Kuwasi in the Twent-First Century

Maroon: Kuwasi Balagoon and the Evolution of Revolutionary New Afrikan Anarchism

Akinyele Umoja

On October 20, 1981, Black revolutionaries and their white radical allies engaged in an attempted “expropriation” of a Brink’s armored truck in Rockland County, New York. That day Rockland police apprehended three white activists and one Black man. A manhunt ensued, and on January 20, 1982, Black revolutionary Kuwasi Balagoon was apprehended in New York City. The alliance of Black and white radicals captured were part of a radical formation called the Revolutionary Armed Task Force (RATF) under the leadership of the Black Liberation Army (BLA). Balagoon was the lone anarchist among the RATF defendants; others identified themselves as Muslims, revolutionary nationalists, and Marxist-Leninists. While Balagoon was closely aligned with and respected by his comrades in the BLA and RATF, his anarchist position set him apart ideologically.[1]

Informants told the U.S. government investigators that his BLA and RATF comrades called Balagoon “Maroon.” The term “Maroon” originates from enslaved Africans in the Western Hemisphere who escaped and formed rebel communities in remote areas away from slaveholding society. Balagoon earned this nickname due to his multiple escapes from incarceration. This article will explore how Balagoon was also an ideological and social “Maroon” in the context of the Black Liberation Movement and will examine his legacy in the contemporary struggle for self-determination and social justice.

From Donald Weems to Kuwasi Balagoon: The Development of a Revolutionary

Kuwasi Balagoon chronicles his early life and political development in the collective autobiography of New York Black Panther Party defendants titled Look for Me in the Whirlwind. He was born Donald Weems in the majority Black community of Lakeland in Prince George’s County, Maryland, on December 22, 1946. Early experiences prepared young Donald Weems to become an activist who would militantly resist white supremacy and unjust authority.[2]

He was also inspired by the militant movement led by Gloria Richardson in Cambridge in the Eastern Shore region of Maryland. Protests in Cambridge evolved into violence in 1963. Blacks organized sniper teams to defend nonviolent protesters from white supremacist violence. In June 1963, the National Guard was sent to Cambridge to quell the accelerating disturbance and was deployed there for a year. U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy and the Justice Department were forced to intervene and negotiate a “treaty” between Richardson and the white power structure. Nation of Islam national spokesman Malcolm X Shabazz would mention the Cambridge movement as an example of developing “Black revolution” in his legendary speech “Message to the Grassroots.” The militancy of the Cambridge Movement inspired and impressed the teenaged Weems.[3]

Weems joined the U.S. Army after graduating from high school and was stationed in Germany after basic training. Like most Blacks in the army, he experienced racism and physical attacks from white officers and enlisted men. Weems believed Black soldiers were unjustly and disproportionately punished after altercations with whites. Black soldiers formed a clandestine association called “Da Legislators,” in his words, “based on fucking up racists … because we were going to make and enforce new laws that were fair.” Donald prided himself in his ability to exact revenge on racist war soldiers. In London, he also connected with Africans and African descendants. He described the experience of socializing with African descendants from around the globe and other people of color in London as a “natural tonic,” which motivated him to ground himself in Black consciousness and culture. He stopped “processing” his hair, wore a more natural hairstyle, and also “became more committed to Black Liberation.” He was honorably discharged in 1967, after three years serving primarily in Germany.[4]

After his discharge and return home to Lakeland, Weems ultimately moved to New York City, where his sister Diane lived. In New York, he involved himself in rent strikes and was eventually hired as a tenant organizer for the Community Council on Housing (CCH). The principal leader and spokesman of the CCH was Harlem rent strike organizer Jesse Gray. Gray used the rhetoric of militant Black nationalism to recruit lieutenants for his activist campaigns. He once told a Harlem audience that he needed “one hundred Black revolutionaries ready to die.” Gray exhorted:

There is only one thing that can correct the situation and that’s guerrilla warfare …. [A]ll you Black people that have been in the armed services and know anything about guerrilla warfare should come to the aid of our people. If we must die, let us die scientifically![5]

“My father worked for the U.S. Printing Office, and my mom and Mary Day worked at Fort Meade, Maryland. Their love for my other sister Diane and for me, the only boy and the baby of the family—and the concept that you’ve got to work somewhere, and all-suffering determination—enabled them to rush to the job, and getting there, work and teach white folks how to do the type of work encountered, and then watch them climb the governmental ladder quickly, while they themselves rose slowly and painfully step by slow step. They did that for twenty-five years, so we could have food and clothes and goodies.” (From: Look for Me in the Whirlwind [PM Press, 2017])

Like many of his generation, Weems was ready to join an uncompromising movement for Black freedom and human rights. He joined Gray in protesting the conditions in New York housing, particularly the infestation of rats in public housing. In 1967, Gray, Weems, his sister Diane, and two other tenant activists were arrested for disorderly conduct in Washington, DC, where, unannounced and uninvited, they attended a session of Congress and brought a cage of rats to the assembly to highlight urban housing conditions. Due to the protests, the CCH lost its funding and Gray his ability to pay his organizers.

After Weems left CCH, he participated in the Central Harlem Committee for Self-Defense in solidarity with student protests at Columbia University. The Committee brought food and water to students who occupied buildings on the Columbia campus.

Weems would also associate himself with the Yoruba Temple in Harlem, organized by Nana Oserjiman Adefumi. The Detroit-born Adefumi was initiated in Cuba in the Lukumi rites of Yoruba origin. He saw the West African religious and cultural heritage as a means to cultural self-determination and peoplehood for African descendants in the United States. Explaining the nationalistic aims of the Yoruba Temple, Adefumi offered, “We must Africanize everything! Our names, our hats, our clothes, our clubs, our churches … etc., etc., etc.” Many of the youth of Weems’s generation rejected their “slave” names and adopted African or Arabic names. Through his association with the Yoruba temple, Weems was renamed. He would be Donald Weems no more, adopting an Ewe day name, “Kuwasi,” for a male born on Sunday, and the Yoruba name “Balagoon,” meaning “warlord.” He would later say that the name Kuwasi Balagoon “reflects what I am about and my origins.”[6]

Revolutionary Nationalism: Balagoon and the New York Black Panther Party

While Balagoon found his cultural bearing in the Yoruba Temple, he was attracted to the Black Power politics of revolutionary Black nationalism. The revolutionary Black nationalism of the Black Power movement was a political expression that argued that Black liberation would not be possible without the overthrow of the U.S. constitutional order and capitalist economic system. Revolutionary Black nationalism represented a confluence of ideological influences on the Black freedom movement. Significant numbers of Black militants of the 1960s Black Power movement did not see classical Marxism-Leninism as a framework they could identify with. Many were inspired by the influence of Marxism in the Chinese and Cuban Revolutions and other national liberation movements in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, but were critical of the racism of the Old Left and sought a theoretical vehicle and self-definition that gave them ideological self-determination. A significant number of Black youth identified with the direct action of the Civil Rights Movement but were not committed to nonviolence as a way of life. Some Black radicals also identified with Black nationalism and rejected the integration and pro-assimilationist tendencies within the Civil Rights Movement. Young Black Power militants also sought a more insurgent political program than they observed from the Nation of Islam and fundamental Black nationalists. As a new ideological development in the Black freedom movement, the Revolutionary Black nationalism of the Black Power movement incorporated the Marxian critique of capitalism, the historic tradition of Black nationalism and self-determination, and the direct action approach that characterized the Civil Rights Movement.[7]

In his own words, Balagoon “became a revolutionary and accepted the doctrine of nationalism as a response to the genocide practiced by the United States government.” He began to read literature like the Autobiography of Malcolm X, Robert F. Williams’s book Negroes with Guns, and the newsletter The Crusader. SNCC leader and Black Power movement spokesman H. Rap Brown also inspired Balagoon. Brown was elevated to spokesman of SNCC in 1967. He became one of the most recognized voices of the Black Power movement and the rebellion of urban communities of the late 1960s. Balagoon also came to embrace the position that Black liberation would only come through “protracted guerrilla warfare.”[8]

Balagoon would actualize his revolutionary nationalist politics as a member of the Black Panther Party. Originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP) had distinguished itself in Oakland, California, by its armed patrols to monitor police abuse and its armed demonstration at the California State Legislature in Sacramento on May 2, 1967. Balagoon first heard of the BPP after the October 28, 1967, shootout between BPP founder Huey Newton and one of his comrades and members of the Oakland Police Department. The shooting left Officer John Frey fatally wounded and Newton and Officer Herbert Heanes injured; Newton’s companion fled the scene. Newton became a national hero to urban Black youth after the shootout. While Newton was wounded in the exchange, the thought that a militant Black Power activist actually survived a gun battle with white police automatically propelled him to legendary heights. After he was charged with Frey’s murder, the defense of Newton and the call to “Free Huey” became a popular cause in Black Power and left circles.[9]

The BPP came to New York in the summer of 1968. An alliance between the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) had attempted to create a Black Panther Party in New York in June 1966, but this grouping became dysfunctional due to internal conflict.[10] The Oakland-based Black Panther Party for Self-Defense became a national organization after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968. The organization grew from a regional organization with chapters in the California Bay Area, Los Angeles, and Seattle to a national movement with thousands of members and supporters throughout the United States. Building a chapter in New York was one of the most important events of this development. The same month as Dr. King’s assassination, national BPP Central Committee members Bobby Seale and Kathleen Cleaver came to New York and appointed eighteen-year-old SNCC member Joudon Ford as acting captain of defense of the BPP on the East Coast. Ford was soon joined by forty-year-old David Brothers to found the New York chapter of the BPP in Brooklyn in the summer of 1968. The national leadership sent Ron Pennywell, a trusted member of its cadre, to give direction to the New York chapter. Pennywell had reached the rank of captain in the BPP ranks. Pennywell was described as “a very grass-root brother, who would always ask the cadre for suggestions.”[11]

Lumumba Shakur would found the Harlem branch of the New York chapter. Shakur was the son of a Malcolm X Shabazz associate Saladin Shakur. The elder Shakur also served as a mentor and surrogate father for many members of the New York BPP chapter. Lumumba Shakur and his friend Sekou Odinga traveled to Oakland in 1968 to learn about the BPP. Shakur and Odinga met in prison in the early 1960s and embraced Islam and revolutionary nationalism through the teachings of Malcolm X and under the tutelage of Saladin Shakur, a member of Shabazz’s Muslim Mosque Incorporated and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. After the assassination of Malcolm X, both young men attempted to find a revolutionary organization to replace the fledgling Organization of Afro-American Unity. They returned to meet Pennywell and Brothers in April 1968. Shakur was the section leader of Harlem, and Odinga was assigned to organize the Bronx with Bilal Sunni-Ali, who had introduced them to Pennywell. The New York chapter of the BPP would grow to be among the largest, if not the largest, in the organization, with approximately five hundred members.[12]

When Balagoon found out the BPP was organizing in New York, he located the organization and ultimately joined. He had affinity with the BPP’s ten-point program, which he believed was “community based.” He also identified with the organization’s appropriation of Mao Zedong’s axiom that political power “comes from the barrel of a gun.”[13] The assertion of the necessity of armed struggle was not the only principle the BPP borrowed from Mao. Mao and the Chinese Revolution profoundly influenced the BPP, as it did other radical movements of the 1960s. The Chinese Communist Party and its Leninist model of democratic centralism was the model of organization for the BPP. The BPP’s National Central Committee (NCC) was the highest decision-making body of the organization. The first NCC was concentrated in Oakland, with the overwhelming majority of the body composed of associates of BPP founder Huey Newton.[14] The BPP also functioned as a paramilitary organization, with Newton, as Minister of Defense, being the principal leader and with military positions (e.g., Captain, Field Marshal, etc.) integrated into the organization’s chain of command. The BPP system and style of governance would become a factor in Balagoon’s attraction to antiauthoritarian politics.

Balagoon was able to engage in militant, grassroots organizing, combined with revolutionary ideology, as a member of the BPP in Harlem. In the Party he found comrades ready to participate in working with poor and oppressed Black communities around basic issues and willing to challenge the system with insurgent action. The New York City BPP engaged in grassroots organizing. In September 1968, BPP members participated in a community takeover of Lincoln Hospital. Lincoln was a “dilapidated and disinvested public hospital in the [predominately Black and Latino] South Bronx.” The BPP would ultimately align itself with the Puerto Rican Young Lords and the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Africa to take over and reform the Detox Program at Lincoln Hospital.[15] New York Panther branches were also involved in tenant organizing and in fights for community control of the school system and of the police. BPP leaders, along with the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, Center for Constitutional Rights, and the National Lawyers Guild, filed a lawsuit calling for decentralization of the police in October 1968.[16] While Balagoon’s previous experience as a tenant organizer helped him become a key member of the organization, he was attracted to the military wing of the BPP.

Repression and BPP Internal Contradictions: Catalyst Towards Antiauthoritarianism

Balagoon and New York BPP member Richard Harris were arrested in February 1969 on bank robbery charges in Newark, New Jersey. On April 2, 1969, less than one year after the founding of the New York chapter of the BPP, twenty-one Panther leaders and organizers (including Balagoon and Harris) were indicted, twelve arrested on conspiracy charges in a thirty-count indictment. This case became known as the case of the New York Panther 21. The charges included conspiracy to bomb the New York Botanical Gardens and police stations and to assassinate police officers. After their arrest, most of the defendants were released on a hundred thousand dollars bail. Balagoon was held without bail.[17]

A central charge in the indictment was the accusation that on January 17, 1969, Balagoon and Odinga planned to ambush New York police but were interrupted by other officers coming on the scene. This charge was based on testimony from a nineteen-year-old BPP member Joan Bird, who, defense attorneys argued, had been beaten by police to elicit a statement to favor the prosecution. Bird’s mother reported arriving at the police station and hearing her daughter screaming. She was startled when she was taken to her daughter, who had visibly been beaten, with a black eye, swollen lip, and bruises on her face.[18]

Odinga escaped police and went underground on the day he was charged, after hearing of Bird’s arrest and alleged torture. He escaped arrest on April 2, when his comrades were apprehended, fled the United States, and eventually received political asylum in Algeria. Balagoon was severed from the case of thirteen of those who had been arrested originally, to face charges in New Jersey. After over two years behind bars, the thirteen defendants were acquitted of all charges. It only took the jury one hour of deliberation to acquit. While this was a significant legal victory, the incarceration of key organizers and leaders of the New York BPP significantly crippled the organization’s momentum and activities. After the acquittal of most of his comrades, Balagoon pleaded guilty to the charge that he and an unidentified person did attempt to shoot police officers, making him the only one of the twenty-one original defendants to be convicted. If these charges were true, Balagoon had committed himself to participate in offensive guerrilla warfare as early as 1969.[19]

The BPP national leadership’s handling of the New York Panther 21 case played a significant role in the transition of Balagoon from revolutionary nationalism and democratic centralism to antiauthoritarian politics. The members of the New York BPP, including the defendants in the Panther 21 conspiracy trial, became disenchanted with the national leadership in Oakland. Division between the Oakland-based national leadership and the New York chapter increased after the purge of Geronimo Pratt by the national leadership. Pratt, a U.S. Army veteran who served as an Army Ranger in Vietnam, distinguished himself by training BPP members and other Black liberation forces in paramilitary tactics. He went underground to develop a clandestine apparatus but was captured in Dallas, Texas, on December 8, 1970. On January 23, 1971, Huey Newton, the BPP Minister of Defense, expelled Pratt from the organization for “counterrevolutionary behavior.” Newton’s expulsion of Pratt created confusion within the ranks of the organization. Many BPP rank-and-file members considered Pratt a hero, and he was well-respected in the New York chapter.[20]

The expulsion of Pratt is connected to a series of expulsions by the national leadership of BPP members engaged in armed struggle. The initial orientation of the BPP encouraged the development of an armed underground capacity to wage guerrilla warfare. Combined with the image of armed Panthers patrolling against the police, many Blacks who believed in armed confrontation with the state were attracted to the BPP. The New York BPP had developed an armed clandestine capacity from its inception. One police officer reported at a congressional hearing: “Members of the Panthers are not secret, with the exception of those who have been designated ‘underground.’ This group are secret revolutionaries and their identities are kept secret.” New York police and the FBI suspected the BPP in an August 2, 1968, shooting of two police officers in Brooklyn and an attempted bombing of a New York City police station on November 2, 1968.[21]

Tensions also developed when the BPP national leadership sent Oakland cadres Robert Bey and Thomas Jolly to New York to assume leadership of the chapter. Years later, Balagoon publicly criticized the decision to import a new leadership group to New York, as opposed to promoting indigenous leadership from the local community. He saw this as critical to destabilizing the revolutionary vitality of the organization. Other New York BPP members shared Balagoon’s criticism of the NCC appointment of supervisory leadership over Panther activity in New York and on the East Coast. Unlike Pennywell, the newly imported leadership possessed a more autocratic and hierarchical style of decision-making. In her autobiography, Assata Shakur questioned the quality of some of the West Coast leaders sent to New York. Shakur noted:

We [New York BPP members] had a bit of a leadership problem with Robert Bey and Jolly who were both from the West Coast. Bey’s problem was that he was none too bright and that he had an aggressive, even belligerent, way of talking and dealing with people. Jolly’s problem was that he was Robert Bey’s shadow.[22]

Members of the Harlem BPP branch, along with historian Kit Holder, argued the “lack of indigenous leadership on the local level was one of the major contributing factors to the initial differences of opinions and misunderstandings” between the national leadership and the New York chapter.[23] Holder argued these factors “inhibited the growth of the Party.” One of the factors Holder identified was “cultural nationalism.”

Due to conflict with elements of the Black Arts Movement in the Bay Area and the US Organization in Los Angeles, the California-based BPP developed an aversion to African Americans who identified with African culture. The New York group, on the other hand, embraced African and Arabic names (e.g., Kuwasi, Afeni, Assata, Lumumba, Dhoruba, Zayd, etc.) and African clothing. Some were Muslims or influenced by African traditional religion. Holder reports that the national leadership barred New York BPP members from participating in nationalist-oriented community events or displaying the red, black, and green flag that originated in the Pan-African nationalist Universal Negro Improvement Association (aka the Garvey movement). The decision by nationally appointed leadership to take emphasis away from the local activism of the New York BPP around tenant issues and reassign cadre to “serve the people” programs that were popular on the West Coast was also resented by New York cadre.[24]

The incarcerated members of the New York BPP conspiracy case also believed the national leadership did not provide sufficient financial support for their legal defense. Balagoon would comment on how the national leadership selectively determined who would be released on bail. He stated: “Those who were bailed out were chosen by the leadership, regardless of the wishes of the rank-and-file or fellow prisoners of war or regardless of the relatively low bail of at least one proven comrade.” It must also be noted that the U.S. government, particularly the FBI through its Cointelpro program, worked to increase the division within the national leadership of the BPP, the New York chapter, and the New York Panther 21 defendants.[25]

After a series of attempts to send criticisms of the national leadership to the Black Panther newspaper, New York Panther 21 defendants publicly took what was interpreted as a critical position on the BPP national leadership in an open letter to the Weather Underground published on January 19, 1971. The Weather Underground was a clandestine organization of white radical anti-imperialists who initiated a campaign of armed propaganda by bombing U.S. government facilities in solidarity with national liberation movements, particularly in Vietnam. The open letter applauded the insurgent actions of the Weather Underground and acknowledged them as part of the vanguard of the revolutionary movement in the United States. Without naming the BPP national leadership, the statement of the incarcerated New York Panthers also critiqued “self-proclaimed ‘vanguard’ parties” that abandoned the actions of the radical underground struggle and the political prisoners.[26] Balagoon agreed with this criticism of the national leadership of the BPP.

Under their leadership, “political consequences” (attacks) against occupation forces [police] ceased altogether. Only a fraction of the money collected for the purpose of bail went towards bail. The leaders began to live high off the hog … leaving behind so many robots [in the rank and file] who wouldn’t challenge policy until those in jail publicly denounced the leadership.[27]

The differences between the national leadership and the New York BPP accelerated after the publication of the New York Panther 21 open letter. Newton immediately expelled the Panther 21 on February 9, 1971. The cover of the February 13 Black Panther newspaper would declare New York BPP leaders and New York Panther 21 defendants Richard Dhoruba Moore, Cetawayo Tabor, and Newton’s personal secretary Connie Matthews “Enemies of the People.” Moore and Tabor, out on bail, went underground rather than return to court proceedings. They would ultimately surface in Algeria at the BPP international section. Later that month, members of the New York BPP would hold a press conference and call for the purge of Huey Newton and BPP Chief of Staff David Hilliard and the formation of a new National Central Committee. The New York chapter officially split from the national organization.[28]

Balagoon’s involvement in the New York BPP was an important part of his political development. On the one hand, he was inspired to be a part of a dynamic revolutionary movement with comrades that he respected, loved, and trusted. On the other, Balagoon’s experience with the BPP national leadership left him questioning its decision-making and the nature of democracy in the organization. While acknowledging that state repression disrupted this revolutionary nationalist organization, Balagoon wanted to correct the internal and ideological weaknesses that compromised the fighting capacity and solidarity of the liberation movement.

Besides his disenchantment with the BPP national leadership, Balagoon’s receptivity to antiauthoritarian politics was also supported by his role in organizing fellow inmates as a Panther political prisoner. His comrade Kazembe Balagun argues that Kuwasi’s experience in prison awaiting trial influenced his transition to anarchism. The New York Panther 21 were incarcerated at a variety of jails in different boroughs of New York City. Kit Holder called a series of inmate protests at each of these institutions in 1970 a “coordinated rebellion.” Balagoon, Lumumba Shakur, and New York Panther 21 defendant Kwando Kinshasa were all incarcerated in the Queens House of Detention, where inmates organized an uprising that took seven hostages, including a captain, five correctional officers, and a Black cook, holding them from October 1 to 5, 1970. The slogan for the multiethnic (Black, Latino, and white) inmate takeover was “all power to the people, free all oppressed people.” The primary demand of the inmates was for speedier trials. Instead of attempting to play a “vanguard” role in the decision-making, Kazembe Balagun argued, even before formally declaring his commitment to anti-authoritarian politics, Kuwasi Balagoon’s “primary concern was a consensus process for all inmates in decision-making, including access to food being brought from the outside.” He and the other incarcerated Panthers in Queens were concerned that the weight of the Panther leadership was too influential on the general consensus of other prisoners, so Kuwasi and his comrades skipped general meetings to allow prisoners to “determine what was true and what was bullshit.” The Panthers also promised to go with the majority.

The prisoners formed committees to coordinate their uprising. The inmates agreed to release the Black cook and one prison guard as a “sign of good faith.” The prisoners ultimately released all of the hostages and suffered physical abuse and charges from the uprising. Kazembe Balagun argues that while Kuwasi was disappointed at the outcome, he believed the power the inmate resisters felt by “holding the state at bay” was a valuable experience. As an organizer, he saw the uprising as “‘growing pains’ to those of us who believe oppressed people will rise up and seek justice.”[29]

From Black Panther Party to Black Liberation Army

Balagoon’s experience in the BPP and the repression of the New York chapter also convinced him of the necessity of being involved in a clandestine fight against the state. He concluded that repression turned the BPP away from grassroots organizing the Black masses around issues that most affected their daily survival (housing, education, and police abuse) to defending the political prisoners. Balagoon stated:

The state rounded up all the organizers pointed out to it by its agents who infiltrated the party as soon as it had been organizing in New York. It charged these people with conspiracy and demanded bails so high that the party turned away from its purpose of liberation of the Black colony to fundraising [for legal defense].

This experience convinced him that “to survive and contribute I would have to go underground and literally fight.”[30] Balagoon was committed to building a Black Liberation Army and saw his role in the Black Liberation Movement as a clandestine freedom fighter.

On September 27, 1973, Balagoon would escape from New Jersey’s Rahway State Prison shortly after his conviction for armed robbery in New Jersey. Approximately eight months after his escape, on May 5, 1974, Balagoon was captured attempting to assist New York BPP member and New York Panther 21 defendant Richard Harris escape from custody while being transported to a funeral in Newark. Balagoon and Harris were apprehended after being wounded in a gun battle with correctional and police officers. Risking being recaptured to free Harris demonstrated Balagoon’s commitment to his comrades and willingness to sacrifice for the liberation struggle.[31]

New Afrikan Anarchism

Balagoon’s imprisonment and expulsion from and disillusionment with the BPP did not discourage his involvement or commitment to revolution. He began to explore anarchist politics during his incarceration. Balagoon received and studied literature from solidarity groups such as Anarchist Black Cross, an antiauthoritarian organization that provided material and legal support to political prisoners. Anarchism provided an analytical lens to sum up his critique of his experience in the BPP. According to Balagun, he worked to “apply the theories of Wilhelm Reich, Emma Goldman and others to the Black liberation struggle.” He began to ask critical questions about the practice of his comrades and himself in allowing the national hierarchy to weaken the resolve and fighting capacity of the BPP. He concluded:

The cadre accepted their command regardless of what their intellect had or had not made clear to them. The true democratic process which they were willing to die for, for the sake of their children, they would not claim for themselves.[32]

He desired a democratic process that would unleash the revolutionary potential of the masses and not make them prey to new oppressors.

It is to say the only way to make a dictatorship of the proletariat is to elevate everyone to being proletariat and deflate all the advantages of power that translate into the wills of a few dictating to the majority …. Only an anarchist revolution has on its agenda to deal with these goals.[33]

Balagoon clearly believed that true Black liberation could only be achieved through anarchism.

While incarcerated he read and identified with certain radical anarchists, particularly those men and women of action advocating insurrection against the oppressive order and the necessity and right of the oppressed to expropriate resources from their oppressors. One of his inspirations was Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta, who exhorted that revolutionary struggle “consists more of deeds than words.” Another influence was Spanish revolutionary José Buenaventura Durruti Dumange, who organized the anarchist guerrilla movement Los Justicieros (The Avenging Ones ). Like their name, Los Justicieros were thought to be involved in political assassinations in retaliation for political repression and guerrilla raids on the military forces of the Spanish dictatorship. Balagoon was also motivated by the example of Italian exile Severino Di Giovanni, known for his campaign of bombing as armed propaganda in solidarity with executed anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. Durutti and Giovanni both engaged in expropriation of capitalist institutions as a mean of supporting the revolutionary movement.[34]

Another ideological influence on Balagoon was Russian immigrant and pioneer of American anarchism Emma Goldman. Another advocate of revolutionary armed struggle, Goldman supported the attempt by her comrade Alexander Berkman to assassinate a wealthy industrialist, Henry Clay Frick. The methods used by Frick to suppress the Homestead Steel strike in Pennsylvania “justified the means.” Goldman’s encouragement of “free love” also resonated with Balagoon, as he was open to sexual relationships with both men and women.[35]

Balagoon continued to believe the original BPP position that Black people were an internal colony of the United States and interpreted the Black liberation struggle as a national liberation movement. Like other BLA members, he also began to identify with the New Afrikan Independence Movement. The Provisional Government of the Republic of New Africa (PGRNA) viewed Black people as a “subjugated nation” within the USA. The PGRNA was founded in March 1968 at a conference of five hundred Black nationalists who declared their independence from the United States and demanded five states in the Deep South (South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana) as reparations for the enslavement and racial oppression of Blacks. “New Afrika” was declared the name of the new nation and the five states as its national territory. Some New York BPP members developed a political relationship with the PGRNA from its inception. Kamau Sadiki (aka Freddie Hilton) of the Queens BPP branch remembers PGRNA member Mutulu Shakur facilitating political education sessions for him and other BPP members. Corona (in the borough of Queens) BPP branch leader Cyril Innis remembers taking the oath of allegiance to the New Afrikan nation in 1969, when the PGRNA and BPP collaborated around struggles for community control of education in New York’s public schools.[36]

Like many of the New York BPP and BLA comrades, Balagoon began to ideologically unite with the political objective of the PGRNA for independence and adopted “New Afrikan” as his national identity. Balagoon believed that:

We say the U.S. has no right to confine New Afrikan people to redlined reservations and that We have a right to live on our own terms on a common land area and to govern ourselves, free of occupation forces such as the police, national guard, or GIs that have invaded our colonies from time to time. We have a right to control our own economy, print our own money, trade with other nations …. We have a right to control our educational institutions and systems where our children will not be indoctrinated by aliens to suffer the destructive designs of the U.S. government.

His position for Black self-determination was also combined with an anti-capitalist perspective. Balagoon proposed that New Afrikans would

enter a workforce where We are not excluded by design and where our wages and the wages of all workers cannot be manipulated by a ruling class that controls the wealth.

The New Afrikan Independence Movement was consistent with Balagoon’s belief in the necessity of national liberation of the colonized Black nation. He identified himself as a New Afrikan anarchist to express his national identity, aspiration for self-determination, and desire for whatever type of society he wished to inhabit.

Balagoon’s identity as a New Afrikan anarchist set him ideologically apart from Black Marxist-Leninists and revolutionary nationalists who had the objective of seizing state power from the white power structure of U.S. capitalism and imperialism. But he still desired a land for Black people to achieve self-determination and space to build a society based on antiauthoritarianism and freedom. His continued support for New Afrikan politics also distinguished him from the majority of the anarchist movement in the United States, many of whom opposed any form of nationalism.

Balagoon would share his New Afrikan anarchist viewpoint and ideologically struggle with Marxist-Leninist and revolutionary nationalist political prisoners incarcerated with him. He recruited soldiers for the BLA, as well as converts to antiauthoritarian and New Afrikan politics. In Trenton State Prison, in New Jersey, his fellow New York Panther 21 defendant Sundiata Acoli and BLA members James York and Andaliwa Clark formed a political study group inside the penitentiary.[37]

Political education behind bars became a vehicle for recruitment into the BLA. Clark and Kojo Bomani were both inmates who had been politicized by Balagoon and other political prisoners after being incarcerated and recruited into the BLA.[38] Bomani was released in 1975 and arrested in December of the same year in a failed BLA expropriation of a financial institution. A BLA member captured with Bomani was Ojore Lutalo. Lutalo provides testimony concerning Balagoon’s influence on his transition from Marxism-Leninism to antiauthoritarian thinking:

In 1975 I became disillusioned with Marxism and became an anarchist (thanks to Kuwasi Balagoon) due to the inactiveness and ineffectiveness of Marxism in our communities along with repressive bureaucracy that comes with Marxism. People aren’t going to commit themselves to a life-and-death struggle just because of grand ideas someone might have floating around in their heads. I feel people will commit themselves to a struggle if they can see progress being made similar to the progress of anarchist collectives in Spain during the era of the fascist Bahamonde.[39]

Like his teacher and comrade, Lutalo identified himself as a “New Afrikan/Anarchist Prisoner of War.”

A New Afrikan Freedom Fighter: Balagoon and the Revolutionary Armed Task Force

Balagoon would again escape from Rahway State Prison in New Jersey on May 27, 1978. He would rejoin a clandestine network of BLA soldiers in alliance with white radicals in solidarity with the Black Liberation Movement and other national liberation struggles. This ideologically diverse network of insurgent militants was known as the Revolutionary Armed Task Force (RATF). The RATF was described as “a strategic alliance … under the leadership of the Black Liberation Army.” The BLA members in the alliance identified themselves as Muslims or revolutionary nationalists and the white radicals as anti-imperialists or communists. Balagoon appeared to be the sole anarchist in this formation. Balagoon’s BPP comrade Sekou Odinga had returned from political exile in Algeria and the People’s Republic of the Congo to be a major leader in this formation. While Balagoon was critical of Marxism and nationalism, he decided to join comrades he loved and trusted in a common front against white supremacy, capitalism, and imperialism. He and his comrades in the RATF also had political unity on the question of New Afrikan independence. This wing of the BLA identified themselves as “New Afrikan Freedom Fighters.” Balagoon, who was considered a “free spirit,” viewed most nationalist formations as “too rigid.” His RATF comrades, despite ideological differences and his sexual orientation, respected Balagoon due to his commitment to revolutionary struggle and his history of sacrifices on behalf of his comrades and for the liberation movement. In terms of his sexuality, comrades stated, “That’s Kuwasi’s business.” Differences over ideology and sexual orientation were tolerated and subordinated to the pragmatic unity necessary to carry out the clandestine work of armed propaganda, expropriations of resources from capitalist financial institutions, or assisting comrades in escaping from incarceration.[40]

The RATF came together in response to an increase in violent acts against Black people in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including the murders of Black children and youth in Atlanta and Black women in Boston and shootings of Black women in Alabama. The increase in white supremacist paramilitary activity, including the Ku Klux Klan, was a related motivator for this alliance. The whites in the RATF participated in intelligence gathering on white supremacist and right-wing activity to ascertain its capability and connection with elements of the U.S. military. The RATF also engaged in “expropriations” to obtain resources to build the capacity of the Black Liberation Movement to resist the white supremacist upsurge.[41]

The two most well-known actions of this New Afrikan Freedom Fighters wing of the BLA and the RATF were the escape of Assata Shakur and the attempted “Brink’s expropriation” in Nyack, New York. Assata Shakur was a member of the New York BPP who was forced underground in response to the repression of the organization. She was captured on May 2, 1973, after a shootout with New Jersey state troopers and BLA members. State trooper Werner Foerster and New York BPP member Zayd Shakur were both killed in the shootout. Assata Shakur was wounded and paralyzed from the shooting. Former New York Panther 21 defendant and BLA member Sundiata Acoli was captured two days after the shootout, having escaped the scene. The FBI identified Assata Shakur as the “soul of the BLA” and hailed her capture as a significant event in “breaking the back” of the Black underground. While forensic evidence proved she did not fire a gun, and although she was paralyzed at the outset of the shooting, Assata Shakur was convicted of the murder of Foerster and Zayd Shakur and sentenced to life plus sixty-five years. She was considered a political prisoner by human rights organizations in the United States and internationally.

According to the FBI, an armed team of four BLA members, including Odinga and Balagoon and two white allies, facilitated the escape of Shakur from Clinton Correctional Institution for Women in New Jersey on November 2, 1979. Prison officials stated the raid was “well planned and arranged.” Shakur’s escape was hailed and celebrated as a “liberation” by the Black Liberation Movement and demonstrated the continued existence of the BLA.[42]

An attempt by the BLA and RATF to expropriate 1.6 million dollars from a Brink’s armored truck in the New York city of Nyack on October 20, 1981, led to an exchange of fire, resulting in the deaths of one Brink’s security guard and two police officers. Three white radicals—Judy Clark, David Gilbert, and Kathy Boudin—and one Black man—Solomon Brown—were captured. A manhunt ensued for others who were believed to have escaped the scene or assisted in the attempt. Physical evidence, electronic surveillance, and informants led to arrests of other revolutionaries and the death of BLA member Mtayari Sundiata. The Joint Terrorist Task Force (JTTF) apprehended Balagoon in New York City at a Manhattan apartment three months later. The JTTF was organized after the escape of Assata Shakur to provide a coordinated investigation by FBI and local police. The FBI believed Balagoon was a part of the BLA team that initiated the expropriation attempt in Nyack. It was also believed that this wing of the BLA had successfully expropriated funds from financial institutions in a series of raids dating back to 1976. The funds had been utilized to support the development of an underground infrastructure, families of political prisoners, Black Liberation Movement political activities and institutions, and freedom struggles on the African continent.[43]

New Afrikan Anarchist Prisoner of War

After his capture, Kuwasi Balagoon publicly spoke to the movement for the first time since the publication of Look for Me in the Whirlwind eleven years earlier, in 1971. Defining himself as a New Afrikan anarchist, Balagoon represented New Afrikan and antiauthoritarian politics in public statements. In captivity, he defined himself as a prisoner of war not a criminal. Balagoon acted pro se (served as his own attorney) at the Rockland County trial where he was charged with armed robbery for the Nyack expropriation and the murders of the Brink’s guard and two police officers. This gave him the opportunity to speak to the public about his politics and to make his intentions clear for history. In his opening statement, Balagoon declared:

i am a prisoner of war. i reject the crap about me being a defendant, and i do not recognize the legitimacy of this court. The term defendant applies to someone involved in a criminal matter …. It is clear that i’ve been a part of the Black Liberation Movement all of my adult life and have been involved in a war against the American Imperialist, in order to free New Afrikan people from its yoke.[44]

Balagoon wanted it acknowledged that his armed actions were politically motivated to win national liberation for New Afrikan people and to eliminate capitalism, imperialism, and ultimately authoritarian forms of government.

Once convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, Balagoon continued to speak to New Afrikan/Black Liberation forces and anarchist gatherings through public statements. As well as his continued support for armed struggle, he advocated the building of an insurgent movement and building of autonomous communities. On July 18, 1983, at a Harlem rally for imprisoned New Afrikan Freedom Fighters, Balagoon’s statement was read: “We must build a revolutionary political platform and a universal network of survival programs.”[45] In another statement directed to anarchists, Balagoon stated:

Where we live and work … We must organize on the ground level. The landlords must be contested through rent strikes and rather than develop strategies to pay rent, we should develop strategies to take the buildings …. Set up communes in abandoned buildings …. Turn vacant lots into gardens. When our children grow out of clothes, we should have places we can take them, clearly marked anarchist clothing exchanges …. We must learn construction and ways to take back our lives.[46]

He also challenged anarchists to move from theory to practice. In the tradition of the insurgent anarchists of previous generations who inspired him, Balagoon argued:

We permit people of other ideologies to define anarchy rather than bring our views to the masses and provide models to show the contrary …. In short, by not engaging in mass organizing and delivering war to the oppressors, we become anarchists in name only.[47]

Balagoon also continued to organize and provide political education to other prisoners. He died in prison on December 13, 1986, from pneumocystis pneumonia, an AIDS-related illness.

Legacy

While Balagoon is not in mainstream discourse, his name is evoked in some Black/New Afrikan, anarchist, and queer spaces. In 2005, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM), a New Afrikan activist organization, dedicated its annual Black August celebration to Kuwasi Balagoon. That year MXGM highlighted the need for awareness of the AIDS virus in Africa and among the African diaspora. A few radical hip-hop artists, such as Dead Prez and Zayd Malik, also mention Balagoon’s name. But Balagoon’s name is not commonly used, even in socially conscious hip-hop, as much as other Black revolutionaries such as Marcus Garvey, Huey Newton, Assata Shakur, Geronimo (Pratt) ji Jaga, and Mutulu Shakur.

Anarchist collectives have republished Balagoon’s statements. After his incarceration and self-identification as an anarchist, a Canadian antiauthoritarian collective that published the newsletter Bulldozer, which later became known as Prison News Service, published Balagoon’s writings. The Patterson Anarchist Collective in New Jersey reprinted his trial statement and tributes to his life in 1994. The Quebec collective Solidarity issued a Collected Works of Balagoon’s trial statements, essays, poetry, and acknowledgments from comrades titled A Soldier’s Story: Writings by a Revolutionary New Afrikan Anarchist; subsequently reissued by Kersplebedeb. [The first edition of this book was published in 2001; the most recent edition is the book you are holding in your hands today, now copublished with PM Press.]

Radical queer liberation forces also embraced Balagoon’s legacy. He acknowledged his bisexual identity within a primarily heteronormative Black Liberation Movement. ACT UP, a direct action organization emerging from queer liberation forces, joined forces with anarchists and revolutionary Black/New Afrikan nationalists to commemorate Balagoon in December 2006. His sexual identity has become a vehicle to challenge homophobia within the broader Black Liberation Movement. Elements of the queer liberation movement and their allies have criticized Black liberation forces for being silent on Balagoon’s sexuality. Balagun, in a posthumous statement honoring Kuwasi Balagoon, offered this:

One of the silences that engulfed Kuwasi’s life was his bisexuality. The official eulogies offered by the New Afrikan People’s Organization and others omitted his sexuality or that he died of AIDS-related complications. These erasures are a reflection of the ongoing internal struggle against homophobia and patriarchy within the larger society in general and the movement in particular.[48]

This issue will remain so long as heteronormativity remains the dominant sexual orientation of the Black Liberation Movement.

Kuwasi Balagoon is remembered and saluted by revolutionary nationalists, radical anarchists, and queer liberation forces. He remains a “Maroon” isolated from mainstream Black and left political dialogue and memory. His legacy will only be secure with the survival and empowerment of the political tendencies he represented. Balagoon’s name will only be saved from obscurity when insurgent Black nationalists and anarchist collectives take up his charge to organize oppressed people to build a revolutionary program that challenges capitalism and institutional racism in the United States.

This essay first appeared in Science & Society 79, no. 2 (April 2015): 196–220.

3 Haiku That Barely Suggest the Sparkle of Kuwasi Balagoon

David Gilbert, September 6, 2017

Coffee/dab-of-cream color. Maroon spirit. Laugh; irrepressible

Syncopated jazz whistle; surreal art; poetry—both sharp and touching

Lion heart courage but puppy dog loving heart, our freedom fighter

Kuwasi: A Virtual Roundtable of Love and Reflection

Compiled and coordinated by Matt Meyer, with Joan P. Gibbs and Meg Starr, featuring Sekou Odinga, Bilal Sunni-Ali, Kim Kit Holder, Meg Starr, Danielle Jasmine, Amilcar Shabazz, Ajamu Sankofa, David Gilbert, dequi kioni-sadiki, Kai Lumumba Barrow, Dhoruba Bin Wahad, and Ashanti Alston

Unique. The single word most often used to describe Kuwasi Balagoon when discussing his life and legacy with those closest to and most affected by him is “unique”—that Kuwasi’s way of living and looking at life set him apart in special and wonderous ways. Even in the midst of amazing friends and colleagues, and even while living and working in extraordinary times, Kuwasi stood out. Distinctions surrounding other labels and descriptors—New Afrikan revolutionary nationalist and anarchist; gay, bisexual, and/or queer; poet, militant, housing activist, Panther—can be discussed and debated and reflected upon, but Kuwasi’s greatest quality was surely his lasting love for the people and his ability to transform that love into tangible acts of resistance.

“I probably met Kuwasi in the spring or early summer of 1968,” remembered Sekou Odinga, “and he was always a real energetic brother. You were always going to hear him telling a story or joke or enjoying one.” A fellow Panther and codefendant in the infamous New York Panther 21 case, Odinga noted that Kuwasi was always “full of life, always ready to volunteer for any work that needed to be done: the more dangerous the work, the more ready he was. He was real, sincere, and dependable. That was what struck me early on. He was always ready to step up, even if you didn’t need him. He would volunteer; it wasn’t something where you ever had to go find him. He and his wife at the time were working on housing issues—trying to get the landlords to do the right thing.”

Sekou and Kuwasi also shared an interest in building the clandestine movement, and both were part of the formation of the Black Liberation Army. Though Sekou recalled that the two of them “connected militarily,” he added that “as much of a military inclination as Kuwasi had, he had—as Che said—even more of a love for the people. He loved children and the elderly and was always ready to help and talk with them. Kuwasi lived with my family and I for a few months, and he’d get right down there on the floor with the kids and became one of them—creating games and playing. He was full of love, always wanting to participate in all aspects of life.”

“My first impression of Kuwasi came from a poetry reading,” recalled New York Panther and famed jazz musician Bilal Sunni-Ali. “The Black Panther Party for Self Defense was at its early, infant stages—not to be confused with the earlier New York Black Panthers organized by the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM). Sekou and I and Lumumba Shakur were there, and this brother got up and read this poem called ‘Disrupt!’ I don’t remember a word of the poem, but it described so well what power we have—that we have the power to disrupt what was going on, to stop the injustices. The delivery of the poem struck me so hard that I made it a point of saying to Sekou and Lumumba, ‘Please reach out to that brother who did that poem and get him in the Party.’ That was the spring of 1968.”

“Kuwasi was drawn to poetry, to Amiri Baraka and the Last Poets. He was a very articulate brother,” added Sekou. “He always had a comeback, the right thing to say. He had a comedic side as well, and always had a name to call you. For example, I was known to control the finances pretty tightly, while he was kinda loose with his money. Sometimes he’d have to come to me to borrow some money, so he might call me the Banker!”

One of Kuwasi’s most striking and unique strengths was his ability to articulate seemingly contrasting ideas in ways that made sense. “He was definitely a Pan-Africanist,” noted Sekou, “and he was also a nationalist, an anarchist, and very antiauthoritarian. He was a revolutionary nationalist—an internationalist—and he didn’t just talk it, he lived it. I don’t know anyone else who fit into those categories like that. He was a contradiction himself: a real warrior but a babysitter too. You’d want to leave the kids with him! He was one of the few brothers whose nationalism had no basis in racism, and in a racial USA that is a hard thing to say. Kuwasi had white friends growing up, in the military, in school, and he always had an openness about all people, even though he was very clear about America being very racist. He was, way before the rest of us, really open to working with white folks.”

“He enjoyed getting high,” Sekou continued, “and would experiment with any kind of drug except heroin. He used to tell me about drugs I’d never even heard of! He was a living dude—all about getting the most out of life. He loved music: jazz, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, heavy metal, really eclectic stuff. That was the uniqueness of Kuwasi. He fit into almost every category. You couldn’t put him into a category: Kuwasi was Kuwasi.”

Professor Kim Kit Holder, whose dissertation The Black Panther Party 1966–1971: A Curriculum Tool for Afrikan-American Studies helped usher in a new wave of academic interest in the Party, first remembers becoming aware of Kuwasi at the time of the New York Panther 21 trial. “I joined the Party a month later,” Holder reflected, “and looked at Kuwasi in three categories: as a guerrilla, as a queer, and as an anarchist—intersectionally. As a guerrilla, I put him up there with Harriet Tubman and George Jackson. The first thing that made an impression on me was the New York City 1970 jail uprisings, later learning about his key role in it. I remember saying ‘Wow … we are going to win this, because Panthers never give up the fight!’ It gave us rank-and-file Party members strength; it didn’t matter where we were, we were going to struggle. That was profound.”

Holder was struck by Kuwasi’s shift towards anarchism after the trial of the 21. “At first, he insulted us, calling us ‘robots’, but at the same time he gave us voice, articulating our problems with the leadership structure and the people in it. I was just a kid in New York City when I joined the Party, but remember one of the things that pissed me off was that we earned five cents for every Panther newspaper that we sold, while the West Coast folks got ten cents from the sale. There were a bunch of other things, and while Kuwasi’s thoughts on anarchism weren’t always taken up as a new philosophy, we could use them as tools in our work. Kuwasi aligned himself with what made sense. The needs of the people were more important than any particular ideology.”

Theory and practice collided intensely in the events of 1981, when the attempted robbery of a Brink’s truck to fund clandestine work of the Black Liberation Movement and their allies ended in disaster. Two police officers and a security guard were killed, and those involved in the movement—including Kuwasi and codefendant David Gilbert, as well as Sekou Odinga and many others—were captured, tortured, tried, and imprisoned. Many younger activists first learned of Kuwasi at this time, including Free Puerto Rico Committee leader and author Meg Starr.

“Kuwasi was arrested the night before my twenty-second birthday,” Meg sharply recalls. “I had met his codefendant Judy Clark and other white anti-imperialists some scant six months earlier, through the Women’s Committee Against Genocide. My roommates brought me some ice cream, and we watched the news about the Brink’s Case on television. I spent most of the night throwing up.” Shortly after that, Meg became a regular visitor of Kuwasi, David, and Judy.

“It was a very difficult time,” reflects Meg. “In those years of rallies outside of courthouses, wheat pasting posters on billboards across town, and having our apartments broken into and covered in fingerprint dust, you became used to a level of repression. In contrast, visiting these political prisoners was inspiring. Kuwasi’s energy and passion lit up the dank visiting room. He got out of me the fact that I loved punk rock, even though I knew already that most of the older activists around me thought that punk was ‘degenerate white music.’ But Kuwasi loved punk. He connected to the part of me that was a natural nonconformist to anything at all, including radical political correctness. He explained things to me that I didn’t really understand till later. And he sent me long amazing letters.”

One of those letters, from December 1983, revealed some of Kuwasi’s own reflections on the intersection of political and social aspects of life, and the tasks ahead.

Kuwasi wrote:

i had been led to believe i was an oddity. Even on the street, i had to separate political from social dealings. The people i met at the Mud Club and other clubs and the people i knew from the Liberation movement were distinctly different! But there’s no separation in my mind about cultural and political things, so i write you and want to see you and convince you to aid me in being a more complete person. i not only intend to survive but to grow, not only because to survive i’m gonna have to grow, but also because i’ve resolved to deal with this condition not merely as a fall, but as a step in the evolution of myself, just as i am trying to influence the movements to transform this defeat into a victory by using the information from the experience: to become what we must to really transform the world.

The question of ideology and practice were also part of Meg’s in-person communications with Kuwasi, as he tried to explain to this young, lesbian, radical punk his own political journey. “I was too new to political work to understand or imagine the compromises that led Kuwasi to where he ended up,” Meg notes with some regret. “But a few minutes of one visit stick out in my mind like a short and powerful video. Long before I read or even heard of Audre Lorde, surrounded by the gray walls, focusing on Kuwasi’s shining eyes, I listened intently to his musings about how he landed exactly where he was, the trajectory to that exact spot. Kuwasi said: ‘I am down with the Black nationalists because I looked around, and they were the ones that were actually doing something, that were really down to fight the state.’ My respect for Kuwasi and the others was immense: they were actually engaged in attempting revolutionary action, instead of just talking about it.”

One concrete action which the Women’s Committee Against Genocide took was to help single mothers escaping from abusive relationships. The matriarch of one such family became deeply involved in a relationship with Kuwasi, remembered here by her grand-daughter, poet Danielle Jasmine.

“My Grandma loved a man,” Danielle wrote, “who was a great many things to a great many people, but to her: a man … a passionate, supportive, inspiring man. I lost my Grandma many years ago and after she passed, I came across her letters from Kuwasi from 1983–1985. Through them, I’ve gotten a glimpse into what they shared and the love and support they provided for each other. Throughout his letters, he offered support for her sobriety, health, and family. We all have walls built up around us, and my Grandma worked on dismantling the ones she could. I like to think I’ve continued this process (for her and for me) in some of my writing.

“Beyonce’s song ‘Halo’ has been an anthem for me throughout this process and I often listened to it while reading Kuwasi’s letters, feeling their presence in the lyrics ‘remember those walls I built. Well, baby, they’re tumbling down.’ All of Kuwasi’s letters end similarly, yet on one particular day, in one particular letter, he asks my Grandma to give her daughter, my Aunt, ‘a Halo hug for him.’ To balance the struggle for freedom and justice with peace and light is a remarkable feat in any case. That Kuwasi could understand and accomplish this, despite the physical walls around him, is a remarkable thing, something he offered to all of us in his life. As he ended each letter: ‘Love, Power, & Peace by Piece.’”

Another young activist at the time of the Brink’s trial was Texas-based Amilcar Shabazz, now chair of the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and vice president of the National Council for Black Studies. By 1981, Shabazz had already worked with leaders of the Republic of New Afrika (including Minister of Education Fulani Sunni-Ali and New Afrikan People’s Organization leader Ahmed Obefemi) and been given permission to start a local chapter of the National Committee to Honor New Afrikan Freedom Fighters. After Brink’s, that group changed its name from an emphasis on “honor” to the National Committee to Defend, and Shabazz moved to New York, became a volunteer paralegal, and worked with Attorney Chokwe Lumumba on the cases of Kuwasi, Sekou Odinga, and the rest. His thoughts of that time are much more than fond memories: “Kuwasi was warm and generous in a way you would not believe.”

“I was able to get through the daunting security system at the jail where Kuwasi, David Gilbert, and Judith Clark were being held,” Shabazz recalled, “because I’d go in with an attorney working with Gilbert and Clark. Kuwasi represented himself at trial, but he’d come to these face-to-face legal meetings so that he and I could sidebar in the meeting room. Under these conditions, we got to know each other and had frank talks about how to reach New Afrikans about what this case was really about, and who the real criminals were. In the first of these meetings, Kuwasi expressed to me his dislike for the very name of the National Committee. He did not like the term ‘freedom fighter.’ A fire fighter is someone who fights fires. A crime fighter is someone who, what? Fights crime. So, isn’t a freedom fighter someone who fights against freedom? That was my first lesson in understanding Kuwasi’s ironic wit and political nonconformism.”

Kuwasi and Shabazz became quite close, with Shabazz serving as liaison between Kuwasi and the outside defense committees. Instrumental in producing the original booklet of Kuwasi’s “Statement of a New Afrikan Prisoner of War,” Shabazz notes Kuwasi’s intention “for his statement to be a clear and truthful articulation of exactly who he was and why he did the things he did.” It was here that Kuwasi first articulated the now popularly cited adage that “repression breeds resistance,” and that he called out the U.S. for many of the crimes against Afrikan peoples that Kuwasi himself witnessed, as a soldier in Vietnam and as a housing rights activist in the tenements of Harlem.

“Kuwasi was a warlord,” Shabazz concludes, “in the best sense of the word. He did not elevate the revolutionary methods by which he fought or the level of resistance he was best at above what others in the struggle contributed. He gave us some of his ideas on ‘PT,’ or physical training, in his handwriting with sketches of different exercises, especially what could be performed in the tight confines of the small cells he spent many hours, days, and years of his life locked up inside prisons and devoid of human contact. His body was as solid as iron from his PT practice, which was a key to his life and power to escape. ‘We are human,’ he said, ‘and nobody wants to live under or bring offspring into a confined atmosphere with an artificial sky.’ I have never met a comrade that could make me think, laugh, and strive for liberation like Kuwasi.”

Already a lawyer at the time of the Brink’s trial, Joan Gibbs was employed by the National Lawyers’ Guild’s Grand Jury Project in 1981 and was a member of Dykes Against Racism Everywhere (DARE). A supporter of the Black Panther Party, Gibbs explains that she “never joined the Party for a couple of reasons, among them their seeming militarism and the hypermasculinity of some of their members.” In addition, she adds, “at the time, I was more attracted to Marxism, Leninism, and Trotskyism. The August 1970 publication of Huey P. Newton’s ‘To the Revolutionary Brothers and Sisters about the Women’s Liberation Movement and Gay Liberation Movements’ tempered but did not entirely erase my feelings that because of my sexuality I would be not welcomed with open arms in the BPP.” Years later, Kim Kit Holder would report that he used Kuwasi’s life as an example, especially for LGBTQ people, to “show the possibility of the universality” of Panther politics and to “use Kuwasi as a badge to deconstruct the concept that armed struggle is a hypermasculine phenomenon.”

But even in the more backwards 1980s, Brink’s, for a young, radical, lesbian, NewYork–based Black lawyer, was impossible to ignore. “In the aftermath of the Brink’s incident,” Gibbs recalls, “a federal grand jury was impaneled in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Activists were subpoenaed to appear before it from both in and outside of New York City. Consequently, at the Grand Jury Project, I worked to educate organizations and individuals about federal prosecutors’ abuse of grand jury subpoenas to harass and sometimes incarcerate dissidents from the United States foreign and domestic policies, and the risks of talking to the FBI. In DARE, we worked to build support for both those arrested and those subpoenaed, an arduous task as many of the people purportedly on ‘the left’ considered those arrested to be, at best, ‘adventurists.’ DARE principally focused on building support among LGBT folks. To this end, DARE, among other things, organized forums on noncollaboration with the FBI and grand juries and published leaflets on these issues. I believed, then and now, that for revolutionaries the principle contradiction is between us and the state. The contradictions among those of us working to fundamentally transform the U.S. are secondary. For these reasons, I also support the freedom of all U.S. political prisoners and prisoners of war.” Joan Gibbs, it should be noted, has served as defense counsel to some of the most significant BPP-related political prisoners of the past half-century, including Jericho Movement cofounder Herman Ferguson and former NASA mathematician Sundiata Acoli (still in jail as of this writing, well over eighty years old).

“As for Kuwasi’s sexuality,” Gibbs recalled, “his arrest with his transvestite lover garnered tabloid headlines. The circumstances of his arrest were negatively greeted by some alleged supporters of the Black Liberation Movement, including some alleged supporters of the Black Liberation Army. And, if my memory serves me correctly, when he died in December 1986, only a few openly spoke about the fact he had died from an AIDS-related illness. None of this should be surprising given the times. In 1982, when Kuwasi was arrested, and in 1986 when he died, support for LGBTQ people was far less than it is today, in society generally and also within the left and the Black Liberation Movement. Heterosexism, homophobia, and transphobia were the norm.”

Reflecting on Kuwasi’s legacy, Joan has noted that “while I am not an anarchist, his writings on anarchism have challenged and caused me to rethink my beliefs with respect to the need for ‘a vanguard party,’ with democratic centralism, and with the meaning of leadership itself. In other words, his writings have deepened my understanding, as well as my appreciation, of the theory and practice of anarchism—understanding its popularity today, particularly among younger activists. Like Harriet Tubman, Kuwasi should long be remembered for his steadfast, decades-long commitment to the fundamental transformation of the U.S. Kuwasi demonstrated his repeated willingness to risk liberty and life in furtherance of the liberation of people of African descent in the United States, by non-queer and queer people committed to that same goal. With a white supremist, misogynist, homophobe in the White House, with the far right, Nazis, and Klan rallying and marching unmasked, we especially need people with Kuwasi’s revolutionary, free, loving spirit.”

Regarding Kuwasi’s sexual orientation, the ways in which he freely expressed his love—spiritually and otherwise—has perhaps been the most complicated aspect of his legacy; the prejudices, then and now, which Joan Gibbs poignantly notes, are not the only reason for this. Questions of self-determination—of how Kuwasi defined or would have defined himself—need also be considered. Sekou Odinga, one of his oldest and closest comrades, asserts: “I often hear people say that Kuwasi was part of the queer community, but he never called himself that. Clearly, he would not have called himself gay. From what I’m told—I didn’t know it at the time—Kuwasi was bisexual; he had a homosexual relationship which continued while he was in prison. I did meet [his lover] Chicky, but didn’t know her much. I was out at their house but didn’t know that Chicky was transsexual. Was Kuwasi a gender rebel? Yes. He wasn’t caught up in people’s bourgeois ways of looking at things. He had his own way of looking at things.”

Bilal Sunni-Ali remembered one time late in Kuwasi’s life when he had to pick Kuwasi up at a hospital. “He told me that he had a sexually transmitted disease, and he said he had a male partner. That was the first and the only time that I heard him talk about his private life.” This memory reinforces an assessment made by revolutionary educator and lawyer Ajamu Sankofa, who concluded that “Kuwasi viewed sexual expression as fundamentally a private matter, not to be regulated by systems of domination.” Though he never met Kuwasi, Sankofa—a member and leader of the African Liberation Support Committee, the National Independent Black Political Party, the Socialist Workers Party, the National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL), and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)—is one of many who have spoken and written about the great impact Kuwasi’s life had on their own thoughts and practice. Sankofa concluded that Kuwasi’s own fluid and liberated ways of approaching relationships could serve as “a perspective that if fully practiced could help lead humanity out of the horrible dungeons of sexual oppression.”

Ajamu Sankofa remarked of his own experience, “Up until I encountered Kuwasi’s writings, my only Black male radical role model was James Baldwin and, of course, as a proud Gay Black man, I had to process the fact that the mainstream Black-led civil rights movement hid Baldwin from view whenever it could. I fervently hung on to the words of Huey P. Newton, who said, “[q]uite the contrary, maybe a homosexual could be the most revolutionary.” In the late 1980s Sankofa “became aware of Kuwasi as an out Black bisexual prisoner of war of African descent who was public with his transvestite lover.”

In Sankofa’s assessment, Kuwasi was “one who lived a life that put into concrete practice an ever-evolving set of ideological principles that rested within a dynamic pyramid of intention, where one point was anti-imperialist anarchism, another was Marxism-Leninism, and the other was revolutionary Black nationalism. Each point existed in dynamic tension with the other recreating itself while influencing each other point. I found that to be pretty unique indeed.” In 1989, several years after Kuwasi’s death, Sankofa joined the staff of the ACLU Prisoners’ Rights Project, which filed lawsuits against state prison systems because they were deliberating denying necessary health care to prisoners with HIV/AIDs in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. At the same time, as Sanfoka experienced and remembered, “The radical left held hateful and reactionary views towards gay people. The Black community, especially the clergy, was notably hostile towards gay people and prisoners.”

“During the decade of 1980s,” Sankofa continued, “the Black community was under siege by the triple threat of drugs, violence, and AIDS. Black people despised drug dealers in their communities, as opportunistic politicians manipulated them to support mass incarceration. Accordingly, during this period the prison population was disproportionately filled with prisoners with HIV/AIDS due to the correlation of drugs, sex, and HIV. Prisoners with HIV/AIDS terrified and repelled many prison medical staff.” It is noteworthy that one leading exception to leftist denial of and distancing from the AIDS epidemic and people with AIDS came from within the prison system itself—and from one of Kuwasi’s closest comrades and codefendants. White anti-imperialist David Gilbert, who still languishes in prison at the time of this writing (and who did time behind bars with Kuwasi during the last years of his life), pioneered a peer-centered support and education program for prisoners with HIV/AIDs in New York State. This program, used as a model for inmate education across the U.S., was formally begun just one year after Kuwasi’s passing; Gilbert’s instructive and challenging booklet AIDS Conspiracy? Tracking the Real Genocide, was dedicated to Kuwasi: “a Black Liberation warrior with a giant heart, who died of AIDS on December 13, 1986.”

Sankofa’s perceptions about Kuwasi’s legacy is that his story might lead revolutionaries to “take a far deeper and humble dove into the physics of small stuff, such that we are ever fortifying ourselves against dogmas, against navel gazing, and for greater openness to new revolutionary ideas.” He concluded that “Kuwasi’s definitions and practice of revolutionary nationalism and anarchism seem to me to have been ‘in formation.’ … They do provoke new thinking regarding the existing meanings of ideological categories. This is very healthy for vibrant revolutionary movements.” Finally, Sankofa asserted, “the signature lesson that I glean from Kuwasi’s definitions is the necessity to be authentic in your revolutionary practice.”

Authenticity, humility, and an openness to working across personal and political categorization were also the key Kuwasi legacy points raised by Sister dequi kioni-sadiki, coordinator of the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee. “We can all learn from Kuwasi’s ability to work with all kinds of people across the board,” observed dequi, “accepting people from where they are and helping them develop without writing anyone off. We don’t talk about the human side of our revolutionaries often enough, but Kuwasi’s humanity shone through.” A cofounder of the Northeast Political Prisoner Coalition along with her husband Sekou Odinga, dequi reminisced that Kuwasi, like Sekou, was committed to “finding more ways to work with people than reasons not to work with them.” That, she noted, is a great legacy indeed.

In the words of Black liberation artist and Gallery of the Streets founder Kai Lumumba Barrow, Kuwasi was no less than a contemporary Maroon. As a performance and visual artist, Kai has incorporated Kuwasi’s “character” into her theatrical and political work, including a current piece titled [b]Reach: adventures in heterotopia. A multimedia traveling act, [b]Reach works to “consider the notion of Black fugitivity as a point of departure, a place to discuss the questions … a third space—between confinement and freedom,” which situates Black fugitivity as a “location of disobedience, consistent among resistance movements for structural change.” As a founder of the prison industrial complex abolitionist organization Critical Resistance, a leader of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and Southerners on New Ground, and a key activist with the Black Panther Newspaper Committee, INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, FIERCE!, UBUNTU, and the Student Liberation Action Movement, Kai has been at the center of many of the major strategic organizing efforts since the time of Kuwasi’s transition. “As a queer Black feminist artist,” she wrote, “I was, and am, inspired by Kuwasi’s life and example …. His escapes were operatic; his sexuality the stuff of gossip and pride, and his practice, a model for aspiring revolutionaries. Kuwasi’s trial statements were the work of a surrealist shaman—Abracadabra and Whoop there it is—he transformed the kourtroom into a space of political education, revealing the farce that is the amerikkkan justice system.”

Bilal Sunni-Ali agreed with this larger-than-life imagery. During the time when Bilal was released from California’s Soledad Prison in the 1970s and returned to New York, Kuwasi had masterminded one of his prison breaks. “The newspapers,” Bilal recalls, “were describing someone who was nine feet tall, leaping over two cars at a time while still shooting at the police who were chasing him!”

Dhoruba Bin Wahad, Black Panther Party New York Field Secretary and a New York Panther 21 codefendant of Kuwasi, vividly recalls how his powerful words back then continue to echo in the struggles of today. “Once on a run down south,” Dhoruba remembered, “Kuwasi was called upon to bust a verse or two. He began his poem about ‘Black self-hatred’ and ended it with an existential metaphor for white supremacy that, to me, also presaged Black Lives Matter. He matter-of-factly juxtaposed ‘social justice’ with racial equality as a question of ‘mind over matter’; Kuwasi poetically proclaimed to all who were listening that from a white supremacist mindset: ‘White folks don’t mind, and Black folks don’t matter.’”

Former Black Liberation Army militant and political prisoner Ashanti Alston, who adopted the moniker “Anarchist Panther” in the 1980s, speaks of how he “was drawn to Kuwasi, because he seemed to have a daringness not just to say bold things but to do things and to be certain ways outside of the norm …. He opened up many doors at a time when it was important for more and more people to see that they have a part to play—whether they be queer, whether they be nationalist but still critiquing top-down structures. [Former New York Panther 21 defendant] Ali Bey Hassan and Panther political prisoner Bashir Hameed—the Jersey crew—would tell stories of this great loyalty they had to one another. One of them was in prison on a road work crew, and another was out … so they were going to get their brother free. They organized some plan to come by in a fast car and pick the one off the road! That’s how they rolled, that kind of daringness—and if you’re going to have a revolutionary movement, you cannot be passive about this, you cannot be on the fence about what you’re going to do. Sometimes you’ve got to step outside the box. And Kuwasi became that person willing to step outside the box on many different levels.”

Ashanti, who served as national cochair of the Jericho Movement to Free All U.S. Political Prisoners, noted that “how Kuwasi saw himself in relation to other human beings, and his own sexuality, was in deep contrast to the European concepts of sexuality and what is a man, what is a woman. The Black nationalist movement just didn’t deal with that and were in some ways aligned with the Western model which Kuwasi challenged by the way he lived his life. The public statement Kuwasi made was how he chose to live. How people look at these choices after his death is like a piece of art: it is up to the viewer to get something from that. It is like how people look at Malcolm X after his death: some people may only focus on what Malcolm said about voting, others focus on what he said about the land, and others just focus on what Malcolm said about armed struggle.

“What do you get when you see the life of Kuwasi Balagoon?” Ashanti asks us all. “That is what becomes important. In the times that we live in, when so many people have been oppressed and repressed in so many ways in terms of their very being, it is important to have someone like Kuwasi saying, ‘You don’t have to fit that norm. You are trying to be free in the spirit that you’re in, doing it in the course of struggle.’ That is the importance of Kuwasi Balagoon; it is all in the course of the struggle to change this world. His anarchism, his sexuality, all of the parts of his life fit into the whole of his revolutionary-ness. That is what I think people miss: it was still all him—as a revolutionary, but a revolutionary who is also willing to be free in some areas that we might not all have the courage to be free in.” No matter who Kuwasi loved from one moment to the next, Kuwasi’s love—for the people as a whole and for individual peoples of all kinds—was the revolutionary context for his life of militant action.

Perhaps Sekou Odinga’s concluding words serve as the best summary of all: “Kuwasi loved life! He clearly loved life and loved living life. He was always ready to live …. He was a living dude, and most of us all really loved him.”

Black Cats Named Kuwasi

A reflection by Kai Lumumba Barrow

Back in the day, we had a couple of black cats: Kuwasi and Merle, named to honor Merle Africa, of MOVE, and Kuwasi Balagoon, BLA anarchist, anti-imperialist, AIDS activist, and bisexual poet. Both Kuwasi and Merle died in the underbelly of the belly of the beast and we wanted to recognize their contributions to Black liberation. To quote Ashanti, “There are Cats, and there are Cats …. There is Kuwasi Balagoon”

As a queer Black feminist artist and cat lover, I was, and am, inspired by Kuwasi’s life and example. I never knew Kuwasi, but his reputation was the stuff of legend. In my cadre, Kuwasi was described as bold, brazen, wild, and sharp. His escapes were operatic; his sexuality the stuff of gossip and pride, and his practice, a model for aspiring revolutionaries. Kuwasi’s trial statements were the work of a surrealist shaman—Abracadabra and Whoop there it is—he transformed the kourtroom into a space of political education, revealing the farce that is the amerikkkan justice system.

Kuwasi was a Trickster in our midst, a contemporary Maroon determined to live free or die trying.

As if taking on the spirit of his namesake, Kuwasi the cat refused to stay confined to the house. A frequent flier and escape artist, no amount of threats, punishments, product, or cajoling would make that cat behave. No solo act, he even learned how to open our Brooklyn brownstone sliding door (the locks are on the bottom), unlocking the latch and sliding the barrier aside so that both he and Merle could escape. “It’s better inside,” I told him one day, after catching him on his way out and trapping him back in the house. “It’s dangerous out there with cat snatchers and roaming Toms and ruffneck felines on every corner. We’ll give you toys and catnip and scratching posts and take care of your basic needs,” I pleaded. “Just stay inside, and definitely stay away from the upstairs apartment. The old lady who lives above is not a fan. These are the rules,” I said walking away, hoping that the cat would pick up what I was putting down, and pretty sure that he would not.

Minutes later, I peeked back into the room curious to see the effect of my rules. Kuwasi was gone. And so was Merle. The door cracked open stood as a reminder of Balagoon’s words, “This is the place to begin erasing borders.” Kuwasi indeed, was one of them Cats.