While in the US Genet spent two months with the BPP giving talks at universities and other venues in support of Bobby Seale and the Panther 21, who were later condemned and purged by BPP Chairman Huey P. When do you want to leave?” I said, “Tomorrow.” They were even more astonished, but they reacted immediately: “Okay, we’ll come by to get you.” I think that what they had in mind was that I would help them in Paris, but I said, “The simplest thing would be to go to America.” This answer seemed to surprise them a little. Two members of the Black Panther Party came to see me in Paris and asked me what I could do to help them. Recounting this event in an interview with Michèle Manceaux, Genet said: According to Genet, he left France for the United States the next day, clandestinely entering the country through Canada because the US had always denied his visa requests.
Genet’s contact with the BPP began on Februwhen Black Panther International Coordinator Connie Matthews (and possibly one other BPP member) solicited Genet for help in Paris. To understand how George Jackson and the Soledad Brothers became a cause célèbre among the French intelligentsia requires an examination of Jean Genet’s relationship to the Black Panther Party (BPP) and the post-May ’68 political climate in France.
Genet used his connections to the French intelligentsia to mobilize support for Black militants in France and was able to get a number of French intellectuals to sign his statement, including Roland Barthes, Maurice Blanchot, Julia Kristeva, Pierre Guyotat, Jacques Derrida, Marguerite Duras, Phillippe Sollers, and many others. Using the rhetoric of Black Power, the statement denounces “le système judiciaire raciste” (the racist judiciary system) and draws attention to state repression against Black militants. In 1971 the French novelist and playwright Jean Genet issued a statement titled “Appel pour un comité de soutien aux militants politiques noirs emprisonnés” calling for the immediate release of all “détenus politiques” (political prisoners), including George Jackson, John Clutchette, and Fleeta Drumgo, collectively known as the Soledad Brothers.
0 kommentar(er)
