The Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League (RAIL) encourages activists to check out the Maoist vanguard of the 1960s and early 1970s United Snakes--the Black Panther Party (BPP). At our showing of the film The FBI's War on Black America in Ann Arbor on September 10, audience members claimed that the BPP was not revolutionary, but reformist. This wrong characterization of the BPP muddies a piece of revolutionary history which is important for progressives to understand.
Luckily, this argument can easily be refuted by investigation. The history of the Black Panther Party is one of revolutionary struggle against the Black nation's domination by white settler colonialism. The BPP followed the the correct theory and ideology of the greatest revolutionary movement of its time: the Chinese Revolution led by the Chinese Communist Party and Mao Zedong. The Panthers' Serve the People programs showed the Black people that a Maoist party with a revolutionary nationalist program would meet their basic needs better than capitalist Amerika. These programs, which served free breakfasts to school children, offered free medical care and gave out groceries, met people's basic needs while organizing the Black nation towards revolution and educating people about the need for revolution.
"Serving the People," from The Black Panther 4/6/69 p. 14
The Black Panther Party is a political party established to create revolutionary political power for Black People and is continuing steadily to serve the People heart and soul. ... Our Cardinal Rule is: "Have faith in the People, and faith in the Party." This faith derives from an undying love for our people and the awareness of a need for governmental eclipse. We, as the vanguard of the oppressed masses, realize that we must and will serve the People heart and soul. ...
The exploited and oppressed people's needs are land, bread, housing, education, freedom, clothing, justice and peace and the Black Panther Party shall not, for a single day, alienate ourselves from the masses and forget their needs for survival, but instead institute to the People faith to the death.
"I'd rather be without the shame,
A bullet lodged within my brain.
If I were not to reach our goal
Let bleeding cancer torment my soul."
--Bunchy
... The spirit of the People is greater than the man's technology, and that spirit will be guided by the vanguard party of this present liberation struggle. The capitalistic, imperialistic, doggish, pimping of the People must cease by this wanton, sadistic country or perish like Babylon. The People shall smash the glutton roaches running this decadent society and, along with the directing of the Black Panther Party, halt these running dogs and gain true liberation for all. ... Thus more and more programs shall be set up to suffice the desires of the People and destroy the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (ruling class) and its lackeys.
The Black Panther Party is for everything that the enemy (U. S. imperialists) is against, and against everything the enemy is for. ... All our actions are to the exact opposite of this hypocrisy called democracy. The Black Panther Party will continue to serve the people and fulfill their every desire as an International united front of revolutionaries of the world, battling this mass oppression of capitalism and imperialism. ...
"Our duty is to hold ourselves responsible to the People. Every word, every act, and every policy must conform to the People's interest and, if mistakes occur, they must be corrected--that is what being responsible to the People means."
---Mao Tse-tung, article written by Marsha
Find out more about RAIL and MIM events in the Ann Arbor area:
check out our local homepage;
contact us at P.O. Box 3576, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-3576;
or send us e-mail at mim@mim.org
To find out more about the Black Panther Party of the late 1960s and early 1970s, check out MIM's Black Panther Newspaper Collection.
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