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Judas and the Black Messiah ★★★★ Dir. Shaka King, 126 min. HBO Max
Warning: This review contains spoilers. As the same argument about reform plays in a loop,
Judas and the Black Messiah is a reminder that there is no such thing as patient protest and that to combat targeted, intentional systems of oppression, it takes a revolution. Because as the real Fred Hampton so famously explained in a commonly quoted 1968 speech, it’s the revolution that lasts. “You can jail a revolutionary, but you can’t jail a revolution,” he said about Black Panther Party Chairman Bobby Seale, who was beaten, bound, and gagged while on trial for a conspiracy with men he’d never met. “You might run a liberator like [BPP minister of information/spokesperson] Eldridge Cleaver out of the country, but you can t run liberation out of the country. You might murder a freedom fighter like [BPP treasurer] Bobby Hutton, but you can t murder freed