“I still want my right to defend myself. A railroad operation, and you know it, from Nixon on down. they got you running around violating my constitutional rights.”

We jumped into the protest of Vietnam before the Black Panther Party ever started, before the Black Panther Party was even thought of. In fact, it was late 1965 and 1966 that the anti-Vietnam War, anti-draft to the Vietnam War protest started at University of California, Berkeley.

Money is the medium of exchange, and it’s how you make things happen. To say you hate it is some farfetched, idealistic crap.

But I think people, especially white people, have to come to understand that the language of the ghetto is a language of its own, and as the party – whose members for the most part come from the ghetto – seeks to talk to the people, it must speak the people’s language.

We were not talking about the average white person: we was talking about the corporate money rich and the racist Live politicians and the lackeys, as we used to call them, for the government who perpetuate all this exploitation and racism.

I’m still a political revolutionary. The fire never went out of me, but perceptions and realizations change.

Fox News never calls up Bobby Seale to articulate a stance in opposition to right-wing conservatives. To me, giving the New Black Panthers a platform on Fox is a subtle tactic to scare people.

I always tried to raise money for the Black Panthers through business schemes.

There is an entire generation of young people who know nothing about how viciously the FBI attacked The Black Panther Party, and why.

The Black Panther Party were not revenge nationalists.

My father was a master carpenter and builder. Architectural design, engineering design, mechanical design, three-dimensional views, that was my shtick, my forte.

I have quite a few good friends in Philadelphia who were police officers.

The first point was we wanted power to determine our own destiny in our own black community. And what we had done is, we wanted to write a program that was straightforward to the people. We didn’t want to give a long dissertation.

The people have now come to realize that the only way to deal with the oppressor is to deal on our own terms and this was done.

To develop political and economic power in a capitalist society, you need capital.

You don’t fight racism with racism, the best way to fight racism is with solidarity.

I am not a hoodlum. I’m a community organizer.