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<a href="http://www.blackcommentator.com/sendstudio/link.php?M=343239&N=678&L=255&F=H">
http://www.blackcommentator.com/</a><br><br>
</font>Not in America:<br>
Review of the Documentary <i>Cointelpro 101<br>
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Dr. Lenore J. Daniels – Black Commentator – 10/21/2010<br>
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There will be no swastikas this time but seas of red, white and blue
flags and Christian crosses. There will be no stiff-armed salutes,
but recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance. There will be no brown
shirts but nocturnal visits from Homeland Security. <br>
Chris Hedges, “How Democracy Dies: Lessons from a Master”<br>
<br>
A few weeks ago, I came across an ad inviting college graduates to
consider working for Homeland Security. For the college graduate,
strapped with negotiating the repayment of student loans while struggling
with minimum wages as servers at McDonalds, the starting salary of 35,000
is appealing and even more so for those with specialized skills in
technology. <br>
<br>
These college graduates are often not war bound as are their less
fortunate “undereducated” and “unskilled” contemporaries. It is not hard
to envision an entry level or managerial position with Homeland Security.
<br>
<br>
A lack of history is the unstated requirement. No Daniel Ellsberg
(after or before the Pentagon Papers) need apply. And Homeland Security
does not have to worry. No Daniel Ellsberg of any kind will
applyand they know it!<br>
<br>
Orwellian grown-up-children only! <br>
<div align="center">***<br>
</div>
Fairly familiar with the story of how this government targeted activists
for justice for the purposes of neutralizing social change, I realized
after viewing the documentary <i>Cointelpro 101</i> that the Left rarely
has presented the Puerto Rican, the Chicano/Mexicano, Indigenous, and
Black as efforts on the part of the government to destabilize and silence
people of color. The government’s COINTELPRO program was nothing short of
an assault and that assault, <i>Cointelpro 101</i> makes clear, was
direct, brutal, and criminal. And why not? <br>
<br>
The collection of campaigns to neutralize the democratic progress in the
U.S., COINTELPRO, is an extension of this nation’s involvement in the
practice of genocide, conquest, colonization, and enslavement. The
continued incarcerations of freedom fighters after 20 or 30 years as well
as the incarceration of millions of Indigenous, Black, and
Chicano/Mexicano and even the recent FBI raids in Chicago and Minneapolis
targeting predominantly white activists are examples of the continuation
of COINTEPRO today.<br>
<br>
The goal of COINTELPRO was to “sow division and distrust” among citizens
in a nation claiming for itself a model nation of democracy.
COINTELPRO, as this film showswas/is not only the criminal activities of
a paranoid president or an even more bizarre FBI chief.<br>
<br>
The producers of <i>Cointelpro 101</i> (Freedom Archives, 2010) have
assembled documentary footage, photos, and commentaries from Jose Lopez,
Priscilla Falcon, Ward Churchill, Kathleen Cleaver, Geronimo Pratt, and
others to present the historical and often simultaneous implementation of
U.S. war strategies beginning in the 1950s to conquer the hearts and
minds of the core Left in this nation. <i>Cointelpro 101</i> does not
preachbut it teaches. <br>
<br>
Beginning (as the film admits) with the “lesser known” story of the
Puerto Rican movement for independence, the U.S. government since its
conquest of Puerto Rico in 1898, sought to eliminate the peoples’
struggle against colonization and imperialism. The film’s unflinching
representation of the tactics used by the government leaves no doubt that
U.S. citizens were under attack from within the Empire. Originally, the
FBI targeted the Puerto Rican National Liberation Movement. But, as
<i>Cointelpro 101</i> shows, what began in Puerto Rico in the 1950s
expanded to include Puerto Rican grassroots leaders and organizations in
major Northern urban areas. The FBI compiled 165,000 files against Puerto
Rican leaders and organization members. As the Puerto Rican
Cultural Center activist Jose Lopez explains, the FBI had free reign to
infiltrate organizations, blacklist, and arrest, incarcerate, and kill
activists who attempted to protest against U.S. colonial
policies. <br>
<br>
By the early 1970s, the FBI targeted American indifference. With
the aid of the media, the FBI created a red-alert narrative warning that
the “minorities” are coming! <i>Indifference</i> took a stance
<i>against</i> marauders! In turn, as <i>Cointelpro 101</i> shows, the
government green-lighted a pogrom of infiltrating, wiretapping, framing,
and incarcerating activists groups everywhere and anywhere in the U.S.
<br>
<br>
The Chicano/Mexicano struggle for farmer’s and immigration rights did not
begin in the 1960s but an extension of the conquest of Mexico by the U.S.
government. Thanks to the <i>goodwill </i>of local law enforcement and
(yes) right-winged vigilante groups, the FBI build up its attackwith
willing bedfellows. (The KKK, other pre-Tea Party citizens, and law
enforcement, were, not many years ago, one and the same militia force,
with individuals members of both groups). As activists Ricardo Romero,
Francisco “Kiko” Martinez, and Professor Falcon comment, this joint
operation became an effective killing machine. <i>Cointelpro 101</i>
presents us with names and photos of freedom fighters, one after another,
(Linda Montoya, an educator, Rito Conales and Antonio Cordoba, both
“riddled” with bullets, Ricardo Falcon, 22 years old, and six young
activists blow to bits in a car bomb)outright murderedmost all in the
early 1970s. <i>What crime did these young people commit? <br>
</i> <br>
The “American public” has yet to confront this nation’s practice of
genocide against Indigenous peoples, and few understand how the
government’s assault on the people at Wounded Knee ultimately resulted in
more oppression and the framing of American Indian Movement members,
including Leonard Peltier. Fewer still understand how the U.S.
government trained and funded “goon squads” to orchestra a reign of
terror predominantly against the elderly leaders and women and children.
(How different is this war tactic from the one in which citizens in
Chile, Guatemala, for example, are trained at the School of the Americas
to return to their homeland as military and police officials charged with
terror and murder). When young AIM members were called in to protect the
people, the U.S. government speeded to the reservations with armored
tanks and high-powered weaponryin support of its hired goon squadsnot
the elderly, women, and children. The Constitutional Rights of Indigenous
people was, states Professor Ward Churchill, suspended. <br>
<i> <br>
Cointelpro 101</i> challenges the viewer to recognize the connections as
well-planned and, most important, as Churchill states, “illegal”
destructive strategy to eliminate people, a strategy no less horrifying
than that one executed by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s. In America,
Churchill states, the government waged a counterinsurgent war against
activists. Counterinsurgency, anti-war activist, Laura Whitehorn added,
on U.S. soil is “supposed to be illegal.” <br>
<i> <br>
--Not in America!<br>
</i> <br>
But in America, the strategy to eliminate activists engaged in the fight
for justice and social change had to also target the American public with
a campaign labeling these activists criminals, conspirators against
innocent Americans and the red, white, and blue. In other words, the
American public had to be eternized by the language government officials
and the media employed to demonize Puerto Rican, Chicano-Mexicano,
Indigenous, and Black activists and their communities. <br>
<i> <br>
Take cover in your homes while we battle these monsters in the streets
and in their adobes.</i> <br>
<br>
COINTELPRO, the film insists, the U.S. government inflicted violence and
used terror on U.S. citizens (long before 9-11) as is its strategy
against what it perceives as a threat to its racial, social, and economic
dominance anyone else in the world. <br>
Inspired by the Civil Rights movement on the Left, these movements in
Puerto Rico, in the Chicano-Mexicano communities, on Indigenous’ lands
challenged their right to free speech, to organize, and to protest for
social change, and the government’s response involved massive efforts on
the part of hundreds of FBI agents, local law enforcement operations, and
informants. A drugged-out-on-fear American public did not notice and did
not care if the government cleaned the treasury to pay for an insurgency
against American citizens of color. <br>
<br>
The movement that began in the South, that is, the Hoover movement,
spread throughout the country. J. Edgar Hoover’s fear of the Civil Rights
Movement and its leaders, Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, spread,
too, to win the hearts and minds of white America. Because the
Civil Rights Movement, <i>Cointelpro 101</i> shows, had the “ability to
bring unity and to transform grassroots movements” into national
campaigns, Black leaders had to be “neutralized.” To understand U.S.
history is to recognize that enslavement of Africans and their
descendents was but one phase in the relationship between Blacks and the
U.S. government. The elimination of an enslaved Black was costly and
therefore employed as a strategy to instill terror in the masses of Black
workers and remove the treat of terror in the white community. But
the effort to <i>neutralize</i> Black Americans began the minute
Southerner confederate soldiers understood change in the South was on its
way, and free-roaming Blacks on the landscape was not the change Southern
citizens could live with and thrive. The official policy that spread
throughout the U.S. then became one that encouraged the servitude or the
neutralization of Black Americans.<br>
<br>
In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, African Americans were the most visible
and vocal population calling for social change. The work of Stokely
Carmichael (Kwame Ture) and Fannie Lou Hamer drew the attention of the
FBI’s COINTEPRO, who, as former Black Panther Geronimo Pratt explained,
organized an assault that began with SNCC. Other targets of
COINTELPRO included the Black Panthers and RAM. Leaders were
expungedshot deadin the streets, in their homes, or in the prisons as
the FBI infiltrated these organizations with agent provocateurs and
informants. Many under surveillance were framed, charged with
“crimes,” and forced to fight erroneous charges as “criminals.”
<br>
<br>
The Department of Justice, according to an ex-FBI agent, “learned
everything and about people in a political organization.” In 1968, while
protesters took to the streets. The Chicago Police department was
organizing the “Red Squad,” and, as police footage reveals, the function
of the Red Squad was to watch and ultimately infiltrate suspicious Black,
Latino as well as anti-war organizations in order to neutralize
leaders. Former Black Panther Kathleen Cleaver recalls the Key
Agitator Index, in other words, a list of grassroots and organization
leaders the FBI targeted for an early death. <br>
<br>
There is a moment in <i>Cointelpro 101</i> when a juror from the Geronimo
Pratt case, faces the camera: “We had no clue,” she admits, <br>
as to what the government could do or what they did do even tough Vietnam
was going on. You couldn’t believe that your own government was
doing that at home to one of its own citizens, to one of its own
veterans.<br>
Geronimo Pratt, a Vietnam veteran, joins and the Black Panthers and
becomes an instant target of COINTELPRO. <br>
<br>
That was America then…and this is America now…<br>
<br>
Homeland Security!<br>
<br>
“When those kinds of people are making decisions on what is politically
appropriate for the citizens to do, then we don’t have a democracy,”
states Kathleen Cleaver. COINTELPRO used taxpayers’ money to operate
illegal and criminal activities, explains Pratt, to declare victims
enemies of the people. Today, taxpayers fund the government’s strategy to
continue expanding its surveillance of an ever-expanding number of
activists and organizations within its borders and without while it
attempts to win the hearts and minds of the “American public” with
narratives profiling the “enemy.” <br>
<br>
The message: “If you dare to go out and make social change, you will be
punished” (Priscilla Falcon). <br>
<br>
Today, the operation is more sophisticated, states activist attorney Bob
Doyle. “It doesn’t have to be secret anymore.” As <i>Cointelpro
101</i> shows, anyone can be charged as a terrorist today if engaged in
radical politics. With the Patriot Act, adds Cleaver, there need not be a
crime. “People are just investigated, whisked off to prison, [then]
interrogated and tortured.” What was illegal under COINTELPRO is now
legal. “Now, that’s the law.” <br>
<i> <br>
Cointelpro 101</i> shows that the discovery of COINTEPRO files and the
Frank Church investigation barely fazed the government. How does the
government take it upon itself “the supervising of what is allowed
politically and what isn’t allowed politically?” asked Cleaver. <br>
<br>
The “shoot to kill” suspected American “terrorists” did not begin under
the Obama administration, but Obama’s selection assured the FBI and other
law enforcement agencies that the business of murdering justice and
democracy will progress. To what? What is that future envisioned by these
fellow citizens? <br>
<br>
All the voices who contribute to <i>Cointelpro 101</i> agree in one voice
that the U.S. government’s practice of injustice must be “dismantled” and
replaced “with something that reflects our interests, concern with our
well-being, and reflects a certain sort of respect for the dignity of our
communities and traditions, and us as individuals.” <br>
<br>
I watched <i>COINTELPRO 101 </i>thinking of the students who, while
preparing cover letters and resumes to send to Homeland Security,
inherited a perception of the <i>terrorists </i>homeland propaganda.
<br>
<br>
Students need to view this film. <br>
<i> <br>
Cointelpro 101</i> is a riveting recall of history for anyone who wants
to be inspired to work toward an end to the U.S. practice of terrorism.
Because it was not <i>then</i>: it is happening <i>still</i> in
America!<br>
<br>
To purchase the film or to learn more, contact: Claude Marks,
<a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.freedomarchives.org</a> or
<a href="mailto:info@freedomarchives.org">info@freedomarchives.org</a>.
Phone: 415 863-9977.<br><br>
<br><br>
<br>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3 color="#FF0000">Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#008000">415 863-9977<br><br>
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<a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">
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