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Fundraising video about the Black Panther Party and it's Chairman, Bobby Seale


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Lol @ "hellafied movie"

And that's exactly how they talk up in Northern Cali and the Pacific North West.
It's about "hella" this and "hellafied" that.

I love that clip

If there's anything more powerful that hearing how "it really went down" from a person who was there to witness what happened......it's hearing directly from one of those who actually MADE it happen!

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Ahhhh, I remember it well.  Bobby didn't explain why the clip is called the 8th defendent.  He along with 7 1960s white radicals who were members of a group known as SDS(students for a democratic society)  were brought to trial in Chicago for their revolutionary activites. Bobby  was so profane and disruptive in the courtroom that he had to be shackled  and gagged.  It was all a lot of high-publicized  drama played out in the court room to call attention to their cause. I can't remember all of the details but the case against Bobby was eventually thrown out, and the remaining defendants became known at the Chicago Seven, a group which included the infamous Abbe Hoffman and who were defended by uber liberal lawyer William Kustler.  I guess none of these names ring a bell with this generation but at the time they were household words.  I'm guessing  all of this will be revealed in the upcoming film. :ph34r:

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SEIZE THE TIME: "Bobby Seale, The Eighth
Defendant"
a feature length film will chronicle the life of Bobby
Seale, the founding Chairman and national organizer of the Black Panther Party.

The Bobby Seale story: an American grown political revolutionary, with
flash back scenes from early life in San Antonia, Texas to Berkeley,
California, and later all across the USA, organizing and fighting for electoral
people empowerment: "For constitutional democratic civil-human
rights." Bobby Seale tells his story from the stand point of being … a
political prisoner, in jail without bail revolving around two sixties protest
movement historical court room trials of the century. The inadvertent but profound
evolvement of Bobby Seale and his Black Panther Party to the point of FBI
cointelpro instigated nationwide shooting war. A war against Bobby Seale and
his panther organizational and coalition movement.



The film will highlight important aspects of Seale's life, particularly The
great "Chicago Seven" conspiracy trail that was originally
"Eight" with Bobby Seale as the pivotal, most memorable historically
defiant of all the defendants in demanding his six amendment rights. The other
defendants and lawyers were Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom
Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, William Kunstler and Leonard Wineglass and
Lee Weiner.

 

All were charged with the "RAP Brown" law of "… conspiracy to
use interstate transportation with the intent to incite riots" related to
protests that took place in Chicago, Illinois on the occasion of the 1968
Democratic National Convention. And one year later and after seven weeks of
knock-down drag out conflict with Judge Julius Hoffman, Bobby Seale, the eighth
man charged, was severed from the trial and sentenced to four years in prison
for contempt of court during the proceedings, lowering the number from eight to
the "Chicago Seven" defendants. During the trial proceedings, Seale
was denied an attorney of his choice. His attorney of record was Charles R.
Garry who was in the hospital recovering from a surgical operation.

 

When Seale consistently protested for seven weeks that he was being denied
his sixth amendment constitutional right to either have an attorney of his
choice or to represent himself, Judge Hoffman silenced him by having Seale
chained, shackled, bounded and gagged for three days in the courtroom.

 

Bobby Seale and Huey Newton created and founded the Black Panther Party for
Self-Defense in October of 1966, in Oakland California. The Party advocated
self-defense of the black community against the racist murder and brutality of
the Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond and San Francisco Police through armed patrols
of police activities. The purpose of the armed patrols was to capture the
imagination of the people for broader community electoral purposes as Seale and
Newton observe the police making arrest of black people. The Party also fought
to establish greater peoples' empowerment via community control politics,
through mass organizing of more than twenty different community based survival
programs. The party was one of the first organizations in U.S. history to
militantly struggle for ethnic minority and working class emancipation - a
party whose political electoral agenda was the revolutionary establishment of
real economic, social, and political equality across gender and color lines,
aligning itself with other people of color organizations including Cesar
Chavez's Farm Workers Movement, AIM The American Indian Movement, The Asian Red
Guard [i Wor kuen] {Righteous Harmonious Fist}, Puerto Rican The Young Lords
Movement and The Peace and Freedom Party, SDS, Young Patriots, etc. The Party's
effectiveness as an organizing vehicle lead it to grow quickly starting with
Bobby Seale leading an armed delegation of Party members to the California
state capitol building on May 2nd 1967 to read Executive Mandate No. 1:
protesting the state legislatures passing of the Mulford Act, a new law that
was designed to keep the Party from legally patrolling the police in the
streets of Oakland CA.

 

The FBI's director J. Edgar Hoover became involved in stopping the Black
Panther Party as the party began to gain prominence during 1967 & 68. As
COINTELPRO had been established in 1956 to police "political
radicals" within the United States, focus and pressure now came onto the
Black Panther Party. On December 15, 1968, J. Edgar Hoover declared, "the
Black Panther Party, without question, represents the "…greatest threat to
the internal security of the country"; he pledged that 1969 would be the
last year of the Party's existence.

 

Hoover has also been quoted as saying that it was not the guns that were the
greatest threat but the Party's Free Children's Breakfast Program that was the
"…greatest threat to the internal security of the United States of America."
An interview with former FBI Agent M. Wesley Swearingen, whose book the
"FBI Secrets," will highlight the Bureau's COINTEL-PRO program's
covert campaign to neutralize, disrupt, and discredit" The Black Panther
Party.

 

Under Hoover's reign, the Party suffered immensely, which resulted in many
of its members being assassinated or imprisoned. By 1970, Eldridge Cleaver was
in exile, key leadership members such as Apprentice Bunchy Carter, John
Huggins, and Fred Hampton had been assassinated and Geronimo Pratt, Angela
Davis and Bobby Seale were in prison.


According to Seale what sustained him while locked in the
mire of prisons deepest, darkest hours of despair and isolation, was his
childhood memories. And this is where "Bobby Seale The Eighth Defendant"
will begin its narrative journey to tell the life story of Bobby Seale and the
rise and decline of his many times misunderstood organization, The Black
Panther Party.

All Power To All The People!

Bobby Seale



 

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