January 14, 2025 • 60 mins
Welcome to 2025 at We the Unhoused! Theo is starting the year on a high note, interviewing former Black Panthers, Lorenzo Ervin and JoNina Abron-Ervin. They share their experiences and insights on what a more just world can still look like. In Unhoused News, Theo takes a look at the persistent struggles faced by people transitioning from temporary to permanent housing, and the real dangers of hypothermia in Los Angeles among the unhoused.
Stay tuned for We the Unhoused's ongoing reporting on the fire impacts on the unhoused in Southern California -- stay safe.
More of JoNina Abron-Ervin's work here:
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/books/45/#:~:text=Description,decade%20of%201965%20to%201975.
More of Lorenzo Ervin's work here:
https://www.plutobooks.com/author/lorenzo-komboa-ervin/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Previously on Whedian House.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
You know, I was a grieving brother, but I had
no sort of focus at the time. I was mostly
just like, Okay, I want to do this for Meli.
We need to continue to tell the narrative in the
story of Meli. And then as time went on, it
was like, well, I need to go out there and
get involved because I think what was important is talking
to people like you and other leaders in the community
and other organizers. I come to realize that, like all
(00:29):
of this stuff is connected, so.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I think people need to start giving people like me
a chance. I'm looking for work right now.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
I'm struggling to you know, even pay rent, and with
the cost of living, it's getting worse.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
They're increasing my rent every.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Month at the place where I was put in and
it becomes very difficult to make ends meet.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Welcome back to Whedian House, Happy New Year.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
I'm your host, Theo Henderson, and we have an exciting
special guest on the show today, two former Black Panther activists.
But first on House News. A recent Los Angeles audit
shows very few on house transitioned from temporary to permitted housing,
(01:23):
wasteful spending of two hundred and eighteen million dollars could
have aided the unhoused into permanent housing. The audit also
found gaps in how the city tracks funding and distributes resources.
There's a lack of support for those who leave temporary housing,
which just feeds the cycle of housing insecurity. What would
(01:43):
our city look like if they had taken the two
hundred and eighteen million dollars and put it toward permitted
housing instead of empty pr initiatives and hostile architecture. Long
term problems cannot be solved with short term solutions. Story more,
older unhoused residents are freezing to death in California. In
(02:05):
twenty twenty three, one hundred and sixty six Californians died
from hypothermia. That's doubles the number in twenty fifteen. There
has been a link between houselessness and cold weather. Federal
data shows more than two thirds of Sacramento unhouse are
susceptible to inclement weather. Older adults fifty five plus are
(02:28):
more susceptible and account for three quarters of hypothermia deaths.
What can we do as a society to push the
issue to our city leaders and our state leaders? The
answer is more warming centers and more permanent support of
housing options.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
And that's in House News.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
When we come back, we'll speak with organizers and former
Black Panthers Lorenzo and Janina Irban. Welcome back to Wiedian House.
We have a special treat to start out twenty twenty
five with the upcoming inauguration of a very problematic president
(03:11):
as well as the upcoming holidays celebrating the life of
doctor Martin Luther King. It is my honor to introduce
two former Black Panther community members sharing their experiences from
the past to the president. We have two former Black
Panther as well as two active civil rights or human
(03:32):
rights activists on the scene today and I'm going to
read a little bit of their synopsis on who they are.
This is no way includes the extensive actions and activists
activities that they are doing even today. Joanninah Abron Irvin
is an activist, author and retired educator. Her work includes
(03:54):
a campaign to end the naked jailing of black men
in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She is a former editor of the
Black Panther newspaper, an author of the book Driven by
the Movement. Activists of the Black Power era a retired
Western Michigan University Associate professor of communication. She has published
(04:14):
several articles about the Black Panther Party and the Black
Panther Era. Our next guest, Lorenzo Comboa Irvin is an
American writer, activist, and black anarchist. He is a former
member of SNICK, the Black Panther Party, and Concerned Citizens
for Justice. Following an attempt to frame him on weapon
(04:35):
charges and for threatening the life of a Ku Klux
Klan member or leader, Irvin hijacked a playing to Cuba
in February nineteen sixty nine. While in Cuba and letter
in Czechoslovakia, Irvin grew dissolusion with the authoritarianism of state socialism.
Captured by the CIA in Eastern Europe, he was extradited
(04:57):
to the US, put on trial and sentenced to life
in prison in nineteen seventy He was introduced to anarchism
while in prison, inspiring him to write Anarchism and the
Black Revolution in nineteen seventy nine. Released after fifteen years,
Irvin remains politically active. I dare say yo all night
(05:19):
as well. I want to thank you very much for
coming on the show. I understand you have a very
busy itinerary, and I want you just start off with
the softball questions. Tell us a little bit more about yourselves,
and I will start if you don't mind, Janina, and
then I.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Will take it to you. Lorenzo Well I.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
Was born in Tennessee that I grew up in Jefferson City, Missouri,
capital city of Missouri. I am the oldest of three
daughters of a United Methodist minister and a music teacher.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
I was a PK preacher's kid. Preacher's kid.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
Grew up in Jefferson City, Missouri, you know, in the
nineteen fifties and in the nineteen sixties, when I was
eight year years old, I had been attending segregated schools
for kindergarten, first grade, and second grade. But by the
time I was ready for third grade, Brown versus Board
of Education had been ruled on by the Supreme Court,
(06:14):
So you know, I started going to integrated schools, although
I didn't really understand what that meant because I was
just a kid, you know, I didn't really know no
know what all that was about. I grew up during
that period of the Civil Rights era, when you know,
doctor King and other people were marching and protesting, so
I would, you know, I'd see that on television. I
(06:34):
would watch the news with my parents and all. That
was of a great interest to me. And I think
that one of the things that really influenced me at
an early age was to see little kids in Birmingham,
Alabama who were, you know, protesting segregation. They were attacked
(06:55):
by you know, barking dogs and you know, fireholes with
water coming out. And it caught my attention because some
of these kids were really very young and I'm I'm
ten years older than my youngest sister and some of
them were like four and five years old like she
was at the time, and I'm like, wow, it blew
my mind to see little kids like that out there
(07:16):
doing that, and it just I think that was probably
it really inspired me because I thought, wow, you know,
here I am. You know, I was fifteen at the time.
I thought, well, these little kids can do that, then
you know, there must be things that I can do.
And I think one of the next things that really,
I guess kind of radicalized me was by the time
I got to college, doctor King was assassinated near the
(07:39):
end of my sophomore year. Was halfway through college, and
you know, it radicalized a lot of young black people
like me. My only own feeling was, well, you know,
he was supposed to be, as they called him, me
apostle nonviolence. But here he is murdered, you know, shot
to death, shot down. And so I said, you know,
as soon as I can get involved in the black struggle,
(08:01):
I'm going to. So after I graduated from college, went
to graduate school, I did join the Black Panther Party
in Detroit, Michigan. I saw that the Black Panther Party
was an organization that was doing something about freedom and
liberation and black people. The first time I saw the
Black Panther Party, however, had been on television and when
(08:22):
they were protesting here in California, in Sacramento, when they
were doing away with the law that allowed people to
carry guns. Of course, the Black Panther believed in armed
self defense, and the police hated that, so they got
the state legislature to.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Pass the law.
Speaker 4 (08:37):
That's the first time I saw them on television protesting
up in Sacramento. This was May of nineteen sixty seven,
and I was only about eighteen, nineteen years old then,
and I'm gonna be honest, my first reaction to that
was these people are crazy. You know that these black
people are crazy, then I can be able to walk
into the legislature, which is mostly white, and do this.
(08:59):
I thought they were totally nuts. But as time went on,
I learned what the Black Panther Party was doing.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
I learned how they were.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
Feeding children breakfast programs, and they were fighting for our liberation.
So I did ultimately join the Black Panther Party.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Thank you, Jo Nina. Mister Lorenzo, you tell us a
little bit about yourself.
Speaker 5 (09:19):
Well, I'm originally from Chattanooga, Tennessee. As you pointed out,
and just as you're and I to talk about. I
was influenced by the Civil Rights movement. But what I
was influenced by was the student led movement that erupted
in nineteen sixty And at the time, I might have
been twelve years old, and I was in the student
(09:40):
or youth in ACP chapter that you know, the group
except didn't do a lot, and the NACP as a
whole didn't do anything. I was very conservative, but the
city ins came to Chattanooga from Nashville and the city
in movement. The students at the local black high school
(10:01):
had a march and a rally downtown where they took
over the department stores. Now, my cousin was a little
older than I was named Curtis, and he was one
of the student leaders, and through him, you know, I
got a lot of the you know, the real history
of how this struggle went down in Chattanooga, because the
(10:24):
students themselves led the movement. They weren't influenced by the
advocates of pacifism and all this sort of stuff that
you get smacked in the mouth or hit in the
mouth and you turn the other cheek and just sit
there and take it. Well, when it happened in Chattanooga,
the students came and they sat down at the department
store of lunch Counts, they you know, demanded be services
like everybody else, and white racist hooligans jumped out and
(10:49):
started hitting people. What they didn't realize that these people
were going to hit back, and they jumped up and
started beating them and mopped the floor up with them.
And this was a five intended party store, that's right,
the Survive and ten department store, and they picked up
everything that was at hand, you know, mops, wrenches, everything else,
and was beating them with beating them bloody, and so
(11:11):
the cops came in and had to save them from
being beaten to death, I suppose, you know. And for me,
the younger kids in the communities, we marched from another
end of town, from the downtown sector and from the
West side, which was you know, one of the large
downtown communities at that time, and people were trying to
(11:34):
converge in the center of the city. And this actually
was the first time they used high pressure water hoses,
not Birmingham, before Birmingham, three years before Birmingham. This is
his hisity. And they shot high pressure water hoses. They
loosed police dogs to try to bite people or drive
them back. They had the cops throwing tear gas bombs
(11:57):
at people, and this was going on all day. You know,
we were trying to get into town. You know, we
did get into town at some time, but they kept
us so we couldn't get in on this fighting that
was taking place. You know, That's what's what they were
trying to do, and that's what they did. Well. Now,
this is a Southern city, a racist Southern city, you know,
(12:19):
to be quite honest, and the Ku Klux Klan was
very active in this time. But they were scared to
death to see black people of all ages resisting police
terrorism and itching to fight them, and so they arrested
the black students, but then they hurriedly released them, and
(12:41):
they shut the department's store down so that they wouldn't
be further conflict. And then by the time people got
to town and so forth, everything was over, you know,
but this continue for days. You know, you had these
young black men come in, women as well, sisters as well,
sit in and demanded to be served, and of course
the they wouldn't serve them. Then the owner come out
(13:01):
and he tell, well, why are you people here. Well,
you know, good and well, you're not supposed to get
fled in this city here, u this is the South,
and we don't cotton to any kind of uh uh
you know, integration. We're not going to integrate. We're not
going to give you service. So he said, well, we'll
be here until you do. Well, we don't deserve negroes anyway,
(13:22):
he said, well we don't need them, so that's okay.
We'll we'll be until you serve us some real food
and so, uh, you know this kind of stuff. We'd
go on and after the rebellion though that scared every
everyone in the authority, including the federal government, and they
call themselves going to send negotiators down and all this
(13:42):
kind of stuff on behalf of the students, and they
got the black pastors and so forth to you know,
to do a song and dance to try to you know,
stop the students from protesting and drive them out of downtown,
present them from coming. And of course the guy who's
headed in a CP time and also the principal of
the high school where the student protesters came from, he
(14:06):
engaged in mass suspensions of as many students he could.
But none of that worked. What they tried to do,
and what they often they did, is they made concessions.
They allowed black people to come down there and eat
at the department stores. They stopped a lot of segregation
in terms of the movie theaters. Black people could attend
the movie theaters and so forth and so on. And
(14:27):
as time went by, they you know, all the open
trappings of racial segregation were being eliminated. Allegedly, it was
still a racist town. Black people had no political power,
and they were still being subjected to police terrorism, police killings.
And in fact, when I came out of prison. This
is another tale part of it. Chattanooga, Tennessee had the
(14:49):
largest number of police killings in the country of any
city under two hundred thousand, and that's an official statistic.
You know, at that time, when I came out in
nineteen eighty three, the mayor was an FBI agent. Now
I have not found anywhere else a situation where the
mayor himself was an FBI agent. But as I said,
(15:10):
that's another part of the story. But in my formative stages,
this is what set me on the path to revolution
and to being a political organizer, a black political organizer,
a radical black political organizer in the South, and then
you know, in other parts of the country and eventually
having the reach to you know, to reach people in
other countries. You know, I've been to quite a few
(15:32):
countries in the last i don't know, twenty five thirty
years that I never would have had the chance to
go to. And I've been able to spread the same
message and talk about the racism. And so when talk
about fascism, then I don't consider myself some textbook authority,
but I do say that I have practical experience that
I can, you know, give to the next generation, and
(15:53):
having been in the Black Panther Party and having been
exposed to the ideas in the Black Panther Party, especially
the ideas around fascism. You know, when I first came
out of the army and came back home and got
involved with first SNICK, the Student I Violent Coordinating Committee
that was one of the field organizers, an anti war trainer,
(16:14):
you know, training people to how to resist the war,
how to resist the draft, and so forth. That went
on for some time. Then a merger between the Student
nine Violent Coordinating Committee and SNICK took place in nineteen
sixty seven through sixty nine, and at that time I
went into the Black Panther Party. Well, all I managed
to do basically do this period would sell newspapers and
(16:36):
you know, give speeches. And in one instance, a brother
was killed at a department store where I worked at
and we organized a protest campaign and the racist that
shot him was driven out of that store. They he
couldn't come back to work at that store, and all
this sort of and it created a citywide protest movement.
There were five major so called racial rebellions, black people
(17:00):
resisting particular racist attacks in Chattanooga from nineteen sixty to
nineteen eighty. This was caused by as I said, well
in nineteen eighty, this is going to give you an example.
In nineteen eighty, the ku Klux Klan came and in
(17:21):
the black community, drove through the black community, the downtown
sector and shot at black people, and they shot and
injured battlely five black women. And it caused rebay and
especially when the officials were giving protection to the white supremacists.
They gave him free lawyers and put them in protective
custody at the city hall. Believe it or not. So
(17:44):
people were outraged and they had a rebey and it
was so heavy that the largest black housing project it
was in South Chattanooga, and in that housing project, these
young men had come out of Kuwait and they had
an armed resistance to that incident and the kodly Madi
(18:05):
calling by the city government and its officials openly you know,
racist and pastious. That was one of the things that
you know, took me to the next stage.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Well, thank you very much for bringing a lot of
interesting points that we will revisit. But I want to
jump back to Janina and I wanted to ask you
in your biography it stated that you stood up against
the forces of the dehumanization of black males incarcerated.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Can you tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
Well, this took place in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where I was
teaching journalism at Western Michigan University. And it was probably
September of nineteen, nineteen ninety nine, yep. And there's a
front page article and it had been it was an
interview with the black man who said that he had
(18:59):
been arrested. He said it was racial profiling and he
had been arrested for his resisting arrest when the police
stopped him and stripped of all his clothes and put
in jail naked. And this was on the front page.
It was the front page headline. And of course you
can imagine this was quite a controversy at the time,
you know. And I read about it, of course in
(19:19):
the paper. I said, wow, you know, you would not
think something like this would happen in a little college
town like Kalamazoo, Michigan. You know, I was kind of surprised,
but it did. And Lorenzo at the time was still
living in Chattanooga. He had come up to visit me
in Michigan. And he was saying with Joe nine, and
you know, you were in the Black Panther Party. You know,
(19:40):
you know how to organize against police terror, and you
need to get something going here.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
There has to be a movement to stop this.
Speaker 5 (19:47):
You know.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
I didn't really want to hear that at the time
because I hadn't done any organizing for a long period
of time. You know, I had come there to teach,
and I was a single parent, I was raising a daughter,
and I thought, wow, you know I don't I can't
do this. I haven't done anything like this in years.
And Lorenzo kept after me. He says, you know how
to do this, you were in the Black Panther Party.
(20:07):
And he wasn't gonna let up on me. He did
not let upon me. So I went to a Kalamazoo
City Commission meeting and I spoke out against this, that
you know, this naked jailing of black men, and you
know it. What happened was it came out other black
men went to the media and saying that the same
thing had happened to them when they had been put
(20:28):
in jail, to the Kalamazoo County jail either if they
weren't stripped totally naked, they were at least partially stripped.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
So I went to the.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
City Commission, spoke out about it, and people began contacting me.
So we started what was called the Southwest Coalition against
Racism and Police Brutality. Lorenzo actually wrote a pamphlet for
the campaign. We detailed the cases of the different uh
men who had been either stripped, naked or partially naked.
(20:55):
That what was it called the Naked Jailings of Kalamazoo.
He wrote the pamphlet. And you know, this coalition was
a multiracial coalition. We just began working and campaigning to
get this practice. Stop this this naked generally of black men.
And the university where I taught, of course, was a
predominantly white university, but many of the white professors were
outraged about this. How can you put people in jail naked?
(21:18):
You know, there was a lot of a lot of
outrage about it. So we basically had about a three
year campaign. We had protests, marches in I guess April
of two thousand, we had a march and a protests
through you know, downtown Caluma Zoo and we were told
(21:39):
that this had been that was the first time that
there had ever been a protest against police brutality in
Kalami Zoo. I mean it's a small town. There was
only about sixty thousand people. It's grown since then.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
I finished my undergraduate in Grand Rapids, Michigan, so passed
through Kalumba Zoo many times.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
So, yep, you know about Calumni Zoo. That's right.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Well that's also a song they got a Girl in Kalaumusuo.
What that's a difference.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Yeah, I never heard of Kalama Zoo.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
My daughter, who likes to watch old movies, she said,
you don't know about that song.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
I got a girl in Kalamazoo, and you know he
brought it on the map.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
So that's another story. But we had this organized, this
marching protest in April of two thousand and we weren't
sure anybody was going to come because it had snowed
the day before and it can snow really heavily in Kalamazoo.
But the next day it was sunny and bright and
the snow was melting. So we just started in the
(22:33):
start of the march in the black community of Kalamazoo,
and you know, people saw us and it came outside.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
And they joined. They joined the march.
Speaker 4 (22:41):
People were really outraged about this, about black men being
put in jail naked, and they joined the march. And
we went to downtown and we had a rally on
the steps of City Hall. The brother who had been
the first one to expose this, he spoke. Of course,
he was harassed by the police unmercifully because he had
(23:02):
done this, but he spoke, and other people spoke, and
you know, we began, we began building this movement. I'm
not going to tell you that police terror and Callum
was Zoo ended, but one thing we know is that
the uh, the naked jailing, at least they stopped that,
at least for a good period of time. The police
chief was forced to resign. Our campaign was so intensive
(23:24):
that we forced the police chief to resign from his post.
That was something that you know, I didn't expect, because
I didn't expect anything like that would happen in a
place like Calum was Zoo. You might think about it
happening in la or Chicago or New York. In fact,
they did have some naked jillings in New York City,
but they never had a campaign like we had that
(23:46):
actually just systematically organized and held marches and rallies and protests.
At one point, they were going to create some kind
of commission to deal with you know, police terror, police
brutality in Kalum and Zoo, and they invited me, as
the chairperson of the Southwest Michigan Coalition Against Racism and
(24:08):
Police Brutality, to join that. But I refuse because once
you join these kind of official commissions and everything, you know,
your voice becomes music because you become kind of part
of the system. So we never joined We never joined it.
We just kept on doing what we did.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
We'll be right back with more from Lorenzo and Janina.
Welcome back. This is THEO Henderson with Leedian House. Let's
continue our discussion with community organizers and former Black Panthers
Lorenzo and Janina Irvin. Before I delve deeper into the past,
(24:48):
I want to bring us back to the current reality here.
Have any of you heard of about Grant's past?
Speaker 4 (24:54):
No?
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Prior to I have any of you guys have heard
about forty one to eighteen. No, okay, so allow me
to give a little crash course. I'm going to be
just touching the highlights because it's a very exhaustive kind
of thing, but it interlinks what's going on in the past.
So I'm going to start off for forty one eighteen.
Forty one eighteen in short, is the current Jim Crow
(25:19):
of now. It is stated very clearly it is against
the law for a person to sit, sleep, or stand
or be anywhere near a sign that they are not
allowed to be. It is aimed at unhoused people, particularly
in Los Angeles. There is a large swath of unhoused
(25:40):
peoples that are black. As you probably know, unhoused people
that are black men and women and children. But most
importantly there has been recently incarcerated black men that have
had to juggle this legislation. To put a finer point
on it, it is like, for example, if you see
a special enforcement zone or a sign stating that if
(26:00):
the person is not allowed to be there, they can
be arrested, they can be incarcerated, they can be a
victim of all of the type of Charcole type of
solutions that harken back into the fifties and sixties. So
to I say this to and let people know, because
there is a housing an unhoused crisis that's going across
this country now in order to counteract what forty one
(26:24):
eighteen was was supposed to be a temporary salve, because
activists got when of these kind of car through actions
that were happening to unhouse people. They were tearing orizing them,
tearing up their belongings, important papers, finding reasons to incarcerate
them or create a situation. For example, if you have
(26:45):
your own personal belongings and your own home or your
own section, they give you a certain time period to
collect them, and if you do not do it in
enough time, they can arrest you. Now, let's say, for example,
you rush and get as much as you possibly can,
and then they put a yellow tape on it. Now
(27:06):
you can be arrested for disturbing the tape and stealing
your own stuff that is legalized in this city. And
I say this because also a quicker point was that
we had Martin versus Boise. The Circuit court had forcefully
stated it is against the law, it's cruel and unusual
punishment to demonize and dehumanize people that are vulnerable in
(27:32):
the city. You cannot just arrest people or just make
their life a live in hell for simply trying to exist,
simply trying to say the human body has to rest.
Nobody walks twenty four hours, that you have to have
a point to sit down, you have to rest, you
have to sleep, and to do that, to go out
of your way to continually have a legislation or law
(27:54):
on the books to terrorize people at whim at will,
it's dehumanizing and against the law. Now we enter Grant's
pass and Grant's pass overrides the.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Cruel and unusual punishment.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
It was released earlier in July of twenty twenty four.
The six Conservative Supreme Court justices says it is not
cruel and unusual punishment to target unhoused people, and as
a result of fact, that has sparked a wave of
legislations across the country from San Francisco now in San
(28:29):
fran Monica. It is against the law for you to
have a pillow or blanket. Now, you know, unhus people
going to need usually use different things because it's cold
to night. I don't know if you know, like last night,
it's reason and so if you were caught with a
blanket or a pillow, that's justifications to be banned, taken
(28:50):
and arrested. And as you as well as I know,
the most people that are usually affected economically financially and
their homes, houses are taking or they're being targeted, are.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Usually people of color that are unhoused.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Now to say that other communities are not, yes, that's true,
they are. But there is always a focused slant with
spirticularly with gentrification on the rise, the exploding rents, and
it's particularly here in Los Angeles where the gentrification is
starting to creep down in South La Crenshaw area. You
notice they're sprucing up the places. There's a way of
(29:28):
unhoused people and grants passed. Is the impectus to utilize
and to steamroll people's there. Now, there are communities like
when you guys did what we call today mutual aid,
when you guys feeding, we have mutual a kind of
things now to it's like you know, a band aid
on a broken leg. But the fact of it is
(29:49):
is there is a huge hunger crisis as well. There
is higher unhoused elderly people. In this conversation doesn't always
get advanced and house elderly black.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
People that are out here on the streets.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
And I'm not talking about like you know, I'm not
saying I'm elderly, but I'm talking about seventy eighty ninety
years old. The oldest that I've known was eighty nine
years old. So I know many of my grandparents' generation
are out here because of the exploding rents. They cannot
they're dealing with medication, they're dealing with advanced health issues.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Like you know, we were joking about some of our things.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
But you know, you can't make them get a job
eighty nine years old to be able to get back
a house. You cannot tell them that they all are
on substances. Then you can't say that they're all mentally ill.
It's that these are natural laws. These are natural progressions
of a systematic failure. So I put to you, after
this long explanation, what do you suggest for the new
(30:52):
activists that are coming up. What would be some of
the solutions just off the top of your head that
you could think of that would bring life or try
to help get other people involved into the movement or
try to get them to care.
Speaker 5 (31:07):
Well, let me say this, first of all, all of
this homeless crisis, a houseless crisis, can be put at
the feet of the government. I think there was a
failure to have had massive demonstrations, civil rights demonstrations, whatever.
Years ago, it would have helped us at this point.
But we've reached this stage with a new generation of activists,
(31:32):
not to say, a new generation of houseless people. People.
Some people have died on the street. We know all
these things, and the only way we ever get anything,
any kind of social or political justice, is we fight
in the street. We struggle in the streets. We struggle
in front of the rich people's palaces, we struggle in
(31:53):
front of the government buildings. We have never gotten anything,
any single thing that didn't require struggle. We've never been
given anything by this government. In fact, the so calls constitution,
the sections of it that really matter, the Bill of
Rights were created as a result of a social struggle,
(32:15):
almost another revolution, just to get the Bill of Rights.
And then of course the civil rights provisions from after
the Civil War were put into the Bill of Rights.
So everything we've ever gotten is a result of struggle. Now,
I think we're at a stage where we're all facing
(32:38):
the destruction of the economy, we're all facing mass imprisonment,
we're all facing all of these means to destroy labor
that they feel is not productive or that they feel
is an impediment to profit. And the thing that we
have to understand, those of us who are looking at this,
(33:01):
those of us who are trying to find ways to
fight this, is that we have to take the struggle
to a higher level. And we're looking right now at
fascists taking over the American government. That's where we are
right now. And when the Black Panther Party was around,
my initial understanding and training around ideas of fascism came
(33:25):
from the Black Panther newspaper. The entire struggle by the
Black Panther Party and others in that period, the Black
Power movement and the new Left in that period was
about not just fighting the government, but restricting their powers.
In fact, the whole constitution is about that. But now
we have people going in the power who don't even
see that the constitution means anything to bar them from
(33:49):
having absolute and utter power. It's only the people, because
there have been other countries that have had you know, dictators,
a lot of them installed by America. And it's when
the people rise up in enough numbers with a program
to resurrects not just resurrect society as it was, but
(34:10):
fighting for a new society fighting for a new kind
of economy, because we're going to need these things to survive.
In this period, we're fighting the battle of our lifetimes
and and for our children and those unborn. We're going
to be fighting that these people are they may and
have the potential to put the Nazis shame. So these
(34:33):
conditions that exist now are planned. They are planned to
get rid of. Trump himself has said that when he
gets in our office, he is going to take unhouse
people in the cities and take them out somewhere to
some desert. Yeah. I see.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
They were saying that when he was first running that
he was going to try to put them out in
the desert near the airport.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
Yes, very much, the desert.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
You know.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
One of the things that there is so much I
don't live in Los Angeles. I don't know the numbers,
but there's so much abandoned housing everywhere. I'm sure there's
hundreds and hundreds of homes in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
And not only I just to quickly jump jump up
into it too. Recently, when Grant's Pass was passed, Governor
k Newsome doled out money to utilize to help criminalize
or create an environment that you hunted down unhoused people.
But here's the thing that millions of dollars that they
could have used that have for example, like the people
(35:39):
that are activists that had occupied housing during the pandemic
and were being evicted, they could have used that money
to keep these unhoused people in these places, help reverbish
these places and have the place for them to stay.
They don't have to reinvent the wheel. Throw the person out.
Then they got it. Now start over in this Sisaphyan
task of trying to re established themselves into a stable place.
(36:02):
They could keep many of them that are already housed
or in these places, give them money, refurbish the place,
and that will eliminate a lot of the detritus that
they have. But they won't do that because of the
fact that it's much more newsworthy of going down terrorizing
unhouse people, tearing down the structures that they have, saying
(36:24):
that they are criminals, saying that they just like being
out here.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
They're service resistant.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
Conversely, then understanding that other people when you're living on
the street, from my own personal experience I've lived eight years,
sustain your life when you're in a survival mode. It
is a completely different conversation. You cannot live like you're
living inside a building unless you are in a different
fantasy world.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
You create a different.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
World in order to survive the vagaries and the winds
and rains of heaven and understanding climate control, which I
will talk about later, but the fact of the matter
is that you must understand that also, it is an
industrial complex where they get more money demonizing and dehumanizing people.
It's easier to blame, it is easier to demonize, then
(37:13):
you can criminalize.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
I always say that, but that's I digress.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
You know, the whole thing this is this is class warfare.
It's class warfare against poor people, low income people. And
there needs to be a massive squatting rebellion. And I
don't know how to organize it, and obviously it will
look different in different cities, but that's what's going to
have to happen.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
People are going to.
Speaker 4 (37:37):
Have to take over all these abandoned homes and you know,
fix them up, get the plumbing in the electricity.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
You have people who are.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
Skilled who know how to do that. That's what needs
to happen because what we're seeing is the whule thing
people are being evicted because of these high rents and everything.
As you you mentioned gentrification. Lorenzo and I were living
in Kansas City, Missouri for about five or six years,
but and we had been able to move into a
(38:08):
house where there was a special program that kept the
rent low for low income people like us. But that
program ended and then of course the landlords were there
were all happy about that. Then the gentrification started to
begin and they were raising. In fact, the day we
were moving out, a guy showed up at the front door.
I guess he thought we were the owners, and he
was there ready to well, you know, we could buy
(38:29):
this from you and we could really fix it up,
you know, I said, you know, I said, the bloodsuckers
are here already and we haven't even gotten out the
front door, you know, ready to take over. So we
are going to have to have massive squatting. We were
going to have to take over all of these houses
across the country, and there will have to be specific
(38:51):
campaigns in each part of the country because every place
is different. I always say there's no one size fits
all because you know, La is not Chicago, not Boston
or anything else.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
So I can't you know, I can't.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
Tell anybody how to do this, but that's what's going
to have to happen. We're gonna have to take over
these empty, abandoned houses. And I realized as you were
talking you gave the number of the legislation for I
am familiar with it. I did read about it, you
heard about it on the news. But this is class
(39:23):
warfare against poor people. It's further criminalizing people who don't
have the resources to live in a house and saying
you know that, well, you can't live on the streets.
If you are on the streets, you're a criminal.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
We're going to take a break and we will be
right back. We're back.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
What I find when I created the show the difficulty
for people, other people that are in vulnerable states to
understand the mass propaganda machine that is there. One thing
that I have to say is hurt people. Hurt people
and people that are vulnerable. They have done a very
good job of trying to differentiate different facets of houselessness,
(40:10):
the deserving poor versus the undeserving poor. And I say this,
for example, then you have house people running around talking
about you only concerned about house kills because you don't
talk about the unhoused children that are in la USD,
and there's a very high toll of those. You're not
concerned about those kids that parents are living in RVs
(40:30):
or living in unstable couch commitments or living in shelters
and they have to grapple and traits to the school
and deal with the privilege in class classes, behaviors that
house children have and watching their parents. You're only concerned
about your child that's in a house. My understanding that
your child that has to navigate school, navigate sleep deficiencies
(40:55):
and food deficiencies and insecurities, and to deal with going
back into an unstabled environment, which plays an academic toll,
which also plays another facet.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Another rung of the prison pipeline.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
Which we don't talk about enough, is particularly here in
la We need to understand there are a cascade event
and we understand when we see and understand what houselessness
is and understand how it's impacting due to systematic insufficiencies inadequacies,
then we can understand also the conversation wholesale, But again
(41:29):
I'm digressing.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
You know, any insight on that Lorento.
Speaker 5 (41:34):
Well, let's look at this in terms of a class struggle.
The government created these conditions, and it's the government that
has the financial resource even the houses that the banks
and the others are sitting on, as well as these
corporations come along and destroying properties, destroying neighborhoods. I should say,
(41:57):
you know, we need a u a coalition of groups
of different types. We need people like you said, that
are the traditional poor and the super poor, which is
what you know, how sist people are. They're the super
poor and we need to find a way to unite
them along with all the other social movements in this
(42:21):
period and to come. And if we don't do this,
and we're not capable of doing this, then we can't win.
But we can win if we believe that we can
unite around these issues. It's just like we can unite
around issues that people who were disabled head at that time.
Many of them were homeless because they, as you said,
they were the part of the undeserving poor. They didn't
(42:43):
deserve anything. And then they fought. They were able to
fight and get certain types of social money and social
protections and so forth that would never happen if they
just sat there and and you know, just limited the
fact we've got to create a certain amount of unity.
(43:04):
We've got to do massive political education the movement. I
think that one of the things we have to say
to this point is that what the government did in
the nineteen seventies, when when massive homelessness first started showing up,
the capitalists system created the situation. They drove productive jobs
(43:25):
out of the country. They cut social money, you know,
whether it's food stamps or whatever. They cut those things,
and they made it impossible to live. They assured that
there would be a massive prison population because people were
let's just say it the way it is, if you
don't have food to eat, you're going to steal. Yeah,
(43:46):
ain't even stealing. It's survival, that's right. And we we
used to talk about crimes of survival back in the day,
you know. And the state, the government is responsible for
these things, and it is the government that we have
to confront in every instance. They have housing. They even
(44:07):
have military basis that has housing. The government has the money.
The government is responsible. They're the ones we need to
put the pressure on. And what has happened is that
they're able to use they were able to use the
shelter system. The creation of the shelter system claim that
they could contain the problem because it's a explosive political
(44:30):
issue and their thing is how do we control it?
And so now they're saying, how can we criminalize it?
And how can we just kill these people off or
put them in prisons, put them in camps way out
in the country, somewhere out in the desert and all
this kind of thing. Yeah, we have to fight every
step of the way. We have to make people see
that this is the kind of genocide steps that were
(44:54):
taken in Nazi Germany. We have to fight this step
of way. But we have to continually edge, kate, organize
and agitate. We have to be doing these things so
that the masses can see it because right now, and
the way it has been for too many years is
people to see while they're homeless, is I feel sorry
for him? There's nothing I can do. And also we're
(45:18):
doing the best thing by getting them out of site
and out of mind, you know, And you know what
happens with people that are out of sight and out
of mind with a government like Trump, who's going to
be uh, you know, even worse than what has happened
to this point. He's telling you before he even gets
elected that he wants to remove people exactly. So the
(45:39):
real answer here we have to create a poor people's
survival movement, a mass movement dealing with class warfare, with
exposing the crimes of the government, with fighting for social resources.
Somebody's talking the other day about reparations, and I said, said, listen,
(46:00):
let me explain something to you. The government of the
United States is not going to give you reparations unless
it's a payoff to collaborators, like what we're seeing right now.
Trump has told a lot of black people that, well,
you elect me, and I'll give you reparations, but he
will give money to a class of parasites and sellouts
(46:23):
and traders, and the rest of us will be up
the creek, they say.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
And then they will use that narrative. What that you
would unhouse people is that we tried to help them.
We gave them money, and they chose to squander it
or they chose to abuse it, and they just you know,
this is their fault, and it's always going to be
the victim is always going to be victimized.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
Further, well, this is what they did. You know, we
did try to.
Speaker 5 (46:48):
Help, so we can kill them off with thee them
dies exactly as I said, the justification to, you know, exterminate.
But I will say this, I don't I'm not pessimistic
even with these people in office, because I think that
it's possible to build a broader based movement. Said, we
should be talking about what kind of society we want
to have and not just look at these people and
(47:11):
say we can't do anything. We can do everything. We
have the power. The thing about the nineteen sixties, brother,
is that we saw for the first time how powerful
the black movement is. Because the Black movement organized everybody
into an autonomous political tendency that changed everything. And in fact,
(47:32):
you know, they talk about Watergate, and this is one
of the things I did, you know, some research on
and thought about, and I want you to think about this.
Richard Nixon tried to do everything Donald Trump is doing
right now, everything and more, but he was defeated, especially
about the Black Panther Party creating a massive anti fascist
(47:56):
movement called it the National Committee to Combat Fascism, and
it was in cities all over the country, and not
only was it organizing black people, but it also linked
up with other social and radical forces and that unity
beat back the attempt by Richard Nixon to take over
the government. Now, granted, there was a massive anti war
(48:20):
movement and the social protest movements were really powerful, much
more than they are today, and we have to recognize
that fact. But they were able to prove to us
and fascism can be defeated even if they try, even
if they're in power or trying to take power, they
can be defeated. They are retrograde force, and if the
(48:41):
people themselves unite against it, they can beat it back
and beat it completely. And this is what happeneds to
have and it needs to be decisively defeated. But if
we tell ourselves that we have to depend on the
government to be able to fight the government, we will
never accomplish our goals. If you go back and look
at the entire Civil rights and Black Power period, and
(49:03):
you know, the New Left and all this back in
the sixties, especially because that was the closest thing we
had to full on revolution in this country.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
If you go back and.
Speaker 5 (49:10):
Look at that, the one thing they did do they
didn't ask for forgiveness, they didn't ask to have permits
and all this stuff. They just did it because it
had to be done, and they understood they were fighting
a class war. And we need to understand that now
what's happened here in this country, that the rich have
taken power in a fascist coup, and we need to
(49:30):
recognize that, and we should not be feeling that we
were defeated. In fact, this whole campaign is a forest.
It was a forest. The Supreme Court and other forces
put their thumb on the pulse if you want, whatever
you want to call it, to allow Trump to take power,
(49:52):
to allow Trump to receive massive funding, and the billionaire
class which has destroyed the economy already in this country.
They created, on one end, a class of profiteers and plunderers,
and on the other end, they created a class of
people who are struggling to survive, struggling to survive. And
(50:14):
so we need to look at it through the lens
of how do we fight back. How do we build
a movement, not only we build a movement, but a
movement that takes us to a new society. How do
we stop those in power that want to wage war
and profit from it. How do we stop the people
who have created the massive prison system in America? They
(50:36):
don't even have to create a gulag or any kind
of concentration camp system. They've already got them. This country
has the biggest prison establishment in the world, and it's
the biggest prison establishment in world history. You could take
all the people that Adolf Hitler rounded up and putting
(50:57):
his concentration camps all over Europe. You can take the Chinese,
you can take all of these people and that were
in Russia, you know, and you can put them together.
In the United States far outpaces them in numbers and
in the ability to crush the population using incarceration. And
(51:20):
so our fight has to be not just reforms. Our
fight has to be revolution. And when you say that,
I'm not just talking about somebody said, well, revolution us violence.
No revolution is social change, revolution is resisting violence. Fascism
(51:41):
is violence. Fascism is violence that can kill millions, that
has done it. And in the United States right now,
the white government that exists that's coming into power is
a fascist regime and it's installed by fascist populism. This
is the way they figured out how they could get
into power. And let's be clear about these things. We
(52:03):
should be telling people this shouting from the highest roottop.
Whatever your issue is that made you, an activist, or
your circles, we should be telling each other that the
way to fight back is to create a mass movement
of our own, to create the stages for a new society,
(52:23):
you know, right now in the belly of the beast,
like they said. And so from our standpoint, I really
do think, and many like me have come to this
conclusion that it's all in our hands actually, and regardless
of who's in power and who's out of power and
all that. They've created a mistake as well, though, because
(52:44):
they've shown people that the government, any government, is a
fascist regime, has the potential to become a fascist regime,
even the ones who claim to be a democratic party
or regime. So the only way we're going to survive
is that we come together, we unite and around all issues.
We can't allow people to exclude houselessness and say that
(53:08):
that's not an issue that we are concerned about. We
cannot allow that. We have to make it one of
the central figure. We cannot allow them to claim that
the prison movement are the prison industries that they've created
and profiting from. And Trump says he's going to boost
the prison population through the use of private prisons. He's
(53:29):
going to allow private prisons to take over the state
of California. He's on record of saying things.
Speaker 3 (53:36):
Like that it is a felony in Tennessee to be
unhoused is six y development. So it's not down in
the future. It's happening under our watch, under our eyesight,
And though we are focusing on all of the other
atrocities that are going on outside of our country, we
are not having the same layer of focus that's going
(53:57):
on right under our nose. Which is why this show
is so adamant about trying to raise the alarm about
Grant's past. People don't understand the implications. For example, climate
change is coming on the horizon. You can have all
of the things, you could do, everything that you're supposedly
supposed to do, and then you can lose all of
(54:18):
it through a hurricane or a forest fire or a
mud slide, what have you. You are susceptible to the
laws of Grant's past. You will not be saved beca
because you did everything right. You will be subjected through
the same legal consequences, just like an unhoused person that
lost their housing or had a medical emergency or whatever.
(54:40):
The conversation is you are now in the same community.
Whether you believe that you're different, or you were deserving poor,
or you're deserving the help and other people are not,
you still are susceptible to these kind of laws that
are being down on the.
Speaker 1 (54:58):
Books or put on the books.
Speaker 5 (55:00):
Excellent, and you know what this legislation actually is, and
we need to just call it what it is. It's
fascists enabling legislation, and we'll see more of it, especially
if there's no fight back. Everything that's happening right now
is contingent on whether there's fight back or whether people
(55:21):
just sit down and say nothing and become intimidated at
the power of the government and the threats of a
lunatic who's now becoming the president. We have to understand
that we can fight back and we can win significant victories,
but only if we unite the struggles we can't have,
(55:43):
you know, struggles that are excluded of a class of
people that are so far on the bottom, they're the
super poor. We can't have that. These are things that
are really important for organizers to understand. There's recently, I
understand that they have now ruled that nonprofit organizations that
(56:03):
come out against the government or as critical of the government,
we'll lose their funding and their status.
Speaker 1 (56:10):
It'll be called terrorists.
Speaker 4 (56:12):
You support the Foulestinian movement, your terroist movement, the irs
will revoke your five oh one c three status.
Speaker 3 (56:18):
So basically becoming a country is that they denounce and
demonize exactly they're becoming these countries. They're just doing it
in the name of the democracy.
Speaker 1 (56:27):
But that's it, absolutely.
Speaker 5 (56:30):
Well, we can do better with their form of democracy.
That's what it amounts to. We can build a different
kind of society where billionaires don't dominate the entire economy
and the people on the bottom suffer. We can remove
that class of parasites, and we can tax those parasites
as they should be taxed while there exists. But if
(56:53):
we sit around and do nothing, or get in a
political party that approves of it and does nothing, the
so called democratocratic party, these people have led us down
the Primrose path. And the so called left that you
got in this country has not even said a word
or tried to protest against Trump even being able to
run for office. How does this happen. It happens because
(57:15):
there's been a wink and or nod kind of system
in place that has pushed his candidacy because the rich
have decided that this is what is necessary to get
super profits and to get control of the government, and
to not have regulations and to not have people in
protest movements in any kind of way to be able
(57:38):
to stop them. You know, this is what they adopted
and they are shamelessly, you know, doing it. And we
seem to be the only ones that don't understand what's
going on. We seem to be staring at fascism but
not seeing it. That's what we're confronted with now, and
so we really have to have these discussions as we're
(57:58):
having now. We should sure they turn you off until
they run you off the air. We need to have
these discussions in our own survival, but even in terms
of our ability to take the young people and others
that are already looking at things but not quite understanding.
And we need to have mass education, political education, so
(58:20):
that we can build a movement in this generation that
did even the things that rivals over things that happened
in the nineteen sixties. It's really really important.
Speaker 3 (58:34):
Thank you for joining us, Lorenzo and Jannina and for
that lively exchange of ideas and hope. Check out their books,
an Archism and the Black Revolution by Lorenzo Kimboya Irvin
and Driven by the Movement Activists of the Black Power
Era by Joe Nina Irvin. There are many ways of
(58:57):
saying how language opens the door of comprehension action. So
I will leave you with a quote by the late
Great Tony Morrison to gird ourselves from the oppressant regime
that's being ushered in. Oppressive language does more than represent violence,
it is violence. It does more than represent the limits
of knowledge, it limits knowledge. And on that note, this
(59:27):
is THEO Henderson from Widian House. Happy New Year, and
thank you for listening, and may we again meet in
a light of understanding. And as always, please like and subscribe,
and if you would like to share your story on
wiedian howse, please reach out to me at weedian House
on Instagram or email me at Weedianhouse at gmail dot com.
(59:50):
Weedian House is a production of iHeartRadio. It is written,
posted and created by me THEO Henderson, our producer, Jamie Loftus,
Kailey Fager, Katie Ficial, and Lyra Smith. Our editor is
Adam Wand and our local art is also by Katie Ficial.
Speaker 1 (01:00:11):
Thanks for listening.
Previously on Whedian House.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
You know, I was a grieving brother, but I had
no sort of focus at the time. I was mostly
just like, Okay, I want to do this for Meli.
We need to continue to tell the narrative in the
story of Meli. And then as time went on, it
was like, well, I need to go out there and
get involved because I think what was important is talking
to people like you and other leaders in the community
and other organizers. I come to realize that, like all
(00:29):
of this stuff is connected, so.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I think people need to start giving people like me
a chance. I'm looking for work right now.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
I'm struggling to you know, even pay rent, and with
the cost of living, it's getting worse.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
They're increasing my rent every.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Month at the place where I was put in and
it becomes very difficult to make ends meet.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Welcome back to Whedian House, Happy New Year.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
I'm your host, Theo Henderson, and we have an exciting
special guest on the show today, two former Black Panther activists.
But first on House News. A recent Los Angeles audit
shows very few on house transitioned from temporary to permitted housing,
(01:23):
wasteful spending of two hundred and eighteen million dollars could
have aided the unhoused into permanent housing. The audit also
found gaps in how the city tracks funding and distributes resources.
There's a lack of support for those who leave temporary housing,
which just feeds the cycle of housing insecurity. What would
(01:43):
our city look like if they had taken the two
hundred and eighteen million dollars and put it toward permitted
housing instead of empty pr initiatives and hostile architecture. Long
term problems cannot be solved with short term solutions. Story more,
older unhoused residents are freezing to death in California. In
(02:05):
twenty twenty three, one hundred and sixty six Californians died
from hypothermia. That's doubles the number in twenty fifteen. There
has been a link between houselessness and cold weather. Federal
data shows more than two thirds of Sacramento unhouse are
susceptible to inclement weather. Older adults fifty five plus are
(02:28):
more susceptible and account for three quarters of hypothermia deaths.
What can we do as a society to push the
issue to our city leaders and our state leaders? The
answer is more warming centers and more permanent support of
housing options.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
And that's in House News.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
When we come back, we'll speak with organizers and former
Black Panthers Lorenzo and Janina Irban. Welcome back to Wiedian House.
We have a special treat to start out twenty twenty
five with the upcoming inauguration of a very problematic president
(03:11):
as well as the upcoming holidays celebrating the life of
doctor Martin Luther King. It is my honor to introduce
two former Black Panther community members sharing their experiences from
the past to the president. We have two former Black
Panther as well as two active civil rights or human
(03:32):
rights activists on the scene today and I'm going to
read a little bit of their synopsis on who they are.
This is no way includes the extensive actions and activists
activities that they are doing even today. Joanninah Abron Irvin
is an activist, author and retired educator. Her work includes
(03:54):
a campaign to end the naked jailing of black men
in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She is a former editor of the
Black Panther newspaper, an author of the book Driven by
the Movement. Activists of the Black Power era a retired
Western Michigan University Associate professor of communication. She has published
(04:14):
several articles about the Black Panther Party and the Black
Panther Era. Our next guest, Lorenzo Comboa Irvin is an
American writer, activist, and black anarchist. He is a former
member of SNICK, the Black Panther Party, and Concerned Citizens
for Justice. Following an attempt to frame him on weapon
(04:35):
charges and for threatening the life of a Ku Klux
Klan member or leader, Irvin hijacked a playing to Cuba
in February nineteen sixty nine. While in Cuba and letter
in Czechoslovakia, Irvin grew dissolusion with the authoritarianism of state socialism.
Captured by the CIA in Eastern Europe, he was extradited
(04:57):
to the US, put on trial and sentenced to life
in prison in nineteen seventy He was introduced to anarchism
while in prison, inspiring him to write Anarchism and the
Black Revolution in nineteen seventy nine. Released after fifteen years,
Irvin remains politically active. I dare say yo all night
(05:19):
as well. I want to thank you very much for
coming on the show. I understand you have a very
busy itinerary, and I want you just start off with
the softball questions. Tell us a little bit more about yourselves,
and I will start if you don't mind, Janina, and
then I.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Will take it to you. Lorenzo Well I.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
Was born in Tennessee that I grew up in Jefferson City, Missouri,
capital city of Missouri. I am the oldest of three
daughters of a United Methodist minister and a music teacher.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
I was a PK preacher's kid. Preacher's kid.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
Grew up in Jefferson City, Missouri, you know, in the
nineteen fifties and in the nineteen sixties, when I was
eight year years old, I had been attending segregated schools
for kindergarten, first grade, and second grade. But by the
time I was ready for third grade, Brown versus Board
of Education had been ruled on by the Supreme Court,
(06:14):
So you know, I started going to integrated schools, although
I didn't really understand what that meant because I was
just a kid, you know, I didn't really know no
know what all that was about. I grew up during
that period of the Civil Rights era, when you know,
doctor King and other people were marching and protesting, so
I would, you know, I'd see that on television. I
(06:34):
would watch the news with my parents and all. That
was of a great interest to me. And I think
that one of the things that really influenced me at
an early age was to see little kids in Birmingham,
Alabama who were, you know, protesting segregation. They were attacked
(06:55):
by you know, barking dogs and you know, fireholes with
water coming out. And it caught my attention because some
of these kids were really very young and I'm I'm
ten years older than my youngest sister and some of
them were like four and five years old like she
was at the time, and I'm like, wow, it blew
my mind to see little kids like that out there
(07:16):
doing that, and it just I think that was probably
it really inspired me because I thought, wow, you know,
here I am. You know, I was fifteen at the time.
I thought, well, these little kids can do that, then
you know, there must be things that I can do.
And I think one of the next things that really,
I guess kind of radicalized me was by the time
I got to college, doctor King was assassinated near the
(07:39):
end of my sophomore year. Was halfway through college, and
you know, it radicalized a lot of young black people
like me. My only own feeling was, well, you know,
he was supposed to be, as they called him, me
apostle nonviolence. But here he is murdered, you know, shot
to death, shot down. And so I said, you know,
as soon as I can get involved in the black struggle,
(08:01):
I'm going to. So after I graduated from college, went
to graduate school, I did join the Black Panther Party
in Detroit, Michigan. I saw that the Black Panther Party
was an organization that was doing something about freedom and
liberation and black people. The first time I saw the
Black Panther Party, however, had been on television and when
(08:22):
they were protesting here in California, in Sacramento, when they
were doing away with the law that allowed people to
carry guns. Of course, the Black Panther believed in armed
self defense, and the police hated that, so they got
the state legislature to.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Pass the law.
Speaker 4 (08:37):
That's the first time I saw them on television protesting
up in Sacramento. This was May of nineteen sixty seven,
and I was only about eighteen, nineteen years old then,
and I'm gonna be honest, my first reaction to that
was these people are crazy. You know that these black
people are crazy, then I can be able to walk
into the legislature, which is mostly white, and do this.
(08:59):
I thought they were totally nuts. But as time went on,
I learned what the Black Panther Party was doing.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
I learned how they were.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
Feeding children breakfast programs, and they were fighting for our liberation.
So I did ultimately join the Black Panther Party.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Thank you, Jo Nina. Mister Lorenzo, you tell us a
little bit about yourself.
Speaker 5 (09:19):
Well, I'm originally from Chattanooga, Tennessee. As you pointed out,
and just as you're and I to talk about. I
was influenced by the Civil Rights movement. But what I
was influenced by was the student led movement that erupted
in nineteen sixty And at the time, I might have
been twelve years old, and I was in the student
(09:40):
or youth in ACP chapter that you know, the group
except didn't do a lot, and the NACP as a
whole didn't do anything. I was very conservative, but the
city ins came to Chattanooga from Nashville and the city
in movement. The students at the local black high school
(10:01):
had a march and a rally downtown where they took
over the department stores. Now, my cousin was a little
older than I was named Curtis, and he was one
of the student leaders, and through him, you know, I
got a lot of the you know, the real history
of how this struggle went down in Chattanooga, because the
(10:24):
students themselves led the movement. They weren't influenced by the
advocates of pacifism and all this sort of stuff that
you get smacked in the mouth or hit in the
mouth and you turn the other cheek and just sit
there and take it. Well, when it happened in Chattanooga,
the students came and they sat down at the department
store of lunch Counts, they you know, demanded be services
like everybody else, and white racist hooligans jumped out and
(10:49):
started hitting people. What they didn't realize that these people
were going to hit back, and they jumped up and
started beating them and mopped the floor up with them.
And this was a five intended party store, that's right,
the Survive and ten department store, and they picked up
everything that was at hand, you know, mops, wrenches, everything else,
and was beating them with beating them bloody, and so
(11:11):
the cops came in and had to save them from
being beaten to death, I suppose, you know. And for me,
the younger kids in the communities, we marched from another
end of town, from the downtown sector and from the
West side, which was you know, one of the large
downtown communities at that time, and people were trying to
(11:34):
converge in the center of the city. And this actually
was the first time they used high pressure water hoses,
not Birmingham, before Birmingham, three years before Birmingham. This is
his hisity. And they shot high pressure water hoses. They
loosed police dogs to try to bite people or drive
them back. They had the cops throwing tear gas bombs
(11:57):
at people, and this was going on all day. You know,
we were trying to get into town. You know, we
did get into town at some time, but they kept
us so we couldn't get in on this fighting that
was taking place. You know, That's what's what they were
trying to do, and that's what they did. Well. Now,
this is a Southern city, a racist Southern city, you know,
(12:19):
to be quite honest, and the Ku Klux Klan was
very active in this time. But they were scared to
death to see black people of all ages resisting police
terrorism and itching to fight them, and so they arrested
the black students, but then they hurriedly released them, and
(12:41):
they shut the department's store down so that they wouldn't
be further conflict. And then by the time people got
to town and so forth, everything was over, you know,
but this continue for days. You know, you had these
young black men come in, women as well, sisters as well,
sit in and demanded to be served, and of course
the they wouldn't serve them. Then the owner come out
(13:01):
and he tell, well, why are you people here. Well,
you know, good and well, you're not supposed to get
fled in this city here, u this is the South,
and we don't cotton to any kind of uh uh
you know, integration. We're not going to integrate. We're not
going to give you service. So he said, well, we'll
be here until you do. Well, we don't deserve negroes anyway,
(13:22):
he said, well we don't need them, so that's okay.
We'll we'll be until you serve us some real food
and so, uh, you know this kind of stuff. We'd
go on and after the rebellion though that scared every
everyone in the authority, including the federal government, and they
call themselves going to send negotiators down and all this
(13:42):
kind of stuff on behalf of the students, and they
got the black pastors and so forth to you know,
to do a song and dance to try to you know,
stop the students from protesting and drive them out of downtown,
present them from coming. And of course the guy who's
headed in a CP time and also the principal of
the high school where the student protesters came from, he
(14:06):
engaged in mass suspensions of as many students he could.
But none of that worked. What they tried to do,
and what they often they did, is they made concessions.
They allowed black people to come down there and eat
at the department stores. They stopped a lot of segregation
in terms of the movie theaters. Black people could attend
the movie theaters and so forth and so on. And
(14:27):
as time went by, they you know, all the open
trappings of racial segregation were being eliminated. Allegedly, it was
still a racist town. Black people had no political power,
and they were still being subjected to police terrorism, police killings.
And in fact, when I came out of prison. This
is another tale part of it. Chattanooga, Tennessee had the
(14:49):
largest number of police killings in the country of any
city under two hundred thousand, and that's an official statistic.
You know, at that time, when I came out in
nineteen eighty three, the mayor was an FBI agent. Now
I have not found anywhere else a situation where the
mayor himself was an FBI agent. But as I said,
(15:10):
that's another part of the story. But in my formative stages,
this is what set me on the path to revolution
and to being a political organizer, a black political organizer,
a radical black political organizer in the South, and then
you know, in other parts of the country and eventually
having the reach to you know, to reach people in
other countries. You know, I've been to quite a few
(15:32):
countries in the last i don't know, twenty five thirty
years that I never would have had the chance to
go to. And I've been able to spread the same
message and talk about the racism. And so when talk
about fascism, then I don't consider myself some textbook authority,
but I do say that I have practical experience that
I can, you know, give to the next generation, and
(15:53):
having been in the Black Panther Party and having been
exposed to the ideas in the Black Panther Party, especially
the ideas around fascism. You know, when I first came
out of the army and came back home and got
involved with first SNICK, the Student I Violent Coordinating Committee
that was one of the field organizers, an anti war trainer,
(16:14):
you know, training people to how to resist the war,
how to resist the draft, and so forth. That went
on for some time. Then a merger between the Student
nine Violent Coordinating Committee and SNICK took place in nineteen
sixty seven through sixty nine, and at that time I
went into the Black Panther Party. Well, all I managed
to do basically do this period would sell newspapers and
(16:36):
you know, give speeches. And in one instance, a brother
was killed at a department store where I worked at
and we organized a protest campaign and the racist that
shot him was driven out of that store. They he
couldn't come back to work at that store, and all
this sort of and it created a citywide protest movement.
There were five major so called racial rebellions, black people
(17:00):
resisting particular racist attacks in Chattanooga from nineteen sixty to
nineteen eighty. This was caused by as I said, well
in nineteen eighty, this is going to give you an example.
In nineteen eighty, the ku Klux Klan came and in
(17:21):
the black community, drove through the black community, the downtown
sector and shot at black people, and they shot and
injured battlely five black women. And it caused rebay and
especially when the officials were giving protection to the white supremacists.
They gave him free lawyers and put them in protective
custody at the city hall. Believe it or not. So
(17:44):
people were outraged and they had a rebey and it
was so heavy that the largest black housing project it
was in South Chattanooga, and in that housing project, these
young men had come out of Kuwait and they had
an armed resistance to that incident and the kodly Madi
(18:05):
calling by the city government and its officials openly you know,
racist and pastious. That was one of the things that
you know, took me to the next stage.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Well, thank you very much for bringing a lot of
interesting points that we will revisit. But I want to
jump back to Janina and I wanted to ask you
in your biography it stated that you stood up against
the forces of the dehumanization of black males incarcerated.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Can you tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
Well, this took place in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where I was
teaching journalism at Western Michigan University. And it was probably
September of nineteen, nineteen ninety nine, yep. And there's a
front page article and it had been it was an
interview with the black man who said that he had
(18:59):
been arrested. He said it was racial profiling and he
had been arrested for his resisting arrest when the police
stopped him and stripped of all his clothes and put
in jail naked. And this was on the front page.
It was the front page headline. And of course you
can imagine this was quite a controversy at the time,
you know. And I read about it, of course in
(19:19):
the paper. I said, wow, you know, you would not
think something like this would happen in a little college
town like Kalamazoo, Michigan. You know, I was kind of surprised,
but it did. And Lorenzo at the time was still
living in Chattanooga. He had come up to visit me
in Michigan. And he was saying with Joe nine, and
you know, you were in the Black Panther Party. You know,
(19:40):
you know how to organize against police terror, and you
need to get something going here.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
There has to be a movement to stop this.
Speaker 5 (19:47):
You know.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
I didn't really want to hear that at the time
because I hadn't done any organizing for a long period
of time. You know, I had come there to teach,
and I was a single parent, I was raising a daughter,
and I thought, wow, you know I don't I can't
do this. I haven't done anything like this in years.
And Lorenzo kept after me. He says, you know how
to do this, you were in the Black Panther Party.
(20:07):
And he wasn't gonna let up on me. He did
not let upon me. So I went to a Kalamazoo
City Commission meeting and I spoke out against this, that
you know, this naked jailing of black men, and you
know it. What happened was it came out other black
men went to the media and saying that the same
thing had happened to them when they had been put
(20:28):
in jail, to the Kalamazoo County jail either if they
weren't stripped totally naked, they were at least partially stripped.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
So I went to the.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
City Commission, spoke out about it, and people began contacting me.
So we started what was called the Southwest Coalition against
Racism and Police Brutality. Lorenzo actually wrote a pamphlet for
the campaign. We detailed the cases of the different uh
men who had been either stripped, naked or partially naked.
(20:55):
That what was it called the Naked Jailings of Kalamazoo.
He wrote the pamphlet. And you know, this coalition was
a multiracial coalition. We just began working and campaigning to
get this practice. Stop this this naked generally of black men.
And the university where I taught, of course, was a
predominantly white university, but many of the white professors were
outraged about this. How can you put people in jail naked?
(21:18):
You know, there was a lot of a lot of
outrage about it. So we basically had about a three
year campaign. We had protests, marches in I guess April
of two thousand, we had a march and a protests
through you know, downtown Caluma Zoo and we were told
(21:39):
that this had been that was the first time that
there had ever been a protest against police brutality in
Kalami Zoo. I mean it's a small town. There was
only about sixty thousand people. It's grown since then.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
I finished my undergraduate in Grand Rapids, Michigan, so passed
through Kalumba Zoo many times.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
So, yep, you know about Calumni Zoo. That's right.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Well that's also a song they got a Girl in Kalaumusuo.
What that's a difference.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Yeah, I never heard of Kalama Zoo.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
My daughter, who likes to watch old movies, she said,
you don't know about that song.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
I got a girl in Kalamazoo, and you know he
brought it on the map.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
So that's another story. But we had this organized, this
marching protest in April of two thousand and we weren't
sure anybody was going to come because it had snowed
the day before and it can snow really heavily in Kalamazoo.
But the next day it was sunny and bright and
the snow was melting. So we just started in the
(22:33):
start of the march in the black community of Kalamazoo,
and you know, people saw us and it came outside.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
And they joined. They joined the march.
Speaker 4 (22:41):
People were really outraged about this, about black men being
put in jail naked, and they joined the march. And
we went to downtown and we had a rally on
the steps of City Hall. The brother who had been
the first one to expose this, he spoke. Of course,
he was harassed by the police unmercifully because he had
(23:02):
done this, but he spoke, and other people spoke, and
you know, we began, we began building this movement. I'm
not going to tell you that police terror and Callum
was Zoo ended, but one thing we know is that
the uh, the naked jailing, at least they stopped that,
at least for a good period of time. The police
chief was forced to resign. Our campaign was so intensive
(23:24):
that we forced the police chief to resign from his post.
That was something that you know, I didn't expect, because
I didn't expect anything like that would happen in a
place like Calum was Zoo. You might think about it
happening in la or Chicago or New York. In fact,
they did have some naked jillings in New York City,
but they never had a campaign like we had that
(23:46):
actually just systematically organized and held marches and rallies and protests.
At one point, they were going to create some kind
of commission to deal with you know, police terror, police
brutality in Kalum and Zoo, and they invited me, as
the chairperson of the Southwest Michigan Coalition Against Racism and
(24:08):
Police Brutality, to join that. But I refuse because once
you join these kind of official commissions and everything, you know,
your voice becomes music because you become kind of part
of the system. So we never joined We never joined it.
We just kept on doing what we did.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
We'll be right back with more from Lorenzo and Janina.
Welcome back. This is THEO Henderson with Leedian House. Let's
continue our discussion with community organizers and former Black Panthers
Lorenzo and Janina Irvin. Before I delve deeper into the past,
(24:48):
I want to bring us back to the current reality here.
Have any of you heard of about Grant's past?
Speaker 4 (24:54):
No?
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Prior to I have any of you guys have heard
about forty one to eighteen. No, okay, so allow me
to give a little crash course. I'm going to be
just touching the highlights because it's a very exhaustive kind
of thing, but it interlinks what's going on in the past.
So I'm going to start off for forty one eighteen.
Forty one eighteen in short, is the current Jim Crow
(25:19):
of now. It is stated very clearly it is against
the law for a person to sit, sleep, or stand
or be anywhere near a sign that they are not
allowed to be. It is aimed at unhoused people, particularly
in Los Angeles. There is a large swath of unhoused
(25:40):
peoples that are black. As you probably know, unhoused people
that are black men and women and children. But most
importantly there has been recently incarcerated black men that have
had to juggle this legislation. To put a finer point
on it, it is like, for example, if you see
a special enforcement zone or a sign stating that if
(26:00):
the person is not allowed to be there, they can
be arrested, they can be incarcerated, they can be a
victim of all of the type of Charcole type of
solutions that harken back into the fifties and sixties. So
to I say this to and let people know, because
there is a housing an unhoused crisis that's going across
this country now in order to counteract what forty one
(26:24):
eighteen was was supposed to be a temporary salve, because
activists got when of these kind of car through actions
that were happening to unhouse people. They were tearing orizing them,
tearing up their belongings, important papers, finding reasons to incarcerate
them or create a situation. For example, if you have
(26:45):
your own personal belongings and your own home or your
own section, they give you a certain time period to
collect them, and if you do not do it in
enough time, they can arrest you. Now, let's say, for example,
you rush and get as much as you possibly can,
and then they put a yellow tape on it. Now
(27:06):
you can be arrested for disturbing the tape and stealing
your own stuff that is legalized in this city. And
I say this because also a quicker point was that
we had Martin versus Boise. The Circuit court had forcefully
stated it is against the law, it's cruel and unusual
punishment to demonize and dehumanize people that are vulnerable in
(27:32):
the city. You cannot just arrest people or just make
their life a live in hell for simply trying to exist,
simply trying to say the human body has to rest.
Nobody walks twenty four hours, that you have to have
a point to sit down, you have to rest, you
have to sleep, and to do that, to go out
of your way to continually have a legislation or law
(27:54):
on the books to terrorize people at whim at will,
it's dehumanizing and against the law. Now we enter Grant's
pass and Grant's pass overrides the.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Cruel and unusual punishment.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
It was released earlier in July of twenty twenty four.
The six Conservative Supreme Court justices says it is not
cruel and unusual punishment to target unhoused people, and as
a result of fact, that has sparked a wave of
legislations across the country from San Francisco now in San
(28:29):
fran Monica. It is against the law for you to
have a pillow or blanket. Now, you know, unhus people
going to need usually use different things because it's cold
to night. I don't know if you know, like last night,
it's reason and so if you were caught with a
blanket or a pillow, that's justifications to be banned, taken
(28:50):
and arrested. And as you as well as I know,
the most people that are usually affected economically financially and
their homes, houses are taking or they're being targeted, are.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Usually people of color that are unhoused.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Now to say that other communities are not, yes, that's true,
they are. But there is always a focused slant with
spirticularly with gentrification on the rise, the exploding rents, and
it's particularly here in Los Angeles where the gentrification is
starting to creep down in South La Crenshaw area. You
notice they're sprucing up the places. There's a way of
(29:28):
unhoused people and grants passed. Is the impectus to utilize
and to steamroll people's there. Now, there are communities like
when you guys did what we call today mutual aid,
when you guys feeding, we have mutual a kind of
things now to it's like you know, a band aid
on a broken leg. But the fact of it is
(29:49):
is there is a huge hunger crisis as well. There
is higher unhoused elderly people. In this conversation doesn't always
get advanced and house elderly black.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
People that are out here on the streets.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
And I'm not talking about like you know, I'm not
saying I'm elderly, but I'm talking about seventy eighty ninety
years old. The oldest that I've known was eighty nine
years old. So I know many of my grandparents' generation
are out here because of the exploding rents. They cannot
they're dealing with medication, they're dealing with advanced health issues.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Like you know, we were joking about some of our things.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
But you know, you can't make them get a job
eighty nine years old to be able to get back
a house. You cannot tell them that they all are
on substances. Then you can't say that they're all mentally ill.
It's that these are natural laws. These are natural progressions
of a systematic failure. So I put to you, after
this long explanation, what do you suggest for the new
(30:52):
activists that are coming up. What would be some of
the solutions just off the top of your head that
you could think of that would bring life or try
to help get other people involved into the movement or
try to get them to care.
Speaker 5 (31:07):
Well, let me say this, first of all, all of
this homeless crisis, a houseless crisis, can be put at
the feet of the government. I think there was a
failure to have had massive demonstrations, civil rights demonstrations, whatever.
Years ago, it would have helped us at this point.
But we've reached this stage with a new generation of activists,
(31:32):
not to say, a new generation of houseless people. People.
Some people have died on the street. We know all
these things, and the only way we ever get anything,
any kind of social or political justice, is we fight
in the street. We struggle in the streets. We struggle
in front of the rich people's palaces, we struggle in
(31:53):
front of the government buildings. We have never gotten anything,
any single thing that didn't require struggle. We've never been
given anything by this government. In fact, the so calls constitution,
the sections of it that really matter, the Bill of
Rights were created as a result of a social struggle,
(32:15):
almost another revolution, just to get the Bill of Rights.
And then of course the civil rights provisions from after
the Civil War were put into the Bill of Rights.
So everything we've ever gotten is a result of struggle. Now,
I think we're at a stage where we're all facing
(32:38):
the destruction of the economy, we're all facing mass imprisonment,
we're all facing all of these means to destroy labor
that they feel is not productive or that they feel
is an impediment to profit. And the thing that we
have to understand, those of us who are looking at this,
(33:01):
those of us who are trying to find ways to
fight this, is that we have to take the struggle
to a higher level. And we're looking right now at
fascists taking over the American government. That's where we are
right now. And when the Black Panther Party was around,
my initial understanding and training around ideas of fascism came
(33:25):
from the Black Panther newspaper. The entire struggle by the
Black Panther Party and others in that period, the Black
Power movement and the new Left in that period was
about not just fighting the government, but restricting their powers.
In fact, the whole constitution is about that. But now
we have people going in the power who don't even
see that the constitution means anything to bar them from
(33:49):
having absolute and utter power. It's only the people, because
there have been other countries that have had you know, dictators,
a lot of them installed by America. And it's when
the people rise up in enough numbers with a program
to resurrects not just resurrect society as it was, but
(34:10):
fighting for a new society fighting for a new kind
of economy, because we're going to need these things to survive.
In this period, we're fighting the battle of our lifetimes
and and for our children and those unborn. We're going
to be fighting that these people are they may and
have the potential to put the Nazis shame. So these
(34:33):
conditions that exist now are planned. They are planned to
get rid of. Trump himself has said that when he
gets in our office, he is going to take unhouse
people in the cities and take them out somewhere to
some desert. Yeah. I see.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
They were saying that when he was first running that
he was going to try to put them out in
the desert near the airport.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
Yes, very much, the desert.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
You know.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
One of the things that there is so much I
don't live in Los Angeles. I don't know the numbers,
but there's so much abandoned housing everywhere. I'm sure there's
hundreds and hundreds of homes in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
And not only I just to quickly jump jump up
into it too. Recently, when Grant's Pass was passed, Governor
k Newsome doled out money to utilize to help criminalize
or create an environment that you hunted down unhoused people.
But here's the thing that millions of dollars that they
could have used that have for example, like the people
(35:39):
that are activists that had occupied housing during the pandemic
and were being evicted, they could have used that money
to keep these unhoused people in these places, help reverbish
these places and have the place for them to stay.
They don't have to reinvent the wheel. Throw the person out.
Then they got it. Now start over in this Sisaphyan
task of trying to re established themselves into a stable place.
(36:02):
They could keep many of them that are already housed
or in these places, give them money, refurbish the place,
and that will eliminate a lot of the detritus that
they have. But they won't do that because of the
fact that it's much more newsworthy of going down terrorizing
unhouse people, tearing down the structures that they have, saying
(36:24):
that they are criminals, saying that they just like being
out here.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
They're service resistant.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
Conversely, then understanding that other people when you're living on
the street, from my own personal experience I've lived eight years,
sustain your life when you're in a survival mode. It
is a completely different conversation. You cannot live like you're
living inside a building unless you are in a different
fantasy world.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
You create a different.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
World in order to survive the vagaries and the winds
and rains of heaven and understanding climate control, which I
will talk about later, but the fact of the matter
is that you must understand that also, it is an
industrial complex where they get more money demonizing and dehumanizing people.
It's easier to blame, it is easier to demonize, then
(37:13):
you can criminalize.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
I always say that, but that's I digress.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
You know, the whole thing this is this is class warfare.
It's class warfare against poor people, low income people. And
there needs to be a massive squatting rebellion. And I
don't know how to organize it, and obviously it will
look different in different cities, but that's what's going to
have to happen.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
People are going to.
Speaker 4 (37:37):
Have to take over all these abandoned homes and you know,
fix them up, get the plumbing in the electricity.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
You have people who are.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
Skilled who know how to do that. That's what needs
to happen because what we're seeing is the whule thing
people are being evicted because of these high rents and everything.
As you you mentioned gentrification. Lorenzo and I were living
in Kansas City, Missouri for about five or six years,
but and we had been able to move into a
(38:08):
house where there was a special program that kept the
rent low for low income people like us. But that
program ended and then of course the landlords were there
were all happy about that. Then the gentrification started to
begin and they were raising. In fact, the day we
were moving out, a guy showed up at the front door.
I guess he thought we were the owners, and he
was there ready to well, you know, we could buy
(38:29):
this from you and we could really fix it up,
you know, I said, you know, I said, the bloodsuckers
are here already and we haven't even gotten out the
front door, you know, ready to take over. So we
are going to have to have massive squatting. We were
going to have to take over all of these houses
across the country, and there will have to be specific
(38:51):
campaigns in each part of the country because every place
is different. I always say there's no one size fits
all because you know, La is not Chicago, not Boston
or anything else.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
So I can't you know, I can't.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
Tell anybody how to do this, but that's what's going
to have to happen. We're gonna have to take over
these empty, abandoned houses. And I realized as you were
talking you gave the number of the legislation for I
am familiar with it. I did read about it, you
heard about it on the news. But this is class
(39:23):
warfare against poor people. It's further criminalizing people who don't
have the resources to live in a house and saying
you know that, well, you can't live on the streets.
If you are on the streets, you're a criminal.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
We're going to take a break and we will be
right back. We're back.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
What I find when I created the show the difficulty
for people, other people that are in vulnerable states to
understand the mass propaganda machine that is there. One thing
that I have to say is hurt people. Hurt people
and people that are vulnerable. They have done a very
good job of trying to differentiate different facets of houselessness,
(40:10):
the deserving poor versus the undeserving poor. And I say this,
for example, then you have house people running around talking
about you only concerned about house kills because you don't
talk about the unhoused children that are in la USD,
and there's a very high toll of those. You're not
concerned about those kids that parents are living in RVs
(40:30):
or living in unstable couch commitments or living in shelters
and they have to grapple and traits to the school
and deal with the privilege in class classes, behaviors that
house children have and watching their parents. You're only concerned
about your child that's in a house. My understanding that
your child that has to navigate school, navigate sleep deficiencies
(40:55):
and food deficiencies and insecurities, and to deal with going
back into an unstabled environment, which plays an academic toll,
which also plays another facet.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Another rung of the prison pipeline.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
Which we don't talk about enough, is particularly here in
la We need to understand there are a cascade event
and we understand when we see and understand what houselessness
is and understand how it's impacting due to systematic insufficiencies inadequacies,
then we can understand also the conversation wholesale, But again
(41:29):
I'm digressing.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
You know, any insight on that Lorento.
Speaker 5 (41:34):
Well, let's look at this in terms of a class struggle.
The government created these conditions, and it's the government that
has the financial resource even the houses that the banks
and the others are sitting on, as well as these
corporations come along and destroying properties, destroying neighborhoods. I should say,
(41:57):
you know, we need a u a coalition of groups
of different types. We need people like you said, that
are the traditional poor and the super poor, which is
what you know, how sist people are. They're the super
poor and we need to find a way to unite
them along with all the other social movements in this
(42:21):
period and to come. And if we don't do this,
and we're not capable of doing this, then we can't win.
But we can win if we believe that we can
unite around these issues. It's just like we can unite
around issues that people who were disabled head at that time.
Many of them were homeless because they, as you said,
they were the part of the undeserving poor. They didn't
(42:43):
deserve anything. And then they fought. They were able to
fight and get certain types of social money and social
protections and so forth that would never happen if they
just sat there and and you know, just limited the
fact we've got to create a certain amount of unity.
(43:04):
We've got to do massive political education the movement. I
think that one of the things we have to say
to this point is that what the government did in
the nineteen seventies, when when massive homelessness first started showing up,
the capitalists system created the situation. They drove productive jobs
(43:25):
out of the country. They cut social money, you know,
whether it's food stamps or whatever. They cut those things,
and they made it impossible to live. They assured that
there would be a massive prison population because people were
let's just say it the way it is, if you
don't have food to eat, you're going to steal. Yeah,
(43:46):
ain't even stealing. It's survival, that's right. And we we
used to talk about crimes of survival back in the day,
you know. And the state, the government is responsible for
these things, and it is the government that we have
to confront in every instance. They have housing. They even
(44:07):
have military basis that has housing. The government has the money.
The government is responsible. They're the ones we need to
put the pressure on. And what has happened is that
they're able to use they were able to use the
shelter system. The creation of the shelter system claim that
they could contain the problem because it's a explosive political
(44:30):
issue and their thing is how do we control it?
And so now they're saying, how can we criminalize it?
And how can we just kill these people off or
put them in prisons, put them in camps way out
in the country, somewhere out in the desert and all
this kind of thing. Yeah, we have to fight every
step of the way. We have to make people see
that this is the kind of genocide steps that were
(44:54):
taken in Nazi Germany. We have to fight this step
of way. But we have to continually edge, kate, organize
and agitate. We have to be doing these things so
that the masses can see it because right now, and
the way it has been for too many years is
people to see while they're homeless, is I feel sorry
for him? There's nothing I can do. And also we're
(45:18):
doing the best thing by getting them out of site
and out of mind, you know, And you know what
happens with people that are out of sight and out
of mind with a government like Trump, who's going to
be uh, you know, even worse than what has happened
to this point. He's telling you before he even gets
elected that he wants to remove people exactly. So the
(45:39):
real answer here we have to create a poor people's
survival movement, a mass movement dealing with class warfare, with
exposing the crimes of the government, with fighting for social resources.
Somebody's talking the other day about reparations, and I said, said, listen,
(46:00):
let me explain something to you. The government of the
United States is not going to give you reparations unless
it's a payoff to collaborators, like what we're seeing right now.
Trump has told a lot of black people that, well,
you elect me, and I'll give you reparations, but he
will give money to a class of parasites and sellouts
(46:23):
and traders, and the rest of us will be up
the creek, they say.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
And then they will use that narrative. What that you
would unhouse people is that we tried to help them.
We gave them money, and they chose to squander it
or they chose to abuse it, and they just you know,
this is their fault, and it's always going to be
the victim is always going to be victimized.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
Further, well, this is what they did. You know, we
did try to.
Speaker 5 (46:48):
Help, so we can kill them off with thee them
dies exactly as I said, the justification to, you know, exterminate.
But I will say this, I don't I'm not pessimistic
even with these people in office, because I think that
it's possible to build a broader based movement. Said, we
should be talking about what kind of society we want
to have and not just look at these people and
(47:11):
say we can't do anything. We can do everything. We
have the power. The thing about the nineteen sixties, brother,
is that we saw for the first time how powerful
the black movement is. Because the Black movement organized everybody
into an autonomous political tendency that changed everything. And in fact,
(47:32):
you know, they talk about Watergate, and this is one
of the things I did, you know, some research on
and thought about, and I want you to think about this.
Richard Nixon tried to do everything Donald Trump is doing
right now, everything and more, but he was defeated, especially
about the Black Panther Party creating a massive anti fascist
(47:56):
movement called it the National Committee to Combat Fascism, and
it was in cities all over the country, and not
only was it organizing black people, but it also linked
up with other social and radical forces and that unity
beat back the attempt by Richard Nixon to take over
the government. Now, granted, there was a massive anti war
(48:20):
movement and the social protest movements were really powerful, much
more than they are today, and we have to recognize
that fact. But they were able to prove to us
and fascism can be defeated even if they try, even
if they're in power or trying to take power, they
can be defeated. They are retrograde force, and if the
(48:41):
people themselves unite against it, they can beat it back
and beat it completely. And this is what happeneds to
have and it needs to be decisively defeated. But if
we tell ourselves that we have to depend on the
government to be able to fight the government, we will
never accomplish our goals. If you go back and look
at the entire Civil rights and Black Power period, and
(49:03):
you know, the New Left and all this back in
the sixties, especially because that was the closest thing we
had to full on revolution in this country.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
If you go back and.
Speaker 5 (49:10):
Look at that, the one thing they did do they
didn't ask for forgiveness, they didn't ask to have permits
and all this stuff. They just did it because it
had to be done, and they understood they were fighting
a class war. And we need to understand that now
what's happened here in this country, that the rich have
taken power in a fascist coup, and we need to
(49:30):
recognize that, and we should not be feeling that we
were defeated. In fact, this whole campaign is a forest.
It was a forest. The Supreme Court and other forces
put their thumb on the pulse if you want, whatever
you want to call it, to allow Trump to take power,
(49:52):
to allow Trump to receive massive funding, and the billionaire
class which has destroyed the economy already in this country.
They created, on one end, a class of profiteers and plunderers,
and on the other end, they created a class of
people who are struggling to survive, struggling to survive. And
(50:14):
so we need to look at it through the lens
of how do we fight back. How do we build
a movement, not only we build a movement, but a
movement that takes us to a new society. How do
we stop those in power that want to wage war
and profit from it. How do we stop the people
who have created the massive prison system in America? They
(50:36):
don't even have to create a gulag or any kind
of concentration camp system. They've already got them. This country
has the biggest prison establishment in the world, and it's
the biggest prison establishment in world history. You could take
all the people that Adolf Hitler rounded up and putting
(50:57):
his concentration camps all over Europe. You can take the Chinese,
you can take all of these people and that were
in Russia, you know, and you can put them together.
In the United States far outpaces them in numbers and
in the ability to crush the population using incarceration. And
(51:20):
so our fight has to be not just reforms. Our
fight has to be revolution. And when you say that,
I'm not just talking about somebody said, well, revolution us violence.
No revolution is social change, revolution is resisting violence. Fascism
(51:41):
is violence. Fascism is violence that can kill millions, that
has done it. And in the United States right now,
the white government that exists that's coming into power is
a fascist regime and it's installed by fascist populism. This
is the way they figured out how they could get
into power. And let's be clear about these things. We
(52:03):
should be telling people this shouting from the highest roottop.
Whatever your issue is that made you, an activist, or
your circles, we should be telling each other that the
way to fight back is to create a mass movement
of our own, to create the stages for a new society,
(52:23):
you know, right now in the belly of the beast,
like they said. And so from our standpoint, I really
do think, and many like me have come to this
conclusion that it's all in our hands actually, and regardless
of who's in power and who's out of power and
all that. They've created a mistake as well, though, because
(52:44):
they've shown people that the government, any government, is a
fascist regime, has the potential to become a fascist regime,
even the ones who claim to be a democratic party
or regime. So the only way we're going to survive
is that we come together, we unite and around all issues.
We can't allow people to exclude houselessness and say that
(53:08):
that's not an issue that we are concerned about. We
cannot allow that. We have to make it one of
the central figure. We cannot allow them to claim that
the prison movement are the prison industries that they've created
and profiting from. And Trump says he's going to boost
the prison population through the use of private prisons. He's
(53:29):
going to allow private prisons to take over the state
of California. He's on record of saying things.
Speaker 3 (53:36):
Like that it is a felony in Tennessee to be
unhoused is six y development. So it's not down in
the future. It's happening under our watch, under our eyesight,
And though we are focusing on all of the other
atrocities that are going on outside of our country, we
are not having the same layer of focus that's going
(53:57):
on right under our nose. Which is why this show
is so adamant about trying to raise the alarm about
Grant's past. People don't understand the implications. For example, climate
change is coming on the horizon. You can have all
of the things, you could do, everything that you're supposedly
supposed to do, and then you can lose all of
(54:18):
it through a hurricane or a forest fire or a
mud slide, what have you. You are susceptible to the
laws of Grant's past. You will not be saved beca
because you did everything right. You will be subjected through
the same legal consequences, just like an unhoused person that
lost their housing or had a medical emergency or whatever.
(54:40):
The conversation is you are now in the same community.
Whether you believe that you're different, or you were deserving poor,
or you're deserving the help and other people are not,
you still are susceptible to these kind of laws that
are being down on the.
Speaker 1 (54:58):
Books or put on the books.
Speaker 5 (55:00):
Excellent, and you know what this legislation actually is, and
we need to just call it what it is. It's
fascists enabling legislation, and we'll see more of it, especially
if there's no fight back. Everything that's happening right now
is contingent on whether there's fight back or whether people
(55:21):
just sit down and say nothing and become intimidated at
the power of the government and the threats of a
lunatic who's now becoming the president. We have to understand
that we can fight back and we can win significant victories,
but only if we unite the struggles we can't have,
(55:43):
you know, struggles that are excluded of a class of
people that are so far on the bottom, they're the
super poor. We can't have that. These are things that
are really important for organizers to understand. There's recently, I
understand that they have now ruled that nonprofit organizations that
(56:03):
come out against the government or as critical of the government,
we'll lose their funding and their status.
Speaker 1 (56:10):
It'll be called terrorists.
Speaker 4 (56:12):
You support the Foulestinian movement, your terroist movement, the irs
will revoke your five oh one c three status.
Speaker 3 (56:18):
So basically becoming a country is that they denounce and
demonize exactly they're becoming these countries. They're just doing it
in the name of the democracy.
Speaker 1 (56:27):
But that's it, absolutely.
Speaker 5 (56:30):
Well, we can do better with their form of democracy.
That's what it amounts to. We can build a different
kind of society where billionaires don't dominate the entire economy
and the people on the bottom suffer. We can remove
that class of parasites, and we can tax those parasites
as they should be taxed while there exists. But if
(56:53):
we sit around and do nothing, or get in a
political party that approves of it and does nothing, the
so called democratocratic party, these people have led us down
the Primrose path. And the so called left that you
got in this country has not even said a word
or tried to protest against Trump even being able to
run for office. How does this happen. It happens because
(57:15):
there's been a wink and or nod kind of system
in place that has pushed his candidacy because the rich
have decided that this is what is necessary to get
super profits and to get control of the government, and
to not have regulations and to not have people in
protest movements in any kind of way to be able
(57:38):
to stop them. You know, this is what they adopted
and they are shamelessly, you know, doing it. And we
seem to be the only ones that don't understand what's
going on. We seem to be staring at fascism but
not seeing it. That's what we're confronted with now, and
so we really have to have these discussions as we're
(57:58):
having now. We should sure they turn you off until
they run you off the air. We need to have
these discussions in our own survival, but even in terms
of our ability to take the young people and others
that are already looking at things but not quite understanding.
And we need to have mass education, political education, so
(58:20):
that we can build a movement in this generation that
did even the things that rivals over things that happened
in the nineteen sixties. It's really really important.
Speaker 3 (58:34):
Thank you for joining us, Lorenzo and Jannina and for
that lively exchange of ideas and hope. Check out their books,
an Archism and the Black Revolution by Lorenzo Kimboya Irvin
and Driven by the Movement Activists of the Black Power
Era by Joe Nina Irvin. There are many ways of
(58:57):
saying how language opens the door of comprehension action. So
I will leave you with a quote by the late
Great Tony Morrison to gird ourselves from the oppressant regime
that's being ushered in. Oppressive language does more than represent violence,
it is violence. It does more than represent the limits
of knowledge, it limits knowledge. And on that note, this
(59:27):
is THEO Henderson from Widian House. Happy New Year, and
thank you for listening, and may we again meet in
a light of understanding. And as always, please like and subscribe,
and if you would like to share your story on
wiedian howse, please reach out to me at weedian House
on Instagram or email me at Weedianhouse at gmail dot com.
(59:50):
Weedian House is a production of iHeartRadio. It is written,
posted and created by me THEO Henderson, our producer, Jamie Loftus,
Kailey Fager, Katie Ficial, and Lyra Smith. Our editor is
Adam Wand and our local art is also by Katie Ficial.
Speaker 1 (01:00:11):
Thanks for listening.
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