Follows the arc of Panther growth, repression, and fracturing focusing on the political and tactical approaches they developed and revised as they grew from local opposition to police brutality to a national revolutionary organization. Emphasizes that their growth, despite their provocative revolutionary stance, relied on the broad support of moderate allies in the post civil rights and anti-war and anti-colonial left, and that it was as much the partial state resolution of these shared motives as the FBI's repression that ultimately ended the Panther's power.

The stories of police/state injustice documented throughout that motivated radical action seem so recognizable today.