The House voted to recommend contempt for Steve Bannon. We know Bannon to be a Trump supporter, racist, and far right extremist. The Attorney General Garland said that the DOJ will apply facts and the law to Steve Bannon's contempt decision. We must always embrace truth. The truth is that democracy is under threat by extremists who want elections to restrict voting rights. We have the racist Trump launching his own social media network to spew lies. Also, we realize that it isn't just Trump involved in this reactionary anti-democratic movement. We have the Proud Boys, the 3 Percenters, and other extremists who want to destroy the progressive progress in American society. They have made it clear that they hate human diversity, they hate immigration, they hate black people, and they hate truth. There is no other way to put it. Our minds are clear to advocate not just equality but justice. We must have equality and human justice too. That is why we follow real creeds.
Today is an urgent day in American history. Recently, the Senate voted to not support progressive voting rights legislation. The Republicans in leadership are clear to not care for protecting the right to vote for all Americans. Republicans are not the only ones to be blamed here. Moderates are just as guilty as promoting compromise instead of human liberation. We see the Earth burning, the right to vote suppressed by unjust laws in Texas (including Georgia and other states), inequality still here, and our democracy being harmed viciously. This is a time where that archaic filibuster must be eliminated period. Joe Manchin and Sinema are moderate who are silent like usual. Sinema doesn't even want to go on the record to promote universal health care, free community college, and a real infrastructure bill. The Freedom to Vote Act was voted down. It would make election day a holiday, have automatic and same day voting, 2 weeks early voting, empower the FEC, and have a ballot paper trail rule. If voting rights legislation is not passed, the Republican may actually cheat to steal elections in 2022 and 2024. In 1890, the filibuster was used to block legislation to protect the right of black Americans to vote. Now, the filibuster is used against to restrict the right to vote among black people, other people of color, etc. Abolishing the filibuster is necessary.
This time is the 55th year anniversary of the birth of the Black Panther Party of Self Defense. That has been some time. Today, we have new movements for social change all of the time. The Black Panther Party was one of the most revolutionary movements of human history. It was born out of many situations. First, there was the 2 Great Migrations of African Americans from the South to the North, Midwest, and West Coast. The first one was from ca. 1910-1940 and the 2nd one was from ca. 1940-1970. Many black people who came into those regions wanted to escape Jim Crow apartheid. Yet, they witnessed the same police brutality, miseducation, redlining, racial discrimination, and economic oppression as found in the South. Black people worked up North in industrial jobs, the military, etc. There, the Black Panther Party was a group who advocated self defense, and it was on the progressive side of the Black Power movement of the 1960's. They questioned non violence as the sole act to create meaningful change. The truth is that both nonviolence and self-defense are legitimate, powerful methods in causing freedom and justice for all. The BPP was more than about grown men and grown women wearing black clothing, having guns, and saying Power to the People.
They had a philosophy of being against racism and imperialism. They abhorred capitalist exploitation, and it was formed by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton. Both of them were influenced by the literature and views of Frantz Fanon, Mao, Malcolm X, Robert F. Williams, etc. They viewed the ghetto as a colonized, occupied territory by the powers that be to restrict power from the common people. We know of tons of stories of the Brothers and Sisters in the Black Panther Party who heroically fed children, sent people transportation services to help people, and monitored the police. They wanted to respond to police terrorism and poverty in Oakland, California. It branched out all across America and worldwide from NYC, Chicago, Los Angeles, D.C. and to Iowa. Also, this time of 1966 saw the capitalist boon leaving out millions of the poor and workers, disproportionately affecting African Americans. Economic dispossession and oppression influenced the rebellions in the 1960's. The 1963 rebellion in Birmingham, the 1964 one in Harlem, the 1965 on in Watts, etc. showed the world that we are living in a new era of time. The Panthers merged nationalist views and socialist views together.
They were right to oppose the Vietnam War as unjust. Police murder of many Panthers and the FBI targeting them proved that the Black Panthers were one of the major targets of the establishment. Back then, the FBI was headed by the hypocrite J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover supported the FBI COINTELPRO program whose goal was to infiltrate and end progressive, anti-war movements for social change in American society. Hoover didn't want what he called a "Black Messiah" to electrify the black community to end injustice in general. Hoover wanted confusion and disinformation to ruin social causes. That is why FBI agents helped to cause the Huey P. Newton and Eldridge Cleaver divide by the early 1970's. Cleaver later sold out revolutionaries by being a Reagan supporter, loving compromise, and going out to believe in American exceptionalism. They or FBI forces even targeted the SCLC, which is a Christian, nonviolent organization. Young people were definitely inspired by the BPP for its social activism and sense of action to end oppression. Chicago Panther leader Fred Hampton (who said that we won't defeat oppression with black capitalism or white capitalism but with solidarity in socialism) was one leader who helped to do so much good that the Chicago police murdered him and Mark Clark in cold blood. The murder of both Panthers were some of the most wicked, vicious acts of the American government against black human beings. The Chicago police shot 99 shots at the location, and Mark Clark only fired one shot out of a human reflex. The Ten Point Program showed what the Black Panthers have stood for concretely from opposing the military draft to desiring investments in building up the community prodigiously. The Black Panthers used the Free Breakfast Program to feed kids, use transportation services to help people travel, have blood drives to help the sick, form health clinics, and created schools to educate the people. Infiltration, infighting, and other errors caused the BPP to end by 1982. You have to unite the working class and the poor to cause justice without adventurism. The 1960's saw an international upheaval of the working class against the oligarchs. Yet, we learn the lessons of heroic Black Panther members to continue to fight for the goal of total black liberation. The memory of the Black Panthers still remains an important part of the overall black freedom struggle.
The struggle continues, but in the end, we will be victorious.
By Timothy
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