How Black, Hispanic, & white people came together & scared the shit out of the government

Divide and Conquer: A Timeline

Chicago, Illinois, 1968:

An accidental double booking of a church’s main room by the Black Panther Party and the Young Patriots Organization brings together the speakers of both groups to discuss poverty and oppression in both of their communities. The Black Panther Party was an activist group formed to defensively protect and provide for black communities in the US, and the Young Patriots Organization was an organization of white Southerners (mostly from Appalachia) formed to do the same for their community. What these groups found that night was that their goals were similar, and so was the enemy-oppressive government and the evils of capitalism .

Chicago, Illinois, Spring of 1969:

The Rainbow Coalition was formed by Bob Lee and Fred Hampton to combine multiple races together to form a united front against oppression, discrimination, and wealth inequality.

Oakland, California, July 1969:

A huge conference is held including members and leaders of the Black Panthers, the Young Patriots, the Farm Workers Union, the Young Lords and more. This conference was called The Conference for a United Front Against Fascism. Among the speakers was William “preacherman” Fesperman, and he summed up the movement like this:

“We come from a monster. And the jaws of the monster in Chicago are grinding up the flesh and spitting out the blood of the poor and oppressed people—the blacks in the south side, the browns in the north side, and the reds and the yellows—and yes, the white oppressed people.”

Chicago, Illinois, December 4th, 1969:

In the middle of the night, a gang of 14 undercover police officers armed with

heavy firepower and a detailed map of 21-year old Fred Hampton’s apartment. Ballistics reports (ordered later) showed that they fired into the apartment and bedroom 90+ times from all angles—and with that, Fred Hampton was murdered next to his 8-months-pregant wife while asleep. Afterwards, the Cook County State Attorney claimed in a press conference that his officers were ambushed by the Panthers while trying to execute a search warrant (even though only one shot was fired in defense from another Panther in the apartment after the shooting began).

Chicago, Illinois, The Winter of 1970:

The Internal Security Subcommittee of the US charged a church association (the North Side Cooperative Ministry) with financially supporting the Young Patriots and the Young Lords and called them “street gangs”. The church fought the charges, but lost and had to eventually discontinue support and association with these groups.

Philadelphia, 1971:

Antiwar activists break into the Philadelphia FBI offices and find documented proof of a covert FBI operation called COINTELPRO, short for counterintelligence program. The documents described COINTELPRO as an operation meant to “disrupt, misdirect and otherwise neutralize” black activist movements. The FBI surveilled and attacked civil rights activists including Malcom X and Martin Luther King Jr. under the cover of COINTELPRO. All of this was a part of the Director of the FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's tactics to stop what he called "the rise of a messiah that would electrify and unify the militant nationalist movement".

Understand this: the government does not want us to get along. The government does not want us to join together, because we would be too powerful to control. All of that hatred people spout at each other is a result of online and media manipulation and propaganda—no matter who the president is. So let's rise above the reasons we think we hate the other side, the other race, the person sitting across from us on the bus, and come together so that we can fight against the corporations and institutions that want to control us and destroy the earth we live on.