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Freedom: Guns or Dharma

Jan Willis’s critical choice: join with the Black Panthers in an armed fight for freedom, or return to Nepal to study the dharma. This was the decision she faced upon graduating from Cornell University in 1969.

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I had already made up my mind to return to Nepal after leaving Cornell when I picked up a copy of Time magazine and read the story about Fred Hampton’s tragic death. As they slept in an apartment at 2337 W. Monroe Street in Chicago he and one of his comrades had been shot to death. The pictures of the room showed blood-splattered walls and bodies lying in disarray. I had personally met Fred Hampton earlier that same year when he had given a talk at the University of Wisconsin. Now, that young warrior was dead. The photos churned my stomach. Against guns, we had no chance.

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