Survival Pending Revolution: The Black Panther Party on View
We recognized that in order to bring the people to the level of consciousness where they would seize the time, it would be necessary to serve their interests in survival by developing programs which would help them to meet their daily needs…these programs satisfy the deep needs of the community but they are not solutions to our problem. That is why we call them survival programs, meaning survival pending revolution.
— Huey P. Newton, To Die for the People: The Writings of Huey P. Newton1
These words were written by Huey P. Newton who, with Bobby Seale, developed a ten-point program to help launch this revolution from their hometown of Oakland, California. The ten-point program was born out of frustration, as Newton and Seale had witnessed repeated acts of “police brutality and murder of Black People” with no end in sight.2 In 1966, after the city council’s refusal to audit police brutality in their neighborhood, Newton and Seale set out to determine the “destiny” of their own community. Calling themselves the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, they began to deliver a wide-range of services; most notably the Breakfast for Children Program, the Sickle–Cell Anemia Research Foundation, Community Learning Center, and the Intercommunal Youth Institute. Providing food, health care, and education was central to the identity of the Black Panthers, but as Newton stated, these community programs were only a salve to the issues revolution would resolve. This was particularly true with respect to the Panthers struggle to gain both political and economic power over the governing space of their neighborhood. Full seizure of both power and space required radical confrontation with “racist power structures” — the police department, legal systems, and local government. It required insurrection. Through street rallies, protests, and patrolling of the police, the Black Panthers gained visibility and a steady following. By 1970, the party grew to include over five thousand members with more than forty chapters formed across the United States.3
The Black Panthers also established a strong international presence in Asia and Africa by linking their domestic mission for black liberation with global movements opposing American imperialism.4 By 1972, the party’s following began to wane as their message and focus became fractured: between proponents of armed insurrection and those who believed community service and electoral politics would achieve their goals.5Through a tumultuous period of interparty disputes, shootouts, and violent encounters with the FBI and local police, fifty subsequent years has witnessed the memory of the Black Panthers locked in an endless standoff between these two opposing narratives, both clouded by myth and misunderstanding. It’s in a pursuit to translate this tension found in the Panthers’ history that the Oakland Museum of California presents All Power to the People: Black Panthers at 50.6
The Black Panther Party was formed out of left-wing values, mobilizing the rhetorical persuasion of Black Power, the armed insurrection of black nationalism, and the self-help ethos of black pride and determination. Early in their formulation for revolutionary socialism, Newton and Seale began drafting a mission statement that would eventually become their Ten-Point Party Platform and Program.7 The platform and program distilled the party’s beliefs into a portable and reproducible device, a type of map or what Bruno Latour refers to as an “immutable mobile.” For Latour, maps were ideal for obtaining knowledge because of their simultaneous immutability and mobility.8 In other words, in printed form, the medium specificity of the Black Panther Platform and Program allowed for a mobile yet unchangeable transference of a given knowledge set. Written on college-ruled paper, the drafts of the platform are presented in the second gallery of the exhibition — notes carefully displayed in Plexiglas vitrines. These “immutable mobiles” serve as reminders of how remarkably deft the Panthers were in rhetorical persuasion.9
For full essay, enter Avery Review: http://averyreview.com/issues/22/survival-pending-revolution
