The "New" Black Panther Party - provacateurs or buffoons?

“Please keep things in their proper context, and remember that there were almost no Black politicians, much less Black police officers anywhere in this country, during the heyday of the real Black Panther Party (@1968-72).”


Dear friends,

Lately, there has been a lot of talk about the “New Black Panther Party” being let off the hook, by the Obama administration, for the group’s criminal behavior inasmuch as the "New Panthers" forced European American (so-called “white”) voters, in Philadelphia, away from the polls in 2008, on the day that then Senator Obama was elected to the presidency.

But what is the “New Black Panther Party”? The purpose of the alleged combining of the original Black Panther Party with the Islamic Movement, as its national spokesperson, an attorney. claims, is for African Americans to have an organized body that moves towards Black liberation. However, what they have mostly done is defame the legacy of the real Black Panther Party, making many of us who were part of the original organization smell a great big C.I.A. - or some other reactionary group’s - rat!

As a matter of fact, the so-called New Black Panther Party reminds me of the so-called Symbionese Liberation Army that kidnapped Patty Hearst back on 1973, which, inevitably, along with their thoughtless actions brought about a decline in support from the large amount of youth in North American Black communities who had previously agreed with Brother Malcolm’s mantra “By any means necessary”.

First of all, because the so-called “New Black Panther Party” insists that its chief method of confronting US rulers is similar to the “legal gradualism” of the NAACP, perhaps, they should call themselves the “New NAACP”. Moreover, with so many of the leaders bearing Muslin names and relating to the teachings of Islam, they totally contradict the secular humanist value judgments that guided the real Black Panther Party.

Nevertheless, if anything, their name should actually be the “Different” Black Panther Party. As a former member of the Black Panther Party (1969-71), mostly in Boston, but for nine months in New Haven, CT. helping to successfully get Bobby Seale freed from his unjustified murder case, I have been hearing about these so-called "New Black Panthers" for some time (10 years?).

Moreover, I cringe each time that I hear their name.
They are in no way connected with the group that held community education classes (which I taught for the entire nine months that I was stationed in New Haven), had the Free Breakfast program across the nation that, for several years, fed about 10, 000 or so kids, in churches, Panther offices, and community centers, each weekday morning (long before the US government offered such programs for youngsters in public schools). We opened Free Health Clinics nationwide (again, long before Medicaid serviced many “poor” folks to that extent), the Free Clothing program nationwide (before the Salvation Army had bins set up everywhere), and we, literally, started the Prison Reform Movement, with our Free Buses to Prisons program in this country, again, nationwide. In fact, when New York state’s Attica Prison Rebellion happened in 1971, the inmates called on Black Panther Party co-founders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale to be the chief negotiators for them.

Still, while we, the real Black Panthers, would, ultimately - and thereafter constantly, criticize ourselves and move to correct the status that we had allowed ourselves to develop by making the image of violence too much of an issue, we were mostly, on a daily basis, about community service - knocking on doors, then after, usually, being invited in, sitting down in people’s homes talking about social issues featured in our nationally-renowned weekly newspaper, and confronting problems, for example, like getting legal help – and bail - for any relatives or friends of our hosts who’d just been arrested. Also, it must be mentioned that we received almost all of our financial support from the Black community itself.

The members of the “New Black Panther Party” are not our descendants and they are, in fact, at least to me, insulting. Please keep things in their proper context, and remember that there were almost no Black politicians, much less Black police officers anywhere in this country, during the heyday of the real Black Panther Party (@1968-72).

At any rate, on the link below is a statement about the “New Black Panther Party” from the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation, a non-profit educational organization that was established and is still overseen by my old comrade David Hilliard and Fredricka Newton, the widow of another old comrade of mine, the late Dr. Huey P. Newton.

“Dare to struggle – dare to win” – Frederick Douglass

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.blackpanther.org/newsalert.htm