Break The State Book Club #25

Special Edition

Aug 16, 2024

Both right and left claim to love their country. The Ku Klux Klan, John Birch Society, American Nazi Party, con¬ servative Republicans, Minutemen, even the Hell’s Angels —all wrap themselves up in the American flag and solemn¬ ly call themselves patriots. Their enemies and critics, seeing that the right wing would not disappear when spoofed as kooks, nuts, and little old ladies in tennis shoes, surprised and frightened by their potential strength as indicated by the 26,000,000 votes cast for Goldwater, now grant them de facto political status by applying to them such sophisti¬ cated labels as “neo-fascist” and “right-winger.”

- Eldridge Cleaver, Soul On Ice

Greetings fellow Plebs & Peasants,

While the following book is not on the list of books that spurred this series, and definitely not the same theme, I recently read it after it was sitting on my bookshelf for many years and feel a politcal prisoner who later became a Black Panther and was ready to give his life to fight this corrupt system, I feel it deserves a special mention in the Break The State Book Club. I don’t agree with his politics, I don’t agree with his goals, but I can respect anyone willing to lay down his or her life for what they beleive and for what they think is a better way. I know people are in general turned of by things like the Black Panthers, and the Nation of Islam, but keep in mind, anything or anyone that is a threat to the sysytem is demonized and/or destroyed. So, I hope at least one person who is unfamiliar with Cleaver or the underlying ideals he and those like him profess takes the time to listen. It was truly a compelling read from a man who was in a position to be nothing but honest (anyone who ever spent even a day in prison knows that to be true). If one can write the words admitting he is a rapist, ther is no reson to lie about anything else. Enjoy.

- jw

#breakthestate #anarchy #donotcomply #nocompromise #nosurrender

Folsom Prison
October 9, 1965
I'm perfectly aware that I'm in prison, that I'm a Negro, that I've been a rapist, and that I have a Higher Uneducation. I never know what significance I'm supposed to attach to these factors. But I have a suspicion that, because of these aspects of my character, "free-normal-educated" people rather expect me to be more reserved, penitent, remorseful, and not too quick to shoot off my mouth on certain subjects. But I let them down, disappoint them, make them gape at me in a sort of stupor, as if they're thinking: "You've got your nerve! Don't you realize that you owe a debt to society?" My answer to all such thoughts lurking in their split-level heads, crouching behind their squinting bombardier eyes, is that the blood of Vietnamese peasants has paid off all my debts; that the Vietnamese people, afflicted with a rampant disease called Yankees, through their sufferings—as opposed to the "frustration" of fat-assed American geeks safe at home worrying over whether to have bacon, ham, or sausage with their grade-A eggs in the morning, while Vietnamese worry each morning whether the Yankees will gas them, burn them up, or blow away their humble pads in a hail of bombs—have canceled all my IOUs.

Soul On Ice

by Eldridge Cleaver

https://archive.org/details/soulonicebyeldridgecleaver

Soul on Ice is a memoir and collection of essays by Eldridge Cleaver, originally written in Folsom State Prison in 1965, and published three years later in 1968.

Part 1: Letters

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