From The Ramparts

The Struggle Intensifies

The Struggle Intensifies

Posted May 2005 06:39 PM
“The federal government has announced a $1 million bounty for the capture of fugitive JoAnne Chesimard, who is widely known as Assata Shakur. Assata, who is also Tupac’s godmother, has lived in Cuba nearly 30 years after escaping a maximum security jail. Today [May 2] represents the 32nd anniversary of a notorious clash between members of the Black Liberation Army and the New Jersey state troopers. At the end of the conflict, two were dead and two were incarcerated, including Assata. Rappers like Paris and Common have written sympathetic, reflective songs about Assata, Assataâs Song and A Song For Assataâ respectively”. www.MOBfiggaz.net

The US government has rachet up their reactionary COINTELPRO on liberation fighters, dissidents to send a message and serve as an example to deter resistence against their increasingly fascist agenda. COINTELPRO was a wide ranging federal program targeting the left and people of color during the tumultuous times of rising black consciousness/black power movements, opposition to the Vietnam War, grass roots labor organizing, the American Indian Movement and the emerging Chicano and Latino activism. The government dropped all pretense of democracy and freedom and morphed into aruthless police state, as they funded and facilitated local police departments becoming increasingly militarized and aggressive in their assaults on people of color. As part of their plan the government initiated sophisticated surveillance, disruption techniques and campaigns to smear and discredit all forms of opposition to its immoral policies at home and abroad. Most people are familiar with COINTELPRO the brain child of FBI director J Edgar Hoover who fancied himself the keeper of the fascist and racist status quo. Hoover in his dementia blamed all dissent on “communism”, the boggy man of his day. However Hoover’s COINTELPRO was just one of many reactionary programs the government employed to further their agenda to undermine resistence to their imperial wars and domestic oppression. The CIA in direct violation of its charter initiated OPERATION CHAOS in conjunction with COLINTELPRO to spy on, discredit and disrupt the anti-war movement which was raging across the nation. These two programs illegally spied on ordinary AmeriKKKan citizens and organizations, they initiated smear campaigns to sully and defame people who voiced opposition to the war, the US racial cast system and economic exploitation. They used the police and court system to frame a wide range of dissents like Leonard Peltier, Geronamo Pratt, Mumia Abu Jamal, they infiltrated trade unions, grass roots community and political organizations and assassinated and eliminated those they could not co-opt, bribe, coerce or intimidate. The police state was out of control. When concerned lawmakers moved to put them in check, the ruling elites working through the CIA moved on them. US Senator Frank Church who as a member of the Select Committee of Government Intelligence Activities investigated CIA abuses was targeted and defeated by those who resented his efforts to clean up the agency.
We must understand we are in an ongoing war, a war for the minds, soul and very lives of African people. Every chance the fascist get they target Africans who have stood up against their anti human anti- life agenda, which explains why they went after activists and community builder Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin formerly known as H Rap Brown and why the US government recently put a one million dollar bounty on the head of Assata ShaKur a soldier in the Black Panther Party and African Liberation Army now living in Cuba. The feds in addition to the bounty (in a display of blatant hypocrisy) have placed Assata Shakur on their most wanted domestic terrorist list. Shakur who changed her named from JoAnne Chesimard was charged with killing a New Jersey state police officer in 1973. In what probably was a case of routine racial profiling gone bad; one trooper and Shakur's brother in law James Costan were killed. Shakur and the ALA embarrassed the state by helping her escape from a New Jersey maximum security women’s facility following her conviction on murder charges in 1977. Just as the federal and state governments framed so many other dissidents or used the courts, the “legal” system and state sanctioned murder to undermine any challenges to the status quo in the ‘60's and ‘70's, New Jack fascists want to make sure there are no examples or models of resistence and revolution remaining to spark renewed opposition to their agenda of domestic oligarchy and global domination. Assata Shakur is 57 years old living in exile in Cuba under political asylum. The Sistah is well respected in the conscious African community. Hence the fascists are afraid her continued existence will serve as an encouragement to freedom fighters all over the world to defy the blatant racism, oppression, militarism and imperialism of the AMeriKKKan empire. So while this bounty is symbolic, it will also offer additional incentive for some red neck to attempt to capture her. Since Fidel Castro granted her asylum, he will probably increase her protection and security. The lesson here is, the fascists never give up. Neither should we. The struggle intensifies.

-30-

posted by Junious Ricardo Stanton @ 10:15 AM