[Introduction to Our Culture, Our Resistance: People of Color Speak Out on Anarchism, Race, Class and Gender, 2004]

The white fathers told us, "I think, therefore, I am" and the black mother within each of us – the poet – whispers in our dreams, I feel, therefore I can be free. Poetry coins the language to express and chart this revolutionary demand.
– Audre Lorde

Here we are, and the APOC phenomena continues. From the Detroit Conference to the build-up for the Republican convention and onward, folks of color with anarchist and anti-authoritarian politics are making a presence. And it couldn't happen at a better time!

[originally appeared in Love and Rage newspaper, Aug / Sept, 1995]

In the Black Panther Party, when someone said, "Power to the People!" the response would be "ALL Power to the People!" After many years of political imprisonment, employing the easy-to-use Malcolm-Eldridge Educational Supercharger, that call/response would take on more anarchistic meaning. This is about my experience in the now as an anarchist (a baby one) within a generally hierarchical Panther formation.

It was just this year, Jan. 1995, that I decided to publicly identify myself as anarchist. In playing around I came up with a term to identify me fully: @narcho-pantherista (thinking about the word Sandinista, ha!). Though, just in fun, I decided to keep it. It's me. Silly, anarchistic, for real.

Sometimes the QUESTIONS are just as important as the Answers. Here are some questions that i drew up while in prison that developed from my continuing criticism and learning experiences of the movement. See if you can follow my thinking and my overall concerns for those who have chosen and are chosing the roller-coaster path of Revolution:

1. Why have we accomplished so little over the past 20-25 years?

2. Has our PRACTICE matched our IMAGE or VISION of what we consider our ROLE in the Revolution? Or should we even question what one's ROLE is?

3. What would make us PANTHERS and/or FIGHTERS of the BLA and what would make us WORTHY of presenting ourselves as the kind of new human beings who would be socially responsible and politicially conscious citizens of a new society?

(from New Formulations Vol 2 #1)

I am always on the search for cutting edge, challenging thinking within anarchism and other fields of revolutionary theory: the search for how to get beyond 'stuck.' As a Black anarchist I have looked for writings specifically related to the problems and challenges that I face, and that my people face here in the United States, and that can help us organize for self-determination and destroy the very basis upon which all oppressive systems operate. Of the activist "isms," anarchism, at least in theory, promotes the kind of openness and risk-taking that actually encourages the constant regeneration necessary to meet new revolutionary challenges. The price to pay, often, is getting "uncomfortable," being "jarred," even in terms of what one understood as the anti-authoritarian or anarchist canon.

by Ashanti Alston (AKA Rev. Lucien), circa 1985

I have been preparing my self for a new venture, a kind of sharing outreach, you might say, because that’s what I want to do - Share Something Real Special With You. My preparations have been/ are in disciplining myself to read, read, read - and test out some new ideas in revolutionary struggle. What I have to share has come to take on a supreme importance for me, as if in answering a “CallIng". I give it in that kind of spirit, seriousness and sincerity, too!

JOURNEY INTO THE ‘MISSISSIPPI’ OF MEXICO

February-March, 1997

I was on a Talk Show (Steal This Radio) in the Lower East Side of New York City the other day. I was invited to speak on my recent trip to Mexico. More specifically, ZAPATISTA LAND., One of my Sistuhs said jokingly that we should title this talk: "What's a Black Man…" we all laughed. But upon second-thought, hmmm … Why not.

(from Anarchist Panther zine #1)

What motivates me more than anything else about anarchism and its relevance to Black revolution is that it has offered me some powerful insights into why we have not been able to recover from our defeat (the 60’s revolution) and advance forward to the kinds of untities, organizations and activities that make for invincible revolutionary movements.

(from Anarchist Panther zine #4)

Anarchy as a journey in the human story has a long and crazy road. In fact, it is where the Human Story begins. It is the story of human life BEFORE the advent, the institutionalization of The Muthafuckas. (Eldridge Cleaverian definition, ha).

The following was written back in March 18 ADM (18 years After The Death of Malcolm). I was still a Black Liberation Army prisoner-of-war. This period of reflection shows a developing anti-authoritarian awareness coming out of a strong Black Panther Marxist-Leninist-Maoist influence. Why?

THERE ARE CATS, AND THERE ARE CATS...

THERE IS KUWASI BALAGOON

In the name of Allah Most Gracious Most Merciful…

Kuwasi Balagoon is dead. "Surely we are Allah’ and to Him we surely return." The Quran tells us each soul shall have a taste of death and all too often we make the mistake of seeing death as a process outside of life. Kuwasi was full of life, therefore his death seems odd.