Fred Hampton, the former deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, speaking during 1969 in Chicago. The film "The Murder of Fred Hampton" has recently been re-released on DVD.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
Event: People's Summit Fundraiser/Discussion
Film: "The Murder of Fred Hampton", 1971 (88 mins.) Recently re-released on DVD
Date: Friday May 29, 7:00-9:00 p.m.
Location: 5920 Second Avenue at Antoinette, Near WSU in Detroit
Suggested Donation: $5
Hampton Photo:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53911892@N00/3549015374/
Fred Hampton, a young leader of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party, electrified the African American and progressive movement in Chicago during 1968-69. He formed an alliance of street gangs along with organizations from the Puerto Rican, Chicano, student and working class white communities in the Chicago area in order to fight against repression and for food, free health care, quality education, housing and fundamental social change. His efforts prefigured the Rainbow Coalition of Jesse Jackson during the 1980s. Hampton's legacy as a young revolutionary organizer portends much for the challenges facing the people of the United States today amid the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
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Brief background on film:
In The Murder Of Fred Hampton, currently in re-release on DVD, director Mike Gray and the Chicago Film Group Collective chronicle the brief but extraordinary life of 21 year old Hampton, executed as he slept on December 4th, 1969, along with other Panthers during a brutal home invasion by a special unit of Chicago police tied to the State Attorney's office. Despite an elaborate coverup by police insisting that that they fired 99 bullets and left Hampton's brains splattered across his mattress in 'self-defense,' movement lawyers, as documented in this devastating film, proved otherwise. This people's investigation challenging at the same time Nixon Administration repression and Cointelpro, resulted in the indictment of several Chicago police, the State Attorney for Northern Illinois, and his assistants.
The Murder Of Fred Hampton illuminates the magnetic fervor, militant eloquence, and sheer infectious ideological energy of 'living high on the people,' that Chairman Fred embodied, much like Malcolm. And it was that threat to the state and the status quo, a combination of political rage transcending fear and the passionate pursuit of broad popular unity against social and economic injustice, that invoked Hampton's valiant iconic immortality and also abrupt victimhood. Rendering The Murder Of Fred Hampton a visual and oral blueprint of cautionary wisdom and mass inspiration.
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