COINTELPRO 101 - Documentary Film from 2010

COINTELPRO 101 exposes illegal surveillance, disruption, and outright murder committed by the US government in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. “COINTELPRO” refers to the official FBI COunter INTELigence PROgram carried out to surveil, imprison, and eliminate leaders of social justice movements and to disrupt, divide, and destroy the movements. Many of the government’s crimes are still unknown. Through interviews with activists who experienced these abuses firsthand and with rare historical footage, the film provides an educational introduction to a period of intense repression and draws relevant lessons for present and future movements.

Interviews in the video include: Muhammad Ahmad (Max Stanford)—Founder of Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) and professor at Temple University; Bob Boyle—Attorney representing many activists and political prisoners targeted by COINTELPRO; Kathleen Cleaver—former leader of the Black Panther Party, now Professor of Law at Emory and Yale Universities and an expert on COINTELPRO; Ward Churchill—just-removed Professor at the University of Colorado who has written extensively about COINTELPRO; Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz—Long-time Native American activist and educator; Priscilla Falcon—Long-time Mexicana activist and professor whose husband was assassinated for his leadership in the Chicano struggle; Geronimo Ji-Jaga Pratt—former leader of the Black Panther Party who was falsely imprisoned for 27 years in a COINTELPRO case; Jose Lopez—Director of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Chicago and long-time advocate of Puerto Rican independence; Francisco ‘Kiko’ Martinez—long-time Chicano/Mexicano activist and attorney; Lucy Rodriguez—Puerto Rican Independentista and former Political Prisoner; Ricardo Romero—long-time Chicano/Mexicano activist and Grand Jury resister; Akinyele Umoja—African American History scholar at Georgia State University; Laura Whitehorn—radical activist and former political prisoner who was targeted by the federal government.

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