The BP's Ten Point Program...does it apply in 2002 and beyond?

[Honeykiss1974]

[/i] A version of this in Chit Chat, but I wanted to discuss this over here without all the "boo-hooing" of some folks. I just don't feel like having to breakdown EVERY, SINGLE situation that involved an African American person [/i]

From www.blackpanther.org

The Ten Point Plan

WE WANT FREEDOM. WE WANT POWER TO DETERMINE THE DESTINY OF OUR BLACK AND OPPRESSED COMMUNITIES.

We believe that Black and oppressed people will not be free until we are able to determine our destinies in our own communities ourselves, by fully controlling all the institutions which exist in our communities.


WE WANT FULL EMPLOYMENT FOR OUR PEOPLE.

We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every person employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the American businessmen will not give full employment, then the technology and means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.


WE WANT AN END TO THE ROBBERY BY THE CAPITALISTS OF OUR BLACK AND OPPRESSED COMMUNITIES.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules were promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of our fifty million Black people. Therefore, we feel this is a modest demand that we make.


WE WANT DECENT HOUSING, FIT FOR THE SHELTER OF HUMAN BEINGS.

We believe that if the landlords will not give decent housing to our Black and oppressed communities, then housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that the people in our communities, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for the people.


WE WANT DECENT EDUCATION FOR OUR PEOPLE THAT EXPOSES THE TRUE NATURE OF THIS DECADENT AMERICAN SOCIETY. WE WANT EDUCATION THAT TEACHES US OUR TRUE HISTORY AND OUR ROLE IN THE PRESENT-DAY SOCIETY.

We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of the self. If you do not have knowledge of yourself and your position in the society and in the world, then you will have little chance to know anything else.


WE WANT COMPLETELY FREE HEALTH CARE FOR All BLACK AND OPPRESSED PEOPLE.

We believe that the government must provide, free of charge, for the people, health facilities which will not only treat our illnesses, most of which have come about as a result of our oppression, but which will also develop preventive medical programs to guarantee our future survival. We believe that mass health education and research programs must be developed to give all Black and oppressed people access to advanced scientific and medical information, so we may provide our selves with proper medical attention and care.


WE WANT AN IMMEDIATE END TO POLICE BRUTALITY AND MURDER OF BLACK PEOPLE, OTHER PEOPLE OF COLOR, All OPPRESSED PEOPLE INSIDE THE UNITED STATES.

We believe that the racist and fascist government of the United States uses its domestic enforcement agencies to carry out its program of oppression against black people, other people of color and poor people inside the united States. We believe it is our right, therefore, to defend ourselves against such armed forces and that all Black and oppressed people should be armed for self defense of our homes and communities against these fascist police forces.


WE WANT AN IMMEDIATE END TO ALL WARS OF AGGRESSION.

We believe that the various conflicts which exist around the world stem directly from the aggressive desire of the United States ruling circle and government to force its domination upon the oppressed people of the world. We believe that if the United States government or its lackeys do not cease these aggressive wars it is the right of the people to defend themselves by any means necessary against their aggressors.


WE WANT FREEDOM FOR ALL BLACK AND OPPRESSED PEOPLE NOW HELD IN U. S. FEDERAL, STATE, COUNTY, CITY AND MILITARY PRISONS AND JAILS. WE WANT TRIALS BY A JURY OF PEERS FOR All PERSONS CHARGED WITH SO-CALLED CRIMES UNDER THE LAWS OF THIS COUNTRY.

We believe that the many Black and poor oppressed people now held in United States prisons and jails have not received fair and impartial trials under a racist and fascist judicial system and should be free from incarceration. We believe in the ultimate elimination of all wretched, inhuman penal institutions, because the masses of men and women imprisoned inside the United States or by the United States military are the victims of oppressive conditions which are the real cause of their imprisonment. We believe that when persons are brought to trial they must be guaranteed, by the United States, juries of their peers, attorneys of their choice and freedom from imprisonment while awaiting trial.


WE WANT LAND, BREAD, HOUSING, EDUCATION, CLOTHING, JUSTICE, PEACE AND PEOPLE'S COMMUNITY CONTROL OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are most disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpation, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

[Honeykiss1974]

Hmm, after reading this, i wonder was there EVER a time that these ideas were applicable?

[Steeltrap]

This is food for thought, but I just don't see much of it becoming reality.

Much of it is borderline communism/socialism. I'm not sure that anything that smacks of collectivism can become a reality. For instance, there is too much money in healthcare for the system to be dismantled and replaced by single-payer. And we know that $$$ talks, and BS walks.

Also, blacks are affected by racism, IMO, at different levels. My situation is different than someone who hasn't had the benefit of a college education or increased opportunities.

Some years ago, I was reading a column from William Raspberry of the Washington Post and he compared racism's impact on black people like the rain. He said that the black middle class, as it were, had "coats" and "boots" for protection.

[Honeykiss1974]

I wonder what does the columnist consider to be "boots" and "coats" of protection, in regards to middle class blacks and racism?

I do think that this "ten-point" program might have been considered the BP's opinion of reparations (or "boots" and "coats" protection) for African Americans (which I do believe is something that should happen, but will it materialize???? I doubt it..)

Shoot, I think they nned to add "Free College Education" to that list. Socialism starts to look good around the 14th of every month, when I get my bill from the US Dept. of Ed.

[Steeltrap]

Originally posted by Honeykiss1974
I wonder what does the columnist consider to be "boots" and "coats" of protection, in regards to middle class blacks and racism?

I do think that this "ten-point" program might have been considered the BP's opinion of reparations (or "boots" and "coats" protection) for African Americans (which I do believe is something that should happen, but will it materialize???? I doubt it..)

Shoot, I think they nned to add "Free College Education" to that list. Socialism starts to look good around the 14th of every m
month, when I get my bill from the US Dept. of Ed.

I suspect he means education, job status, income, et al, when he talks about boots and coats of protection.

I'm down with a free college education. It would have saved my 'rents $40K back in the mid-80s.

[Steeltrap]

This is from The Black World Today, and I happen to agree with a lot of what the author says.
A March Won't Convince Americans Reparations Isn't A Terrible Idea


By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
TBWT Contributor
Article Dated 8/18/2002


On a recent radio talk show a caller told anti-reparations crusader David Horowitz that reparations advocates didn't give a hang what Horowitz thought about reparations. He assured listeners that reparations advocates would force America to own up to its nightmarish slave past and compensate blacks for their suffering. Horowitz shrugged off the criticism, insisted that most Americans still think that reparations for slavery is a terrible idea, and defiantly announced that he would take his anti-reparations road show back to colleges in the Fall to prove it.

Horowitz and the caller are right and wrong on reparations. Once a fringe issue touted by a motley mix of black separatists, zealots, and crackpots, and that respected mainstream civil rights leaders shunned like the plague, reparations has now been rammed onto the nation's public policy plate. The NAACP, Urban League, and Congressional Black Caucus leaders all agree that reparations have some merit. Outside of President Bush's National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, no other prominent black dares to publicly denounce reparations. Even some top white politicians such as Chicago Mayor Richard Daley have given passing nod to reparations as valid for consideration.

The Washington D.C. reparations march aimed to put pressure on Congress and the Bush administration to soften their Formica-like resistance to reparations. But a march, no matter how great the noise and numbers, won't make Bush any more willing to embrace reparations. The reason is simple. Bush reads the opinion polls and they show that the overwhelming majority of whites, non-blacks, and even many blacks, think that reparations is a bad idea. And the numbers aren't close.

A CNN/USA Today poll taken after blacks filed two well-publicized reparations lawsuit last February found that seventy-five percent of Americans said that corporations should not pay reparations for slavery, and a whopping ninety percent said the government should not pay reparations.

Reparations advocates have grabbed at every argument in the book to dent the wall of public resistance to reparations. They assure that black billionaires, corporate presidents, superstar athletes and entertainers won't get a dime of reparations money, that it will go to programs to aid the black poor, that it won't guilt trip all whites, and that Japanese-Americans and Holocaust survivors have gotten reparations for the atrocities against them.

These arguments still fall on deaf ears. The reparations movement can't shake the deep public tag that it is a movement exclusively of, by, and for blacks. Despite countless speeches pleading for racial brotherhood and interracial cooperation by Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders, that same tag was imprinted on the civil rights movement in the early 1960s.

It took national shock and revulsion over Southern mobs beating, maiming, and killing white civil rights workers, and the massive presence of thousands of white students in Southern backwater towns to shake the "for blacks only" tag from the civil rights movement. Only then did it gain widespread public and political acceptance as an authentic movement to change laws, and public policy that would benefit labor, women, minorities, and even whites.

The reparations movement does not possess the inherent racial egalitarianism of the civil rights movement. It is ensnared by its racial isolationism. The focus is solely to compensate the descendants of black slaves for the wrong of slavery, and whipsaw whites for present-day racism. Most whites almost certainly applaud the fight to improve failing inner city public schools, health care, provide better housing and health care, and to battle drugs, and the near pandemic scourge HIV/AID affliction among blacks.

But they also believe that these are social ills that slam other minorities, the poor, and marginally employed working class whites nearly as hard. Reparations advocates make no mention of this.

As a consequence, reparations comes off as a hustle and scam that would flush their hard earned tax dollars down a black hole with nothing in return for them. In a time of soaring budget deficits, corporate meltdowns, the stock downslide, and the looming peril of massive layoffs that batter middle-class workers, reparations seems like a frivolous issue that is politically divisive and racially polarizing.

Despite the colossal resistance to reparations, a compelling argument can still be made that it's in the interest of government and business to pump more funds into specific projects such as AIDS/HIV education and prevention, remedial education, job skills and training, drug and alcohol counseling and rehabilitation, computer access and literacy training programs. They would boost the black poor, not gut public revenues, and most importantly, not finger all whites as culpable for slavery.

The fact that thousands were willing to march for reparations guarantees that the issue won't go away. But as long as most Americans are convinced that reparations is a terrible idea, a march won't do much to change their thinking on that.