#cointelpro
“WE SERVE THE PEOPLE”
New York City chapter of the Black Panther Party’s Harlem office, circa 1970 with racks of free clothes for the community in front.
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(DC1) DES MOINES, Iowa, Aug. 23—ARMED TAKEOVER—Members of the American Indian Movement stand guard in a state office building here after 10 AIM members occupied the offices Wednesday. The Indians peacefully vacated the building after two hours.
The American Indian Movement were a groundbreaking organization for indigenous rights, taking their inspiration from their contemporaries, the Black Panther Party. They boldly challenged the American power structure and demanded self-determination for their people and an end to the genocide they continue to face. Their history is a rich source of knowledge for us to take inspiration from, as well as learn from their mistakes.
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With school around the corner, this is a reminder to not allow the history textbooks have you go & discredit revolutionary heroes that fought & died for your rights. It’s important to educate yourself & others about COINTELPRO, an FBI government-sponsored series of covert, and often illegal, projects aimed at spying on, infiltrating, discrediting, disrupting & destroying leftist political organizations & leaders they deemed “subversive” including the Black Panther Party, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Civil Rights organizations, the Brown Berets, the Young Lords, the American Indian Movement, women’s liberation groups, LGBT activists, & anti-Vietnam war organizers.
“COINTELPRO used informants, agent provocateurs, infiltrators, legal and illegal wiretaps, break-ins, false correspondence, and “bad-jacketing,” which was the act of making a legitimate member of a group appear to be a collaborator with the state. Psychological warfare included calling the parents of young civil rights activists to inform them that their children had been murdered or kidnapped. FBI agents worked with journalists to plant stories in order to discredit leadership and organizations. Across the country, the Bureau collaborated with local police to repress targeted groups. Sharing resources & intelligence, activists were arrested, fired from jobs, expelled from schools and lost business contracts. COINTELPRO even used switchboard operators and postal workers to spy on citizens, with or without court order… The effectiveness of COINTELPRO was overwhelming. Many organizations were destabilized with arrests, raids, break-ins, & killings. The most famous raid of the Panthers occurred in December 1969 in Chicago when a 14-man police raiding party killed two Panthers, Fred Hampton & Mark Clark. Several other Panthers were injured in the pre-dawn attack. Nationally, the Panthers insisted that the FBI and local police were involved in a conspiracy to destroy them. Hoover denied it. The magnitude of these coordinated activities, however, were not known until the 1976 congressional hearings.” -Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar
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This keeps happening overandoverandoverandoverandover. White nationalists are part of the police, and the police are part of white nationalism. They are one and the same.
COINTELPRO is in the DNA of American police forces.
Anti-Blackness is in the DNA of American police forces.
There’s no other way to put it: The police (and the federal government) consider Civil Rights activists more of a threat to America than white nationalists. They consistently target Black and Brown activists and communities. Even worse, they target those communities but not the greatest threat to America—organized and ever proliferating white supremacist groups.
Hopefully, this is comes as no great surprise to anyone living in America who has been paying attention. This is another great example of why sO many Black and Brown people do not trust the police, and why so many of us are vehemently against any president—Republican or Democrat—literally gifting the police with more *discretionary* funds than they everrrrequested.
The police are the problem, NOT the solution.
