Originally shared by Bobby Seale

Originally shared by Bobby Seale

I took from Malcolm X’s polemic pronouncement, “The ballot or the bullet,” that Malcolm preferred the ballot, and I believed the racists took from Malcolm’s statement that he would give black folks the bullet simply because, in their minds, they were not going to allow any people of color to vote to take over political seats via the ballot. In 1965, I was employed by the City of Oakland’s Department of Human resources, when all the hullabaloo about “Black Power” broke onto the scene. I argued with several of the fresh “Black Power” advocates that we black folks will not have any power until we acquire thousands of political seats, that there were counties in many southern states whose population grossly outnumbered white folks. A black sheriff could be elected in many counties if we had the power to vote in those counties. We have no power seats here in California on our city councils or in our county supervisor seats because black people are shamefully not registered to vote.

While I ran summer youth jobs programs, I researched just how many black people were elected to any political office all across the USA. I discovered that there were only about fifty (50) black people, including Adam Clayton Powell, duly elected to any political offices throughout the United States, only fifty duly elected black politicians that I could find! But the shock did not come until I found out how many political seats there were. My estimated count came to over five hundred thousand (500,000) political seats that one can be elected to throughout the whole of the United States from local part time city council to the federal level. In my mind this was the basis that I needed to start a political organization.

Soon after I would become the founding Chairman of the Black Panther Party beginning in October of 1966 while still employed by the city government of Oakland. Our first organizing tactic was to “legally” observe the police in our Oakland/Berkeley, California black communities. We had law books, tape recorders, and very legal loaded arms as we recited the law to the police. When a policeman said to us, “You have no right to observe me,” we responded with “No, California State Supreme Court ruling states that every citizen has a right to stand and observe police officers carrying out their duty as long as they stand at a reasonable distance away. A reasonable distance, in that particular ruling, was constituted as eight to ten feet. We are standing approximately twenty feet from you. Therefore we will observe you whether you like it or NOT!”

Our ten point political program further included the demands of full employment, decent housing, ending exploitation, education of our history, exempt from military service, right to fair trials, and a paraphrasing of the first two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence of theses united states of America.

Today one cannot carry law books, ten point programs and “legal arms” like we did because the laws have changed. Today, and as I have been pointing out, the cell phone video technology is the best documentary tool to record police brutality and murder of our black, brown and oppressed citizens.

During those hardcore late 1960’s racist/fascist times, we took a big chance with our lives patrolling the police. It was a time of rampant vicious police brutality and murder of black people by police that was ten times worse than today. We had declared that the racist police occupy our community like foreign troops occupy territory. That fact remains today, especially with the militarized police forces in our communities, all across America.

The concept of a greater peoples’ community control of their police department is a constitutional democratic necessity. It is the opposite of a racist fascist corporate control by city council politicians controlling and exploiting people using the police departments. Unarmed people of color are too many times being murdered today as they were in the 1960’s.

We need to mold and restructure police departments that work to protect us, rather than exploit us. We need a step-by-step process to go about doing this.

Back in 1964-1965, I worked with the Youth Jobs Program in Oakland. My mandate was one of touring and knowing city government and the police departments. I had my youth question the police about the brutality and racism at the time.

In 1967, the Black Panther Party was so legal that the powers that be had to make a law to stop us from patrolling the police. Saying that no one could carry a “loaded gun inside city limits within a hundred fifty feet of public property.” Public property included all roadways and byways. And during that time I got to know certain policemen who gave me helpful information. I wanted to get the racists out of the police department and get progressive city government and progressive police leadership that would honestly protect and serve the people of the community. I told the youth they had to understand what it meant to be responsible to your community and I detailed to them all the methodology on how to do this. By 1969, with the Black Panther Party, I did what I could to organize people to use the ballot to change the police department.

The Black Panther Party’s campaign for greater community control of police, modified for today’s broader inclusive issues and problems, would work in Ferguson and many other cities.

I had my Black Panther Party actually put a “Community Control of Police” referendum on the ballot in Berkeley, California by 1969. We initially put more than two hundred BPP members and left radical supporters in the field getting registered voter’s signatures for my peoples’ community control of police (CPP), and gathering signatures in four different cities in the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area: San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond and Berkeley. The Black Panther Party, working with all 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 the original community control of the police ballot measure. Our referendum/measure first called for real community investigative powers. Rather than the standard appointment of a police chief, our referendum called for a tri-level body of police commissioners to be duly elected by the people of the community. Most important the referendum called for three community review boards with not less than five odd number members duly elected to each of the three community board members. These review boards with lots of legal assistance would have the investigative power to question police shootings, any unlawful activity, and unnecessary force and community complaints. With legal assistance, if the elected board found in their investigation unnecessary force was used or complaints more than credible, then the people’s voice would be heard. With that method, we the people would rise above or outside their internal police affairs, i.e., police “investigating” police, by having elected members as a people’s investigative body and from there recommend action to be taken against the police misconduct. This happened right after I was put in jail, but all the community organizers got all the necessary signatures and put this referendum on the ballot in Berkeley California. The referendum lost by only one percentage point. Community control of police via the ballot!

In this year, 2018, we the People need to organize and then re-evolve greater community empowerment and community control of police back into the hands of the People via legislation and policies for greater, more profound progressive political seats, and economic, ecological and social justice empowerment.

All Power To All The People!
Bobby Seale

http://bobbyseale.com/

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