Internationalist Books and Community Center is soliciting nominations for the Third Annual Bob Sheldon Award. The deadline has been extended to April 25.
Each year, the Internationalist collective recognizes a member of the Triangle community who carries on Bob Sheldon's work and breathes life into his legacy by being gentle and persistent, being radical and free-thinking, being playful and patient, and leading by example...
Bob Sheldon founded Internationalist Books in 1981. He described the store's mission as follows: "We are dedicated to the position that we have no country: we do not support mindless patriotic pleas for 'national unity,' nor are we interested in keeping America number one. We support the unity and liberation of oppressed people worldwide and are working toward the day when all oppression and inequality will be removed from the earth."
Toward this end, he provided a space where people could come and learn about revolutionary and activist movements around the world, a center for discussing and analyzing politics and society. Bob labored to provide an alternative to the information disseminated by the mainstream media. Bob embodied peace and compassion through his whole-hearted, unrelenting dedication to social justice while maintaining a "radical calmness" that made him an effective advocate for his many causes.
Bob Sheldon was one of the community's most vocal activists against the Persian Gulf War. On February 21, 1991, within hours of the beginning of the ground war, Bob was shot and killed as he closed the store for the evening. The murderer has never been apprehended. Many believe that his killing was politically motivated.
Contact Internationalist to submit your nomination.
Issues:
Comments
How about G. R. Quinn--he
How about G. R. Quinn--he has balls of steel!
Dan, you need some "radical
Dan, you need some "radical calmness." The fact is that Bob's murder is unsolved and that there are people who believe that it was politically motivated.
Bob was shot with a gun at short range at Internationalist Books's old location on Rosemary street. As I understand it, although there were people in offices immediately adjacent to the store at the time, no one heard any gunfire. Some have speculated that Bob was shot with a gun that had a silencer on it.
The Country was at war at the time and Bob Sheldon was indeed a noted opponent of the war.
I understand that Bob had also been involved in illegally smuggling Eddie Hatcher out of North Carolina when Hatcher was a fugitive from the State of North Carolina and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hatcher is the Native American activist from Robeson County, NC who siezed control of a local newspaper office in order to bring attention to racial issues in his community at the time.
Assuming that Bob really was involved in the flight of Eddie Hatcher (how should I know if that is true?), then I interpret Bob Sheldon to have been involved in other activities that were not generally known to the public. My point is that Bob was not merely a person who had radical things to SAY; he was also someone who was actually DOING things to resist the American Government. I say all of that without placing value judgments on the man. There were certainly many people who were very upset by Bob's political message and activities.
So, I don't think it is accurate to say that there is 'not a shred of evidence' that his murder was politically motivated. I personally think that we do not know and cannot say whether Bob was assassinated or not. And we probably will never know anything more about it. But it remains a possibility that Bob was assassinated.
-Mark Chilton
PS How would we email you directly when you did not post with your real email address or put your name on your post?
Please people, lay off about
Please people, lay off about Sheldon's murder being "politically motivated." There's not a shred of evidence that such is the case. It's little more than the wet dream of disempowered leftists projecting their own paranoia onto the death of a leader. If it is true that "many believe" this drivel and need to repeat it, that speaks volumes about what is wrong with the left today.
Bob Sheldon understood better than most that there was plenty of bad stuff going down in the world. He would never concur with the notion that the left needs to make stuff up in this manner. It's a distraction at best, indicative of the kind of weak analysis that Bob would never have tolerated.
Please, honor Bob's memory with an award and with remembrances of his life, activism, and political philosophy, and most importantly with support for Internationalist. Ruby expresses all that very well. But it only tarnishes his memory to promote this baseless conspiracy theory surrounding his death.
(Out of respect for my friend's memory, I will not comment further on this point on this thread. Feel free to contact me directly via email if you wish.)