If you possess even a cursory history of oppressed peoples, then you have undoubtedly heard of the great Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh and the outstanding Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey. Ho Chi Minh, who’s actual name was Nguyen Ai Quoc, was the founder and leader of the Viet Minh Front, which was the organized force of Vietnamese people that led their national liberation against colonial invading forces (including the U.S.) from the 1920s through the 1970s. Marcus Garvey was the Jamaican born African who helped initiate and lead the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) which grew to be the largest liberation . . .
COINTELPRO
Kuwasi Balagoon: Love, Power and Peace by Piece
Freedom is a habit and for Africans throughout history, it is one that can cost you dearly while under the repressive state apparatus of an imperialist power. Despite this, it has rarely discouraged those who’ve taken up the program for Black liberation from making the ultimate sacrifice out of their love for the people. Recognizing the colonial status of Africans in the US and in the diaspora is only the first step. Through organization, struggle, uniting around a set of principles and an unwavering commitment to the movement is where some of the strongest and most fierce of the litter . . .
Enemies and Friends: Resolving Contradictions
The following is an excerpt from Safiya Bukhari’s The War Before: The True Life Story of Becoming a Black Panther, Keeping the Faith in Prison & Fighting For Those Left Behind. This section is titled “Enemies and Friends: Resolving Contradictions and it was written some time in the late 1980s or early 1990s, during a time where those who had been targeted by COINTELPRO were trying to recover their relationships and figure out how they would be able to continue to do political work together. We have written extensively about the environment of mistrust created around the imprisonment of Geronimo ji Jaga. That environment contributed significantly to the solutions that Safiya offers in this work. . . .
Rittenhouse and Verdict Mania
Black people give great attention to certain court cases in hopes of receiving justice when the system is designed to be unjust. That recognition and the commitment to fighting back will be of greater use than divining conclusions about a racist nation when juries reach verdicts. . . .
Huey Newton, George Jackson & What They Mean to Us
This week is quite a historical week as it relates to the African liberation struggle within the confines of the colony known as the U.S. In August of 1971, George Jackson, who was incarcerated in California, was murdered inside prison walls there. As a response to his murder and oppressive prison conditions, incarcerated persons from all walks of life banded together at Attica Prison in New York and staged a rebellion that saw about 40 people slaughtered by prison officials and police. In August of 1989, Huey P. Newton, the co-founder of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, and . . .
Black August, COINTELPRO & Learning The Important Lessons
As 2021 moves along, there are a number of things that, like the sun following the moon, remain constant. The international capitalist system continues to utilize its control over our brain waves to promote, institutionalize, and normalize lies, confusion, and misinformation. The masses of humanity continue to resist this oppression in any number of creative and evolving ways. And, the forces attempting to organize against the system continue to claim complete mastery over how the government manipulated our movements in the past while simultaneously and foolishly behaving in the same destructive ways, especially on social media, that sabotaged our work . . .
Exposing Police Lies to Destroy the Legacy of Kwame Ture
The capitalist system is not going to educate you about the true legacy of Kwame Ture because once you know it, you will become energized to carry out that legacy. The capitalist ruling classes understand clearly, even if we do not, that the day that consciousness takes hold is the day their time is numbered. . . .
Why Misogynists Make Great Informants
This piece on gender violence in social justice movements was originally published in make/shift magazine’s Spring/Summer 2010 issue and written by Courtney Desiree Morris. In January 2009, activists in Austin, Texas, learned that one of their own, a white activist named Brandon Darby, had infiltrated groups protesting the Republican National Convention (RNC) as an FBI informant. Darby later admitted to wearing recording devices at planning meetings and during the convention. He testified on behalf of the government in the February 2009 trial of two Texas activists who were arrested at the RNC on charges of making and possessing Molotov cocktails, . . .