Last weekend, former Black Panther party leader Sekou Odinga, who spent 33 years behind bars convicted of the attempted murder of police officers in the 1980s, gathered with his advocacy group outside movie theaters in New York City to “educate” audiences of the blockbuster superhero film Black Panther about the real-life Black Panthers.
The UK Guardian reports that the movie, with its all-black cast and message of racial superiority, has revived calls from attorneys, families and civil rights leaders for the release of more than a dozen jailed former members of the Black Panther Party (BPP), the radical group founded in 1966 in Oakland, California.
“Many are in the worst prisons and the worst conditions, and a lot of them are getting older and suffer from health problems,” said Odinga. “This is an opportunity to remind people of the real heroes of the Black Panthers and the conditions they live in today.”
Odinga clearly has a different definition of “heroes” from the one we have at TruthRevolt. We don’t find anything heroic about domestic terrorism, but hey, we’re quirky that way.
The Guardian has more:
“We have to educate people that this has all happened before, and it will happen again if we’re not careful,” said Malkia Cyril, a California activist whose mother was a Black Panther. Kamau Sadiki, a former Black Panther whom Cyril considers an uncle, was convicted decades after the 1971 killing of an officer and is still in prison, where he has maintained his innocence.