 We haven't even done anything yet. Thank you. That's great. Hey, so we have a gigantic full house today If you have a seat next to you Please consider making a new friend and hold your arm up so we can See someone or you think someone's attractive and you want them to sit next to you Keep your hand down if you really don't want to do that. Okay, we're gonna get started Let's get rolling. So we have three great talks tonight. We also have Tons of great beer tonight. So we have a bunch of bottles part of the way We pay for this venue is we actually get you guys to buy beer. Everyone loves beer, right? So please do buy beer. We had good stuff on draft. We have good bottles. That's how we can continue to do nerd night So someone came up to me earlier and they said this is awesome you guys should do this every month Buddy, I have great news for you. We do this every month. So we actually Have three awesome speakers already lined up for August We have the history and revival of classic arcade games So all those 80s arcade games and and some of the history behind them Also, the museum of arcades is going to talk about how the hell do you keep an arcade game going for 40 years? So they're actually gonna bring some in and show you the guts while they talk about it We also have the steady breakthrough product the steady breakthrough project So talking about trying to talk to aliens. It's gonna be awesome We also oh quick thing. Hey because you're here because we have a big crowd And we know that a bunch of you are at nerd night for the first time We're throwing up a really great offer for you you guys. So this is full. We sold out We actually had to turn some people away If you guys buy our next show right now, we're gonna give it to you for five bucks So that's the link right there. We're gonna take that five dollar link down like at the end of the night So please go ahead and we'll put this up later. Please go ahead and buy tickets for our next show We have a bunch of good shows actually we have two shows in August if you guys like pinball You should absolutely go to our second August show at the Shabo Center at the Shabo Center We actually have classic pinball games. We have someone talking about the science of pinball We have people talking about why humans automate the world and finally there used to be this really big amusement park Down at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, which some people don't know about but it was like one of the biggest in the country We're gonna have someone talking about the history of that amusement park And it's actually a really really cool talk if you want to get tickets for that right down there as well You also get to play classic video or classic pinball games from the 1920s all the way through the 1990s for free with your ticket It's actually a really awesome event Hey, we're killing it September 25th We have an event where we have tracking lucid animals with technology So how do you find animals that are really hard to track? We have the short clever life of daddy long legs more than you could possibly want to know in the good way About spiders and finally the rebel art of the East Bay mudflap So if you ever drive out by Berkeley by Emeryville, you see all that art in the water We're actually gonna talk about the history of that art RIP Snoopy, which just fell down by the way Unfortunately the last one, but but you'll hear about how it got put up in the first place It's actually a really cool talk hosted by East Bay yesterday one of the podcasts that we love out here Holy crap we have all these great events. How can you find out about these great events while sitting at home on your computer? You should totally join our Facebook page join our Facebook page We post like a couple times a month and we post all the events. We invite you to these events You can also get on our Winners for a future show. We're usually a little less crowded than this, but screw it. This is a good thing. We love having a giant crowd This is great So first talk So Kurt Cole says gonna talk about regional design wonders of the world Kurt works with 99 PI he works with web urbanists and so a lot of what they talk about is Good design There's lots of bad design So this was used back in the say no to drugs era in the 1990s Too cool to do drugs cool to do drugs Do drugs drugs, right? Probably increase the rate of drug use while doing your homework or taking notes about your dealer. I Saw this shirt in Target not that long ago Ironically by going for that late 80s nostalgia. They actually created a perfect t-shirt for 2017 If you Here's the ball that they gave the golf ball. They gave two members of the armed forces You better be really good at golf to find your ball so sometimes Sometimes bad design just comes about because you had good ideas and you just you put them you put them too close together I'm a guy guys are not cool with this. Trust me We don't like to use any urinal when there's a guy at any other urinal. This is not cool at all That looks like a really I'm pro bike lane. I'm not pro that bike lane for example So sometimes bad design comes about because you take various components and you try to fit them together in a way that Doesn't quite work So like here we have kind of hard to see but like here. We have a projector and a fan and Neither one of those things is a function function effectively. I'm guessing dude. You had one job Um, here's the advertising campaign for the new I love my cat frame You had one job Sometimes bad design comes about could you try to just get too much information into a little place? This is a real thing This is like basically a hard a non-functional hardware store all stuck together in one of these things that all of them are Unusable also we have an actual street light. This is an actual street light So I guess when you're driving this road, you're like, all right, I got two goes I got five reds. No six man sort of seven reds and I got a caution I'm pretty sure this is just a caution when you really think about it. This is like you see this You should probably just slow down Good design is a good thing Hey guys, uh, be careful out there. Okay, it's it's it's important To talk about good design, please welcome Kurt Kohlsted. How are y'all doing tonight? Thanks for coming out and thank you Scott and their night for having me as He mentioned I'm Kurt Kohlsted from 99% invisible Louder I can do louder All right, how about this testing one two all right so as Scott mentioned I work for 99% invisible and We're a show about all the thought that goes into the things that we don't think about We produce podcasts, but we also produce articles and videos And I also run a site called Web Urbanist, which Covers urban art architecture and design and it actually just turned 10 years old last month. So It's kind of long for like the internet at least So tonight I'm going to give you a bit of a window into how 99 PI turned story ideas into actual stories and Also cover a number of good for the most part regional designs that we've covered at 99 PI so a Few years ago. I started pestering 99% invisibles founder and host Roman Mars. Oh Yeah, thanks About basically redoing the show's website and adding more web content to the mix and while this wasn't my intention at all To my surprise. He actually asked me to join the team and make it happen So I moved out here to beautiful downtown, Oakland, California And I joined the team and I spearheaded the redesign project and this is the redesign site You can see up on the screen and now I work on stories of all kinds as well and One of the things I do for for 99 PI is is make all the or a lot of the web companion content for each episode and I could also say that so I've been out here for a few years now and it's been a real pleasure to learn a lot from my Storytelling colleagues coming from a web background I've I've definitely Picked up a lot that I did not know before So before I joined 99% invisible. I really had no idea how they put an amazing radio story together I knew it was hard But coming from a print or sort of web background. I really had no clue Every story is different, but this graphic gives you a sense of the scale and the number of steps. It's an iterative process Lots of production and editing steps from ideation to publication and at key stages along the way It goes from being a solo effort to a big group at it and We have sort of team meetings to review the piece as we go and Towards the end we have sound checks and final listens and things and then we build this companion where we put in videos and links and all this other supplemental material to go with it and And I'm biased, but I think those I think those companions are often pretty good And they're definitely worth checking out especially for the more visual stories that we do Where you might not get quite everything from just the episode alone. Oh Yeah, and we eat a ton of I don't know if you can read this or not But there's a lot of eating at Pakistani buffet up here, and that's that's true. That's entirely true Yeah, oh which one I'll tell you after So While it's definitely still a challenging thing to do Writing pieces for the website compared to creating episodes is actually a little bit more straightforward You know we picture story write it up add media add links review and publish Some of these articles tackle in-depth subjects like adaptive reuse in suburban America like this one I was that it was gonna be the start of something more And eventually that a whole series of these would come together and become Actually the basis for an episode So I encountered this bit of everyday engineering decades ago actually as a kid living in Bayreuth, Germany And I was honestly a little bit hesitant about even pitching it as a story for nine MPI it's called the tilt and turn window and It's just a window and it's kind of old news to a lot of Europeans So I wasn't quite sure if it was enough on its own, but I I was so also sort of obsessed with it and It's so practical and multifunctional That I just figured I should I'd give it a shot You know see what the audience thought and I didn't realize this at the time But this would actually start a much bigger obsession with these regional designs so the tilt and turn window is three windows and one and And So when you took I'm gonna have to put some stuff down so I can demonstrate with my arms here, but when you When you rotate the handle to the closed position, it's a closed window When you tilt it sideways you can pull it all the way open towards you again You know some windows do that but the magic trick is when you close it and you rotate the handle upward You can pull it down towards you and it sits there to tilt So Effectively it becomes a security window in that configuration, but it can also be an egress window if you need to get out It can also flip around entirely and become an awning on the outside that deflects rain And they make big versions of this too, right? You can see in the lower right that are actually entire doors So you can take you kind of a back door that you just tilt for breezes or tilt it open And I thought this was a nice thing. I was a surprisingly big hit I'll be it with a divided reaction some folks were amazed that this thing exists field something interesting to me We all just assumed that a good Design object is going to make its way around the world on its own But that's not always the case And it makes me think maybe just maybe I could like write an article about Those really neat omnidirectional wheels that they still have on shopping carts in Germany that we still don't have here for some reason Anyway, that's another story technical difficulties You can Try to make birds or something. I'll be here all night. Sure thing all right, um So I really had no idea that this tilt-in-turn thing was gonna be a hit I had no idea it was gonna become something bigger And eventually end up being part of a full episode. I Kind of just figured Look there we go So as as Roman said on this tweet, I mean it turns out people have strong feelings about Windows who would have thought And I thought I was just gonna kind of in there But then I got this email from a guy named Anton Hagueman Who wrote in from well not from Finland, but he's a finished guy. He wrote in about dish drying cabinets as students cuis was copying if there's finished people in the audience. I'm sorry I think that was close though. So he writes being finished. There are many designers and designs I can be proud of especially in architecture and furniture design But there is one finished design that I'm more proud of than any other the dish straining closet these specialized cupboards sit over sinks and Slots in their shelves Allow the dishes to drain See if I can see there's slots in the bottom that allow dishes to drain directly into the sink and These are neat for a lot of reasons, right? I mean They save time and energy that you'd spend normally drying your dishes before putting them away And they eliminate the clutter of sink side dish racks They also let people skip a step going straight from the sink to the cover It's super low-tech, but it's neat. It's ego-friendly and it solves a bunch of little everyday problems So this little bad boy the original one was actually designed by Louise Kraus in the 1930s in the United States, but it actually didn't take off here for whatever reason in Finland though a Version was developed independently by Mayu Gebbard in the 1940s. That's her right there hers For the Finnish Association for Work Efficiency, and it was a huge success Over time older versions built with wood have been replaced with newer ones that have metal and plastic But her basic design is widely used in Finnish kitchens to this day And Anson says this is a quintessentially Finnish invention being practical unobtrusive and cheap But when he moved abroad he found himself missing this design. He lamented to me in an email Now I have to dry my dishes on a rack that sits on the counter like a barbarian By the way, Ikea actually sells these, but I'm not sure if they're available in the United States Yeah So as with the tilt and turn we got a positive reaction to this piece and there seemed to be this sort of pattern of interest forming around these everyday regional design objects so I put a call out onto Twitter for more and Twitter user PD Thorn Responded with the Japanese kotatsu table a special table that doubles as a heating fixture These tables have historically been particularly useful in Japan where home insulation is often sparse and whole home heating is difficult and expensive Underneath these tables is a small space heater below that solid top that you see there's that cloth that cover that spreads out and can be pulled up as a blanket for people sitting around the table and Traditional Japanese clothing, which is very loose Lends itself especially well to this kind of space heating because the heat travels up through your kimono and out through the neck and the arm holes Yes, the katatsu table. Um, I could I just couldn't resist So the device has a really long lineage to tracing back to the 14th century with these in-floor cooking stoves Originally hot coals on the thought that we were used on the floor as a heating source for food and then they were used for rooms over time that heating source got moved up so that it was part of the table and And then it became electric of course over the last century reduced game fire risk So in addition to saving money and energy Through heating efficiency these non-fixed furnishings can be moved around too, which is kind of neat Right a wall fire place is stuck in place, but this thing you can move around And it also means you can gather around it right you can you and your friends can kind of you know Make a full circle around it and interact over the table versus sort of being stuck facing the wall and It's not totally unique to Japan There's other versions to there's a the Iranian coursey in the Spanish brazeiro as well as some less sophisticated Footsteps that never really took off in England in the United States And while you might not get much use for this thing in the Bay Area They'd be really great for places like upstate New York and Minnesota where I come from so and another fan Also responded on Twitter. Alyssa Stevens Responded to this request for additional regional designs and she pointed me to the Hills Rotary Hoist Now the Hills Hoist is an iconic rotating clothes line loaded with both functional and cultural significance The device is a quintessential part of the suburban Australian dream Alyssa says and she's not joking that a dream house on a quarter acre lot with a big backyard would actually be incomplete without a Hills Hoist and While it still serves to dry clothes the device has evolved to do way more than that over time so first a little history on this thing the Hills Hoist was developed by an Australian War veteran in the 1940s for use in his own backyard and as the story goes his neighbors really liked it and he overheard them talking about it and When when you figured like oh, maybe there's a commercial potential of this thing. He decided to try to sell them So he acquired some metal tubing that had been used underneath the Sydney Harbor Bridge to catch submarines in World War two and Turned it into a bunch of these Hills Hoists and started selling them and it went on to be a huge success It was a really big hit in the post-war era with suburban expansion and now the company sells millions of these things every year and The Hills Hoist is actually listed as a national treasure by the National Library of Australia It has appeared in museums on stamps and even on the logo of this expat rugby team the Hammersmith Hills Hoist So yeah, there's actually a rugby team in West London that that uses these things as their icon. It's kind of amazing So as a kid Alyssa would play a game eating donuts from her family's Hills Hoist Where you quote hold your hands behind your back and eat as fast as you can whoever finishes first wins Although with donuts, everyone wins, right? I totally agree and that's not the only kind of weird use for these things either so For example kids will actually parents will actually rig up swings for their kids on these things Kids also use them as frameworks for blanket forts There's even a drinking game which you can see the lower right called goon of fortune Inspired by a wheel of fortune that involves hanging bags of what wine on the lines and then giving them a spin When the bag comes to a stop if it stops in front of you you have to drink So owners also drape shade structures over these things which is really handy for a hot Australian summer and So children teens adults people of all ages seem to have find creative uses for this design object Alyssa's own family's hoist is a new improved version to they dug up their old one some years ago and replaced it with a Modern one that can actually be folded down and taken out of the ground and collapsed and other things so One of the fun things about a piece like this is the reactions you get to it after you publish Alyssa and other people just keep sending me stories and pictures about the hills hoist rounding out my understanding of its everyday uses and its uses on special occasions and So I've learned about people suspending chickens You can't really see this in the image, but those are chickens hanging from a hills hoist over a fire that's been set below it Yeah, it's kind of crazy And So they they'll do you know the user for backyard cookouts There's a kangaroo Lying under one down here. So, you know kangaroos could find shade there, too Not just humans and this of course on the right is my favorite one of all which is kangaroo rescuers Hanging an orphan Joey in a sack You know, I mean, it's just I don't know that gets me And at the end of the day with all of these things what's remarkable isn't so much the original design, right? It's not it's not how it works to hang clothing. It's all these other uses. It gets adapted to And then the same thing for some other regional science, too it's just like it's the way that we adapt these things that are all around us in the built environment and Appropriate them and you know, give them new uses. That's really kind of meaningful and interesting And the more I see of this one the more I just really want to backyard just so I can have a hills hoist to stick in it So earlier I mentioned all this becoming something bigger and turning into an episode And the way this came together is a good example of just how differently different episodes end up getting made Initial ideas can come from a lot of places But most finished episodes go, you know end up revolving around a single subject or a designed object that ties that entire narrative together And this one was a little bit different. In this case We started tossing around the idea of doing an episode based on an array of fan suggested ideas Including some of the regional designs I talked about tonight, and we ended up calling it you should do a story Naming it after an office slack channel that we use to pool ideas that listeners give us For episodes and articles. I love this one Yeah, so it's so like taking a desire path, right a shortcut You know the kind of path of desire which is another topic we get suggested a lot Um We followed fan ideas to see where that would lead us for this episode and that resulting that resulting You should do a story episode featured an array of suggestions From various outside sources through friends in person at live shows by email and via social media And I could tell you a lot about desire paths to Which were the subject of my actually my very first 90% invisible article of all things But I will let you read that about about that on the website instead and And tonight Tonight it all comes full circle Scott from Nerd Knight heard the episode reached out and asked me to come and talk about regional designs So here I am and if you have any ideas for us or for me feel free to tweet at me Kurt Colstead or To contact us at 99pi org slash contacts. Thank you all so much for having me. Yes questions All right. He asked what the worst regional designs that I've ever seen I feel like most of those are like really bad American designs Hermetically sealed buildings are definitely like toward the top of that Like let's just close off the building and spend lots of energy and time and money like Trying to make it what we want it just doesn't work out that well. Um, good question Yeah Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, actually that's oh Sorry, though the question was are there how do designers feel about these kinds of desire paths and are there cases when They actually, you know, take those into consideration and there are absolutely some really good examples of Desire paths becoming real paths. One of those is College campuses will often lay out a very basic grid and then they'll see where people walk across the campus and pave that which Makes a lot of sense, right? And the this kind of bigger design lesson of that to me is like You shouldn't over design, right? You should see, you know try to design the bane the bare minimum And then come in later and like see where you can infill those gaps There's also a phenomena in Finland where the park designers will do this with with parks in the winter They'll see where people walk through the snow and they'll map that out and then when the summer comes, they'll pave those paths. Oh Yes, oh Talk about crappy regional designs I could have been I could answer two questions with one here The German inspection toilet that they're that that comment was referring to I'm also quite familiar with so in Germany There's like a shelf Like like the I don't know how to describe this it's like instead of just having there be a hole in the middle of the toilet They move the whole forward and they have a shelf in the back part And I will my understanding is that these are for energy or for water efficiency So they use less water, but they end up also being requiring more cleaning and There's a there's a there's like a German joke about like having to to like look at your crap before you You know flush the toilet, and I don't know it's a whole cultural phenomena, and I Have never understood it, and I definitely never wanted one questions Let's hear it for Kurt Two quick notes. We're gonna take about a ten minute break And if you're playing our intro game with a little model, please hand it to Anne-Marie in the back of the room So you can be judged. Thanks so much Luckily, I had nerdier people here to help me fail at that So our next speaker is gonna talk about the Black Panthers By before I talk about that. Does anybody know what this is supposed to be? Anybody? I made this poster. It's a Voigt-Kampf machine Voigt-Kampf. Thank you. I needed someone to get the joke. It's from Blade Runner. It tells if you're a replicant or not It's my little visual joke that nobody got So the Black Panthers No, all right. Usually I go here, but I'm not gonna talk about the comic books Even though there are many amazing women in the Black Panther comics This is what our speaker is going to be talking about the women of the Black Panther Party and When I was a teacher in Brooklyn, I was teaching fifth grade and one of my students for her African-American History Black History Month biography wanted to do a biography of Angela Davis. And so I asked her why What interests you about Angela Davis and she said To be honest, I don't know anything about her except she had a big beautiful afro And I thought that's a very good reason to write a biography of someone and that's kind of what I wanted to talk about to introduce Robin's presentation The civil rights movement of the 1950s was a lot about Respectability in appearance by white standards women tended to wear their hair Straightened or relaxed men tended to wear close cropped. This was very deliberate and intentional Because they recognized that their message was radical enough They didn't need their appearance to be off-putting to those moderate whites who would be crucial If they were going to succeed they would need their allyship But by the late 60s There was some rebellion against this approach and that really came to fruition with the Black Panther Party and the Black Power movement which embraced natural hair and the afro maybe others feel differently to me the afro Has lost some of its political context But back then it was a very radical way for people to wear their hair Which is phenomenal when you think about it because it's the way black people's hair naturally grows But it was considered a really radical statement and it was unisex men and women wore afros and it was a symbol of the Black is beautiful movement and a rejection not only of white supremacy and the white beauty standards Which had been imposed on african-americans since the first Africans were brought to America, but also rejection of those respectability politics of the previous generation so Pretty quickly This took off. You can see here is Jesse Jackson in 1967 he's got his number one cut and then a couple years later After dr. King's death. He let it all hang out and That's pretty symbolic of where the movement was going but also the haircut you just became very popular the hairstyle made its way into popular culture you had black exploitation movies and Celebrities entertainers like Richard Pryor in these cases It's starting to lose its political edge, but it's still being associated with black pride and black power confidence and Embracing one's blackness because it's a hairstyle that only black people can have really but then by the early 70s You start to see you know Family-friendly pop groups and even McDonald's ads with some afro action going on so you might Think as I would looking at these images that the afro had lost all of its political associations and was now just a funky young hip hairstyle, but In 1971 The same year as this reporter Melva Tolliver was fired from in a news affiliate I want to say ABC affiliate For wearing an afro to cover Trisha Nixon's wedding So she was literally fired from her job for wearing her own hair the way it grows out of her head and It's a pretty mild afro and all of a sudden done But you can see that even as the hairstyle became really popular and was everywhere including McDonald's ads It was still making white people extremely uncomfortable so by the 1980s The afro really went out of style. You didn't see it too much But it sort of had a comeback in the last 10 or 15 years both as a like retro style and as a political statement and Just as the natural hair movement has really come into its own and People are exploring more options for how to wear their hair But I found this really interesting this is from 2008 It's the New Yorker cover showing the Obama's depicted as hysterical right-wing media would have you believe they are right full of stereotypes and I think it's notable that Michelle Obama is depicted with an afro to Signify how frightening she is to white people Even though she's the last person in the world who would have one She she wears her hair very straightened So is afro still a political statement, this is 2008 it's making reference to the black power movement It's a joke. I don't know but I Would say it pretty much still is when a black person Unless I'm grading them There will be no grades tonight We're just gonna talk a little bit about the history of women in the Black Panther Party I'll talk to you about The book I've written on the topic and the way in which many historians have talked about and research this important history How people are recovering this history in this Black Lives Matter? Movement moment that we're going through today with the resurgence of Organizing around state violence In a contemporary sense, so we're gonna look back through the lens of history and see What we can learn right and especially we want to highlight and foreground the reality that when we talk about the Black Panther Party We're oftentimes talking about women even though we may not Say it know it acknowledge it etc Sure So I wanted to start off with some personal history. I grew up in Brooklyn, New York and I came out here for the first time to the Bay Area for the Black Panther Party's 30th anniversary reunion in 1996 so these are some pictures of the 26 year old me who came out here to the Bay Area That was a particularly important moment in my life. I learned how to drive I did not learn how to drive before then I was told I couldn't survive out here Without having a car. There was no the public transportation wouldn't take me everywhere. I needed to go So I learned how to drive. I came out here and I started to Meet people who were former panther. This is a picture of me and Keelu Nyasha who was a former panther She's actually a radio journalist. She lives in San Francisco, and I met with other Graduate students and other folks who were also Researching and writing about the history of the Black Panther Party and you can see that in that image over there I also got a chance to meet some leaders of the Black Panther Party at the time I got a chance to meet Bobby seal. There was a big reunion that was happening out here where some panthers came together David Hillier to Lane Brown Bobby seal Kathleen Cleaver Erica Huggins Hopefully these are familiar names to my Bay Area audience, right? So I met Bobby seal and he actually made me barbecue and he actually had a cookbook that came out after that Barbecueing with Bobby. I Got a chance to meet his now late brother John seal who's passed away Who still lived over there by Merritt College and when I met Bobby, he said that he was going to be interviewed For a documentary and he invited me along. So this was like outside of my wedding and having my daughter This was like the third best day of my life. I Got the chance to spend the whole day with Bobby seal and the purpose of the day was to go around to different sites Where the Black Panther Party had had major events activities Historical moments and he recreated them so I wanted to share some of that video of footage from that time because it really gives us a strong sense of What the organization was about in this time period because I think sometimes we forget, right? We forget the radicalism of the time and we forget Just how significant it was how bold they were at the time. So I want to just play a clip from this video Here's Bobby seal Talking about the first time that him and Huey Newton Patrol the police with their legally carried firearms their law books and their tape recorders at the time Now the funny thing about the clip is that you will see me kind of wandering in and out of the clip looking kind of clueless The director told me to that they wanted to have it seem like Bobby seal was telling the story to somebody So you'll notice. I'm also wearing that same red shirt. It was you know, I was here for like two months with you know one carry on so That what sure got a lot of action at the time That night we had been patrolling batch tool sits up on Telegraph Avenue for some 10 of 15 blocks He turned off at the street around the corner here And then when we got to that street two blocks later behind him came down the street He was sitting under the stop sign with his lights off So we say there that cop and so we turn in front of him as we turn in front of him He flashed his headlights on his high beams on and that's why I'm holding a shotgun. You can see it through the window I'm holding to his shotgun in my left hand. We turn around and come down this street Well, the police's light is suddenly behind us and flashing Huey, I says Huey, he's flashed his light. We might as well stop and he says no no no I'm gonna test the law. I could be colorblind. He says and I says, okay He says let him turn his siren on so as he came now He bleeped his siren and Huey stops right about here and the police officer's front of his car was stopped here and suddenly as We stopped when that's we just gonna give license, but the cop gets out of his car Hold the hell you goddamn niggas. Thank you. I get out of that car with them God damn got get out of that goddamn car and the cop came up and grabbed our door Snatched it open retching across Huey to attempt to grab Huey's shotgun But I was holding she was shotgun because Huey is driving. I'm pulling back Huey hits the cop Lil Bobby Hutton's in the back seat He tries to hit the cop with the butt of his gun and then Huey gets his feet out and kicks the cop out grabs his gun I come around the front with the 45 Lil Bobby Hutton goes to the back of our car with his M1 Huey is out The cop is stumbling back wanting to go for his gun Huey says go for it and I'll blow your brains out I'm over here and I says you come up here from Tallahassee cut shoot wind come from 10 miles north of Mew Creek Junction thinking you go brutalize us in our black community You gonna get your ass killed out here. You racist son of a bitch Black folks are coming out of this house The cop says come on out folks come on out folks the niggas got too many guns now These are black folks this white cop is saying come on out folks the niggas got too many guns the assistant DA comes up and Finally pulls batch 206 to the side and tells batch 206 The guns illegal the guns illegal you can't you really can't arrest him and batch 206 is fuming We got to do something. We got to do something so batch 206 walks up to my car and He sees my license plate hanging there But I have a coat hanger through the hose to make my license plate attached to the bumper So it begins to write me a ticket With a license plate being on with a coat hanger and I take the ticket the cops leave We give a speech to the people that we organize the community on patrol these racist police out here They've been brutalizing our people in the community, etc. Now. We're about what at best March We started the party in October for five months old at that time We've been patrolling police with illegal guns law books Tape recorders the batch 206 that night when he attempted to do that he almost got killed But just because we were disciplined in the methodology is the reason because it was not Emotionalism so much as we were trying to capture the imagination of the people to let them see some disciplined people young black men in our Community ready to defend ourselves from some burly racist cop and just like our towing You know you bring your ass down here from the Tallahassee cut shoot wind come from ten miles north of mule Creek Junction thinking you won't brutalize us brutalize us black for well. I guess that's shocked this cop The problem was that these guns were in the hands of I'm gonna pause there We should give that a round of applause. I think the amazing part is when we when we look at that moment and from our 2017 eyes and we think about the history of so many people who were unarmed who were killed by the police for far less It gives you a sense of how the Black Panther Party utilized the law They knew that they were operating within the law when they were carrying their weapons after they were founded in 1966 here in Oakland. It was legal to carry weapons openly under certain circumstances They learn what those circumstances were and they executed That position you also get the sense from the video that in a real sense They were trying to capture the political imagination of the people, right? It was about political theater. It was about Capturing the hearts and minds as we might say today and Allowing people to imagine that they could stand up that they could survive Confrontations with the police with the state in a larger sense and live to fight another day So when the Black Panther Party started in Oakland, California In October of 1966 They were initially an all-male organization Right here in Newton and Bobby seal were the founders of the organization and even though their literature Spoke to brothers and sisters on the block men and women Organizing themselves standing up the way that they recruited they went to pool harl Halls They went to street corners. Those were the people that they attracted, but soon enough women began to join the organization They felt that the Black Panthers had an open ethos around gender roles and they were willing to come into the organization and struggle For their rights within the larger liberation movement so Despite that despite the fact that the Black Panther Party would be eventually at its height over 50% women So when we think about everything the Black Panther Party did including these patrols and things like that We have to see women's faces there Despite the fact that that is the reality that is oftentimes not what we see when we imagine What the Black Panther Party looked like? So these are the dominant images here of what the Black Panther Party looked like in the popular Imagination and you'll notice that not only are these images of men Right, there are also images that don't depict the kind of political work that being a member of the Black Panther Party Required right there are images of men who are Marching they are posturing they are wearing uniforms Certainly being a member of the Black Panther Party meant that but that was a small fraction of what people in the organization did And when you remember the Black Panther Party this way, it really leaves a distorted legacy This is an image of Huey Newton here Sitting in the wicker chair, which was very iconic Right, he created this image and it became a poster that went all around the world Depicting this ideal of strength opposition, etc. And hip-hop artist Nas Recreated this image for the pages of Vibe magazine and this image has been recreated again and again and again As a hallmark of what the Black Panther Party was about again very symbolic Very short on substance, right? This isn't tell us anything about the political work This isn't tell us anything about the ideals the activities, etc. Etc. Which brings us to Audre Lorde, right? So Audre Lorde talked about the difference between substance and symbolism and how this particularly played a role in Black women's lives, right? We started out talking about aphoros and the symbolism of aphoros and How they challenged the political norms and they challenged the beauty culture of the time then When they were initially created and popularized in the 60s and 70s and even today, right? So Audre Lorde basically reminds us that for black women, it's about creating an alternative Reality that acknowledges our their presence really it was a way for women of African descent to Write their own stories, right? Because with the acknowledgement that if they don't write their stories Who else will write their stories, right? If they don't write their stories, they'll either be left out or their stories will be Warped which brings us to Beyonce So All of us many of us saw the Super Bowl When Beyonce showed out there and did an amazing Super Bowl performance which captured people's Imagination in a new way, right? It captured people's imagination because it called up this history of the 1960s So on the one hand, you had many people critical of this image saying what is this what's going on at the Super Bowl? This is all American entertainment quote unquote What's going on here? Who are these black militants? What is she calling up this violent organization? And then you have other people saying but wait I Was in the Black Panther Party. I was a woman. I was a man. I didn't see women doing these things looking this way right, certainly, this is not what Black Panther womanhood looked like as much as it created a space for dialogue and openness and curiosity around what Black Panther Party womanhood meant So some actual Black Panther Party women and just for a moment. Are there any Black Panther Party women in this room with us today by any chance? Okay, well, I'm gonna bring some of them to life Through my presentation So this gives you a sense of what women in the Black Panther Party looked like what they did and you see them engage in Political work, right? You see them doing everything from clerical work to work in the Panthers free breakfast program Feeding children. You see them giving speeches You might notice that the audience for the speech is a white audience Giving you a sense that the Black Panthers had many alliances across the racial lines, right? They had a lot of connections with white radicals in Berkeley. They were connected to the student movement in San Francisco They were in a lot of ways Part of the regional uprising and a questioning of the power relations in society at the time They're also registered people to vote the Black Panther Party registered thousands of people to vote here in Oakland, California That is also part of their legacy and somehow that gets forgotten when we think about What Black Panther Party members did and in particular what women did? So I wanted to show some images of Black Panther women actual women so you can see What they what they looked like right and also some compared with some quotations from women who were involved in the Black Panther Party So one woman Brenda Presley talks about I like the fact they appeared to be disciplined and they didn't take any mess from anybody They were really serious It's important to say this because there's this perception that well women joined the Black Panther Party because they wanted to feed children Well, yes But men also joined the Black Panther Party because they wanted to feed children and women joined the Black Panther Party because they Wanted to stand up for themselves and for their communities because they wanted to and felt like militant Beings and felt feeling like they could have that kind of power, right? So we can't pigeonhole Black Panther women Another quote which kind of says that as well that the Black Pants the leather jackets the berets the guns the talk That attracted me The Black Panther Party depicted both men and women through visual art There were many very talented graphic artists who were involved in the Black Panther Party people like Emery Douglas Gala solid Dixon and others who really brought the Black Panthers to life So I wanted to show some of those images because I think that's important to imagine that the Black Panther Party woman was not Just depicted in her actual self, but she was also depicted in art, right? And there was a great exhibit at the Omni Arts Gallery. I believe it's called here In conjunction with the Panthers 50th anniversary, which kind of depicts this so this is a great image because It's about self-defense It's about the Panthers or members of the community fighting back against the police, which are depicted as pigs Now this parlance or this language is still with us today This is something that the Black Panther Party originated again as a symbolic way of verbally Turning the power relations between The community and the police department upside down right by calling the police Pigs and at this time I should say that the pig was under attack from many different sources many people were turning away from eating animals at this time and You have people who were involved in the nation of Islam turning away from pork is in particular So the pig was not welcome on any level in this period another image of Black Panther man and woman this idea that they were united front who were saving the community from the Asks kissing Traditional leaders who were all too willing to operate in conjunction with the police Until the brave Panthers come along and this is so important if we think about today So many people are trying to translate their messages into graphic novels, right? Because that's one way of reaching people and and all of that and the Panthers did all of that at the time I wanted to spend just two minutes on a short clip Which will actually have Panther women talking about the things that they did and the things that they experience And you'll hear them talk about motherhood and what it was like to be a mother and a political activist You'll hear them talk about the political work that they did and you'll hear them talk about the challenges They face including sexism and misogyny from their male counterparts. I was in labor breakfast for breakfast program So I was between contractions I Think we're gonna turn up the volume on this ring the phones even after I had my son when I came back to work And in which case I'll start down really heavy because it just wouldn't stop crying as I'm answering the phone you name it I clean Freezers with a toothpick That's how I dance to the phone black nether party national headquarters like the other party situation orders. Can I help you? Answering the phone. Yes, even after I had my son when I came back to work I used to have to jump them up and down really heavy because it just wouldn't just stop crying as I'm answering the phone You name it. I clean Freezers with a toothpick That's how I dance to the phone black nether party national headquarters black nether party situation orders. Can I help you? When I joined the party, I was thrilled about becoming part of an organization that believes in the equality of men and women It bothers me that there are brothers who still view women as sexual objects We should have no men in the Black Panther Party who feel this way or women for that matter one of the ironies of the Black Panther Party is that the image is The black male with the jacket and the gun But the reality is the majority of the rank and file it by the end of the 60s are women The Black Panther Party certainly had chauvinist tone and so we tried to change some of the Clear gender roles so that women had guns and men cook breakfast for children Did we overcome it? Of course we didn't as I like to say we didn't get these brothers from revolutionary heaven I love showing that clip because it really does kind of give you a strong sense of What the Black Panther Party was about what they did and I think is that sense of work that I want to leave us with Right, we want to imagine that being a member of the Black Panther Party meant doing a certain type of political work It wasn't just something that you did and on a volunteer basis on it. It wasn't something that you That you did part-time right many times people dropped out of high school or college to join the Black Panther Party Sometimes their family disapproved of their Decisions so they lost their family the organization became their new family in this case here in the Bay Area The Panthers bought houses so people were able to live together collectively and all of that Wanted to share this because it really talks about the work the structure the fact that many people who were involved in the organization Were organized, right? We don't want to think about the Black Panther Party having things like letterhead You know that if you wrote to the Black Panther Party as many people did you got a letter back, right? So I wrote you back who did that work who did that clerical work who did that? You know that typing it was the women of the organization who did that but they were also out there on the front lines giving speeches and Really writing the ideology of the organization as well The Black Panther newspaper became one of the most important alternative newspapers in the United States Many people don't know that the Black Panther newspaper was so incredibly popular And if you imagine like I just told you people dropped out of high school in college They did not go around and source graphic arts majors or communication majors or English majors and say we need you to join The Black Panther Party people who were already in the organization Develop those skills, right though it was each one teach one in a way and they were able to take their newspaper and it became a Mirror to what was going on in the larger black community at the time it contained letters from all over the world Including quite a few from people who were fighting again in the Vietnam War and who were critical of of us foreign policy at that time I mentioned the Panthers free breakfast program This gives you a sense of how important it was that it was a nationwide effort And I want to give you the image of men serving breakfast to children Right because we oftentimes don't have that image and when we start out with those dominant images that I mentioned in the beginning We didn't see that image when we saw the men sort of lined up with their weapons at their side, right? That was only a small fraction of what people in the organization did Here's another wonderful event the Panthers had in the Bay Area where they gave away free groceries This is the 50th anniversary of the summer of love so there's lots of conversations about the connections between black power and the counterculture and Just the culture of challenging Community of giving away things free to have people challenge capitalism to conceptually rethink How they feel the commodified relationships between people between services Should go down and the Black Panther Party was part of that and here's an event with Angela Davis speaking Erica Huggins you see their Bobby seal and Ron Dellums The Panthers of course had a school right because as the woman talked about Phyllis Jackson bouncing her daughter her child Her son actually up and down as she was answering the phone at the Black Panther office People who were involved in the Black Panther Party. I might have told you they dropped out of high school They dropped out of college. They did not drop out of dating right they dated each other they had social sexual relationships with each other and Out of that at the time where birth control was becoming incredibly Widely available and discussed as a politicized way for women to exercise their self-determination right you had The creation of children within the organization and the Black Panther Party created structures to Nurture the children of the organization and eventually that grew into structures that nurtured the children of Oakland, California So the Panthers had very well known a well regarded Oakland Community School where women played a very pivotal role wanted to leave you with images of some Panther women and the ways in which they continued to remain connected to each other They continue to be aware of the need to continue to speak to each other Because in a lot of ways, there's a lot of hope a lot of joy and a lot of pain in the memories of the Black Panther Party One member told me that it was called a party, but it wasn't a party Right oftentimes you were arrested you you faced deprivations You sacrificed yourself you weren't wearing the latest this or that you were living collectively and oftentimes you were poor Right you are working poor as part of this organization trying to bring social change And it didn't mean that everyone got along with each other either Right when I say they were like a family you shouldn't be thinking about some idealized version of family Think about your own family and think about how you feel right around Thanksgiving So it was Thanksgiving I mean people were living together collectively in these homes, so there was conflict there was cooperation and All these years later is Panther women continued to meet to talk about their history to talk about what it meant to heal the bonds to he to sort of Bring the ties back together and to continue to support each other and that's so important And there's so many Panther women that I could talk about this is just a small example behind each name is a story is a As a place is a teenage rebellion. It's a love story. It's a story of coming of age There's so many stories that need to be told I tell some of them in my book and I'm excited to hear some feedback from you to hear what you what else you want meet the delve into in the Q&A and My book is going to be on sale in the back later on for people who want to look deeply into that And of course the Oakland Public Library has been so kind to put together resources for everybody's talk. Thank you I just said yes without pointing to anyone. I see one question there and then two over there. So yes, you first man Okay, wonderful. So here's a question about the connection between women in the Black Panther Party and the ongoing Growth of the Black Lives Matter movement today and women involved in that movement There's actually been a lot of connections In conjunction with the 50th anniversary union you had people like Erica Huggins Elaine Brown and others who got together with members of the Black Lives Matter movement to share wisdom Right to share war stories. That doesn't mean that women in the Black Panther Party speak with one voice, right? Everyone had their own experience based on their leadership based on their region based on their age And I think that that diversity is important and I think there's also of course not a Synergy around the opinion of Panther women of whole on the Black Lives Matter movement but I think there's definitely support against this uprising and movement against state violence and Black Lives Matter is certainly at the forefront of that Excellent question. I think I might have planted you because I talk about that in my book. The question is about So when we have women in the Black Panther Party serving as leadership and playing a prominent role This how did that have an impact on factionalism within the organization and how is it that? The FBI the CIA the local police force how were taught at those women fair Compared to their male counterparts Well, the reality is is that despite the fact that Panther women played such a key role because their role was often times Behind the scene in a way. I think oftentimes we associate leadership with holding this Right and because if you're not holding the mic right oftentimes you're not identified as the leader Right. So because Panther women didn't do that In the same way in the visible way as men Oftentimes they escape some element of the direct attack of coin tell pro It meant that as men were arrested women took their place because women were oftentimes the one Behind the scenes running the cogs of the machine If you think about many organizations that you may know about whether it be the church with what men in the pulpit Largely and then women in the pews Largely and you think about what where the seeds the seeds of power Right women really played a big role in sort of allowing the organization to continue that didn't mean that women were not arrested They were not infiltrated. They didn't face the destruction of their relationships Brenda Presley the woman that I that I gave the quote from where she talked about being attracted to the militants the FBI went to her parents and told them that Their daughter was too nice of a middle-class girl to be involved in it with a bunch of thugs like that. So women definitely face Repression as well, but they face it in a different way than their male counterparts And there was definitely a lot of factionalism within the organization, especially in the early 1970s that was fueled by the FBI And women definitely played a role in that I talk in particular about how the FBI used Connie Matthews who was the Panthers international coordinator. They signed letters Comrade C from Connie Matthews, which were forged and they used her because she traveled around a lot So she was everywhere. So if you got a letter from comrade C, you believed it because she had been just there Any final thought yeah question Okay, excellent question. So the question is the connection between the Black Panther Party and the nation of Islam I found here in the Bay Area that there were a lot of connections like for example, the Panthers took their 10-point platform and program They were inspired by the nation of Islam's Platform which was laid out in very much the same way Panther leaders talk about reading the nation of Islam newspaper They talk about going down to the mosque and listening to Malcolm X when he came Around the country to give his speeches But at the same time for women women oftentimes told me that when they were interested in getting involved in something politically They oftentimes would check out the nation of Islam because they too were attracted to that message of Malcolm X But then when they went there they found gender roles that were particularly Prescribed in a way that didn't resonate with them Right, so it seemed rigid for them in their minds what they found in the nation of Islam So they ended up veering towards the Black Panther Party many women said I started out checking out the nation And then I ended up in the Black Panther Party because things seemed looser In terms of what was possible for women, which doesn't mean it was nirvana either Right, but it seemed like you could struggle there that you could have an impact you could raise your voice Let's hear it for Robin Robin has her terrific book for sale right there in the back if you have other questions for her Definitely stop by and ask we're gonna take a short break and get to our last talk and also put up a link for $5 tickets for our next show. Thank you for saying