Yeah, I'd just like to say that I like being
called sister much
more than a professor and I've continually
said that if my job --
if keeping my job means that I have to make
any compromises in
the liberation struggle in this country, then
I'll gladly leave
my job.
This is my position.
Now there has been a lot of debate in the
left sector of the
anti-war movement as to what the orientation
of that movement
should be.
And I think there are two main issues at hand.
One
group of people feels that the movement, the
anti-war movement
ought to be a single issue movement, the cessation
of the war in
Vietnam.
They do not want to relate it to the other
kinds and
forms of repression that are taking place
here in this country.
There's another group of people who say that
we have to make
those connections.
We have to talk about what's happening in
Vietnam as being a symptom of something that's
happening all over
the world, of something that's happening in
this country.
And in
order for the anti-war movement to be effective,
it has to link
up with the struggle for black and brown liberation
in this
country with the struggle of exploited white
workers.
Now I think
we should ask ourselves why the that first
group of people want
the anti-war movement to be a single issue
movement.
Somehow they
feel that it's necessary to tone down the
political content of
that movement in order to attract as many
people as possible.
They think that mere numbers will be enough
in order to affect
this government's policy.
But I think we have to talk about the
political content.
We have to talk about the necessity to raise
the level of consciousness of the people who
are involved in that
movement.
And if you analyze the war in Vietnam, first
of all it
ought to become obvious that if the United
States Government
pulled its troops out of Vietnam that that
repression would have
to crop up somewhere else.
And in fact, we're seeing that as this
country is being defeated in Vietnam, more
and more acts of
repression are occurring here on the domestic
scene.
And I'd just
like to point to the most dramatic one in
the last couple of
weeks, which is the chaining and gagging of
Chairman Bobby Seale
and his sentence to four years for Contempt
of Court.
I think
that demonstrates that if the link-up is not
made between what's
happening in Vietnam and what's happening
here we may very well
face a period of full-blown fascism very soon.
Now I think there's something perhaps more
profound that we ought
to point to.
This whole economy in this country is a war
economy.
It's based on the fact that more and more
and more weapons are
being produced.
What happens if the war in Vietnam ceases?
How is
the economy going to stand unless another
Vietnam is created, and
who is to determine where that Vietnam is
gonna be?
It can be
abroad, or it can be right here at home, and
I think it's
becoming evident that that Vietnam is entering
the streets of
this country.
It's becoming evident in all the brutal forms
of
repression, which we can see everyday of our
lives here.
And this
reminds me, because I think this is very relevant
to what's
happening in Vietnam that is the military
situation in this
country.
I saw in television last week that the head
of the
National Guard in California decided that
from now on their
military activities are gonna be concentrated
in three main
areas.
Now what are these areas?
First of all, he says,
disruption in minority communities, then he
says disruption on
Page 1 of 5
the campus, then he says disruption in industrial
areas.
I think
it points to the fact that they are going
to begin to use that
whole military apparatus in order to put down
the resistance in
the black and brown community, on the campuses,
in the working
class communities.
I think that they are really preparing for
this now.
It's evident that the terror is becoming not
just
isolated instances of police brutality here
and there, but that
terror is becoming an everyday instrument
of the institutions of
this country.
The Chief of the National Guard said that
outright.
it's happening in the courts.
There is terror in the courts, that
judge, whose name is Hoffman proved that he
is going to take on
the terror in the society and bring it into
the courts, that he
is going to use what is supposed to be a court
of law, justice,
equality, whatever you wanna call it in order
to meet out all of
these, you know fascist acts of repression.
Now something else has been happening in the
courts, and I think
this is an incident that we all ought to be
aware of because it's
another instance of terror entering into the
courts.
Down in San
Jose, not too long ago, a young Chicano was
on trial and I'd like
to read a quote from the transcript, a quote
by Judge -- I think
his name is Chargin, the fascist.
He said, "Mexican people, after
13 years of age, it's perfectly all right
to go out and act like
an animal.
Maybe Hitler was right.
The animals in our society
probably ought to be destroyed because they
have no right to live
among human beings.
You are lower than animals and haven't the
right to exist in organized society, just
miserable lousy rotten
people."
Now this is the direct quote from the transcript
that's
happened within the walls of the courtroom.
How can we fail to
see that there's an intricate connection between
that type of
thing between what happened to Bobby Seale,
between the
unwarranted imprisonment of Huey Newton and
what's happening in
Vietnam.
We are facing a common enemy and that enemy
is Yankee
Imperialism, which is killing us both here
and abroad.
Now I
think anyone who would try to separate those
struggles, anyone
who would say that in order to consolidate
an anti-war movement,
we have to leave all of these other outlying
issues out of the
picture, is playing right into the hands of
the enemy.
I mean
it's an old saying, I think it's been demonstrated
over and over
that it's correct that once the people are
divided, the enemy
will be victorious.
We will face defeat.
And I think the attempt
to isolate what's happening on the domestic
scene, from the war
in Vietnam is playing right into the hands
of the enemy giving
him the chance to be victorious.
And I think there's a much more concrete problem.
If you talk
about the anti-war movement as a separate
movement, what happens?
What happens if suddenly the troops are pulled
out of Vietnam?
What happens if Nixon suddenly says we're
gonna bring all of the
boys home?
The people, the thousands, the millions of
people who
had been involved in that movement would feel
as if they had been
victorious.
I think perhaps a, a number of them would
think that
they could return home and relish in their
victory and say that
we have won, completely ignoring the fact
that Huey Newton is
still in jail, that Erica Huggins and all
the other sisters and
brothers in Connecticut are still in jail.
This is what we are
faced with if we cannot make that connection
between the
international scene and the domestic scene.
And I don't think
there's any question about it.
We can't talk about protesting the
genocide of the Vietnamese people without
at the same time doing
something to stop the genocide that is -- that
liberation
fighters in this country are being subjected
to.
Now I think we
can draw a parallel between what's happening
right now and
what's-- what happened during the 1950s.
As the United States
Government was being defeated in the Korean
War, more and more
repression did occur on the domestic scene.
The McCarthy witch
hunt started.
This is the communist party which was the
main
target of that.
I think we have to ask ourselves, why that
period
served to completely stifle revolutionary
activity in this
country.
People were scared, they run away, they lost
their
families, they lost their homes.
They did not resist.
This is the
problem.
They did not resist.
Right now the Black Panther Party
is the main target of the repression that's
coming down in this
society and the Black Panther Party is resisting.
And we all
ought to talk about standing up and resisting
this oppression,
resisting the onslaught of fascism in this
country.
Otherwise,
the movement is going to be doomed to failure.
I think we can say
that if the anti-war movement defends only
itself and does not
defend liberation fighters in this country,
then that movement is
going to be doomed to failure, just as we
can say also if we in
the black liberation movement and the liberation
movement for all
people in-- all oppressed and exploited people
in this country,
defend only ourselves, then we too will be
doomed to failure.
Within the whole liberation struggle in this
country, the black
liberation struggle and the and the brown
liberation struggle
there has continually been the sentiment against
the American
Imperialist aggressive policies throughout
this world because we
have been forced to see that the enemy is
American imperialism
and although we feel it here at home it's
being felt perhaps much
more brutality in Vietnam, it's being felt
in Latin America, it's
being felt in Africa, we have to make these
connections.
[Inaudible] has to see that unless it makes
that connection, it's
going to become irrelevant.
And what we have to talk about now is
a united force, which sees the liberation
of the Vietnamese
people as intricately linked up with the liberation
of black and
brown and exploited white people in this society,
and only this
kind of a united front, only this kind of
a united force can be
victorious.
Now I think that there's something else that
we ought to consider
when we try to analyze what has happened in
the anti-war
movement.
And the anti war movement hasn't just depended
on
numbers.
It hasn't just depended upon attracting more
and more
people into the movement regardless of their
political
orientation.
If we remember, the debate a long time ago
was
whether the anti-war movement or the peace
movement then should
talk about demanding the cessation of bombing
in Vietnam or
whether it should talk about withdrawing troops.
I think now it's
very obvious that you have to talk about withdrawing
all American
troops from Vietnam.
This has occurred only through the process
of trying to raise the level of political
consciousness of the
people who were in that movement.
And right now what we have to
talk about is not just withdrawing American
troops, but also
recognizing the South Vietnamese provisional
revolutionary
government.
Now, I think we have to go a step further.
This is what's
happening inside the anti-war movement, but
we have to take it
further.
And we have to say that if they, if we demand
the
immediate withdrawal of American troops in
Vietnam [inaudible] of
the South Vietnamese Provisional Revolutionary
Government, then
we also have to demand the release of all
political prisoners in
this country, here.
This is what we have to demand.
And I think
that the liberation struggle here sheds a
lot of light on what's
happening in Vietnam.
It shows us that we can't just push for
peace in Vietnam, that we have to talk about
also recognizing a
revolutionary government.
There was a kind of a peace that was
obtained right here in this country, in a
courtroom, that was the
peace which Judge Hoffman forced on Chairman
Bobby Seale by
coercion, by gagging him and binding him to
his chair.
This is
not the kind of peace that we wanna talk about
in Vietnam, the
peace in which you have a puppet regime representing
the
interests of this country in which you have
other means of
establishing the power of this government
in Vietnam.
And I think on a much more personal level,
there's some parallels
that we can draw.
Some very profound parallels I think.
And we
have to say that Bobby Seale's mother who
learned that he had
been chained and gagged and that he had been
sentenced to four
years for contempt of court is no less grieved
than an American
woman who finds out that her son has been
captured in Vietnam, I
think we have to say that, that Erica Huggins
and Yvonne Carter
were no less grieved when they found that
their husbands Bunchy
and John [inaudible] liberation, then an American
wife would feel
about her husband there, but there is a different
political
consciousness involved and this is what we
have to show the
American people today.
We have to show the American people that
their sons and their husbands are being victimized
by American
imperialism.
They are being forced to go and fight a dirty
war in
Vietnam.
They are victims too and they have to be shown
that
their true loyalty's ought to be with us in
the liberation
struggle here and with the Vietnamese people
in their liberation
struggle there.
Now Bobby Seale once made a statement at a
peace
conference in Montreal that the frontline
of the battle against
racism was in Vietnam.
I think we have to ask ourselves what this
means because a lot of people may have thought
that what this
means is that we can depend on the Vietnamese
to win our battle
here.
This is not what he was saying.
He was pointing to that
inherent connection between what's happening
there and what's
happening here.
And I think we can say and I'm talking from
personal experience, I was in Cuba this summer
and I met with
some representatives of the South Vietnamese
Provisional
Revolutionary Government and they told us
that we were -- we,
revolutionaries in this country were their
most important allies.
And not just because we take signs and march
in front of the
White House saying US Government get out of
Vietnam because --
rather because we are actively involved in
struggling to satisfy
the needs of our people in this country and
in this way as they
point out we are able to internally destroy
that monster, which
is oppressing people all over the country.
I have to admit that I
felt a little bit inadequate about that because
what he's saying,
what the representative of the South Vietnamese
Provisional
Revolutionary Government was saying is that
we are to escalate
our struggle in this country, we ought to
talk about making more
and more demands for the liberation of our
people here and this
is going to be what they will depend on.
This is going to help
them in their liberation struggle.
Now I think that we ought to
talk in the context of this upcoming march
here and in Washington
about the [inaudible] to make simultaneous
demands and those
demands ought to be immediate withdrawal of
US Troops from
Vietnam.
There ought to be victory for the Vietnamese.
There
ought to be also recognition of the revolutionary
government in
South Vietnam and I think this is perhaps
most important, we
ought to demand the release of political prisoners
in this
country.
Just one last thing.
You know Nixon made a speech on November
3rd, I think it was and he said something
that we ought to take
heed of, we ought to understand.
He said, "Let us understand that
the Vietnamese cannot defeat or humiliate
the US government.
Only
Americans can do that."
I feel that it is our responsibility to
fight on all fronts, to fight on all fronts
simultaneously to
defeat and to humiliate the US Government
and all the fascist
tactics by which it is repressing liberation
fighters in this
country. Thank you very much.
 
