Marilyn Buck--Bob A. Feldman

Remembering Marilyn Buck: Part 2 of a 1994 "Downtown" Interview

Only a few weeks after finally being paroled, long-time U.S. political prisoner Marilyn Buck died of cancer in New York City on August 3, 2010, at the age of 62.

Following is the second part of a 1994 interview with Marilyn Buck, which was done after Newsweek magazine published a cover story on the odyssey and surrender of former 1960s radical and fugitive Kathy Power in 1993, in which Marilyn commented on the Newsweek article about Kathy Power:

Are there any similarities between Kathy Power’s life and yours?
Marilyn Buck [MB]: I am a woman who lived a number of years clandestinely. There are of course some similarities in our lives—being white, from the middle classes, having become political activists in the 1960s against the war in Vietnam and for Black liberation. And we both lived lives underground. For myself, I also know that becoming a politically active woman was not an overnight experience, that I was not misled by some charismatic character. It was a thoughtful process, an examination of what the nature of this system is, of my own role both as object and, more importantly, as subject to fight the oppression. I do not know Ms. Power’s history of politicization, but I definitely mistrust the media’s reductionist scenario of girl-meets-convict-and-is-manipulated.

I think the differences between our lives are more important. I did not feel it necessary to divorce myself from political struggle to survive; and, I did not surrender. I was captured—imprisoned without negotiation. There were no peace talks, no offers of plea.

Living underground is not a romantic endeavor or diversion, as Jane Alpert may have initially imagined it to be. It is difficult and personally heart-wrenching to be separated from one’s family, friends and one’s political cohorts. And yet people all over the world who have to struggle for survival and against grinding, brutal oppression lead lives of value, of resistance, no matter the deaths, the separations they endure. Being underground is not about escaping a life not liked or not fulfilling: Who one is does not rest on one’s name or birth date, but rather on how one lives and acts.

I remember a conversation I had with a comrade a number of years ago, at the time Bernardine Dohrn and her now-husband Bill Ayers, negotiated their own surrenders. The comrade sadly, and a bit angrily, stated that there was not one of us who were engaged in liberation struggle who would not wish to be home, but in Amerika not everyone can do that and live safely, secure from attack. I think that is true.

Certainly, it is much more possible for white people than for people from the oppressed nations to do so. I think of the Salvadoran FMLN comrades who have been assassinated after returning to public life from clandestinity, after all the agreements and international assurances. I wonder how many more will die at the hands of the death squads.

Being white gives one privilege, so the possibilities that exist to surrender are much greater. In this last decade many white people have retreated, either inured to the escalating racism and socioeconomic oppression, feeling they have done all they can, are not to blame, or are frightened at the possible consequences.

Ms. Power retired into the sanctuary of white Amerika. By that I mean that she, as a white woman, had the privilege of escaping notice by retiring into the expected “normal” white life. She did not have to fear being stopped by the police merely because she looked like a “suspicious person.” White people are not “suspicious,” unless they act suspicious or refuse to conform.

Certainly, in the first period of flight, there was danger because she was not “suspicious”—she was hunted! The full weight of the repressive apparatus was unleashed. Radical white women were under attack for having possibly supported her and Susan Saxe. However, after the threats and intimidation did not work in a number of radical women’s communities because of a refusal to collaborate with grand juries, the relentless hunt was thwarted, and the danger diminished.

The State was not prepared to terrorize white Amerika to capture Ms. Power, certainly not to the degree it did hunting Angela Davis or Assata Shakur in Black America. Once Ms. Power established a conforming identity she was relatively safe. But feeling safe and being safe are not always the same thing. One can be safe and not feel that. Conversely, one may feel relatively secure, believing that one has not betrayed oneself or been betrayed, and not be safe.

I can say this because I too was hunted. After the initial fear of being the fox before the hounds subsided, I found that it was relatively easy to be an unassuming, unnoticed white woman. It was assumed that I was a part of the white social consensus. My social credit was good. More than once, police even rushed to my aid—unrequested. The same police might then rush off to snarl at someone Black or Latino—ready to shoot to kill.

I was also able to continue being a political person. It did not stop me from challenging racism, or working in social programs. Not until I was discovered to be that traitor to the capitalist white supremacist consensus. Then my white skin lost its American Express creditability. The State’s agents went haywire. And here I am with a total of 80 years.

Why aren’t you in the radical gallery sidebar which Newsweek printed?
MB: With the exception of Kathy Boudin [released on parole in 2003], none of the more than 100 political prisoners and P.O.W.s are mentioned in the “Revisiting the Radicals” sidebar. None of us have surrendered or repented. Ms. Boudin had been spectacularized in 1970 after the explosion of a townhouse in the Village, so she was “revisited.”

Very few of those of us now in prison were marketed by the media as “fame” commodities. We are buried as much as possible. Those political prisoners and POWs, such as Leonard Peltier or Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt [now released], who are becoming better known, were not propelled by the press into “fame.” Rather, it is through the struggle of many people to bring attention to the reality that both these comrades were framed by the COINTELPRO agencies that they are known.

Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther, MOVE supporter and a journalist sits on death row in Pennsylvania, framed by the State. He’s an established journalist, but neither Newsweek journalists, nor others in the establishment media, have yet [as of 1994], in more than 10 years, written an investigative piece about the fact that the government is marching him to the death chamber!

Newsweek did not write articles about the Tribunal held in 1991, in which charges were brought against the United States for its treatment and continuing detention of the political prisoners and POWs from the New Afrikan and Black, Puerto Rican, Native American, Hawaiian and Mexican national liberation movements, and the anti-imperialist and peace/antiwar movements. No establishment press wrote a major article on the Tribunal charging the U.S. with the genocide of Native Americans, the enslavement of Africans and the colonialization of North America and the Caribbean held in San Francisco on the 500th anniversary of the European invasion of the Americas.

Political prisoners are definitely not in fashion. The same people that want us silenced, that continue to exact vengeance, certainly would not encourage its publicists and propagandists to bring any attention to who we are and why we are.

Has the Clinton Administration dealt adequately with issues of political prisoners in the 1990s, from your point of view?
MB: No. Even those with the most clear-cut cases are being denied under this new administration. Comrades like the New York 3—Nuh Washington [who later died in prison of cancer in 2000], Herman Bell, and Jalil Muntaqim—have had legal efforts unjustly denied, even though the government misconduct was flagrant—disappearing evidence which would have undermined the state’s court case. Silvia Baraldini, an Italian citizen, has repeatedly been denied repatriation to serve her sentence in her homeland. Each time the Italian government has requested her transfer, the Justice Department has refused because she refuses to “cooperate”—that is, to disavow her political views as an anti-imperialist. [Some years later, Baraldini was finally repatriated to Italy.] There has been no attempt to resolve the demands for the release of the Puerto Rican POWs and political prisoners or for decolonization [until their release in late 1999].

Sundiata Acoli was refused parole this year, after more than 20 years in prison! Those comrades who have been released were released because there were no other legal ways to keep them locked up. They were not allowed to go to half-way houses at a time when the Federal Bureau of Prisons has been trying to send more people to half-way houses. Because they are “a danger to the community”! Teachers, writers, productive human beings—a danger?

Most other nations at some point have come to terms with political movements that have opposed or do oppose the State. Political prisoners have been released and given amnesty all over the world by state apparatuses that had reveled in brutality and torture. But nothing has changed in the U.S.

Everyone of us comes out of a movement that struggles for liberation, social justice and human dignity. Supporting us is a part of supporting these movements. Until the movements challenging U.S. state power regain strength and momentum, until there is a powerful voice raised by you who are concerned with human rights and justice, I do not think the government—no matter who is in the White House—will make any qualitative moves in the direction of justice. Free All Political Prisoners and POWs! (end of interview)

Remembering Marilyn Buck: Part 1 of a 1994 "Downtown" Interview

Only a few weeks after finally being paroled, long-time U.S. political prisoner Marilyn Buck died of cancer in New York City on August 3, 2010, at the age of 62.

Following is the first part of a 1994 interview with Marilyn Buck, which was done after Newsweek magazine published a cover story on the odyssey and surrender of former 1960s radical and fugitive Kathy Power in 1993, in which Marilyn commented on the Newsweek article about Kathy Power:

Why do you think Newsweek chose to do the story on Kathy Power at this time?
Marilyn Buck [MB]: In a capitalist society, fame and recognition are commodities, usually with very short sales life. The moment is exploited for all its worth; often times by the individual or institution in the spotlight, but all the time by the media, the illusion makers. They create the saints and the demons.

Captures, particularly surrenders, are moments of celebration for the state—a chance to affirm its power, despite its being disavowed or challenged. Imagine challenging the power of the biggest, baddest, domestic and international military machine on the planet! How dare they, we, she…me! To psychologize, and label such behavior as deviant is imperative. Never again does the state want to see an uncontrollable or unpredictable rise of different sectors of the population against its policies and programs, or its existence as such. The U.S. incessantly broadcast that the bombing of Iraq and the supposed national consensus supporting that manufactured military maneuver has laid to rest the infamy of the defeat in Vietnam. It has a pathological fear of decolonialization and national self-determination. Standing in the ‘90s, the propaganda establishment seizes every opportunity to declare the ‘60s—that time of standing up for liberation, justice, self-determination, and against the status quo of white Amerika—dead, an aberration.

Kathy Power’s surrender was perfect for spectatularization. Her surrender was a perfect vehicle to reinforce—to use a psychological term—the `see-what-happens-when-you-stray-from-white-Amerika’ line. This is not the first time sensational stories have hit the press about the radical returned to the fold. Most recently, there was an interview in the New York Times Living Section with Bernardine Dohrn. There is a fascination with a woman who defied the system, who she is today; and a reassurance that she has been cured of `excessive opposition.’

How would you characterize Newsweek’s political and ideological slant on the Power article and the accompanying piece by Jane Alpert?
MB: Newsweek fulfilled its ideological and political role in how it presented this story: Woman-in-misery-because-of-her-political-past. They would have liked to have squeezed out an admission of remorse, but an admission of depression was all they could get.

I think it’s interesting that the Newsweek article chose not to say anything substantial about her current political views. Is she still an antiracist, pro-Black, against U.S. imperialism? Her statement upon surrender is not reported in this article. Perhaps because she did not capitulate in her earlier beliefs that the war was wrong, that Black liberation was important to support?

Newsweek ignored what she said, and instead relied on a pseudo-psychological rendering—a focus on depression and the Betty Crocker lifestyle. Of course, they forget to cite any statistics on the prevalence of clinical depression in white middle-class women in their 40s.

By concentrating on the past, the `moment’ and the flight, as well as the reintegration into the safe white world, the media did not have to say a word about who Kathy Power is as a political person living in the world. Another reassurance to the readers. From reading Newsweek and other articles, I don’t have much of a clue as to who she is socially or politically. My first response was, `oh, the prodigal son/daughter line.’

If Kathy Power’s depression doesn’t provide an example of `divine punishment,’ then Jane’s middle Amerikan nightmare should flesh it out—struggle against the system is a childish illusion, a romantic diversion that turns out not to be such a lark after all. Jane’s piece is intended to say `resistance doesn’t pay,’ from one who can say she too challenged the state, but repented. Under the guise of feminism, Alpert continues to be quite a vocal mouthpiece for reconciliation with the system, patriarchal or not.

The actual intent of the Newsweek article, as well as the majority of the `establishment’ media is to continue to delegitimize resistance to U.S. imperialism and capitalism touted as `democracy.’ Despite its inherent weaknesses, the U.S. has emerged more predatory in the absence of any countervailing power. It is a warning…`Don’t even try it.’

Even the `Revisiting the Radicals’ gallery sidebar, while stating the bare facts, is designed to say, `see, it is only a phase, YOU CANNOT WIN!’

Why do you think Newsweek uses a lot of psychological jargon in this spread?
MB: Newsweek uses a psychological format to examine `objects’ of its focus. Also to convince people they know what they are talking about.

The state is obsessed with trying to understand why white people would `drop out’ or challenge the system. They won’t admit that there is something seriously pathological in the system, so they seek to convince the public there is something wrong with those who opposed their system.

The expectations and heady sensation of change of the `60s and ‘70s may be overwhelmed by two decades of unrelenting conformism and systematic desensitization of political, social and moral consciences, but the reality of oppression, exploitation and social injustice is greater than ever. It will not disappear. Even now it is intolerable. Too much white supremacy, too much poverty, prison and social repression. Too little justice and too few jobs. The L.A. uprising was only one seismic shock to this structure. The demand for justice and national liberation has not subsided.

Here in the oppressor nation, there is still a segment of white youth who drop out, become antiestablishment punkers drawn to hip-hop and the rap of the besieged African-American youth, who are alienated and angry, sometimes not yet exactly sure why, but squatting, looking for new forms of protest, examining history, asking questions and rejecting a history of racism and genocide. Youth who are consciously, deliberately opposed to this system. There are still socialists, anarchists, antiracists, antifascists. There are thousands and thousands of women, lesbians who refuse to go back. The potential for struggle within this oppressor nation has not been crushed or thrown into the wastebin of history. (end of part 1).