A Grand Success

Thinking back on the 60's and 70's when the Black Panther party was in full force and J. Edgar Hoover was the director of the FBI and "street" organizations were becoming popular, I can't help but see that there was one operation in particular that has been a major success.  It was not the Black Panthers.  Both of the original leaders of the group are dead, one of which, Huey Newton, succumbed to the exact same thing that eventually tore the Black community apart.  I recall reading in Richard Pryor's memoir "Pryor Confessions" about how he and Newton had a fight over Pam Grier and how Newton was an abuser of cocaine.  Tragic stuff considering that Newton had the potential to change the way the world thinks.  Make no mistake, they had a great impact on the consciousness of of Black America but nothing to the extent of what could have been were those men still alive today.  The New Black Panthers do not even deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the founders.

The "organizations" that rose to prominence in those days, supposedly to protect the residents of their respective communities now hold those residents hostage with senseless violence.  The crips and the bloods both started as community organizations and not violent, murderous bands of killers.  Those days are long gone.  Older residents now are afraid to even chastise the younger generation for fear of being violently assaulted or even killed.  The front porch, which used to be a haven for us, a safe place to shoot the breeze and enjoy the company of family and friends is no longer an option.  Even sitting in the living room in some "hoods" is dangerous because of assault weapon bullets that can penetrate brick and sheetrock like a hot knife on butter.  These men and women that are a part of these gangs are simply pawns in a grand chess game that has dire consequences.

During the era of the Black Panther party, a plan was put in place to infiltrate these groups.  Fear started spreading among White America, particularly at the government level, that if Blacks got organized, we would be a political and econimic force the likes of which this country had never seen.  Hoover, who I am certain was not acting alone, devised a grand scheme to systematically destroy the communities where these "heroes" lived and dash all hopes of organization and political power.  The aim was to prevent the rise of a "Black Messiah" that could lead the people to become independent thinkers and rational voters that used discernment rather than emotion and that saw through the propaganda that was offered as truth.  That plan was called COINTELPRO or COunter INTELligence PROgram.  Using COINTELPRO, leaders of any sociopolitical movement within the Black community were targeted, wrongfully imprisoned, killed and smeared to prevent folks from galvanizing behind them.  Other "subversives" were targeted as well, but this program left an indelible mark on Black America.  People like Huey Newton and Stokely Carmichael were pitted against other African-American community leaders and organizers and a divide and conquer strategy was implemented.  Whether it was fake letters sent from the FBI using the names of others to spark controversy or moles coming into meetings and stirring dissension, it worked.  The division in the community was evident, the beefs were real and the downfall of these organizations was monumental.  This was exacerbated by the fact that the government had also begun flooding the streets with cheap drugs that were consumed in large part by those living in the lower-income communities where many of these movements began.  As stated earlier, even Newton was eventually taken out by the "white horse" which cocaine is affectionately called by those who "take the ride".

Fast forward to the 1980s when Oliver North, the Fox News contributor who should be IN JAIL, oversaw an operation in which money from weapons sold to Iran was used to fund anti-communist operations by the Contras in South America.  Some of that funding also came from cocaine sales here in America which the government not only turned a blind eye to, they allowed to happen.  Guys like Freeway Ricky Ross, who was recently released from prison after a second stint, along with a host of characters that are profiled by the now deceased Gary Webb in his book "Dark Alliance" all played a part in fueling the 80's drug craze.  We still have not recovered from that as a community.  Ross and his cohorts were working, probably unknowingly, hand in hand with the U.S. government to kill off their own people.  We were collateral damage that was not even counted when the cost of the effort to root out "communism" was added up.  The money from Ross's crack cocaine operation is all gone, he's a shell of his former self and so is the community that he calls home.

What the crack craze did in Los Angeles in causing scores of young men and women to choose a color, get armed to the teeth and hustle from the cradle to the grave spread like wildfire across the country.  The movie "Colors" did not help!  After that particular film, gangsters, not gangsters in the sense of mafioso or just tough guys, but gangs that modeled themselves after the bloods and the crips, were popping up all across America.  Gang banging was the new thing to do.  My family was affected by it.  My neighborhood, who couldn't seem to make their minds up to be bloods, crips or disciples changed gangs depending on who was out of jail. Each time a brother from the neighborhood was released from prison and brought something new home, the younger guys fell right in line with it.

Now, think if you will to the current situation in Chicago.  The gang violence there is just unreal.  Larry Hoover, who played a huge role in organizing the Gangster Disciples (GD's) and turning them into a multi-million dollar drug cartel can, in my opinion, be viewed in two ways.  For someone that has a hood mentality, Hoover is a hero that kept it real.  For someone with good sense, Hoover and any other African-American that causes the destruction of their own people for profit, is not a hero but a villain.  Look at the aftermath of what he did in Chicago.  Count the bodies.  Think of all the potential that has been snuffed out in an effort to keep it real.  The fire that he started did not stay in the fireplace, it has gone wild and is now uncontrollable.

Here we are 56 years from the inception and implementation of COINTELPRO and the drugs are still selling, the gangsters are still organized drug cartels and the bodies are still dropping.  Brothers and sisters that join gangs as a way out of the hood can be likened to people that get into a car that is driving off a cliff.  There is no "getting out" and there is no happy ending if gang banging is the mode of escape.  There are two places, as cliched as it sounds, that gangsters end up- prison or in a pine box.  The ones that do make it out are left only to rue, if they have any conscience, the devastation that they have caused and usually try to do some community service as a way of saying "I'm sorry."  What many of these men don't realize is that they were set up from the beginning.  NO one makes big money in this country without the government knowing about it.  Legal or illegal.  The question to ask before entering into the drug trade is this, "Who is at the top?"  Most times that is unknown when you are dealing in drugs.  It's better for it to remain unknown in that lifestyle.  Judging from the deeds of North and his cronies, I'll go on record and say that there are shadowy elements of government or in high places where the thought process is simple: the ends justify the means.  If the means require that entire communities are destroyed so that the ends are accomplished, then that's just the way the cookie crumbles.

Success is measured in different ways.  If the goals and objectives of any particular undertaking are met, then that task can be considered a success.  If the wholesale destruction of a generation of Black mothers, Black fathers, Black children and Black communities was a part of the plan, if the endless cycle of violence, death and revenge was an objective, if the destruction of independent thought and intellectual growth was a goal, if mounting body bags full of Black bodies were objectives of COINTELPRO, then it can be said with certainty that this project was a grand success.  The battle is still raging.  I don't want to oversimplify the issues here but it cannot be overstated that African-Americans have been hit hard by certain policies that look tailor made to destroy us.  Wake up people, wake up.