>From: kiilu
>Sent: Friday, July 21, 2000 8:33 PM
>BLACK AUGUST 2000: A Story of African Freedom Fighters
>
>by Kiilu Nyasha
>
>Black August is a month of great significance for Africans throughout
>the diaspora, but particularly here in the U.S. where it originated.
>"August," as Mumia Abu-Jamal noted, "is a month of meaning, of
>repression and radical resistance, of injustice and divine justice;
>of repression and righteous rebellion; of individual and collective
>efforts to free the slaves and break the chains that bind us.".
>
>On this 21st anniversary of Black August, first organized to honor
>our fallen freedom fighters, Jonathan and George Jackson, Khatari
>Gaulden, James McClain, William Christmas, and the sole survivor
>of the August 7, 1970 Courthouse Slave Rebellion, Ruchell Cinque
>Magee, it is still a time to embrace the principles of unity,
>self-sacrifice, political education, physical fitness and/or training
>in martial arts, resistance, and spiritual renewal..
>
>The concept, Black August, grew out of the need to expose to the
>light of day the glorious and heroic deeds of those Afrikan women
>and men who recognized and struggled against the injustices heaped
>upon people of color on a daily basis in America.
>
>One cannot tell the story of Black August without first providing
>the reader with a brief glimpse of the "Black Movement" behind
>California prison walls in the Sixties, led by George Jackson and
>W. L. Nolen, among others.
>
>As Jackson wrote: "...when I was accused of robbing a gas station
>of $70, I accepted a deal...but when time came for sentencing, they
>tossed me into the penitentiary with one to life. It was 1960. I
>was 18 years old.... I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels, and Mao
>when I entered prison and they redeemed me. For the first four
>years I studied nothing but economics and military ideas. I met
>black guerrillas, George 'Big Jake' Lewis, and James Carr, W.L.
>Nolen, Bill Christmas, Torry Gibson, and many, many others. We
>attempted to transform the Black criminal mentality into a black
>revolutionary mentality. As a result, each of us has been subject
>to years of the most vicious reactionary violence by the state.
>Our mortality rate is almost what you would expect to find in a
>history of Dachau. Three of us [Nolen, Sweet Jugs Miller, and Cleve
>Edwards) were murdered several months ago [Jan. 13, 1969] by a pig
>shooting from thirty feet above their heads with a military rifle.
>(Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson)
>
>When the brothers first demanded the killer guard be tried for
>murder, they were rebuffed. Upon their insistence, the administration
>held a kangaroo court and three days later returned a verdict of
>"justifiable homicide.". Shortly afterward, a white guard was found
>beaten to death and thrown from a tier. Six days later, three
>prisoners were accused of murder, and became known as The Soledad
>Brothers.
>
>"I am being tried in court right now with two other brothers. John
>Clutchette and Fleeta Drumgo, for the alleged slaying of a prison
>guard. This charge carries an automatic death penalty for me. I
>can't get life. I already have it."
>
>On August 7, 1970, just a few days after George was transferred to
>San Quentin, his younger brother Jonathan Jackson, 17, invaded
>Marin County Courthouse single-handed, with a satchel full of
>handguns, an assault rifle and a shotgun hidden under his raincoat.
>"Freeze," he commanded as he tossed guns to William Christmas,
>James McClain, and Ruchell Magee. Magee was on the witness stand
>testifying for McClain, on trial for assaulting a guard in the wake
>of a guard's murder of another Black prisoner, Fred Billingsley,
>beaten and teargassed to death. A jailhouse lawyer, Magee had
>deluged the courts with petitions for seven years contesting his
>illegal conviction in '63. The courts had refused to listen, so
>Magee seized the hour and joined the guerrillas as they took the
>judge, prosecutor and three jurors hostage to a waiting van. To
>reporters gathering quickly outside the courthouse, Jonathan shouted,
>"You can take our pictures. We are the revolutionaries!"
>
>Operating with courage and calm even their enemies had to respect,
>the four Black freedom fighters commandeered their hostages out of
>the courthouse without a hitch. The plan was to use the hostages
>to take over a radio station and broadcast the racist, murderous
>prison conditions and demand the immediate release of The Soledad
>Brothers. But before Jonathan could drive the van out of the parking
>lot, the San Quentin guards arrived and opened fire. When the
>shooting stopped, Jonathan, Christmas, McClain and the judge lay
>dead. Magee and the prosecutor were critically wounded, and one
>juror suffered a minor arm wound.
>
>Magee survived his wounds and was tried originally with co-defendant
>Angela Davis. Their trials were later severed and Davis was eventually
>acquitted of all charges. Magee was convicted of simple kidnap and
>remains in prison to date -- 37 years with no physical assaults on
>his record. An incredible jailhouse lawyer, Magee has been responsible
>for countless prisoners being released -- the main reason he was
>kept for nearly 20 years in one lockup after another. He is currently
>at Corcoran State Prison, having been recently transferred from
>Pelican Bay, remains strong and determined to win his freedom and
>that of all oppressed peoples.
>
>In his second book, Blood In My Eye, published posthumously, Jackson
>noted: "Reformism is an old story in Amerika. There have been
>depressions and socio-economic political crises throughout the
>period that marked the formation of the present upper-class ruling
>circle, and their controlling elites. But the parties of the left
>were too committed to reformism to exploit their revolutionary
>potential....Fascism has temporarily succeeded under the guise of
>reform." Those words ring even truer today as we witness a form of
>fascism that has replaced gas ovens with executions and torture
>chambers; plantations with prison industrial complexes deployed in
>rural white communities to perpetuate white supremacy and Black/Brown
>slavery.
>
>The concentration of wealth at the top is worse than ever: One
>percent now owns more wealth than that of the combined 95% of the
>U.S. population; individuals are so rich their wealth exceeds the
>total budgets of numerous nations -- as they plunder the globe in
>the quest for more.
>
>"The fascist must expand to live. Consequently he has pushed his
>frontiers to the farthest lands and peoples.... I'm going to bust
>my heart trying to stop these smug, degenerate, primitive, omnivorous,
>uncivil --- and anyone who would aid me, I embrace you.
>
>"International capitalism cannot be destroyed without the extremes
>of struggle...We are the only ones...who can get at the monster's
>heart without subjecting the world to nuclear fire. We have a
>momentous historical role to act out if we will. The whole world
>for all time in the future will love us and remember us as the
>righteous people who made it possible for the world to live on....
>I don't want to die and leave a few sad songs and a hump in the
>ground as my only monument. I want to leave a world that is liberated
>from trash, pollution, racism, nation-states, nation-state wars
>and armies, from pomp, bigotry, parochialism, a thousand different
>brands of untruth, and licentious, usurious economics." (Soledad
>Brother)
>
>On August 21, 1971, after numerous failed attempts on his life,
>the State finally succeeded in assassinating George Jackson, then
>Field Marshall of the Black Panther Party, in what was described
>by prison officials as an escape attempt in which Jackson allegedly
>smuggled a gun into San Quentin in a wig. That feat was proven
>impossible, and evidence subsequently suggested a setup designed
>by prison officials to eliminate Jackson once and for all.
>
>However, they didn't count on losing any of their own in the process.
>On that fateful day, three notoriously racist prison guards and
>two inmate turnkeys were also killed, presumably by Jackson who
>was shot and killed by guards as he drew fire away from the other
>prisoners in the Adjustment Center (lockup) of San Quentin.
>
>Subsequently, six A/C prisoners were singled out and put on trial
>-- wearing 30 lbs of chains in Marin courthouse -- for various
>charges of murder and assault: Fleeta Drumgo, David Johnson, Hugo
>L.A. Pinell (Yogi), Luis Talamantez, Johnny Spain, and Willie
>Sundiata Tate. Only one was convicted of murder, Johnny Spain. The
>others were either acquitted or convicted of assault. Pinell is
>the only one remaining in prison and has suffered prolonged torture
>in lockups since 1969. He is currently serving his 10th year in
>Pelican Bay's SHU, a torture chamber if ever there was one. A true
>warrior, Pinell would put his life on the line to defend his fellow
>captives.
>
>As decades passed, our Black scholars, like Mumia Abu-Jamal, learned
>of other liberation moves that happened in Black August. E.g., the
>first and only armed revolution whereby Africans freed themselves
>from chattel slavery commenced on August 21, 1791. Nat Turner's
>slave rebellion began on August 21, 1831 (coincidence?), and Harriet
>Tubman's Underground Railroad started in August. As Mumia stated,
>"Their sacrifice, their despair, their determination and their
>blood has painted the month Black for all time."
>
>Let us honor our martyred freedom fighters as George Jackson
>counselled: "Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the
>reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here,
>that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations
>more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do
>what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution"
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