New Black Panther Party Tampa | St. Pete

By Anastasia Dawson | Tribune Staff
Published: May 3, 2015   |   Updated: May 3, 2015 at 12:51 PM 

TAMPA — Amid a barrage of violence in Tampa’s inner-city, grieving families in poor neighborhoods have found an unlikely ally in their fight for peace — a 26-year-old DJ who heads the Tampa chapter of the New Black Panther Party.

Clarence Jones grew up in Tampa’s now-demolished Central Park Village housing project, and in recent months he has become an ardent, highly visible spokesman for Tampa’s hardest-hit, low-income neighborhoods. He’s spearheaded multiple “Stop the Violence Tampa Bay” rallies, protests and fundraisers. He organized an anti-violence news conference in front of the Tampa Police Department this year and persuaded Police Chief Jane Castor to lend her voice to the cause.

On Saturday, his solidarity rally to show support for protests in Baltimore, which disrupted the mayor’s annual “Mac and Cheese Throwdown” at Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park, drew support from the Tampa Dream Defenders and the Bay Area Activists Coalition. Yet all of Jones’ efforts are also done under the name of the New Black Panther Party, which has a controversial reputation in Tampa and across the country. The group has been labeled by some as a racist and violence-promoting organization, and Tampa’s previous leader of the New Black Panther Party was widely criticized in 2012 after unleashing a racial rant in which she called white people honkies, crackers and pigs.

When Jones is in the party’s black uniform, he’s known as President Ali Abdul Muhammad.

Jones, 26, said his title as leader of the New Black Panther Party has made him a target for angry calls and emails, and threats from members of the Klu Klux Klan.

Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn has known Jones and his family for years. He said Jones’ efforts in the community are “a force for good.”

“I judge people based on what they do now and the contributions they make now. I’m not concerned with what an organization did 50 years ago,” Buckhorn said. “We’re all in this together regardless of where we started.”

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Jones has become more active in his efforts to curtail violence in the city as the violence has increased.

Tampa police have been called to 48 shootings since the beginning of the year, and 18 people have been arrested for shootings where victims survived, according to records. At least 16 people have died this year in shootings.

Most of those targeted by the violence, and suspected to be behind it, are “just kids killing kids,” Jones said.

The string of aimless violence will only increase when kids start their summer vacation from school and find themselves without a job and without community activities to keep them busy, Jones said. Similar circumstances, he said, are what drove him to join the New Black Panther Party of Tampa about four years ago, he said.

“They keep promising a better future, and the residents need better,” Jones said. “You can’t just do something once a year, you can’t just do something to make your organization or your name look good and you can’t sit down and hope the problem will solve itself.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled the New Black Panther Party a “virulently racist and anti-Semitic organization whose leaders have encouraged violence against whites, Jews and law enforcement officers.” The group was founded in 1989 as an offshoot of the Civil Rights-era Black Panther Party. The Black Panther Party has deemed the faction a “black racist hate group.”

But the Tampa New Black Panthers are moving away from their radical roots, Jones said.

“I don’t hate white people. I hate oppression and I hate the situation we’ve put ourselves in,” Jones said. “It’s not up to the government or the police to save us; it’s up to ourselves as a community to come out of this predicament.”

Tampa’s New Black Panther Party only has around a dozen official members but is among the most organized and visible, generating interest from other branches on the East Coast looking to model after its success, Jones said. The Tampa panthers were thrust into the national spotlight when the Republican National Convention came to town in 2012 and the group’s chief of staff, Michelle Williams, told local media, “Republicans hate black people.”

Williams also attracted notoriety in 2012 after she announced a $10,000 bounty on the life of George Zimmerman, who fatally shot black teenager Trayvon Martin.

Williams has since backed off from her Black Panther duties. Now Jones, a Hillsborough Community College student and Blake High School graduate, is working to reshape the group’s public reputation with community fish fries, anti-violence rallies and fundraising for the funerals of children killed in shootings.

Jones’ “Stop the Violence Tampa Bay” Twitter page has more than 820 followers. His “Stop The Gun Violence Tampa Bay” Facebook page has 1,147 likes.

“I’ve known Ali for a while, and everything I have seen him involved in has been focused on trying to keep our communities safe,” said Castor. “Any group that has a goal of keeping our communities safe and sound is a good thing for the city.”

While the department is cognizant of the New Black Panthers’ reputation and doesn’t want to condone “any group expressing discrimination or bias,” Jones’ efforts seem to be genuine and have improved the police department’s relationships with the community, police spokeswoman Janelle McGregor said.

The New Black Panthers have been known in Tampa for many years but don’t seem to have a huge following, said Bennie Small, president of the Hillsborough County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Still, Jones’ “Stop the Violence” moniker has caught on, and that exposure has been a good thing for the community, Small said.

“I don’t discourage groups like that from forming in this area,” Small said. “I don’t think they contribute to the problem. I think they help bring more issues to the table.”

Tampa City Council member Frank Reddick, who represents the Sulphur Springs area, said community leaders are hoping to form a united effort with the many different organizations attempting to help these communities. The network of help available is “not very strong,” he said.

Jerronda Carson, 37, isn’t an official Black Panther, but she’s appreciative of the work Jones has done in the community and helps whenever she can. With a 15-year-old son who lives with his father in Dade City and a 12-year-old son living with her in North Boulevard Homes, the violence hits close to her heart, she said. Her 12-year-old was playing in the front yard of Brianna Anderson’s East Tampa home when the pregnant woman was shot and killed from the road in 2013.

For a long time, her son was afraid of going outside, Carson said.

Jones’ neighborhood rallies are safe places for her son to play with other kids growing up under the same circumstances and also provide positive interactions with police he already thinks “won’t keep him safe,” Carson said.

“I hate feeling like I’m punishing him because of what happens in the community, but he knows that at night I need you in the house, not because I don’t trust you but we just don’t know when the neighborhood will blow up,” Carson said.

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For Jones, the impact of violence in the community is personal.

In 2003, his uncle, James Bass, was gunned down in Ybor City at the age of 26. In 2007, his friend Torrie McDuffie, 16, was shot and killed over spring break. His best friend, Levi Dixon Jr., was killed in the summer of 2008 in West Tampa. His 19-year-old cousin, Sheldon Underwood, was shot and killed the following January as he stood on his apartment balcony in East Tampa.

“Growing up as a black male, you hear sayings in school like you’re lucky to make it to be 21 and get out of the hood,’’ Jones said. “Then, if you live to see it, those sayings started to come true.”

When Jones was in first grade, he said, he was identified as “emotionally handicapped” and placed in an alternative education classroom like many of the children in his neighborhood. The classes were full and mostly black, Jones said.

He stayed in one classroom the entire school day until he reached the 10th grade and was allowed to join regular classes at Blake High School. He became a senior advisor for student government and a student mentor for other struggling boys.

Jones said while other students were learning about the college admissions process, many of the kids he grew up with were being told to make sure they were on a government-subsidized housing list by the time they turned 18.

Jones’ subsidized apartment that he signed up for in high school just came through last year, he said, and he often spends nights sleeping on his couch like he had grown accustomed to at various friends’ and family members’ houses.

“We weren’t really bad students or bad kids, but we got labeled like that so we rose to the expectation,” Jones said. “I think that’s a big factor in why these young kids are going crazy.”

Jones said he has not always made good decisions, but he’s stayed away from gangs.

He has been arrested 10 times, mostly on charges like possession of marijuana and trespassing, yet he also has lots of city leaders’ phone numbers and “out of this world” relationships with former Mayor Pam Iorio, Castor, who retires Friday, and Buckhorn, all of whom he describes as humble, caring leaders.

He has a strong faith in God and a strong conviction to mentor neighborhood “gangs” that he says are “just groups of lost men that are lacking opportunity.”

He wasn’t always a spokesperson for reform. Growing up, he would hide in his apartment, taking apart computers and putting them back together to pass the time and stay out of community violence.

His father was in and out of prison, and his mother “had her own issues,” Jones said. A portrait of his grandmother in her prison uniform hangs above his living room window, though Jones has photo-shopped clouds around her to diminish the prison background.

“I decided I was tired of the killing and tired of feeling like my voice didn’t mean nothing,” Jones said. “If I wasn’t in the Panther Party, I would still be doing the same thing, trying to be a voice for the voiceless.”

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Ali Muhammad, Local Chairman of the St. Petersburg/ Tampa New Black Panther Party for Self Defense was birth and raised in Tampa, FL. Graduating From Howard W. Blake High School, Tampa, FL. Class of 2007, Mr. Muhammad became involved in community activist after being a victim of police brulait seeing the resident's of his former community was mistreated due to urban renewal, with the relocation and redevolpment of the Central Park Village public housing which was located in Tampa first once Black Business District, now slated for a mixed-used devolpment tagged "Encore Tampa". After graduating in 2007, Mr. Muhammad also becamed a known area Disc Jockey, creating the Tampa Encore Exclusive Entertainment, which was a promotional & entertainment company exposing local artists in the underground music industry in Tampa, Help Exposing many artists such as G.I. of Tampa, Young A.J., Tom G., Lil B., Lil Brus, D Smooth, Trab, Vmoe, and many more.... Successfully in founding the DJ Association of Tampa Bay, Inc., which partnered with local DJ's and Artist to Expose the Music Industry here in Tampa, Sponsoring Promotional events, Conferences, Summits, Forums, And Social event to..."Exposing the Unheard In Tampa, Getting The Heard Exposed!"- DJATB 2009

He founded the local Tampa chapter of the New Black Panther Party in 2008, bringing much need change to the area (NBPP) has stood on the forefront of many occasion for the black unheard in Tampa Bay area. In 2018, the Honorable Late Chairman Hashim Nzinga reappointed local Tampa chairman back on post after reopening the chapter fully back to Tampa after a brief closure. In 2021, Chairman Ali is moving the chapter again to be a voice and defense for Our Afro Tampa residents and throughout the region.