Sleep did not come easy last night, so I decided to crack open my new book “Destruction Generation – Second thoughts about the 60’s“.
Having grown up in the Bay Area (California, for those few East coasters that think they matter) during the 60’s and 70’s the topic of the first books chapter was incredibly interesting.
It talks about attorney Fey Stender, who infamously defended Huey Newton and George Jackson, members of the Oakland based Black Panthers. I remember those times well. When the Panthers were able to march the streets of Oakland, in roving bands of armed pseudo-militia. Monitoring the police. Since my grand parents lived just a little north of Oakland, I vividly recall my young imagination running a little wild with fear encountering them in our travels around some of the less desirable parts of the East Bay.
The more I read, the more learned about how this woman even directly affected my life! She was responsible for the landmark decision during this time to abolish the California law banning husbands in the delivery room. Gee.. THANKS lady.
The chapter was full of names I knew, like Betty Ann Bruno, and Angela Davis. Talk about taking me back to my childhood.
It’s full of information from people there at that time, living, breathing, fighting and dying for the Revolution. She ran with some of the most radical communist groups and personalities of the times. What I didn’t know, was how many of these groups splintered and re-formed over and over again trying to attain some sort of relevance. Once such group was “Revolutionary Union“ (now known as the Revolutionary Communist Party USA), which after a botched attempt by George Jackson’s son to hijack a plane to Cuba, which resulted in the death of a Judge, his son and two other prisoners, splintered part into the “Venceremos Brigade” which eventually splintered again and re-formed as the infamous “Symbionese Liberation Army“ which kidnapped Patty Hurst.
But there were other shocking revolutions in the book. An area just a few miles southwest of where I grew up was described this way:
Agents had infiltrated the Panthers and Jackson’s “army”. As well as a training area, the Santa Cruz Mountains had become a killing ground, where the burned corpses of “soldiers” thought to have been informers were hastily buried, leaving shards of bone in full view.
Even today, some areas in those mountains ARE NOT places to go wandering around. As recently as two years ago myself and 2 friends were nearly jumped by some ‘hillbillies’ (for lack of a better description) while riding motorcycles on a public road near their mountain homes. Strange things go on in those mountains.
There were associations with other radical groups including the Weathermen (which, as it turns out is the next chapter in the book).
In the end, for all the had work Fey Stender did to free Huey Newton and other Panthers, on May 28, 1979 the past caught up with her, and the very people she spent so much time fighting to help, put out a hit. At 1:20 AM and she was gunned down in her Berkley Home, the gunman asking her “Don’t you feel you betrayed George Jackson?”. She survived the shooting, becoming paralyzed from the waist down and in chronic pain from the 5 bullet wounds, finally taking her own life 6 months with sleeping pills, in Hong Kong.
The chapter included many interviews with people who were there at the time, both prime agents in the cause and those moving around the peripheral. So far it’s been an interesting, informative and compelling read. So far, I’m glad I didn’t put too much stock in the New Republic’s review of this book.
