"Over the last 18 years the American Muslim community has faced the largest counter intelligence program in the history of the U.S." ... the first time we became aware of gov't surveillance in my Muslim American n'hood in Chicago was 29 yrs ago... more than a decade before 9/11.
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and Black Muslim communities in the U.S. have experienced widespread surveillance/ counter-intel campaigns for centuries, from the inception of gov't surveillance as a tool against enslaved people who escaped their enslavers, to as recently as COINTELPRO and the BIE designation.
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when I was a young teenager growing up in Bridgeview, IL I remember waking up in the middle of the night to men installing a camera on the streetlight in front of my mom's house... just down the street from the mosque. lots of our neighbors had similar experiences.
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after yrs researching FBI surveillance of people of color, reviewing gov't dox from COINTELPRO to PuertoRico's independence movement, & interviewing folks in my community, I've concluded that this tactic of surveillance, cams on streetlights, is overt & intentionally so.
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in fact one of the tactics FBI's used repeatedly in POC communities is overt surveillance, its intended for folks to SEE and consequently be overcome with the chilling effects: paranoia, alienation, rampant distrust, disassociation from the identity under attack. this is trauma.
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in the un-redacted COINTELPRO dox the FBI explicitly states that one of their intents was to make members of the Black Panther Party so paranoid, using overt surveillance tactics, that they would be "discredited" & "dismissed" by the press, the public and others in the movement.
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the thing about "overt surveillance" is that it's only obvious and explicit to those individuals & communities under direct surveillance. people on the outside of this violent one way gaze, hear our experiences with the gov't and pathologize us as paranoid. dismiss our truth.
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this is gas-lighting, intentionally set up through the use of FBI tactics of overt surveillance. to be the object of this violent gaze & have people not believe you, not believe its happening, is traumatic as fuck. the use of this tactic is in no uncertain terms, psych warfare.
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...so I think the way to face & confront this old and ongoing surveillance is: 1) recognize theses tactics as deliberately traumatic and begin to facilitate collective healing in our communities from this trauma. start to reframe community convos from KY"rights" to KY"healing"
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& 2) surveillance thrives in secrecy & knowledge is power. when I learned what happened to the BPP, via COINTELPRO records, I knew i/my community were never "paranoid", these were time-tested FBI tactics. We can bust secrecy by using FOIA to demand public records & transparency.
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finally 1) healing & 2) demanding truth are manifestly related; building power within this surveillance state requires both. Some folks doing meaningful work w/ both practices are:
@MWFNational@stoplapdspying@lucyparsonslabs@MPower_Change@theCCR@mediajustice@MuslimJusticeNäytä tämä ketju
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