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He’s perhaps most known locally for founding the nonprofit Common Ground in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Common Ground and its health clinic served a half a million Katrina survivors in its first year. In 2019, Rahim received a Living Legend award from the Southern University of New Orleans honoring his work. In a box near his couch sits a framed Lifetime President’s Volunteer Service Award, recently received from President Biden.
For years, Rahim had suspected—but never been able to prove—that the FBI had targeted him. Now, government documents showed that he was correct.
Documents obtained last year by The Nation show that in August 2006, a year after Katrina, the New Orleans Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), a federal-police amalgamation led by the FBI, began conducting a “threat assessment” of Malik Rahim and Common Ground for “possible nefarious Domestic Terrorism or Anarchist activities.”
The JTTF’s report claimed that Common Ground was distributing “propaganda” and “anti-government posters.” Under a section titled “Intelligence Gaps,” the JTTF posed several questions, like: “Is Common Ground planning any terrorist attacks against Louisiana government facilities?,” and, “What anarchist groups and gangs, besides the New Black Panther party, is the Common Ground Collective recruiting from?” It ends with a request for the JTTF to conduct an investigation into Common Ground.
Perfect example of the inherent racism built into the US system; one of the former Black Panthers they interviewed is the definition of a good samaritan that stepped up for his community in ways the government didn't, yet they had the audacity to try and claim he was helping people to recruit new Black Panther members?! Yet actual American terrorists on Jan 7, 2021 have been treated with kid gloves in comparison since they were mostly white.