You know I kind of wonder if this is because those people died, or just because the social conditions that allowed those people to flourish, allowed those people to emerge, have changed in some fundamental way. The black panthers were a gang, still, make no mistake, they just weren't as fucked up of a gang as many other drug gangs of the time and of today might be. The black panthers would still occasionally steal from richer white neighborhoods, or go on raids, I think they were called, to fund these free breakfasts. Which I think is cool, but is still something that you can quite easily frame as being a "gang activity".

The social conditions have changed, though. Not in that the consequences have somehow become more severe, for breaking the law (though perhaps the surveillance state has increased, making it harder to get away with in the first place). Mostly, I think, the change emerges out of the crack and cocaine epidemic of the 80's. Dealing is an easy way to make your way up, socioeconomically, it's an easy way to pin people down with charges, it's an easy way to get a bunch of people to fry their own brains, etc. And, we know who really propagated the crack epidemic, don't we? Thank you, gary webb. Infrastructurally, the black community has been displaced from "the projects", and other social works, which were designed to protect their communities, into suburban hellscapes where organization is much harder. You can even see this back all the way in like, the 50's and shit, when everyone chopped up black neighborhoods with the highway act.

I'm sure there's some other stuff I'm forgetting, but yeah, in any case, shit's changed since the 70's, organization has changed. I'm sure we'll only be allowed to learn about the fred hamptons of our day 20 years from now, when they've all been neutralized by the CIA, and when their narratives and lives can be co-opted by the american state to push more garbage propaganda.