Black August 2019

From the Desk of Zayid Muhammad

babazayid@gmail.com

973 202 0745

“A turtle cannot go forward 

until he first sticks his neck out…”

Malcolm X

Black August 2019

by ‘bro. zayid’

            Black August! Its hallmark inspiration is of course George and Jonathan Jackson, two incredibly fearless young men who would each become martyrs for our liberation within a year from each other. Jonathan, in a bold extraction mission, seeking the freedom for comrades who were not going to get it any other way, was killed in action in that mission on August 7, 1970...They burst into that California court room, young guns and said boldly and simply “we are in charge.” His big brother, the profusive urban literary guerrilla, George would be taken following year on August 21^st!

            Their courage and tragic deaths would inspire a bold prison justice movement which would include the epic Attica Uprising less than a month later after George’s death, and in recent years, it would mean a time accelerate support for our political prisoners, and with some approaching 50 years in prison, we absolutely need to do that.

            Black August is also a time when no white confusing holidays take place, when some of the most vicious forms of oppression have taken place, and where of course some of our boldest resistance has taken place. For instance, August 1^st, 1943, the police attack a Black woman and a Black soldier in uniform intervenes. He is shot by a white police officer and all hell breaks loose on the police and on the propertied class! Right on!...August 1^st is also Caribbean Emancipation Day, marking the abolish of slavery in the British Empire in 1838.

            Harlem legend James Baldwin is born on August 2, 1928. Late New Afrikan pioneer Chokwe Lumumba was also born of this day in 1947. On August 3, 1832, Edward Wilmot Blyden, a hugely important, but unsung, bridge of Black Nationalism from the 19^th to 20^th century is born. His African Life and Customs is still a must have. “We did not come here culturally empty-handed,” Dr. John Henrik Clarke used to say. Blyden’s book was early proof!

            He gave a whole new meaning to the adage ‘Wake up! Clean up! Stand up!’ when he brought Acupuncture to the ‘hood in our war against addiction straight from Chairman Mao’s China! Dr. Mutulu Shakur, in prison now for 34 years, was born on August 8, 1950.

            On that same date in 1978, Philadelphia Tanks, Bulldozers and Massive Gunfire would attack the MOVE Family in Powelton Village! A Philly police officer would get killed as a consequence of ‘friendly fire’. They blame it on the 9 MOVE Family members and charge them with that officer’s death...Two have died in prison. Two are still in prison...41 years later!...

            August 9^th is also the anniversary of two ugly police brutality acts. August 9^th, 1997, the heinous beating and sodomizing of Abner Louima and most recently the ‘stranger fruit’ police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014. The film, Stranger Fruit, capturing the spectacle horror of that incident, is a must see!

                                                                Artwork by Rashid Johnson


            August 11^th, 1965, comes the 5ive day sweeping epic Watts Rebellion that would put Martin Luther King Jr. and his insistence of total commitment to Nonviolence on his heels. The late great Dick Gregory was shot and wounded in that uprising.

            On August 13^th, 1926, Fidel Castro is born! Name a revolutionary who has done more for Afrikan people than Fidel!...

            August 14^th, 1791, Bois Cayman!...The time had come to fry the French...The epic Haitian Revolution was launched. I am so honored by the God of our Ancestors to be born on this day. I am also greatly saddened that I would lose our beloved Breya Blackberry Molasses Knight, on that same day two years ago. The Divine Order is in order. Check it...Breya would also be given to us on October 2^nd, the anniversary of the birth of Nat Turner! There should be no mistake from where her fire sprung from...Speaking of Nat Turner, his bold insurrection occurs on August 21^st 1831, the same day that we would later lose Field Marshall George Jackson...Can’t make this up!

            The great Sam Anderson, pioneer of SNCC and the Black Panther Party, author of Black Holocaust For Beginners, master teacher, was born August 16^th!...I salute u, sir.

            August 17^th, 1887, we are given arguably our greatest organizer, Marcus Mosiah Garvey!

            This year marks the 400^th anniversary of our ancestors’ fateful arrival in Jamestown, Virginia on August 20th! Although not slaves right away, we would up in that genocidal bind from that dark beginning...400 years!...

            August 23^rd, the ‘True Maroon’, the implacable Russell ‘Maroon’ Shoatz, in prison since 1975, will turn 75! Almost all of those years were done in the ‘hole! Time to bring him home!

            On that same day, August 23^rd in 2003, we would lose his incredible comrade, Safiya Bukhari Alston! How proud was I to serve under her for the return of The Black Panther Newspaper, the launching of Jericho, and more!

            It was revealed on August 25^th, 1967 that this little sinister, criminal matter of COINTELPRO would be expanded to destroy our Movement.

            August 28^th marks the horrific anniversary of the savage lynching of Emmitt Till in 1955! The date of that horrific event would be used for the March On Washington later in 1963. Controlled show that it was, it’s success as a major mass mobilization, however, marked Dr. King for death, Read his COINTELPRO Papers!

            Finally, we end with Chairman Fred, one of the baddest Panther leaders!...Fred Hampton was born on August 30, 1948. This year marks the 50^th anniversary of Fred’s assassination!

            We who like it hot...Call it ‘Black August’...



©2019

The Plainfield Rebellion-When Chickens Came Home To Roost!

The Plainfield Rebellion-When The Chickens Came Home to Roost!*

By ‘bro.zayid’

One of the most maddening aspects of the recent retrospectives on the Rebellions of ’67 is how ahistoric these retros were.

             How is it that those epic, timemarking rebellions were in no way discussed in terms of the history of race ‘riots’ in America? And how is that the one lone, uniquely “successful” Rebellion, the Plainfield, New Jersey Rebellion, is hardly ever talked about except in white, or more pointedly ‘pro-police,’ terms?

             Let’s be very clear about something here: The worst riots in this country weren’t race riots all

right. They were often massacres were Black people were killed in extreme lynch mob fashion!

             Have we forgotten the savage ‘Draft Riots’ of New York in 1863?!

             On July 13, 1863, angry white men in New York City, not in Birmingham, not in Rosewood, or

some other deep south Dixie dirty town,…in New York, legions of angry white men, angry about being drafted to fight in the Civil War for the Union, angry about having to risk their lives over ‘n#ggaz’ who would be made free to compete for their jobs, angry about having to fight in a war they did not believe in, went buckwil’ on our people and began burning down their homes and literally stringing them up on lamp posts! It was one of the most vicious racist orgies in the history of this racist country. At least 1000 of our people were

killed or seriously injured in that savage racist bloodletting! 1000!

             To be sure, that genocidal savagery made something painfully clear to ol’ Abe Lincoln. He

could not win the Civil War and “preserve the Union,” his most modest military goal, with white men

alone. For the north to win, he came to realize that he had to arm Black men, ex-slaves themselves, who absolutely believed in the monumental righteousness of their own cause, to make that difference. And so

some 200,000 Black men ultimately were brought into the war to ‘seize the time,’ to send slavery and as many slavemasters as possible to hell with their own hands!

             Another race riot of this order must also be appreciated to appreciate the significance

of a Rebellion like Plainfield’s and that is the T-Town Riot of 1921! We must never forget that that riot that destroyed ‘Black Wall Street.’ Like most lynchings and massacres, this one started with a Black man being accused of looking at a white woman wrong. This brother was arrested and was being prepared to be lynched. However, somehow word got out about this brother’s ordeal.

            What happened next should be paid attention to in serious detail.

            May all the ‘bloods’ in the ‘hood smell this especially good.

            Black Wall Street not only had perhaps the most thriving and prosperous post-slavery Black community in the country, they also had an armed underground unit in place to defend themselves from racist terrorism. A child of the Underground Railroad and a grandparent of the Black Liberation Army, the

African Blood Brotherhood, a secret Black society committed to armed self-defense and the forging of a

revolutionary consciousness among our people, had a heroic presence here. These Black men, by force of arms, came and rescued that brother and then fought the Klan and the police to a standstill!

            But tragically, and this is a most important detail to appreciate, at the point of negotiating a peace, these valiant men agreed to put down their arms!

            As soon as they did, these ‘crazy baldheads,’ using Bob Marley’s language, went buckwil’!

Jealous of the vitality and the stability on that side of the tracks, the lynch mob originally obsessed with one black man proceeded to destroy all of ‘T-Town,’ the local nickname for what many of us now call Black Wall Street,  lock, stock and barrel and killed at least 60 of our people in the process!

             Now fast forward to ’67 in Plainfield. Plainfield was put rightfully in the realm of Urban Folklore by none other than the man who was the voice of that incredible insurgent summer, the man then known as H. Rap Brown, now Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, now a wrongly held political prisoner just put into solitary confinement as the anniversary of these rebellions are dawning, resisting incredibly with a hunger strike.

             The Imam noted in the last chapter of his movement classic, Die, Nigger! Die, that the Plainfield Rebellion was the most “successful” of all the rebellions of the time because it was armed, and as such, it minimized the loss of Black life. Its lone casualty was one racist white cop. By the way, that cop was sent to

hell by unarmed men after shooting an unarmed Black man.

            To be sure, the Plainfield Rebellion, like all of the Rebellions of that period’s long,

hot, insurgent summer, was absolutely preventable. That community, including its youth, bent itself over backwards to be heard on all the abuse they were facing through all of the proper legal channels, only to be shunned and further abused at every turn.

            This is why we say it was indeed a case of the chickens coming home to roost! All of that abuse and neglect that the other side refused to address had suddenly blown up in their racist faces,

claimed one of their own and turned their local racist order spinning on its hard racist head!

             On July 14th, only days after Newark exploded, a group peacefully assembled in a local park trying

to address their grievances, were put out of the park by county police. Within hours, in the aftermath of a white police officer with a brutal reputation shot and unarmed Black man and was then surrounded by other unarmed Black men and unceremoniously sent to hell, Plainfield Avenue, a major thoroughfare on the ol’ town’s west end, got rocked to the fullest!

            The Rebellion was on.

            It must be said here that there had been several rebellious incidents before the 14th, that

the city mother fathers, to their detriment, chose to ignore. But one thing could not be ignored.

As soon as the Rebellion got in full gear, a local rifle factory, thanks to some thinking field slaves, had been visited and relieved of at least four dozen rifles and their appropriate ammo!

             So suddenly you had Plainfield, state and federal authorities talking to Black folk about a

“concern about bloodshed.”

             Interesting.

             They expressed no such concern about bloodshed in Newark that they were still

in the process of shooting to pieces.

             To be sure, this unusual concern forestalled those Police forces from steamrolling into Plainfield and

shooting up the place the way they did in Newark where 24 of 26 of all the casualties were Black. When it came to Plainfield, because this community was armed, all the other side could do to prevent blood from being shed was to conduct limited searches of peoples’ homes in the ‘hood on the west end. Of course, when they would come up with nothing in a given Black home, they would tear that home up, further inflaming an already hot town. So to keep our people from further going off, even that search was called off within hours.   Shortly thereafter, state and federal forces withdrew from the town. A truce was negotiated, but at no point were any of those weapons ever turned over or putdown!...Ever!...

            It truly made all the difference in the world!

            This is not to say that the other side was not preparing to go all out militarily to

destroy the town to put the Rebellion down if they had to. They were. But it would have without a doubt produced casualties on both sides. The concern for bloodshed was for their own blood being shed!

              Long live the Plainfield Rebellion! There is a way to stop police brutality! A sure fire way! We truly do have the God-given human right to defend ourselves by any means necessary!

 *Originally written in 2007 for the 40^th anniversary of the Plainfield Rebellion...

#

If You Must Bang…Some Reflections on the Plainfield Rebellion

(This is a reprint of an essay originally published in July 2015)

By ‘Baba Zayid’**

“Where are niggers when the people need some shots?

Niggers are scared of revolution…”

Niggers Are Scared of Revolution, The Last Poets



 “If you must bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!...Bang against police brutality!...

                            Baba Zayid Muhammad, on the streets of Newark


I am known for saying the above when we rally against the madness of gun violence on streets that is scavaging the youth of our community like krazy!


‘For all the bangers within a earshot of this mic, with all the heaters you’ve got on the streets now, how in the hell do you let pigs come into your ‘hood and do our people like this?!...If we had it like that back inthe day, our relationship with these pigs would be totally different than what it is today! So if you must bang,…’


And on and on...


Just days away from a national march against police brutality in Newark, less than a month from the massacre of some of the salt of the earth of our people in a Charleston, South Carolina church, including the assassination of an incredible leader, Clementa Pinckney, who got some real work done on police brutality that hardly anyone is even talking about, and just two days from the 48^th anniversary of the epic Newark Rebellion of ’67, triggered by police brutality, today, I have to stop and give my hometown of Plainfield a shoutout!


Today, July 14^th, marks the 48^thanniversary of our rebellion. Ours, immortalized in Die, Nigger Die! by H. Rap Brown, now political prisoner Imam Jamil Abdullah Amin, was one of the most important, most unique, and most underappreciated of all the rebellions of that incredible, fiery period.


In the Plainfield Rebellion, a party of unseen and unknown urban maroons cleaned out a factory of nearly 50 rifles and ammo. Authorities offered a reward for the bold black underground to turn those rifles in response. Refusing to be hoodwinked into being left unarmed and played for stupid, that underground kept those weapons and told the white man and his reward to go to hell! As a consequence, unlike what happened in Newark and other major cities where state and federal occupiers moved in and shot down a lot of unarmed black civilians, wary of unseen black hands armed and capable of using these missing weapons, state forces did not come into Plainfield blazing away fearing little or no armed resistance. They came very carefully, one house at a time, and even backed down from that after about an hour of aggravating an already angry community refusing to bow down!


Yet today, almost 50 years later, police brutality is a mindnumbing epidemic! Most incredible, it is an epidemic in communities that have young people dangerously well-armed, who tragically use those arms on each other now, and not on the state occupiers who shoot us down in spectacle fashion, incredibly while fearing no armed reprisals!

I have heard of only one instance of an armed, equalizing resistance of this kind since then. That was the ‘St. Petersburg Uprising’ in the aftermath of the 1996 police killing of Tyron Lewis, a young man shot to pieces with his hands on the steering wheel of a car too good for a black man his age to legitimately have.


The Uhuru Movement* called out the pigs responsible. They put up posters of the perpetrators allover their ‘hood calling them armed and dangerous. They held a ‘people’s tribunal’ laying out their case against the state terrorists, and it was this tribunal that provoked a senseless, savage response from the police. As the tribunal was going on, a peaceful town hall meeting in format for the most part, an angry police force surrounded the gathering and began firing into the meeting with tear gas and live fire!


Nothing unlawful was taking place!


Nothing!


But what happened next is what is very instructive here.


All of a sudden, the pigs came under fire! Under heavy and meaningful fire!...A helicopter taken down! One wounded in their ranks!...

Heavy, meaningful fire!...


All of those serious and dangerous arms on the streets associated with so-called ‘black on black’ crime, all of those arms probably sold to our kids by corrupt pigs themselves, all of those weapons all of a sudden, in a rare coming together of courage and clarity of our young, were ablaze on our people’s real enemies. Totally taken by surprise, consumed with the arrogance of power, confronted with their own flesh and blood humanity, if they have any at all, these pigs were forced to retreat and abandon their attack! And it was the boyz in the hood, the ones everybody wants to talk about like a dog, but are afraid to talk to directly, those same unnamed, unknown boyz in the' hood heroically saved the day and may have prevented some real casualties among our people in that brazen sick attack! This is what we mean when we say, ‘if you must bang!...bang for freedom!’


So since our so called leaders still lack the spine to do what Clementa Pinckney did in South Carolina before he was assassinated, that is mobilize the mandating of a state law making body cameras on all police in the state law, and since they still lack the spine to do what Newark Mayor Ras Baraka did with his implementing of a Civilian Review Board with full subpoena powers over the Newark police, maybe our young, who are armed, maybe they mayhave to do what our beautiful, disciplined marching, but unarmed, young may not be able to do, ‘make’ black lives matter…by any means necessary!...

**’Baba Zayid’Muhammad is a cub of the NY chapter of the Black Panther Party, and the founding press officer of the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee…

*Uhuru Movement leader Omali Yeshiteli will be in Newark on Friday at Source of Knowledge bookstore at 6pm signing his new book, An Uneasy Equilibrium:The African Revolution Versus Parasitic Capitalism. The Million People’s March Against Police Brutality takes place on Saturday, July 25^th at 12 noon at the Lincoln Monument,Newark…www.popmillionpeoplesmarchagainstpolicebrutality.org…

 © 2015 all rights reserved

Domestic Violence Takes Spotlight In Newark Police Reform Effort

                Newark’s historic Police Reform took an unexpected turn two weeks ago with an engaging subject not immediately associated with troubled policing...Domestic Violence.

                Newark Communities for Accountable Policing (NCAP) and the Newark AntiViolence Coalition (NAVC) co-sponsored an engrossing talk at the groundbreaking Shani Baraka Women’s Resource Center (The Center) on the subject.

                Problems servicing Domestic Violence came up in a recent oversight report of the Federal Monitor over the Police Reform effort citing inadequate handling of Domestic Violence calls, dismissive behavior of City Police call takers and officers responding to the calls, and of officers themselves not being seriously addressed with their own problems.

                Involved in the panel discussion was Asia Smith, one of the most highly touted experts on the issue in the state on behalf of The Center, Emily Perez, whose program at the Ironbound Community Corporation has serviced at least 150 people since its relatively recent inception, Rev. Jerri Lee Mitchell, the assistant pastor of  United Fellowship Church of New Ark, Captain Brian O’Hara of the Newark Reform Team and Keesha Eure, chair of the NAVC and supervisor of the West Ward Victims Outreach Program, who moderated the panel.

                The Newark Police Department also had on hand leadership from their Sexual Crimes Unit which works directly with the Center.

                Perez pushed the envelope of the conversation immediately when she pointed out the “gaps” between partners.

                “There are many gaps between partners and collaborators.

                “Sometimes we have these discussions, but there is often no follow up on the matters that are raised.

                “These collaborative efforts should be ongoing,” she insisted.

                Rev. Mitchell, who came with an outreach team of survivors pointed out the ongoing challenge of the church community in these efforts.

                Bearing the distinction of being both a clinician and clergy, and serving a congregation that has a considerable LGBTQ membership, Mitchell pointed out the limitations of traditional non-intervention postures of the church and sought to challenge the church community with balanced intervention strategies.

                “We are not our here to change your beliefs.

                “We are here to change your perspective,” she said.

                The Police Department acknowledged key challenges in servicing the issue, including the challenge that the Department faced with the layoff that occurred several years ago and a call center that is simply understaffed for the volume of calls that it faces.

                They acknowledged that of the hundreds of thousands of calls taken on an annual basis at least 17,000 wind up bouncing back to other Police Departments.

                “We are not where they are on ‘911’,” said Zayid Muhammad, the principal organizer of the event, referring to the hit television series starring Angela Bassett that spotlights emergency responders and a first rate call center.

                So what do we have to do get there,” he asked bringing the discussion back to those items outlined in the Federal Monitor’s Report.

                Police leadership agreed that the need for trauma informed retraining of staff is as key as is additional staffing and oversight.

                One of the areas that the Reform effort has helped on the issue is with the implementation of Body Cameras for all officers. Now, a given response to a Domestic Violence call, or any call, can be fully evaluated by their Body Camera footage.

                After a full participatory discussion, including an audience of survivors and additional service providers, Eure closed out the forum with the visionary sentiment of the participants and the survivors on hand.

                “I want to see us move from being a Trauma informed city to becoming a Trauma empowered city,” she stressed.

                The Shani Baraka Women’s Resource Center is an institution developed to address Domestic Violence holistically, named after Mayor Baraka’s late sister who was senselessly slain in a Domestic Violence incident in 2003. It is located at 300 Clinton Avenue in Newark’s South Ward. For more information, please call 973 757 7377.

                For information on the engagement efforts of NCAP, please call 973 202 0745.

                For more information on the NAVC, approaching its tenth anniversary, please call 908 605 NAVC...

P.O.P. REMEMBERS NEWARK REBELLION AT 52! NEWARK POLICE CHALLENGED TO DROP THEIR APPEAL AGAINST THE NEW CCRB!

P.O.P. REMEMBERS NEWARK REBELLION AT 52!

NEWARK POLICE CHALLENGED

TO DROP THEIR APPEAL AGAINST THE NEW CCRB!

          On Friday, July 12^th, the People’s Organization for Progress observed the 52^nd anniversary of the epic Newark Rebellion with their annual March and Rally!

            Participants included elder area statesman William Payne, who retold the haunting story of Eloise Spellman, a mother of eleven children, who was shot to death pulling one of her children from their window as Police forces were firing at their building, Rev. Louise Rountree of the City’s Clergy Council, who opened with prayer and words of healing, NJCU Professor Max Herman, a highly regarded scholar on Urban Uprisings, Richard Cammarieri of New Communities Corporation (NCC), children from the Popcorn Kidz Black History Program and Chaka Zulu Sharod of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party among others.

            The program began with moving laying down of memorial flowers on the Rebellion Monument which the names of all of those who were killed during the Newark Rebellion.

            P.O.P. chairman Lawrence Hamm opened with one of his classic historic talks on the Rebellion.

            One of the most salient remarks of his talk was when he said that there may have been more people than the 26 who were killed than are actually listed on the Monument.

            “I want to make it clear that there may have been more than the 26 people listed here who were killed.

            “In fact just this week, someone told me who was working for Newark Legal Services at that time assured me that there were than 26 people who were killed in that Uprising.

            “More important than that, no one was ever held accountable for any of the people who perished in the Rebellion,” he reminded everyone.

            Zayid Muhammad, the organizer for Newark Communities for Accountable Policing, better known as NCAP, challenged the Police to break ranks with their Fraternal Order of Police leadership after laying out a bold outline of Urban Uprising History.

            “Yes, after 55 years, we finally had a victory at the NJ State Court Of Appeals for our Civilian Review Board, but it doesn’t end there because the FOP is appealing that decision to the NJ Supreme Court.

            “Kwame Ture, the man who brought us to Black Power standing on Malcolm’s shoulders, taught us that our struggled is a protracted one.

            “We must understand that and get ready to face that appeal and get ready to pack that court when the time comes,” he insisted.

            NCAP is an initiative of the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union created to build support for Newark’s new groundbreaking Civilian Complaint Review Board.

            “If the Newark Police Department wants to do something genuine to begin to capture the trust of our community after all this abuse, they need to step to their leadership of the Fraternal Order of Police and tell them to drop their appeal against our Civilian Complaint Review Board and agree to cooperate with all of its transparency dimensions,” railed the veteran activist.

            In 1967, from July 12^th to July 17^th, the Newark Rebellion shook the consciousness of the nation. Triggered primarily by the scourge of police brutality and a local order of brutally enforced segregation, it would take the lives of more than two dozen civilians and the wounding and arresting of many thousands more. It would inspire dozens of similar uprisings throughout the country and inspire an acceleration of organizing centered on Voting Rights-based actions that would transform the electoral landscape, especially in Urban America.

            The late Amiri Baraka’s efforts, which ended Urban Apartheid in Newark, would be greatly applauded, and in many cases emulated in other cities, in a movement that would bring into office a wave of Black elected officials not seen since the early moments of The Reconstruction Era!

            The Newark Police Department is currently undergoing a major reform effort under the oversight of a Federal Monitor. Just weeks ago, the City, under the leadership of Baraka’s son, Mayor Ras Baraka, won a victory in NJ Appellate Court for the first Civilian Complaint Review Board in both the city and the state. Although it will face an appeal to the State’s Supreme Court by the Fraternal Order of Police, the victory was the fruit of a demand for real Civilian Oversight on the Newark Police that dates back to 1964!...