Free Angela and All Political Prisoners Page #4

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to repress the radical political movement

as they saw it developing.

The Anti-War Movement,

Students for a Democratic Society,

the emergence of the Black Panther Party.

And Angela becomes a symbol of all

of those movements at the same time.

There was no precedent in my life

for this kind of public exposure.

And then, of course,

there were all of the threats.

You know, I was told to go back to Africa,

then I was told to go back to Russia.

And often times, I received

letters saying that

I was gonna be dead by sundown.

And so, my life completely changed.

I bought my first gun

because I really feared that

I might be in a situation where

either the police, or agents

or other people would take my life.

What they're doing to her

is an exaggerated form

of what happens every day

to black people in this country.

And they're saying

to those communities through her

that, you know, people have to

straighten up and fly right

and be good n*ggers, you know?

I think the first thing we have to do

is certainly make sure that we do have

some unity in the black community,

so that when a sister like that stands up,

that they don't wipe her out as one person,

that they have to wipe out

more than one person.

Being a revolutionary,

some of it was just being young

and being romantic and...

I don't know that we had a real idea

of, you know,

how bloody a revolution could really be.

I was involved

in hundreds of peace marches,

and, I mean, peace marches

against the war in Vietnam

that ended up with the

police beating people up

and tear gassing people.

Malcolm X gets assassinated,

you might expect that 'cause he was

talking about the ballot or the bullet.

But Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy.

There was the beginnings of, on both sides,

a sense that this isn't gonna

be settled at the ballot box or in debates.

This is gonna be war.

Los Angeles, four and a half years

after the rebellion in Watts,

300 Los Angeles policemen

are involved in a raging

gun battle for nearly five hours.

They are assaulting an office

of the Black Panther Party,

the most powerful militant

black organization in the country.

It is apparent that the undeclared war

between the police and the Panthers

has reached alarming proportions.

Party members at 30 chapters

across the country

have stockpiled arsenals of

automatic weapons, shotguns, pistols

and homemade bombs.

Vice President Agnew

has called the Panthers,

"A completely irresponsible,

anarchistic group of criminals."

FBI director Hoover has called them,

"The greatest danger to the internal

security of the country."

Did you know that this was gonna happen?

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