| Friend,
Breaking: This week the Center for Media Justice and the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program filed a lawsuit against the FBI — demanding the release of all documents pertaining to the wrongful surveillance of Black activists and Black-led movements under the designation known as “Black Identity Extremist” (BIE).1
Sign the petition: Demand that the FBI release all documents related to the “Black Identity Extremist” designation and dismantle its surveillance program targeting Black activists.
In 2017, a leaked intelligence report showed that after police killed Michael Brown, the FBI started identifying Black-led movements protesting police brutality as possible domestic terrorist threats. The report labeled activists participating in these movements as “Black Identity Extremists.”2
This dangerous classification is yet another attempt to group peaceful protesters with domestic terrorist threats. It's also a chilling reminder of the FBI’s targeting of Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil-rights activists under the COINTELPRO program in the 1950s and ’60s.
Since the report leaked, civil-rights groups have sounded the alarm against this problematic surveillance program and its dangerous impacts on a community that’s already overpoliced.
That’s why our friends at the Center for Media Justice (CMJ) filed a Freedom of Information Act request on the “Black Identity Extremist” program last year — asking the FBI to release all documents pertaining to the surveillance of Black activists under the BIE designation. But the FBI hasn’t responded to this request, which is why CMJ and the ACLU have now filed a lawsuit.
We need to keep the pressure on the FBI to release all documents related to the “Black Identity Extremist” designation and dismantle its surveillance program targeting Black activists. Join us.
The “Black Identity Extremist” designation is a fictitious phenomenon the FBI created to destabilize a movement for racial justice and Black liberation. It creates a way for law enforcement to collect data on, monitor and deploy informants to keep tabs on individuals and groups it believes are associated with the fight for racial justice.
We need to end this racist surveillance program: Demand the FBI release its BIE documents and stop targeting Black activists.
Thanks for all that you do,
Lucia, Sandy, Candace and the rest of the Free Press team
freepress.net
P.S. “Black Identity Extremist” is a term the FBI is using to single out Black people who are protesting police brutality and campaigning for racial justice. Demand that the FBI release all documents related to the “BIE” designation and dismantle this program.
1. “The ACLU and the Center for Media Justice Filed a Freedom of Information Act Lawsuit Seeking Records About FBI Targeting of Black Activists,” ACLU, March 21, 2019: https://act.freepress.net/go/30769?t=9&akid=12428%2E10296224%2Ec_qAuu 2. “FBI Terrorism Unit Says ‘Black Identity Extremists’ Pose a Violent Threat,” The Guardian, Oct. 6, 2017: https://act.freepress.net/go/22693?t=11&akid=12428%2E10296224%2Ec_qAuu  |
