Today in Labor History December 22, 1946: Kuwasi Balagoon was born. In the early 1960s, while still a teen, he got involved in the Cambridge Movement, a Maryland civil rights movement that was becoming increasing militant, including advocating for armed self-defense. They were involved in the Cambridge Riots of 1963. He then served in the military and settled in New York after he was discharged in 1967, where he joined the Black Panther Party. He was also a tenants’ rights activist, organizing rent strikes, resisting illegal evictions, and once threatening a corrupt landlord with a machete. He also led a tenants’ rights demonstration in Congress leading to a melee with Capital Police after House Speaker, Tip O’Neil, ordered the cops to “Get those niggers out of here.”
While in prison, as member of the Panther 21 (accused of several bombings), he became disillusioned with the Panthers, became an anarchist and joined the more militant Black Liberation Army. He escaped from prison twice. In 1979, while on the lam from his second prison escape, he helped to free political prisoner Assata Shakur, who fled to Cuba and who recently died there (2025). In 1986, Balagoon died in prison from AIDS. In 2019, PM Press released a collection of writings by and about Balagoon called, “Kuwasi Balagoon: A Soldier's Story.” And the prison abolitionist group, Black and Pink, which supports LGBTQ and HIV-positive prisoners, has, since 2020, run a "Kuwasi Balagoon award" for those living with HIV/AIDS. During his trial, he represented himself, admitted his guilt, but argued that his actions were justified in the war against the colonial, genocidal state. He was also open about his bisexuality. Yet many obituaries omitted this fact in what some activists have decried as the erasure of "internal struggle against homophobia and patriarchy."
#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #blackpanthers #BlackLiberationArmy #racism #newafrika #assatashakur #prison #lgbtq #aids #hiv #politicalprisoner #author #writer #books #BlackMastodon [@bookstadon](
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