INTERVIEW
BLACK PANTHERS
(Bobby Seale, Jamal Joseph, Kathleen Cleaver)
In Cuba Nehanda
Abiodun and Assata Shakur told me about 80 former Black Panthers living
in Cuba today. Are you in touch with these exiled people...
Jamal Joseph: Actually
not, but I'm excited because I am going to Cuba in the end of June to
direct a documentary. And for me a trip to Cuba will also be very special
because my parents are Cuban. My mother died when I was young and my
father died a couple of years ago, but I have lots of relatives in Cuba.
It'll be my first time on the island. Because of my involvement with
the panthers and me being in prison for a long time and then being on
parole for a long time, I hadn't been able to travel, I hadn't a passport.
But the connection between the BPP and Cuba and Vietnam and China and
North Korea and many liberation movements throughout the world was,
that we saw the struggle for liberation as a global struggle and people
were talking about the same issues: These issues came down to human
rights, anti war, anti racism, economic empowerment, but usually we
talked about class struggle. And you really saw that the struggle didn't
come down to black or white, or red or brown but to the haves and the
havenots. And so when you looked, who your brother really was, who was
suffering for a piece of bread or a decent place to live or for decent
housing and health care, you saw that you might have more in common
with a white family that maybe lived a mile away than with a black family
that was very very wealthy, just using it as an analogy: Talking about
a struggle that cuts across class lines, then you discover that solidarity
between the races not only is possible but it must happen. And the solidarity
with other liberation struggles must happen because the human family
wants a world that's peaceful, that has unity and that has love.
Put some children from different races together, they could be black,
white, Asian, native American and the children will just play together
naturally. So the things that we learned that divide us, that make us
look at each other suspiciously and that make us think that we are different
are things that we learn when we grow older.
Bobby Seale: In
the early days we had party members that went to exile, I think especially
of Eldridge Cleaver who went to Cuba, before he went to Algiers. But
we hadn't have direct contact with those exiled in Cuba since the last
ten or fifteen years. We hadn't had the chance to get that contact.
But as Jamal said, we were internationalists, understanding that we
were fighting a class struggle, fighting for our constitutional democratic
human rights.
I saw you in the
film talking about not wanting your private life being invaded by anything
political...
Kathleen Cleaver:
Well I wasn't talking about my private life, I was talking about my
private house, everything else is invaded by politics.
Are you feeling
harrassed because you are a former Black Panther?
Bobby Seale: There
are certain times when I don't let reporters come to my house. Then
there are people that I get to know very well, with all the potential
suspicions lingering in my head: On the other side I got some reporters
in the Philadelphia aerea that can come to my house. With some of the
top level reporters I do barbecues or go to the theatre.
Most of the interviews I do in the Temple University of Philadelphia
where I worked for 12 years.
But other than that I had kids to raise, they are grown now, you gotta
have some degree of private life.
Every once in a while I get someone jumping at me in the audience of
a college lecture - I do 40 or 50 lectures in a year - who is trying
to harang me, so I stop this speaking engagement and say: Let's get
it on, you wanna take my microphone or what ...
Other than that I think the Cointelpro operation of the FBI they keep
pretty good tabs of me, I'm sure they do. They got people reporting
to them what I say, what I did. They are documenting this because I'm
still speaking this, I' m still standing on my principles of human liberation
Did you ever see
your FBI files?
Well I've seen all
of that stuff. That was done when we sued the city of New Haven when
I was tried, they trumped up charges against me there, I was in prison
there for more than 22 months, without bail. In effect what we found
out, was that the local police chief - he later was elected mayor -
he wire chapped everyone: he wire chapped our prison cells, he wire
chapped our lawyers. We sued a file against the city of New Haven and
the local telephone company. In that context I got all my files. Some
of them are still hiding. You know what the FBI does: They are trying
to hide files in other departments of the government. FBI files might
be found in the agricultural department. And if you get them of course
they black out all the names...
I got ten or fifteen boxes of Cointelpro operation files
And they still go on collecting material. I made a speech in Syracuse
eight years ago stating in a question and answer period, that I still
believe in the right of self defense if any power structure moves try
to stop me from exercising of my basic constitutional democratic rights
in a violent threatening fashion. Yes I would use a gun to defend myself.
And so the newspaper printed that, distorted that and in effect when
whe got the files, it read: Bobby Seale continues the advocacy of guns...
But I found some very old stuff, even before the BPP started....
You were in prison
for 22 months in New Haven?
Well I won the case
in New Haven indirectly. They wouldn't give me bail, but I was never
convicted.
Kathleen Cleaver:
We know you won, if you hadn't won, you would have been executed on
the electric chair.
Bobby Seale: If
I hadn't won, I would have been executed on the electric chair
I got only 10 000 dollar refunds for the suit of the city of New Haven
for the wire tap.
But what really upsets me: Fred Hamptons and Mark Clarks family received
a million dollars, but many other black people that have been screwed,
trumped over and several of them murdered have not been compensated
at all for a lot of things that the US government has done. We had 28
BPP members that had been killed by the december of 1969. And a lot
of the compensation is not happening.
We still have political prisoners, I can list 8 or 9 political prisoners
in the US that are former BPP members, that are in prison to this day.
Jamal Joseph, while
working with your students in a theatre company are you reminded every
day , that you are a Black Panther?
Jamal Joseph: I
still live in Harlem where I grew up and where I was a Panther. in the
film I was volunteering with an organization called city kids. Four
years ago we founded a similar program in Harlem called Impact. We have
a hundred kids working on creative arts and leadership training. So
the kids are kind of youth activists that seize the creative arts as
a way to change their world in a positive way. So it's a grassroots
organisation, we teach them communication skills and conflict resolutions
and grassroots organizing and the go out and they fill out some community
functions and do some community grassroots organizing. This is volunteer
work I do every saturday and some days a week. In fact we fund the work
ourselves. The money that I make from screen plays and from film, a
good portion of that goes to run this program. That gives us the independence
to really have the kind of curriculum and activities that we want to
have with the young people.
I teach at Columbia University and I also write screen plays and produce
and sometimes direct.
I'm reminded that I'm a Panther everytime I look into the community
and I see police brutality, everytime I see the face of a young person
who is lost or who is angry or who is in trouble, or every time I see
a senior citizen who is sick and who is not getting proper medication
or someone who is not eating well or is living in bad housings. And
unfortunately that is every day.
When you see cops occupying your community like an occupying army you
are reminded that you are a panther and that the work continues.
It's easier now to function, because the further you get away from a
particual place in history, the more romantic it becomes to people.
So when you meet people they are kind of very excited, that you were
a young Panther leader and that you were part of a celebrated case like
the New York panther 21 and you know there is almost a bit of a feeling
of celebrity to it.
You meet a lot of people, that were Panthers, that you just don't remember
(lautes Gelächter)
Kids will come up to you and tell you: You know my uncle was a Panther,
he was in the Harlem branch, or: my father says he was in the Panthers.
And I don't say anything, because I think if the kid is excited, and
the person feels that the Panthers were good enough or worthy enough
to claim their membership, this is a good thing in terms of the consciousness
and how we remember.
But immediatley after, if you look at the ten year period after the
demise of the BPP, talking about the 70s: People were afraid to be around
you, people were afraid to give you a job, people were afraid to associate
with you, people were afraid to tell that they had been there...
I know Panthers now who are proud and come to our reunions that were
kind of afraid: You'd go by and say: Comrade so and so, right on, sister
love, brother love and they'd be like shhhhhh... my boss is around the
corner. Be quiet, the people in my building don't know.
Now they are yelling across the street: Power to the people.
But back in the 70s many of us or at least our memories and associations
were partially driven underground. Remember we weren't an underground
organisation. We were an above ground organisation organising people
in a very active way. And that was a very painful period, it was hard
to reconcile with your life, if you looked back how hard we had worked,
how little sleep we got - it was a seven days a week, 18 to 20 hours
a day commitment that we made for five, six, seven years of our life,
that we all made to this movement.
And in the period immediately after to see everything decimated, to
see people dead, to see the offices where you had been destroyed, a
barber shop or grocery store had been done there and people didn't remember.
That was a very painful thing.
So in a way the new interest in the BPP is gratifying. Personally you
feel a little validated about the choices, that you made. More importantly
you don't have to feel, that those sacrifices were in vain.
For the people who are not fortunate enough to be here: You have to
now feel that they lived for something and died for something. And for
those who are in prison: We have to keep on struggling, because they
are making a very noble sacrifice.
You should feel
like popstars with all these cards and posters showing your faces...
Kathleen Cleaver:
No,no, we are not feeling like popstars
Bobby Seale: These pictures remind us to the days, when we were police
targets, targets of the FBI
In the BPP I had a rule that I wrote at the beginning of the party:
No one could have marihuana or weed in their posession while doing political
work.
Inadvertently partymembers themselves created a codework, wanting to
hide the fact that they were smoking some marihuana at the side. So
the codework became all across the country as the party grew, if you
were getting ready to travel: By the way is brother Roogie coming with
you? Well no, brother Roogie won't be with us. Or in another case: Yeah
brother Roogie is coming with us, he is down with us. Now imagine this:
Our phones are wire tapped. Every conversation that goes to any Panther
Party office or any known BPP members house or appartment is wire tapped.
It was not until my trial in New Haven, Connecticut, in the summary
by our lawyer, that he reveals to the jury in his closing arguments
about how, by this very sealing of the FBI documents and the viciousness
of the DA working with the FBI trying to kill and destroy the BPP...
then in the New York arrest of the Panther 21 there was also a warrant
put out for brother Roogie.
(lautes Gelächter)
We were such public enemy targets, that soon the FBI assumed, that he
was a specialized underground BPP member. So when we see these pictures
we remember a lot of stories how we were really public enemies.
Jamal Joseph: Huey
and Bobby, Eldridge and Kathleen understood the power of public propaganda,
which is now called marketing, very soon. In terms of counterculture
art, just in terms of that imagery, we kind of did for the young people
what hip hop does with its imagery today in terms of posters then, in
terms of artwork then (artists like....), that wound up in peoples dormitories,
that were plastered all over various billboards, slogans that were working
their way into every day language: If you are talking about cooptation,
you know that your stuff is really coopted when Richard Nixon says:
Right On!
(Gelächter) as he did years later. But these things were created
by the BPP that worked its way in the everyday language and attitude
of people on the street.
I wrote an HBO about a guy called Willie Turner who spent 15 years on
death row and who was executed - and I interviewed his lawyer who was
a 50 year old white conservative big time corporate lawyer who had never
taken a criminal case before, but who had just fallen in love with this
one guy, whom he worked his case pro bono.
So I asked him about the state of virginia, the people who tried to
execute his client and he said: You know, they are pigs!
And that really blew my mind. Something that started on the streets
of Oakland to identify a police, so we wouldn't be afraid of them, came
to be used by this conservative, white big time corporate lawyer - Language
is an important thing: For black people even our slang about ourselves
reflected our inferiority complex or what we call the colonisation process.
The colonial mentality is that you are subject to the will of the mother
country, and you should be grateful that the mother country is feeding
you and clothing you and showing you, how to be civilized. We should
be grateful for the crumbs off the table. We identified white america
as the mother country and the black communities as the colony - so right
away you begin to see a political relationship between where you live.
But even how we talked about ourselves: The police would come in our
community and we would call them "the man". Our house was
the "crib", calling each other babies. Everything was subservient,
growing up with the "Negroes ain't shit" mentality and even
the dozens we would insult with each other: "Your mama's so black
she could go to night school and marked absent... your daddy's so black
he could go in the coal mine and leave a black streak. This was the
dozens.
What the black power movement began to do and what the BPP took to a
more political level was to say: Black is beautiful. Our nappy head
is beautiful, our being black is beautiful. I remember one guy in the
BPP he wrote a poem: I got up from my black bed with my black sheets,
walked to the mirror looked at my black skin, got my black afro picked
and put on my black black panther uniform, put my black gun in my black
holster and stepped out to do my work for the black revolution, opened
the door: Damnit, white snow!
(Lautes Gelächter)
But using terms to describe ourselves like brother love, sister love
or comrade and talking about the enemies, greedy avaricious businessmen
and pigs, was empowering for people to think about themselves in a positive
and a revolutionary way.
So we had that with the language and with posters and with songs. We
had songs that we sang in the process, we had a group called The Lumpen
doing R'nB songs. And we had poetry done.
And we had a saying with the Panthers that the only culture we had was
a revolutionary culture.
So that the posters are here again excites us in a sense, that when
the word is going out and people can connect these images to the meaning
and connect that meaning to a movement then that's a good thing.
When you were posing
for this poster with a pumpgun...
Kathleen Cleaver:
It wasn't a poster. Let me explain. The ... and tax squad had come to
our home at two o' clock in the morning and kicked the door in our apartment.
Six of them rushed in, searching for guns. Next morning there was a
rallye at Huey Newtons preliminary hearing and they wanted to arrest
Eldridge Cleaver, because they knew he would speak there. But whoever
told them, that there were guns in the apartment gave them a wrong information.
They couldn't find the guns and they left. Other panthers had their
doors kicked in in midnight raids.
After Eldridge was in a shootout and freed on bail. As an ex-convict
he was not allowed to have weapons. But I was living in the house, too,
and I said, wait a minute: We are the panthers, they are chasing us,
am I not allowed to have a weapon just because Eldridge is an ex-convict?
So I went and bought a big shot-gun, and a 3.57 Magnum. And instead
of making it a secret we called two reporters from underground papers
telling them : We want you to put a story in the papers that I have
a gun in my house. So we took a picture of my holding a gun in front
of my house and it would run with the stories in the paper. that was
to send a message to the police: Here you see, I have a gun.
It happened to be a very good picture. I was also a candidate for the
state assembly and I used that photograph for campaigning. But it wasn't
to make a poster. It was to say that I have a gun and I will use that
gun if you come to kick down my door.
Later on, people
that was not subjected to this, they identified with these people, who
are brave, or people that they admire. So they take the picture and
make many many copies and put that up in their dormitories to support
this. But I was not there to make a poster, I was there to make sure,
I didn't get shot. This was about political reality.
Even when we made a poster with Huey later, that was done to protect
him by this kind of publicity.
We were using art in a political way. It later became something else.
We did not think in terms of pop culture. Pop culture began to think
about us.
My picture with the pumpgun with taken in 1968. And if you go around
the newspapers of that period you won't find the word pop culture.
We didn't want to create pop culture, we wanted to make revolution.
That was the difference...
Nowadays the political content has been deleted and has been replaced
by something that is commercially viable and non politically threatening.
Do you feel that
it's a sell out when HipHoppers and other popstars use the emblems of
the BPP as a cool kind of fashion?
Kathleen Cleaver:
Sellout is the wrong word. But you have a depolitisation. You have a
whole generation that has had nearly no education on politics and no
conception of how teenagers or young adults could believe in something
so powerfully, that they would sacrifice their lives for. They don't
understand that. And they don't understand the political conflict that
we faced in a world that was racially polarized and where the american
government was fighting a war in Vietnam.... the larger culture does
not want them to understand that world. So if they take this little
pieces, it's out of context.
It's like what we saw yesterday: People walking around with this little
pieces of the Berlin wall and they want to sell it to you. But what's
the meaning of this piece of the wall?
Jamal Joseph: If
somebody who is a rapper is wearing a BPP button or a Free Mumia button,
then we know there is something about that image that attracted them.
And it is better to see them with that button on in a video then to
see them with a gold chain and a gun.
And when we get a chance to meet that person, they will have questions,
about what the movement was really about, or we can challenge them,
what they are doing with their music and for their community.
There are a lot of conscious rappers who are using their music as a
platform to talk about social issues and to talk about revolutionary
issues. I am talking about bands like Dead Prez, Common, Mos Def...
For example Dead Prez they are part of a collective and once a week
they have political education classes. They study the autobiography
of Malcolm X for example and talk about what they can do..
The Black August movement is connected with the Malcolm X grassroots
movement, working consistently about community issues and political
prisoners.
In New York and all across the country there are now a lot of these
poetry cafes and bookstores, where people are meeting and doing hiphop
and poetry every week.
The Nu Yorican Poets cafe used to be the only place to go to experience
that kind of culture. Now in Harlem I could name five different places
where you can go to hear poetry and people doing political hiphop. All
of this is encouraging. So what you get in the music videos and what
the record label is pushing along are kids, who are driving big cars
and who are blingblingin' and women who are being objectified. But what
I see in the hiphop scene, is a lot of young brothers and sisters sporting
afrocentric looks and listening to underground hiphop that is very politicized,
and talking about what they can do in the community.
One of the wonderful thing about my work with youth: I'm getting a steady
dose of inspiration because I see the activism and the politics that
is out there among young people, it's not getting the coverage, there's
nothing about it for Time magazine, or the record labels to push it,
because it is not making sales, but it is out there, it is alive and
it's growing.
Bobby Seale: My
son Malik Nkrumah Seale, now 34 years of age, is basically a profound
rap artist, we found out. He is producing his first own album. I was
out just two months ago in California where he lives. He said: come
on dad, you gotta come to the studio with me. And I went down to the
studio and he had one rap song titled "Seize..." after my
book "Seize the time". And he puts me in front of the microphone:
All you have to do is, dad, say it like you said it on the streets back
in the old days: We want peace and houses and shelter for our people!
And he's splicing this in between his rap renditions. This is gonna
be tough, my son said.
Afterwards I started reading all of his lyrics: And I found out it was
some profound and progressive stuff. It blew my mind. I didn't know
he had this artistic ability. so I started pouring in money in his artistic
studio time. (Gelächter)
If you had your
children getting the same ideas that you had 30 years ago, acting in
a very radical way, going underground, would you kind of support them
or would you say: We made a mistake don't do it again?
Bobby Seale: I was
interviewed with my daughter, my son, and my other son Romain, when
he was two years into medical school. And the press asked my children:
What did they think about all the exploits that their parents did in
their days in the BPP. And my son said: Mom and dad never talked or
emphasized so much, what you may call exploits or battles as much as
they talked about ideas and concepts, what human liberation is about.
And he is right.
I always told my children, that you have a basic human right and that
is a constitutional right under the law, to create a program in the
community and raise concepts to people, to criticize government police
departments and any kind of institutions that practises racism or extreme
exploitations. You have that right. And if somebody wants to take it
away from you by threatening your life with guns, you have a right to
defend yourself. Because what you are defending is that constutional
democratic right.
So they understand that. And they would make their own decisions, if
it happens. And I hope it will not. Idon't want to have my kids shot
or murdered. We didn't try to be martyrs in the 60s. Nothing like that.
We were dedicated to human liberation.
My son is doing his two years residency as a doctor. All through the
process this kid wanted to be a doctor, since he was 5 years of age.
By applying to medical school he wrote that his interest is, to involve
himself in world health care advocacy. And he asked him: Why did you
write about advocacy? Why did you use that term? Damn' dad, he said,
you and mama were two of the biggest advocates in the world. I didn't
tell him to do so, he found out for himself.
He joined the nation of Islam when he was in undergraduate school, and
he got tired of them. You left the Nation of Islam I asked him? Yeah,
he said, I outgrew them. I was messing around with alcohol and drugs
and that's the real reason I joined. I didn't tell him, you can't join
the Nation of Islam...
Definitely good education is about, whether or not your ideas, notions,
your beliefs even your new realizations as much as possible they respond
correctly to reality.
Jamal Joseph: Joyce
and I have tried to talk to our kids a lot about human rights and giving
service especially, serving the people. that was the foundation of what
the BPP was about.
The basis, what we did was serving the people. The primary idea about
being a panther was loving the people...
(spricht über den Panther film von Mario von Peebles)
That is something that is missing from most of the Panther films: If
there was one thing that we were taught about, neary brainwashed in
the BPP - and forget about the ten principles for a moment : We were
taught to have an undying love for the people. And if you have that,
that's a strong motivation. this can make you get up at four, five o'clock
in the morning when it is freezing to go crosstown to feed some kids,
that are not your kids. that's what makes you stay up late at night,
standing at certain bus stops or subway stations in your community,
to escort working people and elderly people to their house, that are
not your grand parents or parents.
And that makes you riding in your car, even when you are not on duty
as a Panther, and you see some cop having some black man or woman stand
up against the wall, that makes you go into the middle of that situation
and make sure that brother or sister is alright and challenge that cop
and get in front of that cops gun and risk your life for someone whose
name you even don't know, but you love them because you understood,
that this is your brother or your sister and that translates to a greater
love to humanity.
We tried to pass that on to our kids. They kind of discovered their
panther legacy on their own. Because if you come to my home you won't
find any Panther posters or slogans kind of hanging over their bed.
The kids would find out themselves: My wife discovered a book, titled
"black history made easy" that children between the age of
8 and 15 can read. And my son reads that book, comes to the film festival,
that Kathleen and I staged, got excited about the story and then ran
into my living room at 10 o'clock and shouted : Daddy here's your name!
You're in the book! I hadn't read the book. I just said, that's cool
Jay. So they have that excitement on your own. And whatever course their
lives will take: I will be happy if their heart is connected to humanity.
If they decide to take a more radical path, I will try to give all the
advice that I can, I will be very concerned, because I know what this
government will do to people who are frontline revolutionaries, but
whatever path they take in life, I will be happy if in some way they
will give service to humanity.
Kathleen, as a law
professor do you have discussions in your seminaries concerning your
experiences as a Black Panther?
Kathleen Cleaver:
I'll give you an example. One of the students complaints in the law
school goes: The only professor that ever talks about justice is professor
Cleaver. The law is very technical and they are trained to understand
techniques and categories and reasoning, ways to win cases. But the
fundamental issues is pretty much left out. What I discovered, is that
the teaching of law the way it is expected to be taught actually doesn't
interest me in the least. What I teach is what interests me: I teach
a course called "the law of slavery and anti-slavery" and
it shows how the law was used to support the institutions of slavery
and also the opposition to slavery and how that was balanced off. I
was always interested in black history. And you can be sure that not
too many law schools care about black history.
The larger society is less concerned with basic human justice then during
the 60s where you had civil rights protests... Right now there is a
lot of interest in getting rid of the death penalty, in dealing with
police brutality.People are moreand more possessed with wealth and money,
partially because many people mistakingliy think that racial segregation
and racial exclusion - that's all done with, we can actually go and
make money. The teenagers and young adults,see that's not at all true.
Bobby Seale: It's
not so much about the money, it's about where your heart, mind and soul
is. What you are attached to. If you can get your energy towards evolving
some new economic practice, that makes human sense, whether you have
a big, nice laid out house sitting on some acres of land - I am not
concerned about whether you make ten million dollars a year. I am concerned
where your heart, mind and soul is located. What do you wanna do that
is positive for humanity?
Some of my old orthodox socialist friends say: Bobby you are nothing
but a capitalist. I say, money is a medium of exchange for services
and goods but when the system is structured, that 3 percent of the US
population are controlling 90 percent of the wealth and concentrate
all political power. This is what the struggle is about: How you begin
to increase an economic practice that allows for a greater amount of
human survival. So you can keep your house. I want to design houses,
I am an architect. I love to design houses, I never loved blowing up
buildings. The question is: For what purpose. I am not so worried about
a rap star earning a million. I am worried about: Can you attach yourself
to making a new economic practice that makes sense?
People want to know why I wrote a cookbook: We had a meeting of former
Panthers in the 80s trying to raise money for a youth jobs development
program. So I wrote a barbecue cookbook to raise money, because we couldn't
raise money in the old ways.
I was very astonished
when I read a quotation from Mumia Abu-Jamal recently. After all the
government had done to him he was speaking of his love for America...
Jamal Joseph: Going
back to the idea of loving America: If we talk about the idea of loving
jazz music or R'nB or hiphop or loving the Apollo theatre, or loving
barbecueing or hanging out in Rockcreek in Washington D.C., well this
is all a part of America.
I remember things, that I thought I was supposed to hate, the Panthers
made me love and appreciate:
The first time I walked in a panther office I thought they would give
me a gun - they gave me books. I was like shit: I cut school to come
here today. (Gelächter)
Are you telling me, if I want to be a panther, I have to read some books?
You know, but I took the books home and I started to read and I realized
how well-read panthers were. I started to lovebooks. The panthers made
me to love something, that the teachers couldn't make: They made me
to love education.
Well two months after I had been in the BPP they told us to report to
the office with our uniforms really clean one sunday morning. I had
my uniform really shining, as they told me: And then we go to Abessynian
Baptist Church. I say: Are we going to church on a sunday morning? I
thought with the panthers I wouldnt have to go to sunday school. They
say oh yes, we have to go there, because we are starting to forming
alliances with the churches for thecommunity programs. And I remember
the pastor welcoming us and I thought, wait a minute, I am beingconnected
to the things, that I thoughtweren't cool to be connected with. That
was what the BPP did: We go to church not because of the church, but
because to make all things relevant to serve to the people. So in that
sense, we loved our people and we loved that institutions that we knew
as the black American experience.
We didn't think about destroying things so much, like we were Mad Max
and everything had to be levelled first to build something new: We were
dreaming about the White House being painted red,black and green and
Aretha Franklin and George Clinton were to do the new national anthem.
That's what we were trying to do of the New American Revolution, and
loving black America.
Did you ever consider
going in exile in times of extreme repression by Cointelpro?
Kathleen Cleaver:
What means considering: I did it, my husband did it. The whole international
branch of the BPP did it. And some are still there.
But what made you
come back to America?
Kathleen Cleaver:
I was not in exile because of any charges: I was with my husband because
I wanted our family to be together. He was very tired of living in Africa
and Europe and after Richard Nixon was no longer the president, the
political situation was somewhat different and he thought he could get
a fair trial, he would turn himself in. But there are still a lot a
people in exile, living in Tanzania, Sambia, Cuba, France. And none
of them will come back unless there will be some kind of amnesty. The
legal system is not allowing them to return without being imprisoned
and in Assatas case its a life sentence.
How did you manage
to stand the pressures, knowing what Cointelpro was able to do to you?
Kathleen Cleaver:
The knowledge of Cointelpro came to us only after its results. Being
in Algeria having a small child I was reading what was happening in
the US: Raid and bombs in New York, and bombs in detroit and a shootout
in New Orleans and murder in Chicago. So everytime we read about the
Panthers it was warfare. So I felt quite protected in Algeria. Not that
I wanted to live there, I just wanted to live. You don't feel it's a
kind of choice if your choice is death or imprisonment.
You were kind of
aware that you were risking your life working for the BPP?
Kathleen Cleaver:
This was clear. If you don't wanna put your life on the line, you shouldn't
join. But we come from a very long long struggle. We have ancestors
who fought to eliminate slavery, we had grandparents who fought to put
an end to very vicious forms of racist violence and then we had parents
who fought segregation. So when we joined the movement, it was not like
it was the beginning of a movement, it's like a continuation. We come
from a culture that is conditioned to understand that we have to struggle
and what the price of struggle is. And people are very clear: You don't
have to join the movement. But if you put your life on the line for
the movement you know what price that is.
Those people who were joining the BPP were admired by other people who
were not willing to pay that price and in some cases they were feared:
Are you crazy?
Jamal Joseph: We
were also taught - and this wasn't suicidal or having a death wish -
what the price was. We come from a people who know about sacrifice from
the days of slavery: Pass the baby to this couple, so it can grow up
free or in a better condition. Or everyone scraping their pennies together
so that this kid will be the first that has a chance to go to college.
So in that sense of struggling we had a context for. And after joining
the Panthers we knew every day you woke up could be a day, that you
got killed, or you got arrested.
But the goal of the BPP was not to recruit more panthers, it was not
to make every black man, woman or child into a panther. We were taught,
that we were a vanguard organisation to teach our people the possibilities
of struggle and how to struggle. And that eventually would raise the
peoples consciousness and an army and a party would form in the community.
That's what the sacrifice was. We didn't talk about a panther flag on
the white house. We talked about teaching the people how to struggle.
How did you handle
the fear?
Bobby Seale: We
had that history right in our face of all the struggles that had going
down for our people to get rid of all sorts of overt and covert institutionalized
racism going on. We learned all about this in our youthful days
I mean I was already an engineer working upon the Gemini missile program
in the army, I was a design major and I knew nothing about my African
American history. In spring semester 1962 some group across the street
was calling itself the Afro American association. Are you guys communists
- I never heard something like that? was my first question.
And so I happened to meet a friend over there who asked me: Who are
the Sioux? And I knew that was a French name given to the people who
called themselves Lakota. So Bobby, he continued, all we say, we are
not Negroes, we are not coloured, we are not jigaboos, naming every
derogatory term you could connect, but we are African Americans or Afro
Americans or black Americans and we should be proud to be black Americans.
I was really brainwashed: I got As in mathematics, I got As in any kind
of architecture design, but I knew nothing about my African American
peoples history of struggle.
I knew about my Martin Luther King and I knew about my father having
to protect us during some riots in 1928. But suddenly this kicks me
to go read a book. And it kicked back into:
I grew up with Jim Crow. I remember when I had to sit in the back of
the theatre down in Texas...
A lot of youth in America today don't know Jim Crow like we know it.
This stuff feeds to you and suddenly it doesn't take much reading and
digesting 10 or 12 books in two weeks and I'm on the street corner,
I'm captured, swept into and I became a part of it. Forget it, I quit
my engineering job after two years, I went into the community to make
some changes.
Jamal Joseph: I
joined the panthers when I was 15 years old. Well I had guns put to
my head, I've had guns in my face, I've had bullets throughpassing my
hat, I've been beaten and tortured by the police, on one occasion Dhoruba
another member of the New York 21 and I were arrested and beaten for
four hours nonstop, beaten beyond recognition. I spent a total of nine
and a half years in prison, I've been to the toughest and most dangerous
prisons in the country and I did a lot of this before I was 18 years
old. Three different times in my life I've been on trial for my life,
I've already stood before a judge who wanted to give me a life sentence
when I was 16. And with the Panther 21 I was accused of conspiracy to
commit murder, conspiracy to commit arsony, attempted robbery, attempted
murder and illegal possession of dangerous weapons, criminal mischief.
And we were facing 354 years, that's what we were calling a reincarnation
sentence, that's when you die and you're reborn as a baby they stick
you back in the cell. (Gelächter)
I would get butterflies, and a lot of times I would think what it would
feel like having a bullet entering your body, or how it would feel like
if this beating was going on for another five minutes, or what it would
feel like if they would give you that sentence and they actually give
you life or double-life. But there was never fear. And there are two
reasons for that. One is that I was around so many brave brothers and
sisters that was just brave and unafraid. And they taught me, never
to have fear. One morning Afeni Shakur - we were both on bail in the
Panther 21 case - and we had been serving breakfast to 50 children in
the Panther breakfast program and we were just cleaning up the kitchen,
and about 20 cops come down and about three cops are just in plain clothes,
and I had a sense that they had come in to kill us. And I said, oh shit,
here it is.
And a cop came and said: What is this? And Afeni said: Who are you?
Are you a policeofficer? I don't talk to police officers. He said, well
I'm just trying to ask you. She said: did you hear what I said. I don't
talk to police officers, it's none of your business what we are doing.
She turned away and looked at me: Jamal don't talk to them. And we turned
our backs and started cleaning.
A lot about how to treat women and how to be a man I learned from women
in the organisation. How can you be afraid in a moment like that, when
you have a women like that guiding you. Even when I was alone in a hole,
even when I was beaten my consciousness was directed to my other brothers
and sisters in the BPP, I knew I was a panther. And I had nothing to
fear. Because I knew that the BPP would live on and the struggle would
live on, no matter what happened to me in that moment.... That's how
you learn to handle fear when your spirit is connected to something
greater than yourself
You always look
very solemn on the press pictures taken of Black Panthers. I never saw
a Black Panther laughing in public....
Even when I was
on trial in the Panther 21 case, we sang a lot, we laughed a lot, we
would all be in the ball pen having a lot of good times. One time a
young guard was asking me: Jamal you always have a lot of laugh, if
I was in your position I would be shitting my pants. I said: you know
what: Don't get in this position then. (Gelächter)
Kathleen Cleaver:
There is something I read about a woman who had survived concentration
camps in Germany, what she said was so striking: I have never in my
life laughed as hard and laughed as long as when we were in the camp.
So it's that persecution, and that pressure. And that threat, that you
would be killed. You are freed from the possibility to feel sorry for
yourself. And with your comrades and your friends you laugh just as
hard as you can.
That's true: Have you ever laughed harder than when you were in prison?
Bobby Seale: Yes
I was a standup comedian way back before the party started and I could
break out after very good serious sessions and starting doin some satyrical
rendition on "how the revolution's gonna come and we will take
over". Various imitations of various speakers, even integrating
John Waynes stupid walk (springt auf, schreitet breitbeinig und mit
tödlichem Gesichtsausdruck durch das Zimmer). And party members
would be cracking up...
I created names for specific guards in the great Chicago conspiracy
process...
I played games with them. Well I've been chained in the cell, I've been
beaten in the balls, I'm choked almost into unconsciousness, but it's
another thing...
Jamal Joseph: And
you can change the consciousness in a fight when you are laughing at
your opponent. Muhammad Ali did this really good. Red Foxx once told
Malcolm X : That's a good speech but you have to build in a few more
jokes. If you told a joke just before you would make an important point,
people would laugh and then get quiet and expecting the next thing coming...
He was a master in it, and Bobby, Kathleen and Eldridge were masters
in it and we learned it listening to them... We did in the local chapters.
And then when you take someone who is supposed to be so fearsome and
the cops do roll up at your home and you say: You come here like oinking
early in the morning, smelling like pig shit what the fuck you want?
That's a great weapon of demoralizing them.
In the Panther 21
case ... we were yelling at the state attorney all the time (What you
gonna do judge, take away my drivers licence?) And he walked out and
everybody was laughing even in the court halls.
So our struggle was very alive,
Bobby Seale: ...in
courtroom: Anyway you are still a fascist, a racist and a bighead.
Mr. Seale if you continue this contemptuous behaviour... will you put
me in prison?
When we were in court we had a lot of fun. Because people supported
us. Some of the panthers, who were not arrested, brought a birthday
cake in, my birthday was during the trial, the judge came in, arrested
the cake...
Another time someone dumped a pound of Marihuana on the defendants desk,
you should have seen how everybody jumped to the desk...
Another day they came in dressed in robes like the judge. So the judge
comes in shouting: Huuh, I will have no mocking of the court in here...
So they had to remove the robes but underneath they wore police uniforms...
I loved that shit. There's a power behind all of this, that doesn't
put you in a state of depression.
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