PIGS, PROBLEMS, POLITICS, AND PANTHERS DO-NOTHING TERRORISTS AND OTHER PROBLEMS From its very beginning, the Black Panther Party has had problems with a lot of people who come in and use the Party as a base for criminal activity which the Party never endorsed or had anything to do with. In the early days of the Party, we had to try a number of times to show brothers that they were breaking rules, and eventually tell them that they were no longer members of the Party and that they didn't represent the Party anymore.   Some brothers would come into the Party, and see us with guns, and they related only to the gun. But one of the things that the Party did from the very beginning was to sit brothers down and politically educate them. We assigned books and materials like The Autobiography of Malcolm X, The Wretched of the Earth, and helped them understand their constitutional rights and some basic points of law.   The ten-point platform and program was essential because through it the brothers would understand that we had guns, not for foolish criminal activity against their people, but for self-defense since there's so much brutality and murder unjustly committed on the part of cops against black people. We constantly tried to teach the brothers this from the very beginnings of the Party and many, many have learned well and understood the scope of the Party. But in the process and development of the Party, many have had to drop away, were expelled, or were told to get out of the Party.   There are some people who go around and say they are Black Panther Party members, when in fact they aren't. If they had been arrested or possibly had done something, or if the cops were just trumping something up on them, the police department would announce to the press that they'd just arrested some Black Panther Party members. Naturally the demagogic politicians and the police, who are the armed bodies of the state and protect the state and the greedy riches of the avaricious businessman, would lie and try to mislead the people. They didn't want people to understand the real philosophy of the Black Panther Party, the real ten-point platform and program, and the real community programs we were implementing on a very practical level to try to educate the people to end their oppression.   Violations of the rules of the Party were primarily due to previous conditioning and the oppression that we live in. The Party has the principle that only the worthy, those who are really dedicated to serving the people, those who are able to grasp the meaning of the rules and philosophy of the Black Panther Party, should be members. We have a rule that no one can be drunk while doing Party work. It doesn't mean that a Party member can't ever drink, but if he's drunk he can't do political work. You can't drink around the offices of the Black Panther Party. At one time brothers would bring around something to drink, but then we told them that they had to go into the back and they'd better not get drunk. Then we stopped that too. Brothers who were drunk would come around and say they wanted to get into the Party. We'd tell them they couldn't become members of the Black Panther Party.   If a member got sloppy drunk and became nonfunctional, then he would be put on a worker suspension. If he violated the rules again, we would expel him and put his name and picture in the Party paper, and explain that this person's selfish desires and needs seemed to be above the Party's principle of serving the people in the community. Some people joined the Party for status reasons. The Party was well known in the community, and was written up in the papers a lot. These cats would put on a complete Panther uniform - black beret, black slacks, black shoes, black pimp socks or regular socks, shined shoes, blue shirt, and a black turtleneck. They were cleanshaven, or if they had a goatee or beard it was neatly trimmed. They'd stand up in front of the office with a mean face on, their chests stuck out, and their arms folded, watching people walk by. They were psychologically surviving off the incorrect sensationalism that had been put forth in the newspapers. We began to call them the "do-nothing terrorists". The only thing they did was rap to the sisters. There were some sisters who wanted brothers who would stand up, talk bad and loud, sell wolf tickets, and carry on. They never did any work at all or faked work, so we had to suspend and expel many of these brothers and sisters.   A bunch of them would stand around the office, and we'd ask them to do some work and pass out leaflets. They'd lie and say they had passed out the leaflets already. Half the time these cats would throw the leaflets away. We began to find stacks of leaflets thrown off in a lot or sitting in one of those Keep the City Clean waste-paper baskets. This really teed a lot of us off. All they wanted to do was front off being in the Panther Party and rap to the sisters. Some were just plain cultural nationalists, black racists. It was just a bunch of jive that we had to get rid of.   Sometimes white friends in the Peace and Freedom Party would come down to our office to drop off some money for transportation or some reams of paper. These fool, do-nothing terrorists would say, "You white people can't come into our office." There were a number of black racists around also who would do some work but who would propagate black racist attitudes, which was directly counter to the Party's revolutionary line. We tried to tell the cats over and over again that we had a working coalition for a specific purpose with the Peace and Freedom Party. Some people tried to take it out of context and tried to say that we trusted white people, and we said, "No, we don't just 'trust' white people. We just trust what white people do. Those whites who do things that are positive, we respect. And those who do things that are negative, we don't respect." That's the way you have to see it. They would use this sometimes to try and cover up their lack of work, so we criticized them and told them they weren't doing anything positive for the Party.   Finally we told Huey about it, so Huey ordered all Black Panther Party members not to wear their black berets anymore unless we were at a public function of some kind, where the Party wanted to be conspicuous about the fact that we had a uniform, and were a political party who had members that were of service to the community.   Man, you should have seen the reaction. The do-nothing cats were saying, "Man, what you talking 'bout! Baby, you're ruinin' my game."   "That's just the point," we said, "so don't be wearing no beret. This is going to identify who's doing work and who isn't doing work. Don't be running around here fronting on some kind of status in the Party." Another problem at that time was that the brothers identified only with the gun. When we started the Party, Huey and I didn't have any intention of having them identify only with the gun. We knew that we had to teach them that the gun was only a tool and it must be used by a mind that thinks. When we first started out, the very first members had to go to political education classes. Included was one hour of field stripping of weapons, safety and cleaning of weapons in the home, etc. Then we had one or two hours of righteous political education and study. The third area was work, coordinating various activities, and understanding the political significance of various actions we took, like when we went to the police department with our guns, when we had to go help out the brothers and sisters in Richmond, and when we went to the sheriff's office and tried to enter armed with guns, along with community people, to protest murder and police brutality.   We also did the work in the community of patroling the police, actually trying to implement Point Seven of the ten-point platform and program. In all these actions, we tried to teach the brothers the importance of politically educating the people. The correct political education among members was necessary to break up all these hassles that we were having trying to organize the Party. At the same time we wanted as many members as we could possibly get, so that the Party would spread and the members would carry the message. We also needed a really hard core of working people to get things off the ground. Huey finally sent a message out of jail that those who were not doing any work should be expelled form the Party, because he'd rather work with 100 smart people than 3,000 foolish people. WHY THEY RAID OUR OFFICES The raids on almost every Black Panther Party headquarters in the United States during 1969 were partially related to a move of the Party: Eldridge Cleaver made contact with members of the North Vietnamese government, and asked them to allow him to announce their proposal that if the United States government would release political prisoners in America, starting with Huey P. Newton and myself, then the North Vietnamese government would release the American prisoners of war they are holding.   Right after this was announced, while I was in Chicago at the trial, they readily cut it out of the newspapers and stopped the mass media from printing further information about this. The power structure did this and it is very related to the recent raids that came down and to the murder of Fred Hampton.   The raids upon the Black Panther Party were directly related to the purge that the Party had. The raids people heard about hit practically every Black Panther Party office in the country. The Black Panther Party began to purge in January 1969, by announcing that we weren't going to be taking any more members in. We worked and found out about a lot of fools, expelled them, and printed their names and pictures in The Black Panther, and explained to the people that they weren't representatives of the Party anymore. This in itself stopped the CIA-FBI infiltration operation into the Panther Party. So the raids were also related to the fact that the Party had purged itself and stopped people from being able to come into it, infiltrate it, and work for the big power structure to help distort the real objectives and goals of the Black Panther Party.   A technique typical of the power structure and their fascist pigs were those used in Los Angeles, from mid-1969 to the point where they attacked the Los Angeles Black Panther Party office in December of 1969.   Prior to the December raid, some 300 arrests were made upon the key leaders and organizers and co-ordinators of the Party throughout Los Angeles. About fifty members, the key ones, the ones who were leading and organizing other groups of people in the community, were arrested over and over again. Ninety percent of the charges on all those arrests were dropped after we bailed the people out. Those kinds of bails and exorbitant ransoms which they put on the brothers were a means they continuously used to deplete our funds.   There was consistent harassment. We have complete documentation of all the arrests that occurred and how the charges were dropped. This was a means by which the fascist, racist police in L.A. and the power structure were trying to wipe out the Black Panther Party.   This has been a national operation with a consistent pattern to it. It became more and more exposed when they murdered brothers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in Chicago and shot up other Panther Party members.   Across the country in 1969, with their Mission Impossible-Mission Imperialist operation, it appears that they in fact murdered brother Alex Rackley in New Haven, Connecticut, or used a lackey informer to do so.   Fourteen Party members were arrested in raids in which they supposedly were looking for Rackley's killers. The pigs raided the Detroit office, the Boston office, the New York office, the Chicago office and the Denver office. They had previously raided the New Haven office and the Indianapolis office. They also raided the Sacramento office and shot it up. The San Diego office was raided but the Panther Party members weren't in it at the time. A lot of our offices around the country have been attacked and shot up two or three times, and Panther Party members have been shot up. The raids and the attacks upon the Black Panther Party are interlocked with the whole operation to kill as many Party members as possible.   That's one of the reasons we started the Black Panther Party newspaper: so the black person in New York could read what was happening in Los Angeles, Atlanta, or Chicago, or anywhere else in the nation. All the people who get the Black Panther Party newspaper can read about what is really happening, about the thousands of black brothers and sisters who are murdered, shot and brutalized in the black communities and the wretched ghettoes throughout the country. Circulation for the Black Panther Party's paper has gone up in thousands. It's gotten to the point where The Black Panther is out-circulating any other underground-type newspaper.   The power structure is trying to stop and smash the Black Panther Party, because the Party is ready to show and expose the racist power structure for what it is; to expose what Eldridge Cleaver identifies as the three levels of oppression: the avaricious businessman, the demagogic politicians, and the fascist pig police forces that have been doubled, tripled and quadrupled in every major city and wherever there are black people or brown people, people who are protesting or progressive white people. This is a fascist state that's breeding, and the power structure has to get rid of the Black Panther Party because the Party is setting forth ideology and teaching the people correct methods. We talk not only about the fact that we defend ourselves against oppression but we begin to expose the power structure with our Breakfast for Children, free health clinics, and free clothing programs. We've been arrested on the streets for selling the paper, and charged with loitering and blocking the sidewalk. There have been underground, agent provocateur operations, and lies about Party members killing former Panthers. It's all an attempt to mislead the people about the real philosophy and program of the Party, so the cops can justify making raids on our offices. Agent provocateur operations were headlined in the papers and blown up. Some of the agents were black racists working with the pigs.   The McClellan Committee and people like them allow the pigs to raid us and they try to justify their actions in raiding our offices and shooting up offices. I hope people can see the pattern forming. The pattern becomes set when the FBI and the local police department in Connecticut arrest fourteen members of the Black Panther Party and charge them with conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to kidnap, and also with murder and kidnap - fourteen people. Half of them are leaders, righteous leaders of the Black Panther Party like sister Erica Huggins, who was the Deputy Chairman in Connecticut. At the time they were arrested they were ready to set up the Breakfast for Children Program. The brothers in New York were beginning to move with the Breakfast Program when they got busted on trumped-up charges. These operations and the way the power structure is moving make it clear and evident to me that it's a pattern. It's an attempt on their part to give us a lot of trouble and problems in trying to set up programs. This kind of attack is another part of the pattern. Complete information on all the arrests and all the charges that have been dropped against Party members will show how the power structure has been using these arrest tactics to deplete the funds of the Black Panther Party.   Nearly every Panther office in the country has been raided. In Des Moines, Iowa, they blew up the office, literally bombed it. There had been a big rally with people in the community who were ready to support the Breakfast for Children Program, white and black people were ready to support that program and get that program off the ground. And the pigs just bombed the office.   The year 1969 was the year of the pigs raiding Panther Party offices, trying to wipe the Party out, and trying to wipe out the community programs. RENEGADES, JACKANAPES, AND AGENTS PROVOCATEURS When Huey found out I had been arrested on the shotgun charge, he immediately tried to get bail money. He got the brothers together and told them to get the Black Panther newspapers, take their cars, go out to Rich-some $60, but the bail against me was $1,400. We needed another $80 for my bond. Huey told the brothers we had to raise the money with the papers at twenty-five cents per copy.   There were about 4,000 copies left of the second issue of the Black Panther Party newspaper. The brothers took off with them, but instead of going out and selling the papers, they got to jiving around with some chicks in North Richmond. When they got back some three or four hours later, they had only sold about twenty-five papers, and used up a lot of gas. "You mean you haven't sold any more papers than this?" Huey asked them. One of the brothers admitted, after some debate, that they really hadn't been selling papers.   "To hell with selling these papers right now, man! I'm gonna jive with these chicks," one of the brothers had said. They had brought some of the chicks with them and Huey didn't want to embarrass the cats. He took the brothers to the side and said, "Take the girls back. You can get with them later. Go sell the papers!"   They went back to Richmond, but they messed around again and didn't sell the papers. So Huey Kicked every last one of them out of the Party.   "When you guys were all up in jail at Sacramento," he said, "Bobby got bailed out, and the first thing he did was go to work to get you out. He was really worried about you guys getting bailed out, and tried to get lawyers and everything. Now you guys are jiving around and the brother's in jail, and you won't do the same for him. That's not unity between brothers. "You aren't captains anymore. Nobody is nothing. If you want to work for the Party, you're going to sell papers. Take off your guns. You don't know how to be responsible to the community and the people. You don't know how to be responsible to your leaders in the Party. So all of you are out of the Party. You're busted."   I had been out of jail three days but I still didn't know about this. I noticed a kind of depression around the office, and said to myself, "What's wrong with these guys?" They were still hanging around. They wouldn't leave because deep down inside they really liked the Party. It's just that they went astray and violated some basic rules.   Three days later they pulled me off to the side and said, "The other day brother Huey busted us all. The reason for it was because we goofed off, man. We should have been working to help get bail money to help get you out. Bobby, we're sorry, man." I went and told Huey, "The brothers told me what they did, and the fact that you busted all of them." Huey said, "They're going to have to learn how to get themselves together." I said, "It's important that we stick together and not be jiving around with each other, or we won't have an organization. They asked me to forgive them for it, and I did." Huey agreed, and we let them back in the Party.   Problems like this kept arising though. About a week later we heard that some brothers had bags of weed in their possession. We called them all together, discussed the problem, told them that there was a rule in the Party that said we couldn't have any weed on us, because the cops were always watching us and it was dangerous for any Party member to have grass on him. We sat down and wrote some explicit rules. They were written out in an ordered form for the first time. We got the brothers to help us make the rules. We said that when someone breaks the rules, then it's the responsibility of all the other members of the Party to see to it that that person is put on suspension or kicked out of the Party. Some of the other rules that we made were that a Party member couldn't point or fire a weapon at anyone other than an attacking enemy, that members shouldn't steal anything, not even a needle or a piece of thread from the people, and that members weren't supposed to swear and cuss at the people because that's not serving them.   Today, we have twenty-six rules. About half of them are primarily for individual members of the Black Panther Party. The others are for office and Party functions as a whole, and for carrying out political duties in the community.   Since the early days, a lot of incidents have happened where cats have broken the rules. Some of this was because agents provocateurs have come into the Party, and have deliberately stirred up problems and done things in violation of the Party's principles and rules.   One of the things I remember very clearly was when J------ jumped out of a Black Panther Party truck and held up a diner. The big white van had BLACK PANTHER NEWSPAPER written right on its side in big black letters, and was primarily used for hauling newspapers and distributing them around the community. David Milliard and I had told J------ and S------ to take the truck across the Bay to San Francisco and pick up the eight or ten brothers who had been working most of the night over there putting out the paper. From what we found out through our investigations, S------ apparently drove the truck up to a diner and went to the restroom. They had already picked up the eight other brothers. J------ was in the front of the truck. The other eight cats were in the back of the truck and didn't know about anything that had happened. When S------ walked back to the truck, he saw J------ walking away from the diner with a money box and a gun in his hand. "Man, what's going on?" S------ asked. "Ain't nothin', man. It's cool," J------ said. S------ decided to drive the truck and get out of there. They were picked up by the pigs five minutes later. J------ shot and seriously wounded one cop.   What S------ should have done - he was a captain and a coordinator of the Party - was to have taken the gun away from J------, given the $80 back to the cashier, and then brought J------ to the Party Central Committee for disciplining. But he said he made the mistake of driving away from the diner, which is why at one point we suspected him of possibly being an agent provocateur. We didn't know for sure about J------ either, but our suspicions were high.   I was down at Santa Barbara for a speaking engagement at the time. I was sitting there when I read the papers about the shoot-out and robbery in San Francisco. I couldn't believe it; I thought it was some kind of trumped-up operation. When I got back to the office late that night I saw that David had written on the blackboard that no guns are to be carried unless authorized by the Central Committee. The next day we publicly put J------ out of the Party. We got all the other brothers out of jail finally, except J------.   About a month later J------ got out of jail and came to us. He said, "I was carrying out the Minister of Defense's program." "You're a damn liar," we said. "You weren't carrying out any Minister of Defense's program, not by pulling a petty jive robbery."   Then J------ asked me, "Well, Bobby, what do you think about it?" He was trying to divide me from David and Bunchy. David said, "What do you mean, what does Bobby think about it? It's what me, Bobby, the Central Committee, Huey, Eldridge Cleaver, everybody, thinks about it. It's all of us together." I said, "That's right, man. You weren't carrying out the Minister of Defense's program. Not like that you weren't. You must be crazy, man. I'm sorry, you just gotta get out of the Party."   Bunchy later saw that J------ was trying to put on some kind of front of still being a revolutionary. So Bunchy told him, "If you are a good man, if you just made a mistake, nobody can hold a good man down. If you're a true revolutionary, you'll serve the people. But you're still not in the Party. You can't explain that stuff to us, not by saying that you think that you were carrying out the Minister's program."   When that thing happened, we got phone calls from all over the place. We had a lot of support: it's some cops, some agents messing over you all, people said. They knew that petty robbery wasn't what the Party was about. If you get involved in that stuff then the older people in the community misunderstand the Party. You also mislead the young lumpen proletarian cat, who probably has got the guts enough to commit a robbery, but who we want in the Party so we can politically educate him that robbery isn't the way to go about solving the social problems that put him in the situation in the first place.   So we saw that somehow or another, this kind of activity was agent provocateur-type activity. We couldn't prove anything right away against J------. We thought that either he had flipped his lid or he was an agent provocateur.   We didn't kick S------ out of the Party, but after we helped bail him out, he came around trying to support J------'s position. I began to suspect him and decided to just watch his actions. A lot of times we actually bailed cats out even though they'd done wrong, to try to find out what the heck was wrong with them, to try to find out who was doing what and who was leading what and who was causing this stuff to happen.   Finally it got so bad that the next bunch of jackanapes who got busted - some cats riding around in a Panther car with broken lights, no registration, and carrying guns - we decided we weren't going to bail them out. David said, "We're not going to be putting out no more bail money for cats who're gonna violate the rules of the Party. When this stuff hits the papers, it looks like we're just a bunch of hoodlums and thugs, just because a couple of individuals start acting the fool."   About six brothers and sisters in the Party disagreed, and said we should bail them out anyway. When we asked why, they said, "Because they're black." We said, "No, we're not gonna bail them out just because they're black. They're not serving the people. In fact they're destroying the Party. We got to let people know that these type of individuals are not running the Party. We should kick them out." This small group of five or six cats didn't like that, so we told them to go raise the bail money themselves.   That was the start of a little black racist jackanape faction in the Party. As it turned out, this faction had an agent provocateur in it and we didn't know it. P------ was a righteous agent provocateur who came into the Party in 1968. This little faction of cats was hanging on more to black racism than to a progressive revolutionary program of serving the people. This little faction didn't understand that it was a class struggle we were in, and not a race struggle.   The agents provocateurs used the cats who refused to be politically educated and to follow the Party's revolutionary principles and rules. Half of the cats who didn't follow the program were being laid astray by agent provocateur activity. We didn't know it at first, but we felt and knew that something was definitely going wrong.   A little crew of about ten or twelve cats had been meeting and getting together in a certain little corner around town at night. P------ was the leader of this crap, and behind the scenes was talking really negatively about the Party. These cats didn't understand that revolution doesn't only mean that you mass the people and teach them that they have the right to defend themselves against unjust police attacks. What they didn't understand is that revolution also means that you have to implement basic community programs like Breakfast for Children, Liberation Schools and free health clinics, and really work on these programs every day. They didn't understand how this educates the masses of the people to put more revolutionary political pressure on the power structure to implement similar programs. They didn't understand that you have to work hard at this, and P------ was consistently leading them away from working on these things. These cats are what the Party calls jackanapes. A jackanape is a fool. He's foolish, but he's not scared of the police. He's foolish in that hell get himself killed quicker. If you don't straighten him out, and try to politically educate him, he will definitely bring the Party down. If there's an agent provocateur around, the agent will hinder your attempts to politically educate these cats, and will lead them to do crazy things based on emotions rather than work based on understanding of social change. For example, a jackanape will come walking down the street with a gun in his hand, talking about, "Fuck the pigs. To hell with the pigs. I ain't going to jail." Then he'll be surrounded by twenty-five cops with shotguns pointed at his head and he'll go to Jail. Deep down inside he really doesn't have anything to defend, because he doesn't know what he's defending. Real revolutionaries are like the brothers in the L.A. shoot-out, where the pigs attacked the office and pulled a predawn raid on them. Those brothers defended that office because they were really defending the community programs that we were trying to set up. They defended themselves because they realized that the power structure wanted to rip them off and systematically exterminate them, that it wanted to prevent the organizing and uniting of the people around revolutionary programs.   A true revolutionary will get up early in the morning and he'll go serve the Free Breakfast for Children. Then when that's done he'll go and he'll organize a boycott around a specific issue, to support Breakfast for Children or support any other kind of program. He'll do revolutionary work in the community. Hell propagandize the community, he'll pass out leaflets. As a citizen in the community and a member of the Black Panther Party, he'll go to the firing range and take firing practice, but he'll follow all the gun laws and he won't conceal his weapon, or other jive stuff. He'll follow the rules and be very dedicated. He is constantly trying to politically educate himself about the revolutionary principles and how they function, to get a broad perspective. He'll also defend himself and his people when we're unjustly attacked by racist pigs.   Whereas a jackanape generally works from an opportunistic position. He centers things only around himself; he's still selfish. He thinks his pot and his wine are above the Party. He thinks his gun is something that he can use at will, to rip off stuff for himself. He can be politically educated, that's definite. But if you've got agents provocateurs running around sent in by the CIA and the FBI, black guys running around talking one thing and doing another thing, then it makes it much harder, because they mislead the jackanapes into doing all kinds of jive things to destroy the Party. You have to expose the informers and the agents provocateurs to the people.   The cats in the black racist faction, and some other cats who had come into the Party a long time before, were cats who had pulled robberies. We told them that if they were going to be in the Party, they'd better not do that kind of stuff, because that's not the Party's program and the Party doesn't endorse it. We even told all those cats that they didn't have to worry about rent and food as long as the Party had some funds. We said that five or six members could rent a house together, and the rent would be cheaper, and they wouldn't have to worry about a place to stay and their other needs. As long as people were dedicated revolutionaries, and worked around the clock, the Party would take care of them. We never pay anybody a salary. We just take care of the basic necessities of the Party members. These cats knew that they shouldn't be pulling robberies.   One day, just before David and I went to New York, A------, one of the cats relating to that little jackanape group, walked up to us and said, "Hey, man, I need to rip off some money." We said, "Say, man, before you came into the Party maybe that's what you were doing, but you don't do that anymore because the Party doesn't endorse that crap. You cats don't have to worry about rent and food." So he said, "OK, man," and we thought everything was cool. David and I had to go out of town that evening.   We went to New York, and the next day David called the National Headquarters to check in and he turned to me, real disgusted. "Bobby," he said, "We can't leave that damn place twenty-four hours before some jackanape or some fool is messing up. K------'s old lady is on the phone talking about some jive robbery that A------ and K------ were in." I said, "A------ knows better than that, we were just telling him yesterday that we don't go for that shit." David said, "Man, we'd better hurry up and finish our business here and get on back because these jackanapes and fools are going to try to destroy this Party, if we don't watch them."   When we got back Deputy Chief of Staff June Hilliard gave us the report and gave us some newspapers to read. It really was a damn shame. They tried to rob a grocer for $200 on a main street in broad daylight at 2:00 in the afternoon. Six of them did it, with shotguns, M-1's, .45's, etc. - they were Party guns too. We were really disgusted. They could have walked up and asked me, or whoever was handling the funds, for money for rent or whatever they needed it for. We get $500 to $1,000 for each speaking engagement we do, and I was doing ten or twelve a month myself. They didn't have to rob that place.   We blasted them in the press. We said that they were provocateurs, fools, and jackanapes, and that they only wanted to use the Party as a base for some petty criminal operation which the Party does not have anything to do with, and does not endorse whatsoever. The Party's Central Committee and the rules are completely opposed to this. We ran this all through the Panther paper too.   K------ and A------ were in jail. Supposedly some of the others got away. We had put the word out through the grapevine, "Don't even come around the Party" to everyone who was supposed to have participated in that so-called robbery because, "You're out of the Party. You're no longer members of the Party, you don't represent the Party." Two days later, the house were A------, K------, and P------ had been staying was raided by the police. A couple more brothers who were staying over there, and who weren't necessarily in the little jive faction, were all busted. We went down and got P------ out, because we thought he was a good cat, who'd got busted just on this bullshit raid. We also got a couple more out of jail, because we knew that they weren't in the hold-up. We trusted those cats and we just got them out of jail because they were getting rail-roaded.   Well, surer than shit, about a month later we got some information that P------ knew that the robbery was going to be pulled while David and I were in New York. We called him to a Central Committee meeting, and said, "Hey, man, look, we found out that you knew about this robbery, and that you didn't report it to the Deputy Chief of Staff. You were even the officer of the day then and you were supposed to report it in."   "Well," he said. "I didn't know nothing about it, man, I didn't know nothing about it." Then he sold us this story, that he just didn't have enough time to get back and report it - that he was being negligent. We put him on working suspension for one month.   Meanwhile, K------ and A------ were still in jail, and we refused to bail them out. The faction some of them were still hanging around inside the Party) said, "You should bail them out." They didn't like it at all when we refused. We told K------'s wife that she didn't have to worry about anything, as long as she was working in the Party, but that if she wanted K------ out, she'd have to hustle the money herself. The next thing that P------ was involved in was around that coloring book situation. It's very important because there was testimony at the McClellan Committee hearing against the Party about this. The coloring book situation started way back in November 1968.   That coloring book was drawn by a cat in Sacramento, an artist, who had black racist ideas. We tried to educate the brothers who had real narrow-minded cultural nationalist ideas which breed black racist thoughts, so we told him to start trying to do some kind of art that depicts the true revolutionary program. He went to Sacramento and did some drawings that he wanted to make up into a coloring book. He periodically brought back what he'd finished to the Party office. I would tell him, "Look, brother, you're showing a Black Panther with all muscles, every picture you draw. The Black Panthers all look like supermen, all muscle-bound and everything. We're not supermen, we don't profess to be supermen. We're just human beings and people like everybody else. Some of us are short. Some of the chicks are fine, but all of us are not what we call pretty. Some of us are skinny, and some of us are fat. Some of us do have muscles, but we're not all that way." I told him, "This coloring book you drew - it's got too many racist overtones. Another thing. You show a Panther shooting a cop. What you're showing is something without the political context, the reason why the Panther would shoot a cop. You've got to show the Panther defending himself from the unjust attacks by the cop. Now, if you show a black man being brutalized and unjustly attacked, and a Panther coming out of his door with a gun to help defend that black brother from that unlawful attack by that cop or something like that, then you're showing the political context and showing the right of black men to defend themselves. That's what you have to do. You know what I mean?"   I ran all this stuff down, and this cat took it back to work on it. In November, he finished and brought it down to the Central Committee meeting one Sunday. But it was still all wrong, and I told him, "No, man. This book doesn't show enough political content, man. It's got too much of the black racist overtones. You have to learn the Party's revolutionary principles and once you see the principles, you'll be able to draw like Emory, because Emory can give political content and meaning to the way he draws."   Well, I guess he loved his art, and liked the book the way it was. He had twenty-five of those books printed up in Sacramento and had brought them down to the office. Then he got someone working in the mimeograph room to print more of them up. We stopped him, and said, "No, man, don't print any more of these books, man. The books aren't right. You know what I mean. Let's make another coloring book, that shows more the revolutionary political content."   Sometime around January of 1969 - after K------ was kicked out of the Party - he went and printed up a thousand more of those books. The little factionalizing schism group that P------ was running took the books and distributed them behind the scenes, against the orders of Central Committee. We didn't even suspect till a month after the robbery that something was wrong with P------. We heard, after we wouldn't bail out K------ and A------, that the factionalizing group was talking about, "The Party ain't right. The Party ain't doing right." We just thought they were a little group of dudes, acting the fool, and we said, "Man, later for them dudes." Then we found out from one person that P------ seemed to be the leader of it. His function was to be the advocate among this little group of cats who related more to black racism than to the Party's program.   During the month that P------ was on suspension he came down every day and worked in the office steadily for about three weeks. Then one day he walked into the office with somebody that no one had ever seen before. Now, we've got a little sign posted - NOBODY BUT AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL BEYOND THIS POINT. You can come into the front section of the National Headquarters office, but you can't go roaming all through the back unless you're a member of the Party. We figured that the cops would send agents provocateurs in to plant weed or something on us in the back room, or we figured that they might come in and plant a bomb in a briefcase, and leave it there to blow us up. That's why we don't let everybody walk back through the offices. Unauthorized people stay in the front section of the office, where the officer of the day, and all the brothers and sisters working in there can watch them.   P------ brought this cat all through the back. June and David happened to spot him. David told me later on that evening, "Man, P------ brought some dude I ain't never seen, showing him our machines and stuff." There's a $2,500 machine, an electric stencil machine, a $450 mimeograph machine, our tape recorders, and other equipment back there. David said, "June stopped him and asked him, who is the heck did he think he was bringing strangers all in the back, showing the Party's equipment and carrying on." And P------ said, "Well, man, this brother here wanted to get in the Party, and I was just showing him around the place here." "Wait a minute, man, wait a minute," June said. "You can't bring anybody back here. The man isn't in the Party, and don't be doing that. You know you're wrong. Furthermore, I'm going to report you to the Central Committee."   At the Central Committee meeting, David told P------, "I heard about you over there, running around with this old bunch of jackanapes, and cats who're relating to that black racism and perpetuating that crap. So, the best thing you can do is get on away from this Party. Get on away and don't even come around the Party office anymore, because it seems to me that maybe you're the one who's been getting people to steal other stuff out of our office when we're not here at night. Two .357 Magnums have been stolen and a couple more machines and tape recorders are missing." David ran it down.   "So, you come around here showing people that stuff. I've been on the block long enough to know a hood and a thug when I see one, and if a fool like you who was in the Party is going to run around and deal with cats like that, and isn't gonna send him through the proper channels of the Party, it seems to me that you're the one that's pulling all this stuff. You also got that factionalizing group over there. Get away from this Party and stay away and don't even come back here no more." That's the way it was.   The next thing we heard was that some chick in that group tried to hold up a Wells Fargo Bank with an M-1 rifle. She went in the Wells Fargo Bank, the cops were waiting for her, and she got arrested. The job was set up by P------. Well, we still weren't sure that P------ was a righteous CIA agent provocateur. But we knew he was doing something wrong, and all suspicion was pointed toward him.   Then P------ got four or five other ex-Panthers and went up north to Seattle to try to sway the Seattle branch against the National Headquarters. They got up there and it came out in the papers that they had been busted for possession of hashish. Then they all got cut loose. We didn't dig the fact that they got busted up there, and then were automatically let off. There's something sneaky about it and it's tied into the fact that they were trying to split the Seattle branch (the Seattle branch told us that they were up there trying to do that).   Well, with all this information, and knowing that P------ was leading this stuff, we went back and figured out a few things. For instance, there was an article he got into the Party newspaper accusing Mark Comfort of working with the police in Oakland. The article said that the police department downtown had given them permission to carry guns, but we found out later that Mark Comfort had organized a program where some of his boys were to protect the black businessmen in the black community and guard their places. Apparently owners of stores who hire people to guard them can authorize these persons to have guns. P------ wanted us to publicize the fact that Comfort was working with the cops in the paper, but we said, "No, not till we get all the facts."   But in the next issue of the paper the article appeared, under the pseudonym "Sip." Nobody gave authorization to put that article in the paper. We found out that P------ rushed over to the layout room right before the deadline and said that we told him to put the article in there, which we hadn't.   After the article appeared, Mark Comfort and his group got so many phone calls and the people were so down on them, talking about how they were pigs, that it really destroyed them. It was a means by which P------ was actually moving to try to get an organization in another part of town fighting and bickering with the Party to cause disunity. So this was the next thing that pointed out P------ to be an agent provocateur in the Black Panther Party.   The clear exposure of P------ involved a black cat who was never really in the Party but who for months came around and hung around the front office. He floated around town. Well, three doors down from the Party's office he got into an argument with someone inside the little barber shop. Somebody shot this cat right there in front of the barber shop. Killed him dead. Sunday morning, the next day, P------ called a press conference with a small group of other jackanapes and renegades, and he sounded just like J. Edgar Hoover. He said that this dead guy was his brother, that they had both been kicked out of the Black Panther Party, and that the Party had killed this guy and were going to kill him. All this was an out-right bold-faced lie.   Now what this did was to spread all over the country the lie that we shoot and kill Black Panther Party members. From all my speculation this stuff is all connected to that frame-up on me and the other brothers in New Haven, Connecticut.   The final thing that really showed P------ to be an agent provocateur was when the Grand Jury investigations came down. Who do you suppose comes walking in to testify, escorted by the FBI through the back doors? P------, who was still trying to pose like he's just somebody, trying to cover up the fact that he's an agent provocateur. He sat there saying that he'd been in the Party, and told them a bunch of lies about the Party. The pigs then used this in the press to try to distort the people's understanding about the Party. Stuff about the coloring book came up in testimony at the McClellan Committee hearings. The national press really used this testimony to try to destroy the Party. They said, "The Black Panther Party has now kicked the book out of the Breakfast for Children Program," and tried to say that it was because of the Senate investigation. They hardly mentioned the real facts which we ran down in a press conference. The jackanapes, led by P------ on the side, were running around spreading the coloring books. What P------ had them do, is when the kids would leave Breakfast for Children, they would find the kids, give them a book and say, "I'm a Black Panther." So they staged all this stuff to move to try to destroy the Party politically, and to try to destroy the Party's Breakfast for Children Program.   Right around the time of the Senate investigations A------ sent a letter to Charlie Garry. In this letter he said that he had gotten mixed up with the wrong group, and that agents provocateurs and other cats were the ones who were doing wrong to the Party, and lying about it. He said that he'd been asked to testify before the McClellan Committee and had refused. A------ got five to life in jail.   The purge that we started in the Party came after all these provocateur operations by P------ and others that we didn't know about. After this happened we stopped letting members into the Party. This enabled us to spot the agents provocateurs better, because we could see who was doing work, who wasn't doing work, and who was messing things up. By not letting anybody else in, we cut down on the confusion caused by the constant influx of people. Over a thousand people from around the country have been expelled from the Party. These people are opportunists, jackanapes, renegades, agents, and other kinds who just refuse to understand that we subordinate ourselves to the people by serving the people.   We print the pictures of people we expel from the Party in the Black Panther paper. We also print the reasons why they were expelled, so as to explain things to the people. A lot of people will run around and say they're Panther Party members, when they're not. These people will do all kinds of crazy things like intimidating people, romping and running in the streets, and acting like fools. They give the Party a bad name.   If someone who is actually a Black Panther Party member is cussing people out or intimidating people or something like that, then we hope those people are reported to the Black Panther Party. They won't be in the Party long, because we'll expel them, and expose them for exactly what they are. Generally we keep the Party very well disciplined. Party members respect the people in the community, and work to serve the people in the community. At the same time they stand ready to defend the Party and the community from the cops who attack us.   The key thing to holding the Party together has been real political education and respect for the people. This is something for which brother David deserves a lot of credit. Brother Ray "Masai" Hewitt has been able to give Party members a broad perspective. The work on the part of the Party members can't be matched by the average organization in the black community. The dedication that the Party members have, is something that's above opportunism, above selfishness, and above sloth, and not caring about people. This is because Party members care about the survival of black people, even at the risk of being made political prisoners, or getting killed and murdered by the fascist cops, or being forced into exile.   Here are the rules as they appear each week in the Black Panther Party were violated. RULES OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY   National Headquarters Berkeley, California   Every member of the Black Panther Party throughout this country of racist America must abide by these rules as functional members of this Party. Central Committee members, central staffs, and local staffs, including all captains subordinate to either national, state, or local leadership of the Black Panther Party will enforce these rules. Length of suspension or other disciplinary action necessary for violation of these rules will depend on national decisions by national, state or state area, and local committees and staffs where said rule or rules of the Black Panther Party were violated.   Every member of the Party must know these verbatim by heart. And apply them daily. Each member must report any violation of these rules to their leadership or they are counter-revolutionary and are also subjected to suspension by the Black Panther Party.   The Rules Are:   1. No Party member can have narcotics or weed in his possession while doing Party work.   2. Any Party member found shooting narcotics will be expelled from this Party.   3. No Party member can be DRUNK while doing daily Party work.   4. No Party member will violate rules relating to office work, general meetings of the BLACK PANTHER PARTY, and meetings of the BLACK PANTHER PARTY ANYWHERE.   5. No Party member will USE, POINT, or FIRE a weapon of any kind unnecessarily or accidentally at anyone.   6. No Party member can join any other army force other than the BLACK LIBERATION ARMY.   7. No Party member can have a weapon in his possession while drunk or loaded off narcotics or weed.   8. No Party member will commit any crimes against other Party members or BLACK people at all, and cannot steal or take from the people, not even a needle or a piece of thread.   9. When arrested, BLACK PANTHER MEMBERS will give only name, address, and will sign nothing. Legal first aid must be understood by all Party members.   10. The ten-point program and platform of the BLACK PANTHER PARTY must be known and understood by each Party member.   11. Party Communications must be National and Local.   12. The 10-point program should be known by all members and also understood by all members.   13. All Finance officers will operate under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance.   14. Each person will submit a report of daily work.   15. Each Sub-Section Leader, Section Leader, Lieutenant, and Captain must submit daily reports of work.   16. All Panthers must learn to operate and service weapons correctly.   17. All Leadership personnel who expel a member must submit this information to the Editor of the newspaper, so that it will be published in the paper and will be known by all chapters and branches.   18. Political Education Classes are mandatory for general membership.   19. Only office personnel assigned to respective offices each day should be there. All others are to sell papers and do Political work out in the community, including Captains, Section Leaders, etc.   20. COMMUNICATIONS - all chapters must submit weekly reports in writing to the National Headquarters.   21. All Branches must implement First Aid and/or Medical Cadres.   22. All Chapters, Branches, and components of the BLACK PANTHER PARTY must submit a monthly Financial Report to the Ministry of Finance, and also the Central Committee.   23. Everyone in a leadership position must read no less than two hours per day to keep abreast of the changing political situation.   24. No chapter or branch shall accept grants, poverty funds, money, or any other aid from any government agency without contacting the National Headquarters.   25. All chapters must adhere to the policy and the ideology laid down by the CENTRAL COMMITTEE of the BLACK PANTHER PARTY.   26. All Branches must submit weekly reports in writing to their respective Chapters. WOMEN AND THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY In the Black Panther Party, we understand that male chauvinism is directly related to the class society. In order to explain how the Party deals with male chauvinism, I want to point out how the Party thinks and how the Party understands things. The ideology of the Party is the whole historical experience of black people in America, the experience of all the social evils that have trampled on our heads and caused us to be oppressed. This historical experience of black people, translated through Marxism-Leninism, is really the ideology of the Black Panther Party. The history of the Party is a process of putting into practice the basic revolutionary principles that we've acquired. And these principles not only relate to the economic and social evils, but they're also caught up in the economic and social evils in this system that oppress black people. These social evils are created and maintained by this capitalistic government which is infested with a lot of ruling-class elite, greedy businessmen, and demagogic politicians. In the Party itself there has always been, on the part of Party members, the same kind of progressive, changing experience, in terms of being one with the people.   We need to establish a system based on the goal of absolute equality, of all people, and this must be established on the principle of from each and every person, both male and female, according to their ability, and to each and every person, both male and female, according to their needs. We see establishing socialism in the society as a means by which we begin to remove the oppressive social obstacles, and hope to build a society where someday a man and a woman can relate to each other totally on the basis of natural attraction.   When we study other societies (and you must to understand the society that you live in, to talk about any aspect of the groups which live in poverty within that society), we see that there is a consistently changing culture that exists among these people in poverty, and their economic, political, and social situation is directly related to our everyday lives.   When Eldridge and Huey and the Party as a whole move to get rid of male chauvinism, we're moving on that principle of absolute equality between male and female: because male chauvinism is related to the very class nature of this society as it exists today. And even in the Party there are relationships between male and female that have to be ironed out to a level where it makes some sense. The Party is working very hard and fast to break down male chauvinism: at the same time that we are moving on this matter in relation to the community, we are also moving and changing in relation to ourselves. There are some fine sisters in the Party, Kathy, Marsha, and some others, who were walking in front of a little barber shop, two doors down from the National Headquarters in Berkeley. It's a shop where a lot of brothers, many of whom have just recently come out of the joint, go to get processes on their heads. Some of these brothers call themselves pimps, and you can figure that some of them, at one point or another, are pushing weed or something - the type of activities that black men are driven to, trying to live. These brothers are playing their old game, saying to each other, "Man, I know I can rap to one of the Panther sisters and take all of those chicks away from all of the cats over there in the Panther office."   Now this is an old game that's related to male chauvinism, to the brother dominating the sister. What that's related to - as Malcolm X put it one time - is that the President is the biggest pimp in the country. And this pimping the sister on the block is related to the continued existence of a class system. It's cross-related to the economic problems in the black community where the male is put into a position where he can't really be the breadwinner for the home.   So when the sisters walked in front of the little barber shop, I noticed some brothers were huddled among each other, speculating on the Panther sisters. They tried to rap to Marsha and a couple of other sisters, and Marsha set them straight.   She said, "Look, brother, you're getting none of this! You don't use this on the streets, either. The only way you can get close to me is to get hip to some of the real ideology of the Black Panther Party."   Then another sister said, "Yeah. If you want to get next to us, why don't you check out the Red Book?"   Well, those brothers were a little shocked. Then the other brothers inside the place started laughing at the brothers outside. Well, this got off with the brothers. It seemed like the whole barber shop got upset, not in an antagonistic manner, but wanting to know what it was that didn't allow these sisters to go for that old pimp game. Naturally their speculation was that the sisters made love to us, and therefore they agreed with our rap. What they didn't understand, is that you can't define it in terms of what kind of rap is going down, that it was the ideology of the Party that was helping to bring us out of that very same kind of thinking.   So their curiosity was aroused, and the brothers tried rapping with some of the other sisters, and got the same answers. The next thing I knew, all those brothers had come over to the Party headquarters, twenty-five or thirty of them, to buy some Panther literature and some Red Books. They stopped talking and started listening. And the sisters laid the revolutionary ideology right on them.   We had tried for a long time, in a lot of ways, to get these brothers motivated, but it took some sisters with a new and respectful way of looking at themselves, to bring these brothers in!   Down in L.A., over a year ago, brother Bunchy Carter had put up six offices in the black community, which attracted hundreds and hundreds of members. Now not all of them, but some, were coming around the Party office with wine in their heads. When Bunchy went down to one of the offices, he'd catch them walking up to the door. They were supposed to have been there at ten, but were coming along at noon or later. Bunchy used to call them the "drunk-for-lunch bunch."   Bunchy would say, "Who do you think you are? Don't you know that these fascist pigs are here to murder us and don't you know that we are surrounded by imperialistic wolves who murder and kill and commit genocide against black people? And here you fools come up late and drunk for lunch! What's wrong with you?"   So Bunchy, trying to cross-relate our principles on the level of our everyday lives, asked all the sisters to turn a cold shoulder to all these fools who came around late, and the ones who didn't do any work. "The Minister of Defense," Bunchy explained, "is going to start kicking them all out, and I'm going to start kicking them out right now. Will you sisters help the Party?   "These cats aren't doing any revolutionary work, but are wanting to go to bed with you, talking about how much they love you. But they must not love you very much at all, because they aren't doing revolutionary work so you can be free." Well, the sister dug that. Bunchy had to expel a few of the sisters and brothers who were lazy and just didn't want to do the work in the office and the community that is necessary to run a chapter of the Black Panther Party. But mostly, they straightened up and got down to work.   Originally, we had established rank in the Black Panther Party, according to the political work and political duties of each member. A captain was generally a coordinator, that was his political duty. We judged a person on whether or not he took responsibility, because one of the Party's principles is that you can delegate authority but you cannot delegate responsibility. Lieutenants were security people and sergeants were section leaders. Corporals were subsection leaders. A regular Panther with no special rank was one who was out of training, and a buck private was a Panther in training. Privates were Panthers who had completed the training, which was six weeks of Party political education classes. We had originally structured this, all the way up to the assistant central staff, with the chief of staff. But very soon we discovered that we were running into some problems with this system. For instance, in some office back East, a brother had been made the deputy minister of health, and didn't even know how to put on a bandage. We had to straighten that out right away, and show chapters they shouldn't give people a certain rank just to fill out a spot. Finally we just dropped this system, and stopped relating to rank altogether. But these problems are related to how some brothers, not all but some, had a tendency to misuse the rank concept, in relation to the sisters.   We found that, every once in a while, you'd get a brother calling a sister counter-revolutionary. And the sisters were getting mad about that because it seemed to be related only to the fact that the sisters didn't want to sleep with the brother. In other words, a brother would try to get next to a sister, and when the sister didn't dig him, he'd run around saying she was "counterrevolutionary." Some of the brothers said erroneous things, like, "I'm in the streets and I have to defend you." Some would say, "I'm a captain, so it's your duty to give in to me."   We broke this stuff up right away, and placed it forth that brothers who were captains or any other rank couldn't be using their rank just to go to bed with a sister. At the same time, it didn't go just one way. A few of the sisters had a tendency to go along with this. Finally one or two of them began to speak out, and we definitely got rid of this particular kind of male chauvinism. The main thing the brothers had to understand was that no one had any right to speak of a sister as counter-revolutionary on any personal basis, or to say that he had to defend her. The way we see it, the sister is also a revolutionary, and she has to be able to defend herself, just like we do. She has to learn to shoot, just like we do. Because the pigs in the system don't care that she's a sister; they brutalize her just the same. I think that since the pig structure has been trying to kill Erica Muggins, brothers have begun to see that the sisters can get arrested, too, just the same as the brothers. I know that the community can see this in the recent shoot-out in L.A., where the sisters were in there too, battling, defending just as hard as the brothers.   A lot of the brothers in the black community who only think of the sisters as secondary - brothers who are pimping sisters and think that this is the way life has to be - have begun to see that the examples that are being set by the Black Panther Party are more progressive. They see us winning on a higher level and treating the sisters on an equal level. The brothers in the community see that sisters don't want to oppress us; what they really want is equality. They want to be treated like human beings. And we've found that the sisters work better in the Party when they're treated in this way. If a sister's in charge and taking responsibility to do something, the brothers follow her orders. They don't say, "I ain't going to listen to no woman."   We did have problems of that sort until we politically educated some of them, and we finally all had to purge our hearts', and, as Eldridge says, purge our souls and purge our minds in relation to the old environmental conditioning. So with this attitude, the sisters related to the brothers even more, not on the basis of who's the cutest and who's the handsomest. Personal relations now are based more on knowing people personally and humanly, on people coming and working together and functioning in the Party. Now when men and women meet each other, their relation comes out of common interests, common goals, to function in the Party as revolutionaries. There was an incident that happened when this kind of change was just beginning to take place. My wife and I had just moved to one of the Panther houses in Berkeley. There were three other bedrooms in the house and some Party members from out of town were staying there. One of these brothers had been working closely with a particular sister for several days, living and working there at the house. He really liked the sister and she kind of dug him too.   So one night, after my wife and I had gone to bed, there came a knock on our door. "Chairman Bobby?" the sister called.   I said, "Yes?"   "Can I ask you a question?"   "Sure," I said. I got up, put on my pants and walked out. "What is it?" I asked her.   She said, "If a brother doesn't know the ten-point platform and program, I shouldn't give him any, should I?"   I said, "Well, wait a minute, now. Do you like the cat?"   "Yeah," she said, "I dig him, but I'm not going to give him any unless he knows the ten-point platform and program."   "What are you tryin to do?"   "We got in bed, you see, and I asked him if he knew the ten-point platform and program. He said he did, so I sat there drilling him, and he missed about ten words. He didn't say it exactly."   I didn't smile. This was serious to the sister, and because of that it was serious to me too. So, without making any male chauvinistic statements, I just said, "Not all the brothers are going to be able to know it exactly, word for word. But they might be able to know in a general sense What they're about. Maybe the brother explains it in his own words."   She said, "Well, I thought that everybody in the Party should know the ten-point platform and program by heart."   "No," I explained, "not necessarily. What we meant when we said that every Party member had to know the ten-point platform and program by heart was, that we put high responsibility on you to really study it and understand it. But what if you knew all the words just right, and still didn't understand the meaning of it? Would that do any good?" She shook her head. "Well," I went on, "if you could say the platform and the program in your own words, and what it was all about, each one of the ten points, of what we want and believe, why that's even better. Your own words are more related to your everyday life, and would have more meaning to you. So if the brother doesn't know the words just exactly, that doesn't mean he doesn't know the platform. But don't you like the cat? "I asked her.   "Sure," she said. "I like him lots, and I really want to make love to him. But I'm not going to trump over the Party's ideology."   "Well," I explained, "some of the brothers learn slowly, you know. And they know making love a lot better than anything else."   Now while I was explaining this to the sister, the brother had grabbed up a pillow and blanket to go downstairs. He said, "I'm going to find a sister in the Party I dig who doesn't know the program any better than I do, and we're going to have some real equality." In a way, of course, this was all funny to me, but the sister was very serious. She didn't want him to just run on over her and not pay attention to the things that were important to her.   But the sister that night called the brother back upstairs and told him she understood things a little differently and she really did care about him. This is one example of the kinds of things that happened between people in the Party when we began to deal with the issue of male chauvinism.   There was another incident that took place during the conference last summer that was important.   People came from all over the country to attend the National Committee to Combat Fascism conference, and every Panther house in the Bay Area was crowded way past capacity. People were sleeping on the floors on pallets, in sleeping bags, on couches and beds, and even in the hallways. Over at Eldridge Cleaver's house, all the bedrooms were occupied, and people were sleeping down on the living room and dining room floors.   One of the sisters sent in a complaint to Party headquarters saying that a brother had attempted to rape her.   As we investigated this, it turned out that the brother had come into the room and had gotten into the bed where she was sleeping in her clothes. It wasn't uncommon when it was as crowded as that, for a brother and sister to sleep next to each other. And she told him it was OK to sleep there. Well, it seems that he got sexually aroused from sleeping so close to her, and tried to get a little too close. But she pushed him away from her, and he simply quit trying. So we pointed out that since she had been able to just push him away, this wasn't really attempted rape. And she realized that it wasn't. These are the kind of problems we come up with, and still do. We try to get rid of these petty problems. We try to teach the brothers and sisters the basic Party principles, and how to use these principles to relate to each other.   The problems between the brothers and sisters relate to past conditioning. In a situation where a brother and sister are lying beside each other, past social conditioning has taught that brother that he can use force on the sister, and take her without caring about her feelings in the matter. Now the brother must learn that he has no right to use any kind of force on that sister, and she must watch herself for her own attitude, and not see everything he's doing as force, because that's the kind of conditioning she's had.   We had to make more rules in the Party because a number of similar incidents came up. One of those rules was that the brothers had better not use any force on any sister in the Party. It hasn't been all smooth and easy, getting these rules across. A year and a half ago, when this started, it even got to the point where a sister was hit by a brother. She fell back and her heel was cut by a piece of glass that broke when she fell on it. It was a struggle to stop this kind of thing.   Where the sister was previously regulated to typing and cooking and stuff like this, we broke up those roles in the Party. That was a struggle, too. We even had to deal with the way brothers talked to sisters, because every once in a while we'd catch a brother talking to a sister in such a harsh manner that it really scared her, enough so she'd do anything he said. The sister brought these complaints up, and we told the brothers, "We're tired of that. We're not going to have that in the Party. We're not going to have any kind of messing over these sisters." I think that the sisters began to respect the Party much more for these things, seeing that the brothers wanted to treat them as human beings, and not as necessarily subordinate to us.   All these incidents and problems are cross-related to the economic system in our society, the fact that a black man can't get a job. These oppressive obstacles have to be removed, or they'll perpetuate themselves. Economic obstacles cause black men to commit crimes, especially around Christmas time. Many a black man who doesn't ordinarily commit crimes will go out and rob a gas station or a bus to get the money to buy his family the things the rest of the society has taught them to want. Many of the brothers just give up and leave their families. Because of this rotten system, a lot of young brothers grow up not wanting to get married. They want to be pimps and subordinate the sister.   In our Party, the sister is not told to stay home. If she's got a job, they take all the babies over to one house and one person, male or female, takes care of them all. We do that quite often, for the sisters who have children. Then of course there's the Liberation School, which brothers and sisters run; and sisters have to learn to shoot just as well as brothers. It works both ways, too. For instance, one sister didn't want to teach Charles Bursey shorthand and typing, because she felt that it was improper. Well, she learned brothers can be secretaries, too.   These principles come from Huey. Huey has always talked about the fact that he believed in equality for men and women. You'll find some women's organizations that are working strictly in the capitalist system, and talking about equality under the capitalist system. But the very nature of the capitalistic system is to exploit and enslave people, all people. So we have to progress to a level of socialism to solve these problems. We have to live socialism.   So where there's a Panther house, we try to live it. When there's cooking to be done, both brothers and sisters cook. Both wash the dishes. The sisters don't just serve and wait on the brothers. A lot of black nationalist organizations have the idea of regulating women to the role of serving their men, and they relate this to black manhood. But a real manhood is based on humanism, and it's not based on any form of oppression. "OFF THE PIG," "MOTHERFUCKER," AND OTHER TERMS Off the Pig means to kill the slave master. It doesn't mean commit murder. Some of the brothers in the Party made up a song: "There's a pig upon the hill/If you don't get 'im, the Panthers will."   But first one must understand what a pig is - police, bigots, and fascists. The Black Panther Party started the term.   A pig is an ill-natured beast who has no respect for law and order, a foul traducer who's usually found masquerading as a victim on an unprovoked attack.   This definition was printed in the second issue of the Black Panther Party's newspaper in May of 1967. If you read it closely, you'll see what is really meant by "pig". The police are generally referred to as such. But racist bigots and sadistic fascists who help maintain the oppression of any people are considered pigs. It is best understood when we look at the history of the KKK and Hitler's Gestapo.   Huey said, just before we went to press with the second issue of the newspaper, "We have to have some terms that adequately define the police and fascist bigots who commit murder, brutalize, and violate people's constitutional rights." I told him he already called those who actually do this "fascists" and "swine". Huey said, "Yeah, but black people aren't picking it up. It's not simple enough so they'll understand it. Children, teenagers, and older people, everybody." Then Huey, walking around the room thinking, said, "Swine . . . pig . . . swine" and Eldridge sat down at the typewriter and typed out the definition. He gave it to Huey. Huey said, "Yeah." Emory had a drawing of a pig. We put it on the front page and wrote under it, "Support Your Local Police," a Birchite slogan which is also supported by "white citizen," "white racist, so-called "patriotic" organizations.   Numerous reports at this time in 1967 had appeared on how the police department had been hiring Birchites, KKK members, and other white racists. It was later taken out of the news. But police departments had doubled and tripled across this country, especially where black and other poor oppressed peoples live in large numbers. Murder and police brutality had been going on for hundreds of years, but unjust treatment and slaughter of black people by racists and police which weren't reported by the press much at all, had taken on a new high in the last ten years.   We knew that this was the working and organizing of a more overt police state right here in America and now, today, three years since the Party was organized, in many cities, especially Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and other places, police departments have been quadrupled by the hiring of many sadistic, warped-minded blacks.   There are a few good policemen, black and white. But the majority are sadistic and racist and do not respect the constitutional rights of the people whatsoever. They actually believe in brutality, terrorizing, intimidating, and outright murder, and too many times come up acting and masquerading like a victim of an unprovoked attack.   Huey said, "This defining of the police as pigs will hopefully make some of them think, and oppose what the racists in the police departments are unjustly doing. It will spread to millions and millions of people who know that the cops are 'pigs' and will hopefully generate some political movement for real community control of the police. The police departments are acting like the old German Gestapo who called the world 'swine', which is the same as 'pig'. The racists in this country are exactly that by the definition you have typed out, Eldridge.   "Pigs, pigs, pigs," Huey said. "If the people go forth using their constitutional rights to vote them out and make a real people's police force, and then, if the rotten politicians don't respect the right of the people's vote and use their guns like Hitler did, then they are officializing themselves as Gestapo and are oinking in the face of the people. Guerrilla warfare will have to be used then by the masses of the people. But we have to defend ourselves now. So when and if the police officialize themselves as Gestapo, 'off the pig'. Right now, if they unjustly attack us, 'off the pig' because we have a human right to defend ourselves and the people must learn now that they must also defend themselves against unjust, brutal, murderous 'pig' attacks."   Eldridge, Huey and I checked out Emory's layout of the pig for the front cover and said, "Right on, Emory. That's together."   "A low-life pig, a foul traducer," Eldridge said, "who's usually found masquerading as a victim of unprovoked attack."   We were very enthusiastic about getting the paper off the press and into the streets.   "This will begin to let the people know how the black community sees the police who occupy our communities like a foreign troop and violate the people's constitutional rights," Huey said.   Eldridge said, "Man, these pigs are going to shoot us down on sight when this paper hits the street and they see this."   "But it's the right to freedom of the press and free speech that we're exercising to educate the people as to what's really happening and what must be changed." Huey said. "So if they attack us or try to kill us for this we'll defend ourselves. We'll off any pig who attacks us."   Eldridge said, "Emory, you've got to do some art to show the people what to do in defending ourselves with guns and what to do in the future because I believe from here on in it's going to be nothing but a fascist police state, even more so than it is now."   "Also," Huey said, "the people have got to know that we don't believe in murder but only self-defense in the future and in the present. They must understand that self-defense goes beyond just defending ourselves with guns, but that political organizing and implementing the ten-point platform and program are the real political, economic and social means of defending ourselves. So the people have got to see some things that relate concretely to their problems and the gun has got to be seen as a proper tool in defending ourselves when we, the masses, organize revolutionary programs for self-determination and survival."   I said, "Yeah, you know Malcolm X said we had to deal with the basic and political and economic necessities for our people, also."   Huey said, "And the gun, Malcolm said, was for self-defense since the government won't do its job. We stand on Malcolm X's principle."   Malcolm had said:   We should be peaceful, law-abiding - but the time has come to fight back in self-defense whenever and wherever [the black man] is being unjustly and unlawfully attacked. If the government thinks I am wrong for saying this, then let the government start doing its job.   Malcolm's many speeches clearly told Americans that we must make up for past inequities. And people must understand in the language of the ghetto what "off the pig" means.   "Off the Pig" started being used widely when the people, black and white, were all demonstrating at the trial of brother Huey P. Newton. It meant essentially "don't execute Huey," don't try to put him in the gas chamber. Put the "pig" in the gas chamber for murdering black people. We also wanted community control of police. "Well patrol ourselves," we said. So at the demonstrations during Huey's trial there was a song, "No more pigs in our community/Off the Pig/It's time to pick up the gun."   Motherfucker and Mothafucka': Motherfucker is a very common expression nowadays. Eldridge ran it down to me once after a number of people got upset over this vernacular of the ghetto. Eldridge said, "I've seen and heard brothers use the word four and five times in one sentence and each time the word had a different meaning and expression."   Motherfucker actually comes from the old slave system and was a reference to the slave master who raped our mothers which society to-day doesn't want to face as a fact. But today, check the following sentence:   "Man, let me tell you. This motherfucker here went down there with his motherfucking gun, knocked down the motherfucking door and blew this motherfucker's brains out. This shit is getting to be a motherfucker."   With the rising consciousness of black people learning about Black History in general, many black youth have a tendency to say in reference to a person they may dislike, "The dirty mother . . ." dropping the fucker part. But historically black men know black women have been oppressed and when we use the word we don't mean that a man has had sexual relations with his mother. This never enters into a black brother's mind. But it can be said in anger to mean just that, and the sayer knows it is completely from the truth, referring to the white exploiters and slavers in history.   Today, one can use the word to refer to a friend or someone he respects for doing things he never thought could be done by a black man. In the past, the white man has always been the one who has done fantastic things. Raping our mothers was fantastically derogatory. Well, it's kind of a real complimentary statement to a brother or even a sister when one vicariously relates to someone who's black and pulls a fantastic feat. We will joyfully say, "Man, he's a motherfucker."   The racism and oppression of black people, from history to this very day, has caused this word "motherfucker" to be part of the vernacular of the ghetto. White boys have picked it up from black people, but without the different meanings as they have developed up to the day. It so happens that the lumpen proletarian, the brother off the block who comes into the Party, speaks this vernacular. But Huey was one not to use it much at all. He says people, especially the older people, won't listen to the real program of the Party if we use street language. Eldridge says that if we have to use it, use it in reference to the avaricious and demagogic politicians who oppress us, because when they murder a brother or sister, then it makes us mad at the racist. And use it in reference to sadistic pigs who at least need cursing out for what they are: oppressors, murderers, rapers of justice and peace in our society.   I say that we shouldn't curse at all, although after I went into the U.S. Air Force for four years and was cursed out by instructors in basic training, I picked it up by being around G.I.'s so much. I left the service cursing the military, and my mother resents it today. So, it's a tough habit to get rid of, being still oppressed, but a habit we must get rid of. Huey says that even when one of us gets murdered by the pigs, we must restrain and educate the people to the correct methods. I've been well criticized, as have Eldridge, David and many other brothers. So, for the respect of the people, and our mothers, we're working to break the habit.   Signifying: Lying or putting someone down. Telling him lies about his friends or old lady. Trying to get him in trouble. "Joe said you were a punk," but Joe never actually said anything.   Vamp on: When a large group of police attack you and/or your friends and close associates. In the Party it directly refers to an unjust vicious attack, fascist in nature. It can also mean, on a lesser level, just being busted (arrested). But I've received many phone calls or messages such as the following: "The pigs vamped on the L.A. office."   Nigger: This term is not generally used derogatorily by black people to each other. There are a few very sensitive black people with self-hate imbedded in them, who resent it when brothers and sisters are in a general conversation and in a very laughing atmosphere and say, "Ha, ha, man. You niggers is crazy" or "Say, man, this nigger is outa sight." When we are disgusted with each other, we might say, "What's wrong with you niggers" but we aren't offended by another brother's use in this context because the use is in the context of some criticism and the criticism specifically is what well focus upon. College people and intellectuals have more self-hate, and they resent it most.   White people use it to mean that we are backwards, stupid, innately lazy - all the derogatory connotations that can be associated with the term. Webster's Dictionary never has given this term full meaning as it's colloquially used by both black and white people.   Bull: Prison guard or jail guard. In jail when the guard come around, the prisoners say, "Here come the police." Or a brother will also say "Police" real loud, in jail. This is subtle irony. When someone is in jail and calls for the "police" he links the prison guards, the bailiffs and the police together. But "bull" most specifically refers to the guard in prison who is circulating among the "chickens." he thinks. The men resent the guard acting like he is the head rooster on the farm trying to fuck everybody.   But we refer to them all as "pigs" when we become revolutionary. If the guard isn't trying to violate the prisoners' rights, he may be called "police". If he's trying to violate your rights like he does a lot of prisoners', he's a bull.   Field Nigger: As opposed to House Nigger. The slave in the field working was a good, hard-working black, a field nigger, and the slave in the master's house, a house nigger, was a no-good bastard or an Uncle Tom, and usually was more docile. He had an easy deal to lose if he didn't shuffle enough.   Fire on: In a fight, someone strikes you or you strike them with your fist, you "fire on" them.   Throwin' Iron: Lifting weights.   Knobs: Shoes that are considered sharp. They're usually soft, alligator, and expensive.   Pimp Socks: Thin men's dress nylon socks, with vertical patterns on them.   Right on: Right on time. Black people used to say "right on time" a long time ago. It is a shortened form of identifying something that's said or done as really true and really right. Relates to something that's really correct and not negative.   Deal with: Take time to think about and work with a situation. To attempt to resolve a situation that's bad, or negative, or just to go forth and complete something that needs to be done.   Kill: Kill in the language of black community does not mean murder, but always comes as a reaction to someone or something that is about to unjustly attack the person or threatens to unjustly attack them. You always find the word "kill" in very defensive language on the part of blacks.   Motherfucker, I'll kick your motherfucking ass or I'll beat your motherfucking brains in means more in terms of murder. "Kill" doesn't carry the same weight as "kick your ass" or "beat your brains in". But I've said "kill" is generally used among blacks in a defensive manner, when a black person thinks that something wrong or unjust is going to be done to him or her.   Jackanape: A fool who is busted for smoking pot while selling The Black Panther or who pulls holdups while he is a member of the Black Panther Party. He is not looked upon as malicious or as a traitor to the Party. He is seen as someone who doesn't have enough discipline or brains to be in the Party, although he means well. PARTY PROGRAMS - SERVING THE PEOPLE In 1969 the Black Panther Party tried to reach millions of people, both to organize resistance to fascism and to find out about, and receive service from, the basic community programs that we have already set up and will be setting up in the future. This is what we call a broad, massive, people's type of political machinery. It developed out of the rising tide of fascism in America, the rapid attempt on the part of the power structure to try to wipe out the Black Panther Party and other progressive organizations, and the use of more troops and more police forces to occupy our communities. The cops in Los Angeles and several other places have walked in on the Free Breakfast for Children Program to try to intimidate the children and the Party. They come down there with their guns, they draw a gun or two, say a few words and walk all over the place, with shotguns in their hands. Then the little kids go home and say, "Mama, the police came into the Breakfast for Children Program." This is the power structure's technique to try to destroy the program. It's an attempt to scare the people away from sending their children to the Breakfast Program and at the same time trying to intimidate the Black Panther Party.   Meanwhile, through the politicians and the media they try to mislead the people about the value of such a program and the political nature of such a program. We say that we want that program, not just right now for some political purpose - we say that the program should survive right into the future for years and years. The Party's community programs are the people's programs that we define as revolutionary, community, socialistic programs.   A lot of people misunderstand the politics of these programs; some people have a tendency to call them reform programs. They're not reform programs; they're actually revolutionary community programs. A revolutionary program is one set forth by revolutionaries, by those who want to change the existing system to a better system. A reform program is set up by the existing exploitative system as an appeasing handout, to fool the people and to keep them quiet. Examples of these programs are poverty programs, youth work programs, and things like that which are set up by the present demagogic government. Generally they're set up to appease the people for a short period of time, and then are phased out and forgotten about.   The objective of programs set forth by revolutionaries like the Black Panther Party is to educate the masses of the people to the politics of changing the system. The politics are related to people's needs, to a hungry stomach, or to getting rid of the vicious pigs with their revolvers and clubs. The revolutionary struggle becomes bloody when the pig power structure attacks organizations or groups of people who go forth with these programs. We started the Free Breakfast for Children Program by asking businessmen in the black community and outside of it, to donate food and money. We also moved to get as many other people in the community as possible to work on these programs and take over running them. The programs are generally started off in churches. In one case we actually got a Free Breakfast for Children going in the school itself, which was very, very good, because the school cafeteria facilities and everything were used; this was over in Marin County, north of San Francisco. We generally work out of churches because the churches all have facilities, like a large hall, a kitchen, tables and chairs, etc. Members of the Party get up early in the morning, at 6:00 A.M. to get down and begin preparing the food so when the kids start coming at 7:00 and 7:30, everything is ready. We also try to get as many people from the community to schedule themselves, for one or two days out of the week to come in and work on the Breakfast for Children Program. It has to be a very organized thing so that it's speedy and at the same time the children get good, wholesome breakfasts.   There are millions of people in this country who are living below subsistence; welfare mothers, poor white people, Mexican-Americans, Chicano peoples, Latinos, and black people. This type of program, if spread out, should readily relate to the needs of the people. Donations of food and money can be gotten from churches, stores and companies. When the stores and milk companies don't donate, people should leaflet the community. Any particular chain foodstores that can't donate a small, small percentage of its profits or one penny from every dollar it makes from the community. Breakfast for Children and other community programs, should be boycotted. We don't ever threaten or anything like that, but we tell the people in the community that the businessman exploits them and makes thousands and thousands of dollars, and that he won't donate to a Breakfast for Children Program that's actually tax deductible. This is exposing the power structure for what it is, the robbery of poor oppressed people by avaricious businessmen. Black, brown, and red people, and poor whites can all have the same basic program, and that means we're breaking down racism and focusing in on the power structure. Another program that we're setting up is free medicine and free medical care. We'll be setting those up in community centers. If we start off with nothing more than a doctor and his bag, and some aspirin, this is the beginning of a free health clinic, the beginning of free medicine for the people in the communities. We work to serve the people in the communities on a very practical level.   Right in the Bay Area we have some twenty-five doctors and medical students who've pledged their time to be scheduled in different community centers that we're putting up and this will be free of charge. We have free health clinics all over the country and we are putting more up, just as fast as the people can work with NCCF. In addition, Charles R. Garry is contacting a lot of lawyers who are opening their eyes and beginning to see that the black community needs more legal aid. So we're putting together free legal services, which will also be set up in the community centers. The poverty programs that have free legal service are always told that they can't get funds if they're at all political. That's done so they won't expose the power structure and the injustices of the system. They only handle civil cases. Our legal aid will handle both civil and criminal cases.   Another thing well be doing is heavy voter registration. The purpose of this registration will be to get more black and poor people on the juries so we can really be tried in courts by juries of our peers. The D.A.'s will try to get all white racist juries or maybe to put one jive Uncle Tom on them, but it'll be much harder if a lot of blacks are registered and are on the jury panel that they pick from. Black people have to understand the experience of serving on juries because black people are railroaded in these courts. Poor oppressed people are railroaded in courts because they don't have funds to obtain lawyers. A lot of the older people are frightened or allow themselves to be frightened away from being jury members, and a lot of black people move around so much that they don't bother to re-register. It's a real problem, but we've got to educate the people to the fact that they should be on the rolls for jury duty. Then we can begin to get some revolutionary justice. Right now the type of so-called justice that's being meted out to a majority of the poor oppressed people is the "injustice" of racism and capitalistic exploitation. The Black Panther Party has black caucuses, Black Panther caucuses in a number of unions, and we definitely are working with the union people. We're not putting in Black Panther caucuses as racist groups. We're talking about a caucus that works in conjunction with the union to help educate the rest of the members of the union to the fact that they can have a better life, too. We want the workers to understand that they must control the means of production, and that they should begin to use their power to control the means of production to serve all the people.   Workers have high taxes taken away from their wages, but they should begin to understand that they have to move not only for a 15 or 20 percent wage raise, because taxes have gone up, and not only for better working conditions, but also because they have to realize the need to use their working power for the benefit of all the other poor oppressed people.   They should use their union power to create employment for more of the poor people throughout the country. We're advocating that workers begin to move to control the means of production by first demanding thirty-hour work weeks with the same forty-hour pay. By doing this, they will automatically open up more jobs. These jobs can be filled by poor, unemployed people. This would be part of the program of educating the masses of the workers to be a political force against the three levels of oppression - the avaricious, big-time, greedy businessmen, the demagogic politicians who lie and use the unions, and also the fascist pig cops who have been used in the past and are used today to break up the workers' constitutional right to strike and redress their grievances.   Employed or unemployed, workers must unite with each other and with the community. They should be registered voters, too, and serve on jury panels and circulate the community control of police petition, too. Another Black Panther Party program is the Liberation Schools. These schools are held in the afternoons, along with the free breakfasts and free lunches. They're held in churches and the community centers. We see the Liberation Schools as a supplement to the existing institutions, which still teach racism to children, both white and black. The youth have to understand that the revolutionary struggle in this country that's now being waged is not a race struggle but a class struggle. This is what the Liberation Schools are all about.   We are working to show children that a person's skin color is not important, but in fact it's a class struggle against the avaricious businessman and the small ruling class who exploit us and perpetuate the racism that's rampant in our communities. When we teach Black American History, we teach it in terms of the class struggle, not in terms of a race struggle. In New York we also started a free clothing program. Black Panther Party members went out and asked businessmen to donate sets of clothes, for school children on up to teenagers. We tried to get brand new clothing, because black people are tired of hand-me-downs. Some of the clothing was very good clothing that people never came back and picked up from dry cleaners. We got all kinds of clothing together, but our primary objective was to get free clothing for the people by asking the businessmen to donate two complete changes of clothes for children. This is especially important before school begins in September and in mid-term around January. When this free clothing program got kicked off, some five or six hundred black people in Harlem, mothers and welfare people, came down and got the clothing for their kids.   It takes a lot of work, and a lot of people donating time and funds to run these programs. The programs are not run by the fascist government at all. Naturally, these programs spread and as they begin to reach more and more people, the Party is moving closer and closer to implementing the ten-point platform and program of the Black Panther Party. When we have community socialistic programs such as these, and move them to a real level where people actually begin to receive help from them, it shows the people that by unity, by working and unifying around such programs, we can begin to end the oppressive conditions. The Black Panther Party is not stupid at all in understanding the politics of the situation. We understand that the avaricious, demagogic, ruling class will use racist police departments and mass media to distort the real objectives of the Black Panther Party. The more we're successful with the programs, the more we'll be attacked We don't take guns with us to implement these programs, but we understand and know from our own history that we're going to be attacked, and that we have to be able to defend ourselves. They're going to attack us viciously and fascisticly and try to say it was all justifiable homicide, in the same manner they've always attacked black people in the black communities.   We also go forth to advocate the right to self-defense from unjust attacks by racists, fascist pigs. Even when the policemen come into our communities with guns and tanks and the National Guard, we have the right to self-defense. Brothers and sisters shouldn't riot in large numbers. They should work in small groups of three, four, and five, to fight back when they attack our communities with tanks and start blasting buildings away and killing people. When they come and occupy our community and start killing people, those brothers running in threes, fours, and fives are going to have to know how to stop those tanks and those guardsmen from brutalizing and killing and murdering us.   We aren't hungry for violence; we don't want violence. Violence is ugly, guns are ugly. But we understand that there are two kinds of violence: the violence that is perpetrated against our people by the fascist aggression of the power structure; and self-defense - a form of violence used to defend ourselves from the unjust violence that's inflicted upon us. The power structure metes this violence upon the Black Panther Party because we've implemented programs that are actually exposing the government, and they're being implemented and put together by a revolutionary political party.   The freeing of political prisoners is also on the program of the Black Panther Party, because we have now, at this writing, over 300 Black Panthers who have court cases that are pending. In addition there have been hundreds of arrests, unjust arrests of Party members, who were exercising their constitutional rights. We believe in exercising our constitutional rights of freedom of assembly, of freedom of the press (the Black Panther newspaper), our constitutional right to bear arms, to be able to defend ourselves when attacked, and all the others. So we've been arrested.   What has to be understood is that they intend to destroy our basic programs. This is very important to understand. The fact that they murder Black Panther Party members, conduct attacks and raids on our offices, arrest us and lie about us, is all an attempt to stop these basic programs that we're putting together in the community. The people learn from these programs because they're clear examples, and the power structure wants to stop that learning.   We do not believe in the power structure controlling these programs, but we do believe in making the power structure admit that it has to change the system, because we, the people, united and together, can begin to change our conditions ourselves. We have to move with the power of the people, with the workers and the laboring masses of the people, to have control of the means of production and make the power structure step back. We're going to have to defend ourselves with guns because we know we're going to be attacked and we know they're going to attempt to make more political prisoners.   Community control of police is the key. We've got to have community control of the police in every city where there exists police brutality, in every metropolis in America where black people, Latin people, and Chinese people live in large numbers. In all these cities, and where there are progressive and liberal white people who are protesting, police forces have been doubled, tripled, and quadrupled, and fascist oppression has been meted out upon the heads of all of us. The workers too are attacked and threatened by police when they strike and protest over their conditions.   Our community control of the police campaign is a petition drive. Registered voters will sign the petition and will vote into their city charters a new legal structure for the police department. The people will be voting in a law that says that all policemen who patrol the community, must live in the community. They will be voting in a decentralized police department. We will have neighborhood divisions with neighborhood councils, who are duly elected in the particular neighborhoods. We'll have two, three, four, and five police departments that work in conjunction together through the commissioners of particular neighborhood divisions, so there will not be a single police chief. These commissioners can be removed by the duly elected neighborhood councils. The fifteen-man neighborhood councils will be able to appoint and fire a commissioner, will be able to discipline police officers who are unjust, or who get out of hand, and will be able to set salaries and pay the police officers. The people throughout the city will control the police, rather than the power structure, the avaricious businessmen, and demagogic politicians who presently control them. The point of community control of police is that those people living in those neighborhoods will actually do the hiring and firing of the policemen who patrol that area, and those policemen will be people from those neighborhoods - black police for a black neighborhood, Chinese for a Chinese neighborhood, white for a white neighborhood, etc. The tax money which used to be given to the central police department will be divided up among the neighborhood divisions. All the facilities, all the cars, all the equipment for the police that the city now owns, will be in the hands and in the control of the people in the community.   Now when this begins to move, the pig power structure is gonna say, "OK, you can have civilian review boards." But all that does is allow the same old fascist power structure to keep control of the police while you have a front civilian review board, and this is not what we're talking about at all. What we're talking about is righteous community control, where the people who control the police are elected by the people of the community. Those people who are elected have to live in the community. They can be removed by circulating petitions for re-elections if they go wrong. We know that such a program is very positive and necessity in order for the people to have power in this country and to stop the avaricious businessman from ruling us with guns and violating our constitutional rights.   Everybody knows that they lied about the way they murdered brother Fred Hampton, and then tried to justify it. Mitchell, Agnew, and Nixon are running an operation to wipe out the Black Panther Party behind the scenes, when they send the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department in to investigate the slaying of brothers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. We don't want them to investigate anything. We want the civilian and people's investigation to come forth. Thousands of people went in to the brother's apartment and investigated, and found out that it was out-right murder; that there was no shoot-out, but the brothers in fact, were shot in their bedrooms while they slept. This is outright murder, this is outright fascism. The next attack was on the Los Angeles office, a few days later. Community control of police is where it's at. The only other choice is guerilla warfare.   Guerilla warfare is going to exist if the power structure is not stopped with community control of the police. One of the reasons the people have to work on the community control of police campaign is to curtail civil war in America, because it's at that point right now. Community control of police is one of the most functional and most necessary programs to make all the other basic community programs work. Seize the Time Back to contents