NY Panther 21 Reunion
The Panther 21 were arrested in a pre-dawn raid on April 2, 1969 and charged with conspiracy to blow up the New York Botanical Gardens, department stores, etc. On May 13, 1971, after the longest political trial in New York’s history, all 21 New York Panthers are acquitted of all charges in just 45 minutes of jury deliberation.
The City College Of New York-Harlem Campus
W.138th Street & Convent Avenue
(NAC) Lecture Hall 0-201
Saturday, December 12, 2009
4pm – 8pm
Tribute Program
4:15pm: Welcome By The Hosts:
Sis. Dequi & Bro. Squeeze, Black Panther Collective
4:20pm: Opening Drum Call To Arms & Libation Ceremony To The Fallen Panther Comrades By:
Panther Veterans Sis. Njina & Bro. Shep with Sis. Joyce & Sis. Ndigo
4:45pm: Cultural Performance By: “Maroon Society”
5:00pm: Live On Stage Interview With The Panther 21 By:
Bro. Herb Boyd, NY Amsterdam News
5:30pm: Film Previews: “Wrack 21″ and “A Power Sun” The Story Of The Panther 21 & Sundiata Acoli
Screening Introduction By: Co-Producers Jamal Joseph & Dawn McGhee
6:30pm: Fund Raising Appeal For Political Prisoners By
Dr. James McIntosh/CEMOTAP
6:45pm: Cultural Performance By: “Rebel Diaz”
7:00pm: Cultural Performance By: “Impact” with “Women of Color Productions”
7:45pm: 40th Anniversary Tribute Ceremony To The Members Of The NY Panther 21 By:
The Children Of The Black Panther Party aka “The Panther Cubs”
7:50pm: 50/50 Cash & Panther Memorabilia Raffle
8:00pm: Closing Statement & Invitation To:
The Panther 21 Reunion Reception & Open Mic After Party @ The Harlem Maysles Cinema. (9pm-Until)
Featuring Performances By Hasan Salaam, SupaNova Slom & The Legendary Afrika Bambaataa.
Detroit’s Fight
Detroit is going through it.
GM’s bankruptcy is but a flashpoint in a long stretch of post-industrialism that has lasted many years. Recently the New York Times Magazine ran a story on what’s happening to Black folk in the D, given that unemployment here topped 22% back in March and all of the Big Three are in big trouble. Of course, you can’t talk about black people and the auto industry without talking about the unionization that made it possible for so many people of color to enter the middle class. The Times piece reads like a lament as those foundations crumble away.
But while eulogizing the death of the auto industry may be appropriate, it can’t be the only thing we do. The flip-side of post-industrialism is the rise of a local service economy. Many laid-off autoworkers have joined thousands of servers, bartenders, retail associates and hotel employees in Detroit’s hospitality and gaming industry. And let’s be clear: the fight to unionize these industries and create good jobs in this city is already lighting up…with unexpected opponents.
With all that quality reporting on CNN you may have missed it, but there’s currently a nasty fight between two major unions seeking to represent service industry employees: SEIU and UNITE HERE. The likes of this fight may not have been seen since the major labor battles of the 1930s. Detroit happens to be one of the battle-ground cities, and there are lives at stake.
In this corner, you have SEIU, a purple-and-yellow behemoth whose numbers top two million. Their president, Andy Stern, is well known in Washington, DC for all of his lobbying and other political work. For many, Andy Stern has become the face of the contemporary American labor movement. In the other corner, you have the smaller UNITE HERE, formed in 2004 through the merger of the former textiles and needle-trades union (UNITE) and the hotel and restaurant workers’ union (HERE). SEIU has a habit of growing its ranks by assimilating other unions (rather than organizing un-organized workers and increasing the number of represented workers overall). In the last year, Stern courted UNITE HERE co-president Bruce Raynor to secede part of UNITE HERE and affiliate it with SEIU.
So what does it have to do with Detroit? And what does it mean for working people of color?
Well, the collusion between Raynor and Stern was profoundly undemocratic, and turned into a plain old take-over on the ground. UNITE HERE Local 24 was raided in January, and SEIU attempts to steal members have continued ever since. I’ve been in Detroit talking to workers for two months now about what is going on, and it’s pretty clear that the model on which SEIU operates is a threat to the possibility of racial justice through the labor movement. Workers feel besieged, lied to and left out. They want to know why another union would try to take them over without their permission. They want to know how this disempowerment can ever translate into justice for everyone. They want, most desperately, to grow and challenge the companies that disrespect them and pay them less than they are due. They want to have full, supported lives, self-determination and economic possibility for themselves and their families… and they’re willing to fight to get it. UNITE HERE will by no means bring the racial revolution, but it seems much closer to that ideal than the purple business union.
So I’ll pour one out for the death of the auto-industry, but let’s take a cue from those country homegoings. Right on the heels of a loss must come a celebration of what remains and what is to come. Though the shit around them is falling down, Detroiters make you wanna shout the praise of the life that still lives here. What was can still be, because the fighting spirit still burns Michigan, and nobody can put that fire out.
Look out for more posts from Detroit and the UNITE HERE/SEIU battle over the next few weeks. Check this video in the meantime.
AMC Registration Deadline Extended
Just a head’s up…
The Allied Media Conference online registration deadline has been extended from July 2nd until July 13th. So there’s still time to get in on this important series of conversations in Detroit. I’m personally looking forward to the conversations about how activists are using social media to organize their grassroots campaigns and to build movements for racial justice.
Word is that Danny Glover will be there. I’m looking forward to asking him some tough questions. (More on this later). Apart from him I expect to meet some brilliant, creative minds and some warring radical souls.
HeadyJones will be in the building. Hope to see you there! 
Get Cool With Jazz At Minton’s
If you think that July 4th is only about BBQ, beer, and fireworks, then let introduce you the Minton’s 24hr Jazz Marathon in Harlem.
Follow The Duke’s advice and “Take the A Train” to Harlem to hear some amazing jazz and support a great cause. Originally opened in 1938 before closing in 1974, the legendary Minton’s Playhouse reopened in 2006 and this weekend is the 2nd annual 24hour Jazz Marathon.
From 12pm Saturday until noon on Sunday, you can listen to some of the greatest musicians in the world play the same stage that Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis all played; where bebop was born. Bands are coming from all over New York to support the Jazzy Kids Project, a music mentoring program held that Minton’s that exposes Harlem youth to Jazz and teaches them to play instruments.
Finish eating your BBQ and reading Frederick Douglass’ speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July,” and then you should come to Minton’s and experience the best of American culture. Nowhere else in New York City have I found a more sophisticated and hip crowd. At Minton’s, you can hang with Harlem’s most significant activists, artists, businessmen, and get a taste of what it must have been like in the 1940s at the all night jam sessions.
206-210 West 118th Street between 7th and St Nicholas Avenue. Tel.212-864-8346. Take the B,C or 2,3 train to 116th Street.
About that Ricci Decision…
I’m know I’m just catching up on the decision in the Ricci v. DeStefano case. But New Haven has a special place in my heart and I have to weigh in…however late.
Carmen at AOL Black Voices and All About Race doesn’t trust that the city’s decision to throw out the tests was altruistic, and I feel her on that. I’m no huge fan of the DeStefano-led political machine. I think that like most (all?) political apparatuses, the City of New Haven must be made accountable to poor folk and folk of color. Those structures won’t manifest altruism just because they should. But she goes on to conclude that throwing out the tests was therefore unfair, and on that I definitely disagree.
Victor Goode’s post at Racewire makes all the sense in the world to me, as the problem lies with the burden of proof for civil rights cases brought under Title VII from here on out. Winning the “disparate impact” language was a big deal for folks who need to slug out their rights through litigation, and seems especially important as “colorblind” racism has it’s day. Let’s face it. To the powers that would keep you down, point-blank, bald-faced discrimination comes off as old-fashioned and clumsy when there’s that trusty institutionalized racism to do the dirty work. And if the tool is a test whose questions are out of date or subtly infused with cultural assumptions of white and black worth, then there’s plausible deniability to boot. In this context, the ability to fight back on the bases of an employment policy’s disparate impact–without having to prove invidious intent–is obviously necessary. What the Ricci v. DeStefano decision seems to do is make it more difficult to prove that disparate impact exists.
I’ll admit I only took one law school class, but it sounds like an “L” for racial justice to me. Definitely looking forward to reading the full Ginsberg’s dissent, and wishing that the rest of the Court had listened.
Obama Wants the Spooks
Hanging out with my former Black Panther friend a few weeks ago in Harlem, I had an opportunity to met Sam Greenlee. It was cool to be drinking and chatting with a guy who’s radical imagination so profoundly shook the American cultural landscape through fiction and film.
In his 1969 book The Spook Who Sat by the Door, Black nationalist Dan Freeman conceals his political views long enough to become the token Black in the CIA. The government’s ridiculous performance of inclusiveness backfires, however, as Freeman leaves the agency with all of his weapons and communications training and heads for Chicago. He trains young Blacks in the city in violent and non-violent tactics aimed at securing justice and freedom for the people. I have to admit, talking to Mr. Greenlee spoke to that part of me that secretly joneses for that kind of armed uprising.
Just a few days later, a friend (and one of the coolest prison industrial complex abolitionists that I know) forwarded me this from the Washington Post in disgust:
Obama Administration Looks to Colleges for Future Spies
To the list of collegiate types — nerds, jocks, Greeks — add one more: spies in training. The government is hoping they’ll be hard to spot.
In recent years, the CIA and other intelligence agencies have struggled to find qualified recruits who can work the streets of the Middle East and South Asia to penetrate terrorist groups and criminal enterprises. The proposed program is an effort to cultivate and educate a new generation of career intelligence officers from ethnically and culturally diverse backgrounds.
So, Obama wants to recruit “ethnically and culturally diverse” young people to the CIA. Seriously? And through universities by offering competitive scholarships and assistance to those taking the “intelligence” courses? All toward perfecting state violence…likely against those black and brown people most harmed by capitalism and hate in the first place. Lord, no.
I’ll admit that some part of me wants to say that these kids should go ahead, get themselves a scholarship and get on that Spook model. The organizing and fighting impulse that’s at the root of The Spook is exactly right as I see it. And the critique of the state and its corresponding engagement with Black struggle and longing is dead on. But Audre Lorde is right when she says that “the master’s tools will never destroy the master’s house.” Participation in this program sounds all bad to me, and its disgusting that Obama would even propose it.
This fall, let’s skip the CIA courses at freshman orientation and read The Spook Who Sat by the Door instead. We don’t need their tools. We have it in us to build something better.
Joe Turner’s Come Back to Broadway
In case you are looking for something to do for a date night in New York City, you should take a cue from the Obamas who flew in this weekend to see the revival of August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.”
Encountering Genius
Out back on the patio at St. Nick’s Pub in Harlem on Saturday night, it was easy to believe that there is an arts revolution brewing in this country. Sitting at the feet of Dennis Davis, a legendary drummer most known for his work with David Bowie and Stevie Wonder, we got high off his virtuosity. Making music to get through the hard times, Davis has a story that’s begging to be told. We hope to help him do that.
