Fred Hampton, deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, was born on August 30, 1948 and raised in the Chicago suburb of Maywood, Illinois. In high school he excelled in academics and athletics. After Hampton graduated from high school, he enrolled in a pre-law program at Triton Junior College in River Grove, Illinois. Hampton also became involved in the civil rights movement, joining his local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). His dynamic leadership and organizational skills in the branch enabled him to rise to the position of Youth Council President. Hampton mobilized a racially integrated group of five hundred young people who successfully lobbied city officials to create better academic services and recreational facilities for African American children.
In 1968, Hampton joined the Black Panther Party (BPP), headquartered in Oakland, California. Using his NAACP experience, he soon headed the Chicago chapter. During his brief BPP tenure, Hampton formed a “Rainbow Coalition” which included Students for a Democratic Society, the Blackstone Rangers, a street gang and the National Young Lords, a Puerto Rican organization. Hampton was also successful in negotiating a gang truce on local television.
In an effort to neutralize the Chicago BPP, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Chicago Police Department placed the chapter under heavy surveillance and conducted several harassment campaigns. In 1969, several BPP members and police officers were either injured or killed in shootouts, and over one hundred local members of the BPP were arrested.
During an early morning police raid of the BPP headquarters at 2337 W. Monroe Street on December 4, 1969, twelve officers opened fire, killing the 21-year-old Hampton and Peoria, Illinois Panther leader Mark Clark. Police also seriously wounded four other Panther members. Many in the Chicago African American community were outraged over the raid and what they saw as the unnecessary deaths of Hampton and Clark. Over 5,000 people attended Hampton’s funeral where Reverends Ralph Abernathy and Jesse Jackson of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference eulogized the slain activist. Years later, law enforcement officials admitted wrongdoing in the killing of Hampton and Clark. In 1990, and later in 2004, the Chicago City Council passed resolutions commemorating December 4 as Fred Hampton Day.
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Rant about zoomers in europe not being able to accept how fucked things are in the us and being really frustrating. Please skip bc is just old man yells at clouds
spoiler
Got in to some weird ass argument where me and a few other ancients were trying to explain to a zoomer in Europe how bad the situation is, and he kept saying we were being hopeless doomers about ever changing anything, and we're like "no, dude, this is what's actually happening here. All these things you hear about in the news about how America sucks are intentional and by design and the system is doing what it was intended to do. There are no legal mechanisms to change anything by design and the reason your country has those mechanisms is the people who drafted your laws saw how bad the us constitution was. The civil society and democracy that exists in your state does not exist here. This is not doomerism or hopelessness, this is a frank assessment of what is happening in the us and you are unable to accept it because you're young and naive and live in a vastly more functional state but i seriously need you to accept that this isn't us giving up because we exaggerated the problem and that you continue to say we're hopeless doomers is pissing me off because i'm right now convalescing from getting my ass kicked during the last major episode of us political resistance, i'm literally suffering from going out and trying to change shit and it's very insulting that you're saying i'm not doing that and ahhhhh."It was very frustrating, this kid just does not have the experience to understand what we're talking about and doesn't believe how bad it is, which is fine, but when he stepped over to saying we've given up because the odds are so bad it went from frustrating to actively insulting bc everyone in the chat was probably among the top 2-3% of politically active and engaged americans. Like yeah, cool, he's naive, he's used to Americans being idiots (the condescension when we talk about eu politics is a whole nother thing. Like, thank you, i know Americans are ignorant, I am not, i am at least as informed as you are about high level politics please stop trying to explain Austerity to me)
Ugghghghfhhjruojdfsnuod zrufjkdS
Like idk how to nicely tell a young very educated man that he's wrong in a way that prevents the discussion from continuing when he's locked in to the idea that this is just American's being shits. I've had other discussions trying to hammer in to him that no, American Christian Fascists are not just like the mildly annoying religious person who cornered you in a coffee shop once, they are a tens of millions strong violent fascist political block of vicious killers and you country literally does not have any remotely comparable political formation and please stop telling me they're not actually that bad or they're just misguided I have had guns pointed at me by these people.
Just... general frustration. Very smart guy, well meaning, very kind, and also frustratingly unable to accept that things are different in other parts of the world. Which, you know, guilty, i was the same way, and i was probably just as much of a shit about it and probably pissed off the older, more experienced experts i wasn't listening to just as much.