I left a good job in the city
Working for the man every night and day
…
Big wheel keep on turning
Proud Mary keep on burning
—Tina Turner
But let’s leave those brothers in their smoking Moscow hotel room and check out what’s happening back in the States.
Listen to the story. It’s rolling.
Like I say, Akagi stays behind to take care of business. After three years Huey gets free, but there’re dead brothers all across the country. Police raids and shootouts in Oakland, Chicago, L.A., and the Marin County Courthouse. Repression, provocation, conspiracy, purges. Head of the Panthers incarcerated, but the body struggles. By the time it’s over, there’re thirty-four killed and hundreds imprisoned.
Rally round Bryant and Seventh, Hall of Justice and the San Francisco Jail. Everybody represents: Panthers, La Raza, Venceremos, Los Siete, Soledad, Patriot Party, National Committee to Combat Fascism, plus the significant attorneys for the defendants. But back up: Asian American Community is also represented. Hey, where’s the fancy name? Mothers for Mao, Uncle Ho’s Nephews, Godzillas, or East is Red? Where’s the Red Guard Party? RG missing an historic event. Who comes forward? It’s Akagi, surrounded by his guards. Underneath he’s a Panther, but if necessary, he’s the Asian American Community.
He gets introduced, and the crowd claps. Can he get a rise outta this crowd?
He comes on easy. “Good afternoon, brothers and sisters.” Makes adjustments to the microphone.
He looks around at his four guards, nodding at these Asian brothers dressed in fatigues, headbands, sporting shades so you can’t tell what’s in their sight, folded arms across their chests, ready for any eventuality. No doubt, they’re packing. It’s a show of force, but he says, reassuring-like, “Ah, don’t let the other brothers on the stand put you on any trip. Usually people think that when other brothers come up on the stand, these brothers are here to protect me. Well this is all false, because every brother up here, just like every one of you out there, is so important for our struggle.” Some kind of apology because these cats with their fu manchus look mean.
Then he goes into his talk, starting nice and easy. Talks about the Los Siete cats who are in prison awaiting trial for the shooting of a policeman. Talks about the Soledad Brothers on trial for the same shit. Talks about Panthers in the same situation.
Then he says, “See, understand that the Los Siete trial and what’s happening to the Soledad Brothers are not isolated incidents. They’re just like the practicing of a theory. And dig, this theory is a theory of genocide by the United States government and all their lackeys domestically and internationally. Understand that this theory is not an academic one, dig. It’s not even really very heavy, but if I was to articulate this theory it would go like this: The only good one is a dead one.”
Lots of grunts of approval on this statement.
He goes on, “We have to understand that this theory is no new thing, see. I think it was this one cat name General Custer, in one of his more sensitive moments, said this in reference to the Native Americans.” This is where we get our history lesson. “Now, Goldilocks may have coined this phrase, but see, it was practiced long before he was on the scene. It was like when the first invaders from Europe came and, in quotes, ‘discovered’ America. Understand, when they first discovered America, they immediately started practicing this theory. Initially it was focused against the Native Americans, then finally against the Mexican people on the West Coast, and they disguised this theory of genocide as ‘manifest destiny,’ dig. And toward the black people in the United States, they disguised it as a racist stereotype portraying the black man and the black sister as subhuman persons, and this was the rationale for slavery and their subhuman treatment. Once again, an example of the theory of genocide of the United States.”
But he don’t stop there with his theorizing. He keeps going, and this next part brings the Asians into the general picture. He’s got to do that, so he continues, “Now toward the Chinese people, see, this theory was disguised another way. It was called ‘Yellow Peril,’ and that was the rationale for exclusion acts. That was the rationale for forcing Chinese people to group together into Chinatowns, and the reason they did that was for self-defense, if you can dig that. And understand, against the Japanese people in more contemporary history, they had the same theory of genocide, and the game they ran on the Japanese people, when they put over a hundred thousand Japanese Americans into camps, was that they put them in camps ‘for their own protection,’ if you can relate to that.” This is where he gets some heavy applause and shouts of encouragement from the crowd.
He pauses, then says, “Now see, understand, what we have to realize is that this same theory is being practiced today. Man, the same theory is happening in Chicago, San Francisco, Kent State, Jackson State, and definitely internationally in terms of the Indochina War and the genocide over there. And understand that the sheep’s clothing for this theory now is the disguise of ‘law and order.’”
“See, what people need to understand is that we come together today to show Third World solidarity and unity for political prisoners within the United States. Now, I can dig that’s why we’re here, but you have to understand that when Los Siete walks free of the San Francisco County Jail, when the Soledad Brothers leave the ‘gladiator school’ (what it’s more affectionately called), then we will be free. See, because when the political prisoners walk free of the institutions that bind them, then we will walk free of the institutions that bind us, institutions like the credit agency our parents owe money to, institutions like the Bank of America, institutions like the system that asks us to give six years of our lives to Uncle Sam.” Twist your mind around that: we’re all some kind of prisoner.
So he’s tying it up see, but he’s got to include the women, the feminist position. So he continues with, “the same institution that perpetuates the thought that builds and works on male chauvinism,” but then he wants to make the big point, so he points back to the jail behind him and he says, “the same institution that built that motherfuckin’ piece of shit!” Now this brings the roar of approval from the crowd because finally he’s rolling his nice and easy talk around to the hard and rough. And that’s what the crowd is wanting. They are motherfuckin’ mad.
When they calm down a bit, he goes into his denouement: “Now in order to change this thing, brothers and sisters, in order to make things right, we have to do something, make a real big change.”
Now this is where he’s going to show off his Marxist take, but he wants to bring it down to the level of common understanding. Make it plain to the people. “Now I’m not too intellectual or academic, but I heard that this thing is like where the quantitative change turns into the qualitative change, or where the thesis and the antithesis struggle and therefore make the synthesis.”
But the brother’s got to show his Asian colors, where it’s going to relate to yellow folks. So he says, “Now, philosophically, dig, I just put it one way: when this change comes, it will be when the yin turns into the yang.”
And for the final touches, to prove he’s into Malcolm: “And to put it into the words of the people, dig, this is when we will return the power to its rightful owner, and that rightful owner is the people, and we will get that power by any means necessary! ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!”
Asian guard-brothers on stage know the grand finale, and all the fists pump up.
On the subject of racism, Marxism-Leninism, offers us very little assistance. In fact, there is much evidence that Marx and Engels were themselves racists.
—Eldridge Cleaver
The Black Panther
June 6, 1970