(4 of 4)
To many American radicals, white and black alike, the truth about what happened at San Quentin does not matter; they are convinced beyond doubt that George Jackson was a political martyr. It is sad that many of those who mourn Jackson are oblivious to the fact that three guards and two other convicts died with him. It is equally disturbing that Angela Davis' defenders forget that, whatever her innocence or guilt in the episode, four people, including a judge, Jonathan Jackson and two convicts, died in the Marin County Courthouse gun battle. Surely white racists suspected of purchasing guns to use against blacks should be brought to trial. Why, then, should anyone accused of supplying weapons that were ultimately used for the murder at the courthouse not expect the same justice? Since Angela Davis was a fugitive for two months after the killings, it hardly seems unreasonable to deny her bail now. Her partisans have tried to invest her forthcoming trial with an exclusively political meaning. But if a political prisoner is one jailed solely for his ideological opinions, then it seems likely that neither Angela Davis nor George Jackson rates the label political prisoner.
A far better example would be Martin Luther King, who invited his arrests for a quite specific political goal. Or Bobby Scale, who underwent a political trial as a member, for a time, of the Chicago "conspiracy"—but not as a defendant in the New Haven trial, where a murder was involved. Or the Berrigan brothers, whose destruction of draft cards was a symbolic action directly intended to change the political course of the U.S. Undeniably the U.S. can and does manipulate the law to punish political dissenters. Yet unlike the ideological prisoners of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, America's antiEstablishmentarians have been able to use the legal system to defend themselves, often with success. Dr. Spock's conviction for conspiring to counsel young men in draft evasion was reversed. The Black Panthers, who see "politics" in every prosecution attempt, have an extraordinarily successful acquittal record. Even Angela Davis has written: "We will not infer that fascism in its full maturity has descended upon us. We must continue to make use of the legal channels to which we have access, which, of course, does not mean that we operate exclusively on a legal plane."
Unquestionably, decent Americans have reason to complain about the persistence of a double standard of justice for blacks and whites, rich and poor, which reflects the wider pattern of discrimination throughout the nation. But that does not legitimize a rhetoric that equates violence with politics, rape with revolution. The gradual, painful struggle of the U.S. to make equality a fact instead of a broken promise lacks the seductive appeal of revolutionary apocalypse. But for the majority of Americans, regardless of race, it nonetheless remains the only way to conquer hypocrisy. It may also be the only way to prevent the waste of other George Jacksons.
Lance Morrow