“Back In 1924, He [Paul Robeson] Was Rehearsing The Last Act Of The Emperor Jones, And Script Called

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The Black Panthers fed more hungry kids than the state of California

It wasn’t all young men and guns: the Black Panther Party’s programs fed more hungry kids than the state of California

The Black Panther’s Free Breakfast for Children Program is probably their best-known initiative, the press finding an intriguing story juxtaposing the Panther’s tough-guy-in-leather-jacket image with the act of serving small children plates of hot food. Importantly, it was mostly women who led these survival programmes, and women made up a majority of the Panther membership. They served in leadership roles from ‘Officer of the Day’ (essentially the office – and people – manager for each branch), to organising the many details of a location’s breakfast programme to initiating and leading food justice, healthcare and housing programmes within neighbourhoods.

So why does the image of the Panthers as a masculinist and violent organisation persist? The answer lies in part with media distortion, influenced both by the sexism and racism that misrepresented the Panthers. There was also a misinformation campaign by the FBI, led by J Edgar Hoover, waged against the increasingly popular Panthers, which had an enduring impact on how people saw them.

Shadow, Osaka, Photo by Daido Moniyama, 1995

Andrei Tarkovsky, his Sister Marina and their Mother Maria Ivanova Vishnyakova •

Bianca Blakeney by Sam Crawford for CAP 74024 Magazine April 2022

“I have a longing for life, and I go on living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves as they open in spring. I love the blue sky, I love some people, whom one loves sometimes without knowing why. I love some great deeds done by men, though I’ve long ceased perhaps to have faith in them, yet from old habit one’s heart prizes them. I love the sticky leaves in spring, the blue sky — that’s all it is. It’s not a matter of intellect or logic, it’s loving with one’s inside, with one’s stomach.”

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Statues of Endre Ady and Miklos Radnoti. Budapest, Hungary. June 2019,

The Night Porter

Dir: Liliana Cavani

Cin: Alfio Contini

“If you’re walking for a long time, You can’t think about tomorrow. If you’re walking for a long time, keep your eyes down and don’t falter. Wolves are growling in the mountains, they will come if you’re not wise. Wolves are growling by the roadside, and robbers prowling in the trees. One eye open when you’re sleeping, the night has many arms that touch you. One eye open when you’re waking, sometimes day itself can snatch you. If you dream of grapes in the arbor, you’ll wake up with stones for eyes. If you dreams of rivers winding, there’ll be gravel where you lie. And when your father falls behind, don’t cry, there’s always someone else. And when your mother falls behind, don’t cry, and then, there’s no one else. Never ask where you are going, the wind might blow your ashes there Never also where you are going, The wind is blowing everywhere.”

—

“Children’s Lullaby,” from So I Will Tell The Ground, a book of poetry by Egyptian-Armenian Gregory Djanikian

Cited along the poem, the testimony of “an Armenian child-survivor of a deportation, 1915”

About this time, Turkish or Kurdish women would come and take children away. Realizing that there was nothing but death facing us…my mother gave me to them. So these two women held my hand and took me away.