COINTELPRO may not be a well-understood acronym but its meaning and continuing impact are absolutely central to understanding the government’s wars and repression against progressive movements.
COINTELPRO represents the state’s strategy to prevent movements and communities from overturning white supremacy and creating racial justice.
COINTELPRO is both a formal program of the FBI and a term frequently used to describe a conspiracy among government agencies—local, state, and federal—to destroy movements for self-determination and liberation for Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous struggles, as well as mount an institutionalized attack against allies of these movements and other progressive organizations.
COINTELPRO 101 is a 56-minute educational film that opens the door to understanding this history. It introduces viewers new to this history to the basics and directs them to other resources where they can learn more. The intended audiences are the generations that did not experience the social justice movements of the sixties and seventies.