Malik Rahim

“I believe we are at a crossroads in human existence… as to whether we preserve life as we know it or we sit idly by and allow it to be squandered away. What type of legacy are we going to leave to our children?”

“No Democrat would hand me that award. It was just thrown to me second-hand… Ain’t no difference between politicians.”

(On receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award signed by the Biden administration).

“They fired over 30,000 rounds of ammunition into a wooden house… and didn’t hit nobody. We believe we had four little angels watching over us.”

–Malik Rahim

I had a deeply moving, raw conversation with Malik Rahim, a lifelong community activist and former leader of the Louisiana chapter of the Black Panther Party in the 1970s.

I went to the Gwanji and Hollywood Community Center in “Freetown” (traditionally Algiers, New Orleans), to speak with malik rahim the conversation maps his journey from childhood to his time in the Navy during the Vietnam War, his foundational days with the Black Panthers, and his ongoing mutual-aid work today. Malik Rahim gave me a physical tour of the center. He explains that it is named after two local figures (Gwanji and Hollywood) who were murdered during an attempted robbery at the building when it was a barbershop. Today the center practice Mutual Aid & Survival, The center serves as a “warming station” during freezes, a food distribution hub (running “Red Bean Mondays” that feed up to 100 people the best Red Beans and Rice in all of Louisiana), and an emergency preparedness hub for hurricane season. he showed me their solar generator and compost bathroom setups, emphasizing that they are training locals with livable-wage skills to rebuild and survive disasters.

Born in 1947, Rahim notes he doesn’t say he’s from New Orleans; he identifies with Freetown, the original township name for Algiers. Milik Grew up in Freetown and his grandmother’s house in Gretna, Louisiana, home to one of the largest historic “Maroon” communities—escaped slaves who vowed they would rather die in the bayou than live in bondage. His grandmother, a follower of Bishop Turner and Marcus Garvey, instilled severe racial pride and self-worth in him from an early age

Malik Rahim joined the U.S. Navy during his senior year of high school and was sent to Vietnam with some of the first combat troops. He notes his ongoing health struggles due to handling and being exposed to Agent Orange on a helicopter carrier. Malik described the cognitive dissonance of being paid a meager base salary plus $65 in combat pay to kill people abroad, while watching the civil rights struggle explode back home with the assassination of Malcolm X, the march on Selma, and the Watts riots. He returned to the U.S. deeply bitter toward the government

Upon returning to the states, Rahim refused to join standard society. In 1970, he, his first wife, and his children joined the National Committee to Combat Fascism (NCCF), a precursor to an official Black Panther chapter in New Orleans.

The governor publicly vowed to crush them. On September 15, 1970, over 100 New Orleans police officers laid siege to their wood-framed safehouse in the housing projects, firing an estimated 30,000 rounds over 20 minutes. The Panther 12 survived the attack, Miraculously, due to sandbags and military experience, none of the 12 activists inside were hit. They were arrested, rushed through court, and placed on death row on the exact same day.After 11 months of captivity, the “Panther 12 Shootout” took their case to a jury and were found not guilty of attempted murder.

While held in the prison “dungeon,” Rahim bonded with legendary political prisoners Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox. They organized for prison rights based on the Panthers’ 10-Point Program.

“To those poor souls who don’t know Black history, the beliefs and desires of the Black Panther party for self-defense may seem unreasonable. To Black people, the ten points covered are absolutely essential to survival. We have listened to the riot producing words “these things take time” for four hundred years. The Black Panther party knows what Black people want and need. Black unity and self-defense will make these demands a reality.

What We Want

We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.
We want full employment for our people.
We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our Black Community.
We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.
We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.
We want all black men to be exempt from military service.
We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people.
We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county, and city prisons and jails.
We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.
We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations– supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.

What We Believe

We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.
We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.
We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised one hundred years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of black people. We will accept the payment as currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over twenty million black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.
We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.
We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.
We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.
We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves for self-defense.
We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.
We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that black people will receive fair trials. The Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical, and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the black community from which the black defendant came. We have been, and are being, tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the “average reasoning man” of the black community.
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”(teachingamericanhistory.org)

In our talk Malik Rahim states that while the prison industrial complex is devastating, the medical industrial complex is actively destroying poor communities by turning healthcare and mental health into unaffordable luxury items. Reflecting on Hurricane Katrina (where he later co-founded Common Ground Relief), he dismisses conspiracy theories about the government blowing up the levees. Instead, he blames “hurricane corruption and racism”—the levees failed simply because they were cheaply and corruptly built, treating the Lower Ninth Ward and poor areas as disposable flood basins.**For more on Malik Rahim watch the full video: A Black Panther Speaks | An Interview with Malik Rahim