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Former
Black Panther promotes student activism
By
Ilan Cloud
Daily Forty-Niner
Contributing writer
Kwak
B. Duren, former member of the Black Panther
Party and current leader and co-founder
of the new Panther Vangaurd Movement, spoke
at Cal State Long Beach yesterday in hopes
of inspiring higher student activism on
social and political issues.
David
Petterson, president of the CSULB speech
and debate team, organized the debate, which
served to stoke student interest in social
and political issues.
"We
are citizens of this globe, we don't have
a responsibility to one small part, but
to the whole planet," Duren said.
Duren,
a longtime political and social activist,
worked with many influential figures in
his youth during the '70s including Huey
P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther
Party, and many others who helped define
the organization. He referred to an influential
figure to the party, Malcom X, and spoke
of how his vision coincided with his own.
"‘We
spend most of the time waking people up,'
Malcom used to say," Duren said, referring
to the key element of issues he strives
to change. "Educate to Liberate. Each
one, teach one; that was the slogan of the
Black Panther Party."
Duren,
54 and now a lawyer residing in Los Angles
said his experiences with the Black Panther
Party started in the '70s shortly after
its grass roots creation. His involvement
became a major focal point as he took questions
from students.
"All
the objective inquiries [targeted at the
Black Panther Party] were a strategy of
counter intelligence acts led by [then director
of the FBI] J. Edger Hoover and their primary
goal was to smear the name of the party,"
Duren said in response to a student's question
about the party's infamous history.
"They
viewed us as a threat, so their aim was
to discredit us."
As
the discussion between Duren continued with
students, a prominent view kept resurfacing—the
contradictions of this society. According
to Duren these contradictions are the source
of struggles within the country and even
globally. The major contradiction he pointed
to was the inequity that results with the
distribution of wealth.
"America
is the epitome of what the world and the
country suffers from—a lack of resources,"
Duren said. "Do you believe the African
American male in this society is inherently
prone to crime? There's a reason why the
prison system is filled with African Americans.
The majority of people don't have access
to those resources. That's a contradiction."
Petterson
commented on his motives to bring Duren's
message to the students, "The speech
and debate team studied the Black Panther
Party and thought it would be good to hear
how they started from such small levels.
We wanted to help students actively take
on issues like global poverty and the prison
industrial complex."
While
a few of Duren's topics related to the struggles
of African Americans the main focal point
continued to gravitate on more global issues
and the need for students to become more
vocal on contemporary issues.
His
concluding comments aimed to inspire hope
in the audience, "Power of the people
can change the world."
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