Name: Blood in My Eye
ISBN: 9780933121232

George Jackson

Originally published: New York: Random House, 1972.

Blood in My Eye

nhu ⋆𐙚₊˚⊹

Revolution within a modern industrial capitalist society can only mean the overthrow of all existing property relations and the destruction of all institutions that directly or indirectly support existing property relations. It must include the total suppression of all classes and individuals who endorse the present state of property relations or who stand to gain from it. Anything less than this is reform.

If the proponents of revolution cannot learn to distinguish and translate the theoretical into the practical, if they continue to debate just how to call up and harness the conscious motive forces of revolution, the revolutionary ideal will be the loser– it will be rejected. 

The fascists have deliberately manufactured a false sense of security by various stratagems. They will never permit conditions to go out of their control as long as “bread and circuses” appease. We clearly cannot dodge our responsibilities by giving credence to slogans built around “conditions.” Conditions will never be altogether right for a broadly based revolutionary war unless the fascists are stricken by an uncharacteristic fit of total madness. Should we wait for something that is not likely to occur at least for decades? The conditions that are not present must be manufactured.

Comrades ask me sometimes what can we do against “all these pigs.” I state it simply—we put them to death.

I recall you remarking that in an urban guerrilla situation the military proper must be hidden, separate from the political front, since unlike a classical Mao-Giap countryside struggle where the enemy’s principal forces are 30 miles down the road, with us the enemy is all around, within a few moments of strike.

When any election is held it will fortify rather than destroy the credibility of the power brokers. When we participate in this election to win, instead of disrupt, we’re lending to its credibility, and destroying our own. 

No tactic can be ignored or discounted in such a battle. Power responds to all threats. The response is repression. If the threat is a small one, the fascist tactic is to laugh it off, ignore it, isolate it with its defense mechanism—media. The greater the threat the greater the corresponding violence from power.

A people can never be so repressed that they can’t strike back in some way.

But this has yet to be proved to my satisfaction since I know that a bomb is a bomb is a bomb; it twists steel, shatters concrete and dismembers men everywhere else in the world. Why not those made in Amerika? A bullet fired from an assault rifle in the hands of a Vietnamese liberation fighter will kill a pig in Vietnam. Why won’t it kill a pig in the place where pigs are made?

Building consciousness and revolutionary culture against the repressive, natural defense reflexes of the system means taking realistic day-to-day issues like hunger, the need for clothing and housing, joblessness. It involves provoking repression—feeding on it. 

The first struggle is waged within our own minds.

The cities of fascist U.S.A.—built straight up and with very little real planning or pattern, the twisting side streets, gangways connecting roofs, manholes, storm drains, concrete and steel trees—will hide a guerrilla army just as effectively as any forest. There is the added advantage that just being in an area doesn’t automatically make one suspect and fair game, as is the case when an establishment army unit spots a gathering, no matter how innocent, in an area where guerrilla movements have been reported in the countryside; just being out there defines them.

A $100,000 tank can be destroyed with two dollars’ worth of materials; a jet is useless against the rifleman, and it also can be destroyed with one well-placed burst from an assault rifle or destroyed on the ground by mortar from miles away. Then, too, the pilot, years in the making, can be killed with a knife. The ’copter as a fighting machine is the most stupid of all the costly gadgets; it can be heard from miles away; it can’t be armored, a ten-cent bullet can render it useless. All of these contraptions require liquid fuels that will stop flowing when the production of all the other commodities stops. Fighting really depends upon the people and small easily machined portable weapons.

We will make use of all forms of disguise: mailman, policeman, telephone repairman, priest, nun, National Guardsman. This principle will soon have them shooting at each other.

We recognized that in order to bring the people to the level of consciousness where they would seize the time, it would be necessary to serve their interests in survival by developing programs which would help them to meet their daily needs. For a long time we have had such programs not only for survival, but for organizational purposes. Now we not only have a breakfast program for schoolchildren, we have clothing programs, we have health clinics which provide free medical and dental services, we have programs for prisoners and their families, and we are opening clothing and shoe factories to provide for more of the needs of the community.

When consciousness and understanding is raised to a high level, then the community will seize the time and deliver themselves from the boot of their oppressors.

An electoral choice of ten different fascists is like choosing which way one wishes to die.

Soon we’ll be asked to fight the people of the U.S.A, because they’re getting their people’s army together ... No—I’m not waiting for them to attack a new part of Africa or Asia, I’m entering the war now—on the side of the Vietnamese!

Now is the time for us to fill the streets with our protest, clog the tunnels and back stairs of covert totalitarian government with every weapon at our disposal.

It's a miracle that we have these words written and recorded from inside San Quentin prison, mostly in solitary confinement. It feels like one of the most important books I've read and one that I will revisit often. These words are clear-eyed and convincing on both the illegitimacy of the Amerikan project/capitalism as well as what it will take to destroy them.