[RBG Street Scholar]

A MESSAGE TO GRASSROOTS HIP HOP From DHORUBA BIN WAHAD... Listen on Breakdown FM by clicking HERE: An excerpt from Mr. Wahad's book, Still Black, Still Strong, Toward Rethinking Self-Defense in a Racist Culture: Black Survival in a United States in Transition Hip-Hop Fridays: COINTELPRO - The Untold American Story (Part 1) Hip-Hop Fridays: COINTELPRO - The Untold American Story (Part 2) This is an incredible speech from long term Freedom Fighter and former political prisoner DHORUBA BIN WAHAD... It took place during the recently held National Hip Hop Political Convention in Las Vegas. DHORUBA sat on a panel that focused on the legacy of cointel-pro which took down the Panthers, the anti-war movement and other organizations during the 1960s.. The purpose of this panel was to see how this insidious policy of domestic spying had manifested itself within Hip Hop. Dhoruba was scheduled to be part of a panel, and offer brief remarks, but people were so moved by him and his unwavering commitment to the freedom struggle, he was asked at the last moment to address the entire convention.. He really dropped some bombs. He talked about this country's ascension into being an empire and starts off with the landmark year of 1968... Its interesting to note that DHORUBA’S breakdown of social and political events that took place in 1968 parallels the social and political events chronicled by author Jeff Chang in his landmark book about the Hip Hop generation called 'Can't Stop Won't Stop'. The message that DHORUBA delivers is an important one and hopefully it will motivate all of us to pay closer attention and get more involved in the day to day political discourse that impacts our communities. Enjoy, Get Enlightened and Evolve.. PS.. The song you hear in the beginning is brand new music from the Black Panther of Hip Hop- Paris is new album Acid Reflex is due out in early September. It was almost as if he wrote this song for DHORUBA. Dhoruba Bin Wahad, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Assata Shakur Still Black, Still Strong Survivors of the War Against Black Revolutionaries "My name is Dhoruba Al Mujahid Bin Wahad. Formerly Dhoruba Moore. I’m a political prisoner. I’ve been incarcerated in New York State for nearly nineteen years, which I guess makes me one of the longest held political prisoners in the world, a notoriety I do not seek, but there it is." Still Black Still Strong is an essential document of the Black Panther Party written by three leading thinkers and party activists who were jailed following the FBI’S 1969 mandate to destroy the organization “by any means possible.” First published in 1993, Still Black, Still Strong is partly based upon the 1989 videotape Framing The Panthers by producers Chris Bratton and Annie Goldson. It recounts the stories of Dhoruba Bin Wahad, Mumia Abu-Jamal and Assata Shakur, all of whom were arrested and jailed during the COINTELPRO probe of the Black Panther Party. Dhoruba Bin Wahad, who organized chapters of the Black Panther Party in New York and along the Estern Seaboard and worked with tenants in Harlem and on drug rehabilitation in the Bronx, was accused of murdering two officers while still in his teens and imprisoned for 19 years. He always maintained his innocence and won his freedom by forcing the FBI to release thousands of classified documents proving that he had been framed. The justice department eventually rescinded Bin Wahad’s conviction and he was released in 1990, seven months after the documentary premiered. Mumia Abu-Jamal, a journalist who headed the Black Panther free breakfast program for inner-city school children in Philadelphia, was also accused of the murder of an officer and sent on death-row, where he still is today. Assata Shakur was a college educated social worker in her twenties when she was accused of shooting a cop, then arrested and tortured and denied medical treatment. Her interview was conducted in Cuba where she has been exiled since her escape from a New Jersey women’s prison in 1975. Bin Wahad, Shakur and Abu-Jamal offer a little-known history and an incisive analysis of the Black Panthers’ original goals, which the U.S. Government has tried to distort and suppress. As one confidential, 1969, memo to J. Edgar Hoover put it, “The Negro youth and moderates must be made to understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teaching, they will be dead revolutionaries.” Related RBG Classroom: "ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE": Music that Drove A Movement, Paris/The Black Panther Of Hip Hop & A Classic 1966 SNCC Document "The Basis of Black Power" A RBG Street Scholar Educational Design