On 13 December 1986, Black revolutionary Kuwasi Balagoon died of AIDS-related illness while imprisoned at the Auburn Correctional Facility in upstate New York.
As a young man, Balagoon enlisted in the army until he came to reject militarism and the US war in Vietnam, and instead became a tenant organiser in New York City and joined the Black Panther Party in 1968.
Later, he was one of the Panther 21 defendants, who were arrested and held for a prolonged period on bogus counts of conspiracy to plant bombs until they were all eventually acquitted on all charges.
Balagoon joined the Black Liberation Army and participated in the operation which liberated Assata Shakur from prison in 1979. He was eventually arrested and charged in connection with the 1981 robbery of a Brinks armoured truck, during which two police officers were killed. At trial, Balagoon represented himself and admitted his involvement but argued that his actions were justified as a combatant in a war against the colonial, genocidal US state.
Seeing how the repression of its leadership devastated the Panthers, Balagoon became an anarchist and argued:
"the goals of anarchy don’t include replacing one ruling class with another, neither in the guise of a fairer boss or as a party. This is key because this is what separates anarchist revolutionaries from Maoist, socialist, and nationalist revolutionaries, who from the onset do not embrace complete revolution. They cannot envision a truly free and equalitarian society and must to some extent embrace the socialisation process that makes exploitation and oppression possible".
Despite Balagoon being open about his bisexuality and his HIV status, many obituaries omitted any mention of this information, which many activists criticised as the erasure of "internal struggle against homophobia and patriarchy".
Kuwasi Balagoon dies - WCH | Stories
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