Dear Friends:
The murders of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in Chicago have awakened many Americans to the campaign being carried out against the Black Panther Party throughout the country. Since April 1968, 28 Panthers have died and countless others have been imprisoned. But the “search and destroy” operations against the Black Panther Party do not always take such dramatic forms.
In New York we are facing an immediate challenge. The Panther 21 have bail set at $100,000 each for 14 of the 17 and the defendants (with two exceptions) have been held in solitary confinement for 10 months.
It should be recognized here for what it is: part of the nationwide effort to destroy the Black Panther Party and with it the momentum of the Black liberation struggle and other protest movements in this nation. If the Panthers can be eliminated, then the Nixon-Agnew-Mitchell campaign to stifle dissent will gain steam; the police-D.A.-Justice Dept. network will then have a clear mandate for repression.
Conspiracy charges are useful when the government wishes to stifle dissent. The criteria of proof in a conspiracy case are far more flexible than in any other. Almost anything can be evidence of a conspiracy. Whole groups become the targets of attack, rather than individuals. No crime need be committed, for conspiracy makes what you think a crime.
This weapon has been used against the anti-war movement already: the Spock case, the Oakland 7 case, and the Chicago 8 case, which includes Bobby Seale. Now District Attorney Hogan is adding it to the arsenal of weapons used against Black dissent in New York City. The Panthers are the bulls-eye, but the Black community is the target.
Mayor Daley’s Chicago “solution” may be more direct, but the sophisticated efforts of New York’s Hogan can be just as surefire. We need hardly be reminded that district attorneys and the courts can be just as dangerous as unbridled police violence.
Whether one supports the Black Panther Party or not, their right to exist and function must be upheld. We can no longer afford the luxury of listening to what Black people say only after they are dead.
The Committee to Defend the Panther 21 has been formed to raise funds for the defense effort, to focus local and national attention on the case, and to inform people about the full scope of what is happening to the Black Panther Party. Bail money for the 21 totals over one million dollars.
Twelve thousand dollars is needed immediately for a defense investigation. Transcripts will cost $300 a day for a trial that may last as long as four months. The total defense costs are now projected at well over $100,000, even though the lawyers are volunteering their services.
Too many Americans are in our jails because they lacked the funds for an adequate defense; too many have suffered death, jail and deprivation for participating in the struggle against poverty, war and racism. Now is the time to say Enough! Say it loud—send as much as you can, as soon as you can. Send to Committee to Defend the Panther 21, 37 Union Square West, 4th Floor, New York, New York, 10003.
Yours for the Committee
Murray Kempton
Brothers and Sisters:
Saturday 7 March 1970 the Air Force SPs illegally entered, searched and seized six of my buddies. The SPs had two armored vehicles with 50mm machine guns mounted on them, 4 police dogs, shotguns, m-16 rifles and full riot control equipment. The fucking pigs were called by another pig who was drunk and impersonated our CO over the phone.
Everyone in the company surrounded the hooch they were in, screaming and yelling for a little pig ass kicking. No one had any weapons but we weren’t going to let the pigs take our brothers short of a fight.
In order for the Air Force SPs to shake down our company (we’re Army) they have to go through the company first sergeant and commanding officer and one of these or both have to accompany them. This they neglected to do. Also they didn’t read our brothers their rights before, during or right after the bust. When they finally got to the station they did. Too late then to make it legal.
Also these dumb pigs charged our brothers thusly: 1 for possession—in his pocket, 1 for possession—he was-standing on it with his bare foot! The other four for disturbing the peace! See what kind of bull shit we have to put up with. It’s happening everywhere all the time. Now is the time to stop these pigs from their silly kid games and take what-is OURS! Power to the People!
They had custody of our brothers, for maybe three hours before they were released. Score one for our side! Power to the People!
Of all the people (approximately 100) milling around the scene, there were only a handful trying to get the shit straight. Four of our Black Brothers and three White Brothers of which I was one. The six that were busted were all white but in the Brotherhood there is no color to the eye, only another man that is part of us. Individually we would have accomplished nothing but we showed the pigs that we stand and fight together and don’t take any shit from pigs.
Only 108 days left before I’ll be with you on the streets. I will be glad to be among my Brothers and Sisters again! Power to the People!
An Insider
JS Smith
Vietnam
To the Editors:
For all G.I.s who believe that Nixon is our “Commander In Chief” and that we should believe in what he has said, the following is a quote from his speech to the Air Force Academy on 4 June 1969:
“I believe that every man in uniform is a citizen first and a serviceman second, that we must resist any attempt to isolate or separate the defenders from the defended.”
So since we are all sworn to obey our “Commander in Chief,” RESIST!!
For information, the above quote is printed on a DoD poster (DoD P-61 / DA, POSTER 360-126) use it to its fullest extent!
Name withheld
Wright-Patterson AFB
To the Editors:
Three of us pulled up to a light behind two “Protectors of Liberty” in a squad car. They were watching us in their rear view mirror as we pulled up beside them, they waved us over to the curb.
After the car was searched and our ID checked, one of the pigs spotted a black brother walking down this street. This pig walked up to him, grabbed him, searched him and threw him in the squad car. The search uncovered nothing.
The pigs turned to us and said, “You are getting a break, we are not going to give you a ticket.” He said the back license plate was obscured. They didn’t even see the back of the car until they pulled us over.
We would have gotten a ticket but the “Protectors of Liberty” had better things to do—fuck over a Black man.
OFF THE PIGS
Patrick Hart
To The Editor:
Your paper is great! We G.I.s are simply peace-loving people who got caught in the draft. All we want to do is get the hell out of here and live in a sane society.
Peace, Power to the People, and Good Vibes.
Richard Galenes
Vietnam
Dear Editors:
I enjoy your paper very much. It is entertaining and interesting. I have some things on my mind.
Many people are forced to devote two years to killing and military activities. They are forced to murder and are often injured or murdered’ themselves. This is unfair as well as brutal. Is Vietnam worth American lives? “They” claim to be patriotic yet they put Vietnamese before American lives.
This society is too materialistic. We need to spend more money on the poor, pollution, domestic needs, ghettoes, mental health, schools, etc.
I tried to help the handicapped. I gave books to 200 schools and agencies in Toledo, but I got denied. I used to be square, but “they” did an excellent job of turning me on.
A reader.
Gentlemen:
I am writing in regards to a statement I made which was published in your last issue. It is my sincere desire to retract that statement as it has resulted in great embarrassment to myself, family and the Marine Corps.
Cpl. A. Myers
Editors’ Note: We are glad to print the brother’s retraction, although we could not find the statement he was referring to in searching through our last four issues. When writing letters readers should indicate whether they want their name withheld or signed just with initials. As far as we know, no one has ever suffered any bad consequences from their name appearing in the Fifth Estate and there does not seem any need for rampant paranoia.
To the Editors:
As far as the 5th Estate goes—it’s a good magazine, a little biased at things but a good magazine and I look forward to reading each copy. I especially liked your coverage on the conspiracy trial and being a medical student I enjoy reading Dr. Schoenfeld’s column “Dr. Hippocrates.”
I, being a long haired freak that has been through the dope scene and got fucked on it, wish the 5th estate would turn kids off to dope. You have the influence over the friers today and future friers and, being up at school, I see a lot of kids getting fucked up on dope.
Get the people interested in people—not dope—in Sinclair—in politics—in fucking. Please, and thanks for your co-operation.
Chris Smith
Rochester
To the Editors:
How do you make a revolution? You become an example. You adopt a new life-style which, if uniformly adopted by the masses, will bring about a new, independent order.
Not a life-style which is dependent upon or identical to the structures and forces you oppose. If you are dependent upon the city way of life for food and shelter, then it is not revolutionary for you to bomb, shoot, or say “pig.” That is simply destruction which happens to be better than the passive acceptance of a society that sucks, but is not revolutionary.
Destruction and violence should be used only to defend that new order or life-style when it is threatened. Or to make way for the new order to exist, if there is no other way. Like if the police try to take you to jail for smoking marijuana or something.
But there is room for our new organic order to exist. The problems we face are too many people, too much technology, too much self-consciousness (due to media and cities), the super object/goal oriented consciousness of the white Western man.
The solution to the first three problems is to get out of the city, find some land, and work hard. The solution to the fourth problem is psychedelic drugs, which counteract the effect of this overly object-oriented mind. If you miss the excitement of technological urban life, work harder, have friends who live nearby, get stoned and play conga drums together, etc.
How do you make a revolution? The medium is the message. A revolutionary’s life-style is his medium and his message. Are you a self-sufficient farmer or a student activist? The latter is just another college game, perhaps showing more awareness and sophistication than previous ones, but still a game.
I have said how the revolution will happen. And it must happen because this crowded, inorganically structured, self-conscious, technological society can’t last too much longer.
B.B. Butcher
To The Editors:
Izzie Wright [Letters, FE #100, March 5-18, 1970] refutes my anti-monogamy article last February [“This Hallowed Institution,” FE #98, February 4-18, 1970] on these grounds: (1) Monogamy is neither inherently good nor inherently bad. It depends “on the people in it.” (2) The caveman never had a truly communal setup, only “small harems.” (3) Monogamy can’t be all that bad since it’s bound up with socialism as well as capitalism, e.g., Cuba. (4) The Weathermen argue anti-monogamy yet laud people like male-supremacist Mansen.
On Izzie’s Point One, here is Engels’ Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (pp.54-57):
“The monogamous family… is based on the supremacy of the man, the express purpose being to produce children of undisputed paternity….It is the existence of slavery side by side with monogamy from the very beginning with its specific character…And that is the character it still has today…. It was not in any way—fruit the fruit of individual sex-love… It was the first form of the family to be based, not on natural but on economic conditions—on the victory of private property over primitive, natural communal property.”
On Izzie’s Point Two, again here is Engels (p.27)!
“Reconstructing thus the past history of the family, Morgan…arrives at a primitive stage when unrestricted sexual freedom prevailed…every man and every man to every woman.”
And I might add that despite Engels though Izzie may have a point about the caveman’s not-so-much-sex-freedom, it’s fundamental to make a distinction between caveman and preceding semi-tree-dwellers. It is the latter who enjoys the lush pre-Ice Age greenery—and the true communality.
On Izzie’s Point Three, Cuba is not socialist but state-socialist. Or better, state-capitalist (not very much unlike the USSR) and hence still monogamous.
As for Point Four, the Weathermen, of course lauding a male-supremacist (if Manson be one) is contradictory to an anti-monogamous position. But that’s their problem.
My own anti-monogamy, though it may coincide with theirs, is rooted in the whole Reich-Engels weltanschauung. Only by cracking, invalidating this weltanschauung can one crack my stance.
Right Izzie? Right on.
Sam Cohen