Genuine Legends of Faith, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #397 | @MDWorld

September 14, 2015 Victor El-Khouri 0 Comments

Back during the Chicago Conspiracy Trial when I was just a wee lad of 19, I had the luck and privilege of being a member of the defense team, mostly handling public events (“The Conspiracy Stomp” was my favorite) and the so-called alternative media: underground and college press, FM underground press, that sort of thing.

The current brouhaha over whether Kentucky’s Kim Davis is a prisoner of conscience or just another asshole bigot – and, yes, one can be both – reminds me of two genuine prisoners of faith, both defendants in the Conspiracy Trial. As they used to say on television, they not only talked the talk, they also walked the walk.

David Dellinger was the oldest of the eight – 54, at the time the trial started – and I was in awe of him. A quiet (at least by comparison), thoughtful person, Dave was the real thing. A genuine prisoner of conscience who knew there was a price for standing up for his beliefs, those concerns were so vital he willfully paid the price of being a conscientious objector during World War II. Dave was a Yale and Oxford-educated pacifist who drove an ambulance during the Spanish Civil War. Obviously an anti-fascist, that didn’t stop him from touring Nazi Germany before the War and developing a first-hand knowledge of the enemy that those who put him in prison never knew.

I am not a pacifist, although I admire a lot of folks who are, and I was deeply impressed by this man. While in prison he protested racial segregation in the dining halls which, because of his efforts and those of his cohorts, brought about an end to such treatment.

Bobby Seale was another of the Eight. With Huey P. Newton, he founded the Black Panther Party in 1966. Their primary agenda was to end police brutality and the killing of blacks by police; as I noted, this was 49 years ago so one could say that, at this, they failed. The Panthers also organized a massive and highly successful program to feed breakfast to poor black children. Because they would not swear off violence, the Panthers were perceived as enemies of the nation to those who enjoyed perpetuating such violence upon young blacks. 

Some things never change.

Bobby was indicted in the Conspiracy Trial because the Feds couldn’t find Eldridge Cleaver, who had superior media coverage and thus would have provided a more media-centric scalp. His attorney, Charles Garry, represented him at the arraignment and was his attorney of record. But he had surgery that summer and the trial judge refused to delay the start of the trial, Judge Julius Hoffman (no relation to the more popular defendant, Abbie Hoffman) appointed Bill Kunstler to replace him. Bill was not Bobby’s choice, so he said he would represent himself, which, of course, is his right.

Judge Julie refused to accept this, saying he had a lawyer, that being Kunstler. Bobby continued to cross-examine government witnesses. Each time he rose to do his lawful job, Judge Julie would order him to sit down and shut up. After a brief while Hoffman had him bound to his chair and gagged, an astonishing sight that brought tears to some of the jurors – as well as to several federal marshals. Seeing as how this could affect the trial, the government proposed Bobby be severed from the trial after being sentenced to four years in prison for contempt of court for the crime of being his own lawyer.

As a member of the defense team I was in court and I saw Bobby first-hand. Unlike the myth perpetuated by our “liberal” press, Bobby was soft-spoken although, like the white defendants, quite rhetoric-driven. But Judge Julie, one of the wealthiest federal judges on the bench, simply could not abide by an uppity black man.

And, yes, Bobby Seale most certainly was an uppity black man. I’ll bet still is; he remains politically active even as he borders octogenarian status.

Bobby Seale and David Dellinger were both legends of faith and genuine prisoners of conscience. Both paid the price for their beliefs.

On the other hand, Kim Davis is a hypocrite and a poser, another bigot with authority who bitches and whines when she is told she would pay for breaking the law, as though simply invoking the name of her alleged deity is a sufficient defense.

Ms. Davis should shut up and go away.

Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking rock, blues and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com and on the iNetRadio app, www.iNetRadio.com, as part of “Hit Oldies” channel even though his show is way too ass-kicking to be thought of as either “hit” or “oldies.” Weird Sounds first airs Sundays at 7:00 PM Eastern and is rebroadcast three times during the week – check www.getthepointradio.com above for times and on-demand streaming information. Gold is also a weekly columnist at www.comicmix.com, joining MDW’s Martha Thomases and sometimes even Michael Davis himself there they, and others, incessantly pontificate upon matters of four-color.