Huey P. Newton: I am We: a Conversation with Delio Vásquez
68 Jay Street, #425
Brooklyn, NY 11201
How does revolutionary consciousness begin? In Huey P. Newton: I am We (Polity, 2026), Delio Vásquez offers a new intellectual history of the co-founder, political strategist, and chief theoretician of the Black Panther Party. Across a brilliant and wide-ranging body of work, Huey P. Newton examined the fate of revolutionary nationalisms under global capitalism; the changing shape of revolutionary struggle in an increasingly militarized and technologized world; and the relationship between individual experience and collective consciousness. How might we read Newton’s thought, Vásquez asks, against the backdrop of the tumultuous politics of the 1960s and 70s, of developments within and beyond the Black Panther Party, and of the violent repression and surveillance to which both Newton and the Party were subject?
Join us Thursday, October 8 for the U.S. launch of Huey P. Newton: I am We. Delio Vásquez will sit down with BISR faculty member Nara Roberta Silva to discuss Newton’s life, the impact of his thought on the Black Panthers’ political program, and the relationship between theory and revolutionary activity. Together, the two will ask: Why was Newton’s theory of intercommunalism relevant in the changing conjuncture of the 1970s? What might we learn from Newton’s unrecognized—and, in many cases, unpublished—ideas on the environment, gendered oppression, or psychiatric torture? How might those engaged in local liberation struggles cultivate forms of international solidarity? How should lived experience, reason, will, and hope inform our understanding of social transformation and political strategy? And what do the conditions that produced Newton’s fall portend about our own political present?
The event is free to attend, with a suggested $8 donation. Copies of Huey Newton: I am We will be available for purchase. Beer, wine, seltzer, and snacks will be served. Please RSVP below.
Event Schedule
Thursday, 7:00-8:30PMOctober 08, 2026
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