Leftism

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.

I'd be sooooo on board. Let's gooooo

We have buses! We have duffel bags! Full of soup cans!

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.

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.

That's not fair. The FBI helped.

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.

Yes, but only because white people were terrified of black people with guns, so I wouldn't call that a good case.

Specifically, where a Republican President (at the time Republican Governor) and the NRA supported the gun control. And yes, because of racist bigotry.

https://www.history.com/news/black-panthers-gun-control-nra-support-mulford-act

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/28/us/race-politics-gun-control-the-price-of-freedom/index.html

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/1002107670/historian-uncovers-the-racist-roots-of-the-2nd-amendment

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.

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

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.