Yesterday we went to the Genoese Buridda squat to listen to the conference by David Hilliard, founding member and former Chief of Staff of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. He described the birth of the BPP from the personal engagement of just a few young activists. From his point of view, the key factor for the success of the BPP was their anchorage in the community, the fact they provided services like free health care and “free breakfast program” for children. In his opinion, if the BPP had only consisted in an armed party, it would have never survived the repression of the US government.
He was very keen on debating the lessons learned from the BPP and how they could be applied to the Italian reality, but no such debate took place, instead he was asked a few questions. It would seem as if either there is no such thing as communities in Italy or there is no interest in working in existing communities or as a political community.
On the question of his stand on Barack Obama, David Hilliard replied (to the slight amazement of all present), that Obama would surely not be a good president, but he greeted the movement that was being created around the first black President of the USA.
Then, we also got a chance to ask him a question: if the Rastafarian movement, and Africanism in general, had influenced the BPP. Hilliard said that although he liked to listen to Bob Marley he thought Rasta and BPP had little in common. While Rasta was a religious movement, the BPP was a revolutionary party.
We still think that Africanism had a big influence on the BPP, as exemplified by the fact that one of its leading members, Stokely Carmichael, went to live to Guinea in 1969 and changed his name to Kwame Ture, but it seems clear that their answer to the problem of Black nationalism was different. Without wanting to split hairs, we would also like to reexamine if the BPP was such a revolutionary party, in the sense of overthrowing the given power relations and if the Rasta movement was as apolitical as portrayed by Hilliard. He seems to us to downplay the political potential of other movements, like Rasta and Reggae music, but also of gangs.
Here you will find a beautiful documentary by Agnes Varda on the BPP (last year we subtitled it into Italian, if you want to screen it, contact us or Dome: quadropheniax [at] virgilio [dot] it)
And finally a nice song by Peter Tosh: Arise Blackman (remember to change .doc into .mp3), enjoy!
Tags: Black panther, Black power, peter tosh, Rasta
