Amajor federal government attack on a Black liberation organization has been an embarrassing and crushing legal failure. What started with a high profile armed, flash bang raid of group offices and homes ended with a minor conviction, no jail time and zero fines.
But don’t dismiss this failed case. It’s a serious one Black America must pay attention to, especially anyone fighting for or speaking out on behalf of our suffering people.
The legal case against the Uhuru 3 was recently closed with defendants Omali Yeshitela, Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel given 36 months of probation, 300 hours of community service and no fine.
They had been accused of acting as Russian agents and conspiring to be Russian agents. They were convicted on the lesser conspiracy charge, though no money was exchanged, no orders from Russia were obeyed or apparently even sent.
The government’s “evidence?” Speeches, writing, protests, reparations advocacy, condemnation of U.S. domestic policy against Blacks, criticism of U.S. international evil, and organizing the Uhuru Movement, based in Florida and St. Louis, has been doing since the 1960s. It also included a trip to a conference in Russia in 2017.
The feds alleged the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement members were recruited, funded, and directed “to act as unregistered illegal agents of the Russian government and sow discord and spread pro-Russian propaganda.”
They were also publicly accused of trying to meddle in U.S. elections, which federal agents couldn’t explain when testifying under oath.
Last year the Justice Department charged Chairman Yeshitela of the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement; White allies Hess and Nevel; and Augustus C. Romain Jr. of the Black Hammer Movement in a major case.
Twenty-five charges filed by President Biden’s Justice Department essentially went nowhere. A Trump-appointed judge refused to jail or exact financial penalties, saying he couldn’t see sending two defendants in their 70s and 80s to prison for crimes not involving murder, assault, drugs or similar activity. He issued the sentence in a Florida courtroom on Dec. 16.
“It was a people’s victory. And why does it matter? It matters because this was an assault on the Black liberation movement,” said Kamm Howard, a longtime Black activist who attended the Uhuru 3 trial and sentencing.
“What they were doing is what they’ve always did for 50 years, talked and organized—and the chairman did protests and mobilizations around the crimes that this country has committed against African people and indigenous people, but primarily African people in this country for over 400 years,” said Mr. Howard, who leads Reparations United.
This case was about freedom of speech, the right to dissent and our right to advocate for ourselves.
“Many people in the White Right came out and supported the Uhuru 3 because they understood how relevant and how powerful it is that the First Amendment, right of free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, these are the bedrocks of so-called American democracy.
If you don’t have these, you have no democracy,” said activist Howard in an interview. “It wasn’t anything about actions because the actions were statements, speeches, assemblies, which are supposedly protected by the Constitution.”
If the federal government comes after this radical Black group and tears down their ability to speak, then no one has an ability to speak, Mr. Howard warned. “And we exist under a total dictatorship.”
If we are stripped of our right to protest and prosecuted for our political activity, the federal government can come after anyone—a fearless Minister Louis Farrakhan, an outspoken pastor, an uncompromising imam, a courageous activist who dares exercise their right to visit other nations or conferences to talk about global struggle.
“If we look back at what Jeremiah Wright did when Obama was running for president or was president. He said, ‘God damn America,’ because of the crimes that America was doing against Black people. He would’ve been indicted and his ability of free speech would’ve been taken away as well.
We can look back through our history at all of the great leaders who tried to wake us up to what was happening in this country. None of that would’ve taken place if this government could get away with what it’s trying,” Mr. Howard continued.
The Biden administration “spent millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars to try this case. And it was the defeat of the Justice Department, of the FBI.
The National Security Agency had a component in it—and it was a major defeat. But a victory of the Black liberation struggle,” Mr. Howard observed. “We don’t have a lot of victories, but this was a major victory.”
Still even with this win, we must be vigilant and never underestimate the nefarious activity of a government with a history of spying, infiltrating, lying, planting evidence and fabricating charges against us. This was a victory but is also a warning, our government still sees its citizens as the enemy.
Naba’a Muhammad is editor-in-chief of The Final Call newspaper. He can be reached via www.finalcall.com and [email protected]. Find him on Facebook. Follow @Rmfinalcall on X and Instagram.
