LOONEY TOONS

Why should a mere “rock paper” devote a portion of an issue to a pair of murdered, black revolutionaries?

It’s not an easy question to settle. The situation is not easily verbalized, the reasons are several and complex, the rationale difficult at best.

I suppose it has a lot to do with who we think we are. In some ways, George and Jonathan Jackson seem like part of us: faced with a challenge, they responded with that nebulous “heart full o’ soul” we’ve all been yapping about these past few years. The question is vstill an existential one: to be or not to be.

It’s no light matter. Two brilliant young men are dead* largely because of their own actions. (There is much to be said about the ways in which they come to those actions, but that is one of This Is It's functions.)

It comes down to the questions of freedom and sensitivity; I can’t imagine two more important concepts for the youth movement.

Reading Soledad Brother, George Jackson’s prison writings, one can’t help but be amazed at how universal their perspective is. Jackson was not merely a black revolutionary, he was a man in search of his own humanity.

“When I need strength, 1 reach down into myself. 1 draw out the reserve^ I’ve built — the necessary endurance to face down my opposition. This is where it must always come from in the end — yourself. I place no one and nothing above myself. What any man has done before me I can do. ”

I think George Jackson found his humanity. Not out on the battlefield, where he was clearly outnumbered and (perhaps inevitably) doomed. Rather, Jackson found his humanity in a prison cell, because that was the only place he had to look, and it was the freedom he gained that allowed him to take such a bold step, meet his end so courageously.

I suppose there are those who think, that George and Jonathan Jackson acted out of desperation. That can’t be true,, judging from what they said, and the ways in which they lived their lives. Rather, they acted out of something which transcended desperation.

What is most important to us is that they were able, each in his own way, to respond with action to conditions from which the bravest men might be expected to run. There are those prepared to tell us that the Jacksons were doomed by their politics; one can only pray that we are all able to see through that ruse.

George and Jonathan Jackson acted out of several things: courage, commitment, discipline, sensitivity. While we may never be called upon to take such risks, we are called upon every day, and right now - to take similar actions,

make similar choices.

George Jackson wrote Jonathan’s epitaph so clearly in part because he was writing his own:

He was free for a while. I guess that’s more than most of us can expect.

1 want people to wonder at what forces created him, terrible, vindictive, cold, calm man-child, courage in one hand, machine-gun in the other, scourge of the unrighteous -r‘an ox for the people to ride.’ . . . Cold and calm though. ‘All right, gentlemen, I’m taking over now.’

That’s the only rationale I have to offer for This Is It: we are taking control of our own lives. We are attempting it. It is somehow both reassuring and terrifying that we are not alone in picking up that challenge.