Speech of Fred Hampton
POWER ANYWHERE WHERE THERE'S PEOPLE
Power anywhere where there's people.
Let me give you an example of teaching people. Basically, the way they
learn is observation andparticipation. You know a lot of us go around
and joke ourselves and believe that the masses have PhD's, but that's
not true. And even if they did, it wouldn't make any difference. Because
with somethings you have to learn by seeing it or either participating
in it. And you know yourselves that there are people walking around your
community today that have all types of degrees that should be at this
meeting but are not here.
Right, Because you can have as many degrees as a thermometer. If you don't
have any practice, then you can't walk across the street and chew gum
at the same time.
Let me tell you how Huey P. Newton, the leader, the organizer, the founder,
the main man of the Black Panther Party, went about it.
The community had a problem out there in California. There was an intersection,
a four-way intersection; a lot of people were getting killed - cars running
over them, - and so the people went down and adredressed their grievances
to the government.
You've done it before, I know you people in the community have. And they
came back and the pigs said no you can't have any...oh, they don't usually
say you cain't have it, they've gotten a little hipper than that now.-
That's what those degrees on the thermometer will get you.
They tell you--okay we'll deal with it; why don' t you come back next
meeting and waste some time. And they get you wound up in an excursion
of futility, and you be in a cycle of insaneness, and you be goin' back
and goin' back, and goin' back, and you be goin' back so many times, and
they know you been there so many times that you're already crazy.
So they tell you, they say, okay niggers, what you want And then you jump
up and you say, well it's been so long, we don't know what we want. And
then you walk out of the meeting and'you're gone and they say, well you
niggers had your chance, didn't you?
Let me tell you what Huey P.rNewton did.
Huey Newton went and got Bobby Seale; the Chairman of the Black Panther
Party on a national level. Bobby Seale got his 9 mm, that's a pistol:
Huey P.Newton got his shotgun and got some stop signs and got a hammer.
Went down to the intersection, gave his shotgun to Bobby, and Bobby had
his 9 mm. He said you hold this shotgun; anybody mess with us, blow their
brains out.
He put those stop signs up. There were no more accidents, no more problem.
Now they had another situation. That's not that good, you see, because
it's two people dealing with a problem.
Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, no matter how bad they may be, cannot deal
with the problem. But let me explain to you who the real heroes are. Next
time, there was a similar situation, another four-way corner. Huey went
and got Bobby, went and got his 9 mm, got his shotgun, got his hammer
and got more stop signs. Placed those stop signs up, gave the shotgun
to Bobby, told Bobby if anybody mess with us while we're putting these,
stop signs up, protect the people and blow their brains out.
What did people do? They observed it again. They participated in it.
Next time they had another four-way intersection.
Problems there: they had accidents and death. This time the people in
the community went and got their shotguns, got their hammers, got their
stop signs...
Now, let me show you how we're gonna try to do it in the Black Panther
Party here.
We just got back from the South Side. We went out there--we went out there
and we got to arguing with the pigs or the pigs got to arguing -- he said,
"Well, Chairman Fred, you supposed to be so bad, why don't you go
and shoot some of those policemen? You always talking about you got your
guns and got this, why don'tyou go shoot some of them?"
And I said,
"You've just broken a rule. As a matter of fact, even though you
have on a uniform, it doesn't make me any difference. Because I don't
care if you got on 9 uniforms, and 100 badges. When you step outside the
realm of legaiity and into the realm of ill.eaality, then I feel that
you should be arrested."
And I told him, "You being what they call the law of entrapment,
you tried to incite me to commnit a crime, you tried to make me do something
that was wrong, you encouraged me, you tried to incite me toshoot a pig:
And that ain't cool brother, you know the law, don't you?"
I told the pig that, I told him "You got a gun, pig" I told
him, "You gotta get your hands up against the wall. We're gonna do
what they call a citizen's arrest."
This fool don't know what this is. I said"Now you be just as calm
as you can and don't make too many quick moves, 'cause we don't have to
hit you."
And I told him like he always told us, I told him,
"Well I'm here to protect you. Don't worry about a thing, I'm here
for your benefit."
So I sent another brother to call the pigs--you gotta do that in a citizen's
arrest. He called the pigs. Here came the pigs with carbines and shotguns,
walkin' out there. They came out.there talking about how they're gonna
arrest Chairman Fred. And I said,
"No, fool. This is the man you got to arrest. He's the one that broke
the law."
And what did they do? They bugged their eyes, and they couldn't stand
it. You know what they did? They were so mad, they were so angry that
theytold me to leave. And what happened? All those people were out there
on 63rd Street; what did they do? They were around there laughing and
talking with me while I was making the arrest.
They looked at me while I was rapping and heard me while I was rapping.
So the next time that pig comes on 63rd Street, because of the thing that
our Minister of Defense calls observation and participation, that pig
might be arrested by anybody.
So what did we do?
We were out there educating the people. How did we educate them? Basically,
the way people learn, by observation and participation. And that's what
we're trying to do. That's what we got to do here in this community. And
a lot of people don' t understand, but there's three basic things that
you got to do anytime you intend to have yourself a successful revolution.
A lot af people get the word revolution mixed-up and they think revolution's
a bad word. Revolution is nothing but like having a sore on your body
and then you put something on that sore to cure thatinfection.
And I'm telling you that we're living in an infectuous society right now.
I'm telling you that we're living in a sick society. We're involved in
a society that produces ADC victims. We're involved ina society that produces
criminals, thieves and robbers and rapers.
Whenever you are in a society like that, that is a sick society.
And anybody that endorses integrating into this sick society before it's
cleaned up is a man who's commiting a crime against the people.
If you walk past a hospital room and see a sign that says "contaminated"
and then you try to lead people into that room, either those people are
mighty dumb -you understand me, cause if they weren't,they'd tell you
that you are an unfair, unjust leader that does not have your followers'
interests in mind.
And what we're saying is simply that leaders have got to become--we've
got to start making them- accountable for what they do. They're goin around
talkin' about so and-so's an Uncle Tom so we're gonna open up a cultural
center and teach him what blackness is. And this nigger is more aware
than you and me and Malcolm and Martin Luther King and everybody else
put together. That's right. They're the ones that are most aware. They're
most aware, cause they're the ones that are gonna open up thecenter. They're
gonna tell you where bones come from in Africa that you can't even pronounce
the names.
That's right. They'll be telling you about Chaka, the leader of the Bantu
freedom fighters, and Jomo Kenyatta, those dingodingas. They'll be running
all of that down to you. They know about it all.
But the point is that they do what they're doing because it is beneficial
and it is profitable for them...,
You see, people get involved in a lot of things that's profitable to them,
and we've got to make it less profitable. We've got to make it less beneficial.
I'm saying that any program that's brought into ourcommunity should be
analyzed by the people of that community. It should be analyzed to see
that it meets the relevant needs of that community.
We don't need no niggers coming in our community to be having no company
to open business for the niggers. There's too many niggers in our community
that can't get crackers out of the business that they're gonna open.
We got to face the facts. That the masses are poor, that the masses belong
to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the masses, I'm
talking about the white masses, I'm talking about the blackmasses, and
the brown masses; and the yellow masses, too.
We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with
fire, but we say you put fire out best with water.
We say you don't fight racism with racism --we're gonna fight racism
with solidarity. We say you don't fight capitalism with no black capitalism;
you fight capitalism with socialism.
We ain't gonna fight no reactionary pigs who run up and down the street
being reactionary; we're gonna organize and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary
political power and teach ourselves the specificneeds of resisting the
power structure, arm ourselves, and we're gonna fight reactionary pigs
with INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION. That's what it has to be. The
people have to have the power -it belongs to the people.
We have to understand very clearly that there's a man in our community
called a capitalist. Sometimes he's black and sometimes he's white. But
that man has to be drove out of our community, because anybody who comes
into the community to make profit off of people by exploiting them can
be defined as a capitalist.
And we don't care how many programs they have, how long a robe they wear,
howtall a staff they carry, how long a dashiki they have. Because political
power does not flow from the sleeve of a dashiki, political power flows
from , the barrel of a gun --it flows from the barrel of a gun!
A lot of us running around talking about politics don't even know what
politics is. Did you ever see something and pull it and you take it as
far as you can and it almost outstretches itself and it goes into something
else If you take it so far that it's two things
As a matter of fact; some things if you stretch it so far, it'll be another
thing. Did you ever cook something so long that it turns into something
else. Ain't that right? That's what we're talking about with politics.
That politics ain't nothing,, but if you stretch it so long that it can't
go no further, then you know what you got on your hands? You got an antagonistic
contradiction. And when you take that contradictionto the highest level
and stretch it as far as you can stretch it, you got what you call war.
Politics is war without bloodshcd, and war is politics with bloodshed.
If you don't understand that, you.can be a Democrat, Republican, you can
be independent, you can be anything you want to, you ain't nothing.
We don't want any of these niggers and any of these hunkies and nobody
else, radicals or nobody talking about "I'm on the independent ticket".
That don't mean nothing.
Democrat means you sell out the Democrats, Republican means you sell out
the Republicans, Independent means you're out for graft and you'll sell
out to the highest bidder. You understand?
We want people who want to run on the people's party, because the people
are gonna run it whether they like it or not. The people have proved that
they can run it. They run it in China, they're gonna run it right here.
They can call it what they want to, they can talk about it. They can call
it communism, and think that that's gonna scare somebody, but it ain't
gonna scare nobody.
We had the same thing happen out on 37th Road. They came out to 37th Road
where our Breakfast for Children program is and started gettin those women
who were kind of older, around 58--that's, youknow, I call that older
cause I'm young. I ain't 10 or 20--right, right, ,right: But you see,
they're gonna get them and brainwash them. And you ain't seen nothin'
till you see one of them beautiful sisters with their hair kinda startin'
gettin' grey, and they ain't got many teeth, and they were tearin' them
policemen up: They were tearin' em up!
The pigs would come up to them and say "You like communism? "
"NO, scared of it; I ain't never heard of it."
"You like socialism?"
"NO, I ain't never heard of it."
The pigs, they be crackin' up because they enjoyed seeing these people
frightened of these words. "You like capitalism?"
"Yea, well, that's what I live with, I like it."
"You like the Breakfast for Children program, nigger?"
"Yea, I like it."
And they say "oh-oh." The pigs say "Well, the Breakfast
for Children program is a socialistic program. It's a communistic program."
And the woman said,
"Well, I tell you what, boy. I've been knowing you since you were
knee high to a grasshopper, nigger. And I don't know if I like communism
and I don't know if I like socialism. ButI know that that Breakfast for
Children program feeds my kids, nigger. And if you put your hands on that
Breakfast for Children program, I'm gonna come off this can and I'm gonna
beat your ass like a.."
That's what they be saying. That's what thev be saying, and it's a beautiful
thing. And that's what the Breakfast for Children is. A lot of people
think it's charity, but what does it do? It takes the people from astage,to
a stage to another stage. Any program that's revolutionary is an advancing
program.
Revolution is change. Honey, if you just keep on changing, before you
know it --in fact, not even knowing what socialism is-- you don't have
to know what it is-- they're endorsing it, they're participating in it,
and they're supporting socialism. And a lot of people will tell you, say
"Well, the people. don't have any theory, they need some theory.
They need some theory even if they don't have any practice.
And the Black Panther Party tells youthat if a man tells you that he's
the type of man who has you buying candy bars and eating the wrapping
and throwing the candy away. He'd have you walking east when you're supposed
to be walkingwest.
It's true. If you listen to what a pig says you be walkin' outside when
the sun is shining with your umbrella over your head. And when it's raining
youll be goin' outside leaving your umbrella inside.
That's right. You gotta qet it together. I'm saying that's what they have
you doing.
Now, what do WE do?
We say that the Breakfast for Children program is a socialistic program.
It teaches the people basically that -by practice, we thought up - we
let them practice that theory and inspect that theory. What's more important?
You learn something just like everybody else, let me try to break it down
to you.
You say this brother here goes to school 8 years to be an auto mechanic.
And that teacher who used to be an auto mechanic, he tells him "Well,
nigger, you gotta go on what we call the on-the-job training. "
And he says, "Damn, with all this theory I got, I gotta go to on-the-job
training? What for?" He said, "On on-the-job training he works
with me when I started work I've been here for 20 years: they didn't even
have auto mechanics. I ain't got no theory; I just got a whole bunch of
practice."
What happened? A car came'in making a whole lot of funny noise. This brother
here go get his book. Heon page l, he ain't got to page 200. I'm sittin'
here listening to the car. He says
"What do you think it is?"
I say, "I think it's the carburator."
He says, "No, I"don't see anywhere in here where it says a carburator
make no noise like that." And he says, "How do you know it's
the carburator?"
I said, "Well, nigger, with all them degrees--as many as a thermometer--around
20 years ago, 19 to be exact, ' I was listening to the same kind of noise.
And what I did was I took apart the voltage regulator and it wasn't that.
Then I took apart the alternator and it wasn't that. I took apart the
generator brushes and it wasri't that. I took apart. the generator and
it wasn't even that. After I took apart all that I finally got to the
carburator and when I got to the carburator I found that that's what it
was. And I told myself that ,"fool; next time you hear this sound
you better take apart the carburator first."
How did he learn? He learned through practice.
I don't care how much theory yo've got, if it don't have any practice
applied to it then that theory happens to be irrelevant. Right?
Any theory you get, practice it. And when you practice it you make some
mistakes. When you make a mistake, you correct that theory, and then it
will be a corrected theory that will be able to be applied and used in
any situation. That's what we've got to be able to do.
Every time I speak in a church I always try to say something, you know,
about, Martin Luther King. I have a lot of respect for Martin Luther King.
I think he was one of the greatest orators that the country ever produced.
And I listened to anyone who speaks well, because I like to listen to
that.
Martin Luther King said that it might look dark sonetime, and it might
look dark over here on the north side.
Maybe you thought the room was going to bepacked with people and maybe
you thought you might have turned some people away and you might not have
enough people here. Maybe some of the people you think should be here
are not here and youthink that well if they're not here then it won't
be as good as we thought it could have been.
And maybe you thought that you need more people here than you have here.
Maybe you think that the pigs aregoing to be able to pressure you and
put enough pressure to squash your movement even before it starts
. But Martin Luther King said that he heard somewhere that only when it's
dark enough can you seethe stars.
And we're not worried about it being dark. He said that the arm of the
moral universe is long, but it bends towards heaven.
We got Huey P. Newton in jail, and Eldridge Cleaver underground. And Alprentice
Bunchy Carter has been murdered; Bobby Hutton and John Huggins been murdered.
And a lot of people think that theBlack Panther Party in a sense is giving
up.
But let us say this: That we've made the kind of commitment to the people
that hardly anyone else has ever made.
We have decided that although some of us come from what some of you would
call petit-bourgeoise families, tho some of us even one day aspired to
be petit-bourgeoise, tho some of us even could bepetit-bourgeoise, some
of us could be in a sense on what you call the mountain top.We could be
integrated into the society working with people that we may never have
a chance to work with.Maybe we could be on the mountain top and maybe
we wouldn't have to be hidin' when we go to speak places like this. Maybe
we wouldn't have to worry about court cases and going to jail and being
sick. We say that even tho all of those luxuries exist on the mountain
top, we understand that you people and your problems are right here in
the valley.
We, in the Black Panther Party, because of our dedication and understanding
went into the valley knowing that the people are in the valley, knowing
that we originally came from the valley, knowing that our plight is the
same plight as the people in the valley, knowing that our enemies are
on the mountain,top--our friends are in the valley, and even though it's
nice to be on the mountain top, we're going backto the valley.
Because we understand that there's work to be done in the valley, and
when we get through with this work in the valley, then we got to go to
the mountain top. We're not going to the mountain top because there's
capitalism on the mountain top. We're goinq to the mountain top because
there's a motherfucker on the mountain top that's playing king, and he's
been bullshitting us. Andwe've got to go up on the mountain top not for
the purpose of living his life style - living like he lives.
We've got to go up on the mountain top to make this motherfucker understand,
god damnit, that weare coming from the valley!
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