tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5101759483906107472024-03-06T03:49:39.924+00:00Black Panther Commemoration Committee LondonSukant Chandanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02409104301325666959noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-510175948390610747.post-85155926430652574982010-09-20T20:57:00.001+01:002010-09-20T20:58:43.163+01:00NEW DOC-FILM ABOUT THE POLYNESIAN PANTHERS<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A a major thank you to the filmmakers.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"></span></div><div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">See the film online </span><b><a href="http://www.maoritelevision.com/Default.aspx?tabid=224&progid=2143&epid=13396"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">HERE</span></a></b></div><div><b></b></div><b></b><div></div><div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibFTsE-e1s63sOBiqxdE6q7NtjT_h-VpKpfinQB_yx_HIYRcSygzc7DjiZ70h7X1_-SKtw8cfK5gOVEPcTvh5FPLlGEWSAym00z_HQJ_H5G1GRo5L3djm7nVwCopB6Va536me2YWkIIa9L/s1600/polynesian_panthers_doc_film.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibFTsE-e1s63sOBiqxdE6q7NtjT_h-VpKpfinQB_yx_HIYRcSygzc7DjiZ70h7X1_-SKtw8cfK5gOVEPcTvh5FPLlGEWSAym00z_HQJ_H5G1GRo5L3djm7nVwCopB6Va536me2YWkIIa9L/s400/polynesian_panthers_doc_film.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519086984929424562" /></a></div></div></div>Sukant Chandanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02409104301325666959noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-510175948390610747.post-38849348322666086892010-09-09T21:26:00.004+01:002010-09-09T21:42:52.092+01:00EMORY DOUGLAS INTERVIEWED IN NEW ZEALAND<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdE9fSNiK2cK18ooRsqyHPMhMmD2xlTruJoKLfmI1o8N6PoZ0UqqsO5KYNCzHhC-MV6HGfTR31NH5sr9eMhRWXVIELsPekef4tMAJO-TXosjhqcgXbfsy2pYxGV-QRLbgQEro4tcZRv_Aq/s1600/douglas029q.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 247px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdE9fSNiK2cK18ooRsqyHPMhMmD2xlTruJoKLfmI1o8N6PoZ0UqqsO5KYNCzHhC-MV6HGfTR31NH5sr9eMhRWXVIELsPekef4tMAJO-TXosjhqcgXbfsy2pYxGV-QRLbgQEro4tcZRv_Aq/s400/douglas029q.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515016694103718994" /></a><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Power of the Panther</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div><i><a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=10592861">NZ Herald</a></i>, 22 Aug, 2010</div><div><br /></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" >O</span></span></b>ne of the first things Emory Douglas had to do in his new</div><div>job in January 1967 was to draw the pig. "Huey and Bobby</div><div>would come over after organising in the evenings and they</div><div>would talk about the pig - how they defined the police as</div><div>pigs."</div><div><br /></div><div>That's Huey Newton and Bobby Seale who had just founded the</div><div>Black Panther Party in October 1966 in Oakland, California.</div><div>Douglas, then a 23-year-old commercial art student, was</div><div>doing his best to take the idea on board. "This is all new</div><div>to me. I'm a new kid on the block. This is on-the-job</div><div>learning. I'm listening and trying to figure out how I</div><div>could express in art form what was requested of me. My</div><div>whole experience was interpreting what was being projected</div><div>and articulated verbally."</div><div><br /></div><div>When he talks it's a mix of street and artspeak. Cool. Very</div><div>down. What was being projected was point No 7 of the Black</div><div>Panther's Ten Point Programme - "an immediate end to police</div><div>brutality and murder of black people." It was a programme</div><div>born out of socialist and communist doctrines mixed with</div><div>black nationalism, militant posture and plenty of</div><div>provocative rhetoric.</div><div><br /></div><div>The party's uniform was blue shirts, black pants, black</div><div>leather jackets, black berets, shades and loaded shotguns -</div><div>for self defence. The party had reclaimed the American</div><div>constitutional right to bear arms - only in this case,</div><div>blacks were protecting themselves from the police.</div><div><br /></div><div>Organised neighbourhood patrols were common - perfectly</div><div>legal under Californian law which allowed carrying a loaded</div><div>rifle or shotgun in public, as long as it was publicly</div><div>displayed and pointed at no one.</div><div><br /></div><div>This was the new wild west of social change and a tactic</div><div>that promoted two very different tellings of history. One</div><div>is the story of the Black Panthers as hoodlums and</div><div>gun-toting gangsters who terrorised their communities. The</div><div>other is the Black Panthers as a legitimate social protest</div><div>movement - dedicated young blacks serving the people while</div><div>heroically defending themselves against unprovoked attacks</div><div>by the racist police.</div><div><br /></div><div>At the time FBI director J. Edgar Hoover called them "the</div><div>greatest threat to the internal security of the country"</div><div>and ordered via its counter intelligence programme</div><div>'COINTELPRO' extensive covert and illegal methods to</div><div>"expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise</div><div>neutralise" the party's activities.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's a legacy that lives on. "Even at our 40th anniversary</div><div>people were trying to say we were terrorists and that we</div><div>were hoodlums and thugs and criminals," says Douglas who is</div><div>here as the Elam International Artist in Residence at the</div><div>University of Auckland. "Thousands of people came from all</div><div>over the world to the 40th celebrations - they showed</div><div>different. They tried to say we were racists. The</div><div>progressive whites and activists came forward and they</div><div>refuted all of that."</div><div><br /></div><div>The year 1967, when he offered his commercial art skills to</div><div>help produce the fledgling Black Panther newspaper, was the</div><div>beginning of Douglas' party politicisation. Already a</div><div>member of San Francisco City College's Black Student Union</div><div>and involved in the Bay area Black Arts movement, he was a</div><div>fast learner. He knew about youth correctional facilities</div><div>too. "The fact that you understood the bigotry and</div><div>hypocrisy of the authorities first hand, those experiences</div><div>kind of shaped what I did."</div><div><br /></div><div>His pig-in-uniform drawings were crude and provocative -</div><div>the pig was always fat bellied, with exaggerated snout and</div><div>usually with insects swarming around the head. "That came</div><div>from seeing pigs and the slime they're eating and they have</div><div>the flies flying around them. In American culture that was</div><div>a grotesque thing."</div><div><br /></div><div>The captions were provocative too: "A low-natured beast</div><div>that has no regard for law, justice or the rights of</div><div>people, a creature that bites the hand that feeds it, a</div><div>foul, depraved traducer, usually found masquerading as the</div><div>victim of an unprovoked attack."</div><div><br /></div><div>Newton and Seale liked what they saw and before long</div><div>Douglas had a job title like no other - Revolutionary</div><div>Artist and Minister of Culture - and a free hand to draw as</div><div>he saw fit. "When I first started working, Bobby and Huey</div><div>made sure I understood the politics of what the party was</div><div>about. Once they saw that I understood that, and could</div><div>articulate it in my artwork, I was given the green light."</div><div><br /></div><div>The green light - the back page of the weekly Black Panther</div><div>newspaper published from 1967 through to 1980 - unleashed</div><div>Douglas' pent-up talent and a style of drawing that he'd</div><div>tried before, but which had been rejected at commercial art</div><div>school. At its peak, from 1968-72, the Black Panther sold</div><div>about 100,000 copies a week on street corners and college</div><div>campuses across the United States.</div><div><br /></div><div>Douglas' back-page poster image was often reprinted and</div><div>pasted on the walls of the street. In tribute to his visit</div><div>here, a run of his posters have been plastered around</div><div>Symonds St. "It reminds me of what we used to say - our</div><div>gallery is the community," says Douglas.</div><div><br /></div><div>His style began with cartoon-like, thick black outline</div><div>drawings which developed to include collage and patterns</div><div>from Format, a less expensive version of Letraset. He liked</div><div>woodcuts, but found them too time-consuming for the demands</div><div>of a weekly deadline. "I tried to mimic woodcuts by using</div><div>markers and hard ballpoint pen lines, then using the</div><div>prefabricated textured material that you could cut out to</div><div>get the tones and the contrasts."</div><div><br /></div><div>There are three phases that come and go and resurface in</div><div>Douglas' drawings. "The pig drawings are the earlier work.</div><div>Then there were the self defence drawings, then the ones</div><div>that dealt with social programmes."</div><div><br /></div><div>The comic book style self defence images are the most</div><div>confronting - guns in the hands of defiant black men and</div><div>women in response to the oppressor that seem like a call to</div><div>arms, to rise up and fight. The captions reinforce the</div><div>idea: "All power to the people. Death to the pigs." Douglas</div><div>says they were about empowering and fighting for freedom.</div><div>And effecting change. "It was making them heroes. People</div><div>begin to see themselves in the images and they become the</div><div>heroes on the stage. They can identify with that."</div><div><br /></div><div>But while the style is evidence of propaganda and a visual</div><div>mythology to give power to the people, it's easy to see how</div><div>some might be fearful of such images. Douglas is staunch:</div><div>"Those who were frightened were frightened. Those who</div><div>admired them weren't."</div><div><br /></div><div>The social programme drawings, borne out of the Panther's</div><div>Ten Point Programme demands for decent housing, education</div><div>and employment, are softer, but more confronting in terms</div><div>of the predicament and emotion expressed. Here, Douglas</div><div>shows the conditions that made the revolution seem</div><div>necessary. In one, a woman fights off rats (landlords)</div><div>attacking her in her home. "I was trying to show a person</div><div>trying to overcome the conditions - exaggerating the</div><div>housing situation - but at the same time showing a person</div><div>who had politics in their life. Even though they were</div><div>struggling they were still concerned with the issues of</div><div>that time."</div><div><br /></div><div>Animals - pigs, rats and vultures - feature often as</div><div>representations of not just the police and authority, but</div><div>also the entire capitalist military/industrial system. In</div><div>one image relating to the New Haven Black Panther trials in</div><div>1970 when Seale was imprisoned, the caption reads: "If the</div><div>fascist pigs attempt to murder chairman Bobby Seale and the</div><div>Connecticut Panthers in the electric chair, there won't be</div><div>any lights for days."</div><div><br /></div><div>They were meant to be provocative, says Douglas. "And some</div><div>were meant to be humorous. So this was just saying the</div><div>blood sucking vulture is the US Government being choked by</div><div>the extension cord and hit on the head with the light</div><div>bulb."</div><div><br /></div><div>Point six in the party's programme was "all black men to be</div><div>exempt from military service." Douglas' images relating to</div><div>the issue were often about the Vietnam War and the effects</div><div>it had on those returning, such as drug addiction. It was</div><div>important, he says, to have authentic detail. "There were</div><div>people in the party who had been ex-drug addicts. When I</div><div>did this drawing [an addict shooting up] I had one brother</div><div>pose for me. But I also asked what kind of syringes and</div><div>stuff they used and that's there - what they use out on the</div><div>street."</div><div><br /></div><div>Douglas was very aware of other revolutionary propaganda</div><div>art of the time. "We were getting posters from Africa,</div><div>Latin America, out of Palestine and Vietnam and seeing</div><div>Chinese and Russian, plus the American art protest work. I</div><div>was mostly inspired by the work that came out of Cuba."</div><div><br /></div><div>He says those who went there with the Venceremos Brigades</div><div>to show solidarity for the Cuban Revolution often came back</div><div>saying his drawings had come from there. Douglas insists it</div><div>was the other way round. "It was amazing, they remixed some</div><div>of my images." It's amazing too how the party's message</div><div>spread around the world, including to New Zealand's</div><div>Polynesian Panthers.</div><div><br /></div><div>The party also got considerable support from white America</div><div>including the Honkies for Huey campaign and composer</div><div>Leonard Bernstein and friends who held fundraising parties.</div><div>The latter was lampooned by journalist Tom Wolfe in 1970 as</div><div>"radical chic" - the social elite endorsing radical causes</div><div>to assuage white guilt.</div><div><br /></div><div>As Douglas sees it, Wolfe was buying into the</div><div>disinformation campaign. "People donate if they want to."</div><div><br /></div><div>Did it feel like a revolution in America? "We were hopeful.</div><div>We had a swagger about ourselves believing that we could</div><div>achieve what we set out to achieve. That was overcoming the</div><div>obstacles of transforming society. And we were doing that.</div><div>It was the ideal that we were changing the mindset of</div><div>people."</div><div><br /></div><div>Douglas, like other Black Panthers, has obtained the file</div><div>the FBI had on him showing the level of surveillance that</div><div>was going on - the tracking of his travel, his bank account</div><div>(which had $64 in it at the time) and the questioning of</div><div>his mother and aunt.</div><div><br /></div><div>He's yet to get his file from Operation CHAOS, the code</div><div>name for the domestic espionage project conducted by the</div><div>CIA. But the picture emerging as the information becomes</div><div>declassified shows the extraordinary measures that were</div><div>taken by the authorities to discredit the party - including</div><div>letters on forged Black Panther letterhead threatening to</div><div>kill donors to the party if they didn't give more. Douglas</div><div>agreed there were problems within the party itself that led</div><div>to its dissolution in the early 1980s - Newton getting</div><div>caught up in drugs and substance abuse and in-fighting</div><div>among party factions. But he says the Government's</div><div>discrediting campaign also played a big part.</div><div><br /></div><div>"The fact is what we did is still something people are</div><div>inspired by. There is the solidarity and coalition</div><div>politics. That's the legacy of what the Black Panther Party</div><div>left - kind of like a blueprint that people could be</div><div>inspired by."</div><div><br /></div><div>===========</div><div><br /></div><div><div>EXHIBITION</div><div><br /></div><div>What: Emory Douglas, Minister of Culture, Black Panther</div><div>Party exhibition Where and when: Gus Fisher Gallery, 74</div><div>Shortland St, October 3 On the web:</div><div>www.gusfishergallery.auckland.ac.nz Public events: Emory</div><div>Douglas and the Art of Revolution - lecture University of</div><div>Auckland Engineering Building Monday August 24, 6:30pm; MC5</div><div>and the White Panthers - Gus Fisher Gallery, August 29, 1pm</div></div><div><br /></div>Sukant Chandanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02409104301325666959noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-510175948390610747.post-39576863341351821842010-08-29T16:34:00.006+01:002010-08-29T16:51:44.320+01:00ROBERT KING OF THE EX-PANTHERS 'ANGOLA 3'<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZLstfjGqOeQmT0GXyRS-6KjvLGUXwqekhgI9OmV7gKGBvHR84F3jYLotiCdKZqsofYWorEsB4frjWI7LdXXkZAAJaFoXP82xjjQ_hgBp4PFT75JDAxh0i_5ta-h3Dzyg3p3Ky41rhgFyV/s1600/SC_RK.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZLstfjGqOeQmT0GXyRS-6KjvLGUXwqekhgI9OmV7gKGBvHR84F3jYLotiCdKZqsofYWorEsB4frjWI7LdXXkZAAJaFoXP82xjjQ_hgBp4PFT75JDAxh0i_5ta-h3Dzyg3p3Ky41rhgFyV/s400/SC_RK.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5510856475600173378" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:180%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:times new roman;" >I</span></span> first entered Louisiana State Penitentiary in the early 60s, at the age of 18. I was in and out of that place for the rest of the decade. Back then, if you were young, black and had a record, police in New Orleans would come looking for you when they had a backlog of unsolved cases: it was called cleaning the books.<br /><br /><br />In 1969, I was locked up for a robbery I didn't do and, while inside, I joined the Black Panthers. Three years later, an inmate was stabbed to death on my prison block and, because of my politics, the authorities saw a chance to pin it on me. In 2001, I was cleared of this killing but, by then, I had spent 29 years alone in a cell.<br /><br /><br />It was a dimly lit box, 9ft by 6ft, with bars at the front facing on to the bare cement walls of a long corridor. Inside was a narrow bed, a toilet, a fixed table and chair, and an air vent set into the back wall.<br /><br /><br />Some days I would pace up and down and from left to right for hours, counting to myself. I learned to know every inch of the cell. Maybe I looked crazy walking back and forth like some trapped animal, but I had no choice – I needed to feel in control of my space.<br /><br /><br />At times I felt an anguish that is hard to put into words. To live 24/7 in a box, year after year, without the possibility of parole, probation or the suspension of sentence is a terrible thing to endure.<br /><br /><br />I was kept in the closed cell restricted (CCR) wing of the penitentiary, which is also known as Angola, after the slave plantation that was on the site prior to the prison. Three times a week I was let out for an hour to go to the exercise yard, where I was kept separate from other prisoners by razor wire.<br /><br /><br />The wardens tried to discourage us from talking, but we defied them. We were beaten up and prisoners were found hanging in their cells. Whenever I was disciplined, it was for talking. I didn't care, I refused to let them dehumanise me.<br /><br /><br />The worst punishment was the "cold box", our name for the cell within Camp J. It was down a long hallway through three sets of secure doors, and when they pushed me inside, the isolation was total. They would keep me there for a month, in blocks of 10 days, shoving food through a slot in the door. I went for days without speaking to anyone. That kind of sensory deprivation was torture for me – to survive I knew I had to keep my mind active.<br /><br /><br />One pastime I had was smuggling out praline candies that I made on my cell floor. I traded tobacco to get the ingredients of sugar, peanuts and powdered milk. I made them using a cold drink can for a pot and burning toilet paper to melt sugar.<br /><br /><br />Another thing I did was to fold up toilet paper into squares and stick them to the floor with toothpaste to make a chessboard. I would call out moves to other inmates. When we were in nearby cells I played with Herman Wallace or Albert Woodfox. Like me, they were Black Panthers kept in solitary because they were seen as a threat. They had started a chapter of the Panthers, which had helped mobilise inmates to curb some of the abuse going on inside Angola at the time.<br /><br /><br />They are still in solitary after nearly 38 years – more than any other inmate in the American prison system. They were convicted of killing a prison guard in 1972, but there's a lot of evidence that they're innocent.<br /><br /><br />Since my conviction was overturned in 2001, I have travelled constantly, educating people about the widespread use of solitary confinement in America. The words of the US Constitution prohibit what is called "cruel and unusual punishment", and yet that phrase could have been written to describe solitary confinement.<br /><br /><br />When I walked out of Angola, I didn't realise how permanently the experience of solitary would mark me. Even now my sight is impaired. I find it very difficult to judge long distances – a result of living in such a small space. Emotionally, too, I've found it hard to move on. I talk about my 29 years in solitary as if it was the past, but the truth is it never leaves you. In some ways I am still there. I made a statement when I was released that although I was free of Angola, it would never be free of me. Until Herman and Albert can join me on the outside, I have to make good on that promise.<br /><br /><br />==================<br /><br />Via the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/aug/28/29-years-solitary-confinement-robert-king"><span style="font-style: italic;">Guardian</span><br /></a><br />ANGOLA-3 Campaign:<br />http://www.angola3.org/<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">PICTURED: BPCC co-founder Sukant Chandan with Robert King, London, March 2010</span>Sukant Chandanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02409104301325666959noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-510175948390610747.post-11391957018333879132010-01-02T22:25:00.002+00:002010-01-02T22:29:56.135+00:00EXCELLENT DOC-FILM ON THE PANTHERS, A GOOD INTRODUCTION TO STUDYING THE MOVEMENT<span style="font-style:italic;">Part 1 of 12:<span style="font-weight:bold;"></span></span><br /><br /><object width="445" height="364"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/TXrgaita9MU&hl=en_GB&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/TXrgaita9MU&hl=en_GB&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="445" height="364"></embed></object><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg58QZpNfW8OJk9HJA8iTftl-z-gWepvq2kWmfUAyUdx2Sj6Yoccm-9Hm5mTQ97rMoyE_jA65zBT5vQhem2IruBo4s7cVNfqa0Bj-lqiJIqVgFZaUnGkrWDzTw5E0e8ML4O08fuezGmaMFL/s1600-h/Huey+Newton.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 302px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg58QZpNfW8OJk9HJA8iTftl-z-gWepvq2kWmfUAyUdx2Sj6Yoccm-9Hm5mTQ97rMoyE_jA65zBT5vQhem2IruBo4s7cVNfqa0Bj-lqiJIqVgFZaUnGkrWDzTw5E0e8ML4O08fuezGmaMFL/s400/Huey+Newton.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5422273243620629106" /></a>Sukant Chandanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02409104301325666959noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-510175948390610747.post-882896717395930532010-01-02T22:15:00.002+00:002010-01-02T22:23:28.440+00:00BEAUTIFUL DOC-FILM ABOUT ASSATA SHAKUR, BLACK PANTHER ESCAPED JAIL IN USA AND FOUND ASYLUM IN CUBA<span style="font-style:italic;">Part 1 of 6:<span style="font-weight:bold;"></span></span><br /><br /><object width="445" height="364"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/KDrAvwA2mf0&hl=en_GB&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/KDrAvwA2mf0&hl=en_GB&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="445" height="364"></embed></object><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXzE_Gx5P_9poLZDXLcIIjQaE0tUSHYIwD4Uzhq8xucK0q7MaadAZJPyPGqMvk32-1JsqTfEaJSB_k2j_MUgDoNzw8C671eXm4xcqm4K-XhCYTyqqTpP6QnpODQoIgSG4Vi9aLcoLYocBh/s1600-h/assata-cover-small.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 259px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXzE_Gx5P_9poLZDXLcIIjQaE0tUSHYIwD4Uzhq8xucK0q7MaadAZJPyPGqMvk32-1JsqTfEaJSB_k2j_MUgDoNzw8C671eXm4xcqm4K-XhCYTyqqTpP6QnpODQoIgSG4Vi9aLcoLYocBh/s400/assata-cover-small.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5422271320814290322" /></a>Sukant Chandanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02409104301325666959noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-510175948390610747.post-58770154082688183322009-10-29T18:34:00.000+00:002009-10-29T18:35:14.643+00:00OLIVE, A BLACK PANTHER IN BRIXTON, SOUTH LONDON<span style="font-size: 130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Olive Morris: Forgotten activist hero</span></span><br /><a href="http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/features/Olive-Morris-Forgotten-activist-hero"><span style="font-style: italic;">Morning Star</span></a><br />Wednesday 28 October 2009<br />By Lizzie Cocker<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs96Apxwa6kbXf2gQgp6T8raC7MxqZ6uoiDOu3lfPWR1aaQ1kcv461XCWzyZlFfzd8QRDM5nmvHwiIOHb8yICPUydmDGkdbKBbi7i49g_UMf3tLpgYcifacZFJKvdjBFyTMvIeVGjNRVNM/s1600-h/olive_squat.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 317px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs96Apxwa6kbXf2gQgp6T8raC7MxqZ6uoiDOu3lfPWR1aaQ1kcv461XCWzyZlFfzd8QRDM5nmvHwiIOHb8yICPUydmDGkdbKBbi7i49g_UMf3tLpgYcifacZFJKvdjBFyTMvIeVGjNRVNM/s400/olive_squat.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5398002507230051570" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: times new roman;">This picture from 1973 shows Olive confronting a rather overwhelmed </span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">property agent Mr Defries, in defence of a squatted building, more info </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://rememberolivemorris.wordpress.com/2007/09/28/121-railton-road/">here</a><br /></span></div><br /><span style="font-size: 180%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">I</span></span>n an age when xenophobia and Islamophobia are being stoked<br />by illegal wars and immigration myths, the need to wrench<br />hidden realities from history in order to see today's<br />truths has never been more urgent.<br /><br />And thanks to the Remembering Olive Collective (ROC)<br />founded by artist Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre in 2007, a<br />bit of this history became available to the public last<br />week at the Lambeth Archives in Brixton, south London.<br /><br />Olive Morris, despite her awe-inspiring short life, remains<br />virtually unknown. And she is one of the greatest unsung<br />heroes I have ever come across.<br /><br />My encounter with Morris began when a friend switched on my<br />radar for forgotten female protagonists. He mentioned a<br />local project he was doing on four practically unheard-of<br />women activists who left in their wake cultural, social and<br />political improvements which are enjoyed not just in London<br />but in some instances internationally.<br /><br />Three of these women were black.<br /><br />With my radar on standby, I stumbled across a website which<br />asked me if I "remember Olive Morris?" above a picture of a<br />young black woman smiling with her shades on behind a<br />megaphone.<br /><br />No, I thought. I had never heard of Olive Morris.<br /><br />And as I investigated further it became apparent that my<br />ignorance was widespread.<br /><br />Morris died aged just 27 in the 1970s. But she had such an<br />unshakeable impact on those who knew her that many of the<br />people with memories, documents, photographs and letters<br />relating to this young woman responded to ROC's calls to<br />make her story a matter of public record.<br /><br />As a tireless campaigner for black women, a socialist and<br />an internationalist, Morris dedicated herself to fighting<br />injustice wherever she saw it.<br /><br />One of the most vivid examples was in 1969 when police<br />arrested a Nigerian diplomat in Brixton as he stepped out<br />of his Mercedes.<br /><br />The police were so stunned to see a black man with such a<br />flashy car that their reflex was to treat him as a criminal<br />who had stolen it.<br /><br />Crowds gathered round gaping as the police began to beat<br />him.<br /><br />A 17-year-old Olive struggled through the spectators and<br />physically tried to stop the attack.<br /><br />She was flung down and subjected to black police boots<br />kicking her in her breasts. She was stripped naked and told<br />as the blows kept on coming: "This is the right colour for<br />your body."<br /><br />One Nigerian student wrote in tribute to her upon her<br />death: "It is reasonable to expect that Olive Morris's<br />heroism will be immortalised alongside such black<br />luminaries like Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X and many others<br />who were proud to be black."<br /><br />But despite this ROC found while putting the jigsaw of her<br />life story together that this woman remained only in the<br />memories of those whose lives had crossed hers.<br /><br />So vivid were the memories that these pieces of the jigsaw<br />have now found an eternal home in the archives.<br /><br />As I hungrily sifted through them trying to complete my own<br />puzzle, it was Morris's typewritten words that climbed out<br />of the papers desperate to deliver the answers for problems<br />we continue to face today.<br /><br />A graduate in social sciences from Manchester University,<br />Morris wrote numerous essays on Marxism, race and class. As<br />a Brixton Black Panther, part and parcel of her membership<br />was to attend lessons in Leninism and Marxism.<br /><br />This education and her own activism influenced her<br />relationship with progressive movements and she ultimately<br />became frustrated with the British left, which she<br />described as having "more in common with the ruling class<br />and royalty than with fellow workers.<br /><br />"Today increasingly the British working class is faced with<br />a choice either to defend the 'national interest' or throw<br />their lot in with the oppressed people of the Third World.<br /><br />"The most immediate way in which this can be done is for<br />them to support the struggle of the Third World people in<br />this country," she argued.<br /><br />Morris sympathised with Trinidadian activist Claudia Jones<br />who was poorly treated by the Communist Party, which failed<br />to acknowledge her far-reaching capabilities and consigned<br />her to an administrative role, and Grunwick striker Jayaben<br />Desai who was virtually abandoned by trade unions.<br /><br />She became disillusioned by institutions for the working<br />class, which instinctively she would have had the most<br />natural allegiance with.<br /><br />"We have used the great British tradition of trade unionism<br />to try and further our cause for equality and justice, but<br />on countless occasions we have found that the movement does<br />one thing for white workers and another for black workers,"<br />said Morris.<br /><br />"White workers have time and time again refused to give our<br />unions recognition, they have crossed our picket lines for<br />racist reasons, they have organised against our<br />organisation in the trade unions.<br /><br />"Take for instance STC (Standard Telephones and Cables Ltd)<br />where white trade unionists and union officials - with<br />exception of a few - put skin colour before the overall<br />interest of the proletariat and often resorted to physical<br />violence against their black fellow workers."<br /><br />Morris was exasperated by what she saw as an inherent<br />self-interest that blocked mainly white apparently<br />progressive groups from seeing where the real battles<br />needed to be fought. She lambasted the Anti Nazi League<br />"trendies" for busying themselves with "shouting their<br />empty phrase of 'black and white unite and fight'."<br /><br />Empty, she said, "because there was no sound basis on which<br />such unity could be built."<br /><br />The ANL, she continued, has "become one big carnival<br />jamboree of political confusion for the middle class.<br /><br />"It doesn't raise the political questions. It buries them<br />in the name of 'broadness'."<br /><br />Morris highlighted that the National Front, which the ANL<br />directed all its enthusiasm into fighting, was merely a<br />symptom and not a cause of the racist ideologies and<br />practices which prevailed in every sector of society.<br /><br />As the black groups Morris worked with organised to fight<br />oppression on all levels - running supplementary schools,<br />clubs and recreational facilities, clubbing together to buy<br />houses, striking, organising pickets and circulating<br />petitions - she urged people truly dedicated to fighting<br />racism to confront the issues which affect black people's<br />lives on a daily basis in schools, the police, local<br />government and even trade unions.<br /><br />"Not a single problem associated with racialism,<br />unemployment, police violence and homelessness can be<br />settled by 'rocking' against the fascists, the police or<br />the army," she said.<br /><br />"The fight against racism and fascism is completely bound<br />up with the fight to overthrow capitalism, the system that<br />breeds both."<br /><br />The symptomatic BNP and other far-right organisations are<br />rearing their ugly heads above the fertile ground laid by a<br />political framework which has perpetuated the<br />criminalisation, social immobility and isolation of black<br />and ethnic minorities.<br /><br />But black history has a lesson for the left.<br /><br />As long as support is only forthcoming when racism is so<br />visible that it can no longer be ignored rather than being<br />part of the daily battles against all discrimination that<br />permeates society, the struggle to create equal conditions<br />for everyone will keep taking one step forward and 10 steps<br />back.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">To get a glimpse into the rest of Olive's life visit</span> <span style="font-style: italic;"><br />rememberolivemorris.wordpress.com or visit the<br />collection</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">at the Lambeth Archives in the Minet Library,<br />52 Knatchbull</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Road, London SE5 9QY</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Olive Elaine Morris</span><br /><br />Born in 1952 in Jamaica and moved with her family to<br />Britain aged nine<br /><br /><br /><br />Died of cancer in 1979<br /><br />Travelled to China, north Africa, Ireland and Spain<br /><br />A council building in Lambeth bears her name<br /><br />Groups she cofounded or worked with:<br /><br />The Black Panther Movement (later the Black Workers Group),<br /><br />Brixton Black Women's Group<br /><br />The Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent<br /><br />Manchester Black Womens Co-operative<br /><br />National Co-ordinating Committee of Overseas Students<br /><br />Black Womens Mutual Aid Group<br /><br />Brixton Law Centre<br /><br />The squatter movementSukant Chandanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02409104301325666959noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-510175948390610747.post-51711271167949761412009-01-06T20:04:00.002+00:002009-01-06T20:11:52.671+00:00HUEY NEWTON SUPPORTED THE PALESTINIANS 100%<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbG0g7rlATH0QgJkuggJBtxJS8W1FcMmwWgVF-2n-d_k4sTzByjkCIzWkHlAvZn7CiDJ7UYTV3PezYhjE9ptN6k5Xo4gVbIGUmDPBDrMSyo1f9qmYjLWMFI7otyAaUgiS8-975e4Q1Qwgs/s1600-h/huey+and+arafat.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 263px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbG0g7rlATH0QgJkuggJBtxJS8W1FcMmwWgVF-2n-d_k4sTzByjkCIzWkHlAvZn7CiDJ7UYTV3PezYhjE9ptN6k5Xo4gVbIGUmDPBDrMSyo1f9qmYjLWMFI7otyAaUgiS8-975e4Q1Qwgs/s400/huey+and+arafat.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5288275881648955506" border="0" /></a>
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<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:180%;" >T</span>hanks to the Black Panther Alumni for putting <a href="http://www.itsabouttimebpp.com/Unity_Support/pdf/Huey_International.pdf">page 16 of the Panther Legacy</a> magazine published by the BPCC, and available from us (see previous posts about how to get a copy/copies).
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<br />See the link for the page, which features the picture above and also this quote from Brother Huey:
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We think that is a<span style=""> </span>backbiting racist underhanded tactic and we will treat it as such. We have respect for all people, and we have respect for the right of any people to exist. So we want the Palestinian<span style=""> </span>people and the Jewish people to live in harmony together. We support the Palestinian’s just struggle for liberation one<span style=""> </span>hundred percent. We will go on doing this, and we would like for all of the progressive people of the world to join our ranks in order to make a world in which all people can live."<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style=";font-family:";font-size:8;" ><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style=";font-family:";font-size:13;" >(</span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:13;" >On the Middle East</span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:13;" >, Huey Newton)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style=""><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<br />Sukant Chandanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02409104301325666959noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-510175948390610747.post-68815892543582145132008-12-04T17:05:00.002+00:002008-12-04T17:17:02.677+00:00REMEMBER FRED HAMPTON - ROLE MODEL FOR THE YOUTH<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpzriGl_hQR3HvTDu-_uU2vKUwGgr1QdHE_mlFKl0xyaE9hMPdWTsM-mlP2gAYm6n96cFXFVOo455VM5ligu5G0zvI9aG5bH8VYtKh6iPNeykFVqBxEwVISJW8gzunkcUoqlOCYd1m-eM0/s1600-h/FredHampton2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 318px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpzriGl_hQR3HvTDu-_uU2vKUwGgr1QdHE_mlFKl0xyaE9hMPdWTsM-mlP2gAYm6n96cFXFVOo455VM5ligu5G0zvI9aG5bH8VYtKh6iPNeykFVqBxEwVISJW8gzunkcUoqlOCYd1m-eM0/s400/FredHampton2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5275980575059312226" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fred Hampton: Martyr of the Liberation Struggle</span></span><br /></div><center><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Fred Hampton (August 30, 1948 – December 4, 1969) was an<br />activist and deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the<br />Black Panther Party (BPP). He was murdered in his apartment<br />by the the Chicago Police Department and the Federal Bureau<br />of Investigation.<br /><br />He was drugged and brutally killed at the age of 21 for<br />being one of the most effective upcoming leaders and<br />organisers of the Black Panthers. Panther Mark Clark was<br />also killed in the same attack.<br /><br />This is how <a href="http://www.thetalkingdrum.com/fred.html">Mutulu Shakur</a> (Tupac's Step-Dad, still in<br />prison today) recounts that day:<br /><br />"Fred Hampton and several Party members including William O'Neal<br />came home to the BPP Headquarters after a political<br />education class. O'Neal volunteered to make the group<br />dinner. He slipped a large dose of secobarbital in Fred's<br />kool-aid and left the apartment around 1:30am, a little<br />while later, Fred fell asleep. Around 4:30am on December 4,<br />1969 the heavily armed Chicago Police attacked the<br />Panthers' apartment. They entered the apartment by kicking<br />the front door down and then shooting Mark Clark pointblank<br />in the chest. Clark was sleeping in the living room with a<br />shotgun in his hand. His reflexes responded by firing one<br />shot at the police before he died. That bullet was then<br />discovered to be the only shot fired at the police by the<br />Panthers. Their automatic gunfire entered through the walls<br />of Fred and his pregnant girlfriend's room. Fred was shot<br />in the shoulder. Then two officers entered the bedroom and<br />shot Fred at pointblank in his head to make sure that he<br />was dead, and no longer a so-called menace to society. It<br />has been said that one officer stated, "he's good and dead<br />now." The officers then dragged Fred's body out of his<br />bedroom and again open fired on the members in the<br />apartment. The Panthers were then beaten and dragged across<br />the street where they were arrested on charges of attempted<br />murder of the police and aggravated assault. The incident<br />also wounded four other Panther members."<br /><br />One of the most important achievements of Brother Fred was<br />the brokering of a peace pact between Chicago's gangs and<br />the recruitment of some of them into the Panthers. He also<br />developed an alliance for struggle with gangs and other<br />progressive forces in the city which he coined the 'rainbow<br />coalition', a term and concept Jesse Jackson later<br />appropriated. He continues to be an inspiration today and<br />his example and martyrdom will always remain in the hearts<br />and minds of strugglers.<br /><br />Sukant Chandan<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Sons of Malcolm / Black Panther Commemoration Committee</span><br /><br /></div><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:78%;" > <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn0PiDvVXDY"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Fred Hampton doc-film</span></a></span><br /></h2><h2><span style="font-size:130%;"><a style="font-weight: bold;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN8ExeinDVFVw9hftcGxrDqgaJO47ov1YPdpcl7GfH8FdyFfwKjsLsDdbAMtQHUgVqJ2gtlHqE26J2xm5EC_AONMqhtGSE8RQKBN3qAn1UigU6K-lPqrXZo3YDsuIsSyPax23MsJixAkBm/s1600-h/FredHampton.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 285px; height: 343px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN8ExeinDVFVw9hftcGxrDqgaJO47ov1YPdpcl7GfH8FdyFfwKjsLsDdbAMtQHUgVqJ2gtlHqE26J2xm5EC_AONMqhtGSE8RQKBN3qAn1UigU6K-lPqrXZo3YDsuIsSyPax23MsJixAkBm/s400/FredHampton.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5275976454524539570" border="0" /></a></span></h2> </center> <div align="right"><a href="http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/fhamptonspeech.html">A Speech By Fred Hampton</a></div> <strong>POWER ANYWHERE WHERE THERES PEOPLE!</strong><br /><br />Power anywhere where there's people. Power anywhere where there's people. Let me give you an example of teaching people. Basically, the way they learn is observation and participation. You know a lot of us go around and joke ourselves and believe that the masses have PhDs, but that's not true. And even if they did, it wouldn't make any difference. Because with some things, you have to learn by seeing it or either participating in it. And you know yourselves that there are people walking around your community today that have all types of degrees that should be at this meeting but are not here. Right? Because you can have as many degrees as a thermometer. If you don't have any practice, they you can't walk across the street and chew gum at the same time.<br /><br />Let me tell you how Huey P. Newton, the leader, the organizer, the founder, the main man of the Black Panther Party, went about it.<br /><br />The community had a problem out there in California. There was an intersection, a four-way intersection; a lot of people were getting killed, cars running over them, and so the people went down and redressed their grievances to the government. You've done it before. I know you people in the community have. And they came back and the pigs said "No! You can't have any." Oh, they dont usually say you can't have it. They've gotten a little hipper than that now. That's what those degrees on the thermometer will get you. They tell you "Okay, we'll deal with it. Why dont you come back next meeting and waste some time?"<br /><br />And they get you wound up in an excursion of futility, and you be in a cycle of insaneness, and you be goin' back and goin' back, and goin' back, and goin' back so many times that you're already crazy.<br /><br />So they tell you, they say, "Okay niggers, what you want?" And they you jump up and you say, "Well, it's been so long, we don't know what we want", and then you walk out of the meeting and you're gone and they say, "Well, you niggers had your chance, didnt you?"<br /><br />Let me tell you what Huey P. Newton did.<br /><br />Huey Newton went and got Bobby Seale, the chairman of the Black Panther Party on a national level. Bobby Seale got his 9mm, that's a pistol. Huey P. Newton got his shotgun and got some stop signs and got a hammer. Went down to the intersection, gave his shotgun to Bobby, and Bobby had his 9mm. He said, "You hold this shotgun. Anybody mess with us, blow their brains out." He put those stop signs up.<br /><br />There were no more accidents, no more problem.<br /><br />Now they had another situation. That's not that good, you see, because its two people dealing with a problem. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, no matter how bad they may be, cannot deal with the problem. But let me explain to you who the real heroes are.<br /><br />Next time, there was a similar situation, another four-way corner. Huey went and got Bobby, went and got his 9mm, got his shotgun, got his hammer and got more stop signs. Placed those stop signs up, gave the shotgun to Bobby, told Bobby "If anybody mess with us while were putting these stop signs up, protect the people and blow their brains out." What did the people do? They observed it again. They participated in it. Next time they had another four-way intersection. Problems there; they had accidents and death. This time, the people in the community went and got their shotguns, got their hammers, got their stop signs.<br /><br />Now, let me show you how were gonna try to do it in the Black Panther Party here. We just got back from the south side. We went out there. We went out there and we got to arguing with the pigs or the pigs got to arguing-he said, "Well, Chairman Fred, you supposed to be so bad, why dont you go and shoot some of those policemen? You always talking about you got your guns and got this, why dont you go shoot some of them?"<br /><br />And I've said, "you've just broken a rule. As a matter of fact, even though you have on a uniform it doesn't make me any difference. Because I dont care if you got on nine uniforms, and 100 badges. When you step outside the realm of legality and into the realm of illegality, then I feel that you should be arrested." And I told him, "You being what they call the law of entrapment, you tried to make me do something that was wrong, you encouraged me, you tried to incite me to shoot a pig. And that ain't cool, Brother, you know the law, dont you?"<br /><br />I told that pig that, I told him "You got a gun, pig?" I told him, "You gotta get your hands up against the wall. We're gonna do what they call a citizens arrest." This fool dont know what this is. I said, "Now you be just as calm as you can and don't make too many quick moves, cause we don't wanna have to hit you."<br /><br />And I told him like he always told us, I told him, "Well, I'm here to protect you. Don't worry about a thing, 'm here for your benefit." So I sent another Brother to call the pigs. You gotta do that in a citizen's arrest. He called the pigs. Here come the pigs with carbines and shotguns, walkin' out there. They came out there talking about how they're gonna arrest Chairman Fred. And I said, "No fool. This is the man you got to arrest. He's the one that broke the law." And what did they do? They bugged their eyes, and they couldn't stand it. You know what they did? They were so mad, they were so angry that they told me to leave.<br /><br />And what happened? All those people were out there on 63rd Street. What did they do? They were around there laughing and talking with me while I was making the arrest. They looked at me while I was rapping and heard me while I was rapping. So the next time that the pig comes on 63rd Street, because of the thing that our Minister of Defense calls observation and participation, that pig might be arrested by anybody!<br /><br />So what did we do? We were out there educating the people. How did we educate them? Basically, the way people learn, by observation and participation. And that's what were trying to do. That's what we got to do here in this community. And a lot of people don't understand, but there's three basic things that you got to do anytime you intend to have yourself a successful revolution.<br /><br />A lot of people get the word revolution mixed up and they think revolutions a bad word. Revolution is nothing but like having a sore on your body and then you put something on that sore to cure that infection. And Im telling you that were living in an infectious society right now. Im telling you that were living in a sick society. And anybody that endorses integrating into this sick society before its cleaned up is a man whos committing a crime against the people.<br /><br />If you walk past a hospital room and see a sign that says "Contaminated" and then you try to lead people into that room, either those people are mighty dumb, you understand me, cause if they weren't, they'd tell you that you are an unfair, unjust leader that does not have your followers' interests in mind. And what were saying is simply that leaders have got to become, we've got to start making them accountable for what they do. They're goin' around talking about so-and-so's an Uncle Tom so we're gonna open up a cultural center and teach him what blackness is. And this n****r is more aware than you and me and Malcolm and Martin Luther King and everybody else put together. That's right. They're the ones that are most aware. They're most aware, cause they're the ones that are gonna open up the center. They're gonna tell you where bones come from in Africa that you can't even pronounce the names. Thats right. They'll be telling you about Chaka, the leader of the Bantu freedom fighters, and Jomo Kenyatta, those dingo-dingas. They'll be running all of that down to you. They know about it all. But the point is they do what they're doing because it is beneficial and it is profitable for them.<br /><br />You see, people get involved in a lot of things that's profitable to them, and we've got to make it less profitable. We've got to make it less beneficial. I'm saying that any program that's brought into our community should be analyzed by the people of that community. It should be analyzed to see that it meets the relevant needs of that community. We don't need no n*****s coming into our community to be having no company to open business for the n*****s. There's too many n*****s in our community that can't get crackers out of the business that they're gonna open.<br /><br />We got to face some facts. That the masses are poor, that the masses belong to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the masses, I'm talking about the white masses, I'm talking about the black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too. We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you do'nt fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don't fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism.<br /><br />We ain't gonna fight no reactionary pigs who run up and down the street being reactionary; we're gonna organize and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary political power and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the power structure, arm ourselves, and we're gonna fight reactionary pigs with INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION. That's what it has to be. The people have to have the power: it belongs to the people.<br /><br />We have to understand very clearly that there's a man in our community called a capitalist. Sometimes he's black and sometimes he's white. But that man has to be driven out of our community, because anybody who comes into the community to make profit off the people by exploiting them can be defined as a capitalist. And we don't care how many programs they have, how long a dashiki they have. Because political power does not flow from the sleeve of a dashiki; political power flows from the barrel of a gun. It flows from the barrel of a gun!<br /><br />A lot of us running around talking about politics don't even know what politics is. Did you ever see something and pull it and you take it as far as you can and it almost outstretches itself and it goes into something else? If you take it so far that it is two things? As a matter of fact, some things if you stretch it so far, it'll be another thing. Did you ever cook something so long that it turns into something else? Ain't that right?<br /><br />That's what were talking about with politics.<br /><br />That politics ain't nothing, but if you stretch it so long that it can't go no further, then you know what you got on your hands? You got an antagonistic contradiction. And when you take that contradiction to the highest level and stretch it as far as you can stretch it, you got what you call war. Politics is war without bloodshed, and war is politics with bloodshed. If you don't understand that, you can be a Democrat, Republican, you can be Independent, you can be anything you want to, you ain't nothing.<br /><br />We don't want any of those n*****s and any of these hunkies and nobody else, radicals or nobody talking about, "I'm on the Independence ticket." That means you sell out the republicans; Independent means you're out for graft and you'll sell out to the highest bidder. You understand?<br /><br />We want people who want to run on the People's Party, because the people are gonna run it whether they like it or not. The people have proved that they can run it. They run it in China, they're gonna run it right here. They can call it what they want to, they can talk about it. They can call it communism, and think that that's gonna scare somebody, but it ain't gonna scare nobody.<br /><br />We had the same thing happen out on 37th Road. They came out to 37th road where our Breakfast for children program is, and started getting those women who were kind of older, around 58---that's, you know, I call that older cause Im young. I aint 20, right, right! But you see, they're gonna get them and brainwash them. And you ain't seen nothin till you see one of them beautiful Sisters with their hair kinda startin getting grey, and they ain't got many teeth, and they were tearin' them policemen up! They were tearing em up! The pigs would come up to them and say "You like communism?"<br /><br />The pigs would come up to them and say, "You scared of communism?" And the Sisters would say, "No scared of it, I ain't never heard of it."<br /><br />"You like socialism?"<br /><br />"No scared of it. I ain't never heard of it."<br /><br />The pigs, they be crackin' up, because they enjoyed seeing these people frightened of these words.<br /><br />"You like capitalism?"<br /><br />Yeah, well, that's what I live with. I like it.<br /><br />"You like the Breakfast For Children program, n****r?"<br /><br />"Yeah, I like it."<br /><br />And the pigs say, "Oh-oh." The pigs say, "Well, the Breakfast For Children program is a socialistic program. Its a communistic program."<br /><br />And the women said, "Well, I tell you what, boy. I've been knowing you since you were knee-high to a grasshopper, n****r. And I don't know if I like communism and I don't know if I like socialism. But I know that that Breakfast For Children program feeds my kids, n****r. And if you put your hands on that Breakfast For Children program, I'm gonna come off this can and I'm gonna beat your ass like a ...."<br /><br />That's what they be saying. That's what they be saying, and it is a beautiful thing. And that's what the Breakfast For Children program is. A lot of people think it is charity, but what does it do? It takes the people from a stage to another stage. Any program that's revolutionary is an advancing program. Revolution is change. Honey, if you just keep on changing, before you know it, in fact, not even knowing what socialism is, you dont have to know what it is, they're endorsing it, they're participating in it, and they're supporting socialism.<br /><br />And a lot of people will tell you, way, Well, the people dont have any theory, they need some theory. They need some theory even if they don't have any practice. And the Black Panther Party tells you that if a man tells you that he's the type of man who has you buying candy bars and eating the wrapping and throwing the candy away, he'd have you walking East when you're supposed to be walking West. Its true. If you listen to what the pig says, you be walkin' outside when the sun is shining with your umbrella over your head. And when it's raining youll be goin' outside leaving your umbrella inside. That's right. You gotta get it together. Im saying that's what they have you doing.<br /><br />Now, what do <i>WE</i> do? We say that the Breakfast For Children program is a socialistic program. It teaches the people basically that by practice, we thought up and let them practice that theory and inspect that theory. What's more important? You learn something just like everybody else.<br /><br />Let me try to break it down to you.<br /><br />You say this Brother here goes to school 8 years to be an auto mechanic. And that teacher who used to be an auto mechanic, he tells him, "Well, n****r, you gotta go on what we call on-the-job-training." And he says, "Damn, with all this theory I got, I gotta go to on-the-job-training? What for?"<br /><br />He said, "On on-the-job-training he works with me. Ive been here for 20 years. When I started work, they didn't even have auto mechanics. I ain't got no theory, I just got a whole bunch of practice."<br /><br />What happened? A car came in making a whole lot of funny noise. This Brother here go get his book. He on page one, he ain't got to page 200. I'm sitting here listening to the car. He says, "What do you think it is?"<br /><br />I say, "I think its the carburetor."<br /><br />He says, "No I don't see anywhere in here where it says a carburetor make no noise like that." And he says, "How do you know its the carburetor?"<br /><br />I said, "Well, n****r, with all them degrees as many as a thermometer, around 20 years ago, 19 to be exact, I was listening to the same kind of noise. And what I did was I took apart the voltage regulator and it wasn't that. Then I took apart the alternator and it wasn't that. I took apart the generator brushes and it wasn't that. I took apart the generator and it wasn't that. I took apart the generator and it wasn't even that. After I took apart all that I finally got to the carburetor and when I got to the carburetor I found that that's what it was. And I told myself that 'fool, next time you hear this sound you better take apart the carburetor first.'"<br /><br />How did he learn? He learned through practice.<br /><br />I dont care how much theory you got, if it don't have any practice applied to it, then that theory happens to be irrelevant. Right? Any theory you get, practice it. And when you practice it you make some mistakes. When you make a mistake, you correct that theory, and then it will be corrected theory that will be able to be applied and used in any situation. Thats what we've got to be able to do.<br /><br />Every time I speak in a church I always try to say something, you know, about Martin Luther King. I have a lot of respect for Martin Luther King. I think he was one of the greatest orators that the country ever produced. And I listened to anyone who speaks well, because I like to listen to that. Martin Luther King said that it might look dark sometime, and it might look dark over here on the North Side. Maybe you thought the room was going to be packed with people and maybe you thought you might have to turn some people away and you might not have enough people here. Maybe some of the people you think should be here are not here and you think that, well if they're not here then it won't be as good as we thought it could have been. And maybe you thought that you need more people here than you have here. Maybe you think that the pigs are going to be able to pressure you and put enough pressure to squash your movement even before it starts. But Martin Luther King said that he heard somewhere that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And we're not worried about it being dark. He said that the arm of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward heaven.<br /><br />We got Huey P. Newton in jail, and Eldridge Cleaver underground. And Alprentice Bunchy Carter has been murdered; Bobby Hutton and John Huggins been murdered. And a lot of people think that the Black Panther Party in a sense is giving up. But let us say this: That we've made the kind of commitment to the people that hardly anyone else has ever made.<br /><br />We have decided that although some of us come from what some of you would call petty-bourgeois families, though some of us could be in a sense on what you call the mountaintop. We could be integrated into the society working with people that we may never have a chance to work with. Maybe we could be on the mountaintop and maybe we wouldn't have to be hidin' when we go to speak places like this. Maybe we wouldn't have to worry about court cases and going to jail and being sick. We say that even though all of those luxuries exist on the mountaintop, we understand that you people and your problems are right here in the valley.<br /><br />We in the Black Panther Party, because of our dedication and understanding, went into the valley knowing that the people are in the valley, knowing that our plight is the same plight as the people in the valley, knowing that our enemies are on the mountain, to our friends are in the valley, and even though its nice to be on the mountaintop, we're going back to the valley. Because we understand that there's work to be done in the valley, and when we get through with this work in the valley, then we got to go to the mountaintop. We're going to the mountaintop because there's a motherfucker on the mountaintop that's playing King, and he's been bullshitting us. And weve got to go up on the mountain top not for the purpose of living his life style and living like he lives. We've got to go up on the mountain top to make this motherfucker understand, goddamnit, that we are coming from the valley!<br /><br /><div align="right"><span style="font-size:85%;"><i> (SPEECH DELIVERED AT OLIVET CHURCH, 1969)</i></span></div>Sukant Chandanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02409104301325666959noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-510175948390610747.post-90488293662499111942008-11-13T16:12:00.002+00:002008-11-14T15:44:38.365+00:00LIMITED EDITION BLACK PANTHER MAGZINE NOW AVAILABLE <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiPXI2a_NGjBJuXMyLJkNdNicG6Y2BO6xUlhyphenhyphenqKn37HruFpjP15c7jTOWzejEw_cPmqojDT74PkArETdo57U_403rlholdMPK-i9ieNkcFP6mx9OO7OOELPLIaOLRxKlqkDfKs5-y-AT-F/s1600-h/BPPC+mag+cover.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 232px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiPXI2a_NGjBJuXMyLJkNdNicG6Y2BO6xUlhyphenhyphenqKn37HruFpjP15c7jTOWzejEw_cPmqojDT74PkArETdo57U_403rlholdMPK-i9ieNkcFP6mx9OO7OOELPLIaOLRxKlqkDfKs5-y-AT-F/s320/BPPC+mag+cover.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5268174472915716498" border="0" /></a><div class="post-body entry-content"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CSukant%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="country-region"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="place"></o:smarttagtype><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><object classid="clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39-B33AF135CC4D" id="ieooui"></object> <style> st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style> <![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} a:link, span.MsoHyperlink {color:blue; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {color:purple; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} @page Section1 {size:595.3pt 841.9pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:180%;">BLACK PANTHER magazine now available</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Dear Friends,</p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The ‘Panther Legacy’ magazine is now for sale.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">[front cover pictured left]</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">This stylish-looking publication is exclusively designed by urban-artist Jaykoe. Just on aesthetics alone this is must have collector’s item. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">You will not find magazine like this anywhere else!</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">This 36 page publication is jammed packed with extracts from the auto-biographies of Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Assata Shakur, Stanley Tookie Williams (founder of the LA street-gang Crips) and extracts from Tupac/2Pac Shakur’s biography amongst many other articles.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Panther Legacy includes Black Panther newspaper covers and other Black Liberation Movement artwork.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Price per one copy: £3 GBP / $5 USD / 3.60 EUR</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">+ p&p: </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">£0.50p to <st1:country-region st="on">Britain</st1:country-region> / 1.30 EUR to Europe / $ 2.20 to <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">USA</st1:place></st1:country-region> and the rest of the world.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">This limited edition publication can be bought by bank transfer to the following bank details:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Mr Sukant Chandan</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Barclays Bank</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sort code: 20 49 76</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Account No: 60480207</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Please email/text/phone me to let me know the payment has been made and the magazine will be sent off to you straight away once payment is confirmed.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">For multiple orders please contact me to work out p+p according to how many copies you would like.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Thanks,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sukant Chandan</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Editor of Panther Legacy magazine</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><a href="mailto:sukant.chandan@gmail.com">sukant.chandan@gmail.com</a></p> <p class="MsoNormal">0044 7709 112 126</p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 85%;">[pic: Billy X head of the <a href="http://www.itsabouttimebpp.com/">Black Panther Alumni </a>holding the Panther Legacy magazine up at Sandino's Bar, Derry northern Ireland alongside Eamon McCann and Emory Douglas]</span> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUpDVhTgiG9EE7MnLfSmU0EoA0dH11eXtGPwxB8vEaJ-QRVJOOR7RuRzrvXs0NRTadhFqdGq-nzX4wqGDOm0j3WlefT9XrbJ9hlFrXL5ZLOtuGz12hfIyAGmm4r9DcmOdc5CFKz-ESYI_o/s1600-h/Billy+with+mag.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUpDVhTgiG9EE7MnLfSmU0EoA0dH11eXtGPwxB8vEaJ-QRVJOOR7RuRzrvXs0NRTadhFqdGq-nzX4wqGDOm0j3WlefT9XrbJ9hlFrXL5ZLOtuGz12hfIyAGmm4r9DcmOdc5CFKz-ESYI_o/s400/Billy+with+mag.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5268538881968779058" border="0" /></a></p></div>Sukant Chandanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02409104301325666959noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-510175948390610747.post-31622134566927995122008-11-09T14:39:00.002+00:002008-11-09T14:48:13.324+00:00PANTHER LEGACY IN LADBROKE GROVE<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCC6f553Yg5Gmaapr1BVoZxB4J1bTJtt_1rhpi60SE8EoaPkecs-q5bWQ2rNu8BicxDkZuf513Q44SHss1I0H4gYiyYWQtbtvMbG3VyTytm0upl8aXPX7APXpcs1w3338t8PsUmd6tOvUP/s1600-h/Panther+Legacy+platform_1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCC6f553Yg5Gmaapr1BVoZxB4J1bTJtt_1rhpi60SE8EoaPkecs-q5bWQ2rNu8BicxDkZuf513Q44SHss1I0H4gYiyYWQtbtvMbG3VyTytm0upl8aXPX7APXpcs1w3338t8PsUmd6tOvUP/s400/Panther+Legacy+platform_1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5266669199656708450" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">[platform from the Tabernacle event, left-right: Emory Douglas, Massoud Shadrajeh from the Islamic Human Rights Commission, Sukant Chandan (chair) and Billy X]</span><br /><br />Dear Friends,<br /><br />The final event of the Panther Legacy tour organised by the<br />Black Panther Commemoration Committee and many other<br />friends, was concluded last night at the Tabernacle in<br />Ladbroke Grove with well over 100 people in attendance.<br /><br />The BPCC would like to thank all the new friends we have<br />made in the organising of this week, all our volunteers and<br />especially Brother Emory Douglas and Brother Billy X from<br />the Black Panther Alumni.<br /><br />This is a start of a new relationship with so many people<br />and organisations and we are stepping up to even bigger and<br />better things.<br /><br />A more complete report will follow shortly.<br /><br />All power to the people.<br /><br />Black Panther Commemoration Committee<br /><br />London, 10/11/08Sukant Chandanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02409104301325666959noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-510175948390610747.post-40395972489229437532008-11-09T14:37:00.001+00:002008-11-09T14:39:37.460+00:00PANTHER LEGACY IN PARLIAMENT: 5th Nov 08<h3 class="post-title entry-title"> <a href="http://sonsofmalcolm.blogspot.com/2008/11/brief-report-from-panthers-in.html">BRIEF REPORT FROM PANTHERS IN PARLIAMENT, LONDON</a> </h3> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWJ6cpVFKqfDTGecVYVgWXeLa3k3xHUziamrX24yT18cXTzR5Xw7zUMyjQH7Sn0uLqzZVRti5sB9PIkrZB3zDLxZNiBZwjOrfDKZvfWD5_hdlP3icoKXhXys0QFkI8Hbv2ULBVRTAPv0lp/s1600-h/parl_lowres_1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWJ6cpVFKqfDTGecVYVgWXeLa3k3xHUziamrX24yT18cXTzR5Xw7zUMyjQH7Sn0uLqzZVRti5sB9PIkrZB3zDLxZNiBZwjOrfDKZvfWD5_hdlP3icoKXhXys0QFkI8Hbv2ULBVRTAPv0lp/s400/parl_lowres_1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5265498979208648418" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br />[pictured left-right: Sukant Chandan (chair), Emory Douglas, George Galloway MP and Billy X]</span><br /><br />Dear Friends,<br /><br />Another great meeting held last night [05/11/08] in the Grand Committee Room in the Houses of Parliament.<br /><br />Again, time does not allow me to give full credit to the content of the contributions by George, Emory and Billy X.<br /><br />The meeting was jointly organised by the Respect political party and the Black Panther Commemoration Committee (BPCC). George Galloway Member of Parliament is the Respect party's leader, and also spoke last night.<br /><br />On a day when the USA elected its first African-American President, we too made a little bit of history on this day by having Black Panthers speaking for the first time (to the best of our knowledge) in the Houses of Parliament.<br /><br />The meeting was packed with around 80 people in attendance.<br /><br />George Galloway made a great speech as per-usual, focusing on the mis-representation of the Black Panthers as offensively militaristic. Galloway stressed that rather their strategy was always one of self-defence. Galloway also spoke at some length about Obama's victory, and the controversies around his presidential campaign in relation to Bill Ayers and Obama's Muslim background. George mentioned that there must be something good in Obama's victory if only judging from the hysteria around his middle name 'Hussein', and the general right-wing and Zionist frenzied campaign against Obama.<br /><br />Emory and Billy X both made great speeches recounting their experiences that led them to join the Panthers and their experiences thereof.<br /><br />Emory talked of how the underlying injustices continue for working class and oppressed people of colour in the USA despite the Obama's achievement of reaching the presidency. Emory stressed that the causes of indecent housing, unemployment and racism still needs to be addressed. Emory also stated that McCain and those like him have not gone away and will keep putting pressure on Obama to disable him from making any progress.<br /><br />It was particularly great to see so many young people attending this meeting. It is not often in political meetings that young working class people from both black and white backgrounds come together to and engage in discussion regarding the issues of race and class oppression and what to do about these issues.<br /><br />After the the session of speeches and debate people in the room continued to discuss with each other in a general positive atmosphere of friendship and solidarity with the Panthers.<br /><br />On behalf of the Black Panther Commemoration Committee I would like to thank Caroline, Kevin Ovenden and George Galloway, Alexandra, Fahim, Carrie and the Treatment Room crew, Black 9 Films who filmed the event, Steve and Henna who photographed the event, all those who attended, and all the BPCC volunteers and organisers.<br /><br />Sukant Chandan<br />Black Panther Commemoration Committee<br />London, 6/11/08Sukant Chandanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02409104301325666959noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-510175948390610747.post-49379009417846827962008-11-09T14:34:00.001+00:002008-11-09T14:37:12.345+00:00BLACK PANTHER LEGACY IN BRIXTON: 3rd Nov 08<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc9OOu4tKaPOsDfvWRYRCG44QSKibJhfbFqxztVyzyeTnIY7WGvKYfFXmUblL-21Sgk9fOGJm1XKZgZSrj6z_zwh9CCHx8Lh33ydWwTz2QphJvivZ75tTpGUptEPck9TNCUoWQ1nVF3Uq0/s1600-h/brix_1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc9OOu4tKaPOsDfvWRYRCG44QSKibJhfbFqxztVyzyeTnIY7WGvKYfFXmUblL-21Sgk9fOGJm1XKZgZSrj6z_zwh9CCHx8Lh33ydWwTz2QphJvivZ75tTpGUptEPck9TNCUoWQ1nVF3Uq0/s400/brix_1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5266666368595642850" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">BLACK PANTHERS IN BRIXTON </span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">[pictured: people at the meeting. On the left, Linton Kwesi Johnson making a contribution from the floor, Billy X at the back with the baseball hat and blue t-shirt]</span><br /><br />Just a quick note to report on last night's event. Due to time<br />constraints, I cannot do justice to everyone's contributions on the<br />evening. However I thought it might interest people to read a little<br />something.<br /><br />For those who don't know, Brixton is perhaps the beating heart of the<br />Black/West Indian community in Britain. It is a place of great<br />struggle, confidence and cultural vibrancy.<br /><br />Here you can see a doc-film about the Brixton uprising<br />against police brutality.<br /><br />Like any community of the oppressed, it is also a cultural<br />centre of the peoples, and has produced many great artists<br />and music.<br /><br />Congratulations to all the sisters in the Remember Olive<br />Collective, a group of sisters in Brixton who have recently<br />set-up this collective to keep the legacy of Olive Morris alive.<br /><br />Olive Morris was a young Black Panther in Brixton. They<br />organised a great meeting, the food was delicious courtesy<br />of Elaine Holness - Director of the Karibu Centre.<br /><br />The event was packed out, around 150 people, standing room<br />only. There were the 'elders' of the movement there, many<br />former members from the Black Panther Movement from the<br />1970s, and many other younger members of the community.<br /><br />Clarence Thompson eloquently recited his amazing poem in<br />dedication to the ANC struggle in 1985, a poem which is<br />displayed at the UN building in NY.<br /><br />The great dub-poet and struggler Linton Kwesi-Johnson said<br />a few words of wisdom. He talked of the importance of the<br />Black Panther Movement (BPM) in opening peoples eyes to the<br />great contribution to literature of Black people, which<br />hitherto has been buried.<br /><br />Neil Kenlock, founder of Choice FM (although he no longer<br />runs it) spoke of his involvement in the BPM, over a slide<br />show of pictures of struggle from the 1970s. Neil Kenlock<br />was photographer for the BPM.<br /><br />Ana Laura, Liz, Linton and Neil all spoke endearingly of<br />Olive Morris and her commitment to liberation of all oppressed<br /><br />and working class people. It was fitting that Yana Morris,<br /><br />Olive’s sister, said a few words about her late Sister on behalf<br />of the Morris family.<br /><br />Billy X of the Black Panther Party Alumni in the USA<br />explained how the Black Panthers comprised many young<br />people. He himself joined when he was only 17, and the<br />Party was comprised mainly of very young people. Billy X<br />talked about the importance that the BPP put on ideological<br />education, especially of Mao tse-tung's teachings.<br /><br />Emory Douglas talked through a slide show of his incredible<br />art, giving insight and historical context to his work.<br /><br />It was a touching movement of solidarity when around a<br />dozen people took a picture together, the people being<br />Billy X and Emory, with many former Black Panthers in<br />Brixton.<br /><br />The Black Panther Commemoration Committee's new magazine,<br />'Panther Legacy' was very well received by people at the<br />meeting. This magazine can be acquired by getting in touch<br />with me.<br /><br />Billy and Emory are today in another heart of resistance to<br />imperialism and racism - northern Ireland in Derry where<br />they are speaking with veteran civil-rights activist Eamonn<br />McCann, and also meeting a high-level delegation from the<br />Irish national-liberation and socialist movement Sinn Fein<br />and Sinn Fein Youth.<br /><br />[Pictures to follow soon.]<br /><br />Billy X and Emory are speaking with George Galloway MP<br />tomorrow in Parliament, see details HERE:<br /><br />And we hope people will join us especially on this Saturday<br />at another centre of struggle and culture - Notting Hill /<br />Ladbroke Grove / Portobello, which will be a great night of<br />resistance and culture in a great venue - The Tabernacle -<br />and the last engagement of Billy X and Emory before they<br />leave - see HERE, or the facebook event page HERE:<br /><br />Sukant Chandan<br />Black Panther Commemoration Committee<br /><br />sukant.chandan@gmail.com<br /><br />bpcc66@gmail.com<br /><br />http://rememberolivemorris.wordpress.com/Sukant Chandanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02409104301325666959noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-510175948390610747.post-43108147429525500802008-10-07T17:53:00.006+01:002008-11-04T16:57:13.763+00:00PANTHER LEGACY - 5pm Sat Nov 8th, Tabernacle, Notting Hill<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1hM26aTUYJ2E7UIxK3N1KTaemdjyTCmEyo5H6g5uEGxJ89a-myOn4y8DhrA8W1nfskuH5VBI29aNi0YcBWSvsqqQ81_6PmkOiyaVOunVKYF9jFI1o7ifFEBh6dYKQDlvfPZJ4MV1kpVqL/s1600-h/Panther+Legacy+Front-1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1hM26aTUYJ2E7UIxK3N1KTaemdjyTCmEyo5H6g5uEGxJ89a-myOn4y8DhrA8W1nfskuH5VBI29aNi0YcBWSvsqqQ81_6PmkOiyaVOunVKYF9jFI1o7ifFEBh6dYKQDlvfPZJ4MV1kpVqL/s400/Panther+Legacy+Front-1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5254457545290384914" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Special guests:</span><br /><br />EMORY DOUGLAS & BILLY X<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Plus:</span><br />Darcus Howe, Bashy, Vanessa Walters & Zena Edwards<br /><br />Saturday, November 8, 2008<br />5:00pm - 9:00pm<br />Tabernacle,<br />Powis Sq, W11<br />London<br /><br />special guest speakers:<br /><br />EMORY DOUGLAS - Former Minister of Culture of the Black Panthers; Black Panther/Black Liberation artist and designer of the Black Panther newspaper<br /><br />BILLY X JENNINGS - Head of the Black Panther Alumni<br /><br />DARCUS HOWE - Former Panther in Brixton, South London, and broadcaster and journalist<br /><br />MC BASHY - London's rising star of grime<br /><br />VANESSA WALTERS - One of Black Britain's best writers and playwrights<br /><br />ZENA EDWARDS - Mesmerizing poetry, music and singing<br /><br />The Black Panther Commemoration Committee in England consists of people from different political experiences and backgrounds who came together in the September 2008 united in the belief that the Black Panther Party for Self Defence was one of the most important experiences of oppressed people's social, political and cultural struggle in the West.<br /><br />As such we have organised the "Panther Legacy" event to recognise the importance of art in revolution and representation.<br /><br />Emory Douglas, former Minister of Culture in the Black Panther Party, is perhaps the person most responsible for conveying the politics of the Panthers into the mass consciousness of Black people in the USA and the oppressed across the world. Emory Douglas' beautiful and striking art-work in the Panther's newspaper conveyed the politics of the movement which embodied the humanity, defiance and revolutionary continuities of oppressed Black people in the US and their support for struggles across the world.<br /><br />Please join us for a small exhibition of Panther artwork and activities, along with a Q&A with Emory and the head of the Black Panther Alumni and ex-Panther himself Billy X Jennings.<br /><br /><br />Chair: Sukant Chandan (Sons of Malcolm)<br /><br />There will be some original panther artwork available on the night to purchase.<br /><br />This event is a fundraiser for the Panther Alumni projects in the U.S. and the entry fee for the exhibition, Q&A and performance is just £10.<br /><br />BOOK TICKETS **<a href="http://www.carnivalvillage.org.uk/november.htm">HERE</a>**<br /><br />*N.B The seating at this event is limited and tickets will almost certainly sell out. Please book in advance to avoid disappointment.<br /><br />For more information check out our website or email us on the address listed.<br /><br /><a href="http://blackpanther1966.blogspot.com/" onmousedown="'UntrustedLink.bootstrap($(this)," target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://blackpanther1966.blogspot.com/</a><br />07709 112 126Sukant Chandanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02409104301325666959noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-510175948390610747.post-17641680718587015852008-10-02T16:49:00.002+01:002008-10-02T16:54:01.179+01:00ABOUT US / AIMS / CONTACTABOUT US<br /><br />The Black Panther Commemoration Committee in England<br />consists of people from different political experiences and<br />backgrounds who came together in the September 2008 united<br />in the belief that the Black Panther Party for Self Defence<br />was one of the most important experiences of oppressed<br />people's social, political and cultural struggle in the<br />West.<br /><br /><br />AIMS<br /><br />The BPCC work towards keeping the experience and legacy of<br />the Black Panthers alive for current and future generations.<br /><br />The BPCC support the excellent work of the Black Panther<br />Alumni.<br /><br />The BPCC support and work towards campaigning for justice<br />and liberation of political prisoners who were associated<br />with the Black Panthers.<br /><br />The BPCC understands that the Black Panthers had an<br />international impact, and we believe in raising<br />consciousness about the experiences and legacy of the Black<br />Panthers across the world, and especially here in England.<br /><br />= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =<br /><br />CONTACT: bpcc66@gmail.comSukant Chandanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02409104301325666959noreply@blogger.com3