Click on the headline to link to a "Bob Feldman 68" blog entry marking the 40th anniversary of the murders of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.
Markin comment:
The late "Gonzo" journalist, Hunter S. Thompson, once noted in his madman escapades posing as a novel, "Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas", that at some point in the late 1960s the high water mark of the counter-cultural revolutionary possibilities had been met and thrown back. From then on the tide receded. We can quibble over exact dates and events but one of the clearest ones for me politically was the murders in Chicago of Black Panther leaders, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in late 1969. To be black, especially a black man, or to be different hereafter in any out of the sort way from mainstream politics or culture put one at grave risk. Maybe not the kind of fiendish risk that Fred Hampton faced but risk of some degree nevertheless. And we of the left are still paying for those defeats forty years later.
Click below to listen to Stanley Nelson speak
about his latest documentary –The Black
Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution on the Terry Gross show Fresh Air on NPR (Sept 24, 2015)
Markin comment:
The late "Gonzo" journalist, Hunter S. Thompson, once noted in his madman escapades posing as a novel, "Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas", that at some point in the late 1960s the high water mark of the counter-cultural revolutionary possibilities had been met and thrown back. From then on the tide receded. We can quibble over exact dates and events but one of the clearest ones for me politically was the murders in Chicago of Black Panther leaders, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in late 1969. To be black, especially a black man, or to be different hereafter in any out of the sort way from mainstream politics or culture put one at grave risk. Maybe not the kind of fiendish risk that Fred Hampton faced but risk of some degree nevertheless. And we of the left are still paying for those defeats forty years later.
