Speaker 1: Hey, y'all, Eve's here. I know you're ready to get
Speaker 1: into this episode, but really quick. We have been loving
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Speaker 2: Thanks y'all. Now time for the episode.
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Speaker 3: Take my bit.
Speaker 4: Okay, say cheese cheez. Let me see mm hm, I
Speaker 4: like that. Try it again.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, how about this one. I don't think it's
Speaker 2: really capturing me, but you're literally right there though.
Speaker 5: Me as in my essence what I want to say
Speaker 5: to the world through my likeness me.
Speaker 2: Okay, So what do you want the picture to say?
Speaker 4: I wanted to say, there she go, and she begin
Speaker 4: to it when she goes, you.
Speaker 1: Know, black people be saying a whole lot and they'll
Speaker 1: be saying nothing.
Speaker 2: But okay, I got it.
Speaker 5: So let's try this again. See that's perfect. I'm Katie
Speaker 5: and I'm Eves.
Speaker 4: In today's episode, Pixel power.
Speaker 5: Photos are always saying something A thousand somethings. As a
Speaker 5: popular quote goes, and when photography and political movements mix,
Speaker 5: maybe those pictures talk. So today on our show, we're
Speaker 5: taking it back to the abolitionist movement and the anti
Speaker 5: apartheid movement, looking through the viewfinder at specific ways photography
Speaker 5: can be used for good and evil.
Speaker 2: Act one, the most photographed man?
Speaker 4: Who do you think is the most photographed man today?
Speaker 1: So the first person that comes to mind for me
Speaker 1: is Barack Obama, even though he's not president anymore, So
Speaker 1: I guess the current president, So Joe Biden.
Speaker 4: I guess you think photograph?
Speaker 2: I don't because I feel like Obama had more photographs.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean? Right?
Speaker 4: Who wants to look at him?
Speaker 2: Nobody? But my thing is the White House.
Speaker 1: They have official photographers, So I say that the most
Speaker 1: photograph because they're photographed on purpose. And obviously I'm thinking
Speaker 1: an A and American centric way. So I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: US federal government and I'm thinking about the office of
Speaker 1: the president. So my first guess is Obama, and then
Speaker 1: my second guess is just whoever the current president is,
Speaker 1: which is now Biden? Wait, who do you think is
Speaker 1: the most photographed person today?
Speaker 4: See, I would sink like maybe Kim Kardashian.
Speaker 5: But then I was like, because people are like always
Speaker 5: taking pictures, it literally could be just like a random
Speaker 5: kid in Ohio to get about the pictures of themselves,
Speaker 5: they take a million pictures of themselves. Like most photographed
Speaker 5: person in the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess I also didn't include like self photography.
Speaker 2: I wasn't include selfies.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In my thinking on this.
Speaker 4: Could literally be anybody.
Speaker 2: So we were really trying to find out who's the
Speaker 2: most narcissistic person in the world.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, maybe most creative. Maybe they put no
Speaker 5: shoots m h okay, that's a very diplomatic way to
Speaker 5: put it. Yeah, with most folks carrying around a camera
Speaker 5: at all times, it might be hard to know who
Speaker 5: is the single most photographed person today, But that absolutely
Speaker 5: was not the case in the eighteen hundreds. In the
Speaker 5: nineteenth century, no American was photographed more than Frederick Douglas,
Speaker 5: with more than one hundred and sixty known portraits. Douglas
Speaker 5: had more pictures taken of him during his lifetime than
Speaker 5: Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman.
Speaker 4: And this was no accident.
Speaker 5: Douglas, an escaped slave who became a renowned abolitionist, and
Speaker 5: author understood the power of photography and saw the revolutionary
Speaker 5: technology as an avenue to challenge racists, caricatures and stereotypes
Speaker 5: about black people that were abundant in.
Speaker 4: American visual culture. Eves, can you describe this photo of Douglas.
Speaker 1: So it's a black and white photo, and Douglas is
Speaker 1: kind of looking off into the side. He's dressed up
Speaker 1: in nice clothes. He looks very stern, his lips are
Speaker 1: kind of downturned. He's very seriously focused, and he looks like,
Speaker 1: you know, he's about business, basically.
Speaker 4: About his beasis. Truly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And for anyone who has ever cracked open a
Speaker 5: US history book, the image Eve's described is floating in
Speaker 5: your head right now, partly because he took a lot
Speaker 5: of his pictures like this. By posing for these portraits,
Speaker 5: Douglas presented the world with an image of a dignified,
Speaker 5: well dressed black man, a stark contrast to the degrading
Speaker 5: to pictures that were common, and he carefully curated this
Speaker 5: public image, ensuring he was always well groomed, always dressed formally,
Speaker 5: and always projecting an air a sophistication.
Speaker 1: If you listen to our past episodes, Bona fide blackface
Speaker 1: or we might regret this episode later. You'll recall that
Speaker 1: American media often depicted black people as silly, simple folks,
Speaker 1: just their fault white folk's amusement.
Speaker 4: But Douglas troubled that notion.
Speaker 5: He once said he never wanted to look like a happy, amiable,
Speaker 5: fugitive slave.
Speaker 2: He a statement, why are he bagging?
Speaker 1: Why is he bagging on slaves like that they can
Speaker 1: be happy?
Speaker 2: Well, I think.
Speaker 5: The thing is like, no one really looked like that. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it was there putting out like nobody was looking like that. Yeah,
Speaker 5: but he was like, let me make sure I don't
Speaker 5: look like that. I ain't gonna smile. I'm not gonna
Speaker 5: crack a one smile. And it's shit funny.
Speaker 1: It's just funny as an isolated sentiment to be like
Speaker 1: taking it out of context like that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, his photos, they were confrontational. The stirred eyes that
Speaker 5: you mentioned, the unsmiling mouth, the playing background. A lot
Speaker 5: of his pictures ain't no little Doiley's in the back.
Speaker 5: He's like, keep your eyes on me, on my face,
Speaker 5: and he described it as the face of the fugitive slave.
Speaker 1: Douglas was well aware of the importance of controlling his
Speaker 1: image and as a famous writer and orator. He used
Speaker 1: his photographs to gain subscribers for his abolitionist newspaper, The
Speaker 1: North Star, and he would also hand out pictures of
Speaker 1: himself along with his letters, speeches and essays.
Speaker 5: He saw photography as quote the most democratic of the arts.
Speaker 5: In a lecture he delivered in Boston in eighteen sixty one,
Speaker 5: he said, what.
Speaker 1: Was once the exclusive luxury of the rich and great
Speaker 1: is now within reach of all the humblest servant. Girl
Speaker 1: whose income is but a few shillings per week may
Speaker 1: now possess a more perfect likeness of herself the noble
Speaker 1: ladies and even royalty with all its precious treasures, could
Speaker 1: purchase fifty years ago.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so basically just saying how photography really kind of
Speaker 5: even the playing field in his eyes is interesting to me.
Speaker 5: And the reason why photography got really accessible during this
Speaker 5: time is because the picture used to be printed on metal,
Speaker 5: and it used it switched to being printed on paper,
Speaker 5: and of course paper was like more abundant and easier
Speaker 5: to print on. But I really thought it's interesting to
Speaker 5: call it the most democratic of the arts, as someone
Speaker 5: who used to be enslaved like slavery is like the
Speaker 5: very antithesis of democracy, you know, and so him seeing
Speaker 5: photography as like the antithesis in a way of slavery,
Speaker 5: and like he's able to put his image out there
Speaker 5: and really change people's minds based on his image, Like
Speaker 5: he like looked so serious and so dignified. People were like,
Speaker 5: he's lying. He wasn't even a slave before. People didn't
Speaker 5: believe it because his image that he put out. He
Speaker 5: had the newspaper and he was going around writing these speeches,
Speaker 5: like giving these speeches. People were like, ain't no way
Speaker 5: because of the images that we see, you know, like
Speaker 5: the minstrel shows, like that's what a slave is.
Speaker 4: So I was like, he ate that. He really ate
Speaker 4: that description. What did you think of it?
Speaker 1: Well, I have a question for you, which is that
Speaker 1: I'm curious about your take on who his intended audience
Speaker 1: was for in his thinking around like presenting himself in
Speaker 1: this way. Was it for other black people to be
Speaker 1: like this is who you are, this is who you
Speaker 1: really are and you can see yourself this way.
Speaker 2: Or was it for non black people? I think it
Speaker 2: was both.
Speaker 5: So, like in the quote where he's talking about like
Speaker 5: the humble servant girl being able to see herself because
Speaker 5: like you know how they say the camera don't lie
Speaker 5: a little timpanals or something, but they gonna lie. It's
Speaker 5: gonna show you what you like really look like. And
Speaker 5: if you have people like always saying like you're subhuman,
Speaker 5: like you're not as good as me, like you're you know,
Speaker 5: an animal really, and then you look at this image
Speaker 5: and you're like, wait a minute, I'm not who they
Speaker 5: said I was. And they also can see this black
Speaker 5: man who is very black, you know, like you know
Speaker 5: sometimes people be back in the days for saying they black,
Speaker 5: but they like, you know, one sixteenth black, but this
Speaker 5: man black, Okay, like ain't no question. So like they
Speaker 5: can see this black man and be like, oh, like
Speaker 5: he has this picture, he's like dressing these nice clothes,
Speaker 5: he's like giving all these lectures.
Speaker 4: So I definitely think it was for black people.
Speaker 5: But then also when people were wanting to know about
Speaker 5: abolition and you know, what should we do as a country,
Speaker 5: people were coming to him people, you know, as powerful
Speaker 5: as a president of the United States, he was advising
Speaker 5: Abraham Lincoln. When Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, he
Speaker 5: was like very well read, well written, well spoken, and
Speaker 5: well photographed. He had the most photographs out, so I
Speaker 5: think it was twofold. And so, like you said, he
Speaker 5: had the North Star and that was a way to
Speaker 5: get the message out, and he was printing his picture
Speaker 5: in there every time, like hey, like this is an
Speaker 5: abolitions newspaper. These are our thoughts about anti slavery. This
Speaker 5: is what it would look like. This is what would
Speaker 5: happened going forward, like really laying out the cause, like
Speaker 5: the moral objections and just laying it out for people
Speaker 5: to be able to read. And like you know, newspapers
Speaker 5: they just popping back then he puts up a newspaper.
Speaker 5: Now maybe people did even read it, but people's reading
Speaker 5: those newspapers listening to his speeches. He was handing out
Speaker 5: little cars of his picture like yeah. Henry Lewis Gates
Speaker 5: called him like the social media influencer of his day,
Speaker 5: and I was like, that's really true, because he was
Speaker 5: using a relatively new technology to get his message out
Speaker 5: and like spread you know, his own propaganda, which was
Speaker 5: anti slavery.
Speaker 1: And he does look serious in the photo, but it
Speaker 1: does also strike me as a very artistically composed photo
Speaker 1: as well. This one that I'm looking at and described
Speaker 1: earlier of him looking off into the side. There's just
Speaker 1: something about it that seems pretty thoughtfully composed, and it
Speaker 1: makes me think about our previous episode in which we
Speaker 1: talked about James Vandersey and his death portraits and this
Speaker 1: being kind of like something that preceded that, Like, this
Speaker 1: is James Vandersey used his portraits to talk about death,
Speaker 1: and this is about life. This is about what kind
Speaker 1: of lives black people had in the truth and authenticity of.
Speaker 2: What black life looked like.
Speaker 1: And Frederick Douglass showed that through his photos without having
Speaker 1: to say it, because a statement of it being the
Speaker 1: most democratic of the arts is very telling when and
Speaker 1: there are so many other arts that Black people did
Speaker 1: express themselves through, a really big one of them being writing,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people didn't have access to that though,
Speaker 1: so a lot of people weren't able to read or
Speaker 1: weren't able to write back in that time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this photograph is like telling a story, even if
Speaker 5: you're illiterate exactly. And going back to your question about
Speaker 5: if he was targeting black people or white people, he
Speaker 5: also was a big recruiter for the Union Army former
Speaker 5: slaves or I think maybe even they were still slaves,
Speaker 5: but yeah, to join the Union Army and fight the
Speaker 5: Confederacy did the Civil War, and he was able to
Speaker 5: use that like this for people who you know, might
Speaker 5: not have access to the North Star but can see
Speaker 5: his picture or like, oh, this man says we should
Speaker 5: like join and fight, and like giving people the idea
Speaker 5: the abolition is possible, you know. So he was really
Speaker 5: like firing on all cylinders truly. But I think like
Speaker 5: a lot of scholars call him like the father of
Speaker 5: the Civil rights movement, and we see a lot of
Speaker 5: his tactics and movements current movements now. Like when you
Speaker 5: look back at the Civil Rights movement, a lot of
Speaker 5: things you're looking at is pictures. Right, So on Bloody
Speaker 5: Sunday when John Lewis crossed that Edmund Pettis Bridge, people
Speaker 5: saw the images of the dogs getting sticked on people
Speaker 5: and the water hoses knocking people down, and that's put
Speaker 5: on TV and you know, you can write your letter
Speaker 5: from the Birmingham jail and stuff like that, but those
Speaker 5: images hit different. And I think Frederick Douglas was kind
Speaker 5: of one of the maybe not first, but one of
Speaker 5: the most prominent people to say, like the opress can
Speaker 5: show these images and like change things. And you see
Speaker 5: that in the civil rights movement, see in the Black
Speaker 5: Lives Matter movement, And I think now even in like Palestine,
Speaker 5: we're getting like terrible images coming from Palestine. And the
Speaker 5: thing that's kind of different with Palestine is like you're
Speaker 5: seeing these images and we're like what the fuck? And
Speaker 5: then the powers at b are just like whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, we're inundated with so many of them that
Speaker 1: it's become easier to be desensitized.
Speaker 5: I don't think we're desensitized. I think the ruling class
Speaker 5: just doesn't give a fuck about Palestinians, right, And so
Speaker 5: it's like we're used to saying like, oh, we're seeing
Speaker 5: these horrible images and they're telling the truth. So things
Speaker 5: need to change because we've seen that going all the
Speaker 5: way back from abolition, But now with Paleside is like
Speaker 5: not happening.
Speaker 1: So when I say we, I don't mean necessarily me
Speaker 1: and you and people who we know are pro Palestine.
Speaker 1: But I do think there is a general public outside
Speaker 1: of the ruling class that is in denial purposeful denial
Speaker 1: as well, because just think about all the people I
Speaker 1: mean holocaust deniers going to that, I mean everything, like
Speaker 1: people who deny atrocities that happen in the world. People
Speaker 1: turn a blind eye to it a lot of the
Speaker 1: time and say, these things are happening, but are they
Speaker 1: really happening, like people who're saying they were like actors
Speaker 1: in Sandy Hook. You know, just whenever atrocities come up,
Speaker 1: there are always regular people, including poor people, including people
Speaker 1: who are not part of the ruling class, who are like,
Speaker 1: you know, they see all of this in front of
Speaker 1: their face and like there's they use some sort of
Speaker 1: excuse to be like, yeah, it's not really happy happening.
Speaker 1: In many ways, Douglas was ahead of his time in
Speaker 1: recognizing the profound impact that photography could have on public
Speaker 1: perception and national consciousness.
Speaker 5: His photos radiated dignity and authority, characteristics denied to those
Speaker 5: who had been enslaved, and his extensive photographic archive is
Speaker 5: a testament to the transformative power of the camera to humanize, educate,
Speaker 5: and inspire.
Speaker 1: Next, we're traveling between Massachusetts and South Africa to hear
Speaker 1: about how two Polaroid employees contributed to the fall of apartheid.
Speaker 1: That's after the Break Act two, the Polaroid protest.
Speaker 5: I wanted to include the Polaroid protest in this episode
Speaker 5: because one unlike Frederick Douglas, I hadn't known about it
Speaker 5: until recently. And that could just be a function of
Speaker 5: our US focus educational system, but it also could be
Speaker 5: because it gives a great blueprint for how we can
Speaker 5: affect change today when it comes to corporations participating in oppression.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a powerful story that really highlights the transformative
Speaker 1: potential of worker led activism.
Speaker 2: So let's get into it.
Speaker 5: In nineteen seventy two, African American Polaroid employees Caroline Hunter
Speaker 5: and Ken Williams made a shocking discovery that Polaroid's products
Speaker 5: were being used by the South African government to create
Speaker 5: ID past books for black South Africans as part of
Speaker 5: the oppressive apartheid system. Here's Caroline Hunter describing how she
Speaker 5: and Ken Williams made that discovery.
Speaker 2: It was really a fluke.
Speaker 6: Ken and I were going out to lunch and as
Speaker 6: we passed through the workplace on our way out, we
Speaker 6: saw an ID badge MAYFA, South Africa. We looked at
Speaker 6: it and began to say to each other, we didn't
Speaker 6: know Polaroid was in South Africa.
Speaker 1: In response to finding out that their employer's products were
Speaker 1: being used to oppress black South Africans, Caroline and Ken
Speaker 1: formed the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement, or the PRWM, and
Speaker 1: they issued three bold demands to Polaroid on October eighth,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy One, that Polaroid announced a policy of complete
Speaker 1: disengagement from South Africa since all American companies doing business
Speaker 1: in South Africa reinforced that racist system and its government.
Speaker 1: Two that Polaroid have its management meet with the entire
Speaker 1: company to discuss this policy and announce his position on
Speaker 1: apartheid publicly in the USA and in South Africa simultaneously.
Speaker 1: Three that if Polaroid company is sincereness opposition to apartheid,
Speaker 1: we call upon it to contribute the profits earned.
Speaker 5: This was an unprecedented move At the time. It was
Speaker 5: the norm for corporations to uphold racist regimes through their
Speaker 5: products and for employees and customers to say nothing, but
Speaker 5: not the PRWM. The PRWN organized a protest of about
Speaker 5: two hundred people at polaroids headquarters at Cambridge, Massachusetts, bringing
Speaker 5: their message directly to the company, and after a Polaroid
Speaker 5: refused to meet with at PRWM. They called for a
Speaker 5: worldwide boycott of Polaroid products by all Right On Thinking
Speaker 5: People on October twenty seventh and a fly release by
Speaker 5: the group. They explained their reasoning for the boycott.
Speaker 1: Polaroid sells its ID two system to the South African
Speaker 1: government to make the notorious pastbook pictures Polaroid imprisons black people.
Speaker 2: In just sixty seconds.
Speaker 4: Here's Caroline Hunter again explaining that ethos behind their fight
Speaker 4: for black South Africans.
Speaker 6: We really had some sense that no one's free unless
Speaker 6: everybody's free, and that we had some relationship to black
Speaker 6: people everywhere, and as workers, we had a right to
Speaker 6: say what happened to our labor. So we started off
Speaker 6: just asking the question, what is Polaroid doing in South Africa.
Speaker 1: In response to the prwm's question asking and demand making,
Speaker 1: Polaroid sent a delegation to South Africa and announced the
Speaker 1: Polaroid Experiment. In the experiment, Polaroid would ban sales to
Speaker 1: the government, raised wages, and increased job training for black workers.
Speaker 5: But PRWM saw the Polaroid experiment for what it was,
Speaker 5: a disingenuous attempt to continue profiting from apartheid. And quel
Speaker 5: discent among workers. Caroline Hunter and Ken Williams also testified
Speaker 5: before the United Nations Special Committee on Apartheid advocating for
Speaker 5: a boycott of Polaroid. This puts significant pressure on Polaroid
Speaker 5: to respond to the worker's demands.
Speaker 1: Caroline Hunter and Kim Williams were fired from Polaroid for
Speaker 1: their activism, but.
Speaker 5: The PRWM continued and after seven years of protest, Polaroid
Speaker 5: finally withdrew from South Africa in nineteen seventy seven, ending
Speaker 5: its business ties with the apartheid regime. The Polaroid workers
Speaker 5: activism is seen as pioneering in the corporate divestment movement
Speaker 5: against apartheid After the break, how we can use the
Speaker 5: Polaroid protests as a blueprint for movement work today?
Speaker 1: You mentioned earlier that you saw this protest as like
Speaker 1: a blueprint for how we can affect change today.
Speaker 2: What exactly do you mean by that?
Speaker 5: I think in a capitalistic society, protests that come for
Speaker 5: your oppressor's capital are more effective than the ones that
Speaker 5: appeal to their morals because they simply don't have any
Speaker 5: I found this leaflet that the African Research Group put
Speaker 5: out about the Polaroid protests as they were going on
Speaker 5: in the seventies, and I think they explained best. Arg
Speaker 5: thinks that the brave action taken by these workers is
Speaker 5: the most important movement now going on in the US
Speaker 5: about South Africa. The workers are making demands that strike
Speaker 5: at the economic roots of apartheid, rather than bemoaning the
Speaker 5: inhuman conditions that the system inflicts. They are revolutionary black
Speaker 5: workers struggling against imperialist oppression and winning their own liberation.
Speaker 5: It goes on to say Polaroid is an ideal target.
Speaker 5: It is a well known LIB company which disguises its
Speaker 5: support for South Africa in pseudo humanistic rhetoric. It knows
Speaker 5: that a victory against them will hurt not only them,
Speaker 5: but other US and peeriless companies as well. Defeating Polaroid
Speaker 5: provides an important starting point an example for similar struggles
Speaker 5: against other companies. It undermines their mystifying ideology and strikes
Speaker 5: a blow at their economic well being. Polaroid is only
Speaker 5: the beginning, and I wanted to include this because storytelling
Speaker 5: is kind of like a neutral tool. It could be
Speaker 5: used for good, it could be used for evil. So
Speaker 5: in the case of South Africa, Polaroid was using photography
Speaker 5: for evil, like the story that they were telling about
Speaker 5: black South Africans, or that they were a criminal, they
Speaker 5: were second class citizens, if citizens at all, you know,
Speaker 5: that they deserve to be monitored and like really restricting
Speaker 5: their freedom of movement. And then the story that Caroline
Speaker 5: and Ken got from that when they just happened to
Speaker 5: see that picture, which I'm so glad they did imagine
Speaker 5: if they are head were like turn and that the
Speaker 5: other way, like this protest might not even happen or
Speaker 5: might have happened years later, but they saw that and
Speaker 5: like took that information that like Polaroid is like telling
Speaker 5: the story about black people in South Africa that simply
Speaker 5: isn't true.
Speaker 4: And we're going to stand up for.
Speaker 5: Fellow black people around the world, whether we like know
Speaker 5: them personally or not, whether we have familial ties to
Speaker 5: them or not, because this story just isn't true and
Speaker 5: it's such the antithesis of what Frederick Douglass was doing
Speaker 5: with his picture. He was using it to say, like
Speaker 5: this is who black people are, kind of like showing
Speaker 5: our humanity in South Africa was doing the exact opposite,
Speaker 5: like stripping black people's humanity away from them. With these
Speaker 5: pastbook pictures.
Speaker 1: And it's also telling that these pastbook photos were photos
Speaker 1: taken in the midst of like direct action that was
Speaker 1: happening or anything like that, and like movement in the streets.
Speaker 1: They were just photos of people. They were portraits, just
Speaker 1: like the pictures of Frederick Douglass were. So thinking about
Speaker 1: that neutrality, it's like you see a person in a photo,
Speaker 1: but what's the context? What is it a part of
Speaker 1: one thing? See the setting for Frederick Douglas's photos isn't
Speaker 1: an anti slavery newspaper, and then this isn't a pastbook
Speaker 1: that is used to directly harm South Africans, to directly
Speaker 1: commit violence upon black people, and to restrict their movement,
Speaker 1: to disenfranchise them, to do so many of these other
Speaker 1: terrible things to black people on South Africans. So in
Speaker 1: the quote that you just read where it was talking
Speaker 1: about how Polaroid is an ideal target because it's a
Speaker 1: liberal company, also hits really hard to thinking about that
Speaker 1: in terms of this social media age where there are
Speaker 1: so many corporations that have this hashtag to cling onto
Speaker 1: that is like pro black or it's pro LGBTQ, or
Speaker 1: it's body positive you know, there are so many things
Speaker 1: that they can latch onto that look really good in
Speaker 1: their commercials. They have really good marketing tactics about it,
Speaker 1: and they cling on to those things and rightfully so.
Speaker 1: And that quote you just read, they bring that up
Speaker 1: and how they are a great target because of that,
Speaker 1: because they profess to believe in certain things, they profess
Speaker 1: to support certain things.
Speaker 2: But look at.
Speaker 1: This actual legwork that Caroline and Ken have done and
Speaker 1: that people today in movements and protests are doing to
Speaker 1: see what the numbers behind the pseudo actions are, like
Speaker 1: tracing the lines from one thing to the next.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it's also.
Speaker 5: Very perscian, Yeah, because I can imagine like Polaroid during
Speaker 5: that time, it's like seems like very family friendly company,
Speaker 5: like oh you get your pictures in sixty seconds, but
Speaker 5: like their the paper and their archives heads like your
Speaker 5: Polari imprisons black people in just sixty seconds. So, like
Speaker 5: you said, it does depend on the context, but like
Speaker 5: in this context, it really reminded me of was like
Speaker 5: your booking picture or your mugshot.
Speaker 4: You know, look at this criminal.
Speaker 5: We have tabs on you, we have our eyes on you,
Speaker 5: and like Polaroid being sell into that, and let's not
Speaker 5: forget their polaroid experiment because companies will do that too.
Speaker 5: The way they're talking about we're gonna raise wages for
Speaker 5: the black workers in the United States.
Speaker 4: The Oki dog, the fucking Okay dog.
Speaker 5: And I'm glad they did for that because I feel
Speaker 5: like niggas be falling for that, like oh word, we
Speaker 5: get two weeks vacation. So yeah, like really being principled
Speaker 5: and just standing up for black people across the diaspora.
Speaker 5: And it's like talking about palisine, I get kind of frustrated,
Speaker 5: like you know, it's like, definitely boycott these companies. But
Speaker 5: then people are saying, like the people who work there
Speaker 5: can't do anything about it, like they have to have
Speaker 5: a job. I'm like, I truly do not believe that's true.
Speaker 5: Like you can disrupt your company from the inside, and
Speaker 5: like they might fire you like they did Caroline and Can.
Speaker 4: With the quickness, but they can't fire everybody.
Speaker 5: Ain't no company then, So I think there is stuff
Speaker 5: that you can do in the inside and the outside.
Speaker 5: So that's what I mean when I said the blueprint too,
Speaker 5: like get on these companies' asses.
Speaker 1: So yes, let's talk about their appt use of that
Speaker 1: slogan of the Polaroid in sixty seconds because so many
Speaker 1: people would have been familiar with that slogan at the time,
Speaker 1: and so it's something that people were hearing a lot
Speaker 1: who were probably fans of Polaroid or just didn't know
Speaker 1: anything about their political stances or who they were sending
Speaker 1: money to. So for them to add the word in prisons,
Speaker 1: I think it's a very effective way of them using
Speaker 1: rhetoric to have like a really emotional response, because that's
Speaker 1: what slogans do. They do something that becomes an earworm
Speaker 1: for you, something that's going to stay stuck in your head,
Speaker 1: and it's going to evoke an emotional response, so you
Speaker 1: have some sort of weird connection to a corporation. So
Speaker 1: for them to add the word in prisons I think
Speaker 1: was a very effective way for them using Polaroid's own
Speaker 1: terminology against them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and another thing I found in the archive was
Speaker 5: they were encouraging everybody to create leaflets pamphlets about what
Speaker 5: was going on. It wasn't just like, oh, this is
Speaker 5: our thing, y'all, don't say nothing. It was like, anybody
Speaker 5: who knows anything about what Polaroids doing put this out there.
Speaker 5: Spread it wide, and you know we talk often about
Speaker 5: like just creating your own media. It's like they're not
Speaker 5: gonna be talking about this on sixty minutes.
Speaker 4: They just not.
Speaker 5: They might later on once you start the grassroots, but
Speaker 5: the information isn't going to come from the top down.
Speaker 5: And so when you're like on the ground and just
Speaker 5: putting out this information, everybody's like working together using their
Speaker 5: slogans against them.
Speaker 4: It's really effective.
Speaker 5: And as we saw, you know, it took years, but
Speaker 5: it did make a huge change. And that was like,
Speaker 5: as the quote said, Polarid is just the beginning. Our
Speaker 5: Polarid is only the beginning. Like they were coming for
Speaker 5: other companies next too. So shout out to Caroline and
Speaker 5: Ken and the whole group really, because you know, I
Speaker 5: think we like to like shout out the leaders, but
Speaker 5: it takes the whole Polaroid Revolutionary Workers movement to make
Speaker 5: it happen. And now it is time for roll credits
Speaker 5: the segment or we give credit to a person, place,
Speaker 5: or thing that we've encountered during the week eves, Who
Speaker 5: or what would you like to give credit to.
Speaker 1: I would like to give credit to good hosts. I
Speaker 1: really like hosting, but I also really like being a
Speaker 1: guest as well, So it's nice when people are gracious
Speaker 1: enough to like open up their home and have people
Speaker 1: over and provide food and like set up activities for them.
Speaker 2: That's why I want to give credit to.
Speaker 4: Today, Okay, good hosts.
Speaker 5: I would like to give credit to my guardian angels.
Speaker 5: They had their hands on me, and sometimes you've be
Speaker 5: thinking something happens and you're like, oh, that's just a coincidence,
Speaker 5: but you're like, nah, they was looking out.
Speaker 4: So thank you.
Speaker 1: So everyone, we have an announcement about our show.
Speaker 2: Next week.
Speaker 1: We will be coming back with a brand new episode,
Speaker 1: but we will be taking a short break throughout the
Speaker 1: month of May, so you won't get any new episodes
Speaker 1: until June sixth, But you can listen to all of
Speaker 1: our previous episode. Any of them that you haven't heard,
Speaker 1: you can listen to them. If there are any that
Speaker 1: you want to listen to again, you can listen to them,
Speaker 1: and you can keep up with us on social media
Speaker 1: at on Theme Show. You can also go to our
Speaker 1: website on Theme dot Show. But stay subscribed because we
Speaker 1: have so many more cool episodes coming up when we
Speaker 1: come back in June. And what are some of those
Speaker 1: episodes going to be about Katie.
Speaker 5: You'll be hearing from arkivist talking about the hilarious stories
Speaker 5: they found in the archive. We'll hear from a children's
Speaker 5: lit expert about the lessons we pass on to our
Speaker 5: kids through literature.
Speaker 1: You'll also get to learn a little bit about the
Speaker 1: Black Muses who are part of visual arts history. And
Speaker 1: you'll get an episode about Kronk Music and Snap Music.
Speaker 1: So make sure you stay subscribed. See you next week.
Speaker 1: See Ya on Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Fairweather Friends Media. This episode was written by Eves Jeffco
Speaker 1: and Katie Mitchell, was edited and produced by Tari Harrison.
Speaker 2: Follow us on.
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Speaker 1: email at helloat on Theme dot show. Head to on
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