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Ji tPOLITICAL JOURNAL OF PffdRJE. FIRE. OR6AMZIHG COMMITTEE.

Volume VI11 No. 1 Summer 1984 $1.50

TABLE OF CONTENTS1. From the Vietnam War to Central America

RESIST THE WARMAKERS 1

2. BEFORE THE SCALES, TOMORROWPoem by Otto Rene Castillo 11

3. "CANDLELIGHT IN THE STREETS, DARKNESS AT HOME"Interview with the Comite de Defensa Popular of Mexico 12

4. INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY 1984Women Confront the War Machine 18

5. OLYMPICS 1984: COUNTER-INSURGENCY GOES FOR THE GOLD 20

6. FROM THE CLANDESTINE MOVEMENTRed Guerrilla Resistance Bombs Washington Navy Yard 27United Freedom Front Bombs IBM in New York 29

7. WRITE TO THE PRISONERS 32

8. CORRESPONDENCELetter from Germany on Repression Against Political Prisoners 33

9. DON'T TALK TO THE F.B.I 36

10. POLITICAL INTERNMENT U.S.A. inside back cover

Cover photo: Sandinista reserves (credit: Guardianphoto by Cordelia Dilg)

Page 1 photo: Demonstration against Henry Kissinger, San Francisco, April 16, 1984

Breakthrough, the political journal of Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, is published by theJohn Brown Book Club, P.O. Box 14422, San Francisco, CA 94114. This is Volume VIII, No. 1, whole number 11.

Subscriptions and back issues are available. Please see page 35.

We encourage our readers to write us with comments and criticisms.You can contact Prairie Fire Oganizing Committee by writing:

San Francisco: P.O. Box 14422, San Francisco, CA 94114Los Angeles: P.O. Box 60542, Los Angeles, CA 90060Chicago: Box 253, 2520 N. Lincoln, Chicago, IL 60614

Prisoners' correspondence and subscriptions should be sent to the L.A. address.

If you have a red dot on your mailing label, this is the last issue you'll receive. Please renew.

FROM THE VIETNAM WAR TO CENTRAL AMERICA

RESIST THE WARMAKERSCentral America has become a nightmare for U.S.

imperialism. Following the debacle in Lebanon, theU.S. is confronted with the spectre of a major defeat inits own hemisphere. Portraying itself as the "citadel ofdemocracy" opposed to the Soviet "evil empire," theU.S. stands increasingly exposed as the conductor of abrutal, genocidal war against the peoples of CentralAmerica.• In El Salvador, the FMLN has liberated almost one-

third of the country, in the process defeating the

Junta's vaunted offensive to secure San Vicente Pro-vince. In a year-end offensive, the FMLN seized anddemolished the supposedly impregnable fortress ofEl Paraiso and attacked more than 60 government-held towns. The FMLN/FDR recently unveiled itsown plan for a provisional government and a politi-cal solution to the war. This is the liberation move-ment's answer to the Salvadoran electoral farce.Official U.S. optimism has disappeared since it hasbecome apparent that the FMLN is winning the war.

page 2/BREAKTHROUGH

• In Nicaragua, the CIA/contras have done great damagethrough their sabotage and terrorism. Over 3000Nicaraguans have already been killed in the war, withmillions of dollars worth of crops and facilities de-stroyed. But the contras have proven singularly unableto win a base of support among the Nicaraguan peopleor seize Nicaraguan territory. The Sandinistas havestepped up the revolutionary process within the coun-try, distributing more land to the peasantry, escalatingmilitary and political training and mobilizing the entirepeople, through their mass organizations, into the de-fense of the revolution. The November elections inNicaragua will strengthen the people's democracy andfurther isolate the contras.

• In Guatemala, the united revolutionary forces of theURNG have shown renewed strength following themurderous counter-guerrilla campaigns of 1982 and1983, in which over 20,000 mostly Indian campesinoswere massacred. Guerrilla activity is developing on aconsistent and nationwide basis, and the U.S. has beenforced to admit that its death certificate for the guerrillastruggle was wishful thinking.

The U.S. is steadily escalating its military presence inthe region and preparing to further expand the war.Thirty-three thousand military personnel are invadingHonduras and the Caribbean for major maneuvers namedOcean Venture '84 and Grenadero I. Honduras has beenturned into a U.S. garrison, with Honduran and Guatema-lan troops training for intervention in Nicaragua and ElSalvador. Three hundred U.S. advisors have taken overdirect control of the Salvadoran war, with U.S. pilots nowflying bombing raids over Salvadoran territory. And, de-spite the furor over the CIA's mining of Nicaraguan ports,the U.S. is stepping up its aid to the contras, with increas-ing support from Israel.

Not since the Vietnam War has the U.S. left been con-fronted with such a clear challenge to resist and to or-ganize. From Central America to the Middle East toSouthern Africa, imperialism is no longer preparing forwar—it is at war. Yet we have proven unable to unite ourforces or to develop consistently effective and militantprogram. Many activists are now searching for new direc-tion. People are realizing that it is simply not enough tohave a sanitized movement, one that limits its protest topolite pickets behind police barricades while the U.S.mines Nicaragua's ports and the CIA bombs Salvadoranvillages. What is needed is a resistance that operates on alllevels to disrupt the U.S. war machine from within.

Over the last year, there have been steps in this direc-tion. Thousands of people have shown their willingness to

face arrest and jail in the course of direct action against thewar apparatus. The Sanctuary movement has taken on amass character as it openly defies U.S. attempts to roundup Salvadoran refugees and send them back to prison ordeath in El Salvador. Armed clandestine organizationshave carried out numerous actions in solidarity with therevolution in Central America, showing that U.S. aggres-sion will be met by determined anti-imperialist struggle.

The recent angry protests which greeted Henry Kissin-ger are another case in point. In Austin, Texas, Kissin-ger's appearance was disrupted and fifty-three protestorswere arrested. In San Francisco, 1,000 demonstratorstook to the streets and refused to be stopped by the policeTac Squad, which charged into the crowd on horseback,swinging clubs. As people stood their ground, nearly 200were arrested. These and other militant confrontationsmake it clear that a movement can be built that resists, thatrejects business as usual in the face of U.S. crimes in Cen-tral America.

It is vital for the anti-imperialist left to become a moreforceful part of this process. In this light, it is useful todraw on the wealth of experience gained in building amovement against the Vietnam War, mindful that thereare no simple analogies. We are obviously faced with con-ditions today that are vastly different from those of the1960s. But there remain valuable lessons to learn from ananti-war movement that, for all its weaknesses, was ableto confront the U.S. war machine.

VIETNAM: A WAR COMES HOME

Ushered in by the stunning victory of the Cuban Revo-lution, the 60s were defined by the growth of armed guer-rilla movement throughout the Third World. The post-World War II notion of an "American Century" wasrudely shattered by poorly armed workers and peasantswho refused to abandon their own dreams and aspirationsin the face of U.S. might. Vietnam crystalized this pro-cess. The Vietnamese taught the world that a small nation,united behind the strategy of people's war and committedto the .quest for national independence, could defeat themost powerful nation on Earth. When Che Guevara calledfor "Two, Three, Many Vietnams," he gave voice to astrategy embraced by revolutionaries around the world:overextend the U.S. empire, fight on many fronts,weaken and eventually defeat the imperialist system. Asarmed struggle developed throughout Latin America, theMiddle East and Africa, this vision began to be realized.At home in the U.S., progressive people came to see thejustice of the Vietnamese struggle and to understand thatthe United States was committing genocide.

Here, the civil rights movement had exploded into the

BREAKTHROUGH/page 3

Newark Rebellion, July 1967. Twenty-three people were killed by police. This was one of scores of Black rebellions throughoutthe U.S. between 1964 and 1968.

Black Power rebellion. Malcolm X articulated the de-mands of a new generation of Black people for nation-hood, for land, for justice,for an end to white supremacistdomination. Malcolm challenged Black people to nolonger see themselves as a beleaguered "minority," but in-stead to identify with Africa and the great mass of col-onized and exploited Third World nations around theworld. With-slogans like "Hell No, We Won't Go!"; "NoVietnamese Ever Called Me Nigger"; and "Amerikkka isthe Black Man's Battleground," Black revolutionaries inStudent Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) andthe Black Panther Party called on the Black Nation to sup-port the Vietnamese and to fight for national liberationhere at home. The Black Revolution challenged themostly-white anti-war movement to see that U.S. policiesin Vietnam flowed from the same social system that keptBlack people in chains. Like in Vietnam, the system herehad to be confronted "by any means necessary."

Fierce protest against the war also arose from other op-pressed peoples. In 1970, the Chicano Moratorium in LosAngeles brought 50,000 Mexicanos into the street. Thedemonstration was attacked by police and three peoplewere killed. In Puerto Rico, the massive movementagainst the draft led to violent confrontation with the col-

onial police and to a virtual state of siege at the Universityof Puerto Rico.

While thousands of troops were heading for Vietnam,the U.S. Army, National Guard and police were forced toright another war in the streets of Newark, Detroit, Watts,Chicago and Harlem. Black GI's staged rebellions in theArmed Forces, refusing orders to fight against a peoplewho were not their enemy. The U.S. responded with areign of terror against both the Black community and theorganized Black liberation movement. The FBI's Cointel-pro campaign destroyed scores of community organiza-tions at the base of the Black struggle, as well as targettingrevolutionary groups like the Black Panther Party (BPP),the Republic of New Afrika (RNA) and the RevolutionaryAction Movement (RAM). A core of Black revolution-aries went undergound and formed the Black LiberationArmy. The BLA attacked police in many cities in re-sponse to police murders of Black youth and State attackson the Black movement. Confronted with the reality ofBlack urban guerrilla warfare, the U.S. heightened itscampaign to annihilate the BLA and frighten away all po-tential support.

For white student radicals just coming to political con-sciousness through the Vietnam War, Black revolutionary

page 4/BREAKTHROUGH

nationalism forced us to look at our own acceptance of aprivileged white position in America. Many white peoplecame to see how deeply embedded racism was in our so-ciety and began to repudiate white supremacy as a way oflife.

Hundreds of thousands of white youth began to ques-tion the hypocrisy of American society. Part of this in-volved the growth of a counter-culture which emerged asa rejection of American values and mores, but ended uprecreating many of those same values in new form.

A powerful women's movement redefined the role ofwomen, challenging the male supremacy of the society,the counter-culture and the left. Within this broadermovement, anti-imperialist women organized militantprotests against the war and racist oppression at home, de-fining women's liberation as tied to the aspirations of op-pressed people.

These were the conditions in which an anti-imperialistleft matured. Centered around Students for a DemocraticSociety (SDS), white anti-imperialists defended the rightof the Vietnamese to liberate and reunify their nationthrough armed struggle. In 1965, SDS called the first na-tional demonstration against the Vietnam War, attendedby over 25,000 people in Washington, D.C. As the Blackstruggle sharpened, SDS developed programs in supportof the Black Panther Party and Black student demands oncampuses.

In the early stages of the war, many SDS members stillheld out hopes for the Democratic Party, even giving sup-port to the presidential campaign of Lyndon Johnson asthe "lesser evil" against Barry Goldwater in 1964. Thenwe saw Johnson send hundreds of thousands of troops intoVietnam, begin bombing North Vietnam, and escalate theconflict to genocidal proportions. We learned our lesson.

Washington, D.C., November 15,1969 Over one-half million people demonstrated against the Vietnam War. Ten thousandmarched on the Justice Department and fought the police, carrying the flag of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam(NLF) and supporting the Black Panther Party. V

BREAKTHROUGH/page 5

In 1968, Democrats of all stripes began making anti-warnoises, with even Vice President Hubert Humphrey pos-ing as a peace alternative to Richard Nixon. "Peace candi-date" Eugene McCarthy tried to channel the anti-warmovement off the streets and into his campaign. But theanti-imperialist left refused to sacrifice its independenceand instead helped turn the Chicago Democratic Conven-tion into a scene of dramatic protest against the Democra-tic architects of genocide in Vietnam.

The anti-imperialists of the 60s are, often dismissed aspetty bourgeois students whose practice had no impact onthe white working class. But the militant wing of the anti-war movement built a base among GI's and among youngpeople in working class high schools and community col-

leges. Resistance to the draft spread far beyond the elitestudent population. Activists physically blocked trooptrains and disrupted draft inductions. Radical campus pro-tests reduced ROTC enrollment by 80 percent, andprevented war criminals like Dean Rusk and RobertMcNamara from speaking. Thousands refused the draftand publicly burned their draft cards.

There was a clear break with pacifism. An understand-ing emerged over time that the war was directed by a statepower which had to be confronted. In November 1969,for example, tens of thousands of protesters clashed withthe police at the National Moratorium in Washington,D.C. In 1970, over 2,000 acts of political violence againstthe war took place, many of them at the height of mass ac-tion. Armed organizations like the Weather Undergrounddeveloped support in the anti-war movement for armed at-tacks in solidarity with the Vietnamese.

LEARNING THE LESSONS

It has become fashionable these days, to ignore this his-tory since it challenges so many conceptions of today'sleft. Many of the same debates and struggles took placethen as now. The dominant left groups (at that point theCommunist Party and the Socialist Workers Party) cen-tered their work around the slogan "Bring the BoysHome." They argued against explicit support for the Viet-namese Revolution because it would alienate the broadbase of the movement. For similar reasons, they opposedconnecting Vietnam with other struggles in the ThirdWorld and with the Black struggle at home. They con-demned militant action and armed struggle as "adven-turist." As repression sharpened, they refused to come tothe aid offerees singled out by the government for viciousattack. But they were never able to effectively silence therevolutionary left.

Watergate tapes revealed Nixon's anger and concern'over the growing social disruption. In his book, The Priceof Power, Seymour Hersh describes how Nixon retreatedfrom his threats to use nuclear weapons in North Vietnam,partially out of fear that it would lead to massive rioting athome. Unlike today, the anti-war movement was a seriousfactor that had to be considered as the U.S. planned itswar strategy.

The State moved skillfully to pacify the homefront.Nixon launched the FBI's Cointelpro program of assassi-nations, imprisonment and generalized persecution of therevolutionary Black movement. Between 1970 and 1973,30 grand juries were convened to attack the progressivemovement. In the aftermath of the Kent State shootings,many white students began to think twice before gettinginvolved in street protest. At the same time, by eliminat-

page 6/BREAKTHROUGH

ing the draft, Nixon removed a main source of anti-warsentiment.

Because so much of the left had limited its organizingto "Bring the Troops Home," Nixon was able to disor-ganize the movement through his Vietnamization strat-egy. As he changed the color of the corpses, replacingU.S. ground troops with puppet South Vietnamese sol-diers and genocidal air attacks, the protests faded. By thetime of the B-52 bombing of Hanoi during Christmas1972, the anti-war movement could summon up only amuted response.

White anti-imperialists made many serious errorsthroughout this time. Coming from the student move-ment, we believed in instant revolution and were woefullyunprepared for the requirements of protracted struggleagainst the sophisticated and powerful U.S. State. Wewanted revolution without cost or sacrifice, without hav-ing to go through the difficult process of changing our-selves and confronting deeply our own ties to the system.Militant organizers became subject to the same cynicismand demoralization which pervaded the movement as thespontaneous protests receded.

Our weaknesses had serious consequences. With only ashallow knowledge of Marxism-Leninism, we were un-able to build genuinely revolutionary organizations ortransform spontaneous resistance into something morelasting. We were limited in our understanding of the lead-ing role of national liberation within the U.S., and failedto demonstrate consistent solidarity with the Black libera-

tion movement, particularly in the face of Cointelpro. Ul-timately, the anti-imperialist left proved incapable ofleading a protracted and revolutionary resistance move-ment.

Still, the experience of the 60s is testimony to the po-tential power of anti-imperialist struggle. Today, many ofthese strategic lessons have been lost. The history of theVietnam War movement has been rewritten, ironically, asan argument for conservatism and caution. The galvaniz-ing role of the Black liberation struggle and the impact ofan insurgent left is conveniently forgotten. Yet it is pre-cisely the lack of such a dynamic anti-imperialist presencetoday which is giving the U.S. a relatively free hand inCentral America.

1984: BRINGING ANOTHER WAR HOME

1984 is a far different time. U.S. imperialism haslearned some harsh lessons of its own from Vietnam, be-coming more flexible as it attempts to meet new crises. Inrecent years, Ronald Reagan has orchestrated a majorshift to the right with consummate skill. There is clearcutsupport within the white working class for vastly in-creased military spending and for the reassertion of Amer-ican power a la Grenada. Opposition to the Marine pre-sence in Lebanon centered on saving American lives, notopposing the U.S. role in the Middle East. Large sectorsof the white working class have been won to see their owneconomic recovery as contingent on a war economy and

BREAKTHROUGH/page 7

' ••x. —Direction ol\s^ ofFMLNfor

—Barracks for Elite U.S~trained Rapid DeploymentForces

—FMLN Zone of Military Superiorityused as military corridors

Four ThousandGuatemalan TroopsMassed on Border

housands of U.S. and Honduranian! Troops Massed on Border

/ T3ULFOF^FONSECA

llr 0

Note: map originally published December 1983 by CISPES

on the economic and social devastation of Third Worldpeople.

Responding to these changed conditions, much of theleft has moved right. Some activists in the anti-interven-tion movement argue that the best we can realisticallyhope for is a Democratic Party candidate who will slowdown the slaughter in Central America. Opposing U.S.intervention in Central America becomes a single issue,stripped of its connection to the struggle against im-perialism around the world. We are told not to underminethe movement by introducing divisive issues like U.S.and Israeli aggression in the Middle East. We are calledon to be practical, to shelve revolutionary politics until amore opportune moment. The lessons of the 60s aredeemed irrelevant to today's movement.

We disagree with this assessment. It expresses a visionof powerlessness, of a left, which accepts the legitimacy ofimperialism, even as U.S. terror stands more exposed. Itoverestimates imperialist strength and is blind to the con-ditions and struggle of Third World people in the U.S. Iteliminates the responsibility of a conscious left to struggleand change things in this difficult period.

For the movement in this country to develop into aforce which can really contribute to stopping the war in

Central America, more massive militant action is essen-tial. Far from isolating the movement, the example ofthousands of people defying our own government can ac-tivate broader sectors. This is one of the cardinal lessonswe can learn from the movement against the VietnamWar.

We can move from protest to resistance. If we firmlysupport the liberation movements in Central America, ifwe define U.S. imperialism as our enemy both at homeand abroad, if we take steps towards more consistent andmilitant activism, we will be able to make significant ad-vances.

;NO PASARAN!SUPPORT THE LIBERATION MOVEMENTS

IN CENTRAL AMERICA

For the peoples of Central America, people's war is theaxis around which all their hopes for freedom have re-volved, the only alternative to degradation and genocide.The current revolutionary movements have their origin inthe painful decisions made by Central American rev-olutionaries in the 1960s and 1970s to take up arms andfight for their nations' dignity and liberation. Groups likethe FSLN; the FPL and the ERP in El Salvador; the EGP,

page 8/BREAKTHROUGH

OPRA and FAR in Guatemala; were at first dismissed andscorned as ultraleft adventurists by the traditional refor-mist left in Central America. Early defeats were taken asproof that the time was not ripe, that legal political workshould remain the cornerstone of left activity. But thepolitical-military formations rejected this line, and insteadpersevered through a series of difficult setbacks. Eventu-ally, the armed formations in El Salvador, Nicaragua andGuatemala began to solve the complex problem of trans-forming sporadic and isolated armed activity of revolu-tionary vanguards into a popular war of the masses.

Revolutionary war in Central America, like in Viet-nam, draws its strength from the whole people: from thefull-time guerrilla combatants in the popular army; fromthe village militias who defend their land and homesagainst Army sweeps; from the peasants who lead massactions against takeovers of their land; from the guerrilla

supporters who refuse to talk under inhuman torture; fromthe mothers showing up day after day at military prisonsdemanding to see their disappeared children; from thechildren themselves fighting at the barricades.

It is precisely through popular war that the new societybegins to take shape, arising out of the destruction of theold. We can see this so clearly in the women ofNicaragua, whose participation at all levels during therevolutionary war laid the basis for their continuing strug-gle for equality within the Nicaraguan revolution. The re-volutionary society in Nicaragua is the fruit of nearlytwenty years of combat, of the determination of the FSLNto fight with all weapons at their disposal in order to winjustice and true democracy.

We need to defend this process in our organizing. Thisis the only way to break through the lies which label free-dom fighters as terrorists and which compare communism

PUERTO RICO: FIRE ! S.•:,./ ...,, .v<,-.ov:,vv ?gi>>;r.< U.S.

militarism rnua address the issue 8f Pulirlg R|ca| iitijfe-;:•".-;/•:•:•:. • • *::

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•••••;• -.••;••: .. • j f ' j . c . inmenslisrn. • •IIS. •:;::: aial policy has soug^ . ie$ro'y Puerto-

Rico's culture and national reality. The /; ; y ;: been distorted to meet the needs of giant 1 ) .S eoj|6|li(ions which reap many billions of dollars in iL^-free

rom the island. \Videspreau poverty nas lOi^co;;opci>. : - • v, .• : -i • '' - ' : •< •£• '^ — •'•-' :* {

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Atlantic and j:-.:;nbean, athreats and i'i te mentions thvasion c : ^-^nada was twRican is • >d of • Viequescallec "Ocean Venture."

a j$ S Y!.c^.e" : • • • ; i,:;/;:p^ pi ;;;•>•:• ; :'.'-; ' 'J'-::' :.- '

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ughout the region. The in-rehearsed on the Puerto

ring massive war gamesw Ocean Venture '84 is

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taking place in Honduras .'I'lie J.S. -a-;:-. - . , . . j : ;-v. '':

2Q20 Plan, which calls foindustrial complexes and. open, pit mining the island's

^ ^tary bases, giant

|a ::U:. '^i-&l, a |e B ! bii U . . , i: CK. rtjgd on | if i!i| IW ts E i&ife s ip|lit E I --^;. v'-^y arid-, cprpo;;1 !':-•; tp^iSj $| ^0pBi |fg Ife ^tlnps Llity^oi,'they.!.^. presence; In Jam lary 1981 , guerrillas from the

riif ::'•-••.'.[: <.-Ay^<>~: I ' : ,>.;/j 'y^x-rm^ $4-0'.?/(>•: F.L :,.;,:: , : . .). J. .?•';- T/ivyi:^: nkiu'l &;' :/ ' ' TJ:Vi': ,r U;

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FREE ALL PUERT

OR PUERTO RICO!

PRISONERS AND PRISONEF

BREAKTHROUGH/page 9

and fascism as two sides of the same coin. This is espe-cially important now that Reagan is trying to scare awaysupport for the liberation movements. New "anti-terrorist" legislation proposed by Reagan would make it acrime to provide support in the form of funds, medicineand clothing for the liberation movements outside the bor-ders of this country. This is aimed at stopping the growingsolidarity with the FMLN/FDR of El Salvador, revolu-tionary Nicaragua, African liberation struggles, the Pales-tinian movement and the struggle in Northern Ireland.The Reagan attack will target mass solidarity organiza-tions like the Committee in Solidarity with the People ofEl Salvador (CISPES). Already, the U.S. has indictedmembers of the Sanctuary movement who shelter CentralAmerican refugees. These attempts at intimidation can becountered with political education and organizing in de-fense of the liberation movements.

CRACKING THE RACIST CONSENSUS

The U.S. is paying for war through a systematic attackon the living standards of over 50 million colonized NewAfrikan (Black), Mexican, Puerto Rican and Nativepeople. The Reagan "recovery" is "For Whites Only,"bringing the U.S. to the threshold of an inevitable politicalcrisis. Today, a Black family of four earns 56 percent ofwhat a white family does. Millions of Black and Latinoparents face a future for their children punctuated by thecolonial cycle of schools which don't teach, permanentunemployment for over half of all youth, and finallyprison. This is an explosive situation which the U.S. willnot be able to pacify.

The U.S. is determined to prevent a repeat of the Viet-nam War scenario, where the war of oppressed people athome undermined its ability to wage war abroad. Its strat-egy is to nip in the bud the movements it considers themost threatening, before they become massive in charac-ter. Accordingly, the FBI and the entire Executive Branchof the government have launched a new witchhunt againstrevolutionary organizations. Under the guise of anti-ter-rorism, the government has unleashed a wave of grandjury attacks against these movements which, along withthe lifting of restraints on FBI activity against the left, arethe "New Cointelpro" and the "New McCarthyism" of the1980s.

What does all this mean for the anti-intervention move-ment? Most left organizations recognize that it is criticalfor Central America work to link up with the powerfulforce of Third World people in the U.S. There is growingconcern over the need to address the fight against racistoppression. But often this is reduced to vague calls forJobs & Justice or to a rush to join the Jackson campaign.

The overwhelming Black vote for Jesse Jackson is, in

part, a reflection of Black pride and the deep-seated disaf-fection which Black people feel towards white politiciansand their promises of change. Black protest may be ex-pressed within an electoral framework during this Demo-cratic campaign, but it will never be contained there. Forthe white left and anti-intervention movement, however,latching on to the Jackson campaign has become a substi-tute for deeply confronting the rise of white supremacy inthis country. Thirty-five million Black people are not justvictims of racism or another color of the rainbow. Theyare a colonized nation fighting for human rights, self-determination and independence. Black liberation chal-lenges the structures of white supremacy and domesticcolonialism upon which imperialism rests. With policeterror on the rise and all-white juries continuing to set kill-er cops free; with the Ku Klux Klan marching in everycorner of the country, our movement needs to attack theroots of this system.

If we are serious about cracking the patriotic consensusin this country, we need to fight back against racist terrorand defend national liberation movements inside the U.S.which are now under State attack. Otherwise, the Statewill have free rein to isolate the very forces which mostthreaten its power.

ELECTIONS '84: THE LEFT MOVES RIGHT

Less than 10 years after the Vietnam War, much of theleft is on the verge of forgiving and forgetting when itcomes to the Democratic Party. Some argue that the primetask is to defeat Reagan, even if this means embracingMondale or Hart as the new version of the "lesser evil."Others argue that the Jackson candidacy holds out hopefor transforming the Democratic Party into a battlegroundover a truly progressive agenda. In the process, the left isentering full tilt into the electoral arena.

We often hear it said that electoral politics is just oneaspect of a strategy, that it will allow us a broader audi-ence for our politics, that it will deepen our base. Peoplethink that electoralism is a faucet you can turn on and offwhen you please, that you can work for Democratic can-didates without legitimizing the Democratic Party, workfor Jackson and then pull back when he endorses theDemocratic candidate. But the reality is more complex.Electoralism generates a conservative momentum, inwhich activists are preoccupied with cultivating liberalpoliticians, watering down the message in order to gaininfluence. Militancy and consistent street activism aredownplayed as the left tries to become more respectable.In the end, solidarity work is curtailed. The non-interven-tion movement becomes the tail wagged by the Democra-tic dog.

What is so ironic is that the Democrats continue to vote

page 10/BREAKTHROUGH

money for the junta in El Salvador and for the enormousU.S. buildup in Honduras. The Democratic leadershipfully supported the Grenada invasion and gave Reaganbipartisan support for the biggest military budget ever. Upand down the line, the Democrats remain committedsponsors of Israeli attempts to destroy the Palestinian andLebanese resistance.

This is a time when the brutal character of the U.S. Stateis becoming more open: in Central America, in the MiddleEast, in the Black and Latino inner cities of the U.S. Weshould be pulling people away from reliance on the sys-tem and towards an understanding that the State is ourenemy. But in the name of "dumping Reagan," many or-ganizations are abandoning principle and reinforcing,rather than confronting, people's faith in American demo-cracy. Imperialism is reduced to a set of evil policieswhich can be reformed within the structures of thebourgeois state. Looking to break our isolation and tomake short term gains, we doom ourselves to longterm in-effectiveness.

SUPPORT ARMED RESISTANCE IN THE U.S.

In a communique issued after their bombing of thecomputer complex at the Washington Navy Yard, theArmed Resistance Unit posed a challenge to the move-ment around Central America:

We have acted tonight to contribute to the building of a re-sistance movement in this country that will rob the U.S.government of the stable homebase it so desperatelyneeds. This is a lesson from the Vietnam War that we canapply now. Our movement can organize the soldiers andsailors not to fight; the military's recruiting efforts can beblocked, and the technology of war sabotaged. The gov-ernment wants the political debate in this country to go onbetween Republicans and Democrats over how to main-tain imperialist control; our movement can be a progres-sive and anti-imperialist alternative that challenges thatcontrol.

As anti-imperialists attempting to build a serious move-ment, we welcome the growth of armed struggle in theU.S. Over the past year, the Armed Resistance Unit, theUnited Freedom Front and the Red Guerrilla Resistancehave attacked war corporations, military facilities andgovernment buildings, including the U.S. Capitol, in anarmed campaign against the warmakers.

There are many on the left who oppose armed strugglein the U.S. as premature and adventurist. They dismisseach armed action as the work of isolated groups, de-tached from popular struggle. But, as the resistance to theVietnam war showed, armed struggle can help lead manypeople to become part of a revolutionary movement whichfights the system itself. The clandestine movement has thepotential to grow and build over the years into a far more

engage in armed struggle target the real perpetrators ofterror in the world. Far from being the "terrorists" por-trayed by the U.S. and NATO, those who fight from clan-destinity are freedom fighters who exemplify a clarity~anddetermination that our movement needs.

CONFRONT THE WARMAKERS

Step by step, the U.S. is expanding the war in CentralAmerica. Reagan has been unable to bring down the San-dinistas or halt the advance of the FMLN/FDR through re-liance on contras or puppet troops. U.S. escalation is in-evitable. Reagan's speech of May 9 was a call to war,pitched to the most rightwing, patriotic sentiments in thecountry. The next day, Democrats and Republicans alikevoted a large military aid package for El Salvador, free ofany "human rights" conditions. The Duarte victory in theSalvadoran elections will be used to justify major in-creases in U.S. involvement in the war. We can be certainthat U.S. imperialism plans a long war against the re-volutionary peoples and nations of the region.

This is a time when we need to affirm and build on thefirst steps of militancy that people are taking. The govern-ment and its conservative echoes within the left will try toisolate and divide us, labelling those who reject State de-fined limits of protest as troublemakers, provocateurs andterrorists. We must reject these attempts to straitjacket ourmovement. We need to step up our support for revolutio-nary Nicaragua and the liberation movements in El Sal-vador and Guatemala. We need to defend Central Amer-ican companeros in the U.S. who are being targetted forgrowing attacks. We should uphold the example of inter-nationalists like Caroll Ishee, a North American who diedin El Slavador while fighting with the FMLN. We have tomake it far more difficult for the U.S. military to recruit,for ROTC to solidify its presence on our campuses, forwar criminals like Henry Kissinger and Jeanne Kirkpat-rick to peddle their poison. We need to defend those whosay "Hell No, We Won't Go!" to the U.S. military, likeAlfred Griffin, a Black Muslim G.I. who refused to fightin either Lebanon or Grenada and was recently court mar-tialled. We need to break the wall of silence around the in-creasing repression against revolutionaries and otherpolitical activists in the U.S. -

For those who see only our weakness, it serves well toremember that left voices were heard few and far betweenat the beginning of the Vietnam War. Those who burnedtheir draft cards were often set upon by angry mobs anddenounced as traitors. Public opinion polls registeredoverwhelming support for U.S. policies. Yet a left perse-vered, showing its own share of courage and principle.And the movement grew. In this present period of war, HI-

* Guatemalan poet and revolutionary, tortured and murdered by the Guatemalan government in 1967

•^——

page 12/BREAKTHROUGH

"CANDLELIGHT IN THE SDARKNESS AT I-

Interview with the Comite de Defensa P<For more than 50 years Mexico has been ruled by the one-

party dictatorship of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, orPRI. While the great majority of the people live in desperatepoverty, corrupt PRI leaders share the nation's wealth with thebanks and corporations of U.S. imperialism. Political oppo-nents of the regime face systematic and brutal repression.

Today, however, from the southern state of Chiapas toChihuahua on the Texas border, a growing independent leftmovement is challenging the PRI. Hundreds of thousands ofworkers, peasants and students are being mobilized into re-volutionary mass organizations which are in the process ofbuilding national unity. This movement takes the position thatthe PRI government cannot be reformed and that socialist rev-olution is the only solution to the misery of the Mexican people.

The Comite de Defensa Popular (CDP) is one of the largestof these revolutionary mass organizations. In the past ten yearsit has organized more than 350,000 people in the state ofChihuahua into popular communities called colonias. Theseare built on vacant land, usually on the outskirts of cities, thatis seized and occupied by CDP members. By building thesecommunities the CDP brings hope and collective political ex-

perience to thousands of people who form part of the mass basefor socialism in Mexico.

The prospect of 70 million people rising in revolution poses anightmare for U.S. rulers. Most threatening of all is the possi-bility that the 20 million Mexicanos in the U.S., colonized onthe lands of the Southwest stolen from Mexico in the 19th Cen-tury, will join in revolution with their sisters and brothers to thesouth. The potential reunification of Mexico under socialism isa threat aimed at the heart of the U.S. empire.

Conditions of poverty and oppression in Mexcio are similarto those in Central America, where millions of people are risingup to confront brutal dictatorships that are clients of U.S. im-perialism. Yet internationally the PRI regime is viewed very dif-ferently from other repressive governments. Mexico's policiesof harboring political refugees, maintaining cordial relation-ships with Cuba and Nicaragua, and criticizing some U.S.military actions, have earned it a liberal and "anti-imperialist"reputation. Progressive North Americans need to look beyondthis veneer and see the PRI's basic repressive character and itsrole as a satellite of U.S. imperialism.

The following interview with Gabino Gomez, a leadingmember of the CDP, was conducted in San Francisco in Oc-tober 1983.

BREAKTHROUGH: There has been a great deal in thenews about the severity of the economic crisis in Mexico.How does the CDP view the roots of this crisis?

COMITE DE DEFENSA POPULAR: The crisis hasaffected Mexico in a very particular way; it has beenmuch graver and more acute, fundamentally becauseMexico is a dependent capitalist country. Mexico hastraditionally been an exporter of raw materials and basicfoodstuffs such as rice, beans and wheat. However, foodproduction has been drastically affected by the increasein the prices of the goods that the farmers have to buyto produce their crops. So the farmers have reduced theacreage under cultivation. This began in 1976, and wasone cause of the crisis, because the agricultural industrywas one of the prime areas where foreign money wasinvested in Mexico. So the government, in an attempt tosolve the problem of lack of investment, began to integ-rate itself with international bodies, primarily with theInternational Development Bank and the InternationalMonetary Fund (IMF).

At this time the discovery of large oil reserves led tothe beginning of large scale oil production. Added to thisis bad planning, maladministration and widespread cor-ruption within the Mexican government. The government

began to put forth the image that the Mexican nation wason the threshold of abundance, and that we had to reor-ganize ourselves and plan for this abundance created byoil production. This did not resolve the crisis. Startingin 1976, the Mexican economy became ?.n economy basedon oil production and export. When oil prices began todrop, Mexico began to cut back its oil production. Thisalso cut back investment in Mexico. Agricultural produc-tion fell, so each year Mexico had to import more grain.

BT: What have been the economic results of the crisis?

CDP: The crisis has had two consequences: first, todecapitalize the country; and second, to increase depen-dence on imperialism. The government had to devaluethe currency; by 1982 there had been a devaluation of1000 percent.* And so the economic crisis was in everyhome because of the high level of inflation. The govern-ment was robbing and exporting the dollars coming intothe country. The bankers, the industrialists and even gov-ernment functionaries were exporting Mexican pesos,leaving the country without any money, on the brink of

* Between 1976 and 1982, the value of the peso fell from 15 tothe dollar to 150 to the dollar.

BREAKTHROUGH/page 13

STREETS,HOME"Popular of Mexico

bankruptcy. It reached the point where the governmentdiscussed withholding the salaries of the governmentemployees because there was no money to pay them.Given that sort of emergency, the Mexican governmentrequested a large loan from the IMF, and renegotiatedits foreign debts with all the banks to which it owedmoney. As a result it obtained the largest single loan thathas ever occurred in the history of the world.*

*$4.5 billion in November 1982; Mexico's foreign debt was$85 billion in 1983.

The IMF imposed conditions on the Mexican govern-ment; the government had to impose an austerity prog-ram. They would have to reduce greatly or eliminatealtogether the amount of money that it spent on educationand other social programs that benefit the people. Butthere was no limit on price increases. Within a year theprice of all consumer goods increased more than 100percent. The government was also committed to wageceilings; 15 percent increase for this last year. Wages didnot increase proportionately to the prices of products thatpeople were consuming.

BT: Can you tell us about the political response from thegovernment and from the popular organizations?

CDP: All the organizations on the left rejected these con-ditions, saying they would only increase the damage tothe Mexican economy and make Mexico an even moredependent capitalist state, dependent on U.S.imperialism. In order to implement this austerity plan

Demonstrators confront PRI government demanding information on the disappeared. In Mexico, over 500 politicalactivists have been disappeared—secretly imprisoned, tortured and often murdered.

page 16/BREAKTHROUGH

different conditions and with more relationship to theworkers' struggles.

BT: You've talked a lot about the current situation. Whatis the process by which the CDP sees, in this next histor-ical period, transforming the economic crisis into thepolitical crisis that you talked about. What is the workof the CDP in that regard?

CDP: We should start by describing the role we playwithin the left in Mexico. We are a regional organizationexclusively in the state of Chihuahua. We are definitivelythe most important organization in the statfe of Chihuahuaand on the national level we are possibly the most influen-tial in bringing people out into the streets. Our work inthis period is organizing the workers in the urban areasand in the rural areas to struggle for their demands andto transform their consciousness so that they transformthose immediate demands into social demands. And justas the CDP exists in the state of Chihuahua, in otherareas of our country there are similar organizations. Thisjuncture of organizations in Mexico is not isolated. Weare in the process of organization and discussion aimedat the future development of a single political formation.We call our tendency the independent revolutionary leftin Mexico.

The rest of the left is what we call the reformist left.The reformist left is primarily made up of the left politicalparties in Mexico. They were given this name becauseof the "political reform" established by Jose Lopez Por-tillo. It allowed electoral participation for those bodiesthat registered as opposition. They were also entitled tosubsidies to carry out their campaigns. This "politicalreform" was rejected by the independent left because wethought that to accept these positions would be to limitourselves to the electoral struggle. To participate in theelectoral process would be to forget about the rest of the

First timein English75 pp., ill us.

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struggles and demands of the Mexican people. And thaiis exactly what occurred. The political parties that regis-tered and participated in the electoral process are todayalienated from the masses of the Mexican people, whilethe organizations that stayed outside the political reformand that have become, according to the government, theillegal left in Mexico, have today a much larger capacityto mobilize the Mexican working class. To cite an exam-ple: In the state of Chihuahua this past first of May, thtCDP was able to mobilize over 50,000 people. Mean-while the other organizations that were registered carriedout simultaneous demonstrations and they were not ableto organize more than small numbers of people.

The primary task for all the revolutionary organizationsin Mexico is to link themselves with the people, toorganize and mobilize them to resolve their immediatedemands without falling into economism, always raisingthe consciousness that it's necessary to struggle againstthe system. In this way we can consolidate the develop-ment of the vanguard organization which will then leadthe decisive battle and install a new social and economicorder where the product of labor is used to satisfy theneeds of the whole population. That is the task of therevolutionaries in Mexico.

BT: We in PFOC support the position that's beenadvanced by the Movimiento de Liberacion Nacional-Mexicano (MLN-M) calling for the socialist reunificationof Mexico. We see it as a critical part of a strategy todefeat U.S. imperialism from within. We are trying tobuild support among North Americans for that positiojand for the struggle of the Mexican people on both sidesof the border. We would like to understand how the CDPat this point views this question.

CDP: Historically, the territory that was stolen fromMexico belongs to Mexico. On the northern side of theborder there are many Mexicans who find themselveshere not because they wanted to be here, but becausethey were forced to be here. And just as in the south,where people have to suffer the consequences of livingunder a capitalist system, here we are faced with thesituation of socialist reunification. We are not strugglingsolely for the question of reunification, because none ofthese problems will be resolved simply by having areunification of the national territory. Rather, obviously,we are in a struggle to transform this capitalist society,as much in Mexico as in the occupied territories, includ-ing all the areas of the United States. We must strugglefor the socialist transformation of all these governments,these regions.

We are completely clear that this is a process that willbe very prolonged. First we must struggle for the transfor-mation of the society. We don't expect support from the

oo•§,

BREAKTHROUGH/page 17

Mexican government for reunification; never has thatgovernment put forth the demand for the reclamation ofthose territories. The important thing now is to work ina coordinated way in this first stage. On this side of themilitarily imposed border are many millions of Mexicanswho can support the revolution in Mexico. Many of theseMexicans don't even know what is taking place in thesouth of our country today. We have a very long road totravel, because south of the border the organizationsamong the workers appear to have given up the possibilityof reclaiming the territories. If we review the programs ofthe different parties and organizations, nowhere do yousee in these programs the call for the recapture of the ter-ritories. So that's where we must begin. All the re-volutionaries that are on this side of the border must ac-cept and work towards the possibility that Mexico can bereunified. But not under the current conditions; thatreunification will take place under a new society, asocialist society. To many people this is still an unrealiz-able task, an unrealizable objective. But we cannot rejecta demand that is very legitimate and that is a historicallycorrect demand for our people.

BT: What can North American people do to support therevolutionary movement in Mexico? What role can theNorth American anti-imperialist movement play?

CDP: In Mexico many things happen that people aroundthe world are not informed of. The North Americanpeople do not have a clear idea of what the government ofMexico really is. The primary task should be coordina-

tion, so that what takes place in Mexico in the south can bedisseminated here in the north in different communities,in North American communities as well as in the oppres-sed nations. To raise the general level of consciousnesshere so that people here can respond to the demands whena revolutionary situation develops. Because of the im-mense economic interests of the United States in Mexico,the United States government would not hesitate to invadeMexico again. It would be important then to develop cer-tain tasks within the general population of the UnitedStates to understand what is going on in order to preventthis from happening. So that if the United States govern-ment decides to intervene, it would be rejected outright bythe masses of the people. But before then, there will alsobe the development of a large movement in Mexico that iscurrently being repressed. We know that governmentslower the level of repression when pressure is applied byother people and other governments. We have been wit-nesses to the fact that when we are repressed, if there aredenunciations and demonstrations, the level of the repres-sion is then lowered. So then here you see what the tasksare. The organizations in Mexico must link themselveswith the people in the United States because in the end weare all workers and we have the obligation to support eachother and be in solidarity with each other. Our enemy isthe same; the bourgeoisie of the United States is the sameas yanqui imperialism. The Mexican bourgeoisie and theU.S. bourgeoisie support each other. This must be ourpoint of departure in the developing work that will supporteach other. •

'

,RNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY 1984men Confront the War Machinejame the American flag over the Presidio Army Base in SanIco.Seventy women and children marched on the Sixth Armyluarters denouncing the U.S. war machine. Chanting "Wep what this place is for: murder in El Salvador!" the women•own the flag, declaring that it symbolized murder and op-JRssion in Central America and around the world. As MPsimed with riot gear approached, blood was thrown on the(building and steps. The FSLN flag of Nicaragua was planted in• front of the building. The MPs demanded that the "ladies"I stop their march, threatening us with mass arrest. We re-

fused, knowing that the Presidio had just sent 800 troops toHonduras to participate in Operation Grenadero. The MPsthen arrested a spokeswoman for the demonstration. Inthe confrontation that followed, the MPs were sur-

rounded by angry women chanting, "Who's the Real Terrorist?—TheU.S. Army!" and two sisters were freed from police custody. The marchthen ended outside the base where ninety other protestors had forced theArmy to padlock the gate to the so-called "open" base.

What better way to celebrate International Women's Day, 1984? Aswe marched, we thought of the women of Latin America, Asia and Af-rica who are transforming themselves in the struggle for the liberation oftheir nations. We want to be part of building an anti-imperialist women'smovement, one that sees our liberation tied to the freedom of oppressednations and peoples around the world and here at home. As part of this,we are building an anti-militarism campaign against the U.S. warmak-ers. We call on others to join us.

—WOMEN AGAINST IMPERIALISM

page 20/BREAKTHROUGH

OLYMPICS 1984

COUNTER-INSURGENCYGOES FOR THE GOLD

Los Angeles is gearing up to host the 1984 SummerOlympics. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being spentby the L.A. Olympic Organizing Committee (LAOOC),multi-national corporations and all levels of governmentto finance this colossal spectacle. With the Presidentialrace moving into high gear this summer, the Olympicswill surely be played as a celebration of "America Resur-gent: standing tall and on the move!" More than a boost tosagging national spirit, the Olympics will be used to buildsupport for the U.S. march down the road to war. Evenwith its image tarnished by the withdrawal of the SovietUnion and its allies, the Games will be of internationalimportance. Faced with an erosion of popular support forintervention in Central America, it is a major opportunityto get Americans rooting for the "home team, the greatestcountry on earth." Behind the patriotic hoopla, the officialOlympic logo of Sam the Eagle designed by Disney, thecandy bars and Olympic banks, another more ominous de-velopment is taking shape. Under the guise of providing"security against a possible terrorist threat," the govern-ment is developing a police state apparatus in the sun andsmog of Southern California.

George Orwell, whose book 1984 has entered popularconsciousness to become synonymous with the policestate, once wrote that "international sport is like war with-out the guns." This August in Los Angeles, the guns willnot be absent. As 10,000 Olympians take the field, theywill be outnumbered two-to-one by law enforcement andcounter-insurgency personnel from the LAOOC, fivedozen jurisdictions in California, the Army, Coast Guard,National Guard, CIA, FBI, Secret Service, and secretpolice from countless foreign countries. The estimatedsecurity budget for all of this is between $100 and $200million.

Enjoying tremendous prestige and respectability, withhundreds of millions watching on T.V. worldwide, theOlympics provide the perfect rationale for this mobiliza-tion of repressive power. The security preparations for theOlympics do not arise out of a momentary crisis, only to

BREAKTHROUGH/page 21

fall away when the danger has passed. They fit into thelong term trend in this country and in Europe towardsmore repressive mechanisms of state control. The de-velopment of domestic repression is a growing preoccu-pation for all the imperialist countries and their clientstates. Despite the talk of economic recovery in the West,the global economy upon which the empire depends is inperpetual and growing crisis. Colonies and neo-coloniesare fighting for liberation and cracks and strains are ap-pearing within and between the advanced industrial coun-tries. Across Europe popular movements are arising, andrevolutionary armed actions are occuring with greater fre-quency. In the U.S. there is a generalized increase inprogressive activity arising in response to U.S. militarismand intervention, and to the depression-level conditionsfaced by colonized people. The state has been unable todestroy armed clandestine movements like the PuertoRican FALN, the Black Liberation Army, the Red Guer-rilla Resistance, the Armed Resistance Unit, and theUnited Freedom Front. In the face of these challenges, allthe western "democracies" are becoming subtlymilitarized, adopting new laws to suppress dissent andprevent the growth of anti-imperialist struggle amongtheir populations.

Up the coast to the north of Los Angeles, hundreds ofFederal and military agents have been sent to San Fran-cisco where the Democratic Party Convention is to be heldin July. As tens of millions of dollars are spent on securityto protect the Convention, the San Francisco police havebegun practicing large scale riot control and containmentoperations against demonstrations opposing U.S. aggres-sion in Central America. When one thousand people tookto the streets to demonstrate against Kissinger in April,the SFPD's mounted police and tactical squads beat de-monstrators and engineered a mass arrest of nearly 200people.

Over the past few months military and FBI agents havestepped up their spying and harassment of individuals andorganizations in the area. The Livermore Action Group *(LAG), a mass organization which has mobilizedthousands to carry out civil disobedience against the nu-clear war machine, has had its meetings infiltrated by gov-ernment spies. The FBI has launched a wave of visits tothe homes and workplaces of Black activists on the westcoast. It is apparent that the police machinery being set upfor the Olympics and the Conventions will remain with uslong after the last athlete and delegate have departed fromthe spotlight.

The Lake Placid Olympic Village was built for use as a federalprison after the 1980 Winter Olympics.

FROM THE BATTLEFIELDTO THE PLAYING FIELD:

A LITTLE HISTORY

The Olympics, financed by monopoly corporations,will raise patriotic fervor and militarism to a fever pitch. Ifthe U.S. can sell Twinkies, McDonalds, and Buicks'to thehuge audience watching the Games, why can't they sellthe FBI SWAT team or the new Los Angeles police anti-terrorist unit?

The Olympic aura as a supposedly apolitical celebra-tion of human sports endeavor is belied by its revival, atthe turn of the century, to inculcate European and U.S.youth with a more martial spirit. The modern Games werebegun by a Frenchman, Baron de Coubertin, who wasconcerned that French youth were neither sufficientlytrained physically nor motivated politically to fight fortheir empire. Since then, virtually every Olympiad hasbeen either the scene of sharp conflict, or suspended be-cause of World War. The Soviet Union was excludedfrom the time of the Russian Revolution until 1952 andthe Peoples Republic of China was similarly banned fordecades. In 1936, Hitler used the Munich Olympics as astage to promote Nazi racialism throughout Europe.

In the Americas, the history of the Olympics is no lesspolitical. South of Los Angeles, the Mexico City Olym-pics of 1968 was the scene of a bloody massacre and massrepression. The revolutionary upheaval which sweptthrough Latin America in the 1960s emerged in Mexico,causing great concern not only to the Mexican bourgeoisiebut to the U.S. as well. More than five hundred Mexicanstudents and members of the independent left weremachine-gunned to death in the Tlalteloco Plaza while de-monstrating prior to the start of the Games.

That same year, Black athletes in the U.S. threatened toboycott the competition in protest against the brutal rep-ression of the Black liberation struggle going on in thiscountry. Black Olympic medalists Tommie Lee Smithand John Carlos expressed the outrage of many when theyraised their fists in the Black power salute during the play-ing of the Star Spangled Banner. For this they were im-mediately ejected from Mexico.

In 1972, the Palestinian revolution came into the inter-national arena by taking hostage a number of Israeliathletes who were also members of the Zionist armedforces. Israeli, German and U.S. counter-insurgencysquads attacked them, precipitating a massacre. Africannations boycotted the 1976 Olympics as part of theworldwide effort to isolate racist South Africa and thosenations which support it. Jimmy Carter fired the openingsalvo of a new cold war in 1980 by refusing to send theU.S. team to the Moscow Games. In spite of all this, the

page 22/BREAKTHROUGH

IF IT ISNTDOOe,T JUST WONT DO

Capitalism has never been thought of as an Olympic sport before, so it is a l i t t le startling to.look up and find that the flag under which the Games wi l l be conducted all over Southern

California next summer is the vest from a three-piece suit. In the most remarkable private business deal in the history of free enterprise,patriotism is seeing nationalism, and raising the bet outrageously. —Time maga/.ine, 10/17/83

Olympics continue to enjoy a reservoir of respectabilitythat provides the U.S. government an unequalled oppor-tunity to get people to swallow increased repression in thename of protecting the "integrity" of the Games.

LOS ANGELES NEVER WASTHE CITY OF THE ANGELS

What is the U.S. so concerned about protecting in LosAngeles? In addition to being the entertainment capitalof the world, L.A. is a strategic center of the militaryindustrial complex. The Olympic venues, which extendfrom Santa Barbara to San Diego, are lined with AirForce, Navy, Army and Marine bases, defense contrac-tors and weapons research facilities. Los Angeles is amega-city which sprawls for miles and miles. It is thesouthern capital of the Pacific Rim; the place from whichstrategic commercial and military activity is launchedsouth to Mexico and Central America, and westward tothe Philippines and Asia.

At the same time, L.A. is home for millions of Blackand Mexican people. The Mexican population there is

second only to Mexico City and is growing. While theregion's economy is greatly dependent on colonizedBlack and Mexican labor, these people are at the bottomof the pyramid and face genocidal conditions of existence.During the last six months Los Angeles has been thetarget of a Klan organizing drive and since December

. three crosses have been burned in Black communities.As the Games draw near, the state is haunted by the fearthat unemployment or police killings may provokeanother "Watts riot"—a long, hot summer of Black resis-tance like the one in 1965 when the inner city burned asBlack people rose up in the first intense rebellion of the1960s.

In L.A. the police have killed or shot an average ofone Black or Latino person every week for the past 15years. The relative economic situation of Black peopletoday is worse than it was at the height of the Civil Rightsmovement in the 1960s. Unemployment among Blackpeople is rising as it falls among whites. Joblessness forBlack youth is well over 50 percent. And Black tenthgraders in L.A have lower reading levels and are less

BREAKTHROUGH/page 23

likely to complete high school today than ten years ago.PCP and other destructive drugs are pumped like a deadlyplague into Black neighborhoods.

The disregard for the human rights of colonized peoplewhich prevails in L. A. is illustrated by the recent sprayingof toxic malathion in several Mexicano and Black neigh-borhoods to kill fruit flies. This chemical is so corrosivethat cars have to be shielded so the spray won't destroythe finish. It has been used as a crowd control weaponby the Junta in El Salvador, which has sprayed it ondemonstrators. One child has died after exposure in L. A.,and many other school children have reported nausea anddiscomfort. Yet, despite strong community protests, thespraying has continued.

Using the Olympics as a pretext, the state is moving toprevent the Black and Mexican communities from risingup—during the Games or any time after. The Immigra-tion and Naturalization Service (INS—la migra), citingthe threat of Olympic terrorism, has increased its activityagainst Central American refugees and has raidedundocumented Iranian "gypsy" cab drivers in the city.Over one million Mexicanos have been arrested at the bor-der in the last year, while Reagan and the right wing arepromoting an hysterical fear of "feet people" (un-documented Mexicanos and Central Americans) crossingthe border en masse. The sheriff has announced that streetgangs are plotting a "reign of terror" during the Olympics,and is calling for increased police presence in the commu-nity. He is planning to build 2000 "temporary" jail cells tohouse the anticipated mass arrests which will be madeduring the Games. The State Legislature plans to au-thorize Governor Deukmejian to call up the NationalGuard during, and at least six months after, the Olympicswithout having to declare a state of emergency. At the firstsigns of unrest, troops could be patrolling every streetcorner in south-central L.A.

Last year, when a tornado hit mostly Black south-cen-tral Los Angeles near the Convention Center, police cor-doned off the entire neighborhood. They required I.D.from everyone entering or leaving a many square blockarea. Similar plans are in the works to require passes formovement in and out of the Black community surround-ing the Olympic Village at the University of SouthernCalifornia (USC). According to a leader of the Center forBlack Survival, a New Afrikan community organizationin L.A., "Police will be sealing off major streets sup-posedly to deter terrorism, controlling all food and otherdeliveries into the area." A Black woman told the news-papers, "I know the concern is terrorism, but if there areno jobs this summer, the little people are going to be doingsome mini-terror of their own."

Tommie Smith and John Carlos brought the spirit ofBlack Power into the 1968 Olympics.

page 24/BREAKTHROUGH

OLYMPICS LINEUP: A ROGUES GALLERY OFRIGHTWINGERS AND WARMONGERS

Who are the real terrorists in charge of the Olympicsand what are they planning? Olympics security planningis coordinated at the highest levels of government. ThePentagon has budgeted $60 million for security at theGames. Reagan has appointed Michael Deaver, who runsthe White House, as his personal liaison to the L.A.Olympic Organizing Committee. Below him are 600 Sec-ret Service agents, international, federal and local expertsarmed to take full advantage of the anti-terrorist mobiliza-tion the Olympics provide.

• Charlie Beckwith: Retired U.S. Army Colonel whois the leading operational expert on counter-insurgencyin the military, was retained by Washington to conducta study of the Olympic anti-terrorist efforts. Beckwith,a former Green Beret commander, founded the Army'sDelta Blue Light commando team—one of the forcesbeing sent to the Olympics—and led it into Iran duringthe hostage crisis.

• William Webster: Head of the FBI, which has princi-pal operating responsibility for security, has announcedthat 700 agents are on assignment to the Olympics tosupplement the hundreds already on permanent duty inL.A. Under Webster, imperialism has found the idealsuccessor to J. Edgar Hoover. Webster has given theagency a face-lift, reorganized it and presided over thenew guidelines which give it freedom to carry outbreak-ins and other illegal activities against progressivegroups.

• Daryl Gates: Chief of the Los Angeles Police Depart-ment, has been somewhat resistant to FBI domination

of security, insisting on greater independence for hisforces. Gates became infamous for his defense of thelethal police chokehold when he said, "Black peopledie disproportionately under the chokehold becausetheir arteries are not normal." Under Gates, it wasrevealed that the Public Disorders Intelligence Division(Red Squad) funnelled files on individuals and leftorganizations to the John Birch Society's WesternGoals Foundation computer network. Gates has travel-led to Germany and Israel to consult with their securityexperts. He has stated in T.V. interviews that Amer-icans must be prepared to give up some rights to gaingreater security. After a briefing in Quantico, Virginiawith FBI, CIA and NSA agents, he signed a protocolwith the FBI establishing a joint police-FBI TerroristTask Force on the West Coast.

1 Jeremiah Denton: Head of the Senate Subcommitteeon Terrorism, has begun holding closed hearings onsecurity planning for the Olympics. Denton's commit-tee is being groomed as the HUAC of today. (HUAC,the House Un-American Activities Committee, led theanti-communist witchhunts of the 1950s.) Dentonclaims that L.A. police and federal agents have told hispanel that people travelling to Lebanon for terroristtraining are returning to the U.S. to pose a threat to theGames. FBI Director Webster testified to Denton'scommittee that he has raised counter-terrorist activitiesto one of the Bureau's top four priorities.

OFF THE STARTING BLOCKS:READY FOR REPRESSION

As the repressive apparatus is put into place the govern-ment is being unusually open about it:

* Recently the FBI brought network T.V. onto its highsecurity base in Quantico, Virginia so it could broadcasttraining exercises of its hostage rescue team. Shown onthe six o'clock news, this report featured agents rescuinga young woman "held hostage by terrorists."

* The L.A. police have established close working rela-tions with the Israeli Mossad (espionage agency), accord-ing to Commander William Rathburn. Shaul Rosolio, a"civilian" Israeli counter-intelligence expert, met with thelaw enforcement leaders of six Olympic countries. Hiscompany, the Jerusalem Research Group, has helpedreorganize the police forces of Costa Rica and Colombiato carry out para-military operations. Rosolio met withOlympic Committee security chief Edgar Best and gave aseminar to the L.A. police academy. In his wake, the newIsraeli consul to L.A., a former tank commander in theSinai invasion, held a press conference to announce anactive Israeli role in protecting the Olympics.

BREAKTHROUGH/page 25

The FBI showed off the tactics of its newanti-terrorist team to the press in March 1984.

* Surveillance and dirty tricks against the left haveincreased in the L.A. area. An agent of the CaliforniaDepartment of Justice, June Johnson, spied on the Pales-tinian resistance, the Puerto Rico solidarity movement,and Prairie Fire Organizing Committee. She infiltrated theanti-nuclear Alliance for Survival and entrapped anactivist into participation in a government-sponsored"bomb plot" against the Diablo Canyon nuclear powerplant. Her role was exposed at the trial of the man, whowas acquitted. Johnson has disclosed that as many astwenty other agents have infiltrated the anti-militarismmovement in L.A. alone.

* Other security forces are being coordinated for theOlympics. The INS has announced new restrictions onimmigration to deter "terrorists and criminals" from enter-ing L.A. Reagan's budget provides a multi-million dollar

increase in funding for the Border Patrol, most of it con-centrated on a fifty mile zone of California.

* Special police sharpshooters have been outfitted withsilencer-equipped machine guns^ and Hughes Aircraft isproviding helicopters to the Olympics Committee for sur-veillance and other security purposes.

* The security hysteria being created around the Olym-pics preparations has its national counterpart in the con-struction of concrete barriers and bunkers around govern-ment buildings in Washington D.C. These were put upto counter alleged Iranian "suicide bombers," and inresponse to the bombing of the Capitol by the ArmedResistance Unit in solidarity with national liberationstruggles in Grenada, Central America and Puerto Rico.Unnamed federal sources have leaked to the press theexistence of one-hundred "terrorist groups" posing athreat to the Olympics: fifty of them operating in the U.S.

page 26/BREAKTHROUGH

and fifty internationally. Reminiscent of Joe McCarthy'slist of communists in the State Department, the groupson this list were not identified.

BEYOND THE OLYMPICS:A DIRTY WAR BEGINS

The anti-terrorist campaign being built up through theOlympics is a microcosm of U.S. strategy. On April 15,1984, word of Reagan's secret National Security DecisionDirective 138 was leaked to the press. Called a "quantumleap" by the head Pentagon policy maker on "terrorism,"Noel Koch, this directive authorizes the FBI, CIA andother agencies to carry out pre-emptive attacks on "ter-rorists." The directive orders twenty-six separate agenciesand offices of the U.S. government to create plans to im-plement the new policy. Several weeks after this wasmade public, the chief of the FBI's "anti-terrorist opera-tions" held a news conference in which he announced thatnineteen organizations inside the U.S. are being targettedas "terrorist groups."

As the economic and social crisis escalates, the State ismoving to stop revolutionary leadership from developing.The central focus of the repressive forces and new lawsare the liberation struggles of Puerto Rican, New Afrikan(Black), Mexican, and Native nations colonized insidethis country. These movements represent the aspirationsof tens of millions of people who are oppressed by the em-pire, not somewhere far away, but at the very center ofAmerica.

In 1978 in Puerto Rico, the U.S. convened a majorinternational conference to plan repression against thePuerto Rican independence movement and otherrevolutionary forces inside this country. The workingmeeting was attended by top counter-insurgency plannersfrom the dictatorships of Argentina and Uruguay, as wellas by officials from Germany, Britain, Canada, Israel,and by an editor of the mercenary journal Soldier of For-tune. The major project of the conference was to figureout how to apply the fascistic counter-insurgency methodsused in other countries—dictatorships and democraciesalike—to the problems of the U.S. empire. Under thecover of training the police to guard the Pan AmericanGames from the "terrorist ihreat of the Puerto Rican inde-pendence movement," many long-range goals were set.Chief among these were the revision of laws to enable thegovernment to deny legal and human rights to "suspectedand captured terrorists." This meeting set a priority on

building a consensus of popular support for repression. Toaccomplish this, the media was urged to depictrevolutionaries as heartless killers and never as sympathe-tic human beings.

IFaced with the prospects of growing mass struggles in

this country, and with the existence of an armed move-ment in the early stages of development, the U.S. govern-ment is implementing this counter-insurgency strategy.Some of its most striking features are:

* The creation of the FBI Joint Terrorist Task Forcewhich works with local police red squads to coordinatepolitical repression nationally. This unit is now carryingout a campaign of low intensity warfare against the clan-destine movements and public supporters of the PuertoRican FALN and the Black Liberation Army.

* Violations of bourgeois legality in the trials of PuertoRican, New Afrikan and white anti-imperialist freedomfighters. Secret juries, where the identities of jurors arenever known, have become standard practice.

* Political internment of activists through the FederalGrand Jury witchhunts. (See inside back cover of thisissue of Breakthrough.)

* The violation of the most basic human rights of cap-tured Prisoners of War, freedom fighters and politicalprisoners. The attempted destruction of these re-volutionaries through psychological torture, denial ofmedical care, and isolation.

These repressive plans are also being broadened inorder to contain and scare off all progressive opposition tothe U.S. war drive. New FBI guidelines have given gov-ernment agents the green light to infiltrate, harass and at-tack many organizations.

The steady escalation of U.S. military intervention inCentral America, the crisis facing colonized peoplewithin this country, are far more than a backdrop to thespectacle being staged at the L.A. Olympics. Like theanti-communism of the 1950s and the Cointelpro repres-sion of the late 1960s, anti-terrorism today is,the smoke-screen being used to stifle and crush both dissent and re-volutionary progress. When we look at the Olympic flameblazing before the American flag, when we see Reaganwaving to the fans, the gun towers will be there behind thescenes. It is up to us to stand up to repression, not only inLos Angeles but across this country, if our resistance is togrow in the times ahead. •

BREAKTHROUGH/page 27

FROM THECLANDESTINE

MOVEMENT

In the aftermath of the invasion of Grenada, the ArmedResistance Unit (ARU) bombed the U.S. Capitol onNovember 7, 1983. If the invasion was Reagan's way oftesting the ideological and patriotic waters, then surelythe ARU's action was a most appropriate response. Com-ing in the midst of a continuing armed campaign againstthe U.S. war machine, the bombing of the Capitol showedonce again the potential strength of an armed clandestinemovement. The attack on one of the most powerful sym-bols of U.S. imperialism pointed out that the U.S. cannotprotect itself everywhere, that it is vulnerable. It showedthat there are forces in this country that will not abide bywhat is deemed "acceptable" forms of protest while theMarines march in and take yet another nation captive.

At a time when the U.S. government, along with itsNATO allies, is waging a concerted campaign to isolateand negate all those who fight for revolution by labelingthem as "terrorists," we have to be clear: these are free-dom fighters, not terrorists. To not fight, to not begin tobuild the clandestine capacity which lays a foundation for

massive armed struggle in the future, is to accept in prac-tice the view that U.S. imperialism will reform itselfthrough peaceful means. It accepts the notion that in thiscountry, only legal struggle is appropriate.

We reprint the following communiques because we be-lieve it is the responsibility of anti-imperialists in the pub-lic movement to support and defend revolutionary armedstruggle in the U.S. We salute the emergence of the ArmedResistance Unit, the United Freedom Front and the RedGuerrilla Resistance over this last year. Along with theBlack Liberation Army (BLA) and the Fuerzas Armadasde Liberacion Nacional (FALN), who have been fightingfor their nations' liberation for over a decade, they helpnurture the seeds of revolution. They challenge all of us toquestion our idea of what is legitimate—the U.S. State orthe liberation movements around the world. Whose au-thority do we respect—the police and the U.S. military orthe will and determination of those who are fighting tocreate a new society? —PFOC

The following communiques were received by mail.

Red Guerrilla ResistanceBOMBING OF WASHINGTON NAVY YARD

April 20, 1984

We dedicate this action to Carroll Ishee, North Amer-ican anti-imperialist who died fighting alongside theFarabundo Marti National Liberation Front of El Sal-vador. His dedication, his willingness to take up arms asan ally of the Salvadoran people is an example for ourentire struggle. To honor the memory of Carroll Ishee isto pick up his gun, build a militant resistance, and strug-gle to defeat U.S. imperialism on every front.

COMPANERO CARLOS ESTA PRESENTE!

Tonight, while the U.S. military prepares for OceanVenture '84, we attacked the Officers' Club at theWashington Navy Yard. We take this action as part of our

ongoing campaign of resistance against the U.S.imperialists, to bring the war home to the warmakers. Weact in solidarity with the sovereign revolutionary nation ofNicaragua, the national liberation struggle of the Salvado-ran people led by the FMLN/FDR, the revolutionarystruggle for independence and socialism for Puerto Rico,and all the just struggles for self-determination of thepeoples of the Caribbean and Latin America.

Here, at the Washington Navy Yard, high rankingofficers helped to plan Ocean Venture. They meet at theOfficers' Club to relax and swap stories and dream ofcareers to be made by invading Grenada, shelling Leba-non, and blockading Nicaragua. Genocide is a ladder tosuccess for these men. By their own actions, they make

page 28/BREAKTHROUGH

\s the enemy of the people of the world and the

target of revolutionary forces. Whether in CentralAmerica, the Middle East, or parts of Europe, the U.S.military is being attacked. They hide behind barricades orstay miles offshore in their ships. They return to the U.S.to relax and recuperate and be adulated by a reactionarygovernment and an increasingly militaristic society. Weneed to rob them of the security of a home base and makethem know they are the enemy wherever they go. Theirofficers' club is gone—let them hide in their homes.

Ocean Venture '84 is the largest of an ongoing series ofU.S. war games. The military will bring together 33,000of its troops and will practice amphibious assaults andbombing attacks against Vieques, Puerto Rico—onceagain making the direct colony of Puerto Rico the U.S.military's training ground. Ocean Venture amasses U.S.troops and weapons in the Caribbean, training and orient-ing its troops to the region's terrain and climate. In 1982,Ocean Venture was a trial run for the invasion of Grenada.Now, as this war "game" begins, the Reagan administra-tion is openly discussing its plans to invade CentralAmerica. The purpose of Ocean Venture '84 could hardlybe more clear. The imperialist strategy of counterin-surgency and covert war has not been enough to halt theinexorable drive toward freedom and liberation in the reg-ion, so the groundwork is being laid for a more direct andprotracted commitment of U.S. troops. Honduras hasbeen turned into a garrison state; the CIA committed anact of war by mining Nicaragua's harbors; U.S. advisorsfly military assault missions against the revolutionaryforces in El Salvador; and the U.S. activates the baseswith which it occupies Puerto Rico. The U.S. govern-

ment, accustomed to dominating other nations, does noteven hesitate to abrogate international law and interveneagainst the right of nations to self-determination.

For years, the inhabitants of the Puerto Rican islands ofCulebra and Vieques have struggled against U.S. navalattacks on their islands—attacks that pockmark theseislands with bomb craters, threaten to destroy the fishingindustry, and force the inhabitants out of their homes.Determined struggles on Culebra in the 60s drove thenavy out; then Vieques became the new target of thesegenocidal "games." In 1979, Comrade Angel RodriguezCristobal, Puerto Rican revolutionary and leadingmember of La Liga Socialista Puertorriquena, wasarrested demonstrating with the people of Vieques againstthe U.S. Navy; on November 11, 1979 he was assassi-nated by the U.S. government while imprisoned in Tal-lahassee, Florida. In honoring his memory, we commitourselves to continuing the fight in solidarity with thestruggle for Puerto Rico's independence and socialism.We express our support for the Puerto Rican armed clan-destine movement and Puerto Rican political prisonersand prisoners of war.

The U.S. has hesitated to deploy its ground troops inCentral America because they remember that U.S. troopswere defeated by people's war in Vietnam , and becausethey need a more consolidated base of support at home forimperialist war. But they have taken the first step towardsincreased intervention by invading Grenada in the face ofworld condemnation. Now the U.S. is escalating itsaggression against Nicaragua and El Salvador. Thepeoples of Central America are enacting the revolutionaryanti-imperialist strategy of two, three, many Vietnams,

U.S. advisors training Salvadoran troops inHonduras, March 1984.

BREAKTHROUGH/page 29

and they will deliver the next strategic defeat to U.S.imperialism and neocolonialism—in its own "back-yard."

At a point when we most need a movement that willfight and resist the escalating U.S. war machine, ourmovement is weakened by reformism and electoral poli-

VIVA NICARAGUA LIBRE!

VICTORY TO THE FMLN/FDR!

INDEPENDENCE AND SOCIALISMFOR PUERTO RICO!

FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS AND POW'S!

tics. To build an effective resistance, we will have to fightand disrupt the U.S. war machine with heightened mili-tancy in every arena of struggle. To defeat this system andbuild a new society, many more of us will need to take uparms as did Comrade Carroll Ishee—within the borders ofthe U.S. as well as around the world.

BUILD THE INTERNATIONAL GUERRILLAFRONT AGAINST IMPERIALISM!

BUILD A REVOLUTIONARYRESISTANCE MOVEMENT!

DEATH TO IMPERIALISM!

Communique #8

BOMBING OF IBM OFFICES, N.Y.

FREE AZANIA!DEATH TO APARTHEID!

"It is not long ago when fascism in South Africa swal-lowed our heroes in Sharpeville..." On March 21, 1960,South African fascist police opened fire on unarmed Afri-can People gathered to protest the repressive pass lawsof apartheid. Sixty-seven People were killed and hun-dreds wounded in this massacre in Sharpeville.

* * *

Tonight, March 19, 1984, armed units of the UnitedFreedom Front bombed the IBM corporate office buildingat 3000 Westchester Avenue in a northern suburb of NewYork City. IBM is a death merchant and directly profitsfrom and supports the fascist South African government,and its war of terror against the Freedom loving Peopleof southern Africa. We must and will continue the attackon all fronts against U.S. imperialism whose governmentpolicies and corporate profits are steeped in the blood ofthose massacred at Sharpeville, Soweto, Kassinga,Maputo, Maseru and the detention cells and executionchambers of South Afrikkkan prisons.

IBM CORPORATION IS GUILTY OF CRIMESAGAINST THE PEOPLE OF SOUTH AFRICA

THROUGH THEIR COLLABORATIONWITH THE FASCIST GOVERNMENT!

IBM corporate profits translate into brutal repressionand exploitation of African People in Azania. The caseagainst IBM is clear. U.S. corporations have over $9billion invested in South Africa (S.A.). By 1980, U.S.

data processing corporations controlled 75 percent of thesales and 77 percent of the rentals of computers in S.A.IBM is the largest computer supplier to S.A., havingdone business with the government since the early 1950's.In 1978 alone, IBM's South Africa sales jumped by 250percent. The apartheid government is IBM's singlelargest customer, accounting for 1/3 of its sales in S.A.

The computer is an integral part of the fascist SouthAfrican government's policies of racist repression andcontrol and military attacks and occupations:

* Computers support a wide range of S.A.'s militaryfunctions and operations. S.A.'s military relies heavilyon IBM for its computers and the company continuesto service S.A.'s most sophisticated military computernetworks.

* IBM set up Project Korvoor, an automated militarylogistics system using IBM equipment to supplyammunition and military supplies to units throughoutthe country. The project enables S.A. to continue itswar on Namibia and its frequent attacks against neigh-boring countries, especially Angola.

* IBM processors are used by the South African Railwaysto supply military transport, supplies and weapons toits invasion armies in Namibia and Angola.

* IBM supplies military researchers.

* IBM supplies military contractors and arms makers andproducers of weapons systems. For example, IBM rentscomputers to a South African company that producesland rovers for the security forces. These are the same

page 30/BREAKTHROUGH

vehicles the S.A. police used in their attack on Sowetoand other operations. During the Soweto uprising, 1000People—many of them children—were killed by thepig security forces.

* IBM supplies computers to a company that makesarmored vehicles for the S.A. military. Armored veh-icles are essential for the type of counter-insurgencyand police operations that S.A. is engaged in.

* IBM rents several computers to one of S.A.'s top exp-losives manufacturers; a company that specializes inthe manufacture of napalm and riot control gas, likethe type used in Soweto, etc.

* IBM has maintained military computer installationswith embargoed parts supplied through its operationsoutside the U.S.

* IBM computers are used as an integral part of S.A.'sNational Identity System.

* IBM supplies computer software to the S.A. police.

* IBM supplies government agencies with computers,training and service that these same agencies can easilyconceal from their real intended end use—military,police and prison.

* IBM supplies computers to the Interior Department'spopulation registry, the Department of the Prime Minis-ter (P.W. Botha, fascist pig architect of the 'total strat-egy') as well as many other government agencies.

It is clear that support from U.S. high-tech companiesbolsters the fascist S.A. government and the war machinethat enforces it. Collaboration with apartheid by U.S.companies, including IBM, by supplying equipment,products, technology and training is equivalent to thosecriminal enterprises in Nazi Germany that built the Naziwar machine and concentration kamps that were theunderpinning of fascism. Millions suffered and died asdeath merchant corporations made millions in profits.

We know who the collaborators are. We have attackedIBM in the past. We attack them today and will continueto attack them in the future unless they cease their supportand dealings with the illegal government of S.A.

After our last bombing attack against IBM facilities,which caused extensive property damage (and helped tar-nish their phoney but slick Madison Ave. image), theIBM bosses offered a $25,000 reward for our capture.They encourage collaboration with the enemy on everylevel! We say—give your 25 thousand blood money tothe families of those murdered while in the detention cellsof South African jails.

In 1980, 30,000 African children in S.A. died of star-

vation and many others died from related diseases. Mil-lions of Africans including entire communities have beenforcibly uprooted from their homes and transferred to the'bantustans.' These so called bantustans/homelands arenothing more than concentration kamps, occupying smallamounts of barren land, administered by brutal goons,armed and supported by the fascist S.A. government.These kamps are wracked with poverty and unemploy-ment, and worse still one-half the children die beforethey reach the age of five.

The computerized 'pass system' demands that everyAfrican over sixteen must carry a pass (denoting personalstatistics, movements, fingerprints, etc.) at all times andwhich must be shown to the police on demand. Withoutsuch a pass, African People cannot work, live or visit inwhat are designated by the government as "white areas."One quarter of a million People are arrested every yearfor so called pass book violations.

TORTURE IS USED ON A ROUTINE BASIS againstAfrican People and anyone else who opposes apartheid.The well known case of Steve Biko is but one exampleof the untold numbers of People who have been murderedwhile under detention of the security police. Murder,physical beatings, electric shocks, psychological tortureand complete isolation are just some of the methods usedagainst those who struggle for human rights. Just lastmonth in Atteridgeville, the pigs broke up a gathering ofstudents protesting corporal punishment in schools, byramming a truck into the group of children, injuring manyand killing 15-year-old Emma Sathedgeke.

THERE ARE NO HUMAN RIGHTSIN RACIST SOUTH AFRICA!

Since the Soweto uprising, there has been a huge milit-ary buildup in S.A., supplementing police forces anddirected against Liberation Movements and the People ofNamibia, Angola and Mozambique.

The 'total strategy' of this fascist government includesthe state mobilization and coordination of all S.A.'sresources to meet the threat of 'total war,' i.e., LiberationForces fighting against fascism/imperialism for the Liber-ation of the Land and its People. This policy goes handin hand with the "constructive engagement" policy of theU.S. government. U.S. imperialism wants to keep theNations of southern Africa in economic subjugation toapartheid. U.N. veto power by the U.S. has protectedS.A. from more effective economic sanctions.

U.S. policy also means supporting S.A.'s occupationof Angolan territory and support for the counter-revolutionary rats of UNITA/Jonas Savimbi (a favoritestooge of Reagan/Bush as well as of top S.A. generals).The not so secret war conducted by the S.A. regime

BREAKTHROUGH/page 31

against the civilians and infrastructure of Angola,Mozambique and other nations supporting the Liberationstruggle are also backed by U.S. imperialism. UnderReagan some of the largest and most vicious attacksagainst the People of Angola have taken place.

The U.S. government under Reagan has reduced therestrictions on the sale of American equipment to theS. A. military and police and has opposed any dismantlingof the repressive security apparatus. The fact is, U.S.imperialism is engaged in a war with its fascistaccomplice, the Republic of South Africa, against theAfrican Liberation Movements. From Lebanon to El Sal-vador, from the Philippines to Grenada, in its own bordersand around the world, U.S. imperialism, including itsdeath merchant backers, are the enemy of National Lib-eration and Freedom loving People.

This bombing of IBM facilities along with other armedactions represents one level of struggle against fascistS.A. and U.S. imperialism. There have to be many more

actions on all levels and fronts and we support all sincereefforts of People fighting against apartheid andimperialism.

The People of Azania and Namibia have an unbreaka-ble determination to be free, reflecting the real will ofthe People for National Liberation and Socialism.

1984—the Year of the Women of Azania, the year ofcontinuing struggle against fascism! imperialism...

"fascism your days are numbered onAfrican Soil—you have committedcrimes.. .never to be forgotten,imperialism...your grave has been madedays fixed when you'll be driven fastto your abyssMother Africa has condemned you todeath!"

Poem by an Azanian Sister

This action is dedicated to the Revolutionary Fighters, Simon Mogoerane, Thabo Motaung and JerryMosoldi, ANC guerrillas executed by the fascist S.A. government on June 9, 1983.

YOUR SPIRIT WILL ALWAYS LIVE!!!

FREE NELSON MANDELA AND ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS!

DEFEAT U.S. IMPERIALISM AND ITS DEATH MERCHANTS!

VICTORY TO THE SOUTH AFRICAN PEOPLE—DEATH TO APARTHEID! !

REVOLUTIONARY SUPPORT AND LOVE TO THE LOCKED DOWNFREEDOM FIGHTERS AND GRAND JURY RESISTERS!

FREE ALL POW'S AND POLITICAL PRISONERS!

SOLIDARITY AND SUPPORT TO ALL GROUPS AND PEOPLE FIGHTING RACIST SOUTH AFRICA!

VICTORY TO PEOPLE'S WAR!

BUILD THE REVOLUTIONARY RESISTANCE MOVEMENT!

\e 32/BREAKTHROUGH

WRITE THROUGH THE WALLSThe U.S. government says that there are no political prisoners orPOWs in this country. Yet the partial list below shows this claim

is a complete lie. We urge you to write them and to send literature. These women and men represent the best of the movement. Maketheir struggle our struggle.

"The Real Dragon" sponsors a continuing book drive to political prisoners and POWs. For information on where to send contribu-tions write: 3543 - 18th Street, Box 14, San Francisco, CA 94110.

Puerto RicanPrisoners of War

Edwin Cortes #92153 024Alberto Rodriguez #92150 024Alejandrina Torres #92152024

M.C.C.71 W. Van BurenChicago, IL 60605

Elizam Escobar #88969 024FCIOxford, WI53952

Ricardo Jimenez 88967 024FCI PO Box 1000Otisville, NY 10963

Adolfo Matos #88968 024MCI, PO Box 1500El Reno, OK 73036

William Guillermo MoralesAvenida Juarez 56-504Col. CentraMexico, D.F.*

Dylcia Pagan #88971 024MCC, 150 Park RowNew York, NY 10007

Maria Haydee Torres #64315Ida Luz Rodriguez #88973 024

WFCIPOBoxA C16Alderson, WV 24910

Oscar Lopez Rivera#87651 024Federal Prison, PO Box 1000Leavenworth, KS 66048

Alicia Rodriguez #N07157PO Box CDwight, IL 60420

Luis Rosa #N02743PO Box 711Menard, IL 62259

Carlos Alberto Torres#88976 024FCI, 922 RenfroeTalladega, AL 35160

Carmen Valentin #88974 024PO Box 1000Pleasanton, CA 94566

Puerto RicanPolitical Prisoners

Pablo Marcano Garcia#10037 158FCI, PO Box 1000Otisville, NY 10963

Steven Guerra #15883 053FCI Raybrook, PO Box 900Raybrook, NY 12977

Julio Veras y Delgadillodo John Doe #300799 069PO Box 1000Lewisburg, PA 17837

Nydia Cuevas Rivera #00868WFCIPOBoxA C16Alderson, WV 24910

Felix Rosa #N11373Graham Correctional CenterPO Box 500Hillsboro, IL 62049

Andres Rosado #19794-053,FCI, FOB 7000Texarkana, TX 75501

Julio Rosado #19793-053FCI, FOB 888Ashland, KY41101

New AfrikanlBlackPrisoners of War

Sekou Odinga #05228 054Sundiata Acolisin Clark Squire #39794 066PO Box 1000Marion, IL 62959

Kuwasi Balagoon #83-A-6216Albert Nuh Washington

#77-A-1528Attica Corr. FacilityPO Box 149Attica, NY 14011

Herman Bell B-79C-262Richard Dhoruba Moore

Drawer B, Greenhaven PrisonStormville, NY 12582

Jalil Abdul Muntaqinsin Anthony Bottom #77A-4283Auburn Corr. FacilityAuburn, NY 13021

Henry Sha Sha BrownFCI, PO Box WOOLewisburg, PA 17837

Ashantisin Michael Alston #28453Box 100Somers, CT 06071

Geronimo Pratt #B40319Tamal, CA 94974

Ruchell Cinque MageeA92051Folsom PrisonRepressa, CA 95671

New AfrikanlBlackPolitical Prisoners

Kalima Aswadsin Robert DurenPO Box 24120Tamal, CA 94974

Heshimu Lloyd Brice#8154908PO Box 5547Santa Clara Main JailSan Jose, CA 95150

Mark CookFederal Prison, Box 1000Leavenworth, KS 66048

Larry GuyJackson State PrisonPO Box EJackson, MI 49204

Basheer Hameed #82A-6313sin James YorkGreat Meadows Corr. FacilityBox 51Comstock, NY 12821

Abdul Majid #83A-483sin Anthony LaBordeDrawer B, Greenhaven PrisonStormville, NY 12582

Larry MackMCC, 150 Park RowNew York, NY 10007

Hugo Pinell A88401Folsom PrisonRepressa, CA 95671

Native AmericanPrisoners of Warand Political Prisoners '

Leonard Peltier #89637-132Standing Deer

PO Box 1000Marion, IL 62959

Rita Silk NauniBox 11492Mable Basset Corr. Inst.Oklahoma City, OK 73136

MexicanPolitical Prisoners

Maria CuetoPO Box 1000Pleasanton, CA 94566

Ricardo RomeroPO Box 1000Bastrop, TX 78602

North AmericanFreedom Fightersand Political Prisoners

Judith Clark #83-G-313247 Harris Rd.Bedford Hills, NY 10507

David Gilbert #83-A-6158Auburn Corr. FacilityAuburn, NY 13021

Silvia Baraldini #05125 024M.C.C., 150 Park RowNew York, NY 10007

Kathy Boudin247 Harris Rd.Bedford Hills, NY 10507

Rita BrownTherese CoupezPO Box 1000Pleasanton, CA 94566

Richard Picariello #05812BoxWLompoc, CA 93438

Vancouver 5Julie BelmasAnn HansenGerry HannahDoug StewartBrent Taylor

Oakalla Prison, Drawer "O"Burnaby, BC V5H3N4 CANADA

-

Fight for the Prisoners!June 1984

Wherever people are confronting imperialism, there are political prisoners andprisoners of war. From the Israeli-run political prison camp at Ansar to theinfamous H-Blocks in Northern Ireland, prisons are used to crush revolution.Yet, from inside the prison walls, the resistance continues to grow.

Although the U.S. denies it, the number of political prisoners and POWs in U.S.prisons is rising. These women and men, captured in combat or imprisoned for po-litical acts of resistance, represent the heart of the struggle. They have re-fused to be buried or isolated, but instead have turned the prisons into anotherfront of resistance. Unable to destroy the FALN and BLA, and faced with thegrowth of armed movements, the U.S. is following closely the policies of its NATOand Latin American clients. By terrorizing these revolutionaries and isolatingthem from their supporters the state hopes to break individuals and deter othersfrom taking up their example.

Political prisoners and POWs are now routinely incarcerated far from theirfamilies and communities. An example of this is the Puerto Rican and Mexicangrand jury resisters who are being sent to prisons in remote areas such as twoon the Canadian border in New York and Minnesota. Health care is denied, althoughprison conditions create severe health crises. Visiting is strictly curtailedand monitored. Mail is restricted and inspected. Puerto Rican POW Carlos Torres,recently moved to Alabama, is allowed to correspond only with six members of hisimmediate family. The prison authorities determine which six. Political prisonersare segregated from general population and most often locked up for 23% hours aday. Puerto Rican POW Alejandrina Torres was locked up in this manner in the malesection of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago where her every movecould be watched by male prisoners and guards.

In Alderson, West Virginia, 7 tiny cubicles have been remodeled in an isolated wingof Davis Hall in the Women's Federal Prison. Each is designed to be the lifetimecell of a Puerto Rican Prisoner of War. Haydee Torres and Lucy Rodriguez are lockedup in two of these sound-proofed cells for 23% hours a day. Three other women POWsexpect to be transferred there soon. Lucy and Haydee are permitted no contact witheach other or any other prisoners. They are allowed a minimal number of visits, foronly two hours at a time. They are always shackled when in the presence of anotherperson. They are given one half hour a day for either exercise or a shower, at thewhim of the guards. They are allowed to receive only 10 books a year. Prison offi-cials have told them that they will be in isolation for the rest of their lives.

When captured in October 1981, New Afrikan freedom fighter and POW Sekou Odingawas methodically beaten and burned with cigarettes in order to extract information.Sekou refused to collaborate, and the torture resulted in severe injury to his pan-creas and a long hospitalization. When he was recently moved from the MCC in MewYork, he was marched down city streets by 100 police, and taken to a waiting heli-copter, flown to Lewisburg Prison and then transferred to Marion and immediatelythrown into the hole.

Marion Federal Prison has been denounced by Amnesty International in its recentreport, "Torture in the 80s." Prisoners there are regularly brutalized and beaten.Here, Leonard Peltier (Gwarth-ee-Lass), a Native American POW, has been on a hungerfast since mid-April. Joined by Standing Deer and Albert Garza, he is demandinghis human right to practice Native American religion. The prison says the sacredpipe and sage are a threat to the security of the prison. Peltier, imprisoned for >•

the alleged shooting of an FBI agent near Wounded Knee in 1973, has been granted anew trial but has declared that there is no way he can prepare for it unless he isallowed to practice the rituals fundamental to Native American life. As a resultof the fast, each man has lost over 50 pounds and Standing Dee>»has lost his sight.

WHAT WE CAN DO:On the outside, we can either be intimidated by this brutality or we can join the

resistance of the prisoners. We can barrage the prisons with letters telling thewardens and guards that the prisoners are not isolated. We can demand through let-ters, telegrams, telephone calls and demonstrations that the psychological andphysical torture of these revolutionaries be stopped.

--There is a telegram campaign demanding that Lucy and Haydee be moved immediatelyto general population. Call and write: Norman Carlson, Director, Bureau of

•Prisons, 320 1st St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20534, phone (202) 633-2000.

—Support is urgently needed for the hunger fast by Leonard, Standing Deer andAlbert Garza at Marion Prison. Write the warden at: Warden Wilford,P.O. Box 1000, Marion, Illinois 62959.

—We must demand that political prisoners be housed in general population,that they be moved close to their families. Puerto Rican POWs have raisedthe demand that they be housed together, under the terms of the GenevaConvention.

FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS AND PRISONERS OF WAR!

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The following are excerpts from a letter from anti-imperialist activists in West Germany who have beenorganizing resistance to the increasing repression ofpolitical prisoners.

The situation of the political prisoners has greatly inten-sified in the last months. Physical attacks and mistreat-ment of the prisoners are increasing. The state is tryingto cut off all communication between the prisoners andwith the outside, and to seal off the cells completely.

We are directly affected by this and are not willing toaccept it. We cannot confront this situation individually,but we want, together with the political prisoners, tobreak through this contact barrier. More and more peopleare doing legal resistance and being imprisoned for it.Many people from demonstrations are simply being keptin jail. In this situation, where imperialism is trying tosolve its crisis with open wars worldwide, a large move-ment against war and war preparations has developed. Inopposition to this, the state poses prison more and moreas a weapon and a threat to repress the resistance. It isimportant for all who are struggling against war andoppression to deal more intensively and offensively withthe struggle of the political prisoners and with the condi-tions of resistance in prison....

THE NEW "ILLEGAL INFORMATION SYSTEM"

Shortly after the arrest of Adelheid Schulz and BrigitteMohnhaupt*, there was a national cell raid arranged bythe Justice Department under top security. Some prison-ers were subjected to "no contact" for days, that is, totallyisolated from each other and the outside; including theirlawyers. Moreover, they were physically brutalized. Thereason for this raid was the well prepared constructionof a new "crime." The goal was to wrap the intensificationin the prisons in a constitutional cloak, to give it moreforce. They now claim that there is an "illegal informationsystem" between the prisoners and us on the outside. As

* Together with Christian Klar, were arrested in 1982 andcharged with being leading members of the Red Army Faction(RAF), a revolutionary armed clandestine organzation operat-ing in West Germany since the early 1970s.

They were accused of participating in numerous attacks onU.S. and NATO facilities as well as the rocket grenade attackon the U.S. commander of NATO forces in Europe, GeneralKroesen.

proof, they seized masses of material on the associationof prisoners together in groups from the cells, such asalready censored letters, newspaper articles, etc. Againthe prisoners were kept for days under the condition ofno contact. Thirty-two prisoners are accused in these pro-ceedings of an "illegal information system," together withpeople on the outside whose houses were searched at thesame time as the cell raids (for example the HamburgInformation on Political Prisoners, comrades in Stuttgartand Frankfurt). They were all charged, inside and outside,with organizing a new "terroristic association" based onthe demand of association of prisoners together in groups.

Three days after the cell raid, our comrade Inge Krobsfrom Frankfurt was arrested. She is a comrade from theanti-imperialist resistance who has for years beeninvolved in the struggle of the political prisoners, writingletters and visiting political prisoners. In her arrest war-rant it stated among other things that she had had contactfor a long time with "RAF" relatives and that she visitsHelga Roos, who is in prison because of supporting a"terrorist group." She is therefore suspected and liable tobe prosecuted for supporting a terrorist organization....

The construction of the "illegal information system"has, in addition to criminalization, very practical conse-quences—letters will be seized, visits will be interrupted,and only in a few cases will leaflets, copies, or speciallysent newspaper articles get through to the prisoners. Wereceive more and more confiscation decrees that this, thator the other letter was sent to the attorney general becauseof the "illegal information system." For several of theprisoners, mail consists only of confiscation decrees. Itis not only the discussion over the association of politicalprisoners in groups that will be blocked, but also allpolitical discussion; for example, the dialogue about thepeace movement, the campaign to stop the bomb trains,Krefeld*, Runway West, etc....

PHYSICAL ATTACKS AND MISTREATMENT

Since the arrest of Brigitte Mohnhaupt, AdelheidSchulz, and Christian Klar, physical torture, openlyexpressed death threats and so-called "house punishment"against the prisoners has increased. An especially clearexample of this is the case of Bernd Rossner. During the

* Militant demonstration against Vice President Bush's visit inJune of 1983.

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Christian Klar in prison. The German secretpolice covered the face of their agent.

raids after the arrest of Adelheid and Brigitte, Bernd wasbrutally beaten and got CS gas sprayed in his face person-ally by security inspector Strohmeier in Straubing. Berndwas one of the first to petition to be put into a group withother political prisoners in February 1983. He wants togo into an already existing group of four political prison-ers in Celle. In response to that, he was brutalized andbeaten in March 1983 by a group of guards in JVA Fran-kenthal, allegedly because he wanted to eat breakfast inhis undershirt. In April, the justice minister of Rheinland-Pfalz announced that Bernd would be returned to Straub-ing where he had been held in isolation for the last fiveyears of his eight years of imprisonment. Because of thishe began a filth strike, which means he began using thefloor of his cell as a toilet. Since the beginning of hisfilth strike Bernd has been locked up in a bunker cell inFrankenthal for five weeks—sometimes with no clock.This is a completely empty, shiny white, neon-lit cellwith no windows and hot air blowing in. After his returnto Straubing in May 1983, Bernd was also in a bunkerthat was kept permanently too cold. Now after fivemonths of his filth strike, Bernd cannot eat solid foodand has therefore broken his strike. He is now in the JVA

hospital. In the beginning of August, Christian Klarjoined the strike, and he has now broken his also. He isalso in Straubing. Bernd was put into the psychiatric wardof the prison, as he was unable to eat and always vomited.That was called a psychosis. Because of the many tele-grams he and the prison officials received from nationalmeetings and groups and the intervention of some doctorsfrom all over the country, he is now back in isolationand no longer on the psychiatric ward....

COMMITMENT TO PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITALS

Before every trial, defendants receive a psychiatricexamination and from this an expert opinion is givenabout their mental health. This has already taken placewith Adelheid Schulz and Rolf Clemens Wagner, whosetrial started in Dusseldorf on Oct. 11, 1983. By thisprocess, which attempts to discredit revolutionary resis-tance and struggle in West Germany, prisoners who sup-port the resistance and struggle would be committed tomental institutions to make resistance appear crazy andmixed-up. The state has already tried to put UlrikeMeinhof, Siegfried Haag and, in the recent past, HelgaRoos in psychiatric wards, but because of the consistentpublic reaction, they were not able to carry out their plans.

PREVENTION OF POLITICAL DEFENSE

This already began years ago with a law which statesthat a lawyer is not allowed to defend more than oneperson charged with the same crime. That means that itis becoming more and more difficult to find lawyers forthe increasing number of trials against the resistance.Some lawyers are not allowed by the courts to take caseson the grounds that they would have to travel too far.This is aimed at the material foundations of the lawyers,making their finances and continuity of defense impossi-ble. A court proceeding has been introduced against thelawyer of Adelheid Schulz, Hanfried Mathies, becauseof his motion for association of Adelheid Schulz withother women prisoners. He already has two civil and onecriminal court proceeding. The new charge is an attemptto silence him as a political defender, and especially forthe trial of Adelheid Schulz. Meanwhile in the "nationalsecurity" trials it became almost obligatory to have apublic defender, whom the defendants did not trust. Thepublic defenders were often political opponents, as in thetrial of Sieglinde Hoffman, whose lawyer was a knownfascist.

THE STRUGGLE AGAINSTISOLATION TORTURE

IS A STRUGGLE FOR THE REVOLUTION

This intensification—especially the construction of anillegal information system—has been going on since the

time when the RAF prisoners and those from the anti-imperialist resistance demanded to be put in groupstogether. These measures are concrete steps from thestate to stifle the prisoners in a political vacuum. Formany prisoners our letters, information that we send, andour visits are their only opportunity for political andhuman contact because under the condition of isolationtorture, all political and human contact is cut off. So theattempt to cut this last connection is a massive attack onthe identity and life of the prisoners.

For us that means an attack on our political connectionsand dialogue with the prisoners, which is important forus. No one is allowed to talk about the existence ofpolitical prisoners, about their conditions, their needs, ordemands. And anybody who does anyway is threatenedwith repression. In the meantime, this fact is alreadysufficient for an arrest warrant.

The state wants the prisoners to be defenseless againstits arbitrariness and repression. At the same time, thisstrategy is being organized against all people who are inthe resistance against oppression and war preparations.The goal is to make our fear of the methods of repression,such as isolation torture, so great that we would no longerhave the courage and determination that we need for thestruggle.

In the last years, the resistance against NATO projectsin West Germany such as Runway West, NATO nuclearpower plants and Euromissiles, has broadened and be-come more offensive and aimed at the right targets. InKrefeld, for example, the various actions from autono-mous anti-imperialist groups and independent peace in-itiatives in the city prevented the German-American peacepropaganda campaign from being carried through. Kre-feld did not become the symbol of war propaganda, butinstead, of our resistance to it. We have more and moreunderstood that we are confronted with the same enemy

BREAKTHROUGH/page 35

and have started to break the split between various move-ments and various levels of resistance. After Krefeld, thestate responded with a whole series of repressive meas-ures that began with the criminalization of the left andanti-imperialist press, then to decrease demonstrationrights, increased arming of the pigs (rubber bullets, etc.),to murderous deportation practices, and the already de-scribed intensification in the prisons. The measuresagainst the political prisoners are now only the tip of therepressive offensive against the entire resistance. Sincethe beginning of 1983, the political prisoners from theRAF and the resistance have been demanding associationtogether in groups. This demand is a conscious step on thepart of the prisoners to struggle for unity and the organiza-tion of revolutionary resistance in prison.

We want the struggle for association of political pris-oners together in groups and our solidarity with all polit-ical prisoners to be a central component in our liberationstruggle, so that prison does not become a hole one fallsinto and then loses connection to the movement, the strug-gle, and life outside. That gives many people much morehope and courage, that the prison walls cannot separateus, because the same struggle goes on inside the prison.

FOR THE ASSOCIATIONOF POLITICAL PRISONERS

FROM THE RAF AND THE RESISTANCETOGETHER IN GROUPS!

FREE POLITICAL INFORMATION ANDDISCUSSION FOR ALL PRISONERS!

Write to the West German government demanding theright of association of political prisoners in groups. Sendletters to: Grussaktion politische Gefangene do GALBartelstr.30, 2000 Hamburg 13.

SUBSCRIBE TO BREAKTHROUGHD Please enter my subscription to Breakthrough beginning with issue .D $6.00/4 issues, regular D 315/yr., institutional. Postage included.

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Please make checks payable to John Brown Book Club, POB 14422, San Francisco, CA 94114Prisoners correspondence and subscriptions should be sent to POB 60542, Los Angeles, CA 90060.

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page 36/BREAKTHROUGH

Hot on the heels of Reagan's "anti-terrorist" crusade,the FBI is back in town. Many people have questionsabout what to do when confronted by the FBI. Here aresome guidelines.

DON'T TALK TO THE FBI!You don't have to. There is no law requiring any of us totalk to an FBI agent, a cop or any other investigator.Every bit of information given to the FBI, no matter howunimportant it might seem, becomes part of their intelli-gence gathering on the movement; a piece of the puzzlethey are fitting together to be used to destroy people andorganizations. Often the FBI comes and says somethinglike, "Your name has come up in the course of an investi-gation into a bombing conspiracy. If you can just answera few questions, we're sure we can clear this up." Thepurpose of statements like these is to catch us off guard, toscare us and get us to talk.

Some people think we can outsmart the FBI, turn theirquestions around and get information from them. Experi-ence has shown that this is dangerous: our questions andanswers often provide insights for the FBI to go on.Likewise, the FBI will try to catch us up if we make state-ments that they can prove are false. When this happensthey can threaten us with perjury charges. The best thingto do is REFUSE TO TALK.

DON'T LET THE FBI INSIDE YOUR HOUSE!

If they come to your door, don't let them inside. If theyget a foot in the door, demand that they leave at once.

DON'TTALKTO THEF.B.I.

Legally they can only enter your home if they have asearch or arrest warrant. If they say they have a warrant,demand to see it and demand to see their I.D. If they wantto ask a few questions, show you pictures of people, askabout who uses your phone, etc. say "No, I have nothingto talk to you about." If you have a lawyer, tell them thatshe/he will contact them. The FBI will try to intimidateyou if sweet talking fails, or vice-versa. This is why wemust be clear and firm in our refusal to cooperate. Some-times they will try to intimidate us by threatening to haveus subpoenaed to a grand jury. However, cooperatingwith the FBI by answering a few questions will not stopanyone from being subpoenaed. It only encourages themto see you as potentially talkative before a grand jury.

Not only are activists being visited by the FBI, but fam-ily members, neighbors and co-workers are being ap-proached as well. Often the FBI will threaten to harass ourparents or friends. These kinds of slimy threats are no-thing new, but still they can present problems. In mostcases, it makes sense to try to educate relatives and friendsbefore the FBI shows up. The FBI's history of dirty tricksis widely known and we can draw on this as we talk topeople.

The government and FBI want to use their fear tactics,lies and spies to put us on the defensive. Now is the timeto build a real wall of resistance, to refuse to be isolated orturned back. The FBI, which was vilified during the1960s, and rejuvenated in the 1970s, must again be thetarget of our contempt and our outrage in 1984.

In Ireland and South Africa, being jailed for nocrime other than one's political beliefs is known asPolitical Internment. It is the same in the United Statesand it is happening right now!

1976: Nine Puerto Rican and Mexican activists werejailed for up to thirteen months for civil contempt. Theyrefused to cooperate with a federal grand jury investigat-ing the Puerto Rican independence movement, in particu-lar looking for the FALN (Fuerzas Armadas de LiberacionNacional).

1981-83: Fifteen New Afrikans and white North Amer-icans were jailed up to eighteen months by a grand juryseeking to capture and destroy the Black Liberation Armyand halt the consolidation of New Afrikan organizations.

1982: Five Puerto Rican and Mexican grand jury resis-ters—Steven Guerra, Julio Rosado, Andres Rosado,Ricardo Romero and Maria Cueto—were arrested simul-taneously in four separate cities by squads of FBI agents.Convicted of criminal contempt, they began servingthree-year prison terms in April 1984. For four of theseactivists, this was their second imprisonment for resistinga grand jury.

1981-83: Carlos Noya, Ricardo Monies Garcia andNorberto Cintron Fiallo, three independentistas fromPuerto Rico, were subpoenaed before a grand jury inBrooklyn and jailed in New York for refusing to testify.They served terms of nine to eighteen months.

1983: After serving his sentence, Carlos Noya was re-subpoenaed along with Norberto's brother, Federico Cin-tron Fiallo. When they refused to testify they werecharged with criminal contempt and brought from PuertoRico to the United States to stand trial. They were con-victed and begin serving two year sentences in June 1984.

1983: Shelley Miller and Silvia Baraldini, two NorthAmerican anti-imperialists, resisted the same grand jury.They were charged with criminal contempt and sentencedto three years.

1984: Pam Fadem, a white anti-imperialist from Austin,Texas, was charged with criminal contempt for resistingthe Puerto Rico grand jury. Her trial was scheduled tobegin in July 1984.

As part of the increasing campaign against so-called"terrorism," the U.S. is jailing activists for refusing tocollaborate with federal grand juries. Grand juries arenow sitting and "investigating" the New Afrikan, PuertoRican and Mexican liberation movements. Twenty peoplefrom the Sanctuary movement are currently under grandjury investigation.

Many people think of the grand jury as an impartialbody that reviews evidence to determine if criminal in-dictments should be issued. But the political grand jury isnothing less than an interrogation center without thebright light. You cannot have a lawyer present. The gov-ernment is not required to inform you of the nature of theinvestigation, or whether you yourself are under investi-gation. There are no limits to the scope of their questions,which you are required to answer under threat of con-tempt. The U.S. attorney is fed the questions by the FBIand every piece of information—however innocent it mayappear—helps the government put together a profile ofthe movement they have under investigation. Through thegrand jury, the State attempts to achieve the following:crush the clandestine movement by using the threat of jailto find someone who will inform; intimidate, harass andcriminalize leaders and supporters of public anti-im-perialist organizations; and gather information on thegrowing movements against war and militarism.

Seeing that the use of civil contempt (which carries amaximum charge of eighteen months or the remaining lifeof the grand jury) wasn't working, the U.S. decided to upthe ante, using the charge of criminal contempt against allthose who refused to comply with subpoenas. This chargewas originally developed for use against the Mafia. It car-ries no determinate sentence, and although defendants aregiven a jury trial, their guilt is a foregone conclusion.

By standing behind those who refuse to collaborate, byrefusing to cooperate in any government investigation, webegin to build an awareness of the State and its repressivegoals. We begin to build a movement capable of defend-ing itself and protecting its clandestine fighters. It is onlywhen we take a united stand that we can hope to defeat thegrand juries.

NO COLLABORATIONWITH THE GRAND JURIES!

FREE ALL GRAND JURY RESISTERS!

Free Leonard Peltier!Free All Political Prisoners and POWs!

"To the people who are struggl-ing for our freedom, I embraceyou and send you all my love andstrength from one of America'smost dreaded concentrationcamps. They can only hold mybody. They will never hold myspirit."

—in the spirit of Crazy Horse

MARION FEDERAL PRISONJune 1984:Gwarth-ee-Lass(Leonard Peltier) andStanding Deer,Native American jPolitical Prisoners,joined byAlbert Garza,on Hunger Fast forReligious Freedom.

SOVEREIGNTY FORNATIVE NATIONS