Justice For Breonna Taylor ❤

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Pam Grier poses for a photos in Los Angeles on December 19, 1973. 

Photos by Michael Ochs Archive

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The CRIPs were not always the gang-bangers they are known to be. The CRIPs were formed in 1969. Raymond Washington, a high school student at the time founded the organization in response to the increasing level of police harassment of the Afrakan community.

CRIPs stood for Community Resources for Independent People. It was styled on the Black Panther Party which was formed 3 years earlier, by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, further down the west coast in Oakland.

There were many organizations springing up around the same time all over the country with the same ideas of protecting and serving the community.

Like so many of these organizations, their commitment to these basic values was not given the opportunity to run its course.

Individuals, marked out by police as leaders, were targeted and arrested on various bogus charges then convicted on the flimsiest of evidence.

Many organizations were pitted against each other through the work of informants and undercover FBI agents who would provoke confrontations as well as provide information as to the whereabouts and movements of individuals. Others were just plain murdered by the police.

The ferocity with which police departments went after the Afrakan community, particularly young Afrakan men, is shown by the fact that by 1971, 2 million Afrakans were being arrested each year. The fear of the Afrakan community producing any more Huey P. Newtons or Malcolm Xs, of the development of a strong revolutionary movement were the main reasons behind such police action and J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program).

Thus, any spirit of resistance was literally harassed, imprisoned or murdered out of the community. Gangs however remained, serving a different purpose.

With large amounts of Afrakan being railroaded into prison, you could imagine the social impact. Virtually thousands of youths would be picked up by the police for no given reason, taken to police stations, mug-shotted, fingerprinted and then held until their families were notified and picked them up.

At a time when the availability of jobs were decreasing; to be young, Afrakan and have a police record meant that the chances of finding a job was almost nil.

If you combine this with the steady removal of social provisions and the marginalization of whole sections of communities, it is not surprising that social relations began to suffer. The destruction of the Afrakan family is a very real phenomenon.

It should be noted that during the very same period of the n70s, whilst Afrakan communities were being forced into the lowest strata of society, “affirmative action” programs were working away to create a Black middle class.

Though in relation to the whole Afrakan population they were a very small number, they occupied positions in city, state and federal government; worked inside corporate America and ran their own businesses. This class was purposefully and knowingly created by the establishment to give the impression that they could make it, if only they kept their heads down and noses clean.

In reality a culture of survival has now gripped a large section of AfrakanAmerica. When people cannot eat or clothe their children they will steal to survive. A person without a job who has been influenced by the rampant materialism of the dominant culture can be recruited into criminal activity. The illegal economies of crime and crack have become the only means of survival for many people.

In amongst such conditions, children are the most vulnerable. Society’s alienation of these youths means that the only place they can find respect, kinship and power is within a gang. The bond between gang members is so strong that many will kill or die for each other, no question. A gang has been described as being “your religion, your family, your college, your everything.”

However, the current level of violence cannot be explained by these factors alone. The stigma of Afrakan people being called ‘naturally aggressive’ is over 500 years old but the explanation for violence cannot be linked to genes or biological make-up. Violence is learned behavior.

A child that is beaten frequently and unjustly will learn to resort to violence against others. Similarly, a community that is constantly visited with unjust killings and beatings at the hands of an oppressive police force can learn to settle conflicts through violent means.

The internalization of problems caused by external factors, by then, has taken place.

THESE ORGANIZATIONS WERE MEANT TO PROTECT US NOT TERRORIZE US?

TAKING OUR CULTURE AND TURNING IT AGAINST US

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Classic

“The people and the cultures of what is known as Africa are older than the word ‘Africa’. According to most records, old and new, Africans are the oldest people on the face of the earth. The people know called Africans not only influenced the Greeks and the Romans, they influenced the early world before there was a place called Europe.”

- John Henrik Clarke -