Hello everybody and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio.

On today's episode I have a really interesting sort of episode that was put it together at

the last minute because of the time-sensitive nature of what we came across.

I have back on the show Aaron Leonard from our Heavy Radicals episode and our folk artist

Communist Party and FBI episode and he's here with his co-author on Heavy Radicals as

well as a second book that I've never had a chance to do an episode on a threat of the

first magnitude and that is Connor Gallagher.

So Aaron and Connor recently, I think it was Aaron that reached out, filed a FOIA request

years and years ago regarding the Co-Intel program, regarding Fred Hampton, etc.

and I think it was in 2015 and only in December, actually December 4th of 2020, the 51st anniversary

of Fred Hampton's assassination.

He finally got back some of the documents he had been looking for and he came to Rev

Left to open up that FOIA document and share some of this stuff that he learned.

It doesn't radically alter the picture of the Fred Hampton assassination but it does

give us more insights and throughout this episode we do the important job of complicating

simplistic narratives that people might have about the Co-Intel program.

I think it's really important to do that as they say throughout this episode we have to

understand the way that those such programs as the Co-Intel Pro operate and how they actually

do it not fall into some sort of simplistic elementary understanding of these things

if we ever hope to be able to move for a better world for social justice because the moment

that people move towards an organization of power that can make a better, more just,

more egalitarian society rooted around values of justice and truth.

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