February 19, 2024 • 47 mins
Margaret talks with Andrew Ti about the anarchists and former Black Panthers that came together to set up mutual aid in post-Katrina New Orleans.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media, Hello, and welcome to Cool People. Did
Cool Stuff your weekly reminder that sometimes good things happen, although,
to be honest, usually it's in response to bad things
and it doesn't always go well, but it's really cool
along the way, I'm your Smargart Killsroy and with me
today is Andrew T.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
How are you? I E good? How's it going?
Speaker 1 (00:25):
I'm good.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I tried to eat a piece of zucchini during the
intro and then I lost faith, So I have a
half chewed piece of zucchini on the table in front.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
That's how you know a professional podcaster is the trying
to time when you can take bites of I.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Bailed, though honestly enjoyed watching that. I just I had
so much confidence and then it was much bigger than
I thought it was.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Andrew is the host of Yo Is This Racist? Which
is a podcast and as a TV writer, and says
you can look it up if you want.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
I didn't say with that attitude is all I will say.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
That's true. No, there was flavor, there was spice to it.
The spice wasn't at the listener.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
That's true. Yeah, yeah, that's correct. That's correct.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
In the industry, yeah, I was at the industry, not
at the nice people who listened to our podcast, because
that's right. I believe last time we had Andrew on
there was a strike going on. Yeah, and I think
the time before that, when we had Andrew on, there
was a strike going on. Yeah, I think that's true.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Two strikes, two strikes, well two two thousands within this
two strikes and yeah. But yeah, and the film and
television industry is sort of limping back to life. So yeah,
we'll see, we'll see how things go.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
I believe in the writers more than I believe in
the industry. But yeah, right, that's true. I can always
turn this into something.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
The rest of the introductions is that Sophie. The other
voice you've heard is our producer, Sophie. Hi, how are
you doing.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
I'm good.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
I was about to off my drink this water, but
then I ruined it. This is my plan today is
I'm looking to see when people on Zoom are reaching
for water and food, and then I'm going to address
questions to them. Our audio engineer is Daniel and our
theme music was written. Oh everyone's to say hi to Danel.
God we almost didn't do it. Hi Danel, Hi danel A.
(02:26):
Our theme music was written for us by unwoman Andrew.
Could you describe the shirt that you're wearing.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Oh, yeah, I believe it's I'm reading it backwards. I'm
trying to remember it racist Saints Safe in the Dirty South, and.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
There's a klansman being eaten by an alligator.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
It's a pretty good illustration of a klansman being, yeah,
eaten by an alligator. It is Oh shoot, It's a
piece of fund raising merch from the I believe they
go by the Screwston Anti Fascist Committee. It's literally written
on the back of this thing. But I'm not going
to turn around or got it fair enough? Yeah, it
(03:02):
really spoke to me, but it's really like, it's really
a wild illustration.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
I love that shirt. I've seen it a couple other
times from people who also supported that fundraiser, and it
is an appropriate shirt for today. Is what I'm going
to start off by telling you.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Oh wonderful.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Today, we're going to break out of cool people tradition
and we're going to talk about the one century I
never talk about this one, the twenty first century. I'm
going to tell a story that happened less than twenty
years ago.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Oh, perfet Wow. I'm still not going to know any
of it, but this is great.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Have you ever heard of the common Ground collective?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
I feel like I actually have, but then I can't
think of a single fact so functional. I feel like
I've heard those the phrase, but I was like, oh.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
No, yeah, no, I mean it is a well Okay,
So we've talked a ton on the show before about
medical solidarity groups set up by the late sixties radicals.
We have talked about the Young Lord's hijacking a mobile
X ray unit in order to get people tested for
tuberculosis and later how they took over a hospital. We've
talked about how the Black Panthers set up community health
(04:15):
clinics as often as they set up free food programs,
and we talked about how the Young Patriots sent it
to members to meet with elderly folks in the community,
to provide escort to doctors and patient advocacy and all
of that, and we talked about how people would just
go door to door to test for lead paint and
meet people's needs in the community. Basically before on this podcast,
(04:36):
when we've talked about the late sixties early seventies, we've
talked about how the New Left took medical care and
mutual aids seriously. But what we haven't talked about is
anything that happens in the twenty first century. And today
we're going to fix it, because today I want to
talk about the child of those New Left programs, which
went on to become parent to most of the mutual
(04:57):
aid programs across the US today, because today we are
going to talk about the Common Ground Collective that's set
up in two thousand and five after Hurricane Katrina devastated
New Orleans and how they're the love child of the
Black Panthers and anarchists and they organized a solidarity not
charity clinic and stepped in when government failed. I'm really
(05:19):
excited to talk about this one.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, that's awesome, And yeah, this is a real swamp episode,
so this is this is exciting.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
I know there's literally going to be people in storms
and flat boats going around through the Gulf of Mexico
and swamps in this episode. Awesome, And we're going to
start this episode where we start, like half of all
stories about the US with a Black Panther party for
self defense, right, and in this case, we'll start with
(05:48):
the Minister of Defense of its New Orleans chapter, a
man named Malik Rahem. Malik Rahem was born in nineteen
forty eight according to almost all the sources, in nineteen
forty seven according to other sources. And it's hey, Malik,
if you're listening, Malik's still alive. I'm sorry that I
don't know what anyway. One thing that's cool about doing
(06:11):
these slightly more modern topics is that a lot of
these people are still alive.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yeah, and the community is not like that big, so like, yeah,
there's a reasonable chance.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yeah, I'm Alik. I think you're cool. That whole podcast
about some of the stuff you did. Oh yeah, he's
an environmental activist. Now we'll talk more about at the end.
And he's not the only character we're going to talk
about today, but he's we're starting with him.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Awesome.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
He was raised in the neighborhood of New in New Orleans.
We're going to center most of this story, which is Algiers,
and Algiers is the in order to have like just
the triple colonized thing, the neighborhood Algiers is in the
West Bank of New Orleans, so.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
God damn. Yeah. Yeah, it's like a like everywhere you
go there's like a white guy with like a real
weedy mustache ruining stuff.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Yeah, basically, which is kind of the story. Yeah, I
mean that happened in New Orleans.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Happened.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Yeah, No, totally. Yeah, they all get pith helmets.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
And unlike the rest of the city, Algiers is on
the west bank of the Mississippi River, and the Misissippi
River like curls around and stuff, so it's not like
west of the rest of the city. It's New Orleans.
Is really annoying geography. Algiers was originally a plantation and
a landing spot for enslaved people. In eighteen seventy it
(07:39):
it became officially part of New Orleans and it was
a big center of jazz in the South. And it
is a very predominantly black neighborhood. There's one rich white
neighborhood within it, Algiers Point, which is about ten blocks
of wealth, but overall it is astoundingly poor and black,
even by New Orleans standards. Before Katrina, sixty seven percent
(08:03):
of the city as a whole was black. Algiers was
eighty nine point four percent black.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Right.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
It had been left out to dry by social services.
It had you know, there was like not clinics for
decades before Katrina so Malik, He's not born under that name.
He later converts to Islam in nineteen sixty five, he
joins the Navy, and he goes off to fight in Vietnam.
He came back in nineteen seventy, fired up for civil
(08:31):
rights and black power. And if you ever want to
hear me talk about what I mean when the Panthers
say black power, then just listened about half a dozen
five done before.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Find a different episode. Also, I should tell the listeners
I'm doing the single worst podcast guesting, which is nodding
when you say stuff which is possibly marginally helpful to
you and zero percent helpful to them. So I will
be better.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Yeah, hmmmm, oh damn, Yeah, oh yeah, okay, yeah, No,
if you take the pith helmet off, you don't have
to go hmmm, you can install say damn.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
We can just layer it in and then yeah, just
drop in reactions as needed. I'll give you some clean
ones at the end.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Yeah, thanks, I really appreciate it. And so he's out
of the Navy in nineteen seventy and he helps found
the Black Panther Party chapter in New Orleans, and I
don't think we've talked about that particular chapter before.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
On the show.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And they're doing all of the good Black Panther stuff.
They are setting up a free breakfast program, they're setting
up a free medical clinic, they're doing community patrols to
protect people from the police. And they opened an office
directly across the street from the Desire Housing project and
it was opened seven days a week. This office. The government,
of course, was like, this is great, You're totally doing
(09:55):
what we wish we had time to do. But we're not.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
No.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Wait, no, they did the opposite that. They they hated
them and tried to murder them.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
All. Yeah, kind of pretty standard standard government.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Behavior pretty much. There's a yeah, there's a track record.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Yeah, it's not great.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
No, soon enough, the police decide to raid this Panther office.
The Panthers they have seen way too many other Panther
chapters gunned down. They don't want to go out easy,
Malik in another vet. They've sand bagged the office, basically
making it so that it's kind of bulletproof. So when
(10:35):
the police starts shooting into the building, the Panthers start
shooting back.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
WHOA.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
The whole thing lasts about twenty minutes. No one is
killed in this shootout. Eventually the Panthers, including Malik, surrender.
They're like, there's no way that is going to end. Well, yeah,
so they walk out with their fists up, shouting all
power to the people, to the growing out outside. And
(11:02):
two things happened. First, even though all of the panthers
present were facing felony charges, it didn't stop the panthers.
Other panthers came in, staffed the office and got right
back to feeding breakfast to kids and patrolling the neighborhood,
that thing that people have to risk their lives to do.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
The other thing that happened is that Malik and the
others went to jail, whereupon they were beaten and mistreated
by guards, and at one point they're okay, So they
segregated away the panthers that they just arrested from general population.
And there was another group on another level that was
like also segregated away, that was like the real bad
motherfuckers or whatever, right, And so the cops are like,
(11:45):
you better act up, or we're gonna let those bad
motherfuckers in here with you. And I think they probably
phrased it that way, right, And y'all are definitely gonna
end up fighting because these are really bad people. You're
in trouble now. And so they let all these hard
and scary gangsters in with the panthers. It turns out
that those hard and scary gangsters, we're all black and
(12:06):
had either become recent converts to the Panther party or
we're quite willing to become.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
So yeah, so that's the wonder that is sort of
not like heartening, but like it kind of got to
give like cops something which is like they're not like
kidding around when they appear to be like deathly afraid
of like the magic evil of black men somehow, like
(12:34):
they really think it's real. Yeah, it's pathetic, and it
lets them do all these kinds of things. But you
know every time, like you know those cops that you know,
the reason that that standard like of oh if a
cop is afraid for their lives, they can use deadly
force is a bullshit is because they genuinely do seem
(12:54):
to believe that black men in particular are just mad
death demons.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Yeah. Absolutely, that's why they all shoot fentanyl, not into
those dets, but they open their guns up and shoot
all drugs because they're afraid it's ventol. One of the scary,
scary people that they had let in was another man
(13:22):
we'll get to in a minute who's important to this
story and to the development of mutual aid as a
political practice in the United States. And his name is
Robert H.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
King.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
We'll come back to him.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
And he was.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Childhood friends with Malik. Anyhow, that's the other thing, right,
And we're like, oh, or let these people in. We're like, right,
these kids grew up together.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Yeah. The community is not that big. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
And so while the Panthers are sitting around in jail,
the other panthers are running the office. But the cops
are like, well, rating once works, so let's rate again,
and this time we'll do it way bigger. And November
nineteen seventy was a couple months later, and it was
probably going to be a bloodbath, but three thousand residents
from the nearby projects showed up and surrounded the Panther
(14:07):
office and almost certainly saved the lives of the twelve
panthers inside.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Or you know, I mean, I guess the thing that's
dark is like, we're now rounding the quarner into the
era of human shields don't work on us level.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Yeah, of fascism, you know, that's true. I don't like
your thought that's true. You know, it's it's like a
little fucked up that the like the thing.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
That's like, oh, they're weaponizing our humanity against us. Well,
we'll just have to not have humanity. I suppose.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Oh, there's this quote that I can't remember who said
it is around this era that's like, you know, nonviolence
depends on the like, yeah, the morality of your oppressor.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, I guess I just always assumed that was a
Malcolm quote, but I don't know why, but.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
I can't remember.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
I'm not sure. I feel like you would know. So
if that's.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Not right, No, I don't know. I mean it was
it was Malcolm X or was someone else from roughly
this time period doing singular work, you know.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
And roughly yeah, roughly the same world as view. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Yeah, And we are not going to look it up. Nope,
that would be impossible. So instead, everyone, if we got
it wrong, you can direct all complaints to our complaint department,
which is on Twitter, which is that I write.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Okay, yeah, let him know.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah. So the Panthers go to trial and they're acquitted
by the jury. Later, Malik was asked why they'd shot
back at the cops, and he said, quote, our position
was that African Americans should no longer be lynched or
beaten or attacked and have their rights taken away without
any form of resistance. We believed you had a right
(15:56):
to defend yourself, You had a right to defend your community,
you had a right to defend your family, and you
had a right to defend your honor as a human being.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yeah, the sort of like standard ATRA stuff that somehow
never shakes out in practice.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Totally whenever the cops shoot someone who for carrying a
gun and then the NRA is like, I didn't see anything. Yeah,
you have one.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Job, I mean, yeah, but it's not their stated job. No,
they do have only one job, that is true.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yeah. So after the stint in prison because you know,
he's found not guilty, Malik, when he gets out, he
goes to Oakland, California for a few decades, he moves
away from New Orleans for a while. He sticks with
the Party until the mid seventies. Then he tried his
hand at being a crime guy instead. For a while.
He did a five year stint for armed robbery. He
(16:53):
gets back into activism when he's out, and he's fighting
for affordable housing and for the rights of formally incarcerated people.
By the late nineties, he moved back to Algiers in
New Orleans, and I'm inferring from what I've read that
he moves back into his family's house, his mother's house specifically.
I'm not sure if she's still alive or not at
this point. I'm a little bit frustrated that I didn't
(17:14):
immediately find that information because half of the things refer
to it as Malik's house and half of it referred
to Malik's mother's house.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
So got it.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
He's doing all kinds of activism now. He's fighting against
the death penalty. He found the Algiers Development Center and
invest in transitional housing, which helped house more than one
thousand former inmates and you know, help people get back
on their feet. He runs for office with the Green
Party time and time again, though he doesn't win. In
nineteen ninety seven, he notices something not all the Movement
(17:47):
prisoners from the seventies are out. In fact, locally three
of them are still in including his childhood friend Robert H.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
King.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
One of the guys who would come up right, right,
And Robert H. King is one of the once famous,
now forgotten and goal of three. So he starts the
work to go about making these people unforgotten and more
importantly free, much like all of the products that we
(18:17):
advertise are free if you apply yourself and are not
afraid of breaking the law.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Yeah, if you just got to do do it the
old fashioned way.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Yeah. And that's how you can take advantage of these
sweet sweet deals is by applying crime, Sophie. That's a
way that will help us keep our advertisers if we
phrase it that way, right, And we're back. So now
(18:58):
we're going to talk about Robert Hillary King. Robert H. King,
he was born in nineteen forty two and he grew
up in New Orleans. He grew up into petty crime
and boxing. Those were like his interests as a teenager
as far as I can.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Tell, Yeah, that's that awesome.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
With that same he went semi pro under the name
Speedy King. As a boxer, he did a few years
for armed robbery before getting out on parole at twenty two.
And then as far as I can tell, I'm not
certain about this. As far as I can tell he
became like the usual suspect where they're like, oh, we
think like a black guy did an armed robbery. Let's
(19:34):
just go arrest this.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Guy, black guy.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Later he gets arrested for armed robbery again.
Eventually they dropped the charges because he's innocent. Okay, But
then listen to this cop logic. The guy he got
arrested alongside of took a plea bargain right and became
a felon. So Robert had been hanging out with a
(19:56):
felon and therefore had violated his previous parole. He had
to go spend fifteen months in prison for literally.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Not breaking God. That is so cram.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
He is not going to have an easy life, this man. Yeah,
the a goal of three. Well, we'll talk about that
in a second. Later, he gets arrested for armed robbery again.
He probably didn't do it this time either. His co
defendant that time had been tortured into giving a false statement.
Is what everyone seems to think, and you know there's
(20:30):
some reasonable eve that.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
At one point early on into that stint, he decides
that he wants to preemptively help the listener fill out
a bingos square on cool people who did cool stuff, bingo.
And so he breaks out of prison. But he then
does what pretty much everyone who breaks out of prison does,
which is get caught.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Right. Is that is that a standard part of the
story that's rad.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
It's like there's a couple like.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
I haven't I haven't been on prison breaking episodes.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well there's a couple that are like
getting or getting outdated, Like there's been a long time
since anyone's dug a tunnel, right, But that used to
be a real big part of early cool people did
cool stuff. Oh man, I think it's because I moved
away from the nineteenth century. I feel like the nineteenth
century was all about tunnels.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Yeah, yeah, right, But.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Yeah, so he's caught. Now that he's back in prison,
this is when he meets Malik Raheem and all this
other stuff happens, right, the panther stuff that we talked
about earlier, And he's like, oh shit, this panther thing,
that's that fucking rules I'm in. And then he's transferred
to Angola Prison and he's thrown into solitary because he
quote wanted to play lawyer for another inmate.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Oh god.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Famously not a crime, yeah, Jesus Christ. Along the way,
somewhere in all of this, he gets convicted for murdering
another prisoner, which he almost certainly again either didn't do
or it wasn't murder, right, because this conviction is going
to end up overturned in two thousand and one decade later,
(22:02):
he then spends the rest of his prison career in
solitary confinement. Somewhere along this way, probably before the solitary stint,
he tried to stop the sex slave trade of young
inmates and has the knife scars to prove it. And
so I think that that might be I'm inferring here
(22:23):
from the different stories that I've read, I think that
might be where the killing someone in prison comes from.
But oh sure, sure, and that maybe it wasn't considered
murder because it was I don't know, right, right, right
the self defense are defending someone or Yeah, but I'm
not entirely certain, yep, But I know his conviction was overturned, Okay, Right.
(22:45):
Two other black inmates who are in at the same
time as him, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, they're in
solitary too, and they just all keep being in solitary
decades go by and they are in solitary. They are
the Angola Three, not because they were co defendants on
the same case, but because they're all in solitary for
(23:07):
just unconscious able lengths of time.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
In two thousand and one, thanks to the work of
Malik and other activists, Robert gets his conviction overturned and
he's released. He spent twenty nine years out of thirty
two years in prison in solitary confinement. Jesus Christ and
then Herman Wallace spends about forty two years in solitary
confinement before he is released under compassionate release in twenty thirteen,
(23:35):
which is when they let you out of prison because
you're dying, right, you know. He died three days after
he was set free, and even then the people were like,
how dare you have set him free? You know, right,
you let this murderer? Whatever the fuck mean, he's dying?
Fuck off?
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yeah, who cares.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Albert Woodfox is released from prison in twenty sixteen after
forty two years of solitary confinement. He died in twenty
twenty two of COVID. He was quite likely the longest
serving solitary confinement in US history. Yeah, fuck the United
Nations Standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners. You
know how long they say that you're allowed to put
(24:14):
someone in solitary for. Isn't it like on the order
of like weeks fifteen days? Yeah, yeah, yeah, we all
know international law as a joke. But here's the other example. Yeah,
on any given day in the US right now, while
you're listening, one hundred and twenty two thousand people are
being kept in cages alone for twenty two to twenty
(24:34):
four hours a day. Jesus, forty one to forty eight
thousand people are held longer than fifteen days in a
given year, and more than six thousand of those will
have been in solitary for more than a year at
any given point.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
That's like yeah, and that's also like so far past
the bounds of like what that could do to somebody.
I mean, I know, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
I did on my other podcast Live Like the World
Has Died, I did an interview that actually is worth
people checking out. I did an interview with a long
term anarchist prisoner named Eric King, who spent years in
solitary for defending himself from guards and all this stuff.
Like literally like at one point he won a self
defense case while he was in prison for defending himself
from a guard, which is has to be a pretty
(25:20):
clear cut case to win.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Yeah right, They're not trying to give that one to you.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
No, and they absolutely would. He ended up serving in
every level of incarceration. He started off in minimum and
ended up in maximum like super max because of how
much the guards hated him. I did an interview with
him about what's involved in like surviving prison. I came
out probably in January of twenty twenty four for anyone
(25:47):
who wants to hear it, and it is a It
was an intense conversation.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Yeah, fuck, it is a k.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Have you ever been in solitary?
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Nope.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
I spent one night alone in a jail cell and
it was foreign detention in the Netherlands, and that was
one of the most impactful moments of my life. Was
one night alone in a jail cell with no one
to talk to and no idea what's happening?
Speaker 2 (26:11):
You know? Yeah? I fuck.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Anyway, twenty nine years this man who went on to
become incredibly important to the development of so many things.
So Robert King gets out of prison two thousand and one,
He gets right back into activism. He also just as
a fun side note, because why not. He's a football fan.
(26:34):
This actually I threw this in for Sophie. Sophie likes spelts.
I like basketball. This guy likes the real like soccer
football you know. Oh, okay, oh europe football or rest
of the world, the one you play with your feet.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
The ball, the.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
One with less concussions. Yeah. He supports the Scottish club,
the Celtics. Oh, probably the Celtics. They probably pronounced it
right over there.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
I think it's just Celtic. I will say, oh, the
football club from Scotland. Yeah, I think it's just called
it's just Celtic FC. Okay, or maybe Celtic, but it's no,
there's no the yeah or plural. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
My sports knowledge is bleeding through. The most I ever
learned about sports was I ghost write all these romance
I ghost wrote two romance novels back in the day,
and they had to be about like Midwest sportsman protagonists. Sure,
like one one guy was a baseball player and one
guy was an American football player, so I had to
learn a lot about them back then. Anyway, that's kind
(27:43):
of all you need. Yeah, that's funny. So he said
about this, I don't know how to pronounce football club
in twenty twenty. They represent oppressed people like me and
my brothers in the African American community. They represent the
poor Irish immigrants in the UK and the people in
the poorest areas of Glasgow, the people with nothing and
who face adversity.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
So he likes the politicized sports and I understand.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah, yeah, that one I think is very It's it's like,
I can't remember all the details, but there's basically a
Catholic team and a Protestant team in Glasgow and it's
as about as like, you know, passionate and violent as
it sounds.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
The thing I'm coming off of is doing a whole
lot of I just did a four part about the
Easter Rising in Ireland.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
So oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
So anyway, you've got these two former Panthers living in
New Orleans. There's more of them, I'm sure, but they're
living in New Orleans, and then Hurricane Katrina hits. Hurricane
Katrina is one of the deadliest natural disasters in US history.
But as we'll talk about, it wasn't the storm itself
that killed people. Well, the storm itself also killed people, right,
(28:56):
but it was systemic poverty and racism that did an
awful lot of them. Ordering the right world murder, Well, actually,
in this case it is murder because it's caused by
these whatever anyway, Right, it is not the deadliest storm
in US history. That honor goes to the Great Galveston
hurricane that hit coastal Texas in nineteen hundred, which killed
(29:16):
eight thousand people. Most of the deadliest storms were one
hundred plus years ago. We theoretically have the infrastructure now
to prevent massive loss of life from natural disasters. Yet
Katrina killed eighteen hundred people, and Hurricane Maria, which hit
Puerto Rico in twenty seventeen, killed about three thousand people.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Right, It's like that thing where like famine is not
actually about the distribution of the actual food.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Right totally. It's not about whether or not the food
grows out of the ground correctly.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, or sorry, It is about the distribution.
It's the existence of the.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Food, yeah, totally. So Katrina is real fucking bad. For
a little while. It was a Category five storm, which
the highest category we have so far of hurricanes. I
believe in US, I believe we'll have to come up
with a higher category.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
You know what. And I just actually got off a
family text thread with like some Republican aunts that are like,
it's so crazy. There's all these storms in California, and
it's just like, yeah, I wish there was some explanation
for why this could be happening. It's just I guess
there is a just a coo incidents. I suppose did
(30:30):
you give.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Did you give them the oh geez? I'm like, you don't.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Say it's really like, oh, well, I guess. I guess
the consequences will just land and we'll be like, oh,
this is so weird because we're all flowing away.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
I don't remember fucking around. Why am I finding out
for no reason? So Katrina calmed down to a category
three before hitting Louisiana and Mississippi before making landfall in
August twenty ninth, two thousand and five, which it did
early in the morning, and yet it devastated the area.
(31:12):
It did at least one hundred billion dollars in damages,
which is just when you're talking about damage and you
use money, and then you also talk about numbers and
you get into the billions. It doesn't. It's more in
miss I could have said, right, I could have said
one hundred trillion, and you'd be like wow.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
You know, like, yeah, it's equal. Yeah, it just means everything.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Yeah, fucking a lot more money than I currently have. Yeah,
by a little bit. But if that's right, I would
have been a great place for an ad transition. But
I don't think that's where we're at. So most of
New Orleans had evacuated. Eighty to ninety percent of New
Orleans evacuated. That's still left tens of thousands of people
in harms way. Mostly it was people who had nowhere
(31:52):
to go and or no where to get anywhere, plus
a lot of stubborn motherfuckers who just weren't leaving, Plus
a lot of people who like a lot of the
emmergen agency services that people set up that the city
set up. Wouldn't let you take your animals, And right,
I wouldn't leave my dog, Yeah I right, just wouldn't
(32:14):
you know. Yeah, we made a deal. I'm in charge
of every moment of his life, and in exchange, I
can't fucking abandon him.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Yeah, you know, I don't even like this dog that much,
but she's coming with me.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Yeah, and New Orleans is not the best designed city
in the world. An awful lot of it forty nine
percent is below sea level. The whole thing is surrounded
by levees to keep out the Gulf of Mexico. But
construction on those levees was of mixed quality and not
(32:45):
always done. And there's like, like, ten years later, a
lot of stuff came out. We're not going to get
into the like the nitty gritty of why the levels collapsed,
but the Army Corps of engineers fucking at the very
least dropped the ball right, whether they did so like
criminally whatever, you know, anyway, engineers and shit knew it
(33:05):
was a disaster waiting to happen. There was like regular
articles being like, so when you think a hurricane's gonna
come and kill everyone, and everyone's like, I don't know,
well I'm too poor to fix it, and the city's
like we kind of don't care, you know.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Yeah, I guess that's the thing with most infrastructure. It's like, yeah,
oh well they'll just say sorry. It's a real like
you know, beg for forgiveness culture there.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Yeah, absolutely, especially in places where poor people live. Yeah,
you will be shocked to know that the below sea
level parts are more often the poorer parts.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
That's interesting. I would not have considered that possibility.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Yeah. Two days before landfall, the National Weather Service was like, Hey,
we're in fucking trouble. This is going to break the levees.
So the mayor, rayinn Egan, whose name we remembered how
to pronounce because it sounds like rain again.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Called.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
When I say we, I mean everyone but me, called
for a voluntary evacuation. First on Saturday night, and then
on Sunday they called for the city's first mandatory evacuation
in history. Basically, he was like, this is going to
topple our levee system. Anyone who stayed behind was offered
(34:25):
to be shuttled to the Louisiana super Dome. Throughout Sunday
and Monday morning, the storm hit, the waters broke the
levee in fifty places. People started dining and bridges collapsed.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Jesus, Yeah, you.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Want to know who else wasn't evacuated? These goods and service?
Is this a good place for an ad transition? These
goods and services stayed right where they were, through thick
and thin, by their own choice. Here they are and
(35:07):
we're back.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
You gotta find the places.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
I know. The other thing that wasn't evacuated. So there
was about seven thousand prisoners total in New Orleans at
that time, including one hundred children, six hundred and fifty prisoners,
and entire wing of one of these prisons was just
abandoned by its staff, with the prisoners locked inside their cells.
This is one of the worst things that's I've ever
(35:32):
America's bad. America has always been bad. I'm gonna go
on out on a crazy limb here, but this is
one of the worst things I've ever read about my life.
Six hundred and fifty prisoners were abandoned by their staff,
with the prisoners locked in their cells. On the first floor,
(35:53):
the water came up to people's waists. Obviously, this flooded
all of the sewage and all of these things. People
didn't know if I was going to stop rising. People
are like hanging out on their top bunks. People on
the upper floors are like calling down to the people
down below, being like, hey, a you okay, and people
are just like crying and they're like, no, yeah, I'm
not Yeah. There was no food or water. People were
(36:15):
drinking sewage there was no lights, there was no air circulation.
The people who were evacuated, the prisoners who were evacuated
on time were left for days in buses in the
sun on the highway, often going entire days without food
or water. Five hundred and seventeen prisoners from across the
city in the end were never accounted for by the
(36:37):
prison system. I hope they all escaped. I think they
probably only did so if you believe in heaven.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Yeah, it seems unlikely, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Most of the prisoners were just in were like serving
a couple of weeks, you know whatever, like facing trial
from misdemeanors and shit. After Katrina, they suspended habeas corpus,
and people did like six months or a year waiting
on trial for like something that would have only gotten
them in, you know, a one week sentence or whatever.
(37:13):
But the hurricane wasn't the worst of it. I want
to quote one of the founders of Common Ground, Scott
Crow from his memoir Black Flags and Windmills. It was
not the hurricane that caused this disaster. It was the
levee failures and the ongoing ecological destruction in the Gulf.
This was the latest in a long history of largely
(37:33):
invisible disasters of neglect in these communities. To me, the
levees became a symbol of the way that the corruption
and arrogance of government disregards the most vulnerable people. And
the flooding lasted for days in most of the city
and weeks in plenty of places, some places like a
couple months before the flood waters receded. Yeah, most of
(37:56):
the people who died because of Katrina were elderly folks
living near levee breaches, in the poorest neighborhoods like the
Lower ninth ward right. The news, of course, you remember
the news during Katrina.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
I'm not uh kind of yeah, I mean it was
just like yeah, like obviously, I mean I think at
the time it was this like Jesus Christ, like George W.
Bush is going to fuck this up. Not exclusively a
Republican thing, but not I guess, of the choices, not
(38:31):
the not the preferred one, not that either is that great?
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Yeah, who knows how fucking gore who ran in Gore.
But the news was full of these wild stories about
and when I say anarchy, I don't mean anarchy like
I like anarchy. I mean the opposite anarchy. The news
was full of all these wild stories of like everyone
(38:55):
in the super Dome is currently being raped and murdered.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Oh right, yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
The gangs run it. Snipers are just killing people in there.
And you know what, six people died at the super Dome,
that's true. Four of them died of natural causes, one
person odeed, and one person killed themselves. And there were
no snipers. Right, But there was violence in post Katrina
(39:21):
New Orleans, most famously after the fact, police violence. Right,
But we're going to talk about how there was I mean,
there was more. You know, it was a bad situation.
And let's get back to our panthers who are living
in New Orleans, especially to Malik Rameil. Malik Ramil and
his friend Sharon Johnson in the Algiers neighborhood. They decided
(39:42):
to stick it out together. They stayed in the house
to make it Sharon Johnson was not yet a community organizer,
but she's about to become one, and Malik Ramil has
been one for decades. Right, this neighborhood, Algiers, it was
spared the worst of the natural disaster. It gets as
much as anyone else of the unnatural disaster. It's levees
were separate from the rest of the city, right because
(40:04):
it's in a separate physical geographical location, and they held
despite a ship crashing into one, which is pretty they
built one levee, right, yeah, god it is.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
I guess what an improbability that that's the one that
was like that held.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
In this case. Yeah, yeah, I mean these ones were
like solid concrete, yeah, and twelve feet highs compared to
a lot of them that were like just dirt. And
you know, I wonder whether they finished these early. I
don't know enough about the levee system of New Orleans.
I've walked on some of the levees. They're a very
nice place to walk your dog.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
I don't think i've ever been. Oh it's nice in
New Orleans.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
But yeah, if you walk down one of the levees,
you can get to this place called the End of
the World. That's just a little sticks out into the
water and there's some burned out, rusty things and people
go and hang out and do drugs or walk their
dogs and it's like kind of like a nice vibe
of like those two things like happily coinciding, you know.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Amazing.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Yeah, So there's a lot of like rituals for the dead.
And this is a neat, neat place anyway. Yeah, Algiers
wasn't spared completely. People were trapped, right, They couldn't leave
the city, right, All the bridges had collapsed, like all
this crazy shit's happening. There's like check points everywhere. Getting
(41:27):
in and out as a nightmare. And of course there's
like all these armed people with guns that work for
the government yelling at you and yeah, and so they're
fucking hungry. Malik and Sharon they started talking with their
neighbors and soon enough they had a food distribution system going.
They used their one fucked up car and whatever gas
they could siphon from abandoned vehicles to pass out the
(41:47):
mrs the meals ready to eat and water that was
filtering in from the National Guard. Algiers primarily a black neighborhood.
It has one white area, Algiers Point, which is full
of those like U loot, we shoot signs.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Right.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
Have you seen that that meme where there's like the
white assholes with guns standing in front of a Texas
flag and it says lotters will be shoot on site.
Oh it's good. And then there's like lotters are not afraid.
The mean with the.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
Yeah, I haven't. I don't know if I've seen that.
I Mean, it's like I feel like it's an endless
well on the internet of yeah, totally, but yeah, it
is like the mentality of like, I will murder someone
for you know, at worst categorizing it as burglary. Ye. Like,
it's like, yeah, like fucking crazy, which.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Is funny because they all watch movies where white people
break into grocery stores after the end of the world,
and you know, it's good and noble because they're starving
or whatever. Right, that's the vibe is lotters will be
shoot on site, and soon enough there is a white
racist militia patrolling not just their own blocks but the
rest of Algiers. And another similar militia was active in
(43:03):
the French quarter on the other side of the river,
and they weren't just sticking to their blocks, right, An
awful lot of young black men were dead in the
streets full of bullets. The police let them do it
because the police were there to shoot looters too. Yeah,
quote looters whoever they fucking wanted. And one highly publicized
(43:23):
example on September fourth, cops on the Danziger Bridge killed
James Brissett, who was seventeen, and Ronald Madison, who was
forty and had mental disabilities. Ronald was shot in the back.
The police tried to cover it up. It took until
twenty sixteen for the cops involved to get convicted. And
of course that was only after like, yeah, more than
a decade of work, right, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Kind of remember that one, yeah, because that was caught
on like news camera or something, right.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
I think, so, I actually a little bit ago. It
said a whole long thing about it. There's like good
and really emotional reporting that people have done about that.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
You know.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
It's like they were a family out to try and
like find something to eat and figure out what's going
on and stuff, you know, and like, yeah, Malik himself
saw nineteen people shot to death by these militias, according
to what I read. And this was not yeah, it
was someone else quoting Malik. This is not a direct
quote from him. But the militias piled men with rifles
(44:24):
into the beds of pickups and drove around to harrass people. Yeah,
and they particularly had it out for Malik. They called
him the mayor of Algiers and said they were going
to quote get him, which, to put it mildly, is
a bad situation.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Yeah, concerning, But what was.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
Going to happen? In order to find out, You're going
to have to wait until Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Part two.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
That was so cool. Thank you, thank you. Proud of
a I'm proud of my segues seguys, cliffhangers.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
But what people don't have to wait for is to
hear from you Andrew about what you do.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Oh that's true. Yeah, just fine. I don't know the
Yosis Racist podcast, I guess is the thing that is
happening every week when this comes out. I don't know
what's happening. I do know I just recorded a very
hurried solo premium episode because I was stuck at San
Francisco Airport for fourteen hours. So I did a little
(45:34):
recap of that, and I was very tired of when
I did it. Anyway, Yoss Racist.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
Awesome, Sophie, what do you got to plug?
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Well? And I at cool Zone Media have a new
weekly podcast that I think at the time of this
at least the trailer, if not episode one will be out.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
It's called Better Offline. It's a weekly show exploring the
tech industry's fuckery. So check that out. Yeah, check me
out on substack Margaret Kiljoy dot substack dot com, where
I alright google it like the rest of us. You sick.
You don't just type in your yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
No man.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
Although, with the way Google's going, who knows where we're starting.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Ask chat GPT yo, go Duck duck.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
The world's gonna split into three directions. There's going to
be Google the centrists, and there's going to be Duck dutgo,
the privacy paranoid. And then there's going to be the
chat GPT, Yeah, the dumb fox, the people who are
the least correct according to my whatever. Go listen to
that podcast and it'll probably have better ideas than I do. Yeah,
(46:42):
and we will talk to you all on Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us
out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Cool Zone Media, Hello, and welcome to Cool People. Did
Cool Stuff your weekly reminder that sometimes good things happen, although,
to be honest, usually it's in response to bad things
and it doesn't always go well, but it's really cool
along the way, I'm your Smargart Killsroy and with me
today is Andrew T.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
How are you? I E good? How's it going?
Speaker 1 (00:25):
I'm good.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I tried to eat a piece of zucchini during the
intro and then I lost faith, So I have a
half chewed piece of zucchini on the table in front.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
That's how you know a professional podcaster is the trying
to time when you can take bites of I.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Bailed, though honestly enjoyed watching that. I just I had
so much confidence and then it was much bigger than
I thought it was.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Andrew is the host of Yo Is This Racist? Which
is a podcast and as a TV writer, and says
you can look it up if you want.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
I didn't say with that attitude is all I will say.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
That's true. No, there was flavor, there was spice to it.
The spice wasn't at the listener.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
That's true. Yeah, yeah, that's correct. That's correct.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
In the industry, yeah, I was at the industry, not
at the nice people who listened to our podcast, because
that's right. I believe last time we had Andrew on
there was a strike going on. Yeah, and I think
the time before that, when we had Andrew on, there
was a strike going on. Yeah, I think that's true.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Two strikes, two strikes, well two two thousands within this
two strikes and yeah. But yeah, and the film and
television industry is sort of limping back to life. So yeah,
we'll see, we'll see how things go.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
I believe in the writers more than I believe in
the industry. But yeah, right, that's true. I can always
turn this into something.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
The rest of the introductions is that Sophie. The other
voice you've heard is our producer, Sophie. Hi, how are
you doing.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
I'm good.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
I was about to off my drink this water, but
then I ruined it. This is my plan today is
I'm looking to see when people on Zoom are reaching
for water and food, and then I'm going to address
questions to them. Our audio engineer is Daniel and our
theme music was written. Oh everyone's to say hi to Danel.
God we almost didn't do it. Hi Danel, Hi danel A.
(02:26):
Our theme music was written for us by unwoman Andrew.
Could you describe the shirt that you're wearing.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Oh, yeah, I believe it's I'm reading it backwards. I'm
trying to remember it racist Saints Safe in the Dirty South, and.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
There's a klansman being eaten by an alligator.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
It's a pretty good illustration of a klansman being, yeah,
eaten by an alligator. It is Oh shoot, It's a
piece of fund raising merch from the I believe they
go by the Screwston Anti Fascist Committee. It's literally written
on the back of this thing. But I'm not going
to turn around or got it fair enough? Yeah, it
(03:02):
really spoke to me, but it's really like, it's really
a wild illustration.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
I love that shirt. I've seen it a couple other
times from people who also supported that fundraiser, and it
is an appropriate shirt for today. Is what I'm going
to start off by telling you.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Oh wonderful.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Today, we're going to break out of cool people tradition
and we're going to talk about the one century I
never talk about this one, the twenty first century. I'm
going to tell a story that happened less than twenty
years ago.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Oh, perfet Wow. I'm still not going to know any
of it, but this is great.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Have you ever heard of the common Ground collective?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
I feel like I actually have, but then I can't
think of a single fact so functional. I feel like
I've heard those the phrase, but I was like, oh.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
No, yeah, no, I mean it is a well Okay,
So we've talked a ton on the show before about
medical solidarity groups set up by the late sixties radicals.
We have talked about the Young Lord's hijacking a mobile
X ray unit in order to get people tested for
tuberculosis and later how they took over a hospital. We've
talked about how the Black Panthers set up community health
(04:15):
clinics as often as they set up free food programs,
and we talked about how the Young Patriots sent it
to members to meet with elderly folks in the community,
to provide escort to doctors and patient advocacy and all
of that, and we talked about how people would just
go door to door to test for lead paint and
meet people's needs in the community. Basically before on this podcast,
(04:36):
when we've talked about the late sixties early seventies, we've
talked about how the New Left took medical care and
mutual aids seriously. But what we haven't talked about is
anything that happens in the twenty first century. And today
we're going to fix it, because today I want to
talk about the child of those New Left programs, which
went on to become parent to most of the mutual
(04:57):
aid programs across the US today, because today we are
going to talk about the Common Ground Collective that's set
up in two thousand and five after Hurricane Katrina devastated
New Orleans and how they're the love child of the
Black Panthers and anarchists and they organized a solidarity not
charity clinic and stepped in when government failed. I'm really
(05:19):
excited to talk about this one.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, that's awesome, And yeah, this is a real swamp episode,
so this is this is exciting.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
I know there's literally going to be people in storms
and flat boats going around through the Gulf of Mexico
and swamps in this episode. Awesome, And we're going to
start this episode where we start, like half of all
stories about the US with a Black Panther party for
self defense, right, and in this case, we'll start with
(05:48):
the Minister of Defense of its New Orleans chapter, a
man named Malik Rahem. Malik Rahem was born in nineteen
forty eight according to almost all the sources, in nineteen
forty seven according to other sources. And it's hey, Malik,
if you're listening, Malik's still alive. I'm sorry that I
don't know what anyway. One thing that's cool about doing
(06:11):
these slightly more modern topics is that a lot of
these people are still alive.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yeah, and the community is not like that big, so like, yeah,
there's a reasonable chance.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yeah, I'm Alik. I think you're cool. That whole podcast
about some of the stuff you did. Oh yeah, he's
an environmental activist. Now we'll talk more about at the end.
And he's not the only character we're going to talk
about today, but he's we're starting with him.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Awesome.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
He was raised in the neighborhood of New in New Orleans.
We're going to center most of this story, which is Algiers,
and Algiers is the in order to have like just
the triple colonized thing, the neighborhood Algiers is in the
West Bank of New Orleans, so.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
God damn. Yeah. Yeah, it's like a like everywhere you
go there's like a white guy with like a real
weedy mustache ruining stuff.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Yeah, basically, which is kind of the story. Yeah, I
mean that happened in New Orleans.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Happened.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Yeah, No, totally. Yeah, they all get pith helmets.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
And unlike the rest of the city, Algiers is on
the west bank of the Mississippi River, and the Misissippi
River like curls around and stuff, so it's not like
west of the rest of the city. It's New Orleans.
Is really annoying geography. Algiers was originally a plantation and
a landing spot for enslaved people. In eighteen seventy it
(07:39):
it became officially part of New Orleans and it was
a big center of jazz in the South. And it
is a very predominantly black neighborhood. There's one rich white
neighborhood within it, Algiers Point, which is about ten blocks
of wealth, but overall it is astoundingly poor and black,
even by New Orleans standards. Before Katrina, sixty seven percent
(08:03):
of the city as a whole was black. Algiers was
eighty nine point four percent black.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Right.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
It had been left out to dry by social services.
It had you know, there was like not clinics for
decades before Katrina so Malik, He's not born under that name.
He later converts to Islam in nineteen sixty five, he
joins the Navy, and he goes off to fight in Vietnam.
He came back in nineteen seventy, fired up for civil
(08:31):
rights and black power. And if you ever want to
hear me talk about what I mean when the Panthers
say black power, then just listened about half a dozen
five done before.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Find a different episode. Also, I should tell the listeners
I'm doing the single worst podcast guesting, which is nodding
when you say stuff which is possibly marginally helpful to
you and zero percent helpful to them. So I will
be better.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Yeah, hmmmm, oh damn, Yeah, oh yeah, okay, yeah, No,
if you take the pith helmet off, you don't have
to go hmmm, you can install say damn.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
We can just layer it in and then yeah, just
drop in reactions as needed. I'll give you some clean
ones at the end.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Yeah, thanks, I really appreciate it. And so he's out
of the Navy in nineteen seventy and he helps found
the Black Panther Party chapter in New Orleans, and I
don't think we've talked about that particular chapter before.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
On the show.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And they're doing all of the good Black Panther stuff.
They are setting up a free breakfast program, they're setting
up a free medical clinic, they're doing community patrols to
protect people from the police. And they opened an office
directly across the street from the Desire Housing project and
it was opened seven days a week. This office. The government,
of course, was like, this is great, You're totally doing
(09:55):
what we wish we had time to do. But we're not.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
No.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Wait, no, they did the opposite that. They they hated
them and tried to murder them.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
All. Yeah, kind of pretty standard standard government.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Behavior pretty much. There's a yeah, there's a track record.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Yeah, it's not great.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
No, soon enough, the police decide to raid this Panther office.
The Panthers they have seen way too many other Panther
chapters gunned down. They don't want to go out easy,
Malik in another vet. They've sand bagged the office, basically
making it so that it's kind of bulletproof. So when
(10:35):
the police starts shooting into the building, the Panthers start
shooting back.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
WHOA.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
The whole thing lasts about twenty minutes. No one is
killed in this shootout. Eventually the Panthers, including Malik, surrender.
They're like, there's no way that is going to end. Well, yeah,
so they walk out with their fists up, shouting all
power to the people, to the growing out outside. And
(11:02):
two things happened. First, even though all of the panthers
present were facing felony charges, it didn't stop the panthers.
Other panthers came in, staffed the office and got right
back to feeding breakfast to kids and patrolling the neighborhood,
that thing that people have to risk their lives to do.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
The other thing that happened is that Malik and the
others went to jail, whereupon they were beaten and mistreated
by guards, and at one point they're okay, So they
segregated away the panthers that they just arrested from general population.
And there was another group on another level that was
like also segregated away, that was like the real bad
motherfuckers or whatever, right, And so the cops are like,
(11:45):
you better act up, or we're gonna let those bad
motherfuckers in here with you. And I think they probably
phrased it that way, right, And y'all are definitely gonna
end up fighting because these are really bad people. You're
in trouble now. And so they let all these hard
and scary gangsters in with the panthers. It turns out
that those hard and scary gangsters, we're all black and
(12:06):
had either become recent converts to the Panther party or
we're quite willing to become.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
So yeah, so that's the wonder that is sort of
not like heartening, but like it kind of got to
give like cops something which is like they're not like
kidding around when they appear to be like deathly afraid
of like the magic evil of black men somehow, like
(12:34):
they really think it's real. Yeah, it's pathetic, and it
lets them do all these kinds of things. But you
know every time, like you know those cops that you know,
the reason that that standard like of oh if a
cop is afraid for their lives, they can use deadly
force is a bullshit is because they genuinely do seem
(12:54):
to believe that black men in particular are just mad
death demons.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Yeah. Absolutely, that's why they all shoot fentanyl, not into
those dets, but they open their guns up and shoot
all drugs because they're afraid it's ventol. One of the scary,
scary people that they had let in was another man
(13:22):
we'll get to in a minute who's important to this
story and to the development of mutual aid as a
political practice in the United States. And his name is
Robert H.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
King.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
We'll come back to him.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
And he was.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Childhood friends with Malik. Anyhow, that's the other thing, right,
And we're like, oh, or let these people in. We're like, right,
these kids grew up together.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Yeah. The community is not that big. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
And so while the Panthers are sitting around in jail,
the other panthers are running the office. But the cops
are like, well, rating once works, so let's rate again,
and this time we'll do it way bigger. And November
nineteen seventy was a couple months later, and it was
probably going to be a bloodbath, but three thousand residents
from the nearby projects showed up and surrounded the Panther
(14:07):
office and almost certainly saved the lives of the twelve
panthers inside.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Or you know, I mean, I guess the thing that's
dark is like, we're now rounding the quarner into the
era of human shields don't work on us level.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Yeah, of fascism, you know, that's true. I don't like
your thought that's true. You know, it's it's like a
little fucked up that the like the thing.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
That's like, oh, they're weaponizing our humanity against us. Well,
we'll just have to not have humanity. I suppose.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Oh, there's this quote that I can't remember who said
it is around this era that's like, you know, nonviolence
depends on the like, yeah, the morality of your oppressor.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, I guess I just always assumed that was a
Malcolm quote, but I don't know why, but.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
I can't remember.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
I'm not sure. I feel like you would know. So
if that's.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Not right, No, I don't know. I mean it was
it was Malcolm X or was someone else from roughly
this time period doing singular work, you know.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
And roughly yeah, roughly the same world as view. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Yeah, And we are not going to look it up. Nope,
that would be impossible. So instead, everyone, if we got
it wrong, you can direct all complaints to our complaint department,
which is on Twitter, which is that I write.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Okay, yeah, let him know.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah. So the Panthers go to trial and they're acquitted
by the jury. Later, Malik was asked why they'd shot
back at the cops, and he said, quote, our position
was that African Americans should no longer be lynched or
beaten or attacked and have their rights taken away without
any form of resistance. We believed you had a right
(15:56):
to defend yourself, You had a right to defend your community,
you had a right to defend your family, and you
had a right to defend your honor as a human being.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yeah, the sort of like standard ATRA stuff that somehow
never shakes out in practice.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Totally whenever the cops shoot someone who for carrying a
gun and then the NRA is like, I didn't see anything. Yeah,
you have one.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Job, I mean, yeah, but it's not their stated job. No,
they do have only one job, that is true.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yeah. So after the stint in prison because you know,
he's found not guilty, Malik, when he gets out, he
goes to Oakland, California for a few decades, he moves
away from New Orleans for a while. He sticks with
the Party until the mid seventies. Then he tried his
hand at being a crime guy instead. For a while.
He did a five year stint for armed robbery. He
(16:53):
gets back into activism when he's out, and he's fighting
for affordable housing and for the rights of formally incarcerated people.
By the late nineties, he moved back to Algiers in
New Orleans, and I'm inferring from what I've read that
he moves back into his family's house, his mother's house specifically.
I'm not sure if she's still alive or not at
this point. I'm a little bit frustrated that I didn't
(17:14):
immediately find that information because half of the things refer
to it as Malik's house and half of it referred
to Malik's mother's house.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
So got it.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
He's doing all kinds of activism now. He's fighting against
the death penalty. He found the Algiers Development Center and
invest in transitional housing, which helped house more than one
thousand former inmates and you know, help people get back
on their feet. He runs for office with the Green
Party time and time again, though he doesn't win. In
nineteen ninety seven, he notices something not all the Movement
(17:47):
prisoners from the seventies are out. In fact, locally three
of them are still in including his childhood friend Robert H.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
King.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
One of the guys who would come up right, right,
And Robert H. King is one of the once famous,
now forgotten and goal of three. So he starts the
work to go about making these people unforgotten and more
importantly free, much like all of the products that we
(18:17):
advertise are free if you apply yourself and are not
afraid of breaking the law.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Yeah, if you just got to do do it the
old fashioned way.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Yeah. And that's how you can take advantage of these
sweet sweet deals is by applying crime, Sophie. That's a
way that will help us keep our advertisers if we
phrase it that way, right, And we're back. So now
(18:58):
we're going to talk about Robert Hillary King. Robert H. King,
he was born in nineteen forty two and he grew
up in New Orleans. He grew up into petty crime
and boxing. Those were like his interests as a teenager
as far as I can.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Tell, Yeah, that's that awesome.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
With that same he went semi pro under the name
Speedy King. As a boxer, he did a few years
for armed robbery before getting out on parole at twenty two.
And then as far as I can tell, I'm not
certain about this. As far as I can tell he
became like the usual suspect where they're like, oh, we
think like a black guy did an armed robbery. Let's
(19:34):
just go arrest this.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Guy, black guy.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Later he gets arrested for armed robbery again.
Eventually they dropped the charges because he's innocent. Okay, But
then listen to this cop logic. The guy he got
arrested alongside of took a plea bargain right and became
a felon. So Robert had been hanging out with a
(19:56):
felon and therefore had violated his previous parole. He had
to go spend fifteen months in prison for literally.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Not breaking God. That is so cram.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
He is not going to have an easy life, this man. Yeah,
the a goal of three. Well, we'll talk about that
in a second. Later, he gets arrested for armed robbery again.
He probably didn't do it this time either. His co
defendant that time had been tortured into giving a false statement.
Is what everyone seems to think, and you know there's
(20:30):
some reasonable eve that.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
At one point early on into that stint, he decides
that he wants to preemptively help the listener fill out
a bingos square on cool people who did cool stuff, bingo.
And so he breaks out of prison. But he then
does what pretty much everyone who breaks out of prison does,
which is get caught.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Right. Is that is that a standard part of the
story that's rad.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
It's like there's a couple like.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
I haven't I haven't been on prison breaking episodes.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well there's a couple that are like
getting or getting outdated, Like there's been a long time
since anyone's dug a tunnel, right, But that used to
be a real big part of early cool people did
cool stuff. Oh man, I think it's because I moved
away from the nineteenth century. I feel like the nineteenth
century was all about tunnels.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Yeah, yeah, right, But.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Yeah, so he's caught. Now that he's back in prison,
this is when he meets Malik Raheem and all this
other stuff happens, right, the panther stuff that we talked
about earlier, And he's like, oh shit, this panther thing,
that's that fucking rules I'm in. And then he's transferred
to Angola Prison and he's thrown into solitary because he
quote wanted to play lawyer for another inmate.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Oh god.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Famously not a crime, yeah, Jesus Christ. Along the way,
somewhere in all of this, he gets convicted for murdering
another prisoner, which he almost certainly again either didn't do
or it wasn't murder, right, because this conviction is going
to end up overturned in two thousand and one decade later,
(22:02):
he then spends the rest of his prison career in
solitary confinement. Somewhere along this way, probably before the solitary stint,
he tried to stop the sex slave trade of young
inmates and has the knife scars to prove it. And
so I think that that might be I'm inferring here
(22:23):
from the different stories that I've read, I think that
might be where the killing someone in prison comes from.
But oh sure, sure, and that maybe it wasn't considered
murder because it was I don't know, right, right, right
the self defense are defending someone or Yeah, but I'm
not entirely certain, yep, But I know his conviction was overturned, Okay, Right.
(22:45):
Two other black inmates who are in at the same
time as him, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, they're in
solitary too, and they just all keep being in solitary
decades go by and they are in solitary. They are
the Angola Three, not because they were co defendants on
the same case, but because they're all in solitary for
(23:07):
just unconscious able lengths of time.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
In two thousand and one, thanks to the work of
Malik and other activists, Robert gets his conviction overturned and
he's released. He spent twenty nine years out of thirty
two years in prison in solitary confinement. Jesus Christ and
then Herman Wallace spends about forty two years in solitary
confinement before he is released under compassionate release in twenty thirteen,
(23:35):
which is when they let you out of prison because
you're dying, right, you know. He died three days after
he was set free, and even then the people were like,
how dare you have set him free? You know, right,
you let this murderer? Whatever the fuck mean, he's dying?
Fuck off?
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yeah, who cares.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Albert Woodfox is released from prison in twenty sixteen after
forty two years of solitary confinement. He died in twenty
twenty two of COVID. He was quite likely the longest
serving solitary confinement in US history. Yeah, fuck the United
Nations Standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners. You
know how long they say that you're allowed to put
(24:14):
someone in solitary for. Isn't it like on the order
of like weeks fifteen days? Yeah, yeah, yeah, we all
know international law as a joke. But here's the other example. Yeah,
on any given day in the US right now, while
you're listening, one hundred and twenty two thousand people are
being kept in cages alone for twenty two to twenty
(24:34):
four hours a day. Jesus, forty one to forty eight
thousand people are held longer than fifteen days in a
given year, and more than six thousand of those will
have been in solitary for more than a year at
any given point.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
That's like yeah, and that's also like so far past
the bounds of like what that could do to somebody.
I mean, I know, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
I did on my other podcast Live Like the World
Has Died, I did an interview that actually is worth
people checking out. I did an interview with a long
term anarchist prisoner named Eric King, who spent years in
solitary for defending himself from guards and all this stuff.
Like literally like at one point he won a self
defense case while he was in prison for defending himself
from a guard, which is has to be a pretty
(25:20):
clear cut case to win.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Yeah right, They're not trying to give that one to you.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
No, and they absolutely would. He ended up serving in
every level of incarceration. He started off in minimum and
ended up in maximum like super max because of how
much the guards hated him. I did an interview with
him about what's involved in like surviving prison. I came
out probably in January of twenty twenty four for anyone
(25:47):
who wants to hear it, and it is a It
was an intense conversation.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Yeah, fuck, it is a k.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Have you ever been in solitary?
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Nope.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
I spent one night alone in a jail cell and
it was foreign detention in the Netherlands, and that was
one of the most impactful moments of my life. Was
one night alone in a jail cell with no one
to talk to and no idea what's happening?
Speaker 2 (26:11):
You know? Yeah? I fuck.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Anyway, twenty nine years this man who went on to
become incredibly important to the development of so many things.
So Robert King gets out of prison two thousand and one,
He gets right back into activism. He also just as
a fun side note, because why not. He's a football fan.
(26:34):
This actually I threw this in for Sophie. Sophie likes spelts.
I like basketball. This guy likes the real like soccer
football you know. Oh, okay, oh europe football or rest
of the world, the one you play with your feet.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
The ball, the.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
One with less concussions. Yeah. He supports the Scottish club,
the Celtics. Oh, probably the Celtics. They probably pronounced it
right over there.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
I think it's just Celtic. I will say, oh, the
football club from Scotland. Yeah, I think it's just called
it's just Celtic FC. Okay, or maybe Celtic, but it's no,
there's no the yeah or plural. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
My sports knowledge is bleeding through. The most I ever
learned about sports was I ghost write all these romance
I ghost wrote two romance novels back in the day,
and they had to be about like Midwest sportsman protagonists. Sure,
like one one guy was a baseball player and one
guy was an American football player, so I had to
learn a lot about them back then. Anyway, that's kind
(27:43):
of all you need. Yeah, that's funny. So he said
about this, I don't know how to pronounce football club
in twenty twenty. They represent oppressed people like me and
my brothers in the African American community. They represent the
poor Irish immigrants in the UK and the people in
the poorest areas of Glasgow, the people with nothing and
who face adversity.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
So he likes the politicized sports and I understand.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah, yeah, that one I think is very It's it's like,
I can't remember all the details, but there's basically a
Catholic team and a Protestant team in Glasgow and it's
as about as like, you know, passionate and violent as
it sounds.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
The thing I'm coming off of is doing a whole
lot of I just did a four part about the
Easter Rising in Ireland.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
So oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
So anyway, you've got these two former Panthers living in
New Orleans. There's more of them, I'm sure, but they're
living in New Orleans, and then Hurricane Katrina hits. Hurricane
Katrina is one of the deadliest natural disasters in US history.
But as we'll talk about, it wasn't the storm itself
that killed people. Well, the storm itself also killed people, right,
(28:56):
but it was systemic poverty and racism that did an
awful lot of them. Ordering the right world murder, Well, actually,
in this case it is murder because it's caused by
these whatever anyway, Right, it is not the deadliest storm
in US history. That honor goes to the Great Galveston
hurricane that hit coastal Texas in nineteen hundred, which killed
(29:16):
eight thousand people. Most of the deadliest storms were one
hundred plus years ago. We theoretically have the infrastructure now
to prevent massive loss of life from natural disasters. Yet
Katrina killed eighteen hundred people, and Hurricane Maria, which hit
Puerto Rico in twenty seventeen, killed about three thousand people.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Right, It's like that thing where like famine is not
actually about the distribution of the actual food.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Right totally. It's not about whether or not the food
grows out of the ground correctly.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, or sorry, It is about the distribution.
It's the existence of the.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Food, yeah, totally. So Katrina is real fucking bad. For
a little while. It was a Category five storm, which
the highest category we have so far of hurricanes. I
believe in US, I believe we'll have to come up
with a higher category.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
You know what. And I just actually got off a
family text thread with like some Republican aunts that are like,
it's so crazy. There's all these storms in California, and
it's just like, yeah, I wish there was some explanation
for why this could be happening. It's just I guess
there is a just a coo incidents. I suppose did
(30:30):
you give.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Did you give them the oh geez? I'm like, you don't.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Say it's really like, oh, well, I guess. I guess
the consequences will just land and we'll be like, oh,
this is so weird because we're all flowing away.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
I don't remember fucking around. Why am I finding out
for no reason? So Katrina calmed down to a category
three before hitting Louisiana and Mississippi before making landfall in
August twenty ninth, two thousand and five, which it did
early in the morning, and yet it devastated the area.
(31:12):
It did at least one hundred billion dollars in damages,
which is just when you're talking about damage and you
use money, and then you also talk about numbers and
you get into the billions. It doesn't. It's more in
miss I could have said, right, I could have said
one hundred trillion, and you'd be like wow.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
You know, like, yeah, it's equal. Yeah, it just means everything.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Yeah, fucking a lot more money than I currently have. Yeah,
by a little bit. But if that's right, I would
have been a great place for an ad transition. But
I don't think that's where we're at. So most of
New Orleans had evacuated. Eighty to ninety percent of New
Orleans evacuated. That's still left tens of thousands of people
in harms way. Mostly it was people who had nowhere
(31:52):
to go and or no where to get anywhere, plus
a lot of stubborn motherfuckers who just weren't leaving, Plus
a lot of people who like a lot of the
emmergen agency services that people set up that the city
set up. Wouldn't let you take your animals, And right,
I wouldn't leave my dog, Yeah I right, just wouldn't
(32:14):
you know. Yeah, we made a deal. I'm in charge
of every moment of his life, and in exchange, I
can't fucking abandon him.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Yeah, you know, I don't even like this dog that much,
but she's coming with me.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Yeah, and New Orleans is not the best designed city
in the world. An awful lot of it forty nine
percent is below sea level. The whole thing is surrounded
by levees to keep out the Gulf of Mexico. But
construction on those levees was of mixed quality and not
(32:45):
always done. And there's like, like, ten years later, a
lot of stuff came out. We're not going to get
into the like the nitty gritty of why the levels collapsed,
but the Army Corps of engineers fucking at the very
least dropped the ball right, whether they did so like
criminally whatever, you know, anyway, engineers and shit knew it
(33:05):
was a disaster waiting to happen. There was like regular
articles being like, so when you think a hurricane's gonna
come and kill everyone, and everyone's like, I don't know,
well I'm too poor to fix it, and the city's
like we kind of don't care, you know.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Yeah, I guess that's the thing with most infrastructure. It's like, yeah,
oh well they'll just say sorry. It's a real like
you know, beg for forgiveness culture there.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Yeah, absolutely, especially in places where poor people live. Yeah,
you will be shocked to know that the below sea
level parts are more often the poorer parts.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
That's interesting. I would not have considered that possibility.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Yeah. Two days before landfall, the National Weather Service was like, Hey,
we're in fucking trouble. This is going to break the levees.
So the mayor, rayinn Egan, whose name we remembered how
to pronounce because it sounds like rain again.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Called.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
When I say we, I mean everyone but me, called
for a voluntary evacuation. First on Saturday night, and then
on Sunday they called for the city's first mandatory evacuation
in history. Basically, he was like, this is going to
topple our levee system. Anyone who stayed behind was offered
(34:25):
to be shuttled to the Louisiana super Dome. Throughout Sunday
and Monday morning, the storm hit, the waters broke the
levee in fifty places. People started dining and bridges collapsed.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Jesus, Yeah, you.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Want to know who else wasn't evacuated? These goods and service?
Is this a good place for an ad transition? These
goods and services stayed right where they were, through thick
and thin, by their own choice. Here they are and
(35:07):
we're back.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
You gotta find the places.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
I know. The other thing that wasn't evacuated. So there
was about seven thousand prisoners total in New Orleans at
that time, including one hundred children, six hundred and fifty prisoners,
and entire wing of one of these prisons was just
abandoned by its staff, with the prisoners locked inside their cells.
This is one of the worst things that's I've ever
(35:32):
America's bad. America has always been bad. I'm gonna go
on out on a crazy limb here, but this is
one of the worst things I've ever read about my life.
Six hundred and fifty prisoners were abandoned by their staff,
with the prisoners locked in their cells. On the first floor,
(35:53):
the water came up to people's waists. Obviously, this flooded
all of the sewage and all of these things. People
didn't know if I was going to stop rising. People
are like hanging out on their top bunks. People on
the upper floors are like calling down to the people
down below, being like, hey, a you okay, and people
are just like crying and they're like, no, yeah, I'm
not Yeah. There was no food or water. People were
(36:15):
drinking sewage there was no lights, there was no air circulation.
The people who were evacuated, the prisoners who were evacuated
on time were left for days in buses in the
sun on the highway, often going entire days without food
or water. Five hundred and seventeen prisoners from across the
city in the end were never accounted for by the
(36:37):
prison system. I hope they all escaped. I think they
probably only did so if you believe in heaven.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Yeah, it seems unlikely, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Most of the prisoners were just in were like serving
a couple of weeks, you know whatever, like facing trial
from misdemeanors and shit. After Katrina, they suspended habeas corpus,
and people did like six months or a year waiting
on trial for like something that would have only gotten
them in, you know, a one week sentence or whatever.
(37:13):
But the hurricane wasn't the worst of it. I want
to quote one of the founders of Common Ground, Scott
Crow from his memoir Black Flags and Windmills. It was
not the hurricane that caused this disaster. It was the
levee failures and the ongoing ecological destruction in the Gulf.
This was the latest in a long history of largely
(37:33):
invisible disasters of neglect in these communities. To me, the
levees became a symbol of the way that the corruption
and arrogance of government disregards the most vulnerable people. And
the flooding lasted for days in most of the city
and weeks in plenty of places, some places like a
couple months before the flood waters receded. Yeah, most of
(37:56):
the people who died because of Katrina were elderly folks
living near levee breaches, in the poorest neighborhoods like the
Lower ninth ward right. The news, of course, you remember
the news during Katrina.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
I'm not uh kind of yeah, I mean it was
just like yeah, like obviously, I mean I think at
the time it was this like Jesus Christ, like George W.
Bush is going to fuck this up. Not exclusively a
Republican thing, but not I guess, of the choices, not
(38:31):
the not the preferred one, not that either is that great?
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Yeah, who knows how fucking gore who ran in Gore.
But the news was full of these wild stories about
and when I say anarchy, I don't mean anarchy like
I like anarchy. I mean the opposite anarchy. The news
was full of all these wild stories of like everyone
(38:55):
in the super Dome is currently being raped and murdered.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Oh right, yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
The gangs run it. Snipers are just killing people in there.
And you know what, six people died at the super Dome,
that's true. Four of them died of natural causes, one
person odeed, and one person killed themselves. And there were
no snipers. Right, But there was violence in post Katrina
(39:21):
New Orleans, most famously after the fact, police violence. Right,
But we're going to talk about how there was I mean,
there was more. You know, it was a bad situation.
And let's get back to our panthers who are living
in New Orleans, especially to Malik Rameil. Malik Ramil and
his friend Sharon Johnson in the Algiers neighborhood. They decided
(39:42):
to stick it out together. They stayed in the house
to make it Sharon Johnson was not yet a community organizer,
but she's about to become one, and Malik Ramil has
been one for decades. Right, this neighborhood, Algiers, it was
spared the worst of the natural disaster. It gets as
much as anyone else of the unnatural disaster. It's levees
were separate from the rest of the city, right because
(40:04):
it's in a separate physical geographical location, and they held
despite a ship crashing into one, which is pretty they
built one levee, right, yeah, god it is.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
I guess what an improbability that that's the one that
was like that held.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
In this case. Yeah, yeah, I mean these ones were
like solid concrete, yeah, and twelve feet highs compared to
a lot of them that were like just dirt. And
you know, I wonder whether they finished these early. I
don't know enough about the levee system of New Orleans.
I've walked on some of the levees. They're a very
nice place to walk your dog.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
I don't think i've ever been. Oh it's nice in
New Orleans.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
But yeah, if you walk down one of the levees,
you can get to this place called the End of
the World. That's just a little sticks out into the
water and there's some burned out, rusty things and people
go and hang out and do drugs or walk their
dogs and it's like kind of like a nice vibe
of like those two things like happily coinciding, you know.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Amazing.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Yeah, So there's a lot of like rituals for the dead.
And this is a neat, neat place anyway. Yeah, Algiers
wasn't spared completely. People were trapped, right, They couldn't leave
the city, right, All the bridges had collapsed, like all
this crazy shit's happening. There's like check points everywhere. Getting
(41:27):
in and out as a nightmare. And of course there's
like all these armed people with guns that work for
the government yelling at you and yeah, and so they're
fucking hungry. Malik and Sharon they started talking with their
neighbors and soon enough they had a food distribution system going.
They used their one fucked up car and whatever gas
they could siphon from abandoned vehicles to pass out the
(41:47):
mrs the meals ready to eat and water that was
filtering in from the National Guard. Algiers primarily a black neighborhood.
It has one white area, Algiers Point, which is full
of those like U loot, we shoot signs.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Right.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
Have you seen that that meme where there's like the
white assholes with guns standing in front of a Texas
flag and it says lotters will be shoot on site.
Oh it's good. And then there's like lotters are not afraid.
The mean with the.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
Yeah, I haven't. I don't know if I've seen that.
I Mean, it's like I feel like it's an endless
well on the internet of yeah, totally, but yeah, it
is like the mentality of like, I will murder someone
for you know, at worst categorizing it as burglary. Ye. Like,
it's like, yeah, like fucking crazy, which.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Is funny because they all watch movies where white people
break into grocery stores after the end of the world,
and you know, it's good and noble because they're starving
or whatever. Right, that's the vibe is lotters will be
shoot on site, and soon enough there is a white
racist militia patrolling not just their own blocks but the
rest of Algiers. And another similar militia was active in
(43:03):
the French quarter on the other side of the river,
and they weren't just sticking to their blocks, right, An
awful lot of young black men were dead in the
streets full of bullets. The police let them do it
because the police were there to shoot looters too. Yeah,
quote looters whoever they fucking wanted. And one highly publicized
(43:23):
example on September fourth, cops on the Danziger Bridge killed
James Brissett, who was seventeen, and Ronald Madison, who was
forty and had mental disabilities. Ronald was shot in the back.
The police tried to cover it up. It took until
twenty sixteen for the cops involved to get convicted. And
of course that was only after like, yeah, more than
a decade of work, right, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Kind of remember that one, yeah, because that was caught
on like news camera or something, right.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
I think, so, I actually a little bit ago. It
said a whole long thing about it. There's like good
and really emotional reporting that people have done about that.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
You know.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
It's like they were a family out to try and
like find something to eat and figure out what's going
on and stuff, you know, and like, yeah, Malik himself
saw nineteen people shot to death by these militias, according
to what I read. And this was not yeah, it
was someone else quoting Malik. This is not a direct
quote from him. But the militias piled men with rifles
(44:24):
into the beds of pickups and drove around to harrass people. Yeah,
and they particularly had it out for Malik. They called
him the mayor of Algiers and said they were going
to quote get him, which, to put it mildly, is
a bad situation.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Yeah, concerning, But what was.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
Going to happen? In order to find out, You're going
to have to wait until Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Part two.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
That was so cool. Thank you, thank you. Proud of
a I'm proud of my segues seguys, cliffhangers.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
But what people don't have to wait for is to
hear from you Andrew about what you do.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Oh that's true. Yeah, just fine. I don't know the
Yosis Racist podcast, I guess is the thing that is
happening every week when this comes out. I don't know
what's happening. I do know I just recorded a very
hurried solo premium episode because I was stuck at San
Francisco Airport for fourteen hours. So I did a little
(45:34):
recap of that, and I was very tired of when
I did it. Anyway, Yoss Racist.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
Awesome, Sophie, what do you got to plug?
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Well? And I at cool Zone Media have a new
weekly podcast that I think at the time of this
at least the trailer, if not episode one will be out.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
It's called Better Offline. It's a weekly show exploring the
tech industry's fuckery. So check that out. Yeah, check me
out on substack Margaret Kiljoy dot substack dot com, where
I alright google it like the rest of us. You sick.
You don't just type in your yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
No man.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
Although, with the way Google's going, who knows where we're starting.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Ask chat GPT yo, go Duck duck.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
The world's gonna split into three directions. There's going to
be Google the centrists, and there's going to be Duck dutgo,
the privacy paranoid. And then there's going to be the
chat GPT, Yeah, the dumb fox, the people who are
the least correct according to my whatever. Go listen to
that podcast and it'll probably have better ideas than I do. Yeah,
(46:42):
and we will talk to you all on Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us
out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Host
Margaret Killjoy
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.