I went to a forum on Wednesday night at Baruch about the Black Panthers and the Young Lords. The room it was held in was completely full (about 200), containing mostly college-age African-American and Latino students. I think that I was only one of three white people in the entire room. It gave me a lot of hope to see all of these young people together discussing real issues and doing so in a very constructive way. I mean none of the speakers had any illusions about Obama and the topic of COINTELPRO and police infiltrations was discussed. One of the Young Lords was the main speaker. You can read his bio here:
http://www.revson.columbia.edu/fellows/alumni/vinc...
He definitely understood the nature of what we are facing and said how his fellowship at Columbia showed him how some of the smartest people can be so clueless about the word around them. A great film about the Young Lords is Palante Siempre Palante:
http://palante.org/Documentary.htm
I have also been reading about the death of Malcolm X and the involvement of the NYPD Bureau of Special Service and Investigations, in which deep cover operations were run by Tony Ulasewicz who went on to work in the Nixon Whitehouse and I believe was directly involved in the operations at Chappaquiddick to take out Ted Kennedy in 1969.
http://www.amazon.com/Presidents-Private-Eye-Detec...
I just raise these issues because they are local and I think that you can learn a lot from them and apply this to what we are dealing with in terms of infiltrations and disruptions. Granted, the technology is far greater today, but the nature is very much the same. Just some thoughts.