fully teac with regards to the political situation i will be in beirut in the next few days to take part in the celebration of our independence and i'll express opinions on all subjects once i've made president. doctors in east and in syria say the besieged area is on the brink of a humanitarian disaster they say people will die if they're not immediately allowed to leave four hundred thousand syrians live in the damascus suburb which has been under attack by government forces for the past four years in that time only limited food aid and medical supplies have been allowed in cameras for survivors of sierra leone's deadly mudslide in august are being shut down leaving many homeless the government wants to move people to one thousand new homes that it's built but construction is not complete many say they are yet to receive compensation and other help promised by the government and also research plane has joined the search

for a missing argentine submarine which has been missing since wednesday the vessel and its forty one crew was returning to its base model platter just south of one is varies from a routine mission to the southernmost tip of south america those weather headlines stay with us on al-jazeera next up its fall. my artwork has always been about my family about the magic that is. a black american family surviving in america.

and to have. this f.b.i. file that was basically attacking all of those things i knew it would work its way into my artwork. despite the fact that my dad had turned in vietnam despite the fact that he was taking care of family and just a regular citizen of this information is being collected because he's considered an enemy by his own government. in the us there's a long history of government surveillance of black civil rights groups. who was supposed to engage in the nine hundred seventy s. . but today there is a similar threat to dance but lives might tell a movement fighting to and systemic violence against gun people. in this world lines reveal new details about surveillance about my smiter. family show how far

the government can go when its power is remain on track. the organizes in the bloodlines matzoh means meant the french of surveillance is a reminder of what happened to them alex generation. and it's just recently that people have been able to see the extended family trying. to come to oakland california to better understand this is strange. and we start with the story of an artist and her father. when i was twelve years old i saw

a picture and one of the black newspapers i think was called the pittsburgh courier and it was a picture of a black man being lynched and bert and white people celebrating and cut and body parts and at that point i asked god as to what we do or what kind of people you know would do that so the sense of really i knew that something was wrong. and the exhibition the two photographs that are next to each other one of my dad in his military uniform. she's just been drafted he's going to be sent to vietnam. grew up in a segregated united states. he was drafted to go to vietnam at the age of twenty one and returned a year later we did in the line of duty in a photograph next to it is after he's come back from the war he looks older

a little wiser he's seen some terrible things he's lost friends. worth watching on the news the police were conducting the same kind of operations that we did what. i was outraged to create. killing black people. black people so you have this whole generation of people that are coming back from the war and wondering you know what. why did i just almost die for a country that doesn't have a place for me. his answer about what he can do is to join the panther party. and this is right after the civil rights movement martin luther king was killed no . extension to what the civil rights movement trying to achieve. while the black panther party has often been projected as only an armed movement but he says the focus for most

of them was on community building. the panthers demanded an end to police brutality and equal rights to housing and employment. in l.a. we're organizing around churches and other organizations and trying to get. breakfast programs for children going to school but not me and the entire world would learn some years later was just how much that community organizing threaten the government. over famously said that the most dangerous element of the black panther party was the free breakfast program because he knew that that could really unify a community and draw attention to the needs that aren't being met. j. edgar hoover oversaw the u.s. federal bureau of investigation or the f.b.i. . and the nine hundred seventy two who has notoriously unconstitutional program

named cointelpro was exposed. this was a counter intelligence program that labeled almost leftist groups a terrorist threat. and targeted martin luther king jr antiwar activists and the black panthers among others. the goal of the program was destroy and discredit the groups that targeted. thousands of pages would show evidence of infiltration under such nations by the f.b.i. to achieve just that. rodney would be swept up in this mass surveillance. two years ago so his own f.b.i. file for the first time you get these files describe what it was like to read about yourself it was amazing they tried to build cases against me to try to say that i harbor. that i was going to receive their own

weapons anything that they could use to justify doing something further to me. there's one. where an informant is out to buy panther meeting and observes that my father is wearing his post office uniform tells the f.b.i. that my dad works at the post office the f.b.i. would use this information to go off to his job even when what these managers reported that he was a good work. so they terminated me for quite happening with a woman that i wasn't married to and they called it conduct unbecoming of a government employee so i was fired. sadie's was meant to pay homage to his father's generation. and to show up close how the government's program. meant i destroy life. one thing i hope that

people will take away from this work is really connecting family history with capital history you know that really is what was at stake like that's what the black panthers were fighting for was for their children to be able to grow up safely. to not be underfed under-served. to not be murdered by the police there's always been a percentage of black people that constantly fought against white supremacy and with white supremacy in reality and fighting against all these years and still play. i don't even think that i've had to work very hard in curating the viewing experiences for people to connect it to today. in politics and optics and today have done that for themselves but.

it is really this theory has shown us that this is what they do. and there's no reason to think that they're not doing the same thing now as they were before. in the last few years videos of police brutality have put the issue shocking back into focus. kartik american. life matter has been a direct response to the police killings on all black men and women around the u.s. . activists around the country began to feel various forms of intimidation and

aggression by doing foresman. us journalists revealed stories of f.b.i. knocking on add to the stores collecting social media information and arresting protesters for low level offenses. the reaction by authorities to people's demands for equal treatment even the familia. we heard stories of people being followed around grocery stores and being called by their social media as opposed to their actual name brandy coleen's change has been tracking allegations a surveillance for a few years cleveland on and on stories that sounded too similar to us for it to be accidental but what we saw is part of a continued larger court unaided effort similar to what we saw in the sixty's and seventy's. how can i say she filed a freedom of information act or for her request to obtain federal surveillance

records from august twenty fourth teen to june twenty sixth. but they ultimately had to sue and have been in court for almost a year. so the counterintelligence program that allegedly has been dismantled by the government felt pretty clear that some form of that was continuing to occur right now while they may be checked out by government agents it's the mr black lives really has a merge and black lives matters has emerged as this powerful movement beyond a hash tag and i think that was you know a threat to the powers that be in a threat to harm. the out of what's not to spontaneously in late twenty fourteen a protest around the shooting of michael brown. lead into cities across the u.s. where other black madam women were been killed by police were out a little girl really oh my god oh. my god

freddy franklin and the miami heat women being killed by police every day as it. is simple hash tag became a rallying cry. that lives. on the movements of the ice became a coalition of groups nineteen fifty two treatment. and. it's a movement the stars from one point the simple request to stop telling. the simple idea that black folks should be entitled to a certain amount of dignity and rights and should be able to walk outside their house and not fear being gunned down by police officers for any number of reasons and this movement is about reclaiming what it means to exist in dignity and how to

have a real conversation around what police have met in our community is from the beginning a police state. was. the cause for justice ruth operated around the us. in new york city thousands of people protested when the officers who killed michael brown and eric bana face no indictments. stuff from the. organizers began to feel until bush. several found freedom of information requests with the new york police department to obtain surveillance freckles related to black life manta. with the n.y.p.d. refused to turn over information organize a suit anything that the courts could force a nervy always something that we think can only benefit the movement and us who has saying i'm vienna rai plaintiffs in a lawsuit represented by the american civil liberties union. electronic

surveillance by the n.y.p.d. l c u a being watched by frankly don't expect the n.y.p.d. to be transparent with us and tell us their tactics against us they suspect certain technology has been used to disrupt and intimidate them and powering off and then economy can acclaims that phones might be a target and a large like the flow for shut them up will try this is probably the eighth time it's been shut down tonight. and fifty four percent battery there's no problem with the phone. the n.y.p.d. has used technology called sting right in the past it's used to sweep up people so funny information but have attention to disrupt the phone as well and you start to realize also like how important the phone is right in terms of being able to fill in the police if they were to do something are being able to call friend if they were to do something there's been some reports from across the country as well without feeling that there's only the new york city so we requested that

information begin stephen another local organizer. it's part of a lawsuit to force the n.y.p.d. to release text communications from on the cover the police found out that there were numerous undercover officers organizes police with these undercover her and in which right at the going to collect information. these are private sex lives that were not public sex lives and this undercover had access to them so it would and they kept that they were one of a very core member of organizers i pointed out to the court that what the n.y.p.d. is doing when they surveil black last matter is part of a long history of law enforcement organizations usually in political conduct to try to subvert and for what they perceive as political enemies day thompson is representing some of the organizes against the n.y.p.d. the greater goal behind all this is to cover up the extent of their political use of their police powers to oppose black lives matter. because when they

undertake surveillance of black lives matter this is not law enforcement activity likewise matters not breaking laws. in the case of vienna and the bill the department invoked defense called globe. often use for national security threats where they were neither nor deny they have any information. this strong response race is the suspicions of piano the bill and then lois. the n.y.p.d. we fused an interview request before nine. how do you see the two situations two different sets of law suits looking at surveillance how do you see the thing connecting the causes factions within the movement right so there's many different ways that surveillance can manifest so paranoia internal conflicts about when it does become the mobile i think i mean i think either technological surveillance or

human surveillance they're just different methods right like the. the point is the same either way which is to prevent organizing from happening or from being effective. when we think of the police as kind of an mean traill enforcer of the law we understand that police should only undertake investigations where there's evidence of criminal wong doing alex my time is a professor who can call each has research political policing. but the history of political policing is a history of the surveillance of individuals and organizations based on their political beliefs not on their criminal behavior. in late october we learned the color of change had a batch of documents they would share with us related to f.b.i. surveillance of black lives matter. it's no small thing to conflate protest to hold

the police accountable for gunning down an arm to black people with a threat that has to be policed in a proactive and preemptive way almost far out i think the center of the constitutional rights. is the lead attorney on this for you and. this is the first time the documents have been made public and he's saying anything anish me that. setting off alarm bells for you it's certainly confirms that otherwise protected first and i'm an activity that should really be celebrated is being looked at with a degree of suspicion that i think is reserved for black and brown communities and for other minority groups i'm up before you dig into it let's go brandi because he said to brandy recently and see what she says then she paid for any ice omar the first documents they pull up a set of entitle agency. starts off well explaining that there's a range of protected activity that falls within the first amendment and therefore

should not be monitored or surveilled but then says however based on known intelligence and or specific. historical observations as possible the protected first amendment activity might also invite violence that the f.b.i. has to to respond to this language would give the f.b.i. a way to conduct surveillance of black. based on a belief that violence could occur but says they will stop if it does not but at that point the damage has been done the surveillance is what chills people from interacting and mobilizing and raising what we think are just indispensable voices to hold the government accountable for these kinds of things randi i'm curious i would love to know more what are those historical observation because civil rights protected historically do not isolate and violent so what are they actually drawing from as hers will be in this narrative about violent reactions that they're presuming will happen i want us to look at another document again another chain of emails this document shows f.b.i.

notes from july twenty sixth the. gunman shot and killed five dallas police offices it happened during an anti police brutality rally but the sheet is believed to have acted alone and had no ties to black lives matter a term that strikes us as odd black supremacy extremist there's no definition in the docking of what exactly that means but that is one thing that's really caught our eye and that's been part of the subject that the brennan i've been talking about as we go forward in the case having a law saying the document raises more questions than it says but the brandy this term blurs the line between isolated incidents and the movement it's like trying to say that the older movement is on par with white nationalists then why did she miss going to that are actively calling for violence to say that back on the same level it's certainly the first time i saw black because of the extremely bad black and white in a document and i hear it popping up now i think it's very alarming. and

have recently f.b.i. memo. published by foreign policy the memo speaks of a so-called black identity extremist b i e movement in the us that is carrying out premeditated guidant attacks on middle enforcements. excess sections of police abuse feat this movement's ideology. mike german a former f.b.i. agent says the document cherry picks isolated file of incidents against police to fit under this umbrella ideology the creates the notion that there is this broader criminal activity that these isolated incidents are part of and that way they can justify fraud surveillance fraud investigations against anybody who is out there protesting who has a black identity or is protesting about issues that impact communities of

color. the f.b.i. declined to speak to us for this film but they told us they do not open investigations by solely on race national origin religion or the exercise of first amendment rights. yet the black identity extremist memo a state he just days before a gathering of white supremacy groups and charlottesville virginia in august twenty seven thousand. german says over the last few years he's seen white supremacists openly calling for violent at peace rallies. f.b.i. records show they commit more tax than any other group but police have not used it but these are people who are criminals who are going there to commit violence committing violence and then somehow being allowed to go to the next protest and violence again it's very shocking. i am.

living. for many in the movement. the black lives have been on the streets the police response to charlottesville has been a stark contrast to what they faced. images from the protests show the world neighborhood streets look like more sense when you have a movement like black lives matter or the other broader concerns about aggressive policing and over policing militaristically saying they're actually challenging the police they're challenging on force only. really so law enforcement sees that as a threat to what they're doing so they tend to view that kind of protest through a very different lands than white supremacists say who commits a lot of harm but who they attack is very different. so i think there is

a kind of war on cops mentality that has come to dominate a lot of policing circles clearly. was and so they see criticism of the police as being tied to some of these extreme events where someone has gone and shot police officers even though they have no connection to these movements. but. it's been over three years since the black life matter movement began. really on the steps of a.n.c. is only now coming to light. but organizers know enough to fill a lot. and we are going to a period where police are being trained have been trained to see black labs matters and if a black lives as a terrorist threat but i think that bats absolutely carrying out in terms of the level of surveillance that's happening in the information released so far last

session raises concerns that the one force meant may have political motives behind its surveillance and is undermining people's by. rights to hold the government accountable how do you feel being put in that category of surveillance alongside groups where people will say well these people are a danger to society to america there's no evidence and like i don't feel the need to refute it because there's never been any evidence presented that were a threat to the world but what we are a threat to is the power of the state. and when a new president in office has unleashed rhetoric that organizers say further demonizes the movement for black lives the stakes are quite high and. when we organize we have to organize out loud i don't mind. all the book imo our right. this isn't about creating more fear.

or freezing our desire to fight and win and live in our dignity. this is about understanding what the landscape looks like and what the world of surveillance is like and how police are watching us. you should know all of those things you shouldn't stop fighting to get free they went and then what's the point . there is no way. yes. elfie this is the opportunity to understand the very the french with where their

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