Chairman Fred Hampton (2015)

Melanie Cervantes (artist/printer)
12.5 ” x 19″
9-color screen print, Mr French Kraft tone paper, Printed in San Leandro, 2015

This print was created to celebrate all of my friends who are community organizers working to address racism and White Supremacy. There are a very limited number available for sale.

Deputy Chairman(of national BPP) Fred Hampton, (Chairman of) Illinois Chapter Black Panther Party, August 30, 1948-December 4,1969, Serve the People, Body and Soul. (I will be editing the text on the poster to more accurately reflect this in the second round of printing).

This quote is part of a much linger speech at Olivet Church in 1969. Full speech here: http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/fhamptonspeech.html Here is a bit of it “We got to face some facts. That the masses are poor, that the masses belong to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the masses, I’m talking about the white masses, I’m talking about the black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too. We’ve got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don’t fight racism with racism. We’re gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don’t fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism.

We ain’t gonna fight no reactionary pigs who run up and down the street being reactionary; we’re gonna organize and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary political power and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the power structure, arm ourselves, and we’re gonna fight reactionary pigs with INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION. That’s what it has to be. The people have to have the power: it belongs to the people. “