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St. Louis has a new basketball court. Its funders were raided by the FBI

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  • St. Louis has a new basketball court. Its funders were raided by the FBI

    These appear to be peaceful, elderly people - community gardener types. They could have had heart attacks from the FBI using flash bang devices and flying a drone into the house.

    https://news.stlpublicradio.org/show...ded-by-the-fbi
    St. Louis has a new basketball court. Its funders were raided by the FBI
    St. Louis Public Radio | By Avery Lea Rogers, Danny Wicentowski
    Published August 26, 2022 at 3:48 PM CDT

    St. Louis has a brand-new basketball court. Created as an effort of the African People’s Socialist Party and its affiliate groups, the court comes complete with bleachers, water fountains, lighting for evening pickup games and an elaborate mural by St. Louis artist Jamie Bonfiglio.

    But before the hoops were even installed, the African People’s Socialist Party became embroiled in controversy. In the early morning hours of July 29, the group’s headquarters in St. Louis and St. Petersburg, Florida, were both raided by the FBI.

    During the raid, FBI agents breached the door of a residence in south St. Louis that doubles as an Uhuru Center, also run by the African People’s Socialist Party. The group’s leaders, Chairman Omali Yeshitela and Deputy Chair Ona Zené Yeshitela, live in the same property. The couple was just starting their day when the raid commenced.

    For Ona Zené, the raid brought up memories of the FBI’s operations against the leaders of the civil rights movement, including the 1969 FBI raid that killed Black Panther leader Fred Hampton.

    “It was horrific,” Ona Zené told St. Louis on the Air, describing the raid on her home in St. Louis. “When I reached the bottom of the stairs, it was like a war zone. I thought that they were gonna kill us. … I just thought about Fred Hampton, how they went in his home and murdered him. And I was just thinking that they're going to kill [Omali]. They're gonna kill him.”...
    Last edited by Emily; October 7, 2022, 03:04 AM.
    _____________________________________________

    Ask Congress to Investigate COVID Origins and Government Response to Pandemic.

    i love myself. the quietest. simplest. most powerful. revolution ever. ---- nayyirah waheed

    "...there’s an obvious contest that’s happening between different sectors of the colonial ruling class in this country. And they would, if they could, lump us into their beef, their struggle." ---- Omali Yeshitela, African People’s Socialist Party

    (My posts are not intended as advice or professional assessments of any kind.)
    Never forget Excalibur.

  • #2

    FBI Raid on St. Louis Black Liberation Activists Must Watch
    MAYOR SOSUA
    12.2K subscribers

    FBI Raid on St. Louis Black Liberation Activists, Claims Russia Used Them As Pawns To Spread Propaganda
    _____________________________________________

    Ask Congress to Investigate COVID Origins and Government Response to Pandemic.

    i love myself. the quietest. simplest. most powerful. revolution ever. ---- nayyirah waheed

    "...there’s an obvious contest that’s happening between different sectors of the colonial ruling class in this country. And they would, if they could, lump us into their beef, their struggle." ---- Omali Yeshitela, African People’s Socialist Party

    (My posts are not intended as advice or professional assessments of any kind.)
    Never forget Excalibur.

    Comment


    • #3
      Leaders of the African People’s Socialist Party say the FBI carried out a violent raid on its properties with flash grenades and drones early Friday morning in Missouri and Florida. The pan-Africanist group has been a longtime advocate for reparations for slavery and a vocal critic of U.S. foreign policy. The raid appears to be connected to a separate indictment of a Russian man accused of using U.S.-based groups to spread Russian propaganda and tampering with U.S. elections. We speak with Omali Yeshitela, chair of the African People’s Socialist Party, who describes how he was zip-tied while his home was raided. He says the FBI’s implication that their group was taking orders from the Russians is “the most ridiculous, asinine” narrative. “It’s an attack on the right of Black people,” says Yeshitela. “It’s an attack on our struggle for the absolute total liberation of every square inch of Africa.”

      “Bogus Charge”: FBI Raids African People’s Socialist Party; Group Dismisses Russian Influence Claims

      StoryAugust 10, 2022
      Watch Full Show

      ...
      JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Omali, this is an astounding story. I mean, here we — for those of us who are familiar with the radical movement in Black and Brown communities in the United States, the African People’s Socialist Party has been in existence for more than 40 years. It’s part of — it arose out of the Black community and is one of the few organizations that has consistently maintained an anti-capitalist and a socialist and internationalist perspective. And now suddenly you’re being accused of being pawns of the Russian government? What sense can you make of this attack?

      OMALI YESHITELA: I think that what we’re experiencing — and by the way, this is the — May was 50 years of existence for the African People’s Socialist Party. But you’re right, we came out of — I was a SNCC organizer. We came out of the whole civil rights movement.

      And I think that we’re dealing with the fact that the United States is facing an existential crisis of sorts — the whole social system is — where it was this uncontested hegemony for the longest period of time. It is now being perceived by much of the world, and I think rightly so, as a force that’s losing its grip on the world. And, you know, having suffered military defeat in Afghanistan, having suffered humiliation in Saudi Arabia, the country that Biden had said that he was going to turn into some kind of a pariah, and then having to find himself slinking over — slithering over, I should say — fist-bumping the prince, I just think it’s an existential crisis.

      And the African People’s Socialist Party — I want to invite you and all of your listeners to come and see the work that we’re doing in St. Louis. We’ve transformed an entire most oppressed African community. When they came to get us at our house, they came to Red Bud, 44 Bud, as it’s referred to. It’s the most depressed, economically depressed, politically neglected place in St. Louis. And we’ve transformed much of that, our party has done, in pulling the people into actual active political work to change that community. We’ve brought basketball courts where there were none. We built it ourselves, no city government, no help. We’ve initiated a doula program, where 20 young African women have just recently — even as we were being attacked, this was happening there. We’ve created programs for African men and women who are leaving prison, in workforce program. The opening — we bought properties, where we are opening a bakery cafe to train people coming out of prisons in culinary arts and things like this. We bought properties to house them once they get out. So, this, it’s our work. And when I say it’s our work, I mean the work we’ve been doing for 50 years as a party and that I’ve been doing for nearly 60 years is about the liberation of Black people. I want to be clear on that.

      And the government is clear on that. They use Russia, they use this nonsense, even at a time when we’ve seen white people scaling the walls of the Capitol, threatening to kill the vice president, the feet on the desk of Nancy Pelosi. And you talk about we have some role under the Russians of contaminating the pristine elections that happen in this country? And I’m right now in a state where the guy who’s running for Senate, one of his most controversial, if you will, campaign advertisements or videos has him smashing through a door, just like the FBI smashed through our doors, having — with camouflage, carrying, people, flashbang grenades, and him stepping in with an automatic weapon, saying that he’s going RINO hunting. We, in the African People’s Socialist Party, are contaminating and undermining elections in this country? We are responsible for discrediting the United States around the world? It’s the most ridiculous, asinine issue.

      But we, the African People’s Socialist Party, we are busy all over the world. We have actual political organization in South Africa, throughout the Caribbeans, in West Africa. We are there in the slums, in places like Everton township in Gauteng in South Africa, in various places like that. So, we are a problem. We are throughout the Caribbean as an organization.

      And the United States has identified, obviously, three strategic enemies. And one of them, clearly, is Russia. The other is China, that it’s dealing with right now — very dangerous, very tense, serious situation. And Africa is one. That’s why you’ve got for the first time in its 246-year history of the United States Marines, they’ve created — they put forth their first four-star Black general, and they’ve given him the job of presiding over Africa Command, the organization from the United States military to control, contain Africa, that finds itself, it says, in a contest with Russia and China in Africa, and, of course, with Black people in Africa. That’s why you have the first Black secretary of defense, they call him, in its history. So, Africa is an enemy.

      And Black people, if you remember, 1969, the FBI declared that the Black Panther Party was the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States. And it was an organization dealing in international affairs, and it didn’t have the kind of organizational presence that we have throughout the African world. So that’s why we came under attack. It’s an attack on the right of Black people. It’s an attack on our struggle for the absolute, total liberation of every inch, square inch, of Africa and its unification, along with the African peoples around the world, in solidarity with oppressed and colonized people elsewhere.

      JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Omali, you mentioned that Russia identified as a prime enemy of the United States. What do you know about this guy Aleksandr Ionov, the one who supposedly you are unindicted co-conspirators with, and these allegations that he’s been spawning — he and others have been spawning dissident movements within the United States?

      OMALI YESHITELA: You know, I don’t know if the Russians are spawning dissident movements in the United States. I just know the African People’s Socialist Party, as you mentioned earlier, we are 50 years old. We are on the same trajectory we’ve always been. And I find it extremely problematic for this suggestion that somehow the Russians — we needed the Russians to tell us. You know, it fits into the whole narrative about colonized people and Black people being too stupid to see our own future and control our own affairs, that we need somebody to come and tell us that America is treating us bad. George Floyd didn’t happen; it wasn’t the murder of Mike Brown that brought the African People’s Socialist Party into Ferguson and St. Louis, that somehow the Russians had something to do with it — it’s asinine.

      And there are some things I will not talk about, just in terms of still pulling together our legal forces to deal with this, because they’ve stolen — so, people mention, and they mention that they took laptops and cellphones and other devices like that, but they took a lot more. They took years and years of communications with various people that we’ve had around the world and throughout this country. They’ve got texts. They’ve got emails. They’re constructing some narrative that will defend what it is they’ve done. They’ve created a political offense against us, and then they’re using the law — they’re constructing a case using the law to punish us for what they cannot characterize as a political crime. And the political criminal in this instance is the United States government.

      So, I won’t say too much, you know, about that aspect of it, except to say that it’s a bogus charge. It’s a ridiculous charge. And anybody can see our history. There’s this assumption that somehow somebody paid us to say something about the genocide against African people. 1950s, Black people went to the United Nations charging genocide. In 1982, we held the first tribunal that ever happened in the world on reparations for Black people in this country, a world tribunal with international jurists playing a role in this. And we based it on international law. And one of the — the international law, one aspect of that was the U.N. Convention on the Punishment of — Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. We did that. And this was at a time that the United States had not even ratified —

      AMY GOODMAN: And, Omali —

      OMALI YESHITELA: — the Genocide Convention.

      AMY GOODMAN: Omali, just to be clear, you haven’t been charged with anything, right? I mean, they raided your house. They handcuffed you and your wife. They used flashbang grenades. But you weren’t charged with anything.

      OMALI YESHITELA: We haven’t been charged yet. We expect a indictment. We expect also an attempt to separate people from these incredible programs that we’ve been doing. But much of this has been, by the way, facilitated by white people who voluntarily pay reparations to the African community through us. I mean, we have 130-some-odd organization — organizers in — that is to say, 130 cities, that this white organization, under our leadership, is functioning in 30 states. So, they haven’t charged us yet, but that’s the thing hanging over our heads.

      And we are convinced that part of this also is to represent a threat, terrorize people — you can’t communicate with us because the FBI is going to get your information — and to keep people from supporting the programs that we’re doing. And now we have to spend money buying communications capacity, you know, videos and laptops and things like that, and to get lawyers, because this thing about unindicted co-conspirators provides them an opportunity, anytime they want to, to file these charges. And we expect indictments to come.

      AMY GOODMAN: And —

      OMALI YESHITELA: We expect — yeah, go ahead.

      AMY GOODMAN: If you wouldn’t mind, your age, Omali?

      OMALI YESHITELA: I’m 80. I’ll be — I’m 81. I’ll be 81 in October.

      AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds, but can respond to the raid on Mar-a-Lago? Some of your properties in St. Petersburg were also raided, also in Florida.

      OMALI YESHITELA: Yeah, I haven’t heard a single — anything about flashbang grenades going off at Trump’s place. I haven’t heard any flashbang grenades going off on any of those people climbing the walls of the Capitol. And the fact is that the FBI is being used as a political instrument. And certainly that’s happened with us. And I can’t speak to the former president of United States, except to say that there’s an obvious contest that’s happening between different sectors of the colonial ruling class in this country. And they would, if they could, lump us into their beef, their struggle. But we are fighting for the liberation of Black people, the unification and liberation of Africa, and we ain’t gonna stop...

      The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.
      _____________________________________________

      Ask Congress to Investigate COVID Origins and Government Response to Pandemic.

      i love myself. the quietest. simplest. most powerful. revolution ever. ---- nayyirah waheed

      "...there’s an obvious contest that’s happening between different sectors of the colonial ruling class in this country. And they would, if they could, lump us into their beef, their struggle." ---- Omali Yeshitela, African People’s Socialist Party

      (My posts are not intended as advice or professional assessments of any kind.)
      Never forget Excalibur.

      Comment


      • #4
        I recall being a 20-year-old St. Pete native spending most of my life here. I’m in the city and I had recently been arrested on a false charge that was really cooked up by the government. I should have known better, but such was the time. The fighting crime bill had recently been enacted about […]

        Support statement from John Muhammad, St. Petersburg, FL District 7 City Councilman
        I recall being a 20-year-old St. Pete native spending most of my life here. I’m in the city and I had recently been arrested on a false charge that was really cooked up by the government. I should have known better, but such was the time. The fighting crime bill had recently been enacted about two years earlier which we have come to see has been a significant escalation in the so-called war on drugs and it’s documented and proven that it was a rebranding of Jim Crow and continued to be really a war on black America.

        When I reflect on that time, I can’t really remember a whole lot of people or organizations who were calling out and addressing the systems that were at play in the root causes of what myself and so many others in my community was experiencing and the two that I can really recall that were
        vanguards were the Nation of Islam and the Uhuru Movement. And really the Uhuru Movement was closer to me because growing up here, being here, right around the corner, right down the street, I always had a love and affinity for them in the way that the Uhuru Movement and the Chairman specifically defended, elevated the consciousness and really protected our community....
        _____________________________________________

        Ask Congress to Investigate COVID Origins and Government Response to Pandemic.

        i love myself. the quietest. simplest. most powerful. revolution ever. ---- nayyirah waheed

        "...there’s an obvious contest that’s happening between different sectors of the colonial ruling class in this country. And they would, if they could, lump us into their beef, their struggle." ---- Omali Yeshitela, African People’s Socialist Party

        (My posts are not intended as advice or professional assessments of any kind.)
        Never forget Excalibur.

        Comment


        • #5
          Livestream begins at 5:49. Thank you for watching this episode of SYSTEM UPDATE, now airing every weeknight at 7pm ET. Subscribe and join us LIVE on Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/GGreenwald Become part


          Glenn Greenwald

          Streamed on: Apr 19, 7:00 pm EDT
          New DOJ Indictments Criminalize Dissent—Weaponizing the Very Censorship Tactics They Condemned in Russia | SYSTEM UPDATE #74
          _____________________________________________

          Ask Congress to Investigate COVID Origins and Government Response to Pandemic.

          i love myself. the quietest. simplest. most powerful. revolution ever. ---- nayyirah waheed

          "...there’s an obvious contest that’s happening between different sectors of the colonial ruling class in this country. And they would, if they could, lump us into their beef, their struggle." ---- Omali Yeshitela, African People’s Socialist Party

          (My posts are not intended as advice or professional assessments of any kind.)
          Never forget Excalibur.

          Comment


          • #6
            bump this

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