All language subtitles for A.Double.Life.2023.108

(water rushes)

(traditional piano music plays)

♪ Tread thou in them boldly ♪

Steve was my favorite uncle.

In holiday gatherings at the family home in Connecticut,

he stood out from the rest.

He wore a leather jacket and drove a motorcycle.

And my brother and I thought he was very cool.

And then one day when I was eight years old.

(ominous music plays)

he disappeared.

(indistinct chatter and shouts)

Authorities say they want to question the lawyer

named Stephen Mitchell Bingham

in connection with a gun.

Bingham apparently was the only person

to visit George Jackson.

A militant Black who was shot dead yesterday

while trying to break out of San Quentin.

Three white guards

and two white inmates were killed,

their throats slit.

The warden's investigators suspect

Stephen Bingham.

Stephen Bingham.
Stephen Bingham.

His grandfather was Governor of Connecticut once,

and a US Senator.

There is no way that

George Jackson could have obtained the death gun

except during his visit,

the visit with attorney Stephen Bingham.

Police and San Quentin guards

held him responsible for the death of prison guards

during the George Jackson incident.

If he went to prison, his life was in true danger.

(ominous music continues)

It was a Saturday and I spent the day cooking.

I think I was making cabbage borscht.

We were listening to music, listening to the radio,

and an APB came out that there was this terrible event

at San Quentin.

Whether it was Bingham who deliberately smuggled

a gun to Jackson through these gates is

something that only Stephen Bingham can answer.

And the next thing I know, I'm in the kitchen

and in walks Steve with his motorcycle helmet,

takes off his helmet and says by kind of,

as lighthearted as you can be,

"Hi, what's for dinner?"

And I said, "What are you doing here?"

In the next day or two,

it became clear to us that he was

potentially in great danger.

We developed these ideas that as lawyers,

our jobs were one, to keep the movement on the streets

by representing people who were arrested

and charged with criminal offenses.

We would use the law to expose

some of the problems in our society.

We saw the need for the lawyers

to be part of the movement,

not just the counselors to the movement.

And the young people coming out of law school

saw their role as activist professionals.

(gentle music plays)

Steve was one of the people who said that

I'm not going to simply run for office.

I'm not going to be the white man who is

going to tell folks what to do.

I'm gonna commit myself to working with other people.

One of the projects was to send white lawyers

to sleep inside the office of the Black Panther Party

in San Francisco.

I think it may have been the only Black Panther office,

major Black Panther office,

that did not get attacked in that December of '69

because the police knew

that these white lawyers were sleeping in the office

and if they attacked the office,

they were gonna hurt some white lawyers

and that was gonna give them more headache

than it was worth to them.

There's this quote attributed to J. Edgar Hoover

and he said, "The National Lawyers Guild is more dangerous

than the people who throw bombs."

We give breathing space to the movement.

We protect the movement,

and that's why we're more dangerous.

So you have to get rid of us

so you can get rid of the movement.

(crowd chants indistinctly)

(energetic rock music plays)

(crowd shouts indistinctly)

(energetic rock music continues)

You have to recall, I mean,

we were living during a period

where people were being killed all the time.

All of us expected that at any time

we might be charged with this or that

and be dragged into jail or have to stand trial.

(indistinct chatter)

Among our circles, and a lot of people on the left,

there was a lot of interest

in the rights of prisoners and who prisoners were.

Steve was at the center in the '70s of the movement

when he went out to visit George Jackson.

And that exploded

and that was an impact on the world.

What happened at Attica was a part of the result of that.

From Soledad to San Quentin,

a prison reform movement was growing,

led by a young convict who had served 11 years

for robbing a gas station, George Jackson.

Here in prison, we see the repression,

the exploitation, the victimization of lower class people.

Steve was not actually representing George Jackson

when he went to visit him in August of 1971.

He had been visiting him that summer to collect information,

to file a lawsuit

against the Department of Corrections

for its cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners

in the Adjustment Center.

In the Adjustment Center, prisoners lived

23 and a half hours a day in lockdown.

They had a half an hour for exercise.

They were treated like animals.

They were brutalized.

Stephen Bingham was

like so many of today's young lawyers,

angry at the injustices in the system,

but committed to working within it for change.

He organized Mexican American farm workers

in Central California,

then went to work for a local anti-poverty office.

The authorities believe he took

that one, last over-committed act

and tried to circumvent the system

and smuggle a gun to George Jackson.

If I was incarcerated,

I would probably get killed.

I would be guarded by guards

who believed that I was responsible

for the death of these guards at San Quentin.

And then I get a phone call from Steve saying

he needed help.

He was so scared

because there was no safe place.

They were gonna come at him from all sides,

and he just needed to get away.

The threat was immediate, it was imminent.

And I contacted this woman who was able to get

fake IDs for people because she had helped GIs

who had been to Vietnam and didn't wanna go back.

So we arranged to meet him in Las Vegas.

(car engine hums)

They never investigated properly.

They cleaned up the entire crime scene,

so there was no independent opportunity

to view the crime scene by the media and other people.

So I was driven to the bus station

in San Jose

to go to Las Vegas to meet with some friends

who were gonna help me get papers under a different name.

I was having a coffee,

waiting for the bus in an hour or two,

and there's a gentleman sitting at the next table

and I'm looking at the newspaper that he's looking at

and there's this huge picture of me on the front page

of the newspaper.

(camera shutter clicks)

I was trying to think carefully everything I did,

'cause I was at risk at this point.

I had very long hair,

so I went into a barber shop to get my hair cut.

And I thought if I go in and try to get a crew cut,

he's gonna think, wow, that's peculiar.

And then he's gonna see the picture in the paper

and whatever.

So, I just asked him to do a good trim.

And once that was finished,

I went around the corner to another barber shop

and promptly asked him if he could cut my hair

because I wanted it to be much shorter.

So I did it in two phases.

(crowd chatters)

I met Steve in a seedy hotel and we just said,

"What are we gonna do to protect him?"

We gave him the ID.

We dyed his hair,

we trimmed his eyebrows,

and then he left.

George and I were the same age,

both 29.

What different lives we were born into.

For a young, headstrong,

kind of tough kid growing up in Los Angeles

with a unbelievable racist police force back in the '60s,

it was almost inevitable that he was gonna end up in jail.

And of course, I'm growing up

in my very privileged household in Connecticut

and going to private schools.

You would be hard pressed to find

in inequality of America two situations more different.

(crowd chatters)

(alarm bell rings)

(cell doors slam)

George Jackson wasn't simply an extraordinary individual,

which he was.

He encouraged community and collective efforts

and political education.

It was really an eye-opening experience

because I had been doing work around political prisoners

for quite some time.

(indistinct chatter)

(door slams)

But this was the first time I began to get a sense

of the oppressiveness of prison life.

(indistinct chatter)

I was contacted about

going in to meet with George and talk with him

about filing a civil suit

dealing with the conditions of detention

in what San Quentin euphemistically calls

the Adjustment Center.

There was excessive shackling.

There were five or six quiet cells

where people would be thrown,

where the toilet was just a hole in the floor

and there wasn't any running water

and they were just given a bucket.

I mean, this is America.

This is not South Africa.

The prisons were completely segregated institutions.

They were really California's apartheid.

Well, I was incarcerated under a term

that called for one to life

where I could have done one year and been released.

I've done 10.

That's more time than anybody in the state has ever done

on a one to life.

George Jackson had incredible influence through his book,

"Soledad Brother".

I mean, the introduction was written

by the famous French author, Jean Genet.

The book was an internationally famous book,

and it's this book of letters,

these powerful letters saying to the world

racism is being used to split prisoners

and oppress them in the prisons.

You have to open your eyes.

♪ Lord, lord they cut George Jackson down ♪

♪ Lord, lord, they laid him in the ground ♪

Jackson became an international symbol

for the oppression and the racism in American prisons.

And really importantly,

he was bringing Black and white prisoners together.

One of his lasting legacies,

it has to do with the purpose of knowledge,

the role of knowledge.

And he, I think, exemplified

how knowledge can be used

in a radical and transformative way,

how it can be used to change the world.

(funky music plays)

And we'll raise our children to be like George Jackson,

to live like George Jackson,

and to fight for freedom

as George Jackson fought for freedom.

His action was a political statement

because he set the standard for all political prisoners.

He took the only available avenue of redress

against state murder.

The state created the violent situation

that exists in San Quentin today.

(funky music continues)

No way was this an escape attempt on this day.

George Jackson runs from the Adjustment Center

into the grounds.

The walls are huge.

There's no way he could get over a wall.

Plus, there's snipers on the wall.

A sniper shoots and kills him.

(gunshot bangs)

(funky music continues)

The district attorney told me

there is hardly any doubt in his mind

that Stephen was the instrument

by which the gun was delivered to George Jackson.

I don't know if that is true,

but I had it in my mind that Steve could have been

victimized or used as an instrument inadvertently.

(emotive music plays)

[Person Off-Camera] Mr. Bingham, (indistinct).

My purpose in coming to California

will primarily to do what I could for Steve,

perhaps increasingly with the sense of wanting him to

feel that

if he came out of hiding,

that there was plenty of chance for his clearing himself.

Alf was a very, you know, impressive, imposing fellow.

An interview was arranged.

Patrician could not be a more appropriate word.

He was used to being in control

and to having his way, having his say.

And I think that it was very difficult for him,

initially unpleasant for him,

to have these young, lefty punks

who were in their middle 20s,

obviously in charge and not letting him be in charge.

(tape player clatters)

I was concerned at the public image

that was projected in the papers that day,

after the prison break.

Though Steve's name was not yet mentioned,

it was clear the authorities believed

the pistol had been smuggled to Jackson by a lawyer

who had seen him just before he produced the gun.

(smooth music plays)

[Newsreader Off-Camera] An investigation

centering around radical attorney Stephen Bingham,

grandson of a former US Senator.

As soon as Steve's name began to surface

as the lawyer involved,

I, you know, I just simply couldn't believe it.

And I felt at that time that it was some kind of conspiracy,

but it was a conspiracy of the authorities

to get at the lawyers that they found distasteful.

I actually started collecting news articles,

about 500, 600 pages.

I came across articles in which before the event,

authorities were claiming that there were lawyers

from the Lawyers Guild who were sneaking in articles

and who were plotting with the prisoners.

You know, things that were just unsubstantiated.

And as a result of that,

I started an article which appeared in "The Nation" magazine

about the inconsistencies in the stories

presented by the authorities.

(smooth music continues)

(traffic hums)

A couple days after Steve left

I was driving my car and came to a stoplight

and I saw a man look at me,

take out a piece of paper

and starting to write my license down.

I jumped out of the car and I said, "What are you writing?"

And he said, "Nothing, nothing."

I said, "You're writing my license plate down.

What are you doing?"

And he said, "I thought you were Stephen Bingham."

And I said, "I'm not Stephen Bingham."

He said, "I'm just trying to do my duty

as an American, good American citizen."

And I said, "Tear it up."

And he tore it up.

I was so sad for Steve,

knowing that all over the country,

people were looking for him.

(tense music plays)

The FBI started calling me

and coming to my door

and asking if I'd had any knowledge of Steve's whereabouts.

And of course I didn't have any knowledge.

I couldn't imagine my brother carrying a gun into a prison.

I assumed that he was innocent,

as my parents did,

and that somehow he'd been set up by the authorities.

Everybody was sort of horrified,

but there was also a lot of kind of skepticism too

on some parts of the family wondering, well,

why did he do this?

Why did he leave?

You know, why did he drop out?

I entertained the possibility that, in fact,

he had done what he was accused of doing.

It didn't seem like him,

but he was a bit of a revolutionary.

There were people in the family that at least say

that they never entertained for an instant

that he could be guilty.

I was not one of them.

The story that was attached to it

made it seem entirely improbable.

That for one thing, they never seemed to ever arrive

at the right size of the gun.

You know, at one time it was a little, bitty gun

and another time it was a great big gun.

I thought, what gun are they talking about?

Well come on.

We are satisfied now that it was brought in

underneath a wig.

And since we found the wig this morning,

we can now tie in that there was help from the outside.

(suspenseful music plays)

My whole life had changed.

Out of survival instinct, I didn't reflect on that.

I just had to think forward, think future.

Here I was, Robert Boarts.

I had to invent an entire identity.

An identity is not just a name and a picture and a passport.

It's like, who am I?

If you had no photo ID,

you couldn't get a passport quickly.

There was one exception

and that was that if there was a family emergency abroad

and somebody vouched for you,

you could get a passport.

A woman who I'd never seen

but was part of the movement

was willing to risk prosecution.

She could have gone to prison for five years,

and she was willing to step forward,

wear a wig, and look very different than who she was.

And she flew across the country with me

from Las Vegas to Philadelphia.

(suspenseful music continues)

She went all by herself to pick up the passport

the next day.

And she proposed if it didn't work,

that it was better for her to be arrested

and deal with the consequences than for me to be arrested.

If she didn't come back within a certain amount of time,

it meant something horrible had happened

and I needed to just leave and invent plan B,

which I didn't have at that point.

(somber music plays)

My mother used to always sit at that end of the table

with a coffee there or with her drink there,

sitting by the phone and always thinking

every time it rang and just running to get it,

oh, that might be Steve.

Within this yellow frame house

of American Revolution vintage,

65-year-old Sylvia Bingham raised Stephen,

one of four children.

Mrs. Bingham, you said earlier that Steve was

an advocate of non-violence

and yet he is almost alleged to have

brought in a gun into this prison scene.

Is that conceivable under any circumstances?

It's not conceivable to me.

If Steve has been guilty of this, this is one thing,

and I'm sure that he's able to take the consequences.

But we are very anxious not to see him framed.

I must say, it reminds me of the summer

Steve spent in Mississippi

when I didn't know whether he'd have emerged alive or dead.

And I hung on the phone and worried about him all the time.

♪ Didn't it rain, children ♪

(crowd shouts indistinctly)

♪ Oh Lord, yes ♪

♪ Didn't it, Lord ♪

♪ Didn't it, you know it did ♪

♪ Didn't it, oh, oh, yes ♪

We hope to send into Mississippi this summer

upwards of 1,000 teachers,

ministers,

lawyers and students

from all around the country.

The goal was to do

voter registration work

and freedom education schools.

♪ Rain, rain, rain, rain ♪

♪ Rain, rain, rain ♪

Seeing two sides,

all these white people going about their business

as if they were living in the rest of the United States

and living a perfectly normal life,

when three miles away there were sharecroppers

or people living on less than six or $700 a year.

And they had absolutely no consciousness of it.

The reality is that the power structure was not responding

to reasonable demands that were being put forth

in a reasonable way.

Mayors are saying we call on law enforcement to stop it.

By definition,

if you're in Mississippi working for civil rights,

it's dangerous.

♪ Rain, rain, rain, rain ♪

If they're dead, I feel like they asked for it.

They came here looking for trouble.

♪ Didn't it, yes ♪

♪ Didn't it, you know it did ♪

His father and mother were deeply worried.

They have connections.

Go down the street.

Everyone go down the street.

His father used those connections to talk

to Senator Eastland from Mississippi

about making sure his son did not get abused

in some fashion.

The senator called the governor

to see that nothing happened to a volunteer

with important political connections.

I had a frantic call from Steve,

"Daddy, what have you done?"

In fact, he was concerned

that law enforcement was not protecting any of us.

Rather than providing protection,

they could essentially make my life so miserable

by having police around me 24 hours a day

that I would leave the state.

I did have some resentment towards my father.

It was meddling in my life,

even though it was well-meaning.

(pensive music plays)

One of the dynamics that seemed to me

about the Bingham family is that you're being told

as a seven-year-old that you come from a family with a past.

They had a role to play.

And it's not just about their personal desires.

They were gonna change the world.

He could not have missed the significance of him

also stepping away from political missionaries

with his grandfather who rediscovered Machu Picchu,

and then religious missionaries,

with his great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather,

the first three Hiram Binghams.

Each one of these generations up until Stephen

had been wrestling with what it meant

to be a Bingham in the world.

And I think Stephen's vision was,

that also morphed over time,

to not be the missionary,

to pull back from that hyper-charged vision of yourself

relative to others as being subordinate and inferior.

(pensive music continues)

At the end of the Mississippi summer,

I went to Berkeley Law School.

I dropped out of law school after the first year

and went into the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone.

Fairly quickly, I became disillusioned

with the whole project.

The questions that Stephen was raising

about his time in the Peace Corps

helped him see that the liberalism

that the Peace Corps embodied,

that his father was a reflection of,

was no longer working in the world.

(mellow music plays)

(indistinct chatter)

I got the call from the Black Panthers.

This investigator, Vanita Anderson,

was planning to take out drafts of a book

George was in the process of finishing.

My only purpose when I arrived there with her was

to make sure she could get her visit with George.

(scanner beeps)

Vanita was carrying a briefcase

that had a tape recorder inside it.

The warden denied the visit.

Vanita asked me to take the drafts of the book in

to visit with him myself.

(syncopated music plays)

We don't think there was any gun

that any inmate or anyone brought in from the outside.

We think it was an inside job.

To understand how reasonable that was,

there's context.

The National Lawyers Guild itself was

a targeted organization

of the counterintelligence program of the FBI.

The FBI program, COINTELPRO,

their counterinsurgency program to destroy the Panthers

and other groups was horrible.

In Chicago, they killed Fred Hampton

and Guild lawyers were at the site of the shooting

that night

and they preserved the evidence.

In Los Angeles, the Panthers called the home

of some Guild lawyers,

young Guild lawyers from inside and said,

"The police are surrounding us."

And Guild lawyers went and stood outside

as witnesses, white Guild lawyers.

(melancholy music plays)

(melancholy music continues)

I am scared.

I'm really scared.

I cannot face the irreversibility of my situation,

can't face the hopelessness of going back.

Can't face the prospect of always being alone.

Can't face the fact of never having a family,

never having children,

never seeing family and friends again

who are so important to me,

never being involved in the struggle

in the way I was before.

(melancholy music continues)

I spent about a year and a half

in Eastern Europe,

mainly Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.

Eastern Europe didn't participate in Interpol

and you could live in Eastern Europe very, very cheaply.

I would move every week or two,

just pretending I was a tourist arriving for the first time

'cause I felt uncomfortable staying in any place

more than about 10 days.

I went to visit him in Hungary.

His first reaction was discomfort

because as soon as I saw him,

I leapt on him and hugged him

and he was into a security mode, which was understandable.

Steve was unsettled.

We talked about him stopping the running

and finding a place to live and making a life for himself.

So by the time we left, he had decided to move to Paris.

(cheerful music plays)

I have a little apartment, very cheap.

I have a good chance to soon have a part-time job

to sustain me.

I'm in Paris, where there are things to do, people to meet.

(sound of typewriter keys)

One is given life only once

and I don't want to die stupidly,

but even less I don't want to live stupidly.

Thus, the origin of my gut-level feeling

that I'd rather die living than live dying.

(footsteps shuffle)

(Stephen knocks on door)

Hello.
Hi Steve.

Patrick taught me how to paint.

And you know, I did earn a living, become a house painter.

And, which politically fit

because we were trying to work with the working class

and I was learning to use my hands.

Can we go this way?

Sure, let’s go.

I had friends who gave me

a significant amount of money
they’d collected from who knows where.

They never told me because

in principle it’s illegal to give aid

to a fugitive from justice.

They didn’t tell me a thing.

But I survived on that money
until I could find work.

I could only occasionally buy a cup of coffee

If I'm in some public place,

I kinda like to face the entrance

'cause I always had the feeling

I wanted to see people coming

if they were coming to get me

and not have a tap on the shoulder.

Exile...

is extremely difficult.

In exile

you miss the smells, the sensations.

Everything that makes you who you are-

your childhood,

your family history.

I did learn to close off my emotions

to other people 'cause the horror of what I was living in

could have very easily allowed

all kinds of uncontrollable emotions

to bubble to the surface.

The danger is that I end up

closing off emotions to myself

and not danger in the terms of security,

but just the negative aspect of that

in terms of who I am as a person.

He was an odd character to us,

because we knew nothing of his past.

But none of us could imagine who he actually was.

I was tempted to ask him,

“So what did you do in the US?
What was your job, your education?”

When he was with us he never wanted to...

go to public places, like to a cafe.

I think it was a very lonely time for him.

I am tired, just really tired,

playing games, saying things I don't believe,

pretending I'm not what I am.

I want to be me.

(telephone rings)

Goodness, was Steve Bingham,

a voice I had not heard for several years.

And at when I got the call, prior to it,

I didn't know whether he was alive or dead.

I remember Henry Weinstein calling me,

somewhat agitated, saying, "I need to see you, Paul,

as soon as possible."

We met the next day at my office.

He said, "Paul, no one's heard from Steve Bingham

for a couple years.

He contacted me, he wants to meet with me

and meet to write an article showing people

that one, I'm alive

and two, I'm doing good political work

and I don't want to go to jail."

And this was like August or late July of 1974.

Nixon was convening grand juries around the country

to go after basically anything left of center.

I said, "Henry, if a grand jury is convened

to get you, to force you to give up

where you met with Steve

and where Steve was living and you refuse,

then you go to jail."

It was potentially a great story,

but was also potentially a number of months in jail.

Could be as long as 18 months.

It was a conscious tactic of the Nixon administration.

Once I made the decision that I was going to go,

I let Paul know.

Of course I let Steve know,

but I didn't tell anybody else.

You know, I didn't tell my parents,

I didn't tell my closest friend.

(apprehensive music plays)

(train engine rattles)

So I got into Toronto

and I started looking around for a cheap hotel

where no one would care who I was

as long as I was able to pay the bill.

And I found such a place, I dunno,

maybe it's $10 a night.

(apprehensive music continues)

And we met for

a couple of days of interviews.

We were both very concerned about being followed,

about possible surveillance.

Just very concerned, understandably, about being tailed.

(crowd shouts indistinctly)

So we met in an empty stadium

where there was a football team practicing.

Henry was writing,

and then I was talking and periodically

the people on the football field would look up at us

and sort of wonder what we were doing there.

All of the meetings were outside,

ball parks, in a restaurant.

And it became clear that Steve was very concerned

that if, God forbid, we were, you know,

some cop spotted us or something,

or some FBI agent and he was arrested,

that I couldn't be charged with harboring a fugitive

because we were in a public place.

(crowds shriek)

There were things he wanted me to know.

I mean, the fact that he was alive,

the fact that he was involved in political work

wherever he was living.

But there were things that he didn't want me to know,

that potentially could have created problems for me.

I mean, if somebody had ever asked me,

"Well, where's he living?"

I could say, "I don't know.

He wouldn't tell me where I was living."

And I think I sort of felt like

I couldn't look at myself in the mirror

if I didn't do this.

I would've sort of been second-guessing myself forever.

It became liberating emotionally

to know that everybody on the planet who cared about me was

somehow or other gonna read this article

that was on the front page of "The New York Times".

Did he have any regrets about his decision

to go underground?

Without a trace of hesitation, smiling broadly, he said,

"No."

People may think I've gotten into mysticism

like Rennie Davis, or I'm quietly living out my life.

In fact, the opposite's happened.

It's been a very good and strong period for me,

growing my involvement, the struggle is stronger.

There's a real joy from being alive,

engaged at one level or another in revolutionary struggle

and the fellow friendship around that.

(airplane engine roars)

When I got to San Francisco, I did not kiss the ground,

but I breathed a deep sigh of relief.

I entered the country, nobody stopped me.

The first thing I did was I went to see Paul

before I went home to let him know that I was back

and that things had, you know, basically gone fine.

When the article appeared, I was greatly relieved.

It meant that he hadn't been killed

in Berkeley or Oakland back,

shortly after the incident at San Quentin.

Henry had done a really brave thing.

It was like a blow against the Nixon administration.

It was a blow against the prison officials

who were trying to suppress the prison movement.

Steve could have been any of us liberal and radical lawyers.

If you intimidated the lawyers,

and going after Steve was a huge intimidation,

the prisoners would be isolated once again.

So when we saw Henry's article, it was like,

all right, we're fighting back.

♪ Yeah, ooh, ooh, ooh ♪

I met Robert at the University of Vincennes,

an experiment in higher education...

somewhat like the atmosphere at Berkeley.

It had grown out of the negotiations with students

who had led the struggles of May 1968.

They had occupied the Sorbonne,
demonstrated widely throughout France.

This movement reflected the ideas
sweeping the world in those times.

The university accepted factory workers
as well as regular students.

It was like a small revolution.

And students came from around the world.

A student could get a visa for a year,

and Vincennes really didn't care what I was doing there.

So I was a student for 10 years.

(indistinct chatter)

After moving like a vagabond from place to place,

finding Vincennes was a little like

finding heaven on Earth.

Our group emerged

from the ‘68 movement.

We were leftists.

We made films,

about the land,

a film about the wine industry,

about a bank that loaned to small farmers.

It was a struggle for social justice
in the countryside.

I taught a film course on Tuesday evenings

called “Le Front Paysan.”

He came to see me and said,

“I love what you’re doing,
and it’s exactly what I want to do.

Can I get involved with your work?”

And of course I said yes.

(indistinct chatter)

Every day of those 13 years,

at some point you open the door out of your little cocoon

and you venture into a world where there's police,

there's strangers,

there's friends of the family that suddenly appear

on the street corner.

(tranquil music plays)

There's all these unexpected things

that could potentially happen.

I didn't trust anybody on the personal, emotional level,

and I didn't share my story.

Scene 1 Take 1.

My earliest memories of Francoise are

being in classes

and her working on this film on University Vincennes.

We had a classmate, Phillippe,

who was going to work on Steve’s film
about the Longwy strike.

But Phillippe never showed up,

and Steve called to see if I could help.

I asked her if she could come to

do sound.

The country of the three borders,
it is the high country...

In the valley of the Chiers River, the steel mills,
the blast furnaces...

The thing that triggered my interest was

this extraordinary union struggle in Longwy,

which is a small, steel-producing town.

In August,

the plant will close.

Completely shut down

We’re trying to salvage the situation,
but I think that...

for us...

we can’t expect much.

It was a true disaster.

The abandonment of the workers,
the collapse of an entire heritage, a tragedy.

And it was Robert who decided to make the film.

We were working elsewhere, he did it alone.

It took guts.

It took major courage and determination
to do what hat he did.

He had truly come into his own,
doing something original and independent.

And that was a amazing experience

and also very scary because somehow,

the guards learned that there was

a foreigner inside the plant filming,

which was completely illegal.

And the workers hid me in the broom closet.

Here I am, underground,

and I'm inside a factory and there's a guard looking for me.

And, but I didn't panic

'cause that was one of the things my living underground

had taught me.

I just sort of focused on the task of being

quiet in the closet.

The film was gonna be a tool

to get the government to invest

in the steel industry in France, to save it.

(pensive folk music plays)

I was attracted to Françoise

but because I thought she was linked

with either Phillippe or Patrick

it never occurred to me that I might date her.

I was sharing an apartment with two friends.

Phillippe was visiting one weekend.

I slept on the floor in my sleeping bag.

Phillippe wasn’t awake yet.

Then Steve suddenly kissed me-that’s how it began.

It absolutely seduced me!

I didn’t think he was the type.

He seemed a bit distant.

(traditional French music plays)

Steve was so poor in France.

He was a working class guy, you know, house painter.

And I remember having picnic with him in the park.

He would eat his sardine, you know,

it was very cheap,

and he was covered with plaster

and we would've a picnic there.

(birds chirp)

Françoise and I were together for a full year

before I finally said to myself

this is different and I wanna share who I am.

I was sort of scared 'cause it could have gone

in two directions.

I'd been lying to her for a year.

I remember it very well.

It took all day, we were
sitting on the lawn.

He said he was not Robert Boarts.

My first reaction was,
“I didn’t like that name anyway!”

He talked about the context
of the Black Panthers.

And all that had happened.

Ever since the day I left,

I contemplated some deep recess in my mind

the consequences of what might happen,

if sometime I had a trial and I was found guilty.

I mean, that was always

in my mind.

Back home,

our family was closely following

the 1975 trial of six prisoners accused of murder

for the violent events of August, 1971.

We called it the San Quentin Six trial,

but the official name was more haunting,

the people versus Stephen Bingham.

The trial was named after

the key defendant, who was absent.

We had no idea who this guy Bingham was,

but that we believed that whatever it was that happened,

it was nobody's fault.

It wasn't George Jackson, it wasn't Steve.

It was the system.

We weren't the notorious people in the Adjustment Center.

We were the extras to a drama,

to a scenario, to a story

that climaxed that particular day.

The San Quentin Six trial was a living example

of racism in action.

In the courtroom, Johnny Spain was chained

and he was unable to move.

The defendants were treated as dangerous animals.

They were not treated as human beings.

This was exactly what we feared,

trials that were heavy on theater and convictions,

but fell short on protecting

the legal rights of the accused.

I was dumbstruck when he told me the story.

He’s one of the gentlest men
I’ve ever known.

My first response was, “If you are accused of this,

people must learn that you’re innocent.

It’s essential that you go back and deal with this.

You can’t spend the rest of your life
like this in Paris.

The life of a housepainter is a very marginal existence.”

(traffic roars)

I'd continually assess the situation in the States

in terms of when would be a time when

I would be able to go home and feel safe.

(poignant music plays)

We were often reminded

of Steve's absence by the clicking phone lines

and the dark cars parked across the street,

a constant warning that our family was

under FBI surveillance.

Word was brought to us in person

by one of Steve's former housemates

that he would be able to make a rendezvous

with Sylvia and me within the next month or so.

(poignant music continues)

The idea of meeting with my parents was scary

and freaked my friends out, freaked me out.

So what we eventually did is I, you know,

I pushed on the question and we set it up

through Gary Bellow,

one of the few people that my parents really trusted.

And Gary somehow got my parents out on the lawn

because we didn't know if the house was bugged

and basically said,

"You have a chance to see Steve.

(melodramatic music plays)

but you have to come right now.

You're not allowed to make any phone calls or do anything.

Get in my car

and we're gonna go to the ferry and go to Long Island."

(melodramatic music continues)

He followed a very circuitous

and roundabout route in downtown New London,

as he explained to throw off any possibility

of our being trailed.

Eventually, we arrived at the terminus

of the Long Island ferry.

He warned me to stay as much out of sight as possible

while he went to get tickets.

We enjoyed the two-hour ferry ride across Long Island Sound,

hardly daring to believe we might soon see Steve.

After an hour's drive, we pulled into a motel

where a cabin had been reserved for us.

In the cabin, we sat expectantly.

Finally, there was a knock at the door

and Steve stepped out of the darkness.

So we met for about four hours

and it was, as you can imagine,

it was pretty emotional.

One of the things I wanted was to tell my mother

that I would've connected with her earlier

but because of Daddy, everybody just felt it wasn't safe.

I'd been afraid that being a fugitive

would've hardened him, but he was his old gentle self,

although it seemed he showed a new firmness

and self-confidence.

I had two little stones

that I'd picked up on a beach somewhere,

I think in France,

and I gave one to each of them

just as something concrete that they could kinda hold onto,

so when they woke up in the morning,

they would know it had not all just been a dream.

I reassured him that there was a finite point in time

that was coming to an end.

He rose and said he had to go.

And after a tearful goodbye,

we saw him go out the door and disappear in the darkness.

(sad piano music plays)

Those few short hours in Long Island

were the last moments my uncle had with his mother.

Three years later, she was dead.

I think it was after my mother had died

that I really began talking with Françoise

about finally going home.

(uneasy music plays)

I never heard my name spoken,

I never said my name.

I remember when I finally decided to come back,

walking to Vincennes and I'm out in the middle of the forest

and I decided I really needed to just say my name,

psychologically, just to hear my name.

And I modulated my voice and I said,

Stephen Bingham,

Stephen Bingham.

Stephen Bingham reappeared today

after 13 years on the run from the law.

On the advice of his attorney,

Bingham declined to say where he's been living

or what he's been doing the past 13 years.

We couldn't have him arrested as a fugitive.

That would really hurt the case.

The whole idea was surrender,

showing your faith in your innocence.

(indistinct chatter)

Let's walk over to Glide Church.

Glide Church is this nationally famous, progressive church.

And one of the lawyers knew the minister at Glide Church

and he arranged for Steve and Françoise to sleep

in Glide Church the night before we surrendered.

(camera shutters click)

I'm real happy to be back.

My politically active life

has always been dedicated to the idea

that change can come about without violence,

that violence tends to poison otherwise good motives.

The sympathy I want to express

to the families of those killed that day is not gratuitous.

It is very real.

So is my innocence.

You must understand, I was very afraid.

I decided finally to leave,

when one week later I heard

that there was "conclusive evidence",

pointing to my knowing participation.

I knew that such evidence did not exist

and could only have been invented.

They booked me into the jail in a single cell

'cause they were so afraid

that something might happen to me,

'cause shit happens in jails.

(indistinct chatter)

I was greeted by the inmates,

"Hey, did you bring my gun in for me?"

Bail was set at a half a million dollars,

which is the equivalent today of two or $3 million.

A friend called me.

He said, perhaps I already knew,
but he wanted to tell me

that there was an article
about Robert Boarts...

who was in fact Steve.

I was totally shocked by
what was in those two pages.

I was a bit angry.

Robert had been with us a long time.

He was like a brother.

He’d met Françoise, a student of mine.

We were like a family.

And I understood

that the work he’d done with us

was an extension of his activism in the US.

That’s quite nice,

that we had engaged with someone
who remained true to their ideals.

I turned on the TV to watch the news.

The first thing I saw was Robert.

It looked just like him.

I’d just showered, and Bernie called out:

“Jean Rene! Come and see!”

Next to him was his father, other people.

There was an audience.

They said, “The fugitive has returned!”

And she heard Steve speak.

He was wearing a suit,

which she’d never seen him wear before.

And I said to you then,

“I knew he was a criminal!”

We were shocked.

It couldn’t possibly be him.

But it was.

(calm music plays)

Françoise had a temporary visa.

They weren’t married.

And in order to stay with Steve-

we’d started calling him Steve-

they decided to get married, it was the only way.

Since we were there, we attended
this very discreet ceremony.

But it was very moving, very beautiful.

Bingham will likely face all the original charges,

one count of conspiracy, five counts of murder.

(tense, rhythmic music plays)

We were concerned that for many juries,

just the question of how else could it have happened

if not with Steve Bingham's participation

would be sufficient to get a conviction.

And I, you know, I carried that fear

throughout the whole trial.

(tense, rhythmic music continues)

By charging me,

they never investigated the incident.

We came across dozens and dozens of names

of people who'd had contact with Jackson that day

who had never interviewed.

So we had a preliminary hearing,

and at the time it was the longest preliminary hearing

in California history.

There was 50 witnesses,

there was 250 exhibits that went on and on.

From my perspective, sitting in on the prelims,

it didn't go that well.

The prosecution seemed to be really organized

and the kind of feeling in the courtroom

from those of us who were watching was,

gee, this isn't going as well as we would like.

Given all those facts and Mr. Bingham's flight,

I think that there is proof of his guilt.

And so we will have to wait for Bingham's trial

to see if there are new facts

on that bloodiest day in San Quentin history.

And if those facts are not compelling,

or if Bingham is wrong about the new mood in America,

he could find himself behind the same walls

where George Jackson died 13 years ago.

The prosecution had, on its face,

a very strong circumstantial evidence case.

Steve goes to a visit with George Jackson.

Right after the visit,

George takes control of the Adjustment Center

and then people are killed and wounded.

So the prosecution's theory was

Steve smuggled a gun in through a tape recorder.

The problem with that theory is

that the tape recorder went through a metal detector

and was searched by the guard.

The other problem with that theory is

Steve never intended to take a tape recorder.

He was there with a private investigator.

She had the tape recorder.

He wasn't even gonna take it in.

The guard said to him,

"Aren't you gonna take the tape recorder in?"

And at the preliminary hearing,

Lenny Weinglass did a really nice job

in cross-examination of the guard,

establishing those facts.

(indistinct chatter)

The defendant, Mr. Bingham, George Jackson and others

conspired to commit one or two crimes.

That conspiracy resulted in the deaths,

the murders of Frank P. DeLeon

and Jere Graham.

People had come together and formed a support committee.

I had two buttons made

that everybody was handed out to everybody.

One of 'em was "Welcome home, Steve"

and the other was "Not guilty".

There were supporters in the courtroom for him

every day.

Having people in the courtroom changes

the dynamic amazingly.

So you may be wondering

how come Stephen Bingham ended up being charged

with conspiracy and murder.

The opening statement was

an incredibly nerve-wracking experience.

I was of course very nervous

and my hands were sweating

and I was holding the gun to try to explain

that the size of this gun, the shape of it,

the weight of it would've been impossible

for George Jackson to have walked

the length of a football field

between the visitor room and the Adjustment Center

while balancing this object on his head

even if he had had a wig.

The diagram that I'm now putting up.

Depending upon which side was speaking,

the prosecution or the defense,

you'd go home that night thinking

well, of course it had to have happened this way,

and then the next day you'd be swayed the other way.

Their theory of the case was essentially

it couldn't have happened any other way

than Steve smuggling the gun into him.

Because the guard who had examined the tape recorder,

his recollection of the size of these objects

changed over time.

Things got bigger and bigger.

The gun didn't fit in the tape recorder.

Gerry put it up on a chalkboard.

They drew one box and then there was a box bigger,

then a box bigger than that.

And there were four boxes.

And a graphic thing like that put up on the blackboard

pretty much demolished his testimony.

We were able to get across the theory

that the government was looking for a scapegoat

because George Jackson's death was a national,

if not an international event.

And the government had to find some sort of theory

that would turn the spotlight away

from what was going on in the prison

and what was going on

in the solitary confinement of the Adjustment Center.

(cell door bangs)

And Steve was a scapegoat.

The only real argument

that the DA had in his corner was that I fled.

And there wasn't a whole lot that could be done around that

'cause we agreed, I fled,

and I came back to be acquitted.

(indistinct).

After the multitude of witnesses

and exhibits were presented,

Terry Boren got me to admit that I lied

when I was getting my passport.

And I lied when I was telling people

my name was Robert Boarts.

And everything that was personal was a lie,

and so you are a liar.

(unsettling music plays)

No one else left.

No one else obliterated their identity.

Why run if you're innocent?

(unsettling music continues)

The darkest day of the trial was when guards

who had been taken hostage and had their throat slit

but survived, testified.

It was horrific, horrific testimony.

After court that day,

Steve's dad wanted to have dinner with me.

He wanted me to talk to the prosecutor

about trying to negotiate some kind of plea bargain.

You know, as a father and a grandfather,

I, you know, I can't imagine what it was like for him

to be there every day

and listen to all of that testimony

knowing that his son could get convicted

and go to prison for the rest of his life.

But I told Mr. Bingham, "We're gonna win.

We're going to win."

(unsettling music continues)

I told the jurors this trial's not about 1986,

it's about 1971.

And you had to understand what life was like

and what the political environment was like in 1971

to understand why Steve and his friends

thought he had to leave.

But that jury was out for a week.

Which was nerve-wracking for all of us

because we thought if they're gonna acquit him,

they're just gonna go in there and vote for acquittal

and come out.

And every day that they deliberated

and they didn't rush out with a not guilty verdict

made us more and more nervous.

So, I wasn't eating or sleeping.

I was so scared, I didn't go to court.

I just thought how horrible it would be

to visit Steve in prison for the rest of my life

and his life.

(anxious music plays)

Ever since the day I left,

I contemplated in some deep recess in my mind

the consequences if I was found guilty.

We did not really want to think about the worst,

of course, because you are paralyzed by the idea.

You know, which door of that courtroom was

he gonna walk out of?

(anxious music continues)

Stephen and I had gone up to the roof,

it was lunchtime,

and a guard came up and said,

"Ah, you know, Mr. Bingham,

there's a verdict and you need to come back

to the courtroom."

I remember seeing one of the press people

running down the hall and

the jury's back, the jury's back.

And he actually said, "And we think the verdict's guilty."

And all of us turned white.

I mean, Françoise totally turned white.

Everybody just froze.

I was sitting next to Alf and Kitty, you know,

on the second row when the jurors came up.

We all, you know, took each other's hand

and press, you know, like crazy

because it was so tense and we didn't know what to expect.

We, the jury in the above entitled case

find the defendant Stephen Mitchell Bingham

not guilty.

(hopeful music plays)

I don't have any words.

I've waited 15 years for this day.

For all of us, just thrilled with the verdict.

But also the significance of the case is that

it's okay to care about what goes on

inside California's prisons.

I think the prosecution persisted after all these years

because they wanted to paint everybody with the same brush,

violent and you know, not valuing human life.

And what we felt was our movement was quite the opposite.

The support for Steve was not just a support for him

as an individual,

but a support for our movement.

It wasn't about killing people.

That was what the police did.

It wasn't about tearing things up.

It was about building a better world.

So when Steve was acquitted,

it was an affirmation of our world, not their world.

(joyful music plays)

Just to be open and you know,

go on with a normal life,

not to have this big, big worry in our life,

it's going to make such a difference.

I certainly feel that 13 years underground

and a two-year trial has defined me to other people

but it's not who I am.

(joyful music continues)

You know, everything changed after the verdict

because first of all, Steve,

he was himself again and we were able to

start a family.

I mean, we didn't really expect to have a baby so soon

but we turned out, we had a baby nine months exactly

after the, when the verdict came out.

We named our child Sylvia because of his mother.

So Sylvia was the acquittal baby, born on Earth Day 1987.

(joyful music continues)

I had a firm which specialized in pension law

and I offered him a job.

So he started working with us

and he worked very well.

He was a good lawyer.

I really appreciate that they did that

'cause that's what allowed me to become a lawyer again.

But my life has been working with low-income people

who really get screwed by the system.

So in 1990, I went to work for Bay Area Legal Aid.

The Social Security which has representative payees

that help people and it's required under law

when they have a drug addiction problem,

those people receive their money

and they help the client manage their funds.

We could talk about --

No we're not.
Yes we are.

We're talking about giving all of the rent money

to a landlord.

We are not talking about a program

that would permit with dignity

someone to work out with a representative payee

what's the best way to spend the money?

We were doing this work in very hostile environments.

We were dealing with the backlash of the 1960s and '70s.

We were dealing with the rise of Ronald Reagan

and his coalition that was fundamentally pushing back

against the advances that people had made.

We had to develop credibility both in the community

and with the institutions here in San Francisco.

And Steve was very instrumental in all of that

and inspired me to believe in possibilities

and to, you know, start with the seed of an idea

and dedicate yourself to seeing that idea

you know, bear fruit, you know,

deepen your roots in the community

and always maintain a sense of fairness and rightness.

Not necessarily righteousness,

but rightness in the work that you were doing.

And as long as Steve was in the room,

we felt that the law was indeed on our side.

One of the things we talked about,

and it'd be really helpful to somehow systematically

keep track of people's...

He could have used his celebrity status

and risen to some kind of position of prominence

among folks who find that to be important.

But he is not looking for that.

He makes a contribution by being part of a movement,

by being part of discussion

and accepting collective responsibility,

accepting the ability to work with other people.

We also have to educate the community

that if you get cited and released,

you better show up in court.

Which, if you're undocumented, is kind of scary

'cause then if you don't show up,

then a warrant for your arrest.

Steve taught me what it means to be a movement lawyer,

how to listen to the people on the ground

and how a lawyer can fit into that kind of organizing.

(upbeat classical music plays)

Sylvia, show me your style.

Don't go over there too much, sweetie.

It makes me a little nervous.

Ooh, that was nice

Steve I think had projected all his dream

you know, in Sylvia

and she turned out to be a wonderful young woman.

[Newsreader Off-Camera] It is called a ghost bike,

an all-white bicycle often placed near the spot

where a rider is killed.

This bike on Prospect Avenue is for Sylvia Bingham,

the 22-year-old California native struck and killed Tuesday

while riding her bike to work.

Sylvia Bingham started working

at Hard Hatted Women in Cleveland just August 24th.

She's the best of what we see in young people.

For her parents,

the loss of this child who wanted so much

to give back to the world is beyond words.

The world is not made for parents

to die after their children.

So there is nothing, just nothing to compare this to.

(mournful music plays)

Losing Sylvia was an amazing trauma for us.

I think there's nothing worse in this world

than having a child and losing her so young.

I think that she survives in young people's spirit.

You know, very political,

very interested in changing the world.

Because of this tragedy,

we tend to pay more attention

to what young people are doing around us.

The fact that Sylvia passed away the way she did

really changed Steve's perspective politically.

He became interested in making a greener world,

and in the cause of people choosing

a mode of transportation that is greener.

(mournful music continues)

The skills that I had developed

living underground in a peculiar kind of way

helped me deal with losing Sylvia.

Life

throws incredible shit at you

and you better learn to deal with it

because otherwise, your life falls apart.

His way of surviving is

always to try to fight.

We call him Father Time, right?

Because he is, 'cause he is ageless.

(indistinct chatter)

(funky music plays)