Kathleen Cleaver by Alan Copeland
“The pigs are hunting Eldridge and Kathleen down, the way they went after Bonnie and Clyde. This past Tuesday, Eldridge Cleaver’s parole officer ordered him to leave his wife. The reason is that Kathleen exercised her inalienable right not to be a sitting duck at a shooting gallery. She bought a Super Pig Riot Shotgun. Mrs. Cleaver has had her life threatened so many times that she has lost count. But lately it has been the San Francisco Pigs themselves that have been openly telling her to make herself scarce or else.
When the shotgun and the heavy shells that go with it were bought, the clerk behind the counter in the Gun Store was so freaked that he called in the pigs and six of them stayed with him behind the counter while the purchase was being made. Kathleen also intends to buy a pistol. She told BARB “I went down to the Pig Station to apply for a permit to carry a concealed weapon and they told me they had issued only six permits in the last 2 years. Well, if that’s true, there are a lot of businessmen carrying illegal weapons. I wonder why the pigs never move on them?” She told me that she ate in the Pig’s Public Cafeteria and she freaked everybody out. Their eyes followed her every move.
When Eldridge found out about his wife’s purchase, he contacted his Parole Officer. Parolees are not allowed to associate with people who own guns. Cleaver’s parole officer visited his house in San Francisco, and when he saw the shotgun there he ordered Eldridge to move out. There is no question that Kathleen has as much legal and moral right to carry a gun as she does to give a speech in Bobby Hutton Park; but Eldridge is a Parolee and a Panther, and in this society that means some petty bureaucrat has the right to tell a human being he can’t sleep with his wife.” — Stew Albert, Berkeley Barb (1968)











