When 50 Days is Not Enough
An Open Letter to the Black Family

In the empowering and inspiring battle for justice for Sean Bell, the NY
Daily News may very well have done that battle a big favor by presenting
themselves as a ripe, ready and very visible target for a meaningful
political and economic action.

How so? On December 12th and 13th, they ran some of the most
racist inflammatory and unequivocally unethical stories on our beloved
heroine in our struggle, the incredible Assata Shakur.

The December 12th issue was incredibly obscene. They ran a
front page story called 'Disgrace,' condemning a student building named for
the exiled freedom fighter and for Puerto Rican exiled freedom fighter
Guillermo Morales. But what made the December 12th most obscene was the
front page they used for the story. The racebaiters ran a cover photo of a
woman robbing a bank in the 70s, saying it was Assata.

Not to be outdone, the next day, they ran the second part of
the story in an article entitled 'New Name Shame,' to justify the
unsubstantiated cover photo the day before. In it, they cite a priest who
says that Assata robbed his church around the same time. The priest says he
knew that it was Assata because it was the same woman in the photo!
Neither story, of course, never dealt with the story of the photo. The
photo was indeed a surveillance photo of a bank robbery in Queens. Assata
was put on trial for that robbery when she was being held in New Jersey. In
that trial, the presiding judge even ordered to have Assata photographed
again in court for comparison purposes, even if it meant beating her to the
ground to do it. Which, in fact, they did. But what neither that racist
judge, nor Assata's prosecutors/persecutors could count on is that the jury
simply did not go for it. That jury did not accept that the woman in the
photo was Assata and did not accept that Assata was in anyway involved. In
the end, Assata was acquitted in that trial, their surveillance photo
notwithstanding.

There is more to this, of course, that neither story dealt
with at all. That bank robbery trial took place while the FBI's COINTELPRO
Operations were in full gear reeking havoc on our movement, and that there
was a special COINTELPRO operation put in full gear just to jam Assata.
Just for Assata! It was called Operation Chesrob. Chesrob was the acronym
for Chesimard and bank robbery. It was in that setting that this
unsubstantiated photo was produced and used against her in that trial,
although it failed miserably. One of the hallmark's of COINTELPRO was the
FBI having bogus evidence planted in newspapers to aid in the prosecution
of activists and to inflame public opinion against them. This was just one
example.

For the NY Daily News, the paper of New York's "working class"
to run such stories without a drop of that background violates every
meaningful canon of journalistic ethics ever conceived of while of course
disrespecting our community to the umpteenth. Talk about playing the race
card from the bottom of the deck.

So while we're "shopping for justice," why don't we seriously
consider making the Daily News pay for those extreme stories? Why don't we
make them 'pay' for that supreme disrespect? I mean, what if Black and
Puerto Rican New Yorkers in Rosa-regal unity, discipline and focus, choose
in the thousands not to buy the Daily News for any reason, not for the
sports, not for the number, not for any reason, from January to the end of
February, Black History Month. You'd think they get the message? They'd
feel something for sure. Boycotts, to be effective, require sure, very
specific targets. In face of that racebaiting, I present herewith the NY
Daily News.

We stand with the City College students and we honor Assata
and Guillermo for their enormous courage and commitment. The BLA and the
FALN were both continuations of our legendary Underground Railroads. They
did what they were supposed to do. The fact that Assata and Guillermo
survived such extreme violent government obsessions with having them wiped
off the face of the earth is miraculous in a divinely inspiring way.
Sip on that, family, as we ponder on what's important in this season
centered around the
miraculous birth of that enormous, timesplitting dredlocked-draped
revolutionary ancestor Christ.

Long live Assata! Long live Guillermo!
Justice for Sean Bell.By Any Means Necessary!
Shut'em down!
Black Power!

Bro. Zayid Muhammad,
New Black Panther Party