WEBVTT - Remembering 1968: The Holy Week Uprising and the Riots a Nation Forgot 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:04.800 All zone media. 0:00:04.920 --> 0:00:08.160 It's's riot time when it could happen here. This is 0:00:08.240 --> 0:00:11.119 this is the podcast that you're listening to. It's about 0:00:11.720 --> 0:00:14.000 this is this one's kind of about bad things. This 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:16.440 is this is about a bunch of riots in the past. 0:00:16.800 --> 0:00:18.959 I'm your host to be along with Vus James and 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:25.319 Garrison Hello harming. So one of the kind of I 0:00:25.320 --> 0:00:28.360 don't know, the trends of twenty twenty four is everyone 0:00:28.440 --> 0:00:31.120 looking at this year and going this is nineteen sixty eight. Again, 0:00:31.160 --> 0:00:34.160 there's campus occupations or that are anti war protests. There 0:00:34.200 --> 0:00:36.360 is a Democratic National Convention that is expected to be 0:00:36.440 --> 0:00:37.200 extremely hot. 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:41.040 And so one of one of the things that we are. 0:00:40.880 --> 0:00:43.680 Doing in the run up to the Democratic Convention is 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:46.240 we are going to go do some episodes about nineteen 0:00:46.280 --> 0:00:49.200 sixty eight, and we are eventually going to do episodes 0:00:49.320 --> 0:00:52.880 about like the Columbia campus occupations and about the DNC. 0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:57.240 But unfortunately, in order to do that, we have to 0:00:57.360 --> 0:00:59.800 why I say, unfortunately, this is actually not unfortunately, this 0:00:59.800 --> 0:01:03.520 this mostly rules. I don't know, some of it's bad. 0:01:04.400 --> 0:01:06.720 But in order to talk about this and this is 0:01:06.840 --> 0:01:08.440 this is the part of this whole thing that has 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:12.399 been completely forgotten right. You know, there's there's become this 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:16.399 kind of like I don't know, state cult isn't quite 0:01:16.400 --> 0:01:18.160 the right word, but there's become this sort of like 0:01:18.280 --> 0:01:22.240 professional institutional history of nineteen sixty eight, where like all 0:01:22.280 --> 0:01:25.720 of these universities like proudly have banners from like nineteen 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:29.800 sixty eight protests. Everyone has been like, you know, incredibly 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:32.320 willing to embrace the legacy of the anti war movements 0:01:32.319 --> 0:01:35.560 and the Captus occupations, and you know, like insofar as 0:01:35.600 --> 0:01:38.040 they tell people not to embrace things, it's this stuff 0:01:38.080 --> 0:01:40.880 about like you know, you hear this constant screaming about 0:01:40.959 --> 0:01:44.040 don't repeat the sixty eight convention. But there's one part 0:01:44.080 --> 0:01:47.440 of this story that has is just gone, has been 0:01:47.840 --> 0:01:50.600 excised from the historical record. It is extremely clear that 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:54.000 no one wants you to remember it whatsoever, and that 0:01:54.360 --> 0:01:55.800 is the Holy Week Uprising. 0:01:55.840 --> 0:01:57.720 Do you two know have you too heard of the 0:01:57.720 --> 0:02:01.800 Holy Week Uprising? Not before you started talking about it 0:02:02.160 --> 0:02:03.440 in our work meetings. 0:02:04.080 --> 0:02:07.720 I'm familiar with it. I've covered in US history Ghosroughs before. 0:02:08.360 --> 0:02:11.200 Not as that name. I think people might be more 0:02:11.200 --> 0:02:12.760 familiar with they be described the events. 0:02:13.440 --> 0:02:15.880 Yeah, So the other name for is the MLK riots, 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:21.040 which is a week I mean, okay, so it's okay, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, 0:02:21.120 --> 0:02:24.560 so okay, so and I should be clear about this. Okay, 0:02:24.600 --> 0:02:27.600 So there are there are really two things going on here. 0:02:27.880 --> 0:02:31.600 There is one the actually it's usually thought of it 0:02:31.600 --> 0:02:33.600 was about a week, but it's it's actually longer than that. 0:02:33.639 --> 0:02:35.840 There's like a couple of months of writing in various 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:39.440 places over the sascination of MLK. The other thing that's 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:44.000 going on here is a wave of urban rebellion. And 0:02:44.240 --> 0:02:47.600 when I say urban here, I'm not just talking about 0:02:47.919 --> 0:02:51.799 you know, like Watts or Detroit or Chicago, like these 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:53.920 like giant urban cities, which is which is how you know, 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:56.840 insofar as anyone ever talks about writing in this period 0:02:56.960 --> 0:02:59.880 is about these large urban centers. No, they are right 0:03:00.320 --> 0:03:02.919 in Milwaukee. The most intense fighting that we're going to 0:03:03.000 --> 0:03:06.480 talk about in this episode happens in York, Pennsylvania. In 0:03:06.520 --> 0:03:09.800 this period for about is about nineteen sixty three to 0:03:11.040 --> 0:03:16.520 roughly by nineteen seventy one seventy two was kind of over. 0:03:17.520 --> 0:03:23.440 There are a staggering number of urban uprisings. I'm going 0:03:23.600 --> 0:03:25.040 I'm going to read a quote from a book called 0:03:25.080 --> 0:03:27.280 the Great Uprising, which is about this sort of period. 0:03:27.560 --> 0:03:31.079 Between nineteen sixty three and nineteen seventy two, America experienced 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:34.800 over seven hundred and fifty urban revolts. Upwards of five 0:03:34.920 --> 0:03:38.960 hundred and twenty five cities were affected, including nearly every 0:03:39.040 --> 0:03:42.680 one with a black population over fifty thousand. The two 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:45.360 largest wave of uprisings came during the summer of nineteen 0:03:45.400 --> 0:03:47.880 sixty seven entry in Holy Week in nineteen sixty eight, 0:03:47.880 --> 0:03:51.320 following the assassination of Martin Luther King Junior. In these 0:03:51.360 --> 0:03:54.560 two years alone, one hundred and twenty five people were killed, 0:03:54.640 --> 0:03:58.200 nearly seven thousand were injured, approximately forty five thousand arrests 0:03:58.200 --> 0:04:01.240 were made, and property damage top one hundred and twenty 0:04:01.240 --> 0:04:04.240 seven million dollars or approximately nine hundred million and twenty 0:04:04.280 --> 0:04:05.400 seventeen dollars. 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:09.440 If you can even stretch this out to like, can 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:10.640 I just give you the Spain and I put on 0:04:10.680 --> 0:04:12.280 this in my history class, and then and then we 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:15.360 can we can continue. Yeah, Okay. So the way I 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:20.360 perceive this is the process of decolonization begins like in 0:04:20.400 --> 0:04:22.680 the colonies, and it comes back to the metropol right, 0:04:22.760 --> 0:04:27.240 and we see like this physical decolonization in places like Algeria, right, 0:04:27.279 --> 0:04:30.640 and then the impact of witnessing that returns to the 0:04:30.680 --> 0:04:34.800 metropol along with the theories that like, if you want 0:04:34.839 --> 0:04:36.920 to say they declonize the mind, I think that that's 0:04:36.920 --> 0:04:41.520 an acceptable way. And like this sort of struggle and 0:04:41.720 --> 0:04:44.000 even the esthetic, right, like the aesthetic of the Battle 0:04:44.040 --> 0:04:47.000 of algieas is present in some of these uprisings, like 0:04:47.160 --> 0:04:49.359 and then you can stretch it out to like, you know, 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:51.120 I like to talk about Winded NYE, but the second 0:04:51.120 --> 0:04:53.320 occupation of Winded Nee in nineteen seventy three, I think 0:04:53.360 --> 0:04:56.000 you could also see that as part of this decolonization struggle. 0:04:56.800 --> 0:04:59.760 At least that's my uh, yeah, that's my angle on it. 0:05:00.520 --> 0:05:03.040 Yeah, And I think there's definitely a lot of like, 0:05:03.320 --> 0:05:05.360 I don't know, there's a lot of inspiration taken there. 0:05:05.400 --> 0:05:07.760 I think the way it's usually seen in the US 0:05:08.040 --> 0:05:10.760 is as this is the sort of I don't know, 0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:13.040 it's kind of as it's seen as is kind of 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:15.440 this is where everything went off the rails after the 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:19.599 Civil rights movement, which isn't what happens. Yeah, And the 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:21.040 other way I think this is seen and this is 0:05:21.640 --> 0:05:24.559 I don't know, a lens that is kind of useful 0:05:24.600 --> 0:05:28.120 to talk about this, but kind of isn't is about 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:31.440 the sort of quote unquote long nineteen sixty eight, So 0:05:31.640 --> 0:05:33.159 you know, we're gonna be covering a lot of nineteen 0:05:33.160 --> 0:05:35.839 sixty eight stuff on this show, you know, so like 0:05:35.839 --> 0:05:39.640 there's obviously this nineteen sixty eight in France. I think 0:05:39.800 --> 0:05:42.680 if you want to look at the origin point of 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:47.000 the sort of like wave uprisings that are specifically nineteen 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:50.720 sixty eight and that aren't sort of like the decolonization arc, 0:05:51.560 --> 0:05:56.520 I think it probably starts in China with the January 0:05:56.560 --> 0:05:59.720 Storm in nineteen sixty seven. But on the other hand, 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:01.880 sort of and this is you know, one of the 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:04.360 things about this period is everything is happening so much 0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:06.280 at the same time, right, Like we have a lot 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:08.320 of experience about this, but like you know, as the 0:06:08.400 --> 0:06:11.760 January Storm, the January Storm is as part of the 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:16.119 Culture Revolution where Mao kind of loses control and Mao 0:06:16.200 --> 0:06:18.800 kind of incites a bunch of these like a bunch 0:06:18.839 --> 0:06:22.640 of workers in Shanghai to like take the city. But 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:24.919 then they actually take the city and they run the 0:06:24.960 --> 0:06:27.960 party out, they run the pla out, and for a 0:06:28.000 --> 0:06:30.960 brief period of time, Shanghai like has just been taken 0:06:31.000 --> 0:06:32.960 by its working class and is not being run by 0:06:32.960 --> 0:06:35.600 the party, and there's this whole, like you know, massive 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:39.200 series of struggles and kind of struggles. But the thing 0:06:39.200 --> 0:06:40.719 that the think about the sort of the way succeed 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:42.840 is understood is you know, even some people even include that, 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:46.679 but these riots, specifically the Holy Week riots are almost 0:06:46.800 --> 0:06:50.880 never talked about as as part of this process, which 0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:53.320 I think they obviously are, and I think, you know, 0:06:53.440 --> 0:06:55.360 part of the reason that we're talking about them now 0:06:55.480 --> 0:06:58.880 is that you can't understand the Columbia campus occupations. You 0:06:58.920 --> 0:07:01.760 can't understand the kind of politics that's going to come 0:07:01.800 --> 0:07:03.799 after that, you can't understand the and see, you can't 0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:07.200 understand like the rise of black radicalism. Like none of 0:07:07.200 --> 0:07:10.520 this is comprehensible at all unless you understand these riots, 0:07:11.000 --> 0:07:14.400 because this was the uprising that sort of kicked everything off. 0:07:15.080 --> 0:07:16.600 It's also this is a very hard thing to write 0:07:16.600 --> 0:07:19.960 about because like this, I've had the time of my 0:07:20.080 --> 0:07:22.480 life trying to put this together because this thing should 0:07:22.520 --> 0:07:24.560 be like thirty five hours, and I don't have thirty 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:28.400 five hours. I have thirty minutes. So that being said, 0:07:28.800 --> 0:07:33.200 let's get into why these are happening. So obviously there 0:07:33.240 --> 0:07:35.920 is the civil rights movement happening. You know, nineteen sixty 0:07:35.920 --> 0:07:37.680 five you get, you get the Voting Rights Act. We've 0:07:37.680 --> 0:07:42.960 had some civil rights acts. But comma, if you are 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:46.400 like you are a part of the black working class 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:49.880 in nineteen cities of America, a society is still unbelievably racist. 0:07:49.960 --> 0:07:52.360 Like they're like, you know, like on on a very 0:07:52.400 --> 0:07:54.320 basic level, there's a bunch of people walking around calling 0:07:54.360 --> 0:07:58.040 you the N word. You are restricted to the shittiest 0:07:58.120 --> 0:08:00.960 jobs available, assuming you can find work at all. One 0:08:01.000 --> 0:08:03.440 of the biggest ones. And this is something that this 0:08:03.520 --> 0:08:05.360 is something that was a very big focus of the 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:07.280 kind of later civil rights umit that kind of has 0:08:07.360 --> 0:08:10.160 been a race for historical memory was struggle over housing. 0:08:10.600 --> 0:08:12.960 I'm going to read another thing from the Great Uprising 0:08:14.320 --> 0:08:18.160 SNCC field worker John Baptiste, who took over for Robinson 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:20.760 and Hanson, described many of the homes in the Second War. 0:08:21.040 --> 0:08:23.080 This is in Cambridge, which is one of the places 0:08:23.080 --> 0:08:26.920 where those really intense rioting. Both we'll talk about this 0:08:26.960 --> 0:08:28.560 in a little bit, but both in sixty three and 0:08:28.640 --> 0:08:32.560 in sixty seven describe many of the homes in the 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:36.920 Second Ward as nothing more than converted horse barns, corn cribs, 0:08:36.960 --> 0:08:41.360 and company shacks, which lacked hot, running water, flush toilets, 0:08:41.360 --> 0:08:46.640 and electricity. Separate and independent investigations by federal officials confirmed 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:50.640 Betista's claims. We were shown block after block of tottering, 0:08:50.760 --> 0:08:55.000 single family frame structures, often lined along dirt roads and 0:08:55.080 --> 0:08:58.120 generally with little or no setback, which is like they're 0:08:58.200 --> 0:09:00.800 like directly on the street, right, you open your door 0:09:00.840 --> 0:09:04.880 and you're on the street, crowded almost against each other, 0:09:05.240 --> 0:09:07.880 and on small lots, sometimes of no more than fifty 0:09:07.960 --> 0:09:11.000 or sixty foot depth, reported one US Department of Housing 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:14.760 and Urban Development official. These dwellings were obviously obsolete and 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:18.520 in disrepair, with tumbling porches and steps. Many were without 0:09:18.520 --> 0:09:21.600 inside toilets, and in several instances, the outside privy served 0:09:21.600 --> 0:09:25.080 more than one family. Hot water is rarely available, and 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:28.280 several are without inside water. Overcrowding is a common pattern. 0:09:29.640 --> 0:09:32.559 So you know, this is the kind of like this, 0:09:32.920 --> 0:09:34.439 this is one of the centers of these struggles. So 0:09:34.559 --> 0:09:40.640 these people are living in like nineteen thirties barns and this, 0:09:41.200 --> 0:09:43.200 you know, there is there was a sort of staggering 0:09:43.200 --> 0:09:46.640 amount of anger about this, and the other aspect of 0:09:46.679 --> 0:09:48.600 this is that you know, okay, so these people are 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:54.280 living in like places that are not fit human habitation. Also, 0:09:54.600 --> 0:09:57.160 they are on average fifty six percent more of their 0:09:57.200 --> 0:10:01.160 income goes to rent than white than Why then white 0:10:01.200 --> 0:10:02.959 people paid a rent, which means that you know, and 0:10:03.040 --> 0:10:06.000 and this this is also one of the things that's 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:08.800 happening in this period is that there's a bunch of 0:10:08.840 --> 0:10:11.520 money for like white people that the government is giving them, 0:10:11.520 --> 0:10:13.680 are giving people sort of loans and subsidies and tax 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:16.680 credits to go buy houses. None of this is happening 0:10:16.679 --> 0:10:18.920 for black people. So what you have is a situation 0:10:19.120 --> 0:10:21.840 where like if you are black, basically all of your 0:10:21.880 --> 0:10:24.400 money is being absorbed into rents. There is no possibility 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:27.280 of you like saving or you know, like saving to 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:29.640 buy a house, like other than the sort of like 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:33.319 ramshackle shit that you're in, Like the conventional civil rights movement, 0:10:33.400 --> 0:10:36.079 right you're sort of like non violent marches. This hasn't 0:10:36.080 --> 0:10:40.040 done shit to deal with any of these problems. You're 0:10:40.080 --> 0:10:46.520 also dealing with really really intense labor discrimination, you know, 0:10:46.600 --> 0:10:49.400 and I mean these are things like like there's this 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:52.559 kind of like example in Baltimore where you know, you'll 0:10:52.600 --> 0:10:56.720 you'll you'll have union locals that are literally all white locals, right, 0:10:57.240 --> 0:10:59.480 and they will they will cut these deals with management 0:10:59.480 --> 0:11:01.520 where they will be like, well, management will hands like 0:11:01.640 --> 0:11:03.599 hiring and firing power over to the unions, and the 0:11:03.640 --> 0:11:06.080 unions go, oh great, okay, and this this is a 0:11:06.120 --> 0:11:08.120 negotiated thing between the two. The unions are like, okay, 0:11:08.160 --> 0:11:10.360 only unions can work at only union members can work 0:11:10.360 --> 0:11:11.840 at the shop, which in theory is good. But in 0:11:11.880 --> 0:11:15.680 practice what this means is because these are all white unions, right, 0:11:15.840 --> 0:11:17.760 they've they've now created a system by which you can, 0:11:17.800 --> 0:11:19.560 by which you can just not hire black people. 0:11:19.600 --> 0:11:19.800 Ever. 0:11:20.720 --> 0:11:25.599 Yeah, the Brianna wu method. Oh god, yeah, you know 0:11:25.800 --> 0:11:27.800 it's a reference to a terrible tweet I hopefy people 0:11:27.880 --> 0:11:28.360 haven't seen. 0:11:28.679 --> 0:11:30.960 Oh god. Yeah. 0:11:31.000 --> 0:11:33.000 And you know the other things that are sort of 0:11:33.000 --> 0:11:36.320 happening here, right, is so in theory desegregation is supposed 0:11:36.360 --> 0:11:40.680 to be happening. In practice, that shit is not happening. 0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:43.959 People are making people are doing these like you know, 0:11:44.040 --> 0:11:46.680 like white progressors are giving these speeches about how like, ah, 0:11:46.840 --> 0:11:52.160 segregation is like ending where we're like integrating quickly, and 0:11:52.200 --> 0:11:58.440 it's not happening, and all of this kind of you know, 0:11:58.480 --> 0:12:01.079 all of this sort of fuel and also and obviously 0:12:01.080 --> 0:12:03.360 the sort of immediate spark of a lot of a 0:12:03.400 --> 0:12:06.160 lot of these uprisings, So particularly in sixty seven, is 0:12:06.200 --> 0:12:09.040 that as as happens today, you know, you all statistically 0:12:09.040 --> 0:12:11.520 have lived I don't know why I was satistically, all 0:12:11.559 --> 0:12:12.000 of you have. 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:12.440 Lived through this. 0:12:12.640 --> 0:12:15.040 All of you probably have been to at least one 0:12:15.080 --> 0:12:17.760 protest that is this is that the coptious murder people 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:23.440 and all of this sets off a set of kindling 0:12:23.480 --> 0:12:28.160 and is going to lead to a simply staggering wave 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:29.040 of uprisings. 0:12:29.320 --> 0:12:30.680 But first, do you know what I. 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:33.719 Won't lead to us a simply staggering set of uprisings 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:34.920 if you buy them. 0:12:35.120 --> 0:12:38.320 It's the production and consumption of created needs, as described 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:39.400 by Herbert Mark Cuser. 0:12:41.679 --> 0:12:44.520 That's right, James, Yes, or more on that. 0:12:44.600 --> 0:12:45.760 Here's these ads. 0:12:57.240 --> 0:13:00.480 So we are back, all right, So let's start actually 0:13:00.520 --> 0:13:05.040 talking about some of these riots. Okay, So I've mentioned 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:07.480 before that these riots are happening in a lot of 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:11.240 places that are not like that are not typically considered. 0:13:11.280 --> 0:13:13.800 And we're actually not gonna talk sort of sunningly for 0:13:13.800 --> 0:13:15.679 thinking about this. We're not going to talk about the 0:13:15.720 --> 0:13:17.800 Watts Riots, which are probably the biggest and most famous 0:13:17.800 --> 0:13:19.160 of the riots in this period. We're not going to 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:21.120 talk about Detroit either, even though that was another really 0:13:21.120 --> 0:13:24.360 big one, because you know, you you can go out 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:26.680 and you can find a bunch of people kind of 0:13:26.720 --> 0:13:30.160 talking about these. We are going to start in Omaha. 0:13:32.040 --> 0:13:36.800 Where begin Yeah, Like but again, this this is something 0:13:36.800 --> 0:13:39.120 that's very important is that this is not just a 0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:41.400 sort of uprising of the urban ghettos, which is which 0:13:41.440 --> 0:13:43.640 is how it's like very explicit. This is literally the 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:46.000 language that is used at this time to describe what's 0:13:46.000 --> 0:13:49.040 happening here. But like, no, this is happening in a 0:13:49.080 --> 0:13:53.720 bund Like again, Cincinnati and Omaha is interesting because it 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:56.839 has one of the a very very common one of 0:13:56.880 --> 0:13:59.560 the other big sort of rallying points in this era 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:03.160 is price gouging. So you know, if you're if you're 0:14:03.200 --> 0:14:06.559 in one of these like ninety nine percent black communities, 0:14:06.640 --> 0:14:08.839 like the one, like the one white person who is 0:14:08.880 --> 0:14:11.160 there is the shop owner. And the thing the shop 0:14:11.240 --> 0:14:13.520 owner is doing is the shop owner is gouging you 0:14:13.600 --> 0:14:15.439 for food because you don't you know, you don't have 0:14:15.520 --> 0:14:17.160 any other options to buy for you from, so they're 0:14:17.200 --> 0:14:18.680 going to gouge you, and they're going to give you 0:14:18.760 --> 0:14:20.720 like the worst products you can ever you've ever seen 0:14:20.720 --> 0:14:23.120 in your life. And so by many sixty six people 0:14:23.120 --> 0:14:25.680 are just fed up with this. There start there start 0:14:25.720 --> 0:14:28.560 to be sort of protests, like specifically at these white stores, 0:14:29.320 --> 0:14:31.440 there's a bunch of people, you know, throwing rocks. 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:31.800 At the cops. 0:14:32.720 --> 0:14:34.400 Yeah, and so you know, so, I mean, okay. 0:14:34.400 --> 0:14:36.640 The other thing that's very important to understand about these 0:14:36.640 --> 0:14:40.760 places is that these riots don't just start out of nowhere, right. 0:14:41.040 --> 0:14:43.520 These are mostly places where there have been existing civil 0:14:43.600 --> 0:14:45.360 rights movements and they kind of just ran into a 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:47.480 stone wall, you know. One of the big things in 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:49.760 this period too, and this is something that like like 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:52.520 you know, this is what MLK and the Poor People's 0:14:52.520 --> 0:14:55.640 Campaign was sort of working on at the same time, 0:14:55.800 --> 0:14:58.440 was you know, these these these demands for job programs, 0:14:58.640 --> 0:15:00.560 and so people are you know, marching round, they doing 0:15:00.600 --> 0:15:05.440 like pickets. Omaha, Like has a Malcolm X come speak 0:15:06.120 --> 0:15:08.080 at one point and he's talking about like, you know, 0:15:08.200 --> 0:15:10.400 like the youth these protests and people like marching outside 0:15:10.400 --> 0:15:14.720 of Safeway saying like we want jobs. And these protests 0:15:14.720 --> 0:15:18.000 start getting attacked by the police, and this is something 0:15:18.000 --> 0:15:19.800 that you know, this is something that that has been 0:15:19.840 --> 0:15:22.400 happening to these nonviolent sit ins. I'm going to read 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:25.680 a passage from the book. Then the burnings began from there, 0:15:25.760 --> 0:15:29.640 Omaha police Wallace's quote unquote goon squad and spectators began 0:15:29.720 --> 0:15:32.560 to beat the protesters out of the auditorium using batons 0:15:32.560 --> 0:15:36.680 and metal folding chairs. Reeling from the attacks, African American 0:15:36.720 --> 0:15:40.520 youth retaliated in the streets. So like like they'll be 0:15:40.640 --> 0:15:43.920 in meetings with community with like like the mayor or whatever, 0:15:44.000 --> 0:15:47.880 and these fucking mobs will start just beating people with chairs. 0:15:48.840 --> 0:15:53.880 The goon squad, you say, yeah, God reminds me of 0:15:53.960 --> 0:15:56.680 the we've been running ads to free down at Peltier 0:15:56.720 --> 0:15:57.080 a week. 0:15:57.120 --> 0:16:00.480 But the guardians of the Agglala Nation, but like thet's 0:16:00.520 --> 0:16:04.880 literally call themselves the goons. I'm guessing the people, not 0:16:05.040 --> 0:16:09.120 the people participating in this particular beat. Non many such 0:16:09.160 --> 0:16:09.960 cases in this area. 0:16:10.040 --> 0:16:12.440 Yeah, and this gets to another aspect of these of 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:14.760 these riots is that a lot of them aren't started 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:17.520 by rioters. They're started by a bunch of like a 0:16:17.560 --> 0:16:22.000 white mob showing up and attacking people. And so you know, 0:16:22.440 --> 0:16:24.720 in Omaha. And this is something that we're going to 0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:27.200 see a lot. Uh. That is something that kind of 0:16:27.240 --> 0:16:30.400 doesn't happen as much now, is like they just the 0:16:30.440 --> 0:16:32.960 cops just fucking kill people the streets from protests are 0:16:33.000 --> 0:16:35.320 happening in Omaha. They like they just they murder a 0:16:35.400 --> 0:16:37.640 kid with a riot gun. And this, you know, this 0:16:37.720 --> 0:16:40.920 sets off like as sort of you know the patterns 0:16:40.960 --> 0:16:43.360 that Worshire visa seeing of like these sort of escalating riots. 0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:47.200 And this is a very kind of familiar riot, right, 0:16:47.280 --> 0:16:50.560 Like I think we've all we've all had the like, Okay, 0:16:50.600 --> 0:16:52.680 so the police attacked a bunch of people, so it caused. 0:16:52.480 --> 0:16:55.120 A riot kind of thing. Yeah, so now a riot starts. 0:16:55.480 --> 0:16:59.080 Yeah, And this is this is a relatively non violent riot, 0:16:59.120 --> 0:17:01.240 which is to say that people are mostly throwing stones 0:17:01.280 --> 0:17:07.560 and molotovs. That is absolutely not true of a huge 0:17:07.600 --> 0:17:09.640 amount of the rest of these riots, and particularly as 0:17:09.640 --> 0:17:12.320 we sort of get closer to Holy Week. Something that 0:17:12.400 --> 0:17:15.399 is very important about the sixty eight riots that is 0:17:15.440 --> 0:17:17.560 not true about any riots that we've ever lived through 0:17:18.200 --> 0:17:22.640 is that not only are people extremely well armed, they 0:17:22.800 --> 0:17:26.400 are the state's monopoly on violence in nineteen sixty eight 0:17:26.440 --> 0:17:28.320 is nowhere near as powerful as it is now. People 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:31.320 will just fucking shoot. And one of the constant things 0:17:31.359 --> 0:17:34.000 you read about when you're reading about these riots is 0:17:34.040 --> 0:17:37.679 that is, you know, every police account has police like 0:17:37.800 --> 0:17:40.439 screaming about snipers, and like I didn't believe this, right, 0:17:40.480 --> 0:17:41.960 because I was reading this, I was like, Okay, whatever 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:43.880 other police, right, they talk about snipers all the time. 0:17:44.320 --> 0:17:46.320 You see this in radical accounts too, where people will 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:48.800 talk about like, well, yeah, like the National Guard and 0:17:48.880 --> 0:17:50.880 Watts will be talking about how they're taking sniper fires 0:17:50.880 --> 0:17:52.640 so they'll start shooting machine guns and like the rus 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:54.160 of build at buildings. 0:17:53.800 --> 0:17:55.120 Right, But. 0:17:56.960 --> 0:18:00.239 Like this was real, people actually were like doing this, 0:18:00.440 --> 0:18:02.719 and you know I was, I was really sort of 0:18:02.800 --> 0:18:05.280 like like on the on the fence about this, like 0:18:05.320 --> 0:18:07.919 what's this actually happening? And then the next thing I 0:18:07.960 --> 0:18:09.560 read was an interview with a guy who'd been a 0:18:09.560 --> 0:18:13.199 black nationalist and starts talking about how they they were 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:16.080 using all of their dynamite stores and how they didn't 0:18:16.080 --> 0:18:18.000 have fuses for the dynamites so they had to like 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:20.240 they had to plant the dynamite and then retreat across 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:21.560 the sheet to shoot at the dynamite. 0:18:21.600 --> 0:18:22.720 So the dynamite would go off. 0:18:23.880 --> 0:18:26.680 That sounds like a fun exercise. 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:27.760 Yeah, it was. 0:18:27.800 --> 0:18:30.040 It was nuts. It was like the kind of stuff 0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:34.720 these people were doing is sort of just really it's 0:18:34.840 --> 0:18:35.840 really staggering. 0:18:36.880 --> 0:18:38.920 Like you say, the state just didn't have that same 0:18:39.000 --> 0:18:42.000 monopoly on violence like that there was. It didn't have 0:18:42.040 --> 0:18:44.919 the overwhelmed cops, didn't have like the overwhelming force that 0:18:44.960 --> 0:18:47.679 they do now, that they didn't possess tanks, and like 0:18:47.760 --> 0:18:49.520 it was a lot harder to trace gun purchases in 0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:51.840 nineteen sixties because not everyone used credit cards. So it 0:18:51.880 --> 0:18:54.000 made it a whole lot easier for folks to have 0:18:54.080 --> 0:18:55.120 and keep guns. 0:18:55.520 --> 0:18:55.720 Yeah. 0:18:55.760 --> 0:18:57.480 Well the other thing is, like, you know, this is 0:18:57.480 --> 0:19:00.680 something that that in some of the this is something 0:19:00.680 --> 0:19:04.520 that played into some of the NAACP like chapters in 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:06.280 the South that were the sort of like black working 0:19:06.280 --> 0:19:08.919 class chapters. Is that like so if you were if 0:19:08.960 --> 0:19:11.080 you were an NRA chapter, you could just buy at 0:19:11.119 --> 0:19:14.360 a really cheap bulk rate like surplus M one garrens 0:19:14.359 --> 0:19:15.879 from the US Army and AMMO, and they would just 0:19:15.920 --> 0:19:16.399 sell it to you. 0:19:16.880 --> 0:19:18.680 Yeah, you can still buy them at a pretty cheap 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:20.320 rate through the CMP. Yeah. 0:19:20.400 --> 0:19:22.920 Yeah, but you could buy like like really large quantities 0:19:22.960 --> 0:19:24.439 of them as long as you were sort of like, 0:19:24.560 --> 0:19:27.639 you know, there was this kind of like popular like 0:19:28.359 --> 0:19:32.800 popular like gun marksman culture that we don't like we 0:19:32.880 --> 0:19:34.960 have been in, like our gun culture is kind of insane, 0:19:34.960 --> 0:19:37.119 and this was like a very different thing from there. 0:19:37.160 --> 0:19:39.919 Yeah, definitely, And you had like like Rob Williams was 0:19:39.960 --> 0:19:44.040 the the are you failure with Rob Williams? Yeah, yeah, 0:19:44.119 --> 0:19:46.080 he wrote a book called Negros with Guns. He was 0:19:46.119 --> 0:19:49.280 the he was the leader of the NRA chapter right 0:19:49.640 --> 0:19:54.000 in Monroe. But then yeah, also a member of the NAACP, which, 0:19:54.119 --> 0:19:57.320