Anthony and the Oakland Black Panthers.

["Soldoll@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <soldoll]

Members of this list owe Anthony thanks for his first hand account of the
Black Panthers. in the late 1960's.  His review of the events  are
distinctive to a movement centered in Oakland.

The Los Angeles scene is entirely different. One must keep in mind that the
Communist Party was a one time dominant force in labor, in the movie colony
and in the mass organizations constructed in the heyday of People's
Frontism.  The McCarthy era and the Soviet invasions of Hungary and
Czechoslovakia  were shattering blows.  With each debacle the membership
declined.  An organization of thousands does not just disappear from the
arena of politics. Many of these former members sought new arenas of
activity.  They found one in the ACLU and rallied around Eason Monroe,  a
fired teacher.  The ACLU  grew from a few hundred to thousands with the
support of the left and became the largest unit of the ACLU nationally.

For whatever reasons, the ex CP members did not play a leading role in Peace
and Freedom but chapters sprouted all over the city and  in these chapters
were members guided by their past political experience.  I have no
explanation for their failure to find representation in the steering
committee of the Peace and Freedom Party. They were beyond  party discipline
of early years.

The organizational center for the P and F Party was not in Oakland but in
Los Angeles.  Oakland could be the tail of the dog and nothing more.  But
the Los Angeles group that initiated the drive for the ballot was
overwhelmed by the Black Panthers. They became the tail to the tail of the
party.  What we found astonishing was the failure to organize in the huge
California University and State Colleges.  No effort was made to find these
leaders on the college campus and try to incorporate them into the party
structure.  The steering committee consisted of 20 to 30 generals with no
officer corps.

There is an art to politics. One must  examine and properly understand the
intentions of forces at play and in Los Angeles we didn't have the
leadership who could recognize and act on the fact that the student movement
was motivated by self interest in wanting the war brought a close before
their draft numbers were called.  So too,   The Panthers  acted out of self
interest but their agenda was much narrower than the P and F.  The Oakland
Panthers substituted for a  thought out program, soup kitchens to feed the
poor. Their program never did coincide with the P and F.  In Oaklant they
were the political party.

In Los Angeles, whether correctly or not, the impressions that permeated the
public and the students was that scam tactics were employed in Oakland. In
the Fairfax chapter of P and F two Afro Americans showed up at a home where
a meeting was underway. They refused to enter until a good will offering of
money and cigarettes was made.  A former SWPer tried to persuade those at
the meeting that this was no way to start a collaboration.  Most of those at
the meeting came from the CP milieu and rejected the position of the
exSWPer.

Anthony writes of an electoral campaign in Oakland where the Panther
candidate got 30% of the vote. A laudable achievement but the consequences
of the LA leadership failure to draw a line between the competing groups was
the destruction of Peace and Freedom Party and in time The Black Panthers