It strikes me that even as the Panthers shouted that “A Gun is Power,” they were aware that media technology was as much or more a part of their war against government aggression than projectile weaponry. The “black colony” that was declaring its rights to life, liberty, and self-direction in the Panthers’ party platform could not do so with guns alone: a constant, international, public-opinion-changing media assault was the only way that their demands could be forced on the government.
The presence of the media could enflame already tense situations (Rhodes, 71). Think of May ’68 in France, where the experienced their actions in real-time through the radio: “making history” can destabilize. But the news also protected the Panthers from police attacks: “Being in the news kept us from getting killed” (115). Or alternatively, media technologies could be firmly in the arsenal of the police forces. In BCNS Vol II, No 1. 1968, on page 2, in “Arm Ourselves or Harm Ourselves,” the entry “8 T.V. taping recorders” appears in a list of technologies acquired by the Newark PD, alongside shotguns, rifles, riot shields, PA systems, and vans. In the entry above, a helicopter, presumably armed with both guns and cameras, surveils the Cleveland ghetto.
On page 5 of the same paper, the footer screams “GUNS BABY GUNS” and sprouts the curiously multi-valenced subtitle, “The Spirit of the People is Greater Than The Man’s Technology.” Whose technology? What technology? Where did Black Panther Power lie between guns, radios, typewriters?
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