 So welcome everyone to this book talk hosted by New America and we've got the author Garrett Felber here with us today to talk about his book those who know don't say it's an incredible book. I will admit that I'm a child of the 80s and 90s so my introduction to the nation of Islam came mostly by rap music, and final call newspapers and the bean pies on the corner that sort of thing. And I had really no clue about a lot of the work that the nation was doing in the 50s and 60s, and how that work intersected with the carceral state protest of all sorts not just sort of the narrative were fed about, you know by any means necessary sort of that Malcolm X quote. And so that's what we're going to spend today talking about. I mean, Garrett's done an incredible job with this book and so we're going to dive right in. You begin the book with two vignettes from 1962. And so I'd love if you could sort of kick us off today the same way you did with the book, and then give us some sense of how that intersects with the primary thesis of the book. Instead, and I just want to thank New America for hosting this and Ted for being a conversation with me and the generous reading of the book. I appreciate that. So I think before so as you mentioned both of these vignettes take place in the spring and summer of 1962 and I think it's important for listeners to kind of think about, you know where that's situated within the civil rights movement and Arab right so we if we think about the Greensboro sedans, the freedom rides on one end and the March on Washington the Birmingham campaign on the other. This is really in the heart of what we consider the civil rights movement. And so just as I tell these two vignettes kind of thinking about the images places and people that we typically associate with with that period, because I think as you point out it kind of unsettles some of those assumptions. So, the first is in Los Angeles in April of 1962 to Muslim men are unloading suits out of the back of a car outside of the mosque in south Los Angeles to white police officers stop them. And then ask them about what they're doing asking if they're Muslim. This has been part of a much longer campaign of surveillance and harassment by LAPD of Muslims in LA. And then there's sort of conflict over what happens next but basically the LA Times describes this as a blazing gunfight, even though all of the Muslims involved were unarmed. And it ends with seven on our Muslim shot. One of them William X Rogers is paralyzed from the waist down for life and another Ronald X Stokes who's the mosque secretary is shot and killed at close range as he's walking towards a white police officer with his hands raised in prayer. The other vignette is later that summer at Folsom prison awesome also in California and essentially Muslim prisoners are in the yard having a meeting as they regularly would do, and a prison guard is sort of perched taking surveillance photos of them. And there's actually this series of photos that I found in the Attorney General's files, as the prison guard approaches, one of the men in the group sort of recognizes that they're under surveillance, and says you know if they want to take our picture let's give them a good one. And they stand, and they face Mecca and pray. And the reason I start with both of these is to kind of, you know, suggest that what does the civil rights era look like if we if we put these untold stories at the center. And, you know, both of them are instances of state violence and surveillance, being responded to with nonviolent protest in the form of prayer. I think what it does is it, it sort of ruptures a couple of things that were taught about the movement one is it's often either a secularized movement or told through the centrality of the black church, which is not wrong, but is it often leaves out Muslims especially Muslims of African descent. The second is black nationalism. So, often this 50s and 60s period is kind of narrated as a recession of black nationalist thought right between on one end, Garvey and the UNIA and kind of this flourishing of black nationalism in the 20s, and then the emergence of black power. But of course the thread that connects those is the nation of Islam. And I think the relationship between anti carceral organizing and by that I mean, you know anti police brutality and anti prison work, and the ramp up of state repression. It's often narrated as sort of late 60s early 70s phenomena right like the rise of mass incarceration is seen as something coming out of the 70s, and later, often coin tell pro is what we point to as the moment of, of high state repression but both of those are sort of consolidations of a much longer 50 plus year buildup of local state national repression and organizing against it. So I start with both of those stories to kind of. I think make us question what's at the margins often of our stories about the civil rights movement and think about how it, how it changes the story if we place those at the center. Yeah, it's so interesting. The, the first story about you know when the police shoot the men loading boxes. The first thing that comes to mind is the hands up don't shoot the, you know, which was the phrase we've heard over the last several years, and that's literally what is happening in that in that moment maybe not the exact words but the certainly the mannerisms. And then in the second one, it's, it's, it felt very civil rightsy for lack of a better term is sort of if you've got prisoners who are under surveillance and they, you know, gesture in prayer. And if something were to go wrong if the corrections officers were to were to turn violent, there would be no question who was behaving civilly in that moment, and who wasn't and that's very much the strategy that came in the broader, more traditional understanding of the civil rights movement they sort of latched on to that same. The timing of the interaction with law enforcement. So, and this seems to speak to, I think the primary theory that you offer in the book that you call dialects of discipline. Can you unpack that a little bit for us and tell us what that is what it means. So, I always preface talking about the dialects of discipline with a disclaimer which is that I, I really when I sat on this book did not think, oh I'm going to coin and a literative phrase with dialectics and use it to frame the book that wasn't in my in my mission so it really did come out of sort of my attempts to grapple with the material in the archive and think about a way to frame and understand what I was seeing both in prisons and in the streets which is so so I'll start with the dialectics part which is, you know, I think we often think about kind of broad backlash, right so one of the, one of the narratives with mass incarceration is oh this was sort of backlash to buy the state to the civil rights era, kind of this large scale understanding of resistance and repression. And we have great histories of policy of how mass incarceration was built out of federal and state policies. But what I wanted to get at was really the way that granular interplay between people who often aren't in our histories, prisoners, prison guards, police officers, you know people we might just see as kind of regular so to speak. And historical figures, how those interactions on a daily level are also shaping the carceral state through a dialectic of kind of resistance and repression. So to give a concrete example, one of the things that I was finding with prison litigation by incarcerated Muslims was the state responded very specifically at Attica with something called rule 22. Rule 22 basically stated that if you had legal materials in your cell that were not your own, you could be punished. And this was targeted at so called jailhouse lawyers, like Martin Soster who I write about who were writing up rits on behalf of a huge swath of people who didn't have the same legal literacy. So they would just fill out the whole legal form and then you just had to enter your name. So what I was trying to capture with the dialectics is the way that on the ground at somewhere like Attica, there are these these this interplay between the state and its captives to kind of the lead to small scale developments which ultimately build up the carceral state. And then the discipline piece is really thinking about discipline in kind of three ways. So one of them is probably the most traditional Foucaultian way is the state's ability to punish, coerce subjects deemed deviant. Another is discipline as resistance. So, whether that's individual or collective. So I would what I was finding is that there are all these ways in which Muslims in the nation of Islam would use individual discipline, whether that's, you know, immaculate dress, not eating pork, prayer, all of these sort of things that are very regimented and disciplined or collective discipline. So an example for people who are familiar with the autobiography of Malcolm X, there's this really pivotal scene in the book right where all these folks come out precinct and and they gather and he sort of like waves his hand and dissipates and that's often that anecdote is often used to demonstrate how powerful Malcolm was. But I think it also demonstrates how powerful discipline collective discipline was that you could have thousands of people who could go one way or the other but have so much control and collective force right that's what scared police not just that Malcolm had this sort of position of power. So that's the second piece and then the last one is really disciplinary knowledge. So what I found was the ways that this kind of constellation of journalists scholars and prison officials of all ranks whether they be prison guards doing daily surveillance or commissioners penologists they all sort of came together to assemble ways of knowing the nation of Islam that I think still impact our understandings today so so the dialectics of discipline was my attempt to kind of grapple with those ideas of the relationship of discipline as coercion discipline as resistance and then disciplinary knowledge the way that carceral knowledge about people in our society is developed. Yeah, it's fascinating. And again sort of going back to my my understanding of the nation as a like a young adolescent. One of the images that have stayed with me is in the public enemy videos, we have the guys in the suits and very militaristic sort of the marching. I think they're like the fruit of Islam I think was what the set was called or the this group, and it was, it was, it sort of conveyed that discipline is required. And to your point, not just as a body but even collective discipline or I'm sorry individual discipline and what you eat, and sort of how you take care of yourself, which also, you know, sort of harkens back to or maybe employees respectability politics, which sort of found its way in the Christian church, but I think was a tool of the civil rights movement and you make the case beautifully that it wasn't just the black church it was also in the mosque where some of these strategies were employed. So, so I guess before we kind of dive into the intersection of protest and transformative figures and sort of the carceral state. I think most folks understanding of the nation today is through controversial figures like Lewis Farrakhan. So can you give us some history about what the history of the, the of the black Muslim, and then sort of how the terms have come, how they've adopted them in those terms, and then sort of complicate our understanding of the nation and get us away from just this, the public frame and that's happened over the last few decades. Yeah, that's, that's a great question because I think what I found with studying the nation is it's a group that is both understudied but a lot of people seem to think they know quite a bit about right there's like a very, there's a lot of ideas circulating. And those ideas tend to be pretty narrow. So, so it's not something that people just say oh I'm ignorant about this it's like people have a sort of like anecdotal sense of what the nation is or isn't. So you know the nation is formed in Detroit in 1930, and really from 1930 until 1959 I'd say. There's a period in which it's mostly, you know in black community black urban communities across the north and starting the West there are some examples in the in the deep South to which I think are really interesting in kind of unsettling the ways that we think about it as a northern urban movement. And during that time really white America has very little knowledge about the nation of Islam. Elijah Muhammad for most of this period from 1934 afterwards is sort of the figurehead of the nation. But the understanding of the NOI through this period tends to be very orientalist in in journalists renditions of it they they're called a cult they're sort of all of these ways in which they talk about like the trappings of different sort of oriental themes right so that and then and that takes a really sharp turn in 1959 specifically because that's the moment when this documentary the hate that hate produced by Mike Wallace later of 60 minutes fame along with a black journalist Lou Lomax produce the six part series called the hate that hate produced and what it does is it introduces a new framework for understanding the nation of Islam and black nationalism as reverse racism or what they call black supremacy or black hate and what they do is they ask for the first time really kind of mainstream civil rights organizations to weigh in and as you can imagine 1959 there's a lot at stake for like NAACP and groups to have to make public statements on the nation of Islam and and they double down and they sort of say yes this is you know we denounce hate whether it's white people black I mean very much of both sides argument that we're familiar with today right some groups even call them the black KKK. So suddenly there's this new and this isn't just a new framework for the nation of Islam it's actually an emerging framework to understand black national like this idea of black hate or reverse racism is new at that point and I think it actually has huge ramifications for them when black power comes about right because it's a white liberal framework for misunderstanding. So, so that is one really pivotal moment and then shortly thereafter, C. Eric Lincoln who's a doctoral student, trying to do a dissertation on the nation of Islam and most of his advisors are sort of like I don't know what this is why would you do a dissertation and he uses the the popularity this kind of explosion of interest in the nation is long because of the documentary to pitch a full fledged dissertation and then a book and this book black Muslims in America becomes in 1961. Widely read by college students, some of whom you know are young black radical students who have a lot of interest nation, but also carceral officials. So all of these police chiefs and wardens. So we've been trying to gather information throughout the 1950s latch on to both Lincoln's book, and he also, I should say is complicit in this like he he offers his services to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation he goes and gives talks to police officers. But they also latch on to this phrase the black Muslims. And it's like overnight in 1961 suddenly this group that has been either referred to through these derisive terms like a cult or whatever but also just as Muslims, suddenly become the black Muslims. And there's this period where Malcolm is really adamant about trying to squash this because he says you know we're not black Muslims were Muslims. Right. There's no, there's no framework within the nation of Islam for for understanding Islam as kind of a racialized. I mean they understand all black people to be Muslims. Right. That's the idea of the nation of Islam is that all black people are Muslims originally and they need to Islam. So it makes no sense within nation theology. And really to this day I think that that term black Muslims has stuck but what the the sort of utility of that phrase to the state is that they can use it quite malleably malleably to say it's not actually recognized within the Muslim world as a legitimate form of Islam. It's actually this politicized hate group. So, so there's a way that the sort of adjective black before Muslim is used to discredit its standing as a religious group and as as I shown the book that's actually a pivotal for the ability to organize in prisons because if they're understood as a hate group and not a religion, it opens the door for all sorts of suppression and repression of Muslims inside. And so, and so it's with the book but also the reason the book is popular among police forces and corrections officers is because there is now a nation of Islam population within the prisons. And folks are like the wardens and police officers are wanting to know exactly what's going on. And so how did they come to make up part of the, the, you know, so much of the prison population to the point where they were under surveillance and where they were, you know, making these photos to sort of frame their peaceful protest. And in the book you mentioned a little bit about sort of resisting military draft and that sort of thing. I'd love to for you to give us some sense of the intersection between the carceral state, and then how black Muslims become squarely in its in its sites. Yeah, so I mean if we think about the sort of most famous Muslim draft resistor right Muhammad Ali. He is so often understood within the content his decision to not be drafted in Vietnam is often I think misunderstood as part of 60s anti war radicalism, rather than the context in which it should be understood which is nation of Islam draft resistance. So, the fact is no member of the nation would ever be drafted, you know, Wallace Muhammad in the early 60s was doing time in federal prison for draft resistance, you know, the, the, the eventual person who takes over the nation of Islam after his father's death. So, so that dates all the way back to World War two. And during World War two Elijah Muhammad and most of the men within the nation of Islam refuse to register with with the selective service. And this is not necessarily out of a sort of pacifist anti war position but rather out of their belief that they're not citizens of the United States. And so they constitute the largest constituency of black draft resistors during World War two, because World War two, really the sort of mainstream protest movement of World War two is the double V campaign. So this idea of sort of, you know, warring against fascism abroad and racism at home sort of beautiful service, but in return, the actualization of democracy. And in that context, you know, 100 or more Muslims go to federal prison. And what they, the thing I found is they're sort of in this really diverse political atmosphere, where they're actually in federal prisons with prison abolitionists with pacifist resistors mostly through civil rights movements but people like Bayard Rustin, you know, eventual, you know, figures in the civil rights movement who are also doing time in federal prison, who are waging desegregation campaigns in the prisons, something that the nation of Islam does not take part in. So during the 40s what's, what's interesting about this kind of arc is that during that period, the, the federal Bureau of Prisons see Muslims inside as, as quote unquote model prisoners. Because they're basically a small group that's kind of insular that want basic religious rights and aren't making waves in the same way that these abolitionists anti racist pacifists are. The interesting thing is by 1960s the 40s to the 60s has the same James Bennett is the head of the federal Bureau of Prisons and in the 60s he compares the Muslims inside to those like Rustin in the 40s in terms of the hell they're raising. And you can kind of trace that development through I mean you know Malcolm and others who have gone through the prison system and really started challenging the, you know, conditions of their confinement as well as their lack of religious rights through the 40s and 50s. But there's this, this origin moment where they go, they go to federal prisons. Through draft resistance, and then sort of become more radical and larger and put pressure on the state to the point where they're actually the central concern and sort of the Vanguard radical organizing by by the early 60s. Thank you all for joining us. I'm Ted Johnson a senior felt the Brennan Center for Justice and a 2017 National Fellow. And this is a this book event is brought to you by the new American National Fellows Program and solid state books. And I'm with Garrett Felber the author of those who don't know, say, or yes, those who know don't say, and there's a second part of that that I always sort of mix up. And he's an assistant professor at the of history at the University of Mississippi. If you've got questions, look for the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen and submit your questions there. We'll get to those in just a few minutes. My next question for you, Garrett is about you write in the book that the court is is like a theater is it's a a place of where incarcerated Muslims can sort of take on the state, but do so with in the public eye. And so they begin to use the court as a stage for their protest and for the rights they're they're trying to secure for themselves. So can you talk about this hands off period of the carceral state, and then how incarcerated members of the nation, use the court as a way of contesting this hands off approach to prisoners rights and then sort of transform what that means going forward for the nation, the America and the nation of Islam itself. Yeah. Yeah, so there's this whole, almost 100 year period from this ruling rough and become enough in 1871, which defines incarcerated people as literal slaves of the state with no constitutional rights and and this period is care is characterizing the hands off period, as you said, and by that they mean that the judicial branch essentially said we have no say over prison discipline and security and discipline and security for folks who don't know is the most capacious term right everything in prison in prison official can go can fall under that umbrella. So, so for the judicial branch to say we have no say in in prison security is to say you're at the hands of DoC. And it's really not until the late 50s early 60s through Muslim prison litigation that this hands off period is is challenged successfully to bring about the basic idea that prisoners have constitutional rights. That's one with Cooper v. Pate, which is a case out of a state bill in Illinois. And I sort of write about the cases that lead up to that. But the thing that the the prison litigation strategy does is one it just floods the courts with cases as I mentioned earlier they're they're not just filing single cases they're filing many cases on behalf of every single incarcerated and they're asking for very basic religious rights like ability to correspond with ministers, a space to pray access to black newspapers which carry Elijah Muhammad's writings, religious metals things like that. But the idea is that that sort of is a gateway to the basic premise of constitutional rights, and that's the bedrock then so Cooper v paid is described often as the brown v board of the prisoners rights movement because they are established as as constitutional subjects. Then there's all of these other things that can be raised. But to your point about sort of using the court, not just as a place of legal wrangling, but as a stage. So much of the challenge of prison organizing and prison activism is its invisibility, you know the removal the geographic removal of people from society, so they cannot make their cases known and what the what these cases so often did even when they didn't win what they were going in to challenge legally. And they would spend it as a space of testimony to testify I mean so often. These cases would come in about a single issue, like access to the Quran in Arabic. And they would spend the majority of the trial talking about solitary confinement and loss of good time. So they're really talking about big broad issues about punishment and constitutionality and cruel and unusual and the judges would be so frustrated because they'd say like look the thing we are here to litigate is whether or not you can access the crime, do you have access to that, but they would spend a testifying about, you know, the amount of time they lost off their sentence for for practicing Islam. So there are all these ways of sort of creating creatively using systems of oppression I mean they had no illusions about the courts delivering justice. But that was the mechanism available. That was the arena in which they could actually testify. Right and so. So Malcolm X becomes the central figure, you know, I guess it's in the 60s when he sort of rises the prominence and you there's a courtroom scene that you reference in the book where he's I think it's Sumerian or Sumerian and where he's brought as like a witness of sorts to sort of show that this is not just some political make believe thing this is an actual religion. So can you talk about his sort of his the role he plays in the nation in that time period and then his testimony on the court stand what that does for the movement writ large. Yeah, so this case, basically incarcerated Muslims right to Malcolm and say we, we need you to be an expert witness on our behalf, because what, as I mentioned earlier the state is trying to delegitimize it standing within the Muslim world. Because if they can say this isn't a legitimate religion it's using the guise of religion to actually practice what we're calling hate. And use it to to suppress the movement. So there's this showdown that I recount in the book basically between a Columbia University professor of Islamic jurisprudence who the state uses as their expert witness to say this is a you know, illegitimate sectarian cult and then Malcolm on the other hand, and, and what's, what's just beautiful about this, this four days of testimony to have Malcolm and two of this professor is really Malcolm goes first. And this, this judge who's, you know, a white conservative judge is just totally smitten by Malcolm and Malcolm uses his platform and he does this riff. This is in late 62. He basically does a sort of dry run of message to the grassroots one of his most famous speeches where he's talking about, you know the field Negro and house Negro and the Negro Revolution and the black revolution. And he's riffing all through his testimony to a federal judge. But, but he's so compelling that essentially by the time this this Columbia University professor starts going up there and listening all of his honorary degrees. The judges like well I you know I don't know that you're actually an expert on Islam. So, so on one hand it's just this incredible use of testimony and of Malcolm sort of rhetorical skills I mean I think back to to the autobiography that famous scene where he says that he wants to be a lawyer. When he's a kid, right and the white teacher tells him, you know, oh no, no n word can be a lawyer. And there's this moment where I'm like reading this testimony of Malcolm in court and it's just, you know, it's beautiful the way he runs circles around everyone in there. But I think it's also just evidence of the way that testimony can function, rather than just being about I mean they they wind up winning some concessions in that particular case about being a legitimate religion. But it's also just about using the courtroom to reshift the terrain of debate. I mean he actually gets a federal judge to apologize for using the word Negro, and the judge starts using the word American black man. And, and, and it's just, I think a fascinating use of a space like that to kind of stage political debate. Yeah, our first question from a viewer is in contrast to the Mike Wallace documentary you mentioned, what is your view of Abdulrahman's Muhammad's inspired documentary who killed Malcolm X that's I think it's playing on Netflix right now. You've seen that and what you write in the book, a little bit you mentioned, you know, his assassination, and how maybe the people who were convicted of it weren't the ones, you know, behind the actual killing so what's your sense of the documentary. Yeah, so I'm briefly in the documentary. You know, I have, I guess mixed feelings about it. I'll say the thing I the thing that I think we should be doing which the documentary does well is thinking about the role of the state in Malcolm's assassination. And, and, and again I think the documentary could go further and thinking about state complicity so one of the things that I started doing around 2014 was trying to get the case reopened. Based on some evidence that another person was taken from the scene who was an NYPD undercover cop. And I think the thing that the documentary falls into, which we often fall into is just these narratives of innocence and guilt, and I can't talk about this in the in the last chapter about what a fiction that is really of the state to think about these hard lines between innocence and guilt, which essentially masked the violence of the state, the ever present violence of the state the way that the state creates the conditions for the assassination in itself. So, you know, it's absolutely clear to me that two of the three men convicted of Malcolm's assassination. We're not there that day did not participate in the assassination wrongfully convicted and did years in prison and that's unjust. But I think stopping the story there without talking about the deep role of state violence in creating the conditions for Malcolm's assassination, whether or not they're the ones who pull the trigger is the conversation we need to have. I guess the only other thing I'll say about that documentary but really I think just the genre of documentaries that we tend to consume and produce is, we often talk about people's deaths. We're not reckoning with why they're important figures in our histories. So, I think, you know, the thing that I find lacking from most documentaries on Malcolm is a real exploration of his ideas of his anti colonialism of his internationalism of his role in anti police brutality organizing. Right. So, so I think it's such a given that Malcolm's important. But why is he important. What are the lessons that Malcolm gives us today for freedom struggles, and I think that's the thing that I find missing again and again and again. And when I participated in that project I really emphasize like look I want to talk about his life and his ideas. assassination. Okay, the next question is, because of the example of Malcolm and the nation of Islam, it has become almost cliche for incarcerated persons to adopt Islam and the search for knowledge as quarter their personal redemption. And so the viewers interested in your take on that legacy for today's prison education and personal redemption efforts slash narratives. But I think, you know, again, going back to the pop culture there's remember in living color, there's like I forgot the character's name but he goes to prison and comes out using all of these very big words and sort of the implication is that the nation has become a place for his imagination and knowledge and he becomes enlightened there, but does so in a way that is, I mean they sort of hope fun at a little bit, but there does seem to be something to people discovering a spirituality through the nation while incarcerated. I guess the question is kind of getting at, is there something to the redemption that folks find in the, in that religion in prison. That's analogous to efforts just around general educational redemption efforts for the current moment around, you know, second chances and, and reducing recidivism that's worth. Yeah, I mean I think, obviously, there are many reasons to adopt spirituality while caged right I mean there's, you know, so I think just setting that aside and not. trivializing that in any way. But also, I mean I'm a big supporter, very active in political education efforts inside working with incarcerated people to make sure that radical material gets into prisons. You know, it's this. The next project I'm working on is a biography of Martin Sastre, who is a figure in the book. So he becomes a political prisoner. Actually, in the late 60s, but before that he characterizes himself as a politicized prisoner, someone who came to prison and became politicized around conditions of confinement. And I think that happens for so many folks who understand the confinement not only of the prison in real time, but the confinement of their life prior to coming to prison. To sort of explore through books whether it's the autobiography of Malcolm X or other radical literature like George Jackson, Asada, and others to sort of understand America writ large as a carceral state as a prison nation that creates all sorts of forms of criminalization and enclosure. So, so I think the prison is absolutely a space of politicization, and we should encourage that and organize with people inside, and really make sure that radical literature gets inside because if we think back to Malcolm's own politicization in prison. I mean, I think he plays up in the autobiography the extent to which he's apolitical when he comes to prison like his parents. So he's not new to this. But it's through the debate team is through the library and reading literature and for so many of these folks that I write about who are engaged in this activism. I mean, the nation of Islam isn't just hosting Juma on Fridays they're also doing black history lessons they're also teaching current events. So it's a whole program of understanding the world around you and your role in it. And I think that's something that that we should all be supportive of. Yeah, there are two questions that are somewhat related. The first is, isn't the primary problem with the nation that isn't the primary problem that the nation of Islam has is with its status within mainstream Islam, and that Muhammad is the seal of Islam. And so by definition you can have Elijah Muhammad also as a prophet, which sort of rolls into this next question about common understandings and misperceptions around the history of the nation of Islam and the ways that the nation from this particular the 50s and 60s, how they should be remembered. Again, there's sort of the where Malcolm splits with the nation, because he he sort of sees, I guess he goes to Mecca and sees hey wait a minute, all Muslims aren't black, even though the argument is that all black folks are Muslims. And so if he's gotten that enlightenment over the course of his journey. What is what is the message for America today about like how should the nation be remembered or understood in that period, both what it does in the carceral state but also its larger relationship with the broader religion. Yeah, okay there's a lot there. Yeah. So the question of the seal of the prophets yes so there, there is a sort of question that's one of many about the relationship between the nation of Islam and Sunni Islam right and, especially during that period and in the period, I'm less concerned with saying, No, this is in fact, quote unquote Orthodox Islam, or this isn't, but rather what does it mean for the state, largely to be saying this is not, I mean the state official of what constitutes legitimate and illegitimate forms of Islam, and they do that specifically to co-opt and disrupt black radical organizing. So I think that's the important lesson there and and secondly to say that that narrative Malcolm gives in the autobiography it's, it's crafted for a particular reason and he starts that autobiography at a time where he's still in the nation and the point of the book is to be a testament, a living testament to Elijah Muhammad. And in the process of writing that book he leaves the nation and is about to be assassinated. So, there's, there's all sorts of ways that we need to interrogate and historicize our origins of the autobiography. And the reason that he does particular things in the book to say, I went, you know, I made Hajj in 1964 and had all these real estate I mean he was, he was in, in these communities in 1959 abroad. He, he's, this is, he's not for the first time. You know, and what's happening from the late 50s onward is the nation of Islam is consulting with Muslims from around the globe, especially one who I write about Abdul Basit Naim from Pakistan. They're introducing Arabic to their school rooms they're thinking about sort of their place within the Muslim world. So I guess that's the second point I'd say is that they are very conscious about their role within the Muslim ummah. And then to your, to your last question about how we should remember the nation of Islam, especially during this period of the 50s and 60s. I think there's a very dangerous mainstream narrative which is that not one we see the nation only through Malcolm. We see it through Malcolm or Elijah Muhammad or Muhammad Ali or Louis Fairground. So we just see a kind of charismatic male figures. So that's one I recommend everyone read Eula Taylor's wonderful book about women in the nation of Islam, the promise of patriarchy. Or is it the promise of protection? Oh, sorry, Eula if I'm messing up your title. And, you know, so that's the problem with seeing it through Malcolm only is that what happens is the narrative becomes Malcolm wants to be political. And the nation holds him back. And eventually he has to split because he wants to join the civil rights movement. That's the narrative. And what I try to show in this book is that there's all these ways on the ground, especially locally, that the nation of Islam is a part of the movement. You know, whether or not you see them a part of the civil rights movement, they're a part of the Black freedom struggle. They're in constant dialogue with people who we see as part of the civil rights movement. And they have real fundamental issues where they merge and where they diverge. And we have to see that that is part of, you know, the diversity of what the Black freedom struggle is. And it's not simply about Malcolm warring against the nation to make it political it was always political. And it was about what does that politics look like. And how will they be engaged nationally or locally in different struggles. Yeah, the next question as this is the question is, did you uncover interesting or surprising ways in which the state hides its tracks, as it works to repress and surveil dissidents or others it's defined as subversive. And I was actually I was struck up in the book by how much innovation around surveillance was happening, just to surveil members of the nation of Islam in prison and then in neighborhoods where they after that where they re entered after leaving prison. Can you just talk about that that relationship between the surveillance state, the carceral state and and members of the nation. Yeah, so I think that's how I would answer that is yeah it less surprising that they were covering their tracks because they don't really. And I'm just emphasizing about the extent to which I think these organizations, these surveillance networks work together. So I think we tend to think about Cointel pro and the FBI is kind of this like, you know, this effort that's just a single it's Hoover, again kind of like told through a single person even. And, you know, talking with former members of the Bureau of Special Services which was the surveillance unit in New York, they had an FBI liaison in their office who just spent all day feeding the information that they were getting to the FBI. And then you see sort of the state police files that were where I got most of the information about surveillance in New York State prison so you had a state police unit, which was called called a non criminal investigation unit so it's basically a repurposed red that was used to sort of monitor communist organizing and then expanded to include black radical organizing, and they're doing things as as minute as having undercover officers in prison, surveilling members of the nation. And then as you point out when people get paroled, they would always convey that information to the local offices there. So I think I think I can't say that that was surprising, but really seeing the depth of the surveillance at all levels and the coordination between them. And the way that, again, this gets back to that question about like producing knowledge. So they actually hire someone in New York prisons to just sort of call all this data together, you know membership of the nation Islam. He would do a book review of CR Glinken's book, and then he would take that and he would send it across the country to other because in California they're trying to figure out, you know, the same things. So just understanding that web, and the way that they're actually producing ways of knowing the nation of Islam, and how those carceral. Carceral knowledge really permeates our society in the way that we think about organizing. Yeah, in the book, talking about three rebellions. And the last question that we have from from the from the viewer is what lessons from this time can be applied to today. And I wonder if there is. There's something in those rebellions that you sort of wrap the book up with that give us some sense of the protests we're seeing today. The prison abolition movement, the interact like the relationship between the correct the criminal justice system writ large and black America. If you could sort of talk through those rebellions and then if there are lessons that that applied to the dad, you know, that's one of the questions here. So, I think it's helpful to think about I wrote this, I started this book as a dissertation, really the writing in earnest kind of after Ferguson so I was writing this over the course of Ferguson to last year. And I say that to say that, you know, all of these issues about organizing against police violence and killings Islamophobia state surveillance I mean during that time frame all of this stuff was percolating right the bie extremist report came out. And so now it's like the book comes out and people like oh wow like this is touching on so many things that and it's like those things are always happening. That's the thing is like there is never a time where anti carceral organizing state repression anti black violence is not relevant, because that is the foundation of this society. And, you know, I ended it with with Harlem 64 watts 65 and Attica 71. In part because everything so everything we've talked about so far happened prior to that. And the way that those uprisings were narrated at the time, especially by journalists and people outside the movement was about spontaneity right spontaneous rebellion disorganization. And the reason I wanted to end with that is because you can, you can think about say Attica in 1971. And there's no way that you get 1000 people in D yard to organize 27 demands and hostages that are going to be your only chance at both executing the demands and protecting yourself, which they ultimately still can't do because of the violence, but there's no way you get that in in 24 hours without decades of organizing. I think we often conflate planning with organizing. So it's not that Attica Watts or Harlem were planned. But they're organized. They're organized because the stuff is is years in the making and I think that's the lesson today as well, is there's nothing spontaneous happening right now, this is organized this is the organizing that's happened since that's how being put into play. So that's one lesson is that the sort of knee jerk reaction to Oh now I see this. It's immediately apparent to me so it must be new. It's not organized right over a period of long time of a long time. The other is just I was asking myself throughout the book what is the role of organizing against police violence in a more sustained revolutionary movement. Because there's this moment after Stokes is killed that opening anecdote where there's this coalition against police violence as an issue that affects black and brown communities, writ large regardless of their differences and in political affiliation and so there, there's this incredible possibility for police violence to organize a mass movement, but those mass movements very quickly diverge politically and what their responses are we see that now right with a can't wait versus a tabulation and kind of like are we talking about banning excessive violence are we talking about abolishing the police. Right. And I think they're incredibly difficult to sustain over time and develop into a full fledged revolutionary movement without an understanding of the deeper systematic ways that something like police killing is connected to daily, everyday violence of, of policing prisons and the carceral state. So, so I think it's we're in an incredible moment and the lessons that I see in this book is kind of understanding the long array of organizing against these forms and the deep structural that these are not the thing that we're seeing now that some people see the problem is is so deep. It's it's rooted in racial capitalism it's not, you know you're seeing the manifestation of that with the killing of George Floyd or Breonna Taylor. But that's just the manifestation. It's not the problem itself so I think the key to this sort of like long, long form using police violence as a catalyst for a long sustained movement is understanding those deeper connections and the role of organizing over time. Yeah, and I mean, it's so true. I mean I remember back to the 92 LA riots and those. They did not happen just in response to Rodney King that was in response to decades of police brutality and Ferguson was not in response like you said just to Michael Brown, and then even the Department of Justice report, which kind of said Charlie Brown, you know, wasn't as innocent as by Sanders made him out to be. However, there is a long standing history of police abuse in this part of the county and not just brutality but in terms of like ticketing and fines and fees and all that sort of thing. So you're right and I mean your entire book talks about the way connection with police and the corrections department adds fuel to the fire to the rights and privileges of citizenship that that are the members of the nation are trying to claim for themselves. So we're almost out of time I think the last question is on July 4th Farrakhan sort of gives his address to the nation. And I'm curious if you think the period in the 50s and 60s. where the nation of Islam was part of the black freedom struggle, is that still the case today, or has has their moment kind of passed because of controversy the wrong charismatic figure at the head, or are they still, you know, can they still be considered along some of the other leading civil rights activists to the extent such a thing even existing. I mean, I think I think I'll sort of point to actually what I would I think was happening then as well, which is that if we only understand the nation of Islam through charismatic leadership, right we're going to miss organizing. So I do think it was a different organization and a different time that it was organizing in. And I think, for example, if we had looked at what Elijah Muhammad was saying in 1961, as many have and said this is what the nation of Islam is. Because Elijah Muhammad at that time was saying, we're not a political organization. You know, we are Muslims, and you know we are interested in building up our communities and black businesses and that wasn't wrong but it's sort of the point of the title of the book right those who know don't say is that there's a very strict silence around what the nation is doing. So, at the same time that Elijah Muhammad was saying that and people have built whole arguments about the nation out of that people like Martin Saustre, are organizing really revolutionary movements within Attica. I guess I would say the same thing today which is that if we only think about I mean the nation of Islam has never talked about outside of what Lewis Farrakhan said and Lewis Farrakhan is only talked about when he's sort of making some incendiary remark right it's never about like what the day to day organizing of the nation is doing. So I think it's a larger lesson really in terms of how we think about organizations and I think there's all sorts of trappings to to understanding movements through organizations rather than through networks and activists, you know, who's working with the nation but aren't actually part of the nation. Right like who's organizing with Muslims that that don't even see themselves as part of the nation but are in the same network doing the same work so I think that's really a lesson in how social movements. Excellent, well done. Well, thank you, Gary Felber for sharing your book with us. For those watching you please go by the book those who know don't say wherever books are sold but especially at solid state books, and thanks to New America and the National Fellows Program for hosting this event. I'm Ted Johnson this has been great I really appreciate it. Yeah thanks for the great question said. It's a pleasure.