Recent searches
Search options
#blackpanthers
Today in Labor History April 6, 1968: Oakland police attacked the Black Panthers headquarters and assassinated Bobby Hutton, an unarmed teenager.
Today in Labor History April 5, 1977: U.S. disability rights activist stormed and occupied the offices of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle. They demanded enactment of section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which had passed Congress four years prior. The law mandated that no federally funded programs could exclude persons with disabilities and put into place legal protections, and the right to accommodations, for students with disabilities. During the prior four years, HEW director Joseph Califano repeatedly delayed enactment of the law, while regulations were weakened to benefit business interests. During the San Francisco protests, disability rights activists Judith Heumann, Kitty Cone, and Mary Jane Owen organized a 25-day occupation of the US Federal Building with 150 other activists. Solidarity support from the Black Panthers, allied politicians, and the International Association of Machinists, who provided food, mattresses, wheelchairs, and other equipment, and helped a delegation get to Washington, D.C. The regulations for section 504 were ultimately signed into law on 28 April, 1977.
For a really great documentary on the birth of this movement, please see Crip Camp, A Disability Revolution (2020).
#workingclass #LaborHistory #CivilDisobedience #occupation #directaction #disability #ableism #union #solidarity # #blackpanthers #sanfrancisco #JudithHeumann #KittyCone #MaryJaneOwen #BlackMastadon
He founded the #anti-racist, anti-classist #Rainbow Coalition,[6] a prominent multicultural political organization that initially included the #BlackPanthers, Young Patriots (which organized poor whites), and the Young Lords (which organized Puerto Ricans), and an alliance among major #Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton
#acab
Long, excellent read on the children of the #BlackPanthers
'Fred Hampton Jr was days away from taking his first breath when his father was assassinated. Still in his mother’s womb, he would have sensed the shots fired by police into his parents’ bedroom at the back of 2337 Monroe Street, Chicago.
He would have absorbed the muffled screams, felt the adrenaline rushing through his mother’s veins, been jolted by her violent arrest. Could he also have somehow sensed the moment of his father’s death?'
Today in Labor History March 20, 2000: Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, was arrested for murdering a Georgia sheriff’s deputy. Al-Amin had been a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panthers. He once said that “violence is as American as cherry pie.” Al-Amin denied shooting the deputy. His fingerprints were not found on the murder weapon. He had no gunshot wounds, though officers who were present at the shootout claimed that the suspect had been hit and wounded. Another man, Otis Jackson, later confessed to being the shooter, but the authorities have repeatedly denied Al-Amin’s requests for a retrial. He is now serving a life sentence. He had been at Florence supermax, under a gag order preventing interviews with journalists. In 2014, he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. He is now at the U.S. Penitentiary, Tucson. In April 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal from al-Amin.
Today in Labor History March 5 1968: The first Chicano student walkout in East Lost Angeles occurred on this date. The Walkouts, or Chicano Blowouts, occurred throughout 1968 in protest of unequal conditions in Los Angeles Unified School District high schools. Chicanos were often in classes of 40 students. Teachers often treated them with contempt. Drop-out rates were high. At Garfield High School, 58% of Chicano students dropped out each year. Thousands of students participated in the Blowouts. On March 4, 1968, J. Edgar Hoover sent out a memo to law enforcement, nationwide, warning them to be extra vigilant against “nationalist” movements in “minority” communities. Harry Gamboa Jr., one of the organizers of the first walkout, was placed on the list of 100 Most Dangerous & Violent Subversives, by the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary, along with Angela Davis & Eldridge Cleaver.
https://youtu.be/4eWJXW_vYTA
ATF Raids Black 2A Influencer's Home, Finds Nothing,
The Civil Rights Lawyer
#ACAB #BluePussies #2A #SocialistGunClub #BlackPanthers #PoliceIntimidation #BlackGunsMatter
They won't go after WHITE NAZI TERRORISTS but they will go after law abiding BLACK citizens.
"Armed men are guarding the streets of #LincolnHeights, stopping cars and vetting passersby"
What #MAGA bullshit is this?
Well no:
This is a #Black #neighborhood
And recently neo-#Nazi intimidators have been parading through their neighborhood
Anyone who knows the history of #GunControl in the #USA knows #Republicans last supported it when the #BlackPanthers open carried in 1967 (#Reagan, in #California)
Will #GOP controlled #Ohio go after #Nazis?
Or Black men?
I had a profound WTF moment when I finally started learning about Huey P. Newton and the Black Panthers after having grown up hearing only that they were dangerous. Here's to a birthday worth celebrating and a history that deserves better.
The #BlackPanthers had it all figured out. Their #praxis was unparalleled. We need to start taking cues from them again. Whatever it is we're doing now isn't really working.
The greatest legacy of the #BlackPanther Party is free #school lunches.
If you grew up poor and got free #lunch at school, you can thank the #BlackPanthers for that.
"If we speak honestly we must admit that everyone believes in violence and practices it, however they may condemn it in others. Either they do it themselves or they have the police or army to do it on their behalf as agents of the state. In fact, all of the governmental institutions we presently support and the entire life of present society are based on violence.
In fact, America is the most violent country on Earth, or as one SNCC comrade H. Rap Brown, was quoted as saying: "violence is as American as apple pie(!)"
The United States goes all over the world committing violence, it assassinates heads of State, overthrows governments, slaughters civilians in the hundreds of thousands, and makes a prison out of captive nations, such as it is doing in Iraq and Somalia, at the present time. We are expected to passively submit to these crimes of conquest, that is the hallmark of a good citizen."
- Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, "Anarchism and the Black Revolution", page 58
text
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lorenzo-kom-boa-ervin-anarchism-and-the-black-revolution
Today in labor History January 17, 1969: Black Panther Party members Bunchy Carter and John Huggins died in a shootout with the rival black nationalist Organization Us, during a meeting at UCLA. The rivalry and antagonism between the two groups was deliberately stoked by the FBI’s COINTELPRO, or counterintelligence program. The FBI even sent counterfeit death threats to members of both organizations, making it look like they originated with the other group.
![Photo of Bunchy Carter, with mustache and goatee. By [1], Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1670492](https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/113/844/547/746/329/984/original/12737d3990e22256.jpg "Photo of Bunchy Carter, with mustache and goatee. By [1], Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1670492")
Here is my long overdue review of “Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times,” by Amy Sonnie and James Tracy (Melville House Publishing, 2021). Long overdue, but particular timely, with the recent passing of José "Cha Cha" Jiménez (August 8, 1948 - January 10, 2025), activist and founder of the Young Lords Organization, one of the key figures in the book. Particularly timely and, quite possibly, even more relevant and urgent today than when it first came out, thirteen years ago, as it provides an antidote for the fear, anger, dismay, and disillusionment so many are feeling with the re-election of Donald Trump and the rise of white supremacy and fascism in the United States.
“Hillbilly Nationalists” is a well-researched and superbly written history of radical, poor white social movements of the 1960s and ‘70s, and their interracial solidarity with the Black Panthers, Young Lords and other groups of the era. This fascinating and largely forgotten piece of history debunks the myth that poor whites, hillbillies, and rednecks, the “deplorables” as Hilary Clinton derisively referred to them, are incurably racist and incapable of organizing beyond their immediate needs. Rather, Sonnie and Tracy not only provide numerous historical examples of revolutionary and anti-fascist working-class white organizations (e.g., Chicago’s JOIN, Young Patriots and Rising Up Angry; Philadelphia’s October 4th Organization; and White Lightning, from the Bronx), but also describe how these organizations were built through community organizing, providing insight as to how activists can accomplish the same today.
Perhaps the most well-known, or best remembered, of the radical, multiracial alliances was the Rainbow Coalition, an anti-racist, working-class movement founded in Chicago, in 1969, by Fred Hampton and Bob Lee, of the Black Panthers, William “Preacherman” Fesperman of the Young Patriots Organization, and Jose Cha Cha Jimenez of the Young Lords. The coalition engaged in protests, demonstrations, and direct actions to fight poverty, corruption, racism, police brutality, and in support of tenants’ rights and other causes. The coalition’s first alliance was between the Black Panther Party and the Young Patriots Organization (YPO), putting into action the famous Fred Hampton quote: “You don’t fight racism with racism. We’re gonna fight racism with solidarity.”
While most readers are probably quite familiar with the Black Panthers, and possibly the Young Lords, the YPO, or Young Patriots, were a less well-known part of the radical left of the late 1960s and early 70s. They were composed primarily of poor southern whites, Appalachian refugees from the Great Depression, who had migrated north and settled in in Uptown, Chicago, a neighborhood with so many Appalachian residents that it became known as Hillbilly Harlem. Young Patriots were proud of their Southern roots. They wore their hair greased back, sometimes covered with a cowboy hat. Some even wore Confederate flag patches on their jackets. Yet, they also wore buttons that read “Free Huey” and “Resurrect John Brown.” In a 1970 issue of “The Patriot,” they called for solidarity with Black Panther Bobby Seale (who was in prison for the Democratic National Convention protests and on trial for murder) and wrote, “Guns in the hands of the police represent capitalism and racism…. Guns in the hands of the people represent socialism and solidarity.”
It might seem shocking to many readers that the Panthers, known for their militancy and their opposition to racism, would embrace a group of hillbillies sporting Confederate flag patches. And initially, many did not. It was really through the vision, and hard work, of Fred Hampton and Bob Lee, that they were able to convince their comrades that all poor people, including poor whites, had far more in common with each other, than they did with rich people, even of their own ethnicity. That they were subjected to similar police violence, crooked slumlords, and abusive bosses, and therefore had far more to gain by working together, in solidarity with other poor and working-class people, then they did in accepting the bogus claims of the fascists and white supremacists that their problems were caused by other marginalized and oppressed people.
The challenge, of course, is how do you get people to make these connections and start working together in solidarity? The method Sonnie and Tracy so eloquently describe in “Hillbilly Nationalists” is community organizing, the most effective form of which occurring when organizers focused on building relationships, and really listening to the people, hearing their concerns, the things that mattered most to them, and turning them into actionable items that they could actually fight for and win, rather than coming in on their high horses and trying to impose their own agenda, as some of the early efforts by Students For a Democratic Society tried to do. Activists found that this relational organizing was much more successful at building trust, solidarity, and a feeling among their constituents that their organizations mattered, and were making a difference in their lives.
“Hillbilly Nationalists” begins with the story of Peggy Terry who, by the end of the 1960s, had become one of the leading voices speaking out for the rights of poor whites. She even ran for Vice President of the U.S., on the 1968 Peace and Freedom ticket, as the running mate of Eldrige Cleaver, from the Black Panthers. But Terry did not start out as a radical hillbilly. Quite the contrary. She grew up in Kentucky, in a segregated community where she rarely came into contact with any people of color. Her grandfather was a Klansman, who took her to a KKK rally when she was only three. Her father was a racist, too. As a young woman, she worked as an agricultural laborer, alongside black and Mexican workers, but without much interaction. It was not until she was 35, when she witnessed Martin Luther King Jr. getting savagely beaten by white vigilantes during the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott, that her path toward racial justice really started to change. After emigrating to Uptown, Chicago she became active in the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Her first day with CORE, in 1962, she was arrested for blocking an intersection in protest of segregation in the Chicago schools.
A couple of years after joining CORE, her friend and comrade Monroe Sharpe encouraged her to start organizing among poor whites. “You have to really know who you are before you ever know who we are.” Initially, she resisted. On the one hand, she felt she could do far more good if she continued her work with CORE, fighting for racial justice. On the other hand, she knew her own people, and had doubts (just like many on the left do today) about whether she could have any success organizing them to support the rights of people of color. What she did know from her experience with CORE was that the dilapidated and overcrowded classrooms that black kids in Chicago attended looked very similar to the dilapidated and overcrowded classrooms her children attended, and that the disdainful treatment that poor black residents experienced at the hands of caseworkers and bosses was similar to her own experiences. Even the police abuse of white residents looked similar, particularly when her own son was almost shot to death by the cops. Ultimately, it became very clear that there was common ground for interracial solidarity, and joint organizing, particularly around issues like economic justice, education, and police violence.
Terry began working with JOIN (Jobs or Income Now), a project of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Some of their early efforts involved organizing tenants, encouraging them to withhold rent, and engage in building takeovers, when landlords failed to make repairs. In 1966, they won a collective bargaining agreement with one notorious landlord, the first such contract in the city. Victories such as these taught participants that organizing worked, that they could win small battles, and helped attract new members to the movement.
The growth of the movement was not without conflict. As early as 1964, women were starting to speak out against the sexism at meetings and in JOIN’s power structure. And tensions also developed early on between the local Uptown residents and the middle-class college kids from SDS who seemed to dominate the decision-making. At the 1967 SDS national convention, Terry told SDS student leaders that “We believe that the time has come for us to turn to our own people, poor and working-class whites, for direction, support and inspiration, to organize around our own identity, our own interests.”
You can read the complete review here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2025/01/11/review-of-hillbilly-nationalists/
#workingclass #LaborHistory #racism #hillbillynationalists #blackpanthers #younglords #youngpatriots #whitesupremacy #fascism #antifascism #rainbowcoalition #organizing #chicago #apalachia #police #policebrutality #poverty #radical #revolutionary #books #nonfiction #author #writer @bookstadon
️
️ "We don’t think you fight fire with fire best; we think you fight fire with water best. We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism." - Fred Hampton
Fred Hampton was killed by Chicago Police on this day in 1969. The world needs more Fred Hamptons.
Today in Labor History December 4, 1969: Chicago Black Panthers, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, were assassinated by the Chicago Police, with assistance from the FBI. Hampton was chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party (BPP) and deputy chairman of the national BPP. He founded the antiracist, anti-classist Rainbow Coalition, which included the Black Panthers, Young Lords and Young Patriots (a radical poor white people’s movement). On the night of the assassination, an infiltrator drugged Hampton with barbiturates. He remained unconscious when the cops entered his bedroom, dragged away his pregnant girlfriend, then fired several shots into his chest and head.
Today in Labor History November 20, 1969: Indigenous activists seized control of Alcatraz Island, in San Francisco Bay, and occupied it until the U.S. Government ousted them 19 months later. The protest group called themselves Indians of All Tribes. They took the island because, according to the Treaty of Fort Laramie, all retired, abandoned or out-of-use federal land was to be returned to the Indians who once occupied it. Since Alcatraz had been closed for over 6 years, and the island had been declared surplus federal property, indigenous activists believed that the island was theirs to reclaim. One of the organizers of the Occupation, Richard Oakes, was shot to death in 1972 by a white supremacist YMCA counselor in Sonoma, CA. And the American Indian Movement (AIM) was targeted by the FBI’s COINTELLPRO. Other organizers of the Alcatraz Occupation included LaNada Means, head of the Native American Student Organization at the University of California, Berkeley, and poet, musician and songwriter John Trudell. At the height of the movement, there were 400 people occupying the island. They set up a school, daycare center, and health clinic. Trudell began making daily radio broadcasts from the island. The longshore union rented space on Pier 40 to coordinate the delivery of supplies. Grace Thorpe, daughter of Olympic champion and multisport indigenous superstar, Jim Thorpe, helped convince celebrities like Jane Fonda, Anthony Quinn, Marlon Brando, Jonathan Winters, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Dick Gregory, to visit the island and show their support, bringing national and international attention to the cause. AIM also formed coalitions with the Black Panthers and the Brown Berets, who help run security on the island.
#JimCrow was enforced in my lifetime. The #FreedomSummer murders happened in my lifetime.
#JFK, #MalcolmX, #MLK, #RFK, the #BlackPanthers, all assassinated in my lifetime.
The entire #Holocaust happened during my Mom's lifetime.
#MathewShephard was murdered for being #Gay less than 30 years ago.
These fuckers are complaining about fucking "#Woke" about fucking "#ShadowBans?
Some fucking motherfuckers need to be throat-punched.
The future happens a lot faster than you think.