(Left) Police begin blockading African community from Uhuru House following November 13th verdict acquitting officers Knight and Minor in murder of TyRon Lewis. (Right) Police pepper-spray Uhuru Movement leaders, including African People's Socialist Party Chairman Omali Yeshitela.
Then on November 13th they came to get rid of us so they could go back to business as usual, especially since they had all these plans for a baseball team that they are dropping down in the middle of the African community. So they brought everything, believe me. You really had to be there.
On November 13th, some 300 members of a variety of local, county and state police organizations attacked the Uhuru House with a barrage of tear gas against black babies, other children, women and men.
The ferocity of the attack resulted in several fires set by tear gas canisters and depletion of all the tear gas in the city police armory.
The obvious intent of the attack was to kill the Uhuru leadership. However, the heroic masses of the community, their faces covered with bandanas, rose up, rock, bottle and gun in hand, and repelled the invaders. They shot down a helicopter and wounded two policemen. They saved the lives of the Uhuru House inhabitants and defended the integrity of the community.
The Uhuru Movement was incredible during all this. All our forces stood tall! And on the outside of the building, the work that we've done was paying off. The people came to the defense of the movement and actually defeated this armed force that was outside and pushed them back!
In explaining what happened to our building the media is saying there were gunshots aimed at the police which came from the vicinity of the Uhuru House. We were to learn later that the State's Attorney's office had put out a statement from the grand jury absolving the cops of any responsibility for killing TyRon Lewis.
The statement said the cops were justified in killing TyRon Lewis, but blamed the Uhuru Movement for starting all these problems. It was clear that the statement was supposed to have been justification for the destruction of our movement, the physical destruction of the people in that building, after the fact. The statement had already been prepared.
Their plan was to attack our building, kill our leadership, then put an article in the paper explaining that the cops were innocent but we were guilty. So the grand jury that was supposed to be dealing with the cops actually indicted us! The cops walk, we're dead, and the explanation from the grand jury is we were the ones who started everything in the beginning.
But none of it worked, because we survived the whole thing thanks to the heroism of that community! The attack on November 13th was supposed to solve the problem for them. When it didn't work, we began to see contradictions emerge inside the city council, which is made up of representatives of the ruling class. City council members began fighting with each other, arguing, having open debates. Heavy criticism was leveled at the chief of police because he didn't finish us off.
Three days later they staged a little unity march which talked about "black and white unite." They were going to march chanting "u-ni-ty, u-ni-ty." The march began on 9th Street and 18th Avenue. We were on 13th Street and 18th Avenue, down the street and in the other direction from where TyRon Lewis was killed. We decided that we would join that march from the back. When the march took off it was mostly white people. When the black petty bourgeois sell-outs didn't see us, they joined the march as well.
After the march had taken off, we ran to catch up with it. There were about 30 of us in uniforms and combat boots. Everyone in the march was chanting "unity" and holding hands. As we ran down the street in uniform towards the march, the people in the community began cheering. African people, standing on the side lines were cheering, "There they are!" An article in The St. Petersburg Times described how this dual march was going on with the people in the front chanting "unity, unity," while we were in uniform running and chanting, "Black people united will never be defeated!"
The Uhuru Movement and I had been so demonized by the city and the media. But when the mayor got up to speak at the rally in downtown St. Petersburg, people started heckling right away. So the mayor didn't stay up there any time. He beat it off the platform before it could reach a crescendo. But when I came up to speak, the people welcomed me like a hero. It was tremendous. The prestige of our movement just went up so much because they had tried to kill us and yet we walked out of there. The prestige of the movement just skyrocketed. Now the mayor was heckled off the platform in downtown white St. Petersburg and I was welcomed as a hero!
Subsequent to that Henry Cisneros from HUD came to town. Clinton had sent him because he didn't want contagion; he didn't want St. Petersburg to be happening everywhere else. But Cisneros saw right away that they couldn't do anything they wanted to do without coming to terms with the Uhuru Movement! He asked for a private meeting with me before he met with city council. As a consequence of the meeting he created the Citizen Advisory Commission that would oversee the theoretical money, the phantom $20 million the federal government was supposed to send in to deal with the situation in St. Petersburg.
Cisneros told the city council "I've been all over but this is the worst place I've ever been" in terms of the treatment of African people. He was saying, "I've never seen anything like this. The police are just incredible," etc., etc. The City Council was so subjective, they had personalized what happened so much that they couldn't see what was in their best interest. But Cisneros was able to tell them that they were going to have to deal with Omali Yeshitela and the Uhuru Movement.
Cisneros created the Citizen Advisory Commission. I said I didn't want any part of it and he said, "I really wish you'd be part of it." So we thought about it and agreed that it would be a good idea.
