I have been a contributor to this publication spanning thirteen years. Thanks to the efforts of Dan Murphy who has been gracious to publish many of my pieces that I know the larger white community has had issues with as well as Mr. Murphy himself.
But it is a testimony to Dan that he is a true journalist in that he has consistently published what i have presented. However his story about Assata Shakur is categorically wrong because it presents a good vs. Evil narrative when it comes to black cop killers and white police officers which is rarely the truth or whole story in these types of incidences and many others.
Assata Shakur was NOT a terrorist and the FBI has been a criminal organization for generations under J Edgar Hoover that includes its local field office in Rye. There is a book by former FBI Agent Mike German called “ Disrupt Discredit and Divide how the FBI damages democracy “. He details the racial profiling of people of color as well as the profiling of FBI agents of color especially if they are Asian, black and certainly if they are Muslim. Where these agents of color have sued the FBI for their criminal behavior and racist behavior and sometimes lost their jobs.
Meanwhile white supremacist groups, that FBI head Christopher Wray has said “ are the biggest domestic terrorist threat “ have received “ kid glove “ treatment from white FBI agents and their ingratiating agents of color who are thoroughly colonized in their thinking. What Mike German has detailed i have seen corroborated by other sources.
Assata Shakur was a member of the Black Liberation Army an off shoot of the Black Panther Party for self defense. That came into existence because of generations of pathological white violence north and south where police violence as documented by the kerner commission and Knapp commission has been a major factor in explaining the rioting that went on in the Black community especially from 1963 to 1968.
Francesco Serpico was the major impetus to Mayoy Lindsay directing Judge Whitman Knapp to convene the commission that had his eponymous name, and showed his courage and intrepidation and is my hero and brought home the fact that all cops are not heroes and in many cases are criminals. Serpico had been talking about police corruption and police violence particularly in the black community back in 1967 and no one responded until 1970, when the Knapp Commission was formed, did something finally happen.
This violence was parelleled to what police forces had done nationally especially in the cities. When legendary rhythm and blues singer Sam Cook was murdered in 1964 a leading official of the Los Angeles police department said in response to his death , the murder occurred in Los Angeles, “ it is just a case of a nigger being killed.”
Assata Shakur and the black liberation army like revolutionary George Jackson and the black panther party were fighting a lawless violence prone and racist police environment that had been brutalizing and killing black people and people of color for decades with impunity. So like the deacons that were formed in the early 1960’s to fight pathological white violence from the greater white community as well as the police the panthers as well as the BLA were organized to protect the black community.
The BLA was accused of robbing banks, and killing drug dealers and killing police officers but this blanket good vs evil definition like everything else in America was predicated on a lie. For one thing Shakur was exonerated from most of the initial charges she was accused of and with the history of police misconduct and violence mandates a reevaluation of how these two groups were demonized. J Edgar Hoover administered in conjunction with the Illinois State attorney general Hanrahan and the Chicago police department the execution of Black Panther party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in a 5 am raid on their apartment with 6 others where the Chicago pd shot 99 bullets into the apartment killing Hampton and Clark and almost killing Hamptons girlfriend who lay next to him eight months pregnant in 1969.
Hoover also advised Dr. King to commit suicide with all of the salacious information he had about Kings indiscretion. He did this and for 40 years as head of the FBI ignored and did nothing about all of the bombings murders and rapes that whites committed against blacks especially during the period of American apartheid. Why there is a building named after this racist disgrace of law enforcement is beyond my bandwidth of understanding. J Edgar Hoover was pure evil like much of American History.
Many officers of color especially the younger ones don’t know this evil history and will come to the same conclusion as Dan Murphy and others that when cops are killed by so-called black terrorists that it is always a case of good vs evil. No it’s not, and the NYPD has never been “NY City’s Finest” that is a LIE just ask the legacies of James Baldwin or Malcolm X. Yes police officers have a difficult job because they are on the front lines dealing with all of the fallout of how THOROUGHLY uncivilized this society is as Dr. King said and police officers have one of the highest suicide rates in the country because of this. But they are by no stretch of the imagination all heroes, the history I just delineated brings that home.
So yes I support, along with many others, Congress Bowmans decision not to apologize for Assata Shakur appearing as a hero at that school because I understand why she would be defined as such. Malcolm X said white America and the press “ Will make you think the criminal is the victim and the victim is the criminal.” Like Anthony Curtis Blanks , who should have been released years ago with the circumstances that the Larchmont PBA ignored and rejected because of their entrenched racism that I have seen for 34 years,
Assata Shakur is not a terrorist and should be allowed to come back to the United States. If Shakur is a terrorist many members of the Fraternal order of the Police alive and who have passed away are terrorists.
Clifford Jackson, Larchmont
