On The DL

Flores Forbes


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Published: Oct 4, 2006

Thu., Oct. 5, 7 p.m., free, Borders, 1 S. Broad St., 215-568-7400

When Flores Forbes was 14, he got beat up by the police for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Two years later, he joined the Black Panthers, and worked his way up to the inner circle and a position as head of the Panthers' "military arm."

In his memoir, Will You Die With Me? (Atria), published almost exactly 30 years after he fled the organization, Forbes writes about gunfights, drug use, extortion, Huey P. Newton's megalomania—a violent, brutal history of would-be revolutionaries who descended into the world of organized crime.

These days, Forbes looks more like your local reverend than an armed and dangerous hero of the resistance or criminal in Oakland's underworld, but he's still a real-deal survivor of 1960s radicalism—and the failure that followed it. And if all that doesn't pique your interest, then remember: No matter how disillusioned Forbes ended up being, you're still sticking it to the man by hearing him speak.