Rules should serve men, and not men serve rules. It is the duty of the poor to write and construct rules and laws that are in their better interests. This is one of the basic human rights of all men.
If Black people go about their struggle for liberation in the way that the oppressor dictates and sponsors, then we will have degenerated to the level of groveling flunkies for the oppressor himself. When the oppressor makes a vicious attack against freedom fighters because of the way that such freedom fighters choose to go about their liberation, then we know we are moving in the direction of our liberation. The oppressor must be harassed until his doom. He must have no peace by day or by night. The slaves have always outnumbered the slave-masters. The power of the oppressor rests upon the submission of the people. When Black people really unite and rise up in all their splendid millions, they will have the strength to smash injustice. We do not understand the power in our numbers. Divided, confused, fighting among ourselves, we are still in the elementary stage of throwing rocks, sticks, empty wine bottles, and beer cans at racist cops who lie in wait for a chance to murder unarmed Black people.
Black people must now move, from the grass roots through the perfumed circles of the Black bourgeoisie, to seize by any means necessary a proportionate share of the power vested and collected in the structure of America. We must organize and unite to combat by long resistance the brutal force used against us daily. The power structure depends upon the use of force within retaliation. This is why they have made it a felony to teach guerrilla warfare. An unarmed people are slaves or are subject to slavery at any given moment. If a government is not afraid of the people, it will arm the people from foreign aggression.
When a mechanic wants to fix a broken-down car engine, he must have the necessary tools to do the job. When the people move for liberation, they must have the basic tool of liberation: the gun. Only with the power of the gun can the Black masses halt the terror and brutality perpetuated against them by the armed racist power structure; and in one sense only by the power of the gun can the whole world be transformed into the earthly paradise dreamed of by the people from time immemorial. One successful practitioner of the art and science of national liberation and self-defense, Brother Mao Zedong, put it this way: “We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.”
From “In Defense of Self-Defense.” Newton’s family left their sharecropper’s plot in Louisiana for Oakland, where Newton attended high school and went to college. Newton founded the Black Panther Party with his classmate Bobby Seale. Under their leadership, the Panthers focused on surveilling police officers in Oakland and informing citizens of their rights during arrests. In 1968 Newton was convicted of the voluntary manslaughter of a police officer. “We’ve never advocated violence,” Newton said after his conviction was overturned in court. “Violence is inflicted upon us.”
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