When we tell the history of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, we often focus on the open carrying of guns and the armed police patrols. That was spectacular. It is what propelled the Black Panthers into the national spotlight—especially the confrontation at the California statehouse in Sacramento on May 2, 1967. But what receives less attention is that, at the very moment the Black Panther Party emerged in October 1966, it came to life with a mission focused on community service and cooperation: a ten-point platform and program focused on combatting poverty in African-American communities. The platform demanded social and economic rights, including full employment, housing, food, education, land, clothing, as well as justice and peace, and very quickly cooperative community programs were put in place for child and adult nutrition, education, health and welfare. Community service and cooperation were central to the mission. [Continue reading here…]
Yearly Archives: 2024
On the evening of Thursday, January 25, 2024, the State of Alabama strapped a man, Kenneth Smith, to its execution gurney, placed a mask over his face, and pumped nitrogen gas hoping to asphyxiate him quickly. It was an execution method never used before in human history. Steve Marshall, the Alabama Attorney General, promised that Mr. Smith would be unconscious within seconds. What the media witnesses and others, including Mr. Smith’s family and Elizabeth Sennett’s sons, watched was very different—a far cry from the peaceful and dignified passing that Marshall presented to the Supreme Court and the public. It was another botched execution in Alabama: Mr. Smith remained conscious for many minutes after the nitrogen gas started flowing, struggled and writhed on the gurney, convulsed, dry heaved and retched into his mask, gasped for breath, and was finally pronounced dead 22 minutes later. [Continue reading here…]
In her book, Rivals: How Scientists Learned to Cooperate (2023), Lorraine Daston traces the evolution of scientific cooperation from the eighteenth century to present times. Daston focuses on three periods which, she argues, capture different styles of scientific cooperation during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Over the past three centuries, Daston identifies progress, culminating in the twentieth-century concept of “a scientific community.” [Continue reading here…]