Revolutionary Suicide (Book 2)

I put my first book on pause, due to me getting frustrated with the author of the book....I began reading Huey P. Newton's Revolutionary Suicide last week. A much better read for me. I can't say I was ever really taught about the Black Panthers, or Huey or Bobby Seale. Time for some self-teaching! I'm almost through with Part One and this is a good book! 

Huey says:

I do not think that life will change for the better without an assault on the Establishment, which goes on exploiting the wretched of the earth. This belief lies at the heart of the concept of revolutionary suicide. Thus it is better t oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder than to endure them. Although I risk the likelihood of death, there is at least the possibility , if not the probability, of changing intolerable conditions. This possibility is important, because much in human existence is based upon hope without any real understanding of the odds.

What I got from that is that if you want to change your conditions, you have to directly challenge those that cause your conditions. Having the will and the genuine desire to change where you are will cause you to go as far as risking death in hopes of changing something. An all-out effort....at the end of the day I think before we all go to sleep, we should ask ourselves "How bad do I want it? What am I willing to put on the line for my hopes and dreams...what is really driving me to change what I see everyday?"

Hopefully I finish this book this week. Got way more to do this summer.

Revolutionary suicide does not mean that I and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite. We have such have strong desire to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is impossible. When reactionary forces crush us, we must move against these forces, even at the risk of death. We will have to be driven out with a stick.

-Huey P. Newton



~Rell