13th Page #6

Why?

We shouldn't ask,

"Why is Bill Clinton so strong?"

We should ask,

"Why is the black community so weak

in our inability to defend ourselves?"

Let's not forget how many martyrs

we put in the ground in the '60s and '70s.

Let's not forget how many of our leaders

had to leave the country or are in prison.

You stripped out

a whole generation of leadership.

You ran them out the country,

you put them in prison,

you put them in... in cemeteries.

And then you unleash this blitzkrieg,

and we don't have the ability

to defend ourselves.

You can tell the story

of white leadership in America

and never mention the FBI one time.

You can't tell the story

of black leadership, not one,

without having to deal

with the full weight

of the criminal justice system

weaponizing its black dissent.

I'm tired of living every day

under the threat of death.

I have no martyr complex.

I want to live as long

as anybody in this building tonight.

Dr. King, people forget,

was not this beloved figure

that everybody wants to put on a pedestal.

Uh, he was considered one

of the most dangerous people in America

by the head

of the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

Don't tell me

that Dr. King has no relevance

to young brothers in the street.

They dealing with little cops.

He was dealing with the top cop.

We were brought here

against our will.

We were not brought here

to be made citizens.

We were not brought here

to enjoy the, uh, constitutional gifts

that they speak so beautifully about.

Malcolm's whole entourage

was infiltrated with police.

He may have had as many police

as he had regular folk

in his entourage, under cover.

So afraid of black dissent.

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover

today asserted that the Black Panthers

represent the greatest internal threat

to the nation.

J. Edgar Hoover said

these Panthers represent

the greatest threat

to American democracy at the time.

The Panthers never were that big.

I mean, no one in their right mind

could ever believe

that the Black Panthers

were gonna bring down

the greatest military force

in the history of the world.

The whole movement was criminalized

and destroyed systematically

by the government.

People haven't thought about

what it means to lose a Fred Hampton,

who somehow was able to pull together

blacks and whites

and Puerto Ricans and Native Americans

to fight for justice at 21.

We're going to say it after this

and after I'm locked up

and after everybody's locked up,

that you can jail revolutionaries,

but you can't jail a revolution.

He had to go.

The head of the Black Panthers in Illinois

was killed today by police in Chicago.

Illinois Panther Chairman

Fred Hampton and another Panther leader

from Peoria, Illinois, were killed.

This is where our chairman

had his brains blown out

as he lay in his bed

sleeping at 4:
30 in the morning.

They literally went

and shot his whole house up,

with his pregnant wife

next to him in the bed.

So afraid of a leader

that could unite people.

We know the history of folks

who've done this kind of standing up

to these systems,

and we know how the system has

murdered them, assassinated them,

exiled them, excluded them,

or found ways to discredit them.

Assata Shakur was one of the great leaders

of the Black Liberation Army.

That, um, order given by J. Edgar Hoover

was essentially

to destroy any black, progressive...

Third World movement in this country.

They put her in prison,

and her allies said,

"We're not gonna leave her in prison."

Her white allies said,

"We're not gonna leave her in prison."

And pulled her out of prison and got her

to Cuba. She's in Cuba right now.

And within the next five years,

something like, uh, 300 prisons

are in the planning stages.

This government has the intentions

of throwing more and more people

in prison.

Criminalization of Assata Shakur,

the use of the media to represent her

as a dangerous criminal.

And of course, in my own case,

where I was represented by the FBI

as being armed and dangerous.

The FBI has put

black militant Angela Davis

on its list

of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.

Then with Angela Davis,

the power of the black intellect...

One thing

that we have to talk about,

coming to grips with,

is this whole question of crime.

What does it mean

to be a criminal in this society?

That had to be broken up.

And in my case, Ronald Reagan

was the governor of California,

Richard Nixon was

the president of the US.

The whole apparatus of the state

was set up against me,

and they really meant to send me

to the death chamber

in order to make a point.

The actions of the FBI

in apprehending Angela Davis,

a rather remarkable, uh, story again...

The system tried

to put the sister on trial,

and the sister said,

"No, we puttin' you on trial."

Comes in, the big Afro,

she didn't go press her hair.

She was facing major time.

You know, most people,

they'd have got a nice little press.

You know? They'd have been

in there with little white gloves on,

praying to Jesus.

She came in like this.

And she devastated the prosecution

and walked out of there free.

But the question is

how do you get there?

Do you get there

by confrontation, violence?

Oh, was that the question you were asking?

Yeah.

So, I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama.

Uh...

Uh, after the four young girls who were...

who lived very...

who lived...

One of them lived next door to me.

I was very good friends

with the sister of another one.

My sister was good friends

with all three of them.

My mother taught one of them in her class.

And they went down.

And what did they find? They found limbs

and heads just strewn all over the place.

I remember,

from the time I was very small,

I remember the sounds of bombs

exploding across the street.

Our house shaking.

I remember my father having to have guns

at his disposal at all times

because of the fact that at any moment

we might expect to be attacked.

I mean, that's why,

when someone asks me about violence, uh...

I just, uh...

I just find it incredible.

Because what it means is that

the person who's asking that question

has absolutely no idea

what black people have gone through,

what black people have experienced

in this country

since the time the first black person

was kidnapped from the shores of Africa.

And when you strip out

a whole generation of leadership,

running folk out the country,

killing folk, framing folk,

you will be vulnerable

to Bill Clinton or anybody else.

They'll do to you what they will.

There's a man going 'round

Taking names

He has taken my father's name

And it's left my heart in pain

There's a man going 'round

Taking names

Going 'round

Going 'round

An armed

neighborhood watch leader

saw Martin walking inside

a gated subdivision near Orlando.

He thought the 17-year-old

looked suspicious.

He's got his hand in his waistband.

And he's a black male.

These a**holes,

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