I’m currently reading George Jackson’s Soledad Brother and by way of coincidental study, a friend sent me this talk with Joy James: https://youtu.be/z9rvRsWKDx0. Joy James delivers some truth on the relationship between Jackson and the radical academic Angela Davis during that time. How the death of George Jackson really marked the end of that pursuit of revolutionary struggle and everything got commodified into reform and other sinister movements. Now, that on its own is extremely interesting to me obviously. But what was also interesting was her mention of Fay Stender, the radical Jewish Berkeley born lawyer who defended Huey Newton and George Jackson.
James asserts that Stender heavily edited the letters included in Jackson’s Soledad Brother, which, really pisses me off because these are already letters which underwent surveillance, destruction, editing, censorship through the state. But as James notes, Stender edited these letters to sanitize the words and images of Jackson so that white liberals (of which she would later be revealed to move into) could more easily digest him and all of his black rage.
So I did some light searching on Stender and found this extremely anti-black article on Stender and the night that a former black convict, and alleged member of Jackson’s Black Guerrilla Family (BGF) Edward Brooks entered Stender’s house, put a gun to her head and forced her to admit that she had betrayed Jackson, and then shot her six times. Stender pressed charges obviously (or maybe not obviously for a former radical lawyer whose focus was the black radical incarcerated) and Brooks went back to prison where he was murdered many years later. Stender, paralyzed from the waist down, had a breakdown, moved to Hong Kong, further left behind the prison analysis in favor of other political lines, and took her own life a year later.
Now, this story to me rang many, many ironies. How is it that a white radical lawyer who turned her back on specifically black incarcerated people could have been all that surprised that black anger came knocking on her door? The same black anger that she sanitized in Soledad Brother came knocking with a gun in an attempt to take her life. The fact that she worked so hard to see this black man locked away in prison without ever probably thinking about why he was motivated TO take her life (the anti-black article asserts, erroneously, that the BGF had no politics, but they were allegedly targeting movement lawyers), might be the greatest irony of all and a clear representation of so-called white radicals. White radicals are able to divest and give up on slaves when they are burnt out, while the slave continues to die in prison. So that when Jackson requests of Stender to smuggle weapons into the prison for his survival, she can refuse and keep it moving. White radicals are able to change their political lines. For the slave there is but one political line. And it is hardly line, but a force weighing down on us at every breath.
Stender served an important purpose, necessary at that time: to be a lawyer for these high profile black revolutionaries. But what does it say about the white radical’s desire to take up that position? I feel like reading Assata really demonstrates the limits and uselessness of lawyers in many cases. Stender simply performed a job to the best of her abilities, and that was it. Or so she thought.