via Humanities and Social Sciences Net Online
The National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL) condemns the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s recent placement of activist Assata Shakur on its Most Wanted Terrorists list, and its increase of the reward for her capture to $2 million. These actions by the FBI should alarm everyone in the United States as they only serve to criminalize the right of people to disagree with governmental policies. These actions intimidate activists and recklessly expand the use and meaning of the word “terrorist.” In the 1960s Assata Shakur was active in several human rights causes, such as the Black Liberation Movement, the struggle for student rights and activism to end the war in Vietnam. She joined the Black Panther Party, an organization that by the late 1960s was persecuted by the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO).
COINTELPRO notoriously utilized covert and often illegal tactics in an attempt to discredit and destroy a wide range of groups, including the NAACP, groups advocating for the rights of Native Americans, groups associated with the women’s rights movement and groups that opposed the war in Vietnam. Like other members of the Black Panther Party, on more than one occasion Shakur was falsely charged with crimes, and in six different cases where she was indicted she was either acquitted or the charges were dismissed…