SEIU East VP Bruce Richard Statement on Campaign To Free Chip Fitzgerald-Solidarity Needed

http://www.freechip.org/bruce-richard.html

Statement of BRUCE RICHARD
Former Member of the Southern California Chapter of the Black Panther Party

My friendship with Chip began when we were in our teens, and enthusiastic about our new sense of the world. Both of us having been confined in some of the worst reform schools in California, we ended up together in Tracy, an adult prison where so-called unfit youth were also incarcerated. It was an amazing period in which, for the first time, we were reading books, magazines, journals, learning about the social justice movement. Our new way of thinking was primarily the result of how deeply the Movement influenced and penetrated the fabric of society.

We came to represent an important departure from the previous generation of black youth of a similar background, who had made different choices, many of whom had fallen down an abysmal gutter into a cesspool of no escape. We, on the other hand, had become products of the Movement, a movement that was more powerful than any drug, and guaranteed to hook you. Overnight, it seemed, we had become aware of its vast new terrain. The Movement would plaster a smile on your face, straighten you up in an erect fashion, tighten your gut and propel you into the future. That was how we felt.

We had been rescued, not from danger, but from the corruption of our old values and principles. We had been rescued by the Movement from what seemed our predestined path. We were overwhelmed with excitement about our discovery of what was going on in the world and how we might fit into it. We formed ourselves into an activist group made up of 20-25 black adult and youth inmates.

Now, we spent a portion of everyday exercising, going to the library, and having group discussions about what we were reading. We talked politics, recited poetry and listened to jazz on a small battery-operated record player. We transformed our prison environment into a training center for the Movement. Everyone in our group was responsible to run laps and engage in a physical fitness program.

We saw ourselves physically and mentally getting into shape for the Struggle, the struggle to remedy the racist murders of four little girls in Birmingham, and the Emmett Tills, and the lynchings, and Jim Crow, and the suppression of our people’s human rights. To stay under the prison radar, we operated in squads, in groups of twos and threes, threes and fours, debating current events and pursuing various aspects of radical philosophy. We stayed clear of the prison bickering, and it stayed clear of us.—If only a new movement could rise and replicate such a positive human transformation among black youth.

Our minds became free, free to roam the Kenyan mountains of Jomo Kenyatta, soothed by thoughts of the struggle in the Sierra Maestra of Cuba, refreshed by the Long March of China, healed by the successes of the freedom fighters of Algeria, warmed by contemplations of the cold winters of the Russian Revolution, aroused by the crashing waves of Cape Town that fathered another Movement, imagining ourselves riding down the Mississippi river singing “I’ve known rivers, those ancient dusty rivers,” or escaping to survive yet another day in the hills of Bolivia with Che and Tanya, only to find ourselves talking with Langston Hughes or being brought to tears by Richard Wright’s black boys.

Kwame was the African name Chip adopted for himself. Chip understood and expressed his political perspective in an enhanced manner. In most dialogues about the critical issues before the Movement, Chip was always more engaging. And he was always grasping to understand all the implications of the Movement, its history and the forces that influenced it. Chip became a young mentor, who was kind and patient with everyone around him.

There were five of us in our group who knew we were getting out of prison around the same time and who all agreed that we would join the Black Panther Party when we got out.—Of the five of us, only Chip and I remain alive.—I remember one day after we made that pledge, when the weather was wonderful and we were sitting around on the prison yard, we dramatically decided that Donald Byrd’s “Cristo Redentor” encapsulated the music we wanted for our funerals, as we romanticized our possible deaths.

Upon our release, we wasted no time joining the Black Panther Party. Chip worked tirelessly in various capacities in the Westside office of the Los Angeles Branch of our Southern California Chapter. To be a Panther was a 24/7 commitment, and every single day seemed like weeks due to the volume of activities during that explosive period. We were totally consumed in the Party’s free breakfast program, the tutorial program, selling Panther papers, political education classes and other projects. Chip was a favorite of many in the communities we served, and the children, especially, loved him, as reflected in their smiling little faces when he appeared.

I remember that night, too, and the solemn look on Chip’s face after he got away from a shoot-out with the police. He had been shot in the head. The bullet had hit the front of his head without having entered his skull and miraculously exited the rear of his head. Still conscious, Chip consoled me, telling me, “Everything will be okay. Don’t worry.”

Even though Chip must have been in excruciating pain, there were no screams, no tears, no complaints. Yet in that dreadful moment, all of the romanticized aspects of our struggle collided with a startling reality.

I know better than most that Chip’s silence and low-key manner about his long incarceration are the result of the preparation for death or imprisonment we made long ago. Heroically, Chip has endured these many years of confinement with the clear understanding that it is collateral damage, the fate of a captured activist.

The parole board in California has demanded Chip’s remorse, which he has demonstrated. This is a terrible irony, though, in consideration of the fact that the same government has shown no remorse for its crimes against humanity and long-standing oppression of black people, which we struggled to overcome. Indeed, Chip’s excessive, continuing incarceration exposes a system that punishes a young, black freedom fighter more brutally than a common criminal.

My name is Bruce Richard, and I’m an Executive Vice President of United Healthcare Workers East, the largest local union in the world, and this is my personal account about my friend and comrade Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald.

Committee Note: In October of 1969, the same year Chip was captured, Bruce Richard then 18 years old, was captured several weeks later and like Chip, was himself shot and severely wounded by Los Angeles police in a shoot-out that ended in the murder of Panther Walter Touré Pope. Bruce spent the next seven years of his life in prison.