Detroit --The Biggest
An Eyewitness Account
&
New
Witch-Hunt
in Mexico
73 Imprisoned
@
U.S. Citizen , | , Deported DUNTED PATIO, pe. of thee tihir teen arte From Mexico been designated a "prominent Trotskyist" by the Diaz Ordaz government. For full details see pages 715-727
Vol. 5, No. 28
August 11, 1967
New York, N. Y. 10010.
DETROIT, THE BIGGEST SO FAR -- AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT
By Evelyn Sell
("Things are almost normal now," Evelyn Sell wrote August 1. "The curfew has been lifted, liquor is being sold again and the Federal troops are withdrawing.
("Stores are open, buses are running, schools are back in session and some of the prisoners have been released. The politicians are bickering over who aid what wrong and trying to dream up plans to avoid ‘more Detroits.'"
(What happened in Detroit and why? That question is being asked all over the world as “law and order" has been restored to the fourth largest city in the United States. It was the biggest ghetto uprising in the three-year wave of revolts and by far the costliest to the capitalist rulers.
(Evelyn Sell is a Detroit resident. The following account was written from the scene of the rebellion.]
* * *
Sunday, July 23
As I looked out of my tenth floor apartment window, I could see black and grey clouds of smoke streaming up from every point on the horizon. Dull orange glows flared up through the clouds.
Below me, crossing the lawns of the integrated public housing project in which I live, I could see pale white rectangles and the darker shapes of the human beings carrying then.
At first I didn't understand, but within moments it struck me: the people in the project were reclaiming items from the furniture warehouse a half block away.
My neighbors were laughing and exclaiming at the sight below. Suddenly a yellow-orange mass of flames shot up from the warehouse with the rumble and crackle of thunder and lightning.
Detroit had at last exploded like Harlem, Watts, Newark and countless other American cities.
Flames and reclaimed goods completely destroyed the myth that Detroit was invulnerable to ghetto revolt because of its "enlightened police methods," "massive antipoverty program" and "good relations between white and Negro leaders. Ever since the long hot summers began, Detroit officials boasted that they showed the nation how to avoid costly
ghetto rebellions.
But they had only delayed the explosion. They could not prevent it.
Flames and fire-bombs licked away the facade. Millions of dollars are not enough to solve the overwhelming problems of the ghetto poor.
The "responsible Negro leaders” snuggled so cosily with the white power structure that they were not in tune with, had no control over and were unable to speak for the black masses.
But the Detroit uprising did more than just pose a crisis for the local power structure. Since the "safest city" in the country exploded, no city can be immune.
What could the national government do now to head off more and graver civil disorders? How could they fight their wars
abroad and their wars at home at the same time?
Monday, July 24
We went shopping. One of the first things I noticed was an 01d, torn couch placed neatly on the curb for the garbage collector. Lying on its faded pillows was a large, empty white box labeled: "Furniture -- Handle with Care."
A grocery store was crowded with blacks and whites stocking up for the days to come.
In another place a stream of people was carrying goods out of a supermarket and several smaller stores. They had ap-~ pliances, household furnishings, clothes -- whatever they needed.
A black man was standing inside the broken windows of an appliance store handing items to several whites on the sidewalk.
A white woman ran up, disappeared into a store and emerged a few minutes later. She hurried back down the street, her arms piled high with clothes.
Two young black women carried a huge pile of goods balanced precariously on a large piece of wood. When they got to the street corner, they patiently waited for the light to turn green.
Blacks and whites stood along the streets watching the activity in the stores. People driving by in cars slowed
down to look and laugh. A police car came along but no one stopped to look.
A little later, another police car drove up, parked in front of the supermarket and a tall officer with a rifle got out and ordered the people to get away.
He didn't even glance at people across the street who were still carrying items from the appliance store. About ten minutes later he got back into the patrol car, drove away, and the people returned to the supermarket.
Detroit Mayor Cavanagh remarked on TV that night, "It's like a carnival!" A perfect word to describe the atmosphere as whites and blacks together evened the score with cockroach merchants and thumbed their noses at the police.
That afternoon and the next day, I drove all over the city in the areas most seriously affected by the uprising. The lack of hostility between blacks and whites was remarkable.
The truth is, Afro-Americans were not engaging in indiscriminate attacks against whites. Their goals were very clear: to rid their neighborhoods of people who profited from black second-class citizenship.
The integrated character of the repossessions, fire-bombings and shootings made it impossible for anyone to call the uprising simply a "race riot."
The terms used over and over again were: "civil disturbance," "insurrection," "rebellion," "ghetto guerrilla warfare."
One police officer said, "This is more than a riot. This is war." Michigan Governor Romney stated, "I call this an attack on authority and on property, not an attack by one race on another."
A black U.S. congressman, John Conyers, called it “a war of the have-nots against the haves."
While blacks and whites were together on the streets, their "leaders" were meeting together to condemn the uprising and take steps against it.
Detroit's lone black councilman completely agreed with the pronouncements of the white administration. He said, "This is a completely lawless element. I support the basic policy decision [to call’in National Guardsmen and federal troops]. At this point, we must have a safe and secure city."
Statements like this caused one young Afro-American to exclaim bitterly, "You leaders have failed the black community. There's no hope for black kids. So I say let ‘em loot. The black leadership brought it on the black people."
The only black voices raised in unconditional defense of the participants in the uprising were those of black nationalists like Attorney Milton Henry, Richard Henry and Rev. Albert Cleage.
The Henry brothers issued a statement on behalf of the Malcolm X Society calling for the immediate release of all prisoners, amnesty to all arrested persons, black ghetto control over rebuilding programs for the burned out areas and the withdrawal of all soldiers.
Rev. Cleage, gubernatorial candidate on the 1964 Freedom Now party ticket, protested the excessive bails put on prisoners and the rampant police brutality.
Tuesday, July 25
The crack of rifle fire woke me up again and again last night. When I looked out of the windows, I could see the black smoke from old fires and the grey and yellow of new ones.
The smell of burning rubble drifted into the apartment.
The night was full of the sounds of the uprising: army helicopters dipping low over the roofs searching for guerrillas, the sirens of police cars and fire engines, burglar alarms ringing inanely in the burned shells of stores, the shouts of police and soldiers.
In the daytime, caravans of police cars bristling with rifles poking out of the windows were everywhere. There were jeep loads of soldiers with rifles at the ready and machine guns mounted at the rear.
There were tanks lined up across the lawn of the school I attended when the 1943 Detroit race riot took place -- a real race riot in which white gangs beat up and harassed blacks.
Two small skinny black children around ten years old were handcuffed together and guarded by a tall soldier in front of a shoe store.
A police van was packed with white prisoners.
Whole blocks of stores and homes had been turned into piles of bricks and twisted steel girders.
Newspapers reported the details of house-to-house guerrilla warfare between ghetto residents and the armed forces. Police stations, National Guard headquarters and fire stations were under heavy
attack from the ghetto guerrillas.
Police were routed from some areas entirely and were only able to reenter behind heavy forces of troops. Battles were taking place during the day as well as the night.
And city officials repeatedly tried to cover up the real situation with soothing announcements that "things are returning to normal."
Comparisons between Detroit and Vietnam were inevitable and very appropriate. Over half of the paratroopers patrolling and pacifying Detroit's east side wore combat badges won in Vietnan.
One paratrooper explained, "The last time we did this for real was when we moved into the Dominican Republic two years ago. But we practice all the time and we're ready to go anywhere in the world anytime with only an hour's notice."
of the soldiers interviewed said they felt uncomfortable about their duty in Detroit. Some were natives of the city or had relatives here. They would say, “It's our job and it has to be done."
But the Detroit police felt otherwise. The uprising was a direct challenge to their control over the city.
Up until July 23, they proudly boasted about their success in smashing a "riot" last August. They claimed that their special riot control plan succeeded in putting down a revolt on Detroit's east side.
It was apparent at the time that that "riot" was a fiction invented by the police department. The real test of strength came this week -- and the famous riot control plan proved a complete flop.
It took tanks, machine guns, state police, helicopters and the full support of state and national armed forces; and it took a savage attack against the black community.
Over 4,000 persons have been arrested, many routed out of their beds in the middle of the night on the spurious claim that "there's a sniper in here."
Prisoners have been beaten with rifle butts, crowded into cells, police garages, buses and federal penitentiaries and not fed for several days. Excessively high bail bonds of $10,000 and even up to $200,000 have been set.
Judges have declared that prisoners are guilty and will be treated accordingly although no trials have taken place yet.
Militant blacks are being arrested on phony charges. A bookstore owned by a black nationalist was visited by carloads of police on two occasions. Windows and display cases were smashed, books were flooded with water, pictures of famous black leaders were ripped from the walls and torn to pieces and the owner was calmly told by the officer in charge, "I ordered it. We heard you had a gun."
The full extent of destruction and murder by the police is only now being revealed. Gangs of police invaded private homes and apartments, smashing floors and furniture and shooting through walls and ceilings.
One tiny four-year-old black girl was killed by police as they shot up the building in which she was crouching in fear.
A witch-hunt can be expected in the near future in an attempt to place blame for what happened on militant blacks and radical groups and thereby to divert attention from the real culprits: our rotten capitalist society and the apparatus of force which maintains it.
Wednesday, July 26
There was no mail again today. The school across the street looked very empty without the usual stream of summer students walking inside.
I drove downtown and saw that the National Guard was still posted in front of J.L.Hudson, one of the largest department stores in the country and usually the busiest spot in the downtown area.
The magnitude of what took place could be measured by the paralysis that gripped the city during the uprising. All of the things which normally go on in a major metropolitan area were affected by the revolt.
Business, transportation, communication, industry -- everything halted or drastically slowed down. And this was accomplished by a relatively small number of Detroit's citizens.
According to last year's census, there were 1,640,000 people in Detroit. Figures for January, 1967, showed 694,000 blacks in the city. Of course, only a portion of these blacks took an active part in the uprising.
Yet they shut down the fourth largest city in the country, exposed the basic weaknesses of the capitalist rulers in this country, initiated a clear class struggle of blacks and whites together against common enemies and forced a sharp reexamination of the ruling class foreign and domestic policies.
U.S. CITIZEN IS DEPORTED FROM MEXICO
By Manolo Sarmiento
Peter Camejo, the brother of one of the 13 witch-hunt victims arrested in Mexico July 17, was deported from Mexico July 28 on the grounds that he came as a "tourist" but did not devote himself to "touristic activities."
{For full details on the Mexican witch-hunt, see pages 715-727.]
Peter Camejo, an American citizen, was born in New York. His brother, Daniel Camejo Guanche, born in Venezuela, has been charged with "conspiring to overthrow the Diaz Ordaz government."
Daniel Camejo, and the others arrested, are imprisoned without trial and have been tortured to obtain "confessions.
Peter hoped to provide for his brother's elementary needs: blankets, clothing and money.
Although Peter arrived in Mexico City on Friday, July 21, he was able to see his brother only once, on Sunday.
Red tape and bureaucratic stalling prevented Peter and Daniel from seeing each other more than an hour all told.
Peter reported that Daniel was filthy when he saw him. The prisoners were being given little food. They did not have cots or mattresses and were forced to sleep on the concrete floors.
Peter Camejo is a leader of the American antiwar movement in California.
The form in which he was expelled from Mexico appears typical of the arbitrary acts of the "gorilla" dictatorships elsewhere in Latin America.
In Bolivia, General Barrientos refused to allow Régis Debray's mother to see her son exeept under police surveillance. And then, she was allowed to see him only once.
Mexico's Gustavo Diaz Ordaz is not a general, but he will go down in history as one of the presidents who has done the most to crush the democratic rights of the Mexican people.
This fact is not well known in the United States or Europe where the Mexican government passes as the continent's "democracy" in contrast to the openly and unrestrainedly reactionary governments of the other countries.
In other words, the government of Mexico has taken great care to prevent blemishes of its prestige abroad, trying to preserve a “liberal" image.
It is true that the Mexican government is the only one which has diplomatic relations with Cuba today. But at the same time, the internal repressions against groups of the revolutionary left and against the Communist party have begun to lead it down the path opened up by the military dictatorships.
Revolutionary opinion in the U.S. and in Europe must take account of the case of Peter Camejo to get the full measure of the cruelty and inhumanity with which the Mexican government is treating the political prisoners who already fill its jails.
This cruelty and inhumanity is not less harsh and reactionary than that of the military dictators because it is less known.
It is merely more perfidious and hypocritical because it is veiled by “international prestige" which permits it to act with greater impunity.
International denunciations of the repressive acts of the Mexican government are urgently needed.
A FLAW IN THE PENTAGON