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Blood in My Eye

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The life praxis of assassinated prison intellectual and revolutionary George Jackson embodies much of the radical possibility embodied by the work of radical prisoners. Incarcerated in 1960 at the age of eighteen for a $70 gas station robbery, Jackson was given an indeterminate sentence of one year to life. His staunch disobedience to prison rules and officials, along with his principled and visceral hatred of confinement, spurred Jackson's political and intellectual transformation within the prison. As his political stature among California inmates grew, Jackson became a liability to state authority through his profound effectiveness as an organizer and educator of fellow prisoners-in fact, one can still find many (formerly) imprisoned and free people who testify to Jackson's mentorship as integral to their political formation. This praxis essentially guaranteed that Jackson would never again see the light of the outside, and his brutal, open execution on the concrete ground of San Quentin prison emblazoned the logic of state repression in spectacular fashion. It is an ironic, perhaps fitting testament to Jackson's lasting political legacy that a wall in the San Quentin prison "museum" contains a mounted trophy case of the high-powered rifle that killed him on August 21, 1971, along with a bronze plaque enshrining the name of the guard who pulled the trigger.
George Jackson was, in many ways, the personification of Frantz Fanon's paradigmatic "native intellectual." In Fanon's terms, Jackson's widely read Soledad Brother and Blood In My Eye became "literatures of combat," serving dual capacities as theoretical texts and mobilizing tools. Close analysis of Jackson's knowledge production reveals a general congruence with the third, revolutionary "phase" of Fanon's developmental conception of the revolutionary native intellectual:

"Finally in the third phase, which is called the fighting phase, the native, after having tried to lose himself in the people and with the people, will on the contrary shake the people. Instead of according the people's lethargy an honored place in his esteem, he turns himself into an awakener of the people; hence comes a fighting literature, a revolutionary literature, and a national literature. During this phase a great many men and women who up till then would never have thought of producing a literary work, now that they find themselves in exceptional circumstances-in prison, with the Maquis, or on the eve of their execution-feel the need to speak to their nation, to compose the sentence which expresses the heart of the people, and to become the mouthpiece of a new reality in action."

As Jackson found political agency in abrogating the image of the depersonalized, silent, debased prisoner, he recognized his own incarceration as the logical outcome of a collective plight. The destiny of human expendables, the surplus people left to languish under the advance of white supremacist capital, was death, addiction, unemployment, and mass warehousing. Jackson consistently articulated the tortured severity of his relation to the world in these terms, stating and re-stating the essential dialectic of capital that rendered antagonism, deviance, and disobedience the most generalized mode of existence for people like himself:

"...that's the principal contradiction of monopoly capital's oppressive contract. The system produces outlaws. It also breeds contempt for the oppressed. Accrual of contempt is its fundamental survival technique. This leads to the excesses and destroys any hope of peace eventually being worked out between the two antagonistic classes, the haves and the have-nots. Coexistence is impossible, contempt breeds resistance, and resistance breeds brutality, the whole growing in spirals that must either end in the uneconomic destruction of the oppressed or the termination of oppression."

This epistemology of resistance and antagonism structured Jackson's political praxis. It was precisely his refusal of an idealized, hopeful "peace" (along with a pedagogical willingness to articulate the grounds of his refusal) that may have made his political assassination virtually inevitable. Jackson believed that the structural inevitability of state repression formed a condition of resistance for prisoners and free people alike. Yet, embracing this condition could produce an existential suicide-the necessary condition for declaring war on power.

"This monster-the monster they've engendered in me will return to torment its maker, from the grave, the pit, the profoundest pit. Hurl me into the next existence, the descent into hell won't turn me. I'll crawl back to dog his trail forever. They won't defeat my revenge, never, never. I'm part of a righteous people who anger slowly, but rage undamned. ...I'm going to charge them reparations in blood. ...This is one nigger who is positively displeased. I'll never forgive, I'll never forget, and if I'm guilty of anything at all it's of not leaning on them hard enough. War without terms."

For George Jackson, the historic possibility of forging a utopic "new reality" could only emerge from the corporeal ashes of those who dared challenge the corporate state's programmatic killing of oppressed people in and outside the U.S. It was this imagination of a righteous political death, a glorified descent into hell mandated by a social formation that fed on the bodies of disobedients and disposables, that allowed for the creative rearticulation of the imminent, violent consequence of repression.

This book offers an excellent, honest portrayal of the day to day reality of 70s black revolutionairies and it can be promised that once you begin reading, you will rush to the end.

This book takes you to the heart of the Black Power movement and is so intriguing because it is written by someone who lived, and died for a cause in which he believed.

So often books or studies that focus on this specific facet of the civil rights era dillute the reality of the moment, because they are writing from a mere spectator's point of view, rather than from the perspective of actual participants.

For this reason, this book should be a must read for anyone studying the Black Panther Party--if they want to know the principles, beliefs and hopes of the people.

George Jackson, a man imprisoned for robbery at a young age and given one year to life in the penal system. Self educated in jail by the works of Marx, Fanon, Mao, Che and many other revolutionary intellectuals. Powerful comments on Urban Guerrilla Warfare. A must read for anyone grappling with the question of How? How can we strike a blow at the Oppressors, read this book you will glean ideas, what you do with them is on you. peace!

Now I figured out where Ja Rule got the title for his new album from. Upon reading this book, it addressed the racial, sociatal, politcal, and emotional abuse that was going on in his life and towards blacks. I think it was not fair that he got one year to life in prison just for stealing $70.00 from a store. I think he should've served some prison time and community service. But being gave life in prison for a misdemeanor is definately wrong!. If he were white he would probly get 2 years in prison & probation. But they did not allow that for blacks back during that time. I thought the collection of essays & letters expressed his feelings or inner most thoughts. So I can see why Ja Rule named his album after this book's title

This monumental work encompassing politics, economics, history, military strategy, psycology, self-defense and critical analysis is one of the most important works written by an author of African descent. There are a select few books which I would honestly call timeless classics but this along with Carter G. Woodson's "The Mis-Education of the Negro," are two which should be required reading for every New-Afrikan male. There are so many key points and observations made which are prevalent in todays society that it becomes clear as to the reason why the author was viewed as a threat to American society at large.

This is George Jackson at his finest. Thirty years before the Bush era inspired fears of American fascism, this literary master-piece warned of the impending danger. George warned that "no facist regime "in power" would "advocate the abolition of any form of private ownership." Over the past 7 years we've seen blatant examples of this come to life in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Venenzuela, Liberia, Zimbabwe and countless other hotspots around the world. Viewing the mistakes of history Jackson from the confines of his cell was able to offer up such historically accurate assessments as "war taken to the point of diminishing return weakens rather than strengthens the participants."

In the tradition of Malik El Hajj Shabazz, David Walker, Denmark Veasey, Nat Turner and countless others, the call for a unified, fearless resistance to oppression earned George L. Jackson a death sentence. How much of a threat was he, consider this. On December 12, 2005, Stanley "Tookie" Williams was denied clemency from the Govenor of California who pointed to his sighting of George Jackson as a hero of his, as evidence that Williams believed in armed rebellion and was thus a unworthy of clemency inspite of his work against gang violence.

In facing the use of the title of Blood in My Eye by a quisling like Jahrule, my anger and disappointment was pacified only by the words found in this text in relation to "the black running dog." "Your main source of opposition is the black running dog...but it is unfair to automatically condemn a black person for not understanding economic and political subtleties...some are simply confused in an honest way.

Fast shipping!! Will definitely do business again!! The book was packaged safetly and was in great condition!!

To place this book in perspective, it should be read with "The Rise and Fall of California's Radical Prison Movement" which gives a more accurate and less flattering portrait of Jackson as a petty hustler and con-artist. There are no subtle insights here, just overheated and dated rhetoric about "the fascist beast" and "Amerikkka." Prisons are not hotbeds of potential anti-capitalism but where the worse aspects of present day society are leached into their most destructive and poisonous forms. Only in exceptional circumstances, like Attica, do these circumstances get overturned.

As Max Stirner pointed out more than a century and a half ago, criminals are those most dominated by spooks; even as they break laws, they worship property because they want to make it their own, a more profound insight whose validity anyone who spends any real time around petty street criminals can testify to.

I have not read this book yet, but it seems to be an interesting propaganda piece (in the original sense of the word) by somebody serving an unjust sentence.

Nowadays, with Three Srikes and you're Out in CA, this is being repeated no doubt.

My objection to this book (why it's not 5 stars) is that it appears to be a derivative work by somebody who studied the original leftist agitators.

Also, this book is likely to be admired by prison radicals who actually do not mind being labeled evil. By that I mean prison gang diciples. This is the modern 21st century trend--in other words, people who do not care for a reconcilation with their oppressors, but relish the opportunity to make trouble.