If there ever was a time that a play needed to be staged, reminding us of radical struggles in our not very distant past, the time is now. And Party People by UNIVERSES, directed by Liesl Tommy, which opened recently at The Public Theater in New York City, is that production.
It is a powerful, disturbing, uplifting, and inspiring portrait of the rise and fall of two revolutionary groups from the late ‘60s and ‘70s, The Black Panther Party (BPP) and The Young Lords Organization/Party (YLO) (YLP) and their connections to contemporary challenges faced in our communities.
It is being described as “a breakthrough show about the activists that broke through.”
UNIVERSES created PARTY PEOPLE based on dozens of interviews with members of these ground-breaking, society-changing groups. PARTY PEOPLE imagines a present-day reunion at an art opening curated by two young counter culturalists; but the curators themselves have complex relationships with the Party members, who fought injustice and provided free food and medical care for their communities—often at the expense of the people who loved them most. Old wounds and generational divides collide in this astonishing, multi-media theatrical event about the price of being a revolutionary, and what it means for those who come after.
Young people in today’s America are organizing to protest hate, racism, xenophobia, injustice, the prison system, machismo, police brutality, voter suppression, and economic inequality. Many young activists are not fully aware of the links between today’s movements and those that came before, especially because the history of groups who militantly pushed back are not part of high school curricula or included in textbooks. When mentioned at all, the groups who took a militant stance on community self-defense are often portrayed falsely as either hate groups or gangs. Productions like Party People serve not just as theater, but also as educational tools.
I attended previews last Sunday along with several friends and former members of both the BPP and YLO/YLP.
It is fitting that this production is happening now.
Now, at a time when social justice movements will be more necessary than ever, as the nation prepares for the presidency of Donald Trump.
Now, when he has threatened to unleash massive repressive programs under a battle cry of “law and order,” which we know all too well translates into disorder, disruption, and deportation in targeted communities of color.
It is fitting that this play is taking place during the year of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California.
Panthers from across the country gathered in Oakland to not only celebrate the past but to ask, “Where do we go from here?”
The event was covered in a wide variety of pieces, including:
“What We Don’t Learn About the Black Panther Party—but Should;”
“On The Black Panthers 50th Anniversary, We Checked in With One of the Group's Former Leaders Ericka Huggins on police shootings, Colin Kaepernick, and more;”
“We Can't Stop Looking at These Unforgettable Images of the Black Panthers.”
More of the silence about us is being lifted, and thankfully there are many Panthers still alive to tell their own stories. On a more somber note, those who died were remembered, and those still in prison or in exile were supported.
Similarly, there was a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Young Lords back in 2009 in New York City, and more recently a stunning series of exhibits on the Young Lords at three New York City museums, titled “¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York.”
A Long Journey
Steven Sapp, Mildred Ruiz, Gamal Abdel Chasten and William Ruiz (a.k.a. Ninja) are collectively known as UNIVERSES.
Universes members all grew up in housing projects in New York City and starting performing poetry in the "thriving spoken-word scene" of the late 1990s, namely, The NuYorican Poets Cafe. Based out of The Bronx, NY, the company was born and raised of the artistic environment created by Steven Sapp and Mildred Ruiz, also co-founders of THE POINT Community Development Corporation (Hunts Point) in 1993.
They went on to develop a large body of work which has taken them from the Bronx to world-wide tours.
Lawrence Van Gelder’s New York Times review of Universes 2001 production of Slanguage gives you a taste of what their performances evoke:
Anyone who habitually enfolds New York in a loving embrace -- not just its Gold Coast and its midwinter galas but its pockets of poverty and its packed and pounding subways in midsummer rush hours -- is likely to warm to the exuberant, insightful entertainment titled ''Slanguage.'' Here, out of the mouths and clapping hands and dancing feet of five multitalented performers known collectively as Universes, comes the poetry of the city, minted in the urban furnace where the flint of real life strikes the sparks of creation from concrete pavement and steel tracks.
Expressed in rap and riffs and gospel and bluesy laments, among other poetic forms, this intermissionless, roughly 95-minute roller coaster of rhythm at New York Theater Workshop takes the listener by the ear. The show travels from the underground rattlers, where the beggar, the battery seller and the religious rile the riders; to the streets, where walking is attitude; and to the tenements, where domestic disputes leave babies dead.
But God is here, too, and Ali and Jack Kerouac and the great Puerto Rican migration and Dr. Seuss; so along with the politics of dislocation and the problems of assimilation and richer and poorer and neighborhoods and classrooms come fun and a feverish joy of language. The program for ''Slanguage'' includes an educational and laughter-inducing glossary. If someone hasn't heard the latest bochinche, or gossip, from someone dressed in a bubblegoose, or puffy down jacket, about some Mumia, or prisoner on death row, it is possible to front, or act as if one has. Here is the place, as the words of a scene called ''Alphabet City A-Z Cafe'' put it, ''where a variety of verbal vandals' voices evolve the vernacular verbatim.''
In 2009 they received a grant from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) to write a play for their American Revolutions: the United States History Cycle. They chose to write about the Black Panthers and the Young Lords who had influenced them while they were growing up.
Their development work took them across the United States, interviewing former members of both groups. I had the pleasure to welcome them into my home and spend a day of talking and laughing and sharing about my experiences as both a Young Lord and a Panther. I was not only supportive of what they were doing, but intensely curious to see the final result of their conversations with those of us who had been there and been a part of history. I got my chance when I was invited to go to Oregon, as were many other former Panthers and Lords, and participate in talk backs with the audience after the show, which I got to see three times. When I got back home, I wrote about it for Black Kos:
Yes—the living characters in the play are composites. But during the production there is a roll-call of the names of those heroes and sheroes of revolutionary struggle who are no longer with us—black, brown, yellow, red and white—upon whose shoulders we stand today. Their names are called and the cast shouts out ¡Presente! and many of us in the audience, who remember—wept. For truly we are guided by the ancestors who have fought and died to bring us to the present.
One scene in the production features the bullet riddled door of Fred Hampton's apartment. A young woman sitting next to me whispered a question,"Was he a real person?"
I sighed, and answered her in the affirmative, but was deeply troubled by how easy it is for the threads of recent history to become snarled and then lost. It doesn't make any difference that there are videos, books and films available. The documentary, The Murder of Fred Hampton is on YouTube. Black Panther Party alumni, have an extensive online archive, maintained by Billy X Jennings.
The multi-media production features images from the revolutionary artwork of BPP member Emory Douglas, which have been preserved for future generations in exhibitions and in his book.
More information on this artist can be founf in Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas.
The Black Panther Party for Self Defense, formed in the aftermath of the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, sounded a defiant cry for an end to the institutionalized subjugation of African Americans. The Black Panther newspaper was founded to articulate the party’s message, and artist Emory Douglas became the paper’s art director and later the party’s minister of culture. Douglas’s artistic talents and experience proved a powerful combination: his striking collages of photographs and his own drawings combined to create some of the era’s most iconic images.
Emory Douglas was one of the Panthers there during my visit, as was sister Ericka Huggins. I remember wishing that the show could come to New York. This year, that wish has come true.
After their stint at OCS, the production went to California to perform at the Berkeley Rep, where they got great reviews.
The Panthers and the Lords are celebrated for their vision, courage and community programs. But they’re criticized as well. Based in part on Universes’ extensive interviews, the internal rifts and tyrannies, paranoia, violent abuse of members, endemic sexism, and destructive drug use in both parties is vividly displayed — as is the zealotry of the FBI’s notorious (and murderous) COINTELPRO subversion. Meanwhile, the party veterans are challenged both by their children and a rising 21st century generation of digital and hip-hop rebels.
Some audience reactions from Berkeley:
While today’s audience is watching a real life drama swirling around the FBI meddling in our elections, it’s especially important to see the devastating and destructive impact of the Bureau’s Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) on both the Black Panthers and the Young Lords.
I lived through it, but people near and dear to me died as a direct result of the manipulations of the Feds.
Watching the scenes unfold triggers flashbacks for many of us in the audience who lived through those times. Younger viewers are surprised, shocked, and thoughtful about what for them is new information.
When I returned home after the show, I had the opportunity to tell my class about it, and curiously asked what they knew about COINTELPRO.
I got blank looks.
It was depressing to realize something that played a key role in destroying so many groups and movements on the left is not even a memory for a generation of young people venturing into their own forms of activism.
We have educational work to do.
The show’s finale, led by Ninja’s rap anthem American and backed by the full cast, brings the house down. He opens with:
"I'm an American.
I'm as American as apple pie
As American as slavery, smallpox, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, Malcolm X and the Trail of Tears,
baseball, hamburgers and gas guzzlers,
Livin' off the sweat off someone else's back
That's the American way … and I'm that"
The chorus in the background chants “Give me land, bread, housing, give me justice, give me peace,” which synthesizes the demands from the BPP 10 Point Program, as well as the 13 Point Program from the Young Lords.
There was a thunderous standing ovation for the cast at this point, and filing out of theater after the show ended, I could hear other audience members humming and repeating:
“Give me land, bread, housing, give me justice, give me peace.”
I smile, as I am reminded that a new generation is taking up that quest.