Talking About Revolution (1970)

 

In September of 1970, the Black Panthers convened a meeting of revolutionaries in Philadelphia to begin work on drafting and ratifying a new U.S. Constitution on election day later that year. 

During that spring, the BPP distributed these registration forms through the underground press. According to a report in the Cornell Daily Sun, about 6,000 people were packed into Temple University's gymnasium, which held only 4,500.  Attendees who represented racial justice, women's, gay and lesbian groups, workers and peace organizations split into 17 workshop sections, each meeting for six hours to piece together the document. 

According to the Daily Sun, "The workshops were on such topics as self-determination for national minorities, for women, and for 'street people,' control and use of the military, the means of production the educational and legal systems and the land. Other workshops dealth (sic) with health and drugs. 

"Among the principles the participants wanted included in a new Constitution were community control of police and education, guaranteeed (sic) free medical care including birth control, abortion and sterilization upon request, a part time militia to replace the standing army, no conscription, no production of genocical (sic) weapons, no United States troops on foreign soil, free advanced education, and the replacement of present boundaries with an indeterminate number of self-governing communities."

The actual convention in Washington, D.C. never happened as the Panthers were shut out of multiple venues and internal coordination fell apart. Huey Newton promised the Panthers would try again but they never did.