Assata: An Autobiography (26 page)

I had begun to think of myself as a socialist, but i could not in any way see myself joining any of the socialist groups i came in contact with. I loved to listen to them, learn from them, and argue with them, but there was no way in the world i could see myself becoming a member. For one thing, i could not stand the condescending, paternalistic attitudes of some of the white people in those groups. Some of the older members thought that because they had been in the struggle for socialism for a long time, they knew all the answers to the problems of Black people and all the aspects of the Black Liberation struggle. I couldn't relate to the idea of the great white father on earth any more than i could relate to the great white father up in the sky. I was willing and ready to learn everything i could from them, but i damn sure was not ready to accept them as leaders of the Black Liberation struggle. A few thought that they had a monopoly on Marx and acted like the only experts in the world on socialism came from Europe. In many instances they downgraded the theoretical and practical contributions of Third World revolutionaries like Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Augustino Neto, and other leaders of liberation movements in the Third World.

Another thing that went against my grain was the arrogance and dogmatism i encountered in some of these groups.

A member of one group told me that if i was really concerned about the liberation of Black people i should quit school and get a job in a factory, that if i wanted to get rid of the system i would have to work at a factory and organize the workers. When i asked him why he wasn't working in a factory and organizing the workers, he told me that he was staying in school in order to organize the students. I told him i was working to organize the students too and that i felt perfectly certain that the workers could organize them selves without any college students doing it for them. Some of these groups would come up with abstract, intellectual theories, totally devoid of practical application, and swear they had the answers to the problems of the world. They attacked the Vietnamese for participating in the Paris peace talks, claiming that by negotiating the Viet Cong were selling out to the u.s. I think they got insulted when i asked them how a group of flabby white boys who couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag had the nerve to think they could tell the Vietnamese people how to run their show.

Arrogance was one of the key factors that kept the white left so factionalized. I felt that instead of fighting together against a com mon enemy, they wasted time quarreling with each other about who had the right line.

Although i respected the work and political positions of many groups on the left, i felt it was necessary for Black people to come together to organize our own structures and our own revolutionary political party. Friendship is based on respect. As long as much of the white left saw their role as organizing, educating, recruiting, and directing Black revolutionaries, i could not see how any real friendship could occur. I felt, and still feel, that it is necessary for Black revolutionaries to come together, analyze our history, our present condition, and to define ourselves and our struggle. Black self-determination is a basic right, and if we do not have the right to determine our destinies, then who does? I believe that to gain our liberation, we must come from the position of power and unity and that a Black revolutionary party, led by Black revolutionary leaders, is essential. I believe in uniting with white revolutionaries to fight against a common enemy, but i was convinced that it had to be on the basis of power and unity rather than from weakness and unity at any cost.

TO MY MOMMA

To my momma,
who has swallowed the amerikan dream
and choked on it.

To my momma,
whose dreams have fought each other-
and died.

Who sees,
but cannot bear to see.
A volcano eating its own lava.

To my momma, who couldn't turn
hell into paradise
and blamed herself.
Who has always seen
reflected in her mirror
an ugly duckling.

To my momma,
who makes no demands of anyone
cause she don't think she can afford to.
Who thinks her money talks
louder than her womanhood.

To my butchfem momma,
who has always
taken care of business.
Who has never drifted
hazily to sleep
thinking, "he will take care of it."
Who has schemed so much
she sometimes schemes against herself.

To my sweet, shy momma.
Who is uneasy with people
cause she don't know how
to be phony,
and is afraid to be real.

Who has longed for sculptured gardens.
Whose potted plant
dies slowly on the window sill.

We have all been infected
with a sickness
that can be traced back
to the auction block.

You must not feel guilty
for what has been done to us.
Only the strong go crazy.
The weak just go along.

And what i thought was cruelty,
I understand was fear
that hands, stronger than yours,
and whiter than yours,
would strangle my young life
into oblivion.

Momma, i am proud of you.
I look at you
and see the strength of our people.
I have seen you struggle
in the dark;
the world beating on your back,
dragging your catch
back to our den.
Pulling your pots and pans out
to cook it.
A mop in one hand.
A pencil in the other,
marking up my homework
with your love.

The injured have no blame.
Let it fall on those who injure.

Leave the past behind
where it belongs-
and come with me
toward tomorrow.

I love you mommy
cause you are beautiful,
and i am life that springs from you:
part tree, part weed, part flower.

My roots run deep.
I have been nourished well.

I am at school when i hear about it. Electric shocks are zooming down my back the way they do when i am about to go temporarily insane. On the train, headed uptown, i am ready to riot. I am having daymares on the subway, imagining myself with a long knife slashing slits in white sheets. Ku Klux Klan blood is spilling. You wanna look like a ghost, you wanna look like a ghost, my mind keeps chanting, you wanna look like a ghost, well, i'll make you one. Sitting on the subway, bloody fantasies. I look out of my daymare. Nobody is moving. Everybody screams. Everybody has a frozen face. The train is slowing down. Everybody is tensely looking at the door. I25th Street. I am going to a riot. I want to kill someone.

Martin Luther King has been murdered.

The street wakes me up. There is no blood yet. Everybody is getting into position. The wind is blowing rumors. The people are waiting. The streets are rumbling. The tanks are coming. The natives are rest less. The tanks will quiet the natives. The tanks are coming. I feel absurd and impotent.

Who am i going to attack? Where is a George Lincoln Rockwell? I am ready to kill him. He will get a chance to utter exactly two syllables before i cut him off. He isn't there. Only the rumors and the rumble of the tanks and the waiting. The store windows are filled with shit. You can't exchange Martin Luther King for shit in the store window. Smashing windows will do me no good. I am beyond that. I want blood. The tanks are waiting to crush the resistance, squelch the disturbance. It crosses my mind: i want to win. I don't want to rebel, i want to win. The revolution will not be televised on the six o'clock news. I have to get myself ready. Revolution. The word has me going.

I am back on the subway. Nobody is looking at anybody. I think i have my period. Sweat is rolling down my legs. I go home. My mother is glad to see me. She knows that i am half crazy. The television is wet with crocodile tears. REBELLION, REBELLIOUS CHILDREN, TEMPER TANTRUMS, REBELLION, REVOLUTION. I like the word.

The grim reapers are abuzz. Reports about the natives. They are excited. This is the stuff that news is made of. We are looking at each other. Impassioned speeches sizzle on their tongues, causing sour ashes to fall from our mouths. We are just sitting there. I am thinking about revolution. The tonic. Abstract. Revolution. I am tired of watching us lose. They kill our leaders, then they kill us for protesting. Protest. Protest. Revolution. If it exists, i want to find it. Bulletins. More bulletins. I'm tired of bulletins. I want bullets.

While i was going to CCNY, after i graduated from Manhattan Community College, i decided to get married. My husband was politically conscious, intelligent, and decent, and our affair was frantic, high-pitched, and charged with emotion. Somehow, i believed that our shared commitment to the Black Liberation struggle would result in a "marriage made in heaven." I spent most of my time at school, meetings, or demonstrations and whenever i was at home my head was usually stuck in some book. It was unthinkable to allow more than five minutes on mundane things like keeping house or washing dishes. To complicate matters, my husband's ideas about marriage stemmed mostly from his parents' life, where his mother was the homemaker and his father was the breadwinner. Spaghetti was about the only thing i could cook, and he was profoundly shocked to learn i had none of his mother's domestic skills. After a while, it became clear to me that i was about as ready to be married as i was to grow wings and fly. So after a confused and unhappy year, we decided we made much better friends than marriage partners and called it quits.

I decided to go to California. It was becoming increasingly clear to me that, although it was important for students to participate in the struggle, no revolution had ever been won by students alone. Struggling around school issues had narrowed my perspective and i was getting bogged down. I wanted to expand that struggle to the Black community. At that time California, especially the Bay area, was where everything was happening. Some of my favorite professors were going out West for the summer and they offered to hook me up with a place to stay. As usual, i was flat broke, but a good friend gave me the money to make the trip, with a little spending change thrown in.

My friends found a place for me in Berkeley, the most radical, progressive place i had ever been in. Revolutionary posters were plastered all over the walls, along with "people's murals." The fronts of banks and other official buildings were bricked up as a result of the demonstrations and street fighting that followed the People's Park struggles. Red stars and Mao's Red Book were sold on street corners, and food cooperatives sold health food at cheap prices. People's collectives were dedicated to surviving, struggling, and teaching. I was impressed with the kinds of informal solutions they had cooked up to deal with the problems they faced, and i enrolled in the practical skills classes they gave (printing and layout, first aid, etc.).

There were books and pamphlets in the San Francisco and Berkeley bookstores i had never seen in New York, and for the first time i read the theory of urban guerrilla warfare as outlined by Che Guevara, Carlos Mariguella, and the Tupamaros. I had been more aware of imperialism in Vietnam or Cambodia, and the extent of u.s. imperialism in South and Central America surprised me. The u.s. government had invaded more than fifteen countries there, not once or twice but in some cases more than ten times, and the guerrilla movements were waging armed struggle in most of them. Reading about guerrilla warfare in South America and Vietnam was one thing, but thinking in terms of guerrilla war inside the u.s. was another.

Back then, people used the word "revolution" just because it sounded hep. Half the time what they were really talking about was change or some kind of vague progress. Some meant a separate Black nation, and others dealt with Black revolution as part of an overall revolution waged by whites, Hispanics, Orientals, Native Americans, and Blacks. Malcolm said it meant bloodshed and land. To me, the revolutionary struggle of Black people had to be against racism, capitalism, imperialism, and sexism and for real freedom under a socialist government. But the reality of achieving it seemed a long way off.

In Berkeley and San Francisco, the revolution didn't seem too far away. A lot of white radicals, hippies, Chicanos, Blacks, and Asians were ready to get down. But i hadn't forgotten the hardhats and the rednecks and the bible belt and the so-called middle amerikans who had elected Nixon. I couldn't imagine the “new left" talking to those people, much less organizing them and changing their minds. I decided the only way i would come up with some answers was to keep on studying and struggling. I didn't know how half of what i was studying would fit in, but i figured it would all come in handy some day. I read about guerrilla warfare and clandestine struggle without having the faintest idea that one day i would go underground. It's kind of funny when i think about it, because reading all that stuff probably has saved my life a million times.

As part of my first aid skills class, i worked as an assistant to a doctor who volunteered once a week at Alcatraz. At the time, Alcatraz had been taken over by Native Americans who were protesting against a long series of broken treaties, genocidal policies, and racist exploitation. Alcatraz symbolized the strength and dignity of Indian people as well as their resolve to fight to preserve their cultural traditions. I enjoyed everything about going there except the trip. The doctor was a motorcycle fanatic who insisted on zooming across the Golden Gate Bridge on that thing, with me hanging on for dear life. Once on the other side we would jump into a rickety little boat with water in the bottom and limp across the bay to the island. By the time we got there i felt as if i had done a day's work.

The first thing that hit me was the spirit of the people. I felt the tremendous pride, tremendous determination, and tremendous calm from the time i landed on the island until the time i left. They were Native Americans from all over North America, including Canada, from different tribes and backgrounds. They were young and old. Little babies wiggled in their mother's arms, and one old man who had spent many years in Alcatraz prison said that when he arrived on the island he had taken a sledgehammer and reduced the cell he had once been locked in to rubble. The prison, one of the most infamous and sadistic ever to exist, loomed in the back ground.

There were many different Indian nations, each with its own rich culture, religious traditions, history, and folklore. Everybody was into learning and teaching each other their own history and culture. It was a surprise to find out how many Native Americans had been raised in cities and knew nothing about who they were. In that respect, they were very similar to Black people. Most of them were from the West Coast, and so i told them about the Indian Museum and the Museum of Natural History in New York. Suddenly, i stopped short. I wondered how i would feel going into some museum and seeing the houses and stolen artifacts of my people stuck away in some exhibition hall. As i spoke i realized that most of the "history" i had been taught about the Indians was probably lies invented by the white man.

It wasn't until later, for instance, that i learned that scalping was an old European custom. In the 1700s, the state of Massachusetts was paying the equivalent of $60 for a scalp and Pennsylvania paid $134. It wasn't until more than a hundred years later, in response to the massive genocide at the hands of whites, that the Indians themselves started scalping. None of the little museum exhibits featuring tepees and feather headdresses had ever mentioned how men, women, and children were mowed down at Wounded Knee or how the u.s. army had purposely given the Indians smallpox-infected blankets. As i listened to those sisters and brothers at Alcatraz i realized that the true history of any oppressed people is impossible to find in history books.

I will always be grateful for having had the opportunity to visit Alcatraz. I will never forget the quiet confidence of the Indians as they went about their lives calmly, even though they were under the constant threat of invasion by the FBI and the u.s. military. They didn't fit into any of my preconceived notions or the stereotyped images shown on TV and in the movies. They were really open with me and, after a while, we talked about the struggle in general. They had many of the same problems we had: education, organizing the people to struggle, and raising consciousness. They damn sure had the same enemy, and they were doing as bad as we were, if not worse. They told me to check out Akwasasne when i returned to New York. It was a territory they had liberated on the border between New York and Canada. I told them if they ever came to New York they should visit me and check out Harlem. "Sure. When are you going to liberate it?" they asked.

There were a million groups in the Bay area i wanted to check out. There was so much activity i would have had to spend twenty-eight hours a day just to keep up with it all. Someone i was studying with arranged for me to hook up with the Brown Berets, a Chicano group that had been started recently in California and Texas. It was a brief meeting since the brother with whom i had the appointment had to be on the move. He ran down to me some of the conditions they were dealing with and some of the work they were doing. I had always thought of the Chicano movement as a rural rather than an urban one. Most of the information we had received was about the Chicano farmworkers' struggle and people like Cesar Chavez fight ing to organize them and abolish the unbearable living conditions and slave wages they were forced to work for. I was not aware that Chicanos in the city were fighting against unemployment, police brutality, and inferior schools, just like Black people. In the same way that the Black Panther Party was trying to organize and politicize street gangs in Chicago, the Brown Berets wanted to politicize Chicano street gangs in Los Angeles. The brother also told me that they had been doing a lot of work around Los Siete de las Razas, seven Chicano brothers who had been accused of killing a San Francisco policeman. (They were later acquitted.) I wanted to rap some more about this case because i was seeing the same pattern everywhere-sisters and brothers being locked up all over the country, accused of killing pigs or of conspiring to. The brother had to run, though. We promised that we would hook up again, but it never happened.

Next i wanted to check out the Red Guard, a group of young revolutionary brothers and sisters who were struggling in Chinatown, San Francisco. I was especially anxious to meet up with them because it was so hard to get information about them back East. The West Coast has the largest Asian population in the country and i really wanted to get a good idea about what was going on in the Asian communities. A lot of people think Asians do not experience racism, that they are professionals and business owners, unaware that many are poor and oppressed.

Finding the Red Guard was not at all easy. Half the people i ran into had never heard of them, and the other half only had a minimal knowledge of who they were and what they were all about. Someone gave me an address and since i didn't have the faintest idea where it was, i got a brother to drive me over to Chinatown to look for their headquarters. We ended getting lost and never did find the address. Instead, we ended up eating at a Chinese restaurant and getting into a big debate. He couldn't understand why a Black woman wanted to hook up with Chinese revolutionaries in the first place: "ain't nobody gonna free Black folks but Black folks"; "those Chinese don't give a damn about you and me. All they care about is their own people and what's going on in China." I told him that i thought there were a whole lot of us in the same predicament and that the only way we were going to get out of it was to come together and break the chains. The brother looked at me as if i was spouting empty rhetoric. Some of the laws of revolution are so simple they seem impossible. People think that in order for something to work, it has to be complicated, but a lot of times the opposite is true. We usually reach success by putting the simple truths that we know into practice. The basis of any struggle is people coming together to fight against a common enemy.