Activist Shaun King disputed former Black Panther member Elaine Brown‘s criticism of the Black Lives Matter movement.
During an exclusive with the British news outlet Spiked, Brown said the Black Lives Matter movement has a “plantation mentality” and that activists are unorganized and aimless in their methods.
““The next wave of young people running out here, who are complaining and protesting about the murders of young Black men and women by the police all over the country, they will protest but they will not rise up in an organized fashion, with and agenda, to create revolutionary change…
“We [BPP] advocated community self-defense organizations to be formed, so that we would not be assaulted by the police, so that we would bear arms and assume our human rights,” Brown continued. “This to me is a plantation mentality. It smacks of ‘master, if you would just treat me right.’ And it has nothing to do with self-determination, empowerment and a sense of justice, or anything else.”
Brown’s criticism comes during the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party. And King respectively disagreed with her assessment during the Oct. 21 broadcast of Democracy Now.
In the clip, the activist says that the party’s co-founder, Bobby Seale, was supportive of the new movement. He tells host Amy Goodman that he is surprised and disappointed by Brown’s statements.
“If you look at where we are now versus where the Black Panther Party was at the same time, I think we’re doing well,” King notes. “But even some of us look at the dangers of what happened to Black Panther leaders, from targeted assassinations to COINTELPRO, and some of the lessons that we learned from them has caused us to change our methods. … The Black Lives Matter movement is not a carbon copy of what the Black Panther Party did. How we do what we do will be uniquely different. Our time is different …”
