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The FBI and Joint Terrorist Task Force routinely police dissent. This time they targeted small town Tennessee activists organizing their first #BlackLivesMatter protest using Facebook. theintercept.com/2020/06/12/fbi-jttf-protests-activists-cookeville-tennessee/?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=theintercept&utm_medium=social
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Details on the surveillance of Occupy nytimes.com/2014/05/23/us/officials-cast-wide-net-in-monitoring-occupy-protests.html and highlights of 4,000 pages of "intelligence" they circulated: nytimes.com/interactive/2014/05/23/us/23occupy-docs.html
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Joint Terrorism Task Forces are "joint" because they involve the FBI alongside state or local police and other Federal agencies. They operate through at least 78 "fusion centers" located throughout the country. (NYC pictured here) america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/10/little-oversightconsistencyatnationsterrorismwatchcenters.html
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In the case of the young Cookeville activists, it was the Tennessee Fusion Center, at the TBI headquarters that likely coordinated the lurking on Facebook and sent officers to pester them at work. tn.gov/tbi/law-enforcement-resources/tennessee-fusion-center.html
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There are 80 fusion centers operating nationwide, sites for the coordination of policing dissent across federal, state, and local policing agencies. dhs.gov/fusion-center-locations-and-contact-information
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Here's FBI Director Louis Freeh explaining how the FBI and JTTFs were treating "anarchist and extremist socialist groups" including "Reclaim the Streets and Carnival Against Capitalism" as potential terrorists, 3 months before 9/11… archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/testimony/fbi-file-management
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As #BlackLivesMatter emerged, the FBI invented a new category to monitor: “black identity extremism” theintercept.com/2019/03/23/black-identity-extremist-fbi-domestic-terrorism/ This has all the signs of a replay of the FBI targeting the Black Freedom movement as "Black Nationalist–Hate Groups" in the 1960s.
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Cointelpro on "Black Nationalist–Hate Groups" (Program 37) was targeted on "such groups as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, [King's] Southern Christian Leadership Conference ... the Congress of Racial Equality and the Nation of Islam" theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/apr/04/preventingtheriseofamessi
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In the 1960s and 1970s, "counter-intelligence"—that is ferreting out Soviet influence—was the excuse. Since the 1990s, it's "counter-terrorism." Either way, the real target is effective dissent.
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Here's a 2019 report on the FBI "Still Spying on Dissent," which puts many recent episodes in historical context. rightsanddissent.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Still-Spying-on-Dissent.pdf
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Since it's easiest to document surveillance (thanks, FOIA!) we generally talk about political policing in terms of "spying" or "surveillance," but the real risks are intimidating people from dissenting and operations to "divide and disrupt" movements.
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Here's Brian Glick's list of 4 methods used by COINTELPRO: infiltration, psycholoigical warfare from the outside, harrassment via the legal system, and extralegal violence. (see p. 10 of The War at Home here: fightgangstalking.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/war-at-home-1989.pdf )
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And eight pieces of good advice on how to sustain movements despite this kind of harassment (from p. 40 fightgangstalking.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/war-at-home-1989.pdf).