Best gig in Phoenix last week - by far - was Bobby Seale at Phoenix College. Architect, engineer on the Gemini Missile program, actor, jazz musician, author, celebrity cook, activist, Chicago 8 defendant, co-founder and former chairman of the Black Panther party - yes, that Bobby Seale.

Best gig, you say? Absolutely. For two hours, Seale moved easily from dialectical materialism to stand-up jokes, from political awakenings to Huey P. Newton and Martin Luther King impressions, from African-American history to a poetry recital, all with the consumate ease of a seasoned professional entertainer.

First, a little grounder for those who need it. During his eight years as Co-founder and Chairman of the Black Panther Party, Seale served as the key national coordinator for coalition-organizing and a number of nationwide community based service programs.

In 1969, Seale gained international recognition as a defendant in the 1969 Great Chicago Eight Conspiracy Trial, where he was chained, shackled, and gagged and tied to a chair for three days during the trial. While in jail, he wrote the book Seize the Time.

In 1974, he resigned from the Black Panther Party and released his autobiography, A Lonely Rage.

Today, Seale acts as a Community Liaison with the Department of African and African-American Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia.

His talk formed part of the College’s Gold, Gods, and Glory: The Global Dynamics of Power lecture series. Slated for 45 minutes, with a 15 minute Q & A, Seale rapped for an hour and a half, and then took a further 30 minutes of questions.

The hall was pretty full and although a wide variety of ages and ethnicities were represented, the majority were young students. They demonstrated not only a knowledge of Seale’s achievements, but through their cheers and applause, a degree of support for Seale’s type of social activism which made The Grid all warm inside and optimistic for Phoenix’s future.

Here is Seale, probably from 1967, explaining the Party’s 10 point program. Spotable in the audience/on stage are Stokely Carmichael,Angela Davis and members of the Brown Berets/Young Lords.

Seale took time to detail the events which led to the creation of the BPP. His arrest for reciting Ronald Stone’s anti-war/anti-draft poem in May 1966 on an Oakland street corner resulted directly in the drafting of the initial 10 point plan. At first reluctant to recite this (”My wife doesn’t like me using cuss words”), he eventually produced a powerful reading of this poem that resonates today as strongly as it did 40 years ago:

Uncle Sammy don’t shuck and jive me,
I’m hip the popcorn jazz changes you blow,
You know damn well what I mean,
You school my naive heart to sing red-white-and-blue-stars-and-stripes songs and to pledge eternal allegiance to all things blue, true, blue-eyed blond, blond-haired, white chalk white skin with U.S.A. tattooed all over,
When my soul trusted Uncle Sammy,
Loved Uncle Sammy,
I died in dreams for you Uncle Sammy,
Died in dreams playing war for you Uncle Sammy,
No, I don’t want to hear that crap,
You jam your emasculate manhood symbol, puff with Gonorrhea,
Gonorrhea of corrupt un-reality myths into my ungreased, nigger ghetto, black-ass, my Jewish-Cappy-Hindu-Islamic-Sioux-sure, free public health penicillin cured me,
But Uncle Sammy if you want to stay a freak-show strongman god,
Fuck your motherfucking self,
I will not serve.

For a pretty good idea of what went on, here he is at Sonoma State University in 2005 (88 minutes worth!)

Seale became emotional at times when remembering those that had fallen in the struggle - 28 BPP members died in the late 60’s/ early 70’s - but was largely optimistic for the future, pointing to the numerous committed social activists now in position to enact changes through the democratic process. Amongst these (and in the audience) was Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Democratic representative for California’s 9th district, a former volunteer at the Oakland chapter of the Black Panther Party’s Community Learning Center who also worked on Panther co-founder Bobby Seale’s 1973 Oakland mayoral campaign.

Overall, it was a very human performance, actually aided by his occasional self-aggrandizing. If you had any thoughts of putting the guy on a pedestal, here was the kicker; he’s human, just like the rest of us, and prone to moments of ego and vanity. And probably weakness and indecision and who knows what. But who the fuck has the credentials to throw the first stone? Started any Breakfast for Children or Free Preventative Healthcare programs recentlty? Organized any nation-changing social movements?

Thought not.

As a P.S., Wilma Mankiller speaks on April 16, 2008 as part of the same series on ‘What It Means to be an Indigenous Person in the 21st Century’. These are people that have, and continue, to make history. Get your ass down there, Phoenix, and learn why. You can always see that emo band next month.