Black bloc protests return for Trump years, COINTELPRO and the return of the Nixon-Reagan years
An article that seemed to me designed for Reader Supported News is still at the Washington Post, it's about the return of agent provocateurs.
The Post partially rehashed Reason Magazine
http://reason.com/blog/2017/01/26/when-the-left-glorifies-violence-against
I want to refer to my local experience in Philadelphia during the past repressive years, and hope to inspire others to report there experiences as well.
There were two major conflicts over evictions of the Move Back-to-Nature sect, the Osage Avenue fire after the police dropped a bomb and earlier on 8/8/1978 when at 3 am I was on the trolley to the Night Owl train to Washington DC to visit my parents.
I dealt with two or three provocateurs that early morning and into the dawn.
Ali of the Friend's Surveillance Project and was also the leader of a Marxist group who was on the same trolly rushing to 33rd & Spring Garden. At least that is where I found him with a crowd after he became upset when he mentioned the eviction was today, after I asked him if the Quaker Friendly Presence knew about it. I circled the closed off area. In among the crowd at that corner looking at a distance at the Move House were kids and their bicycles as young as seven. Later Wallace Muhammad of the Black Muslims came and announced to the crowd “Get your women and children off the street”. Ali argued with him that woman and children are dying in South Africa as necessary part of the revolution, Wallis Muhammad began backing up taking the listening crowd with him. Muslims began picking up kids, taking them away from the barricades. Some kept returning; but without their bicycles.
About two hours later the Move eviction seemed over and the cops began to relax. Suddenly a shot rang out, it turned out it was from the other direction behind the police. The police began shooting at the house. The remaining kids still at the barricades cried “Baby Killers”. Someone threw a firecracker from the abandoned house behind us almost hitting Chief Inspector Fencil who quickly pointed at the abandoned building, and the cops rushed forward waving and hitting as they headed into the scattering crowd. I stood there and was arrested without my being hit. In The Round House, Officer Magazzo demanded of me, “Don't you think the cops can do their job”. He charged me with tripping him preventing him from getting into the abandoned house in time to catch the firecracker thrower. Sasha Finestein was in the cell with me as the other people arrested were released. He was crying about letting his girlfriend down by getting arrested again. His friend threw the firecracker and Sasha tripped Office Magazzo. which Magazzo in court testified I had done, and I was, at first, sentenced to 6 to 23 months. My brother found my arrest in the (still available) documentary “Black and Blue" which edited out such scenes as the firecracker and several demonstrators with baseball bats. After a lot of TV coverage and news headlines of my heading for jail with my mother crying. I as let out of prison after one week.
Sasha, who I saw years later, moved to New York and changed from a radical to a Hasidic Jew. If still around could help find out if the firecracker thrower was connected to the person who shot from behind the crowd and maybe get the Move 9 freed. In the Mumia Abu Jamal saga, Officer Faulkner was likely mad at Billy, Mumia's brother because of Billy and Poppi's (or Poppies) corrupt newsstand where corrupt cops met, not a traffic violation. Daniel Faulkner was the one non-corrupt officer in the 39th District. His death and Mumia's arrest stopped him from testifying in the then upcoming corruption trials. (See Wikipedia “39th District Corruption Scandal. Now that agent provocateurs are back, let's relive and rehash the old examples. Others with stories like mine, please come forward. PS with Native prisoner Leonard Peltier, why not search the nursing homes and antidote stories as to natives who actually had likely shot Special Agents Jack R. Williams and Robert A. Coler?
RichardKanePhiladelphia.Blogspot.com
RichardKanePhillyPA.Blogspot.com
