On December 4, 1969 Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were assassinated by Chicago cops while they slept. The murders were part of the FBI’s COINTELPRO. Fred was deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party and a rising charismatic leader. He was only 21; Mark was 22. There are potential Freds and Marks walking our streets today that need to know their history and who their enemy is. The spirit of the Black Panther lives on!
The attempt to seize local control from the citizens of St. Louis will be met with organized—and might I add–hostile resistance (think pension, think future raises). That’s because citizens voted for local control of their police department in 2013 by a majority of citizens. That historic vote was the result of more than a decade of tireless organizing under the leadership of the Coalition Against Police Crimes and Repression (CAPCR).
Listen to Burnes Center Senior Fellow Seth Harris’s conversation about worker power, the labor movement, social justice, and podcasting with Jamala Rogers and Bianca Cunningham, co-hosts of Convergence Magazine’s Black Work Talk, and Adam Keller and Jacob Morrison, co-hosts of The Valley Labor Report.
Racial capitalism is a grinder of our very humanity. Black Lives Matter is not just a slogan; it is a daily reminder to resist the infectious virus of self–loathing and self-destruction spawned and perpetuated by our oppressors.
