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Breakthrough, Vol. VIII, No. 1., Summer 1984

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POLITICAL JOURNAL OF PffdRJE. FIRE. OR6AMZIHG COMMITTEE. Volume VI11 No. 1

Summer 1984

$1.50


TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.

2.

From the Vietnam War to Central America RESIST THE WARMAKERS

1

BEFORE THE SCALES, TOMORROW Poem by Otto Rene Castillo

11

"CANDLELIGHT IN THE STREETS, DARKNESS AT HOME" Interview with the Comite de Defensa Popular of Mexico

12

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY 1984 Women Confront the War Machine

18

5.

OLYMPICS 1984: COUNTER-INSURGENCY GOES FOR THE GOLD

20

6.

FROM THE CLANDESTINE MOVEMENT Red Guerrilla Resistance Bombs Washington Navy Yard United Freedom Front Bombs IBM in New York

27 29

3.

4.

7. WRITE TO THE PRISONERS

32

8. CORRESPONDENCE Letter from Germany on Repression Against Political Prisoners

33

9.

36

DON'T TALK TO THE F.B.I

10. POLITICAL INTERNMENT U.S.A.

inside back cover

Cover photo: Sandinista reserves (credit: Guardianphoto by Cordelia Dilg) Page 1 photo: Demonstration against Henry Kissinger, San Francisco, April 16, 1984

Breakthrough, the political journal of Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, is published by the John Brown Book Club, P.O. Box 14422, San Francisco, CA 94114. This is Volume VIII, No. 1, whole number 11. Subscriptions and back issues are available. Please see page 35. We encourage our readers to write us with comments and criticisms. You can contact Prairie Fire Oganizing Committee by writing: San Francisco: P.O. Box 14422, San Francisco, CA 94114 Los Angeles: P.O. Box 60542, Los Angeles, CA 90060 Chicago: Box 253, 2520 N. Lincoln, Chicago, IL 60614 Prisoners' correspondence and subscriptions should be sent to the L.A. address. If you have a red dot on your mailing label, this is the last issue you'll receive. Please renew.


FROM THE VIETNAM WAR TO CENTRAL AMERICA

RESIST THE WARMAKERS Central America has become a nightmare for U.S. imperialism. Following the debacle in Lebanon, the U.S. is confronted with the spectre of a major defeat in its own hemisphere. Portraying itself as the "citadel of democracy" opposed to the Soviet "evil empire," the U.S. stands increasingly exposed as the conductor of a brutal, genocidal war against the peoples of Central America. • In El Salvador, the FMLN has liberated almost onethird of the country, in the process defeating the

Junta's vaunted offensive to secure San Vicente Province. In a year-end offensive, the FMLN seized and demolished the supposedly impregnable fortress of El Paraiso and attacked more than 60 governmentheld towns. The FMLN/FDR recently unveiled its own plan for a provisional government and a political solution to the war. This is the liberation movement's answer to the Salvadoran electoral farce. Official U.S. optimism has disappeared since it has become apparent that the FMLN is winning the war.


page 2/BREAKTHROUGH • In Nicaragua, the CIA/contras have done great damage through their sabotage and terrorism. Over 3000 Nicaraguans have already been killed in the war, with millions of dollars worth of crops and facilities destroyed. But the contras have proven singularly unable to win a base of support among the Nicaraguan people or seize Nicaraguan territory. The Sandinistas have stepped up the revolutionary process within the country, distributing more land to the peasantry, escalating military and political training and mobilizing the entire people, through their mass organizations, into the defense of the revolution. The November elections in Nicaragua will strengthen the people's democracy and further isolate the contras. • In Guatemala, the united revolutionary forces of the URNG have shown renewed strength following the murderous counter-guerrilla campaigns of 1982 and 1983, in which over 20,000 mostly Indian campesinos were massacred. Guerrilla activity is developing on a consistent and nationwide basis, and the U.S. has been forced to admit that its death certificate for the guerrilla struggle was wishful thinking. The U.S. is steadily escalating its military presence in the region and preparing to further expand the war. Thirty-three thousand military personnel are invading Honduras and the Caribbean for major maneuvers named Ocean Venture '84 and Grenadero I. Honduras has been turned into a U.S. garrison, with Honduran and Guatemalan troops training for intervention in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Three hundred U.S. advisors have taken over direct control of the Salvadoran war, with U.S. pilots now flying bombing raids over Salvadoran territory. And, despite the furor over the CIA's mining of Nicaraguan ports, the U.S. is stepping up its aid to the contras, with increasing support from Israel.

Not since the Vietnam War has the U.S. left been confronted with such a clear challenge to resist and to organize. From Central America to the Middle East to Southern Africa, imperialism is no longer preparing for war—it is at war. Yet we have proven unable to unite our forces or to develop consistently effective and militant program. Many activists are now searching for new direction. People are realizing that it is simply not enough to have a sanitized movement, one that limits its protest to polite pickets behind police barricades while the U.S. mines Nicaragua's ports and the CIA bombs Salvadoran villages. What is needed is a resistance that operates on all levels to disrupt the U.S. war machine from within. Over the last year, there have been steps in this direction. Thousands of people have shown their willingness to

face arrest and jail in the course of direct action against the war apparatus. The Sanctuary movement has taken on a mass character as it openly defies U.S. attempts to round up Salvadoran refugees and send them back to prison or death in El Salvador. Armed clandestine organizations have carried out numerous actions in solidarity with the revolution in Central America, showing that U.S. aggression will be met by determined anti-imperialist struggle. The recent angry protests which greeted Henry Kissinger are another case in point. In Austin, Texas, Kissinger's appearance was disrupted and fifty-three protestors were arrested. In San Francisco, 1,000 demonstrators took to the streets and refused to be stopped by the police Tac Squad, which charged into the crowd on horseback, swinging clubs. As people stood their ground, nearly 200 were arrested. These and other militant confrontations make it clear that a movement can be built that resists, that rejects business as usual in the face of U.S. crimes in Central America. It is vital for the anti-imperialist left to become a more forceful part of this process. In this light, it is useful to draw on the wealth of experience gained in building a movement against the Vietnam War, mindful that there are no simple analogies. We are obviously faced with conditions today that are vastly different from those of the 1960s. But there remain valuable lessons to learn from an anti-war movement that, for all its weaknesses, was able to confront the U.S. war machine. VIETNAM: A WAR COMES HOME Ushered in by the stunning victory of the Cuban Revolution, the 60s were defined by the growth of armed guerrilla movement throughout the Third World. The postWorld War II notion of an "American Century" was rudely shattered by poorly armed workers and peasants who refused to abandon their own dreams and aspirations in the face of U.S. might. Vietnam crystalized this process. The Vietnamese taught the world that a small nation, united behind the strategy of people's war and committed to the .quest for national independence, could defeat the most powerful nation on Earth. When Che Guevara called for "Two, Three, Many Vietnams," he gave voice to a strategy embraced by revolutionaries around the world: overextend the U.S. empire, fight on many fronts, weaken and eventually defeat the imperialist system. As armed struggle developed throughout Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, this vision began to be realized. At home in the U.S., progressive people came to see the justice of the Vietnamese struggle and to understand that the United States was committing genocide. Here, the civil rights movement had exploded into the


BREAKTHROUGH/page 3

Newark Rebellion, July 1967. Twenty-three people were killed by police. This was one of scores of Black rebellions throughout the U.S. between 1964 and 1968.

Black Power rebellion. Malcolm X articulated the demands of a new generation of Black people for nationhood, for land, for justice,for an end to white supremacist domination. Malcolm challenged Black people to no longer see themselves as a beleaguered "minority," but instead to identify with Africa and the great mass of colonized and exploited Third World nations around the world. With-slogans like "Hell No, We Won't Go!"; "No Vietnamese Ever Called Me Nigger"; and "Amerikkka is the Black Man's Battleground," Black revolutionaries in Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panther Party called on the Black Nation to support the Vietnamese and to fight for national liberation here at home. The Black Revolution challenged the mostly-white anti-war movement to see that U.S. policies in Vietnam flowed from the same social system that kept Black people in chains. Like in Vietnam, the system here had to be confronted "by any means necessary." Fierce protest against the war also arose from other oppressed peoples. In 1970, the Chicano Moratorium in Los Angeles brought 50,000 Mexicanos into the street. The demonstration was attacked by police and three people were killed. In Puerto Rico, the massive movement against the draft led to violent confrontation with the col-

onial police and to a virtual state of siege at the University of Puerto Rico. While thousands of troops were heading for Vietnam, the U.S. Army, National Guard and police were forced to right another war in the streets of Newark, Detroit, Watts, Chicago and Harlem. Black GI's staged rebellions in the Armed Forces, refusing orders to fight against a people who were not their enemy. The U.S. responded with a reign of terror against both the Black community and the organized Black liberation movement. The FBI's Cointelpro campaign destroyed scores of community organizations at the base of the Black struggle, as well as targetting revolutionary groups like the Black Panther Party (BPP), the Republic of New Afrika (RNA) and the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM). A core of Black revolutionaries went undergound and formed the Black Liberation Army. The BLA attacked police in many cities in response to police murders of Black youth and State attacks on the Black movement. Confronted with the reality of Black urban guerrilla warfare, the U.S. heightened its campaign to annihilate the BLA and frighten away all potential support. For white student radicals just coming to political consciousness through the Vietnam War, Black revolutionary


page 4/BREAKTHROUGH nationalism forced us to look at our own acceptance of a privileged white position in America. Many white people came to see how deeply embedded racism was in our society and began to repudiate white supremacy as a way of life. Hundreds of thousands of white youth began to question the hypocrisy of American society. Part of this involved the growth of a counter-culture which emerged as a rejection of American values and mores, but ended up recreating many of those same values in new form. A powerful women's movement redefined the role of women, challenging the male supremacy of the society, the counter-culture and the left. Within this broader movement, anti-imperialist women organized militant protests against the war and racist oppression at home, defining women's liberation as tied to the aspirations of oppressed people.

These were the conditions in which an anti-imperialist left matured. Centered around Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), white anti-imperialists defended the right of the Vietnamese to liberate and reunify their nation through armed struggle. In 1965, SDS called the first national demonstration against the Vietnam War, attended by over 25,000 people in Washington, D.C. As the Black struggle sharpened, SDS developed programs in support of the Black Panther Party and Black student demands on campuses. In the early stages of the war, many SDS members still held out hopes for the Democratic Party, even giving support to the presidential campaign of Lyndon Johnson as the "lesser evil" against Barry Goldwater in 1964. Then we saw Johnson send hundreds of thousands of troops into Vietnam, begin bombing North Vietnam, and escalate the conflict to genocidal proportions. We learned our lesson.

Washington, D.C., November 15,1969 Over one-half million people demonstrated against the Vietnam War. Ten thousand marched on the Justice Department and fought the police, carrying the flag of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF) and supporting the Black Panther Party. V


BREAKTHROUGH/page 5 In 1968, Democrats of all stripes began making anti-war noises, with even Vice President Hubert Humphrey posing as a peace alternative to Richard Nixon. "Peace candidate" Eugene McCarthy tried to channel the anti-war movement off the streets and into his campaign. But the anti-imperialist left refused to sacrifice its independence and instead helped turn the Chicago Democratic Convention into a scene of dramatic protest against the Democratic architects of genocide in Vietnam. The anti-imperialists of the 60s are, often dismissed as petty bourgeois students whose practice had no impact on the white working class. But the militant wing of the antiwar movement built a base among GI's and among young people in working class high schools and community col-

leges. Resistance to the draft spread far beyond the elite student population. Activists physically blocked troop trains and disrupted draft inductions. Radical campus protests reduced ROTC enrollment by 80 percent, and prevented war criminals like Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara from speaking. Thousands refused the draft and publicly burned their draft cards. There was a clear break with pacifism. An understanding emerged over time that the war was directed by a state power which had to be confronted. In November 1969, for example, tens of thousands of protesters clashed with the police at the National Moratorium in Washington, D.C. In 1970, over 2,000 acts of political violence against the war took place, many of them at the height of mass action. Armed organizations like the Weather Underground developed support in the anti-war movement for armed attacks in solidarity with the Vietnamese. LEARNING THE LESSONS It has become fashionable these days, to ignore this history since it challenges so many conceptions of today's left. Many of the same debates and struggles took place then as now. The dominant left groups (at that point the Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party) centered their work around the slogan "Bring the Boys Home." They argued against explicit support for the Vietnamese Revolution because it would alienate the broad base of the movement. For similar reasons, they opposed connecting Vietnam with other struggles in the Third World and with the Black struggle at home. They condemned militant action and armed struggle as "adventurist." As repression sharpened, they refused to come to the aid offerees singled out by the government for vicious attack. But they were never able to effectively silence the revolutionary left. Watergate tapes revealed Nixon's anger and concern' over the growing social disruption. In his book, The Price of Power, Seymour Hersh describes how Nixon retreated from his threats to use nuclear weapons in North Vietnam, partially out of fear that it would lead to massive rioting at home. Unlike today, the anti-war movement was a serious factor that had to be considered as the U.S. planned its war strategy. The State moved skillfully to pacify the homefront. Nixon launched the FBI's Cointelpro program of assassinations, imprisonment and generalized persecution of the revolutionary Black movement. Between 1970 and 1973, 30 grand juries were convened to attack the progressive movement. In the aftermath of the Kent State shootings, many white students began to think twice before getting involved in street protest. At the same time, by eliminat-


page 6/BREAKTHROUGH ing the draft, Nixon removed a main source of anti-war sentiment. Because so much of the left had limited its organizing to "Bring the Troops Home," Nixon was able to disorganize the movement through his Vietnamization strategy. As he changed the color of the corpses, replacing U.S. ground troops with puppet South Vietnamese soldiers and genocidal air attacks, the protests faded. By the time of the B-52 bombing of Hanoi during Christmas 1972, the anti-war movement could summon up only a muted response. White anti-imperialists made many serious errors throughout this time. Coming from the student movement, we believed in instant revolution and were woefully unprepared for the requirements of protracted struggle against the sophisticated and powerful U.S. State. We wanted revolution without cost or sacrifice, without having to go through the difficult process of changing ourselves and confronting deeply our own ties to the system. Militant organizers became subject to the same cynicism and demoralization which pervaded the movement as the spontaneous protests receded. Our weaknesses had serious consequences. With only a shallow knowledge of Marxism-Leninism, we were unable to build genuinely revolutionary organizations or transform spontaneous resistance into something more lasting. We were limited in our understanding of the leading role of national liberation within the U.S., and failed to demonstrate consistent solidarity with the Black libera-

tion movement, particularly in the face of Cointelpro. Ultimately, the anti-imperialist left proved incapable of leading a protracted and revolutionary resistance movement. Still, the experience of the 60s is testimony to the potential power of anti-imperialist struggle. Today, many of these strategic lessons have been lost. The history of the Vietnam War movement has been rewritten, ironically, as an argument for conservatism and caution. The galvanizing role of the Black liberation struggle and the impact of an insurgent left is conveniently forgotten. Yet it is precisely the lack of such a dynamic anti-imperialist presence today which is giving the U.S. a relatively free hand in Central America. 1984: BRINGING ANOTHER WAR HOME 1984 is a far different time. U.S. imperialism has learned some harsh lessons of its own from Vietnam, becoming more flexible as it attempts to meet new crises. In recent years, Ronald Reagan has orchestrated a major shift to the right with consummate skill. There is clearcut support within the white working class for vastly increased military spending and for the reassertion of American power a la Grenada. Opposition to the Marine presence in Lebanon centered on saving American lives, not opposing the U.S. role in the Middle East. Large sectors of the white working class have been won to see their own economic recovery as contingent on a war economy and


BREAKTHROUGH/page 7

'^••x. —Direction ol \s^ ofFMLNfor —FMLN Zone of Military Superiority used as military corridors

Four Thousand Guatemalan Troops Massed on Border

—Barracks for Elite U.S~ trained Rapid Deployment Forces

housands of U.S. and Honduranian! Troops Massed on Border

/

T3ULFOF ^FONSECA

llr 0 Note: map originally published December 1983 by CISPES

on the economic and social devastation of Third World people. Responding to these changed conditions, much of the left has moved right. Some activists in the anti-intervention movement argue that the best we can realistically hope for is a Democratic Party candidate who will slow down the slaughter in Central America. Opposing U.S. intervention in Central America becomes a single issue, stripped of its connection to the struggle against imperialism around the world. We are told not to undermine the movement by introducing divisive issues like U.S. and Israeli aggression in the Middle East. We are called on to be practical, to shelve revolutionary politics until a more opportune moment. The lessons of the 60s are deemed irrelevant to today's movement. We disagree with this assessment. It expresses a vision of powerlessness, of a left, which accepts the legitimacy of imperialism, even as U.S. terror stands more exposed. It overestimates imperialist strength and is blind to the conditions and struggle of Third World people in the U.S. It eliminates the responsibility of a conscious left to struggle and change things in this difficult period. For the movement in this country to develop into a force which can really contribute to stopping the war in

Central America, more massive militant action is essential. Far from isolating the movement, the example of thousands of people defying our own government can activate broader sectors. This is one of the cardinal lessons we can learn from the movement against the Vietnam War. We can move from protest to resistance. If we firmly support the liberation movements in Central America, if we define U.S. imperialism as our enemy both at home and abroad, if we take steps towards more consistent and militant activism, we will be able to make significant advances. ;NO PASARAN! SUPPORT THE LIBERATION MOVEMENTS IN CENTRAL AMERICA For the peoples of Central America, people's war is the axis around which all their hopes for freedom have revolved, the only alternative to degradation and genocide. The current revolutionary movements have their origin in the painful decisions made by Central American revolutionaries in the 1960s and 1970s to take up arms and fight for their nations' dignity and liberation. Groups like the FSLN; the FPL and the ERP in El Salvador; the EGP,


page 8/BREAKTHROUGH OPRA and FAR in Guatemala; were at first dismissed and scorned as ultraleft adventurists by the traditional reformist left in Central America. Early defeats were taken as proof that the time was not ripe, that legal political work should remain the cornerstone of left activity. But the political-military formations rejected this line, and instead persevered through a series of difficult setbacks. Eventually, the armed formations in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala began to solve the complex problem of transforming sporadic and isolated armed activity of revolutionary vanguards into a popular war of the masses. Revolutionary war in Central America, like in Vietnam, draws its strength from the whole people: from the full-time guerrilla combatants in the popular army; from the village militias who defend their land and homes against Army sweeps; from the peasants who lead mass actions against takeovers of their land; from the guerrilla

supporters who refuse to talk under inhuman torture; from the mothers showing up day after day at military prisons demanding to see their disappeared children; from the children themselves fighting at the barricades. It is precisely through popular war that the new society begins to take shape, arising out of the destruction of the old. We can see this so clearly in the women of Nicaragua, whose participation at all levels during the revolutionary war laid the basis for their continuing struggle for equality within the Nicaraguan revolution. The revolutionary society in Nicaragua is the fruit of nearly twenty years of combat, of the determination of the FSLN to fight with all weapons at their disposal in order to win justice and true democracy. We need to defend this process in our organizing. This is the only way to break through the lies which label freedom fighters as terrorists and which compare communism

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BREAKTHROUGH/page 9

and fascism as two sides of the same coin. This is especially important now that Reagan is trying to scare away support for the liberation movements. New "antiterrorist" legislation proposed by Reagan would make it a crime to provide support in the form of funds, medicine and clothing for the liberation movements outside the borders of this country. This is aimed at stopping the growing solidarity with the FMLN/FDR of El Salvador, revolutionary Nicaragua, African liberation struggles, the Palestinian movement and the struggle in Northern Ireland. The Reagan attack will target mass solidarity organizations like the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). Already, the U.S. has indicted members of the Sanctuary movement who shelter Central American refugees. These attempts at intimidation can be countered with political education and organizing in defense of the liberation movements.

part, a reflection of Black pride and the deep-seated disaffection which Black people feel towards white politicians and their promises of change. Black protest may be expressed within an electoral framework during this Democratic campaign, but it will never be contained there. For the white left and anti-intervention movement, however, latching on to the Jackson campaign has become a substitute for deeply confronting the rise of white supremacy in this country. Thirty-five million Black people are not just victims of racism or another color of the rainbow. They are a colonized nation fighting for human rights, selfdetermination and independence. Black liberation challenges the structures of white supremacy and domestic colonialism upon which imperialism rests. With police terror on the rise and all-white juries continuing to set killer cops free; with the Ku Klux Klan marching in every corner of the country, our movement needs to attack the roots of this system.

CRACKING THE RACIST CONSENSUS

If we are serious about cracking the patriotic consensus in this country, we need to fight back against racist terror and defend national liberation movements inside the U.S. which are now under State attack. Otherwise, the State will have free rein to isolate the very forces which most threaten its power.

The U.S. is paying for war through a systematic attack on the living standards of over 50 million colonized New Afrikan (Black), Mexican, Puerto Rican and Native people. The Reagan "recovery" is "For Whites Only," bringing the U.S. to the threshold of an inevitable political crisis. Today, a Black family of four earns 56 percent of what a white family does. Millions of Black and Latino parents face a future for their children punctuated by the colonial cycle of schools which don't teach, permanent unemployment for over half of all youth, and finally prison. This is an explosive situation which the U.S. will not be able to pacify. The U.S. is determined to prevent a repeat of the Vietnam War scenario, where the war of oppressed people at home undermined its ability to wage war abroad. Its strategy is to nip in the bud the movements it considers the most threatening, before they become massive in character. Accordingly, the FBI and the entire Executive Branch of the government have launched a new witchhunt against revolutionary organizations. Under the guise of anti-terrorism, the government has unleashed a wave of grand jury attacks against these movements which, along with the lifting of restraints on FBI activity against the left, are the "New Cointelpro" and the "New McCarthyism" of the 1980s. What does all this mean for the anti-intervention movement? Most left organizations recognize that it is critical for Central America work to link up with the powerful force of Third World people in the U.S. There is growing concern over the need to address the fight against racist oppression. But often this is reduced to vague calls for Jobs & Justice or to a rush to join the Jackson campaign. The overwhelming Black vote for Jesse Jackson is, in

ELECTIONS '84: THE LEFT MOVES RIGHT Less than 10 years after the Vietnam War, much of the left is on the verge of forgiving and forgetting when it comes to the Democratic Party. Some argue that the prime task is to defeat Reagan, even if this means embracing Mondale or Hart as the new version of the "lesser evil." Others argue that the Jackson candidacy holds out hope for transforming the Democratic Party into a battleground over a truly progressive agenda. In the process, the left is entering full tilt into the electoral arena. We often hear it said that electoral politics is just one aspect of a strategy, that it will allow us a broader audience for our politics, that it will deepen our base. People think that electoralism is a faucet you can turn on and off when you please, that you can work for Democratic candidates without legitimizing the Democratic Party, work for Jackson and then pull back when he endorses the Democratic candidate. But the reality is more complex. Electoralism generates a conservative momentum, in which activists are preoccupied with cultivating liberal politicians, watering down the message in order to gain influence. Militancy and consistent street activism are downplayed as the left tries to become more respectable. In the end, solidarity work is curtailed. The non-intervention movement becomes the tail wagged by the Democratic dog. What is so ironic is that the Democrats continue to vote


page 10/BREAKTHROUGH money for the junta in El Salvador and for the enormous U.S. buildup in Honduras. The Democratic leadership fully supported the Grenada invasion and gave Reagan bipartisan support for the biggest military budget ever. Up and down the line, the Democrats remain committed sponsors of Israeli attempts to destroy the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance. This is a time when the brutal character of the U.S. State is becoming more open: in Central America, in the Middle East, in the Black and Latino inner cities of the U.S. We should be pulling people away from reliance on the system and towards an understanding that the State is our enemy. But in the name of "dumping Reagan," many organizations are abandoning principle and reinforcing, rather than confronting, people's faith in American democracy. Imperialism is reduced to a set of evil policies which can be reformed within the structures of the bourgeois state. Looking to break our isolation and to make short term gains, we doom ourselves to longterm ineffectiveness. SUPPORT ARMED RESISTANCE IN THE U.S. In a communique issued after their bombing of the computer complex at the Washington Navy Yard, the Armed Resistance Unit posed a challenge to the movement around Central America: We have acted tonight to contribute to the building of a resistance movement in this country that will rob the U.S. government of the stable homebase it so desperately needs. This is a lesson from the Vietnam War that we can apply now. Our movement can organize the soldiers and sailors not to fight; the military's recruiting efforts can be blocked, and the technology of war sabotaged. The government wants the political debate in this country to go on between Republicans and Democrats over how to maintain imperialist control; our movement can be a progressive and anti-imperialist alternative that challenges that control.

As anti-imperialists attempting to build a serious movement, we welcome the growth of armed struggle in the U.S. Over the past year, the Armed Resistance Unit, the United Freedom Front and the Red Guerrilla Resistance have attacked war corporations, military facilities and government buildings, including the U.S. Capitol, in an armed campaign against the warmakers. There are many on the left who oppose armed struggle in the U.S. as premature and adventurist. They dismiss each armed action as the work of isolated groups, detached from popular struggle. But, as the resistance to the Vietnam war showed, armed struggle can help lead many people to become part of a revolutionary movement which fights the system itself. The clandestine movement has the potential to grow and build over the years into a far more

engage in armed struggle target the real perpetrators of terror in the world. Far from being the "terrorists" portrayed by the U.S. and NATO, those who fight from clandestinity are freedom fighters who exemplify a clarity~and determination that our movement needs. CONFRONT THE WARMAKERS Step by step, the U.S. is expanding the war in Central America. Reagan has been unable to bring down the Sandinistas or halt the advance of the FMLN/FDR through reliance on contras or puppet troops. U.S. escalation is inevitable. Reagan's speech of May 9 was a call to war, pitched to the most rightwing, patriotic sentiments in the country. The next day, Democrats and Republicans alike voted a large military aid package for El Salvador, free of any "human rights" conditions. The Duarte victory in the Salvadoran elections will be used to justify major increases in U.S. involvement in the war. We can be certain that U.S. imperialism plans a long war against the revolutionary peoples and nations of the region. This is a time when we need to affirm and build on the first steps of militancy that people are taking. The government and its conservative echoes within the left will try to isolate and divide us, labelling those who reject State defined limits of protest as troublemakers, provocateurs and terrorists. We must reject these attempts to straitjacket our movement. We need to step up our support for revolutionary Nicaragua and the liberation movements in El Salvador and Guatemala. We need to defend Central American companeros in the U.S. who are being targetted for growing attacks. We should uphold the example of internationalists like Caroll Ishee, a North American who died in El Slavador while fighting with the FMLN. We have to make it far more difficult for the U.S. military to recruit, for ROTC to solidify its presence on our campuses, for war criminals like Henry Kissinger and Jeanne Kirkpatrick to peddle their poison. We need to defend those who say "Hell No, We Won't Go!" to the U.S. military, like Alfred Griffin, a Black Muslim G.I. who refused to fight in either Lebanon or Grenada and was recently court martialled. We need to break the wall of silence around the increasing repression against revolutionaries and other political activists in the U.S. For those who see only our weakness, it serves well to remember that left voices were heard few and far between at the beginning of the Vietnam War. Those who burned their draft cards were often set upon by angry mobs and denounced as traitors. Public opinion polls registered overwhelming support for U.S. policies. Yet a left persevered, showing its own share of courage and principle. And the movement grew. In this present period of war, HI-


* Guatemalan poet and revolutionary, tortured and murdered by the Guatemalan government in 1967 •^——


page 12/BREAKTHROUGH

"CANDLELIGHT IN THE S DARKNESS AT I

Interview with the Comite de Defensa P For more than 50 years Mexico has been ruled by the oneparty dictatorship of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. While the great majority of the people live in desperate poverty, corrupt PRI leaders share the nation's wealth with the banks and corporations of U.S. imperialism. Political opponents of the regime face systematic and brutal repression. Today, however, from the southern state of Chiapas to Chihuahua on the Texas border, a growing independent left movement is challenging the PRI. Hundreds of thousands of workers, peasants and students are being mobilized into revolutionary mass organizations which are in the process of building national unity. This movement takes the position that the PRI government cannot be reformed and that socialist revolution is the only solution to the misery of the Mexican people. The Comite de Defensa Popular (CDP) is one of the largest of these revolutionary mass organizations. In the past ten years it has organized more than 350,000 people in the state of Chihuahua into popular communities called colonias. These are built on vacant land, usually on the outskirts of cities, that is seized and occupied by CDP members. By building these communities the CDP brings hope and collective political ex-

BREAKTHROUGH: There has been a great deal in the news about the severity of the economic crisis in Mexico. How does the CDP view the roots of this crisis? COMITE DE DEFENSA POPULAR: The crisis has affected Mexico in a very particular way; it has been much graver and more acute, fundamentally because Mexico is a dependent capitalist country. Mexico has traditionally been an exporter of raw materials and basic foodstuffs such as rice, beans and wheat. However, food production has been drastically affected by the increase in the prices of the goods that the farmers have to buy to produce their crops. So the farmers have reduced the acreage under cultivation. This began in 1976, and was one cause of the crisis, because the agricultural industry was one of the prime areas where foreign money was invested in Mexico. So the government, in an attempt to solve the problem of lack of investment, began to integrate itself with international bodies, primarily with the International Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). At this time the discovery of large oil reserves led to the beginning of large scale oil production. Added to this is bad planning, maladministration and widespread corruption within the Mexican government. The government

perience to thousands of people who form part of the mass base for socialism in Mexico. The prospect of 70 million people rising in revolution poses a nightmare for U.S. rulers. Most threatening of all is the possibility that the 20 million Mexicanos in the U.S., colonized on the lands of the Southwest stolen from Mexico in the 19th Century, will join in revolution with their sisters and brothers to the south. The potential reunification of Mexico under socialism is a threat aimed at the heart of the U.S. empire. Conditions of poverty and oppression in Mexcio are similar to those in Central America, where millions of people are rising up to confront brutal dictatorships that are clients of U.S. imperialism. Yet internationally the PRI regime is viewed very differently from other repressive governments. Mexico's policies of harboring political refugees, maintaining cordial relationships with Cuba and Nicaragua, and criticizing some U.S. military actions, have earned it a liberal and "anti-imperialist" reputation. Progressive North Americans need to look beyond this veneer and see the PRI's basic repressive character and its role as a satellite of U.S. imperialism. The following interview with Gabino Gomez, a leading member of the CDP, was conducted in San Francisco in October 1983.

began to put forth the image that the Mexican nation was on the threshold of abundance, and that we had to reorganize ourselves and plan for this abundance created by oil production. This did not resolve the crisis. Starting in 1976, the Mexican economy became ?.n economy based on oil production and export. When oil prices began to drop, Mexico began to cut back its oil production. This also cut back investment in Mexico. Agricultural production fell, so each year Mexico had to import more grain. BT: What have been the economic results of the crisis? CDP: The crisis has had two consequences: first, to decapitalize the country; and second, to increase dependence on imperialism. The government had to devalue the currency; by 1982 there had been a devaluation of 1000 percent.* And so the economic crisis was in every home because of the high level of inflation. The government was robbing and exporting the dollars coming into the country. The bankers, the industrialists and even government functionaries were exporting Mexican pesos, leaving the country without any money, on the brink of * Between 1976 and 1982, the value of the peso fell from 15 to the dollar to 150 to the dollar.


BREAKTHROUGH/page 13

STREETS, HOME" Popular of Mexico bankruptcy. It reached the point where the government discussed withholding the salaries of the government employees because there was no money to pay them. Given that sort of emergency, the Mexican government requested a large loan from the IMF, and renegotiated its foreign debts with all the banks to which it owed money. As a result it obtained the largest single loan that has ever occurred in the history of the world.* *$4.5 billion in November 1982; Mexico's foreign debt was $85 billion in 1983.

The IMF imposed conditions on the Mexican government; the government had to impose an austerity program. They would have to reduce greatly or eliminate altogether the amount of money that it spent on education and other social programs that benefit the people. But there was no limit on price increases. Within a year the price of all consumer goods increased more than 100 percent. The government was also committed to wage ceilings; 15 percent increase for this last year. Wages did not increase proportionately to the prices of products that people were consuming. BT: Can you tell us about the political response from the government and from the popular organizations? CDP: All the organizations on the left rejected these conditions, saying they would only increase the damage to the Mexican economy and make Mexico an even more dependent capitalist state, dependent on U.S. imperialism. In order to implement this austerity plan

Demonstrators confront PRI government demanding information on the disappeared. In Mexico, over 500 political activists have been disappearedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;secretly imprisoned, tortured and often murdered.


page 16/BREAKTHROUGH different conditions and with more relationship to the workers' struggles. BT: You've talked a lot about the current situation. What is the process by which the CDP sees, in this next historical period, transforming the economic crisis into the political crisis that you talked about. What is the work of the CDP in that regard? CDP: We should start by describing the role we play within the left in Mexico. We are a regional organization exclusively in the state of Chihuahua. We are definitively the most important organization in the statfe of Chihuahua and on the national level we are possibly the most influential in bringing people out into the streets. Our work in this period is organizing the workers in the urban areas and in the rural areas to struggle for their demands and to transform their consciousness so that they transform those immediate demands into social demands. And just as the CDP exists in the state of Chihuahua, in other areas of our country there are similar organizations. This juncture of organizations in Mexico is not isolated. We are in the process of organization and discussion aimed at the future development of a single political formation. We call our tendency the independent revolutionary left in Mexico. The rest of the left is what we call the reformist left. The reformist left is primarily made up of the left political parties in Mexico. They were given this name because of the "political reform" established by Jose Lopez Portillo. It allowed electoral participation for those bodies that registered as opposition. They were also entitled to subsidies to carry out their campaigns. This "political reform" was rejected by the independent left because we thought that to accept these positions would be to limit ourselves to the electoral struggle. To participate in the electoral process would be to forget about the rest of the First time in English 75 pp., ill us. Available from: New Movement in Solidarity with the Mexican Revolution

m

P.O. Box 18072 Denver CO 80218

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struggles and demands of the Mexican people. And thai is exactly what occurred. The political parties that registered and participated in the electoral process are today alienated from the masses of the Mexican people, while the organizations that stayed outside the political reform and that have become, according to the government, the illegal left in Mexico, have today a much larger capacity to mobilize the Mexican working class. To cite an example: In the state of Chihuahua this past first of May, tht CDP was able to mobilize over 50,000 people. Meanwhile the other organizations that were registered carried out simultaneous demonstrations and they were not able to organize more than small numbers of people. The primary task for all the revolutionary organizations in Mexico is to link themselves with the people, to organize and mobilize them to resolve their immediate demands without falling into economism, always raising the consciousness that it's necessary to struggle against the system. In this way we can consolidate the development of the vanguard organization which will then lead the decisive battle and install a new social and economic order where the product of labor is used to satisfy the needs of the whole population. That is the task of the revolutionaries in Mexico. BT: We in PFOC support the position that's been advanced by the Movimiento de Liberacion NacionalMexicano (MLN-M) calling for the socialist reunification of Mexico. We see it as a critical part of a strategy to defeat U.S. imperialism from within. We are trying to build support among North Americans for that positioj and for the struggle of the Mexican people on both sides of the border. We would like to understand how the CDP at this point views this question. CDP: Historically, the territory that was stolen from Mexico belongs to Mexico. On the northern side of the border there are many Mexicans who find themselves here not because they wanted to be here, but because they were forced to be here. And just as in the south, where people have to suffer the consequences of living under a capitalist system, here we are faced with the situation of socialist reunification. We are not struggling solely for the question of reunification, because none of these problems will be resolved simply by having a reunification of the national territory. Rather, obviously, we are in a struggle to transform this capitalist society, as much in Mexico as in the occupied territories, including all the areas of the United States. We must struggle for the socialist transformation of all these governments, these regions. We are completely clear that this is a process that will be very prolonged. First we must struggle for the transformation of the society. We don't expect support from the

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BREAKTHROUGH/page 17 Mexican government for reunification; never has that government put forth the demand for the reclamation of those territories. The important thing now is to work in a coordinated way in this first stage. On this side of the militarily imposed border are many millions of Mexicans who can support the revolution in Mexico. Many of these Mexicans don't even know what is taking place in the south of our country today. We have a very long road to travel, because south of the border the organizations among the workers appear to have given up the possibility of reclaiming the territories. If we review the programs of the different parties and organizations, nowhere do you see in these programs the call for the recapture of the territories. So that's where we must begin. All the revolutionaries that are on this side of the border must accept and work towards the possibility that Mexico can be reunified. But not under the current conditions; that reunification will take place under a new society, a socialist society. To many people this is still an unrealizable task, an unrealizable objective. But we cannot reject a demand that is very legitimate and that is a historically correct demand for our people. BT: What can North American people do to support the revolutionary movement in Mexico? What role can the North American anti-imperialist movement play? CDP: In Mexico many things happen that people around the world are not informed of. The North American people do not have a clear idea of what the government of Mexico really is. The primary task should be coordina-

tion, so that what takes place in Mexico in the south can be disseminated here in the north in different communities, in North American communities as well as in the oppressed nations. To raise the general level of consciousness here so that people here can respond to the demands when a revolutionary situation develops. Because of the immense economic interests of the United States in Mexico, the United States government would not hesitate to invade Mexico again. It would be important then to develop certain tasks within the general population of the United States to understand what is going on in order to prevent this from happening. So that if the United States government decides to intervene, it would be rejected outright by the masses of the people. But before then, there will also be the development of a large movement in Mexico that is currently being repressed. We know that governments lower the level of repression when pressure is applied by other people and other governments. We have been witnesses to the fact that when we are repressed, if there are denunciations and demonstrations, the level of the repression is then lowered. So then here you see what the tasks are. The organizations in Mexico must link themselves with the people in the United States because in the end we are all workers and we have the obligation to support each other and be in solidarity with each other. Our enemy is the same; the bourgeoisie of the United States is the same as yanqui imperialism. The Mexican bourgeoisie and the U.S. bourgeoisie support each other. This must be our point of departure in the developing work that will support each other. â&#x20AC;˘


'


,

RNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY 1984

men Confront the War Machine jame the American flag over the Presidio Army Base in San Ico.Seventy women and children marched on the Sixth Army luarters denouncing the U.S. war machine. Chanting "We p what this place is for: murder in El Salvador!" the women •own the flag, declaring that it symbolized murder and opJRssion in Central America and around the world. As MPs imed with riot gear approached, blood was thrown on the (building and steps. The FSLN flag of Nicaragua was planted in • front of the building. The MPs demanded that the "ladies" I stop their march, threatening us with mass arrest. We refused, knowing that the Presidio had just sent 800 troops to Honduras to participate in Operation Grenadero. The MPs then arrested a spokeswoman for the demonstration. In the confrontation that followed, the MPs were sur-

rounded by angry women chanting, "Who's the Real Terrorist?—The U.S. Army!" and two sisters were freed from police custody. The march then ended outside the base where ninety other protestors had forced the Army to padlock the gate to the so-called "open" base. What better way to celebrate International Women's Day, 1984? As we marched, we thought of the women of Latin America, Asia and Africa who are transforming themselves in the struggle for the liberation of their nations. We want to be part of building an anti-imperialist women's movement, one that sees our liberation tied to the freedom of oppressed nations and peoples around the world and here at home. As part of this, we are building an anti-militarism campaign against the U.S. warmakers. We call on others to join us. —WOMEN AGAINST IMPERIALISM


page 20/BREAKTHROUGH

OLYMPICS 1984

COUNTER-INSURGENCY GOES FOR THE GOLD Los Angeles is gearing up to host the 1984 Summer Olympics. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent by the L.A. Olympic Organizing Committee (LAOOC), multi-national corporations and all levels of government to finance this colossal spectacle. With the Presidential race moving into high gear this summer, the Olympics will surely be played as a celebration of "America Resurgent: standing tall and on the move!" More than a boost to sagging national spirit, the Olympics will be used to build support for the U.S. march down the road to war. Even with its image tarnished by the withdrawal of the Soviet Union and its allies, the Games will be of international importance. Faced with an erosion of popular support for intervention in Central America, it is a major opportunity to get Americans rooting for the "home team, the greatest country on earth." Behind the patriotic hoopla, the official Olympic logo of Sam the Eagle designed by Disney, the candy bars and Olympic banks, another more ominous development is taking shape. Under the guise of providing "security against a possible terrorist threat," the government is developing a police state apparatus in the sun and smog of Southern California. George Orwell, whose book 1984 has entered popular consciousness to become synonymous with the police state, once wrote that "international sport is like war without the guns." This August in Los Angeles, the guns will not be absent. As 10,000 Olympians take the field, they will be outnumbered two-to-one by law enforcement and counter-insurgency personnel from the LAOOC, five dozen jurisdictions in California, the Army, Coast Guard, National Guard, CIA, FBI, Secret Service, and secret police from countless foreign countries. The estimated security budget for all of this is between $100 and $200 million. Enjoying tremendous prestige and respectability, with hundreds of millions watching on T.V. worldwide, the Olympics provide the perfect rationale for this mobilization of repressive power. The security preparations for the Olympics do not arise out of a momentary crisis, only to


BREAKTHROUGH/page 21 fall away when the danger has passed. They fit into the long term trend in this country and in Europe towards more repressive mechanisms of state control. The development of domestic repression is a growing preoccupation for all the imperialist countries and their client states. Despite the talk of economic recovery in the West, the global economy upon which the empire depends is in perpetual and growing crisis. Colonies and neo-colonies are fighting for liberation and cracks and strains are appearing within and between the advanced industrial countries. Across Europe popular movements are arising, and revolutionary armed actions are occuring with greater frequency. In the U.S. there is a generalized increase in progressive activity arising in response to U.S. militarism and intervention, and to the depression-level conditions faced by colonized people. The state has been unable to destroy armed clandestine movements like the Puerto Rican FALN, the Black Liberation Army, the Red Guerrilla Resistance, the Armed Resistance Unit, and the United Freedom Front. In the face of these challenges, all the western "democracies" are becoming subtly militarized, adopting new laws to suppress dissent and prevent the growth of anti-imperialist struggle among their populations. Up the coast to the north of Los Angeles, hundreds of Federal and military agents have been sent to San Francisco where the Democratic Party Convention is to be held in July. As tens of millions of dollars are spent on security to protect the Convention, the San Francisco police have begun practicing large scale riot control and containment operations against demonstrations opposing U.S. aggression in Central America. When one thousand people took to the streets to demonstrate against Kissinger in April, the SFPD's mounted police and tactical squads beat demonstrators and engineered a mass arrest of nearly 200 people. Over the past few months military and FBI agents have stepped up their spying and harassment of individuals and organizations in the area. The Livermore Action Group * (LAG), a mass organization which has mobilized thousands to carry out civil disobedience against the nuclear war machine, has had its meetings infiltrated by government spies. The FBI has launched a wave of visits to the homes and workplaces of Black activists on the west coast. It is apparent that the police machinery being set up for the Olympics and the Conventions will remain with us long after the last athlete and delegate have departed from the spotlight.

The Lake Placid Olympic Village was built for use as a federal prison after the 1980 Winter Olympics.

FROM THE BATTLEFIELD TO THE PLAYING FIELD: A LITTLE HISTORY The Olympics, financed by monopoly corporations, will raise patriotic fervor and militarism to a fever pitch. If the U.S. can sell Twinkies, McDonalds, and Buicks'to the huge audience watching the Games, why can't they sell the FBI SWAT team or the new Los Angeles police antiterrorist unit? The Olympic aura as a supposedly apolitical celebration of human sports endeavor is belied by its revival, at the turn of the century, to inculcate European and U.S. youth with a more martial spirit. The modern Games were begun by a Frenchman, Baron de Coubertin, who was concerned that French youth were neither sufficiently trained physically nor motivated politically to fight for their empire. Since then, virtually every Olympiad has been either the scene of sharp conflict, or suspended because of World War. The Soviet Union was excluded from the time of the Russian Revolution until 1952 and the Peoples Republic of China was similarly banned for decades. In 1936, Hitler used the Munich Olympics as a stage to promote Nazi racialism throughout Europe. In the Americas, the history of the Olympics is no less political. South of Los Angeles, the Mexico City Olympics of 1968 was the scene of a bloody massacre and mass repression. The revolutionary upheaval which swept through Latin America in the 1960s emerged in Mexico, causing great concern not only to the Mexican bourgeoisie but to the U.S. as well. More than five hundred Mexican students and members of the independent left were machine-gunned to death in the Tlalteloco Plaza while demonstrating prior to the start of the Games. That same year, Black athletes in the U.S. threatened to boycott the competition in protest against the brutal repression of the Black liberation struggle going on in this country. Black Olympic medalists Tommie Lee Smith and John Carlos expressed the outrage of many when they raised their fists in the Black power salute during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner. For this they were immediately ejected from Mexico. In 1972, the Palestinian revolution came into the international arena by taking hostage a number of Israeli athletes who were also members of the Zionist armed forces. Israeli, German and U.S. counter-insurgency squads attacked them, precipitating a massacre. African nations boycotted the 1976 Olympics as part of the worldwide effort to isolate racist South Africa and those nations which support it. Jimmy Carter fired the opening salvo of a new cold war in 1980 by refusing to send the U.S. team to the Moscow Games. In spite of all this, the


page 22/BREAKTHROUGH

IF IT ISNTDOOe, T JUST WONT DO

Capitalism has never been thought of as an Olympic sport before, so it is a little startling to .look up and find that the flag under which the Games will be conducted all over Southern California next summer is the vest from a three-piece suit. In the most remarkable private business deal in the history of free enterprise, patriotism is seeing nationalism, and raising the bet outrageously. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Time maga/.ine, 10/17/83

Olympics continue to enjoy a reservoir of respectability that provides the U.S. government an unequalled opportunity to get people to swallow increased repression in the name of protecting the "integrity" of the Games.

LOS ANGELES NEVER WAS THE CITY OF THE ANGELS What is the U.S. so concerned about protecting in Los Angeles? In addition to being the entertainment capital of the world, L.A. is a strategic center of the military industrial complex. The Olympic venues, which extend from Santa Barbara to San Diego, are lined with Air Force, Navy, Army and Marine bases, defense contractors and weapons research facilities. Los Angeles is a mega-city which sprawls for miles and miles. It is the southern capital of the Pacific Rim; the place from which strategic commercial and military activity is launched south to Mexico and Central America, and westward to the Philippines and Asia. At the same time, L.A. is home for millions of Black and Mexican people. The Mexican population there is

second only to Mexico City and is growing. While the region's economy is greatly dependent on colonized Black and Mexican labor, these people are at the bottom of the pyramid and face genocidal conditions of existence. During the last six months Los Angeles has been the target of a Klan organizing drive and since December . three crosses have been burned in Black communities. As the Games draw near, the state is haunted by the fear that unemployment or police killings may provoke another "Watts riot"â&#x20AC;&#x201D;a long, hot summer of Black resistance like the one in 1965 when the inner city burned as Black people rose up in the first intense rebellion of the 1960s. In L.A. the police have killed or shot an average of one Black or Latino person every week for the past 15 years. The relative economic situation of Black people today is worse than it was at the height of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. Unemployment among Black people is rising as it falls among whites. Joblessness for Black youth is well over 50 percent. And Black tenth graders in L.A have lower reading levels and are less


BREAKTHROUGH/page 23

likely to complete high school today than ten years ago. PCP and other destructive drugs are pumped like a deadly plague into Black neighborhoods. The disregard for the human rights of colonized people which prevails in L. A. is illustrated by the recent spraying of toxic malathion in several Mexicano and Black neighborhoods to kill fruit flies. This chemical is so corrosive that cars have to be shielded so the spray won't destroy the finish. It has been used as a crowd control weapon by the Junta in El Salvador, which has sprayed it on demonstrators. One child has died after exposure in L. A., and many other school children have reported nausea and discomfort. Yet, despite strong community protests, the spraying has continued. Using the Olympics as a pretext, the state is moving to prevent the Black and Mexican communities from rising upâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;during the Games or any time after. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INSâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;la migra), citing the threat of Olympic terrorism, has increased its activity against Central American refugees and has raided undocumented Iranian "gypsy" cab drivers in the city. Over one million Mexicanos have been arrested at the border in the last year, while Reagan and the right wing are promoting an hysterical fear of "feet people" (undocumented Mexicanos and Central Americans) crossing the border en masse. The sheriff has announced that street gangs are plotting a "reign of terror" during the Olympics, and is calling for increased police presence in the community. He is planning to build 2000 "temporary" jail cells to house the anticipated mass arrests which will be made during the Games. The State Legislature plans to authorize Governor Deukmejian to call up the National Guard during, and at least six months after, the Olympics without having to declare a state of emergency. At the first signs of unrest, troops could be patrolling every street corner in south-central L.A. Last year, when a tornado hit mostly Black south-central Los Angeles near the Convention Center, police cordoned off the entire neighborhood. They required I.D. from everyone entering or leaving a many square block area. Similar plans are in the works to require passes for movement in and out of the Black community surrounding the Olympic Village at the University of Southern California (USC). According to a leader of the Center for Black Survival, a New Afrikan community organization in L.A., "Police will be sealing off major streets supposedly to deter terrorism, controlling all food and other deliveries into the area." A Black woman told the newspapers, "I know the concern is terrorism, but if there are no jobs this summer, the little people are going to be doing some mini-terror of their own."

Tommie Smith and John Carlos brought the spirit of Black Power into the 1968 Olympics.


page 24/BREAKTHROUGH of security, insisting on greater independence for his forces. Gates became infamous for his defense of the lethal police chokehold when he said, "Black people die disproportionately under the chokehold because their arteries are not normal." Under Gates, it was revealed that the Public Disorders Intelligence Division (Red Squad) funnelled files on individuals and left organizations to the John Birch Society's Western Goals Foundation computer network. Gates has travelled to Germany and Israel to consult with their security experts. He has stated in T.V. interviews that Americans must be prepared to give up some rights to gain greater security. After a briefing in Quantico, Virginia with FBI, CIA and NSA agents, he signed a protocol with the FBI establishing a joint police-FBI Terrorist Task Force on the West Coast.

OLYMPICS LINEUP: A ROGUES GALLERY OF RIGHTWINGERS AND WARMONGERS Who are the real terrorists in charge of the Olympics and what are they planning? Olympics security planning is coordinated at the highest levels of government. The Pentagon has budgeted $60 million for security at the Games. Reagan has appointed Michael Deaver, who runs the White House, as his personal liaison to the L.A. Olympic Organizing Committee. Below him are 600 Secret Service agents, international, federal and local experts armed to take full advantage of the anti-terrorist mobilization the Olympics provide. • Charlie Beckwith: Retired U.S. Army Colonel who is the leading operational expert on counter-insurgency in the military, was retained by Washington to conduct a study of the Olympic anti-terrorist efforts. Beckwith, a former Green Beret commander, founded the Army's Delta Blue Light commando team—one of the forces being sent to the Olympics—and led it into Iran during the hostage crisis. • William Webster: Head of the FBI, which has principal operating responsibility for security, has announced that 700 agents are on assignment to the Olympics to supplement the hundreds already on permanent duty in L.A. Under Webster, imperialism has found the ideal successor to J. Edgar Hoover. Webster has given the agency a face-lift, reorganized it and presided over the new guidelines which give it freedom to carry out break-ins and other illegal activities against progressive groups. • Daryl Gates: Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, has been somewhat resistant to FBI domination

1

Jeremiah Denton: Head of the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, has begun holding closed hearings on security planning for the Olympics. Denton's committee is being groomed as the HUAC of today. (HUAC, the House Un-American Activities Committee, led the anti-communist witchhunts of the 1950s.) Denton claims that L.A. police and federal agents have told his panel that people travelling to Lebanon for terrorist training are returning to the U.S. to pose a threat to the Games. FBI Director Webster testified to Denton's committee that he has raised counter-terrorist activities to one of the Bureau's top four priorities. OFF THE STARTING BLOCKS: READY FOR REPRESSION As the repressive apparatus is put into place the government is being unusually open about it: * Recently the FBI brought network T.V. onto its high security base in Quantico, Virginia so it could broadcast training exercises of its hostage rescue team. Shown on the six o'clock news, this report featured agents rescuing a young woman "held hostage by terrorists." * The L.A. police have established close working relations with the Israeli Mossad (espionage agency), according to Commander William Rathburn. Shaul Rosolio, a "civilian" Israeli counter-intelligence expert, met with the law enforcement leaders of six Olympic countries. His company, the Jerusalem Research Group, has helped reorganize the police forces of Costa Rica and Colombia to carry out para-military operations. Rosolio met with Olympic Committee security chief Edgar Best and gave a seminar to the L.A. police academy. In his wake, the new Israeli consul to L.A., a former tank commander in the Sinai invasion, held a press conference to announce an active Israeli role in protecting the Olympics.


BREAKTHROUGH/page 25

The FBI showed off the tactics of its new anti-terrorist team to the press in March 1984.

* Surveillance and dirty tricks against the left have increased in the L.A. area. An agent of the California Department of Justice, June Johnson, spied on the Palestinian resistance, the Puerto Rico solidarity movement, and Prairie Fire Organizing Committee. She infiltrated the anti-nuclear Alliance for Survival and entrapped an activist into participation in a government-sponsored "bomb plot" against the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. Her role was exposed at the trial of the man, who was acquitted. Johnson has disclosed that as many as twenty other agents have infiltrated the anti-militarism movement in L.A. alone. * Other security forces are being coordinated for the Olympics. The INS has announced new restrictions on immigration to deter "terrorists and criminals" from entering L.A. Reagan's budget provides a multi-million dollar

increase in funding for the Border Patrol, most of it concentrated on a fifty mile zone of California. * Special police sharpshooters have been outfitted with silencer-equipped machine guns^ and Hughes Aircraft is providing helicopters to the Olympics Committee for surveillance and other security purposes. * The security hysteria being created around the Olympics preparations has its national counterpart in the construction of concrete barriers and bunkers around government buildings in Washington D.C. These were put up to counter alleged Iranian "suicide bombers," and in response to the bombing of the Capitol by the Armed Resistance Unit in solidarity with national liberation struggles in Grenada, Central America and Puerto Rico. Unnamed federal sources have leaked to the press the existence of one-hundred "terrorist groups" posing a threat to the Olympics: fifty of them operating in the U.S.


page 26/BREAKTHROUGH

and fifty internationally. Reminiscent of Joe McCarthy's list of communists in the State Department, the groups on this list were not identified. BEYOND THE OLYMPICS: A DIRTY WAR BEGINS The anti-terrorist campaign being built up through the Olympics is a microcosm of U.S. strategy. On April 15, 1984, word of Reagan's secret National Security Decision Directive 138 was leaked to the press. Called a "quantum leap" by the head Pentagon policy maker on "terrorism," Noel Koch, this directive authorizes the FBI, CIA and other agencies to carry out pre-emptive attacks on "terrorists." The directive orders twenty-six separate agencies and offices of the U.S. government to create plans to implement the new policy. Several weeks after this was made public, the chief of the FBI's "anti-terrorist operations" held a news conference in which he announced that nineteen organizations inside the U.S. are being targetted as "terrorist groups." As the economic and social crisis escalates, the State is moving to stop revolutionary leadership from developing. The central focus of the repressive forces and new laws are the liberation struggles of Puerto Rican, New Afrikan (Black), Mexican, and Native nations colonized inside this country. These movements represent the aspirations of tens of millions of people who are oppressed by the empire, not somewhere far away, but at the very center of America. In 1978 in Puerto Rico, the U.S. convened a major international conference to plan repression against the Puerto Rican independence movement and other revolutionary forces inside this country. The working meeting was attended by top counter-insurgency planners from the dictatorships of Argentina and Uruguay, as well as by officials from Germany, Britain, Canada, Israel, and by an editor of the mercenary journal Soldier of Fortune. The major project of the conference was to figure out how to apply the fascistic counter-insurgency methods used in other countries—dictatorships and democracies alike—to the problems of the U.S. empire. Under the cover of training the police to guard the Pan American Games from the "terrorist ihreat of the Puerto Rican independence movement," many long-range goals were set. Chief among these were the revision of laws to enable the government to deny legal and human rights to "suspected and captured terrorists." This meeting set a priority on

building a consensus of popular support for repression. To accomplish this, the media was urged to depict revolutionaries as heartless killers and never as sympathetic human beings. I Faced with the prospects of growing mass struggles in this country, and with the existence of an armed movement in the early stages of development, the U.S. government is implementing this counter-insurgency strategy. Some of its most striking features are: * The creation of the FBI Joint Terrorist Task Force which works with local police red squads to coordinate political repression nationally. This unit is now carrying out a campaign of low intensity warfare against the clandestine movements and public supporters of the Puerto Rican FALN and the Black Liberation Army. * Violations of bourgeois legality in the trials of Puerto Rican, New Afrikan and white anti-imperialist freedom fighters. Secret juries, where the identities of jurors are never known, have become standard practice. * Political internment of activists through the Federal Grand Jury witchhunts. (See inside back cover of this issue of Breakthrough.) * The violation of the most basic human rights of captured Prisoners of War, freedom fighters and political prisoners. The attempted destruction of these revolutionaries through psychological torture, denial of medical care, and isolation. These repressive plans are also being broadened in order to contain and scare off all progressive opposition to the U.S. war drive. New FBI guidelines have given government agents the green light to infiltrate, harass and attack many organizations. The steady escalation of U.S. military intervention in Central America, the crisis facing colonized people within this country, are far more than a backdrop to the spectacle being staged at the L.A. Olympics. Like the anti-communism of the 1950s and the Cointelpro repression of the late 1960s, anti-terrorism today is,the smokescreen being used to stifle and crush both dissent and revolutionary progress. When we look at the Olympic flame blazing before the American flag, when we see Reagan waving to the fans, the gun towers will be there behind the scenes. It is up to us to stand up to repression, not only in Los Angeles but across this country, if our resistance is to grow in the times ahead. •


BREAKTHROUGH/page 27

FROM THE CLANDESTINE MOVEMENT In the aftermath of the invasion of Grenada, the Armed Resistance Unit (ARU) bombed the U.S. Capitol on November 7, 1983. If the invasion was Reagan's way of testing the ideological and patriotic waters, then surely the ARU's action was a most appropriate response. Coming in the midst of a continuing armed campaign against the U.S. war machine, the bombing of the Capitol showed once again the potential strength of an armed clandestine movement. The attack on one of the most powerful symbols of U.S. imperialism pointed out that the U.S. cannot protect itself everywhere, that it is vulnerable. It showed that there are forces in this country that will not abide by what is deemed "acceptable" forms of protest while the Marines march in and take yet another nation captive. At a time when the U.S. government, along with its NATO allies, is waging a concerted campaign to isolate and negate all those who fight for revolution by labeling them as "terrorists," we have to be clear: these are freedom fighters, not terrorists. To not fight, to not begin to build the clandestine capacity which lays a foundation for

massive armed struggle in the future, is to accept in practice the view that U.S. imperialism will reform itself through peaceful means. It accepts the notion that in this country, only legal struggle is appropriate. We reprint the following communiques because we believe it is the responsibility of anti-imperialists in the public movement to support and defend revolutionary armed struggle in the U.S. We salute the emergence of the Armed Resistance Unit, the United Freedom Front and the Red Guerrilla Resistance over this last year. Along with the Black Liberation Army (BLA) and the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional (FALN), who have been fighting for their nations' liberation for over a decade, they help nurture the seeds of revolution. They challenge all of us to question our idea of what is legitimate—the U.S. State or the liberation movements around the world. Whose authority do we respect—the police and the U.S. military or the will and determination of those who are fighting to create a new society? —PFOC

The following communiques were received by mail.

Red Guerrilla Resistance

BOMBING OF WASHINGTON NAVY YARD April 20, 1984 We dedicate this action to Carroll Ishee, North American anti-imperialist who died fighting alongside the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front of El Salvador. His dedication, his willingness to take up arms as an ally of the Salvadoran people is an example for our entire struggle. To honor the memory of Carroll Ishee is to pick up his gun, build a militant resistance, and struggle to defeat U.S. imperialism on every front. COMPANERO CARLOS ESTA PRESENTE! Tonight, while the U.S. military prepares for Ocean Venture '84, we attacked the Officers' Club at the Washington Navy Yard. We take this action as part of our

ongoing campaign of resistance against the U.S. imperialists, to bring the war home to the warmakers. We act in solidarity with the sovereign revolutionary nation of Nicaragua, the national liberation struggle of the Salvadoran people led by the FMLN/FDR, the revolutionary struggle for independence and socialism for Puerto Rico, and all the just struggles for self-determination of the peoples of the Caribbean and Latin America. Here, at the Washington Navy Yard, high ranking officers helped to plan Ocean Venture. They meet at the Officers' Club to relax and swap stories and dream of careers to be made by invading Grenada, shelling Lebanon, and blockading Nicaragua. Genocide is a ladder to success for these men. By their own actions, they make


page 28/BREAKTHROUGH \s the enemy of the people of the world and the

target of revolutionary forces. Whether in Central America, the Middle East, or parts of Europe, the U.S. military is being attacked. They hide behind barricades or stay miles offshore in their ships. They return to the U.S. to relax and recuperate and be adulated by a reactionary government and an increasingly militaristic society. We need to rob them of the security of a home base and make them know they are the enemy wherever they go. Their officers' club is goneâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;let them hide in their homes. Ocean Venture '84 is the largest of an ongoing series of U.S. war games. The military will bring together 33,000 of its troops and will practice amphibious assaults and bombing attacks against Vieques, Puerto Ricoâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;once again making the direct colony of Puerto Rico the U.S. military's training ground. Ocean Venture amasses U.S. troops and weapons in the Caribbean, training and orienting its troops to the region's terrain and climate. In 1982, Ocean Venture was a trial run for the invasion of Grenada. Now, as this war "game" begins, the Reagan administration is openly discussing its plans to invade Central America. The purpose of Ocean Venture '84 could hardly be more clear. The imperialist strategy of counterinsurgency and covert war has not been enough to halt the inexorable drive toward freedom and liberation in the region, so the groundwork is being laid for a more direct and protracted commitment of U.S. troops. Honduras has been turned into a garrison state; the CIA committed an act of war by mining Nicaragua's harbors; U.S. advisors fly military assault missions against the revolutionary forces in El Salvador; and the U.S. activates the bases with which it occupies Puerto Rico. The U.S. govern-

U.S. advisors training Salvadoran troops in Honduras, March 1984.

ment, accustomed to dominating other nations, does not even hesitate to abrogate international law and intervene against the right of nations to self-determination. For years, the inhabitants of the Puerto Rican islands of Culebra and Vieques have struggled against U.S. naval attacks on their islandsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;attacks that pockmark these islands with bomb craters, threaten to destroy the fishing industry, and force the inhabitants out of their homes. Determined struggles on Culebra in the 60s drove the navy out; then Vieques became the new target of these genocidal "games." In 1979, Comrade Angel Rodriguez Cristobal, Puerto Rican revolutionary and leading member of La Liga Socialista Puertorriquena, was arrested demonstrating with the people of Vieques against the U.S. Navy; on November 11, 1979 he was assassinated by the U.S. government while imprisoned in Tallahassee, Florida. In honoring his memory, we commit ourselves to continuing the fight in solidarity with the struggle for Puerto Rico's independence and socialism. We express our support for the Puerto Rican armed clandestine movement and Puerto Rican political prisoners and prisoners of war. The U.S. has hesitated to deploy its ground troops in Central America because they remember that U.S. troops were defeated by people's war in Vietnam , and because they need a more consolidated base of support at home for imperialist war. But they have taken the first step towards increased intervention by invading Grenada in the face of world condemnation. Now the U.S. is escalating its aggression against Nicaragua and El Salvador. The peoples of Central America are enacting the revolutionary anti-imperialist strategy of two, three, many Vietnams,


BREAKTHROUGH/page 29

and they will deliver the next strategic defeat to U.S. imperialism and neocolonialismâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;in its own "backyard." At a point when we most need a movement that will fight and resist the escalating U.S. war machine, our movement is weakened by reformism and electoral poli-

tics. To build an effective resistance, we will have to fight and disrupt the U.S. war machine with heightened militancy in every arena of struggle. To defeat this system and build a new society, many more of us will need to take up arms as did Comrade Carroll Isheeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;within the borders of the U.S. as well as around the world.

VIVA NICARAGUA LIBRE!

BUILD THE INTERNATIONAL GUERRILLA FRONT AGAINST IMPERIALISM!

VICTORY TO THE FMLN/FDR! INDEPENDENCE AND SOCIALISM FOR PUERTO RICO!

BUILD A REVOLUTIONARY RESISTANCE MOVEMENT!

FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS AND POW'S!

DEATH TO IMPERIALISM!

Communique #8

BOMBING OF IBM OFFICES, N.Y. FREE AZANIA! DEATH TO APARTHEID! "It is not long ago when fascism in South Africa swallowed our heroes in Sharpeville..." On March 21, 1960, South African fascist police opened fire on unarmed African People gathered to protest the repressive pass laws of apartheid. Sixty-seven People were killed and hundreds wounded in this massacre in Sharpeville. * * * Tonight, March 19, 1984, armed units of the United Freedom Front bombed the IBM corporate office building at 3000 Westchester Avenue in a northern suburb of New York City. IBM is a death merchant and directly profits from and supports the fascist South African government, and its war of terror against the Freedom loving People of southern Africa. We must and will continue the attack on all fronts against U.S. imperialism whose government policies and corporate profits are steeped in the blood of those massacred at Sharpeville, Soweto, Kassinga, Maputo, Maseru and the detention cells and execution chambers of South Afrikkkan prisons. IBM CORPORATION IS GUILTY OF CRIMES AGAINST THE PEOPLE OF SOUTH AFRICA THROUGH THEIR COLLABORATION WITH THE FASCIST GOVERNMENT! IBM corporate profits translate into brutal repression and exploitation of African People in Azania. The case against IBM is clear. U.S. corporations have over $9 billion invested in South Africa (S.A.). By 1980, U.S.

data processing corporations controlled 75 percent of the sales and 77 percent of the rentals of computers in S.A. IBM is the largest computer supplier to S.A., having done business with the government since the early 1950's. In 1978 alone, IBM's South Africa sales jumped by 250 percent. The apartheid government is IBM's single largest customer, accounting for 1/3 of its sales in S.A. The computer is an integral part of the fascist South African government's policies of racist repression and control and military attacks and occupations: * Computers support a wide range of S.A.'s military functions and operations. S.A.'s military relies heavily on IBM for its computers and the company continues to service S.A.'s most sophisticated military computer networks. * IBM set up Project Korvoor, an automated military logistics system using IBM equipment to supply ammunition and military supplies to units throughout the country. The project enables S.A. to continue its war on Namibia and its frequent attacks against neighboring countries, especially Angola. * IBM processors are used by the South African Railways to supply military transport, supplies and weapons to its invasion armies in Namibia and Angola. * IBM supplies military researchers. * IBM supplies military contractors and arms makers and producers of weapons systems. For example, IBM rents computers to a South African company that produces land rovers for the security forces. These are the same


page 30/BREAKTHROUGH vehicles the S.A. police used in their attack on Soweto and other operations. During the Soweto uprising, 1000 People—many of them children—were killed by the pig security forces. * IBM supplies computers to a company that makes armored vehicles for the S.A. military. Armored vehicles are essential for the type of counter-insurgency and police operations that S.A. is engaged in. * IBM rents several computers to one of S.A.'s top explosives manufacturers; a company that specializes in the manufacture of napalm and riot control gas, like the type used in Soweto, etc. * IBM has maintained military computer installations with embargoed parts supplied through its operations outside the U.S. * IBM computers are used as an integral part of S.A.'s National Identity System. * IBM supplies computer software to the S.A. police. * IBM supplies government agencies with computers, training and service that these same agencies can easily conceal from their real intended end use—military, police and prison. * IBM supplies computers to the Interior Department's population registry, the Department of the Prime Minister (P.W. Botha, fascist pig architect of the 'total strategy') as well as many other government agencies. It is clear that support from U.S. high-tech companies bolsters the fascist S.A. government and the war machine that enforces it. Collaboration with apartheid by U.S. companies, including IBM, by supplying equipment, products, technology and training is equivalent to those criminal enterprises in Nazi Germany that built the Nazi war machine and concentration kamps that were the underpinning of fascism. Millions suffered and died as death merchant corporations made millions in profits. We know who the collaborators are. We have attacked IBM in the past. We attack them today and will continue to attack them in the future unless they cease their support and dealings with the illegal government of S.A. After our last bombing attack against IBM facilities, which caused extensive property damage (and helped tarnish their phoney but slick Madison Ave. image), the IBM bosses offered a $25,000 reward for our capture. They encourage collaboration with the enemy on every level! We say—give your 25 thousand blood money to the families of those murdered while in the detention cells of South African jails. In 1980, 30,000 African children in S.A. died of star-

vation and many others died from related diseases. Millions of Africans including entire communities have been forcibly uprooted from their homes and transferred to the 'bantustans.' These so called bantustans/homelands are nothing more than concentration kamps, occupying small amounts of barren land, administered by brutal goons, armed and supported by the fascist S.A. government. These kamps are wracked with poverty and unemployment, and worse still one-half the children die before they reach the age of five. The computerized 'pass system' demands that every African over sixteen must carry a pass (denoting personal statistics, movements, fingerprints, etc.) at all times and which must be shown to the police on demand. Without such a pass, African People cannot work, live or visit in what are designated by the government as "white areas." One quarter of a million People are arrested every year for so called pass book violations. TORTURE IS USED ON A ROUTINE BASIS against African People and anyone else who opposes apartheid. The well known case of Steve Biko is but one example of the untold numbers of People who have been murdered while under detention of the security police. Murder, physical beatings, electric shocks, psychological torture and complete isolation are just some of the methods used against those who struggle for human rights. Just last month in Atteridgeville, the pigs broke up a gathering of students protesting corporal punishment in schools, by ramming a truck into the group of children, injuring many and killing 15-year-old Emma Sathedgeke. THERE ARE NO HUMAN RIGHTS IN RACIST SOUTH AFRICA! Since the Soweto uprising, there has been a huge military buildup in S.A., supplementing police forces and directed against Liberation Movements and the People of Namibia, Angola and Mozambique. The 'total strategy' of this fascist government includes the state mobilization and coordination of all S.A.'s resources to meet the threat of 'total war,' i.e., Liberation Forces fighting against fascism/imperialism for the Liberation of the Land and its People. This policy goes hand in hand with the "constructive engagement" policy of the U.S. government. U.S. imperialism wants to keep the Nations of southern Africa in economic subjugation to apartheid. U.N. veto power by the U.S. has protected S.A. from more effective economic sanctions. U.S. policy also means supporting S.A.'s occupation of Angolan territory and support for the counterrevolutionary rats of UNITA/Jonas Savimbi (a favorite stooge of Reagan/Bush as well as of top S.A. generals). The not so secret war conducted by the S.A. regime


BREAKTHROUGH/page 31

against the civilians and infrastructure of Angola, Mozambique and other nations supporting the Liberation struggle are also backed by U.S. imperialism. Under Reagan some of the largest and most vicious attacks against the People of Angola have taken place. The U.S. government under Reagan has reduced the restrictions on the sale of American equipment to the S. A. military and police and has opposed any dismantling of the repressive security apparatus. The fact is, U.S. imperialism is engaged in a war with its fascist accomplice, the Republic of South Africa, against the African Liberation Movements. From Lebanon to El Salvador, from the Philippines to Grenada, in its own borders and around the world, U.S. imperialism, including its death merchant backers, are the enemy of National Liberation and Freedom loving People. This bombing of IBM facilities along with other armed actions represents one level of struggle against fascist S.A. and U.S. imperialism. There have to be many more

actions on all levels and fronts and we support all sincere efforts of People fighting against apartheid and imperialism. The People of Azania and Namibia have an unbreakable determination to be free, reflecting the real will of the People for National Liberation and Socialism. 1984—the Year of the Women of Azania, the year of continuing struggle against fascism! imperialism... "fascism your days are numbered on African Soil—you have committed crimes.. .never to be forgotten, imperialism...your grave has been made days fixed when you'll be driven fast to your abyss Mother Africa has condemned you to death!" Poem by an Azanian Sister

This action is dedicated to the Revolutionary Fighters, Simon Mogoerane, Thabo Motaung and Jerry Mosoldi, ANC guerrillas executed by the fascist S.A. government on June 9, 1983. YOUR SPIRIT WILL ALWAYS LIVE!!! FREE NELSON MANDELA AND ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS! DEFEAT U.S. IMPERIALISM AND ITS DEATH MERCHANTS! VICTORY TO THE SOUTH AFRICAN PEOPLE—DEATH TO APARTHEID! ! REVOLUTIONARY SUPPORT AND LOVE TO THE LOCKED DOWN FREEDOM FIGHTERS AND GRAND JURY RESISTERS! FREE ALL POW'S AND POLITICAL PRISONERS! SOLIDARITY AND SUPPORT TO ALL GROUPS AND PEOPLE FIGHTING RACIST SOUTH AFRICA! VICTORY TO PEOPLE'S WAR! BUILD THE REVOLUTIONARY RESISTANCE MOVEMENT!


\e 32/BREAKTHRO

WRITE THROUGH THE WALLS The U.S. government says that there are no political prisoners orPOWs in this country. Yet the partial list below shows this claim is a complete lie. We urge you to write them and to send literature. These women and men represent the best of the movement. Make their struggle our struggle. "The Real Dragon" sponsors a continuing book drive to political prisoners and POWs. For information on where to send contributions write: 3543 - 18th Street, Box 14, San Francisco, CA 94110. Puerto Rican Prisoners of War

Puerto Rican Political Prisoners

Edwin Cortes #92153 024 Alberto Rodriguez #92150 024 Alejandrina Torres #92152024 M.C.C. 71 W. Van Buren Chicago, IL 60605

Pablo Marcano Garcia #10037 158 FCI, PO Box 1000 Otisville, NY 10963

Elizam Escobar #88969 024 FCI Oxford, WI53952 Ricardo Jimenez 88967 024 FCI PO Box 1000 Otisville, NY 10963 Adolfo Matos #88968 024 MCI, PO Box 1500 El Reno, OK 73036 William Guillermo Morales Avenida Juarez 56-504 Col. Centra Mexico, D.F. * Dylcia Pagan #88971 024 MCC, 150 Park Row New York, NY 10007 Maria Haydee Torres #64315 Ida Luz Rodriguez #88973 024 WFCI POBoxA C16 Alderson, WV 24910

Steven Guerra #15883 053 FCI Raybrook, PO Box 900 Raybrook, NY 12977 Julio Veras y Delgadillo do John Doe #300799 069 PO Box 1000 Lewisburg, PA 17837 Nydia Cuevas Rivera #00868 WFCI POBoxA C16 Alderson, WV 24910

Leonard Peltier #89637-132 Standing Deer PO Box 1000 Marion, IL 62959

Geronimo Pratt #B40319 Tamal, CA 94974

Rita Silk Nauni Box 11492 Mable Basset Corr. Inst. Oklahoma City, OK 73136

Ruchell Cinque Magee A92051 Folsom Prison Repressa, CA 95671 New AfrikanlBlack Political Prisoners

Maria Cueto PO Box 1000 Pleasanton, CA 94566 Ricardo Romero PO Box 1000 Bastrop, TX 78602

Heshimu Lloyd Brice #8154908 PO Box 5547 Santa Clara Main Jail San Jose, CA 95150

Judith Clark #83-G-313 247 Harris Rd. Bedford Hills, NY 10507

Mark Cook Federal Prison, Box 1000 Leavenworth, KS 66048

David Gilbert #83-A-6158 Auburn Corr. Facility Auburn, NY 13021

Larry Guy Jackson State Prison PO Box E Jackson, MI 49204

Silvia Baraldini #05125 024 M.C.C., 150 Park Row New York, NY 10007

Julio Rosado #19793-053 FCI, FOB 888 Ashland, KY41101

New AfrikanlBlack Prisoners of War

Kuwasi Balagoon #83-A-6216 Albert Nuh Washington #77-A-1528 Attica Corr. Facility PO Box 149 Attica, NY 14011 Herman Bell B-79C-262 Richard Dhoruba Moore Drawer B, Greenhaven Prison Stormville, NY 12582 Jalil Abdul Muntaqin sin Anthony Bottom #77A-4283 Auburn Corr. Facility Auburn, NY 13021

Basheer Hameed #82A-6313 sin James York Great Meadows Corr. Facility Box 51 Comstock, NY 12821 Abdul Majid #83A-483 sin Anthony LaBorde Drawer B, Greenhaven Prison Stormville, NY 12582 Larry Mack MCC, 150 Park Row New York, NY 10007 Hugo Pinell A88401 Folsom Prison Repressa, CA 95671

'

Mexican Political Prisoners

Andres Rosado #19794-053, FCI, FOB 7000 Texarkana, TX 75501

Alicia Rodriguez #N07157 PO Box C Dwight, IL 60420

Carmen Valentin #88974 024 PO Box 1000 Pleasanton, CA 94566

Ashanti sin Michael Alston #28453 Box 100 Somers, CT 06071

Kalima Aswad sin Robert Duren PO Box 24120 Tamal, CA 94974

Sekou Odinga #05228 054 Sundiata Acoli sin Clark Squire #39794 066 PO Box 1000 Marion, IL 62959

Carlos Alberto Torres #88976 024 FCI, 922 Renfroe Talladega, AL 35160

Native American Prisoners of War and Political Prisoners

Felix Rosa #N11373 Graham Correctional Center PO Box 500 Hillsboro, IL 62049

Oscar Lopez Rivera #87651 024 Federal Prison, PO Box 1000 Leavenworth, KS 66048

Luis Rosa #N02743 PO Box 711 Menard, IL 62259

Henry Sha Sha Brown FCI, PO Box WOO Lewisburg, PA 17837

North American Freedom Fighters and Political Prisoners

Kathy Boudin 247 Harris Rd. Bedford Hills, NY 10507 Rita Brown Therese Coupez PO Box 1000 Pleasanton, CA 94566 Richard Picariello #05812 BoxW Lompoc, CA 93438 Vancouver 5 Julie Belmas Ann Hansen Gerry Hannah Doug Stewart Brent Taylor Oakalla Prison, Drawer "O" Burnaby, BC V5H3N4 CANADA

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Fight for the Prisoners! June 1984 Wherever people are confronting imperialism, there are political prisoners and prisoners of war. From the Israeli-run political prison camp at Ansar to the infamous H-Blocks in Northern Ireland, prisons are used to crush revolution. Yet, from inside the prison walls, the resistance continues to grow. Although the U.S. denies it, the number of political prisoners and POWs in U.S. prisons is rising. These women and men, captured in combat or imprisoned for political acts of resistance, represent the heart of the struggle. They have refused to be buried or isolated, but instead have turned the prisons into another front of resistance. Unable to destroy the FALN and BLA, and faced with the growth of armed movements, the U.S. is following closely the policies of its NATO and Latin American clients. By terrorizing these revolutionaries and isolating them from their supporters the state hopes to break individuals and deter others from taking up their example. Political prisoners and POWs are now routinely incarcerated far from their families and communities. An example of this is the Puerto Rican and Mexican grand jury resisters who are being sent to prisons in remote areas such as two on the Canadian border in New York and Minnesota. Health care is denied, although prison conditions create severe health crises. Visiting is strictly curtailed and monitored. Mail is restricted and inspected. Puerto Rican POW Carlos Torres, recently moved to Alabama, is allowed to correspond only with six members of his immediate family. The prison authorities determine which six. Political prisoners are segregated from general population and most often locked up for 23% hours a day. Puerto Rican POW Alejandrina Torres was locked up in this manner in the male section of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago where her every move could be watched by male prisoners and guards. In Alderson, West Virginia, 7 tiny cubicles have been remodeled in an isolated wing of Davis Hall in the Women's Federal Prison. Each is designed to be the lifetime cell of a Puerto Rican Prisoner of War. Haydee Torres and Lucy Rodriguez are locked up in two of these sound-proofed cells for 23% hours a day. Three other women POWs expect to be transferred there soon. Lucy and Haydee are permitted no contact with each other or any other prisoners. They are allowed a minimal number of visits, for only two hours at a time. They are always shackled when in the presence of another person. They are given one half hour a day for either exercise or a shower, at the whim of the guards. They are allowed to receive only 10 books a year. Prison officials have told them that they will be in isolation for the rest of their lives. When captured in October 1981, New Afrikan freedom fighter and POW Sekou Odinga was methodically beaten and burned with cigarettes in order to extract information. Sekou refused to collaborate, and the torture resulted in severe injury to his pancreas and a long hospitalization. When he was recently moved from the MCC in Mew York, he was marched down city streets by 100 police, and taken to a waiting helicopter, flown to Lewisburg Prison and then transferred to Marion and immediately thrown into the hole. Marion Federal Prison has been denounced by Amnesty International in its recent report, "Torture in the 80s." Prisoners there are regularly brutalized and beaten. Here, Leonard Peltier (Gwarth-ee-Lass), a Native American POW, has been on a hunger fast since mid-April. Joined by Standing Deer and Albert Garza, he is demanding his human right to practice Native American religion. The prison says the sacred pipe and sage are a threat to the security of the prison. Peltier, imprisoned for >â&#x20AC;˘


the alleged shooting of an FBI agent near Wounded Knee in 1973, has been granted a new trial but has declared that there is no way he can prepare for it unless he is allowed to practice the rituals fundamental to Native American life. As a result of the fast, each man has lost over 50 pounds and Standing Dee>»has lost his sight. WHAT WE CAN DO:

On the outside, we can either be intimidated by this brutality or we can join the resistance of the prisoners. We can barrage the prisons with letters telling the wardens and guards that the prisoners are not isolated. We can demand through letters, telegrams, telephone calls and demonstrations that the psychological and physical torture of these revolutionaries be stopped. --There is a telegram campaign demanding that Lucy and Haydee be moved immediately to general population. Call and write: Norman Carlson, Director, Bureau of •Prisons, 320 1st St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20534, phone (202) 633-2000. —Support is urgently needed for the hunger fast by Leonard, Standing Deer and Albert Garza at Marion Prison. Write the warden at: Warden Wilford, P.O. Box 1000, Marion, Illinois 62959. —We must demand that political prisoners be housed in general population, that they be moved close to their families. Puerto Rican POWs have raised the demand that they be housed together, under the terms of the Geneva Convention.

FREE ALL POLITICAL

PRISONERS AND

PRISONERS OF WAR!


BREAKTHROUGH/page 33

The following are excerpts from a letter from antiimperialist activists in West Germany who have been organizing resistance to the increasing repression of political prisoners. The situation of the political prisoners has greatly intensified in the last months. Physical attacks and mistreatment of the prisoners are increasing. The state is trying to cut off all communication between the prisoners and with the outside, and to seal off the cells completely. We are directly affected by this and are not willing to accept it. We cannot confront this situation individually, but we want, together with the political prisoners, to break through this contact barrier. More and more people are doing legal resistance and being imprisoned for it. Many people from demonstrations are simply being kept in jail. In this situation, where imperialism is trying to solve its crisis with open wars worldwide, a large movement against war and war preparations has developed. In opposition to this, the state poses prison more and more as a weapon and a threat to repress the resistance. It is important for all who are struggling against war and oppression to deal more intensively and offensively with the struggle of the political prisoners and with the conditions of resistance in prison.... THE NEW "ILLEGAL INFORMATION SYSTEM" Shortly after the arrest of Adelheid Schulz and Brigitte Mohnhaupt*, there was a national cell raid arranged by the Justice Department under top security. Some prisoners were subjected to "no contact" for days, that is, totally isolated from each other and the outside; including their lawyers. Moreover, they were physically brutalized. The reason for this raid was the well prepared construction of a new "crime." The goal was to wrap the intensification in the prisons in a constitutional cloak, to give it more force. They now claim that there is an "illegal information system" between the prisoners and us on the outside. As * Together with Christian Klar, were arrested in 1982 and charged with being leading members of the Red Army Faction (RAF), a revolutionary armed clandestine organzation operating in West Germany since the early 1970s. They were accused of participating in numerous attacks on U.S. and NATO facilities as well as the rocket grenade attack on the U.S. commander of NATO forces in Europe, General Kroesen.

proof, they seized masses of material on the association of prisoners together in groups from the cells, such as already censored letters, newspaper articles, etc. Again the prisoners were kept for days under the condition of no contact. Thirty-two prisoners are accused in these proceedings of an "illegal information system," together with people on the outside whose houses were searched at the same time as the cell raids (for example the Hamburg Information on Political Prisoners, comrades in Stuttgart and Frankfurt). They were all charged, inside and outside, with organizing a new "terroristic association" based on the demand of association of prisoners together in groups. Three days after the cell raid, our comrade Inge Krobs from Frankfurt was arrested. She is a comrade from the anti-imperialist resistance who has for years been involved in the struggle of the political prisoners, writing letters and visiting political prisoners. In her arrest warrant it stated among other things that she had had contact for a long time with "RAF" relatives and that she visits Helga Roos, who is in prison because of supporting a "terrorist group." She is therefore suspected and liable to be prosecuted for supporting a terrorist organization.... The construction of the "illegal information system" has, in addition to criminalization, very practical consequencesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;letters will be seized, visits will be interrupted, and only in a few cases will leaflets, copies, or specially sent newspaper articles get through to the prisoners. We receive more and more confiscation decrees that this, that or the other letter was sent to the attorney general because of the "illegal information system." For several of the prisoners, mail consists only of confiscation decrees. It is not only the discussion over the association of political prisoners in groups that will be blocked, but also all political discussion; for example, the dialogue about the peace movement, the campaign to stop the bomb trains, Krefeld*, Runway West, etc....

PHYSICAL ATTACKS AND MISTREATMENT Since the arrest of Brigitte Mohnhaupt, Adelheid Schulz, and Christian Klar, physical torture, openly expressed death threats and so-called "house punishment" against the prisoners has increased. An especially clear example of this is the case of Bernd Rossner. During the * Militant demonstration against Vice President Bush's visit in June of 1983.


page 34/BREAKTHROUGH hospital. In the beginning of August, Christian Klar joined the strike, and he has now broken his also. He is also in Straubing. Bernd was put into the psychiatric ward of the prison, as he was unable to eat and always vomited. That was called a psychosis. Because of the many telegrams he and the prison officials received from national meetings and groups and the intervention of some doctors from all over the country, he is now back in isolation and no longer on the psychiatric ward.... COMMITMENT TO PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITALS Before every trial, defendants receive a psychiatric examination and from this an expert opinion is given about their mental health. This has already taken place with Adelheid Schulz and Rolf Clemens Wagner, whose trial started in Dusseldorf on Oct. 11, 1983. By this process, which attempts to discredit revolutionary resistance and struggle in West Germany, prisoners who support the resistance and struggle would be committed to mental institutions to make resistance appear crazy and mixed-up. The state has already tried to put Ulrike Meinhof, Siegfried Haag and, in the recent past, Helga Roos in psychiatric wards, but because of the consistent public reaction, they were not able to carry out their plans. PREVENTION OF POLITICAL DEFENSE Christian Klar in prison. The German secret police covered the face of their agent.

raids after the arrest of Adelheid and Brigitte, Bernd was brutally beaten and got CS gas sprayed in his face personally by security inspector Strohmeier in Straubing. Bernd was one of the first to petition to be put into a group with other political prisoners in February 1983. He wants to go into an already existing group of four political prisoners in Celle. In response to that, he was brutalized and beaten in March 1983 by a group of guards in JVA Frankenthal, allegedly because he wanted to eat breakfast in his undershirt. In April, the justice minister of RheinlandPfalz announced that Bernd would be returned to Straubing where he had been held in isolation for the last five years of his eight years of imprisonment. Because of this he began a filth strike, which means he began using the floor of his cell as a toilet. Since the beginning of his filth strike Bernd has been locked up in a bunker cell in Frankenthal for five weeks—sometimes with no clock. This is a completely empty, shiny white, neon-lit cell with no windows and hot air blowing in. After his return to Straubing in May 1983, Bernd was also in a bunker that was kept permanently too cold. Now after five months of his filth strike, Bernd cannot eat solid food and has therefore broken his strike. He is now in the JVA

This already began years ago with a law which states that a lawyer is not allowed to defend more than one person charged with the same crime. That means that it is becoming more and more difficult to find lawyers for the increasing number of trials against the resistance. Some lawyers are not allowed by the courts to take cases on the grounds that they would have to travel too far. This is aimed at the material foundations of the lawyers, making their finances and continuity of defense impossible. A court proceeding has been introduced against the lawyer of Adelheid Schulz, Hanfried Mathies, because of his motion for association of Adelheid Schulz with other women prisoners. He already has two civil and one criminal court proceeding. The new charge is an attempt to silence him as a political defender, and especially for the trial of Adelheid Schulz. Meanwhile in the "national security" trials it became almost obligatory to have a public defender, whom the defendants did not trust. The public defenders were often political opponents, as in the trial of Sieglinde Hoffman, whose lawyer was a known fascist. THE STRUGGLE AGAINST ISOLATION TORTURE IS A STRUGGLE FOR THE REVOLUTION This intensification—especially the construction of an illegal information system—has been going on since the


BREAKTHROUGH/page 35 time when the RAF prisoners and those from the antiimperialist resistance demanded to be put in groups together. These measures are concrete steps from the state to stifle the prisoners in a political vacuum. For many prisoners our letters, information that we send, and our visits are their only opportunity for political and human contact because under the condition of isolation torture, all political and human contact is cut off. So the attempt to cut this last connection is a massive attack on the identity and life of the prisoners. For us that means an attack on our political connections and dialogue with the prisoners, which is important for us. No one is allowed to talk about the existence of political prisoners, about their conditions, their needs, or demands. And anybody who does anyway is threatened with repression. In the meantime, this fact is already sufficient for an arrest warrant. The state wants the prisoners to be defenseless against its arbitrariness and repression. At the same time, this strategy is being organized against all people who are in the resistance against oppression and war preparations. The goal is to make our fear of the methods of repression, such as isolation torture, so great that we would no longer have the courage and determination that we need for the struggle. In the last years, the resistance against NATO projects in West Germany such as Runway West, NATO nuclear power plants and Euromissiles, has broadened and become more offensive and aimed at the right targets. In Krefeld, for example, the various actions from autonomous anti-imperialist groups and independent peace initiatives in the city prevented the German-American peace propaganda campaign from being carried through. Krefeld did not become the symbol of war propaganda, but instead, of our resistance to it. We have more and more understood that we are confronted with the same enemy

and have started to break the split between various movements and various levels of resistance. After Krefeld, the state responded with a whole series of repressive measures that began with the criminalization of the left and anti-imperialist press, then to decrease demonstration rights, increased arming of the pigs (rubber bullets, etc.), to murderous deportation practices, and the already described intensification in the prisons. The measures against the political prisoners are now only the tip of the repressive offensive against the entire resistance. Since the beginning of 1983, the political prisoners from the RAF and the resistance have been demanding association together in groups. This demand is a conscious step on the part of the prisoners to struggle for unity and the organization of revolutionary resistance in prison. We want the struggle for association of political prisoners together in groups and our solidarity with all political prisoners to be a central component in our liberation struggle, so that prison does not become a hole one falls into and then loses connection to the movement, the struggle, and life outside. That gives many people much more hope and courage, that the prison walls cannot separate us, because the same struggle goes on inside the prison. FOR THE ASSOCIATION OF POLITICAL PRISONERS FROM THE RAF AND THE RESISTANCE TOGETHER IN GROUPS! FREE POLITICAL INFORMATION AND DISCUSSION FOR ALL PRISONERS! Write to the West German government demanding the right of association of political prisoners in groups. Send letters to: Grussaktion politische Gefangene do GAL Bartelstr.30, 2000 Hamburg 13.

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page 36/BREAKTHROUGH

DON'T TALK TO THE F.B.I. Hot on the heels of Reagan's "anti-terrorist" crusade, the FBI is back in town. Many people have questions about what to do when confronted by the FBI. Here are some guidelines. DON'T TALK TO THE FBI! You don't have to. There is no law requiring any of us to talk to an FBI agent, a cop or any other investigator. Every bit of information given to the FBI, no matter how unimportant it might seem, becomes part of their intelligence gathering on the movement; a piece of the puzzle they are fitting together to be used to destroy people and organizations. Often the FBI comes and says something like, "Your name has come up in the course of an investigation into a bombing conspiracy. If you can just answer a few questions, we're sure we can clear this up." The purpose of statements like these is to catch us off guard, to scare us and get us to talk. Some people think we can outsmart the FBI, turn their questions around and get information from them. Experience has shown that this is dangerous: our questions and answers often provide insights for the FBI to go on. Likewise, the FBI will try to catch us up if we make statements that they can prove are false. When this happens they can threaten us with perjury charges. The best thing to do is REFUSE TO TALK. DON'T LET THE FBI INSIDE YOUR HOUSE! If they come to your door, don't let them inside. If they get a foot in the door, demand that they leave at once.

Legally they can only enter your home if they have a search or arrest warrant. If they say they have a warrant, demand to see it and demand to see their I.D. If they want to ask a few questions, show you pictures of people, ask about who uses your phone, etc. say "No, I have nothing to talk to you about." If you have a lawyer, tell them that she/he will contact them. The FBI will try to intimidate you if sweet talking fails, or vice-versa. This is why we must be clear and firm in our refusal to cooperate. Sometimes they will try to intimidate us by threatening to have us subpoenaed to a grand jury. However, cooperating with the FBI by answering a few questions will not stop anyone from being subpoenaed. It only encourages them to see you as potentially talkative before a grand jury. Not only are activists being visited by the FBI, but family members, neighbors and co-workers are being approached as well. Often the FBI will threaten to harass our parents or friends. These kinds of slimy threats are nothing new, but still they can present problems. In most cases, it makes sense to try to educate relatives and friends before the FBI shows up. The FBI's history of dirty tricks is widely known and we can draw on this as we talk to people. The government and FBI want to use their fear tactics, lies and spies to put us on the defensive. Now is the time to build a real wall of resistance, to refuse to be isolated or turned back. The FBI, which was vilified during the 1960s, and rejuvenated in the 1970s, must again be the target of our contempt and our outrage in 1984.


In Ireland and South Africa, being jailed for no crime other than one's political beliefs is known as Political Internment. It is the same in the United States and it is happening right now! 1976: Nine Puerto Rican and Mexican activists were jailed for up to thirteen months for civil contempt. They refused to cooperate with a federal grand jury investigating the Puerto Rican independence movement, in particular looking for the FALN (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional). 1981-83: Fifteen New Afrikans and white North Americans were jailed up to eighteen months by a grand jury seeking to capture and destroy the Black Liberation Army and halt the consolidation of New Afrikan organizations. 1982: Five Puerto Rican and Mexican grand jury resisters—Steven Guerra, Julio Rosado, Andres Rosado, Ricardo Romero and Maria Cueto—were arrested simultaneously in four separate cities by squads of FBI agents. Convicted of criminal contempt, they began serving three-year prison terms in April 1984. For four of these activists, this was their second imprisonment for resisting a grand jury. 1981-83: Carlos Noya, Ricardo Monies Garcia and Norberto Cintron Fiallo, three independentistas from Puerto Rico, were subpoenaed before a grand jury in Brooklyn and jailed in New York for refusing to testify. They served terms of nine to eighteen months. 1983: After serving his sentence, Carlos Noya was resubpoenaed along with Norberto's brother, Federico Cintron Fiallo. When they refused to testify they were charged with criminal contempt and brought from Puerto Rico to the United States to stand trial. They were convicted and begin serving two year sentences in June 1984. 1983: Shelley Miller and Silvia Baraldini, two North American anti-imperialists, resisted the same grand jury. They were charged with criminal contempt and sentenced to three years. 1984: Pam Fadem, a white anti-imperialist from Austin, Texas, was charged with criminal contempt for resisting the Puerto Rico grand jury. Her trial was scheduled to begin in July 1984.

As part of the increasing campaign against so-called "terrorism," the U.S. is jailing activists for refusing to collaborate with federal grand juries. Grand juries are now sitting and "investigating" the New Afrikan, Puerto Rican and Mexican liberation movements. Twenty people from the Sanctuary movement are currently under grand jury investigation. Many people think of the grand jury as an impartial body that reviews evidence to determine if criminal indictments should be issued. But the political grand jury is nothing less than an interrogation center without the bright light. You cannot have a lawyer present. The government is not required to inform you of the nature of the investigation, or whether you yourself are under investigation. There are no limits to the scope of their questions, which you are required to answer under threat of contempt. The U.S. attorney is fed the questions by the FBI and every piece of information—however innocent it may appear—helps the government put together a profile of the movement they have under investigation. Through the grand jury, the State attempts to achieve the following: crush the clandestine movement by using the threat of jail to find someone who will inform; intimidate, harass and criminalize leaders and supporters of public anti-imperialist organizations; and gather information on the growing movements against war and militarism. Seeing that the use of civil contempt (which carries a maximum charge of eighteen months or the remaining life of the grand jury) wasn't working, the U.S. decided to up the ante, using the charge of criminal contempt against all those who refused to comply with subpoenas. This charge was originally developed for use against the Mafia. It carries no determinate sentence, and although defendants are given a jury trial, their guilt is a foregone conclusion. By standing behind those who refuse to collaborate, by refusing to cooperate in any government investigation, we begin to build an awareness of the State and its repressive goals. We begin to build a movement capable of defending itself and protecting its clandestine fighters. It is only when we take a united stand that we can hope to defeat the grand juries. NO COLLABORATION WITH THE GRAND JURIES! FREE ALL GRAND JURY RESISTERS!


Free Leonard Peltier! Free All Political Prisoners and POWs!

"To the people who are struggling for our freedom, I embrace you and send you all my love and strength from one of America's most dreaded concentration camps. They can only hold my body. They will never hold my spirit." â&#x20AC;&#x201D;in the spirit of Crazy Horse

MARION FEDERAL PRISON June 1984: Gwarth-ee-Lass (Leonard Peltier) and Standing Deer, Native American j Political Prisoners, joined by Albert Garza, on Hunger Fast for Religious Freedom.

SOVEREIGNTY FOR NATIVE NATIONS


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Breakthrough, Vol. VIII, No. 1., Summer 1984 by Arm The Spirit - Issuu