A Letter to the People from Fahizah
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A Letter to the People from Fahizah
"TO THOSE WHO WOULD BEAR THE HOPES AND FUTURE OF THE PEOPLE, LET THE VOICE OF THEIR GUNS EXPRESS THE WORDS OF FREEDOM."
Greetings, my comrade sisters and brothers, all love, power and freedom to you. I am very glad to have this opportunity to speak to you, even though I know that what I am feeling cannot be completely expressed in words. You may have heard of me, not because I am any more important than any of you, but simply because my former name has been in the news lately. My name was Nancy Ling Perry, but my true name is Fahizah. What that name means is one who is victorious, and I am one who believes in the liberation and victory of the people, because I have learned that what one really believes in is what will come to pass. So, my name is Fahizah and I am a freedom fighter in an information/intelligence unit of the United Federated Forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army. I still am that, in spite of the fact that I am now being sought for a political action, and in spite of the fact that two of my closest compañeros are now chained in the Adjustment Center (the prison's prison) at San Quentin concentration camp. I am still with other members of the SLA information/intelligence unit, and I am hiding only from the enemy and not from the people. I have no intention of deserting my commitment nor would I ever try to run away from it, because I have learned there is no flight to freedom except that of an armed projectile. Although it is the practice of the Symbionese Liberation Army to act rather than talk, I am compelled to speak because I wish to make clear my position and why I am fighting, what it is I am fighting for, what the purpose and nature of the SLA information/intelligence unit is, and why I will continue to fight.
First of all, I think I should tell you something about my background and the evolution of my consciousness. Basically, I have three backgrounds: I have a work background, a love background, and a prison background. My prison background means that I have close ties and feelings with our incarcerated brothers and sisters. What they have taught me is that if people on the outside do not understand the necessity of defending them through force of arms, then it is because these people on the outside do not yet realize that they are in an immediate danger of being thrown into concentration camps themselves, tortured, or shot down in the streets for expressing their beliefs. What my love background taught me was a whole lot of what love is all about, and that the greater one's capacity for love is, the greater is one's longing for freedom. What my work background taught me is that one of the things that every revolutionary does is to fight to get back the fruits of her or his own labor and the control of his or her own destiny.
When I was in high school in 1963-64, I witnessed the first military coup, against we the people of this country. I saw us passively sit by our t.v.'s and unconsciously watch as the militarily armed corporate state took over the existing government and blatantly destroyed the constitution that some of us still believed in. I listened to the people around me deny that a military coup had taken place and claim that such a thing could not happen here. The people that I grew up around were so politically naive that their conceptions of a military coup only recognized those that have occurred in South America and African countries where the military and ruling class took over the government by an open force of arms. But the method of taking over the government was different here. Here the coup was simply accomplished by assassinating the then president John Kennedy, and then assassinating any further opposition to the dictator who was to take power; that dictator is the current president Richard Nixon. In 1964 I witnessed these and other somewhat hidden beginnings of the military/corporate state which we now live in. And I heard my teachers and the government controlled media spread lies about what had happened. I saw the Civil Rights protests, the killings and bombings of my black brothers and sisters and the conditioned reactions of extreme racism in my school and home. When I questioned my teachers about how these occurrences related to the meaning of democracy and freedom that we were told existed to protect us all, the answer I got was that we were better off not knowing the truth about what was happening. I told my teachers and my family and friends, that I felt we were all being used as pawns and puppets, and that those who had taken over the government were trying to keep us asleep and in a political stupor. I asked my teachers to tell me what happened in Nazi Germany; I asked them to tell me the meaning of fascism; I asked them to tell me the meaning of genocide; and when I began to hear about a war in Vietnam, I asked them to tell me the meaning of imperialism. The answer to all my questions then was either silence, or a reply filled with confusion and lies, and a racist pride and attitude that well, after all, it was all for us.
The experience of living in Amerikkka has since taught me the realities of what fascism, imperialism, and genocide mean; and I have discovered the truth about the military take-over and the police state dictatorship, not because I studied about it in college, but because I see it every day, and because truth is something that is honestly known, as easily as beauty is seen. There is no need for me to relate here everything that I have seen, or everything that I am sure you are already aware of. I am sure, my sisters and brothers, that you realize that the government is now in the rapid and steady process of removing the means of survival from the lower class and giving these benefits to the middle class in an effort to rally support from them. And as the government is removing these means of survival from the people, then naturally the people who have been robbed must in turn take back what rightfully belongs to them, and take back what they need in order to survive. This the current dictatorship calls a crime, whether they take food from the grocery store, or take to the streets to make a speech, or take a gun in their hand to defend themselves.
As a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army information/intelligence unit, I fight against our common oppressor, and this I do with my gun as well as my mind. I try to use my mind and my imagination to uncover facts, so that when the SLA attacks it will be in the right place, and that the actions of the more experienced SLA combat units will truly serve to benefit the people and answer their needs. The action taken by the SLA combat unit in reference to the Oakland Board of Education was a specific response to political police state programs and the failure of the Board to heed the rights and demands of the people in the community. The specific program was one of the photo identification (similar to the system of apartheid in South Africa), biological classification in the form of bio-dossiers which classify students according to race and political beliefs, internal warfare computer files, and armed police state patrols within the schools. Intensely thorough intelligence operations carried out by one of the SLA information units was able to obtain factual information that Foster's signature was the first to appear on the Nixon Administration inspired proposal for armed police agents within certain Oakland schools and various forms of computer classification of students. Further intelligence revealed that Foster's background included membership on the Philadelphia Crime Commission. Foster's sideman, Blackburn, is a CIA agent. As director of Education in East Africa he worked to implement test programs against black people there, and he trained other agents to carry them out so that he could return to his country and introduce those same programs here. I feel a need to explain this again because I want to make it clear that the SLA was not indiscriminately issuing death warrants for Foster, Blackburn and anyone else, but rather we were attacking the programs and proposal of which they were the initiators, supporters and first signers. Such an attack was the only means left open to us to demand that the people's wishes be met, and that all such dangerous, genocidal programs be stopped.
The government controlled media has made some reference to the effect that this action was carried out by white people made up in black face. Members of the SLA do not have to make up in black face to defend the black community, since the SLA is a federation formed in the style of a revolutionary United Nations whose commanding leadership is composed of representatives of the black, brown, yellow, red and white communities. We have more than enough members from every race to carry out any operation. As revolutionaries we would never disguise ourselves by race, because we would never deliberately act in a manner that would bring further police investigation onto any one race of peoples. But I would like to ask, since when does one have to be black in order to care about the murder of 14 year old Tyrone Guyton by political police state death squads, since when does one have to be white in order to feel for the starving children in Appalachia, since when does one have to be Asian in order to care about stopping the napalming of children in Vietnam, since when does one have to be brown in order to fight against the mass slaughters being conducted by the military junta in Chile? ? ? ? Since when? ? ? ? Not since we have come to realize that we are all one in struggle.
I am a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army information/intelligence unit and that means that my responsibility is to aid the combat units with information, and keep myself armed at all times. I am in a race to learn how to fight, because I am in a race to survive. SLA information/intelligence units have a military/political alliance with SLA combat units. What that means is that information units totally support armed struggle. That is to say that all members of the SLA understand that politics are inseparable from struggle, in fact politics have no meaning without armed combat and information units to give politics a purpose.
The Symbionese Liberation Army is unlike many existing political organizations in this country which support the armed liberation struggles of peoples throughout the world, but when it comes to the struggle here in Amerikkka, they consistently denounce militancy and revolutionary violence, and in so doing denounce the only means left to the people to achieve their liberation.
I believe that whenever people are confronted with oppression, starvation and the death of their freedom that they want to fight. It has been the history of many political leaders to suppress this will of the people, and to pretend that the people do not have the right to fight, and to pretend that the people will somehow achieve their liberation without revolutionary violence. But the truth is that there has never been a precedent for a non-violent revolution; the defenseless and unarmed people of Chile can testify to that. All members of the SLA recognize that we, right here in Amerikkka are in a state of war, and that in a state of war, all must be armed, and understand the true meaning of self-defense. When any member of the people's army strikes out at the murderer of our people and children, we are doing so in self-defense, we are doing so because we are left no alternative, and force of arms is now our only legal means to affect revolutionary justice. However, the natural instincts of many people in our country have become perverted by the conditionings to which they have been subjected, they have been conditioned to be afraid of revolutionary violence. I no longer have these fears because as a comrade of mine named Osceola has taught me, "The only way to destroy fear is to destroy the makers of fear, the murderer and the oppressor." A revolutionary is not a criminal nor is she or he an adventurer, and revolutionary violence is nothing but the most profound means of achieving internal as well as external balance.
I would like to correct and clarify the information given to you by the regime-controlled media and police-state reports associating the Symbionese Liberation Army with the August 7th. First of all, statements about August 7th literature and original communiqués being found in the Concord house are completely untrue. The Symbionese Liberation Army is NOT the August 7th; in fact, the August 7th is a counter revolutionary Oakland City and California State police plot to discredit revolutionaries and confuse the people. Freedom Fighters act only in the interest of the people, they do not unnecessarily shoot down a helicopter whose crashing would endanger lives of people in their communities, nor do they credit themselves with events or accidents that occur in which they had no part, nor do they issue threats which they are unprepared to carry out, nor do they expose the nature and whereabouts of their forces, as for example the recent statement issued by August 7th saying that armed guerrilla units existed inside the prisons. The events and the communiqués associated with the August 7th served only enemy purposes: that is, a state wide lock-down went into effect in the prisons and the people began to think of revolutionary action as that which would endanger their lives and homes. As a member of the SLA I can tell you that the SLA takes full credit and responsibility for its actions, we acknowledge everything that we do, and if we had shot down a helicopter, we would say so; and if I had participated as a decoy in a taxi cab incident I would say so. However, I would like to tell you not to rely solely on my analysis that the August 7th and the Oakland and California State Political Police are one and the same, but instead, just take a look for yourselves. Ask yourselves of the extent to which the police state will go to discredit revolutionaries by labeling all street violence as revolutionary activity and by issuing nothing but threatening communiqués and then saying that such threats were coming from revolutionaries. It isn't just coincidence that the week the August 7th issued an idle threat against the life of prison official Procunier, was the same week that the California legislature re-instated the death penalty.
The house in Concord, Calif. was a Symbionese Liberation Army information/intelligence headquarters, nothing more. The house was set on fire by me only to melt away any fingerprints that may have been overlooked. It never was intended that the fire would totally destroy the premises, because there was nothing left there that was of any real consequence to us, nor was there any material left behind that could stagnate the functioning ability of the SLA to carry on the struggle. The reports that mass armaments were found in that house is a lie. It is an attempt to frame my 2 comrade brothers and it is an assertion to cover up the fact that there were no weapons found there. All that remained were 3 broken BB guns, a couple of malfunctioning gas masks, a few research books, and several liberation posters on the wall. Also, let me tell you that no one living or coming to that house was a part of the SLA combat forces. This can be easily verified; first of all, everyone in SLA combat forces is offensively armed with cyanide bullets in all weapons that they carry; and up until today this had NOT been the case for SLA information/intelligence units or any support units, at that time all units but combat were only defensively armed with hand guns and carried no cyanide bullets. Secondly, we can easily verify that the ballistics on the .380 now in the hands of pig agents do not match those of the weapon used in the attack on the Oakland Board of Education. Information/intelligence units or any support units were never allowed to possess or have any contact with combat unit weapons. Beginning January 11th however, a directive was issued by The SLA and the Court of the People stating that as of that date, all units of The Symbionese Liberation Army are to be heavily, and offensively armed with cyanide bullets in all their weapons. I would like to convey the word, to my 2 captured compañeros: you have not been forgotten, and you will be defended because there has been no set back and all combat forces are intact.
There really are no words available to me to express what I feel about the capture of my two compañeros. They are in a concentration camp now because none of us were offensively armed, and because I was not aware that they were under attack. But my beautiful brothers, as we have said many times, we learn from our mistakes, and we learn from our active participation in struggle, not from political rhetoric, so we won't cry, but simply fight on; and right on with that. A comrade of mine, Bo, says something that I'd like to leave you with:
"There are two things to remember about revolution, we are going to get our asses kicked, and we are going to win."
"DEATH TO THE FASCIST INSECT THAT PREYS UPON THE LIFE OF THE PEOPLE."
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