Bobby Seale
It was mind blowing for
me, Bobby Seale, to see the images of a tear-gassed, smoky night in Ferguson,
Missouri where the people were protesting the murder of an 18-year-old
African American male, Michael Brown, murdered by the Ferguson police with his
hands up in surrender. I’m taken back to another tear-gassed, smoky night in
Oakland, California in 1968 after the death of Martin Luther King. That night
another young African American youth, Bobby Hutton, was murdered by the Oakland
police. Bobby Hutton, like Michael Brown, was murdered with his hands up. He
was kicked in the back by the police and told, “run,
nigger, run,” and when he stumbled forward, several policemen riddled
his body with bullets.
Everything was hidden
about the shooting of Bobby Hutton in one way or another until six to eight
weeks later when an Inquest into the shooting of Bobby Hutton began. Prior to
the Inquest, Marlon Brando, my friend at the time, and I had done a television
show together where Marlon had stated that “Little
Bobby Hutton had been murdered by the Oakland police.” In
response to this accusation, five or six policemen filed a lawsuit against
Marlon Brando. At the Inquest, after two or three policemen had sworn and
testified attempting to distort the facts of the murder, a young, black female
officer, fresh on the force, testified that those police officers who had just
testified had murdered Bobby Hutton. The Inquest was immediately shut down and
Bobby Hutton’s family was awarded $250,000 and, of course, the lawsuit
against Marlon Brando was dropped.
With Michael Brown, we are
still in the situation where the police are not forthcoming on the details of
his killing, holding off on releasing the Officer’s name
and trying to assassinate Michael’s character and, like
Bobby Hutton’s murder, stalling for time. Recent examples of Oscar
Grant, in Oakland, California, who was murdered while laying on the ground with
his hands behind his back in a subway station when an officer pulled out his
weapon and shot him in the back, or Eric Garner who was strangled in an illegal
choke hold by police while struggling to breathe and asking for help, these
incidents seem to me endemic of a fascist mind-set in police and law
enforcement agencies.
Of course not all
policemen are like this, but many departments get out of hand. With the Black
Panther Party in 1969, I put together a campaign for greater community control
of police. The Party and our coalition partners actually put a Community
Control Of Police referendum on the ballot in Berkeley, California. Before the
actual voting took place, they had falsely arrested me. My people’s
control of police concept was set up in four different cities in the San
Francisco-Oakland Bay Area: San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond and Berkeley. The
Black Panther Party, working with different organizations and groups, crossing
all racial and ethnic lines, was able to get enough signatures to place the
referendum on the ballot in Berkeley, California only.
This was basically
community control of the police. The referendum called for, rather than the
appointment of a police chief, a tri-level body of police commissioners to be
duly elected by the people of the community. It called for three community
review boards with not less than five members duly elected to each of the three
community board members. These review boards had the investigative power to
review questionable police shootings, undue, unnecessary force and community
complaints. If the board found in their investigation unnecessary force was
used or complaints more than credible, then the people’s voice
would be heard. With this method, in the community control of police, we add a
broader framework above and beyond the police internal affairs, i.e., police
investigating police. By having duly elected members as a people’s
investigative body, from there they can recommend legal action to be taken
against any specific policeman violating the law, such as Eric Garner being
strangled in an illegal choke hold in New York. While I was in jail, the
coalition committee with my Black Panther Party put this referendum on the
ballot in Berkeley, California. We lost only by one percentage point. Besides
the need to get all police operations to recognize people’s
constitutional democratic civil-human rights, these are the things that we must
realize and the people must do to change the relations with the police.
Ferguson, Missouri has
become another example of the militarization of police departments across
America which is being used to repress the First Amendment rights for people to
redress their grievances. Those people in Ferguson, demanding information on
the killing of one of the members of their community, found themselves
surrounded by police in military vehicles armed with officers pointing guns
into the crowd, and being bombarded by tear gas and smoke canisters. For them
it is nothing more than an example of the avaricious, rich, corporate machine
controlling our politicians, police and law enforcement agencies. What’s
needed is greater democratic community control of the police.
When in the course of
human events, it becomes necessary for any one people to dissolve the political
bondage which has connected them with another, and to assume among the powers
of the earth the co-operational and equal station to which the laws of nature
and nature’s god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of
humankind dictates that we the people should declare the causes which impel us
to dissolve that oppressive bondage. Implement a greater people’s
community control of police.
We, the people, can
organize and structure things to defend our human rights. What I was doing in
the late sixties was in the spirit of and in line with Dr. Martin Luther King,
Nelson Mandela, and other progressive human rights activists. What my Berkeley
referendum to the ballot meant in those times is what needs to take place today
in cities across America.
All Power To All The
People!
Bobby Seale, Founding
Chairman and National Organizer of the Black Panther Party (1962-1974) SPEAKING
Across America.
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