Chicago - In the last few days, I've been witnessing intense signs of the
state's counter-insurgency efforts - from seeing an increased number of
agent provocateurs to seeing marked and unmarked pig cars trailing me to the
most recent event, an attempt to assassinate me on Thursday, Sept. 26. My
mother, Comrade Akua Njeri, and Sister Tuere and I were riding on a heavily
populated street on the South Side of Chicago. All of a sudden, at 8:50
p.m., about five shots hit the back window of our vehicle. The only sound
was the shattering of glass, with a slight pop that sounded something like a
silencer was being utilized. We were all able to escape without injury.
This is not the first time that the state has tried to snatch me from the
streets in one way or another. The fact is that my contact with the U.S.
counter-insurgency started before I was born, when the Chicago Police
Department in collaboration with the federal government made their move on
Dec. 4, 1969. What came to be known as the Massacre on Monroe resulted in
the assassinations of Black Panther Party Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton and
Defense Captain Mark Clark. My mother's pre-natal care consisted not of a
doctor's stethoscope on her eight-and-a-half-month pregnant belly, but a
Chicago policeman's revolver being pressed there and him telling her,
"Nigga, you betta’ not run!”
The counter-insurgency has not let up since then but has become more
intense. The state has leveled trumped up charges against me; I was
kidnapped and held captive behind enemy lines; numerous attempts were made
on my life while I was held captive and later out in the field (the
streets); and I’ve been constantly harassed in every sense of the word. This
country has a history of dealing with those who struggle for liberation and
demand to be treated as human beings by either slandering them in attempts
to isolate them or trying to buy ‘em off, spook or scare them from engaging
in struggle, force them into exile, frame or kidnap them or resort to
sending them to the cemetery - recognized by revolutionaries as
“revolutionary happy hunting ground."
I see this as an indication that we are struggling in the right direction.
As Field Marshall George Jackson assessed, "It is when we do not incur
attacks that we become concerned.”
When I was held captive on the same Menard plantation where Chairman Fred
Hampton was held in 1969, many brothers referred to me as “déja vu” because
of the similarities between the stages of struggle that we are in now
compared with then, as well as the stances that I take with respect to those
of Chairman Fred. We see a climate of intensified attacks on the Black Power
Movement while the state distracts many of the people into believing that it
is only making its moves abroad.
In the '60s and early ‘70s, while the anti-war protesters were chanting,
"Bring the boys back home," Albert "Nuh" Washington and the New York 3 were
being kidnapped right under their noses in 1971. George and Jonathan Jackson
were gunned down domestically in the most brutal fashion. Seventeen-year-old
Lil’ Bobby Hutton was assassinated by an occupying army on the streets of
Oakland, Calif., two days after Dr. King was assassinated. Chairman Fred and
Defense Captain Mark Clark were murdered in cold blood in one of the most
brutal acts of terrorism that ever occurred on U.S. soil.
Right here today, many peace activists may be willing to challenge prison
conditions abroad, such as prisoners being forcefully medicated while
transported, but they turn a deaf ear to the multitudes of Afrikan and
colonized youth in Menard, Statesville and camps throughout this country who
are being pumped full of thorazine and other narcotics against their will.
Peace activists may recognize such degrading acts as prisoners outside U.S.
borders having bags put over their heads while they are being transported,
but the same activists have no response for those held captive in Pontiac,
Ill., who are forced to visit their loved ones with black nets over their
face and rubber grill pieces over their mouths.
Those same activists sit on Oprah Winfrey shows and engage in what I refer
to as "safe struggle," talking about violations that women endure overseas
but making no mention of the women in Cook County Jail in Chicago who are
forced to rinse their sanitary napkins out for re-use. Those same activists
condemn it as undemocratic for the U.S. to topple the leader of a foreign
country but will not say a word about the countless numbers of Black leaders
who have been taken out throughout this country's history.
How do I recognize the activities of the continuing counter-insurgency? Why
don't I have to wait for some Oliver Stone type movie to come out for me to
say that something is a conspiracy or a coincidence? Because I went to the
same schools that Brother Malcolm went to. He learned Amerikkkan history
through its ghettos and prisons.
POSTSCRIPT:Fred Hampton Jr. is the son of the legendary 21-year-old Chicago
Black Panther leader Fred Hampton Sr., who was assassinated by the
government in 1969, just before Mama Akua gave birth to Young Chairman Fred.
Email JR at fire@sfbayview.com
Chicago - In the last few days, I've been witnessing intense signs of the
state's counter-insurgency efforts - from seeing an increased number of
agent provocateurs to seeing marked and unmarked pig cars trailing me to the
most recent event, an attempt to assassinate me on Thursday, Sept. 26. My
mother, Comrade Akua Njeri, and Sister Tuere and I were riding on a heavily
populated street on the South Side of Chicago. All of a sudden, at 8:50
p.m., about five shots hit the back window of our vehicle. The only sound
was the shattering of glass, with a slight pop that sounded something like a
silencer was being utilized. We were all able to escape without injury.