DTP Statement on Recent Claims Against the FTP Formation

Statements on social media are not the best forum to work through points of conflict in movements.  As to the specifics of the claims that have been made against the FTP formation, we refer people to the statements by Why Accountability and Take Back the Bronx, which we include here. We believe that this moment is an opportunity to learn and unlearn how we can move together and separately.  

The past month has seen a massive upsurge of abolitionist and decolonial struggle, shaking the carceral settler state to its foundation. Police cars have burned, monuments have fallen, and streets have flooded with millions of people moving together in rage and joy as the empire crumbles. Yet within this ecstatic moment, tensions, contradictions, and antagonisms have inevitably arisen. This is to be expected at a time like this, poised as we are between crisis and radical possibility. How can breakdowns become breakthroughs that extend the prospects of liberation and combat the forces of counter-insurgency arrayed against our movements? That is our priority, and it is in this spirit that we approach the situation that is currently unfolding with regard to Nabil Hassein and others who have taken to social media in recent days to claim that the FTP formation and its constituent groups including Why Accountability and Take Back the Bronx are comprised of or allied with police.

In response to these claims against FTP, we urge people to read the statements by WA and TbBX about the details of the situation in question and to make their own judgments as to what this means for the movement. We also invite you to read the apology written by Nabil to DTP organizers (see attached) for the negligent and irresponsible manner in which he addressed his concerns in January, thereby putting the movement work and people at risk. We should note that we met with Nabil in person on January 15 of this year and the apology was sent to us on January 21 just before FTP3.

From the beginning, there have been efforts to break up the FTP formation, an autonomous constellation of groups largely led by Black womxn who do not work with politicians or NGOs and who do not take their money. From our end, we have followed the lead of more seasoned organizers and groups in NYC with a keen sense of the political and social landscape and a body of work that demonstrates a commitment to Black liberation.

The tactics and politics of the FTP formation have proven deeply unsettling to the world of professionalized nonprofit organizations, many of which are financed and run by people who do not reflect the communities they claim to serve. In a movement world characterized by pervasive anti-Blackness, WA has been critical in ensuring that FTP has been grounded in the Black Radical tradition.    

Now there seems to be a well-coordinated social media campaign to delegitimize the work of FTP in its entirety. We’re hearing a lot about holding people and movements accountable, specifically the question of why it was not continuously publicized that there was a parole officer organizing with WA. The fact is that this information was well known in the abolitionist landscape of New York well before we became involved in it, including by Nabil himself and others, who benefitted from the labor and connections of the person in question over the course of years. Accountability does not work if it’s one sided and if it appears to be disingenuous and instrumentalized. We do not believe in calls for accountability when accountability is being weaponized.

Ask yourself: what goal do you think that a call-out effort conducted in this way serves? Is this how we build collective liberation? Why is it that now, of all times, energy would be put into publicly tearing down long-proven groups of working-class Black radicals while tolerating, for instance, the legions of paid organizers, nonprofits and elected officials who unsuccessfully attempted to channel the energies of an ungovernable Black-led insurrection into a watered-down budget deal with the city? All we know is that if working class Black people are not leading the movement, it will inevitably reproduce the same class structure we are all seeking to dismantle.

There is a principled movement conversation to be had about whether an individual employed in any form by the carceral state institutions should be welcomed into abolitionist movements. The state preys on working class Black communities by only offering them jobs within the carceral/military workforce. But that careful and principled conversation is not what is happening in the recent posts by Nabil and others. We are witnessing instead an opportunistic attempt to take down an entire movement formation.

We are not attributing counterinsurgency motives or connections to Nabil and others who have gone on the attack against FTP. It would be more understandable if they were simply infiltrators trying to stir shit up (though we can always be sure there are some of those). But whatever their motivation, these attacks are making everyone more vulnerable to the forces of counterinsurgency. Unfortunately, our movements have yet to figure out how to make points of conflict into points of construction that assist in movement maturity, growth and power. Instead, we are seeing antagonisms playing out on social media in such a way that they dis-organize entire movements and invite further state repression.  

The uprising of the past month is bigger than any of us, and we are indebted to those who laid the groundwork for this moment across many generations. Regardless of whether the work continues in the current FTP formation or otherwise, FTP is the spirit of this moment. We will continue to do our share of the work, centering land, life, and collective liberation.

The empire is falling, and the ancestors are calling.

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Click here for Why Accountability Statement

Click here for Take Back the Bronx Statement

Below, please find Nabil’s apology to DTP members on January 21, 2020: