Cue up Aretha Franklin Respect video

Cold Open: Talking about the Black Panthers today. Not the movie that is STILL in theaters that has already made roughly 1.5 BILLION dollars. Seriously. Against a 210 million dollar budget. As if Disney needed even MORE money. Good God. Pretty soon we Americans will be living in the United States of Disney. Or perhaps the United States of Amazon.

Not talking about the large cats that look so cuddly but could easily claw your face off of your skull and then pop what’s left of your skull like a grape in its powerful bad kitty jaws.

Talking about the black nationalist, African American revolutionary group that kicked off in 1966 - the Black Panther Political Party that rose from the ashes of Malcom X and stood as a fierce, fighting example of Black Power during the Civil Rights turmoil of the 1960s. Talking about a very complicated, very polarizing group of freedom fighters and neighborhood protectors.

Not an easy topic for a white dude to cover but I’m just dumb enough to give it a go! May Nimrod have mercy on my soul.

The Black Panthers have a complex history. They fought for racial equality. They fought for a better future for black children. They fought the police. They fought the FBI. They fought other revolutionary groups. They fought each other. They did a LOT of fighting!!!

And we’re gonna thoroughly suck their fight that was at times incredibly inspirational, at other times - at best - morally questionable, and almost always, controversial, today on Timesuck.

PAUSE TIMESUCK INTRO

I. Welcome! A. Happy Monday:

Happy Monday Timesuckers! Work can FUCKING WAIT!

Happy Black History Month my Melatonin-enhanced Meatsacks. Hail Nimrod and Lucifina. Praise Bojangles and Triple M!

Thoughts go out to our Australia Suckers devastated by recent terrible flooding. Read that over 20,000 homes have been lost. Just devastating. Hope all you listeners over there are ok.

B. Joe Dimeo Pre-Roll: Timesuck is brought to you again today by the Broaum (Bro-um (one syllable word!) podcast.

Broaum is show about how it’s ok to be a dude but all dudes should be better dudes . Each week on Broaum, Joe and Ben pick a topic that they think dudes could use a little help with. And, based on what I’ve heard so far, this info is fantastic not just for dudes, but for all Meat Sacks.

How to enjoy art. How to talk to women. How to build wealth. How to navigate discussions of different types of relationships. The guys are gonna be talking about how "your place is gross, how to fix it" this week. Joe and Ben will share ideas on how to make your place less disgusting. Practical tips like get white towels so you can bleach them when you forget them in the washer for two days and you dont have to spend your life smelling like a moldy towel.

Joe asked me to share any cleaning tips I have and I don’t know that I have any. I’m a dirtbag. I need to listen to the next episode of Broaum!

Lot of great topics honestly discussed.

So give it a shot!

Tune in each week for new topics, new discussions and new ways to continue seeking enlightenment through deadlifts.

Broaum (Bro-um) it up!

https://www.broaum.com/ for more info.

Link in the episode description. Or push the button on the Timesuck web or app.

C. Monthly Charity: Thanks to the Space Lizards monthly Patreon contributions that now allow us to give $1600 this month to the Cancer Research Institute! Hail Nimrod!

The Cancer Research Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to harnessing the human body’s immune system's power to control and potentially cure all types of cancer. They fund the most innovative clinical and laboratory research around the world, support the next generation of the field's leaders, and serve as a trusted source of information on immunotherapy for cancer patients and their caregivers.

Thanks to anyone who has recently purchased our Valentine’s Day themed Timesuck pins. Check them out in the Timesuck Shopify store along with the recent Meatsack sweatshirts and so many other fun, fun goodies.

D. Tour Dates: Recording this in advance of Madison shows. Hoping they were amazing.

Bringing the Happy Murder tour to Philly this week - get the Punchline! Shows in Salt Lake City next week. Some shows already sold out - hail Nimrod! And then the Stardome in Birmingham, the Punchline in Atlanta - that show is now sold out. Zanies in Nashville. Standup Live in Huntsville.

Check out dancummins.tv for a full year of fun shows.

More live Time Sucks coming up in Cleveland, Nashville, Spokane, San Francisco, Orlando, Phoenix, Denver, Grand Rapids, and Tacoma.

E. Segue to Topic: Time now for the Black Panthers.

PAUSE TIMESUCK INTERLUDE

II. Intro/Establish Premiss:

A. African American Life in 1960s America: To Understand the Black Panthers of the 1960s - to understand why this organization was ever thought up or formed in the first place - you have to understand what life was like for many black Americans in America in the1960s, particularly those living in urban areas.

This is one of those Sucks where context is REAL important. Super, duper important. And before I head down the road of today’s Suck, know that I love your black meat sacks, our white meat sacks, and our law enforcement meat sacks. Probably gonna hit those notes several times today.

Obviously, as a white man, I can’t personally speak to what it is like to live as a black American in this or any other era.

ALTHOUGH - according to my 23 and Me results, I am in fact 0.3% Sudanese AND ALSO 0.1% percent Sub-Saharan African.

So…

Kidding not kidding!

Not kidding about my genetic test results, kidding about how those results would enlighten me in any way whatsoever to the historical struggle of many black Americans.

Before I dive into the meat of this episode, just know that I know that I’m white as fuck. I know I can’t personally relate to widespread racial discrimination on any level. Just found this story fascinating and wanted to Suck it and followed it where truth and logic took me. Hail Nimrod!

Meat sacks of all color - including myself - all rationally, critically thinking empathetic meat sacks, can, I hope, at least understand what it’s like to struggle. I hope we all, AT LEAST, recognize that others are struggling and know how to empathize with them. We are all part of the human experience.

Another important disclaimer before I go further! I’m VERY racist.

I just want you to keep that in mind. When it comes to Polish people, many of you know that I have some pretty extreme prejudices. And they’re not widely accepted. But I’m not ready to accept them as humans yet. And that’s my right. And I’m done with this tired joke that I can’t seem to stay away from.

No - real disclaimer now…

- When it comes to issues that involve race, just like politics, religion, gender issues, etc - things have a tendency to leave the arena of logic and enter the realm of emotion real quick. It’s sensitive shit. And that is why I’m gonna throw out some numbers - little bit of math - to kick this Suck off. Numbers that make the case that life on average was unquestionably way fucking harder for black Americans than white Americans in the 1960s, as it still is overall today. That’s not opinion. That’s statistical fact that has been documented by numerous comprehensive, non partisan studies time and time again.

And if you’re thinking, “Well I’m not black and life isn’t easy for me. I’m struggling! I worry about rent every month! And I know plenty of black people way better off than my poor ass, making way more money that me and my family ever have! I struggle far more in every meaningful way that they’re struggling! What the fuck, dude!?!”

I get it! Your feelings are valid! Your struggle is real! Your hardships are very real! Hell yes they are. Not denying that ONE DAMN BIT.

But this Suck isn’t about comparing one INDIVIDUAL life to another ISOLATED life. It’s about cultural trends. It’s about overall tendencies.

On AVERAGE, members of every race but black are doing better than members of African descent in the United States because statistically, when it comes to average education level, average income, and average incarceration rate - no one has had a rougher go of it than black Americans.

There are roughly a metric shit ton of stats that back this claim up. And these aren’t “liberal agenda” numbers taken from the “liberal media” for my more socially conservative listeners. Take a deep breath. Grab a stress ball and give it a squeeze. Yip, Yip, Yaw!!!

The numbers I’ll be relaying to you today aren’t taken from White Guilt Dot Snowflake. They’re not taken from Social Justice Warrior Dot Cry Me A Fucking River. They’re taken from either the US Bureau of Labor, or the US Census Bureau, or the US Bureau of Justice.

And if you think THOSE organizations were conspiratorially motivated in favor of the plight of black Americans back in the 60s? Or that they are today? Well then you’re just not a logical person!

You might as well turn this off now because quite literally nothing I can say can make today’s tale appealing to you.

For those of you still listening… and I hope you all still are - here are some numbers.

1. Household Income: According to the US Census Bureau, the average household income for a white household in 2017 was $65, 273. The average household income for a black household was $40,258.

That means that white households made, on average in 2017, just over 62% MORE than black households.

Hope you appreciate those numbers. My dumbass had to relearn how to use Microsoft Excel to gather them. Why, US Census Bureau!?! Why!?!

PDFS, motherfucker! Put everything in PDFs for people like me who aren’t accountants.

Anyway, US Bureau of Labor Statistics taken between 2014 and 2016 show that the average household income for Black Americans was lower than any ethnic group. Lower than white, American Indian, Hispanic, multi-race, Pacific Islander, and Asian.

Back in 1967, the earliest year that US Census Bureau data exists for US household income by race, the disparity was even greater. The median household income for whites was $44,700 compared to only $24,700 for blacks. White households made just under 81% MORE money than black households.

That is some SERIOUS disparity. No consolation to you if you were some poor-as-fuck white person living in 1967, but clearly, OVERALL, black Americans not doing nearly as well as white Americans. And racist, discriminatory practices played a large role in that difference. How could they not?

2. Education level: According to 2015 US Census statistics, around 36% of white Americans have at least a bachelor’s degree compared to roughly 22% of black Americans. Almost 64% more common for white people, on average, to have a bachelor’s degree than black people as recent as 2015.

The gap was even wider back in 1965, the year before the formation of the Black Panther Party. Around 51 percent of white Americans had graduated high school compared to only roughly 27 percent of black Americans. Whites on average were almost 89% more likely to have a four year college degree than blacks. Damn near 90% more likely to hold a college degree. Discrimination for SURE playing a large role here. Generations of discrimination following centuries of actual, literal enslavement.

3. Incarceration Rates: Now let’s talk about incarceration.

According to 2016 Bureau of Justice Prison Statistics, black Americans made up 12% of the total US population but made up 33% of the total US incarcerated population currently serving prison sentences. White Americans made up 64% of the total population and made up 30% of the prisoner population. In 2016, black Americans were incarcerated at over five times the rate of white Americans. That’s an alarming disparity. And that one wasn’t actually worse in the 1960s.

It WAS just as bad.

In 1960, blacks were also incarcerated five times as often as whites.

4. 1960s Anger in Black Communities:

So why the 1960s? Why did the Black Panthers form in this decade? Well, because as bad as things still were, things were getting better due to the Civil Rights movement. It was safer to be visibly and publicly furious about racial mistreatment thanks to the counter-culture movement than it was even a decade before. Now that it was finally a little safer, centuries of pent-up anger were now pouring out of many Americans.

We’ve talked about the counter-culture movements of the 1960s in previous Sucks, such as the Suck of Charles Manson, and the Jim Jones and Children of God Sucks amongst others. The American youth of all races were questioning authority - all forms of it - in ways their parents and grandparents never did. There was a growing distrust of the government.

The inspiring leader of many young Americans in the early 60s- JFK - was assassinated in 1963 and many believed the government was responsible. Citizens were questioning the government at levels not seen since the build up to the Civil War. Many white youths were strongly opposed to the racial segregation of their parent’s and grandparent’s generations. They were embarrassed by it. They also opposed the growing conflict in Vietnam.

Young black Americans were particularly disillusioned in the 1960s.

They’d seen their fathers and grandfathers fight in WWII and the Korean War just as honorably as white soldiers and then come back to a segregated country that still made them use different bathrooms, sleep in different hotels, shop in different stores, go to different schools, etc. They were still being drafted into the military to fight honorably for a country they didn’t feel was treating them honorably. For a more comprehensive look into racial segregation, by the way, you can revisit the Ku Klux Klan or Martin Luther King, Jr. Sucks. But I assure you it existed.

The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1960 - a federal law that established inspection of local voter registration polls and introduced penalties for anyone who obstructed someone’s attempt to register to vote. And then the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, which ended segregation in public spaces and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or nationality.

Years of fighting and marches and protests and spilled blood and beatings and death led to the passage of that legislation. And things were supposed to be better now. Except they weren’t.

Life for the average black American didn’t actually get that much better after that legislation was passed. Not right away. And there was a feeling of betrayal. Why had so many sacrificed to pass this new legislation to end racial discrimination, only to see the new laws not being forced in many places?

Imagine running the longest race of your life. You don’t think you can finish it. Your body is starting revolt. Your muscles are cramping up. You feel dizzy. Your lungs have been burning for miles. Your feet have blisters and are starting to bleed. Your knees ache more with every step. But then, way out in the distance, you see the finish line. The thought of crossing that finish line is the only thing that’s kept you running. And then, with the last of your strength, you cross that finish line. You collapse in victory. You did it. It took everything you had but you made it.

Now imagine, as you lay there, lungs on fire, lips cracked from miles of hard breathing, imagine some asshole standing over you and saying, “What the fuck are you doing boy!?! Race ain’t over. Race will NEVER be fucking over. Run all you want, you’ll never finish and you’ll NEVER win.”

I imagine, THAT is how the 1960s felt to many black Americans. They won, then asked to see what was behind Door Number Three - and it turned out to be just a big sign that said, “More of the Fucking Same.”

Black Americans continued to suffer wide spread discrimination, economic and social inequality after the passage of that legislation. Many Black Americans had moved to the cities of the North and West for jobs in the 40s and 50s only to find those jobs relocate to the suburbs.

Many black populations ended up concentrated in poor urban neighborhoods - “ghettos,” full of rampant unemployment, substandard housing, and widespread social problems such as drug use and crime. Black Americans saw themselves continuing to be excluded from political representation, universities, and all sorts of employment areas and social stratas such as the middle class.

And I know you can point to examples of black Americans who grew up in the ghettos, went to college, and became doctors, lawyers, accountants, scientists, professors, and more who made a good livings and pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, so to speak.

Yes, those examples are real!

BUT - harder to pull yourself up by your bootstraps most of the damn country is stomping on your fucking boots.

I’ve experience racism as a white man in small ways. I’ve personally not been considered for various comedy festivals in the past because they “already have enough white dudes.” I’ve actually had that said to me. I’ve had TV concepts I wanted to pitch get rejected before even being looked at because the network was lookin for more diversity in programming, which is code for “anything but more straight white dudes.” That for sure is racial discrimination. And it pissed me off every time it happened. But there was always another job waiting for me if I wanted to work hard enough for it.

What I have never experienced is no one considering me for a job because of a skin color. I haven’t experienced an entire community taking one look at me, and saying, “Nope! Next!”

I’ve never lived in constant fear of incarceration because racist police officers patrolled my neighborhood hoping to beat me or someone who looks like me with a club.

I only bring this all up to illustrate that life was harder for black Americans than white Americans in the mid-1960s. 5. Malcom X: And then along comes Malcom X. Without Malcom X, there likely is no Black Panthers. The Panthers were heavily influenced by the teachings of Malcom X - a man who will be a subject of a future Suck I’m sure.

Malcom X - born as Malcom Little - was a preacher’s son. His father was also an early black nationalist leader named Marcus Garvey who died after being hit by a street car, possibly murdered by white supremacists strongly opposed to his pro-black messages.

His death left Malcom’s family with such little income that Malcom’s mother cooked dandelion greens she’d picked on the street to feed her kids at one point. That’s when you know you were poor. I’ll joke about growing up poor and eating a lot of hamburger helper. But someone like Malcom would say, “You got to eat meat? You weren’t fucking poor if you ate burger every week. Dandelion broth. Made from Dandelions picked from cracks in the sidewalk - that’s poor!”

Malcom’s mother was then committed to an insane asylum when he was 14. I imagine it’s hard not to lose your fucking mind when you’re making your kids dandelion broth.

Malcom ended up getting raised the last few years of his childhood in foster homes and by other family members. After serving a seven year prison stint for robbery he committed at age 21, he became a prominent black nationalist leader and minister for the Nation of Islam.

And Malcom X came to be nationally known, initially, because of an incident of police brutality in NYC. Police brutality, more than any other issue, would lead to the formation of the Black Panthers.

On April 26, in 1957, Hinton Johnson - a nation of Islam member, and two other passersby — also Nation of Islam members — witnessed police officers beating a black man with nightsticks.

When Johnson shouted, "You're not in Alabama ... this is New York!” and tried to help the man, one of the officers turned on him and beat the shit out of him with his club. Beat him within an inch of his life. Johnson suffered brain contusions and subdural hemorrhaging.

And then, after the beating, all four black men were arrested.

Someone who witnessed the event found and told Malcolm X and he and a small group of black Muslims went to the police station and demanded to see Johnson.

Police initially lied and told him that Johnson wasn’t even being held. But then, when a crowd of other African Americans hearing about the beating and gathering outside the station grew to about five hundred people, they allowed Malcolm X to speak with Johnson. Once Malcolm X saw what had been done to Johnson he insisted on an ambulance taking him to Harlem Hospital.

Johnson's injuries were treated and by the time he was returned to the police station, some FOUR THOUSAND people had now gathered outside the station. An angry black mob had formed. And white authorities were getting nervous. Shit was tense.

Inside the station, Malcolm X and an attorney made bail arrangements for two of the Muslims. Johnson was not bailed, but police said he could not go back to the hospital until his arraignment the following day.

Malcolm X hadn’t won the war but he’d won a battle with the officers that day.

He stepped outside the station house, and motioned for the crowd to be quiet.

And then he farted.

Just one time.

Loudly.

Powerfully.

Triumphantly.

It was the signal the crowd had waited for and they stormed the station.

In the end, 50 rioters and 35 police officers died. An additional 65 officers and 172 rioters were wounded. Four structures, including the precinct, were burned to the ground in the the clash that followed that fateful fart.

That riot is the origin of the term “Bronx Cheer.” That’s right. The Bronx Cheer can be traced back to Malcom X in 1957.

That moment also came to be known as”The Fart Heard ‘Round the World.”

Of course that’s not true! If Malcom X farted that day, no one wrote about it. And it’s not relevant to the story.

What really happened is that Malcom X came outside and gave a hand signal to the crowd, and the crowd dispersed.

One police officer would later say: "No one man should have that much power." Within a month the New York City Police Department arranged to keep Malcolm X under surveillance. Tensions between the police and the black community, in New York and around the country, were growing.

It was issues like this that pushed Malcom X to hate not only police officers, but, basically, white people in general. He started pushing an agenda, via the Nation of Islam, that white people were “devils”, that blacks were superior to whites, and that the demise of the white race was imminent. He was critical of the civil rights movement, even labeling Dr. King Jr. a “chump” and he called his 1963 March on Washington a “the farce on Washington.”

Do I like these messages? Fuuuuuuuuck no. Of course not.

I don’t like racism in any form. Don’t like it when it’s white against black. And don’t like it when it’s black on white.

But while I don’t condone Malcom X’s racist rhetoric, I do have more sympathy for him than I do some KKK leader, for example, because Malcom’s rage came from being a member of a race that truly was continually oppressed and victimized by the race that was in political and cultural power in the nation he was born and raised in.

It was this same rage that also created the Black Panthers. It was the issue of police brutality that also led to the creation of the Black Panthers.

Law enforcement Timesuckers, you know I love you, right? You know I think the overwhelming majority are great Goddamn citizens. You know how much respect I have for putting your lives on the line to keep the public safe.

And I’m guessing you also know that some of your coworkers, or at least some of your professional predecessors, either are or have been sadistic racist fucks. Some people crave a position of authority to serve and protect. That makes sense.

It also makes sense that some crave a position of authority because they want to exert power over others. They want power to abuse it. The world has always had those meatsacks. Always will. a) Police Brutality towards African Americans in the 1960s (and perhaps earlier):

Malcom X and the the Black Panthers after him weren’t just talking out their asses when they complained about police brutality. And that wasn’t a callback to my silly fart joke either.

It’s hard to find stats specifically on incidents of police brutality in the 1950s and 1960s that compare police violence towards blacks against violence towards whites, but here’s some info I did find that at least relates to a pervasive culture of prejudice that no job sector, including law enforcement, was immune to.

In 1929, the Illinois Association for Criminal Justice published the Illinois Crime Survey. Conducted between 1927 and 1928, the survey sought to analyze causes of high crime rates in Chicago and Cook County, especially among criminals associated with Al Capone. But the survey also provided data on police activity—although African-Americans made up just five percent of the area's population at that time, they constituted 30 percent of the victims of police killings, the survey revealed.

You don’t get a number like that without a LOT of racism. CLEARLY, the police at that time were far more likely to kill you if you were black than if you were white.

Using 2015 data, racial minorities made up about 37.4 percent of the general population in the US and 46.6 percent of armed and unarmed victims killed by police, but they made up 62.7 percent of unarmed people killed by police.

An analysis of FBI data found that black people accounted for 31 percent of police killing victims in 2012, even though they made up just 13 percent of the US population. Although the data is incomplete because it’s based on voluntary reports from police agencies around the country, it highlights the vast disparities in how SOME police were still using force.

A 2011-2014 study by a University of California, Davis professor found “evidence of a significant bias in the killing of unarmed black Americans relative to unarmed white Americans, in that the probability of being black, unarmed, and shot by police is about 3.49 times the probability of being white, unarmed, and shot by police on average.”

A 2010 New York Governor’s Task Force study examining police-on-police shootings found even black and Latino police officers face a greater risk of being killed by police. In cases of mistaken identity, 9 out of the 10 off-duty officers killed by other officers in the United States since 1982 were black or Latino.

Nine out of ten. Again, clearly when white people say, “Don’t shoot,” they’re more likely to be listened to than black people.

A 2013-2014 Stanford study of police practices in Oakland, California, where the Black Panthers would really get going as a movement, found that officers were disproportionally handcuffing blacks. 2,890 African Americans were handcuffed but not arrested in a 13-month period, while only 193 whites were cuffed. When Oakland officers pulled over a vehicle but didn’t arrest anyone, 72 white people were handcuffed, while 1,466 African Americans were restrained.

That’s an astronomical disparity.

And if racial profiling is still occurring now, which the stats consistently show IS happening, it’s safe to assume shit was WAY worse in the 1950s and 1960s. SO MUCH worse in the days before social media, Youtube, and everyone having a video camera on their phone. Martin Luther King, Jr wasn’t leading marches and leading sit-ins because everything was fine and dandy. Malcom X wasn’t talking about white devils because of the consistent love and respect coming his way from whites.

And then, in 1965, the year before our timeline was founded, two major incidents led to the formation of the Black Panther Party. The assassination of Malcom X in February, and the Watts Riots in August.

On the evening of Wednesday, August 11, 1965, 21-year-old Marquette Frye, an African-American man driving his mother's 1955 Buick, was pulled over by California Highway Patrol motorcycle officer Lee Minikus for alleged reckless driving in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. After administering a field sobriety test, Minikus placed Frye under arrest and radioed for his vehicle to be impounded. Marquette's brother, Ronald, a passenger in the vehicle, walked to their house nearby, bringing their mother, Rena Price, back with him to the scene of the arrest.

When Rena Price arrived on the scene she scolded Frye about drinking and driving, as he recalled in a 1985 interview with the Orlando Sentinel. And then the the situation quickly escalated: someone shoved Price, Frye was struck, Price jumped an officer, and another officer pulled out a shotgun.

And shit got crazy.

Backup police officers attempted to arrest Frye by using physical force to subdue him. After community members reported that police had roughed up Frye and kicked a pregnant woman, angry mobs quickly formed. As the situation intensified, growing crowds of local residents watching the exchange began yelling and throwing objects at the police officers. They’d had enough. And a riot broke out.

Police came to the scene to break up the crowd several times that night, but were attacked when people threw rocks and chunks of concrete. A 46-square-mile (119 square kilometer) swath of Los Angeles was transformed into an active combat zone during the ensuing six days

Nearly 4,000 members of the California Army National Guard would end up getting called in to suppress rioting that resulted in 34 deaths, 272 buildings damaged or burned, 192 business and homes looted, and 267 businesses completely destroyed. Overall, $40 million dollars in damage occurred. $320 million in 2018 dollars.

And while the riots ended - the feelings of rage consuming many black Americans did not.

Black youth are hearing Malcom X tell them that if white America won’t leave them alone then they’ll just have to burn the nation to the fucking ground and rebuild it.

Malcolm X adamantly believed in bearing arms. He wasn’t down with Dr. King’s let’s hold hands and pray about this shit. He wanted a revolution.

On April 3rd, 1964, he’d given a speech in which he encouraged African Americans to use their right to vote and threatened the government with an armed response if African Americans did not receive full voting equality. In the speech he stated, “it’s either the ballot or the bullet,” a slogan that would later be adopted by the Black Panthers.

In his ‘Message to Grassroots’, speech delivered in 1963, Malcolm X explained that armed self-defense among African Americans was not only necessary but also morally justifiable, citing the American Revolution, French Revolution and Russian Revolution, which he claimed all involved huge loss of life and outlined a belief that a revolution which doesn’t involve bloodshed was impossible.

He said:

“Look at the American Revolution in 1776. That revolution was for what? For land. Why did they want land? Independence. How was it carried out? Bloodshed. ... The French Revolution —what was it based on? The landless against the landlord. What was it for? Land. How did they get it? Bloodshed. Was no love lost, was no compromise, was no negotiation.... The Russian Revolution—what was it based on? Land, the landless against the landlord. How did they bring it about? Bloodshed. You haven't got a revolution that doesn't involve bloodshed. ... As long as the white man sent you to Korea, you bled. He sent you to Germany, you bled. He sent you to the South Pacific to fight the Japanese, you bled ... but when it comes to seeing your own churches being bombed and little Black girls murdered, you haven't got any blood... How are you going to be nonviolent in Mississippi, as violent as you were in Korea?

If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country.”

Lot of military references in this talk. Opposition to the growing conflict in Vietnam also led to the formation of the Black Panthers.

Even before the US really escalated the Vietnam conflict, young American men were being drafted. Between 1954-1964, from the end of the Korean War until the main escalation in Vietnam, the “peacetime” draft inducted more than 1.4 million American men, an average of more than 120,000 per year.

Many Panther leaders would preach a message of: “Why should we fight and die for a nation that doesn’t fight for us? A nation whose police profile, beat, and kill us. A nation that forces many of us to live in ghettos where jobs are scarce, where the schools our children go to are broken down and dangerous. Where we can’t make enough money to properly feed our children. Where our children in addition to not having proper nutritional and educational access, also don’t have the proper access to hope for a better life.”

NOW that the context has been laid down and backed up with some numbers - Numbers never gathered from Wackadoodle dot This Will Trick White-y - now let us jump on into the Panthers with today’s Timesuck Timeline.

After a word from today’s sponsor.

B. Fake Sponsor. A-Hole Air Banjo Academy: Timesuck is brought to you once again by the A-Hole Air Banjo’s latest course, Banjo Power - Plucking It To the Man. You don’t ALWAYS have to grab the air guitar when you’re laying down some bomb tracks to fuel a revolution.

Rage Against the Machine? Built for Air Banjo.

[Killing in the Name of Banjo] “Killing in the Name of! Some of those who work forces, are the same who burn crosses.

Or how about some Aretha Franklin Respect Banjo backup to get you in the mood to take shit from no-one? (play) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FOUqQt3Kg0

Okay I’m done. I promise. Sorry. I needed that. This Suck is JUST SO HEAVY. Had to lighten it up with some sweet, sweet banjo.

C. Midroll: Timesuck is actually brought to you by Leesa! Maybe people would’ve been nicer to each other back in the 50s and 60s, if they slept better. I get grouchy when I don’t get enough sleep.

And now, the only reason I don’t get good sleep is because sometimes I don’t go to sleep when I should. When I do get sleep, it’s great, because it’s on a Leesa mattress!

A quality night’s sleep helps you recover from distractions faster, prevents burnout, make better decisions, improve your memory, make fewer mistakes. It’s not marketing, it’s science.

More sleep also helps you be less of a dick. That’s not marketing or science - that’s just my opinion - but I believe it to be true. So don’t be a dick - sleep on a Leesa.

If any Leesa execs hear that and want to make it the new Leesa slogan, I sign away by rights to use it.

Leesa builds a great mattress and they’re a great company. Through their One-Ten program, they donate one mattress for every ten they sell--that's more than 32,000 mattresses donated through over 1,000 nonprofits and counting. And the all-foam Leesa mattress is new and improved, featuring cooling LSA200 foam for enhanced pressure relief for side sleepers. Just yesterday, I was snuggled up on my Leesa with my wife Lynze, Queen of the Suck, and Ginger Belle and Penny Pooper. And, I have to say, the dogs seem to love it. They refuse to move off of the bed. It’s the only time either one of those little furry assholes have actually growled at me. I get it! They love Leesa too. And I don’t get up and do anything about it because I’m too comfortable. I’m too snugged up.

So don’t miss Leesa’s Presidents Day Sale. This is a new, kick ass Leesa deal! Get 15% off any mattress for a limited time at leesa.com/TIMESUCK when you use promo code TIMESUCK That’s L-E-E-S-A dot com slash TIMESUCK, promo code TIMESUCK

Link in the episode description, Leesa button in the Timesuck App, Black Panther Timeline right now.

PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE INTRO

III.Timesuck Timeline

1. October 22, 1966: On October 22, 1966, Oakland community organizer Bobby Seale and ex-con turned law student Huey Newton formed the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, a revolutionary political organization, on Seale’s 30th birthday. Huey Newton was only twenty-four.

Originally, there were just six members. Elbert "Big Man" Howard, Huey Newton - the Defense Minister, Sherman Forte, Bobby Seale the Chairman, Reggie Forte and Little Bobby Hutton - the Treasurer.

The concept of a Black Panther Party didn’t originate in Oakland it’s just where it took hold. A group similar in mission statement but different in name that just barely preceded the Panthers was the SNCC - Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee - that formed in Lowndes County, Alabama, in early 1966.

The earliest organization actually called the “Black Panther Party” started in April of 1966 - the New York Black Panther Party - but it was almost immediately infiltrated and placed under law enforcement surveillance and totally dissolved within a year. Actually, many Panther organizations formed around the country in 1966. But none really thrived like the Oakland chapter did.

a) Huey Newton: Huey Newton was born in Monroe, Louisiana to an impoverished family of sharecroppers. His family moved to Oakland in 1945, when he was three years old.

As a teenager, he was arrested several times for criminal offenses, including gun possession and vandalism at age fourteen. Growing up in Oakland, Newton stated that he was "made to feel ashamed of being black."

Years later, in his autobiography, Revolutionary Suicide, he wrote, “During those long years in Oakland public schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more or to question or to explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process nearly killed my urge to inquire.”

If only Huey had had the Cult of the Curious to turn to! Hail Nimrod!

Huey graduated from Oakland Technical High School in 1959 despite not knowing how to read. Sounds like that high school was even easier than Salmon River High School, the place I graduated from in Riggins, Idaho. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of my former classmates were illiterate.

Despite being illiterate, Newton was no dummy. He taught himself how to read before attending Merritt College in Oakland and then got into the San Francisco School of Law, where he met Bobby Seale.

Years after the dissolution of the Panthers, in 1980, he’d receive a PhD in social philosophy from the University of California at Santa Cruz: his dissertation was titled “War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America.” b) Bobby Seale: Robert “Bobby” Seale was born in Liberty, Texas. Son of a carpenter and a homemaker. When he was eight his family moved to Oakland.

Seale went to Berkley high school, dropped out and joined the U.S. Air Force. He was dishonorably discharged a few years later for for fighting with a commanding officer.

After leaving the Air Force, he worked as a sheet metal mechanic for various aerospace plants while studying for his high school diploma at night. Another guy who was no dummy. He’d later say, "I worked in every major aircraft plant and aircraft corporation, even those with government contracts. I was a top-flight sheet-metal mechanic". After earning his high school diploma, Seale attended Merritt Community College where he studied engineering and politics until 1962.

He also first heard Malcolm X speak in 1962. He was inspired and he joined the Afro-American Association (AAA), a group on the campus devoted to advocating Black separatism and lost interest in engineering.

Through the AAA group, Seale met Huey Newton.

Every time I say Huey’s name, by the way, I immediately think of Huey Lewis and the News.

“I want a new drug… …one that won't make me sick

One that won't make me crash my car… …Or make me feel three feet thick.”

In June of 1966, Seale began working at the North Oakland Neighborhood Anti-Poverty Center in their summer youth program, teaching Black American History and an ethic of responsibility towards other black people living in your black community. He and Newton met Bobby Hutton, one of the original six.

Seale would describ the Panthers as "an organization that represents black people and many white radicals relate to this and understand that the Black Panther Party is a righteous revolutionary front against this racist, decadent, capitalistic system."

In addition to being influenced by the teachings of Malcom X, who had once declared himself as a communist in a letter to President Truman opposing US involvement in the Korean War, the Black Panthers were also heavily influenced by communist and socialist teachings. The FBI would declare them a communist organization.

Like Malcolm X, the Panthers were influenced by the philosophies of Fidel Castro, Karl Marx, and others - they believed in a link between racism and the capitalist system.

Huey Newton, in particular, identified as a Marxist-Leninist. Lenin being, of course, the Russian revolutionary who served as the head of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 who was heavily influenced by Pootie and Juju. Put it in your lunch box, Shirley! Too little, too diddle, Pootie! Learned about all that in the Stalin Suck.

Despite sharing similarities with other African American cultural nationalist organizations, such as the Universal Negro Improvement Association and Malcom X’s Nation of Islam, to which the Panthers were commonly compared, the Panthers immediately sought to set themselves apart from these other groups.

Although all of these black-centric groups shared certain philosophical positions and tactical features, the Black Panther Party differed on a number of basic points. For example, whereas African American cultural nationalists generally regarded all white people as oppressors - the whole “White Devil” talk - the Black Panther Party distinguished between racist and non-racist whites and allied themselves with progressive members of the latter group.

Watch videos of old Black Panther demonstrations, and you typically see a fair amount of white supporters.

Also, whereas other black nationalists generally viewed ALL African Americans as oppressed, the Black Panther Party believed that black capitalists and black elites could and typically did exploit and oppress other black people, particularly the working class.

The Black Panthers were also more militant than other black nationalist groups. Look up pictures and they often dressed and carried themselves as soldiers in a revolution. Armed soldiers. c) Ten Point Program: To really understand what the Panthers were about, you have to get familia with their ten point program, a mission statement written by Huey Newton shortly before the group even officially formed, on October 15th, 1966:

(1) We Want Freedom. We Want Power To Determine

The Destiny Of Our Black Community.We believe that Black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

(2) We Want Full Employment For Our People. We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the White American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

I understand the desire to have more equality here, I really do, but - not through communism. Nope.

I get that communism was new and exciting to numerous young, liberals in the the 1960s. Those who have survived until today though, I’m guessing the overwhelming majority have a very different opinion of communism now. Capitalism has its evils, but its proven to provide a far better quality of life then communism. Look at the human rights violations of North Korea, communist Russia, Cuba, China, etc.

Innovative, entrepreneurial capitalism fuels new technology that increases the standard of living. You don’t see North Korea and Cuba kicking out the latest, greatest computers, automobiles, medical technology, etc.

And I don’t have time in this Suck to go into great detail about the differences between communism and capitalism here to properly illustrate how much better capitalism is. But communism, time and time again, has failed to improve the human condition. Fuck communism. Bojangles growls every time he hears that word.

If this country ever shifts towards actual communism, I shit you not I will bounce the fuck out. I’m off to any capitalist nation that’ll have me at that point. I don’t mind some socialism - we have that now. It’s called Medicaid and Social Security. But communism? Nope.

I do understand though, when it seems like you and your family and friends never get to be the factory owners, fuck yeah - let’s take that shit and give it to the people. Very Rage Against the Machine.

(Killing in the name of Air Banjo)

Anyways, I’ll get back to their ten point program now.

(3) We Want An End To The Robbery

By The Capitalists Of Our Black Community. We believe that this racist government has robbed us, and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules were promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over fifty million Black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.

Restitution. I’ve often heard of this forty acres and two mules promise, but never looked into it. So glad this Suck gave me an excuse to do so!

(a) FORTY ACRES AND A MULE: Did the US government promise to give forty acres and a mule to freed slaves following the Civil War?

No. No it did not actually. Hear me out!

This notion does have a real historical origin.

When a Union Army led by General William Tecumseh Sherman marched through Georgia in late 1864, thousands of newly freed blacks followed along. Until the arrival of federal troops, they had been slaves on plantations in the region.

Sherman's Army took the city of Savannah just before Christmas 1864. While in Savannah, Sherman attended a meeting organized in January 1865 by Edwin Stanton, President Lincoln's secretary of war. A number of local black ministers, most of whom had lived as slaves, expressed the desires of the local black population.

According to a letter General Sherman wrote a year later, Secretary Stanton concluded that if given land, the freed slaves could "take care of themselves." And as land belonging to those who rose up in rebellion against the federal government had already been declared "abandoned" by an act of Congress, there was land to distribute.

Following the meeting, Sherman drafted an order, which was officially designated as Special Field Orders, No. 15.

In this document, dated January 16, 1865, Sherman ordered that the abandoned rice plantations from the sea to 30 miles inland would be "reserved and set apart for the settlement" of the freed slaves in the region.

So - land was promised to freed slaves. HOWEVER, it was promised by a General in the Army, not by a bill that passed through Congress and the Senate and that was then signed into law by the President.

According to Sherman's order, "each family shall have a plot of not more than 40 acres of tillable ground." At the time, it was generally accepted that 40 acres of land was the optimal size for a family farm.

General Rufus Saxton was put in charge of administering the land along the Georgia coast. While Sherman's order stated "each family shall have a plot of not more than 40 acres of tillable ground," there was no specific mention of farm animals.

General Saxton, however, did apparently provide surplus U.S. Army mules to some of the families granted land under Sherman's order which is where the mule part of this story comes into play.

And a lot of people heard about Sherman’s order because it got a lot of press. The New York Times, on January 29, 1865, printed the entire text on the front page, under the headline "General Sherman's Order Providing Homes for the Freed Negroes."

Three months after Sherman issued his Field Orders, No. 15, the U.S. Congress created the Freedmen's Bureau for the purpose of ensuring the welfare of millions of slaves being freed by the war. We talked about that organization in the KKK Suck.

One initial task of the Freedmen's Bureau was the management of lands confiscated from those who had rebelled against the United States. The intent of Congress, led by the Radical Republicans, was to break up the plantations and redistribute the land so former slaves could have their own small farms.

But then Lincoln was killed. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

Andrew Johnson became president in April 1865 and he was kind of douche. Douche Johnson! And Johnson, on May 28, 1865, issued a proclamation of pardon and amnesty to citizens in the South who would take an oath of allegiance.

As part of the pardon process, lands confiscated during the war would be returned to white landowners. So while the Radical Republicans had fully intended for there to be a massive redistribution of land from former slave owners to former slaves under Reconstruction, Johnson's policy fucked that all up.

Approximately 40,000 former slaves received grants of land under Sherman's order. And then that land was taken away from them by Andrew Johnson.

So, while there was no LAW or Presidential promise of 40 acres and a mule, there was an attempt at restitution that was then taken away.

Do I think some form of restitution should be given to the descendants of slaves?

Yes. But I don’t know what that should look like

It’s so complicated. It would be easy to say, “Fuck yeah! Land and money or both - that’s what’s fair! Make it happen!”

But, does the US government have the ability to pay out that much money? And, if the descendants of slaves should get money, what about American Indians? What should they get? Who pays for all this now? Taxpayers? Taxpayers whose ancestors weren’t even in this country prior to 1865? Is that fair? Aren’t there other groups of Americans who aren’t African American also trapped in cycles of multi-generational socioeconomic disadvantages? Who else should be given some money?

Tricky issue! Which is why it should be looked into and not just ignored.

Every year between 1989 and 2017, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) introduced the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act.

As the name indicates, H.R. 40 did not require reparations.

It simply called for comprehensive research into the nature and financial impact of African enslavement as well as the ills inflicted on black people during the Jim Crow era. Only then can remedies be considered or suggested.

And every year, the bill stalled. Every single year for 19 years. That’s fucking embarrassing.

What about targeted education and job training programs for the descendants of slaves whose families have been trapped in a cycle of poverty for over 150 years. Can’t we at least look into that?

Shame on us for never even considering it.

Back to the points now.

(4) “We Want Decent Housing Fit For The Shelter Of Human Beings.We believe that if the White Landlords will not give decent housing to our Black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.”

Again. Don’t love the communist angle BUT decent and affordable housing should absolutely be made available to every hard working American regardless of Meatsack Melatonin levels.

(5) We Want Education For Our People That Exposes The True Nature Of This Decadent American Society. We Want Education That Teaches Us Our True History And Our Role In The Present-Day Society. We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.

Absolutely! Couldn’t agree more. The curriculum taught to kids in school seems to be way more diverse now than it was when I was a kid based on what I’ve seen from Kyler and Monroe. So things have moved in a good direction. Yip, yip, yaw!

When I was a kid I didn’t learn shit in school about Africa or the Middle East or anything else other than information filtered through a Judeo-Christian, Western European lens.

The best way to be racist and prejudiced is to only look at the world through one cultural and racial point of view.

Travel to enough other nations or read enough foreign literature and you WILL realize, if you keep an open mind, that we are ALL involved in the same meat sack struggle.

Couldn’t agree with you more here, Huey! (6) We Want All Black Men To Be Exempt From Military Service.We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like Black people, are being victimized by the White racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.

Uhhhhhhh… I understand the logic here, but, maybe this one shouldn’t of been written down. This reads as a declaration war, and you were fighting a nation with too many soldiers and weapons for you to ever hope to defeat them. Maybe have number six be discussed secretly and never written if you don’t want to get the FBI’s attention.

If I ever want to start a revolution, it’s gonna be fun like Fight Club. The first rule of overthrowing the government is to never talk about overthrowing the government. Which I do realize creates its own organizational problems.

(7) We Want An Immediate End To Police Brutality And Murder Of Black People.We believe we can end police brutality in our Black community by organizing Black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our Black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all Black people should arm themselves for self- defense.

Absolutely agree. The main point of having an armed citizenry is to prevent your government from becoming tyrannical and abusing you.

I got a lot of emails after my gun control suck letting me know that despite our military having superior weaponry, an armed populace still absolutely helps keep our government in check.

(8) We Want Freedom For All Black Men Held In Federal, State, County And City Prisons And Jails. We believe that all Black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.

Ummmmm… may want to change the wording on this one a bit. How about, “We believe that all black inmates should have their cases reviewed.”

While many black inmates have been wrongly incarcerated, not ALL black inmates are in jail because they are a victim of a racist judicial system. Many are in jail because, you know, they broke laws.

But again - I understand where this is coming from!

(9) We Want All Black People to Be Able to Take Any and All Property from the Descendants of Slave Owners Effective Now. This includes physical property, financial property, intellectual property, and sexual property. Your bodies will be ours you white devil motherfuckers.

No! That’s not rule number nine. Whooa. Easy. Whoaa. Uh uh. That’s way too much. Can’t launch a revolution when you’re that aggresie right off the rip.

No. Number nine said:

We Want All Black People When Brought To Trial To Be Tried In Court By A Jury Of Their Peer Group Or People From Their Black Communities, As Defined By The Constitution Of The United States.

We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that Black people will receive fair trials. The Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the Black community from which the Black defendant came. We have been, and are being, tried by all-White juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the Black community.

Beautiful. Love this one.

All white juries deciding black trials, especially during the 1960s when things were that much more racist than they are now? That’s super fucked up. That shouldn’t of happened.

(10)We Want Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice And Peace.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect of the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”

I love this too. I mean, they never had a chance to overthrow the US government, but, I love the spirit of this message. I love America, and loving it should include wanting to destroy it if it ever loses it way.

The only reason America was started was to be able to pursue the American dream. Be able to work your way into owning a home, sending your kids to college, and chasing a nice retirement for yourself and an inheritance for future generations. And for Huey and people living in his neighborhood, this was damn near impossible.

If I was him, I would’ve felt the same rage. I would’ve probably fucking hated most white people. I would’ve wanted to burn this country to the fucking ground.

And if we ever become as racist and hateful as we used to be, if we ever stop evolving towards more and more acceptance for people of different sexual preferences, skin colors, cultural affiliations, religious or non-religious belief systems, gender identities, etc - if become more and more intolerant as opposed to tolerant, than I hope we do burn this motherfucker to the ground and start over.

Let’s not make America great again. Let’s make it great for everyone for the first time ever.

It’s been great before - but only selectively. Never for everyone.

Wasn’t great for women when workplace sexual harassment and date rape was basically a cultural norm. Wasn’t great for homosexuals when they were given the Matthew Shepahrd treatment time and time again. Wasn’t great for Asians when they were being run out of fucking towns and thrown into shallow graves while they built our railroads and worked our mines.

And it sure as fuck wasn’t great for inner city black Americans when they were so scared of police that they felt the need to arm themselves and follow the police.

And if you want to read politics into that rant - that’s on you!

If wanting equality for everyone who isn’t actively hurting others with their choices isn’t part of your moral compass, you’re no member of the Cult of the Curious. You’re not on Team Meatsack. Never were. Get in Nimrod’s butthole where you belong you ignorant motherfucker.

Back to the show now. Let’s talk about following the police. After a word from today’s final sponsor.

2. GREAT COURSES MIDROLL:

Great Courses Mid-roll: Before we discuss other areas outside of Europe ravaged by the Black Death, other historical plague pandemics, insane plague medical treatments and more, a word from today’s final sponsor.

Today’s Timesuck is brought to you by The Great Courses Plus!

I’m on a lifelong quest to learn as much as I can about the past and the world around me. Hail Nimrod! Hail Lucifina! Praise Bojangles! Get out of here Chikatilo! And The Great Courses Plus has been an invaluable tool to assist me on this journey.

With The Great Courses Plus, you get unlimited access to in- depth, insightful information on virtually any topic. This streaming service has thousands of lectures to explore on topics like World History, Archaeology, Astronomy, Art & Literature, even cooking or a learning new language.

And they’re all presented by top-notch experts who are so passionate about what they teach. You can watch or listen entirely on your schedule, from anywhere. If you heard last week’s suck, you know that I’ve been enjoying the course The History of Ancient Egypt.

Egyptologist Bob Brier examines the three periods of Ancient Egypt, including Sneferu [sNEF-er-oo] and the first Pyramids, the mysterious reign of Queen Hatshepsut [hat-shep-soot], the murder of King Tut, even how to read hieroglyphs.

Lecture 44 is still my favorite. The Middle Ptolemies - The Decline. Bob talks about one of the Ptolemy rulers fleeing to Cyprus when the people revolted against him. His wife stays behind to rule in his place and this pisses him off so he lets her know he’s not happy by having their son killed and dismembered and the scattered parts of their son sent to her on her birthday. Surprise!!!

That’s so messed up it might even make Ed Kemper say, “Father. Father you’ve gone too far. You really need to get your zapples under control.”

So learn more about the Ptolemies and so much more.

To help get you started, The Great Courses Plus is offering a FREE TRIAL with unlimited access to learn about anything! To get this great offer, sign up through TheGreatCoursesPlus.com/ TIMESUCK

That’s The-Great-Courses-PLUS – dot – com – slash – TIMESUCK

Link in the episode description. Or push the Great Courses button in the Timesuck app. Push it!

Now back to the first organized activities of the Black Panthers.

3. Late 1966: In late 1966, within a few months of organizing, the Black Panther party began organizing “police” patrols. Started doing what they called, “Cop watching.”

Open carry laws of the 1960s allowed citizens to openly carry loaded weapons, in hand, wherever they pleased. You could walk right into Macy’s with a loaded shotgun or semi-automatic military style rifle. Safety off.

Gotta say, I’m a gun owner, and I am SO GLAD you can’t just walk into a bar now with a loaded rifle in hand. "Carrying" a firearm directly in your hands now, particularly in a firing position or combat stance, is known as "brandishing" a firearm. And that’s a crime even where I live in Idaho, which is a very permissive open carry state.

The current law in Idaho, Section 18, 3303, reads:

“EXHIBITION OR USE OF DEADLY WEAPON. Every person who, not in necessary self-defense, in the presence of two (2) or more persons, draws or exhibits any deadly weapon in a rude, angry and threatening manner, or who, in any manner, unlawfully uses the same, in any fight or quarrel, is guilty of a misdemeanor.”

That’s pretty crazy that, if I interpret this law correctly, I could pull out a loaded gun at Denny’s here in Couer d’Alene, Idaho, point it at the ceiling, wave it around and yell, “I’m really fucking tired of waiting for my pancakes! FUCK!!! Coffee water is COLD! Warm up my coffee water! (high voice) And get those PANCAKES!”

(waitress) “Sir, put the gun away!”

(me) “Bring me my FUCKING PANCAKES! I’ll stop waving my gun around just as soon as I can use that hand to grab tasty ass butter and syrup covered fluffy pancakes and shove into my gullet. Getting REAL HANGRY around here.”

And after all that, I just get a misdemeanor.

(judge) “Mr. Cummins, the court finds you guilty of carrying your weapon in a rude, threatening manner.”

(Me) “I don’t threaten anyone your honor!”

(Judge) “Nonetheless - it is most definitely RUDE to wave your gun around at the dinner and demand your pancakes with unnecessary profanity. The court orders you to be a two hundred dollar fine.”

Also wasn’t illegal to follow the police and carry whatever weapons they pleased, so the Black Panthers did just that. They’d follow the police while other officers followed them. They’d had enough of police brutality and were ready to protect their neighborhood, “by any means necessary” - one of the slogans they’d taken from Malcom X.

If confronted, members would cite laws that proved they’d done nothing wrong and would threaten to take court action if the police violated their constitutional rights.

The Black Panthers were HUGE gun rights advocates - they walked around rifles in hand all the time - and the aggressive means in which they wielded their right to carry would actually lead directly to California having some of the toughest gun control laws in the nation today.

How nervous does all this make you if you’re an Oakland police officer?

(Chad) “Hey Greg. They guy is doing about 70 in a 35. Aren’t we gonna pull him over?”

(Greg) “Hey Chad. See those guys in the car holding shotguns and .357s sitting a block behind us?”

(Chad) “Yeah.”

(Greg) “They’re why we’re gonna let that go.”

(Chad) “So we’re gonna let everyone get away with everything now?”

(Greg) “Hell no, Chad! As soon as we see some white dude do something, we’re gonna arrest the fuck out him.”

Further adding to tensions with local police, the Black Panthers begin casually referring to all law enforcement officers as “pigs”, chanting things, while armed, like “the Revolution has come, it’s time to pick up the gun. Off the pigs!”.

4. January 1967: In January of 1967, The BPP opens its first official headquarters in an Oakland storefront, and published the first issue of The Black Panther: Black Community News Service

5. February 1967: In February of 1967, membership numbers get a bump, when the BPP escorted Malcolm X’s widow, through the Oakland airport. The public association between Malcom’s widow and the group gives them revolutionary legitimacy.

New Black Panther recruits were required to learn how to wield, clean and shoot guns, in addition to understanding their right to carry firearms and how to communicate that to police in California.

Huey Newton put his knowledge of the law on display after he and Seale were stopped by Oakland police officers in early 1967 in a vehicle filled with weapons. When questioned about the guns Newton simply replied that the only thing he was obliged to do was give his “identification, name and address.”

At the request of the officer, Newton stepped out of the car, rifle still in tow, and refused to explain why he and the other Black Panthers were carrying their weapons.

As onlookers gathered, the police tried to disperse the crowd while Newton welcomed them. He knew that under California law, bystanders could legally view an arrest as long as they didn’t intrude. Since there were no violations for the police to charge the Black Panther members with (and a growing pack of witnesses), they were able to leave the scene without any trouble from law enforcement.

I love this. The balls on this guy!

And again - I love law enforcement officers! We need them to keep the general public safe. However, being a law enforcement officer doesn’t give anyone the right to abuse the law. The best law enforcement officers are public servants, not bullies abusing the very laws they’re sworn to uphold.

6. April 25, 1967: On April 25th, The Black Panther newspaper features the boldfaced headline “Why was Denzil Dowell Killed?” to rally action over the death of a young black man shot by police in Norther Richmond, a a small, impoverished, all-black town around fifteen miles north of Oakland.

In the early morning hours of April 1, 1967, in North Richmond, Denzil Dowell lay dead in the street. The police said that Dowell, a 22-year-old construction worker, had been killed by a single shotgun blast to the back and head; they claimed that he had been caught burglarizing a liquor store and, when ordered to halt, had failed to do so. But the coroner’s report told a different story. His body bore six bullet holes, and there was reason to believe Dowell had been shot while surrendering with his hands raised high.

His mother said, “I believe the police murdered my son.” An all- white jury found that Dowell’s death was “justifiable homicide” after just thirty minutes of deliberation. Many people in North Richmond didn’t agree. The newly formed Black Panthers rushed to meet with the Dowell family and get more details about what happened.

They started holding street-corner rallies protesting his death as an act of police brutality, confronting officials, arguing that only by taking up arms could the black community put a stop to police brutality.

One Sunday, the police came knocking on Mrs. Dowell’s door while Newton was there. When she opened the door, Newton later recalled, “a policeman pushed his way in, asking questions. I grabbed my shotgun and stepped in front of her, telling him either to produce a search warrant or leave. He stood for a minute, shocked, then ran out to his car and drove off.”

Emboldened by this confrontation, Newton and Seale planned a rally.

A few days later in the Spring of 1967, the Panthers showed up armed and in uniform and closed off the street. Black leather jackets, black berets, many with sun glasses, all with guns in hand. Looked pretty dope as fuck, I gotta say. The Panthers had no shortage of swag.

Word had spread and almost four hundred people of all ages came to the rally. Many working-class and poor black people from North Richmond showed up wanting to know how to get some measure of justice for Denzil Dowell and in turn how to protect themselves and their community from further police attacks. People lined both sides of the block. Some elderly residents brought lawn chairs to sit in while they listened. Some of the younger generation climbed on cars. Grab some popcorn and watch the show!

Several police cars arrived on the scene, but chose to keep their distance. A Contra Costa County helicopter patrolled above. According to a sheriff’s spokesman, the department took no other action because the Panthers broke no laws and, as required, displayed their weapons openly. Neighbors showed up with their own guns…. One young woman who had been sitting in her car got out and held up her M-1 for everyone to see. The Panthers passed out applications to join their party, and over three hundred people filled them out. According to FBI informant Earl Anthony, he “had never seen Black men command the respect of the people the way that Huey Newton and Bobby Seale did that day.”

Crazy that the FBI was already watching them. The FBI would become very, VERY interested in the Black Panthers.

This rally, and the actions of the Panthers in general over the past few months is scaring the shit out of the California government. Following the rally, Don Mulford quickly drafted The Mulford Act, a bill that prohibited the carrying of loaded firearms in public.

When Newton and Seale and other Panthers caught win of this new legislation being proposed, they quickly organized a protest.

7. May 2, 1967: On May 2nd, 1967, Panther Chairman Bobby Seale led a group of thirty fully-armed Black Panthers to the California state Capitol in Sacramento. Then Governor Ronald Regan happened to be there that day and the news crews that were covering him quickly shifted to interviewing and filming the Panthers.

Before entering the Capitol building, Bobby Seale read a written statement on the Capitol steps right in front of Governor Ronald Reagan: “The American people in general and the black people in particular,” Seale declared, must “take careful note of the racist California legislature aimed at keeping the black people disarmed and powerless.”

Seale and five others are arrested during this protest, but not for gun charges. The group pleads guilty to misdemeanor charges of disrupting legislation.

8. June 1967: The following months, in June and July of 1967, their were massive race riots in cities like Cleveland, Newark, Chicago and Detroit.

The city of Newark, New Jersey, erupted in violence as black residents battled police following the beating of a black taxi driver, leaving twenty-six people dead. Twenty-six!

The 1967 Detroit Riots were among the most violent and destructive riots in U.S. history. By the time the bloodshed, burning and looting ended after five days, forty-three people were dead, 342 injured, nearly 1,400 buildings had been burned and some 7,000 National Guard and U.S. Army troops had been called into service.

It all started with a raid of an illegal nightclub on 12th Street. 12th street in Detroit was a hotspot of inner-city nightlife, both legal and illegal.

At the corner of 12th St. and Clairmount, a man named William Scott operated a “blind pig” (an illegal after-hours club) on weekends out of the office of the United Community League for Civic Action, a civil rights group. The police vice squad often raided establishments like this on 12th St., and at 3:35 a.m. on Sunday morning, July 23, they moved against Scott’s club.

On that warm, humid night, Scott was hosting a party for several veterans, including two servicemen recently returned from Vietnam, and the bar’s patrons were reluctant to leave the air- conditioned club. Out in the street, a crowd began to gather as police waited for vehicles to take the eighty-five patrons away.

An hour passed before the last person was taken away, and by then about 200 onlookers lined the street. A bottle crashed into the street. The remaining police ignored it, but then more bottles were thrown, including one through the window of a patrol car. The police fled as a small riot erupted. Within an hour, thousands of people had spilled out onto the street from nearby buildings.

Looting began on 12th Street, and closed shops and businesses were ransacked. Around 6:30 a.m., the first fire broke out, and soon much of the street was ablaze. By midmorning, every policeman and fireman in Detroit was called to duty. On 12th Street, officers fought to control the unruly mob. Firemen were attacked as they tried to battle the flames. And things just got worse from there.

A phenomena called “white flight” - white middle class city residents fleeing urban centers to live in the suburbs in the 40s and 50s and 50s, reduced the tax base in formerly prosperous downtown neighborhoods, creating urban blight, poverty and racial discord for the residents who remained, who were largely impoverished racial minorities. Poor, urban, under-serviced black neighborhoods policed by almost entirely white law enforcement officers did NOT make for a good, non-violent mix.

9. July 28th, 1967: In late July of 1967, the state capital demonstration in May that had given the Panthers a tremendous amount of national exposure and increased membership levels, ultimately didn’t stop the bill from passing both the state Assembly and Senate. Ironically, the bill got the the full support of the NRA.

In addition to repealing open carry gun laws in California, Mulford made it illegal to take firearms into the Capitol. On July 28th the bill was signed into law by Governor Reagan, who later commented that he saw “no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.”

The Panthers can no longer openly and legally carry loaded weapons while they follow police. Sheeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiit. This puts a serious dent in the revolution.

10.Oct. 28, 1967: On October 28th, 1967, the Oakland Chapter of the Black Panther movement hits another snag when Panther Minister of Defense Huey Newton is involved in a shootout with Oakland police after a traffic stop. Officer John Frey is killed. Newton is shot in the abdomen. Tracked to an Oakland hospital, he is arrested and charged with first-degree murder.

And new leaders step in to keep the movement going while Newton is incarcerated.

Panther member Eldridge Cleaver, who joined the Party after being released from prison on December 2nd, began the movement to "Free Huey", a struggle the Panthers would devote a great deal of their attention to in the coming years, while the party spreads its roots further into the political spectrum, forming coalitions with various revolutionary parties.

Opinions on Eldridge Cleaver vary wildly when you watch interviews of former members.

Essentially, most seem to think he was a visionary genius, or a complete fucking maniac, or both. Cleaver was attracted to the BPP because of their focus on armed struggle.

Cleaver was an inmate of correctional institutions in California almost constantly from his junior high school days until 1966 for crimes ranging from possession of marijuana to rape to assault with intent to murder. While in prison he became a follower of the teachings of Malcom X and Karl Marx. He also wrote essays that would be collected into Soul on Ice. The essays Cleaver documented his evolution into a radical black liberationist, and they became highly influential in the black power movement. The book was and remains fairly controversial. The central premise is the trouble of "identification as a black soul which has been 'colonized'... by an oppressive white society that projects its brief, narrow vision of life as eternal truth."

In the book, Cleaver admitted to raping black girls as a "practice run" before seeking white women as prey, but claims that in jail he had come to consider those acts as inhuman.

Jesus.

Not sure you could earn that same forgiveness and be part of a social justice movement today.

“I’m sorry, did you actually just say you raped black girls as a ‘practice run’ to then later rape white women?

Yeah, your participation in the revolution is OVER effective NOW. You can go join the ‘rapists who promise not to rape anymore’ revolution.”

Along with ten other books such as Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Bonnegut, Black Boy by Richard Wright, and The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris - Soul on Ice would be part of a 1982 Supreme Court Case when a Long Island, New York school district sought to remove these books from its libraries due to them being “ "anti- American, anti-Christian, anti-Sem[i]tic, and just plain filthy.” The Supreme Court ended up with split ruling in this case.

I love the language of “just plain filthy.”

(Judge) “And why would you like these books removed from your school libraries?”

(School Board) “They’re just plain filthy your honor.”

(Judge) “Define, ‘filthy’.”

(School Board) “They’re nasty as fuck your honor. They’re like vomit and shit thrown in the same bucket, swirled around, and then dumped on top of some rotten meat and then eaten and vomited and shit back into the same bucket for someone else to then take a crack at it. Filthy, your honor. Just. Plain. FILTHY.”

Eldridge was a supporter of taking what you felt was yours through any means necessary. One quote of his was ''We shall have our manhood. We shall have it or the earth will be leveled by our attempts to gain it.''

I feel like that’s kind of a rapey quote. Might be reading into now, but, seems rapey to be that into taking “manhood.”

At one Black Power rally, Eldridge said about then California Governor Ronald Regan, and I quote “He’s a punk, a sissy, and a coward. And I challenge him to a duel. I challenge him to a duel to the death, or until he says Uncle Eldridge. And I give him his choice of weapons. He could use a gun, a knife, a baseball bat, or a marshmallow. I’ll beat him to death with a marshmallow. That’s how I feel about him.”

Not surprisingly, Regan was not a HUGE Eldridge fan around this time. When Cleaver taught a class at UC - Berkley a few years later, Regan said, ‘"If Eldridge Cleaver is allowed to teach our children, they may come home one night and slit our throats.”

Ironically, Eldridge would become super conservative years later and openly endorse Regan when Regan ran for President. He also became a Mormon in his later years, a religion that is pretty conservative. And pretty white. People can change I guess, right?

11.February, 1968: Another new member of the party to take a leadership position once Newton was behind bars was Stokely Carmichael, the former chairman of that Alabama Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and a nationally known proponent of Black Power. He becomes the party's Prime Minister in February, 1968.

And Stokely was, well, less rapey than Eldridge, and by “less” I mean not at all, but, way more racist.

He was adamantly against allowing whites into the black liberation movement at any level. He felt that whites couldn’t relate to the black experience - which I agree with - and that they would have an intimidating effect on blacks - which I can’t disagree with since I’m not black.

However, you’ve also just given a huge middle finger to any white person who wants to see your movement succeed, and since there was about nine times as many white people in America as there were black people at the time - you’ve put a big fucking nail into the coffin of your movement by doing this.

At so many points in this suck I feel so much empathy, as much as a white dude can, for this movement. It must have been so nice for young black children to see strong black role models who weren’t afraid of standing up to those who had oppressed them for generations.

BUT - whenever you go FULL Us versus Them mentality - when ALL white people become part of the problem, you lose. Just like white racists lose when they think ALL blacks are this, or ALL Mexicans are that, etc.

That’s not how humanity works. Not ALL white people were in favor of slavery even during the height of slavery.

I think about this logic in today’s polarized society. Whenever somebody has an attitude of fuck Republicans or fuck Democrats, and thinks that ALL conservatives are this way or ALL liberals are that way, they’re wrong. Just like it’s bad, lazy writing to make a villain in a movie ALL evil - cartoonishly evil - it’s bad, lazy thinking to believe certain real people are ALL bad or that they’re ALL part of the problem.

Unless again, you’re taking about people defined by negative behavior. All convicted pedophiles are bad babysitters - that’s true. That’s very, very true.

But you get what I’m saying.

12. April 4th, 1968: On April 4th, 1968, civil rights leader Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The real Reverend Doctor! Dr. King is assassinated in Memphis. Years later, the King family would hire Attorney William Francis Pepper to investigate King’s shooting, and he would present evidence from 70 witnesses and 4,000 pages of transcripts. Pepper alleges in his 2003 book, An Act of State that the evidence implicated the FBI, the CIA, the Army, the Memphis Police Department, and organized crime in the murder of King.

While the government wasn’t proven in court to be involved, there remains widespread speculation that they helped kill King or at least allowed it to happen. And many Panthers at the time believe law enforcement was involved. And they were, understandably enraged. And they decided to strike back by organizing an attack on Oakland Police Officers. Eye for an eye.

13.April 6, 1968: Two days later, on April 6th, 1968, seventeen-year- old Panther treasurer Bobby Hutton is killed by police during a violent confrontation in West Oakland. Panthers maintain that Hutton was shot while unarmed and with his arms raised to surrender.

On April 6, Cleaver and 14 other panthers led an ambush of Oakland police officers, during which two officers were wounded. Cleaver was wounded during the ambush and seventeen-year-old Black Panther member Bobby Hutton was killed. Panthers were armed with M16 rifles and shotguns.

Years later, in 1980, when Cleaver returned to the country after fleeing in the wake of this gun battle, he would state that he led the Panther group on a deliberate ambush of the police officers, provoking the shootout. He also discredited the Black Panthers, stating "we need police as heroes.” Some speculated his admission could have been a pay-off to the Alameda County justice system, whose judge had only just days earlier let Eldridge Cleaver escape prison time. Cleaver would be sentenced to community service after getting charged with three counts of assault against three Oakland police officers.

A documentary on Huey Newton, A Huey Newton Story, claims that "Bobby Hutton was shot more than twelve times after he had already surrendered and stripped down to his underwear to prove he was not armed.” 14.Sept. 8, 1968: On September 8th, 1968. A jury acquits Newton of his murder charge but convicts him of voluntary manslaughter. He’s sentenced to two to fifteen years. “Free Huey” demonstrations intensify around the nation.

15.Sept. 10, 1968: Two days later, rifle shots are fired into Black Panther national headquarters in Oakland. A poster in the front window, of Newton holding a gun while seated in an African wicker chair, is apparently the target. Two intoxicated off-duty Oakland police officers are blamed for the incident and dismissed from the force.

Obviously, there is a lot of tension between Bay Area police and the Panthers.

16.1968: Throughout the Fall of 1968, activism builds around the notion that Newton is a political prisoner. The “Free Huey” campaign leads to the opening of Black Panther chapters in more than 20 other cities. The Free Breakfast for Children program is launched at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church in Oakland.

This, to me, the The Free Breakfast for Children program is one of the coolest accomplishments of the Black Panthers.

Inspired by contemporary research about how important the role of a good breakfast was in a kid’s ability to learn - basically, you can’t pay attention in class if you’re stomach’s growling - the Panthers began to cook and serve food to the poor inner city youth of the Oakland area. The program became so popular by the end of the year, that the Panthers set up kitchens in cities across the US, feeding over 10,000 children every day before they went to school.

17.November 1968: In November of 1968, young Fred Hampton joins the movement.

Fred Hampton is my favorite Panther. Like, if the Panthers were made into action figures, I would’ve wanted a Fred Hampton figure. And the Fred Hampton figure would occasionally take the Eldridge Cleaver figure aside and whisper, “You still know that raping is SUPER fucked up, right? Like, good for you for admitting it, but, can’t happen again. Shouldn’t of happened ever, but, happens again, I gotta put you down.”

Anyway - Hampton had just turned twenty years old when he joined the movement. He was a gifted student and a gifted athlete. Dreamed of someday playing center field for the Yankees. He’d graduated high school in Maywood, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, with honors in 1966.

He was enrolled in Triton Junior College in nearby River Grove, Illinois, and studied pre-law. He and fellow Chicago-area panthers followed police, watching for brutality, using Hampton’s knowledge of the law as self-defense.

He also became active in the NAACP. He lead 500 members in a Youth Council. He was handsome, strong, charismatic. Watch some videos and you know right away he was a natural leader.

Within a year in joining the Panthers, he was able to broker a peace treaty between some of Chicago’s most powerful and violent street gangs, convincing them that continuing to kill each other would just keep them and their families entrenched in a never-ending cycle of death, poverty, and incarceration.

Even more impressive, he forged an alliance between Black Panthers and the Young Patriots Organization and the Young Lords.

The Young Patriots Organization - the YPO - where based in a poor, uptown neighborhood of Chicago known as “Hillbilly Harlem”, populated by displaced white southerners. Many YPO members were openly racist, flaunting controversial symbols associated with southern pride, such as the Confederate flag. But like blacks and Latinos, the white Young Patriots and their families experienced discrimination in Chicago. In their case, because they were poor and from the South.

The Young Lords started off as a Puerto Rican turf gang in Chicago in 1960 and had just recently evolved into a civil and human rights movement - sort of a Puerto Rican equivalent to the Black Panthers. They were opening chapters around the nation as well, and were headquartered in Chicago.

And Hampton got these two groups to align into what he called a Rainbow Coalition - a term another civil rights leader, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, would adopt. Hampton convinced these groups and members of others that the real problem in America was the oppression not of one particular minority group, but of the working class in general. And that the only chance they had to change the system and bring more economic equality into America was if they fought together instead of fighting each other.

Dude! How slick was this guy?

In the 1960s he, as a black man, got racist backwoods Hillbillies to join his cause.

(Hampton) “So what do you guys stand for?”

(Hillbilly - slight, stuttery voice) “White power!”

(Hampton) “I dig it, brother. Fighting for your own.”

(Hillbilly) “Wait. What? You like White Power?”

(Hampton) “Hell yes! White Power is a lot like Black Power, just a different shade of the SAME struggle.”

(Hillbilly) “Are you fucking with me?”

(Hampton) “White power!”

(Hillbilly) “Wait, that’s what I say. You know you’re a black fella, right?”

(Hampton) “White power! Now you say Black Power, Jethro! C’mon, I say White Power, you say what?”

(Hillbilly) “Black Power?”

(Hampton) “Fuck yeah, feels good don’t it, Jethro?”

(Hillbilly) “Yeah. I do kind of like it. Black Power! Black Power! BLACK POWER! Yip, yip, yaw! (Air Banjo Sweet Alabama)

Hampton quickly rose to become the leader of the Chicago chapter of the Panthers, teaching free political education classes every morning at 6AM, organizing a free breakfast program for school children, and much more. By mid-1969, he’d become one of the nationally known faces of the movement.

Part of what led Fred to join the movement was the arrest of who would become known as the “Chicago Eight” in the summer of 1968.

The 1968 Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago in late August to select the party's candidates for the November 1968 presidential election.

Prior to and during the convention—which took place at the International Amphitheater in Chicago’s Southside—rallies, demonstrations, marches, and attempted marches took place on the streets and in the lakefront parks, about five miles away from the convention site. These activities were primarily in protest of President Lyndon B. Johnson's policies for the Vietnam War.

Anti-war groups had petitioned the city of Chicago for permits to march five miles from the central business district (the Chicago Loop) to within sight of the convention site, to hold a number of rallies in the lakefront parks and also near the convention, and to camp in Lincoln Park. The city denied all permits, except for one afternoon rally at the old bandshell at the south end of Grant Park.

The city also enforced an 11:00 pm curfew in Lincoln Park. Confrontations with protesters ensued as the police enforced the curfew, stopped attempts to march to the International Amphitheater, and cleared crowds from the streets.

The Grant Park rally on Wednesday, August 28, 1968, was attended by about 15,000 protesters; other nearby activities involved hundreds or thousands of protesters. After the large rally outside of the venue, several thousand protesters attempted to march to the International Amphitheater, but were stopped in front of the Conrad Hilton Hotel, where the presidential candidates and their campaigns were headquartered. Police worked to push the protesters out of the street, using tear gas, verbal and physical confrontation, and police batons to beat people; protesters retaliated by throwing rocks and bottles, and damaging private commercial property. The police made scores of arrests. The television networks broadcast footage of these violent clashes, cutting away from the nominating speeches for the presidential candidates.

Over the course of five days and nights, the police made numerous arrests, in addition to using tear gas, mace, and batons on the marchers. Hundreds of police officers and protesters were injured. Dozens of journalists covering the actions were also clubbed by police or had cameras smashed and film confiscated. In the aftermath of what was later characterized as a "police riot" by the U.S. National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, a federal grand jury indicted eight demonstrators and eight police officers.

And one of those eight demonstrators indicted was Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale. Charged with Conspiracy and Inciting a Riot.

After being arrested, Bobby said, "To be a Revolutionary is to be an Enemy of the state. To be arrested for this struggle is to be a Political Prisoner."

The evidence against Seale was slim. He was a last-minute replacement for Eldridge Cleaver and had been in Chicago for only two days of the convention. During the trial, one of Seale's many vociferous protests led Judge Julius Hoffman to have him bound and gagged. And the image of this gagged black man in court became a rallying point for the black liberation movement. Bobby looked like the court had made him a slave. He was treated like an animal.

18.November 5th, 1969: On November 5th, 1969, Bobby Seale was removed from the case but was sentenced to four years in prison for 16 counts of contempt in court. Three months for each outburst.

Pretty fucked up. To get four years in prison because you’re angry about being charged with some bullshit you didn’t do.

I’m always surprised more judges and prosecutors aren’t killed. Not kidding. I’m not saying they should be, but, if I was put on trial for some bullshit I didn’t do, and the judge went extra hard on me and I was sentenced to a long term behind bars when I was innocent. MAN it would be hard not to plot the death of that judge, or that prosecutor, or even the jury members while I rotted in prison. Again, not saying it would be right to kill a judge. I am saying if judge or prosecutor ever railroads me into a guilty verdict for something I didn’t do, might try to kill you.

Just want to put that out there.

So, late 1969 doesn’t go well for Bobby Seale. It goes even worse for Fred Hampton, young star of the movement.

The qualities that made Hampton a rising star in the Panther movement also made him a huge target of the FBI.

The FBI FUCKING HATED the Black Panthers. So much. J. Edgar Hoover would’ve loved to personally execute every member for treason with his bare hands in front of a live, televised audience. He didn’t say exactly that. But that’s the feeling you get looking into it.

Check this out.

A few years later, in March of 1971, a group of anonymous activists calling themselves the “Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI” broke into a small FBI office in Pennsylvania and stole more than 1,000 FBI documents. They ended up exposing the FBI’s “CO INTEL PRO” program, a secret counterintelligence program created to, as the L.A. Times put it in 2006, “investigate and disrupt dissident political groups in the United States.”

According to these documents, Hoover had directed all of the Bureau’s offices to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit and otherwise neutralize” African-American organizations and leaders, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Nation of Islam, Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael the Black Panthers and more.

A written goal of the FBI Counter Intel program was to “prevent the rise of a black messiah” who could unify the movement. Also prevent the appeal of the Black Panther Party to black youth.

Now back to 1969 in Chicago. Specifically, December 3rd.

Hampton taught a political education course that evening at a local church, which was attended by most members of the local Panthers. Afterwards, as was typical, several Panthers went to the Monroe Street apartment to spend the night, including Hampton’s bodyguard, William O’Neal, who later admitted to being an FBI informant sent in to infiltrate Hampton’s chapter and get close to him in exchange for dropping some criminal charges against O’Neal.

O’Neal made dinner for everyone and slipped barbiturates into Hampton’s drink to sedate him for a planned FBI raid later than evening.

O'Neal left at this point, and, at about 1:30 a.m., December 4th, Hampton fell asleep mid-sentence talking to his mother on the telephone.

Although Hampton was not known to take drugs, Cook County chemist Eleanor Berman would report that she ran two separate tests which each showed evidence of barbiturates in Hampton's blood. An FBI chemist would later fail to find similar traces, but Berman stood by her findings.

Of course the FBI didn’t find shit!

Those murdering Hoover puppet fucks would later be found guilty by a US Court of illegally conspiring to destroy the Panthers and also plan the raid that would take Hampton’s life that night.

While the FBI planned the raid, they didn’t take part in it. At 4:00 a.m., a heavily armed Cook County police team arrived at the site, divided into two teams, eight for the front of the building and six for the rear. At 4:45 a.m., they stormed into the apartment. Mark Clark, sitting in the front room of the apartment with a shotgun in his lap, was on security duty. He was shot in the chest and died instantly. A single round was fired from his gun, caused by a reflexive death-convulsion after the raiding team shot him; this was the only shot the Panthers fired.

Automatic gunfire then converged at the head of the south bedroom where Hampton slept, unable to awaken as a result of the barbiturates the FBI infiltrator had slipped into his drink. He was lying on a mattress in the bedroom with his fiancée, who was nine months pregnant with their child. Two officers found him wounded in the shoulder, and fellow Black Panther Harold Bell reported that he heard the following exchange:

"That's Fred Hampton." "Is he dead?... Bring him out." "He's barely alive.” "He'll make it."

Two shots were heard, which were later found to have been fired point blank at Hampton's head. According to Johnson, one officer then said: "He's good and dead now."

The seven Panthers who survived the raid were indicted by a grand jury on charges of attempted murder, armed violence, and various other weapons charges. These charges were subsequently dropped. During the trial, the Chicago Police Department claimed that the Panthers were the first to fire shots; however, a later investigation found that the Chicago police fired between ninety and ninety-nine shots while the Panthers had only shot once.

Damn!

A decade later, in April 1979, the US Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals found that the FBI and its government lawyers had obstructed justice by suppressing the BPP files and also concluded that there was substantial evidence to support the conclusion that the FBI defendants, in planning and executing the raid, had participated in a “conspiracy designed to subvert and eliminate the Black Panther Party and its members,” thereby suppressing a “vital radical-Black political organization.”

The Court further found there to be convincing evidence that these defendants also participated in a separate post-raid conspiracy to “conceal the true character of [their] pre-raid and raid activities,” to “harass the survivors of the raid” and to “frustrate any [legal] redress the survivors might seek.”

Hampton’s family and the surviving members of the raid were also eventually awarded $1.85 million dollars in a settlement from Cook County in 1982, believed to be the largest civil settlement ever awarded in a civil rights case up unto that point.

Damn man! The government didn’t like the Black Panther Movement and literally assassinated its most prominent young leader.

19.Aug. 5, 1970: A month after Fred Hampton’s government sanctioned and administered execution, a different Black Panther leader is freed.

Co-Founder Huey Newton is released on $50,000 bail pending a retrial after serving thirty-three months in prison for the death of officer Frey. The Free Huey movement has won. Huey Newton has been freed. He moves into a top-floor apartment at 1200 Lakeshore Ave., Oakland. After two retrials, the charges against him are ultimately dropped.

Newton is back, he’s in charge, but, his return to leadership fragments The Movement.

20. January 1971: In January 1971, Newton expels Geronimo Pratt who, since 1970, had been in jail facing a pending murder charge. Geronimo was a high ranking party member who had served two tours in Vietnam and was heavily decorated. If Pratt’s name sounds familiar, it’s because it showed up in the Tupac and Biggie Suck, Suck 76. Geronimo was Tupac Shakur’s Godfather.

Newton also expels two of the “New York 21” - twenty-one Panther members who had been arrested for a bombing plot. One of those members was Afeni Shakur - Tupac’s mother! The trial eventually collapsed and all twenty-one were acquitted of all charges. Fucking FBI. Dedicated to destroying the Black Panther Party through continued indictments and the incarceration of its members and leaders.

Newton also expelled his own secretary, who flees the country.

Newton and various other Panthers believe BPP should participate in local government and social services, while others thought that the BPP should be in constant conflict with the police. And Newton is kicking out everyone who doesn’t agree with him.

Eldridge Cleaver wants to fight the police 24/7/365 and gets kicked out too even though he was basically already out. Cleaver hadn’t really been involved in a consistent, meaningful way with the group outside of rhetoric since 1968, when he fled to Cuba to avoid trial for an attempted murder charge that sprang from his involvement in that ambush on Oakland police officers than resulted in the death of Bobby Hutton.

After a brief stay in Cuba hanging with Castro, Eldridge had bounced to Algeria when Castro learned that the CIA had been keeping tabs on Eldridge and since the CIA wanted Castro dead, Castro wanted no part of anyone else also being put in their crosshairs. Eldridge set up an international Panther office in Algeria, a nation friendly to black revolutionaries that would not extradite to the United States. Eldridge also took a few trips to North Korea, initially befriending Kim Jong Il. The BPP’s publications actually began reprinting excerpts from Kim Il Sung's writings. Man, talk about going from the frying pan into the fire.

America in general was not a friend of the black man in the 1960s but holy shit neither was North Korea. North Korea wasn’t and isn’t a friend to any fucking human being on Earth whose name isn’t Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il or Kim Jong Un.

21.May 25, 1971: On May 25th, 1971, co-founder Bobby Seale gets some good news. He has a murder conspiracy case against him dismissed in New Haven, Conn., following a suspension of his contempt of court convictions in Chicago. He’s freed after twenty- one months in jail.

While serving his four-year sentence for those contempt of court convictions, Seale had been put on trial again in 1970 in the New Haven Black Panther trials.

Several officers of the Panther organization had murdered a fellow Panther, Alex Rackley, who had allegedly confessed under torture to being a police informant.

The leader of the murder plan, leader George Sams, Jr., turned state's evidence and testified that Seale, who had visited New Haven only hours before the murder, had ordered him to kill Rackley. The trials were accompanied by a large protest of the trial in New Haven. The jury was unable to reach a verdict in Seale's trial.

1971 is terrible year overall for the Panthers. Hundreds of Party members quit the BPP around the nation, alarmed by both the split between Huey Newton and other members and the violence against its own members by different factions, brought to light most notably by Bobby Seal’s case.

It would be discovered later that the FBI has sent Newton and Eldridge bogus letters stoking anger between the two and paranoia. Various FBI informants had entered the organization and stoked resentment and paranoia between various members. Members were told other members were planning on killing them.

In 1971, the FBI dedicated a budget of $7.4 million to pay informers to harass and intimidate the Panthers, more than twice the amount budgeted for informers in organized crime that year.

Between 1969 and 1971, at least four Panthers were shot to death by other Panthers because of feuds created and perpetuated by the FBI.

22.Early 1972: In early 1972, Newton shuts down various Black Panther chapters around the country due to infighting created because of FBI disinformation. Hoover officially calls the FBI off of the Panthers at this point, satisfied that they will continue to tear each other apart based on statements in since leaked documents.

The underground remnants of the Los Angeles Black Panthers chapter eventually reemerges as the Crips, a powerful street gang that advocated social reform before it got into crime big-time.

Did you know that CRIPS may stand for “Community Resources for Independent People”? I didn’t either before this suck.

Bloods and Crips Suck anyone? Can our Space Lizards pretty please vote that topic up? Holy Nimrod that would be fascinating.

Full disclosure - while some gang historians point to the Crips coming directly out of the Black Panther Party, others say the word Crip evolved out of the word “Crib” a word gang founders Tookie Williams and Raymond Washington possibly used to describe various factions of the gang. I’ll look further into the etymology of the word Crip when we hopefully Suck that topic someday.

23.March 29, 1972: The Black Community Survival Conference is held at Oakland Civic Auditorium on March 29th, 1972. Ten thousand bags of groceries are given away with canned goods on the bottom, packaged goods in the middle and a four-pound chicken in every bag.

24.June 24, 1972: On June 24th, 1972, Bobby Seale announces his candidacy for mayor of Oakland. Panther Elaine Brown announces her candidacy for City Council. The Panthers attempt to transition into mainstream politics. Seale forces a runoff but both candidates end up losing.

Elaine Brown remains a social activist living in Oakland to this day.

25.Early 1974: In early 1974, leader Huey Newton embarks on a major Black Panther Party purge, expelling co-funder Bobby Seale and Bobby’s younger brother John. He kicks out numerous other top party leaders. Dozens of other Panthers loyal to Seale resigned or deserted.

26.August 1974: In August of 1974, Newton allegedly murders Kathleen Smith, a teenage prostitute, and is also charged with pistol-whipping his tailor, Preston Callins.

Newton reportedly confides to friends that Smith is his “first nonpolitical murder.” He flees to Cuba. Elaine Brown takes over the leadership in his absence.

For all intent and purposes, the movement is dead at this point. It’s barely hanging on in Oakland, really only surviving through a few social programs, most notably The Oakland Community School which opened in 1973 to educate the children of the Panthers. 150 kids attended it.

27.December 1974: In December of 1974, Panther accountant Betty van Patter is murdered, after threatening to disclose irregularities in the Party's finances. Van Patter goes missing on December 12th, 1974, and her severely beaten corpse is found on a San Francisco Bay beach.

Newton later allegedly confesses to friends that he ordered Van Patten’s murder, and Van Patten had been tortured and raped before being killed.

28. 1977: In 1977, Newton returns from Cuba to face murder charges but not before meeting People’s Temple leader and former Suck subject and Jonestown Cult Leader Jim Jones in Havana. Remember Jimmy? Strange, strange Jimmy Jones!

Jimmy was a die hard communist by 1977 and a former major figure in the Bay Area civil rights movement. What a crazy connection.

Newton actually spoke to Temple members in Jonestown via telephone expressing support for Jones and what he was doing in Guyana. Anyone familiar with the Jonestown massacre knows that the communist experiment Jim created didn’t work out too well in the end.

Newton's cousin, Stanley Clayton, was one of the few residents of Jonestown to escape the area before the 1978 mass murder of 900 Temple members by Jones and his fanatics through forced suicide.

29. October 1977: In October 1977, three Black Panthers attempted to assassinate Crystal Gray, a key prosecution witness in Newton's upcoming trial who had been present the day of Kathleen Smith's murder. The organization, once based in the liberation of black Americans, has devolved into little more than a gang by this point.

Unbeknownst to the assailants, they attacked the wrong house and the occupant returned fire. During the shootout one of the Panthers, Louis Johnson, was killed, and the other two assailants escaped.

During Newton's trial for assaulting Preston Callins, Callins changed his testimony several times and eventually told the jury that he did not know who assaulted him. Newton was acquitted of the assault in September 1978, but was convicted of illegal firearms possession.

After the assassination attempt on Crystal Gray, she declined to testify against Newton. After two trials and two deadlocked juries, the prosecution decided not to retry Newton for Smith's murder.

30.1980: In 1980, Newton earned a Ph.D. in the Social philosophy program of History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

31.1982: In 1982, the remnants of the Black Panther Party officially and completely dissolve. The Oakland Community School closes. Newton is charged with embezzling $600,000 from the school. Whoops. He’s sentenced to six months after pleading no contest to stealing $15,000 in state aid intended for the school.

32.Aug. 22, 1989: Seven years later, on August 22nd, 1989, Huey Newton, 47, is shot to death on a West Oakland street by gang member Tyrone Robinson, allegedly over a drug deal. Robinson is convicted of murder. Newton had been allegedly involved in drug dealing, according to numerous interviews with former, Panthers, for years by this point.

The other co-founder, Bobby Seale is alive and well! 82 years young! He still tours the country as a social activist. How cool is that? You can find his schedule by Googling his name and clicking the News results and digging around. He does have a website, but, it is the website one would expect an 82 year old to have and doesn’t include tour dates. Someone help Bobby out!

And that takes us out of today’s Timesuck Timeline.

PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE OUTRO

IV. Additional Thoughts A. No Idiots of the Internet: No Idiots of the Internet because it’s essentially just a repeat of last weeks’s Idiots of the Internet. Just replace anti-semitic rhetoric with even more aggressive anti-black rhetoric. And then add tons of aggressively anti-white racism. And then add a bunch of death to all cops rhetoric.

Are there a lot of good comments as well? Absolutely.

The history of the Panthers is complicated one. Black Americans, including the Panthers, were for sure oppressed. They were the victims of untold incidents of police brutality. They were the victims of a government conspiracy to take them down. They were the victims of racism.

And then, sadly many also became racist themselves. I just can’t get behind that. I don’t like the rally of Black Power any more than I like the rally of White Power. It’s Meat Sack power or no power for me. The fight to me, is about greater economic equality and equal opportunity to fight for your dreams for every color of Meat Sack. Guess I’m more Dr. King than Malcom X.

But - easy for me to say as a white dude! Never had a cop get rough with me. Never been asked to use a separate bathroom or been threatened by strangers due to the color of my skin.

Many Panthers took anger towards many racist cops - which I get as much as I can - and turned into rage towards all cops. Which I can’t condone. But again - easy for me to say they should’ve handled this or that differently. Easy for me to play armchair revolutionary. I’m not being harassed and I’m not putting my life on the line.

Do I think everything the Panthers did was great? No. But I’m glad they existed because much of what they did and stood for and symbolized was needed and necessary to enact social change.

At their best they were really superheroes. Real superheroes not Marvel Creations. They showed other oppressed black Americans that you didn’t have to just bend over and take it. You could stand up and stand up proud for your rights.

And I think black America needed them to do this in the 1960s.

But they were complicated, imperfect heroes like real life heroes almost always are.

And some of them became villains.

Some of them were villains posing as revolutionaries. Just like all cops weren’t bad, all Panthers weren’t good.

Cleaver comes off like an utter fucking maniac at times. Hard to get behind a guy who blames committing rape on racial oppression.

Fred Hampton seems like a fucking angel. Would love to pop into an alternate reality where the FBI and Chicago police don’t murder him in cold blood and see what amazing things he’s done for not only black America, but for America in general. That saying, “only the good die young” seems to have been written about him. Dude seems, from everything article I could find written about him, from every speech I watched of him, to have been like a saint.

And then there was co-founder Huey Newton. Such a complicated man. Did so much good with his social justice programs but then may have also killed several people. I watched interviews with several former high ranking Panthers and they just said he was never the same after he was freed from prison. His mood was unpredictable and he allegedly assaulted, verbally, physically, and even sexually, several other Panther members. Some former members said he was a violent drug addicted psychopath in the later years of his rule over the Panthers.

But Newton was also, publicly, an important symbol for young black Americans. He was handsome. He was strong- dude was fucking jacked. Looked like an action figure. He was brave - he didn’t take shit from anyone, especially if they were white. He was a charismatic leader and incredibly intelligent. He didn’t just get a doctorate handed to him.

I should also point out that there wasn’t just dudes in the Panthers. There were a lot of female members. And I feel terrible for many of them. Even though they were part of a revolution against racism, they still faced sexism from both white and black America. The Panthers were still a patriarchal organization and many of them left early in the movement.

How much must that have sucked? To be fighting a fight for equal rights based on your skin color only to have to also fight a fight within the revolution for equal rights based on your genitalia.

Never thought this Suck would lead me to think about Oprah Winfrey, but it did. She became an industry leader, as a black woman in America. I got a little bit of glimpse into how hard that must be - a tiny glimpse - in this Suck. Hail Lucifina! Always liked Oprah but respect her even more now.

B. What is the legacy of the Black Panthers?

So what’s the legacy of the Panthers? What is their lasting impact? In a word, “complicated.”

At their worst, for an organization founded as a response to racism, many of their members ended up being pretty racist.

At their best, they inspired a new generation of black Americans to be strong, to love themselves, and to not lay down and give up when it came to racism.

Real stories don’t often fit into convenient narratives that play out like they were written for TV. Life is usually pretty complicated. You can think that Black Panthers were freedom fighting inspirational revolutionaries and you’re right. And you can think the Black Panthers were violent, racist cop-killing criminals. And you’d also be right.

What I love about the Panthers - what I found most inspiring - was their fighting spirit. So easy to just take it in life. So easy to just bitch and never actually fight for what you believe in. So easy to talk but not walk the walk. The Panthers, while you may not agree with some or any of their messages - they for sure walked their talk.

They stood up for their convictions. They fought for their convictions. Some of them fucking DIED for those convictions.

Outmanned and outgunned, they refused to stand down when it came to standing up to the Man. They fought the Powers that Be. The Powers That Be may have won, but they still fought them. How many of us have ever fought for our ideals as hard as some of the Panthers fought for theirs?

Time now for top five takeaways.

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS INTRO

V. Top Five Takeaways

1. Number One: The Black Panther Party, originally named the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was an African American revolutionary party founded in 1966 in Oakland, California, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. The party's original purpose was to patrol African American neighborhoods to protect residents from acts of police brutality.

2. Number Two: The Black Panthers formed in the wake of Malcom X’s assassination and during a period of tremendous social upheaval and unrest in America when riots and protests were commonplace in America and when African Americans were statistically extremely disproportionally disenfranchised compared to any other race of Americans.

3. Number Three: California’s comparatively tough gun laws can be traced back to the Mulford Act of 1967 - a law passed in response to the Black Panthers. I had no idea the Black Panthers inspired a trend to push for tighter and tighter gun control measures that has continued to this day.

4. Number Four: The Black Panther Party officially dissolved in 1982 and co-founder Huey Newton died in a drug related murder in 1989. Newton's funeral was held at Allen Temple Baptist Church, where he was a member. Some 1300 mourners were accommodated inside, and another 500–600 listened to the service from outside. The other co-founder, Bobby Seale, continues to preach social activism and standing up to the man to this day.

5. Number Five: New info! Let’s talk for a second about The New Black Panther. There is currently a black nationalist organization in the United States called the Black Panthers. The formed in Dallas, Texas in 1989 and consider themselves successors to the original Black Panther Party. They’re not. Co-founder Bobby Seale has been very clear about that. He can’t stand them.

In a speech I watched Mr. Seale tell the audience that they deserve a huge thumbs down and that what they stand for is totally antithetical to what Bobby’s panthers stood for.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, the group that helped cut the balls off of the KKK in America, labels the New Black Panther Party a hate group.

They preach insanely racist rhetoric. They’re no revolutionaries. They’re hate mongers.

Khalid AbdulMuhammad, one of the party’s future leaders, said at a rally in Baltimore, Maryland, on February 19, 1994. “Our lessons talk about the bloodsuckers of the poor. … It’s that old no-good Jew, that old imposter Jew, that old hooked-nose, bagel-eating, lox-eating, Johnny-come-lately, perpetrating-a-fraud, just- crawled-out-of-the-caves-and-hills-of-Europe, so-called damn Jew.”

King Samir Shabazz, former head of the party’s Philadelphia chapter, said the following in a National Geographic documentary, January 2009.

“I hate white people. All of them. Every last iota of a cracker, I hate it. We didn’t come out here to play today. There’s too much serious business going on in the black community to be out here sliding through South Street with white, dirty, cracker whore bitches on our arms, and we call ourselves black men. … What the hell is wrong with you black man? You at a doomsday with a white girl on your damn arm. We keep begging white people for freedom! No wonder we not free! Your enemy cannot make you free, fool! You want freedom? You going to have to kill some crackers! You going to have to kill some of their babies!”

Wow!

Well King Samir, you do NOT get an invite to join the Cult of the Curious with that kind of attitude. You’re no member of Team MeatSack. I hereby change your name to King Go Fuck Yourself. Hail Nimrod!

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS OUTRO

VI.Final Announcements

A. Episode has been sucked!: The Black Panthers have been sucked! Man that was a tricky Suck. Worked overtime on this one. So much to absorb. So much to consider. Hope I did it justice. Hope my black meat sacks know I love ‘em just as much as white meat sacks and hope my law enforcement meat sacks know I love you guys and gals and that you don’t deserve to be unjustly attacked anymore than citizens do.

To quote arguably the most famous victim of police brutality in the past several decades, Rodney King, “Can we all just get along?”

B. Thank you to Timesuck Team (including episode researcher): Sample

Thank you to the Timesuck Team! Thanks to the Queen of the Suck Lynze Cummins, High Priestess of the Suck Harmony Vellekamp, Jessie “Guardian of Grammar” Dobner, Reverend Doctor Joe Paisley. Timesuck High Priest Alex Dugan, the guys at Bit Elixir, Danger Brain Axis Apparel, and Sophie “Fact Sorceress” Evans - thanks for the fine research to get me started. Great meeting you in person in New Jersey btw, Sophie

C. Facebook Group/Discord: Have you joined the Cult of the Curious private Facebook group?

There are almost 7,000 Timesuckers in the private Cult of the Curious group on Facebook and almost 1,500 Discord members now. Link to the Discord chatroom/messaging app right on the Timesuck app.

Links to the private Facebook group and to the Discord channel in today’s episode description.

D. Next Episode Preview: Next week - more potential controversy with the Space Lizard chosen topic of Pedophile Island. What is Pedophile Island?

The Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) operates Special Commitment Center (SCC) programs that provide specialized mental health treatment for civilly committed sex offenders who have completed their prison sentences.

Superior Courts in the county in which an individual was previously convicted of a sex crime have the authority to determine if individuals meet the legal definition of a sexually violent predator and to civilly commit them to the SCC. Which is legal speak for sending them to an island where they not allowed to leave, after their prison sentences have been completed, until they are no longer deemed a threat to sexually reoffend.

Is this the best way to deal with pedophiles? How big of a problem are sex offenders? How many are there? How often do they victimize? How many lives are negatively affected by pedophiles? Do they deserve rehabilitation? CAN they be rehabilitated?

Tune in next Monday for a deep dive on a very uncomfortable subject. E. Segue to Timesucker Updates: Time now for today’s Timesucker Updates.

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES INTRO

VII.Timesucker Updates

A. First Update from a longtime law enforcement Sucker I’ve met and talked with several times who wishes to remain unnamed.

He writes:

Hey guys,

I wanted to bring this to your attention. I know how much you appreciate the sacrifices made by law enforcement in this country. Lucas Dowell embodies everything his last name implies. “Do Well!”

And our anonymous officer sent me a link to an article about Virginia State Trooper Lucas B. Dowell who was killed when someone inside a home fired a weapon at police executing a search warrant during a drug investigation. The person who killed Trooper Dowell, identified by police as Corey Johnson, 44, of Cumberland County, was shot and killed by police.

Our fellow meat sack continues with:

I trained him when he first hit the road and he was a shift partner for many years before leaving the Charlottesville area.

If you do mention anything on a future episode please leave my name out of it. I don’t want to detract anything away from this. I don’t bring this to you because I want sympathy or attention. He was a good Trooper, the kind everyone would be proud to have working for them, and everyone should know the sacrifice he made.

Whether you are for or against drugs, I hope none of our listeners is for killing cops. This is just the kind of thing I think about when people refer to drug use as a victimless crime. I don’t mean to offend anybody, but I just learned of this as it happened about 9 hours ago and I am still processing my anger.

Thank you for who you are and what you believe in. Thank you for the cult of the curious.

Thank you man. Thank you for being an example of an incredible law enforcement officer. I base that on numerous interactions I’ve had with you and the many stories you’ve sent in over the past few years. Thoughts go out to you man. Thanks for sending in this message brother.

B. Now we’ll shift gears and lighten things up with a hilarious message from Timesucker Haley Ford.

Dan,

I listened to the inspirational episode and you talked about how the mom ate peanut butter while she was pregnant and her baby's skeleton was growing on the outside of it's body. I flipped the ever loving fuck out. I eat peanut butter all the time and am 3 weeks away from delivering. I was so convinced that my baby was going to have an exoskeleton which is fucking stupid because this is my second baby and I've seen 3D ultrasounds of her. She is not, in fact, an ant baby you fuck face. Every episode you say some shit that gets me. The first one I can remember was during the episode about Teddy Roosevelt and you said the teddy bear was named after him because he got caught wearing a teddy. Totally believed you. It's literally happened during every episode. I believed you (like many others) when you mentioned that people used to fuck dogs in cave or some shit and I believed you because of the Toybox Killer episode. I was like "oh, so maybe he just had that nasty desire too" and it made complete sense to me. You're an asshole.

On a separate note, I love your podcast. I am finally caught up and having withdrawals. I love that you donate money every month and that you've changed so many people's lives. I have become much more open minded and even enjoyed the podcasts I didn't want to listen to. I forced myself to listen to all of them and ended up loving all of them because of the way you present the information and the "got ya's" you throw into each one.

On another separate note, I know you get SO many requests for shout outs, but I would so much appreciate it if you could give my boyfriend, Dominick, a shout out. He is the most amazing person. He works on the weekends doing side jobs to make extra money for us and then comes home and cooks and plays with our 3 year old daughter. Like I mentioned before, we're having our second daughter on the 25th and he has gone above and beyond to make sure that we're ready for her arrival. To give you an example of the kind of person he is, we were driving around one day and it was ridiculously hot outside. This was back when he drove around conducting CNA hospice visits and we saw a homeless man on the side of the road that he apparently saw frequently. He told me that he keeps a case of water bottles in his car and when he has the chance, he gives the homeless water bottles so they don’t become hydrated. He is unbelievably caring and selfish and does what he can for anyone and everyone around him even if he doesn't know them. He's the best thing to ever happen to me and my little girls and he is the one that introduced me to your comedy and Timesuck so I love him even more for that! He is an inspiration to me every day. I understand if you're not able to announce this, but it would mean the world to me if he heard you read this(:

Again, thank you you beautiful sucker for all you do! Hoping to be a space lizard soon so we can help keep Timesuck going!!

Haley Ford

Thank you Haley and thank you Dominick for being a good man. Love how much you two are in love. Life is so fucking short. Spend as much of it as you can with love in your hearts. I don’t care if that sounds corny as fuck - it’s true. Love love says the angry bearded Idaho man.

C. Mothman Update coming in from Timesucker John Dvorachek.

John writes: Most Holy Pontificated Pope of the Suck,

I write to inform you that Rich Hattem, the screenwriter of the Richard Gere, Mothman Prophecies film, admited to completely making up the whole Mothman at Chernobyl thing. The film ends by alluding to other Mothman citings from around the globe.

The podcast, Astonishg Legends, pluged Timesuck many moons ago. And their endorsment is how arrived at the Cult of the Curious. I love both Timesuck and Astonishing. Well, Rich Hattem is a friend of theirs and has been on a few Astonishing episodes. He specifically admits that he made the whole Chernobyl thing up. So...no Mothman there.

John

D. And now another funny one. This one killed me. Comes in from Timesucker Greg Hauk.

Subject line of “You’re Such An Asshole”

To our fearless Suckmaster

I truly love your podcast. I am a mailman. I am in and out of businesses, walking through neighborhoods, and driving along servicing curbside mailboxes. It’s usually mind numbing, lonely work. I listen to various podcasts throughout the day through earbuds because, well, because of you mainly. I look forward to your podcast like no other I listen to. Your show informs and entertains me through 2 ( I’m an OG space lizard ) parts of my work week. It used to be 3, but I forgive you for that.

Listening today to the Black Death episode, I knew I would be using a new sign off for my emails. I have been using my favorite quote from your shows - Loved everything about it, wouldn’t change a thing. 2 out of 5 stars - it’s still funny.

Originally that was going to be the entirety of my email today. But then the letter you read to close the show changed the tone of this missive. It’s one thing to be walking along delivering mail and have to stop what I’m doing because I’m laughing so hard that snot bubbles are forming, but it’s something else again to have to wipe away tears and sniffling like a prepubescent girl that just got her heart broken by the boy in class that ignored her. How about a heads up, you asshole? How about a fucking spoiler alert, or something? That letter was so well written and so poignant. I contend that only a cyborg wouldn’t sniffle a little after hearing you read that. That poor man has all the sympathy I have to give. I can only imagine the hell he is experiencing. It is truly one of the worst things that a parent can go through. I’ve had scares with my kids and grandkids now, but nothing in comparison to his.

Thank you for your decision to make the space lizard donation to help in some small way. I’ll be adding a check of my own in the following days.

Load the Greg! Aim the Greg! Fire the Greg!

Hail Nimrod

Greg Hauk

Perfect note to end on today, Great. Load the Greg! Aim the Greg! Fire the Greg!

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES OUTRO

VIII.Goodbye!

A. Goodbye!: Have a great week everyone! Another Secret Suck on Thursday for you Space Lizards. Thank you again for the donation money. Pedophile Island next Monday! If you start a revolution this week, please let every meat sack of every color be a part of it!

And make sure, while you’re freedom fighting, that you Keep on suckin’!

SOURCES: https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat37.pdf https://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2018/race-economics-and-social-status/ pdf/race-economics-and-social-status.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/ demo/p20-578.pdf http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/12/shrinking-gap- between-number-of-blacks-and-whites-in-prison/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/09/06/incarceration-gap- between-whites-and-blacks-widens/ https://www.census.gov/prod/99pubs/99statab/sec04.pdf http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/06/27/1-demographic-trends-and- economic-well-being/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/09/06/incarceration-gap- between-whites-and-blacks-widens/ http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/06/27/1-demographic-trends-and- economic-well-being/ https://www.bls.gov/cps/tables.htm https://www.google.com/search? q=jfk+assassination+date&oq=jfk+assassination+date&aqs=chrome.. 69i57j69i60j0l4.4762j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 http://michiganintheworld.history.lsa.umich.edu/antivietnamwar/exhibits/ show/exhibit/draft_protests/the-military-draft-during-the- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Conscription_in_the_United_States#Vietnam_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_lottery_(1969) https://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/app/uploads/2014/03/Timeline-of-of- conscription.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_riots#Aftermath https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/nyregion/27shoot.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2016/06/15/ oakland-police-stopping-and-handcuffing-disproportionate-numbers-of- blacks-work-to-restore-trust/?utm_term=.94469a4961a3 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone. 0141854 https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/07/data-police-racial-bias https://www.vox.com/identities/2016/8/13/17938186/police-shootings- killings-racism-racial-disparities https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/long-painful- history-police-brutality-in-the-us-180964098/

https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idstat/title18/t18ch33/ sect18-3303/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denzil_Dowell https://www.history.com/news/black-panthers-gun-control-nra-support- mulford-act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act https://www.history.com/topics/1960s/1967-detroit-riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X#Prison https://www.sfchronicle.com/art/article/A-timeline-of-the-rise-and-fall-of- the-Black-9967597.php https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/12/11/african-american- students-lagging-far-behind https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/2016007.pdf https://www.britannica.com/biography/Malcolm-X#googDisableSync

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/reparations-black-americans- slavery_us_56c4dfa9e4b08ffac1276bd7 https://www.thoughtco.com/forty-acres-and-a-mule-1773319 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty_acres_and_a_mule http://www.aei.org/publication/dont-tell-bernie-sanders-but-capitalism- has-made-human-life-fantastically-better-heres-how/ https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/black-panthers/ 1966/10/15.htm https://www.sutori.com/story/black-panthers-1966-1982-- SsbSkMcBzt1jEWHge6ajtMZH http://theconversation.com/chicago-1969-when-black-panthers-aligned- with-confederate-flag-wielding-working-class-whites-68961 https://www.ruralstrategies.org/hillbillies-coalition/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton#Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Lords https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_on_Ice_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_on_Ice_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_Trees_School_District_v._Pico https://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/02/us/eldridge-cleaver-black-panther- who-became-gop-conservative-is-dead-at-62.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Assassination_of_Martin_Luther_King_Jr.#Conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Breakfast_for_Children https://www.socialistalternative.org/panther-black-rebellion/los-angeles- gangs-bloods-crips/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crips#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Sams_Jr. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geronimo_Pratt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panther_21 https://www.nytimes.com/1989/08/23/obituaries/huey-newton- symbolized-the-rising-black-anger-of-a-generation.html http://inthesetimes.com/article/15949/ how_the_fbi_conspired_to_destroy_the_black_panther_party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Hutton https://www.britannica.com/biography/Eldridge-Cleaver https://www.thenation.com/article/rage-and-ruin-black-panthers/ https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/black-panthers/ http://depts.washington.edu/moves/BPP_intro.shtml https://www.britannica.com/topic/Black-Panther-Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldridge_Cleaver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_P._Newton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Seven https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/new-black- panther-party https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KU-QFPgGcg https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/new-black- panther-party