It's grotesque to say the Black Panther party is equivalent to the police. Reminder for those who aren't familiar with the history here, the Black Panthers miss

It's grotesque to say the Black Panther party is equivalent to the police. Reminder for those who aren't familiar with the history here, the Black Panthers mission was to run social programs. The police entered Newton's home in the early morning and fired dozens of rounds at him - not because they felt threatened in any way, they set out to assassinate him for his politics. If a bunch of white communists started carrying guns, filming the police in their communities, and providing school lunches, they absolutely wouldn't be assassinated in their homes like that. If you're uncomfortable that they carried guns - I certainly am - try to consider whether their lived experience was quite different than yours, and how you might behave if you were constantly surrounded by an armed and hostile police force, before the proliferation of smart phone cameras, who could and would murder you with impunity. They viewed their everyday lives as a survival situation, and they called their social programs "survival programs."