Matriarchies are true gender-egalitarian societies; this applies to the social contribution of both sexes-and even though women are at the center, this principle governs the social functioning and freedom of both sexes. Matriarchal societies should emphatically not be regarded as mirror images of patriarchal ones-with dominating women instead of patriarchy’s dominating men-as they have never needed patriarchy’s hierarchical structures.
Patriarchal domination, where a minority emerges from wars of conquest and takes over a whole culture, depends for is power on structures of enforcement, private ownership, colonial rule, and religious conversion. Such patriarchal power structures are a historically recent development, not appearing until about 4000-3000 B.C.E. (and many parts of the world even later) and increasing in strength throughout the further spread of patriarchy.
In light of this misunderstanding about the word “Matriarchy,” its linguistic background needs to be looked at more carefully.
We can challenge the current male-biased idea that matriarchy means “rule of women” or “domination by the mothers,” as these definitions are based on the assumption that matriarchy is parallel to patriarchy, except that a different gender is in charge. Because the words sound parallel, this fuelled the notion that the social patterns must be parallel.
In fact, the Greek word “arche” means not only “domination, “but also “beginning”-the earlier sense of the word. The two meanings are distinct and cannot be conflated. They are also clearly delineated in English: you would not translate “archetype” as “dominator-type,” nor would understand “archaeology” to be “the teaching of domination.” People who believe in the myth of universal patriarchy present this relatively recent form of society as if it had existed all over the world since the beginning of human history.
Hundreds of fictitious stories of this sort have been propagated by patriarchally-oriented theorists.
First of all, they are unable to see matriarchy through any other lens except the dominator pattern. Based on this misunderstanding, they search high and low for evidence of a matriarchy based on domination; when they find no evidence of any culture that conforms to their patriarchally-oriented hypothesis of domination by women, they proceed to assert that matriarchies do not now and never have existed. They invent a phantom culture, and then go looking for an example of it; then, because they cannot find any, they smugly proclaim that it was just a phantom.
This circular reasoning is not only illogical, it is a shameful waste of science.
Based on the older meaning of “arche’,” matriarchy means “the mothers from the beginning.” This refers both to the biological fact that through giving birth, mothers engender the beginning of life, and to the cultural fact that they also created the beginnings of culture itself. Patriarchy could either be translated as “domination by the fathers,” or ”the fathers from the beginning.”
This claim leads to domination of the fathers, because-lacking any natural right to claim a role in “beginning”-they have been obliged, since the start of patriarchy, to insist on that role, and then to enforce it through domination. Contrary to this, by virtue of giving birth to the group, to the next generation, and therefore to society, mothers clearly are the beginning; in matriarchy they have no need to enforce it by domination.
In this writing, taken from ‘The Ohio River Speaks‘, Will Falk describes the urgency in which he seeks to protect the natural world. Through documenting the journey with the Ohio River he strengthens others fighting to protect what is left of the natural world. Read the first part of the journey here.
The first headwaters of my journey with the Ohio River are located in despair. Despair and I have a long-term, intimate relationship.
Seven years ago, I tried to kill myself. Twice.
Suicidal despair is a failure to envision a livable future. The future never comes, so the future is built with the only materials at hand – experience. At times, my experience is so painful, and the pain lasts so long that, when I peer into the future, I only see more pain. When this happens, I sometimes ask: If life is so painful, if life will only remain so painful, why go on living?
I cling to my reason. I live for my family. I have seen the pain my two suicide attempts have caused my mother, father, and sister. My family also includes the natural world. I have been enchanted by the stories the Colorado River tells. I have watched the stars next to ahinahina (silverswords) on the slopes of Mauna Kea. I have seen a great horned owl dance on setting sunlight filtered through pinyon-pine needles.
This doesn’t mean, however, that I do not experience despair anymore.
Sometime last year, a spark flew from our shared global experience to fall into a tinderbox of my recent personal experiences and ignited the strongest inferno of despair I’ve felt in a long time.
I ended a long-term romantic partnership with a woman who, at one time, I thought was the love of my life. I moved in to my parents’ basement in Castle Rock, CO. And, an environmental organization I love working for almost internally combusted.
These realities are personally painful. But, they’re not unique. It is a global reality – the intensifying destruction of the natural world – that is the deepest source of my despair.
The love I feel for my mother and father, for my sister, for rivers, mountains, and forests, for ahinahina, great-horned owls, and pinyon-pines makes me deeply vulnerable. It wasn’t until I noticed the way people have been obsessively tracking confirmed cases of COVID-19 that I realized most people do not pore over studies about rates of ecological collapse like I do.
While COVID-19 is very scary, I find reports like the one from Living Planet Index and the Zoological Society of London in 2018 documenting a gut-wrenching 60% decline in the size of mammal, bird, fish, reptile, and amphibian populations in just over 40 years to be even scarier.
I am cursed with a profound sense of urgency to stop the destruction of the planet.
If millions of people are killed every year by air pollution, then each passing year is, to me, a heinous disaster. If dozens of species are driven to extinction every day, then each passing day is an unspeakable tragedy. If thousands of acres of forest are cleared every hour, then each passing hour is a horrific loss.
If all these things are true, then each passing moment screams more loudly than the last for the destruction to stop. I haven’t found many others who possess a similar sense of urgency. I haven’t even found many others who possess this sense of urgency among fellow environmentalists. The lack of urgency displayed by environmentalists is especially frustrating because environmentalists are aware of the problems we face. Despite this awareness, most environmentalists are still drinking a stale Kool-Aid brewed with the substanceless sugar of ineffective tactics.
For example, I am a practicing rights of nature attorney. In 2017, I helped to file a first-ever federal lawsuit seeking rights for a major ecosystem, the Colorado River. For the past few years, I’ve worked for a nonprofit law firm, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), that has developed a strategy for enshrining rights of Nature in American law.
American law defines Nature merely as property. Property is an object that can be consumed and destroyed. CELDF’s strategy, specifically, and rights of Nature, generally, seek to transform the status of Nature from that of property to that of a rights-bearing entity. This is similar to how ending American slavery required transforming the legal definition of African Americans as property into African Americans as rights-bearing citizens. Those with rights have power over those without rights.
And, in a culture based on competition, those with rights oppress those without rights.
A key component of CELDF’s strategy involves helping communities affected by environmental destruction to use their local lawmaking functions to enact laws granting Nature the rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, and naturally evolve. These laws also give Nature legal “personhood” which empowers community members to bring lawsuits to enforce Nature’s rights. Currently, under American law, if community members want to sue to stop environmental destruction, they must frame the problem as violating their rights as citizens. It is often more difficult to prove that environmental destruction directly harms humans than it is to prove that an activity harms an ecosystem.
If Nature was recognized as a legal person and communities simply had to prove that an activity violated the rights of Nature, then many destructive activities would become illegal. On the surface this may seem like a great strategy. However, this strategy depends on convincing too many people in power, who directly benefit from the status quo, to embrace and enforce rights of Nature. The powerful derive their power by exploiting Nature. Enforcing Nature’s rights would undermine their power. This is why they react so violently whenever their power is truly threatened. Even if convincing all these people to give up their power is possible, it will likely take decades to change the legal system into one that respects rights of Nature.
In CELDF, we are working hard to reinvent our strategy to reflect the recognition that legal change, by itself, is taking far too long.
Nevertheless, most tactics employed by environmentalists are based on achieving a voluntary transition to a sane and Earth-based culture. But, do we really think this voluntary transition is possible? And, even if we do, don’t we have to admit that this voluntary transition is taking a long time? As time slips away – and so much is destroyed and so many are murdered – shouldn’t we be most concerned with stopping the dominant culture as quickly as possible? When I suggest that we have an open and frank conversation about what it will take to truly stop the destruction, I am often dismissed as being unrealistic and too extreme.
This causes me to despair. When I despair for too long I become depressed and anxious. When I am depressed and anxious I shake, tremble, fidget, and pace. Over the years, I’ve learned that when this happens, my body is telling me to move. Unsurprisingly, one of the best medicines I’ve found for mental illness is exercise. Lately, though, my typical regimen for managing despair hasn’t been working. No matter how much I exercise, no matter how much stress I shed from my day, no matter who I spend time with, the flames of despair keep on licking the edges of my consciousness. The lack of urgency I find reflected around me also causes me to question my perception of reality.
Are things really as bad as I think they are?
It is natural to seek validation from other humans. But, most humans I know would rather not join me in my despair. Psychologist R.D. Laing in The Politics of Experience was correct when he wrote:
“If Jack succeeds in forgetting something, this is of little use if Jill continues to remind him of it. He must induce her not to do so. The safest way would be not just to make her keep quiet about it, but to induce her to forget it also.
Jack may act upon Jill in many ways. He may make her feel guilty for keeping on ‘bringing it up.’ He may invalidate her experience. This can be done more or less radically. He can indicate merely that it is unimportant or trivial, whereas it is important and significant to her. Going further, he can shift the modality of her experience from memory to imagination: ‘It’s all in your imagination.’ Further still, he can invalidate the content: ‘It never happened that way.’ Finally, he can invalidate not only the significance, modality, and content, but her very capacity to remember at all, and make her feel guilty for doing so into the bargain.
This is not unusual. People are doing such things to each other all the time. In order for such transpersonal invalidation to work, however, it is advisable to overlay it with a thick patina of mystification. For instance, by denying that this is what one is doing, and further invalidating any perception that it is being done by ascriptions such as ‘How can you think such a thing?’ ‘You must be paranoid.’ And so on…”
Similarly, it is easy to seek answers from television and computer screens. The internet provides more access to certain forms of information – like graphs, statistics, and written reports – than ever before. However, answers provided by graphs, statistics, and written reports will always be secondhand. I do not want to risk the invalidation of the experience of others that many humans are so adept at. Neither do I want to settle for secondhand answers.
I want to see for myself.
Earth is vast. Ecocide is extensive. I have neither the time nor the resources to rely solely on firsthand knowledge. Fortunately, the Ohio River is vast enough to implicate global reality while remaining small enough for me to witness with my limited budget and finite time. Meanwhile, my body urges me to move. So, why not put that movement to good use? Instead of killing birds, I’ll kill two drones with one stone, by embarking on a journey with the Ohio River. I can write, with eyewitness testimony, about how bad ecocide has become in the Ohio River basin. At the same time, I can ask the Ohio River if her waters can quell this despair burning within me.
I know I am not alone in my despair.
William Styron wrote in his poignant exploration of despair, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness: “The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many in stances because its anguish can no longer be borne. The prevention of many suicides will continue to be hindered until there is general awareness of the nature of this pain.”
As I travel with the Ohio River, witnessing her many wounds, I will describe my pain. If she will help me bear that pain, I hope my story will show how a river can save your life.
Deep Green Resistance is a radical feminist organization, because all oppression is connected. The freedom of women as a class cannot be separated from the resistance to the dominant culture as a whole. Racism is connected to patriarchy, patriarchy is woven together with the destruction of the planet, and ecocide is interlinked with class oppression.
This episode of The Green Flame focuses on “Pornography Men Possessing Women,” one of Andrea Dworkin’s most influential and important books. In this episode we highlight reflections from the Deep Green Book Club to approach the heart of Andrea Dworkin’s analysis and life’s work.
Poetry and Music
We thank Trinity La Fey for a special live recording of her poem “Tintinnabulation.”
Thank you to Beth Quist for sharing her live acoustic performance of her composition, Angel of Death. Beth is playing all the instruments as well as being the solo vocalist. The “studio” is her RV!
Musicians and artists have lost much of their their ability to create a livelihood as a result of social distancing during the pandemic. Please, if you are able, send some love and support their way.
The Green Flame is a Deep Green Resistance podcast offering revolutionary analysis, skill sharing, and inspiration for the movement to save the planet by any means necessary. Our hosts are Max Wilbert and Jennifer Murnan.
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Originally named Ohi:yo’—“beautiful river”—by the Seneca, the Ohio River is now the United States’ most polluted river. The dominant culture teaches us to view natural beings like the Ohio River as objects to be used, consumed, and destroyed for human benefit.
This is a primary reason the destruction of the natural world is intensifying. How would our relationship to the natural world change if, instead of viewing nonhumans as objects, we viewed them as living beings capable of speaking to us? As allies who desire to communicate valuable lessons to us?
This journey – like the Ohio River – has many beginnings. A river’s physical beginnings are often called headwaters. Water wells up from the ground or falls from the sky. Then, aided by gravity, water navigates the specific peculiarities of the land to collect and form the first wet trails distinct enough to earn names such as creek, brook, or stream. These creeks, brooks, and streams tirelessly search for each other, perpetually seek communion with their kin. And, when enough of them join together, they become rivers.
Where should we say a river begins? Which of those first passages of water in the round Pennsylvania hills or the thickly-wooded West Virginia mountains, which of those first liquid motions over white Indiana limestone or black Kentucky coal can we name as the beginning of the Ohio River?
Many mapmakers seem determined to pinpoint precise headwaters for the world’s rivers. This is strange because the idea that a river has only one starting point is belied by the very maps declaring this to be true. Google Maps has grown to be one of the most widely used maps in the world today. When I look at Google’s map of the Ohio River basin, I am told that the Ohio River begins at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers in Pittsburgh, PA.
Tracing the River’s Veins
But, if I follow the thin ribbons of blue twisting and curling across the map to their disappearance on the page, I am taken to dozens of different places. I trace the thin blue line representing the Allegheny River to the hills of Potter County in northern Pennsylvania. I trace the line representing the Monongahela River south of Pittsburgh and the line quickly splits in two. The map continues to label the western line “Monongahela,” but the eastern line is labeled “Youghiogheny River.”
I follow the eastern line up into the mountains near Aurora, West Virginia where it disappears. I go back to the line representing the Monongahela but it splits in two once more at Point Marion, Pennsylvania. The western line once again remains “Monongahela” and the eastern line reads “Cheat River.” Following the eastern line south, the Cheat River splits in two, one “Shavers Fork” and another “Black Fork.” The “Black Fork” line is joined by a line labeled “Blackwater River” which then splits into three lines named the “Dry,” “Glady,” and “Laurel” forks. These three lines then disappear in the hills of West Virginia near the Virginia state line.
Tracing each of the Ohio’s tributaries’ tributaries’ tributaries would take a long time. At the very least, we should understand that arbitrarily locating the headwaters of the Ohio River at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers in Pittsburgh is inaccurate, at best, and downright dishonest, at worst. So, why are geographers, topographers, and cartographers so determined to name a river’s headwaters? Is this a peculiar side effect accompanying the choice to don the suffix “-ographer.” Or, more likely, is it a symptom of the colonial impulse to control, to define, to destroy ambiguity, to produce one true answer as there is one true ideology, one true religion, one true God.
Stories Are Rivers and Rivers, Stories.
The Ohio River is not so much concerned with either accuracy or honesty as she is concerned with creativity –the land she shapes, the communities she forms, the songs she sings, and the lives she makes possible. Metaphor is a creative channel. It is a way of knowing far older than science or philosophy. I suspect that metaphor is a way of knowing far older even than logic. The Ohio River beckons me to swim in the channels of metaphor.
Stories, of course, are rivers and rivers, stories. The story of my journey with the Ohio River has many headwaters. These headwaters will flow into streams of written consciousness, lyrical vignettes, and fluid reflections. Like water, they will seek their kin who share thematic similarities and topical currents. The strongest writing, achieving a certain depth, will collect in pools as essays and chapters. One day, I hope, these stories may join together to form a book worthy of the Ohio River.
As I begin this journey, I feel the headwaters of many stories gathering within me. They well up from my lifelong love affair with oceans, lakes, rivers, and marshes; with fish, turtles, toads, and tortoises; with ripples, tides, waves, and the way crescent moons are best seen from a still pond face; with the infinite voices water sings with; with all water creates and all the lives water facilitates.
Blood and Water
My experiences as a practicing rights of Nature attorney and my work to stir bravery in the souls of those who love Nature begin gathering as another headwaters. I feel the waters in my body boiling for the respect they deserve. My heartbeat pounds, insisting on the sacredness of the water in the blood my heart works so consistently to move. My organs agitate against the poisons they must filter out of my daily drinking water.
I find the trickle of yet more stories in my family history. I recall how, in Evansville, IN on the banks of the Ohio River, my grandmother was prevented from being a Poor Clare nun. And how, if this didn’t happen, I would never have been born some 30-odd years later in Evansville not far from the Poor Clare convent. I hear the metaphors growing in clarity. The other sisters feared my granny was too talkative to take a vow of silence. Fortunately, my granny’s signature chattiness, her need to gossip and share stories, are properly understood as a beginning of my life’s story.
Current events are natural springs of stories. As much as I wish I could bury some of those springs, plug the wells, I can’t. I can’t ignore the images of black people being murdered in the streets for having the simple audacity to walk those streets. I can’t deny the scenes of indigenous people being teargassed on their own land for having the simple audacity to protect water. I can’t forget the reality that the natural world is being polluted, clear cut, dammed, consumed, and driven to extinction for having the simple audacity to exist. Thunder clouds and lightning appear on my inner horizon. These are the dark stories. The stories of mental illness, psychiatric hospitals, and court-ordered involuntary commitments. I need the rain, but I fear the acid that may fall with the guilt and shame. I fear the floods. I fear where those floods may carry me.
Rivers and Stories: More than One Beginning
Just like the Ohio River, it would take far too long to trace these stories’ tributaries’ tributaries’ tributaries. It is enough to say this:
No river has only one beginning. No story has only one beginning, either. But, writing is linear and sooner or later, but before the story is heard by a listener or read by a reader, the story teller must locate all of the story’s headwaters and direct her audience’s attention to one beginning. I will need some time to decide where that will be.
Give me a few days, and I’ll be back with my decision.
Will Falk is the author of How Dams Fall: On Representing the Colorado River in the First-Ever American Lawsuit Seeking Rights for a Major Ecosystem and a practicing rights of Nature attorney. Rights of Nature advocates work to transform the legal system so that it recognizes the “personhood” of natural beings. For the rest of 2020, Falk will travel through the Ohio River Basin asking the Ohio River the two questions he asks any client who steps into his office: “Who are you?” And, “What do you need?”
Featured image: Not far from the Ohio River’s true headwaters in Potter County, PA. Photo by Melissa Troutman.
In this lecture, we will cover a wide range of 10,000 years of agricultural history. Starting with the initial question “how old is human culture” we argue that humans have been living in a wide range of different cultures, long before some of them started applying agriculture about 10,000 years ago. We distinguish 5 different human cultures, according to the way they get their food and basic resources: Hunter/gatherers, horticulturists, pastoralists, agricultural, and finally industrial culture.
Agriculture of different character developed in some places in the world, and some forms are more destructive than others. The form of grain monoculture that developed about 10,000 years ago in the fertile crescent has proven to be the most aggressive one, it is spreading very fast and with it the agricultural society, the people and their genes. It also causes the most devastating consequences for ecosystems. Europe was already ecologically badly damaged towards the end of the Middle Ages, by agriculture and the mining and extraction that was needed to fuel countless wars between European lords and kings.
The Issues with Agriculture
Environmental problems caused by agriculture are not a new phenomena. As a consequence, the European people had a large pressure to expand. The conquest of the Americas is the most recent disaster of this clash of cultures that has been going on for 10,000 years. The American Holocaust is the greatest mass murder in human history, the annihilation of at least 500 unique cultures, languages, peoples and world views that will never come back.
Since “unquestioned beliefs are the real authorities of any culture” (Robert Combs), and “Culture” means “enacting a story” (Daniel Quinn), we continue exploring some of the myths of agrarian culture. The question “why we are doing all of this” leads us back to biblical times and a spiral of violence that started with early agrarian empires and their efforts to conquer and colonize the middle east.
Following the development of apocalyptic thinking that originated in the ruined and deeply traumatized societies the empires and their wars left behind, we discover that “authoritarian religion and technocracy are not opposites, but part of a continuum” (Fabian Scheidler).
Transformation through Technology
Finally, we enter the 20th century. Central to apocalyptic thinking is the complete destruction of the old and the creation of a new, better state. To replace the heavenly state for the souls heard by the Last Judgment comes the belief in a transformation of the world through technology. Nature, which is perceived as brutal, raw, wild, imperfect is to be replaced by a better system, created by man.
This is what we are currently doing with our modern capitalist economy. In modern times, especially in the 20th century, the mega- machine, into which agricultural culture had evolved, once again gained enormous momentum through the input of the newly discovered energy sources fossil coal and oil. Also the destructiveness gained enormous momentum which we can see in climate change, ecocide, critical state of freshwater resources etc.
As we know, the 20th century brought new weapons and new wars. A particularly important man, who‘s inventions shaped our recent history, was Fritz Haber. He developed the process of ammonia synthesis in 1909. Ammonium nitrate is the basic material for explosives and also chemical fertilizers. The 20th century was marked by an explosion of human population that planet earth had never seen before. Fritz Haber inventions indeed broke the planetary boundaries by artificially producing more nitrogen than there would be naturally. This was the birth of modern industrial agriculture.
Ecological Restoration
After we have covered all these startling facts, we can finally start thinking about solutions. But we have to learn that “The political system cannot be counted on to reform agriculture because any political system is a creation of agriculture, a co-evolved entity. The major forces that shaped and shape our world –disease, imperialism, colonialism, slavery, trade, wealth– are all part of the culture agriculture evolved. (…) Just as surely, agriculture dug the tunnel of our vision.” (Richard Manning).
We‘ve probably understood during this lecture that the dominant culture, the civilization that is based on agriculture, inevitably leads to colonialism and conquest, and ultimately to the destruction of all life on this planet. That is the history, the present and that will be the future. But the future is ours, and we can change it. We can stop the destruction, and we can build alternative, life-centered cultures with structures and institutions that are based on cooperation, mutual understanding and respect. Whatever happens, the future must be an age of ecological restoration.
After millenia of agriculture, war, colonialism and suppression, all of us are, over generations, severely traumatized by all this violence. We went crazy and thought that we have to conquer and subdue nature and change the world fundamentally with our technology. All peoples who stood in the way of the expansion of agrarian culture were either destroyed or robbed of their land, their spirituality, their culture, and traumatized by violence and oppression, so that they became equally insane. (This is what Jack Forbes called Wétiko disease in his brilliant book Columbus and Other Cannibals.)
Why Permaculture?
I want permaculture to become a remedy that helps us to recover from this delusional state, so in the last part of this lecture we get to know permaculture, its founder Bill Mollison and its basic principles and ethics as a viable alternative. Coming to an end, I want to answer the initial question “Why do we need permaculture?”. Do we want an era of collapse, the apocalypse? Or do we want to take the chance and be protagonists of a new age of ecological restoration?
You may know the slogan swords to plowshares. It comes from the bible and has been used by movements for peace for a long time. But even they did obviously not understand that no lasting peace is possible within agricultural culture. Any peace movement that fails to recognize this must fail. Because whoever has plowshares will soon need swords. Actually, the plowshare itself is already a sword that injures the earth. It is the same analogy as explosives and chemical fertilizers, pesticides and chemical weapons. But we obviously had to break the planetary boundaries first to see these connections.
The more I think about it, the more permaculture becomes a new peace movement for me. So I would like to answer the question “Why do we need permaculture?” as follows: Agriculture is permanently at war (against nature and other people). Permaculture offers the chance for lasting peace.
Boris Forkel is a radical environmentalist, social rights activist and permaculturalist located in Germany. You can learn more about his work on his website BabylonApocalypse.org.
What has changed in the last 400 years? Slavery is no more, segregation is illegal, and the Voting Rights Act is law. And yet poverty is everywhere in the Black community, white supremacy is ascendant, policing is murderous, and yet people call for peace. In this piece, Assata Shakur looks for peace in the status quo, and finds none.
Black brothers, Black sisters, i want you to know that i love you and i hope that somewhere in your hearts you have love for me. My name is Assata Shakur (slave name joanne chesimard), and i am a revolutionary. A Black revolutionary. By that i mean that i have declared war on all forces that have raped our women, castrated our men, and kept our babies empty-bellied.
I have declared war on the rich who prosper on our poverty, the politicians who lie to us with smiling faces, and all the mindless, heart-less robots who protect them and their property.
I am a Black revolutionary, and, as such, i am a victim of all the wrath, hatred, and slander that amerika is capable of. Like all other Black revolutionaries, amerika is trying to lynch me.
I am a Black revolutionary woman, and because of this i have been charged with and accused of every alleged crime in which a woman was believed to have participated. The alleged crimes in which only men were supposedly involved, i have been accused of planning. They have plastered pictures alleged to be me in post offices, airports, hotels, police cars, subways, banks, television, and newspapers. They have offered over fifty thousand dollars in rewards for my capture and they have issued orders to shoot on sight and shoot to kill.
The Black Liberation Army
I am a Black revolutionary, and, by definition, that makes me a part of the Black Liberation Army. The pigs have used their newspapers and TVs to paint the Black Liberation Army as vicious, brutal, mad-dog criminals. They have called us gangsters and gun molls and have compared us to such characters as john dillinger and ma barker. It should be clear, it must be clear to anyone who can think, see, or hear, that we are the victims. The victims and not the criminals.
It should also be clear to us by now who the real criminals are. Nixon and his crime partners have murdered hundreds of Third World brothers and sisters in Vietnam, Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola, and South Africa. As was proved by Watergate, the top law enforcement officials in this country are a lying bunch of criminals. The president, two attorney generals, the head of the fbi, the head of the cia, and half the white house staff have been implicated in the Watergate crimes.
Who Are the Real Murderers?
They call us murderers, but we did not murder over two hundred fifty unarmed Black men, women, and children, or wound thousands of others in the riots they provoked during the sixties. The rulers of this country have always considered their property more important than our lives. They call us murderers, but we were not responsible for the twenty-eight brother inmates and nine hostages murdered at attica. They call us murderers, but we did not murder and wound over thirty unarmed Black students at Jackson State—or Southern State, either.
They call us murderers, but we did not murder Martin Luther King, Jr., Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, George Jackson, Nat Turner, James Chaney, and countless others. We did not murder, by shooting in the back, sixteen-year-old Rita Lloyd, eleven-year-old Rickie Bodden, or ten-year-old Clifford Glover. They call us murderers, but we do not control or enforce a system of racism and oppression that systematically murders Black and Third World people. Although Black people supposedly comprise about fifteen percent of the total amerikkkan population, at least sixty percent of murder victims are Black. For every pig that is killed in the so-called line of duty, there are at least fifty Black people murdered by the police.
Black life expectancy is much lower than white and they do their best to kill us before we are even born. We are burned alive in fire-trap tenements. Our brothers and sisters OD daily from heroin and methadone. Our babies die from lead poisoning. Millions of Black people have died as a result of indecent medical care. This is murder. But they have got the gall to call us murderers.
Who Are the Real Kidnappers?
They call us kidnappers, yet Brother Clark Squires (who is accused, along with me, of murdering a new jersey state trooper) was kidnapped on April z, 1969, from our Black community and held on one million dollars’ ransom in the New York Panther 21 conspiracy case. He was acquitted on May 13, 1971, along with all the others, of 156 counts of conspiracy by a jury that took less than two hours to deliberate. Brother Squires was innocent. Yet he was kidnapped from his community and family. Over two years of his life was stolen, but they call us kidnappers. We did not kidnap the thousands of Brothers and Sisters held captive in amerika’s concentration camps. Ninety percent of the prison population in this country are Black and Third World people who can afford neither bail nor lawyers.
Who Are the Real Looters?
They call us thieves and bandits. They say we steal. But it was not we who stole millions of Black people from the continent of Africa. We were robbed of our language, of our Gods, of our culture, of our human dignity, of our labor, and of our lives. They call us thieves, yet it is not we who rip off billions of dollars every year through tax evasions, illegal price fixing, embezzlement, consumer fraud, bribes, kickbacks, and swindles. They call us bandits, yet every time most Black people pick up our paychecks we are being robbed. Every time we walk into a store in our neighborhood we are being held up. And every time we pay our rent the landlord sticks a gun into our ribs.
They call us thieves, but we did not rob and murder millions of Indians by ripping off their homeland, then call ourselves pioneers. They call us bandits, but it is not we who are robbing Africa, Asia, and Latin America of their natural resources and freedom while the people who live there are sick and starving. The rulers of this country and their flunkies have committed some of the most brutal, vicious crimes in history. They are the bandits. They are the murderers. And they should be treated as such. These maniacs are not fit to judge me, Clark, or any other Black person on trial in amerika. Black people should and, inevitably, must determine our destinies.
The Revolutionary Struggle for Freedom
Every revolution in history has been accomplished by actions, although words are necessary. We must create shields that protect us and spears that penetrate our enemies. Black people must learn how to struggle by struggling. We must learn by our mistakes.
I want to apologize to you, my Black brothers and sisters, for being on the new jersey turnpike. I should have known better. The turnpike is a checkpoint where Black people are stopped, searched, harassed, and assaulted. Revolutionaries must never be in too much of a hurry or make careless decisions. He who runs when the sun is sleeping will stumble many times.
Every time a Black Freedom Fighter is murdered or captured, the pigs try to create the impression that they have quashed the movement, destroyed our forces, and put down the Black Revolution. The pigs also try to give the impression that five or ten guerrillas are responsible for every revolutionary action carried out in amerika. That is nonsense. That is absurd. Black revolutionaries do not drop from the moon. We are created by our conditions. Shaped by our oppression. We are being manufactured in droves in the ghetto streets, places like attica, san quentin, bedford hills, leavenworth, and sing sing. They are turning out thousands of us. Many jobless Black veterans and welfare mothers are joining our ranks. Brothers and sisters from all walks of life, who are tired of suffering passively, make up the BLA.
There is, and always will be, until every Black man, woman, and child is free, a Black Liberation Army. The main function of the Black Liberation Army at this time is to create good examples, to struggle for Black freedom, and to prepare for the future. We must defend ourselves and let no one disrespect us. We must gain our liberation by any means necessary.
It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.
Assata Shakur was a member of the Black Panther Party (an aboveground organization) and the Black Liberation Army (an underground organization), thus violating the principle of the firewall. She was active in the early 1970s and was eventually arrested. She escaped prison in 1979 and went on the run, eventually reaching Cuba, where she lives in exile. In 1987 she published her book Assata: An Autobiography.
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