Anthony Boynton's detailed look at the context in which the BPP emerged is very important. In reading David Hilliard's autobiography recently I was struck by how many times, before, during and after his Panther days, he got jobs on the docks and later became a union organizer. The point being the potential for a more working-class based party (rather than lumpen) was there, had help from the Old Left not been so absent, as the community which justifiably admired the Panthers was a predominantly working-class community -- the most exploited part of it. That absence of the Old Left was also striking when reading the countless times he (and other Panthers in their autobiographies) say "we couldn't have known," "we never expected," etc., the kind of COINTELPRO dirty tricks and murder that they encountered. And every time I read that I said to myself, there were hundreds of CP, SWP and others in the Bay Area to tell them they had just spent 20 years going through similar repression! Nonetheless, despite Carroll's assertion, the Panthers were most definitely ultraleft in their rhetoric and analysis. Yet there was a continuity with the theory and practice of Malcolm X, Robert F. Williams, the Deacons for Defense, and others, which means with more support from others, both in practice and theory, the ultraleft side could have been reshaped into a more rounded perspective. And here Anthony's recounting of the ILWU defense guard practice is an important example. Andy Pollack
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