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Oppression Breeds Resistance, Resistance Breeds Repression
by Michael Novick, Anti-Racist Action L.A./People Against Racist Terror
The night before the verdict came in at the trial of BART officer Johannes Mehserle for the murder of a young Black father, Oscar Grant III, the LAPD raided the home of Wolverine Shakur, a/k/a T.A.C.O. (Taking All Capitalists Out), founder of the Black Riders Liberation Party. Under the authority of the parole officer supervising T.A.C.O., they lined up and handcuffed five members and an associate of the BRLP who were present at the time. They detained a 10-year-old child and ransacked the home, taking personal possessions, a laptop computer and cell phone, and Black Riders literature. T.A.C.O. was taken into custody for alleged parole violations and taken to the hole at the Men's Central Jail in L.A., with the intention of transferring him back into state prison.
The alleged parole violations T.A.C.O. is accused of amount to violations of his civil, constitutional and human rights of free speech and freedom of association. They make it a crime for him to have Black Rider literature and Black comrades. Like the original charges, they are politically motivated and unjustified. T.A.C.O. is once again a political prisoner because of his advocacy of African Inter-communalism and self-defense. The parole officer has admitted that he was violating T.A.C.O. under instructions from higher-ups, and that T.A.C.O. was specifically charged with “sending the Black Riders to the Oscar Grant trial.” The Black Riders did indeed smash the media blockade of the Mehserle trial in Los Angeles, turning out in large numbers to post up outside the court in support of Oscar's family and to organize community people at the courthouse. They did attract immediate media and public attention with their strong, disciplined presence.
The LAPD had already announced that they had a “secret tactical plan” to handle the possibility of any “disruptions” in response to the verdict on Mehserle for the murder of Oscar Grant. They saw the Black Riders as a threat to the plans to let Mehserle get away with murder and to contain or deflect people's righteous anger. Part of the plan was the staged arrest of the so-called Grim Sleeper serial killer suspect timed for the day the verdict would come in, to distract attention and paint the LAPD as saviors of the community. The pre-emptive arrest of T.A.C.O. was designed to disrupt the Black Riders' organizing around the case, which was channeling people's anger into revolutionary consciousness. But the arrest failed to accomplish that goal.
The Black Riders continue organizing both independently and within the L.A. Coalition for Justice for Oscar Grant, which they helped develop. The BRLP, which had smashed at court the day before, came back strong the next day despite T.A.C.O.'s incarceration, when the verdict came down after shenanigans delayed it. Several Black Riders spoke at the community protest in Leimert Park, where a couple of hundred people came out for the rally that had been called in advance for 5:00 PM when the verdict came down, despite the pigs' efforts to disorient the Riders and the community. Everyone there stood with the Riders and understood the transparent tactics of the pigs in violating T.A.C.O.'s parole.
There is a long history of illegitimate, repressive tactics by the LAPD to try to squelch community resistance to police violence and abuse of power. Back in the day, the pigs launched their war on the original Black Panther Party for Self-Defense with the COINTELPRO assassination of Alprentice Bunchy Carter and John Huggins at UCLA. The LAPD were stymied in their attempt to assassinate other BPP members by the military planning of Geronimo ji Jaga. A strong base of community support came out into the streets when the LAPD attempted to kill the L.A. Panthers on 41st and Central, as the Chicago pigs had executed Fred Hampton and Mark Clark days before.
After Geronimo and the Panthers were taken down by COINTELPRO, the police infiltrated the Coalition Against Police Abuse (CAPA) organized by former Black Panther Michael Zinzun around the police killing of sister Eulia Love over an unpaid gas bill. One Black pig provocateur who was planted inside CAPA in an attempt to spy on the community and disrupt or discredit resistance was later rewarded with a promotion to the FBI. The LAPD was hit with a court injunction preventing such political espionage, and forced to pay million-dollar damages to Zinzun and others.
Police illegality and criminality continued after the LAPD “red squad” was ordered to disband and destroy its illegally obtained espionage files. One officer involved secretly moved the files to his own garage and then turned them over to Western Goals, a private right wing, pro-fascist “think tank” connected to the John Birch Society and the white supremacist movement. Still later, police agents infiltrated communist forces organizing in the projects, entering into illicit sexual relationships with people organizing against a May Day police killing in order to carry out their political espionage and dirty tricks.
When that was exposed through lawsuits, the police espionage and infiltration was then transferred to new anti-gang and anti-terrorist task forces, or to units steeped in criminality and violence like the CRASH units operating out of Rampart, Seventy-seventh, and other divisions. CRASH officers were involved in frame-ups, “bad” shootings justified with drop guns, coerced confessions, drug thefts and even bank robbery. Yet thanks to the same Judge Perry who presided over the Mehserle trial for killing Oscar Grant, the only cop who went to prison was the one who blew the whistle, turning state's evidence after he got caught.
But for a dozen years now, the Black Riders Liberation Party, and especially its founder, General T.A.C.O., have been the concerted target of police repression, frame-ups, assaults and COINTELPRO type tactics in Los Angeles and elsewhere in CA. The LAPD hates the Black Riders because of the Riders' love for the people, expressed in such concrete survival programs as the Watch-a-Pig program and their gang truce efforts. They once took T.A.C.O. into custody on traffic warrants, and threatened to kill him while he was hogtied and handcuffed. LAPD, along with LA and San Bernardino sheriff's deputies and federal agents with armored personnel carriers, battering rams, helicopters and assault weapons, staged a raid on the home of BRLP members in San Bernardino. They sealed off four square blocks in hopes of provoking an incident in which they could shoot and kill members of the Black Riders. They pointed guns at little children and their care-givers.
Finally, failing to ever infiltrate or deviate members of the BRLP, they sent an undercover police agent, posing as a outside Middle Eastern sympathizer who could provide weapons. They succeeded, through a process of entrapment and frame-up, in bringing charges of conspiracy to possess (non-existent) weapons against T.A.C.O. and two other members, known as the Black Rider Three. Even more so than in the Oscar Grant murder trial, there was a complete media white out of that case, even though it was brought as a Homeland Security/USA PATRIOT style indictment with outlandish claims that the BRLP was planning attacks on police stations (never brought as a criminal charge). It was as a result of a plea bargain on that case, through which T.A.C.O. obtained the release of his comrades, that T.A.C.O. was on parole. Thus he was subject to the arbitrary jurisdiction of a P.O. who enabled the LAPD to stage their raid. But like their previous attempts at repression, this too will fail. As Chairman Mao said, “To be attacked by the enemy is a good thing.” The pigs' tactics are a mark of their vulnerability, not their power, and a sign of the fear they have of the Power of the People!
The Black Riders Liberation Party has raised the slogan of “Free General T.A.C.O. or the sky's the limit,” and is calling for an Inter-Communal Solidarity Committee, to organize in defense of T.A.C.O. and all political prisoners. Anti-Racist Action-Los Angeles/People Against Racist Terror (ARA-LA/PART) is committed to joining and helping build such an effort. We recognize that people of European descent who oppose racism and hate oppression and exploitation must fight as allies with African and other liberation forces against the common enemy of humanity, capitalist colonialism and imperialism. We urge all people who are tired of this wretched system to join such an effort.
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