SomeThoughts on Repression

On December 4, 1969, Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were gunned down in their sleep in a massive military-style raid executed by Chicago cops. I only heard about it a couple of days later, as I had just arrived in Cuba with the first Venceremos Brigade. Some of us talked regretfully about being stuck in the Caribbean for the next two months when stuff was starting to break loose back in the belly of the beast. Hey, we were young.

Every December 4, thousands of us of a certain age think of Brother Fred and of how the pigs murdered him because he was a dynamic leader of the oppressed.

I’ve been thinking about him today with Oaxaca in mind. Last night I heard filmmaker Tami Gold and some very recently returned global justice activists report. The situation is dire. 17 activists and bystanders have been killed and more than 150 arrested or disappeared in the last 10 days. Teachers union leaders, back at work, are being grabbed in the classroom and carted off. Bloody reaction is gaining the upper hand.

While it is true that the Mexican government would rather not suffer international attention or even anger, there are alternatives that the Mexican ruling class finds far less acceptable. I’ve spent the last few months being irked as hell at some here in the US who celebrated the popular uprising led by APPO as an invincible revolutionary upsurge. Wake up—they are in one city and armed, as the showdown with the Federal Preventive Police and PAN vigilantes unfolded, with slings, molotovs and some cheap handguns! I fear many more may die as Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz and the Federales crack down and take revenge, and the movement begins the difficult task of adjusting and consolidating under conditions of “normalcy” and fearsome repression.

And if they think their interests demand it, the rich and powerful here will gun down as many as they need to—and jail more. The BPP lost many more cadre to the criminal “justice” system than police bullets. Some are still in jail. Today, with far less attention from liberals or the left, dozens of young activists in the ecology movement and the animal rights movement are facing—and serving!--fearsome sentences. Check out the Day in Support of the Green Scare Indictees slated for December 7. There’s probably an event happening near you.