At least 60 people marched with fists in the air from Troost to Prospect Avenue along East 75th Street on Saturday in an armed march led by the Revolutionary Black Panther Party of Kansas City.
General Indigenous Xi told the crowd that “Black people are under attack,” from the state of Missouri, the local government and the Kansas City Police Department. “It’s time for us to back the black. You’ve heard enough about backing the blue.”
Xi led the group down 75th Street in chants of “no justice, no peace,” “Black power,” and “the Panther party is back and we are pro-Black,” along the steady beat of a drum.
Residents along the street came outside to watch, record and raise their fists in solidarity.
For one block, they marched in silence for those who have been killed by Kansas City police.
And at 75th and Prospect, near the police department’s metro patrol division, they stood in the intersection as Xi led a chant of “I am a revolutionary.”
After the march back at 75th and Troost, Xi told The Star they are working to bring back a solidarity culture and move away from the current culture of white versus Black. Instead, he said, the culture can be about uplifting Black people. Xi said the country has taught Black people how to fight themselves, instead of uniting. That Black uplifting and Black pride, he said, is what they want to bring back.
“When we say Black Power, nobody has to be scared of that,” Xi said. “Because when Black people have power, everybody has power.”
Included among the programs they do: helping feed seniors and teaching youth.
Xi said when people talk about “back the blue,” they create a political message while the other side is making a social message.
“Those two are not the same thing. People are not hearing us,” Xi said. “When we’re saying treat us as humans, treat us as humans.”
Attorney and activist Stacy Shaw told the crowd that Saturday’s event was a “demonstration of collective power.”
She criticized the inequities between the east and west sides of Troost.
“Make no mistake: The children that are born east of Troost are just as smart, just as talented, have as much of a promise as the people that were born on the west side of Troost,” Shaw said.
The Black Panther Party was launched in Oakland, California, in 1966 as part of an effort to protect Black residents against police brutality and racial violence.
Chapters formed in a number of cities across the United States, including Kansas City in 1969, a year after rioting and social unrest took place in the city’s East Side on the day of Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral.
The Panther chapter in Kansas City was founded by Pete O’Neal and operated numerous local social programs, but the group often clashed with police and other law enforcement.
O’Neal was later convicted of transporting a shotgun across the state line, but he fled the United States and currently lives in exile in Tanzania.
The new Kansas City chapter for the Revolutionary Black Panther Party was founded in 2016.
“Power to the people,” Xi said.
*story by The Kansas City Star
