"Who you out here for?"

BREAKING: One person shot and seven arrested in Ferguson after curfew, officials say: photo via NBC News on twitter, 17 August 2014

"Who you out here for? Better be for Mike Brown." Protesters guarding a liquor store from looters early Saturday a.m.: photo via Trymaine Lee, on twitter, 16 August 2014

CONFIRMED: Tear gas deployed against Ferguson protesters -- police: photo via RT on twitter, 17 August, 2014

Police marching forward, and we're hearing more shots: photo via Alice Speri on twitter, 17 August 2014

Bobby Seale: We built it out of anger and desire and need

Drawing for CBS Evening News of Bobby G. Seale with Arnold F. Markle, State attorney for the Judicial District of New Haven, in the background: Robert Templeton, 1971, oil pastel, 24.6 x 20.3 cm., from Drawings and sketches related to the trial of Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins, New Haven, Connecticut (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University)

You have to remember, the Party at one time had 5,000 active members in 45 cities throughout the United States of America.

Man on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial holding a banner for the Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention, at Black Panther Convention: photo by Thomas J. O'Halloran/Warren K. Leffler, 19 June 1970

45 chapters and branches of the Black Panther Party. The peak of that was January 1969. The Party was almost two and a half years old. Started in October 1966. We had international notoriety seven months later, May 2, 1967.

Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, Washington, D.C.: photo by Marion S. Trikosko, 26 March 1964 (U.S. News & World Report Photograph Collection, Library of Congress)

Martin Luther King was killed April 6, 1968. Up to Martin Luther King I only had 400 members up and down the West Coast, San Diego to Seattle.

Riot damage in D.C.: the ruins of a store in Washington, D.C., that was destroyed during the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.: photo by Warren K. Leffler, 16 April 1968

When Martin Luther King was killed, in a matter of a couple of months, particularly when the colleges let out, it blew my mind that so many young people started flooding into our organization.

D.C. riot. April '68. Aftermath. A soldier standing guard on the corner of 7th & N Street NW in Washington D.C. with the ruins of buildings that were destroyed during the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.: photo by Warren K. Leffler, 8 April 1968 (Library of Congress

They were so angry that brother Martin Luther King was killed.

Washington D.C. riot, April 1968, Aftermath: members of the D.C. National Guard patrolling streets as pedestrians walk by: photo by Warren K. Leffler, 8 April 1968 (Library of Congress)Washington D.C. riot, April 1968, Aftermath: members of the D.C. National Guard patrolling streets as pedestrians walk by: photo by Warren K. Leffler, 8 April 1968 (Library of Congress)

They said, ‘I’m joining the Black Panther Party.’ So we had an influx, 60% of that membership being particularly college students, high school students headed to college who decided to postpone their college education.

Smoke rises near U.S. Capitol, during riot, 1968. (Photographer's note: "D.C. Riot, April, '68: After curfew deserted streets in D.C. -- Smoky sky w/capitol -- damaged area."): photo by Marion S. Trikosko, 6 April 1968

In a matter of five or six months following the death of Martin Luther King, we had peaked at 5,000 active full-time members of the Black Panther Party.

"Don't work" sign promoting a holiday to honor the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., on a shop on H Street, N.W., Washington, D.C.: photo by Marion J. Trikosko, 3 April 1969

Plus our working coalitions had expanded to a point that by 1969 we were able to create what we called the National Committees to Combat Fascism as an extension organizing effort beyond the Black Panther Party, we didn’t care whether you was white, black, blue, red, green, yellow, polkadot, anyone could be a community worker with the NCCF. And that group was composed of almost 10,000 more people.

thejazzpoet: Bobby Seale, Photo by Robert Altman, 1969

Bobby Seale, San Francisco: photo by Robert Altman, May 1969

This was why the power structure was really afraid of us, about that. Because to mobilize those kind of people, to mobilize those brothers and sisters, people who were angry, and to tell them we need to take over all of these political seats. These political seats, whether it’s a city council or making legislation, laws and policies, are not serving the basic desires and needs of the people. So we the young political revolutionary humanists, we can get in there. We’re saying the same thing as to exist now -- in the context of the present, though.

Bobby Seale: photo by Risa Staszewski. 25 February 2006

Black Power, Ferguson: photo by July 27 on twitter, 15 August 2014

You have to remember, I come up in the high-tech world.

Ferguson: photo by AP via The Independent, 14 August 2014

Before I ever got involved with this stuff, I was working on the Gemini missile project in the engineering department at [inaudible] Aerospace and Electronics. I was doing electromagnetic field, black light, non-destruct testing for all the engine frames for the Gemini missile program. For all three stages of exhaust housing for the Gemini missile program.

Gemini spacecraft diagram: image by NASA, 26 April 1965 (NASA)

I went to college originally as an engineering design major, and when I went to college, remember this is AFTER the four years in the United States Air Force, structural repair, high-performance aircraft for the USAF, so … raised a carpenter and a builder…architect by the time I’m 18. So I based everything in my life and my understanding, even by the time I got in college, based on it on good, proven, scientific evidentiary fact.

View of the tracking screen at the front of the Mission Control Center during the Gemini-5 spaceflight: image by NASA, Augustl 1965 (NASA)

So when the Nation of Islam, as religious Black nationalist-type of organization was propagating some very mythical misunderstanding, it’s not scientific fact for me. I have no time for it, you know what I mean? I did respect their call for financial self-sufficiency in the Black community, etc., but in terms of having an organization, we refused to have religious and/or myopic, xenophobic Black nationalists as the ideology or as any part of, we didn’t want that as the head, or the leading ideological notion.

Missouri governor declares state of emergency and curfew in Ferguson: photo via Saulo Corona on twitter, 16 August 2014

What happened was that in forming the Black Panther Party, Huey and I came up with what we called a functional definition of power. In those days, people were spouting in 1964 or ’65 or ’66, “Black power! Black power!” There was so much rhetoric, you see what I mean. It was so much TALK, it was not really being put together. Huey and I set the word “black” to the side for a minute to come up with a functional definition of the term “power.” And we came up with “Power is the ability to define phenomena and then in turn, make them act in a desired manner.”

Demolition, Deaconess Hospital, Dogtown (St. Louis): photo by chalkdog, 22 April 2014

What I’m getting at here, this is like three-dimensional to me. An engineering design major, an architect, I think three dimensional. [That definition], oh my god, it’s metaphorical, it’s applicable to understanding what the situation is. If the city council are a bunch of low-life avaricious racists, bang! We have defined them for what they are. Now we must unite all the people, vote they butts out of office and make them in turn act in a desired manner, giving greater people’s community political representation power. So this is where we came from.

Protester, Ferguson: photo via Chicago Tribune on twitter, 15 August 2014

So our point was, I think it was a pivot point when we came up with that definition, we looked at and began to see a class analysis, in the sense that it was not only black people that were being oppressed, we had poor whites who were oppressed, poor Mexican-Americans who were oppressed, Native Americans, etc. Crossing the racial lines.

Incredible night in Ferguson: photo via Julia Macfarlane on twitter, 16 August 2014

And that's why we moved not for some Black nationalist, xenophobic-type separatist ideology. Two, I didn’t think that way. Ohmigawd, gimme a break, you know. I looked at the world as being interconnected and interrelated. Thinking three-dimensional. See, we were part of a young Black intelligentsia. We were researchers. We were avid readers. We took time to know. You couldn’t just come up with some platitude, some emotional speech, ha ha ha, to get us all hooked up. Cuz we would question it. “Where you going with it? What do you mean by…?” So much theory. “Well how you gonna put that theory into practice?” In other words: I’m an architect. When I draw and lay out the plans for building a structure, those plans are only theory for the idea, right? [But] When I build the building, it’s real. You have to put it in practice.

After kicking out the police, the people of Ferguson took back their streets: photo via Allah akbar on twitter, 16 August 2014

So you have to put all that together and you can see where we came from. The separatist ideology was absurd. And I used to tell people, “No, we’renot outside the system.” “Oh yes you are.” I says, “Agnew said that!” Agnew, the vice president of the United States, part of a corrupt political structure, telling people we were outside the political system. Which was bullcrap, when we’d already ran for political office. How can you be outside of something that’s oppressing you, I would tell people. “Oh that’s right, how can you be outside of something…”

20 Photos: Clashes in Qalandia following funeral of young Palestinian

Palestinian protesters try to climb the Israeli separation barrier during clashes at the Qalandia checkpoint following the funeral of a young Palestinian: photo by Federico Scoppa/Corbis via the Guardian, 30 November 2013

Then I’d ask the white left radical buddies one time, after Bobby Kennedy was killed, [they were saying] “Oh no Bobby, man, we’re tired of the System, man. We’ve droppedout, man.” I says, “You can't drop out. You cannot drop out of the total system. We have to get rid of the avaricious corporate monopoly capitalism. We have to get rid of the institutionalized framework of racism in America. Those two aspects we must fight against.” “No we’ve dropped out!” I sez, “You think you can drop out of the total System? cuz everything is interconnected and interrelated, then you take all your buddies, go down to Cape Canaveral, I want you to hijack one of those rockets, take your butt to the moon. When you get to the moon, the president of the united states, Tricky Dick Nixon, is gonna send some troops up there, bring you back. There is no such thing as dropping out of the total system!” So my point becomes you must struggle to change the frameworks, the institutions and make those institutions make human sense.

Ferguson: photo by AP via The Independent, 14 August 2014

So this is the argument and this is where we came from in the 1960s. I mean, yeah we were political revolutionaries, yeah we identified a racist for what he was, and if we said “Black power” as fast as we said “Black power” we said “Red power” and as fast as we said “Red power” we said “Brown power”, “white power” and then we summed it up with “All power to all the people.” See what I’m getting at? So this is where we came from.

Bobby Seale, from an interview by Jay Babcock, Oakland, 17 March 1999

Bobby Seale: photo by Risa Staszewski. 25 February 2006

A police officer and a protester have a tense moment before a scuffle breaks out between a different protester and police officers near the port during an "F the Police" march held on August 15, 2014 in Oakland, California in solidarity with Ferguson, Missouri, where there was a fatal shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old black man earlier in the week: photo by Leah Millis / San Francisco Chronicle, 15 August 2014

A woman tries to pull a protester away from police after a scuffle breaks out during a march in Oakland against police brutality held in solidarity with the demonstrators in Ferguson, Missouri: photo by Leah Millis, / San Francisco Chronicle, 15 August 2014

One protester helps a woman up after she was involved in a scuffle between police and a protester during an "F the Police" march held in solidarity with Ferguson, Mo., where there was a fatal shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old black man earlier in the week August 15, 2014 in Oakland, Calif. Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle

One protester helps a woman up after she was involved in a scuffle between police and a protester during an "F the Police" march in Oakland, California held in solidarity with Ferguson, Missouri, where there was a fatal shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old black man earlier in the week: photo by Leah Millis / San Francisco Chronicle, 15 August 2014