Van Lierop: I think it's very important to try to understand what the system tries to do to us. They try to take each one of us and put us in a small narrow box with four walls surrounding, and say that our political interest must be limited to events inside our boxes. They are very happy if our political consciousness is limited to affairs in our own country, and they're happier if all you care about is your own state. And they are even happier if your political consciousness is limited to your city. And they reach nirvana when all you care about is yourself.

Our objective has to be to kick down the walls of that small box and expand our political consciousness to recognize that a corporation like Gulf is doing business in Angola because it doesn't recognize national boundaries. What has happened in the twentieth century as the corporations grew and matured and capitalism reached new and higher levels of development is that the nation state became an artificial concept, and international corporations developed that had budgets and expenditures and profits and losses that were greater than the GNP's of most of the countries of the world. Gulf is one of those companies.

What Gulf will try to do is tell you and me that we shouldn't care what Gulf does in Angola. And yet, if we stop to think about it. Oakland, California is 3000 miles away, and Angola is only 4000 miles away. What difference should that extra 1000 miles make. The very minute that those slave ships left Africa and sailed to the Western hemisphere, oppression of our people became international in scope.

The system has succeeded to a certain extent in telling some black people that what we have to do is concentrate on what's happening in our own back yard. A big proponent of this approach is Jesse Jackson, and some of the other so-called "national" leaders. They are trying to subvert the work done by people like Malcolm X, who raised our consciousness, who expanded our political interest, and who for the first time raised the struggle of black people in this country to an international struggle. And people outside began to look at us in a different light. They began to look at us not as a people who helped subjugate the Indians, not as people making a narrow self-serving demand to be included in this system and to participate as equals in the exploitation of resources of the Third World. They began to look at us as Third World people ourselves, engaged in a struggle not just for nationhood, but against American imperialism.

It's very important for the comrades in Angola, the comrades in the bush in Mozambique, the comrades in Guinea Bissau to know that they are not alone. That they have some allies in other places. And our goal and objective is not to participate in this system, but to participate in the world-wide revolutionary movement. The future of the world is going to be decided in Third World revolutionary struggles.

Because one of the things that American corporations have been doing is exporting class contradictions. Inside this country class contradictions are exported to the Black, Puerto Rican, and Chicano communities. White workers are exploited, but they don't know it. We are lucky in a way, because of our race. We are exploited to an even higher degree. We are exploited both as a race and as a class. We have a primary contradiction with the ruling class, and a secondary contradiction with the white working class. That secondary contradiction exists because they are too ignorant to understand the nature of their oppression.

On a grander scale, they export class contradictions from this country to the Third World. Every person in this country participates indirectly in the exploitation of people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. We have an inflated standard of living as a result of that exploitation. What the Third World revolutionary groups are doing is sending those class contradictions back, because when those Third World countries are free, the standard of living in this country is going to drop. Be prepared for that: understand the consequences of what we are about.

And when the standard of living falls in this country, then those class contradictions are going to rebound, like a boomerang. They are going to hit America right back in the face. What our job as black people has got to be is likewise exporting the contradictions in the black community right back to the white. Imagine when they don't have niggers in this country any more. And the white workers become the niggers of the ruling class, and those white workers realize that there is no longer another class for them to look down upon. Then the class struggle in this country heightens.

In effect, American imperialism will be strangled as the arms and legs that currently feed it are cut off. Then Imperialism can't eat any more. He can't eat the blood and the flesh of people of Third World. He can't eat the blood and the flesh of Black people. Indians, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans in this country.

What you're doing here at Harvard is in a very real and pragmatic way bringing these class contradictions right back to America. You are saying to our comrades in Angola. "We are part of the same struggle." We're saying that what Gulf Oil does in Angola is only an extension of what they have done in this country. And so as part of our struggle we've got to broaden our scope, and attack at every single level that we can. That means demonstrations; it even means letters to Congressmen. In every way, raise the price of what they do in the Third World.

Attack...Attack...Attack. Until they can't stand it any more. We've just got to persevere and hang in there.

And what you're doing here is a part of the educational process that is necessary to inform people. It's a part of political consciousness raising, because you'll politicize people.

And what you're doing here is a part of the confrontation process, because Harvard is one of the outstanding representatives of the liberal establishment. They have a very nice, clean-cut liberal veneer. The President of Harvard never called anyone a nigger. But the same Harvard President would participate in the exploitation of the resources of the people of Angola, which is just as bad as a racial epithet. And you have got to make that clear.

Question: What is your response to Gulf's argument that social welfare expenditures in Angola have gone up concommitantly with the increase in oil revenues. And also, what success have you had in organizing black workers at Gulf.

Van Lierop: The first part, about social benefits increasing: that is a direct response to MPLA military and political success in Angola, not a function of Gulf revenues. Ever since the revolution started, the Portuguese have tried to offer the people plums. But the people have said. "It's too late. You've had your chance. From now on, we don't care how many schools you build. The object is how many schools we build, because it's our country. It's our oil. It's our resources."