Street roots., March 15, 2013, Page 9, Image 9

Street roots
9
March 15, 2013
PAN TH ER, from page 8
then Robert F. Kennedy. Not to mention all
the people who were always shot, innocently
killed throughout the country and even in
Seattle. We were saying, “We’re not gonna
take this anymore: If you’re gonna shoot at
us, then we’re gonna shoot back. We’re
gonna defend ourselves.”
R.R.: One of the stories that really got me in
this book was about the typewriter.
A.D.: Well, we were not aware the local
police authorities and the Federal Bureau of
Investigation would infiltrate the
organization. We just recently found out the
FBI had a program, called Ghetto Informant
Program, where they were recruiting people
in the community to be informants. So when
we opened our office up, we took over 300
applications from people who came to join
the Party. Some of those people were police
informants.
While we were trying to get our office
together, we were in need of a typewriter.
Someone says, “Oh, Aaron, so and so says
that he’s gonna give us a typewriter down by
Model City. All we have to do is come down
there after 5. The door will be open.” I said,
“OK, good.” So we went up there after 5; I
carried it out, and I carried it into the office.
I didn’t know that there were some
detectives a block away that were observing
me. Probably about two months later, they
issued a warrant for my arrest for stealing a
typewriter, and in the process they raided
our office and began to carry out files and
different things out of our office.
R.R.: How did it resolve?
A.D.: First of all, it led to the only major
riot that Seattle’s ever had. When word
spread to the community that I’d been
arrested, we organized a rally at Garfield
Park.. The rally turned into a rebellion.
Rebellions had been taking place all across
the country: Detroit, Chicago, everywhere.
Now this was the time for that explosion in
Seattle. The riot lasted three days.
Helicopters were shot at, police cars were
overturned and a lot of buildings were
firebombed. Young people were out there
just going crazy. It ignited a war between
the Black Panther Party and the Seattle
Police Department. And it lasted all through
the summer of ’6 8 .1 mean, if you would
read a blotter page of things around the
country, you would’ve sworn that the
revolution had started. Finally by
wintertime, things had subsided. I went to
trial in December, and William Dwyer,
considered the best lawyer in the state, he
came down to our office and offered to take
my case. It boiled down to the secret
witness that the prosecution had (that) they
said was gonna seal the deal for them. I was
facing seven to 10 years.
R.R.: For stealing a typewriter?
A.D.: Yeah. Larceny is what they call it.
(Laughs.) The secret witness never showed
up, so I was found not guilty.
R.R.: You mentioned earlier that if you
would’ve looked at the paper in ‘68, you
would’ve sworn that the revolution was
happening. Well, here we are, it’s 2013. What
happened to the revolution?
A.D.: A lot of things. One was a program
called COINTELPRO (or Counter
Intelligence Program) that the FBI had put
together not only to destroy the Black
Panther Party, but other organizations,
because there were a lot of organizations:
The Brown Berets (Chicano nationalist and
Mexican-American group), you had the Red
Guards (radical Chinese-American group),
you had AIM, American Indian Movement,
you had SDS (Students for a Democratic
Society, a radical left student group), you
had the Weathermen (radical left group),
you had Patriot Party, which was white
leftist hillbillies, the Women’s Movement,
the Gay Rights Movement. It was just really
powerful and really beautiful to see so many
people coming together. We were able to
create a lot of change. The Gay Rights
Movement was one we supported. And you
had the anti-war movement, which was
probably one of the most powerful with
200,000 - 300,000 students all over the
country that were protesting against this
war.
But the repression against that was pretty
heavy, particularly against the Black Panther
Party. We didn’t know until recently that
they had planned to have us killed by 1969.
Fred Hampton, he was going to be the
next great leader in America, if not the
world. He was just the most phenomenal
person. At 19 years old, he starts the
Chicago chapter. December 1969 he was
assassinated, and of course the Chicago
chapter never rebounded from his
assassination.
Then the whole leadership of the New
York chapter is arrested and charged with
conspiracy to blow up buildings. Afeni
Shakur, (rapper) Tupac’s mom, was among
them. All across the country offices were
being raided and attacked, and leaders were
being killed.
You got people from those cities that I
just named that are still in prison to this day
because of the organizing that we were
doing with the Black Panther Party. So they
were hitting us really hard and heavy.
We had orders that we had to fortify our
offices. We had double sandbags all the way
up to the ceiling. We had steel plates on the
door, we had gas masks. Party people had to
be on security two hours a night, all through
the night. People got kidnapped, people
were mysteriously killed. (The FBI) even
contacted the Hell’s Angels to participate in
trying to wipe out the Black Panther Party.
So we were under a tremendous assault.
We had The Black Panther Newspaper,
which was one of the most powerful
alternative newspapers ever created. At its
height we had a circulation worldwide at
250,000, and these papers came out every
single week. It was the voice of the people.
And the FBI, they burned the papers. A lot
of times different chapters and branches
would go get the papers from the airport:
They’re burned, they’d been soaked with
water, they disappeared. It was just a
constant battle.
The L.A. chapter was the most military
minded of all the chapters: They had
machine gun nests inside the roof. (The
FBI) used helicopters and armored vehicles
in this assault on the Panther headquarters,
and they had a shootout that lasted for eight
hours. Two or three days later the (Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives) leave, and they come to Seattle.
They try to conduct the same type of raid in
Seattle, but Mayor Wes Uhlman refuses to
give them support from the Seattle Police
Department. Because Mayor Wes Uhlman,
he saw what happened in Chicago and LA,
and he didn’t want to have that blood on his
hands. Seattle was a smaller city, and we
were much entrenched in the community.
In the summer of ’68, the Seattle Police
Department had put a $25,000 contract on
my head to end the firebombing because they
couldn’t stop it. They figured the only way to
stop it was to have me killed. So some
informants in the Seattle chapter tried to set
me up with the police in a shootout, and it
didn’t work.
In 1971,1 went out to the gun range with
another Panther member to make sure all
our weapons were working, and the last
weapon we fired was a shotgun. I was gonna
fire from my shoulder. A voice told me, No. I
fired it from my waist. And the shotgun blew
up. My arm was hanging off. I made it to the
hospital, and they were going to have to
amputate it, and my mother told them, “No.”
We had the shotgun shells tested and find out
that gunpowder had been taken out and high
explosives had been put in its place.
R.R.: (In) this book you described yourself
as someone with a shy, inward nature. So how
does that jibe with starting a chapter of the
Black Panther Party?
A.D.: I’m sure it surprised a lot of people,
because I was a pretty shy and quiet guy, but
I was also a very serious person. My elders
used to tell me all the time, “Oh, you take
things too serious.” So I guess that’s what
the tradeoff was. I was a serious person.
Once I committed to something, I stuck to it.
R.R.: At the beginning of this book, you
said that in ’89, when Huey Newton (the other
co-founder of the Black Panther Party) was
gunned down, there was a memorial service.
Someone approached you and said you should
write a book about your experiences. And it
took two decades. Why did it take you that
long?
A.D.: Because I was going through what
many Black Panther Party members were
going through. We didn’t know that we had
some form of post-traumatic stress
(disorder). We were trying to find our
footing in this new dynamic,
nonrevolutionary environment, trying to
make sense of what had happened and all
the deaths and all the people that had been
killed. I became a single parent. My kids’
mother had got addicted to crack cocaine,
and, you know, the whole crack cocaine
thing, it was just really devastating to the
black community.
R.R.: Yeah, it got my brother.
A.D.: That’s what my second book is
gonna be focused on.
So not only did I end up raising my kids,
but I was raising other people’s kids. Then I
became a gang counselor, working with
at-risk youth. I went back to school at
Seattle U. full time and worked full time. I
had too many other things going on in my
life. But you know, even though I had so
many other things, it was always in my mind
that I was gonna get this book completed.
R.R.: How does it feel to be a part of
history?
A .D .: Like I said, it was a very hard,
serious time. It left us with a lot of scars
and wounds, things that will always be with
us. Stories that will always be with us. But,
on the other hand, we made a tremendous
contribution, not only to this country but to
humanity as a whole. A lot of our programs
that we started are embedded in our society
now, like the medical clinics, the free legal
aid programs. The whole memory of the
Black Panther Party is something that will
always last forever, not just in this country
but in the world. People revere the Black
Panther Party so much. It was a special
time; it was a very special time. I still feel
privileged to have been a part of it.
Reprinted from Real Change News, Seattle.
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