Prometheus 6   

Catching up
Iraq isn't the only country that needs liberation
04/14/2003 11:53 PM EDT
By David Person
Special to BlackAmericaWeb.com

. . . We all know about how the FBI monitored Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and other civil rights leaders. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had concluded that the civil rights movement was part of a communist conspiracy and sicced COINTELPRO - the Bureau's counter-intelligence program - on it. The FBI then began recording phone conversations, spreading lies and doing anything it could to disrupt the efforts of black leaders to push for equality.

Even today, people with viewpoints that oppose the government become targets.

. . . Committed black folks won't let this stop them. The International Black Coalition for Peace and Justice held a protest in a black neighborhood in Los Angeles last month. From what Chimbuko Tempo, co-chair of the coalition told me, they're not going to back down.

"This is part of our tradition," she said. "The tradition of Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass. We're required to do this."

We have been taught that the United States is a free society. This means that any U.S. citizen is free to criticize any governmental policy - even in a time of war.

The war in Iraq is supposed to be about liberating the Iraqi people. After our military finishes its work in Iraq, our young men and women will come home to America that is not as free as it should be - and may be on its way to being even less free in the future.

Who then will liberate us?

posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/21/2003 09:00:00 PM |