The Berkeley Liberation Program (1969)

The Berkeley Liberation program was written by several groups of Bay Area radicals and was first made public at the time of the People’s Park struggle. It is one of the first efforts by movement activists to set out a more or less comprehensive political vision for the city in which they live and work.

The new left does have a positive politics and this program is an assertion that now is the time to make that clear and out front. The program is also an effort to identify a series of continuing program objectives which can relate different organizing activities in the community by bringing them together in a larger framework and strategy for movement building. In these two aspects, the program provides an important model: seeking to get beyond the episodic, reactive, and often defensive and negative character of many current movement scenes.

The particulars of the program are another matter. Already there has been much debate about the specifics of the thirteen points, their applicability to other areas of the country, or even their appropriateness to an expanding movement in Berkeley.

The points where debate should focus now are the politics implicit in the program:

The program is an effort by white, mostly male and university-centered radicals to define a working relationship with street culture, the women’s movement and the extensive drop-out community which are major factors in Berkeley politics.

It is an effort to connect the public concerns of the movement to the basic needs of, at least, its own members (for subsistence, community fun, drugs, etc.) while dealing with a range of problems (taxes, parks, police, rents, schools) faced by others in Berkeley whom the movement seeks to reach.

It is an effort to develop a form of movement organization relying on small affinity groups or collectives as a base for political work. The emphasis is on a program which demands neither closely coordinated structure nor complete agreement about political content.

And finally it is an effort to deal in practical terms with the problems of repression and the increasing violence of political confrontation providing training for self-defense, legal problems and medical aid, and encouraging people to find small groups which they can rely on.

These aspects of the program represent both new developments in the Berkeley scene and sharp departures from the emerging political direction characterized by developments in SDS (the two Revolutionary Youth Movement proposals).

The Berkeley Liberation Program

POWER TO THE IMAGINATION

ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE

The people of Berkeley passionately desire human solidarity, cultural freedom and peace.

Berkeley is becoming a revolutionary example throughout the world. We are now under severe attack by the demons of despair, ugliness and fascism. We are being strangled by reactionary powers from Washington to Sacramento.

Our survival depends on our ability to overcome past inadequacies and to expand the revolution. We have not done enough to build a movement that is both personally humane and politically radical.

The people of Berkeley must increase their combativeness; develop, tighten, and toughen their organizations; and transcend their middle-class, ego-centered life styles. We shall resist our oppressors by establishing a zone of struggle and liberation, and if necessity shall defend it. We shall create a genuine community and control it to serve our material and spiritual needs. We shall develop new forms of democratic participation and new, more humane styles of work and play. In solidarity with other revolutionary centers and movements, our Berkeley will permanently challenge the present system and act as one of many training grounds for the liberation of the planet.

1 WE WILL MAKE TELEGRAPH AVENUE AND THE SOUTH CAMPUS A STRATEGIC FREE TERRITORY FOR REVOLUTION.

Historically this area is the home of political radicalism and cultural revolution.

We will resist plans to destroy the South Campus through University-business expansion and pig assaults. We will create malls, parks, cafes and places for music and wandering. Young people leaving their parents will be welcome with full status as members of our community. Businesses on the Avenue should serve the humanist revolution by contributing their profits to the community. We will establish cooperative stores of our own, and combine them within an Avenue cooperative.

2 WE WILL CREATE OUR REVOLUTIONARY CULTURE EVERYWHERE.

Everyone should be able to express and develop himself through art—work, dance, sculpture. gardening and all means open to the imagination. Materials will be made available to all people. We will defy all puritanical restraints on culture and sex. We shall have media-newspapers. posters and leaflets, radio, TV, films and skywriting to express our revolutionary community. We will stop the defiling of the earth; our relation to nature will be guided by reason and beauty rather than profit. The civilization of concrete and plastic will be broken and natural things respected. We stall set up urban and rural communes where people can meet for expression and communication. Many Berkeley streets bear little traffic and can be grassed over and turned into people’s parks. Parking meters will be abolished and we will close areas of downtown and South Campus to automotive traffic. We shall celebrate the holidays of liberation with fierce dancing.

3 WE WILL TURN THE SCHOOLS INTO TRAINING GROUNDS FOR LIBERATION.

Beneath the progressive facade of Berkeley’s schools, students continue to be regimented into accepting the existing system. The widely-celebrated integration of the schools is nothing in itself, and only perpetuates many illusions of white liberalism. The basic issue is creating an educational system in which students have real power and which prepares the young to participate in a revolutionary world. Students must destroy the senile dictatorship of adult teachers and bureaucrats. Grading, tests, tracking, demotions, detentions and expulsions must be abolished. Pigs and narcs have no place in a people’s school. We will eliminate the brainwashing, fingernail-cutting mass production of junior cogs for tight-ass America’s old age home war machine. Students will establish independent educational forms to create revolutionary consciousness while continuing to struggle for change in the schools.

4 WE WILL DESTROY THE UNIVERSITY UNLESS IT SERVES THE PEOPLE.

The University of California is not only the major oppressive institution in Berkeley but a major brain center for world domination. UC attempts to kill radical politics and culture in Berkeley while it trains robots for corporations and mental soldiers to crush opposition from Delano to Vietnam.

Students should not recognize the false authority of the regents, administration and faculty. All students have the right to learn what they want, from whom they want, and in the manner they decide; and the right to take political action without academic penalty. We will build a movement to make the University relevant to the Third World, workers, women and young people searching for human values and vocations. Our battles will be conducted in the classrooms and the streets.

We will shatter the myth that UC is a sacred intellectual Institution with a special right to exist. We will change this deadly Machine which steals our land and rapes our minds, or we will stop its functioning. Education can only begin when we’re willing to close the University for what we believe.

5 WE WILL STRUGGLE FOR THE FULL LIBERATION OF WOMEN AS A NECESSARY PART OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PROCESS.

While the material oppression of women varies in different classes, male supremacy pervades all social classes. We will resist this ideology and practice which oppresses all women. As we struggle to liberate ourselves, many of the problems of inequality, authoritarianism and male chauvinism in the Berkeley movement will be overcome.

We will create an unfettered identity for women. We will abolish the stifling masculine and feminine roles that this society forces on us all. Women will no longer be defined in terms of others than themselves – by their relationships to men and children. Likewise, men will not be defined by their jobs or their distorted role as provider. We seek to develop whole human beings and to bring together the most free and beautiful aspects of women and men.

We will end the economic oppression of women: job discrimination, the manipulation of women as consumers, and media exploitation of women as sexual objects.

We demand the full control of our own bodies and towards that end will establish free birth control and abortion clinics. We will choose our own sexual partners; we will eliminate the demeaning bustling scene in Berkeley which results from male chauvinism and false competition among men and among women, We will not tolerate harassment In the parks, streets, and public places of Berkeley.

We will resist all false concepts of chivalry and protectiveness. We will develop self-reliance and the skills of self defense. We win establish female communes so that women who so choose can have this free space to develop themselves as human beings.

We Will end all forms of male supremacy by ANY MEANS NECESSARY!

6 WE WILL TAKE COMMUNAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR BASIC HUMAN NEEDS.

High-quality medical and dental care, including laboratory tests, hospitalization, surgery and medicines will be made freely available. Child-care collectives staffed by both man and women, and centers for the care of strung-out souls, the old and the infirm will be established. Free legal services will be expanded. Survival needs such as crash pads, free transportation, switchboards, free phones, and free food will be met.

7 WE WILL PROTECT AND EXPAND OUR DRUG CULTURE.

We relate to the liberating potential of drugs for both the mind and the body politic.

Drugs inspire us to new possibilities in life which can only be realized in revolutionary action. We intend to establish a drug distribution center and a marijuana cooperative.

As a loving community we shall establish drug information centers and free clinics. We will resist the enforcement of all drug laws in our community. We will protect people from narcs and burn artists. All drug busts will be defined as political and we will develop all necessary defense for those arrested

8 WE WILL BREAK THE POWER OF THE LANDLORDS
AND PROVIDE BEAUTIFUL HOUSING FOR EVERYONE.

Through rent strikes, direct seizures of property and other resistance campaigns, the large landlords, banks and developers who are gouging higher rents and spreading ugliness will be driven out. We shall force them to transfer housing control to the community, making decent housing available according to people’s needs. Coordinated housing councils will be formed on a neighborhood basis to take responsibility for rents and building conditions. The housing councils -in work with architects to plan for a beautiful community Space will be opened up and living communes and revolutionary families Will be encouraged.

9 WE WILL TAX THE CORPORATIONS. NOT THE WORKING PEOPLE.

The people cannot tolerate escalating taxes which are wasted in policing the world while businessmen are permitted to expand their profits in the midst of desperate social need. Berkeley cannot be changed without confronting the industries, banks, insurance companies, railroads and shipping interests dominating the Bay Area. In particular, University of California expansion which drives up taxes should be stopped and small homeowners should no longer pay property taxes. We will demand a direct contribution from business, including Berkeley’s biggest business-the University, to the community until a nationwide assault on big business is successful.

10 WE WILL DEFEND OURSELVES AGAINST LAW AND ORDER.

America’s rulers, faced with the erosion of their authority in Berkeley, begin to take on the grotesque qualities of a dictatorship based on pure police power. We shall abolish the tyrannical police forces not chosen by the people. States of emergency, martial law, conspiracy charges and all legalistic measures used to crush our movement will be resisted by any means necessary–from courtroom to armed struggle. The people of Berkeley must arm themselves and learn the basic skills and tactics of self defense and street fighting. All oppressed people in jail are political prisoners and must be set free. We shall make Berkeley a sanctuary for rebels, outcasts and revolutionary fugitives. We shall attempt to bring the real criminals to trial; where this is impossible we shall implement revolutionary justice.

11 WE WILL CREATE A SOULFUL SOCIALISM IN BERKELEY.

The revolution is about our lives. We will fight against the dominating Berkeley life style of affluence, selfishness, and social apathy – and also against the self-indulgent individualism which masquerades as doing your own thing. We will find ways of taking care of each other as comrades. We will experiment with new ways of living together such as communal families in which problems of income, child care, and housekeeping are mutually shared. Within the Berkeley movement we will seek alternatives to the stifling elitism, egoism, and sectarianism which rightly turns people away and creates organizational weakness. We have had enough of supposed vanguards seeking to manipulate mass movements. We need vanguards of a new type – people who lead by virtue of their moral and political example;-who seek to release and organize energy instead of channeling or curbing it; who seek power not for themselves but for the people as a whole. We firmly believe In organization which brings out the leadership and creativeness existing in everyone.

12 WE WILL CREATE A PEOPLES GOVERNMENT.

We will not recognize the authority of the bureaucratic and unrepresentative local government. We will ignore elections involving trivial issues and personalities. We propose a referendum to dissolve the present government, replacing it with one based on the tradition of direct participation of the people. People in motion around their own needs will become a decentralized government of neighborhood councils, workers councils student unions, and different sub-cultures. Self-management in schools, factories, and neighborhoods will become commonplace. Locally chosen people’s mediators will aid those desiring to settle disputes without referring to the illegitimate system of power.

13 WE WILL UNITE WITH OTHER MOVEMENTS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD
TO DESTROY THIS MOTHERFUCKING RACISTCAPITALISTIMPERIALIST SYSTEM.

Berkeley cannot be free until America is free. We will make the American revolution with the mass participation of all the oppressed and exploited people. We will actively support the 10-point program of the Black Panther Party in the black colony; all revolutionary organizing attempts among workers, women, students and youth; all Third World liberation movements. We will create an International Liberation School in Berkeley as a training center for revolutionaries.

WE CALL FOR SISTERS AND BROTHERS TO FORM LIBERATION COMMITTEES TO CARRY OUT THE BERKELEY STRUGGLE.

These committees should be small democratic working groups of people able to trust each other. We should continually resist the monster system; our emphasis should be on direct action, organizing the community, and forming a network of new groups. Together as a Berkeley Liberation Movement, the liberation committees win build people’s power and a new life.

Source: Leviathan, Summer 1969

Posted by: skip
Views: 15245
Topic:16