I had the pleasure of speaking with some old-school Black activists from the US while on a brigade in Cuba.

One of them, who I won’t name, told me that during the early days they did not know whether having members of the community inside the police would work or not. They simply had no idea. He told me they fought for it, and fought to make it work. It is only with the hindsight of having tried that they now realized it wouldn’t work. Only now with hindsight is it obvious.

Many of the Black people I met on the brigade shared stories. Many of them on the receiving end of a racist power structure. A recurring theme of my conversations was that many Black people were and remain skepitcal specifically of the strategies of Marxism-Leninism. Many see power structures as problems themselves, and just like trying to make cops Black, they think trying to make a state and courts proletarian won’t change anything.

Of course, Black people are not a monolith. They are people who happen to be Black. They are not automatically more enlightened and they aren’t automatically more ignorant. Just as many Black people I met were more interested in national self-determination with Black courts, Black landlords, Black bourgeoisie, and with little hint of Marxism in their struggle as there were those entirely skepitcal of any power structure at all.

I was recommended Don Cox’s posthumous memoir about his time in the Panthers: Just Another N-----

F.D. Signifier is fucking awesome.