Catherine Masud’s “A Double Life” was screened at L.A.’s Black-themed Pan African Film Festival – even though its protagonist is White. Why? Because this documentary involves legendary ’60s/’70s African American revolutionary icons: Angela Davis, and George and Jonathan Jackson. Ex-fugitive Stephen Bingham was interviewed by phone at Marin County, California, about “A Double Life,” for an article that originally appeared at Truthout.org.
Ed Rampell: What can movements fighting against White supremacy and capitalism learn from studying George Jacksons life and writings?
Stephen Bingham: George’s book, “Soledad Brother,” was incredibly popular and brilliant … Although George’s death in 1971 temporarily set back the budding prisoners’ rights movement, the seed remained there. Angela’s “Critical Resistance” is the logical outgrowth of the movement around George’s death.
What was your relationship with George? What happened at San Quentin?
George was interested in filing a civil suit about prison conditions in San Quentin’s euphemistically called “Adjustment Center,” where prisoners were held 23-and-a-half hours a day. My early visits with George were to talk about these conditions. Aug. 21, 1971 I was requested to accompany Vanita Anderson, a Soledad Brothers murder trial investigator, to San Quentin to ensure she could visit George to review final galleys of his second book, “Blood in My Eye.” Authorities had been clamping down on George’s numbers of visitors … her visit was denied.
She asked if I could take in the materials for him to review; I agreed. As I was going in with the papers to the attorney’s visiting room off the main visiting room, the guard asked, “Aren’t you going to take the tape recorder?” I had no need to, so Vanita said I could take the tape recorder.
That’s a key piece of evidence, of course, as the authorities’ whole theory of what happened [the ensuing shootout] is that a gun was inside that tape recorder. There was also a wig, and I had carried all that in to be used by Jackson for some kind of escape attempt. Which of course is nonsense, [given the high] wall, and the Adjustment Center is a maximum security prison within a maximum security prison. So, escaping from San Quentin then and now is virtually impossible. But that was their theory.
I took the papers in, George made some notes, I brought them out and gave them to Vanita … I got home around 10:30 and [the San Quentin shootout] was all over the news. About 20 lawyer friends were waiting for me to arrive, because the National Lawyers Guild was targeted by the FBI; consensus was I had to immediately disappear.
How?
I went to a nearby house hoping authorities would announce a complete investigation into what happened, but that never happened. From the first hours they targeted me, which fit in with a pattern of targeting movement lawyers. I decided with the consensus of radical lawyers I needed to disappear because my life was in danger. If I’d felt I wasn’t likely to get killed I would have stayed and taken my chances. But having been accused of mass killing that included three guards, I was convinced I would not survive in custody. Friends helped me disguise myself; I went to Philadelphia.
You fled America and started living what the documentary calls “A Double Life.”
I got a passport in another name, went to Eastern Europe within 10 days after Aug. 21. The governments were aware of the presence of “Robert Boarts” [Bingham’s pseudonym], but not Stephen Bingham … I came to Italy in ’72, ’73, and spent almost a year there, working legally. In June ’74 I moved to Paris.
Why?
If I was going to be living somewhere underground for a long time it had to be a very big city … The French had been receiving exiles and people living underground for centuries.
Describe living underground in Paris?
By the time I got there I was fully comfortable with the story I’d created around my name. I never said or heard my [real] name, I really became Robert Boarts, with an inner shell preserving who I was and my political commitment to work for change … I got into filmmaking, and house painting, which corresponded to my politics of the working class and wanting to identify with them.
What’s your impression of the French left versus the American left?
In major elections every credible party is entitled to time on national TV … In France, the left’s strongest party were Trotskyists … they would get their candidate eight minutes on national television to say what their program was. There was a national exchange of ideas, a continuum from far right to far left, and there weren’t these huge doors the two parties in America close off to anything that’s not one of them. France has a different electoral system, proportional representation; depending on the percentage of votes you get, parties get X seats in parliament. So, even if the Greens only get 5%, they might get a couple of seats. I found France’s whole political structure and debate much richer. Our two-party system is not democratic, it stultifies – like none of us, right now, want to vote for Biden or Trump.
Tell us about your documentaries?
I studied at the University of Paris’ film school. I joined Front Paysan, a collective making films for small farmers, who were constantly being screwed by the system and turned into radicals. I wanted to make a film … about this extraordinary battle in a small town, Longwy … the heart of Alsace Lorraine and Europe’s steel industry … The struggle was over a steel mill to be shutdown…
There’s a much stronger identification with unions in France than in America. In Longwy, CGT, the Communist Party-organized union, was not as aggressive and radical as CFDT, which had more of an association with the Socialist Party. They did this incredible “fist in the face” actions, like a forklift full of lime crashing into the police station … These 16mm films were meant to be used as organizing tools for their struggles – not for festivals and big theaters.
Why’d you voluntarily return to America July 9, 1984 to face charges?
All this time I was away I know I’m going to go back – the only question is when. The only way I could convince people I didn’t do what I was charged with was to come back and have a trial …
After winning your 1986 trial what did you do?
I worked in a pension law firm for a couple of years. Then I went back to my original work from 1970, working for … San Francisco Neighborhood Legal Assistance Foundation … I did lots of advocacy work … until retiring in 2013. I joined NLG in 1964 and became local chapter president in the ’90s …
What’s the legacy of movements you were a part of?
The Civil Rights movement in Mississippi in 1963/1964, Freedom Summer, which shook me awake and resonates to this day in an extraordinary way. One of my Mississippi housemates was the Berkeley Free Speech Movement’s Mario Savio … I was in the antiwar movement, which continues to reverberate.
My daughter Sylvia was killed [biking] in 2009. I spend most of my time now doing road safety advocacy.
Info: www.doublelifemovie.com.
Ed Rampell is a film historian and critic based in Los Angeles. He is author of “Progressive Hollywood, A People’s Film History of the United States” and he co-authored “The Hawaii Movie and Television Book.” The full interview was published March 10 in Truthout.org. See the full interview at https://truthout.org/articles/once-a-fugitive-attorney-for-black-panther-member-recounts-his-life-underground/
From The Progressive Populist, May 1, 2024
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