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2pac - Raised as a panther

Panthers

Many people don't know about 2pac's mother Afeni being a member of the Black Panther Party. Afeni was one of the famous New York 21 who were falsely imprisoned in 1970 for 9 months. All the prisoners were released in May of 1971 after being acquitted of all charges brought against them by the NYPD.

The Party

Armed with sincerity, the words of revolutionaries such as Mao Tse-Tung and Malcolm X, law books, and rifles, The Black Panther Party fed the hungry, protected the weak from racist police, and presented a new paradigm of Black political and social activism. Founded in October 1966 by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in Oakland, Ca., the Party grew to at least 5,000 members nationwide, with chapters in more than half of America and an international branch in Algeria.

Its "survival programs"-such as food giveaways, free health clinics and free breakfast programs for children-were popular fixtures in Black neighborhoods in the early 1970s, but for the white power structure and the vast majority of the white public, the Panthers represented only anti-government militancy; a view which engendered the wrath of the police and FBI and led to the murder of several Party members by law enforcement. Some were little more than teens when they were killed, like 20-year-old Illinois state leader on Fred Hampton, who was gunned down with fellow Panther Mark Clarke, in an early morning raid of the group's Chicago headquarters on Dec. 4, 1969. The attack, aided by the help of an infiltrator, was masterminded by the city's police force and the FBI powerful counterintelligence program (COINTEL-PRO).

For those not killed, the threat of incarceration was ever present. Some, like Panther Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver, would be arrested, on what often seemed little more than engineered charges. Despite government hostility, the organization flourished for a while, sweeping across Black America and attracting some of the most articulate young Blacks on the revolutionary scene of the 60's. Among them were H. Rap Brown and Stokeley Carmichael, both former presidents of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and activists Angela Davis. But it was divisions within the Party itself, along with a focus on winning local political campaigns in Oakland, which led to its decline by the mid-1970s. Decades later, however, the legacy of the Panthers remains vivid in the minds of many; for it is a powerful illustration of the ability of individuals to rise up and join together to fight oppression.

And even today, the organization evokes strong emotions. Some believe that the current plight of former Panther and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, for example, is at least partially linked to his membership in the group.

Time has not erased the memory of these young revoluntionaries. The still potent image of the black-clad Panthers, with their trademark berets testifies to the fact that these were young men and women who were unafraid to take power into their own hands and defend the rights of their people, whatever the cost to themselves.

New York Panther 21

The case of the Panther 21 serves as a classic example of police infiltration and political repression which created a new generation of political prisoners in the United States. For many membership in the Black Panther Party proved to be a serious liability that resulted in assassinations, frame-ups, long-term incarceration.
Unlike Mark Rudd, Jerry Rubin and other white "radicals" who were able to re-integrate into the mainstream, the lives of former Black Panther Party leaders were, more often than not, irrevocably shattered. Their lives will bear the scars of the brutal and violent repression they endured forever. Many believe that the indictment
of the Panther 21 was a racist and politically motivated frame-up by the government, through its Counter-Intelligence Program, to destroy the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation
movement.

The Black Panther Party was a grassroots organization of young Black men and women dedicated to the empowerment of Black people. While the Black Panthers advocated self-defense they never supported unprovoked, random, indiscriminate violence - The right to self defense was but one of the ten points of its
political platform. Contrary to the racist image painted by the mainstream media, the BPP was not a bunch of gun-toting thugs, blood-thirsty fanatics -

Leaders of the Black Panther Party were targeted by the COINTELPRO for what the FBI termed "neutralization" (a code word for assassinations, frame-ups, imprisonments and public
vilification) in early 1969. Federal and local law enforcement agencies successfully assassinated many Black Panthers (Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, Zayd Shakur) or successfully imprisoned them for life (Geronimo ji jaga pratt, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Marshall Eddie Conway, etc.) by utilizing extra-legal means (e.g. suborning
of perjury, harassing and intimidating witnesses, withholding of exculpatory evidence, etc.)

In the late 1960s, as the U.S. "civil rights" movement grew and became more militant in its opposition to racist and poor domestic and foreign policies, the FBI intensified its domestic surveillance and counter-insurgency programs aimed at the Black community. The BPP became the primary target of the FBI's Counter
Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO). The 1974 findings of the Church Committee (a Senate Committee on Government Operations) revealed that almost 90% of the FBI's counterintelligence activities that were aimed at the Black community targeted the BPP. The US government's Counter- Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) effectively destroyed radical. Black political dissent in the US by murdering, framing, incarcerating its leaders or forcing them into exile.

The United States denies the existence of political prisoners within its borders - Instead, the US law enforcement agencies classifies these former political activists that it targeted as mere criminals.
Within the US, the criminal justice system (law enforcement, the courts, jails and prisons) is used to repress political activists -
Illegal methods were used to frame political prisoners - A review of these cases reveal gross patterns of prosecutorial misconduct which includes: the fabrication or concealment of evidence by the government during trial. Statistics prove that political prisoners consistently receive longer prison terms than do right-wing fanatics
or non-political offenders. They are also forced to endure the harshest conditions of confinement. The majority of political prisoners in the US today are Black and former members of the Black Panther Party.