Albert Nuh Washington was exposed to the injustices of the US toward Blacks early on and became a member of the Black Panther Party shortly thereafter. As state sponsored repression against the Panthers intensified, Nuh went underground and joined forces with the clandestine Black Liberation Army. Today, a new Congress is determined to push Black and other poor people down to prop up the middle class. There is a strong class and caste antagonism within the country today, as well as an increase in police powers and harsher prison sentences and conditions. Conditions are ripe for class struggle but the state is more sophisticated with its technology and laws.
Racism is still the number one divider of people.
Competition for jobs has only heightened the antagonism between white workers and minorities. Proposition 187 in California is an example of fear controlling politics. The failure of the Black Liberation Movement and the New Left to consolidate its gains in the 1970s allowed the right to push its agenda using the politics of fear and separation to gain control over the country. When I think of all of us who have languished in prison for over twenty years, I think also of those of us who died like Jonathan and George Jackson. Jonathan, along with James McClain and Bill Christmas, died in a hail of bullets fired by San Quentin prison guards.