END THE REPRESSION OF BLACK PEOPLE, ESPECIALLY THE BLACK PANTHERS. FREE THE NEW HAVEN NINE; FREE BOBBY SEALE. FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS.

The above statement is the first demand of the National Student Strike. It has been accepted at the University of Maryland as the first strike demand by both the students and the faculty, Unfortunately, it is, perhaps, the most widely misunderstood of the demands, due to the widespread ignorance and misinformation among middle class whites concerning the nature of the Black Panther Party.

The black panther, as explained by Minister of Defense, Huey Newton, is an animal who will not attack. If attacked. the black panther backs up until there is no room to back. Then, he will strike out at his assailant and wipe him out. Newton says the Black Panther Party will not attack unless pushed up against the wall--- where nothing else is possible but to attack it assailants--- in order to live. The Panthers are guided by the principle of armed self- defense which will be explained below.

The Black Panther Party began as a response to continued instances of police violence in the black community. The party was inspired by the Lowdnes County Freedom Organization in Alabama, which organized black people in the south to obtain such basic constitutional rights as the right to vote.

The Black Panther Party. started by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, while students at Merritt College in Oakland, set out originally to legally patrol the police. They carried weapons, as provided by law, and stayed the legal distance from the police whom they watched. The result of this sur-veillance was a decrease in brutality against members of the black community, but severe harassment of the Black Panther Party by the police.

1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the des- tiny of the Black community. We believe that Back people will not be free until we are-able to determine our own destiny.
2. We want full, employment for our people. We believe that the federal governnment is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaran- teed income . We believe that if the white American businessmen do not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from, the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.
3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our black community We believe that this racist goverment has robbed us and we are demanding the overdue debt of 40 acres and 2 mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and the mass murder of black people. We will accept the Pay- ment in currency -which will be distributed to our many communities, The Germans murdered 6 million Jews. The American racist has murdered over 50 million black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.
4. We want decent housing, fit shelter human beings. We believe that if the white landlord wi11 not give decent housing to our black community, then the housing the land should be made in cooperatives so that our communnity, with goverment aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.
5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches our true history and our role in the present day society. We believe Ln an educational system that will give our people knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world then he has little to relate to anything else.
6. We want all Black men exempt from military service, We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight-in the military service to defend a racist govern ment that does not protect us. We will not fight to kill other people of color in the world who, like the black people, are being victimized by the white racist govern- ment of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of, the racist police and the racist military by whatever means necessary.
7. We want a, immediate and to P0LICCE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people. We believe we can end police brutalitv in our black commu- nity by organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The 2nd Amendment of the Constitution of the U.S. gives a right to bear arms. We, therefore, believe that all black people should arm themselves for self-defense.
8. We want freedom for all Black man held in federal, state L county and city prisons and Jails. We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.
9. We want all Black people when brought to trial to be tried in a court by a jury of their Deer group or people from their-black community, as defined by the constitution of the U.S. We believe that the courts should follow the U.S. Constitution so that black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a me the right to tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the black community from which the black defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the black community.
10. We want bread, housing education, justice and peace. And as our maior political objective, a United Nations supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determinining the will of the black people as to their national destiny. When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are most disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpation, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

The way to political change is through power. What does this mean? Huey Newton has said that politics is war with. out bloodshed and that war is politics with bloodshed. The reason that the Reconstruction attempt to put blacks into office from the South failed was because (1) the black legislators had no powerful constituency behind them (2) 3 years after the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments were passed, the Black Codes implemented to countereat them; enforcement was ensured by the Ku Klux Klan. According to Huey Newton a powerful group is one which can deliver consequences if these demands are not met. There are several way in which this kind of power is obtained. One way is to own the land.-feudal power. It is exercised by farmers who when they do not get what they want, can let the crops rot is the field. Ownership of a business is a second way of gaining economic power. In America the slaves were freed with the promise, by the Freedman's Bureau, of 40 acres and 2 mules.

Had this promise been fulfilled, the black man would have had land power and the ability to inflict a consequence.

To ask blacks to redress their grievances by running for office does not pose a realistic solution. Black people constitute a geographically divided colony of the U.S. They are treated as colonial subjects rather than citizens. It is true that members of the B.P.P. -- Huey Newton and Kathleen Cleaver of Congress in the 7th Congresm sional District, Bobby Seale for Assembly in San Francisco is needed to make up the two-thirds states necessary as required by the Constitution. A Constitutional Convention is therefore a highly conceivable and realistic focus for all groups whicb endorse change in this country- women's liberation, anti-war forces, GIs, the Welfare Rights Organization, and all groups fighting for the rights of minority groups and black people.

America grew out of a revolutionary tradition, and part of it's founding philosophy was the conviction that men have the right to change their goverment to meet their changing needs. Support the Black Panthers call for a Revolutionary Peoples Constitutional Convention.