Leader of the Black Riders speaks on police terrorism after Dallas

by The People’s Minister of Information JR

With police terrorism hitting the screens of televisions around the world on a weekly and sometimes daily basis due to cellphone cameras, it is obvious why a strong Black media is needed to counteract the nationwide police psychological operation, aka public relations campaign, now being employed to make the police likable and to justify police-imposed torture and genocide on the Black community. By now we have all heard about the police murders of Micah Johnson in Dallas, Texas, and Gavin Long in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who both reportedly acted alone and days apart, in July of 2016, collectively killing a total of eight officers and injuring a dozen, before being executed themselves.

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Black Riders

The war has escalated with members of the Black community fighting back in many different ways, and one of the tactics that law enforcement has employed on the media-psychological front has been to try to assassinate the character of the resistance, whether that is by demonizing the SF Bay View newspaper for publishing writings on Black August and political prisoners in a nationwide FBI bulletin, attempting to discredit Public Enemy’s Minister of Information Professor Griff because he was in a picture with Micah Johnson, or trying to link the Black Riders Liberation Party, indirectly, to the events that went down in Dallas last July.

I was able to catch up with General T.A.C.O., aka Wolverine Shakur, of the Black Riders Liberation Party to talk about what has been recently transpiring between the police and Black community and the Riders being linked to Dallas.

M.O.I. JR: What did you think about the recent murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile?

General T.A.C.O.: Well, after the brutal police terrorist murders of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota, we felt it was insane for the police to viciously commit another act of extreme police terrorism on live television, while the whole world was watching, mind you, by scandalously denying Micah’s constitutional and human right to due process and a day in court.

They tell us that America is a democracy, but it’s nothing but hypocrisy. It shows how the fascist police have become the judge, jury and executioner on the streets.

They murdered him with a terminator robot drone like they do when they are at total war with another country overseas, except this was done domestically, right here, to a so-called citizen. This shows us Black people that the police have come down on us like an occupying army of soldiers who are intent on keeping us colonized and oppressed.

We must all think about how the police treated the white supremacist Dylann Roof. This racist dog murdered nine Black men and women in a church in South Carolina and the police gave him a nice walk, a ride to Burger King, a bulletproof vest for his protection, and a day in court to be judged by a jury of his peers. It shows us that Black lives don’t matter to racist America; if you’re white, you get a slap on the wrist, and if you’re Black, you get blown up with a killer robot.

They tell us that America is a democracy, but it’s nothing but hypocrisy. It shows how the fascist police have become the judge, jury and executioner on the streets.

M.O.I. JR: Were you familiar with Micah Johnson, because it was reported in the mainstream news that you were Facebook friends?

G.T.: Our Facebook page is open to the public for anyone to like and follow us. Thousands of Black people have liked our Facebook page because they love and support the work we do to serve and defend Black people who have been oppressed by white supremacy, capitalism and international Amerikkkan imperialism.

The police have tried to link Micah to many different Black power groups, in order to come up with an excuse to attack the new Black power movement that’s taking place, even though Micah clearly told them that he acted alone of his own free will. We only became aware of Micah once he was shown on the news.

We are extremely aware that Black people are growing more and more upset at being oppressed and colonized in a country that claims to be the leader of the so-called free world. We were also not aware of Larry Davis in New York, Christopher Dorner in Los Angeles and Lavelle Mixon in Oakland, who all responded in a similar fashion as Micah after being enraged because of numerous incidents caused by racist police terrorism.

We will not be manipulated by the racist media to slander him, like the media tried to slander other people who have been brutalized or murdered by police terrorism. The racist mass media always tries to dehumanize our people by highlighting their so-called criminal backgrounds.

The police have tried to link Micah to many different Black power groups, in order to come up with an excuse to attack the new Black power movement that’s taking place, even though Micah clearly told them that he acted alone of his own free will.

When we get murdered by the police, they don’t ask if we are a criminal, a preacher or a lawyer before they murder us; they only murder us because we are Black. The police only shoot first and ask questions later. We must struggle relentlessly to achieve justice and freedom from oppression.

M.O.I. JR: What do you have to say to our folks who listen to the mainstream media calling the Black Riders Liberation Party a “hate group”?

G.T.: We are not a hate group. We just love our people so much that it pushes us to have the heart and courage to risk our lives to help Black people achieve justice and freedom. We do hate the injustice of police terrorism that beats and murders our people with no accountability.

The Black Riders’ New Generation Black Panther Party for Self-Defense is a group that was created in Los Angeles in 1996. We have existed for 20 years pushing the line for our people’s freedom.

Last year, we traveled from California to Texas and marched with the Huey P. Newton Gun Club through South by Southwest in Austin, openly carrying guns to the state capitol to raise Black consciousness and awareness of our Second Amendment constitutional right to bear arms after the police brutal murders of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Ezell Ford in Los Angeles, Eric Garner in New York and Clinton Allan in Texas.

We are not a hate group. We do hate the injustice of police terrorism that beats and murders our people with no accountability.

The Black Riders has been organizing the Watch-A-Pig patrols for 20 years in which we police the police in California. For the past few years, we have been organizing the patrols nationwide to defend against police terrorism. While we can’t lawfully carry loaded guns in California, we use video cameras, law booklets and other legal weapons to observe the police, at a legal distance, pulling over and detaining innocent Black people.

M.O.I. JR: Can you speak on what the Blacks Riders have been organizing around before and after these recent incidents of police terrorism?

G.T.: We are organizing numerous chapters, from the West Coast to the East Coast, and intensifying our Watch-A-Pig patrols around the racist Empire. We are also organizing to serve the needs of the Black community and to educate and politicize the masses to ride for freedom.

We educate the youth on the true history and teachings of the original Black Panther Party because we love and respect their theory, practice and continual sacrifices. We understand that all of our problems are interconnected, so we have also been organizing survival programs like Free Food Give-A-Ways, George Jackson Freedom Schools for Children, campaigns to bring Bloods and Crips into a ceasefire, a nationwide Prison Chapter, campaigns to free Political Prisoners, and we have helped send thousands of bottles of clean water to Black People in Michigan during the Flint poisoned water crisis.

We educate the youth on the true history and teachings of the original Black Panther Party because we love and respect their theory, practice and continual sacrifices.

Here is our manifesto, which is called the Black Commune Program. It is patterned in the spirit of the original Black Panther Party’s 10 Point Platform and Program. It is what we want and believe. This is “Why We Ride”:

We Ride for the Black Commune Program because it is what we want and believe. A Black commune is a Black community built on the belief of sharing and mutual cooperation between all people of that community, which brings forth unity. What is mine is yours and what is yours is mine, or “I am because we are; and because we are, therefore, I am.” This is a belief system that Black people have held since the beginning of human existence. It allowed us to ride out any storm in perfect unity. This is the type of Black community that we ride for.

A. We Ride for total liberation. We Ride for power to take full control of the destiny of our Black community. We will not be liberated and free from oppression until we take full control of our destiny.

B. We Ride to put a stop to the thievery by capitalists of our Black community. We Ride because the racist government has stolen from us, and now we demand the overdue debt of 40 acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised over 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency, which will be distributed to our communities. The Amerikkkan racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50 million Black people; therefore, We Ride to make sure we receive complete payment.

C. We Ride for maximum and complete employment for our people. We Ride because the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every person employment or a guaranteed income. We Ride because we believe that if the Amerikkkan businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen, placed in the community and communized. That way, the people of the community can organize and employ its entire people and give a high standard of living.

D. We Ride for freedom of speech. We Ride because we believe that all attacks on social redeeming hip hop rap songs should stop. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives a right to freedom of speech. During chattel slavery, the Black spirituals provided us songs with socially redeeming qualities. Today’s hip hop raps provide us songs with socially redeeming qualities because conscious rappers help to guide us to liberation by outlining the horrible plight that Black people suffer in this new era of crisis.

E. We Ride because we demand the cases of all Black people held captive in the jails and prisons of Amerikkka be re-opened, re-investigated and re-tried by members of the Black community. We Ride because we feel that Black people living in incarceration have been tried unfairly by the U.S. Justice Department. We have been denied the right of trial by one’s peers, resulting in guilty verdicts for an enormous amount of innocent Black people. We have been and are being tried by racist white juries that have no understanding of the “average reasoning man” of the Black community. It is time that these cases be re-opened and re-tried by Black people so that the innocence of Black inmates can be determined by a jury of their peers, as stated in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. We as Black people shall then deal with our own people by granting freedom from incarceration to those whose re-trial has validated it, and deferring charges and sentences for those proven to be guilty by their peers. We want amnesty for all Political Prisoners.

F. We Ride for decent housing fit for shelter of human beings. We Ride because we believe that if the capitalist landlords will not give decent housing to our Black community, then the housing and land should be made into a commune so that our community, with government aid, can build and make housing for our people.

G. We Ride for education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent Amerikkkan society. We Ride for education that teaches us our true history and our role in present day society. We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.

H. We Ride for an end to the drug problem. We Ride because we demand all the files of the Iran-Contra hearings and information regarding aid to the Contras in Nicaragua be released to the Black community. This should be done to determine the connection between the government and the influx of drugs into the Black community during the 1970s and 1980s. Black people neither own airplanes nor manufacturing plants needed to produce and distribute drugs. We believe that the best way to solve the drug problem is to find out how it is entering our community so we can put a stop to it.

I. We Ride for all Black people to be exempt from military service. We Ride because we believe that Black people should not be put in financial deprivation, causing them to be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like Black people, are being victimized by the racist government of Amerikkka. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist military by whatever means necessary.

J. We Ride for an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people. We Ride because we believe we can end police brutality in our Black community by organizing Black self-defense groups dedicated to defending our Black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all Black people should arm themselves for self-defense.

K. We Ride for full medical attention that should be given to all Black people. We Ride because we believe that Amerikkkan capitalist economics is to blame for the high rates of disease in the Black community. Black people suffering from life threatening ailments like AIDS should no longer be left to the mercy of low budget county hospitals. For whatever illness any member of the Black community suffers, the federal government is obligated to send them to medical institutions that provide the best treatment.

L. We Ride for an end to environmental racism and to stop the disruption of the earth’s ecological balance. We Ride because we believe that Amerikkkan industrial production has and is currently creating terrible environmental side effects locally, nationally and internationally – especially in areas where Black people live. Industrial production causes pollution of air, land and water, which in turn lowers the life expectancy of people. If the racist Amerikkkan industrialists sought out technology to further industry then he must seek out technology to protect the environment. If a racist U.S. industrialist refuses to do so, then his industry should be taken and placed in the Black community so that we can protect the environment and our own communities.

M. We Ride for land, technology, bread, housing, education, clothing, medical care, justice, peace and an end to environmental racism. When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the government. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpation, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security.

Black Power! All Power to the People! RED, BLACK AND GREEN 4 LIFE!

General T.A.C.O. (Taking All Capitalists Out) aka Wolverine Shakur, Black Riders – New Generation Black Panther Party for Self-Defense!

The People’s Minister of Information JR Valrey is the author of several books including the upcoming “Halfway to a Hundred: Dispatches from the Black Panther Party.” Tune to BlockReportRadio.com and reach him by email at blockreportradio@gmail.com.