Two Attendees Stalk AIA Reporter and Steal Tapes

by Dan Flynn

The organizers of the Black Panthers 35th anniversary reunion ejected Campus Report's Christopher Chow and Dan Flynn (the writer of this article) for asking questions deemed hostile to the gathering's speakers on April 20. A conference mob surrounded and denounced Chow, which led to two attendees stalking Chow for several blocks and stealing his belongings. The event, which advertised itself as open to the public, was held at the federally funded University of the District of Columbia.

The conference, held from April 18th through the 20th, featured more than its fair share of extremist language. A woman named Sister Sheeba presided over a large portion of the event, declaring, "We have a little rat-faced boy in the White House who stole the election." Pam Africa shouted to a cheering audience later in the conference, "I am a revolutionary without a motherf-in doubt." Other speakers described the murder of policemen by Panthers as "military actions," with the convicted perpetrators labeled "prisoners of war." Perhaps the conference's biggest applause followed a description of how imprisoned Panthers murdered a warden and a deputy warden.

The President of the University of the District of Columbia, Timothy Jenkins, warmly greeted the congregants on the gathering's opening night. "Welcome to the People's University," Jenkins proclaimed. "The principle of education as a tool for radical change is in the DNA of this university."

"We welcome you here, because this is an open forum," Jenkins remarked. "We don't weigh your ideas. We don't weigh your conclusions. We have no test of ideology to allow you to sit in this hall."

Seale's Tacit Acknowledgement

With leading Panthers like Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver dead and dozens of others in jail, the conference featured few real Black Panthers. The most noteworthy member of the radical group to address the UDC event was Bobby Seale, the gagged "Chicago 7" defendant who was later charged, but never convicted, in the New Haven murder of Party member Alex Rackley.

"COINTELPRO is still here," Seale remarked about the FBI's counterintelligence program. "They still tap my phone to this day."

To the shock of some in the audience, Seale repudiated much of the Panther dogma from the '60s. A less radical Seale declared, "Race is bullshit!" The graying Panther noted that humans are actually more than 99% alike. He ridiculed Nation of Islam theories that maintain that an evil scientist created whites in a laboratory. Seale labeled the preoccupation with Marxism by many radicals as an exercise in "intellectual masturbation." The revolution he now seeks, he proclaimed, has nothing to do with violence. He's abandoned the Panthers' past enthusiasm for guns as well. "I don't think you need guns," he remarked. "I don't see the relevance of guns."

Seale's most shocking statements concerned the criminal activities of some of his lionized contemporaries.

Seale declared, "I love Huey, but Huey used to do some crazy stuff." Seale recounted how Newton used to lurk for prey outside of an Oakland hospital. When patients were rushed into the emergency room from cars, Newton would steal from the abandoned vehicles. At another session, Seale candidly discussed the botched robbery of a gas station by a Panther.

Despite his willingness to reevaluate past Panther dogma and frankly confront misdeeds by individual Panthers, there are some aspects of the Black Panther Party that Seale clearly did not want to revisit.

"David Horowitz wants to paint all the Black Panther Party, as he puts it, as 'Black Panther murderers,'" Seale responded to this writer's query about Panther crimes alleged by Horowitz. "He can't do it. He's angry."

In his book Radical Son, 1960s radical turned present-day conservative David Horowitz alleges that the Black Panthers stole vast sums from their own non-profit ventures and killed his friend, Betty Van Patter, who discovered the wrongdoing.

Seale didn't deny the specific allegations made by Horowitz. In fact, everything that he said-other than vague condemnations of Horowitz as a liar-supported Horowitz's charge.

"Supposedly, Huey Newton, or Elaine Brown or somebody, had taken $100,000 And Huey Newton did serve six months in jail for personal use of $100,000," Seale admitted, adding, "Remember, this was all after I left the Party." Van Patter, who served the Party in an accounting capacity, uncovered severe financial improprieties by the Panthers. On December 13, 1974, Van Patter disappeared. Her dead body, head caved in, would later turn up in San Francisco Bay.

Seale allows that things were getting out of hand in the Party by the mid '70s. "I wanted to stop the Black Panther Party," the former radical confessed. "I had stumbled on Huey Newton abusing cocaine at the time-viciously. I stumbled on him trying to take over the drug trade operation in Oakland, California." Seale admitted that Newton attempted to shake down pimps and drug dealers, and as a result, the ne'er-do-well population of Oakland took out a contract on Newton's life. "I was very, very pissed," Seale maintains. "If I stayed around, I probably would have killed Huey myself."

Later, Seale offered a tacit acknowledgement that the Panthers probably did indeed kill Van Patter. David Horowitz, he remarked, is "probably still feeling guilty because he left Betty Van Patter there." If the Panthers didn't kill Van Patter, what would Horowitz have to feel guilty about?

Despite offering no dispute to the substance of Horowitz's specific charge, Seale denies that his old ideological comrade is right. Seale's main quarrel with Horowitz is that at the time of Van Patter's murder, Seale and most other Panthers of note had left the Party. To blame the Black Panthers for a crime committed by Party members when the organization was a shell of its former self, Seale contended, was patently unfair.

"David Horowitz cannot write us out of history like that," Seale proclaimed. "He can try all he wants."

The End of America?

More than 34 years after the Black Panthers demanded payments from the U.S. government for slavery, the reparations debate remained a hot topic amongst Black Panther alumni and their supporters at UDC.

"The reparations campaign means the end of America as we know it," Kwaku Duren remarked in a conference workshop.

"Reparations, without a doubt in my mind, is going to happen for African Americans," Wautella Graham of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA) declared. Graham broke the question of slavery into four major categories of involvement: the victims, the collaborators, the perpetrators, and the beneficiaries. Even immigrants and people whose ancestral line contains no slaveholders should pay reparations, Graham claims, since every American benefits from slavery. Just as non-slaveholders benefited from slavery, Graham posits that slavery victimizes free blacks to this day. "All American people are responsible to carry the debt that America owes from its history."

The workshop organizers didn't limit the reparations campaign to the U.S. government. The Roman Catholic Church, various corporations, and individual families descended from slave-owners, they suggested, should also be targeted. Other workshop participants strangely claimed that Africans were the original inhabitants of the Americas, and should thus inherit the ownership of the land in addition to reparations.

What form should reparations take? Land? Property? Currency? "Surely, we're entitled to the whole gamut," remarked Kibibi Tyehimba. "We shouldn't settle for the $20,000 that the Japanese got." A fair estimate, she holds, places America's debt to living African Americans at $4 trillion.

"We are talking about a redistribution of wealth and power," Kibibi Tyehimba of N'COBRA proclaimed. "You're talking about revolution?" an audience member asked. "Essentially," Tyehimba candidly affirmed, "but words frighten people."

No Room for Dissent

At various times during the gathering, conference participants and speakers expressed outrage when writers for Campus Report questioned their statements. Ultimately, the intolerance of the Black Panthers and their supporters led to the ejection of this writer and the intimidation and stalking of Christopher Chow.

When this writer posed a question to Bobby Seale regarding Horowitz's allegations, several audience members angrily denounced the questioner. Elliot Grossman, attorney for Mumia Abu-Jamal, similarly launched into a profanity-laced tirade after this reporter called him on numerous baseless claims.

On Saturday, April 20, reporter Christopher Chow questioned Charles Pinderhughes, a Boston College professor, on various questionable statements he made in a workshop he conducted on "Marxist Theory and the Black Panther Party." Pinderhughes professed, "If you are not a Marxist-Leninist you cannot be in the Black Panther Party." According to Chow, he told attendees that Mao and Stalin never ran any death camps. He benignly called them, "reeducation camps" in which no one was killed. After the session, Chow questioned Pinderhughes about the accuracy of his statements. Chow recounts that Pinderhughes insisted that notions of mass-killings in China and Russia were simply based on "right-wing propaganda," and wanted to know what newspaper he wrote for.

Upon hearing that Chow wrote for Campus Report, Pinderhughes became incensed. "That's a conservative paper," he said. The BC professor, who had himself taped the session, now demanded Chow's audiotape of the workshop. When Chow refused and tried to leave, Pinderhughes followed Chow outside the hall, shouting, "This guy's a conservative! This guy's with Campus Report! This guy's a conservative!" Chow, surrounded by an angry mob, left the event.

Still Pinderhughes and an accomplice trailed him. The Campus Report writer traveled several blocks in attempts to avoid his stalkers. He sought refuge, to no avail, in a nearby apartment building. Once inside, the angry professor and his younger accomplice cornered Chow. Pinderhughes, a former Black Panther Minister of Information, put his face up against Chow's, yelling, "I'm not threatening you! Get off the phone! Give me all the tapes! I want all the tapes!" He grabbed Chow's bag containing audiotapes, a recorder, cellular phone, wallet, car keys, and other items. Pinderhughes put Chow's bag around his own shoulder and said, "We're leaving!" After appeals, Pinderhughes returned the bag but kept the audiotapes.

The entire incident in the building was caught on videotape.

Chow and this writer returned to the conference, demanding the return of the stolen tapes. While the conference organizers returned one of Chow's tapes, they refused to hand over the tape confiscated by Pinderhughes. Both writers were then kicked out of the conference, with event organizers issuing a ban on Accuracy in Academia reporters from attending their future events.

"I felt very threatened by being followed and by having my bag stolen," reacted Christopher Chow to the ordeal. "My rights were violated not only as a journalist, but as a private citizen as well. First, my rights were violated by Pinderhughes, then by the event organizers. It is disturbing that Boston College pays Pinderhughes to preach communist hatred and the denial of millions of murders to future generations of leaders."