02-10-2025  11:55 am   •   PDX and SEA Weather

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NORTHWEST NEWS

Pastor Mark Knutson on Strengthening Sanctuary and Responding to Trump’s Threats

Augustana Lutheran Church is part of an interfaith network in Portland organizing to protect immigrants.

“Young Black Men Are ___”, A Multimedia Interactive Storytelling Project, Opens February 1

Word Is Bond partners with the 1803 Fund to explore Black identity.

PHOTOS: The World Arts Foundation Presents Lifetime Achievement Award on MLK Day in Portland

Bernie and Bobbie Foster, The Skanner News founders, were presented with the award.

Cascade Festival of African Films Celebrates 35th Year

The Cascade Festival of African Films runs from Jan. 31 through March 1, featuring more than 20 films from 14 countries

NEWS BRIEFS

AG Rayfield Reacts to Latest Victory in Trump’s Attempt to Block Birthright Citizenship Order

“This just proves what we’ve been saying all along. No president can rewrite the Constitution with the stroke of a pen,” said...

Budget Committee Ranking Member Merkley: Vought Dangerously Unfit to Lead OMB

Merkley spoke on the Senate floor to kick off Democratic opposition to Trump’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) nominee and...

Portland Trail Blazers Host First-ever Albina Rose Alliance Game

Game to highlight the Albina Rose Alliance – a partnership between Albina Vision Trust and the Portland Trail Blazers ...

Big Brothers Big Sisters of America Launches Research on the Long-Term Impacts of Mentorship

“This new research proves what we’ve known for years— mentorship has an incredibly positive impact, not just to our Littles, but...

Rayfield Announces Initial Victory in Lawsuit Challenging Trump’s Illegal Federal Funding Freeze

Today a federal judge in Rhode Island issued a temporary restraining order in the lawsuit filed by Oregon and a coalition of 22...

Fresh lawsuit hits Oregon city at the heart of Supreme Court ruling on homeless encampments

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The small Oregon city at the heart of a major U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that allowed cities across the country to enforce homeless camping bans is facing a fresh lawsuit over its camping rules, as advocates find new ways to challenge them in a legal landscape...

Western Oregon women's basketball players allege physical and emotional abuse

MONMOUTH, Ore. (AP) — Former players for the Western Oregon women's basketball team have filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging emotional and physical abuse. The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in Marion County, seeks million damages. It names the university, its athletic...

Slaughter leads Missouri against No. 5 Texas

Missouri Tigers (12-10, 1-6 SEC) at Texas Longhorns (20-2, 6-1 SEC) Austin, Texas; Thursday, 9 p.m. EST BOTTOM LINE: Missouri visits No. 5 Texas after Grace Slaughter scored 31 points in Missouri's 78-77 victory against the Mississippi State Bulldogs. The...

Slaughter leads Missouri against No. 5 Texas after 31-point game

Missouri Tigers (12-10, 1-6 SEC) at Texas Longhorns (20-2, 6-1 SEC) Austin, Texas; Thursday, 9 p.m. EST BOTTOM LINE: Missouri visits No. 5 Texas after Grace Slaughter scored 31 points in Missouri's 78-77 win over the Mississippi State Bulldogs. The...

OPINION

Bending the Arc: Advancing Equity in a New Federal Landscape

January 20th, 2025 represented the clearest distillation of the crossroads our country faces. ...

Trump’s America Last Agenda is a Knife in the Back of Working People

Donald Trump’s playbook has always been to campaign like a populist and govern like an oligarch. But it is still shocking just how brutally he went after our country’s working people in the first few days – even the first few hours – after he was...

As Dr. King Once Asked, Where Do We Go From Here?

“Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall...

A Day Without Child Care

On May 16, we will be closing our childcare centers for a day — signaling a crisis that could soon sweep across North Carolina, dismantling the very backbone of our economy ...

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE NEWS

Trump consoles crash victims then dives into politics with attack on diversity initiatives

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday responded to the deadliest American aviation disaster in more than two decades by blaming diversity initiatives for undermining safety and questioning the actions of a U.S. Army helicopter pilot involved in the midair collision with a...

US Supreme Court rejects likely final appeal of South Carolina inmate a day before his execution

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Thursday what is likely the final appeal of a South Carolina inmate the day before his scheduled execution for a 2001 killing of a friend found dead in her burning car. Marion Bowman Jr.'s request to stop his execution until a...

Trump's orders take aim at critical race theory and antisemitism on college campuses

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is ordering U.S. schools to stop teaching what he views as “critical race theory” and other material dealing with race and sexuality or risk losing their federal money. A separate plan announced Wednesday calls for aggressive action to...

ENTERTAINMENT

Book Review: Hunted by the FBI and Russian Oligarch, a hedge fund manager flees into the wilderness

Paul Brightman, a former hedge fund manager, has been keeping a low profile, changing his name to Grant Anderson and making a modest living as a boat builder in a small New Hampshire town. But Paul fears it’s only a matter of time before he’s found. The FBI is hunting him. The CIA...

Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni get March 2026 trial date for her 'It Ends With Us' lawsuit

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York judge set a March 2026 trial date on Monday and moved an initial conference from mid-February to next week as the public feud between Blake Lively and her “It Ends With Us” costar and director Justin Baldoni continued to grow and accelerate. And in a...

Movie Review: Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon collide in comedy 'You're Cordially Invited'

Are you with the bride or the groom? Hold on, scratch that. Are you with Reese Witherspoon or Will Ferrell? “You're Cordially Invited,” a new comedy directed by Nicholas Stoller, brings together two stars whose movie worlds are nearly as divided as wedding guests on separate sides...

U.S. & WORLD NEWS

By C. Alexander Haywood Special to the NNPA from Our Weekly

"So the concept is this basically: The whole Black nation has to be put together as a Black army. And we gon' walk on this nation.  We gon' walk on the racist power structure.  And we gone say to the government: "Stick em' up motherf****r, this is a holdup.  We've come for what's ours"—excerpt from the 1995 DVD "What We Want, What We Believe" the Black Panther Party Library.  

It's been more than three decades since the collapse of the Black Panther Party (for Self Defense), as it was originally titled. After a historic campaign of militant demonstration and persisting community activism, the grassroots alliance that was, as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover described, "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country," finally crumbled under the relentless pressure of external opposition in 1970.

"Do you want to know why we aren't still around like the NAACP and all those other Uncle Tom Negroes?" asked Roland Freeman, former leader of the Panther's Los Angeles Chapter. "It's because we didn't want integration, we wanted progress, and integration aint' progress. We wanted our communities to be self-sufficient, self-aware and armed. Not walking hand and hand with the enemy."

Freeman added that Huey Newton, the Panther's founding member, went public with his decision to disband every segment of the party, without informing with his estranged brethren.

"He didn't tell us nothing [Newton]," griped Roland Freeman, former leader of the Panther's Los Angeles Chapter. "From what I knew, we were supposed to establish a new extension underground in Dallas, Texas, because things were getting too heated on the streets. But, that never happened."

Newton's knee-jerk reaction to the government's ever-looming presence, prompted other key members of the panthers to break ranks, in an attempt to establish their own power base.

"When the split came, all the comrades (who) were revolutionary in their ideals and admirations for the Black Panther Party were on one side; and the other side with Newton and Hilliard represented the dictatorial power," former field marshal of the panthers Donald L. Cox said in an interview in the What We Want DVD. "[Newton's way was] you do what I say or you're going to get your head knocked in. That was the split."

A number of Panther leaders, including Newton and chief of staff David Hilliard, turned their focus to community service as well as self-defense, while former minister of information for the Panthers, (Leroy) Eldridge Cleaver, and others, embraced a more confrontational strategy.

Cleaver's faction proceeded to buck the powers that be—namely police, or "pigs" and they were often tagged by this splinter Panther group—with streaks of arbitrary violence and engaged indiscriminate battles with rival organizations.

Cleaver's rash approach to Black justice culminated with the death of Panther Bobby Hutton, or "Lil Bobby," the party's treasurer, who was gunned down during a haphazard ambush attempt on the Oakland Police by Cleaver's fraction of the party in 1968. The strain between he and Newton grew more severe when he publicly criticized his estranged comrade for adopting a "reformist" rather than "revolutionary" agenda, and he also called for Hilliard's permanent removal.

As a result, Cleaver was expelled from the Panther central committee but went on to lead a splinter group called the Black Liberation Army, which had previously existed as an underground paramilitary wing of the Party. Both factions eventually deteriorated due to rising legal costs and perpetual infighting with the individual groups. The demise was aided by steady doses of calculated interference by the FBI and other government agencies.

Throughout 1969, the Black Panthers were the primary target of the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program COINTELPRO, designed to neutralize, and ultimately terminate, the more prominent Black Nationalist organizations. The secondary aim was to prevent the unification of these groups, while also weakening the power of their leaders, which, in turn, would reduce their support and growth, according to the What We Want DVD.

Consequentially, many established Panther chapters across the U.S. collectively experienced more than 233 government-authorized sieges as well as raids by numerous COINTERLPRO agents. As a result they were extensively weakened.

Other intended targets of the government covert action program include the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Revolutionary Action Movement, and the Nation of Islam.

In 1974, Newton appointed veteran member Elaine Brown as the first woman to chair the Panthers. Under Brown's leadership, the party became involved in organizing for more radical electoral campaigns, including Brown's unsuccessful run for Oakland City Council in 1975, and Lionel Wilson's successful election as the first Black mayor of Oakland.

Certain aspects of COINTELPRO were directed at creating and exploiting existing rivalries between Black nationalist factions. One such attempt was to "intensify the degree of animosity" between the Black Panthers and the Blackstone Rangers, a Chicago street gang.

In Southern California, similar actions were taken to exacerbate conflict between the Black Panther Party and a group called the US Organization. Violent conflict between these two groups, including shootings and beatings, led to the deaths of at least four Black Panther Party members, according to Jessica Christina Harris in the Journal of Negro History.

On January 17, 1969, Los Angeles Panther Captain Bunchy Carter and Deputy Minister John Huggins were killed in Campbell Hall on the UCLA campus, in a gun battle with members of US Organization, stemming from a dispute over who would control UCLA's Black studies program. Another shootout between the two groups on March 17 led to further injuries. It was alleged that the FBI had sent a provocative letter to US Organization in an attempt to create antagonism between US and the Panthers.

While a sizable part of the organization was already participating in local government and social services, others were in constant conflict with the police. For some of the Party's supporters, the lines between political action, criminal activity, social opportunity, access to sustainable power, and grassroots identity became blurred, as were the intentions of certain Panther organizers, Cleaver and Newton being among them.