Black America’s State of Surveillance

Originally Posted In Progressive.org

By Malkia Amala Cyril

Ten years ago, on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, my mother, a former Black Panther, died from complications of sickle cell anemia. Weeks before she died, the FBI came knocking at our door, demanding that my mother testify in a secret trial proceeding against other former Panthers or face arrest. My mother, unable to walk, refused. The detectives told my mother as they left that they would be watching her. They didn’t get to do that. My mother died just two weeks later.

My mother was not the only black person to come under the watchful eye of American law enforcement for perceived and actual dissidence. Nor is dissidence always a requirement for being subject to spying. Files obtained during a break-in at an FBI office in 1971 revealed that African Americans, J. Edger Hoover’s largest target group, didn’t have to be perceived as dissident to warrant surveillance. They just had to be black. As I write this, the same philosophy is driving the increasing adoption and use of surveillance technologies by local law enforcement agencies across the United States.

An Open Letter From Assata

Posted on May 3, 2013 by reed

Originally on Frontlines of Revolutionary Struggle

My name is Assata Shakur, and I am a 20th century escaped slave. Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the US government’s policy towards people of color. I am an ex-political prisoner, and I have been living in exile in Cuba since 1984.

I have been a political activist most of my life, and although the U.S. government has done everything in its power to criminalize me, I am not a criminal, nor have I ever been one. In the 1960s, I participated in various struggles: the black liberation movement, the student rights movement, and the movement to end the war in Vietnam. I joined the Black Panther Party. By 1969 the Black Panther Party had become the number one organization targeted by the FBI’s COINTELPRO program. Because the Black Panther Party demanded the total liberation of black people, J. Edgar Hoover called it “greatest threat to the internal security of the country” and vowed to destroy it and its leaders and activists.

In 1978, my case was one of many cases bought before the United Nations Organization in a petition filed by the National Conference of Black Lawyers, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, and the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, exposing the existence of political prisoners in the United States, their political persecution, and the cruel and inhuman treatment they receive in US prisons. According to the report:

[Video] Jalil Muntaqim Interviews and Message From a Supporter

Written by Imani Asada Mohamed, with contributions from The Freedom Archives

as Salamu Alaykum, Greetings Comrades, Fam, Friends-and yes Foes!

I am writing in deep solidarity and service for our comrade Jalil Muntaqim, former member of The Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Jalil is also one of the USA’s longest held political prisoners. Comrade Jalil Muntaqim has roots here in the Bay area. He was born in Oakland in 1951, and lived in both San Francisco and San Jose. He was arrested at the age of 19 as part of a COINTELPRO target project. At the time of his arrest he was working as a social worker.

While some are not familiar with comrade Jalil, nor his case, he is in fact one of the Bay Area’s native sons. More in depth information can be found about his case here and here.

[Scroll below the videos for the rest of the essay.]

Interview with Jalil, Part I:

Interview with Jalil Part II:

I highly recommend reading the particulars about his case, his life, and learning about the strong, compassionate, intelligent man, who sacrificed his life in a quest to address racism, police brutality, oppression and injustice in our communities. Comrade Jalil is not only a Political Prisoner/Prisoner of War-but he is a beloved son, father, uncle, friend, and hero.

Jalil is not a number, he is a victim of the COINTELPRO slave chattel, gathered up to feed the Prison Industrial Complex and imprisoned for his political beliefs that oppression, injustices, and brutality against people is vile and wrong. He is a human being, punished for opposing the ills of this un-just system. Getting to know Jalil, opens a whole new door into how this system functions, why it must be changed, and revolutionary visions concerning how to create and implement positive changes. Anyone who views this as “threatening” has lost the ideals and meaning of what human rights are all about-for indeed these are human rights issues. Beyond the intellectual writings from his myrid of essays, books and interviews, Jalil is also a prolific poet. Jalil has written several volumes of poetry that causes one to pause, reflect and to contemplate deep seated feelings and emotions as his poetry speaks intensely on various issues both socially and personally, from the depths of the soul -from the belly of the beast; wherein over four decades of incarceration have produced some of the greatest creative and intellectual material written.

Upcoming Discussion: Spied Upon: Surveillance and Resistance

From the Spied Upon Facebook page

The Bay Area Public School presents:
Spied Upon: Surveillance and Resistance
Join us Friday February 21st 7-9 pm at the Bay Area Public School (common room)
2141 Broadway (enter on 22nd), Oakland – three blocks from 19th St. Bart)

Between the ever-present fear of informants to the profusion of metadata
collection and the construction of the Domain Awareness Center (DAC) in
Oakland, the growing problem of surveillance has made it into the
mainstream dialogue, but the people and communities most affected are
sometimes being left out of the conversation.

Join us for an evening of ideas, discussion and your questions about
solidarity in the face of this intimidation. How do we support one another
and our movements when being targeted by police, surveillance and
informants? What are the legal, community and political responses that can
best keep the larger “us” safe and allow our movements to flourish?

– SPEAKERS –
Jason Kirkpatrick, filmmaker and activist, will show clips of and discuss
his upcoming film, Spied Upon. Interviewing activists across the world and
telling his own personal story, Jason will take us on a journey into one
of Europe’s biggest political surveillance scandals, documenting growing
movements of resistance to surveillance along the way.

Zahra Billoo, Civil rights attorney and Executive Director at the Bay Area
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), speaks on the use of
informants in a post-9/11 context, their impact, the community’s
resistance and lessons learned.

Richard Brown, Black Panther and member of the SF8, will share his history
with undercover police and surveillance, imparting the ‘long view’ of
solidarity learned from a lifetime of activism.

-Panel Discussion –
Moderated by Nadia Kayyali of the EFF
(Electronic Frontier Foundation)

Q & A with the speakers will follow in conversation with representatives
from:
Bay Area Anti-Repression Committee
Bay Area Coalition to Stop Political Repression (at AROC)
Legal Workers of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG)
Oakland Privacy Working Group (OPWG / anti-DAC)

The event space at the Public School is accessible.

All donations gratefully received will go to the Bay Area Anti-Repression
Committee and the Legal Workers at the Bay Area chapter of the NLG – two
groups long supporting the Bay Area radical community with legal and
educational assistance and solidarity. Thank you!

http://thepublicschool.org/node/36455   Event page at The Public School
https://www.facebook.com/#!/events/531604720271510/    Face Book Event

[Video]: Sons of Malcolm (Sukant Chandan) in Conversation with Sohail Daulatzai – Black Star Crescent Moon

From Sons of Malcom

London, England

WATCH VIDEO HERE: SONS OF MALCOM

Sat June 8, 2013 6pm at Housmans bookstore in kings cross central london, Brother Sohail Daulatzai will be in conversation with Sukant Chandan (Sons of Malcolm / sonsofmalcolm.com ) on the subject of Daulatzai’s newly published book: ‘Black Star, Crescent Moon: The Muslim International and Black Freedom Beyond America.’

Black Star is a book which documents and analyses the impact of the Muslim International, ie., the tradition of radical and popular resistance and liberation to western imperialism in the internationalist traditions of those inspired by Islam, from that of the Non-Aligned Movement, to the impact on the Nation of Islam and especially Malcolm X as well as Muhammad Ali, as well as the cultural impact manifested in Hip-Hop and Cinema.

Black Rider Liberation Party: Building the Intercommunal Solidarity Committee

Oakland, California

Building the Intercommunal Solidarity Committee

Shango Abiola
BRLP Oakland

Author’s note: The Black Riders Liberation Party (BRLP) launched the Inter-Communal Solidarity Committee in Los Angeles, CA with a gathering at the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research on Saturday, November 10, 2012. At this event, numerous activist and community members from different races, philosophies and ideological lines came together to form the Inter-Communal Solidarity Committee. The idea to form this committee comes from our study of the Black Panther Party’s (BPP) forming the National Committee to Combat Fascism (NCCF), which would later become the Inter-communal Committee to Combat Fascism (ICCF). This paper is a historical analysis of our theoretical framework for this development.

“Unitary Conduct implies a ‘search’ for those elements in our present situation which can become the basis for joint action. It involves a conscious reaching for the relevant, the entente, and especially, in our case the reconcilable. Throughout the centralizing authoritarian process of Amerikan history, the ruling classes have found it necessary to discourage and punish any genuine opposition to hierarchy. But there have always been individuals and groups who rejected the ideal of two unequal societies, existing one on top of the other.”

George Jackson, Blood in My Eye