How many Chinatown girlfriends got themselves Panther dates? Whole group of them: Leway Girls. Legitimate Way. Girls cross the bridge to Oakland, and the brothers reciprocate and go Leway. Hang out on Jackson under the shadow of the I-Hotel at their Chinatown pool hall, swapping looks over the soda fountain of long life and trying to beat the odds at pinball. It’s about broadening horizons, taking the Third World to heart. International understanding while they get some sweet satisfaction from those black boys in their black turtlenecks and black jackets. Got to push the fingers through those spongy naturals. Pull away the heavy leather with those Free Huey fist buttons and set aside the weapons. Sweet satisfaction from those radical sisters who set you straight about the Suzie Wong stereotype. Oh yeah, set you real straight. Are you ready to mess with such sweetness? Gingerly. Don’t you know? You dancing slow to “My Guy,” but turns out she’s packing.

Panthers walk on Sacramento; it’s national news on prime time, and overnight there’s forty-three Black Panther Party chapters nationwide. Telegrams come in daily; this one’s from this place called Reed College, wants to form a chapter.

Huey asks, “Akagi, you’re a college man. What’s this Reed College?”

Akagi thinks about it. “College for geniuses, but the crazy John Reed kind.”

“Check it out.”

Reed is honky territory out in Portland, Oregon. Shit. Could be a bunch of black brothers infiltrated behind the lines. How’d they get into Reed? They’re letting colored people into fancy places everywhere. Affirmative action my ass! Could be a hoax. A trap! Akagi gets three of his best men. Drive up to Oregon and do calisthenics and shoot up the desert on the way. Take a pilgrimage detour to Tule Lake and shoot at the leftover guard towers. Get to Reed in prime condition—trained and mean and looking sharp. Field jackets, black berets, shades, rifles. March into the designated coffee shop for the meeting. At attention.

Who walks in? It’s one black dude. Just one.

“Where’re the others?”

“It’s just me.”

“Just you?”

“Just me.”

It’s a chapter of one! A fucking chapter of one! Break my heart!

Akagi could lose it, but stop! He tugs nervously at his leather gloves, then faces Reed off and says, “Name the ten-point program!”

White Russian kid from the Potrero hangs out with Leways like he’s Chinese. Maybe he is. Speaks more Chinese than the ABCs. Friend of RG from his hippy days. Crosses the Broadway/Columbus border daily. Supplies the brothers with sources for quality drugs. Parks his hopped-up ’Cuda on the street and works in the stolen parts. Mechanical genius. Political genius, too. He’s saying, take note, police brutality is under control in Oakland. Got to follow the path of the Panthers. Got to get the police off their backs. Running out of fooling. It’s not about give the lumpen jobs. It’s about organize the lumpen. RG and the Russian put together a plan. Notice when the black brothers come around, the Wah Ching stay at bay. That’s what we gotta do; we gotta join up. It’s a war, anyway. Got to get some R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Not enough to be Wuxia heroes. One-armed swordsmen. One-armed boxers. Fighting at a disadvantage. And it’s just a lost arm! Check out a history of disadvantages. How many Wuxia heroes promise themselves to a life of nonviolence and have to give it up? It’s an impossible dream. Brutality on the street. The only thing the brothers know is how to fight their way through. The Wuxia got one thing. Got a philosophy about fighting. That’s what the Panthers offer. Study up. Revolution’s coming. Pick up the gun.

Like I say, Akagi stays behind to take care of business. After three years Huey gets free, but there’re dead brothers all across the country. Police raids and shootouts in Oakland, Chicago, L.A., and the Marin County Courthouse. Repression, provocation, conspiracy, purges. Head of the Panthers incarcerated, but the body struggles. By the time it’s over, there’re thirty-four killed and hundreds imprisoned.

Rally round Bryant and Seventh, Hall of Justice and the San Francisco Jail. Everybody represents: Panthers, La Raza, Venceremos, Los Siete, Soledad, Patriot Party, National Committee to Combat Fascism, plus the significant attorneys for the defendants. But back up: Asian American Community is also represented. Hey, where’s the fancy name? Mothers for Mao, Uncle Ho’s Nephews, Godzillas, or East is Red? Where’s the Red Guard Party? RG missing an historic event. Who comes forward? It’s Akagi, surrounded by his guards. Underneath he’s a Panther, but if necessary, he’s the Asian American Community.

Now this is where he’s going to show off his Marxist take, but he wants to bring it down to the level of common understanding. Make it plain to the people. “Now I’m not too intellectual or academic, but I heard that this thing is like where the quantitative change turns into the qualitative change, or where the thesis and the antithesis struggle and therefore make the synthesis.”

But the brother’s got to show his Asian colors, where it’s going to relate to yellow folks. So he says, “Now, philosophically, dig, I just put it one way: when this change comes, it will be when the yin turns into the yang.”

And for the final touches, to prove he’s into Malcolm: “And to put it into the words of the people, dig, this is when we will return the power to its rightful owner, and that rightful owner is the people, and we will get that power by any means necessary! ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!”

Asian guard-brothers on stage know the grand finale, and all the fists pump up.

She’s working the telephones at the office, waking up early to cook for the breakfast program, distributing the paper, running day care during the morning and a free school in the afternoons, lifting shit and raising money for the programs, doing political study in the evenings and basic training on the weekends. In between, she’s got to be giving you honey, even though you might be getting several honeys. Even though from time to time you lose your mind and put your revolutionary fist in her face. She accepts your weeping apologies because what lumpen can be perfect? Takes time to get your freedom. She’s gonna bear it for you. Gonna prove her mama’s wrong about you. After all, she’s got your babies and another one coming. Producing those power children for the next generation. For the protracted struggle.

But how long’s this gonna last? Dope offers up the future: funk wears off. What else you got to offer? By the time it takes you by surprise, you know she’s found it all out yesterday. Oh, yes.

How many nights she’s got to sit home with the baby waiting for the field marshal to return with his ratty briefcase? One night he comes home, finds the door ajar. First time he has to really draw his weapon, kick the door aside, and jump around with his heart in his throat, thinking, what’s the door open for? She’d never leave it open in this neighborhood, not at this time of night, not with what’s been going down. He searches the house, kicking in the doors, checking every room like he’s in enemy territory, snuffing out a sniper. But it’s empty, and she’s gone.

O.K., so much for the future you could predict. What happens next, and over time? Hasn’t happened yet, but you gonna find Akagi renting a room in the I-Hotel with the old Filipino and Chinese bachelors. Nothing strange about that. He’s a bachelor too. He’s like all the other activists down home with the tenants, working for their rights. Even though he’s been purged from the Party, he’s not like others to go wash his hands of everything, reject his beliefs. Where’s he gonna go anyway? Gonna keep working for the people.

What's Il Piccolo? Is it a coffee house? A doughnut shop? A Chinese cake and tea shop that plays Italian opera? Honey it's a stage, a dais for the imagination. It's reproduced in every city on every continent. Gather the intellectuals, the politicos, and the surrounding lowlifes to exchange the necessary drugs that fuel the imagination: caffeine, nicotine, absinthe, opium. So on the one hand, you have the revolutionaries staging their purposeful antics, and on the other hand, you've got the outlaw literati. [...]

3.1 If war brought Olivia and Ben together, would peace then pull them apart? For the young, seven years might seem an eternity, but for those who live seven years, it is finally only a beginning, and the promises of seven years stretch out into multiples of seven until youth crumbles into age, grasping for a reevaluation that desires once again a blank slate, the sloughing of cares piled one upon the other, the emptiness of freedom.

2.1 Ben sat in the audience and marveled at the confidence of the young woman who marched to the microphone and spoke without notes, in complete sentences, with casual but forceful articulateness. She recounted her journey, her work, and the significance of her meetings and discussions with those personages of high repute: H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael. She could not have been more than twenty. He noted the sheen of her hair curled behind her ear, the elegant gestures of her hands and long fingers, the sense of her stature despite her height.

2.2 At another event, Olivia heard the intensity in the voice of the young man who introduced the labor organizer from the farmworkers' movement, Philip Vera Cruz. She heard his voice, but she watched his eyes, which seemed to her almost stunning in their bright beauty, the way his look across the crowd sparkled with both kindness and fury.

2.3 First impressions may both deceive and perceive.