Geronimo Pratt Refused to Bow

(Letters)

June 12, 2011

I appreciated the timely statement in Workers Vanguard No. 982 following the death of Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt), a courageous former Black Panther Party leader who, throughout his 27-year imprisonment, remained unbowed and unbroken. We can be proud of being in the vanguard of those championing his fight for freedom, while for many years the liberals and reformists virtually abandoned him and other class war prisoners. But I write for a different reason.

As an activist in the Southern California based Riverside Political Prisoners Defense Committee (formed in the early 1970’s to free three black men framed for murdering two cops), I along with a few others attended the farcical trial of Geronimo Pratt. The zeal with which the prosecutors and judge pursued his conviction was truly nauseating. I was in the courtroom the day they convicted him. The cops and the prosecutors could barely hide their smiles. They were thirsting for his blood.

It was noticeable how the fake left and liberals were absent throughout most of the trial. It was mainly a few friends of Pratt, his family, and some of us from the Riverside Political Prisoners Defense Committee who were present.

While shackled but with a determined look on his face throughout the trial, Geronimo made a deep impression on me. In the eyes of the capitalist state, this fighter was a dangerous runaway slave, a captured commander with military knowledge who could lead.

Those were very difficult days. It was scary, and with so many former revolutionary minded black youth whom I knew dropping out of politics, jailed, or hooked on drugs, I wondered where I would end up.

Without exaggeration I can say that, more than any single individual then, it was seeing how Pratt refused to bow down in that court that made me want to stay in the struggle. He knew the purpose of his conviction and that it was bigger than him.

As the article in Workers Vanguard notes, the Black Panther Party’s nationalist program “doomed them to isolation in the ghetto.”

But I’m afraid it was more than that. It led some of the best subjectively revolutionary elements to make their peace with the racist capitalist system and embrace the very capitalist Democratic Party of imperialist war, racism, and repression that they once opposed.

Don A.