Black Panther Party

[Whaleboy]

Seroiusly??? Was it based on actual events in 1996??

If so, then that is seriously disturbing and an awful indictment on a system that hasnt succeeded in countering those views since the 60s

[Bereta_Eder]

it sounded strange to me too, so i did a search and it was about 1960! (which i still pretty damn recent!!!!!!)


i mean i can see why ted striker and other americans appear so racist. there is a long tradition behind it whiuch makes the neo nazis look cute.



here's the movie (1st link i found really) http://www.spiritualityhealth.com/ne...item_2097.html

[chequita guevara]

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was primarily a Black nationalist organization that got into socialism for two reasons. One, it was the late 60s, and every protest group was influenced by socialism of one sort or another. Two, they discovered they could make a lot of money buying cheap books from the PRC and selling them to white college radicals.

There were some serious problems with the BPP, mainly because of certain "reactionary" aspects of their philosophy. One of the key aspects of their philosphy was that racism unmanned the Black man (which is not untrue, but neither as true as they claimed), and so as a response they proclaimed a hyper-macho philosophy. As the BPP proclaimed at the last congerss of the Students for a Democratic Society, the proper position for women during the revolution is prone. To say that the BPP was sexist would be an understatment.

Eldrige Cleaver wrote in his memiors, Soul on Fire, that he raped white women in order to get back at white men. In order to practice, to learn how to rape and get away with it, he spent several years raping Black women first! He apologizes for raping Black women, not for being a rapist. Women in the BPP were expected to give it up for the revolution, which basically relegated them to being prostitues and maids.

The BPP also attracted a large number of opportunists, criminals, and dillitants. Because of the hyper-machoism of the BPP, many men joined simply so they could strut their stuff around the Black community. Criminals joined because the BPP openly carried weapons (which was legal at the time in California, stronghold of the BPP). Having been drug dealers before, they continued their illegal activities after joining the party. While some sections, such as the Chicago and L.A. branches were mostly political, the national headquarters in Oakland was infected with many lesser quality comrades.

Still, there was something about the BPP that scared the bezeezus out of authority. They were openly revolutionary (though more for show than real), they carried weapons and regularly confronted the police (legally--mostly), they had the support of the communities in which they lived. They were able to organize within the prison system. They forced the issue of sickle cell anemia on the American medical establishment. They established the first breakfast programs for poor students (programs which many cities still have today). They gave away free groceries in poor communities. At a time when police were free to grab any Black man they wanted and charge him for a crime, or simply decide to go beat some poor man up, the BPP would intervene, help people get aquitted, defend those getting beaten.

Roy Kanaga's US organization was funded by the government (federal and local) as a counter-organization to the BPP, and when US attacked and murdered several BPP members at a UCLA meeting, it was the BPP that was harrassed by the police. The CIA spread a rumour that a then prominent actress, married to a French director, was carrying the child of a Panther. She because so distraught over the rumor, that after the child was born (all white, btw), that she committed suicide. The LAPD created the SWAT team to deal with the BPP. After all, Black people openly carrying weapons weer scary. California even changed the law to outlaw carrying weapnos openly, after the BPP showed up at the statehouse in Sacremento armed.

Gun fights between the BPP and police were frequent, and people were jailed on silly pretences or made up ones. Geronimo Pratt spent 23 years in prison for a murder, where the only evidence was the testimony of a paid FBI informant, even though there were witnesses who placed him 600 miles away at the time of the murder (a Black man murdered a white woman playing tenis with her husband).

George Jackson, who became political in prison, was jailed for participating in a robery, though he was asleep in the car when the robbery occured. Eventually he was murdered by prison guards who claimed he had hidden a gun in his afro. Before this, however, Jackson's younger brother, a BPP member, staged a armed take-over of a court room, to try and get his brother out. When they got outside to a van with the judge in tow, the FBI and police open fired on the van, kiling the judge, and everyone else inside.

One of the guns Jackson's brother used was registed to Angela Davis, a prominent member of both the BPP and the Communist Party. Ronald Reagan, then governor had a hate on special for Angela, as he had repeatedly tried to fire her from her UCLA teaching job. With this excuse, the government proclaimed her a public-enemy, armed and dangerous, and began a year and a half manhunt for her, eventually capturing her in a hotel in NYC. Her captors expressed surpise that she surrendered quitely, apparently hoping she'd try and go out in a blaze of glory. The jury aquitted her of all charges in less than four hours of deilberation.

In Chicago, local BPP leader Fred Hampton arranged a truce between the Back (Black P. Stone Rangers--later known as the El Rukins) and Latino gangs and began recruiting them to politics. When the Black Student Union took over one of the main buildings at DePaul university, these gangs and the BPP stood guard (unarmed) outside to prevent invasion by the police.

Later that year, after an FBI plant informed police of the layout of the BPP's apartment, the police opened fire with a hail of bullets. Police claimed that the BPP started the gun-fight, but a reporter examined the evidence and discovered that only one bullet had been fired outward from the building. Both Fred Hampton and follower Mark Clark were killed while they lay in their beds, sleeping. According to Hampton's widow, when the police finally entered the apartment, one of them exclaimed "He's still breathing!" in Hampton's bedroom and they opened fire again. The family later won a lawsuit against the city of Chicago for quite a bit of money, and no one inside the building ever went to jail.

Eventually, the shenningans in Oakland drove many of the leaders into exile. Cleaver ended up in Algeria, where he held acid-guru Timothy Leary captive for a while (Leary was a narc, so he deserved it) and threatened to kill Elane Brown, Huey Newton's lover, while they were in China. Newton himself ended up in Cuba, hiding from a warrent on a cocaine charge.

Brown then took over the organization, drove out the rapists and many of the criminals, and tried to transform the organization from the macho-posture fest it was to a useful political organization. She was the one wh sponsored free grociers to the poor, she helped get Jerry Brown elected, etc. Then Huey came back from exile, beat the drug charge, and the organization collapsed.

Today, Cleaver is back in the US, a pastor of an evangalist churhc. He supported Ronald Reagan saying he would kick Black people in the ass and get them moving. Heuy Newtno died in what is presumed to be a drug deal gone wrong, but he was killed execution style. Given the man's addition to coke, I believe it. Bobby Seale, another leader (whom Brown claims no one in the organization had much respect for--so how did he get to be a leader?), one time member of the Chicago 8 (later the Chicago 7 as his trial was seperated for demanding his own attorny at every chance) now works as a community laison for Temple University and sells BBQ stuff.

There is a group around today that claims to be the BPPSD, but it is only a few years old, none of the old leaders enorse it, and has none of the socialist pretensions of the original group. It is a fairly right-wing, Black nationalist organization heavily influenced by the Nation of Islam. A sad appropriation of the name of an important part of American history,

[Kidlicious]

Very informative post.

[chequita guevara]

The Encarta post is actually quite good, and a little more accurate since I made mine entirely from memory.

[Darius871]

A mix of socialist and nationalist elements... sounds familiar...

[chequita guevara]

Just cuz you have elements of both doesn't make you a national socialist. Don't confuse names with reality.

[Al B. Sure!]

again, chegitz...

Eldridge Cleaver died in the mid 1990's...

he also ran for Congress in Cali as a Republican

[Al B. Sure!]

and by the way, the second incarnation of the black panther party is whats up... thats what i'm talking about... the working class, urban neo-fascists! my kind of people.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Albert Speer
again, chegitz...

Eldridge Cleaver died in the mid 1990's...

1998 is not the mid-90s, but it's not like I keep track o the guy. He hasn't been relevent since he went into "exile" and return.

BPP2 isn't up. They are an incredibly minor organization in the Black nationalist movement. I wouldn't go so far to call them fascists, either. They're Black nationalists.

More people probably show up to hear Cornel West speak than are members of BPP2.

[Al B. Sure!]

alright... late 90's...

anyway here in philly, you're right... these groups are minor. I think the African Revolutionary Action Commitee is a bit bigger but that group basically comes down to a guy walking the subway preaching to people... so black nationalism is at a low which is a good thing in that racial tensions are low but is bad in that people are slipping more and more onto the road of immorality and dependence.

[Al B. Sure!]

though i had talked to one of the ARAC people... bah... his beliefs made no sense... saying that the gov't was arresting people to work in prison for nothing because no corporations wanted to hire black people... thats paranoid, delusional bull****...

[chequita guevara]

Can't say anything about that ARAC cuz this is the first I've ever heard of them. It's a legitimate concern thuogh (if poorly reasoned).

Fact: corporations do use convicts as cheap labor.
Fact: #1 means that people who don't committ crimes aren't going to get those jobs.
Fact: historically, companies in the South would provide the state or county with a request for convict laborers, and the sheriff would go out and round people up, railroad them on some crime, and provide, at the cost fo the state, slave labor. This happened up until the end of the chain gang system (IIRC, the early 50s).

However, there is no evidence the later is happening today. But, if people aren't getting jobs because a convict laborer has the job instead, it's more likely that the jobless person will have to resort to crime to support himself. Thus, it becomes a vicious circle. Politicians and right-wingers say that convicts should work to pay for their keep, since it's an unfair burden on society to keep them in prison at public cost, but it takes jobs away from the innocent.

You can see how a paranoid person would latch onto this and construe it another way.

[Al B. Sure!]

Chegitz:

but even what you said was not something intentional... it was just how the system worked out... i had a pamphlet from the group (i donated three dollars and got a cd of malcolm x speeches) where it basically said that businesses did not want to hire blacks period (which in itself is clearly a paranoid idea) but they still wanted to get labour off them so they basically forced blacks to do crime and get arrested so they could work in the prisons that the pamphlet described as in-door plantations...

some really crazy ****... i didnt know where to begin when i was talking to the boy

[Al B. Sure!]

i respect what he's trying to do but he needs to get his head on straight... at least he's anti-drugs and anti-feminist but the rest of his idealogy is crazy...

it's no matter though... his words fall on deaf ears 90% of the time... it's weird though how the last thing and the most important thing he says people should remember after hearing him is to 'not snitch on your people'...