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<font size="1"><a href="https://imixwhatilike.org/2020/06/10/bppopenlettertohiphop/">https://imixwhatilike.org/2020/06/10/bppopenlettertohiphop/</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">An Open Letter from Original Black
Panther Party Members to Black (Hip-Hop) Artists Who Have an Interest in
Our Community (T.I., KILLER MIKE, CARDI B, KANYE WEST, BEYONCE’, JAY-Z,
P-DIDDY, LUDACRIS, 50-CENT, and others)</h1>June 10, 2020<br></div>
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<div><p><span><span>G</span></span>reetings and Solidarity to each
of you. In recognition of your individual voice, influence, and
cultural following among current generations of Black people/Africans in
the Diaspora and on the continent, we salute you.</p>
<p>While we only know you from the public domain, we know that many of
you come from backgrounds where you faced poverty, police brutality,
lack of healthcare and other forms of oppression like most Black people.
We all recognize that we are in a watershed period of economic and
government failure, a pandemic and now a resistance movement from which
things will never emerge the same. </p>
<p>What we all do in this period will directly impact the fortunes,
survival and freedom dreams of Black People, and others around the world
who suffer from the same oppression. Whether its South American
Favelas, South African Shanty Towns, Palestinian territories or the
Black urban ghettoes of racist America, capitalism and white supremacy
has turned the entire world into a ghetto for the profits of a few. So,
we should pay attention to each other, because here, in the heart of
racist America we are all we have, and along with our true allies, are
truly all we need.</p>
<p>Individually we who write this letter are former members of the original <a href="https://imixwhatilike.org/?s=black+panther+party" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Black Panther Party</a>, co-founded in 1966 by the late <strong><a href="https://https//imixwhatilike.org/?s=huey+newtonimixwhatilike.org/?s=huey+newton">Huey P. Newton</a></strong>, and <strong>Bobby Seale</strong> in Oakland, California. We were targets of the FBI’s infamous Counter Intelligence Program (codename <strong><a href="https://imixwhatilike.org/?s=cointelpro">COINTELPRO</a></strong>) which killed many of our comrades, including <strong><a href="https://imixwhatilike.org/2020/02/28/fredhamptonfilm/">Fred Hampton</a>, Mark Clark,</strong> and
numerous other Panthers and revolutionary freedom fighters. We are
veterans of government search and destroy missions that forced our
beloved Comrade Assata Shakur into exile. We are former Black Political
Prisoners who spent decades in U.S. prisons, like our comrades <a href="https://imixwhatilike.org/?s=shoatz" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Russell Maroon Shoatz</a>, Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald, <strong><a href="https://imixwhatilike.org/?s=acoli">Sundiata Acoli</a>, <a href="https://imixwhatilike.org/2020/05/28/jalil-muntaqim-hearing-audio/">Jalil Muntaqim</a></strong>, and <strong><a href="https://imixwhatilike.org/?s=mumia">Mumia Abdul-Jamal</a></strong> who
are still locked down today. In short, we were on the front line of
government efforts to kill and destroy the Black radical movements for
civil/human rights including the right to self-determination.</p></div>
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<div><p><span><span>S</span></span>ome of us were also racist law enforcement’s worst nightmare, armed combatants in the revolutionary Black underground, the <strong><a href="https://imixwhatilike.org/2017/05/13/10736/?">Black Liberation Army (BLA)</a></strong>.
Much of our history in our people’s struggle has been kept away from
you and seemingly unavailable to your generation as you reinvent what
was done in the past. Our people’s enemies haven’t changed,
circumstances and conditions have. History never repeats itself – but it
damn sure can rhyme.</p>
<p>The question is where do we, Black people, oppressed peoples, go from
here? What is to be done? Make no mistake, we are still at war. A war
that began when, as <strong><a href="https://imixwhatilike.org/?s=malcolm+x">Malcolm</a></strong> said, “Plymouth Rock landed on us” and it has continued to this day unabated.</p>
<p>It is our duty as revolutionary freedom fighters to pass on lessons,
wisdom, knowledge and experiences to the next generation of freedom
fighters, cultural workers and activists. In that manner, an oppressed
people can resist domination from one generation to the next without
reinventing failures, pitfalls, or the mistakes of the previous
generation. It is our enemy’s job to prevent this, and isolate one
generation from the other. It is their duty to denigrate the history of
militant and radical traditions and burnish the history of
integrationist who think we can simply vote our way out of this problem.
It is for this reason that we have stepped forward at this neo-fascist
moment in history driven by the current crisis of capitalist culture,
an ongoing pandemic and the now renewed attention and massive
demonstrations brought on by ongoing police murders in our community. </p>
<p>We have chosen to focus this letter on you because our enemies
constantly target you to help “calm” the people down. They hope your new
class status will outweigh your racial and class analysis. You have a
chance to prove them wrong and with your resources and influence you can
be crucial to the collective survival of our people. Tattoos, expensive
cars and private jets don’t inoculate anyone from a disease and don’t
render you bullet proof. We have to collectively provide for our own
human agency and not delude ourselves into thinking it’s safer to
integrate into a maligned system of greed and dehumanization.</p>
<p>Some may say we as Panther veterans are not the Black people you
should be seen talking to. Niggas should know their place we’ve been
told and this is one reason that powerless Black folks have sports
figures, actors, musicians and bought-off politicians as their public
opinion makers. The voices of the disenfranchised is only heard when
they rage against the machine that has ground down their lives.</p>
<p>We have all been encouraged by the energy of the Black masses and our
allies in protesting the murder of George Floyd, but as each of you are
well aware the murder and brutality visited upon our people is nothing
aberrational or new. The butchering, torture, and dehumanization of
Black people extends back to the days of bullwhips, castrations and mass
rape on the plantations of America’s European “founding fathers” and
continues to this day. This is the legacy from which modern law
enforcement in America derived its overarching purpose, the protection
of property and wealth, not people — especially not Black people. No
amount of training, social sensitivity, counseling, or smaller police
forces will change the current impact of this history on law
enforcement. Only our control of public safety in our communities will
break this historical context for modern law enforcement. This begins
with decentralization of the police, and community control of public
safety.</p>
<p>This season of political struggle is indeed about the “Ballot and the
Bullet.” To organize the former, (ballot) all progressive and radical
forces in America need to come together in a United Front Against
Fascism and the militarized police state. This is what the BPP did at
the height of the tumultuous sixties, resulting in delaying the outright
consolidation of right-wing racist takeover of American foreign and
domestic policy.</p></div>
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<div><p><span><span>W</span></span>e must also look beyond
solutions that are strictly based on legislative reform, voting, or
individual capitalist enterprises. Black folks must survive
institutional racist paradigms of power and exercise political and
social self-determinant power. The public platforms each of you have can
go a long way in creating this tactical and strategic organizing
vision. With this in mind we ask you who have a certain sway over the
attitudes and minds of today’s Black youth to do the following.</p>
<ul><li>Let’s meet and talk through a strategy based on liberating Black People and our respective roles.</li><li><span>Let us create a Pan-African Refugee and Relief Agency where we
become our own first responders in times of natural or man-made
disasters/pandemics.</span></li><li>Help create consortium so we can develop new a cooperative economic
system where ownership is shared and is directed towards the needs of
our people/workers, not consumerist enterprises. </li><li>Support radical and revolutionary Black organizations that have a
history of accomplishment and institution building in our community that
is independent of major corporate donations, government grants or
foundation founding.</li><li>Through your media reach support the current rebellion in the streets and mass organizing for radical change.</li><li>If you are opposed to property destruction then call for massive
demonstrations at key government and private instillations and give free
concerts to ensure large numbers of people come out.</li><li>Work with us and others to create and fund an independent Black
political platform and candidates with radical demands for Black control
and redistribution of this country’s wealth and reparations.</li><li>Fight for the demilitarization and the decentralization of the
police where the local community through local boards control the
hiring, firing and disciplining of police in their community.</li><li>Let us create a system of not only a new policing paradigm but one
where we create a community restorative justice and end the prison
industrial complex.</li></ul>
<p>These are just some of the things you/we can do to create a united
Black Liberation Front to challenge our oppressive conditions in the
united states and erase the class divide between the overwhelming
majority of our people and those few like you who have some wealth and
influence. This is all our opportunity to do what’s best for our people
and be on the right side of history. </p>
<p> Original Black Panthers Members,</p>
<p><b>KATHLEEN CLEAVER, SEKOU ODINGA, CLEO SILVERS, JAMAL JOSEPH,
YASMEEN MAJID, VICTOR HOUSTON, PAULA PEEBLES, BILAL SUNNI ALI, JIHAD
MUMIT, DHORUBA BIN-WAHAD, KIM HOLDER, HAROLD WELTON, HAROLD TAYLOR,
ARTHUR LEAGUE, RASHAD BYRDSONG, KHALID RAHEEM.</b></p>
<p>Supported by <a href="http://www.communitymovementbuilders.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Community Movement Builders</a><strong>.</strong></p>
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