The FBI has a long history of targeting and repressing progressive social movements in the US, including civil rights, Black liberation, indigenous rights, unionization, and economic justice groups. The FBI conducted widespread surveillance, infiltration, propaganda, and outright violence including assassination against leaders and members of the Black Panther Party, American Indian Movement, Occupy Wall Street, and unions. While initially targeting Black, indigenous, and leftist groups, the FBI now monitors a wide range of activists and social movements through partnerships with local and private security forces.
The FBI has a long history of targeting and repressing progressive social movements in the US, including civil rights, Black liberation, indigenous rights, unionization, and economic justice groups. The FBI conducted widespread surveillance, infiltration, propaganda, and outright violence including assassination against leaders and members of the Black Panther Party, American Indian Movement, Occupy Wall Street, and unions. While initially targeting Black, indigenous, and leftist groups, the FBI now monitors a wide range of activists and social movements through partnerships with local and private security forces.
The FBI has a long history of targeting and repressing progressive social movements in the US, including civil rights, Black liberation, indigenous rights, unionization, and economic justice groups. The FBI conducted widespread surveillance, infiltration, propaganda, and outright violence including assassination against leaders and members of the Black Panther Party, American Indian Movement, Occupy Wall Street, and unions. While initially targeting Black, indigenous, and leftist groups, the FBI now monitors a wide range of activists and social movements through partnerships with local and private security forces.
strike-breaking to employers, and even built fraudulent cases
against teamster unionizers [12]. FBI: Repression,
And Much More These brief profiles of FBI operations are just small pieces in a Spying, and Murder terrible picture of what this agency does. The FBI works to stop those trying to improve the world. The FBI spies on Americans, from “There is an entire generation of young people who know Charlie Chaplin, to Marilyn Monroe, to Norman Mailer. The FBI nothing about how viciously the FBI attacked The Black carries out political assassinations both in America and abroad. The Panther Party, and why.” - Bobby Seale FBI partners with white supremacist groups and fights against civil rights groups. Is this really something you want to be part of? Since its inception the FBI has been used as a tool against unionizing, black liberation, indigenous rights, economic equality, Sources: and other progressive movements. Many people who are now seen [1] Millies, Stephen: “The FBI is a Racist Sewer” as heroes, from MLK to Cesar Chavez, had FBI files for their <www.workers.org/2017/05/18/the-fbi-is-a-racist-sewer/> ‘subversive activities’. The FBI has spied on anyone working for a [2] Haas, Jeffery: The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther better world, imprisoned activists on fabricated charges, infiltrated [3] Churchill, Ward and Vander Wall, Jim: Agents of repression: the FBI's secret wars against organizations to destroy them from the inside, and even murdered the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement citizens in cold blood. These are not relics of the past, the FBI [4] Farley, Jonathan: “Preventing the Rise of a ‘Messiah’” <www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/apr/04/preventingtheriseofamessi> continues in the same direction to this day [1]. [5] Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF): “FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring” <www.justiceonline.org/fbi_files_ows> [6] Wolf, Naomi: “Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy” Fred Hampton, Black Panther Party Leader, <www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy> [7] Gibbons, Chip: “Why is the FBI in Bed With Shadowy Corporate Spies?” Murdered December 4, 1969 <rightsanddissent.org/news/fbi-bed-shadowy-corporate-spies/> Fred Hampton was deputy chairman of the Illinois Black Panther [8] Levin, Sam: “Revealed: FBI Terrorism Taskforce Investigating Standing Rock Activists” Party. The FBI started their file on him when he was 19 years old. <www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/10/standing-rock-fbi-investigation-dakota- access> On December 4, 1969, 21 year old Fred Hampton was drugged by [9] Gage, Beverly: “What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals” an FBI informant and assassinated while lying in bed by local police <www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncensored-letter-to-mlk-reveals.html> working under the direction of the FBI [2]. This was one piece in an [10] Lardner Jr., George: “15 Years of Dirty Tricks Bared by the FBI” [11] Heiss, Jasmine: “Is It Time to Free Native American Activist Leonard Peltier” organized effort to destroy the Black Panther party. Many <www.newsweek.com/time-free-native-american-activist-leonard-peltier-460866> documents from this operation (COINTELPRO) have been [12] Levin, Sam: “Top Prosecutor in Leonard Peltier Case Urges Clemency in 'Extraordinary' declassified [3]. COINTELPRO outlined the FBI’s plans to stop the Move” <www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/04/free-leonard-peltier-obama-open- letter-james-reynolds> black liberation movement. One of those plans was to “prevent the [13] Street, Richard: “The FBI’s Secret File on César Chávez” rise of a 'messiah' who could unify and electrify the militant black <www.jstor.org/stable/41171831> nationalist movement”, bringing to mind the assassinations of Fred [14] Dobbs, Farrell: “FBI: Anti-Union Weapon for Bosses Against Teamsters” <www.themilitant.com/2017/8111/811149.html> Hampton, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King [4]. FBI to Martin Luther King Jr. “like all frauds your end is approaching” In 1964, after years of surveillance, the FBI sent Dr. King a letter in an attempt to blackmail him into committing suicide. Alleging “immoral conduct” in King’s sex life, they told King “you are done”, and “there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is.” They sent ‘evidence’ of his “sexual deviance” to his wife, which she called “mumbo jumbo” [9]. The FBI also attempted to discredit the Black Panther Party, releasing a ‘Black Panther Coloring Book’ depicting black people stabbing white people in an attempt to smear the Black Panther Party as promoting violence [10].
Repression of the American Indian
Movement The American Indian Movement (AIM) was an organization fighting for the rights of indigenous people, founded in 1968. The FBI treated them much like the Black Panther Party, infiltrating the organization and assassinating and imprisoning leaders [3]. AIM member Leonard Peltier is still in prison for allegedly aiding and abetting in OWS and Dakota Access Pipeline the deaths two FBI agents. He was initially charged with murder but FBI documents released in 2012 revealed the FBI treated Occupy all three witnesses recanted and admitted the FBI forced their Wall Street (OWS) peaceful protesters as a potential terrorist threat statements, suppressed ballistics tests proved the shots didn’t come [5]. They formed a joint task force with local police, Homeland from Peltier’s rifle, and the FBI was following a red truck, which Security, regional fusion centers (state and local anti-terrorism Peltier didn’t drive [11]. The former lead prosecutor urged clemency groups), and private security, working under the name ‘Domestic [12]. Peltier is receiving subpar medical care for his cancer. Security Alliance Council’. They harvested information about college students involved in OWS from campus police, met with banks, and ignored threats against OWS leaders [6]. The Dakota Access Strikebreaking and Cesar Chavez Pipeline protests began in 2016 to protest a pipeline going through In 1965, as he lead a strike against the brutal labor practices of Standing Rock Indian Reservation land. The FBI worked with local California grape growers, César Chávez entered the radar of the police and TigerSwan private security to violently repress protests, FBI. They opened a file on him and began spying on him and his and is attempting to charge protesters with injuries from an union’s activities, and then covered up knowledge of assassination explosion caused by the police [7,8]. These are modern attempts on Chávez by the farm owners [13]. This was typical of the continuations of the old COINTELPRO strategies. FBI’s dealing with unions, as they provided intelligence and