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What Would the Black Panthers Say About DSA Today? · The Real News Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Black Panther Party,
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  Speaker 1: founded in Oakland, California in nineteen sixty six. Today, we'll
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  Speaker 1: be discussing the history of the Black Panther Party with
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  Speaker 1: two people that are intricately involved with the party in
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  Speaker 1: terms of practice, in terms of being members of the
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: party or being associated with members of the party. Joining
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  Speaker 1: me today is doctor Jeorge James, author numerous books including
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  Speaker 1: The Pursuit of Revolutionary Love and Resisting State Balanced, and
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  Speaker 1: doctor Kim Holden. And we was talking off and somebody said,
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  Speaker 1: call him a former member of the Black Panther Party,
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  Speaker 1: and he rightly correctly said, now, I'm not a former member.
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  Speaker 1: I am a Panther and rightly so, thank y'all for
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  Speaker 1: joining me today, Thank you.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you.
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  Speaker 1: All right, So, both of y'all wrote articles dealing with
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  Speaker 1: socialism and making it an analysis as to what socialism is,
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  Speaker 1: how y'all looked at it from the perspective of Black
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  Speaker 1: Panther Party, and how it's looked at now in terminologies.
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  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the analysis of the Black communal socialism.
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  Speaker 1: Can you expound on this and share your assessment of
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  Speaker 1: the Democratic Party socialism when including your core criticism and
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  Speaker 1: its progressive potential.
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  Speaker 3: We understand that we have a critique or criticism rightly
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  Speaker 3: so of the current political parties, the official ones and
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  Speaker 3: the left of the Democratic Party, but still embedded in
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  Speaker 3: the Democratic Party. So there's a lack of vision, and
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  Speaker 3: I would also say there's a lack of understanding of
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  Speaker 3: what we were saying before we came on air, that
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  Speaker 3: you know, you can't reform capitalism and different forms of
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  Speaker 3: socialism that have.
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  Speaker 2: Cropped up, particularly in academia.
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  Speaker 3: And so my contributions, as limited as they are, are
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  Speaker 3: based on being academic. I was not in the party.
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  Speaker 3: I did not go organize in the party, but I
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  Speaker 3: was able to meet Holder and others like decades ago,
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  Speaker 3: thirty plus years ago, and to understand how essential the
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  Speaker 3: Black Panther vision was of struggle and that has not
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  Speaker 3: replicated or been reproduced in the current moment and not
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  Speaker 3: and would not be something that would be the heartbeat
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  Speaker 3: of democratic socialism because I see it as a hybrid
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  Speaker 3: with AOC with Bernie Sanders and also Cornell West likely
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  Speaker 3: in the article that Kim was the primary author and
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  Speaker 3: I was a joint one. The evolution of black communal socialism.
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  Speaker 2: We talked about AOC.
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  Speaker 3: We talked about a bit of Bernie, and we talked
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  Speaker 3: about Cornell West who became an independent presidential candidate in
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  Speaker 3: the last site goal. And we've gotten this potus fascist
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  Speaker 3: in the current moment, but that demands the articulation of
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  Speaker 3: what we're dealing with. That you see, and the party
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  Speaker 3: and I and Kim better than I can differentiate West
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  Speaker 3: Coast and I know he says it's not just West
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  Speaker 3: Coast to East Coast, but there are different factions of
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  Speaker 3: the Party. There's capitulation in different forms of socialism because
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  Speaker 3: they're trying to accommodate capitalism, which is tied to imperialism.
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  Speaker 3: And I think this the critique that Holder was talking about,
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  Speaker 3: and you know, we could talk about Ella Baker and
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  Speaker 3: others that people were very dedicated to not get captured
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  Speaker 3: under a certain kind of democratic socialism that did not
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  Speaker 3: understand how violent the repression is emanating from all factions
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  Speaker 3: tied to the state.
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  Speaker 4: Doctor who the Black Panther parties. Embracing of socialism was
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  Speaker 4: creed clearly with the acknowledgment that this was an alternative
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  Speaker 4: to the present condition and that this was could be
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  Speaker 4: a foundation but it was independent. What I see today
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  Speaker 4: with people is they're trying to bring socialist politics into
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  Speaker 4: this bourgeois democratic political arena. And while you can utilize
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  Speaker 4: electoral politics to get certain things that you want, you're
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  Speaker 4: not going to transform. We're not going to get socialism
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  Speaker 4: through reforms in the democratic system in this country. You're
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  Speaker 4: going to get them from creating institutions within the people
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  Speaker 4: and that those institutions overtake the institutions of government.
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  Speaker 1: What's the importance of this conversation right at this point
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  Speaker 1: in town in terms of moving the narrative about chain,
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  Speaker 1: raising people's contants, and getting people to understand that right
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  Speaker 1: now where we are right now, we need a black
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  Speaker 1: pants party mentality. We need we need to be in
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  Speaker 1: a space where we're organizing our communities, we're telling our
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  Speaker 1: people how to be developed on the timeless infrastructure. We're
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  Speaker 1: moving in.
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  Speaker 4: That way because we got to get from where the
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  Speaker 4: people are today to where we would like them to be.
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  Speaker 4: And so right now I look at this as kind
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  Speaker 4: of like the mid to early sixties that where there's
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  Speaker 4: a wide a tent uh and that we could then
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  Speaker 4: within the context of them. For example, the mayor of
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  Speaker 4: New York. Within that context, we can get some things
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  Speaker 4: out of there that will help our position at this
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  Speaker 4: particular time. There's resources and there's organizational uh uh opportunities
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  Speaker 4: to working with these people because there's a white tent
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  Speaker 4: right now because we haven't focused enough and we haven't
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  Speaker 4: developed enough, you know, you know, so right now there's
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  Speaker 4: you know, there's this is the anti Trump well, to me,
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  Speaker 4: is very much similar to the sixties of the anti
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  Speaker 4: war movement in the civil rights movement. So we could
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  Speaker 4: take the opportunity just to point out the differences and
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  Speaker 4: also engage and show them how those particular actions and
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  Speaker 4: stuff are frutal and show them within that context the
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  Speaker 4: things that are productive. I give you an example. So
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  Speaker 4: we know that the mayor of New York is not
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  Speaker 4: going to overthrow capitalists and kick them out, but we
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  Speaker 4: also know that we could take some of that food money,
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  Speaker 4: with some of that housing money and develop programs and
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  Speaker 4: get the support of the of the system right this minute,
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  Speaker 4: you know, of of of city Hall, and then when
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  Speaker 4: they get kicked out, we could still continue as long
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  Speaker 4: as we don't base it there. Right So, you know,
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  Speaker 4: the Panthers were not against electoral politics, but it wasn't
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  Speaker 4: to get elected. It was about using it as a
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  Speaker 4: megaphone and as an organizational tool, particularly you know, initially,
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  Speaker 4: you know, let's be honest, up to the seventy nineteen
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  Speaker 4: seventy it was a free UI organization and that was
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  Speaker 4: our major thing. But you know, so we could utilize
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  Speaker 4: those platforms to point out the contradictions and also get
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  Speaker 4: some resources so we can develop those people's institutions in
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  Speaker 4: the communities.
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  Speaker 1: Dog Joe, we're superspent.
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  Speaker 3: I kind of echo or maybe expend on what you
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  Speaker 3: both have been talking about.
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  Speaker 2: In part.
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  Speaker 3: Again, I was in the movement the way both of
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  Speaker 3: you were. I didn't have the experiential struggles and I
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  Speaker 3: didn't have the level of risk. But based on what
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  Speaker 3: we're seeing right now, I think we as a collective
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  Speaker 3: of people, we're more timid. And I think that timidity
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  Speaker 3: is tied in point of like your first Black prison
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  Speaker 3: with Obama and others running through the Democratic Party that
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  Speaker 3: promised certain kind of deliveries that they weren't going to
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  Speaker 3: make in terms of equality, in terms of the needs
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  Speaker 3: of people, and also stopping these fascist wars, and when
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  Speaker 3: when you lose your imagination or you're told that there
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  Speaker 3: was a victory around the Panthers. I think, what's happened
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  Speaker 3: and you guys, you can say I'm wrong. What's happened
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  Speaker 3: to the Panthers if they turned into icons? Like even
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  Speaker 3: what Kim was saying earlier, the Free Huey movement, if
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  Speaker 3: I understand through Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver, who are primary,
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  Speaker 3: you know, architects of that, was to keep him alive
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  Speaker 3: and make sure he came out of prison. But then
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  Speaker 3: if you come out of prison, or like with Davis,
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  Speaker 3: it goes back and forth whether or not she was
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  Speaker 3: a cant But when you get acquitted or when you're
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  Speaker 3: like made free, and then you become an icon, I
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  Speaker 3: think we become distracted. So as an academic when I'm
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  Speaker 3: trying to teach about the Panthers or talking about my
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  Speaker 3: students about it, in some ways they see the Panthers
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  Speaker 3: as kind of some shiny beacon on the hill that's
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  Speaker 3: compatible with capitalism, which I don't even know, you know,
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  Speaker 3: how they got.
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  Speaker 2: There, but they got there right because it's there's a
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  Speaker 2: design to.
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  Speaker 3: Co op the clarity of who and what the Panthers
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  Speaker 3: were and what they stood for. And then you know,
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  Speaker 3: I'm going to make a connection with They may sound weird,
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  Speaker 3: but through the doge guys, there's like, you know, white
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  Speaker 3: teenagers or whoever we're running with Elon Musk. They decimated
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  Speaker 3: over three hundred thousand jobs for Black women in the
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  Speaker 3: federal government. Now that's a lot of pay for housing,
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  Speaker 3: for food, for cars, for leisure, for travel, et cetera,
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  Speaker 3: et cetera. But you can see how we became dependent
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  Speaker 3: on this state itself, so that once it started to
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  Speaker 3: shrink or white supremacy started to become full blown as
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  Speaker 3: it is now, there's a lot of confusion and less
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  Speaker 3: clarity about the radicalism and the revolutionary potential of the
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  Speaker 3: Black Panther Party because we agreed to take certain you know,
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  Speaker 3: perks from this. I mean I have a perk because
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  Speaker 3: I have a job perk from perks from the state
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  Speaker 3: and for nonprofits. A lot of that Black Lives Matter
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  Speaker 3: money that flowed in. People became millionaires. There are different
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  Speaker 3: ways that you can buy off a black liberation movement,
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  Speaker 3: and the state used multiple avenues to do that.
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  Speaker 1: The system is such design such that they're not going
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  Speaker 1: to conceive no territory under no terms without it being
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  Speaker 1: taken from that's just the reality. But I was saying
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  Speaker 1: when they how they was going to co opt the
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  Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter movement, and that's how they did it.
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  Speaker 1: They did it with money. I went, I went down
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  Speaker 1: to the anniversary of the MOTU in Washington. It was
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  Speaker 1: one of thirty or something, and every from one end
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  Speaker 1: of the DC lequery more to the other end. All
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  Speaker 1: you've seen was Black Lives Matter perfonnality being sold fast forward.
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  Speaker 1: You know, you know they didn't They didn't create no infrastructure.
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  Speaker 1: They didn't create no free breakfast program. They ain't no medicals,
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  Speaker 1: you know, and now it ain't institute no ideas that
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  Speaker 1: was gonna get the community become more involved with their
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  Speaker 1: self determination.
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  Speaker 4: It wasn't just Black Lives Matter and the grants and stuff.
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  Speaker 4: It's also somehow another from in the transition to the
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  Speaker 4: next century, the movement got tied to professionalism. Yeah, and
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  Speaker 4: then the professor and look, everybody got a job. I
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  Speaker 4: got a job, and the yeah, yeah, souse, I gotta
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  Speaker 4: live and I got people I gotta feed too, So
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  Speaker 4: I got I getting paid. But I can't be defined
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  Speaker 4: by my job. That's why I don't go by what
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  Speaker 4: I do in my job. I don't go by doctor
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  Speaker 4: holds of per se. Okay, that's my job. And somehow
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  Speaker 4: another we got this mixed up and our professionalism became
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  Speaker 4: the center of our organizing instead of the community.
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  Speaker 1: Right right. And that's that's what that's what that's very observation,
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  Speaker 1: uh now, because that's exactly what happened, Bobby Rush. We
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  Speaker 1: get in a position and we get we go from
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  Speaker 1: being uh anti establishment, to.
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  Speaker 4: Being to being the establishment.
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  Speaker 1: To be in the establishment, then to be like to
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  Speaker 1: everybody's because everybody need a job. Everybody got to work,
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  Speaker 1: everybody got to take to their family. It's how you,
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  Speaker 1: It's what you do, how you what What are you
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  Speaker 1: willing to sacrifice in when you're working? Are you willing
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  Speaker 1: are you willing to say certain things just to maintain
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: the paycheck. I'm gonna give you an example, and I'm
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: asking the next question. I was I was on a
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: at an event and Michelle Alexander was one of the
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  Speaker 1: people that was there at the event that wrote the
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  Speaker 1: new Jim Crow and she said, you know, I was
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  Speaker 1: a coward. And people say, like, why you say that?
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  Speaker 1: She said, because when the question of genocide that's taking
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  Speaker 1: place in occupied territory.
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  Speaker 2: Was going on.
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  Speaker 1: And people was asking them to like take a position,
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  Speaker 1: and it's you know, they was heavy handed on if
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  Speaker 1: you open your mouth up and saying thing, you're gonna
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  Speaker 1: be scored you. If you ain't gonna have your job,
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  Speaker 1: you don't have your tenure, you ain't gona have nothing.
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  Speaker 1: We're gonna blackball you. And she said that she wouldn't
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  Speaker 1: speak up because she wanted to hold on to this
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  Speaker 1: good job, to the to the image that she had created.
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  Speaker 1: And then she said so then she said that it
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: got to a point where her consciously and let her
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: continue down at paam. So she wound up like going
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: to somebody and tell them you what she get ready do?
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  Speaker 1: They said, man, are you are you great?
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  Speaker 2: You can great?
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  Speaker 1: Commits suicide?
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  Speaker 2: I mean, I respect her.
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  Speaker 3: She's at Union Theological Seminary right and there's a number
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  Speaker 3: of prominent theologians there, including Cornell West. And I know
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  Speaker 3: some of the people who were in the encampments in
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  Speaker 3: Columbia University, especially the young brother who had to leave
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  Speaker 3: go to Canada and announced back in Egypt. He was
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  Speaker 3: one of the organizers. And I met with or talked
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: to some of the seminarians and they were trying to
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  Speaker 3: create a position for him at union, but the administration
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  Speaker 3: said no. And so there are a lot of ways
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  Speaker 3: in which, you know, I talked about three hundred thousand
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  Speaker 3: black women lost their jobs, they could have been three
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  Speaker 3: hundred thousand and one right, and a number of us.
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  Speaker 3: And so we got caught up in capitalism. We got
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  Speaker 3: caught up in middle class, upper middle class funding. You know,
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  Speaker 3: you know, medical insurance, back flying around to make.
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  Speaker 2: Speeches, etc. Etc. That's a purchase.
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  Speaker 3: And I want to give it like an example, because
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  Speaker 3: when y'all were talking reminded me of twenty sixteen. For
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  Speaker 3: whatever reason, I ended up in Philly when Bernie Sanders
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  Speaker 3: was going to concede to Hillary Clinton. I was sitting
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: up in the bleachers and then I hear people chant
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  Speaker 3: black lives matter, and I was like, that's not real,
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: because nobody cares about black people being gunned down by
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: the police right or disappeared in prisons. But it turned out,
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  Speaker 3: after Bill Clinton was literally booed on stage, they brought
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  Speaker 3: in five mothers and then there were black mothers of
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  Speaker 3: children who had been slain Trayvon Martin, we can do
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  Speaker 3: a whole list, and they were wearing corsages and color coordinated,
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: and they were there to advocate for Clinton, even though
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  Speaker 3: if you looked at Hillary Clinton's record and her husband's record,
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  Speaker 3: Bill Clinton, right, they are not black friendly, and you
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  Speaker 3: see what she did in Libya and elsewhere, it's just
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  Speaker 3: imperial capture. But sitting there and listening to these cheers
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  Speaker 3: black lives matter, it's like, that's not real. And then
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  Speaker 3: later is looking at the news and John Podesta, who's
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: a DNC like headheadner, it turned out that he had
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: told everybody chant black lives matter, but if they ask
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: you how to stop police or state violence and killings,
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: don't say a word. So everything was being orchestrated. And
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: he agreed to be in the play. And once you
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: agree to take your character and place yourself in the play,
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: it's really difficult to get out. So I applaud Michelle
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: for being honest because a lot of people know this
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  Speaker 3: is bullshit, but we can to stick with it because
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  Speaker 3: there's a payout.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, But also I agree, but also we have to
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  Speaker 4: look at it too, and that is that there needs
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  Speaker 4: to be a bridge. In order to survive. You can't
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  Speaker 4: just reject your job. You have to be able to
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: get your strength in your center from somewhere. And so
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: while we can criticize and we could say I'm a
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: coward or so and so as a coward, but we
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: also have to look at this too. You know, I
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: don't even know what community means in twenty twenty six.
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  Speaker 4: That's something that the next generation really has to define.
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  Speaker 4: But there needs to be a connection so these people
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  Speaker 4: aren't off by themselves and jeopardize and everything. They're set
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: up that they get health care from somewhere that there
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: has a community outside of their job, okay and stuff.
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: So that also has we tend to look at it
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: because they're getting privileged too. Yes, that's true, they're getting paid,
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: but there also has to be something for them to
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  Speaker 4: go to.
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  Speaker 1: George Jackson called it a time as infrastructure and what
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: he called it the Time's infrastrug. He was basically saying
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: that and he linked the free he links the survival
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: programs to this concept that he had out now, but
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: the concept with more important. What it was was saying
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: the things that the parties implement institutions and ideas that's
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: serving people that would understand that once the people become
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: aware of these institutions are working with him, they'll ultimately
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: taking over and moving forward in terms of provider quality. Sir,
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  Speaker 1: So how do we how do where we at with
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: that in terms of Because that's a good point you made.
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  Speaker 3: Well, I'm gonna I'm a quote Ella Baker that Kim's
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  Speaker 3: article the Evolution of Black Communal Socialism. I don't know
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  Speaker 3: if you guys are going to post it, but if
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: you can, that might be helpful. Here's the quote that
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: opens the chapter. And this is from miss Baker, who
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  Speaker 3: highly I mean, she's a civil rights organizer. Let me
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: just say a little bit about her. And because the
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: contradictions we're talking about now are the contradictions in the
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: nineteen fifties too, right, So she's in her Harlem, she
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: comes down after the Montgomery boycott. She gets hired by
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: Reverend King. He doesn't really want our one, he doesn't
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: want female leadership. But also she moves like a socialist, right,
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  Speaker 3: And so eventually, when the youth were organizing and Reverend
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: King wanted to turn the youth into a young people's
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: wing of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference SCLC, she encouraged
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: them to become snack And that's when you get stokely,
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: you know, Carmichael, that's what you get. Yeah, you get
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: all these radicals who understand what the panthers mean, both
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: the panthers in Alabama and the Panthers on the West coast.
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  Speaker 2: So here's her quote.
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: You have to go back and reach out to your
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: neighbors who don't speak to you, and you have to
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: reach out to your friends, get them to understand that they,
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: as well as you and I cannot be free in
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: America or anywhere else where there is capitalists. And that's
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  Speaker 3: from Ella Baker speaks in nineteen seventy four.
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  Speaker 2: Totally agree with her.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: Weld just add imperialism given the mass murdering wars that
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: the US has dragged us into and the funding of
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: Israel in terms of the genocide and Gaza, and of
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: course they're genocides in Sudan and other places. But I
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: would say, you know, riecho what I said about Baker.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: If we can make a kinship with people who we
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: don't always know or don't always trust, but we understand
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: that capitalism, imperialism, particularly under this regime, will burn everything
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: down to the ground and they will take the billions
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: and flee with it. You have to create community that
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: gives us the courage to take to the other steps,
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: which the best parts of the panthers and panthers had contradictions,
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: but the best part of the panthers new to be
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: the pathway, right.
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: I like what you said in the beginning about you're
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: just the megaphone for people to express themselves. We need
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: to be able to take our skills and imply them
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: outside of the institutions, to allow people to gain control
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: over their lives and develop people's institutions. And that seems
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: really abstract, but I mean most simplest way of looking
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: at that is looking at the survival programs, which I
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: think were kind of miss labeled because they were institution building.
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: Wasn't just for survival, it was awesome. It was you know,
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: to get a sense of self government, that you had
• 21:41
  Speaker 4: control over stuff. They were liberation institutions, you know, we
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: people's institutions, you know, and given the people a sense
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: of power within that context. And I think today would
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: be even better because the way they are with technology
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: and stuff, our ability to do things independently is so strong.
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: You know. The problems we had back there in terms
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: of communication and mobility in that is not there anymore.
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: I can't even talk, you know, I can't even talk.
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: I'm not of that generation, you know, I can't even talk.
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: So when I talk about community, I got no clue
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: what I'm talking about because I don't know what they're
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: what community means to them today. Okay, but but they
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: got one