Jeff Shero interviews Zayd Shakur for Rat Subterranean News (1969) “Zayd-Malik Shakur, brother of Lumumba Shakur who sits in prison in lieu of $100,000, speeds around the city organizing and promoting the Panther defense. As one of the Panther spokesmen he hurried down from the welfare demonstration to give a short interview. We decided that most radicals understood that the Panthers had been framed, ‘kidnapped for ransom’, as Zayd put it, so that we should deal with the questions that are commonly asked by those unfamiliar with the Panther organization.”
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Jeff Shero interviews Zayd Shakur for Rat Subterranean News (1969)

“Zayd-Malik Shakur, brother of Lumumba Shakur who sits in prison in lieu of $100,000, speeds around the city organizing and promoting the Panther defense. As one of the Panther spokesmen he hurried down from the welfare demonstration to give a short interview. We decided that most radicals understood that the Panthers had been framed, ‘kidnapped for ransom’, as Zayd put it, so that we should deal with the questions that are commonly asked by those unfamiliar with the Panther organization.”

Jane Alpert and David Hughey demonstrating outside the Women’s House of Detention. Photo by Steve Rose. I was expected to stay in the House of D. for quite a lot longer than the week I spent there. When the bail on our charges was lowered to $20,000 on two of us and $50,000 on the other two, it blew our minds to think of the Panther 21, in jail on no evidence since April 1st on $100,000 bail each which the state had refused again and again to lower. Two of the Panther women arrested on those charges are still in the House of D., Joan Bird and Afeni Shakur, known to her sisters as “Power,” and they’ve done some far-out things in their 7 months in incarceration. Although we were on different floors, couldn’t see each other and could communicate only with great difficulty and danger, I heard about Power and Joan constantly from the sisters on my corridor since every inmate knows who they are after a week. What I heard most in the House of D. was “Hey, Conspiracy, I know you had nothing to do with those bombs, but if you can find that girlfriend of yours who split [Pat Swinton], tell her to come back and blow this motherfucker up!” —Jane Alpert in Rat Subterranean News (1969)
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Jane Alpert and David Hughey demonstrating outside the Women’s House of Detention. Photo by Steve Rose.

I was expected to stay in the House of D. for quite a lot longer than the week I spent there. When the bail on our charges was lowered to $20,000 on two of us and $50,000 on the other two, it blew our minds to think of the Panther 21, in jail on no evidence since April 1st on $100,000 bail each which the state had refused again and again to lower.

Two of the Panther women arrested on those charges are still in the House of D., Joan Bird and Afeni Shakur, known to her sisters as “Power,” and they’ve done some far-out things in their 7 months in incarceration. Although we were on different floors, couldn’t see each other and could communicate only with great difficulty and danger, I heard about Power and Joan constantly from the sisters on my corridor since every inmate knows who they are after a week.

What I heard most in the House of D. was “Hey, Conspiracy, I know you had nothing to do with those bombs, but if you can find that girlfriend of yours who split [Pat Swinton], tell her to come back and blow this motherfucker up!” —Jane Alpert in Rat Subterranean News (1969)

Shredded draft files cascading over Rockefeller Center. Photo by Steve Rose for Rat Subterranean News (1969). On July 3, 1969 a group of five women (Jill Boskey, Pat Kennedy, Valentine Green, Kathy Czarnik, and Maggie Geddes) scattered the shredded files of 200,000 draft-age men in Manhattan. The files were liberated from the Manhattan draft board offices at 321 W. 44 St. where the women left a letter explaining the action, which read, in part, If the destruction we have wrought against the files upsets you — we ask you to think about the destruction of lives which you have helped perpetuate in Vietnam. If you question what we consider our obligation to do this, we ask you to question rather the insidiousness of American “peace with victory” in Vietnam and of future American counterinsurgency efforts elsewhere. Corporations such as Dow, Standard Oil, Shell and Chase Manhattan — with offices here in Rockefeller Center — bear much of the responsibility for U.S. domination of those areas from which we profit. It is obvious how fiercely the recent Latin American protests against Rockefeller belie the “goodwill” policies mouthed by government and corporations in this country.
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Shredded draft files cascading over Rockefeller Center. Photo by Steve Rose for Rat Subterranean News (1969).

On July 3, 1969 a group of five women (Jill Boskey, Pat Kennedy, Valentine Green, Kathy Czarnik, and Maggie Geddes) scattered the shredded files of 200,000 draft-age men in Manhattan. The files were liberated from the Manhattan draft board offices at 321 W. 44 St. where the women left a letter explaining the action, which read, in part,

If the destruction we have wrought against the files upsets you — we ask you to think about the destruction of lives which you have helped perpetuate in Vietnam. If you question what we consider our obligation to do this, we ask you to question rather the insidiousness of American “peace with victory” in Vietnam and of future American counterinsurgency efforts elsewhere.

Corporations such as Dow, Standard Oil, Shell and Chase Manhattan — with offices here in Rockefeller Center — bear much of the responsibility for U.S. domination of those areas from which we profit. It is obvious how fiercely the recent Latin American protests against Rockefeller belie the “goodwill” policies mouthed by government and corporations in this country.