Bobby Seale's still cookin': Black Panther founder and Chicago 8 defendant sees echoes of '68 in '08

IT WASN'T EASY getting former Black Panther Bobby Seale on the phone for an interview, because of his latest confrontation with the government.

"The city government gave me a citation for peeling paint," Seale said. "They said I had to have my house painted by [the end of the month]."

Seale lived in Philadelphia for 20 years, but now he's back in Oakland, the city where he grew up and won more than a third of the votes when he ran for mayor in 1973.

In the ferment of the Sixties, Seale was at ground zero.

In 1966, Seale and Huey Newton founded the Black Panther Party, the era's most visible black-nationalist group.

Three years later, Seale was famously bound and gagged in a Chicago courtroom after outbursts in the trial stemming from the demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

The "Chicago Eight" became the "Chicago Seven" when Seale's case was severed from the remaining defendants.

And in 1971, he was accused of ordering the killing of a police informant in New Haven. The murder charges were dismissed after the jury failed to reach a verdict.

At 71, Seale is now a law-abiding citizen, living in the house that his family has owned for decades.

He does 20 speaking dates a year, serves on the board of a youth arts group and is busy trying to get multiple projects off the ground or to completion: a cooking/interview televison show; a memoir about the Chicago trial; an updated barbecue cookbook with vegetarian recipes; and a documentary about the Panthers.

But turn back the clock a couple of decades, and you'd find Seale in Philadelphia, volunteering for Wilson Goode's 1983 mayor's race. While he lived in Philadelphia, he worked for Temple University, ran a youth program, wrote three books and perfected barbecue recipes for a successful cookbook.

Ask for his fondest associations with Philly, and the answer is surprising for a man who founded an organization famed for gun battles with police.

"I have quite a few good friends in Philadelphia who were police officers," Seale said. "There were more police than you'd think who supported us in the [Black Panther] party, because they saw the institutionalized racism of the time"

Asked how he views the gun-toting militancy of the Panther movement today, Seale said he sees it as the product of a time when racism and police brutality were widespread.

Seale regards the Panthers' community service as the forgotten and ultimately more meaningful part of its work.

"I created the free breakfast program," he said. "We had free sickle-cell screenings, free bus-to-prison programs. And we did this with no government money. We got so many donations from Hollywood people and a lot of liberals."

Seale believes that America has come a long way. He sees Barack Obama's campaign as connected to his activism in the '60s and '70s.

"Electoral politics was always an objective of the Black Panther party, so Barack Obama is a part of what we dreamed and struggled and died for," Seale said. "I am so happy to see this. Whether you're black, white, green or polka-dot, this is some real human progress we're seeing."

Seale serves on the board of the Eastside Arts Alliance, which involves Oakland youths in cultural projects. And he works out every day at the same YMCA he belonged to as a kid.

But much of his energy is aimed at telling the story of his radical past, and making sure that he's fairly compensated for it.

Seale said that he's finishing a memoir about the Chicago conspiracy trial called "The Eighth Defendant." His plans for a documentary film about the Panthers suffered a setback in December when director St. Clair Bourne died.

And Seale was interested in, but ultimately critical of, HBO's plans for a six-part dramatic series on the Panthers.

"I'm in an argument with these people," Seale said. "They have the audacity to say they don't want to contract my literary property."

HBO declined comment on the project.

Seale also said that he hopes that Stephen Spielberg will hire him as a consultant to a film he may make about the Chicago conspiracy trial.

Any other irons in the fire?

"I'm going to have to call up Spike Lee," Seale said. "I did a cameo for him in 'Malcolm X,' and I'm trying to get him to do my life story and the history of the Black Panther Party." *