Huey P. Newton’s Labor Day Speech
Revolutionary Constitution Convention
The Black community was fortunate to have one of the greatest freedom fighters ever to grace this planet, co-founder of The Black Panther Party, Dr. Huey Pierce Newton. Dr. Newton was born to execute the mission of raising the levels of consciousness in Black people toward the revolutionary goals of freedom.
Dr. Newton was an extraordinary scholar, he taught himself to read and read the entire dictionary like our other heroes, Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X, which led to a Ph.D. in Social Philosophy, so it’s only fitting to put him in that same category of brilliance.
We are talking about a man who always kept a law book in his car to fight against police brutality. A man who used his philosophical powers to apply Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil Theory with the interests of Black people to give us the powerful ideology of All Power To The People.
Dr. Newton was a great philosopher and speechwriter who went unnoticed in the area of scholarship to uphold the status quo. One of his many great speeches was on Labor Day weekend in 1970 for the preliminary session of the Revolutionary Constitution Convention held in Philadelphia. “The purpose of the conventions was to discuss the plight of Black people and to write a new Constitution for the United States,” said Dr. Newton. And he was not enthusiastic about the conventions because he said they had no power to implement them. However, nonetheless, he gave a powerful speech that is still relevant to our socio-economic conditions today. Here is an excerpt:
The democratic capitalism of our early days became caught up in a relentless drive to obtain profits until the selfish motivation for profit eclisped the unselfish principles of democracy. Thus 200 years later we have an overdeveloped economy which is so infused with the need for profit that we have replaced democratic capitlaism with bureaucratic capitalism. The free opportunity of all men to pursue their economic ends has been replaced by constraints (confinement) placed upon Americans by the large corporations which control and direct our economy. They have have sought to increase their profits at the expense of the people, and particularly at the expense of the racial and ethnic minorities…
Generation after generation of the majority group have been born, they have worked, and they have seen the fruits of their labors in the life, liberty, and happiness of their children and grandchildren. Generation after generation of Black people in America have been born, they have worked, and they have seen the fruits of their labors in the life, liberty, and happiness of the children and grandchildren of their oppressors, while their own descendants wallow in the mire of poverty and deprivation, holding only to the hope of change in the future. This hope has sustained us for many years and has led us to suffer the administrations of a corrupt government. — Dr. Huey P. Newton
Conclusion
Dr. Newton’s sentiments against our corrupt government and capitalists in 1970 are still relevant today. The government and capitalist drive for wealth, domination, and power are evident in the rise of automation, robotic labor, and emerging technologies to increase profits exponentially.
For Black people in America to combat this power struggle, we have to change our relationship within the power structure from consumers to producers. By doing so, we would have the pleasure of seeing the fruits of our labor in the life, liberty, and happiness of our children and grandchildren in the future.
