Item: Why was Mark Clark of Peoria in Chicago to be murdered along with Fred Hampton? It seems that too many undesirable recruits were joining the Panthers because they believed the shit in the media and thought "That's for me." The Illinois Panthers therefore began a purge of their membership to eject the thugs that the lying media had recruited for thm. Panthers were being called to Chicago one at a time to be interviewed. Hence Mark Clark, a former NAACP leader in Peoria, was there. Mark's brother was in B/N about a month after the murder to support us in responding to some lecture scheduled here. (I forget who or on which side the lecturer wa.) All I can remember now of Mark's brother (I think his name was Jim) was his sensibly remarking that the January weather was too fucking cold to do anything in.
Item: Jan drove up to Panther headquarters in Chicago to bring two Panthers back here for some meeting. (Neither of us can remember what the meeting was about.) What she remembers most vividly is (a) all the bullet markings on the steel door to their office and (b) how tense and nervous they were at any sight of a police car, a tension that continued until they were wholly out of the Chicago area. Swell armed insurrectionaries they were. And incidentally, it was perfectly safe for a white person to be wandering around alone in an area where the Panthers operated. On the other hand, when Jan had driven a friend home to her South Chicago residence, the friend's brother, giving driving directions, concluded, "I hate to say this, but if you get lost your best friend is the man in Blue." The contrast to the areas in which Panthers organized was sharp.
Item: After King's murder, among the areas in large cities that did _not_ riot were all those neighborhoods where either the Panthers or SNCC had been active. Some asshole on the Marxism list, when I made the same point, made some wiseass remark aobut the Panthers triggering such riots.
Item: A couple months ago Seale was in Illinois and an NPR reporter interviewed him. The question concerned his attitude towards the "new" Panthers (actually about 15 years old). His answer was a polite version of "a bunch of assholes." He made three points against them in which they differed from _his_ Panthers: 1) they hated white people, and it was stupid to hate a whole category of people; 2) they provided no community services, while the Panthers had initiated more than 200 different services, of which the Breakfast Program was the most dramatic; and 3) unlike the original Panthers, they did no political organizing.
Incidentally I would disagree that the White Panthers are any evidence for my argument. It was the whole left that the Panthers regarded themselves as part of. Their _breakthorugh_ was to see that a racially united left had to involve an Independent Black Left, grounded in the Black community and serving Black interests but _also_ cooperating fully with white leftists. That was a revolutionary notion - embodied in practice, not mere rhetoric. They represented the highest 'reach' of that Movement of Movements we know as "The '60s." Any future mass left movement must involve both 'integrated' organizations AND organizations similar to the Panthers in the Black and Latino communities.
All this was not easily visible to those who had no direct relations with the Panthers, but that they were neither thugs nor "armed insurrectionaries" is and always has been obvious to anyone not willfully blind. The same white "progressives," leftists, etc who have swallowed media lies so glandly would not put the same stupid trust in media reports of white activists or of Democratic politicians. All one can say is Shame! Shame! Shame!
Carrol
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Dennis Claxton Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2010 3:56 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org; lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Black Panther Coloring Book
At 01:35 PM 10/28/2010, Max Sawicky wrote:
>Since being a gun-carrying black militant was illegal for all practical
>purposes,
Yup, even if the law was technically on your side at first:
http://law.jrank.org/pages/4775/Black-Panther-Party.html
[...]
....HUEY P. NEWTON, age 23, a first-year law student. With his friend Bobby Seale, age 30, Newton founded the BPP, with the intent of monitoring police officers when they made arrests. This bold tactic-already being employed in Minneapolis by the nascent AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT (AIM)-was entirely legal. Also legal under California state law was the practice of carrying a loaded weapon, as long as it was visible. But legal or not, the sight of Newton and Seale bearing shotguns as they rushed to the scene of an arrest had enormous shock value. To police officers and citizens alike, this represented a huge change from the previously nonviolent demonstrations of civil rights activists. Although they did not use the guns and maintained the legally required eight to ten feet from officers, the Panthers inspired fear. They also quickly won respect from neighbors who saw them as standing up to the predominantly white police force. The law books they carried-and from which they read criminal suspects their rights-appeared to many in the community to give the Panthers a kind of legitimacy.
[...]
Read more: <http://law.jrank.org/pages/4775/Black-Panther-Party.html#ixzz13glsIS5t>Blac k Panther Party - Further Readings - Panthers, Police, Fbi, Seale, and African http://law.jrank.org/pages/4775/Black-Panther-Party.html#ixzz13glsIS5t