Ақ Пантералар: Антирасистік Көсемдер Тобының Тарихы

Defunct anti racist collective

The White Panthers were an anti racist political collective founded in November 1968 by Pun Plamondon, Leni Sinclair, and John Sinclair. It was started in response to an interview where Huey P. Newton, co founder of the Black Panther Party, was asked what white people could do to support the Black Panthers. Newton replied that they could form a White Panther Party. The counterculture era group took the name and dedicated its energies to "cultural revolution.” John Sinclair made every effort to ensure that the White Panthers were not mistaken for a white supremacist group, responding to such claims with "quite the contrary." The party worked with many ethnic minority rights groups in the Rainbow Coalition.

The group was most active in Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan, and included the proto punk band MC5, which John Sinclair managed for several years before he was incarcerated. From a general ideological perspective, Plamondon and Sinclair defined the White Panthers as "fighting for a clean planet and the freeing of political prisoners." The White Panthers added other elements such as advocating "rock 'n roll, dope, sex in the streets and the abolishing of capitalism." Yippie co founder Abbie Hoffman praised the WPP in Steal This Book and Woodstock Nation, and John Sinclair often referred to himself as a Yippie as well. The group emerged from the Detroit Artists Workshop, a radical arts collective founded in 1964 near Wayne State University. Among its concerns was the legalization of marijuana; John Sinclair had several arrests for possession. It aligned itself with radical politics, claiming the 12th Street Riot was justifiable under political and economic conditions in Detroit. Plamondon was indicted with John Sinclair in connection to the bombing of a Central Intelligence Agency office in Ann Arbor on September 29, 1968, a year after the founding of the group. Upon hearing on the left wing alternative radio station WABX that he had been indicted, he fled the U. S. for Europe and Africa, spending time in Algeria with exiled Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver. After secretly re entering the country, and on his way to a safe house in northern Michigan, he was arrested in a routine traffic stop, joining John Sinclair, who had been sentenced to nine and a half years in jail for violating Michigan's marijuana possession laws, in prison. Plamondon was convicted and was in prison when Sinclair was released on bond in 1971 while appeals were being heard on his case. Sinclair's unexpected release came two days after a large "Free John" benefit concert, with performances from John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Bob Seger, and Stevie Wonder, was held at the University of Michigan's Crisler Arena.

The group had a direct role in two important legal decisions. A landmark U. S. Supreme Court decision in 1972 quashed Plamondon's conviction and destroyed the case against John Sinclair. The court ruled warrantless wiretapping was unlawful under the U. S. Constitution, even in the case where national security, as defined by the executive branch, was in danger. The White Panthers had been charged with conspiring to destroy government property and evidence used to convict Plamondon was acquired through wiretaps not submitted to judicial approval. The case U. S. vs. U. S. District Court (Plamondon et al. ), 407 U. S. 297, commonly known as the Keith Case, held that the Fourth Amendment shielded private speech from surveillance unless a warrant had been granted, and that the "warrant procedure would not frustrate the legitimate purposes of domestic security searches." The judgment freed Plamondon, yet John Sinclair was free only on bond fighting his possession conviction. In 1972, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled in the People v. Sinclair, 387 Mich. 91, 194 N. W.2d 878 (1972) that Michigan's classification of marijuana was unconstitutional, in effect decriminalizing possession until a new law conforming to the ruling was passed by the Michigan Legislature a week later. Sinclair was freed but the cumulative effects of the imprisonment had marked the end of the White Panther Party in Michigan, which renamed itself the Rainbow People's Party while John Sinclair and Plamondon were in prison. The Rainbow People's Party, headquartered in Ann Arbor, disbanded in 1973.

The headquarters of the White Panthers in Portland, Oregon were raided by the FBI on December 5, 1970. Two members of the group were arrested and accused of throwing a molotov cocktail through the window of a local Selective Service office.

White Panther Party chapters in San Francisco, Marin and Berkeley remained active into the 1980s. The WPP ran a successful 'Food Conspiracy' The White Panthers held People's Ballroom in the Park concerts in Golden Gate Park. In 1983, angry because then Mayor of San Francisco Dianne Feinstein proposed to ban handguns in the city, the San Francisco White Panthers mounted a successful petition drive that forced Feinstein into a recall election, which she won with about 82% of the vote.

Author and anarchist Mick Farren, a leader of the United Kingdom Underground, later founded the White Panthers UK, which was one of the organizations involved in the tearing down of the outer walls surrounding Isle of Wight Festival 1970.