite, and it’s a sad day whenever they do. The United

States, Israel, and South Africa stand as expanding imperialist settler

states, rotten to their cores, from inception. Their fall will mark the

end of a tragic era in history, worth all truly revolutionary efforts.

courtesy of Mary Patten and Madame Binh Graphics Collective Archives

Brink’s Trial Opening Statement

July 11, 1983

My name is Kuwasi Balagoon. The name is of Yoruba origin. Yoruba is a

name of a tribe in Western Africa in what was called the Slave Coast,

and now called Nigeria. Many if not the bulk of slaves brought to the

Western Hemisphere were Yoruba, and throughout slavery and U.S.

colonialism the religion, customs, and even part of the language were

maintained in the United States and throughout the Caribbean, Central,

and South America. When the people of Nigeria threw the British out,

they sent representatives to Oriente Province in Cuba to relearn the

culture and the Yoruba religion, which was kept intact throughout

slavery, Spanish, and American colonialism. i was renamed by my peers in

the Yoruba temple and was married in a Yoruba ceremony like thousands of

people before and since.

The english translation of Kuwasi is “born on Sunday,” and the

translation of Balagoon is “Warlord,” and it suits me to have a name

which reflects what i am about and my origins, i accept that name.

Donald Weems, the name that the prosecutor likes to use, is an alien

european name. Donald is a Christian name—and i am not a Christian; and

Weems is a Scottish name, and i am not Scottish. It’s a name that some

slaver decided to brand what he considered his property with, and it is

the name the state likes to use to propagate a colonial relationship.

The english translation of Weems is “cave dweller.” i reject all that it

means.

i am a prisoner of war, and i reject the crap about me being a

defendant, and i do not recognize the legitimacy of this court. The term

defendant applies to someone involved in a criminal matter, in an

internal search for guilt or innocence. It is clear that i’ve been a

part of the Black Liberation Movement all of my adult life and have been

involved in a war against the American Imperialist, in order to free New

Afrikan people from its yoke. i am not treated like a criminal, am never

in the company of prisoners with non-political charges. Never have i had

a bail or parole once captured, and out of ten years in County Jails and

prisons, seven years were spent in isolation, administrative

segregation, management control, incorrigible units, or some separate,

punitive arrangement or prison within a prison.

Before becoming a clandestine revolutionary i was a tenant organizer and

was arrested for menacing a 270-pound colonial building superintendent

with a machete, who physically stopped the delivery of oil to a building

i didn’t live in but had helped to organize. Being an organizer for the

Community Council on Housing i took part in not only organizing rent

strikes but pressed slumlords to make repairs and maintain heat and hot

water, killed rats, represented tenants in court, stopped illegal

evictions, faced off with City Marshals, helped turn rents into repair

resources and collective ownership by tenants, and demonstrated whenever

the needs of tenants were at stake. In 1967, the U.S. Congress killed

the rat bill which would have provided funding for killing rats. At that

time, it was estimated that there were at least one rat for every person

in New York City. So we decided to demonstrate at the U.S. House of

Representatives. Once we got there we decided that instead of walking

around with signs in the sun waiting for reporters, we would just go in

and tell those creeps how we felt. Once we began to practice our First

Amendment rights and refused to leave, Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill

instructed the Capitol Police to “Get those niggers out of here,” at

which time the Boy and Girl Scouts and other spectators were ushered out

and we and the Capitol Police had a free-for-all in the halls of

Congress, down the front steps, and all over the lawn. Five of us,

including myself and my sister, were arrested for “disorderly conduct,”

which the FBI files advise me was lodged because of resulting publicity

that court proceedings might have entailed. The U.S. Congress response

to us was to have plexiglass installed between them and the gallery

where people affected by their actions and inactions would have to sit.

Although i was naive, i didn’t think so, having been honorably

discharged from the U.S. Army and seeing countless New Afrikan and

Mexican GIs dishonorably discharged after serving thirty-four months of

a thirty-six-month enlistment. Being stigmatized for life and denied

employment and the right to vote for what white GIs were reprimanded

for. Being told by a company commander that he was told that he would

have to pay graft before our combat scores would be correctly

calculated. i thought i knew the U.S. government.

We found it unacceptable that the same government who drafted New

Afrikans and demanded that we fight the Vietnamese who had forced the

French to surrender at Dien Bien Phu and leave Indochina, and who had

mauled the 1^(st) Cavalry Division in hand-to-hand combat in the

jungles, as well as retaking Hamburger Hill at least four times, could

not allocate a little money for killing rats, who were attacking

countless infants and children, causing nervous disorders as well as

poisoning, and traumatizing, mauling mothers nursing their infants.

Members of Congress laughed straight out when the bill was brought

before it and promptly voted it down.

There were people in the Community Council on Housing who worked at

other jobs during the day and organized and conducted meetings at night

until all matters were decided and business conducted; there were people

who got up early in the morning to go with tenants to “tenants and

landlords” court to argue out specific injustices, with pictures,

inspection data, and building and apartment histories, and then walked

all over West Harlem to organize meetings, because we couldn’t afford

our fare back and forth across town. We would stop illegal evictions at

the door with court orders, arranged repairs, got heat and hot water for

tenants, and outright threatened and stood off City Marshals who

received hundreds of dollars for each eviction. i had gone to apartments

and waited with my carbine a few times.

Then i began to realize that with all this effort, we couldn’t put a

dent in the problem. There’s thousands of buildings with wiring eaten

away by rats, holes in the floors, ceilings that had crashed on people,

bathtubs that had fallen through the floors. There were always

electrical fires; in the winter, 90 percent of the people i ran into

heated their apartments with their ovens. i could confront building

superintendents every day and a job and a free apartment would draw a

replacement just as rotten. These conditions didn’t come about through

accident or people in high places not being aware. It was not even a

question of the government not caring. The City of New York is the

greatest slumlord, and the other slumlords get tax breaks and make

superprofits on buildings that have been paid for hundreds of times

over. i began to know that these inhuman conditions were not only

perpetrated in Harlem, Brownsville, El Barrio, and the South Bronx where

had originated and aided other organizers. These conditions were and are

perpetrated in New Afrikan reservations in Washington, DC, in Miami’s

Overtown, the Hill District of Pittsburgh, the Central Ward of Newark,

North Philadelphia, the Southside of Chicago, and all over the confines

of the U.S.

We say that the U.S. has no right to confine New Afrikan people to

redlined reservations, and that we have a right to live on our own terms

in a common land area and to govern ourselves, free of occupation

forces, such as the police, national guard, or GIs who have invaded our

colonies from time to time. We have a right to control our own economy,

print our own money, trade with other nations, and enter a workforce

where we are not excluded by design and where our wages and the wages of

all workers can be manipulated by a ruling class that controls the

wealth. We have a right to build our own educational institutions and

systems where our children will not be indoctrinated by aliens to suffer

the destructive designs of the U.S. government.

When i say we New Afrikan people are colonized, i mean that our lives

socially, economically, and politically, with the exception of our war

of liberation, are controlled by other people, by imperialist

euro-americans. Imperialist euro-americans tell us where to live and

under what conditions, euro-american invaders, colonizers, decide what

laws we should obey and what jobs we will get. It’s no mystery why such

a proportion of GIs, hospital workers, domestic workers, farmworkers, or

athletes are New Afrikans or why we are 10 percent of the population

within the confines of the U.S. and 50 percent of the prison population.

We suffer 50 percent unemployment. Likewise, there is no mystery why the

Black Liberation Army (BLA) was formed well over a decade ago and,

despite captures and many instances of tortures and executions on the

part of the U.S. government, has managed to continue the struggle and

fill a lot of cops full of holes and continue to enjoy our people’s

support, in spite of raids and threats by the U.S. government and

outright political and military blunders on our part. Despite claims

that our backs have been broken or that we were out of existence, we of

the BLA have continued to fight. Repression breeds resistance. There is

no mystery how the Fuerzas Armados de Liberacion Nacional[49] (Armed

Forces of National Liberation—FALN) continues, or how the Irish

Republican Army (IRA) continues in Ireland, or the African National

Congress continues to oppose America’s 51^(st) state: South Africa. Or

why, despite helicopters and bloodthirsty advisers, the guerrillas in El

Salvador continue to struggle and advance or why the Palestine

Liberation Organization, despite the massive invasion of Lebanon,

Israeli-and American-backed massacres, and internal conflicts, struggle

on.[50] We have legitimate support from peoples who have been victimized

and have a right to self-determination. We are human and nobody wants to

live under or bring offspring into a confined atmosphere with an

artificial sky.

That is what it is all about. The state knows that of the ninety

so-called felonies i’ve been indicted on against the mythical peace and

dignity of New York and New Jersey, all of them have been political and

military in nature, even in cases where the charges have been dropped.

The only time that i’ve been charged with offenses against working-class

people who were not agents of the state was during a shootout with

police where i commandeered a car, and while aiding an escape, when a

man mistaken for a guard didn’t follow instructions. It’s been clear

since i was forced underground while in the Panther Party that i have

been a partisan on behalf of the liberation of Black people and in the

ranks of Black resistance. The Secret Service wasn’t issued a memo to

detain, question, or at the very least monitor me in the event that i

was in the same area as the president of the United States, might be

because i might steal his watch, or because i ever voiced a threat; and

the FBI hasn’t put me in its National Index of Agitators to be arrested

by them at any time on no charge because of molesting women or children,

or selling drugs, or victimizing working-class people in any way. i am

on the National Index of Agitators because i am a friend of liberty, an

enemy of the state, and a fighter in the ranks of the liberation army of

New Afrikan people.

District Attorney Gribetz, Judge Ritter, and the state’s propaganda arm,

the establishment media, have sought to obviate this by calling me a

defendant, as well as my comrade Sekou Odinga, as if we were American

citizens negotiating an internal domestic legal system. We reject this,

as well as the insistence on calling us, as well as Assata Shakur, Abdul

Majid, and other POWs by slave names. We know that it is not just a case

of racist arrogance or legality and note that Zayd Malik Shakur changed

his name through the courts years before he was killed by State Troopers

on the New Jersey Turnpike and was still called by the state and the

media by his slave name. This is to propagate a colonial relationship.

i am tired of going through towns and cities, divided into sections

where the houses are bigger and more fit for habitation in one section

than the other, and the police protect one section and harass and

terrorize the other, the one section enjoying better living conditions

always white and the section most resembling hell nonwhite. i am tired

of living in a land where the highest rank a Black man or woman can

attain is a token appointment, and then hearing that crap that we are

all Americans! i am tired of living the life of a colonial subject,

while the hypocritical oppressors and exploiters of my people make

pompous declarations about our democracy. America is racist, and by no

twists and turns of semantics, by no evasions whatsoever, can a racist

nation claim to be a democracy.

The media that carries stories about David Gilbert having a map of

Orange County Jail while at Rockford County although no incident report

was filed and the warden denied any knowledge of a map, first said to be

a drawing, then a photo, ever being found. But besides justifying an

incredible amount of security, this story was used as a motion to obtain

a secret jury in a related federal RICO trial.[51] This court could not

grant a motion to investigate this through a hearing and a hearing to

find out what traitor Samuel Brown[52] told state authorities. In

another instance the Rockland Journal reported that Julio Rosado was a

FALN member who visited Judy Clark and David Gilbert at Rockland, when

it is clear that Rosado is a public spokesperson of the Movimiento de

Liberacion National (MLN), and that the FALN is a clandestine

revolutionary organization of fighters. A real investigative reporter

would have checked and found out readily that no visit occurred,

especially since the day it was reported to have happened, a Monday, is

a day that freedom fighters don’t receive visits.

The media role in this case is to help the state build fascism and is no

more “neutral and detached” from the state than the judge. The ruling

that the jury be anonymous is a political ruling, and we don’t really

care how it affects these individuals, because the reality it

communicates to everyone who knows of it is that the state and

supposedly “neutral” judge have reasons to believe that we are of danger

to people outside the state’s repressive apparatus, when it is clear

that in no instance where a BLA member was on trial has a juror been

harmed, threatened, or tampered with in any way. We only engage the

enemy in combat, and we don’t consider working-class people outside of

law enforcement enemies. The state’s task is to make us appear to be

everybody’s enemy—however, truth and history make it clear who is the

real enemy of the people.

In Newsweek, they had the nerve to state, “Nearly one half of the 157

members of the United Nations hold political prisoners of one sort or

another: those of conscience, jailed for their beliefs or those whose

convictions have driven them to directly challenge their governments.

Some even accuse the United States of having its own, though American

tradition of democracy and due process make the charge seem more

metaphysical than real.” What crap! In the U.S. political prisoners are

called, among other things, Grand jury resisters. They are brought

before a grand jury and ordered to talk, and when they don’t they are

arrested and locked up for refusing to talk. Sometimes a judge orders

them to answer a DA’s question, and then, if they refuse to talk, they

are tried with the aid of twelve people siding with the pigs under the

guise of doing their civic duty and holding the fascist fabric of the

state in place and can be convicted of contempt of court and can be

sentenced to an undetermined sentence.

Aisha Buckner, Jerry Gaines, Fulani Sunni-Ali, Shaheem Jabbar, Richard

Delaney, Yaasymyn Fula, Asha Thornton have been jailed for eighteen

months or more; Julio Rosado, Andres Rosado, Ricardo Romero, Maria

Cueto, and Steven Guerra have actually been sentenced—not for murder,

not for arson or shop-lifting or any alleged crimes—but for not

submitting to an evil, alien, imperialistic power … the U.S. government.

There have been at least seventy-five people jailed this way since 1970

…. If these people were locked up in the Soviet Union, Poland, Grenada,

or Cuba, they would be called “political prisoners.” If they were in

Zimbabwe or Libya, Kirkpatrick and Shultz[53] would call them prisoners

of conscience. Lech Walesa[54] didn’t do half the time that Jerry

Gaines, Shaheeem Jabbar, Yaasmyn Fula, or Asha Thornton has, and they

are still in, because America is a hypocritical empire. The [U.S.]

propaganda machine moans each time Walesa is stopped by the [Polish]

police, and when he admits to meeting with members of the underground,

and then racistly and hypocritically ignores these people [grand jury

resisters].

The American Heritage Dictionary defines a colony as a “group of

emigrants settled in a distant land but subject to a parent country; 2.

A territory thus settled; 3. Any region politically controlled by

another country.” But just as the hypocritical USA claims that it has no

political prisoners, it claims it has no colonies.

Let’s look at the word “genocide,” same source. “1. The systematic

annihilation of a racial, political or cultural group.” The UN

Convention on Genocide defines it as:

A. Killing members of a group; B. Causing serious bodily or mental harm

to members of a group; C. Deliberately inflicting on the members of the

group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical

destruction in whole or in part; D. Imposing measures intended to

prevent births within the group; E. Forcibly transferring children of

the group to another group.

The American Bar Association objected to the Genocide Convention and the

U.S. signing it through its special committee on Peace and Laws, because

“Endless confusion in the dual system of the United States would be

inevitable with the same crime being murder in state law and genocide in

the federal and international fields. Race riots and lynchings being

both local crime and genocide depending on the extent of participation.”

Leader H. Perez, DA of Louisiana, stated, “All forms of homicide and

personal injury cases would be brought under the broad mantle of

genocide, and the mechanics of the thing would simply be that the United

States Attorney would walk into state district court and move to

transfer the case to federal courts. But what is still worse than the

destruction of our constitutional setup and our framework of government

in America is the overhanging threat that citizens of our states someday

will have to face the international tribunal, where now they must face

the state courts and a jury of their peers.” This constitutional setup

has resulted in a white person never having been legally executed for

the murder of a Black person in the history of the United States. This

is not by chance, this has been contrived, the genocide and hypocrisy

have been elevated into civic virtue in the U.S. empire, while death

rows across the U.S. are packed with Black prisoners.

The U.S. signed the Genocide Convention, with its government leaders

knowing full well that they would not abide by it, just as it stated in

the U.S. Constitution, Art. 6, para. 4: “The constitution and the laws

of the United States shall be the supreme law of the land and the judges

in every state shall be bound thereby.”

They wrote these things out, real official, just as they wrote the

Declaration of Independence, which said, “We hold these truths to be

self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by

their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are

life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these

rights, governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers

from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government

becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to

alter or abolish it and to institute new government, laying its

foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form,

as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

These are noble words for slavers and rapists, and they go on to say,

“but when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the

same object evinces and designs to reduce them under absolute despotism,

it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government and to

provide new guards for their future security.”

They said this while kidnapping African people en masse from another

continent three thousand miles away. Between 75 million and 110 million

Africans were kidnapped, with less than 10 million surviving the Middle

Passage to reach these shores. By the end of slavery there were only 4

million of us. Having endured every conceivable atrocity, including the

forced separation and sale of family members, rape, murder, the raping

and selling of children who were themselves the offspring of rape.

Olmsted reported, “In the states of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina,

Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri as much attention was paid to the

breeding and growth of negroes, as to that of horses and mules.”

J.E. Cairnes, the English economist, computed from reliable data that

Virginia bred and exported no less than one hundred thousand slaves,

which at five hundred dollars apiece (per head) yielded fifty million

dollars. George Washington sold a slave to the West Indies for a

hogshead of “best rum” and molasses and sweetmeats, and said it was

because “this fellow is both a rogue and a runaway.” Thomas Jefferson

sold slaves on the open market. To refer to Washington, Jefferson, and

the rest of those hypocrites as the fathers of our country is outright

provocation.

Slavery was defended thusly: it was said, except for slavery, “The poor

would occupy the position in society that the slaves do—as the poor in

the North and in Europe do, for there must be a menial class in society

and every civilized country on the globe, beside the confederate states,

the poor are the inferiors and menials of the rich. Slavery was a

greater blessing to the non-slave holding poor than to the owners of

slaves, because it gave the poor a start in society that would take them

generations to work out; they should thank god for it and fight and die

for it as they would their own liberty and dearest birthright of

freedom.” This is the real justification for colonialism today.

Chattel slavery was an institution built on racism that built the USA,

which for all practical purposes meant that the “owner” of a slave had

complete control over the slave and also that any white person could

order about any Black person. The slave patrols and militias were the

predecessors of the fugitive squad, Red Squad, and the Joint Terrorist

Task Force of today. The economy not only of the agrarian autocracy but

of the whole south, through marshals, militias, breeders, auctioneers,

overseers, slave drivers, and patrols looking for fugitives, was based

on slavery, and there was much slavery in the North also: Maryland,

Delaware, Washington, DC, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, etc.

The Civil War that ended chattel slavery was carried out by the North

not for that purpose but to stop the separation of the U.S. and to

ensure industrial domination over agriculture. “The Negro became in the

first year contraband of war: that is, property belonging to the enemy

and valuable to the invader. And in addition to that, became as the

South quickly saw, the key to the Southern resistance. Either these 4

million laborers remained quietly at work to raise food for the

fighters, or the fighters starved. Simultaneously, when the dream of the

North for manpower produced riots, the only additional troops that the

North could depend on were 200,000 Negroes, for without them, Lincoln

said, the North could not have won the war.” (W.E.B. Du Bois, Black

Reconstruction).

As the North began to secure victory over the rebellious states, the

U.S. government with the Union Army and volunteer organizations

established the Freedman’s Bureau, which in conjunction with the

treasury and newly freed slaves, lands throughout the confederacy were

confiscated, and put into the hands of New Afrikans, who quickly proved

they could support themselves even in the wake of war, as well as assist

many people who had no land or provisions. Schools and universities were

established and many New Afrikans attempted to become citizens of the

United States.

On February 5, 1866, Senator Charles Sumner addressed the Senate and,

among other things, said, “Our fathers futures and their sacred labor …

and now the moment has come when the vows must be fulfilled to the

letter. In securing the equal rights of the freedman and his

participation in the government which he is taxed to support, we shall

perform our early promise of the fathers, and at the same time the

supplementary promises only recently made to freedmen as the condition

of alliance and aid against the rebellion. A failure to perform these

promises is political and moral bankruptcy.”

The moment he spoke of has long passed, the promises have not been kept

and the reason for this is inherent in the very nature of the U.S.

empire. This was understood by nineteen out of twenty Black leaders of a

delegation that met with General Sherman. When asked if they preferred

to be part of the U.S. or live separately, nineteen said, “live by

ourselves.”

In short order, the U.S. government took back the bulk of the land

confiscated from the Confederacy and handed it over to the New Afrikans

who had been working on it. The Freedman’s Bureau was dissolved, and

President Grant urged removal of all political disabilities of former

Confederates in December 1871. A bill was passed in the House to serve

that purpose and was tied by Sumner to a Civil Rights Bill in the

Senate. When it finally passed Congress in 1872, however, the civil

rights feather was omitted.

Black federal troops were disbanded and removed from the South, at which

point the militia searched Black dwellings for arms and took them away.

The U.S. government, now consolidated, went back to playing the same

role in regards to New Afrikan people as before the war—that of users.

Carl Schurz, who was an adviser to President Johnson, observed: “The

emancipation of the slaves is submitted to only insofar as chattel

slavery in the old form could not be kept up. But although the freedman

is no longer considered property of the individual master, he is

considered the slave of society, and all independent state legislation

will share the tendency to make him such. The ordinances abolishing

slavery passed by the conventions under pressure of circumstance will

not be looked upon as barring the establishment of a new form of

servitude.”

New Afrikan people could see this, and Henry Adams, testifying before

the U.S. Senate Committee on Petitions on behalf of a petition by New

Afrikans in Louisiana and Mississippi (two of the highest states in

concentrations of New Afrikans) in 1874 said, “Well, in that petition,

we appealed there if nothing could be done to stop the turmoil and

strife, and give us our rights in the South, we appealed then at that

time for a territory that could be set apart for us to live in peace and

quiet.” That’s not asking for very much; however, the U.S. government

rejected that petition. As it does now. The Fourteenth Amendment reads:

“All persons born and naturalized in the United States, and subject to

the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the

state in which they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which

shall abridge the privilege or immunity of citizens of the United

States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or

property without due process of law nor deny to any person within its

jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Certainly, it can’t be argued that New Afrikan people have ever received

equal protection under the law, and besides being another official

pompous lie, the Fourteenth Amendment “wrongfully and illegally

precluded New Afrikans from exercising their options fully. New Afrikans

were forced to accept the label of U.S. citizenship, and they had not

been asked whether or not they wanted such citizenship or such a label.

In 1856, 400,000 Afrikans had not been born in the U.S. These people

could not be deemed to have been made citizens by any interpretation of

the 14^(th) amendment.”

With a substantial portion of the New Afrikan people in the country

legally unaffected by the Fourteenth Amendment and petitioners from two

of the most populous states in regards to Black people noting that they

were not receiving equal protection of the laws and asking for

“territory set apart for us,” what could have possibly been the motives

of the government of the United States of America outside of deceit,

war, and colonization?

Between 1868 and 1871, there were 371 cases of violence, including 35

murders of Blacks in Alabama. Six churches and many school houses were

burned before the election of 1870.

General Davis of the Freedman’s Bureau reported 260 attacks, whippings,

and murders of freedmen between January and November 1868 in Georgia.

In 1868, when Gov. Holden of North Carolina devised a plan to

redistribute land and give ex-slaves a means to become self-sufficient,

the Congressional Investigating Committee reported 260 outrages,

including 7 murders and whippings of 72 whites and 141 Negroes.

A committee of the Constitutional Convention of 1868 on Partial Returns

said that 1,035 men had been murdered in Texas (a part of Mexico that

was invaded for the purpose of exploiting slavery) since the closure of

the war, and the federal attorney said the number might have been 2,000.

Two thousand people were killed, wounded, or otherwise injured in

Louisiana within a few weeks prior to the presidential election in

November 1868. “Frightful conditions prevailed up the Red River around

Shevreport in Caddo and Bossier Parishes, a trading center for Texas,

Arkansas and the Indian nations. A United States army officer on duty in

this place saw 2 or 3 men shot down in the streets in front of the store

in which he sat. He picked up the bodies of 8 men who had been killed in

1 night. Never had he heard of anyone being punished for murder in that

county.” One hundred and twenty corpses were found in the woods or were

taken out of the Red River after a “Negro hunt” in Bossier Parish.

“534 Negroes have been lynched by mobs in Mississippi between 1882 and

1950; 491 in Georgia; 352 in Texas; 335 in Louisiana; 299 in Alabama;

256 in Florida; 226 in Arkansas and 204 in Tennessee. Virtually no one

has ever been punished for such a crime, because the courts and police

collaborate with it.” Three thousand four hundred and thirty-six Negroes

are known to have been lynched between 1882 and 1950, thousands of us

have been murdered without it even being recorded, throughout the USA.

This is a war against New Afrikan people for the purpose of colonization

and genocide. i could delay the proceedings indefinitely reciting

instances of “legal” murders, such as countless rape frame-ups and

executions, and instances where New Afrikans have been murdered, raped,

assaulted, burnt out, or otherwise victimized, without any attempt to

bring guilty persons to justice and for no other reason than national

oppression. However, the objective of the imperialist war must be

brought to light.

United States imperialism, which drains resources and profits from all

parts of the world under its domination, has as its original base of

this exploitation, and still largest source of superexploitation, New

Afrikan labor and talents, and this has been no less true with the

shifting of the New Afrikan population.

Thus, in 1947, the median wage or salary of white wage earners was

$1,980; of the nonwhite wage earners $863, or 43.6 percent as much,

according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. In 1949, according to the

United States Census Bureau reports, while 16,800,000 Americans in

4,700,000 families had an income of less than $1,000 a year, the income

of white families was two times greater than that of New Afrikans.

Using the 1947 figure, this difference of more than $1,100 in normal

earnings gives a measure of the amount of extra income, of superprofits,

which employers derive from the average New Afrikan worker over and

above the normal profits derived from the average white worker. Whites

in 1939 who had a college education averaged $2,046 annually while New

Afrikans with the same education had a median wage of $1,047. About the

same disparity; so much for education.

Taken altogether, an appropriate answer might be gained by regarding as

extra profits the $1,100 difference between the median Negro wage and

the median white wage and multiplying the difference by the number of

New Afrikan productive workers in agriculture and industry. Of the

6,000,000 New Afrikan gainful workers in 1947, approximately 3,500,000

were engaged in productive labor on farms or in industry, according to

the U.S. Department of Commerce labor report. This number multiplied by

$1,000 gives a total superprofit of almost $4 billion. More recent

figures show a similar result for 1948 and 1949.

On top of this, the jobs with the highest percentage of New Afrikans

include those least desired, due to working conditions, low pay, and

risk of accident and disease, such as logging, sawmills, fertilizer

plants, hospital workers, nursing home workers, U.S. armed forces

enlistees (especially infantry, airborne, and armor), domestics, foundry

workers, and farm and migrant laborers.

As of 1950, a single block in Harlem had a population of 3,871 people.

At a comparable rate of concentration, concluded Architectural Forum,

“The entire United States could be housed in half of New York City.”

Yet, due to redlining, being burnt out of places not permitted to us by

a racist population, and a working conspiracy between banks, savings and

loans associations, insurance companies, real estate corporations,

police and fire departments, and other racist organizations, such as the

original Southern Klans, Inc., Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Florida,

Inc., National Small Businessmen’s Association, American Independent

Keystone Society, Knights of the Kavaliers, Free White Americans, Inc.,

The Christian American, Inc., Order of American Patriots, Northern

Klans, Inc., and other organizations who have state charters, corporate

sanctions, tax exemption, and the right to establish subordinate lodges

throughout the United States and its territories, we remain for the most

part cooped up on Black reservations with rents 10 percent to 50 percent

higher than comparable dwellings elsewhere.

That various states bestow these benefits of incorporation and tax

exemption on these paramilitary racists is undeniable evidence of

government conspiracy; that the Bureau of Internal Revenue, who harass

ordinary working people, investigates who various presidents direct them

to, and actually wreck homes, dig up yards, and confiscate small

businesses, farms, and homes for nonpayment of relatively small sums to

further this conspiracy by extending federal tax exemptions on the basis

that these organizations are “nonprofit, benevolent, fraternal and

educational” is outright war, hypocrisy, and deceit, second only to the

U.S. Department of Justice and the Defense Department that invades the

Dominican Republic and other republics under any pretense and

destabilizes popularly elected governments and commits real massacres in

Chile, Indonesia, and Puerto Rico and supports and aids the Israeli

government in its massacres of Palestinian people and the theft of their

homeland—just as the euro-americans stole this land—and supports the

invaders and nazis of South Africa, who not only exist on stolen land

but exploit African labor and commit massacres and other atrocities like

their racist imperialistic euro-american tutors.

In this period, called a recession and marked by inflated prices and

high unemployment, we are still in the same position as regards to being

economic cannon fodder in these United States. As of July 17, 1983, as

reported in that edition of the New York Times, the Center for the Study

of Social Policy reports that the average Black college graduate’s

income is about the same as the average white high school graduate’s

income. Only 55 percent of Black men over the age of sixteen are

employed today. Unemployment of Black men over the age of twenty-one is

almost 50 percent; twenty-one years ago three out of every four Black

men were employed. In 1981, the median income for Blacks was $13,266,

while the median income for whites was $23,517. In other words, the

Black median income is only 56 percent of the white. 54 percent of Black

families are now at income levels below $15,000 a year, compared with 28

percent of white families.

As always, old age and survivors’ insurance and unemployment

compensation systems do not cover agricultural, domestic, service, and

self-employed persons. Sixty-five percent of all Black workers fall into

these categories, compared with 40 percent of white workers.

The Presidential Advisory Committee on Civil Disorders lists as the

first level of grievance police practices, unemployment and

underemployment, and inadequate housing.

Police in NYC have been involved in forty-nine racially motivated

murders since 1979, and police throughout the country have murdered four

hundred Third World people during the year.

New York: December 22–24, 1980. Three Black males and one Hispanic male

were fatally stabbed. Witnesses to at least two of the stabbings have

described the assailant as a white male.

New York: October 8–9, 1980—Buffalo, Cheektowanga, Niagara Falls. Three

Black males and a Black teenager were shot and killed by sniper attacks

or in shooting incidents. Witnesses have described the assailant as a

white man.

New York: August 8, 1979—Yonkers. The home of a Black family was

firebombed. City officials describe the attack as racially motivated.

Ohio: November 1, 1980—Youngstown. A Black teenager was shot and killed

by a rifle fired from a pickup truck. Press accounts indicate a group of

white youths in a pickup truck had been driving around shooting randomly

at Black citizens.

Oklahoma City: October 21, 1979. A Black male and a white female

companion were shot and killed by a sniper attack. Police said the

assailant was a white male.

Johnstown, PA. A Black male and a white female companion were shot and

killed by a sniper attack.

Chattanooga, TN: October 24, 1980. A Black teenager was shot and wounded

by two white males.

Chattanooga, TN: April 19, 1980. Four Black women were shot and wounded

by a shotgun fired from a car. A Ku Klux Klansman was convicted and two

other Klansmen were acquitted.

Salt Lake City: August 20, 1980. Two Black youths were shot and killed

by a sniper attack as they were jogging with two white female

companions.

Bennington, UT: October 27, 1980. One of three [assailants] was

sentenced to between three months and one year in jail for his role in

the abduction and stabbing of a Black teenager.

Contra Costa County, CA: November–December 1980. A series of attacks

against Black families by white vandals occurred, including an attempted

assault and shooting incident.

Chico, CA: January 13, 1980. A deaf Black male was shot and killed by

two white males and one white female. According to press reports, the

assailants murdered their victim because they could not find any animals

to shoot on their hunting trip.

Manchester, CT: October 2, 1980. The home of a Black family was

firebombed.

Ft. Wayne, IN: May 29, 1980. Vernon Jordan, President of the National

Urban League was shot and critically wounded by a sniper attack.

Indianapolis, IN: January 1, 1980. A Black male was shot and killed by a

sniper attack.

Greensboro, NC: November 3, 1980. Demonstrations protesting the Ku Klux

Klan clashed with Klansmen and Nazis. Five of the demonstrators,

including three white males, one Black female, and one Hispanic male,

were shot and killed. Six Klansmen and Nazis were later tried on state

charges of murder and rioting. An all-white jury acquitted all of the

defendants.

There have been recent lynchings of New Afrikans in rural Mississippi

and Mobile, Alabama, and since Wayne Williams has been in custody, there

have been twenty-five more killings of New Afrikans in Atlanta.[55] In

April 1982, three young retarded Black men were found hanged and

castrated in Atlanta. In the Greensboro, NC, killings of the anti-Klan

demonstrators, FBI “informant” Ed Dawson rode in the lead car of a

ten-car Klan and Nazi convoy; Agent Bernard Butkovich participated in

the planning. The armed military assault by the Klan and Nazis against

the demonstrators who were unarmed was shown on national television, the

acquittals were announced. What was this, if it wasn’t a case of

propaganda by the deed? What did this communicate to the murderers of

Willie Turks in Brooklyn? What did the five-year sentence of Bova

communicate? What did the acquittal of Paul Mormando, after he admitted

to taking part in the beating that led to Turks’s death by actually

pulling a man who was trying to run from a fight out of his car?[56]

Well, the answer to that was duly reported in the next day’s paper: a

gang of white armed males attacked a Black teenager in Queens, with at

least one knife and one baseball bat, with no arrests made.

But that’s only part of what is communicated. Not only are these actions

announcing over and over that in the United States, Black life is cheap,

and that any white racist armed with a weapon or crowd of other racists,

which aren’t hard to find, can attack and even kill Blacks with little

or no consequence, but that the American legal system has no problems

finding jurors able to overlook words, pictures, or whatever they have

to accept a racist tradition.

At Camp Fuller, on the Texas Gulf Coast, CIA-rained mercenaries,

national guardsmen, and army reserve personnel train Klansmen and women.

At Dekker Lake, a marine recruit is in charge of training Klansmen.

There’s Klan training camps in Connecticut, New York, California,

Alabama, and Georgia as well, and not only is there no effort to stop

them from being armed—this government of the United States supplies

them. There’s no shortage of police, jailers, or U.S. GIs in the Klan,

and there’s no shortage of federal agents. In North Carolina alone,

forty-one chapters were maintained by the FBI. You tell me the

difference between the Germans in World War II and the euro-americans,

except that euro-americans have killed more people within its confines

than the followers of Hitler who were inspired by euro-americans to

commit their slaughter and have been and are very often harbored and

protected since by the U.S. government. Where and when in the history of

this earth have there been a bigger bunch of murderers, liars, and

hypocrites than the USA, and yet the war machine hasn’t satisfied the

state. Twenty-four percent of Black women have been sterilized by the

state; Black infant mortality rate is 23.1 percent, while white infant

mortality rate is 12 percent;[57] Black life expectancy is nine years

less.

The U.S., with the aid of Turkish and other UN forces, were set back in

Korea and thus lost a market to exploit. They wanted a puppet government

over the whole of Korea and had to settle for half. They make “fashion

jeans” over there for wages people over here wouldn’t work for, and i am

certain you’ve heard some of the stories by GIs returning from South

Korea after the so-called police action. The U.S. lost markets in

Southeast Asia. This undeclared war was not an adventure gone astray or

an attempt to aid the people of South Vietnam by propping up a fascist

puppet, who had a difficult time leaving after his defeat because of the

weight of the gold on his plane. The Vietnam episode was a classic

imperialist war, from the rubber on its plantations once under French

rule, oil on its offshore—which Standard Oil had surveyed and had begun

negotiations for with both the U.S.-backed government and the democratic

Republic of Vietnam—and the poppy fields that provided most of the

heroin during that war, for the chemical warfare against and enslavement

of much of the Black and other Third World youth within the U.S.

colonies, and provided extra funds for the Central Intelligence Agency.

The U.S. imperialists have lost Somoza’s grip on Nicaragua,[58] and the

U.S. puppets in El Salvador and Guatemala stand on shaky ground.

Imperialism must expand or die; the recession is due to lack of

expansion and new supplies of raw materials, in an economy whose growth

is in video games for diversion, computers for taking people out of work

and storing information against them, “security” to guard the rich and

intimidate the poor, and pornography and provocative violence against

women and children, is the cause of this crisis.

In 1968, the Republic of New Afrika petitioned the U.S. in pursuit of

secession; the Nation of Islam under the leadership of Elijah Muhammed

had demanded land for a Black Nation since 1940. In the 1930s, Marcus

Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association organized five

million people of African descent in an effort to return to Africa. The

U.S. government charged this man, who bought a ship line and land in

Africa and mobilized five million people into industrious

self-sufficiency and one purpose and one aim, with mail fraud and

deported him to the hands of the British who kept him in jail until his

death (after confiscation of the ship line and rubber plantation in

Liberia and selling them to Firestone, B.F. Goodrich, etc.) The Nation

of Islam was dubbed by the press as “Black Muslims” to the point where

few people, comparably, knew their real title. They were persecuted and

special oppressive conditions and denial of their rights to religion

occurred when members were imprisoned, often on framed-up charges, and

yet they were accused of teaching hate. At least part of this was

because their program called for land and for the building of a nation

of and for Black people. Twenty-one Black Panthers were indicted on

thirty-six criminal conspiracy charges in 1969; twelve of us who were

captured were held in isolation in county jails, because we had

established housing, medical, and food programs and had in our political

program a call for a vote conducted by the UN to ascertain the number of

Black people in the U.S. who want to live in a separate nation of Black

people. After over two years, a jury acquitted all brought before them

after ninety minutes of deliberation. But for two years, twenty-one

people who were key organizers had to sit in jail or go underground.

Some are still underground, as flight to avoid persecution is a

“criminal” charge.

The Republic of New Afrika presented the U.S. State Department with a

petition for land for the New Afrikan nation and has been hounded by the

federal and state police ever since. The federal and state police

attacked New Bethel Baptist Church while a public meeting was in

progress, attended by 142 men, women, and children in Detroit. The New

Afrikan Provisional Government was having a meeting, and although they

were surrounded and surprised, the participants, including Mtayari

Shabaka Sundiata and Mutulu Shakur, gave a good account of themselves,

and the police got one of their own killed and another wounded for their

efforts. This was a clear case of self-defense, and no New Afrikans were

imprisoned with this shootout used as justification, and, of course,

none of the federal or state police who had fired over four hundred

shots into the church were charged with anything.

On August 18, 1971, in Jackson, Mississippi, the Mississippi State

Police and the FBI attacked the headquarters of the Provisional

Government of the Republic of New Afrika and got a few holes in their

hides for their efforts. In fact, the head of the Jackson Police

Intelligence Squad, Louis Skinner, was killed and two other

euro-americans in that lily-white death squad were wounded.

Eighty years before that, Thomas Fortune and the National Afro-American

League championed the cause of a separate nation for New Afrikan People.

A hundred years before, New Afrikan people in Mississippi and Louisiana

petitioned Congress for a separate territory. The first permanent

inhabitants after the Native Americans in what is now the United States

were slaves that rebelled against Spanish enslavers and colonizers and

joined the Native Americans in what is now South Carolina, in the year

1526.

So understand this demand is no fad, that this struggle for land and

independence is a legitimate aspiration that has been within the

national will of the New Afrikan people since we first stepped onto

these shores. We are a colonized people who have a common language,

culture, and history of oppression.

If the United States was a democracy it would set a date for a UN

plebiscite, hold elections with no interference, and abide by the

outcome. If the United States had been “forthright” in its dealings with

us it would be doubtful if thirty million people would decide to move

and begin anew, rather than choose what they know and have experienced,

but you know and the American government knows it has not been anything

but hideous.

This “criminal” trial will not settle the question, there will be a war

until justice is served. Some New Afrikans feel that once America sees

that it comes out cheaper to leave us alone we will achieve

independence. i feel that independence will come after total revolution,

when the government no longer exists or simply hasn’t the power to

extend its authority over us. That there is something in the psychology

of Americans that permits the continuation of the marines in Guantanamo

Bay in Cuba, even though it is clear that neither the Cuban government

nor the Cuban people want them there.

i don’t know how many generations of migrant workers will pick through

the same groves year after year, or how many children will grow hungry

or worse, cynical, packed up in subhuman dwellings. i don’t know how

long people will speak of officers like O’Grady and Brown[59] as if they

were saints and accept photos of warriors like Mtayari lying dead under

the caption “Death to Terrorists” in papers like the Daily News.

How can people talk of survivors, the wives and children of cops, and

their grief as if revolutionaries come from Mars and don’t have

families, when our families and loved ones are harassed and attacked?

Sundiata’s wife was literally driven insane, and police went to the

mental hospital to obtain a statement nevertheless. The answer must be

the same as why Americans can say right off the bat that fifty-seven

thousand “Americans” died in the Vietnam War without caring as to how

many Southeast Asians were killed. This kind of disregard comes with the

territory of being a freedom fighter in a racist, imperialist, fascist

empire, but it comes, for the most part, with being Black.

Throughout slavery there were numerous rebellions and conspiracies to

rebel, and laws were enacted against it, defining rebellion as criminal.

Nat Turner, Cinque, Denmark Vesey led revolts and conspiracies, there

were over 250 slave revolts during these three hundred years of slavery

and countless cases of arson and poisonings. Just as there were slaves

and jerks like Crispus Attucks who fought with the Americans against the

British, there were ex-slaves who fought with the British and after the

British gave up, these ex-slaves became Maroons and continued to fight.

Evidence of at least fifty such communities (of Maroons) in various

places and at various times, from 1672 to 1864, has been found. Today

from the backlands of New Jersey through Appalachia, southward into

Texas, and even across the Mexican border, the descendants of many of

these Maroons who chose to cast their lots with the Native Americans can

still be found, largely forgotten and often desperately poor. New

Afrikans fought alongside the Seminoles against the Americans, 1,500

white soldiers and twenty million dollars. U.S. history doesn’t record

our loss of life. In September 1850, three hundred Florida Maroons took

flight from their abode in present Oklahoma to Mexico. This was

accomplished after driving off Creek nationals sent to expose their

exodus. On October 30, 1851, 1,500 former American slaves were aiding

the Comanche Indians of Mexico in their fighting.

In The Conclusion of the President’s Commission on Civil Disorders, Dr.

Kenneth B. Clark commented, “I read the report of the 1919 riot in

Chicago, and it is as if I were reading the report of the investigating

committee on the Harlem riot of ‘43, the report of the McCone Commission

on the Watts riot. I must again in candor say to you members of this

Commission—it is a kind of Alice in Wonderland—with the same picture

reshown over and over again, the same analysis, the same recommendations

and the same inaction.”

Black people have attempted to be recognized as human beings in this

country despite its history of murder through non-violent marches,

sit-ins, etc., appealing to America’s moral conscience, and only got

more oppression for this. They couldn’t speak the right language; tell

me the difference in the fates of Martin Luther King, El Hajj Malik

Shabazz, and Mark Essex?[60]

Expropriation is an act of war carried out by every revolutionary army

in history. The have-nots must take from the haves to support their war.

Washington, even though he had slaves and was aided by the French,

crossed the Delaware to raid the British. Stalin was expropriating from

banks at the age of fifteen. Carlos Marighella expropriated from the

North American imperialist banks in Brazil, as the Tupamaros did

likewise in Uruguay. During the Spanish resistance to fascism, the banks

were necessarily targets of Nosotros and los pistoleros and other

guerrillas. Anyone not funded by an outside power must engage in acts of

expropriation or collect “revolutionary compulsory tax” to carry on

revolution. No member of the BLA has ever opened fire during an

expropriation unless forced by a fool. Actually, we’d prefer not to fire

a shot, because the purpose of an expropriation is to get funds and not

to execute guards or police, as a retaliating action might be for, but

also because shots are signals. The ideal expropriation is carried out

without anyone outside of the action being any the wiser. When the BLA

has assassinated police officers on purpose and by design we’ve issued

communiqués explaining why and leaving no questions.

My comrade Sekou Odinga has been rejected from this case and indicted in

a federal case, charged with racketeering, justified by the same

incidents that leave me charged with murder and robbery, so that the New

Afrikan position can be hopefully put out of focus by the state, by

having one New Afrikan defending against the same criminal charges as

two white anti-imperialists. i am defending the revolution, the state’s

arrangements are of no consequence. It does not matter what the legal

outcome will be. Our fates are not in the hands of the state, but in the

hands of the masses of New Afrikan people. In revolution, one either

wins or dies. This case awaits a bigger jury.

In regards to the death of the money courier and the two police

officers, i am insulted that it’s thought of as such a horrendous act by

the media and a population that doesn’t conclude that twenty-five

murders of New Afrikan children in Atlanta since the incarceration of

Wayne Williams or the drowning of a crowded boat of Haitians under the

eyes of the United States Coast Guard is a big deal.

But that’s the system. Like Public Law 831–81 Congress, Title II,

Sections 102, 103, 104, otherwise known as the McCarran Act, which

authorizes Concentration (Detention) Camps should the president declare

an Internal Security Emergency. Security is the word. The U.S. Army has

350 record centers containing substantial information on civilian

political activists. The pentagon has twenty-five million cards on

individuals and 760 thousand on organizations held by the defense

Central Index of Investigations alone, and this information includes

political, sociological, and psychological profiles of twenty-five

million people in the U.S. There are special prisons in the U.S. Army

Reserve’s 300^(th) Military Police POW Command at Kivonia, Michigan.

Other “emergency detention centers” are at Allenwood, PA; Mill Point,

West Virginia; Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama; Avon Park,

Florida; and Elmendorf at Eilson Air Force Base in Alaska. The Air Force

has one of the largest police departments in the so-called free world.

The introduction to the King Alfred Plan,[61] a plan to be utilized by

the U.S. Defense and Justice Departments in the event of rebellion,

reads: “Even before 1954, when the Supreme Court of the United States of

America declared unconstitutional separate educational and recreational

facilities, racial unrest has become very nearly a part of the American

way of life. But that way of life was repugnant to most Americans. Since

1954, however, that unrest and discord have broken into widespread

violence which increasingly has placed the peace and stability of this

nation in dire jeopardy. This violence has resulted in loss of life and

limb and property, and has cost the taxpayers of this country billions

of dollars. And the end is not in sight. This same violence has raised

the tremendously grave question as to whether the 2 races can ever live

in peace with each other.”

The U.S. doesn’t intend to make fundamental changes, it intends to bully

New Afrikans forever and maintain this colonial relationship based on

coercion, or worse, a “final solution.” This means that some New Afrikan

soldiers like myself must make our stand clear and encourage New Afrikan

people to prepare to defend themselves from genocide by the American

nazis—study our mistakes; build a political program based on land and

independence; a counterintelligence program to ferret out traitors the

likes of Tyrone Rison, Sam Brown, and Peter Middleton;[62] and be ready

to fight and fight and organize our people to resist on every level. My

duty as a revolutionary in this matter is to tell the truth, disrespect

this court, and make it clear that the greatest consequence would be

failing to step forward.

i have thrown my lot in with the revolution and only regret that due to

personal shortcomings on my part, failure to accept collective

responsibility, and bureaucratic, hierarchical tendencies within the

BLA, i haven’t been able to contribute as much as i should or build a

better defense against my capture due to denial of fuse. i am confident

that my comrades still at large will correct their thinking and practice

thorough criticism/self-criticism and begin to strike consistent blows

at the U.S. imperialist. i wish i could inspire more people, especially

New Afrikan people, to take the road to liberation and adequately

express my contempt for the U.S. ruling class and its government. Other

than that, i have nothing else to say.

This is the statement Kuwasi wrote in his defense, to explain the events

that had brought them all there. He began reading this but was prevented

from finishing by Judge Ritter. Unless otherwise noted, all footnotes in

this and other texts in the “Kuwasi Speaks” section were added by the

publishers of the first edition of A Soldier’s Story, in 1999.

Brink’s Trial Closing Statement

September 13, 1983

For the record, i’ll say right now, that this place is an armed camp. It

has the trappings and props of a court. A state-issued clone in a black

robe, an ambitious state-issued clone at the state table, a fenced off

area, and a section for spectators with a smaller section for members of

the press, who can listen to an opening statement, and between them not

one mentions anything i said about America being an imperialist empire

that among other things holds New Afrikan people in subjection, or that

the U.S. government, while hypocritically speaking of human rights in

places like Poland, never mentions the political prisoners it holds and

calls grand jury resisters. The state-issued prosecutor objects, the

state-issued court sustains, and the media that pats itself on the back

and hypocritically calls itself free erase whatever notes they might

have taken automatically and take their places beside the state-issued

court and prosecutor. Although i think the press is capable of following

instructions, the ruling that politics have nothing to do with this case

is enough. A reporter, Van Sickle, describes the opening as a list of

grievances. That New Afrikan people are subjected to living in

reservations administered by an occupation force calling itself police

and being systematically beaten out of wages, liberties, and our very

lives is not news, and that the media is just so many state-issued

clones is not news either. Their job all along has been to present the

state in a false light and instill fear in the population, so that

people will find fascism acceptable. And call it democracy. Under no

stretch of the imagination, twist or turn, summations or evaluations can

a racist, imperialist country call itself a democracy, without its

victims, its enemies, calling it anything more than a hypocracy.

Taking up a couple of other rows in the court are the pistol-packing,

armor-plated plainclothes cops paid to keep an eye on things. On the

roofs and in the surrounding areas there’s more and a herd of hastily

deputized armed clones in gas station attendant uniforms, as well as

German shepherds, and of course the usual guards. There’s a lot of iron

in here, state-issued iron. And in the hallway leading to this theater

there’s more state-issued clones with state-issued iron and metal

detectors to make sure that all the iron that enters these state

domains, this imperialist theater, is state-issued. They wish to have us

believe or act as if we believe that war is peace—as the press

apparently believes that ignorance is strength.

Other than that are the people who braved searches, having their

pictures taken and filed away by the fascist, to come here to actually

be as they are designated, supporters and spectators. And one group of

people that stinks of the trappings of this court is designated a jury,

among them some wear sunglasses while in our midst—another has children

who have Black friends whose homes they visit but who never visit them

at home, and who has Black friends himself who never drop by. Another

who thinks we are so ugly she turns and looks at the wall while we ride

by in police cars. None of these people are racist or have any

prejudice, and we know this because the court asked them, and they said

they didn’t, all of them. None of the potential jurors were racist or

infected by racial prejudice, and showed this to the satisfaction of a

racist court.

Had i not taken the position that no court in the imperialist U.S.

empire had the right to try me as a criminal, i would have demanded that

this case be tried in Rockland County. One cannot hold both positions.

However, i believe that the people of Rockland County and elsewhere

deserve an explanation of the event, the expropriation and related

actions that took place on October 20, 1981. Not a mere criminal defense

in relation to it, that type of legal mumbo jumbo could have matters

more confused than ever. An explanation on the other hand, by someone

who might have given them directions on the subway in New York City or

sweated through a basketball game with them or shared a dance floor

should make things clear factually, as well as let people in Rockland

who are not already our friends and everyday people throughout the

confines of the U.S. know for sure that it is not the people but the

United States government and its oppressive apparatus that we are at war

against.

The media said that on two separate occasions members of the Black

Liberation Army jumped out of vehicles shooting randomly in incidents

where one guard and two policemen were killed. On the face of it, it

doesn’t appear random at all according to that line. Either the

guerrillas and the people around not participating were lucky; the armed

money courier and the two policemen were very unlucky; or the guerrillas

were armed with guided bullets. Obviously, none of this was so, but it

was broadcast far and wide for a long time to taint not only people who

might be jurors but everybody in a land where a war is going on between

oppressed peoples and the oppressors. It’s clear the guerrillas intended

to shoot police and that’s who they shot. They shot the enemy.

Expropriation raids are a method used in every revolution by those who

have got to get resources from the haves to carry on armed struggle.

When George Washington and company crossed the Delaware, it was to raid

the British, to take money, supplies, and arms, even though he was

financed by the French and owned slaves. Joseph Stalin robbed banks when

he was fifteen to support revolutionary struggle. The Sabate brothers in

Spain were obliged to empty the tills of banks to resist Franco during

the Spanish Civil War. When Carlos Marighella in Brazil or the Tupamaros

in Uruguay expropriated from banks to finance their struggles, it was

clear to the press that they were revolutionaries; this government sent

counterinsurgency specialists to help the juntas and dictators they

resisted and expropriated from, just as they’ve done in regards to

Argentina. But here in the U.S., the government doesn’t acknowledge the

collection of revolutionary compulsory tax as the work of

revolutionaries, just as the British do not acknowledge the IRA, just as

Israel doesn’t acknowledge the PLO, and just as the South Africans do

not acknowledge the ANC. It’s too close. The British called Washington a

criminal and issued a reward for him dead or alive, just as the

Americans put a price on the head of Twyman Myers. The state must deny

revolution and call revolutionary acts and revolutionaries something

else, anything else—bandits, terrorists. The state must suppress

revolution and say they are doing something else. Rather than argue that

there’s no need for revolution and be confronted with Harlem, the South

Bronx, Bedford Stuyvesant, Newark’s Central Ward, North Philadelphia,

etc. They say there is simply not a revolution, as if there is no reason

for sweeping the oppressors from power. Revolution is always illegal and

revolutionaries are always slandered.

There are clearly more than a few points that the state has pushed for

reasons beyond that of legal that clearly go past the objective of

getting convictions. The first lie is that Peter Paige, the Brink’s

guard and money courier, was gunned down without a chance to defend

himself or surrender. In order to portray the Black Liberation Army as

cowardly and cold-blooded, bloodthirsty.

The BLA is an organization that takes credit for preplanned

assassinations. In our history there are numerous instances of ambushed

police where credit was clearly taken, where communiqués were issued to

the media who do not broadcast them completely, if at all, because the

government has directed them not to. These ambushes have always been

retaliations for terrorist acts against Black people—these acts have

always been responses to murders, brutalizations, and threatening

against Black people, Third World people, or their forces of resistance.

Never has a guard or a bank teller been shot down as part of a plan; no

unit of the BLA has ever done this, including the unit involved in the

expropriation of October 20, 1981. Our war is not a license and the BLA

reserves assassinations for those who are combatants in opposition to

the revolution and those who direct them. Money couriers are safe so

long as they do not put their bodies and weapons in between someone

else’s money or try to shoot their way out of a source of embarrassment

or into a promotion or an early grave.

This is because the goal of an expropriation is to collect revolutionary

compulsory tax and not casualties. A unit is no better off with a guard

killed. Shots are signals that alert more police more quickly and

directly than an onlooker’s phone call. Guerrillas prefer to take the

weapons from the holsters of guards or pick them up after they’ve been

dropped and complete the action without anyone except guards and

guerrillas being any the wiser. Had Peter Paige not acted the fool, he

would’ve lived and his coworker would not have been injured.

War is expensive, you know that; you don’t pay taxes once. And no matter

how much money a unit may get from an expropriation, that unit as well

as others will have to engage in other expropriations in the course of a

protracted war. The BLA doesn’t want a situation where guards believe

they will be shot whether they comply or not, because then there would

always be shootouts. Dead guards don’t bring us a step closer to land

and independence and don’t add a cent to a war chest. At the same time,

the BLA doesn’t want guards to believe for an instant that they have any

reasonable alternatives outside of compliance.

The only parties that benefit from a bloody shootout during an

expropriation are the bankers, the bosses of the armored car

corporations, and career counterinsurgency experts. The first two put

their money, or what they label their money, before the lives of

guerrillas, as well as their employees; the third, without New Afrikan,

Puerto Rican, or Mexican fugitives to justify raids in those colonies,

could find themselves in fatigues in the wilds of the Dakotas laying

siege to Native American colonies. Paige died for his bosses not for

himself, his family, or his fellow workers.

State clone Michael Koch issued another slanderous attack for the state.

At one point in his testimony he says that one of the combatants says in

regards to Kathy Boudin, “Fuck her, leave her.” On one episode of

Today’s FBI, a band of “terrorists” takes a truck of 1.6 million dollars

and purposely leave one of their comrades. On one episode of Hill Street

Blues, a radical band gets 1.6 million dollars from another truck. In

the FBI fiction the radicals mow down the guards as a matter of course;

in the Hill Street Blues fiction, the beautiful white girl when faced

with life in prison serves up her comrades for a deal that sounded not

unlike a slave auction, with time being the medium, rather than money.

Koch meanwhile hasn’t gotten a contract as a writer or an actor—i tell

you, there is no justice in this world.

There’s no record of the BLA leaving comrades in hostile areas on

purpose. When comrades are wounded, attempts are made to carry them. The

state contends that Marilyn Buck[63] was wounded and taken to Mount

Vernon with the unit in question. The state wants to have it both ways.

The BLA doesn’t work that way. We have a saying: “The lowest circles in

hell are reserved for those who desert their comrades.” The BLA has a

history of aiding the escapes of comrades from prisons and other

detention centers. The state-issued lie that any of us said anything to

the effect to leave anyone who had participated in any action with us is

designed to portray us as users and racist. For the state to project

that piece of propaganda at the same time that it lines the roofs with

rifle-toting clowns, posts guards at each block and intersection, and

transports us in armed convoys without red lights is not only an insult

to us but an insult to anybody outside the state who hears it. Every day

we come to court there are scores of fat middle-aged cops crouching

behind trees, phone poles, and cars, guns at the ready. This is not

because they think we can break out of handcuffs, waist chains, and leg

chains, and then dive out of closed car windows and sprint to the next

county before anyone notices what is going on. They do this because the

BLA does not forfeit comrades into the hands of the enemy and does not

forfeit those who struggle beside us into the hands of the enemy. There

are enough instances of aided escapes, attempts at escapes, and fierce

battles to avoid capture to make it clear how we feel and how we deal.

They say that veteran police officers responding to an incident where

one guard was mortally wounded were convinced to put a shotgun away by

Boudin, but Waverly Brown didn’t have a shotgun. They say he was the

first to go in any event, that O’Grady was loading his weapon when

someone ran up to him shooting, but didn’t he have six shells in his

weapon when he responded? And if he was reloading, doesn’t that mean he

fired six times and, for all practical purposes, missed. Lennon says he

watched O’Grady get shot but didn’t Lennon have a pistol that was

loaded, as well as a shotgun? Why didn’t he shoot the man who ran up and

shot O’Grady? Why was Keenan so far away from the action? And didn’t hit

no one? Why is it that so many police officers converged on the scene so

soon after the battle?

Once they got a couple of suspects who had surrendered, who were

outnumbered, handcuffed, they got tough at the action, but i suggest

that they lost heart! That the odds were too even, that Koch has been

spinning his yarn to his coworkers for two years, took a circular

approach to the roadblock, because the shortest distance between two

points is a straight line. Do you believe that he [lost] an opportunity

to shoot someone who had been shooting at other cops because some lady’s

scream broke his concentration? Or that another cop, John McCord, missed

his opportunity to shoot Marilyn Buck, because just as she drove up he

dropped a shell and by the time he reached down to pick it up, she

zoomed right past him? What was so important about that particular

shell, outside of it being a catalyst for a fish story? Why would an

experienced cop and bodyguard like O’Grady try to load every shell into

his revolver when someone is running up to him to kill him? Why does the

state insist that we swallow all of this?

How did those cars that had been spotted and noted get out of the area?

Well, i’ll tell you why; it was because the cops who got paid so much a

week wanted backup in a big way. This was discernable war. One group of

soldiers in opposition to another group of soldiers. One group of

soldiers who ate and slept at the front and another who may not have

witnessed colonialism contested so aggressively before. i don’t know.

The state says there were six people coming out of the back of the

truck, with pistols and an automatic rifle, and counting Koch there were

five cops with revolvers and two shotguns. The insurgents left one

pistol at the scene of the expropriation, one pistol and one shotgun at

the scene of the roadblock. i don’t think there were any supermen or

saints around that day battling it out on Route 59, or Mad Dog Killers

or Cowboys, i think there were only men, mortals, one group called

niggers and the other group called pigs. Lennon during his hypnotic

session, when he described a Black man running up to O’Grady shooting,

didn’t describe that Black man as a “terrorist” or “robber,” he called

that man a nigger, “a big nigger.” He’d taken his mask off while in the

car weathering the storm, and he had to push a dead nigger away from the

door to get out of the car.

[District Attorney] Gribetz, the perfect representative of the United

States, a pimple of a man, has tons of evidence that has been labelled,

marked, and stored for two years. He has two Browning 9mms, the doberman

pinscher of pistols, no prints on them, no bullets from them in bodies,

but it’s important. He has a shotgun, or a picture of one, also, and

shell casings that can’t be placed on anyone, but it’s important too,

because niggers are only supposed to have spears. He’s got expert

witnesses giving expert testimony and opinions on prints and glass. Ms.

Clark[64] had five kinds of glass on her, two, in the “expert’s” opinion

“consistent” with Brink’s brand glass and Honda glass, and three other

kinds of glass. They mention two pistols and a shotgun of mine, which

had a part missing, by the way, as if it’s evidence. When the fact is

that i should have had a bomb or at least a grenade. He’s got a witness

who remembers—when he asks, “Did you happen to see a white male with

brown hair, a brown beard, and a big nose.” He’s got lots of witnesses.

He’s got clothes, pieces of bullets, pictures of bullets, pictures of

cars, trucks, and everything but our masks.

He has ski masks, and he has his own public official mask, his civil

servant mask. But he doesn’t have ours, we’ve thrown them away. We are

not going to act like wayward citizens in a democratic society before a

just court with the duty of administering justice. We act like

ourselves. New Afrikans and anti-imperialist freedom fighters in an

imperialist empire that colonizes and commits genocide against New

Afrikan, Native American, Puerto Rican, and Mexicano people, before an

impostor in an armed camp.

In an effort to deny the issue of New Afrikan Independence that is part

and parcel of the October 20, 1981, action, the state has presented its

politics that we are to be confronted with. The politics of imperialism,

based in their myth of justice in their colonial courts, whose function

somehow should be participated in by its victims, as if this whole

scheme of things is in the interests of the oppressed. It’s legal to

oppress and illegal to resist.

At the helm of this myth are the police, who are the government after

six o’clock p.m., are of a species above that of mortals. Whose racism

is less than the general society’s, whose competence and heroism is

beyond us all and is the apex of all culture. When, in fact, police are

at best only human and are tools of the state who are employed to

maintain an unjust, exploitative, oppressive system that holds New

Afrikan and other Third World peoples under subjection and in a colonial

relationship.

When i was growing up, the bulk of programs on TV were Westerns, where

the heroes shot down endless rows of Native Americans, while calling

them Indians, Redskins, and what not. There were other Westerns too,

like Gunsmoke. Marshal Dillon shot fifty-two people a year and was the

central character in Dodge City. i never remember seeing the mayor,

preacher, or schoolteacher, only Dillon and his friends—Doc, Chester,

and Miss Kitty—and i thought they were my friends too.

Now, Matt Dillon is Chief McCain, on the cop show McCain’s Law, and even

Captain Kirk is a cop! Westerns have been replaced by cop shows. There

are twenty-nine hours of cop shows on TV each week. There are more cop

shows on during prime time and all the other times on TV on any week

than any other type of program. There is not a single program on TV

other than comedies where a Black is the central character. We are

portrayed as sidekicks of cops, snitches, and sources of humor, without

exception.

This is all in the interest of images. Pictures say a thousand words;

they say what seems to be a fact over and over in ways that can’t be

countered by reasonable argument, without investigating reality. White

racism does not for the most part care what really goes on inside New

Afrikan colonies, or even recognize that we do indeed live in colonies.

But because white racism is politically and morally bankrupt, it is

concerned about its image. That’s why people familiar with Newburgh,

Harlem, and Overtown can ignore the issue of colonialism, even while

Reagan speaks of free enterprise zones, Bantustans![65] That is why the

U.S. with jaw-shaking righteousness can say that it doesn’t have

colonies, while planning to turn the beautiful island of Puerto Rico

into an industrial park.

These people who judge us should take a city bus or a cab through the

South Bronx, the Central Ward of Newark, North Philadelphia, the

Northwest section of the District of Columbia, or any Third World

reservation and see if they can note a robbery in progress. See if they

recognize the murder of innocent people. This is the issue, the myth

that the imperialists should not be confronted and cannot be beaten is

eroding fast, and we stand here ready to do whatever to make the myth

erode even faster, and to say for the record that not only will the

imperialist U.S. lose, but that it should lose.

i am not going to tell you that the Black Liberation Army’s ranks are

made up of saints; it is clear that there have been impostors among us

who have sold out and are worse than the enemies history has pitted us

against. And i am not going to tell you that there’s no virtue among

money couriers or policemen. However, i will tell you now and forever

that New Afrikan people have a right to self-determination and that that

is more important than the lives of Paige, Brown, and O’Grady or

Balagoon, Gilbert, and Clark. And it’s gonna cost more lives and be

worth every life it costs, because the destiny of over thirty million

people and the coming generation’s rights to land and independence is

priceless.

Brink’s Trial Sentencing Statement

October 6, 1983

The ruling class of the United States and its government colonizes the

New Afrikan people; that is, Black people held within the confines of

the present borders of the U.S. i’ve been brought here to be sentenced

by the state partly because all New Afrikans, notwithstanding a Black

astronaut and Miss America, have been sentenced to an indefinite term of

colonialization and partly because of my response to genocide,

exploitation, oppression, degradation, and all the elements that make up

this process of colonialization.

The bulk of New Afrikan people are restricted to living in certain

areas, restricted to certain areas of employment; we, as well as other

Third World peoples of color in the confines of the U.S., make up the

caste of captive nations within this empire who perform the menial tasks

far out of proportion to our numbers in relation to whites. Although the

ruling class exploits all workers, they exploit New Afrikan and other

Third World people at a higher rate. Our infant mortality rate is

higher, our life expectancy shorter, our unemployment rates double, and

none of this is by chance. This is contrived by the enemies of my

people, our colonizers, the American imperialist, and this is enforced

by force of arms.

Historically and universally the counter to imperialist armies are

liberation armies, the counter to colonial wars are wars of liberation,

the counter to reactionary violence, revolutionary violence. As a New

Afrikan prisoner of war, i have no more respect for a sentence by the

colonializers than i have for hypocritical legislative rituals leading

to it or the enslavement apparatus of a corrupt order that commits

genocide against entire peoples and threatens the entire biosphere or

the pompous proclaimers of democracy and free enterprise in a country of

racists, where less than 2 percent of the population own more than 30

percent of the wealth in a pyramid whose base is made up of 50 percent

of the population earning less than 9 percent of the wealth.

The United States imperialist government colonializes New Afrikan people

in every sense of the word, and every New Afrikan who investigates that

fact and all that it means comes face to face with a dilemma: to deal

with the condition on a personal basis and do the best they can under a

circumstance that’s dictated by what is in fact the enemy and leave the

decision with others and perhaps to another generation, or to join with

those of us committed to overturning conditions for the entire New

Afrikan nation and make war with those who historically and presently

make war against us for however long it takes.

When the oppressed bear with it, accept colonialization for the most

part, or at least don’t get so upset about it as to entertain the idea

of war, things are okay by pig logic. [District Attorney] Gribetz wishes

out loud that there were a death penalty, but the fact that there has

never been a white executed for the rape or murder of a Black in the

entire history of the United States doesn’t provoke any wishes for a

need for change. Not one in all of the fifty states or colonies before

them during four hundred years is an incredible statistic. But although

he rants and raves, he doesn’t challenge the truth of that statement or

the recent murder of a Black man in Manhattan for writing graffiti on

the subway or murder of a Black man in Boston or of the two in Chicago

or a child in California, all by police; or the fourteen Black women

murdered in Boston,[66] twenty-five Black children murdered in Atlanta

since the arrest of Wayne Williams, or the beating death of Willie

Turks. These crimes don’t call for the death penalty, if any penalty at

all, all this is okay by pig logic: that kind of killing helps to keep

the colonies in check.

When Somoza passed out the best land in Nicaragua to members of his

family, sent his henchmen out to kill whoever disagreed and subjected

the rest of the population to poverty, illiteracy, poor sanitation, and

hunger and printed the face of an American ambassador on Nicaraguan

money, everything was okay, there was no need to arm anyone to overthrow

or “destabilize” that situation or bring a naval blockade to bear or

talk about some other people’s nation being America’s backyard. But when

the people of Nicaragua resolved to change their conditions for the

better and remove all obstacles in their way, then it was time for

“dirty tricks,” a War Powers Act, and reactivation of the draft.

As long as the people of El Salvador suffered their best land given to

the United Fruit Company (or whatever name it goes by now) and lived

clearly under the heel of American imperialism, by pig logic everything

was okay. But once people said enough and really contested it, well, it

was time to fortify the puppet regime’s army and send advisers,[67] and

when a Salvadoran patriot blew one of those advisers away, by pig logic

it was a shame before God.

When the reactionaries killed journalists and nuns, it was cause for

concern;[68] when the reactionaries killed peasants and other colonial

subjects, that was unfortunate, their names or even numbers were not

noted. Just so many niggers. But when a career soldier, trained and

armed to kill and direct intelligence for the purpose of more killings

so that large corporations could continue to drink Salvadoran blood,

gets killed, the culprit must be found right away.[69]

When a cop gets killed, by pig logic it’s different than when an old

lady or a teenager or almost anyone else gets killed. Especially if that

anyone else is nonwhite. When Mtayari Shabaka Sundiata was killed, they

put a picture of his corpse on the front page of the Daily News, and

then in the centerfold under the caption “Death to the Terrorist.” They

did this because he opposed the colonialization of New Afrikan people,

and they make a big deal out of the deaths of the cops and money

courier, because they impose colonialization and this is war.

Legal rituals have no effect on the historic process of armed struggle

by oppressed nations. The war will continue and intensify, and as for

me, i’d rather be in jail or in the grave than do anything other than

fight the oppressor of my people. The New Afrikan Nation, as well as the

Native American Nations, are colonialized within the present confines of

the United States, as the Puerto Rican and Mexicano Nations are

colonialized within, as well as outside, the present confines of the

United States. We have a right to resist, to expropriate money and arms,

to kill the enemy of our people, to bomb, and do whatever else aids us

in winning, and we will win.

The foundation of the revolution must rest upon the bones of the

oppressors.

Destroy All Traitors

Sekou Odinga, Kuwasi Balagoon, Judy Clark, David Gilbert, Silvia

Baraldini

The government is bringing forward its dirty snitches and traitors in

the current RICO trial. Dealing with traitors has been a paramount issue

for all revolutionary movements: from Vietnam to Che’s group in the

mountains of Bolivia; from the traitorous assassination of Amilcar

Cabral to the guerrilla war in El Salvador today; from the streets of

Belfast to occupied Palestine. In the four hundred–year struggle of New

Afrikans for self-determination and human rights, traitors have always

been a key weapon for the rulers to smash righteous rebellions by the

oppressed. Traitors have been a cancerous presence in the proletarian

and anti-imperialist movements within the oppressor nation.

Traitors and snitches are universally hated and vilified in all people’s

cultures because of the harm they do and their total violation of all

standards of human decency. For example, look at Tyrone Rison. Here is a

person who turned on the movement that gave him dignity and life. He

readily betrays the ideals and aspirations that he once loudly

proclaimed. He has become a willing tool for the government that—as he

so often stated—is responsible for the murders of Black children in

Atlanta. He works to destroy the movement that provides the only promise

for self-respect and liberty for his children, for his children who now

face the legacy of a father who turned traitor. This man has become a

bootlicker and a base liar without a shred of morality.

The government’s purposes in displaying and promoting such despicable

characters go beyond the effort to convict specific individuals in

particular court cases. Their main purpose is to discredit and

dehumanize the New Afrikan Independence Movement. In particular, they

want to destroy the armed movements by piercing the shield of

clandestinity, attacking the morale of freedom fighters, and creating

fear that anyone who joins the ranks could be betrayed. This is the

reason for their lie that Rison was a leader. They also want to drive a

wedge between the masses of people and the revolutionary movements; the

emergence of traitors and the line they project are designed to produce

cynicism and distrust towards revolution.

The government is also trying to create a culture of snitches, create a

situation where traitors are seen as commonplace and it becomes

acceptable to large sectors of the population. It is a way to make

people accept and participate in their own oppression. By far the

greatest damage of traitors is how they are used to undermine the very

spirit and fiber of the movements.

Traitors are a product not only of the power of the state but also of

the penetration and internalization of imperialism’s values. The traitor

displays the worst forms of individualism, corruption, and contempt for

oppressed people. The proliferation of traitors exposes serious

political weaknesses within the ranks which must be corrected.

CC BY Image courtesy of The Courtroom Sketches of Ida Libby Dengrove,

University of Virginia Law Library.

Our goals in dealing with traitors go beyond legalism and the needs of

individuals. The paramount issue is the character and integrity of the

movements we are building. We must confront, vilify, and destroy

traitors at every opportunity; deal with them as the dehumanized vipers

that they are; instill “the greater fear.” The political terms must

always be clear: discredit and destroy all traitors.

To minimize the development of traitors we must build movements based on

clear principles, deep politicization, a strong commitment to oppressed

and exploited peoples. We must struggle for collectivity and show that

there is a scientific strategy to defeat imperialism. Would-be traitors

should know that they will be destroyed. We must teach that the state is

our implacable enemy and fight for total noncollaboration as a basic

principle. Such movements can also spearhead a broader people’s culture

that reviles traitors and snitches and that builds on strong principles,

human values, and collective commitment.

CC BY Image courtesy of The Courtroom Sketches of Ida Libby Dengrove,

University of Virginia Law Library

This joint statement appeared in Let your motto be…Resistance (No.4)

July 1982, published by the Coalition to Defend the October 20^(th)

Freedom Fighters.

Statement to New Afrikan Freedom Fighters Day

July 18, 1983

Revolutionary Greetings Brothers and Sisters:

On the third anniversary of New Afrikan Freedom Fighters Day i’d like to

extend my feelings of comradeship and optimism.

That the government of the United States or any government has the right

to control the lives of New Afrikan People is absurd and has no basis in

principled reason or justice or common decency. Only New Afrikan people

should govern New Afrikan people, in the manner that we collectively as

a people deem correct.

This being so, and that on top of forcing us to live as a colonialized

people, the government of the United States has been and is practicing

genocide against us, it is our right, duty, and natural inclination to

defend ourselves and provide for the safety and well-being of our

people. As Marcus Garvey stated: We cannot leave the fate of our people

to chance.

The necessity of building a people’s army to carry our armed struggle

and a mass movement to build the infrastructure for the superseding

society must be explained to the masses of our people. We must organize

this, our army and our total revolution, along principled lines that

will deliver us as a people to land ample enough to support our

population in order to obtain our self-determination. It is either

liberation and self-determination for us as a people or more colonial

degradation and genocide. These are the choices.

If we choose to live, we must carry on a revolutionary struggle to

completion, guard against corruption and liberalism in our ranks, and be

consistent in building not only the means of cutting ourselves free of

America but of securing our survival and self-determination by building

the superseding society to provide for the needs of our people. As a

better organized, more politicized, and security conscious approach must

be developed in building our army, a more grassroots basic approach must

be developed to deal not only with the political mobilization of the

masses but the needs surrounding our day-to-day survival. We must build

a revolutionary political platform and a universal network of survival

programs, along with the army.

Imperialism must expand or die, and even as the pigs escalate their

military and political offensive, they have lost their grip increasingly

throughout this world, despite their wolf tickets, because the peoples

of Cuba, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Libya, Angola, Tanzania, Vietnam,

Cambodia, Nicaragua, Grenada, and other lands have put their heads and

hearts together to devise no nonsense methods to drive the Americans

out.

If we do the same, we will obtain the same results. In fact, we will

obtain greater results, because our liberation would mean a greater

decline to imperialism than any of the previous people’s victory and

reaction would be weakened to a corresponding extent.

There is no way for us as a people or any of us individually to

correspond our conditions to those we desire, we have never known

freedom—however, we will know freedom. We will win.

Anarchy Can’t Fight Alone

Of all ideologies, anarchy is the one that addresses liberty and

equalitarian relations in a realistic and ultimate fashion. It is

consistent with each individual having an opportunity to live a complete

and total life. With anarchy, the society as a whole not only maintains

itself at an equal expense to all but progresses in a creative process

unhindered by any class, caste, or party. This is because the goals of

anarchy don’t include replacing one ruling class with another, neither

in the guise of a fairer boss or as a party. This is key because this is

what separates anarchist revolutionaries from Maoist, socialist, and

nationalist revolutionaries, who from the onset do not embrace complete

revolution. They cannot envision a truly free and equalitarian society

and must to some extent embrace the socialization process that makes

exploitation and oppression possible and prevalent in the first place.

When i first became a revolutionary and accepted the doctrine of

nationalism as a response to genocide practiced by the United States

government, i knew, as i do now, that the only way to end the evil

practices of the U.S. was to crush the government and the ruling class

that shielded itself through that government through protracted

guerrilla warfare.

Armed with that knowledge, i sat out the initial organizing of the Black

Panther Party until the state’s escalation of the war against Black

people that was begun with the invasion of Africa to capture slaves made

it clear to me that to survive and contribute i would have to go

underground and literally fight.

Once captured for armed robbery, i had the opportunity to see the

weakness of the movement and put the state’s offensive in perspective.

First, the state rounded up all the organizers pointed out to it by

agents who had infiltrated the party as soon as it had begun organizing

in New York. It charged these people with conspiracy and demanded bails

so high that the party turned away from its purposes of liberation of

the Black colony to fund-raising. At that point, leadership was

imported, rather than developed locally, and the situation deteriorated

quickly and sharply. Those who were bailed out were those chosen by the

leadership, regardless of the wishes of the rank and file or fellow

prisoners of war, or regardless of the relatively low bail of at least

one proven comrade.[70]

Under their leadership, “political consequences” (attacks) against

occupation forces ceased altogether. Only a fraction of the money

collected for the purpose of bail went towards bail. The leaders began

to live high off the hog, while the rank and file sold papers, were

filtered out leaving behind so many robots who wouldn’t challenge

policy, until those in jail publicly denounced the leadership.

How could a few jerks divert so much purpose and energy for so long? How

could they neutralize the courage and intellect of the cadre? The

answers to these questions are that the cadre accepted their leadership

and accepted their command, regardless of what their intellect had or

had not made clear to them. The true democratic process which they were

willing to die for, for the sake of their children, they would not claim

for themselves.

These are the same reasons that the People’s Republic of China supported

UNITA and the reactionary South African government in Angola;[71] that

the war continued in Southeast Asia after the Americans had done the

bird; why the Soviet Union, the product of the first socialist

revolution, is not providing the argument that it should and could

through being a model.

This is not to say that the people of the Soviet Union, the People’s

Republic of China, Zimbabwe, or Cuba aren’t better off because of the

struggles they endured. It is to say that the only way to make a

dictatorship of the proletariat is to elevate everyone to being

proletariat and deflate all the advantages of power that translate into

the will of a few dictating to the majority. The possibility must be

prevented of any individual or group of individuals being able to

enforce their will over any other individual’s private life or to

extract social consequences for behavior preferences or ideas.

Only an anarchist revolution has on its agenda to deal with these goals.

This would seem to galvanize the working class, déclassé intellectuals,

colonized Third World nations, and some members of the petty bourgeoisie

and alright bourgeoisie. But this is not the case.

That China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Mozambique would build round a

Marxist ideology to drive out invaders and rebuild feudal economies in

the midst of Western imperialism’s designs and efforts to reinvade and

recolonize is a point that can be argued in the light of the

international situation. It is one thing that they don’t back the will

of the people as much as they choose allies in the East-West wars fought

on the ground of the nonwhite colonies. It is another thing that anarchy

ceases to inflame or take the lead in combating fascism and imperialism

here in North America, with the history of the Wobblies, the Western

Federation of Miners, and other groups who have made their mark on

history. It is a denial of our historic task, the betrayal of anarchists

who died resisting tyranny in the past, malingering in the face of

horrible conditions. It is the theft of an option to the next generation

and forfeiture of our own lives through faint hearts.

We permit people of other ideologies to define anarchy rather than bring

our views to the masses and provide models to show the contrary. We

permit corporations to not only lay off workers and to threaten the

balance of workers while cutting their salaries but to poison the air

and water to boot. We permit the police, Klan, and Nazis to terrorize

whatever sector of the population they wish without paying them back in

any kind. In short, by not engaging in mass organizing and delivering

war to the oppressors we become anarchists in name only.

Because Marxists and nationalists ain’t doing this to a large extent

doesn’t make it any less a shame. Our inactivity creates a void that

this police state, with its reactionary press and definite goals, is

filling. The parts of people’s lives supposedly touched by mass

organizing and revolutionary inspiration that sheds a light that

encourages them to unveil a new day, instead are being manipulated by

conditions of which apathy is no less a part than poisonous uncontested

reactionary propaganda. To those who believe in a centralized party with

a program for the masses this might mean whatever their subjective

analysis permits. But to us who truly believe in the masses and believe

that they should have their lives in their hands and know that freedom

is a habit, this can only mean that we have far to go.

In the aftermath of the Overtown rebellion, the Cuban community conceded

as lost souls by Castro came out clearly in one instance in support of

the Black colony. And predictably the Ku Klux Klan, through an honorary

FBI agent, Bill Wilkinson, made no bones about supporting the rights of

businesses and the business of imperialism. Third World colonies

throughout the United States face genocide, and it is time for

anarchists to join the oppressed combat against the oppressors. We must

support in words and actions self-determination and self-defense for

Third World peoples.

It is beside the point whether Black, Puerto Rican, Native American, and

Chicano-Mexicano people endorse nationalism as a vehicle for

self-determination or agree with anarchism as being the only road to

self-determination. As revolutionaries we must support the will of the

masses. It is not only racism but compliance with the enemy to stand

outside of the social arena and permit America to continue to practice

genocide against the Third World captive colonies because, although they

resist, they don’t agree with us. If we truly know that anarchy is the

best way of life for all people, we must promote it, defend it, and know

that the people who are as smart as we are will accept it. To expect

people to accept this, while they are being wiped out as a nation,

without allies ready to put out on the line what they already have on

the line, is crazy.

Where we live and work, we must not only escalate discussion and study

groups, we must also organize on the ground level. The landlords must be

contested through rent strikes, and rather than develop strategies to

pay the rent, we should develop strategies to take the buildings. We

must not only recognize the squatters’ movement for what it is but

support and embrace it. Set up communes in abandoned buildings. Sell

scrap cars and aluminum cans. Turn vacant lots into gardens. When our

children grow out of clothes, we should have places where we can take

them, clearly marked anarchist clothing exchanges, and have no bones

about looking for clothing there first. And, of course, we should

relearn how to preserve food. We must learn construction and ways to

take back our lives, help each other move, and stay in shape.

Let’s keep the American and Canadian flags flying at half-mast …. i

refuse to believe that Direct Action has been captured.

The Continuing Appeal of Anti-Imperialism

Great works measure up, inspire higher standards of intellectual and

moral honesty, and, when appreciated for what they are, serve as a guide

for those among us who intend a transformation of reality. Settlers: The

Mythology of the White Proletariat caused quite a stir in the

anti-imperialist white left and among nationalists of the Third World

nations within the confines of the U.S. empire, as well as anarchists

and Muslims of this hemisphere. In short, among all of us who are ready

and willing to smash or dismantle the empire, for whatever reasons and

whatever reasoning. This is in spite of the fact that it is a Marxist

work, because it isn’t out of the stale, sterile, static, mechanical

mode of the vulgar sap rap that has carried that label.

Its historical recounting of the sequence of horrors perpetrated against

nonwhite people, from the beginning of Babylon to the recent past, has

not been discounted publicly, to my knowledge, by anyone, including the

cheap-shot artist who offered an underhanded review of it in the Fifth

Estate called “The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism.”[72] Mythology

should serve as a reminder (to anyone who needs one) of the genocidal

tendencies of the empire, the traitorous interplay between

settler-capitalist, settler-nondescript, and colonial flunkies. The

flaws and shortcomings of the IWW, which marked the highest point of

revolutionary conscientiousness among whites here, the fraud carried on

by the Communist Party USA, and assorted other persistent offenders of

common sense and common decency. To my amazement, a couple of white

anti-imperialists i know had started the book without finishing,

complaining that it was old hat, but i’ve heard nothing particularly new

from them, and i suggest that they take special note of detail, and i’ll

remind them that this work is so accurate as to be able to serve as

files on people who will say anything to support a position that doesn’t

support real action.

Not being one to take figures verbatim without crosschecking and

believing that class struggle or war within the white oppressor nation

would be a prerequisite for complete victory of the captive New Afrikan,

Mexicano, Native, and Puerto Rican nations, i decided to crosscheck with

the most authoritative work available to me and perhaps anyone, The Rich

and the Super Rich by Ferdinand Lundberg. This was necessary, i felt, in

order to get a clear picture of the material conditions of white folks.

This in order to investigate white Americans’ interest in revolution.

Professor Lundberg used two graphs to illustrate his point: “Most

Americans—citizens of the wealthiest, most powerful and most

ideal-swathed country in the world—by a very wide margin own nothing

more than their twin household goods, a few glittering gadgets such as

automobiles and television sets (usually purchased on installment plans,

many at second hand), and the clothes on their backs. A horde, if not a

majority, of Americans live in shacks, cabins, hovels, shanties,

hand-me-down Victorian eyesores, rickety tenements, and flaky apartment

buildings.”

The second and third tables help us to make things out a bit clearer; it

shows that 25.8 percent of households had less than one thousand dollars

to their collective names and the third showing us that 28 percent of

all consumer units had a net under or less than one hundred dollars.

With 11 percent with a deficit and 5 percent holding at zero, a total of

16 percent. This goes on to show that 35 percent of all households had a

net worth of less than five thousand dollars. Is this affluence?

It certainly looks like a good case for classic class struggle, with the

evidence that Lundberg gives us. Sakai warns us, however, “most

typically, the revisionist lumps together the U.S. oppressor nation with

the various Third World oppressed nations and national minorities as one

society.”

In this light, the figures check out. New Afrikan income, which today

averages 56 percent of white income and stood at about the same or less

in 1953, makes up a disproportion of the deficit, zero,

under-a-thousand, and under-five-thousand dollar consumer units.

Definitely more than 10 percent of them, which was our percentage of the

population. If we could make a sensible judgment, we’d have to say that

the combined captive nations—New Afrikan, Mexicano, Puerto Rican, and

Native, or about one sixth of the population as of 1981—all make up a

disproportionate amount of the consumer units with deficits and below

five thousand dollars. This forms a cushion for the white population.

Sakai points out that “the median Euro-American family income in 1981

was $23,517,” and “that between 1960 and 1979 the percentage of settler

families earning over $25,000 per year (in constant 1979 dollars)

doubled, making up 40 percent of the settler population.” We may have

had a general idea from neighborhood walks, but Sakai gives us an idea

of the extent.

This extent, and the “conspicuous concentration of state services—parks,

garbage collections, swimming pools, better schools, medical facilities

and so on” and the fact that “to the settlers’ garrison goes the first

pick of whatever is available—homes, jobs, schools, food, health care,

governmental services and so on,” not to mention racism within settlers

puts to rest an idea of a multiracial class struggle that includes

whites. “Nation is the dominant factor, modifying class relations.”

Lundberg, who overlooked the national factor in the economic tables he

based his argument on, notes that “in the rare cases where policy is

uppermost in the mind of the electorate it is usually a destructive

policy, as toward Negroes in the South and elsewhere. Policies promising

to be injurious to minority groups such as Negroes, Catholics,

foreigners, Jews, Mexicans, Chinese, intellectuals and in fact, all

deviants from fixed philistinish norms, usually attract a

larger-than-usual supporting vote,” or mandate, if you will.

“Approximately 10% of the European-American population has been living

in poverty by government statistics. This minority is not a cohesive,

proletarian stratum, but a miscellaneous fringe of the unlucky and the

outcast: older workers trapped by fading industries, retired poor,

physically and emotionally disabled, and such families supported by

single women.” (Sakai)

How many of this group of whites will side with the revolution, how many

whites will come to view their interests with the long-term interest of

those of us who prefer to live on a living planet, and how many will

fail to equate their quality of life with fifty billion hamburgers is

anyone’s guess.

However, it’s a small wonder why white anti-imperialists have been

giving me blank stares whenever i’ve mentioned class struggle to them.

The left in this country is very small, whatever way you might want to

look at it. If you define left as those of us who stand for a

decentralization of wealth and power—taking the question completely out

of the realm of bourgeois civil rights and rightfully include the

independence of captured nations, which is part and parcel of the

decentralization of wealth and power—the left is microscopic.

We are left with ourselves. Left in homes that police drop bombs on from

helicopters, and without any shared sense of outrage. We are left where

murders by police and other racists are commonplace and for the most

part celebrated. Left in the ghettos, barrios, and other reservations.

Let’s not forget that New Afrika has a class problem. That not only do

police but politicians, poverty hustlers, and representatives from the

established Black publishers and churches move up in the world when they

join the ranks of the oppressors. The oppressors never have a problem

finding Black leaders to condemn their blatant disregard for life, like

that which took place in Philly.[73] We only have established leaders to

draw us into the ranks of a Democratic Party, without being able to

introduce as much as one Black plank into a white platform. Leaders who

beget other leaders like Mayor Goode.[74]

Where i differ with Sakai is the assertion that “building mass

institutions and movements of a specific national character under the

leadership of a communist party are absolute necessities for the

oppressed.” What communist party is he talking about? i feel that we

must build revolutionary institutions that buttress on survival through

collectives, which in turn should form federations. Grassroots

collective-building can begin immediately.

In an epoch where New Afrikan nationalists and Marxists have voluntarily

taken the defensive, without even a fraction of a blueprint of a party

or consistent practices in the colony, it’s incredible that people

outside the ranks and currents of those who believe in magic words

aren’t encouraged to collectively take matters in their own hands, to

build the collective institutions and superstructure of a superseding

society. We must begin where we are, with each other and the time we

don’t waste.

i think that the building of revolutionary collectives and forming of

federations of collectives is the most practical and righteously

rewarding process of preserving and enhancing life and developing the

character of all nations. We can change ourselves and the world.

Why Isn’t the Whole World Dancin’?

The first time i experienced terror and was able to keep my wits enough

to examine it, i was in the notorious Vroom building, watching the goon

squad proceed with a shakedown and waiting for them to get to my cell,

which was the last on the opposite end of the tier from where they had

started.

As soon as i saw them in their bloused boots, overalls, helmets with

plexiglass visors, flak jackets, and extra-long clubs, i was frightened

and curious as to what all they were up to. i as well as the brother who

locked next to me, got up to see just what was to happen. “What’s all

this shit. Look at those punks …. It takes thirty of those motherfuckers

to deal with one man?” It didn’t take long to see just what they were up

to as the first man was ordered to strip, place his hands behind his

head “Vietnam style” and back out of his cell. The brother next to me

said something, but i said nothing, being intent on seeing what was

happening, so as to have some idea what to expect. Next, the guy being

searched was told to run his fingers through his hair, open his mouth,

lift his balls, slowly turn around, lift his left foot, his right foot,

and bend over and spread his cheeks.

The brother next to me said something else, to which i replied that he

should be cool. More instructions followed: “Walk to the wall and sit on

the floor cross-legged, without taking your hands from your head.” This

is a pretty involved maneuver and if you don’t believe me, try it. i

began to worry even more, as i’d been placed in the Incorrigible Unit of

the Vroom building for interrupting a funeral, pistol whipping a

“corrections officer,” shooting at another, and aiding an escape. It

became clear that something extra could be in store for me. After five

or so renditions of the routine described above, without them actually

vamping on anyone, i began to feel a bit at ease, and at the same time

felt they might be “saving the best for last.”

It was too much to think about, so i went and sat on my bed. Only to

watch a pig named Sudal come down to the cell next to mine and spray

mace on the brother, after he had stepped from the door and laid down on

his bed. “Punk motherfucker!” he shouted through the bars. “Don’t get

yourself fucked up now,” Sudal replied. The expedition was getting

closer, and i tried to decide whether to come out with my clothes on or

just start swinging, stay in the cell, and mess up as many as i could as

they entered, after of course being soaked with mace, or coming out like

everybody else and hardly being in any position to fight.

As i sat on the bed, looking out, they arrived at my neighbor’s cell and

began repeating: “Strip, put your hands behind your head, back out your

cell …,” etc., as the door opened. He did as he was told. “Open your

mouth!” a pig instructed. When he did, the pig slapped him, causing him

to stumble off to one side, as another pig punched him, saying, “Stand

still!” They had tasted blood now and started getting better grips on

their clubs, as one pig hit him on the arm with a stick. By now i was

thoroughly terrorized; there was no fight in the brother. Their jokes

about “the German army,” as they referred to themselves, just entangled

in a massive knot inside my head.

i began to look at the faces. There was an Italian jailer who had caught

a few good shots some time ago by the look on his face. He had never

given me any trouble personally but had been assigned to escort me,

standing at the ready. He was one of the guys they counted on. Another

jailer who was running the show and had initiated knocking the brother

around, told a rookie cop, “What do you expect?” There was a couple of

Black pigs in the gang as well, which never fails to strike me strange.

My door opened. i’d decided to come out naked and follow instructions

unless i got hit, in which case i would go on at least one of them who

had something exposed, as the ninety-degree heat had coaxed a couple of

visors up. It was a puny resolve, as i felt that an attack would spell

the end, and that fear is a great source of power. The issue was decided

as much as it could be. “Run your fingers through your hair, open your

mouth, lift your balls, turn around, lift your left foot, lift your

right foot, spread your cheeks, turn around to your right, walk to the

wall, sit down cross-legged without moving your hands.”

Somehow i assumed the position and listened to the fascist chatter

behind me. “That’s Harris’s partner,” i heard Sudal instigate. i’d heard

they had vamped on him already. Trotman, the pig who was actually in

charge of the goon squad, tapped the bandage on my back with his club.

“Shouldn’t pistol whip correctional officers!” i heard a couple of more

remarks about “getting more practice at the range.” i couldn’t help but

picture one of those creeps hitting me in the head while i was sitting

in that ridiculous position and had thought for an instant that the tap

was a signal to get up. i started to, but decided to wait until told,

while listening to stuff being thrown around in my cell.

Finally, i heard, “Ok, get up and go back into your cell.” The squad had

begun leaving. When i got to the door a jailer named Wise, a Jewish

fascist who hates “jews and niggers,” and who was later charged and

acquitted of beating a prisoner, jumped in front of me and struck me in

the stomach, holding the stick in both hands in the vertical butt stroke

taught to Infantry. But it had no effect. Although my stomach looked out

of shape since i had not been able to do sit-ups for a couple of months,

it was stronger than it looked, as i’d done sit-ups and leg-raisers for

years. Every muscle in my body was like a spring. As the stick rebounded

off my gut and i looked him in the eye, i couldn’t help but smile. He

responded by panicking: “Turn around, face the wall of your cell!”

i looked at the wall until i knew they had all left, found a cigarette,

and sat down to smoke before even putting on my clothes. Later when

recounting this to a prisoner who went through the same thing at the

same time, i could see the recognition in his eyes. So this is state

terror. The most terrifying part being watching what was happening to my

neighbor, hearing what could happen to me … not what actually did.

This was terror. Done for the purpose of producing terror as the search

was, in fact, a justification and had anything been found considered

contraband, it indeed would have been incidental and only by chance of

ridiculous proportions. Just as the “shakedowns” taking place at Marion

now, after that prison has been locked down for nine months, have

nothing to do with finding contraband and everything to do with attempts

by the state at “behavior modification.” With making prisoners so

fearful for so long that their personalities change to that of wimps who

will accept whatever the state has in mind without resistance or

retaliation. They are looking for hearts, and they believe their slogan:

“When you got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.”

Of course, the New York Times has not carried an article on terrorism at

Marion. Nor has any of its partners in Newspeak, such as the Post, Daily

News, Village Voice, Rolling Stone, publications of the Hearst empire,

or any of the other establishment papers. They are not really interested

in “terrorism.” What they are interested in is changing the definition

of terrorism from (American Heritage Dictionary) “the political use of

terror and intimidation” to “armed acts carried out by political

partisans on behalf of captive nations.”

The Klan, whose violence at the voting booths is all but too well

documented, are often accused of committing racial violence, but they

are never accused of terrorism. Nor are the Jewish Defense League (JDL),

American Nazis, or any of their people. The CIA imports losers from

fallen fascist regimes. Iranian students used to wear masks while

demonstrating against the shah, but SAVAK (the Iranian secret police)

was never accused of terrorism, nor was Alpha 66, though they, among

many other reasons, were brought here to attack the Puerto Rican

Independence Movement and to kill Orlando Letelier. He was exiled from

Chile after the CIA-and ITT-sponsored coup took the lives of thousands

and placed thousands more in concentration camps, where they suffered

cruel tortures.

These people, who have a license and a free hand to kill in this empire,

are never called terrorist nor are they accused of terrorizing anyone.

At the same time, if members of the Black Liberation [Army] kill a

couple of cops who are, by whatever your politics, armed men or women

trained to do battle against lawlessness—and revolution is against the

law—this is defined by the media and blasted until the senses are

bombarded as an act of “terrorism” by their definitions. The endless

raids of apartment buildings and vehicles supposedly for suspects is not

terrorism. The bombing of police headquarters is “terrorism,” but the

arrest of people who have nothing to say to the FBI or to the federal

and state grand juries is not.

Nothing that the right wing, the establishment, the people who “got it”

already do is terrorism—the political use of terror and intimidation—and

likewise nothing that their lackeys do is terrorism. By that logic, the

only Black people victimized by terrorism are those Fosters and Browns

who join police departments to do Black folk a good turn! There is

nothing terroristic about being burned out of your home that you bought

in the wrong community. There is nothing terroristic about the murders

of Neville Johnson,[75] Michael Stewart,[76] or any Black victims of the

police; or what about the deaths of Willie Turks or the murder of

Sundiata and the photo of his corpse under the caption “Death to the

Terrorist” in the center of the Daily News; or the twenty-five children

(at last count) killed in Atlanta since the arrest of Wayne Williams; or

any of the murders across the U.S. of New Afrikans, Natives, Chicanos,

Puerto Ricans, or Asians. These things have no effect on us. We feel

safe in our communities within alien communities and have no inhibitions

in regards to securing our human rights. All this murder of Black and

other Third World peoples is just human nature. We kill a cracker, its

terrorism.

Klanners and Nazis gun down five unarmed people on national TV, and it

is just one of those things. SLA members are surrounded and their

dwelling is torched on national TV, and again it is just one of those

things.[77] Thirty fires in a couple of months in the women’s dormitory

at the University of Massachusetts, and the FBI comes to investigate

links with the women’s community and the “Brink’s suspects.” This is not

terrorism either because the state and the state’s media defines

terrorism as any attempt by the oppressed and exploited nations and

allies to pry loose the grip of imperialism. (By the way, the FBI

arrested a New Afrikan woman and charged her with arson.)

South Africa, which has just signed treaties with Angola and Mozambique

after years of invading these countries, is not called “terrorist.” But

the South Africans have killed and maimed civilians in these attacks by

cutting off their ears, a habit the Americans practiced in Vietnam. And

they have killed scores of thousands of Azanians[78] in the territory

they presently occupy. But the SWAPO guerrillas who detonated a bomb in

Namibia, which is occupied illegally by South Africa, that killed two

South African Intelligence officers and an American military attaché are

called terrorist loud and clear—as is the African National Congress. But

what on earth is the domination and superexploitation of 80 percent of

the population based on? One would be hard-pressed to find a regime as

repressive as South Africa, but it is the indigenous peoples who resist

tyranny who are branded terrorist.

The difference between Steve Biko’s death on Robben Island[79] and

George Jackson’s death in San Quentin’s Special Housing Unit is simply

that the South Africans are not as hypocritical as the Americans. It is

clear that Robben Island is for holding political prisoners and

prisoners of war who resist or are suspected of resisting the settler

regime. Americans are not so clear as to the purpose of their Special

Housing Units, Incorrigible Units, and maxi-maxis. The United States is

no less a settler regime, just more genocidal. Instead of maintaining

apartheid (segregation) as the South Africans do—who got their ideas

about reserves (Bantustans) from the American Indian reservations—the

Americans systematically reduced the population of original inhabitants

from 50 million to 1.6 million. With the sterilization of half of Native

women and living conditions designed to bring about the destruction of

Native peoples, the policy is still intact.

We all know the criminalization of the Native American Warriors, who

were branded as “savages” by the euro-american press for defending their

peoples, and most of us know that Crazy Horse was murdered in prison.

But who recognizes the struggles of Native peoples as anti-imperialist?

The policies developed in the genocidal campaigns against the Native

Americans—wars against the entire population forcing the Natives into

small, scattered, confined areas—has been repeated in Vietnam in the

infamous Phoenix program brought to light by the Pentagon Papers.

Similarly, the criminalization of the defenders of the people by the

press and the military and justice system was repeated by the FBI’s

Cointelpro program, as brought out in the Freedom of Information Act

files from the 1978 secret conference in Puerto Rico against the left in

general.

One doesn’t have to be a political scientist to see the parallels in

imperialism’s war against the Palestinian people: the robbing of the

land, the branding of those who resist the tyranny of the Israelis as

terrorists, the forcing of people into ghettos (the West Bank) or

reservations (refugee camps), the massacre of unarmed civilians, the

special confinement of political prisoners and prisoners of war. The

fact that all of Palestine has been overrun doesn’t make the

Palestinians any less of a colonized people any more than the fact that

North America has been overrun makes Native Americans any less

colonized, or the New Afrikans brought here to replace the Native

population and enrich the euro-american oligarchy with free identifiable

labor.

However, the pigs will argue that time and persistence okays any

wrongdoing. “Israel exists,” they argue, “the white man is here to stay,

and as soon as the Palestinians or Indians realize it, the better off

they’ll be.” Well that’s not acceptable; when the victims accept the

victimizers and cease to resist, how can the victims be better off? How

can anyone be better off, other than the victimizers? History shows that

the Greeds are never satisfied.

In the U.S., white anti-imperialists have supported the right to

self-determination of captive nations, and it is clear by the use of

grand juries and sham trials that they indeed have political prisoners

in their ranks. A look at the Canadian left since the capture of the

Vancouver Five[80] and the means employed to suppress it draws many

parallels with the recent RICO trials in Manhattan. Two of the biggest

differences: there were no traitors on the stand, and the actions of the

Five established the right of citizens in Canada to stand up against

tyranny, just as a colonial subject or an ally of the armed forces of a

captive nation have the same right here. As citizens of oppressor

nations stand up against tyranny on their own behalf, the state’s

definition of terrorism will expand as it has already. But as in other

state definitions, the expansion of the definition is in the other

direction.

In closing, i’d like to address the question of the Soviet Union in

Afghanistan, which reactionaries like to throw in when someone of my

political bent addresses American imperialism. i resent this a bit,

because i haven’t been advocating Russian foreign policy and certainly

don’t share the relation to Russia that i do with the Americans. They

kidnapped my foreparents for the purpose of enslavement and rape and

continue to colonize, oppress, and exploit New Afrikan people and insist

that we celebrate their sadism.

The Soviet Union, by invading Afghanistan, is of course carrying on

imperialist aggression, since it is an internal conflict to which the

Russians were invited. It is no less so than the American presence in

South Korea, the Philippines, West Germany, Panama, Haiti, the Congo,

Thailand, Grenada, Puerto Rico, Guanatanamo Bay, or any other place an

oppressed nationalist may have missed whose mind may have been dulled by

weight training and running around in the same damn circles in the yard.

As my people of my nation are colonized by the Americans, it is not an

academic question to be balanced out by someone who intends to do

nothing about it. This colonization is a challenge and an affront, taken

personally and politically. As i am not suffering the effects of the

Russian but American imperialism, which incidentally is more rampant, i

oppose the American ruling class and puppets to whatever extent i can.

That bullshit about “land of the free and home of the brave” provokes me

a bit.

A Letter to Overthrow Newspaper

Back in—on or about 1971, after the jailhouse rock rebellion in NYC,

where every house of detention was taken over by prisoners who had not

been disarmed of their sense of outrage, a few of us were transferred

from Branch Queens House of Detention to Riker’s island and placed in

the segregation unit, where Sekou Odinga sits sharpening his sword now.

Among us were some brothers who—indicted in the famous, or infamous, New

York Panther 21 case, along with thirty-one other brothers—simply

refused to surrender and submit to the systematic beatings and torture

that pigs with baseball bats, ax handles, and night sticks issued, as

the brothers who surrendered stepped out offering no resistance. Those

of us who didn’t give up were not made to kneel on the ground with our

hands cuffed behind our backs while the state-issued robots struck us.

Among us was the brother Dr. Curtis Powell.

One night when we went to “sick call,” Doc and I happened into this

state prisoner he’d met earlier in his incarceration, who had recounted

when he had first met Doc he took for granted that the brother was

insane, because he had listed his occupation as a physician. He was

really amazed to discover that “by golly,” Powell was indeed a doctor

after all. After telling us that story, he asked Doc how he was doing—or

something to that effect. Doc replied, “We are being railroaded …. I am

on the train.” The practitioner’s brows arched and lost for a moment, he

turned to find relief in the face of a “correctional officer” who had

just entered that section of the hallway. After speaking, the state

practitioner asked the jailer, “Do you know Powell here? The doctor?”

the jailer answered, looking at Doc, “Weren’t you in C-76?” To which the

Doc answered, “I’m in 1-a.” To which the state practitioner replied, “He

doesn’t know where he is, he thinks he is on a train.”

We all had a good laugh at that, the practitioner at the irony of a

member of his profession being a crazy nigger after all. Doc and I had a

good laugh, because it shows just how an interpretation sticks; he was

crazy when he tried to convince the interpreter that he was in fact a

doctor of medicine. And now that that fact was confirmed, he was crazy

because he thought he was on a train. A lot of such interpretations have

resulted in trips to the mental wards, shock therapy, thorazine, and

psychosurgery performed by real psychos, and under a dominant alien

culture there is bound to be misinterpretations. The fact that one group

of people are to be a society’s menial class and be subjected to

institutional put-downs and sanctioned to violence is a

misinterpretation of common decency, or, better put, a misinterpretation

of acceptability, for sure.

There is not one social topic that can be discussed free of the stench

of racism. Social problems such as housing summon visions of our

colonies called ghettos. Unemployment raises the specter of what the

media terms “discrimination.” Health care brings to mind that infant

mortality among New Afrikans is double that of Americans, that 50

percent of Native American women have been sterilized; not by one Ronald

Reagan running from one reservation to the next with a knife but by

thousands of dedicated practitioners who were at work under the regime

previous to what has been termed a mandate, and have sterilized over 20

percent of New Afrikan and Puerto Rican women as well. How can we

address crime in a land where there has never been a white executed in

the murder or rape of a Black? How can a victim of Diana Ross concert

mugging or a rape or a mob attack see such an experience in the light of

historical conditioning, and how can the sheepish mob behind the crimes

of Hiroshima, Korea, Vietnam, Nicaragua, and South Africa not take

responsibility for these crimes and not take responsibility for stopping

them? Who can believe that this condition can go on indefinitely?

The United States was founded on the genocide of Native Americans, which

continues. Out of the 50 million who inhabited this land only 1.6

million remain. The economic structure based on the subjection of a

caste continues. The colonization of our brothers and sisters and

neighbors to the south and barefaced denials, the innumerable invasions

and occupations with the same shameless justifications, continue.

Pick up an almanac and read the short historical sketches of Puerto

Rico, Santo Domingo, Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and

other nations in that region while the synopsis are still in print and

it will be clear what the invasion of Grenada, Harlem, El Barrio, and

Wounded Knee continue to be, with the approval and aid of duped citizens

and colonial subjects alike.

The highly polished “news” shows, the ruling class presses, the airwaves

guarded by the FCC manipulate our cultures into commercials, filter out

much of that which challenges them, and flood our senses with subliminal

attacks to maintain racism. Rock reflects progressive and liberating

tendencies, as well as backward and fascist tendencies. It has

challenged our thinking and that of those around us, sensitizing us to

our doings, and it has packaged subtle and rank racism which are

untitled. Anybody who believes they have rights over others is part of

the problem. Anyone who believes they have the rights to use and abuse

and attributes these rights to simply being born a particular species or

gender and not on these beliefs or promotes them must be contested, as

there is no trait worse, save accepting evil nonsense of that type.

This progress, which has devoured entire peoples and poisoned the

biosphere of those of us remaining, must be attacked spiritually and

culturally, as well as fought physically and resolutely in all its

aspects, if we are to maintain our sovereignty as human beings rather

than parts of the machine. Self-determination, the freedom to be

ourselves, only conflicts with the interests of a tiny percent of the

population that controls.

So Rock Against Racism, imperialism, and sexism. It’s a good sign that

the new age art form, indigenous and ingenious, can be acknowledged

piercing the net of commercialism and clearly out of the use of the

state’s arsenal.

Let the good times roll, and let the chips roll where they may.

From Overthrow 6, no. 4 (December 1984–January 1985).

Letters From Prison

Subsequent to his arrest in December 1981, Balagoon was in frequent

contact with comrades who published the Bulldozer newsletter in Toronto,

Canada. An anarchist anti-prison publication (the “bulldozer” was meant

to be the only acceptable tool for prison reform), several of Balagoon’s

writings were first published in this newsletter, which later became

known simply as the Prison News Service. Although PNS ceased publication

in 1998, luckily several letters from Balagoon have been kept over the

years and were made available to the editors of the first edition of

this book. As repetition, length, legibility, and relevance make

publication of all of these letters unfeasible, an effort was made to

assemble a representative and interesting selection of excerpts, with a

minimum of editing, that shed light on both Kuwasi as a person and as a

political strategist.

courtesy of Mary Patten and Madame Binh Graphics Collective Archives

The Trial

April 12, 1983

We’ve been dealing with the public movements so much with explaining our

stance and perceptions that it has twisted me to the point where i’ve

written very little suitable for publication for Bulldozer. Having to

unify with M-L [Marxist-Leninist, ed.] and Nationalist and to defend the

rights to nationalist aspirations have pulled me a bit out of line with

my predilections.

December 9, 1983

That bullshit about seventy-five years wasn’t designed to affect me, i

had been sentenced to twenty-five to thirty before. December 22, i’ll be

thirty-seven years old. That sentence was to affect others, to frighten

others into giving up their lives altogether without fighting for real

control of their lives. But if i worked thirty years at the post office

and went bowling on Thursdays or doing anything but opposing the U.S.

i’d be worse off, it would be like making a rope so my children and

myself could be tied up.

January 25, 1984

The federal trial ended with the five most politico people taking the

most principled position getting convicted of conspiracy, two others

convicted basically for not turning their backs on their friends once

they were wanted (aiding and abetting), and two acquitted altogether,

one which all they had was a traitor cocaine fiend’s word on, the other

who had two traitors words against him—and had fled to Belize (British

Honduras) and was extradited back. So people called it a victory—but i

really don’t think so; the government didn’t get all they wanted, but

four out of six? and the two most politico getting the highest

convictions?

The line i put forth is that the question of if it’s a victory lies with

how many people are mobilized by it, the same with our portion of it. i

am glad for the people who are home now, by legally didn’t that much

happen, simple math. Politically, i feel a bit disappointed, but at the

same time i know that the weight of what went down and what we said,

etc. should grow, people will get better at explaining it, that just our

defiance in the face of what the state says is life, will have more

impact as life progresses.

The Left

May 31, 1983

We had to hassle with the Guardian[81] to git one article countering

some reactionary shit they were saying, and the rest of the “left” has

disassociated themselves from us like most of the left in Canada

disassociates themselves from the Vancouver Five. We took Prisoner of

War positions to forfeit the illusion of the state being able to judge

enemies of the state. In the first place, most of the left didn’t even

speak to it, the “establishment” press mentioned it first, and a lot of

the folks who protest U.S. involvement in Central America condemn us

for, git this, shooting three working-class people. You know who they

are talking about, a sweat hog guard and two outright pigs.

Two papers especially, the Village Voice and the Rolling Stone, are

mistaken for left because they cover antinuke rallies, and etc., had it

in for us from the beginning. They would print accounts by police and

creeps nowhere near the underground and at the same time refuse to print

anything any of us had to say. It’s still their policy. The Voice

demanded the inside scoop on one person’s sex life after they sent in a

political article; the Rolling Stone wrote a series on the Weatherpeople

at about the same time the national news agencies were doing a number on

us, dripping with sexual accounts, even a picture (a drawing).

May 31, 1983

i think we tend to use the term “left” too loosely; everybody left of

Reagan ain’t left. Basic self-determination, the means of production

being in the hands of the workers, should be the criteria of recognizing

an ideology as left. Just because someone doesn’t want some fool in

Washington to blow the world to pieces doesn’t make them left. Everybody

who protests the curtailing of civil liberties that affect them ain’t

left. And we make a mistake when we assume that they are, and they let

us know we made mistakes when the basic issues arise.

May 31, 1983

When a gay group protests lack of police protection by making an

alliance with police to form a gay task force, they ain’t making a stand

against the system, they are joining it. Putting more power in the hands

of those who attack them for being what they are in the first place.

Those women’s organizations with members with underpaid Black, Puerto

Rican, and Mexican maids who decided to vote differently when the Equal

Rights Amendment[82] was defeated can’t be called left, just as Blacks

mobilizing to field a presidential candidate ain’t left. Left is the

land and means of production in the hands of the masses, and right is

land and the means of production in the hands of a few pigs.

As i am writing this it occurs to me that it sounds rigid, but dealing

with land and the means of production in a different manner calls for a

different system. This is not to say that we should sabotage antinuke …

organizations that call themselves “left.” … but we should keep the

basics constantly in debates, and we should establish the working

definition.

Xmas Night 1983?

The point is that there are only a few people in the “left” about armed

struggle and self-determination, so although i personally think they are

ideological imperialists, i will work with them as i do with

nationalists, even though they are hierarchical, and righteous Muslims,

even though i am antireligion. i think it’s okay as long as you don’t

get lost in the sauce, so to speak—that is abandon anarchist principles

and the objective of building anarchist organizations.

Xmas Night 1983?

It’s a very dangerous period we have been going through; the state is

quickly consolidating fascism, on the one hand, and, on the other hand,

there’s no mass movement. All kinds of laws are being passed with no

debate, and people are looking to Jesse Jackson to change the focus of

things, and not only is he electoral (which goes without saying) but

he’s reactionary. He stands up in front of rallies and says things like

“If we (got that we, that tells you he’s an Uncle Tom right away) can’t

have enough marines in Lebanon to do the job, we should bring the

Americans home. Bring our boys back.” Well, if we have any boys in the

marines, then obviously our boys have gone astray. What in the fuck are

they doing over there in the first place? Why are there so many ads in

Black magazines and in the commercials at basketball and football games

and boxing matches with Blacks and the phrase “Be all that you can be”

for the U.S. Armed Forces? There’s nobody Black addressing that.

Xmas Night, 1983?

Not since the Western Federation of Miners and the Wobblies in the ‘30s,

have workers been struggling for actual control and in fact ownership,

but in the past couple of years Greyhound Bus Company, National Baseball

League, and some other unions have been kicking it around. At the same

time all the public movements—since they are too elitist to even want to

organize the working class, and they fear them like the plague because

the public movements are largely petty bourgeois, college students,

white-collar workers, etc.—have been debating each other in a vacuum,

instead of really going out to work.

Xmas Night 1983?

After that ass-kicking in Southeast Asia, you can bet your life they

went through a lot of mass psychological preparation before going to

Lebanon[83] or invading Grenada,[84] but their calculations proved true.

There has been no real response from the Black colony here—and

culturally and historically the Grenadians are so similar to us that its

incredible. They’ve been able to do all of this because there’s been no

real mass movement and so many outright reactionaries like Jackson, who

has the blessings of all the egghead, pencilneck, armchair Marxist and

Black copout artist posing as progressive. The only high points occur

when the United Freedom Front or United Fighting Group[85] or FALN

strikes, which at least has been happening fairly consistently.

January 22, 1984

It’s a small circle of revolutionaries in this hemisphere or in the

northern half of it, we can’t just deal within the same small circle, at

some point new recruits must be won over, youth must be ignited: all the

rallies have got basically the same people showing year after year. i

ask: Do these activists talk to people outside the movement? Obviously

they don’t talk to people about the movement—we got to build a movement

of activists who … address people who are already committed as well as

people who are into other things. “The revolutionary war is a war of the

masses: it can be waged only by mobilizing the masses and relying on

them.”

January 25, 1984

[T]he sad thing is those white M-Ls who are really few in number—when it

comes to supporting armed struggle, have no foothold in the white

working class, and being mostly of a petty bourgeois background, not

only don’t know where to begin but are contemptuous of the working

class—even though the petty bourgeoisie as a class is at least as

reactionary. Plus, they are just beginning to be clear as to the fact

that New Afrikans are indeed colonized and what that means and just

beginning to accept their role in the struggle to initiate the overthrow

of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of a dictatorship of the

proletariat—they ain’t really Marxist and morality has been their line,

rather than the nuts and bolts of what is really going on. That in

itself wouldn’t be so bad but the fact is the nationalist on this coast,

where the [Brink’s] trial actually took place, simply refuses to

organize in the Black community, no survival programs which New Afrikans

need, no challenging the neocolonial Uncle Toms, like Jackson,

Washington, etc., no showing up at police brutality hearings to declare

that the issue is not a few mad-dog cowboy cops, but a mad-dog cowboy

empire, no going to the New Afrikan colonies at all. To them, it is

enough to tell people what is happening with us, which is ridiculous

when people are starving, freezing, and getting shot themselves, but

they believe in magic words.

May 2, 1984

There’s a lot of Islamic influences in our movement now—there always

have been—but now more than ever. i am flooded with Islamic propaganda

through the mails that i pass on to Muslims, and at the same time i am a

bit shook up about it, but rather than counter this, i intend to

cooperate when it’s principled, continue to argue when points of

difference arise, and busy myself with what i am up to my neck with, and

let the people decide.

January 9, 1985

i hope this finds you in the best of health and spirits, as it leaves me

feeling okay, considering everything. At least except for the last round

of busts nothing of consequence has happened, and at the same time

there’s been a lot of busts. Supposedly support is growing, people from

other movements have been shook up by the indictments for thought crime,

and there has certainly been enough grand jury subpoenas to constitute a

witch hunt (twenty-eight this far, to my count) and the Black colony is

stirring behind it, but i don’t know what the movement is doing inside

the colony. i’ve heard they have vowed to do more grassroots organizing,

and i hope so, because people are upset about the pigs who’ve really

been getting away with the grossest murders, as well. In one case they

tortured a guy to death for allegedly writing on the subway walls, and

in another they shot a sixty-year-old woman while evicting her. So any

retaliation action should have the nod.

January 9, 1985

[T]he part of the “left” that has no interest in what is happening to

prisoners and prisoners of war is not left. If the difference is that we

believe in the decentralization of wealth, the redistribution of land,

and armed struggle—and those of the right believe in amassing more

wealth, building empire, and repression—then these are the lines by

which we should define “left” and “right.” We can’t go by other people’s

definitions—even their definitions of themselves—suppose Rev. Sun Myung

Moon[86] declares he’s left, against the establishment, and has been

victimized by racism. The left here is small in proportion to the

population no matter how you define it—but when you talk about

redistribution, freeing the colonies, etc., its micro, and when you talk

doing and actually do something—people look at you as if you’re from

Mars—rare species. You put that same measure to Canada, i’d bet its

micro too. So if we limit our propaganda to people in the left and

Bulldozer reaches a small percent of that, people who are down

already—Martians.

Revolution

May 31, 1983

When a principled conscientious public movement is developed there’s no

problem finding soldiers, and in terms of being as best as you can,

figure what the revolution needs: there’s a lot you can do that can’t be

taken for granted. The speech you make at the rally would be impossible

to give if you were underground, and you would have to hope that someone

else would. All of us who agree would have to hope also. Meanwhile by

the time the public movement gits built to the point where you know

those things will be said, and there’s comrades out organizing people to

take their lives into their own hands, there will be an army to play its

historic role.

i never was happy with the amount of input i could contribute when i was

in the underground. There’s little chance to debate with people doing

aboveground organizing, and if you don’t agree with how they are going

about things, there’s not much you can do. That problem is not

unavoidable, but it is a problem.

May 2, 1984

And although there’s been a lot of bombings, i think that the hierarchy

embedded in the consciousness of the movement prevents the type of

attacks we used to stage with the sole purpose of punishing pigs with

death. There’s not enough real [punishment] for them kind—translated

into a body count, that registers in the population—that these creatures

can indeed be dealt with, and the way i see it retaliation will have to

be commonplace for a long time before people are really prepared to

support revolution. With all kinds of things happening to

revolutionaries and people who just mind their own business and nothing

happening to the pigs and very little happening to turds like [Samuel]

Brown—just doesn’t seem to be a balanced and attractive occupation.

July 28, 1984

Reaction has been moving on a grassroots level uncontested. Here the

Klan says that illegal aliens take jobs, while Ford, IBM, and so many

other corporations move plants to South Africa, England, Korea, etc.

There’s plants operating in Mexico, where U.S. corporations ship parts

to be assembled and shipped back to the U.S.—why don’t the corporations

git blamed for stealing jobs? What’s the difference, except that the

corporations pocket the difference in wages? The Klan, Nazis, etc.

spread their crap uncontested as champions of the white workers, when

it’s clear that they are dupes of the ruling class. If we really adopt

the preamble to the wobblies’ constitution, that the working class and

the ruling class have absolutely no common interest, we will beat them

on the ground level, we will out-organize them—and as they are tools of

the empire, we will begin to be out-organizing the empire. Once the

fragments of the working class are united in hostilities against

reaction instead of each other—the tide will begin to shift.

An anarchist underground will develop in turn, with the only connection

to the aboveground being anarchist ideology, which is enough. The

relatively simple tasks the pigs have now of peeking into the visible

and exposed sections of the movement to aim their gadgetry for suspects

will be fruitless with really widespread mass mobilizations. With a

federated army of collectives, striking at whatever is opportune in the

area of monopoly capital, imperialism, and repression, we will be

settled down in a long protracted people’s war that can’t be nipped at

the bud, until the governments simply cannot exist and authority and

economies collapse. To, of course, be replaced by one built around

collectives, rather than capitalism or state capitalism. All railroads,

ship lines, airlines, phone companies, oil, gas, and electric companies

will be socialized, all trucking will be put into the collective

ownership of drivers, all overseas possessions left to sink, all textile

mills collectivized, all military industries and arms manufacturers

taken over by militias. A people’s referendum is set for Native, New

Afrikan, Chicano, and Puerto Rican nationals in the mainland to decide

on autonomy with 1.7 acres set aside in a common area for all that vote

for nationhood. As well as a referendum for whites who wish to live

separately. The chemical companies, banks, etc. and other capitalist

residue being the province of the will of the people who live in certain

areas.

If we don’t already have an established territory, and perhaps if we do,

we set another people’s referendum for those of us who want no

government. A federation of collectives would conduct the referendum.

The local militias would mop up the reactionary residue. With no public

capital in private hands there wouldn’t be any ruling class to suppress

in the anarchist areas; where people choose state socialism, there would

be no interference from us. Just what i envision, but the idea of doing

away with money—just arranging things so that everyone who wants gets

necessities, food, clothing, housing, education—knocks me out. If we

needed a transitional period, we determine that reefer is currency.

Anti-Imperialism, Nationhood, and National Liberation

May 2, 1984

The Native American struggle is against imperialist occupation. Because

the present movement doesn’t know how to deal with this doesn’t make it

any less so. That’s just a shortcoming of the movement, but a second’s

thought would have to tell us that Native Americans were indeed the

first victims of imperialism in this hemisphere, and if we are to be

anarchist in the here and now, and thus be anti-imperialist, as one

cannot be an anarchist and not be against imperialism, we got to accept

the Native struggle as our own. If the Greeds had not put the Natives in

their position, none of us would be in the position we are in.

May 2, 1984

It’s clear to anyone that Native peoples are repressed more so than

anyone else, that genocide has been practiced against them more so than

any people who still exist as a people. Well that means we got to defend

them—fight alongside of them, just like they fought alongside of the

slaves. People shouldn’t be able to forget for a moment that this land

was under the guardianship of Native Americans for centuries before

anyone else arrived. Anyway, the way to start is by recognizing if

you’re supporting land and liberation for Native Americans, you’re

anti-imperialist and should be in a movement that recognizes and

includes that, and if there’s no movement—well, you got to build one.

May 2, 1984

[T]o me it’s the ultimate meddling … for a white person supposedly for

the revolution to oppose tendencies for Third World people confined to

various reservations in the present U.S. It seems rather clear to me how

our history here would kind of inhibit us from wanting to continue to be

outnumbered and surrounded by whites.

July 28, 1984

This is the place to begin erasing borders, not only because the U.S.

uses up 40 percent of the world’s resources and the bottom 50 percent of

the population controls only 8.2 percent of the economy (nationally),

but on top of it, 5 percent of the population controls 70 percent of the

land. Peoples from the South whose land and resources have gone into

this empire are coming to get it and are entitled to it just as the West

Indians and East Indians are entitled to the portions of the British

Empire they were forced to donate as colonial subjects. Anti-imperialist

struggle grows out of anti-capitalist (class) struggle, just as

imperialism is a development of capitalism.

January 9, 1985

Right now, i am into a slight struggle with a comrade who put forth the

proposition of whites supporting national liberation, as i (especially

after reading Mythology of the White Proletariat) believe in parallel

development, complete movements engaged in national liberation and class

struggle civil war inside the oppressor nations. The fact that this is

now only beginning to happen, that whites are striking blows at the

colonial apparatus is one thing—but colonial subjects should be free to

attack monopoly capital … phone companies rip everyone off, but these

policies in the Black community are really different; when i lived in a

predominantly white neighborhood i never was pressured to pay like

friends living in the colonies, and whereas the defense industrial

complex may rip everyone in the confines, it murders us.

i’ve read the Mythology of the White Proletariat and know what i would

write in a book review now … its enlightening, but i would hope that it

wasn’t used as an excuse by a lot of whites to not attempt to organize

inside the oppressor nation.

Anarchism

April 12, 1983

i hope this letter finds you in good health and high spirits, as it

leaves me none the worse for wear and really happy to hear from you, as

Bulldozer is my favorite political publication. i really hope we can

work well together and promise to make a sustained effort in keeping the

lines out and open and working, as although i share a lot of feelings

and principles with the Nationalist and Anti-Imperialist movements i am

an Anarchist and feel rather isolated ideologically and low for not

pushing my politics as much as i should. This has mostly been due to a

lack of connection with the anarchist movement due again for my being on

the lam and working with who i could readily see were opposing the

state.

Xmas Night 1983?

i think that throughout this hemisphere we should unite with real get

down anarchists first, and then others, and recognize that the so-called

left doesn’t really represent a lot of people. The politics of the

so-called left hasn’t reached a lot of people, and their elitist airs

are actually turnoffs—there’s not much mention of “serving the people.”

If we start putting things together that actually do serve people the

day when anarchy is seen as a viable way of life rather than chaos will

not be far away, because most people when they stop and think of it have

to admit that the empire sucks.

January 22, 1984

Tonight, i am up eating peanut butter sandwiches, just putting the stale

bread over steaming water, when for years i automatically threw it out

and fed it to the birds (this being one of the few times the birds might

be better off for it). i think that waste and bourgeois thinking really

affects how we operate, both in terms of perceiving strong points and

weak points and effectiveness, when it comes to acting after we make our

observations. In Vietnam, GIs had to burn, bury, and grind the stuff

they sent to the dumps, because the Cong would use the tin cans, wire,

bottles, and whatever else against them. They can’t do that here because

they’re always encouraging people to consume more and make more waste.

On the other end, i think that making the most of everything is

exemplified pretty well by working in a collective setting and living in

a co-op, and it seems like it would be an easy thing to found an

anarchist food co-op somewhere in Toronto. As time goes on,

anti-imperialist anarchism will prove to be the only anarchism, since

others will need to make alterations. We should push the idea of

collectives and federations, while continuing to support

anti-imperialist struggle with the aim of not merely building a real

movement that really supports armed struggle but an actual

infrastructure.

January 22, 1984

[T]he idea of collectives was alien to the Panther Party. We had

different survival programs, and people were involved to be part of

them, to donate time, afford to git things/stuff [from] businesses

operating inside the community, to use the space of institutions such as

churches. But the Party, being a hierarchy, simply could not simply

initiate alternatives—it felt it had to lead them—it was to be, in its

mind and words, not just the leading party but the sole representative

of the Black colony. So there was not any organized effort to take space

in the colony and to actually produce (only to distribute) or to provide

transport or a militia. It was miles away from all of that, because it

was a hierarchy. To fully take on the power structure in a given area,

you got to not only provide alternatives but institutions that render

the old ones useless. Just completely take their place, that provide the

[goods] itself, so it’s not a question of a merchant giving material

aide to our operation or being boycotted but a mechanism where one by

one the outlets become collective, because the economy evolves to the

point where the corporate fingers just cannot pull the strings. You

don’t call a Checker cab when an outlaw gypsy cab service will take you

where you want to go cheaper, you don’t shop at Safeway if you can buy

what you want cheaper at a co-op. People are putting all kinds of co-ops

together—the trick is to form a federation that takes care of the needs

of its members and invites more. That teaches self-reliance and

demonstrates it. That supports and practices anti-imperialism and

demonstrates that you don’t have to be a party to it and that

imperialism is not necessary, because capitalism is not necessary,

rather than necessary evils, they are just evils. This sounds like

preaching, but without examples how would you expect it to sound.

January 25, 1984

Why ain’t an anti-imperialist anarchist organization—that’s pro–armed

struggle + self-determination for oppressed nations + socialism and

liberty and complete egalitarianism—been formed? With collectives in

areas wherever there’s enough individuals to put one together and an

international hemispheric program? A “Committee to Promote Anarchy.”

That way at least people who think similar to us would at least have a

unified voice inside and outside the prisons. The network for all its

looseness does cover a lot of territory—rather than debut with the

anarchist who ain’t about what we are about or compromise with M-Ls and

nationalists, we should start building something to take directly to the

masses. That doesn’t mean everybody who thinks similar to us isolating

themselves the way i am, not dealing with M-Ls, nationalists, and

anarchists, or even trying to ignite reformists—but it means putting

something of our own on the ground.

May 2, 1984

What’s as bad is that public movements can’t grow into mass movements,

not because of the apathy that they claim everyone else has but because

of a fantastic elitism. If they organize a mass movement, they’ll lose

their identities. They won’t be so much smarter than the people they’re

supposed to be organizing and providing models for. Of course, there’s

other real reasons too: the almighty media and state floods people’s

minds with the centuries of chauvinism and diversions, coupled with an

economy that makes rent too much to think about. But the main thing that

affects people is that they know no other way and have no access to a

living breathing ideology or a movement that does things differently.

But there’s no public movement that recognizes this, and i think that

that is partly because the next step would be doing things differently …

at the same time what you do shapes how you think, so it’s a vicious

cycle.

Anarchy is the ideal way to break out of it, but since it’s been defined

as chaos by every other proponent of every other ideology, on one hand,

and defined by too many people who define themselves as anarchist as

“whatever,” it is simply not being presented for people’s inspection. A

collective is not only (for lack of a better word) a propaganda organ

because its members may say or print certain things, it’s a propaganda

unit …. If a collective chooses to recycle and accumulate capital for a

co-op of sorts, people will see people working together … they will see

a process that can be duplicated …. With eggheads sitting around

spinning yarns and isms, you have something that can be duplicated, but

for what? The masses are smart not to get involved in any more bullshit.

July 28, 1984

The crazy thing is that there are no anti-imperialist organizations with

a class analysis or program. Of the “communists” who speak of (their

only support of) strikes, none of them really make a stand for

self-determination of oppressed and superexploited colonies, of the

anti-imperialist organizations who do support self-determination, there

are none that explain the exploitation of the working class in terms of

its relation to imperialism.

If an anti-imperialist anarchist organization establishes itself and

calls for an end to imperialism abroad and within the borders of this

hemisphere and supports self-determination for oppressed nations and

supports the working-class struggle against the same monopoly

capitalists who reap the lion’s share of superprofits from the colonies,

it will be the only organization with a complete ideology. If this same

organization begins modest programs in the most depressed areas,

centered around survival, turning waste into capital, taking over spaces

and occupying them for the good of the community, offering services

denied to the communities, like food co-ops, clothing exchanges, and

book exchanges, and then extends this into taxis and a militia to deal

with the Klan and other predators, but on top of this supports

autoworkers, hospital workers, etc. when they are on strike, etc. and

reports and explains why, we will soon have an international

community-based organization that people will support. They will not

only buy a paper that could expand into an international paper with its

own distribution system but cultural activities, because they will see

what’s happening with their support and more importantly they will have

access to a new way of living.

July 28, 1984

Maybe i’ve been sitting around thinking of the same shit too long, but

it seems to me that anarchy would have to be anti-imperialist, that

there’s no other ideology that refuses to recognize borders. Every

communist regime has degenerated into a narrow nationalist state

capitalism, almost as if, and i tend to think that, they couldn’t help

it. Stalin might have been a bastard, but he wasn’t corrupt, or Mao for

that matter. The masses were certainly willing to make sacrifices, but

what do we have now, the very first communist state invading another

country “to protect its borders,” and the second making a treaty with

the U.S.

The Enemy

August 18, 1983

[A] physical propaganda offensive has been escalated against supporters

and other aboveground legal people. About a month ago two sisters and

three children, one only two years old, came to visit. At first the cops

gave them a runaround about how they dressed, which was bullshit, and

then they gave them a run-around about ID. Their ID works out okay when

they visit other jails, but after being held up and insulted by pigs

with no name tags or badge numbers, they were told to leave. When they

went back to their car and drove off, they were stopped by a pig who

went through their papers and mumbled some sap rap and let them go. This

made them really paranoid, and they drove way under the speed limit,

which saved their lives, because a wheel started to wobble. Once they

wobbled into a gas station and had it checked out, they discovered that

the bolts between the wheel and the axle had been loosened. Had they

driven on the highway at fifty-five miles an hour, they would have had

an accident and with five people in the car, three of them children,

there’s no telling how bad it would have been.

One accident occurred like that after the John Brown conference in

Chicago last year and another at a conference in Texas a bit before

that; you would think by now people would automatically check wheels.

About two weeks after that, one of the sisters, _____, after going to

court, where her old man is on trial, went shopping, and then caught a

subway not far from her home. When she got off and decided to catch a

bus to git closer, two white guys stepped in and asked her for

directions. When she took her attention off them, one of them started

punching her while the other acted as a lookout. The one punching her

knocked her down, continued to punch her, took her pocket book with rent

and bill money, and then kept on punching her in the face, while sitting

on her. Just before he stopped and left, he said, “Your husband can’t

help you now.”

There’s been the usual break-ins and women running into guys they find

out later are cops. Right-wing underground harassment (so far, it seems)

groups have been stepping up their activities. So that’s the general

tone of things.

Xmas Night 1983?

There’s a conservative wave sweeping the U.S., lots of mob attacks on

Third World people, lots of police killings; one cracker in Detroit got

two years’ probation because he beat a Chinese guy to death, and the

judge said the punishment should “fit the criminal, not the crime.”

Vietnamese in Boston and Texas are being attacked at random. In Western

Massachusetts, the feds were called in to investigate attacks on women

and started investigating the women’s links with “terrorists.” At the

same time there’s been thirty fires in a women’s dorm, and they’ve

arrested a Black woman who lived there and kicked her out of the school;

a white guy who is charged with rape still goes. The local pigs have

raided the projects (public housing) with slug hammers twice under

different pretenses that didn’t pan out. The feds did security for the

United Technologies Corporation, which has been having a secret

conference there—as if those turds can’t afford to hire Pinkerton. And

ROTC, the young Republicans, SHUN (Stop Homosexual Unity Now), and every

other type of Nazi is running rabid, and that’s just one town. And, as i

said, there’s a wave of conservatism.

Xmas Night 1983?

i think that you got to stop thinking in terms of the U.S. and Canada as

separate and literally in terms of the hemisphere as far as organization

goes—which the network is definitely right in doing—and i think

politically we should attack the whole of imperialism, that is, not only

dealing with a particular government force that’s involved in, say, El

Salvador but any ruling class power involved in imperialism. This means

not only noting South African involvement with IBM and ITT’s involvement

in Chile but every link in the Fortune 500.

May 2, 1984

Here, some new laws have been passed that make support for “terrorists”

a crime, and to change the feds into a more clearly military outfit.

There was an even more outrageous murder in NYC, a brother was beaten to

death, supposedly for putting graffiti on a subway car. Not a murder

where a guy gits hit on top the head one too many times and dies but

torture and overkill. There’s been forty Blacks murdered this year and a

general upswing throughout the country. No retaliation, though, no pigs

caught up and filled full of holes.

July 28, 1984

i think that we simply have to be clear about the fact that the media is

part of the state’s arsenal, they never contradict the state. They

universally and totally miss the point of the matters that pertain to

the opposition of the state. For instance, the Watergate shit that

happened here a few years ago made the press look good, but there was

never any print about all the lawyers’ offices that were broken into

when left-wing clients were involved. They never talk about the things

that DINA or Alpha 66[87] have gotten away with. They covered our case

without mentioning colonialism one time, even though our position was/is

that New Afrikans are colonized and have a right to defend against

colonial oppression. [Associated Press] quoted a statement by me, after

i handed it to them, as i did every paper that covered the trial, but

nobody thought it newsworthy to make a clear statement about our

position. So it’s not just a thing about a press ban on the proceedings

involving the Armenians. The press knows their job, and they know it’s

not to do our propaganda for us. The New York Times couldn’t address

U.S. corruption in Quebec when the separatist was clearly challenging

the ruling class of the entire hemisphere! A guy with a trench coat

doesn’t meet with all the reporters overnight to tell them what to write

or their editors what to print. These caffeine crazed patriots censor

themselves.

Prison Life

August 18, 1983

Meanwhile, i am freer to write and will be writing _____ this week for

sure—the only thing that will hold me up is a lack of stamps if i can’t

work out some kind of deal with the commissary guy tomorrow. The food is

so bad here that when the order blanks come around i don’t think of

anything besides getting enough to eat. However, my discipline shall

improve.

December 9, 1983

As to the seventy-five years i am not really worried, not only because i

am in the habit of not completing sentences or waiting on parole or any

of that nonsense, but also because the state simply isn’t going to last

seventy-five, or even fifty, years. If there’s not a revolution in

thirty years—in which case i really don’t care to live anyways, or an

atomic war, the environment will for all practical purposes resemble the

aftermath of an atomic war. The jerks in charge now are not only

committing genocide but destroying the biosphere.

Xmas Night 1983?

There’s nothing to be amazed of as far as continuing to struggle in

jail, what else can you do? The struggle continues, and if you don’t, if

you give up, you die, you are damned, because it takes effort just to be

in contact, and when they put you in isolation, fuck with your mail,

etc., you have all the proof you need that whatever it was you did, it

was of consequence. “As long as you fight, the decision is still up in

the air,” Ruchell Magee.[88] They only win when we are convinced to let

them have their way.

Xmas Night 1983?

[W]hereas i would be up writing at night, i am going to the movies; they

had Flashdance and Raiders of the Lost Ark. i’ve been telling myself

that it’s impossible to know what’s been affecting the masses if you

don’t check out what they have—nothing super-fragalistic has been

revealed to me—but i figure as long as i ain’t betting football games or

some nonsense like that, a little diversion doesn’t hurt.

January 22, 1984

Well, due to the storm we’ve been locked in for two days, which in and

of itself wouldn’t be such a big deal, but i am locked beside one

motherfucker who plays oldies twenty-four/seven, and on the other side

is a Cuban who Castro kicked out of the country for singing. He starts

right after breakfast most mornings and continues each time he comes

back to the cell until he falls out sometime around eleven, so last

night i kept him up a bit longer with some of my singing.

July 28, 1984

i’ve meant to write you for a long time, but i guess a combination of

factors have slowed me down in correspondence; for one thing the pace of

writing two or three letters a night and feeling like i’ve been

sentenced to writing has kinda worn me out. Then of course, i am still

going to trial. Since ‘82 there’s been some kind of bullshit with

legality. i am tired of it but must pay attention to what’s happening in

court, cause no matter what we must preserve the position that the state

simply has no right to try us. At the same time, these bastards got over

sixty suspects in this case, including every busted BLA member, a

statement by a traitor that they want to act as if they never had, and a

hundred thousand dollar reward. Its outright disgusting how people were

turning in ex-employees, drinking partners, and etc. So it’s an ideal

opportunity to show in detail how the pigs are trying to change New

Afrikan culture into a snitch culture ready to support fascism.

But every time i go to court i really fall behind in letters; last time

they moved me six times in six days, cuffed and shackled. It was

impossible to git visits, because i was never at a jail during a time

when visiting was allowed: a third to half of the time in bullpens or in

a van. The few letters i did write are just getting where they were

addressed. Added to the court time is the trip we go through once we

return. It’s a week before you git any addresses or even legal papers,

another week confined to the cell. Last time i went to the hole for a

day, because there wasn’t any empty cells, and for some reason i always

git the same cell, which isn’t for anyone else, and it’s pretty possible

that the whole thing will be happening again before the 31^(st). So in

letters i’ll be even further behind.

July 28, 1984

Over the weekend a pig shot a brother down in the yard. The official

version is that he was swinging a baseball bat at another prisoner and

some pigs and to protect lives the pig in the tower had to shoot. Of

course, that’s bullshit, there was no one close to the guy when he got

shot; he had gotten stabbed just before and the pigs broke camp.

Prisoners had to pick him up and carry him to the door and demand he

receive medical care for the M15 wound, which you know is difficult

because the bullet tumbles to make wounds large and break bones, to make

more missiles inside the body to penetrate more organs. Anyway, after

the shooting, 180 men refused to lock in—you got to be literally mad to

see someone shot and risk your lives just to make a point. Meanwhile the

pigs have everyone who witnessed the crap firsthand locked down.

November 29, 1985

Friday they told me to go back to the block (and i immediately thought

transfer). When i got back to my block they said i was to be kept

locked. When i said, “For what?” they said, “Investigation,” then within

a half hour or so, this pig comes to tell me i am being transferred.

Then i was brought here, kept in lockup until yesterday at noon, and

released into population. But that has just meant another day with the

same underwear, only one blanket, and asking over and over about my

stuff. i got a chance to talk to one of my comrades personally, and in

the process of doing some chin-ups some turkey lifted my coat, so i

couldn’t go out tonight and am basically in limbo. Tomorrow night

there’s no yard or opportunity to use the phones in the yard. So

basically i’ll be stuck with whatever i have after wading through

bullshit in broad daylight. i can’t remember a similar situation, but it

kinda feels like sitting around a dusty empty apartment waiting for the

landlord to put the heat on—walkin’ to the pay phone, never catchin’

him, looking forward to next to nothing.

Kuwasi Remembered

The following memories and poems appeared in the 1999 first edition of A

Soldier’s Story.

In Memory of Kuwasi Balagoon, New Afrikan Freedom Fighter

David Gilbert, December 15, 1986

When i think of Kuwasi, i think of the word “heart.” No, i got that

backwards. When the term “heart” comes up i think of Kuwasi, because he

epitomized it so beautifully—but of course he also lived and expressed

many other fine qualities. “Heart” has two distinct meanings: one is

great courage; the other is great generosity. Kuwasi was an outstanding

example of both.

People at this commemoration[89] are aware of Kuwasi’s core identity as

a New Afrikan Freedom Fighter. His political activity began as a tenant

organizer in Harlem. (He was, incidentally, also part of the Harlem

contingent who, bringing food and water, broke the right-wing blockade

around we students who were holding buildings during the Columbia Strike

of 1968.) Kuwasi was part of the landmark New York Panther 21 case of

1969. In the same period, he was imprisoned for expropriations in New

Jersey; he escaped a few years later.

It takes both daring and creativity to escape from prison. Kuwasi did

that and a whole lot more: three and a half months later, and on very

short notice, he went to free a comrade being taken to a funeral under

armed guard. Kuwasi was hit by a bullet, yet kept moving, and he almost

made it too. With a little more time for planning and preparation, he

would have been successful. His second escape, about five years later,

from a maximum security prison was even more impressive. That time he

stayed free and active until his capture subsequent to the Nyack

expropriation of October 20, 1981.

After each of these prison escapes in the ‘70s, he was able to quickly

establish himself in a secure and comfortable personal situation. He

didn’t go back for his comrade or reconnect with that unit of the BLA

out of any personal desperation. It was purely a commitment to the

struggle, to New Afrikan liberation, to freedom for all oppressed

people.

When one hears of such courage and sacrifice (and here we have mentioned

only a small portion of his deeds) the stereotyped image is of a stern

or fierce character, perhaps with an inclination for martyrdom. But

nothing could be further from Kuwasi Balagoon the person. Actually, he

had an affecting ebullience, a zest for the pleasures of life, a keen

appreciation for the culture and creativity of the people who lived in

the ghettos and barrios. Politically he placed great stress on the need

for his movement (and other revolutionary movements, as well) to respond

directly to the concrete needs of the people in the communities: he

opposed anything he saw as hierarchy that stifled initiative from below.

Kuwasi was a poet; or, to put it better, he was a revolutionary who

wrote fine poetry. He had read his poetry in the same clubs as the “Last

Poets” way back when they were forming, and he continued to write poems

in prison. Here at Auburn, he worked on drawings late at night and

listened to tapes of both punk rock and jazz with great enthusiasm.

Being in prison population with Kuwasi for this past year, i got to see

an additional dimension of his humanity. Prison can be depressing,

especially in a period of low political consciousness. Kuwasi had a

truly unique ability to make people laugh and to create a sense of

community. Most jailhouse humor is either bleak or sexist. Kuwasi was

able to create a healthier community humor where we’d be laughing at the

authorities or at our own foibles and pretensions. Sometimes in the

yard, i could hear his whole workout crew in uproarious laughter from

fifty yards away. His great spirit is not just my personal observation.

Something like one hundred guys have come up to tell me about it in the

two days since Kuwasi died.

When a guy comes into prison with such a high-powered case and

reputation—well, often the terms are what favors other prisoners can do

for him. With Kuwasi it was just the opposite. i’ve never seen anybody

do so much for other people. i actually felt that he was accommodating

to a fault. We couldn’t have a half hour political discussion in the

yard without about ten or fifteen guys coming up to him to ask him for

some help or favor. He always used his day off from work—even when he

should have been catching up on rest—to do “personal baking,” which he

gave away to innumerable persons over the many weeks; he shared his

commissary purchase with whomever asked. Kuwasi ran a very substantial

and worthwhile political education class for several months.

Kuwasi Balagoon, a bold New Afrikan Warrior with a giant heart: while we

all mourn together there is something particular about the situation

here at Auburn prison that puts the meaning of his life in sharp relief.

The prison guards, who never had the courage to face him straight up in

his life, have been obviously gloating over his death. Meanwhile,

literally hundreds of prisoners are mourning him (particularly prisoners

of his nation, but also a wide range of prisoners who are stand-up

against state authority). Both sets of reactions, in their opposite

ways, are tributes to Kuwasi and how he led his life. The loss is

immeasurable; what he gave us is even more.

New Afrikan People’s Organization Memorial Statement

Black revolutionary soldier Kuwasi Balagoon died on December 13 [1986],

at the Erica County Medical Center in upstate New York. He had been

moved there from the New York State penitentiary at Auburn, where he was

incarcerated for his political-military work on behalf of Black

Liberation.

Balagoon was born Donald Weems on December 22, 1946, in Lakeland,

Maryland, the youngest of three children of Mary and James Weems. His

parents and two sisters, Diane Weems Ligon and Mary Day Hollomand, still

reside in Maryland. Kuwasi attended Fairmont Heights High School.

At seventeen, as an enlisted man in the U.S. Army, Kuwasi witnessed

racism and discrimination in the treatment of Black soldiers. At this

young age he began to realize that Black people had no reason to be

fighting in Vietnam or anywhere else on behalf of a racist “Amerikkka,”

where Black people’s survival remained threatened by capitalist economic

policies and a white dominated political system. He left the u.s.

military and moved to New York, where he became a tenant organizer and,

in 1968, a member of the Black Panther Party.

When the u.s. government’s repression campaign against the Black

Liberation Movement known as Cointelpro took aim on the Black Panthers,

he was among twenty-one men and women named in a federal conspiracy rap

to bomb shopping centers and police stations. It was in the intense

atmosphere of an eighteen-state alarm to pick up these twenty-one

Panthers and vicious FBI and police attacks against Panthers throughout

the empire that Brother Kuwasi would elude arrest and go underground.

All twenty-one defendants would be found not guilty on all counts. His

latest arrest (he escaped from prison two times) would occur in December

1981, when he was arrested and charged with participation in the Brink’s

armored car expropriation attempt of October of that year in Nyack, New

York.

In the show trial on charges arising from the Brink’s action, Balagoon

would uphold a Prisoner-of-War position and refused to participate in

the trial. He openly acknowledged that he was a soldier in the New

Afrikan Freedom Fighters Unit of the Black Liberation Army (BLA), a

political-military clandestine organization formed in 1971 to defend

Black people and to fight for Black people’s liberation. This unit is

said to be responsible for the liberation of Assata Shakur.[90]

Balagoon was also a contributing author of the book Look for Me in the

Whirlwind and has written many poems, short stories, and political

articles published in several Black, U.S., and Canadian journals and

newspapers.

Balagoon was loved and respected by many as a dedicated fighter for

freedom. His spirit will live in the people’s struggle for a new and

better world.

Free the land!

The Following Statement Was Signed by 117 Prisoners at Auburn and

Sent to the December 21, 1986 NAPO Tribute

We mourn deeply the loss of Kuwasi Balagoon. We knew him here as a man

of great courage and principles, warm generosity, and vibrant spirit.

The death of such a person is heavier than a mountain; what he gave us

all in his life is even greater.

A Eulogy

Sundiata Acoli, December 16, 1986

Kuwasi Balagoon was a revolutionary, a rebel, a poet, and he was

faithful to his calling. Once he stepped upon the revolutionary path, he

remained true to the struggle for the rest of his life, fighting the

good fight, staying in shape, writing poetry, and helping fallen

comrades at a moment’s notice, never stopping to count the cost.

He was a natural rebel, couldn’t stand conformity or authority,

especially an illegitimate one. And he had the heart of a gunfighter,

which he was—using all his tools in the service of Black people all his

adult life.

If you ever read or heard his poem “I’m A Wild Man,” you knew him,

because it described him to a T—and he was wild. He knew it, we knew it,

and we loved him for it, because it was his nature … and the nature of

the times, in the late ‘60s, when Black folk needed wild men; and still

do today.

But now Kuwasi’s gone, and the beat goes on, and we who knew and loved

him can only eulogize him—and constantly scan the horizon wondering how

long, how long will it be, before another giant such as he comes along

again.

Born on SundayKuwasi means “Born on Sunday”; Balagoon means

“Warlord.” Kuwasi died at Auburn prison on Saturday, December 13, 1986.

David Gilbert, December 31, 1986

In Memory of Kuwasi Balagoon

Marilyn Buck, December 13, 1986

Some Reflections on an Unpublished Poem

Meg Starr

I met Kuwasi Balagoon when I was in my early twenties and very new to

the movement. As a political prisoner and former member of the New York

Black Panther 21 he was up on several pedestals in my mind. I was

petrified by my first visit with him and completely unprepared for him

to leap off the damn pedestals and meet me as a human being!

This was in the early 1980s, when the movement was very sectarian,

defensive, and hierarchical. The “problem of racism” was “solved”—at

least according to my sector of the left—by allowing white leaders to

meet with Black leaders, while we white followers had almost no direct

contact with the Black movement. I only saw Kuwasi because I ran a white

anti-imperialist kid’s organization. Paradoxically, all children were

allowed to have contact with the Freedom Fighters.

In our children’s group was a young Black girl with a single white mom.

In a nationalist-oriented movement, they fell through the cracks, until

Kuwasi adopted the little girl. He gave her as much of a Black role

model as any locked down dad can do. He was warm and uncontainable.

I never knew him that well, so my stories about him are these little

ones. He chatted with me about the punk music scene and writing poetry.

Punk was frowned upon in my part of the movement as “white music,” but I

was a young punk and the only person visiting Kuwasi who listened to the

Gang of Four and knew the clubs on the Lower East Side. He sent me poems

he was working on and talked about music. Looking back now through his

letters, it seems he was always in “isolation”—waiting to get back into

prison general population and have a radio.

He was closeted. I wish I had known as a young lesbian that the woman in

his poems was probably his transgendered lover of many years. I wish I’d

asked him more questions about his anarchism then, about his

bisexuality. But my interest in anarchism and my own coming out as bi

came later.

What else can I say? I remember his memorial in New York, where neither

his lover nor his full politics were acknowledged. I remember his sister

saying at the time that she could hardly believe he was dead, because

every time his family was at their most worried about him in the past,

he’d pop up and say he was fine and ask how they were taking everything.

Life is short, knock down the pedestals, be human, resist. As Kuwasi

ended every letter: Peace by Piece.

An Unpublished Poem

Found and Shared

In the course of preparing this edition of A Soldier’s Story, the

editors received invaluable assistance from former comrades of Kuwasi’s,

some of whom still had in their possession writings by Kuwasi that had

never been published or widely circulated. The status of the three

following texts is unclear; we do not know if Kuwasi considered them

complete or if they were drafts he would have wanted to return to. In at

least one case, given that the document ends abruptly, it is clear that

his intention was to write more. We present them all here, with little

editing, to present as broad and wide a scope of Kuwasi’s contributions

to radicals who hold him in deep esteem, and to the many who are just

learning about this too often overlooked and complicated revolutionary.

1. WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

“Where do we go from Here?” is first and foremost a strategy for

building collectives from the material basis of will. It is an attempt

to point out a path of thinking and action that leads from one stage to

another or one position to another, by cultivating the collective

process within any small determined group of three or more people and

making the best use of time, space, and whatever specific available

resources to influence others to join the process, contribute, and

exercise a measure of control consistent with their participation

immediately. The basis of this process is agreement, and since

collectives are guided by popular one person, one vote, the strategy is

an anarchist strategy and this work is an anarchist organizing manual.

The collective process is more important than a large treasury, cache of

arms, or throngs of people shouting your name, because to do anything in

the social arena that determines the conditions for liberty and wealth,

the spending and the investing of wealth must be organized. If it does

nothing but sit it does no good, if one person or a few spend it as

those few decide, while it was in fact the fruits of the labor of many,

it only reinforces the existing structures that are responsible already

for the genocide of entire peoples and the literal murder of the

biosphere, and if it’s spent pell mell it will only bring temporary and

partial relief and problems. A large cache of arms in the hands of a few

doesn’t translate into much more than a weapon apiece unless it can be

sold to someone who can be counted on to at the very least not use the

arms to take back the money, and, of course, there’s problems attendant

with security with both money and arms. It wouldn’t be wise to simply

pass out arms to everyone who’s been kicked in the ass, because one

traitor fearful of being kicked out of existence or glad of pleasing his

or her masters or to receive awards would immediately put you and all

you had armed in peril. To carry on a war, many people united in purpose

and organized into small manageable units must be present. While simply

arming those who wish to and deserve to be armed would indeed be a

service in a giant step towards self and community defense, it must be

borne in mind that the enemy has an inexhaustible supply of both arms

and ammunition and is continually on the attack, and so in order for

people to really practice defense, they must practice offense, if only

to force the enemy to have to be on guard.

Masses of people who believe in the cause is the greatest asset a

movement can have, and even that doesn’t bring you and them “out of the

woods.” Sympathy is not support. Actions must be channeled and

coordinated with other actions that interrelate and translate into

offensives that cannot be stopped. To do this people must attend to

practical matters in measurable groups to ensure that there are in fact

enough people to complete tasks, and that things that must be done at

different places can be dealt with at the maximum efficiency and the

least amount of time, effort, and resources being wasted or idle.

Who will lead these collectives? Who is the most qualified? Those are

questions for the collectives to decide. All that can be decided on a

one person, one vote basis should be decided that way. At the same time,

at different points, on different matters, particular individuals will

clearly be more knowledgeable than others, but this too should be

decided collectively. Obviously, a mechanic in a collective garage would

know more about what tools should be bought first, how to obtain the

best at the best rates, and the approximate amount of time that may be

required for certain work and would therefore practically be a leader.

However, at the same time a collective shouldn’t establish a garage if

there’s not at least enough mechanics to do a large portion of

collective transportation work, and it is the collective who decides if,

when, and where. Additionally, an auto repair collective would have

other members, based in some aspects of auto repair and maintenance,

such as changing tires, batteries, jump starts, etc. and would be

required to learn more through on the job training.

Besides this, there are other things attendant to operating a collective

garage or any other collective project. The obtaining and stocking of

supplies and parts, the allocation of funds for light and heat,

propaganda, the national procuring of office supplies and lunch,

maintenance of the building, scheduling of shifts, classes and meetings,

security, services, and interactions with the community.

On the ideology front, who is to decide what is to be studied in each

collective which is also a study group? Who is to determine the mass

line and be certain that it’s consistent with the organizational line?

There is simply no single person qualified. No individual knows what’s

best collectively. Only the collective can solve its ideological needs

through collective participation and it’s the collective who has to take

responsibility for its propaganda, cultivation, and etc.

But how can a maze of separate collectives connect into a mass

organization? Firstly, by aligning with other collectives whose purposes

and rules are in alignment. Further, once a number of collectives of the

same collectives agree to work together, they simply call a congress to

further coordinate their efforts. The propaganda at that point is

decided by that congress. Rather than a group of fifteen people

struggling to put out a paper, a portion of the federation of

collectives is channeled into that end, while the remainder do

collective work that now translates into a larger organizational work.

Should a collective be concerned fundamentally with establishing anarchy

where it is, it groups with other collectives, reorganizing its

organizational efforts. Should a collective be concerned with liberation

of a territory to achieve independence for colonialized nationals, it

should group with other collectives, reorganizing its organizational

efforts. Three or more collectives become a federation. A neighborhood

organized becomes a community, a commune or federation of communes.

Because armed struggle and mass propaganda alone will not develop into

mass movements and significant irregular and regular forces necessary to

overthrow the USA, mass organizing must be the main focus of a

revolutionary program. If these federations of collectives and communes

choose to institute a republic and this is the mandate of the masses

(that is determined through referendum), then it is the task of the

organization to aid in translating the will of the people into reality.

If at the same time the federation of collectives and communes chooses

to continue anarchy on a national territory, and this is the mandate of

the masses, determined through referendum, then it is the task of the

organization to translate that will into reality.

It must be borne in mind that all the suggestions as to enterprises,

etc. do not beg to be followed and that many times it may be opportune

to attempt objectives in the later phases, and perhaps come back to

others or omit them altogether, it depends on particular conditions and

predilections. Many would shun all elections as a matter of course, and

many would deal with mass organizing alone, more than likely the bulk of

collectives will, and since that is in fact what is needed most that

should prove more than enough. The line between open work and

clandestine work should be respected, because to proclaim a cause in the

open and then do military work is overly risky, you become too easy to

be found. The state will watch public organizations while looking for

clandestine organizations, and it is best that they have to start with

no idea as to participants in military acts.

At the same time, an underground movement simply cannot wait until mass

movements complete their tasks before building itself and beginning its

program of action. People applying for federal firearm licenses should

not be identifiable as movement figures, and at the same time they

should belong to a collective and consequently to a study group. Not

aligned with the public movement, visibly, and prepared to buy weapons

wholesale and in bulk transfer them, distribute them, and join an

underground military collective, with the training and preparation

necessary to be a class-one people’s soldier.

Collectives who infiltrate comrades into correctional departments,

security firms, police departments, and the armed forces should be as

careful to not align with public movements. Build a treasury, procure

weapons, and establish and maintain communications with at least but not

necessarily more than one underground formation through a representative

of a collective or a representative of a federation. This representative

should have no police record and should have no direct involvement with

the underground or public organizations, and coordinating in that line

should have a straight nonsensitive job and the appearance of a regular

worker.

These people should be well studied, disciplined, and known and checked

out. For instance, if a comrade can’t make meetings for a year and

participate in a study group, they shouldn’t be approached to take on

the tasks of revolutionary spies or ordinance personnel. Except in

instances where a regular group operating underground picks members with

straight jobs and records for one of these tasks, the procedure should

be initiated by collectives who choose that task, are not yet public,

and choose as well to develop a military collective. That way only those

responsible pay for mistakes and shoddy security.

The regular army is the immediate army that carries on irregular actions

while the mass movement is being built and militias are being formed.

This army is also made up of collectives formed in prisons, the u.s.

armed forces, and anywhere that a collective of people come together and

decide that that is what they want to do. Like every other collective,

it is a study group as well, and like ordinance and spy collectives,

security is of the utmost importance. Aside from meetings and study

sessions, the underground must conduct security checks, obtain

electronic detection devices, weapons, explosives, apartments, lofts and

warehouses for hospitals, presses, and fronts, [and] among other things,

carry on armed actions, such as bombings, arson, assassinations,

expropriations, and kidnappings. To do this an underground military

collective must establish a people’s academy where books on these

subjects can be studied and where training and testing can be given,

along with ideological cultivation. It must develop the means to supply

identification to all members and develop codes and procedures to change

addresses and locations quickly when a member knowledgeable of them is

captured, as well as devise objective methods of detecting weaknesses in

members that could eventually be used against members of the army, as

well as supporters.

Boastful, vice-ridden, vindictive, petty, and weak-willed people, as

well as “rug eaters,” people who storm out of meetings when they cannot

have their way, should be eliminated before they are suspected of going

over to the side of the enemy, just as bullies and people who talk of

violence and are overly fearful. Character, strength of will, clear

thinking, and physical fitness, along with truly democratic selfless

principles are the elements a guerrilla must pit against superior

mobility, firepower, methodological intelligence, and the principle of

command and/or coercion that the police employ to enlist the cooperation

of citizens and colonial subjects. If a member of a military collective

finds at any point the traits needed [wanting], in his or herself or any

other member, it is time to make new arrangements. At the same time when

and if a guerrilla discovers that he or she can’t make scate, they

should be able to say so and should be allowed to leave the collective

and be respected for their honesty.

With all the fundamentals in check, a collective should consist of two

teams, with from five to seven members in each team. Have two drivers

armed with sidearms, one automatic rifleman or woman or shotgunner also

armed with a sidearm, and other members with sidearms. As soon as

possible these arms should be minimized and all members should obtain

bulletproof vests and grenades, either manufactured or homemade.

Likewise, each group should have electronic detection equipment, and any

member should be able to call a strip search to check for wires at any

meeting. Additionally, each group should employ sniper rifles, bombs, in

providing weapons and fires as they see fit to monopoly capital, defense

industrial complex targets, police stations, businesses that contribute

to rewards, and any opportune enemy targets that can be reconned,

studied, and ascertained to present the least risk. The key is to

consistently be on the attack when not preparing to attack, and

remaining victorious, even when the victories are small, like a small

police station, sporting goods shop, an unarmed government agency,

armored car, a bank, landlord or marshal’s office, electric, gas, or

phone monopoly billing offices. After each action, the group should hold

a critique, keeping in mind that simply because no problems were

encountered or problems were overcome, those facts do not indicate that

either the plan or execution was flawless; it only indicates that the

plan and execution was passable under the particular set of conditions

present.

The most important tasks will be the assassinations of clear enemies

such as police, traitors, landlords, and the liberation of captured

guerrillas; ofttimes this will take no more expertise or execution than

an expropriation. All actions should be considered not only on the basis

of value but also in terms of ability to do. A continuous thoroughly

developed reconnaissance program will make clear weak spots in the

enemy’s defense area, where small portions of them are isolated,

exposed, and vulnerable. Likewise, links with captured guerrillas who

are not celebrated but are in fact dedicated soldiers should yield

easier escapes than known revolutionaries held under extra-deep

extra-tight security. Again, every action should take into account the

risks involved in order to minimize them, as we have no soldiers to hand

over or trade, and small victories that incur no losses are indeed

victories nevertheless. It is the insurgents who choose when and where.

The first and hardest task of any revolutionary army is to avoid getting

“nipped at the bud” and to become established in the minds of the people

as a force that will not be stopped. The second task is to grow and

develop into a force that is responsible for consistent military

political acts, that establishes in the mind of the people that a war is

clearly in progress. The values of the revolutionaries must be reflected

through the conduct and propaganda of the revolutionaries. When the

masses of people conscientiously choose revolutionary values over

reactionary values, to the point where they support revolution and

refuse to collaborate in any way with reaction, the balance of power

will shift (all people is truly of the people).

Once the movement perceives that a balance of power has in fact evolved,

the final offensive begins. The “regular” people’s army units become

commando irregular units attached to the people’s militias, who are in

and therefore within the consensus of the mass party. Destruction of

monopoly capital begins in earnest, with the occupation of territories

and public executions of those who profit from exploitation and

oppression.

GENERAL STATE OF THINGS Perceptions—Experiencing and Building an

Experience Rather Than Allowing the Media to Describe Our Lives

When we examine, where do we go from Here? it is clear from the onset

that to discuss or address that question we have to talk about Here.

Where this particular Here is in relation to everywhere else. In terms

of our health and living conditions. Socially, in terms of how other

people are doing and where they are. Our dealings with other people

individually and in terms of whatever institutions they have built to

serve their purposes, and of course mentally, how we experience things

and what we recall about the events or processes that brought us or made

us decide to come Here.

“We” is plural, meaning more than one. Appropriate because as

individuals we interact with other individuals and, regardless of our

designs, do not live in a vacuum. Since that is the case, who we are

with is part of the answer to where we are, and the answer to what we

are doing with who we are with is part of the answer to where we are

going. Where we might be at a particular time and who we may be with at

a particular time can be answered without the resulting illumination

lighting the way very far. For instance, one can leave here for work,

get on a train and ask oneself that question, and it is obvious that you

are going to work. If you were in a desert aided by a map which showed a

water hole that you were standing near, that would be part of the answer

to where you were. If you were there with others and it appears either

that there was enough water for all or that there wasn’t enough for all

to drink their fill or for all to take rations of it to sustain them

until they got out of the desert or to another water hole, then that

would enter into the question of where you were.

So it would serve us better to ask that question in regards to where we

live. We can agree that we live on a planet called Earth, and go on to

say in the northern hemisphere, and for some of our purposes what is

presently the United States.

When we advance further on that question in relation to where we live,

we may examine ourselves in regards to our health. Investigate how we

feel at the moment and most of the time. What does our diet consist of?

Are our dwellings safe? Do we share these dwellings with others? Who are

they? Who is in the immediate area? Who occupies the surrounding areas?

How do we feel about this, as well as the people closest to us?

If everything appears to be satisfactory and what you do every day

insures you satisfaction, then this manual and suggested agenda will

only serve as a poor diversion. If, on the other hand, you are not

satisfied with things, are trying to decide what to do or if you should

leave wherever you are and take your chances elsewhere, this will

hopefully aid you and those who come in contact with you.

If you feel that the house you live in is not safe or not worth the time

you spend in it and that it’s not worth the money you pay to live there.

If you feel that those who inhabit your surroundings are in a similar

condition, that the money you pay for food and clothing takes up too

great a portion of what you make even after budgeting, that what you do

each day, how you are employed, does nothing to change these matters,

perhaps it is time to consider another course.

If on top of this you perceive decisions that shape these and other

aspects of your life are out of your hands and influence, as well as out

of the hands and influence of those in the environment you share, then

it is time to sit down and talk with your neighbors; if not all of them,

then some of them.

Out of the issues that affect you and them directly, discussion can

disclose new insights and confirmations. Where the basics of living are

the issue, they should be dealt with and listed first. If stretching

money or getting money in the first place are problems, living in a

suitable domain of your own, abuse from law enforcement personnel,

landlords, and other community criminals are a problem, then a program

must be built and maintained to change this situation or eradicate these

problems.

There is no one act an individual can perform that can change these

things in an instant and nothing that a small group of people can do

except begin to create ways of defending themselves and, more

importantly, organize and initiate organizing of large groups of people

in the neighborhood and area; as in all the neighborhoods and areas.

The main thing is to focus on your lives collectively, rather than

accept the definitions and descriptions of others. The things that you

can confirm through your experiences must be more creditable than those

things that you cannot. If you cannot make hide or hair of what the

government’s economic forecasters issue you, you can disregard it. At

the same time, there is no book that will liberate anyone. A book may

give ideas, but it takes people to apply, adapt, and if they don’t work

disregard and develop and find new ones.

A Revolutionary Agenda

At the point where a group of people find themselves agreeing to the

fact that they have the same problems, where their decisions hold no

weight, as well as any influence they may have on the government in

charge, the question is then to decide if the government is the source

of the problem, or a source. When this is perceived to be so, then the

solutions ultimately will be changing that government, overthrowing that

government and replacing it with a new one; overthrowing the government

and replacing it with anarchy; seceding from the government, and in the

waging of a war of liberation by colonized people, that [is to say]

people exploited for their land and labor and controlled by a separate

nation of people.

Organizing—Collectivizing and Revolutionizing Our Lives

None of these solutions can be brought about by decree or by simply

deciding on the part of a small group of people or even a large group.

The society and, in fact, the world is organized a certain way that

results in people having problems basic to living and, of course, have

to be organized another way, to rearrange the situation in a real way.

Before the revolution is organized a movement must be organized, and

before a movement can be organized a revolutionary organization must be

organized that will empower people to distribute power and wealth in a

free egalitizing manner.

Before revolutionary organizations can be built; people who know in

their hearts that only a drastic change will be suitable must cultivate

their thinking and actions into the thoughts and actions that bring

about the changes they seek.

They must accept the consequences of their actions in the event the

state and the establishment forces prevail and know in their hearts that

these forces must be contested, in any event, for a worthwhile

change/revolution to be established, and yet never make a needless

sacrifice. That is, a revolutionary must strive to minimize the

possibility of defeats, and yet act in accordance with the game plan

that will lead to the overthrow of the government and the retaking of

power by a revolutionized mass organization that can set matters right.

In this regard a revolutionary’s private life cannot run contrary to

collective responsibility, and the desire for this change within one’s

self should stem from love of people and the desire to aid the evolution

of society where people can live completely with both bread and liberty.

The more our lives fit into this revolutionary context, the more

revolutionary we become, to the point that we do simply what we conclude

the revolution requires, cognizant of what that means and clear as to

why.

Across these United States, in every large city, there are New Afrikan

colonies, as well as in towns too numerous to name. In the middle of the

night when the streets are deserted one can still see that these are the

areas where New Afrikan people live. The actual real estate belongs to

someone outside the colony. The services that are a matter of course

elsewhere are withheld, apartment buildings and public buildings from

schools to storefronts are boarded up. In the light of day unemployment

is admittedly 50 percent according to the U.S. government. Police patrol

and harass but do not protect residents—they shoot residents; any day’s

reading of a newspaper will recount an incident where a New Afrikan man,

woman, or child was killed or brutalized. At the same time these

conditions that are ripe for rebellion have not been organized into a

revolutionary mass movement.

Hispanic colonies that are often bordering New Afrikan colonies suffer

the same conditions. Puerto Rican, Mexicano, and New Afrikan migrant

workers pick the bulk at America’s tables and are only paid enough to

live to produce new generations of migrant workers. While Native

Americans are isolated on reservations and oppressed in cities and get

the same range of work that other Third World people get; hospital

workers, nursing home workers, factory workers, and employment that make

of them a menial class and castes, and employment that brings less

salary for the same work as whites, but there has been no real mass

movement inside the colonies.

The white working class suffers with wages, unemployment, job-related

injuries that could be avoided, drafts, wage freezes, inflation,

environmental pollution in water, air, and ground, utility hikes, and

etc. that the Third World colonies suffer; as well as being organized by

the state and ruling class to combat the liberation of Third World

colonies. An antinuke movement to prevent the immediate destruction of

the world appears from time to time, along with anti-draft movements.

However, there is no revolutionary mass movement within the white

working class. This is not to say that there are not any public

revolutionary organizations or that there are not revolutionaries who

clearly understand that the genocide of Third World people and the

manipulation and exploitation of the working classes will not cease

until there is revolution. Nor does this absence of a mass movement

imply that there are no revolutionaries among any of the captured

nations or of the white working class who have not historically or

presently showed themselves to be truly heroic and deliberately

revolutionary in their dealings. But it does mean that the need to

organize a mass movement has not been appreciated to a large extent and

that the formulas for doing this have not been developed.

Make no mistake about it, without a mass movement there is no

revolution. An army without a mass movement can never achieve a balance

of power necessary to defeat a government or build a mass movement to

organize the people. A mass movement, on the other hand, can organize

the people and set the conditions for the building of real people’s

armies, which will not only have the power to carry on protracted war

but [will] build the forces strong enough to sweep the government and

ruling class out of power …

Why the Collective First? SMALL IS POSSIBLE …

No one individual can carry out a revolution. If there were thousands of

people gathered to carry out the revolution in any one place, these

people would have to be organized to carry on in a coherent fashion

within a strategic framework to fulfill the tasks of the revolution;

they would have to be organized into companies, clubs, communities, or

some type of political military or economic formation in tune with other

formations, and it would take an organization to do this. It would take

an organization as well to organize smaller groups of people and

individuals. That is, to share a basis of understanding with them as to

your objectives and means to carry them out and the reasons why these

efforts are worthwhile. Moreover, it would take an organization to

actually coordinate efforts by individuals into a means of doing

practical and actual work, as well as coordinating efforts by this work

into a coherent and consistent program that brings people collectively

to the goals desired, while maximizing the effect of small actions and

efforts and securing the progress made.

A collective that is from three to fifteen people is a starting point

and functional unit, where these terms can be developed, where

understandings can be confirmed, and where the potential of individuals

can be maximized. A mass of people can be organized into a network of

collectives, and a few people can build and expand a collective.

Once there are too many people to easily coordinate their actions,

collectives can split in two, and tasks and programs can be coordinated

between collectives. More importantly a collective has the greatest

potential of maintaining a democratic one person, one meaningful vote

process and can demonstrate clearly the power of organized people. A

suggestion might be to keep the numbers in collectives odd, that way

there are no tied votes.

The Collective GUIDELINES, MEETINGS, RULES, AGENDAS, DISCIPLINE …

Once you have formed a group, it’s time to change that group into a

political entity, a collective, if there are three or more people. You

can set a list of things you collectively agree are priorities and make

note of the things that you can deal with, to whatever extent,

immediately, keeping in mind that you will have to work on matters for a

long period of time and that, as you expect the collective to grow, you

collectively establish guidelines.

For instance, even though you consist of a relatively small group of

people, you would want the group to be self-reliant and yet responsive

to the issues before you. You will want to establish ways for members to

contact each other. A method of sticking with and following up on tasks

once started. Criteria for recruiting new members, and standards for

dealing with each other, potential friends and allies, and with enemies.

You will have to set meetings at regular times to deal with matters on

your agenda. Decide what type of propaganda you may employ, share

information with the group that may result in a collective advantage and

advance for the struggle, and check in on projects, as well as setting

aside time for group study and exercise.

Meetings should start on time and end on time and should cover the

matters on the agenda and updates on work done before moving on to

general discussion. They can be at homes on a rotating basis, in public

parks, or at sites where tasks are being performed. Each collective

should get two loose-leaf notebooks for the gathering of political and

economics intelligence, with dividers between each topic, and notebook

paper with ads, news clippings, and other printed items as a storehouse

of information to be used in future research. That way when individual

members run across information of value, the collective gets the

opportunity to review it and gain by its storage. It is always a good

idea rather than everyone buying the same newspapers to collectively buy

them and collectively choose books and magazines. Particular members

pick up particular publications at different meetings to share.

Rules should be within reason but definite. For instance, no member

should be allowed to assault another member and yet continue to be a

member. No member should have drugs or alcohol in his or her possession

while at a project site or be under the influence of drugs or alcohol

when doing collective tasks or representing the collective. No member

should live off the proceeds of prostitution or sell hard drugs.

Agendas are necessary both in meetings and away from meetings, since

they aid the collective in focusing input. At each meeting an agenda

should be set and followed. At the close of each meeting the agenda for

the period between that meeting and the next should be set, and every

agenda should have an automatic re-check of tasks assigned or

volunteered for from the next.

Discipline should be clear in regards to infractions. In relation to

rules, for instance, if it comes to a collective’s attention that a

member sold heroin or was an informer that member would have to go.

Obviously, a member who was late at meetings or who had failed to

attempt a task or join in collective work wouldn’t be subject to the

same fate. However, if a member actually missed enough functions the

collective would have to proceed as if that member wasn’t there and

under the circumstances decide the correct way to deal with minor

problems. For instance, when a member misses a regular meeting he/she

misses the opportunity to vote on whatever issues are before the

collective, and if there is no advance notice of any particularly

important matter, this cannot equal to being absent at a collective

function where a task has been decided upon. Since all members are

required to keep in touch and informed of meetings and collective tasks,

the excuse of missing a task through ignorance by missing a meeting is

not valid. There will more than likely be meetings missed and tasks for

different reasons from time to time which the collective will have to

pass judgement on. More than likely some members will drop out and

return from time to time if that is permitted. As some drop out at only

stages you should be as happy as you are when you recruit a new member

and unless a member has committed a serious offense against the

collective, or [against] the people while in the collective, they should

be considered. When a member drops out due to commitment or differences

they may reexamine their practice once away from the collective and

renew their efforts once back in.

A collective must not be a group of vindictive individuals ready to take

sides against anyone for petty reasons. At the same time for offences

that fall between being late or absent from a meeting or task, and

assault, theft, drug possession or sale, there should be not only a

collective disciplinary proceeding and a punishment deemed fair by the

majority but an extra task. An individual under discipline should have

to write an essay on where his or her action or actions were wrong. The

reasoning or their motive in the particular matter. Refusal to do this

should result in expulsion, and all serious offenses should include

permanent expulsion. If a collective finds out later that it was wrong,

the members who voted for the expulsion, which should be a matter of

record, should write an apology and self-criticism to the individual in

question, just as the individual would be expected to write. In many

cases it might be a good idea for members of the collective to write an

essay before joining as to their aims and feelings.

Resources PEOPLE, TIME, UNUSED SPACE …

Starting out small and broke, the first objective of a collective is not

to get in debt, either in terms of money or in terms of any patrons who

may wish for any reasons to bankroll the organization. The desire to

rent an office when in fact meetings can be held in homes, schools,

parks, vacant lots, and in favorable conditions storefronts that can be

taken over and occupied.

The task is to organize people through services that the government or

corporations cannot perform, if they had the intentions, as well as the

people themselves. The task before the collective is to initiate

services and maintain self-reliance. Propaganda of the deed and mouth to

mouth, as well as posters, graffiti, letters to the editors, and

leaflets can accompany but cannot take the place of actual work and

actual organizing. The desire to put out a paper which must be funded by

a broke collective usually without an established system of distribution

is crazy, and at the beginning is only an expressed view of small

organizations.

A collective treasury should be designed before the details of money

become a question, and by collective what is meant is that all funds

brought into it are collective funds, and all funds leaving it do so

after being accounted for collectively. If a bank account is set up then

at least two members should have the power to withdraw funds only when

at least both members are present. When funds are not held in banks and

are held in safes, the safes should be in the homes of members who do

not know the combination and should only be attended to by others when a

vote has been taken. When commercial banks and safes are not used, the

money raised collectively should be distributed after meetings have

decided what should be the aim or needs to be taken care of.

Just as unused space in terms of a meeting place is a resource, time is

a resource. Members are therefore required to invest time other than

meeting-time into the organization, whether employed or unemployed.

Investigation into resources should be made, as well as possible

services to the community. For instance, it may be profitable and a good

means of conducting propaganda to be in a babysitting service or to

liberate an in-court lot and charge for parking or to develop a craft

into a light industry and save the proceeds until a used car or a van

can be bought to begin a gypsy car service.

At the same time, some investigation can be made into the whereabouts of

recycling plants. At least one day a week a collective can converge on a

vacant lot, bag aluminum and steel cans, bottles, and clear the

particular lot of trash. At the same time, spraypainting or postering

the area with the message you intend to get to people.

People seeing you at work get to wonder who you are and why you are

doing what you are doing. At the same time a steady source of income

enters the treasury to be saved until a bigger source of capital can be

obtained. If, for instance, you buy a used car and start a car service

where members of the collective alternate shifts, the money goes back

into the treasury and the collective continues the process of

accumulating collective capital.

Once the weather is favorable you plant Victory Gardens in the vacant

lots close to members where they can water them straight from the

building they live in, if possible. You invite the community to help you

clear more vacant lots and turn them into gardens. After investigating

what would be wisest and easy to grow and as vegetation ripens, you set

up stands in areas people pass through and sell produce at a reasonable

price; after dividing the produce between people in the collective

and/or organizing gardens for people in the community to do with as they

see fit.

Once you are known and recognized throughout the community and more than

enough money is coming in, it is time, if you cannot simply liberate a

place, to rent one and buy a press, even if just a hand crank model.

Arrangements should be made to have a public phone installed, which will

not only be cheaper but discourage hours of sap rap. Then you can start

turning out leaflets with a phone number to be contacted by and an

address which should be occupied from noon to at least 8 p.m. so people

can stop in after work as well as during the day. This place should be

used for more than a contact and for meetings. A book exchange can now

be initiated, where anyone can bring a book in and trade it for another

book. A clothing exchange, likewise, could be initiated so as to not

only serve people but bring them in contact with the organization on the

basis of needs.

When profitable and no other use can be made of the rented space,

political movies, decided upon by the collective, and plays should be

staged. Dances, likewise, with no alcoholic beverages sold, on a weekly

basis can be held. At the same time, periodicals from organizations

friendly to us, as well as any periodicals thought appropriate to put

out collectively, can be distributed.

However, at this stage the collective organizational goals include

buying and taking an entire building big enough to cover all

organizational functions. But not right away, unless someone donates a

building, knowing that this organization wants things but never favors,

then the regular publishing of a newspaper can be included.

At the same time this point, or early points, should mark the beginnings

of rent strike organizing when it is clear that there are enough people

to see the entire process through. Everyone who comes in contact with

any of the collectives should be informed as to the goals and principles

of the collective and rules of membership, if they are potential friends

…

PART TWO

Although this is written in parts and is a suggested agenda, this is not

to suggest every suggestion in Part One must be taken up before moving

to the suggestions in Part Two, or that equal or better ways to reach

people and be self-reliant are not to be found. Success must be measured

in terms of how many people have been organized and participate fully in

terms of developing and internationalizing the ideology of the group.

Success must also be measured by the relationship with the community and

area residents and the degree of self-reliance and freedom from

counterrevolutionary influences.

In order for a revolutionary collective or organization to grow into a

revolutionary mass organization certain requirements must be met, which

include:

• The acceptance of the organization by the people the organization

intends to organize into an organization which is on their side and

which places their interest before the interest of any individual or

group of individuals. People must accept that the organization is theirs

and intends to address and does address their needs.

• People must know that the organization is firmly rooted and is not a

“fly by night” group. That the principles and programs are sound and

that the organization is guided in an intelligent manner that doesn’t

allow or tolerate corruption in any form.

People must feel that the goals of the organization can be reached and

that the goals are worthwhile and deserve their participation and

support …

Building and Aiding the Building of Other Collectives SUGGESTING

LINES ALONG FOOD, CLOTHING, AND SHELTER …

A collective, besides carrying out its program and proving its program

can work, must encourage the formation of other collectives. As new

members are recruited, they must be given the opportunity to join a

collective process, whether it’s one new member or one thousand. Having

a list of names in a book doesn’t organize people or transform a group

of people into an organization. Having people enter collectives,

participate in study and discussion groups, attend meetings, vote on

issues, do organizational work and participate in collective tasks, air

their ideas, and organize other people, transforms people into

revolutionaries and transforms groups of people into revolutionary

collectives.

New members should join old collectives and form new collectives and be

aided both in terms of encouragement and in terms of material support.

For instance, if a collective already formed has tools and isn’t using

them on a particular day, they could lend them to a newly formed

collective. [In] the case of sticks with nails for picking trash, any

collective would look for suitable sticks when cleaning a lot, and it’s

cheaper to buy nails by the pound. Also, different collectives should

help each other plow plots and harvest and look for other suitable

vacant lots and areas. Food, herbs, or even green grass, cloves, and

dandelions look better than trash-filled spaces between buildings. Spray

painting on the walls of abandoned buildings, flags, trash barrels for

debris, for those who would otherwise litter, painted with the symbol of

the organization is constant propaganda. A knowledge of the planting

seasons for different vegetables carries this on from May until

November.

Special attention should be made to aid squatters who live in abandoned

buildings. They should be encouraged and aided to turn the lots adjacent

to their dwellings into Victory Gardens, because they have begun to

literally take back the land already. Collectives of squatters may be

formed in the beginning of warm weather, equipped with camping gear and

building skills. As squatters are many times unemployed, the investments

of time and employment by their own collectives may be the actual

material basis of the superseding society.

One of the objectives is to plant so many gardens that it becomes

impossible to go through what were before ghost towns [without seeing

them transformed] into areas where the best aspects of city and country

living merge. Church groups, clubs, gangs should be encouraged as well

to take over plots, as well as coordination for the purposes of trade

between groups and forming of a “People’s Market,” where each group and

collective can trade and sell their produce and carry on their own

business independently.

At the point where there are a number of collectives in a given area

attempts should be made of forming communes. First where buildings are

taken over in a given area and where buildings are bought. Solid

structures should be investigated for the purposes of establishing food

co-ops.

None of this should be dealt with as ends unto themselves but as means

to propagandize and organize the mass movement. Propaganda in front of

structures, as well as bulletin boards outside and in, should alert all

who enter to programs, activities, and meetings of the organization.

Possible employment outside of organizations for certain members may be

investigated, in the ways of Veterans seeking loans and moneys from the

government to buy houses and open businesses and government programs

where houses can be bought for a dollar and repaired.

These ongoing programs are to continue year in year out with the goals

of revolutionizing squatters’ unions and organizing regional land banks,

where groups of collectives pool resources to buy large tracts and

connecting tracts of lands in given areas around and away from where the

organization began, and most importantly until neighborhoods are

transformed into commun-commun-e-ties. This is not only to initiate

people’s control over their lives and show the power of organization but

to demonstrate the logic of socialism and justice and the desirability

of revolution.

PART THREE

During this time, alternative energy sources that give independence from

monopoly capital should be carried out and developed to as great an

extent as possible. Wood-burning stoves should be built and installed in

buildings taken over by squatters as quickly as possible, and there

should be no inhibitions from collecting wood from structures less

habitable.

Offices should set a fund aside for the buying and installing of

windmills and solar heating equipment, this not only frees the

organization of monthly bills, but demonstrates to a public that no

donations are accepted without a good or service rendered, that the

organization takes steps to be independent and cuts overhead so as to be

able to serve more and better.

A building owned and propagated as being owned by a collective or an

organization, with visible and independent sources of power and

independence, is a permanent piece of propaganda.

A clothing exchange is a service that merely calls for the allocation of

space and cadre to deal with the public. A food co-op is clearly an

operation existing on the principle of buying bulk at the cheapest price

and distributing at the cheapest price a wide range of wholesome foods,

beverages, and herbs. To make a donation to see a movie, attend a dance,

play, or recital of revolutionary content in such a place is to know

that money is going into a revolutionary process.

Every member should have access to wholesale food and clothing and have

tasks that include organizing and propagandizing and community service.

Members not employed elsewhere may opt to join a manufacturing

collective or a service collective. For example, money generated from a

gypsy cab service, movies, dances, and open-air markets could be

reinvested in collective capital, such as more gypsy cabs, etc.

Other capital investments may include machines and material for clothing

production, videotaping of plays, canning of commune-grown foods, etc.

The task being to become free of capitalism and to better serve lumpen

proletarian and proletarian people by the cultivation of revolutionary

ideology through theory and practice on a mass scale. The building of

alternative economic structures along socialist lines and building the

grounds for the two classes to interact in a progressive manner by

initiating the means for the two classes to interact along principled

lines and adopting to a degree the role of the revolutionary

proletariat.

PART FOUR

By the time an organization advances this far in one area certain

processes should have been initiated in other areas, through members

moving to other areas and initiating collectives but also through

example which a revolutionary organization should be clear in both

setting and explaining, especially with mass level participation. Once a

federation of collectives is established in one area and progress is

noted, the most progressive elements of other areas should be invited to

witness and formulas should be shared, as this is not a competition.

When an organization takes on the practices and guiding theories of

another it becomes the organization. When a neighborhood becomes a

commune, members should aid in building a federation of communes, just

as collectives aid in building a federation of collectives.

A Word on Collective Business

Savings from individual collectives through enterprises that the members

are engaged in, funds from a rotating basis from programs jointly

carried out by collectives, and pooling resources are the means used to

generate collective capital. No collective will receive government

funding, except in the case of veterans from the U.S. armed services

demanding their benefits. The organization should work with Third World

and anti-imperialist veterans’ groups, not only in aiding them to fight

for their rights to benefits but to form collectives and be a part of

the federation. However, funds from different government departments

will always have strings attached and tend to direct interference from

the U.S. government under the justification of protecting the American

taxpayer. Likewise, money from corporations also leads to intervention,

aiding to investigate the resources of a given collective and later the

federation, tax investigations, fishing expeditions into what is being

done with the money. Worst of all, these grants make the entire

organization suspect to those who it serves.

The primary purpose of collective business besides building the

infrastructure for a superseding society is of course to serve the needs

of people we intend to aid, and in those regards not be a burden or a

source of competition, except in cases where capitalist businesses from

people who live outside or inside the community take advantage of

conditions to exploit the community.

For instance, if there is only one laundromat in the area, which is

exploiting the people, a group of collectives may pool resources and

establish another laundromat that may merely come out even. We will

encourage people to eat in family-owned and operated restaurants, rather

than chain fast-food enterprises or expensive restaurants, as well as

small stores, to pool resources and buy in greater bulk to make their

prices cheaper.

At the same time, we will open food co-ops to give people the

opportunity to be a part of an operation that helps them and to be able

to get foods that are cheaper and of more variety than at established

locations. We will not open a liquor store and at the same time will

promote buying from community stores if you drink and making your own

wines, whiskeys, and beers. We will not open a video or pinball parlor

or otherwise engage in an enterprise whose motives are not clearly seen

as practical fulfillment of needs.

At the same time, some vacant lots may be converted into picnic areas,

flower gardens, playgrounds, small parks for the playing of checkers,

chess, darts, horseshoes, etc.

When a certain strength is reached some collectives should open daycare

centers, revolutionary cultural centers, and when possible schools.

Every advancement on our part must be seen as an advancement on the

people’s part. Rather than taking over communities we must initiate the

reorganization of communities; reorganization, because communities are

already organized, but not for the purpose of bettering the condition of

the inhabitants or for their liberation. Our task is to revolutionize

and neutralize all we come in contact with …

Organizing Block Associations and People’s Militias …

Block associations are very important, and when members of collectives

live in blocks that already have block associations, they should join,

and collectives should take care to consider block association meetings

when scheduling collective and commune meetings, so that members can

attend both.

At the same time collectives should help to organize block associations

whenever they conduct rent strikes or initiate Victory Gardens or any

type of mass work in a given area. If there is already a block

association where a rent strike is being organized, tenants should be

encouraged to join in rather than set up a rival association, as well as

when a Victory Garden is being initiated.

Candidates for recruitment into collectives should be asked to join and

be familiarized with the programs and rules. This keeps the organization

on ground level in touch with people who are familiar with what the

organization is doing and makes a lot of work easier.

For instance, landlords often count on people not showing up for court

and filing forms to contest evictions or conditions, and a particular

tenant may indeed have to work or be at the hospital or otherwise be

indisposed on a particular day. In that case an organizer who may

represent people in court may have to get another tenant instead of the

particular tenant to file a form. At the same time, as many tenants may

have the same date in court from the same building, and many of these

people may have to work, they may be replaced by people from other

buildings who may need the same type of standing at a court date for a

rent strike they are involved in. This is easier to arrange when an

organizer can simply walk to the next building and talk to another

tenant. This way no court days are forfeited, and landlords are

contested every inch of the way. The more delay tactics are used the

more money is withheld by the tenants.

Each time the landlord concedes the power, the tenants’ union grows;

each time a landlord is forced to give up a building and the organized

tenants take it over directly, this should be noted and “celebrated.” As

the “city” is the landlord in many cases, actions should be sustained in

an effort to force the city to give in. When through a crooked court a

landlord receives a ruling in his favor, an organization fully prepared

to make court dates should propagandize the struggle and appeal to civil

court leaving the landlord to pay two sets of lawyers, the lower and

higher court, while organizers train other tenants to be organizers and

target other buildings of the same landlord with enough violations to

initiate rent strikes and court actions.

With collective members involved in tenant unions and block associations

consolidating mass power within the community, knowing that these

organizers do in fact have organizational backup, former tasks that

still have to be carried out become easier and advance becomes possible.

Collectives have a responsibility to protect patrons who come to dances,

movies, and other organizational functions. From time to time members

will volunteer to serve as security. To prevent assaults, stop alcohol

and drugs from entering premises, search out electronic eavesdropping

devices, etc. Those found to be satisfactory should be encouraged to be

militia and perhaps represent the People’s Militia while dealing with

security.

In the same view, members of collectives who have formed people’s car

services and have shown themselves to be of the traits of

militiamen/women should be harmonized with each other, as well as those

living in the neighborhood. Their cars and radios give them the means to

report enemy and criminal movements and transport militia to given areas

quickly.

An intelligence network can be established and a People’s Militia with

members being known for their political practice over a period of time.

Neighborh

[1] Arnold H. Lubasch, “Key Suspect is Arrested in Brink’s Car Robbery,”

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.

[2] Kuwasi Balagoon, in Look for Me in the Whirlwind: From the Panther

21 to 21^(st) Century Revolutions, ed. dequi kioni-sadiki and Matt Meyer

(Oakland: PM Press, 2017), 201–6; Tim Blunk and Ray Levasseur, eds.,

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“‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’: Gloria Richardson, the Cambridge

Movement, and the Radical Black Activist Tradition,” in Sisters in the

Struggle: African-American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power

Movement, ed. Betty Collier-Thomas and V.P. Franklin (New York: New York

University Press, 2001), 174–96; Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter:

The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: Bantam,

1994), 290–92.

[4] Balagoon, Look for Me in the Whirlwind, 372, 392.

[5] Jesse Gray, quoted in Peter Noel, “By Any Means Unnecessary,” The

Village Voice, September 2, 1999.

[6] Balagoon, Look for Me in the Whirlwind, 368–72; David Gilbert, “In

Memory of Kuwasi Balagoon, New Afrikan Freedom Fighter,” see page 201 in

current volume. Kuwasi Balagoon, “Anarchy Can’t Fight Alone,” see page

150 in current volume.

[7] Harold Cruse, “Revolutionary Nationalism and the Afro-American,”

Studies on the Left 2, no. 3 (1962), accessed October 24, 2018,

brotherwisedispatch.blogspot.com

. The first self-described revolutionary nationalist organization, the

Revolutionary Action Movement, stated in 1963 that it was “somewhere

between the Nation of Islam (Black Muslims) and SNCC (the Student

Nonviolent Coordinating Committee)”; Max Stanford, in Black Nationalism

in America, ed. John Bracey, Elliot Rudwick, and August Meier

(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), 508; Akinyele Omowale Umoja, “From

One Generation to the Next: Armed Self-Defense, Revolutionary

Nationalism, and the Southern Black Freedom Movement,” Souls: A Critical

Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society 15, no. 3 (Fall 2013):

224–25.

[8] Balagoon, Look for Me in the Whirlwind, 438; Balagoon, see page 150

in current volume.

[9] Akinyele Omowale Umoja, “Set Our Warriors Free: The Legacy of the

Black Panther Party and Political Prisoners,” in Black Panthers

Reconsidered, ed. Charles E. Jones (Baltimore, MD: Black Classics Press,

1998), 418–19.

[10] Muhammad Ahmad, We Will Return in the Whirlwind: Black Radical

Organizations 1960–1975 (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 2007), 167–70.

[11] Murray Kempton, The Briar Patch: The Trial of the Panther 21 (New

York: Da Capo Press, 1997), 43; Sundiata Acoli, “A Brief History of the

Black Panther Party: Its Place in the Black Liberation Movement,”

February 4, 1985, accessed October 24, 2018,

www.hartford-hwp.com

; Balagoon, Look for Me in the Whirlwind, 463.

[12] Lumumba Shakur, in Look for Me in the Whirlwind, 463; Acoli, “A

Brief History of the Black Panther Party”; Kalonji Changa, “Tupac and

the Revolutionary Shakur family: Interview with Bilal Sunni-Ali,” New

Afrikan 77, accessed October 24, 2018,

tpmovement.tumblr.com/post/50587379244/shakur-family-tree; Ahmad, We

Will Return in the Whirlwind, 191.

[13] Balagoon, Look for Me in the Whirlwind, 438.

[14] Kit Holder, “The History of the Black Panther Party 1966–1971” (PhD

diss., University of Massachusetts, 1990), 255.

[15] James Tracy, “Rising Up: Poor, White, and Angry in the New Left,”

in The Hidden 1970s: Histories of Radicalism, ed. Dan Berger (New

Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010), 223.

[16] Holder, “The History of the Black Panther Party 1966–1971,” 227.

[17] Morris Kaplan, “Bomb Plot is Laid to 21 Panthers: Black Extremists

Accused of Planning Explosions at Macy’s and Elsewhere,” New York Times,

April 3, 1969, accessed October 24, 2018,

www.nytimes.com

; “Panther 21 Trial: Another Chicago,” February 20, 1970, accessed

October 24, 2018,

jfk.hood.edu

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[18] T.J. English, The Savage City: Race, Murder, and a Generation on

the Edge (New York: Harper Collins, 2011), 267–68.

[19] Sekou Odinga, in Can’t Jail the Spirit: Political Prisoners in the

U.S. (Chicago: Committee to End the Marion Lockdown, 1990), 143;

Lubasch, “Key Suspect Is Arrested in Brink’s Car Robbery”; Juan M.

Vasquez, “One of Panther 21 Admits Helping Anti-Police Sniper,” New York

Times, October 8, 1971, accessed October 24, 2018,

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[20] Akinyele Omowale Umoja, “Repression Breeds Resistance: The Black

Liberation Army and the Radical Legacy of the Black Panther Party,” New

Political Science 21, no. 2 (June 1999): 138–39.

[21] Thomas Courtney, Testimony of Sgt. Thomas Courtney in Hearings

Before the Permanent Sub-Committee of the Committee Investigations of

Government Operations United States Senate, Ninety-First Congress, First

Session, Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders, June 26 and 30, 1969, Part

20, Washington, DC, U.S. Government Printing Office, 4235.

[22] Assata Shakur, Assata: The Autobiography of a Revolutionary

(Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 2001).

[23] Holder, “The History of the Black Panther Party 1966–1971,” 258.

[24] Ibid., 258–61.

[25] Umoja, “Repression Breeds Resistance,” 141; Balagoon, see page 151

in current volume.

[26] Umoja, “Set Our Warriors Free,” 421–22; Umoja, “Repression Breeds

Resistance,” 138–39.

[27] Balagoon, see page 151 in current volume.

[28] Umoja, “Repression Breeds Resistance,” 141–43.

[29] Balagun, “Kuwasi at 60”; Balagoon, Look for Me in the Whirlwind,

494–515; “6 Are Arraigned in 1970 Jail Riots: 2 Panthers Acquitted Last

Week Among Defendants,” New York Times, May 19, 1971, accessed October

26, 2018,

www.nytimes.com

; “Prison Struggle 1970–1,” n.d., accessed October 26, 2018,

abolitionistpaper.files.wordpress.com

; “Queens House Of Detention Prison Riot” (photo), October 1970,

accessed October 26, 2018,

www.flickr.com

.

[30] Balagoon, see pages 150–1 in current volume.

[31] Gilbert (2003), p. 9; Commission on Criminal Justice Services, New

York State Report of the Policy Group on Terrorism, November 1985,

99–100; “Panther 21 Trial: Another Chicago”; Mutulu Shakur, “To Our

Brother Kuwasi Balagoon,” Campaign to Free Dr. Mutulu Shakur, 1986.

[32] Balagoon, see page 151 in current volume.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Ashanti Alston, correspondence with author, September 7, 2013.

Alston is a former Black Liberation Army member, political prisoner, and

anarchist activist. See Ashanti Alston, “Propaganda of the Deed,”

Workers’ Solidarity (October 1998); Abel Paz, Durruti in the Spanish

Revolution (Oakland: AK Press, 2007), 9–22, 87, 88, 116.

[35] Ojore Lutalo, phone interview with author, October 12, 2013.

[36] Kamau Sadiki, discussion with author, Atlanta, Georgia, November

27, 2003; Cyril Innis, discussion with Charles E. Jones and author,

Bronx, New York, June 5, 2013.

[37] “Bashir Hamed: Black Liberation Army Political Prisoner,” It’s

About Time 5, no. 4 (Fall–Winter 2001).

[38] Clark would be killed in an attempted escape on January 19, 1976;

Commission on Criminal Justice Services, New York State Report of the

Policy Group on Terrorism (November 1985), 102.

[39] Ojore Nuru Lutalo, in Can’t Jail the Spirit: Political Prisoners in

the U.S. (Chicago: Committee to End the Marion Lockdown, 2002), 132.

[40] Umoja, “Repression Breeds Resistance,” 154; “Sekou Odinga—New

Afrikan Prisoner of War,” Arm the Spirit 14 (Fall 1982): 1, 9.

[41] Black Liberation Army, “On Strategic Alliance of Armed Military

Forces of the Revolutionary Nationalist and Anti-Imperialist Movement,”

in America the Nation-State: The Politics of the United States from a

State Building Perspective, ed. Imari Obadele (Baton Rouge, LA: The

Malcolm Generation, 1998), 423–24.

[42] Umoja, “Set Our Warriors Free,” 425; Umoja, “Repression Breeds

Resistance,” 148–49.

[43] Lubasch, “Key Suspect Is Arrested in Brink’s Car Robbery”; Eileen

Putman, “Jury Indicts Eighth Suspect in Brinks Robbery,” Schenectady

Gazette, January 16, 1982, accessed October 27, 2018,

news.google.com

.

[44] Balagoon, see pages 95–6 in the current volume. In the grammar of

the New Afrikan Independence Movement the first personal singular is not

capitalized (“i”) and the first letter in first person plural is

capitalized (“We”). This is the application of a principle of the New

Afrikan Creed, “The community is more important than the individual.”

[45] See pages 148–9 in this volume.

[46] See page 152 in this volume.

[47] See page 153 in this volume.

[48] Balagun, “Kuwasi at 60.”

[49] A clandestine Puerto Rican nationalist organization that engaged in

armed struggle.

[50] While mention of the African National Congress and the Palestine

Liberation Organization in this context may raise some eyebrows today,

it should be remembered that in the 1980s both were considered

legitimate national liberation organizations that at times faced severe

government repression.

[51] This trial, the first political use of the anti-mafia RICO law,

began April 4, 1983, the six defendants being Sekou Odinga, Bilal

Sunni-Ali, Cecilio Ferguson, Jamal Josephs, Silvia Baraldini, and Iliana

Robinson. Others, such as the then-fugitive Mutulu Shakur, were

convicted in later trials.

[52] Samuel Brown was a member of the BLA arrested in relation to the

Brink’s action who cracked and started cooperating with the police.

[53] During the Reagan administration Jeanne Kirkpatrick was U.S.

ambassador to the United Nations and George P. Shultz was secretary of

state.

[54] Leader of the anti-communist Solidarity trade union in Poland,

which was at the time a satellite of the Soviet Union and was used as a

constant example of human rights violations in the capitalist media.

[55] In the 1980s, Atlanta was hit by a wave of serial killings of New

Afrikan children. Under immense public pressure, the Atlanta police

arrested and convicted Wayne Williams, a young Black music producer who

had no previous criminal record. The evidence was largely

circumstantial, and many people have believed Williams to be the victim

of a coverup to protect a white cop child molester.

[56] On June 22, 1982, Willie Turks, a thirty-four-year-old city transit

worker, was one of three Black transit employees driving home after work

through Brooklyn when their car was attacked by a white mob. Turks was

savagely beaten to death and his coworkers injured. Of the approximately

twenty white men in the mob, the police and prosecutors indicted only

six, and none were ever convicted of murder. One had his charges

dropped, one died before his trial, the others received terms of five,

three, three, and two years, and served less than that—Paul Mormando,

who was only convicted of assault and sentenced to two years, was

released after only nine months.

[57] This sentence is as it appears in the New Jersey ABC edition of

Balagoon’s Opening Statement. While accurate regarding sterilizations,

Balagoon’s infant mortality statistics may have been the result of a

typo as the correct statistics for 1980 are roughly 23.1 per thousand

(Black infant mortality) and 12 per thousand (white infant mortality),

not per hundred.

[58] Anastasio Somoza’s brutal dictatorship in Nicaragua was overthrown

by a popular left-wing revolution in 1979. Balagoon was writing at a

time when Nicaragua was ruled by the left-wing Sandinistas and was the

victim of military attacks by the CIA-backed Contras.

[59] Waverly Brown was the only Black cop on the Nyack police force and

Edward O’Grady was his white sergeant in the NPD. Both were killed at

the roadblock during the Brink’s action.

[60] Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis,

Tennessee. El Hajj Malik Shabazz is better known by the name Malcolm X

and was assassinated on February 1, 1965, in the Audubon Ballroom in New

York City. Mark Essex was a Black revolutionary in New Orleans who got

fed up, armed himself, and started shooting cops. He was killed after a

day-long siege on January 7, 1973.

[61] The “King Alfred Plan” was detailed in a radical Sixties novel, The

Man Who Cried I Am by John Williams. It involved using the army to

physically exterminate the entire Black population of the U.S. It was

published in the Black Panther newspaper as if it were fact, and was

widely discussed in radical circles and believed by many (including

Balagoon) to be an actual existing government plan. Nevertheless, it was

a work of fiction.

[62] New Afrikans arrested in connection to the Brink’s expropriation

who flipped and cooperated with the police and prosecution.

[63] Marilyn Buck was a white political prisoner. During the 1960s, as

an anti-racist activist in California, she was convicted of helping

former Black Panthers. Federal prosecutors often referred to her as “the

only white member of the Black Liberation Army.” After years in prison,

she escaped but was later recaptured and convicted of helping to free

Assata Shakur and other revolutionary acts. Update to 2019 edition: In

2008 Marilyn was granted a parole date in February 2011, then won an

advance to August 8, 2010. With less than twelve months left to serve,

she was diagnosed with a rare and very aggressive uterine cancer.

Despite surgery and chemotherapy, treatment came too late to save her

life. She was granted an early release on July 15, 2010. She paroled to

Brooklyn, New York, where for the next twenty days she savored every

moment of her freedom.

[64] Judy Clark, another of Balagoon’s white codefendants in the Brink’s

case.

[65] The name given by the South African government of the day for the

reservations that Blacks were confined to under apartheid.

[66] Victims of a serial killer.

[67] In the 1980s and early 1990s, a popular left-wing guerrilla force,

the FMLN, was active in El Salvador. With U.S. aid in the form of

military “advisers,” mercenaries, and arms, the Salvadoran military and

paramilitary death squads carried out a scorched earth policy against

the entire peasant population and those suspected of left-wing

sympathies.

[68] A Salvadoran death squad raped and murdered three American nuns and

a female religious worker in 1980; in 1982 a death squad killed four

Dutch journalists who had written articles critical of the government.

[69] While less than two dozen U.S. “advisers” were killed during the

Salvadoran dirty war (1980–1993), the army and paramilitaries killed

some fifty thousand people, the vast majority of them peasants.

[70] This was the case of the New York Panther 21.

[71] UNITA was an anti-communist army controlled by the South African

apartheid regime that worked to destabilize the Marxist Angolan

government in the 1970s and 80s.

[72] The essay Kuwasi is referring to here, The Continuing Appeal of

Nationalism, was written by the late Fredy Perlman and is available as a

pamphlet from Black and Red Press.

[73] On May 13, 1985, Philadelphia police bombed a home belonging to the

radical group MOVE, while eleven Black people, including four children,

were trapped inside. All but two, Ramona and Birdie Africa, were killed

in the police attack.

[74] Wilson Goode was the first Black mayor of Philadelphia and, as

such, presided over the MOVE bombing.

[75] Neville Johnson was a 20-year-old Black man, shot through the head

and killed by a Miami police officer while playing a video game in an

arcade, on December 28, 1982. (Note to 2019 edition.)

[76] Michael Stewart was a 25-year-old Black man arrested on September

15, 1983, for spraypainting graffiti in a New York City subway station;

he was beaten while in custody, went into a coma, and died of his

injuries thirteen days later. (Note to 2019 edition.)

[77] The Symbionese Liberation Army was an armed group active in

California in the 1970s. It carried out assassinations and bank

robberies, and was made famous through the kidnapping of heiress Patty

Hearst. On May 16, 1974, police surrounded and attacked the group’s

safehouse in Los Angeles. The house caught fire; six guerrillas were

killed, either by the fire, or shot by police as they attempted to flee

or surrender. (Note to 2019 edition.)

[78] Azania was the name given to what is still today the country of

South Africa by the radical anti-integrationist wing of the

anti-apartheid liberation movement of the time.

[79] Steve Biko of the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa, was

in fact murdered by police while being interrogated in Port Elizabeth.

Kuwasi mistakenly situates his death in Robben Island, the notorious

maximum security prison that housed many anti-apartheid political

prisoners in South Africa. (Note to 2019 edition.)

[80] In 1981 and 1982, bombings against a hydro substation and an arms

manufacturer were carried out in Canada by a group called Direct Action,

while a sister organization known as the Wimmin’s Fire Brigade

firebombed several video stores specializing in pornography. When five

members of the Vancouver anarchist scene were arrested in relation to

these actions they became known as the Vancouver Five.

[81] The Guardian was the historic main weekly newspaper of the U.S.

socialist left. Started in the 1940s to provide a broader voice for

pro-Moscow independent socialists, it became a voice of the 1960s New

Left, and then pro-Maoist before its final collapse.

[82] The Equal Rights Amendment would have made sex discrimination

unconstitutional in the United States. It was defeated in a referendum

in 1982, largely as a result of the New Right’s first major political

mobilization.

[83] The Reagan Administration had sent eight hundred marines into

Lebanon in 1982 to support the pro-U.S. Lebanese Army and Israeli armed

forces that were fighting against pro-Palestinian groups. The marines

stayed until 1984.

[84] In 1983 the U.S. invaded the Caribbean island of Grenada to

suppress its Marxist government and establish a pro-American regime.

[85] United Freedom Front and United Fighting Group were names used in

bombing communiqués by anti-imperialist underground groups.

[86] The Reverend Moon is the head of the far-right Unification Church

(“the Moonies”). In the 1980s, he was briefly jailed for income tax

fraud.

[87] DINA was the Chilean secret police during the right-wing Pinochet

dictatorship, and Alpha 66 is a paramilitary Cuban exile organization

sponsored by the CIA. Both were involved in violent attacks against

their opponents internationally, the most infamous in North America

probably being the assassination of former Chilean ambassador Orlando

Letellier in Washington, DC, in 1976.

[88] The sole survivor of Jonathan Jackson’s raid on the Marin County

Courthouse on August 7, 1970, Ruchell “Cinque” Magee remains in prison

today. He is one of the longest-held political prisoners in the world.

[89] The New Afrikan People’s Organization December 21, 1986, memorial

for Kuwasi Balagoon, held in Harlem.

[90] BLA member Assata Shakur was liberated from a New Jersey prison in

November 1979. She now lives as a political refugee in Cuba.