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.Some members were natural geniuses at organizing people, but they were usually the busiest comrades with the most responsibility.Part of the problem was that the Party had grown so fast that there wasn’t a lot of time to come up with step-by-step approaches to things.The other part of the problem was that almost from its inception, the BPP was under attack from the u.s.government.At first i didn’t feel the repression too deeply.I knew the Party was under attack, but it felt like it wasn’t so near, like it was lingering in the background.What made me maddest was the media treatment of the BPP, which gave the impression that the Party was racist and violent.And it worked.The pigs would burst into a Panther office, shoot first, and ask questions later.The press always reported that the police had “uncovered” a large arsenal of weapons.Later, when the “arsenal” turned out to be a few legally registered rifles and shotguns, the press never printed a word.The same thing goes on today.Nobody gets upset about white people having guns, but let a Black person have a gun and something criminal is going on.The only time white amerika is in favor of Black people having guns is when we are using them to do amerika’s dirty work.They’ve got a lot of Black people so scared they are scared even to think about owning a gun.But the way the tide of racism is rising in this country, Black people better be more scared to not have a gun than to have one.With the Ku Klux Klan and all these other racists running around, Black people have got to be suicidal if they don’t own and know how to operate a gun.If you don’t own a gun now, you’d better rush out and buy one because in a few years, the way this country is moving, it might be against the law for Blacks to buy guns.One of the best things about struggling is the people you meet.Before i became involved, i never dreamed such beautiful people existed.Of course, there were some creeps, but i can say without the slightest hesitation that i have been blessed with meeting some of the kindest, most courageous, most principled, most informed and intelligent people on the face of the earth.I owe a great deal to those who have helped me, loved me, taught me, and pulled my coat when i was moving in the wrong direction.If there is such a thing as luck, i’ve had an abundance of it, and the ones who have brought it to me are my friends and comrades.My wild, bighearted friends, with their pretty ways and pretty thoughts, have given me more happiness that i will ever deserve.There was never a time, no matter what horrible thing i was undergoing, when i felt completely alone.Maybe it’s ironic, i don’t know, but the one thing i do know is that the Black liberation movement has done more for me than i will ever be able to do for it.Becoming Zayd’s friend was something really important.After i joined the party he would drop by my house every so often.We would listen to music and talk politics.I was forever teasing him about being part of the leadership (he was Minister of Information) since he was the only leader up at the Bronx Ministry, with the exception of Afeni Shakur, i had any respect for.He would laugh at my Robert Bey jokes, but he never once said a disparaging word about any of the other comrades.I also respected him because he refused to become part of the macho cult that was an official body in the BPP.He never voted on issues or took a position just to be one of the boys.When brothers made an unprincipled attack on sisters, Zayd refused to participate.Whenever we hooked up for a meeting at somebody’s house, he was the first to volunteer to cook dinner or, if dinner was already cooked, the first to roll up his sleeves and wash the dishes.I knew this had to be especially hard for him because he was small and his masculinity was always being challenged in some way by the more backward, muscle-headed men in the party.Zayd always treated me and all the other sisters with respect.I enjoyed his friendship because he was one of those rare men completely capable of being friends with a woman without having designs on her.We communicated on such an intense, honest level that afterward i wondered if it had been real.And he was cultured.When you say “cultured,” most people think you’re talking about the opera and Amy Vanderbilt’s etiquette book, but that’s not what i’m talking about.He was well versed and well educated about every aspect of Black life.He could not only recite Langston Hughes by heart and give a biographical rundown of Coltrane, Bessie Smith, or James Cleveland, but he could also sit down and have an intelligent conversation about dreambooks or Argo starch eaters.After a while Zayd asked me to work with him on Party projects.It was mostly dealing with white support groups who were involved in raising bail for the Panther 21 members still in jail.I hated it.At the time, i felt that anything below 110th Street was another country.All my activities were centered in Harlem and i almost never left it.Doing defense committee work was definitely not up my alley.I think that one of the reasons Zayd insisted on bringing me to some of these events is that he knew how much i hated them.I was the perfect angry Panther.I hated standing around while all these white people asked me to explain myself, my existence.I became a master of the one-line answer.“What made you become a Panther?”“Oppression.”“What do you think about Huey Newton?”“He’s a right-on Black revolutionary leader [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]