Chairman Fred Taught Me: The Importance of Political Education

Without education, people will accept anything. Without education, what you’ll have is neo-colonialism instead of colonialism like you have now. Without education, people don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing, you know what I mean? You might get people caught up in an emotionalist movement, might get them because they’re poor and they want something and then if they’re not educated, they’ll want more and before you know it, we’ll have Negro imperialism.

— Fred Hampton

Without proper political education, the people will never be free; that is what Chairman Fred Hampton taught me. As I learned that I was African from Malcolm, what Black Power was from Ture, and that Revolution is Love from Assata, Chairman Fred gave me direct instructions on how to dedicate my life to the people. We must educate ourselves, we must educate the people. We must educate the people on what colonialism is, on what we should be fighting against, who we are fighting against, what we are fighting for (political motivations), we must educate them on why this is a “people’s thing” as the Chairman would say. Without a proper foundation, we have a conflation of Black Power and Black Capitalism. We allow Jay-Z to invoke Fred Hampton’s name as if the Chairman didn’t say that if he caught a Black capitalist he would “beat him to death…