Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. Welcome Today can happen here
Speaker 1: a podcast about fighting your bosses? Uh, this is this
Speaker 1: is your house. Christopher Wong and with me today to
Speaker 1: talk about fighting bosses and bosses doing incredibly illegal stuff,
Speaker 1: bosses doing incredibly shady stuff and why you should fight
Speaker 1: them more is Tori Tamblini, who was a partner organizer
Speaker 1: from Pittsburgh Starbucks Workers United and was fired from Starbucks
Speaker 1: like very illegally, under very sketchy circumstances. Tory, Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Thanks so much. I'm excited to be here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I really really happy to have you here. Um. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I I guess I guess we should start with
Speaker 1: the whole you were denied, you were you were, you
Speaker 1: were denied your leagual of rights and then fired presumably
Speaker 1: for union organizing thing. Yes, absolutely so starting from the beginning,
Speaker 1: and there was like I was so a month ago
Speaker 1: my store manager sat me down, and I like, he
Speaker 1: asked me to come downstairs for a conversation. So I
Speaker 1: brought a witness with me and we went downstairs, and
Speaker 1: I found out that I was being investigated because there
Speaker 1: was one day that I had written down my weekday
Speaker 1: start time instead of my weekend to start time. They
Speaker 1: just recently changed things at my store so that we
Speaker 1: opened at we start opening shifts at five thirty on
Speaker 1: the weekends and five on the weekdays. And this is
Speaker 1: a recent change up. I had been there for three years,
Speaker 1: so I out of habit one day had written five
Speaker 1: in the book instead of five thirty. Um, a couple
Speaker 1: of months later, it seems like everything has blown over.
Speaker 1: They accept of the fact that it was just an
Speaker 1: innocent mistake. I really wasn't trying to steal thirty minutes
Speaker 1: of time, which comes out to like what six dollars
Speaker 1: after that, Like, yeah, I was really desperate for that
Speaker 1: six dollars. So I figured they just they knew it
Speaker 1: was an innocent mistake, and it wasn't going to be
Speaker 1: a further issue until I saw two managers in my store.
Speaker 1: One of them was my store manager, the other one
Speaker 1: was Her name is Brittany. And what Starbucks has done
Speaker 1: recently is that they've created this new position in the company.
Speaker 1: From my understanding, it's called support manager, and they're basically
Speaker 1: like an assistant district manager, and they go around two
Speaker 1: stores where there's any sort of union activity and they
Speaker 1: try to talk about strategies to squash it. So it's like, basically,
Speaker 1: the store manager that did the most harsh union busting
Speaker 1: at their own store gets promoted to this position. So
Speaker 1: in my district, the person's name is Brittany, and I
Speaker 1: saw her in my store, which is always a bad sign.
Speaker 1: And um, at one point they asked me to have
Speaker 1: a seat for a conversation. So I sit down own,
Speaker 1: and well, before I sit down, I say, is this
Speaker 1: a disciplinary conversation? And the manager said the one manager
Speaker 1: said to me, yes, this is solely a disciplinary conversation.
Speaker 1: And I said, I would like to invoke my wine
Speaker 1: button rights. I'm going to go out to the floor
Speaker 1: and bring somebody back as a witness. And they said,
Speaker 1: you can't do that today. And basically what they did
Speaker 1: is they like held up a piece of paper like
Speaker 1: with a wall of text on it, like this far
Speaker 1: from my face, and they're like, it says right here
Speaker 1: that we can't we don't have to do that for you.
Speaker 1: And I was like, that's really illegal and I'm not
Speaker 1: comfortable having this conversation right now at all. And they said, well,
Speaker 1: we're going to hand this to you anyway, and handed
Speaker 1: me a notice of termination. Um. Yeah, So I walked
Speaker 1: out and walked back to the front of house and
Speaker 1: I said a little bit loudly, definitely not like shouting,
Speaker 1: but kind of loudly. I said, I just got fired,
Speaker 1: And is it okay if I swear to quote my friend? Okay? Cool.
Speaker 1: So my best friend Kim was working at the time,
Speaker 1: and she loudly said, right in front of our new
Speaker 1: store manager, what the fuck? And I just kept walking
Speaker 1: because I was so upset and I didn't want the
Speaker 1: managers to see me cry. So I walked to the
Speaker 1: front of house or walk outside, and Kim follows me
Speaker 1: and she was like, we're going to fix this. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go ask relieve early and I'll drive you home
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about this Kim goes back inside, looks
Speaker 1: at my assistant manager and says, I'm a question permission
Speaker 1: to leave early. And the assistant manager literally couldn't even
Speaker 1: look her in the eye and told her Kim go
Speaker 1: have a seat in the back, and they fired Kim
Speaker 1: as well. Jesus. Yeah, yeah, And I think when everything
Speaker 1: about the story I think is worth talking about is
Speaker 1: that like when when it comes to union busting, it
Speaker 1: literally does not matter how good of an employee you are,
Speaker 1: unblessed like you not being there will literally cause everything
Speaker 1: to collapse. But yeah, I don't talk about like you
Speaker 1: were really good at this, and they were still just
Speaker 1: like no, fuck you. Yeah. So I was voted by
Speaker 1: everybody at my store. I was voted Partner of the
Speaker 1: Order in spring of I was also promoted a shift
Speaker 1: supervisor within that same week, and later that year, I
Speaker 1: participated in a Barista competition for my store and I
Speaker 1: won Barista Champion for my store level, and I also
Speaker 1: tied at the district level for Barista Champion for the district.
Speaker 1: So um. And then in addition to that, I had
Speaker 1: dealt with a situation where somebody like leaning against the
Speaker 1: front of my store had overdosed on heroin and I
Speaker 1: gave him an arcam and basically saved the guy's life,
Speaker 1: and then like a month or two later they fired me.
Speaker 1: So yeah, which, like I'm trying to think of if
Speaker 1: like any other way you can possibly go like above
Speaker 1: and beyond what anyone could reasonably require you, that is
Speaker 1: more than I saved a dude's life. It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: like you're welcome, guys. Someone would have died inside your
Speaker 1: store if I wasn't there, but okay, by I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk a little bit about about that,
Speaker 1: specifically in about sort of the conditions at this store,
Speaker 1: because one of the things that seems really clear from
Speaker 1: from listening to you talk about it and from reading
Speaker 1: stuff about it is that it's not just I mean,
Speaker 1: even if you were just like you know, doing kind
Speaker 1: of regular issue service like service workers stuff, this would
Speaker 1: be unaccessable. But it's also like there's there's this way
Speaker 1: in which you and your co workers have sort of
Speaker 1: been turned into social workers and are being sort of
Speaker 1: are being forced to like deal with just all of
Speaker 1: the people who sort of capitalism to say of just
Speaker 1: like spat out. Yeah, and sort of like fill in
Speaker 1: the gaps of just the collapse of American social services.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I wanted, Yeah, I wondered if you could
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the stuff that you've been
Speaker 1: having to do and what that's like. Yeah. Absolutely, So.
Speaker 1: Something I've noticed in the market square is that it
Speaker 1: feels like there were some sort of resources for the
Speaker 1: unhoused community that existed before the pandemic. That's straight up
Speaker 1: just don't exist anymore. So a lot of that that
Speaker 1: work to be done, like falls on the Starbucks employees.
Speaker 1: Most of us are completely unqualified for that, Like I
Speaker 1: have a degree in psychology, but sometimes that's just not
Speaker 1: really enough. Most of us are film students at Point Park,
Speaker 1: so none of us are all equipped to deal with
Speaker 1: any situations where somebody is under the influence of something
Speaker 1: and maybe becoming aggressive, or somebody is having a mental
Speaker 1: health crisis, or there are people that are sleeping in
Speaker 1: the cafe and we're asked to pick them out if
Speaker 1: they're sleeping. But that feels really really bad because there's
Speaker 1: not a ton of other resources, especially during the day.
Speaker 1: I know, the shelters closed, so when it's like winter
Speaker 1: or it's like ninety degrees outside and someone is just
Speaker 1: trying to get like a tiny little bit of sleep,
Speaker 1: it feels really bad to kick them out. Um. So
Speaker 1: we dealt with a lot of situations that we are
Speaker 1: just completely unequipped to handle. And Starbucks was send us
Speaker 1: de escalation training, but most of the de escalation training
Speaker 1: revolved around if a customer isn't happy with their drink
Speaker 1: and they're shouting at you, So it doesn't even begin
Speaker 1: to cover like any of the stuff that we deal
Speaker 1: with at Market Square. We had like we've we've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of customers having mental health crisis in the cafe,
Speaker 1: Like what do you do? Like I don't want to
Speaker 1: call the police. That's definitely not going to help. UM.
Speaker 1: In the situation where I had to narcan somebody, the
Speaker 1: we had called for an ambulance and twenty minutes later
Speaker 1: the ambulance still wasn't there, And they were even managers
Speaker 1: at the surrounding businesses calling and calling and calling trying
Speaker 1: to get an ambulance to Market Square and it ended
Speaker 1: up like being me that had to give them a narcan. Um. Overall,
Speaker 1: like something that we are pushing for with Union, the
Speaker 1: main thing that we were pushing for was better training like,
Speaker 1: we want Narcan to keep in the stores and we
Speaker 1: want all the ships to be trained on how to
Speaker 1: use that, and that doesn't have to be through Starbucks.
Speaker 1: There are I know of a lot of organizations throughout
Speaker 1: Pittsburg that would be happy to train our staff on that. UM,
Speaker 1: we need like better resources. I know at one point
Speaker 1: we were falsely promised a social worker that would sit
Speaker 1: in our cafe for at least one day every two weeks.
Speaker 1: UM never got that. And yeah, I feel like my
Speaker 1: staff just deserves better, community deserves better, and it shouldn't
Speaker 1: be Starbucks's job. But until we have something better, I
Speaker 1: think that we should be a little bit more equipped
Speaker 1: to handle situations that frankly, we do have to deal
Speaker 1: with at some point, just by the nature of our
Speaker 1: work and our location. I also think something really funny
Speaker 1: to mention here is that we got a new store
Speaker 1: manager at the UM. I want to say at the
Speaker 1: beginning or like mid June, we got this new store manager.
Speaker 1: Her name was Sarah, and she has already transferred to
Speaker 1: a different store because she felt so unsafe working up
Speaker 1: Market Square. She got her first Market Square a death
Speaker 1: threat and was like I'm out, So even the store
Speaker 1: manager can't deny that our working positions are bad. So
Speaker 1: the fact that they're still fighting against the union even
Speaker 1: though management is well aware of how terrible our conditions are.
Speaker 1: Just like, yeah, okay, I want to I want to
Speaker 1: take a second and go back to something that you said,
Speaker 1: which is your first market square death threat? How common
Speaker 1: is this? Um? I think I received a total of
Speaker 1: four to five and um. Then I received my very
Speaker 1: last one the day that my store went on strike,
Speaker 1: and I was sitting at the picket line and I
Speaker 1: was like, wow, it's just like the little days before.
Speaker 1: But yeah, market squares a lotless land. Yeah, And I like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like I feel like this is like
Speaker 1: every time I do this is like a recurring thing.
Speaker 1: Every time I do a labor story, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a labor story. Was like, no, But it's
Speaker 1: also the story of a bunch of like a bunch
Speaker 1: of people whose job this like isn't who just wind
Speaker 1: up having to deal with all of the ship that
Speaker 1: the state doesn't want to do, that corporations don't want
Speaker 1: to do. And it's like the the fact that Starbucks
Speaker 1: employees have to be the like the Starbucks union has
Speaker 1: to be the group in like in this place that
Speaker 1: is trying to get people to get in dark hand
Speaker 1: training is nuts, like just just like just any like
Speaker 1: sort of just macro taking a step back level, Like
Speaker 1: what on earth is going on in the society we
Speaker 1: could have been thinking a lot about lately. Like I
Speaker 1: think a lot of journalists and reporters have asked me,
Speaker 1: like why do you think that the younger generation is
Speaker 1: the one like leading this? Like why are unions making
Speaker 1: a come back now? And why is this younger generations
Speaker 1: like so ready to lead this. I think it's because
Speaker 1: we've spent our entire lives watching politicians on TV like
Speaker 1: all these promises and continuing to do absolutely nothing, and
Speaker 1: we're all sick and tired of it. We are all
Speaker 1: ready to take it into our own hands and fix
Speaker 1: it in any way that we see that we can. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes a lot of sense. I mean, like I
Speaker 1: my you know, my my first ball o case, my
Speaker 1: first political member was the Rock War. But like I
Speaker 1: was like a little baby child, but like like you know,
Speaker 1: like I remember, like the thing I grew up on
Speaker 1: was like yeah I was Obama, it was it was hope,
Speaker 1: it was changed and then it was like you look
Speaker 1: at the world now and it's like it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's it's even bleaker that it was in two eight,
Speaker 1: which is like, yeah, absolutely crazy. Yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense. And I think also just
Speaker 1: like like the last two years have been so brutal. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I was wondering, Yeah, I wondering, did you can
Speaker 1: talk about like what affects the UM, what effect the
Speaker 1: pandemic had on Yellows workers, and what effect that had
Speaker 1: on union organizing. Yeah, absolutely so. Um. I think that
Speaker 1: it really pulled the mask off the company, which ironically,
Speaker 1: well everyone is putting the mask on coming out Starbucks
Speaker 1: because they always really pretended to be this really awesome
Speaker 1: progressive company, and it really revealed how performative the company
Speaker 1: is because they gave us all these COVID benefits for
Speaker 1: like two three months and then took them right away
Speaker 1: from us, like before, obviously the pandemic isn't even over now,
Speaker 1: definitely wasn't over back in I think it was October
Speaker 1: they took away like ours exactly, and right around that time,
Speaker 1: we were also watching our CEO are now former CEO
Speaker 1: Kevin Johnson get like a forty million dollar raised while
Speaker 1: they had just taken away our hazard pay and there
Speaker 1: are free food benefits even though we were all still struggling.
Speaker 1: So then I think that us seeing those benefits being
Speaker 1: taken away and realizing that the company doesn't care about
Speaker 1: us in that sense made us start looking harder at everything,
Speaker 1: Like the company doesn't want to increase our pay, they
Speaker 1: don't want to give us credit card tipping, they don't
Speaker 1: want to make our stores safer, um and every other
Speaker 1: reason that any store could see to unionize. Like it
Speaker 1: really highlighted all of those reasons and all the ways
Speaker 1: the company doesn't care about us as much as they should,
Speaker 1: and how they really do just see us as a number.
Speaker 1: So I think that's what really really pushed us all
Speaker 1: towards unionizing. It's like, if the company doesn't care about
Speaker 1: us and the people in our stores, then we're going
Speaker 1: to rely on each other to care about us, and
Speaker 1: UM push reunions so that we can take matters into
Speaker 1: urrow and hands. Yea and yeah, And I think there's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of the stuff that you've been talking
Speaker 1: about that highlights how important that is, which is that
Speaker 1: like you know, you have this combination of management, either
Speaker 1: like do the management immediately above you understanding what's happening
Speaker 1: and being like we'll just throw you guys at it
Speaker 1: will just literally bail and run away from how bad
Speaker 1: it is. And then you have the layer management like
Speaker 1: above you, which is it's a bunch of bureaucrats who
Speaker 1: like couldn't find their ask if you drew the map
Speaker 1: and you know, or like oh hey, here here's your
Speaker 1: d escalation training. It's about person mad about drink and
Speaker 1: it's like I am getting multiple death threats. It's like
Speaker 1: it's I don't know. We literally had a like someone
Speaker 1: from I think you're either regional management or maybe a
Speaker 1: level higher than that, like area management. Humandour store the
Speaker 1: other day, like as a customer and there was something
Speaker 1: going on. I'm not sure if it was like somebody
Speaker 1: shouting in the cafe or like two customers were fighting,
Speaker 1: but this like upper level manager who should know about
Speaker 1: our store said one of my briefs, does um so
Speaker 1: is this like a high incident store? And we were like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, isn't it your job? Like really like wow, yikes, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's something that like you know, it's not like I learned,
Speaker 1: Like it's something like you learned intellectually and then you
Speaker 1: just see like and then yeah, so it's only you
Speaker 1: learned intellectually, and then you just sort of viscerally begin
Speaker 1: to understand. When you know you're doing work and you're
Speaker 1: watching what your managers do, it is it's that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like the people who actually knows how the production process
Speaker 1: works and how the stuff actually goes and what's happening
Speaker 1: on the shop floor, like are the people are the
Speaker 1: workers there? And it's like everyone above them is just
Speaker 1: doing some other ship. They're just making everyone's lives worse,
Speaker 1: and it's just literally curating. It starts that nobody the
Speaker 1: reason we need a union. And I tell people this
Speaker 1: all the time whenever I'm going into new stores, nobody
Speaker 1: knows your store better than youbody knows, like the inner
Speaker 1: workings of it, how busy you are with the needs
Speaker 1: of the store, are better than the people that are
Speaker 1: there forty hours a week. And so another thing we
Speaker 1: talked about a lot in like our our citywide meetings
Speaker 1: is like what do the managers even do on it?
Speaker 1: Like what is their job? What are they working on?
Speaker 1: Like what manager do all day in her bushy little
Speaker 1: corporate off I guess you're just union busting now, even
Speaker 1: that they're delicating another manager below them, So yeah, apparently. Yeah,
Speaker 1: did you ever see the fake tweets, the fake Workers
Speaker 1: United tweets that Starbucks published? No ill to email you
Speaker 1: a copy of them, but they literally made this hand
Speaker 1: out with a list of fake tweets from Workers United
Speaker 1: and like the company's responses to them. But if you
Speaker 1: look up the company's Twitter account, um, it just doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: And the tweets from Workers United that they printed out
Speaker 1: all these hand outs also don't exist. And I think
Speaker 1: maybe three copies of that got handed out to my
Speaker 1: store where we all made so much fun of my boss,
Speaker 1: Like so, um, I guess that's my boss's job. I
Speaker 1: will I can show these towdeos. I keep them on hand.
Speaker 1: But this is this is like it's the biggest energy
Speaker 1: of like, oh, I thought of the perfect arguments seven
Speaker 1: hours later, so they didn't even the argument isn't even real,
Speaker 1: like they're they're just making up a guy to argue with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he didn't even try that hard because these were
Speaker 1: handed to me back in April. It says that these
Speaker 1: all of these tweets were posted on June one, so
Speaker 1: the day that they claimed that this was tweeted hadn't
Speaker 1: even happen. Whenever I received their rand out, I mean, hey,
Speaker 1: if you if y'all have access to a time machine,
Speaker 1: I I have some work I need to do. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they say things like, in collective bargaining, you start with
Speaker 1: everything you have and negotiate for more from there from
Speaker 1: Starbucks workers united right there, and then the company's responsive
Speaker 1: I know literally as um and then though we are
Speaker 1: one Starbucks account said in collective bargaining, everything is up
Speaker 1: for negotiations if you have more, the same, or less.
Speaker 1: And once you negotiate a contract, you locked in, which
Speaker 1: which is also funny because it's like like, okay, you
Speaker 1: are looking at that like you think that that is
Speaker 1: actually like a thing that makes you look good and
Speaker 1: not like a super villain. It's like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: if you try to negotiate with us, we will make
Speaker 1: everything worse for you. It's like really because it makes
Speaker 1: it looks good. You know, they try so hard union
Speaker 1: busts and they just kind of stuck at it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been it's been comical to watch. It's very funny.
Speaker 1: Which is really funny because like I remember, like I
Speaker 1: didn't know the super well, but like I remember I
Speaker 1: knew some people who were doing starbic union organizing like
Speaker 1: way about like like two thousand, like six or something,
Speaker 1: and they were like, you know, and it was like
Speaker 1: they were kind of better at it, like they were
Speaker 1: willing to just like throw resources at it in a
Speaker 1: way that like they don't seem to be able to know.
Speaker 1: I think maybe just because like there there's so many organizations,
Speaker 1: so many organizing efforts happen happening at once, that it's
Speaker 1: harder to sort of just like throw all of their
Speaker 1: stuff at one store. But yeah, it's just it's like
Speaker 1: incredibly funny watching them just sort of like flail and
Speaker 1: like you know what I mean. I guess like like
Speaker 1: all all corporations that you need bust eventually resort to
Speaker 1: break the law because you know the law, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's designs for rich people. My district manager um came
Speaker 1: into my store screwdriver in hand to personally make repairs
Speaker 1: at my store. It would the funniest thing I have
Speaker 1: ever seen. It's probably my favorite union busting story. But
Speaker 1: she was like, yeah, I'm here to cover up the
Speaker 1: electrical outlets in your bathroom and we're like cool, why
Speaker 1: and she was like, so that the homeless people can't
Speaker 1: like plug in their electric shavers and shaven there. We
Speaker 1: were like, wow, we've seen we've seen people do a
Speaker 1: lot of weird things in the bathroom, and that's like
Speaker 1: not even one of them. You are so out of touch.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, it's been hilarious to watch, Like, wow,
Speaker 1: that was really some efforts, but really, you know, absolutely
Speaker 1: not immediately now, there's nothing I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: that Starbucks is you talked a bit about earlier about
Speaker 1: Starbucks sort of like having this image as like like
Speaker 1: progressive organization and okay, like one of the things they've
Speaker 1: been big on sort of recently is like portraying themselves
Speaker 1: as just like pro l G, B t q I,
Speaker 1: A plus like thing. And I think, like, okay, so
Speaker 1: there's something that like traditional media has finally discovered because
Speaker 1: they haven't covered labor organizing in forty years and they
Speaker 1: suddenly started doing it again, and they were like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, all of the union organizers are queer. And
Speaker 1: it was like anyone who's ever organized a union or
Speaker 1: anyone who knows anyone who's ever been in the Union
Speaker 1: could have told you this like thirty years incredible stuff
Speaker 1: is like, wow, congratulations you've discovered this. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask about of I don't know that this
Speaker 1: kind of bind that like I feel like we're people
Speaker 1: doing organizing are in right now, which is that Like Okay,
Speaker 1: so on the one hand, you have like in you know,
Speaker 1: in the last sort of year or so, this like
Speaker 1: incredible increase in rampant homophobia, but then simultaneously, like so
Speaker 1: you know, you have to fight that fight, and then
Speaker 1: simultaneously you have these corporations who are trying to you know,
Speaker 1: like yeah, they're like nominally on our side, and that
Speaker 1: they're not well I mean they are, they are, they
Speaker 1: are funding the rampant homophobus, but like publicly they don't
Speaker 1: you know publicly their supportive, but also you know that
Speaker 1: like their supporter because they're trying to sell our identity
Speaker 1: as a brand. And then you know when queer people
Speaker 1: are like, hey, can we like have stuff that lets
Speaker 1: us live there? Like no, And I was wondering how
Speaker 1: you've been sort of navigating that. Yeah, so that's been
Speaker 1: really tough because um, a lot of our queer partners
Speaker 1: in Pittsburgh get get their health insurance through Starbucks, get
Speaker 1: care through Starbucks. And the biggest union busting tactics is
Speaker 1: our cuts. And if you cut someone's hours, then they're
Speaker 1: not eligible for healthcare. So they're really just like dangling
Speaker 1: the carrot on the stick in front of our faces, like, oh,
Speaker 1: if you unionize, then we're going to cut your hours
Speaker 1: and then you can't get your gender affirming health care.
Speaker 1: So that's like, that's really really sucked. Um. In addition
Speaker 1: to that, UM, there have been now four people about
Speaker 1: to be five. Um, we think one of one person
Speaker 1: is going to be fired one of these back from vacations.
Speaker 1: But out of all of us that are fired or
Speaker 1: about to be fired, we are all queer people. So UM,
Speaker 1: I think that really shows how much store books your partners.
Speaker 1: And since I've started organizing, in addition to like homophobia
Speaker 1: and like discrimination against the rare community, I've also heard
Speaker 1: just rampant stories about microaggressions and racism. UM. I've actually
Speaker 1: met a UM a partner that was fired from a
Speaker 1: store in Virginia. I want to say she was I believe,
Speaker 1: for my understanding, she was the only black woman that
Speaker 1: worked at her store and she was fired for aggressive behavior.
Speaker 1: And when I heard that, I was like bidding me.
Speaker 1: So just like and also that support manager that I
Speaker 1: was talking about, I've heard rumors that like she was
Speaker 1: transferred from one store to another because she was like
Speaker 1: caught being racist at the first store. She instead of
Speaker 1: being fired, she was transferred and now she got she
Speaker 1: was promoted to store manager. And then she fired a
Speaker 1: trans partner at her store and now she's our support
Speaker 1: manager and fired me. So just like it's homophobia. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's it's the Catholic church for racist homophobes.
Speaker 1: Well okay, the Catholic Church for racist homophobes, but corporate
Speaker 1: and well okay, I I I am not going to
Speaker 1: make a claim on the air that they're not also
Speaker 1: doing this with sexual assault, because I they had like
Speaker 1: there's no way that they're not. But yeah, that is
Speaker 1: that that that's incredibly bleak. And I would go back
Speaker 1: a second to sort of the gender affirm and care
Speaker 1: stuff because like, yeah, that stuff, it's like, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: the thing that they are doing is just like we
Speaker 1: we are holding the genocide button over you. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if if you if you don't comply with us, and
Speaker 1: you don't like accept the like absolute ship and scraps
Speaker 1: that we give you, we are going to try to
Speaker 1: kill you. And that is just indescribably horrific. Absolutely. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: I know it's something that partners up. There's at least
Speaker 1: one partner at my store that's dealing with that right now.
Speaker 1: She's twenty five about and she is trans and I
Speaker 1: know that she's on her parents insurance at the moment,
Speaker 1: but in less than a year she'll have the insurance elsewhere,
Speaker 1: most likely through Starbucks. And it's something that really got
Speaker 1: her into organizing. I know that for sure. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's been a really scary moment for her, Definitely
Speaker 1: something she's worried about. Yeah. Yeah, just the risk of
Speaker 1: being fired, the risk of having your hours cut and
Speaker 1: stop being eligible for benefits. It's awful, and like she
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like she can get a job like anywhere
Speaker 1: else just because Starbucks is one of the like Starbucks
Speaker 1: offers like decent health insurance. So it's like I'm kind
Speaker 1: of trapped here until I can get out, until I
Speaker 1: can get another job with insurance benefits. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: know that's incredibly it's incredibly hard, especially right now. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's I mean, it's not really surprising
Speaker 1: that they're doing this, but it's yeah, it's it's really
Speaker 1: depressing and it sucks. And the fact that they're you know,
Speaker 1: like sending sending racist to do homophobias like hm, it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like dystopian like this happened, and been like is
Speaker 1: this real life? Like this is crazy? And um, they
Speaker 1: just fired another black clear organizer infits were just yesterday
Speaker 1: and trying to make it look like he resigned, um,
Speaker 1: but really they gave him like a couple like options
Speaker 1: like you need to have at least one weekend day available,
Speaker 1: or you need to demote yourself, or you need to
Speaker 1: transfer to a different store. And they were like, I
Speaker 1: can't really do any of those options, like none of
Speaker 1: those work for me. And then the company said like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: Jimmy resigned, Like we totally didn't fire them, but they
Speaker 1: just resigned and sorry, you get to peel it because
Speaker 1: you resigned by yeah, it's a real we didn't fire you.
Speaker 1: We simply forced you out by making utterly impossible demands. Yep.
Speaker 1: It's like it really reminds me of like it's the
Speaker 1: kind of stuff a country does when they want to
Speaker 1: go to war, where it's like, yeah, we're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna give you a bunch of demands that it is
Speaker 1: literally physically impossible for you to comply with, and that
Speaker 1: because you don't comply with him, we're getting invade. M hmm, yeah, exactly, exactly,
Speaker 1: Like oh um, although I did find out some good
Speaker 1: news today. So there's this one bar where most of
Speaker 1: the union organizers hang out all the time, and they
Speaker 1: message just on Twitter today and they want to throw
Speaker 1: a queer dance party and fundraiser for like our solid
Speaker 1: strike fund. It was like literally the most us thing
Speaker 1: I can mostly think of, like a queer dance party
Speaker 1: fundraiser at our favorite bar. Like the bathroom attendant from
Speaker 1: the bar like showed up to our strike at my
Speaker 1: store and friends of the bartender there. It was like
Speaker 1: the best Twitter DM ever. It was like, that's so funny.
Speaker 1: I'm literally going there with the other person that got
Speaker 1: fired from my store like tonight. So we're very excited
Speaker 1: for that. Yeah, And I guess that means that something
Speaker 1: else I wanted to talk about, which is um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you want to talk a little bit about like
Speaker 1: what happened after you got fired and the support you've
Speaker 1: been getting in the like the backing from other unions
Speaker 1: that you've been getting. Totally. Yeah. So my store is
Speaker 1: actually just like a block away from the United steel
Speaker 1: Workers head twitters, which is incredible because anytime we have
Speaker 1: any sort of direct action, we get like forty steel
Speaker 1: workers store. Yeah. The day after I was fired, I
Speaker 1: I have this very funny picture that's on my Twitter
Speaker 1: um of me just standing like with like forty steel
Speaker 1: workers sitting behind me and the found like the two
Speaker 1: biggest dudes like setting on each side of me where
Speaker 1: I started a safer and in the protest. This is
Speaker 1: my new favorite picture of myself. So that was day one.
Speaker 1: We had a rally. We had really good turn out
Speaker 1: with all the steel workers and a bunch of other
Speaker 1: community allies are Symphony UM. Symphony musicians have a have
Speaker 1: a labor union to to the library workers UM. They
Speaker 1: all came out for the first day of the rally
Speaker 1: at Market Square and my city wide organizing committee was
Speaker 1: actually able to pull together a total of four strikes.
Speaker 1: What happened within the course of two days. The planning
Speaker 1: happened in like basically under twenty four hours. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I got fired. Wednesday. Thursday was the rally at my
Speaker 1: store with all the steel workers. Friday, the East Carson
Speaker 1: Store in the South Side of Pittsburgh went on strike.
Speaker 1: The East Side store in the Bloomfield store all went
Speaker 1: on strike for the full day. Um. The south Side
Speaker 1: store continued the strike into Saturday, and then um, Sunday,
Speaker 1: my store went on strike finally. So um it was incredible.
Speaker 1: We had We have a labor choir in Pittsburgh which
Speaker 1: is in trouble. It's just like a dude with a guitar.
Speaker 1: He's my favorite person ever. Um. So we had the
Speaker 1: labor choir out at all of our events. And um
Speaker 1: we had, like I said, the library workers, the steel workers,
Speaker 1: the Symphony Union. Um, we have UE. We have d
Speaker 1: s A, which is Democratic Socialists of America. We have
Speaker 1: the part you for Socialism and Liberation or really strong
Speaker 1: allies to us. And we had like a lot of
Speaker 1: the regular my my favorite customers showed up at my
Speaker 1: store of course, which made try. One of my customers,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite customers who comes in multiple times
Speaker 1: a day, said you shouldn't be standing out here on
Speaker 1: the on the sidewalk, you should be back there behind
Speaker 1: the counter making coffee. And I was like, I know,
Speaker 1: thank you. Um. We had a couple of our regulars
Speaker 1: changed their mobile order name to Tori and Kim, so
Speaker 1: that every time he orders a drink to my store,
Speaker 1: they have to call out the name Tory and Kim.
Speaker 1: That's great, And we set up a go fund me
Speaker 1: and we received way more donations than we thought that
Speaker 1: we would get. So um for all the workers at
Speaker 1: my store that went on strike, in addition to the
Speaker 1: seventy pay that we received from the union for the day, UM,
Speaker 1: we were able to pledge twenty dollars to each of
Speaker 1: them to try to make their paychecks pole and cover
Speaker 1: some of their last tips. That was incredible and really
Speaker 1: just a demonstration of how much support we have in
Speaker 1: our area. You know, they say Pittsburgh as a union town. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really is. It turns out, yeah, and it's really
Speaker 1: cool to see. I don't know, I like one of
Speaker 1: one of the things that I keep seeing is this
Speaker 1: sort of like like one of one of the sort
Speaker 1: of right wing tactics that have been like just inundated
Speaker 1: within the last like a couple of years has been
Speaker 1: like trying to separate out like oh, here are these
Speaker 1: people who are workers, but like, oh, they're not workers
Speaker 1: because they're like oh, they're like doing cultural stuff for
Speaker 1: They're like oh, they just like serve drinks and like
Speaker 1: you know, you look at actual labor. It's like that's no,
Speaker 1: like none of this, none of this, none of these
Speaker 1: divisions things are real, like people showing from each other.
Speaker 1: It's always get worried that people will be like judgmental
Speaker 1: about that. Like I'm always kind of like surprised when
Speaker 1: the steel workers show up. I'm like, I know, I'm
Speaker 1: not the steel worker. I don't make steel, I don't
Speaker 1: work at a factory or anything. Just make coffee. But um,
Speaker 1: everyone is so supportive and they are always so willing
Speaker 1: to stand in solidarity, which is really cool. But it's
Speaker 1: something I'm always like worried about, Like I know it
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like I'm a real worker, but like union,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm in a podcast union, so like talking
Speaker 1: about yeah, I I have I have like arguably like
Speaker 1: if if if if if you're going to use the
Speaker 1: really silly like like I don't know, sort of like
Speaker 1: cultural analysis of what a worker is like a podcast.
Speaker 1: Union is like the silliest union every and it's great. No,
Speaker 1: it rules. It turns out where workers we go fight
Speaker 1: for other people to other people fight for like the
Speaker 1: the when when when we when we were trying to
Speaker 1: get union recognition, like the NFL Players Association was like, hey,
Speaker 1: you guys need to recognize this if we were like yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just um, we've been going to a lot of rallies
Speaker 1: for the Planned Parenthood union and yeah, which I didn't
Speaker 1: I didn't actually know that they existed that Yeah, I actually,
Speaker 1: well it wasn't Pittsburgh, but I I was just talking
Speaker 1: actually probably well I don't know what or these are
Speaker 1: gonna err in, but like yeah that I just talked
Speaker 1: to people from Oh my gosh. Yeah they were cool.
Speaker 1: I got to the labor choir there again. I was Yeah,
Speaker 1: solidarity all around. I love to see it. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's really cool. M hmm. Yeah, lots of unions
Speaker 1: in Pittsburgh A good time. I met a lot of
Speaker 1: really cool people. I feel like all the people I've
Speaker 1: met since I've been involved with union stuff have been
Speaker 1: like really cool. For the first time I talked anywhere,
Speaker 1: it was at the Pennsylvania a f l C i
Speaker 1: OH convention and um whatever. I was told that when
Speaker 1: of our I talk, my speech was supposed to end
Speaker 1: with brothers and sisters, can I count on your support?
Speaker 1: Because they were passing a resolution for us. But one
Speaker 1: of my briefstas told me it would be funnier if
Speaker 1: I said, can I get a hell yeah? So I
Speaker 1: said some very serious words to this room full of
Speaker 1: serious look at people, and then I said, on behalf
Speaker 1: of all of our partners at the Market Square Starbucks,
Speaker 1: can I get a hell yeah? And they all were
Speaker 1: so happy, and I was like, cool, I found my people.
Speaker 1: That was like the first time I talked anywhere. That
Speaker 1: was funny. That's awesome. Yeah, this is and and and
Speaker 1: another reason to unionize. You get to beat a bunch
Speaker 1: of really cool people and then they show up for
Speaker 1: you and it's just incredible experience. Yeah. On my last
Speaker 1: kid vissing trip, we went out in Games of two
Speaker 1: when when when we reconvened at the end of the
Speaker 1: night for dinner and we were like, oh, we should
Speaker 1: stop at our one store that we visited again, like
Speaker 1: all four of us, and I was like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: should like go in and be like, look, guys, I
Speaker 1: joined the union and I made three whole friends. Yeah. Also,
Speaker 1: just talking at the UM, I was on a panel
Speaker 1: at Women's Labor School, which was really awesome. It was
Speaker 1: at Penn State University, and that was a really really
Speaker 1: cool experience. I met all the all the female union
Speaker 1: leaders are really great. Then overall, it's really cool people
Speaker 1: involved here. Hell yeah, I love unions, good stuff. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: They got a cool pin that says labor women get
Speaker 1: in good trouble and I was like, yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: I'm doing. Yeah, absolutely, hell yeah. Yeah. So these days
Speaker 1: I'm just working with UM some other stores in the
Speaker 1: Greater Pittsburgh area helping get them filed. I won't be
Speaker 1: too specific about this, but we are going to see
Speaker 1: some stores picking up in DC, which is really really exciting.
Speaker 1: We've been doing some canvassing trips out there well. At
Speaker 1: Starbucks Workers United, we call it a clean play because
Speaker 1: in Starbucks, what a clean play is is that one
Speaker 1: day a week, UM, all the closing crew is scheduled
Speaker 1: for an extra two hours at the end of their
Speaker 1: shift deep clean the store. And they call that a
Speaker 1: clean play. So we like to take Starbucks playing. So
Speaker 1: we feel like our little canvassing blitzes clean plays. So
Speaker 1: for the DC Clean Play, we've been I've been out
Speaker 1: there twice. Um, we visited a ton of stores. Definitely
Speaker 1: some interests there. Seems like the union bust has been
Speaker 1: really tough, but we have we have one store that's
Speaker 1: and you'll see it in the news soon. Hell yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm very proud. It was like one of that was
Speaker 1: one of my DC leads. Um, they've reached out to
Speaker 1: us on our website for an organizing request and um,
Speaker 1: they've just been like super strong leaders and they've been
Speaker 1: incredible and union investing really hasn't faced them at all
Speaker 1: and they're going to be there. I'm very proud of them.
Speaker 1: A little bit proud of myself, but they they can
Speaker 1: have all the credit for that. They they really like
Speaker 1: stay strong for the union busting. Do have good stuff.
Speaker 1: It's scary to be the first store in your area too,
Speaker 1: to actually make moves. Like my friend Jake Welsh, he
Speaker 1: was the first store in Pittsburgh. His store was the
Speaker 1: first in Pittsburgh. And I know that's like really scary,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad that it's happening because it feels like
Speaker 1: once the one store goes, then the dominoes starting to fall.
Speaker 1: So once we see that one store in DC file
Speaker 1: for the union election, we're going to see a lot
Speaker 1: more go down there. Um, are you able to talk
Speaker 1: at all about what the search of organizing process has
Speaker 1: been like? And you know, if you can't talk about
Speaker 1: like what it's been like as an organizer, just like
Speaker 1: what it was like at your store and what it's
Speaker 1: been like going to other stores, totally. So at my store,
Speaker 1: we started we had heard a little bit about what
Speaker 1: Buffalo was doing, and we started very casually talking about
Speaker 1: it at my store, like, yeah, if any store needs
Speaker 1: the union, it is the store. Like we are an
Speaker 1: absolute shit show here, so we could definitely usunize. That
Speaker 1: would be awesome. UM. Really had no idea how to
Speaker 1: get started though, until a couple of weeks later. I
Speaker 1: get a panicked phone call from one of my baristas
Speaker 1: and she was like, Tori, this weird guy came into
Speaker 1: the store when I was on a register today and
Speaker 1: he started asking me questions about unions, and I know
Speaker 1: he wasn't a barista, and I think he was a
Speaker 1: corporate spy. And we were like, oh okay, so we googled,
Speaker 1: the guy started to like like get some information. We
Speaker 1: found like his LinkedIn or his coworkers LinkedIn account, and
Speaker 1: we were like, okay, they seemed trustworthy, We're still not sure,
Speaker 1: so we emailed the guy from a Burner email account
Speaker 1: the fake name. I think the fake name was like
Speaker 1: Darren or something. You know, though, like our names are
Speaker 1: like Tor and Kelly and Kayla. So we emailed them
Speaker 1: from a fake name and a Burner account and eventually
Speaker 1: got in contact with Daisy Pickens, who is now our
Speaker 1: national campaign director, but at the time she was working
Speaker 1: mainly in Pittsburgh and from there she she taught us
Speaker 1: everything we know about organizing. We built an organizing committee
Speaker 1: consisting of me, Kelly, and Kayla because like the three
Speaker 1: of us were pretty good friends, and we got cards signed.
Speaker 1: We were able to get one of people want my
Speaker 1: store to sign a card, and we filed unanimously. Yeah. So, um.
Speaker 1: Something that stores do right before they file is they
Speaker 1: write a dear Howard letter. And you might have seen
Speaker 1: these on Twitter. If you haven't, you didn't find them
Speaker 1: on the Starbucks Workers United like national official Twitter. They
Speaker 1: always post those there. So we wrote our dear Howard
Speaker 1: we turned in our cards to the n l RV office,
Speaker 1: and right after I finished turning in the cards to
Speaker 1: then l RB, I walked right back to my store
Speaker 1: and I had printed out a physical copy of our
Speaker 1: Dear Howard, and I handed it to my store manager, Joe.
Speaker 1: I wanted you to hear it from me, and he
Speaker 1: was like okay. UM. From there, the union busting started.
Speaker 1: We had captive audience meetings, which I believe, to my understanding,
Speaker 1: the company has stopped doing because they were kind of
Speaker 1: declared illegal. Or maybe it was just that the information
Speaker 1: they were sharing was so misleading, but it was declared illegal.
Speaker 1: But they handed us like a bunch of really really
Speaker 1: misleading handouts saying things like withdrawn petitions. If Workers United
Speaker 1: thinks that you're going to lose lose your union election,
Speaker 1: they will withdraw your petition and abandon you, which is crazy.
Speaker 1: Another thing was that like if if the union thinks
Speaker 1: that you're going to vote no, they're going to try
Speaker 1: to talk you out of voting. But Starbucks is the
Speaker 1: one that we really cares about your voice, and we
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure everyone has a voice. We're like, literally,
Speaker 1: you can look objectively at this, you can see what
Speaker 1: Starbucks has done to try to prevent you from voting,
Speaker 1: like they were pushing for in person stores or in
Speaker 1: person elections in stores where most of the partners don't
Speaker 1: have cars, are um busy with other things, have second jobs,
Speaker 1: and just couldn't feasibly vote in person. UM. They challenge
Speaker 1: ballots left and right, they think. I think they challenged
Speaker 1: a little of nine ballots at my store, including Kelly's ballot,
Speaker 1: even though Kelly was literally like working at the time
Speaker 1: of our ballot count She was literally behind the counter
Speaker 1: and like you can see her like in the zoom
Speaker 1: call when people as she came out to watch the
Speaker 1: ballot counts on her break, they tried to challenge her ballot,
Speaker 1: claiming that she didn't work there. So there's just like
Speaker 1: hard evidence that the company is the one that doesn't
Speaker 1: want people to vote. So we got through the union busting.
Speaker 1: It was it was tough, it was an uphill battle,
Speaker 1: and eventually we won our election eight to one on May.
Speaker 1: So after that, I became an intern with Workers United
Speaker 1: UM for the Summer Solidarity internship program, and that's when
Speaker 1: I started really getting into helping other stores file. So
Speaker 1: there was one out in out in the Pittsburgh suburbs,
Speaker 1: like the Greater Pittsburgh area. Peters Township was the first store,
Speaker 1: like my first really solid lead that I ever took on. UM,
Speaker 1: they filed, I helped them write their Dear Howard letter.
Speaker 1: We were interviewed by the Washington Post. Super cool. So
Speaker 1: they have their ballot count on August eighteen. Very excited
Speaker 1: for them. I have my stores in DC that I'm
Speaker 1: working with, and a lot of other stores throughout Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: and UM going on a lot of Queen Play trips,
Speaker 1: whether it's a big one to Washington, d C. Or
Speaker 1: smaller local one. But we'll go out in teams of two,
Speaker 1: visit as many stores as we can possibly get to
Speaker 1: in one day, and we wear our Star Wars Workers
Speaker 1: United shirts, so immediately people know why we're there. Basically,
Speaker 1: just go up as if we're going to order a
Speaker 1: drink and be like, hey, so we heard about what
Speaker 1: we're doing in downtown Pittsburgh. We're like the stores in
Speaker 1: Buffalo that unionized you, so like, what do you guys
Speaker 1: think of that? And typically our approach is to find
Speaker 1: the gayest looking person. Yeah, we gotta trying to find
Speaker 1: like the young like maybe like twentysomething person with like
Speaker 1: dyet hair and a septom piercing. It's always the septom piercings.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you. They're always the leader, the ring
Speaker 1: leaders at their store. I don't know why, but it's
Speaker 1: been funny. So yeah, try to find the gayest person
Speaker 1: and be like, hey, so what do you think about unions?
Speaker 1: And that's how we brought a new store. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we've been pretty successful with it. A lot of people
Speaker 1: either don't know what a union is or they really
Speaker 1: like their boss, and that seems to be the company's
Speaker 1: best union tactic union busting tactic because by having good bosses,
Speaker 1: because we always say that sometimes the best organizer is
Speaker 1: the boss. So sometimes the stores where they're like, we
Speaker 1: love our boss, our boss takes such a good care
Speaker 1: of us, I'm like, darn it. Um, Like good for
Speaker 1: you guys, but you should unize anyway. Yeah. I would
Speaker 1: also yeah, like like I would say, it's like I
Speaker 1: really liked my boss and I am also still on
Speaker 1: the union because yeah, trying to explain to them too.
Speaker 1: Sometimes those stores where they say that they're hard to
Speaker 1: talk into it, but I always tell them what happened
Speaker 1: at my store, and what happens that we had the
Speaker 1: same store manager for I believe like five years. He
Speaker 1: was great, We loved him, he was cool, and when
Speaker 1: we unionized, it wasn't about him. It was about the
Speaker 1: working conditions at our store and that upper management had
Speaker 1: been giving us false promises, and the things that needed
Speaker 1: to be changed at our store were kind of out
Speaker 1: of my store manager's hands, like that was like above
Speaker 1: his vagode, so he couldn't do much about it. And
Speaker 1: we made it clear, like Joe, it's not about you.
Speaker 1: You're great, we love you. Um gotta do it, do
Speaker 1: you though, Sorry, buddy. Um. Then we got even though
Speaker 1: we loved Joe, we got a new store manager in
Speaker 1: mid June, and she was a little bit less awesome.
Speaker 1: And you know, you never know when things that your
Speaker 1: store can change. And even if you love the store
Speaker 1: manager you have now, they could They could leave tomorrow.
Speaker 1: So you gotta like, the only thing that's guaranteed, your
Speaker 1: store manager isn't guaranteed to be at your store forever.
Speaker 1: What is guaranteed is a contract, and that's something that's
Speaker 1: really important. Sometimes it's hard to get people to see
Speaker 1: the long term of it though, UM, otherwise we're normally
Speaker 1: pretty successful. UM. We uh typically try to get phone
Speaker 1: numbers at every store, reach out to them within the
Speaker 1: next two days, and then we'll hold like an intake meeting.
Speaker 1: So whenever we have an intake meeting, we tell them
Speaker 1: make a spreadsheet of every partner at your store, what
Speaker 1: shift they work, what their job is like if they're
Speaker 1: strip supervisor or barista, and assign one person on your
Speaker 1: organizing committee to talk to that person. So every person
Speaker 1: at your store should have an organizing committee member assigned
Speaker 1: to them. From there, once they have a plan for
Speaker 1: who's going to talk to who, we get cards to
Speaker 1: them and they can be either physical cards like my
Speaker 1: store did or digital cards, and then they start getting signatures,
Speaker 1: having little conversations like hey, here's what do you mean
Speaker 1: is here's why we're doing this. If you agree, sign
Speaker 1: this card. Once they have sent cards signed, then we
Speaker 1: take it to the on l RV and say hello,
Speaker 1: we would like to do a union please, and then
Speaker 1: hopefully they get a ballot count date. And the company
Speaker 1: always pushes for in personal elections. We always push back.
Speaker 1: We pretty much always win, and um we always want
Speaker 1: mail in ballots because we do, like, really genuinely want
Speaker 1: everybody to be able to vote. Whenever I was organizing
Speaker 1: at my store, I told everyone my best possible outcome,
Speaker 1: best case scenario is that every single person here votes
Speaker 1: and votes. Yes. My second best possible outcome is that
Speaker 1: everyone here votes and some of you vote. Now, like
Speaker 1: I I want everyone to vote. I want every single
Speaker 1: person here to vote. I don't want to be like,
Speaker 1: there is one store in my district that did end
Speaker 1: up winning their union election, but out of there I
Speaker 1: think fifty to sixty partners, only twelve people voted, and
Speaker 1: although they won, like, that is not the way we
Speaker 1: wanted to get you want everyone to have a day, yeah,
Speaker 1: which I think is interesting on sort of two levels. One,
Speaker 1: it's like you can see the exact moment at which
Speaker 1: corporations start carrying about prince are pretending to care about democracy,
Speaker 1: which is like, oh wait, hold on, our workers are
Speaker 1: doing stuff. Oh no, we have to care about Yeah.
Speaker 1: Suddenly we're like this incredible pro democratic force. We don't
Speaker 1: want everyone to have to say. It's like, okay, it's funny.
Speaker 1: They actually just came out with This happened after I
Speaker 1: got fired. This happened the past two weeks, but they
Speaker 1: came out with I believe it's an app where partners
Speaker 1: can share their feedback and share their experiences. Um. So
Speaker 1: they are trying to be so democratic, like look at
Speaker 1: them just really listening to us. Um. Yeah. They also
Speaker 1: did this really fun thing where even though hours are
Speaker 1: being cut across the company, people are having their hours
Speaker 1: drastically cut because this poor little billion dollar corporation can't
Speaker 1: afford to schedule us any more hours or properly staff
Speaker 1: their stores. We were all scheduled an extra hour for
Speaker 1: one of our shifts during the week so that we
Speaker 1: could sit down and watch an hour long speech by
Speaker 1: Howard Shoulder and do a survey about how much we
Speaker 1: like our job, which was funny. That Wow, that was
Speaker 1: like a kind of a new load for Starbucks. Like, wow,
Speaker 1: there's two people working on the floor right now, one
Speaker 1: person like making drinks and one person on register and
Speaker 1: they're getting slammed out there. It's so glad you guys
Speaker 1: had the had the labor hours to be able to
Speaker 1: schedule me to sit here and watch this Howard speech. Great. Thanks,
Speaker 1: And like I think, like just the scheduling stuff, like
Speaker 1: everyone being consistently understaffed. It's like this is something I
Speaker 1: was talking to the plant Parenthood people about two, which
Speaker 1: is like like there too. It's like you get you
Speaker 1: get these managers who are like, wow, okay, we need
Speaker 1: to cost cutting we're doing, and you know the price
Speaker 1: of cost cutting is we're going to just make all
Speaker 1: of our people work can possibly hard because we refused
Speaker 1: to put enough people in the store. And then you know,
Speaker 1: we're we're not gonna let you work long enough, like
Speaker 1: we're not gonna let you work long enough to actually
Speaker 1: get benefits. And then yeah, it's like the worst combination. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but it's like you know, okay, know like like
Speaker 1: they have the buddy, they can't schedule you. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: what I mean like like you know, I think like
Speaker 1: it ideally, in a society that wasn't just like like
Speaker 1: not even not even like a perfect society, in a
Speaker 1: society that was not like entirely based on cruelty and violence,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't even be able to do this at all.
Speaker 1: Everyone would just have a fixed schedule. Yeah, just like exactly,
Speaker 1: because it's so it sucks so much because it's like
Speaker 1: I barely get to go to work even though I
Speaker 1: asked for a full time I'm scheduled seventeen hours a week,
Speaker 1: but I am there. I'm like so freaking stressed because
Speaker 1: there's just not enough people to make the number of
Speaker 1: drinks that need made and all the customers are super
Speaker 1: piste off because they've been waiting ten minutes for their drink,
Speaker 1: and like corporate is just watching this happen. I'm sure
Speaker 1: that they have to be getting bad reviews. Like there's
Speaker 1: no way people aren't calling corporate to complain about the
Speaker 1: weight times because there's only two of us working on
Speaker 1: a Sunday morning, and like they're really just shooting themselves
Speaker 1: in the foot, just all around, all around, shooting themselves
Speaker 1: on the foot. Yeah, but I think also like there's
Speaker 1: a part of this which is just like like they
Speaker 1: are insulated from this, like you know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's like the managers don't have to deal with this ship.
Speaker 1: And it's like, yeah, they're gonna they're just gonna throw
Speaker 1: all of the angry customers, Like people who are angry
Speaker 1: because of decisions of management do they throwte you? And
Speaker 1: it's like this is this is fucking bullshit, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like here's a cupe on for a free drink.
Speaker 1: Go Bull, the brist does again. Yeah. Yeah, it's like Michelle,
Speaker 1: my district manager doesn't have to come in and deal
Speaker 1: with like forty angry customers staring at her while she
Speaker 1: tries to frantically make drinks. Like yeah, it's like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, Like there is definitely a part of me
Speaker 1: that is, like, I mean, okay, like I know, on
Speaker 1: the one hand, this isn't true because there have been
Speaker 1: a lot of terrible corporate people. There's been a lot
Speaker 1: of like I don't know, like terrible world leaders who
Speaker 1: actually had to work real jobs. But like, okay, a like,
Speaker 1: like some part of my soul still holds onto the
Speaker 1: belief that if like these people actually had to work
Speaker 1: in these conditions like consistently, that it wouldn't be like
Speaker 1: this because they wouldn't be completely insulated from just the
Speaker 1: absolute horror they're inflicting an iPhone And it's yeah, you
Speaker 1: can see whenever my store manager is scheduled to be
Speaker 1: on the floor, like scheduled for a coverage shift, which
Speaker 1: means that they're required to be out on the floor
Speaker 1: making drinks and doing register, they were always very fully staffed.
Speaker 1: Whenever whenever the scheduled for coverage, there's always at least
Speaker 1: five other people on the floor. But whenever it's like
Speaker 1: me on a Sunday morning opening the store and there's
Speaker 1: like a Steelers game and a convention in town and everyone,
Speaker 1: like the city is packed and all the hotels around
Speaker 1: around my store are packed. Everyone's gonna want coffee. There's
Speaker 1: like three of us, which is just like it's really
Speaker 1: frustrating to sort of like on a political level, it's
Speaker 1: like every job that I've ever worked, It's like if
Speaker 1: it was literally just us running this and there was
Speaker 1: no manage, everything would work on hunter Ties better. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's like yeah, yeah, it's like okay, Like at
Speaker 1: a certain point you have to just be like get
Speaker 1: rid of these people, like why why why are we
Speaker 1: doing this? Our new new store manager since our recent
Speaker 1: new one quit because working visions are so bad. Our
Speaker 1: new new one is an outside hire who doesn't know
Speaker 1: how to ring in drinks, don't know how to make drinks,
Speaker 1: doesn't know anything, and they just put him in my
Speaker 1: store as a store manager. And my roommate is also
Speaker 1: a barista, and she's been like having to coach him
Speaker 1: every day, which is a really awkward situation because she's
Speaker 1: not even a supervisor. She's like a barista, and she
Speaker 1: has to be like, hey, there's a difference between Nitro
Speaker 1: coold Brew and regular coold Brew, Like keep putting the
Speaker 1: wrong button. Very frustrating when they sent this guy into
Speaker 1: run my store. Meanwhile, like he probably knows less than
Speaker 1: everybody else that works there. Yeah, definitely knows us. And
Speaker 1: you do like, yeah, definitely knows less than me. It's
Speaker 1: so funny. Since I've been fired, I still like every
Speaker 1: time there's an emergency at my store, my barristas called me.
Speaker 1: It's wild. Like I got a call at five in
Speaker 1: the morning the other day from one of my favorite
Speaker 1: barristas and he was like, hey, Tori, I know you
Speaker 1: don't work here anymore, but sal was supposed to open
Speaker 1: and he's not here yet and I'm locked out of
Speaker 1: the store. What do I do? Or Like another barrista
Speaker 1: called me when I was in d C and he
Speaker 1: was like, Tori, I just shrote up for work and
Speaker 1: the store is closed. What do I do? And I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't know that. I was like, I
Speaker 1: can do my best to help you, but I there's
Speaker 1: not much I can physically do. I don't have keys anymore. Sorry, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's it's really like, you know, one of one
Speaker 1: of the things that I mean, I guess you get
Speaker 1: this in both sort of like like when I want
Speaker 1: to like so I went to the verse of Chicago,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's like, okay, so these are the
Speaker 1: people who infamously produced all of the terrible economics that
Speaker 1: make the world suck, right, and it's like okay, well
Speaker 1: you take econ classes there and it's like everything is
Speaker 1: about sort of like I like, you're doing all of
Speaker 1: this because I like, okay, so like the you're you're
Speaker 1: doing all of this under the assumption that if you
Speaker 1: let corporations run into free market, they will do everything optimally,
Speaker 1: and they will produce the lowest prices, and they will
Speaker 1: produce everything as efficiently as possible. It's funny because like
Speaker 1: you see this in like Marxist theory too. And then
Speaker 1: it's like you look at like any store place and
Speaker 1: it's like no, no, no, they're firing their most competent
Speaker 1: workers and hiring people who are incompetent because like because
Speaker 1: the thing that they actually like care them most about
Speaker 1: even more than efficiency, even more than like making more
Speaker 1: money is maintaining their power, and it's like it's something
Speaker 1: that like is really obvious when you're working, but somehow,
Speaker 1: like the people who write about this stuff has like
Speaker 1: deluded themselves into not being able to understand. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: no idea. It's like it feels like they almost don't
Speaker 1: want the experienced workers to say I've seen, like so
Speaker 1: part of my internship project is keeping a database of
Speaker 1: the fire and partners in the anti union firings, which
Speaker 1: is d of ironic because I was like, well, gotta
Speaker 1: add myself to this spreadheet now, But I've seen I
Speaker 1: seen people must freadheet who worked the company for five years.
Speaker 1: There's one person on there who worked for the company
Speaker 1: for seventeen years. But we don't get raises or anything
Speaker 1: for a seniority or anything like that. There's actually a
Speaker 1: cap on how much you can make in each state
Speaker 1: from Starbucks because they don't they don't want you to
Speaker 1: work there forever because then the frustrations start to come through,
Speaker 1: and then new the new unionized, and it feels like
Speaker 1: they the high turnover feels really intentional. Sometimes I think
Speaker 1: it is like I think that that's that's like a
Speaker 1: pretty common, like Amazon Justice too, where it's like their
Speaker 1: whole their their whole business strategies is intentionally on working
Speaker 1: every one so hard as they quit so I can
Speaker 1: get a new group of people, and so people don't
Speaker 1: organize and it's yeah, yeah, it's really brutal and horrific
Speaker 1: and I hate these people. Yeah same, It's like if
Speaker 1: I see this person here for ten years and make
Speaker 1: this look like it's a sustainable career, then then we
Speaker 1: have to make it a sustainable career. And I don't
Speaker 1: want to do that. So bourse people out after like
Speaker 1: two or three so very frustrating, which I think I
Speaker 1: guess also helps them with the sort of like like
Speaker 1: the way that people look at like I mean minium
Speaker 1: wage workers and also just service workers in general, where
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, well, yeah, you know, we don't need
Speaker 1: to raise minium wages a bunch of teenagers, Like these
Speaker 1: people don't need like good wages because this is like,
Speaker 1: you know, you're not actually supposed to be doing this,
Speaker 1: This is like a transition thing. It's like that's not
Speaker 1: how any of this works, Like it's just not that's
Speaker 1: just you're you're you're making excuses for corporations doing exploitation. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it also seems like another thing they're doing is
Speaker 1: that we've seen a lot of really high manager turnover too,
Speaker 1: And I think that also is really intentional because they
Speaker 1: had to even though the storm manager that ultimately fired
Speaker 1: me was new, like she couldn't she didn't even have
Speaker 1: the heart to do that. She had to bring in.
Speaker 1: They had to bring in a support manager to like
Speaker 1: actually of the words like you're fired, here's a termination notice.
Speaker 1: And it feels like the reason they're making the manager's
Speaker 1: anniverse so high is so that the managers don't like
Speaker 1: form those relationships with the staff of the store because
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel as bad to fire them. Like I
Speaker 1: don't think this ever would have happened to me if
Speaker 1: my original store manager, who had been there for five
Speaker 1: years and like knew me personally, was still at my store,
Speaker 1: I don't think this would have happened. And I think
Speaker 1: that's why they're doing this big manager shuffle right now,
Speaker 1: at least, I mean, I'm sure it's happening in other places.
Speaker 1: It's definitely happening a lot in Pittsburgh. I think there
Speaker 1: are very few stores in my district that had the
Speaker 1: same manager that they had three months ago. It feels
Speaker 1: like they're intentionally shuffling them around so they don't form
Speaker 1: like personal relationships or any sort of emotional tie to
Speaker 1: the partners at their store, and they don't feel guilty
Speaker 1: firing them. Yeah, it's like it's community is really dangerous
Speaker 1: to them. M absolutely, Like I think I talked about
Speaker 1: this like some number of episodes ago, but like yeah,
Speaker 1: like this is this is the thing that's really common
Speaker 1: with Like I'm just I'm just gonna straight up called
Speaker 1: Starbucks dicatorial organization because it is like it is just
Speaker 1: a dictatorship. It's like the tatorships do this a lot
Speaker 1: where like yeah, like communities are really dangerous to them.
Speaker 1: Communities with any kind of strong bonds with each other
Speaker 1: really dangerous because people will fight for each other, and
Speaker 1: you know, you can't for example, like I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's it's really really hard to support someone who has
Speaker 1: a strong community around them that will fight back. But
Speaker 1: if you can isolate those people, if you can like
Speaker 1: like physically isolate them, if you can like socially isolate them,
Speaker 1: if you can make sure that they don't have these
Speaker 1: support networks, then you can then you can you know,
Speaker 1: do whatever you want to them. And that seems yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like it's it's a very deliberate like and
Speaker 1: didn't even think it was, like you know this also
Speaker 1: like this just makes everyone's life worse, right, Like, did
Speaker 1: you see what happened in Seattle with the new Starbucks
Speaker 1: Heritage District. I think I've vaguely heard about it, but yeah,
Speaker 1: so in Seattle, the three like origin I leave, it's
Speaker 1: the three original Starbucks stores, like first ever Starbucks stores
Speaker 1: to open, the three in Seattle. Um, they've made it
Speaker 1: so that you don't the partners there don't have a
Speaker 1: specific store that they're assigned to. They're assigned into the
Speaker 1: district and can be scheduled at any store at any time.
Speaker 1: So you're not working with the same people all the
Speaker 1: time and you're not forming those relationships. And if you
Speaker 1: were to somehow forming of relationships to start organizing, UM,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be able to vote as a store. You
Speaker 1: have to vote as a district, which is just a
Speaker 1: lot more logistically difficult, And there was a lot of
Speaker 1: pushback that happened, but unfortunately those stores hadn't file up
Speaker 1: for an election yet. And um weren't really able to
Speaker 1: do much about it, but we're definitely scared of that
Speaker 1: happening like in Pittsburg and like at other Starbucks stores
Speaker 1: around the country, that they're going to make it so
Speaker 1: that you work for the district on the specific store
Speaker 1: and that's kind of terrifying. So yeah, I mean, and
Speaker 1: I think that that's not everything where it's like okay
Speaker 1: that they have to have to weigh efficiency versus like
Speaker 1: they're power and they're going to choose their own power
Speaker 1: every time. Like there's just like an aspect of that too,
Speaker 1: where it's like they're just incredible dehumanization of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just totally it's like really careless, like you don't
Speaker 1: know what someone's transportation situation looks like. Um, you don't know,
Speaker 1: like if they feel comfortable working with like different groups
Speaker 1: of people, Like I don't know, I know that like
Speaker 1: a lot of people at UM. So this is just
Speaker 1: reminding me of something that happened at the store in
Speaker 1: my area. So at Penn Center East, the Penn Center
Speaker 1: East Starbucks, they are Union store. They decided they were
Speaker 1: closing Penn Center East for like a for an entire
Speaker 1: week and gave them the option to work at three
Speaker 1: stores that were like an hour away from them, and
Speaker 1: of course, like they were only giving the option to
Speaker 1: work at other stores that were unionized, they weren't going
Speaker 1: to send the union people into the non unionized store
Speaker 1: potentially influenced them. So one of the partners, the one
Speaker 1: that was actually fired yesterday, it was like, I do
Speaker 1: not feel comfortable working at this store because I worked
Speaker 1: at this or one time and I faced a lot
Speaker 1: of discrimination from the from the manager there, from the
Speaker 1: partners there, and I don't want to be put in
Speaker 1: that situation again. There's like a customer at this other
Speaker 1: store that said or that called me a racial slur,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to be in this area. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't want to go out to these stores. And
Speaker 1: it just like exposes partners to like a lot more
Speaker 1: like situations that they're potentially not comfortable with there, with
Speaker 1: new managers that they don't have like a good rapport
Speaker 1: with yet, and it makes everything just a lot more difficult.
Speaker 1: Like just let everyone work at their own store, Like
Speaker 1: we all have friends. All the partners that like my
Speaker 1: store at least were very very close. I know a
Speaker 1: lot of the stores are the same way. It just
Speaker 1: makes work worse to not be working with your friends.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone would work in market Square if
Speaker 1: we weren't all really close with each other. Um overall
Speaker 1: just work situation. Yeah, And I don't know, hope, hope,
Speaker 1: hopefully they're not able to do that on a large scale,
Speaker 1: because yeah, that would be It's feels like a disaster,
Speaker 1: especially since I mean there's a lot of Starbucks stores
Speaker 1: like concentrated in cities, but I know, like the Penn's
Speaker 1: Center East Starbucks was kind of out there in the suburbs.
Speaker 1: And another big issue that they faced was that, like,
Speaker 1: we don't have some of us don't have cars, and
Speaker 1: we just can't get to like the city Starbucks stores
Speaker 1: because our parents drive us to work, to our parents
Speaker 1: drive us to work every day because we're in high
Speaker 1: school and we just don't have like a means of transportation.
Speaker 1: There's nowhere to park there, and it just puts them,
Speaker 1: It just makes them face a lot of issues that
Speaker 1: they weren't really planned on dealing with, planning on dealing with,
Speaker 1: and aren't really prepared to. And they probably chose the
Speaker 1: store that they currently work at because, like they didn't
Speaker 1: just pick it at random. They picked becuse it was
Speaker 1: community to get to. They like vibes there and it
Speaker 1: was like a good fit for them, and forcing them
Speaker 1: to work at other other stores where there are a
Speaker 1: lot less comfortable. Not a good decision. Just feels shady,
Speaker 1: very dehumanizing for sure. Yeah, and so I guess I do.
Speaker 1: I do have phone lessing to ask, which is if
Speaker 1: people want to support you and if people want to
Speaker 1: find you in places, where can they do that? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so my Twitter is Tory Underscore Timbolini and that's my
Speaker 1: personal Twitter. We also have a Pittsburgh Starbucks Workers United
Speaker 1: Twitter account. Um, if you want to support me and
Speaker 1: Kim specifically, there is a link to our go funds
Speaker 1: me there. There's a link in my bio and somewhere
Speaker 1: in the Pittsburgh account as well. We also just released
Speaker 1: a National Solidarity fund um through a coworker, but I'm
Speaker 1: actually not quite clear on how people can donate to
Speaker 1: that yet. I can. It's very new, So I can
Speaker 1: send you an email with a link to that. Yeah cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we'll put all the links in the show notes. Awesome,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Yeah, thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: For joining us is Yeah, it was really good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for sharing my story. I I
Speaker 1: feel like there's a lot of fired partners fired partners
Speaker 1: across the country and like we all kind of need
Speaker 1: to stand together there. And I like people hear my
Speaker 1: story and hear about how like the union has supported
Speaker 1: us and there's been a lot of community support. And
Speaker 1: you know, as soon as I was fired, I was
Speaker 1: immediately hired by Workers United. You know, they're really willing
Speaker 1: to take care of us. And if I had like
Speaker 1: anything to kind of like like any advice to give
Speaker 1: the partners who are trying to organize, like the union
Speaker 1: has your back, don't worry too much about losing your job.
Speaker 1: Probably won't happen. If it does, the union has your back,
Speaker 1: and all the other fire partners have your back as well. Thanks.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah. Yeah. And on that note, yeah, fight your
Speaker 1: bosses together. You can beat them. Uh yeah. Go out
Speaker 1: into the world and make havoc for people who do
Speaker 1: bad stuff, cause problems on purpose. Welcome to it could
Speaker 1: happen here a podcast that I've could and yeah, well welcome.
Speaker 1: We'll welcome to the inaugural podcast where it's just Christopher
Speaker 1: and Andrew. I'm your house, Christopher Wong, and I got
Speaker 1: I got Andrew with with me today to cast the pod. Okay, yes,
Speaker 1: I have Tony age from Thank you for that. UM.
Speaker 1: I had to sacrifice you for that one, because I
Speaker 1: was not gonna gonna do it myself. UM. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the first in a two part exploration of the New
Speaker 1: African revolutionary known as Kasi Balacoon. He's one of the
Speaker 1: most recognizable black and archaic radicals of the whole black
Speaker 1: and radical tradition. UM. Recognized for his constant struggle, UM,
Speaker 1: for his political journey, and for his insights in the
Speaker 1: cause of you know, black freedom in the US. And
Speaker 1: so I think it's his very layered journey is one
Speaker 1: I believe that more people should explore, and I hope
Speaker 1: that more people would come away with this episode and
Speaker 1: the following episode, the second part, with a recognition of
Speaker 1: what an inspiring person is and what we can can
Speaker 1: learn from his life. Hell yeah, I'm excited. He's super cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, for many reasons. As I think we will
Speaker 1: start at the very beginning, as most humans do. I
Speaker 1: don't think we know of anybody who just kind of
Speaker 1: plopped onto the youth fully formed. His quasi bo lagoon
Speaker 1: was not his original name, was his chosen name. He
Speaker 1: was born Donald Wims in the major majority black community
Speaker 1: of Leland in Prince George's County, Maryland and December twenty second,
Speaker 1: n six, So I'm sure he got like his Christmas
Speaker 1: presents and his birthday presents like combined. That was a laugh.
Speaker 1: It's thinking my one of my oh I think it's
Speaker 1: my my uncle or something has his birthday is, yeah, December, Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of my uncle's bothday is I think, and my
Speaker 1: girlfriend's birthday is the twenty. Yeah. That's that's some That
Speaker 1: is some rip stuff there. Yeah. I mean I try
Speaker 1: not to like add to that, so I try and
Speaker 1: get two separate gifts, but um, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a challenge. And then talk of that like you
Speaker 1: can't really do much for your birthday because everybody has
Speaker 1: always been like last minute stuff. Yep, yep. Thankfully I
Speaker 1: was born in the best month. So anyway, the experiences
Speaker 1: prepared young Donald Williams to become an activist who would
Speaker 1: militantly resist white supremacy and unjust authority. He was particularly
Speaker 1: inspired by his own parents struggle um during the Cambridge
Speaker 1: Protest of is he his dad had worked in the
Speaker 1: US Printed Office, and his mom had worked at Fort
Speaker 1: Meade in Maryland, and so they, he and his sister
Speaker 1: were very much cared for. He and his two sisters
Speaker 1: rather very much cared for. He think he was the
Speaker 1: youngest of the family and loved and they really showed
Speaker 1: um that sort of drive to provide and care for
Speaker 1: for for their children. Um in those work environments they
Speaker 1: would have seen, he observed, and he watched it. He
Speaker 1: observe of his parents, observing the effort that they put in,
Speaker 1: and the fact that they surpassed the skill and experience
Speaker 1: of a lot of the white folks who came into
Speaker 1: their type of work. But then those said white folks
Speaker 1: who just go on ahead and climb the ladder and
Speaker 1: you know, get these promotions and get these raiss while
Speaker 1: they themselves had to like slowly and painfully drag themselves
Speaker 1: forward and fight to get ahead. Also that their children
Speaker 1: could have their food and clothes and everything that they needed.
Speaker 1: So the Cambridge Right the ninety three were led by
Speaker 1: a young one by the name of Gloria Richardson, who
Speaker 1: was a key figure in the civil rights Movement UM.
Speaker 1: Their struggle had he moved as part of the Civil
Speaker 1: Rights Movement UM and the local chapter of the Student
Speaker 1: Tern VIOLENTCE Coordinating Committee. There was fighting against segregation in
Speaker 1: the area, organizing sit ins and so on and so forward.
Speaker 1: But after they had organized against a movie theater that
Speaker 1: was expanding its discriminatory practices, UM the movement started to
Speaker 1: push back and they marched, and the demands were unmet,
Speaker 1: and the police were called and Richardson and others were
Speaker 1: arrested for disorderly conduct, and there was a whole pattern
Speaker 1: of protests and arrests and boycotts and harassed when they
Speaker 1: just went on and on and on. After some youths
Speaker 1: both a few years old were charged with disorderly conduct
Speaker 1: for being arrested and were arrested for pretting peacefully outside
Speaker 1: of a segregated facility. Even more marchers were organized, and
Speaker 1: eventually the protests escalated and some white owned businesses we
Speaker 1: set on fire. Then gunfire was being exchanged between whites
Speaker 1: and African Americans, and of course martial law was declared
Speaker 1: and National Guard was deployed, and eventually a treaty had
Speaker 1: to be negotiated between UM Glory Richardson and the white
Speaker 1: power structure. The Gambridge movement is recognized by the Nation
Speaker 1: of Islam as one of the marcom x as one
Speaker 1: of the examples of a developing black revolution, and so
Speaker 1: that militancy in that movement is well inspired and impressed
Speaker 1: the young Donald Williams would later become quest. Probably another
Speaker 1: formative point in his in his life was when he
Speaker 1: had joined the U. S Army after graduate in high
Speaker 1: school and were stationed in Germany after receiving some basic trina.
Speaker 1: Of course, like most black people in the military, he
Speaker 1: experienced a lot of racism and physical attacks from white officers,
Speaker 1: and eventually he and others formed the association known as
Speaker 1: the Legist Leaders, basically based on like messing up racists
Speaker 1: and making sure that they couldn't like interfare with them
Speaker 1: any longer. Yeah, he prided himself in his ability to
Speaker 1: exact revenge on racist war suits while in Europe. He
Speaker 1: was in London at one point and he connected with
Speaker 1: Africans and African descendants, and he saw his experience and
Speaker 1: learn that it's basically like a natural tonic like it's
Speaker 1: something that clicked in his head and he realized the
Speaker 1: interconnections between African descendants across the globe. Um as he
Speaker 1: grounded himself more in in black consciousness and culture, he
Speaker 1: stopped processing his hair while it is natural hair style
Speaker 1: and became basically more committed to black liberation than he
Speaker 1: had been before. After being honorably honorably discharged the ninety seven,
Speaker 1: after three years of servant primarily in Germany, he returned
Speaker 1: home to Lakeland, UM and then he moved to New
Speaker 1: York City, where his sister Diane had lived. And in
Speaker 1: New York he got involved in wrench strikes and became
Speaker 1: parts of a tenant organizing movement for the Community Council
Speaker 1: of Housing. One of the principal leaders of this of
Speaker 1: this movement was a hulum rend strike organized so called
Speaker 1: Jesse Green, and he used the rhetoric of like militant
Speaker 1: Black nationalism to recruit lieutenants for his activist campaigns. His
Speaker 1: his militancy when you know, pull it back, and he
Speaker 1: connected with the militantcy that Donald was already feeling drawn
Speaker 1: to is what it really pushed him to get into
Speaker 1: that cause. And so I think it makes me think
Speaker 1: as I'm you know, going through his journey about like
Speaker 1: I mean, his commitment to the struggle began from very
Speaker 1: early on, from seeing his parents and the things they
Speaker 1: had to do with from seeing the Cambridge riots, from
Speaker 1: seeing his experience in the army, from connecting with UM,
Speaker 1: with black folks in London, with UM his tenant organizing.
Speaker 1: And it makes me think of the political journeys of
Speaker 1: people today and how all these little points and larger
Speaker 1: points in a Pererson's life kind of combined to create
Speaker 1: the sort of tapestry of a person that they are
Speaker 1: and a tapestry of political beliefs that they wuld. I
Speaker 1: think a lot more people have been drawn to like
Speaker 1: militant radical politics, left rack of politics than we give
Speaker 1: them credit for. The more people have that basis than
Speaker 1: we necessarily um want to accept. I think the issues
Speaker 1: we just don't have the outreach and please do you know,
Speaker 1: help them get across the finish line and get to
Speaker 1: a place where the actively you know, working for these courses. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like there's a lot of I mean, partially
Speaker 1: burned out and partially just sort of I don't know.
Speaker 1: You you get these you get periods where sort of
Speaker 1: just like specific movements ends and a bunch of people
Speaker 1: just kind of fall out, and it's like, it's not
Speaker 1: that they haven't done this stuff, it's that they just
Speaker 1: sort of, I don't know, the movement to the thing
Speaker 1: they were in is over and now they're sort of
Speaker 1: just off doing something else. And yeah, and that reminds
Speaker 1: me of um well, rhymes of a script that I
Speaker 1: was working on the other day about demands. And one
Speaker 1: of the arguments people have made against making demands, you know,
Speaker 1: as a movement is that once demands are met, it's
Speaker 1: sort of what concessions even made. It's SAPs the momentum
Speaker 1: out of a movement and SAPs its potential because if you,
Speaker 1: you know, accept concessions, if you accept that, you know,
Speaker 1: when whatever you receive and you know, you go back
Speaker 1: in your loyalty, you don't reach the climax of what
Speaker 1: you could have achieved as a movement compared to if
Speaker 1: you've just kept going. Of course, I have critiques of
Speaker 1: the anti demand position, but it's something that they frequently
Speaker 1: consider when I look at a lot of these social
Speaker 1: movements that have based on specific projects, based on specific focuses,
Speaker 1: and what happens when these movements get you know, coopted,
Speaker 1: When these movements get compromised, and the way that the
Speaker 1: potential and the share manpower of some of these movements
Speaker 1: compared to like what they've actually achieved is a massive discrepancy.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, and this I was thinking about. Um
Speaker 1: it was something in The Bastard's episode a long time
Speaker 1: ago about um. The the name of the treaty was Ampo,
Speaker 1: wh just like there was this huge mobilization in Japan
Speaker 1: in the sixties to stop this treaty with the US.
Speaker 1: Was a military treaty they're doing there, and they hit
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of stuff in it. Like I think
Speaker 1: there was a closet let the US like invade Japan
Speaker 1: if there was like a civil disturbance or something stuff
Speaker 1: like that, and they, you know, they had this huge
Speaker 1: movement like people people stormed the parliament like multiple times,
Speaker 1: like you know, I think, I think. I think afterwards
Speaker 1: the historians determined that like a third of the total
Speaker 1: population of Japan had been involved in this movement. And
Speaker 1: then they lost because the whole movement had been about
Speaker 1: stopping this treaty and the treaty gets signed that they
Speaker 1: can't do anything about it, and then it just sort
Speaker 1: of like fizzles and it kind of becomes the Japanese
Speaker 1: New Left. But like you know, you have this like
Speaker 1: incredible high water mark of like like you you have
Speaker 1: you have so many from the then even the Japanese
Speaker 1: you left like dissipeate. Yeah, yeah, and they they it implodes,
Speaker 1: like yeah, you go from like like Nixon, like was
Speaker 1: it Nixon you tried to visit And I think that
Speaker 1: there's been a couple of US presidents you tried to
Speaker 1: You tried to visit Japan and couldn't leave the airport
Speaker 1: because the bob was too large outside of it, And
Speaker 1: he's like it went from that too. You know, everything
Speaker 1: is sort of once once, once once. They're sort of
Speaker 1: like immediate rallying, like here's our demand, there's our goal,
Speaker 1: like like disappears. Everything just sort of splinters into these
Speaker 1: like weird fragment groups and you get like a bunch
Speaker 1: of Japanese Marxists just like shooting each other over nothing
Speaker 1: in the mountains, and the whole thing sort of just implodes.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean even if you look at like
Speaker 1: like say Fridays the Futures and an example or like
Speaker 1: extension rebellion, no George Floyd protests, and you can sit
Speaker 1: and just sit and think about the shant numbers involved
Speaker 1: into his movements, the potential of that large mobilization, a
Speaker 1: mobilization effort, compared to what comes out of them. You know,
Speaker 1: like what other than a few minor policy changes, what
Speaker 1: has you know, say extinction, rebellion or frids the future
Speaker 1: achieved when you know these massive co operations are still
Speaker 1: actively fights in every step of the way, and these
Speaker 1: movements are not yet willing to do what it takes
Speaker 1: to you know, accomplished. It needs to be accomplished. Not
Speaker 1: even talking about violence. I'm not talking about violence. I
Speaker 1: am not talking about violence. What I'm talking about is
Speaker 1: the efforts involved, the work that goes into social revolution,
Speaker 1: that goes beyond the sort of flashy, easily recognizable march
Speaker 1: and the street kind of activities, because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff that goes behind the scenes. A lot of
Speaker 1: institutions need to be built from the bottom up, a
Speaker 1: lot of institutions need to be transformed from the inside out.
Speaker 1: And you know, without that basis in place, which is
Speaker 1: spinning on top in mud. But back to weams like
Speaker 1: me in his generation, he was ready to join an
Speaker 1: uncompromised movement for black freedom and human rights. He joined
Speaker 1: Jesse Gray and protesting the conditions and New York housing,
Speaker 1: particularly infestation of rats and public housing. In fact, and
Speaker 1: this is probably one of my favorite stories of his
Speaker 1: entire you know, like lifetime as an activist, a's no organizer.
Speaker 1: In n Jesse Gray, Donald Wellims, his sister to Diane,
Speaker 1: and two other ternant activists were arrested for disorderly conduct
Speaker 1: in Washington, d C. When they unannounced, an uninvited attended
Speaker 1: a session of Congress and brought the cage of rats
Speaker 1: to the assembly to highlight the uvan hosing condition. Hell yeah,
Speaker 1: I wish I could have been a fly on the
Speaker 1: wall or something to have witnessed that. Yeah, Like I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's such an impressive thing, even just on a
Speaker 1: sort of like just like a logistical level of where
Speaker 1: did they get this cage of rats from? I mean
Speaker 1: clearly they got the rats from the housing. The housing
Speaker 1: was so bad. They had the rats run around everywhere,
Speaker 1: imagining like they we're we're not going to use kill trap,
Speaker 1: We're gonna use like capture traps. Specifically, sweet drop these
Speaker 1: rats on Congress like these rules. It's perfect. It's perfect,
Speaker 1: is that sort of energy that you helped him to
Speaker 1: create that group the legislators while he was in the army,
Speaker 1: you know. But what I mean because they you know,
Speaker 1: dropped some rats in Congress and they got arrested. The
Speaker 1: c h UM lost It's the Community Council learn Housing
Speaker 1: lost its funding, and Jesse Gray losssibility to pay his organizers.
Speaker 1: And just that line Alane just kind of stood out
Speaker 1: to me. Um that movement that is because these movements,
Speaker 1: you know, back in the day, they were serious about
Speaker 1: getting changed done, and they recognized that to get changed done,
Speaker 1: you need to have people who are full time involving
Speaker 1: getting that change done. It can be a part time thing.
Speaker 1: And so you know, these movements had these groups, they
Speaker 1: had like staff that you know, appaid to like put
Speaker 1: in the work, who could focus all their efforts and
Speaker 1: energy in it. And of course that took fundraise, and
Speaker 1: that took donations, that took support from their local communities
Speaker 1: to get that sort of of support that they needed
Speaker 1: to get things done. Um. I think right now we
Speaker 1: have is a lot of groups that often fizzle out
Speaker 1: to burn out before they could even get started because
Speaker 1: they don't have the resources to support their kind of
Speaker 1: effort that they will need to get things done when
Speaker 1: everybody is working one to three jobs. Everybody's booms out
Speaker 1: and re stressed out. And this was my organizing experience
Speaker 1: at least. Um, it's very hard to get stuff done
Speaker 1: when everybody's tired all the time. It's very hard to
Speaker 1: get things off the ground when everybody is busy all
Speaker 1: the time. I think there's another kind of interesting thing
Speaker 1: here too, which is like, it's like, well because so
Speaker 1: like now we do have organizations where you can get
Speaker 1: paid to be full time staff, but it's it's it's
Speaker 1: NGO if yeah, it's NGO stuff. And and the thing
Speaker 1: I think is it's it's it became this question of
Speaker 1: sort of I mean a personally, it's about legal structures
Speaker 1: of how you could have like part part of I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's about the sort of legal requirements about who can
Speaker 1: actually have and what kinds of organizations and what you
Speaker 1: have to do to like have an organization that has
Speaker 1: a bank account for example. And then also I think
Speaker 1: there's this there's just kind of traffic traft people fill
Speaker 1: into where Okay, so you need funding, right, and you
Speaker 1: know the places you can get funding from usually tend
Speaker 1: to be either you're spending your entire time doing donation
Speaker 1: tribes or you're doing these grant stuff, and it's like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: the problem with like both of these basically a giant
Speaker 1: strings attached to them, and so like it sort of
Speaker 1: falls away from the like, hey, we're you know, sort
Speaker 1: of like paid revolutionary organizers and just degrades and some
Speaker 1: more enteo stuff exactly exactly, and the incentive structure completely changes.
Speaker 1: And of course they also potodynamics involved and you know,
Speaker 1: pervoices and paid organizers and that sort of thing. But
Speaker 1: I mean, if if, if you know, these these liberal
Speaker 1: organizations and getting all this fund and getting all these support,
Speaker 1: they're able to sustain themselves and keep pushing their cause,
Speaker 1: and all radical movements and militant movements are floundering. Again,
Speaker 1: where are we going with this? You know? Yeah. But afterwards,
Speaker 1: with the loss of funding, Weems left the cciege and
Speaker 1: then he joined the Central hallm Communitee for Self Defense
Speaker 1: and Solidarity the student protests and Columbia University. That committee
Speaker 1: would bring food and water to the students who occupy
Speaker 1: the buildings in the Columbia campus. And that's another important
Speaker 1: things to pointing to when I was talking about the
Speaker 1: less flashy work that goes into it. Because people are
Speaker 1: talking about general strike, because they have this vision of
Speaker 1: this general strike that everybody's you know, standing out in
Speaker 1: the streets and this big crowds out in the streets
Speaker 1: and we all refused to work, and it's rude, whe
Speaker 1: it's wonderful. But a general strike can only be pulled
Speaker 1: off if there's a strike funding place, if there's a
Speaker 1: a strike banking place where resources are available for people
Speaker 1: to draw from. Doesn't a strike, contrary to some perspectives
Speaker 1: or I guess some misled approaches, it's not when you
Speaker 1: tell your boss, hey, let me get a day off.
Speaker 1: It's like a grunge strike real quick. A strike is
Speaker 1: you refusal to work. It is unpaid. It is a
Speaker 1: risky endeavor. You don't just walk out without organized support
Speaker 1: from your fellow co workers at the very least. And
Speaker 1: part of what makes a strike successful, part of what
Speaker 1: makes a protest or a sitting or any kind of
Speaker 1: movement successful is having a network of care work instituted.
Speaker 1: So you see that the Central Hall and Community for
Speaker 1: Self Defense in solidarity with another movement, brought food and
Speaker 1: water to the students who are occupying the buildings, and
Speaker 1: because they brought food and water, those students are able
Speaker 1: to continue occupying, occupying those buildings and continue struggling for
Speaker 1: the causes they were struggling for. I don't think they're
Speaker 1: enough people, and not to just count people that are.
Speaker 1: If it doesn't fall in your garden, you don't after
Speaker 1: watch it. I think there needs to be more people
Speaker 1: who are going into that care work, which is marginalized
Speaker 1: because it's just alsociated with women and non men really,
Speaker 1: but it's it's something that we need to account for, something,
Speaker 1: it needs to be one of the principal arms of
Speaker 1: our strategy. Like like when I was doing tenant organizing,
Speaker 1: is like I did was like, what did I do?
Speaker 1: The tenant organized? Was like, well, okay, so I went
Speaker 1: around to put signs up on move chairs around, I
Speaker 1: took care of people's kids, like that was like feeling
Speaker 1: most of it. There's just a lot of like I
Speaker 1: don't know, I mean stuff like childcare like that, that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Like he's a vital part of any
Speaker 1: If if is a vital part of any political movement
Speaker 1: that's actually going to succeed, that you're trying to run
Speaker 1: and nobody wants to talk about or do it because
Speaker 1: it's not the like exciting like we're throwing a brick
Speaker 1: at a cop or whatever. Stuff. Yeah, exactly, I sat
Speaker 1: no more postal notes. And this is the part where
Speaker 1: he changes his name. Not a Beams would associated himself
Speaker 1: with the Yoruba Temple in hard just organized by Nana
Speaker 1: Sir Jimani. The Detroit boone at Offumi was initiated in
Speaker 1: Cuba in the Lukumi Rights of the Ruba urgin. And
Speaker 1: he saw the West African religious and cultural heritage as
Speaker 1: a means of cultural self determination and peoplehood for African
Speaker 1: and science the United States. Recently there was a Netflix
Speaker 1: documentary about the ways that Euroban traditions have been kept
Speaker 1: alive across the quote and quote New World. And so
Speaker 1: you will see um in Cuba and in Brazil and
Speaker 1: in trying to be a goole, and in the US,
Speaker 1: the Uba practices and cultural components have just and sustained.
Speaker 1: And so when as who may established the Oruba Temple
Speaker 1: in New York, Starry in Detroit was the Detroit New
Speaker 1: York in Detroit, Um, I would say Detroit. He so
Speaker 1: it has an institution two, a naturalistic institution meant to
Speaker 1: advance the cause of the civil rights movement and liberation.
Speaker 1: Black liberation movement. You sort of African nines everything, you know,
Speaker 1: names and hats and clues and clubs and churches and
Speaker 1: so a lot of people in Beam generation and so
Speaker 1: you see people like like Malcolm X adopting a new monica.
Speaker 1: They rejected, you know, these European names and adopted African
Speaker 1: or Arabic names. So when we're gonna see to the
Speaker 1: Urban Temple, he would no longer be Donald Weems. He
Speaker 1: took an away day name Kuasi meaning mail born on
Speaker 1: a Sunday, and the urban name Blagoon meaning wallord. And
Speaker 1: so that again ties into his whole passion for militancy
Speaker 1: because he is basically a wall lord born born on
Speaker 1: a Sunday. I don't know what she would as a
Speaker 1: kind of a metal Yeah, it's like now great to fight,
Speaker 1: fresh out the room, all kind of thing, but pretty
Speaker 1: sick exactly exactly. But you know, along with finding his
Speaker 1: cultural beer in the Uruba Temple, he got his Black
Speaker 1: pap politics of revolution black nationalism from the Black Paul
Speaker 1: movement the nineteen sixties. Black Pole movement. They realized that,
Speaker 1: you know, black liberation is not possible without the overthrow
Speaker 1: of the US constitutional order and capitalist economic system. And
Speaker 1: they also recognized and a significant number of black Milton's
Speaker 1: sixties Black Power movement recognized that the classical Marxism Leninism
Speaker 1: was not a free work that they identified with. It
Speaker 1: is something that all of them did adopt an adapt
Speaker 1: but it's not something that they just consumed whole sale.
Speaker 1: And I think that's honestly some nuance that is often
Speaker 1: obscured when people take this sort of blindly nonstylegic approach
Speaker 1: to pass you know, movements. Because even even back then,
Speaker 1: even in the early stages Black Power movement, there was
Speaker 1: you know, political diversity in terms of the aims and
Speaker 1: intentions and beliefs, um different perspectives, even within the same
Speaker 1: political philosophy, um different approaches. The the West Coast Black
Speaker 1: Panthers and the East Coast Black Panthers took different approaches.
Speaker 1: The West Coast Black Panthers were more class focused, whereas
Speaker 1: the East Coast Lack Panthers were more Pan Africa and
Speaker 1: the approach, and that honestly caused a lot of tension
Speaker 1: between the two of them them were inspired you across
Speaker 1: the board, but the influence of Marxism, the Chinese and
Speaker 1: Cuban revolutions, by other national liberation movements in Africa, Asia
Speaker 1: and the America's because this was a time of course
Speaker 1: where a lot of movements, a lot of countries were
Speaker 1: getting independence from Britain and France and all together colonized US.
Speaker 1: This is also a time where more and more people
Speaker 1: were you know, building their criticisms and the racism present
Speaker 1: in the old Left, and so they wanted a theoretical
Speaker 1: vehicle that that gave them the self determination, the ideological
Speaker 1: self determination that they needed. Like they were with the
Speaker 1: whole civilrights movement, they were fighting within it, but they
Speaker 1: wanted more than what the civil rights movement was offering.
Speaker 1: They wanted more than just civil rights between within a
Speaker 1: settler colonial state. And they would not going to sit
Speaker 1: back and just be satisfied with non violence as a
Speaker 1: way of life. All of them sold the civil rights
Speaker 1: movement as well as as something integrationists or something pro assimilationist,
Speaker 1: whereas they wanted something more insurgent, more revolutionary, and so
Speaker 1: you know, they brought together all these different things, um,
Speaker 1: Black nationalism and self determination, Marxian critiques of capitalism and
Speaker 1: a direct action proved that was you know, in the
Speaker 1: civilrights movement from the beginning, and so Blagoon became a revolutionary.
Speaker 1: He began to read literature by the autobiography of Malcom
Speaker 1: X and Robert Williams, spoke negroes with guns, and he
Speaker 1: also learned from the leaders that surrounded him, like the
Speaker 1: leader of the n c c UM and the leaders
Speaker 1: of of you know, the Black Panthers. What do you
Speaker 1: recognized someone long inspired by militancy is a black liberation
Speaker 1: only come about through protracted gorilla warfare. I don't think
Speaker 1: you have to go over like the origins of Black
Speaker 1: Panthers and detail um. But just to summarize, the Black
Speaker 1: Panther Party was founded in Oakland, California in response to
Speaker 1: the abuses of the police UM upon residents of Oakland,
Speaker 1: and so after Huey Newton, when the founders a Black
Speaker 1: Panther Party and one of his comrades got on a
Speaker 1: shootout with the Oakland Police Department and survived UM and
Speaker 1: one of the officers actually got fatally wounded. Newton basically
Speaker 1: became a national hero to the only England black youth
Speaker 1: who you know, like you can't even conceive that this
Speaker 1: guy fought the state and won. He had like a
Speaker 1: small win, but he won. And so that's when you
Speaker 1: see like the whole Free Huey movement kickoff, because you know,
Speaker 1: he was charged with phrase murder for his name the
Speaker 1: cop he shot, and Free hue was the Irallian cry,
Speaker 1: Black Pole and La circles. Eventually, BPP came to New
Speaker 1: York in some of the nine and I mean people
Speaker 1: try to kick off Black Panther Party New York beforehand
Speaker 1: in sixty six, but it didn't work out. So this
Speaker 1: new Black Panther Party in New York kicked off and
Speaker 1: began to build support in the hundreds. The same month
Speaker 1: that Dr King was assassinated, he had a lot of
Speaker 1: members of the b PP coming together two sort of
Speaker 1: figure out a direction because although they may have been
Speaker 1: critical of the Souf Rights movement, the lost Dr King
Speaker 1: was a major blue to everyone because even if they
Speaker 1: disagree with him, he was still an inspiration. So Bobby
Speaker 1: CeAl and Cathain Cleeveld came to New York and they
Speaker 1: appointed eighteen year old, eighteen year World ESSENCC member Judon
Speaker 1: Ford as acting Captain of Defense of the BPP. And
Speaker 1: that's another thing a lot of people forget, like these
Speaker 1: people are young, really young. Fred Hamilton died when he
Speaker 1: was twenty one, assassinated, of course, and so it's like
Speaker 1: an inspiration honestly, and also like a rallying cry for
Speaker 1: all young people who feel disimportant, disenchanted, disheartened by all
Speaker 1: the different aspects of collapse that us surrounded us, you know,
Speaker 1: like we can stand up and fight back. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so Judon Ford became the acting Captain Defense of the
Speaker 1: BPP of the East Coast and he was soon joined
Speaker 1: by David Brothers and they found the the BPP in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: In National leadership of the BPP also sent Ron penny
Speaker 1: Well to give directions to New York Chapter, and so
Speaker 1: Pennyell was there and he was involved, and he became
Speaker 1: a captain in the ranks, and he was very grassroots
Speaker 1: in his approach. The Harlem branch of the New York
Speaker 1: Chapter will be founded by Blue Bomber Shakur, who was
Speaker 1: the son of Malcolm X associates Suladin Shaku, and that
Speaker 1: same Saladin Shako was He served as a mentor and
Speaker 1: a servid father for many of the members of the
Speaker 1: New York of New York's Black Panther Party, and you know,
Speaker 1: all these different people and all these different groups and
Speaker 1: stuff for mixing and molding and melding and getting together.
Speaker 1: And eventually the New York chapter the BPP would grow
Speaker 1: to become among the largest, if not the largest, in
Speaker 1: the entire organization, but approximately five hundred members. So went
Speaker 1: Bytagoon found out the BPP was organized in New York.
Speaker 1: He went and he joined. He felt, you know, like
Speaker 1: empowered by the Black Panther Party's ten point program. And
Speaker 1: for those who don't know, the ten point program was,
Speaker 1: you know, a pretty straightforward. One. We want freedom. Two
Speaker 1: we want full employment. Three you want an end to
Speaker 1: the robbery by the white man of our black community.
Speaker 1: Four we want decent housing. Five want education that exposes
Speaker 1: the true nature of this decadent American society, teaches us
Speaker 1: a true history, not rule in present day society. Six
Speaker 1: you want black men to be exempt from military service. Seven.
Speaker 1: We want an immediate end to police brutality and mood
Speaker 1: of black people. Eight you want freedom for all black men.
Speaker 1: Helen federal, state, county, and city prisons and jails nine,
Speaker 1: you want all black people to be brought to child
Speaker 1: to be tried in a court by a jury of
Speaker 1: their peers from black communities because at the time, and
Speaker 1: I still exists today UM and even affected UM during
Speaker 1: tours in being tried for these things and some as
Speaker 1: single black face, and the entire jury it's entirely white,
Speaker 1: middle class upper class three members. And lastly ten, we
Speaker 1: want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And
Speaker 1: so Balagoon was drawn to this. He's identified with the
Speaker 1: organization's Maoist axiom that political power comes from the barrel
Speaker 1: of the gun um and was inspired by you know
Speaker 1: the way us that the Chinese Revolution inspired the Black
Speaker 1: Panther Party. However, the structure from the beginning, the structure
Speaker 1: of the Black Panther Party did pose some challenges for
Speaker 1: Balagoon and it really only got worse from there to
Speaker 1: The Black Panther Party was structured with the National Center
Speaker 1: Community the n SEC as the highest decision making body
Speaker 1: and the entire organization across the entire country. Even though
Speaker 1: the New York chapter was the largest in the entire
Speaker 1: UM Party, the ant C was concentrated in Oakland, which
Speaker 1: is where you know, the party was founded, and so
Speaker 1: most of the body was associated with people who knew
Speaker 1: Hugh Newton. There was a whole chain of command and
Speaker 1: like I said, that whole style and structure of governor
Speaker 1: speaking a factor and Baltagoon's attraction to anti authority in politics.
Speaker 1: And of course he was not alone in being critical
Speaker 1: of the structure of the party. John Cox, Shanty Allston
Speaker 1: learned to come to it and many others but also
Speaker 1: developed similar critiques, drawing them from a similar direction. Because
Speaker 1: Bagon had this experience organized and beforehand, and he recognized
Speaker 1: the good that you know, the party was doing, but
Speaker 1: he also taken issue with how the party was structured.
Speaker 1: So when he got involved, you know, he was ready
Speaker 1: to participate and work with oppressed black communities and around
Speaker 1: these basic issues. Um For example, in September nine, the
Speaker 1: Black Panther Party members participating in a community take over
Speaker 1: of Lincoln Hospital, which at the time was dilapidated and
Speaker 1: disinvested and was not able to save the predominantly black
Speaker 1: and Latino residents. As all Bronx and so the BPP
Speaker 1: in New York would work with the Puerto Rican Young
Speaker 1: Lords and the Professional Government of the Republic of New
Speaker 1: Africa to take over and reform the detox program at
Speaker 1: Lincoln Hospital. And that boldness again so inspirational, because how
Speaker 1: many of us are willing today two just like so
Speaker 1: boldly this walking and take over these broken institutions, to
Speaker 1: put them in the hands of the community, to make
Speaker 1: them whole, hopeful institutions for the people. I think we
Speaker 1: need more of that boldness. So New York Panthers were
Speaker 1: prey much involved in tennant organizing as well, which is
Speaker 1: right up Ballagoon's alley. Um oh, I guess we could
Speaker 1: call him rat catcher um. And they were also involved
Speaker 1: in fights for community control over the school system and
Speaker 1: the police. Eventually, Baldagoon and another Panther, Richard Harris, would
Speaker 1: be arrested in February nine on bank robbery charges in
Speaker 1: New York, New Jersey. On April second, n sixty nine,
Speaker 1: less than one year after the founding of the New
Speaker 1: York chapter of the b PP, twenty one Panther leaders
Speaker 1: and organizers, including Balagoon and Harris, were united twelve arrested
Speaker 1: and conspiracy charges and a thirty count indictment and of
Speaker 1: was This case became known as New York Panther one.
Speaker 1: The charges included conspiracy to bomb the New York Botanical
Speaker 1: gardens and police stations and two assassin police officers. And
Speaker 1: after the arrest, mostly defendants were released on a hundred
Speaker 1: tho dollars bail, but Blagoon was held without bail. So
Speaker 1: they were being charged for this like claim that they
Speaker 1: were going to ambush New York police. Um based on
Speaker 1: the testimony of one nineteen year old Panther member, Juan Byrd,
Speaker 1: who had been beaten by the police in order to
Speaker 1: you know, make a statement that was favorable to the prosecution,
Speaker 1: like beaten as an her mom pulled up to the
Speaker 1: police station to hear her daughter screaming visibly beaten with
Speaker 1: a black eyes, swollen lip, bruises on her face, everything,
Speaker 1: and so um Ballagoon and the other person who was
Speaker 1: be in charge with this attempt to ambush the police,
Speaker 1: who was a guy named Odinga, and he had escaped
Speaker 1: and went under ground, but Laguna Dot but then ended
Speaker 1: up going fleeing the United States, settling down in Algeria
Speaker 1: and all that jazz. But Blagoon not only was he
Speaker 1: charged with all the others were charged with, but he
Speaker 1: was separated from the others and face charges in New Jersey.
Speaker 1: All the others where in New York as and he
Speaker 1: was split in behind bars for two years. The other
Speaker 1: defendants whore acquitted. And as a result of you know,
Speaker 1: all this legal battling and maneuvering, since a lot of
Speaker 1: the key organizers and leaders as a New York Plat
Speaker 1: Panther Party were incarcerated, the organization was pretty badly crippled,
Speaker 1: and as with its you know, activities and general momentum,
Speaker 1: I think that's that's that's something that the Planted Party
Speaker 1: had to struggle with very often, having it's it's key members,
Speaker 1: it's it's leaders and and and members incarcerated and charged
Speaker 1: and facing trial. And so as a result, Panther Party
Speaker 1: was almost for almost its entire existence, was basically fighting
Speaker 1: charges and trying to get its members out of jail
Speaker 1: and this, that and the other. It's a lot of
Speaker 1: its efforts ended up treating towards that. So I think
Speaker 1: seeing now the New York Plant Party was crippled, I
Speaker 1: think it highlights the importance of distribution and decentralization when
Speaker 1: it comes to organizing it. How I the importance of
Speaker 1: as the future Stabolitionists of the Americans say, moving like
Speaker 1: my core is a my core is basically a mute
Speaker 1: world relationship between fungi and plant roots. So they move
Speaker 1: nutrients seen plants they're connected to, and they basically create
Speaker 1: this kind of fungal network that that spreads across an ecosystem,
Speaker 1: and it prevents researchers from basically able to see where
Speaker 1: they begin where they end. They you know, they grow slowly.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they pop up above ground there's like mushrooms and stuff,
Speaker 1: but primarily they exist underground. And so what the our
Speaker 1: future establishers are talking about is basically creating a movement
Speaker 1: that is primarily underground that spreads and is interconnected and
Speaker 1: cannot be pinned down with such a clear pinned down
Speaker 1: or easily infiltrated like how the party was able to
Speaker 1: with such a clear you know, structure and the chain
Speaker 1: of command. So basically move like mccres A, work from
Speaker 1: the ground or underground and work for the roots, work
Speaker 1: from the roots MHM. Eventually, after most of his comrades
Speaker 1: were acquitted, Balagum pleaded guilty to the charges that he
Speaker 1: and somebody else did attempt to shoot the police officers
Speaker 1: so then he became the only one of twenty one
Speaker 1: original defendants who was actually convicted. So that was going on. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, while the New York plant the case was
Speaker 1: being played out, Balagoon's politics were starting to shift revolutionary
Speaker 1: nationalism and democratic and the democratic centralism of the party
Speaker 1: were beginning to if you healthy critique, I would say,
Speaker 1: and Balagoon is starting to shift more towards anti authoritarian politics.
Speaker 1: At the same time, about's going through that political journey.
Speaker 1: More generally speaking, the New York Black Panther Party was
Speaker 1: getting to feel disenchanted with how the national leadership was
Speaker 1: handling things. Like the tension had already existed because of
Speaker 1: the differences in focus, you know what, the New York
Speaker 1: Panthers being more Pan African and the Oakland Panthers being
Speaker 1: more class focused. But one of the after one of
Speaker 1: the leaders of the Panther Party, Geronimo Pratt, had been
Speaker 1: purged from leadership for his coute que counter revolutionary behavior,
Speaker 1: um tension started to build because Pratt was seen as
Speaker 1: a hero to a lot of members of the New
Speaker 1: York UM Party because he had been very much parliamentary,
Speaker 1: he had been very much paramilitarily organized, and he had
Speaker 1: taken it up upon himselves the train Panther members in
Speaker 1: paramilitary tactics. And so after he was you know, push
Speaker 1: from the leadership um and a few other leaders were
Speaker 1: also pouged. The New York Panthers began to feel disconnected
Speaker 1: from the from the national because the whole reason they
Speaker 1: were attracted to the Panther Party is because of this
Speaker 1: this image of armed Panthers patrolling against the police of
Speaker 1: you know, underground perrilla warfare um, and so, you know,
Speaker 1: the New York Panther movement was very much associated with that.
Speaker 1: But once they saw the sort of pudges they were
Speaker 1: taken place, um, some of which they looked up to.
Speaker 1: When they saw that the national leadership sent these other
Speaker 1: guys Robert Bay and told on Stoli into New York
Speaker 1: to assume leadership of the chapter to basically important leaders
Speaker 1: from outside movement, rather than sort of bring up new ones,
Speaker 1: you know, from within the local community. It basically work
Speaker 1: to destabilize what the New York Panthers were working for.
Speaker 1: Because when these guys rolled up, they had a very autocratic,
Speaker 1: hierarchical style of leadership, unlike you know, the Pennywell guy
Speaker 1: who was very much grassroots in his approach. And I
Speaker 1: mean even as Sata Suku had like basically critiqued the
Speaker 1: quality of the West Coast leaders sent to New York
Speaker 1: when she spoke about how Robert Bay and Jolly, who
Speaker 1: are from the Rest Coast, had a very aggressive, and
Speaker 1: she said, a belligerent way of talking and dealing with people.
Speaker 1: And so that really what built up towards UM from
Speaker 1: simple initial differences of opinions and misunderstanding leaning towards the
Speaker 1: dissolution of the connection between the national leadership and the
Speaker 1: New York Chapter. The New York Chapter wanted to focus
Speaker 1: on things of a more national orientation. UM. They wanted
Speaker 1: to work on the tenant issues that they had started
Speaker 1: with in the first place, but the nationally appointed leadership
Speaker 1: was not interested in tenant issues and they don't want
Speaker 1: to play so much focus on on on you know,
Speaker 1: nationalists oriented issues Pan African, its US. And so when
Speaker 1: you know, these groups were reassigned from their tenant organizing
Speaker 1: to the s the people programs that were working in
Speaker 1: the West Coast that was also presented by the New
Speaker 1: York Panthers. Because the New York pan Douse they were
Speaker 1: you know, working on certain things. They had like tenant
Speaker 1: organizing behind their belt, and they had like these different
Speaker 1: mutual league projects and stuff going on, these you know,
Speaker 1: sort of support and solidarity things going on, and to
Speaker 1: be toold from the outside, Hey, stop doing this tenant
Speaker 1: organizing and stuff. Do these things as working where we
Speaker 1: are coming from. It didn't play out well yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean the last time in Or told me to do that,
Speaker 1: I left. I literally had this happen to me, which
Speaker 1: just like no, yeah, yeah, yeah, it doesn't work O.
Speaker 1: Not to mention. And I mean this was a criticism
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier about who. A lot of the focus
Speaker 1: ended up being towards um getting people out of jail
Speaker 1: and you know, dealing with legal defense. One thing about
Speaker 1: we criticized was the fact that the national leadership selected
Speaker 1: leader to him and who would be released from view
Speaker 1: m like, it didn't matter you know what the round
Speaker 1: and file or fell prisoners of war or who had
Speaker 1: the Lewis Bill or whatever, what about it is what
Speaker 1: the leadership, who the leadership wanted to be chosen to
Speaker 1: be allowed. And of course it should also be noted
Speaker 1: that parts of what was building these tensions and building
Speaker 1: these divisions quo until prove, and you know, the FBI
Speaker 1: working at every separate the way to foment divisions and
Speaker 1: fire up divisions within the national leadership, within the New
Speaker 1: York Chapter, even within the New York plants, the twenty
Speaker 1: one defendants. So you can't you can't reach that aspect
Speaker 1: of it. Yes we can. We can criticize these organizations
Speaker 1: and these movements for their missteps. We also to keep
Speaker 1: in mind the context that they were in, the tensions
Speaker 1: they were facing, and the fact that they were being
Speaker 1: openly assaulted and clandestinely assaulted by the US government and
Speaker 1: all you know, angles at all corners. I think sometimes
Speaker 1: it's like they both kind of fit together in that,
Speaker 1: Like if you look at what the U. S. Intelligence
Speaker 1: Services were good at, right the very the very specific
Speaker 1: thing they'd become incredibly good at because they've been doing
Speaker 1: it for you know, like basically since the end of
Speaker 1: World War Two, is that they were really really good
Speaker 1: at hammering down these like these sort of like centralized
Speaker 1: party apparatus. Is like that's how they basically turned cpu
Speaker 1: SA from like genuinely really powerful political movement the thirties
Speaker 1: to like by the fifties, it's entirely run by like
Speaker 1: the FBI, and so yeah, it's like this is this
Speaker 1: is kind of mismatch here because it's like, on the
Speaker 1: one hand, you're suffering incredibly heavy repression, but then also
Speaker 1: it's like the political form that you're taking is a
Speaker 1: form that the U. S. State has gotten really really
Speaker 1: good at fighting. So the two issues sort of like
Speaker 1: compound each other exactly exactly. And so of course, like
Speaker 1: it's not like the rank and file that necessarily just
Speaker 1: going to roll over fun that these things happen, right,
Speaker 1: So they were trying their best to like submit these
Speaker 1: criticisms to the national leadership through the like Black Panther newspaper,
Speaker 1: but eventually the New York Panther twenty one defendants took
Speaker 1: a public position and there was seen as critical of
Speaker 1: the national leadership when they sent an open letter to
Speaker 1: the Weather Underground, which they published on the nineteenth January,
Speaker 1: those who don't know the weather on the ground was
Speaker 1: basically a bunch of um white radicals who basically we're
Speaker 1: trying to fight the U. S. Government by doing a
Speaker 1: bunch of bollins and fighting souldarity with national liberation movements
Speaker 1: like in Vietnam. Yeah, the stuff ranges from like pretty funny,
Speaker 1: like they kept blowing up the statue for the Haymarket cops,
Speaker 1: to like, what are you guys doing? It's it was.
Speaker 1: It was a very weird organization. Yeah, yeah, quite quite
Speaker 1: quite the characters and so um. The Open Letter applauded
Speaker 1: the insludent actions because Cubman New York Party was very
Speaker 1: much intact militant sort of stuff. So the Open Letter
Speaker 1: applauded the insludent actions of the Weather Underground and acknowledged
Speaker 1: them as part of the Van God of the revolutionary
Speaker 1: movements United States. They never mentioned the national leadership of
Speaker 1: the b p P, but they also critiqued like kind
Speaker 1: of like a a subtle sort of unspoken kind of thing,
Speaker 1: shady kind of through shade. Basically, they were like critical
Speaker 1: of self proclaimed a vanguard parties that abandoned the action
Speaker 1: to the radical and the ground struggle and the political prisoners.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's as open as you could be with
Speaker 1: the actually saying. But yeah, so of course, and Babdagoon
Speaker 1: was you know, he agreed with this criticism. And so
Speaker 1: because the national leadership had you know, wasn't you know
Speaker 1: actually attacking the occupational forces of the la Ploma state anymore. Um.
Speaker 1: And because you know, a lot of money being collected
Speaker 1: was going towards Bill, and a lot of people were
Speaker 1: sycriticizing the fact that some of the leaders who were
Speaker 1: beginning to live pretty comfortably while a lot of the
Speaker 1: rank and file was based we were sitting out in jail.
Speaker 1: Once the letter went out, new Turn basically expelled the
Speaker 1: Plant and basically declared the Plant at one enemies of
Speaker 1: the people. Jesus. Yeah, a lot of them, and not
Speaker 1: just Plant the twenty one, but also the New York
Speaker 1: EPP leaders in general, just all of them branded enemies
Speaker 1: of the people. Um. Some of the defendants like Richard
Speaker 1: to Ruben Moore and set Away Table and a few
Speaker 1: others also ended up going to Algeria late in the month.
Speaker 1: Members of the New York Black Panther Party who will
Speaker 1: the press conference and basically equal for the purge of
Speaker 1: human Newton and the Planta Party chief of staff David
Speaker 1: Hilliard and the formation of a new National Central Committee
Speaker 1: and basically, like I said, officially split from the National Organization.
Speaker 1: I want to find interesting able with that approach to
Speaker 1: it is they basically fought fire with fire, for one,
Speaker 1: so you're like, oh, you want to call us enemy
Speaker 1: of the people, we were going to call you enemies
Speaker 1: of the people. And then on top of that, you
Speaker 1: also have to deal with the fact that their solution
Speaker 1: to the problem of the National Central Committee being too
Speaker 1: big for their bridges and interfere and with their grassroots
Speaker 1: politics was like, you know, we needed a new National
Speaker 1: Central Committee. Well, you know what, this reminds me of
Speaker 1: a lot. Yes, it reminds me of a lot of
Speaker 1: the stuff that happens in the sort of early cultural
Speaker 1: revolution where it's like you have a bunch of people well,
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, the big difference of the early culture revolutions,
Speaker 1: like every single group is like claiming at their loyal demount.
Speaker 1: But like you get a lot of these things where
Speaker 1: you know, people people will be like, hey, the party
Speaker 1: has been becoming incredibly overbearing, and then you get like
Speaker 1: most of them are just like okay, like our solution
Speaker 1: to this is we are now the party. But then
Speaker 1: you you get these sort of like ultra left groups
Speaker 1: who are making sort of like not exactly anarchist but
Speaker 1: are making sort of structural critiques of it, and those
Speaker 1: guys just get like purged and killed. I don't know,
Speaker 1: the dynamics and the critiques remind me of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's something that we see just in general
Speaker 1: and politics. Honestly, it's a sort of limitation of the imagination. Wait,
Speaker 1: people aren't on't conceiving of things like outside of what
Speaker 1: has already been done. I mean, I myself and guilty
Speaker 1: of this because a lot of my inspirations are like
Speaker 1: pre colonial coaches and you know, societies and stuff. But
Speaker 1: still I try to like bring those into a new
Speaker 1: context and think of ways that can be applied differently.
Speaker 1: I just when you think about this approach it where
Speaker 1: you have the issues of the National Central Committee, the
Speaker 1: solution is to create a new central Committee rather than
Speaker 1: consider an approach that's not involved a National Central Committee. Um.
Speaker 1: I think that's something we see all too all too often,
Speaker 1: or even like just nostalgia politics in general, people's whole
Speaker 1: approach to politics is trying to replicate past movements. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so as you see in balagoons involvements, you know, well,
Speaker 1: as a child, I'm gonna with his parents, you know,
Speaker 1: with the Cambridge protests with the army and his involvement
Speaker 1: in that. But the New York Tenants organizing UM with
Speaker 1: the Plant, the Party, with the Europa Temple, all these
Speaker 1: things how to inform his political development, inspired him to
Speaker 1: be part of dynamic revolutionary movements that he respected and
Speaker 1: he loved and he trusted. But it also helped him
Speaker 1: to question the decision making and the nature of organizations
Speaker 1: and how the structure of organizations um relates to state repression.
Speaker 1: So my name Jail. You tend to have a lot,
Speaker 1: a lot of time to think and consider, and so
Speaker 1: Bablagoon wanted to sit and think and basically correct all
Speaker 1: these ideological weaknesses that are the stirring in his head
Speaker 1: that basically compromised the militant liberation movements that he wanted
Speaker 1: to see liberate his people. So I can good by
Speaker 1: saying that we must learn from the past. In this
Speaker 1: you know, short for agents about Lagoon's life, We've ended
Speaker 1: up coming to a lot of different conversations about the
Speaker 1: nature of movements today. And I think that sort of
Speaker 1: critical approach to you know, people's history something we should
Speaker 1: be doing more often in our modern discussions of the past,
Speaker 1: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Anyway, join us
Speaker 1: for part two of Valagoon's journey, as we explore his
Speaker 1: path towards new African anarchism. You can find me Andrew
Speaker 1: on YouTube, dot com slash Andwism, and on Twitter at
Speaker 1: underscore saying true this has been It could Happen Here?
Speaker 1: Chris was here too. Yeah. You can find us at
Speaker 1: Happened Here Pod on Twitter and Instagram. Follow us at
Speaker 1: the Cool Zone. Yeah, I'll see you next time. Welcome
Speaker 1: to It Could Happen Here, the podcast about stuff falling
Speaker 1: apart and how we can maybe put some of it
Speaker 1: back together. Today, I'm your host, Garrison Davis. Though this
Speaker 1: episode is going to be more of an it did
Speaker 1: happen here sort of thing, as this is part one
Speaker 1: of a special three part series made in collaboration with
Speaker 1: the Atlantic Community Press about the history of the old
Speaker 1: Atlanta Prison Farm. If you haven't listened to my super
Speaker 1: sized three hour two part series on the Defend the
Speaker 1: Atlanta Forest Movement from last May, i'd recommend you check
Speaker 1: that out just for you know, extra context, but it's
Speaker 1: not strictly necessary, as will be mostly going over history
Speaker 1: for these next few episodes, although I will sprinkle in
Speaker 1: updates about what's been happening in Atlanta related to the
Speaker 1: stop Cop City movement throughout this series. At the end
Speaker 1: of this episode, there will be a summary about the
Speaker 1: most recent week of action now for this series, not
Speaker 1: only did the Atlantic Community Press provide the vast majority
Speaker 1: of the historical research and format for these episodes, I
Speaker 1: was also able to record with two members of the collective,
Speaker 1: Sam and Laura, so you'll hear snippets of our conversations
Speaker 1: over the course of these next few episodes as well.
Speaker 1: Last year, in the lead up to the Atlanta's City
Speaker 1: Council signing over hundreds of acres of forest to the
Speaker 1: Atlanta Police Foundation to build a state of the art
Speaker 1: militarized police training facility, complete with a large mock city,
Speaker 1: around that same time, a group of people decided to
Speaker 1: look into the history of the land in question, famed
Speaker 1: for being the site of an old federal prison honor farm.
Speaker 1: This was also around the same time last year when
Speaker 1: more atrocities of the residential school systems were being unearthed,
Speaker 1: and with the Atlanta Police Foundations plans to bulldoze large
Speaker 1: sections of forest that were once used as an old
Speaker 1: labor prison, the possibility of disturbing forgotten grave sites seemed
Speaker 1: to be worth considering. Um, okay, I'm Sam. I help
Speaker 1: out with I do research for the Atlantic Community Press Collective, UM,
Speaker 1: so that means I file open records requests. I accidentally
Speaker 1: I helped accidentally write a seventeen page history report in summer,
Speaker 1: and I listened to fun things like community stakeholders committee
Speaker 1: meetings and UH council meetings. What is the inception for
Speaker 1: the Atlantic Community Press Collective. So at the beginning, it
Speaker 1: was me, Laura and another friend of ours, and we
Speaker 1: were all just kind of involved on the periphery of
Speaker 1: the movement. Laura, please feel free to correct me if
Speaker 1: direct me also, but just as part of the general
Speaker 1: movement and resistance to Cops City. One of us raised
Speaker 1: the question I based on when the prison farm was
Speaker 1: an operation. One of us asked, I wonder if they're
Speaker 1: unmarked graves there, because given the error in which the
Speaker 1: prison farm was an operation, it's not unrealistic that people
Speaker 1: were just buried on site, especially m for prisoners who
Speaker 1: didn't have families to claim them, which is horrible, but
Speaker 1: there you go. Um. That was sort of the genesis
Speaker 1: of our history report. And then I guess naturally, as
Speaker 1: an extension of that, we started asking questions of city
Speaker 1: government and county government about the I guess construction process
Speaker 1: of Cops City. Throughout the development of Cops City, concerns
Speaker 1: regarding environmental racism, police violence, and land stewardship in an
Speaker 1: era of climate change have all been discussed, if not
Speaker 1: by local government or the Atlanta Police Foundation, but at
Speaker 1: least by community members, some local press, and national media.
Speaker 1: Despite this, very little is actually publicly known about the
Speaker 1: actual history of the land that Atlanta Police Foundation wants
Speaker 1: to build Cops City on and the history of the
Speaker 1: prison farm itself. The most often cited histories suggests that
Speaker 1: the land was the site of a federal prison farm
Speaker 1: that was later taken over by the city and then
Speaker 1: soon abandoned. Archival research into the site on Key Road,
Speaker 1: conducted by volunteers with the Atlantic Community Press, tell a
Speaker 1: different story. Months of archival research trivial that not only
Speaker 1: was it never run federally, it was run as a
Speaker 1: city prison farm uninterrupted from about nineteen twenty to the
Speaker 1: early nine nineties and doing considerable harm to those incarcerated throughout.
Speaker 1: Despite claims of reform made at every stage through the
Speaker 1: gathering of old legal notices, old newspaper articles, letters from nurses,
Speaker 1: legislative and inspection records, and oral histories of forgotten legacy
Speaker 1: of torture, overcrowding slave conditions, quote unquote, the lack of healthcare,
Speaker 1: labor strikes, death, and unmarked Popper's graves have slowly been
Speaker 1: rediscovered through Atlanta's radical scene. And this just barely scratches
Speaker 1: the surface. As the Atlantic community press conducted their research,
Speaker 1: to conflicting surprises arose, one being that there was just
Speaker 1: so much available historical documentation that seemingly very few people
Speaker 1: had dug into and put together correctly in the past,
Speaker 1: and two that there was so much information that was
Speaker 1: just missing entirely, records that were either just missing, destroyed, misfiled,
Speaker 1: or possibly were never kept in the first place. The
Speaker 1: nature of this kind of archival research is pulling on
Speaker 1: one question and then finding dozens more. With limited time
Speaker 1: and resources, you can find yourself with more questions than
Speaker 1: definitive answers. These episodes are meant to just be a
Speaker 1: brief overview of the broad strokes of this history, while
Speaker 1: also serving as a survey of the possible directions that
Speaker 1: further research can take. Many people, including an individual on
Speaker 1: the Community Stakeholder Advisory Committee for the Atlanta Public Safety
Speaker 1: Training Center a k a COP City, have advocated that
Speaker 1: there must be responsible, in depth investigations into the history
Speaker 1: of this land and many of its current physical attributes
Speaker 1: before any further development could take place. Katherine Nichols already
Speaker 1: laid the groundwork for such research in her thesis on
Speaker 1: the unmarked graves and burial grounds of the Brandon Indian
Speaker 1: Residential School System and the history of what took place
Speaker 1: during its operation. A three pronged approach includes archival research,
Speaker 1: field research, and qualitative interviews with effective members of community.
Speaker 1: This type of research will be discussed more in the
Speaker 1: third episode. However, this research would take time, and with
Speaker 1: construction and deforestation attempts proceeding at an increasing rate, the
Speaker 1: opportunity to do further on the ground historical research is
Speaker 1: quickly vanishing. The same policing institutions that caused so much
Speaker 1: harm are increasingly trying to physically bulldoze away centuries of history.
Speaker 1: We did not set out to write this word. We
Speaker 1: did not We did not know literally when we started
Speaker 1: writing this that the Wooten Report and the same we
Speaker 1: old Atlanta prison farm campaigns proved it incorrect history. We
Speaker 1: didn't know there were two more than two. Frankly, prison farms.
Speaker 1: No one's wrong for not knowing about this, But we've
Speaker 1: emailed this to city council repeatedly. Laura has Laura has
Speaker 1: done amazing, tenacious work and just making sure that every
Speaker 1: single government official involved in this project knows exactly what
Speaker 1: kind of violence there perpetuating the cops. City is bad
Speaker 1: enough on its own, but when you have an accurate
Speaker 1: historical understanding of not just what they are building, but
Speaker 1: where they are building it, it's beyond the pale. It's
Speaker 1: beyond belief. It's it's disgusting. They want to build this
Speaker 1: and stolen indigenous land. They want to build this on
Speaker 1: a slave plantation. Are you kidding me? What were we
Speaker 1: out in the streets for? What are people still out
Speaker 1: in the streets are? I know they know what we're saying.
Speaker 1: I know they know who we are. I know they're listening.
Speaker 1: It's just disgusting. It's disgusting to me. Before we continue,
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about the idea of history.
Speaker 1: I think for a lot of people, especially white people,
Speaker 1: are engagement with history is often so distant we keep
Speaker 1: ourselves othered, conceptualizing history as some abstract narrative instead of
Speaker 1: the direct flesh and blood we ourselves and our systemic
Speaker 1: relations grew out of. History should be the tales and
Speaker 1: songs of joy and sorrow and pain, generational wisdom and
Speaker 1: trauma told by the people who lived it, not just
Speaker 1: a list of names and the numerical record keeping of
Speaker 1: the structures that caused ongoing suffering, which still benefit from
Speaker 1: this abstraction. Preserving history for its own sake is all
Speaker 1: and good, but doing preservation with an explicit, ecological and
Speaker 1: intersectional drive can be much more insightful, not to mention,
Speaker 1: respectful for those who it literally happened to in the past.
Speaker 1: This perspective argues for the preservation on the basis of
Speaker 1: its material effects on people both past and present, and
Speaker 1: to demonstrate the direct continuity of control of these structures
Speaker 1: over the people they affect and the repeating patterns of
Speaker 1: rhetoric used to justify it. Similarly, Katherine Nichols points out
Speaker 1: in her residential school thesis that it's essential to view
Speaker 1: this type of history and these records within a full
Speaker 1: living context. Obviously, a complete consideration of context is outside
Speaker 1: the small scope of this podcast and could probably make
Speaker 1: up multiple volumes of books. The time period will be
Speaker 1: diving into, roughly the nineteen twenties to present day, has
Speaker 1: been home to an unceasing trend of the criminalization of
Speaker 1: many marginalized peoples, especially black, Indigenous, poor, disabled, and mentally
Speaker 1: ill people, which will see demonstrated throughout the story told
Speaker 1: here and on into the present. This criminalization of marginalized
Speaker 1: people's coincides with institutions of power engaging in what Lauren
Speaker 1: Berland calls the slow death. The phrase slow death refers
Speaker 1: to the physical wearing out of a population and the
Speaker 1: deterioration of people in that population that is very nearly
Speaker 1: a defining condition of their experience and historical existence. It's
Speaker 1: like a mass phenomenon of material and metaphysical restriction that
Speaker 1: typically already marginalized people face when living under capitalist or
Speaker 1: authoritative governing structures. The slow death manifests by intentionally and
Speaker 1: repeatedly subjugating people to events and conditions known to contribute
Speaker 1: to suffering, resulting in an early death of those deemed
Speaker 1: less valuable by capital interests, sometimes even at their own expense.
Speaker 1: Other times for the sake of profit. All that gets
Speaker 1: passed down through generations with the corresponding generational trauma that
Speaker 1: becomes a defining feature of personal and cultural identity. In
Speaker 1: the case of the prison farm, we see the slow
Speaker 1: death and living history in many forms. A swastika found
Speaker 1: in one of the bedrooms, white inmates going on strike.
Speaker 1: Shortly after the prison farm is racially integrated, Stokely Carmichael
Speaker 1: is held at the farm for several days on the
Speaker 1: charge of loitering. At the height of the Civil rights era,
Speaker 1: after Martin Luther King's assassination, donkeys from the prison farm
Speaker 1: pull his casket through town. Own nurses beg for more
Speaker 1: tuberculosis tests for overcrowded prisoners. Homeless alcoholics are repeatedly cycled
Speaker 1: in and out of the system. All of these instances
Speaker 1: are similar to others both at the time and now
Speaker 1: in present today, and reflect the racial and class dynamics
Speaker 1: at the heart of the constral system. These same socio
Speaker 1: political forces continued to shape the social landscape of Atlanta,
Speaker 1: whether that be through the criminalization of Atlanta's water boys,
Speaker 1: black teenagers who sell ice cold drinks to motorists. We
Speaker 1: also see it in the ongoing eviction and housing crisis,
Speaker 1: the lack of resources in the midst of a pandemic,
Speaker 1: the continued cycling of homeless people through the prison system
Speaker 1: instead of providing humane housing, the squashing of anti state
Speaker 1: protests but allowance of white supremacists and anti vax protests.
Speaker 1: All these highlight the further need for this history to
Speaker 1: be told by the people it affects, rather than the
Speaker 1: institutions responsible, which are already seeking to take hold and
Speaker 1: control the narratives surrounding this piece of land and their
Speaker 1: own history. The Police Foundation has announced its intention to
Speaker 1: build separate museums on the site, dedicated to police officers, firefighters,
Speaker 1: and the labor prison that was once located there. The
Speaker 1: museum idea has been framed as a concession to last
Speaker 1: year's anti cops city call in campaigns, a concession that
Speaker 1: will result in land being paved over and as sanitized,
Speaker 1: police approved history to be built over top the offending
Speaker 1: institutions like the Atlanta Police Department, the Atlanta Police Foundation,
Speaker 1: City Council in the Mayor's office, and the media organizations
Speaker 1: which support them try to pay lip service to the
Speaker 1: atrocities of the past as quickly as possible while retaining
Speaker 1: all the power and then bulldozing for the forgotten history
Speaker 1: as well discuss vague gestures towards the harms of the
Speaker 1: past without material accountability for the harm done have been
Speaker 1: used throughout the prison Farm's history to justify continued control
Speaker 1: of physical and narrative space, and is simply vapid virtue signaling. Now,
Speaker 1: before we deep dive into the prison farm itself, as
Speaker 1: a part of the intent to place the history in
Speaker 1: its full living context, it's necessary to state the land
Speaker 1: the prison farm was built on was a thriving trade
Speaker 1: hub for Native Americans throughout the continent. Every story that
Speaker 1: takes place in quote unquote America has grown from genocide, colonialism,
Speaker 1: broken treaties, and the division of interconnected land into individual
Speaker 1: parcels for ownership. This is part of the history and
Speaker 1: needs to be reckoned with and fully reconciled before anyone
Speaker 1: can truly be free. That extensive history is outside the
Speaker 1: scope of this episode, but we are trying to get
Speaker 1: such topics discussed on this platform with more qualified people.
Speaker 1: The most frequently cited history about this piece of land
Speaker 1: is a historical analysis of the Atlanta Prison of Farm
Speaker 1: by Jillian Wootton of the City Planning Department, written in nine.
Speaker 1: In it, we are told that the Key Road property
Speaker 1: was purchased in nineteen eighteen by the Bureau of Prisons
Speaker 1: and the United States federal government. It was called the
Speaker 1: Honor Farm, and federal prisoners grew crops and raised livestock
Speaker 1: to feed the population of the nearby Federal penitentiary. The
Speaker 1: piece claims that the site operated until nineteen six when
Speaker 1: it was then purchased by the Atlanta City government and
Speaker 1: shut down soon after, at which point the history becomes murky,
Speaker 1: as a single report of a labor strike on the
Speaker 1: land seems to contradict claims of the nineteen sixties closing.
Speaker 1: If you just google old Planta Prison Farm, there's two
Speaker 1: things that are going to come up. There's a campaign
Speaker 1: called Save the Old Atlanta Prison Farm, and this website
Speaker 1: tells you the story of how in the early to
Speaker 1: mid twentieth century, the federal government operated a prison farm
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, and then sometime in the fifties, the city
Speaker 1: of Atlanta took it over. And it links to a
Speaker 1: document written in by a person named Gillian Luton, who
Speaker 1: I think was probably doing the best She could in
Speaker 1: given the difficulties we had in researching this, and what
Speaker 1: this commonly cited history, the Save the Old Wlanta Prison
Speaker 1: Farm campaign and this more official report written by Jillian
Speaker 1: Luton tell you is again that sometime in the fifties
Speaker 1: the city bought this prison bar territory. We found nothing
Speaker 1: to support that. If our initial question was where the
Speaker 1: graves where the body is buried, the question we ended
Speaker 1: up asking was, well, when did the city take over
Speaker 1: the prison farm from the federal government. And we kept
Speaker 1: going back and back and back further into historical record
Speaker 1: until we eventually got to around nineteen eleven, when the
Speaker 1: city itself bought the property that would become Cops City
Speaker 1: and operated their own prison farm and long store. Short
Speaker 1: the conclusion we came to was the federal prison farm
Speaker 1: was a completely separate property, a completely separate prison system.
Speaker 1: And sometimes even though this prison farm really only shut
Speaker 1: down sometime around the early nineteen nineties, in the course
Speaker 1: of just a few decades, we've forgotten the story of
Speaker 1: the people who were incurcerated there and the story of
Speaker 1: the prison farm to the way where we don't even
Speaker 1: understand that it was its own thing, which is it's
Speaker 1: it just makes me angry, Like every abuse possible you
Speaker 1: can imagine happened at the prison farm and we can't
Speaker 1: even we've just completed it with another prison. Horrible, horrible
Speaker 1: things happened. Like that's how poor custodians have been of
Speaker 1: this history. A lot of people don't know that there
Speaker 1: were actually three prison farms running all in Atlanta essentially
Speaker 1: once technically technically two of them are into cap Um.
Speaker 1: There was the U. S Prison Farm Number one federally run.
Speaker 1: That's the one that most people know now as an
Speaker 1: apartment complex. Uh sorry, I don't remember it off the
Speaker 1: top of my head. Then there's number two, which is
Speaker 1: what people know as the quote unquote on our farm
Speaker 1: near Panthersville. Then we have the City of Atlanta prison farm.
Speaker 1: So there are three running at the exact scene time,
Speaker 1: all with that a fairly short distance from each other.
Speaker 1: This isn't something that was unique to Georgia by any means,
Speaker 1: but the history of it is largely ignored. Convict least
Speaker 1: labor was incredibly common. The archive Atlanta Sorry did a
Speaker 1: podcast specifically on the convict least labor that was done
Speaker 1: to build the Atlanta streets basically every street in Atlanta
Speaker 1: was built by convict least labor, and a lot of
Speaker 1: that labor came from the Atlanta Prison Farm as well
Speaker 1: as some of the other prison farms around. There's also
Speaker 1: the Chattahoochee Brickworks Company that was recently turned into a
Speaker 1: public park, and it was historically acknowledged by our mayor,
Speaker 1: Mayor Dickens for its horrific atrocities of slave labor or
Speaker 1: building or creating these bricks at the company m where
Speaker 1: many people died. So there's just this hypocrisy of hey,
Speaker 1: we're using slave labor at this location and it is horrific,
Speaker 1: and we are going to acknowledge that, and we are
Speaker 1: going to put a plaque out there and do a
Speaker 1: ribbon cutting ceremony and truly acknowledge this atrocity. Whereas here,
Speaker 1: because they want the land, they're just going to cover
Speaker 1: it up and oh, hey, our acknowledgement from this is
Speaker 1: we're going to utilize some marble library stones in our
Speaker 1: capaganda entrance to the horse bearings. That's pretty much what
Speaker 1: they're going to do. The Atlantic Community Press research found
Speaker 1: that the Wooton History Report actually conflates three different properties.
Speaker 1: Property number one, a prison farm on the property of
Speaker 1: the Federal Penitentiary, where the penitentiary still exists today. Another property,
Speaker 1: number two was a second prison farm on Panthersville Road
Speaker 1: that was purchased from farmers in nineteen twenty and was
Speaker 1: used to supplement the production of the first federal prison farm.
Speaker 1: But the third property, and the one that we're focused
Speaker 1: on here today, is the one on Key Road in
Speaker 1: unincorporated decap County. This one was only ever owned and
Speaker 1: operated by the city government and was used to produce
Speaker 1: food for city prisons. It operated from up until the
Speaker 1: early nineties before shutting down and being abandoned and then
Speaker 1: used as a dumping ground for the city until now
Speaker 1: where they have plans to turn it into a militarized
Speaker 1: police training facility. After serving as a slave plantation, the
Speaker 1: Key Road property operated as a municipal dairy farm, but
Speaker 1: accusations that the farm was loosing the city money, coupled
Speaker 1: with the ongoing scandals at the city jail stockade in Glenwood,
Speaker 1: opened up debates within the city government ranging from nineteen
Speaker 1: fifteen to nineteen twenty about closing the old stockade and
Speaker 1: moving prisoners to the municipal dairy farm. The stockade was
Speaker 1: overcrowded and unprofitable, and expanding it would cost the city
Speaker 1: too much money. Meanwhile, the area it was in was
Speaker 1: developing quickly and quote filling up with small property owners,
Speaker 1: and the presence of the stockade is an hindrance to
Speaker 1: further development unquote. They proposed building a park, or a
Speaker 1: golf course, or school or all three on the land
Speaker 1: to cater to new residents. Meanwhile, the Superintendent of Prisons, T. B. Langford,
Speaker 1: who had also inexplicably be put in control of the
Speaker 1: municipal dairy in nineteen eighteen, was the subject of a
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty Atlantic Constitution piece that examined Atlanta Humane Society
Speaker 1: claims of women's stockade prisoners being tied to a chair
Speaker 1: known as the Bucking chair and whipped with a strap
Speaker 1: for disobedience. He at first denied these claims, saying that
Speaker 1: white women at the stock aide were never whipped to
Speaker 1: his knowledge and quote Negro women only seldom so unquote.
Speaker 1: An investigation apparently disproved this, and he was ordered to
Speaker 1: stop the corporal punishment, which he argued was both good
Speaker 1: and necessary and should not be stopped because changing the
Speaker 1: course would be an admission of having done something wrong.
Speaker 1: He argued that workshy prisoners would need to be motivated somehow,
Speaker 1: so by the end of January nineteen twenty, Atlantic City
Speaker 1: Council passed a law banning whippings and offering a new
Speaker 1: form of punishment instead quote solitary confinement on a diet
Speaker 1: of bread and water unquote. Complaints of the stockade losing
Speaker 1: money continued into April nine, and T. B. Langford suggested
Speaker 1: moving the whole operation to the dairy farm, which he
Speaker 1: also controlled. Conveniently, prohibition had started earlier that year, so
Speaker 1: it was suggested that the city could save a lot
Speaker 1: of money by making a new influx of prisoners work
Speaker 1: this city dairy. Moving prisoners to the dairy farm had
Speaker 1: one problem. It was not legal to build prison facilities
Speaker 1: on land outside city limits, and the Key Road property
Speaker 1: was located in unincorporated de Cap County despite being owned
Speaker 1: by the City of Atlanta. This problem was easily solved
Speaker 1: by city council, who simply passed a bill making it
Speaker 1: legal to build city prison facilities on land outside the city,
Speaker 1: even outside of Fulton County. By November, the proposal to
Speaker 1: close this cockade and move the prisoners to the dairy
Speaker 1: farm was agreed upon, and from that point forward, the
Speaker 1: Key Road Municipal Dairy Farm became the Atlanta City Prison
Speaker 1: and Dairy Farm, later simplified to the Atlantic City Prison Farm.
Speaker 1: Council members were being praised for bringing in the quote
Speaker 1: largest number of prisoners at any one time in the
Speaker 1: past ten years, saving the city twenty dollars a day
Speaker 1: on the cost of feeding prisoners, and increasing dairy production
Speaker 1: by two hundred and fifty gallons a week unquote. It
Speaker 1: was seen as a win win win for the new
Speaker 1: property owners, city government, and police, but it was a
Speaker 1: huge loss for the most vulnerable citizens of the city
Speaker 1: and for the residents of the surrounding Decab County area
Speaker 1: who had no way of consenting to this deal, just
Speaker 1: like how modern day Decab County residents have no say whatsoever.
Speaker 1: And Atlanta's goals of building a militarized police training compound
Speaker 1: with a gun range and explosives testing section in what
Speaker 1: would formerly be there forested backyard, I mean building cups
Speaker 1: city here is just a continuation of the violence that
Speaker 1: has been done to this land since the earliest since
Speaker 1: time and memorial like this was. This was first of all,
Speaker 1: this was stolen Muskogee land. Then it was a plantation.
Speaker 1: Then it was a prison farm, which is just an
Speaker 1: extension of being a plantation. When it stopped being a
Speaker 1: prison farm and just started being mostly a prison, horrible
Speaker 1: horrible things were done to people and the solitary confinement cells.
Speaker 1: This mostly happened in the eighties. Then we the prison
Speaker 1: and the farming stopped. It just became a commercial dumping
Speaker 1: ground in an area of the city that already has
Speaker 1: some of the worst water quality and air quality standards
Speaker 1: and in the whole metro area. UM the South River
Speaker 1: Forest Coalition and the South River Watershed Alliance are the
Speaker 1: best sources for that. UM. But this was stolen land
Speaker 1: from the bee at the store. The start the story
Speaker 1: was stolen land. And then I guess the last historical
Speaker 1: record is social and environmental injustice. And now you want
Speaker 1: to give it to the police in this day and age,
Speaker 1: I guess you could say, like it's just compounding violence
Speaker 1: upon violence upon violence. Okay, now it's time for the
Speaker 1: update that I promised on the Week of Action that
Speaker 1: recently took place in Atlanta. So near the end of
Speaker 1: this past July from the there was another week of
Speaker 1: Action as a part of the movement to Defend the
Speaker 1: Atlanta Forest and Stop Cops City. Before things even kicked off,
Speaker 1: Ryan Millsap of Black Hole Movie students, just days before
Speaker 1: the July Week of Action put up concrete barricades around
Speaker 1: the section of forest that currently operates as a public
Speaker 1: park that protests had previously gathered in. He later made
Speaker 1: an appearance alongside some bulldozers in Entrenchment Creek Park where
Speaker 1: then said bulldozers seemingly accidentally question mark damaged a park gazebo.
Speaker 1: So great work, Ryan. We just wrapped up our week
Speaker 1: of action. Obviously, we did a whole bunch of really
Speaker 1: awesome events. UM writer's workshops, we had multiple music festivals,
Speaker 1: daily A meetings, medic trainings, we did an arcan training
Speaker 1: and distribution daily meals. I personally, UM had the fortune
Speaker 1: to attend to talk by John Lash who was incarcerated
Speaker 1: at what is now called Metro Reentry Center, but at
Speaker 1: the time was called Metro State Prison, which is just
Speaker 1: across the street UM from the south end of the
Speaker 1: child prison that's on the south end of the prison
Speaker 1: farm property. This was the most well attended week of
Speaker 1: action there has been so far, especially on the first
Speaker 1: Saturday with the first music festival, like as some as
Speaker 1: folks were leaving, like people not at all affiliated with
Speaker 1: the forest movement beforehand, or like heard about the music
Speaker 1: like the school music festival in the woods. They were
Speaker 1: brought in by the music festival. But then we were
Speaker 1: able to educate them on the fight to defend this
Speaker 1: forest in their neighborhood, which is like that is the goal.
Speaker 1: That was an amazing experience. There were three different instances
Speaker 1: of arrests during this most recent week of action. On
Speaker 1: July in Cobb County, on the north end of the
Speaker 1: Metro Atlanta area, four people were arrested at a noise
Speaker 1: demo outside of a contractor's residence. Police scanner audio has
Speaker 1: cops discussing charges for the people who were standing outside
Speaker 1: on public property to include criminal trespass and also discussed
Speaker 1: was quote with the eco terrorists happening in the county,
Speaker 1: possible domestic terrorist charges unquote, it will be criminal trespass,
Speaker 1: will be wrong with the eco terrorists and happened in
Speaker 1: the county. Domestic terrorism as well, wasn't possible domestic terrorism
Speaker 1: as well? It will be negative ontomestic terrorism. That last
Speaker 1: cop they're called a negative on domestic terrorism. This was
Speaker 1: not the first instance of law enforcement referring to defend
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Forest protesters as eco terrorists. On July six,
Speaker 1: people were arrested near the ruins of the old prison
Speaker 1: Farm for criminal trespassing, seemingly just for hanging out in
Speaker 1: the prison farm area, which has been a well known
Speaker 1: urban exploration hangout spot for decades. These people were just
Speaker 1: taken to jail for being there. In the bail hearing,
Speaker 1: the judge said that he didn't even know why they
Speaker 1: got arrested. They were soon released with signature bonds for
Speaker 1: all and then on Friday, July seven, people were arrested
Speaker 1: at a noise demo at a brass Field and Gory
Speaker 1: construction site. Currently Brassfield and Gory is the lead contractor
Speaker 1: for the Cops City project. The site was on Georgia
Speaker 1: State University property. The Atlantic Police Department responded as well.
Speaker 1: Unicorn riot footage shows people making a loop through the
Speaker 1: building and chanting before a construction worker aggressively shoves one
Speaker 1: protester out of the doorway. Here's some police scanner audio.
Speaker 1: Unit three they're saying that no one's in the building
Speaker 1: now protestor wise, but they were inside the building, so
Speaker 1: they all need to be I D and can you
Speaker 1: advise on a number by proximly fifty seven. But if
Speaker 1: you still got eyes on the people walking away, can
Speaker 1: you snap some pictures. I'm on the way up there
Speaker 1: in case they're calmed before mirror inside the building. So
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's ground for CTS. So we can
Speaker 1: stop just taking pictures you and the three. That's affirmative,
Speaker 1: but we can stop into hands Leaves, coffee, APT Homeland
Speaker 1: and Zone three is in a route to provide support
Speaker 1: of that location. Coming up on the location now. Atlanta
Speaker 1: Police stated that no property damage was done beyond a
Speaker 1: bucket being kicked, and yet seven people are facing a
Speaker 1: slate of felony charges. Yeah, major, says Homelands en route.
Speaker 1: So no property destruction, nobody assault, fit nothing that was
Speaker 1: the problem. They walked back in dead, thank you, sir.
Speaker 1: One person was hospitalized due to broken ribs sustained during
Speaker 1: their arrest. For the first nine hours after the arrests,
Speaker 1: police refused to give jail support the location or contact
Speaker 1: info for where the arrestees were being sent. The following
Speaker 1: Tuesday night, everyone was finally released on posted bond and
Speaker 1: with that that wraps up part one of the three
Speaker 1: part series for the history of the Old Atlanta Prison Farm.
Speaker 1: Before I close out, I do want to plug the
Speaker 1: Atlanta Solidarity Fund at a t L solidarity dot org
Speaker 1: that helps protesters with bail and legal stuff, So donate
Speaker 1: to that if you have the means. Also in the description,
Speaker 1: I'm going to leave that link. Also the link for
Speaker 1: the Atlantic Community Press history report that they published last year.
Speaker 1: That will also be in the description below. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Check out Atlanta Community Press on Twitter or the website.
Speaker 1: See you on the other side. Welcome to it could
Speaker 1: happen here today. I'm your host, Garrison Davis, and this
Speaker 1: is part two of our three part series on the
Speaker 1: history of the Old Atlanta Prison Farm, made in collaboration
Speaker 1: with the Atlanta Community Press Collective. Last episode, I talked
Speaker 1: about how one of the initial motivations for running a
Speaker 1: city prison farm was to save money on the project
Speaker 1: of incarceration, or perhaps even starts generating money. This for
Speaker 1: me to the case throughout its existence, though exactly how
Speaker 1: well it performed at that was often questioned. Use of
Speaker 1: prison or slave labor for government projects was not a
Speaker 1: new concept in Atlanta, though. Around the time of its
Speaker 1: incorporation in the mid nineteenth century, the City of Atlanta's
Speaker 1: population was around one fifth enslaved persons. City Hall itself,
Speaker 1: along with many other iconic buildings and roads, was built
Speaker 1: using convict lease labor from the Chattahoochee Brickworks, notorious for
Speaker 1: its brutal conditions and was owned by a former Atlanta mayor.
Speaker 1: The City Prison Farm produced various crops, livestock, and dairy,
Speaker 1: but it also provided workers for other city projects. In
Speaker 1: nineteen forty six, Superintendent H. H. Gibson bragged that he
Speaker 1: was cutting the city prison food budget in half, as
Speaker 1: well as quote furnishing the city eleven thousand, nine hundred
Speaker 1: sixty one man days of work on city streets by
Speaker 1: prisoners unquote within a six month period. In nine they
Speaker 1: began saving further money on incarceration by getting the women
Speaker 1: prisoners to make the new uniforms, adding that quote, the
Speaker 1: city can buy better materials because the labor is free unquote.
Speaker 1: They attempted to incentivize overtime work by offering quote extra
Speaker 1: credit for each hour of overtime worked for reduced sentences.
Speaker 1: The prisoners were forced to build some of their own
Speaker 1: cages as well. Into one of the older prison buildings
Speaker 1: was designated for use as a hospital for people with
Speaker 1: maneial diseases. That meant that prisoners would need a new
Speaker 1: building and they had to build it themselves. Quote. Most
Speaker 1: of the work was done with prison labor, with the
Speaker 1: city providing the materials unquote. They were also responsible for
Speaker 1: the cleaning and maintenance of the buildings in order to
Speaker 1: pass health inspection. According to an Atlantic Constitution article, quote,
Speaker 1: the dormitory scrubbed daily by men and women whose drunkenness
Speaker 1: and traffic violations placed them behind a mop or tractor
Speaker 1: for an average fifteen day stay one four health rating.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty eight. Prisoners were even made to rescue
Speaker 1: a guard's furniture from a fire. By the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: the farm provided more than half the food and dairy
Speaker 1: products for inmates in city detention centers. By the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: the prison firm had stopped growing crops, but still provided
Speaker 1: for of the pork and beef eaten by the prisoners,
Speaker 1: both at the farm and at the city jail. The
Speaker 1: work heavily subsidized city operations and was crinci are crucial. H. H. Gibson,
Speaker 1: the head of the prison farm, in said quote, idleness
Speaker 1: is the root of all evil in prison management. To
Speaker 1: be completely exempt from work, a prisoner should be minus
Speaker 1: both arms and both legs unquote. In the Courier Journal
Speaker 1: article where he makes those claims, the publication also accepts
Speaker 1: Gibson's claims that he quote took care to see the
Speaker 1: guards did not overwork prisoners, and that the guards are
Speaker 1: not permitted to strike or even curse prisoners unquote, and
Speaker 1: this would of course be later proven very much untrue.
Speaker 1: White guards were known to send black women to a
Speaker 1: less occupied area, supposedly to do extra work, but upon arrival,
Speaker 1: the prisoners would be raped by the guards. If they refused,
Speaker 1: they were quote given a hard way to go unquote.
Speaker 1: These same guards had the power to assign extra work
Speaker 1: to prisoners. This was supposed to have been fixed several
Speaker 1: years earlier with the hiring of a black woman guard,
Speaker 1: but according to the Pittsburgh Courier, she was quote only
Speaker 1: a matron in name. The white guards continued to supervise
Speaker 1: the colored women inmates unquote. The same statement details a
Speaker 1: beating with a broom handle. It claims that black women
Speaker 1: were forced to farm in the rain while white women
Speaker 1: were allowed to stay inside and read newspapers, and called
Speaker 1: for further investigations since the banning of the bucking chair
Speaker 1: used for whippings. Solitary confinement end quote. The whole unquote
Speaker 1: was the official punishment for not working at the standards
Speaker 1: set by the prison guards and wardens. We know little
Speaker 1: about the conditions of the whole in earlier years, but
Speaker 1: in nineteen five a new administ trader named Ralph Holsey
Speaker 1: took over operations of the prison farm. A skeething report
Speaker 1: from journalist Dick Herbert, who went undercover as a prisoner, alleged,
Speaker 1: among many other things, that the whole was quote where
Speaker 1: men were starved and degraded unquote. His report drew much
Speaker 1: negative attention to the conditions on the farm, the whole
Speaker 1: being one of them. At the time, Holsey said that
Speaker 1: he was quote not happy with it as it is,
Speaker 1: but it is necessary for discipline unquote. The whole was
Speaker 1: described as an eight foot by four foot windowless room
Speaker 1: where troublesome inmates are kept in solitary confinement. It's described
Speaker 1: as quote. Furnishings now include a pale and two buckets,
Speaker 1: no bed, no mattress or plumbing. Holsey allegedly planned to
Speaker 1: fit such cells with an iron lattice, bunk and toilet facilities,
Speaker 1: but we have no one to cation that this was
Speaker 1: ever followed through on, and the whole continued to be
Speaker 1: used regularly up until the mid eighties. Leadership of the
Speaker 1: prison Farm changed hands many times throughout its history, and
Speaker 1: at each passing of the torch there were claims of
Speaker 1: improvement the dawn of a new, better era, bleak and
Speaker 1: cruel conditions remained no matter who was in charge. Archival
Speaker 1: research shows that for over half a century, life on
Speaker 1: the farm was subject to hard labor, long days, harsh punishments, overcrowding,
Speaker 1: poor sanitation, and constantly lacking healthcare. J. D. Hudson, the
Speaker 1: superintendent of the prison farm in later years, who was
Speaker 1: hyped up by press as a sort of humanitarian reformer,
Speaker 1: described the previous conditions of the prison farm as slave labor.
Speaker 1: He bragged frequently of his intention to give prisoners quote
Speaker 1: a measure of self respect so they could lead decent
Speaker 1: lives again. Upon being instated he announced his intention to
Speaker 1: empty solitary confinement and forbid guards from hitting or abusing inmates,
Speaker 1: something which we must point out had been declared many
Speaker 1: times before already. He also made statements saying that inmates
Speaker 1: are quote written with guilt about their lives, and they
Speaker 1: want to be mistreated and abused, and they want to
Speaker 1: be denigrated as some sort of atonement for their sins unquote.
Speaker 1: So this might explain why the great Reformer himself was
Speaker 1: still in charge when the a c l U sued
Speaker 1: the city in two for conditions on the farm, citing
Speaker 1: quote illegal and unconstitutional punishments such as leg irons and
Speaker 1: excessive time in solitary confinement unquote, along with the long
Speaker 1: track record of unsanitary conditions. Mayor Andrew Young said of
Speaker 1: the suit, quote, it's simply a problem the city hasn't
Speaker 1: gotten around to handling yet unquote. At that point, the
Speaker 1: whole was still in use as solitary confinement and described
Speaker 1: as a room seven feet long by four ft wide
Speaker 1: that is virtually without heat in the winter and without
Speaker 1: cooling in the summer. Prisoners were held there twenty three
Speaker 1: hours a day, with an hour out for baths, often
Speaker 1: held for many days at a time. The suit was
Speaker 1: settled in nineteen eighty five with a forty dollar settlements
Speaker 1: split between three former prisoners, but the city never actually
Speaker 1: admitted guilt. Prison Farm staff were also ordered to avoid
Speaker 1: using isolation cells like the whole and told to build
Speaker 1: twenty new individual cells. The a c l U and
Speaker 1: those supporting the suit hoped that this lawsuit would push
Speaker 1: the city to make changes, but in nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: just two years later, the city tried to build any
Speaker 1: more solitary confinement cells at the prison farm, and this
Speaker 1: project only fell through because white contractors they hired were
Speaker 1: caught taking job contracts slated for minority run businesses by
Speaker 1: using a front. And hopefully you don't need me to
Speaker 1: tell you that solitary confinement is still used as punishment
Speaker 1: in most prisons today. It's been ages. Something. I looked
Speaker 1: at this newspaper quotes document and just there's so much
Speaker 1: Atlanta may well take pride and the fact that it's
Speaker 1: city prison Farm has won such recognition as a model
Speaker 1: progressive institution that decided as a model in other metropolitan
Speaker 1: areas for municipal penal systems need improvement. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: the same thing they're trying to do with Cops City. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is this is from nine that that was
Speaker 1: one of the surprising things that that we found was
Speaker 1: that so many aspects of like specific fights that are
Speaker 1: being had about Cops City have happened fifty sixty years ago.
Speaker 1: Like they were trying to expand the prison harm I
Speaker 1: think eastward more into the Cab County in the forties,
Speaker 1: and that the Cab County residents were like, no, you
Speaker 1: can't do this to our county. But it was because
Speaker 1: they didn't want the black prisoners near the white elementary school.
Speaker 1: And like nine that was that like wasn't long after
Speaker 1: when they like formally disallowed whipping. Yeah, Like that's like
Speaker 1: it's there's still like obviously it's they're still doing brutal
Speaker 1: stuff in terms of like solitary and other forms of
Speaker 1: torture and rape, but like posing it as this like
Speaker 1: model facilities, like you just got in trouble like a
Speaker 1: few years previous for like whipping all of your prisoners,
Speaker 1: tying people down to a chair, like and then one
Speaker 1: of my favorites guards shoot two women prisoners while firing
Speaker 1: vainly at each other. I can't remember if we put
Speaker 1: that one in the article or not. But two prison
Speaker 1: guards were shooting at each other because they were I
Speaker 1: don't know, cranky or whatever and ended up just like
Speaker 1: shooting to prisoners. Since then, inside the report from last
Speaker 1: year on the history of the prison farm, there's like
Speaker 1: almost like a hundred citations and a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: background stuff. How once you kind have had this question
Speaker 1: of like is there unmarked graves at this site? How
Speaker 1: can we go about researching it? What were the kind
Speaker 1: of techniques and things you used to gather all of
Speaker 1: this information? Um, and then let alone, Like how do
Speaker 1: you start sorting through all that to pick out, you know,
Speaker 1: which which seems more incredible than others. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of there's a lot of conflicting history in
Speaker 1: in in some regards. So how what was like the
Speaker 1: whole entire research process, Like because looking at just the
Speaker 1: list of citations, it is a little overwhelming. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: very overwhelming. So our rather co author and Laura they
Speaker 1: did so much of the research, um, Like I have
Speaker 1: to give enormous prompts to them. Like they even made
Speaker 1: a couple of trips to things like the State Archives,
Speaker 1: which are slightly south of the city. I think kind
Speaker 1: of snuck into a university library because a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of these, like in person resources were still
Speaker 1: closed at the time due to COVID restrictions. A lot
Speaker 1: of them aren't open now unfortunately. So like we have
Speaker 1: a huge document of just like newspaper quotes. A big
Speaker 1: big source for us were historical newspaper articles, mostly because
Speaker 1: because we initially started looking for official documents, um, this
Speaker 1: this is a pub this was a public entity. The
Speaker 1: city is required to keep records, um. And what we
Speaker 1: found was just a huge dearth of them. And most
Speaker 1: of the articles that are not articles but like official
Speaker 1: documents that are still around are housed in a really
Speaker 1: great collection at Georgia State University in downtown. But a
Speaker 1: lot of those things are they're just fairly limited, or
Speaker 1: if they're like year to year reports, it's like just
Speaker 1: one from the fifties, there is one from the sixties.
Speaker 1: There's no consistent documentation available. So then we went to
Speaker 1: public record, which is newspaper articles, and oh my god,
Speaker 1: there are so many newspaper articles about the prison farm.
Speaker 1: I never want to read a newspaper again. And we
Speaker 1: kind of used things that happened at the prison farm
Speaker 1: that we're noteworthy enough to make it into the newspaper too.
Speaker 1: I guess you could say guide what the biggest beats
Speaker 1: in the history of the prison farm work. And that
Speaker 1: kind of led us to what was something that we
Speaker 1: didn't know when we started our research, which was just
Speaker 1: how poorly or just how mangled the history of the
Speaker 1: prison farm has become. This land approximately nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: started becoming a police training academy, So there has been
Speaker 1: some sort of police training facility on this land since
Speaker 1: approximately nine There was even a slight version of a
Speaker 1: mock city in the eighties. They had an intersection that
Speaker 1: was for training for urban encounters, if you will. So
Speaker 1: this is the kind of information that we're digging to
Speaker 1: try to find the history. We're literally seeing legal notices
Speaker 1: in the newspaper, so advertisements, and this is how we're
Speaker 1: piecing this information together. When the pandemic hit for the
Speaker 1: first time in recent memory, there was a large scale
Speaker 1: public discussion on how the structure of the prison system
Speaker 1: is detrimental to the health of incarcerated persons. Public health
Speaker 1: experts advocated that the best way to limit the spread
Speaker 1: of disease is simply to have less people in prison.
Speaker 1: We'll talk more about COVID's impact on prison populations in
Speaker 1: a bit, but first let's note how overcrowding and lack
Speaker 1: of medical treatment in prisons leading to disastrous and deadly
Speaker 1: health outcomes is no new issue. When Dick Herbert went
Speaker 1: into the Atlanta prison Farm undercover for the Atlanta Journal
Speaker 1: Constitution in nineteen six, one of his main findings was
Speaker 1: quote non existent medical treatment. He reported quote tubercular, coughing,
Speaker 1: sickly men waiting to die, society's discards herded into an
Speaker 1: unwashed stock aide, only to be turned out again without
Speaker 1: even a smattering of help unquote. This was the case
Speaker 1: from the early days of the prison farm, and remained
Speaker 1: the case for long after. Already, by nineteen thirty eight,
Speaker 1: the prison farm was described by Mayor Hartsfield as an
Speaker 1: ungodly mess and was likely facing issues with communicable diseases,
Speaker 1: as evidenced by a call for quote separate hospital wards
Speaker 1: for diseased prisoners unquote. But it took city council until
Speaker 1: nineteen forty one to even quote study a proposal to
Speaker 1: equip the new building nearing completion for a five hundred
Speaker 1: bed emergency hospital unquote. The completed building was still not
Speaker 1: furnished by nineteen forty three, and in nineteen forty four,
Speaker 1: instead of making the new building into a health facility,
Speaker 1: they moved the prisoners into the new building and fitted
Speaker 1: the twenty year old prison building out to be a
Speaker 1: city detention hospital for treatment of those infected with venereal disease,
Speaker 1: and then, rather than be used as a hospital order
Speaker 1: for the prison farm, it was then used to treat
Speaker 1: a manerial disease bastions from throughout the city. This was
Speaker 1: expected to quote meat demand for years to come, but
Speaker 1: by ninety five there were already calls to close the
Speaker 1: entire prison farm and convert the whole thing into a
Speaker 1: veneerial disease quarantine clinic due to an increasing load. Obviously,
Speaker 1: those calls were never adopted, and the prison farm remained
Speaker 1: in operation in a grossly recursive mirror of the present.
Speaker 1: In an October one, nineteen fifty seven edition of the
Speaker 1: Atlantic Constitution, a quote Asian flew outbreak prompted the immediate
Speaker 1: release of quote any person who is ill and who
Speaker 1: has a home to return to unquote. Even this was qualified,
Speaker 1: though h H. Gibson, who was heading the prison at
Speaker 1: the time, said that only some of those who had
Speaker 1: been convicted of just light in fractions would be released.
Speaker 1: He also said that older men with a history of
Speaker 1: tuberculosis would be released due to the risk of their
Speaker 1: contracting pneumonia. Quoting Gibson, quote, none of the men who
Speaker 1: had temperatures of one hundred and one or more were released.
Speaker 1: Some of these older men have no places to go,
Speaker 1: and if we released them with a possible case of
Speaker 1: flu and higher temperature, chances are we would find them
Speaker 1: dead in the woods or somewhere a day later. Unquote.
Speaker 1: There was no mention of efforts to mitigate spread within
Speaker 1: the prison of Farm facility, and the fate of those
Speaker 1: who were forced to stay is unknown to us at
Speaker 1: the present moment. In December of nineteen fifty seven, the
Speaker 1: Decab County Grand Jury presented findings from an investigation that
Speaker 1: found that the prison farm was severely lacking in healthcare.
Speaker 1: They advised that a building should be provided so that
Speaker 1: prisoners who are ill can be held aside from the
Speaker 1: ones who are not sick, meaning that in the twenty
Speaker 1: years since this was first proposed, it had still not
Speaker 1: been implemented. They recommended that prisoners who were sick be
Speaker 1: given examinations and a record to be kept of those prisoners,
Speaker 1: and the prison farm should quote employ a proper nursing
Speaker 1: staff unquote. Their final recommendation was that quote some sort
Speaker 1: of sick quarters should be put into effects the prisoners
Speaker 1: who are ill can be held aside from the ones
Speaker 1: who are not sick unquote. The implication from these recommendations,
Speaker 1: of course, is that none of these practices were in
Speaker 1: placed at the time of investigation. A year later, in
Speaker 1: November of nineteen fifty eight, a second Decab grand jury
Speaker 1: quote found fault with its medical facilities, along with the
Speaker 1: lack of fire safeguards in the prison farm. Of course,
Speaker 1: thanks to Dick Herbert's undercover investigation for the Atlanta Journal Constitution,
Speaker 1: we now know that by nineteen sixty five, nearly ten
Speaker 1: years later, medical treatment was still found to be non
Speaker 1: existent at the prison farm, and by nineteen six a
Speaker 1: prisoner quote with a record of hospitalization for tuberculosis and
Speaker 1: heart trouble, collapsed and died unquote. Despite the order that
Speaker 1: medical records for sick patients be kept, there was no
Speaker 1: record on file that this patient had ever seen the doctor.
Speaker 1: Recorded sections from a meeting between the prison farm and
Speaker 1: the Department of Prisons indicate that they planned to hire
Speaker 1: a full time registered nurse in nineteen seventy two to
Speaker 1: assist the on site doctor. Other plans included tests for tuberculosis,
Speaker 1: PEP tests for female prisoners, and basic height, weight, and
Speaker 1: blood tests. They also indicated that they were not currently
Speaker 1: providing vision, hearing, or dental care. In Atlanta Voice article
Speaker 1: from nineteen seventy three claims there are quote unquote new
Speaker 1: improvements in this area with the quote employment of a
Speaker 1: physician and two nurses, a detoxification program for alcoholics, health tests,
Speaker 1: and a humane approach to prisoner problems unquote, But by
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six we still see such things being raised
Speaker 1: as simply proposals. An interoffice communication at Grady Memorial Hospital
Speaker 1: states the need for quote a nurse clinician to be
Speaker 1: hired by Grady and paid by the state under contract
Speaker 1: to provide screening and triage services on site and referral
Speaker 1: when appropriate to Grady Hospital. One of them suggests entering
Speaker 1: this contract for reasons that it will generate one dollars
Speaker 1: in income and quote minimized public criticisms of inadequate healthcare
Speaker 1: for prisoners unquote. It also states that currently prisoners quote
Speaker 1: get only crisis oriented emergency care. A May nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: six Community Relations Commission report indicates that many of the
Speaker 1: health care issues are caused by the reluctance of guards
Speaker 1: to respond to prisoner complaints and quote brutality at Grady
Speaker 1: Hospital by Atlanta police officers unquote. Another proposal from Grady
Speaker 1: one month later suggests that rather than hiring a nurse
Speaker 1: specifically for the prison farm, they use a nurse from
Speaker 1: the Central Referral Office to act as a liaison with
Speaker 1: non clinical personnel at each of the eight detention centers
Speaker 1: in the city and give recommendations over the phone. They
Speaker 1: note that this would save the prison thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: a year. A nineteen seventies seven letter from Shirley Millwood,
Speaker 1: interset Grady Hospital, indicates that prisoners were still being transported
Speaker 1: to Grady for the administration of medication, and that even
Speaker 1: that was not often done. One of her patients was
Speaker 1: supposed to be brought in every day for medication, but
Speaker 1: Millwood claimed, quote the jail personnel have not lied the
Speaker 1: patient had been experiencing chest pain and shortness of breath
Speaker 1: all afternoon, but was not brought in until ten thirty pm. Quote.
Speaker 1: I feel that this is negligent on their part, and
Speaker 1: it is certainly detrimental to our patients. If something happens
Speaker 1: to this patient, will the jail be liable for the
Speaker 1: problems that result from him not being properly medicated? Unquote.
Speaker 1: In an undated document entitled Health Program City of Atlanta
Speaker 1: Prison Farm, tolled from the same archival collection as the
Speaker 1: other Grady Hospital records, does indicate that since nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: a doctor is on site five days a week for
Speaker 1: one hour each day, and a nurse is on duty
Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day. It states that wherever feasible,
Speaker 1: treatment should be done on the prison farm property, but
Speaker 1: lays out several procedures to follow for serious medical emergencies,
Speaker 1: usually involving transportation to Grady Hospital. However, it points out
Speaker 1: that quote unattended heart attacks, poison or suicide, overdose cases,
Speaker 1: and heroin withdrawal in jail frequently occur. The report also
Speaker 1: says that in the case of public intoxication, quote, minor
Speaker 1: medical skill and routine capacity in easing interpersonal tensions can
Speaker 1: reduce difficulty for arresting officers, reduce the arrests needed, and
Speaker 1: initiate more constructive rooting than directly to jail unquote. The
Speaker 1: report points out that in diabetic patients, their convulsions and
Speaker 1: the similar smell of their breath to acetone can lead
Speaker 1: to incorrect conclusions with permanent health effects. It also mentions
Speaker 1: that delirium treatment's condition associated with withdrawal of alcohol and
Speaker 1: other substances can quote endanger and inmates life and more
Speaker 1: than one has died unquote. Without proper healthcare, separation of
Speaker 1: sick and healthy prisoners, and in the midst of a
Speaker 1: decades long tuberculosis epidemic, overcrowding would certainly be a major
Speaker 1: contributing factor to sickness and death in prison scenarios. Archival
Speaker 1: research found that overcrowding was a recurring complaint throughout the
Speaker 1: over half century of the prison farm's existence, despite frequent
Speaker 1: expansions often motivated by the overcrowding in the first place.
Speaker 1: Overcrowding is a common occurrence in prisons and jails throughout
Speaker 1: the country. A longitudinal study by the Vera Institute of
Speaker 1: Justice found that quote as jail populations have exceeded capacity,
Speaker 1: county policy makers have turned to jail expansion rather than
Speaker 1: alternatives to incarceration. In some cases, decision makers also argue
Speaker 1: that replacing older facilities will provide safer living and working
Speaker 1: conditions for the increasing numbers of people in the jail unquote.
Speaker 1: How Ever, institute researchers note that quote. Larger jails built
Speaker 1: to accommodate an overcrowded population often see their populations continue
Speaker 1: to increase. This is because expansion alone fails to address
Speaker 1: the root causes of overcrowding, leaving in place the very
Speaker 1: policies and practices that drove the jail's population increase in
Speaker 1: the first place. Indeed, there is a risk that the
Speaker 1: existence of a larger jail with more beds may reduce
Speaker 1: the incentive to make policy changes that address the factors
Speaker 1: driving overcrowding, due to the temporary relief expansion provides unquote.
Speaker 1: This is precisely what we see play out here in
Speaker 1: the case of the old prison farm, and in fact,
Speaker 1: is still an ongoing issue in Atlanta area incarceration systems today.
Speaker 1: Since early on in the COVID nineteen pandemic, it's been
Speaker 1: made clear that the most effective way to mitigate the
Speaker 1: devastation of endemic COVID nineteen and pisons and jails is
Speaker 1: to reduce the number of people behind bars, and wow,
Speaker 1: perhaps that would be a good idea in general, not
Speaker 1: even related to this specific pandemic. The United States locks
Speaker 1: up a larger portion of its population than any other
Speaker 1: nation in the world, and just the state of Georgia
Speaker 1: has the fourth largest incarceration rate in the entire world
Speaker 1: if you compare individual US states to all other entire countries.
Speaker 1: Throughout only three states, New Jersey, California, and North Carolina
Speaker 1: released a significant number of incarcerating people from prisons. Parole
Speaker 1: boards also approved fewer releases in the first year of
Speaker 1: the pandemic compared to the year prior. The response of
Speaker 1: governments was so bad that in total, ten fewer people
Speaker 1: were released in prisons and jails compared to As a result,
Speaker 1: at the end of the first year of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: nineteen state prison systems were at nine capacity or higher.
Speaker 1: Incarcerated people are infected by the coronavirus at a rate
Speaker 1: more than five times higher than the nation's overall rate.
Speaker 1: According to research reported in the Journal of the American
Speaker 1: Medical Association from July of The reported death rate of
Speaker 1: inmates thirty nine deaths per one hundred thousand, is also
Speaker 1: much higher than the national rate of twenty nine deaths
Speaker 1: per one hundred thousand. As of April sixte more than
Speaker 1: six hundred and sixty one thousand incarcerated people and staff
Speaker 1: have been infected with coronavirus, and at least two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine hundred and ninety have died, according to The
Speaker 1: New York Times, and getting data more recent than that
Speaker 1: is actually almost impossible because many carstral agencies have simply
Speaker 1: stopped collecting and releasing information. The number of infections and
Speaker 1: deaths is likely even higher than the reported number. Because
Speaker 1: jails and prisons are conducting limited testing on incarcerated people.
Speaker 1: Many facilities won't test incarcerated people who die after showing
Speaker 1: symptoms of COVID nineteen. A lack of data reporting by
Speaker 1: carstral agencies has prevented the public from being able to
Speaker 1: understand the full impact of the pandemic on incarcetrated persons.
Speaker 1: Organizations like the u c l A Law COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: Behind Bars Project, the Martial Project, and the COVID Prison
Speaker 1: Project have been working to collect data and information as
Speaker 1: there's been a lack of transparency from agencies in providing
Speaker 1: adequate or correct data on the number of cases, safety protocols,
Speaker 1: and deaths within their jails and prisons. Many states Department
Speaker 1: of Corrections rolled back or stopped reporting their COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: data altogether in the summer of twenty twenty one, during
Speaker 1: the Delta variant surge and way before the openercron wave
Speaker 1: that hit last winter. For example, in Georgia, the Georgia
Speaker 1: Department of Corrections has not reported any new COVID deaths
Speaker 1: since March one, and last year halted all public reporting data.
Speaker 1: Among all the correctional systems in the United States, the
Speaker 1: Georgia Department of Corrections has the second highest case fatality
Speaker 1: rate or percentage of those people who have reported infections
Speaker 1: and later die. So this has been a problem in
Speaker 1: Georgia for a long time, whether that be with the
Speaker 1: old Atlanta prison farm or the current day jail's, prisons
Speaker 1: and penitentiaries. I'm going to close out this episode with
Speaker 1: this little tidbit from one of the conversations I had
Speaker 1: with members of the Atlanta Community Press Collective. I think
Speaker 1: just something that's continue waste not addressed. UM. I know
Speaker 1: a lot of people like to focus on positive things
Speaker 1: or more inspiring things. I guess as far as prison
Speaker 1: stuff goes, because I know I've had people repeatedly asked like, hey,
Speaker 1: were there strikes? Were their uprisings? Which is really inspirational.
Speaker 1: I agree, But there's also a really really sad history
Speaker 1: that a lot of people aren't addressing and how many
Speaker 1: people died by suicide here or attempted to die by suicide,
Speaker 1: and it's really sad that no one seems to care
Speaker 1: about that aspect that there were horrific atrocities. There were
Speaker 1: frequent rapes and beatings. There's a photo from the a
Speaker 1: j C That literally says black woman. I think it's
Speaker 1: like from the forties and they are moving around chemically
Speaker 1: infused sludge. It literally says sludge as fertilizer. We have
Speaker 1: proof of these atrocities, and people just like to focus
Speaker 1: on things of like, oh, hey, there was arsenic in
Speaker 1: a lake. I've never been able to find anything about that.
Speaker 1: I have no idea where that came from. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying it didn't happen, but there are so many concrete
Speaker 1: examples of horrific things that happened here. We don't need
Speaker 1: to make up stories. They exist and they're here. You
Speaker 1: just have to pay attention and read about it. There's
Speaker 1: literally a woman who attempted suicide six times because she
Speaker 1: hated being in the whole so bad. The isolated confinement
Speaker 1: self labeled the whole like six times aimes. And nobody
Speaker 1: addresses this kind of stuff, even as forest offenders like
Speaker 1: we owe it to ourselves to educate our community about
Speaker 1: exactly what happened here, even the worst of it, and
Speaker 1: then we'll go fucking raped in the woods because you've
Speaker 1: got to take care of yourself too. But even as
Speaker 1: we acknowledge this land, we need to know the history
Speaker 1: of it too. That doesn't for us. Today. In the
Speaker 1: next episode, will be going over the details of possible
Speaker 1: grave sites and how further research into the prison farm
Speaker 1: could be done, as well as more updates on the
Speaker 1: happenings in the Fight to Defend the Atlanta Forest. See
Speaker 1: you on the other side, Welcome this is it could
Speaker 1: happen here. The podcast about how it feels like everything
Speaker 1: is kind of falling apart and maybe what we can
Speaker 1: do to put stuff back together. I'm Garrison Davis, your
Speaker 1: host for this episode, and this is the third and
Speaker 1: final part of our mini series on the history of
Speaker 1: the old Atlanta prison Farm, produced in collaboration with the
Speaker 1: Atlanta Community Press Collective. We're actually going to start this
Speaker 1: episode with a little update on what's been going on
Speaker 1: in Atlanta as a part of the Defend the Atlanta
Speaker 1: Forest and Stop Cops City movement, considering the Atlanta Police
Speaker 1: Foundation's Cops City project is very much a direct continuation
Speaker 1: of the authoritarian and carcetral oppression of the prison farm
Speaker 1: that occupied the very same section of land. Here's an
Speaker 1: audio clip of one of my conversations with members of
Speaker 1: the Atlantic Community Press Collective from right before the recent
Speaker 1: July Week of Action, and this is about the status
Speaker 1: of construction on the South River or Willani Forest. So
Speaker 1: for the past month or so, it's kind of been
Speaker 1: a waiting game, Like if you refer to the construction
Speaker 1: timeline that whenever open records request revealed, like construction really
Speaker 1: should have started in earnest by now, like they last
Speaker 1: time I saw figure they want to have this open
Speaker 1: by fall of next year, and they are not on
Speaker 1: that timeline. And that's not all necessarily due to the movement.
Speaker 1: So I think between UM just the general supply train
Speaker 1: havoc that's happening across different industries right now, definitely the
Speaker 1: construction industry. I think UM they did men and this
Speaker 1: during one of the recent UM Community Stakeholders Committee meetings
Speaker 1: where they're like, oh, yeah, by the way, we are
Speaker 1: kind of having sub supply chain issues. In addition to
Speaker 1: I don't think a p D and the Police Foundation
Speaker 1: really expected to have any kind of continued resistance on
Speaker 1: the ground UM or any kind of continued public bad press.
Speaker 1: I don't think they think they thought they passed the
Speaker 1: legislation on the public would kind of move on UM,
Speaker 1: because that's frankly what he usually happens when people, when
Speaker 1: people when movements that criticize the police happen, they usually
Speaker 1: get repressed or people's attention turns turns to other things
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. We know that they have a permit for
Speaker 1: It's what exactly is it is a permit for. It
Speaker 1: is kind of complicated, but one way or another, it
Speaker 1: enables the Police Foundation, there contractors and our vendors to
Speaker 1: construct a basically like a temporary construction fence like you
Speaker 1: would see around a construction site. But in that permit
Speaker 1: I believe expires in August of this year, because that's
Speaker 1: a temporary permit, but that fence does not seem to
Speaker 1: have gone up, so it's it's kind of a stalemate
Speaker 1: right now. Just five days after the July week of
Speaker 1: action wrapped on early Wednesday morning on August three, dozens
Speaker 1: of work vehicles and police amassed around the forest, staging
Speaker 1: heavy machinery, setting up roadblocks, and started dismantling barricades in
Speaker 1: the forest. Sounds of tree cutting could be heard near
Speaker 1: the occupied to stop Cops City tree sets. Police were
Speaker 1: initially stalled by the burning of tire barricades near roads,
Speaker 1: but around seven am, heavy machinery bree to the proposed
Speaker 1: site for Cops City and entered on the north side
Speaker 1: of the forest. Excavators cleared barricades and trees were felled
Speaker 1: near trails, making wider paths into the forest. De Cab
Speaker 1: County Police officers accompanied gas pipeline workers who were on
Speaker 1: the ground adjacent to Entrenchment Creek Park. One arrest was reported.
Speaker 1: The arrestee was originally being taken straight to jail and
Speaker 1: then got diverted to police headquarters for questioning, and it
Speaker 1: was confirmed that FBI was also on the scene. There
Speaker 1: were no attempts at extraction of tree sitters and no
Speaker 1: additional arrests reported. That day, the Atlanta Police Foundations contract
Speaker 1: workers did substantial forest clearing in an area of the
Speaker 1: woods near the entrance gate on Key Road, directly adjacent
Speaker 1: to the existing power line clearing. Much of the surrounding
Speaker 1: neighborhood was blocked off by the Atlantic Department for most
Speaker 1: of the day, with no warning given to local residents,
Speaker 1: many of whom have stopped cops city yard signs. The
Speaker 1: work being done along the power line cut is assumed
Speaker 1: to be either for installing sewer lines and or drilling holes.
Speaker 1: The presence of Georgia Power suggests that they could have
Speaker 1: been trying to bore holes to install power lines. The
Speaker 1: next morning, around twenty cops, some mounted on a t
Speaker 1: v S, patrolled throughout the forest, possibly looking for rebuilt
Speaker 1: barricades or to snatch up anyone they found in the area.
Speaker 1: Ever since then, there's been cops, sometimes on a t
Speaker 1: v S, spotted multiple times a week in the forest,
Speaker 1: usually during early in the morning. How much grounds clearing
Speaker 1: and pre construction work was done recently in the forest
Speaker 1: was slightly surprising considering the land disturbance permit has not
Speaker 1: yet been issued, though it is possible that the recent
Speaker 1: work was covered by existing utility easements or the temporary
Speaker 1: construction permit that expires later this month that was mainly
Speaker 1: issued around the goal of putting up a security offense
Speaker 1: around the forest. And with that now, let's get back
Speaker 1: to the history of the prison farm. As discussed last episode,
Speaker 1: overcrowding was one of the initial motivations for proposing to
Speaker 1: move the Glenwood Stockade prisoners to the dairy Farm site,
Speaker 1: though it was not the final decisive factor because at
Speaker 1: the time populations there were dwindling. Several years later, though,
Speaker 1: Councilman chose Wood was being praised for increasing the incarcerated
Speaker 1: population because it brought in more revenue, and several years
Speaker 1: after that, in overcrowding at the second stockade on Decatur
Speaker 1: and Hillard prompted discussions on expanding the prison farm by
Speaker 1: bringing in portable buildings from the school board and expanding
Speaker 1: the woman's prison by one hundred feet. A police report
Speaker 1: from nineteen thirty six says, quote, we find that all
Speaker 1: prisoners have separate quarters which are in sanitary condition but overcrowded.
Speaker 1: We recommend that another unit be constructed for white female
Speaker 1: prisoners as well as white male prisoners unquote, And by
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty eight, a new wing was completed housing seventy
Speaker 1: five more prisoners, and another edition of the same size
Speaker 1: was expected to be added to the main building, but
Speaker 1: only five months later, the prison farm's own superintendent again
Speaker 1: described the conditions there as overcrowded and recommended another expansion
Speaker 1: and separate ward for quote unquote diseased prisoners. In nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine, a proposal to extend the land by one
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty four acres was protested by Decab residents
Speaker 1: on the basis that it was directly next to a
Speaker 1: white school and that quote for their development of penal
Speaker 1: institutions in net section would destroy the value of surrounding
Speaker 1: property and preclude the development of a civic center which
Speaker 1: citizens seek near the west side school grounds unquote. The
Speaker 1: plan was abandoned, but later brought up with a compromise
Speaker 1: in that they would instead only take a hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty four acres, leaving a fifty acre buffer between the
Speaker 1: prison farm and the school. In four, a new building,
Speaker 1: originally slated to be a medical ward, was built, and
Speaker 1: as we saw in the healthcare section, this ended up
Speaker 1: becoming a new prison building, and the old building became
Speaker 1: the Maneial Disease Hospital. The new building could quote house
Speaker 1: seven and twenty five prisoners without crowding them unquote, and
Speaker 1: was said to be able to quote eliminate long standing
Speaker 1: criticism of nearby residents because of escapes from the old
Speaker 1: overcrowded and ill arranged structure unquote. In nineteen forty six,
Speaker 1: the city took possession of an additional eighty nine acres
Speaker 1: of land for the prison farm, but still overcrowding was
Speaker 1: again raised as an issue in nineteen fifty two, but
Speaker 1: this time certain sentences were reduced from twenty days to
Speaker 1: ten days to address this problem, constituting the first time
Speaker 1: a slightly decarce oral approach was used. But despite this
Speaker 1: and yet another new wing being built in nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 1: a grand jury in nineteen sixty found that the prison
Speaker 1: farm was quote unquote exceedingly overcrowded and quote as a result,
Speaker 1: the health of prisoners is jeopardized unquote. They suggested building
Speaker 1: a quote unquote work camp to alleviate crowding. Dick Herbert's
Speaker 1: undercover investigation in nineteen sixty five found that men were
Speaker 1: sleeping on the floor and tables because there was still
Speaker 1: not enough beds. A quote from Herbert says, so closely
Speaker 1: pass act are the three hundred bunks that they are
Speaker 1: alternated head to foot. In nineteen sixty seven, Atlanta started
Speaker 1: talking about chronic alcoholism as a health problem rather than
Speaker 1: one of criminality. However, the assumption was that this was
Speaker 1: still to be treated by those in charge of the prisons. Quote.
Speaker 1: The prison is already crowded up against its six hundred
Speaker 1: person capacity, said the Atlanta Journal Constitution. But according to
Speaker 1: Superintendent Holsey, the conversion to a rehabilitation center would mean
Speaker 1: longer stays and thus higher populations, stating quote, they likely
Speaker 1: will have to build a whole new city prison farm unquote.
Speaker 1: A nineteen seventy six article from the Atlanta Journal Constitution
Speaker 1: says that in nineteen seventy a thousand prisoners were packed
Speaker 1: in the old building. Inmates slept in rickety beds. Three
Speaker 1: high health inspectors and judges cut the population for humanity's sake.
Speaker 1: It further claimed that the facility was now quote well
Speaker 1: below its comfortable capacity of four hundred prisoners unquote. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, the Uniform Alcohol Treatment Act was passed,
Speaker 1: although never fully funded, which effectively decriminalized alcoholism. This act
Speaker 1: was said to reduce the population of the prison farm
Speaker 1: from five hundred in nineteen seventy two to two hundred
Speaker 1: and nine eighty three, although new laws were passed further
Speaker 1: criminalizing certain actions while intoxicated at the behest of the
Speaker 1: business community who quote demanded drunks and winos be removed
Speaker 1: from the streets unquote. This era marks the last time
Speaker 1: the Atlantic community press research found complaints of overcrowding. The
Speaker 1: lack of further complaints strongly suggests that decriminalization is a
Speaker 1: better answer to the problem of overcrowding rather than prison expansion.
Speaker 1: It also necessary to mention that alleviating the problem fifty
Speaker 1: years into the project does not make up for the
Speaker 1: unnecessary harm and death likely caused by these conditions over
Speaker 1: the years. As we went over last episode, overcrowding of
Speaker 1: jail's remains a problem in our modern jails and prisons. Currently,
Speaker 1: the Fulton County Sheriff wants the Atlanta City government to
Speaker 1: abandon their promise of closing a city jail and instead
Speaker 1: rent the jail to Fulton County to alleviate overcrowding in
Speaker 1: their system. This is billed as a humanitarian move, but
Speaker 1: as we've discussed in the past few episodes, history suggests otherwise,
Speaker 1: and the most successful way at reducing harm was decarcet
Speaker 1: role approaches. Complaints about poor sanitation and malnutrition also span
Speaker 1: the prison farm's history. Combined with the previously detailed conditions,
Speaker 1: these would further increase the likelihood of sickness and death
Speaker 1: within the prison. For arm walls, prisoners eight complained that
Speaker 1: quote a silver dollar would cover each particle of food
Speaker 1: given to prisoners and asked for quote more vegetables and
Speaker 1: less sorghum unquote. In ninety one, during a tense meeting
Speaker 1: in which Decab tried unsuccessfully to prevent Atlanta from expanding
Speaker 1: the prison farm, a DECAB resident said that the farm
Speaker 1: was without sanitary facilities, despite frequent assurances that the facility
Speaker 1: was clean. However, work was temporarily abandoned on that expansion
Speaker 1: after Decab County citizens sought and obtained an injunction against
Speaker 1: the City of Atlanta for dumping untreated sewage into entrenchment creek.
Speaker 1: There is a large gap in reporting on these particular conditions,
Speaker 1: but there's evidence that they persisted, because in nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: the Decab Ground jury found that quote, restrooms were deplorable
Speaker 1: in both white and negro wards unquote, and that the
Speaker 1: kitchen floor was quote unquote in a deplorable state and
Speaker 1: should be replaced. The Atlanta Journal Constitution's own inspection curiously
Speaker 1: concluded that the farm was quote operated very efficiently and
Speaker 1: with good sanitary conditions unquote, But just two years later,
Speaker 1: Dick Herbert's undercover work as a prisoner showed quite the contrary.
Speaker 1: He found puddles of spit at drainage grills, wondered if
Speaker 1: many of the men had tuberculosis, and said that quote
Speaker 1: it was not uncommon to find dead bugs or hair
Speaker 1: in food. The rusty, dirty tins we drank out of
Speaker 1: should be replaced unquote. Herbert also mentioned that quote the
Speaker 1: food was almost entirely a thin and liquid diet, and
Speaker 1: also said that inmates often complained that the best of
Speaker 1: the farms produce and meats are reserved for the guards
Speaker 1: and hired help, and just to remind or that they
Speaker 1: themselves worked to grow all that produce. A prisoner named
Speaker 1: Carl h sent to the prison farm in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: eight on a public drunkenness charge, said, after five days
Speaker 1: at the facility, quote, I've had one half of a
Speaker 1: meal since I've been here unquote. Apparently, by this time,
Speaker 1: local court rulings had determined that chronic alcoholics could no
Speaker 1: longer be arrested on these charges, but the judge claimed, quote,
Speaker 1: I'm doing it from a humanitarian standpoint, whether it's legal
Speaker 1: or not. Unquote. Carl said of that matter, that the
Speaker 1: judge quote told me that he was going to save
Speaker 1: my life. I told him he can't save my life
Speaker 1: out there at the stockade. I told him he can
Speaker 1: send me anywhere, but not the stockade. He can't save
Speaker 1: my life out there unquote. This was three years after
Speaker 1: Superintendent Holsey was praised for his reforms and interviewed by
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Journal Constitution saying, quote, I'm just trying to
Speaker 1: make this place sanitary and livable for these people unquote.
Speaker 1: On two occasions in nineteen sixty nine, the vast majority
Speaker 1: of prisoners went on strike due to poor food. The
Speaker 1: first time, they demanded a raise for the cook and
Speaker 1: the hiring of a new cook. But four months later,
Speaker 1: these conditions which were agreed to to end the strike
Speaker 1: had still not been met. Prison farm administrators once again
Speaker 1: promised to raise cook wages and hire a new cook
Speaker 1: to end the strike, but we have no indication that
Speaker 1: they ever followed through on that. In Atlanta Journal Constitution
Speaker 1: article from nineteen seventy states that prisoners were working in
Speaker 1: the kitchen while infected with tuberculosis. Quote one man was
Speaker 1: sent to Batty State Hospital after it was found his
Speaker 1: tuberculosis was so advanced that he started hemorrhaging. He had
Speaker 1: worked in the kitchen the night before unquote. When asked
Speaker 1: about this, the prison farm administrator R. F. Jordan's said
Speaker 1: that some prisoners do have tuberculosis, and yes, quote some
Speaker 1: of them work in the kitchen, but only if their
Speaker 1: case is arrested. Unquote. Employees protesting discrimination against black employees
Speaker 1: at the farm and unfair and illegal incarceration of alcoholics
Speaker 1: also said that quote there are rats and roaches and
Speaker 1: filth that you wouldn't believe unquote. In nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: the prison farm was found to be serving food illegally
Speaker 1: without a license. But health officials complained that there were
Speaker 1: only two of them for the entire multi county district
Speaker 1: and they had no means of actually enforcing licenses or
Speaker 1: food safety. Just one month later, prisoners again went on
Speaker 1: strike due to being served watered down gravy and being
Speaker 1: unjustly incarcerated for alcoholism. Reports on conditions are few and
Speaker 1: far between after this period, but the two a c
Speaker 1: l U lawsuit claimed, among other things, that the conditions
Speaker 1: at the facility are unsanitary. There is most likely more
Speaker 1: information to find between these years, As one prison farm
Speaker 1: worker said, quote, we used to have strikes out here
Speaker 1: about every month, sometimes two or three a month unquote.
Speaker 1: In nine three, Superintendent Hudson, once hailed as the great
Speaker 1: humanitarian reformer, was replaced after quote complaints from employees and
Speaker 1: city politicians about his handling of the city jail, its
Speaker 1: employees and prisoners. Hudson said of the criticism, quote, I
Speaker 1: get bored when there aren't any problems. Serenity is not
Speaker 1: my thing unquote. A big focus of the research that
Speaker 1: the Atlantic Community Press did was on the question of
Speaker 1: unmarked graves at the prison farm site. There are persistent
Speaker 1: folk stories about these that may be tempting for some
Speaker 1: to write off as unfounded rumors. However, oral histories and
Speaker 1: qualitative interviews need to be taken seriously and considered along
Speaker 1: side other forms of evidence. Some stories have already been substantiated,
Speaker 1: and for others, the evidence found so far certainly places
Speaker 1: them within the realm of possibility. This episode, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to try to prove without a shadow of a
Speaker 1: doubt that there are unmarked graves on the property that
Speaker 1: is slated to become a cop city, but I will
Speaker 1: discuss documentation that shows that there is a strong possibility
Speaker 1: that needs to be carefully and fully investigated, regardless of
Speaker 1: how long it takes to do so properly. To start,
Speaker 1: there is this quote from an Atlanta Journal constitution piece
Speaker 1: from nineteen seventy six. Quote, Maud, the deceased elephant and
Speaker 1: two hundred and eighty inmates rest in peace at the
Speaker 1: City of Atlanta prison Farm. Unquote. Now, I'm gonna unpack
Speaker 1: that one at a time, because there's a there's a
Speaker 1: lot there. Uh. The elephant, Maud was the former zoo
Speaker 1: elephant end that died and whose corpse was dumped at
Speaker 1: the prison farm property by the city, and as for
Speaker 1: the line about two hundred and eighty buried inmates. There's
Speaker 1: no other details given in the article, and some researchers
Speaker 1: suspect that this is some kind of sick, sarcastic joke
Speaker 1: on the newspaper's part, as the rest of the article
Speaker 1: attempts to paint life at the prison Farm as one
Speaker 1: of leisure and respite. According to local folk historian Scott Peterson,
Speaker 1: there is, however, a known burial ground off of Bouldercrest
Speaker 1: and Key Road that contains both marked and unmarked graves
Speaker 1: that was once owned and operated by the prison Farm. Now,
Speaker 1: to be perfectly clear, this burial ground is not on
Speaker 1: the current property slated to become Cops City. The section
Speaker 1: of land that was originally the prison Farm has been
Speaker 1: divided up into many smaller pieces, a few hundred years
Speaker 1: of which the Atlanta Police Foundation is trying to turn
Speaker 1: into the new militarized police training compound. However, the burial
Speaker 1: site that Scott Peterson talks about does tell us that
Speaker 1: a that there is some truth behind at least some
Speaker 1: of the folk stories, and be the prison Farm as
Speaker 1: a whole contained at least some unmarked graves, which leads
Speaker 1: us to believe that there could be others throughout the
Speaker 1: property and that other claims are at least worth taking seriously.
Speaker 1: When the Atlantic Community Press was doing the bulk of
Speaker 1: their historical research last year, they attempted to find death
Speaker 1: and burial records for inmates that died while incarcerated at
Speaker 1: the prison farm through archival digging. Select inmate death and
Speaker 1: burial records were found simply via public reporting. We know
Speaker 1: for certain that at least several deaths occurred in very
Speaker 1: close time spans. One man was sprayed with an insecticide,
Speaker 1: which the warden denies, but which the attending nurse and
Speaker 1: those who sprayed the man corroborate. Samuel Bayon's thirty six
Speaker 1: year old black man quote unquote dropped dead shortly after
Speaker 1: a patrolman woke him up to get dressed. Mark Isaiah
Speaker 1: Willem died after quote unquote becoming sick. In Atlanta Daily World,
Speaker 1: headline reads quote coroner's jury will probe death of prisoner.
Speaker 1: Brown urges full investigation. And that's dated from nineteen fifty three.
Speaker 1: On April, Robert Reynolds, forty nine year old black man
Speaker 1: died from head injuries, prompting an investigation, and in reference
Speaker 1: to Reynolds, Charlie Brown, a nineteen fifty three mayoral candidate, declared, quote,
Speaker 1: approximately ten prisoners have died in the jail in the
Speaker 1: last four years under mysterious circumstances unquote. Despite these known deaths,
Speaker 1: finding official records listing either deaths or burials at the
Speaker 1: site was much more difficult. On top of searching through
Speaker 1: several archives, researchers sent Georgia Open Records Act requests to
Speaker 1: the Police Department, the Department of Corrections, and the Atlantic
Speaker 1: City Council. The Police Department said that the records would
Speaker 1: be in the custody of the Department of Corrections. However,
Speaker 1: the Department of Corrections stated that they are not and
Speaker 1: never were, the custodians of such records. The Atlantic City
Speaker 1: Council replied to requests by sending the inaccurate Jillian Wooton
Speaker 1: History Report, but also connected researchers with a historian. Serena
Speaker 1: McCracken of the Atlanta History Center has said that there's
Speaker 1: a possibility such records simply do not exist, either that
Speaker 1: they were never kept in the first place due to
Speaker 1: laws at the time, or that they were destroyed at
Speaker 1: some point, either due to negligence or an expiring period
Speaker 1: of retention. There is also the possibility that these records
Speaker 1: do exist and simply have not been yet found. They
Speaker 1: could have been misfiled, or requests could have been sent
Speaker 1: to the wrong agency, or they could just be sitting
Speaker 1: in a box of mill doing records still on the
Speaker 1: land today, as so many other records were when the
Speaker 1: city finally shut down the site, many of which are
Speaker 1: now lost forever in the ensuing fires and other ravages
Speaker 1: of time. In the Georgia Archives file on the prison farm,
Speaker 1: a memo was discovered describing procedures for the death of inmates.
Speaker 1: The memo says that upon a prisoner's death, their nearest
Speaker 1: kin should be notified. If the body is not claimed, quote,
Speaker 1: then the body shall be given a pauper's burial not
Speaker 1: to exceed fifty dollars unquote. Such burials don't always include
Speaker 1: a headstone, but rather a marker or a burial flag,
Speaker 1: which can easily erode away or become invisible over time.
Speaker 1: Not all unmarked graves on the site necessarily exist within
Speaker 1: a traditional grave plot. According to Scott Peterson, who has
Speaker 1: collected folk stories and oral histories about the land for
Speaker 1: twenty years. There is another plot next to an old
Speaker 1: oak tree and sunken in structure that was once used
Speaker 1: to shade the warden during lynch ings. This would of
Speaker 1: course be not legal, but as we've talked about, legality
Speaker 1: does not always dictate the behaviors of prison farm wardens,
Speaker 1: and there are records of cases of runaways at other
Speaker 1: prison farms that were later discovered to have been killed
Speaker 1: and buried on site. As such, these claims are not
Speaker 1: outside the bounds of possibility, and, if anything, are highly likely.
Speaker 1: There are also many similarities between the conditions at the
Speaker 1: prison farm and those of the Brandon Indian Residential School
Speaker 1: that would lead to the need to bury many bodies
Speaker 1: without necessarily keeping tight records. Katherine and Nicole thesis details
Speaker 1: a history of airborne diseases aggravated by factors such as
Speaker 1: poor sanitation and ventilation, lack of medical attention, malnutrition, violence
Speaker 1: and abuse, overwork and accidents, and harsh punishment of runaways,
Speaker 1: all of which are also seen throughout the prison Farm's history.
Speaker 1: I don't want to draw too tight a comparison between
Speaker 1: the prison farm and other places and other events, it
Speaker 1: is worth looking at other similar situations as something that
Speaker 1: shows that the question of unmarked graves is not unfounded
Speaker 1: nor uncharacteristic of the institutions of the time. There have
Speaker 1: been several other instances where institutions with similar conditions were
Speaker 1: later found to have unmarked graves, burial grounds, or other
Speaker 1: human remains. Human remains. In sugar Land, Texas, near the
Speaker 1: old Imperial Prison Farm, there were found have quote belonged
Speaker 1: to prisoners who worked on the land once used as
Speaker 1: a sugar plantation unquote. An article from the Tyler Morning
Speaker 1: Telegraph describes life of physical abuse, forced labor, and poor nutrition,
Speaker 1: much like the prison farm in Atlanta. Similarly to Atlanta, quote,
Speaker 1: it wasn't until it became clear that these abuses were
Speaker 1: widespread and affecting white prisoners that public opinions started to
Speaker 1: shift unquote. In Arkansas, in nineteen sixty eight, a reformist
Speaker 1: superintendent of Cummins Prison Farm discovered the remains of three
Speaker 1: former prisoners. His discovery quote made international news, embarrassed Governor
Speaker 1: Winthrop Rockefeller, and infuriated conservative politicians. It also led to
Speaker 1: merchants firing and banishment from the field of prison management unquote. Finally,
Speaker 1: although the Brandon Indian Residential School was a prison farm,
Speaker 1: archival research points to conditions for the prisoners held at
Speaker 1: the Atlanta prison Farm that are not dissimilar from the
Speaker 1: conditions of the children held at the Brandon Indian Residential School.
Speaker 1: We see lacking healthcare, poor sanitation and ventilation, malnutrition, violence
Speaker 1: and abuse, a heavy workload, accidents, and harsh punishments all
Speaker 1: contributed to the deaths there, and each of those factors
Speaker 1: has been demonstrated via archival research to have existed on
Speaker 1: the prison farm in Atlanta. As mentioned at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the first episode, this is not an exhaustive or
Speaker 1: comprehensive history. Further research is necessary, and hopefully, as explained
Speaker 1: by the past few episodes, is extremely warranted. However, what's
Speaker 1: laid out here and in the Atlantic community presses other
Speaker 1: work already changes our fundamental understanding of the Atlanta prison farm.
Speaker 1: Far from a federal program ending in the sixties before
Speaker 1: being essentially abandoned, we saw that the Atlanta prison Farm
Speaker 1: on Key Road was a city run from the very
Speaker 1: beginning and the direct continuation of the already cruel stockade.
Speaker 1: Contrary to popular belief, it was run continuously from the
Speaker 1: early twenties up into the nineteen nineties, it was a
Speaker 1: completely different property than the Honor Farm. Despite many, including
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Police Foundation, continuing to use that phrase when
Speaker 1: referring to the site. At the city run prison farm,
Speaker 1: atrocious conditions persisted across the better part of a century
Speaker 1: and ongoing into what we would consider the modern era,
Speaker 1: despite claims at each stage that the bad times were
Speaker 1: behind us and a new era lay ahead. There is
Speaker 1: a documented history of the city prioritizing its ability to
Speaker 1: cut costs with prison labor, essentially extending slavery, Extensive records
Speaker 1: of physical and emotional abuse, torture, forced labor, overwork, a
Speaker 1: lack of healthcare for sanitation, overcrowding, and poor nutrition ranging
Speaker 1: throughout the entire history of the site. Nearly every stage
Speaker 1: of leadership has gotten caught breaking rules and laws while
Speaker 1: avoiding the same carcetral fate as the prisoners, as well
Speaker 1: as a reluctance by city officials to enact policies that
Speaker 1: would truly alleviate these harms and attempt to make up
Speaker 1: for them, rather ensuring that power remains continuous, as is
Speaker 1: the case with cops city. This history demonstrates how Atlantic
Speaker 1: City government is perfectly fine with over ruling rights of
Speaker 1: the residents of Decab County who are disenfranchised from the city.
Speaker 1: With the Atlanta Police Foundation and the city getting closer
Speaker 1: and closer to deforestation and facility construction, the window of
Speaker 1: opportunity is shrinking for further on the ground historical research.
Speaker 1: The fact that they've yet to meet the requirements for
Speaker 1: the full environmental assessment, let alone the careful historical analysis
Speaker 1: necessary considering the history of the land, means that the
Speaker 1: city is not only physically erasing the history of the
Speaker 1: lives it's destroyed, but also risking the possibility of desecrating
Speaker 1: their graves in the process. A guest column in the
Speaker 1: Supporter Report by Lilly Ponins, an environmental engineer and now
Speaker 1: former member of the Community Stakeholder Advisory Committee for the
Speaker 1: Atlanta Public Safety Training Center ak A COP City, gave
Speaker 1: us an inside look at how the development of COPS
Speaker 1: City is knowingly and willingly refusing to do their due
Speaker 1: diligence assessments and pave over decades of corstral history. Quote.
Speaker 1: Since joining the Community Stakeholder Advisory Committee for the Atlanta
Speaker 1: Public Safety Training Center. I've observed the developers from Da
Speaker 1: Vinci Development Collaborative, along with the Atlanta Police Foundation, mislead
Speaker 1: the community into believing that they are following a legitimate,
Speaker 1: regulated environmental due diligence process. In reality, they are doing
Speaker 1: less than the minimum to meet the legally defined standards
Speaker 1: for environmental site assessment reporting and are breaking the trust
Speaker 1: of stakeholders and the terms of their ground lease agreement
Speaker 1: with the City of Atlanta. Given the historical operation as
Speaker 1: a prison farm and plantation prior to that conditions violence, abuse, accidents,
Speaker 1: and harsh punishments, it is reasonable to believe that areas
Speaker 1: of the property could contain human remains in unmarked graves.
Speaker 1: This was never investigated. Comments and professional input from myself
Speaker 1: and others on the Community Stakeholder Advisory Committee were brushed off,
Speaker 1: and no additional site investigations were considered beyond the limited
Speaker 1: site investigation. To remedy this, the City of Atlanta must
Speaker 1: force the development team to act responsibly by requiring a
Speaker 1: proper phase to environmental site assessment. If they fail to
Speaker 1: do so, taxpayers are likely to foot the bill for
Speaker 1: the remediation that is being ignored or for the complicated
Speaker 1: litigation that will arise when this development team disturbs human
Speaker 1: remains on this site unquote. A few months ago, Lily
Speaker 1: Pontins was kicked off the Community Stakeholder Advisory Committee after
Speaker 1: writing this column. Both the Community Stakeholder Advisory Committee and
Speaker 1: COPS City have repeatedly been made aware that the assessments
Speaker 1: they've done failed to meet environmental requirements, and the reports
Speaker 1: that they're using to base decisions off of and green
Speaker 1: light proposals have been shown to be inaccurate. As far
Speaker 1: as responding to City council, APF enlisted Terra Con to
Speaker 1: write a cultural report. This report was highly inaccurate due
Speaker 1: to relying on the Billian Luten report. I personally emailed
Speaker 1: City Council as Atlantic community press collective and as I've
Speaker 1: repeatedly told them, hey, this is incorrect, this is why,
Speaker 1: here's proof. This is really disgusting and sad that you
Speaker 1: refuse to acknowledge any of this history. And ironically, a
Speaker 1: month or two later, another report comes out that's slightly better,
Speaker 1: slightly revised, but still has that whitewashed aspect that the
Speaker 1: original one did. I had the misfortune to recently need
Speaker 1: to reread the terra con report um, and I don't
Speaker 1: believe they they address when the city supposedly took over
Speaker 1: the prison the federal farm at all. I don't think
Speaker 1: they discussed that date in the slightest. But the Bluten
Speaker 1: report they draw from, I think she just says sometime
Speaker 1: in the fifties, which was how we figured out because
Speaker 1: we were trying to nail down the date of the fifties,
Speaker 1: and when we had to go back and back and
Speaker 1: back and back and back. We found out when the
Speaker 1: city purchased the land by literally just going to the
Speaker 1: decap history archives at the courthouse and looking them up.
Speaker 1: A fairly quick process in terms of research that APF
Speaker 1: obviously didn't hair or bother to look into at all.
Speaker 1: Obviously the City of Atlanta didn't either. Yeah. In her
Speaker 1: residential school thesis, Katherine Nichols lays out a robust process
Speaker 1: for unobtrusively examining possibilities of human remains while respecting the
Speaker 1: communities affected. Her process involves thorough archival research, including the
Speaker 1: use of oral histories and unconfirmed local knowledge to general
Speaker 1: leads for a deeper investigation. This archivalrysearch is then situated
Speaker 1: alongside the currently existing literature on the subject. She then
Speaker 1: conducts qualitative interviews with local community members and family members
Speaker 1: of those affected. She stresses that this qualitative information is
Speaker 1: not to be written off just because it does not
Speaker 1: align with records that the state institutions consider to be legitimate.
Speaker 1: And finally, she lays out a method for field research
Speaker 1: including site reconnaissance, field walking and probing, site preparation, controlled burns, mapping,
Speaker 1: aerial photography, soil profiles, metal detector surveys, ground penetrating radar,
Speaker 1: and ground conductivity surveys, all checked against controls to ensure
Speaker 1: that they align with the results of the same methods
Speaker 1: on previously known unmarked grave sites. Crucially, all of this
Speaker 1: is done with the consent of the relevant communities and
Speaker 1: is done unobtrusively as to not disturb the graves. Now
Speaker 1: that the construction process has ostensibly started, Um, how does
Speaker 1: that factor into, like, you know, disturbing the grounds where
Speaker 1: there could be no all of this history that is
Speaker 1: being unearthed and kind of paved over top of. Um,
Speaker 1: how does that kind of impact the ability to do
Speaker 1: ethical research going forward into the history of this land. So,
Speaker 1: for one thing, we talked on and off with a
Speaker 1: handful of archaeologists and anthropologists and related fields about if
Speaker 1: we were going to go onto the prison farm property
Speaker 1: and conduct a search for grape sites or other historical information, like,
Speaker 1: we have no legal way to do that. It would
Speaker 1: be trespassing. And we also know that from the quote
Speaker 1: unquote cultural report that the Police Foundation had done, they
Speaker 1: didn't really do that kind of search. Um, they were
Speaker 1: mostly searching for evidence of I guess you could say
Speaker 1: indigenous artifacts, not let's say bodies buried in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: So the ability to do on site historical research is
Speaker 1: it kind of depends on, Hey, how willing are you
Speaker 1: to get picked up for felony trespassing because that's a
Speaker 1: charge they can put on you. It definitely feels like
Speaker 1: we're up against a clock. I'm just going to add
Speaker 1: on to that. I feel like one of the issues
Speaker 1: that we've definitely come across, as far as looking for
Speaker 1: graves that are related to the prison farm, your options
Speaker 1: are pretty much grund Prendy trading radar or what they
Speaker 1: call cadaver dogs. Cadaver dogs theoretically can sniff up to
Speaker 1: a hundred years. From what I've read, how many people
Speaker 1: have connections to cadaver dogs honestly, and then also the
Speaker 1: just logistics of attempting to get ground penetrating radar in
Speaker 1: a forest UM is definitely difficult. Are you worried as
Speaker 1: construction continues that even if stuff is discovered, whether that
Speaker 1: be unmarked graves or you know other other various other
Speaker 1: things that do you have any any level of confidence
Speaker 1: that if things are found they'll even go public? Or
Speaker 1: are you worried that if they find things they'll just
Speaker 1: cover it up? Basically, I have absolutely zero faith. I
Speaker 1: mean to me that I have absolutely zero faith to
Speaker 1: directly ensure a question. I have absolutely zero faith that
Speaker 1: anything that is found will be preserved. UM. We also
Speaker 1: have it on fairly good authority that the issuing of
Speaker 1: construction permits is imminent. UM. The cab kine of Commissioner
Speaker 1: Ted Terry is are our best uh legal ally, if
Speaker 1: you will um our best government ally. He last week,
Speaker 1: during the Week of Action, introduced UM a resolution that
Speaker 1: would ask Dicab County CEO Michael Thurmond to basically make
Speaker 1: a series of asks himself of the City of Atlanta.
Speaker 1: This is basically legally the most the County Commission can
Speaker 1: do and it is all incumbent upon the CEO of
Speaker 1: the county to actually do these things. UM hope is
Speaker 1: not great for the county CEO to do any of
Speaker 1: these things. But um ted Terry, among other things, asked
Speaker 1: for additional environmental studies, which by the way, they are
Speaker 1: required to do in the lease. He asked for additional
Speaker 1: historical research and full disclosure. He actually cited the Press
Speaker 1: Collective's history report we did last summer in the legislation,
Speaker 1: which was both he's a state actor, but also you've
Speaker 1: got to admit that's kind of cool. Um, it was
Speaker 1: gratifying to see our work receive a fairly high level
Speaker 1: of recognition. Additional environmental studies, historical research, noise studies, and
Speaker 1: ultimately he asks that the CEO asked the city to
Speaker 1: consider just relocating the site completely. I think something that
Speaker 1: we need to take into consideration throughout this entire research
Speaker 1: process is that a lot of the records that we
Speaker 1: have access to our newspaper, the primary newspaper service we
Speaker 1: have access to is the a j C, which we
Speaker 1: have a clear we have clear proof that a j
Speaker 1: C continues to be racist, continues to focus on the
Speaker 1: narrative that they would like to project as far as
Speaker 1: being accomplices to the police and to a p F
Speaker 1: and how that correlates to this city's history and mishandling
Speaker 1: of this piece of land. Um. When we were looking
Speaker 1: through older articles, they are handful of papers. There's the
Speaker 1: Great Sparckled Bird, which is as so it's a student
Speaker 1: run newspaper. This one, I'm assuming, just based on the
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies time frame, that there's a decent chance
Speaker 1: that it was primarily written by white people. I do
Speaker 1: not have proof of that. I'm just going on with
Speaker 1: gut feeling with that. So there is a probably a
Speaker 1: bit of bias, but it really does start to give
Speaker 1: a different picture of the people that were sent to
Speaker 1: the prison from There were several g SU students who
Speaker 1: were sent there and they were put in the whole.
Speaker 1: One was put the whole just because he had long
Speaker 1: hair and he refused to cut his hair, so they said,
Speaker 1: you know what, you're going into isolation, have fun um
Speaker 1: and he was there for a little bit. It's important
Speaker 1: to reiterate that throughout much of the archival research that
Speaker 1: produced these findings, the bulk of the articles discovered were
Speaker 1: from the Atlanta Journal, The Atlantic Constitution, and the Atlanta
Speaker 1: Journal Constitution after the two merged. Though these papers reported
Speaker 1: on bad conditions once they had become public, and in
Speaker 1: two cases were responsible for investigative work that made these
Speaker 1: conditions public. These white run papers, much like many major newspapers,
Speaker 1: have a known history of racism and support for the
Speaker 1: police state and carcetral institutions. We therefore believe that a
Speaker 1: thorough search through archives of black run newspapers such as
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Daily, World, magazines and other publications is necessary
Speaker 1: to gain a more complete understanding of the history. Both
Speaker 1: myself and the researchers that put this history together are
Speaker 1: furthermore white, and so it is possible that our own
Speaker 1: biases and blind spots could be present in this reporting.
Speaker 1: We strongly believe that a more complete accounting of this
Speaker 1: history could be undertaken by people who have been more
Speaker 1: directly affected, and hope that these episodes and the research
Speaker 1: they're based on, is not taken as the end of
Speaker 1: the story, but just a beginning and an invitation to
Speaker 1: further scrutiny. Is there really any way to continue the
Speaker 1: research that would be necessary to actually preserve the history
Speaker 1: and keep people knowledgeable about the atrocities that's happened the
Speaker 1: past hundred plus years, Like with if construction continues, is
Speaker 1: there even a way to do this now or is
Speaker 1: that clock really just running out? So I think one
Speaker 1: of the biggest hurdles as far as preserving the history
Speaker 1: is honestly just getting people to care about it, because
Speaker 1: it's not sexy. It's not people in tree houses. It's
Speaker 1: sitting on a computer just skimming through thousands of articles.
Speaker 1: No one cares that in two the a c l
Speaker 1: You sued the city because they were using illegal in
Speaker 1: unconstitutional punishments. Nobody really cares about that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: It's not that exciting in the grand scheme of things,
Speaker 1: but it's part of the history, and it's part of
Speaker 1: what has led us to where we are now with
Speaker 1: Cops City and with that that wraps up our miniseries
Speaker 1: on the very much incomplete history of the old Atlanta
Speaker 1: Prison Farm. The fact that there's seemingly little to know
Speaker 1: original official records to learn from because they were either
Speaker 1: trashed or never kept in the first place, is itself
Speaker 1: cover up and denial of history and gross denial of
Speaker 1: the experiences of trauma and oppression of those who are
Speaker 1: subjected to the horrors of the prison farm. It's bad
Speaker 1: enough that the city couldn't be bothered to remember the history,
Speaker 1: but crucially they're bulldozed over. Police endorsed narrative in whatever
Speaker 1: museum or plaque they want to create cannot be allowed
Speaker 1: to become the story of the prison farm. And it's
Speaker 1: many atrocities that we are still rediscovering. There is still
Speaker 1: a long way to go and we have barely scratched
Speaker 1: the surface. Hopefully this is just the start of more
Speaker 1: people paying attention to the forgotten histories like this and
Speaker 1: then going out and doing further digging. You can check
Speaker 1: out the Atlantic Community Press Collective and they're great reporting
Speaker 1: at a t L Press Collective dot com or Atlanta
Speaker 1: Underscore Press on Twitter. See you all on the other side. Hey,
Speaker 1: we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
Speaker 1: now until the heat death of the universe. It could happen.
Speaker 1: Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone
Speaker 1: Media dot com, or check us out on the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can find sources for it could happen here. Updated
Speaker 1: monthly at cool Zone Media dot com Slash sources. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.