This year marks the 45th year since the Black Panther Party was co-founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, CA. It's About Time BPP is organizing events in the SF Bay Area throughout the month, with the biggest events Oct. 21-23. Read the full schedule below (click on the graphic to enlarge it) and link to the main event website here).
Featured above is a new video-interview with Billy X Jennings by Angola 3 News, entitled "We Called Ourselves the Children of Malcolm," featuring archival photos and more graphics from www.itsabouttimebpp.com, including the photo exhibit "Women of the Black Panther Party and Beyond." Link to the full screen, high quality version of the video here.
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE BY IT'S ABOUT TIME BPP:
The It's About
Time Committee is committed to preserving and promoting the legacy of
the Black Panther Party (BPP) and its programs of community survival
pending social change. We will commemorate the historic legacies of the
BPP as well as the many sacrifices and constructive contributions that
all of us made while serving the people body and soul. Voter
Registeration
We have the responsibility to place our own
experiences into historical context; otherwise the legacy of the Black
Panther Party will be ignored, dismissed and distorted by today's
commentators and tomorrow's historians.
We will maintain a
network of Black Panther Party alumni and supporters for the purpose of
providing educational information to community groups or the public at
large regarding issues of social justice. This will include publishing a
newsletter and maintaining a speakers' bureau. We also organize local
community events and support other community organizations who promote
social justice issues. We provide mentoring for urban youth groups to
encourage positive community activity and voluntarism.
We
commemorate the sacrifices of those who fell in body and spirit to the
prevailing internal and external forces of those times. We must continue
to bring attention to the plight of the many political prisoners and
exiles who were victims of the government repression which contributed
to the Party's demise.
We need to reclaim our history and dispel the many myths about the Party.
IT'S ABOUT TIME!
--Angola 3 News is an official project of the International Coalition
to Free the Angola 3. Along with providing the latest news about a trip
of Black Panther political prisoners known as the Angola 3, we are also
creating our own media projects, which spotlight the issues central to
the story of the Angola 3, like racism, repression, prisons, human
rights, solitary confinement as torture, and more. Our articles and
videos have been published by Alternet, Truthout, Counterpunch, Monthly
Review, Z Magazine, Indymedia, and many others.
