Fred_Hampton

Because of the abdication of corporate media like the New York Times, Washington Post, ABC News and others, many people fear that the traditional role of the free press in the US to hold the power structure accountable is coming to an end. Additionally, the end of fact checking on the largest social media sites portends a future where the truth is undervalued.Elon Musk and the Heritage Foundation are attacking Wikipedia and even individual contributors. If you have the disk space, I encourage you to download the entire Wikipedia archive before the right wing destroys it.

One of the articles I'm afraid of losing to the fascists is about Fred Hampton, a 21-year old African-American organizer from Chicago who was assassinated in his bed by the Chicago Police Department, who fired more than 100 unanswered shots into the apartment where Hampton and other so called radicals were sleeping. The police were photographed grinning as they brought his bullet riddled body out to the street.

The raid was encouraged by J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director who feared that Hampton was so intelligent, so charismatic and such a natural leader that he was capable of organizing a multi-racial movement to overthrow the government of the United States. Remember, this was a 21-year old man. In a 1982 trial, Hampton's family sued the Chicago PD and the FBI. They won the equivalent of a multi-million dollar judgment. It was revealed during the trial from COINTELPRO documents and other sources that Hampton's death at the hands of the police department was a planned assassination at the urging of the FBI.

Fred Hampton considered fascism the greatest threat, saying "nothing is more important than stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all." This is as true in 2025 as it was in 1969. It was revealed this week that the first mass roundup of undocumented immigrants is scheduled to happen the day after Trump in inaugurated. The location is Chicago.

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