Strongest!!!

LOOK FOR YOURSELVES

AN INTRODUCTION

Shaba Om

We, the members of the New York Panther 21, were indicted for conspiracy to destroy public property, to hurt and maim police officers and other officials. It became clear after our long trial and acquittal that the real conspiracy was on the part of the police and the U.S. government—to disrupt and destroy the activities of a central branch of the Black Panther Party.

Harlem has always been a special place. From the time of the Harlem Renaissance to our time in the 1960s it was a center of powerful Black thought—of women and men working for our freedom. Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois and Congressman Adam Clayton Powell were key figures. And, of course, Minister Malcolm X was a renowned leader of the Harlem community. The U.S. government also saw Harlem as an extremely key place. They were very upset about the Panthers having a strong branch there. Harlem being Harlem, we had a very active chapter, including wide distribution of our newspaper up and down 125th Street. We covered every corner with the paper, which was filled with information on the hardships facing the Black community and the need to fight back. The Panther 10-Point Program was primarily a means of educating the community and the Panther newspaper included both the program and details of how people were dealing with it. But what I really learned while on trial with the 21 was that from the point of view of the U.S. government, educating our people was a detriment to American society.

We were very proud of who we were as a people. As we began to learn and read about our history from renowned historians and activists, the police and the government came down really hard on the New York branch. There were at least three undercover officers in our chapter, working to weaken us at all times. There was a Bureau of Special Services (BSS, popularly known as the Red Squad ) within the New York Police Department, which was essentially a local part of the FBI’s illegal Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO).

My comrade Kwando Kinshasa and I were not arrested or captured on the original day of the roundup of the 21; we were caught in Columbus, Ohio, some time later. When we were brought back to New York we were connected to our other comrades on Rikers Island. Once we were all together, we were asked to write a book—the book that became Look for Me in the Whirlwind. We all agreed to put our stories together, to speak about ourselves personally and about our collective work as Panthers. The title centered on a speech from noted Pan-Africanist the Honorable Marcus Garvey.

What makes Look for Me in the Whirlwind still current today is that a lot of the same political issues that existed then are relevant even now. As you go through the original book and read the various sections, if you overlook the date you won’t be able to tell whether you’re reading about the 1960s or reading about today! What would be interesting to do is to continue reading—and then pick up today’s newspaper. You’ll find a startling series of parallels.

What touches me as a member of the 21, having real love for my comrades, is that a lot of them are with us physically while many others are not. The power of the printed word is a really beautiful thing, and here in the 21st century we are fortunate enough to be able to hear the members of the 21, now once again in print and thereby making a connection to the 21st century. The love and compassion that we had for the people back then we still have just as strongly today. It is an honor and a pleasure to have the baton picked up, so that proud young people today can better understand the shoulders they are standing upon.

Harlem is still a very interesting place: still very culturally significant, but with widespread gentrification. We as a people bought into the myth that we would never and could never amount to anything. We learned the myths that the schools perpetuated: that we couldn’t have any sense of ownership but could only serve others. Harlem, we must remember, is very strategically located. You can get anywhere in the world from Harlem in just a matter of hours. It was a well thought-out and calculated plan to gentrify the community—to destroy us through misinformation and miseducation, through drugs, and through direct purchasing of the buildings and the land.

But the power of a whirlwind is that it comes out of nowhere and takes over everything. It has a unique beauty about itself—in the sense of ultimate transformation. Our 21 was of the 1960s, and now we all face the 21st century. As Panthers, we were always taught to have undying love for the people. That love was there then, it is here now, today, and it will remain forever. It must and will encircle and protect us all.

Read who you are, and be who you are. And look for yourselves—discover yourselves—in the whirlwinds of the 21st century.

PANTHER 21 POETRY

NEWLY DISCOVERED OR RARELY SEEN

The Lesson

Afeni Shakur

Malcolm woke up and saw what appeared to be the mountain of liberation—then he was murdered.

Martin started up that mountain and found there was beauty and lasting peace—he was murdered.

Huey went all the way up and came down again to speak to the world of the solidarity there—he was shot and kidnapped.

Eldridge saw my desire to go up and showed me the rugged path—he was forced into exile.

Bobby took my hand to lead me there and I found the way rough and exhilarating and of course he was gagged, beaten, and chained.

Fred overheard their directions and took to the hills for a closer look—what he saw made him go back down to share his happiness.

When he came back in the valley, all I could hear him say was—I am a Revolutionary.

But, it made no sense, and so I just sat and listened.

The next day I heard him repeat this melody as he prepared the morning meal for my child.

I heard the words—and still I was quiet; Fred didn’t seem to mind—he just kept doing things and singing his song.

And then one day—the melody of his song was taken up by the evil winds of human destruction.

They heard its message and handed to him the salary of a people’s servant

KA BOOM …

The air that breathed his message to me was alive with urgency.

The mountains became a reality.

The tools became friends.

The curves became mere objects of jest!

I could sit still no longer.

I began to hum his song.

As I climbed, as I fell and

got up and fell again—I

Sang the song of liberation.

I AM A REVOLUTIONARY!

I AM A REVOLUTIONARY!

Truth Is a Virus

Sundiata Acoli and Walidah Imarisha

Guerrilla plague

Brought from bastard tongues

Blood from a burst blister

Blood on the legs of a sister

We are the fever that heals as it burns

Our rage purifies

Harbingers of chaos and construction.

Living virus running through your system

Resurrecting those you hit at but missed ’em

We are the war coming home

The second coming of Rome

Defeated abroad and destroyed from within

Never to terrorize or rise again.

Revolutionaries birthed and homegrown

Smeared on cheeks like ash

He smiles at all his grandchildren

He knows the inside of vaccination needles

And sterilization pills

His heart bursting with so much love

And so much fear

Hoping his strong arms

Can build a shelter

Against the coming epidemic.

He smiles at his grandchildren, loving them so,

But still must send them where angels fear to go

Grossly unprepared because they haven’t been trained

Their schools long ago razed, teachers routed and cadre maimed.

Eyes so wide

You can see the future in ’em

And deep as a new york sewer drain

This child has my eyes

And they are too old for this polished apple face.

A pug nose

And a wide grin mouth

Eyes searching the landmarks for 95 south

Think you can make it thru

That’s easy to do …

Once, twice but how about the rest of your life?

You can not hope to understand

Infinity

But 33 years starts to stretch

Farther than forever

As the blood slows

In our collective veins

In stasis

Mosquitoes in amber

With the lifeblood

Of ancestors

Suspended inside us.

33 years and more

is just a meatball

compared to foreparents

who did cradle to grave

and still stood tall.

That same blood

Yet courses our veins

Their same message drumbeats

Over and over again.

The solutions to a problem

Lie in its origin.

Human history is long

Ours goes back

To the beginning,

Before the spread of false images

That keep the world lamenting.

So the call of the Ancients

Who had the strength of 10

Will forever remind us when

Once we were free,

And that we, and the world,

Shall be

Free again.

Lock Step

Kuwasi Balagoon

Auburn Correctional Facility

(Excerpt from an unpublished letter to Meg Starr, December 10, 1984)

They march in formation

lock step

in cadence

so that their bodies don’t betray

their fear

by jerky-hesitant motions.

Head straight

on order

by order

so that the folder

cannot confirm under-certain eyes.

They make noises

hut, two

to think hut, two

and whatever they are told

instead of possible death.

And they think of dying anyway

even though they are used to thinking whatever they are told.

And they think they should be honored for this.

And they shall be

increasingly

with grenades.

WHIRLWINDS ALL AROUND US

THE NEW YORK PANTHER 21 IN 21ST-CENTURY REVOLUTIONARY CONTEXT

Matt Meyer

It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win.

—Assata Shakur, member of the New York Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army, and inspirational figure for the Movement for Black Lives

Historians and linguists like to remind us that radical means back to the roots —and this book seeks to serve contemporary people’s movements by exploring the roots of an extraordinary part of modern history that has largely been hidden from view. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense certainly has had more than its share of attention, but the extremely active and influential New York branch—around which the essential case of the New York Panther 21 was centered—has received significantly less focus among activists or scholars. The Panther 21 case was essential in part because it served as the major launching point of the U.S. government attack on the modern Black Liberation Movement (the original, often underscored, blm ). If we are to understand current government machinations, we must gain a deep understanding of the Panther 21. And we must do so in the context of contemporary events.

It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win.

There can be little question that Black Lives Matter (BLM) has signified a burgeoning rebirth of the Black Liberation Movement (blm). With distinct chapters in close to forty locations and many, many more affiliated and connected groups and sympathetic individuals throughout the world, the naysayers have been shown that BLM is much more than just a hashtag. But it is also more than can be personified in a single organization—with related and parallel structures like the Movement for Black Lives, the Ferguson Truth Telling Project, and frontline activists, the Dream Defenders, Justice League and Gathering for Justice, and countless others. There are many clear and common goals, demands, experiences, and hopes, but one consistent thread is a militancy based in part on the mantra-like recitation of four sentences penned by Assata Shakur, who was once called the soul of the Black Liberation Army (BLA). Many now have heard of Assata and read her autobiography, and some wear T-shirts proclaiming, Assata taught me.

Yet when questioned about vital historical markers—people and places barely one step away from Assata herself—confusion or ignorance too often abounds. Leaders have been asked: Have you heard about Sundiata Acoli? Are you familiar with Sekou Odinga? Do you know the name Dhoruba Bin Wahad? All three are closely connected to Assata both personally and politically, but their names and work—past and present—are practically unknown outside of a very small circle of mainly elder organizers. The first of these, Sundiata, remains in prison at age eighty, still doing hard time after more than forty years behind bars for activities he and Assata were involved in together. Sekou was finally paroled after more than thirty-three years in prison, convicted in part for being involved in the escape and freeing of Assata. Dhoruba, coauthor with Assata and Mumia Abu-Jamal of Still Black, Still Strong: Survivors of the War against Black Revolutionaries, was field secretary of the Black Panther Party in New York, the organization Assata joined in her early years. He remained a political prisoner for nineteen years until his release in 1990, after proving he was framed as part of the FBI’s illegal Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO).

Sundiata, Sekou, and Dhoruba have more in common than their connection to Assata, more than the fact that they serve and served substantial prison time because of their political beliefs and actions, and more than the simple fact that they were members of the Black Panther Party and allegedly part of the Black Liberation Army.

Sundiata, Sekou, and Dhoruba were all members of the infamous case of the New York Panther 21.

**

We must love each other and support each other.

Tupac Shakur is arguably the most influential overall artist of the late 20th century—rapper, emcee, vocalist, poet, actor—and is certainly one of the era’s top-selling performers even years after his death. Tupac’s mystique and legacy in the areas of culture, politics, community-based economics, prison life, and more continue to shape new generations. There can be no doubt that his extensive effect on people draws in part on his own upbringing, as the son of a prominent Panther surrounded by a street survival ethic, a social commitment, and a sense of possibility using bold, creative imagery to go up against systemic injustice. The video for Tupac’s smash hit Dear Mama has over a hundred million views on YouTube—and it’s impossible to listen to the song without some awareness that Afeni Shakur was a Black Panther. It should therefore also be no surprise that one of his most consistent and supportive uncles —Jamal Joseph—is now a professor and former chair of Columbia University’s Graduate Film Division, nominated for an Academy Award for his own artistry. But Afeni is somehow more remembered for being a crack addict than for her successful defense—while on trial and pregnant with Tupac, and against the advice of many—of herself and her comrades, ultimately getting all charges dropped against the 21 targeted and hunted defendants. She was married, at the time, to Lumumba Shakur, a founder of the Panthers in Harlem, whose brother Zayd Malik was killed in the shootout where Assata and Sundiata were captured. Lumumba himself was assassinated in New Orleans just two days before the arrest of Tupac’s stepfather Mutulu Shakur, himself a Black liberation militant who has always asserted both his own innocence and that Lumumba’s death was politically motivated and based on the early 1980s roundup, incarceration, and murder of militants still committed to the struggle.

Everyone knows Tupac Shakur. But how many know the history of Lumumba or Afeni Shakur, or of Jamal Joseph?

Afeni Shakur, Lumumba Shakur, and Jamal Joseph were all part of the infamous case of the New York Panther 21.

**

We have nothing to lose but our chains.

Some leading human rights advocates have asserted that 21st-century movements for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) liberation are the cutting edge political issues of our times. Others focus on the continuing struggles opposing militarized police violence—especially in light of heightened attacks on young people of African and Latino descent—as fundamental to understanding contemporary civil rights within the USA. On a broader scale, both LGBT and anti–police violence movements are increasingly understood within an international context, where deep-seated issues of patriarchy, capitalism, imperialism, and racism are interwoven for a holistic and intersectional approach toward individual and collective liberation. New organizational structures challenge old authoritarian or centrist models; consensus-informed approaches have been used in place of the leadership of a small and select group of mainly male charismatic decision-makers. But these new approaches have roots which can be found in attempts made during previous decades of uprising and revolt.

Kuwasi Balagoon is a little-known former Panther whose name may have been uttered once for every thousand times Huey Newton or Bobby Seale were praised during the 2016 celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Oakland-headquartered Panthers. Though he was clear to some colleagues about his fluidity of political and personal practice, uniquely blending both revolutionary nationalist and anarchist beliefs, and he died in prison in 1986 due to complications from AIDS, he is held up as an important figure only among a very select group of radicals. Balagoon, in addition to being one of the team responsible for the liberation of Assata, was a member of the New York Panther 21.

At age nineteen, Joan Bird was terrorized by New York police officers who were harassing two older men while the three were in a parked car. They dragged me out, she later testified, and began to beat and stomp on me with heavy blackjacks, and beat and kicked me in the stomach, lungs, back, and handcuffed me. Bird had just a few months earlier become a youthful recruit of Black Panther Party; a few months later she would be formally charged as a member of the New York Panther 21.

Michael Cetewayo Tabor and Larry Mack traveled to Algeria to help set up the International Office of the Black Panther Party. They were early practitioners of true Pan-African solidarity: meeting and sharing resources with those struggling to free their lands of colonialism and neocolonialism from Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Vietnam, Palestine, and elsewhere. Successful freedom fighters from Algeria, Cuba, and China discussed strategies and tactics across geographic and linguistic lines and even occasionally fought together to help liberate one another’s territories. Cetewayo and Mack (along with Sekou Odinga, whose remembrances you will read about in this book) were not only part of the Panthers, they were members of the New York Panther 21.

**

Exiled in Cuba, on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List with a $2 million bounty on her head, Assata Shakur wrote the words which are repeated nightly as a call to renewed struggle: It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.

As part of that duty, as part of our collective ability to learn how to win, we must know about Sundiata and Sekou and Dhoruba, about the pitfalls and lessons of Afeni and Jamal, Lumumba and Joan, Kuwasi and Cetewayo, and Larry and all the others.

It is not merely that the case of the New York Panther 21 brought together an extraordinary group of exemplary individuals, deeply committed to the freedom of their people and of all people. It is not merely that the fiery militancy of those times forged a collective spirit and strategic approach which inspired millions and sent nervous shock waves down the corridors of state and imperial power. The story of the Panther 21 and its legacy provides essential truths which have remained largely hidden, even in the myriad of books and movies which make up the cottage industry of Black Panther nostalgia and mythology. These truths include a perspective on the need for clandestine operations during times of great repression. They include an emphasis on the role of the criminal/prison industrial complex which looks beyond the question of abolition toward a direct confrontation with existing legal structures and engagement with those on both sides of the wall. They include a unique and forgotten understanding of the ability to creatively provide both direct local services, such as the much-touted breakfast programs, while at the same time providing a concrete global vision and practice of revolutionary self-defense, fight back, and organization building.

Beyoncé, Bette Midler, and other celebrities have recently referenced the significance of the Black Panthers, sometimes even calling for the release of the more than a dozen remaining Panther political prisoners. Like their celebrity counterparts of past generations, from John Lennon to Leonard Bernstein and beyond, the importance of these spotlights is entirely what they represent in terms of mass organizing possibilities, not in terms of negotiable support for getting anyone out of jail—much less creating lasting radical change. Possibilities must be turned into realities through the steadfast, sometimes boring, often rewarding, occasionally fun work of making phone calls, writing educational materials, reaching out to people not yet in the know, holding meetings to help unify otherwise divergent perspectives. Once in a while it means working with folks we neither agree with nor like, but who can still play a helpful role in the struggles to free Sundiata Acoli, Imam Jamil Al-Amin, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Russell Maroon Shoatz, Mutulu Shakur, Charles Sims Africa, Debbie Sims Africa, Delbert Orr Africa, Edward Goodman Africa, Merle Austin Africa, Michael Davis Africa, William Phillips Africa, Zolo Azania, Herman Bell, Jalil Muntaqim, Veronza Bowers, Kojo Bomani Sababu, Oso Blanco, Bill Dunne, Romaine Chip Fitzgerald, Patrice Lumumba Ford, David Gilbert, Robert Seth Hayes, Alvaro Luna Hernandez, Kamau Sadiki, Jaan Laaman, Mafundi Lake, Ruchell Cinque Magee, Tom Manning, Tarek Mehanna, Leonard Peltier, Ed Poindexter, Rev. Joy Powell, Gary Tyler, and others. For many of us, the publication of this book brings a special urgency to work harder for the release of Sundiata Acoli, member of the 21 who is an elder deserving of spending his eighth decade of life at home with his family.

**

In 1969, when twenty-one leading members of the New York Black Panther Party were rounded up and indicted, taking risks for some meant continuing the work to bring the war home —as the first U.S. troops returned from Vietnam. This was in the context of an antiwar movement, which was holding moratoriums attracting millions, with Washington, DC–based demonstrations mobilizing upwards of 500,000 people. In the wake of the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and the uprisings that followed, of the growing international popularity of Black Power and militancy on campuses and in communities, 1969 saw the inauguration of Richard Nixon as thirty-seventh president of the United States. The Chicago conspiracy trial began, bringing together eight codefendants accused of inciting riots that had taken place at the previous year’s Democratic National Convention. Ultimately it seemed that Chicago’s police force was more responsible for the riotous violence than any of those on trial. During the course of the trial, the judge ordered one of the eight, Black Panther cofounder Bobby Seale, bound and gagged in the courtroom—a fitting symbol to many of the treatment of vocal movement leaders.

The year 1969 is widely remembered for the Woodstock Music Festival and Jimi Hendrix, Neal Armstrong’s one giant leap for mankind as Apollo 11 landed on the moon, and the release of the Beatles’ Abbey Road amid rumors of their splitting up. John and Yoko staged a bed-in for peace, and John returned his Order of the British Empire medal in protest of the war in Biafra, West Africa. Booker T and the MGs sang Time Is Tight and the Fifth Dimension sang Let the Sunshine In (Age of Aquarius). J-Lo and Jay-Z, Sean Combs and Ice Cube, Wyclef Jean and Terrence Howard were all born in 1969.

As the year came to a close, in the wee hours of December 4, FBI under-cover agent William O’Neal—who had infiltrated the Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers and become bodyguard to Illinois Party chairman and Rainbow Coalition founder Fred Hampton—slipped Hampton a powerful sedative. While Hampton slept, officers of Cook County stormed his apartment, riddling him and fellow Panther Mark Clark with rounds of automatic gunfire. Two point-blank shots to the head of the man who was bringing together youth gangs and political activists, people of all races and ideologies, made certain that Chicago’s Panther leadership would be silenced—one way or another. In New York however, for 1969 at least, a different tactic was being used. Fighting for radical social change means taking real risks.

Fifty years following the founding and demise of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, different economic, social, and political conditions prevail—even as many of the same baseline issues and underlying causes of conflict and injustice remain. An overextended empire seems in deep crisis, while attempts to stifle popular resistance at home are carried out by ever-more-militarized police forces and agents of repression. The imperial nature of the USA’s internal colonialism became clearer every day, as disenfranchised communities of color lived entirely separate and unequal lives even while a few Black millionaires thrived under a Black president. The U.S. presidential elections of 2016, if nothing else, showed a new level of dissatisfaction with the Washington status quo, whether evidenced by increased interest in socialistic political revolution, in right-wing populist or fascist movements, or in a woman-led continuation of the neoliberal agenda. Whatever one’s preference—including the growingly popular none of the above —resistance most certainly continues.

**

The radical historian’s job is not, in fact, to recount the people’s history in truth-telling form. As useful as that approach might sometimes be, the more urgent and revolutionary task of a people’s historian is to use one’s privileged positions to amplify, empower, uncover if necessary, and provide support for the voice of people themselves. Similarly, white folks struggling to be in accountable alliances with liberation movements must support anti–white supremacist, anti-imperialist, and pro–Black Power positions in many forms. Being good interpreters of other people’s oppression—like attempting to be facilitators of other people’s liberation—is ultimately a reactionary and ineffective position. Revolutionary 21st century solidarity must recognize that the oppressed of any race, ethnicity, gender, class, culture, and geographic space have much more wisdom about the nature of power and change than those of the oppressive castes (though privilege works overtime to ensure that most believe the opposite to be true). True solidarity understands that together, from different but aligned angles, we must deal strategic blows to the systems which devalue and commodify all people and things. Thus, this special book seeks to build authentic bridges between the past, present, and future—for all seeking truly revolutionary paths.

The stories and voices of the Panther 21 resonate today because they boldly confronted their own tumultuous times with creativity, candor, and directness. This anthology brings together the classic texts from their collective autobiography with contemporary commentary from the surviving Panthers on lessons learned and directions for our times. Sister déqui kioni-sadiki adds the following piece that, along with this preface, attempts to set the stage for the ideas that follow. In addition to key new pieces by former Panther 21 members Sekou Odinga, Dhoruba Bin Wahad, and Jamal Joseph—each of whom did time behind bars even after the acquittal of the 21—we also have rarely seen and never-before-published materials from Panther 21 members Afeni Shakur, Ali Bey Hassan, and Kuwasi Balagoon, as well as some key writings of Sundiata Acoli and others. With the help of Bronx Panther Cyril Innis Jr. ( Bullwhip ), we have compiled a review of the post-acquittal lives of all of the 21; photographer and communications specialist David Fenton has shared with us some never-before-seen photos from the period. Photo-journalist Stephen Shames, whose recent book Power to the People: The Black Panthers in Photographs spectacularly chronicles the images of those times, has gifted us with some images of the 21 that do not appear in his other work. Panther leader Bilal Sunni-Ali contributes a special chapter on 21 member Lumumba Shakur and in so doing casts a light on the entire complex history of Black Panthers in New York. Panther 21 member Shaba Om provides an inspiring introduction. And finally, former Panthers and still-incarcerated political prisoners Imam Jamil Al-Amin (aka H. Rap Brown) and Mumia Abu-Jamal graciously frame the book with their foreword and afterword, strengthening our efforts to build connections between the prison walls with the force of their mighty words.

We would do well to listen carefully to them all.

More than one hundred years have passed since Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey built the single largest organization in the history of Africans in the Americas. We would also do well to remember his admonitions, facing his own turbulent times while organizing in a period of great risk:

If I die in Atlanta my work shall then only begin, but I shall live, in the physical or spiritual to see the day of Africa’s glory. When I am dead wrap the mantle of the Red, Black and Green around me, for in the new life I shall rise with God’s grace and blessing to lead the millions up the heights of triumph with the colors that you well know.

Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm, look for me all around you, for, with God’s grace, I shall come and bring with me countless millions of Black slaves who have died in America and the West Indies and by the millions in Africa to aid you in the fight for liberty, freedom, and life.

Let us remember well that it is our duty not simply to struggle, but to win.

THE PAST CATCHES UP TO THE PRESENT

déqui kioni-sadiki

Sankofa: go back into the past to build for the future

That Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the first nationally recognized chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP) is fairly well known in most progressive circles. Their October 1966 efforts centered on confronting police terror and the murder of Black people taking place in Oakland, California at that time. What isn’t nearly as well known is that almost from its inception, J. Edgar Hoover (the decades-long director of the FBI) was engaged in an undeclared and clandestine Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) war—on the BPP in particular, and on the whole of the Black Freedom struggle in general. Though the Panthers were specially targeted, COINTELPRO both included and began before FBI campaigns against Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, looking to criminalize the entire Black Liberation Movement with special attempts to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist … organizations and groups, their leadership, spokesmen, membership, and supporters.

That Hoover directed the FBI to destroy this revolutionary, youth-led BPP poses a number of questions: What was it about the BPP which so challenged the capitalist power structure that it had to be neutralized?

Could it be that, as a revolutionary organization, the BPP stood firmly on the principle that Black people have the right to struggle for justice, self-determination, and liberation? That those BPP principles were firmly rooted in the Black radical tradition of self-defense and armed resistance to white-on-Black violence and murder?

Could it be that in a short span of time—in cities, towns, and states across the country—thousands of urban poor and working-class Black youth were becoming radicalized and joining the organization at a rate faster than anyone expected? Could it be that the BPP’s 10-Point Platform and Program provided poor and working-class Black people with free breakfast for children programs; free health clinics; sickle cell anemia testing; food pantries; clothing drives; elder, housing, and domestic violence assistance programs; welfare rights advocacy; cultural programs; and more—all while the capitalist power structure did nothing to help people?

Could it be that the BPP articulated that the violence of poverty, hunger, homelessness, lack of decent health care, housing, and education, police terror and murder, and all manner of oppression endured by poor and working-class Black people were fundamentally a consequence and function of u.s. capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, racism, and white supremacy? Moreover, could it be that the BPP was able to politicize, inspire, awaken, and transform urban Black youth’s previously reactionary dysfunctional intercommunity violence and hostility into a revolutionary commitment and practice of serving and defending the material needs of other poor and working-class Black people?

What is clear is that the deepest politics and practices of the BPP then—like its true history and legacy now—remains a source of tremendous power and potential. What is clear is that the idea that Black people, especially youth, would engage in the struggle to defend their right to justice, self-determination, and liberation—with arms if necessary—was so deeply troubling and threatening to the racist capitalist power structure that Hoover deemed the BPP the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.

It is in this context that the FBI, CIA, u.s. Marshals, and New York City Police Department (NYPD)—with bulletproof vests, loaded shotguns, and a shoot-to-kill attitude—conducted an early morning raid of Panther homes and offices on April 2, 1969, to serve arrest warrants on Michael Cetewayo Tabor, Alex Katara McKeiver, Curtis Doc Powell, Sundiata Acoli (C. Squire), Ali Bey Hassan, Lonnie Epps, Lumumba Shakur, Lee Berry, Kwando Kinshasa, Shaba Om, Walter Johnson, Richard Dhoruba Moore, Afeni Shakur, Jamal Eddie Joseph, Joan Bird, Robert Bob Collier, Kuwasi Balagoon, and Richard Harris, as well as Sekou Odinga, Thomas Berry, and Larry Mack, who temporarily escaped capture. Eventually, charges were dropped against eight of them, leaving thirteen Panthers to stand trial: Joan Bird, Richard Dhoruba Moore, Robert Bob Collier, Ali Bey Hassan, Michael Cetewayo Tabor, Afeni Shakur, Sundiata Acoli, Lumumba Shakur, Kwando Kinshasa, Shaba Om, Abayama Katara (Alex McKeiver), Baba Odinga (Walter Johnson), and Dr. Curtis Powell. Kuwasi Balagoon and Richard Harris were already doing time in New Jersey.

The New York Panther 21, as they came to be known, were charged with 186 counts of attempted arson, attempted murder, and conspiracy to blow up police precincts, schools, department stores, and the New York Botanical Garden. If convicted, each faced the possibility of 300+ years of political imprisonment. Almost the entire Harlem-Bronx chapter of the BPP, its NYC leadership, were included in the group.

At the time, the trial against the 21 was the longest and most expensive trial in the history of New York City. It was never about justice or protecting people or places from these Panthers allegedly conspiring to harm or destroy them; and the trial was one that neither Hoover nor the powers that be had any intention of losing. As is the general case for poor and working-class Black people caught in the mangled web of an unjust criminal justice system, it was a cornucopia of injustice: perjured testimony by law enforcement, coercion of witnesses, prosecutorial misconduct, and a sitting judge (John Murtagh) who made no attempt to conceal his contempt or disdain for the Panthers, Black resistance, and the team of movement attorneys.

A visibly very pregnant Afeni Shakur functioned as her own extraordinarily effective, believable, compassionate, and capable pro se attorney. Gerald Lefcourt, William Crain, William Kunstler, Robert Bloom, Sanford Katz, Charles McKinney, and others served as the attorneys of record. The criminal charges levied against the 21 weren’t just about the individuals on trial. The trial and charges were among the war strategies Hoover used to criminalize the BPP and its membership all over the country. Then and now, the arrest, trial, and political imprisonment of the 21 stands as an indictment of a centuries-old hypocrisy that amerikkka holds the promise of life, liberty, and happiness for all people regardless of race, class, or religion. In fact, as government treatment of the Panthers makes clear, amerikkka has a long trajectory of criminalizing, suppressing, and repressing Black resistance. This trajectory extends from the state-sanctioned and violence-infested slave ships and plantations during the transatlantic slave trade and Middle Passage that first brought Africans to these shores to the impunity of white-on-black violence in the post-Reconstruction era, to the one hundred years of lynchings, the storm of mass arrests, water hoses, snarling police dogs, police beat-downs, and hate-filled white mobs of Jim Crow apartheid, to the present killing of Black mothers’ sons and daughters every twenty-six hours somewhere in amerikkka by white police, security guards, or vigilantes.

The Black Panthers recognized this as both a historical and contemporary reality and responded appropriately in the language of self-defense and armed resistance. It is for this reason that Hoover was so doggedly determined to maim, murder, and defeat the BPP. He didn’t care how, or at what cost to life or limb, COINTELPRO was carried out; there were no legal, moral, or ethical boundaries he did not cross. All manner of overt and covert violence was used against the BPP: surveillance, illegal phone wiretapping, agents provocateurs, infiltration, coercion, fabrication of criminal charges, poisoning of the breakfast for children program, intercepting and forging mail to instigate internal and external dissension, distortions, and outright lies with the purpose of inciting hostility and violence between members and with other organizations. When all of that wasn’t enough, outright assassinations were fine with the FBI.

The public was never supposed to know about COINTELPRO, or about Hoover’s mission to prevent: 1) the coalition of militant Black nationalist groups; 2) the rise of a messiah who could unify and electrify the masses; 3) Black militants from gaining respectability; and 4) the long-term growth and coalition of militant Black youth. Nor were they supposed to know Hoover had the complicit support and cooperation of local, state, and federal law enforcement, politicians, the capitalist ruling class, the criminal justice system, and corporate media to manufacture the climate of fear, hysteria, and law and order repression to combat the BPP and militant Black youth. Our knowledge of COINTELPRO’s existence is based mainly on an accidental discovery by a group of white radicals who secretly broke into a Media, Pennsylvania, FBI storage room to steal and burn draft cards. They stumbled upon the classified documents, turning those documents over to WIN Magazine, a biweekly associated with the War Resisters League, which dedicated its entire March 1972 issue to publishing the incriminating FBI documents. In those more radical times, in addition, the mass media was more willing to expose and spotlight the wide-scale government corruption. This eventually led to the Senate-based Church Committee hearings—named for its chair, Senator Warren Church—which ruled that COINTELPRO was an illegal operation that had committed acts violating the civil and constitutional rights of u.s. citizens.

The sole outcome of those hearings was the immediate dismantling of COINTELPRO, but no other remedies or actions were taken to punish or hold accountable any law enforcement officer or agency for the literal crimes they committed against the revolutionaries, organizations, and movements of that time. Also, although other revolutionaries and organizations were targeted by Hoover and COINTELPRO, none suffered the degree of repression, state-sanctioned violence, and political imprisonment as the unsuspecting and underprepared Panthers and their families. In a six-year period, the BPP became target number one in Hoover’s vicious and unrelenting campaign of criminalization, dehumanization, distortion, demonization, and maligning that made police shoot-ins of Panther homes and offices a frequent occurrence. Across the country—even with unarmed bystanders present—dozens of Panthers were assassinated or injured. Dozens of others were driven underground or into exile, and dozens more were criminally charged, convicted, and sentenced to inordinately long terms of political imprisonment.

In the decades since the Church Committee hearings there have been sporadic grassroots calls demanding public hearings to hold the government responsible for COINTELPRO’s illegal and violent acts. To date, there have been no formal investigations into the criminal convictions, and no widespread attempts to exonerate or release the dozens of Panthers and other revolutionaries targeted by COINTELPRO who are still held as political prisoners and prisoners of war (PP/POWs) in state and federal prisons across amerikkka.

On May 13, 1971, the jury in the Panther 21 case returned with its verdict: not guilty. Although it was a tremendous victory for both the BPP and the Movement, at the same time the trial had exacted a heavy price. For two years, the NYC leadership were disappeared from the streets while BPP families and communities were disrupted and relationships and friendships became strained, with some dissolving under the duress. The work of serving and defending the people suffered. COINTELPRO had also succeeded in heightening and exploiting existing and growing contradictions between local, national, and international BPP cadre, chapters, and leadership, to the point that while fighting for their lives and freedom, the 21 were expelled by the Party’s Central Committee. COINTELPRO had instigated and manipulated internal and external seeds of dissension, hostility, distrust, and paranoia within the BPP that ultimately proved too difficult for the young cadre organization to recover from. The psychological, emotional, mental, physical, spiritual, and financial toll of coping with constant police attacks, friends being killed, children and parents harassed, dangerous and pernicious stereotyping, the loss and alienation of family members, the loss of jobs and housing, the arrests and fabrication of criminal charges requiring perpetual fundraising for lawyers and bail fees eventually left the BPP fractured and splintered, a shell of its short former existence.

In the end, some members disappeared underground into the clandestine military unit of the Black Liberation Army (BLA). Some returned to their previous lives—feeling afraid, disillusioned, frustrated, disappointed, angry, and betrayed by the Party and movement they had come to love and committed their lives to. Still others found alternate means of serving the people. Fifty years later, members of the BPP are hidden in plain sight, suffering from the debilitating effects of post-traumatic stress disorder, casualties of COINTELPRO’s deadly war on the BPP.

It has been four and a half decades since the trial of the 21, and the sociopolitical realities that exist today serve as a chilling reminder that the past has caught up to the present, that everything old has become new again, and that the more things change the more they stay the same. In 1966, rampant and unpunished police terror and murder of Black people led to the grassroots communal response of the BPP, with Black youth across the country being recruited in rapid-fire succession. In 2016, the persistence of unpunished police terror and murder of Black people has led to the grassroots communal response of Black Lives Matter, with once again much excitement from and recruitment of Black youth. Both are examples of organic formations that came into being as a result of the negligence and recalcitrance of a capitalist power structure, elected officials from the president of the United States to Congress, mayors, prosecutors, and grand and trial juries assiduously refusing to punish or hold police accountable for the murder of unarmed Black people.

Most troubling of all is the fact that in the 1970s, the Church Committee felt able to call COINTELPRO an illegal operation; in 2016, government criminality and violent repression have surpassed the 1970s and been made legal by Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, and the Military Defense Authorization Act. What this means for the new generation of Arab nationals, immigrants, and activists involved in a wide range of issues such as the environment and Ferguson, Baltimore, and the Black Lives Matter movement is that the criminalization, repression, demonization, arrests, dehumanization, subversion, and undermining of their ideas, principles, and organizing has not only continued but in some ways become commonplace. Criminal prosecutions, convictions, and political imprisonment imposed on the movement radicals and revolutionaries of the 1960s and ’70s is now being imposed on a new generation, with less interest or attention from the mainstream media. That most people have never heard of COINTELPRO or the war it waged against the BPP and the Black Liberation Movement isn’t surprising given the pervasive corporatization and commodification of history and academia. This status quo history-telling of the BPP has been fraught with revisionism, the culture of celebrity activism, and individualized Panther exceptionalism.

The residual effects of COINTELPRO’s war on Black liberation continues not just in the political imprisonment of radicals and revolutionaries, but in the everyday reverberations which—over the past forty years—have led to the decimation, disintegration, and destruction of poor and working-class families and communities. The violent repression and political imprisonment of the BPP is symbolic of the notion that when they come for you in the morning, they’ll be coming for me at night. In the 1960s, the government waged war on Black liberation; twenty years later, a new draconian War on Drugs was waged on millions of poor and working-class Black men, womyn, and children. Forty years later, it’s a religious xenophobic War on Terror against Muslims and Arab nationals across the globe.

The consequences and legacy of the onslaught against the Panther 21 are more than sophisticated government surveillance and disruption. That legacy continues daily as an unseen force assiduously manipulating, dictating, orchestrating, and controlling the entire Black sociopolitical landscape. It includes the lingering disorganization and sectarian disunity that plagues many activist circles and organizations today. Ultimately, what Hoover set out to accomplish has been achieved.

We see this with the glaring absence of revolutionary Black nationalist groups and coalitions between organizations and activists, while a plethora of white-funded nonprofit or not-for-profit organizations exploit the conditions created by racist capitalist policies in urban Black communities. We see this in the lack of a cohesive transformative Black agenda to halt the systematic and institutionalized police genocide of Black people, and in the overabundance of Black mis-leadership, opportunists, self- or state-anointed Black spokespersons, and Black elected officials—always ready to serve the status quo, yet unwilling to challenge and confront the institutionalized oppression that cripples Black lives. We can see this in the marginalized, misleading, and mythologized history and legacy of the Panthers, in the treatment of self-defense, armed resistance, radical grassroots political perspectives mischaracterized as violent, militant, or extremist. Most perniciously, we see the overwhelming majority of misinformed and miseducated Black youth, crippled by ignorance and indifference about who they are, about the centuries and generations-old struggles waged on their behalf, distracted and obsessed by the whims of social media and technology, and consumed by hypercapitalist dreams of fame, fortune, and material possessions.

This has affected all of us: unlike the days of old, neighbors hardly speak or interact with one another, children are left to fend for themselves, people have been conditioned to be afraid of not only the power structure but their neighbors, Black children, and everyone else. Each one of these wars has been waged on Black people in particular, but they have also targeted Brown, immigrant, Arab, and Muslim people, and have led to the further disintegration and destruction of poor and working-class families, kinship communities, and nations around the world. u.s. history is replete with perpetual wars meant to repress and control those who dare to struggle against the violence of capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, racism, and white supremacy. Unbeknownst to many, these wars have helped usher amerikkka into the police state we live in today. They have consolidated law enforcement into the most militarized police force in the world. It is against this backdrop that, radical or not, activists must heed the collective histories and herstories of the 21, the Black Panther Party, and past movements—to better understand and prepare themselves for the virulent state repression and potential political imprisonment that awaits them.

For all these reasons and more, this updated version of Look for Me in the Whirlwind is a book whose time has come. Hoover is long gone, as is the covert version of the COINTELPRO. For the most part, the public’s perception and understanding of the BPP/BLA and what the organization represented within the Black freedom struggle is based upon an anti-Black, mythological, demonized, or criminalized idea of Black resistance—especially armed resistance. And while much has been written about the West Coast membership of the BPP, the East Coast stories have yet to be told. In many ways, the perspectives in this book will be an introduction for some, and a reintroduction for others, not only of the historic case of the 21 as members of the East Coast NYC chapter of the BPP, but about the who, what, and why regarding every level of the u.s.a.’s continuing war against the BPP/BLA and Black resistance movements. Like the original edition, it is presented in the first-person narrative of the once-younger members of the BPP. They are now becoming older, some departing this earthly realm, taking with them a litany of untold and valiant histories and herstories from one of the most significant revolutionary organizations and movements of the 20th century.

Dhoruba Bin Wahad, Jamal Joseph, Sundiata Acoli, Shaba Om, and Sekou Odinga, underground at the time of the original publication, are among the surviving members of the 21, and of the rarely presented East Coast membership of the BPP. They are survivors of Hoover’s war on the Black Liberation Movement. They offer here their fifty-year post-perspective on the significance of the 21, on Hoover’s COINTELPRO war, on the BPP/BLA and Black Liberation Movement, and on the still alarming rate of police genocide against unarmed Black men, womyn, and children. Here they expose the forty-year-old lies told about them and their comrades; here they make visible the often invisible existence of their fellow Panthers and dozens of other radicals and revolutionaries from the Movements of the 1960s and ’70s, held as PP/POWs in this purported land of freedom and democracy. Their collective histories as revolutionaries and former PP/POWs will counter the narrative of the BPP/BLA as anything but revolutionary—showing that they are nothing like the reactionary hate group or militant violent extremists conspiring to blow people up while they shopped for Easter outfits, as the case against the 21 tried to present them.

With COINTELPRO waging war against the BPP, being a revolutionary was a matter of life and death. Surviving COINTELPRO has left deep scars, and means that to varying degrees every member of the BPP has gained, lost, and suffered from their involvement in the Black Liberation Movement. For Dhoruba, Jamal, and Sekou—and their families—this is especially true given that as former PP/POWs, they endured being underground and hunted down by law enforcement, prison isolation and separation from family, and torture and police beat-downs. What they share on these pages will challenge the vilification, denigration, and falsehoods that permeate any mainstream discussion about the BPP/BLA, their contributions to the Black Freedom struggle, and the presumptive denunciations of them and their comrades as violent, cop killers, convicted felons, or domestic terrorists for taking up arms to defend themselves, their families, community, and a nation of poor and working-class Black people against extreme state violence. As revolutionaries who stood up to this vile, hundreds-of-years-old system of oppression, repression, and suppression of Black people’s lives they can speak best to what they believe is their legacy in the movement for Black liberation.

They tackle some of the questions most on people’s mind: Is there anything any of them would have done differently if given a chance? What challenges did they face then, and what challenges do they face now? What were the lessons learned? What has it meant to leave their still imprisoned comrades behind the wall thirty, twenty, or two years after their own release from prison? Most importantly, what messages of hope, resistance, and vision do they have for current and future generations of revolutionaries?

It has now been more than forty-five years since the acquittal of the 21 and each of their lives has taken a different political, spiritual, personal, and professional path. Sundiata Acoli has spent well over forty years as a POW; he has been repeatedly denied parole based on pressure from the New Jersey law enforcement apparatus. Sekou Odinga was a POW thirty-four years until his release in November 2014. Dhoruba Bin Wahad served nineteen years as a POW until his conviction was overturned following a court appeal that released details of the COINTELPRO conspiracy against him. Jamal Joseph served five and a half years behind bars and is now a well-known filmmaker, college professor, and arts educator.

The 21 and the BPP, like Malcolm X and so many Black folks before them, upheld the principle and tactic of self-defense and armed resistance, born out of the historical reality of Black people’s lived experiences resisting centuries and generations of white-on-Black terror, violence, and murder. Self-defense and armed resistance neither began nor ended with the BPP; both are a matter of Black survival in an amerikkka built on the violence and genocide against millions of indigenous people and the enslavement of millions of kidnapped Afrikans. Both are an ideology and practice firmly rooted in the Black radical tradition of justice, self-determination, and liberation—as aptly suggested by recent book titles such as This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible and We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement. Self-defense and armed resistance are calls to action, to Black self-determination—to not be unarmed victims and witnesses of police genocide or any other form of white-on-Black terror and violence. For this reason, the BPP fighters were not and are not criminals, dangerous villains, domestic terrorists, the greatest threat, murderous people intent on killing police, or any of the other pejorative name-calling phrases ascribed to them by Hoover, police officers, judges, prison administrators, the corporate media, prison parole boards, history books, and Hollywood movies.

And while all this is important, and a great deal of attention has been given to the Panther’s focus on the gun (with some also to the larger strategy of armed resistance), it isn’t the most significant aspect of the BPP legacy. The BPP’s primary objective was serving and defending the material needs of poor and working-class Black people. Keeping this in mind, the 21 and the BPP are Black heroes and sheroes, servants of the people, freedom fighters in the pantheon of the Black freedom struggle concerned about poor and working-class Black children living in a system that denied their humanity, dignity, justice, and most basic material needs. That millions of poor and working-class people of all races and ages—in cities, rural or suburban towns, and states across this country—now have access to free breakfast/lunch programs, free health clinics, food pantries, soup kitchens, a patients’ bill of rights, coats, shoes, and clothing drives—all this is a reflection of the work of the BPP.

These survival programs initiated by the BPP made them targets of Hoover’s destructive, racist obsessions. The programs have since been co-opted by the u.s. government, to be administered as disempowering social service programs. Rather than speaking this truth to power about the legacy and work of the BPP, white amerikkka, reactionary academics, conservative political pundits, the corporate media, and bourgeois Blacks consistently demonize and misrepresent the role of the BPP as revolutionaries in the Black freedom struggle. These same forces clamor to glorify the highly fictitious nonviolent civil rights movement—which always had significant self-determination and self-defense elements built into it. Sadly, this dichotomy persists today. Whenever another unarmed Black man, womyn, or child has been murdered by the police, and Black people who must confront the reality of trying to live and breathe safely while Black in amerikkka make the obvious choice to rebel, we are all treated to the guardians of the status quo insisting on the need for calm, nonviolent, and peaceful protests.

This hypocritical cry is antithetical to the historic realities of resistance and change; it is a patronizing and reactionary response to the contemporary paradox of state-sanctioned white-on-Black terror, violence, and murder. How are victims to remain calm, nonviolent, and peaceful in the face of intentional and unpunished violence and murder? In the 1960s, the BPP denounced the power structure’s sanctioning of police murder of Black people, and declared that Black lives matter in word and in deed. Today, that same Black lives matter declaration speaks just as profoundly to the souls of Black folk, because we still live in a nation of anti-Black laws and policies.

That said, the reissue of the original book included here is a praise song to the 21 and to all those members of the BPP/BLA—inside and outside the prison walls, here and gone—who gave their hands, bodies, hearts, minds, and spirits to answer the Black freedom call; who woke up at 3:00 a.m. to cook breakfast for hungry children not their own; who escorted poor and working-class mothers into the bowels of housing court and welfare offices; who held slum landlords accountable for rats, roaches, and peeling paint; who faced down marshals attempting to evict mothers with children; who confronted drug dealers on street corners and playgrounds; who placed their bodies and lives in the police line of fire to stop them from shooting down other people’s sons and daughters; who served and defended poor people not because they were asked to but because necessity has always been the mother and fatherhood of Black resistance.

The BPP didn’t just inspire this nation of Black youth to join