 this meeting is being recorded. Welcome. Hello everybody. We're going to allow some folks to fill up the room. Give it a few moments here. In the meantime, I'm going to put in our chat box the link for today's program. And this link will have library news information, links to reading lists and all sorts of other things, but also links to today's author and conversation person, presenter, their links to their websites and their socials. And then along with that, anything that comes up in today's conversation, which always does, I'll be there. Tap it in the resources if we can link back to the library. Great. But I will also reach out to other locations. All right. And so let's jump in with today's library news. Thank you all for joining us on a lovely Friday afternoon. And for a lunchtime other talk, this is part of our summer stride, which if you are familiar with our library, this has been an ongoing campaign. If you do 20 hours of reading coming to an event or learning, exploring, you get your iconic San Francisco Public Library tote bag. So time to go pick that up. I know you've all done your 20 hours. All right. And of course, we want to acknowledge that San Francisco lies in the occupied and unceded ancestral homeland of the raw, nutrition, lonely peoples, or the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. And as uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Ram Yutush community. And right now in the chat, I'm throwing in a reading list that is, has tons of resources, a giant reading list, but you'll also find in there specifically Bay Area Indigenous Reading List and some great websites that you can explore. And then there's also a map that's called Native Land, which is really great because you can put in your location and it'll tell you what land you are on and any treaties that were in place or previously in place. It's a really great interactive map. All right. And so coming up in this summer, our library celebrates by monthly read where we encourage all of San Francisco to read the same book at the same time. So for July and August, we chose a romance beach read, sizzle read, bodice ripper. This one is different though, because it also has feminism and family planning. So I love, I love the twists in this book. And author Beverly Jenkins will be in conversation with Rachel Feige, a librarian at our library. And that'll be happening August 23rd at 7pm. You can join the book club the day before that August 22nd and talk about wild rain. All of October, we're celebrating food. We have poets from Nomadic Press doing their third and final summer session, poets on food. And we have the vegan powerhouse, Neocos Creamery, talking about the work she has been doing. She is amazing. And we do have James Feard award winning author Christina Cho, but the date has been postponed and look for the new date on that. And I'm so excited about this. I know if you're from the Bay Area, you know, all about our food co-ops. We love our food co-ops. So we have Eris Mindy Bakery, my favorite, and other avenues who has been, they're legendary in San Francisco. And the deep grocery co-op, which is out of Oakland, and Cultivate Community Food Co-op. And so we're going to have a huge panel. This will be in the Caret Auditorium, but it will also be streaming. So don't worry, but come on down. The Caret is gorgeous. It's a beautiful day. The farmer's market is outside that same time. So come on down to the Civic Center. We miss having folks around. And one last announcement. We are so excited for October, November, December, celebrating our largest literary campaign of the year. Well, COVID has really screwed up our years. So I'm saying years. Their 17th One City One book is This Is Ear Hustle, Unflinching Stories of Everyday Prison Life featuring Nigel Ford and Erlon Woods. And then main event, November 3, December, throughout November, December, we have programs that align with the book. It is going to be amazing human fest. So come out for that. All right. Without further ado, today you are here to hear from Suzanne Cope and Cleo Silvers. And we're talking about power hungry women of the Black Panther Party and Freedom Summer and their fight to feed a movement. Suzanne Cope is a writing professor at NYU who has been researching and writing about food and politics for years. Her articles have been published in The New York Times, Washington Post, Atlantic and travel and leisure, as well as with the BBC, CNN, BuzzFeed, NPR and more. She speaks on related topics on radio shows and podcasts, and at numerous professional scholarly meetings. And she's in Brooklyn, New York. And then we have the amazing Cleo Silvers raised in Philadelphia. Her career in community and labor organizing began at Vista. And that was in the South Bronx. She was a member of the Black Panther Party, later the Young Lords Party. She was recruited by James Foreman and the Central Committee into the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, also which became Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, DRUM, which became the Black Workers Congress. It goes deep, right? She began her work with BWC on the labor organizing introduction to the United States and organized in most of the major working class cities in the country. Today, and I love this part, she's working as a consultant at the Cosset Library in Memphis, Tennessee. So lots of library love and what an amazing life. So we are so fortunate to have both of you here. And I'm going to stop sharing and turn it over to the both of you now. Thank you so much for having us, Denise. Thank you. This is such a pleasure to be here. And so great to talk to Clio again. Hi, Clio. What are you saying? Great to see you. How's your summer been going? Very well. I've been ill a couple of times, but other than that, it's going really well. I've been enjoying it. Good. I'm glad. So we were chatting a few minutes, be right before, and Clio had asked me a question, and I'll just have you ask me that first question, because I think it's a nice way to kick off our conversation, and then we'll dig into some of the topics of the book. Well, I don't know if this is verbatim of what I said before, but I was so interested in what brought you to interest, even in writing a book about the Black Panther Party, about food, about the interaction of food and the movement for social justice. It's such a wonderful way to approach life. And I just was so excited and actually very surprised when I heard about this book. So would you talk to us about that just a bit? Sure. I'll talk a little bit about the genesis of this. So in late 2016, I had been writing about food and thinking about food and culture, and food is always political. Many, most people know or think about it, especially food scholars. And I was really thinking kind of from my own self, I was so many people were being activated at that time, and how is food used as a tool for political and social change? I'd been thinking about it more abstractly, but then I saw people feeding protesters and organizing dinners, and I thought, what has happened kind of around the world? I wanted to be personally inspired by these stories. And so I started doing this research into just different movements, different moments in history and kind of modern history in the last, I had kind of just roughly been, okay, the last 100 years. And I was gathering these interesting stories and reading these firsthand accounts. And I came across Ellen Quinn's story, which is the other half of the book. That's not the Black Panther Party of Power Hungry. And it was interesting, she was this footnote in many accounts about the voting rights efforts, the Black Independence Movement in Mississippi in mostly the early 1960s. And she was a restaurant tavern owner and a single mom and a community leader. And just, I was so taken with her story, but there was, at that point, I couldn't find that much online. And so she was part of this initial book idea that didn't end up taking off. It was looking more broadly, it was looking at global stories of women. And then I wanted to turn my focus towards American stories and maybe just this period of time. And so I was thinking what, I was kind of afraid that I wouldn't be able to find that much about Ellie, because that's, there's been I think a number of great books recently that have been highlighting these unsung leaders, mainly women, many women of color who have been left out of history. And part of their unsungness is that there's just not often a lot about these women. And if they're no longer alive, it's a little unclear about what might be out there in the world. How much can you tell their story and really fill in the blanks? And so I was speaking with my wonderful agent, Monica Woods, and she brought up the Black Panther Party and the free breakfast for children program, which of course I was aware of. And it was a really, you know, aha moment for me when I started even doing a little bit of research, because I think it's the, it's the kind of story that so many people have heard of, but they don't know that much about, they think they know more about it than they really do. And as soon as you start doing any sort of critical research, you start to realize that what you thought you knew about this amazing program is not the common narrative. And so I saw that, wow, this is really a story that for someone like myself, an academic who really tries to do this, you know, solid research and think critically about the stories that I think I know, there was so much I didn't know. And particularly what struck me was an early statistic about how women were, you know, as much as two thirds to 70% of the Black Panther Party membership that they were leading these programs that the community programs were so popular and really at the core of what the Panthers did. I was like, wow, why is this story not told? And then as I started to put this book together, I really saw that Ellie and story, not that it's not really the beginning of the Black Panther story, but they have so many parallels and they do, you know, intersect in these really interesting ways. And so and so this this dual narrative came about and as I dug deeper and deeper that the connections were even more interesting. But before I started doing that really deep research, I was thinking, okay, once I realized there were so many female leaders in the party that weren't there was there's a few that many people have probably heard of whose names are most most often out there. But then I was like, can I find someone who is not one of these top five names who maybe would be willing to speak with me? And I came across Cleo's name. And I think what I first read it was in your interview with with Alondra Nelson. And in I think it was ultimately in her book, Buddy and Soul, but it was in a it was excerpted in a scholarly article. And so I I was able to find you in social media and I reached out and you got right back to me. And I remember exactly I was in my office at school, and I we had a phone call. And I remember you just being so wonderful and and generous with your time, like I'm going to tear up now. And it was just such a great conversation. And I thought, wow, I want to I want to help tell your story and and and other the story of other women like you. So so that was really the that was the fall before the I really dug into the research of the book. So it was probably fall 20, 2019. And then I really the first time we met was January 2020. Yeah, so that's that was great. Thank you. I just it is an amazing intersection. And I'm so happy that somebody thought of it that thought the of the importance of sharing that with people everywhere. Because because we don't get an opportunity to really talk about how food is a basis for a pretty much everything we do in life. Food and health care. Those are the two main elements of of life and and society and keeping us happening on the yeah. So it's for me, I just I'm so amazed and so happy that you decided to do it and show what really life was like for the Black Panther Party and for the civil rights movement. And Miss Aileen, I really appreciate her and all of her hard work and all of her, you know, contributions that she made to the struggle, you know, and many more women that are unsung in the civil rights movement, you know, we, we haven't yet opened up. Oh, there's so many of wonderful women that have been participants in the civil rights movement. You know, thinking about food and and its power for social and political change, but also how it creates community. And also how I think we have, you know, a concept that's come up and in our conversations, but I also, you know, definitely wrote about it in the book and recently was so excited to speak with with Dr. Francois Hamlin about this concept, activist mothering. I think so often women are relegated to the kitchen. They're like, okay, women have to like have to feed people or people think they want to or this is what they're good at. I remember early before I I met you, Cleo, I was going to New York City up in Harlem, a Black Panther Party. I think it was their film festival. And probably right before I reached out and met you. And I was meeting some, some Yasmeen, I remember meeting her and the and the women, I was like, would you be willing to maybe speak with me about this book? And I forget if it was Yasmeen or someone else who like, you better not be writing a cookbook, like they didn't, you know, they were, it was just what, what were the women cooking for everyone? I was like, no, that's not it at all. And so it's interesting, you know, that you and I have talked so much about food, we've shared meals together. And it's like that. I mean, I want to I want your recipes, you know, like I want the cookbook, but obviously, it's so easy just to think it's, it's about sitting down and having dinner together. So it's that just the position of that is really important to sit down and have dinner together and to have delicious food. And I know you put so much love and care into the food that you make for people and have made for people throughout your life. But, you know, it's about this book. And also what we know it is about so much more than that. I remember I was so lucky to meet you in right before everything changed in January 2020. And we cook together. And I can't imagine, you know, having to only meet you over Zoom and not be able to sit around your table and, and, and share what we shared multiple times. Do you want to talk a little bit about that, about that idea about the importance of sitting down and, and communing over, over meals? Well, I also want to say that many of the, many of the struggles, many of the ideas and many of the concepts that came out of the struggles came out over a table of people sharing together from different backgrounds, from different ways of life, from different political positions, people coming together and understanding the basic social and political questions and the financial questions, economic questions that, that bring us together to fight for social justice. And that, and as well as, as those revolutionaries that sat down over, you know, let's eat and make these final, these final decisions about taking, taking whatever action we're about to take that. And of course, there's also things like getting together and sitting up so that we're, none of us are late for the free breakfast program and having a glass of wine or so, just talking and doing political education and sharing information with each other. So much of this took place, you know, and, and so much of the unity that we were able to establish came as a result of our sitting together over some food. And I want to say the other thing is that, you know, Black Panther women, at least in the Harlem branch where I'm from, didn't do a lot of cooking for the party. And how did we get our food? You know, there was a thing that we did in Harlem is that we never saw a senior citizen or an elderly person with a package going up to the fifth or sixth floor of a building without taking their package and running it up to the sixth floor for them or running it up to the fifth floor for them. And as a result, the elderly people, the senior citizens in the community used to, we would end up with a pot of a big pot of Bryson beans down at the party because we took some old ladies packages up to the floor where she lived. So many times people in the community who understood that what we were struggling for was their, their needs fighting for the community and they were very positive about the work that we were doing in the community. So we got fed a great deal by the people in the community and everybody and as well the resources in the community for participating in our free breakfast program for having our free breakfast program came from the community as a result of people recognizing that what we were doing was something that was in their interest in the interest of all. So we're very and I want to tell the story of the free breakfast program whenever you're ready. That was going to be my next question. I was going to give the a touch of background for folks who might not know the history. So the especially West Coasters, right? The first free breakfast program was in Oakland, as most people probably know here and within a couple months it just became so incredibly popular. But what I thought was interesting about how I spoke with Curtis Muhammad who was a SNCC member and he's no longer with us as of a couple months ago but what a wonderful man and he was very active in I met him through the voting rights research that I was doing and then he told me this amazing story early in my research that he was called a couple years later by the Black Panther Party who said so would you mind this is called this they called the SNCC office and would you mind coming out to Oakland to maybe you know tell us a little bit about how you organize the community how you figured out what what you know kind of projects to do and so he said and this is his story he said he went out out to Oakland and he told them what Ella Baker told him and she was a longtime leader in the NAACP and helped found SNCC and said go to the people and ask them what do you want me to do for you what do you need and and he said I'm not is what Curtis said he's like I'm not saying I told him to start the breakfast program but I told them to ask the people what they needed and and and this was corroborated that this is what the Panthers did by when I talked to father father Neil who was the the pastor of the priest who who was supportive of the Panthers and where they had their first breakfast program and so they went and you know he helped them and Ruth Beckford who was one of his parishioners and the Panthers and they met with they asked the people what can we do for you and they kept saying I don't always have food I'm not you know I work nights I'm not always able to bring my kid to school and so they came up with this breakfast program and it started in January of 1969 and and it was an immediate success and so within months they said okay all of the branches around the country need to start doing this and and so yeah I guess Cleo tell us what it is that that y'all did well here in the Harlem branch the Harlem branch of the Black Panther 40 was kind of the center of the Black Panther 40 where there was a Brooklyn branch and and a branch out in a Queens there were two branches there were a Jamaica branch and and another branch in which they're going to be so upset with me for not remembering oh no you're on mute today oh I just unmuted Corona branch thank you thank you so much jazz will be very upset with me so that there was not just one free breakfast program in the New York City area so there were about four and in fact the big important one was not in Harlem itself but was in the South Bronx where my base was I was based in the South Bronx and most of my work that I was assigned to from the Black Panther 40 Harlem branch was in the South Bronx so our free breakfast program was on Intervale Avenue and the Intervale was community center and there was one in the unity unified church in the Bronx so there were two programs and I think I attended both of them so the point about the free breakfast program is that one of the things that we were able to do is that we didn't have to or we didn't just have a program and tell people to come we went to the people to the parents of the children and asked them if the kids could come down to the free breakfast program so parents knew exactly where their kids were going to get up early and go we did a couple of other things that were so important is that we went to pick the kids up to bring them through the free breakfast program so the food we was made available by the leadership and where it came from it came from the canvassing of community businesses throughout the city and in your area so you canvass the community and you let people know well you know you're making money off of the community we're doing a free breakfast program we need cups plates utensils we need bacon eggs grits orange juice toast and whatever else is needed to make that to make a breakfast happen and we got all of those things not from any kind of foundations not from the government we got everything from the community and we always say that the resources there all the resources you need to do a program that is going to feed the people in the community actually come straight from the community itself so that was one of the wonderful things about the program so what did a Black Panther have to do to be in the free breakfast program you have to commit to a certain number of days that you're going to work in the in the free breakfast program and if you say you're going to do it you have to be there you have to do it and you had to show up so we began at five o'clock in the morning somebody began cooking right away immediately when we made it to the place and we tried to determine what we were going to feed the kids for that day and the bacon got on we started setting the table with all the utensils and the plates and cups and napkins that were needed and we got everything ready and then each group of each person that had kids a group of kids to go and pick up had to run and pick up their kids and we did that parents were very happy to let us have their kids and take them over to the free breakfast program we got the kids settled and sat down and started feeding them and the kids were very happy we fed them some really excellent breakfasts and the kids were like yeah right all we like this and they would be partying and dancing during the breakfast that would be good and then during breakfast we don't ask everybody okay who's got homework and kids really raised their hand they got homework we helped them with their homework and while they were finishing their breakfast they were like get your homework out and then after breakfast is over we'll work with you on your homework there was another period of time during the during breakfast where members of the Black Panther Party who were experts in Black history would teach children Black history events we would teach them about the contributions that Black people made to society like the egg beater like the ironing board like so many of the important things that people used in society that were made by Black people and important people in the society important Black people in the society who made tremendous contributions so those were the things that we were doing and after breakfast the people that had kids going to school had to rush off and take their kids to school and the people who were left cleaned up for the next day and we always everyone was so meticulous about our work this is why I say the the Black Panther Party was one group of people that I've never met a finer group of people everything we did was so meticulous every pot was cleaned every plate was was put away everything that we used was meticulously cleaned and prepared and set up for the next day we never had a problem that we were so organized and so disciplined to do the right thing so that we could so we could get things happening because right after that you had to go out and sell your newspapers and we're pretty much like you know I'm going to sell 100 we would compete with each other over how many newspapers you're going to sell and where are you going to go to sell your newspapers so I mean we really cared about getting the information out never sold a newspaper and without explaining to each individual what was inside that newspaper and why they should buy it which is why our sales were so high just everything that we did was was so excellent and and our goal was to make positive things happen in the society I want to say one more thing that the Black Panther Party did that people may not may or may not understand that sickle cell anemia and sickle cell disease had never been a diagnosis a formal diagnosis in medicine in the United States of America and it's because the struggle of the Black Panther Party and the demand that the NIH the National Institute of Health take up sickle cell and sickle cell anemia as a diagnosis as diagnoses and as a recognized disease and do research not only just take it up and recognize it but to do research on sickle cell that it is now such a recognized disease in society and right on to the Black Panther Party and and to our work I want to take a little bit of credit in that I was a part of that initial group of people who worked on the sickle cell issue so as well as going to the free breakfast program and getting up to five in the morning that was so cool I couldn't do it now but when you're young all of these things are possible you can do so many things so young people let's go I love it I know you're an inspiration for so many people um yeah I definitely want to circle back to um some of these legacy issues and and healthcare stuff um but I had another question um right before you were talking about that um this is such an an interesting um theme that came up with um you know Ellen Quinn and and SNCC and the voting rights efforts and of course in every major movement political education I know how important it was for the Panthers um among the Panthers um and maybe you could speak a little bit to that but I also know that um teaching these these kids their history and um and also not just their history but like the truth of what is happening that they are worthy that food should should not be a privilege but a right um and I know in part it was the um political education that um you all really had the core of your message um that made you such a target um that um had the Panthers they were considered such a threat to um you know white supremacist government establishment could you speak a little bit to the um political education in general and maybe that idea of why a political education is so powerful please well I want to say a couple of things political education is was the key and at at the core center of the work of the Black Panther Party for us to be to become more politically conscious and aware and for us to share our awareness and consciousness with the rest of the community so that was the the key to it that was what we were trying to do and I have to say I learned so much uh during political education class which was held every day in which you were expected to participate to show up and participate in every day if you were a member of the Black Panther chapter so I showed up every day after work and after selling my newspapers and whatever else assignments I was given from the Black Panther Party and then before dinner time we had our political education classes where sometimes fundamental education took place because many times people from the community people who wanted to participate as Panthers even came in and did not know how to read so there was that kind that level of education going on at the same time simultaneously as this really high level of political dense political reading you know people some people were as as high as Kant and some people were just learning how to read at the same time after dinner then that's when the big books with the big guns came out and the leadership came out with books that they wanted you to participate with uh reading and sharing information so that you would understand the material that was inside of the Black Panther newspaper and of course the Black Panther newspaper was used to educate everyone in the community um and I my feeling is that the level of consciousness in the community during that period was quite high and that people the also I want to say that the Black Panther Party used slogans a great deal the average business man and all power to the people were concepts that people understood they know who the average business man was you know and that was one of the slogans that was used in the newspaper so many times you know and by the way in order to be a recognized member of the Black Panther Party you had to be able to recite the 10-point platform program the eight points of attention the three points of discipline and to do it on demand so that you people knew that you were a member of the Black Panther Party and that you recognized the importance of the program that we were fighting to acquire to attain so I think she was like there's so much education um that man we could all stand to have more of now um and then it wasn't just that you understood that I remember um uh speaking with Frankie um Elika and she was saying that um she was someone who I was both active in the New York um Panthers and she also was a SNCC member in Mississippi so it was really amazing and she hadn't you know she was so active in Mississippi and then moved to New York to be with her sister um who lived right outside the city and ended up starting their own um breakfast program but what I remember she was telling me something where she was used to action and so she was hanging out with um I think Amiri Barraco's wife and she's like they did a lot of talking and it was great but I wanted to do things and the Panthers were doing things and so I love that you were you were doing all this thinking and talking and debating and learning but then you were also doing things I mean I was just um you know continually impressed with just how much was happening and how active you were in um in the community for sure um but one thing that really strikes me too is that you you were modeling this you're modeling the world that you wanted to see you were modeling the future that you wanted you know with with many of these community programs but um you know specifically with the um with the free breakfast program you were you were saying food should not have to cost money no one in a country as rich as ours in a society as rich as ours everyone deserves food and um and I remember there was this great quote by Fred Hampton I don't have in front of me but that was saying you know that maybe some of I'm going to paraphrase it he says it of course amazingly um you know that that people may not be thinking about socialism or think that they agree with socialism but once they start agreeing with the concepts of socialism that food should be free suddenly they're coming around to this um you know this belief um do you think that this was I don't know if you have anything to say about that but also if um you know do you think that this modeling of a non capitalist society was something that um made the panthers both powerful and also a target absolutely uh and I think it continues uh anyone who really wants to change the society and to square uh and make um equality and justice the way that we should live is a target uh for our government and I really I don't understand why what makes society a lot better you wouldn't have a lot a lot of crime because and people have the things that they need uh and the resources that are available to human beings then you don't need to have crime you know people steal because they need stuff or that's my understanding of why why would you steal if you didn't need to have it you know so there's a or why would you steal if the society has not told you that you should have it and you don't have it you know um and yes we were socialist uh and yes we became so if we were not socialist we became socialist in the process of modeling what it meant to have to live in a society where we spoke to each other with with respect and dignity uh where we were learning how to share that with the with the community and with the kids that were coming up we the kids who came to the free breakfast program and many of them I've met since uh over the years and they have they learned from us they learned they were respectful of how we interacted with each other you know and uh the pride and and dignity that we always afforded each other you know that's part of it you know what we're fighting for is a society in which we can listen and hear each other as opposed to closing up our ears and and and looking at scants at each other in the society so I don't know why we're targets we should be the darlings of society as a matter of fact the people who are leading the struggle for justice and equality should be the darlings of society yeah for certainly modeling is so important um if my mother's here she would she would she would chime in childhood development they they want to do what they see others doing I see some I just want to comment I do see some great questions in the chat and we'll get to them at the end of this hour um you know and that reminds me of something else you were telling me that I'd love you to speak to um you know the that feeling of of belonging that feeling of of of when you can feel welcome at a table you're black and brown cadre that you would take them out to dinner and why that was so important for you to take these young men or the young men and women or mostly young men that you would young men and women oh they were both I would like to say who the black and brown cadre was when you're when you're working in a community uh and you're there you're you're immersed in your deep down in the community and you're working and you're meeting people on a day-to-day basis and people who are introducing themselves they walk up to you and go I know who you are and I'm introducing myself to you and I want my I want my high school son to meet you or when you walk into a high school and they got a struggle going on they asked you to come over and speak and they're high school students that you you run into there's some of them that are just special and want to just get involved in the movement right now and that's how the black and black and brown cadre emerged the black and brown cadre were high school students who were not old enough to become members of the Black Panther Party but who wanted to be and it was my responsibility to and those were from Morris High School and uh Bronx Science and uh two or three other high schools around the area and so I just took them in after school come over we'll do political education and we all studied and we all read we all talked about then that we would even sometimes use the newspaper the Black Panther newspaper as political education for this day and we're going to go out and sell our newspapers and I went with them by the way I had to go to their parents and ask their parents if it was okay for them to do this I never took on children without having their parents okay to do so so I had the kids we go out we sell newspapers together who sold the most newspapers and you know you had a you get a percentage of the papers that you sold and you gave the other percentage to the party and I gave the kids their percentage just like equal to what a Black Panther we get because we all were doing the same thing and it was wonderful and of course if you come over after school I'm cooking dinner sometimes if I'm you know if I'm in a position to and so you get to have dinner at my house too and then after dinner there's this wonderful discussion Zaytrakor might come over and have political education evening political education and here you are you're a high school student and you have Zaytrakor coming in or Michael Tabour coming in or Fainitrakor coming over to you know give you political education what an amazing thing and so so many of those students became brilliant members of the community who made tremendous contributions to the community I want to say that Huracan Flores and his brother Felix Flores were two members of my beautiful black and brown cadre and Huracan was killed in Florida in a struggle with the with the police with the FBI and his brother Felix Flores is still around floating around I have no idea what he's doing but he's a great man he's whatever he's doing is great so many of those young students Panama I know you've heard of Panama Alba Panama Alba is one of my one of my students he had dropped out before I could but he still is what I consider one of my students Muntu Muntu the great a lawyer the great attorney gee they're part of that high school team and it did just amazing people so uh hill door tease I cannot forget hill door tease so there were so many of the black and brown cadre were just brilliant young people uh okay so what else that we talked about political education oh well I was gonna say I love that you're on you're on mute Suzanne I am off you did not off not turn off um I feel like this is lagging a little bit um I love that you said you would take them to the Indian restaurant or out for these meals um to help them feel like they knew more about the world and help them and say you belong in these spaces um I was just talking to a friend today who was telling me that um you know as a she was a queer person and a person of color and she was saying you know I go to this one restaurant but I don't always feel welcome and this is you know so many decades later and um I was thinking how important it is to help to help these young people feel like yes you this is a space you deserve to be in and and that we deserve we all deserve to share whatever resources there are in society and particularly things that are cultural and and to uh we would be a much better place if we could share our our cultural things our music our food sharing food uh from different uh countries and different walks of life and different worlds and even different approaches to the same food you know I'm in the south and and the approach to uh African-American food food to soul food is a different thing down here in the south uh than it is in the north where I come from so this there's a great deal to for us to interact and intersect with and any sort of critical thinking has you questioning why is that oh let's go back to the history let's look at migration I mean this is why right food is always political and always this great way this great place to start or to continue these kind of conversations um which is so great I think we were going to leave the last 10 minutes for um for questions so the last thing I wanted to um maybe have you speak to if you don't mind before we get to that mark is a little bit more about health care because I know it was so important to what you um what your you know lifetime mission was what you did with the Panthers and also perhaps um related to food justice of course eating eating well is part of health care holistic care community care yeah well food is is a health um and I'm learning that lesson every day because uh in order for me to stay alive because of my heart and because I have a congestive heart failure all of my which means my arteries are all clogged up uh I have to eat eat a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables uh and it helps me to stay healthy and it helps everyone to stay healthy as a matter of fact so health and food I was involved in uh fighting for quality health care but initiated in uh Lincoln Hospital and people should learn all about Lincoln Hospital struggle by by watching the the film Takeover and the film um Dope is Death Takeover by Emma Snyder and Dope is Death by Mia Donovan but the struggle for quality health care uh had its center for a long time in the community of the South Bronx because Lincoln Hospital was such a horrible place it was recognized as the butcher shop and I don't want to go on and on because I want to answer question but check out the health the struggle for health care uh and how important it is that we were able to write the the first patient's bill of rights based on the the real complaints of patients at the hospital at Lincoln Hospital we put up a 24-hour complaint table and um not only was it a complaint table but we actually took up the struggle inside of the hospital for individual patients and for groups of patients uh right there the the uh against lead poisoning what I was about to get that I was I was basically being like clio talk about um patient's bill of rights I'm so glad you brought up um lead poisoning which was um yeah like not even recognized as being a public health problem and now there are there's legislation against it there's public programs um you know and I just wanted to yeah kind of end before we get to questions with highlighting that there are so many um you know issues that the Panthers brought um brought light to that they um pushed research towards that they pushed legislation towards of course um you know the the free breakfast programs led towards federal free breakfast programs a couple years later and um you know so many other things around these community programs that you worked on um I mean it's this is this is the legacy of the Panthers and it's so little known um and the last thing I just want to say that the struggle for free quality uh health care continuity of health care still exists it should never we should never pay for for health care delivery um ever because it belongs to human beings belongs to the people and um we haven't we haven't won that struggle yet yeah there's still many things we're still fighting for um as um folks they uh we'll go back to I think we had two questions here that are already in the chat but if anyone else has any questions for Cleo or for me um and yeah please put them in the chat and I'll go back um you know one one here was um Sharon wrote I hope you can relate or connect this or at least mention the farm worker march from Southern California to Sacramento that's happening right now um I'm sorry I don't know about that are you familiar with that I know the history of um supporting farm workers rights um within the party um we yes and I'm so happy I just want to say I'm so happy to get questions from from the people who are listening so please send us questions if you or just you send us your email address so we can be in contact um um I don't I am not aware of the current uh struggle for workers rights um in the California area but I have to tell you that historically the Black Panther Party is always was always a tremendous supporter and was there uh for the march uh and I have not eaten grapes I did not eat grapes for many years because of the grape boycott um so it wasn't and I love grapes but it was a long time before I ate any grapes but I must say that the the Mexican community the community of a farm worker community is um one of the one of the places that I'm I consider to be my people and whenever there's anything that is going on with them I support whatever struggle that they're engaged in um you know that's what I so appreciate about the Panthers and I think another um another maybe misunderstanding or or not full understanding is the way that the Panthers were really striving to reach across all these different lines to support all you know support workers around the country um partnering with the young lords um which was um it was a Puerto Rican or would you say um Latinx group Puerto Rican specifically um and then Chicago of course um Fred Hampton was targeted for trying to bring together working class whites um Latinx people um Indigenous rights I mean it was it's you you have the targeting of the Panthers who were helping to bring together all these disparate groups because that would be a threat for the power structure right and um and so of course they were always reaching across many aisles to um support anyone who needed support um to show that this was you know the rights for everybody even in that image that was at the very beginning of this talk which was a photo taken by Bev Grant who is a friend of both of ours that has become a friend here in Brooklyn to me um there is I know because I've looked at that picture very closely the the kid wearing the beret I think he has a young look but yes there was another question about what drove you to be um I'm paraphrasing um to drove you towards activism um to your lifetime of activism Cleo um I must say that I give the credit for my activism to my family I come from a family where people in the community used to come over to talk politics and listen to good music so our house was a place where the jazzy people in town who are who may and may not have been allowed to come over or uh the adults came over we had every magazine every ebony uh jet magazine crisis mag magazine crusader magazine uh every black newspaper the Amsterdam news the Pittsburgh courier the Philadelphia whatever the Philadelphia black newspaper was at that time we had them in the house um 1000 lynchings was one of the first books that I stole from my father's uh dead table you know um and I remember very clearly because he says you're too young to read that and I was like I had already read it so I don't know what he was talking about I had already read it um and so and everybody was activist you know everybody that we had a huge garden in the backyard and people in the neighborhood were just allowed to come and get stuff out of the garden it was never like you know they're stealing stuff my grandma would say well we got plenty so let them come and get stuff you know uh and she would go out and she you know bring in her stuff and do her canning and if somebody came over and they didn't have any food they they come over to our house and get food we have bunches of food canned in the basement where it was cool at you know and it was always sharing going on so I come from that kind of background uh and the other thing is that we didn't lock our doors back then we just you know and everybody was kind of cousin second third fourth cousins all that um so that's when I come from I come from that I had no idea that the conditions that people lived in were as as uh terrible as the ones that I found when I when I made it to the south france because we were working class people we were poor working class but we were working class people and I always had everything that I needed um and more but uh yes I knew immediately that I was going to help people I was just kind of like who I was I was kind of like kind of in your blood you know and you just know that that's what you're going to do and you start doing it and being a vista volunteer and learning the tools with which to do it were just amazing I'm just like oh this is the way you do it I got this I got the tools now let me go go forth carry forth I love it Cleo um well someone asked if um how would they reach out to us for scheduling for their book talk so if you want to put maybe however you mine don't be being best um contacted in the chat um and I'll give you my information if that's okay and I'll give you our last fantastic question in a second I just wanted to comment on I I love um there's so many threads that you're bringing up um you know that we didn't have a chance to talk about today that idea of mutual aid which was a term I had not heard of until I started doing research into this book and of course it's become something that more and more people are aware of and really I know in my neighborhood in bedside brooklyn it became even more um you know there's a mutual aid organization that really did a lot of fundraising and reaching out and and did exactly what Cleo was saying she learned it in um you know in her vista training and that was engaged in vista engaged with snick and vaged with the engaged with the panthers which is going to the people and saying how can I help you and um that's such a it was so interesting as I was in the middle of my research of seeing some of these threads come up again and also this idea of um of community gardens which I um I am a co-leader of my local community garden and um last time I saw Cleo a couple months ago she introduced me to um some community garden folks she knows and she didn't even get to telling you about how she helped create community gardens um in the in the Bronx right yeah and so our last question in our final minute is what are we having for dinner tonight do you know what a good question I I think I'm having hors d'oeuvres for dinner tonight I'm I'm having cauliflower and I'm going to blanch my cauliflower and and put chili powder and curry on it um so that's going to be and then we're going to use dip it in hummus so I'm going to do that I'm we've got um smoked trout we're going to do smoked trout with cream cheese or creme fraiche on crackers uh and capers probably with caper and onions um what else are we going to do um salad and salad gotta have salad gotta have green stuff because yesterday we felt we fell to the to the wolves and had a hamburger it's the first time we had all year wow we had big ones Ron says I love it the first time we had all year with smothered onions and was so delicious so I love a good burger this is the last time you and I talked on the phone I was cooking food and so then we ended up talking about food I'm probably having some version because we just talked a week or so ago about um what I was having that day because I sent you a picture of it it is my favorite season it is tomatoes from the garden season so we're probably having another crazy um because I can get most of that out of the garden and I love the tomatoes are just coming ripe for real and then um and then we've also our a million cute our million um zucchini so my kids have been eating it if I saute it where it gets all caramelized and sweet I want some zucchini and yellow squash and and uh summer squash oh I would love that I think I think I'll ask my husband to go get it so it's my favorite do you have any good um oh we have to wrap it up but do you have any good um farmers markets are you or farm stands um we have one really good one but I haven't been over there this year as a matter of fact uh we have strange hours I just have whatever's in the community garden which is great um and I won't complain about that but yeah um well thank you all so much as Cleo I love chatting with you it's been so great thank you so much and thank you for listening people let's let's do stuff that's where I'm at I'm I want to do stuff with you and I and I love I love you Anissa because you know you did this but also you know you guys are so progressive in San Francisco can I come live with you I love San Francisco there's a great place to be thanks for having me we are very lucky here yes indeed we have I have I work right across the street from a farmers market that operates two days a week I fed my baby from that place and you know the same farmers that have been there 17 years ago that are there today and you know they all took a hit during COVID but everything's coming back to life so Cleo you are welcome anytime you have a place thank you and look at your beautiful plants they're lovely thank you and oh my gosh was I right uh library community what an amazing amazing two humans so thank you so much and stick around because all of August is all about food and I'm just going to put this link in here one more time this is the link to the doc it has all of well as much as I could keep up with it has Cleo and Suzanne's emails like they put in there but all of the resources which were flying like I said it always happens found some great um archives of the Black Panther newspaper that's listed in there so thank you very much Cleo Silver Suzanne Cope get the book at the library or from your independent bookstore and we'll hope to have you both back very soon thank you so much