White Panther Party

The White Panthers were a far left, anti-racist, white-American political collective founded in 1968 by Lawrence (Pun) Plamondon and Leni and John Sinclair. It was started in response to an interview where Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, was asked what white people could do to support the Black Panthers. Newton replied that they could form a White Panther Party. Thus, the group took its name in emulation of the Black Panthers, and dedicated its energies to "cultural revolution." Sinclair made every effort to ensure that the White Panthers were not mistaken for a white supremacist group, responding to such claims with "quite the contrary."

Michigan years

The group was most active in Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan and included the proto-punk band MC5 which Sinclair managed for several years before he was incarcerated. Jon Landau took over managing the band and the group disassociated with any overt support for the White Panther Party by 1970. From a general ideological perspective, Plamondon and Sinclair defined the White Panthers as "fighting for a clean planet and the freeing of political prisoners." The White Panthers added other elements such as advocating "rock 'n roll, dope, sex in the streets and the abolishing of capitalism." Abbie Hoffman was also a part of the White Panthers mentioning it in his book "Steal This Book", for a free world. The group emerged out of the Detroit Artists Workshop, a radical arts collective founded in 1964 near Wayne State University. Among its primary concerns was the legalization of marijuana, something that ultimately cost Sinclair his freedom after several arrests for possession. It also aligned itself with radical politics; for example explaining the 12th Street Riot as justifiable under current political and economic conditions in Detroit.
Lawrence (Pun) Plamondon was indicted as a co-conspirator with Sinclair in connection with the bombing of the CIA office in Ann Arbor a year after the founding of the group. Upon hearing, on the left-wing alternative radio station WABX, that he had been indicted, he fled the U.S. for Europe and Africa, spending time in Algeria with the self-exiled Huey Newton. After secretly reentering the country, and on his way to a safe house in northern Michigan, he was arrested in a routine traffic stop, thus joining Sinclair in prison, who had been sentenced to nine and half years in jail for serially violating Michigan’s marijuana possession laws. Plamondon was convicted and was in prison when Sinclair was released on bond in 1971 while appeals were being heard on his case. Sinclair's unexpected release came two days after a large "Free John" benefit concert held at the University of Michigan's Crisler Arena headlined by John Lennon and Yoko Ono as well as Stevie Wonder.

Legal reforms

The group had a direct role in two important legal decisions. A landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1972 quashed Plamondon’s conviction, and destroyed the case against Sinclair. The court ruled warrantless wiretapping was unlawful under the U.S. Constitution, even in the case where national security, as defined by the executive branch, was in danger. The White Panthers had been charged with conspiring to destroy government property and evidence used to convict Plamondon was acquired through wiretaps not submitted to judicial approval. The case U.S. vs. U.S. District Court (Plamondon et al), [http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=407&invol=297 407 U.S. 297] , commonly known as the Keith Case, held that the Fourth Amendment shielded private speech from surveillance unless a warrant had been granted, and that the “warrant procedure would not frustrate the legitimate purposes of domestic security searches.” This case returned to the news in 2006 regarding the Bush Administration’s NSA warrantless surveillance controversy. The judgment freed Plamondon, yet Sinclair was free only on bond fighting his possession conviction when in 1972 the Michigan Supreme Court ruled in the "People v. Sinclair", 387 Mich. 91, 194 N.W.2d 878 (1972) that Michigan’s classification of marijuana was unconstitutional, in effect decriminalizing possession until a new law conforming to the ruling was passed by the Michigan Legislature a week later. Sinclair was freed but the cumulative effects of the imprisonment had marked the end of the White Panther Party in Michigan, which renamed itself while its leaders were still incarcerated, ultimately choosing the Rainbow People's Party as a new name.

Related groups

The headquarters of the White Panthers in Portland, Oregon were raided by the FBI on December 5, 1970. Two members of the group were arrested and accused of throwing a molotov cocktail through the window of a local Selective Service office.

White Panthers chapters in San Francisco and Berkeley remained active into the 1980s [http://berkeleyinthe70s.homestead.com/files/W-JUNE80.htm] . In 1984, angry because then-Mayor of San Francisco Dianne Feinstein proposed to ban handguns in the city, the San Francisco White Panthers mounted a successful petition drive that forced Feinstein into a recall election, which she won.

Author and anarchist Mick Farren, a leader of the United Kingdom Underground, later founded the White Panthers, UK.

The White Panther Statement

In November 1968, "Fifth Estate" published the "White Panther State/meant". This manifesto, in emulation of the Black Panthers, ended with a ten-point program:
*Full endorsement and support of Black Panther Party's 10-Point Program
*Total assault on the culture by any means necessary
*Free exchange of energy and materials
*Free food, clothes, housing, dope, music, bodies, medical care
*Free access to information media
*Free time and space for all humans
*Free all schools and all structures from corporate rule
*Free all prisoners everywhere
*Free all soldiers at once
*Free the people from their "leaders"

References

*The documentary film [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0333847/ MC5*: A True Testimonial] (2002) features comments by Sinclair and MC5 on the party.
*Essay: [http://eserver.org/bs/42/mosher.html The Political Economy of the White Panthers]
*"'60s radical takes long trip back to his roots," Marsha Low, Detroit Free Press, Oct. 27. 2004, Sec B.
*"White Panther Manifesto," John Sinclair, 1968, accessed 17 Nov. 2004 [http://www.signal66.com/music/lostindc/00_0324b.html]
* Adapted from the Wikinfo article, White Panther Party [http://www.wikinfo.org/wiki.php?title=White_Panther_Party] , used under the GNU Free Documentation License
*The documentary film "The U.S. vs. John Lennon" (2006) asseses the FBI's investigation into John Lennon and Yoko Ono attending several White Panther Party meetings.
*Carson, David. "Grit, Noise, and Revolution: The Birth of Detroit Rock 'n' Roll". University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor, 2005.
*Hale, Jeff A.. "The White Panthers' 'Total Assault on the Culture.'" In "Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960s and ’70s". Eds. Peter Braunstein and Michael William Doyle. New York: Routledge, 2002: pp. 125-156.

Notes

ee also

* Cointelpro
* New Left
* Weather Underground
* John Sinclair (poet)

External links

* [http://www.johnsinclair.us/ JohnSinclair.us] The Official John Sinclair Website
* [http://www.umich.edu/~bhl/bhl/refhome/jls/John.htm The John and Leni Sinclair Papers, 1957-1999]