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email the perth indmedia mob...
Black Panthers: Anti-Racist Campaigns in WA in Early 1970s |
| by Graham Milner |
2009-06-28 2:57 AM +0800 |
| An extract from a message I wrote a few years ago to a friend who was involved with me in anti-racist and other left campaigns in Perth in the early 1970s. |
Dear M.,
You are quite right about the attraction that the Black Panthers had for many of us on the left in Perth in the early 1970s. I first came across their existence through Greg H., who was a Communist Party of Australia member when I met him in early 1971. Greg lent me his copy of Bobby Seale's 'Seize the Time'. I was very impressed, and inspired I should say, by Seale's account of the emergence of the Panthers. I think that the attraction of them was their preparedness to take on the state by interpreting literally their 'constitutional right to bear arms'. But I think that the politics of the Black Panthers fitted into the general 'ultra-left' tenor of the early 1970s. I believe now that there was a certain 'soft-Maoist', 'Third-Worldist' tincture to my own politics in 1971-72, especially with relation to national-liberation movements, which the Black liberation struggle in the USA could be identified with. Most of us were keen as well on the Cubans, in a relatively uncritical way (ie. endorsement of Che Guevara's guerilla warfare strategy), and certainly on the National Liberation Front in Vietnam. But this situation seems to me to be fairly healthy. Better to give support to the Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions and their leaderships than abstain in a sectarian way, as the Healyites did. Do you remember a 'revolutionary film festival', at the Oxford Cinema in Leederville I think, in 1971? It included a documentary about the Black Panthers, if I remember rightly.
I read George Jackson's 'Soledad Brother' in early 1972, and Eldridge Cleaver's 'Soul on Ice' a year or so later. I didn't really discover Malcolm X as a figure in the Black liberation movement, however, until rather later. I read his 'Autobiography' in 1981, and an account of the political development he went through towards the end of his life, in George Breitman's 'The Last Year of Malcolm X: Evolution of a Revolutionary'. Did you see the Spike Lee film about Malcolm? I thought it was superb. I believe that the US Socialist Workers Party had a much better approach to the emergence of the Black liberation movement in the USA than, for example, the Communist Party of the USA. I have a pamphlet published by the latter organisation attacking Black nationalism, entitled 'Black and White: One Class One Fight'. The Healyites had a bad line on it, too: Tim Wohlforth wrote a critique of the SWP's position entitled 'Black Nationalism and Marxist Theory' which flew in the face of Trotsky's own stated position (Trotsky had argued in the 1930s in favour of an independent Black movement in the USA - see Leon Trotsky: 'On Black Nationalism and Self-Determination').
I'd thought quite a bit about the issue of racism myself since early youth. My father was a Powellite Tory when we lived in England in the 1960s, and was very racist. At school in Australia we students were exposed to the political writings of James Baldwin ('The Fire Next Time'), and I read E.R. Braithwaite's novel 'To Sir with Love', dealing with racism in Britain. I think that getting involved in the anti-apartheid struggle made me very conscious about racism, and I was arrested in mid-1971, across the road from the Town House hotel in Perth, along with quite a few others amongst those protesting the presence in the hotel of the Springbok rugby team. That sports tour, and the opposition it generated, was certainly a seismic event in Australian politics - remember Bjelke-Petersen declared a 'state of emergency' in Queensland? There is a book about the Springbok rugby tour of 1971: 'Political Football', which quotes Rupert Gerritsen as one of the spokespeople for the anti-apartheid movement in Perth.
Best regards,
Graham
(May, 2003) |
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Angela Davis |
| by Desire |
2009-06-28 11:22 AM +0800 |
I thought that it might be appropriate for me to disclose a piece of my writing that I shared previously with my family and friends ["The colour of human blood"] (see below).
------
The colour of human blood …
Last year, on my birthday, I offered myself a gift.
After a criminal case instigated by the Western Australia Police against my wife was dismissed, I wrote an article, in my usual funny and crazy way; and, I shared it with friends over the internet in order to talk about a woman who inspired me to fight against racism – in whatever forms it appears in life!
I have always considered the woman as one of my angels down under.
Yesterday’s evening, I drove at 100 kilometers per hour, on the highway bien sûr, in order to see her, to listen to her and to make a picture of her. Finally, my angel was in front of me en chair et en os! When she talked, I was bemused. I was listening to a ‘negro’ teacher “with small scars on both knees” who was once on the “10 Most Wanted” list of the FBI because she was “wanted on kidnapping and murder charges.”
Her speech was not based on anger or impotent rage. Her speech was based on disturbing and confronting facts, but nevertheless well researched facts about racism. Though she was speaking in English, I could clearly understand her perspective on the issue.
“The inability to recognize the contemporary persistence of racisms within institutions and other social structures results in the attribution of responsibility for the effects of racisms to the individuals who are its casualties, thus further exacerbating the problem of failing to identify the economic, social, and ideological work of racism.”
(Source: Vice Chancellors’ Oration, presented at Murdoch University, Perth on 18th March 2008)
As I was listening to her speech, I became ‘speechless.’ I could not take even one single picture of her delivering her speech. It remains a sad fact that I was an ‘excluded’ doctoral student – thus branded from academic life. However, there was nothing but joy in my heart while I was listening to a Professor of History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies who was once a prisoner!
When I showed her one of her books that another angel offered to me as a gift (at a garage sale!), she looked for a while at the “wanted poster” that filled the back cover of the book. May be she remembered the witch-hunt …
Then, she took my red pen, asked for the date and signed her name - in the colour of humankind’s blood.
Shared in solidarity with all ‘prisoners’ worldwide.
Désiré Mallet
19 March 2008
[NOTE: My original text “Most Wanted Woman” of 27 September 2007 follows]
Most Wanted Woman
She was named as an angel and she had been one of the loves of my adolescence. Yes, I was once seduced by her. At that time, I was a high school student who had to study hard in the hope of being able to get a decent job—if ever this could be my ‘destiny’. Therefore, I could not reveal my passion for her to anyone. So, I kept her picture in a hidden section of a secret drawer inside my heart. As she was a teacher, by profession, she guided me to draw out my confidence and to unleash my hidden desires. Today, I feel no shame to confess that she shattered the ‘innocence’ and loneliness of my puberty period.
She was one of my preferred role models—at that time!
When I left Mauritius, I thought that I would never ever see her again. But there she was, in front of me, in Morley, Perth, Western Australia. I kept on staring at her and things called memories came back to my overtly absent-minded state. My wife was saying something to me but, as usual, I was not listening. Thus, my wife could not (and was not going to) repress her annoyance. She insisted, “Let’s go now” I did not want to go because my Libran inner child was still prevaricating on a new and unresolved issue.
Then, I turned my attention to another woman who had organised the garage sale that my wife and I were visiting. Like an emperor of a fantasy tale, that woman was surrounded with clothes, shoes, bags and jewellery. In fact, there were exquisite, magnificent, quite wonderful glamorous and sexy clothes everywhere. Albeit her wrinkles, à la manière de Bob Dylan, the woman herself was indeed very beautiful and must have been a model too, during one stage of her life. May be she was having a change of heart and had decided to get rid of the unnecessary apparel in order to discover her true self.
Anyhow, in order to diffuse the quite obvious tension that had been generated by my fatal attraction, the garage sale organizer—who might have detected a slight smell of infidelity in the air—looked at me and said, “Your wife is very pretty.” In fact, my wife had already left me. She was standing hundreds of millimeters away from me, near the kerb of the road. She saw the woman whispering something to me but was not able to understand what was said. If words could have come from my wife, they would have been, “What is going on between you two? Do you know her? Why is she looking at you that way, as if she knows you?”
Consequently, I gave the woman my “I-want-to-stay-longer-but-sorry-I-have-to-go-my-wife-is waiting-for-me” look. However, in a discret (but not secret!) way, just like a male freemason giving secret words to her female counterpart, inside the first co-masonry lodge created by Edith Cowan; and, in the name of a constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech, I murmured, “Do you know her? Do you know Angela?”
The woman saw my supplicating look and understood my unsatisfied desire. She smiled at me as if she had known me in many secret ways. She nodded her head and said in a gentle and wise way, “Your wife is waiting for you. You better go. I will be going very soon too. If you want, you can have the books. You can have them all.”
The books were placed in between dozens of high-heel leather boots and dozens of colourful bags covered with silky scarves that would have suited all moods and seasons. There were half a dozen of them. The books were lying on the floor, at the feet of one hundred hanging boudoir clothes made of the finest ever seen cloth—that is invisible to a fool! In a hurry, I grabbed them all and rushed towards my wife. One should have seen my face. I was simply in the seventh heaven! However, my joy and enthusiasm were cut short by my puzzled wife, who asked me, in her firm “do-not-mess-with-the-feelings-I-have-for-you” tone: “Who is that Angela? I heard it. Tell me who she is. Is she another woman?”
She was and I could not admit it!
I walked on the side of my wife with lowered head. I was very eager to know the names of all the authors of the books. I smiled when I read those names. They were Martin Luther King, George Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver and bien sûr Angela Yvonne Davis. The Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), United States Department of Justice, Washington, D.C. 20535 described the latter in the following terms: Age: 26, born January 26, Birmingham, Alabama; Height: 5’8”; Weight: 145 pounds; Build: Slender; Hair: Black; Occupation: Teacher; Scars and Marks: Small scars on both knees; Eyes: Brown; Complexion: Light brown; Race: Negro …
Angela had been a fugitive.
“IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION CONCERNING THIS PERSON, PLEASE NOTIFY ME OR CONTACT YOUR LOCAL FBI OFFICE” said the black and white wanted poster on the back cover of the book. I knew her. I had information concerning her. “CONSIDER POSSIBLY ARMED AND DANGEROUS,” affirmed the caution section of the notice. Oh my, for almost half a century, I have believed that Angela, my muse, my platonic girlfriend, was fighting against discrimination and racism. She betrayed me! I do not want her in my life anymore!
GET LOST ANGELA!
“Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?
Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me?”
“EVAAAAA, SWITCH OFF THAT MUSIC. Daddy is not in a good mood. Daddy do not want to hear about this ‘girlfriend thing’. YOU UNDERSTAND? You got no homework from your teacher to do?” Suddenly, there was such a complete silence that one could have heard an angel flying by. Or was it that ‘witch’ named Angela?
Shared in solidarity with the victims of discrimination and racism.
Désiré Mallet
27 September 2007
[Oops, who forgot my birthday?]
NOTE: Angela Davis was the 3rd woman in history to appear on the FBI’s most wanted list (“on false charges.”) To my knowledge, she might be currently a tenured Professor in the History of Consciousness at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
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