I remember a group in the Bay area called the white panthers.I believe they symbolized themselves with two giutars crossed with a rifle.They were looking to recruit.I didn't like the rifle and somehow I took them for an anti-panther group which I didn't exactly like either.The panthers weren't a lot better.They carried guns,but they also did a lot of good in Oakland.I believe Shameless mentioned them once.I was hoping to get her to elaborate a bit more.Good or bad they were a part of hippie history.
hey gate, yes I was involved with the white panthers for a while. When I lived at the Good Earth Commune 71/73..It was all brotherly love, I Ching and a lot of PCP..Spacy Stacy, Leo Ron and Aries Larry were the "elders" of the commune and kept the 'records' and the peoples of the commune informed of 'new happenings' Now the house I lived in before I was Good Earth was on old victorain with five floors each one a 'flat' I was living at the street level flat. next floor up was the Good Earth floor above that was wounded knee people and to the side of that was the Black Panthers. The pigs came and busted EVERYone in the building except for the flat I was living in. To make a long story short. I came out n took all the babies n kids that the pigs was gonna take to child haven (orphanage) and I was excepted in and made apart of the commune. All went fine for a couple of yrs. and we branched (the Good Earth) to Oregon and bought up a logging camp. We were a large commune about 500 of us tallied up.. we would travel back n froth..I was in Oregon for a trip to the valley and on my return to the Haight I found that the White Panthers had moved in the building I was in and not only that but they were taking over a lot of the 'houses' in the commune. I did not like this because of the guns and the hard drugs that were being used and the White Panther leader was a drunken fool call John the Barber he was a gung ho sort and no too cool..the good earth was strickly a 'no needle commune'. Well the heroin and crank mongers were movin' in and Spacy left for parts unknown..Leo Ron decided to rip off the money the GE had and and spent it on 'coke'.. The white panthers then took over the HQ on Oak n Cole and and started running people off.. The white panther DID NOT have it together as far as organization and the black panthers hated them and refused to join together with themor have anything to do with them..There were fights on the street and in the houses..You didn't dare venture out on the streets at night for fear of being raped or your throat slit. The Black Panthers were very organised and had strong leaders.. there were not many druggies in the BPs..They had an army of young milatant black men and some white folk too.. I had a run in with a couple of 'lady BPs' who were gonna kick my ass on the way to the beer store on Haight St. for being WP. I picked up a brick off the sidewalk and told them to come on with it..I told them I was NOT a WP, that they had taken over our house, and I was not one of them nor did I want to be. The Wp were soon desolved for lack of supporters. Who wants to follow assholes to doom.. and the BP rained supream..hey the BPs had it going on as far as they were inteligent and focused, they had a cause to fight for and who wanted to argue with Huey Newton.. not me.. I could go on n on, but I think I'll stop here n get some more tea.. Love Shameless
and the White Panther leader was a drunken fool call John the Barber My buddy Gil was with the brown berets here in Southern Cal.He told me one of the guys wanted him to drive down to get booze for the meeting.For the cause they told him.Now Gil had his dad's car and he was more afraid of the old man then he was of the berets.That was the end of that... Thanks for the info,quite interesting.
I love reading about things like this... things that went wrong as a result of the counterculture of the 60s. Not to be critical of the whole period but I guess I like looking at the whole picture, good and bad. It created an opportunity for some people to mutate... The Manson family for starters. Also the Symbionese Liberation Army that kidnapped Patty Hearst in the early 70s would have had its roots back in the 60s. I have the book "Every Secret Thing" but I haven't read it yet. I also have the book "If They Come In The Morning" by Angela Davis - don't know anything about her except she seemed to be another militant, I still have to read this book too.
Angela Davis,a black female self declared communist who "dared" to be a professor I'm thinking at U.C.Davis in Palo Alto or maybe it was up in Santa Rosa(correct me).She wasn't out for personnal gain,she only wanted to teach.The nerve. Patty Hearst carried a gun.Her family owned damn near every newspaper in California and controled the media during her trial.Kidnapped my ass.
The White Panthers <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/rauk/whitepan.htm> symbolize the more violent aspects of the 1960s counter culture. Their political views were basically maoist, for they wanted to start a "Cultural Revolution" by destroying the mainstream culture completely and erecting a new "conterculture" on its ruins. Even as a devout hippie, I never really liked them, or subscribed to their views
OK thanks for that perspective Gate. I'll take it on board when I read the books. I have heard the speculation over the years that Patty Hearst was a willing participant. I guess being rich has its benefits whereas her partners in crime like Kathleen Soliah are getting arrested 30 years later. Thanks again.
Patty hearst was a willing partisipant.. she was a militant.. and yes she did carry a gun, like anyone ever belived she was nabbed.. I never met the manson family that I remember or knew of at the time but I must have at one point .. in 66 or 67'.the police contacted my parents in So Cal and told them they had found some 'bodies' in the desert and the manson family was suspect, AND that Squeekie Fhrom had my ID when she was picked up for questioning... my parents freeked thinking I was dead in the desert or turned killer.. my bro in law showed up shortly to Haight and found me..I wasn't hinding or anything I just wasn't in contact with my parents.. I went back to So Cal with my bro in law and returned soon after to the Haight..I couldn't stay away long.. Shameless
Ash.. the guy John Sinclair in that URL u posted was John the Barber or Barber John I was speaking of.. I knew this dude he stayed in the same flat as I was living in at the GE..I had some corrispondence a few weeks ago with him..he and his wife are not into that sceen anymore and are just living life..
Shameless, If I say to you tomorrow, "Take my hand child, come with me... It's to a castle I will take you, Where what's to be they say will be." I catch the wind, see us spin, sail away, Leave the day, way up high in the sky. Well the wind wont blow, I really shouldn't go, It only goes to show... Heh, but that is really wierd about Squeekie Fhrom having your ID. That's put me in a daze for a while...
yes it gave me the creepiest feeling..they must of been close very close to be able to get into my dang pockets and take something like that.. I think back and try to remember, but it's impossible it find it.. there were 50,000 ragged hippies, heads n freaks crammed into a 10 block radius.. but this one house I stayed at in 67/8 called shrader house and was run by a dude named Doc'..now he coulda been manson himself.. he sure fit the discription....an evil dude if I ever met one.. with a harum full of women, six of them.. I remember one ol gal named Jessie. Jessie was way out there but sweet, she was a junkie prostitute, but took me under her wing and had kept me outta the way of harm.. but she like the other women of the house belonged to him.. it's scary to think back sometimes.. it makes me shudder to think of the danger I put myself in..my guardain angel most have been working over time to keep me from being a satistic.. Blessed Be Do as you will but harm none as I say it so mote it be Shameless
Nathan Bless you my brother..come sit at the table and let us speak of wonderous things and partake in the delites of the earth.. Shameless
Gate. John soon took over everything of the GE's.. he took the food distrabution.. or food bank.. we hadda truck (moving van type truck) we would pool our food stamps and would get discounted food stuff from wearhouse and divie it out..well he took over that.. ya know he thought himself a big man and he thought he ran us off because we were scared.. but we were already leaving the city and there was just a few of the old ones left.. we just dis-connected ourselves from him and what ever he was doing.. he eventualy got too big for his britches and the BP's and what was left of the GE ran him out of town.. Angela Davis was pres. of the BPP.. she was miliant as far as kick ass till we get equality.. yes a woman ran the BPP.. If I were to join a "party" it would have been the BPP.. they changed they path of the black man.. Shameless Damn am I Forrest Gump..
sorry about the color,that's what I get for cutting and pasting.Just right click and select all to read it. angela davis by Alex Burns (alex@disinfo.com) - March 04, 2001 Born on January 26, 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama, radical black activist, author and academic Angela Davis received a B.A. from Brandeis University in 1965. She later studied as a doctoral candidate at the University of California, San Diego, under the Marxist professor and One Dimensional Man'(1964) author Herbert Marcuse. Davis joined the Communist Party in 1968 and suffered discrimination like many blacks during the late 1960s for her personal political beliefs and commitment to revolutionary ideals. Despite her qualifications and excellent teaching record, the California Board of Regents refused to renew her appointment as a philosophy lecturer in 1970. Davis worked to free the Soledad (Prison) Brothers, African-American prisoners held in California during the late 1960s. She befriended George Jackson, one of the prisoners. On August 7, 1970, during an abortive escape and kidnap attempt from Marin County's Hall of Justice, the trial judge and three people were killed, including Jackson's brother Jonathan. Although not at the crime scene, Davis was implicated when police claimed that the guns used had been registered in her name. Davis fled underground and was consequently listed on the FBI's Top 10 Most Wanted Criminals list, sparking one of the most intensive manhunts in recent American history. Californian Governor Ronald Reagan publicly vowed that Davis would never teach in that state again. She was captured in New York City in August 1970, but was freed eighteen months later and cleared of all charges in 1972 by an all white jury. During this period an international Free Angela Davis movement had grown, and Davis used the momentum to found the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, which remains active today. Davis resumed teaching at San Francisco State University after the fiasco, and has subsequently lectured in all 50 US states, as well as internationally throughout Europe, Africa, the Carribean, Russia and the Pacific. Her acclaimed books exploring the institutionalisation of racial politics include If They Come In The Morning (1971), Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974), Women, Race & Class (1981), Women, Race and Politics (1989), Blues Legacies & Black Feminism (1999) and The Angela Y Davis Reader (1999). Currently a member of the Advisory Board of the Prison Activist Resource Center, Davis now focuses on exposing racism that is endemic to the US prison system (which she calls the Punishment Industry in deference to unmonitored corporate cult-ure and increasingly totalitarian privatization schemes), and exploring new ways to de-construct oppression and race hatred. Controversy and her radical past still haunts her: in 1994 Republicans objected to her appointment to a presidential chair at University of California, Santa Cruz, where she is currently a professor in the History of Consciousness Department. Her revolutionary politics and academic writings provide a link from 1960s groups like the Black Panthers to contemporary cases including Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu Jamal. Ultimately Davis represents a revitalising force in New Left politics (she was at the forefront of Gulf War protests in the United States that were censored by the mainstream media) and individual life-affirming cultural studies (particularly blues and hip-hop music). She remains a powerful role-model for the Black Consciousness movement, and a reminder of how dictatorial the Police State can suddenly become towards minorities if it is not vigilantly monitored by free patriots. http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/dossier/id91/pg1/ Review: Race and Unreason Writing & Resistance Angela Davis to Visit Campus Oct. 16
gate that was a great artical without going into depth on Angela Davis and her invovlment with the BPP. She is a true revelutionary..I wish I had listened more and drank less back then..
