the story about the shotgun through the wall happened in oakland, CA, so it wasn't hampton. i didn't say it was a "solitary" cop. (i'm not the warren commission with the solitary gunman nonsense.) you and i both know better than that. for those who don't know, you've just enlightened them. you're a closet michael moore. ;-)
now people know who hampton was and why his death mattered. why the establishment wanted to kill him and others like him; and the hopes and the idealism of the 1960s along with him.
i liked hampton, too. he wasn't perfect. hampton could never be a "mere" anything.
what it's hard to bring people to see -- particularly today -- is that in politics there's no gain without pain: to get off their self indulgent rears and do something risky rather than only complain, write or talk about it. your comments about those arguing against the resolution and the reaction to david hilliard are quite illustrative of the fact the 1960s was a battle ground, with its cowards, wimps and heros. it's not something to be passed over lightly as a frivolous era solely inhabited by deluded, left wing nut cases, druggies and rock musicians. and it wasn't easy to "keep hope alive."
R
----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 2004 6:05 PM Subject: [lbo-talk] Fred Hampton
:
:
: R wrote:
: >
: > 5. murders. . . . .the black panther leader who was murdered while
sleeping
:
: And so Fred Hampton -- I loved that man -- has come to be a mere
: unidentified "black panther leader" killed by a solitary cop with a
: shotgun.
:
: Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were murdered by a special squad of Chicago
: police assigned to the States Attorney's office. It was December 4,
: 1969. The Chicago Tribune printed a photograph taken inside the bedroom
: on their front page without first checking with the authority's as to
: what the story was supposed to be. The photograph shows that _all_ the
: shots were from the hallway into the bedroom; that none had been fired
: from inside the apartment. The official story was going to be that the
: cops had knocked on the door, that someone inside had fired through the
: door at them, and that they then returned fire. It was not _a_ cop; it
: was a whole damn army of cops. And they weren't using _a_ shotgun but a
: number of automatic weapons. The whole room was a shambles.
:
: Fred Hampton was Vice-Chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party. Mark
: Clark was from Peoria. We (ISU SDS) had had Hampton here as a speaker
: just a few weeks before that. At the November meeting of the Moratorium
: at ISU Jan and I had begged for a resolution condemning police
: repression of the Panthers. The resolution was voted down. Those arguing
: against it claimed that the question would "turn people off." Similar
: events were happening all over the nation. In San Francisco at the
: November Moratorium the crowd booed Dave Hilliard (of the Panther
: leadership) when he declared the right of blacks to defend themselves
: against violence.
:
: It is hard to bring people to see that solidarity is not a sentiment.
:
: Carrol
:
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