The Immovable Black Lumpenproletariat: The Futility of White-Supremacist, State-Sanctioned Indictments of Black Factions and Gangs

By Patrick Jonathan Derilus

“Though I cannot condone it, much of the violence inflicted on my gang rivals and other blacks was an unconscious display of my frustration with poverty, racism, police brutality and other systemic injustices routinely visited upon residents of urban black colonies such as south central Los Angeles. I was frustrated because I felt trapped. I internalized the defeatist rhetoric propagated as street wisdom in my hood that there were only 3 ways out of south central, migration death or incarceration. I located a fourth option: incarcerated death.”

— Stanley Tookie Williams,  Blue Rage, Black Redemption: A Memoir

It should be made clear, if in any case there was no critical observation of the phenomena, that in our (to use ancestor bell hooks’ phrase) ‘imperialist, colonial settler, white supremacist, capitalist, cisheteropatriarchal society,’ Black people (of all ages and gender identities) are under ceaseless exploitation and violence via surveillance, harassment, instigations, and so on. With attention to Black-led organizations, factions, collectives, and in this case particularly, Black gangs, there is unquestionably a white-supremacist outroar from racists (media or otherwise), who deem these communities a threat to the status quo.

Fuck respectability politics and fuck civility; and this is to say that regardless of the objective of a Black collective, be it as revolutionary as the Black Guerilla Family (BGF), a Marxist-Leninist group that originated in San Quentin State Prison and was founded by ancestor George Jackson in 1966 or the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) founded by ancestor Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. Du Bois, and several other members in 1909, we’re niggas at the end of the day.

While we can present arguments for what this statement means is not the point, but rather, the sociohistorical result of change that is assuredly established when Black people have long struggled for: Black Liberation. Black history is every day. Black history in itself chronicles resistance, togetherness, unfettered joy, solidarity, commonality, righteous insurgence, mutuality, love—humanism, notably the urgency for Black self-defense against the white-supremacist police state.

Let us also highlight that, in spite of these elements, we recognize the settler-fascistic entities that have been responsible for the many deaths, infightings, conspiracies, and consistent destabilizations of Black-led movements, organizations, and to this day, Black gangs. Prior to the Black Panthers — and what many of us know in modern day as Crips and Bloods, were their historical predecessors, The Slausons, The Businessmen, and The Gladiators, Black-led gangs that originated in Los Angeles during the 1940s. The sociopolitical function of these gangs were a direct response against white-supremacist gangs like the Spook Hunters, who regularly terrorized Black people because of the growing Black population at the time— white flight.

In the 1960s and 70s, an example of this is Kwanzaa’s founder, Ron Karenga, who was not only a violent, self-hating misogynist responsible for kidnapping and torturing Black women, but also, an agent of fascist J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO, who exacerbated the infighting between the Black Panthers and the US Organization. Subsequently, this led to the murders of four members of the Black Panthers, whose names went by John Huggins, Sylvester Bell, Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter and John Savage.

Around the same time the Black Power movement was building momentum, the Gangster Disciples, founded by Larry Hoover, were a Black-led faction based in Chicago in the 1970s and 80s. In the same way, the Black Disciples, founded by David Barksdale, were another Black faction based in Chicago that was created at the grassroots, organizing projects such as the free breakfast program for the community and marching together with Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1966:

On Aug. 5, 1966, in Marquette Park, where King was planning to lead a march to a realtor’s office to demand properties be sold to everyone regardless of their race, he got swarmed by about 700 white protestors hurling bricks, bottles and rocks. One of those rocks hit King, and his aides rushed to shield him.

Stanley Tookie Williams, who co-founded the Crips alongside Raymond Washington in 1971, established a groundwork in which Black folk would defend themselves and their communities from neighboring adversaries in Los Angeles. Similarly, the Bloods, created by Sylvester Scott, were later created as a direct response in opposition to the Crips. Contrary to this occurrence, the remarkable moments in Black history where Bloods and Crips, despite their incendiary rivalries against each other, have come together in solidarity to protest state-sanctioned police violence against Black people. To echo the sentiment of George Jackson in his book, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson:

Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.

We highlight instances of collective protest in Atlanta, the unity of rival Bloods and Crips gangs taking place after the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles in 1992, unity between Bloods, Crips, and the Nation of Islam in Baltimore, who banned together in honor and righteous vengeance against the state-sanctioned murder of Freddie Gray, Newark, New Jersey and a March For Peace in The Bronx that was led by rival gangs inspired by the wrongful murder of Nipsey Hussle.

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Bringing further attention to the history of white supremacist, State-sanctioned violence toward Black people in the US and across the world, we understand that surveillance and more specifically, indictment, an arbitrary charge or accusation of a crime, is no new concept to us. To be Black itself is a crime in the world. In the article, Black is Crime: Notes on Blaqillegalism, writer Dubian Ade states,

What a crime it is to be Black. To have the police be called on you for sitting in a restaurant, for grilling at a cookout, selling water, going to the pool, taking a nap, standing on the corner; to be Black and to have the presence of one’s very own body break the law and to know at any given moment a police officer can slam you to the ground and cuff you for resisting arrest, which is to say, arrest you for absolutely no reason at all. Blackness carries this implication that a law is or has been broken and is about to be broken in the future. It is the color and sign of criminal activity under white supremacist capitalism used to justify the mass incarceration and extra-judicial murder of Black people by and large. But what are the origins of this strenuous relationship between Blackness and the law? In what ways is Black criminalization constituted under the state? And if Blackness is already criminalized in the eyes of the law, what are the features of already existing Black illegal forms and what might the theoretical contours of Black illegalism (Blaqillegalism) that is principled and above all revolutionary look like?

Ancestor Huey P. Newton has already answered this question of Black criminality:

…existence is violent; I exist, therefore I am violent in that way.

To emphasize, the carceral State spares no Black human being. To name a few, learn about Mutulu Shakur, stepfather of Tupac Amaru Shakur and a member of the Black Liberation Army, who was just released from prison in December of last year after serving 60 years in prison; he was informed he only has a few months to live due to terminal cancer in April. Another is Marshall “Eddie” Conway, an elder of the Black Panther Party, who was sentenced to serving 43 years to life in prison for self-defense. Look to the instance of Tay-K, who was 19 at the time he was indicted and sentenced to 55 years in prison. 23-year old YNW Melly, who was indicted and is facing the death penalty. Look at the wrongful indictments of YSL and Young Thug and Gunna—Sheff G, Sleepy Hallow, 8 Trey Crips and 9 Ways — Woos and the Choos, the YGz and Drilly indictment and now 19-year old Kay Flock, who was just indicted with the death penalty being listed as a possible charge.

I repeat, the death penalty.

Where else have we heard the inhumane sentencing of young Black and Brown children and teenagers across AmeriKKKa?

Recall the wrongful conviction of 14-year old George Stinney in 1944, who the carceral State put to death by electric chair for allegedly murdering two white girls. The antiBlack State ritualistically likens itself to heroism and yet, their actions remain wickedly ironic because it has always been the State that has not been held accountable for its innumerable human rights violations against Black people. As long as the antiBlack State exists, there is no transformative recourse for Black lives (especially Black children and Black teenagers).

By the same token, it is far too reductive (and victim-blaming) to present cases that serve as counterarguments to the material reality in which Black children and adults are continuously subjected to. With Malcolm X’s truism, by any means necessary in mind, often many Black folk are left with no choice to navigate this colonial-settler, white-supremacist world in the best ways we can as a means of not only defending ourselves and our communities against the white-supremacist power structure, but also surviving under it. Black feminist and scholar, bell hooks, highlights the two-sidededness of this racial, socio-existential dilemma in her text, We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity:

In today's world, most upwardly mobile educated black males from privileged class backgrounds share with their poor and underclass counterparts an obsession with money as the marker of successful manhood. They are as easily corrupted as their disenfranchised brothers, if not more so because the monetary stakes, as well as the rewards in their mainstream work world, are higher…assimilated black males who are “white identified” find it easier to submit to fickle arrogant white males (and white female bosses) in the workplace. However, most black males suffer psychologically in the world of work whether they make loads of money or low wages from overt and covert racially based psychological terrorism.

hooks continues,

Young beautiful brilliant black power male militants were the first black leftists to loudly call out the evils of capitalism. And during that call they unmasked wage slavery, naming it for what it was. Yet at the end of the day a black man needed money to live. If he was not going to get it working for the man, it could come from hustling his own people. Black power militants, having learned from Dr. King and Malcolm X how to call out the truth of capitalist-based materialism, identified it as gangsta culture. Patriarchal manhood was the theory and gangsta culture was its ultimate practice. No wonder then that black males of all ages living the protestant work ethic, submitting in the racist white world, envy the lowdown hustlers in the black communities who are not slaves to white power.

I have strong abolitionist sympathies and feel as though a potential alternative to the futility—the inherent uselessness of incarceration—of imprisoning Black children—Black people, is divesting money from state to state and putting the funds toward building transformative rehabilitation centers across the country similar to the Success Stories Program. As stated in their mission and values statement, the primary focus of the Success Stories program is this:

Our mission is to provide an alternative to prisons that builds safer communities by delivering feminist programming to people who have caused harm.​ We envision a world free of prisons and patriarchy as the dominant culture. We build a world where harmful behavior is seen as a symptom of patriarchy to be transformed, in the community, by our program and others like it.

What happens when the State persistently (and wrongfully) indicts Black women, men, queer folk, and children for so-called “crimes” will never resolve anything — it will never curtail anything. We are looking at a generational passing down of Black factions (of the newer generation) that will continue to repeat itself. These factions, which are defined as a group or clique within a larger group, party, government, organization, or the like, typically having different opinions and interests than the larger group, are often born out of an aversion to episodic, economic violence, impoverishment, governmental negligence, fascist police violence, —the white establishment and a yearning—a desperation to belong (commonly by homosocial bonding) to establish camaraderie between one another. In other words, regardless of how many indictments the State puts on Black people, the lumpenproletariat collectives that the State has destabilized will naturally be reborn out of generational factions in our continued struggle against the deathly whims of the US Empire.

The Rosenbergs: Traitors or Heroes?

By Stephen Millies

Republished from Struggle La Lucha.

In his funeral eulogy for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, W.E.B. Du Bois declared, “They died because they would not lie.” The Rosenbergs were burned to death in the electric chair by the U.S. government on Juneteenth 1953.

Du Bois, the legendary Black scholar, also arranged the adoption of the Rosenbergs’ two young children, Michael and Robert. The Jewish orphans were adopted by Anne Meeropol and Abel Meeropol. Abel wrote “Strange Fruit,” a song about lynching that Billie Holiday made famous. 

The Rosenbergs were blamed for the Soviet Union being able to develop an atomic bomb. Their frame-up and execution for espionage during the Korean War was the peak of the anti-communist witch hunt in the United States. 

The ruling class was in a frenzy because of the Chinese Revolution. The Soviet Union’s ability to defend itself against the Pentagon’s nukes made the banksters even more mad.

The FBI and corporate media insisted the Soviets “stole the secret” of the atom bomb. The real secret was revealed when the U.S. dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945. By incinerating 100,000 people, including 30,000 Korean slave laborers, the Pentagon showed it was possible to develop nuclear weapons.

Showing it was what made it knowable. Some of the scientists involved in the Manhattan Project — the code name for the U.S. atom bomb project — gave the Soviets five years to match the U.S. effort. 

The rub wouldn’t be in the theoretical work. U.S. scientists knew the Soviet Union had capable physicists.

Among them was Lev Landau, who would win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1962. Even before the Bolshevik Revolution, the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev had devised the periodic table of the elements.

U.S. scientists thought the Soviets would have difficulty in making extremely pure chemicals and seals to lock in corrosive gases. Because of socialist economic planning, the Soviet Union was able to concentrate its efforts and explode a nuclear device on Aug. 29, 1949. It took four years, not five, to produce.

Decades of lies

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover immediately set out to nab the “communist spies” that smuggled secrets. How else could those “stupid people” in the Soviet Union have produced nuclear weapons? 

U.S. schoolchildren were taught their country was the land of great inventors like Thomas Edison. Newspapers told their readers that only the U.S. could have built the bomb.

Thirty years later, President Ronald Reagan said there wasn’t a Russian word for freedom. (There is. It’s svoboda.) 

So U.S. capitalists were astonished when the Soviet Union sent the first artificial satellite into space on Nov. 7, 1957 — the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Claims that the Sputnik satellite was the result of spying fell flat. The Pentagon wasn’t able to launch its own satellite until months later, on Jan. 31, 1958.

It would have been much more difficult to execute the Rosenbergs after Sputnik. It shattered the bigoted conception that 150 different nationalities in the Soviet Union couldn’t do science.

Today another big lie is being told. The People’s Republic of China is being blamed for the COVID-19 pandemic.

With no evidence, the media and even comedians like Jon Stewart are claiming the coronavirus “leaked” from a Wuhan laboratory. This is a blood libel similar to blaming Jewish people for plagues in medieval Europe or the racist myth that immigrants bring diseases to the U.S.

Building a frame-up

The FBI framed the Rosenbergs and a co-defendant, Morton Sobell, by connecting dots and forging evidence. At the end of World War II, the Communist Party in the United States had around 75,000 members, according to the University of Washington’s “Mapping Social Movements” project, including thousands of Black members. They fought racism and built unions.  

Over 10,000 party members were members of the U.S. armed forces. Some party members had government jobs, including the electrical engineer Julius Rosenberg, who was employed at Fort Monmouth army base in New Jersey.

The Manhattan Project had 130,000 employees. U.S. army counterintelligence agents constantly spied on them. 

Even J. Robert Oppenheimer, considered to be the father of the atomic bomb, was a suspect. The army hesitated appointing Oppenheimer to lead the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos laboratory because of his left-wing associations before the war.

Yet with thousands of U.S. Army and FBI agents prowling around, nobody claimed to have found any spy rings until after the Soviets exploded their bomb.

Julius Rosenberg was fired from his civilian job with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in January 1945 as a suspected communist. (He actually resigned his membership in 1942.) But Julius wasn’t arrested until July 1950.

At the time there were still around 40,000 Communist Party members. Hundreds of thousands of people had worked with the CP or the Young Communist League.

That was a big talent pool for Hoover and his FBI agents to construct a frame-up by matching people with left-wing backgrounds. They found out that Julius Rosenberg’s brother-in-law David Greenglass, an ex-YCL member, had worked as a machinist at Los Alamos. 

Presto! The “Rosenberg spy ring” was invented.

Under threat of the death penalty, David Greenglass told prosecutors whatever they wanted. His lying testimony sent his sister Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair. It took five jolts of electricity to kill her.

Show trial

The Rosenbergs and Morton Sobell were convicted in a show trial. Although at the time a quarter of New York City’s population was Jewish, not a single Jewish juror was chosen.

One of the federal prosecutors was Roy Cohn, who had illegal “ex parte” conversations with presiding Judge Irving Kaufman in which Cohn urged the death penalty. After serving as Senator Joe McCarthy’s sidekick, Cohn became a lawyer and mentor for Donald Trump.

The evidence was flimsy. David Greenglass produced three crude sketches. One looked like a pie chart. A baby carriage couldn’t have been made from them, much less an atomic bomb.

Greenglass said his spy contact was Harry Gold, a chemist and pathological liar who admitted that he “lied for a period of 16 years.” Gold also claimed to be a courier for Klaus Fuchs, a scientist at Los Alamos.

Fuchs confessed he was a spy to a Scotland Yard detective and was jailed in Britain. Fuchs identified Gold as his contact from a picture.  

Fuchs’ statement and identification of Gold is questionable. Fuchs never confronted Gold in a U.S. court and thus couldn’t be cross-examined. It’s striking that the convictions of Greenglass, Gold and Fuchs would have been impossible without their confessions.

The FBI even suspected future Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman, who had been Fuchs’ roommate at Los Alamos. FBI agents changed their mind only because Feynman was completely non-political.

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Morton Sobell was indicted because he was a schoolmate of Julius Rosenberg at New York’s City College and a former YCL member. The only witness against Sobell was Max Elitcher, who claimed vaguely to have seen Sobell visit Julius Rosenberg while carrying a container that could have had film in it. 

He then said he had no idea what was in the container, yet Sobell was sentenced to 30 years in prison.  He served 17, including five years at Alcatraz.

The prosecution stressed that Sobell and his family went to Mexico after David Greenglass was arrested. If Sobell was such a master spy, wouldn’t the Soviets have tried to help him escape?

Instead Mexican secret police kidnapped Sobell and turned him over to FBI agents at the border.

A key piece of evidence was forged. A hotel card from the Albuquerque Hilton was introduced to prove Harry Gold was in town to meet David Greenglass on June 3, 1945.

Miriam and Walter Schneir were authors of “Invitation to an Inquest,” a detailed exposé of the Rosnberg-Sobell case. They looked at copies of the card. It had different date stamps on the front and back despite Gold having checked in and out on the same day. 

When the Schneirs sought to examine the original card, the FBI told them that the evidence was destroyed, even though J. Edgar Hoover called the Rosenberg case “the crime of the century.”

Smearing the dead

Millions of people around the world rallied around the Rosenbergs. They saw parallels between their frame-up and the anti-Jewish persecution of French army officer Alfred Dreyfus decades before.

The American Jewish Committee, which represents the small section of the Jewish Community that’s capitalist, didn’t think so. Writing in the AJC’s Commentary magazine, historian Lucy Dawidowicz endorsed the Rosenbergs’ execution. 

Today when Jewish youth join marches supporting Palestinian liberation, Commentary magazine supports bombing and starving Gaza.

The publication of “Invitation to an Inquest” in 1965 sparked new interest in the Rosenberg and Sobell cases. The U.S. deep state counterattacked, particularly after the overthrow of the Soviet Union.

The FBI and CIA say they have proof that the Rosenbergs and Sobell were guilty. They point to the “Venona Project,” which consists of allegedly deciphered messages between Soviet agents in the U.S. and their Moscow headquarters. The documents claim to show that the Rosenbergs, Sobell and dozens of other people in the U.S. were Soviet agents.

Why should anybody believe U.S. spy agencies? These are the folks that told the world that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Even if the Venona papers are genuine, the rub is matching code names with individuals.  One of the alleged code names for Julius Rosenberg was “liberal.” Does that sound like a name for an accused communist super-spy? 

The code name linked to Morton Sobell described him as having a wooden leg, which he didn’t have. There was no code name for Ethel Rosenberg.

The Venona Project smeared a series of liberals who couldn’t defend themselves since they were dead. That was the case of the economist Harry Dexter White, who worked in the U.S. Treasury Department.

The deep state and the ultra-right use the Venona papers to support Joe McCarthy’s phony charge that President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration was filled with communists.

The documents have also been used to rehabilitate Elizabeth Bentley’s tarnished reputation. The professional liar gave dishonest testimony against the Rosenbergs, defendants in other trials and before a series of congressional witch-hunting committees.

Typical of the so-called “red spy queen” was her claim to have given the secret date of the Normandy landings to the Soviets. Actually, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower informed the Soviets of when D-Day would occur. He did so because he wanted them to launch an offensive and prevent German troops from being withdrawn from the Eastern Front.

Never forget the Rosenbergs

“I consider your crime worse than murder,” declared Judge Kaufman when he sentenced the Rosenbergs to the electric chair  

Worse than the killers of the 14-year-old Emmett Till? The two racists who tortured the Black youth to death got off scot-free. 

Gen. Douglas MacArthur wanted to drop dozens of atom bombs on Korea and China. Judge Kaufman blamed the Rosenbergs for the U.S. not being able to do so.

Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk wrote in his memoirs that the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs wanted President John F. Kennedy to approve a plan to launch nuclear first strikes against the socialist countries.

The whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg revealed that the Pentagon plan would have killed 600 million people. 

What if the Rosenbergs and Morton Sobell had helped the Soviets build an atom bomb? It was only because the Soviet Union — and later the People’s Republic of China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — were able to develop a deterrent to the Pentagon’s arsenal of atomic and hydrogen bombs that a nuclear holocaust was averted. 

But the Rosenbergs and Sobell didn’t have the ability to penetrate the Manhattan Project. The FBI wanted them to finger dozens of liberals to back up Joe McCarthy’s fantastic claim of “20 years of treason” under the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. 

The courage of Ethel Rosenberg, Julius Rosenberg and Morton Sobell prevented this nightmare.

Ethel Rosenberg was electrocuted for supposedly typing reports. She was arrested almost a month after Julius Rosenberg was jailed to put pressure on him to lie.

David Greenglass later admitted he lied about Ethel Rosenberg’s typing. Justice demands that Ethel Rosenberg be given a presidential pardon.

When Morton Sobell was 91 years old, he was badgered by New York Times reporter Sam Harris into saying he and Julius Rosenberg offered information to the Soviets. It was from their jobs as electrical engineers, not from the Manhattan Project.

Twenty-seven million Soviet people died defeating Hitler. Yet during World War II both Britain and the United States refused to share new anti-aircraft weapons and radar with the Soviets.

If Morton Sobell and Julius Rosenberg did indeed help the Soviets, it wasn’t espionage to help a gallant ally. It was whistleblowing, like Daniel Ellsberg did when he released the Pentagon Papers or the truth-telling by Chelsea Manning about U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The best way to honor the Rosenbergs is to fight even harder to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Ruchell Cinque Magee, Sundiata Acoli, Mutulu Shakur and dozens of other political prisoners.

One way to do so is to donate to the Rosenberg Fund for Children, which helps the children of political prisoners, at RFC.org.

Malcolm X: The Black Messiah

By Ameer Hasan Loggins

Republished from the author’s blog.

“I now introduce to you, a man that would give his life for his people,” Benjamin 2X told the crowd in the Audubon Ballroom. That would be the last time 2X would have the honor to make such an introduction. Because on that day, February 21, 1965, in front of close to 500 people, including his pregnant wife and children, Malcolm X was shot 15 times.

On Saturday morning, February 27, 1965, in Harlem, New York, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz was laid to rest. The public viewing of his body was attended by up to 30,000 mourners. Another 3,000 people made the pilgrimage to pay their respects at the Faith Temple Church of God to their “shining Black prince.”

J. Edgar Hoover and the Federal Bureau of Investigation wanted to “neutralize,” a “true Black revolution” in the United States. By any means necessary, they were hellishly bent on preventing “the rise of a” Black “messiah.” Hoover and the FBI identified Malcolm X as the one who, “might have been such a ‘messiah.’”

James Baldwin said, when Malcolm talked, he articulated the long-denied pain and suffering for all of the Black people in the United States. That Malcolm corroborated the reality of Black folks, and by doing so, he affirmed that, “they really exist.”

Malcolm spoke directly to their soul.

The primary role of the Messiah, from an Old Testament perspective, was supposed to be one of a liberator, by militant means. He was to, “strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,” and, “with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked” (Isaiah 11:4). According to Sigmund Mowinckel, author of He That Cometh: The Messiah Concept in the Old Testament and Later Judaism, The Messiah always had, “political significance,” and, the Messiah’s mission is to restore his people, “and free them from their enemies.”

Malcolm and his message were messianic.

That made Malcolm X dangerous.

That made Malcolm X a revolutionary worthy of being neutralized in the eyes of Hoover and the FBI.

Malcolm saw the “Black Revolution,” as “controlled by God.”

Two days before his assassination, Malcolm said, “It is a time for martyrs now, and if I am to be one, it will be for the cause of brotherhood. That’s the only thing that can save this country.” Hoover wanted to, prevent Malcolm the messianic from rising. Hoover felt the only thing that could save this country was the elimination of people like Malcolm. He feared Malcolm’s ability to, “unify, and electrify, the militant Black nationalist movement.” Hoover correctly labeled Malcolm as a “martyr of the movement,” but it seems that Hoover viewed martyrs as people who sacrificed life for the sake of principle.

Hoover viewed Malcolm X as dead.

As past tense.

Malcolm is a Muslim. When he was gunned down in the Audubon Ballroom, he was gunned down fighting for the liberation of the oppressed. 15 bullets entered his body, but he did not die. Allah says in the Quran, “And say not of those slain in the way of Allah: ‘They are dead.’ Nay, they are living, though ye perceive it not.”

Malcolm X is alive.

He lived in the Black Panther Party (BPP).

Bobby Seale, the co-founder of the BPP said:

“The fact that Malcolm X had been murdered…drove Huey and I to a point to say that we were going to have to create an organization, reflective of what he was talking about. The fact that Malcolm said that by legal constitutional right, the 2nd Amendment, that every Black man, woman, and person in this country had a right to have a shotgun in their home to defend themselves from unjust attacks by racism was one point that influenced us very much. But what influenced us, even more, was Malcolm’s emphasis that we must have a political organization that felt most immediately with the housing, and the clothing, the shoes, and the food for the people.”

Dr. Huey P. Newton adds that “Malcolm X was the first political person in this country that I really identified with…We continue to believe that the Black Panther Party exists in the spirit of Malcolm…the Party is a living testament to his life and work.”

Kwame Ture (formerly known as Stokely Carmichael went as far as to emphasize that, “we who have an ideology today use Malcolm X as our framework. Our basic framework. Our point of reference.”

Malcolm was there, but he saw him not.

Olympic medalist and human rights activist John Carlos was born and raised in Harlem. He would follow Malcolm X around the streets, picking his brain as a teen. Reflecting on the first time that he sat and listened to Malcolm speak, Carlos notes:

“I’m sitting this close to him to listen to him. And I can just feel the blood just run through my body, man. I couldn’t sit still. I was — just with excitement for me to be there and see somebody live that I could touch that was talking like that. Because the way he was talking is the way I was feeling because I’m seeing what’s happening in my community.”

Somberly, Carlos continues.

He thinks back to February 21, 1965.

He feels guilt.

Carlos, in some ways, blamed himself for Malcolm being shot 15 times at the Audubon. He believed that if he were there, he could have saved Malcolm from a fate that he had already foreseen. Carlos says:

“I was supposed to be there that Sunday. And we decided, me and some of the guys I was with, Machine and Metal Trades and the track team, that I was going to go try and get my driver’s license that Monday. And we took a road trip and drove up to Buffalo, New York — not Buffalo, but Bear Mountain. And we passed by West Point, and just as we passed by West Point, it came on the news that Malcolm X was shot. Man, we turned around. We shot back to the hospital. By the time we got back to the hospital, he was gone, and everybody was milling around.

And I can tell you, man, probably the better part of 40 years, not 40 years, but 20 years of my life, I felt real bad, felt like if I was in the Audubon Ballroom that day, I could have did something to prevent him from dying.”

Malcolm was alive and standing next to John Carlos in the 1968 Olympics as he raised his clenched Black fist in the air.

Malcolm X is alive in the hearts and minds of every one, whose evolution in life involved the reading of his autobiography. He is alive in every lashing out for liberation by Black folks uncompromisingly fighting tooth and nail against the interlocking systems of white supremacism and anti-Blackness.

He is alive because Allah says so.

He is alive because we won’t let Malcolm rot away.

Yes, on this day, in 1965, the physical shell of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz was adorned in white linen, and placed into the ground, but from that day forward he lives everywhere.

Remembering the Original Black Panther Party

By Aneesh Gogineni

In 1966, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, two students attending Merritt Community College in Oakland, founded what would be one of the most infamous organizations in US history, The Black Panthers. In fact, the FBI director at the time, J. Edgar Hoover regarded the Black Panthers’ breakfast program, not their guns, as the greatest threat to the nation’s internal security. Separating themselves from other black liberation groups at the time, the BPP was fighting the underlying evil that shapes and supplies racism — classism.

The Black Panthers were a Marxist group based on the ideology of revolutionary intercommunalism, a theory formed by Huey Newton that recharacterized imperialism and its relation to black subjugation. The theory rejected Western and neoliberal systemic issues in favor of Leninist style resistance to the neoliberal world order through means of a vanguard party to achieve socialist dictatorship of the proletariat. The Black Panthers were one of the largest domestic left-wing groups in the US that revolted against police brutality, systemic racism, racial capitalism, and worldwide imperialist efforts by the US empire. Running on what they called the Ten-Point Program, they believed in Black freedom and liberation at the same time as the abolition of capitalist systems of oppression and exploitation. At the height of the BPP, there were 68 chapters within the US from Chicago to Oakland to Louisiana. The BPP extended farther than just the United States as it had connections with similar organizations in Algeria, India, South Vietnam, and many other countries. Comprised of predominantly young, black members, very prominent activists were originally BPP members. Fred Hampton, Angela Davis, and Assata Shakur are a few of the activists that were either a part of the BPP or influenced heavily by its core beliefs.

The Black Panthers engaged in various modes of Black resistance. This included violent and peaceful means of resistance. Some of the violent methods included community protection and surveillance in which many Black Panthers armed themselves and patrolled black communities to prevent police brutality and anti-black crime. This resulted in lots of violence between the group and the cops as the cops were very brutal towards black people within black communities. On the other end of the stick, the party also engaged in peaceful, radical action. Some of this action included educating children with non-whitewashed history rather than public school learning. They also created community food programs that had free breakfast for children in school. In fact, this program founded by the BPP is what has led to free lunch and breakfast in nationwide public schools. Through these violent and peaceful programs, they were able to establish a radical commune predicated on fulfilling material needs for everyone in the community rather than profiting off of exploitation of workers and POC within the community.

As the Black Panthers became more prominent around the world, they ascended the FBI’s list of threats to the nation’s internal security. In 1956, COINTELPRO was an FBI operation founded to disrupt the activity of socialist entities such as the Communist Party of the USA or the Socialist Workers Party. As the Black Panther Party gained power, COINTELPRO placed them at the top of the list and sent agents to begin infiltration. In December 1969, the FBI shot and killed multiple leaders around the US. They staged police raids in neighborhoods in order to assassinate leaders. This resulted in the deaths of multiple black panthers including young leader Fred Hampton. However, the Black Panthers were able to remain intact throughout the 70’s and 80’s and continue to spread radical ideas. The demise of the Black Panthers can be attributed to dissolution of leadership as leaders either moved away from the party or were killed. In 1989, Huey Newton was killed and the party came to an official end.

The Black Panthers had a very large domestic and international reach. Multiple chapters throughout the nation replicated the communist praxis of the BPP with pioneers like Fred Hampton leading it in different areas. However, the reach of it extended farther than the US borders into the international spector. By establishing ties with other black liberation movements around the world, they were able to spread revolutionary intercommunalism and influence other areas of the world. An example of how strong their influence was can be seen in the Dalit Panther Party. In India, there is a hierarchal caste system based on what family one is born into. The Dalits were the lower caste that were constantly dehumanized, killed, subjugated and legally oppressed. Thus, the Dalit Panther Party was formed as a method of resistance and rejecting the caste system. Mentioned in the BPP magazines, the Dalit Panthers were a wonderful example of the original party’s reach.

Similarly, in Dallas, the group known as Guerilla Mainframe participates in community aid programs as a method of resistance. They also engage in militant protests to police brutality within their community, which is very reminiscent of the Black Panthers. The legacy of the BPP has been carried on around the world with the Yellow Panthers in Vietnam, the Vanguard Party of the Bahamas, and many more groups that studied and copied the Black Panthers’ model of organizing resistance. Thus, we should remember The Black Panther Party not as a terrorist group but rather as an inspirational Party that was key in the fight for black liberation and abolition of class. Thus, in the name of the Black Panthers and the millions of other deaths resulting from capitalism, we must endorse alternative methods of communing.

Sources

https://viewpointmag.com/2018/06/11/intercommunalism-the-late-theorizations-of-huey-p-newton-chief-theoretician-of-the-black-panther-party/

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Black-Panther-Party/Legacy

The FBI's War on the Left: A Short History of COINTELPRO

By Alex Zambito

Republished from Midwestern Marx.

Throughout its history the United States has billed itself as an open society upholding the free exchange of ideas. We are told that, unlike people in less-enlightened countries, Americans do not have to worry about being persecuted for their political beliefs. Of course, this has never been true. From its very inception, the US government has been restricting free-speech through legislation such as the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798- not to mention the restriction on expression for the enslaved. Americans usually consider this a thing of the past, but political repression continued throughout the 20th century to this day, but in more covert forms. In this essay, I will explore the historical development of the US government’s system of covert domestic political repression, its consolidation, and its culmination in the FBI’s COINTELPRO program.

The FBI has its origins in the General Intelligence Division which was created in 1919 by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer to collect information on radical organizations. J. Edgar Hoover, who would remain in power for the next several decades, was appointed as its head.[1] The GID was immediately used in the infamous Palmer Raids- a series of mass arrests and deportations targeting “alien” members of radical movements. The raids began on November 7, 1919 when GID agents raided offices of the United Russian Workers across the country arresting 650 people and deporting at least 43 without due process.  The crescendo of the raids came on January 2, 1920 when GID agents descended on radical groups in over 30 cities across the country, arresting at least 3,000 people.[2] Much of this repression was directed at the Communist Party USA, with Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson announcing on January 19th that membership in the CPUSA was enough to warrant deportation of immigrants.[3] The raids were finally ended by a court ruling in June 1920, but by then the damage had already been done. Left-wing organizations were effectively decimated with Communist Party membership dropping from over 27,000 in 1919 to just over 8,000 the next year.[4]

Along with the Palmer raids, the Bureau utilized numerous other methods to harass radical groups. In 1919, Hoover targeted Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association. The Bureau employed several infiltrators in the UNIA to uncover information which could be used in trumped up criminal charges against Garvey. After numerous charges of criminal activity failed to stick, the Bureau managed to obtain a conviction against Garvey on mail fraud in 1925. He was deported to Jamaica in 1927.[5]

By the mid-1920s, Hoover was able to renounce the FBI’s past political operations. Aside from participating in repression of major strikes, the Bureau would be true to its word for the next decade. But as the Communist Party began to regain relevance- reaching 66,000 members by 1939- Hoover gained approval from President Roosevelt to resume repression of “subversive activities”. Although Roosevelt later altered this directive as the Soviet Union became a key ally in the fight against Nazi Germany, it would not prevent Hoover from using it as justification for later counter-intelligence activities.[6]

After World War II ended and the Cold War began, Communism became enemy #1 with the CP becoming a natural target. In coordination with the CIA, the FBI began a program of intercepting and inspecting the international communications of US citizens. This was particularly focused on the mail and cables between the US and Soviet Union.[7] Additionally, the Bureau would frequently use other forms of information gathering such as “surreptitious entry” and “bugging” CP offices.[8] The FBI also cooperated with the IRS to gather information on targeted groups and single them out for harassment from the IRS.[9]

Additionally, the FBI would perfect the divide and conquer techniques it would later use to great effect in official COINTELPRO programs against the CP. The Bureau used infiltrators to exploit internal divisions within the party, such as over Khrushchev’s denunciations of Stalin.[10] The Bureau also used “anonymous mailings” in various ways to disrupt party activities. Agents would send letters to party members warning about the treacherous activities of others in the party, hoping to stir up factional disputes.[11] This was also a common ploy in the FBI’s “snitch jacketing” technique to portray loyal party members as informants. This was also frequently accomplished by informants within the party spreading rumors, forged informant reports, or “interviews” where agents would publicly speak with a target to create the impression the party member was an informant.[12]

Anonymous letters and interviews would also be used to impact the personal lives of party members or disrupt alliances the party would make with other groups. Agents would contact the employers or landlords of party members in efforts to get them fired or evicted. Additionally, if the CP were seeking to cooperate with other organizations, agents would send derogatory information to these organizations to prevent an alliance.[13]

These were the FBI’s covert methods in the battle against domestic communism, but it also played a direct role in the overt repression. The FBI played an active role in the rise of McCarthyism by cultivating “friendly media” outlets which would be used to disseminate derogatory information about the CP. Further, the Bureau aided anti-Communist private organizations such as the American Legion and anti-Communist congressmen, with FBI agents even writing their speeches.[14]

These activities would create a general context for the US government’s legal attacks against the CP leadership. FBI agents would use selective law enforcement to harass the party and its members. Party members were frequently arrested for minor or spurious causes. For example, a secretary of the Alabama branch of the CP was arrested and convicted of possessing “seditious literature” for carrying copies of The Nation and The New Republic. He was sentenced to 100 days hard labor and fined $100.[15] This culminated in the government’s use of the Smith Act to prosecute Communist Party members. The Smith Act was passed in 1940 and created criminal penalties for advocating the forcible overthrow of the US government and required all adult non-citizen residents to register with the federal government. It would be used to prosecute eleven top Communist Party members in 1949. All eleven were convicted with ten being sentenced to five to ten years and one- a World War II veteran- sentenced to three.[16] Similar cases would occur across the country, with frequent FBI interference in the judicial process.[17]

The official COINTELPRO program would not begin until 1956, although this was just a formalization of already existing FBI practices. Even though the Communist Party had already been decimated by the mid-1950s, the majority of COINTELPRO operations were carried out against the party. However, the most impactful COINTELPRO activities in this period were against other left-wing and civil rights movements. Some of the groups targeted were called “Black Extremist” groups. The Nation of Islam was an early target of this program, with the FBI maintaining massive files on just Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X. The FBI would go on to play a role in driving a wedge between the two.[18]

As would become a habit for the FBI, the parameters for which groups qualified as “Black Extremists” was expansive. Organizations that would eventually come under the COINTELPRO purview included the NAACP, SCLC, and SNCC.[19] The FBI infamously wiretapped Martin Luther King Jr. and sent him anonymous letters encouraging him to commit suicide.[20]
COINTELPRO would reach its zenith in the late 60ss and early 70s with the inauguration of COINTELPRO-Black Panther and COINTELPRO-New Left. As with its counterintelligence activities against the CP, the Bureau’s tactics ranged from the petty to the outright murderous. Bureau infiltrators of New Left student organizations were instructed to uncover evidence of members’ “depravity” to be publicized.[21] Agents would even contact targets’ parents to inform them of their child’s subversive activities. The FBI also sought to prevent these groups from exercising their first amendment rights by preventing speaking events and public demonstrations. Further, given that many of these groups were popular on college campuses, the Bureau targeted academics friendly to radical groups, seeking to get them disciplined or fired.[22]
The Bureau also attempted to instigate violence between target groups and violence-prone rival political organizations or criminal organizations. In 1968, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent a memorandum to FBI field offices instructing them to devise plans to exploit the conflict between the Black Panther Party and Ron Karenga’s Black Nationalist “US” organization.[23]

This was accomplished through infiltrators, anonymous mailings, and forged propaganda. For instance, the Los Angeles field office responded to Hoover’s call for proposals reporting:[24]

​“The Los Angeles Office is currently preparing an anonymous letter for Bureau approval which will be sent to the Los Angeles Black Panther Party supposedly from a member of the ‘US’ organization in which it will be stated the youth group of the ‘US’ organization is aware of the [Black Panther Party] ‘contract’ to kill RON KARENGA, leader of ‘US’, and they, ‘Us’ members, in retaliation have made plans to ambush leaders of the [Party] in Los Angeles. It is hoped this counterintelligence measure will result in an ‘US’ and [Black Panther Party] vendetta.”

Agents also distributed forged propaganda meant to increase tensions between the BPP and US, such as this cartoon attributed to US:[25]

This strategy would bear fruits as hostilities between the two groups spilled over into violent confrontations resulting in the deaths of four BPP members, including prominent members John Huggins and Bunchy Carter. Despite Bureau protestations that it never intended to encourage violence, the FBI continued to encourage hostility between the two groups even after these killings. This is illustrated by a 1970 report from the FBI’s Los Angeles office:[26]

​“Information received from local sources indicate that, in general, the membership of the Los Angeles BPP is physically afraid of US members and take premeditated precautions to avoid confrontations.

In view of their anxieties, it is not presently felt that the Los Angeles BPP can be prompted into what could result in an internecine struggle between the two organizations…

The Los Angeles Division is aware of the mutually hostile feelings harbored between the organizations and the first opportunity to capitalize on the situation will be maximized. It is intended that US Inc. will be appropriately and discreetly advised of the time and location of BPP activities in order that the two organizations might be brought together and thus grant nature the opportunity to take her due course.”

The Bureau used a similar technique with Operation Hoodwink, where the Bureau attempted to spark conflict between the Communist Party and the criminal organization La Cosa Nostra, as well as criminal elements within reaction unions such as the Teamsters. Fortunately, this attempt did not lead to any reported physical conflicts.[27] [28]

Additionally, the FBI liked to use a specific form of infiltrator known as “Agents Provocateurs” who would encourage members to commit violent or criminal acts. For example, a member of the Weather Underground arrested for a conspiracy to bomb Detroit police facilities was actually an FBI informant, Larry Grathwohl. Grathwohl reportedly instructed members on how to build bombs and participated in the group’s bombing of a Cincinnati public school.[29] One of the most famous provocateurs was “Tommy the Travler” Tongyai who traveled around college campuses in the northeast encouraging students to bomb military research facilities.[30]

As they did with the CP, the Bureau cooperated with local law enforcement to harass targeted groups and their members. Officials sought to stop targets frequently, hoping to arrest and convict them on minor charges. They would also attempt to frame targets for crimes they did not commit. This is exemplified by the case of Geronimo Pratt- a prominent member of the Los Angeles branch of the BPP. After numerous attempts to convict Pratt on trumped up charges failed, Pratt was accused of the 1968 “Tennis Court Murder”. On December 18, 1968, a white couple, Caroline and Kenneth Olsen, were robbed and shot by two black men on a tennis court in Santa Monica, California. Caroline Olsen would die a week later. In August 1969, an anonymous letter was delivered to the Los Angeles Police Department claiming Pratt had committed the murder and had been bragging about it. Pratt was also positively identified by Kenneth Olsen, leading to Pratt’s arrest and eventual conviction in 1972. Of course, the FBI was heavily involved in the trial. The anonymous letter turns out to have been written by Julius Butler, an FBI infiltrator, who would become a key prosecution witness. Additionally, the Bureau had at least one infiltrator in Pratt’s defense team keeping the Bureau informed on defense strategy. And the prosecution concealed the fact that Kenneth Olsen had initially identified another man, Ronald Perkins, as his wife’s killer and that police had purposefully influenced his identification. Pratt would remain in jail for a crime he did not commit until 1997 when his case was invalidated due to the prosecution’s suppression of evidence.[31]

But the worst of COINTELPRO was the Bureau’s use of violent raids and political assassinations. On April 6, 1968 a group of Panthers were confronted by police officers in west Oakland. Gunfire was exchanged and the police cordoned off the block. After an hour and a half, the Panthers attempted to surrender, but when unarmed ‘Lil Bobby Hutton emerged from a nearby basement, he was shot dead by police officers.[32] In a more overt case, Chicago police officers, with the assistance of the FBI, assassinated Fred Hampton in 1969. They were assisted by an FBI infiltrator, William O’Neal, who provided detailed floor plans of Hampton’s apartment.[33]

This is far from an exhaustive exploration of the FBI’s counterintelligence programs. The FBI targeted numerous groups such as the Socialist Workers’ Party, American Indian Movement, etc. that I was unable to cover here. While COINTELPRO was brought to light by the Church Committee in the 1970s and, subsequently, formally ended, the FBI has definitely continued its counterintelligence activities. In recent years, it has been revealed that the FBI maintains a list of “Black Identity Extremists”.[34] With this in mind, I think it is incredibly important for leftists to learn the history of COINTELPRO. With this knowledge we can more thoroughly safeguard our organizations against the inevitability of government subversion 

​Citations

[1]Churchill, W., & Vander Wall, J. (2001). COINTELPRO Papers. Retrieved 2020, from https://www.freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/Black%20Liberation%20Disk/Black%20Power!/SugahData/Government/COINTELPRO.S.pdf, 297

[2] Admin. (2020, July 24). AG Palmer Promises "War on Reds," Delivers Palmer Raids. Retrieved October 03, 2020, from https://todayinclh.com/?event=ag-palmer-promises-war-on-reds-delivers-palmer-raids 

[3]Churchill, W., & Vander Wall, J. (2001). COINTELPRO Papers, Retrieved 2020, from https://www.freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/Black%20Liberation%20Disk/Black%20Power!/SugahData/Government/COINTELPRO.S.pdf, 299

[4]“Communist Party Membership by Districts 1922-1950.” Accessed October 3, 2020. https://depts.washington.edu/moves/CP_map-members.shtml.

[5] Marcus Garvey.” FBI File on Marcus Garvey, Part4, document no. 190-1781-6, 10 Aug. 1922. The FBI: Federal Bureau of Investigation, US Department of Justice, https://vault.fbi.gov/marcus-garvey/marcus-garvey-part-04-of-12/view

[6] Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, United States Senate: Together with Additional, Supplemental, and Separate Views. Vol. II. Washington: U.S. Govt. https://www.transformation.dk/www.raven1.net/cointeldocs/churchfinalreportIIb.htm Accessed: 2020

[7] Ibid

[8] Ibid

[9] Ibid

[10] Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, United States Senate: Together with Additional, Supplemental, and Separate Views. Vol. III. Washington: U.S. Govt. http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/book3/pdf/ChurchB3_1_COINTELPRO.pdf Accessed:2020, 45

[11] Ibid, Pgs. 33-49.

[12] Ibid

[13] Ibid

[14] O'Reilly, Kenneth. "The FBI and the Origins of McCarthyism." The Historian 45, no. 3 (1983): 372-93. Accessed October 4, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24445173.

[15] Churchill, W., & Vander Wall, J. (2001). COINTELPRO Papers. P. 318, Retrieved 2020, from https://www.freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/Black%20Liberation%20Disk/Black%20Power!/SugahData/Government/COINTELPRO.S.pdf 

[16] McElroy, Wendy. “Smith Act Tyranny Against Communists.” The Future of Freedom Foundation, March 5, 2018. https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/smith-act-tyranny-communists/.

[17] Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, United States Senate: Together with Additional, Supplemental, and Separate Views. Vol. III. Washington: U.S. Govt. http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/book3/pdf/ChurchB3_1_COINTELPRO.pdf Accessed:2020, 57

[18] Chicago. Bureau of Investigation. Chicago Letters. Chicago: Bureau of Investigation, 1969. http://docs.noi.org/fbi_january_22_1969.pdf

[19] Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, United States Senate: Together with Additional, Supplemental, and Separate Views. Vol. III. Washington: U.S. Govt. http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/book3/pdf/ChurchB3_1_COINTELPRO.pdf Accessed:2020, 5

[20] Gage, Beverly. “What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals.” The New York Times. The New York Times, November 11, 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncensored-letter-to-mlk-reveals.html.

[21]  Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, United States Senate: Together with Additional, Supplemental, and Separate Views. Vol. III. Washington: U.S. Govt. http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/book3/pdf/ChurchB3_1_COINTELPRO.pdf Accessed:2020, 24 

[22] Ibid, Pg. 56

[23] “Federal Bureau of Investigation – Initial Memo on Fomenting Violence Against Black Panther Party.” Genius. Accessed October 4, 2020. https://genius.com/Federal-bureau-of-investigation-initial-memo-on-fomenting-violence-against-black-panther-party-annotated.

[24] Bloom, Joshua, and Waldo E. Martin. Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016, 218

[25] Los Angeles. Bureau of Investigation. Things to do Today. Los Angeles: Bureau of Investigations, 1969. http://collection-politicalgraphics.org/detail.php?type=browse&id=1&term=Black+Panther+Party&page=3&kv=54716&record=141&module=objects

[26] Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, United States Senate: Together with Additional, Supplemental, and Separate Views. Vol. III, Washington: U.S. Govt. https://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/book3/pdf/ChurchB3_3_BlackPanthers.pdf Accessed: 2020, 24 

[27] “Hoodwink.” FBI Files for Operation Hoodwink, part 1, document no. 100-159407, 29 Nov. 1967. The FBI: Federal Bureau of Investigation, US Department of Justice, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/hoodwink/cointel-pro-hoodwink-part-01-of-01/view

[28] “Hoodwink.” FBI Files for Operation Hoodwink, par1, document no. 100-49252, 25 Jan. 1968. The FBI: Federal Bureau of Investigation, US Department of Justice, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/hoodwink/cointel-pro-hoodwink-part-01-of-01/view

[29] Newton, Michael. The FBI Encyclopedia. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2012, 133

[30] Churchill, Ward, and Jim VanderWall. Agents of Repression: the FBI's Secret Wars against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement. Cambridge, MA: South End Pr., 2008, 48.

[31] Ibid, 77-94

[32]  Bloom, Joshua, and Waldo E. Martin. Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016, 118-120.

[33] Churchill, Ward, and Jim VanderWall. Agents of Repression: the FBI's Secret Wars against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement. Cambridge, MA: South End Pr., 2008, 64-77.

[34] Speri, Alice. “The Strange Tale of the FBI's Fictional ‘Black Identity Extremism’ Movement.” The Intercept, March 23, 2019. https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/black-identity-extremist-fbi-domestic-terrorism/.

A Captured or Dead Assata Wouldn't Be To Silence Her: It Would be to Silence Us

By Frank Castro

"For centuries, nothing has so stirred up American fury like the escape of a slave. That ain't just distant history. For daring to slip her bonds and escape from brutal and unjust bondage, the Empire now labels her a terrorist. That's because to them, nothing is more terrifying than resistance to their imperial will."

- Mumia Abu-Jamal on Assata Shakur

When it comes to "capturing" "terrorists" or America's political fugitives, the same litmus test applies: What makes less noise, a prisoner or a corpse?

With the United States and Cuba resuming diplomatic ties, there has been a lot of speculation about what will happen to Assata Shakur, a 67 year old black liberationist and political fugitive. Almost immediately after President Obama announced resurrecting ties between the two nations, the New Jersey State Police (NJSP) started scheming to get their hands on her.

According to the NJSP's Facebook page, Colonel Rick Fuentes, Superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, issued the following statement:

"We continue to work closely with the FBI towards the capture of Joanne Chesimard [Assata Shakur], a convicted felon and fugitive who escaped from jail in 1979 and remains on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist List, as well as New Jersey's Most Wanted List. We view any changes in relations with Cuba as an opportunity to bring her back to the United States to finish her sentence for the murder of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster in 1973. We stand by the reward money and hope that the total of two million dollars will prompt fresh information in the light of this altered international relationship."

But of course that's the state sponsored narrative of whom she is and why she is wanted by US authorities. This is the only propaganda you are supposed to unquestionably swallow as you rally behind the most racist nation in the world to go lynch yet another life in the name of "justice".

In reality Assata was a prominent female member of the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army. She became a member of the Black Power movement at a time when many activists were galvanized following the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. And she experienced firsthand the authentic history of a nation built on genocide and slavery, something which stands in stark contrast to the whitewashed beacon of exceptionalism that mainstream America propagates today.

That experience was cemented as Shakur was targeted and framed by the FBI's COINTELPRO program, a series of illegal practices and entities formed precisely for the purpose of domestic political repression.

As David Love elaborated in a recent article for the Grio:

"The baby of J. Edgar Hoover, COINTELPRO was designed to monitor, infiltrate and destroy social justice movements seen as a threat to national security, including civil rights and antiwar groups, the Black Power movement, [the American Indian Movement], and the Young Lords. Some of the stated goals of the program in an FBI memo were to "prevent the coalition of militant black nationalist groups," to "Prevent the RISE OF A 'MESSIAH' who could unify…the militant black nationalist movement," to "Prevent militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining RESPECTABILITY, by discrediting them to…both the responsible community and to liberals who have vestiges of sympathy…," and to "prevent the long-range GROWTH of militant black organizations, especially among youth."

As a result, black leadership was decimated, either assassinated… or thrown in prison with the key thrown away. Assata Shakur, who fled to Cuba, was the last woman standing, so to speak. And apparently that is embarrassing to someone in the FBI, so they want to make an example of her as a so-called "domestic terrorist." That is why last year, 40 years after the shooting, the FBI made thepolitically-motivated move of placing Shakur on their Ten Most Wanted Terrorists list, making her the first woman and second U.S. citizen on that list. If you listen to the FBI, you'd think the ten most dangerous people on Earth are essentially nine Al Qaeda operatives and-Assata Shakur."

Yet still, to peoples struggling against American oppression she remains a prominent figure in the fight for liberation, and that's the REAL problem. To put it how Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin might, a former political prisoner himself, the reason that the US government is still after Assata is not because they fear that she will engage in violence or to just punish her, but rather because they fear her effects upon the oppressed, who see in her the inspiration to fight - and more importantly, the strength to win.

Primarily it is for this reason that the US government is unlikely to seek extradition of Shakur. Further still, bringing her back stateside in the midst of a social movement like BlackLivesMatter, the likes of which has not mobilized since her last years in America, would only add fuel to the flame of public outrage over police terror in our communities.

There are more logistical reasons she is unlikely to be extradited anytime soon though.

These include, but are not limited to 1) because her (alleged) crime and acceptance into Cuba was political in nature she is not subject to extradition per the un-revoked 1905 extradition treaty between the US and Cuba; 2) if Shakur is a Cuban citizen, this would prevent extradition; 3) there are precedents for U.S.-friendly nations that have refused to extradite American fugitives who have fled the U.S. whom fear political repression upon returning; 4) it would take a decision by Obama or the DOJ to order it in the first place; and 5) any renegotiated treaty would have to go through the Senate first.

But if we know anything about the United States' treatment of political dissidents, extraditions are low on the priority list.

There is a reason Osama bin Laden was brought back dead rather than alive. The U.S. government didn't want to try him. They didn't want bin Laden, a former partner of the CIA, to recall in intimate detail the U.S. sponsored terrorism in the Middle East that has killed millions . They didn't want to remember that before the Taliban they funded, trained, andpart nered with the Mujahideen and countless other militias in proxy wars with the USSR, devastating and destabilizing entire regions in the process. LEAST of all did the U.S. government want a lesson in historical accuracy to rally the victims of U.S. oppression around the fact that AmeriKKKa has never given a shit about brown bodies - not here, not anywhere.

Nope. They didn't want any of that. What the U.S. government DID want was a trophy for U.S. imperialism. They wanted to hang a dead body in the public square. They wanted a dead body because dead bodies don't talk.

This is why Fred Hampton never spoke again. Why Dr. King never spoke again. Why Malcolm X never spoke again. Why Huey P. Newton never spoke again. Why George Jackson, John Huggins, Bunchy Carter, Sylvester Bell, and so many others never spoke again. Any threat to the hegemony of AmeriKKKa's narrative that it is the benevolent land of milk and honey - of democracy and freedom - MUST be dealt with.

It is why if we understand the current options available to the U.S. government, and if we remember its history, the danger of Assata's U.S.-sponsored assassination is now more menacing than ever. AmeriKKKa doesn't want to bring her to "trial". That was done already and it was a farce. This government wants her shut up, out of sight, or dead. And a re-established U.S. embassy in Havana would make it that much easier. It would put agents of repression closer to Shakur than they may have ever been in the past 40 years.

So now is the time to renew our conviction to Hands Off Assata. Now is the time to remind our oppressive government that we are here, we are watching, and we will fight for Assata no matter where she is. This is the time to remember, in the powerful words of Dr. King, that an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, because any effort to silence Assata Shakur is an effort to silence us.