STUART GANNES 1 I Eldridge leaver's Trials Political AT THIRTY THREE, 'Eldridge Cleaver's life has, reached a, turning point. Less than one year ago-and for nine years before that, Eldridge Cleaver was in prison. .His parole, his subsequent arrest after a shootout in Oakland between Police and Black Panthers and the publication of his book Soul op Ice all happened within the course of two months last Spring. Since his release from prison, Cleaver has been cast in many political roles, each suf- * ficient to command the total energies of a lesser man. Early this year, Cleaver made his own decisions. He could have becopne a member of the radical literary clique on the merits of his book. However, Cleaver did not slip quietly into any literary circle. He joined the Black Pan- ther Party, becoming its minister of informa- tion and a leader in the black liberation move- ment. And because of the clash last spring between the Panthers and the Oakland police -the clash which killed Bobby Hutton- * Cleaver will go to court next month on charges of attempted murder. By the end of this summer he found him- self playing a different role. Ironically, be- cause PFP adopted him as its presidential candidate, Cleaver assumed nominal leader- ship over-the same radicals who discovered, " encouraged and liberated him from jail earlier in the year. Finally, in the past few weeks, Cleaver has become embroiled in a controversy involving Berkeley students bringing him into conflict with California authorities in a different situa- tion from the Hutton incident, but one which also challenges his good intentions and seeks to repress his voice in the Oakland commun- ity.; Wednesday the California State Supreme Court virtually sent Cleaver back to prison. It refused to hear Cleavers appeal, on the re- 4. vokation of his parole last Spring by a lower, court. Cleaver's parole, in fact had been re- voked over his alleged participation in the Police-Panther shootout over which Cleaver is now also awaiting his trial. Sao even before his trial begins he must go back to prison- to finish seven years of his term on a 1958 f assault conviction. As his trial approaches, Cleaver seems trapped in a story whose outcome has been predetermined. For the freedom he cherishes may well be ending. Whether he is sentenced to a long prison term, shot by Oakland police or forced to flee to a foreign country, Cleaver's days of freedom in the United States appear numbered. Whatever happens to Cleaver, his major supporters will remain firm on university. campuses.' When Cleaver came to Ann Arbor in Aug- ust for the first convention of the Peace and Freedom Party, he didn't have to sway any hearts. Because of publicity through Ram- parts, Cleaver was already regarded as a re- volutionary hero of the New Left. A New York Times correspondent covering the convention commented the Movement is obsessed with a "Che Guevera syndrome". In fact on two successive nights the floor of the convention was emptied as young delegates poured into the quiet streets of Ann Arbor on wild rumors that the Pigs were hassling some of the Panthers. So when Cleaver walked into the Michigan Union ballroom with a host of bodyguards in black leather jackets, young white radicals loved every minute of it. If you can't end the war, at least you can defy the establishment with obscenities, New Left rhetoric and touch- es of revolution. i rYou have an obligation to liberate street corners. RADICALS weren't supporting Cleaver for his ideas, but rather for his image, Bert Garskoff, a local PFP candidate said at the convention "Eldridge Cleaver is a true representative of the people. He is a member of the violated class. He leads a revolutionary- "Eldridge Cleaver" says Paul Jacobs, a founder! of the PFP and its senatorial candi- date in California, "has the capacity to make men feel intensely uncomfortable all of the time-and that's what we need. Cleaver repre- sents the thorn in my side that ought to be the thorn in the. side of America." So when Eldridge Cleaver speaks, white vr1alfe -mile- Fnr the first time in this gen- Almost any single insight can trigger a dizzying association of ideas. From political tactics Cleaver moves on to revolutionary tactics. From ;there to having young white girls lie down for the revolution. But the best/part about listening to Cleav- er is his spontaneous answers to questions. When somebody asked whether he'd move into the White House if elected, Cleaver re- sponded "Hell, I wouldn't move into the White House, - if I did win the election I'd turn it into a shrine and build a new house, a people's house." y SOLVE AMERICA'S racial problems, Cleaver offers the late Malcolm X scheme of taking the issue to the United Nations. Says Cleaver, "A lot of positions taken by people who say they know what black people want don't really know what goes on in the minds of the people. We, if elected will call for a UN plebicite so the people themselves can determine how they feel." "What the establishment has now is power, power to inflict pain. What we want and what we're asking for is authority." For Cleaver, "authority' is expressed in programs.: - A new economics, changing "the de- candent establishment" into "a system of public ownership ... to change from a system of private ownership to one of cooperation." - Community control of "local schools, police forces, and all public agencies 'operating within our communities." - "Revolutionary reform." Cleaver is the ideological spokesman for the Panthers, -- who work to build economic cooperatives with- in black ghettos and "demand the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of . black people." - On politics he says, "the political arena itself is a valid institution Even though the parties now are lousy, you're going to have them in any system, you just can't throw them out." Of course Cleaver wasn't trying to win his election. Like the other leaders of PFP he sees electoral politics as an "organizing tool" to radicalize the public. a striking analysis of American society and its racial attitudes, an analysis projected onto every aspect of society, from literary criticism to an evaluation of the career of Muhammad Ali. CLEAVER EXPLAINS how he gradually realized how black men are submerged in white culture and deprived of a culture of their own. How blacks are conditioned to respect white values and detest their own. In a passage from Soul on Jce, Cleaver says, "A black growing up in America is indoc- trinated with the white race's standard of beauty. Not that the whites made a conscious calculated effort to do this, but since they constituted the majority, the whites brain- washed the blacks by the very process the whites employed to indoctrinate themselves with their own group standards." Cleaver's description of prison life is es- pecially revealing. Being confined in prison will change the life of any man. But for a black man it can be particularly horrifying. Cleaver wrote then, "Blacks and whites do not fraternize in comfort here . . . The whites want to talk with you out in the yard or at work, standing up, but they shun you when it comes to sitting down. For instance, when we line up for chow, the lines leading into the mess halls are integrated. But once inside the mess hall, blacks sit at tables by themselves and whites sit with themselves or with the Mexicans . . . I have to keep my eyes open at all times or I won't make it. There is always some madness going on, and whether you like it or not you're involved. So I engage in all kinds of petty intrigue which I've found necessary to survival." Soul on Ice is an experience which trans- cends the physical abuse Cleaver portrays so vividly. Perhaps the most moving sequences in the book deal with the mental torment pro- viding 'the bases for' what Maxwell Geismer calls "a secret kind of sexual mysticism which adds depth and tone to Cleavers social com- mentary." CLEAVER WRITES: "A convict's paranoia is' as thick as the prison wall-and just as necessary. Why should we have faith in any- one? Even our wives and lovers whose beds we have shared, with whom we have shared the tenderest moments and the most delicate "For a man like Cleaver, prison life repre- sents the final oppressive link of a chain of abuses forged by a racist establishment. ." v r:"c,{{QC 'fi" '. r , MIX ";.'i ::}}".":{1:R::"{s ". -n:;r,:?:: a r y{:{r r{r1; ,e}::is."," }? { ,;S;:n':;'+d:: . man in the country who could either start or stop a race riot through his influence in the black community. Writes Cleaver, "Malcolm X had a ,spec- ial meaning for black convicts. A former prisoner himself, he had risen from the lowest depths to the greatest heights. For this reason he was a symbol of hope, a model for thousands of black convicts who found them- selves trapped in the vicious PPP cycle: prison -parole-prison." Cleaver, one of Malcolm X's most ardent followers, has started to garner the fame and respect of his slain mentor. Cleaver was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1935. He was 'educated' in the Negro ghetto of Los Angeles and graduated to the Califor- nia state prisons of San Quentin, Soledad and' Folsom. In prison, Cleaver quickly became a leader in the Nation of Islam movement but was later isolated from the Muslims because of his sup- port of the Malcolm X faction which attempt- ed to "liberate" Muhammad's followers "from the doctrine of hate and racial supremacy" When Eldridge Cleaver speaks, he inspires black pride. Cleaver teaches black respect and black cultural identity. His slogan is "all power to the people, black power to black people." However, revolutions are not made single- handedly and Cleaver, whose impact has al- ways been chiefly with upper class intellec- tuals, last spring, joined the Panthers to be in the forefront of the black revolution. Cleaver works with the Panthers because he believes "they represent the best synthesis in 'Babylon' of what we've learned about re- volution through the techniques of Malcolm X." Unlike most black militant organizations, the Panthers are willing to work with whites to achieve their program. According to Cleaver, the basis for the coalition between the Panthers and the PFP began "when Huey Newton was in trouble and we noticed that Peace and Freedom had some sound trucks. We joined because we needed those trucks, not because we saw a grand coalition forming between black and white radicals. It wasn't until later that we noticed we had a lot of things in common." During numerous meetings last spring to determine what PFP and the Panthers did have in common, white and black radicals eventually formed the coalition which al- lowed the Panthers and PFP to function as two separate, but allied parties, working for common causes. IN THEIR RADICALIZING effort, PFP form- ed a political, issue-oriented platform. It dissociated itself from both existing political parties in this country, urged immediate with- drawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam a n d pledged total support for the "black libera- tion movement." PFP people saw the embodiment of the black liberation movement specifically in the creation of the Panther Party. In supporting the Panthers' 10 point political program, PFP provided the basis for a "black-white radical coalition" and adopted Cleaver as its candi- date. However, Cleaver is more than a Panther. In Soul on Ice he writes "I was familiar with the Eldridge who came to prison, but that Eldridge no longer exists. And the one I am now is in some ways a stranger to me." - Now Cleaver is in a state of flux. What- ever his prison experience did for him, it did 'protect' him from the further realities of the oppressive establishment he liked to write about. His life during the few months out of pri- son has been a constant flirtation with au- thorities whose single purpose seems to be to get Cleaver back in jail. He knows he is a chased man. His freedom revolutionary? "Everybody who can't stand the Democrats or the Republicans is a radi- cal ... I'll call them revolutionary." At Canterbury House, Cleaver addressed the audience saying "We've got a coalition for the specific purpose of bringing the curtains down on Babylon ... When the Pigs speak out, the only thing we hear them say is "oink." They just don't relate and the alternatives they offer us are like a pound of ham-all pork. "We have to say everything in this country is out of order until everything is rearranged." At the convention Cleaver told delegates, "the people in Vietnam who are having na- palm for breakfast can't wait . . . if we are really trying to deal with the situation we should open up another front here in Baby- lon." Cleaver says he has no illusions about peaceful change. When a pacifist asked him why he preaches violence, Cleaver answered that sometimes change can only be effected through violence. At the very least, Cleaver's violence should be seen as a reaction to the brutal treatment he has 'had by the Oakland police. Cleaver believes the police are out to get him. He thinks the only thing that saved his life when Bobby Hutton was killed was that a tear gas cannister exploded on his should- ers and made his face swollen beyond recog- nition. Cleaver had only been out of prison a few weeks when the Hutton killing occurred. After he was released from the hospital his parole was revoked for associating with "persons of bad reputation." A VIGOROUS COURT APPEAL by his friends on Ramparts resulted in his release, Super- ior Court Judge Raymond Sherwin declared Cleaver was 'limprisoned on political grounds noting "not only was there abscense of couse for the cancellation of his parole, it was the product of a type of pressure unbecoming, to say the least, to the law enforcement of his state." However, to see Cleaver is to see a scared man. The more prominent his name becomes, the more he will be exposed to that lunatic fringe of people who have been responsible for the deaths of many political leaders. Cleaver expects an attempt on his life soon- er or later. "I figure it will happen," he says "You learn to live with that in prison. There was a lot of racially motivated killing in pri- son, and for a long time I was one of the prime targets. I still am. I also know that if someone wants to kill me there's not much I can do about it." But there is something Cleaver can do about those authorities who wish to send him back to prison. He can flee the country, and Clea- ver just might. Cleaver will risk his life on the streets of Oakland but he won't return to the prison hell of Soul on Ice. Cleaver represents a force in America which cannot be alienated. He presents a philosophy of cooperating with whites which should logically be supported by the Estab- lishment. Don A. Schanche says in the Saturday Evening Post, Cleaver must be understood not as a wild radical but as an idealist who "has an almost mystical faith in the essential goodness of man." Cleaver himself says "the key is a new awareness within people which will include a respect for all people and an absence of xenophobia." The tragedy, however, is that ours is a country not prepared or willing to undertake the obligation of seeking "a new awareness." Understanding Cleaver and the forces he re- presents is no simple task and most whites find it easier to write off Cleaver as a lunatic rather than to understand him as a human being. Cleaver, like many black militants today, is motivated by a combination of pride and rage. He sees himself as a leader, perhaps of both militant blacks and radical whites, who will overcome "this decadent society"-by force if necessary. WHILE CLEAVER tends to be carried away' with his rhetoric-and his requests for machine guns seem insane-his actions are clearly those of a leader of black people. Ramparts magazine wrote in a recent issue that the day after Martin Luther King's assassination, "Eldridge Cleaver was at a high school where most of the pupils are black. The kids were mad about Dr. King's death and had decided to burn to school down. Eldridge Cleaver stopped them. "While Washington and Chicago burned, Oakland was quiet." And while Cleaver outrages liberals with obscenities and threats of revolution, they out- rage him in their stoic tolerance of institu- tions which see him as a black criminal who must be destroyed. For Cleaver watched the alleged shooting of his comrade, Bobby Hutton by Oakland police. California authorities are pushing Cleaver back into prison. So Cleaver is threatened by the very institutions' he seeks to change. Cleaver wants changes now. His freedom is his most precious possession and he gauges it in days and weeks. Cleaver refuses to sit idly or hope anx- iously for reform. He sees violence as a useful catalyst for change. He thinks a successful revolution relations, leave us after a while, put us down, cut us clean aloose and treat us like they hate us, won't even write us a letter, send us a Christmas card every other year or a quarter for a pack of cigarettes or a tube of tooth- paste. All society shows the convict its ass and expects him to kiss it: the convict feels like kicking it or putting a bullet in it. A convict sees man's fangs and claws and learns quick- ly to bear and unsheath his own, for real and final. To maintain a hold on the ideals and sentiments of civilization in such circum- stances is probably impossible - "Yet I may believe that a man whose soul or emotional apparatus had lain dormant in a deadening limbo of desuetude is capable of responding from some great sunken well of his being, as though a potent catalyst had been tossed into a critical mass when an ex- citing, lovely, and lovable woman enters the range of his feelings. What a deep, slow, tor- tious, reluctant, frightened stirring!" For a man like Cleaver, prison life repre- sented the final oppressive link on a chain of abuses forged by a racist establishment. Out of such oppression, frustration and alienation many blacks, and particularly black convicts, have been attracted to the separa- tist Nation of Islam religious movement of Elijah Muhammad. The teachings of Muhammad - to hate the white devil for subjugating the black man to 400 years of slavery - were especially ap- pealing to these 'victims of society'. Most were able to follow Muhammad without question- ing the basis for his teachings. A few however, were able to use Muham- mad's rhetoric and' staunch nationalism as a r,'"'