Oppression and Repression in the U.S. by Angela Davis [1972] (2/4)

to say something about the need to respond to what was happening in the ghettos and the Barrios and we kept waiting and we heard Nixon and all of all of his racist nonsense and we were wondering whether or not George McGovern was going to say something about that whether he was going to atleast challenge him in words but in a lot of ways he was silent he was either silent when we went into Chicago and made a deal with Richard Daley with the daily machine and if anybody symbolizes racism in the Midwest it's the daily machine [Applause] and that also met at least implicit support for Hanrahan who was a part of that whole sleep but we know what Hanrahan is all about because an official investigative Commission confirmed that had something to do with a during the attack which led to the matter in cold blood of Fred Hampton as they slept in their bed well I think the failure of McGovern to at least verbalize a fourth right challenge to racism indicates that we will indeed be facing very serious days ahead as I said earlier we can look back over the last four years as we try to predict what we're going to face these next four years and what I tried to do was to look at try to understand what happened in Germany prior to the Nazi seizure of power prior to the Nazi seizure of power one of the things I've looked at is this judicial system prior to fascist Germany and I noticed some very very frightening parallels between the deterioration of the judicial system and Nazi Germany I'm stressing this proved Nazi Germany before Hitler seized power there's a very frightening parallels between what was going on there then and what is going on here now and look at the Supreme Court this is once upon a time there was something called the fifth amendment and once upon a time the fifth amendment was supposed to be one of the mainstays of democracy in this country but the Supreme Court recently rendered a decision which virtually allows the fifth amendment because you see now you can't say I refuse to testify on the grounds that it might incriminate me especially when you're going before grand jewelry and grand juries are becoming increasingly instruments for political intelligence to find out what's going on in the movement and you can't say I refuse to testify on the grounds that it might incriminate it used to be that if they forced you to testify they would give you immunity from prosecution but now according to a recent Supreme Court decision they don't have to give you immunity from prosecution all they have to say is that they won't use those few words that you may have said during the grand jury hearing or during the court appearance but that isn't to say that they will go up and dig something else up fabricate something and charge you with the very same thing about which you're supposed to be testifying once upon a time the jury system in this country was supposed to be one of the most important institutions of democracy in this country once upon a time but the Supreme Court has recently ruled that you don't have to have 12 individuals totally convinced that you are guilty in order to be convicted from benign can be a have you ever seen that movie 12 Angry Men well one man who believes in the innocence of the person who's on trial succeeds in convincing all 11 others that he indeed is right but you see this doesn't this and two states already this doesn't exist anymore and and I'm sure that the rest of the states are going to begin to follow suit very soon but what does this mean in terms of this racist offensive it means that if we have a situation where a black person or Chicano person is on trial and you're in a County where the most you can hope for is maybe one or two or three like such a condos on the jury that means that whatever input they might have will be totally canceled out case he was tried on three different occasions and there were hung juries and as a result of that they had to dismiss the trial because the charges it was obvious that the racism and the bias of jurors was preventing a just verdict from coming forward but you see that won't exist anymore because the Supreme Court has now ruled that you don't need 12 you only need who knows it may be two or three after a while this is this is what I'm talking about when I say fascism is something that that begins and it might look very small but it spreads and it develops and before you know it it has crept up behind you and there is nothing more you can do and if you don't start fighting it when you can look at it and isolate it and try to cut out the cancer it will have strangled everything around and there would be no more hope but let's look at thee let's look at further examples of this encroaching fascism creeping fascism there's something called Uno is now before Congress and what does that say that says that every [Music] person who is working and who might possibly be considered a foreigner has to have papers arrests that person can be deferred and we see particularly in this area in Southern California is used against Chicanos and it's not only used against Chicanos who do not have papers but it's something that can be used against Chicano political activist because they can very easily set you up and say that you don't have papers and ship you out of the country we have to begin to understand that all of these things affect all of us and we have to talk about establishing the greatest most invaluable kind of unity black and brown unity black and brown and right unity when it's a question of progressive white people who understand what is happening who are willing to struggle against it because that is the only solution unity unity let me just give you what I feel is the most stunning example of that kind of unity to have emerged in this country in recent years and I'm talking about the brother satanica the deficit Erica really added together black prisoners Puerto Rican prisoners white prisoners stood you mayn't it and it was because of that unity that Rockefeller turn in oh the police in the area the military - and probably would have gone in himself if he hadn't been afraid [Applause] they fear that unity we oppress or the repressor the exploiter we have to counter all attempts to pit people against bound people brown people against black people one of the things that they do in order to divide the movement and to disrupt any attempt to build this unity is ourself there tell Chicanos well black people have eaten all of the pie and there isn't any left for you and then they attack people Chicanos have eaten all the pine there isn't any less than you [Applause] and we know that they tell white workers you better watch out for that black wiggle is trying to get your child [Applause] let me give you another another very clear very obvious example of those attempts to diss divided and disrupt and I'm talking about either Nixon's pronouncement about welfare you know he's been ranting and raving about welfare recipients and parasites living off the taxes of working people but let's let's look at what the real facts are let's look let's look at the breakdown first of all whenever they talked about welfare recipients they are implying if they do not say so explicitly black people [Applause] [Music] [Applause] and then they talk about the draining of the federal budget but less than four percent of the federal budget is spent on welfare in the first place welfare is the most inhumane kind of system in this country the most racist but but but let's let's let's compare this seven point eight billion dollars that comes out of the federal budget for welfare to the 120 billion [Applause] if anything is dreaming the tensions of the purple in this country in the world in Indochina and that potential war that they're trying to build up in South Africa and elsewhere in Africa where our sisters and brothers are struggling for their liberation [Applause] we're getting back to the question of welfare let me just tell you who is on welfare we said first of all the 55% of the people on welfare alright let's look at the breakdown of the categories of welfare recipients now 24 percent of old age recipients you see Nixon kept talking about all these lazy shiftless black and brown people who don't want to work ok 24 percent of age of old old age recipients 8 percent of permanently and totally disabled so they can't work 2. 9 percent are incapacitated parents in wombs 13 points 13 percent of mothers and then fifth of that 13 percent of mothers are in job training are they are employed already and I'm making so little money that they have to resort to welfare in order to survive [Applause] so you end up with point eight percent eight tenths of one percent who are able bodied men who are so seeking jobs so what is all of this work ethic that Nixon has been talking about this laziness it's obvious that it's just an attempt to create a historical racist atmosphere in this country so that you end up with the situation like what happened at Southern University yesterday when two black students were killed I would like to move briefly into another area and area where you find many many symptoms of creeping fascism and let's see all your political prisoners and this is something that I feel very close to because I know what it is like to be a political prisoner and after I was acquitted I committed myself to devoting all of my time and energy towards building a movement to free all political prisoners [Applause] all political prisoners and victims of voiceless repression in this country and we don't have to look very far at all if we want to know where some of the political prisoners in this country are and I don't have to look very far because my former co-defendant Michele McGee is awaiting trial in San Quentin prison for his ricardo chavez ortiz for hijack the plane but as the brother said he felt that this would be a way to dramatize the phases oppression which Chicanos and black people have to deal with every moment of their lives his dad wasn't even loaded when he hijacked the plane and he called a press corps and made it very long and moving statement about the condition of people of color in this country today his trial has already unfolded he has been convicted and sentenced to life I think and he's one of the brothers around whom we're building a movement because he can win on appeal and we have to fight for his freedom to talk about the San Quentin snakes do you know who the San Quentin sticks because I think it's a shame that communication is so difficult because I 6 do you remember what happened on August 21st 1971 from San Quentin prison when George Jackson was assassinated by st. Quentin guards you see it's the same story they try to cover up for their own misdoings by shoving the entire load on our bags and so they indicted 6 brothers for the whole string of charges they just don't stop among those six brothers is fleeted rumble and you see but because they couldn't get him with that fame of charge they pinned another one on him so we have to fight for the freedom of the San Quentin snakes I'm just Gary long do you know Gary Martin is he merely shirred because the incident with which he is charged took place in Riverside California that's not too far away from here his trial is taking place at this very moment he's being charged with the killing of two policemen was a political activist he was a brother who's felt up for the rights of black people who struggled and as soon as they found something they could use to set him up they tried to railroad him right through to the gas chamber and we still have to talk about the possibility of the gas chamber because one of the things that happened during that mud side mudslide re-election of Richard Nixon was that people in this state voted to reinstate the death penalty and then we have to talk about three brothers like lost race in Southern California brothers who were involved in the anti drug movement like H rat Brown and you see they are charged they were charged with the shooting of a federal agent who apparently was not just posing as a heroin pusher thought was actually selling it in the black and Chicano community they've been sentenced to 45 years 25 years and 10 years and say I've just given you a few names from California it's just a small fraction of the political prisoners here in California today and it's just a grain of sand not even a grain of sand you consider the national situation because I've recently been on tour talking about the need to build a defense movement to defend these sisters and brothers and we're in the process of building that movement now and I just like you to know that the honorarium I'm receiving for speaking here this evening as has been the case that every other college campus is going into a Defense Fund sometimes it's really frustrating work because you accumulate an a a list of names this long and then when you start traveling as I've been doing recently you realize you haven't even begun you haven't even begun because every single place you go they're sisters and brothers who want to sit down and talk to you about this place which has to be worked on about this sister at this brother who has to be free I was just in Atlanta a couple of days ago and I talked to a woman who's twenty five year old black daughter has just been sentenced to life in prison her name is Emily Butler heard about the case of Emily Butler it's a very tragic case cuz when we talk about racism and the black worker we have to look try to understand what's been happening with the Emily thoughtless she's a sister who worked at the Atlanta Internal Revenue Service Bureau and as she had mentioned on many occasions prior to the charges being lodged against her she felt that she was a particular target of the racism the institutionalized racism in the sense they say she never got promoted whenever times promotion came around whenever she made a request wrong request was always denied and when it came to just outright blatant overt racist harassment she had to deal with that every single day every day she went to work me see one day she asked to see her doctor and then they started screaming at her that she had punched in her time she her time card two minutes late and then only the white for men and for women really began to go down her back and the sister became so desperate that she didn't know what to do and she winning bad a gun and she shot two because that's certainly not the answer to liberation I mean we got hundreds of thousands of Emily Butler's and we have to realize that Emily Butler is not guilty in his racism that pull that trigger racism and if anybody needs to be indicted and in prison it's the reincarnation of racism himself Richard Nixon [Applause] we must recognize that racism is not only confined to this country we see the tentacles of u.

s. racism reaching throughout the globe could any of you in this room conceive of the United States government waging war on a people in a white country and killing and maiming six million people in the most incredible kind of genocidal aggression that history has ever seen could you conceive of that having been imposed upon a white country is it possible in this day and age you see that's what racism is all about and racism is Richard Nixon telling the people of this country that the war is winding down because the sole US soldiers are coming home it's all right for the Vietnamese to continue to be killed from those 155 extra b-52s he said and when he pulled the troops out because you see there were only 45 before so the number went up from 45 to 200 during the de-escalation and the type of the number of tactical planes went up from 350 to 1200 during the de-escalation and during the de-escalation over 100 child care centers and nurseries were bombed in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam during the de-escalation 16 schools and vocational institutions were born and the banks were bombed during the de-escalation and not only where the bank banks bombed but when men and women and children went to repair the dikes they dropped anti-personnel bombs on them and you see that's racism from Richard Nixon to be able to persuade the majority of white people in this country that the world was winding down just one example of the highest kind of hypocrisy hypocrisy of the highest order on October 31st that was supposed to be a post agreement signed and then the election day came closer and closer he said just wait you know just give me a few more days just got to get a few last-minute things together [Applause] that is not all that is not all listen to this this is a clipping from the New York Times of November 9th 1972 the United States military command reports on November 9th that American b-52 bombers set a record Tuesday for concentrated bombing in a single South Vietnamese province in a single day Quang Tri province just south of the North Vietnamese border was the target for the record b-52 saturation rate raids there in the foothills northwest of quandary City 23 missions were flown this number was more than that of the previous night for a single province and amounted to about 70 aircraft dropping a total of probably something like 2,000 tons of bombs and this is - benign two days after election day and on Election Day itself 2.