The enemy within: surveillance in our communities

Event published by Cage Prisoners

Event date: June 23, 2012 15:45

Tagged as: repression social_struggles

Hyde Park Picture House, 73 Brudenell Road, Leeds LS6 1JD

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Free film screening + panel

*COINTELPRO101* is a new hard-hitting new documentary which blows the lid off every undercover tactic and method ever used by the FBI ... and their bag of subversive practices has been exported to the UK. Find out how our very freedoms, liberties and rights are being eroded by the police and secret services on both sides of the Atlantic.

*COINTELPRO* (an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert and often illegal projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from the late 1950s through the 1970s, although many contest it ever ended. It was aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting and disrupting community groups fighting for racial, economic and social justice, most infamously through its attacks on the Black Panthers. *TODAY*, Muslims, people of colour, and activists in both the US and the UK, face similar tactics from the state.

*Join us to watch COINTELPRO101. After the film, we'll be joined by American and British activists working to protect their communities. *

*Panellists (vary by event):*
- *Claude Marks*, one of the filmmakers and a prison justice activist.
- *Monami Maulik*, Executive Director, & *Fahd Ahmed*, Legal & Policy Director, from *DRUM* (Desis Rising Up & Moving), a New York City-based organization of working-class South Asians which has been at the forefront of organizing to challenge the NYC Police Department, for its widespread and illegal surveillance of Muslim communities, use of informants and agent-provocateurs, and Islamaphobic training materials.
- *Ameena Qazi*, Deputy Executive Director and Staff Attorney, from *CAIR-LA* (the Council of American Relations - Los Angeles), which is filing a class-action lawsuit against the FBI for instructing an informant to collect information on hundreds and perhaps thousands of Muslims in Southern California.
- *Moazzam Begg*, Guantanamo Bay survivor and Director of Cageprisoners

- *Aviva Stahl*, US Researcher for Cageprisoners

- Local activists talking about undercover police in UK protest groups.

The event is free. Please register at http://www.cageprisoners.com.