JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH AND BPP RESEARCH
“Solidarity entails the recognition that liberation is a collective project that requires
dialogic participation and a critical consciousness of how both oppressor and oppressed
are bound together through power relations.”
I agree with Freire. I chose to watch Judas and the Black Messiah. This movie is about the Black
Panther Party in Chicago, Illinois. Every time I watch this movie the meaning behind it just gets
deeper and deeper. The main role of the Black Panther Party was to create a space for the
African American people to express their feelings about being oppressed in this time. During
this time the African American population was moving into Oakland and other Bay Area cities,
as well as cities and states across the world. The younger black men and women developing
in those towns confronted new kinds of poverty and racism. This was surprising to their
parents who had a different type of oppression while they were growing up. These men
and women sought out to increase new kinds of politics to cope with them.
In the movie one of the main quotes that spoke out to me first was, “You don’t fight fire, with
fire. You fight fire with water. You don’t fight racism with racism. We gonna fight with
solidarity.” I felt like this spoke to me mainly because it made me think about the quote we are
agreeing and disagreeing about. Coming from myself who identifies as being both Afro-
Caribbean and Latina, I feel like the only way to be liberated is by fighting for solidarity between
everyone in the community of the Black and Brown communities as well as the other racial
communities as well.
As the quote by Freire states, “both oppressor and oppressed are bound together through
power relations.” Well as I saw in the movie the “oppressed” being the Black Panther Party had
power and so did the “oppressor” which in this case was the Police. Just the Police had a slightly
upper hand of power due to the color of their skin. Another thing I learned from watching is
that there were tons of different heavily populated Black and Brown groups around the cities.
Also, that they were basically all fighting for the same thing. They wanted to be liberated and
treated the same as their oppressors.
