Thug Life Army

After the assassination of Dr. King, Africans rose up in Rebellions across the country. This era sparked the most internal threat to the existence of the United States as we know it since the Civil War. Congress repsonded by passing the Omnibous Crime Control and Safe Streets Act. This bill nationalized police forces, granting federal subsidization of the training, arming, and modernization of local police forces. The police were now out of the control of local authorities and became more of like a National Guard.

The actual beginnings of the ''War on Drugs'' of the 80's, which was disguise for the War on the African Community, started in the early 70's as the CIA began flying in heroin from Southeast Asia and flooding the African Community with it. In 1972 Nixon established the Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement(ODALE), a forerunner of the Drug Enforcement Agency(DEA). These forces could:

- use court authorized wiretaps and no-knock warrants

- feed the names of suspects to a target-selection committee in the IRS, which could then initiate audits and investigations.

...among other tactics.

The ODALE received most of its funds from the Law Enforcement Assistance Adminstration(LEAA). This was apart of the Justice Department created by Congress in 1968 to financially assist state and local law enforcement units. Backed by funds from these entities, Special Weapons And Tactics(SWAT) teams and other militarized police forces began to be deployed to African communities across the country. Between 1963 and 1972, 200 FBI agents per year were trained by the Army in riot control at Fort Belvoir, VA. The course was designed to put in place military strategies and tactics in civil disturbance suppression among civil law enforcement. This was a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 that was put in place to prevent the military from acting as a domestic police force. So instead of using the military, they just taught domestic law enforcement how to implement military strategy and tactics.

After the passing of the Omnibous Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, the U.S. government began using domestic police the same way it had been using police forces in colonized countries since the 1950's as the first line of defense against Anti-Colonial People's Liberation Movements, otherwise known as Counterinsurgency or a regimes war against a People's Movement for Liberation. Sir Robert Thompson, a British Counterinsurgency expert, stated that the police were the best organization to be responsible for all internal security intelligence. He said, "the police force is a state organization reaching out into every corner of the country and will have had long experience of close contact with the population."

From this began to evolve the public policy of police containment we see implemented in the African Community today. Like in the days of Chattel Slavery, anytime there was a rebellion that was defeated, the aftermath was the Cracka Slavemaster and Overseers unleashing a mass ''Flogging'' or punishment to put the ''Negroes'' back in their place. They would come down hard on the Slave Community to intimidate them in order to monitor and strike fear so that no further rebellions would ever be organized again. This is what we have been going through since the Great Rebellion of the 60's.

The following factors were noted in Michael Klare's book, "War Without End". They are designed to crush Liberation Movements of Oppressed People and to prevent them from ever rising up again.

RESOURCE CONTROL:

To stop the flow of human and material resources into communities and revolutionary movements of Oppressed Peoples. Designed to crush financial and political support for political organizing in these communities and to diffuse any popular revolutionary base.

IDENTIFICATION:

A key part of population and resource control. In Vietnam everyone 15years and older were required to register with the Saigon government and carry ID cards. In the U.S. the widespread use of "pro-active policing" gets the data and fingerprints of African People into police databases. Today we see this practice in the routine fingerprinting of children in elementary schools. This is also why Africans are arrested at such high rates. If they can''t lock you up and exploit you for labor and keep you off the streets preventing you from engaging in the development of Revolution, at least they have you in their database.

SURVEILLANCE:

Wiretapping, use of listening devices, and employment of infiltrators and spies in movement organizations. This has been used since the defeat of the Black Revolution of the 60's to frame up and intimidate African People.

PACIFICATION:

This is the most deceptive and the most deadly. So called "goodwill" projects are set up in impoverished communities by the State, such as Operation and Weed and Seed, to establish a firm State presence in the community. The task is for identication and neutralization of revolutionary forces. Projects of the past were the Phoenix Program in Vietnam and COINTELPRO.

Police murders are not the work of just a few ''rotten apples''. They are doing what they are trained to do. The police are the First Line of Offense of the U.S. State apparatus, whose work is to suppress the African Community.

Chairman Omali Yeshitela of the African Peoples Socialist Party, leader of The Uhuru Movement urges,

"We must organize not to just stop a police killing, because thats not enough. The police are instruments of State power and they are fighting to keep things just as they are. So that Mexico continues to be called California, Texas, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. So that the Indigenous People are still kept in concentration camps that they call reservations. So that the Africans are still denied even basic assumptions of humanity"

UHURU means FREEDOM!!!

Read and find out more at Assata Shakur.org , and The Drum Collective .