cointelpro
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Let There Be No Mistake: If You’re Outspoken and Black or Muslim, ‘They’ Are Definitely Watching You
Because I am predisposed to take everything with a grain of salt and was born with the inability to have delusions of grandeur, when friends and acquaintances tell me, “You know they are watching you,” I usually dismiss it with the same relative inattention I pay to accusations of reverse racism or white oppression. After…
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Watch: Patrisse Khan-Cullors on Being Under Extreme Surveillance
As an activist, Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors says that her home was first raided by Los Angeles police in 2013. “Surveillance tactics have been used against me,” Khan-Cullors told The Root.While this raid was years before the FBI’s 12-page “Black Identity Extremist” report—which vilifies black activists—was leaked, it’s clear that members of the…
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Long Live the Chairman: On This Day in 1969, the FBI and Chicago Police Assassinated Black Panther Fred Hampton
Dec. 4, 1969—48 years ago today—police officers from the Cook County, Ill., State Attorney’s Office, in collusion with the FBI, assassinated Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, and Black Panther Party leader Mark Clark. Hampton and Clark were 21 and 22 years old, respectively. At approximately 4:45 a.m., 14…
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Janaya Khan, Black Lives Matter Leader, Dismantles FBI’s Fraudulent ‘Black Identity Extremist’ Report
From the days of COINTELPRO—the targeting of black human rights leaders and sowing dissent within the ranks of black organizations committed to freedom and liberation for black people—to its unofficial subsidiaries like the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, whose sole purpose was to violently oppress black communities, the FBI has often operated as a terrorist group out…
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FBI Launches COINTELPRO 2.0, Targeting ‘Black Identity Extremists’: Report
Raise your hand if you identify as a “black identity extremist.” Matter of fact, raise your hand if you’ve ever even heard of the term “black identity extremist.” According to a new report from Foreign Policy magazine, this is the dangerous, racially motivated movement the FBI counterterrorism unit warned about in a report back in…
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4 Ways the FBI Director’s Election Ambush Was White Male Privilege at Its Best
Black folks know all about the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It’s a history dipped in the ongoing harassment, surveillance and unmitigated unconstitutional destruction of black life and leadership. And so, the eleventh-hour, October-surprising relaunch of one of the fakest political scandals in recent memory wasn’t unusual behavior for the agency. Former Washington, D.C., Mayor Vincent…
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Native American Activist and Prisoner Leonard Peltier Asks Obama for Clemency
In 1977 Native American activist Leonard Peltier was put behind bars, where he has remained in federal custody ever since, for the murder of two FBI agents. But he hasn’t given up on being released: A petition for clemency was sent to the White House in late March, according to the New York Daily News.…