We Charge Genocide – Jalil Muntaqim
In this episode, I talk with Jalil Muntaqim, who is a revolutionary and a community organizer with Citizen Action of New York. Jalil is a former member of the Black Panther Party (BPP) and the Black Liberation Army (BLA) and former political prisoner, having served almost 50 years in prison since being arrested when he was 19 years old. He was employed as a social worker at the time. We are celebrating his one-year release from prison! We talk about prison, his involvement in the BPP and BLA, his organizing from within prison, as well as his current organizing. He talks about the repression he experienced for his efforts, including being placed in solitary confinement multiple times, the last time for teaching a history class to prisoners that included teaching about the Black Panther Party. Jalil emphasizes the dehumanizing nature of prison and makes clear that they never broke him. He has never stopped organizing and fighting for Black liberation. During his decades in prison, Jalil earned numerous educational degrees, authored two books, led multiple education programs, and mentored many younger incarcerated men. Jalil talks about the United States being guilty of committing genocide of Black people and Indigenous people and how he is organizing an international tribunal to formally charge the U.S. with these crimes. He provides the definition of genocide, which leads us into a conversation about social work’s complicity with genocide due to being part of the removal of Black children and Indigenous children from their families. I am so honored to have been able to interview him and help share his story and powerful words that always emphasize the need to resist. I hope this conversation inspires you to action.
Contact Jalil: jalil.muntaqim@gmail.com
Music credit:
“District Four” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
TRANSCRIPT
Shimon Cohen:
Welcome to Doin' The Work: Frontline Stories of Social Change, where we bring you stories of real people working to address real issues. I am your host, Shimon Cohen.
In this episode, I talk with Jalil Muntaqim, who is a revolutionary and a community organizer with Citizen Action of New York. Jalil is a former member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army and former political prisoner, having served almost 50 years in prison since being arrested when he was 19 years old. He was employed as a social worker at the time.
We are celebrating his one-year release from prison. We talk about prison, his involvement in the BPP and BLA, his organizing from within prison, as well as his current organizing. He talks about the repression he experienced for his efforts, including being placed in solitary confinement multiple times, the last time for teaching a history class to prisoners that included teaching about the Black Panther Party.
Jalil emphasizes the dehumanizing nature of prison and makes clear that they never broke him. He has never stopped organizing and fighting for Black liberation. During his decades in prison, Jalil earned numerous educational degrees, authored two books, led multiple education programs, and mentored many younger incarcerated men.
Jalil talks about the United States being guilty of committing genocide of Black people and Indigenous people and how he is organizing an international tribunal to formally charge the U.S. with these crimes. He provides the definition of genocide, which leads us into a conversation about social work's complicity with genocide due to being part of the removal of Black children and Indigenous children from their families.
I am so honored to have been able to interview him and help share his story and powerful words that always emphasize the need to resist. I hope this conversation inspires you to action.
Jalil, thanks so much for coming on Doin' The Work.
Jalil Muntaqim:
You're really most welcome, my brother. It was a pleasure and an honor to be invited as a guest. I am grateful. Thank you.
Shimon Cohen:
Oh, man. You know, it is my absolute honor for a few reasons, number one is we're celebrating a year since you've been out of prison, which is a cause to celebrate, so let's just get into that a little bit. How are you feeling these days?
Jalil Muntaqim:
It'll be a year on October 6th. It will be exactly one year. As I have told many, and I adhere to this position, for all the world to know, I am blessed. I feel blessed. I had the opportunity to get myself really settled in the community that I'm in and I'm back out here doing the work. I've been hired by an organization called Citizen Action of New York and they are a statewide organization that deals with the issues of dealing with the community-at-large. In their preamble or their positions, they are anti-capitalist and so that in and of itself ... And anti-racist, anti-white supremacist. As an organization.
Jalil Muntaqim:
For an organization to state that from the jump, that's what they are, a statewide organization that gets work done and then to hire me? Whoa. What can you say? You know? Yes. I'm in the right place at the right time.
Shimon Cohen:
Yeah. I definitely gotta give props to them for hiring you because there was, obviously, a lot in the media, I'm sure there was a lot of attacks going on about that, and so that says a lot that they did that. If I think of the name of this podcast, Doin' The Work, I can't think of someone who more embodies that than you, man. You know?
Shimon Cohen:
Just before we get into all of it too is you and I have known each other for a long time, right? For me, this is the other part why it's such an honor to have you on here because I think we met when I was like ... I don't remember the exact age but it was like 21, 22. I didn't know what social work was. We connected through a community organizing project, the Victory Gardens, that you organized from behind bars, right?
Jalil Muntaqim:
Myself and my codefendant Herman Bell.
Shimon Cohen:
Yeah.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Herman Bell actually was the one who initiated Victory Gardens and pulled me into as a co-sponsor of Victory Gardens. Victory Gardens lasted for several years. They produced over 10 tons of produce that was distributed in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Harlem.
Shimon Cohen:
Newark.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Newark. Boston. Free produce. You know? We had young people come up from the inner cities to Maine where the farm was and do farming and harvesting to really get the touch of the land and what it means to be a farmer, that had inner city kids understand where their food comes from, and the labor and the labor intensity of this to feed this planet. It was a very good enlightening project for not only me, in terms of being a sponsor of it and as a political prisoner, being a sponsor of it, but ensuring that that kind of rural and urban relationship were brought together.
Jalil Muntaqim:
I also give a lot of credit to Rodney Jackson and his mom, Ms. Jackson, in Newark, who were very much advocates for Victory Gardens and supported it. It was a very good project that was put together by my codefendant Herman and myself.
Shimon Cohen:
Yeah. Shout out to Carol Dove and Michael Vernon, who were the farmers in Maine. The other aspect of that project, which was, for me, essential to who I am, was the political education aspect of it. You know, that's how I furthered my own understanding, thanks to all the folks just named and you, about that, that there are political prisoners in the United States. That's how I learned about the Black Panther Party because, of course, I didn't get any of that in school.
Shimon Cohen:
You and I have continued this communication over the years and a lot of that led to my interest in doing community-based work, which led me to doing work with youth and led me to social work. I even remember when I was opening up this youth center, writing to you about the different kinds of programming and you writing back, cause we had to write letters, right? Those were handwritten letters.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Yeah.
Shimon Cohen:
And plus going to see you in prison and ... I mean, that was a whole experience in and of itself, not like ... I mean, obviously, positive to see you but a horrific experience as well.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Yeah. They try to discourage people from coming to the prisons to visit their loved ones, their family members ... You know, prison is dehumanizing and it's dehumanizing for the family members to come into the prison system and dehumanizing for the prisoners themselves. They try to degrade and diminish one's own humanity as part of the process of breaking ... They try to break an individual, try to break them in their own sense of self.
Jalil Muntaqim:
That's what prison is in the United States. Prison is, in fact, a slavery system. It's a slave-ocracy. You know? Based upon the 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution that states emphatically that slavery or involuntary solitude shall not exist in the United States, except for those who have been duly convicted of a crime. That indicates, based upon the Constitution, that prisons are, in fact, slave plantations.
Shimon Cohen:
Yeah. All of the ones that I visited you at, and you were at others that I know I didn't see, these places are deliberately put in the most rural, far away from the city, far away from family and friends, and I think that needs to be discussed, especially for people who have never been to one, have never gone to visit a friend or a family member in a prison, it's an indescribable experience but you were the one there. You know? You were the one in these places so far removed from everybody.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Yeah. Nearly 50 years. Nearly 50 years I was in prison, from the age of 19 to the age of 69. I experienced the worst of the worst, all through California as well as in the state of New York. Every maximum security prison they had in the state of New York, I had been in it at one point in time and several of them, several times, during the course of the nearly 50 years of imprisonment.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Therefore, naturally, as a result of my own activism inside prison, I had to confront some of the most racist and bigots, brutal prison guards that they have. You know? Being able to survive some of those attacks ... Yes, I was attacked in prison at one time or another by prison guards and had to defend myself as a result of those attacks. Having survived that, been placed in solitary confinement for months at a time, several times, as a result of me organizing inside the prison or teaching inside the prison.
Jalil Muntaqim:
The last time I was in solitary confinement — in the box — was for teaching a class that I was approved to teach in Attica. Because they didn't like what I was teaching or what I had prepared my students to receive, after about six weeks of teaching, I started in 1861 and moved up to 1966, and when I got to 1966, they wanted to put a halt to it because 1966, you had to talk about the Black Panther Party. That was the biggest thing going on in this country.
Jalil Muntaqim:
When I got to talk about the Black Panther Party, they said, "Wait a minute. We don't want you teaching that," and they put me in solitary confinement for four months. They said that I was trying to teach the gangs to be militants and revolutionaries rather than being criminals and common criminals and vying and fighting against each other, rather than organizing themselves into a coherent capacity to empower themselves and the community for which they are evolved from.
Jalil Muntaqim:
They don't like for people to be empowered and for anyone to teach that, and so by my teaching that, to empowering them, they felt that was a threat. They didn't want them to have that kind of control. They put me in solitary confinement for four months. Ultimately, the court reversed those charges and they were expunged from my record. In fact, the court, in their decision, stated that this guy is actually teaching a course and teaching the class and teaching the history. That's what they said in their decision.
Shimon Cohen:
Wow.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Yeah. They dismissed the charges and had it expunged from my record.
Shimon Cohen:
For people listening, what is that like? Four months in solitary confinement, what does that feel like? Taste like? Smell like? What is that like?
Jalil Muntaqim:
[laughing] You don't want the smell! Let me tell you, you don't want the smell, or the food. You don't even taste the food. It's hard. There's no other way to put it. Here you are, locked in a cell 23 hours a day, and you're on a tier with other men who had been locked in a cell 23 hours, some of them for months, some of them for years in solitary confinement, and many ... I won't say many but there are a few who have basically lost their mental capacity to hold onto reality.
Jalil Muntaqim:
As a result, we hear them screaming at night, we hear them banging on the bars at night. You hear them arguing or even throwing feces and urine at people passing by, just to get ... I don't know what the dynamics in their mind for doing such a dehumanizing thing but I think the results of it is, the fact that a human being should not be locked in a cell for 23 hours a day. Period. All right? That in itself is crushing.
Jalil Muntaqim:
It takes an individual who has some kind of presence of mind in regards to what are the circumstances for what you have to survive to maintain their sanity. For me, that was the case. I was able to read, I was able to exercise in the cell, and I was able to write. In fact, during the course of that last months of being in the solitary confinement, I devised a means to prepare a proposal to have the international jurists come out to the United States. I had done it before, about two decades prior, and was able to, again, make a proposal for the international jurists to come to the United States to discuss the issues of human rights and designation of political prisoners and the question of genocide.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Gratefully, my comrades who received my proposal agreed ... This was in 2018. Agreed that they are willing to organize this and so I am eager to announce that on October 22nd to the 25th at Malcom X & Betty Shabazz Center, we will be hosting the International Tribunal and the International Tribunal is charging genocide. We are charging genocide against the United States.
Jalil Muntaqim:
We are also honoring the 70th year, the 70th year, when the first time we charged genocide when brought to the United Nations by the great Paul Robeson and William Patterson. That was December 15th, 1951, two months after my birth, in fact. Here we are, at the 70th year, an anniversary, and we are recharging genocide again.
Jalil Muntaqim:
We are putting forth a whole gamut of issues that we're bringing to the international community, that are cumulatively raising the issue that we talk about Black people, Brown people, Indigenous people in the United States have suffered conditions of genocide.
Shimon Cohen:
Let's get a little more into that tribunal. Can you say more about that?
Jalil Muntaqim:
Yeah. I can. The International Tribunal has about six charges. People can go to theSpiritofMandela.org and get all that information in regards to the charges. Again, the cumulative charges amount to genocide. A lot of people don't know the difference of the meaning of genocide. If you give me an opportunity, I'll try to very basically explain what it is that we are charging the United States, right?
Jalil Muntaqim:
According to the International Convention of Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, this states in Article Two, "In the present convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national ethnic, racial, or religious group such as killing members of the group," We know they be killing us, right? They be killing us. Okay? "Two, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group." They do that. We have recorded history. All right?
Jalil Muntaqim:
C, "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction in whole or in part." We say that institutional racism or white supremacy is the concept, it's the idea of anti-Black. All right? Therefore, by virtue of that concept, we have that idea that is institutionalized in this country, then for the most part we can say, at least, in whole or in part, that our bodies deliberately inflicting the group conditions of life calculating in bringing about physical destruction in whole or in part.
Jalil Muntaqim:
D, "Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group." We know that they have been engaged in that, particularly, sterilizing people of color. There has been issues with sterilizing Puerto Rican women for a period of time, with a decades long struggle against that. In California, today, there is a lawsuit against sterilizing women in prison in California. The issue of sterilization of women, particularly, Black women, Native Americans, Indigenous, as well as Brown women, Latinx women, it is part of their eugenics, right? The principles of eugenics, that is applicable to the idea of holding white supremacy.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Five, "Forcefully transferring children of the group to another group." They do that. They've been doing that, especially Indigenous community, where they have taken the Native American children and send them out for adoptions or sending them out to the various other groups, or what they're doing in the Black community today, what sociologists should be really fighting against, is the degree to which Black children, people of color, are being put in foster care, right? The meaning of why they are put in those kinds of conditions, is subject to a whole gamut of institutional racism that Black people and Brown people and, particularly, women are confronting in this country.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Further, Article Three from this states that the following shall be punishable, punishable, right? A, genocide. B, conspiracy to commit genocide. C, direct public incitement to commit genocide. D, attempt to commit genocide. E, complicity in genocide.
Jalil Muntaqim:
I think that when we look at the convention itself, in its totality, and look at the array of conditions in which Black people are eking out an existence in the United States, everything from the question of what I said about sterilization, but even if we look at the issues of mass incarceration, right? Where they are putting young, Black, Brown people in prison at a young age and holding in prison 20, 30, 40, 50 years, right? At a time when they're in their ripe year of reproducing, preventing that from happening, right? Preventing for decades these younger people from reproducing and, therefore, decimating or diminishing the capacity for the population to grow, right?
Jalil Muntaqim:
As an example, Black people in America, or I call them African people, that's another story, but Black people in America, in terms of the demographics of the population, has not exceeded 13% of the entire population and that's been in the last 50 years. From 11% to 13% in the last 50 years.
Jalil Muntaqim:
That indicates, for me, looking at the historical and chronological question, our history in the United States, that we have been suffering to degrees of genocide in whole or in part.
Shimon Cohen:
Yeah. I think that's a really interesting and important point that mass incarceration is serving as a form of population control.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Absolutely. That's a fact. We're having to ... Michelle Alexander and her book, The New Jim Crow, was able to bring that into the national debate but, personally, I have been arguing for that for 20 years before that book even came out, the issues of mass incarceration and the question of our being used as part of the capitalist system of wage labor and profit and exploiting people of color by using the court system and the last rung of the judicial system, being prison, the last rung of that process to keep people in their control and to reap profits off their misery.
Shimon Cohen:
What happens if the tribunal of these international jurors does find the U.S. complicit in genocide? Then what happens?
Jalil Muntaqim:
Okay. I'm glad you asked that question because we have a whole answer for you. All right? The whole answer is the International Tribunal, it has several goals and objectives to achieve. One of those objectives is to ensure that the international community understands what our fight is inside the United States, within the 3,000 by 2,000 mile territory/borders that has been identified as the United States. I don't know how much united it is... I don't even know if we would consider them states, but that goes to another question of what the United States is because if you go to 28 USC 3006, I think it indicates that the United States is, in fact, a corporation... They call it a federal corporation.
Jalil Muntaqim:
So, essentially the American population is citizens of a corporation, but that goes to a whole other legal argument and the dynamics involved with that but you can go to 28 USC 3002 or 3006, that informs that the United States, in fact, is a corporation.
Jalil Muntaqim:
The international jurists, if they were to condemn the United States for their acts of genocide against Black, Brown, and Indigenous people, then what we intend to do is file a similar action in the federal courts. File a civil action in federal courts and, hopefully, have an amicus curiae briefs, not only from activists across the country but amicus curiae briefs, which means "friends of the court" briefs, are filing in support of our own petition or from the international community as well.
Jalil Muntaqim:
From that point, we will begin to continue to promote and propagate and build upon the civil lawsuit, build support towards that and we'll be calling for building what we call a people's senate in 2022. People should be prepared. We think there is a need for a third voice for people in the United States to really challenge the corporate parties, when I say corporate I'm talking about the Democrat and Republican Party, which people have been tied to. We think there is a need for a third voice, a new narrative, in regards to people power and what does that mean, and so we are moving towards building a people's senate. Essentially, it's going to be a composite of a united front as a third voice in the United States.
Jalil Muntaqim:
The Black Panther Party attempted to do so at one point in time. There are older members of the Black Panther Party, older members of the Young Lords, older members of AIM, American Indian Movement, all of whom who have come to a conclusion that it is time for us to rise and reassert our own future, being future focused, reassert our determination and our own destiny.
Jalil Muntaqim:
In this instance, we're using the backdrop of international community as our foundation to move forward. We need to... El-Hajj Malik Shabazz, Malcolm X, warned us ... Actually, he instructed us that we need to take our struggle outside of the civil confines of the United States. He felt that and he made the instructions that if you're intending to keep your movement within the confines of civil rights, that there will be a way for the United States to use this issue domestically to control it domestically but when you bring it to the international community, you have raised it outside of the purview of civil rights, and it has now become a human right.
Jalil Muntaqim:
We're saying that the issues of the confronting Black, Brown, and Indigenous people are questions that are based upon our human rights being violated and, therefore, the United States, as far as we're concerned, in this dynamic, we say that they are engaged in the practices of genocide.
Jalil Muntaqim:
I can give you another example of the necessity as far as moving in this direction. We had on January 6th, of this year, white supremacists storm our Congress. None of them were, for the most part ... I think one woman was shot but for the most part, they were not mowed down. If it were Black, Brown, or Indigenous people storming Congress, there's no doubt in my mind or anybody else's mind, that they would have been mowed down, there would have been bodies lying all over the plaza of Congress.
Jalil Muntaqim:
That did not happen. We have to ask ourselves why did it not happen and, obviously, it didn't happen because the institutions are supporting the individuals who rampaged the Congress. I mean, supported them ideologically. Not so much supported the act they committed but supported them ideologically. They're all on the same page. The same page of white supremacy.
Jalil Muntaqim:
For us, particularly, Black, Brown, and Indigenous people, we have to come to a conclusion that this country is a white supremacist country. Anybody who thinks otherwise is delusional. I don't mind saying that. They're delusional. That is the reality. We need to fix that reality.
Jalil Muntaqim:
70 million people voted for an avowed white supremacist, Donald Trump, right? Out of that 70 million, I imagine there is at least another 30 million who supported him, who are voiceless. That means there's about approximately 100 million people in this country who are avid white supremacists. Right? That's one-third of the population of the United States. They're not going anywhere. Okay?
Jalil Muntaqim:
In fact, they have, as of January 6th, declared that they are engaged in a new war. Right? A civil war, that they will not be replaced, as it was said in I think South Carolina or North Carolina...
Shimon Cohen:
Charlottesville. Yeah.
Jalil Muntaqim:
...Charlottesville, a couple of years ago. Right? They are serious about that. I believe them. They said it. I believe them. That means that we need to setup the conditions that we need to defend ourselves in order to survive what is coming. If we're not prepared, they say those who fail to prepare, prepare to fail. Okay? We need to prepare. Therefore, the people's senate is going to be the means by which we start preparing for that third voice to ensure that we, people of color in the United States, are empowered and that our voices will be heard in defense of our own very existence. This is the end of the promotion of white supremacy and genocides in the United States.
Shimon Cohen:
We'll link the Spirit Of Mandela website with the information about the tribunal on there. We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it on the website. I really want to encourage the listeners to learn about it, to get involved, to ... You covered so much different terminology. People, take the time and look that up. Educate yourselves. To connect to social work, which is connected to this podcast just because that's my profession, it's like social workers have been complicit in a lot of this and these removals of Indigenous children, the breakdown, the child welfare system or as folks are calling it, the family regulatory system, family regulation system, and so social work has to confront this and the National Association of Black Social Workers have been challenging this since 1968. Just wanted to put that out there.
Jalil Muntaqim:
There is one hope that the National Association of Social Workers, the National Association of Black Psychologists or Psychiatrists and psychologists and psychiatrists will put together an amicus curiae brief, that will be found in support of their argument, their understanding of how white supremacy has damaged, traumatized, people of color in this country and we can use that as part of our support, our legal arguments, for the amicus curiae brief to be followed along with the civil complaint that we are going to file after the tribunal.
Shimon Cohen:
Absolutely. You know, I know you jumped right into the tribunal and what you're doing now and I love that because that's what I've always known about you. You're all about the work. You get right into it. I want to go over some history to talk about ... I think a lot of folks, I know a lot of folks, especially young folks, don't have the history. I want to talk about the Black Panther Party, which the original name, right — Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. That's very important.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Very important. Before we do that, I want to do that, but before we do that, there's one word you used a minute ago and it stuck me because I've been using it quite regularly, and it's a word called complicity. What is the meaning or what is the nature of complicity?
Jalil Muntaqim:
I think that as a result of ... I'm going to make two points in regards to that, right? The United States has blood on their hands.
Shimon Cohen:
Absolutely.
Jalil Muntaqim:
All right? They have been complicit in U.S. imperialism. They have been complicit in U.S. colonialism. Everything. They've been complicit in U.S. neocolonialism. Martin Luther King once said that the United States is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. Right? Purveyor of violence in the world. That's not my words. These are Martin Luther King's words. The individual they've made a national holiday over.
Shimon Cohen:
Right.
Jalil Muntaqim:
He said that. Okay? By saying that, he's also saying that we have been complicit in allowing this corporate government to engage in that type of violence throughout the world. Right?
Jalil Muntaqim:
Another point in regards to white supremacy, right? White supremacy is an aberration. Anyone who believes in white supremacy is an aberration. Anyone who believes that they are superior to any other person, any other human being on the planet, because of the color of their skin, is neurotic. Right? I once talked to a psychologist about that and I said that white supremacy is an aberration, an ideological aberration, is a neurosis. She said, no, it's not a neurosis, it's a psychosis. I said, what do you mean? Because they engage in mass murder, they engage in such violence, psychotic violence around the world to uphold the ideas of white supremacy.
Jalil Muntaqim:
This idea of white supremacy, not so much any different than that of the ideals of Adolf Hitler or engaged in a kind of psychosis that they feel immune from the kind of mass murder that they have committed all over the planet. And so the international community, in my thinking, is waiting for the American public to be woke. Right? To accept responsibility of their complicity in the work this corporate government is doing. Right? In support of the ideals of the psychosis, this phenomenon, that they call white supremacy, that has been engaged in in for the last 400 or 500 years, of engagement, around the world and the kind of death throes that they have created around the world. The United States public are complicit in their own silence and their failure to fight back.
Jalil Muntaqim:
What we're saying, that for the next generation, the generation to come, we're going to end that kind of complicity. There was a time in our history in the United States where the American public rose up against that kind of violence and that was during the anti-Vietnam War campaign, where we actually stopped the United States, along with the Vietnamese people who no longer wanted them in their country, prevent them to ... To end that war. Right? There had not been that kind of active internationalism, solidarity, amongst the public in this country since then.
Jalil Muntaqim:
We need to rise up, again, to the extent where we understand the United States' complicity in this kind of violence and the need for us to charge this government with that kind of violence that we need to end it. We need to end it. We need to find our own humanity, the depth of our humanity, toward the humanity of people around the world. We have lost that. It's been lost by the indoctrination of the American people, the indoctrination that began from K-12, with the idea of our manifest destiny, with the idea of the Monroe Doctrine, basically, we are taught to believe that makes America exceptional to any other nation or any other people on this planet. That's a bold-faced lie. We have been living that lie for too long.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Okay, Black Panther Party.
Shimon Cohen:
No. I'm glad you said all that. I think it really challenges everyone to really look like, "Well, what am I doing? What am I doing to change this?" I'm saying for everyone, we all need to be asking ourselves that, and then getting involved, getting involved with the work that's happening and making it happen because there's going to be people who there isn't work happening maybe around them and they need to get connected to folks who are and learn about this.
Shimon Cohen:
Then, of course, there's the aspect of continuing to pass on this knowledge, right? That's the part where, to me, it connects to the history is there's so much ... I've noticed this interest, this ... I don't know if I want to call it a new interest but I've seen more and more folks who are interested in the Black Panther Party and, specifically, the community-based programs.
Shimon Cohen:
There's been some articles that have come out, one came out saying, "You know, those free breakfasts in schools, you can thank the Black Panther Party for that," and then there was a really good article about the Panthers and the Young Lords instituting a substance abuse program in New York.
Shimon Cohen:
But the Panthers can't be looked at without the context of everything they were about.
Jalil Muntaqim:
I agree.
Shimon Cohen:
I was hoping you could talk about that and talk about what led you to joining the Panthers when you were a teenager, because you joined when you were a teenager.
Jalil Muntaqim:
That's true. That's true.
Shimon Cohen:
Take us back.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Take us back. Back to the future. Okay. Going back to the future, let me begin by just stating that I was raised in a household where my family members were conscious of who we are as a people. I was raised with the understanding that I am an African. My mom as a young woman was a student of African dance. As a result, her African dance teacher, used to teach her about African culture. Therefore, as I was growing up, as a young child, my mom used to tell us, as she was teaching us African dance like she learned it, that we are African, we are descendants of Africans and we come from Africa.
Jalil Muntaqim:
We never had in our household the idea that we are a Negro. It's a made-up word. Or we are a colored person, another made-up identification. Or that we are not this convoluted identity, being an African and an American, an African-American, this hyphenated identity, which is, in my thinking, is schizophrenic, because America has never been supportive of Africa, yet we are supportive of America and not in support of Africa. Essentially, those who identify themselves as African-American are against one part of the part that they say that they identity themselves with. I don't understand how you do that but at any rate, this is why I do not identify myself as an African-American because I think of it as a whole collective idea of who I am as identity, an identity that I identify with is New African. I identify as a New African.
Jalil Muntaqim:
I won't go into the whole thread of that, so we get back to the point. I was raised with the idea that I am African, that's number one. Okay? My mom's a part of the NAACP. She used to drag us along on those marches when I was a youngster, those civil rights marches. By the time I was a teenager, I became a member of the Black Student Union at my high school, fighting for ethnic studies. What they call ethnic studies today, back then was called Black studies. They didn't have Black studies in schools so we had to fight to get Black studies in schools.
Jalil Muntaqim:
One of my mentors in high school, my math mentor, because I was always good at school at any rate, but one of my mentors in high school was John Carlos, and many of you may remember the iconic picture of John Carlos and Tommie Smith raising their fists in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. That's the era that I was raised in, that kind of dynamic I was raised in, in high school.
Jalil Muntaqim:
In high school, I was on speaking engagements with the Black Student Union, president of San Jose State, and also San Jose City College, and myself, the three of us would go out on different, what we called, speak outs, going to different places and raising issues and questions of Black studies and Black culture.
Jalil Muntaqim:
By the time I was 16, I was hanging out with my friends in San Francisco. I had since became a Black Panther Party member. I decided ... One day, we were out in front of the Black Panther office on Filmore Street, we were bundling papers to be distributed across the country and I decided to go in and sign up and become a member of the Black Panther Party. That was at the age of 16.
Jalil Muntaqim:
I was active in that sense of helping with the paperwork and stuff like that but not really an active member in all of the programs that they had going on, like the free breakfast program, the free health clinics, food packages for families, the transportation of family members to prisons to visit loved ones, or even the, what we would call it today, copwatch, right? The copwatch program, that originated with the Black Panther Party.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Until I returned to the Black Panther Party at the age of 18, and that's when I got involved in those kind of programs, the free breakfast program and the health clinic program, and also doing some security work when we had dignitaries come to the San Francisco area, under the sponsorship of the Black Panther Party. Sometimes I was in security areas or the perimeter for security for those events.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Eventually, it led to me being recruited into what's called the Black Underground. At the age of 18, going on 19, I was recruited to the Black Underground. One thing that people do not understand about the Black Panther Party, that they had rules. One of the rule, rule number six says no Black Panther Party member can join an underground organization except for the Black Liberation Army.
Jalil Muntaqim:
And so we understand that, that the Black Liberation Army was part of the vision of Bobby Seale and Huey Newton when they originally put forth the idea of there will be a revolution headed by the Black Liberation Army, headed by the Black Panther Party. They also understood that there will be a need for armed struggle.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Within these rules of the Black Panther Party, way back in the day, was that no Black Panther Party can join an underground organization except for the Black Liberation Army. That's already written into the rules.
Jalil Muntaqim:
As part of the evolving of the Black Panther Party, they did have a Black underground and eventually, I was recruited into the Black underground and it resulted in my being captured and sent to prison for nearly 50 years.
Shimon Cohen:
The other thing I think is just so important is from what I've learned from you and others, over the years, is that you all really felt at that time that you were on the verge of revolution in this country.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Absolutely. It's not just us. It's not just the Black Panther Party. Remember, there's also the Brown Berets. Also, the Young Lords. There was also AIM, American Indian Movement. There was also the SDS, Students for Democratic Society, and the Weather Underground and a host of other revolutionary organizations that was engaged in the turbulent '60s. There was riots going on across the country. People were angry, people were upset, and they showed that by virtue of their insurrections. Insurrections doesn't make a movement. Insurrections does not make a revolution. That's the lessons learned.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Insurrection does check the temperature of what's going on in society at large. As what happened recently, when I say recently, over the last 10 years with the many deaths of Black people in this country and the advent of Black Lives Matter is indication. What has happened in the interim when there was this destruction of the Black Panther Party, the destruction of the various other revolutionary movements going on at that time, by virtue of COINTELPRO, the onslaught of the government to squash revolutionary activities in this country.
Jalil Muntaqim:
There was a lull and a law created the conditions for again, the kind of gross dehumanization and diminishing value of Black people, that there had to come a point in time where Black people had to come again and say, hey, our lives do in fact have value, that it matters. That's where we are today, resurrecting the value of Black lives, resurrecting the value of Black lives in a very concrete and substantial way, right? In a way that we are seeking institutional change, substantial institutional change on how we are governed and how the government governs. That is a process that we are engaged in today.
Jalil Muntaqim:
The Black Panther Party was instrumental in setting the foundation, as did the Young Lords and as did the Brown Berets, as did AIM, as did the Weather Underground, and recognizing our history of resistance in this particular country.
Jalil Muntaqim:
A lot of people are interested in the history, a history of armed struggle, but that's nothing new in this country. When we look at the Nat Turner, right? And his insurrections. If we look at Denmark Vesey back in the days, if we look at the Afro Brotherhood, African Brotherhood, that a lot of people don't even know existed, or armed Black revolutionaries, if we look at the Deacons For Defense, armed deacons and preachers who kept security for the civil rights movement, if we look at an organization called RAM, the Revolutionary Action Movement, and various others, that there have always been this thread ... Look at Robert Williams, for example, he wrote the book Negroes With Guns, right?
Jalil Muntaqim:
There's always been this thread in our history in this country of this kind of armed resistance. Black Liberation Army is just one aspect of that historical thread and we don't know what's going to come next or if there have to be a next. We should know that this is not an aberration in our history of resistance in the United States.
Shimon Cohen:
Yeah. I think some of that is really interesting is that Black Panther Party shows up at the Capitol in California with guns and the NRA and Ronald Reagan are passing gun control laws but we see White people doing mass shootings all over the place and where are the gun control laws?
Jalil Muntaqim:
Absolutely correct. That's ironic. California, at that time, was an open carry state, as we have now many states in the country today, but when Black people organized and are carrying guns, they're going to change the law. They want to make it, "We can't have open carry anymore so Black people are not using the law to their own benefit" or to their own best interest. When we started using the law in our own best interest, they want to change the law. White supremacy.
Shimon Cohen:
You know, one of the things I heard you say on the first time you were on the Hella Black podcast, shout out to Hella Black, is that the Black Panther Party and the BLA, there was a direct correlation with a reduction in the number of deaths of Black people killed by police.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Absolutely.
Shimon Cohen:
I was hoping you could speak to that.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Well, I mean, this is history. It's statistically proven that when Black people engage and are engaged in self-defense, that the attacks on Black people are lessened. Right? When they know there's going to be retaliatory responses to wholesale murdering of Black people, the wholesale murdering of Black people decreases, right? Then once that threat to white supremacy is removed, then there is an upsurge or increase in the killing of Black people.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Statistically, that's well established. Statistically, that's well established and it's not a question of my hypothesis, this is a fact. Okay? It is important for us to understand that when we defend ourselves, that we actually are preserving our own existence.
Shimon Cohen:
Right, and that point, though, of that then the law gets changed, right? And then we see the results of that or the responses a program like COINTELPRO, which I think a lot of people today don't even know what that is and maybe if they've seen Judas and the Black Messiah, they will get a glimpse of COINTELPRO so I hope people will check that out.
Shimon Cohen:
I know, for me, like I was saying, when I was like 21, 22 years old, learning about political prisoners in the U.S., learning about the Panthers, about AIM, American Indian Movement, and I learned about COINTEPLRO, it was like ... You know, it's like a shattering type of thing when you've grown up being taught a certain way about this country and then you learn about that, that the government did this and people need to know about it.
Jalil Muntaqim:
People can go on YouTube and YouTube COINTELPRO and learn right out the mouth of J. Edgar Hoover what was the goals and objectives of COINTELPRO. The goals and objectives of COINTELRPO was to stop the rise of a Black messiah, right? Anyone who was able to come to the forefront and organize Black people in their own best interest and for their own liberation. That was the primary goal and objective of COINTELRPO is the preservation of white supremacy.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Not only that but just most recently, we have what they called the Black Identity Extremist likely motivated targeting law enforcement officers. If you're Black and advocating for Black, then you're considered a Black extremist. Now they don't say anything about White people advocating for White people or as being White extremists. At least, not recently. Okay? But for Black folks to do so, they come up with a law, a whole philosophy by which they condemned — condemned — Black-minded people for thinking about Black lives and called them extremists.
Jalil Muntaqim:
They don't even want Black people to think of themselves as being valued enough to organize themselves or for their own best interest. In order to do so, without being able to be exploited, then you are in opposition to the United States.
Shimon Cohen:
Yeah. You know, the White extremists ... One White extremist got put in as president and had other White extremists as part of his advisory and cabinet.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Yeah. Of course. Of course. That's the failure of Barack Obama I guess.
Shimon Cohen:
Say more about that.
Jalil Muntaqim:
I'm jesting. I'm jesting. The failure of Barack Obama was the fact that there was this backlash to his presidency by the white supremacists and, therefore, I don't believe that he understood the significance of his presidency in association to the ideas of what he represented to the Black community. In my thinking, he did not show up, that's for certain, for Black folks and by virtue of his own presence in the White House caused this kind of angst amongst white supremacists that they have the need to have this backlash in electing someone totally opposite than what Barack Obama was attempting to represent.
Shimon Cohen:
Yeah. I mean, what helped me understand it was, again, going to history and looking at the white racist terror that followed Reconstruction. You know? That really, for me, helped me understand the backlash and how someone like 45, or whatever you want to call him, let's just call him what he is, Trump, got put in office, and could very well get put there again.
Jalil Muntaqim:
That would be ... If that should happen, Black people or people of color, Native Americans, Latinx, need to be prepared for what will be the ... What's the word I'm looking for? The results, the repercussions of having him lost his office the first time. There will be repercussions, white supremacist repercussions. They will make every effort to stranglehold the governing of this country by the ideals of white supremacy.
Jalil Muntaqim:
We have to be very prepared if that were to happen. As you mentioned, the possibility of that happening, the likelihood of that happening, is scary.
Shimon Cohen:
It is.
Jalil Muntaqim:
To say the least. Listen, let me just make this point especially clear as well, this is not the first time that we're finding white people against other white people in the issues of Black people. That example, of course, is the civil war, north against south, what to do about Black people? We're finding ourselves perhaps going back to that or reliving that type of anxiety, national anxiety, and we have to galvanize the relationships that we have, white people willing and prepared to fight other white people about the lives of Black people. A sober thought, a very sober thought, but one that we have to reflect upon.
Shimon Cohen:
Yeah. I mean, I think every White ... As a White person, every White person needs to really, who wants to say they're anti-racist or says they care about Black people and cares about whatever you want to call it, equality, some people will go as far as to say liberation, but let's say people want to say equality, they believe in human rights, right? It's like every White person needs to ask ourselves what does that really mean when it comes right down to it?
Jalil Muntaqim:
Okay. Let me give you another example then. I was once reading Malcolm X's book, his autobiography, and he shared with us an experience that he had with a young White woman. I think he made a presentation, I think maybe at Philadelphia University or something of that nature, and he was coming out and a young White woman came up to him and said what can she do or how can she help? Malcolm turned to her and told her and said, "Nothing." Right?
Jalil Muntaqim:
He regretted that later as he grew in his own humanity and understanding that she had a responsibility as well. What he should have told her, she needs to go back to her community and tell them to stop being racist.
Jalil Muntaqim:
For me, white supremacy is White people's problem. It is my problem when you try to impose it upon me. Then it becomes my problem. For as long as White people want to be White racists, y'all go ahead and do what y'all want to do, right? When you try to impose that on me, on my children, on my children's children, then we've got a problem.
Jalil Muntaqim:
For us to end this problem, that means that White people have to go to Aunt Jenny and Uncle Bubba, who is carrying the Confederate flag, and tell them that they're wrong and tell them they need to put their stuff down or they need to change their mind and change their thinking of the world for which we live in.
Jalil Muntaqim:
The onus of white supremacy is on White people to challenge White people against this aberration in our world. It's the aberration of human society.
Shimon Cohen:
Absolutely. You know, I want to go back again, not like you want to go there but I want to go back for a minute to your time in prison.
Jalil Muntaqim:
[laughing] No I don't want to back there again.
Shimon Cohen:
I know. I don't want you going back there either. I mean, 50 years is longer than I've been alive. You know? I know you kept busy organizing. You've talked about even what you did in solidarity, reading, working on this proposal. I also know you on a personal level just from all our communication. I know you're like a deeply caring human being. I know that about you. How did you survive 50 years in prison?
Jalil Muntaqim:
Organizing. That's how I survived. Listen, they have my body in prison. They don't have my mind and spirit in prison. My mind and spirit has always been with the people. My mind and spirit has always been out there doing the work. When I first came to prison, was I was arrested in 1971, and then after actually going through the trials I had to go through, both from California and in New York. By the time I was actually sent into a prison, I decided I was going to be an organizer while I was in prison.
Jalil Muntaqim:
I was organizing before I came to prison, I was organizing while I'm in prison, I was organizing as I came out of prison. That's what I do. I'm an organizer. I created the first national prisoners newspaper, a revolutionary newspaper back in 1977 called Arm the Spirit. I was the first one to organize a national march to the United Nations, I had the first petition organized to the United Nations that was actually heard in the sub-committee of the United Nations, dealing with the issues of prisoners’ rights and political prisoners in the United States.
Jalil Muntaqim:
I organized a march into Washington, DC on the issues of political prisoners. That was in 1998. That evolved into the Jericho Movement, the national Jericho Movement. People can go to TheJerichoMovement.com and learn about political prisoners. I'm the only living co-founder of the national Jericho Movement, now in existence 21 years, the premiere organization advocating in support of political prisoners in the United States.
Jalil Muntaqim:
In 2018, as I already mentioned, I put out a proposal for the international jurists to return to the United States and that will be happening on October 22nd to the 25th in New York in Harlem where they had that campaign. There's also many other things that I've organized or had organized while I'm in prison, organizing strikes, organizing demonstrations, being put in solitary confinement, organizing strikes and hunger strikes and, at times, while I was confined in solitary confinement, and so my years of imprisonment has honed me, has sharpened my weapons in regards to my capacity to engage in the struggle, to learn these lessons.
Jalil Muntaqim:
I had 50 years to study. I think if anyone had 50 years to study, as I have had, they'd probably have two or three PhDs. Testing theory into practice. One of the books that I've written, We Are Our Own Liberators, was written over 20 years ago and is resonating with young people today over the things that I said, over the things that I've written 20, 21 years ago. That book is a manual of my thinking, that I am sharing with people across the country.
Jalil Muntaqim:
In fact, once I got out I did a six week series on Zoom teaching from the book from cover to cover. I had 60 young people on Tuesdays and Thursdays for six weeks going through this entire book with me. Unfortunately, it is out of print now. I am trying to work on means to get it back into print because, again, there's a need for what is conveyed in that particular book, some universal principles that are timeless in regards to what it means to be involved in the struggle, to identify one's self as a revolutionary, as I do.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Let me just take a moment to define that for you. Having the years to really look at what it means to be a revolutionary and understanding and studying revolutions in Cuba and Latin America and Africa and Asia, I've come to the conclusion that the revolutionary ... If you take the R off, what word do you have?
Shimon Cohen:
Evolutionary.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Evolutionary. Right. Exactly right. As a sociologist, we understand that society evolves, evolutionary, it's an evolutionary process of society's evolvement, as it is of man's own evolvement, right?
Jalil Muntaqim:
The method by which we are engaging in the evolutionary process is through the process of revolution. A revolutionary is actually an evolutionary. He's the person or persons who see the evolving of human society from one state of existence to a greater end quality state of existence and he moves that process along. Sometimes the process is violent, sometimes it is non-violent. We need to look at Martin Luther King as an example. Martin Luther King was an evolutionary, right? He brought the social order of the United States out of the Jim Crow era into one that we would think was more equitable in its own diversity as the United States. That's the evolutionary process.
Jalil Muntaqim:
We look at what happens to Black people from the days of slavery to where we are today, that's the evolutionary process. The ebbs and flows of that process that there were times where it was revolutionary, right? That those individuals who engage in that process was, in fact, revolutionaries.
Jalil Muntaqim:
We find that in terms of identifying one's self as a revolutionary, you're actually identifying yourself as a social evolutionary, that we are changing the social dynamics of our existence from one quality or state of existence to a greater and better quality and state of existence. Often times, it is bloody. Often times, it is violent. The reason why? Because the old do not die. They have to be thrown out. They have to be get rid of in order for the new to evolve and to grow and to flourish.
Jalil Muntaqim:
The process is, basically, get rid of the old and bringing in the new. These new ideas, new way of thinking, new way of behavior because thought proceeds action, how you think is the determining factor of how you are going to act or how you are going to behave, and if we think in old terms, in old ways, we continue to act in old ways and old terms in your own behavior.
Jalil Muntaqim:
For us, becoming a revolutionary should be an honor. Every sociologist, if they actually thinking to make real changes in the social structure of society at large, they have to become revolutionaries. Right? They have to get rid of the old and bring in the new. More often than not, that's not an easy task. It's a very difficult task because the old do not die. They have to be removed.
Shimon Cohen:
Yeah. If anything, as they feel any momentum and change coming, they clamp down on their power.
Jalil Muntaqim:
That's right. A fact. A fact.
Shimon Cohen:
We see that.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Let me just give you one other issue that people are not really giving any serious thought to in regards to this system of capitalism. The other day, I had some young people over at the house. I have an Alexa, right? People say, "Jalil, they're data mining you." I say, "Okay, cool."
Jalil Muntaqim:
I asked Alexa, I said how many billionaires are in the United States? Alexa answered and said 540 billionaires in the United States. 540 billionaires in the United States. I asked Alexa, well, what is the accumulated wealth of these 540 billionaires? Alexa answered $2.6.9 trillion. Right? Equivalent to all of the wealth of western Europe. 540 people, all of the wealth of western Europe. That's about 28,000 families controls, for the most part, what happens or do not happen in the United States.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Here we have a population of 330 million people? We're allowing 540 people to control our lives? And have us fighting for the crumbs off their table? What are we doing? That's why I made the argument on complicity. We are having complicity to our own oppression. We are consciously permitting 540 people, 540 billionaires to control the wealth of this country. That's insane. Insane. We're fighting for the crumbs.
Jalil Muntaqim:
We don't understand how destructive capitalism actually is when people are hoarding wealth, hoarding wealth, and people are starving in the streets. People are homeless. People don't have proper medical care. People have been sent to prison in mass out of poverty. 540 people control all the wealth in this country? Come on, man. That's insane.
Shimon Cohen:
Absolutely.
Jalil Muntaqim:
We're complicit.
Shimon Cohen:
Totally.
Jalil Muntaqim:
We're complicit. Those are facts. That's how we view and understand the world in which we live in. As sociologists, we should be very clear and very truthful about the reality in which we live in, about the reality of capitalism, and how it operates. Capitalist and imperialist and how it operates and that the system is based upon. As sociologists.
Jalil Muntaqim:
If we don't do that, then you are not only lying to the people who which you are covering, you're lying to yourself.
Shimon Cohen:
100%. Powerful words, man.
Jalil Muntaqim:
I only tell the truth. Truth to power, brother. Speak truth to power.
Shimon Cohen:
I wouldn't have it any other way, man, having you on here.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Fact.
Shimon Cohen:
As we're going to wrap things up, you had mentioned that class you did about your book, We Are Our Own Liberators. Do you have any plans for more classes like that? I know I've heard some things about a podcast and a YouTube channel. Let people know what you're going to be up to and how people can get in touch.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Sure. Sure. Absolutely. I am looking forward to starting a podcast. I don't know how soon it will be. It probably won't be until next year. I'm still learning the technology that is involved with this. Technology is kicking my butt. Having spent 50 years in prison and coming out and finding this new world of technology ... I mean, the iPhone, that was a challenge for me, understanding they have this thing, how this damn thing works. I got some handle on it right now. I got it pretty much handled on the computers.
Shimon Cohen:
Yeah. I think you're pretty on point, man.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Well, I'm learning. You had to help me out to get on this program. It's all good. Hopefully, within the next few months, I will be starting my own podcast and it's going to be called We Are Our Own Liberators: Conversations with Jalil Muntaqim.
Shimon Cohen:
Nice. People got to keep the lookout for that and how can people stay up on what you're doing, though, to see what you're up to.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Well, I do not have a Facebook and I don't do social media like that. I will, hopefully, soon put up my own blog soon and be sending the blog out, like I was doing in prison prior to my going to the parole board, I had to take it down because I was going to the parole board because you have to sanitize your image in order for you to get released from prison and what they're expecting of us is the kind of hoops that we have to jump through in order to gain our freedom, not inconsistent to what Black people have to do in this country in order to survive, the white supremacy hoops that we have to go through.
Shimon Cohen:
Every day.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Every day.
Shimon Cohen:
Or at work.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Yeah, that's a fact.
Shimon Cohen:
School.
Jalil Muntaqim:
That's a fact. I have made mention the other day of a podcast with my cousin on Hella Black, that how traumatized that Black people are in this country. We've been traumatized for over 450 years, alright, dealing with the issues of white supremacy, from the time that we walk into a grocery store or a shopping mall and we're being watched, being followed just because we're Black, to the time where we drive down the streets and a police car drives past or behind you and you're traumatized, not knowing whether the person is going to pull you over and murder you just for existing because you're Black.
Jalil Muntaqim:
The whole dynamic involved with that idea of being Black in America, for the most part, is traumatizing. We have to really delve deep within our own trauma to find liberation, to find emancipation, to become abolitionists.
Jalil Muntaqim:
I was talking to these young people the other day, talking about what does abolition mean? I said, listen, you're in the city of the greatest abolitionist who ever lived, Frederick Douglass, this is his home, this is his city, and we need to resurrect that legacy of Frederick Douglass but, in so doing, we have to take it to another level. In as much as slavery has not been abolished in the United States, but rather it has been institutionalized into the penal system, we have to abolish everything that's anti-Black. If it's anti-Black, it needs to be abolished.
Jalil Muntaqim:
We need to grow into the idea of being emancipated and abolitionists and liberators. That's the reason why I wrote the book We Are Our Own Liberators.
Shimon Cohen:
Yeah. I heard you say that on Hella Black and I actually tweeted it out because I loved that and so many people are talking about abolitionist thinking and action these days but the way you've said it was so powerful and I'm so glad you said it again on here.
Shimon Cohen:
Then as far as folks keeping up with you, once you get all this stuff going, of course, I'll post it where I can post it, send it out, so anyone who is following Doin' The Work can check it out. I also recommend people check out Hella Black because I know they'll also be ... First of all, their podcast is amazing and the work they're doing with the People's Programs is phenomenal. It's the continuation, the legacy of the Panthers.
Jalil Muntaqim:
That's a fact. That's a fact. I am very proud of my cousin Abbas Muntaqim. He took my last name. I ain't mad at him. Abbas Muntaqim and his working partner, Delency Parham. Very good brothers. Actually they spent a couple of weeks with me here at my house. We just chopped it up for two weeks and really got into what it is to be an abolitionist, what it is to be an emancipator, what it is to be a liberator. They are taking the science, the science, and putting it into application in the Bay Area. They just recently got a bus so they can do health clinics, mobile health clinics in the community. They are doing food packages in the community.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Most recently, an organization here in Rochester, they call themselves, the young people, they call themselves the People's Liberation Program, are now giving away food packages and trying to build these, what we call, decolonization programs. The Black Panther Party had a program called Survival Pending Revolution, and in my thinking, as far as Survival Pending Revolution is defensive. It is survival pending the revolution.
Jalil Muntaqim:
I think we need to flip that. We need to turn that on its head and develop programs that are pro-revolution. We are calling these programs now decolonization programs. These are programs where we are trying to empower the community, to decolonize the community, and to empower the community and, in so doing, creating the conditions for which a movement for change, real change, evolutionary change, revolutionary change can happen.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Many organizations in the communities across the country are building decolonization programs and using those terms, using those names, that narrative. Names are important, words are important, and how you identify what you're doing is extremely important. Instead of Survival Pending Revolution, we are building decolonization as part of the revolutionary process.
Shimon Cohen:
Yeah. I like that, man. I heard you talking about that too, so I hope folks will check out Hella Black and get involved wherever they're at, get involved wherever your community is at, tap into these decolonization programs or create your own and if you need guidance on it, there's folks who will help with that, who are doing that work.
Shimon Cohen:
There's one more thing I wanted to ask you before we go, and it goes back to something you said early on and then we got into so many other things. I know I said we were wrapping up but you talked about that class that you did in prison, the one that they put you in solitary for.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Yeah.
Shimon Cohen:
You said that you were doing education with folks who were other folks locked up, right?
Jalil Muntaqim:
Yeah.
Shimon Cohen:
What were those conversations like? That was one of the things I just thought I really wanted to know what those conversations were like with you. I remember many years ago, you and I talking about some of generational differences, also with guys inside and ... Yeah. What were those conversations like? Were they taking to what you were talking about?
Jalil Muntaqim:
Well, if you're a teacher, one thing that you appreciate about teaching, when you see that light bulb turn on in their student and you see that person, they get it. That's rewarding for the teacher. When I'm in the classroom and I'm teaching, that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for that light bulb to turn on. The process by which we do so, it's a different... Reflecting how the teacher really knows the subject and knows their student and how to interact and interchange with the student.
Jalil Muntaqim:
For me, I was fortunate because in prison, as part of my "rehabilitation", was that I was engaging in organizing inside of the prisons. By virtue of that alone, I got some degree of respect amongst other prisoners. When they came to my room, came to my classroom, they brought that with them, the understanding that this is an OG, this is OG ... He earned his stripes and, therefore, what he has to say, we should listen to him. Those who did, and let me make this part explicitly clear, the individuals who came to the class were the individuals who had some degree of understanding there was a need for change.
Jalil Muntaqim:
While I may have a population in prison of 1300 men in prison or 900 men in prison or 500 men in the population in prison, I'll only get 30 guys, 20 guys to come to the class. These are the individuals who are prepared, who have some understanding of their trauma, some understanding of the system that they are navigating, and as a result, they come to the class to learn how to better navigate from someone who has some degree of understanding of that process.
Jalil Muntaqim:
For me, the interaction with the young brothers coming inside the prison and who had... Hey, who's this OG that we've got respect for and what's he kicking in the classroom when it comes to the class and they see how I'm teaching and the information that I'm imparting upon them and materials I'm asking them to read, they become woke. That's the word they use today. They become woke. Once they become woke, you can't un-woke them. You can't put them back to sleep. Okay?
Jalil Muntaqim:
They then become activists or become active organizers inside the prison system and so that's one of the reasons why they wanted to lock me down because I was trying to take these street organizations, street gangs' mentality and change it from a criminal mentality into a revolutionary mentality. That has to be the agenda. Unfortunately, that kind of organizing that has not gone on in our communities as it should, and so we're trying to make some inroads today to find these street organizations and offer them another way, offer them another way to think about their own survival.
Jalil Muntaqim:
We definitely need to ... Again, I'm talking about the trauma of our communities. I'm also talking about the phenomenon of Black on Black crime, right? That's traumatic. Where does that come from? I'm talking about the conditions to which Black mothers are found... Have to resort to welfare because they can't get a job and due to the aberrant conditions of our school system.
Jalil Muntaqim:
I'll give another example and I'm going to make this really short. Here at the Rochester School District is the fifth-worst school district in the country. The fifth-worst school district in the country. 80% of the school population are Black and Brown. They're being taught, like 80%, White teachers. A majority of them are women. A majority of them live outside of the city. They live out in the suburbs and they come into the suburbs to try to teach Black and Brown children. That's a blatant disconnect. It's culturally a disconnect.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Carter G. Woodson wrote a book called The Mis-Education of the Negro. We find that continuance of that kind of miseducation when you have the cultural foundation for these young people, Black and Brown students, aren't able to really look at a teacher and see themselves. This innate racism that is brought into these classrooms in teaching these Black and Brown babies. No wonder there's this degree of failure. The system is created, is structured for these young people to fail. We need to change that.
Jalil Muntaqim:
That's the reason why we have so many young people dropping out of school and ending up in mass incarceration. This is designed. You have people who have think tanks, public policy think tanks and they don't see this as a problem? Wait a minute. There's a problem with the think tanks. Or they're functioning as they were designed to function.
Shimon Cohen:
Yeah. When people are like, "Oh, the system is broken." It's like, no, it's not.
Jalil Muntaqim:
No. It's not. The system is functioning the way it was designed to function and it is our problem that we have not yet faced that, being truthful with ourselves, and being truthful with one another in terms of how the system functions and operates, to the detriment, of Black, Brown, Indigenous people in this country.
Shimon Cohen:
Jalil, we've talked about so much, man. You've shared so much knowledge, like you always do, and I'm so grateful that you took the time to come on here. This has been great just having this much time talking with you, even though, we've been in touch. One of the best things was FaceTiming when you got out, being able to actually see you, talk with you like that after so long.
Shimon Cohen:
You know, man, just thank you so much for coming on here and, of course, thank you for all the work you do. Thank you for doin' the work.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Yeah. I appreciate you. For anybody in New York City and New York State, I petition you to check out Jericho Movement, check out SpiritOfMandela.org, and I also ask you to become a member of Citizen Action. Although, it is a nonprofit organization, it does some good work. I think people need to learn about us. Go to the website, Citizen Action of New York, and just look at the stuff that they're doing. If you find what they're doing resonates with you, become a member, join, help us do the work.
Shimon Cohen:
Thanks, again, man.
Jalil Muntaqim:
My pleasure, my brother.
Shimon Cohen:
Thank you for listening to Doin' The Work: Frontline Stories of Social Change. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Please follow on Twitter and leave positive reviews on iTunes. If you're interested in being a guest or know someone who is doing great work, please get in touch. Thank you for doing real work to make this world a better place.
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