LMC students urged to battle cuts

Larry Pinkney was highlighted in a Wednesday, April 24, 1991 Daily Ledger Post Dispatch (CA, USA) article, Page 3:

Front page says:
Inside: Former Panther rallies students –see Page 3 (includes photo of Larry Pinkney speaking)

Photo of Larry Pinkney and students in audience
Photo caption: Former Black Panther leader Larry Pinkney told students that proposed budget cuts amount to “educational genocide.”

Photo of Larry Pinkney speaking
Photo caption: Pinkney: State cuts slash students’ hopes, dreams

Excerpts from the article:

LMC students urged to battle cuts
By Mike Sobel, Staff Writer

PITTSBURG [CA]– Former Black Panther leader Larry Pinkney urged about 60 shouting and clapping students at Los Medanos College on Tuesday to rally against “educational genocide.”

“At this very moment, minority students at S.F. State are challenging the administration and saying we will not accept the budget cuts,” Pinkney said.

He referred to a protest at San Francisco State University on Tuesday, when about 100 students occupied the administration building, demanding more money for schools.

“The time has come for us to do what the students at S.F. State are doing,” he told the LMC students, drawing a round of applause. “The time has come for us to explode for the right to educate ourselves.”

Born in Baltimore, Pinkney, 40, was a former Southern California Black Panther Party leader in the late-1960s. He also was a political activist in Europe and Africa. He is the only American to receive an official United Nations ruling declaring a violation by the United States of his civil, political and human rights, he said.

The violation stemmed from FBI spying on his Black Panther activities. He read from an FBI file calling him a dangerous extremist and proposing to discredit him by tempting him with sex and drugs.

Pinkney’s speech Tuesday, “Education, Multiculturalism and Empowerment in the 1990s: Myth or Reality?” criticized subjects taught in East County and other schools and equated recent state and federal budget cuts with “educational genocide.”

“Too often when people say education, they really mean brainwashing,” Pinkney said, citing as an example history textbooks that glorify the killing of American Indians.

…

“True education comes only with challenging accepted norms,” he said. But recent budget cuts show the government’s desire to undermine young people’s ability to challenge norms, he said.

….

Pinkney now lives in Concord, on sabbatical from the State University System of Minnesota, where he teaches political science, African-American history and international relations.

“You have the answer to whether education, multiculturalism and empowerment in the 1990s will be a myth or reality,” he told the students. “As of now, it is a myth. You have the will to make it a reality. Get out there and do what you have to do.”

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Larry Pinkney is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities, Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, and more recently on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones Show. Pinkney is a former university instructor of political science and international relations, and his writings have been published in various places, including The Boston Globe, San Francisco BayView newspaper, Black Commentator, Intrepid Report, Global Research (Canada), LINKE ZEITUNG (Germany), 107 Cowgate (Ireland and Scotland), and Mayihlome News (Azania/South Africa). He is in the archives of Dr. Huey P. Newton (Stanford University, CA), cofounder of the Black Panther Party. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.)