SENTINEL: Yet, I always se e some spokesman for them on Fox.
BS: Fox News never calls up Bobby Seale to articulate a stance in opposition to right-wing conservatives. To me, giving the New Black Panthers a platform on Fox is a subtle tactic to scare people. As far as I'm concerned, any extremist organization whether it's Al-Qaeda, the Ku Klux Klan, or any other a-holes who indiscriminately murder and blow-up innocent people, need to be routed out and dealt with. If they claim to be fighting for human liberation, they're liars, because when you start killing indiscriminately on that level, you have totally stepped outside the civility of what human liberation is all about.

SENTINEL: Were you politicized while serving in the Air Force?
BS: Oh, no. I didn't know politics back then. They put me in the stockade twice. I had been an honor student. But I ran into racism in the military and didn't know how to handle it. I'd knock a racist out. So, they put me in the stockade.

SENTINEL: So, what would you say politicized you?
BS: The first thing that began to politicize me was Jomo Kenyatta's “Facing Mount Kenya.” I started reading that in the Spring semester of 1962. From there, I went to hear Martin Luther King speak. In the early part of '63, I was working on the freedom of Nelson Mandela and on ending apartheid. Next, I was listening to Malcolm X after he'd left the Nation of Islam. I was thinking about joining his new organization, the OAAU, but that never happened, because he wound up getting assassinated before I had an opportunity. I was steeped in African-American history and in and out of many different organizations in the Oakland area. I was a programmatic organizer. I quit my engineering job after three years to work at the grassroots level. I wasn't married and had no kids, so I was able to do those things.

SENTINEL: What was at the heart of your and Huey Newton's creating the Panthers?
BS: Patrolling the police, the breakfast and job programs were all political moves, but our overall objective was to organize a mass membership organization and to evolve a political, electoral, community unity in the black community. That was my objective.

SENTINEL: Do you think the government would have come down as hard on you if you hadn't exercised your right to bear arms?
BS: Yeah, because they came down hard on peaceful protesters. They were already shooting, killing, murdering and brutalizing peaceful protesters, so what's the difference?

SENTINEL: How do you think you managed to survive the Sixties when so many black leaders either ended up dead, in prison or in exile?
BS: I think they thought it was best to put Bobby Seale in jail and to try to convict him than to kill him, because killing him might make him a martyr and cause his organization to grow some more.

SENTINEL: What do you think of Barack Obama?
BS: I like Obama very much. He's representative of a lot of changes which are necessary for the country. He might just be another guy who has been handed the keys by the corporate establishment. But if he can make it to President and actually use the bully pulpit to become a driving force for some progressive legislation related to human liberation, then that's all the better.

SENTINEL: How would you describe yourself politically today?
BS: I am still a progressive, political revolutionary. I am a revolutionary humanist, like I was in the Sixties. Do you understand what I mean by revolution? Revolution is about the need to re-evolve political, economic and social justice and power back into the hands of the people, preferably through legislation and policies that make human sense. That's what revolution is ab out. Revolution is not about shootouts.

SENTINEL: The Tasha Smith question: Are you ever afraid?
BS: What do you mean by afraid? I'm too old to be running around being afraid. I been through a lot of [expletive] in my life. Beat up… choked unconscious by cops, etcetera.

SENTINEL: Is there any question no reporter has ever asked you, that you wished one would?
BS: Yeah, Where's my eldest son?

SENTINEL: Where is he?
BS: In Iraq. He just got shipped there on June 19th. He's been in the Army Reserves from the age of 18 to 30. He was going to leave, but he agreed to reenlist if they=2 0would make him a Military Police Officer, because that would help him get a higher paying job he wanted as a security guard with a bio-tech company. And right after that Bush started that damn, dumb-ass Iraq War. And my son just got shipped to Iraq for the first time.

SENTINEL: Are you able to sleep, or are you always worried now?
BS: Sure, I'm able to sleep. But I got a kid in Iraq, and I just don't want him to be killed over there. I call him and email him and tell him I'm behind you and the troops, but not behind Bush. I also have a son who's a doctor, and a daughter who's 30. She's finished school and needs to get married. I'm hoping she'll find somebody really nice soon. But she's got her job, and her principles, and her independence, which are all important in terms of her personalized liberation.
So, what else do you want ask? How much my income is?

SENTINEL: I wasn't planning to but, okay, how much money do you make?
BS: How do you think I survive?

SENTINEL: By giving lectures and writing books.
BS: Yep, college lectures. I do about 20 lectures a year. I haven't written any books for a while, although I have two books in the works. I've almost finished “The Eighth Defendant.” I'm looking for a top publisher who'll give me a half-million dollar advance for it. I need a big advance to make my family secure. Are you going to write include that in the article?

SENTINEL: Yep. I'm going to write-up every word of this conversation.
BS: Have you heard about the Spielberg film? He's make a drama call The Trial of the Chicago 7. Guess who he has playing me?

SENTINEL: Jeffrey Wright again?
BS: Nope, Will Smith. And Kevin Spacey will be playing one of the attorneys.
This is going to be a big Hollywood production. So, I need to publish “The Eighth Defendant.” by the time the movie is released.

SENTINEL: Bookworm Troy Johnson wants to know, what was the last book you read?
BS: The last book I read, digested and loved was “Shades of Love” by Leon Higginbotham.

SENTINEL: I haven't read that one, but I loved his book “In the Matter of Color.” Do you still live in Philly?
BS: No, man, I'm living in Oakland. I lived in Philly for a while because my wife was from Philadelphia, and she had a home and everything there. But we moved back to my home in Oakland, California four or five years ago. In fact, we really started coming back about eight years ago when my daughter began studying at San Francisco State University. She graduated, let me see, about five years ago now.

SENTINEL: You can look for this article in a couple of your local papers. I write for, the Oakland Globe and the Oakland Post.
BS: Paul Cobb's paper.

SENTINEL: Yep, the Post is the paper whose editor, Chauncey Bailey, was murdered on the street about a year ago for writing an expose'. I had just spoken to him a couple of days before.
BS: Yeah, that was a tragedy.

SENTINEL: Well, Bobby, thanks for your lifelong commitment to oppressed people, and thanks for the great interview.
BS: You're welcome. Thanks a lot.

Last update: 07-31-2008 11:11

Published in : Entertainment, Personalities

Users' Comments (1)

Add your comment