Power Anywhere Where There’s People – Fred Hampton (1969)

“Power anywhere where there’s people. Power anywhere where there’s people. Let me give you an example of teaching people. Basically, the way they learn is observation and participation. You know a lot of us go around and joke ourselves and believe that the masses have PhDs, but that’s not true. And even if they did, it wouldn’t make any difference. Because with some things, you have to learn by seeing it or either participating in it. And you know yourselves that there are people walking around your community today that have all types of degrees that should be at this meeting but are not here. Right? Because you can have as many degrees as a thermometer. If you don’t have any practice, they you can’t walk across the street and chew gum at the same time. Let me tell you how Huey P. Newton, the leader, the organizer, the founder, the main man of the Black Panther Party, went about it. The community had a problem out there in California. There was an intersection, a four-way intersection; a lot of people were getting killed, cars running over them, and so the people went down and redressed their grievances to the government. You’ve done it before. I know you people in the community have. And they came back and the pigs said ‘No! You can’t have any.’ Oh, they dont usually say you can’t have it. They’ve gotten a little hipper than that now. That’s what those degrees on the thermometer will get you. They tell you ‘Okay, we’ll deal with it. Why dont you come back next meeting and waste some time?’ And they get you wound up in an excursion of futility, and you be in a cycle of insaneness, and you be goin’ back and goin’ back, and goin’ back, and goin’ back so many times that you’re already crazy. So they tell you, they say, ‘Okay niggers, what you want?’ And they you jump up and you say, ‘Well, it’s been so long, we don’t know what we want’, and then you walk out of the meeting and you’re gone and they say, ‘Well, you niggers had your chance, didnt you?’ Let me tell you what Huey P. Newton did. Huey Newton went and got Bobby Seale, the chairman of the Black Panther Party on a national level. …”
History Is A Weapon
YouTube: Fred Hampton on the need for working-class unity, On building revolutionary programs, On the importance of political education and ideology