Again, I am behind on reading posts, having been in Amherst since Thursday, and probably won't catch up. Apologies if this repeats points already made.
Fred Hampton spent the last few months of his life going from Black high school to Black high school -- and what was he telling them: he was condemning the Wetherman tendency. That repeated polemic against the Weatherman, delivered to Black high school students, catches up THE chief contribution of the Black Panther Party: The need for the development of a complex political movement that linked Black and white revolulutionary organizations int a commone struggle to break the barrier to class unity represented by racism (structural and ideologoical). The Weatherman tendency grew from a repudiation of that as a possible political goal, since white workers were so deeply racist that no change was possible on their part. (As one of them once argued with me, socialism in the United States would probably require somethng like a lenghy occupation of the U.S. by the PLA. The Weather loons really were loons.*) The Panther Pary rejected this, and constantly looked for white/Black cooperation. Panthers came over to Bloomington(Illinois) from Peoria, for example, to cooperate with the ISU SDS chapter in attempting to recruit ISU students to participate in the RYM2 October 1969 demonstrations in Chicago. Fred Hampton himself spoke at ISU only a couple weeks before his murder. I do not think the specific errors made by any political grouping of the past are of any interest (other than antiquarian) whatever. Errors are repeated, but never in any form that is a recognizable repetitionof the same error in earlier peiods. Criticism of the Weatherman tendency, for example, will do nothing whatever to protect against the identical error in the fture, since those who will make that error will be convinced that they are entirely different from the Weatherman tendency. My remarks above on Eatherman are meant to help clarify a political principle that still holds: that "black-white" unity (or cooperation) can coame aboaut _only_ through the leadership of Black revolutionary forces. Weatherman terrorism is a triviality; their rejection of this principle was profound, and this principle still holds today. Carrol ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
