What We Want/What We Believe

WHAT WE WANT/WHAT WE BELIEVE

1. We want freedom. We want the power for all people to determine their own destinies.

We believe that we will not be free until all people are free, and that there will not be world peace until all the people of the world have their freedom. We believe that freedom means, first, the power of all peoples to determine and control their own destinies, in cooperation with all other peoples, giving full respect to the rights of all other peoples to control THEIR own destinies. We believe that the first right of man is the right to live, the right to bread for his children, the right to live by his own labors, and the right to have his own culture. And we believe that the western notions of freedom as "free markets." "free enterprise," and "free competition" are wholly out-moded, out-dated, obsolete and inimical to the best interests of the peoples of the earth.

We believe further that all oppressed peoples have the absolute right to national self-determination, and that they are not bound to recognize or respect the so-called laws of the oppressor. In this connection, we support the national liberation struggles of the black, brown, yellow, red and youth colonies on the North American continent, of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Vietnam, the Pathet Lao in Laos, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the revolutionary peoples of Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, and the Philippines, the Palestinian Liberation Front, all African, Asian and Latin American national liberation movements, and the struggles of all other peoples throughout the world who are fighting for their liberation from the forces of modern imperialism. We unite particularly with the revolutionary youth of the western world who are struggling with us to bring the New Age into being on this planet.

2. We want justice. We want an immediate and total end to all political, cultural, and sexist repression of all oppressed peoples all over the world, particularly the repression of women, of black people, young people, and all national minorities within the confines of the United States of America. We want the complete transformation of the so-called legal system in the United States so that the laws and courts and police and military will function only in the best interests of ALL the people. We want the end of all police and military violence directed against the people of the earth right now!

We believe that the American police, courts and military as they are presently constituted are used as instruments of repression by a minority "ownership" class against the revolutionary peoples of the earth; that they are the means by which the tiny "ownership" class manages to keep control of the world's natural and human resources; and that control of these forces must be removed from the hands of this minority class and placed in the hands of the people as a whole.

We believe that sisters throughout the planet are subjected to specific kinds of sexual oppression in the roles that they have been expected to fulfill. We are determined to rediscover our true roles as whole revolutionary people.

We believe that laws, courts, police and military should be used only to defend the people against the usurpation of their lives, liberty, and common wealth by any minority group, and to keep the earth's resources and the means of production and distribution of goods, information and services in the hands of the people as a whole. We believe that all domestic troops must be kept out of the people's communities, and that all international armed forces under the present control of the United States government must be recalled from their various outposts around the world, starting with Southeast Asia, and kept from interfering in the affairs of sovereign peoples throughout the world.

3. We want a free world economy based on the free exchange of energy and materials and the end of money.

We believe that the present world economy based on scarcity and consumerism is obsolete and must be abolished, and that it must be replaced with a free, post-scarcity economy in which all the energies and resources of the earth are held in common wealth and used strictly to promote the welfare of all the people on the planet. Only in a scarcity economy do people and goods have a price; in a post-scarcity economy everything is free for every body, energies and materials are exchanged freely within an overall world planning system based on the absolute needs of the people, and minority control of the earth's energies and resources is completely eliminated. We believe that money, or "currency," is merely a curious function of the scarcity economy which will disappear when the free economy is allowed to develop and flourish.

4. We want a clean planet and a healthy people. We want to eliminate all industrial and military pollution of the land, the water, the air, and the universe itself, and of the people of the earth whose minds and bodies are now polluted by the products and the propaganda of the consumer/war society. We want to restore the ecological balance of the planet and secure the future of humanity and its environs.

We believe that the present state of disaster on planet earth is a direct and inescapable result of the irresponsible capitalist system and the greedy conduct of the "ownership" class which controls that system. We believe that control of the planet's resources must be placed entirely in the hands of the people, who still develop new forms of energy and fuel, eliminate unnecessary jobs and degrading products, and stop the pollution of the planet and its people.

5. We want a free educational system that will teach each man, woman, and child on earth exactly what each needs to know to survive and grow into his or her full human potential.

We believe that the present so-called educational system in the west is merely a high-pressure training device by means of which the "ownership" class provides itself with adequately-trained workers for the various levels of its exploitative production system, from the high-school-trained factory worker to the college-educated manager, professor, general, manipulator, judge, prosecutor, insurance salesman, etc. We believe that the schools are also used to wipe out all creative and humanistic impulse in the country's youth population and replace them with the cheapest brand of materialism, the anti-human ethic of the consumer culture. We believe further that education is one of the most important and one of the most exciting functions and responsibilities of the free society, and that all people should receive any education which will teach them to provide for their own needs and to determine their own destinies. A free revolutionary educational system is central to the development of a free revolutionary society, since the people have to be full informed and made fully aware of the possibilities open to them so they can truly have freedom of movement and freedom of opportunity. We believe that the free educational system of the future will go far beyond classrooms and teachers and textbooks and tests-it will include the whole universe and will make full use of the highest forms of modern technology to bring all relevant information to all the people and teach them how to utilize that information for their own happiness and welfare.

6. We want to free all structures from corporate rule and turn all the buildings and land over to the people at once.

We believe that the land and everything on it belongs to no one but to the people as a whole, and that the land and any structures built on it must be used solely for the benefit of all the people. We believe that deeds, mortgages, leases, rents, liens, all of those things are simply phony means of control through which the "ownership" class exploits the rest of the people. We believe that the actual and absolute needs of the people, all the people, must control the uses to which the land and the structures built on the land are put.

7. We want free access to all information media and to all technology for all the people.

We believe that the people must control the means of production and the entire technology of production, service and distribution, and that the people must control and have free access to the mass information media so they can control their own consciousness. We believe that the mass information media must no longer be used to propagandize the consumer economy, that it must instead be used to free the people from obsolete beliefs and values which are detrimental to their highest human development. We believe that the people's technology must be used solely to keep the people informed of all the possibilities open to them in the New Age and to help teach them how to realize those possibilities.

8. We want the freedom of all people who are being held against their will in the conscripted armies of the oppressor throughout the world.

We believe that the only legitimate armed forces are those which can only be defines as people's armies, that is, armies made up of citizen volunteers and patriots who are fighting in defense of their homeland against imperialist aggressor/invaders, or who are fighting for the national liberation of their peoples against oppressive mother country forces. We believe that all conscripted soldiers, particularly those brothers who have been ripped off from the black and youth colonies in the United States and forced under pain of imprisonment or death to promote U.S. imperialism wherever they are sent throughout the world, must be released from that service immediately and returned to their own communities, where they can join the struggle for the freedom of their own people.

9. We want the freedom of all political prisoners of war held in federal, state, county, and city jails and prisons. We want them returned to their communities at once!

We believe that the government of the United States and its various agencies and subsidiaries is presently carrying out an organized, calculated, wide-ranging program of political and cultural repression and terrorism against the people of the black and youth colonies of North America, and against all revolutionary peoples throughout the world. We believe that thousands of our brothers and sisters are being arrested, jailed, dragged into courts, subjected to cruel and unusual punishments, and imprisoned or exiled on phony charges such as marijuana possession, trespassing on the people's property, resisting illegitimate arrests, refusing to accept inhuman and illegal orders from government agents, etc. And we believe that these brothers and sisters must be released from their illegal confinement and returned to the people immediately.

We believe particularly that John Sinclair, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Erika Huggins, the Panther 21, Timothy Leary, Ahmed Evans, Martin Sostre, Lee Otis Johnson, all marijuana prisoners, all draft resisters, all deserters and resisters of illegitimate authority within the mother country armed forces must be released from all jails at once.

We believe further that all American prisoners are political prisoners finally, since their "crimes" have been prompted and promoted by the insane consumer culture which teaches people to rob, steal, rape, murder, plunder and destroy as a means to personal power and property. Property itself is theft-the real criminals are the members of the tiny "ownership" class who have ripped off the land and its resources from the people's common wealth and who use their illegal power to keep the people from assuming full control of what is rightfully theirs.

We believe that prisons and jails have nothing to do with the "crimes" committed by their inhabitants, and that all prisoners should be released and given a chance to prove themselves as free citizens of the New Age. If there are "criminals" who cannot restrain themselves from harming other people, they must then be brought before juries of their PEERS and, if convicted, sent to real rehabilitation centers which will teach them how to live in the New Age.

10. We want a free planet. We want free land, free food, free shelter, free clothing, free music, and culture, free media, free technology, free education, free health care, free bodies, free people, free time and space, everything free for every body!

We believe that the only solution to the problems of the people of the earth now is through the creation of a free world economy based on the needs of all the people all the time, and that any social system which does not provide for the needs of all the people must be abolished and replaced by a free social order.

When, in the course of human events, it become necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws and nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separations.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed; THAT WHENEVER ANY FORM OF GOVERNMENT BECOMES DESTRUCTIVE OF THESE ENDS IT IS THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO ALTER OR ABOLISH IT and to institute a new government, laying it's foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly all experience has shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing inevitably the same object, evince a design to reduce them under absolute despotism. IT IS THEIR RIGHT, IT IS THEIR DUTY, TO THROW OFF SUCH GOVERNMENT, AND TO PROVIDE NEW GUARDS FOR THEIR FUTURE SECURITY.

Central Committee,

White Panther Party

Chairman: John Sinclair

Minister of Defense (underground): Pun Plamondon

Minister of International Affairs: Genie Plamondon

Minister of the Interior: Skip Taube

Minister of Information: Ken Kelley

Minister of Education: Magdalene Sinclair

Minister of Art: Gary Grimshaw

Minister of Culture: Frank Bach

Minister of Communications: Lynn Schneider

Chief of Staff: David Sinclair

Editorial Staff of SUN/DANCE

Jointly edited by the Central Committee, White Panther Party

Editor, Minister of Information: Ken Kelley

Revolutionary Artist & Layout, Minister of Art: Gary Grimshaw

Production Coordinators: Marsha Rabideau, Al Shamie, Terry Taube, Peggy Taube

Distribution Manager: Judy Janis

Circulation: Hiawatha Bailey