How History Came to Love the Black Panthers

All of the worship, gloss and drama overshadows the Black Panthers' true legacy, and that is community service, whether you're talking activism, education or engagement.
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Hey all, sorry for the silence. The baby emerges on Feb. 9, and the
prep has been INSANE in the membrane. But I have been busy at work for
Wired, XLR8R and more, including Alternet's youth imprint href="http://www.wiretapmag.org" target="blank">WireTap. The
latest spiel is a personal interrogation of the Black Panthers, and
whether or not they could survive the Bush Administration. Just in
time for Black History Month. Dig it!

"All of the worship, gloss and drama overshadows
the Black Panthers' true legacy, and that is community service,
whether you're talking activism, education or engagement. Their free
breakfast program reportedly pressured Lyndon Johnson's to pass the
1966 Child Nutrition Act and also inspired the similarly interested
Food Not Bombs collective, remarkable considering as recently as 2006
the FBI accused the latter of, you guessed it, terrorist connections.

All of which goes to show that, while much has changed, much has
remained the same. If anything, a reflection on the Black Panthers
would seem to lead one back into our embattled, embittered present,
where catastrophic wars, unilateral aggression and a disturbing
suspension of civil liberties should make those nostalgia fumes even
more intense. You can almost smell the tear gas from here. At least I
can..." MORE

Let me know what you think if you can, via blog or email, and let me
know if any of you are interested in checking out advance chapters
from my first book Hyperhighway to Hell, which I am cranking
out starting in February. If so, I'll leak some screeds on Morphizm and elsewhere. It's
all going to happen right when the rugrat drops. What did Ozzy call
it? Going off the rails on a crazy train? Exactly.

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