Brother Shep - Free Kamau Sadiki and All Political Prisoners (2022)

Ajay: Yes. How are you doing today, though?

Brother Shep: I'm good. Just, you know, on the move, man. You know, since 6-1. I'm up at 6 early, you know, taking care of business, man.

Ajay: Yes, sir. As you should be as a revolutionary. Absolutely. Man, we're glad to have you here, brother. I believe I met you through, I believe, Brother Samaj. I believe through Harlem Liberation School activities and things of that nature. But man, anyone who's in Harlem has seen Brother Shep on 125th Street with his table, the Black Panther buttons and memorabilia, the literature. He's always out there. I believe Sister Daquie told us when she was on the show, that one of the reasons she got into consciousness is because she attended Medgar Evers College, of course, which had some of our most powerful intellectuals, but also because she ran into you, I think, at a Jazzmobile event or something like that. That's true. You were handing her literature. You see, so Brother Shep has been on the scene. You better act like you know. This brother ain't new to this. He's true to this. 67 years old, I have what this brother's drinking. He don't look like he close to 70, so he doing something right. And we're going to get into a few questions with Brother Shep, and then he's going to go into kind of an update of what's going on with the Free Kamau Siddiqui campaign. First thing, Brother Shep, that I have for you for this question, who or what first got you interested in black liberation?

Brother Shep: I missed that. Could you repeat that? And I have it posted on the screen.

Ajay: Oh, okay.

Brother Shep: All right. Basically, I would say that growing up in the late 60s and the 70s, we all were in an environment that was dealing with struggle. The Vietnam War going on, people were forced to get involved, primarily due to the fact that you had a draft and mostly black and brown people were getting sent to Vietnam to die or to kill other black and brown people. And we couldn't vote. You know, at 17, you could go and be sent there, but you couldn't vote until you were 21. So that de-enfranchisement itself caused a lot of us to get active. um then of course you know just the environment the music the culture was about revolution and change um you can hear the shy lights saying power to the people temptations board confusion uh individuals stevie wonder marvin gaye what's going on then of course you had gil scott heron the last poets, you know, all the music on the radio was about struggle. It was a balance. And so you heard it and you saw it. And it was in the streets during the rebellions that took place in the summertime. And then, of course, we had the organizations that were out. For me personally, I really got it when I joined the Black Panther Party at the age of 19 in 1973. During that same time, I went to Hunter College where, of course, people couldn't hear that introduction, but I had Professor John Henry Clark, Dr. Ben, Marimba Arne. Those are my professors when I was in Hunter. And so I really began to learn about black history and through the Black Studies Department there at Hunter.

Ajay: Now, Brother Shep, let me ask you, you joined up with the Black Panther Party in 1973. You were 19 years old. 1973 is still in the thick of the Black Power Movement. And there were a number of formations during this time. You had the Republic of New Africa, Revolutionary Action Movement. There's a bunch of different organizations. what was it about the black panther party for self-defense that compelled you that attracted you to join that particular organization with so many different organizations around that's very important for people to understand

Brother Shep: Just the understanding that the party was in the community. I mean, you saw Panthers on the streets selling the papers. We had officers in every city, but it was part of the community. It wasn't just a group that would show up at rallies and demonstrations and then disappear, but they were part of communities, you know, through the decolonization programs or what we call survival programs, whether it was free breakfast for children or organizing tenants to strike against capitalist landlords, pest control, lead poisoning testing, sickle cell, acupuncture, you know, all the programs we had in the community. Then, of course, we defended the community against police terrorism. um so that definitely attracted you when you're young um i was actually old when i joined the party because i was 19. i say old because the average age was 17. and um two-thirds of the members were sisters you know you always see bobby yuri and eldridge but Women ran the Black Panther Party. That's what trained me, not just how to use clean and service a weapon, which we all had to have, you know, but also how to study, how to read, which we had to do three hours every single day.

Ajay: So I didn't hear that. Say that again.

Brother Shep: Three hours every day. We have that included our political education classes. It included knowing the Black Panther newspaper from cover to cover because you could not sell that paper unless you knew what was in it. Somebody came to you and asked you about the struggle in Southern Africa for liberation and asked you who the MPLA was. You had to know the difference between them and UNITA, which was backed by the United States fascist government. So you had to know everything. And if you didn't know how to read, you learned how to read. We made sure that all of our members were able to do that and be able to use dialectical materialism and analyze things, use practice and theory and all those methods of thought and thinking and action.

Ajay: Would you agree, Brother Shep, that the Black Panther Party was unique also? And it's not knocking the other formations and organizations during the Black Power Movement. But I know one of the things that I see that's remarkable with the Black Panther Party was that it It seemed to have appreciate and respect the sisters to the degree that you saw sisters all across the line in every city that were in positions of leadership. I think that that's a very remarkable thing, particularly given the Me Too movement and the time we're living in now. Would you agree with that?

Brother Shep: um totally you know as i mentioned two-thirds were women in the party and our leadership condition you know most of you might have a fanny shakur or um kathleen cleaver asada shakur Joan Bird, you know, just down the line, the women ran everything, you know, and you would find that they were probably more astute at being able to analyze situations and to manage what we were doing. Again, I was trained by sisters. You know, my coordinator was, even though it was right in the middle of the split in the party, we had an ideological split in 1971. And during that time, you know, we were actually at war with each other, including the war we had against the government. We learned later on how much the counterintelligence program, also known as COINTELPRO, had to do with that, instigating internal conflict between Panthers over that ideological split. Contrary to what you might hear, it wasn't an East Coast, West Coast thing. It was an ideological split. between those who continue to believe that we should have armed struggle and that our fight was dealing with that, the right to be able to bear arms and to struggle against this country, and those who say, well, we need to put down the weapons and just deal with the survival program. So there was positive and negative in both thoughts. And we learned later on that we did not have the support of the community itself to do arms struggle. But even today, we're still in that whole predicament where Black folks still unfortunately don't realize that we need to have our own nation. And to do that, we have to be able to defend it and to take up arms if necessary, buying back weapons and all of that. That ain't the way.

Ajay: That's right.

Brother Shep: A lot of people are subjected to slavery or extermination like they did during World War II.

Ajay: That's right. And Black people, those of you listening, you should almost intuitively know, but though you need political education to know, that anytime your enemy wants to buy back your guns and gives you a gift card and tells you, we won't look up the gun, we won't look at the print, you got to intuitively know that that's a setup for the what-up, family. Your enemy's never going to do that. Anyway, Brother Shep, I'm very interested because you actually bridge some generations. Man, you're part black power movement, brother. You hip hop. I mean, you bridge quite a few generations. I'm curious to know if you were to give one compliment to this generation of activists, what would it be? And if you were to have one critique of this current generation of activists, what would that be?

Brother Shep: On a positive side, the younger people, I won't say youth, but younger generation now that's out here, they're a lot more smarter than we were. That's what I pick up. I mean, they're able to utilize the technology for struggle, which we didn't have. I wish we did have it. But even putting the paper together, we had to do it by hand, you know, and it came out every single week. know um they are more apt to wanting to learn more i mean i conduct political education classes now you know the pandemic was a bad thing but it was as dialectics teaches us with balance it was a good thing because i was able to conduct classes with a lot of young folks from all across this country on the internet um to be able to do political education classes and um they all flock to it i didn't even have to advertise it was word of mouth And the classes were, you know, I had to turn people down because I didn't want to go any further than 15 per class to make sure we had full participation. But they want to learn. They want more information. I got that from the demonstrations in 2020. The anti-police terror of Floyd and Breonna Taylor demos. Young people were saying at the end of the demos, well, what's next? And the organizers didn't have no solutions and no answers. It was just, OK, thank you for coming. And then that was the end of it. And I did one speech. They gave me three minutes at the end in Washington Square Park. And I left my email and talked about which answers the second question you had. What do they do not do? Simple things like there was nobody handing out clipboards, writing down addresses for people to get in touch, no flyers about the next meeting. And the main thing is the question came out about political education classes. And they're the ones who forced me to do that. When they emailed me in droves and said, we want classes, we want classes. So we did that. But what's missing is the dependence upon social media. Folks are not willing to go out into the streets and really do work with the community. There's no offices. Like when the Black Lives Matter movement came about and became a quote unquote organization, Where do the people go? There's no office in the community where folks can go through the doors and say, well, look, this is my problem. We had that back in the day. Whatever your situation was, whether it was rats running through the apartment building, and we did things like catch rats and take them down to City Hall and unleash them in front of the council people to say, we got to live with them, you're going to live with them.

Ajay: That's right.

Brother Shep: but you know just these actions like that or when the young lords threw the garbage out in the middle of lexington avenue and and um and the rest of the streets to block off traffic because they weren't picking it up there's no communication there's nowhere to go even groups that came after that you know they use our name they'll put black panther you know wherever they want to put in front of it as an acronym but they're not in the community they're not serving the people They're just in front of cameras. They're just talking, but they're not in the community. That's the difference. Young folks need to be in the community. They need to not be afraid to go into projects or talk to the brothers and sisters on the corners. They need to do that. And a lot of them are really afraid to do, you know, those things or just be in the community. You know, you look at demonstrations, folks to go downtown. I know it's like that here in New York. I see in other cities, they'll go down to the courthouses, but they don't demonstrate or rally or march in the black and Latino brown communities. You got to go with our people at that. Talk to some big concrete wall. So folks need to get some courage up and be part of the community organizing the neighborhood.

Ajay: Yes, sir. Brother Shep is almost releasing a call to action, calling for us to be more present and more relevant and be right in the community where we're visible. People can see us, touch us. We can interact with the community, build real relationship and capacity. Thank you for that, good brother. Now, something I don't know, many of you watching probably know that Brother Shep, among other things, does really, to me, really a remarkable job with disseminating information, man. Like he told me I'm not tech savvy, but yet he has an email newsletter that he probably puts out once or twice every day, family, every day. with events, revolutionary events, events about all types of activities, political prisoners, and all types of things we should get involved with, things that educate, inform us, and things that challenge us to be better and do better. And I find it really remarkable your level of consistency and all of the information, man, that you disseminate in these email blasts. So I think one of my the last question I have for you before you actually talk about what you're going to talk about is how important to you is news and propaganda to a liberation movement, disseminating news and using propaganda as you see it?

Brother Shep: You know, in the party, you know, you said that information is intelligence. OK, and we need to circulate to liberate. That's what Sam Napier said, you know, who ran the newspaper, the Black Panther paper back in the day. And I was actually the last distribution manager for the Black Panther newspaper, you know, in the East Coast. And that carried on to now. You know, there's no more Panther paper out there in the streets on a consistent basis. And again, we did it every week. You know, we had to put it out there. And so me utilizing this internet to do that is a continuation of the work that I did, you know, as a distribution reporter for the paper. And the importance of that is that you can't depend upon the enemy to give you all your news and information. If you do, we won't be around. You know, if you depend on them, you'll be dead.

Ajay: That's right.

Brother Shep: Straight up. You know, we've got to get our own alternative information. You know, it's a shame that we lost things like when BET was once time run by black folks. You know, we lost that a lot of radio stations that we had that were all black. um they're gone it's good that we have shows like yours and other um internet programs that are out but you got to also understand everybody doesn't have a computer or a smartphone You know, the Lump and Pull and Terrier or the Brothers and Sisters on the Block are not on Facebook. They're not on Twitter. They're not, you know, dealing with Instagram and all the rest of those things. They're out in the street. So if you're going to get that information out, you've got to go back to some of the original things. You know, putting posters up, handing out flyers, utilizing, you talked about hip hop. You know, graffiti art was a revolutionary thing back in the day. Now you only find it on an international scale. You can go to South America or Central America or Africa and you'll see revolutionaries utilizing graffiti or what we call street hieroglyphics. But here, it's been died down. You don't see political information put in the hood anymore, on the trains. So we got to get back to putting information out on the street, which is where propaganda is. It's us telling our story out there the way it should be, which is what hip hop really was. you know you had lyrics you had messages that were put out through that music through the lyrics and then when the record companies took it over they changed it you know folks got their little um payment and made their deals. And then if they made a deal to do 10 albums, after that first two albums were done, then the company said, OK, you're not going to speak about revolution no more. But you're going to still make the record. You're going to make the record that we want you to make. So then you got the misogyny and the drugs and the money and all the glorification of all the negativity that became hip hop in this country. So our propaganda, we have to go underground and do music now that's going to be revolutionary and conscious. But there's nothing wrong with that. We can use these platforms and control that technology just like we need to control all the institutions in our community that are at our hands because they're all controlled from the outside.

Ajay: Thank you for that, Brother Shep. And I did want to add on this point for those watching. Hopefully, we have quite a few people watching at Howard Liberation School on YouTube, as well as my Facebook page. Please spread this. Share the link if you can, family. I think it's interesting to know that there's kind of this confluence of the Black political, cultural nationalists, and Pan-Africanists, and socialist organizations. and how it impacts popular culture in our hood. So many of the so-called gangs or street organizations that are Black owe part of their birth to, for instance, groups like the Black Panther Party. These are young people whose uncles and aunts was in the party, and now they're coming up under them and in a void. Sometimes these people may be taken off the jail unethically or killed unethically. Right. These young people come up and see themselves in some ways as taking on kind of the mantle of the Black Panther Party or some of the black power movers. And of course, the introduction of drugs and other things kind of made a left turn with it. But it's very interesting to see the impact when people stand up and organize on behalf of the people. It impacts the community in very real ways. We talk about the Black Liberation Army and so many other things. But one thing I wanted to do, family, Brother Shep does a wonderful job of educating us about our political prisoners. Now, we had a broadcast. We had our sister, Dayque Keone Siddiqui, peace to our sister, wherever she is, who gave a very wonderful sort of speech. breakdown of what a political prisoner is, a prisoner of war, and that type of thing. Brother Shep is going to kind of update us on what's going on with the free Kamau Siddiqui campaign and what we can do to free our political prisoners. We cannot leave them there as if they did not sacrifice their lives and their families for us. So, Brother Shep, I'm going to give you the rest of this time up until about, let's say,

Brother Shep: 15 20 minutes and then a few questions and then we're going to end at four take it away good brother okay um before i get into um brother kamal i just wanted um just what you just mentioned about our street families or street organizations um not only did those groups come out of the movement you know whether it be the new african or the black panther uh party We came from that, from the streets. So you actually have a lot of chapters that were street organizations that became revolutionary. so it was you know it goes both ways you know street organizations became revolutionary and then revolution then the other ones looked at revolutionaries and and changed so you know all that has connections to it um you have a lot of those groups that you just talked about the socialist groups and so forth that say oh we have a meeting We got to bring young people in. Why don't they come to the meetings? They're not coming to the meetings. You got to go into projects, to the community rooms, and hold meetings there. They're not going to come to the school or even to the church, if it's outside, and come to your meetings. The other part is, how come they don't come to the demonstrations? Well, the government and law enforcement has made it unreasonable for folks in the street to go because they might have outstanding warrants, the three strikes and you're out kind of nonsense that's up. And so they're not going to come to no demonstration. But they're ready to do some work when it comes time for it. And if you're in the street talking to them on a regular basis, you know that. They ain't giving up them guns. They're not ready to go out there and sacrifice for nothing. So that's just the reality with that. And that's one of the reasons why they killed Fred Hampton. Just the idea of unifying all the street organizations. And we're actually going to do a program on that if you're lucky enough to be in New York on next Wednesday. We're going to show Sam Greenlee's film, Spook Who Sat by the Door. which is about how he organized street organizations to become revolutionaries. And we're going to talk about that with a lot of different groups that you've actually had on your show in the past, you know, the Black Spades and the Peacemakers and other groups. We're going to be talking about that. So that said, Kamau Siddiqui, what I'm going to do is just do a quick talking point. with that. And I'm going to start out basically with who is Kamau Siddiqui? Again, I joined the Panther Party when I was 19. Kamau joined when he was 17. And that was back in 1968. He joined the Queens chapter. Actually, he was born in 53, one year before me. And he's raised in New York. And he joined the Queens branch in the Jamaica chapter 17 in 1968. As I mentioned about a split in 1971, there was a split in the Panther Party. And a lot of Panthers were forced to go underground due to the police oppressions, which started actually in 69 when they killed Fred Hampton, when they began attacking every Panther office throughout the country. When they declared, when Hoover and FBI declared that we were the Number one threat to the internal security of the United States, it was open season. They began bombing offices, shooting up offices, setting up Panthers by the hundreds and locking them up, even for selling a newspaper. The whole idea of political prisoners grew at that time. And of course, we lost people, whether it was in combat or just straight up assassinations, like I mentioned with Mark Clark and Fred Hampton. So Kamau was one of the ones who was forced to go underground, mainly because of the split when we were actually committing fratricide. Panthers were trying to kill panthers. And so some people were forced to go underground. Kamau was one of those ones who went underground. When you went underground, you usually would join the Black Liberation Army. In 1974, he was captured. He did about five years in prison as a prisoner of war. um and um basically from out of that he was released in 1979 on the case that he was um charged with was killing a police officer but um they didn't have enough evidence for it and he was able to get out for 23 years from 1979 until 2001 kamal work and live with his family. He raised two daughters, Kakuya and Kasise. Kasise, her mother was a Panther. Kakuya's mother is a Panther. Most people know her as Asada Shakur. And he worked for the telephone company, was a pillar in the community. Everyone knew him as a telephone man, because he worked for the phone company. And he raised a family, got his two daughters through college, did all those things. Then 2001 came, 9-11 hit, and they passed the Patriot Act, and Homeland Security came in, and the United States went on this whole war on terror, which I'm sure everybody here remembers. They began to dig up cold cases, and they got to go ahead to once again look at who they had declared to be the number one threat to the internal security of the United States and tried to clean up all their cold cases. Anywhere a cop had been killed, they began trying to grab Panthers and BLA people and try to charge them with the cases. So Kamala was first. They came up with that cold case, and they captured him under some fake charges of child abuse. in order to get him captured. While he was captured, they offered him a deal. They said if he would help trap Osada Shakur, who was in Cuba, who again is the mother of one of his daughters, that he would go free. And if he didn't agree to do it, that he would spend the rest of his life in prison. Of course, Kamau's principle as a revolutionary wasn't going to have that. So they brought up that case again. They dug up somebody from back, again, 23 years ago to say that, oh, yeah, so-and-so admitted to me that he said that he killed the cop. So that's why Kamau's in prison today. um due to that so um he was convicted in 2003 and sentenced to life plus 10 years in prison um right after that in 70 in 2007 they did the same cold case thing with the san francisco eight they tried to dig them up and blame them for a case that took place you know 20 what 5 26 years ago so they were trying to dig up all these old cases and just you know frame up panthers who have been out on the case of summoning the um San Francisco case like Jalil and Herman Bell, who was still in prison. They tried to put them, add that to their charges. So today, Kamau is in the so-called Atlanta medical prison. There's nothing about medical involved in that. He has hepatitis C, cirrhosis of the liver. Sarcoidosis. He has a wound infection that they refused to treat the right way. And he's actually self-medicating himself. He was affected, of course, with the COVID-19. And that prison is known as a death house. If you go to our website, you'll actually see part of our campaign, which I'll get into in a second, that we're dealing with, and not just for Kamau, but for all of our prisoners who are now elders. All of our political prisoners are in their late 60s, their 70s, or in their 80s are going on. We just luckily were able to do a whole lot of work to get Sundiata Akoli out. He's 85, you know, spent almost 50 years in prison. Latulu Shakur in his late 70s. Iman Jamil Alamein about to hit 80. So, I mean, it's... elders that are in prison. And our whole focus now is on elder abuse and medical neglect. That's the new strategy that we're utilizing now. We're not focusing anymore on the whole thing of being a prisoner of war or fighting the US government and all of that. Because primarily, they've been using that to try to get the parole, deny parole. So we're going to make it so that they can't deny parole anymore. um we were able to get russell maroon schultz out for that uh very reason of medical neglect that they do and we've lost so many political prisoners in these prisons due to medical neglect they died in there what was cancer hepatitis, diabetes, all these different diseases and medical problems that we incurred by being locked up in prison. We lost a lot of our folks like Noah, Albert Noah Washington, Bashir Hamid, Abdul Majid. I mean, I could go on and on with that. you know, folks that died in rural Africa. I mean, just on and on, our political prisoners have died in prison due to medical neglect. So that's what we're looking at now, the focus on that. We're actually going to have a conference coming up this month in Atlanta to look at Iman Jamil Alameen, Matulu Shakur, and Kamal Siddiqui, since their cases are in Georgia, to begin to look at strategies to get that done under those two categories. So not only is it dealing with political prisoners, but dealing with prisons overall, because the majority of folks locked up in these dungeons are Black and brown people, and they're elders. And so some folks have been locked up since they were young. Like Jalil was captured, he was 19. He just recently got out. So there's a lot of folks in prison that were captured when they were young teenagers who are now elders and they need to come home. They're not threats to society. They're not risk to escape because most of them can't even walk. Nevertheless, move around and jump a wall or do anything else like that. So they need to be with their families, their great grandchildren and grandchildren and family members and do that. Because in the final analysis, Brother Ajay and the audience, there was a war that took place in the late 60s and the 70s. They attacked us. We defended ourselves. We engaged in that war. And we were the ones who actually caught the ceasefire. It wasn't them. They didn't defeat us. We just stopped because it wasn't the point of where we would have had been able to fight to a standstill, which is what we wanted to do. So it was a war. We lost people. They killed us. And it went the other way around, too. But none of them have ever been locked up or charged for killing us or assassinating us. So that's something that needs to be dealt with down the line. I know there's something going on in Congress now to bring COINTELPRO back up again, because it's never resolved. And there's a bill being tried to be put out now on that. So that's basically the situation with Kamau. I put in the website, I mean, in the chat, the website for the campaign. I also have the Facebook page, the link tree, and the address. And my address is also there, panthershepcat.all.com. If people want to get in touch and support the campaign, we're definitely supporting the family. And we're trying to raise these funds to make sure we have those legal fees and legal resources to get Kamau out. And in terms of all of our other prisoners, we just got Sundiata out, but there are still at least 11 Panthers that are still in prison that we know of. And again, they're all elders. Then we have Fort White Leonard Peltier, who's an elder. They're all infirmed. They all have medical problems, and we don't want anybody else to die in prison. They need to come home.

Ajay: That's right. That's right. That's right. Brother Shep, people are commenting on our YouTube channel, Harlem Liberation School, man. Excellent presentation by Brother Shep. Some people have said that the medical neglect, of course, is deliberate. They're being punitive, of course. That's the nature of American prisons, to be punitive, particularly when we're dealing with black and brown people who are attempting to severely challenge, maybe even overthrow or replace the governmental apparatus. So absolutely. Now, we wanted to pivot right now, Brother Shep, now to talk about some of the things, because I've seen a lot of really good information people give about political prisoners and people like, oh, that's messed up. You know, they go home. go back to the football game the beer the basketball game whatever and they kind of forget you know these people are in far away places many times so people forget and what i was hoping to make sure we do and i know you are eminently qualified to help us understand what are the practical things that we can do at home to support and help to free our political prisoners

Brother Shep: I would say, first and foremost is, I know Sister Day-Queed spoke about, you know, what is a political prisoner? What is a POW? But we need to have classes. We have to have forums like this, workshops, and different means to get out to people the definitions of them. You know, Professor Clark said that, basically, we in mass were brought here as political prisoners of war. Try to keep away from that thing of being it was slavery. We were slaves. No, we were prisoners of war because we were captured And there was resistance on the motherland, throughout the Middle Passage, or through the or what they call the Holocaust. We resisted. We resisted when we got here. We resisted, and we continue to resist. And Clark said that the revolutionaries of the 60s, 70s, and 80s followed in the tradition of Nat Turner, Denmark Vasey, Gabriel Prosser, Malcolm X, Harriet Tubman, all of our freedom fighters from back then, they follow that same tradition. And so looking at it that way, we have to teach that our people are and were still at war. In terms of what we can do, we have to teach. We got to educate our youth and our community to the fact that they do exist. Now, that's one thing. The second part of it is that outside of educating, supporting financially. Donate to the programs to get people out. Legal fees are tremendous. Commissary is needed. Supporting the families. You still have bus in the prison programs. We can still bring those things back. But it's expanding it so it's not just those who were locked up as political prisoners or prisoners of war. We have folks like George Jackson and Malcolm X who were social prisoners, and they became politicized when they were captured. There's a whole lot of folks inside these prisons that can be politically change to the point where they get conscious and start organizing. That's why they keep so many of our revolutionaries in solitary confinement, to keep them away from the general population, to keep the young folks from being in contact with them. But that's the training ground, too, for the struggle, for our liberation, is the other side of the war. So we got to look at supporting all of our captains, whether they go in politically or if they went in social, because they can become that next wave of revolutionaries. Or they say, when the prison doors are open, the dragon will fly out. So we got to look at that. In addition to that, Again, we got to be in the community dealing with it. So look at that whole issue that I mentioned earlier of medical neglect and elder abuse. Okay. That involves families across the board. Families, loved ones are in those situations. When we look back at, let's say when Mamia Abu-Jamal was on death row, we got all kinds of people that joined that campaign because they were against the death penalty. The minute Mumia got off of death row, they all disappeared. So we looked at that and we said, well, we got to find something that's similar to that, but ongoing. And medical neglect and elder abuse is something that's going to continue. Like you said, someone in the chat said that's what they do. Well, that's what they do across the board. So that's the direction we're going in. We can get all of our, we want all of our elders out and that's automatically going to include the elders that are political prisoners in POWs. And last thing I want to say on that is, think back about the Vietnam War that I was talking about. The minute that war ended, all those thousands and thousands and thousands of so-called progressive socialist organizations and white folks They all disappeared once the Vietnam War was over. And they left us hanging. That's why the government was able to really move on the Black and Brown independence and liberation movements the way they did. Because with the few exceptions, maybe the May 19 crew or whoever underground at one point, white folks disappeared. They put their shirts and ties back on, got back in their suits, and they disappeared. and left us out there. So we have to make sure that we support ourselves in the Black community and that we are the ones who are suffering and have to organize ourselves.

Ajay: That's right. White people have a certain privilege that Brother Shep just spoke. They could cut their hair differently, put their suit and tie on and blend right into the rest of their people, right? They can turn themselves in after 30 years living as a housewife or a husband, right? Got fake IDs, turn themselves in and get released very quickly. If that's you or I, you know how that's going to go down. So that is right and exact. Brother Shep, I think we have... Oh yeah, I just wanted to remind people. Those of you watching on YouTube, please, family, somebody hacked my Gmail three years ago, put up an inappropriate video, and the white man took my YouTube channel, Black Liberation University, down, family. That was not incidental or accidental. I believe that was for a reason. They didn't want the radical voices that were credible. I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about all the people I had on the show. They don't want the radical revolutionary voices. They want you to get caught up in the people that got us fighting each other, cursing each other out, talking about very simplistic stuff that's irrelevant. They want to proliferate our community with that. Distract us. Their number one tactic is to keep us distracted. Right? So now we're back on through Harlem Liberation School on YouTube. Please, family, all of you watching, hit the subscribe button. Help us to help you bring this revolutionary, life-sustaining, nation-building sort of information out to the people. Brother Shep, are there any other things you want to say? Are there any questions? I put that out. Are there any questions for Brother Shep? Because we got like nine minutes left, family. We'll probably have our brother back on. There's a wealth of information. And Brother Shep, how can people get tagged, linked into that very wonderful email blast that you do? How can they be a part of that, receiving that?

Brother Shep: Well, I see the bottom screen. You got my email there, panthershepcatatall.com. Just hit me up. Say you want to be in the network. And it's a private network. It's BCC only. It's not a listserv. You know, I don't do those because they could be easily tapped into by other folks. So all your messages are sent BCC and it's controlled right from here. So we have over 8,000 people in our network.

Ajay: Wow.

Brother Shep: And all 8,000 are either revolutionaries, community activists, folks that are organizers. That's who's in the network. And even some of those websites are part of that. Like the Jericho Movement, they're part of that network. Matulu's campaign, Sandiata's campaign, Kamau's campaign. They're all part of that. Different prison organizing is part of that group. And then, of course, it's individual people. So panthershepcat at AOL.com and you send me a request and I'll put you in there and you can get all that information.

Ajay: And if you were wise, you would want to be part of that. Trust me, family. I mean, he got events. I'm about to go down to the people's church family. Brother Shep done told me about 18 times. He said, brother, he said, brother, you ready to get Harlem Liberation School back in a brick and mortar?

Brother Shep: come on down to the people's church and so absolutely there's a history there you know they don't know about the young lords break it down chef yeah well basically um the church was there they wanted to do a free breakfast program the pastor there um didn't want to do it and so they took over the church They did it twice. The second time, they were armed and took it over. Stood off the cops for a few days. But that legacy is back again. We've been working for about three years there, even through the pandemic. feeding the community and uh we've got programs there now everything from acupuncture to martial arts for children and women um we have pe classes that we're about to start and this wednesday we're going to open up our summer series for the black panther party film festival which i know most people know about here in leeson harlem that takes place in october but we're doing a summer series this year and it starts on wednesday so We do programming. We're looking for more people to come in and do things like re-entry programs for our brothers and sisters that come out of these dungeons and need assistance, team programs, father circles. There's a Zumba class that takes place for all the sisters that want to get physically in shape. We got all kinds of programs that we're doing. Again, you've got to have programs in the community. And spaces are hard to come by now. And so when we have them, those are liberated zones that we need to keep and support so we can have them. We just lost the National Black Theater through some kind of construction stuff they're doing. But I don't know how long that's going to take. So we're losing spaces. And that's organizing again. Churches are supposed to be institutions in our community that we have access to. We all know the situation with that. If you're not part of the congregation, you can't use the church. How many churches do we see with padlocks and chains across the gates? But a people's church is open. And we keep it open, and we want people to come and support that. And open up your churches. You know, this whole elder abuse and medical neglect crosses all lines. We no longer want to speak to the quote unquote, the quiet. We want to reach out to all aspects of our community and get the information out. So that's the big campaign that's going on now.

Ajay: Brother Shep, are you still, I know there was a time when you were kind of continuing the Panther tradition of serving food to the people that needed it. I know through the community survival program, is that still going on?

Brother Shep: Well, we have, now that we have a place, you know, we did a lot of renovation at that church. The kitchen is almost done now. We still got Jacob's. We can get food from them and other sources. And we served hot food. But prior to that, we were serving 500 people every Saturday at the people's church. You know, all through the pandemic, you know, every week we served, you know, all doing Thanksgivings. We gave out turkeys to, you know, 300 to 400 people and all free, you know. And so that got cut off, so to speak, by the government. When you depend on them to give you stuff, that's what happens. That's something we never did in the party was really get anything from the government. Um, you know, no, definitely no funds, cuz once you do that, they own you. Yes, sir. They can cut you off or make you change you up, which is what they did. All the programs that were out that got government funds, they eventually controlled them and made them stop. Just like I mentioned with the music, once you pay into it and you getting paid, they can control you. It's gotta come from the community by the community for the community.

Ajay: Now, Brother Shep, in line with that, some people watching have some little plastic credit cards and all types of money in their pocket that's disposable. Do you or whatever formation or community initiative that you're the head of at this current time accept donations? And if so, how would people donate monetarily?

Brother Shep: Yes, we do. And if you go to our website, which is in the chat, just click on International Campaign to Free Kamal Siddiqui, and that'll send you to our link tree. Once you get to that link tree, it'll send you out to all the political prisoner groups that you can contact, including the Jericho Movement, which covers all the political prisoners. or the individual campaign for Kamal. And you'll be in the network. And of course, if you send it to my email at panthershepcatall.com, just ask that question, and we'll send you all that information on how you can donate. And we have folks that deal with all of that. know in terms of all those different systems whether it's i'm not familiar with the world but you got somebody got the cash apps and the vmos and the paypals right and all that stuff but we got all that covered so any way you can do it and we got a mailing address if you want to just send a check or a money order for kamal sadiki so all that information is in the chat um just click on and get in touch with us and we will get back to you

Ajay: excellent and those watching you'll see i have a link right there the link tree for free command sadiki that i believe brother shep was referring to that will take you to a number of different resources so if you want to donate that is the link you can go to you also have this whole show we've had uh brother shep's information scrolling on the bottom of the screen his uh his email you can hit him up at panthershepcat at AOL.com for any questions you want to donate, you want to come to People's Church. I presume you need volunteers, right, Brother Shep?

Brother Shep: Oh, yes, especially with the campaign, not just the People's Church. But yes, we do need volunteers there for our on the ground community programs, which I was saying before, you have to have your roots sunk in to the ground inside the community to be a real revolutionary. Get off that camera. Stay off. Do what we're doing now as much as you can. And get out there. Spend some time aside to be in the streets. But yeah, we also need folks with the campaign to do research. Back in the day, we were able to incorporate work study and field work for college students into the movement to get your credits in college. So those of you who are in school, you can do this work and get your credits for it. And so you're actually serving the community and you're getting your credits while you're in school. Those are different ways that you can do it. Of course, we had free tuition back then and open admissions, so we were able to get revolutionaries into the colleges. And then, unfortunately, those of us that were willing to burn the schools down or go into combat against them changing the curriculars and putting tuition in, once we left, that's what happened. That's why you got tuition and all that stuff now, because folks were afraid of getting kicked out, losing their money for their tuition, and all those other things, not realizing that people sacrificed to make sure that we got into college. Because there was a time when black and browns were not allowed to go into these universities, particularly if they were free. That should be the fight now, not to stop tuition or lower it, but to end it. College should be free, just like it is in Cuba.

Ajay: That's right. Well, with that said, we want to thank you, Brother Shep, not just for the show or the broadcast today, but man, this is a brother that has been involved, meaningfully involved, actively involved, in our historical and continuous Black liberation movement from the age of 19 when he joined the Black Panther Party. And he may have been involved before that, for all I know. But at least from the age of 19 and the brother is now 67. Okay, we're talking. This brother has put in a lifetime of work. And I just take my hat off to Brother Shep. Every time I see Brother Shep, he's in motion. He's selling buttons. He's moving. He's moving and grooving. He's educating. He got literature. So he's doing that Panther work, man. And that's a beautiful thing to see. To see it up close in real time is a beautiful thing. It's a good model for the rest of us. Brother Shep, thank you, man. We got to have you back on. I'm going to take you up on that People's Church offer. I'm going to get through there, man. I just got some mobility, some health issues right now. But I'm going to be up in there.

Brother Shep: Try to drop by on Wednesday so you can get that history. Well, you did one on street organizations already back a few years ago. But you can get updated on it. Come on by on Wednesday. yes sir and you say once a panther always a panther all right so that work has to continue and there's no such thing as an ex-panther or a former panther so when you see that correct it yes sir that disrespects those of us that were killed or became ancestors for the struggle so there's still panthers and we are