Elaine Brown - A Woman of the People!!!

Dear friends

My old comrade Elaine Brown always keeps it real, unlike Angela Davis, the former Communist Party member (she was never a Black Panther) who, although it's kept real quiet these days, along with Jim Jones of the People's Temple cult group, by giving the latter strong support, helped lead hundreds of African American people to their slaughter in Guyana, Elaine Brown, on the other hand, has consistently fought for both the empowerment and enrichment of life for African American people, for a half-century. As you'll see on the link below, she has never either made excuses or apologized for that!

Liberation!

G. Djata Bumpus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NmT2hCqv-Q Read full post

Huey P. Newton on Gay & Women's Liberation

"We should be careful about using those terms that might turn our friends off. The terms “faggot” and “punk” should be deleted from our vocabulary, and especially we should not attach names normally designed for homosexuals to men who are enemies of the people, such as [Richard] Nixon or [John] Mitchell. Homosexuals are not enemies of the people." - Huey P. Newton, Black Panther Party




Dear friends,

On the link below, is a short speech by my old comrade Huey P. Newton. What he had to say at the time was very uncomfortable for many men especially, including male Panthers.

The attitudes that seemingly most people had towards both women’s and gay liberation were not those that would move our society forward.

While women in the Black Panther Party enjoyed equal and respectful treatment, things were far different in the overall society. As well, homosexuality was basically unacceptable.

Yet, one of my biggest concerns, regarding today’s social movements is: the word “liberation” has been replaced by the term “rights”. Unfortunately, as a result, the very goals of both the women’s and gays movements now reflect the overall identity crisis in our country.

Finally, if the drive for equality, dignity, and justice, for all people, is diminished to being only for females who call themselves “white”, and people whose “identity” is based upon something as precarious, if not frivolous, as the human sexual appetite/impulse, then Male Supremacy and its spirit - which is male homosexuality, along with White Supremacy, euphemistically called “racism” will prevail.

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.workers.org/2012/us/huey_p_newton_0524/ Read full post

Humiliating the Panthers

Dear friends,

I was quite incensed both yesterday and today as some clown, on Facebook, masquerading as an African American, posted a picture from 1970 where some Philly Panthers stripped for authorities after a raid that was led by super-scumbag Frank Rizzo, the top cop back then who later became mayor.

Nevertheless, it's a hugely false abstraction to compare the a displaying of the Emmett Till horror, as well as lowlife Frank Rizzo's stripping Panthers in 1970, within the context of exposing it to people of today, just as it is with the murder of Dr. King, without revealing the relationships between all of those occurrences and their connection with the continuation of both local and federal government actions to demean and humiliate, especially African American people.

Moreover, as someone who had to walk around in the daytime with a pistol on my waist, and sleep at night with a shotgun beside my bed and the pistol under my pillow, while police cars surrounded our offices, and occasionally helicopters hovered above as they routinely performed “combat exercises”, it angers me that that photograph is not accompanied by the question "why did those Panthers undress?". After all, we were always ready to fight!...Consequently, I always saw it as an inside job.

That is, I always thought to myself that the Philadelphia Police Department had infiltrated a local Panther branch  (since there were about seven of them all over Philly)...worse yet, since there were females there too, I can't imagine an African American woman stripping naked in public, as some of them did...therefore, whoever pulled his or her clothes off first was the police informant\collaborator who got the others to join in.

Finally, jealous of the Panthers, many self-hating black journalists and college professors have brought that incident up as an excuse to snicker at the Panthers, when in fact their cowardly selves, including my old friend Cornell West, were too scared to stand up to our oppressors.

Liberation!

G. Djata Bumpus

Read full post

Assata Shakur has something to say

“People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.”
― Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography



Dear friends,

On the video below, you will hear Assata Shakur, a brave warrior, talk about her/our plight as the victims of an organized minority. 

One Love!

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BKnJT-ne62k#! Read full post

A Great Gift for Everyone!

http://bookstore.authorhouse.com/Products/SKU-000494533/The-Voice-of-a-Panther.aspx

Read full post

Short video of former Black Panther chair Elaine Brown on Cointelpro, the Crips and Bloods, and more...(first posted on 8/9/10)

"Nevertheless, after listening to Elaine speak on this video, I can tell you, confidently, that she is the exact same honest, knowledgeable, energetic, and no-nonsense but warm person now that she was 40 years ago when I first met her."

Dear friends,

This video features one of my old Panther comrades. Her name is Elaine Brown. While she was a West Coast Panther, she came through New Haven, CT., during Bobby Seale’s trial, a couple of times, when I was stationed there.

Nevertheless, after listening to Elaine speak on this video, I can tell you, confidently, that she is the exact same honest, knowledgeable, energetic, and no-nonsense but warm person now that she was 40 years ago when I first met her.

Additionally, while I remember her as a very slightly-built woman back then, she had a beautiful and incredibly powerful voice, and was a heck of a piano player – and songwriter.

In any case, on the link below, Elaine talks about, not just some Black Panther Party history, but she also gets into how gangs like the Crips and Bloods evolved and why they have taken different courses than the ones that they had initially professed to be taking. Of course, as Elaine points out, the “market” is responsible for this turn of events.

Moreover, that’s why it’s so important that we, as parents and other elders, take the reins of our present culture and provide our youth with both an historical and social conscience, and set the example for young people, by informing identity through recognition of the connection between generations and defining human life in a meaningful way (as opposed to basing who they are upon silly claims regarding with whom they are allegedly having sex, or what "gang colors" they're wearing). That way, our society will benefit from the "leadership" of our youth. As well, the "market" will then be a function of the values of the society and not vice versa, as it now stands.

All power to the People!!!
G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roGNxckardg Read full post

A video of former Black Panther leader Elaine Brown on being "free"

"...another short video of Elaine Brown doing her life's work as a genuine, consistent, decades-long freedom fighter."






Dear friends,

On the link below is another short video of Elaine Brown doing her life's work as a genuine, consistent, decades-long freedom fighter. While I've not seen her in over 40 years, to me, she will always remain my comrade.

Enjoy!

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8F7X8nW2mc&NR=1&feature=endscreen Read full post

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
Read full post