Records
Profiles of Provocateurs
Kristian Williams's 2011 PM Press pamphlet documenting law-enforcement and informant infiltration of U.S. social movements — case studies of named provocateurs (Brandon Darby, Anna Davies, Andrew Darst, etc.) who infiltrated antiwar, Earth/Animal Liberation, and anarchist organizing, the techniques they used, and the prosecutions and entrapment cases their w...
Revolutionary Suicide
Huey P. Newton's 1973 autobiography (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), written in part from inside the Alameda County Jail. Co-founder of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (Oakland, October 1966), Newton wrote the book during and after his 1968–1970 imprisonment on charges arising from the October 28, 1967 shooting that killed Oakland police officer John Fr...
Sacco-Vanzetti
Documentary collection on the case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti — Italian-American anarchist immigrants convicted of the 1920 South Braintree, Massachusetts payroll robbery and murders, tried in 1921 in what became the most internationally-publicized political-prisoner case of the early-20th-century United States. Despite a worldwide defense campa...
The Accused, The Accusers: The Famous Speeches of the Chicago Anarchists in Court (1886)
The closing courtroom statements of the eight Chicago anarchists convicted in connection with the May 4, 1886 Haymarket Affair: Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Louis Lingg, Samuel Fielden, Michael Schwab, and Oscar Neebe. Delivered during the August–October 1886 trial before Judge Joseph Gary in the Cook County Criminal Court, and...
The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States
Companion volume to Agents of Repression (1988). Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall's 1990 South End Press compilation reproduces hundreds of pages of FBI COINTELPRO documents — released under FOIA — covering the Bureau's operations against the Communist Party, the Socialist Workers Party, the Puerto Rican independence movement, the New Left and the anti-war...
The Jericho Movement Manual
Organizing manual of the National Jericho Movement, the U.S. coalition formed in 1998 to demand amnesty and freedom for all U.S. political prisoners and prisoners of war. The manual lays out Jericho's founding principles, its political-prisoner roster, its mailing and visiting protocols, its national-and-international solidarity work, and its organizational...
The Rebel Girl: An Autobiography, My First Life (1906–1926)
The 1955 autobiography of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn covering her early life and her organizing with the Industrial Workers of the World from the Spokane free-speech fights of 1909 through the Lawrence and Paterson textile strikes, the Joe Hill defense, the Tom Mooney case, the Sacco-Vanzetti campaign, the WWI Espionage Act prisoner defense, and the founding of...
The Struggle Within: Prisons, Political Prisoners, and Mass Movements in the United States — Dan Berger (2014)
Dan Berger's overview of U.S. political-prisoner support work from the 1960s onward. PFOC's *Breakthrough* and the parallel publications archived alongside this record are core primary sources for the period the book covers.
The Symbionese Liberation Army: Documents and Communiques (1974)
Collected communiques, taped statements, and historical documents of the Symbionese Liberation Army — the small Bay Area armed group founded in 1973 whose actions included the November 1973 killing of Oakland school superintendent Marcus Foster and the February 1974 kidnapping of Patricia Hearst. The collection includes the SLA's foundational political docum...
The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground — Ron Jacobs (1997)
Ron Jacobs's history of the Weather Underground Organization — the immediate political predecessor of PFOC. Covers the 1969 founding through the 1976–77 split that produced PFOC and the May 19th Communist Organization.
Truth and Revolution: A History of the Sojourner Truth Organization, 1969–1986 — Michael Staudenmaier (2012)
Michael Staudenmaier's definitive history of the Sojourner Truth Organization (STO), the Chicago-based Marxist-Leninist cadre group that operated alongside and in polemic with PFOC throughout the 1970s on questions of whiteness, white-skin privilege, and the strategic role of white workers in anti-imperialist struggle.
Voice of the Voiceless: The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal
Case-history and movement-statement collection on Mumia Abu-Jamal — journalist, former Black Panther Party member, longtime MOVE supporter, and U.S. political prisoner held by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania since 1981 on a conviction arising from the December 9, 1981 killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. Combines case documents, trial-rec...
War at Home: Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About It
Brian Glick's 1989 South End Press handbook on FBI/COINTELPRO-style covert action against U.S. social movements, written for movement participants. Combines a historical synthesis of COINTELPRO and its successors with concrete advice for activists on recognizing infiltrators and provocateurs, defending against grand juries, protecting communications, support...
You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows (1969)
The founding political document of the Weather Underground Organization, presented at the June 18, 1969 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) National Convention in Chicago by the faction that called itself the Revolutionary Youth Movement. Co-authored by Karen Ashley, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, John Jacobs, Jeff Jones, Gerry Long, Howie Machtinger, Jim...