Fred Hampton’s declaration that “we’re not metaphysicians, we’re not idealists, we’re dialectical materialists” comes from his speech known as “It’s a Class Struggle, Goddamnit!” It captures the scientific heart of his revolutionary politics. For Hampton, revolution was not built on dreams, slogans, or wishful thinking but on a sober analysis of the material conditions of the people. Dialectical materialism, the method of Marx and Lenin, meant studying the world as it really is, its contradictions, its class forces, and the concrete needs of the poor, in order to change it. Dealing with reality whether we like it or not meant refusing illusions about the system and about the movement itself.

Born in 1948 and raised in Maywood, outside Chicago, Hampton was a gifted organizer while still in his teens. At twenty he became chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party. Under his leadership the Chicago Panthers fed thousands of children through the Free Breakfast for Children program and opened a free medical clinic. He built the original Rainbow Coalition, uniting the Panthers with the Puerto Rican Young Lords and the poor white Young Patriots in a common class struggle. He taught that racism had to be fought with solidarity, that the enemy was capitalism, and that the people would win through organization and political education.

The state understood the threat he posed. On December 4, 1969, Chicago police, working with the FBI and guided by an informant’s floor plan of his apartment, raided the home where Hampton slept and killed him and fellow Panther Mark Clark. Hampton was twenty-one. Years later, the families and survivors won a settlement from the city, county, and federal governments. His words remain a guide for revolutionaries: to base the struggle on reality, to unite the oppressed across every division, and to remember that the fight for liberation is, at its core, a class struggle.

• 1 print shipped in a rigid mailer (made from recycled cardstock)
• printed on acid-free, premium matte-photo paper

• paper weight + thickness: 250/m² / 66lbs 

*frame not included*