When Whistleblower Edward Snowden chose to defect from his professional allegiance to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2013 U.S. rulers went into crisis mode. Snowden fled to Russia but not before causing panic by leaking classified information about National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance programs.
We now know how advancements in computer technology, especially the Internet and its many social media outlets, are being used to gather intelligence on U.S. citizens and serve as a tool to stifle the creation of a new people’s movement against oppression.
For those familiar with the consequences of Operation: CONTELPRO, during the 1950’s, 60’s & 70’s, should never become so naive to believe that these government projects ever ended. On the contrary, government surveillance continues to this day with greater ferocity and sophistication, especially now with political extremists in government itching to bring about an openly fascist dictatorship.
Edward Snowden
We have learned a lot about covert operations during the 1950s-70s and how it was used to diminish the strengths of the Black liberation, Puerto Rican independence, Chicano, Indigenous, labor, Socialist, and anti-war movements, especially at the height of mass opposition to the war in Vietnam. What we tend to overlook is that the government has also gained many lessons from those experiences which it intends to use against a potential rise of a new movement.
Operation COINTELPRO employed the most shocking tactics imaginable. It used subtle and emotionally convincing methods to carry out its deceit. Cunning techniques were accompanied by open repressive force aimed to have a devastating psychological impact on the movement opposed to the status quo.
COINTELPRO was created in the early 1950’s to spy and disrupt the Socialist and Civil Rights movements, at a time when the notorious Senator Joseph McCarthylaunched his anti-Communist, racist and anti-labor political campaign. COINTELPRO utilized information obtained from wiretaps, intercepting postal mail and informants. Today much of that has become obsolete thanks to the invention of non-other than the Internet, specifically social media.
The upgraded methods of surveilling and manipulating conflict by the police state involves specialized units that monitor social media for intelligence gathering and developing plans of actions aimed to cause disruptions and havoc within targeted politically progressive circles.
The notorious J. Edgar Hoover
The notorious J. Edgar Hoover would have been delighted if Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Tik Tok existed during his time as FBI Director. It is certain that Hoover’s use of today’s social media technology would have been for speeding up the persecution of theBlack Panther Party – targeting its most outspoken members, like those who were murdered by police or imprisoned for life.
The New York Police Department (NYPD), the Chicago Police Department (CPD) in coordination with the FBI, used the same divide & conquer tactics against the Black PantherParty’s fraternal ally, the Young Lords.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X were both targets of COINTELPRO.
Puerto Rican Nationalist leader Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos.
What did COINTELPRO rely on?
Gossipers, individuals who engage in petty discourse are the greatest resource the government relies on for building cases to repress social movements or prevent one from rising up.
Professional covert operatives from the FBI, CIA, and police are trained to analyze and utilize gossip and personal conflicts as one of their primary techniques, especially to manipulate the sentiments of the emotionally weak, narrow-minded, and self-serving individuals. What this methodology depends on is the absence ofcriticalthinking in a society that automatically accepts cancel culture.
Moreover, to achieve this part of spying and suppression government agencies maintain files containing psychological profiles of individuals in order to assess who they can best manipulate and steer for precise moments when they are used to incite or aggravate disputes.
These are usually targeted individuals known to be gossipers and unstable elements in the habit of engaging in whisper campaigns. In addition, they are also known for their indifference if the progressive movement achieves its political goals, or not. Such is a profound trait of hypocrisy while professing to be “progressives, leftists”, or “revolutionaries.”
The FBI and police placed primary focus on destroying the Black Panther Party.
The state uses these individuals to accomplish its desired outcome of destroying reputations to paralyze progressive entities by instigating divisions. The government’s ultimate strategy is to cause demoralization, diminish people’s energies and discredit the politics of a movement.
That is why we must always be vigilant and know the identities of rumor mongers, gossipers, and promoters of petti discourse within our midst. In the end, they serve as the greatest assets to the police state, as if they are paid operatives themselves.
A close examination of what Edward Snowden revealed should easily tell us that although COINTELPRO succeeded destroying a movement in the past the government’s program against progressives continues to exist. Whatever name covert operations have today the goal is still the same – to prevent a new revolutionary movement rising up.
We should never allow ourselves to be played and lured again into that trap. We would be guilty of complicity in hindering the struggle for human emancipation.
The Young Lords were also targeted by Operation: COINTELPRO’s divide & conquer tactics.
History tells us that we should never underestimate the police state. They will utilize all situations and any issue to steer our focus away from challenges before us. A severe economic crisis is looming, accompanied by an intensity of racism, repression and the possibility of war. The state will do anything to stifle our efforts to counter such possible scenarios.
For those who hold a contrary view should ask themselves: Why is white supremacy blatantly showing its ugly face at an increased pace with civil liberties eroding? Events today serve as warning signs to alert us of an approaching crisis in this country, which we must all confront.
Regardless our platforms, socialist, anarchist, nationalist, feminist, LGBTQ, and so on, we must not have complicity in what the rulers are attempting. The police state does not need our help to divide us further.
There is always a politically mature way of reaching resolution to any problem. We must always have the victory of the liberation struggle in mind.
Social media should be used as a tool for educating and organizing ourselves against the common enemy. If our oppressors use the Internet to keep us disoriented and preserve their power, we must strive to become better users of that technology to combat the system perpetuating oppression.
The police state is not invincible. Their strength relies on poisonous petti discourse. The state’s covert activities against progressives can be stifled and stopped. However, we must adapt a standard of using critical analysis of solidarity and respect, when issues or crisis arise among us. It is imperative to our growth that we not employ the reactionary use of cancel culture.
Let’s make a fundamental part of countering the fascist menace guarding against its hidden and not-so-hidden operations of divide and conquer within our midst!
As a tribute to the African Blood Brotherhood I am re-posting this article on my blog. The history of the ABB and the role of African Americans in the socialist movement should be of the utmost importance for all to research. -Carlito Rovira
The African Blood Brotherhood and the Proletarianization of Blacks in Amerika
By Comrade Tom Big Warrior (2010)
Reprinted from Right On! #1
The African Blood Brotherhood for African Liberation and Redemption (ABB) was the first Marxist, Revolutionary Black Nationalist organization in Amerika. Founded in 1917, it grew rapidly during the wave of white racist riots known as the “Red Summer of 1919,“ the ABB was a secret, armed, community self-defense-oriented society headquartered in Harlem.
Many of the “Blood Brothers” were combat vets who had fought in France in World War I. Many were workers, conscious of their proletarian class exploitation and oppression in capitalist society, as well as their caste oppression as “Negroes,” and national oppression as members of a nation of a new type defined by color and refined by slavery, terror and segregation.
The Nation of New Afrikans in Amerika, which was then a peasant nation concentrated in the cotton-producing “Black-Belt South,” was also evolving into a proletarian nation in the industrial centers and defined urban ghettos. The white riots were pogroms directed at these ghettos, which were expanding with the “Great Migration” from the South to the North and the West that had been encouraged by the need for industrial workers during the World War. Many of the white rioters were also returned war vets. There was also a big resurgence of the KKK at this time that peaked in the mid-1920s.
The urban Black proletarian had to be tough to survive. They were consigned to the dirtiest, most menial and demeaning jobs, and there was brutal competition for these jobs. The ghettos were overcrowded and transient, and Black on Black violence was rampant. Rubes from the country were sheep to slaughter for the lumpen criminals who preyed on them, and they kept coming as mechanization was displacing share-cropping in the South. Black workers quickly learned that whites who were not racist against them were probably class-conscious and Socialist. Militant unions like the IWW brought together workers of all ethnic backgrounds. But the core of leadership of the ABB was part of another migration from the Caribbean to the U.S., and particularly to Harlem.
The African Blood Brotherhood was the brain-child of Cyril Briggs, a light-skinned native of the Caribbean island of Nevis, where he was born in 1887. He migrated to New York on July 4th, 1905 and joined a growing community of West Indian Blacks in the city. That was the year of the first attempted revolution in Russia in which the Leninist Bolsheviks played a conspicuous role. The successful October Revolution of 1917 sent a shock wave around the world that was felt by oppressed people everywhere.
CYRIL BRIGGS – Founder and leader of the African Blood Brotherhood.
Lenin particularly had a lot to say to the colored peoples of the colonial and semi-colonial countries and directly to the Black people in Amerika. Eventually, the ABB was absorbed into the underground communist Workers Party of America (WPA) which evolved into the CPUSA. The communist party founded by the Russian Federation declared its stance on the Negro Question in 1920: “The Communist Party will carry on agitation among Negro workers to unite them with all class conscious workers.”
Leninism distinguished itself from earlier Marxism by its conscious commitment to the national liberation struggles of the colonial and subject peoples which Lenin recognized to be closely linked to the World Proletarian Socialist Revolution. The class conscious ABB veterans and West Indians shared an understanding of a wider world of exploitation and oppression than the “Jim Crow” South and the ghetto street corner, the world of global capitalist-imperialist empire and world proletarian socialist revolution – a world illuminated by Leninism.
The ABB was committed to the liberation of Afrika and the whole of the Afrikan Diaspora from white world supremacy and capitalist-imperialism and saw the necessity of overthrowing this system to end the racist oppression of Black people and other people of color. As the immediacy of defending the oppressed Black communities from the violence of vigilante white mobs subsided, the ABB comrades began to see more and more the need to win white comrades to fight against white racism in the overall workers movement and all strata of society and prepare the U.S. for proletarian socialist revolution.
Former ABB members formed the core of the CPUSA’s Black cadre, and they were rigorous in opposing white racism in the Party and the unions and mass organizations influenced by the Communist Party. In the 1920s & 30s, the Communist Party initiated work in the South, including forming sharecropper unions uniting both Black and poor whites and unions among southern textile workers.
This was the CP’s most revolutionary period – though it tended towards “left economism” and “dual unionism” — and a period when many Blacks were first exposed to Communist ideology and organization. The “Harlem Renaissance” saw a flowering of Black consciousness and culture, and most of the artists and intellectuals involved were strongly influenced by Marxism-Leninism and leftist ideas.
The World War had shaken things up and raised Black expectations. Most expected progressive changes after the war and were disappointed and frustrated by the resurgence of KKK activity and overall reactionary backlash that swept white Amerika. Large numbers turned to the new Communist Party looking for direction.
LONG LIVE THE MEMORY OF THE
AFRICAN BLOOD BROTHERHOOD!
Statue in honor of the African Blood Brotherhood, at the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park in Tulsa, Oklahoma
In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, news headlines focused on a group of Puerto Rican youth in New York City who used daring tactics and unusual forms of protest against racist oppression. These defiant and militant youths called themselves the Young Lords.
Their examples, and the mass movement from which they arose, continue to inspire young people, especially today as we see greater proof that the only solution to oppression is organization and struggle.
The Young Lords developed in Chicago in the late 1950s. Its founder and leader was the late Jose “Cha-Cha” Jimenez, April 8, 1948-January 10, 2025.
The Young Lords were unemployed students and working-class youth, who were among many street-youth organizations targeted by police and demonized as “gangs” by the capitalist-owned mass media.
These youths came from families compelled to leave Puerto Rico between the 1940s and 1960s as a result of economic hardships caused by U.S. colonialism. They continued to experience oppression but under new social circumstances, as victims of extreme exploitation in factories, greedy slumlords, police brutality and by the viciousness of racist white gangs.
My portrait of Young Lords founder Jose Cha-Cha Jimenez. 24′ x 30″, acrylic paint on canvas.
The Puerto Rican migration occurred during the same years the Civil Rights movement arose. The newly arrived Puerto Rican immigrants were impacted by African Americans who also experienced the vile nature of racism in this country since chattel slavery. In many instances, Puerto Ricans identified with the demands of the Black Power movement.
In 1966, the Black Panther Party was formed. Panther leader Fred Hampton of Chicago sought to politicize the street organizations, particularly the Puerto Rican youths. The BPP’s efforts were successful when, in 1968, under the leadership of Jose Cha-Cha Jimenez, the Young Lords became a revolutionary political entity; they then became part of a fraternal alliance known as the Rainbow Coalition (unrelated to Jessie Jackson’s later Rainbow/PUSH Coalition). The Rainbow Coalition also included the Brown Berets, I Wor Kuen, Young Patriots and the Black Panthers.
From L to R: Fred Hampton, Pablo Yoruba Guzman, Jose Cha Cha Jimenez, and name unknown.
Young Lords in New York
On July 26, 1969, the Young Lords made their debut in New York City at the 10th anniversary celebration of the Cuban Revolutionheld at Tompkins Square Park in Loisaida (Lower East Side). The Young Lords admired and supported the Cuban Revolution, led by Fidel Castro Ruz, Camilo Cienfuego, Celia Sanchez, Vilma Espin, Ernesto Che Guevara, and Raul Castro.
For many years, Black and Latino people complained about the New York Sanitation Department’s double standards in trash pick-up. White affluent areas were serviced properly, while Black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods were left in unhealthy conditions.
In the summer of 1969, the Young Lords in New York began sweeping the streets and amassing large piles of garbage that were a nuisance to the community of East Harlem. Many people wondered about what the young, seemingly “good Samaritans” were up to. But the mystery did not last long.
Banner reads: “Young Lords Party serves & protects its people.”
In August 1969, the Young Lords used the garbage they had collected as the means to execute a political offensive with military tactics. Tons of trash were dumped and set ablaze across the main arteries of Manhattan to disrupt traffic, including on the affluent 5th Avenue. The Lords demanded an end to New York City’s racist municipal policies on sanitation.
In neighborhoods where the “garbage offensive” was launched, the Lords galvanized community support; many joined the organization. Two months later the Lords opened an office on Madison Avenue and 111th Street, in the East Harlem, “El Barrio” community.
The mass media’s attacks on the Lords only worked in their favor. Within months, YLP chapters appeared in Philadelphia, Bridgeport, Jersey City, Boston and Milwaukee—cities with concentrations of Puerto Ricans. While mainly composed of Puerto Ricans, the organization also allowed members of other oppressed nationalities to join the Young Lords, specifically African Americans.
The Young Lords Party had a military-type structure with a process for recruitment and rules of discipline that were strictly enforced. The YLP believed that in order to defeat a politically and militarily sophisticated foe oppressed people had to prepare for their liberation by developing greater sophistication.
The YLP functioned with military-type discipline.
In the years following the Garbage Offensive, the Young Lords engaged in numerous campaigns that involved bold actions that drew widespread attention. One example was the physical takeover of the First Spanish Methodist Church on 111th Street and Lexington Avenue, which the Lords named The People’s Church.
The Lords repeatedly pleaded with parishioners for space in order to feed hungry children, but to no avail. This church was closed throughout the week and only opened for a few hours for worshiping by a congregation that mostly lived out of town.
Backed by community sentiment, the Young Lords entered the church during a Sunday mass and expelled the congregation. Using the church as a base, the Young Lords operated a free childcare service, breakfast program and legal clinic. Medical services were also provided.
Disease and poor healthcare have long been an issue in the Puerto Rican community. Other actions taken by the YLP included the seizure of an unused tuberculosis testing truck, equipped with X-ray technology. After the truck was seized, the city was compelled to provide technicians to run the machine. The truck was then taken to East Harlem, where many people were tested for the lung ailment prevalent in Black and Brown communities.
The Lords demanded that Lincoln Hospital, which served the people of the South Bronx, expand its services. Because this facility originated in the mid-1800s, when it also treated enslaved Black people who escaped the Southern states, its facilities were outdated and did not meet current needs. An infestation of rats and roaches in the hospital further exacerbated the deplorable conditions.
In the early morning hours of July 14, 1970, about 120 members of the Young Lords boldly seized control of Lincoln Hospital. For 12 hours, the Young Lords and progressive medical professionals in the Health Revolutionary Unity Movement provided free medical services to the community. Today’s modern Lincoln Hospital—with its newer facilities—is the result of a community struggle of which the Young Lords were in the leadership.
Young Lords held many demonstrations leading up to the takeover of Lincoln Hospital.
The Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Organization
In the summer of 1972, the Young Lords Party held its First Party Congress (and its last) in New York City. The event highlighted a new energy and direction for the organization. At this time, the membership voted to change the name from Young Lords Party to Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Organization (PRRWO). Moreover, the changes solidified Marxism-Leninism as the entity’s ideological and political premise.
However one may view this stage in the organization’s development, many things proved to be certain years later — the Young Lords/PRRWO was undergoing a process of deterioration unseen by its members. The attempts made to rejuvenate its existence with a new line of march at the 1972 Congress came a bit too late. Making an erroneous decision to establish chapters in Puerto Rico, losing its base of mass support in the community, aggravated by internal hostilities instigated by COINTELPRO activities, eventually sealed the death of the once powerful organization.
El Frente Unido – The United Front
One of the least talked about areas of work of the Young Lords/PRRWO was the collaborative relationship it had with other organizations in the Puerto Rican diaspora; These organizations were the Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP), El Comite-MINP, Resistencia Puertorriqueña, and the Puerto Rican Students Union.
A great amount of the collaborative work these groups did jointly was centered around burning issues in Puerto Rico, such as the struggle to end the U.S. military’s practice bombings on the island of Culebra. Other issues compelling the joint work was the demand for the release of Puerto Rican political prisoners, such as Carlos Feliciano, Edwardo “Pancho” Cruz and the 5 Puerto Rican Nationalists.
Other actions El Frente Unido committed work towards were protest demonstrations against injustices inflicted against Puerto Ricans and opposing the U.S. War in Vietnam. Grave mistakes were indeed made of a sectarian nature that eventually made the coalition vulnerable to the divide & conquer tactics by Operation COINTELPRO. But nevertheless, the attempts made by El Frente Unido provided the Puerto Rican struggle with a wealth of experience to benefit the long-range fight for national liberation.
The Second People’s Church Takeover
In late 1970, YLP member Julio Roldan, who had been arrested at a demonstration in the Bronx and was pending arraignment, was found hung to death in his cell at the “Tombs” prison facility in lower Manhattan. During this period, many prisoners were found mysteriously dead in their cells, but prison officials always labeled them “suicides.”
The Young Lords responded to Roldan’s death with militancy, accusing the state of murder. Following a procession with Roldan’s coffin through El Barrio, the YLP returned to the People’s Church, which they had seized a year earlier—but this time, they came armed with shotguns and automatic weapons. They demanded an investigation into Roldan’s death.
Deeply entrenched community support for the Young Lords prevented a gun battle, as government officials knew there would be an enormous political fallout if they initiated a police onslaught. The Young Lords held the church for three months.
Young Lords responded to the death of Julio Roldan with arms.
There are many examples of heroism among these young revolutionaries—not only in New York or Chicago, but also in chapters formed in other cities where the Puerto Rican people rose up in struggle.
From YLO to YLP
Consequently, internal differences that festered for a while between the New York and Chicago leaderships, ended in an unfortunate organizational split by the middle of 1970. The lack of political experience and maturity necessary to cope with those dynamics, added to factors that resulted in a separation.
It was my personal observation as a member of the Young Lords during this critical time that leads me to conclude today that the differences between the Chicago and New York did not merit a breakaway. The decision to split was initiated exclusively by the New York Central Committee and had absolutely no input from rank & file members. What the lack of process reveals are questionable motives held by certain YLP leaders.
The differences between the Young Lords in Chicago and New York were not critical enough to call for a split. With a little effort the dispute could have been resolved without hurrying up to dissolve adherence to the organizational structure under Jose “Cha-Cha” Jimenez’s leadership. What comes to mind when recalling these events are habitual patterns that led to the complete dismissal of democracy in the organization, as well as the divide and conquer tactics of COINTELPRO.
Similarly, the total absence of a democratic process also occurred when a decision was made unilaterally by the leadership to establish chapters in Puerto Rico. Once that decision was made, offices were established in Aguadilla and El Caño. As a result, YLP resources were then used to maintain the two Puerto Rico chapters. Thus put a strain on the organization which aggravated other problems that caused its deterioration.
Ideology of the Young Lords Party
The New York Young Lords moved on and drew up what became known as theYLP 13-Point Program. This document outlined the organization’s political objectives. It included independence for Puerto Rico, as well as liberation for all Latinos and other oppressed people, like African Americans and Palestinians. The Young Lords upheld the struggle against women’s oppression and eventually voiced support for the rights of LGBTQ people.
These young revolutionaries believed that the power of the people would eventually overwhelm the power of the oppressors. In that spirit, the YLP believed in the right to armed self-defense. This became evident in actions they took while patrolling the streets in areas they organized. Whenever the Young Lords witnessed the police arresting community residents, they would intervene to confront the racist cops and often liberated the prisoners.
The Young Lords Aspired to Socialist Ideas
Shamefully, because that movement no longer exist, diluted, non-revolutionary and opportunistic interpretations of that history persist today, by former members who gradually drifted to the treacherous politics of the Democratic Party. In addition, some have also expressed their affinities for the police state.
Let’s set the record straight, the YLP openly denounced the capitalist system and called for a socialist society. They increasingly gravitated towards the ideals of Marxism, by conducting mandatory study of revolutionary-Marxist literature, such as Mao Zedong’s “Red Book,” The Communist Manifesto by Marx & Engels, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism by Vladimir Lenin, Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon, and so on.
Historical revisionism currently depicts the Young Lords and other frontline groups of the 1960’s-70’s as harmless to the capitalist system and irrelevant to the struggle for socialism today. In other words, despite historical versions from authors that seek approval by publishing houses and other parts of the mainstream the Young Lords were fundamentally revolutionaries that sought to smash the present social, economic and political order.
Contents to this pamphlet available online. Link below.
Regardless of what may be argued, the Young Lords openly called for the demise of the capitalist system and establishment of socialism in the United States. This is made indisputably clear in the YLP’s 13-Point Program and Platform, as well as in the pamphlet titled “The Ideology of the Young Lords“.
Women of the Young Lords
As with all movements of importance, it was the women of the Young Lords who served as the political backbone and spirit of the organization. At the height of the YLP’s development women comprised at least 40 percent of the membership. Their nobility and courageous leadership among the ranks was beyond exemplary.
However, respect and acceptance of their roles as leaders was met with resistance and obstacles often rooted in the oppressive traditions of male dominance. But the sisters were steadfast and formed the Women’s Collective, an internal organizational vehicle to enable launching the necessary fight against sexism in the Young Lords.
Yet, despite many internal battles, these sisters used the persuasiveness of politics and education to move forward the entire entity. We owe a debt of deep gratitude to all of these women.
As a result of their determination and work, many groups of women from international movements recognized them for their contributions against capitalism and its many forms of oppression.
Young Lords women were the backbone and soul of the organization.
The Young Lords, like the Black Panther Party, attempted to build a highly disciplined organization. They understood that without the organizational sophistication of a vanguard political party, revolution is impossible. It is precisely this lesson that revolutionaries today should embrace and emulate in order to realize the future victory of socialism.
Today, May 11, 2019 marks one year since the death of Ana Luz Lopez Betancourt, the woman whom I grew to love, respect, cherish and from whom I learned tremendously. After having a stroke months before many had hoped that Ana would heal. What resulted instead was an unexpected heart attack which eventually claimed her life. Being a witness to her suffering in those final moments became the greatest trauma that I have ever experienced.
Ana was a beautiful human being who had earned the respect and affection of many people, especially fellow poets and her students, many of whom were immigrants from various countries. She was a teacher of creative writing and assisted these students in the use of the English language for job applications. But her humanity was not strictly in her profession, Ana’s premise was selflessness on every level. If Ana were to see someone in need she would immediately step in to help.
Ana was a Buddhist who consciously practiced her spiritual beliefs by always making an extra effort to help others in need. Her humanism was undeniably expressed through her poetry. Ana wrote about love, sorrow, pain, joy, as well as poetic renditions of political themes in both English and Spanish.
Ana Luz Lopez Betancourt reciting her poetry.
Ana was very proud of her Puerto Rican heritage as well as for being an Afro-Boricua. She would always challenge the influences of white supremacy with individuals who demonstrated to be impacted when they would express anti-Black notions by tending to deny or downplay the African blood among Latino people.
And having been born in Puerto Rico, suffering the consequences of colonialism, Ana’s steadfast became inseparable from her contempt for the U.S. colonization of her homeland, especially in the last days of her life when it became apparent how U.S. colonial policy welcomed the destructive forces of Hurricane Maria, in order to intensify their rule. Ana lived with the hopes of living long enough to see Puerto Rico as a free and independent republic.
Surviving the trauma of Ana’s death was very difficult, especially with the death of my very best friend Andy McInerney who died six months later. But I was very fortunate to have many friends who came to my support at a moment when I needed it the most. The people whom I shall forever be grateful to were members of the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home, most especially Johanna Fernandez, Sophia Williams, Gwen Debrow, Robyn Spensor, Rebekah McAlister, as well as Xen Medina, Mariana McDonald and my beloved dear friend Andy McInerney.
Ana shall always be remembered by many who grew to love her. And being that her convictions and morality also impacted me, which helped to strengthen my resolve in political struggle as well as making me a better man, Ana shall always have a very special place in my heart.
You say you’re disappointed – what on earth were you thinking about when Mueller was first appointed special counsel?
Sure the rulers are not homogeneous and are contentious among themselves, but keep in mind that it was an inquiry created by and approved by them. Mueller, who is also a Republican, is a staunch cadre of the ruling class, and is highly regarded by them. His military career and as Director of the FBI under both Republican and Democratic presidents confirms his complete loyalty to this system.
If there is a strict rule these villains in power live by is to protect the political integrity of the capitalist system. Mueller’s investigative mandate was not aimed to protect “democracy”, but rather, to protect a system of exploitation, social privilege and inequality.
Whose interest did you think the special counsel really represented? Certainly not our’s, the tens of millions of working class people who are being impacted by the policies of the Trump administration, and every administration that came before — which have acted consistently with the interest of the ruling class — a class interest that Democrats also represent. This fiasco was more like thieves investigating thieves.
Of course Trump should be indicted, most people in this country will agree. In fact, people are now speaking about the Mueller Report everywhere with the highest level of disappointment. But what Trump should have been investigated, indicted and imprisoned for goes beyond collusion — which many in the ruling class are also motivated to engage in for their business interest.
What Trump is indisputably guilty of is stepping up the full agenda of billionaires in this country, who conspire daily to execute an onslaught against poor working class, people of color.
What Trump is guilty of is working feverishly on eliminating the gains African Americans made during the Civil Rights movement and openly legitimizing traditional racist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazies. He is also guilty of degrading Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Muslims, and other people of color. Special Council Mueller’s mandate did not include addressing questions of social oppression which are the unavoidable consequence of capitalist society.
Trump should also face criminal charges for plotting war against Venezuela; his disgusting and offensive disposition towards the Palestinian people when he established a U.S. embassy in Jerusalem; and his hurtful, chastising imperial behavior towards Puerto Rico, as thousands died horribly as a result of Hurricane Maria.
YES, Trump should be investigated, indicted and imprisoned, but by a people’s tribunal that can guarantee justice in the fullest sense, independent of financial interests and the intricate connections within the ruling class. Such would require a people’s revolutionary movement. Not only would Trump be held accountable for his criminal activities but so too would the capitalist system and the white supremacist movement which he represents.
The colonization of Puerto Rico began as a consequence of the Spanish-American War in 1898. Cuba, Guam, the Philippines and Puerto Rico were deemed as “spoils of war” — the result of Spain’s surrender to the United States. Puerto Rico was then colonized by a new tyrant. The island nation soon after became a staging ground for U.S. military ventures throughout the Caribbean and all of Latin America; a practice that continues to this day.
Throughout the history of the U.S. colonial presence in Puerto Rico outspoken advocates for independence have been the targets of Draconian measures. Members of the Nationalist Party lived under the constant threat of being blacklisted from employment, their homes firebombed, imprisonment, torture and being killed by various repressive agencies.
U.S. colonial policy in Puerto Rico has always been administered with complete disregard for the wishes of the Puerto Rican people. It was precisely this disposition by the colonial rulers which brought about one of the most horrifying events in Puerto Rico’s history.
The Ponce Massacre
In the city of Ponce, a peaceful demonstration was being planned for March 21, 1937. It was intended to commemorate the 1873 abolition of African chattel slavery in Puerto Rico and to demand the immediate release of imprisoned Nationalist leader Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos.
Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos during his studies at Harvard University.
Although permits were not required the organizers requested permission to have the event out of respect for the sympathetic mayor of Ponce. The organizers were granted a legal permit to proceed with their plans.
The notorious U.S. Army General Blanton Winship was appointed colonial governor by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Despite the “progressive” and “liberal” projections made by bourgeois historians and apologists, Roosevelt was just as brutal as any colonizing head of state acting with impunity. Boricuas suffered tremendously under the FDR administration and Gen. Blanton Winship’s racist implementation of colonial policy.
Outright brutality through military rule was the preferred form of administering colonialism. Winship tried everything possible to stop the scheduled nationalist event, including using blatant gangster-type methods aimed to intimidate.
In this period of intense repression, the U.S. government, through Winship, sought to stamp out all nationalist sentiments and the self-identity of the colonized nation — especially its quest for independence and self-determination.
On that Palm Sunday morning, hundreds of people – women, children and men – gathered at the town plaza, in defiance of the colonial government’s wishes. Among those who assembled were women dressed in all white who gathered as Nurses of the Republic; the mostly youth comprised Cadets of the Republic — the para-military wing of the Nationalist Party was present in uniform, black shirts and white pants; church congregations and community residents attended to form their contingents.
Re-enacting the Ponce Massacre.
A Nationalist color guard in military formation unveiled the Puerto Rican flag, outlawed by the U.S. colonial government. With clenched fists in the air, the crowd began to proudly sing “La Borinqueña” — the original (revolutionary) version of the Puerto Rican national anthem, written by Lola Rodriguez De Tio.
At this point, the police had sealed off the area where the Nationalist protest was gathering. With grenades, tear-gas bombs, carbine rifles and Tommy sub-machine guns, under the directions of Blanton Winship the police prepared for the bloody onslaught.
Once the crowd began to march, knowing that the mostly young participants were unarmed, the police did the unimaginable — they opened fire.
Photo of the actual moment when the Ponce Massacre began..
The barrage lasted about 13 minutes. The participants which included the elderly and children, helplessly attempted to escape the unexpected horror. People desperately ran to save their lives from bullets flying everywhere. They screamed terrified as they witnessed the chaos and blood splattering bodies of compatriots who fell to the ground from gunshots wounds.
One police officer of Puerto Rican origin, who was sympathetic with the Nationalist cause for independence, was shot in the back and killed by his commanding officer for refusing to participate in the mayhem against the unarmed crowd.
When the shooting ended, 21 people had been killed and over 200 were critically wounded. The American Civil Liberties Unioninvestigated the tragedy. It was concluded by forensic inquiry that those who died were shot in the back. The event brought sadness and shock throughout Puerto Rico. The funeral procession for the martyrs was one of the largest in the country’s history — about 20,000 people attended.
Victims of the Ponce Massacre.
The cruelty of the Ponce Massacre sheds light on many other heinous acts committed by the U.S. in Puerto Rico. Destruction, death, plunder and rape are the trademarks of colonialism. U.S. rulers perceive Puerto Ricans as expendable; let us not forget how modern times Washington officials allowed 4,746 Puerto Ricans to die from neglect, following the devastation of Hurricane Maria.
“It was love for the freedom of our homeland — Puerto Rico,” Nationalist iconic figure Doña Isabel Rosado once said, “that gave strength to the martyrs of Ponce. Nothing in this world is more powerful than this emotion — not even the guns of the colonial assassins.”
A Nationalist laying on the pavement after being killed by the colonial police.
And it is precisely this emotion that worries U.S. colonialism even to this day — an emotion that will prove fatal to them when the Puerto Rican masses eventually rise up to avenge the Ponce Massacre.
Changing the form of colonial rule
The nationalist movement that rose up in the first half of the 20th Century compelled the U.S. colonizers to change their methods of subjugating the people of Puerto Rico. Long after the Ponce Massacre, decades later into the present day, the U.S. colonizers became more sophisticated in their methods of domination.
By 1952, Washington, DC allowed some semblances of “democracy,” in an attempt to fool the people of Puerto Rico with illusions of self-determination and to disguise the exploitative nature of the colonial relationship before the eyes of the world.
A depiction of the Ponce Massacre by artist Pedro Brull.
The U.S. colonizers developed such a confidence in their new tactics of colonizing that they became willing to allow individuals of Puerto Rican origin, like the notorious Luis Muñoz Marin, to serve on the highest levels of government years later, such as in the U.S. House of Representative and the Federal Supreme Court.
The rulers have no problem granting Puerto Ricans visibility — what they have problems with is granting Puerto Ricans political power, that is, the right to independence. And because freedom is never granted from the “goodness” of an oppressor, it will require a revolutionary mass movement to obtain it.
The U.S. empire is more vulnerable than what most people realize. It has brought on itself enemies in every part of the globe. We should feel assured that Boricuas will rise up in rebellion and win the historical struggle for independence. On that glorious future moment Puerto Ricans will make their contribution to the worldwide defeat of U.S. imperialism.
Arturo Alfonso Schomburg was born on January 24, 1874 in Santurce, Puerto Rico. He was a Black Puerto Rican scholar, historian, author and activist, who devoted his entire life to compiling vast collections of writings and art documenting significant events in Black history.
When Schomburg was just 8 years old he was told by a school teacher that Black people had no history. This assertion naturally bothered him for a long time. But as he gradually grew older, Schomburg found the teacher’s claim to make absolutely no sense. That encounter became Schomburg’s motivation which led him to set out and prove wrong such racist notions.
African chattel slavery also took place in Puerto Rico, it was the consequence of Spanish colonialism in both Africa and Latin America. In the year 1527, the first of many slave revolts in Puerto Ricooccurred which was among the bloodiest in Western Hemisphere history.
Despite the numerous contributions Schomburg made to the preservation of Black-Latino history, like many other Black scholars and professionals in different fields, he was not immune to anti-Black discrimination. Throughout his entire life, Schomburg experienced blatant racism, sadly within the Puerto Rican community as well.
Colorism, as an extension of white supremacy, often permeated conversations about “Los prietos” (the dark ones), “Pelo bueno y pelo malo” (good hair and bad hair), and so on. As in the United States, the not-so-hidden practices of racism has also existed in Puerto Rico and all of Latin America, like the widely known anti-Black, anti-Haitian “legal” practices of the Dominican Republic.
Arturo Schomburg was instrumental in documenting the role of African people in the cultural development of the Puerto Rican nation. The psychic, spirituality, linguistics, diet, music and dance of Puerto Rico pointed to the contributions made by Africans. Schomburg proudly identified as an Afroborinqueño (Afro-Puerto Rican).
Harlem Renaissance & Puerto Rico’s independence struggle
Schomburg became known during the famous Harlem Renaissance. He collaborated with prominent figures like Marcus Garvey, Carlos A. Cook, Hurbert Harrison, Langston Hughes, Alain Leroy Locke, W.E.B. Du Boisand other pillars of that movement. It was an exciting and enlightening period in history for the African diaspora, following the struggles to end the horrors of slavery. Harlem was viewed as the political and cultural Mecca of the African American people.
The Harlem Renaissance, which unveiled the beauty of African culture also shattered many racist myths. This movement resulted from Marcus Garvey’s call for Black people to be profound with their identity in all areas of dignified expression. It succeeded in challenging the ideological facets of white supremacy through the literary, visual and performing arts.
Marcus Garvey, Arthur Schomburg and other mourners at the grave of John E. Bruce
Thanks to the powerful momentum inspired by Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) Black people now had relative freedom to develop culturally, economically and politically in the surroundings of a white racist society. This was the setting in which Arturo Schomburg was able to make his contributions to Black history.
Arturo Alfonso Schomburg in New York City, 1932.
Before moving to New York City, at 17 years old, Schomburg was a leader in the secret Revolutionary Committee of Puerto Rico. This organization was created several years before Schomburg’s birth for launching the 1868 anti-slavery & pro-independence revolt known as El Grito De Lares. Although the attempt to rid Spanish colonialism failed, the Revolutionary Committee continued to exist clandestinely.
Schomburg was a firm advocate for Puerto Rico’s independence. In fact, he was the founder of Las Dos Alas (in English The Two Wings), an organization in New York City devoted to the independence cause of Puerto Rico and Cuba.
In 1895, Schomburg partook in a secret meeting held at New York City’s Chimney Corner Hall to discuss and approve by vote a proposed design for what became the official Puerto Rican Flag of today. The attendees of this meeting were mostly political fugitives being sought by the Spanish colonial authorities. Most of them became affiliated with the Cuban Revolutionary Party under the leadership of the legendary Jose Marti.
Schomburg’s shift in central focus
But as the 19th Century came to a close with the U.S. military occupation of both Cuba and Puerto Rico, caused the independence movement in both countries to enter a period of stagnation. The anti-colonial struggle was temporarily paralyzed due to many people believing the overtures of U.S. invaders who promised to grant independence. As a result, Schomburg and other like-minded activists who resided outside of Cuba and Puerto Rico, began to re-vise their activities based on the change in the climate of imperialism.
As the persecution of Black people in the United States intensified, with the extension of Jim Crow laws, lynching and white racist riots presenting a dangerous and menacing setting, coupled by Schomburg’s childhood memory of a demeaning comment made to him by a school teacher, raised his commitment to the idea of affirming the validity and truth of Black history.
Ridiculing the racist fables about the origins and history of Black people became Schomburg’s central focus. His noble quest eventually proved the extent of white supremacy’s corruption and baseless reasoning for existing.
Once in New York City, and for the remainder of his life, Schomburg collected large amounts of materials relevant to the history of Africa and the African diaspora. His work unavoidably brought to light the falsehood of white historians who interpreted the history of human social development strictly from a European perspective, thus concealing what are the African people’s pivotal role in that process.
Although Arturo Schomburg never proclaimed to be a revolutionary, his academic achievements coupled with such fervent passion to preserve and protect the historic culture of the Diaspora shows otherwise. Long after his death, Schomburg’s accomplishments continue to shatter racist myths.
A 24″ X 30″ canvas portrait I made of Arturo Alfonso Schomberg.
His devotion to raise Black history to its rightful grandeur contributed immensely to the ideological struggle against white supremacy, thus, adding to the majestic qualities of Black nationalism.
Moreover, Schomburg was a consistent leader of debunking the dangerous narratives of racial superiority that ushered in social Darwinism and Eugenics. These world perspectives were often used by capitalists to politically hinder and divide working class people.
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture — Harlem, New York City
The vast and beautiful collection of literature and art materials he compiled throughout his life are permanently housed at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center For Research of Black Culture, located at 515 Malcolm X Blvd, in Harlem, NYC.
Arturo Afonso Schomburg shall be remembered for his bold intellectual defiance and as a hero of the oppressed. His lifelong contributions have strengthened the legitimacy of Puerto Rico’s independence cause as well as the historical struggle for Black liberation. Schomburg’s’ life embodied the epitome of Black & Puerto Rican solidarity.
On New Year’s Eve, December 31, 1958, the revolutionary guerilla army of the July 26 Movement, under the leadership of Comandante Fidel Castro Ruz, entered the capital city of Havana, Cuba. This was the final act in the overthrow of the notorious U.S.-sponsored Fulgencio Batista regime.
The closer the guerilla army approached the city on foot, horseback and vehicles, the more frantic the oppressors of the Cuban people became. Their world of lavishness with cocktails drinks on hand was abruptly disrupted.
Mafia gangsters, prostitution pimps, drug peddlers, casino club owners, CIA operatives and other imperialist agencies, military and police officials as well as top bureaucrats of Batista’s government, were all crowding Havana’s airport in a desperate rush to leave Cuba, in order to avoid capture by the guerillas.
This event marked the dawn of a new era in that country’s history while at the same time posing a threat to U.S. imperialism’s predatory intentions throughout the Western Hemisphere.
The Cuban Revolution had a tremendous impact on political circumstances in Latin America, the Caribbean and most especially in the United States, where a mass upsurge was erupting. In every sense, Cuba followed the examples of its neighbor, the glorious 1804 Haitian Revolution.
Comandantes Camilo Cienfuego (left), Fidel Castro Ruz and fellow combatants entering the City of Havana.
Ever since the revolution’s military victory, and despite the criminal economic blockade it continues to endure, Cuba has been fiercely outspoken about the bullying foreign policies of the United States that keeps the Haitian people in a downtrodden colonial existence.
After the seizure of power, Cuba has also been a consistent advocate for Puerto Rico’s right to independence. The Cuban revolutionary government has brought to light at the world stage the horrendous nature of U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico.
In 1980, Fidel Castro Ruz invited to Cuba the newly released Puerto Rican Nationalists political prisoners, Lolita Lebron, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Irvin Flores, Andres Figueroa Cordero, and Oscar Collazo. The Puerto Rican patriots came to Cuba to receive that country’s highest honor, the Medal of the Order of the Bay of Pigs.
Puerto Rican Nationalists being welcomed by Fidel Castro Ruz at a ceremony of honor, 1980.
Revolutionary Cuba provided political and logistical support to the Palestinian liberation struggle. And it sent thousands of Cuban troops to Africa in an effort to assist freedom fighters there in their quest.
Cuban President Fidel Castro Ruz welcoming Palestine’s Yasser Arafat.
Cuban President Fidel Castro Ruz visiting Amica Cabral during the revolution in Guinea–Bissau.
The most notable example of Cuba’s solidarity with Africa’s freedom struggle is the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale. In a combined effort with the Angolan military the Cuban Army surrounded and smashed the racist apartheid South African Army. It was this event that caused the gradual demise of Apartheid rule in South Africa, thus facilitating favorable political circumstances which brought about the release from prison of Nelson Mandela.
South Africa’s Nelson Mandela and President Fidel Castro Ruz.
Cuban President Fidel Castro Ruz awarded Thomas Sankara with the Order of Jose Marti for his role in the liberation struggle of his people and upholding internationalist solidarity.
Of the most notable of Cuba’s acts of humanitarianism is its creation of the Latin American School of Medicine. Students from poor and oppressed communities from the United States and Third World countries, who otherwise could not financially afford it, are provided with a free education to become medical doctors, paid for by the Cuban government.
Comandante Fidel Castro Ruz addressing a crowd of tens of thousands.
And to demonstrate how serious the Cuban Revolution is about its convictions and sense of humanity, many people in poor countries have received medical attention for the first time thanks to Cuba’s well-known international medical program. In addition, Cuba has sent thousands of trained medical professionals to the poorest communities throughout the globe to heal and prevent deceases, even under the most dangerous circumstances.
Women in Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces.
Cuba has also provided a safe haven to many political refugees sought by the agencies of imperialism, like Puerto Rican freedom fighter William Morales and Black Panther Party/Black Liberation Army (BLA) sister Assata Shakur. Cuba has also been a firm supporter for the release of political prisoners in the U.S., like Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Assata Shakur and William Morales were granted political asylum by the Cuban government.
Justice now had a new meaning, defined by the revolutionary aspirations of the oppressed. Uniformed villains of the Batista military and police who once tortured, murdered and raped the people were rounded up and brought to face criminal charges. Tribunals were held throughout the country for all to witness and participate in a completely new form of justice — People’s Justice — in which victims partook by providing testimony and in deciding the fate of overthrown government officials.
Batista government officials facing criminal charges at a Revolutionary Tribunal.
Thanks to the Cuban Revolution the people were no longer deprived of free healthcare, free education, and access to food. Such are the vital necessities denied to the working poor here in the United States.
It has been more than six decades since the military defeat of the U.S. puppet Batista government and the Cuban people remain firm on defending their right to self-determination. They have been exemplary in their resilience in the face of repeated U.S. attempts to undermine their sovereignty.
These attempts include terrorist actions on Cuba’s tourist industry, CIA subversive attempts to incite counterrevolutionary activities within the country, 600 known attempts on the life of the late Fidel Castro Ruz, and a criminal economic blockade that continues to this day.
Raul and Fidel Castro among others overwhelmed by the jubilant moment.
Despite these acts of aggression and Washington’s 65 years propaganda war aimed to demonize the revolution, no one can deny Cuba’s achievements in eradicating illiteracy, advancements in medical science, food production & agriculture, housing development and the infrastructure.
Cuba’s revolutionary leadership has prioritized the needs of the people and continues to make good on its pledge never to allow returning the country back to the domination of the United States. So, as we celebrate the coming of the new year, we should salute the Cuban people on their glorious anniversary. And may the year 2025 bring us a step closer to a world without exploitation, deprivation, oppression and racist violence.
It saddens me to announce that on the evening of Monday, December 10, 2018, long time revolutionary activist Andy Mcinerney passed away after losing a long battle with cancer. As if it wasn’t enough losing my sweetheart & love of my life, Ana Lopez Betancourt, in the month of May 2018, I now grieve another major loss, my very best friend, brother and comrade, Andy Mcinerney.
Andy and I at a Free Puerto Rico event 2011
Andy was a professor at Bronx Community College in New York. He will surely be missed by the many whom he taught as well as his colleagues who partook in struggles for bettering college level education and for increasing the benefits and salaries of professors.
Andy was a communist. He was always fascinated when learning about the liberation struggles of oppressed people. He was adamant about white progressives today requiring having the same disposition John Brown once had against African chattel slavery, if they sincerely claim being anti-racist. I always had respect for Andy, since I envisioned him fighting alongside John Brown if he were to live during the 1859 attack on Harpers Ferry.
As a person of white origin himself, Andy was critical of white leftists who tended to show inconsistencies of conviction, by being soft and evasive of criticizing white privilege and white entitlement. He viewed that kind of behavior unforgiving and a not-so-hidden expression of white supremacist ideology.
Andy and I became good friends during our mutual experience in Workers World Party and in the Party for Socialism & Liberation. It was in our experiences in these entities where our collaboration first grew to the finest pitch, which later on continued.
Andy McInerney with his loving partner and spouse, Eline Elara.
Wherever Andy found himself, whether organizing events on campus or mobilizing for mass demonstrations, he always sought ways to promote and apply Marxist-Leninist theory. He recognized that his moral obligation was to build in the present in preparation for the future battle for socialism in the United States.
Andy was indeed a revolutionary who also contributed to my own political development. In 1991 when I first met him the world revolutionary movement went into disarray, resulting from the impact the collapse of the Soviet Union was having everywhere.
Andy and his daughter Arlen McInerney.
Andy & the very young Arlen McInerney.
He was an optimist, even under dim circumstances. He always told me that the collapse of the Soviet Union was only a temporary victory for imperialism and that we should maintain our course in building for revolution in this country regardless.
Andy understood that throughout history such phenomenon also occurred with other social & economic systems. It was Andy who told me “Not to worry” and enlightened me to how the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte in France was equivalent to the restoration of capitalism in Russia. Bonaparte restored the political power of the monarchy that was defeated by the 1789 French Revolution.
Andy was of Irish descent. He demonstrated the utmost respect to me when he discovered that I was a Young Lord and a Puerto Rican revolutionary nationalist. In our exchanges we strengthened each other’s understanding of the Irish-Puerto Rican connection. It was Andy who first made me aware that Irish revolutionary James Connolly had asked Puerto Rican Nationalist leader Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos to draw up a draft for the Constitution of a free Irish republic.
Ana Lopez Betancourt and Andy McInerney
There is much more that can be said about Andy Mcinerney. He touched the hearts of so many people. His greatest trait which describes his finest qualities as a human being was his incredible love and respect for teaching and learning, a fundamental requirement for what it takes to be a revolutionary. Andy’s disposition came with an eagerness to learn and pass the knowledge on to others.
I will miss you my dear brother and comrade, Andy McInerney. You were always there for me during the thick and thin. There is much about you that I will cherish and feel honored that you were in my life. And above all, I shall eternally be grateful to you for helping me strengthen my resolve to keep fighting until this social system of oppression is finally smashed by the will of the vast majority of oppressed and exploited people.
“We say you don’t fight racism with racism. We’re going to fight racism with solidarity. We say you don’t fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism.” -BPP Chairman Fred Hampton
In a coordinated effort between the Illinois State Attorney’s Office, Cook County Police Department, the Chicago Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in the morning hours of December 4, 1969, a heavily armed assault team launched a heinous attack on the residence of Black Panther Party, Illinois Chairman Fred Hampton.
With a vicious sense of racist hatred and no regard for human life, these law enforcement officials fired a single shotgun blast through the entrance door of the apartment instantly killing Mark Clark, by striking him to the chest. These murderers then fired their weapons at will through a wall separating the hallway from the apartment, critically wounding Fred Hampton as he laid in bed.
According to accounts, after the police smashed through the front door entering the apartment, one of the police officers who entered Hampton’s bedroom was overheard saying “He’s still alive.” At that point the handcuffed occupants can hear from another room the kill-shot that ended the Panther leader’s life. In a matter of minutes, two inspiring revolutionaries were maliciously murdered.
MARK CLARK WAS A LOYAL PANTHER
Mark Clarke was 22 years old, an enthusiastic youth with talents in the arts. He was eager to fight against the racist oppression Black people endured since chattel slavery. That became the motive why Clark joined the Black Panther Party soon after he met Chairman Fred Hampton during a visit to the BPP national office in Oakland, California. From then on Hampton and Clark became good friends and comrades until the tragic end of their lives.
Once he embraced the BPP ideology and discipline, specifically it’s Ten Point Program and Platform, Clark organized the Peoria, Illinois chapter of the BPP with 50 recruits, including two of his siblings. Under Clark’s leadership a Free Breakfast Program was established which drew support from many residents from Peoria’s Black community. Clark was appointed by the BPP’s Central Committee the rank of Defense Captain, which he accepted and took seriously.
Mark Clark and Fred Hampton
In the days that followed, law enforcement officials were quick to reinvent the facts. They claimed that the occupants of the apartment fired guns at police. Their story never held water. Evidence gathered from the forensic investigation and other inquiries pointed exclusively to police savagery in the attack.
The shaping of Fred Hampton’s leadership
Like millions of African Americans, Hampton’s parents left the South during the Great Migration of the 1930’s to look for a better life and flee the constant threat of racist terror. They settled in Maywood, Ill., a suburb of Chicago where they worked at the Argo Starch Company.
Hampton was attracted to books and took it upon himself to read the speeches and writings of Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Dubois, Joan Elbert, Martin Luther King Jr.,Malcolm X as well as Marxist–Leninist classics. He gained a reputation for his knowledge of Black and world history which helped develop his sense of the need for struggle.
As a student at Proviso East High School, he noticed that most of the students who failed were Black. Hampton began to speak out against the school administration for not providing tutoring and remedial programs for students. He was also critical of the fact that the faculty and administration were all white when one-fourth of the student body was Black.
Hampton challenged the school’s exclusive racist practice of nominating only white girls to compete for “Miss Homecoming Queen.” He organized a protest, walk-out and school boycott. As a result, the following year Black female students were included in this contest.
Chairman Fred Hampton speaking with children at the Free Breakfast Program.
Fred Hampton was respected by white and Black students alike. The year after he graduated from Proviso East, a school administrator requested his help to calm racial tensions among students.
An event that likely affected the young Fred Hampton, much as it affected most of Chicago’s Black community, was the 1955 gruesome lynching of Emmett Till. The 14-year-old Till was visiting family in Mississippi when he was abducted and killed for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Till was the son of family friends and neighbors of the Hamptons.
While Hampton was in the NAACP, the Black Panther Party was opening chapters across the country and becoming a prominent force in the Black liberation struggle. Hampton began to absorb and understand the revolutionary content of the Panthers’ political perspective and joined. He soon demonstrated his leadership abilities and became deputy chairman of the party’s Illinois chapter.
His disposition and skills as a speaker earned Hampton a moral authority. His political achievements included brokering peace with the supposed “street gangs” of Chicago, amongst them the Puerto Rican group the Young Lords. Hampton was instrumental in transforming the Young Lords into a revolutionary political organization.
BPP Chairman Fred Hampton and Young Lords Chairman Jose Cha-Cha Jimenez.
The white, racist U.S. ruling class was appalled. How dare the descendants of African slaves call themselves Socialists and aim to achieve Black people’s right to reparations! Even more daring was the Black Panther Party’s call for the overthrow of capitalism—a demand the ruling class could never tolerate. Their ability to forge unity in struggle was a threat in itself.
All this was happening while resentment for the war in Vietnam was on the rise. The men of privilege and wealth, with a stake in preserving the imperialist system, grew apprehensive the more it became apparent that a mass revolutionary movement was arising.
Hampton valued the need for a multinational revolutionary struggle, and organized the original Rainbow Coalition comprised of the I Wor Kuen of the Asian community, the Brown Berets of the Chicano-Mexican community, the poor white workers of the Young Patriots, the Young Lords and the Black Panthers. The Black Panther Party set standards for waging struggle. Their enthusiastic projection of socialism allowed many to envision its relevance to African Americans and other oppressed nationalities.
Operation COINTELPRO, an acronym for Counterintelligence Program, was established in the mid-1950’s to deter the development of any movement deemed a threat to the existing social, economic and political order. It remained secret until 1971, when courageous anti-repression/anti-war activists broke into an FBI field office in Media, Pa., and confiscated files revealing the hidden operation.
My portrait of Chairman Fred Hampton. 20″ X 24″, acrylic paint on canvas.
As the Civil Rights movement advanced—galvanizing strength from all sectors of the population, breaking the despicable Jim Crow laws and compelling the U.S. Congress to pass other progressive legislation—the FBI increasingly turned its attention to the Black liberation struggle.
The slanderous editorials against the Panthers in the capitalist-owned mass media, combined with Hoover’s frequent verbal attacks, reflected the wishes of the ruling class who sought the complete destruction of the Black Panther Party and the ideals it embodied. Internal FBI memos show that the government had a special interest in Hampton’s political activities and his associations; Chicago police were encouraged by the FBI to find a way to lock up Hampton, if not worse.
These circumstances compelled the government to carry out the horrible attack on Fred Hampton as part of their strategy to destroy the Black Panther Party and ultimately the entire revolutionary movement.
“The greatest threat to national security”
The Black Panther Party openly advocated for socialist revolution, and openly supported the Chinese and Cuban revolutions. The Panthers’ breakfast program for children, among other social programs, underlined their commitment to meet the needs of communities that received nothing but oppression and neglect from the government.
Prior to Hampton’s death, police raided the Panthers’ Chicago office on three separate occasions. William O’Neal, Fred Hampton’s bodyguard, was a police informant who was instructed to draw up a floor plan of the targeted apartment weeks earlier. Law enforcement used the information gathered by O’Neal to murder Hampton.
The staunch anti-capitalist stance of these young revolutionaries who declared themselves Marxist-Leninists made them the target of the most ruthless, racist elements in power. On numerous occasions, the notorious FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover expressed a special disdain for the Black struggle, particularly towards Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Many were not surprised when Hoover declared the Black Panther Party “the greatest threat to national security.”
Chairman Fred Hampton was a widely respected orator.
Hampton’s murder was part of a pattern of police raids, false imprisonment and executions of Black Panthers. COINTELPRO documents proved that assassination of Black leaders was among its aims. Fred Hampton and the Black Panther Party had to be eliminated simply because they had touched upon capitalism’s greatest weakness—the decisiveness and strength that a multi-national movement has in a battle against this system.
The Black Panther Party arose from the struggles of the African American people, historically the most oppressed and exploited group in the United States. They symbolized hope and received the greatest affection. They attributed Black oppression to the capitalist system, and dared to pick up arms against the state. The militancy and defiance of these young revolutionaries deeply impacted the Civil Rights and socialist movements.
Hampton and the Black Panthers believed all would benefit if the struggle against racist oppression was taken up by the whites as their own. Hampton knew that it was possible to smash the racial barriers created by capitalism to divide and conquer the working class. His confidence was based on the strong belief that this system provides motivation for all to unite and engage in revolutionary struggle.
Long live the Legacies of Fred Hampton & Mark Clark!
carlitoboricua 