{"id":1953,"date":"2011-09-15T08:45:14","date_gmt":"2011-09-15T14:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/?p=1953"},"modified":"2013-03-23T09:07:39","modified_gmt":"2013-03-23T15:07:39","slug":"counterinsurgency-and-political-prisoners-in-the-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/counterinsurgency-and-political-prisoners-in-the-united-states\/","title":{"rendered":"Counterinsurgency and Political Prisoners in the United States"},"content":{"rendered":"

Published in Issue 441 of The Black Commentator on September 15, 2011<\/a>
\nRepublished in Intrepid Report on September 19, 2011<\/a>
\nBy Larry Pinkney<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can jail a revolutionary, but you can\u2019t jail the revolution.\u201d<\/strong>
\n -Fred Hampton<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cHistory is important. If you don\u2019t know history it\u2019s as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything and you have no way of checking up on it.\u201d<\/strong>
\n -Howard Zinn<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One of the most insidious historical myths perpetuated by so-called \u2018educational\u2019 institutions and the corporate-stream media is that the\u00a0United States\u00a0was founded upon the holistic principles of \u2018democracy\u2019 and \u2018justice for all.\u2019\u00a0<\/strong>Since when has \u2018democracy\u2019 and \u2018justice for all\u2019 meant the genocide of the Indigenous Native peoples, the enslavement of Black people, and the systemic disenfranchisement of women and the poor?!<\/p>\n

There are those who will smugly argue that these above-mentioned realities were all \u2018in the past,\u2019 despite the fact that the past continues to be\u00a0the very foundation<\/em>\u00a0for the present; especially since the realities of that past are wrapped in historical mythology, glorification, glossed over and\/or outright ignored. Until that \u201cpast\u201d is honestly and forthrightly addressed, this nation continues to be the world\u2019s most insipid hypocrite both at home and abroad.<\/p>\n

The daily experiences of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in the United States\u00a0attest to the hypocrisy of this society and nation. We are enslaved by, and labor under, what the noted author, revolutionary, and psychiatrist, Frantz Fanon, referred to as \u201ccognitive dissonance.\u201d In this context, the mere color or gender of those in power is absolutely irrelevant, and the systemic horror and hypocrisy continues unabated.<\/p>\n

The notion, for example, that there are no political prisoners in the\u00a0United States\u00a0is inaccurate and absurd. There are\u00a0numerous<\/em>\u00a0political prisoners and\/or prisoners of conscience held in the sadistic and brutal 21st century\u00a0U.S.\u00a0prison gulag system. Many of them have been imprisoned for decades as a direct result of the U.S. Government\u2019s war of\u00a0counterinsurgency<\/em>\u00a0against its own citizens. Even as the corporate elite of this nation have overwhelmingly gutted the economic-industrial base in the\u00a0United States, the prison industry (and it\u00a0is<\/span>\u00a0an\u00a0industry<\/em>) has grown, and is growing, by leaps and bounds. Many millions of economically poor people in this nation are incarcerated, even as the avaricious and criminal corporate elite bask in trillions of stolen dollars, given to them by their surrogate, corporate controlled, U.S. Government.\u00a0In many ways, the counterinsurgency by the\u00a0U.S.\u00a0corporate-government against the people of this nation has actually been tweaked and intensified. For example, many components of the U.S. Government\u2019s outrageous, and then illegal and devastating program (known by its acronym\u00a0COINTELPRO<\/em>\u00a0– the Counter Intelligence Program) to \u201cframe, neutralize, imprison, and\/or murder\u201d political activists (and their families and friends) have now been\u00a0codified into law<\/span>,\u00a0<\/em>as embodied in what is now known as the so-called\u00a0\u201cPatriot Act.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The American Heritage college dictionary defines the word\u00a0counterinsurgency<\/em>\u00a0as a: \u201cPolitical and military\u00a0strategy or action<\/em>\u00a0intended to oppose or forcefully\u00a0suppress<\/em> insurgency.\u201d The word\u00a0insurgency<\/em>\u00a0is defined by the afore-mentioned dictionary as: \u201cThe quality or circumstance of being\u00a0rebellious<\/em>.\u201d Thus, COINTELPRO and the Patriot Act have, in effect,\u00a0criminalized<\/span>\u00a0rebelliousness. Our alleged U.S. Constitutional rights be damned.<\/p>\n

This is not a new phenomenon, as all who know of the government\u2019s COINTELPRO program are aware. However, it is in this 21st century a most dangerous and treacherous development with everyday people in this nation as the unsuspecting targets. To better understand the\u00a0U.S.\u00a0governments\u2019 history of suppressing rebellion, right up to the present, I strongly recommend that every reader of this column (and beyond)\u00a0obtain and view<\/em>\u00a0the documentary film titled,\u00a0COINTELPRO 101<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

The perpetual wars (and military forays) abroad being waged by the U.S. Empire and its \u2018allies,\u2019 the increasing economic austerity at home, and the de facto gutting of the U.S. Constitution do\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0make the people of this nation or of Mother Earth as a whole any safer. To the contrary, accepting these things is an unfolding and sure recipe for disaster.<\/p>\n

It is our human duty to rebel against systemic injustices at home and abroad, even as we\u00a0educate ourselves and one another<\/em>, about and in, this\u00a0ongoing<\/span>\u00a0everyday people\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>struggle. In the words of Frederick Douglass, \u201cThere is no progress without struggle.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

To be sure, serious political struggle has its risks, but shirking said struggle guarantees the tightening of our mental and political chains. The words of Joe Hill still ring true, loud and clear: \u201cDon\u2019t mourn. Oraganize!\u201d Moreover, Fred Hampton was correct when he said, \u201cYou\u00a0can<\/em>\u00a0jail a revolutionary, but you\u00a0can\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0jail the revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Onward then my sisters and brothers! Onward!<\/p>\n

Larry Pinkney<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil\/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities, Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil\/Lehrer News Hour, and more recently on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones Show. Pinkney is a former university instructor of political science and international relations, and his writings have been published in various places, including The Boston Globe, San Francisco BayView newspaper, Black Commentator, Intrepid Report, Global Research (Canada), LINKE ZEITUNG (Germany), 107 Cowgate (Ireland and Scotland), and Mayihlome News (Azania\/South Africa). He is in the archives of Dr. Huey P. Newton (Stanford University, CA), cofounder of the Black Panther Party. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book,\u00a0Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker<\/a>, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0to read excerpts from the book.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Published in Issue 441 of The Black Commentator on September 15, 2011<\/a>
Republished in Intrepid Report on September 19, 2011<\/a>
By Larry Pinkney<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can jail a revolutionary, but you can\u2019t jail the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1953"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1960,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953\/revisions\/1960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}