i am ... a revolutionary

when i leave you can remember i said with the last words on my lips, that i am ... a revolutionary, and you are going to have to keep on saying that.

: fred hampton

fred hampton
30 august 1948 – 4 december 1969

today is the 40th anniversary of the assassination of fred hampton. hampton, chairman of the chicago black panther party, was a talented organizer & skilled orator, widely recognized and loved for his ability to inspire in people a sense of their own revolutionary potential. at just 21 years of age he had already called for and achieved a gang truce in chicago by arguing that instead of fighting each other poor people of color should unite and fight their true enemies.

fred hampton was assassinated in a hail of bullets as he slept in his bed, early morning of december 4th 1969. deborah johnson, hampton's partner who was 8 & 1/2 months pregnant at the time, was at his side. the raid on hampton's apartment was a carefully orchestrated operation carried out by the chicago police department & fbi. bpp member mark clark was also killed, and four other members were seriously injured.

chairman fred hampton's revolutionary spirit lives on.

all power to all the people!! long live fred hampton!!!

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power anywhere where there's people : fred hampton (speech)

We got to face some facts. That the masses are poor, that the masses belong to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the masses, I'm talking about the white masses, I'm talking about the black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too. We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don't fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don't fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism.

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You know, a lot of people have hang-ups with the Party because the Party talks about a class struggle. We say primarily that the priority of this struggle is class. That Marx and Lenin and Che Guevara and Mao Tse-tung and anybody else that has ever said or knew or practiced anything about revolution always said that a revolution is a class struggle. It was one class - the oppressed, and that other class - the oppressor. And it's got to be a universal fact. Those that don't admit to that are those that don't want to get involved in a revolution, because they know as long as they're dealing with a race thing, they'll never be involved in a revolution.