l_rawjalaurence BLACK PANTHERS is a salutary piece that should be shown as a reminder to every politician past and present that racism is alive and regrettably flourishing throughout the United States. Perhaps they should bear this fact in mind before making racist and inflammatory statements in their campaign speeches.With the help of extensive archive footage plus first-hand reminiscences from those involved, Stanley Nelson's documentary tells the story of a movement that grew out of the Civil Rights Movement but favored more active forms of intervention. Protests might be kept largely peaceful - at least in the early years - but members of the movement were quite prepared to carry weapons, especially in California, where a loophole in the law allowed them to do so. The overwhelmingly white police force took strong exception to this, but there was little they could do within the confines of the law ... except to beat up miscreants in the name of preserving the peace.Ideologically speaking, the Black Panthers had a lot in common with the liberation movements that sprung up all over Africa during the Sixties. Many nations freed themselves at length from the shackles of colonial rule: the Black Panthers wanted to do the same for African Americans within the USA. They garnered considerable support from within the African continent, and managed to attract a huge following for their various demonstrations. The media found some of them highly attractive with their Afro hairstyles and alternative modes of dress through which they expressed their unique identities.In a chilling reminder of the anti-Communist movement two decades previously, the government - especially under Richard Nixon - tried to limit the Black Panthers' activities through the work of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Although not exactly described as such, his determine to root out so-called "subversives" reeked of an anticommunist witch-hunt, taking place in a country that publicly speaking liked to proclaim its commitment to democratic values.Perhaps the document was a tad one-sided, as it tended to concentrate on the Panthers' commitment to eradicate racism while not exploring some of its more violent tactics. But then perhaps they could be justified; the days of the African American passively turning the other cheek or peacefully resisting in a manner prescribed by Martin Luther King were long gone.My first memory of the Black Panther movement and its significance came at the 1968 Olympics, when the African American Tommie Smith raised his hand in the movement's salute just after he had received a gold medal. Although the television companies tried to make light of the incident, it was a clear indication of how the movement had become part of the mainstream rather than remaining on the margins.

paul2001sw-1 What can you do when the system is biased against you? You can resist. Who is drawn to resistance? The young, the restless, those not yet powerful even by the standards of their own communities. What good does violent resistance do? Maybe not much directly, but it helps re-frame a debate in which otherwise the powerless are ignored. The Black Panther Party was a movement established to protect the interests of black Americans in the 1960s. On one hand, they were terrorists whose mandate was self-given; on the other, they really inspired the communities in which they were embedded, to whom the police were just the mightiest local mafia. They combined a message of self-help, pride, the demand for justice, protection and revolutionary fervour; at their worst, they advocated murder (and in return, members were literally murdered by the cops) and (near the end) raised money from drug dealing. Their charismatic leaders ultimately fell out with one another; their eloquent speeches remain compelling today. This documentary, featuring interviews with many surviving Panthers, is a bit one-sided; we don't hear from those within the community who did not approve (there surely must have been some), or (say) from the families of police officers hurt by Panther violence (only from those cops who still take pride in the violence they dealt out). But the sense of anger at the everyday injustice perpetrated on black Americans that drove the Panthers' formation is clear. Ultimately the Panthers had nowhere to go; their last significant act was in electoral politics, both admirable and yet strangely unambitious for an organisation that had been committed to the overthrow of the government of the United States. Of the Panthers' three most famous members, two are dead, one having become addicted to drugs and the other having become a Republican. But Bobby Seale still lives as a community activist in the Bay Area. And for all the problems, this documentary leaves one (mostly) impressed by what he tried to do.

treywillwest This is a heroic attempt at a one-film history of the Panthers. It suffers only from its own ambition- this is too complex a subject to offer a "history of" in the length of a single feature film. The best parts of the film are the stirring, emotional recounts of battles with agents of the state by revolutionaries who were on the front lines, heroes most of us have never before heard of. The portraits offered of the iconic Party leaders were a bit more problematic, or simply lacking. The presentation of Huey Newton is far too simplistic. One comes away with a sketch of a sociopath who the Party naively turned into an icon. While there is credible documentation of Newton's erratic behavior and drug abuse after spending many years in prison on likely trumped up charges, watching this film you would not know of Newton's extensive and influential writings on revolutionary theory, including his ground-breaking advocacy of the Gay- Equality struggle. Other important strands of Panther history were simply lacking. There is, for instance, no mention of George Jackson or the Angola Three. Still, a fine attempt to do a lot with too little space and time.

daretostruggledaretowin *May contain spoilers, but not really* The first thing that struck me about this film was the absence of talk about revolutionary theory or even tactical practice. With a name like it has one might think it would unpack the nuanced and much debated term "vanguard" a little more. The influence of Mao Tse Tung thought is completely absent apart from a sign that says "Chairman Mao says: Free Huey," which is never explained or even mentioned. Primarily the film tells the story of what happened, but does not explore motivations, expectations, hopes, dreams or rationale any more than is necessary for a cursory tally of events.However, it is actually an entertaining film for precisely that reason. There are guns, there is action, there is insanity; or more properly put, allegations of insanity. Actually, the film is pretty sensationalistic. If you're a radical interested in an analysis of the BPP this is not the place to look. I get the sense that the interviews in the film are brutally chopped up.My favorite part of the film was also my favorite part of BPP history and that is Fred Hampton's work in Chicago and his resulting assassination by agents of the state. The film actually does make a pretty good case for why Hoover's FBI, the Nixon administration and the cops in Chicago considered him dangerous. However, one of the strongest arguments for his perceived danger from the state (and I do think it was justified) is the eloquence of his speeches and clips of these speeches are sadly lacking. One my favorite speeches is the one where he says: We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don't fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don't fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism.We ain't gonna fight no reactionary pigs who run up and down the street being reactionary; we're gonna organize and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary political power and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the power structure, arm ourselves, and we're gonna fight reactionary pigs with INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION. That's what it has to be. The people have to have the power: it belongs to the people.In the film this speech was cut off after the first two sentences.Additionally, the film focused solely on what was going on with the Panthers at the time and completely obfuscated the context of the time. It made mention of white allies but it did not talk at all about the Weather Underground, for example, who issued a "Declaration of War" against the US government in response to the assassination of Hampton and subsequently bombed multiple government buildings.Like I said, this is an entertaining movie and some parts are even inspiring, but if you're looking for the definitive story of the Black Panther Party, this is not the place.