You can easily tell if someone is truly seeking redemption by the way they react when people don't forgive them immediately just because they say "war bad, actually". Redemption is about doing the right thing to correct your past sins even if others no longer trust you, and forgiveness is up to the people you victimized and betrayed.

As for helping veterans, that's great and all, but I highly doubt the Black Panthers were just giving them free food and housing without educating them on why their actions in Vietnam were wrong and how they can atone for them.

And for the people going "we need military for a revolution." Correct, but take a look back in history. Almost all of the professional military were disillusioned with war or the state and/or starving to death. The communists won them because they promised to end pointless wars and provide food. Right now, your average soldier in the US military is quite comfortable. All they do is stand around on base, sit on a ship for 4 years, get free hot meals and play on their phones until their training session, and they WANT action because they're bored.

The ones who are disillusioned are the ones who fought and got nothing in return or wasted half a decade in service only to have 0 job training. The state isn't scared of those individuals because the majority of soldiers and veterans do fine, and if they aren't doing fine, they're still not angry enough to inspire regiment. And wrt the Black Panthers, they were doing this shit during a turbulent civil rights era where the government considered them the greatest threat - more than the Soviets - because they were uniting all sorts of marginalized people. What group or movement has that status today? Antifa? BLM? Lol.