WW in 1969: Stop the war against Black America
Published Apr 13, 2008 5:40 PM
Workers World is in its 50th year of publication. Throughout the year,
we will share with our readers some of the paper’s content over the past
half century. Below is a reprint of an article in 1969, after the U.S.
government assassination of Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton.
Fred Hampton
Black Liberation Fighter
Chairman, Illinois Black Panther Party
MURDERED
by the Nixon-Mitchell-Daley racist assassins
Dec. 4, 1969
At five o’clock in the morning on Dec. 4, 1969, racist Chicago police,
armed to the teeth, smashed their way into the home of Fred Hampton, Chairman
of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, and shot him to death in
his bed. They also murdered Mark Clark, a Panther Party member from Peoria,
Illinois. The house was surrounded by cops armed with machine guns and tear
gas.
This brutal and totally unprovoked act of fascist terror is part of a ruthless
campaign by the Nixon Administration and the racist ruling class to exterminate
the leadership of the Black Panther Party and to destroy the Party as a force
fighting for the liberation of black people.
The broad masses in the anti-war and progressive movement and particularly the
white workers must understand that this pre-dawn assassination raid was an
atrocity of the same type that the U.S. committed in My Lai. The murder of
Panther leader Fred Hampton was a premeditated act of barbarism carried out at
the orders of the master class in a savage war of aggression against Black
America. This provocation cannot, must not, go unchallenged. The time to
respond to this monstrous violation of human rights is now. The racists must be
punished for their deeds. They must feel the wrath of the people.
The country is presently experiencing a wave of revulsion and horror at the
revelation of the My Lai massacre. This bestial act has quite correctly been
likened to the Nazi crimes at Lidice and Buchenwald. But it will be demagogy
and a criminal shirking of responsibility to vent anger and indignation at the
My Lai massacre without, at the same time, mounting a militant and determined
struggle against the atrocities suffered by the Black people right here at
home. Home is where the decisive struggle will be fought and won!
Fred Hampton, Mark Clark and the dozens of other members of the Panther Party
are only the most recent victims in a long and brutal war against Black
America. These murders should be classified as war crimes. They should evoke as
much indignation and revulsion among progressive humanity as do the crimes
against Vietnam. More importantly, the massacre of Black leaders should be
protested just as strenuously, just as militantly and just as widely as the
massacre of our Vietnamese brothers.
The war against Black America is total. Any Black community in the U.S. is
subject to invasion by U.S. troops, tanks, armored personnel carriers mounted
with machine guns, helicopters, tear gas at the slightest sign of mass
resistance to racism and police brutality. Every Black community in the U.S. is
already occupied and patrolled by the police of U.S. imperialism. Every Black
person in the U.S. is subject to beating, arrest or murder by these occupation
forces at any time.
These are the same conditions of enslavement which the Vietnamese are fighting
against. Black America, just like Vietnam, is subject to perpetual attack from
an imperialist aggressor.
The U.S. billionaires want the Black people to man their sweat shops, work
their plantations, sweep their floors and serve their meals for slave wages
while the profits roll into their coffers. That is why they are at war against
Black America.
The Black people, just like the Vietnamese, have organizations which fight for
them. The Black Panther Party is trying to serve the Black people in the same
way that the National Liberation Front is trying to serve the Vietnamese
people—by fighting for liberation, for self-determination, to get the
boot-heel of U.S. imperialism off the peoples’ neck. They fight for the
same cause; they are up against the same imperialist enemy and they are both
being subjected to the murderous atrocities and war crimes by the ruling
class.
The murder of the Panther leaders is part and parcel of the same rampant
fascism which led to My Lai, which U.S. big business is unleashing against
oppressed people everywhere and which the bosses turn against the working class
when they begin to resist exploitation—as they are now beginning to do in
GE and dozens of other smaller strikes.
It is the most urgent task of the progressive, student and anti-war movement in
general to mobilize a broad and militant counter-attack against these domestic
atrocities. It is high time to strike back with full force. We must organize
protests, demonstrations and set in motion all forms of struggle against the
racist war criminals, Nixon, Mitchell, the fascist courts and all the local
agents of the ruling class who persecute Black liberation fighters. We must
show the masses that My Lai and the murder of Fred Hampton are two identical
deeds executed by the same guiding hand in Washington.
Stop the war against Black America!
Long live the Black liberation struggle!
Long live the solidarity of Black and white against imperialism!
Long live the proletarian revolution!
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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