<html>
<body>
<font size=3><b>
<a href="http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/04/21/18403248.php">
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/04/21/18403248.php<br><br>
<br>
</a></font><h3><b>
<a href="http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/04/21//police">Police
State</a></b></h3><font size=3><b>Persecuting Panthers<br>
</b>by Kiilu Nyasha ( <a href="mailto:Kiilu2@sbcglobal.net">Kiilu2 [at]
sbcglobal.net</a> ) <br>
<i>Saturday Apr 21st, 2007 11:59 PM <br><br>
</i></font>
<dl>
<dd>Last year, the Black Panther Party celebrated its 40th anniversary,
garnering incredible media coverage of its history and the positive
impact it had on communities here and around the world. Three months
after the 40th anniversary celebration, on Jan. 23, 2007, the police in
New York, Florida and California arrested Francisco Torres, Harold
Taylor, Richard Brown, Richard O’Neal, Ray Boudreaux and Henry Watson
Jones on charges related to the 1971 killing of a San Francisco police
officer – and also charged two political prisoners, Herman Bell and Jalil
Muntaqim (Anthony Bottom). They’re both parole eligible after over 30
years in prison.<br><br>
<br>
</dl><h1><b>Persecuting Panthers<br><br>
</b></h1><font size=3> <br>
</font><h2><b>The San Francisco 8 and the ongoing war against the Black
Panther Party<br><br>
</b></h2><font size=3> by Kiilu Nyasha<br><br>
Last year, the <a href="http://www.itsabouttimebpp.com">Black
Panther Party</a> celebrated its 40th anniversary, garnering incredible
media coverage of its history and the positive impact it had on
communities here and around the world. Numerous activities across the
country preceded a very successful Oakland reunion that drew Panthers
from as far away as Tanzania. One of the most notable events was “The
Black Panther Rank and File” exhibit and series of forums at San
Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. It ran from March 17 to July
2, 2006, and turned out to be the best attended exhibit at the Center
since its opening.<br><br>
Little did we know that the same forces that attacked and destroyed the
Party were busy planning still more attacks on its former members. (Note:
The BPP no longer exists, but in keeping with our slogan, “once a
Panther, always a Panther,” I’ll not be referring to our brothers as
“ex-Panthers.”)<br><br>
Three months after the 40th anniversary celebration, on Jan. 23,
2007, the police in New York, Florida and California arrested Francisco
Torres, Harold Taylor, Richard Brown, Richard O’Neal, Ray Boudreaux and
Henry Watson Jones on charges related to the 1971 killing of a San
Francisco police officer – and also charged two political prisoners,
<a href="http://www.prisonactivist.org/pps+pows/bell.html">Herman
Bell</a> and <a href="http://www.freejalil.com/">Jalil Muntaqim (Anthony
Bottom)</a>. They’re both parole eligible after over 30 years in
prison.<br><br>
Ten brothers would have been arrested had it not been for the fact
that one, Ronald Stanley Bridgeforth, has not been seen or heard from in
over 30 years and is still being sought. And John Bowman, known as JB,
one of the five Grand Jury Resisters, is deceased.<br><br>
JB died last Dec. 23 of terminal cancer that went undiagnosed by
this medical system until in its advanced stage. The FBI literally
hounded him to his death and beyond; they sought to open his casket –
there wasn’t one; he was cremated – they interrogated family members and
the funeral director and they even visited the crematorium voicing
suspicions that he had escaped. Unbelievable!<br><br>
We must be clear that this witch hunt, part of the war on terror,
is really a war on resistance to an increasingly fascist, imperialist
government. It’s a war on the best of our kind, heroes and sheroes who
resist racist repression and fight for the survival and liberation of our
people.<br><br>
One such hero was JB, who joined the Party in 1967 in San
Francisco, where he grew up. I met him in ‘69 or ‘70 in New Haven and
grew to respect and love him dearly. Warm and caring, he was truly
dedicated to serving and uplifting Black people and did so for 40 years.
A founder of <a href="http://www.allofusornone.org/">All of Us or
None</a> and the <a href="http://www.cdhrsupport.org">Committee to Defend
Human Rights (CDHR)</a>, he was a community organizer in Oklahoma City
until his death.<br>
<br>
The four other Grand Jury Resisters – Brown, O’Neal, Taylor and
Boudreaux – were subpoenaed in 2003 to testify before a San Francisco
grand jury in what was the opening salvo of this bogus case. Refusing to
testify, they were all jailed for the jury’s duration.<br><br>
Upon release, in view of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal and the
ongoing violation of their constitutional and human rights, they felt
compelled to alert the public to the similarity of tortures perpetrated
behind walls in the U.S. So they founded CDHR and began touring the
States to educate people about
<a href="http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/COINTELPRO/cointelpro-methods.html">
COINTELPRO</a>, the
<a href="http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html">Patriot
Act</a>, and this latest witch hunt.<br><br>
Earlier witch hunts of Panthers included the capture and framing
of
<a href="http://www.fantompowa.net/Flame/hougland_geronimo.htm">geronimo
ji Jaga (Pratt)</a> who suffered 27 years in California prisons until
exonerated in 1996, winning a subsequent lawsuit;
<a href="http://www.semiotexte.com/authors/wahad.html">Dhoruba bin Wahad
(Richard Moore)</a>, who did 19 years before exoneration and a
million-dollar settlement in 2000; the NY 21, who were all found “not
guilty!”; <a href="http://www.thejerichomovement.com/jamil.html">Jamil
Al-Amin ( H. Rap Brown)</a>, now a Muslim imam, doing life in a Georgia
state prison while appealing his wrongful conviction;
<a href="http://www.thejerichomovement.com/sadiki.html">Kamau Sadiki
(Freddie Hilton)</a>, sentenced to life in 2003 after refusing to
cooperate in the pursuit of <a href="http://www.assatashakur.org">Assata
Shakur</a>, now living in Cuba, the exiled mother of his daughter. In
2005, New Jersey’s governor increased the bounty on Assata to $1
million!<br><br>
Nor can we forget the state’s plot to execute
<a href="http://www.freemumia.org">Mumia Abu Jamal</a> who has been
locked on Pennsylvania’s death row for 25 years for a murder he clearly
didn’t commit. He would be dead – death warrants have been signed twice
already – were it not for the power of the people. Not to mention
countless other Panthers imprisoned for up to 40 years.<br><br>
The original investigation of the Ingleside murder of Sgt. John
Young began with the arrest in New Orleans, in 1973, of JB, Taylor and
Ruben Scott. Two San Francisco detectives interrogated and supervised
their torture by New Orleans police for several days.<br><br>
The brothers were isolated from one another, stripped naked and
handcuffed to a chair, covered with boiling hot blankets and plastic bags
tied over their heads threatening suffocation. Cattle prods were used to
inflict electric shocks to their genitals and anus, and they were
brutally beaten with blackjacks and other objects. Taylor described being
kicked in the back of the neck unconscious, then kicked back awake four
or five times in an hour.<br><br>
All tolled, the prolonged tortures left the brothers with
permanent injuries, including damaged ear drums, chronic pain, knee
problems, arthritis and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms such as
trouble sleeping and nightmares.<br><br>
At that time, they all made torture-induced confessions, but such
“evidence” is neither credible nor legal. So in 1975, a San Francisco
judge dismissed the case. It’s outrageous that these same charges are
again being brought against eight elders ranging in age from 55 to 71,
all of whom face conspiracy charges on the Ingleside incident and
numerous other activities between 1968 and 1973.<br><br>
It was during this very period that 41 FBI field offices were
advised by a memo from the FBI director to “be alert to have them
arrested” on virtually any charges they could trump up … the same period
when Panthers were struggling to meet people’s basic needs through free
breakfast programs, clothing drives, health clinics, sickle cell testing,
alternative schools, organizing against rent hikes and substandard
housing, and advocating for community control of local police to stop
them from murdering and brutalizing our people.<br><br>
This resurrected case must be understood through the historical
lens of the FBI’s
<a href="http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/COINTELPRO/cointelpro.html">
Cointelpro</a> (counterintelligence program) working in concert with
local police departments. These forces, led by FBI Director J. Edgar
Hoover, targeted the Panthers for neutralization (incarceration,
assassination or isolation) with an official reign of terror encompassing
1968-1973, or until the
<a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6808">
Weather Underground</a> raided FBI files and exposed its illegal
operations.<br><br>
Under the leadership of the late Sen. Frank Church, hearings were
held resulting in passage of the Freedom of Information Act of 1973,
allowing individuals to obtain copies of their secret files. This
prompted lawsuits against the government and others. For example, I was
one of numerous plaintiffs in a wiretap lawsuit settled out of court in
New Haven against the City, the FBI, the Chief of Police and the phone
company. Today, that wouldn’t be possible, because wiretapping is legal
under the
<a href="http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html">PATRIOT
Act</a>.<br><br>
By 1969, 28 Panthers had been murdered by police and by 1973, at
least 32 Panthers, including Field Marshall
<a href="http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/rodneyjackson.html">
George Jackson</a>, had been killed by so-called law enforcement. The
most blatant was the premeditated assassination of
<a href="http://www.blackcommentator.com/67/67_hampton.html">Fred
Hampton</a> and <a href="http://www.markclarklegacy.com/home.htm">Mark
Clark</a> in Chicago. A million-dollar civil lawsuit was won, thanks to
Attorney Dennis Cunningham, but not one policeman who participated in the
predawn deadly assault on the Panthers was ever even indicted.<br><br>
Fast forward to 1985, when Philadelphia police bombed
<a href="http://www.onamove.com">MOVE’s</a> home, killing six adults and
five children of the Africa family. A lawsuit settlement but no
indictments. To 1999, when New York police murder innocent, unarmed
<a href="http://www.amadoudiallofoundation.org/lifehistory.html">Amadou
Diallo</a> with 41 shots. Not one conviction! To 2007, when three unarmed
Black men were shot, Sean Bell fatally, in a hail of 50 police bullets.
Manslaughter charges. And we could go on and on documenting police
murders of innocent Black folks, often with complete impunity, only paid
suspensions (vacations) for the murderers and payoffs to grieving
families.<br><br>
Cointelpro under Nixon has regrouped under Bush with Attorney
General John Ashcroft’s new, legal counterintelligence program, the
<a href="http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html">PATRIOT
Act</a>, to begin anew the persecution of Panthers. In fact, before
leaving office, Ashcroft sought to reopen all cases of police killings
dating back to the ‘60s.<br><br>
Who are the SF 8?</b> <br>
Collectively, the San Francisco 8 are a group of Black community
activists who served the people in the BPP activities mentioned above.
They are fathers, grandfathers and even great grandfathers.<br><br>
Richard Brown, 65,</b> has worked for decades right here in San
Francisco’s Fillmore District. “He was at community meetings at night, on
boards, in the neighborhood, working for affordable housing. His job was
never 9 to 5.” said the Rev. Arnold Townsend, who has known Brown for 40
years. Employed for 20 years as a program coordinator at the Ella Hill
Hutch Community Center, he’s also a founding member of the African
American Police Community Relations Board and several other neighborhood
organizations. “He has a fantastic rapport with the young people,” Jim
Queen, a commissioner with the city’s Juvenile Probation Department, told
the San Francisco Chronicle. “He grew up there and had a special way with
the kids, a stern tough-love way. He demanded high standards and made
sure he was always available to them.”<br><br>
Likewise, the Chronicle noted that Richard O’Neal, 57,</b> “who
has two grown sons ... has worked for the past few years at the Southeast
Community Center. ... People who work there said they were stunned by his
arrest, recalling him as a kind and gentle man who always had a smile on
his face and would at times stay late to fix lights or other things.”
Veronica Hunnicutt, the dean of the Southeast college campus, exclaimed,
“Oh, my God, we’re just utterly stunned. It’s taken us all aback because
he is such a nice man. He is a trusted employee who would do anything to
help us. I hope they look at all of the information, because this man has
been wonderful out here. He would take the shirt off his back to try to
help you.” O’Neal has only been charged with “conspiracy.”<br><br>
Ray Boudreaux, 64,</b> a Vietnam veteran who resided in Altadena,
Calif., was employed for the past 25 years as an electrician for the
County of Los Angeles and did community work until his arrest. “People
come to me sometimes as a peacemaker. And all of that has to do with all
of my experience.”<br><br>
<a href="http://www.prisonactivist.org/pps+pows/bell.html">Herman
Bell</a>, 59,</b> of Mississippi, and
<a href="http://www.freejalil.com/">Jalil Muntaqim (Anthony Bottom)</a>,
55,</b> of San Francisco, joined the Party in the Bay Area, where they
began their long service to the people. Captured in the early 1970s,
along with
<a href="http://prisonactivist.org/pps+pows/nuh-washington">Albert Nuh
Washington</a> and Gabriel and Francisco Torres, they were framed for the
killing of two policemen in New York City in May 1971. I saw Jalil and
Nuh in the San Francisco court when they were arraigned in 1971. In 2007,
it’s déjà vu!<br><br>
Originally the NY 5, their first trial ended in a hung jury. In a
second trial, the Torres brothers’ charges were dismissed, but perjured
and coerced testimony – including that of Ruben Scott, tortured in New
Orleans – resulted in convictions of the remaining brothers, who got 25
to life and became known as the
<a href="http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/profiles/ny3.html">NY 3</a>.
The trial judge had refused to hear any testimony about Cointelpro and
its campaign to secure convictions by any means, including breaking laws.
In April of 2000, after 29 years of incarceration, Nuh Washington passed
away, ending a long battle with cancer.<br><br>
Herman and Jalil have maintained close ties to their families here
in the Bay. In 2000, Jalil was featured in an Essence magazine article on
father-daughter relationships. Both continued to grow and contribute to
society despite being locked up all these decades.<br><br>
They earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees, tutored and counseled
prisoners, and worked with community activists outside to organize the
<a href="http://www.prisonactivist.org/pps+pows/vg_update.html">Victory
Gardens Project</a>, the urban-rural connection to plant, harvest and
distribute free food to various ‘hoods along the East Coast. This
life-giving project enjoyed eight successful seasons. Jalil is also the
founder of the <a href="http://www.thejerichomovement.com">Jericho
Movement</a> to free political prisoners.<br><br>
Harold Taylor, 58,</b> was living in Panama City, Fla., where he
remained committed to his principles and community. He had joined the
Black Panther Party in Los Angeles. In a 2006 interview with Harold and
JB on <a href="http://www.kpfa.org">KPFA</a>, Harold described how the
FBI “used a lot of informants, agents and provocateurs to entrap people.”
In fact, the FBI had infiltrated 67 agents into the BPP and deployed 700
informants nationwide. “In 2003 the detectives that were responsible for
my torture [in New Orleans] came to my house to try and question me. I
have not been the same since,” said Taylor.<br><br>
Henry W. (Hank) Jones, 71,</b> of Altadena, a responsible family
and community elder, was employed as a real estate appraiser before his
arrest. “I [have lived] under the constant threat of another ...
incarceration. In essence I have been robbed of peace of mind, life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” said Jones when in 2003 he was
subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury and resisted.<br><br>
Francisco Torres, 58,</b> was born in Puerto Rico and raised in
New York City. A Vietnam veteran, he’s been an activist since his
discharge from the military in 1969 in veterans’ and community affairs
and has worked with troubled youth right up until his recent arrest and
extradition to San Francisco from Queens, N.Y.<br><br>
Six of these brothers are being kept in jail needlessly on bails
of $3 million each</b> – reduced from $5 million for equity! Where are
all the wealthy Black entertainers and sports figures who claim to want
to give back to their communities? Well here’s a golden opportunity for
you to give back to our community activists! They present no risk of
flight, they’re highly respected members of their communities and they
should be returned to their families as soon as possible. Equity in
property can be used to secure release on bail without any permanent
sacrifice of personal or community resources.<br><br>
Hearings will be held in the next weeks to request a lowering of
bail for these brothers, making it more realistic to secure their release
during these lengthy “conspiracy” hearings. The next hearing is Friday,
April 27, 1:30 p.m., at 850 Bryant St., San Francisco. A noon rally will
precede the hearing. Join us!<br><br>
</b> For more information on the SF 8 and how you can help, please
go to
<a href="http://www.CDHRsupport.org">http://www.CDHRsupport.org</a>.<br>
<br>
Free the SF 8, Mumia Abu-Jamal and all political prisoners<br>
</b><a href="http://www.cdhrsupport.org">http://www.cdhrsupport.org</a>
<br><br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3 color="#FF0000">The Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br>
(415) 863-9977<br>
</font><font size=3>
<a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.freedomarchives.org</a></font></body>
</html>