WHERE DID IT BEGIN?
by Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt
Last year, after evidence revealed that the chief witness
against him was an FBI informant who lied under oath, Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt
was released from prison after 27years. The following article is excerpted
from his speech at Pasadena City College, October 1997.
I have always dealt with truth. I was charged with a murder I didn't do,
and I wanted to expose the truth. But I was in the hole for the first eight
years with no visits. And we learned the murder victim, Carolyn Olsen, was
a very progressive person who was a part of the anti-war movement at the
time. Strangely enough, she was dead, and I was in prison. Something is
not working here. I didn't know about Nixon then. I didn't know about CoIntelPro
then. But I knew something was amiss, and I knew it was more than the little
peons in the L.A. area and the LAPD and the Sheriff's Department playing
their FBI games. I knew it was more than that.
But at the time we did not know that Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover had
plotted to kill and destroy one of the most beautiful movements that history
has ever seen, and these sick individuals were allowed to get away with
it. When it was exposed, I was in Folsom Prison facing sadistic guards who
were shooting us and manipulating prisoners who were trying to stab and
kill us
Nixon was being exposed as a criminal during the Watergate hearings, yet
we went to San Quentin and he went to San Clemente -- this man who is responsible
for the death and destruction of so much! It didn't add up. Meanwhile, there
was all the corruption around Vietnam and the attacks against the Black
liberation movement, the Asian liberation movement, the Mexican liberation
movement, the Native liberation movement, and other movements. No one was
left untouched. And nothing was being done.
People come up to me now and ask for an autograph, and I love them for their
sentiment, but it tells me that they don't know who I am. I'm not a movie
star. We are under collective discipline not to promote ourselves. We do
not promote personalities -- we promote principles. So please understand
that a person who struggles in a situation, such as Ruchell Magee, Hugo
Pinell, Leonard Peltier, Sundiata Acoli, Dr. Mutulu Shakur, Marilyn Buck,
Susan Rosenberg -- doesn't care if you form committees out here and say
free this person, free that person, or if you put our names on posters.
We didn't join the movement for that. Mumia sitting up there on Death Row
understood when he joined, just like we all did, that we were going to go
to prison, that we were going to be driven underground, that we were going
to be killed, that we were going to be exiled. Because we knew the nature
of our enemy. And if you think anything otherwise, you are playing a dangerous
game because we are faced with a very vicious enemy.
How to define that enemy is another question. You hear a lot of people,
especially in what we call the New Afrikan or Black communities, saying
"White folks this, white folks that -- the white folks!" Mistake,
a big mistake! Our enemies cannot be defined by race. We've got to be careful
with that. In fact, a further caution is that you better watch that brother
next to you and that sister next to you in a lot of cases because it's endemic
in every ethnic group, every national liberation movement, not only in this
country but throughout the world, that they're heavily infiltrated with
people who like to play cops, who like to operate from the premise of what
Che Guevera called the mechanical discipline and get the big buck and do
anything that Ol' Massa tells him or her to do. Stay very cautious, and
define your enemies accurately, else you're going to be defeated time and
time again. If someone sends their killer dogs after you, are you going
to spend the rest of your life plotting and trying to kill those killer
dogs, or getting at the people that trained them and sent them? It's as
simple as that. We have to study and become more sophisticated in solving
these problems.
We joined and struggled in this movement, not to be a part of the Democratic
party, but because we believed, as we still do today, that Africans in this
country constitute the second largest African nation in the world, next
to Nigeria. We have the wherewithal to field an entire nation. Over six
hundred billion dollars a year go through our nation. We have the brainpower
that will surpass any brainpower of the world. We have the skills; we have
a common language, common culture, common everything; yet we still turn
around and call Clinton our president. This doesn't seem right to us. We
have a right to elect our own leadership, to govern our own selves. This
is what we fought for.
Read the ten points of the programs of the Panthers, of other organizations
back in the 'Sixties. They state very clearly that we call for a United
Nations supervised plebiscite to let it be known what we want. Not some
handpicked leaders imposed upon us, who say, we want this. They do not speak
for us. Let us speak for ourselves. We've been calling for this for years.
This country prides itself on democratic principles, on democracy. Well,
to us, this is the epitome of that -- a plebiscite. We want the United Nations
to supervise it because we don't trust the United States. It's as clear
as that. If they're involved in it, then I'm not going to have anything
to do with it.
Consider the referendums and the surveys we took in the sixties -- even
Newsweek did one, I think in 1969 -- and they polled throughout the country,
and came back 92% in support of not only the Black Panther Party, but nationhood:
national independence. Right after that, they escalated their CoIntelPro
attacks. It's a shame for us to be so large, so huge, so capable, so qualified,
and still turn around and let Ol' Massa patrol our communities while our
children are dying with dope, and we send our children to their schools
where they misedup;cate and confuse them with these culture invasions.
It's a shame that we have not called for a state of emergency at the alarming
rate in which our young men and women are going to prison. It's a shame!
And you are going to the White House, to Capitol Hill, to someone else,
and say, "Ol' Massa, can I do this? Can I start this program?"
Ol' Massa says yes and gives you a few million, and turns around and builds
50 prisons behind your back and hires your nephews and your nieces to work
in the prisons to shoot us and to kill us. I just left them. I left little
brother, a little Crip, standing up arguing with another Crip, didn't throw
any blows, but before he knew it, a bullet goes through his head, the whole
back of his head blown out. Right down at Tehachapi prison! I was there.
He didn't even throw a blow. We looked. The guard that killed him was blacker
than midnight. A black guard! The same way in Soledad, same way in Folsom.
You got Mexican guards killing young, beautiful, promising Mexican prisoners.
It's a damn shame. They got you killing your own sons and daughters. And
you sit down here and do nothin' about it.
This is a form of genocide. There should be a state of emergency. These
prisons are nothing but tools used to further this genocidal war against
people of color especially. You should see what they're doing to the black
and the brown prisoners in those prisons today. It was a shame when I went
in, but that wasn't anything like it is today with young brothers coming
in, confused, not knowing, meaning well, coming from a street that gave
them drugs, that victimized them, called them a gang, blamed them, when
you know it's coming from Langley, Virginia. And you're going to blame those
young brothers?
"Well they drove by and shot!" We're in college right now. Let's
talk some philosophy. Let's talk about determinism vs. indeterminism. Let's
talk about free will vs. lack of free will. Let's talk about at what point
a person becomes a criminal, and at what point society puts him in that
situation where he can do no other? Let's talk philosophy, if you want to
get at it from that angle.
Either way you look at it, it's wrong. We don't want to put anybody in prison.
I advocate the abolition of prison. I'm known as a prison abolitionist.
I think we can create societies where there won't be a need for prison.
I think that we can exist, can flourish, can get along together, and can
regulate ourselves in a social, civilized way, and we won't need any prisons.
I really believe that. Because I've looked into the souls of brothers of
all nationalities who have come in those prisons, who didn't need to be
there, who were manipulated, who were more or less put in that situation.
We give the analogy of the pool cue hitting the cue ball, the cue ball hitting
the three-ball, the four-ball hitting the eight-ball. At what point did
it begin? Are you going to blame that eight-ball when it falls in the pocket
for falling in the pocket? Are you going to blame the four-ball for hitting
the eight-ball, or the three-ball for hitting the four-ball -- or the cue
stick for hitting all that? It's a concatenation that deserves study. You
cannot understand anything in isolation. When you try to do that, you confuse
yourself, and you become a willing servant of the powers that be, who are
quickly at your side to manipulate you.
Spring 1998-- N.C.Xpress
-- Archives -- Electrons
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