In Response To The Daily Challenge And Our Critics

The New Black Panther Party Speaks

By Bro. Zayid Muhammad*

       In anticipation of the first anniversary of the passing our fearless leader, the immortal Khallid Abdul Muhammad, the Friday, February 15^th edition of our beloved Daily Challenge newspaper featured a lead article by Nayaba Arinde, someone who we love and respect. For the most part, the article rightfully lauded the legacy of our immortal champion and Black Power General. Unfortunately, it then turned into a three-pronged attack on our organization and ‘his’ chosen successor Attorney Malik Zulu Shabazz, our national chairman. We had hoped instead that it would have highlighted our Emergency Town Hall Unity Meeting In Defense of Imam Jamil Al-Amin, the former H. Rap Brown, in Harlem that was set for the following Tuesday as the Imam was about to go on trial for his life in Atlanta.

       The attack spins on three issues that we will address here. 1) Our leader’s grave not having a headstone; 2) The records of our leader’s autopsy and post-mortem toxicology reports not having been publicly released; and 3) the purported ‘new’ direction of our Party.

       On the first matter, the headstone for our leader’s grave has been for in full and should be rightfully placed at the gravesite as soon as that preparation and setting process plays itself out.

       On the matter of our leader’s death records, we greatly appreciate the desire for the public release of those records. We understand how so many of our people who loved this great man want to know for sure that his death was truly from ‘natural causes’ and not from anything or anybody else. We understand that sentiment completely. However, the family of Khallid Abdul Muhammad does not wish to have those records publicly released, whether we want them released or not. We have to respect that and so will everyone else.

Malik Zulu Shabazz has said, however, that serious researchers who wish to analyze and assess those records can make arrangements to do so privately! But in accordance with the wishes of the family of Khallid Abdul Muhammad, those records cannot and will not be released to the public.

      On the matter of our Party having a ‘new’ direction, nothing could be further from the truth!  A quick glance at the more high profile missions of our Party over the last year in our late leader’s absence should lay that to rest.

      Late March early April…Cincinnati goes up in smoke in response to the bloody scourge of police brutality…The New Black Panther Party was the only national organization to roll into that backwards upsouth town and support our people’s right to rebel, to fight back and to even shoot back in self defense if necessary against state terrorism and state terrorists as some apparently did!

        Does that sound like something different than Khallid Abdul-Muhammad?

In July, the supreme user of Black people Bill Clinton moves into Harlem to escalate the gentrification of our beloved capital of Afrikan culture. Only the New Black Panther Party and CEMOTAP dared to crash that sick, bootlicking welcome party, and we told Clinton “Don’t come to Harlem, Bill! Go to hell! You degenerate death penalty pushin’ no good bastard!”

        Does that sound like a direction different from Khallid Abdul Muhammad?

That same month, our beloved freedom fighter in exile Assata Shakur came under fire again in New Jersey, the upsouth birthplace of racial profiling. She became the target of a proposed new bill called ‘The No Safe Haven In Cuba Act.’ What was most pathetic about this attack was the central role that Carson Dunbar, the first Black superintendent for the NJ State Police, played in this attack! We fired back and raized hell in defense of our sister, of our brother Sundiata Acoli and in defense of the Cuban Revolution!

        We acknowledge proudly that The Daily Challenge rightly and boldly ran our open letter to Carson Dunbar in defense of Assata when no one else would.

        As September rolled in, the rest of the world came together at the UN World Conference on Racism in Durban, South Africa and recognized that the TransAtlantic Slave Trade was indeed a crime against humanity, the united states and their handmaiden of middle eastern apartheid, the state of israel, told the rest of the world that racism will only be discussed on their terms or they won’t recognize any discussion of it all!

       How democratic of this very arrogant minority?

Your New Black Panther Party took the anniversary of the epic Million Youth March to respond by launching the beginning of the ground campaign for the battle for reparations, by rolling into Washington, D.C. to the National Jewish Museum and said “If reparations is good enough for their holocaust, then damnit, they are going to be good enough for ours!”

       In the aftermath of the 9/11 Incident, as many so-called Black leaders were pulling out their american flags, as if they were white flags (and for many of them, they were), the New Black Panther Party boldly sought to bring the focus of this charade back onto who ‘our’ terrorists are! Only after our October Town Hall Meeting in Washington, D.C. in particular, after we cleared the political terrain, only then did many of our so-called radical leaders began to organize their own meetings to do the same! This is not to say that we were the only ones to stand strong. But we were the boldest and we were the boldest to turn to our Muslim brother in solidarity, as many others turned away either in a confused anger or in a terrorized fear.

            How is all of that out of step with the ways and legacy of Khallid Abdul Muhammad?

In November, we hosted several Gye Nyame celebrations in this region. Gye Nyame is our late leader’s New Afrikan alternative to the holocaust holiday that is so-called ‘thanksgiving.’ We are laying the groundwork for the creation of Gye Nyame kits so we can put this serious cultural alternative and weapon that our leader gave us squarely in the hands of our people! 

In December, with some 30 chapters in tact, we hosted our first national summit in Washington and presented our complete organizing manual to our troops to bring greater unity of form to work all around the country. This organizing tool was conceived, drafted and developed by Khallid Abdul Muhammad. Malik Zulu Shabazz and our national central committee, with supreme thanks to our founding chapter in Dallas, saw to it that it got done! …All to insure that our troops are rolling, or are at least trying to roll, as Khallid Abdul Muhammad would have them roll! 

As Imam Jamil was about to go on trial for his life, our Atlanta chapter had already hosted two Town Hall Unity Meetings in his defense, all based on the principle of the Afrikan United Front that our late leader so strongly believed in as all our Town Meetings seek to do.  They have had a constant presence at the courthouse and have been one of the few Black organizations in Atlanta actually organizing community-based support for the Imam! It was in that context that we decided mark the anniversary of our leader’s passing with an attempt to nationalize those support efforts for Imam Jamil because often as New York goes, so goes much of the rest of the Black nation.  

How all of this is seen as ‘not’ being in step with the spirit and legacy of Khallid Abdul Muhammad is beyond us!

In conclusion, the New Black Panther Party will not participate in any petty dramas of the theater of personality; Nor will we engage in any petty partisan politics, especially with another freedom fighter’s life squarely on the line. Instead, for all of our problems and for all of our limitations notwithstanding, the New Black Panther Party is on our post! We are holding the line! We are covering down! By the way, we love and salute our Daily Challenge, the only Black daily in the area. We love our sister Nayaba Arinde, but, in the language of Ma’at, the ancient philosophy of our ancestors, our sister’s article seriously lacked ‘balance.’ Now let’s move on!…Together!…Pan-Afrikanism or Perish!…

Long live Khallid Abdul Muhammad!

Hands Off Imam Jamil!

Death To The Death Penalty!

Black Power!

-30-

* Bro. Zayid Muhammad is the eastern regional chief of staff for the New Black Panther Party…

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