STOP THE WAR!
11 am. Saturday, March 29th.
Leimert Park
Crenshaw Boulevard & 43rd Street.

Many African American organizations are part of the Peace & Justice coalition... including the US Organization of Dr. Maulana Karenga. Dr. Karenga was interviewed by Amy Goodman on her "Democracy Now!" radio show. Dr. Karenga eloquently called on African Americans to come out and show their opposition to a war that is a "war of colonialism."

Dr. Karenga expressed his solidarity with the Iraqi people, and linked the colonial war to the oppression of people of color everywhere who live under the heal of imperialism.

Show YOUR solidarity with the African American community... come to the antiwar rally!

infiltration, short memories, or black unity?

here is what Lorenzo Komboa Ervin had to say about Karenga in a dicussion back in 1999. (incidentally, the discussion found here is more dignified and constructive by far, than the vast majority of analogous discussions on the IMC)

[Moderator: response to an article on BRC-NEWS]

Here is something to think about: If 30 years after WW2, a Nazi came along and tried to convince us that he now works at a Jewish community center with kids, should we now forgive his previous crimes? So now Karenga and US are "champions of the working class with a living wage campaign in Los Angeles?"

There are those in the contemporary Black nationalist movements who will do anything to rehabilitate this guy despite his crimes against the people. Farrakhan had him as a speaker at the Million Man March in 1995, and he has been giving talks on college campuses with his Kawaida cultural nationalist mumbo-jumbo. Like neo-Nazi holocaust revinionsists, there are those who claim there is no "proof" that Karenga or US had anything to do with the shootings and killings of 5 members of the Black Panther Party in Los Angeles and San Diego, that he is not/was never a police informer and provocateur, and that he should now be rehabilitated in this period. He himself says now that the Black Panther members in L.A., Jon Huggins and Bunchy Carter, who were murdered by US thugs on the UCLA campus in 1968 "egged the whole thing on and got what they deserve", and other Black nationalists have said some nonsense like "they were fighting over a woman", rather than that the FBI initiated all this and they were willing tools.

This points to how corrupt the contemporary movement really is, Karenga and the US helped to destroy the Black revolutionary movement of the 1960's, and no good works in this period will erase that, especially since no one ever paid for these murders and counter-revolutionary acts. We can't be weak on things like this for some perceived short term gain. These are my personal opinions, not those of a group.

Lorenzo Komboa Ervin

is KPFK / Pacifica just ignorant? Or what?

what's up? is nobody out there concerned about this?

who's idea was it for KPFK to endorse this event? and why did Amy have Karenga on without a single voice from any other black organization?

i want to hear that problems have been resolved, but it would be silly to just ASSUME that they have been.

The show used to be produced by Pacifica at WBAI until a management dispute forced it into a Manhattan studio not far from "ground zero." It's currently carried on the network as part of an independent production deal. It's still being debated at Pacifica whether they should have let this show go indy. Of course, everything is still being debated at Pacifica. They seem to like debate there.

[below copied and pasted from here]

UCLA killings

Around this time, US leader Ron Karenga had suggested Dr. Charles Thomas as head of a proposed Black Studies program at UCLA. UCLA Chancellor Charles Young authorized funding for Karenga's program. The rank and file of the Black Student Union (BSU) were upset at having been uninvolved in the decision-making process. They called a meeting. Fearing the US organization, the BSU asked the BPP to act as security for the meeting. The BPP refused to take sides, but agreed to back up the BSU's majority decision regarding the program. On January 15, the BSU voted against Karenga's program.(55) At a follow-up meeting two days later, Carter and Huggins were shot and killed. (56)

"[Local Cointelpro head Richard] Held quickly took 'credit' for the killings [of Carter and Huggins], and recommended sending more cartoons. This was duly approved and resulted in the wounding of several more Panthers and the death of yet another, Sylvester Bell. In the aftermath, Held again patted himself on the back for such 'success' via internal memoranda."(57)

In 1969, Panther Ronald Freeman was shot by US organization members while selling BPP newspapers.(58) BPP member John Savage was killed by US members in San Diego on May 23. The BPP claimed that Savage had witnessed the Carter and Huggins murders and was killed to prevent him from testifying at the US members' trial.(59) In all, four Panthers were shot and one wounded by US members in 1969.(60)

The theory outlined above suggests that genuine rivalries between two genuine organizations were exacerbated by the FBI to create war between them. On the other end of the spectrum of plausible theories, some suggest that the US organization was not a genuine part of the Black power movement at all, but was in fact an anti-Panther death squad financed by the FBI. Elaine Brown suggests that she believes this was the case, at least after the Campbell Hall killings.(61) Former FBI infiltrator and agent-provocateur Earl Anthony alleges that he knows this to be true:

"When I met with [FBI Agents Robert] O'Connor and [Ron] Kizenski at our designated time [Aug. 6, 1968],...[t]hey said they were tired of the 'Panther shit,' and the FBI had worked out a deal with Karenga where they would supply US with weapons and a master plan to destroy the LA Black Panther Party; and they were hoping to get something like that going in New York."(62)

Anthony's words have proven in the past to be untrustworthy, so this allegation is not worth very much. It is quite possible that he is continuing to spread slanderous disinformation on behalf of the FBI.

What gives some credence, though not proof, to the theory held by Brown and Anthony is that while the more conservative theory holds that the FBI was using each group against the other, the repression faced by the BPP was much more severe than that faced by the US organization. The pattern of killings described above is a case in point. Another is that the FBI opened a conspiracy investigation for Panther Geronimo Pratt for a bank robbery that the FBI knew had been committed by US members.(63)

Another example of police favoritism towards US is the initial police response to the killings of Carter and Huggins, which was not to go after the US organization or any other suspects in the murder, but instead to deploy over 150 police officers to raid a Panther apartment and arrest 75 Panthers, including the remaining Panther leadership, on charges of intending to murder US members in retaliation!(64) Later, the police arrested US's Stiner brothers, Larry and George. The Stiners were given life terms and sent to San Quentin, but, adding to suspicions that US members were deliberately given light treatment, they "walked away from a minimum security area on March 30, 1974."(65) Larry Stiner turned himself in on Feb. 5, 1994, while George Stiner remained a fugitive.(66)

the coalition that is organizing this event does seem much larger than just Karenga's organization. here is a list of particpants from afrocubaweb.

i'm not sure what this all says about the state of unity or lack thereof amongst radical black organizations in L.A.

opposition to the war is a good thing - and seems to be uniting huge chunks of the entire world. whether this unity will extend into organizing democratic alternatives to the prevailing system.... i hope so, but i would feel optimistic if there was more public discussion of the relevant issues. on kpfk for example.

-----------------------------------------
here is the copied and pasted info:

International Black Coalition for Peace and Justice

Partial List of Members:

Afrikan Diaspora Foundation
Afrikan Student Union – UCLA
Artists for Justice and Liberation
Black Studies /Student Association, Cal State Long Beach
Black Women’s Forum
Concerned Men with Families
Faith United Methodist Church
HIV Prevention Trials Network
Human Rights Advocacy
KRST Unity Center of Afrikan Spirituality
Leimert Park Merchants
Los Angeles Black Deaf Advocates
NAACP Youth and College Divison – Region I
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Stop the Violence / Increase the Peace
The Organization Us

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, 35th District
Dr. Maulana Karenga, Department of Black Studies, Cal State Long Beach
and many others ...

Planning Meetings held every Tuesday and Friday @ 6:30 pm
African American Cultural Center
2560 W. 54th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90043

For more information, please call 323.292.3009 or 323.299.6124

The politicization of street organizations.... (Alprentice Carter brought with him as many as five thousand L.A. Slauson gang members into the Black Panther Party when he joined. It doesn't take any imagination to understand why the FBI considered him a serious problem).

here is some contextual info copied from here:

Social-Political Period, 1965-1970
In the aftermath of the rebellion, young people, namely former club members from the community, began to build political institutions to contest social injustices, specifically police brutality, which sparked the 1965 Watts Riots. Following the Watts Riots, and throughout the rest of the 1960s, black groups were organizing and becoming politically radical.

For nearly five years, beginning in 1965, there were almost no active black street gangs in Los Angeles. Several reports that black gang activity was on the decline began to circulate (Klein 1971: 22). According to Sergeant Warren Johnson, “during the mid and late 1960s, juvenile gang activity in black neighborhoods was scarcely visible to the public at large and of minimal concern to south-central residents” (Cohen 1972). It was the formation of these new movements that offered black youths a vehicle of positive identification and self-affirmation that occupied the time and energies that might have been spent in gang activity. A sense of cohesiveness began to form, along with self-worth and positive identification, as pride pervaded the black community (Los Angeles Times 3/19/72).

After the Rebellion in 1965, club members began to organize neighborhood political groups to monitor the LAPD and to document their treatment towards blacks. Ron Wilkins (ex-member of the Slausons), created the Community Action Patrol (CAP) to monitor police abuses (Davis 1990:297), and William Sampson (ex-member of the Slausons), along with Gerald Aubry (ex-member of the Orientals), started the Sons of Watts, whose key function was to “police the police” (Obtola 1972:7). The B started a chapter in Los Angeles shortly after Huey Newton, and Bobby Seale started the Party in Oakland, California, in 1966. The BPP in Los Angeles also organized both the black on several high schools campuses in Los Angeles and the black, a meeting place for black residents concerning community issues on Florence and Broadway in 1967. Ron "Maulana" Karenga organized a nationalistic group called US Organization, and Tommy Jacquette organized the Self Leadership for All Nationalities Today (SLANT) in October of 1966 (Bullock 1969:67; Tyler 1982: 222). After splitting away from the US Organization, Hakim Jamal started the Malcolm X Foundation in 1968, and Robaire Nyjuky founded the Marxist Leninist Maoist (MLM) which had an office on 78th Street and San Pedro (Tyler 1983:237). Student Non-ViolentCoordinating Committee (SNCC), a national organization of black nationalists visited Los Angeles and opened an office on Central Avenue in 1967. Also during this period, Ron Karenga created Kwanza, a non-religious holiday that celebrates African heritage.

All these groups were formed in the wake of the 1965 rebellion to provide political support to the civil rights movement that was gaining strength within the black community of Los Angeles. There were several other black nationalist groups in Los Angeles, but the Panthers and US Organization were considered to have the largest following and the most political influence in the black community of Los Angeles following the Watts Rebellion. The BPP heavily recruited members from the Slausons, an East side club, while the US Organization had a large a following from the West side clubs, including the Gladiators, but members of both political groups came from a variety of different clubs from all over Los Angeles. _____________Carter was elected president of the Los Angeles Chapter of the black Panther Party (BPP), whose sole purpose was monitoring the actions of the Los Angeles Police Department. Several members of the black Panthers and the US Organization[7] headed by Ron “Maulana” Karenga, were at one time members of the black clubs of Los Angeles during the 1950s and early 1960s. Some experts have suggested that the rivalry between the BPP and US was rooted in previous club rivalry, but it was actually associated with the opposite philosophies of the two groups.

After the formation of several progressive groups in Los Angeles, local and federal law enforcement agencies began to target those groups that they viewed as a threat to society and the nation as a whole. The emerging black consciousness of the 1960s, that fueled the political movement, was viewed as hostile. The efforts of these political and militant groups to organize young blacks against police brutality were repressed by the FBI, because they specifically viewed the actions of the Panthers and other groups as subversive and a threat to the security of the nation. Chief Thomas Reddin of the Los Angeles Police Department retained the military model and police tactics that his predecessor (Chief Parker) had employed for sixteen years. Reddin believed that the black Panthers represented a major threat to the safety of his officers and their authority on the streets (Scheisl 1990: 168).

By 1967, the Panthers were one of the strongest black political groups in the nation, and by November 1968, J. Edgar Hoover dispatched a memorandum calling his field agents to “exploit all avenues of creating ...dissension within the ranks of the BPP” (Churchill and Wall 1990:63). This was accomplished by the use of counterintelligence (COINTELPRO) which are tactics designed to divide, conquer, weaken, and to make ineffective the actions of a particular organization. COINTELPRO tactics that the FBI began to use against the BPP to weaken its power base, were previously used during the 1940s and throughout the 1950s against the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the Communist Party (CPUSA) in the United States (Churchill & Wall 1990:37). From 1968-1971, these tactics were used against the BPP to control and neutralize what was believed to be “a dangerous black political group.” The most vicious and unrestrained application of COINTELPRO techniques during the late 1960s and early 1970s was clearly reserved for the BPP (Churchill & Wall 1990:61; Horne 1995:13).

After several confrontations for over two years, the disputes between the BPP and US continued to the campus of UCLA resulting in the murders of BPP leaders. There are several versions of the events in the described oral histories of those who were present and those who knew the victims personally, but US members were ultimately arrested for the murders. The years of 1969 and early 1970 marked the end of any forward progress by black political groups in Los Angeles.

check it out. it's on 90.7fm kpfk right now.

sounds like they're playing a recording from March 15th instead due to technical problems.

and now, they've gone back to Leimert Park live.... how confusing.