Screed 8: FOSTER MURDER AND COMMUNIQUE ONE
Dr. Marcus Foster, Superintendent of the Oakland school system, a Black man widely honored and admired, had come to California from a distinguished earlier career in the East. His chief assistant, Robert Blackburn, a white, had also served in other systems, and had spent some years in a Federal program organizing schools in Africa. Both had become involved in discussions about violence and murder in Oakland schools.
During the autumn of 1973, two particular suggestions, namely that police protection be given to teachers and students in schools, and that a system of voluntary identification be used to keep street kids and petty criminals off of school grounds, had been mooted in Board meetings. These measures had become issues of great importance to the Black communities in the East Bay. They were called discriminatory and anti-Black, and Board meetings at which they were discussed were generally violent. Foster and Blackburn supported only the second of the measures, and supported even that lukewarmly, but they failed to take the extreme positions demanded of them by radical Blacks.
As Screed 8 shows, the, moderation of these two men led to their being sentenced to death. On November 6, Election Night throughout the United States, the hit took place. As they walked from a School Board meeting to Blackburn's parked car, they were cut down by small-arms fire. Blackburn's wounds were from a shotgun, and after some time on the critical list he recovered from them. Foster was struck by eight pistol bullets, and died at once. Although this shooting occurred in series with a large number of other killings in the Bay Area, Dr. Foster's civic importance, wide public favor, and Negritude, made the murder a cause celebre throughout California and the nation generally.
This was the background for Communique No. 1, a "Warrant Order" claiming the honor, or onus, of the attack on Foster and Blackburn. The communique was sent to Radio Station KPFA, in Berkeley, a subscription FM station, culturally oriented but long identified with Black and other minority causes. Little notice was taken of the message, and it was thought a mere prank. However, its reference to "cyanide bullets" became important a few days later, when the Alameda County Coroner, in his report, stated that the bullets which killed Foster had been "drilled at their points and packed with potassium cyanide". From that time forward, the Symbionese Federation and the Symbionese Liberation Army were never out of the news.
A sharp degeneration of style and manner may be noticed in this communique as compared to earlier documents of the Symbionese. The difference is explained by the fact that after it surfaced in early December 1973, the SLA addressed the general public rather than its own people. Once vis-a-vis this broader audience, SLA writers adopted the persiflage techniques of ordinary admen. In their new mode, they shifted the semantics of their terms, added epithets likely to draw sympathetic reactions, and simply changed the names of things, as when the Oakland "Voluntary Identification Program" became "Forced Youth Identification Program."
The SLA reference to the death of Tyrone Guyton, and similar references in other communiques, is intended to show the SLA actions to be self-defensive. Tyrone Guyton was shot fleeing the police after a crime had been committed in Oakland. By many in the Black communities, he was adjudged a martyr and an illustration of tyranny and genocide.
SYMBIONESE LIBERATION ARMY
WESTERN REGIONAL YOUTH UNIT Date: November 6, 1973
Communique #1Warrant Order:
Subjects:The board of Education, The Implementation of the Inter
nal Warfare Identification
Warrant Issued By: The Court of the People
Charges:Supporting and taking part in the forming and implementation of a Political Police Force operating within the Schools of the People. Supporting and taking part in the forming and implementation of Bio-Dossiers through The Forced Youth Identification Program. Supporting and taking part in the building of composite files for the International Warfare Identification Computer System.
Target:Dr. Marcus Foster, Superintendent of Schools, Oakland, California
Robert Blackburn, Deputy Superintendent, Oakland, California
On the afore stated date, elements of the United Federated
Forces of The S.L.A. did attack the Fascist Board of Education,
Oakland, California, through the person of Dr. Marcus A. Foster,
Superintendent of Schools, and Robert Blackburn, Deputy
Superintendent.
This attack is to serve notice on the Board of Education and its fascist elements that they have come to the attention of The S.L.A. and The Court of the People and have been found guilty of supporting and taking part in crimes committed against the children and the life of the people.
This attack is also to serve notice on the fascist Board of Education and its fascist supporters that The Court of the People have issued a Death Warrant on All Members and Supporters of the Internal Warfare Identification Computer System. This SHOOT ON SIGHT order will stay in effect until such time as ALL POLITICAL POLICE ARE REMOVED FROM OUR SCHOOLS AND ALL PHOTO AND OTHER FORMS OF IDENTIFICATION ARE STOPPED.
Indictment:
No. I: The Board of Education has taken upon itself the roleforming and supporting a Special Political Police Force to and patrol the schools in our cities. The vast Black, D, Asian and conscious white youth communities of the Oakland-Berkeley area understand that this newest extension of surveilance is patterned after fascist Amerikan tactics of
enocide, murder and imprisonment practice by Amerikan finamced puppet governments in Vietnam, The Philippines, Chile and South Africa. We recognize that the school system censors and
controls what we read, and that the Special Political Police Force
is to censor and control what we say and do.
No. 2: The Board of Education has taken upon itself the role of forming and supporting the implementation of Bio-Dossiers through the Forced Youth Identification Program. The Photo
identfication Program, with the additional composite files, is patterned after the system of apartheid in South Africa. The Bio-Dossiers classify our youth according to color and "criminal lencies" (will to be free) and seek to eliminate all our valiant freedom fighters by "relocating" (incarcerating) them to such concentration camps as Tehachapi Prison. Under the Preventative Act such concentration camps have the authority to incarate our youth from age of 15 for an "indefinite" period of time. The Preventative Crime Act stipulates that any youth displaying violent or "criminal" potential or the possibility of violent criminal potential in the future, in other words, any youth oppose the current system of censored Political Police-State education and seek to organize against it are to be classified as erous and either disarmed, shot, or imprisoned for expressing rights to be free, and defending the rights to freedom of their
brothers and sisters.
3:The Board of Education has taken upon itself the role of )Orting and taking part in the implementation of the Internal Identification Computer System. The Internal Warfare I are based in the FBI's master computer system with information from the composite files of individuals who have expressed political views that may be regarded as differing from those of the facist ruling class. Members of the liberation movements and
organlzations, as well as single individuals, are identified through photographs and bio-dossiers, supplied, in the case of our youth, by the Boards of Education and Public School Systems in our cities. The racist nature of the Internal Warfare Identification Computer System is clear since blacks and other minorities who refuse to serve the rich ruling class are automatically classified as potentially violent and "criminal". The CIA-ITT financed juntó government in Chile uses similar bio-dossiers to murder all identified people who oppose the military takeover there or who do not serve and support the interest of the wealthy. Similar programs are carried out by governments financed by America and its military copporate enterprises throughout the word in the lands of the robbed; Vietnam, The Philippines, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, South Africa are some prime examples.
The Black, Chicano, Asian and conscious White youth in our communities recognize the importance of the Oakland-Berkeley area to the liberation struggle of all oppressed people.
We know that the ruling class must seek to stop the revolutionary community here before the ruling class can regain its arm of control around the struggling and oppressed people of the world.
We understand that the definition of a fascist government necessitates the elimination of all who oppose its controls. We know that the school system does not educate us, but rather it lies to us in an attempt to perpetuate the interests of the rich ruling class. News of the successful liberation struggles of our brothers and sisters throughout the world is stifled because the enemy fears our knowledge of the fact that a truly determined people can never be defeated. We reject totally the ruling class values of personal material gain and competition among ourselves and we know that the enemy fears our understanding of the fact that nothing is more precious than freedom. The myth of a high-style superfly life and fashion show (a capitalistic rip-oft) does not sway us for we know that the fascist government of Amerika supplies the dope and the clothes and wants us to spend the rest of our lives paying for them. We are well aware that a fascist government will allow some of us to get high, while the rest of us go to concentration camps, and none of us are free.
It is clear that Dr. Foster and sideman, deputy superintendent Robert Blackburn, represent the rich ruling class and big business, and not the children and youth of our communities. The school system which they represent and serve does not teach us or address itself to the needs of our survival, but rather it does perpetuate the values of big business and the wealthy. Under the
current system, the ruling class is educated to exploit, and our children and youth are educated to serve. We are not deceived by the superintendent and deputy. Robert Blackburn is a former director of education for the Peace Corps in East Africa. The Peace Corps, as well as AID, are promoted and financed as a front for the CIA, and have long been arms of American imperialist and racist oppression and genocide. Dr. Foster is a former member of the Philadelphia Crime Commission, and now his advancement within the fascist process found him as initiator, promoter and supporter of Political Police Units armed with riot shotguns, to patrol our schools.
The Oakland-Berkeley area is considered potentially dangerous to American ruling class, that is why it has been selected for the Political Police Force within the Schools and the Forced Youth Identification Program. Let it be known to those who sign for the implementation of these fascist programs, that the death of our manchild comrade youth, 14-year-old Tyrone Guyton, murdered on November 1St by three goons from the Emeryville Political Police Patrol, is NOT fORGOTTEN Tyrone fell victim to the racist enemy who is instituting programs such as those initiated by Marcus Foster and Robert Blackburn aimed at control, imprisonment, execution and
nocide of blacks and other minorities Let it be known to those who sign for the implementation of these fascist programs that they sign their own death warrants. We of the black and other Volutionary youth communities have for too long seen the enemy prostitute our mothers, imprison our fathers, shoot our brothers and sterilize our sisters. We have learned the lesson;
erefore, notice is hereby given on the enemy political police state and all its lackeys that we hold as an example to follow the courage of our slain comrade-in-arms Johnathan (George) Jackson and we call upon our mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers saying
TO THOSE WHO WOULD BEAR THE HOPES AND FUTURE OF OUR PEOPLE, LET THE VOICE OF THEIR GUNS EXPRESS THE WORDS OF FREEDOM.
DEATH TO THE FASCIST INSECT THAT PREYS UPON THE LIFE
OF THE PEOPLE. S.L.A.
