Atlanta, GA – The Atlanta Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression hosted a May Day panel May 4 focused on fighting back against political repression.

Over 40 people attended to hear speakers from the Atlanta Alliance, Black Alliance for Peace, AUC (Atlanta University Consortium) Students for Justice in Palestine, AUC Student Intercommunal Coordinating Committee, GSU (Georgia State University) Students for Justice in Palestine, and Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

With the subject of the panel being around political repression, the panelists tied together U.S. imperialism, national oppression and political repression. Speakers touched on the recent wave of pro-Palestine student organizing, political prisoner Kamau Sadiki, mass incarceration, and the Anti-war 23 international solidarity activists.

“When you’re dealing with imperialism and dispossession on a global basis you’re going to eventually come to why we’re here today: that local repression that stems from whenever you try to fight that,” said Damion Scott, a member of Black Alliance for Peace. “When you think about political repression we have to understand that it is constant. When you live in a nation such as this, citizens are always being repressed on a class and race basis,” he continued.

Damion also highlighted the case of political prisoner Kamau Sidiki and the fight to secure his freedom. Sidiki was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army and was wrongfully arrested in an effort to recapture Assata Shakur from Cuba. Police offered Sidiki a deal whereby if he assisted in the arrest of Shakur he would be given back his freedom. Sidiki refused the 2002 deal and remains in prison to this day.

“When talking about political repression, things like mass incarceration are incredibly relevant. In Georgia, we see some of the highest incarceration rates in the country and the harshest conditions in the jails when looking at Rice Street here in Atlanta,” said David Jones, a speaker from the Atlanta Alliance. “That’s actively taking political power from working-class Black folks. When folks have to sit in jails for months and sometimes years on end without a conviction, it keeps them out of the political struggle, it prevents them from building and uplifting their communities, and it’s actively standing in the way of the struggle for self-determination that folks are organizing towards across the South.”

Rice Street is a Fulton County jail which has come under national scrutiny in recent years due to the appalling conditions inmates are subjected to. The Atlanta Alliance is currently running a campaign to close the Rice Street Jail.

Running mass campaigns against political repression was also talked about by Alex Carson, a member of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization and one of the recently arrested Emory University protesters. Through an analysis of the Anti-war 23 and the defense campaign to maintain their freedom, Carson was able to draw out lessons that can be applied to other defense campaigns, including the campaign to drop the charges against the Emory protesters.

“The wave of violent repression being brought upon Americans who support Palestine will require a strategy of mass defense; one that pulls student groups, community organizations, and labor unions into a coordinated defense of the people’s movements,” said Caron. “The state is already attempting to paint the student movement and its supporters as ‘terrorists’. By being proud of our actions and politics we show the state that they can’t outlaw resistance no matter how hard they try.”

#AtlantaGA #GA #MayDay #Labor #OppressedNationalities #InJusticeSystem #PoliticalRepression #AAARPR #NAARPR #BlackPantherParty

Thomas “Blood” McCreary is a veteran of the Black liberation movement of the 1960s and 70s, having been a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), then the Black Panther Party (BPP), and then the Black Liberation Army. Today he continues to press for release of the former Panthers who are still in prison, many for 45 years. He also advocates for the dropping of the cases against the Panthers abroad, including Assata Shakur.

Frank Chapman is the Field Organizer of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

McCreary was in Chicago for an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and agreed to an interview with Fight Back! Fight Back!: Tell us about how you got involved in the movement, become a political prisoner, and lat-er started working for the freedom of other political prisoners.

Thomas “Blood” McCreary: I became involved in the liberation struggle in this country after returning from Vietnam in 1967. I started working with SNCC, and in 1968 I went to working with the Black Pan-ther Party, about a year and a half later. We did what the Panthers usually did: breakfast program and housing for kids, medical care, transportation for families to visit prisoners.

I became a member of the BPP in New York City. There was a lot of intense law enforcement surveil-lance of our activities. Unbeknownst to us, later it was proven that there was a counter intelligence program waged against the BPP. Through COINTELPRO, a lot of people ended up dead, in exile, framed and in prison. That was just another way that the government was trying to break the back of the liberation movement by us having to exert time, energy and resources to defend people on trumped up charges.

I became a political prisoner in 1972. I was captured in Saint Louis, Missouri. I was paroled after five years. When I came out, I got involved in trying to liberate other comrades who were doing long prison sentences.

Angela [Davis], her case had been a very highlighted case, and I knew she had been a member of the L.A. chapter of the Panthers. We were mainly concerned with getting Elmer Geronimo Pratt out of prison at that time. One of the encounters I had with Angela and Frank took place in Birmingham, Ala-bama. She agreed to get involved in Geronimo’s case. She agreed she would visit him, but as it turned out, Gi thought it would be best if she didn’t come in because San Quentin was threatening to send him further away, and his family was close to San Quentin.

Frank Chapman: In response to that meeting, McCreary convinced me to visit all the Panthers who were in prison. We visited with a number of Panthers, mainly in New York: Anthony Bottom, Dhoruba Bin Wahad, Nuh Washington, Bashir Hameed, and those visits convinced me, and to this day, that our organization needed to be involved in this great fight.

McCreary: Anthony Bottom is one of the longest-held political prisoners. [Bottom was convicted and sentenced to two life sentences based on circumstantial evidence.] He comes up for parole some time after the first of the year. His co-defendant, Herman Bell was released in April.

After Bottom, the longest-held prisoner is Sundiata Acoli, Assata Shakur’s co-defendant, arrested dur-ing the New Jersey turnpike incident in 1973. Assata had seven or eight other cases, and she was ac-quitted on all of her charges. It seems to me that if the other cases were false, and they were the rea-son she was on the run, we should call it even. Sundiata Acoli is 81 years old. At his last parole hearing, they told him to come back in 15 years. They want him to die in jail. Of course, Assata was liberated from prison and she lives in Havana.

Fight Back!: What is the campaign that needs to happen to free these remaining Panthers and all polit-ical prisoners?

McCreary: In New York State, how we won the release of Herman Bell is we got rid of the members of the parole board. Some of the members of that board had been appointed by Governor Rockefeller [who served from 1959 to 1973]. We’re trying to end the practice of the Police Benevolent Association giving impact statements at the parole hearings.

Also, we have to include support for the exiles, like Assata Shakur and Pete O’Neal.

In terms of support, we need letter writing. In letters to prisoners, ask them specifically, “What is it I can do?” In New York, we have an annual dinner with about 600 people, families of the political pris-oners and supporters. Last year we raised about $6000 to split among the political prisoners.

[McCreary recommended https://thejerichomovement.com as a resource for more information.]

Chapman: We should use our historical experience freeing other political prisoners, such as Reverend Ben Chavis, Joanne Little, and Johnie Imani Harris. One effort by Jazmine Salas, a new leader in the Al-liance in Chicago, is organizing a campaign to send holiday cards of solidarity to prisoners to let them know we will make it a priority in our work to struggle around their cases. We will also work with the Jericho movement for amnesty and freedom for these political prisoners.

Fight Back!: Thanks for sharing this history and informing our readers of the continued injustices facing the former Panthers and other political prisoners. We invite supporters of the imprisoned Panthers and others to our annual People’s Thanksgiving in Chicago, Saturday, December 1, where we’ll have letter-writing to these and other political prisoners and the wrongfully convicted. http://bit.ly/PeoplesThanksgiving18

#ChicagoIL #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #PoliticalPrisoners #BlackPantherParty #Antiracism #FrankChapman #ThomasBloodMcCreary

Chicago, IL – The memory of murdered Illinois Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton, Sr. was marked at a “Streetz Party,” August 30, at 2337 W. Chairman Fred Hampton Way (also known as Monroe Street), the site of his martyrdom. Chairman Fred Hampton, Sr. would have been 70 years old on August 30 of this year.

To mark his birthday, Chairman Fred Jr., Comrade Mother Akua Njeri, and the Black Panther Party Cubs organized the event, which opened with a libation, a minute of silence and a clenched fist salute for the young revolutionary leader.

Chairman Fred Hampton, Sr. was assassinated by state forces early in the morning of Dec. 4, 1969, along with Defense Captain Mark Clark.

This year's Streetz Party was special because it featured the grand opening of the Chairman Fred Hampton Memorial Museum in Maywood, Illinois, at the house where the chairman grew up. More information is available at savethehamptonhouse.org.

#ChicagoIL #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #BlackPantherParty #FredHampton #PoliticalRepression #ChicagoStreetzParty #StreetzParty

Chicago, IL – Every year on August 30, the Black Panther Party Cubs and Chairman Fred Hampton, Jr. (the son of martyred Illinois Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton, Sr.) throw the Chairman Fred Streetz Party, a commemoration of his father's 1948 birthday. Chairman Fred, Sr. was assassinated on Dec. 4, 1969 in a 4 a.m. Gestapo-style raid carried out by the Chicago Police Department, Illinois State's Attorney’s Office and the FBI.

As is the case every year, forces gather at Ground Zero, 2337 W. Chairman Fred Way (‘Monroe Street’), the site of his father's brutal state murder. People come from all over the world to remember Chairman Fred Hampton, Sr. and his message of revolutionary proletarian internationalism. Representatives from New York City's December 12th Movement were present, as well as a representative of the Revolutionary Movement of the Left (MIR) from Chile, along with members of New Era Chicago. Also in attendance was up-and-coming Chicago hip hop artist Vic Mensa.

Chairman Fred, Jr. opened the gathering, stating, “Certain dates stick out with us because of the significance of them. Even if you're not outside, when you're held captive out at the concentration camps, you stop what you're doing, out on the college campus, the street corners, whatever. You feel a sense of, it's inspiring, not only to the colonized community, but it sends a message to the system, saying that, regardless of how brutal the attacks are, regardless of how many times they place individuals in isolation for acknowledging certain forces, regardless of how many books they ban, regardless of how much they don't teach, we want it to be instinctive to acknowledge those who fought for us. Right on?” The crowd responded, “Right on!”

After opening statements from Chairman Fred, Jr., Comrade Mother Akua Njeri, and Black Panther Party veteran Billy “Che” Brooks, statements of solidarity were offered, and the assembled revolutionaries marched down to The Wall, the Chairman Fred, Sr. mural at Madison and California.

#ChicagoIL #AfricanAmerican #BlackPantherParty #FredHampton

Shakur helped run the free breakfast program for Black youth on top of her day to day community organizing duties with the party.

According a statement released by the National Alumni Association of the Black Panther Party, “Afeni had a deep and profound love for the community and a passion for the people that made her a dynamic organizer and dedicated activist. She embodied the spirit of what it meant to be a Black Panther, waking up at 5:00 a.m. to cook for the free breakfast program, coordinating the day to day office duties and personally being in the field.

“Afeni's organizing laid the seeds for a legacy we still bear witness to today. While working with tenant organizations, Afeni led numerous rent strikes, resulting in several tenant owned buildings, some of which still exist today. She was instrumental in organizing health care professionals and patients at Lincoln Hospital and Harlem Hospital to develop the first patient bill of rights, a forerunner of the patient bill of rights now posted in every hospital.”

Shakur, along with 20 others known as the Panther 21, were victims of racist political repression, part of the U.S. government’s ‘War on the Panthers.’ They were accused and faced trumped-up charges of conspiracy to bomb police stations. Shakur decided to represent herself in the case after reading, History Will Absolve Me, a speech by Cuban Revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. The Panther 21 were acquitted of all charges.

Shakur will be remembered as a true fighter in the Black liberation movement. More than being the mother of Tupac Shakur, she showed the revolutionary leadership of Black women in the Black Panther Party as well as the importance of organizing to win the peoples struggles.

#BaltimoreMD #Remembrances #PeoplesStruggles #BlackPantherParty #Antiracism #PoliticalRepression #Socialism #AfeniShakur #TupacShakur

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following article by Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire.

On the 40th anniversary of the shooting and capture of Assata Shakur, the FBI and the State of New Jersey has now placed the African American revolutionary on the most wanted terrorist list. This latest provocation against Shakur, 65, is directed not only against the veteran Black Panther Party (BPP) and Black Liberation Army (BLA) member, but represents an overall attack on the struggle of African Americans against racism and national oppression in the United States.

Assata Shakur has now been placed under a $US2 million bounty offered by the racist government of the U.S. She had previously been subjected to a sum of $US1 million instituted a decade-and-a-half ago.

Since 1984, Shakur has been living as a political refugee in the revolutionary Caribbean-Island nation of Cuba. She sought asylum there after living underground in the U.S. where she escaped from maximum security prison in New Jersey on November 2, 1979.

Shakur was arrested on May 2, 1973 after being stopped by the state police while riding in a car traveling on the New Jersey Turnpike. She was seriously wounded in the routine traffic stop where Zayd Malik Shakur was killed and Sundiata Acoli (formerly known as Clark Squire) was also captured. Acoli remains in prison until this day some forty years later.

During the traffic stop New Jersey state trooper Werner Forester was killed. Shakur was charged with numerous crimes during a series of trials between 1973-77. However, she was acquitted of all these charges and was finally falsely accused and convicted in the death of the law-enforcement officer.

At the time of the arrest of Assata Shakur and Sundiata Acoli and the murder of Zayd Malik Shakur, the Black Liberation Army had been vilified for years in the corporate media. Many law-enforcement agencies throughout the country were on high-alert for the capturing or killing of members and associates of this organization.

Assata was held for six-and-a-half years in maximum security prisons in New Jersey. She wrote in her political biography entitled “Assata: An Autobiography,” released in 1987 by Zed books, that she was detained in all-male correctional facilities and subjected to torture by prison guards and other law-enforcement officials.

In late 1979, a group of BLA and Weather Underground activists liberated her from prison. She later immigrated to Cuba where the revolutionary socialist government of President Fidel Castro granted her political asylum.

Background of Repression Against the Black Liberation Movement in the U.S.

The Black Panther Party grew out of the southern Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s in the state of Alabama. In Lowndes County, Alabama in the aftermath of the Selma to Montgomery March that preceded the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) moved into the area to begin organizing for independent political action.

Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture) was a leading organizer with SNCC at the time and played a significant role in the struggle in Lowndes County during 1965-66. SNCC partnered with the John Hulett of the Lowndes County Christian Movement for Human Rights which eventually led to the formation of the all-Black Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO).

The LCFO rejected attempts to integrate into the all-white Alabama Democratic Party which was segregationist and thoroughly racist in character. The LCFO took on the Black Panther logo and was consequently labeled the Black Panther Party. This idea spread throughout other regions of the state leading to the formation of the Alabama Black Panther Party by early 1966.

These efforts in Lowndes County gained national attention during 1966. Although the party registered thousands of African American voters, the November 1966 county elections were stolen by the racists.

Nonetheless, by this time the idea which time had come spread throughout other sections of the U.S. There was the establishment of other Black Panther organizations from New York State to California.

In October of 1966, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense which eventually became the most dominant within the entire movement by mid-1968. By 1967, there were at least three different organizations working under the banner of the Black Panther in California in both the southern and northern regions of the state.

Carmichael, who became Chairman of SNCC in May 1966, pushed for a more nationalist orientation for the organization and the Civil Rights Movement as a whole. The Black Power slogan, which became popular in the summer of 1966, was advanced by Willie Ricks, a SNCC field secretary, (now known as Mukasa Dada) and Stokely Carmichael during the “March Against Fear” in Mississippi in June of 1966.

In 1967, Carmichael was drafted as “Honorary Prime Minister” of the Newton-Seale organization. Carmichael and other SNCC leaders entered into an alliance with the BPP for Self-Defense in February 1968.

Later this alliance broke down but Carmichael and other SNCC organizers continued to work with the Panthers based in Oakland through mid-1969. As a result of both the FBI’s Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO-Black Nationalist) as well as ideological and political differences, there was a split within the Black Panther Party during the summer of 1969.

COINTELPRO and the Splits Within the Black Liberation Movement

In 1967, the FBI stepped up its efforts to undermine and neutralize the Black Liberation Movement in the U.S. This took placed amid burgeoning urban rebellions which had struck over 200 cities by the end of 1967.

By October 1968, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had labeled the Black Panther Party based in Oakland as the most serious threat to the internal security of the U.S. Hundreds of Party members and supporters were indicted on spurious charges and several organizers were killed by the police and their collaborators.

Leading members of the Party were imprisoned and driven into exile during 1968-69. Newton was wounded and convicted in the murder of an Oakland police officer in 1968. Eldridge Cleaver and Kathleen Cleaver went into exile in Cuba and later Algeria in 1968-69.

In 1969, Bobby Seale was arrested and charged with a conspiracy in the murder of fellow Panther Alex Rackley who was killed in New Haven, Connecticut. During that same year, Seale was bound and gagged on the orders of Judge Julius Hoffmann in Chicago during the conspiracy trial for allegedly attempting to disrupt the Democratic Convention of 1968.

With the Party being a relatively young organization, these actions by the federal government had a devastating impact. By late 1970 after the release of Newton on appeal, tensions grew between the factions within the organization headed by Cleaver, then still living in Algeria, and many of the Panthers on the east coast on the one hand and Newton and Chief-of-Staff David Hilliard along with their adherents based in northern California on the other.

In February 1971, an open split erupted with Cleaver calling for the expulsion of Newton and Hilliard and Newton condemning Cleaver for his public criticism of Party policy. Cleaver and his cohorts soon called for the intensification of the armed struggle inside the U.S.

With the ideological and political struggles coming to the fore inside the Party, various members were forced underground to avoid imprisonment and assassination. These cadres began to call themselves the International Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army.

The BLA was already a part of the Party prior to the split. Rule number six of the Black Panther Party 26 rules, said that no Party member could belong to any other armed force but the Black Liberation Army.

Political fracturing escalated in early 1971 with the acquittal of the New York 21, a group of leading Panthers in New York City who were falsely charged with attempts to carry out bombings in the city. A letter signed by some members of the New York 21 openly criticized the west coast leadership under Newton, prompting their expulsion.

Assata Shakur in her autobiography described this period in detail. Many Party members who had been purged were deliberately sent into the BLA, the underground.

Shakur wrote from the Middlesex County Workhouse on July 6, 1973 that “There is and always will be, until every Black man, woman and child is free, a Black Liberation Army. The main function of the Black Liberation Army at this time is to create good examples to struggle for Black freedom and to prepare for the future. We must defend ourselves and let no one disrespect us. We must gain our liberation by any means necessary.” (Break the Chains pamphlet)

She continues in this essay noting that “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains!”

The prevailing governmental, corporate and reactionary forces were in mortal conflict with the Black Liberation Movement of the period. The heightened repression against the Movement came amid the major re-structuring of the U.S. and world economy.

Inside the African communities of the U.S. large-scale capital flight, police repression and the proliferation of drugs served to level whole areas which weakened the ability of the struggle to rejuvenate on a revolutionary basis. The split within the Black Panther Party between 1969-71 was replicated in other revolutionary organizations such as the Republic of New Africa, formed in Detroit in 1968 and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, also established in Detroit in 1969.

These political developments grew out of the material conditions in existence at the time. The African American struggle between 1975 and the second decade of the 21st century appeared to have shifted into the electoral arena.

However, the greater exposure of domestic neo-colonial constraints is causing a rethinking among the masses in regard to the overall strategic and tactical imperatives of the struggle. The ascendancy of President Barack Obama and the Congressional Black Caucus has fully laid bare the futility of Democratic Party politics and its utility for African American liberation.

The Significance of the Continuing Persecution of Assata Shakur

With the abysmal failure of the electoral political strategy dominated by the Democratic Party, the ruling class in the U.S. knows that sooner or later the African American masses in alliance with other oppressed nations and exploited workers will move in the direction of revolutionary politics. The decline in the world capitalist system has illustrated to billions around the world that there is no future in the current economic dispensation.

Even inside the U.S. it has been estimated that nearly half of the people are now living either in poverty or close to it. The spokespersons and political agents of the ruling class through their own pronouncements make no pretense in regard to addressing the growing impoverishment of the workers and oppressed.

During the 1960s there was deceptive rhetoric related to the so-called “War on Poverty” and providing greater opportunities for the oppressed nations and marginalized workers to receive a larger share of the wealth owned by the top echelons of society. Today this rhetoric has totally disappeared from the lexicon of the corporate media and the political functionaries of both the Republican and Democratic parties.

Consequently, revolutionary politics must be criminalized by the ruling class, the corporate media and the repressive apparatus of the state. Yet large segments of the African American, Latino/as, Arab-Middle Eastern and Muslim sections of the U.S. and world populations have already been criminalized.

Therefore, the recent attacks on Assata Shakur will ring hollow in the minds of the oppressed and conscious workers inside the imperialist-dominated system. This will be the case because there is no future in the current oppressive structures and revolution, or fundamental change and transformation, is the only solution to the problems of poverty, economic exploitation, state repression, environmental degradation and wars of aggression.

The most just response of the ruling class would be to grant a general amnesty to all political prisoners inside the U.S. and those held by the imperialists throughout the world. People living in exile like Assata Shakur should be granted a pardon and allowed to walk free among the masses of the U.S. who are yearning for such revolutionary leadership and consciousness.

Even if an amnesty is not granted to political prisoners by the Obama administration or successive White House occupiers, the struggle against capitalism and imperialism will continue to accelerate. The people have no other choice other than reject the system that is creating the conditions for their own destruction.

#UnitedStates #OppressedNationalities #Racism #BlackPantherParty #COINTELPRO #InjusticeSystem #Cuba #FBIRepression #AssataShakur

Elaine Brown, a former Black Panther Party leader, decided to run for mayor of Brunswick after attending an anti-globalization protest on nearby Sea Island, where the G-8 ministers met to divide up the world economy. The contrast between Sea Island and Brunswick is stark: rich whites with political power versus working poor Blacks given little choice in local elections. The most recent mayor of this majority Black town was a Lieutenant Colonel of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Brown ran on an agenda of Black political empowerment, including a plan to create a local port authority that would benefit the majority of the people in the area. The current port is run by the State of Georgia and benefits the wealthy and powerful, with little benefit to Brunswick. Elaine Brown’s candidacy represented the democratic desires of the majority of the 16,000 people in Brunswick. It exposes the lie about the U.S. government 'spreading democracy overseas in Iraq,' while showing how little democracy there is down home in the South.

Brown is now backing African American mayoral candidate Otis Herrington. She states, “It is very important that an agenda that serves the needs of all the people be preserved and advanced. This is why I'm supporting Otis Herrington. I believe he provides the only other opportunity to marginalized voters to save our communities from a takeover by rich and powerful outside forces.”

#BrunswickGA #News #AfricanAmerican #BlackPantherParty #GreenParty #GlynnCountyBoardOfElections

A Brown for Mayor press release said: “In Federal Court today, Judge Anthony Alaimo ordered the Glynn County Board of Elections to count the write-in votes for mayoral candidate Elaine Brown.”

Brown had been disqualified as a candidate by the Board of Elections last month and removed from the ballot.  The Glynn County Superior Court had upheld the Board’s decision.

However, in the United States District Court today, Judge Alaimo ruled that write-in votes for Elaine Brown had to be counted pending a trial on the merits.

While this ruling does not address the advance voting period, where more than 300 voters were told their votes for Brown would not count, she will contest the outcome of the election.

#BrunswickGA #News #AfricanAmerican #BlackPantherParty #GlynnCountyBoardOfElections

Brown’s post-election press release stated: “Even though the racist, Republican-backed opposition to Elaine Brown’s campaign for mayor of Brunswick, Georgia, succeeded in removing her name from the Nov. 8 ballot – and taking away her right to vote! – a federal court judge, at the eleventh hour, on Nov. 7, ruled the local Board of Elections had to count her votes! In other words, Elaine had only hours to mount another campaign to convince blacks their votes for her would now be counted.”

“By then, of course, the majority-black population of Brunswick, slated to vote for Elaine and make her the City’s first black mayor, had already sat out the five-day advance voting period and really didn’t know or believe they could vote for Elaine on Election Day. Her name was still not on the ballot. So, black voter turnout was low, and the Republican-backed candidate was declared the winner,” the statement continued.

Brown plans a challenge in Federal Court with the aim of a new election.

#BrunswickGA #News #AfricanAmerican #BlackPantherParty #GreenParty

In the wake of the controversy over the racist remarks by radio personality Don Imus, Fight Back! did the following interviews with grassroots leaders of the Black community in Newark, New Jersey.

The remarks made by Imus are nothing unusual – they are typical of what’s being said on talk radio and in media across the country. It is racism with an agenda of justifying the systematic discrimination, inequality and national oppression that is imposed on the African American people.

Nell Sanders, 26, music teacher at Trenton Community Charter School, Rutgers and Mason Gross School of Fine Arts graduate

Fight Back!: What is the most important thing?

Sanders: Everybody realizes it’s bigger than him. He just brought up a bigger issue. We’ve been normalizing racism and sexism in our everyday lives. He’s a stepping-stone for us to eliminate all this stuff on radio and TV.

The American people are so complacent about everything. Katrina, Iraq, if it doesn’t have a direct effect on you and your little community they don’t give a ——. Right now black people and women have a link. We can go on and connect to what’s happening in Iraq and what’s happening to Muslims and really do some things.

The problem with hip-hop is it’s the young white people who are keeping these artists in business. The black young people don’t have the money. The white kids aren’t looking at them as role models but young kids in the black community do. Young women are acting like these videos on TV. And they’re young.

I’m just glad he said it so we can wake up. Reporters on TV are saying, “It’s the black community,” but it’s not. BET does not represent the black community. Viacom owns BET. You think it’s a coincidence? It’s not. The media is funding the most negative things we produce. They’re being funded and put on TV. I have a friend who’s a jazz cellist but you’ll never see anything on TV about her. These rappers are no better than the corporations. It’s all about money.

Fight Back!: What should we do now?

Sanders: Organize in communities on a small scale to create dialogue. Why is it not OK for a white man to call you a ho, but for a rap artist it’s OK? Get them to look at it and see it’s not OK. We have to want to give the people a voice so we can empower them. Let’s write to BET and get this stuff off. Let the people brainstorm together and find their voice. It doesn’t have to be a big thing.

BET is all over the world; it’s all people know about us, this negative image. It’s not an accident. Let people come up with their own voice. Imus was our wakeup shake but we have to act fast before people go back to sleep.

Bashir Akinyele, Chief of Staff, Newark Chapter, New Black Panther Party

Fight Back!: What does this say about U.S. culture?

Akinyele: [Imus’s remarks are] part of U.S. culture – denigrating women, particularly black women, because they are the most vulnerable. It’s typical. We’ve got to put Imus in perspective as part of the corporate culture-entertainment industry…the justification of the n-word, they beat up on groups that have no power to fight back. You see rap music, the radio stations. It goes deeper than Imus, we should attack the whole industry.

Fight Back!: Where does the mass struggle have to go?

Akinyele: We need to attack the whole entertainment industry. But I don’t think it’s going to happen.

Fight Back!: Why not?

Akinyele: We haven’t been able to come together. Petty ideological differences keep us from sitting down for dialogue. We need to do that. Once we have that we can have mass energy coming together to attack these issues. People need to dialogue with the New Black Panther Party. Women’s groups, the revolutionary communist parties, we need to sit down and dialogue.

Debbie Strong, Vice-Chairperson, People's Organization for Progress

Stong: He felt so comfortable. It represents a system of racism that’s ingrained so well that certain people feel they can say whatever they want and only apologize. But the damage has been done. There’s no sense of responsibility.

He was talking about all African-American women. Period. Not just those particular ones. He didn’t even know them. In the music, on the airwaves, on TV there is a reverse sense of morality. People see that happening in politics. Politicians lie, they steal, they do whatever they want to do and all they have to do is apologize.

Fight Back!: What do you mean by a reverse sense of morality?

Stong: I came up in the 60s. Back then certain things could not be said; people had to control their behavior. You had to be responsible for what you said. You couldn’t slander people. Something would happen to you. Freedom of speech has to come with responsibility. But today people suck it up like sponges because it’s on radio’ it’s on TV. Little kids copycat and adults do the same. Once things were regulated, now they’re out of control. The complacency of the people lets this happen. People have been misinformed. People don’t pay attention.

Fight Back!: What do people have to do?

Stong: Imus was fired because the sponsors wanted him out. It was a reflection on them, such an uproar was made.

Fight Back!: Isn’t that a reflection of the power of the people?

Stong: Yeah, the people who were leading this were not going to give up. The public would have stayed on it until the sponsors either lost a lot of money or gave in. But what about the other radio jocks? They’re still making their ‘little racial jokes.’

Fight Back!: What do the people have to do to make a lasting difference?

Stong: I’m not going to accept that the things Black people say is behind the problem. White people in general have to be conscious of how the things they say affect people who are different. I don’t think they’re even conscious of it. That has to stop. When that change happens maybe some real changes can happen. The country has an obsession with race, some kind of addiction. The country has to go on rehab.

The masses of the people have to be the ultimate decision-makers. Each individual has to decide their relationship to other human beings. The government is not competent.

People with money are running the government. They’re not always the right ones because they’ve never had to be responsible.

Fight Back!: Given the changes taking place all over the world can U.S. society continue to exist as it does much longer?

Stong: It can’t go on this way. It’s only going to get worse. People become part of the system because they’ve been guided to think a certain way, act a certain way. It’s all based on capitalism and greed.

What’s going on in the school system is not education. You have to be able to pass a test, it’s not about being able to think and act for yourself. People have to fit into the picture or else. There’s no room for being creative.

When things get to the point where it’s the haves versus the have-nots we will see something basic. There’s always been the in-betweens. When it gets to the point where there are no in-betweens, that’s when change will happen. Maybe some day we will thank Imus for waking up the people. Turn it into something positive. That’s what we have to do.

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March participant Anh Pham, a member of the University of Minnesota's Progressive Student Organization said, “It's great to see that people are recognizing that Mumia's case ties in with an overall system of injustice. There are people here talking about Mumia's case and police brutality in all our communities, different national liberation movements, and the US bombing of Yugoslavia. The system is showing cracks and the people are speaking out.”

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