The Panthers and the Power of Social Imagination

Summary

A short history of the Black Panthers’ ‘survival programmes’ – free breakfasts for over 20,000 children in 1969, clinics, schools – as practical imagination. Beyond meeting needs, they “gave people the chance to experience what a different future might feel like”, which is why the FBI targeted the breakfasts. As the author puts it, “Imagination threatens the status quo; it has power.”

Rationale

The breakfasts did what we hope more work can: meet a need here and now while letting people experience another way of living together, rather than be told about it.