Death and Birth - The Life and Thoughts of Zach — LiveJournal
Jan. 9th, 2005
08:40 pm - Death and Birth
I was just poking around Wikipedia looking at dates because I only just found out that there are entries for each year and date.
As many times as I've heard the story, I only just learned that Black Panther members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were shot to death in their sleep during a raid by 14 Chicago police officers ON MY BIRTHDAY in 1969. I wasn't born in 1969, but it was on the date of my birthday.
Something about that is really intense. I mean this story is one of many stories that I think are among the most important largely forgotten moments in our recent history. Our recent history when the FBI was the most powerful terrorist organization in the United States.
I have no real point to make. Stumbling across stories about the Black Panthers and especially about Fred Hamptom always makes me get choked up and angry and impassioned. I didn't expect to stumble across that in an innocent casual search on my birthday. And I needed to share those links with others so the story of Fred Hampton is in more people's heads than my own. Wikipedia really has some very good content. I'm consistently amazed at how high the signal to noise is there.
Stories like this make me feel like I'm not doing enough and my energies are focused in the wrong place. Sometimes I feel lost. Other times I feel inspired. In either case I don't have the energy right now to do anything about it but share links.
There's also a book that just recently came out by the son of a couple of Weather Underground members. This kid had like 5 different names by the time he was 4 years old as they lived in hiding.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/03/1454204
I also recently saw a documentary on PBS about a Black Panther who moved with his young wife to exile in Africa and they're still there 30 years later and what they've been doing there. They've recently been joined by another Panther who recently just got out of jail:
http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2004/apantherinafrica/
All this different stuff coming out now about the Panthers and Weather Underground folks who are just now a generation later getting out of jail, coming out of hiding, having grown children, etc has really put thoughts about that time period and it's connection to the present at the forefront of my thoughts. I mean it's like all the radicalism from 1968-1972 just disappeared from the face of the earth and now they're starting to show up again a generation later...I'd always expected they'd be gone forever, utterly defeated by oppression, but nothing goes away completely.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114084/
It's ok as hollywood movies about radical movements go but of course it really kind of misses some very important stuff about the Panthers in the attempt to over dramatize. And it presents some theories about COINTELPRO (that the FBI authorized the mafia to flood the ghetto with cheap heroin in the mid 70s and that that is ultimately what destroyed the black power movement...maybe true maybe not but it just screams out conspiracy theory) in such a conspiracy-theory way that I think it makes it less believable than if they'd just stuck to the real absolutely verifiable and documented stuff that happened (they kind of gloss over the murder of hampton and the FBI bombings of BPP headquaters in a brief montage).
I should watch it again now that I know more about this stuff. That movie was my introduction to the panthers and at the time I really liked it. Certain if I hadn't seen that movie I wouldn't have had ANY context when I later heard bits and pieces about the panthers. I'm sure that movie had a tiny bit to do with my ultimate eventual radicalization.
Edward Teller gave a lecture at IMSA in 1992 and then stuck around and taught Topics in Modern Physics for 2 weeks. What a strange mixed blessing that was. One of the most brilliant men of the 20th century collaborating and sharing with us but also the man behind the H-bomb, the betrayal of Oppenheimer, the notion that hydrogen bombs might have civil uses (like redirecting the flow of rivers!) and the star wars project. I wish we had all been more conscious of the complex moral issues surrounding this man's life at the time. There was some brief and minor protest and student newspaper editorial activity but it mostly passed over everyone's heads (mine included).
See all the links being bandied about in these comments for some movies and books that you can check out to start learning more.
re: weather underground
i think it'll happen. it will be different, but i think it will happen at some point. the weathermen, to me, seem like a bunch of desperate kids trying to make a difference in the only way they had left. to work really hard for civil rights and peace and to watch as one by one, all the leaders for said causes were killed.
wondering who our leaders will be. who's gonna be our fred hampton? who's gonna be our malcolm x?
from mister ryan kaldari in nashville:
Re: weather underground
I do frequently wonder about the leaders thing. Is the fact that we don't have these big inspirational charismatic public leader figures a sign that we aren't as organized as they were in the 60s, or is it a sign that we are stronger because we are more decentralized and because there is no one to assasinate, kidnap, or "convert" to bring the whole movement down?
I'm never sure if we're lying to ourselves when we compare our movement to the radicalism of the 1960s. Maybe we're small and weak and ineffective compared to that MASSIVE organizing and militancy. Or maybe we're smarted and bigger and building towards something more powerful. Or mostly likely and truthfully, maybe we're the logical extension and continuation of that movement and there has been no break in continuity just changes in the way our story is told and what the public thinks about us.
Re: weather underground
i wonder sometimes if it's that there are fewer big issues now than then, or if there are just tons and tons now and everyone is dividing their energies toward what really matters to them. for example, i support gay marriage but that's not what i'm going to put my energy toward, because there are other things that are more important to me personally. yaknow?
i was trying to think of who the leaders will be. i can't really think of anything.
Re: weather underground
Re: weather underground
Re: weather underground
Re: weather underground
Re: weather underground
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Liberation_Front
They're scary.
Re: weather underground
It's a totally decentralized movement of radical cell groups that do property destruction actions against companies that do environmental damage. They pride themselves on having destroyed (usually through arson) X million dollars worth of property and never having killed or injured a person.
This very closely parallels the Weathermen who bombed many facilities associated with the Vietnam war but did very careful planning and no one other than members of their own movement was ever killed or injured by their actions. The difference between ELF and the Weathermen is that there was a period of about a year when something got bombed almost every (day? week?). ELF's actions are much more random.
also
i would like to point out that you are still alive. fred hampton was brilliant, but he was killed. just keep that in mind when you talk about not doing enough, ok?
Re: agreed
Re: agreed