chapter 15 a bundle of energy walked into the black panther party office on 7th avenue if a light had been plugged into me i'm sure i would have lit up half of harlem i was fired up in raring to go when i joined the bpp i was determined to give it everything i had the officer of the day gave me a form to fill out he couldn't find the second sheet so i went back with him to look for it he was searching through a file cabinet which was in a state of anti-order it was a complete mess i offered to arrange it for him and the brother consented in a minute i was knee-deep in paper indexing and putting everything in alphabetical order [Music] after everybody's security files were filed i cut index markers out of a manila folder thinking about how lacked security was i had just walked in off the street and they let me go through all the files i explained the new system to the brother happy at least that the experience gained from all those boring office jobs was put to some revolutionary use that same evening i was on the bus to philadelphia the party had called for a constitutional convention to write a new constitution that would guarantee the rights of the poor and oppressed and would be anti-racist and anti-fascist we were attending the plenary session for the convention to be held later in dc this session was a definite up everybody's spirits were soaring it took my breath away to see all those revolutionaries get up and tell it like it was i was happy as a dog in boneville my hotel room was a pool table in the basement of a church i slept better than a princess on 20 mattresses when i got back to new york i was assigned to the medical cadre [Music] joan byrd was my immediate supervisor she had been a nursing student and was one of the defendants in the new york panther 21 case she was out on one hundred thousand dollars bail and busy working on the trial she had been beaten tortured and hung upside down out of a police station window she had big soft eyes nervous lips and the face of someone who had been forced to grow up too soon she reminded me of someone who had led a very sheltered life and then all of a sudden found herself in the cold cruel world she was sort of shy and i felt sorry for her because she seemed to be under so much pressure she took everything to heart nothing seemed to slide off her back she worried about everything and everyone she was facing 30 years in prison so i had to do most of the medical cadre work and she worried herself sick about that the medical cadre was responsible for the health care of the panthers we made medical and dental appointments for them and taught them basic first aid so that they could help the people in emergencies periodically we set up a table on the street corner and gave free tb tests or gave out information on sickle cell anemia it was also my job to work with the black medical students and doctors who we were counting on to help us set up a free clinic in harlem the panther party had brought a brown stone on 127th street and as soon as it was renovated we planned to open a free clinic there every week all the medical cadre members from the bronx brooklyn harlem jamaica and corona branches met at the bronx ministry of information on my first trip to the ministry i carried a big stack of panther newspapers i was a lousy paper seller and most of the time i got some of my doing good friends to chip in and buy them then we give them away to the people the head of the medical cadre was alaiwa and from the first moment she gained my respect and admiration she was serious about everything that concerned black people but when it came to their health she was a fanatic she demanded that we take our job seriously and woe to the medical cadre who showed up at the weekly meeting with nothing on their progress reports alaiwa had a young daughter but she nevertheless did the work of two people i got expelled from the party though that first night after the medical cadre meeting when i came out of the meeting my stack of panther papers was gone i axed around but no one had seen them finally robert bay the head of the whole east coast branch of the party said that he had seen them where are they i asked i threw them away what do you mean you threw them away i asked thinking it was some kind of joke i threw them away he insisted y'all know that you're not supposed to leave the papers out here on the desk this will teach you to put the papers up on the rack where they belong i explained that it was my first time coming up to the ministry and that i had no way of knowing the procedure you should have axed he replied arrogantly i threw them away and that's that i was losing my patience look man why don't you just give me my paper so that i can get out of here i don't have time to stand here all night i told you i threw the papers away and that's that then you're either a liar or a fool i shot back he had made me mad gone and stepped on my last nerve then he tried to get all bad getting all up in my face trying to defend his stupid arrogance i was in no mood for fooling around i cursed him out royally and walked out of the office the next day when i walked into the harlem office bashir the officer of the day told me i would have to leave what do you mean leave i asked he said that he was sorry but robert bay had called and told him that i was no longer in the party i was burnt i got the bronx ministry and told them to put bae on the phone and proceeded to call him the unprincipled arrogant idiot he was in addition to being cowardly he hadn't even told me to my face that i was expelled i was so warm i wasn't even surprised when he apologized and told me i was reinstated i hate arrogance whether it's white or purple or black some people let power go to their heads they think that just because they have some kind of title in front of their name you're supposed to bend over and kiss them on the ass the only great people i have met have been modest and humble you can't claim that you love people when you don't respect them and you can't call for political unity unless you practice it in your relationships and that doesn't happen out of nowhere there's something that has got to be put into practice every day the first day i was assigned to the breakfast program i overslept to get there on time i had to get up at 4 30 in the morning i was the picture of shame and remorse as i came plodding into the office fancy meeting you here the sister who i was supposed to be helping said so nice of you to come [Music] later on that evening i criticized myself for being late that's all right sister the brother who is leading [Music] the meeting said you can do penance by working on the breakfast program for life for life i repeated yep you can show your sincerity to the hungry children of harlem by working on the breakfast for as long as you're in the party i have always hated to get up in the morning and the sheer idea of getting up every day at 4 30 made me grown but i thought about the children i'd let down getting up early should be an easy thing for a revolutionary i thought about those who had given their lives for our struggle and decided it wasn't so hard after all later one of the sisters told me don't worry they'll just assign you to the breakfast program every day until you're used to it and they can count on you to be disciplined the same thing happened to me [Music] i was glad it had happened to others because i felt like such a dumbbell got to try harder i told myself working on the breakfast program turned out to be an absolute delight the work was so fulfilling the harlem branch had breakfast programs in three different churches and i rotated among all three from the first day i saw those kids my heart went out to them they were such bright open little people each with his or her own personality i spent the first two weeks or so just getting my cooking act together one little girl came over to me and tats me on the back there's something wrong with your pancakes what's wrong with them they don't taste good making breakfast for a whole bunch of hungry kids in the morning is no easy task especially when you don't know how many are coming or how much they're going to eat there was one little boy who i was convinced had a tapeworm he put away so much food it was unbelievable one day i saw him stuff some food into his pockets would you like some paper to wrap that in i asked him tearing off a piece of foil i wasn't stealing tears welled up in his eyes of course you weren't everything is free here and you can take as much as you want but don't you want to wrap it up so your pockets don't get all greasy it's for my mother we don't have no food and the stove is broke you can tell your mother that she can come down if she wants to and you can take as much food home as you want to a few of the other kids were looking at us that goes for everyone if you want to take a sandwich or something with you just let me know and i'll give you some wrapping paper for it after that i would try to remember to ask if anybody wanted anything to go most of the kids were interested give me an egg sandwich to go i want two sausages to go we rarely met the parents when a new kid joined the program the parents might drop by to check it out but in general they would only come to leave the kids or pick them up the breakfast program in east harlem was the poorest in the middle of winter some of the kids were without hats gloves scarves and boots and wore just some skimpy coats or jackets when it was possible we tried to hook them up with something from the free clothing drive only once in a while when everything went smoothly and we were through early did we get a chance to spend some time with the children usually we were in a rush making sure they got out to school on time some of the panthers wanted them to learn the 10-point program and platform and others wanted to teach them panther songs i prefer talking to them sitting down with them and exchanging ideas so we just sort of combined these approaches we were all dead set against cramming things in their heads or teaching them meaningless wrote phrases the children were so naturally curious we had to take care not to let the food burn while we answered their questions my closest friends in the party were daruba katawayo and jamal they were all out on bail from the panther 21 case they came over to my house and we sat for hours talking politics the party north korea and what was happening on 116th street i learned more in one night than i learned in city college in a month they had a hard time dealing with me though i can be stubborn as six mules and will argue anyone down until i'm convinced one way or the other although i no longer hated white people and no longer saw all of them as the enemy i was still not too fond of them as far as i was concerned it was the duty of black people to work in the black community and it was the job of white people to go into the white community and organize white people the brothers were in 100 agreement with that we also agreed that it was necessary for black white hispanic native american and oriental people to come together to fight we disagreed on who and what i should study usually after a disagreement they suggested i read this or that often marx lenin or angles i preferred ho chi minh kim il-sung che or fidel but i ended up having to get into marx and lennon just to understand a lot of the speeches and stuff huey newton was putting out it wasn't easy reading but i was glad i did it it opened up my horizons a hell of a lot i didn't relate to them as the great white fathers or like some kind of gods like some of the white revolutionaries did as far as i was concerned they were two dudes who had made contributions to revolutionary struggle too great to be ignored the more i studied the more critical i became of the political education program and the party there were three different political education classes community classes classes for bpp cadre and pe classes for panther leadership in the community classes panthers explain the 10-point program and the general objectives and philosophy of the bpp as well as various articles that appeared in the black panther newspaper as far as i was concerned these were the best pe classes the party ever gave if the teachers were good the classes were interesting and fun with a few exceptions pe classes for party members turned out to be just the opposite we reviewed articles in the bpp paper read passages from mal's read book and discussed certain speeches and articles by various party members most of the time whoever was giving the class discussed whatever we were studying and explained it but without giving the underlying issues or putting it into any historical context the basic problem was not whether the teacher was good or bad the basic problem stemmed from the fact that the bpp had no systematic approach to political education they were reading the red book but didn't know who harriet tubman marcus garvey and nat turner were they talked about inner communalism but still really believed that the civil war was fought to free the slaves a whole lot of them barely understood any kind of history black african or otherwise huey newton had written that politics was war without bloodshed and that war was politics with bloodshed to a lot of panthers however struggle consisted of only two aspects picking up the gun and serving the people that was the main reason many party members in my opinion underestimated the need to unite with other black organizations and to struggle around various community issues a lot of the sisters and brothers had joined because they were sick and tired of the oppression they had been suffering most of them had never been in the struggle before quite a few joined thinking the party was going to issue them a gun and direct them to go out and shoot pigs most of these brothers and sisters had attended inferior schools which either taught them lies or nothing at all education of every kind was sorely needed without an adequate education program many panthers fell into a robiton bag they repeated slogans and phrases without understanding their complete meaning often resulting in dogmatic and short-sighted practices for example one day an african brother who was working with one of the african liberation movements came into the office and gave us a beautiful calendar put out by one of the african liberation groups it was bad it had beautiful pictures of african freedom fighters and said something like international support for african liberation the first thing i did was hang it up when i came into the office the next day the calendar was gone when i asked what had happened to it they said the calendar said international and we're not internationalist we're inter communalist i'm convinced that a systematic program for political education ranging from the simplest to the highest level is imperative for any successful organization or movement for black liberation in this country the party had some of the most politically conscious sisters and brothers as members but in some ways it failed to spread that consciousness to the cadre in general i also thought it was a real shame the bpp didn't teach panthers organizing and mobilizing techniques some members were natural geniuses at organizing people but they were usually the busiest comrades with the most responsibility part of the problem was that the party had grown so fast that there wasn't a lot of time to come up with step-by-step approaches to things the other part of the problem was that almost from its inception the bpp was under attack from the us government [Music] at first i didn't feel the repression too deeply i knew the party was under attack but it felt like it wasn't so near like it was lingering in the background what made me maddest was the media treatment of the bpp which gave the impression that the party was racist and violent and it worked the pigs would burst into a panther office shoot first and ask questions later the press always reported that the police had uncovered a large arsenal of weapons later when the arsenal turned out to be a few legally registered rifles and shotguns the press never printed a word the same thing goes on today nobody gets upset about white people having guns but let a black person have a gun and something criminal is going on the only time white america is in favor of black people having guns is when we are using them to do america's dirty work they've got a lot of black people so scared they are scared even to think about owning a gun but the way the tide of racism is rising in this country black people better be more scared to not have a gun than to have one [Music] with the ku klux klan and all these other races running around black people have got to be suicidal if they don't own and know how to operate a gun if you don't own a gun now you'd better rush out and buy one because in a few years the way this country is moving it might be against the law for blacks to buy guns one of the best things about struggling is the people you meet before i became involved i never dreamed such beautiful people existed of course there were some creeps but i can say without the slightest hesitation that i have been blessed with meeting some of the kindest most courageous most principled most informed and intelligent people on the face of the earth i owe a great deal to those who have helped me loved me taught me and pulled my coat when i was moving in the wrong direction [Music] if there is such a thing as luck i've had an abundance of it and the ones who have brought it to me are my friends and comrades my wild big hearted friends with their pretty ways and pretty thoughts have given me more happiness that i will ever deserve there was never a time no matter what horrible thing i was undergoing when i felt completely alone maybe it's ironic i don't know but the one thing i do know is that the black liberation movement has done more for me than i will ever be able to do for it becoming zade's friend was something really important after i joined the party he would drop by my house every so often we would listen to music and talk politics i was forever teasing him about being part of the leadership he was minister of information since he was the only leader up at the bronx ministry with the exception of afeni shakur i had any respect for he would laugh at my robert bay jokes but he never once said a disparaging word about any of the other comrades i also respected him because he refused to become part of the macho cult that was an official body in the bpp he never voted on issues or took a position just to be one of the boys when brothers made an unprincipled attack on sisters zade refused to participate whenever we hooked up for a meeting at somebody's house he was the first to volunteer to cook dinner or if dinner was already cooked the first to roll up his sleeves and wash the dishes i knew this had to be especially hard for him because he was small and his masculinity was always being challenged in some way by the more backward muscle-headed men in the party zade always treated me and all the other sisters with respect i enjoyed his friendship because he was one of those rare men completely capable of being friends with a woman without having designs on her we communicated on such an intense honest level that afterward i wondered if it had been real and he was cultured when you say cultured most people think you're talking about the opera and amy vanderbilt's etiquette book but that's not what i'm talking about he was well versed and well educated about every aspect of black life he could not res he could not only recite langston hughes by heart and give a biographical rundown of coltrane bessie smith or james cleveland but he could also sit down and have an intelligent conversation about dream books or argo starch eaters after a while zade asked me to work with him on party projects it was mostly dealing with white support groups who were involved in raising bail for the panther 21 members still in jail i hated it at the time i felt that anything below 1 10th street was another country all my activities were centered in harlem and i almost never left it doing defense committee work was definitely not up my alley i think that one of the reasons zade insisted on bringing me to some of these events is that he knew how much i hated them i was the perfect angry panther i hated standing around while all these white people asked me to explain myself my existence i became a master of the one-line answer what made you become a panther oppression what do you think about huey newton he's a right on black revolutionary leader what do you think white people should be doing organizing other white people in their communities supporting black and third world liberation struggles and helping to free the panther 21. once a guy asked if i was really going to off the pigs not tonight i couldn't get over how personal some of those people tried to get even though i'd never seen them before [Music] one came over to me and asked if zade was my panther husband when i looked at her as if she was crazy for asking me a question like that she said giggling all over herself i mean i mean is he your cat another woman came over and stuck her hands all in my hair oh i just had to touch her hair it's so kinky zade would be steady trying to convince the defense groups to raise more money he explained how important it was to have the panther 21 out on the street organizing and educating people about what was going on in america zade was polite and understanding and patient after he gave his little speech he would turn to me and ask what do you think about that sister wrapping in my best panther cadence i would say something like black people have been oppressed for 400 years we are still being oppressed the panther 21 don't need any moral support they need concrete support they don't want to hear that you sympathize with them they want to hear that you are willing and ready to help liberate them when we were finished a second donation would be given zade was usually cool and poised at these functions except once [Music] we were at a meeting with the computer people for peace a group that was helping to raise the money to bail out sandiata akoli zaid said sandiata should be the next panther to be bailed out because his leadership qualities were sorely needed in the party one guy kept interrupting him implying that zade was pushing for santiata's release because they were friends that he was being subjective and dealing from an emotional rather than a scientific objective analysis zade's face underwent a complete change i could see that he was trying to control himself to keep from going off on this dude what do you mean i'm being subjective don't you ever open your mouth to tell me i'm subjective as long as you live my brother lumumba my own flesh and blood has also been locked up for more than a year and i haven't asked you for a dime to bail him out lumumba shakur was one of the panther 21 a complete hush came over the room the computer people said they would do everything they could to raise money for some diade's bail and that's what they did the only thing was that once the 100 000 cash bail was raised pig judge mart taw refused to release him or any of the others we were furious and helpless after a while everything seemed strange to me i was catching all those weird vibrations and sensations i couldn't quite put my finger on it but i could sense a whole lot of stuff was going on i felt like i was standing on top of a river with currents swirling down underneath the surface all these strange things were starting to happen i would go to the laundromat and find a black policeman there who said he wanted to join the party every once in a while i turn around and see strange men following me even though i had no money to pay my telephone bill and had long stopped paying it the telephone kept working and after a while i stopped receiving any bills politically i was not at all happy with the direction of the party huey went on a nationwide tour advocating his new theory of intercommunality the essence of the theory was that imperialism had reached such a degree that sovereign borders were no longer recognized and that oppressed nations no longer existed only oppressed communities within and outside the u.s the problem was that somebody had forgotten to tell these oppressed communities that they were no longer nations even worse almost no one understood huey's long speeches explaining intercommunalism huey newton was not what you would call a good speaker in fact he had a kind of high-pitched monotonous voice and his rambling for three hours about the negation of the negation was sheer disaster instead of criticizing what was happening most of the party members defended it when i said that huey needed speaking lessons they jumped down my throat when huey changed his title from defense minister to the ridiculous sounding supreme commander and then to the even more ridiculous supreme servant damn near nobody said a word that was one of the big problems in the party criticism and self-criticism were not encouraged and the little that was given often was not taken seriously constructive criticism and self-criticism are extremely important for any revolutionary organization without them people tend to drown in their mistakes not learn from them because i was still a college student i was often called on by the bpp to do student work i didn't mind working with students to coordinate this or that but i was deathly afraid of speaking in public but they insisted i had to learn in order to be effective on campus i had an old rickety tape recorder that was on its last legs i decided to use it to practice public speaking on and on i went blah blah blah into the microphone the telephone rang i put the mic down turned off the recorder and rushed to the phone hello joanne stop making tapes the voice said the phone clicked i stood there with the receiver in my hand i had to get out of there i ran to get my coat i needed some privacy to think every day at the office things were getting stranger and stranger rumors that the pigs were going to attack the office were rampant convinced of the invasion the leadership decided to secure the office the big storefront window was removed and replaced by a wooden partition windows without glass were cut into the wood covered by little wooden doors what are all those little holes for i asked to shoot out of they told me piles of sandbags were brought into the office i didn't believe that [ __ ] everybody was talking about defending the office why do we have to defend the office i asked they told me something about executive mandate number three it said panthers were supposed to defend the office against pig attacks i was all in favor of self-defense but i couldn't see giving my life up just to defend the office it's the principle of the thing they told me i didn't understand what principle they were talking about one of the basic laws of people's struggle was to retreat when the enemy is strong and to attack when the enemy is weak as far as i was concerned defending the office was suicidal the pigs had manpower initiative surprise and gun powder we would just be sitting ducks i felt that the party was dealing from an emotional rather than a rational basis just because you believe in self-defense doesn't mean you let yourself be sucked into defending yourself on the enemy's terms one of the party's major weaknesses i thought the failure to clearly differentiate between above ground political struggle and underground clandestine military struggle an above-ground political organization can't wage guerrilla war any more than an underground army can do aboveground political work although the two must work together they must have completely separate structures and any links between the two must remain secret educating the people about the necessity for self-defense and for armed struggle was one thing but maintaining a policy of defending party offices against insurmountable odds was another of course if the police just came in and started shooting defending yourself made sense but the point is to try and prevent that from happening one day in the not too distant future any black organization that is not based on bootlicking and tomming will be forced underground and as fast as this country is moving to the fascist far right black revolutionary organizations should start preparing for the innova inevitability fascist governments do not permit revolutionary or progressive opposition groups to exist no matter how peaceful or non-violent they are it doesn't matter whether the fascist government simply outlaws the groups like in nazi germany or mounts a counterintelligence campaign to destroy opposition groups like in the u.s it was growing more and more impossible to get work done everything seemed to me in a continuous state of chaos the party decided at one point to open a saturday liberation school for children and i was assigned to the project i was really ecstatic about it because i love working with children and i was really tired of adults at the time being my usual reserve self i threw every bit of energy i had into the project i collected books materials paints photographs children's black history stories children's records etc two other comrades were assigned to the project everybody pitched in and after a few weeks we had a whole pile of children attending just as we got the program on its feet i was called aside and taken into con confidence the party had information that the pigs were going to raid the office in about two weeks if the pigs were going to attack the office why would they bother to tell us i asked we have our sources sister i was told just like the pigs have their sources we have ours i was skeptical but i figured they knew more about it than i did in preparation for the coming attack i was asked to prepare a child's care place a safe house for panther children it sounded kind of wild but i agreed to do it in the back of my mind i half thought they were testing me to see how i would respond in crisis i put the child's care thing together two weeks came and went but there was no invasion in addition a lot of things were going on that i was not too happy about plans priorities and procedures changed daily and most of the time the changes were ill-conceived everything had an arbitrary air to it and i certainly did not have the feeling that we were waging a step-by-step analytical struggle there was little internal conflict in either the harlem branch or the new york chapter for the most part panthers were a friendly open group of people who really went out of their way to be kind and helpful and in spite of all the pressure and hardships they had to deal with managed to be principled and to fight as hard as they knew how for our people we had a bit of a leadership problem with robert bay and jolly who were both from the west coast bay's problem was that he was none too bright and that he had an aggressive even belligerent way of talking and dealing with people jolly's problem was that he was robert bay's shadow bay later became huey newton's bodyguard a job for which he was much more suited cotton had come to harlem from california everybody loved him he was everybody's main man he had known bunchey carter little bobby hutton the chief david hillard and of course the rage eldritch cleaver cotton had been sent to new york and put in charge of fixing up the brownstone the party had bought on 127th street according to the grapevine huey wanted to move bpp headquarters to new york and cotton was to prepare the security for the house he used to mosey over to the harlem office with a bottle of cheap pluck in his back pocket and tell war stories he would sip his wine and talk about what had gone down on the coast the first time i went over to inspect the 127th street house cotton gave me a guided tour he explained the whole futuristic security plan he was going to hook up the security system so that if so much as a foot was put on the front steps of the building an alarm would alert the security officer inside if it was the pigs huge flood lights would be turned on blinding them thick metal doors would glide into place and a lot of other fantastic things would happen that i don't remember i kept my mouth shut because i knew absolutely nothing about security but i silently wondered why he didn't put in stuff that was more conventional like a closed circuit tv i had a special interest in the building since the ground floor and the basement were designated to be the free health clinic at the time the basement was a disaster with no plumbing no heat no electricity and a mountain load of bricks powder and debris cotton assured me that the basement would be fixed up within six months next he showed me huey's room it was the only room in the house somewhat fixed up he had put up wooden paneling there was a small table in a single bed which he carefully explained to me was made up in military style ready at all times for the minister i looked at him like he was crazy of all the things i could imagine huey doing sleeping in that freezing house on the spartan bed was not one of them cotton talked about huey with this eerie reverence that made me sick and it sounded sure enough weird how cotton talked about the minister's bed i visited the house on 127th street many times over the next few months hard as i tried i could not find one shred of progress i came to the conclusion that cotton was a big mouth and a drunk but everybody kept telling me how hard he was working so i figured he was working on something secret they had obviously decided not to tell me about during one of my trips to the house cotton's assistant told me he didn't feel well i made an appointment with the doctor and called to tell him the time a few days later when i came into the office everyone looked at me like i had committed some crime against the people what's wrong i asked cotton says that the brother who works for him is sick and that you refused to do anything for him what i was completely surprised that's not true cotton says that's what's happened fired up mad i tried to get cotton on the phone but it was out of order it took me several days to get the thing straight but finally the assistant confirmed that i had made the doctor's appointment for him but that he had neglected to keep it and had gone home instead i tried to figure out why cotton had made such a fuss the only conclusion i could come to is that he was annoyed with me because i kept pushing him to get the clinic in order several years later after the freedom of information act was passed it was revealed that cotton had been working undercover for the police things seem to be going from bad to worse although there wasn't much dissension in the new york branch there was buku dissension and disunity on the national level every other weekend somebody was going out to the west coast to deal with contradictions everybody was uptight and miserable and then everything started to happen at once first there was an article stating that huey was living in a 650 a month apartment in oakland the harlem branch was shocked because in those days that was a whole lot of rent and it contrasted sharply with the living conditions of the panthers in new york panthers who own little more than the clothes on their backs were out in the street in the freezing cold weather selling papers with big pieces of cardboard in their shoes and with flimsy jackets that did nothing to hold back the hawk the party issued a statement that huey was living in the apartment for security purposes but a lot of panthers were not at all convinced i wanted to believe the security story but it didn't fit my sense of logic then came the long series of expulsions which proved to be the last straw many long-standing loyal panthers were being expelled by huey one of the first to go in huey's private purge was geronimo elmer pratt geronimo was widely respected somewhat of a panther folk hero when i heard about it the first thing i did was go to someone who would know and try to find out the real deal although paranoid and upset the person broke down the story to me just enough to let me know the expulsion was probably unjust i couldn't imagine geronimo being an enemy of the people any more than i could imagine myself being one then came the expulsions of the panther 21 supposedly for writing an open letter to the weathermen that was somewhat critical of bpp policies i had read the letter and could find nothing in it to merit such extreme action especially since it might prove prejudicial to their ongoing trial i was becoming more and more critical of what was going on in the party but i loved it nevertheless and wanted to see it functioning on the right track for the first time i questioned whether i could continue within the party almost every project i was working on was frustrated and barely able to get off the ground the saturday liberation school the free health clinic and a lot of the student work were all on hold i felt frustrated and a bit demoralized this party was a lot different from the black panther party i had fallen in love with gone were the black berets and leather jackets because of police harassment panthers had been ordered not to wear the uniform except for special occasions gone were the panther marches the panther songs gone were the free huey free bobby song sung to the tune of wade in the water gone were the big panther buttons and big panther flags flapping in the wind everything felt different the easy friendly openness had been replaced by fear and paranoia the beautiful revolutionary creativity i had loved so much was gone and replaced by dogmatic stagnation it was around this time that zade and i had our big falling out i had made a list of the criticisms of the party along with a list of things i thought were positive and a lot of suggestions i thought might correct some of the problems the party was facing i called zade and told him i needed to talk to him when he arrived i bared my heart and soul to him i must have talked for a good two or three hours raising all of the political and tactical concerns i had they listened to everything i said without taking any position one way or the other then he told me he had to leave and would talk to me another time i was furious i felt he was acting in his role as leadership and using our friendship to gain information about how i thought to gauge the level of dissension within the ranks throughout my days in the party i've always been outspoken and blunt zade and i had always been frank with each other and i interpreted his silence as a declaration that he supported and defended policies i considered unprincipled and politically incorrect after that we didn't see or speak to each other for a long time i had no way of knowing the thin tightrope he was walking or the pressure he was under [Music] zade was acting as peacemaker between huey and the panther 21 furiously trying to get huey to rescind his expulsion order zade felt that to take any position in reference to problems within the party might jeopardize his role and result in dire consequences for the panther 21 katawayo and deruba who had not been expelled because they were out on bail and had not signed the letter were also attempting to get the panther 21 reinstated they were under a lot of pressure from both sides huey wanted them to support the expulsion and the expelled panthers wanted them to criticize huey's actions like zayd set in daruba honestly believed they could straighten out the madness and were it not for the fbi they probably could have nobody back then had ever heard of the counterintelligence program cointelpro set up by the fbi nobody could possibly have known that the fbi had sent a phony letter to eldridge cleaver in algiers signed by the panther 21 criticizing huey newton's leadership no one could have known that the fbi had sent a letter to huey's brother saying the new york panthers were plotting to kill him no one could have known that the fbi's co-intel pro was attempting to destroy the black panther party in particular and the black liberation movement in general using divide and conquer tactics the fbi's cointel program consisted of turning members of organizations against each other pitting one black organization against another huey ended up suspending set in daruba from the party ban branded them as enemies of the people and caused them to go into hiding in fear for their lives no one had the slightest idea that this whole scenario was carefully manipulated and orchestrated by the fbi [Music] when they brought the black panther newspaper to the office the one that branded daruba set and set's wife connie matthews tabber as enemies of the people i refused to sell it and attacked it as an outright lie i had been so outspoken about my criticisms that i knew it was just a matter of time before i too would be expelled [Music] sick and disgusted i decided it was time for me to leave the party [Music] most of the panthers understood why i left and i stayed on good terms with them they would call me and ask if they could drop by or sleep over at my crib almost daily i got a blow-by-blow description of what was going on in the party the tension had increased even more the differences between the new york cadre and the west coast leadership growing even wider i tried to stress to the comrades what i saw to be the importance of everybody sitting down and resolving their differences no such thing occurred in fact a group came to my house jumping for joy they had split from the west coast leadership it really saddened me that they had not been able to sit down together and mend their differences after i left the party my life became more and more impossible everywhere i went it seemed like i would turn around to find two detectives following behind me i would look out my window and there in the middle of harlem in front of my house would be two white men sitting and reading the newspaper i was scared to death to talk in my own house when i wanted to say something that was not public information i turned the record player up real loud so that the buggers would have a hard time hearing it was so weird i still hadn't received a telephone bill and months had gone by since i paid the last one yet the telephone was always working strange people visited my neighbors asking questions i hated to move from my apartment because the rent was so cheap i was paying something like 65 dollars a month and if you could get used to the fifth floor walk up it wasn't at all bad it was one of those rent-controlled buildings right across the street from city college where i was enrolled i had no choice but to leave it was impossible to live amid all those bugging devices i decided to donate the apartment to the panthers and look for somewhere else to live and to spend time with some friends passing a few days here and a few days there until i found another place [Music] one day i was zipping up the avenue on my way home a friend called me over what's up i asked don't go home what do you mean don't go home your place is crawling with pigs they're waiting for you i walked around for a while trying to get my head together what could they do to me if i went home i hadn't done anything i thought about the panther 21 [Music] they hadn't done anything either anyway they can do anything they want i thought about my crib maybe they had been taping my voice and hooking up pieces of conversation to make it seem like there was a conspiracy to do something maybe they would charge me with harboring a fugitive or with conspiracy to harbor a fugitive everybody said they were tailing me so tough because they thought i would lead them to set doruba or some other comrade that i had been forced into hiding maybe they would try to interrogate me beat and torture me until i signed some phony confession or something i decided one thing right then and there i definitely wasn't going home and i definitely wasn't answering anybody's questions about anything i thought of going to evelyn's but i figured that as soon as i showed the pigs would be there waiting for me i decided the best thing i could do was lay low until i found out what was going on and could come to some decision