It is far too often that organized groups of citizens are brushed aside public consciousness into becoming radicalized cartoons. Quite literally in the case of the Black Panthers, as their name later became synonymous with a comic book series, we have members of the American public who felt it necessary to struggle against a system designed to keep groups of people in conditions of dependency, self-loathing, and servitude. Swept under the rug as future inspiration for glossy Hollywood biopics, these minds of women and men were imbued with enough love for their people that they would not allow fear to curtail their imagination. They dreamed, and organized to march forward towards that dream of a society in which human potential was nurtured instead of brutalized.They were not gods, and they were not myths. They, like you and me, were living, breathing, thinking and stinking human beings who pulled their beliefs not out of imagination, nor history books, but instead organically grew their unique consciousness through our chief form of education- experience. They based their plans upon a steely and passionate examination of their environment. This is a rarely seen speech given by one of the founding members of the Black Panther Party, Dr. Huey P. Newton, and like his namesake, the apples of his knowledge continue to knock us in the skull through the gravity of their present relevance. Considering the website of the Black Panther Party (www.blackpanther.org NOTE: Not the New Black Panther Party, which is a separate entity) is blocked at my work under the category “Militancy and Extremist” it is easy to dismiss the party as a gang of radical racists with guns. This is what we are fed to believe! In reality, if you look at and read firsthand and not through the filters of some journalist trying to keep their job (lucky I’m a rogue pundit without a bridle…) or a screenwriter trying to get produced, one may begin to see that the progressive vision of these dedicated citizens is more in line with the interests of the general public then the current donkey show we take for democracy.Look beyond the guns, as that is a mere façade of what they actually stood for, and remember- like the armed patriots of the American Revolution, they did not seek violence, but equality. No group in power is ever going to give up their position without a fight. The question at our feet is this- which path is the way out of this swamp? To shoot or not to shoot? Here is a rare example of a member of a “militancy and extremist group” speaking, quite lucidly, on the need for Americans to join the Peace Movement. So enough of what I think, I hope my thoughts have not wasted your time. I’m going to get the hell out of the way and introduce to you, beloved readers, the light of not a gun, but a mind on fire. May it torch your field of thought and increase its fertility, like university is supposed to. Or are we just here to gain enough money to fill our lives with crap?-S.R. Fail*This speech is not readily available on the internet. Yours truly has typed the whole damned thing out for your reading pleasure. May it no longer be hidden in a book! It is an excerpt of a complete speech titled “on the Peace Movement: August 15, 1969” from The Huey Newton Reader, a text readily available via Amazon or at your local library.The Peace Movement is extremely important, more important than I thought it was two years ago. The reason I place so much more emphasis on the Peace Movement is that I now see that if peace were to come about, it would revolutionize the basic economic composition of the country.We all know now this is a garrison state, a warfare state. And not by accident. When capitalism reaches a point where it can no longer expand, it looks for other avenues, other deposits, other places to expand the capitalist interest. At this time super-capitalists (General Motors, Chrysler, General Dynamics, and all the super companies– I understand there’s about seventy-six that control the whole economy of this country) and their companies are the main contractors for the Pentagon. In other words, super-capitalists are now putting their over expanded capitalistic surplus into military equipment, This military equipment is then placed in foreign countries such as Vietnam and the Dominican Republic. With the wedding of industry and the Pentagon, there is a new avenue to invest in. Military equipment is an expendable avenue, because the purpose of the equipment is to explode. Therefore, you must keep building new explosives. A perpetual process.We know that the U.S. has a secret pact with Thailand. These pacts are all part of a super-plan to keep the economy going. What would happen then, if peace were to come about? There would not be that final depository for expendable goods, and the surplus could then be returned to the country. The military plants, related defense plants, and industrial plants would be brought to a grinding halt. This is why some union representatives support the war effort. The AFL-CIO (Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations- the largest federation of unions in the U.S.) supported the invasion of the Dominican Republic. It forced out Juan Bosch for the simple reason that, as long as the war continues, they know they can exploit the people through taxation and human lives. We sent soldiers, you see, brothers, because they’re expendable too; people are expendable.One of the favored arguments of the capitalists is that America is not an imperialistic country because the traditional ways and means of imperialism is to go into a developing country, rape it of its raw materials, refine them either in the colony or the mother country, and sell them back at a high price to the colonized people. And the argument is that, “America is not doing that. We don’t need any equipment or raw materials out of Vietnam.” And this is very true. This contradiction puzzled me for a while. But now I understand that something new has happened; with the wedding of science and industry, the industrial plants in America have solved the basic problem of raw material through synthetics and the knowledge of using raw materials that are already here in a variety of ways, therefore keeping the plants going. The favored argument of the capitalist is, “We must be there to stop communism or wars of subversion.” What is overlooked is the fact that the super-capitalists know we don’t need to rape the country. I think Cuba was the turning point away from the traditional colonized country.Another argument is that we need the strategic military positions. But we know that the U.S. does not need strategic military positions because they already have enough equipment to defend this country from any point in the world if attacked. So they could only be there to use this developing country as depository for expendable goods.In traditional imperialism, people from the mother country usually go to the colony, set up government, and the leaders of the military, but this is not so in America. People from the mother country have not gone to the colonized country of Vietnam and jockeyed for position, but the profit has all been turned back to America. The defense contractors jockey for position now in the mother country for defense contracts. Then they set up a puppet government or a military regime to supply these developing countries with military equipment. They really do not want to be in Vietnam or any of the developing countries because they feel (and they have all done this) that they have bought off the militaries in these various developing countries so that they will only be an arm of the Pentagon. The military regime in Greece is a good example. They have full control of the military officers, paying them high salaries so they feel they will not have to send American troops and disturb the mother country.But what happens when one battalion of military is defeated? Then you send in reinforcements for the defeated puppet army in that developing country. The whole government becomes subject to the army. And the army becomes suspicious of the civil government in these developing countries because they are told by the Pentagon, through indoctrination and money, that the civil government is a communist threat to the nation. Military coups follow, and this is what happens over and over with the support of the U.S.We have actually an imperialistic variation of imperialism. The jockeying for positions of power is inside of the mother country now, so in fact, the American people have become colonized.At one time I thought that only Blacks were colonized. But I think we have to change our rhetoric to an extent because the whole American people have been colonized, if you view exploitation as a colonized effect. Seventy-six companies have exploited everyone. American people are a colonized people even more so than the people in developing countries where the military operates.This is why the Peace Movement is so important. If the Peace Movement is successful, then the revolution will be successful. If the Peace Movement fails, then the revolution in the mother country fails. In other words, the people would be pushed so uptight once wars were to stop that the whole economy would go down the drain. Only a planned economy could combat the chaos that an absence of incentive causes. Now war is the incentive for the military contractors.This is why it is very important that we have communications with the Peace Movement. Not only should we communicate with it, we should actually get out and support it fully in various ways including literature and demonstrations.We have to realize our position, and we have to know ourselves and know our enemies. A thousand wars and a thousand victories, and until we know who the enemy is and what the situation is we will only be marking time. Even the Peace Movement doesn’t compromise our defense principles. We still defend ourselves against attack and against aggression. But overall, we are advocating the end to all wars. But yet, we support the self-defense of the Vietnamese people and all the people who are struggling.