NJ NBPP Sho Nuff Ona Move for ASSATA!

[nattyreb]

COME
TO A TEACH-IN
ON OUR
MUCH BELOVED
FREEDOM FIGHTER IN EXILE
ASSATA SHAKUR!!!

FIND OUT THE TRUTH ABOUT
THIS INCREDIBLE BLACK WOMAN!

FIND OUT WHAT COINTELPRO
DID TO ‘OUR’ BRAVEST GENERATION!

FIND OUT WHAT
MAYOR DOUG PALMER,
PETER HARVEY AND DEVON BROWN
OBVIOUSLY DON’T KNOW!

HOSTED BY
YOUR
NEW BLACK PANTHER PARTY
ON TUESDAY, JULY 19TH
614 STUYVESANT AVE
TRENTON
DOORS OPEN AT 6PM
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CALL 609-615-3453
================

THE NEW BLACK PANTHER PARTY
THE GREATER NEW YORK-NEW JERSEY CHAPTERS
P.O. BOX 25332
NEWARK, NJ 07101
THE OFFICE OF THE CHIEF OF STAFF
201-602-0780
July 11, 2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NEW PANTHERS DEFEND ASSATA
BLAST TRENTON MAYOR
WILL SPEAK AT STATEWIDE MMM PRESS CONFERENCE

On Thursday, July 14th, at a statewide press conference,the New Black Panther Party will be among a proud cross-section of Black leaders proclaiming their unity in support of the upcoming 10th anniversary rally of the epic Million Man March.
The press conference will take place at 12 noon at the Statehouse in Trenton.
The Million Man March was held on October 16, 1995 in Washington, D.C. Using the theme of ‘Atonement and Reconciliation,’ it was an uplifting nondenominational spiritual gathering called for by Nation Of lslam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan. It was uniquely designed to inspire African-American men to address the deep social crises facing their community at that time. The March, to the shock of its critics, attracted 1.7 million men to Washington, making it the largest mass gathering in the history of the United States.
Minister Farrakhan has called on Black America to return to Washington on Saturday, October 15th, to mark the anniversary of that epic event and to launch what he is calling a Millions More Movement, an independent self-empowering movement involving all sectors of the Black community.
The July 14th press conference will highlight the broad support that this new movement already has throughout the state of New Jersey.
This gathering will not be free of controversy, however. Among the items that the new movement is supposed to address is the plight of Black political prisoners in the United States, most of whom were former members of the Black Panther Party. October 15th, incidently, is the 39th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party. The New Black Panther Party will speak to that controversial item, as well as to the main crisis currently facing the African-American community, epidemic gang and drug-related street violence. They will be represented by their national youth minister Divine Allah, a longtime Trenton resident. The Party will also condemn the recent media attack on exiled Black Panther Assata Shakur, or the much maligned Joanne Chesimard, by Trenton’s mayor Doug Palmer. A detailed statement by the Party is annexed.
Several weeks ago, on the heels of the State of New Jersey recently raising their bounty on Shakur’s head from $150,000 to $1 million dollars, Palmer, at the recent U.S. Conference of Black Mayors, objected to a pending resolution calling for the normalization of relations with Cuba, unless they first extradited Shakur back to New Jersey to serve her life sentence she was facing when she was liberated from a Clinton prison in 1979. Palmer’s stand made frontpage news in the Trenton area. While Palmer’s stand may have engendered accolades from the law enforcement establishment, it angered African-Americans all over the country. While Shakur has been demonized over the years as a cop killer, she has always maintained her innocence and is much beloved by many in her own community.
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HOLD THE LINE! COVER DOWN!...BLACK POWER!...
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An Open Letter to our People In Defense of Assata
By Bro. Zayid Muhammad, National Minister of Culture, New Black Panther Party

“Wassa matta, boss? We sick?�Malcolm X, Message to the Grassroots,Nov.12’63

The New Black Panther Party, along with countless thousands of others in our community, are supremely offended and outraged by the recent attack of Doug Palmer, Trenton’s first African-American mayor, on our much beloved exiled freedom fighter Assata Shakur.

Background
Several weeks ago, at the national convening of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Palmer objected to a pending resolution calling for the normalization of relations with Cuba. Palmer said that in no way should normal relations be resumed unless Cuba first hands over “cop killer Joanne Chesimard.� He was joined in the objection by the mayors Elizabeth, Piscataway and Hope, NJ.
Most sickeningly, Palmer went on demonize Assata as if he was a spokesman for NJ State Police, you know that high profile law enforcement outfit world famous for institutionalizing racial profiling.
He called her a cop killer. He rattled off the state’s medically disproven version of the facts. He implied that she was virtually being coddled like a celebrity in Cuba. (Cuba coddles no celebrities, exiled or homegrown.) He called the proposed resolution “a slap in the face.� His action was a “slap in the face� to his own community. The man sounded like a white man in blackface.
Palmer’s attack was reported on the front page of the June 11th issue of The Trentonian newspaper.
With this pathetic misdeed, Palmer joins the hypocritical ranks of two of Trenton’s other prominent Black public officials, Peter Harvey, NJ’s first Black attorney general and Devon Brown, the first Black to head the Department of Corrections (DOC), in cahoots with white law enforcement in calling for Shakur’s return. On May 2nd, the anniversary of the tragic NJ Turnpike incident that tragically turned worlds and lives upside down, Harvey took the point for State law enforcement upping the bounty on Shakur’s head from $150,000. to $1,000,000, and we blasted him for it too. Just a few weeks prior, Brown, we just learned, listed Shakur as a priority for the Department of Corrections’ unfinished business in so far as fugitives remaining at large are concerned. They all did so in total disregard for the racially polarized climate of those times. They all did so in total disrespect for the struggle that produced each of their opportunities to serve at their very high level of service, a struggle which included Assata! They did so in total contempt for the revered place Assata has in our community. Of course, none of them even bothered to make an honest examination of both sides of the story.

The Other Side Of The Story
It’s hard to believe that any Black public official would do what these sellouts did if they were at least aware of the following:
1. The whole incident blew up when Assata and her comrades, Sundiata Acoli, the other survivor, now serving a life sentence in a federal prison, and Zayd Shakur, who was also killed in the Turnpike incident, were all profiled in the first place. State Trooper Thomas Harper stopped them because they were driving with Vermont license plates. Of course, all good racist profilers know that Black people, who have been scattered allover the western world as a consequence of the still unaddressed consequences of the transatlantic slave trade, live all thoroughout the country, but not in Vermont!
2. At her trial, Assata presented evidence which clearly established that she was paralyzed when she herself was shot; that she had to have had her hands up in the air to have sustained the wounds she suffered, and that it was “totally anatomically impossible� for her to have been in a crouching position when she was shot. (The state has insisted that she fired on the troopers first and did so in a crouching position until she was shot herself.)
3. No fingerprints, or any other physical evidence, links Assata to the use of any weapons.
4. All Neutron Activation tests, which were used to determine whether or not someone she had fired a weapon, were came back negative.
5. COINTELPRO, that sinister acronym for the secret and illegal FBI operation aimed at Black activists in 1960s and the early 1970s, including Martin Luther King, Kwame Ture (the former Stokely Carmichael), the Nation Of Islam, and the Black Panther Party, who were targeted more than anyone else after King’s assassination, was in full, violent gear at the time of the incident. Not because of any proven criminal activity as has been professed to be so over the years; But more because of the government’s national security order wanting to destroy our community’s mass mobilization capability. COINTELPRO left dozens of activists dead. Dozens more still in prison. Others, like Assata, driven into exile.
6. The FBI initiated a COINTELPRO operation that exclusively targeted Assata called Operation Chesrob, and Assata was never even a leader in the Party, which reveals the depths of the FBI’s obsession with destroying our peoples’ movement at that time.

Any Black public official aware of these factors surrounding Assata’s case and still wants to participate in her capture is someone completely out of touch with reality and the heroic force of history that created real opportunities for men like Palmer, Harvey and Brown to serve the public at that level in the first place. Or maybe they are backwards enough to believe that the Fraternal Order of Police, the NJ State Police and the Department of Corrections were the real champions of affirmative action, equal opportunity and an end to racial profiling. For now, they are clearly out of their African minds!

Lessons From the CBC Precedent
This traitorous scenario is not without precedent, however.
In 1998, after our epic battle against Rudolph Giuliani’s police at the Million Youth March, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) pathetically endorsed a resolution in congress that was initiated by then governor Christine Whitman, which also called for Assata’s extradiction as a necessary prerequisite for normalization of relations with Cuba.
After the New Afrikan Liberation Front and many other progressive Black forces blasted their support for that resolution, Congressman Maxine Waters claimed that they did not recognize Assata by her much maligned slave name, Joanne Chesimard.
To their credit, they apologized and sought to reverse their position. In fact, they went further. They even visited Cuba themselves first hand and got their own independent perspective on that proud island nation. They even embraced Cuba’s call to train Black and Latino students from poor backgrounds in this country free of charge per international scholarships at their leading medical school and to be the recruitment points for the process!
They clearly learned from their mistake and took responsibility for it, even if it meant taking some controversial positions.
Will these officials, these three mousekatoms, demonstrate the same character to do the same? Will they call for a re-examinations of cases like Assata’s and call for the release of her comrades, some who have been incarceration for over three decades now, like the rest of our community has?!
Time will tell.
As co-convenors of the 10th anniversary of the epic Million Man March, which will be held on Saturday, October 15th , the 39th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party, incidently, we vow to represent for the other side! As such, we must inform the Doug Palmers of the land that the very freedom fighters that they are so willing to demonize to make their white masters happy will boldly be lionized en masse on an unprecedented scale of unity on that great gittin’ up morning.
We must also inform them that there is new generation of Black leadership itching to emerge from the MMM, a new generation tired of the disconnect and the absence of character so pathetically characteristic of too many of our current crop of Black elected officials. That generation has already begun organizing to replace those not willing to stand for our people with the character and spine that anchored our struggle for decades!
To Hell with Doug Palmer!
Hands off Assata! Free Sundiata! Free All Political Prisoners! Free The Land!
Black Power!
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