User talk:Awbritt/sandbox

George Jackson Brigade 1. Lead Section 2. Members When looking to add new members the first thing that Ed Mead and Bruce Seidel did was look for women to join the group, this is where Rita Brown comes into the picture, she was also an ex-con and they also recruited her girlfriend Therese Coupez. However in order for Rita Brown to join she made the George Jackson Brigade apologize for the failed Safeway attack which they did. Right about this same time two more people were about to come into the fold, John Sherman a former cell mate of Ed Meads at McNeil Island Penitentiary and Washington State Prisoners Union member Mark Cook. The final member to join the active group was a girl named Janine Bertram who became Rita Brown’s girlfriend after Coupez entered into a relationship with Sherman. 3. History a. In 1974 Ed Mead traveled to San Francisco, just a few years after his release from prison for a pharmacy burglary, hoping to connect with the Symbionese Liberation Army however when he arrived it was another group he joined with. The group he joined was the New World Liberation Front or NWLF, it was from this group that Ed Mead learned to make pipe bombs. Upon arriving back home in Seattle he met with his friend Bruce Seidel and it was at this meeting that they decided to take up arms for their political beliefs. The two decided to deliver on the former Black Panther lieutenant George Jackson’s promise and thus the name George Jackson Brigade. In the George Jackson Brigade there were a mixture of Communist and Anarchist ideologies. In its operations, it also tried to avoid killing or injuring civilians at all costs. b. The George Jackson Brigade carried out attacks from 1975-1977 targeting government buildings in the beginning and moving to businesses, as they grew older. Their first attack was the bombing of the department of corrections building in Olympia, Washington. Their second attack was also their first failure as a group, the target was the safeway on Capitol Hill the group snuck a pipe bomb hidden in a 50-pound bag of dog food and left it in the store. Ed Mead then called the safeway store and informed them there was a bomb however, he claimed he was blown off as a prank while the Seattle press reported he called the wrong number. Civilians were injured and the George Jackson Brigade received a lot of bad press for the attack. The George Jackson Brigade wanted to redistribute wealth as well as overthrow the government and make the "ruling class" pay for keeping them from being successful. The main goal of the George Jackson Brigade was to replace the Capitalist government with a more humane government. The George Jackson Brigade stated that any revolution that occurs the ruling class would meet with violence so they must be prepared to use violence themselves. After each attack the carried out, successful or unsuccessful they would send a communique explaining why each place had been attacked. They also used these communiques as a way to communicate with authorities. c. The downfall of the George Jackson Brigade started in January 23 1976 when they attempted to rob a bank in Tukwila, Washington. Two police officers and one member of the George Jackson Brigade, Bruce Seidel, were killed along with John Sherman and Ed Mead being arrested with John Sherman also being wounded. Then on March 10 of the same year Mark Cook rescued John Sherman from police custody however he shot a police officer in the stomach in the process they both escaped but Cook was captured a few days later and spent the next 25 years in prison. The remaining members retreated to regroup and came back in the Fall of 1977 however in September of 1977 Brown was arrested while casing a bank. Then on March 21 of 1978 Sherman, Coupez, and Browns now new girlfriend Bertram were arrested in a Tacoma restaurant right before executing another robbery. 4. Claimed Events a. The GTD, which stands for the Global Terrorism Database, tracks all terrorist attacks that happen and attempts to attribute them to a group as well as carting when they happened, where they happened, if there were fatalities, what the target was and a multitude of other things. This site attributes 20 events to the George Jackson Brigade, starting from 1975 and ending in December 1977. Of the 20 attacks 17 were bombings, two were robberies, and one was an armed assault. 5. External Links a. http://www.start-dev.umd.edu/gtd/search/Results.aspx?chart=overtime&search=George%20Jackson b. https://vault.fbi.gov/George%20Jackson%20Brigade%20 c. Hauser, S. (2011). Guerrilla USA: The George Jackson Brigade and the anticapitalist underground of the 1970s. Choice, 48(8), 1550. d. Mead, E. (2000). Reflections on crime and class. Social Justice, 27(3), 11-14. Awbritt (talk) 16:56, 4 May 2017 (UTC)