I'm not afraid to say I'm at war with the pigs.

Hear, O listener, the burning words of Fred Hampton, the young lion of the Black Panther Party: “I’m not afraid to say I’m at war with the pigs.” This cry was not the reckless boast of a man in love with violence, but the defiant declaration of one who stood unflinching before oppression. Hampton, who rose to lead the Illinois chapter of the Panthers in the 1960s, lived in a time when the state’s power was turned with relentless force against Black communities—police raids, surveillance, brutality, and systemic denial of dignity. To call the police “pigs” was to strip away their mask of authority and reveal them, in his eyes, as instruments of repression rather than guardians of justice.

The origin of these words lies in the bitter clash between the Black Panther Party and law enforcement during the turbulent years of the civil rights struggle. While Martin Luther King Jr. preached nonviolent resistance, Hampton embodied a fiercer path: community self-defense. He organized free breakfast programs, health clinics, and political education classes, but he also taught that oppressed people had the right to protect themselves against violence by any means necessary. When he said he was at “war,” it was not war for conquest, but war for survival, for dignity, for the right to live as free men and women.

Consider the tragic story of Hampton’s own death. In December 1969, at just 21 years old, he was killed in his bed during a pre-dawn raid by the Chicago police and the FBI. He never fired a shot; he was drugged, unarmed, and executed while he slept beside his pregnant partner. The state declared him an enemy, and in turn, he had named them as his adversaries. His words about being at war were fulfilled in his blood, proof of the very brutality he denounced. His life became both a warning and a prophecy of what happens when a government sees dissent as treason.

History echoes his truth. Recall the struggles of colonized peoples under imperial rule—India under the British, Algeria under the French, Kenya under the British empire. In each case, those who rose to resist were branded criminals, rebels, or worse. The occupying powers wore uniforms and claimed legitimacy, but to the oppressed, they were the pigs of Hampton’s vision: agents of domination who had forsaken the higher duty of justice. To declare war upon them was to declare allegiance to freedom, however costly.

The deeper meaning of Hampton’s words is not only about police or politics—it is about fearlessness in naming injustice. Many tremble to speak against power, to call oppression by its true name. Hampton did not tremble. He was not afraid to declare that he stood in battle against those who devoured his people. His war was not merely with bullets, but with words, with programs that fed children, with speeches that lifted spirits, with solidarity that crossed racial lines. To be “at war” meant to resist every day, in every form, until liberation was won.

What, then, is the lesson for us who inherit his voice? It is this: you must not fear to speak truth, even when power looms above you. Do not be cowed into silence when injustice reigns. Recognize that war does not always mean weapons; sometimes it means persistence, solidarity, and the courage to fight with ideas, with service, with love fierce enough to challenge oppression. Hampton’s cry teaches us that neutrality in the face of injustice is surrender, but bold resistance—whether through protest, art, or service—is a form of sacred battle.

Therefore, O listener, carry Hampton’s fire into your own life. Ask yourself: who are the “pigs” of today, the forces that grind down the poor, silence the oppressed, and profit from injustice? And what is your war, your chosen field of resistance? Fight not only with anger, but with vision, with compassion, with tireless work that builds the world you long for. For though Fred Hampton was cut down young, his words still thunder across the generations: do not be afraid to stand at war with oppression, for in that struggle lies the hope of freedom.