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Statements By The Defendants

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Parent Issue
Month
February
Year
1971
OCR Text

Statements by the Defendants

"We will resist...until the world is brought joyously back the reality."

Statement #1 by John Sinclair, Chairman, W.P.P.

There are a lot of issues involved in this trial, very important issues which relate not only to the White Panther Party but to all revolutionary organizations involved in the liberation struggles against the octopus of Amerikan imperialism. In the past two days, during our most recent pre-trial hearings, we learned of some new developments in the government's strategy which only confirmed once and for all our original analysis--that the U.S. Just-us Dept. is using this trial as an attempt to smash the White Panther Party before we can reach our full maturity as a revolutionary organization.

Dig this: Attorney General John N. "Porky" Mitchell submitted an affidavit in our case to explain why the wiretap transcripts of some of the Minister of Defense's conversations couldn't be revealed to the defense of the people. In this document Porky Pig stated that:

"The defendant Plamondon has participated in conversations which were overheard by government agents who were monitoring wiretaps which were being employed to gather intelligence information deemed necessary to protect the nation from attempts of domestic organizations to attack and subvert the existing structure of the government."

Wow! What does this gobbledegook mean? It's hard to understand these pigs when they start oinking in their foul tongue--the language of total bureaucracy and death--but what Porky is trying to say is that the White Panther Party is a "threat to national security" which the "existing structure of the government" is deathly afraid of!

This is really far out, but it just reinforces something we started to learn in Chicago in 1968 and which has been driven home over and over again ever since the Nixon-led reactionaries took over later that year--THE PIG POWER STRUCTURE TAKES US FAR MORE SERIOUSLY THAN WE TAKE OURSELVES! Or I should say, than we have IN THE PAST taken ourselves, because we are finally starting to learn what this whole struggle is about, and how big a part the rebellion in the youth colony plays in the overall world revolutionary drama.

When we started the White Panther Party in the fall of 1968, just after the Chicago stomp scene, we had almost no political consciousness at all--it was almost like a joke to us, a high-energy doped-out Yippie-istic joke but a weird trip none the less. We didn't even know what a party WAS, but it sure sounded good and we had to do SOMETHING in response to the increasing police/state repression that was coming down on us specifically and on all our brothers and sisters in the developing youth colony. We were truly inspired by the work of Huey P. Newton and the incredible high-energy writing of Eldridge Cleaver, and we knew our people needed a strong image to identify with as the struggle against our life culture intensified. So we changed our name from Trans-Love Energies, which evolved out of the acid innocence of the beautiful first blooming of our culture as a mass phenomenon, to the White Panther Party, which we meant to put our "cultural revolution" into context of resistance against politically-motivated repression.

During the early days and months of our Party's existence, when Pun, Skip, Jack and myself were still on the street working with the powerful sisters and brothers of the Party and the masses of the people of the youth colony, we failed to develop any real political consciousness, any knowledge of revolutionary history and revolutionary theory, because we were still fucked up behind our years of conditioning in the pig schools and we were too busy working with the people to get down and STUDY. We knew that the shit was coming down on all of us harder every day, but we really didn't understand WHY is was happening like that--we kinda thought it was just arbitrary, just a mistake, you know? And we tried to deal with it as best we could, which wasn't well enough because we couldn't stop the octopus from ripping me off, and then ripping Pun off, and Skip and Jack, and party workers all over the country. We still thought we were just a bunch of maniac rock and roll dope fiends who just wanted to have a good time and wanted ALL the people to be able to have a good time. We still couldn't really understand why these pigs wouldn't let us alone, why they wouldn't stop fucking with young people, black people, oppressed people all over the world. It was just too weird to believe.

It was only when I got locked up in the penitentiary and started to study that I began to understand what was happening and WHY it was happening. I began to realize just how much of a threat our culture posed to the international octopus of Amerikan imperialism, how we threatened its very existence, how our life culture, properly organized and developed along its highest and purest lines, could bring total death to the death culture and total freedom to the people of the world. THE GOVERNMENT KNEW IT ALL ALONG, and it was determined to crush us before we found out how strong we really were.

Woodstock brought it all home to us though, and the Mobilization in Washington on Moratorium Day, and the ice-cold premeditated murder of Mark Clark and Fred Hampton in Chicago, and the massacre of our brothers and sisters at Kent State, and then when Pun was put on the 10 Most Wanted List of the FBI the whole deal was clear to me--we ARE a threat to the "existing structure of the government," only we ourselves weren't aware of it! They HAD to stomp us out before we could get ourselves together, or we would become so powerful--not just the White Panther Party, but ALL of us--that the octopus couldn't stop us from joining with liberation fighters all over the world and cutting off its slimy tentacles one by one.

It's too late for that now. We know what we're doing, and we cannot be stopped. The spirit of the people is far stronger than the pig's technology, and we will resist and resist until the octopus fantasy of the U.S. ruling clique is totally smashed and the world is brought joyously back to reality. Locking us up only makes us stronger and gives us the much-needed opportunity to study and grow stronger. Even our deaths, as brother Che told us on the way out, will only raise the people's consciousness and bring the end of the death culture nearer.

This trial is a powerful weapon in the hands of the people--already it is enabling us to expose the vicious CIA conspiracy to the people and to heighten the people's consciousness of the seriousness of the struggle. We will fight the octopus monster on all fronts, and we will surely defeat it! WE WILL NOT SUBMIT TO FASCISM, NOW OR ANYTIME, IN ANY FORM, AND WE WILL WIN OUR FREEDOM--THE FREEDOM OF ALL PEOPLE ON THE PLANET! ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE! STOP THE CIA CONSPIRACY! REVOLUTION IS THE WAY TO LIFE!! VENCEREMOS!!

Wayne County Jail

January, 1971

Year of the Youth

Statement #2

There are a number of secondary issues involved in this trial which we have not dealt with sufficiently since we have heretofore concentrated on the primary issue, which we have defined as the government's strategy of smearing the WPP and characterizing us as irresponsible terrorists and anarchists. But it is important to investigate these secondary contradictions in order to understand exactly what is going on.

Once more, the primary contradiction is the contradiction between the government's characterization of the White Panther Party as an illegal secret conspiracy which plans and carries out bombings, and the reality of the WPP, which is that we are a disciplined political party engaged in legal political work to serve the people of the youth colony. The government contends that Pun Plamondon, Jack Forrest and myself conspired with David Valler to blow up the Ann Arbor CIA office; the WPP insists that no such conspiracy existed nor, due to the reactionary, anarchist motivation of Valler, could it possible have existed.

We have spoken to this point at some length, but we haven't yet explored the substantial secondary contradictions involved in this case. Let me try to explain these secondary issues now: (1) David Valler has confessed to his responsibility not only for the CIA bombing but for a whole series of what he calls "anti-establishment" bombings; he has admitted his guilt not only in the courtroom but in the pages of the fascist organ The Detroit News. Yet David Valler was given a 2-5 year sentence in Recorder's Court (the original charge carried a 25-year maximum prison term), which runs concurrently with his previous 7-10 year sentence for narcotics violations. And he has not even been CHARGED in the Federal (CIA) Conspiracy Trial.

(2) Jack Forrest was originally charged as Valler's partner in the State Conspiracy-to-bomb case; Valler and the rest of his cohorts pled guilty, but Jack maintained his innocence and had the state charges against him DROPPED completely last year. Yet it is Jack Forrest and not David Valler who is on trial in the CIA Conspiracy Trial.

(3) I am presently serving a 9 1/2 - 10 year sentence for possession of two marijuana cigarettes. Not only is David Valler, who was originally charges with selling large quantities of marijuana and LSD, serving a less severe sentence for the same "crime", but the maximum sentence I can receive IF CONVICTED of the CIA Conspiracy is only 5 years, or half of what I got for possessing two joints! The conclusion which must be drawn from this contradiction is that it's twice as dangerous to the public "health, safety and welfare" to possess two joints as it is to conspire to blow up a CIA recruiting office! Right on!

(4) Thirteen people were originally charged in the State Conspiracy-to-bomb charge, which included in the indictment and information the CIA bombing. David Valler was both named by the judge and himself admitted that he was the "ringleader" of this conspiracy. Of these 13 people 12 either pled guilty to reduced charges (with Valler, with his 2-5 year sentence, receiving the only penitentiary time) or snitched on each other; the 13th was Jack Forrest, who maintained his innocence and finally had the charges against him dropped. NEITHER PUN PLAMONDON NOR MYSELF WERE NAMED AS PART OF THIS ORIGINAL CONSPIRACY, which INCLUDED the CIA bombing; yet we are named as the PRINCIPALS in the Federal case, along with Jack Forrest.

(5) In the "wave of anti-establishment bombings" admittedly planned and executed by David Valler and his cohorts and to which they have already pled guilty, the CIA bombing fell in the middle -- there were at least two bombings AFTER the CIA explosion, both of which were ad-

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mittedly carried out by Valler et al. Yet this ONE CASE has been singled out and assigned to Pun, Jack, and myself.

(6) Finally, the most serious secondary contradiction is that the government denies that this is a political prosecution against the WPP; yet the people WHO ACTUALLY PLANNED AND CARRIED OUT A WHOLE SERIES OF BOMBINGS were let off with probation, misdemeanor sentences, or prison sentences (Valler) which is in effect no sentence at all. They were let off like this because they had no political consciousness, no political affiliations with revolutionary organizations, and no commitment to revolutionary change through serving the people and making the revolution. All of them "repented" their involvement in Valler's conspiracy and grovelled before the pigs in fear and trembling.

Only Pun, Jack and myself have been charged, without objective basis, because we have been active in the White Panther Party, serving in positions of leadership and dedicating ourselves to the cause of the people. Thus we represent a threat to the U.S. government which has nothing to do with anarchistic actions like blowing up individual police cars and other symbolic targets. We represent a threat to the government because we are committed to the abolition of capitalism and its institutions and we manifest our commitment in protracted daily community work among the people of the youth colony.

A few individual bombings, no matter the targets, do not represent a problem for the U.S. government; what DOES threaten its security is revolutionary organization, education, and people's service work. Tactical bombings have meaning only when they are accompanied by the intensive political education of the masses, not when they are done by crazed individualists who, like David Valler, do it because they think it's "hip" or because it will gain them personal notoriety and fame.

***

It is important that we clarify one more point in regard to the charges brought against Pun, Jack, and myself. This concerns the party's position on bombings and other acts of armed propaganda carried out against imperialist installations within the mother country. As suggested above, such acts of revolutionary violence are effective only when they are carried out within a framework of mass political education, so that the broad masses of the people can understand the purpose of these acts and how they advance the causes of the people. For if the masses are not educated as to the political significance of such acts by revolutionary freedom fighters they will succumb to the government's reactionary propaganda and see the actions as being AGAINST their best interests, and the revolutionaries as their enemies.

In the past two or three years as the struggle has intensified and the issues have become more clearly defined for the participants, there has been a serious lack of effective educational work among the masses as far as the bombings are concerned, and thus the broad masses have come to feel that counter-revolutionary buffoons like David Valler are typical of the armed propagandists. This false image has been promoted by the government as part of its overall strategy to discredit the revolutionary movement in Babylon and turn the masses against the revolution. This  is the situation we must correct if we are to make the revolution, because we must win the support of the masses and teach them that we are their true friends while the government and the imperialist system it fronts for is their real enemy. In this respect we have failed so far, and it is time now to correct our mistakes and go forth to educate the people. Revolution is the way to life!

All Power to the People!

Life to the Life Culture!

Death to the Death Culture!

Stop the CIA Conspiracy!!

VENCEREMOS!!

Wayne County Jail

January, 1971