What Does It Mean to Love Your People the Way Fred Hampton Did?

Love is not sentiment. Love is commitment. Love is action. When people ask me about love, I think they're expecting some soft answer, but real love for your people is the most radical thing you can do.

To love your people means you cannot rest while they suffer. It means you study the conditions that oppress them so you can fight those conditions effectively. It means you're willing to sacrifice your comfort, your safety, maybe even your life so that they can be free. That's love.

See, I love Black people. I love all oppressed people. That love is what drives me. But it's not a love that accepts things as they are. It's a love that says: we deserve better, and we're going to fight for better. It's a love that builds breakfast programs and medical clinics. It's a love that teaches people their history and their power.

The system tries to distort love. They want us to accept crumbs and be grateful. They want us to love them—the oppressors—enough to serve them quietly. But the love I'm talking about is the opposite. It's a love that refuses exploitation in any form.

When you truly love your people, you cannot be a reformist. You cannot accept small changes that leave the fundamental system of oppression intact. That wouldn't be love—that would be betrayal. Love demands that you fight for total liberation, for a complete transformation of the conditions that grind people down.

I organize because I love. I study because I love. I put myself on the line because I love. You want to know what love looks like? It looks like a young person understanding their worth and their power. It looks like a community that feeds itself, defends itself, and determines its own future.

If you love your people, you become dangerous to the system. You become someone who cannot be bought, cannot be intimidated, cannot be stopped. That's the kind of love that changes the world. That's the love we need.