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Youths are passed through schools that don’t teach, then forced to search for jobs that don’t exist and finally left stranded in the street to stare at the glamorous lives advertised around them.
I think it's absurd to talk about - one time you were outside the system, now you are in the system - no, we fight, the cause of the fight is because the system is bad that we can't get out of it.
But before we die, how shall we live? I say with hope and dignity; and if premature death is the result, that death has a meaning reactionary suicide can never have. It is the price of self-respect.
A rather honored guest of the Cuban government, so I wouldn't experience the problems. I think it would take a black Cuban to really articulate this because I'm being treated in a very generous way.
Let us go on outdoing ourselves; a revolutionary man always transcends himself or otherwise he is not a revolutionary man, so we always do what we ask of ourselves or more than what we know we can do.
I think it's wrong for North America in particular, the West in general to make a comparison between the economic situation in Cuba and the extraordinarily developed industrial complex of North America.
We felt that the police needed a label, a label other than that fear image that they carried in the community. So we used the pig as the rather low-lifed animal in order to identify the police. And it worked.
I worked in the mechanical factories repairing cement trucks. The Cuban government wanted me to work in the university as a teacher in literature, but I declined because I wanted a more sense of the countryside.
The Cuban Revolutionary Government has been generous and very considerate to me and my family. I lived in Santa Clara for a few months because I wanted to work in the countryside and get to know the country better.
You can Jail a Revolutionary but you can't jail the Revolution. You can run a freedom fighter around the country, but you can't run freedom fighting around the country. You can murder a liberator, but you can't murder liberation.
I expected to die. At no time before the trial did I expect to escape with my life. Yet being executed in the gas chamber did not necessarily mean defeat. It could be one more step to bring the community to a higher level of consciousness.
The rest of the Third World people are seeing, that the country can make a real change. No changing or trading one master for another. The only real change would be to socialize the means of production and this is what's happening in Jamaica.
No one can say, 'I have dropped out - I am no longer in the system.' When you're in prison, you're even closer to the system: you feel it more, and you might be in there for whatever reason. You don't transform the system as an absolute thing.
There is a very strong socialist movement in Jamaica. I was in Jamaica years ago. All the talk, all day they talk politics. The literacy rate is very low. Everyone is so interested in politics, more than those who can read in the United States.
I think the basis - the foundation - has already been laid for a society where people will work together and enjoy the wealth of the whole nation together. I think this will be accomplished because this is the theme of the revolutionary government's program.
I think the time is right for organizing and to give Blacks more political - the progressive Blacks, you have to make a distinction - participation, more Blacks in more authoritative positions, in more electoral political positions. But we want the right ones.
You can tell the tree by the fruit it bears. You see it through what the organization is delivering as far as a concrete program. If the tree's fruit sours or grows brackish, then the time has come to chop it down - bury it and walk over it and plant new seeds.
When you deal with a man, deal with his most valuable possession, his life. There's play and there's the deep flow. I like to take things to the deep flow of play, because everything is a game, serious and nonserious at the same time. So play life like it's a game.
Too many so-called leaders of the movement have been made into celebrities and their revolutionary fervor destroyed by mass media. They become Hollywood objects and lose identification with the real issues. The task is to transform society; only the people can do that
I think generally speaking, both people are trying to be free from the abuses of the white racist North American authorities. I think that's the one common denominator. The Cubans found a way to liberate themselves and we haven't found the way yet. So that's the difference.
The reactionary suicide is ‘wise,’ and the revolutionary suicide is a ‘fool,’ a fool for the revolution in the way Paul meant when he spoke of being a ‘fool for Christ,’ That foolishness can move mountains of oppression; it is our great leap and our commitment to the dead and the unborn.
We have to realize our black heritage in order to give us strength to move on and progress. But as far as returning to the old African culture, it's unnecessary and it's not advantageous in many respects. We believe that culture itself will not liberate us. We're going to need some stronger stuff.
White America has seen to it that Black history has been suppressed in schools and in American history books. The bravery of hundreds of our ancestors who took part in slave rebellions has been lost in the mists of time, since plantation owners did their best to prevent any written accounts of uprisings.
When I founded the party in 1966, I had just turned 24.And each year, no, not each year, each day I live I've gained new experiences. Now the criticism is not to say the party did not play a positive part in those times, but, in order to be objective, we did not accomplish the things we set out to accomplish.
Cuba was neo-colony of the United States and still suffers a blockade. So, therefore, the consumer goods and so forth, we don't have here, especially when you leave the city areas it's a spartan life. But what is impressive about it is what is coming about. It's the future that all these socialists look forward to.
I am very happy here [on Cuba], but I feel I have work to do in the United States. It's where I can identify with the total world struggle for socialism. But I think as a North American, as a Black North American, I have certain understandings - certain contributions - to make that are unique to the North Amerian experience.
I would like to say that racial attitude and prejudice are probably here...It is very difficult to act this out - discrimination - discrimination is an act. After you have the prejudices, the disciminations come out, if there is an institution for it but the Cubans have attempted to create institutions free of discrimination.
Just before I left [Cuba], I was about to transfer to the university. I had decided I had had enough experience in work in the manual areas. But then I got word from the United States that I could return...that my party had gathered enough information about the false charges that were against me for me to return to the United States.
We [Panthers] have not said much about the homosexual at all, but we must relate to the homosexual movement because it is a real thing. And I know through reading, and through my life experience and observations that homosexuals are not given freedom and liberty by anyone in the society. They might be the most oppresed people in the society.
My mother and my father have been married 50 years, and he's just started to understand that something's wrong with the system. He accepted the whole thing, you see. Yet this industrious kind of engagement didn't bring him the success, according to American terms, that he wanted. I was probably affected by this very much. In fact, I know I was.
The imperialistic or capitalistic system occupies areas. It occupies Vietnam now. They occupy them by sending soldiers there, by sending policeman there. The policemen or soldiers are only a gun in the establishments hand. They make the racist secure in his racism. The gun in the establishment's hand makes the establishment secure in its exploitation.
During those long years in Oakland public schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more or to question or to explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process nearly killed my urge to inquire.
I don't like to just talk of Africa, and south of the Sahara in general. No, I'll talk about the Third World in general. I'll like to say this - we in the United States would never believe that another form of goverment - I don't care even if it's against the racism, etc. - it is hard to get the masses of people to believe or accept that a socialist government will relieve them of most of the problems.
IQ tests are routinely used as weapons against Black people in particular and minority groups and poor people generally. The tests are based on white middle-class standards, and when we score low on them, the results are used to justify the prejudice that we are inferior and unintelligent. Since we are taught to believe that the tests are infallible, they have become a self-fulfilling prophecy that cuts off our initiative and brainwashes us.
Those in the community who defy authority and 'break the law' seem to enjoy the good life and have everything in the way of material possessions. On the other hand, people who work hard and struggle and suffer much are the victims of greed and indifference, losers. This insane reversal of values presses heavily on the Black community. The causes originate from outside and are imposed by a system that ruthlessly seeks its own rewards, no matter what the cost in wrecked human lives.
Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment. If the guns are taken out of the hands of the people and only the pigs have guns, then it's off to the concentration camps, the gas chambers, or whatever the fascists in America come up with. One of the democratic rights of the United States, the Second Amendment to the Constitution, gives the people the right to bear arms. However, there is a greater right; the right of human dignity that gives all men the right to defend themselves.
Institutions work this way. A son is murdered by the police, and nothing is done. The institutions send the victim's family on a merry-go-round, going from one agency to another, until they wear out and give up. this is a very effective way to beat down poor and oppressed people, who do not have the time to prosecute their cases. Time is money to poor people. To go to Sacramento means loss of a day's pay - often a loss of job. If this is a democracy, obviously it is a bourgeois democracy limited to the middle and upper classes. Only they can afford to participate in it.