Sheriff Dave Clarke from Milwaukee declared on FOX News that Beyonce’s homage to the Black Panthers at the Super Bowl was equivalent to a white band paying homage to the KKK, and asked,”Would that be acceptable if a band, a white band, came out in hoods and white sheets?”
There is no comparison between the terrorist white supremacist KKK and the Black Panther Party. The BPP stood up for equality and Black liberation, only to be terrorized, murdered and and framed-up, by America’s brutal and racist FBI working with local law enforcement. The Black Panthers fought for liberation, the KKK instead seek to terrorize every oppressed minority as well as union activists and socialists. The KKK stand for oppression, the BPP for liberation, There is no comparison.
African Americans have faced brutal political oppression orchestrated by the FBI. In the 1960’s and 70’s the U.S. government liquidated the Black Panther Party For Self Defense through the murders of 38 members, constant police harassment costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in bail money, and the frame-up of many other members.
Fred Hampton was a leader of the Chicago Black Panther Party (BPP). He was murdered in his sleep at the age of 21 in a joint assassination carried out by the Chicago Police and the FBI. The operation also murdered BPP member Mark Clark. As a leader of the BPP, Fred Hampton organized a non-aggression pact between Chicago’s street gangs, a successful breakfast program, and a multi-racial Rainbow Coalition unrelated to Jesse Jackson’s later liberal appropriation of the name for the so-called “Democratic” Party. In addition, Fred Hampton gave fiery speeches that were part of building a movement for proletarian socialist revolution. As Fred Hampton said, “Racism is the excuse used; racism is just a byproduct of capitalism.”
This was a point also made by BPP member Connie Mathews in a speech to 500 students at San Jose State University on October 25th, 1969:
“…the reason they divided us up into ethnic groups, into races, because as Fanon has said—capitalism and racism—one is a cause and the other is effect. They did not bring Black people over from Africa as slaves because we are Black. They brought Black people over so capitalism could thrive. When capitalism reached its highest form—imperialism—they had to define methods to keep the division.”
The sinister Hoover with reluctant admirer and fellow crook, Nixon. [CC BY-NC by National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund]
“Every nation has sovereign and legitimate rights to grant political asylum to people it considers to have been persecuted. … That’s a legitimate right. We’ve explained to the U.S. government in the past that there are some people living in Cuba to whom Cuba has legitimately granted political asylum.”
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie responded, calling Cubans “thugs” and likewise applying typical racist disrespect by using Assata Shakur’s discarded slave name saying:
“So Joanne Chesimard, a cold-blooded cop-killer, convicted by a jury of her peers, in what is without question the fairest and most just criminal justice system in the world … is now, according to an official of the Cuban government, persecuted. These thugs in Cuba have given her political asylum for 30 years. It’s unacceptable.”
In reality, Assata Shakur was not convicted by a “jury of her peers”, she was convicted by an all white jury. Assata Shakur was a victim of America’s racist courts and the FBI’s COINTELPRO operations that targeted Black radicals for police murder and judicial frame-up. Police ambushed Assata Shakur and her comrades in 1973. In that attack, police crossfire struck and killed New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster, with a bullet from a police revolver killing the cop. James Harper, the slain trooper’s partner has admitted that he lied about seeing a gun in Assata Shakur’s hand. Assata Shakur was supposedly being apprehended for 7 counts, including a bank robbery. She was later acquitted for all of these counts and a jury even decided that the picture the FBI had widely circulated, supposedly showing her during a bank robbery, wasn’t even a picture of her. She and her comrade Sundiata Acoli were, however, wrongly convicted in the death of Werner Foerster.
Before going to trial, Assata Shakur was badly tortured as were other Black Panthers in custody like Ruben Scott who confessed after being tortured. Assata Shakur did not confess.
The torture and murder of political dissidents by the U.S. government did not begin with Bagram, Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, it was used against the Black Panther Party as well as directly by the U.S. government in places like Vietnam. For instance, before Guantanamo and the Panthers, there were the tiger cages of Côn Sơn Island where U.S. forces and the South Vietnamese puppet government tortured prisoners and murdered 20,000 people. The victims were largely leftists and suspected leftists who opposed the U.S. imposed dictatorship of southern Vietnam. Similarly, the CIA’s torture and assassination under the Phoenix Program in southern Vietnam targeted Communists and suspected Communist supporters. Few prisoners survived their interrogations. The U.S. State Department admits to directly killing 20,000 people under this program and another 20,000 people were murdered by it when the program was turned over to the South Vietnamese dictatorship.
It was in 1977 that Assata Shakur was convicted by an all-white jury that was kept unaware of the FBI’s COINTELPRO campaign of murder and frame-up against the Black liberation movement. After the conviction, Assata Shakur’s comrades, however, broke her out of prison. She lived underground in the United States for 5 years and by 1984 she was able to escape to the freedom of Cuba.
While Assata Shakur benefits from the gains of the Cuban Revolution living in exile in Cuba, political prisoners who have not been able to escape the United States like Sundiata Acoli, who was arrested in relation to the same incident as Assata Shakur, still sit in prison. In September 2014, Sundiata Acoli, however, won an appeal to grant his release on parole, but the state of New Jersey is still fighting the ruling. Free Sundiata Acoli Now!
A similar case is that of Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald. He was pulled over by the California Highway Patrol in 1969, supposedly for a broken tail light. At that time, the police all across the country, in coordination with the FBI, were carrying out these kinds of stops and then opening fire on BPP members to kill them. In the shoot out that came with this CHP attack, Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald was shot in the head and CHP Officer Leslie Clapp was injured as well. At the trial for attempted murder, CHP Officer Leslie Clapp admitted that he was under orders to shoot and kill members of the Black Panther Party. The judge ordered the jury to disregard this essential fact. An additional charge for the murder of security guard Barge Miller was also placed on Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald. Yet, the one eyewitness against him couldn’t even pick out the picture of Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald when photos of three men were placed before him. Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald fired on Officer Leslie Clapp in self-defense and was framed for the death of Barge Miller.
While all of this went on, the corporate media loyally reported the FBI’s murder campaign against the Black Panther Party in the reverse of reality, with the BPP portrayed as the aggressors. Other FBI operations were used to discredit and murder members of the BPP as well. For instance, on his own initiative, FBI agent “Crazy” Tom Mosher set-up the so-called Guevara guerrilla training base in the Santa Cruz Mountains. From this base FBI agent Tom Mosher carried out various illegal activities like robberies of pot growers and leftists as well as guerrilla activities that were used to get people busted, all while doing his best to associate himself with the BPP. In 1971, an important and well liked member of the BPP, Fred Bennett, was murdered and his body disposed of at this FBI run training camp. FBI agent Tom Mosher then “leaked” a falsified version of what happened to a reporter he worked closely with in his operations named Ed Montgomery of the San Francisco Chronicle. From this falsified FBI information, Montgomery reported that Fred Bennett’s murder had been ordered by BPP leader Bobby Seale because of a personal relationship Fred Bennett was having with a woman in the BPP. This was an obvious lie from a known liar, in part because the BPP had actually approved their relationship. In his article, Montgomery hid the fact that he knew his source was FBI, and instead reported him as a movement source.
New Jersey’s Guv Chris Christie is easily one of the most repulsive politicians in America these days. By character a thug, he has all the instincts (as does Trump whom he just endorsed) of a a fascist thug. He would have been at home with Mussolini. [CC BY-NC-ND by geener]
In years following Mumia’s frame-up, his journalism behind bars has spread far and wide as an important voice of the voiceless. The continued attempts at his execution up until 2011 by the entire system were intended to silence that voice. The latest move to silence Mumia came in the form of the Revictimization Relief Act signed into law in October 2014 by Governor Tom Corbett. Soon after signing the law, Corbett held a press conference on the site where Officer Faulkner was killed where he stated the law would stunt the “obscene celebrity” garnered by offenders like Mumia Abu-Jamal. The law greatly curtails the free speech rights of Mumia Abu-Jamal and any journalist who would like to report what he or any other inmate says.
It is to terrorize and silence leftists and the Black community that the capitalist class carries out outrageous repression against Mumia Abu-Jamal, Philadelphia MOVE, and the Black Panther Party.
Our demands
Genuine Marxists call for Black liberation through socialist revolution. In addition, we call for labor and other types of action to demand of the racist capitalist government: Free all political prisoners of the U.S. war on the Black liberation movement including Mumia Abu-Jamal, Sundiata Acoli, and Romaine “Chip” Fitzegerald! End the $2 Million Bounty Against Assata Shakur and Drop The Conviction Against Her! Jail the Police, Judges, FBI, and Prosecutors Who Slaughtered and Framed Leaders of the Black Liberation Movement! Jail Killer Cops Who Continue to Murder With Impunity Today! End the U.S. Imperialist Economic Blockade of Cuba! Smash the racist and anti-worker capitalist state in proletarian socialist revolution!
-Steven Argue writes for the Revolutionary Tendency (Leninist/Trotkyist formation).
The Revolutionary Tendency
https://www.facebook.com/RevolutionaryTendency/
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