Speaker 1: Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the only podcast on
Speaker 1: the Internet that you are listening to right now presumably,
Speaker 1: and if it's you're listening to a multiple podcast at once,
Speaker 1: I'm concerned. Yeah, no way, but it's not impossible. It's
Speaker 1: no way you're retaining anything. You're missing a lot. Yes, um,
Speaker 1: And this is a podcast about the worst people in
Speaker 1: all of history. And we're doing a bit of an
Speaker 1: odd duck of an episode because we're focusing a lot
Speaker 1: on on some folks who I think are are pretty
Speaker 1: cool dudes. Um. But last episode was to build up, uh,
Speaker 1: to the bastards who tried to destroy them. So this
Speaker 1: is an episode about how the FBI and law enforcement
Speaker 1: tried to take down the Black Panther Party. Uh. My
Speaker 1: guest for part two, as with part one, is prop propaganda,
Speaker 1: hip hop artist and podcast yourself. What'saw y'all. I'm just
Speaker 1: glad to be here, just smiling so much, I don't know,
Speaker 1: glad to have you here. Um. We've been really happy
Speaker 1: to have your perspective and excited to get into the
Speaker 1: rest of this. So um. We talked about the Moford
Speaker 1: Act in the last episode, which which stopped the Black
Speaker 1: Panthers from carrying loaded weapons in the state of California. UM,
Speaker 1: but did not stop the Black Panthers from loving themselves
Speaker 1: some firearms, weapons training, stockpiling. They remained a big part
Speaker 1: of what they did. Uh. And I found an archive
Speaker 1: of magazines published by the Black Panther Community News Service,
Speaker 1: which was like they're essentially their media network. Um. And
Speaker 1: one issue from nineteen sixty nine included this cartoon UM
Speaker 1: which Sophie can show you and I guess I can
Speaker 1: describe it. You can describe if you'd like, Let prop
Speaker 1: describe it. Yes, So this is from the Black Panther yeahtop, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the magazine that they ran, magazine. So it's like it's
Speaker 1: very familiar with their style of animation, but it's like
Speaker 1: thick animation style of illustrations, like thick, like out black
Speaker 1: out lined characters like that are just kind of shaded
Speaker 1: in grays UM and uh, yellow or orange letters in
Speaker 1: blue letters. It's like a black family. Um, I think
Speaker 1: that's a child, but the child looks like an adult
Speaker 1: up the animation style and it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: cartoon or like a like a comic strip. But the
Speaker 1: brothers got a good throw both the brothers got a
Speaker 1: good throw and the sisters got a nice little hair
Speaker 1: wrap on. Yeah, am I supposed to say? What? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: What's what's going on in the cartoon? It says, so
Speaker 1: Dad's got his hand on the shoulders a little homie,
Speaker 1: and he says, son, what do you want for Christmas?
Speaker 1: And I can't really make out what read what the
Speaker 1: sun says he wants for Christmas? A machine gun, a shotgun,
Speaker 1: a box of hand grenades, a box of dynamite, and
Speaker 1: I think a box of handguns is the nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine um. And then there's some stuff written around the
Speaker 1: edges of the cartoon UM, including off the pig, blow
Speaker 1: oink oink away and snipe the hawks um in w
Speaker 1: a yeah really intense yes on his way to like
Speaker 1: the f the police song, Yeah yeah. And violence against
Speaker 1: the police was a constant refrain in Black Panther periodicals,
Speaker 1: and it was usually framed as necessary self defense against
Speaker 1: an oppressive and violent force. UM. And there is this
Speaker 1: kind of unavoidably gleeful tone and some of the discussions
Speaker 1: against violence against law enforcement, which I think is really
Speaker 1: uncomfortable for a lot of particularly kind of middle of
Speaker 1: the road centrist political UM people to to to deal
Speaker 1: with um to to like accept but uh, there's there's
Speaker 1: a reason for this, Yeah, yeah, there And and that's
Speaker 1: what this episode is about, is like why there was
Speaker 1: so much paranoia and hatred of the police, not just
Speaker 1: as sort of like the violence against black people by
Speaker 1: law enforcement, but specifically because the Panthers knew the police
Speaker 1: were targeting them. Um and as the sixties turned into seventies,
Speaker 1: an increasing amount of their anti law enforcement rhetoric focused
Speaker 1: on the Federal Bureau of Investigations. UM and I found
Speaker 1: a really interesting website, black Power in American History. It
Speaker 1: appears to be a graduate student project from UNC at
Speaker 1: Chapel Hill, and they analyzed piles of old Black Panther
Speaker 1: magazines and noted they would claim that if the Black
Speaker 1: Panthers did not join or follow a particular course of action,
Speaker 1: disaster will result. An example of this was seen in
Speaker 1: the article published on January nine, ninety one, when it
Speaker 1: read when a pig is caught dirty snoop and shows
Speaker 1: you his badge and begs for mercy, mercy him to
Speaker 1: death with the butt of your gun towards the bottom.
Speaker 1: It also reads kill the pigs before they kill you.
Speaker 1: The pigs here are referring to undercover FBI agents that
Speaker 1: were sent to infiltrate the party and cause internal unrest.
Speaker 1: And again, this is really uncomfortable rhetoric for a lot
Speaker 1: of folks to read. But it wasn't It wasn't just
Speaker 1: bawned from bloodthirstiness. The FBI and the police were engaged
Speaker 1: in an active battle to destroy the Black Panthers and
Speaker 1: to murder many of their leaders in this period of time,
Speaker 1: and a lot of folks would have just called them conspiratorial. Um,
Speaker 1: would have said that they were sort of making stuff
Speaker 1: up because they're paranoid. Um. All of these fears were
Speaker 1: proved valid by documentation that later came out, which we'll
Speaker 1: get to at the end of this episode. There's a
Speaker 1: a good tie into like modern time, especially like you know,
Speaker 1: the community that spawned the hip hop music that most
Speaker 1: of us kind of consider golden age, Like these were
Speaker 1: our dads, you know, our moms. Like so even just
Speaker 1: like you know, eight song from n w A for
Speaker 1: the Police, like this isn't just it's hard. It's hard
Speaker 1: if you're not here, like to understand that, like you know,
Speaker 1: Iced Teas Cop killer. It's like, Okay, you you think
Speaker 1: that this is uh like a honorable like officer position,
Speaker 1: that that job is a job of person that carries
Speaker 1: prestige and honor. It's like that is not our experience
Speaker 1: with the police, like your experiences. This is another gang, right,
Speaker 1: It's just the law protects them, you know. So you
Speaker 1: have this attitude towards him. There's another song, but I
Speaker 1: feel like you're your taste in hip hop. Would know
Speaker 1: if I'd say, Jay Dilla, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: so like you liken more of the obscure or doom
Speaker 1: tree stuff. I've been listening. I've been listening to you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. Uh and uh you know. Um,
Speaker 1: So you take somebody like J. J. Diller, who has
Speaker 1: also has a song called the Police, and it's it's
Speaker 1: the ideas, Like the backstory with that song was like
Speaker 1: there was this false tip that he was engaged in
Speaker 1: some criminal activity and the police raided his mom's basement,
Speaker 1: you know, destroyed all these things. It's like destroyed hard
Speaker 1: drive stuff. Like this guy's like recording albums for you know,
Speaker 1: uh child call quest, Like he's recording albums for for
Speaker 1: busta rhymes like all these like main major level Like
Speaker 1: he's like you guys asked Pharrell, Timberland, all these like
Speaker 1: you know, producers, they're all like we got our swing
Speaker 1: from Jay Dilla, you know, and like and Dilla. So
Speaker 1: Dilla wrote this song. This guy, this guy like he
Speaker 1: just rated my and so he made that song that day,
Speaker 1: like after the police just rated his mom's basement and
Speaker 1: destroyed just volumes and volumes of music that none of
Speaker 1: us will never get now, you know what I'm saying. Um,
Speaker 1: So the attitude is like you're your bullies. You're not
Speaker 1: policing us, you are bullies, you know. So it's it's
Speaker 1: hard not to respond that way. But so if you
Speaker 1: understand as a long statement, but if you understand, like
Speaker 1: our relationship with law and for and I say this
Speaker 1: as somebody who's like my brothers is a highway patrol officer,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, Like, so we have law
Speaker 1: enforcement in our family, you know, but the institution since
Speaker 1: this day, Like so it's like this is coursing through
Speaker 1: our veins. Our grandparents are great grandparents, our fathers, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Like, this is our relationship with
Speaker 1: the police, sorry, that's just is so triggering. No, just
Speaker 1: and just as as a way to kind of make
Speaker 1: that point just into the modern era, because we're talking
Speaker 1: about decades ago and most of this episode. Um. I've
Speaker 1: had a two thousand fifteen article in the Washington Post
Speaker 1: about civil asset forfeitures, which is what happens when police
Speaker 1: take your stuff with no recourse versus burglary. In two uh,
Speaker 1: police civil asset forfeitures total more than five billion dollars
Speaker 1: worth of property. Police took five billion dollars worth of
Speaker 1: property with no recourse really from people. Burglaries accounted for
Speaker 1: less than four billion dollars worth of theft. So when
Speaker 1: you're making that comparison between police and the burglars, there's
Speaker 1: some numbers you can throw out there that are very compelling. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's probably enough for now. Um. So. In nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty six, the FBI launched its co Intel pro operation
Speaker 1: UM co Intel pro usual. We see it written in
Speaker 1: all caps as one one where it's an acronym. Initially
Speaker 1: aimed at targeting communist organizers in the United States, it
Speaker 1: was later expanded to strike at groups like the KKK,
Speaker 1: but thanks in large part to jer Hoover. In the
Speaker 1: late nineteen sixties, the FBI co intel pro operations focused
Speaker 1: increasingly and primarily on the Black Panthers. This was a
Speaker 1: sophisticated and complex operation. Hoover himself wrote, one of our
Speaker 1: primary aims and counterintelligence as it concerns the b PP,
Speaker 1: is to keep the group isolated from the moderate black
Speaker 1: and white community which may support it. And I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote again from the book Black Against Empire here, the
Speaker 1: federal agents sought to create factionalism among the party leaders
Speaker 1: and between the Panthers and other black political organizations. FBI
Speaker 1: operatives forged documents and paid provocateurs to promote violent conflicts
Speaker 1: between Black Panther leaders as well as between the Party
Speaker 1: and other Black nationalist organizations, and congratulated themselves when these
Speaker 1: conflicts yielded the killing of Panthers, and co intel pro
Speaker 1: sought to lead the party into unsupportable actions, creating opposition
Speaker 1: to the bp P on the part of the majority
Speaker 1: of the residents of the ghetto areas. For example, agent
Speaker 1: provocateurs on the government payroll supplied explosives to Panther members
Speaker 1: and sought to incite them to blow up public buildings
Speaker 1: and they promoted kangaroo courts, encouraging panther members to torture
Speaker 1: inspected informants. Yeah. Yeah, so like that's it's so like
Speaker 1: that's so like, you know, illuminating, because it's like you're
Speaker 1: in the room. It's like you're in a room with
Speaker 1: like rational people and somebody else from the back you
Speaker 1: should just punch them in the pot. You're just like,
Speaker 1: who said that? Right? And then everybody goes you see
Speaker 1: what they're about. They're about punching in the butt, Like, well,
Speaker 1: who first of all, who punches in the butt? Number one?
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. But then but just them
Speaker 1: planting these people to push them into places that make
Speaker 1: other people uncomfortable, and then that becomes the narrative. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's clearly so effective. Yeah, it was very effective and
Speaker 1: very um insidious. Um. And we'll get into the numbers
Speaker 1: a little bit later how much they spent on this,
Speaker 1: but um For in a specific exam uple of how
Speaker 1: this process worked, I think we need to turn to
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, when J. Edgar Hoover sent a memorandum
Speaker 1: to fourteen FBI field offices noting that a state of
Speaker 1: gang warfare existed between a group called the US Organization,
Speaker 1: a black nationalist group, and the Panthers now US as
Speaker 1: a complicated Organization UM. Their founder, among other things, is
Speaker 1: the guy who created Quanza UM and I we're not
Speaker 1: going to do them justice in this episode. For today's purposes.
Speaker 1: What's important to know is that US and the Panthers
Speaker 1: had a lot of disagreements on how to achieve black liberation,
Speaker 1: and it competed aggressively for new recruits UM through a
Speaker 1: network of informants. The FBI learned this, and Hoover noted
Speaker 1: that they'd seen evidence that there had been threats of
Speaker 1: murder between some members. He took notice of this and
Speaker 1: ordered what he called imaginative and hard hitting counter intelligence
Speaker 1: measures aimed at crippling the BPP. In order to fully capitalize,
Speaker 1: in his words, on the rivalry and exploit all avenues
Speaker 1: of creating further dissension, The FBA ordered its informants and
Speaker 1: US to tell members when the BPP planned to have events,
Speaker 1: so that US could also show up and both in
Speaker 1: organizations would wind up in conflict. They did whatever they
Speaker 1: could to stoke hatred between both groups, including having their
Speaker 1: paid informant spread rumors about either side to the other group,
Speaker 1: like rumors about like them being there being hits planned
Speaker 1: and murders plan raising the temperature that was the goal. UM.
Speaker 1: And this all came to a boil. UM at an
Speaker 1: event your father was at January nineteen sixty nine, UM,
Speaker 1: when al Prentice Carter and John Huggins were gunned down
Speaker 1: by US members on the u c l A campus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it's like junior high all over again, only
Speaker 1: with like murder, yeah mixed in, you know. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: so sad man. Yeah, Pops was at that anyway, continue Sorry.
Speaker 1: The Black Panther seemed to instinctively know what was going on.
Speaker 1: UM and their magazines declared the murders of political killing.
Speaker 1: They pointed out that US received government funding and had
Speaker 1: a working relationship with the police. They also note that
Speaker 1: seventeen Panthers were arrested in the immediate wake of the murders,
Speaker 1: while it took much longer for the law to get
Speaker 1: take action against the actual killers, who were members of US. UM. Now,
Speaker 1: only some of the FBI's co intel profacory has been
Speaker 1: declassified at this point, so we'll never know the exact
Speaker 1: extent to which the Bureau planned all this. There are
Speaker 1: allegations that what happened at u c A was an
Speaker 1: ordered hit. Others will argue that the FBI definitely intended
Speaker 1: for there to be murders, but they weren't trying to
Speaker 1: stoke specific murders. So they wanted to raise the temperature
Speaker 1: to where murders were inevitable, but they weren't saying, on
Speaker 1: this date, kill these people. There's also allegations that they
Speaker 1: were in fact saying, on this date, kill these people.
Speaker 1: Um was like yeah, they had a list this who
Speaker 1: you're supposed to die, you know, yeah, yeah, And we
Speaker 1: can verify that they absolutely specifically intended to stoke violence.
Speaker 1: That they wrote, we want to make these people kill
Speaker 1: each other like that like that that that we know,
Speaker 1: um to a point of certainty. Um. Whatever the truth
Speaker 1: about how specific they were about the violence they wanted, Um,
Speaker 1: the violence like happened and it was very much stoked
Speaker 1: by the FBI. And on May nineteen sixty nine, Black
Speaker 1: panther John Savage was killed by US members. Sylvester Bell
Speaker 1: was murdered in August. Now, most of the information behind
Speaker 1: all this didn't come out until a series of court
Speaker 1: battles in the late nineteen seventies, so particularly like white
Speaker 1: people reading about this at the time would have just said, oh,
Speaker 1: these these black liberation groups are also violent, look at
Speaker 1: what they're doing to each other, ignoring the fact that
Speaker 1: it was their FBI and was stoking all this. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: and I found a really good New York Times article
Speaker 1: from nineteen seventy six, Um, when this started to come out,
Speaker 1: that goes into detail about everything here, and it notes
Speaker 1: that the Bureau, working with the Chicago Police Department, also
Speaker 1: sought to create violent divisions between the Panthers and the
Speaker 1: black Stone Rangers, which are now a much more complicated organization.
Speaker 1: At that point, we're a street gang in Chicago. Quote.
Speaker 1: For example, a fake note was sent to the leader
Speaker 1: of the street gang, Jeff Ford, telling him the Panthers
Speaker 1: hostility towards his group, saying they're supposed to be a
Speaker 1: hit out for you. In noting that that this meant
Speaker 1: there was probably a contract to kill someone, the Chicago
Speaker 1: FBI office set in a memorandum to headquarters that the
Speaker 1: letter may intensify the degree of animosity between the two
Speaker 1: groups and occasion for it to take retaliatory action, which
Speaker 1: could disrupt the b PP or lead to reprisals against
Speaker 1: their leadership. So the FBI sends this fake letter about
Speaker 1: a hit and note specifically we're hope, like we think
Speaker 1: this is going to make them angrier at each other
Speaker 1: and might stoke violence, and that's our goal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it's just like, can we just like okay,
Speaker 1: acknowledge that, like we you can't make this stuff up. No,
Speaker 1: you can't make this stuff up. You know. One thing
Speaker 1: that's really frustrating about this is that it, um it's
Speaker 1: spread so far even outside of among the entire left
Speaker 1: wing activist community. It's spent a lot of time in
Speaker 1: that community, um for my work, and there are constant
Speaker 1: modern fears about co intel pro stuff even among like
Speaker 1: white activist group primarily white activist groups, um of FBI
Speaker 1: informants and stuff like. You find this this fear among
Speaker 1: a lot of members of anti fascist street groups right
Speaker 1: now that there's agent provocateurs and maybe there are like
Speaker 1: it's happened, like that's the thing, it's like they did it.
Speaker 1: There is precedence, yes, yeah, yeah, there's really no limit
Speaker 1: to what you might be worried. The FBI will do
Speaker 1: to your activist group because this ship happened. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: Now I'm gonna quote again from that New York Times article.
Speaker 1: The report portraits of campaign in which the Bureau used
Speaker 1: a legion of informers, sometimes as provocateurs, and close cooperation
Speaker 1: with local police anti radical squads to so confusion, fear,
Speaker 1: and dissension among the Panthers. Cartoons attacking them purportedly from
Speaker 1: rival groups were distributed to aggravate antagonisms. Stories were planted
Speaker 1: with newspaper and television outlets to put the Panthers and
Speaker 1: their supporters in a bad light. Bogus messages were sent
Speaker 1: to cause rifts between the party and its white leftist supporters.
Speaker 1: This was a comprehensive campaign. Imagine this and like the
Speaker 1: Internet age just be like just trolls attacking your comments
Speaker 1: section for the purpose of m hmm. Yeah. It'll maybe
Speaker 1: thirty years, yeah, yeah, we it'll probably be a few
Speaker 1: years before the extent to which that stuff is going
Speaker 1: on comes out now. And you know what, to be
Speaker 1: entirely honest, it's possible that none of it now was
Speaker 1: the FBI. That it's all for example, government like private
Speaker 1: corporations contracted by government agencies or whatever like, who knows. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the FBI's Cointal Probe campaign seriously disrupted the Black Panthers,
Speaker 1: but it did not stop them from expanding. Throughout the
Speaker 1: late sixties and early nineteen seventies, the organization was under
Speaker 1: constant stress, though, and this was not helped by the
Speaker 1: fact that, for some strange reason, its leaders kept getting
Speaker 1: imprisoned and assassinated. I wonder why all of a sudden
Speaker 1: started kid making crimes. They just they just went off
Speaker 1: the rails. Yeah. I think we'll start on this subject
Speaker 1: by talking about what happened to Huey P. Newton on
Speaker 1: October seven, nineteen sixty seven, who we walked down to
Speaker 1: his girlfriend's house on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland. It was
Speaker 1: a Friday night. They were going to party, but she
Speaker 1: wound up feeling sick and instead lent in her card
Speaker 1: to take out on the town own. He had a
Speaker 1: drink at the bar and then went to a church
Speaker 1: social where he danced until around two am. Then he
Speaker 1: drove to a party, which he left it around four am.
Speaker 1: That early morning, October Officer John Frey of the Oakland
Speaker 1: Police was sitting in his squad car. He saw hue
Speaker 1: drive past and recognized his plates. We don't know precisely
Speaker 1: if the Bureau had local cops keeping tabs on Huey,
Speaker 1: if this was an FBI directed operation, or if the
Speaker 1: Oakland cops on their own. We're just wanting to funk
Speaker 1: with Huey. Either is entirely possible, but without any apparent cause.
Speaker 1: John Frey made one of the last mistakes of his life.
Speaker 1: He pulled Huey p Newton over. Here's how SF Weekly
Speaker 1: describes what happened next. Officer Herbert C. Hines rolled up
Speaker 1: on the scene shortly after Frey had radioed for backup.
Speaker 1: The officers told Newton to get out of the bug
Speaker 1: and marched him to the back of Haines's patrol car.
Speaker 1: Newton and Frey started scuffling on the trunk of Haines's car.
Speaker 1: A gun went off. Haines was hit in the right forearm.
Speaker 1: Heines fired back, hitting Newton in the gut. More shots
Speaker 1: were fired. Haines was shot three times and survived. Newton
Speaker 1: took that bullet to the gut and fled the scene
Speaker 1: with McKinney, which is a friend he was with. Freight
Speaker 1: was shot five times and died. He had been on
Speaker 1: the force for a little over a year and had
Speaker 1: a three year old daughter. He was only twenty three,
Speaker 1: but all of the men involved in the melee were
Speaker 1: well under thirty. Now we don't know what actually happened.
Speaker 1: Newton claims to have blacked out after being shot, which
Speaker 1: is totally reasonable, and speculates that the cops shot each
Speaker 1: other and all of the recovered bullets came from police revolvers.
Speaker 1: Speculation on what went down ranges from Huey grabbing a
Speaker 1: cops gun and shooting them both, to him resisting when
Speaker 1: the cops started beating him and then them shooting each
Speaker 1: other in error, to an attempted assassination of Huey by
Speaker 1: the Oakland p DE gone horribly wrong. I don't know
Speaker 1: what exactly went down, but I do think additional context
Speaker 1: on Officer James Frey is useful here, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote from Black Against Empire. Frey had been implicated in
Speaker 1: numerous incidents of racism. H Bruce Bison, an English teacher
Speaker 1: who invited Frey to speak about police work to his
Speaker 1: class at Clayton Valley High School, reported that Frey had
Speaker 1: told the class that inwards in the neighborhood he patrolled
Speaker 1: were a lot of bad types, and the trial eventually
Speaker 1: held to adjudicate the nts of that early morning. Alfred Dunning,
Speaker 1: an accountant for Prudential Life Insurance, testified that Frey had
Speaker 1: racially harassed him during a traffic accident, and when Dunning
Speaker 1: complained that Frey was acting like the Gestapo, Frey loosened
Speaker 1: his holster, put his hand on his gun and said
Speaker 1: I am the Gestapo, and ordered done into the police car.
Speaker 1: The best. Yeah, that's the quiet part. Yes. Earlier on
Speaker 1: the evening that Huey Newton and Gene McKinney drove to
Speaker 1: get soul food on Seventh Street, Frey had intervened in
Speaker 1: a dispute between a black grocery clerk named Daniel King
Speaker 1: and a white man without pants on, who claimed King
Speaker 1: had stolen his pants. According to King, Fray called him
Speaker 1: an inward and held his arms so the white man
Speaker 1: could beat him. So this is the guy who winds
Speaker 1: up in this. I don't have trouble believing um that
Speaker 1: it was self defense. It's also entirely possible that both
Speaker 1: of them fucked up, or that both of them were
Speaker 1: trying to kill Hue and shot each other. Um, who
Speaker 1: knows any scenario works, yeah, um, But obviously Huey P.
Speaker 1: Newton gets charged with murder um as a result of
Speaker 1: of of the shooting death of Officer James Freight Um,
Speaker 1: and in prison, hue became a living martyr to the
Speaker 1: Black Panthers. There was a rally on his twenty six
Speaker 1: birthday February sevent nineteen sixty eight, that brought more than
Speaker 1: six thousand people to the Oakland Arena. H Rap Brown
Speaker 1: and Black Power activist told the crowd the only thing
Speaker 1: that is going to free Huey Newton is gunpowder, and
Speaker 1: this actually wound up being inaccurate. Hue received his day
Speaker 1: in court, which revealed, among other things, that Frey had
Speaker 1: a list of twenty Black Panther vehicles on the dashboard
Speaker 1: of his car when he died. Huey was initially convicted
Speaker 1: of voluntary manslaughter and sent to prison, but in May
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy that conviction was reversed after the California
Speaker 1: Court of Appeals found significant errors in the trial. Hughie
Speaker 1: would be tried two more times, both trials ending in
Speaker 1: jury deadlocks before he was eventually cleared of all charges
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy one. So he is cleared by the courts,
Speaker 1: but he loses two years of his life, you know,
Speaker 1: to the to prison. Um my mom used to cast
Speaker 1: My mom used to call me h rat brown just
Speaker 1: for she's doing for jokes. You look h rat brown
Speaker 1: whenever I was talking about black stuff. Anyway, it's that
Speaker 1: that was funny now. Um. Bobby's seal also caught serious
Speaker 1: legal trouble in nineteen sixty nine as a result of
Speaker 1: his participation in the nineteen sixty Chicago riots over the
Speaker 1: Democratic National Convention. That year's DNC occurred in one of
Speaker 1: the most tumultuous periods in American history. And again, this
Speaker 1: is another thing that we probably should do a whole
Speaker 1: episode about, Like we're not gonna get into enough to
Speaker 1: tail in the sixty eight riots. Um. The short story
Speaker 1: is that Bobby Kennedy, who was like the progressive icon
Speaker 1: at the time, had been gunned down the night he
Speaker 1: won the California primary. Hubert Humphrey, the former Vice President,
Speaker 1: hadn't actually participated in any of the primaries, but was
Speaker 1: favored to become the candidate during the convention because he
Speaker 1: was beloved by establishment Democrats. Progressives and leftists hated him.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure, this is a situation that has sends
Speaker 1: familiar to any um. The nineteen sixty eight riots like
Speaker 1: sort of resulted out of all this um and they
Speaker 1: were nightmarish and caused in large part by the fact
Speaker 1: that the mayor of Chicago, Richard Daily, turned the city
Speaker 1: into what Walter Cronkite called a police state leading up
Speaker 1: to the event. The police turned on left wing protesters
Speaker 1: with unspeakable violence, and the city burned. The whole ugly
Speaker 1: event is, among other things, a big part of what
Speaker 1: inspired Hunter Thompson to write Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: He was there at the time, um, and it was
Speaker 1: just this this big, ugly nightmare that was largely instigated
Speaker 1: by state violence against protesters who were unhappy that the
Speaker 1: d n C had picked basically a conservative guy to
Speaker 1: run against fucking Nixon. Um yeah, and in nineteen yeah,
Speaker 1: And for a little bit of context, all of the
Speaker 1: people who know their history right now are fucking terrified
Speaker 1: that the DNC in twenty twenty is going to be
Speaker 1: another sixty eight Chicago. Same yeah. Yeah. I felt like
Speaker 1: that sitting watch in the last debate. I was like, Uh,
Speaker 1: here we go again. I'll be bringing my helmet. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty nine, Bobby Seal was arrested for conspiracy
Speaker 1: to incite riots at the d n C. And he
Speaker 1: was likely targeted for this because you know, he was
Speaker 1: a co founder of the Black Panthers, and the FBI
Speaker 1: wanted him dead or in prison and ideally both. Um.
Speaker 1: The court refused to let Seal choose his own lawyer.
Speaker 1: When he spoke up and complained that his constitutional rights
Speaker 1: were being violated, the judge ordered him bound and gagged.
Speaker 1: So he is bound and gagged during his own trial.
Speaker 1: In the idea of how yeah, yeah, that's another one
Speaker 1: of those like okay, play some spa music. Think about
Speaker 1: that for a second, just just really ruminate on that.
Speaker 1: Ruminate on the fact that this man was not allowed
Speaker 1: to pick his own lawyer. Yeah, and then when he
Speaker 1: complained about it, they gagged him. You're telling you so,
Speaker 1: which one of us is like a president violent? Which
Speaker 1: one of us is violent? You know? Ye? Now, when
Speaker 1: he did get to speak, Bobby repeatedly called the judge
Speaker 1: and government attorneys racists, fascists, and lying pigs. And this
Speaker 1: was pretty true in my opinion, and it did not
Speaker 1: aid in his defense. Bobby can't say that out loud,
Speaker 1: just like let's let's play to play a long game. UM.
Speaker 1: He was sentenced to four years in prison and he
Speaker 1: served twenty one months before his conviction was reversed and
Speaker 1: he was freed in nineteen seventy one. So again, he
Speaker 1: has almost two years stolen from UM. Now, while all
Speaker 1: this was going on, the Panthers were taking in huge
Speaker 1: sums of money. The arrest of Huey Pe Newton in particular,
Speaker 1: drew in enormous amounts of donations, and as thousands of
Speaker 1: men and women joined all across the country, the fundraisers
Speaker 1: grew more and more successful, and as it tends to do,
Speaker 1: all this money caused massive disagreements and fights between different
Speaker 1: chapters of the party. The New York chapter being the
Speaker 1: most successful fundraisers, were particularly incense that they had not
Speaker 1: been allowed to keep what they thought was their fair
Speaker 1: share of the money they had raised for the group. UM.
Speaker 1: These were the sort of disagreements that any kind of
Speaker 1: political organization is going to have, especially as they grow
Speaker 1: and start up, and they could have been smoothed over
Speaker 1: but for the fact that a large chunk of the
Speaker 1: most respected Panther leadership, the men who might have been
Speaker 1: able to work these conflicts out were in prison or,
Speaker 1: in the case of Hampton dead. Now we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about Fred. But you need to look at this
Speaker 1: thing happening behind my shoulder right now. Oh ship, your
Speaker 1: your your your video is frozen. Oh here we go,
Speaker 1: I can see it. No, it's working here. That's just Sophie, Oh,
Speaker 1: vigorously trying to get your attention. Trump hillaration behind prop
Speaker 1: vera creeple, you know what, won't falsely charge political activists
Speaker 1: with crimes they didn't commit. Oh man, the sponsors of
Speaker 1: this podcast. Glorious, Yeah boy, oh man, all right. I
Speaker 1: couldn't wait to get to Fred Hampton. I feel like
Speaker 1: I've been sitting here at this all the time, waiting
Speaker 1: to God. Yeah, I was wondering why you were gonna
Speaker 1: antcy in there, because when you get the three, it's like,
Speaker 1: this is the trinity that like paints the best picture
Speaker 1: as to how they got destroyed it because it's like
Speaker 1: it's like you ask, you ask ten different panthers, what
Speaker 1: the black panthers? Where you gonna get ten different answers,
Speaker 1: you know, pending on which one of these figureheads. You know,
Speaker 1: you're appealing to you know what I'm saying. Um So,
Speaker 1: that's why I was like, you got to have the
Speaker 1: third person, you know, the doll I don't make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and we um you know. It was one of those
Speaker 1: things I had to debate do I include Fred Hampton
Speaker 1: in part one or part two? And I thought it
Speaker 1: was best to kind of lay the groundwork in one
Speaker 1: and then bring up because Hampton's whole life is so
Speaker 1: tight in with the police violence, because his story like
Speaker 1: tied with like the Black Massiah stuff. Like, it's like
Speaker 1: you have to wait till there was like, don't because
Speaker 1: he's the most like likable if you will, at all
Speaker 1: of them. So it's like build the narrative and then
Speaker 1: it's like, oh God, now there's a guy that's likable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's let's talk. I mean, I find Hughey and
Speaker 1: Bobby pretty likable Fred. Yeah. Yeah. Fred Hampton is the
Speaker 1: charismatic Yes, um so. Fred Hampton was born on August
Speaker 1: ninety eight, and he grew up in the suburbs of Chicago.
Speaker 1: He was gifted academically and physically from a very young age,
Speaker 1: and at one point dreamed of playing for the Yankees,
Speaker 1: but as he grew into a young man, the injustice
Speaker 1: evident around him in America made anything but a revolutionary
Speaker 1: career impossible for Fred. And I'm gonna quote now from
Speaker 1: a Twitter thread I found on Fred Hampton by Michael Harriet,
Speaker 1: who's a senior writer at the Route. UM, and he
Speaker 1: knows a lot about Hampton. And you know, obviously it's
Speaker 1: a Twitter threat. I did do my work to like
Speaker 1: double check claims and stuff. Um. And he's very accurate here, UM,
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna quote from him. Like the others he's
Speaker 1: referring to the other Black Panther leaders. Hampton started out
Speaker 1: with mainstream black organizations. By the time he was a teenager,
Speaker 1: he was organizing his own youth chapter of the in
Speaker 1: double a CP in his small Illinois suburb. In a
Speaker 1: single year, he had five hundred members. If this sounds
Speaker 1: like hype, consider this. When Hampton attended his first Black
Speaker 1: Panther Party meeting in November nineteen sixty eight, the FBI
Speaker 1: had already opened a file on him a year earlier.
Speaker 1: His phone had been tapped for nine months. He had
Speaker 1: been designated as a key leader on the FBI's Agitator
Speaker 1: Index for five months before he ever joins the party.
Speaker 1: He's just he's a g Like that's the what it's like.
Speaker 1: You take all of the best attributes of everybody so
Speaker 1: far and then you like put it in a guy
Speaker 1: who has like the entertaining ability of like a Michael Jackson.
Speaker 1: You're just like you can't lose, you know. So that's
Speaker 1: that he he gives me chills when I think about
Speaker 1: his ability to just like electrifier room. Yeah. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: he's I really recommend like like pulling up videos and
Speaker 1: you can find them of Fred Hampton's speaking and addressing
Speaker 1: crowds like he was. He was very good at it
Speaker 1: um and uh, Michael in that threat argues that the
Speaker 1: FBI recognized Hampton's exceptional nature and that they were terrified
Speaker 1: he would be right to become a national figure. And
Speaker 1: there's a lot of backing for this argument. Uh. He
Speaker 1: in particular sites a memo from Herbert Hoover himself discussing
Speaker 1: the goals of the co Intel program, and it included
Speaker 1: as their number two goal. And I'm gonna quote directly
Speaker 1: from the FBI here, Everybody take a breath. Yeah, Number
Speaker 1: two prevent the rise of a messiah who could unify
Speaker 1: and electrify the militant black nationalist movement. Malcolm X might
Speaker 1: have been such a messiah. He is the martyr of
Speaker 1: the movement today. Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, and Elijah
Speaker 1: Mohammed all aspired to this position. Elijah Mohammed is less
Speaker 1: of a threat because of his age. King could be
Speaker 1: a very real contender for this position should he abandon
Speaker 1: his supposed obedience to white liberal doctrines nonviolence and embrace
Speaker 1: black nationalism. Carmichael has the necessary like, yeah, yeah, here
Speaker 1: I talk about you, boys, is the yeah obedient a
Speaker 1: white liberal thought dog. Yeah, yeah yeah. If you ever
Speaker 1: needed evidence of sort of the value of the armed
Speaker 1: revolutionary wing of the civil rights movement, it's the fact
Speaker 1: that the FBI was like, thank god, Martin Luther King's chill,
Speaker 1: he cool. Let let let kea talk. Don't let that
Speaker 1: do talk. Yeah, we'd had to shoot him a lot earlier, right,
Speaker 1: oh man so um Hampton uh in his early well
Speaker 1: he didn't have a long career, unfortunately, but Hampton, early
Speaker 1: in his career worked to broker peace steals between various
Speaker 1: gangs in Chicago and came very close to getting the
Speaker 1: black Stone Rangers, a heavily armed organization with as many
Speaker 1: as eight thousand members, to join the Black Panthers. Now.
Speaker 1: The FBI considered that possibility an enormous threat, and they
Speaker 1: devoted significant resources to fomenting anger between both groups, going
Speaker 1: as far as forging a death threat to the leader
Speaker 1: of the black Stone Nation we talked about a little
Speaker 1: bit in Part one. UM. In early nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: Fred Hampton set up the first Panther free food distribution
Speaker 1: in Chicago. He got in trouble around this time due
Speaker 1: to a confusing series of events with an ice cream truck.
Speaker 1: And again, depending on who you listen to, he either
Speaker 1: stole a bunch of ice cream from an ice cream
Speaker 1: truck to give out to poor kids, um, hijacked the
Speaker 1: truck and beat its driver, or had nothing at all
Speaker 1: to do with the robbery of seven any one dollars
Speaker 1: worth of ice cream. In any case, an ice cream
Speaker 1: truck driver claimed to have been beaten up by kids
Speaker 1: while Fred stole ice cream from his truck. UM. And again,
Speaker 1: you gotta be real fucking careful when you listen to
Speaker 1: charges against any of these guys, because we know what
Speaker 1: was going on. Yeah, even even if it was true,
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, so take that same event and put
Speaker 1: it in like toadsuck Arkansas, which is a city I've performed,
Speaker 1: didn't believe it or not, And it's just funny. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know what, dude is hot out here. You know,
Speaker 1: I got a dial it, you know, distract the guy
Speaker 1: while we get some drumsticks. You know what I'm saying. Like,
Speaker 1: it's more like it's mischievous. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Like I'm not trying to like, well, yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, minimize a crime. But it's
Speaker 1: like this is it's like it's mischievous. It's just you
Speaker 1: can't be mischievous. And Fred Hampton yeah, now. Hampton was
Speaker 1: arrested for this and charged with robbery and assault. Well
Speaker 1: he waited for his trial. Fred organ used a free
Speaker 1: breakfast for children program in Chicago. In its first two weeks,
Speaker 1: had fed more than a grade school kids and earned
Speaker 1: a huge amount of community support for the Panthers. Hampton
Speaker 1: was convicted of robbery and assault in April, but thanks
Speaker 1: to a good attorney, he was released from jail on
Speaker 1: two thousand dollars bail fred immediately held a press conference
Speaker 1: where he declared that the Black Panther Party was acting
Speaker 1: in the interests of the people whom the government ignored
Speaker 1: and oppressed. Quote, our case should be taken to the people,
Speaker 1: and the people will not tolerate any oppressive system or
Speaker 1: force that attempts to jail the very people who feed
Speaker 1: their hungry children now. Hampton next organized a mock trial
Speaker 1: with a group of white leftists known as the New Left,
Speaker 1: and he gave in that trial what would become one
Speaker 1: of his most famous speeches, saying, We're gonna fight racism,
Speaker 1: not with racism, but with solidarity. We're not going to
Speaker 1: fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we're gonna fight it
Speaker 1: with socialism. We're not gonna fight reactionary pigs with any
Speaker 1: reaction on our part. We're gonna fight their reaction when
Speaker 1: all of us get together and have an international proletarian revolution.
Speaker 1: The most where the FBI was not a fan, the
Speaker 1: most level headed, like mature response to be like look man,
Speaker 1: and just look you know, and and in and in
Speaker 1: that sense it's like it shows sort of. Even though
Speaker 1: there was differences in the solution, there was a common
Speaker 1: thread through a lot of these thinkers are just being like, look, man, like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know if just going straight
Speaker 1: this way is gonna work. I don't know a straight
Speaker 1: going this way is gonna work. But like, you know,
Speaker 1: you can't. You can't defeat racism with racism. And it
Speaker 1: just doesn't you know, although that's what that's what y'all want,
Speaker 1: that's what people what they wanted us to believe about
Speaker 1: the Black Panthers was like, y'all were racist, and He's like, no,
Speaker 1: you don't understand. That's not gonna that's not gonna get
Speaker 1: us to our conclusion is more racism. I think that's
Speaker 1: important to notice that those were his words, you know,
Speaker 1: and that's the guy that they were like, He's are
Speaker 1: worse than men? Yeah, yeah yeah. Fred succeeded in building
Speaker 1: a broad base of support in Chicago, including people of
Speaker 1: all races and backgrounds, and this got the attention of
Speaker 1: Panther national leadership. Bobby Seal flew down to sip Cargo
Speaker 1: to attend one of Fred's events. He gave a speech
Speaker 1: there wherein he said, I'm so thirsty for revolution. I'm
Speaker 1: so crazy about the people. We're gonna stand together, We're
Speaker 1: going to have a black army, a Mexican American army,
Speaker 1: and alliance and solidarity with progressive whites, all of us,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna march on this pig power structure and
Speaker 1: we're gonna say, stick him up, motherfucker, we come for
Speaker 1: what's ours. It's a good speech. I love it, man,
Speaker 1: because stick him up, motherfucker we comes. Yeah, Man, Can
Speaker 1: I throw in a little history lesson here? Hell yeah? Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't want to, like because I don't like it
Speaker 1: when someone steals your thunder on the show. So I
Speaker 1: don't I don't want to do that, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, because no, no, no, you're here to because
Speaker 1: you know more about a lot of aspects of this
Speaker 1: than I. So yeah, hit me up. Yeah. So, like,
Speaker 1: you know, towards the end of like you know, Dr
Speaker 1: King's like work, especially the one that the event that
Speaker 1: ended after I have a dream speech where he was
Speaker 1: on his way for to talk about really was what
Speaker 1: you're saying, was this idea of saying, we need to
Speaker 1: build this coalition because the system itself is trying to
Speaker 1: keep us out of this. Then he does this, he
Speaker 1: does this whole this whole diet tribe about like, okay,
Speaker 1: you know talking about the Homestead Act and y'all could
Speaker 1: google that, but he was talking about the Homestead Act
Speaker 1: like okay, so to lift like poor white people out
Speaker 1: of serfdom. He was like, the government was handing out
Speaker 1: land grants to people to come build farms. If you
Speaker 1: don't know what you was doing, government would train you.
Speaker 1: They pay to train you. If you don't have no
Speaker 1: tools to work at, government pay for you to have
Speaker 1: no tools. He's like, these are social programs that the
Speaker 1: government has done. He's like, these are the same people
Speaker 1: who look at us and say you need to pull
Speaker 1: yourself up by your own bootstraps. And he's like, you
Speaker 1: need to stop asking for government handouts. He's like, the
Speaker 1: government has been handing out money to y'all this whole time.
Speaker 1: So when we go to d C, we're going to
Speaker 1: get our check because because us just trying to to
Speaker 1: to to just tell you to stop being uh a
Speaker 1: racist or trying to change your mind about who you are,
Speaker 1: just trying to fight you. Just forget it. Let's just
Speaker 1: do it ourselves. Black as in it it was like, no, listen,
Speaker 1: this is what you said the country is. This is
Speaker 1: what you said it was, and this is what we're
Speaker 1: coming to do. So for you, for for for the
Speaker 1: government to look at or or for the FBI to say, well,
Speaker 1: Fred Hampton is saying this, I'm like, hey, but your boy,
Speaker 1: your boy King was saying the same thing, family like
Speaker 1: he was. He was actually he said the same it
Speaker 1: just get we're all we're all saying the same thing.
Speaker 1: Bro good, We're all saying the same thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: And it's it's interesting that the guys who were saying
Speaker 1: that same thing didn't didn't get a lot of time
Speaker 1: to say it. No. Yeah, And I don't know enough
Speaker 1: about the murder of Martin Luther King or the assassination
Speaker 1: of Martin and Luther King to talk about the beercy
Speaker 1: theories you might say around it. Um, but I will
Speaker 1: say there's definitely a reason to be suspicious about what
Speaker 1: kind of government involvement there might have been about Um.
Speaker 1: Also totally possible a racist might have you know that guy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not out of anyway. Um. So. By May twenty six,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, Fred Hampton's free breakfast program was feeding
Speaker 1: more than three thousand children. On that day, he was
Speaker 1: sentenced to two to five years in prison for his
Speaker 1: little ice cream truck escapade. He appealed, though, and was
Speaker 1: led out on an appeal bond by the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: of Illinois. In July of nineteen sixty nine, Fred Hampton
Speaker 1: embarked on his most ambitious plan yet. He held the
Speaker 1: Conference for a United Front against Fascism, which he built
Speaker 1: as an attempt to build a rainbow coalition. He brought
Speaker 1: a lot of different people together, but focused on bringing
Speaker 1: in poor people of all different races, particularly gang members.
Speaker 1: Hampton told them that no matter who they were, the
Speaker 1: root of their oppression was the same, and they would
Speaker 1: need to work together to confront issues like police stality
Speaker 1: and poor public housing. And teen Vogue actually has a
Speaker 1: really good rite up on this that I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: from now. Hampton and the other Panthers, like Section leader
Speaker 1: Bobby Lee, made the case that as poor people trying
Speaker 1: to survive and Mayor Richard J. Daly's racially segregated city,
Speaker 1: they had more in common with each other than not.
Speaker 1: They banded together to protect members from the cops, fight
Speaker 1: against police brutality, run healthcare clinics, feed the homeless and
Speaker 1: poor kids, and connect people with legal help. If they
Speaker 1: were dealing with abusive landlords or police. We did security
Speaker 1: for the Panthers along with other panthers. Seventy year old
Speaker 1: High Theurman, a member of the y p O, told
Speaker 1: teen Vogue from his home in Alabama, here's a bunch
Speaker 1: of hillbillies doing, you know, security for black people and
Speaker 1: black panthers. Therman said that was shocking for a lot
Speaker 1: of people. Out of respect for the Panthers, the Young Patriots,
Speaker 1: which grew out of a street gang called the Peacemakers,
Speaker 1: decided to stop wearing the Confederate flag. Meanwhile, the Young
Speaker 1: Lords foregrounded issues impacting immigrants from Latin America and citizens
Speaker 1: who moved from Puerto Rico, birthplace of the co founder
Speaker 1: jose Cha Cha Yamenez. They introduced the slogan Tango Puerto
Speaker 1: Rico in Mikorazon in a fight for Puerto Rican self determination.
Speaker 1: So he's getting together hillbilly white gangs, Puerto Rican, Hispanic gangs,
Speaker 1: black gangs and being like, look, we all have the
Speaker 1: same problems and we can all fight together to deal
Speaker 1: with them. Yeah, it's like, is that not like? Is
Speaker 1: that not like the I mean, this isn't That's not good?
Speaker 1: Like you know what I'm saying, Like that's the question, Like, wait,
Speaker 1: that's not good, like when you desire I mean, like,
Speaker 1: I just don't understand why this is a problem to
Speaker 1: you all. Well, I mean it's because they kind of
Speaker 1: prefer it if these gangs are shooting at each other,
Speaker 1: because if they realize they all have more in common,
Speaker 1: they started looking at the actual person. Fucking I'm over,
Speaker 1: that's probably it. Suddenly we got a real threat. Now
Speaker 1: you know, you kill each other. We ain't gotta do
Speaker 1: to work for you, gotta just kill each other, you know.
Speaker 1: So listen to this and take heed, young gangsters. Yes, now,
Speaker 1: all of this scared the hell out of j Edgar Hoover.
Speaker 1: He directed his men to quote destroy what they stand
Speaker 1: for and erratic hate. It's served the people programs. I
Speaker 1: gotta say, if you're talking about eradicating serve the people programs,
Speaker 1: you might be the bad guy. I just think I
Speaker 1: think you might be reading this story all wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe you on the wrong side of this one. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a real Are we the battiest moment? Wait a minute,
Speaker 1: it's me right, Like yeah, now we are. We are
Speaker 1: leaving out a lot because the story of all of
Speaker 1: the ship that the police and the FBI did to
Speaker 1: take down Fred Hampton would I could do a full
Speaker 1: two parter just on that. Um. This guy had almost
Speaker 1: as much thrown at him as Bobby Seal and Hui P.
Speaker 1: Newton did combined. It's it's remarkable um. For our purposes today,
Speaker 1: we're going to focus on the actions of FBI informant
Speaker 1: William O'Neill. Now, as soon as Fred Hampton formed the
Speaker 1: Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers, the Bureau sent O'Neill
Speaker 1: in to infiltrate it, and he was good at his job.
Speaker 1: O'Neill was renowned as a hard worker, although he worried
Speaker 1: other Panthers with his obsession for violence. At point, he
Speaker 1: built an electric chair for the Panthers to use to
Speaker 1: torture informers, which was disassembled on Fred Hampton's orders. And
Speaker 1: it was obviously like a an FBI an attempt for
Speaker 1: them to like get the Panthers to torture people so
Speaker 1: that they could arrest them for a torture. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: Hampton's like, what the funk are you doing building an
Speaker 1: elect Get that out of what you're doing a fucking
Speaker 1: electric chair? I'm gonna quote now from a rite up
Speaker 1: in the nation for this next bit. Quote not simply
Speaker 1: an informant. O'Neil tried to provoke others into kama Kaze
Speaker 1: type activities. Former Panther member Lewis Truelock had submitted an
Speaker 1: affidavit stating that during a visit to O'Neill's father's home,
Speaker 1: the informer showed him putty blasting caps and plastic bottles
Speaker 1: of liquid enough material to produce several bombs. He proposed
Speaker 1: that they blow up an armory and later suggested robbing
Speaker 1: and McDonald's rest around Truelock on the others who heard
Speaker 1: O'Neil's provocative proposals rejected them as useless to the cause.
Speaker 1: Although he was infatuated with weapons and tried to involve
Speaker 1: other Panthers in criminal activities, O'Neill was tolerated because he
Speaker 1: was an exceptionally hard worker around the office. Ronald doc Sat,
Speaker 1: a Black Panther leader who was wounded in the raid,
Speaker 1: recalls the only person who didn't want O'Neil and the
Speaker 1: Panthers was Fred Hampton. Now. The electric chair and the
Speaker 1: bombs were part of a series of schemes O'Neil hatch
Speaker 1: to try in and trap Hampton on behalf of the FBI.
Speaker 1: None of them worked, though, because Hampton was very smart,
Speaker 1: and eventually the police were left with exactly one option
Speaker 1: for dealing with Fred, cold blooded murder. In November of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, William O'Neill provided the FBI with a
Speaker 1: detailed floor plan of the Black Panther Headquarters, which doubled
Speaker 1: as Fred Hampton's home. The map included a red X
Speaker 1: over his bed. At four am, Sergeant Daniel Groth of
Speaker 1: the Chicago Police Department knocked on the door of the
Speaker 1: Black Panther Headquarters. What exactly happened next is debated, but
Speaker 1: we know that for the next seven minutes, the police
Speaker 1: pumped roughly a hundred rounds into the building. Only one
Speaker 1: bullet was fired in response by a Black Panther, Mark Clark,
Speaker 1: aged two. Both Clark and Fred Hampton were shot dead.
Speaker 1: Fred died in his bed from two point blank gunshots
Speaker 1: to the head. The vast majority of bull holes in
Speaker 1: the house were centered around the location of his bed,
Speaker 1: where William O'Neil had drawn the red X. One officer
Speaker 1: was heard saying he's good and dead now as they
Speaker 1: trapes through the bloodstained office, and there was a photograph
Speaker 1: of the officers carrying Fred Hampton's body from the building.
Speaker 1: It's one of the more disgusting things I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: Two of the officers are visibly gritting and we we've
Speaker 1: got a photograph, so if you can show you, we'll
Speaker 1: put it up on the side. I've seen it. It's important, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's important to see these men's faces. Um this and
Speaker 1: that the map with the red X or something that
Speaker 1: like sits in our psyche, you know, because that image
Speaker 1: is just it just burns in you. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying when you see and you know, like that's
Speaker 1: what is that's that man is bit you know? Yeah
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, but is it that for the listeners that
Speaker 1: the you would think that they just like left there
Speaker 1: like local bar and just like a glad hand in
Speaker 1: each other. Like that's the way they look like they
Speaker 1: did well on a slot machine. Yeah, yeah, so true,
Speaker 1: speaking of doing well on a slot machine. Following the ray,
Speaker 1: William O'Neal was given a three hundred dollar bonus by
Speaker 1: the FBI. And now today the assassination of Fred Hampton
Speaker 1: is basically universally agreed by scholars and legal experts as
Speaker 1: well as activists, to have been a political assassination organized
Speaker 1: and orchestrated by the FBI. Um. There is really zero
Speaker 1: disagreement about this fact between credible people who study it. However,
Speaker 1: in mainstream coverage of the raid, you still run into
Speaker 1: people who will equivocate on this fact. A Chicago Tribune
Speaker 1: article I read about the assassination stated in the two
Speaker 1: years before the raid, police and panthers had engaged in
Speaker 1: eight gun battles nationally in which three police officers and
Speaker 1: five panthers died. Four of the shootouts, including one in
Speaker 1: which two police officers were killed, occurred in Chicago. To
Speaker 1: try and make the case that, like there was reason
Speaker 1: for the police to be super anty about this whole thing,
Speaker 1: you know what like is like when people say, hey, well,
Speaker 1: you know these street gangs are these streets, you know,
Speaker 1: they're violent to they're shooting, they're shooting, so we're shooting.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, but you know they're gangsters. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're shooting. But aren't aren't you the police, Like, aren't
Speaker 1: you supposed to carry yourself? You know, at a level
Speaker 1: of integrity, you're telling me your bar of integrity is
Speaker 1: a street gang. That's what you're telling me right now,
Speaker 1: you know. So even if I'm just saying, like, even
Speaker 1: if that was your reasoning, I'm like, yeah, but you're
Speaker 1: the cops though. Yeah. You know one thing that's interesting
Speaker 1: to me that maybe I can leave a little bit
Speaker 1: of homework for the listener. Go sit down and and
Speaker 1: look up Google all the people who were killed in
Speaker 1: mass shootings in the history of the United States, Like, like,
Speaker 1: not just like shootings, but like mass shootes where some
Speaker 1: nut with a gun decides to murder a bunch of strangers.
Speaker 1: Add that number together, and then figure out how many
Speaker 1: people were shot dead by the police in two thousand
Speaker 1: nineteen alone. Oh no, figure out which of those numbers
Speaker 1: is larger. But a homework for you now. Uh. The
Speaker 1: article um that I found in the Chicago Tribune also
Speaker 1: counts the firearms the panthers had on the property nineteen
Speaker 1: and the number of rounds over a thousand, as if
Speaker 1: any of that justifies what was done. Those were all
Speaker 1: the legally owned guns and legally owned I have more
Speaker 1: firearms and ammunition in my house sitting five feet from
Speaker 1: me in the black Panthers had in their house at
Speaker 1: that point. Um, Like, that's not a lot to be
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the nineteens, a sizable number of guns
Speaker 1: for one person, but like it was multiple people's weapons,
Speaker 1: and a thousand rounds is not a lot. Um. And
Speaker 1: those gunfights with police had no connection to Fred Hampton
Speaker 1: other than that he was a Panther to UM. And
Speaker 1: despite the murders and the FBI factory and the counterintelligence operations,
Speaker 1: by seventy the Black Panthers had offices in sixty eight cities.
Speaker 1: The representatives had traveled to meet with communist leaders in
Speaker 1: North Vietnam, North Korea, and China. Some Panthers had set
Speaker 1: up shop in Algeria. UM. And we're not gonna have
Speaker 1: enough time really to go into all of the international
Speaker 1: divisions of this. And speaking of international, UM, Sophie is
Speaker 1: signaling to me that it's time for an ad break
Speaker 1: from the international corporations that sponsored this podcast. All right, globalism,
Speaker 1: the globalist you're Alex Jones voices on point, We're back.
Speaker 1: So UM nineteen seventy would prove to be the Black
Speaker 1: Panthers high point. And again there's a number of reasons
Speaker 1: for this. Police repression, UM, disruption of the leadership and
Speaker 1: stuff had a lot to do with it. UM. I
Speaker 1: should note, and it's very fair to note that it
Speaker 1: was not just UM police and state violence that were
Speaker 1: responsible for the decline of the Black Panthers. There were
Speaker 1: other sort of factors that played into it. And I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quote from Black Against Empire again because it gives
Speaker 1: you an idea of some of these other factors. The
Speaker 1: resilience of the Black Panthers politics depended heavily on support
Speaker 1: from three broad constituencies, Blacks, opponents of the Vietnam War,
Speaker 1: and revolutionary governments internationally. Without the support of these allies,
Speaker 1: the Black Panther Party could not withstand repressive actions against
Speaker 1: them by the state. But, beginning in nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 1: and steadily increasing through nineteen seventy, political transformations undercut the
Speaker 1: self interest that motivated these constituencies to support the Panthers politics.
Speaker 1: As mainstream Democratic leaders opposed the war and Nixon scaled
Speaker 1: back the military draft, blacks one broader social access and
Speaker 1: political representation, and revolutionary governments entered diplomatic relations with the
Speaker 1: United States, the Panthers had greater difficulty sustaining Allied support. First,
Speaker 1: major concessions by the political establishment and the Nixon the
Speaker 1: administration on the Vietnam War eroded the basis of war
Speaker 1: opponents support for the Panthers politics. Once it appeared the
Speaker 1: war would be ended through institutionalized political means, those principally
Speaker 1: committed to ending the draft in war no longer shared
Speaker 1: a personal stake and radically transforming political institutions, many now
Speaker 1: increasingly saw the Panthers call for revolution as unnecessary. From
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine onward, increasing electoral representation as well as
Speaker 1: affirmative action programs and growing access to government employment and
Speaker 1: e leite education also weakened the base of support for
Speaker 1: the Panthers revolutionary politics among blacks. From the end of
Speaker 1: reconstruction eighteen seventy seven until nineteen sixty nine, no more
Speaker 1: than six black people it held a seat in the
Speaker 1: U s House of Representatives at once, but just two
Speaker 1: years later black representation more than doubled, with thirteen Black
Speaker 1: people holding seats in the US House of Representatives by
Speaker 1: nine So a lot of why the Panthers decline is
Speaker 1: because these groups who supported them because they were in
Speaker 1: like for their own self interest, got what they wanted
Speaker 1: and stopped caring about this kind of revolutionary struggle for equality. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's part of this story too. Yeah, my uh, my
Speaker 1: father would say, like, you know, the government go always
Speaker 1: get their man, you know, whatever they want. If the
Speaker 1: if the system decides they want you going, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be going right and like and he would also say,
Speaker 1: what you ain't what you ain't gonna never mess with
Speaker 1: is their money. And if you mess it with their money,
Speaker 1: they're gonna stop it. You know. So this idea of
Speaker 1: like you had this coalition. It was cool when it
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, y'all want to sit at the same
Speaker 1: table as us, all right, that's all right, fine, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. Okay, you want us to not
Speaker 1: beat you on the streets, all right, I guess you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. Won't you start messing with our
Speaker 1: money though, you know, and um and and especially like
Speaker 1: our our internationals. Like I said, when you may have
Speaker 1: said this on the last episode when you first invited
Speaker 1: me on here, I wanted to like refresh my memory
Speaker 1: with like with with my father's experience. So I caught
Speaker 1: him and talked to him about it for a while.
Speaker 1: So this was like the time he was in and
Speaker 1: he was saying he was saying that he would talk
Speaker 1: about like the multi tiered approach of like, uh, the
Speaker 1: sowing seeds of like doubt of like you know, even
Speaker 1: just the idea of saying like hey, you know, um,
Speaker 1: you got this coalition, but like now, like well, if
Speaker 1: the war is over, why are y'all here? Right? So
Speaker 1: he he even mentioned he mentioned exactly what you were saying.
Speaker 1: It was like, now the utility is gone, Like what
Speaker 1: do we do? Then you have like the the what
Speaker 1: we what we in the in slang, now we'll call
Speaker 1: street sweepers. But it was essentially like the injunctions of
Speaker 1: like you're not allowed to gather. He was talking about
Speaker 1: like if it was two or more y'all on a sidewalk,
Speaker 1: that constitutes a black panther meeting. So you'd be stopped
Speaker 1: by the police and like broken up because you're just
Speaker 1: standing on a street corner together, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So like this multi tiered approach to like whether it
Speaker 1: was just like sowing seeds of doubt, dividing the coalition,
Speaker 1: messing with their money, just like all of those things together, Um,
Speaker 1: if the government decides these are his words of government.
Speaker 1: Decide down, won't you down? Won't you? Yeah? Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it's um, yeah, I'm glad you brought up like the
Speaker 1: like the cracking down on so called meetings, because that again,
Speaker 1: that's that's one of those things, like there's there was
Speaker 1: so much. I'm sure it was on my I think
Speaker 1: it was on my dock at some point. I just
Speaker 1: didn't get written up. And that's absolutely important. I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's other stuff like that that I've left out because
Speaker 1: there's just so much to go over here. Um, so
Speaker 1: I'm glad you did bring that up. Um. The Black
Speaker 1: Panther Party was eventually dissolved in and the FBI and
Speaker 1: you know, local federal, state law enforcement cannot be blamed
Speaker 1: for all of that, but their efforts succeeded in draining
Speaker 1: huge amounts of energy from the organization, killing at least
Speaker 1: twenty of its members, and most importantly, destroying or distracting
Speaker 1: its most influential leaders. Huey P. Newton spent most of
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies fighting a seemingly endless series of legal battles.
Speaker 1: There were accusations of violence and embezzling and even murder
Speaker 1: that are very hard for me to parse out. It
Speaker 1: is possible he committed some of these crimes, possibly embezzled.
Speaker 1: Given what we know about the FBI's efforts to take
Speaker 1: him down, I have a lot of difficulty giving too
Speaker 1: much credit to any of these charges. Um, he was
Speaker 1: murdered in nineteen eighty nine by Tyrone Johnson, a member
Speaker 1: of the Black Guerrilla Family, a prison gang, and it's
Speaker 1: very difficult to not draw connections between that murder and
Speaker 1: the FBI motivated US killings. Um, you know, I I
Speaker 1: don't know, impossible not to think about it. Did you
Speaker 1: come across this is like a side note, but did
Speaker 1: you come across like the ten demands of the Black
Speaker 1: Panther Party? Yes, yeah, we're getting Yeah. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: what I wanted to end on. Yeah, And did you
Speaker 1: get don't are you going to cover like their connection
Speaker 1: with like the founding of the crips and Tookie Williams
Speaker 1: and stuff that we're not So if you have something,
Speaker 1: yeah I would I would love to get. So it's this,
Speaker 1: it's this window that you're talking about, this window of
Speaker 1: like the sort of seeing you know, you got these
Speaker 1: three dudes like seeing the the destruction of the party
Speaker 1: and almost like the same sort of disillusionment, Like damn,
Speaker 1: that didn't work either, you know what I'm saying, And
Speaker 1: just being like, and then you introduce Crack and then
Speaker 1: it just everything changes. But like that sort of transition
Speaker 1: from the Panthers dissolving to these like you know, just
Speaker 1: street gangs of just like what we know as the crips,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, Being like, there's a documentary
Speaker 1: called The Bastard Children of the Black Panther Party and
Speaker 1: it was about the founding of the crips and uh,
Speaker 1: and that window between those two sort of like like
Speaker 1: the dissolving of that and then the birth of this,
Speaker 1: you know, being a new sort of like communal police
Speaker 1: force and then and then the Crack attack and then
Speaker 1: it all goes to ship But interesting. Yeah, anyway, I
Speaker 1: had no idea about any of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And the whole Crack in the Inner Cities thing in
Speaker 1: the c I that that's a whole another two or
Speaker 1: three part because I don't want to just like spout
Speaker 1: off about that because even among the people who are
Speaker 1: on the right track, there's a lot of misconceptions about
Speaker 1: that's carried out and it's it's very detailed his whatever
Speaker 1: the case may be. It's it's understood in the inner
Speaker 1: city that like, yeah, crack destroyed us. It's what made
Speaker 1: our gangs violent, you know what I'm saying. And just
Speaker 1: the moving of drugs is what made our gangs violent. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and um yeah, that's really important context. Um. And also
Speaker 1: important context is the to really get an idea of
Speaker 1: the sheer level of of factory perpetrated against the Black
Speaker 1: Panther Party by the FBI during the period of Cointeal
Speaker 1: Pro of the two nine as the bureau took to
Speaker 1: disrupt black groups. Under co Intal Pro two hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty three were taken against the Panthers. The FBI paid
Speaker 1: out more than seven point four million dollars in bribes
Speaker 1: to Black Panther informants, which is more than for for context,
Speaker 1: that's more than twice the amount of money they spent
Speaker 1: on bribing informants who were organized crime informants nationwide. So
Speaker 1: they spent twice as much money on the Black Panthers
Speaker 1: as they did on the fucking mob. Mob. And the
Speaker 1: mob in like the sixties and seventies, when the mob
Speaker 1: is like really a big deal the actual mob. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: like the hardcore like the fucking Scorsese mob. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know it's that I will speak. I think I
Speaker 1: could speak for all of black people. I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go out a limit say this. I am. We
Speaker 1: are absolutely fascinated like the Irishman being like, oh, the
Speaker 1: greatest movie ever, like you know, honored as like this,
Speaker 1: Like now, I'm like, y'all murder Murderer, Like okay, I
Speaker 1: like my movies too, But how come like y'all are
Speaker 1: so fascinated with just these like these white like gangsters,
Speaker 1: Like why is it okay? Why are y'all so fascinated
Speaker 1: by white gangsters? I'm saying, I wonder how many of
Speaker 1: the people who love those movies. Um, I also think
Speaker 1: that rap music unfairly glorified criminals. Yes, that's my point,
Speaker 1: that's my point. I'm just like, why is it why
Speaker 1: y'all okay with this? Like why is this type entertaining?
Speaker 1: Like why is this okay? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah? Um so. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We've spent this episode talking about this incredibly sweeping campaign
Speaker 1: to disrupt and destroy the Black Panthers by the FBI
Speaker 1: and by law enforcement, and we might not know about
Speaker 1: any of this if it weren't for the actions of
Speaker 1: eight really fucking cool dudes led by William C. Daviden,
Speaker 1: professor of physics at Haverford College. In nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: they spent months casing an FBI field office in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: During the night of a major Fraser Ali fight, when
Speaker 1: everyone was distracted, they broke into the FBI's offices with
Speaker 1: a crowbar and made out with a car load of
Speaker 1: FBI files. Those files included numerous memos from j Edgar
Speaker 1: Hoover on the Black Panthers and the co Intel pro
Speaker 1: to operations. Now, the FBI tried to stop the press
Speaker 1: from writing about any of this, but The Washington Post
Speaker 1: was courageous enough to flip in the bird and right
Speaker 1: about it. The findings inspired a blizzard of foyer request
Speaker 1: from Panthers, who suddenly had confirmation that they've been surveilled
Speaker 1: for years. All these ship they've been writing about the
Speaker 1: fbis on our backs. No, you're paranoid, No, look, no seriously, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: For an example of what was found, one member, a
Speaker 1: guy named Rodney Barnett, received a five hundred page file
Speaker 1: on himself quote documenting his whereabouts, interviewing every employer he's
Speaker 1: ever had, interviewing his high school teacher, his neighbors, all
Speaker 1: of his siblings, and observing him getting on airplanes. So
Speaker 1: all this led to an investigation in nineteen seventy six
Speaker 1: by the Senate collect Committee on Intelligence Activities. The final
Speaker 1: report they issued noted that the actions carried out by
Speaker 1: the FBI under co Intel pro quote would be intolerable
Speaker 1: in a democratic society even if all the targets had
Speaker 1: been involved in violent activity. But co Intel pro went
Speaker 1: far beyond that. The unexpressed major premise of the programs
Speaker 1: was that a law enforcement agency has the duty to
Speaker 1: do whatever is necessary to combat perceived threats to the
Speaker 1: existing social order and political order. But the report stated,
Speaker 1: although the claimed purpose of the program was to prevent violence,
Speaker 1: its tactics quote were clearly intended to foster violence, and
Speaker 1: many could reasonably have been expected to cause violence. The
Speaker 1: Senate concluded that the FBI quote itself, engaged in lawless
Speaker 1: tactics and responded to deep seated social programs by fomenting
Speaker 1: violence and unrest. And part of me wants to end
Speaker 1: on that note, but I don't think I want to
Speaker 1: give the government the last word in this episode, even
Speaker 1: if that last word is the government condemning the actions
Speaker 1: of its own agents. So for the last word in
Speaker 1: this episode, I think we should go over the Black
Speaker 1: Panthers tin Point Program introduced in nineteen sixty six by
Speaker 1: huy P. Newton and Bobby Seal. And Bobby Seal, by
Speaker 1: the way, we talked about Newton, he died, obviously, Hampton died.
Speaker 1: Seal is still alive today, or at least as if
Speaker 1: the recording this episode has continued to be an activist
Speaker 1: ran for off as a couple of times. Um, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's still around to this day. So that's at least
Speaker 1: one bit of yeah positive. Um. So here is the
Speaker 1: tin Point program. What we want now. Number one, we
Speaker 1: want freedom. We want the power to determine the destiny
Speaker 1: of our black community. Number two, we want full employment
Speaker 1: for our people. Number three we want an into the
Speaker 1: robbery by the white men of our black community, later
Speaker 1: changed to we want an into the robbery by the
Speaker 1: capitalists of our black and depressed communities. Four we want
Speaker 1: decent housing fit for the shelter of human beings. Five
Speaker 1: we want education for a people that exposes the true
Speaker 1: nature of this decadent American society. We want education that
Speaker 1: teaches us our true history and our role in the
Speaker 1: present day society. Six we want all black men to
Speaker 1: be exempt from military service. Seven we want an immediate
Speaker 1: end to police brutality and murder of black people. Eight
Speaker 1: we want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county,
Speaker 1: and city prisons and jails. Nine we want all Black people,
Speaker 1: when brought to trial, to be tried in a court
Speaker 1: by a jury of their peer group or people from
Speaker 1: their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the
Speaker 1: United States. And ten we want land, bred housing, education, clothing, justice,
Speaker 1: and peace. Now. That list of demands also included a
Speaker 1: list of beliefs, starting with we believe that black people
Speaker 1: will not be free until we are able to determine
Speaker 1: our own destiny, and included a reiteration of the Panther
Speaker 1: belief in the importance of community self defense. We believe
Speaker 1: we can end police brutality in our black community by
Speaker 1: organizing black self defense groups that are dedicated to defending
Speaker 1: our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The
Speaker 1: Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States gives
Speaker 1: us the right to bear arms. We therefore believe that
Speaker 1: all black people should arm themselves for self defense. There
Speaker 1: were also demands for the release of all black people
Speaker 1: incarcerated in American prisons, since none of them could possibly
Speaker 1: have received a fair trial. The whole thing ended with
Speaker 1: this paragraph. When in the course of human events, it
Speaker 1: becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds
Speaker 1: which have connected them with another, and to assume among
Speaker 1: the powers of the earth the separate and equal station
Speaker 1: to which the laws and Nature's God entitle them. A
Speaker 1: decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they
Speaker 1: should declare the causes which impel them to separation. We
Speaker 1: hold these truths to be self evident, and that all
Speaker 1: men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Speaker 1: creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty,
Speaker 1: and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights,
Speaker 1: governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from
Speaker 1: the consent of the government. That whenever any form of
Speaker 1: government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right
Speaker 1: of the people to alter and abolish it, and to
Speaker 1: institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and
Speaker 1: organizing its power in such a form as to them
Speaker 1: shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.
Speaker 1: Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not
Speaker 1: be changed light and transient causes. And accordingly, all experience
Speaker 1: hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while
Speaker 1: levelers are sufferable, than to write themselves by abolishing the
Speaker 1: forms to which they are accused. But when a long
Speaker 1: train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object,
Speaker 1: evince as a design to reduce them under absolute despotism,
Speaker 1: it is their right and their duty to throw off
Speaker 1: such government and to provide new guards of their future security.
Speaker 1: You may recognize that as the beginning of the declaration
Speaker 1: to if independence. Yes, man, what a freaking journey. And
Speaker 1: they're so like again us ten different people with the
Speaker 1: black panthers? Are you get ten different answers, even people
Speaker 1: that were in the movement. But at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, man, like, you know, wherever like point might
Speaker 1: be a problem? Like is it? I mean, is it
Speaker 1: so much to ask to be? Like? Yo, I just
Speaker 1: wanted housing that's like suitable for humans? How about that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know, if yeah, yeah it and at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, and I think why they ended on
Speaker 1: that note I'm just quoting the introduction to the Declaration
Speaker 1: of Independence, is they're saying, what we want is for
Speaker 1: this nation to make good on its promises. Just just
Speaker 1: keep your promises. Yeah, like yeah, like they're saying, like
Speaker 1: this thing that you all claim to revere, this is
Speaker 1: a good document. It's got some good ship in there.
Speaker 1: Why aren't you doing it? That's what we were about.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. Yeah yeah, so good, yeah yeah cool cool,
Speaker 1: um prop Is there anything you want to go into
Speaker 1: before we roll out of this one? Man? Um? I
Speaker 1: think uh, mentioning some of the like some of the women,
Speaker 1: like the Tupac connection, you know Nikki, I mean Angela Davis,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean her her prison reform stuff
Speaker 1: that she's doing now, like some of these people, um
Speaker 1: you know, uh, Nina Simone and like you know, just
Speaker 1: some of the like things that are having like uh,
Speaker 1: who's in Cuba right now? What am I blank? And
Speaker 1: who's in Cuba right now? Oh? Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: um some of their like because yeah they're in Cuba
Speaker 1: and in um Algeria, they had like a number of
Speaker 1: them wound up living. Yeah, they just they just went there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, some of the some of the women, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying that we're like so pivotal, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. And again like uh Afana shakor
Speaker 1: like Tupac's mom, you know what I'm saying, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: going to prison or being pregnant with Tupac in prison.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. Stuff like that like that
Speaker 1: like ties to like now I think would be cool
Speaker 1: to kind of cover. Yeah. Yeah, And that's definitely the
Speaker 1: biggest shortcoming of this is that, like, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I definitely didn't go into detail enough about like the
Speaker 1: different women activists, um, the the international stuff that went on. Um,
Speaker 1: It's there's so much to talk about. Yeah, like there was.
Speaker 1: It was always going to be imperfect, and I totally
Speaker 1: but gun you could go here, you could like Angela
Speaker 1: Davis like teaches at Berkeley, Like you could go hear
Speaker 1: her right now, you could go hear her lecture, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. Like those things to me, like
Speaker 1: these like living you know monuments that like like if
Speaker 1: we could gather these stories and hear the more somebody
Speaker 1: could hear them. Why they're still alive? You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, Um, I think it's like super even if
Speaker 1: you don't like even if you don't rock with like
Speaker 1: a lot of whatever they stood for right now, like
Speaker 1: she was, she was on this campaign and like just
Speaker 1: in prisons period, Like prisons are ineffective, They don't work,
Speaker 1: They just make more criminals, you know what I'm saying. Um,
Speaker 1: So you could go hear her right now. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Like talk about it. You know know, I'm saying,
Speaker 1: like why Tupac was who he was again, his mama
Speaker 1: was a panther, you know what I'm saying, and like
Speaker 1: it was in prison pregnant with him, you know things
Speaker 1: like that. I just think it's like these this like
Speaker 1: it's not it's it's not that long ago, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Like some of these people are still
Speaker 1: alive and still accessible. But really the misst to me
Speaker 1: even in a lot of like the academic work with
Speaker 1: the with the panthers, Like I know I've harped on
Speaker 1: this a lot, but like what the women did, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. They were doing the cooking for
Speaker 1: all those like breakfast programs that was women doing that,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, When they locked up all
Speaker 1: the men when it was killing the men, guess who
Speaker 1: charried it. It It was the women, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So it's just I just think that, like that legacy,
Speaker 1: I would love to see more on that legacy, not
Speaker 1: even not from this, I'm just saying just period, Like listen, yeah,
Speaker 1: can we talk about what the ladies did? You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Yeah, Yeah, And that's you know that
Speaker 1: that's probably a good maybe a good subject from when
Speaker 1: we do our next Heroes episode, uh around the end
Speaker 1: of the year or something. Yeah. Um, and part I
Speaker 1: was focusing this on, I mean, I was focusing this
Speaker 1: largely on like efforts to destroy the panthers, and those
Speaker 1: did sort of focus more on on killing and injuring Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: imprisoning some of the Yeah. But you're right, like that's
Speaker 1: a you know, and it's one of those things. As
Speaker 1: soon as I started reading Black Against Empire, it was
Speaker 1: like this anxiety attack of like I'm gonna leave so
Speaker 1: much sh it out, dude. Yeah, you can't like how
Speaker 1: like that's what I was saying, Like I was already
Speaker 1: ready to show you mercy because it's just so much
Speaker 1: to cover, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, this
Speaker 1: was a very focused episode, and my main hope for
Speaker 1: it is that it convinces people, particularly other like white
Speaker 1: kids like me, Um, go read more about these guys
Speaker 1: and women and and and this this, Like, go read
Speaker 1: more about this. I think Black Against Empire is a
Speaker 1: good place to start. Um. There's a lot of other
Speaker 1: really good books, um, um that you can look into.
Speaker 1: And I'd say i'd even tell everybody, like I've taken
Speaker 1: your book advice before, you know, read a few things
Speaker 1: you didn't put out there, and has sent those four
Speaker 1: Like I read The Death of Democracy. That's a good one.
Speaker 1: That was That was a book. Boy. Yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: probably got to save chills. I did. When he was reading,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, oh this isn't good. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is too familiar. Yeah. Anyway, well, um, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe consider some of the lessons in Black Against Empire
Speaker 1: is part of the antidote to the Death of Democracy,
Speaker 1: especially the survival programs, that sort of thing, this idea
Speaker 1: of community organizing for self defense, um, the armed stuff
Speaker 1: and the stuff that has nothing to do with guns.
Speaker 1: It's all very important. So that's the in note on
Speaker 1: this episode. Prop you wanna plug your plug doubles before
Speaker 1: we sail out of here into the weekend. My plug
Speaker 1: doubles are prop hip hop. Uh, just like it sounds
Speaker 1: prop hip hop. That's that's Twitter, that's Instagram, that's the website.
Speaker 1: There's Merche coffee, Paraphamalilia. I'm quite a coffee nerd uh.
Speaker 1: A couple of podcasts I'm a part of, like really
Speaker 1: cool coffee paper. Oh yeah, it's really really really you
Speaker 1: guys got to look up the Poor Gammy. It's gonna
Speaker 1: blow your mind. DJ Daniel, our engineer bought one jerk.
Speaker 1: You're supposed I was supposed to give you one man.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, dude, so the Poor Gammy. Um ye, some pods.
Speaker 1: I'm a part of Godhood Politics when I'm most excited
Speaker 1: about essentially like a uh sort of the like street
Speaker 1: level version of like politics and information just to like
Speaker 1: it's kind of fun, kind of tongue tongue in cheek.
Speaker 1: But you can understand politics. If you survived eighth grade,
Speaker 1: you can understand geo politics. And that's really what and
Speaker 1: that's what kind of what I'm working on. All right,
Speaker 1: and I am working on this podcast every week. You
Speaker 1: can find me here, you know, and the sources for
Speaker 1: this episode on behind the Bastards dot com. You can
Speaker 1: find our Twitter and Instagram and at Bastards pod you
Speaker 1: can find my Twitter at I right, okay, um, and
Speaker 1: you can also find our other podcast, Worst Year Ever. Um.
Speaker 1: We have a two parter that just dropped, investigating a
Speaker 1: terrorist attack on the furry community at a convention in
Speaker 1: to US in fourteen and it's Nazi connections. So that's
Speaker 1: a fun one. Um. So uh, continue uh learning things,
Speaker 1: read some good books and go ahead into the street
Speaker 1: and and kick some ass or or feed some ass
Speaker 1: to do something two asses. Yeah, great, all right, and
Speaker 1: we're out. H m.