On the day of the verdict, whether or not the grand jury decides to indict Darren Wilson – the cop who killed Mike Brown – we will be out on the streets at 14th and Broadway at 7pm. We do so to show our solidarity with Mike Brown and the militants of Ferguson, who withstood the brute force of the state while bravely fighting the white supremacist power structure that treats black life as disposable. Their actions have inspired a movement all across the country and the world to challenge the daily oppression faced by black and brown working class people.
Whether or not this cop is indicted won’t change the repressive nature of the state and capital, but what this tragedy has shown is the revolutionary potential of concerted action in the street. The militants of Ferguson have directly faced the state, have rejected community and business leaders’ calls for pacification, and, when the cameras left, continued to do the intensive community building to keep the movement strong. But where will they and the national movement against police brutality go from here?
The experience in the Oscar Grant struggle has shown the need for an organized struggle that moves beyond merely reacting to moments of outrage and court dates, and develops a sustained movement and organization of black and brown proletarians that can challenge all instances of police brutality that occur in our city and beyond. This isn’t done by pandering to the state and it’s courts, non-profit leaders, self-appointed community leaders, or the “business community,” but by developing a revolutionary organization composed of working class militants who are steeled in the day to day struggles in the streets, their communities, and their workplaces.
When a black life is lost every 28 hours by the hands of cops and racist vigilantes, when stop and frisk is becoming the new normal, when prison populations are overflowing with black and brown people, families broken up by deportation, and jobs are few and far between, this movement seems more relevant then ever.
Below the jump, check out a dope track entitled War Cry by Tef Poe, a rapper who has been on the front lines of the struggle in Ferguson. This is sure to be a protest anthem. See you in the streets..
The roots of the Black Panther Party (BPP) lie within student struggle for fully-funded public education reflecting Black history, culture, and struggle. The founders of the party, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, met at Merritt College in Oakland and began to struggle for education together with other black students. But unlike liberal forces in the movement, Newton and Seale saw the necessity to connect their struggle as black students to structural oppression in working-class black communities. Police murder and beatings combined with a deadly lack of jobs, healthcare, food and affordable housing; the BPP saw that the struggle for control over our schools must be connected to the revolutionary struggle for control over our communities. Looking to the present not a whole lot has changed in Oakland: the BART police murder of Oscar Grant and the numerous murders committed by OPD before and after him demonstrate that state-sponsored racism and violence continues to oppress and kill us; East Oakland has some of the highest rates of foreclosures in the state creating more and more homeless families; health clinics and other vital social services continue to get cut back or completely eliminated; free after-school youth programs and daycare centers continue to close down placing more burdens on working-class mothers, who struggle to find ways to make sure their children are cared for when they attend work and/or school. A central difference between then and now is the lack of an organization like the BPP striving to connect these issues and build community control. There is however a growing student movement, which is trying to fight the budget cuts and demand affordable quality education. There are also 
