Monday, March 13, 7-9pm, Columbus Mennonite Church, 35 Oakland Park Ave.

Today’s program: screening of film “The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution”

In the turbulent 1960s, change was coming to America and the fault lines could no longer be ignored because cities were burning, Vietnam was exploding, and disputes raged over equality and civil rights. A new revolutionary culture was emerging and it sought to drastically transform the system. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense would, for a short time, put itself at the vanguard of that change. The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution is the first feature-length documentary to explore the Black Panther Party, its significance to the broader American culture, its cultural and political awakening for black people, and the painful lessons wrought when a movement derails. The film tells the story of a pivotal movement that gave rise to a new revolutionary culture in America. Their causes, with slogans like “power to the people” and “creating a better world” are relevant again in an era that has seen the rise of the “Black Lives Matter” movement and tense relations between African American communities and the police. The Black Panthers condemnations of injustice, oppression and brutality in the late 1960s and the early 1970s reverberate again in one city after another.