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branches of government, and their respective arms, the F.B.I. and the courts.

Communists have always known that capitalism, especially through its most reactionary spokesmen and leaders, is capable of unleashing everything at its disposal when its absolute rule appears to be threatened.  Throughout the life of our Party, our comrades have been arrested, jailed, tried, convicted and imprisoned whenever the ruling class went on a reactionary right-wing path.  The last such rampage was during the McCarthy period of the '50s when the leadership of our Party was forced to spend a total of more than 100 years on prison.  The conditions and events of that imprisonment resulted in the death of one comrade, Robert Thompson, and the blinding of another Henry Winston, now the National Chairman of our Party.  Death, blindness and long years taken out of their lives and their leadership to our Party and our class on trumped-up charges under the infamous Smith Act!

We do not see the long  punitive detention of comrade Angela as accidental.  Angels was kept in jail because she is a [[italicized]] political [[/italicized]] threat to the Nixons, Reagans, Rockefellers and Hoovers.  She challenges everything that they stand for.  Angela fights for an end to the racism that pollutes our entire country and is perpetuated by the ruling class and all its agents.  she challenges their racist, imperialist aggression in Indochina and Southeast Asia, their role in the Middle East, and their direct aid to the racist regimes in South Africa, Rhodesia and Portugal.  Angela Davis struggles especially for the freedom of political prisoners, and the ending of a prison system of which a major aim is to punish people on the basis of their color and their class, a prison system that attempts to dehumanize rather than rehabilitate, a prison system that intensifies the inherent racism of U.S. capitalism.  Indeed, Angela challenges the very existence of the capitalist system which the rulers of our country hold so dear.

If insisting that there is something fundamentally wrong with this system and that there is a way out - that masses of people,

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the working class, Black and white, the liberation movements in our country, all joined together, can reverse the present reactionary racist, repressive trend - if this is a crime, then Angela pleads guilty to willfully violating any such "laws."  But that is all!  Angela Davis is guilty only of articulating the demands of Black people, of all oppressed peoples, of the exploited and impoverished working masses, and of organizing them into a united movement for fundamental change.

In short, Angela Davis sat for months in a small windowless cell in Palo Alto, California, denied bail, because she is a Black woman and a Communist whose attempts to organize the exploited and oppressed were succeeding.  That is why Angels Davis was deprived of her liberty and denied her constitutional and human rights.  That is why she must be set free.

From October 13, 1971, the date of Angela's arrest, the sympathetic sentiment expressed itself immediately from California to New York.  The groundswell of support has been unprecedented, especially in the Black community.  Black people feared that Angela might be killed when the F.B.I., by placing her at the top of its "10 most wanted" list, issued what was tantamount to a license to any policeman or crazed racist to take her life.  Black people know from their own history the lengths to which the racist ruling class will go to stop or set back the movement for freedom.  Accordingly, Black people were among the first to see the frameup for what it is.

The Communist Party, prior to the arrest, had already assigned some of our foremost leading members to begin a movement to remove Angela from the F.B.I.'s "wanted" list and allow her to return to her community and her work.  With Angel's arrest, these comrades, along with many non-Communists, brought into being the National United Committee to Free Angel Davis (NUCFAD).  Franklin Alexander, then chairman of the Che-Lumumba Club of the Party in Los Angeles and member of the Southern California District Committee of the Party, along with Fania Davis Jordan (Angela's sister) who joined the

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