Transcription of the White Panther Party Ten-Point Program. This transcription preserves the spelling, punctuation, and word choice of the original document. Explanatory text not from the original document is bracketed.
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WHITE PANTHER 10 POINT PROGRAM
July 4, 1969
WE TAKE AS OUR HEROES THOSE THAT WE HAVE BEEN TOLD TO HATE AND TO FEAR;
ELDRIDGE CLEAVER, HUEY P. NEWTON, FIDEL. THE RED GUARD ARE OUR BROTHERS;
THE
BLACK PANTHERS ARE OUR BROTHERS. WE JOIN WITH THEM IN THE LIBERATION
OF THE PLANET.
Pun Plamondon
Minister of Defense
(underground)
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FREE JOHN SINCLAIR
White Panther/Trans-Love Tribe
1520 Hill Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
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WHITE PANTHER PARTY 10-POINT PROGRAM AND PLATFORM
JULY 4, 1969
WHAT WE WANT/WHAT WE BELIEVE
1. WE WANT FREEDOM. WE WANT THE POWER FOR ALL PEOPLE TO DETERMINE THEIR
OWN DESTINIES.
We believe that we will not be free until all the people are free, and
that all people are entitled to self-determination as a natural human right.
2. WE WANT JUSTICE. WE WANT AN IMMEDIATE AND TOTAL END TO ALL CULTURAL
AND POLITICAL REPRESSION OF THE PEOPLE BY THE VICIOUS POWER STRUCTURE AND
THEIR MAD LACKIES THE POLICE, COURTS, AND MILITARY. WE WANT THE END OF
ALL POLICE AND MILITARY VIOLENCE AGAINST THE PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD
RIGHT NOW!
We believe that the present system of "law and order" and "justice"
is being used by the ruling classes to keep the people under their control
and to keep us from developing ways and means by which to determine our
own destinies. The police and courts and other legal apparati are closely
controlled by the monied ruling classes and constitute a police-state conspiracy
which is in now way responsive to the needs of the people. The police must
be brought under decentralized community control and the judiciary must
be thoroughly revamped so that the people will have a truly independent
judicial system which will protect them against class oppression and violence
by the ruling classes on their lives and energies.
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3. WE WANT A FREE WORLD ECONOMY BASED ON THE FREE EXCHANGE OF ENERGY
AND MATERIALS AND THE END OF MONEY.
We believe that no person and no thing in the world has a price, and
that money is a ruse, once useful, now obsolete, used to keep the people
from learning that a small elite class runs their lives and plunders their
resources, both human, material and natural. We believe that the consumer
economy, based on competition and control, must be completely replaced
by an economic system the sole purpose of which is to provide forthe needs
of all the people all the time. The people must control the means of production
and distribution of all goods and all services, and our energies must be
used freely to create the best that our technology and resources can produce,
because the people deserve the best there is.
4. WE WANT FREE ACCESS TO ALL INFORMATION MEDIA AND TO ALL TECHNOLOGY
FOR ALL THE PEOPLE.
We believe that the mass information media are controlled by the forces
of monopoly capitalism and used by this ruling elite to brainwash the people
into buying the consumer economy and the decadent culture this type of
system has evolved. The material technology is used cynically to advance
the interests of the military-industrial police-state conspiracy and to
continue the tyranny of the consumer economy. We believe that the mass
media must be used to educate the people through disseminating of information
that will help them build a new culture based on life instead of death,
on the needs of the people instead of the interests of an elite oligarchy.
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5. WE WANT A FREE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM THAT WILL TEACH EACH MAN, WOMAN,
AND CHILD ON EARTH EXACTLY WHAT EACH NEEDS TO KNOW TO SURVIVE AND GROW
INTO HIS OR HER FULL HUMAN POTENTIAL.
We believe that the present so-called educational system, from kindergarten
through post-doctoral programs, are designed merely to reproduce the conditions
of monopoly capitalism and to train people how to fulfill their roles as
captives of this death culture. We believe that the educational process
should be the most exciting experience in the people's lives, and that
all modern communications media and technology must be utilized in creating
an educational system that will lead the people into the new age by teaching
them how to provide for their own needs and for the needs of the people
as a whole.
6. WE WANT TO FEE ALL STRUCTURE FROM CORPORATE RULE AND TURN ALL THE
BUILDINGS AND LAND OVER TO THE PEOPLE AT ONCE.
We believe that the land and everything on it belongs to all the people
and must be used in their best interests rather than in the selfish interests
of landlords, banks, and other hoarders and renters of property and housing.
We believe that the people must be free to develop housing and clusters
of housing, or cities, that will be adequate and healthful, suitable for
their needs, and that the ecological balance which has been destroyed by
the insensitive greed of the polluters and exploiters must be restored
and forever maintained.
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7. WE WANT FREE TIME AND SPACE FOR ALL HUMANS - DISSOLVE ALL UNNATURAL
BOUNDARIES.
We believe that the present system of monopoly capitalism and the consumer
economy keeps people enslaved by tieing them to obsolete "jobs" and work
patters which are designed only to perpetuate the consumer economy and
to keep the people on a treadmill from birth to death trying to make enough
money to provide themselves with the barest necessities of life. We believe
that the people must be free to work, live and travel as their own needs
dictate and in such a way that the great masses of the people benefit from
each other's work and lives. We believe further that all so-called jobs
except those essential to the functioning of a free society be abolished
and the people set free to determine their own living conditions, and that
those jobs which are necessary for survival will be rewarded by the knowledge
that the work is done for the good of the people. Self-determination brings
dignity to work; slavery brings only hate for the job and for the system
that keeps people slaves.
8. WE WANT THE FREEDOM OF ALL PEOPLE WHO ARE HELD AGAINST THEIR WILL
IN THE CONSCRIPTED ARMIES OF THE OPPRESSORS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.
We believe that the young men who have been ripped off from their people
and their homes and families and tribes to be forced to serve in the imperialist
armies of the United States and other oppressive forces must be released
at once and returned to their homes, where they can join the fight for
independence and self-determination being waged against the same force
that held them in servitude. We
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believe that all wars of national liberation all over the world deserve
and demand the respect and support of all the people, and that we will
not have peace in the world until all peoples are free to determine their
own destinies. Peace is not possible when people are not free.
9. WE WANT THE FREEDOM OF ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS HELD IN FEDERAL, STATE,
COUNTY AND CITY JAILS AND PRISONS, SINCE THE SO-CALLED LEGAL SYSTEM IN
AMERICA MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR ANY MAN TO RECEIVE A FAIR AND IMPARTIAL
TRIAL BY A JURY OF HIS PEERS.
We believe that the present system prison system is obsolete and useless,
and that the legal system that puts people in prison was designed for a
society entirely different from our own. We believe that the prison system
as it now exists serves only to alienate the so-called criminals even more;
that their so-called crimes are the result of an obsolete social order
which denies freedom and dignity to the people; and that if any of the
present prisoners are truly enemies of the people then they must be rehabilitated
and taught to serve the people. If anyone should be locked up it is the
monopolists and robber barons and judges and other members of the capitalist
conspiracy who are bent on perpetrating their insane sense of order and
ownership on the people.
10. WE WANT FREE LAND, FREE FOOD, FREE SHELTER, FREE CLOTHING, FREE
MUSIC, FREE MEDICAL CARE, FREE EDUCATION, FREE MEDIA, FREE TECHNOLOGY,
EVERYTHING FREE FOR EVERY BODY!
We believe that the only solution to the problems of the people of the
earth now is through establishing a free economy throughout the world based
on the needs of all
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the people all the time, and that any social system which does not provide
for the needs of the people must be abolished and replaced by a free social
order.
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinion of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any for of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, IT IS THEIR RIGHT, IT IS THEIR DUTY, TO THROW OFF SUCH GOVERNMENT, AND TO PROVIDE NEW GUARDS FOR THEIR FUTURE SECURITY.