• DigitalTraveler42@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Did you know that there was also a White Panther Party? They were the anti-racist white allies of the BPP, imagine how many conservatives we could trigger by reviving that, since conservatives have tried their best to turn Antifa into Boogeymen.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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      9 months ago

      I did not know that. Thank you for the link!

      Edit:

      The White Panthers added other elements such as advocating “rock 'n roll, dope, sex in the streets and the abolishing of capitalism.”

      I am cool with all but one of those, but I really don’t want to watch actual sex. It’s not like porn. It’s not pretty.

      • NounsAndWords@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        It’s not like porn. It’s not pretty.

        But it’s real, and therein lies the beauty. I’m more concerned with the traffic ramifications of street sex… although it would probably help get the anti-car communities engaged.

      • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Yeah, that’s some serious political baggage right there. In concept, the idea of an organized people that help disadvantaged communities is a great one. But this mission statement needs a looooot of work, or it won’t even get off the ground.

      • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        9 months ago

        It was the seventies and culture was really earthy then.

        Curiously this is one of the common concerns about clothes-optional public areas, that sometimes unfit people are visibly naked and some find that offensive (while happily gawking at fit naked folk).

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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          9 months ago

          I’m fine with naked people walking around. I just don’t want to watch people fucking and I really don’t think that’s such a ridiculous position to take.

          I don’t want to see people pissing or shitting either.

          Some things don’t need to be on public display.

          • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            9 months ago

            I’d say it’s not, but a society in which public sex (or public defication, for that matter) was acceptable is not that far a reach. Classic Rome had potty facilities where people sat adjacent to each other and conversed while they pooped into a trench of running water to wash the refuse away, a noted precursor to modern plumbing.

            The US is particularly conservative when it comes to dress codes, where girls are evicted from schools for wearing sleeveless shirts (in contrast to boys who are allowed to wear sports jerseys). In contrast to what was happening the seventies, US society is far more easy to offend, and dangerous when offended, so public spaces are more prone to covering their bases. Hence nudity in classic paintings has to be covered up on YouTube.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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              9 months ago

              Nudity is not something I have an issue with. I have no problem if someone wants to walk down the street nude. I just don’t think absolutely everything should be acceptable to do in public.

    • daltotron@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      You know I kind of wonder if this is because those people died, or just because the social conditions that allowed those people to flourish, allowed those people to emerge, have changed in some fundamental way. The black panthers were a gang, still, make no mistake, they just weren’t as fucked up of a gang as many other drug gangs of the time and of today might be. The black panthers would still occasionally steal from richer white neighborhoods, or go on raids, I think they were called, to fund these free breakfasts. Which I think is cool, but is still something that you can quite easily frame as being a “gang activity”.

      The social conditions have changed, though. Not in that the consequences have somehow become more severe, for breaking the law (though perhaps the surveillance state has increased, making it harder to get away with in the first place). Mostly, I think, the change emerges out of the crack and cocaine epidemic of the 80’s. Dealing is an easy way to make your way up, socioeconomically, it’s an easy way to pin people down with charges, it’s an easy way to get a bunch of people to fry their own brains, etc. And, we know who really propagated the crack epidemic, don’t we? Thank you, gary webb. Infrastructurally, the black community has been displaced from “the projects”, and other social works, which were designed to protect their communities, into suburban hellscapes where organization is much harder. You can even see this back all the way in like, the 50’s and shit, when everyone chopped up black neighborhoods with the highway act.

      I’m sure there’s some other stuff I’m forgetting, but yeah, in any case, shit’s changed since the 70’s, organization has changed. I’m sure we’ll only be allowed to learn about the fred hamptons of our day 20 years from now, when they’ve all been neutralized by the CIA, and when their narratives and lives can be co-opted by the american state to push more garbage propaganda.

        • daltotron@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          The “gang activity” wasn’t my main point, my main point is just that I think fred hampton arose as a result of the circumstances around him, more than anything else. He was unique, yes, but I don’t think he was a messiah, or a “great man” of history, or what have you, I think he was just the right person in the right place at the right time. Or maybe in the wrong place, since he got killed, I suppose.

          In any case, my point was just not to discredit the surrounding material circumstances which led to the group, the context, and that, context providing, modern gangs could move in a similar direction. They have that same latent potential, it’s just being co-opted by a bunch of different interests, currently. Maybe less so right now, actually, than in the kind of post-black panther period.

          I’m also not sure that a black separatist state or movement would really threaten the feds all that much, or that black self-sufficiency would, but I’m more willing to be contested on that point. I would think, more, that the precursors to black separatist states and movements, would be the thing that threatens the government, and maybe the actions leading up to a black separatist state, rather than the existence of the state itself. The conditions that lead to such a movement would be the main threat to the feds, I would think, because the same precursors are what could easily lead to a direct moral conflict with the feds and an attempt at abolishing their power more broadly. “State” here being kind of a dumb word for it, but you get what I mean anyways, probably. But then, everyone just kind of decided to tear apart tulsa oklahoma, so maybe my cynicism level just isn’t high enough.

          I dunno, we’re mostly saying the same thing here, I guess.

  • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Not only did they do that. The Black panther party was just a shortening of their real name. The Black panther party for self-defense.

    This is just another example of wealthy white bigots controlling the narrative for their advantage. As is so often the case. So many things people perceive they know. Are completely false or based on half truths. A few years ago I had heard a good documentary series with the interviews with surviving members of the original Black panther party for self-defense. On one of the Pacifica stations. Pretty sure it was the one out of California considering the subject matter. I wish we had one locally though. They cover things that you will never see touched upon through capitalist outlets. Even PBS is loathe to acknowledge or touch on a lot of the history and insight they deal in regularly.

    • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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      9 months ago

      another example of wealthy white bigots controlling the narrative for their advantage

      links to archive.gov

      r u o k?

      • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        You got reading comprehension? I linked it because it states it… Being a .gov site doesn’t automatically make something right or wrong. But even that site acknowledges the actual name of the group.

        • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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          9 months ago

          You got reading comprehension?

          Being .gov means it’s run by the very same racist white bigots you proclaim won’t acknowledge the name of the group…acknowledging the name of the group.

          • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            9 months ago

            That would actually be the deep state. The federal government of the US is huge and its mostly the elected / appointed ones at the tippy top that are racist white bigots controlled by even racistiet whiteier plutocrats.

            This is why a big chunk of the Heritage Society’s Project 2025 is to fire all those deep state non-partisans and replace them with Jesus-fearing MAGA loyalist white bigots, because the non-partisan employees aren’t white enough or bigoted enough.

    • teamevil@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      And the guy who usually investigated for the police was the one to prove it was murder by the police…No question he was murdered unfortunately.

    • nothingcorporate@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      If you get rid of “in his bed,” then the police murdered many of their leaders. But yeah they absolutely executed Fred Hampton… Not just in his bed, but while he was sleeping next to his pregnant girlfriend, whom he died shielding with his body.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    And they even led to one of the few cases in American history where there were serious talks about gun control!

  • doctorcrimson@lemmy.today
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    9 months ago

    I know that it doesn’t describe them or their policies but the mental image I think of is the scene from Forest Gump where he comes back from military service and they kick him out of a tent. Racial Tensions were high, progressives were tired of the establishment’s shit, the Black Panthers were the result.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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      9 months ago

      That’s because people younger than that organization’s height have learned whitewashed history. For a long time. I’m 46. They never covered the Black Panthers in school for me. I had to learn about them myself.

      • octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        I’m a bit older than you, and IIRC (admittedly it’s been a long time) they did mention them at some point, but essentially as if they were a sort of black analogue to the KKK. That’s what I thought they were until well into my twenties, if not later.

      • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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        9 months ago

        I think it depends a lot on your school district. I’m 44 and I leaned of the Black Panthers. There wasn’t much detail but IIRC the portrayal of them wasn’t entirely negative. This was despite my district being extremely white.

        • v_krishna@lemmy.ml
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          9 months ago

          I can thankfully say in my kids’ bay area public schools (west contra costa unified and berkeley unified over the years) they learn a whole lot of positives about the BPP, including directly tracing their free lunches today back to them. Berkeley High has a bunch of plaque type things honoring famous alum and one of them is for Bobby Seale. Way different than my own upbringing for sure.

          • medgremlin@midwest.social
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            9 months ago

            I grew up in the Bay Area (Silicon Valley), and my AP US History class in 2006-2007 included Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” and in-depth discussions of groups like the Black Panthers. Our teacher was open about being a socialist and when we talked about things like the Red Scare, he made a point to really humanize the victims of the politics of the time like the Rosenbergs.

            (Edit: It is important to note that our discussions of the Rosenbergs in class pre-dated the release of the classified information regarding their actions. Our teacher’s approach was to include information about who they were as people instead of the boogeymen they were presented as in the standard textbook.)

        • HBK@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          9 months ago

          Yeah, I wanna say the first time I learned about the Black Panthers was in Forrest Gump.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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      9 months ago

      I hope they do well, but they are certainly not the household name their predecessors were. Not yet anyway.

  • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    The black panther party was the business and there needs to be serious counter fascist movements similar to these right wing militias you see constantly.

    As for the shit at the end, so do most street gangs. Doing good things for you or your community does not negate the bad things. It’s not some weird zero sum game. Then again this meme probably wasn’t meant for me. It was meant for imaginary middle-class rich middle/old-aged white folk who don’t browse Lemmy and definitely not Leftist.

    • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      9 months ago

      Doing good things for you or your community does not negate the bad things.

      Can we assess law enforcement throughout the US based on this standard? Or the states and federal government that facilitate their brutality and the prison industrial complex?

      Heck, can we assess the United States, with its penchant for military adventurism by this standard?

      Of course, even if it were a zero sum game, law enforcement these days causes more harm than good, and should still be abolished.

      • Krafty Kactus
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        9 months ago

        Do you think that law enforcement should be abolished entirely?

    • Agent641@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Face-eating Leopards for Self-Offence.

      Only dangerous if you are brimming with hubris and taunt them relentlessly

  • jaschen@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    Please keep me honest, but didn’t the bloods and crips derived from the Black Panthers?

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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      9 months ago

      In the sense that the white establishment bringing the Black Panther Party down allowed those gangs to be born, yes. When you work to get rid of the legal organization until there’s nothing left of it, you promote lawlessness from the people that organization helped out of poverty and crime who no longer get that help.

      • jaschen@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        I remember hearing that before it was a gang that was killing each other, it was something similar to what the black panther did. Neighborhood watch, community help, and in general it was a support group. It later turned into a bloody gang.