Right on, Right on.
Posted on 10/27/2002 10:30:31 AM PST by syriacus
A handful of the remaining members from the original Black Panther Party—in an effort to preserve their legacy—have retained a trademark lawyer to stop the use of their name by the New Black Panther Party.
Bobby Seale, David Hilliard, Elaine Brown and Huey P. Newton’s widow, Fredrika, claim that the New Black Panther Party tarnishes their controversial legacy. They condemn the new group as a racist and anti-semetic nuisance.
“They have hijacked our name and are hijacking our history,'' Seale told reporters. “We have to claim it back.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization, includes the New Black Panther Party along with the Ku Klux Klan and Neo-Nazis in its annual list of hate groups in the United States. “We have to close them down,” said Hilliard, the original party's chief of staff in the 1960's. “They have almost done irreparable damage to our credibility with their racist and anti-semitic behavior.”
New Black Panther Party chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz has publicly made anti-semetic comments on television. The United States and Israel are ''the number one and two terrorists right now on the planet,'' Shabazz has said. “The European Jews have America under control, lock stock and barrel, the media, foreign policy.''
While the original Black Panther Party had a controversial and extremist past, it also was involved in community service campaigns. The party served 200,000 hot breakfasts daily for schoolchildren, provided 1 million tests for sickle-cell anemia and printed weekly newspapers with a 200,000 circulation.
It is unclear what community service activities the New Black Panther Party engages in. “This new generation that sees this stuff doesn't know that we are opposed to these guys,'' Hilliard said. ''I get letters all the time threatening me and Mrs. Newton because they confuse us with them. We weren't racists. We were in coalition with people of all colors. People died and went to prison and are in exile for this history.''
Shabazz said his organization is not racist or anti-semetic and claims that Seale and Hilliard are being manipulated into pursuing the suit. ''It seems they want war, and we will have to go to war,'' Shabazz said, referring to the original group. ''But I think they are really working with the Zionists. I think their lawyer is one. I think they are being used by outside forces to keep alive the counterintelligence program of the F.B.I. and the U.S. government, creating divisions and factions among Black organizations.''
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