 I'd like to introduce our guest speaker today, Mr. Aaron Dixon himself. Aaron Dixon is a former captain of the Black Panther Party chapter here in Seattle. In Oakland, he worked in the Black Panther BPP, the Black Panther Party National Headquarters, for six years as an assistant to Elaine Brown and Huey P. Newton. For 25 years, he worked for gang involved in homeless youth here in Seattle, or the King County area. In 2006, he ran for the U.S. Senate as a Green Party candidate. He has traveled to Palestine with the African heritage delegation, and Aaron Dixon is the author of My People Are Rising, which was published in 2012. He currently travels throughout the country speaking at colleges and campuses and community centers, and he is also currently working on his second book. Okay, so I'd like to just please show your love, give a high-line welcome to Mr. Aaron Dixon. Thank you very much, Aaron. Aaron, when he was working on his PhD, he came and lived with me and my family, because we had a whole bunch of people living with us, a whole bunch of kids. That's a whole other story. But I just want to start off and talk about how important history is. And unfortunately, for the last 30 years, our society has seemingly sped up. We have seemingly passed up so many things and so many parts of our history that those generations that came along in the 70s and 80s really do not have a good understanding of the past history of Black America or America as a whole. And my generation, you know, I came along in the 50s and 60s. So my generation was very much connected to the past. We were very much connected to history. I lived in a house with my great-great-grandmother who was born in 1867. And I had a special connection to her. Her mother had been a slave at some point. And so, you know, we grew up hearing stories, hearing the stories from our parents and from our grandparents and from our aunts and uncles. You know, we heard these stories constantly over and over. And this is what was called the oral tradition. Oral tradition was a very important part of the Black family in the Black community. Of course, there were people who did not like to talk about the past because it was too painful. But overall, it was a part of our oral, it was a part of our tradition. And, you know, almost most cultures have had the oral tradition. But when they come to America, oftentimes they seem to lose that oral tradition. But I grew up with that oral tradition. I grew up hearing the stories about, you know, my father's experience when he joined the army and he went through boot camp and was sent to Mississippi. And the fact that him and his Black soldiers had to fight for their lives just to get out of Mississippi, just to be able to fight in the war. And, you know, the stories of the race riots that they had in Chicago and, you know, the stories of, you know, my grandfather and my great grandfather and the trials and tribulations they had to go through in Mississippi. So, you know, these stories in this oral tradition shaped my generation. As well as at the time you had the civil rights movement unfolding. And it was on the news. And you didn't see any Black people on the news in the 50s and 60s. So we knew during this time period that they were going to have some Black people, Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers and thousands of other young people who had taken to the streets. So we were going to see this on the news. And we got to see this, you know, when the news came on everybody gathered around the little black and white TV to watch all of this unfold. And so we were, you know, we were watching this. We were watching this and we were dealing with, you know, racism in our own lives because we lived segregated. Even here in Seattle, you know, we lived segregated. I'm from, originally from Chicago. I grew up on the south side of Chicago, which was segregated. It was all black. And then when I came here, the central area was segregated. It was segregated with people of color. It was segregated with Black people, Japanese, Chinese and Filipinos. And we all lived together. We all grew up together. We all went to school together. We had our own businesses. So it was a very, as long as we didn't go outside of our community we were well protected and we felt really good and we felt valued and we felt cherished by our community. So, you know, I was a very serious child. You know, my grandmother once told me I was a deep thinker. My father told me I was a dreamer. And so, you know, things affected me much more seriously than they did, you know, my siblings or some of the people around me. But I know when Mark Luther King came to town, I was about 12 years old and I asked my parents. I told my parents I wanted to go. So they dropped me off down at the demonstration that Mark Luther King led down 23rd Avenue against redlining, you know, where, you know, black people weren't allowed to move out of the central area. They couldn't move past Madison or further south. They couldn't really live in, you know, parts of the, you know, where Rainier Beach is. There were no black people out of Rainier Beach at that time. So I found myself marching with Mark Luther King and down 23rd Avenue. And then at the end of the march, he got on a bandstand to speak. And I, for some reason, I made my way from the back to the front and made my way to the bandstand and stood on the edge of the bandstand and looked out at the crowd. Because I wanted to protect Mark Luther King. I didn't want anything to happen to Mark Luther King because my generation, we grew up on assassinations. The first assassination that we witnessed was the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the first Irish Catholic president in America. And he was the first president that seemed to really have the interest of black people more than any other president. So he had a special place in the black community. And I was in the eighth grade, I remember. Because of Mark Luther King, I joined the Civil Rights Movement and when they started to integrate the elementary schools, I became one of the first people that jumped up and wanted to integrate into an all-white school because I thought that was helping the cause. Whatever the cause was, I thought that that would be helping the cause. So I'm sitting in class and we get told that school is let out because the president has been assassinated. We go home and we turn on the TV and we watch the assassination of John F. Kennedy over and over and over again. Over and over again because they played it over and over and over again. And then the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald right after the assassination. Somebody jumps out at the police station and assassinates the assassinator. We're watching this over and over again. Imagine being 12, 13 years old, 7, 8, 9 years old and you're watching this and you see the president get assassinated. You see his wife crawling in blood. It was very traumatic. It was very traumatic for us. But only several years later, Medgar Evers was assassinated. Medgar Evers was one of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. He was right up there with Martin Luther King. The difference between Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers is that Medgar Evers believed in protecting himself with a weapon and so he carried a weapon. And the Klan was constantly trying to kill him. And finally they did assassinate Medgar Evers. And not long after that, two years later, Malcolm X is assassinated. Malcolm X is one of the great, most powerful voices that we had ever heard. One of the most dynamic voices that we had ever heard. And he was brutally assassinated. And so, you know, all of these events, all of these things shaped us and prepared us for what was going to come in the future. And when Martin Luther King, when Medgar Evers was assassinated, UEP Newton and Bobby Seale decided to start the Black Panther Party. It was because of the assassination of Malcolm X that the Black Panther Party came about. Because they wanted to recreate the organization that Malcolm was trying to create. And so they stepped forward to start this organization called the Black Panther Party. The main visionary of the Black Panther Party, the main philosopher of the Black Panther Party was UEP Newton. UEP Newton was a visionary. He had a vision for this organization. He was a very complicated person, a very complicated man. He was born in Louisiana, grew up in the deep south at a very young age. His parents were sharecroppers. And, you know, there was a lot of racism that happened within his family and to his father. And his father had a tremendous anger towards the racism that he had faced, even though he was half-white. And so he did not want his kids to grow up in the south. He wanted his kids to get an education. So he moved them to Oakland, California. And Huey was the youngest of seven kids. His father was a preacher. So Huey was, you know, he was a baby because he was the youngest. And he was so cute in terms of his sisters and brothers because everybody looked out for Huey, you know? And so, but Huey, as I said, was a very complicated person. You know, he did not know how to read when he was in high school. And it was his brother, Melvin Newton, who would go on to become a professor at Merrill College that started teaching Huey how to read and giving Huey books to read. And the books that he gave Huey to read were philosophical books and books written by some of the great authors, you know, out of Europe. So Huey was like reading these books that most young people were not into or had not even really heard about. So he would later on go to law school and he met Bobby Seale and they formed this organization for the Black Panther Party. It's called the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. And one of the main things that they wanted to focus on was police brutality and police violence. And so here being a law student, he believed in the Second Amendment of the Constitution, which says everybody has the right to bear arms. He says, well, we have a right to carry weapons. We have a right to protect ourselves in the law. In California, had an open carry policy. So they developed a uniform, black leather jacket, black beret, powder blue shirt, black pants, combat boots, black shoes. This became the uniform of the Black Panther Party and then they went out and raised some money. They began to buy some rifles and shotguns and they studied the law. He studied the law. He could verbatim, recite the law about the gun laws. And so what they did was they went out and started patrolling the police with their weapons and their uniforms on. And, you know, this was, you know, a lot of these police officers came from the south, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana. And here is this group of black men carrying guns and watching them. And here we knew that we, you know, you stand 15 feet away from the police officer you could observe them. So when a police stops somebody in the black community, they get out of their car, they lined up, and they stood 15 feet away. And the police was like, what are you doing here? What are you niggers doing here? Basically it's what he said. What are you niggers doing here? And here he would recite the law. He would recite the law by verbatim. And if the police went for his gun, he would jack around into a shotgun and said, I have a right to carry my weapon. If you try to shoot me, I'm going to shoot you back. Because here he was very, he was fearless. He did not fear anything or anyone. Plus he had all this anger that he carried about what had happened to his family. So he did not like injustice. And he was going to stand up. He was ready to die to fight against injustice. So this police patrol went on for a while. And there were many incidents where the police would come up and say, what's this nigger doing with his gun? He'd say, what is this pig doing with his gun? Because that's what we call the police pig. So anyway, the Black Panther Party began to form. Now I was a student at University of Washington in 1968. I helped form the first Black student unit at the University of Washington. And we did a sit-in at Franklin High School. And two weeks later we got arrested. We were put in the county jail. And so I'm in the county jail with Larry Gostin and Carl Miller, some of the other BSU members. And the television comes on and it says that Martin Luther King has been assassinated. And this was very shocking. This was very, I mean, we were like, what the hell? They didn't kill Martin now. So riots start breaking out all over America. Every major city riots were just breaking out. America was burning. America was angry at the death and the murder of Martin Luther King. And I remember that night going back to my bum. And I remember saying to myself that my picket sign was going to be replaced by the gun. And so I joined the Black Panther Party. But I did not realize that all across the country a lot of young people, black, white, brown, red, yellow, they all said the same thing. They knew that Malcolm X, I mean, Martin Luther King was the man of love and respect. And if they killed Martin Luther King, then it's time for all of us to take to the streets and organize and do something. And so you not only have the Black Panther Party that began to rise up, you had other organizations. You had the Brown Berets, you had the Young Lords, you had the Young Patriots Party, you had SDS. Young white people were angry. They were angry at the war as well. So you had this big anti-war movement that began to build among the white students. And so a big movement was actually created on the death of Martin Luther King. It was a nationwide movement. But the Black Panther Party was a special organization. It was a significant organization. And in the Black Panther Party, we had to read two hours a day. We had to study. We had political education class twice a week. And we put out a newspaper. Now Huey had, this is how brilliant that Huey was. That he understood that if we're going to have a political organization talking about what's happening in America, we need to be able to tell what's happening through a newspaper. Because this is what we were taught in the party, that power is the ability to define phenomena and make it act in a desired manner. That means whoever is controlling the media controls the masses, controls the people. And so we had to have a newspaper that defined the truth of what was really happening, not just in our community, but what was happening in Palestine, what's happening in Mexico. And we had an international section in our newspaper where we talked about all the other struggles that were taking place all over the world. We were telling the truth about these struggles and about these movements. We were telling the truth about what was happening in America. And so our newspaper became very important and very critical. And we put this paper out for 16 years, every week, nonstop. And they did everything they could to stop that newspaper. We would go pick it up from the airport. They would be burned. They would be watered down. Or they wouldn't be there. And we had orders. Every Panther had to go out and sell 100 papers a day because we understood how important that paper was. And people were eager to get that newspaper. They were eager to read what was happening in the Black Panther newspaper because we had an artist, Emery Douglas and Erin's mother, Asali, and another sister named Tariqa Lewis, were all artists. And we had artwork. And he told Emery Douglas, the artist of the party, that I want you to be the minister of culture and create art for the newspaper. Because he told us that black people are not well-read people, but they do understand art. That they do understand art. So we had a lot of pictures. We had a lot of artwork. A lot of revolutionary artwork that defined what the Black Panther Party was about. That defined what was happening in our community. So by 1968, Jed Gehooper, John Mitchell, Attorney General, Nixon, President of the United States, they could hold a press conference that said Black Panther Party is number one threat of America. By this time, the Black Panther Party spread all over the country. Seattle had the first chapter outside of the state of California. Then we opened up a chapter in Portland. Then we opened up a chapter in Tacoma. And all across the country, there were Black Panther Party chapters, except for in the deep south. And so you had all these young men and women who joined up in the Black Panther Party wearing the Panther uniform. So Jed Gehooper, they come out with a press conference that said we're the number one threat to the security of America. But we didn't know that they had talked amongst themselves that they were going to have us killed off in 1969. We didn't know that. They had this thing called Cointel Program. It was a secret program to wipe out not just the Black Panther Party, but to wipe out the whole left of the movement. One of the beautiful things about the Black Panther Party is we understood the importance of working with other people. We were not a Black Nationalist organization, though many of us, when we did join the Black Panther Party, we were Black Nationalists, but the Black Panther Party taught us that this is an international struggle. It's just not about Black people. It's about all oppressed people, all people of color, not just in America, but all over the world. And that's what made the Black Panther Party more powerful and that's what made it more dangerous. So they began to arrest party members, arrest people in leadership. There were some chapters that were actually started by the FBI, like in Baltimore and New Jersey, were actually started by the FBI. So they heavily infiltrated the party with FBI informants and local police informants. And they began to attack the Black Panther Party. You know, the Black Panther Party, you know, he taught us nothing stands outside of change. Everything is in a constant state of flux. Everything is always changing and you have to be adaptable. You have to be adaptable to survive because nothing stands outside of change. And so, we had to change as well. So when they began attacking the Black Panther Party, we had to come out of our uniform. We had to stop wearing our uniform because our uniforms were also scaring some people in the community. Then we also understood, you know, we wanted to change America. We wanted to change America, like Malcolm X said, the ballot of the bullet. We were going to try to do it either way, you know, because revolution was taking place all over the world. And we saw ourselves as part of this worldwide revolution. So we wanted to create revolution, to change America, to keep it from where we're at right now. That was our goal, to keep America from being what it is right now. We can talk about that later. But anyway, so, you know, they began to attack the Black Panther Party and a lot of people were arrested, people were assassinated and so we came up with this idea called survival programs, pending revolution. We knew that the people weren't ready but we also knew that the people were hungry. They didn't have resources, they didn't have medical care. So we started creating these programs. The first program was the free breakfast for school children program. We started feeding breakfast to kids on their way to school. Now there were a lot of people in the Black Panther Party, not a lot, but there were handfuls of people who only joined the Black Panther Party so they could carry a gun to shoot police. And so when we said we were creating these programs, they didn't think that was revolutionary so they left the Black Panther Party. So we began to, so in Seattle we opened up five different locations of breakfast programs where we were feeding kids on their way to school. These kids, we had it near elementary school and they would come into the community centers that we had established and we'd get up at six in the morning, we'd go down there and prepare pancakes and bacon and nutritious grits and oatmeal and all kind of good stuff for the kids. And so we were given the order to start they sent us a memo and you said you got to start a breakfast program. So we did. Then we got a memo saying you got to open up a medical clinic and so there was no blueprint about how to start a medical clinic. There was no step A, B, C, there was nothing. We had to go out and organize and within three or four months we opened up the first free medical clinic in Seattle. It was a Sydney Miller free medical clinic now it's the Carolyn Downs clinic, it's still open but the Black Panther Party opened up 13 free medical clinics all across the country providing free medical care. In Seattle we had a baby wellness program where we focused on women that were pregnant and we made sure that they had everything that they need prenatal vitamins and checkup and diapers and everything they needed for their babies. Then we opened up the free busing the prisons program because we said Mrs. Jones she's got to go two or three hours to walla walla prison to visit her son and she doesn't have a way to get there. And a lot of Black parents were in that same position so we got some cars and vans and we started taking people to the different prisons and eventually somebody gave us a in Chicago somebody gave them the Chicago Chapter Greyhound bus and so we started taking people to all the prisons and we started free food program once a week we started giving out bags of groceries out of our office out of our community center. One of the orders also that we had was we had to move out of the storefront offices where most of the Black Panther Party offices were located because we were vulnerable to attacks so they start this campaign of attacking the Black Panther Party. Meanwhile 1967 Huey is arrested and charged with murder because he had been stopped over 50 times they wanted to kill Huey Newton they wanted to get rid of Huey and so what happened was he got stopped one night while he was out was one of his friends he had a law book that he carried around he carried this law book around everywhere and so when the police stopped him they made him get out of the car he had his law book with him they took him into the back of the police car in the back and they tried to kill him they pulled their guns out and tried to kill Huey Huey opened up his law book where he had a snub nose 38 took it out and killed one policeman and wounded another one and they take him down where his friend takes him to the hospital they call the police and the police come down there and they start beating Huey he's got his arm arm stretched back on the gurney like this he's got two bullet holes in him and they're beating him and they're calling a nigger and he's spitting blood on him he's spitting blood on him and telling him you fuck you pigs that's the type of man that Huey was that's bad and he's still defying so and I was really detrimental to the black panther party because he had he eventually went to prison so anyway they started this campaign to try to destroy the black panther party and then we got orders to fortify our offices we got orders to put sandbags and fortification around our community centers because we had to protect themselves we were given orders that we had to protect ourselves if they came to the door and they tried to shoot us we had to shoot back we had to fight back we got orders on that and so we sandbagged our office in Seattle where our community center was we built sandbags all the way to the top we had double sandbags we had steel plates on the doors we had bulletproof vests that we purchased mass mass that we bought and we were considered we had the second most fortified office panther office in the country and so they began these raids to try to destroy the black panther party in the summer of 1968 there was an assassination attempt on my life some guys who had joined the party they tried to set me up to be killed to the police that put a $20,000 contract on my head and I barely escaped with that from my life and that's in the book and so they began to raid chapters and branches around the country now in Chicago there was this young man named Fred Hampton Fred Hampton probably one of the most important people to join the black panther party he was 19 years old when he joined the party he was a year older than I was Fred Hampton was he was a he was the next great leader of not just America he was the next great humanitarian of the world he was a very special human being when Fred Hampton spoke you heard Martin Luther King and Malcolm X coming out of his mouth because he had served in the NAACP as well he had Martin Luther King as well and he used to stand in front of the mirror and practice the speeches of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and the Chicago chapter of the black panther party one of the first things that Fred Hampton does is go down to the black gang so the disciples of the Blackstone Rangers the two largest gangs in the world tell them they got to stop fighting each other and so he begins to build a coalition with the gangs to stop the gang warfare in America but the FBI was also involved trying to get these gangs not to join one of the gangs did join up with the black panther party and one of the other things that Fred Hampton did he started the rainbow coalition many of you heard about the rainbow coalition that started by Fred Hampton he met Cha Cha Jimenez who was head of the Young Lords of Puerto Rican Gang he convinced Cha Cha to change his gang to a political organization and they became the Young Lords political excuse me organization he also sent a delegation of people down to the poor white community where the Appalachian hillbillies lived who had migrated from the deep south and they began to meet with him and they heard about the condition that these poor whites were living in conditions that were worse than what black people were living in and the police brutality that they had to deal with as well so they developed a coalition with these poor whites and they created an organization called the young patriot party and they wore burgundy berets and they put out a newspaper and they adopted the same organizing techniques as the Black Panther Party so that was a rainbow coalition that was poor whites poor blacks and Puerto Ricans and Fred Hampton was a great speaker people that heard him speak that was it man you're going to join up you're going to join the Black Panther Party you're going to do something because this man was unbelievable I met him in Chicago so I know very much about Fred Hampton and so the FBI decided Fred Hampton had to go Chicago Daly City Mayor Daly City decided Fred had to go and Fred knew he was going to die he used to say that he used to get out and speak to a lot of he would get all the Panthers up they had to be up at six in the morning and he would go out and speak to them and he would say I I'm not going to die slipping on no ice I'm not going to die laying up in no bed I'm going to die for the people I'm going to die serving the people that's what Fred Hampton used to say there were these lawyers these white lawyers who just graduated from law school and they went up to this church to hear Fred Hampton speak and when they finished hearing him speak all of them decided they were going to donate their services to the people donate their services to the Black Panther Party and protect the Black Panther Party legally they opened up the People's Law Center which is still open today they opened up on the south side of Chicago it's still open today so one night Fred Hampton is meeting with his staff because we had all these programs we had the Black Panther Party you got up at 6 in the morning after being on security for 2 hours you got yourself ready you went to the breakfast program you came back from the breakfast program you went out in the field to sell your 100 papers you might be working on the medical clinic you might be working on the Liberation School or the food program you had to get resources from that so then you came back and we came back to the office and we had political education class we were smoking some Brother Ruby and drinking some Bitter Dog Brother Ruby that was the code name we used from marijuana Bitter Dog was a drink that they started to know from Darkport wine used to go get some Darkport wine and some little plastic lemon and pour out a little bit of wine you know pour it out to the elders and put some lemon juice in there and shake it up that was Bitter Dog that was a Panther drink Panther Piss that's what they used to call it so that was our relaxation time so Fred Hampton had been meeting on the night of December 3rd Fred Hampton had been meeting with his staff breakfast coordinators and medical care in his apartment we worked so hard we worked 7 days a week we worked so hard when it was time to go to sleep we didn't need no bed or no pajamas or nothing like that we just went to sleep wherever we were on the floor or some other stuff on top of the table or whatever you know but that morning there was a knock on the door Mark Clark 19-year-old captain of the Peory chapter of Don Gardner he went to the door with a shot and he said who is it? Shots went through the door and killed him instantly simultaneously the ATF FBI burst through the rear door and came into the house with the machine guns and started spraying just started shooting the panthers were asleep they got him up and just shouting one of the people that got shot was a young guy little thin guy really nice kind guy and he was head of the medical clinic Doc Statso he was head of the medical clinic in the Chicago chapter and he got wounded in his stomach he would never recover from those wounds they went into Fred Hampton's room and his wife tried to wake him up but he had been drugged because the security for Fred Hampton was the FBI for him he gave the lay out to Fred Hampton's home to the FBI and he put some second on Fred Hampton's drink so he was drugged his wife tried to shake him wake him up he wouldn't wake him up so they grabbed came and grabbed and pulled her by her hair she's six months later pulled her by her hair out of the room went back into the room and bam bam bam shot Fred Hampton in the head three times while he was asleep 21 years old that's how afraid of Fred Hampton they were that they were killed a 21 year old man while he was asleep and drugged and he was going to be he was a he was a messiah they looked at Fred Hampton as a messiah you know they put out a information even before the party started if you find a black messiah the FBI put to the you find a black messiah he has to be killed you know Martin Luther King was a black messiah Malcolm X was a black messiah and Fred Hampton was a black messiah and they killed him and so that very day the Seattle chapter the Chicago chapter had a tour because the newspaper said Panthers shoot out Panthers shoot first they shoot through they shoot at the police that's a bunch of bull crap there were no shots fired by the Panthers all the shots were fired by the police it was murder it was assassination so they had a tour that went through that house over a thousand people went to that house in one day and saw the bloody mattress and the blood on the floor where they dragged Fred Hampton's body and carried it down the stairs and that's that's the way the party was we educated people this was a very disastrous thing to have happened to the Black Panther Party now 11 months earlier in L.A. there was a brother named Bunchy Carter Bunchy Carter was head of the largest gang in L.A. called the Slossons and he got out of San Quentin prison when he was 31 and he started the Southern California chapter of the Black Panther Party first chapter outside of the state of California and Bunchy was dynamic he was he was very close to Huey in terms of his perfection and his organizing and how serious he was and you know we were organizing he was working with the Panther Congress to organize a Black Studies program on the campus of UCLA and a lot of people don't realize Black Studies program actually came from the Black Panther Party it started at San Francisco State with Panther members who organized the demonstration at San Francisco State and got Black Studies at San Francisco State and then Black Studies at UCLA then University of Washington we did the same thing up here we got the Black Studies program and look at all the things that came from the Black Studies women's studies, Native American studies Latino studies and on and on and on that was the result of the work of the Black Panther Party so anyway Bunchy Carter was killed on UCLA campus along with John Huggins the two main leaders of the Southern California chapter was assassinated and one day the UCLA by the U.S. organization which had been an enemy of the Black Panther Party under Ron Koringa who's the one that started Kwanzaa okay don't celebrate Kwanzaa so anyway they after they left killed Fred Hampton six days later they go to LA now the LA chapter was the most military minded chapters of all you know they had a lot of Vietnam vets they had a little bunker a sandbag bunker inside their office they had an underground tunnel they had a machine gun nest on the top man they was ready LA Panthers was some bad brothers and sisters there's no doubt about that so they you know when they conducted this raid they separated they cordoned the community off for about five or six blocks and made people move out of the houses they had helicopters they had armored personnel carrier they had the SWAT team the SWAT team was invented for the Black Panther Party that's where the SWAT team came about and so they began this raid they burst through the LA office burst through the door his brother named Cotton who was a Vietnam vet he had a Thompson sub machine gun and he started blasting and blew him right out the door and they had an eight hour shoot out with the LA police department and the LA chapter of the Black Panther Party they had even bombs they were even throwing bombs out on the police and up on where they had the machine gun nest they were fighting almost hand to hand a sister there were women in there because women did every single thing that the man did they learned how to use weapons they learned how to shoot they did everything you know we didn't relegate our women to no second role there were revolutionaries and there was no distinction between a male or female in the Black Panther Party in terms of work so there were sisters in there there was fighting along with the brothers and it lasted six or seven hours one of the sisters got shot both her legs both went to one knee and went through the other knee and she kept on fighting she kept on shooting she kept on shooting and so finally they realized they were running out of ammunition they realized they had to surrender but nobody wanted to surrender nobody was willing to do it except until this sister stood up and said that she was going to do it and so she put up a white flag and walked out and everybody else walked out and everybody was arrested beaten and charged with attempted murder how could it be a charge for attempted murder but trying to defend yourself they not only raided that office but they raided two other homes in the area and did the same thing so right after that they came to Seattle ATF came to Seattle they met with the mayor they said the Seattle Panthers have illegal weapons in their office and that's the same pretext they used to kill Fred Hampton that's the same pretext they used in the LA chapter but we didn't have no no fully automatic weapons we were trying to get some but we did not have any in our office so the mayor told them no the mayor West Oman said I'm not going to give you Seattle police backup to raid the Seattle chapter because he knew that would be his political suicide he saw what happened in Chicago he saw what happened in LA Seattle was a smaller community we were so well known in the community we were so well known in Seattle that if he had you know subjected to death that he would not be able to live with himself and so he told them no and so he saved our lives even though our office was heavily fortified there was going to be casualties there was no doubt there was going to be casualties and so we always pay homage to mayor West Oman for standing up as a result when he went to the mayor's convention in Washington DC he was met at the front door by James Ehrlichman and told that we are not you are not allowed in because you did not carry out the orders that we had for the FBI to come destroy the Seattle chapter and so you know over about a you know four-year period there were 25-30 Panthers that would be killed in various ways in various situations so we were always going to funerals so one of the things that came about because of all of these raids and attacks and murders by the FBI that they convened a church commission in Seattle I mean in Washington DC to investigate not just the Black Panther Party but also to investigate Jedga Hoover and these attacks that were taking against the Black Panther Party because a lot of people were killed and so as a result of that they had to stop that open warfare against the Panthers so how much time did we have? 5 minutes alright so so one of the things that we did here we eventually got out of prison you know and then we do a centralization in Seattle we bring a lot, I mean in Oakland we bring a lot of comrades to Oakland because we wanted to make Oakland a base of operation and we we ran Bobby Silvermaier in Brown for City Council we gave out 10,000 bags of groceries with a chicken in every bag if you can imagine having to organize and give out 10,000 bags of chicken groceries I'm sorry with a chicken in every bag a bag of potatoes loaf of bread, canned food that was a tremendous feat that we were able to carry this off and we gave it out when we announced that Elaine Brown in this campaign Bobby Silvermaier almost won they had interjected a black guy to run against Bobby Silvermaier that took away some of the votes otherwise Bobby Silvermaier would have came mayor so after this eventually we did run Lionel Wilson in 1976 for mayor and the Black Panther Party put the first black mayor into office in 1976 and we were in his office every day the Black Panther Party was running the city of Oakland when Lionel Wilson was elected there was a lot of things that happened Huey came back he would have to go into exile in Cuba he would come back he got addicted to cocaine and the party just all the attacks against the party Fred Hampton being killed a lot of people had to go into exile a lot of people had to leave the country important people it really kind of destabilized things and eventually the Black Panther Party would cease to exist somewhere around 1988 we also opened the Oakland Community School in 1972 which was considered the best alternative school in America a very powerful school we had ordered that we teach meditation and yoga at the Oakland Community School so in 1972 Community School kids yoga and meditation way up there so we're gonna wrap this up but the Black Panther Party played a very significant role we also had an international section in Algeria we were given diplomatic status by the government of Algeria and the North Korean government two Black babies ever born in North Korea and they were both by Panther with Mcathleen Cleaver and Barbara Barbara Cox they had babies that were born they would give them Korean names so it's just we had an international section we had Black Panther Party support groups Black Panther Party organizations in Australia among the Aborigines in India in New Zealand in India the dark people of India we had a Black Panther Party in Israel among the Moroccan Jews they rose up against the racism they were facing and they chose the Black Panther Party as their name so that was how influential Black Panther Party was we're gonna end it we'll have a question and answer who's got the first question first question don't be afraid what is the main message that you want our generation to understand from your experiences well I think the main message is and this is the legacy of the Black Panther Party this is a legacy that exists all over the world this is why people love the Black Panther Party all over the world the people who travel other leaders of the neighborhood they love the Black Panther Party and the reason why they love the Black Panther Party because our legacy and our message that everybody has a right to exist everybody has a right to defend themselves everybody has a right to fight for justice you have to be strong you have to be determined and you have the right to be strong you have the right to determine you have the right to fight for justice we shouldn't have the problems that we have today before 1980 there were no homeless people in America there may be a handful maybe a few here and there but now we've got thousands and thousands of people living in tents how do we let that happen we've got two and a half million people in prison most of them Black and Latino how do we allow that madness to happen because we're not connected anymore we don't have that interconnection that we used to have that my generation had we had we had compassion we had deep compassion for other people we couldn't like just walk by and see somebody living in a tent or living on the side of the street and not really feel something not really feel that we had to be compelled to do something and so we've lost that connection with one another we've got to bring that connection back I think it's coming back under Trump I think he inspired us to really begin to really look at things that are more critical way and really be willing to come together and really fight for injustice my question is on the state of Palestine so earlier you said you visited the state of Palestine so do you think that a similar movement to the Black Panther movement is free Palestine it's going to take the world to free Palestine and what's happening in Palestine just like homelessness should not be allowed to continue in this country the oppression of Palestine should not be allowed to continue because you got in Gaza you got 2 million people living in a prison virtually a prison they can't leave they can't get medical care for the food for their kids they can't take care of the kids the kids are dying the kids are suffering from trauma they can't get medical care it's a trosity of what we are allowing to happen to the Palestinian people and we should not allow that we as a the EU Europe delegation wanted to go to Gaza this is recently wanted to go to the Gaza Israel told them no you can't go into Gaza and investigate this genocide that we are committing on the Palestinian people but I think more and more people are getting in tune to what's happening with Palestine even a lot of Jewish people are beginning to realize that that is not the answer taking away their land the way that we're doing and abusing the Palestinian people I think that in terms of the liberation for all of us there's also going to be a liberation for Palestine good afternoon Mr. Dixon how are you? my name is Al Gardner and I'm from the Madison valley down the street from the central area and my question for you is what local programs do you have any support that individuals can get up under today similar to the central motivation program and those programs were alive when I was coming up well I don't live in Seattle anymore I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico but I think there's a lot of things going on in Seattle there's a lot of people that are doing things I think Africa town has to be given some credit for what they've done in terms of developing developing their own land and developing housing for people of color in Seattle so they can have some housing and there's a lot of other organizations there's a lot of there's a Latino brother named I think his name but he's from Venezuela, Nicaragua and what he did was he opened up a community library upon Beacon Hill where people can go in and sign up and pay a fee and they can collect books out of there they can sit there and have discussions it's really a beautiful thing because one of the things that happened during the movement was they got a wage war against the black bookstores black bookstores were all over America and the FBI wage war against them there are very few left that was one of the places we could go and sit down and read and have discussions and really kind of develop our minds about what was happening so that's one of the things we could support his bookstore I can't remember the name but it's right there on Beacon Hill right across from the station any other questions? I've got a question it might be a personal opinion why is it that the government wanted to take down the black Panthers and all black leaders were killed but they didn't infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan and try to take them out I want his opinion because he lived there I just want to know I was going to say the same thing this is a racism after what America was built upon America was built upon racism and colonization and the destruction of Native Americans and the destruction of of black of black people and creating this racist state you know creating a problem where a problem really did not exist before so my question is before segregation there are a lot of black owned businesses do you think we'll ever get to that point now? one of the things that happened in the 80s was the push for individualism and so what it did was it kind of gave the message, this false message that racism did not exist and black people had an opportunity to do anything they wanted to do in America owned businesses and all kinds of things and you did, there was a there was a black middle class that you could say was developing and black millionaires came about you had Oprah and all these other people that became millionaires you had Obama who became president it was all about the individual individually yeah if you work hard and you got the right connections you can do some things you can open up businesses even though we still face discrimination and even going through that it's much more available now what is that to answer because it's not just about the individual it's about the community even though individually we as people of color can do a lot of different things including rise of president our communities and our families are more worse off now than they were 40 years ago under segregation we are really worse off now so it's about really developing our community again rebuilding our community rebuilding our family structure rebuilding our values the values that I grew up with you know that my family passed down to me some of those values may be not pertinent but a lot of them are pertinent and so it's about finding our humanity discovering our humanity how can we rebuild and redevelop our humanity so that we can save not just black America so we can try to save this world in dire straits we're facing some tremendous destruction if we don't come together as human beings my question is about you said that there was an assassination attempt on your life and also in the documentary a few hours ago that we watched it said that you were set up and you robbed a place of their typewriter and like you were set up you walked out of a room with a typewriter and then you went to jail for that how did you push yourself like to stay within the party after you know people are trying to take your own life people are trying to keep you in jail make you a political prisoner you see many more political prisoners that are people like minded as you how did you decide I want to stay with the vision the level of compassion that we had and passion we were committed we said we're ready to die we're ready to die for the people we're ready to die for our comrades and if you're not ready to die for something what are you living for if you're not ready to die for a cause that is unjust what is the whole purpose of really having a valued life to live to die or fight for something and so that's what it was for me you know I don't care yeah they were trying to kill me they were trying to kill my comrades and a lot of people did leave because of that a lot of people did not join the party because of that but it left a core group of people that were willing to sacrifice their life and you know being in the Black Panther party was the most important part of my life and you ask any party member they'll tell you the same thing if they had a chance to do it all over again would you do it and they always say yeah we would do it again because it's that's who we are that's why I'm here now talking to you now and sharing that story with you now because I refuse to back away from that and you know I think that's a message for young people too is we have to be willing to fight for something no matter what how difficult it is no matter how what the challenges are we have to be able to stand up and fight for something okay is there I just want to say thank you it's an honor to be in a room with you because I grew up during your generation time so I was and we all need to be awakened to the truth and the negative things that were told about the Black Panthers so I didn't know a lot of what you just told because when I grew up they didn't tell us they told us lies like our current president now tells a lot of lies so I really realized from you talking how important it is for me to also empower and educate others about the truth of the Panthers because I'm a social equity warrior and so I believe that's important for all of us to stand united just like you said about community and it's important we have the social media now for the youngsters they don't know how to communicate they don't respect each other they'll walk through the door and they won't hold it for you you know little simple stuff they don't know what etiquette is all the way up through high school and college it hurts my heart but my heart smiles for you to go out and tell and educate because either we are part of the problem or part of the solution when you do nothing and you see injustice and you see things happening that you don't agree with and you say nothing you do nothing about you're part of the problem so thank you so much thank you for saying that you were talking about a lack of compassion a lack of communication a lack of coming together and discussing things probably also I'm thinking you know about being a good neighbor and knowing your neighbors and communicating with people as being a good thing what do you see as the cause for this lack of compassion that's becoming apparent in our present society it's a lot of things there's never one thing that you can point to it's always a series of things you know and I think well you know first of all history you know like I said at the beginning history is always moving but it seems to have sped up in the 1980s because in the 1980s we developed we were moving to a different culture we were moving to what I call it was this capitalism that we have we were moving into a phase of capitalism where we were nothing really was important that culture wasn't important what happened in the past is old it's not part of us now and we started beginning pushing this individualism it started in the 70s but then it began to really move at a very fast pace in the 80s and a lot of things began to change you know corporations wealthy people were charged at a very high level starting with the war on poverty in 1969 wealthy people were they were paying 90% tax rate and even up until the 70s they were paying 90% tax rate and a lot of that money was used to pay for college for a lot of students tuition was very affordable and after that what we saw they had a plan they wanted to turn the college institutions into corporations then to be money making operations they didn't want them to be a place where young people could come and learn about the injustices and they didn't want them to be a place of dissent anymore so that's one of the first things they did was start turning the universities into corporate entities and that's how we got so many people that are paying so much money for their college education you know they're in debt another thing is Ronald Reagan got rid of the mental health system he broke down the mental health system that we had in place and ended up putting a thousands of mentally ill people out on the streets he cut the budget in HUD which meant housing was subsidized housing it wasn't as much subsidized housing as before and pushing this individualism this trickle down theory and it's all about money when I was growing up greed was a bad word in the 80s greed was a good word everybody was greedy everybody wanted to be a millionaire and you know all the songs they you heard that in the songs you know it's about money I'm gonna get my money money money money and so all of those things all of those things led to the breakdown of the family the most devastating thing was the crack cocaine gang epidemic that happened in the 80s because there were no gangs in Seattle in the 1980s you had never heard about a black kid shooting another black kid in Seattle in 1979 and you know gangs have always been territorial they were all about their territory their hood their neighborhood and then in the midst of this grab to be rich and became you know the FBI the CIA started importing cocaine into America to fund the conscious their war against the Nicaraguan government and that's where it all really began to really have a devastating effect you had all millions and millions of pound of cocaine coming into America and they came into South Central LA and they developed this method because cocaine was a popular drug in the 70s you know everybody was I snorted I snored with some politicians and everybody in Hollywood was snorting cocaine you know it was a casual drug you know Huey was snorting cocaine then they came up with this thing called the rock if you had a lot of money you could get a rock of cocaine and put it in this pipe and smoke it that's what happened to Richard Pryor you know he caught himself on fire you know and then they got it down to a rock where you didn't have to be half the money like Richard Pryor had you could just have 10, 20 dollars get a 20 dollar dub and smoke that shit and that shit was so damn addictive and ten minutes later you coming back for more black mothers were the most part paternalistic mothers in America because we we took care of the white man's babies during slavery and even after slavery we took care of their kids we cleaned their clothes we washed their clothes we came seamstresses and laundry and all we took care of their families we were very paternalistic black women were extremely paternalistic more than anybody else because of slavery and they thought that they had to protect their kids and when this crack cocaine came about but see first integration hit you know when integration I don't know why we were fighting for integration integration hit when we integration we gave up everything we gave up our values we gave up our community we just gave we just gave everything up no no no no no group of people does that you don't just give up everything but it made us vulnerable made us vulnerable to this crack cocaine epidemic when that crack cocaine epidemic our families were already breaking apart people were already moving I remember in the 70's you said I'm just doing my thing you know I left my wife and my two kids I'm just doing my thing that was justification you know so that began the whole individual thing and so when the crack cocaine came and the gangs this became a money making thing for the gangs so it no longer came became about territory it became about money and these gangs can make about to many millions of dollars you know and guns not only guns start coming in with the cocaine you know with all these thousands and millions of pounds of cocaine and and so the gangs proliferated and they spread you know they came to Portland because they had to get out of LA LA was so crazy they wanted more markets for their for their crack so they came up to Portland they came up to Seattle and the Seattle gangs they they didn't have no gangs in Seattle but Big Al from Chicago had been in town and he formed the Black Gangs of Disciples among Seattle young people and they had you know they had their gang and they fought with the crypt they fought with the blood and so you had gangs in them in Seattle but they spread the South Dakota they had gangs in South Dakota everywhere all over you had these drug gangs and you had this epidemic of all these addicted people these addicted mothers aunts and uncles and grandparents you know that addiction was so bad that black kids never were in foster care before 1980s you didn't see no black kids in foster care in 1980s by 1990 black kids were filling up the foster care system because the black family was breaking down breaking down you had grandparents who had to take care of their kids their kids kids because they were no longer able to do it I saw it when it hit Oakland I saw what that epidemic did Oakland we used to call Oakland black chocolate city we were proud of Oakland you know Lake Merritton it was a beautiful place and it was a black people black people and this epidemic came in and just man it was so destructive and it just did the same thing all across the country but it broke down the family it broke down the community it broke down our family that's the most devastating thing to happen to black people since slavery with that epidemic and the US government and CIA they need to be they need to be sued they need to be held accountable you know Ronald Reagan knew that shit was going on he's got his wife tell him all you got to do is say no you know and they're bringing in millions of pounds of cocaine George Bush was part of it you know his family was cashing and so that you know that really kind of led to destruction what bought us here now is that gang crack cocaine epidemic that was the most potent thing of that movement also one of the things that Ronald Reagan did in 1986 he passed the law and said that drug companies pharmaceuticals could advertise on TV because before 1986 you didn't see no drug advertisement pharmaceuticals on TV you didn't see that now they're the biggest drug dealers of all the biggest drug dealers and we got to watch that shit every time we watch the news we got to watch that shit you know anytime a Zeralta it may cause your kidneys to fail it may cause so we really got to question ourselves our thinking man you know we are brainwashed man we are delusional we are delusional that we think this is the greatest place in the world America is the greatest place in the world that's a bunch of bullshit America is not the greatest place what other country does that to its people no other country what other country is the richest country in the world we got 50,000 homeless people in New York we got 75,000 homeless people in LA we got 50,000 homeless kids and all over this country now this is not the greatest place in America and we believe that crap we think that's true and we want to be all patriotic and get all upset when somebody attacks America somebody says something bad about America do your history read and study and read the truth now my second book I'm working on a second book I'm three-fourths of the way done but I talk about what happened in the 80s it's a sequel to my first book I talk about the breakdown of the family because my wife at the time became addicted I became I had to become a single parent to my kids and they have taken a whole bunch of other kids as well I took, I had a house full of kids instead of my own non-profit and opened up a transition housing program you know but this is what we those who were conscious we had to step forward and help fight against this campaign so thank you again thank you