A Black History Month Moment: The Black Panther Party for Self Defense

[AthenaAwakened]

 The Black Panther Party or BPP (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was a revolutionary black nationalist and socialist organization active in the United States from 1966 until 1982, with its only international chapter operating in Algeria from 1969 until 1972.

At its inception on October 15, 1966, the Black Panther Party's core practice was its armed citizens' patrols to monitor the behavior of police officers and challenge police brutality in Oakland, California. In 1969, community social programs became a core activity of party members. The Black Panther Party instituted a variety of community social programs, most extensively the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, and community health clinics.

Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover called the party "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country", and he supervised an extensive program (COINTELPRO) of surveillance, infiltration, perjury, police harassment, and many other tactics designed to undermine Panther leadership, incriminate party members, discredit and criminalize the Party, and drain the organization of resources and manpower. The program was also accused of using assassination against Black Panther members.

Government oppression initially contributed to the growth of the party as killings and arrests of Panthers increased support for the party within the black community and on the broad political left, both of whom valued the Panthers as powerful force opposed to de facto segregation and the military draft. Black Panther Party membership reached a peak in 1970, with offices in 68 cities and thousands of members, then suffered a series of contractions. After being vilified by the mainstream press, public support for the party waned, and the group became more isolated. In-fighting among Party leadership, caused largely by the FBI's COINTELPRO operation, led to expulsions and defections that decimated the membership. Popular support for the Party declined further after reports appeared detailing the group's involvement in illegal activities such as drug dealing and extortion schemes directed against Oakland merchants. By 1972 most Panther activity centered on the national headquarters and a school in Oakland, where the party continued to influence local politics. Party contractions continued throughout the 1970s. By 1980 the Black Panther Party had just 27 members.

The history of the Black Panther Party is controversial. Scholars have characterized the Black Panther Party as the most influential black movement organization of the late 1960s, and "the strongest link between the domestic Black Liberation Struggle and global opponents of American imperialism". Other commentators have described the Party as more criminal than political, characterized by "defiant posturing over substance".

A short lived organization that inspired, incited, infuriated and in the final analysis contributed to the transformation of a nation.

And the berets were cute too.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

And Reagan and the NRA were all for gun control:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I'm hardly a scholar on the subject, but the Black Panthers sounded like they were a bunch of young kids seeing shit that they thought was unacceptable and reacted, like a bunch of young kids would. Some were violent, but the FBI had infiltrated the organization to a point that it was probably difficult to tell who were informants and who were actual members. The FBI also attempted to incite violence, once again making it harder to know the source of violent acts. Honestly, the action of the Black Panthers was less reprehensible than the FBI's attempt to thwart them.

We know the Black Panthers were involved in positive social programs and that they wanted to enact large scale social changes to improve the lives of blacks. Given the crap the entire race had to go through, that a quasi-radical group would form in response to it isn't exactly unexpected. Saying "they" killed cops ignores the violence that some cops actually were involved in against blacks in either the propagation of the violence or the cover up. Using such loose pronouns is ridiculous if you want to cover the issue of violence.

 

[untermensche]

Chomsky likes to point out when asked about Watergate how differently government crimes are treated.

Minor crimes, like Watergate, but crimes against a major political party with power, and a president is forced to resign.

But major crimes, like the assassination of black leaders, as occurred in COINTELPRO, are ignored.

 

[Derec]

Torture and murder of Alex Rackley.

 

[Derec]

But major crimes, like the assassination of black leaders, as occurred in COINTELPRO, are ignored.

Major crimes, like murder done by BPP members you mean?
Huey Newton was released after a few years after he murdered a police officer. Luckily he got his in the end, during internal black radical power struggle.
The people who killed Alex Rackley all served only a few years while those who ordered the murder as well as accomplices walked. Many were rewarded for their murderous acts with university professorships.

Those people are not heroes, they are scum, and should be treated as such.

 

[untermensche]

Groups attacked violently, and harassed by the government will many times have members who also act out violently.

This is why people are against the government attacking groups violently, infiltrating groups with the intent to incite violence, and assassinating their members.

 

[Derec]

We know the Black Panthers were involved in positive social programs

I am sure serving a few breakfasts makes up for all their misdeeds.

 

[untermensche]

But major crimes, like the assassination of black leaders, as occurred in COINTELPRO, are ignored.

Major crimes, like murder done by BPP members you mean?
Huey Newton was released after a few years after he murdered a police officer. Luckily he got his in the end, during internal black radical power struggle.
The people who killed Alex Rackley all served only a few years while those who ordered the murder as well as accomplices walked. Many were rewarded for their murderous acts with university professorships.

Those people are not heroes, they are scum, and should be treated as such.

You are defending deliberate government assassination.

Based on nothing but lies from the government.

You are a problem for people seeking liberty.

 

[laughing dog]

The people who killed Alex Rackley all served only a few years while those who ordered the murder as well as accomplices walked. Many were rewarded for their murderous acts with university professorships.

Please provide the number and names of the former Black Panthers who were hired as university professors and the evidence that shows they got the job because of his or her murderous acts.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

On the morning of December 4, 1969, lawyer Jeffrey Haas received a call from his partner at the People’s Law Office, informing him that early that morning Chicago police had raided the apartment of Illinois Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton at 2337 West Monroe Street in Chicago. Tragically, Hampton and fellow Panther Mark Clark had both been shot dead, and four other Panthers in the apartment had critical gunshot wounds. Police were uninjured and had fired their guns 90-99 times. In sharp contrast, the Panthers had shot once, from the shotgun held by Mark Clark, which had most likely been fired after Clark had been fatally shot in the heart and was falling to the ground.

http://zinnedproject.org/materials/the-assassination-of-fred-hampton/

 

[Derec]

You are defending deliberate government assassination.

What deliberate government assasination? Government did not even want to keep those creeps in prison for more than a few years.

Based on nothing but lies from the government.

I am sure BPP was just a sowing circle.

You are a problem for people seeking liberty.

No they were not. A Maoist dictatorship is pretty much the opposite of liberty.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Many were rewarded for their murderous acts with university professorships.

OMG!!! You were denied tenure!! This is what happened. I am so sorry.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

According to FBI documents, one of the purposes of the COINTELPRO program was to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of the Black nationalists". They wanted to prevent the rise of a black "messiah" and Martin Luther King Jr. had been amongst the candidates until his assassination in 1968 when the attention shifted to Huey P. Newton. Of the 295 documented actions taken by COINTELPRO to disrupt Black groups, 233 were directed against the Black Panther Party.

https://www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/actions/actions_cointelpro.html

 

[Derec]

Please provide the number and names of the former Black Panthers who were hired as university professors

Erika Hudgins, Laney College and Berkeley City College. Was involved in interrogation and torture of Alex Rackley at least (hwer voice was on the tape, yet a lefty jury acquitted her).
Warren Kimbro was one of the two gunmen convicted in the Alex Rackley murder. He only served four years and was then promptly hired as Assistant Dean of Eastern Connecticut State University.
Those two are the ones I remember from reading about Alex Rackley. I am sure there are many more.

and the evidence that shows they got the job because of his or her murderous acts.

That would be tough to prove but in any case, there involvement with a radical organization like BPP should have disqualified them from being professors.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Erika Hudgins, Laney College and Berkeley City College. Was involved in interrogation and torture of Alex Rackley at least (hwer voice was on the tape, yet a lefty jury acquitted her).
Warren Kimbro was one of the two gunmen convicted in the Alex Rackley murder. He only served four years and was then promptly hired as Assistant Dean of Eastern Connecticut State University.
Those two are the ones I remember from reading about Alex Rackley. I am sure there are many more.

and the evidence that shows they got the job because of his or her murderous acts.

That would be tough to prove but in any case, there involvement with a radical organization like BPP should have disqualified them from being professors.

So you have no proof, but you really like typing this stuff so you will keep on making specific accusations for which you have no proof.

 

[untermensche]

What deliberate government assasination? Government did not even want to keep those creeps in prison for more than a few years.

Based on nothing but lies from the government.

I am sure BPP was just a sowing circle.

You are a problem for people seeking liberty.

No they were not. A Maoist dictatorship is pretty much the opposite of liberty.

Here is a ruling on what you are defending.

The Committee finds that the domestic activities of the intelligence community at times violated specific statutory prohibitions and infringed the constitutional rights of American citizens. The legal questions involved in intelligence programs were often not considered. On other occasions, they were intentionally disregarded in the belief that because the programs served the "national security" the law did not apply. While intelligence officers on occasion failed to disclose to their superiors programs which were illegal or of questionable legality, the Committee finds that the most serious breaches of duty were those of senior officials, who were responsible for controlling intelligence activities and generally failed to assure compliance with the law.[1] Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that ... the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.[29]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

Another ruling:

While the declared purposes of these programs were to protect the "national security" or prevent violence, Bureau witnesses admit that many of the targets were nonviolent and most had no connections with a foreign power. Indeed, nonviolent organizations and individuals were targeted because the Bureau believed they represented a "potential" for violence—and nonviolent citizens who were against the war in Vietnam were targeted because they gave "aid and comfort" to violent demonstrators by lending respectability to their cause.

The imprecision of the targeting is demonstrated by the inability of the Bureau to define the subjects of the programs. The Black Nationalist program, according to its supervisor, included "a great number of organizations that you might not today characterize as black nationalist but which were in fact primarily black." Thus, the nonviolent Southern Christian Leadership Conference was labeled as a Black Nationalist-"Hate Group."

And here is some of what was done:

Illegal force: The FBI conspired with local police departments to threaten dissidents; to conduct illegal break-ins in order to search dissident homes; and to commit vandalism, assaults, beatings and assassinations.[38] The object was to frighten or eliminate dissidents and disrupt their movements.

This is what you are defending.

Truly amazing.

 

[Derec]

So you have no proof, but you really like typing this stuff so you will keep on making specific accusations for which you have no proof.

Why else would you hire murderers and torturers to teach at your university unless you hire them because of their violent radicalism? Kimbro was hired as assistant dean right after leaving prison. Note that he murdered a young man in cold blood. A young man who had previously been tortured. Hiring Kimbro was a tacit approval of these crimes.

It's amazing how people like you glorify thugs like Newton, Seale and others who should have been locked up for the rest of their lives. And who can blame police for not trying to hard to take Fred Hampton alive given how often BPP and other black radicals were escaping justice through the courts.

 

[Derec]

This is what you are defending.

Go read the account of torture and murder of Alex Rackley. That is what you are defending.
Or go and read about all the violent crime your hero Huey Newton has committed, including murder and attempted murder of a witness.
COINTELPRO might not have been pretty, but given mafia-like ability of BPP members to escape justice over and over again extraordinary measures were more than justified.

 

[untermensche]

This is what you are defending.

Go read the account of torture and murder of Alex Rackley. That is what you are defending.
Or go and read about all the violent crime your hero Huey Newton has committed, including murder and attempted murder of a witness.
COINTELPRO might not have been pretty, but given mafia-like ability of BPP members to escape justice over and over again extraordinary measures were more than justified.

You defend government assassination of people it doesn't like.

And you wave your hands a lot as you do it.