The Black Panthers Revisited

From CounterPunch:

If one reads the Ten Point Program of the Panthers, they will not see a radical document that calls for the installment of a dictatorship of the proletariat or a program to install a racially designed anti-white regime. No, the demands merely demanded fairness and some reparations for the historic enslavement of African-Americans by the white-skinned rulers of the American colonies and the early United States. Sure, the Panthers saw the situation of black people in the US as comparable to that of a colony, but that perception is still not that much of a stretch even today, thirty-four years after the founding of the Party. One can argue the various theoretical inadequacies of this perception, but the general truth of the economic status of most African-Americans in today's world is this: they own little property; they are subject to the whims of the major capitalist and political powers that work hand in hand to keep power among the rich who are also mostly white skinned; in those arenas where they do produce goods or services, the control remains with the colonial (or neocolonial) power; and in terms of the culture of the colonized, it is expropriated, manipulated, and exploited.

The Panthers were the targets of the most concerted governmental internal counterinsurgency effort while they existed, if not in the entire history of the United States. After they began observing Oakland police by following them around as they performed their duties the Party began to incur the cops' wrath. It was because the Panthers carried loaded guns during their observations that the California State Legislature outlawed that practice in California. The sight of Black men with loaded guns was too much for the fearful white culture. In April 1968, one of the first members of the Panthers was killed by Oakland police. Sixteen year old Bobby Hutton was shot down in a confrontation that also saw the arrest of Eldridge Cleaver, who had joined the party after his release from prison in 1967. Cleaver then went into exile after being released on bail. His theoretical differences with some of the original party members, especially Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, would be exploited by FBI agents and others involved in the counterinsurgency campaign waged against the Panthers. This campaign was a major part of the COINTELPRO program and involved everything from infiltration to murder. Bobby Hutton's death was but the first of many.

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I know that the Panthers ultimately fell apart in a haze factionalism and drug use, but then who's to say that wasn't spurred by the Federal Government, who spent millions of dollars to illegally undermine the completely legal political organization? I love the Black Panther Party, the original one, not the wonky and politically opportunistic so-called "New" Black Panther Party. Their philosophy of worker empowerment, their social programs, their no-nonsense embrace of the concept of self-defense coming from an understanding that the racist white power structure was (and still is) literally out to kill and exploit black people, hell, even their kickass black leather jackets and revolutionary spirit all excite me to no end. They were a group that wanted justice, and they wanted it now.

Their just radicalism is a far cry from the armchair liberalism of today, which insists that leftists support Democrats, who do nothing. Okay, they do something: they enable the corporate forces that are incrementally making slaves of us all. I'm sick of watching this country going to hell. I'm sick of liberals reminiscing about the marvels of the Clinton era, which was in reality a very conservative, pro-corporate time. Is it any wonder that the Black Panther Party seems larger than life to me? America needs them again, if only to shake up all the bullshit. Nothing like the image of a righteous black guy with a gun to send the weirdos scurrying like the rats they are.



Right on!

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