(ThyBlackMan.com) Just over a month since the new president took the oath of office, I, like many others, found myself chronically doomscrolling my iPhone as if it were a permanent appendage.
I consumed headlines, hot takes, and half-assed attempts at post-mortem election analysis. I wanted to be inspired, to parse through my own jaded, inconclusive rabbit-hole summaries — from the perspective of someone who lived deep in the bowels of the Democratic Party for the past five months. Between the sweetest moments of scrolling TikTok in its “final days,” I stumbled upon the timely and prescient words of Huey P. Newton.
Fresh out of prison after serving time for a contested manslaughter conviction, Huey was reasserting his leadership at a moment of deep internal crisis for the Black Panther Party. In a New York City address given in the summer of 1970, To the Revolutionary Brothers and Sisters, he declared: “During the past few years, strong movements have developed among women and homosexuals seeking their liberation.”
And with stunning courage, he proclaimed: “We should try to unite with them in a revolutionary fashion.”
Spoken to a Black Panther Party fracturing from the inside out — over ideological divides, regionalism, sexism within its ranks, and financial turmoil — Huey’s prescription for an ailing party appears to have (at least) a 55-year-old shelf life.
A Leadership Vacuum
A few hours of feeding input-hungry social media algorithms expose the wide range of sentiments among Democratic voters — fatigue, bitterness, despondency, and in some cases, anger. Former Twitter refugees, armed with their moral convictions, are finding bluer pastures for their short-form opinions on Bluesky. Self-appointed political pundits spar under clickbait memes and headlines from urban blogs on Instagram. The political chaos is in full swing, but party leaders are either silent, sidelined, or struggling to command the moment. The circus is open for business, and the ringmaster is nowhere to be found.
What is Hakeem Jeffries doing? Where is Kamala? Can’t Obama do something?
That perspective is widely shared. Many are looking to the hills for leadership — the Invisible Negro Justice League expected to appear from thin air. What is Hakeem Jeffries doing? Where is Kamala? Can’t Obama do something? These questions, misguided or not, reveal an unsettling truth: the American leadership vacuum is being felt at every level.
Perhaps there’s an early lesson to be gleaned from Huey’s nearly two-year absence from Panther Party leadership before his murder conviction was overturned. Can the Democrats prove that electing a straight, white, male chairman, Ken Martin, is not a rebuke of the recent cycles of tribal-laden identity politics as strategy? Some see it as an about-face — a signal to the fiercely loyal 92-percenters, Black women, who remain the irrefutable conscience of the party. With just two years before the next federal election, this party in crisis, too, must consider its own breaking point.
In Huey’s speech, his call to “unite in revolutionary fashion” with others “seeking their liberation” was not just rhetorical — it was prophetic.
By 1973, the Black Panther Party and the Gay Liberation Front had forged real alliances, sharing hard-fought victories in opposing police violence, advocating for prison reform, and expanding public health services, including sexual and reproductive healthcare for women and LGBTQ+ people — laying the groundwork for future HIV/AIDS activism in the Black community. These were not symbolic gestures but tangible protections at a time when the government offered little. Sound familiar
We see intra-party fighting as just as capable of slowing progress.
While the Black Panther Party of the ’70s and the Democratic Party of today may seem like distant strangers, their histories provide a grim warning to us all. It’s difficult to ignore the parallels between COINTELPRO — the FBI’s counterintelligence program that wielded disinformation, surveillance, infiltration, and direct violence against the Black Panther Party — and a Trump administration that has promised retribution against its political enemies. And while external forces have sought to dismantle and discredit party systems, in both cases, we see intra-party fighting as just as capable of slowing progress.
Despite financial headwinds and deeply divided leadership, Huey Newton offered a bold, audacious path forward — one that centered on harnessing the strength of “other” movements where common ground was within reach. If Huey saw the potential for solidarity among marginalized groups in 1970, today’s landscape offers a similar opportunity — one that the Democratic Party cannot afford to ignore.
The others of today, those forced to the margins and now preparing for battle, are not so different from those of the past. They are living in the margins, lacing up their gloves for a fighting chance.
Standing at a Crossroads
I would project that those fighting for the dignity of transgender Americans would lock arms on the frontlines with immigrants and Dreamers fighting to stay in the communities they’ve called home. I would imagine the coalition would create space for the poor working class and those duped into believing that a billionaire class looting the American treasury has their best interests at heart. I would consider the plight of farmers and farmworkers, milling about a crop of spoiled fruit that government leaders promised would bear good returns — only to be sacrificed to petty tariff battles. In the face of authoritarianism, those whose lives and dignity are in the crosshairs might join forces to build a more formidable opposition and be an insurmountable target.
Historians remind us that the Black Panther Party disbanded just over a decade later, undone by internal fissures, shifting missions, and financial insolvency. But today, we stand at a similar crossroads, and our response will determine our fate. I would submit to my fellow doomscrollers that we may evade that eventual demise.
It would require #NeverTrumpers and protest voters, lesser-of-two-evil-ers, progressives, Blue Dogs, abolitionists, and yes, even the revolutionaries among us, to shed the narrow inclinations of self-preservation to inch one step closer to salvation for us all.
If we take a page from Huey’s vision, a modern coalition — united not by political convenience but by shared survival — could emerge.
That is where the path forward begins for a party in crisis.
Written by Dorien Paul Blythers
Official website; https://goodrebel.co/
