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UN - GUARDED SMILE - a poem to Sam Randolph by Julia Wright

(Daughter of Literary Icon Richard Wright)

brother Sam

when I first met you

on another zoom

I did not know your name

and all I saw

was what I thought

at the time

was such a beaming

unguarded smile

that I failed to notice

the bed from

which you spoke

up for others

little did I know

that you literally

had won your smile

against the guards

who made sure you

were shackled

before severing your spine

while failing to break your spirit

the upright courage it took

to withstand torture

by the guards and the DA

shows who the spineless ones really are

your humble relentless determination

not to be broken not only exonerated you

it turned you into our honored teacher

(c) Julia Wright. May 2nd 2023.

All Rights Reserved to Sam Randolph.

"Living Death : Ruchell, Mumia and Sam Randolph" RSTV April 30th with Kalonji Changa, Joy James, Dylan Rodriguez and Sam Randolph

Go Fund Me Link

https://bit.ly/HelpSamWalkAgain

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 KEVIN JOHNSON: 24 HOURS TO LIVE!

-Kalonji Changa

  A political prisoner is a person targeted or imprisoned because of their political actions, affiliations and/or beliefs. A political prisoner is also an individual, who while incarcerated, transforms themselves from a social prisoner by gaining clarity, embracing and maintaining political struggle. Thirty-seven-year-old Kevin “KJ” Johnson is scheduled to be executed by the State of Missouri, tomorrow, November 29th most would not view him as a “political prisoner.”  However, given the poverty, neglect, suffering and abuse that comes with being a captive in domestic colonies and urban enclaves within a capitalist and imperialist state, from the onset Kevin was undoubtedly a victim of US politics and policing.    On July 5, 2005, 19-year-old Kevin “KJ” Johnson witnessed his 12- year-old brother, “Bam Bam” collapse while police conducted a search of their grandmother’s home. When KJ learned later that day that his brother had died, he felt that the death was medical neglect. Hours later, traumatized, mentally and psychologically distressed, Kevin spotted Kirkwood Police Sergeant William McEntee in the neighborhood. He approached the patrol car screaming “You killed my brother!”. Then he shot and killed the officer. Inadequately armed with court-appointed attorneys, KJ had two trials. The first resulted in a hung jury which rejected the first-degree murder charge. In the second trial, an all-white jury found KJ guilty and sentenced him to death for killing of a white police officer.  

In the 17 years that Kevin Johnson has served on death row, nearly 20,000 people have been killed by police in the United States, over 1000 this year alone. Few officers have been convicted, even fewer have been sentenced to 20 years (or more). Currently, there is only one police officer on death row: Antoinette Frank, a Black woman. Convicted, along with her drug dealer boyfriend, of the robbery of a New Orleans based Vietnamese Restaurant where she worked part time, Frank had murdered two members of the family who ran the establishment, and her fellow NOPD officer Ronald A. Williams II. The decision by the State of Louisiana to push for the death penalty likely had more to do with Frank betraying her fellow officer than actual justice.

        Impunity for police forces that function as colonial enforcers tracks the murders of the occupants of this stolen land.  Awaiting the outcome of our collective efforts to save the life of Kevin Johnson from Missouri’s death row, some of us commemorate the police murder of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston; who was gunned down by Atlanta Police in 2006.   https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/people-african-american-history/kathryn-johnston-1914-2006/  

This police murder became one of the rare occasions in which police were prosecuted for murder. 

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/three-former-atlanta-police-officers- sentenced-prison-fatal-shooting-elderly-atlanta-woman . 

People in Atlanta observed and then acted during an era where many believed you had to be “doing something” wrong, naively arguing: “The police ain’t just going to shoot you.” That was before cell phone footage shifted blame from the victim to the state perpetrator. The 92-year-old Ms. Johnston never even had a traffic ticket; yet, she was murdered inside her own home by police. In an attempt to exonerate themselves, police planted marijuana in Ms. Johnston’s basement; and handcuffed Ms. Johnston after they gunned her down, leaving the deceased bleeding, handcuffed and lying in a pool of her own blood while police tampered with a crime scene. Media vilified Johnston as a violent, criminal rogue who shot at the police officers. Media rarely mentioned that police ripped her burglar bars off her door and came in unannounced with hoodies and Timberland boots without signaling that they were officers. 

Eight years shy of a century, Ms. Kathryn Johnston had her case eclipsed from national headlines when four days later, 23-year-old Sean Bell was murdered, and two of his friends, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield were seriously wounded, after NYPD fired 50 shots into the vehicle the men were driving as they were attempting to leave Bell’s bachelor party, a few hours before his planned wedding. The Kathryn Johnston case was “closed” when officer Jason R. Smith, was sentenced to 10 years, Gregg Junnier, to 6 years, and Arthur Tesler, to 5 years in federal prison. The police officers were mandated to collectively pay $8,180 in restitution for the costs of Kathryn Johnston’s funeral and burial.

In the Sean Bell case, officers Michael Oliver (who fired 31 of the 50 shots), Gescard Isnora, and Detective Marc Cooper, were acquitted on all counts.  

         In 2022, willful ignorance and false platitudes make some feel comfortable about complacency. The scale of justice appears to lean toward the linchpins of capitalism/imperialism and executioners. Deputy Chairman of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton, stated: “It’s terrible but it’s fine.” Those who do not care about reform, empty promises and handshakes from politicians, photo ops or ghost-written tear-jerker speeches by entertainers and propagandists, also likely do not care about state-orchestrated marchers leaving Instagram pics and a fed file.

         Community control of public safety and decentralization of our neighborhoods is mandatory. A pastor in Rochester, NY, when George Floyd was murdered stated on WBAI “If you kill us, we will kill your economy.” Economic destruction by not spending money leads to creative alternative choices for communal and familial households. The police are terrorizing our communities. Those who live and work in and care for the community must come to terms and recognize that there are no neutrals in war. Economic boycotts, political organizations, and security apparatuses must become more effective. Whether it is Kathryn Johnston or Kevin Johnson or someone whose name we do not know, our very lives are on the line in terms of police violence. Until we dare to challenge the authorities and practitioners of genocide, we will remain their victims. 

Kalonji Jama Changa, organizer and founder of the FTP Movement, is author of How to Build a People’s Army and co-producer of the documentary Organizing Is the New Cool. Co-founder of Black Power Media, Changa serves as co-chair of the Urban Survival and Preparedness Institute.   Find out more about the case of Kevin “KJ” Johnson and how you can get involved by visiting   https://www.madpmo.org/  to support Mr. Johnson and Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Exclusive Interview w/ Kevin Johnson, Kalonji Changa and Dr. Joy James

Also, check out the recent Truthout article by Dr. Joy James and Kalonji Changa:

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Julia Wright, daughter of literary icon Richard Wright on what the death of Queen Elizabeth II should mean to Africans worldwide.

MOURNING OUR OWN QUEENS...

"There will be many funerals..."

-George Jackson, shortly before his murder

As a veteran journalist, I watch the body language of thousands of mourners in live streaming, as I write, filing to pay their respects to their late monarch, Elizabeth the Second, in Saint Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh.

As a Black woman, this is what I see: a crowd of mostly shabby genteel, mostly white, vacant faced, subdued, awed, baffled, bewildered, tired, ordinary folk cut off by a cordon from the object of their mourning, unable to have a last look at the face of the person they grieve for because the casket is closed. Other folks chat while they watch virtually and vicariously and wonder if there is actually anybody in that pompously guarded coffin.

Very symbolic doubt... Will there come a time when they will wake up to a Santa Claus monarchy?

My sadness goes not to this privileged, imperially entitled Queen but to these masses amassed in their living dream as they file in front of empty and antiquated pageantry.

Words from one of my father's favorite poets, Vachel Lindsay, come back to me: "It is not that they die, it is that they die like sheep".

It is said that the late Queen had a minute hand in planning the details of her own funeral - at a cost of billions of taxpayers pounds.

Dr Janine Jones and Kalonji Changa - who defends the poor - agree to say: we need equality in the face of death.

I rewind to the footage of Emmett Till's funeral: his open casket by decision of his mother, Maimie Till Mobley, who brought his sealed lynched remains back from Mississippi at the cost of a full year of her own salary. The thousands who passed close to the open coffin were not cordoned off from History - in fact this absence of cordons, this transparency sparked the civil rights movement.

Maimie, our Black Queen, turned us towards the future with the decisions she took - not towards a stultified past.

And I rewind to Malcolm X's funeral and to the mourning crowds excluded from it, waiting cordoned off by hostile police behind barriers. And I pay tribute to the dignity of another Black Queen, the late Betty Shabazz I was years later to meet - and the talk we had.

And I rewind to the poignant footage of Martin Luther King's funeral and the humble pauper's cart that drew his coffin after the funeral service at Ebenezer Church. And my heart goes out to another Black Queen, the late Coretta Scott King, so full of courage surrounded by so many of her husband's assassins.

And I rewind to so many of our funerals - when we are fortunate to be given back the bodies of our lynched and to bury them.

I want to pause a moment on the soul-wrenching funeral of George Jackson who in his own "royal" way prepared his own funeral by writing:

"an empty bed

tears are shed

no more sun

after I'm gone

my family cries

their love has died

my friends are there

death's in the air

my chains unbound

I'm put in the ground

everybody's sad

but I'm glad

it's lucky me

because now I'm free"

I recognize as one of my Black Queens, his mother, Georgia Jackson who lost two sons, Jonathan and George to white supremacy and "did not sit in a corner and cry".

And what about our other ancestral Queens: Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, bell hooks to name only three.

And then we have the living who are not yet even elders: Assata Shakur, Pam Africa, Johanna Fernandez...

We are blessed with so many Black Queens, alive and dead - we are so rich.

Let's celebrate.

(c) Julia Wright September 13 2022

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Assata Shakur 4th of July Message

Nineteen Seventy Six, the year of this countries bicentennial and the flags fly high and the politicians roar and the bugles blow and Ray Charles sings praise of Amerika. And while MGM projects red, white and blue rainbows in the sky and Ideal is making Betsy Ross dolls and Seventh Avenue is belting out red, white and blue evening gowns every capitalist from here too California is getting into the act.

They are peddling Buy-centenial cups and coins and bells and belt buckles, churning out red, white and blue lampshades and ice cream and napkins and nooses. It's all one big happy carnival, a red, white and blue circus.

But do we buy the buy-centenial? What does it mean to Black people, to Chicanos to Puerto Ricans? What does it mean to poor people, to working people, to oppressed people?

What does it mean to Cherokee and Crow and Apache and Navajo and Sioux? What does it mean to the victims of Amerika? What do we have to celebrate? Should we celebrate George Washington who sold a slave for a keg of whiskey? Shall we celebrate the signers of the Declaration of Independence who referred to Native Americans are "Merciless Indian Savages" while murdering them and ripping off their land?

Shall we celebrate Wounded Knee, Watergate and Birmingham? Shall we celebrate Orangeburg, Attica, Kent State, Dred Scott, McCarthyism, Ludlow and Hayes? Shall we celebrate the lynchings, the concentration camps, and the wars and the greed? Shall we celebrate the bought elections, the FBI, the CIA, big brother, the big stick, burning crosses and the dollar diplomat?

There is no liberty, no justice, no freedom in Amerika. In 1776, Black people were slaves. In 1976, we are still slaves, enslaved by a racist system where the haves control everything and the have nots have to beg just to work. In 1776, this country was founded by the landed aristocracy who sought mainly to protect their interests. And in 1976 this country is still in the hands of a rich few who thrive off the misery of the many. No, we must not buy their bicentennial. Only a fool celebrates his own oppression.

There is a saying, "When your child cries and is hungry and you have no food to feed him, sing him to sleep". And so when inflation is raging, when taxes are soaring, when schools are closing, when corruption and unemployment are rampant and when over 70% of the people in this country are dissatisfied with the government, the rulers of this country creates a bicentennial lullaby. They have the wealth but rather than share it they try to pacify us with patriotism and pagentry. 'let them eat apple pie" they snicker. "Let them wear the color of the blood we make them shed" of the racism we manipulate them with and the misery and grief we make them suffer".

We have nothing to celebrate. Let the Rockefellers and the DuPonts and the Fords and the Mellon's celebrate. It is their bicentennial. Let them drape themselves with a red, white and blue shroud and wail the last desperate bellows of a dying bull. But let us hear a different drummer.

Let us issue a new declaration, a people's declaration. Let us work towards a second revolution, a revolution of the have nots, of the oppressed and the powerless. And let us work, let us organize, let us struggle so that a hundred years from now, our children will have something real to celebrate.

In solidarity and struggle,

Assata Shakur

Middlesex County Jail

June 29th, 1976

Join our Patreon Community and assist us in putting the finishing touches on our documentary Organizing Is the New Cool https://www.patreon.com/OITNC/

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Open Letter to Roland Sebastian Martin

A couple days ago our podcast network, Black Power Media tweeted a 3-minute video titled, “Roland Martin, Angela Davis and the Black Misleadership Class”. The brief clip from an episode of The RemiX Morning Show (a show on our platform) featured two of the hosts Dr. Jared Ball and Kamau Franklin giving a somewhat mild critique of your support for current US president Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. You replied to the tweet, “Awwww. 929 views?” followed by several laughing emojis.

As you know there was a back and forth between you, members of our platform and supporters. Amongst your many responses to our collective, one particular that you directed towards me was “Well when a fool says something stupid, I’ll happily smack em. But go ahead and keep making up bullshit”. Now that was funny! I must admit that as my country uncle would say, “You tickled me with that one”. Perhaps you were drinking, talking out your head or under the influence of sedatives or methamphetamines when you fixed your fingers to type such malarkey. Or maybe your screen made you feel as bold as the parasitic merchants and avaricious businessmen who feel safe behind the polycarbonate glass in their hood establishments where they provide low quality products, bad service and disrespect the very people who frequent and sustain them. Nevertheless, I invite you to cash in on those woof tickets you selling anytime you feel the desire. Loosen up your ascot, put on your ceremonial kente cloth tights and go for broke.

All of the descendants of LBJ sixties “War On Poverty” aimed at quelling the rebellious summers of “Discontent”, the Poverty Pimps who emerged as vociferous voices of “Black Capitalism” and who launched careers off the blood and repression of Black radical resistance talked the same arrogant smack as you. They ensconced themselves in the Democratic Party, the Jackass Party, and earnestly became the “Crash Test dummies” for neo-liberal White Supremacy forays into “Making America the Greatest Vampire nation on the planet” while amassing piddling wealth as a Black ownership class, all the while fostering the myth that Black consumerism translated into economic independence within the White Supremacist Construct that is Capitalist America.

You sit at the knee of the Boulè Negros, Gate Keepers who set and kept their eyes on the road to Black political cooptation with both hands on the wheel driving us toward Black dystopian perdition as our urban communities sunk deeper and deeper into despair. Now today, we have more Black mayors, elected officials, and Black Police chiefs than ever, yet everything has gotten progressively worse, and it’s this Black ‘misleadership’ class that presides over it all. Even, though, time and time again when grassroots radicalism raises its forbidden head, it’s Negroes like you who seek to coopt its energy and pretend that you are courageous in doing so, when in fact you’re as radical, revolutionary, or even slightly progressive as a church mouse. Puffing up your chest and talking about slapping somebody, like you’re a misogynist pimp or character in a Donald Goines novel when in fact you wouldn’t bust a grape in white folk distillery of American dreams. So, your arrogance preceded your ego. You see, Roland Sebastian Martin, the criticisms that were offered, were not antagonistic, they were based off of you and others mentioned support of a born again semi-senile racist Biden and the false narratives around the democratic party. No one mentioned the fact that you were the same person who posted the dramatic video of yourself in your car crying (with a Trey Songz soundtrack in the background) talking about, “I have voted all my life. But when I rolled up to Friendship-West Baptist Church this AM, and I saw this massive line after the polls had been open 27 minutes, the tears just hit me”. Never occurred to you how absurd you sounded – Black people have been voting for decades, indeed we seem to revisit the right to vote every four or five years since the passage of the “voting rights act” of the mid-1950s because the White increasingly minority population refuse to let go of White privilege without fight to the death. We vote with little to no discernible power to control our own destiny, or even with racial-class integrity. Are we to reinvent failure every time a “ho or hum” comes along and promises us a seat at the monster banquet? We didn’t attack you when you were literally dancing with democrats. It was you Roland Sebastian Martin, who in 2015 moderated the South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus Town Hall (while employed as host and managing editor of TV One’s News One) teaching Hillary Clinton, the quintessential “Wicked Witch of the West” how to “wobble”. That was the same year Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray and Walter Scott were murdered by police, and there’s your rotund ass “wobbling” with war criminal Clinton. But yet, you wanna disrespect Black Power Media because of our mentioning the fact that you have assisted in mis-leadership? While you were the one boohooing for Biden and buck dancing for Billy Clint’s bish? You are a strange kind of man. You brag about your 30 years in media. What you don’t know is whilst you were on the screen, we were on the scene. There was once an entire generation that backed up racist armed agents of the state, Cops who wantonly murdered us and occupied our community like a street gang, occupying the territory of the poor too weak and cowered to fight back. It is on those streets we organize. Like Chairman Fred Hampton of the BPP, who formed the Rainbow Coalition, before suffering Jessie branded the concept and flipped the script. While you were fraternizing, we were organizing. That is what Black Power Media is about. We are here to politicize and educate our people not to get views and “likes” but to encourage sovereign political thinking people who are eager to organize an anti-racist abolitionist movement. Not get adverts on YouTube and likes on social media.

It is an insult of the highest order when we have political prisoners like 84-year-old Sundiata Acoli who has served 48 years in prison with no disciplinary infractions in the last 25 years or 82-year-old Ruchell Magee, who has served 58 years in prison and is currently the longest held political prisoner in the US. These brothers and many other brothers and sisters are literally dying in prison in poor health, being denied medical treatment and you wanna try to brag about your work in media, and you have not mentioned once the voice of the voiceless, Mumia Abu Jamal, an imprisoned Black journalist, while downplaying our efforts yet you have never highlighted any political prisoners from the Black Liberation Movement? Maybe it’s because you know none that White folks are comfortable with, or that the police unions won’t condemn you for merely mentioning their existence. In a recent interview with freedom fighter and renowned journalist Mumia Abu Jamal who has been a political prisoner for 40 years, I asked him “What is the role of the journalist?” He replied, “The role is to be a tribune of the people, to touch the pulse of the people, feel what they feel and reflect that which they do not. So that we can build movements that are moving at a higher frequency and a higher vibration to pull the people together”. Roland Sebastian Martin, you can’t play both sides of the fence. My hope is that you move from the comfort of a corporate journalist and land on the right side of history before it’s too late. Recent events since the storming of the senate, by enraged right wing mobs should tell you that we can never ignore the power of plenty of ignorant and delusional people. History teaches us this.

Kalonji Changa (@KalonjiChanga) Co-Founder, Black Power Media (BPM)

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BLACK AUGUST DEFINED

Over the past several years, there have been numerous events - “barbeques”, “strip club promos”, “car washes” and all types of madness in the name of Black August.  Many have come to the conclusion that Black August is an additional Black History Month, while others utilize it as a “holiday” or celebration to promote and endorse various forms of Black capitalism. Unfortunately, many of our people are clueless as to what true power is so they are motivated by the illusion of power.  Minister Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party stated, “Power is the ability to define phenomenon and make it act in a desired manner”. And therein lies the foundation of Black August – Black August is about resistance. It is an annual commemoration, rather than celebration, of our political prisoners – those who lost their lives during the 1970s in the gulags of California, along with the hundreds who are currently languishing under torturous conditions and being denied their basic human rights across the United States.

In 1979, the concept of Black August manifested outside the gates of San Quentin State Prison, in a response to a number of assassinations, state sponsored executions, and deaths related to the denial of medical treatment. One such case was that of Khatari Gaulden, a disciplined and principled leader in the Black Prison Movement who became the last man to suffer a Black August inspired death. On August 1, 1978, Khatari was playing football in the San Quentin adjustment center prison yard, when he tripped and hit his head on a pipe sticking out of the side of a brick wall. Khatari was taken to the infirmary with a severe head injury and held there for hours. The doctors in the infirmary knew immediately that they could not help him and that Khatari should be taken to a public hospital.  However, the prison refused him the much needed medical care, stating they didn’t have “enough security to transport him”. Khatari Gaulden would lay in the prison infirmary long enough for authorities to see he was gravely ill, before a decision was made to transport him to Ross Hospital in Marin, California for a brain scan. After several additional hours of not being attended to, he was transferred to San Francisco General where he made his transition.  

During the tenure of his 11-year imprisonment, Khatari Gaulden’s leadership, courage and accountability made him legendary, and he quickly became one of the most hated targets by the California Department of Corrections. For years, up until Khatari Gaulden’s death, the prison paid-off a number of inmates to kill him, and also hired fellow convicts to file bogus charges in an attempt to set him up for more time. They were unsuccessful. Many believe the prolonged medical treatment, which ultimately led to his demise, was the prison’s opportunity to “legally” neutralize him.  

Along with Khatari Gaulden’s death, the roots of Black August date back to 1970 with the murders of three young men on the yard of Soledad Prison. These men, 21-year-old W.L. Nolen, 23-year-old Alvin “Juggs” Miller, and 21-year-old Cleveland Edwards, were involved in an altercation with members of the Aryan Nation when corrections officer Opie G. Miller, an expert marksman, opened fire and wounded the young men. The Brothers were left on the prison yard for 20 minutes until they all bled to death. According to witnesses, inmates made efforts to carry the wounded inmates off of the yard and were forced at gunpoint to cease their attempts. Four days after the murders, a prison guard was beaten and thrown from a prison tier to his death.

George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo and John Cluchette –known as “The Soledad Brothers” – were accused and charged with the retaliation. George Jackson, who was arrested at the age of 17, was serving time after being sentenced to 1 year to life in prison for allegedly robbing a gas station of $70. George was a close comrade of W.L. Nolen and was well on his way to becoming a recognized writer, freedom fighter and cultural icon.  Shortly after the murders of inmates Nolen, Miller and Edwards, and the charges brought upon the Soledad Brothers, George Jackson released his first book_, “Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson.”  He was quickly thrust into the international spotlight. Jackson, a recognized prison leader and organizer studied and shared revolutionary philosophies and politics. In addition, he developed and taught his team a bastardized martial arts fighting system. Huey P. Newton later drafted George Jackson as Field Marshal of the Black Panther Party.

On August 7, 1970, George Jackson’s 17 year-old brother, Jonathan Jackson, entered the Marin County Courthouse armed with several guns, including a M1 carbine, demanding the release of the Soledad Brothers. Jonathan passed guns to James McClain (who was on trial for stabbing another guard), William Christmas, and Ruchell McGee. Jonathan announced to the court officers, “Ok, gentlemen we will be taking over from here”.  Taking hostage Judge Harold Haley, Deputy District Attorney Gary Thomas and juror Maria Elena Graham, the 4 men hopped into a van and attempted to escape when police opened fire on the vehicle. In the aftermath Jonathan Jackson, William Christmas, James McClain and Judge Harold Haley were all dead. The guns, which were allegedly bought by and given to Jonathan Jackson by freedom fighter Angela Davis, made her a fugitive hunted by the FBI. President Richard Nixon declared Angela Davis a “dangerous terrorist”.  

One year later, August 21, 1971, 29-year-old George Jackson was assassinated by San Quentin Prison guards after they claimed he smuggled a pistol under an afro wig, returning to quarters after a visit with his lawyer. This government sponsored assassination sent a ripple effect across the globe. George Jackson’s murder set off a rebellion in which three prison guards were killed. Six brothers were accused, and labeled “the San Quentin 6”. Jackson’s assassination had such an impact, that it is said to have ignited the Attica Prison Rebellion, which took place 2 ½ weeks later at the Attica Correctional Facility in New York.

These are only a few key reasons why we have continued to commemorate Black August Resistance for 39 years since its inception. It is important that we keep the spirit of Black August Resistance alive and well in its proper context. And we must be clear, Black August is not a fad or just an event; it is a practice.  Each year, in the State of California, over 300 inmates are placed on lock down if they are caught with any literature or paraphernalia pertaining to Black August.  On August 5, 2016, the FBI’s National Gang Intelligence Center put out an anti-resistance propaganda memo, with a fabricated warning that Black August was gang activity and to watch out for “increased violence” and “ambushing of police officers in dark alleys”. The memo serves as a form of propaganda used as an age-old scare tactic by the FBI for almost a century, going back to its Palmer Raids in 1919, and its counterinsurgency plan of the 1960s known as COINTELPRO. But in the words of poet Maya Angelou “Still we rise”.

During the month of Black August there are a number of events happening around the globe.

_ _Kalonji Jama Changa is the East Coast Coordinator for the Black August Organizing Committee (BAOC). 

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STATEMENT BY DHORUBA BIN-WAHAD, ON THE OCCASION OF THE TRIBUTE TO ZAYD MALIK SHAKUR AND CAPTURED COMRADES

On March 3rd when a New Jersey State Trooper stopped the car with Sundiata Acoli, Assata Shakur, and Zaid Malik Shakur heading south on the New Jersey Turnpike, it was not a random traffic stop. Though the NJ Turnpike and the State Troopers were long renown for harassing and stopping Black motorists this was no routine “driving while Black” episode.

Earlier the week before, the FBI led Joint Anti-Terrorist Task Force (JTTF) through one of its component Police Agencies, the NYPD “Major Case Squad”, had put out an APB (All Points Bulletin) to every law enforcement agency in the North East to be on the look out for a Black Woman with possibly two male companions – that woman was Assata Shakur, a known BLA soldier wanted by the police for armed robbery of several Banks and armed assaults on Policeman.

So it was that when this Trooper Foster, spotted what seemed like a vehicle fitting the APB description, he radioed for back up and hastily proceeded to pull the suspected car over. Gun drawn and adrenaline pumping the Cop exited his vehicle to confront the occupants of the “suspected” car. What happened next is not exactly clear, but shooting erupted: Zayd Shakur was killed instantly, Assata was shot and wounded with her hands raised while Sundiata Acoli managed to escape the scene into the surrounding country-side, only to be captured later.

The Police Killing of Zayd Shakur, and Capture of Assata and Sundiata made national headlines and was celebrated by NYPD alumnae of the “Major Case Squad” (who weeks earlier had ambushed and killed BLA soldiers, Woody Green, Anthony Kimu White, and Twyman Myers in two separate ambushes targeting the BLA. The FBI led and funded Joint Terrorist Task Force, or JTTF, a bastard offspring of the FBI’s “Racial Matters” Desk and post COINTELPRO ‘s “ NEWKILL investigation that targeted NY Panther 21 for the shooting of several New York cops, and the NYPD’s Intelligence Unit “BOSSI”. The FBI acronym “NEWKILL” stands for “New Killing of Police Officers” and was concocted in 1971 by the Nixon White House to “repress a “Black urban guerilla underground” in the wake of the urban rebellions (riots) that rocked America during the Vietnam war years.

Zayd Shakur, was the Deputy Minister of Information for the NY Chapter of the BPP. Always on the move, busily promoting the BPP programs in the “field” or the Hood without any concern for his personal safety Zayd was a devoted freedom fighter. The Brother of Lumumba Shakur, Harlem Branch Field Lieutenant, and named lead defendant in the NY Panther 21 indictment that charged NY Panthers with over 250 counts of conspiracy in a 1968 secret indictment, Zayd was one of the few original New York Panther leaders left in that city after the “21 Bust”.

As an original New York Panther leader from Harlem and Bronx Zayd became a major target of COINTELPRO and New York’s Police Intelligence Unit BOSSI. None of that fazed Zayd who assumed greater responsibilities for Party programs in the wake of the 21 arrest. From New York to Boston, from New Haven to Baltimore, the National leadership relied on Zayd to guide younger Panther’s and community workers assigned to the East Coast by the Party’s National leadership. A soft spoken man, Zayd hailed from a family of Pan-African activists. His father, Baba Shakur, was an elder Nationalist mentor to many of us, including, Kwame Toure who before his departure to Africa was designated the BPP “Prime Minister” by the Party Central Committee before the COINTELPRO instigated demise of the Party in 1971.

Fifty years ago this month we lost a comrade, freedom fighter, and defender of the Black community’s collective integrity. Fifty years ago, our comrade and BPP stalwart Sundiata Acoli was captured and remains in prison to this day. Though neither Zayd or Sundiata were actual BLA soldiers, or Cadre, but as COINTELPRO targets for neutralization, they both were forced underground to survive the 360 degree repression and police criminalization of their above ground political work that culminated in the Party’s division.

Ironically, after Assata had been found “not guilty” on several of the original Bank Robbery charges that had generated the May 3rd confrontation on the New Jersey Turnpike, Assata was convicted of shooting New Jersey Trooper Foster and sentenced to life imprisonment. She would only spend several months in jail before a unit of the Black Underground liberated her from a New Jersey Maximum Security prison. Assata Shakur lives today in Cuba as a Political refugee from the racist police repression of the Black Liberation Movement for which Zayd Malik Shakur, gave his life.

DHORUBA BIN-WAHAD MAY 2017, ATLANTA GA.

About the Author: Dhoruba Bin Wahad is a former Black Panther Party/BLA Leader and former political prisoner who served 19 years after being framed by the FBI’s COINTELPRO. There is a film on his life called “Passin’ it On”. Dhoruba is currently co-chair of the National Coalition to Combat Police Terrorism. He is available for bookings and interviews at: http://www.thepeoplesarmy.org/speakers

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The Orchestrated Assassination of Martin King

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-The following is a piece My Brother Marcus Kline put together a couple years back...Check it out and leave us your thoughts...For more info like this I invite you to join our site at http://www.thepeoplesarmy.org or follow us on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ftpmovement

*Courtesy of Frontline Magazine

The assassination of Martin King was designed, orchestrated and covered-up by the United Snakkkes government. Is this the ravings of a madman consumed by conspiracy theories? Well, according to a Memphis jury's verdict on December 8, 1999, in the wrongful death lawsuit of the King family versus Loyd Jowers "and other unknown co-conspirators," (the majority of this article is based on this trial) Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a conspiracy that included agencies of his own government. Almost 38 years after King's murder at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4, 1968, a court extended the circle of responsibility for the assassination beyond the late scapegoat James Earl Ray to the United Snakkkes government.

On April 4, 1967, Riverside Church, New York City, Martin Luther King, Jr. condemns the Vietnam War and identifies the U. S. government as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." The Riverside Church speech provokes intense hostility in the White House and FBI. Hatred and fear of King deepens in response to King's plan to hold the Poor People's Campaign in Washington, D. C, with an intent to shut down the nation's capital in the spring of 1968.1

Judge Joe Brown, who had presided over two years of hearings on the rifle, testified that "67% of the bullets from my tests did not match the Ray rifle." He added that the unfired bullets found wrapped with it in a blanket were metallurgically different from the bullet taken from King's body, and therefore were from a different lot of ammunition. And because the rifle's scope had not been sited, Brown said, "This weapon literally could not have hit the broad side of a barn." Holding up the 30.06 Remington 760 Gamemaster rifle, Judge Brown told the jury, "It is my opinion that this is not the murder weapon."

Points of interest:

In order to assist you in following the background of the U.S. government's plot to murder King, we will give you a timeline followed by a brief explanation of the events.

Summer of 1967, Montreal, Canada. Three months after escaping from a Missouri prison, James Earl Ray meets a man named Raul in Montreal. Raul guides Ray's movements and gives him money for the Mustang car and a rifle. Ray later believed that this had been a set-up.2 One of the most significant developments in the Memphis trial was the emergence of the mysterious Raul through the testimony of a series of witnesses. In a 1995 deposition by James Earl Ray that was read to the jury, Ray told of meeting Raul in Montreal in the summer of 1967, three months after Ray had escaped from a Missouri prison. According to Ray, Raul guided Ray's movements, gave him money for the Mustang car and the rifle, and used both to set him up in Memphis.

Andrew Young and Dexter King described their meeting with Jowers and William Pepper (The King Family's Lawyer and writer of Orders to Kill) at which Pepper had shown Jowers a spread of photographs, and Jowers picked out one as the person named Raul who brought him the rifle to hold at Jim's Grill. Pepper displayed the same spread of photos in court, and Young and King pointed out the photo Jowers had identified as Raul. (Private investigator John Billings said in separate testimony that this picture was a passport photograph from 1961, when Raul had immigrated from Portugal to the U.S.)

The additional witnesses who identified the photo as Raul's included: British merchant seaman Sidney Carthew, who in a videotaped deposition from England said he had met Raul (who offered to sell him guns) and a man he thinks was Ray (who wanted to be smuggled onto his ship) in Montreal in the summer of 1967; Glenda and Roy Grabow, who recognized Raul as a gunrunner they knew in Houston in the `60s and `70s and who told Glenda in a rage that he had killed Martin Luther King; Royce Wilburn, Glenda's brother, who also knew Raul in Houston; and British television producer Jack Saltman, who had obtained the passport photo and showed it to Ray in prison, who identified it as the photo of the person who had guided him.

Saltman and Pepper, working on independent investigations, located Raul in 1995. He was living quietly with his family in the northeastern U.S. It was there in 1997 that journalist Barbara Reis of the Lisbon Publico, working on a story about Raul, spoke with a member of his family. Reis testified that she had spoken in Portuguese to a woman in Raul's family who, after first denying any connection to Ray's Raul, said "they" had visited them. "Who?" Reis asked. "The government," said the woman. She said government agents had visited them three times over a three-year period. The government, she said, was watching over them and monitoring their phone calls. The woman took comfort and satisfaction in the fact that her family (so she believed) was being protected by the government. In his closing argument Pepper said of Raul: "Now, as I understand it, the defense had invited Raul to appear here. He is outside this jurisdiction, so a subpoena would be futile. But he was asked to appear here. In earlier proceedings there were attempts to depose him, and he resisted them. So he has not attempted to come forward at all and tell his side of the story or to defend himself."

March-April, 1968, Washington, D. C.. In the three weeks before the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover holds a series of meetings with "persons involved with the CIA and military intelligence in the Phoenix operation in Southeast Asia.3 Pepper went a step beyond saying government agencies were responsible for the assassination. To whom in turn were those murderous agencies responsible? Not so much to government officials per se, Pepper asserted, as to the economic power-holders they represented who stood in the even deeper shadows behind the FBI, Army Intelligence, and their affiliates in covert action. By 1968, Pepper told the jury, "And today it is much worse in my view" -- "the decision-making processes in the United States were the representatives, the foot-soldiers of the very economic interests that were going to suffer as a result of these times of changes [being activated by King]."

To say that U.S. government agencies killed Martin Luther King on the verge of the Poor People's Campaign is a way into the deeper truth that the economic powers that be (which dictate the policies of those agencies) killed him. In the Memphis prelude to the Washington campaign, King posed a threat to those powers of a non-violent revolutionary force. Just how determined they were to stop him before he reached Washington was revealed in the trial by the size and complexity of the plot to kill him. James Lawson, King's friend and an organizer with SCLC, testified that King's stands on Vietnam and the Poor People's Campaign had created enemies in Washington. He said King's speech at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, which condemned the Vietnam War and identified the U.S. government as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today," provoked intense hostility in the White House and FBI. Hatred and fear of King deepened, Lawson said, in response to his plan to hold the Poor People's Campaign in Washington, D.C. King wanted to shut down the nation's capital in the spring of 1968 through massive civil disobedience until the government agreed to abolish poverty. King saw the Memphis sanitation workers' strike as the beginning of a nonviolent revolution that would redistribute income. "I have no doubt," Lawson said, "that the government viewed all this seriously enough to plan his assassination." Coretta Scott King testified that her husband had to return to Memphis in early April 1968 because of a violent demonstration there for which he had been blamed. Moments after King arrived in Memphis to join the sanitation workers' march there on March 28, 1968, the scene turned violent -- subverted by government provocateurs, Lawson said. Thus King had to return to Memphis on April 3 and prepare for a truly nonviolent march, Mrs. King said, to prove SCLC could still carry out a nonviolent campaign in Washington.

March-April, 1968, Jim's Grill, Memphis, Tennessee. Jim's Grill, a Memphis restaurant whose back door opens onto the dense bushes across from the Lorraine Motel, is owned by Loyd Jowers. Jowers did not testify and said through his attorney, Lewis Garrison, that he would plead the Fifth Amendment if subpoenaed. His discretion was too late. In 1993 against the advice of Garrison, Jowers had gone public. Prompted by William Pepper's progress as James Earl Ray's attorney in uncovering Jowers's role in the assassination, Jowers told his story to Sam Donaldson on Prime Time Live. He said he had been asked to help in the murder of King and was told there would be a decoy (Ray) in the plot. He was also told that the police "wouldn't be there that night." In that interview, the transcript of which was read to the jury in the Memphis courtroom, Jowers said the man who asked him to help in the murder was a Mafia-connected produce dealer named Frank Liberto. Liberto, now deceased, had a courier deliver $100,000 for Jowers to hold at his restaurant, Jim's Grill, the back door of which opened onto the dense bushes across from the Lorraine Motel. Jowers said he was visited the day before the murder by a man named Raul, who brought a rifle in a box. As Mike Vinson reported in the March-April Probe, other witnesses testified to their knowledge of Liberto's involvement in King's slaying. Storeowner John McFerren said he arrived around 5:15 pm, April 4, 1968, for a produce pick-up at Frank Liberto's warehouse in Memphis. (King would be shot at 6:0l pm.) When he approached the warehouse office, McFerren overheard Liberto on the phone inside saying, "Shoot the son-of-a-bitch on the balcony." Café-owner Lavada Addison, a friend of Liberto's in the late 1970's, testified that Liberto had told her he "had Martin Luther King killed." Addison's son, Nathan Whitlock, said when he learned of this conversation he asked Liberto point-blank if he had killed King. "[Liberto] said, `I didn't kill the nigger but I had it done.' I said, `What about that other son-of-a-bitch taking credit for it?' He says, `Ahh, he wasn't nothing but a troublemaker from Missouri. He was a front man . . . a setup man.'" The jury also heard a tape recording of a two-hour-long confession Jowers made at a fall 1998 meeting with Martin Luther King's son Dexter and former UN Ambassador Andrew Young. On the tape Jowers says that meetings to plan the assassination occurred at Jim's Grill. He said the planners included undercover Memphis Police Department officer Marrell McCollough (who now works for the Central Intelligence Agency, and who is referenced in the trial transcript as Marrell McCullough), MPD Lieutenant Earl Clark (who died in 1987), a third police officer, and two men Jowers did not know but thought were federal agents.

Young, who witnessed the assassination, can be heard on the tape identifying McCollough as the man kneeling beside King's body on the balcony in a famous photograph. According to witness Colby Vernon Smith, McCollough had infiltrated a Memphis community-organizing group, the Invaders, which was working with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In his trial testimony Young said the MPD intelligence agent was "the guy who ran up [the balcony stairs] with us to see Martin." Jowers says on the tape that right after the shot was fired he received a smoking rifle at the rear door of Jim's Grill from Clark. He broke the rifle down into two pieces and wrapped it in a tablecloth. Raul picked it up the next day. Jowers said he didn't actually see who fired the shot that killed King, but thought it was Clark, the MPD's best marksman. Young testified that his impression from the 1998 meeting was that the aging, ailing Jowers "wanted to get right with God before he died, wanted to confess it and be free of it." Jowers denied, however, that he knew the plot's purpose was to kill King -- a claim that seemed implausible to Dexter King and Young. Jowers has continued to fear jail, and he had directed Garrison to defend him on the grounds that he didn't know the target of the plot was King. But his interview with Donaldson suggests he was not naïve on this point.

· Jowers is asked by Mafia-connected produce dealer Frank Liberto to help in the murder of King and is told there will be a decoy in the plot. Jowers is also told that the police "wouldn't be there that night." Liberto has courier deliver $100,000 for Jowers to hold at his restaurant.4

· Meetings to plan the killing of King take place at Jim's Grill. Participants include5

· Marrell McCollough, an undercover Memphis Police Department officer who was later a CIA employee

· Earl Clark, a Memphis Police Department Lieutenant who died in 1987

· A third MPD officer;

· Two men Jowers did not know but thought were federal agents.

· Raul is present at one of the meeting and brings a rifle for Jowers to hold.6 The rifle is in a box.7

On the night of April 3, 1968, Floyd E. Newsum, a black firefighter and civil rights activist, heard King's "I've Been to the Mountain Top" speech at the Mason Temple in Memphis. On his return home, Newsum returned a phone call from his lieutenant and was told he had been temporarily transferred, effective April 4, from Fire Station 2, located across the street from the Lorraine Motel, to Fire Station 31. Newsum testified that he was not needed at the new station. However, he was needed at his old station because his departure left it "out of service unless somebody else was detailed to my company in my stead." After making many queries, Newsum was eventually told he had been transferred by request of the police department. The only other black firefighter at Fire Station 2, Norvell E. Wallace, testified that he, too, received orders from his superior officer on the night of April 3 for a temporary transfer to a fire station far removed from the Lorraine Motel. He was later told vaguely that he had been threatened. Wallace guessed it was because "I was putting out fires," he told the jury with a smile. Asked if he ever received a satisfactory explanation for his transfer Wallace answered, "No. Never did. Not to this day."

In the March-April Probe, Mike Vinson described the similar removal of Ed Redditt, a black Memphis Police Department detective, from his Fire Station 2 surveillance post two hours before King's murder. To understand the Redditt incident, it is important to note that it was Redditt himself who initiated his watch on Dr. King from the firehouse across the street. Redditt testified that when King's party and the police accompanying them (including Detective Redditt) arrived from the airport at the Lorraine Motel on April 3, he "noticed something that was unusual." When Inspector Don Smith, who was in charge of security, told Redditt he could leave, Redditt "noticed there was nobody else there. In the past when we were assigned to Dr. King [when Redditt had been part of a black security team for King], we stayed with him. I saw nobody with him. So I went across the street and asked the Fire Department could we come in and observe from the rear, which we did." Given Redditt's concerns for King's safety, his particular watch on the Lorraine may not have fit into others' plans. Redditt testified that late in the afternoon of April 4, MPD Intelligence Officer Eli Arkin came to Fire Station 2 to take him to Central Headquarters.

There Police and Fire Director Frank Holloman (formerly an FBI agent for 25 years, seven of them as supervisor of J. Edgar Hoover's office) ordered Redditt home, against his wishes and accompanied by Arkin. The reason Holloman gave Redditt for his removal from the King watch Redditt had initiated the day before was that his life had been threatened. In an interview after the trial, Redditt told me the story of how his 1978 testimony on this question before the House Select Committee on Assassinations was part of a heavily pressured cover-up. "It was a farce," he said, "a total farce." Redditt had been subpoenaed by the HSCA to testify, as he came to realize, not so much on his strange removal from Fire Station 2 as the fact that he had spoken about it openly to writers and researchers. The HSCA focused narrowly on the discrepancy between Redditt's surveiling King (as he was doing) and acting as security (an impression Redditt had given writers interviewing him) in order to discredit the story of his removal. The committee first grilled Redditt for eight straight hours in a closed executive session. After a day of hostile questioning, Redditt finally said late in the afternoon, "I came here as a friend of the investigation, not as an enemy of the investigation. You don't want to deal with the truth." He told the committee angrily that if the secret purpose behind the King conspiracy was, like the JFK conspiracy, "to protect the country, just tell the American people! They'll be happy! And quit fooling the folks and trying to pull the wool over their eyes." When the closed hearing was over, Redditt received a warning call from a friend in the White House who said, "Man, your life isn't worth a wooden nickel." Redditt said his public testimony the next day "was a set-up": "The bottom line on that one was that Senator Baker decided that I wouldn't go into this open hearing without an attorney. When the lawyer and I arrived at the hearing, we were ushered right back out across town to the executive director in charge of the investigation. [We] looked through a book, to look at the questions and answers." "So in essence what they were saying was: `This is what you're going to answer to, and this is how you're going to answer.' It was all made up -- all designed, questions and answers, what to say and what not to say. A total farce." Former MPD Captain Jerry Williams followed Redditt to the witness stand. Williams had been responsible for forming a special security unit of black officers whenever King came to Memphis (the unit Redditt had served on earlier). Williams took pride in providing the best possible protection for Dr. King, which included, he said, advising him never to stay at the Lorraine "because we couldn't furnish proper security there." ("It was just an open view," he explained to me later, "Anybody could . . . There was no protection at all. To me that was a set-up from the very beginning.")

March-April, 1968. The 111th Military Intelligence Group based at Fort McPherson in Atlanta, Georgia had Martin King under surveillance, including wiretaps.8

April 3, 1968, Memphis Police Department.

· MPD Captain Jerry Williams, who normally formed a security unit of black officers when King came to Memphis, is not asked to form a bodyguard, having been told that someone in King's entourage had asked for no security. (1999 court testimony of Williams)

· Emergency tactical forces, in this case it was Tact 10, a group of four or five police cars with officers from the sheriff's and police department were round the Lorraine Motel until the afternoon before the killing. The afternoon of the 3rd they were ordered to be pulled back to the fire station on the periphery. 9

April 3, 1968, Memphis Fire Station #2. Fire Station #2 is located across from the Lorraine Motel · After listening to King's "I've Been to the Mountain Top" speech at the Mason Temple, black firefighter and civil rights activist Floyd E. Newsum is told he is temporarily transferred away from Fire Station #2. Eventually he is told the transfer was ordered by the Police Department.10

· Norvell E. Wallace, the only other black firefighter at Fire Station 2, also is temporarily transferred away. The officer ordering this tells Wallace that this is in response to Wallace having been threatened.11

April 4, 1968, the morning before the killing.

· Carthel Weeden, captain of Fire Station 2, is on duty and is approached by two U. S. Army officers carrying briefcases who indicate they have cameras and state they want a lookout for the Lorraine Motel. Weeden shows them the station roof and leaves them at the edge of its northeast corner behind a parapet wall, from where the officers have a clear view of King's balcony and also can look down on the brushy area adjacent to the fire station.12

· Members of the Army's 111th Military Intelligence Group, who had previously been associated with the Phoenix assassination program in Vietnam, are in Memphis and have been keeping King under 24 hour a day surveillance.13 In addition to military intelligence agents, Army personnel present in Memphis include Green Berets.14

· Bobbie Balfour, a waitress at Jowers' boarding house, was ordered not to deliver food to the second floor (where the staging area for the assassination was) on the day of the shooting.15

April 4, 1968, the afternoon before the killing.

· Four tactical police units that had been patrolling the immediate vicinity of the Lorraine Motel are pulled back. Later, when MPD Inspector San Evans (now deceased) was asked why the units were pulled back, Evans said a local pastor associated with King had ordered it. The pastor, however, denied this.16

· Ed Redditt, a black Memphis Police Department detective, is removed from his surveillance post at Fire Station 2. Redditt had been watching King and his party across the street. MPD Intelligence Officer Eli Arkin comes to Fire Station 2 to take Reditt to Central Headquarters, where he is met by Police and Fire Director Frank Holloman, a retired FBI agent who had been head of the FBI Memphis field office as well as appointments secretary for J. Edgar Hoover. Holloman tells Redditt that a secret service agent has just flown in from Washington with information about a threat on Redditt's life and orders him to go home. Arkin drives him. As they arrive, they hear on the car radio about the King assassination.17

· Frank Liberto was heard to say over the phone "Shoot the son-of-a-bitch when he comes on the balcony." This information was given to the police and FBI and forgotten about. Liberto had previously told Mrs. Lavada Addison, "I arranged to have Martin Luther King killed. Addison’s son, Nathan, confirmed his remark. Lloyd Jowers claims that he had been approached by Mr. Liberto and asked to assist in the assassination. Jowers was to be contacted by a man named Raoul, who would give him a gun. Jowers received the gun after the shooting.18

April 4, 1968, around 6 PM, 10 minutes before the killing. Guy Canipe, owner of the Canipe Amusement Company, observes a bundle being dropped in the Main Street doorway of his company, one block from the Lorraine. The bundle consists of a 30.06 Remington Gamemaster rifle and unfired bullets.19

April 4, 1968, a little after 6 PM, King is killed on Lorraine Motel balcony.

· Marrell McCollough, now a CIA employee, but then an MPD intelligence agent who had infiltrated a Memphis community-organizing group called The Invaders, is driving around with James Orange and James Bevel at the time King is shot. Immediately after hearing the shot, James Orange saw King's leg dangling over the balcony.20 McCollough runs up the balcony stairs with King followers and kneels beside the body, seeking for a pulse, right after the shooting.21

· Army Psyops teams photographed everything that happened at the Lorraine Motel that day. None of the film has ever been released to the public.22

April 4, 1968, a little after 6 PM: the sniper's shot from the brush.

· Members of the U. S. Army 111th Military Intelligence Group "watched and took photos while King's assassin moved into position, took aim, fired and walked away."23

· Olivia Catling, who lives a block away and who had walked down the street hoping to get a glimpse of King at the hotel, heard the shot which killed him and runs with her children to the corner of Mulberry and Huling Streets.24

· Within 5-10 seconds of the shot, James Orange saw smoke coming from the brush area on the opposite side of the street, and subsequently never doubted that the fatal shot was fired by a sniper concealed in the brush area behind the derelict buildings.25

· From the brushy area adjacent to Fire Station #2, a person with his back toward mulberry street, moving rather fast and "wearing some sort of light-colored jacket with some sort of hood or parka" is seen by Solomon Jones, King's chauffeur.26

· Immediately after the killing, MPD Lieutenant Earl Clark gives a smoking rifle to Jowers at the rear door of Jim's Grill. Jowers does not see who killed King, but believes it was Clark, the MPD's best marksman.27

· Olivia Catling observes a man in a checkered shirt run from an alley beside a building across from the Lorraine and jump into a green 1965 Chevrolet as a police car drives up behind him. Later, Catling is convinced the running man is not James Earl Ray.28

· Catling also hears a fireman standing alone across from the motel say to the police who drive up, "the shot came from that clump of bushes," referring to an overgrown area facing the Lorraine and adjacent to Fire Station 2.29

April 4, 1968, MPD respond to the shooting.

· Catling observes the police ignore the man in the green 1965 Chevrolet and block off a street, leaving his car free to go the opposite way. "The Police...asked not one neighbor 'what did you see?'"30 · James Orange's attempts to tell what he saw to the police who tell him to be quiet and get out of the way.31

April 4, 1968, after the shooting.

· J. D. Hill, a member of an army sniper team in Memphis, has been assigned to shoot "an unknown target" and, following training for a triangular shooting, is with the sniper team taking up positions in a water tower and two buildings in Memphis when their mission is suddenly cancelled. Hill realized the next day that the team must have been part of a contingency plan to kill King if another shooter failed.32

· Snipers from the Army 20th Special Forces Group were present in Memphis during the shooting but did not participate " because the Mob contract was successful in killing Martin Luther King and framing James Earl Ray."33

Walter Fauntroy, Dr. King's colleague and a 20-year member of Congress, chaired the subcommittee of the 1976-78 House Select Committee on Assassinations that investigated King's assassination. Fauntroy testified in Memphis that in the course of the HSCA investigation "it was apparent that we were dealing with very sophisticated forces." He discovered electronic bugs on his phone and TV set. When Richard Sprague, HSCA's first chief investigator, said he would make available all CIA, FBI, and military intelligence records, he became a focus of controversy. Sprague was forced to resign. His successor made no demands on U.S. intelligence agencies. Such pressures contributed to the subcommittees ending its investigation, as Fauntroy said, "without having thoroughly investigated all of the evidence that was apparent." Its formal conclusion was that Ray assassinated King, that he probably had help, and that the government was not involved. When I interviewed Fauntroy in a van on his way back to the Memphis Airport, I asked about the implications of his statements in an April 4, 1997 Atlanta Constitution article.

The article said Fauntroy now believed "Ray did not fire the shot that killed King and was part of a larger conspiracy that possibly involved federal law enforcement agencies, " and added: "Fauntroy said he kept silent about his suspicions because of fear for himself and his family." Fauntroy told me that when he left Congress in 1991 he had the opportunity to read through his files on the King assassination, including raw materials that he'd never seen before. Among them was information from J. Edgar Hoover's logs. There he learned that in the three weeks before King's murder the FBI chief held a series of meetings with "persons involved with the CIA and military intelligence in the Phoenix operation in Southeast Asia." Why?

Fauntroy also discovered there had been Green Berets and military intelligence agents in Memphis when King was killed. "What were they doing there?" he asked. When Fauntroy had talked about his decision to write a book about what he'd "uncovered since the assassination committee closed down," he was promptly investigated and charged by the Justice Department with having violated his financial reports as a member of Congress. His lawyer told him that he could not understand why the Justice Department would bring up a charge on the technicality of one misdated check. Fauntroy said he interpreted the Justice Department's action to mean: "Look, we'll get you on something if you continue this way . I just thought: I'll tell them I won't go and finish the book, because it's surely not worth it." At the conclusion of his trial testimony, Fauntroy also spoke about his fear of an FBI attempt to kill James Earl Ray when he escaped from Tennessee's Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in June 1977. Congressman Fauntroy had heard reports about an FBI SWAT team having been sent into the area around the prison to shoot Ray and prevent his testifying at the HSCA hearings. Fauntroy asked HSCA chair Louis Stokes to alert Tennessee Governor Ray Blanton to the danger to the HSCA's star witness and Blanton's most famous prisoner. When Stokes did, Blanton called off the FBI SWAT team, Ray was caught safely by local authorities, and in Fauntroy's words, "we all breathed a sigh of relief." The Memphis jury also learned how a 1993-98 Tennessee State investigation into the King assassination was, if not a cover-up, then an inquiry noteworthy for its lack of witnesses. Lewis Garrison had subpoenaed the head of the investigation, Mark Glankler, in an effort to discover evidence helpful to Jowers's defense.

William Pepper then cross-examined Glankler on the witnesses he had interviewed in his investigation:

Thirty-eight years after Memphis, we know that the government that now honors Dr. King with a national holiday also killed him. As will once again become evident when the Justice Department releases the findings of its "limited re-investigation" into King's death, the government (as a foot soldier of corporate power) is continuing its cover-up -- just as it continues to do in the closely related assassinations of Huey P. Newton, Chairman Fred Hampton, Sr., Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Jimi Hendrix, Tupac Shakur and Malcolm X.

April 4, 1968, night. Police "find" the 30.06 Remington Gamemaster that had been dropped in the Main Street doorway of the Canipe Amusement Company, one block from the Lorraine, and say it was dropped by Ray just before he jumped in his white Mustang and drove to Atlanta. Criminal Court Judge Joe Brown, who later presided over two years of hearings into the evidence, states, "It is my opinion...that this is not the murder weapon.... 67% of bullets from my tests...did not match the Ray rifle" Unfired bullets found with the rifle wrapped in a blanket are "metallurgically different" from the bullet taken from King's body. Rifle's scope had not been sited; therefore the Remington would have been impossible to properly aim.(34)

April 5, 1968, the Brush adjacent to Fire Station #2.

· 7 AM: Maynard Stiles, a senior official in Memphis Sanitation Department, receives call from MPD Inspector Sam Evans "requiring assistance clearing brush and debris from a vacant lot near the site of the assassination." Stiles assembles a crew, goes to site, and cleans it up in a slow, methodical, meticulous manner under the direction of the police department. (Trial testimony, 1999).

· 8AM-9AM. James Orange notices that all bushes and brush on the hill were cut down and cleaned up. (James Orange, 1993 affidavit).

1969 The Ray Trial.

· The State's main witness, Charles Stephens, was drunk at the time and was incapable of identifying anybody. Yet it was the affidavit of Charles Stephens that brought James Earl Ray back to this country from England. (35)

· James Earl Ray pleads guilty to murder. Three days later, Ray fires his lawyer Percy Foreman and asks Judge Preston Battle for a new trial, something he unsuccessfully seeks for the rest of his life until his death in 1998.

1976-1978. D. C. Congressional Delegate Walter Fauntroy chairs subcommittee of House Select Committee on Assassinations investigating the King assassination and discovers electronic bugs on his phones and TV set. When "Richard Sprague, HSCA's first chief investigator, said he would make available all CIA and FBI records, he became a focus of controversy and media attacks. Sprague was forced to resign. His successor made no demands on U. S. intelligence agencies. (Fauntroy testimony, 1999 trial).

1978 William Pepper begins investigating King Assassination and becomes convinced Ray is innocent.

1995 William Pepper and British television producer Jack Saltman, working on independent investigations, locate Raul, living quietly with family in NE US.

1995 William Pepper publishes Orders to Kill: The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King."

1997 King family contacts Pepper and after seeing his evidence is convinced and supports Ray's request for a new trial.

1997 Raul's family is visited by "the government" three times, and family believes government is watching over them and monitoring their phone calls, taking comfort in the impression that they are being protected. (Barbara Reis of Lisbon Publico, interview with a family member of Raul).

1998 James Earl Ray dies. King family unsuccessfully asks President Clinton to establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission comparable to South Africa's that would offer legal immunity in exchange for truth telling.

1998 Loyd Jowers makes a tape-recording of a two-hour-long confession at a meeting with Dexter King and Andrew Young. Young believes Jowers wants "to get right with God." Jowers denies knowing the plot's purpose was to kill King.

1998 King Family files wrongful death suit against Loyd Jowers, who had said he had been part of a conspiracy to kill King. Suit is called King v. Jowers and Other Unknown Co-Conspirators. To emphasize that the purpose of the suit is simply to get at the truth, the King Family asks only $100 in damages.

December 1999, 12 person jury (6 white, 6 black), rules that Jowers is guilty as charged; King was murdered by an intricate plot that included government agencies. Frontline is published by Mapinduzi Communications© from the criminal enterprise of Chicago, Illinois.

End Notes 34. Testimony of Criminal Court Judge Joe Brown to trial jury, 1999. The Christian Century Magazine, March 15, 2000, p. 308-313 35. Summary of the Summation of Dr. William Pepper, Attorney at Law, for the Plaintiff, before the Honorable James E. Swearengen, December 8th, 1999, from the transcript of the case of Coretta Scott King vs. Lloyd Jowers on the matter of a conspiracy to murder Dr. Martin Luther King.

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For those who want to invest in the community... Freedom Home Academy Atlanta is on the way Spring 2017! AND you can help make it happen, contribute today!

No Gimmicks, No Schemes or Dreams... #RealSchoolsMatter http://www.thepeoplesarmy.org/freedom

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How we coming in 2017??? Salute to Our Brother Marcus Coleman Georgia State Chair of the National Coalition to Combat Police Terrorism he is running for City Council in South Fulton! #TheBlockParty #AllPoliticsAreLocal

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Wise Intelligent​ (Poor Righteous Teachers) and Sunni Patterson​ will be kicking off the Blueprint For Black Power Tour February 2017!

Hosted by Kalonji Changa, the tour will be inspirational, educational and entertaining.

For Booking or more info: Sunniwisetour@gmail.com

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7poubRcFM2c)