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Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media, Hello, and welcome to Cool People. Did

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Speaker 1: Cool Stuff your weekly reminder that sometimes good things happen, although,

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Speaker 1: to be honest, usually it's in response to bad things

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Speaker 1: and it doesn't always go well, but it's really cool

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Speaker 1: along the way, I'm your Smargart Killsroy and with me

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Speaker 1: today is Andrew T.

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Speaker 2: How are you? I E good? How's it going?

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Speaker 1: I'm good.

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Speaker 2: I tried to eat a piece of zucchini during the

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Speaker 2: intro and then I lost faith, So I have a

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Speaker 2: half chewed piece of zucchini on the table in front.

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Speaker 1: That's how you know a professional podcaster is the trying

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Speaker 1: to time when you can take bites of I.

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Speaker 2: Bailed, though honestly enjoyed watching that. I just I had

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Speaker 2: so much confidence and then it was much bigger than

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Speaker 2: I thought it was.

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Speaker 1: Andrew is the host of Yo Is This Racist? Which

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Speaker 1: is a podcast and as a TV writer, and says

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Speaker 1: you can look it up if you want.

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Speaker 2: I didn't say with that attitude is all I will say.

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Speaker 1: That's true. No, there was flavor, there was spice to it.

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Speaker 1: The spice wasn't at the listener.

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Speaker 2: That's true. Yeah, yeah, that's correct. That's correct.

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Speaker 1: In the industry, yeah, I was at the industry, not

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Speaker 1: at the nice people who listened to our podcast, because

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Speaker 1: that's right. I believe last time we had Andrew on

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Speaker 1: there was a strike going on. Yeah, and I think

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Speaker 1: the time before that, when we had Andrew on, there

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Speaker 1: was a strike going on. Yeah, I think that's true.

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Speaker 2: Two strikes, two strikes, well two two thousands within this

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Speaker 2: two strikes and yeah. But yeah, and the film and

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Speaker 2: television industry is sort of limping back to life. So yeah,

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Speaker 2: we'll see, we'll see how things go.

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Speaker 1: I believe in the writers more than I believe in

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Speaker 1: the industry. But yeah, right, that's true. I can always

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Speaker 1: turn this into something.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: The rest of the introductions is that Sophie. The other

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Speaker 1: voice you've heard is our producer, Sophie. Hi, how are

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Speaker 1: you doing.

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Speaker 2: I'm good.

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Speaker 1: I was about to off my drink this water, but

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Speaker 1: then I ruined it. This is my plan today is

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Speaker 1: I'm looking to see when people on Zoom are reaching

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Speaker 1: for water and food, and then I'm going to address

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Speaker 1: questions to them. Our audio engineer is Daniel and our

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Speaker 1: theme music was written. Oh everyone's to say hi to Danel.

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Speaker 1: God we almost didn't do it. Hi Danel, Hi danel A.

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Speaker 1: Our theme music was written for us by unwoman Andrew.

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Speaker 1: Could you describe the shirt that you're wearing.

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Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, I believe it's I'm reading it backwards. I'm

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Speaker 2: trying to remember it racist Saints Safe in the Dirty South, and.

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Speaker 1: There's a klansman being eaten by an alligator.

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Speaker 2: It's a pretty good illustration of a klansman being, yeah,

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Speaker 2: eaten by an alligator. It is Oh shoot, It's a

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Speaker 2: piece of fund raising merch from the I believe they

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Speaker 2: go by the Screwston Anti Fascist Committee. It's literally written

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Speaker 2: on the back of this thing. But I'm not going

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Speaker 2: to turn around or got it fair enough? Yeah, it

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Speaker 2: really spoke to me, but it's really like, it's really

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Speaker 2: a wild illustration.

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Speaker 1: I love that shirt. I've seen it a couple other

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Speaker 1: times from people who also supported that fundraiser, and it

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Speaker 1: is an appropriate shirt for today. Is what I'm going

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Speaker 1: to start off by telling you.

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Speaker 2: Oh wonderful.

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Speaker 1: Today, we're going to break out of cool people tradition

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Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about the one century I

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Speaker 1: never talk about this one, the twenty first century. I'm

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Speaker 1: going to tell a story that happened less than twenty

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Speaker 1: years ago.

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Speaker 2: Oh, perfet Wow. I'm still not going to know any

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Speaker 2: of it, but this is great.

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Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of the common Ground collective?

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Speaker 2: I feel like I actually have, but then I can't

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Speaker 2: think of a single fact so functional. I feel like

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Speaker 2: I've heard those the phrase, but I was like, oh.

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Speaker 1: No, yeah, no, I mean it is a well Okay,

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Speaker 1: So we've talked a ton on the show before about

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Speaker 1: medical solidarity groups set up by the late sixties radicals.

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Speaker 1: We have talked about the Young Lord's hijacking a mobile

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Speaker 1: X ray unit in order to get people tested for

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Speaker 1: tuberculosis and later how they took over a hospital. We've

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Speaker 1: talked about how the Black Panthers set up community health

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Speaker 1: clinics as often as they set up free food programs,

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Speaker 1: and we talked about how the Young Patriots sent it

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Speaker 1: to members to meet with elderly folks in the community,

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Speaker 1: to provide escort to doctors and patient advocacy and all

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Speaker 1: of that, and we talked about how people would just

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Speaker 1: go door to door to test for lead paint and

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Speaker 1: meet people's needs in the community. Basically before on this podcast,

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Speaker 1: when we've talked about the late sixties early seventies, we've

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Speaker 1: talked about how the New Left took medical care and

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Speaker 1: mutual aids seriously. But what we haven't talked about is

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Speaker 1: anything that happens in the twenty first century. And today

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Speaker 1: we're going to fix it, because today I want to

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Speaker 1: talk about the child of those New Left programs, which

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Speaker 1: went on to become parent to most of the mutual

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Speaker 1: aid programs across the US today, because today we are

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Speaker 1: going to talk about the Common Ground Collective that's set

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Speaker 1: up in two thousand and five after Hurricane Katrina devastated

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Speaker 1: New Orleans and how they're the love child of the

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Speaker 1: Black Panthers and anarchists and they organized a solidarity not

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Speaker 1: charity clinic and stepped in when government failed. I'm really

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Speaker 1: excited to talk about this one.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's awesome, And yeah, this is a real swamp episode,

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Speaker 2: so this is this is exciting.

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Speaker 1: I know there's literally going to be people in storms

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Speaker 1: and flat boats going around through the Gulf of Mexico

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Speaker 1: and swamps in this episode. Awesome, And we're going to

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Speaker 1: start this episode where we start, like half of all

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Speaker 1: stories about the US with a Black Panther party for

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Speaker 1: self defense, right, and in this case, we'll start with

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Speaker 1: the Minister of Defense of its New Orleans chapter, a

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Speaker 1: man named Malik Rahem. Malik Rahem was born in nineteen

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Speaker 1: forty eight according to almost all the sources, in nineteen

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Speaker 1: forty seven according to other sources. And it's hey, Malik,

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Speaker 1: if you're listening, Malik's still alive. I'm sorry that I

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Speaker 1: don't know what anyway. One thing that's cool about doing

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Speaker 1: these slightly more modern topics is that a lot of

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Speaker 1: these people are still alive.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and the community is not like that big, so like, yeah,

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Speaker 2: there's a reasonable chance.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm Alik. I think you're cool. That whole podcast

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Speaker 1: about some of the stuff you did. Oh yeah, he's

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Speaker 1: an environmental activist. Now we'll talk more about at the end.

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Speaker 1: And he's not the only character we're going to talk

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Speaker 1: about today, but he's we're starting with him.

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Speaker 2: Awesome.

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Speaker 1: He was raised in the neighborhood of New in New Orleans.

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Speaker 1: We're going to center most of this story, which is Algiers,

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Speaker 1: and Algiers is the in order to have like just

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Speaker 1: the triple colonized thing, the neighborhood Algiers is in the

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Speaker 1: West Bank of New Orleans, so.

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Speaker 2: God damn. Yeah. Yeah, it's like a like everywhere you

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Speaker 2: go there's like a white guy with like a real

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Speaker 2: weedy mustache ruining stuff.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, basically, which is kind of the story. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean that happened in New Orleans.

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Speaker 2: Happened.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, No, totally. Yeah, they all get pith helmets.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And unlike the rest of the city, Algiers is on

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Speaker 1: the west bank of the Mississippi River, and the Misissippi

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Speaker 1: River like curls around and stuff, so it's not like

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Speaker 1: west of the rest of the city. It's New Orleans.

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Speaker 1: Is really annoying geography. Algiers was originally a plantation and

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Speaker 1: a landing spot for enslaved people. In eighteen seventy it

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Speaker 1: it became officially part of New Orleans and it was

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Speaker 1: a big center of jazz in the South. And it

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Speaker 1: is a very predominantly black neighborhood. There's one rich white

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Speaker 1: neighborhood within it, Algiers Point, which is about ten blocks

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Speaker 1: of wealth, but overall it is astoundingly poor and black,

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Speaker 1: even by New Orleans standards. Before Katrina, sixty seven percent

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Speaker 1: of the city as a whole was black. Algiers was

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Speaker 1: eighty nine point four percent black.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: It had been left out to dry by social services.

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Speaker 1: It had you know, there was like not clinics for

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Speaker 1: decades before Katrina so Malik, He's not born under that name.

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Speaker 1: He later converts to Islam in nineteen sixty five, he

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Speaker 1: joins the Navy, and he goes off to fight in Vietnam.

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Speaker 1: He came back in nineteen seventy, fired up for civil

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Speaker 1: rights and black power. And if you ever want to

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Speaker 1: hear me talk about what I mean when the Panthers

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Speaker 1: say black power, then just listened about half a dozen

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Speaker 1: five done before.

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Speaker 2: Find a different episode. Also, I should tell the listeners

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Speaker 2: I'm doing the single worst podcast guesting, which is nodding

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Speaker 2: when you say stuff which is possibly marginally helpful to

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Speaker 2: you and zero percent helpful to them. So I will

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Speaker 2: be better.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, hmmmm, oh damn, Yeah, oh yeah, okay, yeah, No,

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Speaker 1: if you take the pith helmet off, you don't have

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Speaker 1: to go hmmm, you can install say damn.

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Speaker 2: We can just layer it in and then yeah, just

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Speaker 2: drop in reactions as needed. I'll give you some clean

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Speaker 2: ones at the end.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks, I really appreciate it. And so he's out

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Speaker 1: of the Navy in nineteen seventy and he helps found

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Speaker 1: the Black Panther Party chapter in New Orleans, and I

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Speaker 1: don't think we've talked about that particular chapter before.

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Speaker 2: On the show.

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Speaker 1: And they're doing all of the good Black Panther stuff.

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Speaker 1: They are setting up a free breakfast program, they're setting

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Speaker 1: up a free medical clinic, they're doing community patrols to

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Speaker 1: protect people from the police. And they opened an office

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Speaker 1: directly across the street from the Desire Housing project and

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Speaker 1: it was opened seven days a week. This office. The government,

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Speaker 1: of course, was like, this is great, You're totally doing

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Speaker 1: what we wish we had time to do. But we're not.

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Speaker 2: No.

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Speaker 1: Wait, no, they did the opposite that. They they hated

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Speaker 1: them and tried to murder them.

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Speaker 2: All. Yeah, kind of pretty standard standard government.

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Speaker 1: Behavior pretty much. There's a yeah, there's a track record.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not great.

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Speaker 1: No, soon enough, the police decide to raid this Panther office.

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Speaker 1: The Panthers they have seen way too many other Panther

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Speaker 1: chapters gunned down. They don't want to go out easy,

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Speaker 1: Malik in another vet. They've sand bagged the office, basically

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Speaker 1: making it so that it's kind of bulletproof. So when

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Speaker 1: the police starts shooting into the building, the Panthers start

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Speaker 1: shooting back.

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Speaker 2: WHOA.

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Speaker 1: The whole thing lasts about twenty minutes. No one is

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Speaker 1: killed in this shootout. Eventually the Panthers, including Malik, surrender.

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Speaker 1: They're like, there's no way that is going to end. Well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: so they walk out with their fists up, shouting all

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Speaker 1: power to the people, to the growing out outside. And

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Speaker 1: two things happened. First, even though all of the panthers

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Speaker 1: present were facing felony charges, it didn't stop the panthers.

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Speaker 1: Other panthers came in, staffed the office and got right

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Speaker 1: back to feeding breakfast to kids and patrolling the neighborhood,

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Speaker 1: that thing that people have to risk their lives to do.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: The other thing that happened is that Malik and the

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Speaker 1: others went to jail, whereupon they were beaten and mistreated

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Speaker 1: by guards, and at one point they're okay, So they

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Speaker 1: segregated away the panthers that they just arrested from general population.

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Speaker 1: And there was another group on another level that was

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Speaker 1: like also segregated away, that was like the real bad

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Speaker 1: motherfuckers or whatever, right, And so the cops are like,

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Speaker 1: you better act up, or we're gonna let those bad

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Speaker 1: motherfuckers in here with you. And I think they probably

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Speaker 1: phrased it that way, right, And y'all are definitely gonna

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Speaker 1: end up fighting because these are really bad people. You're

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Speaker 1: in trouble now. And so they let all these hard

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Speaker 1: and scary gangsters in with the panthers. It turns out

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Speaker 1: that those hard and scary gangsters, we're all black and

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Speaker 1: had either become recent converts to the Panther party or

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Speaker 1: we're quite willing to become.

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Speaker 2: So yeah, so that's the wonder that is sort of

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Speaker 2: not like heartening, but like it kind of got to

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Speaker 2: give like cops something which is like they're not like

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Speaker 2: kidding around when they appear to be like deathly afraid

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Speaker 2: of like the magic evil of black men somehow, like

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Speaker 2: they really think it's real. Yeah, it's pathetic, and it

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Speaker 2: lets them do all these kinds of things. But you

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Speaker 2: know every time, like you know those cops that you know,

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Speaker 2: the reason that that standard like of oh if a

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Speaker 2: cop is afraid for their lives, they can use deadly

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Speaker 2: force is a bullshit is because they genuinely do seem

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Speaker 2: to believe that black men in particular are just mad

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Speaker 2: death demons.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, that's why they all shoot fentanyl, not into

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Speaker 1: those dets, but they open their guns up and shoot

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Speaker 1: all drugs because they're afraid it's ventol. One of the scary,

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Speaker 1: scary people that they had let in was another man

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Speaker 1: we'll get to in a minute who's important to this

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Speaker 1: story and to the development of mutual aid as a

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Speaker 1: political practice in the United States. And his name is

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Speaker 1: Robert H.

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Speaker 2: King.

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Speaker 1: We'll come back to him.

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Speaker 2: And he was.

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Speaker 1: Childhood friends with Malik. Anyhow, that's the other thing, right,

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Speaker 1: And we're like, oh, or let these people in. We're like, right,

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Speaker 1: these kids grew up together.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. The community is not that big. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And so while the Panthers are sitting around in jail,

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Speaker 1: the other panthers are running the office. But the cops

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Speaker 1: are like, well, rating once works, so let's rate again,

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Speaker 1: and this time we'll do it way bigger. And November

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy was a couple months later, and it was

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Speaker 1: probably going to be a bloodbath, but three thousand residents

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Speaker 1: from the nearby projects showed up and surrounded the Panther

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Speaker 1: office and almost certainly saved the lives of the twelve

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Speaker 1: panthers inside.

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Speaker 2: Or you know, I mean, I guess the thing that's

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Speaker 2: dark is like, we're now rounding the quarner into the

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Speaker 2: era of human shields don't work on us level.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, of fascism, you know, that's true. I don't like

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Speaker 1: your thought that's true. You know, it's it's like a

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Speaker 1: little fucked up that the like the thing.

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Speaker 2: That's like, oh, they're weaponizing our humanity against us. Well,

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Speaker 2: we'll just have to not have humanity. I suppose.

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Speaker 1: Oh, there's this quote that I can't remember who said

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Speaker 1: it is around this era that's like, you know, nonviolence

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Speaker 1: depends on the like, yeah, the morality of your oppressor.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess I just always assumed that was a

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Speaker 2: Malcolm quote, but I don't know why, but.

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Speaker 1: I can't remember.

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Speaker 2: I'm not sure. I feel like you would know. So

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Speaker 2: if that's.

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Speaker 1: Not right, No, I don't know. I mean it was

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Speaker 1: it was Malcolm X or was someone else from roughly

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Speaker 1: this time period doing singular work, you know.

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Speaker 2: And roughly yeah, roughly the same world as view. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And we are not going to look it up. Nope,

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Speaker 1: that would be impossible. So instead, everyone, if we got

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Speaker 1: it wrong, you can direct all complaints to our complaint department,

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Speaker 1: which is on Twitter, which is that I write.

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Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, let him know.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. So the Panthers go to trial and they're acquitted

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Speaker 1: by the jury. Later, Malik was asked why they'd shot

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Speaker 1: back at the cops, and he said, quote, our position

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Speaker 1: was that African Americans should no longer be lynched or

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Speaker 1: beaten or attacked and have their rights taken away without

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Speaker 1: any form of resistance. We believed you had a right

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Speaker 1: to defend yourself, You had a right to defend your community,

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Speaker 1: you had a right to defend your family, and you

303
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Speaker 1: had a right to defend your honor as a human being.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the sort of like standard ATRA stuff that somehow

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Speaker 2: never shakes out in practice.

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Speaker 1: Totally whenever the cops shoot someone who for carrying a

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Speaker 1: gun and then the NRA is like, I didn't see anything. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you have one.

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Speaker 2: Job, I mean, yeah, but it's not their stated job. No,

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Speaker 2: they do have only one job, that is true.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. So after the stint in prison because you know,

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Speaker 1: he's found not guilty, Malik, when he gets out, he

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Speaker 1: goes to Oakland, California for a few decades, he moves

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Speaker 1: away from New Orleans for a while. He sticks with

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Speaker 1: the Party until the mid seventies. Then he tried his

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Speaker 1: hand at being a crime guy instead. For a while.

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Speaker 1: He did a five year stint for armed robbery. He

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Speaker 1: gets back into activism when he's out, and he's fighting

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Speaker 1: for affordable housing and for the rights of formally incarcerated people.

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Speaker 1: By the late nineties, he moved back to Algiers in

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Speaker 1: New Orleans, and I'm inferring from what I've read that

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Speaker 1: he moves back into his family's house, his mother's house specifically.

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure if she's still alive or not at

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Speaker 1: this point. I'm a little bit frustrated that I didn't

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Speaker 1: immediately find that information because half of the things refer

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Speaker 1: to it as Malik's house and half of it referred

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Speaker 1: to Malik's mother's house.

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Speaker 2: So got it.

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Speaker 1: He's doing all kinds of activism now. He's fighting against

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Speaker 1: the death penalty. He found the Algiers Development Center and

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Speaker 1: invest in transitional housing, which helped house more than one

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Speaker 1: thousand former inmates and you know, help people get back

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Speaker 1: on their feet. He runs for office with the Green

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Speaker 1: Party time and time again, though he doesn't win. In

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Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, he notices something not all the Movement

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Speaker 1: prisoners from the seventies are out. In fact, locally three

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Speaker 1: of them are still in including his childhood friend Robert H.

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Speaker 2: King.

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Speaker 1: One of the guys who would come up right, right,

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Speaker 1: And Robert H. King is one of the once famous,

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Speaker 1: now forgotten and goal of three. So he starts the

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Speaker 1: work to go about making these people unforgotten and more

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Speaker 1: importantly free, much like all of the products that we

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Speaker 1: advertise are free if you apply yourself and are not

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Speaker 1: afraid of breaking the law.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, if you just got to do do it the

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Speaker 2: old fashioned way.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's how you can take advantage of these

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Speaker 1: sweet sweet deals is by applying crime, Sophie. That's a

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Speaker 1: way that will help us keep our advertisers if we

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Speaker 1: phrase it that way, right, And we're back. So now

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Speaker 1: we're going to talk about Robert Hillary King. Robert H. King,

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Speaker 1: he was born in nineteen forty two and he grew

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Speaker 1: up in New Orleans. He grew up into petty crime

355
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Speaker 1: and boxing. Those were like his interests as a teenager

356
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Speaker 1: as far as I can.

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Speaker 2: Tell, Yeah, that's that awesome.

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Speaker 1: With that same he went semi pro under the name

359
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Speaker 1: Speedy King. As a boxer, he did a few years

360
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Speaker 1: for armed robbery before getting out on parole at twenty two.

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Speaker 1: And then as far as I can tell, I'm not

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Speaker 1: certain about this. As far as I can tell he

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Speaker 1: became like the usual suspect where they're like, oh, we

364
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Speaker 1: think like a black guy did an armed robbery. Let's

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Speaker 1: just go arrest this.

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Speaker 2: Guy, black guy.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Later he gets arrested for armed robbery again.

368
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Speaker 1: Eventually they dropped the charges because he's innocent. Okay, But

369
00:19:44,440 --> 00:19:48,920
Speaker 1: then listen to this cop logic. The guy he got

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Speaker 1: arrested alongside of took a plea bargain right and became

371
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Speaker 1: a felon. So Robert had been hanging out with a

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Speaker 1: felon and therefore had violated his previous parole. He had

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Speaker 1: to go spend fifteen months in prison for literally.

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Speaker 2: Not breaking God. That is so cram.

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Speaker 1: He is not going to have an easy life, this man. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the a goal of three. Well, we'll talk about that

377
00:20:16,119 --> 00:20:19,560
Speaker 1: in a second. Later, he gets arrested for armed robbery again.

378
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Speaker 1: He probably didn't do it this time either. His co

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Speaker 1: defendant that time had been tortured into giving a false statement.

380
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Speaker 1: Is what everyone seems to think, and you know there's

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Speaker 1: some reasonable eve that.

382
00:20:33,359 --> 00:20:33,760
Speaker 2: Yeah.

383
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Speaker 1: At one point early on into that stint, he decides

384
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Speaker 1: that he wants to preemptively help the listener fill out

385
00:20:39,720 --> 00:20:42,479
Speaker 1: a bingos square on cool people who did cool stuff, bingo.

386
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Speaker 1: And so he breaks out of prison. But he then

387
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Speaker 1: does what pretty much everyone who breaks out of prison does,

388
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Speaker 1: which is get caught.

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Speaker 2: Right. Is that is that a standard part of the

390
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Speaker 2: story that's rad.

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Speaker 1: It's like there's a couple like.

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Speaker 2: I haven't I haven't been on prison breaking episodes.

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00:21:01,359 --> 00:21:04,439
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well there's a couple that are like

394
00:21:04,520 --> 00:21:07,199
Speaker 1: getting or getting outdated, Like there's been a long time

395
00:21:07,280 --> 00:21:09,359
Speaker 1: since anyone's dug a tunnel, right, But that used to

396
00:21:09,440 --> 00:21:11,320
Speaker 1: be a real big part of early cool people did

397
00:21:11,320 --> 00:21:14,040
Speaker 1: cool stuff. Oh man, I think it's because I moved

398
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Speaker 1: away from the nineteenth century. I feel like the nineteenth

399
00:21:15,920 --> 00:21:17,080
Speaker 1: century was all about tunnels.

400
00:21:17,200 --> 00:21:19,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, right, But.

401
00:21:19,320 --> 00:21:22,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he's caught. Now that he's back in prison,

402
00:21:22,080 --> 00:21:23,960
Speaker 1: this is when he meets Malik Raheem and all this

403
00:21:24,000 --> 00:21:26,160
Speaker 1: other stuff happens, right, the panther stuff that we talked

404
00:21:26,160 --> 00:21:28,600
Speaker 1: about earlier, And he's like, oh shit, this panther thing,

405
00:21:28,640 --> 00:21:32,320
Speaker 1: that's that fucking rules I'm in. And then he's transferred

406
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Speaker 1: to Angola Prison and he's thrown into solitary because he

407
00:21:35,359 --> 00:21:38,400
Speaker 1: quote wanted to play lawyer for another inmate.

408
00:21:39,400 --> 00:21:40,080
Speaker 2: Oh god.

409
00:21:40,520 --> 00:21:45,760
Speaker 1: Famously not a crime, yeah, Jesus Christ. Along the way,

410
00:21:45,880 --> 00:21:49,320
Speaker 1: somewhere in all of this, he gets convicted for murdering

411
00:21:49,359 --> 00:21:53,159
Speaker 1: another prisoner, which he almost certainly again either didn't do

412
00:21:53,400 --> 00:21:57,000
Speaker 1: or it wasn't murder, right, because this conviction is going

413
00:21:57,080 --> 00:22:00,560
Speaker 1: to end up overturned in two thousand and one decade later,

414
00:22:02,240 --> 00:22:05,679
Speaker 1: he then spends the rest of his prison career in

415
00:22:05,760 --> 00:22:13,879
Speaker 1: solitary confinement. Somewhere along this way, probably before the solitary stint,

416
00:22:14,040 --> 00:22:16,520
Speaker 1: he tried to stop the sex slave trade of young

417
00:22:16,560 --> 00:22:20,679
Speaker 1: inmates and has the knife scars to prove it. And

418
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Speaker 1: so I think that that might be I'm inferring here

419
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Speaker 1: from the different stories that I've read, I think that

420
00:22:26,640 --> 00:22:30,119
Speaker 1: might be where the killing someone in prison comes from.

421
00:22:30,440 --> 00:22:32,879
Speaker 1: But oh sure, sure, and that maybe it wasn't considered

422
00:22:32,960 --> 00:22:35,600
Speaker 1: murder because it was I don't know, right, right, right

423
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Speaker 1: the self defense are defending someone or Yeah, but I'm

424
00:22:40,040 --> 00:22:45,000
Speaker 1: not entirely certain, yep, But I know his conviction was overturned, Okay, Right.

425
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Speaker 1: Two other black inmates who are in at the same

426
00:22:48,080 --> 00:22:51,840
Speaker 1: time as him, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, they're in

427
00:22:51,920 --> 00:22:56,920
Speaker 1: solitary too, and they just all keep being in solitary

428
00:22:57,600 --> 00:23:01,000
Speaker 1: decades go by and they are in solitary. They are

429
00:23:01,040 --> 00:23:03,919
Speaker 1: the Angola Three, not because they were co defendants on

430
00:23:03,960 --> 00:23:07,240
Speaker 1: the same case, but because they're all in solitary for

431
00:23:07,359 --> 00:23:10,040
Speaker 1: just unconscious able lengths of time.

432
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Speaker 2: Yeah.

433
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Speaker 1: In two thousand and one, thanks to the work of

434
00:23:13,960 --> 00:23:16,879
Speaker 1: Malik and other activists, Robert gets his conviction overturned and

435
00:23:16,920 --> 00:23:20,200
Speaker 1: he's released. He spent twenty nine years out of thirty

436
00:23:20,200 --> 00:23:25,439
Speaker 1: two years in prison in solitary confinement. Jesus Christ and

437
00:23:25,480 --> 00:23:30,400
Speaker 1: then Herman Wallace spends about forty two years in solitary

438
00:23:30,440 --> 00:23:35,120
Speaker 1: confinement before he is released under compassionate release in twenty thirteen,

439
00:23:35,359 --> 00:23:36,800
Speaker 1: which is when they let you out of prison because

440
00:23:36,800 --> 00:23:40,520
Speaker 1: you're dying, right, you know. He died three days after

441
00:23:40,560 --> 00:23:43,360
Speaker 1: he was set free, and even then the people were like,

442
00:23:43,760 --> 00:23:46,639
Speaker 1: how dare you have set him free? You know, right,

443
00:23:47,640 --> 00:23:51,040
Speaker 1: you let this murderer? Whatever the fuck mean, he's dying?

444
00:23:51,240 --> 00:23:51,800
Speaker 1: Fuck off?

445
00:23:52,160 --> 00:23:53,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, who cares.

446
00:23:54,040 --> 00:23:57,640
Speaker 1: Albert Woodfox is released from prison in twenty sixteen after

447
00:23:57,680 --> 00:24:01,400
Speaker 1: forty two years of solitary confinement. He died in twenty

448
00:24:01,440 --> 00:24:04,560
Speaker 1: twenty two of COVID. He was quite likely the longest

449
00:24:04,560 --> 00:24:09,800
Speaker 1: serving solitary confinement in US history. Yeah, fuck the United

450
00:24:09,880 --> 00:24:12,720
Speaker 1: Nations Standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners. You

451
00:24:12,760 --> 00:24:14,240
Speaker 1: know how long they say that you're allowed to put

452
00:24:14,240 --> 00:24:17,280
Speaker 1: someone in solitary for. Isn't it like on the order

453
00:24:17,320 --> 00:24:22,400
Speaker 1: of like weeks fifteen days? Yeah, yeah, yeah, we all

454
00:24:22,440 --> 00:24:26,920
Speaker 1: know international law as a joke. But here's the other example. Yeah,

455
00:24:26,960 --> 00:24:29,240
Speaker 1: on any given day in the US right now, while

456
00:24:29,240 --> 00:24:32,280
Speaker 1: you're listening, one hundred and twenty two thousand people are

457
00:24:32,320 --> 00:24:34,600
Speaker 1: being kept in cages alone for twenty two to twenty

458
00:24:34,640 --> 00:24:38,360
Speaker 1: four hours a day. Jesus, forty one to forty eight

459
00:24:38,400 --> 00:24:41,399
Speaker 1: thousand people are held longer than fifteen days in a

460
00:24:41,440 --> 00:24:45,480
Speaker 1: given year, and more than six thousand of those will

461
00:24:45,480 --> 00:24:47,359
Speaker 1: have been in solitary for more than a year at

462
00:24:47,400 --> 00:24:49,080
Speaker 1: any given point.

463
00:24:49,600 --> 00:24:53,600
Speaker 2: That's like yeah, and that's also like so far past

464
00:24:53,640 --> 00:24:56,400
Speaker 2: the bounds of like what that could do to somebody.

465
00:24:57,200 --> 00:24:59,600
Speaker 2: I mean, I know, yeah.

466
00:24:59,640 --> 00:25:02,000
Speaker 1: I did on my other podcast Live Like the World

467
00:25:02,040 --> 00:25:04,400
Speaker 1: Has Died, I did an interview that actually is worth

468
00:25:04,440 --> 00:25:06,160
Speaker 1: people checking out. I did an interview with a long

469
00:25:06,200 --> 00:25:09,760
Speaker 1: term anarchist prisoner named Eric King, who spent years in

470
00:25:09,840 --> 00:25:13,879
Speaker 1: solitary for defending himself from guards and all this stuff.

471
00:25:13,920 --> 00:25:15,600
Speaker 1: Like literally like at one point he won a self

472
00:25:15,600 --> 00:25:18,080
Speaker 1: defense case while he was in prison for defending himself

473
00:25:18,080 --> 00:25:20,800
Speaker 1: from a guard, which is has to be a pretty

474
00:25:20,800 --> 00:25:22,000
Speaker 1: clear cut case to win.

475
00:25:22,200 --> 00:25:26,360
Speaker 2: Yeah right, They're not trying to give that one to you.

476
00:25:25,920 --> 00:25:30,320
Speaker 1: No, and they absolutely would. He ended up serving in

477
00:25:30,359 --> 00:25:34,199
Speaker 1: every level of incarceration. He started off in minimum and

478
00:25:34,480 --> 00:25:37,560
Speaker 1: ended up in maximum like super max because of how

479
00:25:37,640 --> 00:25:39,720
Speaker 1: much the guards hated him. I did an interview with

480
00:25:39,840 --> 00:25:43,800
Speaker 1: him about what's involved in like surviving prison. I came

481
00:25:43,840 --> 00:25:47,560
Speaker 1: out probably in January of twenty twenty four for anyone

482
00:25:47,560 --> 00:25:50,080
Speaker 1: who wants to hear it, and it is a It

483
00:25:50,160 --> 00:25:51,240
Speaker 1: was an intense conversation.

484
00:25:51,840 --> 00:25:53,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, fuck, it is a k.

485
00:25:53,800 --> 00:25:55,040
Speaker 1: Have you ever been in solitary?

486
00:25:57,359 --> 00:25:57,800
Speaker 2: Nope.

487
00:25:59,080 --> 00:26:02,080
Speaker 1: I spent one night alone in a jail cell and

488
00:26:02,280 --> 00:26:05,399
Speaker 1: it was foreign detention in the Netherlands, and that was

489
00:26:05,440 --> 00:26:07,679
Speaker 1: one of the most impactful moments of my life. Was

490
00:26:07,760 --> 00:26:09,719
Speaker 1: one night alone in a jail cell with no one

491
00:26:09,760 --> 00:26:11,119
Speaker 1: to talk to and no idea what's happening?

492
00:26:11,600 --> 00:26:13,359
Speaker 2: You know? Yeah? I fuck.

493
00:26:14,359 --> 00:26:18,520
Speaker 1: Anyway, twenty nine years this man who went on to

494
00:26:18,560 --> 00:26:22,680
Speaker 1: become incredibly important to the development of so many things.

495
00:26:23,680 --> 00:26:27,200
Speaker 1: So Robert King gets out of prison two thousand and one,

496
00:26:27,840 --> 00:26:31,040
Speaker 1: He gets right back into activism. He also just as

497
00:26:31,080 --> 00:26:34,760
Speaker 1: a fun side note, because why not. He's a football fan.

498
00:26:34,960 --> 00:26:37,880
Speaker 1: This actually I threw this in for Sophie. Sophie likes spelts.

499
00:26:39,000 --> 00:26:43,000
Speaker 1: I like basketball. This guy likes the real like soccer

500
00:26:43,080 --> 00:26:47,600
Speaker 1: football you know. Oh, okay, oh europe football or rest

501
00:26:47,600 --> 00:26:49,840
Speaker 1: of the world, the one you play with your feet.

502
00:26:50,080 --> 00:26:50,919
Speaker 2: The ball, the.

503
00:26:52,880 --> 00:26:57,520
Speaker 1: One with less concussions. Yeah. He supports the Scottish club,

504
00:26:57,560 --> 00:27:00,679
Speaker 1: the Celtics. Oh, probably the Celtics. They probably pronounced it

505
00:27:00,760 --> 00:27:01,440
Speaker 1: right over there.

506
00:27:02,200 --> 00:27:06,080
Speaker 2: I think it's just Celtic. I will say, oh, the

507
00:27:06,359 --> 00:27:09,960
Speaker 2: football club from Scotland. Yeah, I think it's just called

508
00:27:10,119 --> 00:27:15,680
Speaker 2: it's just Celtic FC. Okay, or maybe Celtic, but it's no,

509
00:27:15,880 --> 00:27:18,160
Speaker 2: there's no the yeah or plural. Yeah.

510
00:27:18,520 --> 00:27:22,439
Speaker 1: My sports knowledge is bleeding through. The most I ever

511
00:27:22,520 --> 00:27:24,719
Speaker 1: learned about sports was I ghost write all these romance

512
00:27:24,760 --> 00:27:26,960
Speaker 1: I ghost wrote two romance novels back in the day,

513
00:27:27,440 --> 00:27:33,040
Speaker 1: and they had to be about like Midwest sportsman protagonists. Sure,

514
00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:35,240
Speaker 1: like one one guy was a baseball player and one

515
00:27:35,280 --> 00:27:38,080
Speaker 1: guy was an American football player, so I had to

516
00:27:38,160 --> 00:27:43,240
Speaker 1: learn a lot about them back then. Anyway, that's kind

517
00:27:43,240 --> 00:27:47,520
Speaker 1: of all you need. Yeah, that's funny. So he said

518
00:27:47,560 --> 00:27:50,440
Speaker 1: about this, I don't know how to pronounce football club

519
00:27:50,520 --> 00:27:55,119
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty. They represent oppressed people like me and

520
00:27:55,160 --> 00:27:57,840
Speaker 1: my brothers in the African American community. They represent the

521
00:27:57,840 --> 00:27:59,920
Speaker 1: poor Irish immigrants in the UK and the people in

522
00:28:00,040 --> 00:28:02,960
Speaker 1: the poorest areas of Glasgow, the people with nothing and

523
00:28:03,000 --> 00:28:04,000
Speaker 1: who face adversity.

524
00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:04,880
Speaker 2: Yeah.

525
00:28:04,920 --> 00:28:08,280
Speaker 1: So he likes the politicized sports and I understand.

526
00:28:08,440 --> 00:28:11,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that one I think is very It's it's like,

527
00:28:12,119 --> 00:28:14,720
Speaker 2: I can't remember all the details, but there's basically a

528
00:28:14,760 --> 00:28:18,680
Speaker 2: Catholic team and a Protestant team in Glasgow and it's

529
00:28:19,200 --> 00:28:23,720
Speaker 2: as about as like, you know, passionate and violent as

530
00:28:23,760 --> 00:28:24,360
Speaker 2: it sounds.

531
00:28:25,520 --> 00:28:26,040
Speaker 1: Yeah.

532
00:28:26,840 --> 00:28:28,000
Speaker 2: Yeah.

533
00:28:28,119 --> 00:28:29,920
Speaker 1: The thing I'm coming off of is doing a whole

534
00:28:29,920 --> 00:28:31,679
Speaker 1: lot of I just did a four part about the

535
00:28:31,760 --> 00:28:33,520
Speaker 1: Easter Rising in Ireland.

536
00:28:33,119 --> 00:28:34,520
Speaker 2: So oh yeah, yeah.

537
00:28:34,560 --> 00:28:37,840
Speaker 1: So anyway, you've got these two former Panthers living in

538
00:28:37,840 --> 00:28:40,560
Speaker 1: New Orleans. There's more of them, I'm sure, but they're

539
00:28:40,560 --> 00:28:45,160
Speaker 1: living in New Orleans, and then Hurricane Katrina hits. Hurricane

540
00:28:45,240 --> 00:28:48,080
Speaker 1: Katrina is one of the deadliest natural disasters in US history.

541
00:28:48,680 --> 00:28:52,080
Speaker 1: But as we'll talk about, it wasn't the storm itself

542
00:28:52,120 --> 00:28:56,000
Speaker 1: that killed people. Well, the storm itself also killed people, right,

543
00:28:56,040 --> 00:28:58,719
Speaker 1: but it was systemic poverty and racism that did an

544
00:28:58,760 --> 00:29:03,960
Speaker 1: awful lot of them. Ordering the right world murder, Well, actually,

545
00:29:03,960 --> 00:29:05,520
Speaker 1: in this case it is murder because it's caused by

546
00:29:05,560 --> 00:29:09,560
Speaker 1: these whatever anyway, Right, it is not the deadliest storm

547
00:29:09,600 --> 00:29:13,160
Speaker 1: in US history. That honor goes to the Great Galveston

548
00:29:13,280 --> 00:29:16,280
Speaker 1: hurricane that hit coastal Texas in nineteen hundred, which killed

549
00:29:16,280 --> 00:29:20,680
Speaker 1: eight thousand people. Most of the deadliest storms were one

550
00:29:20,720 --> 00:29:24,280
Speaker 1: hundred plus years ago. We theoretically have the infrastructure now

551
00:29:24,320 --> 00:29:28,560
Speaker 1: to prevent massive loss of life from natural disasters. Yet

552
00:29:28,640 --> 00:29:32,680
Speaker 1: Katrina killed eighteen hundred people, and Hurricane Maria, which hit

553
00:29:32,680 --> 00:29:36,760
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico in twenty seventeen, killed about three thousand people.

554
00:29:37,400 --> 00:29:40,520
Speaker 2: Right, It's like that thing where like famine is not

555
00:29:40,720 --> 00:29:43,720
Speaker 2: actually about the distribution of the actual food.

556
00:29:43,720 --> 00:29:46,360
Speaker 1: Right totally. It's not about whether or not the food

557
00:29:46,400 --> 00:29:48,400
Speaker 1: grows out of the ground correctly.

558
00:29:48,040 --> 00:29:50,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, or sorry, It is about the distribution.

559
00:29:50,880 --> 00:29:52,520
Speaker 2: It's the existence of the.

560
00:29:52,400 --> 00:29:57,080
Speaker 1: Food, yeah, totally. So Katrina is real fucking bad. For

561
00:29:57,120 --> 00:29:59,880
Speaker 1: a little while. It was a Category five storm, which

562
00:30:00,080 --> 00:30:03,760
Speaker 1: the highest category we have so far of hurricanes. I

563
00:30:03,840 --> 00:30:06,000
Speaker 1: believe in US, I believe we'll have to come up

564
00:30:06,040 --> 00:30:07,840
Speaker 1: with a higher category.

565
00:30:08,080 --> 00:30:12,640
Speaker 2: You know what. And I just actually got off a

566
00:30:12,680 --> 00:30:15,680
Speaker 2: family text thread with like some Republican aunts that are like,

567
00:30:15,720 --> 00:30:19,040
Speaker 2: it's so crazy. There's all these storms in California, and

568
00:30:19,040 --> 00:30:23,320
Speaker 2: it's just like, yeah, I wish there was some explanation

569
00:30:23,480 --> 00:30:27,400
Speaker 2: for why this could be happening. It's just I guess

570
00:30:27,480 --> 00:30:30,280
Speaker 2: there is a just a coo incidents. I suppose did

571
00:30:30,320 --> 00:30:30,760
Speaker 2: you give.

572
00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:36,680
Speaker 1: Did you give them the oh geez? I'm like, you don't.

573
00:30:36,640 --> 00:30:42,720
Speaker 2: Say it's really like, oh, well, I guess. I guess

574
00:30:42,760 --> 00:30:45,440
Speaker 2: the consequences will just land and we'll be like, oh,

575
00:30:45,520 --> 00:30:48,720
Speaker 2: this is so weird because we're all flowing away.

576
00:30:48,920 --> 00:30:51,720
Speaker 1: I don't remember fucking around. Why am I finding out

577
00:30:51,760 --> 00:31:00,320
Speaker 1: for no reason? So Katrina calmed down to a category

578
00:31:00,360 --> 00:31:03,480
Speaker 1: three before hitting Louisiana and Mississippi before making landfall in

579
00:31:03,520 --> 00:31:05,640
Speaker 1: August twenty ninth, two thousand and five, which it did

580
00:31:05,680 --> 00:31:11,680
Speaker 1: early in the morning, and yet it devastated the area.

581
00:31:12,000 --> 00:31:14,120
Speaker 1: It did at least one hundred billion dollars in damages,

582
00:31:14,400 --> 00:31:17,880
Speaker 1: which is just when you're talking about damage and you

583
00:31:17,960 --> 00:31:20,240
Speaker 1: use money, and then you also talk about numbers and

584
00:31:20,240 --> 00:31:22,400
Speaker 1: you get into the billions. It doesn't. It's more in

585
00:31:22,480 --> 00:31:25,200
Speaker 1: miss I could have said, right, I could have said

586
00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:27,160
Speaker 1: one hundred trillion, and you'd be like wow.

587
00:31:27,040 --> 00:31:31,120
Speaker 2: You know, like, yeah, it's equal. Yeah, it just means everything.

588
00:31:31,280 --> 00:31:35,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, fucking a lot more money than I currently have. Yeah,

589
00:31:35,080 --> 00:31:37,480
Speaker 1: by a little bit. But if that's right, I would

590
00:31:37,480 --> 00:31:38,960
Speaker 1: have been a great place for an ad transition. But

591
00:31:38,960 --> 00:31:42,560
Speaker 1: I don't think that's where we're at. So most of

592
00:31:42,640 --> 00:31:45,760
Speaker 1: New Orleans had evacuated. Eighty to ninety percent of New

593
00:31:45,840 --> 00:31:49,040
Speaker 1: Orleans evacuated. That's still left tens of thousands of people

594
00:31:49,080 --> 00:31:52,400
Speaker 1: in harms way. Mostly it was people who had nowhere

595
00:31:52,480 --> 00:31:55,120
Speaker 1: to go and or no where to get anywhere, plus

596
00:31:55,200 --> 00:31:58,160
Speaker 1: a lot of stubborn motherfuckers who just weren't leaving, Plus

597
00:31:58,160 --> 00:31:59,640
Speaker 1: a lot of people who like a lot of the

598
00:31:59,680 --> 00:32:02,720
Speaker 1: emmergen agency services that people set up that the city

599
00:32:02,800 --> 00:32:07,120
Speaker 1: set up. Wouldn't let you take your animals, And right,

600
00:32:07,680 --> 00:32:13,480
Speaker 1: I wouldn't leave my dog, Yeah I right, just wouldn't

601
00:32:14,040 --> 00:32:16,680
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, we made a deal. I'm in charge

602
00:32:16,680 --> 00:32:18,760
Speaker 1: of every moment of his life, and in exchange, I

603
00:32:18,800 --> 00:32:20,400
Speaker 1: can't fucking abandon him.

604
00:32:20,640 --> 00:32:22,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I don't even like this dog that much,

605
00:32:22,880 --> 00:32:24,360
Speaker 2: but she's coming with me.

606
00:32:24,880 --> 00:32:32,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, and New Orleans is not the best designed city

607
00:32:32,840 --> 00:32:36,040
Speaker 1: in the world. An awful lot of it forty nine

608
00:32:36,080 --> 00:32:39,480
Speaker 1: percent is below sea level. The whole thing is surrounded

609
00:32:39,520 --> 00:32:42,080
Speaker 1: by levees to keep out the Gulf of Mexico. But

610
00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:45,080
Speaker 1: construction on those levees was of mixed quality and not

611
00:32:45,200 --> 00:32:48,200
Speaker 1: always done. And there's like, like, ten years later, a

612
00:32:48,200 --> 00:32:49,520
Speaker 1: lot of stuff came out. We're not going to get

613
00:32:49,520 --> 00:32:53,280
Speaker 1: into the like the nitty gritty of why the levels collapsed,

614
00:32:53,520 --> 00:32:56,680
Speaker 1: but the Army Corps of engineers fucking at the very

615
00:32:56,720 --> 00:33:00,120
Speaker 1: least dropped the ball right, whether they did so like

616
00:33:00,160 --> 00:33:05,400
Speaker 1: criminally whatever, you know, anyway, engineers and shit knew it

617
00:33:05,440 --> 00:33:07,600
Speaker 1: was a disaster waiting to happen. There was like regular

618
00:33:07,680 --> 00:33:10,720
Speaker 1: articles being like, so when you think a hurricane's gonna

619
00:33:10,720 --> 00:33:13,120
Speaker 1: come and kill everyone, and everyone's like, I don't know,

620
00:33:13,440 --> 00:33:16,400
Speaker 1: well I'm too poor to fix it, and the city's

621
00:33:16,440 --> 00:33:18,200
Speaker 1: like we kind of don't care, you know.

622
00:33:18,520 --> 00:33:24,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess that's the thing with most infrastructure. It's like, yeah,

623
00:33:24,400 --> 00:33:27,040
Speaker 2: oh well they'll just say sorry. It's a real like

624
00:33:27,600 --> 00:33:29,880
Speaker 2: you know, beg for forgiveness culture there.

625
00:33:30,280 --> 00:33:34,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, especially in places where poor people live. Yeah,

626
00:33:34,800 --> 00:33:37,360
Speaker 1: you will be shocked to know that the below sea

627
00:33:37,440 --> 00:33:40,640
Speaker 1: level parts are more often the poorer parts.

628
00:33:41,600 --> 00:33:44,760
Speaker 2: That's interesting. I would not have considered that possibility.

629
00:33:44,880 --> 00:33:51,960
Speaker 1: Yeah. Two days before landfall, the National Weather Service was like, Hey,

630
00:33:52,000 --> 00:33:55,080
Speaker 1: we're in fucking trouble. This is going to break the levees.

631
00:33:56,160 --> 00:34:00,719
Speaker 1: So the mayor, rayinn Egan, whose name we remembered how

632
00:34:00,760 --> 00:34:02,920
Speaker 1: to pronounce because it sounds like rain again.

633
00:34:04,680 --> 00:34:04,920
Speaker 2: Called.

634
00:34:05,080 --> 00:34:08,440
Speaker 1: When I say we, I mean everyone but me, called

635
00:34:08,440 --> 00:34:12,960
Speaker 1: for a voluntary evacuation. First on Saturday night, and then

636
00:34:13,400 --> 00:34:17,640
Speaker 1: on Sunday they called for the city's first mandatory evacuation

637
00:34:17,719 --> 00:34:21,719
Speaker 1: in history. Basically, he was like, this is going to

638
00:34:21,719 --> 00:34:25,480
Speaker 1: topple our levee system. Anyone who stayed behind was offered

639
00:34:25,480 --> 00:34:28,160
Speaker 1: to be shuttled to the Louisiana super Dome. Throughout Sunday

640
00:34:29,080 --> 00:34:33,840
Speaker 1: and Monday morning, the storm hit, the waters broke the

641
00:34:33,920 --> 00:34:38,680
Speaker 1: levee in fifty places. People started dining and bridges collapsed.

642
00:34:39,040 --> 00:34:40,719
Speaker 2: Jesus, Yeah, you.

643
00:34:40,719 --> 00:34:45,719
Speaker 1: Want to know who else wasn't evacuated? These goods and service?

644
00:34:46,320 --> 00:34:49,839
Speaker 1: Is this a good place for an ad transition? These

645
00:34:49,880 --> 00:34:53,600
Speaker 1: goods and services stayed right where they were, through thick

646
00:34:53,640 --> 00:35:07,520
Speaker 1: and thin, by their own choice. Here they are and

647
00:35:07,600 --> 00:35:08,000
Speaker 1: we're back.

648
00:35:09,000 --> 00:35:10,840
Speaker 2: You gotta find the places.

649
00:35:10,960 --> 00:35:16,319
Speaker 1: I know. The other thing that wasn't evacuated. So there

650
00:35:16,360 --> 00:35:19,080
Speaker 1: was about seven thousand prisoners total in New Orleans at

651
00:35:19,080 --> 00:35:23,320
Speaker 1: that time, including one hundred children, six hundred and fifty prisoners,

652
00:35:23,360 --> 00:35:26,080
Speaker 1: and entire wing of one of these prisons was just

653
00:35:26,160 --> 00:35:30,160
Speaker 1: abandoned by its staff, with the prisoners locked inside their cells.

654
00:35:30,239 --> 00:35:32,359
Speaker 1: This is one of the worst things that's I've ever

655
00:35:32,920 --> 00:35:37,879
Speaker 1: America's bad. America has always been bad. I'm gonna go

656
00:35:37,920 --> 00:35:42,279
Speaker 1: on out on a crazy limb here, but this is

657
00:35:42,320 --> 00:35:45,000
Speaker 1: one of the worst things I've ever read about my life.

658
00:35:46,480 --> 00:35:49,560
Speaker 1: Six hundred and fifty prisoners were abandoned by their staff,

659
00:35:49,600 --> 00:35:52,760
Speaker 1: with the prisoners locked in their cells. On the first floor,

660
00:35:53,239 --> 00:35:56,520
Speaker 1: the water came up to people's waists. Obviously, this flooded

661
00:35:56,560 --> 00:35:59,520
Speaker 1: all of the sewage and all of these things. People

662
00:35:59,560 --> 00:36:01,680
Speaker 1: didn't know if I was going to stop rising. People

663
00:36:01,680 --> 00:36:03,960
Speaker 1: are like hanging out on their top bunks. People on

664
00:36:04,000 --> 00:36:06,520
Speaker 1: the upper floors are like calling down to the people

665
00:36:06,560 --> 00:36:08,560
Speaker 1: down below, being like, hey, a you okay, and people

666
00:36:08,600 --> 00:36:11,960
Speaker 1: are just like crying and they're like, no, yeah, I'm

667
00:36:11,960 --> 00:36:15,520
Speaker 1: not Yeah. There was no food or water. People were

668
00:36:15,600 --> 00:36:20,400
Speaker 1: drinking sewage there was no lights, there was no air circulation.

669
00:36:22,080 --> 00:36:24,800
Speaker 1: The people who were evacuated, the prisoners who were evacuated

670
00:36:24,800 --> 00:36:27,960
Speaker 1: on time were left for days in buses in the

671
00:36:28,000 --> 00:36:31,000
Speaker 1: sun on the highway, often going entire days without food

672
00:36:31,080 --> 00:36:35,279
Speaker 1: or water. Five hundred and seventeen prisoners from across the

673
00:36:35,320 --> 00:36:37,759
Speaker 1: city in the end were never accounted for by the

674
00:36:37,800 --> 00:36:45,080
Speaker 1: prison system. I hope they all escaped. I think they

675
00:36:45,200 --> 00:36:48,000
Speaker 1: probably only did so if you believe in heaven.

676
00:36:48,520 --> 00:36:50,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems unlikely, Jesus Christ.

677
00:36:51,680 --> 00:36:55,680
Speaker 1: Most of the prisoners were just in were like serving

678
00:36:55,719 --> 00:36:58,640
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks, you know whatever, like facing trial

679
00:36:58,680 --> 00:37:04,920
Speaker 1: from misdemeanors and shit. After Katrina, they suspended habeas corpus,

680
00:37:04,960 --> 00:37:07,640
Speaker 1: and people did like six months or a year waiting

681
00:37:07,719 --> 00:37:10,120
Speaker 1: on trial for like something that would have only gotten

682
00:37:10,200 --> 00:37:12,640
Speaker 1: them in, you know, a one week sentence or whatever.

683
00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:16,799
Speaker 1: But the hurricane wasn't the worst of it. I want

684
00:37:16,800 --> 00:37:19,080
Speaker 1: to quote one of the founders of Common Ground, Scott

685
00:37:19,120 --> 00:37:24,000
Speaker 1: Crow from his memoir Black Flags and Windmills. It was

686
00:37:24,040 --> 00:37:27,160
Speaker 1: not the hurricane that caused this disaster. It was the

687
00:37:27,239 --> 00:37:30,560
Speaker 1: levee failures and the ongoing ecological destruction in the Gulf.

688
00:37:31,040 --> 00:37:33,400
Speaker 1: This was the latest in a long history of largely

689
00:37:33,400 --> 00:37:37,960
Speaker 1: invisible disasters of neglect in these communities. To me, the

690
00:37:38,040 --> 00:37:40,440
Speaker 1: levees became a symbol of the way that the corruption

691
00:37:40,520 --> 00:37:45,560
Speaker 1: and arrogance of government disregards the most vulnerable people. And

692
00:37:46,239 --> 00:37:48,800
Speaker 1: the flooding lasted for days in most of the city

693
00:37:48,880 --> 00:37:52,000
Speaker 1: and weeks in plenty of places, some places like a

694
00:37:52,000 --> 00:37:56,239
Speaker 1: couple months before the flood waters receded. Yeah, most of

695
00:37:56,280 --> 00:37:59,600
Speaker 1: the people who died because of Katrina were elderly folks

696
00:37:59,719 --> 00:38:02,920
Speaker 1: living near levee breaches, in the poorest neighborhoods like the

697
00:38:02,960 --> 00:38:08,520
Speaker 1: Lower ninth ward right. The news, of course, you remember

698
00:38:08,520 --> 00:38:09,640
Speaker 1: the news during Katrina.

699
00:38:09,680 --> 00:38:13,960
Speaker 2: I'm not uh kind of yeah, I mean it was

700
00:38:14,040 --> 00:38:18,400
Speaker 2: just like yeah, like obviously, I mean I think at

701
00:38:18,440 --> 00:38:21,839
Speaker 2: the time it was this like Jesus Christ, like George W.

702
00:38:21,920 --> 00:38:26,239
Speaker 2: Bush is going to fuck this up. Not exclusively a

703
00:38:26,280 --> 00:38:31,160
Speaker 2: Republican thing, but not I guess, of the choices, not

704
00:38:31,280 --> 00:38:34,120
Speaker 2: the not the preferred one, not that either is that great?

705
00:38:35,120 --> 00:38:39,479
Speaker 1: Yeah, who knows how fucking gore who ran in Gore.

706
00:38:41,760 --> 00:38:46,680
Speaker 1: But the news was full of these wild stories about

707
00:38:46,800 --> 00:38:48,840
Speaker 1: and when I say anarchy, I don't mean anarchy like

708
00:38:48,920 --> 00:38:52,320
Speaker 1: I like anarchy. I mean the opposite anarchy. The news

709
00:38:52,400 --> 00:38:55,680
Speaker 1: was full of all these wild stories of like everyone

710
00:38:55,719 --> 00:38:58,280
Speaker 1: in the super Dome is currently being raped and murdered.

711
00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:01,080
Speaker 2: Oh right, yes, yes.

712
00:39:00,800 --> 00:39:04,239
Speaker 1: The gangs run it. Snipers are just killing people in there.

713
00:39:05,320 --> 00:39:08,200
Speaker 1: And you know what, six people died at the super Dome,

714
00:39:08,320 --> 00:39:11,839
Speaker 1: that's true. Four of them died of natural causes, one

715
00:39:11,960 --> 00:39:15,839
Speaker 1: person odeed, and one person killed themselves. And there were

716
00:39:15,880 --> 00:39:21,120
Speaker 1: no snipers. Right, But there was violence in post Katrina

717
00:39:21,160 --> 00:39:25,759
Speaker 1: New Orleans, most famously after the fact, police violence. Right,

718
00:39:25,920 --> 00:39:27,600
Speaker 1: But we're going to talk about how there was I mean,

719
00:39:27,640 --> 00:39:31,640
Speaker 1: there was more. You know, it was a bad situation.

720
00:39:32,680 --> 00:39:35,879
Speaker 1: And let's get back to our panthers who are living

721
00:39:35,880 --> 00:39:39,480
Speaker 1: in New Orleans, especially to Malik Rameil. Malik Ramil and

722
00:39:39,520 --> 00:39:42,440
Speaker 1: his friend Sharon Johnson in the Algiers neighborhood. They decided

723
00:39:42,480 --> 00:39:44,799
Speaker 1: to stick it out together. They stayed in the house

724
00:39:44,840 --> 00:39:48,480
Speaker 1: to make it Sharon Johnson was not yet a community organizer,

725
00:39:48,520 --> 00:39:51,080
Speaker 1: but she's about to become one, and Malik Ramil has

726
00:39:51,120 --> 00:39:54,840
Speaker 1: been one for decades. Right, this neighborhood, Algiers, it was

727
00:39:54,880 --> 00:39:58,359
Speaker 1: spared the worst of the natural disaster. It gets as

728
00:39:58,480 --> 00:40:02,000
Speaker 1: much as anyone else of the unnatural disaster. It's levees

729
00:40:02,040 --> 00:40:04,040
Speaker 1: were separate from the rest of the city, right because

730
00:40:04,040 --> 00:40:07,800
Speaker 1: it's in a separate physical geographical location, and they held

731
00:40:08,440 --> 00:40:13,920
Speaker 1: despite a ship crashing into one, which is pretty they

732
00:40:13,920 --> 00:40:18,000
Speaker 1: built one levee, right, yeah, god it is.

733
00:40:18,440 --> 00:40:21,960
Speaker 2: I guess what an improbability that that's the one that

734
00:40:22,080 --> 00:40:23,440
Speaker 2: was like that held.

735
00:40:24,040 --> 00:40:27,000
Speaker 1: In this case. Yeah, yeah, I mean these ones were

736
00:40:27,000 --> 00:40:30,000
Speaker 1: like solid concrete, yeah, and twelve feet highs compared to

737
00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:32,320
Speaker 1: a lot of them that were like just dirt. And

738
00:40:32,360 --> 00:40:34,880
Speaker 1: you know, I wonder whether they finished these early. I

739
00:40:34,920 --> 00:40:38,200
Speaker 1: don't know enough about the levee system of New Orleans.

740
00:40:38,239 --> 00:40:39,839
Speaker 1: I've walked on some of the levees. They're a very

741
00:40:39,920 --> 00:40:40,960
Speaker 1: nice place to walk your dog.

742
00:40:41,440 --> 00:40:43,800
Speaker 2: I don't think i've ever been. Oh it's nice in

743
00:40:43,920 --> 00:40:44,640
Speaker 2: New Orleans.

744
00:40:44,760 --> 00:40:46,920
Speaker 1: But yeah, if you walk down one of the levees,

745
00:40:46,920 --> 00:40:48,200
Speaker 1: you can get to this place called the End of

746
00:40:48,239 --> 00:40:51,360
Speaker 1: the World. That's just a little sticks out into the

747
00:40:51,400 --> 00:40:56,080
Speaker 1: water and there's some burned out, rusty things and people

748
00:40:56,120 --> 00:40:59,239
Speaker 1: go and hang out and do drugs or walk their

749
00:40:59,280 --> 00:41:00,920
Speaker 1: dogs and it's like kind of like a nice vibe

750
00:41:00,920 --> 00:41:04,239
Speaker 1: of like those two things like happily coinciding, you know.

751
00:41:06,360 --> 00:41:06,880
Speaker 2: Amazing.

752
00:41:07,040 --> 00:41:11,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, So there's a lot of like rituals for the dead.

753
00:41:11,840 --> 00:41:16,680
Speaker 1: And this is a neat, neat place anyway. Yeah, Algiers

754
00:41:16,840 --> 00:41:20,279
Speaker 1: wasn't spared completely. People were trapped, right, They couldn't leave

755
00:41:20,320 --> 00:41:24,160
Speaker 1: the city, right, All the bridges had collapsed, like all

756
00:41:24,160 --> 00:41:27,200
Speaker 1: this crazy shit's happening. There's like check points everywhere. Getting

757
00:41:27,239 --> 00:41:29,520
Speaker 1: in and out as a nightmare. And of course there's

758
00:41:29,560 --> 00:41:31,719
Speaker 1: like all these armed people with guns that work for

759
00:41:31,719 --> 00:41:35,080
Speaker 1: the government yelling at you and yeah, and so they're

760
00:41:35,120 --> 00:41:38,560
Speaker 1: fucking hungry. Malik and Sharon they started talking with their

761
00:41:38,560 --> 00:41:41,520
Speaker 1: neighbors and soon enough they had a food distribution system going.

762
00:41:41,800 --> 00:41:44,240
Speaker 1: They used their one fucked up car and whatever gas

763
00:41:44,239 --> 00:41:47,120
Speaker 1: they could siphon from abandoned vehicles to pass out the

764
00:41:47,560 --> 00:41:50,400
Speaker 1: mrs the meals ready to eat and water that was

765
00:41:50,440 --> 00:41:56,799
Speaker 1: filtering in from the National Guard. Algiers primarily a black neighborhood.

766
00:41:56,800 --> 00:41:59,920
Speaker 1: It has one white area, Algiers Point, which is full

767
00:42:00,080 --> 00:42:02,800
Speaker 1: of those like U loot, we shoot signs.

768
00:42:03,800 --> 00:42:04,000
Speaker 2: Right.

769
00:42:04,120 --> 00:42:07,480
Speaker 1: Have you seen that that meme where there's like the

770
00:42:07,520 --> 00:42:10,120
Speaker 1: white assholes with guns standing in front of a Texas

771
00:42:10,120 --> 00:42:12,720
Speaker 1: flag and it says lotters will be shoot on site.

772
00:42:13,480 --> 00:42:16,360
Speaker 1: Oh it's good. And then there's like lotters are not afraid.

773
00:42:16,600 --> 00:42:17,399
Speaker 1: The mean with the.

774
00:42:18,640 --> 00:42:21,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, I haven't. I don't know if I've seen that.

775
00:42:21,320 --> 00:42:23,240
Speaker 2: I Mean, it's like I feel like it's an endless

776
00:42:23,239 --> 00:42:26,680
Speaker 2: well on the internet of yeah, totally, but yeah, it

777
00:42:26,760 --> 00:42:29,560
Speaker 2: is like the mentality of like, I will murder someone

778
00:42:29,680 --> 00:42:35,359
Speaker 2: for you know, at worst categorizing it as burglary. Ye. Like,

779
00:42:36,480 --> 00:42:40,640
Speaker 2: it's like, yeah, like fucking crazy, which.

780
00:42:40,480 --> 00:42:43,160
Speaker 1: Is funny because they all watch movies where white people

781
00:42:43,200 --> 00:42:45,360
Speaker 1: break into grocery stores after the end of the world,

782
00:42:45,400 --> 00:42:48,400
Speaker 1: and you know, it's good and noble because they're starving

783
00:42:48,480 --> 00:42:52,200
Speaker 1: or whatever. Right, that's the vibe is lotters will be

784
00:42:52,200 --> 00:42:56,880
Speaker 1: shoot on site, and soon enough there is a white

785
00:42:56,960 --> 00:43:00,239
Speaker 1: racist militia patrolling not just their own blocks but the

786
00:43:00,239 --> 00:43:03,719
Speaker 1: rest of Algiers. And another similar militia was active in

787
00:43:03,760 --> 00:43:05,520
Speaker 1: the French quarter on the other side of the river,

788
00:43:06,400 --> 00:43:10,320
Speaker 1: and they weren't just sticking to their blocks, right, An

789
00:43:10,360 --> 00:43:12,400
Speaker 1: awful lot of young black men were dead in the

790
00:43:12,440 --> 00:43:16,560
Speaker 1: streets full of bullets. The police let them do it

791
00:43:16,800 --> 00:43:19,799
Speaker 1: because the police were there to shoot looters too. Yeah,

792
00:43:19,920 --> 00:43:23,880
Speaker 1: quote looters whoever they fucking wanted. And one highly publicized

793
00:43:23,920 --> 00:43:27,800
Speaker 1: example on September fourth, cops on the Danziger Bridge killed

794
00:43:28,120 --> 00:43:31,680
Speaker 1: James Brissett, who was seventeen, and Ronald Madison, who was

795
00:43:31,719 --> 00:43:35,399
Speaker 1: forty and had mental disabilities. Ronald was shot in the back.

796
00:43:35,920 --> 00:43:38,279
Speaker 1: The police tried to cover it up. It took until

797
00:43:38,280 --> 00:43:40,600
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen for the cops involved to get convicted. And

798
00:43:40,640 --> 00:43:43,400
Speaker 1: of course that was only after like, yeah, more than

799
00:43:43,400 --> 00:43:46,319
Speaker 1: a decade of work, right, Yeah, I.

800
00:43:46,320 --> 00:43:48,680
Speaker 2: Kind of remember that one, yeah, because that was caught

801
00:43:48,719 --> 00:43:51,640
Speaker 2: on like news camera or something, right.

802
00:43:51,600 --> 00:43:54,960
Speaker 1: I think, so, I actually a little bit ago. It

803
00:43:55,040 --> 00:43:57,959
Speaker 1: said a whole long thing about it. There's like good

804
00:43:58,000 --> 00:44:01,680
Speaker 1: and really emotional reporting that people have done about that.

805
00:44:01,800 --> 00:44:01,960
Speaker 2: You know.

806
00:44:02,000 --> 00:44:04,360
Speaker 1: It's like they were a family out to try and

807
00:44:04,440 --> 00:44:07,279
Speaker 1: like find something to eat and figure out what's going

808
00:44:07,320 --> 00:44:11,200
Speaker 1: on and stuff, you know, and like, yeah, Malik himself

809
00:44:12,160 --> 00:44:15,000
Speaker 1: saw nineteen people shot to death by these militias, according

810
00:44:15,040 --> 00:44:16,960
Speaker 1: to what I read. And this was not yeah, it

811
00:44:17,000 --> 00:44:19,440
Speaker 1: was someone else quoting Malik. This is not a direct

812
00:44:19,680 --> 00:44:24,880
Speaker 1: quote from him. But the militias piled men with rifles

813
00:44:24,880 --> 00:44:29,080
Speaker 1: into the beds of pickups and drove around to harrass people. Yeah,

814
00:44:29,160 --> 00:44:31,600
Speaker 1: and they particularly had it out for Malik. They called

815
00:44:31,680 --> 00:44:34,120
Speaker 1: him the mayor of Algiers and said they were going

816
00:44:34,200 --> 00:44:41,040
Speaker 1: to quote get him, which, to put it mildly, is

817
00:44:41,080 --> 00:44:42,080
Speaker 1: a bad situation.

818
00:44:42,640 --> 00:44:45,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, concerning, But what was.

819
00:44:45,520 --> 00:44:48,600
Speaker 1: Going to happen? In order to find out, You're going

820
00:44:48,640 --> 00:44:51,400
Speaker 1: to have to wait until Wednesday.

821
00:44:53,200 --> 00:44:53,960
Speaker 2: Part two.

822
00:44:55,560 --> 00:44:59,040
Speaker 1: That was so cool. Thank you, thank you. Proud of

823
00:44:59,080 --> 00:45:03,400
Speaker 1: a I'm proud of my segues seguys, cliffhangers.

824
00:45:03,520 --> 00:45:03,800
Speaker 2: Yeah.

825
00:45:04,480 --> 00:45:07,640
Speaker 1: But what people don't have to wait for is to

826
00:45:07,680 --> 00:45:10,600
Speaker 1: hear from you Andrew about what you do.

827
00:45:11,440 --> 00:45:15,000
Speaker 2: Oh that's true. Yeah, just fine. I don't know the

828
00:45:15,080 --> 00:45:19,040
Speaker 2: Yosis Racist podcast, I guess is the thing that is

829
00:45:19,120 --> 00:45:22,400
Speaker 2: happening every week when this comes out. I don't know

830
00:45:22,440 --> 00:45:25,200
Speaker 2: what's happening. I do know I just recorded a very

831
00:45:25,280 --> 00:45:29,799
Speaker 2: hurried solo premium episode because I was stuck at San

832
00:45:29,800 --> 00:45:34,319
Speaker 2: Francisco Airport for fourteen hours. So I did a little

833
00:45:34,360 --> 00:45:36,640
Speaker 2: recap of that, and I was very tired of when

834
00:45:36,680 --> 00:45:39,680
Speaker 2: I did it. Anyway, Yoss Racist.

835
00:45:39,960 --> 00:45:42,600
Speaker 1: Awesome, Sophie, what do you got to plug?

836
00:45:43,000 --> 00:45:46,000
Speaker 2: Well? And I at cool Zone Media have a new

837
00:45:46,120 --> 00:45:48,799
Speaker 2: weekly podcast that I think at the time of this

838
00:45:49,040 --> 00:45:52,160
Speaker 2: at least the trailer, if not episode one will be out.

839
00:45:52,520 --> 00:45:55,080
Speaker 1: It's called Better Offline. It's a weekly show exploring the

840
00:45:55,080 --> 00:46:00,440
Speaker 1: tech industry's fuckery. So check that out. Yeah, check me

841
00:46:00,480 --> 00:46:05,319
Speaker 1: out on substack Margaret Kiljoy dot substack dot com, where

842
00:46:05,320 --> 00:46:08,480
Speaker 1: I alright google it like the rest of us. You sick.

843
00:46:09,400 --> 00:46:11,600
Speaker 1: You don't just type in your yeah.

844
00:46:11,640 --> 00:46:12,080
Speaker 2: No man.

845
00:46:13,160 --> 00:46:16,000
Speaker 1: Although, with the way Google's going, who knows where we're starting.

846
00:46:16,080 --> 00:46:21,000
Speaker 2: Ask chat GPT yo, go Duck duck.

847
00:46:21,360 --> 00:46:24,320
Speaker 1: The world's gonna split into three directions. There's going to

848
00:46:24,360 --> 00:46:27,800
Speaker 1: be Google the centrists, and there's going to be Duck dutgo,

849
00:46:28,320 --> 00:46:31,800
Speaker 1: the privacy paranoid. And then there's going to be the

850
00:46:31,880 --> 00:46:36,120
Speaker 1: chat GPT, Yeah, the dumb fox, the people who are

851
00:46:36,120 --> 00:46:39,200
Speaker 1: the least correct according to my whatever. Go listen to

852
00:46:39,200 --> 00:46:42,480
Speaker 1: that podcast and it'll probably have better ideas than I do. Yeah,

853
00:46:42,520 --> 00:46:46,600
Speaker 1: and we will talk to you all on Wednesday.

854
00:46:47,960 --> 00:46:50,480
Speaker 2: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of

855
00:46:50,520 --> 00:46:53,600
Speaker 2: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,

856
00:46:53,760 --> 00:46:56,799
Speaker 2: visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us

857
00:46:56,800 --> 00:47:00,279
Speaker 2: out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

858
00:47:00,320 --> 00:47:01,319
Speaker 2: get your podcasts.