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2A MARCH 23, 2000 Al-Amin never was a Black Panther From page one “In the media circus that sur rounds the saga of H. Rap Brown, the bit of information that sur faces repeatedly is his alleged membership in the Black Pan ther Party. H. Rap Brown was a member of the Student Nonvio lent Coordinating Committee (re ferred to as SNCC — pronounced ‘Snick’), not the Black Panther Party. Although there was a brief as sociation between some of the leaders of SNCC (including Brown) and the Black Panther Party, H. Rap Brown was never a real bona fide member of the Black Panther Party. The image of Brown, his monstor Afro tucked beneath the black beret, hugging the rough stock of a sawed-off shotgun, yelling, “death to the pigs'"” while he traded lead with racist police on the streets of America was never a reality. H. Rdp Brown was no more a Black Panther than was D.C. mayor Marion Barry, the NAACP's Julian Bond, or Congressman John Lewis — all former mem bers of SNCC H Rap Brown's brief associa tion with the Black Panther Party amounted to his appearing on platforms with other radicals for afew months in 1967 and making speeches on behalf of Huey P. Newton, the embattled founder of the Black Panther Party who was in and out of jail that year. Confusion about Brown and the Black Panther Party is under standable for anyone who is not intimate with thedynamics of the civil rights movement in general— and that aspect of the movement which dealt with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Com mittee in particular. The tenous “merger” between the Student Nonviolent Coordi nating Committee and the Black Panther Party for Self Defense lasted less than a year and was never more than a proposed ar rangement where the Black Pan therorganization could utilize the superior adminstrative appara Peach Care expanded “rom page one iren are eligible for the program, ind the state ranks fourth in its hild health care coverage, be und California, Florida and New ‘ork — all states with approxi nately one million eligible chil ren, according to published sta -Istics. Almost $lO million is budgeted r the program, with approxi ately $3 million coming from tate tobacco money, while an ther $6 million will be provided irough federal funds. Representatives in the house oted 143 to 20 for the bill's pas age last month. ; m— Bring your census forms to the “Party with a Purpose.” ‘ JoinJ. Anthony Brown at BL's Country Kitchen on Thurs day, March 30, from 6 to 10 a.m. See page 16A for details! ‘ 00 ALL SEATS - ALL SHOWINGS BEFORE 6 PM EVES - ADULYS ‘4™ CNILDREN 54 AFTER 6 PR |MEGBCY&W. mmo' PITCH BLACK (R) F-Sen: (12:15) 230 450 715 940 on. - Th.. 2.30 450 7t SNOW DAY (PG) F-Sen: (1:30) 3:30 530 735 9235 pn. - Th.: 3:30 5:30 7 EXT FRIDA) F-Sen: (1:00) 310 520 7.0 945 pn. - The 3:10 5:20 7:30 OMEO MUST DIE (R) £ -Sun: (12:00) 220 440 700 935 on. - Th: 220 440 700 T CTRIKES TR F-Sen: (1:15) 320 15 220 920 on. -Th 20 S 0 7 A F-Sen: 200 430 700 925 on. - Th. 200 430 700 'y DESTINATIO F-Sun: (1:10) 315 520 7.8 30 -“\,l ).£V 7 iy £ -Sen: (12:00) 210 430 710 %15 Mon - Th. D 430 710 Times are Sat. & Sun. O IC(;! G ORI %I AUGUSTAFOCUS tus of SNCC and SNCC jump start its organization whose influence had begun to wane after the ma- Jor civil rights advances up until that time. In his book Revolutionary Sui cide, published in 1973, Huey P. Newton, chairman and founder of the Black Panther Party wrote: “1 had to respect the Student Non violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) for having some of the most disciplined organizersin the country. When we had first talked of forming a party, Bobby (Seale) and I read about their work in the South — registering people to vote and organizing cooperatives and the like. We felt they could do a good job of administering the Party because they were all com mitted people and highly skilled. Their leadership came from coi lege campuses.” According to Newton, the Pan thers’ original plan was to draft Stokely Carmichael (SNCC's most notorious leader), into the Party and make him Prime Minister, then to add all the SNCC leader shiptothe Party’s administrative positions, including H. Rap Brown and James Forman. Newton ac tually wanted a merger of SNCC and the Panthers because he rec ognized the talent assembled un der the SNCC umbrella. But the merger never occurred. Newton blamed mistrust on the part of the SNCC leadership. “They (Stokely, Brown, Forman) were supposed to inform the rest of the governing body of SNCC,” Newton said. “We thought this had been done when Brown and Forman indicated that SNCC ap proved of the merger. But the scheme never worked out as we had hoped. “We later found out that it had all been empty talk on their part. There was no real trust, because SNCC’s people believed we wanted to take over their organi zation, whereas the reverse was true: we intended to give them complete control.” Brown, in his book Die Nigger Die, published in 1969, does not even mention the Black Panther Party even though he discussesin detail the events of 1967 when he FLLET Ty R AN LB Ry ¥ oh 8y con 2 errgpan b iyl 5o; s B R A oA % . 3 ISR R (T R Jal . % i ¥ 5 ( s 3 ot o it RO ISR RN .* ek T esl %‘- i oy 3 RS : TSRO ‘.‘ £ 3 Pl o Moo et P A SR \ o P o N:* Ye N L . - Se B i Y ' B 3 il RO W il - " ¥‘Si RS R R e £AI e o ‘i“{fitfi“"\“" . 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Any successful dream merger of the two premier militant orga nizations during the black libera tions struggles of the 60s had to overcome some formidable ideo logical roadblocks. In 1967, America was in sad shape. Young men were fighting and dying in Vietnam. On the streets of America’s inner cities, heroin was running rampant and police brutality was commonplace. The group which was at the forefront of the so-called black liberation movement was the Black Panther Party But as pow erful an image as the Black Pan thers projected, they were still a very local movement whose base of power by 1967 never really reached beyond Oakland, Cali fornia. They had a charismatic leader in Newton and a dynamic propagandist in Eldridge Cleaver Huey was an intellectual, a col lege student who liked to quote Nietzsche and Mao Tse Tung and Cleaver was a small-time hood who had a genius for attracting publicity. His prison writings, Soul on Ice, was running up the best seller lists and his creation The Black Panther community newspaper reached out to black ghettoes across the country. SNCC, on the other hand, was largely based in the South. Its leaders were all black intellectu als who forged a student organi zation with spearheaded voter registration drives and agitated for desegregation in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. During the first part of the decade of the ‘6os, they provided many of ground troops for the civil rights campaign. Although they were often at odds with the more tradi tional civil rights organizers like Dr. Martin Luther King's South ern Christian Leadership Confer ence, the kids at SNCC were a vital part of the struggle in the South. But after the civil rights gains of the mid-60s, the organi zation moved beyond the realm of civil rights into the arena of hu man rights and eventually flirted with world-wide socialist rebel lion. Brown succeeded Stokely Carmichael as the group’s chair man in 1967. By the time Brown took over leadership of SNCC, it had already alienated its core of white supporters who bolted af ter the organization made over tures to the Palestine Liberation movement, angering white-Jew ish activists who had supported the organization throughout the civil rights struggle. While Brown was never a part of the outwardly aggressive Black Panthers, his own brand of mili tancy was enough to make the authorities nervous without al luding to the Panthers. Brown always had the “bad brother” per sona. He never believed in non violence. “Ever since Ed [his brother] and I have been active in the Move ment, we've always carried our guns. I've always had the utmost confidence in me and the gun. Give me a gun before you even give me somebody towork with. A gun won't fail you, people will,” Brown said in his book. “Nonviolence might have been tactically correct at one time in order to get some sympathy for the Movement, but for me as an individual, it just never worked. And I didn't try to convince my self that it would work. “I figured that if the police could carry a gun to police my commu nity, then I should carry one to police them and the other uppity crackers. The first gun [ owned, | stole from a sporting store when | was fourteen. “I've been around guns all my life... The only thing “the man's” going to respect is that .45 or .38 you got. That's what it all boils down to,” Brown wrote. If H. Rap Brown ak.a. Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin had resorted to violence to solve a problem, it had nothing to do with his being a Black Panther. Clearly, he was never a Black Panther the way a gullible American public might suppose. It was his statement, that “violence is as American as apple pie,” that foreshadowed the events of the past week that led to the ultimate Americaniza tion of H. Rap Brown. More farms invaded as ex-guerillas ignore court order By MICHAEL HARTHMACK Associated Press Wniter HARARE, Zimbabwe Thousands of squatters ignored a judge’s order to leave white owned farmland Sunday, deep ening a confrontation between de scendants of British settlers and poor blacks, many of them veter ans of Zimbabwe's independence war. Police made no move to enforce Judge Paddington Garwe's order, made Friday, for the squatters to abandon within 24 hours the land they began occupying several weeks ago. Government officials appeared to encourage the squat ters. “Ifthe African people want land now, whatever judgment comes from the courts or government, the liberation struggle continues,” Information Minister Chen Chimutengwende said in a radio interview. A crowd bussed in from Harare by President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party reportedly marched through the Enterprise Valley, 30 miles northeast of the capital, and warned farmers they would be evicted and their land redistributed to black Zimbabwe ans. The incident oécurred on Saturday, according to a farming community leader who spoke on Fuel costs escalate From page one own their vehicle, Fields said. Ra dio Cab has about 78 cars and Curtis Cab has about 20 cars At the downtown location where the company has called headquar ters since the mid-19505, Fields says the gas situation 1s becoming critical. “We're trying to ride it out. But, it's getting close to the point where we'llhave to ask them (the county) for changes.” In the short-run, like recent actions by Washington, D C cab drivers, Fields said 1t may be logical to consider adding a tempo rary surcharge of 50 cents per trip to compensate for the gas prices Curtis Cab agrees the surcharge could be a temporary fix Meanwhile, because no special provisions were made by county officials before fuel prices started rising in the past couple months, local cab companies must do their best to make trips profitable especially during the annual trek of duffers to the course developed by the late, legendary golfer Bobby Jones. On a related note, visitors mak ing the trip to Augusta for the Masters golf tournament won't have to worry about cab drivers charging different fares, thanks to a policy approved by the county. Overall, the city’s cab companies are in favor of a flat-fare svstem i’:}v' hy:;y;;’f-fli‘-i, ‘ o . : o AT . " N LI VL '» I w ¥f ? : & B | 3y > O N 2 .. L & e “" g " ’ Y 0 ;( Ve o e P - 3 TR 1 B \:f: {‘ M V.| ‘ '\‘ “ :;' i H A f/ . % o g T I B [} 5 e Y b Completely encircled by the sparkling beauty of a diamonds, Sm Diamond Eternity Rings exhibit breathtaking brilliance from both the palm and the back of the hands. ... Monday - Saturday 3 )am - 9 m:.muuu& WINDSOR /1: am -9 pm (706) 71&/ m JE H!E!E A(' ;s ) Sianes i 2a y ~—— condition of anonymity. Some 600 properties have been occupied since Mugabe lost a ref erendum last month on a new constitution that would have given him power to seize white owned land without compensa tion. David Hasluck, executive direc tor of the Commercial Farmers Union, said state radio and televi_ sion have refused to comply with~ Garwe's order for them to broad cast details of his order The occupations threaten pro duction of the country’s food and major export crop, tobacco About 4,000 white farmers, mostiy the descendants of British settlers, own about a third of the country’s productive land. Known as Rhodesia, Zimbabwe was a British colony before indepen dence 1n 1980 Since 1980, the state has bought more than 2,000 white farms for resettlement, but the program has been plagued by mismanagement and corruption The government has nearly 2 million acres of agricultural land that has not been used for re settlement and mostly lies idle The government says it can't af ford to parcel up the land into smaller plots and install roads, water pipes and other vital infra structure approved by the county last month which 1s effective during Masters Week, Apnil 2 through Apnl 10 According to Frelds, the flat-fare system which will be charged by all city cab companies, 1s a practice that should curtail any price-gaug ing that may have occurred in pre- VIOUS vears. Last vear, smd Fields, compa nies were not “on the same page.” sotospeak and charged customers varving rates based each individual company’s prices “We charged customers the meter rate even though m some instances, we probably didn't charge asmuch aswe should have,” said Fields After receving com plaints (via the Richmond County hecensing department ) from out-of town golf toursts who thought they may have been over-charged, Fields said he met with some of his cab company competitors in an ef fort to resolve any price-gauging Issues prior to the 2000 Masters tournament week “We sat down and agreed on a rate we thought was fair for all the drivers and the companies. The rate was established by the county and this makes it easier for every one — including the customer Now, evervone knows exactly what to charge,” said Fields, who has worked for Radio Cab, the aty's largest taxi service, since 1973