Alexander Cockburn Quotes

There is an entire generation of young people who know nothing about how viciously the FBI attacked The Black Panther Party, and why.

The American people in general, and the black people in particular, must take careful note of the racist California legislature aimed at keeping black people disarmed and powerless Black people have begged, prayed, petitioned, demonstrated, and everything else to get the racist power structure of America to right the wrongs which have historically been perpetuated against black people. The time has come for black people to arm themselves against this terror before it is too late.

The FBI's Counter-Intelligence Program would work hand-in-hand with police departments, literally planning attacks on Black Panther Party offices throughout the United States of America. They did this over a period of time.

Racialized oppression and dehumanization is woven into the very fabric of our nation — the effects of which can be seen in the lawful lynching of black and brown people by the police, and the mass incarceration of black and brown lives in the prison industrial complex,

One of the things that makes me horrified about a Trump administration is the continued use of code words like 'law and order.'

We've begun to put fear into those whites who think they can do anything they want to a black person and get away with it.

By the time I was at college, I became very alert to the question of racial discrimination, and I remember one of my first writing attempts had to do with a lynching.

The injustices endured by black Americans at the hands of their own government have no parallel in our history, not only during the period of slavery but also in the Jim Crow era that followed.

Every institution where a number of the coloured races are, or can be drawn together, shall be broken up… If we destroy, or prevent the building of the nest, we shall not be liable to the incursions of the brood.

I am appalled and ashamed that things should have come to such a pass in this country that I am skeptical of the ability of black revolutionaries to achieve a fair trial anywhere in the United States.

We gathered for the purpose of neutralizing King as an effective Negro leader.

I didn’t give the arrests any publicity last night because … that didn’t look right to me…: All the Negroes beat up—and the only people we arrest are the people who beat up the FBI agents. There ought to be some more arrests and that ought to help the situation.

The intelligence agencies sometimes abuse people. The FBI abused Martin Luther King.

I think Black Lives Matter has some really thuggish elements in it. Look - at the risk of being incredibly politically incorrect, but I guess that's my job - I think that all lives matter. Not least black lives.

I've heard it said that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. To that end, I think it's worth noting that the very first police force in America was created as a 'patrol' to keep slave populations under control.

I think #BlackLivesMatter is a huge campaign that is important and integral to our advancement as a people.

I believe that Trayvon Martin's life might well have been spared if many of us who care about racial justice had raised our voices much, much sooner and much, much more loudly about the routine stereotyping and profiling of young black men and boys.

Freddie Gray was a story I followed closer than others, for whatever reason, in this larger narrative of police brutality.

At some point in time, we're going to have to stop addressing the kneeling, and we're going to have to start addressing what led Colin Kaepernick to kneel. That's the issue that nobody wants to talk about.

My personal history, along with the history of many black people in this country, is rife with trauma born out of anti-black policies aided and facilitated by presidents and their administrations.

The fact that we live in a world where black people have to strategize so they're not brutalized by police is insane.

I think police brutality has been going on since - I don't know - ever since I can remember and, you know, hearing about it in my childhood.

I am often asked what it is like to be on the 'front line.' But I do not use the term 'front line' to describe us, the protesters. Because everywhere in America, wherever we are, our blackness puts us in close proximity to police violence.

You know I think with Black Lives Matter, it is extremely special and important. I definitely feel that.

Black Lives Matter is the culmination of racial divide. They're nothing more than the last socially acceptable hate group in America.