Comrade George
Jackson Warned Us
by Chaka
"Comrade George
recognized fascism and dared to challenge it."
H.R 1955,
"The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act" passed
overwhelmingly in the House of Representative on October 23, 2007. I hope I have your full attention.
Years ago in Blood
in My Eye, George
Jackson wrote: "Death and prison for all who object - fascism in its final
and secure state. It has happened
here." It has been happening here.
To understand what Comrade George was saying we have to rely
less on establishment academics as to what fascism means. Most of them
understand fascism as something that happened in Europe during the 1930s.
Comrade George tried to improve our understanding of fascism by daring to look
beyond continental Europe. He
recognized US fascism by locating it in the history of genocidal extermination
of indigenous peoples and genocidal enslavement of Afrikans. Comrade George
also recognized that fascism continued into the present because he did not
separate white supremacy from its logical conclusion: genocide. Witness the attempts to destroy public
housing in New Orleans as homelessness there increases dramatically.
"Comrade George did not
separate white supremacy from its logical conclusion: genocide."
US concentration camps - prisons and jails - are sites of
terror and warfare. To some it seems undeclared, but the over 2 million people
imprisoned reveals high-intensity, racialized and class-based warfare.
Critically, this war against us is also highly gendered. While Afrikan men are the vast majority of
those incarcerated, Afrikan women are currently being incarcerated at higher
rates. The incredibly
disproportionate number of Afrikans and other racialized people in the US
gulags should make clear our deadly reality. The recent ruling by the Supreme Court that
asserts the right of federal judges to sentence individuals below the guideline
recommendations in crack
cocaine cases and the decision by the Sentencing Commission to apply
that ruling retroactively, should be a reminder of how much work we have left.
The mandatory minimum terms imposed by Congress remain along with their
devastating impact on our communities. Mass incarceration remains not only a
means of social control for populations rendered surplus by changes in the
global and US capitalist economy - US mass incarceration is genocidal.
On the frontlines trying to halt genocide were/are our
freedom fighters. Some of them
organized themselves under the banner of the Black Panther Party and the Black
Liberation Army; others formed the National Committee to Combat Fascism; and
others were/are part of other revolutionary formations and collectives. What they share(d) in common was a
willingness to up the ante of struggle as the apparatus of US state terrorism
intensified their brutality. Confronted with overwhelming state
violence, often in the form of police assassinations, they resisted. And those who dared to struggle have paid,
are still paying, with their lives.
Today, our freedom fighter - Assata Shakur - remains in exile. The terror mongers have placed a $1 million
bounty on her head. Others remain
exiled, suffering separation from loved ones, yet giving us hope, as they avoid
direct repression. But many of our freedom fighters - Jalil Muntaqim, Herman
Bell, Robert (Seth) Hayes, Mutulu Shakur, Sekou Odinga, Field Marshall Eddie
Conway, Leonard Peltier, Sundiata Acoli, Marilyn Buck, Mumia Abu Jamal and many
others- remain incarcerated. They are
political prisoners and prisoners of war, individuals who remain caged because
they fought and continue to fight against the forces of US fascism.
"Confronted with overwhelming state violence, often in the
form of police assassinations, they resisted."
In these times of global apartheid, "disaster capitalism,"
and intensifying white supremacist violence we should call upon the spirit of
George Jackson to "possess" us. "As a
slave, the social phenomenon that engages my whole consciousness is, of course,
revolution," Comrade George stated boldly. This is what made him so terrifying
to the ruling class. Comrade George recognized fascism and dared to challenge
it.
The pressing task we face is to make revolutionary
transformation the social phenomenon that engages our whole consciousness and
that of more people. Intensifying our
struggle to emancipate all our political prisoners and prisoners of war and to
permanently dismantle the prison industrial complex is a crucial aspect of this
work. It is also one of the most
important ways we can challenge the forces of imperialism abroad and fascism at
home.
Emancipating our freedom fighters is no easy task. The US state refuses to recognize them as
political prisoners and prisoners of war and keeps them locked up although they
have already had decades of their lives stolen. The criminal injustice system continues to be used to criminalize
organizing for social justice and to prevent resistance to political repression
and US state terror. It is from this
vantage point we must resist the "legalization" of "The
Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act." As the Center
for Constitutional Rights has pointed out this legislation is so broad and
sweeping that it can easily be used as a tool for state repression. Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, kidnappings
(extraordinary renditions), illegal wiring tapping, and the legalization of
torture (e.g. water boarding) all reveal that the legal framework for increased
repression is being rapidly expanded.
And, political repression continues to intensify. In fact,
our freedom fighters continue to be subjected to human rights violations and
political repression. For example, in
the aftermath of the attacks on the world trade center in September 2001, many
of our freedom fighters already incarcerated were placed in solitary
confinement. The justification given
was that they constituted a threat to the society. More recently, we witnessed the renewed attacks on the members
(past) of the Black Panther Party and the BPP's legacy of resistance to
empire. The San Francisco 8 case reveals that there
is no action too reprehensible for the forces of repression. Even though a Los Angeles judge, in 1975,
dismissed a case brought against some Black Panther Party members because
police had systematically
tortured BPP member Harold Taylor, the police have re-opened this more than
30 year old case against Taylor and other activists. The struggle to end this
specific attack continues.
Emancipating of freedom fighters is becoming more
difficult. The so-called "war against
terror" is the fig leaf behind which US State terror and corporate plundering
is being intensified. They are using
this as a means to expand the corporate warfare-police State and its systems of
control, containment, repression and death.
To ignore our responsibility to our incarcerated freedom fighters is to
lay idle as fascism intensifies. And
its intensification is not only at the level of the fascist State.
If Comrade George was correct in noting that the "fascist
state has found it essential to disguise the opulence of its ruling-class
leisure existence by providing the lower classes with a mass consumer's flea
market of its own," the capacity to participate in this "flea market" is
shrinking for the lower and middle classes as wealth inequality increases. Consequently, the danger to racialized
people, especially those who are poor, increases exponentially, given that the
US continues to be a white supremacist social formation.
"To ignore our
responsibility to our incarcerated freedom fighters is to lay idle as fascism
intensifies."
State terror widely manifested in mass incarceration is
today enabled by white
acceptance of the "necessity" of Black social death and
the societal retreat from racial justice.
(It is also enabled by our indifference; for the black political
mis-leadership class, those incarcerated have largely become disposable.) However, the dangers to Afrikans and other
racialized people is amplified because the increase in white economic/social
insecurity, real or imagined, will likely feed the growth of non-governmental
white terrorist organizations (e.g. KKK, Minutemen etc.). This could easily
lead whites to engage, as participants or spectators, in the anti-Afrikan
pogroms (disingenuously called "race riots") of the not so-distant past. Unfortunately, at this time, the likelihood
of massive white flight to even more explicit fascism remains more likely than
the rejection of "whiteness" and its wages.
Witness the epidemic of nooses and police murders.
If this is so, there is a dire need for stronger resistance
to genocide. A multi-pronged effort to
emancipate all the political prisoners and prisoners of war held in US gulags
as well as to abolish prisons may serve to revive and build revolutionary
consciousness. Already, the Jericho Movement, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Center for the
Defense of Human Rights (CDHR), Critical Resistance,
ABCDF and others are forwarding the struggle to emancipate our political
prisoners and prisoners of war. It is
imperative that we support them in realization that the emancipation of our
PPs/POWs, securing the safety of our political exiles, along with the
destruction of the prison industrial complex is a most critical front in our
struggle for a radically more egalitarian world.
“Fascism has
temporarily succeeded,” but as Comrade George said, “the only way we can
destroy it is to refuse compromise with the enemy state and its ruling class.”
Chaka can be contacted at [email protected].
Lawrence Hamm, of the People’s Organization for Progress (POP), joins us from Newark, New Jersey, to talk about Black politics in that city. The late Sharpe James was mayor for a record-setting 20…
Ajamu Baraka spoke with Garland Nixon about the need to oppose U.S. foreign policy in Africa and in the Middle East.
The same corporate media talking heads who told us to ignore Biden’s failing health are now cashing in with books revealing political cover ups while also covering up their own role in facilitating…
“It is a lie that slavery has been abolished. It has only been modernized.”
In “A Southern Panther,” movement elder Malik Rahim talks about his lifetime of battling racism and fighting for peace and environmental justice.
