Stories of Armed Community Defense

From riots against neo-Nazis in the rustbelt, to armed defense of mutual aid programs in post-Katrina New Orleans, to mass mobilizations of tens of thousands against the Alt-Right, on today's show, as the It's Going Down crew once again takes over It Could Happen Here, we look at how, far from being just confined to a small set of antifa-supersoldiers, mass community self-defense is part and parcel to the DNA of grassroots movements for liberation in the so-called US.

Featuring Interviews with Spencer Sunhine (@transform6789) and Suncere Ali Shakur.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
It seems like hardly a month goes by where we
are not bombarded with horrific images of far ride violence,
mass shootings, the target synagogues, black churches, and queer nightclubs,
death threats to hospitals, spurred by post from online trolls,
and a barrage of fascist groups attempting to intimidate everyone

(00:21):
and everything. From children's events, black Lives Matter protests, pride celebrations,
and abortion clinics. Boden resistance is mobilized and people do
push back. The media often frames these confrontations is a
clash simply between two sets of extremists. On today's shows,
the It's Going Down crew once again takes over it

(00:41):
could happen. Here we look at how far from being
just confined to small sets of antifas super soldiers, mass
community self defense is part and parcel to the DNA
of grassroots movements for liberation in the so called United States.
We can see this throughout the ongoing history of indigenous
resistance to callization. In the fight against slavery and racial apartheid.

(01:03):
Radical labor unions such as the i w W organized
against the Ku Klux Klan, attention that even led to
running gun battles, while militant organizers like Robert F. Williams
and groups such as the Deacons for Defense, who helped
inspire the Black Panthers, fought back against white racist mobs.
In the book This Non Violent Stuff Will Get You Killed,

(01:25):
author Charles E. Cobb documents this history, discussing the wide
use of arms and defending civil rights organizers from white supremacists.
Groups like Anti Racist Action or a r A carried
on this trajectory, working to set up chapters of organized
anti racists that confronted neo Nazi groups the Clan, and
participated in defense of abortion clinics. Once again, I'm Mike Andrews,

(01:49):
Let's get into it. In two thousand five, in the
wake of Hurricane Katrina, the levy surrounding New Orleans broke,
flooding working class communities and homes. Those that could evacuate fled,
while many, often pouring black, were stuck behind to fend
for themselves. Stepping into this setting was a group of

(02:09):
black liberation and anarchist activists who worked to set up
mutual aid hubs and free clinics dubbed Common Ground. But
as these volunteers worked to feed people, restore people's homes,
and provide free medical care. They quickly found that they
weren't the only organized force on the streets of New Orleans.
In this following interview, Sunseri Ali Shakur discusses how the

(02:33):
group came up against and defended themselves from a formation
of armed racist white vigilantees who worked directly with local
police and our suspected of carrying out multiple murders of
unarmed black men. A warning. However, this interview was graphic
in details death, racist violence, and anti black racism. My

(02:53):
name is s I'm organized out of Wasson and d C.
I went to New Orleans UH doing Katraina, doing the
Katraina after Math, and I helped form co co found
Common Ground Relief and common Ground was formed as a

(03:14):
response to the calamity of Katraina and UM. Common Ground
was also the brainchild of the Angle of Three, so
a lot of the base organizers of Common Ground were
already in New Orleans. UH organized and helped the Angola Three.
So the Angle of Three was basically the god fathers

(03:38):
of Common Ground Ground Relief. We lost a few of
the of the elders, Alfred Wood Fox and such and
we still got King uh King, what is and everything?
A note to our listeners. Of three referred to here
is a group of formally incarcerated black political prisoners and

(03:59):
members of the Black Parentther Party when the nineteen seventies
were imprisoned in the notorious Angola Facility in Louisiana. This
included Robert Hillary King, Albert Wood Fox, and Hermann Wallace.
King was released in two thousand one, and, along with
another former Black panther, Malik Raheem, became involved in mutual
aid and disaster relief efforts in New Orleans following Katrina

(04:22):
in two thousand five under the banner of common ground.
Wallace was released from prison on October one, only to
pass away sadly three days later, a day after being
reindited by the state. Albert Wood Fox was finally released
in February of two thousand sixteen and passed on six
years later due to complications from COVID nineteen tireless activists

(04:45):
on both sides of the prison walls. Together, the angal
of three endured a combined total of one fourteen years
in solitary confinement. Yeah, my job, when I when I
touched down the common ground was basically I was a
released scout UM. I wore many hats, I was a
mediation person, head of security UM. And I also organized

(05:08):
about seven UM makeshift hurricane distribution UH centers from New
Orleans to the Bayou. And I spent eighteen months there
and children's free breakfast program. Anything that the community needed,
you know, I provided. I used to drive like fourteen
hundred miles a week taking supplies from New Orleans UH

(05:33):
into different bious and different surrounding areas in New Orleans.
That was my my job. When I first got there,
I ran into Malink Rahim, a former black pather in
New Orleans, Scutive Minister of Defense, and when I touched down,
he had told me that there were a group of

(05:55):
white vigilantees, up to eighteen of them, riding around and
murdering black people as they walked through these white communities
and Algiers and Algier Point. Algiers wasn't affected by water,
but it did have a great deal of wind damage.
Most of the houses was intact, it just wasn't no

(06:16):
electricity and the water was also a problem. Well, what
they would do they would tie UH cans from one
fence to another beginning of the neighborhood of the street.
And if they were in their homes and uh, you
bumped in, you know, you you try to get up
under the cans, and the cans started ringing. They would

(06:38):
open up windows and and and begin u fire at you.
And they were jumping their pickup trucks and chase you down.
And some uh you know, some are murdered, you know,
point blank. And those whom they wounded, they were throwing
the back of the truck. Take to a garage and

(07:00):
pour gasoline over your wounds, put cigarettes out on you.
And uh, some didn't make it out that situation. They,
like I said, they dropped about courting and information we got.
They dropped nineteen and some black men and the brothers
in the community got tired of of of these guys
and they broke into a pawn shop and stole all

(07:21):
the guns out the pown shop. And there was about
to be a major race war. And um, you gotta
understand too, how tight the situation was because their base,
their house the day they hung out at their backyard
connected with our backyard, so it was extremely tense. So
when the brothers broke into the pond shop and got

(07:41):
the weapons out. Just so happened. The next day the
National Guards showed up. But if the National Guard didn't
show up the next day, it would have been extremely
ugly out there. Uh and everything. And yeah, they used
to patrol the streets and the pickup trucks. We would
see them all the time. I would see them all
the time, and they were cowards, man, you know, they

(08:02):
would tender one. It's always tender one. You know. Ten
vigilante is the one black man, unharmed black man. But
we noticed one they would drive by. We would come
out with our weapons on our hips and let them
know that this ain't no place to mess with. Keep driving.
You know what I'm saying. You will be fired upon

(08:23):
you come here with that business. And I would have
to set up patrols for our house at night. Um,
I would sleep uh in the hallway and malaks home
with a nominal of me to car being rifle strapped
across my chest in a radio column, so I could
keep in contact with the others who were unarmed and

(08:44):
doing patrols, you know, watching the house while the other
thirty six volunteers have slept intense in the backyard. You know,
we're asleep. Lucky for us. They were a bunch of
cowards and they kept it moving. I would see them
all the time, and they were they were afraid of
me because they knew that I was not afraid of them,

(09:05):
and I was armed, and uh we all when we
had a few people back at the house that was
armed as well. You could ride down certain streets and
there will be uh dead bodies that were bloated, uh
from being left out in the sun. And uh those
bodies were left by the vigilantees. The rumor was that

(09:30):
the do on the police department told the vigilantes. We
gave the vigilantes a green light to do what they
needed to do and as far as the bodies, just
leave them near the gutter and they would come and
collect them later, which they didn't. The bodies stayed out there,
I would say up to two months, you know you.
I mean, they were like you can see them all

(09:51):
the time, and um, there a lot of people had left.
There wasn't a lot of people there because people had evacuated,
a lot of stray dogs running around out uh impacts
of thirty And what we would have to do is
get up early in the morning when the curfew was over.
Take bids she's from Malink's mother's room, and go out
and wrap up the bodies with these sheets. Keep the

(10:14):
dogs from ripping them open for fluid and food. Reporting
In the Nation of Republica, investigative journalists A. C. Thompson
spent months speaking with survivors of Katrina about a racist
militia that formed in the predominantly white neighborhood of Algiers Point.
He carried out a series of deadly shootings and even
worked directly with local law enforcement. White residents told investigators

(10:35):
the police had given them a green light to shoot
anyone quote breaking into their property into quote leave the
bodies on the side of the road. Others spoke of
a free for all of white against black, where whites
condulged in violence with compunity. Years later, several white vigilantings
were found guilty were sentenced to prison time for shootings

(10:55):
and murder. And like many modern conspiracy theories pushed by
the far right about and BLM during the George Foight Uprising,
the vigilantes and Eltiers Point were largely animated by widespread
racist rumors that weren't founded about looterers um we were
harassed a lot by the and OPD. You know a

(11:15):
lot of times at gunpoint. They would come to our
house sometimes, you know, ten cars DP, you know, p
D would looking for Malink. One night they came through
looking for Malink and what we had heard that they
were out to assassinate him and anybody with him. They
came out looking for Malink one night, about ten cars
D and they had went through the house looking for him,

(11:37):
and they couldn't find them. And they pulled out this
fourteen year old young man that we had befriended to
live on the backstreet for mLink and they started beating him,
saying that he has stole a cooler out somebody's yard
and minds you, you know, no one's there, so no
one's really missing that cool And the young man thought,
you know, because we didn't have refrigeration and hadn't put

(12:00):
everything on ice. You know, ice was very important at
that time, and the water was very important, you know,
along with gasoline. But the young brother brought us a
cooler and the police put shot guards and everybody's stomachs
and they beat them in front of us and dared
us to do anything as far as like what the
environment looked like it was not and I say this,

(12:21):
it was not a rescue mission. This was seemed like
they were running a drill, a military drill, you know,
like the same hour, I mean, like the old project.
You will look at the bridge and you will see
continue with military cars going across the cresta city bridge
at nighttime. In four corners of the community. You would

(12:42):
have black Hawk helicopters patrolling. You know, they will follow
you through the yard with spotlights. Also, we had homeland security,
which included mercenaries. They were sometimes up to cars and
if you were to violate, uh, the curfew, they were
ride up on you and they had these little and

(13:04):
I used to have to interact with them because we
had some some some young people there that thought they
had privileged from up north would translate in New Orleans,
which it did not. Um, they've seen any white person
outside of New Orleans as a bunch of quote unquote
nigga levels. So I would have to negotiate with these
homeless security people. Um, you had to be very calm,

(13:24):
very still, because you could see the pupils that pupils
were dilated with small anybody that's been in the war
like Vietnam and such an Uh, there's a storm. They
know when these people, when pupils are dilated like that,
it means these people have killed several times. And the
my huncle used to call it a hundred miles there.

(13:46):
And you had to be very calm with these people
because if you flinched, if you did anything that they
didn't like or they felt threatened in any type of way,
they will open up fire on you. Um. They were
They had a R fifteens all of them had a
R fIF teams and not milling meter strapped to their legs.
So it was more you know, it seemed more like

(14:06):
a military takeover, like I said before, than ar rescued
and further down the line. For in the months, you
had National guardsmen that opened fire on people, uh into
busy traffic. Um. You will find bodies in the seventh ward,
in the eighth ward in different houses, UH with bullets

(14:29):
in the back of their head, you know, executive style,
and UM our investigating team will go out and witness
this firsthand. And I was a part of that investigating
team that would do a walk through the house where
the body was at. It was shot in the back
of the head and the rumor was, you know, we
had some rogue National guardsmen executing you know, people who

(14:54):
didn't have homes. We're home some homeless people. You know,
they were left behind. Number one lesson I learned, umu
a trainer, was you may be a pacifist, but you
might need to pass and fists. You may need to
go out and get you firearms. Of course, we want
you to get proper training. Of course, we don't want

(15:16):
you to do anything illegal. Get your legal firearms and
get some training. The second lesson was that human beings
are incredible. We saw a lot of destruction, but we
also saw a lot of beauty and a lot of love.
In my experience too, we were common ground. People came

(15:39):
together in days and we fell in love with each
other within days. Because of the pressure of the situation.
If we didn't love each other, if we didn't get
along with one another, we had to, you know, in
order for survival. Things were so bad that if your
car had broken down on the side of the highway

(16:01):
on the road, you had to call us and five
different vehicles will be speeding to your location. Um you know,
to see who will get there first before Homeland security
or a vigilante group will roll up on you. You
can't rely on the state. Can't rely on the state.
Stay with us as it could happen. Here returns after

(16:23):
the short break and the word from our sponsors. The
same year that Sinceria was facing down armed racist vigilantes
in New Orleans, the stage was also set for an
uprising to kick off in Toledo, Ohio. In our next interview,

(16:47):
Tom tells us how a largely black community an intergists
affiliated with anti racist action hit the streets against the
National Socialist Movement for the NSM and participated in uprising
to the sploded not just against the neo Nazis, but
the police that were protecting them as well. That Toledo
and to racism protests really began when a National Socialist

(17:12):
Movement member who was living in a black neighborhood in
Toledo pulled a gun on two black children that were
playing in the alley behind his house. Um those kids
then went home and told their parents. Their parents then
showed up to his house with weapons. The guy pulled
a gun on them and then called the National Socialist Movement,
who then showed up, and so they had been This
is back when Bill White was still the head of

(17:33):
ns M and NSM was actually starting to make some headway,
like they were growing really quickly. They targeted Ohio as
a recruiting ground um because they thought that they could
gain a lot of membership there. And so Toledo was
kind of their first foray into trying to do stuff
in Ohio. And so they announced a date and the
organizers on the ground and Toledo did something really interesting.
Then instead of organizing activists, they went and organized in

(17:57):
the community directly um that they were going around the
streets to talking to people. Street gangs were calling truces
for the day, right, And so when October fifteenth rolled around,
like everybody showed up, like there were anarchists there, but
there were like tons of people from the neighborhood there.
The whole protest didn't last very long. It was this
is October five they sort of NSM was there and
they had their shields and people were hooking stuff at them,

(18:18):
but they were kind of too far away to really
like hit. So the cops started surrounding them and allowing
them to mark and as they were marching, they got
within projectile range of people who then started pelting them
with everything that they could think of the cops and
got them to run, got the Nazis to run so
they could kind of try and get them out of
the area. A group of people sort of cut back

(18:39):
behind the school trying and cut them off. I got
tear gas and when the tear gas flew, everything just
got set off. There was rioting on and off for
like three days in this neighborhood. After this, a bar
owned by a cop got burned, got looted, and then
burned to the ground. People try to burn this Nazi's
house down. They had to declare state of emergency over this,
And so there are a number of things that really

(19:00):
important about that day, I think for for us, one
was it really did point to the effectiveness of community
anti fascist work. People that neighborhood were already mad, but
it was this sort of like mobilization work which was
done by people in the neighborhood and also done by
kind of anarchists that were down in the neighborhood working
with people to really make that what it was right.

(19:21):
And it really showed what a community can do when
Nazis show up in their name, and how much a
community can reassert its ownership over their space when the
police decided to protect the Nazis that are attacking their neighborhood.
But the other thing that really demonstrated that it really
kind of created was it created a dynamic in Ohio
which had been sort of building for a little while,

(19:41):
but you can kind of still feel the ramifications of it.
So starting with the over the Rhine riots, which I
think we're in two thousand three or two thousand one,
when the Cincinnati police killed Timothy Thomas, there had kind
of been this escalating series of you know, tensions with
with the state around this period of time. It's also
the period of time that a lot of high cities
were sort of beginning. They're the really cute period of

(20:04):
their decline that they had been sort of declining for
a while, But this is really when things got bad.
It was starting really like the early two thousands, mid
two thousand's UM. The financial collapse in Cleveland, for example,
was in two thousand six UM, but it had already
been sort of going for a couple of years before that,
and so there were these political conditions that were in

(20:24):
place that facilitated this. But this also kind of created
a dynamic of confrontation with the state and created a
mentality within anarchist communities about being really realistic about what
those confrontations look like. UM that instead of being idealistic
sort of like people were in the anti war movement
and um, sort of approaching police from a perspective of

(20:48):
ideas and discourse, what we learned during those days is
that we should probably approach the police as a logistical
force and understand them as such. UM. It was after
that point that people really started researching police tactics in
this area of the country, and that has had really
profound impacts over the last fifteen years. Right. It really
did create an entire culture of really digging into those

(21:09):
kinds of things very carefully and doing it in a
way which wasn't bombastic, but was focused on actual research.
The reason that that could happen was what went down
on those days was so intense. UM. It was the
first time a lot of people had experienced like full
blown major rioting before and like major large scale urban

(21:29):
writing before, and it definitely changed a lot about the
way that anarchists in this area of the country approached things. UM.
And you can still feel the the ramifications the ripple
effects of that today. Stay with us. We're gonna take
a quick break and we'll be right back after these
words from our sponsors. In our last segment, we're going

(21:58):
to speak to anti fashion his researcher and author Spencer Sunshine.
But first, let's rewind the clock to when Trump first
came in as president in two thousand seventeen, kicking off riots, walkouts,
and protests around the country. Angry protests soon spilled into airports.
His people in the tens of thousands took action to

(22:19):
defeat the Muslim ban. On February second, a massive riot
kicked off at you See Berkeley against the far right
troll Milo Napolis, shutting down his scheduled talk. The far
right responded by holding a series of free speech rallies
throughout the summer, and anti fascists soon found themselves out
flanked in the streets by a loose coalition of militia members,

(22:41):
Proud Boys, neo Nazis, and alt right groups. Seeking to
seize on this moment, the White Nashal swing of the
movement called for another free speech rally in Charlesville, Virginia,
and the scene was set for historic and deadly showdown.
It was pretty clear, especially as the run up to
it happened, about how big it was going to be,

(23:02):
how many different kinds of groups were going to be involved,
and that for the first time, although there had been
increasing mobilizations throughout the year especially, it was the first
one that was gonna be led by open fascists. Some
of the other ones fascists participated in them, but there
were more a pan far right. We were like pan
far right events like what happened in Berkeley, but this

(23:22):
one was going to be led by fascists, and they
were all those many different kinds of groups, and they
were coming out of the woodwork. We had old activists
who had been around in the eighties who stated they
were going to come, and there was clearly a lot
of energy behind it, and it seemed like it was
the big bid, and there were some of the participants
were openly saying this it was gonna be the big
bid for power and legitimacy of the ault right. I

(23:44):
believe it was Richard Spencer who said, or Matthew Himeeck
I forget which one actually said. There's gonna be before
Charlotte's Bille and after Charlotte's Bille, which was true, but
not in the way that they hoped for. I think
it was a success for anti fascists and other people
who wanted the alt right to wanted that inertia to
stop and eventually end um. But it was not a

(24:09):
success I think in the way that people wanted it
to be or think about it um as a success.
It could have it was. It could have been a
failure very easily after the event. The event itself was
fairly neutral. I mean, there was all the fighting that
is in people's minds that all happened before the rally
was supposed to start. That was kind of a draw,

(24:30):
which certainly was not a success that anti fascists stopped
the rally. They did not. It did not stop people
from entering into the rally grounds. The police dispersed it
before the rally itself actually started, so that can be
seen as a success. And then the car attack, of
course was well in some ways a failure for us,
and I think at the very beginning many of the
fascists you know, were excited about it, like it really

(24:53):
did add to their inertia, and the whole thing could
have been forgotten about very quickly, in which case I
think it then would have been seen as a success
for the fascists. If people remember the first when it happened,
Trump immediately was like, nazis bad. And then the next
day he made his very fine people on both sides comment,
and this is what energized liberals essentially to condemn him

(25:18):
and to jump on the bandwagon against him. If he
hadn't said that, this could have just sort of passed
out of the public eye very easily, and it be seen,
at least by fascists that anti fascists were unable to
mobilize enough people to stop them, you know, and the
only stopping of them only happened because the police did it.
So I think it could have easily been a draw

(25:38):
or neutral or a failure without Trump's comments. It did
end up being success because of this backlash against them.
It did, for whatever reason, did finally bring it to
the consciousness of people that um this huge rising in
the far right that Trump had engendered, what it really meant,
how violent it was really going to be, what a

(25:59):
threat it really was, And it did motivate people two
and the and the aftermath in particular. Unfortunately, this sort
of went away really quickly to take the streets and
come out in big numbers and condemn the alt right,
and the fascist wing of the right did collapse fairly
soon afterwards. By spring of the next year. Charlottesvill was
real interesting because people had been killed by the ault

(26:19):
right before it, but not in such a dramatic manner,
not in public and not on video. And it was
sort of like, I think for people, and I've said
this before, I kind of you remember the first murders,
you remember the first blood, and in that sense, because
afterwards a lot of people were killed during the Trump
administration and car attacks. I mean, I think a few
dozen people during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. It became

(26:40):
almost wrote where you're like, oh, someone was killed at
a demonstration again. But it was the shock of this
at first, because this had not been seen for a
very long time in the United States, that someone would
be murdered at a demonstration. Um, And that really sort
of stuck with people, and in that way it became
a symbol. Um. You can even today still say Charlotte'sville

(27:01):
unless people are you know, teenagers or something, don't remember
people know what you're talking about. Biden invoked it when
he was running for president. So it's good it remains
as a symbol of how big the really really far right,
you know, the fascists can become quite quickly, and how
violent and murderous they are, And so that remains is

(27:22):
a symbol to people, I think, and frankly that there
can be resistance to it, Like people also saw there
was real resistance and people were willing to fight them,
and especially after one six like there's no more of
this idiotic discourse. A bet if it's okay to punch
and nazi, I really think most people do think it's
okay now, you know, after they've seen one unfolded under

(27:43):
the entire arc of Trump from Charlotte'sville to the capital takeover.
If people had stayed at home, if there wasn't the
allart the mobilization that did occur, it would have been
a total victory for them. They would have taken it
as a total victory and then moved on to the
next thing and tried something bigger. Absolutely, if you held
a demonstration and a thousand people came, you know, wouldn't
you be an you did your thing? Wouldn't be like cool,

(28:03):
like let's move on to the next thing that was successful.
Over the years, since I've done more and more activism,
I come to realize what nothing succeeds as success means,
like once you start going, when something succeeds, more people
come to it and you can move on and move
on as a bigger thing and be able to do
things you weren't able to do before. So this is
why I always say we need to confront people. We
have to break their movement. We can't let it jump

(28:25):
from either success to success or just simply not a failure.
Because if you're already moving and you hit something that's
not a failure, you'll just go on to the next thing.
Nothing will stop you. And we need to need these
things to stop. The night of Heather Higher was murdered,
thousands hit the streets and cities across the United States,
tearing down Confederate statues and marching in solidarity. A few

(28:48):
weeks later, when far right activists tried to hold a
rally in Boston, over forty hit the streets to shut
it down. A week later in San Francisco and Berkeley, too,
of thousands of march to shut down more alright rallies.
In Berkeley, a black block of several hundred strong marched
information as part of a wider anti racist coalition, pushing

(29:12):
both far right activists and heavily armed riot police out
of a downtown park where only months before, far right
activists had driven out anti fascists. The events of the
first eight months of the Trump administration showed that there
was mass militant opposition on the streets of the US
against the far right, which destabilized the Trump regime and

(29:34):
made it back pedal. But more importantly, it showed millions
of people across the country the resistance was possible. That
is going to do it for us today. Follow i
g D at It's Going Down dot org and on
masodon at i g D Underscore News. Thanks so much
for tuning in and be sure to come back next time.
As it Could Happen Here returns. We will continue to

(29:56):
tread where we please into the fascist no past on
It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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(30:17):
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