Rakem Balogun | |
|---|---|
| Born | Christopher Daniels |
| Nationality | American |
| Military career | |
| Allegiance |  United States |
| Service |  United States Marine Corps |
| Years of service | 2001 - 2004 |
| Battles / wars | Iraq War |
Rakem Balogun, whose legal name is Christopher Daniels, is an American activist, best known for his involvement in a Facebook-related incident that occurred on December 12, 2017, which became headline news in the United States.
Balogun enlisted as a US Marine in 2001 and served in the Iraq War in 2003. [1] [2] Balogun cites his time serving in the US Marine Corps as alienating due to the behaviour and racial attitudes of white officers, and left the Marine Corps 3 years into an 8-year contract on an "Other Than Honorable" discharge . [3] Balogun became a founding member of groups such as Guerrilla Mainframe in 2016 after a fallout with the Huey P. Newton Gun Club which he allegedly co-founded in 2014, both based in Dallas, Texas. Balogun cites the killing of unarmed black men by police officers as the motivation for creating these groups. [3] In 2016, Balogun distanced himself from the Huey P. Newton Gun Club, as he felt it had become too influenced by New Black Panther Party (also based in Dallas), which he identifies as being a Black Separatist organisation, something which clashed with his Socialist outlook. [3] However, during a 2019 interview on Klepper, Balogun is seen leading a demonstration including several participants in Huey P. Newton Gun Club paraphernalia. [4]
In November 2017, agents found out Balogun was in possession of a firearm, compelling a warrant for his arrest, because he was a prohibited person, due to a domestic violence conviction for assault against his ex-girlfriend. [5]
Balogun was startled awake in his Dallas home by a large crash and police officers screaming commands on December 12, 2017, when he and his 15-year-old son were forced outside of their Dallas home dressed only in their underwear. Balogun was handcuffed and learned FBI agents were investigating domestic terrorism and had been monitoring him for years for posts on Facebook criticizing police and praising Micah Johnson, the perpetrator of the 2016 shooting of Dallas police officers. Balogun's firearm violation as well as his posts were cited as grounds for Balogun's arrest. [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] According to Balogun he was exercising his right to free speech when he praised Johnson, [13] and was not endorsing violence against individual police officers, but a general struggle against the Dallas Police Department. [4]
The event made worldwide news due to Balogun being the first person to be publicly designated a "Black Identity Extremist" by the FBI, sparking a national debate on the appropriateness of that term. [14] In May 2018, Balogun had all charges dropped against him. [15]
COINTELPRO was a series of covert and illegal projects conducted between 1956 and 1971 by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting American political organizations that the FBI perceived as subversive. Groups and individuals targeted by the FBI included feminist organizations, the Communist Party USA, anti-Vietnam War organizers, activists in the civil rights and Black power movements, environmentalist and animal rights organizations, the American Indian Movement (AIM), Chicano and Mexican-American groups like the Brown Berets and the United Farm Workers, and independence movements. Although the program primarily focused on organizations that were part of the broader New Left, they also targeted white supremacist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan and the National States' Rights Party.
Robert George Seale is an American engineer, political activist and author. Seale is widely known for co-founding the Black Panther Party with fellow activist Huey P. Newton. Founded as the "Black Panther Party for Self-Defense", the Party's main practice was monitoring police activities and challenging police brutality in black communities, first in Oakland, California, and later in cities throughout the United States.
Leroy Eldridge Cleaver was an American writer and political activist who became an early leader of the Black Panther Party.
Huey Percy Newton was an African American revolutionary and political activist who founded the Black Panther Party. He ran the party as its first leader and crafted its ten-point manifesto with Bobby Seale in 1966.
Robert James Hutton, also known as "Lil' Bobby," was the treasurer and first recruit to join the Black Panther Party. Alongside Eldridge Cleaver and other Panthers, he was involved in a confrontation with Oakland police that wounded two officers. Hutton was killed by the police under disputed circumstances. Cleaver stated Hutton was shot while surrendering with his hands up, while police stated he ignored commands and tried to flee.
The New Black Panther Party (NBPP) is an American black nationalist organization founded in Dallas, Texas, in 1989. Despite its name, the NBPP is not an official successor to the Black Panther Party. Members of the original Black Panther Party have insisted that the new party has no legitimacy and "there is no new Black Panther Party".
The black power movement or black liberation movement emerged in mid-1960s from the civil rights movement in the United States, reacting against its moderate, mainstream, and incremental tendencies and representing the demand for more immediate action to counter American white supremacy. Many of its ideas were influenced by Malcolm X's criticism of Martin Luther King Jr.'s peaceful protest methods. The 1965 assassination of Malcolm X, coupled with the urban riots of 1964 and 1965, ignited the movement. While thinkers such as Robert F. Williams and Malcolm X influenced the early movement, the Black Panther Party's views are widely seen as the cornerstone. They were influenced by philosophies such as pan-Africanism, black nationalism, and socialism, as well as contemporary events including the Cuban Revolution and the decolonization of Africa.
Kathleen Neal Cleaver is an American law professor and activist, known for her involvement with the Black Power movement and the Black Panther Party, a political and revolutionary.
The Dallas Police Department, established in 1881, is the principal law enforcement agency serving the city of Dallas, Texas.
In the United States, a common definition of terrorism is the systematic or threatened use of violence in order to create a general climate of fear to intimidate a population or government and thereby effect political, religious, or ideological change. This article serves as a list and a compilation of acts of terrorism, attempts to commit acts of terrorism, and other such items which pertain to terrorist activities which are engaged in by non-state actors or spies who are acting in the interests of state actors or persons who are acting without the approval of foreign governments within the domestic borders of the United States.
The Black Panther Party was a Marxist–Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California. The party was active in the United States between 1966 and 1982, with chapters in many major American cities, including San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia. They were also active in many prisons and had international chapters in the United Kingdom and Algeria. Upon its inception, the party's core practice was its open carry patrols ("copwatching") designed to challenge the excessive force and misconduct of the Oakland Police Department. From 1969 onward, the party created social programs, including the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, education programs, and community health clinics. The Black Panther Party advocated for class struggle, claiming to represent the proletarian vanguard.
Mark Everett Comfort was a community activist who worked in early Oakland grassroots civil rights movements in the 1960s, before moving to Lowndes County, Alabama.
The 2015 Texas pool party incident, also known as the "McKinney pool party", was a civil disturbance that occurred on June 5, 2015, at a pool party in McKinney, Texas, United States.
The Huey P. Newton Gun Club is a group named after Black Panther Party co-founder and Minister of Defense Huey P. Newton.
Seize The Time: The Story of The Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton is a 1970 book by political activist Bobby Seale. It was recorded in San Francisco County Jail between November 1969 and March 1970, by Arthur Goldberg, a reporter for the San Francisco Bay Guardian. An advocacy book on the cause and principles of the Black Panther Party, Seize The Time is considered a staple in Black Power literature.
On July 7, 2016, Micah Xavier Johnson ambushed and shot police officers in Dallas, Texas, killing five, injuring nine others, and wounding two civilians. Johnson, a 25-year-old Army Reserve Afghan War veteran, was angry over white police shootings of black men. He shot the officers at the end of a protest against the recent killings by police of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota.
In the United States, Black Identity Extremists was a designation used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from August 2017 to July 2019. It first appeared in a counterterrorism report dated August 3, 2017 sent to thousands of American police departments and described safety concerns about allegedly violent African-American activists. The term was discontinued when the FBI merged several classifications under the umbrella term of “racially motivated violent extremism”.
The boogaloo movement, whose adherents are often referred to as boogaloo boys or boogaloo bois, is a loosely organized far-right anti-government extremist movement in the United States. It has also been described as a militia. Adherents say they are preparing for, or seek to incite, a second American Civil War or second American Revolution which they call "the boogaloo" or "the boog".
In late May and early June 2020, two ambush-style attacks occurred against security personnel and law enforcement officers in California. The attacks left two dead and injured three others.
Daniels enlisted in the Marine Corps in June 2001. Three months later, the World Trade Center towers fell. By 2003, he was in Ramadi, Iraq, serving in an artillery unit.