Part One

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BLoop IN My EYE
Part One

GEORGE JACKSON
‘To THE BLACK COMMUNIST YOUTH —
‘To THEIR FATHERS ~

We WILL Now CRITICIZE THE UNJUST WITH THE WEAPON.
CONTENTS

Preface
Gregory Armstrong

Blood in My Eye
George Jackson
My dear only surviving son,

Iwent to Mount Vernon August 7th, 1971, to visitthe grave
site of my heart your keepers murdered in cold disregard
for life.

His grave was supposed to be behind your grandfather's
and grandmother's. But I couldn't find it. There was no
marker. Just mowed grass. The story of our past. I sent the
keeper a blank check for a headstone ~ and two extra sites
~ blood in my eye!!!
PREFACE

In his introduction to George Jackson's Soledad Brother, Jean Genet
‘wrote, “Nothing has been willed, written or composed for the sake of
a book .. itis both a weapon of liberation and a poem of love.” This
book, t00, is a weapon, but one entirely willed and purposeful. It was
completed barely a week before the author's murder in San Quentin
‘on August 21, 1971. Ie was sent out of the Adjustment Center with
specific instructions for its publication, almost as if the author knew
that he would never live to see its appearance in print. Describing it
a few days before the end, George said, “I'm not a writer, but all of
it’ me, the way I wane it, the way I see it” What he saw and what he
wanted, the central passion of his life, was war, the revolutionary war
of the people against their oppressors, a war which grew out of “perfect
love and perfect hate.”

 

 

“I've been in rebellion all my life.” he wrote in one of his letters. For
1 young black growing up in the ghetto, the first rebellion is always
crime, George's first experience with Amerikan law came at fourteen
when he was arrested in Chicago for stealing a purse. From then on,
his life wasa constant succession of arrests juvenile homes, paroles and
more arrests. At age cighteen he was convicted of stealing $70.00 from
«gas station, His lawyer promised him that he would make a deal with
the D.A. if George confessed to second degree robbery. He told George
iewas his only chance because he had a record, “Don't put the court to
the expense of a trial, and they will give you county time.” Instead he
‘was given an indeterminate sentence ~ one year to life

‘The first time Iwas put in prison, it was just like dying, Just to exist
acall calls for some very heavy psychic adjustment, Being captured
was the first of my fears, It may have been an acquired characteristic
built up over centuries of black bondage.!

‘The turning poine in his life came when I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky,
Engels, and Mao .. and they redeemed me. For the first four years,
I studied nothing buc economics and miliary ideas. I met the black
guerrillas, George “Big Jake" Lewis, and James Carr, W.C. Nolen,
Bill Christmas, Tony Gibson and many others. We attempted to

 

1 Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson.

PART ONE.
transform the black eriminal mentality into a black revolutionary
mentaliey.?

He wasn’t alone in his discovery. At the same time, other prisoners
‘were just beginning to discover Marx, Fanon and Mao, who provided
them with a new way of regarding themselves and their struggle ~ a
new standard of moral judgment. “I have been in rebellion all my life
I juse didn’t know it.” The social insights of Marx and others made
it possible for them to have a sense of themselves as members of the
‘human community, members of a revolutionary brotherhood.

In prison, commitment co revolution hasa special meaningand a special
price. To be identified as a revolutionary by the prison authorities
means an almost permanent denial of parole, separation from the other
prisoners, solitary confinement (usually in maximum security wings of
the prison), transfers from one prison to another, beatings, bad food
Ie brings down on you the entire punitive and repressive force of
completely totalitarian system.

Inside prison George practiced a very special kind of devotion and
love. When convicts talk about him, they often use the term “for rea.”
Many inmates “murder mouth” and “sell wolf tickets": they do a lot
of heavy talking, bue when it comes down to the point of action, they
disappear. George. however, was as good as his word. Whenever he
made a statement of some kind, it would be followed by action. If you
‘were the victim ofa racial ateack inside prison, there was a good chance
that he would turn up fighting for you at your side.

Most of his “offenses” inside prison ~ the reasons why he was forced
to spend over seven years in various forms of solitary confinement,
including the infamous strip cells‘ in Soledad’s “O” wing, the reasons
‘why he was never paroled ~ involve his defense of other inmates. What
made him particularly dangerous to the prison authorities was this
‘enormous talent as an organizer.

2 Ibid
3.A 6 by cell with no protection from wet weather, deprived ofall items with
‘which he might clean himself, force to eat inthe stench and fikh caused by
hisown body wastes, allowed to wash his hands only once every five days and
required to sleep om a sif canvas ma placed direcly on the cold canvas loor,

8 BLOOD IN MY EYE
We have got co be together. We have gor to be in a position to tell
the pig that if he doesn’t serve the food when it’s warm and pass
‘out the scouring powder on time, everybody on the tier is going to
throw something at him, then things will change and life will be
easier. You don't get that kind of unity when you're fighting with
cach other. 'm always telling the brothers that some of those whites
are willing to work with us against the pigs. All they got to do is
stop talking honky. When the races stare fighting, all you have is
‘one maniac group against another. That's just what the pigs want.*

Ic is not coincidental that the need for unity among revolutionary
‘groups is one of the major themes of this book.

‘Try co remember how you fele at the most depressing moment of
your life, the moment of your deepest dejection. That is how I feel
all the time. No matter what level my consciousness may be, asleep,
awake, in between. The thing is there and it keeps me moving, pins
my eye to the ball, uptight, twenty-four hours a day.*

“Locked down” inside his cell, George devoted himself to study. His
painfully acquired scholarship in the fields of Marxian economics and
history rivaled that of most college professors. But sometimes, for days
‘onend, realty itself would vanish from his cell.

I would be sitting ina special locked isolation cell, sometimes even
with the lock welded shut, and there would be no one to talk to ~
just che sound of screaming voices. And because there is no human
contact, you depend on books. No contact with people. Special
lock welded on the door. Nobody around. I'm strictly by myself.
‘The only friend I had was a book. Sometimes I'd find myself talking,
out loud to the author. I'd sort of wake myself up and I'd hear myself
talking co this other person. I guess it was like some kind of wish
fulfillment. When I'm asleep at night, I still find myself talking to
those guys

‘Typing laboriously on a plastic typewriter, George published position
papers which deale with prison life and revolutionary polities from a
Marxian point of view.

4 Unpublished interview
5 Unpublished interview

(6 Unpublished interview

PART ONE. °
He paid a heavy price for his activities. When the prison couldn't break
hhim through solitary confinement, they attempted to have him killed
by other inmates: “They were forced to frame me and set me up for the
final kill” The word was out among white convicts: “Get Jackson. It
will do you some good.” Once he remarked that there had been twenty
setups on his life inside prison, Ie got so that when he left his cll he was
always ready to parry an attack. But nothing could mitigate the pain of
confinement. And the years stretched out and a whole decade passed.

In the context of his life what happened next had a grim inevitability.

On January 13, 1970, a new exercise yard was opened in the maximum
security wing of Soledad Prison. Eight whites and seven blacks were
skin-searched and sent out into the yard. Predictably a fight broke
‘our between the whites and the blacks. Without any warning, a tower
guard who had a reputation asa crack shot began to fire, He fired four
times and three black inmates were killed. One white prisoner was
‘wounded in the groin by a shor that ricocheted.

Black survivors claim that one of the wounded men bled to death on
the concrete floor. Three days later the Monterey County Grand Jury
found that the killings were justifiable homicide. Less than half an hour
after this verdict was announced on the prison radio, a white guard,
(not the guard who had fired the shots) was found beaten co death
All the convicts in the wing where the killing took place were put
into isolation, On February 28, Fleeta Drumgo, John Clutchette, and
George Jackson were formally charged with the murder.

‘The prison authorities accused George because, in their words, “he was
the only one who could have done it.” With their total power over the
inmate population ~ the power of parole, solitary confinement, the
power of life and death ~ they were certain they could get the kind of
testimony they needed when the rial came.

‘When George's parents came to visit him they used to bringhis younger
brother Jonathan, George and Jonathan would gd off to one side of the
visiting room and whisper together. What went on between them can
be seen in this book in the excerpts from Jonathan's correspondence. At
the age of sixteen Jonathan had an extraordinary insight into the nature
of guerrilla warfare. In some of his leters, George was later to refer to
Jonathan as his alter ego. After George was accused of the murder of
the guard on the 16ch of January, Jonathan began to get his first taste
‘of Amerikan justice.

10 BLOOD IN MY EYE
Jonathan himself wrote:

People have said that I am obsessed with my brother's ease, and the
‘movement in general. A person that was close to me once said that
my life was too wrapped up in my brother's case, and that I wasn't
cheerful enough for her. Ie’ true I don't laugh very much any more,
Thave but one question to ask all you people and people that think
like you, what would you do if was your brother?

On August 7, 1971, Jonathan Jackson entered a court-room in San
Rafael, California, and attempted to fie three black convicts, one of
‘whom was on tral for assaulting a guard, He armed the conviets and
took five hostages, including the assistant district attorney and the
judge, sill dressed in his robes. He died a few minutes later in a hail of
bullets inside a rented van that was being used for the getaway.

“We're taking over, he said. Atseventeen, Jonathan had already come to
the conclusion that the only way he could affirm his sense of justice was
ac the point of a gun. His experience of life in Amerika had convinced
hhim that the only way he could be heard was by an act of suicidal
daring. “You can take our pictures. We are the revolutionaries.” With
these words he announced to the world that he was not a criminal,
because he no longer recognized the legitimacy of white law.

 

‘When his sister heard the news of his death, she cried out, “But he was
only a boy” Her mother corrected her: “Don say that. He was a man,
‘They killed his father a long time ago. Jonathan wasn't going to let
that happen to him, He was going to live like a man.” After his death,
George wrote in a letter:

 

 

Thaven’t shed one tear, 'm too proud for that, a beautiful, beautiful
man-child with a sub-machine gun. He knew how tobe with people.
loved Jonathan, but his death only sharpens my fighting spire.

'm proud just to have known that he was flesh of my flesh, blood
of my blood.

In a news conference three days after, he said, “I loved that boy. I was
the first co stand him up in his erib, Not a erib, really. All we had was
box. [aught him how co walk: I wanted to teach him how to fly.
think of him now as I think of Che Guevara’

PART ONE. n
George Jackson's last book, Blood in My Eye, speaks with the voice of
the dead, not only the dead George Jackson and his brother, Jonathan,
but the living dead in all of the jails and ghettos of this counery. It
speaks with the voices of the men who have already given themselves
up for dead and who have nothing left to give ~ except a death for the
people.

Ic is very much a book by a man who considered himself doomed,
In his last letters, George wrote about the judicial process as “the
endgame.” He had foreseen and foretold his assassination at San
Quentin a thousand times (“ten years of blocking knife thrusts and the
pick handles of sadistic pigs”). The face thac the author of this book
lived with his death for so many years gives his book a kind of special
importance. But it would be a mistake to consider it simply as the
work of an individual ~ George always refused to consider himself an
individual, Untold thousands both inside and outside prison join in its
proclamation of total revolutionary war:

‘This book was written literally in bedlam, with the author locked
in solitary for a minimum of twenty-three and a half hours @ day, in
the midst of raucous screaming that never stopped ~ the screams of
prisoners being beaten, the screams of men retreating from intolerable
pain into madness. Iris a book about taking the revolution that George
‘worked and died for inside prison out into society at large. His message
to his revolutionary brothers is crystal-clear. Settle your quarrel, come
together, understand the realty of our situation, understand that fascism
is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that
generations more will die or live poor butchered half-lives if you fail 0
‘act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in
revolution. Pass on the torch. Join us, give up your life for she people.

 

‘George Jackson was shot and killed inside San Quentin on August 21,
1971. The convicts who were with him inside the cell block where he
‘was being confined have asserted that he sacrificed his own life to save
them from an official massacre.” This would only have been in keeping
with the character of his entre life.

Gregory Armstrong,
October 15, 1971

7 Analfidavi fled by the inmates of he San Quentin Adjustment Center shortly
after the author's death

2 BLOOD IN MY EYE
BLOOD IN MY EYE

We must accept she eventuality of bringing the U.S.A. to its knees; accept
the closing off of critical sections of the city with barbed wire, armored
ig carriers criscrossing the streets, soldiers everywhere, tommy guns
‘pointed at stomach level, smoke curling black against the daylight sky,
the smell of cordite, house-to-house searches, doors being kicked in, the
commonness of death,

March 28, 1971
Letter to a Comrade*

My sister has informed me of your release and the political education
class you have formed: From her words and your messages, I sense
that we are still rogether. We've gone through approximately the same
changes since they separated us ~ the confused flight to national
revolutionary Africa, through the riot stage of revolutionary Black
Amerika. We have finally arrived at scientific revolutionary socialism
with the rest of the colonial world. I was hoping that you wouldn't get
trapped in the riot stage like a great many other very sincere brothers.
Thave to browbeat them every day down here. They think they don't
need ideology, strategy or tactics. They think being a warrior is quite
enough. And yet, without discipline or direction, they'll end up
washing cars, or unclaimed bodies in the city-state’s morgue. But I was,
almost certain that wouldn't be your destination, brother.

Though 1 no longer adhere to all of Nechayew’s revolutionary
catechism’ (too cold, very much like the fascist psychology: revolution
should be love-inspired), his frse line contains the incontrovertible
truth, the black revolutionary is twice doomed

At times I wonder about the present state of revolutionary black
consciousness. Ie’s really annoying to hear blacks express right-wing
traditionalise political ideals. 1 mean the same spiel that you get from

  

8 A prison comrade ofthe author's who must remain anonymous.

‘9 Nechayey, an eatly Russian nihils, His catechism can be found in Zero: The
Storv of Terao, by Robert Payne

PART ONE. B
Wallace, Maddox, Hearst, or Hunt coming from black people like
Lomax, Young, Bunche ~ some recently dead now, thanks to the forces
‘of good. I think Lady Lomax is still around, though, representing Africa
with her Anglo-Saxon vernacular. Her husband, L. Lomax was C.LA.
Did you read The Reluctant African, which was sheer propaganda for
the “owner.” disguised in blackface. These are the really dangerous
people. When we leap to destroy the “owner” we'll have these kinds
‘of niggers to fight. They will use the tactic “white left-wing causes” to
protect their bosses’ “white right-wing cause.”

You must teach that socialism-communalism is as old as man; that
its principles formed the basis of mostly all the East African cultures
(chere was no word to denote possession in the original East Aftican
tongues). The only independent African societies today are socialistic.
‘Those which allowed capitalism to remain are still neo-colonies. Any
black who would defend an African military dictatorship is as much
1 fascist as Hoover. Are you aware of how the people are living under
these so-called Africanized fascist cultures? The Congo and the entire
‘West Coast of Africa excepting Guinea and Mauritania are still slave
states, dominated by Westernized black right-wing puppets. I'm
thoroughly sick of the old Jess B. Simples"® (young ones too). They'll
be your main source of opposition in communizing the black colonies
here. The “good white people” who own things will always give them
few inches in their papers or other media, That's how fascism works,
influencing the masses and institutions through elites

I talked to several black lawyers when I got this last case of pig killing
hhung on me. We started off agreeing, but they abandoned me the
moment I attacked Anglo-Saxon law, capitalism and the Blues, and
then went on to recognize Black Panthers, Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou
‘Toure, Nyerere and Odinga instead of Kenyatta, Lumumba instead of,
that litle punk in Ethiopia, and Peking instead of Atlanta or Freetown,
That will be your main source of opposition ~ the black running
dog. But it unfair co automatically condemn a black person for not
understanding economic and political subtleties; some are simply
confused in an honest way.

Some of the arguments they pose will center around the despondent
cliche that “Africa will invent something unique, it won't be socialism,

10 Fictional hero ofthe Langston,

u BLO
communism, or capitalism.” Often they'll leave out the denunciation
of capitalism altogether. You must explain the economic motive of
‘human social history and bring out that there are only two ways by
which societies ean ever be governed and organized for production
of their needs: the various types of totalitarian methods represented
by assorted capitalist and fascist arrangements, and the egalitarian
method. Egalitarianism is people's government, and people's
government and economics is socialism, dialectical and materialist.
How else can societies be governed? There must be hierarchies or the
climination of hierarchies. Then show that the greatest contributions
to egalitarianism came from Africa, the greatest and the first examples.

Then, comrade, you will encounter the faint-hearted and illogical
types like Ali/Clay, entertainer and tool of the capitalist cliques. Their
line is: “Ain't nobody bur black folks gonna die in a revolution.” This
argument completely over-looks the fact that we always have done most
of the dying, and still do: dying atthe stake, through social neglect or
in US. foreign wars. The point is now to construct a situation where
someone else will join in the dying, If fails and we have to do most of
the dying anyway, we're certainly no worse off than before.

We find ourselves today forced into a reexamination of the whole
nature of black revolutionary consciousness and its relative standing
‘within a class society steeped in a form of racism so sensitized that it
cextends itself even to the slightest variation in skin tone.

‘The gecat majority of blacks reject racism. They have never found
it expedient, wise or honorable to take on the characteristics of the
‘enemy. [think ic is vitally important to stress that for blacks a concern
for che “survival” of the race is not, patently not, definable as racism.

Any explanation for social phenomenon, past, present or future, must
present valid arguments and proof. As we travel back into history,
honest descriptions and definitions will inevitably overlap. They will
differ depending on their geopolitical standpoint. Ideally, they should
be colored with as litele subjective interpretation as possible from
today’s world. The present, due to its staggering complexities, is almost
as conjectural as the past. We must prove our predictions about the
fucure with action.

So all my comments must be considered the merest supposition ~ they
must be considered in just the same way we must consider all other

PART ONE. 15
‘comments in this area. They merit attention only in that as soon as I
make them it won't be much longer before I go about proving them. As
a slave, the social phenomenon that engages my whole consciousness is,
of course, revolution.

‘The slave ~ and revolution.

Born co a premature death, a menial, subsistence-wage worker, odd-
job man, the cleaner, the caught, the man under hatches, without
bail ~ that’s me, che colonial victim. Anyone who can pass the civil
service examination today can kill me tomorrow. Anyone who
passed the civil service examination yesterday can kill me today with
complete immunity. I've lived with repression every moment of my
life, a repression so formidable that any movement on my part can only
bring relief, the respite of a small victory- or the release of death. In
cevery sense of the term, in every sense that’s real, I'm a slave to, and of,
property,

Revolution within a modern industrial capitalist society can only mean
the overthrow of al existing property relations and the destruction of
all institutions that directly or indirectly support existing property
relations. It must include the total suppression of all classes and
individuals who endorse the present state of property relations or who
stand to gain from it, Anything less than this is reform. Government
and the infrastructure of the enemy capitalist state must be destroyed
to get atthe heart of the problem: property relations. Otherwise there
is no revolution. Reshutile the governmental personnel and forms,
‘without changing property relations and economic institutions, and
you have produced simply another reform stage in the old bourgeois
revolution. The power to alter the present imbalances, to remedy the
critical defects of an advanced industrial state ordered on an antiquated
set of greed-confused motives, rests with control over production and
distribution of wealth. IF the one percent who presently control the
wealth of the society maintain their control after any reordering of the
state, the changes cannot be said to be revolutionary.

 

‘The prerequisite for a successful popular revolution is that the
victors totally junk the old machinery of state. Lenin stressed in
the State and Revolution: “One thing especially was proven by the
commune, viz, that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the
ready-made state machinery and wield i for its own purposes.” And
again: “the working class must break up, smash the ready-made state

6 BLOOD IN MY EYE
machinery, and not confine itself merely to laying hold of it” The
reason is simple enough: A popular revolution means a revolution
by and for che popular classes. Its ultimate aim isto bring all classes
into one, that is, destroy the class state!"

Revolutionary change means the seizure of all chat is held by the 1
percent, and the transference of these holdings into the hands of
the remaining 99 percent. If the 1 percent are simply displaced by
another 1 percent, revolutionary change has not taken place. A social
revolution after the fact of the modern corporate capitalist state can
‘only mean the breakup of that state and a completely new form of
economics and culture. As slaves, we understand that ownership and
the mechanics of distribution must be reversed. The problems of the
Black Colony and the Brown Colony, those of the entire 99 percent
who are being manipulated, can never be redressed as long as the
necessary resources for their solution are the personal property of an
‘extraneous minority motivated solely by the need for its own survival.
‘And that extraneous minoriey will never consider the proper solutions
‘We have this on record from a voice speaking from inside the Fourth
Reich ~ a Lieutenant Governor of California orating in public on
poverty: "One-third of the population will always be ill-housed, ill-
clothed, and ill-fed, Many urban problems are realy conditions that we
cannot change or do not want to incur the disadvantages of changing.”
His “one-third” statement was a calculated understatement.

To the slave, revolution is an imperative, a love-inspited, conscious
act of desperation. It’s aggressive. It isn’t “cool” or cautious. Its bold,
audacious, violent, an expression of icy, disdainful hatred! Ie can
hardly be any other way without raising a fundamental contradiction,
If revolution, and especially revolution in Amerika, is anything less
than an effective defense/attack weapon and a charger for the people
to mount now, it is meaningless to the great majority of the slaves. If
revolution is tied to dependence on the inscrutabilities of “long-range
politics” ie cannot be made relevant to the person who expects to
die tomorrow. There can be no rigid time controls attached to “the
process” that offers itself as relief, not if those for whom itis principally
intended are under attack now. Ifthe proponents of revolution cannot
learn co distinguish and translate the theoretical into the practical, if

11 John Gerassi, The Coming ofthe New Intemational (New Y ork: World Pub-
lishing, 1970), p. 40,

PART ONE. 7
they continue to debate just how to call up and harness the conscious
motive forces of revolution, the revolutionary ideal will be the loser ~it
will be rejected.

‘The principal reservoir of revolutionary potential in Amerika lies in
wait inside the Black Colony. Its sheer numerical strength, is desperate
historical relation to the violence of the productive system, and the
fact of its present status in the creation of wealth force the black
stratum at the base of the whole class structure into the forefront of
any revolutionary scheme. Thirty percent of all industrial workers
are black. Close to 40 percent of all industrial support roles are filled
by blacks. Blacks are still doing the work of the greatest slave state in
history. The terms of our servitude are all chat have been altered.

‘The Black Colony ean and will influence the fate of things to come
in the US.A. The impact of black revolutionary rage actually could
carry at least the opening stages of a socialist revolution under certain
circumstances ~ not discounting some of the complexities created by
the specter of racism. However, if we are ever going to be successful in
tying black energy and rage to the international socialist revolution, we
must understand that racial complexities do exist

When the Minister of Defense and Servant of the People” atcacks
the strategy of the Amerikan Communist Party and the liberal-left
revisionists for theit failure to devise a policy which takes into account
the special circumstances of Yankee-style racism, he is not attacking
communism and the collective ideal, He is questioning the Communist
Party and other less committed sections of the left revolutionary
movement about their awareness of the unique problems presented by
«particularly vicious and immediately threatening racism.

My brother Jonathan, a communist revolutionary to the core, writing
me in June of 1969, theorized as follows:

We are quite obviously faced with a need to organize some small
defenses to the more flagrant abuses of the system now. I mean this,
in a military sense. The period of disorganized activity, of riots
and rallies, and purely political agitation/education has come to a
close. The violence of the opposition has brought i co an end. We
cannot raise consciousness another millimeter without a new set
of tactics. Long-range political ploys alone are nor practical for us.
To me, the concept seems to assume that someday in the distant

18 BLOOD IN MY EYE
fucure we'll produce a 700-pound flea to fight the Paper Tiger.
That's not too likely to happen. While we await the precise moment
when all of capitalism's victims will indignantly rise to destroy the
system, we are being devoured in family lots at the whim of this
thing. There will be no super-slave. Some of us are going to have to
take our courage in hand and build a hard revolutionary cadre for
selective retaliatory violence. We have numbers on our side if the
whites who suppore revolutionary change can prevent this ching
from degenerating into race war. The picture of the US. asa Paper
Tiger is quite accurate, bue there is a great deal of work to be done
on its destruction and I'm of the opinion that if there is a big job of |
‘growing to do, the sooner begun the sooner done.

Both Hucyand Jonathan are understandably calling for the programmed
revolution to take into account the fact of racial genocide. Jonathan is
calling ftom his grave, adding another voice to the many thunderous
graveyard affirmations which, for us blacks, speeds the revolution to
its ultimate issue. In order to develop revolutionary consciousness,
‘we must learn how revolutionary consciousness can be raised to the
highest point by stimuli from the vanguard elements, We recognize
and appreciate the decades of hard, sometimes dangerous work done
in the name of revolution by che older socialise parties. Perhaps we
wouldn't exist a all were it nor for their efforts. It is our sincere wish
to operate in complete harmony with these older groups. But we must
‘reate new impetus and greater intellectual and physical energy if the
forces of reaction are not to win another extended reprieve. A joint
cffore will make the task of overwhelming our common enemy enemy
all the simpler. But if our present differences cannot be reconciled
by an honest and fearless search for the correct way, then we will be
forced to take the foundation of correct ideals and theory into our own
hands and build a positive and more practical superstructure applicable
to the circumstances surrounding our lives. In his Guerrilla Warfare
Lenin wrote: “New forms of struggle, unknown to the participants of
the given period, inevitably arise asthe given social situation changes,
the coming crisis will introduce new forms of struggle that we are now
unable to foresee."

In other words, the old guard must not fail co understand that
circumstances change in time and space, that there can be nothing

 

3. Guerrilla Warfare

PART ONE. 19
dogmatic about revolutionary theory. It is to be born out of each
popular struggle. Each popular struggle must be analyzed historically
to discover new ideas. In the words of John Gerassi: “Building from
‘one to the other, eventually the revolutionary cadre would become
‘equipped with a theory rooted in experience, broadened by historical
knowledge, tested by combat, and fortified by reflection.”

 

After ten or fifteen generations of laboring on a subsistence level, after
ahundred and forty years of political agitation and education, we grow
impatient ~ nor that we fail to understand the risks and complexities of|
anti-establishmene warfare. We simply want to live.

‘We question a strategy that seems to have stopped short of providing a
tactic for growth and for survival. Terror tactics like lynching will never
be allowed to work on us. Ifterror is going to be the choice of weapons,
there must be funerals on both sides. And let the whole enemy power
complex be conscious of that!

‘The superstructure of any edifice that is as extensive and as lofty as
revolution must be reexamined with each successive layer, for faults,
for possible improvement of method.

‘We have the foundation of our strategy. We have studied Marx and
Lenin foradescription and history of the modem industrial state. We've
organized our thoughts and trained our bodies for the ordeal of “grave-
digging.” Our vanguard elements understand the simple importance of
‘winning consciousness. OF course education and familiarization with
the core issues on a broad basis precede hard revolutionary violence,
If people are to understand and relate to revolutionary violence they
must first be educated into an acceptance of the fact that there is no
alternative, or that the alternative is less inviting than a fight.

Our whole question is: just what level of consciousness will support
the violent revolutionary activity necessary to achieve our ends? And
‘how will we know when this level is reached? Recall: our Mao teaches
that when revolution fails it isn’ the faule of the people, ie’ the faule
of the vanguard party. The people will never come to us and say “Lets
fight There have never been any spontaneous revolutions. They were
all staged, manufactured, by people who went to the head of the masses
and directed them.

13 Gerasi op. ct p42.

20 BLOOD IN MY EYE
‘The liberalise slogan “You can’t get ahead of the people” is meaningless.
From what other position can one lead? From the rear? Rearguard
leadership?!" A typical Yankee innovation. I think most of these
irresponsible excuse-slogans are based on dread ~ a secret wish to avoid
the discomficure of people's war. In all the successful class struggles and
colonial wars of liberation, the vanguard elements did get ahead of the
people and pull. There is no other way in forward mass movement:

‘Avanguard which fears that consciousness will outstrip spontaneity,
which fears to put forth a bold “plan” that would compel general
recognition even among those who differ from us. Are they not
confusing vanguard with rearguard?"

am not implying that che vanguard party act out the people's role. I
am not implying a “society superior to society.” We must never forget
that it is the people who change circumstances and that the educator
himself needs educating. “Going among the people, learning from the
people, and serving the people” is really stating that we must find out
‘exactly what the people need and organize them around these needs. IF
the statement implies a “coming from” somewhere else, it substantiates
no superiority but rather a biological-existential reality. This concept
needs very litle substantiating beyond the obvious fact of a nation
of slaves who control no more wealth than some clothes, perhaps a
worthless automobile, and a roof of sorts over their heads, bue who
have been successfully conditioned to feel rich or at least contented,

“The task of a revolutionary is to make revolution.” The word
“manufacture” can be substituted for the word “make,” and the meaning
comes through a litle better for us.

‘The fascists have deliberately manufactured a false sense of security
by various stratagems. They will never permit conditions to go out
of their control as long as “bread and circuses” appease. We clearly
cannot dodge our responsibilities by giving credence to slogans built
around “conditions.” Conditions will never be altogether right for a
broadly based revolutionary war unless the fascists are stricken by an
uncharacteristic fit of total madness. Should we wait for something
that is not likely to occur at least for decades? The conditions that are
not present must be manufactured.

14VIL Lenin, Selected Works

PART ONE. a
Recall: we had people who felt conditions weren't right in the 1930s
also. The government's bread lines were backed up around every corner,
and baseball was at its peak. Private ownership of public property
should have been destroyed in that decade, but the “conditions weren't
right” The vanguard elements betrayed the people of this nation and
the world asa result oftheir failure to seize the time. The consequences
‘were a catastrophic war and a new round of imperialist expansion, chis
time carried out by the greatest imperialist of all time ~ the Yankee
brigand. There would now be no Indochina “situation” (to mention
‘one of dozens of like situations) if we had taken ourselves seriously
then, when all conditions were favorable. It was a slightly below-
conscious desire to avoid doing the US. further violence, and perhaps a
{general distaste for organized violence, in particular, that robbed us of
‘our chance to win on that occasion when, ironically, a win would have
cost very little, There wasn't chen even the illusion of well-being. In
4 report written by Comrade Jonathan Jackson in November of 1969
just before Fred Hampton's and Mark Clark’s murders in Chicago
and the shoot-out at the Central Avenue Panther headquarters in Los
Angeles he says,

Ie’ come down on us hard now. There are ewenty different breeds
of pigs patrolling every street in the colony here. I mean every
section of the city that can be said to be predominately Black is
saturated with the establishment's demented gunslingers, of every
sort. They're all nervous and dangerous as king cobras. Spies,
double agents, entrapment, a war of electronics, house-to-house
searches, doors being kicked in. I feel just as you do on these issues.
I’m just nor going for ic, even if ie means fighting them by mysel,
If they kick down the door of a house I've stopped at they'll fall in
dead. The 9 mm Browning weighs something like 2 pounds. I'm
not carrying this extra weight around my bele for nothing, Ie has a
13-round clip, I keep one in the barrel, 14 shots, Save me a cell on
murderer's row there, I could have 14 murder charges any day now.

   

‘Two Black Panther Party leaders killed during a raid by the Chicago police
Hampton was the chairman of the Illinois branch of the party. A special report
prepared by che commision of inquiry headed by Ramsey Clark concluded that
the purpose of the police raid was to “search and destroy” Ie also concluded ehat
Hampton had been deliberately killed by shots fied at close range while he was
totally unconscious. The shoot-out on Central was the esule of a police raid on the
Los Angeles Panther headquarters. The Panthers battled the police for five hours at
‘times even throwing the police’ own tear gas canisters back a chem,

2 BLOOD IN MY EYE
‘Try to get the picture ~ down every through street they cruise
just a few moments apart at most. Sometimes the stupid bastards
are bumper to bumper. Each one of the cruisers has a different
residential street here in the Black communities that seems to belong
to them. I's patterned. Let’ say two pig cars, “PI” and "P2," are
both traveling south on Central. They'll patrol six to seven blocks
‘on that main street. “PI” will chen make a left on SOth Street, “Pi
aright on Sse Street, ete. Ie works out so that each couple of square
blocks isin effect always surrounded, cut off divided, sub-divided,
Repression is here! I've followed them, studied them, holed a few of
their cars you should see how they'll run when they can't ell from
exactly what quarter they're drawing fire, We overestimate them, or
perhaps havelltte sense of our own power. Inthe short-run, and here
T mean in an isolated tactical operation sitting within a particular
political design, with military weapons we could easily out-gun the
establishment’ first line of defense. What, for example, would the
city pigs do if they are confronted by a 38 snubbed revolver in the
hand of a brother who's fired that 38 perhaps 10 times in his life?
‘Then take the same situation but give the brother a flamethrower
(scolen from the military), give the brother an armored van from
inside which he could use said flamethrower, give him also two
comrades in arms, one equipped with an M60 machine gun, the
other an anti-tank rocket launcher. Pigs are punks. Give me 10 cells
armed as I've just mentioned and we could start co enforce some
of the demands of the people. Their present show of strength is
actually their weakness show ~ they're too visible. Comrades ask
me sometimes what can we do against “all these pigs.” I state it
simply ~ we put them to death. They look at me as if to say. “Y
‘u're nuts, man.” When I go about my explanation their eyes go
blank, or they are distracted by something five blocks down the
street. They’te not hearing then. So what's happening? The things
I say (for us, smile) seem too fantastic for them to even listen. Yet
it doesn’t seem fantastic for them to go against che L.A.P.D. with a
snubbed-nosed revolver. There's a great deal of work to be done ~
‘with ourselves ~ yet. But the day of the real dragon is coming. Long
live the guerrilla!

Jonathan was sixteen years old chen and he had just thae year been
allowed to drive a car. He liked to drive, and observe. He had long since
learned co like the fight. Guns and weapons in general were his fort.
I carefully reminded him that even vanguard violence was organized

PART ONE. 2
violence. He returned one of Fanon’s lines: “Ie’s time for the talking to
end, and the acting to begin.”

In another of his reports, afer the Chicago murders of Hampton and
Clark and the five-hour shoot at Black Panther headquarters in Los
Angeles, he writes:

‘The fact of Amerikan terror, save existence in general, seems to have
almost destroyed the nervous system of the Black man here. They
are frightened, and feel they are smart for being so. Those that were
unaffected, those that escaped, those that refused to be intimidated,
dismayed, prudent to the point of cowardice, have either joined or
supported the Black Panther Party! They got down pretty cold,
One point needs to be cleared up, however. I recall you remarking
that in an urban guerrilla situation the military proper must be
hidden, separate from the political front, since unlike a classical
Mao-Giap countryside struggle where the enemy's principal forces
are 30 miles down the road, with us the enemy is all around, within
few moments of strike. There should, I feel, be one branch that is
purely political, operating the rent strikes, the breakfast programs,
the People’s Bazaars where all sorts of food and clothing, utensils
and tools are sold, hospitals or clinics (free, of course), and what
I will cerm cottage shops to employ those who will work for the
new medium of exchange ~ love and loyalty ~ at such things as
the making of the clothing and canning of the food for the People’s
Bazaar. Then there should be the super-secret branch to enforce.
‘The military, he comrades with the nervous equipment to make the
best use of the M60, the M16, the flamethrower, the hand grenade,
the mortar, our armored vans and equipmene in frone and plenty
‘of gun ports, bullet-proof tites, etc. You dig, one of the large trucks
properly prepared (plastic may be the best armor, 1Y2 inches will
stop a 220 geain slug fired from a 45 sub-machine gun; 2 inches to
3 inches will protect you from high-power rifle bullets) ~ and with
aheavy armor-piercing, ammo-equipped M60 port in the front cab
pointing in the direction that the truck is moving forward along
the street ~ is more effective than a tank of the Yankee style. The
machine gun in the front cab, and one pointing out to the rear from
the trailer, has whatever street they are moving down in a guerrilla
ambush tactic we'll call angulation. Each one of these guns pointing,
front and back, up the street and back down i, has the advantage of
being able to rack that entire street with only a slight back and forth,

 

 

u BLOOD IN MY EYE
lateral movement. One armor-piercing bullet may render several of
the unrighteous dead.

‘And comrade, the pigs are so proud of their new little ‘copters ~
they're suckers ~ ies almost comical to hear them boast and watch
them look to the sky with the pride of power. The pig who will get
up in one of those things is as stupidly suicidal as a duck erying
to outtly a charge of 12-gauge shor. The fierce and beautiful Cong
shoot down a couple dozen of the very biggest and best ‘copters
Yankee invention can produce every week. These things that the
pigs use are toys, sitting ducks. One, I mean one, solid or armor-
piercing .30 caliber bullet aimed at any one of several points ~ the
tail rotor, the hub of the main rotor, or even the operator ~ will
reduce $200,000 worth of Yankee invention to scrap.

I was pursuing this joke of a secondary education when the whole
thing occurred, but acting with my small ching would have hardly
helped much, though it may have helped raise consciousness, some
~ the besiegers attacked from the rear, the idea of it ~ strong!
Military it would have demonstrated to the pigs that the Panther
Party isnot out there on the limb alone, and of course it would have
promoted among the people that confidence of ability we always
speak on when together! How would they have fele (che pigs and
the people) if the nameless, faceless, lightning,swift soldier of the
people could have reached up, ewisted the tal of their $200,000
death bird, and hurled it into the streets, broken, ablaze!! I think
that sore of thing has more to do with consciousness than anything.
else I can think of. Long ive the Panther! Power to the People Who
Don't Fear Freedom.

Jonathan was sixteen years old then, I repeat. Consciousness is
the opposite of indifference, of blindness, blankness. Promoting
consciousness involves the general dissemination of the concept that
cach of us is part of a universal action and interaction: that poles
are somewhere connected: that there are material causes for trauma,
vertigo, degenerative disease. Connections, connections, cause and
cffect, clarity on theie relation and interrelations, the connection with
the past, continuity, flow, movement, the awareness that nothing,
nothing remains the same for long. And it follows that ifa ching is not
building, ic is certainly decaying ~ chat life is revolution ~ and that
the world will die if we don't read and act out its imperatives. Not
‘on its own will it die, bue rather because the forces of reaction have

PART ONE. 25
created imbalances that will kill it: “The seeds of its own destruction.”
Our destruction too ~ in the epoch of the Bomb, the nerve gases, the
massive precipitation of industrial wastes.

 

Consciousness is knowledge, recognition, foresight: common
experience and perception; sensibiliey, alertness, mindfulness. It stirs
the senses, the blood: it exposes and suggests: it will objectify, enrage,
direct. There are no positive formulas for a thing so complex. We have
{guidelines only to help us with its growth. This means that after we are
done with our books, they must be putaside: and the search for method
will depend on observations, correct analyses, creativity and seizing the
time. Sometime after the December 4, 1969, shoot-out around the
Panther Party Los Angeles headquarters, Jonathan commented on the
“connections” the aftermath:

Have you grasped the significance of the backlash? It has stung the
fascist. The people are in foment, all of them, of all persuasion.
‘They don’t dig midnight or dawn raiding parties, bullets with steel
jackets, cowardly pigs perched upon their roofs, the same gases
manufactured for use against the Vietnamese Liberators blowing
back into cheie faces: Repression, Do you see the effect ithas on the
uncommitted? Comrade, Repression exposes. By drawing violence
from the beast, the vanguard party is demonstrating for the world
to examine just exactly what terms their rule is predicated on ~
their power to organize violence, our acquiescence.

Bur check ~ Blacks are conditioned to acquiesce. They have, in
general, been led to believe that this system is the product and
property of the "white man” that the white man will protect it with
has all, chat che white man is a killer, a reflex killer, that all we can
ever hope for is a reforming or expanding of the system to include
the few of us who can make ourselves acceprable: “i's too big for
us” “you can‘ fight city hall’ “ie can’t happen in Amerikkka. and
all of chat shie, pig-shit.

Double check ~ all of the objective conditions are present here
in the Black Colony for revolution, the physical thing. I mean,
“want” and “want 10” (the real feeling, not the various pretenses).
East Los Angeles hasn’t changed a bit since you were out. Watts is
still a depressed area. Many of the west-side districts ae starting to
resemble the older black districts. The issue of employment is still
the same: we do 30 to 40 percent of the nation’s work for I percent

26 BLOOD IN MY EYE
of the returns, and a huge pool of us is always kept unemployed to
reduce the value of the labor of those who are, just like 10 years
ago. just like 1864-65 when we were thrown on the labor market-
hungry, ragged, crowded into clap-boards, and unhappy. Nothing
hhas changed since you left the street, comrade, not in this respect
at least. Pethaps our condition stands out a litele more glaringly.
that's all,

Bur you know what's been building. The vanguard has viciously
attacked the “system” ~ the omnipotent system attacked by the
slave. Sort of like the worker bee growing so disgusted with the
quality of is life that he turns and atcacks the beat. The other bees
will understand, they do understand, and all sorts of bees, even
those who thought the bear their rightful ruler see him differently
‘when he foams at the mouth, and bites at his own tail

I think you were on the right track with the idea concerning
repression. Its, it has to be, a part of the revolutionary process, a
necessary stage in the development of revolutionary consciousness.
‘The situation being as it was and is, the Black experience is what
I'm referring to here, The milder lynch-example type repression is
accepted by us as a necessary part of life, but che new harsher ching
brought on by the political thrust of the vanguard party serves to
show even the most tractable ofthe reformers among us that firstly,
the system will nor, or actually cannot, meet our demands; secondly,
icclearly illuserates the real terms of our existence under capitalism,
the nature of it, and how foul a piece of the pie would be even if we
could have some.

One fundamental problem remains: the survival of the vanguard
political party and I mean in good form. We must think to the
righteous fielding ofa clandestine army!

Jon

Lenin, Guevara and Fanon, all in their particular fashion, postulate
that before revolution can take place, all other forms of redress
must be exhausted, clearly exhausted. Electoral processes must have
broken down, the confidence of the electorate in any of the old forms
completely shattered, confidence in the ability of the old system to
honestly organize any aspect of public life must be shaken to the core
‘Years and years ago it may have been an acceptable tactic to organize
a people’ ticker of solid worker and revolutionary eredentials and

PART ONE. 7
arm it with an ideal platform ~ only to be defeated by a mud-slinging
‘opportunist-watlord, demonstrably inferior, scum-swilling pig. Then
pass out a pamphlet to explain to the people how the system has failed
them, or speak it in Pershing Square ~ or, years ago, in che Campus
Hall. Today itis not a tactic ~ i's counter-revolution. After forty years
it’s precey clear that it will not suffice. Years ago, “working with” and
attempting ¢o influence union leadership may have been judicious,
bur the government has long since infiltrated and bought off this
leadership and legislated away the strike. Union-hall speeches and
pamphlet passing are playing at revolution.

Icisn’ revolutionary or materialist to disconnect things. To disconnect
revolutionary consciousness from revolutionizing activity, co build
consciousness with political agitation and educational issue-making
alone is idealistic rather than materialist. The effect has been reformism
rather than revolution. When any election is held i will fortify
rather than destroy the credibility of the power brokers. When we
participate in this election to win, instead of disrupt, we're lending to
its credibility, and destroying our own, With all the factors of control
‘over the electoral process in the hands of the minority ruling class, the
people’ party ean always be made to seem isolated, unimportant, even
extraneous. If these tactics still give the appearance of revolution to
some after decades of miscarriage, we are justified in replacing them as
vanguard.

‘When people begin co express their disgust at the demagogic and
reformist maneuvers of the vanguard parties, they will discover in real
action a new form of political activity which in no way resembles the
old:

‘These politic are the politics of leaders and organizers living inside
history who take the lead with their brains and cheir muscles in
the fight for freedom. These politics are revolutionary and social,
and these new facts which the native will now come to know exist
only in action. They are the essence of the fight which explodes
the old colonial eruths and reveals unexpected facets, which brings
‘out new meanings and pinpoints the contradictions camouflaged
by these facts. The people engaged in the struggle who because of it
‘command and know these facts, go forward, freed from colonialism
and forewarned of all attempts at mystification, inoculated against
all national anthems. Violence alone, violence commiteed by the
people, violence organized and educated by its leaders, makes it

28 BLOOD IN MY EYE
possible for the masses to understand social truths and gives the
key to them. Without that struggle, without that knowledge of
the practice of action, there's nothing but a fancy-dress parade
and the blare of the trumpets. There's nothing save a minimum
of readaptation, a few reforms at the top, a flag waving: and down,
there at the bottom an undivided mass still living in che middle
ages, endlessly marking time."

In the general retreat co avoid full commitment, to write the
discomfort out of revolution, some have raised a debate among us that
thas degenerated into name-calling, quoting the same authorities to
validate diametrically opposed ideas, and ultimately creating a process
that is dividing us into ewo mutually exclusive or contradictory groups.
The overall effect is to reduce us to caricature.

‘Where more than one individual is involved in any life situation, the
fact of subjectivism will always make differences based on opinion and
interpretation ~ a problem in exchanges, in reaching the necessary
means for the initiation of collective activity. Some debate will always
be carried on. However, on the basics we must somehow agree or
nothing will get done. All opinions are not of equal value, and there is
such a ching as counterproductive revisionism.

Stupidity is nor unknown to our long-range political policy makers,
Participation in electoral politics organized by the enemy state ~ after
recognizing that the whole process must be discredited asa conditional
step into revolution, and particularly participation that tends to
authenticate this process ~ is the opposite of revolution. Ira tactic for
the ulera-rightists. With history as a guide we could never make such
monumental errors

‘The history of the US. ~ the blood-soaked, urine-steeped essence
of its being: the wreckage and demise of its human character under
the wheels of a tworhundred-year-old headlong flight with heedless,
frightened animals a the controls ofa machine that has mastered them
allows for no appeal on a strictly ideological level. George Wallace or
Adolf Hitler would fare better at che polls of an honest election than
Huey Newton and Tom Hayden. But again, what is an honest election
after the fact of monopoly capical?

16 Franca Fanon, The Wretched ofthe Earth

PART ONE. »
Repression is indeed a part of revolution, a nacural aspect of antithesis,
the always-to-be-expected defense-attack reflex of che beleaguered,
toothless tiger. All arguments against this fundamental fact are false
and labored to the poine of being completely illogical. Can power be
seriously challenged without a response? Will the robber baron, the
tycoon, the Fithrer allow us to seize his privilege without resistance?
Can we steal it away from the greatest bandie ofall time with sle

of hand alone? Incredible! The fascists understand the value of mass
psychology, are familiar with its use, and hold all the important
implements of its effective control, But they are not aware of our
existence and our general strategy regarding the reaching of people.

 

‘The whole situation can be reduced to a minority ruling clique
engaging the people’s vanguard elements for control of the masses.
‘The ruling clique approaches its task with a “what to think” program:
the vanguard elements have the much more difficule job of promoting
“how co think.”

No tactic can be ignored or discounted in such a battle. Power
responds to all threats. The response is repression. IF the threat is a
small one, the fascist tactic is to laugh it off, ignore it, isolace it with
its defense mechanism ~ media, The greater the threat che greater the
corresponding violence From power.

‘The only effective challenge to power is one that is broad enough to
make isolation impossible, and intensive enough to cause repression
to affect the normal life style of as many members of the society as
possible. By compromising and playing at class war, we lose. If some
effective means of threatening to wield powers not used in the opening
stages of revolutionary activity, repression will concentrate itself on the
vanguard elements only, when the ideal situation is for the people to
feel the raw essence of power. Nothing can bend consciousness more
effectively than a false arrest, a no-knock invasion, careless, panic-
stricken gunfire. These will frighten some, anger others. Common sense
alone tells me whom the people will turn their anger against. Perhaps
for a shore time they will be angey at us, but since the pig isa pig. it
‘won't be long before this anger is channeled in the righe direction.

Revolution builds in stages: ic isn’t cool or romantic: it’s bold and
vicious: it’s stalking and being stalked ~ the opposition rising above
our level of violence to repress us, and our forces learning how to
counter this repression and again pulling ourselves above their level

30 BLOOD IN MY EYE
of violence. That process repeats itself again and again uncil finally
the level is reached where the real power of the people is felt and the
ruling class is suppressed. The power of the people lies in its greater
potential violence. And this power of the people ~ their greater
potential violence ~ ean be brought to fruition only if the conditions
in an urban society are created by the application of the foco theory.”
‘The foco theory can be effective only when ie does not allow itself to be
isolated from the people, thus exposing itself to the vastly superior fire
power of the corporate state:

‘There is no doubt that Fidel’s favo was the motor to the revolution
in Cuba. Bue nor ean there be any doubt chat Fidel’ organizational
genius made sure that the fco remained in the center of the much,
bigger revolutionary movement, which it controlled or guided
for its military and political advantage, The faco may well be
the best tactic to mount che motor, but ie needs a long period of
preparation, intensive organizational work to set up an efficient,
reliable machinery which will not only generate che atmosphere
for armed struggle by focos but will also guarantee their logistic,
communication, survival programs and propaganda network. The
traditional communist parties of the world claim that chey are doing
just chat ~ and have been, mostly peacefally, for forty years. That is,
not what Bejar had in mind when he said there have been “teal stages
of hard underground life.” Bejar, and New Left revolutionaries all
over the world, know very well that a revolutionary life style is a
warriors life style, By stages he meant stages of combat, and that
is precisely the way in which revolutionaries can be honed into the
kind of organization capable of leading a people's war."

We are at an impasse now, because the next level of revolutionary
consciousness and activity cannot be reached without calling down on
the nation a corresponding and perhaps over-teactionary repression
And ie'snot the people who dread this next level of commitment. They

17 The Face theory grew out ofthe Cuban Revolution and refers the “more of
les slow building up through guerilla warfare ofa mobile sategic Free which
woul be the nucleus of people’ army an oF future socialist tate” [Regis
Debray, Revolution in he Revlution? armed Serugle and Political Struggle in
Latin. America (New York: Monthly Review Pres, 1967), p24]

18 Gerasi op. ct p69

PART ONE. 31
don't understand the significance of it as yet. The dread, the fear, rests
‘with some of the old-guard elements. refer you again to Mao: “When
revolution fails..it's the faule of the vanguard party”

Some of the fear is an honest fear that revolution will be repressed
entirely. These thinkers have historical references that roll them back
to Europe to the time of Hitler's Germany and Italy in the twenties and
thirties. Buc I say that can never happen here. That was too long ago,
too far away, and none of those European countries had thirty million
irate niggers on their hands. None of that ever had to happen, for the
same reason that we don't have to allow it to happen. Alll reactionary
movements depend principally on a handful of individuals ~ sometimes
‘one individual.

‘There are many thousands of ways to correct individuals. The best way
is to send one armed expert. I don’t mean to outshout him with logic, I
mean correct him. Slay him, assassinate him with thuggee, by silenced
pistol, shotgun, with a high-powered rifle shooting from four hundred
yards away and behind a rock. Suffocation, strangulation, crucifixion,
burning with flamethrower, dispatch by bomb, Auto accidents happen
all day. People drown, get poleaxed, breathe noxious gases, get stabbed,
{get poisoned with bad water, ratsbane, germicides, hemlock, arsenic,
strychnine, L.S.D. 25 concentrate, cyanide, hydrocyanic acid, vitriol,
‘A snake could bite him, nicotine oil is deadly, an overdose of dope:
there’s deadly nightshade, belladonna, datura, wolfs-bane, foxglove,
aconite, ptomaine, botulism, and the death of a thousand cuts. Bue a
curse won't work

 

 

We're going to have to fight to win. The logic of procrastination has
been destroyed. A people can never be so repressed that they can't
strike back in some way. We will purge the poltroons and fight. Or
just ignore them. The reality of power's automatic defense reflexes
makes it possible for us co measure our own effectiveness. Theie efforts
to seriously repress us indicate that we have reached people ~ that we
are finally in the fight. And we cannot ever be truly repressed. There
is quite simply no way for an established government to defeat an
internal, determined, aggressive enemy. Especially in an urban society.
‘The mechanics, logic, and logistics of urban people’s guerrilla warfare
cannot be defeated.

In the opening stages of such a conflict, before a unified left can be
established, before most people have accepted the inevitability of war,

32 BLOOD IN MY EYE
before we are able militarily to organize massive violence, we must
depend on limited, selective violence tied to an exact political purpose.
In the early service of the people there must be totally committed,
professional revolutionaries who understand that all human life is
meaningless if i is not accompanied by the controls that determine its
«quality. Iam one of these. My life has absolutely no value. I’m the man
under hatches, the desperate one. We will make the revolution, Nothing
«ean stop us, we are not intimidated by the specter of repression ~ we're
already repressed. The Black Legion” and their terror leaves us cold,
unafraid. We will meet it with a counter-terror. We'll never, never allow
‘ourselves to be immobilized by a tactic that actually works better for
us. The lynch-murder of a friend ~ it makes me angry, not afraid. I'm
the next man that must be lynched! My forefather trembled when his
brother was lynched, but my brother's immolation means war to the
death, war to the utmost, war to the knife!!

 

Violence is not supposed to work in Amerika. For no one, that is,
‘except the “omnipotent administrator.” But this has yet to be proved to
my satisfaction since I know that a bomb isa bomb isa bomb: i ewists
steel, shatters concrete and dismembers men everywhere else in the
world, Why nor those made in Amerika? A bullet fired from an assault
rifle in che hands of a Vietnamese liberation fighter will kill a pig in
‘Vietnam. Why won't it killa pig in the place where pigs are made?

Counter-terrorism is a facet of urban people’s guerrilla warfare. Ie’s
‘our logical response to the repressive measures taken by the enemy
state to contain us in the early stages of the rebellion. Our military
cadre involved in this activity has the tactical advantage over the
establishment's terrorists only if we remain clandestine. While working
ac the ditection of a political front we must remain separate from it
‘The ranks of these early soldiers must be absolutely impervious to
infileration: precautions must be made to keep this cadre impenetrable
to police spies and less committed comrades.

In The Coming of the New International, John Gerassi observed that
‘As a leading pragmatist, Lenin believed that the only way a

revolution could come about in Europe in his time was by the
creation of a revolutionary organization, That organization had

19 An armed ant-lborterorst group active inthe thirties, reputedly Financed
by sections of the automotive industry.

PART ONE. 33
to be tight, well trained, loyal co its central committee, dedicated
~ and narrow, not only for ideological reasons (hence purges and
sectarian splits were to be encouraged during its formative years),
bur also for security.”

‘And Lenin states that

‘The more we confine the membership of such an organization to
people who are professionally engaged in revolutionary activity and
‘who have been professionally trained in che art of combating the
police, the more difficule ie will be to unearth the organization.”

One of Jonathan's reports contains the following:

I find i almose impossible to trust comrades, not after all of this,
‘They say Gloves Davis ~ a black pig ~ killed Fred Hampton, while
hhe was asleep. I certainly don’t have to mention all the so-called
defectors who are now appearing before government committees
testifying for the state. They were infiltrators to begin with. The
hhouse-niggers who ran to the high sheriff as soon as someone
whispered revolt. I think I hate them worse than I hate the sheriff,
or the “owner.”

T’m juse a young slave (you say) trying to understand and cope with
my environment. I know personalities have no place in revolution
bur every time I think of Davis, Jess B. Simple, Karenga” and the
rest of these murderous turncoat idiots, my trigger finger fairly
itches! Non- persons like Karenga, LeRoi Jones and the other tight-
wing blacks are intelligent enough to know whae they are doing,
‘We cannot excuse them with the ease that we can excuse the average
brother who has had no opportunity or inclination to search. The
mantle of ignorance doesn’t cover their behavior. They have to
know that when they attack socialism, the communist ideal, and
revolution that they are not logically (or illogically depending)
attacking all chat is white, ete. They know that Ho Chi Minh isn’t
white or Chairman Mao, or Nkrumah, Lumumba, and Toure. They
know that there isn’t bue one fight going on across this planet, the
‘one between the imperialist forces of capitalism and its vietims.

 

20 Gerassi op. cies. 44,
2IV.L Lenin, Selected Works
22 Ron Karenga, head ofa black nationalist organization known as US.

ot BLOOD IN MY EYE
‘They know that it was for work that we were kidnapped ~ what
else do you feed a slave for? These Black, Black, Black, Black men
(if you can swallow their shallow shi) have had time to study,
some have traveled, they “know” that it was capitalist agricultural
economies that first caused our pain, and that the only change
since then is the decline of the agricultural elite and the rise of the
modern bourgeoisie. A sweatshop displaced the plantation. Could
i have escaped their that thae all the African states that really
liberated chemselves booted out the foreign businessmen and are
now socialist states?

No, I think the strongest suggestion is that they are working for the
government, the new house-niggers. And what better way is there
for chem co sell themselves to us than to scream Black, Black, Black,
Black .. Like Tom Mboya, whose whole service for the C.LA. was
to redirect the revolutionary rage of the people into a thing more
compatible with the interests on Western Businessmen. They are
spies ~ death to spies

don’t think itis personality clash atall for us to teach these black
pigs that we will not be altered from our course, that the reward
for counterrevolution is death! We can’t continue to expect or wish
for loyalty co the people ~ we'll have to demand it. And that’ both
from these cowardly fat-mouths who come to us in their disguise,
“cultural nationalism,” and from the class defectors who tommy-
‘gun usin our sleep.

T'll make an example of Gloves Davis even if I have to hobo to
Chicago. They'll find him strung-up to a street light by his heels
‘with our sign burned in his forehead!!

“Tests must be devised to guard ourselves against the possibility of
those fools getting into our separate military groups. There is no
way to stop the infiltration of an above-ground political group.
bur we can guard the clandestine army by: I. letting no one choose
us (even if they did know about us and could find us): we do the
choosing. 2 Once we choose someone to do the people's military
work they should be isolated and tested thoroughly, and their
background checked. There are patterns to people's lives especially
Blacks, that if studied one can easily spot pig tendencies and
connections. Checks could be run through some of our political
people who have friends or sympathizers who own, say, used car

PART ONE. 35
36

{ots or any business that generally deals in credit. A great deal can
be learned through the various credit check institutions these days.
‘We'll be using one of their own instruments for the “real” purpose
that they invented it, against chem. (Generally that’s the way i will
be throughout the war.)

‘Testing can be developed into a science-written stuff to help
reestablish for ourselves the patterns of this soldier's background,
You know, full commitment generally comes asa result of awareness,
and awareness is the product of study and observation. The things
‘person has gone to the effore of reading and analyzing say a great
deal about his character. In other words, very few black intelligence
agents will have studied Marx, Mao, Lenin, Fanon, cats like that
“in depth.” You can generally tell what processes a man’s mind has
gone through by what he’s studied, observed. So examine, even the
Post Office will do that. Written and oral tests ~ drugs are noc to be
discounted either, oral tests under truth drugs. Then you have the
ulcimate tests, the chings that no agent of the establishment could
do. Like assassinate the local head of the Gestapo. Bring him out of
isolation blindfolded, arm him, tell him what to do, and where to
{go afterward, and wait, ete. I think you could be faiely sure of him
after a series of tests like these.

‘We're only thinking in terms of a small, highly trained, super-secret,
counter-Kluxist vanguard group. However, dealing with people
you've known over the years and have seen tested in fire already is
best like me, you and your comrades, and mine, The Blacks who
joined the armed expeditionary forces just for profit (the eats who
secal them blind and hustle the other suckers). They are starting to
stir, to become aware also.

‘This Vietnam adventure on the part of the fascist has vastly changed
the whole relationship between the masses and the ruling class. Can
you detect the subtle changes? The really ugly side of imperialism
is being demonstrated for not just the people who suffer its effects
abroad, but also to the litte sleepy guy here inside the US. They're
starting now to make the link between foreign wars and foreign
businesses. And they're better able to make the comparisons and
conclusions. Ho Chi Minh vs. Ky, for example. People are all
starting to say such things as “Some form of socialism is the answer.”
Time to move, we must show them that resistance is possible, and
that chere isa hard lee cadre willing to lead it. Conditions are right

BLOOD IN MY EYE
now, for the beginnings, atleast, of a revolutionary culture: these
conditions have always been present here inside the Black Colony
bur... no leadership until now.

If we can keep the Panther alive by protecting the party workers
with a show of underground strength, watching the watcher,
assassinating the assassins I think the people will star co listen to
them. Blacks have grown very cynical toall geoups who make claims
in the area of problem-solving ~ since there have been one million
‘groups and no problems solved. The physical conditions are right
for che star of a protracted war. We have yet to hit on the tactic for
control of attitudes, however: how to make people organize and
resist the ruin of their lives. And ie’ for certain we'll never figure
‘out the right tactic if the pigs keep killing off and busting all the
vanguard elements, The time has come ~ Bobby's Seize the Time
makes sense, We can’t build a mass movement without finding some
‘way to stay alive long enough to let them know we're here. And that
‘we're not just out to play on them. That we are finally prepared to
totally commit ourselves to the fight, that we will never abandon
them when the pig moves in with his pistols and paddy-wagons,
that we're willing to take it to the grave-yard.

‘A show of organizational skill and valid anti-establishmentism
will always bring on violence from the fascist. The people know
this, so they must also know that this violence can be countered
before they'll believe and respond. “Let the ruling class tremble at
communist revolution.” That’s my favorite line in all of Marx and
Engels. From Fanon it's “The time for talking has ended, the time
for acting has begun.” ~ Long live the guerrilla,

Jon

‘The counter-terrorist faceless, nameless specialist in all martial arts is
the firse soldier of the people! His violence will be swift, surprising,
explosive, and tied into a clearly political matrix. In some cases of
assassination, it may be wise to make them appear as accidents, bur that
still doesn reduce the political content.

‘These workers, properly distributed and going about their tasks with
secret, flawless precision and in perfect unison with the political front,
will shake the fascists to their very foundations. Their limited, highly
selective violence is the absolute minimum for enforcing the demands

PART ONE. 37
of the people. Anything less will fail. We are not dealing with nice
people who will throw down their guns and submit to our will because
‘we outnumber them: from the vantage point of established power and
history, they know that one armed man can control a thousand.

People’s War is not polite or proper: It is not possible to limit the scope
and range of violence to what the enemy will bear without reacting.
‘Any ideal. any activity that may do violence to their control, will never
be permitted, People’s War is improvisation and more improvisation,
Ic is organizing the masses around their realistic needs and moving
them against whatever forces restric their passage to power, I repeat:
realisti, day-to-day needs should be the basis of organizing people and
making them conscious of revolution ~ that the world, the universe,
must revolve ~ that it will stop, stagnate, and die for no man’s privilege.

If we accept revolution, we muse accept all that it implies: repression,
counter-terrorism, days filled with work, nervous strain, prison,
funerals,

Our present problem as soldiers is to protect our political people actheir
work and enforce the increasing demands that the people, asa political
result, will make upon power. The soldier is the counter-terrorist, the
bodyguard, the first ofa milicary vanguard. The distance between him
and the class enemy is a free fire zone. He has to be the baddest and
serongest of our kind: calm, sure, self possessed, completely familiar
with the fact that the only things that stand berween black men and
violent death are the fast break, quick draw, and snap shot. Terrible
Jonathans teethed on the barrel of the political tool, hardened against
the concrete of the most uncivilized jungles of the planet ~ Chicago,
St. Louis, Los Angeles, San Francisco ~ tested in a dozen fires. “Tall,
slim youth’... the new nigger, with a gun and the eyes of the hunter,
the huncer of men.

 

‘These comrades must make the first contribution. They will be the
first to fall, We gather up their bodies, clean them, kiss them and
smile. Their funerals should be gala affairs, of home-brewed wine and
revolutionary music to do the dance of death by. We should be sad
‘only that its taken us so many generations to produce them. Building
consciousness and revolutionary culture against the repressive, natural
defense reflexes of the system means taking realistic day-to-day issues
like hunger, the need for clothing and housing, joblessness. It involves
provoking repression ~ feeding on it. The fac of political and political

38 BLOOD IN MY EYE
‘economic prisoners in legions and the processes used by the oppressors
to judge and condemn them must be used as the rallying cries of
revolution. Economic crime and even crimes of passion against the
‘oppressors must be understood as rebellion. Even funerals can be used
as an issue, since there will be so many of them. Improvising on reality
is che key principle underlying the building of a united left and raising
the consciousness of the people. It will give us our tactics.

In the Black Colony and other depressed areas ofthe country there will
be less difficulty in organizing, mobilizing and altering the attitudes
of the people toward their lass enemies. However, in the areas of the
class structure that can be said to be “making it.” affecting attitudes
toward a revolutionary change in che system of production and
distribution will, of course, call for the destruction of their comfort,
the “manufacturing” of a “condition” where they will be either neutral
‘orcomplementary to the revolutionary effort. The psychological effect
of oursecret army, the real destructive effect it can have: an increasingly
pervasive underground press with new emphasis on a “mass style": the
popularization of the revolutionary culeure and then the elevating of i;
both under the direction of an ultra-aggressive political party ~ chese
three, with no element missing, connected to the realistic issues form
the basis of our only hope. There will be no educating, no consciousness,
no revolutionary culture, no forward movement, without these three
«elements working with the harmony of a healthy organism,

‘To sum up, the existence of a political vanguard precedes the existence
of any of the other elements of a truly revolutionary culture. If the
thrust of this political vanguard is effective (demonstrating realistic,
sincere designs aimed at the overthrow of established power), ie will be
attacked by the buile-in automatic survival instincts of the established
power complex, creating and supporting the need to counterpoise the
violence of power. Without the ability to organize a counterforce to
neutralize the violence of established power, antithesis dies. We are
not contending with fools who will allow us to simply walk in and
‘organize people to war against them. All serious challenges will be
met with panic and repression, That is axiomatic. We must not allow
‘ourselves to be hunted, imprisoned and murdered. We will never yield
to tettor tactics. We will organize a violence of our own, hidden and
more aggressive. We fight from a position of weakness, but there are
tactical devices that if employed without restraint will afford us a very
real advantage.

PART ONE. 39
‘The fascists believe chat one guard with a machine gun can control
a thousand men, bue I know that this guard cannot watch all one
thousand at once. While his attention and gun are trained on a
gathering of ten who whisper freedom ~ closing on his blind side, my
Knife will claim his life. A political chrust is immediately followed
by a hidden military thrust in the opening phases of revolutionary
culture. Leadership must be protected. And it helps people bie by bit
to understand and relate to the necessity of violence in any plan to
‘overthrow anything ~ “overthrow” means violence. In our case it means
putting to death. This is the last time I'll repeat this for those of us who
for one dread or another seem not too receptive: fighting originates
from a well-developed kick in the ass.

‘The proletariat ~ the working class ~isstill the most revolutionary clas,
and still the real gravedigger of capitalist society. However, the notion
that they alone can or must carry the revolution is too ridiculous and
simplistic for any serious consideration at all. The industrial working
force of today’s modern industrial state may be pivotal in carrying out
a successful revolution against that state, but their power and numbers
have been vastly reduced by such developmentsas automation, miliary-
corporate elitism, (the connection through marriage of government,
military and corporate heads). the new class of National Guard pigs
(chey broke the postal strike), government-controlled unions, right-to-
work laws, etc. The argument that centers on the ideal that all workers
must be politically educated before the revolution can support violent
thrust verges on the absurd. Today nearly six and a half million of them
can’t find work. And those who are working seem to be convinced
that foreign wars and armaments spending are more desirable than
unemployment. OF course they should be made conscious of their
exploitation and they must be moved to actin their behalf, Those who
feel chat they are doing well, and those who actually are doing well
should be introduced co the Fact of surplus value.”* Waiting passively
for the final verdict of history is not making revolution. It fies in the
face of revolution. It ignores the existence of bread and circuses, terror
from the right, and the racism and animalism of che ruling-class pigs. It
doesn't take into account the fact that they know we are coming,

 

23 Surplus labor in Marxian economics is che number of hours aworker can work
in excess of what is requited to provide him wich minimum sustenance. The prod
uct of suapls labors known as surplus value It isthe only source of profe for the
capitalise and leads ro exploitation of the worker.

40 BLOOD IN MY EYE
‘They know how co hold on to their privilege, could they have held it
this long otherwise? We are being repressed now. Courts that dispense
no justice and concentration camps are already in existence. There ate
more secret police in this country than in all others combined ~ so
many that they constitute a whole new class that has attached itself
to the power complex. Repression is here. It’s time to move with
determination. After our victory, no one will escape our justice with the
now historically classic line “Well, we didn’t know.” Repression is here
now, and we won't reach the next level of revolutionary consciousness
and activiey until we meet it with a counter-terror and demonstrate to
the people that we are here and resistance is possible.

From a letcer mailed by Jonathan shortly before his death:

Why do we go for this old shit, most ofthe fascist functionaries live
as unguarded as I do. I could slip a knife between Max Rafferty’s
ribs. The Agnews and Du Ponts, the Rockefellers and Morgans,
all of the Getty, Hunt, and Hughes types who sneak around in
armored cars and jets are just as reachable. Anyone who will come
‘out of his bomb shelter can be had, Imagine what Nixon's armored
car would look like ifI stepped out of the alley and hie it with the
anti-tank rocket launcher under my coat ~ a ball of fire. Hell will
be their reward,

But che guerrilla needs our help. When Jonathan steps forward with
his anti-Nixon rocket launcher, there should be nine more like himself,
‘with assault rifles to close an exit path for him. And there should be a
political infrastructure, a cadre, not far away to explain his actions, and
¢glean from them the greatest possible overall political effect.

Prestige stands between the masses and a revolt against their class
‘enemy. The aura of magic, glamour, luster and splendid permanence
covers the fascists like a protective layer of fat. The slimy scales of
majesty shield and conceal the dilapidation of the old bourgeois reign
of terror. Although in reality nothing remains but the illusion. They
can still organize violence, but the Indo-Chinese have proved that to
be not to0 formidable.

(Our present task i to illustrate this point forcefully to the people. The
fascist industrial state can organize a ponderous, mechanized violence,
but this systematic industrially based holding action is helpless before
the fluid, mobil, sel-impelled attrition of people’ urban guerrilla

PART ONE. 41
warfare, With his cechniques fully developed and established, the
urban guerrilla launches his attacks on the corporate-military-police
complex with some of these military objectives in mind:

to weaken the local guardsorthe security system ofthedictatorship,
given the face that we are attacking and the “gorillas” defending,
‘which means catching the government in a defensive position with
its troops immobilized in defense of the entire complex of national
maintenance, with its ever present fears of an attack on its strategic
nerve centers, and without ever knowing where, how, and when
that attack will come:

to attack on every side with many different armed groups, few in
number, each self-contained and operating separately, to disperse
the government forces in their pursuit of a thoroughly fragmented
‘organization instead of offering the dictatorship the opportunity to
concentrate its forces of repression on the destruction of one tightly
‘organized system operating throughout the country:

= "to give proof of its combativeness, decision, firmness,
determination, and persistence in the attack on the military
dictatorship in order to permiall malcontentsto followour example
and fight with urban guerrilla tacties. Meanwhile, che government,
with all its problems, incapable of halting guerrilla operations in
the city, will lose time and suffer endless attrition and will finally
be forced to pull back its repressive troops in order to mount guard
‘over the banks, industries, armories, military barracks, prisons,
public offices, radio and television stations, North American firms,
{gas storage ranks, ol refineries: ships, airplanes, ports, residences of
‘outstanding members of the regime such as ministers and generals,
police stations, and official organizations, ete.

~ to increase urban guerrilla disturbances gradually in an endless
ascendancy of unforeseen actions such that the government troops
cannot leave the urban areas to pursue the guerrillas in the interior
without running the risk of abandoning the cities and permitting
rebellion to inctease on the coast as well as in the interior of the

 

~ to oblige the army and the police, with the commanders and
thelr assistants, to change the relative comforts and tranquility of
their barracks and their usual rest fora state of alarm and growing
tension in the expectation of attack or in search for tracks that
vanish without a trace:

= to avoid open battle and decisive combat with the government,

2 BLOOD IN MY EYE
limiting the struggle to brief and rapid atcacks with lighening
results:

~ toassure for the urban guerrillaa maximum freedom of maneuver
and of action without ever relinquishing the use of armed
violence, remaining firmly oriented toward helping the beginning
of rural guerrilla warfare and supporting the construction of the
revolutionary army for national liberation.”

Prestige is an abstract, an intangible. It has no material basis, no
substantial objective reality to be perceived through the senses. One
can’t couch itor tasteit, see itor smell i, it can't be heard. So how does
iexist? Subjectively, in the mind's eye, ater the fact of some connected
circumstances that may also have been subjective

We're looking for connections: the materialist approach is to examine
things in their coral sequence, see them in process, not to merely
establish their being in fixed sequential images, but co cake in the
state of being in process: infancy, macutity, decline, things in motion,
processed into other things in motion, We're constantly laboring to
determine that which governs, regulates, motivates all the separate
bur related and interrelated processes ~ from the viewpoint that
consciousness is determined by dialectical, objective developments.
‘The prestige of power as the subjective effect of a past deed or
reputation, real or fancied, then has a very definite life process. The
prestige of the capitalist class inside the US. reached its mavuriey with
the close of che 1860-64 civil war. Since that time there have been no
serious chreats to their power: their excesses have taken on a certain
legitimacy through long usage.

Prestige bars any serious attack on power. Do people attack a thing
they consider with awe, with a sense of its legitimacy? In the process
of things, the prestige of power emerges roughly in that period when
power does not have to exercise its underlying basis ~ violence. Having
proved and established itself, it drifts, secure from any serious challenge.
Its automatic defense-attack instincts remain alert: small threats are
either ignored away, laughed away, or in the cases that may build into
something dangerous, slapped away. To the masters of capital, the
most dreadful omen of all is revolutionary scientific socialism. The
sgravedigger evokes fear response. Prestige wanes if the first attacks on

24 Gerassi op. cit,p.71.

PART ONE. 4B
its power base find it wanting, Prestige dies when it cannot prevent
further atcacks upon itself,

All intellectual arguments against the necessity of counter-violence,
even in the opening stages of a People’s War against an industrial
establishment such as the one in the US.A., are false, We can stop
the debate: prestige must be destroyed. People must sce the venerated
insticutions and the “omnipotent administrator” actually under physical
attack, They must be assured that the heavens will not hurl lightning
bolts at the people’s heads for challenging the rights of property.
‘Then, although international capitalism has shor its last bolts, ic is not
‘exactly harmless. Ifthe threat to power is truly revolutionary and the
first step into revolutionary consciousness taken with a forceful attack
upon prestige, we must anticipate reaction, accept repression’s terror,
and meet it with a counter-terror of our own. The gravedigger needs a
bodyguard to protect him at this work, else the grave may be his own.

‘The debate between the vanguard elements should end. The argument
that the prestige of power will lec itself to be educated away is too
idiotic co be allowed co stand. Waiting for power to move to its
inevitable collapse is suicidal forall concerned. Blacks and other Third
‘World peoples have the very imminent prospect of genocidal tactics
to contend with, and we can now all see that the modern industrial
state, motivated by the interests of exclusive groups of capitalise
masters, cannot regulate itself to make possible an inclusive production
and distribution of goods, or production without a massive waste of
resources and destruction of all that stands about. The debate ends,
the action begins. It is not a question of the necessity of violence, but
hhow to organize it to fit our unique sicuation, co tie it with flawless
exactitude to our political activity, and to organize it immediately.

Comrade George: I read recently from a textbook edited by my
favorite writer W. Pomeroy" that a city street could actually be
considered as a defile. A convoy of any kind trapped in a defile on
the countryside is easy prey for the forces positioned above and
about

 

“Jonathan

Ieis absolutely certain that every fascist military thinker and offical in
the world has devored time and study to the works of the great guerrilla

25 WJ. Forest Pomeroy. author of Guerilla Warfireand Marsism.

a“ BLOOD IN MY EYE
tacticians, Mao, Ho, Giap, Guevara, Pomeroy. Fanon and Nkrumah,
‘The fundamentals of People’s War are no sectet. It would seem that
Giap’s People’s Army, People's War or Guevara's Guervilla Warfare and
the other masterworks on poor people’s war, once published for the
world to study, would blunt their effectiveness at least a little ~ that
is, until one has studied in depth and understood. Guerrilla warfare by
its very nature is invulnerable. Advanced scientific guerrilla strategy,
worked out over the first three-quarters ofthis century, is not, contrary
to popular image, merely a “hit-and-run” haphazard affait. In spite of
the need for improvisation and mobility and in spite of its poverty and
daring, ics scientific. The man who labored over its construction had
as.a task the forging of an instrument which would enable an indigent
and weaponless people to resist and overcome a ponderous mechanized
army dependent upon an industrial base and operating on systematized
thought. It is a perfect cool, perfect. No establishment army can
countervail it. The best example of this new fighting style ~ the urban
{guerrilla ~is the spectacular success of the Tupamaros, the milicary arm
‘of Uruguay's National Liberation Movement. Brilliantly organized,
they have carried out well-planned operations, such as

    

burning down plants (General Motors) without harming a single
worker, robbing impregnable fortresses (such as the Casino of Punta
del Este), kidnapping hated officials, ambassadors, and bankers,
seizing whole rowns long enough to explain their purpose and
revolutionary commitment, assassinating key repressive agents, such
as the chief of che police’ special squad, sabotaging imperialism’
industrial-military complexes and raiding police military outposts
to capture arms and ammunition."

Gerassi outlines their fighting strategy as follows:

‘The objective is manifold: (1) co threaten the Establishment, cause
i to panic and make serious tactical mistakes, such as resorting to
mass repression which radicalizes the population against them; (2)
to establish the underground revolutionary apparatus, including
both active participants and trusted but passive collaborators
(who will later carry out the liaison communication, logistic, and
propaganda needs of the revolutionary armies in the cities); (3) to
test new recruits in relative security, for, hough police infiltrators
are bound to creep in and stay in the organization for future need
ceven if they have to kill their own to do so, the fact that for a long
time urban groups will operate independently of each other keeps

PART ONE. 45
sweeping arrests of urban guerrillas down to a minimum: (4) to
demoralize the rank and file and even the officers of the repressive
forces, as they see themselves constantly but unexpectedly under
attack (ic is said that to kill policemen indiscriminately isto forget
the working-class background ofthe cop on the beat: thisis as absurd
as trying to save the ordinary soldiers whom the Vietnamese must
Kall co survive); (5) to panic local capitalists to withdraw their funds
from specific areas, thus hurting the local warlords and politicians
who profit from these investments: (6) to frighten away foreign
investors, which will affect the whole bureaucratic oligarchy: (7) to
force the US. co constantly extend its intervention, which will ax
its resources, hence discontent at home, and spread its imperialistic
arms, rendering it more vulnerable abroad.”

‘Ac this point, I must make clear that I am certainly not warning the
military establishment or their capitalist masters, nor am I advocating
the overthrow of the established Amerikan government: when T use the
initials US.A. in these observations, it must be understood that I could
quite as easily be referring to the Union of South Africa (US.A.!!)

‘The government of the US.A. and all that it stands for, all chat it
represents, must be destroyed. This is the starting point, and the end.
‘We have the means to this end: the problem is to develop acceptance
of their use.

‘The firse struggle is one waged within our own minds. We must in all
haste transcend the intellectual inhibitions that preclude support of at
least the minimum level of violence that must develop concomitantly
‘with each political thrust:ouratticudes mustchangebeforewecan expect
any response from the people, workers, students, lumpenproletariat.
‘We must accept the eventuality of bringing the US.A. to its knees:
accept the closing off of critical sections of the city with barbed wire,
armored pig cartiers criss-crossing the city streets, soldiers everywhere,
tommy guns pointed at stomach level, smoke curling black against
the daylight sky, the smell of cordite, house-to-house searches, doors
being kicked down, che commonness of death. Then we must learn the
forms of resistance: the booby trap, the silenced pistol and rifle, the
pitting of streets to slow chem down, the wrecking of heavy equipment
to block their efficient movement, false walls, hidden sub-basements,

26 Bid, p.68.

46 BLOOD IN MY EYE
tunnels (Vietnamese style), destruction of the critical elements of the
facilities thac support establishment order: we must learn the value of
infleration ~ it works better for us than it does for the opposition. We
simply stop allowing ourselves to be hunted and do some stalking of
‘our own: their secret police aren't really too secret at all, Right now
‘we can go numbering, naming, compiling information on them all ~
they're too visible to be safe, Revolution is aggressive. Just where are
‘we? Where is chis country skidding to? In the morning the fight will
have begun!

In considering all ofthe establishment's protective agencies, even those
that are quasi-secret, none can hide themselves. Any establishment,
insticution or organization that enjoys prestige, that exists openly
aboveground, is by this definition “weak,” or at least vulnerable to
a determined attack. When the purpose of your military tactics is
to build and guard some object or point of supposed advantage, the
defender can actually be thought of as being under siege, the guard
himself standing target. The foreress and all its resources, mechanized
and human, forall its imposing strengeh, cannot exist for long under
persistent attack deprived of the opportunity co replenish, repair,
renew itself If che opposing military forces that have laid the siege are
nameless faceless, numberless indistinguishable from all the millions
that existall about the establishment, when the establishment's milicary
forces sally forth from their beleaguered fortress to do battle, what
must be the result? They must cause suffering to the innocent, since
i is impossible for them to know us, thus making new enemies. They
will restrict the freedom of our known or suspected political parties
and projects that are welded to the people, thus restricting the freedom
of others who may have been neutral or sympathetic to them. They
will make themselves targets for our hidden machine gun, sniper’ rifle,
silenced pistol, mortar, anti-tank rocket, flamethrower

Our counter-terrorism will bring on a stage-two fascist repression
‘There is no question in our minds ~ blacks, men under hatches ~ about
the nature of the ruling class: the exceedingly violent disposition of
the US.A. ruling class is well documented with just a glance into our
lives and the order of our deaths. The point is to reveal this “senseless
violence” to the entire revolutionary class or classes.

Counter-terrorism isa mighty tool, and the only one at our disposal in

the opening stages of People’s War. In some cases in other revolutionary
societies this level of violence alone was sufficient to win all the

PART ONE. a7
demands of che people. However, I’m sure that here it will not be
sufficient because of the complexities of the U.S.A. class structure and
its stockpile of potential further violence (many of the small demands of
a sizable portion of the population are slowly being met at che expense
of all che rest of us and the world’s people). A new pig-oriented class
hhas been created at the bottom of our society from which the ruling
class will be always able to draw some support. Consequently our task
will be to move from counter-terrorist tactics into the second stage of
larger guerslla unie operation.

Over 90 percent of the US.A. population live in cities and towns, and
although some of the principles of classic Mao-Che-style guerrilla
‘operations must be used to stop the orderly flow of intercity and
interstate commerce, most of the real fighting must take place inside
the nerve centers of the nation ~ the cities. This is an entirely new
situation in the development of People’s Wat. Whereas the classic types
of the Third World movements generally relied upon the strangling
of provincial capitals where the enemy colonial power tended to
concentrate itself, in urban guerrilla warfare where the colonies can be
said co be situated within the city, the process or tacties will be unique.

‘Though the basic strategy is the same, urban guerrilla warfare differs
from all that has ever taken place in the arena of guerrilla against the
god state. There are similarities between our situation and that of the
‘growing movement of the Uruguayan people, and perhaps we can draw
from their experience. But to be realistic, the disparity in size and
population, the relative strength of the enemy state institutions and
their global sweep, must seriously be taken into account. Uruguay is a
colony of Anglo-Amerika: defeat of the Uruguayan government and
1 change in the present property relations would of necessity mean
the defeat of a section of the Amerikan imperial infrastructure. The
comparison between ourselves and the Algerian liberation experience
is almost untenable, though there may be some small tactical lessons
to be gleaned from their urban effort. It must be kept in mind that
the principal battles that led to the people’s victory were fought on
the countryside between massive French mechanized divisions and a
classical guerrilla army of the people. The battle for Algiers was only
aided by the forces within. The people’s fifth column within the city
of Algiers was not a model of perfection simply because the principal
effort, energy and motive forces were located in the classical guerrilla
units that engaged the French expeditionary forces for control of

48 BLOOD IN MY EYE
the countryside. At issue there in Algeria were such things as erude
petroleum (62 percent of the nation’s exports), agricultural products
(18 percent), and some iron ore. All these basic raw materials were,
‘of course, located in the countryside and had to be protected by the
French.

‘The war for control of the U.S.A. is unique in that its heartbeat can be
stopped only by placing our primary forces in the valleys and defiles of
its city streets. US.A. is the colonial master, the center of the imperial
process where the raw materials are worked into finished manufactured
products to be recirculated back into the exterior and interior colonies.

Ina comparison of the classical forms of wars of liberation fought in the
‘outlying colonies and the one we must yet formulate, a vital question
is immediately brought to our attention: Does it work in such a totally
differene seccing?

A theoretical examination indicates that it does. Infact, urban people's
{guerrilla warfare may prove to be an even more effective tool than the
classical type. The same advantages are present, the same possibilities,
plus some that exist simply because the fight is taking place within the
cities, the nerve centers of the nation.

‘Theenemy culture, the established government exists firstofall because
of its ability to govern, co maintain enough order to ensure that a eycle
of sorts exists between the various levels and elements of the society.
“Law and Order” is their objective, Ours is “Perfect Disorder” Our
aim isco stop the life cycle of the enemy culture and replace it with our
‘own revolutionary culture. This can be done only by creating perfect
disorder within the eycle of the enemy culture’ life process and leaving
power vacuum to be filled by our building revolutionary culture.

‘When the fight takes place within the cities, the disorder will clearly
be hastened ~ this will have an immediate effece on the consciousness
of the bulk of the population and will strain che relationship between
{government and governed to the utmost.

If che life of the manufacturing city is to be stopped, itis clear that the
normal processes, at least, will be slowed by a convoy of establishment
trucks, tanks or troops simply moving in the city’s arteries where
‘commercial convoys should be moving. The necessary checkpoints will
further slow it. Each one of the opposition’s own tank shells that is fired
inside the manufacturing city ac the elusive guerrilla will destroy some

PART ONE. 9
aspect of that factory-city and undercut the ability ofthe establishment
to produce another tank shell. Ie will not help the fascist cause very
‘much atall when the armored personnel carrier or jeep patrol equipped
‘with 30-caliber machine guns fires into a downtown shopping crowd
at the elusive guerrilla who has taken refuge among them. The people
juse will noc understand,

‘The cities of fascist US.A-built straight up and with very litle real
planning or pattern, the twisting side streets, gangways connecting
roofs, manholes, storm drains, concrete and steel trees ~ will hide a
guerrilla army just as effectively as any forest. There is the added
advantage that just being in an area doesn’t automatically make one
suspect and fair game, as is the ease when an establishment army unit
spots a gathering, no matter how innocent, in an area where guerrilla
movements have been reported in the countryside: just being out there
defines them. The fact that the guerrilla can hide himself fairly easily
inside large population centers does not mean that hard work needn't
bbe done toward the winning of popular support. It simply means that
failure to gain “full support” for violent confrontation doesn't preclude
violent confrontation. I fall che elements exist that have made guerrilla
warfare in its classical style an invincible weapon against mechanized,
industrially-based armies in un-developed areas, they will be even more
successful in built-up urban Amerikan conditions.

‘The facts that make it impossible for the establishment army to
‘overcome the attacking guerrilla army ~ in spite of the availability of
the knowledge contained in the master-works on guerrilla strategy
= become clear when we realize that after the strategy is understood
by the guerrilla chief, the tactics applicable co his particular military
problems “are a product of his imagination alone? a constant creative
improvising. Also working against the establishment's general staffisits
‘own mentality. They've convinced themselves or have been convinced
by their experience ae war with other mechanized armies that “having
the most at the right time” wins war. In other words, they feel that
‘winning wars depends mainly on gadgets and they presume that they
can dictate the terms and grounds upon which each battle rakes place.
‘They're locked in on a fixed set of systematized ideas that conflict
completely with the realities of People’s War. Their egos simply will
never allow them to admit that all the ingenuity that has gone into
the development of the blitzkrieg has been wasted. A $100,000 tank
can be destroyed with ewo dollars’ worth of materials: a jet is useless

50 BLOOD IN MY EYE
against the rifleman, and it also ean be destroyed with one well-placed
burst from an assault rifle or destroyed on the ground by mortar from
miles away. Then, too, the pilot, years in the making, can be killed with
knife, The ‘copter asa fighting machine is the most stupid of all the
costly gadgets: it can be heard from miles away; it ean’t be armored, a
ten-cent bullet can render it useless. All of these contraptions requite
liquid fuels that will stop flowing when the production of all the other
‘commodities stops. Fighting really depends upon the people and small
casily machined portable weapons.

Another factor that works to the advantage of the guerrilla army is
time. The establishment forces cannot survive the prolonged unrest
that is steadily building, Profits fall, the point of diminishing returns
is eventually reached: and from there, the establishment's force and
energy goes into its last stages of life, while our new revolutionary
culture is building musical chairs where each go-round excludes
some element of their control factors. The objective. I repeat, of the
destruction of a city-based industrial establishment and its protective
forces is to ereate perfect disorder, to disrupt all of their interacting
processes that allow them to produce and distribute goods, and this
can be done from within the process much more easily than from
without, Really, there is no possibility of an established government
‘ever overcoming a determined internal enemy.

By their very nacute, the “holder” or “owner” and his guard are exposed
and vulnerable. A comparison between their mode of existence
and that of the people’s vanguard elements employing all the subtle
scientific principles of urban guerrilla warfare will demonstrate cleatly
where the real power lies. Top-heavy establishment organizations
that exist openly are always a reflection of the men who staff them.
Of primary interest to the guerrilla are che bureaucratic institutions
that serve to protect the right of the wrongdoer to do their wrong ~
the local and federal pig establishments. The complexities of the class
structure have shifted somewhat since the time of Marx and Lenin,
Presently within the working class chere exists an ultra-right section
ac the bottom of this structure which feels that all of its demands on
life can be met by the existing order. In fact, the working class of US.A.
1971 can be realistically divided into two mutually exclusive and
conflicting sections, one right-oriented and conservative, the other left
to neutral. One explanation for this phenomenon is the loss over the
years (to fascist nationalistic propaganda and state-controlled unions)

 

PART ONE. 31
of aclear-cur class consciousness. In effect, it can be said that this right-
oriented sector of the working class is a new class, a new pig class. In
their ranks we find a factory or construction worker, the ubiquitous
civil service employee, the retired military career man, the man who
sells used autos or insurance, the stock clerk or longshoreman about to
be replaced by a machine. All of these individuals are not clearly in the
new pig class ~ some only have just one foot in the grave. As yet they
‘only have pig tendencies and can still be redeemed. Outright pigs must
be either neutralized or destroyed (killed). From the new pig class (a
section of the working class whose demands are small and are being
slowly met by the capitalist masters) the government draws its greatest
support. The forces of counterrevolution make themselves felt on the
street level through this new class, while above this clas, in the loosely
defined petit-bourgeois level and upper-middle-class_ professionals
and students, we can find some very real revolutionary consciousness!
‘There are explanations for this complex inverted stratification of
revolutionary potential: the history of the US.A. and its immigrants,
the emphasis placed on subversion of the workers’ movement (the
unions) by the ruling class, and the apparent (not real) stabilizing of
the economy with fascist Keynesian controls and redoubled imperialist
expansion, all can be carefully treated co explain the present confusion
and contradictions in the class struggle ~ but most of this I leave to
Comrade Newton who has handled it well so far. This is a comment on
what to do with what we have and what we are realistically faced with

 

‘The top-heavy bureaucratic agencies that exist with quasi-social
sanction ~ and in particular the ones that are given over to the
maintenance of aw and order ~ draw their principal personnel from the
pig class and consequently are an expression of that class's mentality: a
stagnant, even atavistic mentality that is completely dependent upon
regimen and rote to perform the simplest of functions.

First of all, the opposition is stupid. However, lee me qualify this
statement with the observation that they make up for what they lack
in brains wich sheer brutality. As a result of their original drawback
(stupidity), they have expanded to massive proportions, and tied
themselves irrevocably co a technology based on massive and equally
faulty machines to the point now that ic is impossible for chem ever
to hide any of their movements, to move with any real speed, or to
change themselves in response to any change in our attack. The very
nature of their apparatus, its supposed legality and its size, tends to

32 BLOOD IN MY EYE
‘weaken it. Their growing demand for personnel leaves them helpless
to stop us from infiltrating them. Their cybernetics cannot overcome
the fact that men, especially of the pig class, are cyclic. They think,
function and live in cycles. This is more to their detriment than outs.
‘Their science of control turns upon them to weaken and wreck their
‘own institutions. How can a massive department or bureau or regiment
with hundreds of personnel ever coordinate any activity without the
strictest regimentation, without a massive meeting place to familiarize
themselves with procedures, without badges or uniforms to identify
cach other, without systematized patterns of thought and behavior,
‘without dependence on clear-cut orders. imple pigeypes can only learn
to function by rote and in cycles. Procedure must be drilled into them
and only seldom if ever changed. It is quite easy for a pig to perform a
particular function the same way, time after time, once he has learned
the function; it is not so easy co vary, especially when there are great
numbers of the same types of individuals involved. What would be the
result ifeach pig were given a different job each day in a different area
‘if he had to vary his code every week or think for himself just one
«eight-hour shift? Chaos. [fie weren't for the sergeant or lieutenant and
a routine, when the average pig ran out of gas, his car would have to be
pushed out of the street by the citizenry: when his bullets ran out he
‘would have only a club until he could check with the captain.

Cyclic men equipped with only a few learned responses can be watched,
clocked, photographed and anticipated. Their code isnt really acode at
all. They are finished! A pigisa fool! They have numbers over the small
vanguard element and the social license to kill ~ but once we decide on
the proper action, we will find that our enemies are vulnerable.

For the soldiers of the people, the guerrillas, though they also must
‘operate with the tightest structure and in complete harmony with
their political branch, cycles are not a factor in their operations. The
subtleties and fundamentals of urban guerrilla warfare can be broken
down to their simplest terms this way:

Mobility
Only the light, portable, easily machined or easily stolen weapons
are employed by the guerrilla under normal circumstances, On rare
‘occasions, he may hite or commandeer a piece of heavy equipment
for an isolated or special purpose (which fits in with the improvised,
‘extemporaneous nature of this form of combat). The bomb in all its
various forms, banglor, mortar, satchel charge, hand grenade: the anti-

PART ONE. 33
tank rocket launcher, che sniper’s rifle, the light machine gun, the
silenced pistol, the flamethrower, the poison dart, poison bullet, the
crossbow, the knife, the fist ~ all form the guerrilla arsenal. Provision
must be made to move men and equipment in spite of the condition
of today’s streets and roads in che cities. That means making use of
the new four-wheel drive civilian-type jeeps, station wagons and
motorcycles. The bicycle will regain popularity. Heavy vehicles, the
jeeps. trucks, vans (all ordinary-looking family or commercial-looking
vehicles but armored with either plastic or steel) can be either rented
‘or commandeered. All dwellings should be rented and expendable.
They should be equipped so that when forced to leave by tunnel or
other hidden exits, the place can be burned to create further confusion
for the attacker and destroy evidence, Food and clothing should be
purposely simple. Clothing must always be available for disguises
‘Although part of the guerrillas function is to hijack and commandeer
food in nonperishable form from the enemy cultures and stockpiles,
he should also learn to identify the food plants thac grow wild all over
the country ~ even in backyards and vacant lots. He should also learn
to wane less

Infiltration
Right now we ean be placing our soldiers inside the various police
and military and prison staffs. Our more gifted and berter-educated
comrades could end up in the intelligence units ofthe army and police:
‘our major source of weapons should come from our men placed in the
military under seemingly ordinary circumstances. This is our enemy's
greatest weakness: any establishment’ greatest weakness is the need
for personnel to resist the people. This lays them open to infiltration
‘The guerrilla army that operates within the ciey is necessarily small, so
‘we stop infiltration by being very selective and conducting thorough
and murderous tests and making full use of the principles underlying
departmentalization.

The Ambush
‘The only form of attack employed by the guerrilla forcesis the ambush,
the surprise attack. There must never be any front lines, or defending
of territory. The only engagements that are carried to completion are
the ones that we are winning: after an initial attack ifthe enemy regains
himself and counteratacks, we disengage and simply go home to await
the next opportunity when we can eatch him asleep, with his women,
‘moving in convoys, on the toilet.

5 BLOOD IN MY EYE
Camouflage
Nothing ever appears outwardly as itis. The armor (sheets of plastic
‘or steel) is fixed inside the vans and trucks in such a way as to make
them appear normal when viewed from without. The military safe-
house ~ with cunnels leading in all directions and connecting with
other houses, a storm drain, a manhole with bulletproof and airtight
plexiglass window, encasements inside the house camouflaged with
heavy curtains, rooms with doors that are really booby traps that work
from the inside ~ must be made to look like any other house along
the block. We must dress and equip ourselves with weaponry that will
allow us to move even in units of a dozen or more without appearing to
bbe anything other than private citizens pursuing theie private interests
We will make use of all forms of disguise: mailman, policeman,
telephone repairman, priest, nun, National Guardsman. This principle
will soon have them shooting at each other or turning the innocents
against them. The result ~ perfect disorder!

 

Autonomous Infrastructure
IF it is our eventual goal to wear away the establishment’ ability to
produce and distribute goods, co feed its war machine, o organize
any sort of social activity: then, of course, we must, atthe same time,
provide ourselves with che means of performing these functions on at
least a subsistence level. Both the military and the political arms of the
liberation movement must think of the provisioning of their vanguard
elements and the people during the dark days when we stop the
machine. Military supplies are stockpiled in advance with food staples.
Depression-days’ foraging and war-years' liberation gardens must be
reintroduced and refined. The military must depend on the people for
food. Ie must also prepare to feed the people from the enemy's supplies.

‘Then you have the very healthy, spontaneous mass looting, Perfect
disorder! At some point in the development of the overall struggle
revolutionary culeure ie will have to become totally independent of
the old enemy culture in keeping with Che's theory of molding the
new society around che struggle against the old. We will sare fom
the beginning to build our own infrastructure in every possible area
people’ stores, hospitals, banks, buses. army. This dual power, this
building of political infrastructure and the military is succinctly stated
by the Minister of Defense of the Black Panther Party, Huey P. Newton:

PART ONE. 55
We recognized that in order co bring the people to the level
of consciousness where they would seize the time, it would
be necessary to serve their interests in survival by developing
programs which would help chem to meet their daily needs. For
along time we have had such programs not only for survival, but
for organizational purposes. Now we not only have a breakfast
program for schoolchildren, we have clothing programs, we have
health clinics which provide free medical and deneal services. we
have programs for prisoners and their families, and we are opening
clothing and shoe factories to provide for more of the needs of the
community: Most recently we have begun a testing and research
program on sickle-cell anemia, and we know that 98 percent of the
victims of this disease are Black. To fal to combat this disease isto
submit to genocide: to battle ie is survival

All these progeams satisfy the deep needs of he community but they
are not solutions to our problems. That is why we call them survival
programs, meaning survival pending revolution. We say that the
survival program of the Black Panther Party is like the survival
kkic of a sailor stranded on a raft. It helps him co sustain himself
until he can get completely out of that situation. So the survival
programs are not answers or solutions, bue they will help us to
‘organize the community around a true analysis and understanding
of their situation, When consciousness and understanding is raised
to a high level, chen the community will seize the time and deliver
themselves from the boot of their oppressors.”

In following this strategy we at once “fill a very real vacuum” that
already exists in the Black Colony (brown and poor white too). where
the people are not being fed, clothed, provided with adequate medical
treatment or transportation facilities. This will create the consciousness
that comes from the introduction of people's government. Ie will help
the people to understand the force and energy of revolution. “W e are
‘organizing them around their needs.” We will not distract them with
such empry questions as who will be elected from which political party.
All political parties, as things stand, will support the power complex.
Any individual elected will either be a supporter of the established

 

27 Huey P. Newton, Black Capitalism Re-Analyzed, p. (supplement from) Black
Panther Intercommunal News Service, Sarurday, June 5, 1971

56 BLOOD IN MY EYE
politics ~ or an “individual.” What would help us, in fact, is to allow
as many right-wing elements as possible co assume “political” power.
“The warnings that “our thrusts coward self-determination will bring on
fascism” are irresponsible ~ or better, untealistic. The fascists already
have power. The point is that some way must be found to expose
them and combat them. An electoral choice of ten different fascists
is like choosing which way one wishes to die. The holder of so-called
high public office is always merely an extension of the hated ruling
corporate clas, It is to our benefit that this person be openly hostile,
despotic, unteasoning. We are not living in a nation where left-wing
parties hold eighty out of two hundred seats in a congressional body.
‘or even eight out of two hundred. This is a huge nation dominated
by the most reactionary and violent ruling class in the history of the
world, where the majority of the people just simply cannot understand
that they are existing on the misery and discomfort of the world. They
have been hypnotized into believing that criticism of the expansionist
policies of imperialism is really isolationist oF injurious to both the
US.A. and the world!

‘We are faced with two choices: to continue as we have done for forty
years fanning our pamphlets against the hurricane, or starting to build
‘a new revolutionary culture that we will be able to turn on the old
culture. Collectively we have that choice: the Black Colony as it sits
‘out here alone has no such choice. In a report from Jonathan Jackson
in early 1970, he said,

‘We are not going to waie until the US.A. atcacks the people of the
US.A. or Angola, Mozambique or any of the other African nations
in foment. We can’t wait. We shouldn't even allow this ching to
happen in Indo-China. Bank of America, Chase Manhattan,
First National City Bank of N. Y., Irving Trust Co. the Morgan
monopoly. Manufacturers Hanover Trust, Continental Ill, National
Bank, First National Bank of Chicago, Bankers Trust Co,, and a
dozen lesser firms all have great financial interests in the US.A.

now. In 1966 the US.A. investment in one small African nation was
$667 million. Irs almost doubled since then. In 1968, 70 to 75% of
all goods from the US.A. entered the US.A. duty free, Soon we'll
be asked to fight the people of the US.A. because they're getting
their people's army together ... No ~ I'm not waiting for them to
attack a new part of Africa or Asia, I'm entering the war now ~ on
the side of che Vietnamese!

PART ONE. 37
‘The Black Colony, US.A., has little choice. We must enter the war on
the side of the majority of the world’s people, even if it means fighting
the US.A. majority. We fight co live, And we're learning to fight: itll
be a war, to the knife if necessary.

‘We can't wait until the generation that thinks of blacks as niggers and
the rest of the world as gooks, chinks, spies, etc. has been educated
away. It may be the reverse that happens: we niggers and gooks may be
blown away first. Or if we survive, what will we inherit? A desert?

Well mass what people we can; pethaps that won't be the whole lower
class, Well mass ourselves and any ally we may be able to draw from the
whole cass structure, and we'll attempt to wage a war on property and
property rights. Essentially that is the fight, but, even then, some men
will die asin all forms of war. But if we cannot draw the support that is
necessary for such a war, then we see a positive benefit for the majority
‘of the world’s people in the reduction of this whole country to a vast
wasteland, and a graveyard for two hundred million of history's most
damnable fools!

In People’s War, urban style, each political move toward organizing
people around their realistic needs will suppore a corresponding
military move. This unity of politics and war will increase the
overall revolutionary consciousness by degrees to a point where mass
consciousness can be said to exist.

‘The Black Panther Party is the largest and most powerful political force
existing outside establishment polities. It draws this power from the
people. Icis the people's natural, political vanguard. Now let us assume
the existence of a small, tightly knit, totally commiteed and separate
milicary vanguard such as Jonathan Jackson attempted to build.

  

Jonathan was my brother and closest comrade. I knew him. He was
the real super-nigger. He worked at it, hard. He took complete control
of himself, he learned every weapon in the human arsenal, from the
flying side-thrust foot attack and the quick-draw snap shot to the
manufacture and use of the mortar. He knew six thousand ways to kill
‘a man, thirty with the simple stroke of an empty hand or foot. He was
seventeen years old when he died in the service of the people, on the
side of the black colonies and with the courage of the whole colonized
world, Lets assume where Jonathan is concerned that ".. ur battle ery
reaches some receptive eat, and another hand reaches down to take up

58 BLOOD IN MY EYE
‘our weapon...” We have two perfectly harmonious fists: the left “front
ram" of the Black Panthers’ political thrust, and the left “back ram” of
the August 7th movement.

Ler’sfarther assume that this nation is one hugeccty that weean eal by its
rightful updated name Johannesburg. This clarifies the understanding
‘of urban People’s War, the concept of “the true internationalism” and
the connections, interactions, processes and effects of a people at war
under the leadership of a vanguard which wields a double-edged sword
against an isolated enemy element. All the cities ofthis country can be
treated as one interconnecting entity, due to the necessity of exchange
and interactions caused by specialization. We can now deal with them
as a single entity because of the national character of the vanguard
party and revolutionary consciousness within the inner Black Colony.
All Anglo-Western cities are generally the same when they are reduced
to the critical features that support them. I could be talking about
London, New York, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco,
Seattle, Paris, Berlin oF Rome instead of Johannesburg.

Mao pictured the US.A. as the city of the world surrounded, besieged
and slowly strangled to death by a third force under arms. Using Mao's
theoretical springboard, I wish to make further comments on the
hypothetical super-technological city-state and its vulnerability.

Any honest expert in the overall strategy and logistics of classic
‘Western mechanized warfare ~ the war of the industrially-based,
established state ~ will admit thae the scientific guerrilla force must
be outnumbered ten to one in manpower by the mechanized force if
it is to be contained at all. The establishment army, the defenders of
property, of the industrial complex armed with the tools and weapons
‘of heavy industry, must field ten men for just one guerrilla: this point
is a strong indication of the relative effectiveness of the two fighting
styles. Recent reports (March of 1971) coming in from the Indo-
Chinese theater describe such debacles as eighty US.A. 40-ton tanks
racing in wild retreat before the guerrillas. Puppet soldiers and US.A.
mercenaries in their haste to disengage from the people’s forces are
lashing themselves to the runners of rescue helicopters. Disaster for the
man with the most and best equipment is threatening and imminent,
Now is the time for us to fill the streets with our protest, clog the
tunnels and back stairs of covert totalitarian government with every
‘weapon at our disposal.

PART ONE. 59
‘The effectiveness of rallies and mass demonstrations has not come to
an end, Their purpose has diacricicaly altered, but the general tactic
remains sound, Today the rally affords us the opportunity to effect
intensive organization of che projects and programs that will form the
infrastructure of our communes. Ifthe mass rallies close, as they have
in the past, with afew speeches and a pamphlet, we can expect no more
results than in the past: two hours later the people will be Amerikans
again (instead of people). But going among “the people” at each
gathering with clipboards and pens, and painfully ascertaining what
each can contribute to clear-cut, carefully defined political projects, is
the distinction between intensive organization and the sterile, stilted
attempts to build new unions (rank and file, etc.) or elect a socialist
legislature.

However, as we start the projects that will eventually move the workers
and the whole community into open conflict with che ruling clique, my
‘own personal observations lead me to the independent conclusion that
the political vanguard and even its early project need to be defended
Clearly the political cadre needs protection from the enemy culture's
military, its secret police and vigilante “death squads”

‘Acmed struggle is at the very heart of revolution. If che problems of
the people cannot be redressed because the necessary resources are in
the hands of a relatively few families and individuals, it means we are
sgoing to have to seize this property. Seizing property has always meant
some form of war, some form of armed struggle. If history is our guide,
it clearly records that nothing of any great value has ever changed
hhands without a struggle, or at least a show of, or threat of, violence.
Men simply don't surrender what they think of as their privilege and
property except by force, History itself is economically motivated class

seruggle.

‘There is simply no way to compare this society or its historical
experience with that of a tiny colonial country like Chile: Allende is
not seizing property: his government is “buying property” Until the
Chilean ruling capitalise class is suppressed, the Chilean revolution
is as meaningless as the Swedish experiment. Socialist governments
which attempt to coexist with capitalise economics completely forget
the economic motive of human social history. Revisionism has given
birth to countless “socialistic” hermaphrodites, always to the detriment
‘of people’s power. Strained, tortured definitions of social existence and
‘organization have trapped the people in so many contradictions that

 

0 BLOOD IN MY EYE
most have given up all hope of harnessing the modern industrial state
oor even understanding it. England before the Tories or between the
‘Tories is “liberal socialise” Military dictatorships, clearly totalitarian,
are ruled by cliques traveling under the designation “revolutionary
council” etc, No argument has any substance if it conflicts with the
objective conditions, the clea, incontrovertible facts. In our case, these
facts can be read from the nation’s dailies ~ in the obituary section
Blacks who seriously advocate revolution are killed. Blacks who attack
property relations are slated for the graveyard or the prison camp. Ie’s
national cultural tradition. Since these are the facts, it follows that

‘An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to
acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves. We cannot
forget. unless we become bourgeois pacifists or opportunists,
that we are living in a class society, chat there is no way out of this
society, and there can be none, except by means of the class struggle.
In every class society, whether itis based on slavery, serfdom, or as
at present, on wage labour, the oppressing clas is armed.”*

‘The vanguard cannot stay alive long enough to effect a broad
consciousness unless it possesses the latent threat of force, They're
going to claim that our clothing projects, the people’s bazaars, the
people’s stores and decentralized cottage industries are fronts for
scolen property. The establishment will claim that the vanguard party
is feeding and clothing people with goods stolen from the old enemy
culture. They'll claim thae we're buying it from the city-state’ lumpen
‘who steal everything they can sell, or that we're ripping it off ourselves.
OF course, this will be used co justify an attack upon our political
projects, our infrastructure. The assaults will be justified by them in
a dozen different ways, whether we establish ourselves in storefronts
‘or in our homes. They will attack us ~ behind the fire ordinance,
the sanitation department, the anonymous tip. The establishment's
mercenaries will break in shooting, and all of us who are not killed will
{g0 to jail, for violating the fire ordinance, resisting arrest, attempting
murder and receiving stolen property, etc. Itsas predictable as nightfall,

T'm convinced that any serious organizing of people must carry with it
from the start a potential threat of revolutionary violence. Without it,
the establishment forces will succeed in isolating the political organizer

28VIL Lenin, Selected Works

PART ONE. 61
and closing down his project before the people can feel its benefits
Self-determination requires a small, hidden, highly trained army
‘equipped with the very best and most destructive of military weapons,
and a bodyguard of counter-terrorists.

‘The vanguard party distinguishes itself in the service of the people
and superimposes itself over the old culture chroughout the city-
state, Tactics designed to further the development of revolutionary
consciousness must be based upon the prevailing stat of class and race
antagonisms created out of the new relationship. We ean be certain
that the nucleus of a clandestine army will already exist by then
‘The government’ repressive agencies will also be wel infiltrated by
blacks and other revolutionary people. Infileration is the work of the
professional revolutionary. Infilerating the establishment's procective
agencies will also tend to neutralize the ruling class’ attempt co isolate
the black vanguard commune from the larger body ofthe class structure,
All efforts to isolate the vanguard community must be resisted. The
Black Colony must actively invite other revolutionary people to follow
their example, We must give refuge to the refugees, and eventually
‘work out some means to coordinate our operations with theirs at every
level, However, we cannot delay our own preparations toward a united
black revolutionary culture. No one will undertake to aid us unless they
sense the power of our movement. Its blacks who must play not only
the role of liberating the Black Colony but also the leading role in the
liberation of the whole city-state. To expect that someone else will ake
the full responsibility for our own liberation is suicide. We'll be asked
tobe “patient” for another one hundred to one hundsed and fifty years!
‘We'll get stuck with long theoretical explanations on consciousness or
objective conditions when it’s clear that consciousness will not grow
unless there is someone among us willing to Feed it.

Consciousness grows in spirals. Growth implies feeding and being
fed. We feed consciousness by feeding people, addressing ourselves to
their needs, the basic and social needs, working, organizing toward
united national left. Afcer the people have created something that
they ate willing to defend, a wealth of new ideals and an autonomous
subsistence infrastructure, then they are ready to be brought into
“open” conilice with the ruling class and its supporters. This conflict
must extend to every level of capitalist production and distribution
Consciousness of our power will grow, as a resule of this mass contact
with the ruling forces. There is no question that people must be

a BLOOD IN MY EYE
organized and educated to the benefits of people's government before
they can successfully move against their class enemy. However, there
seems to be some question as to how seriously we should take ourselves
and our work of organizing. When we mect resistance, should we
acquiesce, withdraw, wait it out or intensify? Should we meet violent
reaction with a more determined violence? The type that put eighty
tanks to flight in Laos? In other words, if the fascists don't like what
we're doing and attack us through a lynch mob (the police forces and
judicial branch of their government), should we relent? Or should we
accept their violent reaction asa natural response to our challenge and
‘organize against it?

Every step, every stage toward a unified black commune will meet great
resistance. This resistance will come in some form of violence. It is clear
that if we don't learn to overcome all resistance, no forward movement
will be made. Discovering ways of meeting and overcoming resistance,
demonstrating to ourselves that “we can.” is a fandamental antecedent
to the growth of revolutionary consciousness because well be under
attack every step of the way. One hundred years ago it would have been
the same. One hundred years from roday it will be the same, We'll take
‘our mule and forty acres now, collectivize them, defend them, invite
other revolutionary people to follow our example, make allies-then
leap to destroy the fascists’ pseudo-mass-culeure from within.

‘As the people move into more significant areas of anti-establishment
projects they will be hurled violently into contact with the defenders
Of the present state of property relations at the level of production,
distribution and property rights in general. Then we will discover that
their power and theie new fighting style actually depend on their greater
potential for violence. The size and complexity of a thing are not an
index ofits strength. This struck me forcefully one evening as flipped
through one of the nation’s news weeklies and spotted a photograph of
‘huge self propelled 155-mm cannon lying on its sie, its barrel spiked
forever. A man on foot, armed with a rocket that weighed less than four
pounds, had destroyed it

‘The larger and more complex the city-state, the more itis dependent
upon all related parts, The cannon was hit at its base, in che moving
parts of its treads, which were destroyed and the death machine fell of
its own weight, How can the super-technological state operate without
lectricity or power, without water, transport, communications,
sewage systems, utilities? None of these can be protected: their sheer

PART ONE. 63
size alone makes it impossible. How can the establishment protect an
clectrical supply line and the thousands of transformers, etc? Effective
positioning of the guards is militarily impossible, A man every twenty-
five feet up and down the million miles of line can't protect it (ie would
also break the class that paid for the protection), since a break at any
‘one point renders powerless huge sections of the area served. The cost
of supporting the guards would bankrupt any nation. The guerrillas
‘would simply overwhelm the guardians poine by point. I chink this is
the essence of the poor man’s war, the essence of the guerrilla strategy,
the protracted war of the worker bees.

‘The only valid form of union activity is seizure of union leadership by
any means necessary. We must call strikes to enforce our demands on
capital. To enforce the strike we must stop the plane's power source.
Standing in the gateway with a placard and a pamphlet alone will
not dull a worker’ short-term interest in wage slavery. The very first
impulse isto eat! With right-wing union leadership gone and the black
worker revolutionized through his contact with the black commune,
ceven the fascists who exise without any sense of community or class
consciousness can possibly be won over or at least rendered neutral.
Eicher way, they won't be able to break strikes with the power lines
down.

The power of our military strategy sitting beside our political
infrasteucture depends on constant attack, attack, attack
Improvisation, aggression. An attack on property, the utilities that
feed the super-state, indirect and direct attacks at the productive point
and distribution system. As I stated, the Western military experts
admit that the mechanized establishment guard must outnumber the
attacking worker by cen to one, What they cannot afford to admit is
that even with this numerical superiority they cannot win. They’te
learning this in every theater of combat. In a class war, they could never
‘even raise a ten-to-one numerical superiority! Even if they succeed in
‘employing the degenerate elements of the lower clas (created by a long
history of counter-positive mobilization of reactionary mass society)
as mercenaries or vigilantes in the early stages, the advantage is still
ours, Aten to one, we still enjoy a strategic, military superiority if we
are attacking, because they must defend so many different points vital
to the order and continuity of chet life-support system, all atthe same
time. The points to be protected will always outnumber the units who
are available to protect them.

ot BLOOD IN MY EYE
‘The super-technological city-state has grown so complex that it is
completely dependent upon its thousands of related parts. Ithas grown
so large that no force can be fielded to protect all its vital parts. The
essence of the guerrilla technique is to cripple and finally stop the life-
support system of the enemy class or state. The advantage of the anti
establishment force can be best understood by picturing the need for
the establishment forces to spread themselves thin in the vain attempe to
protect the mechanical base of their source of power, which, of course,
works out to be the various forms of productive and nonproductive
property. The mobile “have-not.” the attacker, ean concentrate his
forces (even though initially they are numerically inferior) to actually
‘outnumber and overwhelm the thinned-out forces ofthe establishment
byattacking a one or two points at a time. In Mao's Selected Works, Vol.
I, he speaks of ingenuity and mobility as necessary qualities of any
{guerrilla operation.

 

‘The ancients said: “Ingenuity in varying tactics depends on mother
wie": this “ingenuity? which is what we mean by flexibility, is
the contribution of the intelligent commander, Flexibility does
not mean recklessness: recklessness must be rejected. Flexibility
consists in the intelligent commander's ability to take timely and
appropriate measures on the basis of objective conditions after
“judging the hour and sizing up the situation” (che “situation”
includes the enemy's situation, our situation and the terrain), and
this flexibility is “ingenuity in varying tactics” On the basis of this
ingenuity, we can win more victories in quick-decision offensive
‘warfare on exterior lines, change the balance of forces in our favor,
gain the initiative over the enemy, and overwhelm and crush him so
that the final victory will be ours.”

there are ewenty points in the city-state tobe protected, and ten units
of protection, clearly an attacking force of one could destroy ten of the
twenty points withoue opposition. The ten points that remain and are
guarded by the ten units of protection must now meet the attacker on a
‘one-to-one basis. The term “attack” explicitly means “frst strike.” and
“first trike” translates into “advantage.” Total repression and genocide
are not possible if we organize ourselves for survival first ~ if we First
construct the commune, a sense of community, a common interest of
class. The objective conditions are present. To postpone our liberation

29 Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works

PART ONE. 65
with the excuse thatthe “people aren't ready” i to underestimate them:
in effect it’ like saying they don't have the mentality to act in their
defense, The repeating shotgun is the deadliest weapon in the world
for close-range urban fighting. They are simple to make, maintain and
use. Anyone can be effective with the scatter gun: one simply points
and squeezes the trigger: if the thing to be shot is moving, follow
through with your swing. Tanks are obsolete. They can be rendered
harmless with a dollar’s worth of grenade, propelled from the muzzle
of the shotgun by a blank cartridge. Then, as a tank moves down any
city street it has placed itself in a defile. On a cost-effectiveness basis,
the most destructive weapon is the gasoline bomb. Enough gasoline,
soap shavings and potassium chlorate could flip a tank over on its side,
or thrown from the windows of our defies, the gasoline bomb could
incinerate the largest army.

‘We can only be repressed iff we stop thinking and stop fighting, People
who refuse to stop fighting can never be repressed ~ they either win or
they die ~ which is more attractive than losing and dying. The primacy
of politics remains but we must now prepare for armed confrontation,
By no stretch of the imagination can we hope to overthrow so
determined an enemy without force.

We Will Win!

George

66 BLOOD IN MY EYE
 
Blood in My Eye was completed only days before the
author died from bullet wounds during an alleged escape
attempt from San Quentin Prison, California. Arrested
at the age of eighteen for allegedly taking part in the
robbery of a gas station netting $70, George L. Jackson
was sentenced to one year to life in prison. At the time of
his death he had served eleven years behind prison walls,
seven of those years in solitary confinement. This book
testifies to how those years were spent, and why.

 

Written with the memory of his slain brother, Jonathan,
constantly before him, it is an apocalyptic vision of
America. It speaks to the poor, the jailed, and the
disenfranchised throughout the world. Jackson's message
to his revolutionary brothers is clear: “People are already
dying who could be saved, generations more will die or
live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Discover
your humanity and your love in revolution, Pass on the
torch. Join us, give up your life for the people.”

Blood in My Eye takes up where Soledad Brother left off, and

introduces the reader to the life force that was George L.
Jackson.

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