Aplicación de Políticas (W AN Seriales, Red MPLS)

When the higher court overturned Judge Sherwin's decision to release Eldridge from the Vacaville State Prison Facility, and Eldridge was informed that he had to go back to prison, I guess he must have made up his mind right then that he just wasn't going back. He stated in speeches that he wasn't going back. He knew that they were planning to kill him there. I also think that he felt that we didn't want him to go to prison. And I didn't. I was always opposed to it.

Eldridge never would say anything about what he was doing. All of us were hoping we could work out something legally to keep Eldridge from going to prison. We were really hoping for the State Supreme Court decision to come down in favor of Eldridge. But in those days before he left, Eldridge was in another big dispute with the state and with Ronald Reagan concerning the lectures he had been hired to give on "Racism in America" at the University of California.

Between early September and November 27, 1968, Eldridge spoke on college campuses up and down the State of California, to 3,000, 5,000, and 10,000 people at various homes. There are eighteen state colleges and nine university campuses in California alone, and he was speaking not only in California but also on other campuses all over the country. He had students cussing out Ronald Reagan by the thousands. The students were opposed to Reagan because of the rotten, underhand politics of the rich men who were directing him. Eldridge was telling it to the students and they were beginning to understand the truth about politics. Eldridge said, "I've cussed my way all across this country and back again. These pigs are really scared of what I'm saying. They're scared because the people are listening. They've got to shut me up, and they know the only way they can do that is to put me in prison again, and kill me there. They think I'm going to go back to that goddam prison," he said, "but I'm not going."

"Eldridge," I said, "if you decide you're going to split - don't tell me. Just split. You've done what was needed. You've got us all cussing out these dogs, and they've been needing cussing out for a long time. But it's been an issue, you know. Brother Huey P. Newton has said that we shouldn't cuss."

"I know, man," Eldridge said. "I guess I should try to obey what the Minister of Defense says. But they got Huey isolated, he's been down almost a year. Somebody's gotta cuss these pigs out for doing that to Huey!"

Huey always said that the older people in the community wouldn't understand the cursing. He felt that that kind of language would cause the older people, especially the mothers, to misunderstand the real program of the Black Panther Party. So one day I asked my own mother about that.

"Mother," I said, "what do you think about Eldridge?"

She said, "Ooh, I think Eldridge is beautiful. He's one of the best persons around." She told me she voted for Eldridge for President. After voting for all those Democrats and

Republicans for all these years, she voted for Eldridge Cleaver.

I said, "Mama, I love you. You're really seeing the revolution in your late days." Mama's about sixty.

"Well, I like everything that Eldridge is saying," she said. "And he's right. He's telling them the truth. But I wish he wouldn't cuss so much."

I said, "I hope that don't turn you off."

"Oh, no, it sure doesn't," she said. "I just always wanted y'all to do right, and I know you're doing right. I understand your getting mad sometimes at the way these" - she hesitated for a moment, and then went on and said it - "these racist pigs - the way they treat us and all our people."

Mama was always a Christian woman. She never talked hate or cursed the oppressors. But she said, "I hate the way they do. I just hate the way they murdered Bobby Hutton. I just hate them for being ol' low-down nasty dogs. They been treating us like this for so many years, just mauling over our people, killing and stomping on our people. Eldridge Cleaver is a very beautiful person and he's got a very beautiful and wonderful wife. I respect him. I understand why he cusses those low-down politicians out. Still, I do wish he'd stop cussin' just a little bit."

I said, "But are you with us, Mama, in spite of it?"

She said, "Oh, yes, Bobby, I'm with y'all, I'll always be with you, because I know you're doin' right. Way back yonder, in the days when my mama was just mauled over, and our peoples was owned like animals, I remember my mother tellin' me that we shouldn't have to be over here in this country treated like we was, and that somehow or other we should be back over in Africa."

"Mama," I said, "you know we ain't ever going back to Africa. We can't."

"Sure. I know that," she said. "I'm just telling you what my mother felt. But also I know that you and Huey used to talk about Africa and going back, and visiting over there and so on, a long time ago. I guess all our people sort of dream like that, even you young generation. But I know y'all all are trying to do what you can, and I just hope nobody hurts y'all. But if y'all can just do something for the people - "

She sighed. "I'm old now," she said. "I wish I was young. I'd get right out there with you and Huey and Kathleen and Eldridge and all of you. But I'm old, and I just can't be in the

Panthers, can't do your young ways. But I sure voted for Eldridge Cleaver."

Of course, being my mother, she was bound to take our part and be on our side. But I hope that she was telling it the way a lot of older mothers felt. I hope they understand that when we cuss those politicians out, we're not cussing out our people. It's only against the power structure, and never shows disrespect of the people. We're honestly calling them what they are for messing over us. I hope the mothers understand what we feel against those who maintain this exploitation, this rotten capitalism and racism, the brutality, and all the

political, economic, and social evils. I hope these older people know that we have to stand up for ourselves.

Some of them have said, "Well, you wouldn't be getting attacked if you didn't say 'pigs' and all." but we point out to them that our people have always been attacked and now we have to let other people know what these racist pigs are. We have to redefine them for exactly what they are and stop letting them fool us. And mostly, I think, the older people do understand and are for us.

Well, Huey wanted the people to understand the real ten-point platform and program, so Eldridge, in his position as Minister of Information, was laying it on thick, but with a creativity and a sense of humour that was only Eldridge's.

I remember one evening Eldridge was due to speak on Channel 44, a television station in San Francisco, on some talk show. I had arrived at the station first, and they led me back to one of those rooms with mirrors on the wall, with stools and chairs to sit in and wait for the program to come on.

In came one of the guys who direct or produce that show. He said, "Look, tell Eldridge please, please do not do any cussing on the program. It's live."

"Well, I don't know," I told him. "You know how Eldridge is. He just gets so fed up with these politicians . . ."

When Eldridge arrived, I said, "Huey said he'd be watching this, so I don't think you ought to be cussing on the program. Besides," and I couldn't help laughing, "this ol' jive producer came by here, and he was really worried about you cussin' on the program. After all, it's live."

Then Eldridge jumped up and said, "What! What! They can't tell me what not to say! I'm gonna cuss all of them, every avaricious businessman, every pig, every last one of them who has ever committed brutality on black people. That's what I oughta do, Bobby." He went on, saying, "I gotta do it, I gotta do it," but actually he was kidding of course, putting them all uptight. He didn't say one cuss word on the program.

But one time Eldridge and David had just come back from a series of speaking engagements, across the country, and David told me, "Man, that Eldridge. You just wouldn't believe that cat. He was at a Catholic girls college, a place where they train girls to be nuns, and, Bobby, he had 5,000 girls singing. 'Fuck Ronald Reagan.'"

"I just don't believe that, David," I said. "He must have been blowing some heavy politics to get them to see it."

David said, "He was exposing the politicians for what they are, man. He was exposing them ninety miles an hour. He was talking about the pigs something terrible! The next thing I knew, right in the middle of the speech, Eldridge had 5,000 chicks out there singing: 'Fuck Ronald Reagan! Fuck Ronald Reagan! One, two, three, four: Fuck Ronald Reagan! Fuck Ronald Reagan! One, two, three, four: Fuck Ronald Reagan.' I've got a tape recording of it." "David," I said, "let me hear it. I'll believe that tape when I hear it"

Eldridge was doing everything he could to expose the power structure. You could see signs all over that he wasn't going back. You could see by the way he was moving, and by the way he was talking. He was exposing Ronald Reagan. He'd go to other cities and expose other demagogic politicians, and he was doing it in a hurry. It was good that he did it. Eldridge knew that he had to do everything he had time to do, to expose this fascist power structure for what it really was.

Before Eldridge left, I think everybody contemplated it, trying to figure out what effect it would have on the Party if they sent Eldridge back to prison. Then when it was announced in the papers that Eldridge was gone, it made all of us more energetic, trying to move to get things organized. One of the principles that we really began to place forth was the one that brother Huey had run down about the oppressor. The oppressor has no rights that the oppressed people are bound to respect.

Eldridge's action was a clear example of this. By not appearing, he was refusing to respect the oppressor's right to lock him up unjustly after he had already been bailed out and released from jail. He was being held as a political prisoner by the government of California, led by Mickey Mouse, fascist Ronald Reagan.

I think most of us had read Soul On Ice already. But I made it a thing that brothers should reread Soul On Ice, reread what Eldridge was running down. That book is very key and very clear when one looks at the massive brainwashing of America as a whole. We know about the brainwashing of black people, but this is not really separate from the brainwashing of the proletarian masses of America. I think that many times the cultural nationalists miss this point.

We want to unbrainwash our people by telling them the true history. One must tell the true history in terms of the class struggle, the small, minority ruling-class dominating and oppressing the massive, proletarian working-class. When I say working-class, I mean those who are employed and unemployed, living below subsistence and at subsistence level. This book, Soul On Ice, really shakes loose the misconceptions that exist. When you read that book, you'll see that, in the beginning, it was a brainwashed black man who was in jail. He had only the white ideals, the Western ideals, and the white woman. When he put the

Playboy picture on the wall, he was saying that, psychologically and personally, he fell in love with that woman. Then this racist cop guard inside the prison rips the picture down. Eldridge tells the guard that he doesn't have any right to rip it down because everybody's got pin-ups. The guard tells Eldridge, "If you had put up a pin-up picture of a black girl, I

wouldn't have said anything." And because of that, Eldridge's consciousness changed, and he began to become what he is. The first essay in the book is called, "On Becoming".

This is very significantly related to the other things that the book sets forth. When one gets to the chapter, "Primeval Mitosis," we see how all this is interlocked with the political sphere and the psychological makeup of the omnipotent administrator, the psychological makeup of the Nixons and Johnsons and Aliotos and Ronald Reagans - those who aspire to this peak of mind - and the black man, who is relegated to a low level. I think Eldridge unbrainwashed

everybody in society with his book: black, white, blue, green, yellow, red, polka dot,

regardless of ethnic differences, etc. Eldridge unbrainwashes anybody who really reads with an open mind.

In the revolutionary struggle today I say Eldridge brought history to the threshold, to the front of a liberation movement here in the midst of the most fascist operation on the face of the earth, right here in the belly of the whale, in the belly of the monster.

While Eldridge and I were in Carmel, something occurred that showed how Eldridge, digging on Huey, could make all the brainwashed past history relevant to the present-day situation.

Way back before they announced that Eldridge had to go back to prison, Eldridge had talked to me about writing a biography of Huey and the Party. Eldridge said, "Bobby, you know Huey longer than anyone in the Party. You and he founded the Party together, so you've got to give us all the information, everything about brother Huey and about the Party, how things developed." Eldridge said that Huey P. Newton followed Malcolm X like Jesus Christ followed John the Baptist. That made a heck of a lot of sense to me. So Eldridge got some tapes and a recorder and a typewriter, and took me down to Carmel to a little cabin to work on the book.

Now in front of the cabin there was a big swimming pool with a lot of lawn around it, with fruit trees and stuff like that. We came out of the cabin about ten o'clock one morning. There was a green hose coming around the front of the swimming pool. It went down to the front end of the pool and wound up right under a tree, an apple tree. On the other side of the swimming pool were some lawn chairs. Bob Scheer and a young white girl were sitting in those chairs. Now Eldridge and I had just been talking about how brainwashed the society was and how history has messed up the minds of the people. Just as we stepped outside, Scheer said to the girl, "Hey, baby, go over to that apple tree and get me one of those apples."

So she went over and picked this apple, and Eldridge and I watched. She came back and gave the apple to Scheer. Just as Scheer got ready to put it in his mouth, Eldridge spoke. "Hey, man, you better watch it. You just sent her over to the apple tree for apples."

Scheer bit into the apple. "What are you talking about?" he said, holding it away from him and looking at it. "There's nothing wrong with this apple."

Eldridge said, "No, it was a goof-up."

I said, "Eldridge, what are you talking about?"

Eldridge said, "History has got society messed up. Our Minister of Defense is in prison, and history has messed up society's mind with these puritanical notions."

So Scheer got up and walked around the pool toward us, bringing the girl with him. He said, "I don't know what you mean."

Then I looked at the green hose lying there like a big snake, and I said, "I get it. He's talking about Scheer in the Garden of Eden, and this girl going to the apple tree. You're in the Garden of Eden," I said to Scheer.

Eldridge said, "And you didn't defend it. You didn't defend the Land of Paradise."

Scheer's a white cat, and he's supposed to be a liberal. He still didn't know what Eldridge was talking about.

Eldridge said, "What you did is, you let the omnipotent administrator send down a pig angel. His name was Chief Gain or any chief of police in the country. You let him come down with a naming sword. With a weapon, you let him drive you out of the Garden of Eden. And you didn't defend it, you and your woman."

This developed into a very creative moment, and being there with Eldridge, I said, "Yeah,