“There is and always will be, until every Blackman, woman and child is FREE, a Black Liberation Army.”

Assata Shakur

ISSUED: NOVEMBER 5, 1981

ON OCTOBER 20th, 1981, under the leadership of the Black Liberation Army, Black Freedom Fighters, and North American Anti-Imperialists, all members of the Revolutionary Armed Task Force, attempted an act of expropriation of $1.6 million from an armored Brinks truck. Brother Sekou Odinga, our comrade who was captured in Queens, was not involved in the Brinks incident. Sister Fulani Sunni-Ali, Chairperson of the Peoples Center Council of the Republic of New Afrika, was not involved in the Brinks incident in any fashion, and is not a member of the Black Liberation Army. Eve Rosahn was not involved in the Brinks incident, nor is she a member of the Revolutionary Armed Task Force.

Although there have been historical differences between Black Revolutionary Freedom Fighters and North American Anti-Imperialists, there were overriding events that called for this significant alliance. These events were:

1. The killing of Black men in Buffalo.

2. The collaboration of the Ku Klux Klan and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in North Carolina, and the subsequent disclosure of Bill Wilkinson as an FBI informant.

3. Fourteen unsolved murders of Black women in Boston.

4. The on-going murders of children in Georgia.

5. The shooting of four Black women in Alabama.

6. The stabbing deaths of Black men in New York City.

7. The use of KKK, Police and the United States Army as mercenaries in the Dominica invasion.

8. The KKK use of the Department of Parks for its war re-enactment of para-military training. This is a clear indication of government support for right wing fascist military training.

9. The government assassination of Black activist Yulanda Ward in Washington, D.C.

10. The consistent use of mercenary forces in putting down the Miami Rebellion.

BASED UPON AN evaluation of these events, a decentralized intelligence strategy was embarked upon by the revolutionary forces to determine the capability to separate rhetoric from real military action, especially concerning the capability of vigilante armies, and armies outside the United States military complex, that can implement urban terror on the Black and Third World population, and to assess the McCarthy-like period we are in—and to devise a response.

An intensive two year investigation was embarked upon which had people who were living underground for years, non-active in the military,reactivated and assigned to infiltrate and assess the major fascist organizations. This investigation led them to the Klan in Connecticut and North Carolina to determine FBI and local police complicity. It led them to the so-called Christian community to determine their military preparedness in their drive for survival. It led them to investigate the international fascist network in North America and its tentacles into the Caribbean, citing the assassination of Walter Rodney and their complicity in toppling the Manley government in Jamaica

FACTS STEMMING FROM THIS INTELLIGENCE ARE:

1. That the Black population in North America is the number one focus of all the above organizations, e.g., illustrated in their fliers, and their targets used for shooting practice.

2. The law enforcement agencies, from the local police, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Secret Service, and Central Intelligence Agency,have directly,through their alumni or various associations outside their own structures, used federal money, taken from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration budget, to participate in said organizations, through lending their expertise and financial backing, and use of classified information on their enemies.

3. Members of the ruling class have been used to back these organizations. John Connally financed the mercenary plot against Dominica. H. Ross Perot financed the failed Iran hostage rescue. The Hunt family finances North Carolina Klan activity through the sale of South African Krugerrands.

4. A mass propaganda program on white America to build an hysteria against communism and crime to perpetuate vigilantism, to cover the fascist approach to genocide by these white people, and to cover up the specific programs of the above forces. To move for more tolerance on the part of white America to accept and participate in this situation.

5. The government anti-terrorist force is formulated under the same ideology as the civilian, so-called race terror forces. Richard M. Nixon and his staff in the FBI and Justice Department are the government’s originators of said program.

Reaganomics is used to force the survival of the Black and Third World population to a situation where the apartheid system will be the norm in urban communities. And to put blue and white collar workers into law enforcement related situations, thereby having control over the system as a whole.

THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMED TASK FORCE assesed that the time to respond was NOW. It could no onger be a wait-and-see program. The normal process of watchdog committees, that generally halted these conspiracies, such as the NAACP, the Urban League, and Klan Watch, have been ineffective in exposing the true nature of the crisis.

The fact that the Black Liberation Army had interwoven into the fiber of the Black community clandestinely allowed the Army to have a finger on the pulse of the Black Community as well as the Anti-imperialist movement. The left movement has emphasized its work against the pro-nuclear forces and works within the bourgeois framework. They are unprepared to understand the fact that they have been targeted and are therefore incapable of responding. The lack of response by progressive people to the Moral Majority has allowed for a right wing backlash against all women. On the other hand, the Black Community responded to the propaganda and conditions by resisting at the basic level of survival. The astronomical amount of law enforcement films, the blatant average American racist disrespect of Black people, and the conditions illustrated from talk shows and editorials, to the passive wait-and-see attitude toward the effects of Reaganomics on Black people and poor people, illustrated to us that the time to respond and to stop the flow of fascist racist repression is now and in this period

ONE CLEAR FACT is that all the racist organizations are well financed. Different from the 1960s and early 70s, when Black people offered their money, checks and funds to enhance the public resistance to racism, cutbacks and loss of jobs have eliminated monies available to

Black people. Black people have no control over their communities. Jobs do not exist, welfare lines are longer. The money to feed the handicapped, the aged, and the unemployed all have been cut. The lack of respect for the elders in the Black community and the low level of nationalist programs have led our youth to respond to the programs of oppression and their insecurities as human beings by inflicting petty vicious crimes internally. We oppose such crimes, and since we understand the conditions that create these situations, the Revolutionary Armed Task Force decided that:

1. The masses in the urban areas must develop people’s self-defese units to defend themselves NOW!

2. Programs are needed to set positive revolutionary examples for our youth, and must be developed in practice and in theory NOW!

3. The urgency to accumulate millions of dollars under the political control of the most advanced revolutionary elements for the use of various types of programs in the communities, from cultural, child care, to health care, must be secured NOW!

4. There will be no BLACK HOLOCAUST. It will be the motivation and determination of the combatants in the field to prevent such an occurrance. Therefore we say

THE COMRADES WHO are in jail are not criminals. They are Prisoners of War, and they are HEROES. They are heroes struggling against RACISM, FASCISM, AND IMPERIALISM. The Black combatants follow in the tradition of Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, Mark Essex, Ahmed Evans, Harriet Tubman, Twyman Myers and all those who have stopped the flow of uncontested violence and repression against the Black community. The white combatants follow in the tradition of John Brown, who organized masses of white people to fight against slavery and repression.

Even though this particular military battle failed, the goals should always set the example for our youth and true revolutionaries. To set the record straight, WE HAVE NEVER SHOT OR KILLED ANYONE WITH THEIR HANDS IN THE AIR SURRENDERING. We have not kicked in doors with guns in hand to murder sleeping people.

Even though we know where many children and families of the law enforcement agencies live we have never charged the wife for the crime of the husband nor attacked innocent children.

—We charge the Black community to relinquish their fear of the enemy and to stop robbing each other, and to go to the fascist multi-national corporations where the risk is the same and the act more political.

—We charge the intellectual aspects of the Black community to come forward and clearly identify this era of Black Resistance to imperialism and colonialism and interpret the current events to the Black community.

—We charge the artists to create a clear presentation of our conditions wherever they can.

—We charge the Black and progressive press to do the investigation of our intelligence reports to celebrate the factual information from our heroes. To speak to the Geneva Accords in relation to our Prisoners of War.

—To all conscious Black and Third World people: remain diligent. If you don’t intend to fight, don’t be afraid to speak and resist.

—To our comrades in Azania/South Africa, who we have aided politically, economically, and militarily, our continued support is assured.

We send our solidarity to all members of the Revolutionary Armed Task Force.

THE BODY AND MIND OF MTAYARI SHABAKA SUNDIATA (s/n Samuel Smith) WILL NOT BE LAID TO REST IN VAIN. WE WILL CONTINUE IN HIS SPIRIT AND DISCIPLINE TO CARRY OUT HIS RESPONSIBILITIES IN THE INTEREST OF THE COLLECTIVE AND HIS PEOPLE.

WE MUST HAVE A NATION!

WE MUST HAVE AN ARMY!!

THERE WILL BE NO BLACK HOLOCAUST!!!

“Where is the Blackman’s Army”

—Marcus Garvey

“Our backs are against the wall. Now more than ever we need an army to defend ourselves and fight for our liberation.”

—Assata Shakur