Rita D. Brown sentencing statement

2/21/78

             I stand before this mockery of justice court to be condemned as its enemy--and I am its enemy!   I am a member of the George Jackson Brigade and I know the answer to Bertolt Brecht’s question:  “Which is the biggest crime, to rob a band or to found one?” 

            It is to my sisters and brothers of the working class that I am accountable--NOT to this court that harasses and searches my peers before they can enter what is supposed to be their courtroom.  NOT to this or any court whose hidden purpose is to punish the poor and non-white in the name of the U.S. government.  A government which perpetuates the crimes of war and repression has NO right to prescribe punishment for those who resist the continuation of worldwide death and misery.  This government didn’t ask its citizens what we thought about CIA intervention in Chile or current U.S. big business holdings in South Africa. 

            I am a native fighting on her homeground!  I was born and raised right here.  All my life has been spent in Oregon and Washington.  My parents are working people.  My father a mill worker for 32 years--my mother an unskilled laborer at the county nursing home.  We always had to count very penny and do without some thing or another to make it from payday to payday.  I have pumped gas, been a clerk, a mechanic, and a printer and a variety of other things.  That makes me a common working person as is most of the population of this world.  We have nothing to survive by except labor--our sweat.  We are slaves!  Forced to give our labor and our lives to maintain an economic system designed to serve only the rich--almost always white male corporate owners.  This ruling class has no respect for human life.  Its only concerns are private property and personal power.  They manipulate us as puppets on their stage of greed. 

            Right here in Oregon there are mountains of proof about how big business, protected by the state and federal governments, rip us off daily.  How much profit did Weyerhauser make last year?  How much taxes did the company pay on those profits, if any?  How come those who slave their lives away for George Weyerhauser get none of those profits?  How come Weyerhauser can continue to pay small pollution fines and isn’t made to install anti-pollution systems?   The answers to these kinds of questions will teach us just who  George Weyerhauser is and what he really cares about.  Those cute commericials we see on TV are a snow job to keep us from seeing the truth. 

            There are a few people in this state who know that the Wah Chang plant, just north of Albany--right there on the freeway--is killing the pure air and water and even the earth, so highly valued by Oregonians.  For years we thought it was a smelly pulp mill but that was a lie!  It is, in fact, the manufacturer of zirconium, a metal vital to the government’s plan to pursue nuclear energy and warfare without properly considering the potential death and destruction in case of the slightest accident.  Wah Chang dumps radioactive poison into our lives everyday!  Their fines are minimal, they are not seriously made to clean up and say that they shouldn’t have to.  The workers are in very real danger of serious illness or injury and even death.

            The university of Oregon has $3 million invested in stock in 28 South African companies.  The State Board of Education has passed the buck to the Attorney General who has passed the buck to the State Treasurer.  The State of Oregon finances the most racist and genocidal government in the world.  The mountains of proof are everywhere. 

            Prisons are big business too.  Nat9ionally, the annual profits reach $2 billion.  Prisons promote “terrorism” by making the denial of human and democratic rights a respectable and common thing.  Look at who is in prison and why--75% of all adults in amerikkan prisons are 3rd world people.  This is clear and simple proof of systematic racism.  Right now in Oregon there are three cruel and unusual punishment suits--one at Oregon Correctional Institution, one at Oregon State Penetentiary, and one at McClaren Juvenile prison.  Every person in this state should investigate these suits in their own interest.  We all know it’s the powerless working and poor people who go to jail.  The real criminals--the rich--are pardoned by other rich criminals or go to country club estates to do short time.  (Or, they can get “daddy” to put up $1.2 million for bail after conviction.)

            I am a woman who is greatly concerned that the biggest areas of neglect in the so called justice system are rape, wife battering and child abuse.  The womon of today suffers everyday form the oppression of sexism.  Everywhere she looks she sees sexist stereotypes that scream: you are a sex object--you can’t control your own body--men need to beat you sometimes--there is no such thing as rape, you must have asked for it.  and if she can’t cope with this insanity the male-dominated medical profession pronounces her crazy.  90% of patients in mental hospitals are wimin.

            I am a lesbian -- a womon who taltally loves wimin.  A womon who loves herself and her sisters.  A womon who is proud to say that loving wimin is a very beautiful and positive aspect of my life.  When any womon or man decides to be openly gay--to “come out”--we risk social disapproval, police harassment, and the very real possibility of being beaten in the streets.  We are denied jobs, thrown out of public places, refused housing, our children can be stolen from us, and most shrinks still think we suffer from some incureable sexual illness.  This blatent discrimination is the systematic denial of our democratic and human rights.  It should never be a crime for any person to love and care about another person.  The freedom to be what we are is what we all fight for!  Wimin loving wimin and mem loving men is nothing new.  Since the beginning of humanity we have loved, free and proud.  Our culture, though sparsely documented due to the great efforts to supress our herstory/history, does exist.  During the time of Sappho and Isle of Lesbos, our sexuality was open and accepted.  Then the self-appointed rulers  -- the profiteers -- marched across the earth and for boots they wore suppression.  Suppression to crush all those who wouldn’t conform to their ideas or recognize their right to destroy our various ways of life.  We have been might warriors in many wars--Amazons and Romans.  Not even Hitler, who killed us in one of his first experiemnts in annihilation, could destroy us.  Joe McCarthy hunted us too.  Today, the fear of homosexuality promoted by the “masters of unreason” encourage anita Bryant types of facist campaigns based on hysteria and ignorance.  This kind of institutionalized fear is repeatedly used to keep us from building strong resistance.  It will work less and less as we learn to understand the tactics of psychological warfare used by the rich to keep all of us in our places.  But, we must remain alert to the very real threat of facism and destroy it before we find ourselves surrounded.

            I love children.  To me children are the most beautiful, honest, sincere, and creative of human beings.  It is for their future as well as my won that I fight.  My heart full of love for all people.  My heart full of rage at the capitalist/imperialist system that traps and destroys us from birth.  I am the anger of the people like the thunder that comes before the rain that will heal the earth.

            It is necessary to define “armed struggle” and “terrorism” since these terms are often and incorrectly used interchangeable.  This error is continually made by the straight media who often just take orders from the FBI and other government gestapos.  The press forgets its real job is to report the facts to the people--not to use sensationalism merely to sell a particular channel or newspaper; and not to participate in news blackouts which keep the facts from the people.  “Terrorism” is armed action which deliberately and callously ignores the welfare of the people.  It is the institutionalized sick violence or the ruling class and its police forces--i.e. the senseless bombings of Viet Nam; the Attica massacre; the Kent State massacre; the Jackson State massacre; the individual murders of Clifford Glover, Karen Silkwood, and George Jackson; the continuing murders and sterilizations of Native Americans and Puerto Ricans; the inhumane method of confinement suffered by Assata Shakur (slavename: Joann Chesmird).  “Armed struggle” is the use of controlled violence such as armed occupations, kidnappings, prisoner escapes, armed robberies, bombings, etc.  A primary factor is that concern for the welfare of innocent people is always a vital part of the planning and execution of these actions.  Freedom fighters around the world have consistently made the distinction between revolutionary “armed struggle” against the ruling class and the “terrorism” of random violence used by the state against the people. (1)

            I am an anti-authoritarian lesbian feminist anarcho-communist!  I am an urban guerrilla committed to give my white life if necessary!  As our comrade brother George Jackson said--and it’s just as true today as it was almost 10 years ago when he said it--“We must come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that facism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations will die or live butchered half-lives if we fail to act.”

                                                                        Love and Rage--Fire and Smoke

                                                                                                Rita

                                                                                           2/21/78

 Rita D. Brown “1/11/78 while coping a plea at the kangaroo kourt” RDBP; “COURT STATEMENT -- 1/11/78 -- Rita Darlene Brown,” distributed by DYKE ANARCHISTS (c/o Lesbians Rising, Hunter College Student Act., Office Box 181, 695 Park Ave, New York, N.Y. 10021)

            Rita D. Brown “Sentencing Statement” 2/21/78 RDBP