-y
11
going to have to face up to it.
CPS: You are defending a group that is
clearly against the system. Yet your de
fense takes place within the very system
they're against. What are your feelings
about this?
LEFCOURT: You know people often say
that, and they should understand what that
means. Fidel Castro's trial when he and
several other people made an attack on the
government military installations in Cuba
was of course a trial vjithin the system,
V/e don't have a choice at this point in
time. We cannot try the Panter 21 in any
other place except in their courts. We do
not have our own courts. We must use their
courts to the best of our abilities to de
fend and to plead those issues that have
created the trial. It's nonsense to say
that one is working within the system or
without the system. What people are doing
is working for change or not working for
change. They've made a decision. What me
thods we use doesn't seem to be really im
portant to me. If we want to write books
and make niovies to rip off money from the
capitalist system to be used to aid and
advance our cause, that's one way to do it
and there's nothing wrong with that. If
we have to go into the American courts
vrhere we don't expect justice and say that
that's another way tc do it^
If we can operate with'-..-ot the courts
and without the system, that's fine. Any
thing, any activity that is designed to
educate and create support for our move
ment must be done. The idea of whether we
should use the courts or not is really non
sense. What do you do when twenty-one peo
ple are in jail who are valuable leaders,
who have $100,000 bails on their heads,
and who have been in jail for a year and a
half v.-ithout coming to trial? Pc you aban
don them? I don't think anybody would an
swer that question in the affirmative. We
have to fight anyvrhere and everyv;here,
'Within or without the system. It doesn't
matter.
V: i'7
ANALYSIS: WEATHERJ1EN
(News Analysis)
(CPS)—^A Grand Jury decision exonerated
the Chic National Guard from the guilt of
the murders of four students at Kent State
in the face of evidence to the contrary,
indicting instead twenty-five people who
Incited to throw rocks at the men charging
upon them with M-16's; the invocation of
the Emergency War Measures Act by Trudeau
•. ' _ ' civil liberties
oj. olio Cenodicn people, me Icing them sub
ject to unlii',iited sccrch end seizure,
’.athout the right to resort to suit
agoinst the govarment in the-event or
Xo, se c;rie,jt; as a result, several hun-
oreo separatists and sympathizers were
arrostod .athout warrents3 Angola -Havic
-;ras apprehended after having already
caving already
been tried.and convicted of murder and
conspiracy by the press on circiunstancial
eviocnce, well in advance of her court
room trial.
Concurrent \;ith the execution of the
loiegoing realities, the '-'eatherifiGn
issued^a statement of intention to bomb,
fall offensive of youth resistance
in
that will spread from Santa Barbara to
Boston, back to Font and kansas,..Ue
are building a culture and society that
can resist genocide. It is a culture of
total reisitance do iiiind-controlling
maniacs, a culturo of high-e.ergy sisters
getting it on, of hippie acid-smiles and
communes and freedon to bo the farthest
out people wo can be," It is directed
against the "Promises of peace from a
government chat bombs Ganbodia Trhile
talking about an end to war, that killed
students at Jackson and Fent while calling
for rcs-|;onsibilit?/ on campus, that mur-
cioro'-i e'rad iknn-'-.on and hundreds of blacks
TThile calling for racial harmony."
The difficul.ties inherent in any anal
ysis of the rcceno activities of the
'eathermen become obvri.ous upon examination
of their motives and upon recognition of
the undeniable validity of such motiva
tion. It is after ten years of attempts
at peaceful dercons drat Ions, non-violent
attempts—marcjies, sit-ins, strikes,
from which particiuants have, alraost from
the cutset, been dragged, beaten, gassed,
and ‘iJorst of ^11, ignored by the agencies
of fhe gcvernmen'03 it is after this that
dissenters .have cone to expect violence,
to he cefensive of it, and finally to re
turn it, in a state of such hopoless
fustration vilt'a "channels" and vaporous
promises of bureaucrats that they see no
other recouj’se but violence.
e saw, in our early yerrs of political
impressionability, John F. Kennedy mur
dered, and ’i.card people rejoice. We sair
iiardin Luther King murdered, and heard
people rejoice. And for those who still
believe, Robert Ken-':edy'a career was
ended in the same fasion. Soon after, we
■witnessed the ilGC-live-and-in-color tele-
C
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