[Pnews] Black activist jailed for his Facebook posts speaks out about secret FBI surveillance

[Prisoner News]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/11/rakem-balogun-interview-black-identity-extremists-fbi-surveillance?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other 



  Black activist jailed for his Facebook posts speaks out about secret
  FBI surveillance

Sam Levin - May 11, 2018
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rakem Balogun thought he was dreaming when armed agents in tactical gear 
stormed his apartment. Startled awake by a large crash and officers 
screaming commands, he soon realized his nightmare was real, and he and 
his 15-year-old son were forced outside of their Dallas home, wearing 
only underwear.

Handcuffed and shaking in the cold wind, Balogun thought a 
misunderstanding must have led the FBI 
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/fbi> to his door on 12 December 
2017. The father of three said he was shocked to later learn that agents 
investigating “domestic terrorism” had been monitoring him for years and 
were arresting him that day in part because of his Facebook posts 
criticizing police.

“It’s tyranny at its finest,” said Balogun, 34. “I have not been doing 
anything illegal for them to have surveillance on me. I have not hurt 
anyone or threatened anyone.”

Balogun spoke to the Guardian this week in his first interview since he 
was released from prison after five months locked up and denied bail 
while US attorneys tried and failed to prosecute him, accusing him of 
being a threat to law enforcement and an illegal gun owner.

Balogun, who lost his home and more while incarcerated, is believed to 
be the first 
<http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/01/30/is-a-court-case-in-texas-the-first-prosecution-of-a-black-identity-extremist/> 
person targeted and prosecuted under a secretive US surveillance effort 
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/06/fbi-black-identity-extremists-racial-profiling> 
to track so-called “black identity extremists”. In a leaked August 2017 
report 
<https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4067711/BIE-Redacted.pdf> 
from the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Analysis Unit, officials claimed that 
there had been a “resurgence in ideologically motivated, violent 
criminal activity” stemming from African Americans’ “perceptions of 
police brutality”.

The counter-terrorism assessment provided minimal data or evidence of 
threats against police, but discussed a few isolated incidents, notably 
the case of Micah Johnson 
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/08/dallas-police-shooting-gunman-kill-white-officers> 
who killed five officers 
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/07/dallas-shooting-police-officers-protest-alton-sterling-philando-castile> 
in Texas. The report sparked backlash 
<https://cbc.house.gov/uploadedfiles/cbc_rm_thompson_cummings_conyers_letter_to_fbi_re_intel_assessment.pdf> 
from civil rights groups and some Democrats 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/us/politics/fbi-black-identity-extremist-report.html>, 
who feared the government would use the broad designation to prosecute 
activists and groups like Black Lives Matter 
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/17/black-lives-matter-birth-of-a-movement>.

Balogun, who was working full-time for an IT company when he was 
arrested, has long been an activist, co-founding Guerrilla Mainframe and 
the Huey P Newton Gun Club, two groups fighting police brutality and 
advocating for the rights of black gun owners. Some of the work included 
coordinating meals for the homeless, youth picnics and self-defense 
classes – but that’s not what interested the FBI.

Investigators began monitoring Balogun, whose legal name is Christopher 
Daniels, after he participated in an Austin, Texas, rally in March 2015 
protesting against law enforcement, special agent Aaron Keighley 
testified in court.

The FBI, Keighley said, learned of the protest from a video on Infowars, 
a far-right site run by the commentator Alex Jones, known for spreading 
false news 
<https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/mar/13/infowars-alex-jones-charlottesville-lawsuit-conspiracy-theory> 
and conspiracy theories 
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/28/florida-shooting-conspiracy-theories-youtube-takedown>.

The reference to Infowars stunned Balogun: “They’re using a conspiracy 
theorist video as a reason to justify their tyranny? That is a big insult.”

Keighley made no mention of Balogun’s specific actions at the rally, but 
noted the marchers’ anti-police statements, such as “oink oink bang 
bang” and “the only good pig is a pig that’s dead”. The agent also 
mentioned Balogun’s Facebook posts calling a murder suspect in a police 
officer’s death a “hero” and expressing “solidarity” with the man who 
killed officers in Texas when he posted: “They deserve what they got.”

Keighley, however, later admitted the FBI had no evidence of Balogun 
making any specific threats about harming police.

At the time of his Facebook posts, Balogun said he was angry and 
“venting” about the high-profile cases of police killing innocent black 
men and women in America, including Alton Sterling 
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/07/alton-sterling-death-ive-been-sick-ever-since-they-murdered-him> 
and Philando Castile 
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/19/philando-castille-police-violence-black-americans>. 
He was particularly disgusted with the way the media and law enforcement 
officials portrayed the killings as justified and said that when he 
wrote those posts “I just mimicked their reactions to our killings.”

In a letter Balogun wrote to the Guardian from jail, he said he felt he 
had been “abducted” by the FBI, a “prisoner of war on free speech and 
the right to bear arms”. Authorities were targeting him for promoting 
black-led community groups and fighting “government abuse”, he wrote, 
adding he was never a threat to anyone: “Violence is the method of our 
oppressor, our method is hard work, love and unity.”

When he was arrested, police confiscated his .38-caliber handgun and an 
unloaded AK-style assault rifle – and also, he said, took his book 
Negroes with Guns by the civil rights leader Robert F Williams.

“They were really desperate,” Balogun said. “This is pretty much like 
Stalin 1950 – ‘You show me the man. I show you the crime.’”

The prosecution’s case eventually unraveled – but in the process, so did 
Balogun’s life.


    ‘Punished for political activity’

The government’s own crime data 
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/16/us-police-deaths-decline-2015-fbi-data> 
has largely undermined 
<https://www.aclu.org/blog/racial-justice/fbi-setting-stage-increased-surveillance-black-activists?redirect=blog/fbi-setting-stage-increased-surveillance-black-activists> 
the notion of a growing threat from a “black identity extremist” [BIE] 
movement, a term invented by law enforcement 
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/22/identity-extremists-donald-trump>. 
In addition to an overall decline in police deaths 
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2017/12/20/crime-police-killings-both-down-in-2017/?utm_term=.754d33785427>, 
most individuals who shoot and kill officers are white men 
<http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/king-cops-killed-white-men-conservatives-silent-article-1.2632965>, 
and white supremacists 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/09/california-police-white-supremacists-counter-protest> 
have been responsible 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/opinion/finsbury-park-terrorist-attack-far-right.html> 
for nearly 75% of deadly extremist attacks since 2001.

The BIE surveillance and failed prosecution of Balogun, first reported 
<http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/06/the-fbi-has-identified-a-new-domestic-terrorist-threat-and-its-black-identity-extremists/> 
by Foreign Policy 
<http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/01/30/is-a-court-case-in-texas-the-first-prosecution-of-a-black-identity-extremist/>, 
have drawn comparisons to the government’s discredited efforts to 
monitor and disrupt activists during the civil rights movement, 
particularly the FBI counterintelligence program 
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/19/preemptive-prosecution-muslims-cointelpro> 
called Cointelpro 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/07/fbi-office-break-in-1971-come-forward-documents>, 
which targeted Martin Luther King Jr, the NAACP and the Black Panther 
party 
<https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/feb/16/black-panther-party-marvel-film-jail>. 


Michael German, a former FBI agent and fellow with the Brennan Center 
for Justice’s liberty and national security program, said the BIE 
assessment 
<https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/fbi-new-fantasy-black-identity-extremists> 
was “extraordinarily overbroad” and that the concept was spreading to 
law enforcement agencies across the US as more black activists were 
facing surveillance 
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/18/facebook-comments-arrest-prosecution> 
and police harassment.

Authorities have not publicly labeled Balogun a BIE, but their language 
in court resembled the warnings in the FBI’s file. German said the case 
also appeared to utilize a “disruption strategy 
<https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/manufacturing-black-separatist-threat-and-other-dubious-claims-bias-newly>” 
in which the FBI targets lower-level arrests and charges to interfere 
with suspects’ lives as the agency struggles to build terrorism cases.

“Sometimes when you couldn’t prove somebody was a terrorist, it’s 
because they weren’t a terrorist,” he said, adding that prosecutors’ 
argument that Balogun was too dangerous to be released on bail was 
“astonishing”.

“It seems this effort was designed to punish him for his political 
activity rather than actually solve any sort of security issue.”

The official one-count indictment against Balogun was illegal firearm 
possession, with prosecutors alleging he was prohibited from owning a 
gun due to a 2007 misdemeanor domestic assault case in Tennessee. But 
this month, a judge rejected the charge, saying the firearms law did not 
apply.

The US attorney’s office and the FBI declined to comment.


For Balogun, who said that the Tennessee case stemmed from a dispute 
with a girlfriend and that he was pressured to plead guilty to get out 
of jail, the decision felt like a “victory”.

But since his release one week ago, Balogun has also been forced to 
confront the harsh reality of life post-incarceration: he lost his 
vehicle, job and home; his son was forced to move and transfer schools 
and Balogun missed much of the first year of his newborn daughter’s life.

“This has been a nightmare for my entire family,” he said, adding that 
he was still recovering from the monotony and isolation of 
incarceration: “It was like living like a dog confined to a small 
backyard.”

Balogun said he also had to accept the fact that the government would 
probably continue to monitor to him and could seek new ways to disrupt 
his life. But the threat wouldn’t stop him from organizing and speaking 
out, he added: “As long as my community needs me to serve them, I’ll be 
there.”


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