Civil War." Its thesis is very simple: another "long, hot summer" is expected in the black ghettos of the United States and plans are well advanced to put down the blacks who engage in "riots."
The lengthy piece is written in sensational style for the readers of the slick, mass-circulation magazine, but it has been carefully documented by the author, Garry Wills, and should be read by all partisans of and participants in the black liberation struggle who want to know the real prevailing attitude of the powers that be toward the poor people in the U.S. and their problems.
The article was written before the assassination of Martin Luther King and the wave of rebellions which his tragic death touched off. The massive deployment of military force against those demonstrations simply underlined and confirmed some of the conclusions Wills drew on the basis of his evidence.
"If you live in any major city in America," he writes, "your home is mapped for defense from its own citzenry. There are elaborate arrangements being formed, codified, revised....All seventeen police divisions in New York City have separate plans, which outline such procedures as how té 'freeze' an area (stop the subways from entering it, etc.)....Staging areas, food sources, command centers are laid out, guarded, stocked with food. On the basis of this general planning, specific orders:.of the day are elaborated for expected trouble."
One example Wills gives is significant: "Police instructions for the Century Plaza demonstration in Los Angeles last summer ran to sixty-eight pages." That was the massive police attack on an antiwar demonstration of 20,000 during a visit by Lyndon Johnson.
These secret military plans, which are "jealously guarded," resemble operations in Vietnam. The National Guard, “following military procedure, uses classified code names for its programs. If you live in New York, the plan is Skyhawk, in Detroit, Sundown. In the District of Columbia, Goblet Glass....In Baltimore, it is Oscar."
The men in charge are conscious of the revolutionary potential they are determined to repress. Maryland's National Guard commander, Adjutant General Gelston, "a gracious Southerner," told Wills: "Riots like that in Detroit are not conventional police actions. This is guerrilla warfare; these people have been
learning the lesson of Vietnam....The
tactics against this kind of rioting
are more like city-clearing operations
than the old-style ‘crowd control' --
except that when clearing an enemy city
you don't worry much about who gets
killed on the other side."
General Gelston, who had a chance
to "clear" his own city of Baltimore
shortly after this interview, declared
himself opposed to "unnecessary" use of
guns and clubs. "You won't find a great-
er proponent of gas than I am," he said.
His motivation -- which is common
among ruling-class strategists of the
war against blacks -- did not involve
any considerations of humanity or the
just demands of black people. He cited
an incident in Cambridge where his men
used nausea-tear gas instead of bullets:
"And there were no dead people to embar-
rass us; none had any holes in them; no
kid two blocks away got hit with a stray
bullet."
In the name of so-called riot pre-
vention, police are going into the spy
business wholesale. Gelston told Esquire's
man that "Operation Oscar" is constantly
brought up to date. "Every week," he
said, "we have a meeting of intelligence
personnel from the Guard, city and county
police, the state troopers, the Baltimore
fire department and utilities companies
to coordinate our plan and stay on top
of what is happening."
Wills claims that police agree
that once an outburst reaches a certain
stage they can no longer stop it, but
they "know of a hundred riots squelched
for every one that gets out of hand and
into the papers."
"So every day intelligence reports
cross police chiefs' desks charting the
movement of all militant leaders, point-
ing to suspect meetings....The reliance
on informers, the placing of undercover
men, the meshing of intelligence net-
works -- this task holds first priority
in all cities where trouble is expected.
‘We want to riddle the black movement
with agents the way the American Commu-
nist Party is infiltrated with FBI men,'
one department told me."
The Esquire article exposes the
role of police "community relations" ef-
forts in this process:
"When old-line departments were
hesitant about adding Community Rela-
tions departments to the police force,
on the grounds that policemen should not
be social workers, an argument that
brought some of them around was the ob-
sn she aasatt. sg Sticsepabagteet? EY
servation that these agencies are good for intelligence probes....forces like those in Los Angeles and New York -- and even in Chicago -- have planted undercover agents among black nationalists, paid them through cover channels like the welfare office, given them one 'contact' only, and kept the secret of their police ties even from their own families.
The treatment of America's black communities as occupied "enemy" territory is not the apocalyptic vision of the future. Wills describes some scenes during the ghetto rebellion in Detroit last sunmmer that were not reported in the newspapers:
“Armored personnel carriers, twoton trucks, jeeps with gun mounts, five Commando armored cars, built for Vietnan, loaned to the city police, cruised through crowds....Skeptics point out that so few died -- forty-three by the official count. But I did not talk to a single participant in the shooting who believes that figure. 'We got the fortyfourth,' one Guardsman told me. 'We had been harassed by a sniper in a building for two nights, and were under orders not to go into the building after him....The first night we sprayed the building with machine-gun fire, but he was still up there firing at us. So, on the second night, the building "accidentally" caught fire....' Needless to say, the death went unreported.
"The fact that deaths were not reported can be proved, even from the official statistics. One of the known victims was shot by police who drew up no report of the incident. Two other men shot by police were left to lie in a store -other policemen found the bodies and arranged for their removal. Another was shot by a store owner, who left the scene and made no report....After the first deaths, few Guardsmen cared to report incidents. '....We just shot and forgot. When we killed a sniper or a looter, he either died in a burning building or we threw him into one. I saw at least six unreported deaths, and I was only on duty half the time in one little area.'
"A police observer told me he had heard informed estimates that ran as high as two or three hundred deaths, that the toll was certainly over a hundred. Many of those who disappeared would be unenployed, unregistered, not on welfare rolls."
The National Guard and police were not the only ones to take part in the killing:
"Establishments around the battle perimeter looked for anyone who was willing to carry a gun and protect the prenises....I talked to one private guard who
shot a Negro in the stomach for refusing
to raise his arms when he approached a
hotel."
Last fall, after the military at-
tack on Detroit's black community, the
city's police chief Girardin asked De-
troit's Common Council for nine million
dollars' worth of “antiriot" equipment.
This was to include armored vests, machine
guns, and battle cars.
The police departments of the coun-
try, in addition to the secret operation-
al schemes worked out with the army and
National Guard, have established a general
approach to outbursts in the black com
munities. "The police have an implicit
orthodoxy on the basic response to riots.
I met no police officials who doubted its
two fundamental tenets. First, that the
way to handle an incendiary situation is
to blanket it, instantly, with blue; just
pour the men in....The second tenet is
that, once the violence starts, there
should be no negotiating with ghetto lead-
ers." In other words, black people and
their leaders are to be regarded as en-
emies to be defeated militarily.
Police departments are setting up
special units whose main or only job will
be to suppress "riots." In Philadelphia,
police commissioner Rizzo has "a hundred
twenty-five trained sharpshooters" whose
job is to "go hunting" during rebellions
in the black community.
According to Wills, they are "now
working on anti-sniper tactics, learning
to shoot from helicopters; finding out
which men can shoot from heights, from
ladders; testing heavier guns and body
armor."
Rizzo told Wills, "We have to use
force just as the Army does. It's war....
We're becoming familiar with guerrilla
tactics, and we have the weapons to fight
a war. I consider myself an expert in
city warfare, and I don't know of any
problem we can't handle. We may have a
riot here, but it will be the shortest
-riot in history."
Police departments across the coun-
try are building up their arsenals for fu-~
ture battles in their war on black people.
One of the most popular items is chemical
Mace, a tear-gas spray put out by Smith
and Wesson, a division of Bangor Punta
Corporation. More than 3,000 police de-
partments already stock Mace. The spray
breaks down "the oily protective coating
of the skin to let the tear gas work
directly on the nerve ends all over the
face. This makes it feel as if one's face
is on fire....a man hit with the mixture
closes his eyes, puts his hands to his
face, and suffers a group of psychological
side effects -- disorientation, gasping,
immobilization."
A wide variety of novel weapons are on order by police along with more standard war materiel:
"The old. Roman shield has come back into use, to stop thrown bottles and bricks. Sound and light are being tested -- certain sound waves make men loose their bowels; other ‘curdling' sounds ._. drive men from their vicinity. Light daz-— zles. One man has even invented a 'nonlethal' flamethrower.
"The buying of war equipment is standard procedure now, limited only by the pinch of the city budget. Orders are being taken and filled for four armored cars; at least four others are in the development stage....One of the two vehicles already tested in riots was designed for the war in Vietnam....They are being surrealistically outfitted with all kinds of accessories -—- fire-fighting equipment, gas dispensers, foam to wash Molotov cocktails off them, electric grids to repel those who try to tip them over...."
The Cadillac Gage Company, which also produces the Commando police "tank," has developed a gas-operated rifle called the Stoner 63A. This gun "spews a highvelocity bullet, barely stabilized, that tears into things with a tumbling action,
almost like a dum-dum bullet (the kind
outlawed by the second Hague Conference).
I fired the gun in Warren, Michigan, and
was shown an inert block of clay into
which one bullet had been sent. I could
stick my fist in the hole. Imagine what
such a bullet will do to a man's head
itt it off), or to his chest (clean it
out).
"The government is still trying to
decide whether the Stoner gun should be
adopted in Vietnam. The Detroit police
have decided. They want to carry a hun-
dred of these out on the street next time
there is a riot."
From the facts provided by Wills,
it is clear that a sector of America's
ruling class believes that a "new civil
war" against the black people in the
United States is on the agenda. The con-
crete steps they have already taken show
that they are preparing to use violence --
violence on a scale not seen in America
since the Civil War.
Whether they succeed any better
than their predecessors, the Southern
slaveholders, in maintaining their rule
by such means is a question that will be
settled by the American people -- both
black and white.
* THE DEBATE OVER