The Black Panther Party’s Ten Point Program: A Manifesto for Absolute Humanity and Justice

Scattered thoughts on racism, rebellion, and revolution, with a call for real solidarity in the fight against racial injustice.

The Ten Point Program, written on October 15th, 1966 by BPP founders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale

In the midst of this pandemic, having been in quarantine for over 80 days now, I’ve been experiencing a natural sadness that I know so many others are too— a feeling of hopelessness, anxiety, and fear over when this nightmare might ever end.

But this week I’m furious. All my sadness has transformed itself into nothing but unadulterated anger.

I am sickened by these supremacist structures that racist oppressors fight and die to uphold. I am sickened by the insidious “I’d vote for Obama a third term” white liberal who would gleefully summon the police on a Black man, fully knowing the power an action like that holds. The white officer conditioned to believe Black people are ‘inherently’ threatening while willfully turning his cheek to the fact that his kin are the ones who have looted, exploited, and profited from centuries of violent colonization, genocide, war, and occupation. They are the threatening ones. Those who consciously benefit and profit with impunity from the immense suffering of others are the threatening ones. They are the ones to whom we should clutch our purses and pearls at when they walk past us…