Week 9

This week was interesting because it changed the way I saw the Black Panther Party. I’ve been educated to believe that the Black Panther Party were extremists, brought to believe that by those who are most likely themselves uneducated on this issue. After reading all the points of the Black Panther party I realized their whole purpose was trying to prevent police violence, promote equality in housing, jobs and justice and promote equality in the greater community for mistreated blacks. The points weren’t willy nilly by any means either, each was supported by reasoning and/or solutions. Side note: a decent number of the points in the Black Panther demands were unrealistic, like paying restitution to every black person or freeing all black people from jail. BUT, the point of these demands was to make people see the inequality, which it certainly did. In addition to these points were the rules, holy cow there were a lot of rules about many aspects of daily life. So after reading this my view went from radical extremist to good intentioned and well disciplined members of the community going out trying to make change. The Young Lords……...I’d never heard of them, until now. After reading their plan it seems as though they have a similar plan as the panthers, promote community equality and protecting their people. The Young Lords fell into a similar boat in terms of how realistic their terms were, like liberation of all third world people and community control of land and resources. Overall, what I got from these demands is an understanding. By reading the demands of these groups and the reasoning behind it I got a better perspective on how problems were effecting their lives and what exactly those problems were.