[Ppnews] I am a revolutionary!

[Political Prisoner News]

December 3, 2009



<http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/%e2%80%98i-am-a-revolutionary%e2%80%99/>‘I 
am 
 a revolutionary!’

http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/%E2%80%98i-am-a-revolutionary%E2%80%99/



Commemorate the 40th anniversary of Chairman Fred 
Hampton’s assassination on Friday, Dec. 4 – 
events in Chicago and San Francisco, details below

<http://www.sfbayview.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Ch.-Fred-40th-12091.JPG>
Details of the commemoration in Chicago are listed below.





Details of the commemoration in Chicago are listed below.
On Dec. 4, 1969, 40 years ago, Chicago police led 
by Cook County prosecutor Edward Hanrahan as part 
of an FBI Counter Intelligence Program 
(COINTELPRO) operation stormed into Illinois 
Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton’s 
apartment at 4:30 a.m. Armed with shotguns, 
handguns and a .45 caliber machine gun and guided 
by a floor plan of the apartment provided by an 
informant, the police killed Defense Captain Mark 
Clark and critically injured four other Panthers.

They gunned their way through the apartment into 
Fred Hampton’s bedroom. There he lay sleeping, 
having been drugged earlier by an FBI informant. 
As he lay there, the cops stood over him and put 
two bullets in his brain, at close range.
<http://www.sfbayview.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Fred-Hampton-Film-Festival1.jpg>
Details of the Fred Hampton Film Festival in San Francisco are



Details of the Fred Hampton Film Festival in San 
Francisco are listed below. - Poster art by Emory Douglas
Other Panthers, including Fred Hampton’s eight 
month pregnant wife, Deborah Johnson (aka Akua 
Njeri), were beaten, dragged into the street and 
charged with assault and attempted murder. Not 
one officer ever spent a day in jail.

Following this murderous attack – where the 
police fired 99 rounds in the house and were 
completely uninjured themselves – Hanrahan 
brazenly lied that the police were under heavy 
fire from the Panthers. Among all the many 
thousands and thousands of actions that show why 
the Black Panther Party correctly dubbed the 
police “pigs,” few compare to the viciousness and 
lies surrounding the assassination of Fred Hampton.

The media took up and spread these lies from the 
authorities as if they were the whole truth and 
nothing but the truth. But the Panthers in 
Chicago – still shocked and grieving from the 
terrible loss of their key leader and with many 
of their core members now in jail – refused to 
give up. Instead, they turned to the people and 
mounted a defiant political counter-offensive.
<http://www.sfbayview.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Ch.-Fred-Hampton-by-Paul-Sequeira1.jpg>

I am & a revolutionary
 was the rallying cry




“I am 
 a revolutionary” was the rallying cry of 
Chairman Fred Hampton, a leader so powerful that 
he could draw tens of thousands on a moment’s 
notice and therefore such a threat to the system 
that he was assassinated at the age of only 21, 
on Dec. 4, 1969. – Photo: Paul Sequeira
The Panthers organized “people’s tours” of the 
apartment. Thousands came, first from the ghettos 
and then more broadly. Film crews and reporters 
were brought in. People saw with their own eyes. 
And the evidence was clear: All the bullet holes 
were coming IN. The famous picture supplied by 
the authorities and run in the Chicago Tribune at 
the time, showing a door supposedly riddled with 
bullets coming from the Panthers, was actually a door with nail holes.

Even mainstream commentators felt compelled to 
speak out. Hanrahan had claimed that it was only 
through the “grace of God” that his men escaped 
with scratches. Mike Royko, then a columnist at 
the Chicago Daily News – and no Panther supporter – wrote in response:
<http://www.sfbayview.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Ch.-Fred-Hampton-assassinated-dragged-by-wrist-to-doorway-1204691.jpg>
Chairman Fred Hampton was assassinated and dragged by his wrist


Chairman Fred Hampton was assassinated and 
dragged by his wrist to this doorway.
“Indeed it does appear that miracles occurred. 
The Panthers’ bullets must have dissolved into 
the air before they hit anybody or anything. 
Either that or the Panthers were shooting in the 
wrong direction – namely, at themselves.” (See 
“The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI 
and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther,” 
page 102, by Jeffrey Haas, Lawrence Hill Books.)

Fred Hampton was a 21-year-old leader of the 
Panthers who inspired all kinds of people to take 
up revolution. As Bob Avakian says in his memoir, 
“Many people throughout the country had been 
moved by Fred Hampton and had made a leap in 
their revolutionary commitment because of his 
influence – the whole way in which, before he was 
killed, he boldly put forward: ‘You can kill a 
revolutionary, but you can’t kill the 
revolution.’” (See “From Ike to Mao 
  and 
Beyond: My Journey from Mainstream America to 
Revolutionary Communist,” Insight Press.)
<http://www.sfbayview.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Ch.-Freds-bloody-bed-by-Paul-Sequeira.jpg>
The cops stood over Chairman Fred Hampton as he lay sleeping an



The cops stood over Chairman Fred Hampton as he 
lay sleeping and put two bullets in his brain at 
close range. This is Chairman Fred’s bed after 
his murder. – Photo: Paul Sequeira
In one short year from the founding of the Black 
Panther Party in Illinois to the time of Fred’s 
murder, there was a transformation in the culture 
of society in Chicago. Based on the teachings of 
Mao Tsetung, the leader of the Chinese 
revolution, there was a “serve the people” ethos 
and culture the likes of which Chicago had not seen before.

The Panthers set up free clinics in neighborhoods 
of the oppressed, where before health care had 
been virtually unavailable. The Black Panther 
newspaper was sold everywhere. Posters from the 
paper were used for political education sessions 
in the communities and on campuses. Former 
gangbangers and student intellectuals became 
revolutionaries. The culture was so widespread in 
Chicago that conductors on the el and subway 
trains would announce, “All power to the people!” 
when calling out the stops where revolutionaries were getting off the train.

Hampton’s assassination was part of a broad 
campaign to smash the Black Panther Party and the 
burgeoning revolutionary movement that burst onto 
the scene in the 1960s. In September 1968, 
notorious FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called the 
Panthers “the greatest threat to the internal 
security of the country,” and by 1969 the 
Panthers were the number one target of the FBI’s 
COINTELPRO operations, which included 233 
different documented operations, from 
assassinations like those of Fred Hampton and 
Mark Clark to attempts to turn street gangs 
against the Panthers, efforts to create divisions 
within the BPP and setting up Panthers on false criminal charges.
<http://www.sfbayview.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Ch.-Fred-apt-BPP-peoples-tour-after-assassination.jpg>
When the Panthers conducted 
peoples tours




When the Panthers conducted “people’s tours” of 
Chairman Fred Hampton’s apartment after his 
assassination, thousands of followers lined up in 
the cold, and film crews and reporters were brought in.
Hoover specifically aimed to prevent the rise of 
what he called “a Black messiah” – that is, he 
focused on taking out leaders and potential 
leaders of the masses. Revolutionaries like 
Malcolm X, George Jackson, Bunchy Carter and John 
Huggins in LA, and Fred Hampton were either 
directly murdered by the government or set up. 
These were counter-revolutionary criminal acts – 
not only were innocent people murdered by the 
U.S. government, but the ability of the masses of 
people to raise their heads and liberate themselves was grievously set back.

Fred Hampton drew out the best from all these 
sectors of the people, inspiring them with a 
revolutionary vision and calling on them to rise 
to being revolutionaries. And many thousands 
heeded the call. His famous chant, “I am
a 
revolutionary,” was transformative, as people 
would take it up, thinking seriously as they did 
so about what they were committing their lives to when they said it.
<http://www.sfbayview.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Ch.-Fred-funeral-home-people-line-up-outside-by-Paul-Sequeira.jpg>
People lined up for blocks outside funeral home to honor Chairm



People lined up for blocks outside the funeral 
home to honor Chairman Fred Hampton. – Photo: Paul Sequeira
Leadership is critical to making revolution. 
Although revolutionary leaders like Fred Hampton 
were taken from the people and others capitulated 
to capitalism and gave up on revolution, the 
spirit of devoting your life to making revolution 
and doing all you can to hasten the day when 
revolution can be made still lives.

This story first appeared on 
<http://www.revcom.us/a/184/Fred_Hampton-en.html>Revolution, 
the voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.



Accomplishments of the Illinois Black Panther Party

• Breakfast for Children Program – Chicago

• Breakfast for Children Program – Peoria

• Free People’s Medical Clinic

• Free Sickle Cell Anemia Testing

• Political Education Classes

• Community Control of Police Project

• Unified the street gangs of Chicago

• Multi-racial united front among the Black 
Panther Party, Students for a Democratic Society, 
the Blackstone Rangers, the Young Lords and the 
Young Patriots that was called the “Rainbow 
Coalition,” a phrase later taken by Rev. Jesse Jackson



40th anniversary events

In Chicago, “40 Years Later, 40 Years Strong! We 
Will Never Forgive! We Will Never Forget!”

4:30 a.m. – exactly 40 years later at the same 
address – at 2337 W. Chairman Fred Hampton Way 
(previously Monroe at Western): candlelight vigil with speakers

12 noon, same place: vigil with speakers

5:30-10 p.m., at Winnie Mandela School, 7847 S. 
Jeffrey Ave. (enter from parking lot): premier 
screening of “Chairman Fred Hampton Way,” 
produced and directed by Ray L. Baker Jr.; 
keynote speakers Akua Njeri, widow of Chairman 
Fred Hampton and chairperson of the December 4th 
Committee; Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. of the 
Prisoners of Conscience Committee; solidarity 
statements from Black Panther Party members, POCC 
Minister of Information JR, POCC New Orleans and 
other POCC chapters, James Clark of the Mark 
Clark Foundation and brother of Mark Clark, Pam 
Africa of the ICFFMAJ, Ramona Africa of MOVE and 
the Last Poets; panel discussion

For more information, call (773) 256-9451.

In San Francisco, “Fred Hampton Commemorative 
Film Festival”: Illinois Black Panther Party 
Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton was killed by 
Chicago Police and the FBI on Dec. 4, 1969. 
Commemorate the history and inspiration and the 
lasting impact of our revolutionary leaders!

7-9:30 p.m. at 522 Valencia St., San Francisco, 
near 16th Street, one block from BART: a showing 
of films on Fred Hampton, revolutionary and 
servant of the people; his enemies: how they 
murdered him 40 years ago today; and the lessons 
for today. Chairman Fred Hampton said, “You can 
kill a revolutionary, but you can’t kill the 
revolution!” Sponsored by Collision Course Media, 
It’s About Time BPP, Freedom Archives, ILPS-Bay 
Area Grassroots Organizing Committee, Committee 
to Free the SF 8, Haiti Action Committee, Malcolm 
X Grassroots Movement, BAYAN-USA (NorCal)




Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
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