What We Want, What We Believe! by Eldridge Cleaver
1 . We want freedom.
We want power to determine the destiny of our
Black Community. We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.
2 . We want full employment for our people.
We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to
give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if
the white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the
means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in
the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ
all of its people and give a high standard of living.
3 . We want an end to the robbery by the CAPITAUST of our Black
Community.
We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are
demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres
and two mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor
and mass murder of black people . We will accept the payment in currency
which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now
aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans
murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in
the slaughter of over fifty million black people ; therefore, we feei that this
is a modest demand that we make.
4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.
We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to
our black community, then the housing and the land should be made into
cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and
make decent housing for its people.
5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this
decadent American society.
We want education that teaches us our true
history and our role in the present-day society.
We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge
of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position
in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything
else.
6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.
We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military
service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We
will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black
people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America.
We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police
and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.
7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER
of black people.
We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing
black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our
black community from racist police oppression and brutality . The Second
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear
arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves
for self-defense.
8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county
and city prisons and jails.
We believe that all black people should be released from the many
jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.
9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by
a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as
defined by the Constitution of the United States.
We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution
so that black people will receive fair trials . The 14th Amendment of the
U.S . Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer
is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental,
historical and racial background. To do this the court will be
forced to select a jury from the black community from which the black
defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries
that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the black
community.
10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.
And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite
to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial
subjects will be allowed to participate, for the purpose of determining the
will of black people as to their national destiny.
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one
people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with
another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and
equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a
decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare
the causes which impel them to the separation .
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights;
that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to
secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of
government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people
to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its
foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as
to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence,
indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not
be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience
hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are
sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they
are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and unsurpations, pursuing
invariably the same object, evinces a design .to reduce them under absolute
despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government,
and to provide new guards .for their future security .
Comments