July 4, 1978
DESSIE WOOD.S' FREEDOM -IS LONG OVERDUE! On July 4, 1978, historic mobilizations took place in Pl~ins, Georgia and San Francisco, California. On that day, a major step was taken in building the anti-colonial struggle of African people' within current US borders. Many hundreds of people marched and rallied in actions led and organized by the National Committee to Defend Dessie Woods (NCDDW), demanding freedom for Dessie Woods and an end to colonial violence. These demonstrations exposed the mockery of celebrating "Independence Day" when there is no such thing as independence or freedom for African people within current U.S. borders; when African freedom fighters like Assata Shakur, Sundiata Acoli, Ernest Graham and Eugene Allen, Geronimo Pratt and the . RNA-11 remain captives within U.S. prisons; when the U.S. is a prison house of colonized nations and peoples. Dessie Woods and the NCDDW see h~r situation as a case in point of colonial violence directed against African people. Dessie is a courageous black woman who on June 16, 1975 successfully defended herself and a friend against an armed rape attack by a white man named Ronnie Horne in rural Georgia. Refusing to be raped, -Dessie shot and killed her attacker with his own unlicensed gun. For her actions, Dessie Woods is now serving a 22-year sentence in the Georgia Women 's Institute of Corrections. The struggle to free Dessie Woods is part of the 400-year struggle of Black people for national liberation and independence. Work on the case has been led by the NCDDW, a black revolutionary nationalist organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. The NCDDW has stressed that white rape of African women is colonial violence, and that the main issue"in the case is the illegitimacy of the colonial state apparatus which sanctioned the rape attempt and which tried, convicted apd imprisoned Dessie Woods. Horne's rape attack is part of the long history of white people raping, beating, castrating and lynching bl!ick people with no f~ar of state reprisal. For the U.S. state, these crimes are part of a strategy to control and terrorize the colonized black population. This is why no white
man has ever been convicted of raping a black woman in Georgia, while Dessie Woods remains locked down. The national mobilization of black people and their supporters to Plains, hometown of Jimmy Carter, and the solidarity demonstration in San Francisco, were based on clear anti-colonial, proindependence politics. These mobilizations represented a sharp threat to the imperialist State, which does not want to see black people organize to win the freedom of Dessie Woods or any other colonial subject. The Plains mobilization was successfully held despite months of intimidation, especially by the FBI and the Georgia State Police, including harassment of African organizers and the targetting of a local black church in Plains for reprisals if it supported the march. Each of these attempts to stop the march was defeated. The Plains march in particular exposed the myth of the "new South" in Carter's own backyard, and demonstrated that the African pro-independence movement is regrouping and on the rise. Through the mobilization, the NCDDW and the black Liberation Movement built unity with significant Puerto Rican and Chicano/Mejicano forces who marched in Plains andSan Francisco. The mobilizations also called forth many white people who marched to free Dessie Woods under the leadership of the NCDDW, in unity with anticolonial and anti-imperialist politics and in support of African liberation and independence. White participation in the July 4 actions represents a significant step forward in solidarity, and a challenge to the long violent history of white people supporting US empire, and to the white left's opportunist opposition to the black struggle for independence and self-determination. For white anti-imperialists, these mobilizations must push us to intensify our struggle to build solidarity for the Black Liberation Movement. We must build political and material support for the National Committee to Defend Dessie Woods, and organize an active mass movement of white people demanding"FREE .DESSIE WOODS AND SMASH COLONIAL VIOLENCE!"