PLATFORM : A Lesson From the 1960s
People can take issue with the methods the Panthers employed, but community empowerment was at the heart of those times and the Panther movement.
The Black Panther Party provided free service programs to the community in the ‘60s and ‘70s, including breakfast for schoolchildren, escort service for the elderly, an alternative school for children labeled “uneducable” by the public schools, health clinics that provided sickle-cell anemia testing and community education forums that listened and learned what the community problems were. The real program of the Black Panthers was empowering the community, a step that organizations and political leaders must address in the ‘90s if anger, riots and other assaults on human dignity are to be taken out of the realm of “easily predictable.”
Today is a good day for the Panthers.
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