Uhuru Movement raided by the FBI

Last July 29, multiple homes and centers of the Uhuru Movement and their members were violently and destructively raided by the FBI based on a Grand Jury indictment that claimed they may be guilty of violating the US Foreign Agents Registration Act.  They have been accused of sowing social division within the US in collaboration with alleged Russian foreign agent Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov. Peggy Hess discusses these events with Radio Active Magazine hosts Cris Mann and Spencer Graves.

Uhuru Movement leaders have responded “The absurdity of these claims not only shows the desperation of this dying colonial-capitalist social system, clinging on to age-old anti-Russia propaganda, but it presupposes that African people don’t have the capacity to think for ourselves, to identify our enemies and lead our own struggle without the intervention of someone else.”

Penny Hess is the Chairwoman of the African People’s Solidarity Committee and author of (2000) Overturning the culture of violence. She is a leader of the movement for white solidarity with black power and reparations.  She will discuss the role of white people and the Uhuru Solidarity Movement’s upcoming national conference in St. Louis, March 11-12, 2023, themed “White people: Say no to the FBI war on Black Liberation. ”

OTHER CONCERNS ABOUT ABUSE OF POWER BY LAW ENFORCEMENT IN THE U.S. 

The FBI raids on Uhuru facilities seem consistent with a 2023-02-07 report on Democracy Now! regarding, “COINTELPRO 2.0: How the FBI Infiltrated BLM Protests After Police Murder of George Floyd“: Award-winning investigative journalist Trevor Aaronson and two others described how the FBI worked to disrupt protests in Denver that erupted following the George Floyd murder.

Aaronson had earlier documented how by 2013 the FBI had 10 times as many as many informants on the streets as there were during the infamous COINTELPRO operations of the 1960s and early 1970s. Aarons said that those informants and agents provocateurs were responsible for more terrorist plots in the US than any other organization.

In the decade between September 11, 2001 and 2011, the FBI prosecuted 508 people as alleged terrorists.  Aaronson wrote, “Of the 508 cases, I could count on one hand the number of actual terrorists”.  The others were guilty of  trying to commit a terrorist act using a plan and equipment given them by agents provocateurs or of lesser offenses like overstaying a visa or lying to the FBI.  Aaronson concluded, “While we have captured a few terrorists since 9/11, we have manufactured many more.” He cited a 2011 study by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press that concluded that Muslims in the US “would not tolerate violent extremists any more than Christians or Jews.”¹

This case seems vaguely similar to the US government’s treatment of Sami Al-Arian, a Professor of computer engineering at the University of South Florida, who was fired and deported for supporting a charity for Palestinian children that the US had designated (without judicial oversight) a terrorist organization.

1. Trevor Aaronson (2013) The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism (Ig Publishing, esp. pp. 16, 17, 24, 113)

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