Musings, page 4

On this same day, the president signed the Military Commission Act of 2006 , that allows for torture and detention abroad, as Section 1076 entitled Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies, essentially puts in place the mechanism for the implementation of “martial law” according to Section 333, which states:

“…the President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard, in Federal service, to restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the president determines that domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constitutional authorities of the State or possession are incapable of (‘refuse' or ‘fail' in)...”

 Most recently, 404 U.S. House Representatives passed HR 1955 titled the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 , which in the series of bills has substantiated the means and method for the application of martial law. This latest initiative establishes a crime for the promotion of ideological terrorism , and Section 899D creates a Center of Excellence for the Study of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism in the United States under the auspices Department of Homeland Security. Obviously, all of these laws severely erodes the U.S. , Inc. Constitution, violates civil and human rights, and projects and promotes martial law and a fascist police state agenda.

Domestically, the police, courts and prisons are the primary institutions of repressing the aspirations of human rights the mass and popular movement seeks to achieve, prisons being the last rung in the ladder of judicial coercion. Hence, the mass and popular movement must demand the closing and moratorium on prison building, strengthening support for the prison movement, calling for the release of political prisoners of war, and end the torture of captured revolutionaries, the abolition of capital punishment, and for the end of prison slavery as instituted by the 13 th Amendment of the U.S. , Inc. Constitution. These demands exposes the inequitable functioning of the judicial process indicating how most laws serve to suppress the will of the masses aspirations for freedom, and show how the police, courts and prisons are repressive coercive bureaucracies of corporate monopoly-capitalism. Ultimately, this understanding will demystify the judicial process, and broaden a mass and popular consciousness to become fearless when confronting the State.4 The martyred Black Panther Party Field Marshall, George Jackson, advised that:

“Consciousness grows in spirals. Growth implies feeding and being fed. We feed conscious by feeding people, addressing ourselves to their needs, the basic social needs, working, organizing toward a national left. After the people have created something that they are willing to defend, a wealth of new ideals and autonomous subsistence infrastructure, then they are ready to be brought into “open” conflict with the ruling class and its supporters.”

 Unfortunately, the majority of young New Afrikans do not know their peoples' history of struggle in this country beyond the civil rights movement. Therefore, they are unable to recount the conditions of heroic struggles as those of Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, Nat Turner and the hundreds of pre-civil war slave rebellions. They are unaware of the force migration of New Afrikans from the South after the civil war because of the Hayes/Tilden compromise and advent of the Ku Klux Klan out of the defeated Confederate Army. They are unable to relate to the history of racist lynching of thousands throughout the South that served to bring the NAACP into existence in 1909 evolving out of the Niagara Movement with its anti-lynching program. They know nothing about the killing of nearly 50 New Afrikans during white racist riots in 1919 and 1920 in Chicago and New York , or the 1925 white destruction of Black Wall Street in Tulsa Oklahoma . How many understand the significance of the judicial ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson compared to Brown v. Board of Education ? They do not truly understand how the practice of the Black Codes and Jim Crow segregation gave birth to the 1950-60's civil rights movement, out of which the Black liberation movement was born. It is this history of struggle, particularly, the legacy of struggle represented by the Black Panther Party that came into existence in 1966, that is currently being attack with the persecution of the SF 8.

4 In 1998, two specific organizations were formed for this specific purpose, the Jericho Amnesty Movement and Critical Resistance, and both continue to be a source of information and resistance exposing the overall criminal (in)justice system. Check: www.thejerichomovement.com and www.criticalresistance.org . The Jericho Amnesty Movement has also called for the reopening of Cointelpro hearings, in behalf approximately 100 Cointelpro victims, U.S. political prisoners languishing in prison for 30 to 40 years.

 

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