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“Can’t win a debate so they sponsor every threat to me/ I wonder if Agent 800 is standing next to me” – “Young Lords”, Immortal Technique
During a recent panel discussion, Hip-Hop artist, Knowledge the
Revelator, was just about to expose the diabolical plot of how they are
using rap music to dumb down the masses. Suddenly, Alfred Jenkins, aka
“King Alfred” pimp, slapped the person sitting next to him, which
started a brawl that abruptly ended the conference. While fists and
chairs were flying, Jenkins quietly exited through a side door where he
was met by a man in a black suit and sunglasses, who handed him an
envelope addressed to “Agent Rex 84…”
Last month, the Associated Press reported that Muslim
students at “a dozen campuses in the Northeast” were being spied on by
the NYPD. Coincidentally, around the same time, the NY Confidential
website released a report that alleged that a 2008 meeting of Rev. Al
Sharpton’s National Action Network was also infiltrated by the NYPD
following the trial of the police officers who killed Sean Bell.
Although it came as a shock for some, the “Alphabet boys” (as Young
Jeezy would say) have long sent snitches into organizations - both
criminal and political.
One of the earliest rats to infiltrate a Black organization was
James Wormley Jones (Agent 800), who spied on Marcus Garvey and the
UNIA during the 1920s. According to a February 11, 2011, article posted
on the FBI website, “A Byte Out of History,” other agents assigned to
the UNIA included, Earl Titus, Authur Lowell Brent, and Thomas Leon
Jefferson. Also, according to the PBS documentary, “Marcus Garvey: Look
for Me in the Whirlwind,” one of Garvey’s closest associates, Herbert
Bowlin, “owner of a Harlem based Black doll company,” was an informant
known as “Agent P-138″
Later, Civil Rights organizations came under scrutiny by the Feds.
More than a decade ago, researcher Steve Cokely, shed light on a
March 21, 1993, “Memphis Commercial Appeal” article that accused the
NAACP’s former board chairman, Joel Spingarn, of being a major in the
Military Intelligence Division who, “used his post to obtain critical
information for MID, such as a list of the organization’s 32,000
members. “
The same newspaper also reported in a September 12, 2010, article
that noted Civil Rights photographer, Ernest Withers, was not only an
FBI informant, but took the pictures at the scene of the Martin Luther
King assassination.
It is more widely known that the Black Panthers and other “militant”
movements of the late ’60s-early ’70s were heavily infiltrated by
informants such as William O’Neal, who supplied intel to the Feds that
led to the murder of Fred Hampton “and BOSS (Bureau of Special
Services) agent, Eugene Roberts, who, not only was spying on Malcolm X
when he was assassinated but, according to John Potash in his book, The FBI War on Tupac Shakur and Black Leaders,
was later an original member of the New York Chapter of the Black
Panther Party of which Tupac’s stepfather and mother were also members.
Although, Tupac Shakur inherited the legacy of government
persecution from Mutula and Afeni Shakur, he was just one in a long
line of rappers from NWA to the Wu-Tang Clan under investigation by the
Feds. Back in 2000, Cedric Muhammad of Blackelectorate.com began
releasing a series of “Rap COINTELPRO” articles exposing this fact.
So why would federal and local law enforcement agencies still be
interested in a music that has become increasingly apolitical since the
early ’90s?
According to Supreme Understanding, author of How to Hustle and Win,
“Hip Hop is just a euphemism for the Black and Brown underclass.” The
author who also released the widely circulated guideline, “How to Spot
an Agent,” also said, “Hip Hop is not as apolitical as people think.
Many mainstream artists have a political element.”
Perhaps the most detailed evidence of law enforcement’s attack on
Hip-Hop is the first hand report of the the NYPD’s “first Hip-Hop cop,”
Derrick Parker. The book mentions the infamous “Hip-Hop binder” that
the Miami police used to keep files on Hip-Hop artists, as well as
other surveillance activities against New York rappers.
What is not often mentioned is that, although Parker was primarily
assigned to watch rappers, he also tailed the late Black nationalist,
Dr. Khalid Abdul Muhammad, whose voice was sampled on early Public
Enemy, Ice Cube, and Tupac Shakur songs. This is proof that you don’t
have to be a criminal nor a Hip-Hop superstar to be under the watchful
eyes of the “Alphabet Boys.”
Just as the FBI used the techniques that it developed fighting the
mob during the ’30s on activists during the Civil Rights Era, they have
used the same techniques that they use to go after drug dealers on
Hip-Hop artists of today.
This has raised a lot of questions that always go unanswered.
Since, according to John Potash, an FBI agent was present when
Biggie Smalls was murdered, why didn’t he stop the bullets? Also, with
so much government surveillance going on, how can the Feds catch
rappers like T.I. with guns, but not see the trucks that are hauling
them into the ‘hood? And, if they can catch members of street crime
families trafficking drugs, how can they miss the planes and ships that
are bringing them into this country?
This actually goes back to the Civil Rights era when activists asked
if the FBI had so thoroughly infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan, why were
civil rights workers still being murdered? The flimsy answer given then
- that they were an “investigative” unit not a “preventive” unit – I
suppose, still applies today.
The mistrust of law enforcement leaves the ‘hood caught in the
middle between those who do dirt and hide behind the “anti-snitch”
attitude of the streets, and law enforcement agencies that refuse to
admit why the “stop snitchin’ ” code was created in the first place.
If we are going to stop crime in the ‘hood, we must first have an
honest conversation about government surveillance and its ramifications.
But until then, as GZA said on “I Gotcha Back”:
“I gotcha back but you best to watch your front/because it’s the brothas who front/they be on a hunt.”
TRUTH Minista Paul Scott’s weekly column is “This Ain’t Hip Hop,” a column for intelligent Hip Hop headz. He can be reached at info@nowarningshotsfired.com, on his website NoWarningShotsFired.com, or on Twitter (@truthminista).Source allhiphop.com
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