Activity

Although called a Men’s Colony by the authorities, San Luis Obispo inmates know it as the California Penal Colony, which sums up what it is all about—a penal institution and a colonized situation. The state believes in the power of euphemism, that by putting a pleasant name on a concentration camp …

By political strategy I mean this: I wanted to use the trial as a political forum to prove that having to fight for my life was the logical and inevitable outcome of our efforts to lift the oppressor’s burden. The Black Panthers’ activities and programs, the patrolling of the police, and the resist…

By political strategy I mean this: I wanted to use the trial as a political forum to prove that having to fight for my life was the logical and inevitable outcome of our efforts to lift the oppressor’s burden. The Black Panthers’ activities and programs, the patrolling of the police, and the resist…

[...] (This was in 1967, just after one of the longest, hottest summers in American history. Student consciousness had never been higher.) I talked about the necessity for Black people to gain control of the institutions in their own communities, eventually transforming them into co-operatives, and…

The movement was cresting around the country. Brothers on the block in many northern cities were moving angrily in response to the problems that overwhelmed them. New York and other eastern cities had exploded in 1964, Watts went up in 1965, Cleveland in 1966, and in 1967 another long hot summer wa…