Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
Speaker 1: You're a weekly podcast that reminds you that there's people
Speaker 1: who become cool by doing cool stuff. I think that
Speaker 1: people get the direction of it mixed up. It's not
Speaker 1: that people are cool, so then they do cool stuff.
Speaker 1: People become cool by doing cool stuff. That's that sounds
Speaker 1: very dramatic because I have something in the back of
Speaker 1: my throat.
Speaker 2: Are you saying actions matter?
Speaker 1: Yes? Cool? Yeah, it matters less what you believe in
Speaker 1: more what you do cool. But what I have done
Speaker 1: is have Joelle Monique on.
Speaker 3: What's up?
Speaker 1: Ooray?
Speaker 3: Oh man, I am here. I've been trying new things
Speaker 3: and they're going well. I'm probably the most hydrated and
Speaker 3: well rested i've been in my adult life. So you know,
Speaker 3: happy things.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Your water bottle looks awesome. By the way, thank you.
Speaker 3: I got it for free. It is to drink my
Speaker 3: daily recommended amount of water. I call it my emotional
Speaker 3: support water bottle. It is cleaned once a week.
Speaker 2: I mean consistency. Love love to see it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well I do. The rest of the intro
Speaker 1: credits the other voice. Oh yeah, Sophie, Sophie.
Speaker 2: That's me. I am not well rested or hydrated.
Speaker 1: But I'm also here. Yes, I got really excited yesterday
Speaker 1: I got these I've been hiking and so I got
Speaker 1: these like fancy electrolyte mixes that are not but I
Speaker 1: tried it while I wasn't hiking yesterday and it's like
Speaker 1: the saltiest, craziest fucking thing. I don't know how I
Speaker 1: feel about it.
Speaker 3: It's like when you drink a gatorade you absolutely don't
Speaker 3: need one. You're like, what is It's like sugary sweet
Speaker 3: but also kind of salty, and your body is like,
Speaker 3: we don't need it. It's too much.
Speaker 1: It's just like, let's get through you as as quickly
Speaker 1: as possible.
Speaker 2: That's one leftover gatory that you had when you were
Speaker 2: like sick, and then you drink it and when you're
Speaker 2: not sick and you're like, this is not it.
Speaker 3: I did not want this.
Speaker 2: Oh I like this intro. Wait, we have to do
Speaker 2: the rest of it.
Speaker 1: Well, okay. So Ian is our audio engineer, and our
Speaker 1: theme music was written for us by someone who is
Speaker 1: actually I was gonna say someone who's not a woman,
Speaker 1: but she actually is a woman, but her name is
Speaker 1: on woman. Yeah, that's who that's who.
Speaker 2: You just confuse this shit out of everybody.
Speaker 1: And that's okay, I know, I know, but I'm going
Speaker 1: to confuse everyone every even more. Joelle, you ever heard
Speaker 1: of breakfast?
Speaker 3: I fucking love breakfast.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, the day it's best.
Speaker 3: It's like, it's so goddamn good. And I have lots
Speaker 3: of thoughts on breakfast randomly. Oh listen, you don't know
Speaker 3: what you just got yourself.
Speaker 1: Okay, Today we're going to tell a story about breakfast,
Speaker 1: about why it's important, especially to students. Are cool people
Speaker 1: today took a long, hard look at what was standing
Speaker 1: in the way of access to healthy breakfast for their community,
Speaker 1: and they did something about it directly, feeding tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of kids every day. I could see Joelle's face.
Speaker 1: I know it is. And of course what was standing
Speaker 1: in the way of these kids having a healthy breakfast
Speaker 1: were those classic problems capitalism and racism. Because today we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the Black Panther Party and we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about their survival programs, the most famous
Speaker 1: of which is their free breakfast program and how this
Speaker 1: pressured the US government into forcing into feeding free breakfast
Speaker 1: to kids.
Speaker 3: But a great organization, Yeah, love us some black panthers. Yeah,
Speaker 3: elite radicals.
Speaker 1: They h well, I want to hear somebody. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: going to do I actually wrote up a bunch about
Speaker 1: breakfast so we can talk about Yes, So there's a
Speaker 1: slogan breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
Speaker 1: I was like googling it and I was like, is
Speaker 1: this true, and a not deep dives into the subject
Speaker 1: tells me that it was a marketing slogan developed by
Speaker 1: John Harvey Kellogg in order to move breakfast Cereal, that
Speaker 1: demon that I know, Yeah, fucker, you want to know
Speaker 1: more about him. There's a whole opposite of Cool People
Speaker 1: episode about him from behind the Bastards. So then people
Speaker 1: on the internet were like, see, since that's marketing slogan,
Speaker 1: breakfast doesn't matter, we can all skip it. This is
Speaker 1: not true. There's been a ton of studies and I
Speaker 1: don't know how compares to lunch or dinner. So I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna be like most important meal of the day,
Speaker 1: but it is one of the important meals of the day.
Speaker 3: There are three.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is It's a pretty classic setup. Not going
Speaker 1: for a long time. Skipping breakfast fucks with your circadian rhythm.
Speaker 1: It increases your risk of heart disease, type tube diabetes,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of other shit. But most important to
Speaker 1: our what used to be anecdotal and is now preliminarily
Speaker 1: proven eating breakfast provides short term cognition and memory benefits.
Speaker 1: So if you eat a healthy breakfast, you do better
Speaker 1: in school. There's noticeable, like trackable changes improvements in math, spelling, reading, attention,
Speaker 1: and memory, as well as reduced frustration, increased attention. Kids
Speaker 1: aren't falling asleep in class as much. So I hate
Speaker 1: to say Kellogg was right, was wrong.
Speaker 3: He was on He knew two things that you need
Speaker 3: breakfast and that masturbation leads to evil. Yeah he was
Speaker 3: right about one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you take what you can get. No, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: he would be.
Speaker 3: So disappointed with our serial selections. He made to be
Speaker 3: able to be the most bland thing. And then people
Speaker 3: were like, that is not it. What if we just
Speaker 3: made it out of sugar and corn. Sugar and corn,
Speaker 3: everybody go for it, And now the cereal is just
Speaker 3: diabetes waiting to happen. It is a crazy wonderful trip.
Speaker 3: If you have you gone back down the cereal aisle recently,
Speaker 3: do you eat cereal for breakfast.
Speaker 1: I do. I eat cereal for breakfast, and I like,
Speaker 1: I usually pick. I have like a really not impressive
Speaker 1: grocery store available to me in West Virginia, and so
Speaker 1: I pick the like least the like least sugary, but
Speaker 1: still like a major brand thing that I can find,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, are we talking like a great nuts?
Speaker 1: I usually eat like Life or Crispecs.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, classics.
Speaker 1: Classics, Yeah, what about you.
Speaker 3: I don't eat cereal for breakfast anymore. I was becoming
Speaker 3: in eggs and toast girl when I do the calculations
Speaker 3: on the calories and I said, my god, it's so delicious.
Speaker 3: It's such a classic breakfast. I didn't realize I needed
Speaker 3: to be a farmer working in a field all day
Speaker 3: to eat it. It's really annoying because it's so fucking good.
Speaker 3: So now I do, uh either have like fresh fruit
Speaker 3: or I'll do like a green smoothie.
Speaker 1: Nice.
Speaker 3: But before I became the person I am today, I
Speaker 3: was just a stoner who was poor, and oh my god,
Speaker 3: cereal is so great because you could eat it for
Speaker 3: any meal. It's also like five dollars max, right, Or
Speaker 3: it was when I was buying cereal. I don't know
Speaker 3: what the prices are now, but so if you accidentally
Speaker 3: ate too much, you were like, not a big deal.
Speaker 3: Now I'm gonna go buy no.
Speaker 2: Dollar box c Cereal is actually like a gluten free
Speaker 2: as well, which is good for people who can't eat gluten.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely nice. Love that I think of cereal as
Speaker 1: a dessert.
Speaker 3: So where I was going was, oh, Oreos is my
Speaker 3: supreme cereal.
Speaker 1: I've never heard of this.
Speaker 3: Oh my, Margaret, it is so divine.
Speaker 1: It's like it's just like eating ice cream for breakfast.
Speaker 2: I scared myself healthier.
Speaker 1: One time when I had no money, but I had
Speaker 1: these leftover cakes from a like event that no one
Speaker 1: came to. It was a very not happy period of
Speaker 1: my life. I like didn't have enough money for food,
Speaker 1: but I like through this like anniversary event for this
Speaker 1: publisher I worked with, and like no one came, and
Speaker 1: so I had these two fucking cakes. And I had
Speaker 1: a science experiment called how many consecutive meals can I
Speaker 1: replace with cake? Oh no, Margaret, the answer was five.
Speaker 3: That is you know about that? That feels right? I
Speaker 3: bet at four you were you were like, this fifth
Speaker 3: meal is probably a bad eye. Yeah, yeah, but I
Speaker 3: absolutely must. When I was in a very similar situation,
Speaker 3: I was living in a two bedroom with at one
Speaker 3: point thirteen people. It was a lovely, wild experience in
Speaker 3: the early twenties. Many of them were, you know, like
Speaker 3: sex workers, punks. I worked at a pizza place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you bring home the pizza and everyone loves
Speaker 1: you every night.
Speaker 3: And it was the best. It was taken baysic organic,
Speaker 3: taking baked pizza.
Speaker 1: It was like the nicest things together.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, Marker, Honestly, it was right. It was just
Speaker 3: queer Kans as far as I could see, all of
Speaker 3: us poor. We got one guy's dad who was a
Speaker 3: sweet old farmer who did not understand his gay son
Speaker 3: but loved him regardless. And he was like, yes, I
Speaker 3: will sign this lease with these two kids you met
Speaker 3: from in college six months ago. How did it happen,
Speaker 3: I don't know, but it was magical. It was a
Speaker 3: great apartment while it lasted. But yeah, we would like
Speaker 3: make pizzas at night. Someone would get a handle of
Speaker 3: vodka because it costs nineteen ninety nine and we could
Speaker 3: definitely get that much money together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then we would always money for vodka.
Speaker 3: The definitely was always ready for vodka. It's cold in
Speaker 3: the Midwest, and this morning we would eat left over
Speaker 3: cold pizza. And it's also a great breakfast.
Speaker 1: It truly is. I think that the breakfast we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about are going to be healthier than what
Speaker 1: you and I have. Just so glad.
Speaker 3: But you mentioned children needing to be educated, so I'm
Speaker 3: glad that they're brea.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, if there's one thing that black activists have
Speaker 1: learned over the centuries in the US, it's that learning
Speaker 1: and education can be weapons in the fight against racism
Speaker 1: if they're wielded intentionally and not just part of recuperation
Speaker 1: into the existing system. Right, And we see that again
Speaker 1: and again, which is to say, sometimes people look at
Speaker 1: the survival programs of the Black Panther Party and they
Speaker 1: write them off as like sort of charity or propaganda,
Speaker 1: kind of like a like a side thing to make
Speaker 1: them puzzles popular, compared to the real work of running
Speaker 1: around with guns but providing food for black children, preparing
Speaker 1: them for education that they could wield the better themselves
Speaker 1: in their community, empower people to confront capitalism directly. It
Speaker 1: also took an armed militant movement to set up that infrastructure,
Speaker 1: so I don't want to. I mostly get mad at
Speaker 1: the fake people keep trying to come up with these
Speaker 1: dichotomies where they're like, oh, you're either like down with
Speaker 1: the militant struggle or you're like doing charity or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's like it took one to make the other happen.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, they're completely merged you. The last month on
Speaker 3: he recommended such a lovely book that I have cherished
Speaker 3: called this Nonviolent Shit Will Get You Killed, Yeah, which
Speaker 3: is everything to me, and it's been because it's definitely
Speaker 3: you're kind of taught. I mean especially I don't know
Speaker 3: what children are taught in schools now, but growing up
Speaker 3: in like the early aughts, specifically during Black History Months,
Speaker 3: when you got to learn about Martin Luther King Junior
Speaker 3: and what he was doing and Malcolm X and the
Speaker 3: bad shit he was doing. Yeah, they're like that guy
Speaker 3: was dangerous and that's definitely how you don't want to
Speaker 3: do it. This guy literally loved the Lord and that
Speaker 3: is why we like him every and when he died,
Speaker 3: everyone thought he was a Saintan's so great, Like really,
Speaker 3: what this was? The lesson I learned from like zero
Speaker 3: to twenty two. It was crazy how long that narrative
Speaker 3: was dictated to me. And you really, or at least
Speaker 3: I'll speak for myself, I really felt like, Okay, if
Speaker 3: you are non violent for a long enough, attitudes will change.
Speaker 3: And especially you know, in the nineties you've got Bill Clinton,
Speaker 3: who people used to very seriously say it was the
Speaker 3: first black president, a mind blowing time. Yeah, but they
Speaker 3: like the thought was, well, we're doing a lot better
Speaker 3: because of the non violent stuff. But of course that
Speaker 3: completely ignored the drug war that was happening. It ignored
Speaker 3: the censorship that was happening across a lot of black arts,
Speaker 3: but very specifically rap. It was a crazy time where
Speaker 3: people were constantly lying to us. And it's interesting now
Speaker 3: I sort of can't shake knowing what I know. Violence
Speaker 3: is necessary. It's not corded, it's not invited, but it
Speaker 3: is necessary to defend ourselves because you know, if we
Speaker 3: look at the two heroes we started with, both ended
Speaker 3: up dead. Didn't matter how peaceful or you know, prepared
Speaker 3: they were to incite violence if necessary, they were both murdered.
Speaker 3: And so yeah, to your point, you eat both.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like and there's a lot of and this
Speaker 1: gets into something that I'm a little bit just going
Speaker 1: from what I've heard people talking about. It's not part
Speaker 1: of the script, but like there's a lot of talk
Speaker 1: about how as Martin Luther King became more and more
Speaker 1: like aware and in connection with militant movements, and Malcolm
Speaker 1: X was also moving like more towards in some ways
Speaker 1: a moderate position, not an unarmed position, but a like
Speaker 1: he moved away from the Nation of Islam and towards
Speaker 1: actual Islam, and like you know, and he's he stopped
Speaker 1: being as explicitly whatever anyway. So this is possibly also
Speaker 1: why they like had to die, right, is because this
Speaker 1: stopped being a dichotomy to some degree. This is a
Speaker 1: little bit off the cuff. There's probably people who know
Speaker 1: more about that, but.
Speaker 3: No, no, but you're one hundred percent right. I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm not a scholar in it either. But if you
Speaker 3: look at some of the especially the very late like
Speaker 3: MLK days, Like there's a video where he's walking through
Speaker 3: the streets of Chicago and he's struck as a dude
Speaker 3: from the South about how sag he called Chicago the
Speaker 3: most segregated city in America, and it was and in
Speaker 3: many ways still is. And while he's walking through, a
Speaker 3: bunch of white people come out the start throwing things
Speaker 3: at him, and you can I mean, he's he's like enraged,
Speaker 3: he's so angry. This is like he's been fighting for
Speaker 3: so long, he's been peacefuls for so long, and you
Speaker 3: can't help but understand, like, my god, it's not working.
Speaker 3: It's the vibe you get, you know, like it is
Speaker 3: just peacely marching is not going to change these people's minds.
Speaker 3: And yeah, they didn't let either of them get to
Speaker 3: start vocalizing that very much where they were taken out.
Speaker 3: It's just crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that that goes well into well, go okay
Speaker 1: to talk about panthers really quick. So you know, the panthers,
Speaker 1: they're about both of these things, right, They're about the
Speaker 1: survival programs and they're about militancy. And it took what
Speaker 1: might have been the largest coordinated effort of law enforcement, federal, state,
Speaker 1: and local in the history of the United States to
Speaker 1: bring them down. It took infiltrators, it took dirty tricks.
Speaker 1: It took rumor mills and slander and libel and drugs
Speaker 1: and frame ups and police violence and outright assassination to
Speaker 1: stop them. There's also, and we're gonna talk about this
Speaker 1: kind of near the end, there's a bit of a
Speaker 1: like they forgot to throw the ring of power into
Speaker 1: the fires of Mount Doom. Stuff going on that plagues them.
Speaker 1: But they got so much done along the way that
Speaker 1: even though they did end up repressed successfully, it was
Speaker 1: cool as shit. They didn't appear whole cloth out of
Speaker 1: nowhere to vitalize the civil rights movement as in my scripts.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to talk about some of the things
Speaker 1: that you were just talking about, but you know, there
Speaker 1: were armed components of the non violence civil rights movement
Speaker 1: in the US South. For anyone who hasn't heard, I
Speaker 1: would recommend listening to me and Joel talking about this
Speaker 1: last fall. But nonviolence is a tactical choice that lots
Speaker 1: of people made in the fifties and early sixties. For
Speaker 1: some people is a moral choice, but not all of them.
Speaker 1: And there was movement after movement that paired voter registration
Speaker 1: and busting a great with armed self and community defense.
Speaker 1: The Deacons for Defense and Justice of Jonesborough, Louisiana a
Speaker 1: particularly prominent example of this. Then, just to lay out
Speaker 1: where the Panthers are coming from. In around nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: the era of civil rights moves into the era of
Speaker 1: black power. The clearest turning point might have been on
Speaker 1: June sixteenth, nineteen sixty six, when Stokely Carmichael, who is
Speaker 1: an organizer with SNICK, the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee,
Speaker 1: he gave a speech that included the following bit, this
Speaker 1: is the twenty seventh time I have been arrested, and
Speaker 1: I ain't going to jail no more. The only way
Speaker 1: we're going to stop them white men from whooping us
Speaker 1: is to take over. What we're going to start saying
Speaker 1: now is black power. And black power is another one
Speaker 1: of those things that like the way it gets talked
Speaker 1: about in mainstream education, at least my education, was not
Speaker 1: a useful way to talk about black power. All black
Speaker 1: power means a lot of different things, depending on who
Speaker 1: says it and what the context they're saying it in,
Speaker 1: but the core of it is self determination for black people.
Speaker 1: At its more extreme end, it's been used to advocate
Speaker 1: for black separatism or black supremacy. I don't want to
Speaker 1: conflate the two. Those are different ideas. Right at its
Speaker 1: least radical end, it's been used to advocate for like
Speaker 1: black control of existing infrastructure, like what if we had
Speaker 1: all black mayors and black cops and stuff like that. Right,
Speaker 1: most people, at least in my reading, didn't mean either
Speaker 1: end of this. The Panthers had a saying all power
Speaker 1: to the people, and they specifically meant that interracially and
Speaker 1: black self determination wasn't going to come at the expense
Speaker 1: of non black people. And that's like the the thing
Speaker 1: that I keep running across, like as I read this
Speaker 1: and then I think back to my own own childhood
Speaker 1: and being told certain things or whatever. Right is that,
Speaker 1: like it wasn't black power means, like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: kill all the white people or whatever.
Speaker 3: Right, it may not the equivalent of the white power
Speaker 3: that the KKK does now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And an awful lot of the civil rights
Speaker 1: leaders and organizations that we usually think about is not
Speaker 1: particularly militant, came along with this transition into the black
Speaker 1: power movement. And this is another part that sort of
Speaker 1: gets forget about it. I went to a I went
Speaker 1: to a middle school called Rosa Parks, Okay in this
Speaker 1: and my neighborhood was actually like bust to integrate this
Speaker 1: school because it was a rich, upper middle class white neighborhood.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I'm I'm a white middle class kid.
Speaker 1: I'm not that's how anyway, whatever, I hear you.
Speaker 3: And I'm not surprised.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And what we learned about Rosa Parks, at least
Speaker 1: what I remember learning about Rosa Parks in the middle
Speaker 1: school named after her, was she was a nice lady
Speaker 1: who didn't give up her seat.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's what I learned too, and always old like
Speaker 3: the there's a level of feebleness and a respect that
Speaker 3: white people could understand because you would not do this
Speaker 3: to an old white lady. And a lot of times
Speaker 3: I think when I use white is a very pejorative term.
Speaker 3: But like if we if we look at I think
Speaker 3: when they think about black liberation, right, because that that's
Speaker 3: typically the goal is just liberation, They're like, oh, it
Speaker 3: will it can only be radical, and if it's radical,
Speaker 3: it must be violent to me, because if our powers
Speaker 3: are equal, then the lack of power should also be equal.
Speaker 3: I really think that's the through line for a lot
Speaker 3: of folks. Yeah, And therefore they can only they can
Speaker 3: only give liberation to the folks that they have given
Speaker 3: some form of liberation to right. So Granny's grannies are fine,
Speaker 3: they can ride the bus.
Speaker 2: There was a kindergarten teacher at my elementary school who
Speaker 2: was friends with Rosa Parks and some kid was like.
Speaker 3: She's not dead. What did they say?
Speaker 4: They're like, she's not dead? Because wow, she was like
Speaker 4: she was ancient, ancient. I went to Rosa Parks Middle
Speaker 4: School while Rosa Parks was alive, and I did not
Speaker 4: know that Rosa Parks wasn't a live person exactly.
Speaker 3: That is insane, that's crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what people don't mention is I mean one and
Speaker 1: I kind of maybe one day so I'll actually get
Speaker 1: her own episode because she's really fucking cool, including the
Speaker 1: bus thing. And it was a like conscious strategic thing,
Speaker 1: kind of like how people are like, oh John Brown
Speaker 1: was like a lone wing now to attack things. He's like, No,
Speaker 1: he was part of a major movement to try and
Speaker 1: accomplish a certain thing and he actually succeeded.
Speaker 3: But how blown was your mind when you learned Rosa
Speaker 3: Parks was part of a movement? Yeah, I active part
Speaker 3: and an amazing human being. Yeah, I was like, why,
Speaker 3: well we didn't this story from us? And why?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Mine my mind was blown. Oh man, diving into black
Speaker 3: history as well? You're like, whoa I have? I recommend
Speaker 3: them at the end. I have two books on slave rebellions.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 3: I got things because yeah, you know, people are always like, oh,
Speaker 3: you didn't fight your oh, like our liberation was all peaceful,
Speaker 3: and I was like, we've been fighting the whole time.
Speaker 3: They just keep burying these stories.
Speaker 1: Have you heard a fucking Nat Turner? Like right, I
Speaker 1: mean yeah, And he's the most famous of them. He's like,
Speaker 1: actually the only name I know off the top of
Speaker 1: my head. Right, but there was like so many of them.
Speaker 1: And then I have this book that I haven't read
Speaker 1: yet because I haven't done this episode on yet. But
Speaker 1: there's a whole like book about women leading slaver vaults.
Speaker 3: Yeah wait is it wake?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I have a lot of history books
Speaker 1: on my shelf. We'll talk about it, okay.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 1: So people missed the parts where Rosa Parks saw Malcolm
Speaker 1: X as her personal hero. She critiqued gradualism, like the
Speaker 1: like let's slowly make everything better. She worked alongside organizations
Speaker 1: with names like League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and she
Speaker 1: supported the Black Panthers and Angela Davis, And that's besides
Speaker 1: the point. Rosa Parks was cool. But yeah, by the
Speaker 1: by the mid nineteen sixties, the civil rights movement was
Speaker 1: taking on a new character, a more revolutionary character. All
Speaker 1: the asking politely wasn't working. Frankly, people weren't asking for
Speaker 1: like half what they needed in the first place. And
Speaker 1: basically people were like, what if we just lay out
Speaker 1: our vision for a better world on the table and
Speaker 1: then fight to bring that into being, which is not
Speaker 1: only the only way you can actually make of you
Speaker 1: can actually achieve your true goal. It's also a really
Speaker 1: incredible way to get reforms is to fight for more
Speaker 1: than what they'll in the end give you.
Speaker 3: You know, of course every negotiation you will lead disappointed.
Speaker 3: You can't start it where you want to end. This
Speaker 3: is just a good business tip. It's the best tip
Speaker 3: I ever got. Whatever you think you're owed, asked like,
Speaker 3: you could double it potentially, but just ask for way more.
Speaker 3: You'll be surprised where you end up it all he thought, totally.
Speaker 1: And so the other thing that you know, we talked
Speaker 1: about this with Martin Luther Kinglin. Moment the movement was
Speaker 1: coming from the rural South into cities across the US,
Speaker 1: and you've got what's called them Great Migration, which is
Speaker 1: split into two waves, when black people left the South
Speaker 1: in great numbers. For most of the US's history, about
Speaker 1: ninety percent of all black people lived in the US South,
Speaker 1: with about eighty percent of them living rurally. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until nineteen ten that the Great Migration started, basically as
Speaker 1: a result of Jim Crow laws, right as reconstruction was
Speaker 1: destroyed by racists, and so people who were pissed off
Speaker 1: about Jim Crow laws and lynchings and the general just
Speaker 1: some franchise franchisement were like, all we're gonna get the
Speaker 1: fuck out of here. We're not getting our forty acres
Speaker 1: and two mules that we were promised. And the first
Speaker 1: wave was huge, but it was actually the smaller of
Speaker 1: the two waves. And millions of Black Americans moved to
Speaker 1: mostly the mid Atlantic in the Northeast in this first migration.
Speaker 1: Others actually moved within the South into cities. But if
Speaker 1: you want to move into a city, you should put
Speaker 1: all of your money into gold. Is that what we're advertising.
Speaker 3: The transition? To me? I was like, is this a
Speaker 3: thing that the people to have never heard? Of this.
Speaker 3: It's hilarious.
Speaker 1: Whatever it is we're advertising is clearly individually vetted by
Speaker 1: me and signed off by Joelle and Sophie, and not
Speaker 1: just a system by which we are able to continue
Speaker 1: to eat food and feed our dogs by selling advertising space.
Speaker 1: So you're sad.
Speaker 3: Joy.
Speaker 1: And we're back, okay. So that's the first wave of
Speaker 1: the Great migration. Then you go World War Two, the
Speaker 1: big war that happened when the US was like, we're
Speaker 1: off to go smash racism. Just kidding, We're still segregated,
Speaker 1: and like, you know, you're the segregated arm Anyway. We've
Speaker 1: talked about that a couple times in the show, about
Speaker 1: people being like fucking mad at the blatant hypocrisy. So
Speaker 1: during World War Two you get the start of the
Speaker 1: second wave. Skilled black workers moved to the West coast
Speaker 1: into the north to work in military things, building airplanes
Speaker 1: and shit. Between nineteen forty and nineteen seventy, the US's
Speaker 1: black population went from rural to urban and down to
Speaker 1: only about fifty three percent of folks living in the
Speaker 1: South and forty seven percent now live elsewhere in the country.
Speaker 1: This is a bigger migration of people than all of
Speaker 1: the ones that white people talk about, like the Irish
Speaker 1: and Italian migrations to the States, which were huge. Right now,
Speaker 1: was a big I mean, that's how I ended up here,
Speaker 1: right will part of me whatever. But it's not nearly
Speaker 1: so massive as the Great Migration, and it's not in
Speaker 1: some ways as culturally important.
Speaker 3: It's it's the speed at which it happened and the
Speaker 3: impact that has left on our culture is so interesting.
Speaker 3: I feel like because both my parents' grandparents, yes, both
Speaker 3: my parents' grandparents came up during the Great Migration. My
Speaker 3: mom's family from Texas to Chicago, my dad's family from
Speaker 3: Mississippi and Alabama up to Chicago. But because of that,
Speaker 3: they were all raised by very Southern grandparents. And that's
Speaker 3: back in the day when we have both generational families.
Speaker 3: It's I think a reason that there remains such a
Speaker 3: homogeny to Black culture across because you know, every Black culture,
Speaker 3: if you look at different pockets are crossing, they're different,
Speaker 3: but there's like a lot of homogenized threads through us.
Speaker 3: And I think it's because migration happened so quickly that we,
Speaker 3: you know, certain things just linger. And I think there's
Speaker 3: like a lot of quote the traditional Southern ethics, styles
Speaker 3: of living, ways of rearing children that remain within black
Speaker 3: culture no matter where you live in the United States.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. Yeah, okay, So there's a weird coincidence
Speaker 1: that happened at the same time as black people were
Speaker 1: moving into cities, just purely by happenstance, all the white
Speaker 1: people moved out to the suburbs.
Speaker 3: Oh, just because they were just you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it happened in what's called white flight and is
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's lots of bad stuff there.
Speaker 1: I don't know enough heroes to do an episode about that,
Speaker 1: and like redlining and all that shit. I'm sure those
Speaker 1: people fought against it. Maybe one day we'll cover it.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so it turns out not just white people
Speaker 1: in the South were racist, but white people all over
Speaker 1: the country were racist. It is shocking to everyone who's listening.
Speaker 1: I'm sure.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: And it's the migrants and their children from the Great
Speaker 1: Migration who bring us the black panthers starting in Oakland, California.
Speaker 1: And that's why the Great Migration matters this story. And
Speaker 1: they brought with them some rural values like armed self defense.
Speaker 1: There's another place that a lot of the Panthers came from.
Speaker 1: And that's the US military. Take for example I want
Speaker 1: to use. I've been reading a bunch of books this week,
Speaker 1: and one of my favorite people is a man named
Speaker 1: Quasi Ballagoon, who is cool as shit, and I want
Speaker 1: to talk about him for a minute because he's so cool.
Speaker 3: Please do what a name a classic?
Speaker 1: I know, I think Balagoon is Yoruba, and I can't remember.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't write down the origin or the
Speaker 1: other of quasi Quasy. So Ballagoon grew up in Maryland,
Speaker 1: where the civil rights movement wasn't so entirely committed to nonviolence.
Speaker 1: It's actually a thing that I didn't know about by
Speaker 1: that when we did the last episode on this. But
Speaker 1: the Cambridge Riot of nineteen sixty three was where people
Speaker 1: protesting segregation were routinely arrested and mistreated racists. The riot
Speaker 1: here is white people being awful. They were setting black
Speaker 1: businesses on fire and trying to like at one point,
Speaker 1: they like drove a car into a black neighborhood and
Speaker 1: so start shooting, but then they all had to flee
Speaker 1: because of the black neighborhood starts shooting the fuck back.
Speaker 1: I love it and here Cambridge, Maryland was under Marshall
Speaker 1: Law for a year as a result of these riots.
Speaker 1: The major civil rights leader on the East shore of
Speaker 1: Maryland was a woman named Gloria Richardson, and she believed
Speaker 1: in non violence as a strategy, but just a strategy.
Speaker 1: And black snipers walked on rooftops, waited on rooftops to protest,
Speaker 1: to protect nonviolent protesters from white supremacists. That's the Maryland
Speaker 1: that Quasi grew up in. So he joins the army
Speaker 1: because he grows up and it's his option, and he
Speaker 1: deploys to Germany. And this is the mid sixties, and
Speaker 1: racist soldiers keep fucking with black soldiers. So he and
Speaker 1: other folks form a group called de Legislators, and the
Speaker 1: legislators just beat the shit out of the racists.
Speaker 3: Come through, Come through, legislators.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I want to quote him directly. We blacks
Speaker 1: who felt we were marked men, we had a secret
Speaker 1: meeting and formed an organization based on fucking up racists.
Speaker 1: We called ourselves de Legislators because we were going to
Speaker 1: make and enforce new laws that were fair. From then on,
Speaker 1: every time time a racial situation appeared, we did two
Speaker 1: every time white gis ganged up on a black GI
Speaker 1: we moved to more than even the score. One at
Speaker 1: a time. We would catch up with them and beat
Speaker 1: and stomp them so bad that helicopters would have to
Speaker 1: be used to take them to better hospitals than the
Speaker 1: ones in the area. We were not. Yeah, yeah, a bar?
Speaker 3: What a bar is that? For the group?
Speaker 2: I know?
Speaker 1: Well, afterwards we would have critiques, just like at the
Speaker 1: end of war games, get our alibis together and keep
Speaker 1: the whole thing under our hats.
Speaker 3: I'm inspired.
Speaker 1: I know they got away with it too, because they
Speaker 1: because no one talks, everyone walks because and they like
Speaker 1: they performed it like military missions. They were like, how
Speaker 1: do we fuck up this racist? You know?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And also there's not much you could do if
Speaker 3: you're constantly getting your ass founded, you know what I'm saying, Like, Yeah,
Speaker 3: y'all could be mad, but you kind of need us
Speaker 3: here to fight your war. That's actually what you've designed
Speaker 3: us to you a little bit. And now we're really
Speaker 3: good at it. And you don't want to get stop?
Speaker 3: Do you just stop saying? Also, the bar are so
Speaker 3: low for hot to stop getting your ass beat. Just
Speaker 3: keep your stop running your mouth and then it's over
Speaker 3: a beautiful strategy. Brilliant.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So he spends three years in the military and
Speaker 1: then he gets out. He's honorably discharged in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: and now he knows how to fight, he knows how
Speaker 1: to shoot, and he knows how to organize against racists.
Speaker 1: And there's a long history of black men in the
Speaker 1: US leaving the military and being like, oh, the real
Speaker 1: enemy is here in the US, and suddenly happy sucks when.
Speaker 3: Your enemy treats you better than your home country. That's
Speaker 3: just got to be a total mindfuck to be like, Okay,
Speaker 3: how are we better off in Nazi territory? Yeah, doesn't
Speaker 3: make sense?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. Fuck. So soon enough he moves to New
Speaker 1: York City. He's organizing rent strikes and volunteering with the
Speaker 1: Central Harlem Committee for Self Defense. At one point, as
Speaker 1: a housing protest, he shows up at US Congress at
Speaker 1: hearing about housing problems and he brings a cage full
Speaker 1: of rats as a visual aid for how black people
Speaker 1: were housed in New York. He gets arrested for this.
Speaker 1: He doesn't even release the rats.
Speaker 3: They said, we don't care if what your visual is true. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you brought. I have to look at a rat. Send
Speaker 3: him to prison where there are definitely more rats. Solving
Speaker 3: the problem. Oh my god, exhausting.
Speaker 1: He gets out. I don't think he spent too long
Speaker 1: for that one. He goes. He spends a lot of
Speaker 1: time in jail, but he gets into Black nationalism. His
Speaker 1: time overseas had put him in contact with Africans and
Speaker 1: he started wearing his hair natural. In New York City,
Speaker 1: he started attending the Yoruba Temple, Yoruba being the religion
Speaker 1: of the Yoruba people from mostly what is present day Nigeria.
Speaker 1: And at this point he changed his name to Quasi Ballagoon.
Speaker 1: And eventually the Panthers come to New York and he
Speaker 1: joins and will pick up the rest of his story later.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to do a little aside about panthers
Speaker 1: in the military.
Speaker 3: Riveting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, i'd. In October nineteen sixty six, the Black Panther
Speaker 1: Party for Self Defense formed in Oakland, California. It was
Speaker 1: started by two friends, Bobby Seal and Huey P.
Speaker 2: Newton.
Speaker 1: Bobby Seeal was born in Texas moved with his family
Speaker 1: to the Bay when he was eight. He joined the
Speaker 1: Air Force he got kicked out for fighting an officer.
Speaker 1: Then he went to Merit Community College with the goal
Speaker 1: of becoming an engineer. Huey P. Newton was born in
Speaker 1: Louisiana and his family fled the racist violence to the Bay.
Speaker 1: He wounded up also at Merrit community colleges, where they
Speaker 1: meet and become friends. It's not actually where the panthers start,
Speaker 1: but and then there's this whole narrative I know a
Speaker 1: little bit less about where over at the bigger schools,
Speaker 1: African students brought the Marxism that had just sent their
Speaker 1: countries free from colonization. So they started talking with folks
Speaker 1: who went to the community colleges in the area and
Speaker 1: setting up African study groups. And that when I like
Speaker 1: that one I didn't read a book. I heard someone say,
Speaker 1: so that is so fast.
Speaker 3: I've never heard that before. But it makes a lot
Speaker 3: of sense. That's fascinating, I.
Speaker 1: Know, And so that's why I like even though I yeah,
Speaker 1: and Hughie and Bobby, both of them are like Malcolm
Speaker 1: X is fucking right. Also, Robert F. Williams, the guy
Speaker 1: from North Carolina who turned the NAACP in his town
Speaker 1: into a community defense organization that guy was right too,
Speaker 1: we should do something about all the fucking racism. Specifically
Speaker 1: in this case, they wanted to do something about the
Speaker 1: racist police, so they started the Black Panther Party for
Speaker 1: Self Defense. A couple years later, it drops the for
Speaker 1: Self Defense and it's just the Black Panther Party. Bobby
Speaker 1: is the chairman, Hue is the Minister of Defense. Their
Speaker 1: first recruit is actually yet another Bobby, Bobby Hutton, who
Speaker 1: was sixteen at the time, and he becomes the treasurer
Speaker 1: and the first thing they there's kind of this thing
Speaker 1: I don't know if you haven't the same way that
Speaker 1: like Rosa Parks is like old in my head. Sometimes
Speaker 1: when people do things in the sixties, they're inherently old,
Speaker 1: right because they m and before I was born, you know.
Speaker 3: Yes, I don't know, but my parents were born in
Speaker 3: the late fifties, early sixties, and I envisioned anyone who
Speaker 3: was an adult at the time of their birth to
Speaker 3: be old. Yeah, no matter what they were doing or
Speaker 3: what time period.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But I think it's like really important
Speaker 1: not to like put them down, but to raise them
Speaker 1: up to be Like the Black Panthers is just some
Speaker 1: people who are like we have a problem. What can
Speaker 1: we do about it?
Speaker 3: Most of them babies, Yeah, most of them so very
Speaker 3: very very young, or you're like how, not even how,
Speaker 3: but you're it lends so much space and credit to
Speaker 3: what is accomplishable if you have a unified goal. And
Speaker 3: their goals were simple and concrete, and therefore their plans
Speaker 3: were effective, and they lived by the manter you gave earlier,
Speaker 3: which is power to the people. Was the truxt of
Speaker 3: everything they did. Was like, what if we just educated
Speaker 3: and gave power the people, the power to make the
Speaker 3: change you know that they want? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: No, they yeah, And I think it's like really telling
Speaker 1: that they're inspiring across ideological lines and like always have been,
Speaker 1: you know, yes, well not always, like some people hated them, right,
Speaker 1: but like you know, so the first thing they did
Speaker 1: was community patrols. It was an armed cop watch basically,
Speaker 1: and this is before cop watch was like a thing.
Speaker 1: And they were like, well, it's legal to carry loaded
Speaker 1: long long guns in this city, so we're gonna get
Speaker 1: some shotguns and we're going to follow cops around and
Speaker 1: tell everyone they're hassling what their rights are. Fuck.
Speaker 3: That takes some courage, like yes, and again a brilliant
Speaker 3: strategy that lends because if you know your rights, you
Speaker 3: know them when you're arrested. You know, then when you're
Speaker 3: sitting in a prison cell, you know them when you're
Speaker 3: being coursed into giving a statement. Yeah, you know, it's
Speaker 3: just such a it's a as far as like act.
Speaker 3: When I think about activism now, and I think especially
Speaker 3: coming out of the era of activism we've come through,
Speaker 3: where it was the visible activism to people outside of
Speaker 3: the community was often led by quote an influencer, often
Speaker 3: not actively engaged in the activism. And it's a problem.
Speaker 3: And there's been great people on the ground making community
Speaker 3: moments happen and making for a lot of change, but
Speaker 3: it wasn't seen, I think, to the great majority of people,
Speaker 3: just by design of the action. And I just it's
Speaker 3: incredible to think about what these guys were doing early
Speaker 3: and to think about how dangerous it was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, and like I mean, it'll come up. A
Speaker 1: lot of them don't survive, you know. Yeah, but first
Speaker 1: they have to get some shotguns. They don't start out
Speaker 1: with shotguns. They don't. They need some money, but you
Speaker 1: know who has money. This isn't an ad transition. I
Speaker 1: thought it was I know you do, dear listen, No, uh,
Speaker 1: rich white liberals have money and what yourselves well to
Speaker 1: rich white liberals the sort of authenticity of struggle by
Speaker 1: people of color. So they bought Mao's Little Red Book
Speaker 1: in bulk and sold it on college campuses at three
Speaker 1: times markup to all the like young white communists around.
Speaker 3: Amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah uh, and they use it to buy shotguns. And
Speaker 1: they got their logo and therefore their name from the
Speaker 1: the Lone Discounty Freedom Organization, which was an Alabama black
Speaker 1: power group that was using a black panther as its logo.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, all right, they didn't come up with
Speaker 1: a black panther. I don't care. They're like some people
Speaker 1: who anyway.
Speaker 3: They I mean, listen, this is what happens. You see
Speaker 3: a symbol, you're like, hey, that feel like that represents me,
Speaker 3: and they do adapt it and add it to your
Speaker 3: That totally makes use up. The black Panthers sympoo looks
Speaker 3: cold as fuck. That's why you still see so many
Speaker 3: people in the free food program shirts. Yeah look amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They got themselves a storefront all and they started
Speaker 1: a newspaper. It was a small group at first. When
Speaker 1: an unarmed black man was killed by cops in Richmond, California,
Speaker 1: the Panthers, who are invited by the man's family, started
Speaker 1: holding armed rallies to bring attention to that police murder.
Speaker 1: People started trickling into the party because here people like
Speaker 1: fucking doing something. And frankly, I read accounts of why
Speaker 1: people joined the Panthers and a lot of people say, like, look,
Speaker 1: the non violence shit was fine, but it just doesn't
Speaker 1: speak to me, you know, but people like standing up,
Speaker 1: so is non violence. I'm not trying to talk shit
Speaker 1: on nonviolence, right, It's going to reach different people.
Speaker 3: And yeah, you have to be somebody who can be
Speaker 3: at peace in a chaotic situation to you embrace actual
Speaker 3: nonviolent activism, because the very first thing that happens is
Speaker 3: they're going to try to incite you into violence. And
Speaker 3: if that is not you know, you can get spit on,
Speaker 3: you might get hit. Like, it's so much zen to
Speaker 3: be consistent in that kind of move me as opposed
Speaker 3: to you know, if you hit me, I'm hit you back.
Speaker 3: That makes a lot of sense to me, I get
Speaker 3: I'll be attracted to this approach.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's one anecdote I ran across that want
Speaker 1: to share. It's from the forward to a book whose
Speaker 1: title I literally cannot say. I'm just going to call
Speaker 1: the book just another dot dot dot. It is an
Speaker 1: autobiography by the panthers Field Marshall Don Cox. It's a
Speaker 1: brilliant book design. Cover too right, because this is just
Speaker 1: another in white and then the other words in black.
Speaker 1: It's like black on black and hard to read.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: His daughter was like clearly like mad that she had
Speaker 1: to publish it under that name, but that was like
Speaker 1: what he insisted on, and he had died right anyway.
Speaker 1: This is his daughter writing from the introduction of that
Speaker 1: book is Don Cox. Is Don Cox's daughter quote. When
Speaker 1: I was going to a Lutheran school, I wore my
Speaker 1: hair in a curly afro one day. How proud I
Speaker 1: was until I got to school. The principle told me
Speaker 1: that my hair looked a mess. I promptly called Daddy,
Speaker 1: and I don't remember what I told him, but the
Speaker 1: next thing I knew, here comes Daddy in about four
Speaker 1: or five panthers, looking fine and sharp and all black turtlenecks, pants,
Speaker 1: leather coats and berets. I never heard my daddy raise
Speaker 1: his voice. I think I would have crapped my pants
Speaker 1: if I did. And when he spoke, he always spoke
Speaker 1: eloquently and softly and looked you directly in the eyes.
Speaker 1: For people who didn't know him, that alone could make
Speaker 1: them crap their pants. I didn't hear what he said
Speaker 1: to the principal that day, but at the end of
Speaker 1: the year I left that school for good.
Speaker 3: M amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that that's like just the like a
Speaker 1: I don't know, that moment of like being like, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like people are gonna have some words if you're
Speaker 1: you know, like, here come actual heroes.
Speaker 3: I think it's interesting, like, yeah, here come a group
Speaker 3: of people to defend your right to just exist. And
Speaker 3: I think frequently if that has been nigh to you,
Speaker 3: especially as a child, my guy, like, it's really beautiful
Speaker 3: that a whole bunch of people came together to make
Speaker 3: sure that at the very least nobody was gonna up
Speaker 3: with you anymore. I mean, they can probably change the
Speaker 3: rules at the school or whatever, and I'm sure people
Speaker 3: are still assholes, but at least she neither are people
Speaker 3: who had.
Speaker 1: Her back totally totally. But you know, who else has
Speaker 1: your back?
Speaker 2: Joelle?
Speaker 3: Who has my back?
Speaker 1: The products and services that support this show.
Speaker 3: I feel so SUPPORTID. That's wonderful.
Speaker 1: And we're back so well. You were not the most
Speaker 1: effective way to get gun laws past us, Oh do tell?
Speaker 1: The answer is once left us, especially immigrants and people
Speaker 1: of color, especially black men, start carrying, Oh, right is in.
Speaker 3: Then you feel the need to carry, and then the
Speaker 3: gun laws of God to get more like I see.
Speaker 1: The vision, Yeah, I see the vision. The very first
Speaker 1: episode of this podcast was about German anarchist immigrants in
Speaker 1: Chicago and the first gun laws in that area were
Speaker 1: passed because German immigrants were using the gun law to
Speaker 1: have open carry parades, right for defend themselves as workers.
Speaker 1: And so Chicago was like, never mind about the guns,
Speaker 1: no more guns. It took California a little. Oh, and
Speaker 1: then New York goes way back before the US was
Speaker 1: even a thing. There were specific gun laws that they
Speaker 1: wrote that were like no indigenous people and no Catholics
Speaker 1: can own firearms.
Speaker 3: They really hated the Catholics in New York for a while.
Speaker 3: What a strange time that was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the Panther started open carrying loaded long guns
Speaker 1: in California, and the government freaked the fuck out. Republicans,
Speaker 1: including Ronald fucking Reagan, scrambled to outlaw open carry. This
Speaker 1: was called the Mulford Act. Republicans, Democrats, and the National
Speaker 1: Rifle Association all agreed, if black people are carrying guns,
Speaker 1: guns should be illegal. And this isn't even like my
Speaker 1: propagandist spin on this that I've never read any history
Speaker 1: that disputes that this is what happened. So on May second,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, the Black Panthers entered the national spotlight.
Speaker 1: Twenty six armed Panthers showed up at the California State Capitol, like,
Speaker 1: walked into the Capitol building with their guns. This is
Speaker 1: before the law has passed, so it was legal for
Speaker 1: them to do so. Six of them, including Bobby Seal,
Speaker 1: were arrested. And this was incredibly good pr for the Panthers.
Speaker 1: I mean, it probably also made people even more like
Speaker 1: to see, this is why we have to ban guns
Speaker 1: or whatever. But like all over the country people were like, oh,
Speaker 1: now we've heard of the Black Panthers and they're fucking cool.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah. So they released their ten point platform. The
Speaker 1: very first point is quote, we want freedom, we want
Speaker 1: power to determine the destiny of our black community. And
Speaker 1: then the rest of the points, it's things like, we
Speaker 1: want full employment, we want to get the capitalists out,
Speaker 1: we want housing, we want education that actually teaches people
Speaker 1: the truth. We want black men to be exempted from
Speaker 1: military service. We want the end of police brutality, we
Speaker 1: want black men released from prison, we want trial by
Speaker 1: actual juries of our actual peers. And the last one
Speaker 1: was quote, we want land bred, housing, education, clothing, justice,
Speaker 1: and peace.
Speaker 3: It's so sad that we have gotten none of those.
Speaker 2: Fuck.
Speaker 1: Yep, fuck, that's really devastating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but a beautiful list, a lovely thing to aspire to.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They also very shortly after, got their first living martyr,
Speaker 1: not so many dies. They got a political prisoner, Huey P. Newton,
Speaker 1: one of the founders. He gets We actually don't know
Speaker 1: what happened here. He was pulled over and arrested, and
Speaker 1: then two cops ended up shot and Huey P. Newton
Speaker 1: was also shot. One of the cops ended up shot
Speaker 1: to death. This was our after Hughie was our already arrested.
Speaker 1: The police's story is that Huey wrestled one of the
Speaker 1: cops guns away from him and shot the cop to death.
Speaker 1: The surviving cop story. Huey's story is that the two
Speaker 1: cops were shooting at him, but they were standing on
Speaker 1: opposite sides of him and shot each other friendly fire.
Speaker 3: Sounds so fucking believable, So just appsite, I know, lutely.
Speaker 1: Probable, I know, and like I also, like one panther later,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of panther expose's that come out afterwards.
Speaker 1: Some of them are like people who still like the panthers,
Speaker 1: some of people who don't like the panthers anymore, and
Speaker 1: all this stuff right. One panther later claims hue would
Speaker 1: drunkenly brag about killing the cop, But honestly, either way
Speaker 1: is believable, and I kind of don't care, Like hmm,
Speaker 1: I'm like, yep, you're getting arrested by people who are
Speaker 1: screaming and just as likely to kill you as not,
Speaker 1: and you defend yourself and you managed to do it
Speaker 1: while you're handcuffed. That's fucking powerful. Or cops are so
Speaker 1: fucking because cops crossfire, shoot each other all the fucking time,
Speaker 1: all the.
Speaker 3: Goddamn time, shoot themselves in the foot, in the groin. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's just hit their partners.
Speaker 1: Just yeah, So he was a Huey Panu was arrested
Speaker 1: and he was convicted of murder in nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: but his conviction was overturned in nineteen seventy. Not that
Speaker 1: he was specifically I think it wasn't that he was
Speaker 1: specifically found innocent. I think is that they like found
Speaker 1: that the trial was all fucked up and everything was
Speaker 1: fucked up about it, and it was clearly all set
Speaker 1: up and all this shit. But along the way, while
Speaker 1: he's in jail, the free Hueye campaign spreads across the
Speaker 1: country and the Panthers are off to the races. One
Speaker 1: of the things I read about it is that like
Speaker 1: the white radicals would wear our honkeys for Huey Pin.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, it's a solidarity, I.
Speaker 1: Guess, yes. Especially in April nineteen sixty eight, when the
Speaker 1: polite voice of civil rights doctor Martin Luther King Junior
Speaker 1: was murdered, the polite conversation was over, and so the
Speaker 1: Panthers are now like at the forefront. Two days later,
Speaker 1: during the riots that spread across the country after Martin
Speaker 1: Luther King Junior was killed, some of the Panthers and
Speaker 1: some cops ended up in a ninety minute shootout. There's
Speaker 1: different versions of who started it. I don't fucking know,
Speaker 1: kind of don't care, or rather I support the Panthers
Speaker 1: either way. Is where I'm at. Bobby Hutton, who is
Speaker 1: seventeen at the time, he was the first recruit. He
Speaker 1: was the treasurer. He tried to surrender, He stripped down
Speaker 1: before going outside to show that he was unarmed, and
Speaker 1: the cops murdered him as he was trying to give
Speaker 1: himself up. Yeah, and.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'd just sit with that for a minute. It makes
Speaker 1: me really fucking sad. Also in nineteen sixty eight, two
Speaker 1: important things happen. First, the Panthers spread across the country,
Speaker 1: like the more City Star chapters than I feel like
Speaker 1: recitings like thirty six or something. Their newspaper has a
Speaker 1: circulation of a quarter of a million copies at this point.
Speaker 1: And the other main thing that starts in nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: which I'm really excited to talk about, are the survival programs,
Speaker 1: most famously the free breakfast program, which we'll talk about
Speaker 1: on Wednesday. That's my cliffhanger about breakfast.
Speaker 3: It's a good one. Thanks that's a good one. You
Speaker 3: want to come back because you have to learn about
Speaker 3: why we spent all that time talking about breakfast. Top
Speaker 3: of the show.
Speaker 1: They do so much cool shit the second half of this.
Speaker 3: I'm so excited.
Speaker 1: Yeah, also cool are the things that you want to
Speaker 1: talk about here at the end of the episode.
Speaker 3: If you listen to the show, you probably like really
Speaker 3: radical acts. My current radical act is to help a
Speaker 3: friend launch a production company that seeks to rewrite the
Speaker 3: codes by which we make film. Doing this in a
Speaker 3: number of ways. We are studying and learning a lot
Speaker 3: about New Zealand and the UK's film laws, which have
Speaker 3: really strict laws about how long you can be on set,
Speaker 3: what a break looks like, how people get paid. And
Speaker 3: we're launching this by crafting a film. It's called Dinner.
Speaker 3: It is a satirical horror film about the way toxic
Speaker 3: work environments follow you home. It's very funny, it's super
Speaker 3: dark and twisty. I'm elated to be making this film.
Speaker 3: I'm it with friends from college. I went to film school.
Speaker 3: They went on to graduate from AFI and work for
Speaker 3: a bunch of different production companies around town. And they all,
Speaker 3: you know, all of us have been like, we want
Speaker 3: to get back to our art, so this is our
Speaker 3: chance to do that and hopefully create some change. So
Speaker 3: we are raising money on a website. It's called Seed
Speaker 3: and Spark Seed and Spark spa r K. If you
Speaker 3: head over there, you can just type in dinner in
Speaker 3: the search bark, type in my name Joel Monique It's
Speaker 3: j O E l E m oen iq u E
Speaker 3: and you can do a couple of things. So if
Speaker 3: you want to donate, that's so lovely and we appreciate it.
Speaker 3: We are about thirty percent funded. We have the time
Speaker 3: of this drops maybe thirty five days ish left to
Speaker 3: raise the money we have I think about eight thousand
Speaker 3: dollars left to go comewhere in there, so we're trucking along.
Speaker 3: We just got a grant for fifteen hundred. You can
Speaker 3: also just follow it. If you follow it, that helps
Speaker 3: us become eligible for more grants. It's a huge help
Speaker 3: and we love a follow. Or you can just share
Speaker 3: the link with your buddies and be like, hey, this
Speaker 3: cool person is making a film. Maybe support them. You
Speaker 3: learn about our cast and crew and our goals on
Speaker 3: the website, so it's just seen in spark dot com.
Speaker 3: There's also a lot of other films if you want
Speaker 3: to support indie filmmakers on there. In a time when
Speaker 3: our industry is going through quite a lot of uphea will,
Speaker 3: here's an opportunity for folks to really launch and hopefully
Speaker 3: support long term careers in independent filmmaking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's my spiel. Okay, that is a good spiel
Speaker 1: and gonna be way too necessary in the very very
Speaker 1: new future.
Speaker 3: Maybe the studio system will collapse.
Speaker 1: Oh no, where would I get's corporate entity? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Gone, there's no Internet where we could just launch films
Speaker 3: of dope independent people. And there's a lot of little
Speaker 3: indie cinema houses that could screen them. And what if
Speaker 3: we had regional cinema. Look at what Bollywood's doing, It's
Speaker 3: pretty cool. I have a lot of Yeah, if.
Speaker 1: You want to follow me, I quit Twitter, so you
Speaker 1: can't follow me there, I mean you still can. I
Speaker 1: didn't delete it. Well, actually Twitter went away. I didn't
Speaker 1: quit Twitter. Twitter just gave stopped existing. But I will
Speaker 1: not continue on X because my quality of life has
Speaker 1: improved already in the week that I am not constantly
Speaker 1: shown transphobes. And you can find me on Instagram, which
Speaker 1: is Margaret Kiljoy and then you can also find me
Speaker 1: on substack. Now it's like the main way I'm doing
Speaker 1: a lot of my writing. And if you want to
Speaker 1: keep up with the kinds of things I used to
Speaker 1: talk about on Twitter, like community preparedness or little history
Speaker 1: bits that didn't fit into here, it's Margaret Kiljoy dot
Speaker 1: substack dot com. And twice a month I do a
Speaker 1: free post that like is like more Maddy matters to
Speaker 1: the larger audience, and then twice a month I also
Speaker 1: do a like more personal post. Right now, I'm writing
Speaker 1: a bunch of memoirs, So if you want to hear
Speaker 1: about me dropping out of college to be a street
Speaker 1: kid and try and fight capitalism, you can read about
Speaker 1: it on my substack. Sophie, what do you get?
Speaker 2: Uh, just follow at cool Zone Media on all the
Speaker 2: platforms we still exist on, and we do have our
Speaker 2: adverse subscription channel that is currently on Apple and I
Speaker 2: think in just a couple of weeks will be available
Speaker 2: for a droid and non Apple users. YEA more on
Speaker 2: that soon, So just look up cooler Zone Media and uh, yeah,
Speaker 2: and you know, pet a dog if they want you.
Speaker 1: To, yeah, and don't if it's a stranger dog. Don't
Speaker 1: start by sticking your hand directly at the dog's face.
Speaker 3: Please, don't do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, don't.
Speaker 2: Don't run up to dogs on the street unless they've
Speaker 2: you've been told you can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, we'll see you on Wednesday.
Speaker 2: They Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production
Speaker 2: of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
Speaker 2: visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
Speaker 2: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 2: your podcasts.