Power to the People
Civic Action Campaigns
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Power to the People's
purpose is in its name.
The initiative designs civic action campaigns that strengthen democracy, distribute power and promote transparency and accountability for people in positions of authority, from police to politicians, from judges and justices to CEOs and billionaires, from faith groups to organizational leaders. The goal is to incentivize each of us to adopt social practices that work for all of us, and for the non-majority society we're on the cusp of becoming.
Giving homage to the Black Panther slogan, Power to the People is built on the concept of democracy itself, derived from dēmokratia; demos (“the people”) + kratos (“rule”); “rule of the people” (or, put another way, "power to the people"), and is the legacy of the original Rainbow Coalition who, despite their different flags (see below), were able to do something we still struggle with today -- they saw how they were all fighting for the same cause. As a result, everyone from AIM (American Indian Movement) and Students for a Democratic Society (Euro Americans) to the Brown Berets (Chicanos) and the Red Guard Party (Chinese Americans) among others, all found a home under their shared banner. "We'll work with anybody, or form a coalition with anybody that has revolution on their mind," was how Fred Hampton would describe the tie that bound them all together.
Fred and Black Panther Party leader/Rainbow Coalition co-founder Bobby Lee first met members of the group that would become the Young Patriots Organization when Fred and Bobby, at Fred's encouragement, attended a JOIN (Jobs or Income Now) event, an initiative launched by Students for a Democratic Society to explore working together. That meeting, understandably tense at first, quickly resulted in a shared awareness of how they were all impacted by the same problems.
Bobby Lee was initially reticent, especially seeing the Confederate flag patches on arms. But the more they talked, the more the walls came down, and he eventually said, "My name is Bobby Lee but my real name is Robert E. Lee." Laughing together erased any lingering suspicions, and in just one meeting, lifelong friendships were established and cemented, with the engagement of Young Lords Party leader Jose Cha-Cha Jimenez, with whom Fred already had a relationship, the venerable Rainbow Coalition was born.
Empowerment Campaigns:
Your Republic - Collaborative effort to secure citizen rights for all Americans, and protect the sanctity of the vote; including automatic voter registration, increasing accessibility, including through absentee ballots, making the right to vote irrevocable for every US citizen, including the incarcerated, and reforming Electoral College.
One Nation, Indivisible – Recognizing public officials who, across the political spectrum, build an America where everyone is embraced, affirmed and included. Fostering political strategies that work in a non-majority society (and eliminating those that don’t).
Just Justice – Tools that make the justice process more democratic, that shift power to the people, and that give the everyday citizen access to equal legal protection and due process.
Back Where We Came From - Effort to shift the narrative from talking about building a border wall to making automatic dual citizenship an option for all Mexicans. This was their land first. When we say to them, "Go back where you came from," we forget that, with respect to the western part of North America, they already are.
Bobby Seale's going through all types of physical and mental torture, but that's all right, because we said even before this happened and we're going to say it after this, and after I'm locked up, and after everybody's locked up, that you can jail a revolutionary, but you can't jail a revolution. You may run a liberator like Eldridge Cleaver out of the country, but you can’t run liberation out of the country. You might murder a freedom-fighter like Bobby Hutton, but you can’t murder freedom-fighting.
Fred Hampton
