CALIFORNIA IN BRIEF : OAKLAND : Ex-Black Panthers Form Aid Group

Former Black Panther Party leaders who were reunited at the funeral of slain party co-founder Huey P. Newton have formed a community group to help people affected by the Oct. 17 earthquake. The program announced Thursday by Bobby Seale, David Hilliard and one-time fugitive lawyer Stephen Bingham is similar to the Black Panthers’ 1960s program that sought improvements in housing, jobs, education and health care. The former revolutionaries and community organizers charged the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the American Red Cross with doing more to assist white, upper-income neighborhoods than to help blacks living in west Oakland, where the Cypress section of Interstate 880 collapsed in the quake. The Red Cross and FEMA have repeatedly denied similar allegations.