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ARM THE SPIRIT / This item is <abridged>.

ARM THE SPIRIT #12 (MARCH - MAY 1992)

INDEX:

1)  "The Uprising" by Ray Luc Levasseur
2)  Red Army Fraction Communique
3)  Letter From Gunter Sonnenberg, RAF Prisoner
4)  A Letter From The Moro-Ter Appeal Trial - Rome - December 1991
5)  "Diss'd" by Ray Luc Levasseur
6)  Now More Than Ever, Mumia Abu-Jamal Needs Your Support!
7)  Closing Trial Statement Of Richard Williams
8)  Leonard Peltier And Big Mountain: 500 Years Of Resistance
    Continues
9)  Newroz Uprising In Kurdistan
10) European ERNK Representatives's Press Statement
11) Recent Dev Sol Action In Turkey
12) Puerto Rican News Briefs
13) News Briefs
14) Revolutionary Cells Communique
15) ATS Member Subpoenaed By U.S. Grand Jury
16) Editorial Notes
17) Contents Of Our Next Issue (ATS #13)
18) Who We Are
19) Subscription Information

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                   L.A. DID THE RIGHT THING

The Uprising

     The Los Angeles uprising isn't about a free lunch or
integrated lunch counters. It's about those whose lives have been
diss'd: disinherited, displaced, discriminated against, and
disenfranchised. It's about 500 years of European-exported
genocide. The entire state of California sits on stolen Indian and
Mexican land. There is nothing legitimate about this kind of theft,
nor the institutional racism and violent repression which
accompanies it.
     The most intense flames of this uprising have burned in
predominantly Black South Central L.A. This community is one of
many emanating from the African Diaspora and its historically
developed land base in the Black Belt south. Today's resistance
draws its lifeblood from the earliest slave rebellions and is
embodied in the descendants of Malcolm X. There is no "middle of
the road" after the Middle Passage.
     There are common threads between the L.A. uprising and the
Palestinian Intifada. Both defy overwhelming superior police and
military forces. Both constitute dispossessed nations fighting for
basic human rights. And at the heart of their struggles is the
right to national identity and land. The L.A. uprising has broken
through one of oppression's fundamental realities: its disarming
effectiveness at turning its victims against each other instead of
their oppressors. The rising has redirected the rage of its
participants against the moral bankruptcy of capitalism and white
supremacy.
     As of this writing, the battleground has claimed 50 lives in
four days, most by police gunfire. In the usual course of events,
L.A.'s killing grounds would take two weeks to claim as many lives.
The significant difference is that instead of passively waiting for
death to stalk them, the people went on the offensive. Or what
might be considered rigorous self-defense, since they were going
to die anyway through police violence, internecine warfare, alcohol
and drug poisoning, and social neglect.
     The uprising resulted in extensive property damage. While
there was some needless destruction, the people's firebombs were
strikingly accurate at rooting at capitalism's ghetto
infrastructure. For the most part people avoided damaging schools,
mosques, churches, and housing. Most damaged property was corporate
and absentee owned. More than one Bank of Amerikkka branch was
torched into oblivion. These are businesses that bleed the
community with overpriced staples of life, then take the money and
run. These are the purveyors of unlimited supplies of alcohol. It
was like pouring salt on leeches as the profiteers squirmed in
their suburban enclaves.
     When faced with uprising and mass resistance, the government
has historically responded with military intervention. From one
decade and century to another: Watts, East St. Louis, Chicago, New
York - the police and military have combined to exact a fearful
death toll. It was during the 1965 Watts rebellion that Daryl Gates
- the Bull Conner of L.A. - drew his first blood as a police
commander. From Watts, Black rage swept through Cleveland in '66,
and Newark, Detroit, and other cities in 1967. After returning from
Vietnam, I travelled to Detroit and saw immense destruction. In
Vietnam I'd seen extensive bomb damage from the door of a
helicopter; in Detroit I saw from the asphalt. Both areas burned
in wars for self-determination. The deployment of federal troops
is predictable, but uprisings that trigger deployment demand
attention and demonstrate the potential power of the people.
     This is not a time for apology and accommodation. If I began
writing all the names of those murdered and beaten senseless by the
police, I'd be writing until forever. I could never catch up with
the reality. With each death is a killer cop who walks free. I know
I've written this before, but its something I can't forget. It
shouldn't be forgotten. I will write but two: Philip Pannell, a
Black teenager from Teaneck, New Jersey, who died from a police
officer's bullet as his hands were raised over his head. And Ralph
Canady, a personal friend, who was murdered in cold blood by police
in Baltimore, Maryland. No civil rights enquiries were initiated
into these murders. There rarely are. It took 50 deaths in L.A. and
the U.S. government's embarrassment in the court of world opinion
to legitimize a federal inquiry into the Rodney King case.
     Thousands have been arrested in L.A., and the federal and
state governments have formed a special task force to prosecute
them. Steal a pair of shoes and go to jail; rip off the livelihood
of a people and you're rewarded with profits and high office. These
prosecutions will be punitive and vindictive. Years after the Watts
rebellion, some of its participants are still in California
prisons. Black Nationalist Ahmed Evans was sentenced to death
following the Cleveland uprising. I first met Ralph Canady after
he'd been railroaded to prison in the wake of the 1968 rebellion
in Nashville's Black community. Colonial rebellions strike fear in
the bowels of American capitalism, and it'll spare no effort to
imprison the most rebellious. Still in prison, some for decades,
are those women and men that represent their peoples' aspirations
to be free: Leonard Peltier, Geronimo Pratt, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Gary
Tyler, Alejandrina Torres, Abdul Haqq, and many others. As Mandela
put it - there's no easy walk to freedom.
     The federal deployment in L.A. includes elements of the U.S.
Marshal's Service, who made their mark in history tracking fugitive
slaves, the racist dogs of the Border Patrol, and the Bureau of
Prisons. The presence of the latter is a further indication of what
lies in store for the rebellious poor: more prisons in a country
that's already choking with them. The U.S. has more steel cages
than any country on earth, and imprisons more Blacks per capita
than South Africa. I live in this compressed nightmare of a gulag.
Each year of my imprisonment I've endured the exile with those from
amerikkka's barrios and ghettos, including South Central and East
L.A. There's no denying this apartheid reality or the necessity to
break its chains.
     Nat Turner said that the struggle for freedom was not a war
for robbery or to satisfy passions. Opportunists exist everywhere,
but most of those that unleashed the power of mass resistance did
not act with criminal intent. They are pursuing their very
survival. Their intent is to demand respect and gain some measure
of control over their lives and community. What criminal intent
exists is primarily represented by police violence and a system
which fosters and protects the real criminals: that rotten element
that lives in bourgeois splendour derived from exploiting and
defrauding societies most vulnerable. Their rapacity is exceeded
only by their ruthlessness and disregard for the value of human
life. The rule of class and white supremacy insures that they can
operate with immunity.
     No doubt the system will attempt some band-aid application to
problems reflected in the uprising. This has been attempted before,
but hasn't worked. That's one of the messages from the streets -
government money, with all its bureaucratic strings, may alleviate
some conditions in the short term, but it cannot deal with the
basics causes that underlie a peoples' subjugation. There's only
one serious context in which to discuss money, and that is
reparations. Billions of dollars in reparations. Millions of acres
of land in reparations. However, a government and general
population that applauds the agonizing death of Iraqui children
caused by U.S. bombing raids will not seriously consider
reparations simply to quell the impact of 50 deaths and property
destruction in L.A.
     The situation is desperate but not hopeless. To rise from the
ashes and bondage requires a well-organized and militant resistance
that's willing and prepared to take it to the limit. For
amerikkka's most oppressed, there is no viable alternative to
revolutionary nationalism and socialism.
     There was widespread participation by Mexicans in the L.A.
uprising, though the media has manipulated coverage to keep them
voiceless. Their involvement is understandable given the conditions
of survival and the fact that amerika occupies their land. Los
Angeles was forcibly taken from Mexicans in 1846.
     There was marginal participation by young whites in L.A. as
well as actions in other cities. This is encouraging, but it is not
enough. Historically, white people have laid claims to privilege
based on race. There are exceptions, but they're not the rule.
White power rules in amerika, as is clearly evident in the
presidency, congress, supreme court, and corporate boardrooms. You
can see it in the faces of the swine wearing the badge of the LAPD.
You see it in the celebrations of Columbus. There are those that
embrace the racist ideology that permeates this country, other are
simply complacent when confronted with its effects. Both are part
of the problem.
     For the predominantly white left and broader grouping of
"progressives", there exists a heightened call to action. Where are
the millions who created a vibrant anti-apartheid movement? Where
are all those that provided political support and material aid to
Nicaragua and El Salvador? Where are the near million strong that
attended the recent pro-choice demonstration in Washington? And
where in hell is organized labour? It is time for this conspiracy
of silence to end.
     For poor and working class whites, the choice is clear:
collaboration with a system based on white supremacy, or combatting
it. When John Brown was asked why he fought to end slavery, he
replied "I act from principle. My objective is to restore human
rights." When Malcolm X was asked what whites who care about Black
people's struggles could do to support them, he replied "Do as John
Brown did." It's time to get down to dismantling the apartheid
legacy of slavery. It's time to organize a 20th century abolition
movement, and to provide aid and assistance to freedom fighters.
It's way beyond the time of no return.

Ray Luc Levasseur                  Marion Prison, May 1992

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... <abridged>

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Editorial Notes

     Here we are again with yet another issue, well behind
schedule. As always we have our atrocious financial situation to
blame for this. Some of the contents of this issue are from many
months ago but because we are virtually the only source of this
kind of information in North America we felt it necessary to
publish them. During the course of putting together this issue, Los
Angeles exploded. We wanted to cover a lot of it in the bulletin
but because we already had a number of pieces to go into this issue
we decided to limit ourselves to just printing Ray Levasseur's
article. We do recommend getting L.A. Today from P.O. Box 8722,
Minneapolis, MN, 55408 USA if you want more info. Unfortunately we
are also not able to include anything in this issue about the
Toronto riots. Hopefully we can do so in issue #13. That is if we
have enough money!!
                    Arm The Spirit

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     In our next issue, #13, we will interviews with two Puerto
Rican P.O.W.'s, statements by Puerto Rican independentistas Luis
Alfredo Colon Osorio and Yvonne Melendez, an interview with Chilean
women political prisoners, a statement by the Chilean guerrilla
organization; the Manuel Rodrigues Patriotic Front (FPMR), a
Revolutionary Cells communique, a statement by Assata Shakur, and
much more...

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Who We Are

     Arm The Spirit is a anti-imperialist/autonomist collective
that disseminates information about liberation struggles in
advanced capitalist countries and in the so-called "Third World".
Our focus is on armed struggle and other forms of militant
resistance but we do not limit ourselves to this. In Arm The Spirit
you can find news on political prisoners in North America and
Europe, information on the struggles of Indigenous peoples in the
Americas, communiques from guerrilla groups, debate and discussion
on armed struggle and much more. We also attempt to cover anti-
colonial national liberation struggles in Kurdistan, Puerto Rico,
Euskadi and elsewhere.
     We come from an internationalist perspective that is anti-
capitalist and anti-imperialist, but we do not separate the struggle
against patriarchy, racism and homophobia from the struggle against
capitalism and imperialism. The development of a coherent
revolutionary praxis is, for us, not rooted in dogmatic ideologies,
but in an anti-authoritarian practice that draws upon many
different strands of revolutionary theory.

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Subscription Information

     Arm The Spirit is co-published with the U.S.-based Autonome
Forum. Subscriptions for this bi-monthly bulletin are $12 for 10
issues. For libraries and other institutions it's $30 for 10
issues. Donations are always welcome. We accept cash (conceal it
well) or blank money orders. No cheques please!

Arm The Spirit
c/o Wild Seed Press
P.O. Box 57584, Jackson Stn.
Hamilton, Ont.
L8P 4X3 CANADA

Arm The Spirit
c/o Autonome Forum
P.O. Box 1242
Burlington, VT
05402-1242 USA


FAX number for Canadian address: 416 527 2419
E-mail for U.S. address: [e-mail]