Rainbow Nation News

RAINBOW NATION NEWS

Hail George Jackson! Hail Sam Melville and the Attica 27! Salute Chairman John! Salute Angela Davis! Power to All Political Prisoners in Babylon and throughout the World!

Brothers and Sisters. In the past prisons have served as tombs, a dead place of gloom. But today, throughout America, the prisons are a womb, fat with pregnancy, ripe with birth of a new revolutionary force.

Chairman John has taught us that any act that has a political consequence is a political act. Every prisoner in Babylon is a Political Prisoner, each of us a victim of a vicious political and economic system that divides us into classes, that allows the world to be divided up and parceled out. A system where a person's humanity is defined by the "things" they own, by the people they control, rather than by their ability to serve other people.

We are all political prisoners. We may not have realized it when we first got sent here, we may not have realized it when we walked into a bank with a note and a gun. We may not have realized it while we pirated sacred hash thru Nepal's carpeted nite, to be busted as smugglers. As a thief, driving a stolen car from Normal, Indiana to Tipical, Illinois, we didn't know it then. We didn't see our actions as political actions, but the man did. He knew we were a threat to his private property, to his continued rule. He knew. He knows.

Now we know. Now you must know. The aim of the penitentiary, of so called rehabilitation programs, is to isolate us, to make us feel that it is us who are wrong, who are sick, and society that is right, healthy. We are bombarded with the idea that we failed society, rather than society who failed us, that we have a responsibility to society, but society has no responsibility to us.

They work to blind us, to dull our eyes, to have us see the world as they do. But they fail, they fail miserably, witness the endless treadmill of prison, parole, prison, again and again. They want us to accept the divisions of wealth as they now stand, to accept the madness and contradictions of the world, to be passive, good citizens in an evil system. When we refuse to fit in, when we refuse to accept the world as they define it, it's back to the slammer for us.

We know. Now you must know.

In order for the womb to give birth to the raging child, in order for us to give our energy to the People's cause, we need your help. We do not need or seek your pity, if there are tears shed, shed them for the daughter who doesn't know her daddy's face, or for the son who doesn't know his mommie's name.

Give us information, communication. Show us there are still some people who are in touch with reality, that we are not alone, that we are not isolated in our struggle for humanity and human dignity.

Our struggle is your struggle, and yours ours. Jails, prisons, youth camps, as well as police depts, hospitals and schools are all institutions which affect all our lives.

For those of us who are aware of our collective significance in the struggle give us the means to preserve ourselves, give us the raw material or new ideas, give us information.

All things must pass, the tomb becomes a womb, an instrument of death becomes an instrument of life in the hands of the people.

All Power to the People! Rainbow Power to the people of the Future! Dragon power to the Political Prisoners!

Bill Clayton and Pun Plamondon
New World Cultural Studies
Federal Penitentiary
Terre Haute, Indiana
December 6, 1971