Part Two: The Bastards Who Killed the Black Panthers

cool dudes. Um. But last episode was to build up, uh, to the bastards who tried to destroy them. So this is an episode about how the FBI and law enforcement tried to take down the Black Panther Party. Uh. My guest for part two, as with part one, is prop propaganda, hip hop artist and podcast yourself. What'saw y'all. I'm just glad to be here, just smiling so much, I don't know, glad to have you here. Um. We've been really happy to have your perspective and excited to get into the

rest of this. So um. We talked about the Moford Act in the last episode, which which stopped the Black Panthers from carrying loaded weapons in the state of California. UM, but did not stop the Black Panthers from loving themselves some firearms, weapons training, stockpiling. They remained a big part of what they did. Uh. And I found an archive of magazines published by the Black Panther Community News Service,

which was like they're essentially their media network. Um. And one issue from nineteen sixty nine included this cartoon UM which Sophie can show you and I guess I can describe it. You can describe if you'd like, Let prop describe it. Yes, So this is from the Black Panther yeahtop, Yeah,

the magazine that they ran, magazine. So it's like it's very familiar with their style of animation, but it's like thick animation style of illustrations, like thick, like out black out lined characters like that are just kind of shaded in grays UM and uh, yellow or orange letters in blue letters. It's like a black family. Um, I think that's a child, but the child looks like an adult up the animation style and it's kind of like a

cartoon or like a like a comic strip. But the brothers got a good throw both the brothers got a good throw and the sisters got a nice little hair wrap on. Yeah, am I supposed to say? What? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, What's what's going on in the cartoon? It says, so Dad's got his hand on the shoulders a little homie, and he says, son, what do you want for Christmas? And I can't really make out what read what the

sun says he wants for Christmas? A machine gun, a shotgun, a box of hand grenades, a box of dynamite, and I think a box of handguns is the nineteen sixty nine um. And then there's some stuff written around the edges of the cartoon UM, including off the pig, blow oink oink away and snipe the hawks um in w a yeah really intense yes on his way to like

the f the police song, Yeah yeah. And violence against the police was a constant refrain in Black Panther periodicals, and it was usually framed as necessary self defense against

an oppressive and violent force. UM. And there is this kind of unavoidably gleeful tone and some of the discussions against violence against law enforcement, which I think is really uncomfortable for a lot of particularly kind of middle of the road centrist political UM people to to to deal with um to to like accept but uh, there's there's a reason for this, Yeah, yeah, there And and that's what this episode is about, is like why there was so much paranoia and hatred of the police, not just

as sort of like the violence against black people by law enforcement, but specifically because the Panthers knew the police were targeting them. Um and as the sixties turned into seventies, an increasing amount of their anti law enforcement rhetoric focused on the Federal Bureau of Investigations. UM and I found

a really interesting website, black Power in American History. It appears to be a graduate student project from UNC at Chapel Hill, and they analyzed piles of old Black Panther magazines and noted they would claim that if the Black Panthers did not join or follow a particular course of action,

disaster will result. An example of this was seen in the article published on January nine, ninety one, when it read when a pig is caught dirty snoop and shows you his badge and begs for mercy, mercy him to death with the butt of your gun towards the bottom. It also reads kill the pigs before they kill you. The pigs here are referring to undercover FBI agents that were sent to infiltrate the party and cause internal unrest. And again, this is really uncomfortable rhetoric for a lot

of folks to read. But it wasn't It wasn't just bawned from bloodthirstiness. The FBI and the police were engaged in an active battle to destroy the Black Panthers and to murder many of their leaders in this period of time, and a lot of folks would have just called them conspiratorial. Um, would have said that they were sort of making stuff up because they're paranoid. Um. All of these fears were proved valid by documentation that later came out, which we'll

get to at the end of this episode. There's a a good tie into like modern time, especially like you know, the community that spawned the hip hop music that most of us kind of consider golden age, Like these were our dads, you know, our moms. Like so even just like you know, eight song from n w A for the Police, like this isn't just it's hard. It's hard if you're not here, like to understand that, like you know,

Iced Teas Cop killer. It's like, Okay, you you think that this is uh like a honorable like officer position, that that job is a job of person that carries prestige and honor. It's like that is not our experience with the police, like your experiences. This is another gang, right, It's just the law protects them, you know. So you have this attitude towards him. There's another song, but I

feel like you're your taste in hip hop. Would know if I'd say, Jay Dilla, you know what I'm saying, so like you liken more of the obscure or doom tree stuff. I've been listening. I've been listening to you

know what I'm saying. Uh and uh you know. Um, So you take somebody like J. J. Diller, who has also has a song called the Police, and it's it's the ideas, Like the backstory with that song was like there was this false tip that he was engaged in some criminal activity and the police raided his mom's basement, you know, destroyed all these things. It's like destroyed hard

drive stuff. Like this guy's like recording albums for you know, uh child call quest, Like he's recording albums for for busta rhymes like all these like main major level Like he's like you guys asked Pharrell, Timberland, all these like you know, producers, they're all like we got our swing from Jay Dilla, you know, and like and Dilla. So

Dilla wrote this song. This guy, this guy like he just rated my and so he made that song that day, like after the police just rated his mom's basement and destroyed just volumes and volumes of music that none of us will never get now, you know what I'm saying. Um, So the attitude is like you're your bullies. You're not policing us, you are bullies, you know. So it's it's

hard not to respond that way. But so if you understand as a long statement, but if you understand, like our relationship with law and for and I say this as somebody who's like my brothers is a highway patrol officer, you know what I'm saying, Like, so we have law enforcement in our family, you know, but the institution since this day, Like so it's like this is coursing through

our veins. Our grandparents are great grandparents, our fathers, you know what I'm saying, Like, this is our relationship with the police, sorry, that's just is so triggering. No, just and just as as a way to kind of make that point just into the modern era, because we're talking about decades ago and most of this episode. Um. I've had a two thousand fifteen article in the Washington Post about civil asset forfeitures, which is what happens when police

take your stuff with no recourse versus burglary. In two uh, police civil asset forfeitures total more than five billion dollars worth of property. Police took five billion dollars worth of property with no recourse really from people. Burglaries accounted for less than four billion dollars worth of theft. So when you're making that comparison between police and the burglars, there's some numbers you can throw out there that are very compelling. Um. Yeah,

that's that's probably enough for now. Um. So. In nineteen fifty six, the FBI launched its co Intel pro operation UM co Intel pro usual. We see it written in all caps as one one where it's an acronym. Initially aimed at targeting communist organizers in the United States, it was later expanded to strike at groups like the KKK, but thanks in large part to jer Hoover. In the late nineteen sixties, the FBI co intel pro operations focused increasingly and primarily on the Black Panthers. This was a

sophisticated and complex operation. Hoover himself wrote, one of our primary aims and counterintelligence as it concerns the b PP, is to keep the group isolated from the moderate black and white community which may support it. And I'm gonna quote again from the book Black Against Empire here, the federal agents sought to create factionalism among the party leaders

and between the Panthers and other black political organizations. FBI operatives forged documents and paid provocateurs to promote violent conflicts between Black Panther leaders as well as between the Party and other Black nationalist organizations, and congratulated themselves when these conflicts yielded the killing of Panthers, and co intel pro sought to lead the party into unsupportable actions, creating opposition to the bp P on the part of the majority

of the residents of the ghetto areas. For example, agent provocateurs on the government payroll supplied explosives to Panther members and sought to incite them to blow up public buildings and they promoted kangaroo courts, encouraging panther members to torture inspected informants. Yeah. Yeah, so like that's it's so like that's so like, you know, illuminating, because it's like you're in the room. It's like you're in a room with like rational people and somebody else from the back you

should just punch them in the pot. You're just like, who said that? Right? And then everybody goes you see what they're about. They're about punching in the butt, Like, well, who first of all, who punches in the butt? Number one? You know what I'm saying. But then but just them planting these people to push them into places that make other people uncomfortable, and then that becomes the narrative. Yeah, it's clearly so effective. Yeah, it was very effective and

very um insidious. Um. And we'll get into the numbers a little bit later how much they spent on this, but um For in a specific exam uple of how this process worked, I think we need to turn to nineteen sixty eight, when J. Edgar Hoover sent a memorandum to fourteen FBI field offices noting that a state of gang warfare existed between a group called the US Organization, a black nationalist group, and the Panthers now US as

a complicated Organization UM. Their founder, among other things, is the guy who created Quanza UM and I we're not going to do them justice in this episode. For today's purposes. What's important to know is that US and the Panthers had a lot of disagreements on how to achieve black liberation, and it competed aggressively for new recruits UM through a network of informants. The FBI learned this, and Hoover noted that they'd seen evidence that there had been threats of

murder between some members. He took notice of this and ordered what he called imaginative and hard hitting counter intelligence measures aimed at crippling the BPP. In order to fully capitalize, in his words, on the rivalry and exploit all avenues of creating further dissension, The FBA ordered its informants and US to tell members when the BPP planned to have events, so that US could also show up and both in

organizations would wind up in conflict. They did whatever they could to stoke hatred between both groups, including having their paid informant spread rumors about either side to the other group, like rumors about like them being there being hits planned and murders plan raising the temperature that was the goal. UM. And this all came to a boil. UM at an event your father was at January nineteen sixty nine, UM, when al Prentice Carter and John Huggins were gunned down

by US members on the u c l A campus. Yeah, it's just it's like junior high all over again, only with like murder, yeah mixed in, you know. Yeah, it's so sad man. Yeah, Pops was at that anyway, continue Sorry. The Black Panther seemed to instinctively know what was going on. UM and their magazines declared the murders of political killing. They pointed out that US received government funding and had

a working relationship with the police. They also note that seventeen Panthers were arrested in the immediate wake of the murders, while it took much longer for the law to get take action against the actual killers, who were members of US. UM. Now, only some of the FBI's co intel profacory has been declassified at this point, so we'll never know the exact extent to which the Bureau planned all this. There are allegations that what happened at u c A was an

ordered hit. Others will argue that the FBI definitely intended for there to be murders, but they weren't trying to stoke specific murders. So they wanted to raise the temperature to where murders were inevitable, but they weren't saying, on this date, kill these people. There's also allegations that they were in fact saying, on this date, kill these people.

Um was like yeah, they had a list this who you're supposed to die, you know, yeah, yeah, And we can verify that they absolutely specifically intended to stoke violence. That they wrote, we want to make these people kill each other like that like that that that we know, um to a point of certainty. Um. Whatever the truth about how specific they were about the violence they wanted, Um, the violence like happened and it was very much stoked by the FBI. And on May nineteen sixty nine, Black

panther John Savage was killed by US members. Sylvester Bell was murdered in August. Now, most of the information behind all this didn't come out until a series of court battles in the late nineteen seventies, so particularly like white people reading about this at the time would have just said, oh, these these black liberation groups are also violent, look at what they're doing to each other, ignoring the fact that

it was their FBI and was stoking all this. Yeah. Um, and I found a really good New York Times article from nineteen seventy six, Um, when this started to come out, that goes into detail about everything here, and it notes that the Bureau, working with the Chicago Police Department, also sought to create violent divisions between the Panthers and the black Stone Rangers, which are now a much more complicated organization. At that point, we're a street gang in Chicago. Quote.

For example, a fake note was sent to the leader of the street gang, Jeff Ford, telling him the Panthers hostility towards his group, saying they're supposed to be a

hit out for you. In noting that that this meant there was probably a contract to kill someone, the Chicago FBI office set in a memorandum to headquarters that the letter may intensify the degree of animosity between the two groups and occasion for it to take retaliatory action, which could disrupt the b PP or lead to reprisals against their leadership. So the FBI sends this fake letter about a hit and note specifically we're hope, like we think this is going to make them angrier at each other

and might stoke violence, and that's our goal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just it's just like, can we just like okay, acknowledge that, like we you can't make this stuff up. No, you can't make this stuff up. You know. One thing that's really frustrating about this is that it, um it's spread so far even outside of among the entire left

wing activist community. It's spent a lot of time in that community, um for my work, and there are constant modern fears about co intel pro stuff even among like white activist group primarily white activist groups, um of FBI informants and stuff like. You find this this fear among a lot of members of anti fascist street groups right now that there's agent provocateurs and maybe there are like it's happened, like that's the thing, it's like they did it.

There is precedence, yes, yeah, yeah, there's really no limit to what you might be worried. The FBI will do to your activist group because this ship happened. Um yeah, Now I'm gonna quote again from that New York Times article. The report portraits of campaign in which the Bureau used a legion of informers, sometimes as provocateurs, and close cooperation with local police anti radical squads to so confusion, fear, and dissension among the Panthers. Cartoons attacking them purportedly from

rival groups were distributed to aggravate antagonisms. Stories were planted with newspaper and television outlets to put the Panthers and their supporters in a bad light. Bogus messages were sent to cause rifts between the party and its white leftist supporters. This was a comprehensive campaign. Imagine this and like the Internet age just be like just trolls attacking your comments

section for the purpose of m hmm. Yeah. It'll maybe thirty years, yeah, yeah, we it'll probably be a few years before the extent to which that stuff is going on comes out now. And you know what, to be entirely honest, it's possible that none of it now was the FBI. That it's all for example, government like private corporations contracted by government agencies or whatever like, who knows. Yeah, the FBI's Cointal Probe campaign seriously disrupted the Black Panthers,

but it did not stop them from expanding. Throughout the late sixties and early nineteen seventies, the organization was under constant stress, though, and this was not helped by the fact that, for some strange reason, its leaders kept getting imprisoned and assassinated. I wonder why all of a sudden started kid making crimes. They just they just went off

the rails. Yeah. I think we'll start on this subject by talking about what happened to Huey P. Newton on October seven, nineteen sixty seven, who we walked down to his girlfriend's house on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland. It was a Friday night. They were going to party, but she wound up feeling sick and instead lent in her card to take out on the town own. He had a drink at the bar and then went to a church

social where he danced until around two am. Then he drove to a party, which he left it around four am. That early morning, October Officer John Frey of the Oakland Police was sitting in his squad car. He saw hue drive past and recognized his plates. We don't know precisely if the Bureau had local cops keeping tabs on Huey, if this was an FBI directed operation, or if the Oakland cops on their own. We're just wanting to funk with Huey. Either is entirely possible, but without any apparent cause.

John Frey made one of the last mistakes of his life. He pulled Huey p Newton over. Here's how SF Weekly describes what happened next. Officer Herbert C. Hines rolled up on the scene shortly after Frey had radioed for backup. The officers told Newton to get out of the bug and marched him to the back of Haines's patrol car. Newton and Frey started scuffling on the trunk of Haines's car. A gun went off. Haines was hit in the right forearm. Heines fired back, hitting Newton in the gut. More shots

were fired. Haines was shot three times and survived. Newton took that bullet to the gut and fled the scene with McKinney, which is a friend he was with. Freight was shot five times and died. He had been on the force for a little over a year and had a three year old daughter. He was only twenty three, but all of the men involved in the melee were well under thirty. Now we don't know what actually happened.

Newton claims to have blacked out after being shot, which is totally reasonable, and speculates that the cops shot each other and all of the recovered bullets came from police revolvers. Speculation on what went down ranges from Huey grabbing a cops gun and shooting them both, to him resisting when the cops started beating him and then them shooting each other in error, to an attempted assassination of Huey by

the Oakland p DE gone horribly wrong. I don't know what exactly went down, but I do think additional context on Officer James Frey is useful here, and I'm gonna quote from Black Against Empire. Frey had been implicated in

numerous incidents of racism. H Bruce Bison, an English teacher who invited Frey to speak about police work to his class at Clayton Valley High School, reported that Frey had told the class that inwards in the neighborhood he patrolled were a lot of bad types, and the trial eventually

held to adjudicate the nts of that early morning. Alfred Dunning, an accountant for Prudential Life Insurance, testified that Frey had racially harassed him during a traffic accident, and when Dunning complained that Frey was acting like the Gestapo, Frey loosened his holster, put his hand on his gun and said I am the Gestapo, and ordered done into the police car.

The best. Yeah, that's the quiet part. Yes. Earlier on the evening that Huey Newton and Gene McKinney drove to get soul food on Seventh Street, Frey had intervened in a dispute between a black grocery clerk named Daniel King and a white man without pants on, who claimed King had stolen his pants. According to King, Fray called him an inward and held his arms so the white man could beat him. So this is the guy who winds up in this. I don't have trouble believing um that

it was self defense. It's also entirely possible that both of them fucked up, or that both of them were trying to kill Hue and shot each other. Um, who knows any scenario works, yeah, um, But obviously Huey P. Newton gets charged with murder um as a result of of of the shooting death of Officer James Freight Um, and in prison, hue became a living martyr to the Black Panthers. There was a rally on his twenty six birthday February sevent nineteen sixty eight, that brought more than

six thousand people to the Oakland Arena. H Rap Brown and Black Power activist told the crowd the only thing that is going to free Huey Newton is gunpowder, and this actually wound up being inaccurate. Hue received his day in court, which revealed, among other things, that Frey had a list of twenty Black Panther vehicles on the dashboard

of his car when he died. Huey was initially convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sent to prison, but in May of nineteen seventy that conviction was reversed after the California Court of Appeals found significant errors in the trial. Hughie would be tried two more times, both trials ending in jury deadlocks before he was eventually cleared of all charges in nineteen seventy one. So he is cleared by the courts, but he loses two years of his life, you know,

to the to prison. Um my mom used to cast My mom used to call me h rat brown just for she's doing for jokes. You look h rat brown whenever I was talking about black stuff. Anyway, it's that that was funny now. Um. Bobby's seal also caught serious legal trouble in nineteen sixty nine as a result of his participation in the nineteen sixty Chicago riots over the Democratic National Convention. That year's DNC occurred in one of

the most tumultuous periods in American history. And again, this is another thing that we probably should do a whole episode about, Like we're not gonna get into enough to tail in the sixty eight riots. Um. The short story is that Bobby Kennedy, who was like the progressive icon at the time, had been gunned down the night he

won the California primary. Hubert Humphrey, the former Vice President, hadn't actually participated in any of the primaries, but was favored to become the candidate during the convention because he was beloved by establishment Democrats. Progressives and leftists hated him. And I'm sure, this is a situation that has sends

familiar to any um. The nineteen sixty eight riots like sort of resulted out of all this um and they were nightmarish and caused in large part by the fact that the mayor of Chicago, Richard Daily, turned the city into what Walter Cronkite called a police state leading up to the event. The police turned on left wing protesters

with unspeakable violence, and the city burned. The whole ugly event is, among other things, a big part of what inspired Hunter Thompson to write Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He was there at the time, um, and it was just this this big, ugly nightmare that was largely instigated by state violence against protesters who were unhappy that the d n C had picked basically a conservative guy to

run against fucking Nixon. Um yeah, and in nineteen yeah, And for a little bit of context, all of the people who know their history right now are fucking terrified that the DNC in twenty twenty is going to be another sixty eight Chicago. Same yeah. Yeah. I felt like that sitting watch in the last debate. I was like, Uh, here we go again. I'll be bringing my helmet. Yeah.

In nineteen sixty nine, Bobby Seal was arrested for conspiracy to incite riots at the d n C. And he was likely targeted for this because you know, he was a co founder of the Black Panthers, and the FBI wanted him dead or in prison and ideally both. Um. The court refused to let Seal choose his own lawyer. When he spoke up and complained that his constitutional rights were being violated, the judge ordered him bound and gagged. So he is bound and gagged during his own trial.

In the idea of how yeah, yeah, that's another one of those like okay, play some spa music. Think about that for a second, just just really ruminate on that. Ruminate on the fact that this man was not allowed to pick his own lawyer. Yeah, and then when he complained about it, they gagged him. You're telling you so, which one of us is like a president violent? Which one of us is violent? You know? Ye? Now, when he did get to speak, Bobby repeatedly called the judge

and government attorneys racists, fascists, and lying pigs. And this was pretty true in my opinion, and it did not aid in his defense. Bobby can't say that out loud, just like let's let's play to play a long game. UM. He was sentenced to four years in prison and he served twenty one months before his conviction was reversed and he was freed in nineteen seventy one. So again, he has almost two years stolen from UM. Now, while all this was going on, the Panthers were taking in huge

sums of money. The arrest of Huey Pe Newton in particular, drew in enormous amounts of donations, and as thousands of men and women joined all across the country, the fundraisers grew more and more successful, and as it tends to do, all this money caused massive disagreements and fights between different chapters of the party. The New York chapter being the most successful fundraisers, were particularly incense that they had not been allowed to keep what they thought was their fair

share of the money they had raised for the group. UM. These were the sort of disagreements that any kind of political organization is going to have, especially as they grow and start up, and they could have been smoothed over but for the fact that a large chunk of the most respected Panther leadership, the men who might have been able to work these conflicts out were in prison or, in the case of Hampton dead. Now we're going to talk about Fred. But you need to look at this

thing happening behind my shoulder right now. Oh ship, your your your your video is frozen. Oh here we go, I can see it. No, it's working here. That's just Sophie, Oh, vigorously trying to get your attention. Trump hillaration behind prop vera creeple, you know what, won't falsely charge political activists with crimes they didn't commit. Oh man, the sponsors of this podcast. Glorious, Yeah boy, oh man, all right. I

couldn't wait to get to Fred Hampton. I feel like I've been sitting here at this all the time, waiting to God. Yeah, I was wondering why you were gonna antcy in there, because when you get the three, it's like, this is the trinity that like paints the best picture as to how they got destroyed it because it's like it's like you ask, you ask ten different panthers, what the black panthers? Where you gonna get ten different answers, you know, pending on which one of these figureheads. You know,

you're appealing to you know what I'm saying. Um So, that's why I was like, you got to have the third person, you know, the doll I don't make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah, and we um you know. It was one of those things I had to debate do I include Fred Hampton in part one or part two? And I thought it was best to kind of lay the groundwork in one and then bring up because Hampton's whole life is so tight in with the police violence, because his story like

tied with like the Black Massiah stuff. Like, it's like you have to wait till there was like, don't because he's the most like likable if you will, at all of them. So it's like build the narrative and then it's like, oh God, now there's a guy that's likable. Yeah, so let's let's talk. I mean, I find Hughey and Bobby pretty likable Fred. Yeah. Yeah. Fred Hampton is the charismatic Yes, um so. Fred Hampton was born on August ninety eight, and he grew up in the suburbs of Chicago.

He was gifted academically and physically from a very young age, and at one point dreamed of playing for the Yankees, but as he grew into a young man, the injustice evident around him in America made anything but a revolutionary career impossible for Fred. And I'm gonna quote now from a Twitter thread I found on Fred Hampton by Michael Harriet, who's a senior writer at the Route. UM, and he knows a lot about Hampton. And you know, obviously it's a Twitter threat. I did do my work to like

double check claims and stuff. Um. And he's very accurate here, UM, So I'm gonna quote from him. Like the others he's referring to the other Black Panther leaders. Hampton started out with mainstream black organizations. By the time he was a teenager, he was organizing his own youth chapter of the in double a CP in his small Illinois suburb. In a single year, he had five hundred members. If this sounds

like hype, consider this. When Hampton attended his first Black Panther Party meeting in November nineteen sixty eight, the FBI had already opened a file on him a year earlier. His phone had been tapped for nine months. He had been designated as a key leader on the FBI's Agitator Index for five months before he ever joins the party. He's just he's a g Like that's the what it's like.

You take all of the best attributes of everybody so far and then you like put it in a guy who has like the entertaining ability of like a Michael Jackson. You're just like you can't lose, you know. So that's that he he gives me chills when I think about his ability to just like electrifier room. Yeah. Yeah. And he's I really recommend like like pulling up videos and you can find them of Fred Hampton's speaking and addressing

crowds like he was. He was very good at it um and uh, Michael in that threat argues that the FBI recognized Hampton's exceptional nature and that they were terrified he would be right to become a national figure. And there's a lot of backing for this argument. Uh. He in particular sites a memo from Herbert Hoover himself discussing the goals of the co Intel program, and it included as their number two goal. And I'm gonna quote directly

from the FBI here, Everybody take a breath. Yeah, Number two prevent the rise of a messiah who could unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement. Malcolm X might have been such a messiah. He is the martyr of the movement today. Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, and Elijah Mohammed all aspired to this position. Elijah Mohammed is less

of a threat because of his age. King could be a very real contender for this position should he abandon his supposed obedience to white liberal doctrines nonviolence and embrace black nationalism. Carmichael has the necessary like, yeah, yeah, here I talk about you, boys, is the yeah obedient a

white liberal thought dog. Yeah, yeah yeah. If you ever needed evidence of sort of the value of the armed revolutionary wing of the civil rights movement, it's the fact that the FBI was like, thank god, Martin Luther King's chill, he cool. Let let let kea talk. Don't let that

do talk. Yeah, we'd had to shoot him a lot earlier, right, oh man so um Hampton uh in his early well he didn't have a long career, unfortunately, but Hampton, early in his career worked to broker peace steals between various gangs in Chicago and came very close to getting the black Stone Rangers, a heavily armed organization with as many as eight thousand members, to join the Black Panthers. Now.

The FBI considered that possibility an enormous threat, and they devoted significant resources to fomenting anger between both groups, going as far as forging a death threat to the leader of the black Stone Nation we talked about a little bit in Part one. UM. In early nineteen sixty nine, Fred Hampton set up the first Panther free food distribution in Chicago. He got in trouble around this time due to a confusing series of events with an ice cream truck.

And again, depending on who you listen to, he either stole a bunch of ice cream from an ice cream truck to give out to poor kids, um, hijacked the truck and beat its driver, or had nothing at all to do with the robbery of seven any one dollars worth of ice cream. In any case, an ice cream truck driver claimed to have been beaten up by kids

while Fred stole ice cream from his truck. UM. And again, you gotta be real fucking careful when you listen to charges against any of these guys, because we know what was going on. Yeah, even even if it was true, it's like, okay, so take that same event and put it in like toadsuck Arkansas, which is a city I've performed, didn't believe it or not, And it's just funny. It's like, you know what, dude is hot out here. You know, I got a dial it, you know, distract the guy

while we get some drumsticks. You know what I'm saying. Like, it's more like it's mischievous. You know what I'm saying, Like I'm not trying to like, well, yeah, I guess you know what I'm saying, minimize a crime. But it's like this is it's like it's mischievous. It's just you can't be mischievous. And Fred Hampton yeah, now. Hampton was arrested for this and charged with robbery and assault. Well he waited for his trial. Fred organ used a free

breakfast for children program in Chicago. In its first two weeks, had fed more than a grade school kids and earned a huge amount of community support for the Panthers. Hampton was convicted of robbery and assault in April, but thanks to a good attorney, he was released from jail on two thousand dollars bail fred immediately held a press conference where he declared that the Black Panther Party was acting in the interests of the people whom the government ignored

and oppressed. Quote, our case should be taken to the people, and the people will not tolerate any oppressive system or force that attempts to jail the very people who feed their hungry children now. Hampton next organized a mock trial with a group of white leftists known as the New Left, and he gave in that trial what would become one of his most famous speeches, saying, We're gonna fight racism,

not with racism, but with solidarity. We're not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we're gonna fight it with socialism. We're not gonna fight reactionary pigs with any reaction on our part. We're gonna fight their reaction when all of us get together and have an international proletarian revolution. The most where the FBI was not a fan, the most level headed, like mature response to be like look man, and just look you know, and and in and in

that sense it's like it shows sort of. Even though there was differences in the solution, there was a common thread through a lot of these thinkers are just being like, look, man, like, I don't know. I don't know if just going straight this way is gonna work. I don't know a straight going this way is gonna work. But like, you know,

you can't. You can't defeat racism with racism. And it just doesn't you know, although that's what that's what y'all want, that's what people what they wanted us to believe about the Black Panthers was like, y'all were racist, and He's like, no, you don't understand. That's not gonna that's not gonna get us to our conclusion is more racism. I think that's important to notice that those were his words, you know, and that's the guy that they were like, He's are

worse than men? Yeah, yeah yeah. Fred succeeded in building a broad base of support in Chicago, including people of all races and backgrounds, and this got the attention of Panther national leadership. Bobby Seal flew down to sip Cargo to attend one of Fred's events. He gave a speech there wherein he said, I'm so thirsty for revolution. I'm

so crazy about the people. We're gonna stand together, We're going to have a black army, a Mexican American army, and alliance and solidarity with progressive whites, all of us, and we're gonna march on this pig power structure and we're gonna say, stick him up, motherfucker, we come for what's ours. It's a good speech. I love it, man, because stick him up, motherfucker we comes. Yeah, Man, Can

I throw in a little history lesson here? Hell yeah? Okay, I don't want to, like because I don't like it when someone steals your thunder on the show. So I don't I don't want to do that, you know what I'm saying, because no, no, no, you're here to because you know more about a lot of aspects of this

than I. So yeah, hit me up. Yeah. So, like, you know, towards the end of like you know, Dr King's like work, especially the one that the event that ended after I have a dream speech where he was on his way for to talk about really was what you're saying, was this idea of saying, we need to build this coalition because the system itself is trying to

keep us out of this. Then he does this, he does this whole this whole diet tribe about like, okay, you know talking about the Homestead Act and y'all could google that, but he was talking about the Homestead Act like okay, so to lift like poor white people out of serfdom. He was like, the government was handing out land grants to people to come build farms. If you don't know what you was doing, government would train you.

They pay to train you. If you don't have no tools to work at, government pay for you to have no tools. He's like, these are social programs that the government has done. He's like, these are the same people who look at us and say you need to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. And he's like, you need to stop asking for government handouts. He's like, the government has been handing out money to y'all this whole time.

So when we go to d C, we're going to get our check because because us just trying to to to to just tell you to stop being uh a racist or trying to change your mind about who you are, just trying to fight you. Just forget it. Let's just do it ourselves. Black as in it it was like, no, listen, this is what you said the country is. This is what you said it was, and this is what we're

coming to do. So for you, for for for the government to look at or or for the FBI to say, well, Fred Hampton is saying this, I'm like, hey, but your boy, your boy King was saying the same thing, family like he was. He was actually he said the same it just get we're all we're all saying the same thing. Bro good, We're all saying the same thing. I mean, And it's it's interesting that the guys who were saying that same thing didn't didn't get a lot of time

to say it. No. Yeah, And I don't know enough about the murder of Martin Luther King or the assassination of Martin and Luther King to talk about the beercy theories you might say around it. Um, but I will say there's definitely a reason to be suspicious about what kind of government involvement there might have been about Um. Also totally possible a racist might have you know that guy. Yeah, yeah,

it's not out of anyway. Um. So. By May twenty six, nineteen sixty nine, Fred Hampton's free breakfast program was feeding more than three thousand children. On that day, he was sentenced to two to five years in prison for his little ice cream truck escapade. He appealed, though, and was led out on an appeal bond by the Supreme Court of Illinois. In July of nineteen sixty nine, Fred Hampton

embarked on his most ambitious plan yet. He held the Conference for a United Front against Fascism, which he built as an attempt to build a rainbow coalition. He brought a lot of different people together, but focused on bringing in poor people of all different races, particularly gang members. Hampton told them that no matter who they were, the root of their oppression was the same, and they would need to work together to confront issues like police stality

and poor public housing. And teen Vogue actually has a really good rite up on this that I'm gonna quote from now. Hampton and the other Panthers, like Section leader Bobby Lee, made the case that as poor people trying to survive and Mayor Richard J. Daly's racially segregated city, they had more in common with each other than not. They banded together to protect members from the cops, fight against police brutality, run healthcare clinics, feed the homeless and

poor kids, and connect people with legal help. If they were dealing with abusive landlords or police. We did security for the Panthers along with other panthers. Seventy year old High Theurman, a member of the y p O, told teen Vogue from his home in Alabama, here's a bunch of hillbillies doing, you know, security for black people and black panthers. Therman said that was shocking for a lot

of people. Out of respect for the Panthers, the Young Patriots, which grew out of a street gang called the Peacemakers, decided to stop wearing the Confederate flag. Meanwhile, the Young Lords foregrounded issues impacting immigrants from Latin America and citizens who moved from Puerto Rico, birthplace of the co founder jose Cha Cha Yamenez. They introduced the slogan Tango Puerto Rico in Mikorazon in a fight for Puerto Rican self determination.

So he's getting together hillbilly white gangs, Puerto Rican, Hispanic gangs, black gangs and being like, look, we all have the same problems and we can all fight together to deal with them. Yeah, it's like, is that not like? Is that not like the I mean, this isn't That's not good? Like you know what I'm saying, Like that's the question, Like, wait, that's not good, like when you desire I mean, like, I just don't understand why this is a problem to

you all. Well, I mean it's because they kind of prefer it if these gangs are shooting at each other, because if they realize they all have more in common, they started looking at the actual person. Fucking I'm over, that's probably it. Suddenly we got a real threat. Now you know, you kill each other. We ain't gotta do to work for you, gotta just kill each other, you know. So listen to this and take heed, young gangsters. Yes, now, all of this scared the hell out of j Edgar Hoover.

He directed his men to quote destroy what they stand for and erratic hate. It's served the people programs. I gotta say, if you're talking about eradicating serve the people programs, you might be the bad guy. I just think I think you might be reading this story all wrong. Yeah, maybe you on the wrong side of this one. You know, it's a real Are we the battiest moment? Wait a minute,

it's me right, Like yeah, now we are. We are leaving out a lot because the story of all of the ship that the police and the FBI did to take down Fred Hampton would I could do a full two parter just on that. Um. This guy had almost as much thrown at him as Bobby Seal and Hui P. Newton did combined. It's it's remarkable um. For our purposes today, we're going to focus on the actions of FBI informant

William O'Neill. Now, as soon as Fred Hampton formed the Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers, the Bureau sent O'Neill in to infiltrate it, and he was good at his job. O'Neill was renowned as a hard worker, although he worried other Panthers with his obsession for violence. At point, he built an electric chair for the Panthers to use to

torture informers, which was disassembled on Fred Hampton's orders. And it was obviously like a an FBI an attempt for them to like get the Panthers to torture people so that they could arrest them for a torture. Yeah, and Hampton's like, what the funk are you doing building an elect Get that out of what you're doing a fucking electric chair? I'm gonna quote now from a rite up in the nation for this next bit. Quote not simply an informant. O'Neil tried to provoke others into kama Kaze

type activities. Former Panther member Lewis Truelock had submitted an affidavit stating that during a visit to O'Neill's father's home, the informer showed him putty blasting caps and plastic bottles of liquid enough material to produce several bombs. He proposed that they blow up an armory and later suggested robbing and McDonald's rest around Truelock on the others who heard O'Neil's provocative proposals rejected them as useless to the cause.

Although he was infatuated with weapons and tried to involve other Panthers in criminal activities, O'Neill was tolerated because he was an exceptionally hard worker around the office. Ronald doc Sat, a Black Panther leader who was wounded in the raid, recalls the only person who didn't want O'Neil and the Panthers was Fred Hampton. Now. The electric chair and the bombs were part of a series of schemes O'Neil hatch to try in and trap Hampton on behalf of the FBI.

None of them worked, though, because Hampton was very smart, and eventually the police were left with exactly one option for dealing with Fred, cold blooded murder. In November of nineteen sixty nine, William O'Neill provided the FBI with a detailed floor plan of the Black Panther Headquarters, which doubled as Fred Hampton's home. The map included a red X over his bed. At four am, Sergeant Daniel Groth of the Chicago Police Department knocked on the door of the

Black Panther Headquarters. What exactly happened next is debated, but we know that for the next seven minutes, the police pumped roughly a hundred rounds into the building. Only one bullet was fired in response by a Black Panther, Mark Clark, aged two. Both Clark and Fred Hampton were shot dead. Fred died in his bed from two point blank gunshots

to the head. The vast majority of bull holes in the house were centered around the location of his bed, where William O'Neil had drawn the red X. One officer was heard saying he's good and dead now as they trapes through the bloodstained office, and there was a photograph of the officers carrying Fred Hampton's body from the building. It's one of the more disgusting things I've ever seen. Two of the officers are visibly gritting and we we've got a photograph, so if you can show you, we'll

put it up on the side. I've seen it. It's important, Yeah, it's important to see these men's faces. Um this and that the map with the red X or something that like sits in our psyche, you know, because that image is just it just burns in you. You know what I'm saying when you see and you know, like that's what is that's that man is bit you know? Yeah yeah yeah, but is it that for the listeners that the you would think that they just like left there like local bar and just like a glad hand in

each other. Like that's the way they look like they did well on a slot machine. Yeah, yeah, so true, speaking of doing well on a slot machine. Following the ray, William O'Neal was given a three hundred dollar bonus by the FBI. And now today the assassination of Fred Hampton is basically universally agreed by scholars and legal experts as well as activists, to have been a political assassination organized and orchestrated by the FBI. Um. There is really zero

disagreement about this fact between credible people who study it. However, in mainstream coverage of the raid, you still run into people who will equivocate on this fact. A Chicago Tribune article I read about the assassination stated in the two years before the raid, police and panthers had engaged in eight gun battles nationally in which three police officers and five panthers died. Four of the shootouts, including one in

which two police officers were killed, occurred in Chicago. To try and make the case that, like there was reason for the police to be super anty about this whole thing, you know what like is like when people say, hey, well, you know these street gangs are these streets, you know, they're violent to they're shooting, they're shooting, so we're shooting. I'm like, yeah, but you know they're gangsters. Yeah, yeah, they're shooting. But aren't aren't you the police, Like, aren't

you supposed to carry yourself? You know, at a level of integrity, you're telling me your bar of integrity is a street gang. That's what you're telling me right now, you know. So even if I'm just saying, like, even if that was your reasoning, I'm like, yeah, but you're the cops though. Yeah. You know one thing that's interesting to me that maybe I can leave a little bit

of homework for the listener. Go sit down and and look up Google all the people who were killed in mass shootings in the history of the United States, Like, like, not just like shootings, but like mass shootes where some nut with a gun decides to murder a bunch of strangers. Add that number together, and then figure out how many people were shot dead by the police in two thousand nineteen alone. Oh no, figure out which of those numbers

is larger. But a homework for you now. Uh. The article um that I found in the Chicago Tribune also counts the firearms the panthers had on the property nineteen and the number of rounds over a thousand, as if any of that justifies what was done. Those were all the legally owned guns and legally owned I have more firearms and ammunition in my house sitting five feet from me in the black Panthers had in their house at

that point. Um, Like, that's not a lot to be I mean, it's the nineteens, a sizable number of guns for one person, but like it was multiple people's weapons, and a thousand rounds is not a lot. Um. And those gunfights with police had no connection to Fred Hampton other than that he was a Panther to UM. And despite the murders and the FBI factory and the counterintelligence operations, by seventy the Black Panthers had offices in sixty eight cities.

The representatives had traveled to meet with communist leaders in North Vietnam, North Korea, and China. Some Panthers had set up shop in Algeria. UM. And we're not gonna have enough time really to go into all of the international divisions of this. And speaking of international, UM, Sophie is signaling to me that it's time for an ad break from the international corporations that sponsored this podcast. All right, globalism, the globalist you're Alex Jones voices on point, We're back.

So UM nineteen seventy would prove to be the Black Panthers high point. And again there's a number of reasons for this. Police repression, UM, disruption of the leadership and stuff had a lot to do with it. UM. I should note, and it's very fair to note that it was not just UM police and state violence that were responsible for the decline of the Black Panthers. There were other sort of factors that played into it. And I'm gonna quote from Black Against Empire again because it gives

you an idea of some of these other factors. The resilience of the Black Panthers politics depended heavily on support from three broad constituencies, Blacks, opponents of the Vietnam War, and revolutionary governments internationally. Without the support of these allies, the Black Panther Party could not withstand repressive actions against

them by the state. But, beginning in nineteen sixty nine and steadily increasing through nineteen seventy, political transformations undercut the self interest that motivated these constituencies to support the Panthers politics. As mainstream Democratic leaders opposed the war and Nixon scaled back the military draft, blacks one broader social access and political representation, and revolutionary governments entered diplomatic relations with the

United States, the Panthers had greater difficulty sustaining Allied support. First, major concessions by the political establishment and the Nixon the administration on the Vietnam War eroded the basis of war opponents support for the Panthers politics. Once it appeared the war would be ended through institutionalized political means, those principally committed to ending the draft in war no longer shared a personal stake and radically transforming political institutions, many now

increasingly saw the Panthers call for revolution as unnecessary. From nineteen sixty nine onward, increasing electoral representation as well as affirmative action programs and growing access to government employment and e leite education also weakened the base of support for

the Panthers revolutionary politics among blacks. From the end of reconstruction eighteen seventy seven until nineteen sixty nine, no more than six black people it held a seat in the U s House of Representatives at once, but just two years later black representation more than doubled, with thirteen Black people holding seats in the US House of Representatives by nine So a lot of why the Panthers decline is because these groups who supported them because they were in

like for their own self interest, got what they wanted and stopped caring about this kind of revolutionary struggle for equality. Yeah, that's part of this story too. Yeah, my uh, my father would say, like, you know, the government go always get their man, you know, whatever they want. If the if the system decides they want you going, you're gonna be going right and like and he would also say, what you ain't what you ain't gonna never mess with

is their money. And if you mess it with their money, they're gonna stop it. You know. So this idea of like you had this coalition. It was cool when it was like, Okay, y'all want to sit at the same table as us, all right, that's all right, fine, you know what I'm saying. Okay, you want us to not beat you on the streets, all right, I guess you know what I'm saying. Won't you start messing with our money though, you know, and um and and especially like

our our internationals. Like I said, when you may have said this on the last episode when you first invited me on here, I wanted to like refresh my memory with like with with my father's experience. So I caught him and talked to him about it for a while.

So this was like the time he was in and he was saying he was saying that he would talk about like the multi tiered approach of like, uh, the sowing seeds of like doubt of like you know, even just the idea of saying like hey, you know, um, you got this coalition, but like now, like well, if the war is over, why are y'all here? Right? So he he even mentioned he mentioned exactly what you were saying. It was like, now the utility is gone, Like what

do we do? Then you have like the the what we what we in the in slang, now we'll call street sweepers. But it was essentially like the injunctions of like you're not allowed to gather. He was talking about like if it was two or more y'all on a sidewalk, that constitutes a black panther meeting. So you'd be stopped by the police and like broken up because you're just standing on a street corner together, you know what I'm saying.

So like this multi tiered approach to like whether it was just like sowing seeds of doubt, dividing the coalition, messing with their money, just like all of those things together, Um, if the government decides these are his words of government. Decide down, won't you down? Won't you? Yeah? Yeah, And it's um, yeah, I'm glad you brought up like the like the cracking down on so called meetings, because that again, that's that's one of those things, like there's there was

so much. I'm sure it was on my I think it was on my dock at some point. I just didn't get written up. And that's absolutely important. I'm sure there's other stuff like that that I've left out because there's just so much to go over here. Um, so

I'm glad you did bring that up. Um. The Black Panther Party was eventually dissolved in and the FBI and you know, local federal, state law enforcement cannot be blamed for all of that, but their efforts succeeded in draining huge amounts of energy from the organization, killing at least twenty of its members, and most importantly, destroying or distracting its most influential leaders. Huey P. Newton spent most of the nineteen seventies fighting a seemingly endless series of legal battles.

There were accusations of violence and embezzling and even murder that are very hard for me to parse out. It is possible he committed some of these crimes, possibly embezzled. Given what we know about the FBI's efforts to take him down, I have a lot of difficulty giving too

much credit to any of these charges. Um, he was murdered in nineteen eighty nine by Tyrone Johnson, a member of the Black Guerrilla Family, a prison gang, and it's very difficult to not draw connections between that murder and the FBI motivated US killings. Um, you know, I I don't know, impossible not to think about it. Did you come across this is like a side note, but did you come across like the ten demands of the Black Panther Party? Yes, yeah, we're getting Yeah. Yeah, that's that's

what I wanted to end on. Yeah, And did you get don't are you going to cover like their connection with like the founding of the crips and Tookie Williams and stuff that we're not So if you have something,

yeah I would I would love to get. So it's this, it's this window that you're talking about, this window of like the sort of seeing you know, you got these three dudes like seeing the the destruction of the party and almost like the same sort of disillusionment, Like damn, that didn't work either, you know what I'm saying, And just being like, and then you introduce Crack and then

it just everything changes. But like that sort of transition from the Panthers dissolving to these like you know, just street gangs of just like what we know as the crips, you know what I'm saying, Being like, there's a documentary called The Bastard Children of the Black Panther Party and it was about the founding of the crips and uh, and that window between those two sort of like like the dissolving of that and then the birth of this, you know, being a new sort of like communal police

force and then and then the Crack attack and then it all goes to ship But interesting. Yeah, anyway, I had no idea about any of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the whole Crack in the Inner Cities thing in the c I that that's a whole another two or three part because I don't want to just like spout off about that because even among the people who are on the right track, there's a lot of misconceptions about that's carried out and it's it's very detailed his whatever

the case may be. It's it's understood in the inner city that like, yeah, crack destroyed us. It's what made our gangs violent, you know what I'm saying. And just the moving of drugs is what made our gangs violent. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and um yeah, that's really important context. Um. And also important context is the to really get an idea of the sheer level of of factory perpetrated against the Black Panther Party by the FBI during the period of Cointeal Pro of the two nine as the bureau took to

disrupt black groups. Under co Intal Pro two hundred and thirty three were taken against the Panthers. The FBI paid out more than seven point four million dollars in bribes to Black Panther informants, which is more than for for context, that's more than twice the amount of money they spent on bribing informants who were organized crime informants nationwide. So they spent twice as much money on the Black Panthers

as they did on the fucking mob. Mob. And the mob in like the sixties and seventies, when the mob is like really a big deal the actual mob. Yes, yeah, like the hardcore like the fucking Scorsese mob. Yeah, yeah, you know it's that I will speak. I think I could speak for all of black people. I'm like, I'm

gonna go out a limit say this. I am. We are absolutely fascinated like the Irishman being like, oh, the greatest movie ever, like you know, honored as like this, Like now, I'm like, y'all murder Murderer, Like okay, I like my movies too, But how come like y'all are so fascinated with just these like these white like gangsters, Like why is it okay? Why are y'all so fascinated by white gangsters? I'm saying, I wonder how many of the people who love those movies. Um, I also think

that rap music unfairly glorified criminals. Yes, that's my point, that's my point. I'm just like, why is it why y'all okay with this? Like why is this type entertaining? Like why is this okay? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah? Um so. Yeah.

We've spent this episode talking about this incredibly sweeping campaign to disrupt and destroy the Black Panthers by the FBI and by law enforcement, and we might not know about any of this if it weren't for the actions of eight really fucking cool dudes led by William C. Daviden, professor of physics at Haverford College. In nineteen seventy one, they spent months casing an FBI field office in Philadelphia.

During the night of a major Fraser Ali fight, when everyone was distracted, they broke into the FBI's offices with a crowbar and made out with a car load of FBI files. Those files included numerous memos from j Edgar Hoover on the Black Panthers and the co Intel pro to operations. Now, the FBI tried to stop the press from writing about any of this, but The Washington Post was courageous enough to flip in the bird and right

about it. The findings inspired a blizzard of foyer request from Panthers, who suddenly had confirmation that they've been surveilled for years. All these ship they've been writing about the fbis on our backs. No, you're paranoid, No, look, no seriously, yeah. Yeah.

For an example of what was found, one member, a guy named Rodney Barnett, received a five hundred page file on himself quote documenting his whereabouts, interviewing every employer he's ever had, interviewing his high school teacher, his neighbors, all of his siblings, and observing him getting on airplanes. So all this led to an investigation in nineteen seventy six

by the Senate collect Committee on Intelligence Activities. The final report they issued noted that the actions carried out by the FBI under co Intel pro quote would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all the targets had been involved in violent activity. But co Intel pro went far beyond that. The unexpressed major premise of the programs was that a law enforcement agency has the duty to do whatever is necessary to combat perceived threats to the

existing social order and political order. But the report stated, although the claimed purpose of the program was to prevent violence, its tactics quote were clearly intended to foster violence, and many could reasonably have been expected to cause violence. The Senate concluded that the FBI quote itself, engaged in lawless tactics and responded to deep seated social programs by fomenting

violence and unrest. And part of me wants to end on that note, but I don't think I want to give the government the last word in this episode, even if that last word is the government condemning the actions of its own agents. So for the last word in this episode, I think we should go over the Black Panthers tin Point Program introduced in nineteen sixty six by huy P. Newton and Bobby Seal. And Bobby Seal, by the way, we talked about Newton, he died, obviously, Hampton died.

Seal is still alive today, or at least as if the recording this episode has continued to be an activist ran for off as a couple of times. Um, and yeah, it's still around to this day. So that's at least one bit of yeah positive. Um. So here is the tin Point program. What we want now. Number one, we want freedom. We want the power to determine the destiny of our black community. Number two, we want full employment

for our people. Number three we want an into the robbery by the white men of our black community, later changed to we want an into the robbery by the capitalists of our black and depressed communities. Four we want decent housing fit for the shelter of human beings. Five we want education for a people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present day society. Six we want all black men to

be exempt from military service. Seven we want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people. Eight we want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county, and city prisons and jails. Nine we want all Black people, when brought to trial, to be tried in a court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States. And ten we want land, bred housing, education, clothing, justice,

and peace. Now. That list of demands also included a list of beliefs, starting with we believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our own destiny, and included a reiteration of the Panther belief in the importance of community self defense. We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self defense groups that are dedicated to defending

our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States gives us the right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves for self defense. There were also demands for the release of all black people incarcerated in American prisons, since none of them could possibly have received a fair trial. The whole thing ended with

this paragraph. When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws and Nature's God entitle them. A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they

should declare the causes which impel them to separation. We hold these truths to be self evident, and that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from

the consent of the government. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter and abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its power in such a form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness. Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not

be changed light and transient causes. And accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while levelers are sufferable, than to write themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accused. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evince as a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right and their duty to throw off such government and to provide new guards of their future security.

You may recognize that as the beginning of the declaration to if independence. Yes, man, what a freaking journey. And they're so like again us ten different people with the black panthers? Are you get ten different answers, even people that were in the movement. But at the end of the day, man, like, you know, wherever like point might be a problem? Like is it? I mean, is it so much to ask to be? Like? Yo, I just wanted housing that's like suitable for humans? How about that? Yeah?

You know, if yeah, yeah it and at the end of the day, and I think why they ended on that note I'm just quoting the introduction to the Declaration of Independence, is they're saying, what we want is for this nation to make good on its promises. Just just keep your promises. Yeah, like yeah, like they're saying, like this thing that you all claim to revere, this is a good document. It's got some good ship in there. Why aren't you doing it? That's what we were about.

Let's do it. Yeah yeah, so good, yeah yeah cool cool, um prop Is there anything you want to go into before we roll out of this one? Man? Um? I think uh, mentioning some of the like some of the women, like the Tupac connection, you know Nikki, I mean Angela Davis, you know what I mean her her prison reform stuff that she's doing now, like some of these people, um you know, uh, Nina Simone and like you know, just some of the like things that are having like uh,

who's in Cuba right now? What am I blank? And who's in Cuba right now? Oh? Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, um some of their like because yeah they're in Cuba and in um Algeria, they had like a number of them wound up living. Yeah, they just they just went there. Yeah. So yeah, some of the some of the women, you know what I'm saying that we're like so pivotal, you

know what I'm saying. And again like uh Afana shakor like Tupac's mom, you know what I'm saying, Um, you know, going to prison or being pregnant with Tupac in prison. You know what I'm saying. Stuff like that like that like ties to like now I think would be cool to kind of cover. Yeah. Yeah, And that's definitely the biggest shortcoming of this is that, like, yeah, I mean I definitely didn't go into detail enough about like the

different women activists, um, the the international stuff that went on. Um, It's there's so much to talk about. Yeah, like there was. It was always going to be imperfect, and I totally but gun you could go here, you could like Angela Davis like teaches at Berkeley, Like you could go hear her right now, you could go hear her lecture, you

know what I'm saying. Like those things to me, like these like living you know monuments that like like if we could gather these stories and hear the more somebody could hear them. Why they're still alive? You know what I'm saying, Um, I think it's like super even if you don't like even if you don't rock with like a lot of whatever they stood for right now, like she was, she was on this campaign and like just in prisons period, Like prisons are ineffective, They don't work,

They just make more criminals, you know what I'm saying. Um, So you could go hear her right now. You know what I'm saying, Like talk about it. You know know, I'm saying, like why Tupac was who he was again, his mama was a panther, you know what I'm saying, and like it was in prison pregnant with him, you know things like that. I just think it's like these this like it's not it's it's not that long ago, you know what I'm saying, Like some of these people are still

alive and still accessible. But really the misst to me even in a lot of like the academic work with the with the panthers, Like I know I've harped on this a lot, but like what the women did, you know what I'm saying. They were doing the cooking for all those like breakfast programs that was women doing that, you know what I'm saying, When they locked up all the men when it was killing the men, guess who charried it. It It was the women, you know what I'm saying.

So it's just I just think that, like that legacy, I would love to see more on that legacy, not even not from this, I'm just saying just period, Like listen, yeah, can we talk about what the ladies did? You know what I'm saying. Yeah, Yeah, And that's you know that that's probably a good maybe a good subject from when we do our next Heroes episode, uh around the end

of the year or something. Yeah. Um, and part I was focusing this on, I mean, I was focusing this largely on like efforts to destroy the panthers, and those did sort of focus more on on killing and injuring Yeah, yeah, yeah, imprisoning some of the Yeah. But you're right, like that's a you know, and it's one of those things. As soon as I started reading Black Against Empire, it was like this anxiety attack of like I'm gonna leave so

much sh it out, dude. Yeah, you can't like how like that's what I was saying, Like I was already ready to show you mercy because it's just so much to cover, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, this was a very focused episode, and my main hope for it is that it convinces people, particularly other like white kids like me, Um, go read more about these guys and women and and and this this, Like, go read more about this. I think Black Against Empire is a

good place to start. Um. There's a lot of other really good books, um, um that you can look into. And I'd say i'd even tell everybody, like I've taken your book advice before, you know, read a few things you didn't put out there, and has sent those four Like I read The Death of Democracy. That's a good one. That was That was a book. Boy. Yeah, yeah, you probably got to save chills. I did. When he was reading, I was like, oh, oh this isn't good. Yeah, this

is too familiar. Yeah. Anyway, well, um, you know, you know, maybe consider some of the lessons in Black Against Empire is part of the antidote to the Death of Democracy, especially the survival programs, that sort of thing, this idea of community organizing for self defense, um, the armed stuff and the stuff that has nothing to do with guns. It's all very important. So that's the in note on this episode. Prop you wanna plug your plug doubles before we sail out of here into the weekend. My plug

doubles are prop hip hop. Uh, just like it sounds prop hip hop. That's that's Twitter, that's Instagram, that's the website. There's Merche coffee, Paraphamalilia. I'm quite a coffee nerd uh. A couple of podcasts I'm a part of, like really cool coffee paper. Oh yeah, it's really really really you guys got to look up the Poor Gammy. It's gonna blow your mind. DJ Daniel, our engineer bought one jerk. You're supposed I was supposed to give you one man.

Uh yeah, dude, so the Poor Gammy. Um ye, some pods. I'm a part of Godhood Politics when I'm most excited about essentially like a uh sort of the like street level version of like politics and information just to like it's kind of fun, kind of tongue tongue in cheek. But you can understand politics. If you survived eighth grade, you can understand geo politics. And that's really what and that's what kind of what I'm working on. All right,

and I am working on this podcast every week. You can find me here, you know, and the sources for this episode on behind the Bastards dot com. You can find our Twitter and Instagram and at Bastards pod you can find my Twitter at I right, okay, um, and you can also find our other podcast, Worst Year Ever. Um. We have a two parter that just dropped, investigating a terrorist attack on the furry community at a convention in to US in fourteen and it's Nazi connections. So that's

a fun one. Um. So uh, continue uh learning things, read some good books and go ahead into the street and and kick some ass or or feed some ass to do something two asses. Yeah, great, all right, and we're out. H m.