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Books
by Huey P. Newton
Revolutionary
Suicide /
War Against the Panthers /
Huey P. Newton Reader /
To Die for the People /
The Genius of Huey P. Newton
In Search of Common Ground /
Insights and Poems /
Essays from the Minister of Defense
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Empowerment
Temples and Ideological Orchestrators
Or Who to Follow: David
Walker or Nathaniel Turner
Conversations with Wilson,
Miriam, Kam Hei, Arthur Flowers
A Post-Katrina Political Discussion
Wilson:
I know you will not despair. Your job is to
educate. You have been manfully discharging your
duty throughout the month of September. Your efforts will
not go unrecognized or unrecorded. You have no more power
than Socrates or Jeremiah. You have only the power
of David Walker. In the long run, we must ask
ourselves whether David Walker or Nathaniel Turner had the
greater effect. Your destiny is to be a David
Walker, not a Nat Turner. So, I send my words of support.
You are doing a great deal, more than sitting in the dust and
bemoaning our fate. You are trying to make people
think. And to feel. That is a worth a great deal.
A few people in every generation will always listen.
Rudy:
I have been reading Newton's book Revolutionary
Suicide. I've
featured the last chapter and a fictional (kinda)
discussion about leadership and service.
However
staged it may appear, it is a needed discussion. Huey P. Newton
was brilliant. He was much more than a stager of sensational events and
a convicted criminal. Did he not go on to earn a Ph.D.? So
we have what my friend Herbert calls a "beautiful
mind," indeed. It was in prison he first became free and an
existentialist. All except the "I" that became a
"we" was
stripped down in the soul breaker, a 4 x 6 room with a hole in the
floor, a kind of updated 19th c. sweat box used on slaves by slaveowners to make them more malleable to slavery.
There's
a nice story here in this last chapter of his book about a shovelful and a mountain. The
mountains are bureaucratic (corporate) capitalism and bourgeois
thinking, according to Mao and Huey. There are probably many who
share that view.
What
is your shovelful? What is your spirit of the generations? Do
you know what raising consciousness is? Well, Huey P. Newton has
a chapter in his book Revolutionary
Suicide,
title
"Raising Consciousness." It's been a long time since
there's been any real political education in our
"progressive community." Here we have in Huey a
socialist, an existentialist, a Buddhist who reads Crime
& Punishment, and Durkheim. An intellectual
lightweight not worthy of serious attention? Well, more of Huey
will be coming.
We
must also disassociate in our minds Eldridge Cleaver, the
darling revolutionary of the left, as we have dissociated Mayor
Nagin and his police chief, from servants of the people like
Huey P. Newton, a man with a desire for life and hope for his
people. I will give it from the horse's mouth so to speak,
"The
Defection of Eldridge Cleaver." Young people today got it all wrong--it ain't
that our generation wasn't thinking, working the problem. It is
that this generation of teachers ain't teaching the thinking
that was produced in the 60s and 70s. It's just the 80s and 90s.
Black
male thinkers are dismissed as legends, video clips, and hip hop
CDs. But there were some brothers and some sisters out their
doing some thinking and some writing and expressing the
consciousness that was then in all kinds of media. But nobody
teaches that era, those writings, sing those songs, put on that
drama in our schools today. And, to think, young people
think that they have to give us undue deference, make us some
ritual in an African drama, because they don't think we really
did nothing, think nothing.
The problem, my dear
friends, is that we have been deprived, we been conned,
hoodwinked, bamboozled. Our children haven't got the whole
loaf. They have not read Huey P. Newton's Revolutionary
Suicide. I think it might be a manual
we can begin to used during adolescence. A lot of identity
crises can be averted when they are in their 20s. The reality of
our world is sometimes better than soft-pedaling the truth.
Miriam:
But, Rudy, one book doesn't tell the complete story.
Huey P. Newton was a very complicated (and contradictory as well
as self-destructive man). You should also read Elaine
Brown's memoir, as well as that of other Panthers: George
Jackson, Angela Davis, etc. to get the full picture.
Newton & Co. did a whole lot of good (consciousness raising,
free breakfasts, schools for kids, newspapers & books, etc.)
but he was and they were also quite flawed. You should
have seen the one-man play on Newton (I did and it was
riveting), a videotape of which aired on PBS. Huey was one
of my heroes, as was Che, but he messed up a whole lotta people
including himself. The image of him in the rattan chair is
seared into our collective imagination, as is the head shot of
Che in the black beret and flowing hair. Aché!
Rudy:
Now, Miriam, you are not playing fair. You are
bringing all kinds of spurious matter into the conversation. The
full picture is not the issue, nor feminism, not the pathologies
of individual Panthers. Have we had enough of that? I ain't
talking about history or sociology but rather the consideration
of an idea, "revolutionary suicide." It has nothing to
do with the personal flaws of the one who coined the phrase.
Let's put aside the trivia, the extraneous, the miscellaneous.
Let's take some of the wind out my words. Huey said too many
people were into phrase-mongering. That they wanted rhetoric
rather than thinking and learning.
Here's a man thinking noting that people in
his audience are clapping but they not hearing what he says. To
put it another way, as James Foreman would put it. There are
societal controls. If our leaders have accepted them, a
call for leaders then becomes a waste of breath. But we have
thinkers. Can we think outside of, break the controls to allow
for more freedom of thought. For it's only freeing the thought
that we get change, that we generate leaders, those that come up
from the people.
This is a process. It's not a matter of
cataloging, but of discerning. What kind of thinking is
appropriate for a time when the leaders have abandoned the
people. Huey P. Newton proclaims that it is when we kill the I,
revolutionary suicide, and become the we, that community begins,
that is how we make revolution. It is the process, not just
doing good.
Miriam: Me,
I just like to argue (smile). If somebody takes one side,
I take the other, sort of an (un)Socratic gadfly, but it
stimulates conversation and my thinking. I got into a
knock-down-drag-out argument with Acklyn weeks ago; I said
that we need to look at our subject positions as people of
privilege before we start casting stones. I also said that
we need to stop all the intellectualizing & theorizing, and
DO something. (I thought I lost a friend!) Then he
tells me, after his radio program on Monday, that I had
influenced his thinking about privilege. He and you and
Herbert and some other folk have definitely helped to shape my
thinking about a lot of these issues that have come out of the
Katrina débacle, but, like I say, we all come from different
perspectives and they're all valuable (even the Bill Cosbys,
Cornel Wests, Al Sharptons, and John Conyers--God love em!). But
you're right: we do need more thinking about ISSUES.
Kam Hei: Rudy,
I really like what you said in regard to
"Revolutionary Suicide." It is true that kids are not receiving
the proper education they should be getting. Especially when
most of the teachers are limited to the teaching plans and
guidelines they were given out. And it seems to me that most
teachers give up at a certain point, on their ambition to
continue working with kids with kindness and patience. I am a
school coordinator at a private-tutoring school. We offer all
kinds of programs to help students with problems they have,
whether they are homework or examinations or just to maintain
their level while improving and sharpening their skills. I hear
all kinds of excuses BOTH from parents and teachers of why the
kids are "stupid." It makes me mad at times and I
would just tell the teachers with dropping jaws that they
are not doing their jobs. Your words reminded me of a poem I
wrote a while ago regarding capitalism and education. Hope you
will enjoy it. If you do find it worthy to share with our
brothers and sisters, please pass it on. With love and blessing.
Arthur: didnt
really want to get in this one but i have to say
david walker is who i pattern myself after
nat turner, gullah jack, denmark vesey, and harriet tubman
as afrospiritual destiny workers are among my ancestral lines
(and in particular gullah jack)
but its david walker who most speaks to me
an ideological orchestrator
with a sophisticated understanding of the politics/psychology of
his day
disseminating words that tried to shake the devil
out of our souls - david walker is my boy
and not only the words he wielded
but the system of distribution that he built using black sailors
to get his words out to the slaves
i feel that same sense of guerilla system building w/the net
and i dont believe we know if he was really killed
true, he was found dead in a doorway and they had bounties on
him
so its possible but i dont believe its historical fact to
definitively say he was killed
the mythwork sounds better but i prefer to stick with whats
known
his story is strong enough as it stands
rudy, my fellow traveler and keeper of the faith
is more radical left than i am
so i can see how the spirit of nat turner
would more appeal to him
im fond of the ole prophet myself
Rudy: Bruh arf, now you done gone too far. And so
I gotta pull you back a little. You don gon running off with the
"empowerment" thing, again, cause you can't run with
the big boys. Sometimes some men should stay home with the women
if they ain't up for the hunt or maybe they should just go
fishing. But don't start calling us dogs because we like fresh
red blood running out of our meat.
There some gods don't require that. I ain't
got no problem with David Walker. He's worthy of your praise.
But you done said and hinted at some things that just ain’t
right.
I don't know whether Walker had the powers
you suggest he had. What you call him, "ideological
orchestrator." Maybe Wilson'll find that rather humorous,
especially since you have stressed "historical fact."
But I suppose myth for one is fact for another. I suppose we can
change definitions like we change pronunciations. Let every man
have his own language. Some find safety in this position,
the more flexible the better – it don't hurt as much.
Now that's real radicalism, and I ain't going
down like that and I will have none of that.
I recall when you Negroes dared not mumble
BLACK POWER and slinked into words like "empowerment."
It's probably one of the most overused words by Negro liberals
and their ilk. It comes out of professional fear of losing that
safety net, and falling back among the people. And who want dat.
Yeah, the elite and the priests they all want to
"empower" the people. They are always in need of
bodies and numbers too, so as to “orchestrate.” What I say
is, well, why not just go get a band and be done with it. Those
kinds of social mechanics do better for small consulting groups.
Malcolm always said that a lot of smart
Negroes didn't want no revolution. They ain't about dying for a
cause, a purpose, community, for what they believe. Giving their
life for the cause, especially their blood, is not what
they’re about. Maybe “empowerment” is a more respectable
recourse for some. As they say somebody must occupy that space.
The result of such “empowerment” is more hearsay than not. A
testimonial, maybe. Well, ain’t that's the ad man's game. We
don't know for a historical fact what happened on the other end
with Walker's Appeals. That's just not historical fact.
And anyone tell you they know what happened
is either a scoundrel or mountebank or both. But we are on surer
ground, closer to historical fact, with Nathaniel Turner. Before
I go on, let me tell you this, you ought toss that moniker
"Ole Nat" in the trash bin of history and leave it
there. I know you fellows who would belittle Turner, who ain't
done no real thinking and talking with the Prophet of
Southampton. And you ain't talked to nobody, particularly me,
who know what they talking in talking about Nathaniel Turner.
You profess kinship but he wasn't and he
ain't never was a Gullah Jack and that's how yall want to see
him as some mad African raging for white blood. You weren't
listening to me. What you got ain't historical fact. Yall got
what white folks made of him. But you who look upon Nathaniel
Turner that way I know how much you depend on the safety of what
you call "historical fact" and your uneasiness about
rumors, and what folks say. I'm sure that the concept of
"radical left" has as much to do with me as
"abolitionist" has to do with Nathaniel Turner.
No offense to you. But David Walker beside
Nathaniel Turner is a lightweight. A theorist. A man with a gift
for gab, a performer, for coins. He who appealed only to the
white male conscience. Turner's appeal was more global, more
universal. And, best of all, he was a practitioner of his own
philosophy. He left ideology for those who wish to walk narrow
streets. Like the rest all you see is the blood—55 men, women,
and children dead. And you retch, ready for a safer game.
Well, that's historical. That's what liberals
do, especially our latest models. They can't follow the logic,
the consequences of their own thinking. They prefer to empower
the poor and the ignorant, because they got all the answers, the
folks' gardens to fallow as well as to plow. And so they end up
usually just talking, as far away from the action as they can
get, like in Philadelphia.
It's easier to do-wah in Philly than in the
Old Dominion, especially way back up in the backwoods of
southern Virginia. Now understand me, though Nathaniel Turner
was in the backwoods, the backwoods was not in him. He was
master of himself and the elements. His understanding was far
beyond any political spectrum devised for him. He was what he
was because that was required of him. He was a free man.
Your empowerment game definitely is not
existential. For your game is programmed. You start out by
setting limits and boundaries. You are not really willing to
allow the facts to lead you, to speak to you. You one of those
people who want us to read only half the story. You'll have us
"empowered" with a half loaf rather than all of black
manhood.
Nathaniel Turner was a man for his time and
he did what was necessary and he did what the people needed him
to do. You see only the blood. You don't know the thinking,
the revelations, the doubts, the regrets, the commitment, the
fears, the calculations, you don’t appreciate the mastery, the
mystery that was accomplished on the banks of the Nottoway, that
is behind that mask of blood. So you don't truly appreciate the
man Nathaniel Turner.
For you, he's "Ole Nat," a vague
clownish figure in the woods a raving lunatic plotting white
folks death. And that frightens you. That's understandable. I
know David Walker provides a more respectable image of
radicalism for you, his black suit, white shirt, and tie.
That’s much more appealing than hardier work clothes &
barefeet coming in from plowing the Northern 40. Yes, Walker
probably had a bounty on his head, but I don’t think poison
was the favorite slaveowner game. Poison sounds like a woman’s
game.
In any event, what impact Walker had on
slaves is pure conjecture, the same is true of Garrison's rag.
All that is historical speculation. And certainly not as much
as a historical fact as what I am now about to tell you.
Nathaniel Turner engineered a journalistic coup.
Do you hear what I'm saying? We know many
more people read Turner than Walker and that Turner had a
greater and a more lasting impact, much greater than Walker, who
has been more an object of scholarly enquiry or one we like to
include in black-nationalist calendars during Black History
Month, to emphasize rhetorical literacy. There are those who
belong in the pulpit or behind a desk or a lectern. That suits
them fine, most of us have to be in the field. That was
Nathaniel Turner; that was Huey P. Newton, he had to be out in
the field with the people. For power comes up from among the
people.
God spare us leaders that empower.
Well, I've said all I need to say at this time,
on this issue. Thank you for your attention. I pray you have
grace in hearing my words. Amen.
Jonathan:
rudy, your idea to start reading (or re-reading) huey p.
newton's " Revolutionary
Suicide
" is a good one. i'm
going to assign it to all my students.
posted 29 September 2005
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* DVDs --
A Huey P. Newton Story 2001 /
What We Want, What We Believe The Black Panther Party Library
The Spook Who Sat By the Door /
Passin' It On; The Black Panthers' Search for Justice /
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