[2 items]
Writer Compares Tea Parties to Black Panthers What an Insult to the
Black Panthers
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/05/26/what-really-separates-the-tea-party-from-the-black-panther-party/
By Crystal Hayes
May 26, 2010
I was three years old when I watched my father, mother, and
three-week-old baby brother nearly murdered in a hail of bullets
during a police raid on our home in September 1973.
My father, Robert Seth Hayes, was a member of the Black Panther Party
(BPP), and ever since that day some 37 years ago, he has been a
political prisoner in the state of New York. So when I read Cord
Jefferson's article, "Is the Tea Party the New Black Panther Party?"
on The Root.com, [see below] I could not help but remember, and
relive, the pain and trauma of that day. I also became frustrated and
angry because Jefferson's article is ahistorical and continues the
tradition of attacking the Party and misrepresenting its history and
legacy. What's more, it does so in a forum that prides itself on
getting African American history correct.
Jefferson begins his piece predictably, by drawing on caricatures of
the Party images of armed, angry, Black men going to war against
the US government. But the images that are used aren't even of
Panther members. His opening lines are accompanied by a photo of
Malik Zulu Shabazz, a member of the New Black Panther Party (NBPP),
an unaffiliated group founded in 1989 that has no connection to the
BPP other than the name that it appropriated.
In fact, original BPP members openly reject the NBPP because its
ideology promotes violence, separatism, and nationalism, values my
father and other BPP members have long abandoned as part of an
effective political ideology and strategy. In fact, the NBPP was
successfully sued by Huey P. Newton's foundation in an effort to keep
them from calling themselves the Black Panther Party for Self
Defense, the BPP's original name.
This is just one example of the article's glaring inaccuracies; there
are many more Chief among them is the central argument that Tea
Partiers waving guns, screaming racial epithets, threatening violence
against Black elected officials, and holding anti-tax rallies is
similar to the BPP's response to systematic police brutality, which
involved developing community-based projects that promoted self
defense, Black political power, and freedom from economic exploitation.
Jefferson admits that "reconciling the…Marxist underpinnings of the
[BPP ideology] with the laissez-faire philosophy of the Tea Party is
impossible," but appears determined to overlook this and other core
differences in his effort to make the case that BPP and Tea Party
political grievances are similar enough to legitimately link the two.
Reducing the BPP to a crazy "fringe" organization primarily
characterized by angry, gun-toting radicals displays Jefferson's lack
of understanding of the BPP's grassroots political philosophy and
commitment to community organizing.
The truth of the matter is that the BPP and the Tea Party are nothing
alike. To begin with, the Tea Party offers nothing close to the
sophisticated analysis of the political and economic condition of
marginalized and oppressed people, whether Black, White, or anything else.
The BPP developed a 10-point platform that articulated better than
any other grassroots group of its time a set of demands and reform
proposals intended to improve the lives of ordinary people. The Tea
Party, meanwhile, has a terrible understanding of the way current
political and economic systems operate. They spend their time
protesting stimulus programs and healthcare reforms, and recently
have embraced Tea Party favorite Rand Paul's advocacy of
re-segregating private businesses, but that's not the same as
building a movement that enacts change through projects like the free
breakfast program for children, as the BPP did. Whether you agree
with BPP politics or not, they at least had an actionable agenda.
Jefferson's poor grasp of history and sloppy analysis reaches new,
disturbing heights when he suggests that BPP and Tea Party
paramilitarism are the same. He writes:
Where the Tea Party and the Black Panther Party appear to connect
most perfectly is at their hips, where they keep their guns. The
Second Amendment and the arsenals it allows is a cornerstone of
both organizations, and for very similar reasons: fear of
governmental authority. Paramilitarism was always at the forefront of
the Black Panthers' operations, mostly because they thought, rightly,
that the government was out to destroy them. Factual or not, many Tea
Partiers believe they are in similar danger…What is the difference
between actually, wholly believing the government is after you and
the government really being after you?
This question astounds me. The difference is as stark and clear as
being eight months pregnant and awaken by gunfire in the middle of
the night to find your fiancé's limp, bullet ridden body lying next
to you as BPP member Deborah Johnson did in 1969. This versus living
in a world of conspiracy theories and doomsday predictions. Johnson
was one of the survivors of the FBI's counterintelligence campaign
(COINTELPRO) that claimed the life of several BBP members including
her fiancé, Fred Hampton, and Mark Clark. Their murders were one of
the worst acts of violence against the BPP at the hands of police,
who in Chicago and elsewhere had partnered with the FBI to target a
broad array of civil rights groups and people, including Martin
Luther King, Jr.
A serious analysis of the Tea Party's core values, constituents,
goals, and rhetoric reveals that the group is not a modern white
version of the Black Panther Party, but is instead the very
antithesis of the BPP. Despite including former BPP Chairwoman Elaine
Brown's refutation of a parallel, Jefferson stubbornly insists on
making this connection. He even goes so far as to equate the
physical, political, and economic oppression that BPP members and
supporters faced with the imagined oppression of Tea Partiers. As
evidence of a link, Jefferson quotes Tea Partier Chris Littleton, who
argues that current federal programs to ban foods high in salt and
sugar from the lunches provided by public schools constitutes one of
many serious denials of freedom. "Should the government be in control
of the personal diets of families?" asks Littleton, who then
concludes, "That's…oppressive." I can't help but wonder if either
Littleton or Jefferson ever heard of bag lunches?
Jefferson's clumsy historical analysis continues with his references
to Eldridge Cleaver. Cleaver is mentioned several times in the piece
and each time he is used to represent the entire BPP. Cleaver,
however, did not found the BPP, Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton did.
While Cleaver did play an integral role in defining the group's
message and direction in its heyday, the BPP was not "his gang."
Jefferson's closing image of Cleaver running for US Senate as a
Republican in his later years is also absurd. By that point, the BPP
had long disbanded, and well before then, Cleaver had defected from the group.
Jefferson's mishandling of history is not only dishonest, it's also
dangerous. In fact, it reminds me of the famous quote by Spanish
American philosopher George Santayana who said, "Those who cannot
remember the past are doomed to repeat it." When our history is so
carelessly blurred, we do not know the right questions to ask or the
right steps to take to rectify the societal ills that plague us today.
Those who think concerns about historical accuracy are limited to
academics need only look at Texas and Arizona, where lawmakers are
attempting to erase important moments in our nation's history from
public school textbooks. Indeed, it is a sad coincidence that The
Root.com saw fit to publish this historically inaccurate,
intellectually insincere article a year after its founding father,
Henry Louis Gates Jr., came face to face with the very real vestiges
of the unjust systems and structures that BPP members like my father
fought tirelessly against.
As was the case for my family, and even for Skip Gates, these unjust
systems and structures didn't merely threaten to raise our taxes,
they threatened our lives and livelihoods. But for my family
especially, and for so many others like us, when those who
represented these systems and structures came looking for us, they
didn't coming to our front doors politely, knocking first. They
busted through, shooting first.
album:
http://www.race-talk.org/wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/dm-albums.php?currdir=/wp-content/uploads/dm-albums/Roz
Paynes BBP Newsreel Photos/
--
Crystal M. Hayes is an activist, writer, and proud mother of her 18
year-old daughter who will be a first-year college student in the
fall. She is a dedicated anti-racist activist and trainer committed
to eliminating structural and institutional racism and gender
inequality in every aspect of the human experience. Crystal received
her BA from Mount Holyoke College in African American studies and
politics and a master's degree in clinical social work from the Smith
College School for Social Work. She lives in North Carolina and is
currently researching a book on race and motherhood. Her research and
writing interests include women's health, Black life and culture,
racial justice, and social policy.
Our goal is to revolutionize thought, communication and activism
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State University.
--------
Is the Tea Party the New Black Panther Party?
http://www.theroot.com/views/tea-party-new-black-panther-party
As implausible as it may seem, much of the insurgent movement's
rhetoric sounds like the views of Eldridge Cleaver's old gang.
By: Cord Jefferson
May 19, 2010
They were armed to the teeth. They were mad. They gathered at public
buildings, guns tucked into their waistlines, demanding limited
governmental authority and the right to self-determination. They
believed the Democratic White House to be an untrustworthy,
imperialistic power, one that "robbed" them under spurious
circumstances. They were wary of the "Zionist media," and they loved
to quote at length from America's founding documents, specifically
violent, revolutionary passages like, "it is their duty, to throw off
[an abusive] Government, and to provide new Guards for their future
security." They were members of one of the most fringe political
organizations in modern American history.
They were the Black Panthers. Had you anticipated Tea Partiers?
As the Tea Party movement continues its steady ascent toward the
mainstream, it has also begun filling out its ranks with a small but
vocal cadre of African Americans. To many outsiders, this is
unconscionable; how could any person of color align himself with a
group whose protest signs frequently depict President Obama morphed
into a primate? And yet in some ways, the coupling makes perfect sense.
In January, political philosopher Noam Chomsky said in an interview
about the Tea Party, "These are people with real grievances. For the
past 30 years of neo-liberalism, wages for the majority have
stagnated; benefits, which were never very great, have declined;
working hours have shot way up; they've gone way into debt to try and
preserve the consumerist lifestyle that's been rammed down their
throats by the advertising industry. They're in bad shape -- not
Third World-style bad shape -- but bad shape by the standards of a
rich industrial country." Assuming that the Tea Party is not an
inherently racist entity, as every black Tea Partier says it isn't,
is it so hard to imagine that African Americans might be attracted to
a group whose underlying gripe is a broken government that doesn't
accurately represent its people?
"First of all, the Tea Party movement is about small government and
self-reliance," says Deneen Borelli, a fellow with Project 21, a
network of black conservatives sponsored by the right-wing National
Center for Public Policy Research. A frequent speaker at Tea Party
gatherings, Borelli says the Tea Party started "because individuals
felt they were not being represented by our elected officials," an
impetus quite similar to those of a great many left-wing political
organizations, including, ostensibly, the Black Panthers.
To be sure, reconciling most of the Marxist underpinnings of the
long-defunct Black Panthers with the laissez faire philosophy of the
Tea Party is impossible. It's important to note, however, that the
Panthers' idea of socialism was very much one of limited government
intervention, at least when they were talking federally. Consider
their demand that every black prisoner be released, citing the
"racist" government's unfit justice system. Consider their demand for
a U.N.-supervised plebiscite concerning the possibility of
African-American secession (secession is also a popular Tea Party
talking point). Consider Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver's
declaration that "the American flag and the American eagle are the
true symbols of fascism" (Tea Partiers believe the U.S. government to
be fascist, too).
Where the Tea Party and the Black Panther Party appear to connect
most perfectly is at their hips, where they keep their guns. The
Second Amendment -- and the arsenals it allows -- is a cornerstone of
both organizations, and for very similar reasons: fear of
governmental authority. Paramilitarism was always at the forefront of
the Black Panthers' operations, mostly because they thought, rightly,
that the government was out to destroy them.
Factual or not, many Tea Partiers believe they are in similar danger.
At GunBlast.com, an online firearms publication, one Tea Party member
praised his fellow Tea Partiers for marching on Washington and
"proclaiming our freedoms against the current tyranny set to bankrupt
our nation and take our guns." And at Patriot Depot, a Web store that
sells "T.E.A: Taxed Enough Already" bumper stickers, one product
description claims, "They plan to take our guns away, give more power
to the federal government, and raise our taxes."
It would be hard to argue that the middle-aged white males who
compose much of the Tea Party have ever faced violent clashes with
the police the way the Black Panthers did. But the question then
becomes this: What is the difference between actually, wholly
believing the government is after you and the government really being
after you?
According to Elaine Brown, the first female chair of the Black
Panther Party, the Tea Party and the Black Panther Party are firmly
incomparable,. "We considered black people to be an oppressed
people," she says. "To say that a group of upper-middle-class white
people -- these are the same people who would support strict
immigration laws against Mexicans but not French immigrants -- are
oppressed? There is no relationship ideologically."
Brown says the only possible link is the Panthers' "opposition to the
government," but she posits that the only reason the Tea Party is
anti-government is that the government is currently being helmed by a
person of color. "Their goals are not the liberation of poor and
oppressed people," she says.
Chris Littleton disagrees with Brown. As president of the Cincinnati
Tea Party and co-founder of Tea Party coalition group the Ohio
Liberty Council, Brown has been a driving force in Ohio's Tea Party
operations. "For generations and generations, we've slowly let little
tiny things slip away," he says. "There are now requirements from the
government to control what your children eat in school. That's an
obscure example, but it points out how much of everyday life they're
touching now. I don't disagree that children need to eat nutritious
food, but should the government be in control of personal diets of
families? That stuff is intrusive; it's oppressive."
Littleton argues that American prosperity has led to "entitlement"
and a citizenry whose primary goal is maintaining its comfort. This
stagnation, he says, has contributed to an ineffectual government
muddied with special interests. "It's not a Republican-Democrat
thing, because Republicans have their special interests and Democrats
have their special interests," he says. "All these different things
come into play so [that] we have administrators who are basically corrupt."
Asked if he realizes that some of his ideas sound akin to many
leftist ideologies, Littleton says, "I think the solutions I have for
the problems are different from what [liberals] would do, but I think
we can agree on many of the problems."
In 1986, two decades after the founding of the Black Panther Party,
Eldridge Cleaver turned away from his Leninist past and ran for the
U.S. Senate on the Republican ticket in California. After years spent
exiled in Cuba, China and other communist regimes, Cleaver had
developed a new outlook on politics and power, famously declaring,
"Pig power in America was infuriating. ... But pig power in the
communist framework was awesome and unaccountable."
Though he lost the election, Cleaver's platforms were all his own. He
advocated using the private sector to eliminate poverty, said the
welfare state had put blacks in a "negative relationship with the
economic system," and praised the North Vietnamese communists for
their "anti-big [governmental] power" stance. He had become a Black
Panther whom a Tea Partier could love. "The truth is," he told Reason
magazine before beginning his campaign, "is that any form of
constraint on our freedoms is not acceptable."
--
Cord Jefferson is a staff writer at The Root.
.
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