Extreme Prosecution: In Search of Black Enemies

Wednesday, 07 May 2008
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

The United States has always shaped its criminal justice practices to suit and satisfy the imperative to smash African American resistance. When no organized resistance can be found, the system invents it. The Bush administration has outdone the post-Civil War Black Codes, which treated all gatherings of three or more African Americans as potential "conspiracies." To justify police state structures erected in the wake of 9/11, the feds entrapped and twice unsuccessfully prosecuted seven impoverished Miami Blacks on charges of plotting to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower - and are now preparing for a third trial. In San Francisco, local and federal authorities press forward with murder charges against eight former Black Panthers, 37years after the shooting death of a policeman. The dragnet for Black villains never ends.

The rulers of the United States require Black villains - menaces to society - in order to maintain the legitimacy of their governance. If such villains do not exist, the U.S. government's organs of coercion will entrap the unwary into playing the role of public enemy. In the event that actual, serious resistance to the racist rule of the rich does arise, as with the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, beginning in the late Sixties, the U.S. government does not hesitate to engage in murder and barbaric torture to reassert its authority.

The American criminal injustice system is running amuck on both coasts. In San Francisco, eight former members of the Black Panther Party face 37-year-old murder charges in the killing of a police officer. The defendants are now senior citizens. This is the government's second attempt to convict ex-Panthers in the 1971 shooting. Back in 1975, charges against three of the men were dismissed, because confessions were obtained by torture. But when it comes to the Black Panther Party, the U.S. government never forgets. Someone must play the villain, even if the objects of official hatred are all hovering around 60 years of age. The FBI seems incapable of feeling shame, and so perpetuates the persecution of aging Black Panthers long after the organization's dissolution and in the absence of any conceivable threat to the prevailing order. That's because, like a shark that will drown if it doesn't keep constantly on the move through water, the government's machinery of repression is always in search of enemies in order to justify its existence.

Throughout U.S. history, African American males have been the enemies-of-choice. Whether it's lynching parties or federal "counter intelligence" programs, the hunt is always on for...somebody, usually somebody Black. The Bush regime needed to find and punish Americans who were conspiring with Al Qaida to attack targets in the United States, in order to justify the police state under construction since 9/11. Inconveniently, no such Americans existed, so the federal police decided they'd organize the conspiracy, themselves. The feds hired Arab con men to wave wads of cash in the faces of impoverished Black men in the Liberty City ghetto of Miami. Some of the men were homeless, they had only one pistol between them, and no explosives of any kind, but the FBI claimed the Liberty City 7 were intent on blowing up the Sears Tower in Chicago. After all, some of the men had sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden, in a ceremony concocted by the FBI and the Arab con man with the 50 thousand dollar bulge in his pocket.

Two trials ended in hung juries, but federal prosecutors are pit bulls when it comes to punishing Black villains - including Black villains of their own creation. After already having spent between five and eight million dollars on the Liberty City 7 case, the prosecution wants a third crack at sending the hapless Black men to prison forever. As with the San Francisco Eight, the U.S. political police have no sense of shame. They don't seem to understand that torture of the helpless, entrapment of the not-too-bright, and dogged pursuit of the elderly demeans the dignity of the state, making government power appear illegitimate. In the end, it is the prosecutors who are undermining the authority of the state.

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com

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