RIP Fred Hampton

[Djehuti]

37 years ago today.
You can kill a revolutionary but you can never kill the revolution.

[Pirate Utopian]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ks7Qzfel4nE
it takes two to tango, great clip

[More Fire for the People]

The Black Panthers were way ahead of other organisations of the time and much farther ahead of modern organisations. Hell, they were even ahead of their own official line.

[Hampton]

Fred Hampton’s family speak on loss of some 37 years later

by Demetrius Patterson
March 2, 2006

Many African Americans view Fred Hampton as a revolutionary standing up against those who would abuse the Black community in a violent or inhumane manner.

Others saw him as a violent young leader of a group of Black men and women who hated the police and bucked authority.

But Francis and Iberia Hampton simply saw Fred Hampton as their idealistic, brave, good-hearted son who died way too soon in a most horrific manner.

Thirty-seven years does a lot to help sooth the aching heart of a man who lost his son to a hail of police gunfire on Dec. 4, 1969, but 83-year-old Francis Hampton told the Defender Wednesday that he has had to relive it all over again as Chicago politicians and officials debate whether Hampton should be honored with a street sign, no less than on the very block where he was killed by Chicago Police.

“On the news I saw a clip of them bringing his body out of that building,” Hampton said. “That was sort of tough for me to watch that. Sometimes it seems like it just happened yesterday.

“The pain gets easier to bare until a controversy like this rises up. It is a really busted up thing. Something should have happened a long time ago (in honoring my son).”

Hampton’s mother, Iberia, said a street with her son’s name on it doesn’t provide her with any type of consolation some four decades later.

“They should do more than that in naming a street after my son,” Iberia Hampton said. “I can’t really put a name to it (as to what they should do) because whatever they do, no dollar amount, no nothing can replace him.”

The parents of Hampton still live in the small suburban community of Maywood where they raised their son.

For Fred Hampton Jr., 36, the visionary life and painful death of his father is something he and his mother, Akua Njeri, bravely face and talk about everyday, he said.

“We continue to live it everyday because my mother and I know that the struggle of our people continues,” Hampton Jr. said. “I have no criminal record, but the federal government already consider me as having three strikes against me. Strike one is because I am African. Strike two is because I am the son of Chairman Fred Hampton. And strike three is because I continue to fight for the liberation of my people through my organization, Prisoners of Conscious Committee.”

As the Hampton family brace and console each other over painful memories and verbal venom spat out about their loved one, some African American police officers say that their views regarding the legacy Hampton has been misinterpreted by the Chicago Lodge 7 Fraternal Order of Police.

In Wednesday’s Defender, FOP recording secretary Sidney Davis said the Chicago Police Department was “vehemently against” any kind of honor bestowed on Hampton. Davis said that the Panther leader on many occasions incited people to “kill the policemen, kill the pigs.”

But Pat Hill, executive director of the African American Police League, 1403 E. 75th St, said Davis’ rants represent a small minority of the approximately 2,600 Black city police officers.

“Chairman Hampton was never charged, accused or convicted of harming or trying to kill any police officer,” Hill said. “The Black Panthers advocated the demise of pigs. Pigs wasn’t a reference to police officers. Upstanding police officers in their communities were never considered to be pigs. Black Panthers said to protect the Black community against those who would advocate violence on the Black community.

“The African American Police League, formally known as the Afro Patrolman League was at one time dubbed the Black Panthers of the police department,” Hill continued. “Because they vowed to serve and protect their community just like white officers vowed to serve and protect their communities.”

Hill said there is a historical connection between her organization, which was formed in 1968 by Renault Robinson and Edward “Buzz” Palmer, after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the Black Panther Party, which was born out of the same turbulent times for African Americans.

“This so-called controversy on naming one city block after the former chairman of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party we feel is a diversion for the public not to focus on more important issues like voting to rid the city of corruption,” Hill said.

Hampton Jr., however, doesn’t care much for Black police officers, regardless as to whether they support his father’s beliefs.

“There is a war that is being waged on our people. The police officers represent the front lines of that war,” Hampton Jr. said. “I know that Chairman Fred Hampton said that everything is political. We can talk about what were the sentiments of Black slave catchers, but they were slave catchers nevertheless.”

Link. (http://www.chicagodefender.com/page/local.cfm?ArticleID=4224)

RIP Fred and Mark.

http://static.flickr.com/75/173623348_cda4fd8841_m.jpg

http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2004/65/BP71_01_30b.jpg

Fred Hampton history (http://www.peopleslawoffice.com/Hampton-history.htm)

[Tekun]

Word....
Fred Hampton is an inspiration to me, and I hope to all of us
RIP to all the Panthers that fell in the struggle

[Janus]

I think his son is carrying on the torch pretty well even though the current times are much less radical and turbulent than during his father's.

[Rawthentic]

I know that he worked or works with the Brown Berets, the Chicano activist group, like the Black Panthers. He was posing for a pic with the Watsonville Brown Berets, along with Immortal Technique. Pic: Fred Hampton Jr. (http://www.brownberets.info/)