years ago. The New Afrikan Creed states that “the fundamental reason our oppression continues is that We, as a people, lack the power to control our lives.” Those who control the Empire consider our pursuit of that power to be a crime. When white people use terroristic violence to maintain their power over us, the government has always turned a blind eye to it, from the slave overseers to lynchings, from the destruction of independent Black towns to killing our people for pursuing the right to vote, and even on down to white supremacist inspired mass shootings in 2019. When the New Afrikan people seek to gain control over our lives and defend ourselves from the violence of white terrorists, we are painted as criminals. The story remains the same as it has always been. What your enemy is afraid of shows you where they are vulnerable. In the March 1968 memo from J. Edgar Hoover explaining the goals of the FBI’s CoIntelPro, he said he aimed to prevent militant Black Nationalist groups from gaining respectability, forming coalitions with one another, and bringing youth into the movementii. These are exactly the things that we should be doing in response to the vulnerable position that we find ourselves in within this country. The entire Black community must be organized into the “militant Black Nationalist group.” Forming Community Self-Defense Networks is the way for us to defend ourselves against the violence of our enemies as well as to assert some control over the institutions in our community. Our aim is not to go out and hurt anyone who hasn’t hurt us, whether they be civilians or soldiers (military or cops). Our duty is to protect ourselves from those who seek to harm us, oppress us, and prevent us from organizing for our liberation. Since the initial controversy over the BIE label, the FBI has officially changed its language in 2019. Their new term is “Racially Motivated Violent Extremism,” which they say doesn’t differentiate between Blacks and whites. However, their description of Racially Motivated Violent Extremists is that they “use force or violence in violation of criminal law to perceived racism or injustice in American society, or in an effort to establish a separate Black homeland or autonomous black social institutions, communities, or governing organizations within the United States.” Though they claim to have changed their tune, it’s still all about preventing us from getting free. In the spirit of the great philosopher DJ Khaled: THEY DON’T WANT US TO FREE THE LAND, SO WE HAD TO GO AND FREE THE LAND. #BlackControlOfBlackLives
Resources for further reading: - https://theintercept.com/series/the-threat-within/ - https://www.democracynow.org/topics/cointelpro