Sing a Battle Song, page 18
Not mandatory for everyone, not a gut-check, but a tool—a Yacqui way of knowledge. But while we sing of drugs the enemy knows how great a threat our youth culture is to their rule, and they employ their allies—the killer-drugs (smack and speed)—to pacify and destroy young people. No revolution can succeed without the youth, and we face that possibility if we don’t meet this threat.
People are forming new families. Collectives have sprung up from Seattle to Atlanta, Buffalo to Vermont, and they are units of people who trust each other both to live together and to organize and fight together. The revolution involves our whole lives; we aren’t part-time soldiers or secret revolutionaries. It is our closeness and the integration of our personal lives with our revolutionary work that will make it hard for undercover pigs to infiltrate our collectives. It’s one thing for pigs to go to a few meetings, even meetings of a secret cell. It’s much harder for them to live in a family for long without being detected.
One of the most important things that has changed since people began working in collectives is the idea of what leadership is. People—and especially groups of sisters—don’t want to follow academic ideologues or authoritarians. From Fidel’s speeches and Ho’s poems we’ve understood how leaders grow out of being deeply in touch with movements. From Crazy Horse and other great Indian chiefs we’ve learned that the people who respect their tribe and its needs are followed freely and with love. The Lakotas laughed at the whites’ appointing one man to be chief of all the Lakota tribes, as if people wouldn’t still go with whichever leader they thought was doing the right thing!
Many of these changes have been pushed forward by women both in collectives with men and in all-women’s collectives. The enormous energy of sisters working together has not only transformed the movement internally, but when it moves out it is a movement that confuses and terrifies Amerika. When asked about the sincerity of Mme. Binh’s proposals Ky says, “Never trust a woman in politics.” The pigs refuse to believe that women can write a statement or build a sophisticated explosive device or fight in the streets. But while we have seen the potential strength of thousands of women marching, it is now up to revolutionary women to take the lead to call militant demonstrations, to organize young women, to carry the Viet Cong flag, to make it hard for Nixon and Ky to travel around the country ranting about POWs the same day that hundreds of women are being tortured in the prisons of South Vietnam.
It’s up to us to tell women in Amerika about Mme. Binh in Paris; about Pham Thi Quyen, fighter in the Saigon underground and wife of Nguyen Van Troi; about Mme. Nguyen Thi Dinh, leader of the first South Vietnamese People’s Liberation Armed Forces unit uprising in Ben Tre in 1961; about Celia Sanchez and Heidi Santamaria who fought at Moncada and in the Havana underground; about Bernadette Devlin and Leila Khaled and Lolita Lebron; and about Joan Bird and Afeni Shakur, and Mary Moylan here.
We can’t wait to organize people until we get ourselves together any more than we can act without being together. They must go on at the same time. None of these changes that people are going through are rules and principles. We are in many different regions of the country and are building different kinds of leaders and organizations. It’s not coming together into one organization, or paper structure of factions or coalitions. It’s a New Nation that will grow out of the struggles of the next year.
Bernardine Dohrn
Weather Underground
THE BOMBING OF THE CAPITOL
Washington, D.C. February 28, 1971
But make no mistake, the Weather Underground had not gone soft. It followed up its denunciation of armed struggle with the most spectacular bombing of the whole campaign. On February 28, 1971, two and a half months after issuing the New Morning statement, newspapers received a new communiqué. “We have attacked the Capitol,” it read, “the worldwide symbol of the government which is now attacking Indochina.”
The only problem was—no bomb had exploded in the Capitol.
The dynamite had been set, and the communiqué had been sent before it was due to detonate. But zero-hour came and went with no explosion. It was decided that a second starter-bomb would be smuggled into the building—now on high-alert—and placed on top of the original charge. When this went off, it would take the defective device with it.
Though the Underground had already displayed its propensity for hiding bombs behind toilets, police had somehow failed to search a little-used men’s bathroom in a restricted area of the Capitol’s basement. The starter-bomb was smuggled in, and at 1 a.m., on March 1st, the switchboard operator in Washington, D.C., was terrified by a caller speaking in a “low, hard” voice. “This building will blow up in thirty minutes,” he told her. “You will get many calls like this, but this one is real. Evacuate the building. This is in protest of the Nixon involvement in Laos.”
Half an hour later, the toilets went sky-high. The explosion ruined the Congressional barber shop, overturned tables in a senators’ dining room, and damaged an expensive painting of George Washington.
The Nixon regime is now attempting the brutal conquest of yet another nation in Indochina. Lies about the war “winding down” cannot hide the criminal invasion of Laos. Nixon’s speech last week cannot cover up the most vicious inhuman air war in history. Deadly US B52s are dropping the equivalent of Hiroshima every two days on Laotian villages, forests and fields. Air attacks on South Vietnam, North Vietnam and Cambodia are heavy and increasing. Nixon can’t explain away fifteen hundred US marines ready on the North Vietnamese border while Ky, Thieu and Kissinger prepare the Amerikan public for the next invasion. Nixon cannot disguise his plan—the genocide of all Indochinese people who dare to fight against Amerikan imperialism.
We have attacked the Capitol because it is, along with the White House and the Pentagon, the worldwide symbol of the government which is now attacking Indochina. To millions of people here and in Latin America, Africa and Asia, it is a monument to U.S. domination over the planet. The invaders of Laos will not have peace in this country. Young people here will do everything we can to harass, disrupt and destroy this murderous government. The thousands of people who have begun to protest and fight this new escalation are saying to the world that we will retaliate against Amerika’s crimes. Our actions, our protests and the spirit of our resistance will be welcomed and supported by people all over the world.
It is urgent that all of us expose Nixon’s lies. Pham Van Dong said, “Nixon talks peace to make war, that is as clear as daylight.” The U.S. claims to be responding to the presence of North Vietnamese in Laos, to be attacking the so-called Ho Chi Minh trail. But it is really launching a direct attack on the people of Laos. Their fight for national liberation has a long history. The Pathet Lao and nationalist forces have been fighting invaders since 1950, winning military victories, transforming lives. Since May 1964 (two months before the Gulf of Tonkin incident) Amerikan B52s flown from Thailand have been devastating the Laotian countryside. Sixty percent of the Laotian people have been made homeless, driven into population clusters or restoration zones with little possibility of survival. This, of course, is what the U.S. has done in Cambodia and South Vietnam.
But in the past few weeks, the Pathet Lao has won great victories over the US-controlled, CIA-trained mercenaries. After cutting off two bases, they are now threatening the main body of the attacking army. Nixon needs to send in Amerikan troops to repair the debacle. Already, the media and military spokesmen are calling it the greatest defeat since Tet—raising before Nixon and his collaborators the spectre of Dien Bien Phu.
Faced with defeats on the ground, Amerika has turned to an air war without limits. “Vietnamization” only means the replacement of Amerikan ground troops with even greater air power. With Black G.I.s leading open rebellions in the army, Nixon can’t rely on draftees. As G.I.s leave Vietnamese soil, they are replaced by more Amerikan B52s, flown by more Amerikan death-pilots, dropping bombs made in Amerikan factories.
U.S. bombers are now raining death on all of Indochina. Chemical defoliants have changed beautiful, lush countryside into a barren wasteland, uninhabitable for generations. Whole rice crops have been wiped out. And the Vietnamese revealed to scientists that defoliants cause severe genetic damage to human beings. A pregnant woman who drinks water which contains defoliant is more likely to have a malformed child than a woman exposed to atomic radiation in Hiroshima. The whole population of 5 Northeastern provinces of South Vietnam is being forcibly relocated to create a 60 mile wide free-fire zone for Amerikan bombers. There is open speculation in Washington about using tactical nuclear weapons in this area. This is not just a war against the people who are fighting now—it is a war against the future.
But Nixon speaks of peace. Air war isn’t really war at all. Bombers pounding the Laotian villages doesn’t mean an invasion. GIs in South Vietnamese uniforms aren’t really Amerikans. Words like “protective reaction,” “protective encirclement” and “phased withdrawal” clean it up for the TV and voting audience.
The men who are running this war are a new vicious breed of murderers. Kissinger smilingly referred to Nixon’s address as his “End of the World” speech, while Amerika moves closer to war with China. Laird cries for the POWs while Vietnamese are tortured in Saigon’s tiger cages and by U.S. special forces. Rogers pledges a “war without limits” in Indochina. Arrogant imperialists at ease with the pastime of murder. Selling their atrocities with press releases, “new images,” Madison Avenue doublethink. But as Custer discovered at the Little Big Horn, as the French found at Dien Bien Phu, and as Nixon is learning in the Laotian hills west of Khe Sanh, the arrogance of the white man can lead to his own destruction.
The war that began ten years ago was to be a quick mop-up job to search and destroy the Vietcong. Instead it has become the longest war this country has fought since the wars to conquer the Indians. Faced with the whole people of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam as its enemy, Amerika has turned to a new kind of warfare—kill all, burn all, destroy all. The crimes committed at the village of My Lai are not extraordinary—the defendants in that case call it standard operating procedure. After all, Calley testified, it’s not as if he were killing human beings.
But the people of Indochina have persevered. In Vietnam the Amerikan invaders have been driven out of the countryside by the full power of people’s war. By local self-defense units in each village, by women in the rice fields shooting down bomber planes, by children running supplies to the front, by the bamboo traps set by thousands of villagers, today the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) governs four-fifths of the countryside and 11 million people. It is recognized by over twenty nations, leading the war effort, maintaining factories and schools, making films. It is the government which, represented by Madame Binh, seeks peace and independence in Paris.
The Saigon regime is now on the brink of collapse. Even the CIA estimates that over thirty thousand people inside the regime are secret members of the NLF. In Saigon itself the underground carries out daily sabotage attacks, and mass student demonstrations threaten the U.S. embassy. In the cities, once the heart of Amerikan corruption and power in South Vietnam, everyone is part of the resistance movement.
Thousands of young people had the honor of meeting the Vietnamese while helping with the sugar harvest in Cuba. What we learn from our Cuban and Vietnamese friends is that our power grows in a long, a protracted war, while the enemy, attacked on many fronts, weakens. We have already fought many battles here. We were at the Pentagon and stopped troop trains in Oakland in 1967. In 1968, the combined effect of the Tet offensive, Black rebellions in every city and the student movement forced LBJ into early retirement. Last May, the massive response to the invasion of Cambodia slowed down Nixon’s timetable, heightened the crisis within the army, and gave great encouragement to the Indochinese people.
Now ruling-class spokesmen are telling us that the movement has cooled off—but we saw a new spirit march through the streets of Amerika last month. People are not fooled about the difficulty of resistance—we were never that naive. We are all learning new ways to fight against the advanced repressive technology of the pigs. It’s growing. In many cities, women’s groups led militant street demonstrations for the first time. They have taken the name and ideal of Madame Binh to young people. The life of Ho Chi Minh, the history of the DRV and NLF has been an inspiration to all of us. Now we must begin mobilizing for the next stage.
All over the country, revolutionaries are getting ready for the Spring. Our plans can be as creative and indigenous as the bamboo booby traps of the Vietnamese. Sometimes our weapons don’t seem to be enough—the feeling of frustration comes from our passionate desire to help force the withdrawal of U.S. troops and stop the murderous bombing raids right away. But our sting is deadly—our revolution is young. Beautiful Pathet Lao banners, sisters marching strong, mobile forces, new people. People learning how to live and how to sustain the fight. Together there comes great power. The combined strength of armed underground attacks, propaganda, demonstrations in the cities and campuses, actions by local collectives, all forms of organizing and political warfare can wreck the Amerikan warmachine.
Everything we do makes a difference. After the B52 attacks, the Vietnamese fill in the bomb craters. Hundreds of men and women mobilize to hand small baskets of earth up to the people at the top of the crater. Soon the crater is filled. People all over the world are encouraged by what we do here in the heart of the Empire.
Nixon will see that what he took for acquiescence was really the calm before the storm.
The Weather Underground
GEORGE JACKSON
San Francisco August 30, 1971
The tragic denouement to the George Jackson story was probably inevitable. It certainly seemed that way to Jackson himself. “They’ve pushed me over the line from which there can be no retreat,” he had once written, “I know that they will not be satisfied until they’ve pushed me out of existence altogether.” On August 21, 1971, guards at San Quentin shot him to death, claiming that he was armed and attempting to escape. The gun, variously described as a revolver and a pistol, couldn’t be found. In the context of his year-long war with the California prison authorities, his death was suspicious, to say the least. “We may never know exactly how he died,” wrote the local alternative newspaper, “But we damn well know why he died.”
At 2:02 a.m., on August 28, a week after Jackson’s death, a woman called the telephone operator in Sacramento. “This is Weatherman,” she said, “There’s a large explosive device at 714 P St. Don’t move it.” Police cars rushed to the address, which housed the Office of California Prisons. But before they got there, the bomb—three to five sticks of dynamite—had already destroyed a women’s bathroom on the sixth floor. “The explosion,” the L.A. Times reported, “turned the rest room into a mass of twisted pipe and splintered wood, blew gaping holes in the roof, knocked out an elevator door, cracked walls, ripped up the floor and severed electrical lines and water mains.” No one was hurt.
A minute or so later, a second bomb exploded in a Department of Corrections building on the San Francisco waterfront. Both devices had been placed the previous day, and their timers had been set to go off simultaneously. The communiqué arrived at the San Francisco Examiner later in the day.
“They’ve pushed me over the line from which there can be no retreat. I know that they will not be satisfied until they’ve pushed me out of existence altogether.”
On Saturday, August 21, 1971, George Jackson, black warrior, revolutionary leader, political prisoner, was shot dead by racist forces at San Quentin. Murdered for what he had become: Soledad Brother, soldier of his people, rising up through torment and torture, tyranny and injustice, unwilling to bow or bend to his oppressors. George Jackson died with his eyes fixed clearly on freedom.
Tonight the offices of the California prison system in San Francisco and Sacramento were attacked. Here is one outraged response to the assassination of George Jackson:
“There are still some Blacks here who consider themselves criminals—but not many. Believe me my friend, with the time and incentive that these brothers have to read, study and think, you will find no class or category more aware, more embittered, desperate, or dedicated to the ultimate remedy—revolution. The most dedicated, the best of our kind—you’ll find them in the Folsoms, San Quentins and Soledads.”
The prisons are part of a strategy of colonial warfare being waged against the Black population. For over a hundred years the U.S. government has tried to “civilize” the continents of Africa, Asia and Latin America. For the same reasons the government has stolen the land and labor and attempted to rip apart the culture of Black people. Originally kidnapped from Africa to work the plantations of the South, Black people today are being torn from their families and communities to be incarcerated in slave labor camps. Under the Slavery and Emancipation Act of 1865, slavery and involuntary servitude were abolished for everyone except criminals. Accordingly, the prison system in this country is run at a profit, with prisoners paid pennies an hour to produce everything from shoes to missile parts. Like in Vietnam, where “rebellious” populations have been “relocated” to strategic hamlets and tiger cages, the rebels of Watts, Harlem, Detroit, Hough have been shipped to places called San Quentin, the Tombs, Parish Prison and Cook County Jail—concentration camps whose sole purpose is to crush the spirit of resistance in the Black population.
Inside are those who have fought back against the white armies which occupy their communities, those who have experienced the slow death of heroin, those who have not accepted hunger, unemployment and racism as a normal way of life. Fifty percent of the prison population of California is Black and Brown. There are more Black men in prison than in college. Once in jail, the point is to keep them there. Thousands of prisoners are serving indeterminate sentences—one year to life is the required California sentence for robbery. There is a high price for parole—that of utter subservience to daily racism and indignities. Prisoners must accept arbitrary transfers, denial of visitation rights without explanation, inhumane medical treatment, atrocious food, overcrowding and rampant brutality. They must accept continual denial of parole by white Adult Authority members. George Jackson was denied parole many times between 1961 and 1969, although his only “crime” was a $70 gas station robbery. If a prisoner becomes identified as a militant, as an agitator, the Adjustment Center awaits. In San Quentin’s Maximum Security Adjustment Center, almost all the prisoners are Black and Brown. The guards and trustees are almost all white. It is in this wing that Fleeta Drumgo, John Clutchette, Ruchel Magee are now being burned and beaten.
