Special Report on the San Francisco 8, by Ron Jacobs

I recently reviewed a DVD about a group of Black Panthers who were tortured in 1973 by New Orleans police during interrogations regarding the murder of a San Francisco police officer in 1971. The DVD, titled Legacy of Torture, highlights the stories of some of these men and their experience at the hands of the police interrogators while law enforcement officials from other local and federal agencies stood by. A federal court ruled in 1974 that both San Francisco and New Orleans police had engaged in torture to extract a confession, and a San Francisco judge dismissed charges against three men in 1975 based on that ruling. The case was reopened in 2003 by the US Department of Justice using funds set aside for the Department of Homeland Security. Several grand juries were convened as part of the reinvestigation, with some of the men involved in the 1973 torture being called before the panel more than once.

Not long after that review was published, eight former Black Panthers were arrested for their alleged involvement in the 1971 murder in a series of sweeps. Law enforcement is still looking for one other man. Richard Brown, Richard O'Neal, Ray Boudreaux, and Hank Jones were arrested in California. Francisco Torres was arrested in Queens, New York. Harold Taylor was arrested in Florida. Two of the men charged have been in prison for over 30 years – Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim. As of this writing, the six who were arrested at their homes and places of work in late January are in prison with bail amounts running between three and five million dollars each. No pretrial date has been set although, according to Claude Marks of the Eight's defense committee, there will be a pretrial hearing because "the government doesn't seem to be backing down." Meanwhile, the committee and the men's legal team are working to get the bail reduced to a more reasonable figure.

According to police records, the men charged were members of the Black Liberation Army (BLA). The BLA was the result of a split in the Black Panther Party and believed the time was ripe for armed struggle in the United States. Other Panthers took a different route which placed more community organizing, community programs, and municipal electoral politics foremost among their strategies for self-defense of the community and black liberation. The split itself was the product of genuine ideological differences in the party, but was intentionally exacerbated by the FBI, local police Red Squads, military intelligence, state undercover police agencies and other elements of the US counterinsurgency apparatus. These agencies worked under the aegis of the COINTELPRO program--a series of FBI counterintelligence programs designed to neutralize political dissidents, primarily of the left and anarchist temperaments. Methods used in this campaign ranged from the spreading of rumors regarding individuals personal lives, putting snitch jackets on activists, publishing and planting false stories about groups and individuals involved in antiwar and antiracist activities, police raids and harassment of activists, false arrests and charges, and murder. The Black Panther Party was the target of all of the aforementioned methods, including murder. In 1971, many of its leaders were either in prison, facing prison time, in exile, or murdered by police. The FBI claimed to have ended its COINTELPRO activities in 1971, but evidence presented to the Church Senate committee investigating the excesses of the program in 1974 proved otherwise. Indeed, all that really occurred was that the program was renamed. The dissident neutralization program continues to this day under other names.

The California State's Attorney's office, which is working with a Federal task force on the case, told the media that no new scientific evidence has been unearthed in the case. Instead, it appears that the prosecutors have reexamined the evidence they extracted under torture and constructed a scenario that involves all of the men charged in the 1971 murder. None the less, the attorney general's office is, in their words, "committed to seeing it through.'' What this means, in essence, is that the men will be prosecuted using evidence declared inadmissible by the courts in 1975 because it was obtained via torture.

What do I mean by torture? Could it really have been that bad? Before I quote the descriptions of the men's ordeal, let me ask you, the reader, to put yourself in the position these men found themselves in 1973. As the cursory history of the COINTELPRO program above makes clear, these men had lots to fear. They were black men held in a jail run by a police department known for its racist history; they were being charged with killing a cop; they were believed to be members of a militant armed organization composed of black men and women in the United States at a time when the government feared armed revolution and the movement feared genuine fascism. With that in mind, here is what the men endured (from the San Francisco Chronicle, surely no leftwing rag): "a court found that when the two San Francisco police investigators who came to Louisiana to interview the three men were out of the room, New Orleans officers stripped the men, blindfolded them, beat them and covered them in blankets soaked in boiling water. They also used electric prods on their genitals, court records show."

Today, hundreds of prisoners and disappeared exist in US prisons around the globe. Torture occurs at these prisons on a regular basis. After more than three years of avoidance, the US Congress addressed the issue of torture in US-run prisons and came up with the Military Commissions Act. This act effectively ended habeas corpus for these prisoners, does little to end torture in these prisons and excuses the torture that occurred before its enactment. In the sham courtrooms that the prisoners in these prisons will face trial, evidence extracted by torture will be admissible. Besides the torture in this corner of Washington's gulag, torture is also part of the law enforcement repertoire that includes the beating and isolation of prisoners in the modern supermax prison complexes like Pelican Bay in California to the so called rectal interrogation techniques known to be occasionally employed by the New York City Police Department. The Chicago police department was the subject of several investigations regarding years of systematic torture of primarily black men in at least one of its station houses. It is but a small leap to see that the prosecutors of the men arrested for the 1971 shooting in San Francisco will also attempt to introduce evidence obtained via torture and already considered inadmissible, no matter how flimsy. If the judge in this trial does allow this to happen, it not only flies in the face of accepted legal understanding, it is another step on the road to a totalitarian state--a road some in the United States are intent on leading their fellow countrymen and women down.

Despite their incarceration, members of the defense committee told me that the men's spirits are high., "I saw two of the bros this weekend." said Claude Marks. They are strong and ready to fight back. Their lawyers are very clear, strong and united....They're calling themselves the San Francisco 8.... They resisted the grand juries of 2005 and will fight now." Several speaking engagements by members of the committee are scheduled and money is being raised. For more information please go to the Defense Committee's; http://www.freethesf8.org/

Iraq's Missing Billions

I know this is a day late and a dollar short, but it's still good. Read on.

When King Jerk-Off Paul Bremer arrived in Iraq he had 23 billion dollars at his disposal for rebuilding Iraq. All these funds were transferred into a new account held at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York and for whatever reason 14 billion of this amount was converted into cash in the form of 363 tons of shrink wrapped $100 bills and flown into Iraq. This and approximately 6 billion additional dollars were spent over the course of 14 months, with a staggering 2.6 billion spend in the last 6 weeks of U.S. occupation.

Why was it converted into cash? As has been said, cash is hard to trace, and hard to account for, so that's why most of the dirty deals in the world are transacted with cash. In post-war Iraq, there were a lot of dirty deals to be done.

And, why were we spending that money again? Oh yeah, cause a few months before, After the U.S. launched a war on Iraq, to destroy weapons of mass destruction, with trumped up evidence and spent over 100 billion dollars to destroy Iraq in three weeks.

At the time it didn't make sense to me. Why spend billions to destroy the countries infrastructure, then three weeks, spend billions to rebuild it? Why not just drop a bomb on Saddam, keep the infrastructure, and allow a new government to flourish Thus avoiding occupation, destruction, Sunni-Shiite violence, U.S. casualties and a un-win-able, no-objective standoff?

I said, "?!"

It must be some seriously intelligent stuff, cause I can't for the life of me make any possible sense out of it.

Originally, the plan wasn't to lose, misplace and misappropriate $23 billion in cash. The U.S. State Department had drawn up equally inept plans for the rebuilding of Iraq, but all of that was swept aside by the Bush Administration, which put the Pentagon in charge of rebuilding Iraq under the control of Paul Bremmer and the provisional authority.

The first thing Bremmer did was suspend Iraqi law. Then he suspended U.S. Law. After creating what has been quoted as being a "fraud free zone" war profiteers descended from every corner of the globe with only political connections, duffle bags and no staff, no facilities, no infrastructure, no equipment, no plans and no track record in international service.

Part of the reason why money was spent so carelessly was because the leading experts in Iraq in the industries that needed to be rebuilt, from Electricity, Sewage, Water supply, Medical Facilities, were all purged in a process called "De-Bathification". All members of Saddam Hussein's former party were effectively blacklisted.

What it amounted to was a genocide of ideas, a genocide of experience and an era where the uneducated, the unknowledgeable began grasping for cash and straws in the dark, in ignorance and with no fiscal oversight, or controls.

Some of the more notable "planned" fuck-ups were:

1. Vice-Pres. Cheney's former/current company, Halliburton was the largest recipient of money with an estimated 1.6 billion entrusted to reinstate the oil supply. By most estimates it overcharged the government by $177 million, and by the way, Iraq now produced LESS oil that before the war.

2. The Provisional Authority maintained one fund of nearly $600m cash for which there is no paperwork

3. $8.8bn that passed through the new Iraqi government ministries in Baghdad is unaccounted for.

4. Independent auditors found that contracts worth billions of dollars to American firms without tender, with no idea what was happening to the money.

5. Iraqis who were close to the Americans, garnered huge bribes from illegitimate and legitimate companies for the opportunity to bid on contracts.

6. Pilfering was rife. Millions of dollars in cash went missing from the Iraqi Central Bank.

7. Between $11-$26 million worth of Iraqi property sequestered by the CPA was unaccounted for.

8. Most Iraqi Government payrolls were padded with hundreds of ghost employees.

9. 19 billion new Iraqi dinars, worth about £6.5m, were found on a plane in Lebanon that had been sent there by the American-appointed Iraqi interior minister.

10. Iraqi oil exports were un-metered. therefore there was no way to account for how much oil went out of Iraq, thus, how much money came in.

11. Auditors reviewed the files of 225 contracts totaling $327 million. To quote the findings, "Our review showed that financial records understated payments made by $108,255,875" and "overstated unpaid obligations by $119,361,286".

12. Auditors also reviewed the paperwork of a further 300 contracts worth $332.9 million stating, "Of 198 contract files reviewed, 154 did not contain evidence that goods and services were received, 169 did not contain invoices, and 14 did not contain evidence of payment."

13. $8.8 billion - the entire Iraqi Interim Government spending from October 2003 through June 2004 - was not properly accounted for. The Iraqi Office of Budget and Management at one point had only six staff, all of them inexperienced, and most of the ministries had no budget departments.

14. One ministry gave out $430 million in contracts without any of the paperwork. Another claimed to be paying 8,206 guards, but only 602 could be found.

15. Many of the American agents submitted their paperwork only hours before they headed to the airport. One agent who did submit receipts, on being told that he still owed $1,878,870, turned up three days later with exactly that amount.

Pretty disgusting huh?

21st century slavery and the extinction of Hope

In 2005, the population of the United States stood at 296.4 million. Of that number 80.2% were White, 14.4% Latino and 12.8% were Black (37.9 million).

In 2006, 2.9 million of the 37.9 million Blacks in the United States were arrested, in addition 3.06 million Blacks, or 8.1% (1 in 10) of all Blacks were incarcerated. In contrast only 1.1% of White males are incarcerated (1 in 100).

If the number of Blacks held in local jails are added to those number in Prisons, then the rate of incarceration of Black males between the agest of 25-29 rises to 1 in 7. Black males are incarcerated at 18 times the rate of Black females, and 17 times the rate of White males.

Although Blacks are 12.8% of the population they make up the following percentages of arrests for the following crimes:

50.9% murder
32.5% forcible rape
56.3 robbery
34.5 aggravated assault
29.2 burglary
28.9 larceny theft
34.9 motor vehicle theft
39.3 violent crime
71.8 gambling
39.6 prostitution
41.6 vagrancy

DUI’s are the only crime that Blacks are under-represented (9.2% of DUI arrests).


The wholesale incarceration of Blacks and Black males in particular has unfathomable consequences upon the community and it’s inhabitants. The removal of such substantial numbers of young men (and increasingly women) from the community contributes to family dissolution, single parent households, and reduced job prospects upon return to the community. Not to mention, Black males who are incarcerated face substantial barriers to higher education opportunities, enrollment, student loans, housing, employment and other types of assistance.

As a result of state-based disenfranchisement laws that restrict voting rights of felons and/or ex- felons, an estimated 13% of black males will be unable to vote. Hundreds of thousands of Black children never know or even see their father’s, only see their fathers during Jail and Prison visits. There is a lack of role models, and seeing as Prison is the most common destination for Black males, (besides emergency rooms and graveyards) there is a pervading sense of hopelessness and inability to engage in activities which lead to any type of future, as well as the inability to have the time space and guidance to engage in positive opportunities.

The reduced use of imprisonment, will depend on a consideration of policy options. Policies which are not in line with wholesale disparities and strategies which are not focused on low level, non-violent offenses. With the barriers faced by those with criminal records in obtaining employment, the long-term impact of “three strikes” and mandatory sentencing policies, is as significant a factor in recidivism as criminal activity itself.

Clearly the use of treatment instead of incarceration as a primary tool in coping with drug abuse, and the provision of adequate resources for community-based prevention and treatment programs is a cost saving and life saving measure.

Forgiveness, expunged records, diversion, enhanced community resources and “entry-points” to employment, housing and education are policies and strategies that can serve as social investments and true diversion as well as the reduction of overall crime and community disenfranchisement.

When Governmental policies are directly responsible for the wholesale disaparites in laws, arrests, prosecutions, sentencing, incarceration and felony disenfranchisement, then it can be said that the fact that so many Blacks are incarcerated is "Political", thus making many Blacks, in essence, Political Prisoners.

E.D. Nixon: Father of the modern civil rights movement.

Mr. Nixon is one of the least known key figures of the civil rights movement. he played a hand in the creation of several foundational Black political organizations and recruited many of the future leaders of those organizations.

Edgar Daniel Nixon was born in Montgomery, Alabama on July 12th, 1899. A trade union leader and close associate of A. Philip Randolph, Nixon was the leading activist in Montgomery from the 30's through the 60's. Despite a limited education, his efforts and strategic vision lead to the founding of over a dozen prominent grass-roots organizations, each tailored to achieve a different goal with a particular focus and strategy.

As a young man E.D. displayed incredible focus, forcefulness and strategic acumen and so he was trained by the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters as an organizer. In 1940 he organized 750 Black men to march on the Montgomery County Courthouse to demand the right to register to vote. He became president of the Voters League of Montgomery in 1944. He was also leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) in Alabama.

Undoubtedly it is the E.D. Nixon who coordinated the choice of Rosa Parks as the icon of the Montgomery bus boycott as well as his organization of the boycott itself. E.D. was able to recognize that Rosa Parks had the wherewithal to sustain a legal fight to challenge public transportation segregation for the year that it would take to obtain justice. Previous candidates lacked Rosa Parks wherewithal and understanding of what the fight would entail. For years Parks served as a secretary with the NAACP, so she had an experienced apprehension of the political side of the struggle.

Once Parks was arrested, Nixon moved quickly to arrange her bail and coordinate a meeting to plan the scope and strategy of the planned boycott Nixon called together many of the most prominent preachers in Montgomery to organize the effort. He was greatly disappointed to find that the Preachers were fearful and advocated a course of action that would keep the bocott lowkey, below the radar of the white community.

E.D. challenged their manhood and called them all cowards. The Rev. Dr. King stepped forward to defend his manhood and with that he accepted the Presidency of the newly created (by E.D. Nixon) Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC). In anticipation of the religious leaders trepidation, Nixon had previously pushed for King to be chosen to lead the SCLC because his lack of experience in Montgomery, would likely make him less likely to be intimidated. His selection of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to be the leader and front man of the Boycott is the foremost legacy of E.D.'s efforts.

During the boycott, which lasted over thirteen months, 17,000 black people in Montgomery walked to work or obtained lifts from the small car-owning black population of the city. Eventually, the loss of revenue and a decision by the Supreme Court forced the Montgomery Bus Company to accept integration. The boycott came to an end on 20th December, 1956.

Nixon and Martin Luther King also created the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) as a way to enact other radical strategies in a way that could bypass the conservative and mainstream concessionist perspective of the NAACP. At the time, and as was often the case, the NAACP was far behind the curve in supporting the burgeoning grass-roots efforts across the south and north that erupted into the full-blown civil rights struggle. The NAACP did not endorse Dr. King's provocative non-violence approach seeing as it was an untried strategy that could potentially backfire by angering the NAACPs conservative Black and liberal white supporters. The NAACP endoresed protracted and dignified legal fights, not uneducated negroes demanding their rights in the streets. E.D. Nixon was just such an "uneducated Negro".

Edgar Daniel Nixon died in Montgomery, Alabama, on 25th February, 1987 after retiring from the front lines of the civil war battles due to a feeling of being neglected, diminished and pushed to the side. When an attempt was made to recruit him to join the Committee to Combat Racial Injustice (CCRI) E.D. Nixon put his feelings on paper and wrote the following:

"for 25 years I have been working in this feel to help bring freedom to un-freed people. I have organize over 15 organizations including the Montgomery improvement association, and it was I who found rev. king. As a spokesman he is very good but no one man can do this job, but when people give all recognition to one because of his academic trainging and forget other who do not have that kind of training but are making a worth while contribution to the cumity that make it hard. You can hardly find a project in Montgomery that I did not start bit but after it got going I have been left out of the picture. I have spent long hours and thousand of my own money to bring about these things and now exist and each time I be push in the background, frankly I do not care to be hurt any more. I just want to be let alone now."

What E.D. Nixon shows is that It's not Education or Academic Skills or understanding the vernacular of a particular social science that counts when it comes to community organization. It's the strength of your message, the boldness and strength of your leadership, and the example you set.

E.D. Nixon, took part in the core movement that resulted in the civil rights victories of the mid 60's and he did it in relative obscurity, whereas MLK, Malcolm X and others share an enduring glow in the spotlight. The name of E.D. Nixon is destined to always remain in a peripheral position in talk of the civil rights movement. A position which belies his stature as the true voice of the people and the heart, soul and nuts of the civil rights movement.

Harriet Jacobs: A Profile in pre-Antebellum Black Survival

Born in 1813, It was not Harriet Jacob's nature to give up without a fight. Born into slavery, Harriet Jacobs would thwart repeated sexual advancements made by her master for years, then run away to the North. She would later publish an account of her anguished life in her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.

Harriet's childhood was a happy one. "[We] lived together in a comfortable home," she wrote in her autobiography, "and, though we were all slaves, I was so fondly shielded that I never dreamed that I was a piece of merchandise." She even found happiness after her mother's death, when she moved into the home of her mother's mistress -- a kind woman who nurtured the young Harriet, teaching her to read and sew, and seeing to her well-being. The happiness would not last, though. Upon the death of the benevolent mistress when Harriet was 12 years old, ownership of Harriet was transferred to the mistress' niece. But since the niece was only three years old, Harriet's actual master was the father, a Dr. James Norcom. This man would be the cause of a great deal of misery.

Around the time Harriet turned 15, Norcom began his relentless efforts to bend the slave girl's will. At first he whispered "foul words" in her ear. As time went on his tactics became more overt. Still Harriet refused to give in. To get Harriet away from his wife, who was suspicious of her husband's intentions, he built a cottage for the girl slave four miles from town. Harriet had previously asked Norcom for permission to marry a free black man. Norcom had violently refused. Now Harriet had a plan to disrupt his fight for sexual conquest: She had become friends with a caring white man -- an unmarried lawyer.

She would become sexually involved with this man, become pregnant, and an infuriated Norcom would sell her and her child. A child was conceived. Harriet felt "it was something to triumph over my tyrant in that small way." Nevertheless, Norcom had no intention to sell her.

Harriet gave birth. Still Norcom pursued Harriet. The harassment continued even after she bore the lawyer another child. Finally, after she learned that Norcom was preparing to put her children to work as plantation slaves, she had had enough. In June of 1835, after seven years of mistreatment, Harriet escaped. For a short time she stayed with various neighbors, both black and white. Then she moved into a tiny crawlspace above a porch built by her grandmother and uncle. The space was nine feet long and seven feet wide. Its sloping ceiling, only three feet high at one end, didn't allow her to turn while laying down without hitting her shoulder. Rats and mice crawled over her; there was no light and no ventilation. But her children had been bought by the lawyer and were now living in the same house. Harriet could even see them while they played outside through a peephole she had drilled. She lived in the crawlspace for seven years, coming out only for brief periods at night for exercise.

In 1842, Harriet made her escape to freedom. She sailed to Philadelphia, and after a short stay, travelled to New York City by train. There she was reunited with her daughter, who had in the meantime been sent by her father. Harriet would later move to Rochester, New York, to be close to her brother, also a fugitive slave. There she became involved with the abolitionists associated with Frederick Douglass' paper, the North Star. In the following years, she would move back to New York, flee to Massachusetts to avoid Dr. Norcom, and finally become legally free after a friend arranged her purchase. Friends later convinced her to write an account of her life as a slave. The book, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, was one of the first open discussions about the sexual harassment and abuse endured by slave women -- a topic that even made many abolitionists uncomfortable.

Harriet was actively involved with the abolition movement before the launch of the Civil War. During the war she used her celebrity to raise money for black refugees. After the war she worked to improve the conditions of the recently-freed slaves.

ROBERT F. WILLIAMS: Black American Freedom Fighter and Consultant to Mao Zedong, Che Guevera, Fidel Castro & Ho Chi Minh.

As "Le Fils" examines disparities and atrocities in America's concentration camps for blacks (Jails and Prisons), it's good to also showcase the leaders in the Black community who have fought for justice and basic human rights, without which, there can be no meaningful confrontation of injustice.

Robert F. Williams unwavering dedication to the protection of the defenseless and his perpetual demand of for his rights as a human were the two points of reference from which his legacy was born.

The case of Mack Ingram serves as a prime example of the type of injustice, racism and oppression that Blacks faced in Monroe, North Carolina, and the former Confederate States.

on June 4, 1951 an African American Sharecropper named Mack Ingram was arrested for an assault on William Jean Boswell, white, female, aged 18 with intent to criminally assault her. Boswell claimed that Ingram was looking at her in a leering manner as she walked to a tobacco field. In Boswell's own testimony she stated that Ingram did not lay hands on her and never had been closer then seventy-five feet. Jailed without bond, Ingram, who had nine children, was sentenced to two years at hard labor for the reduced charge of assault on a female The U.S. state department attempted to paint international uproar over the incident as a communist propaganda and issued the following statement, "The reds are playing up the fact that the Negro never actually touched the girl." In the venacular of anti-Black rights activist, anyone attmepting to garner basic human freedoms for Blacks was a Communist. Such was the indelible mark of racial hatred upon so-called, "Democracy" and the operation of the U.S. Government.

Robert F. Williams was given his grandfather's rifle when he was a young boy. At eleven, he witnessed the ruthless beating to the ground of a black woman by Jesse Helms, Sr. the father of the future red-necked Senator. When Williams defended two young black boys who were jailed after being accused of being kissed by a white girl during a kids game (the kissing case), his one-man worldwide publicity machine shamed the officials into releasing the boys. Williams also lead a protest the segregated, tax supported Monroe swimming pool where his group was shot at, threatened and several attempts were made on his life. KKK leader Catfish Cole stated, "A Nigger who wants to go to a white swimming pool is not looking for a bath, he is looking for a funeral."

Williams also organized the black-armed guard with the national rifle association's blessing in order to protect the black community from the Ku Klux Klan. Under Williams leadership blacks used high powered rifles and weapons and built sandbagged fortified defense positions and drilled on proper and safe firearm use resulting in the successfully defense of their community from Ku Klux Klans night rides. Contrary to media portrayal, Williams did not believe in violence, but rather, armed self-reliance in the face of white terrorism.

Following Williams successful efforts at recruiting lower class, and working class blacks to the local NAACP, a practice which disregarding the NAACPs unwritten rule about recruiting only educated and integration minded blacks, he became the focus of an NAACP campaign to effectively destroy his power base. The effort against Williams was lead by NAACP leader Roy Wilkins and Thurgood Marshall. The NAACP saw Williams as uncontrollable and saw his removal from power power as a tool to reinforce their position of anti-violence and an essential step in furthering their complicity in garnering white acceptance as a non-threat to the power structure. They vigorously recruited and supplemented daisy bates monthly income by $600 a month in exchange for her condemnation of Williams. Despite this Williams maintained his local and national supporters with the help of his friends in Harlem such as John Henrik Clarke, John Oliver Killens, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Shirley Graham Du Bois and Malcolm X who raised money to assist Williams in the purchase of guns, ammunition and supplies for his local newsletter, "The Crusader".

Williams Battle with the NAACP eventually lead to his censure at a national convention due to his public statement that he would, "meet violence with violence." however he maintained his grass-roots support as exemplified by his reception at an NAACP sponsored rally in Harlem on May 17, 1961. At the rally, Roy Wilkins, Daisy Bates and Clarence Mitchell were unable to speak and eventually shouted off a stage on 7th avenue when the crowd noticed Robert F. Williams standing silently nearby. They began shouting, "We want Williams! We want Williams!" When several renditions of the star spangled banner did not quell the disturbance, the NAACP sent a representative to request that Williams take the rostrum. Williams mounted the rostrum and said, "I advocated Afro-American men should defend their women and children! I am tired of being oppressed and I am going to meet violence with violence! It is better to live just thirty seconds walking upright in human dignity than to live a thousand years crawling at the feet of our oppressors!" Williams was then mobbed by the crowd and carried off the stage. The NAACP leaders attempted to speak and were once again shouted down by the crowd.

Williams became an international figure through the help of the J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI in 1961. Williams was at home in Monroe when a white couple became lost in a black neighborhood in the midst of one of the largest race riots in the citys history. Williams allowed the white couple to stay in his home and protected them from a crowd intent on spilling their blood until the crowd subsided. The FBI used this opportunity to charge Williams with kidnapping and placed him on the 10 most wanted list and stated that he was armed, dangerous and suffered from chronic schizophrenia. Thus began Williams 10 year seclusion from the United States . from 1961-1970 Williams and family first stayed in Cuba with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara as a guest where he broadcast radio free Dixie with a signal that reached from Key West to Seattle Washington. He also continued to produce his newsletter,"The Crusader" and wrote his classic, "Negroes with Guns" which influenced an entire generation of leaders, including Huey P. Newton, Malcolm X and The Deacons for Defense. From there Williams traveled to China as a guest of Mao Zedong and then to Vietnam as an honored guest of Ho Chi Minh who credited Williams with providing key strategy elements thorugh his newsletter which lead to the Tet offensive. Eventually Williams tired and returned to the United States by way of Africa when a deal was worked out with the State Department who at this time, was looking to begin relations with China. Williams had valuable information on how to proceed with relations due to his close relationship with Mao Zedong, Zhou "Joe" Enlai and others.

Robert F. Williams legacy is as the most logical precursor to the Black Panthers and a stark contrast to the efforts of mostly highly educated northern blacks who ran the NAACP who preached non-violence to southern, uneducated and harshly discriminated blacks who faced daily struggles and terrorist violence on a daily basis.

Robert F. Williams is honored by Le Fils de Fanon for his fearlessness his stewardship of the black community, his leadership and his defiance of the unjust policies and actions of the local, state and federal government. His international reputation as a freedom fighter influenced indigenous and proletariat/oppressed population revolutions in Cuba, Viet-Nam and China.

Just a reminder

Racial violence has long been used in the United States to maintain the status quo of racial oppression.
Racial Violence secured lands from Mexicans and Native Americans and also enforced legalized slavery against Blacks.
Violence can be "Indirect" which includes the violence caused by: institutional policies and programs that produce, maintain, and rationalize poverty, inadequate health care, and substandard housing.

Racist violence has served five primary purposes:
1. To force people of color into indentured, slave, peonage, or low wage situations;
2. To steal land, minerals, and other resources;
3. To maintain social control and to repress rebellions;
4. To restrict or eliminate competition in employment, business, politics, and social life; and
5. To unite "whites" across ethnic/national, class, and gender lines.

Up to 100 million Africans and American Blacks died in: the slave trade, working as slaves in the U.S., Travel through the middle Passage, through colonization and exploitation in Africa, Wars of conquest in Africa and slave rebellions.

Between 1882 and 1930 approximately 3,000 Blacks were lynched
More than half (53%) of the 4,220 persons executed between 1930 and 1996 were Black
Despite the history of white men sexually assaulting Black women, 405 or 90 percent of the 455 men executed for rape between 1930 and 1976 were Black.
In 1919, the NAACP reported 3,386 incidents of lynching between 1882-1918.

Angola Penitentiary

Oakland artist Sham Saenz asked me to look into Angola Prison, aka Louisiana State Penitentiary as part of an art project he was planning. I knew a bit about it from having viewed the documentary, 'The Farm', but wasn't all that well versed in it's history.

Some of what I think I know, may be fiction. As I investigate Angola over the next several weeks, I will give updates and check facts, call down for interviews and read books on the subject. The end result will be a reliable report about the heart and soul of Angola of course focusing on the major issues of humanity and philosophy and how it serves as a symptom of society at large.

What I think I know about Angola is that in the first have of the 20th century, anyone with a sentance longer than 4 years, had the equivalent of a death sentance. The conditions were so brutal, the trustee's so corrupt and work so bone wearying that hardly a soul had a hope of getting out alive. Part of the reason for this is that in the early 1920's, all the guards were fired seeing as it was too expensive. For the next several decades Angola relied solely on "trustee's" to run the prison. Trustees are prisoners entruted with the duties, jobs and responsibilities in the operation of the prison. This move of course, while saving the State of Louisiana millions of dollars, lead to widespread cruelty and corruption.

Currently only 1 in 6 prisoners lives long enough to be released. 50 years is considered a short sentance. Convictions for charges as light as simple robbery or possession of dope can result in a sentance of 99 years.

There was once a group of 21 prisoners that cut their own achilles tendons to protest the harsh work conditions.

'Angola' was named after the part of Africa where most of the slaves came from. It started out as a plantation purchased with funds from the slave trade by a prominent slave trader. it's lands were gradually added to through purchase and acquisition. After slavery was outlawed, production on the plantation continued through the use of convict labor.

It goes without saying that as a deep south, former confederate and slave state, conditions for Black men were quite horrendous. Is is a prison that has persisted without a fence or walls, due to the fact that it is surrounded by miles of swamps, the lack of roads and alligator infested waters.