On this day in 1966, in the wake of spontaneous riots against police brutality, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton founded the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California. It was a revolutionary organization with an ideology of Black nationalism, socialism, and armed self-defense, particularly against police brutality. It was part of the Black Power movement, which broke from the integrationist goals and nonviolent protest tactics of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The BPP name was inspired by the use of the black panther as a symbol that had recently been used by the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, an independent Black political party in Alabama.
The party was active in the United States between 1966 and 1982, with chapters in many major American cities, including San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia. They were also active in many prisons and had international chapters in the United Kingdom and Algeria. Upon its inception, the party's core practice was its open carry patrols ("copwatching") designed to challenge the excessive force and misconduct of the Oakland Police Department. From 1969 onward, the party created social programs, including the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, education programs, and community health clinics. The Black Panther Party advocated for class struggle, claiming to represent the proletarian vanguard.
In 1969, J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), described the party as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country." The FBI sabotaged the party with an illegal and covert counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) of surveillance, infiltration, perjury, police harassment, all designed to undermine and criminalize the party. The FBI was involved in the 1969 assassinations of Fred Hampton, and Mark Clark, who were killed in a raid by the Chicago Police Department.
Influences
The BPP’s philosophy was influenced by the speeches of Malcolm X, the teachings of Chairman Mao Tse-Tung of the Communist Party of China, and the anti-colonialist book The Wretched of the Earth (Les Damnés de la Terre, 1961) by the Martiniquan psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. The BPP’s practice of armed self-defense was influenced by African American activist Robert Williams, who advocated this practice against anti-black aggression by the Ku Klux Klan in his book Negroes with Guns (1962). Newton and Seale canvassed their community asking residents about issues of concern. They compiled the responses and created the Ten Point Platform and Program that served as the foundation of the Black Panther Party.
An interview with Huey P. Newton (1968)
(1966) THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY TEN-POINT PROGRAM
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Bias in Western commentary is unbearable’: Ex-UK legislator
Clare Short, a former British legislator who served as the UK’s secretary of state for international development, says Western powers are failing to pressure Israel into complying with international law.
“Israel is now bombarding and killing innocents and children and this is going on as we speak. Yet, the Western countries are saying we have Israel’s back, we’ll try and get some humanitarian relief, instead of saying Israel must stop. This is not allowed,” she told Al Jazeera.
“That comes on top of the fact that Israel breaches international law all the time. The occupation is a breach of international law, and the treatment of people in Gaza and the West Bank, and so on. Yet the Western powers all do nothing about it. So suddenly, Hamas has go to comply with international law, but Israel can do what it likes? And that’s the reason Israel keeps behaving so terribly. And so cruelly.”
She added that “the bias in the commentary in the West is unbearable”.
It's a rules based order, sweaty, and the rules say israel can do what ever it wants and if anyone complains they get beat up.