Avoid Positional Battles Organize The Masses Strategically (July 2020), by Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, MOD, NABPP (On behalf of the FLA UPM and NABPP/BPO branch)

For several weeks, in and around Tampa Florida, Black Lives Matter has been leading several protests.

At each event, fascist and white supremacist Trump supporters have determined the locations of the demonstrations ahead of time, and set up their own counter-demonstrations.

The result has been standoffs in the streets between the BLM led forces and the white reactionaries.

The cops have stood between these opposing forces. If experiences in dozens of other states are instructive, private unofficial police forces have intervened on the side of these fascist forces and targeted the more radical elements among the Black protesters for arbitrary arrest.

These arrests have been without any criminal charges being brought and the targeted individuals being held in jail for 72 hours.

Here in Florida, the cops have been doing the same thing, but going a step further, they’ve targeted leading and more revolutionary organizers with trumped up criminal charges to remove the leaders from these protests.

The reactionaries are coming out in greater numbers and more emboldened. The state has allowed them to attack protesters, even giving them clearance to use motor vehicles as weapons, stating that cars can plow into Black and Brown demonstrations under the pretext of defending themselves against perceived threats. Thus portraying demonstrations of people of color as inherently threatening.

The New Afrikan Black Panther Party, the Brown Panther Organization, and the United Panther Movement have determined that these protests have expressed no concrete political objectives, are drawing the masses into meaningless confrontations with reactionaries that serve only to demoralize the people without any material gain and placed them in harm’s way, and offers leaders and radical elements as targets for police to remove from the streets. We therefore denounce these protests as not in the interests of the people and do not support them. We call on leading organizers of these protests to apply a principled approach in choosing battles in which to involve the people and to not engage in positional contests that have no political purpose.

Dare to Struggle Dare to Win!
All Power to the People!