“I dissuade Party members from putting down people who do not understand. Even people who are unenlightened and seemingly bourgeois should be answered in a polite way. Things should be explained to them as fully as possible. I was turned off by a person who did not want to talk to me because I was not important enough. Maurice just wanted to preach to the converted, who already agreed with him. I try to be cordial, because that way you win people over. You cannot win them over by drawing the line of demarcation, saying you are on this side and I am on the other; that shows a lack of consciousness. After the Black Panther Party was formed, I nearly fell into this error. I could not understand why people were blind to what I saw so clearly. Then I realized that their understanding had to be developed.”

― Huey P. Newton :huey-wut:

Huey Newton, born on the 17th of february in 1942, was a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary who, along with fellow Merritt College student Bobby Seale, co-founded the Black Panther Party (‪1966 - 1982‬). Together with Seale, Newton created a ten-point program which laid out guidelines for how the African-American community could achieve liberation. In the 1960s, under Newton's leadership, the Black Panther Party founded over 60 community support programs (renamed survival programs in 1971) including food banks, medical clinics, HIV support groups, sickle cell anemia tests, prison busing for families of inmates, legal advice seminars, clothing banks, housing co-ops, and their own ambulance service.

The most famous of these programs was the Free Breakfast for Children program which fed thousands of impoverished children daily during the early 1970s. Newton also co-founded the Black Panther newspaper service which became one of America's most widely distributed African-American newspapers. In 1967, he was involved in a shootout which led to the death of the police officer John Frey. Although arrested for the murder of Frey, the charges were eventually dismissed.

In 1970, after his release from prison, Newton received an invitation to visit the People's Republic of China. Newton made the trip in late September 1971 with fellow Panthers, Elaine Brown and Robert Bay, and stayed for 10 days. At every Chinese airport he landed in, Newton was greeted by thousands of people waving copies of the "Little Red Book" and displaying signs that said "we support the Black Panther Party, down with US imperialism" or "we support the American people but the Nixon imperialist regime must be overthrown."

By mid-decade, Newton faced more criminal charges when he was accused of murdering a 17-year-old sex worker and assaulting a tailor. To avoid prosecution, he fled to Cuba in 1974, but returned to the U.S. three years later. The murder case was eventually dismissed after two trials ended with deadlocked juries, while the tailor refused to testify in court in relation to assault charges.

Despite graduating from high school not knowing how to read, he taught himself literacy by reading Plato's Republic and earned a Ph.D. in social philosophy from the University of California at Santa Cruz's History of Consciousness program in 1980. In 1989, he was murdered in Oakland, California by Tyrone Robinson, a member of the Black Guerrilla Family.

Revolutionary suicide does not mean that I and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite. We have such a strong desire to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is impossible. When reactionary forces crush us, we must move against these forces, even at the risk of death. We will have to be driven out with a stick.”

― Huey P. Newton, Revolutionary Suicide :huey-wut:

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  • SkeletorJesus [he/him]
    ·
    8 months ago

    So burned out on my job search. Recently graduated with a degree in computer science, looking for a job as a dev. Finally got my first interview after having sent out 30~50 applications a week since the start of last June. I get in there and it turns out they pulled a bait and switch, they weren't actually interviewing me for the job I applied for but a completely different one, not a SWE job, not in the same location, and not even full time. I'm starting to think I basically have no chance of getting hired because all I'm hearing is that I need to wait until the market is better, which won't be until I have a gap of years in my resume with no relevant experience which I can't explain away. Since I didn't graduate with a 3.5 GPA and an internship, my degree is apparently not worth wiping my ass with.

    Burns doubly bad because this wasn't the fucking easy path, I busted my ass for this degree. I had to give up on college in my third semester because I lost my scholarship. Lost my scholarship because, who knew, going unmedicated and untreated for suicidal depression and ADD bad enough that I stared at walls for hours wasn't exactly great for my grades. I clawed my fucking way back in and graduated at 26 and the market's fundamentally different from when I started so instead of getting a comfortable and well-paying job like everybody and their fucking mother swore up and down I'd get, I instead just owe $20k in loans and spent an extra 6 years living with my parents. Turns out, if you had to work hard to get your degree, that means it's worthless. You have to be able to pass with a huge margin and have professional experience.

    I'm just so lost, man. I'm all out of faith I'll ever live a life of anything but repeated humiliation and rejection. I'm bitter and I'm angry. I haven't wanted to just disappear this badly in a long time.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      8 months ago

      That sucks. Fuck the job market. My dev friends have all been stringing along little apps and projects they develop themselves just so they can have something to show interviewers when someone finally gets back to them, and even then it usually ends up being they get a tip from someone that theirs a position at their place.fucking ridiculous. Gates et al spent decades telling everyone to learn to code and building all those stupid charter and magnet schools just so they could do this - flood the field with programmers to cut the legs out from under the profession so they could reduce their labor costs, and now everythings a mess. I'm sorry, a lot of folks i know are stuck right where you are. If i had any advice at all it would be to kick out some simple mobile apps or foss utilities and maintain them so you can be like "yeah i've been unemployed but i wrote and maintain this thing in this language and x people use it so you can see i am literate and can do programmer things". Like a portfolio, i guess, and if anything does get some sales or donations you could get a little income.

    • Commiejones [comrade/them, he/him]
      ·
      8 months ago

      Make a website with a bunch of business buzz word rambling for a company that doesn't exist make every page other than the front page say "sorry this page is under construction". Put it on your resume as a coding job that you are currently at. When people ask why you are leaving you say "The pay is really bad and I don't have faith that the project has a future. The founder all but told you to find a new job."

    • macerated_baby_presidents [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      I know the job market is bad but this is worse even than when I tried to get my first internship as a freshman: 1 interview for 53 applications. Is there anything you can improve about your resume? Dev friends that can review it or give you a referral? Side projects, hackathons, etc? Don't put your GPA on your resume if it sucks; yes, internships and previous experience are really helpful but you can't do anything about that now. Have you entered any interviewing pipelines like interviewing.io? I was going to suggest Triplebyte but it looks like they got acquired and shut down; there are probably alternatives or you might need to find individual recruiters. (The third party ones; paid commission by company when an applicant is hired.) Big venture capital firms have internal talent pipelines e.g. https://boards.greenhouse.io/dragonflycapital where they offer candidates to all the companies they've invested in, explore these if you haven't already.

      There might be keyword optimization you can do to get past automated screening. It is also possible that you're passing keyword screening but failing manual screening before the interview, i.e. they're discriminating based on your age/race/etc. If so, lie.

      Clearly you've got what it takes to get hired, 40 apps a week for months is a grind. But nobody has a 100% success rate for interviews. If you're not getting any please start doing something different. You may need to redirect energy to the resume and/or "networking".