The R.I. State Police and F.B.I. have been knocking on our doors and trying to intimidate us into providing information about movements for social justice, human rights and planetary survival. A.G. Neronha used a grand jury investigation supposedly looking into the attack on non-violent protesters by guards at the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls to ask questions about radical activists and organizers.

Let’s come together and learn from the history of resistance to government repression and find lessons for our work moving forward.

Join us at AS220 on Saturday, November 16th at 2pm for a screening of “COINTELPRO 101,” a 56-minute film from Freedom Archives explaining the history of coordinated repression of progressive movements by local, state and federal government agencies, as well as movement responses and resistance.

Movement elders who survived COINTELPRO tactics will then lead a discussion focused on lessons for today’s activists.

José A. Soler has spent decades in the struggle for social justice. José  was a leader of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party in Mayagüez, and has worked with the Chicano Movement (Black Berets) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and with Clergy and Laity Concerned a national religious social justice organization, and various unions in the Puerto Rico, New York, New Jersey (migrant and farm workers, healthcare, etc.), He testified on behalf of the Puerto Rican independence movement at a hearing of the of the U.N. Commission on Apartheid and was a national co- chair of the U.S. Peace Council. Recently he has worked closely with Central American undocumented workers on wage theft, sexual harassment and rights on the job and the right to have drivers licenses in New Bedford, Mass.

Kazi Toure was one of the key organizers of the Amandla Festival of Unity in 1979 to support anti-apartheid fighters in Southern Africa (including the ANC, FRELIMO, MPLA, SWAPO, etc.) and the on-going efforts of Black and Latino people in Boston to win access to quality education(white folks called this the “busing crisis,” but it was actually an education crisis). The concert featured Bob Marley and the Wailers, Patti LaBelle, Eddie Palmieri, and others. He spent over a decade imprisoned for his role in the United Freedom Front, including a conviction for the crime of “seditious conspiracy.”  In the 1970s and 1980s the United Freedom Front took responsibility for over 20 direct actions against apartheid in South Africa and United States imperialism in Central America including against South African Airways, Mobil, IBM, Union Carbide, & various courthouses and U.S. military targets. Since being paroled in the early 1990s, Kazi has worked to remove the death sentence against Mumia Abu-Jamal and to free U.S. held political prisoners such as Sekou Odinga, Marilyn Buck, Herman Bell, Janine Africa, Janet Africa, and Oscar López Rivera. He is the former co-chair of the National Jericho Movement.

Our aim for this program is to learn from our movement history and build solidarity to survive repression.

This event is sponsored by the Rhode Island and Southcoast Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

The National Lawyers Guild is the nation’s oldest and largest progressive bar association and was the first one in the US to be racially integrated. Our mission is to use law for the people, uniting lawyers, law students, legal workers, and jailhouse lawyers to function as an effective force in the service of the people by valuing human rights and the rights of ecosystems over property interests. The NLG is dedicated to the need for basic change in the structure of our political and economic system. Our aim is to bring together all those who recognize the importance of safeguarding and extending the rights of workers, women, LGBTQ people, farmers, people with disabilities and people of color, upon whom the welfare of the entire nation depends; who seek actively to eliminate racism; who work to maintain and protect our civil rights and liberties in the face of persistent attacks upon them; and who look upon the law as an instrument for the protection of the people, rather than for their repression.