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[humming motor]

[street sounds]

[faint TV dialogue]

[clattering dishes]

[sizzling food]

[traffic sounds]

[hands clapping]

[traffic sounds]

♪ [soft music]

Breathe in.

Exhale.

♪ [soothing music]

OK, Walter, turn
your head that way,

like you're looking
at that hat.

Excuse me.

Just wanna see
something.

I'm gonna adjust this
one right here,

the liver point.

Let me get rid
of this

Turn your
head that way.

[off camera chatting]

There you go sir, turn
your head the other way.

There you go, brother.
You're good to go, man.

Try not to tense up when you
breathe in; just try to relax.

Breathe in.

And exhale for me.
All right? All right.

Turn your head for me?

OK, sir.

I've been doing this, oh for
about seven, eight years now.

Woman: Really?
-Maybe more.

Maybe I skipped a couple because
I was doing drugs back then.

It helps me with
a lot of things.

It calms my breathing;
it calms my heart down;

it keeps me relaxed.

And it just
makes me happy.

I'm a happy person
anyway and with this,

it makes me extra happy.

Come on, put the pins in.

This helps me with
my anger management.

[Lily talks in the background]

Lily, let me talk.

This helped me with
my anger management.

And I found out through taking
anger management courses

that it's not anger I
feel, it's hurt.

And so it helps me manage
the hurts that I have within.

And keeps me away from
alcohol and substance abuse.

Walter: Right, you don't have
to medicate yourself anymore.

This is your natural
medicine here.

Yes, yes, yes.

Come on, hit me up.
I'm ready over here.

Look up a little
bit; there you go.

[off camera] How long
were you in the military?

Quite a few years,
you know...

Juan: I didn't really know
the true history behind it,

which was, that one of the
senior counsellors,

I was telling them about
acupuncture and stuff,

and she said, "Do you know
how this really started?"

And she said, "It was the Black
Panthers and The Young Lords.

They actually were the first
ones to bring acupuncture

to the South Bronx."

♪ [jazz guitar and congas]

♪♪

[siren]

Walter: Growing up in
the South Bronx,

when the heroin epidemic
really hit strong,

I got used to seeing
the addicts, the men,

nodding on the corners.

So I grew up with that sense.

We just didn't drop out of
the sky addicted to heroin.

We became addicted to heroin
because of the situation,

and our environment,
exposed us to heroin.

You could buy a bag of
heroin for three dollars.

So people got
addicted to heroin,

and then it just
got out of control.

At one point, there were
100,000 addicts in New York.

So I wanted to do something.

♪ [drums]

♪♪

New male voice: The need to
go into the Panther Party

came as I watched and observed
the interaction of people,

the interaction of Party,

and what the police
was doing at the time.

[angry shouting]

Even if the situation
required verbal interaction,

verbal communication,

they'd rather use the
baton and use force.

This I seen.

I didn't have to read
it in the evening paper.

I seen this.

♪ [high hat tapping]

So I offered my skills
in the martial arts

to the Panther Party,

♪ [snare joins]

located in the Bronx
Chapter on Boston road.

♪ [cowbell joins]

In the community, we structured
the free lunch program.

♪ [bass joins drums]

♪♪

Also the daycare centre.

♪♪

Woman: The name of this
revolutionary puppet show

is called, "The
child, the man,

the revolutionary,
the Panther.".

Oink! Oink! Oink!

[kids laugh]

Oink! Oink! Oink!

Oink! Oink! Oink! Oi9nk!

♪ [piece continues]

♪♪

[hammering]

[male] To the United
States we came

To learn how to
misspell our name

To lose the
definition of pride

To have misfortune
on our side

To live where rats
and roaches roam.

To be trained to turn
on television sets.

To dream about jobs
we will never get

To fill out welfare
applications

To graduate from school
without an education

To be drafted,
distorted, and destroyed

To work full time and
still be unemployed...

Woman: After work at
Lincoln Hospital,

I would sell
my newspapers,

my Black Panther
Party newspapers.

I sold the newspapers across
the street from the hospital

because that's
the closest place

and there were
lots of people,

a lot of people
walking back and forth.

And on the stoop, every day,
was this fifteen-year-old.

and his buddy, who was
about twenty-five maybe,

and they were stomp-down
heroin addicts.

And I kept telling
them, you know,

you don't want to be addicted to
heroin and let me show you why.

Because the system
is keeping you

--I gave them the
whole spiel--

the system is keeping
you down by making sure

that you stay addicted and
you don't stand up and fight

against all the exploitation
and horrible conditions

that we live in because
you're over here nodding out.

You don't want to fight
when you're on heroin.

You just stay there and
nod yourself into oblivion.

♪ [men singing]
Hey now! Hey now! Hey now! ♪

♪ God bless!

During that era, I found
out I was very political.

I don't know how
this happened.

Obviously, subconsciously
something was working in me.

♪ [Drums and shouts with lines
of poetry between shouts] ♪

I was admiring the Panthers.

I had already met with Bobby
Seale and James Forman.

And I told Bobby Seale I wanted
to organize the counterpart

to The Black Panthers
called The Brown Tigers.

He said, "Son, can I
tell you something?

We're catching hell being
called The Black Panthers.

I would suggest that
you find another name

and work the objective
conditions of your country.

Try to apply socialism to
the objective conditions

of your country and don't
try to do what we do."

I thought that was
a brilliant answer.

Another panelist,
Mr. Felipe Luciano,

a member of The
Young Lords,

and I have asked him
to speak briefly

as to the philosophy
of his organization

and what he feels its place
in the community is.

Mr. Luciano.

First of all, The Young
Lords are a predominantly

Puerto Rican group operating
out of East Harlem.

Basically, the way we go
about mobilizing our people

is through serving
their needs.

That is, if our
people need hot water

then we're gonna
get hot water.

If it's shoes on
their feet,

then we're gonna
give them shoes. Right?

And if it's a political
campaign that needs to be run

then we're gonna run
political campaigns.

That's basically what The
Young Lords are about.

In the process... [continues]

Walter: And I just fell in
love with the movement.

Once I heard him speak
about what we had to do

in our community, I wanted
to join the movement.

["Two Little Boys" by The Last
Poets]

Have you seen the
skinny little boy

that chases the white
ghost at night?

Have you seen the little boy?

Face puffed up, tracks in
his arm, and his mind blown.

His momma's somewhere drinking
and talking about survival.

Pop's in jail, or
downtown at the Y.

The little boy chases the
white ghost with his friend,

and they get high.

And they get high.

And they get high.

Like cloud nine, where
everything is fine.

The fast rise of people's
personal economy grew

as a result of
selling drugs.

Qualitatively, that overshadowed
living harmoniously

amongst each other, which the
Panther Party was introducing.

So we had to tackle
the drugs now.

[indistinct conversations]

At first, we went to those who
were distributing the drugs

and selling drugs.

We asked that they stop.

They wouldn't.

And we just kindly removed
them out the community.

♪ [drum beat]

♪♪

It didn't hit the
lower-middle-class

and middle-class
neighbourhoods.

It was clearly in
the areas of colour.

If it isn't large enough to get
to the influential community;

if it isn't a big
media story;

if it doesn't affect your kid
going to school every day

because you're in Forest
Hills or in Bay Ridge

or some middle-class
neighbourhood;

it's not a big problem.

I was an administrative
assistant to John Lindsay

when he was mayor
from 1966 to 1973.

And basically my
responsibility was the street.

♪ [electric guitar
and congas] ♪

♪♪

We believe in
armed self-defence.

Not because we like violence--
no one likes violence--

but you have to make a
differentiation between

the open and
direct violence

that very often is attributed
to revolutionaries

and the type of violence
that happens every day

on a regular basis
among poor people.

Whether it's the violence of
having to go all winter

in an apartment
that has no heat,

or whether it's the violence of
having to go to a hospital

that doesn't give you service
and you end up dying anyway.

You don't die with a
bullet necessarily,

but you die in other ways.

And that type of violence
takes a lot more lives.

[crowd noise]

Today, we don't want to
just have a rally here.

We're gonna go marching through
the streets of South Bronx.

We're gonna tell the
people of South Bronx

that we're not going anywhere,

that we're gonna be
here until this hospital

learns and is put back in
the hands of the people.

That building was
condemned 25 years ago,

condemned because it was
unsafe for human habitation,

condemned for rich people and
opened up for poor people.

That's what always happens.

Young Lords, Black Panthers,
workers and patients

who set up a
complaint table...

We took complaints of rat bites
for babies, lead poisoning,

asthma, heroin addiction.

Woman: They have those
two thousand complaints

that we got from the
patient complaint table

in their hands and have
done nothing about them.

A group called "Health
Revolutionary Unity Movement".

Some Blacks, some Puerto
Ricans, some Jewish-Americans,

we all got together,
and we decided,

it's time to do something.

And we decided - I know
this is gonna sound crazy -

we decided to take
over the hospital.

♪♪

Felipe: It was an
occupation that came

straight out of the
Normandy Invasion.

Understand it's a U-Haul truck,
driven by a friend of ours.

The gate rose up, and we were
sitting with our legs open,

and a guy would
sit between us,

and it was like a
paratroop assault.

♪♪

I knew that we were ready

because I was expecting them to
look at me for confirmation.

Not one person looked at me.

They knew exactly
what their roles were.

We took the place in
seven-and-a-half minutes.

We secured it in fifteen.

That morning, the Puerto
Rican flag is flying

over Lincoln Hospital.

The cops come.

They had more cops than I
had ever seen in my life.

So they sent over their
best negotiator,

this guy named
Sid Davidoff.

[police radio chatter]

So I get a call one morning
that The Young Lords

have taken over the hospital,
whatever that means,

taken over the hospital.

The police are ready to move
in. They've got hostages.

Can we do something about it.

It's one thing to have a
demonstration in the street.

And you cordon it off
and you have police

and you do what
you have to do.

This is a hospital where people
come who are seriously injured

and seriously sick and
we couldn't provide,

it couldn't
provide, patient care.

And we had to draw
the line there.

[shouts] We don't
want a police state!

Don't let anybody tell you
that there was one minute

of disruption of the delivery of
healthcare at Lincoln Hospital

when The Young
Lords took it over.

Never.

We had our press conference
where we said the hospital

had been taken over and we
were willing to negotiate

but these were the demands.

Pretty much, those demands
were the thousands of complaints

that we had received from the
patients in the emergency room

at our complaint table.

We kept our end
of the bargain.

We did open a detox
centre soon thereafter.

With, as I remember, a
Puerto Rican administrator,

I'm pretty sure.

Felipe: And that
was the beginning

of the Lincoln
Detox Unit.

♪♪

[happy chants]

♪♪

We have now started
the Lincoln Hospital

Drug Detoxification Program.

We brought hundreds
of drug addicts.

Heroin addicts came.

[crowd chatter]

Carlos: The first day that
we opened up the doors,

there were two hundred.

Cleo: Walter came
in off the street.

I was in nursing school, walking
up the block with my ex-wife,

and I saw this big Puerto
Rican flag across the street.

So when I told them I was
in nursing school,

they said, why don't
you volunteer?

In the beginning, I was
just like a translator,

because all of the doctors were
white and didn't speak Spanish.

And since I had a little
experience with nursing school,

I went from being a
translator to drawing blood.

And the clients loved me.

They said I had
excellent hands.

They even said, I wish I
would've known you -

you would've been my
shooting partner.

This is one of my cards.

It has my name on it.

We used to be at
the entranceway.

And we had a big box
at the entranceway.

And when the addicts used to
come in, we used to say to them,

put your weapons here and when
you leave, you'll get them back.

And of course, this is
what they used to do.

So they had zip guns; they had
knives that were called 007s;

they had ice picks.

They carried all
this stuff because

when they were out
there in the street,

you never knew when you
were going to get mugged,

or you actually were going
to do the mugging, right?

Your eyes are brown,
your hair is brown,

your height is
5'6", you say?

Yeah.

OK. You haven't
had a physical?

Blood tests? You're
not handicapped?

All right now, listen. I'm
gonna put my name on your card.

This is my home
number, all right?

[woman murmurs]

If you have any problem,
where you can't get in here,

you call me up, all right?

Cleo:And then, once we had
doctors from Lincoln Hospital

who said that they were
going to be responsible,

that's when we
brought Mutulu in.

Because we had a
medical director,

and we wanted to
have a director

that had revolutionary
consciousness.

I was just a sister
that came to the clinic

and was really messed up.

You know, I didn't
know anything.

I was not politically
conscious of anything;

I was just troubled.

I learned a lot of
things as I been there,

in terms of helping
your people,

making it better
for your people.

I learned about the streets
and the drugs, to that nature,

and what it was
doing to our people.

That's why the political
education classes,

we used to call them P.E.
classes, were so important.

Because we gave
them history.

We gave them history about
what happened in Africa,

what happened in
China, Puerto Rico...

the political movements
that were stopped

because of
the drugs.

We started realizing
a lot more who we was.

Thinking about
our African roots.

Realizing that the names
that our parents carried

were the names of slave masters
that our forefathers had.

That's what we used to call
them: what was your slave name?

And most of us that
changed our name

wanted to get rid of
those slave names.

We wanted names that more
accurately portrayed

who and what we were.

You figure you've been
oppressed all your life, right?

So now you wonder where
that's coming from.

But they forget to tell
you that the problem

really comes from
the system.

Because who oppresses
your mother,

who oppresses
your father?

The system.

The system oppresses your father
so therefore they oppress you.

And when they start
oppressing you,

you hanging out
in the streets.

Cleo: I don't know if you've
ever seen a drug addict detox,

but it is horrible.

They have chills;
they're sick;

they're cold sometimes,
hot sometimes.

It's really, really horrible.

That's why people don't
want to get off drugs.

Because it's such a
horrible experience,

the actual body detoxing.

My poem was
Jones coming down.

Day breaks, got the shakes,
nose running, joint dripping,

mind slipping, body aches.

Jones coming down.
Jones coming down.

Got an attitude.

Fighting mad.

Feeling bad.

Funeral sad.

Another 24 hour drag.

Damn, I need me some scag.

Pawn my brother's doo-rag to
cop me a transparent thin bag.

You see 'cause I'm strung out.

Strung out on a white witch.

My timeless bitch.

Riding a white horse
into my main vein.

Damn baby, I got
to kill this pain.

America's public
enemy number one

in the United States
is drug abuse.

In order to fight and
defeat this enemy,

it is necessary to wage
a new all-out offensive.

If you are a heroin addict,
you need upwards of $100 a day

to buy heroin to
feed your addiction.

And you will literally do
anything to get some heroin

to relieve the withdrawal.

Nixon was under a lot of
pressure to show real evidence

that he was cutting down
on Black street crime.

And if you get those people into
a program where they are getting

methadone every day, they
have no withdrawal symptoms.

And they have no need
to go out and steal

or hold somebody
up at gunpoint.

So there's a direct
correlation:

the more people on methadone,
the lower the crime rate.

It's then possible to get
access to the person

on a regular basis.

The very fact that
it's addicting

is one of its
real attributes.

Once a person is
on methadone,

he has to come
back every day.

Methadone itself, in
1970, is not a new drug.

What was novel was its
use as a maintenance drug.

Meaning that someone who used to
use heroin several times a day,

indefinitely, could use
methadone once a day,

indefinitely.

They would be maintained on
it, not detoxified with it.

If you're coming from a place
that is very critical

of federal, state, and
local government,

and how it treats Black people,
Brown people, poor people,

Asian people, you understandably
might come to regard

methadone maintenance
with some suspicion.

Because it is regulated
and in large part

dispensed by
the government.

♪♪

♪♪

I'm a Puerto Rican.

And we came here, and we went
to fight for the United States.

If we can fight for them,

why can't they fight for
us Vietnam veterans?

Right on! Right on!

I got hooked in Vietnam,
you know, with drugs.

So after I came from over there,
I couldn't get any jobs here.

So I went to the welfare
centre, and they told me,

you have to get into
a methadone program.

And if you don't get
into a methadone program,

you won't be able
to get help.

What's methadone
doing for you?

Is it
helping you?

Getting me high, getting
me high, that's all.

What they saw was
that was just

replacing one addiction
with another.

And what they wanted
to do at Lincoln Detox

is have a chemical-free way
of detoxing from heroin,

and also from methadone,
for that matter.

By '72, we had started looking
around for an alternative.

We no longer wanted
to use methadone.

Dr. Mutulu Shakur, if it
wasn't for his leadership,

I don't think we ever would
have done what we did.

He was the one who found this
article in the newspaper.

That an acupuncturist,
who is treating someone

with respiratory problems,

who also happened to
be addicted to opium,

had found that by
stimulating the lung point

of the ear, did not only
help the respiratory problem

but also took away the
withdrawal symptoms of opium.

Walter: So there was
six of us there,

and we would each
read a paragraph.

And when we read that
article, everybody sort of,

a light was turned on.

And we said, "Wait,
why don't we do this?"

♪♪

And when I walked
into the program,

I was seventeen-and-a-half
years old, or eighteen.

And I walked into the program
and I saw this old man

with needles in him.

And I said, "These people
are really crazy in here.

They sticking needles in
folk and that kind of thing.

I need to get up out of here."

But I stayed because I wanted
to get off of the drugs.

So that was the first
time I saw acupuncture.

I stayed in the
treatment program,

and as I stayed in
the treatment program,

I began to
politicize myself.

I began to educate myself and
study about movement stuff

and politics and
philosophy, etcetera.

Shortly thereafter, I
began to study acupuncture

under Dr. Mutulu Shakur.

When the patients or victims
would come up, we would say,

"Well listen, we're not going
to give you no methadone today.

But what we going to do
is massage your feet,

massage your back, and
we massage your ears.

And what we would use,
we're gonna use our fingers.".

And so before we
even got needles,

people would come up to
the Bronx, dope fiends,

hardened dope victims; we
would massage their ears,

and massage their
hands and legs.

And we would stand there with
our fingers in their ears

or in the different points.

We'd do deep breathing.

And they would fall
right off to sleep.

And just relax.

And then the next day,

they'd be back
for that treatment.

And we would detoxify people
off of heroin and cocaine

and methadone with
acupressure, a lot of love,

and a lot of
commitment to it.

And it was some of the most
rewarding times of our lives,

you know.

It was just great;
it was just great.

It was spirited.

And we then began
to get the needles

and learn needle insertion
and how to ... [fades]

All right, I'm gonna
move you here.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Can you tilt your
head to the left for me?

Mm hm.

Thank you.

Breathe in, out.

Can you tilt your
head slightly?

Breathe in... breathe out.

Please share with them, Malaya,
what these five points do.

The first point, which is
the Shenmen, right here,

opens up your spirit gate.

The second point,
sympathetic, right here,

has to do with
calming your nerves

and dilating
blood vessels.

Third point, kidney, up
here, has to do with fear.

Your liver, which is right
here, that deals with anger.

And last but not least,
right inside the ear,

that's your lung, deals
with sadness and grief.

Winston: So the whole
purpose of the collective

is to empower
individuals so that

they're able to take
care of their family.

You know, and that's
the major thing.

If I can take care of me, if
I can take care of my momma,

my daddy, my sister,
my brother.

And then they can reach out and
take care of some other folk,

and we can do
some more stuff,

that is the way it's
supposed to go.

That's what this
collective is all about.

So on a grassroots
level, one at a time.

Each one, teach one.

You are your brother's
and sister's keeper.

♪ [soft music]

♪♪

Walter: We started
with one point,

and we used an
electrical stimulator.

Carlos: They tried the
acupuncture and they saw

that it did take
the edge off,

and so they kept on
coming every single day.

♪♪

Walter: Before you know it, they
were so relaxed and sedated,

that within a week or
so, they were detoxed.

So we said, well we have
to stop using the machine

and start using
more needles.

I remember, when
we did acupuncture

and people got off heroin,

and to see them moving
on, it was like a joy.

It was like seeing
people being born.

And of course, the people that
pushed methadone were not happy.

Cleo: Everything that
we did was based

on this slogan of
"love the people".

So you love the people, you love
yourself, you love your family.

You don't want to see them
living in this horror.

So that's why you're
working so hard

to make all these
changes in society.

Walter: So we read
all the material

that was
available to us.

We read it.

The Red People's Army
had all these techniques

that they were using.

We just didn't read the Red
Book and became political.

We read, especially,
the medical books.

Film Narrator: Before
the establishment

of the People's Republic,

medical services were
almost non-existent here,

as in most agricultural
areas throughout China.

Chairman Mao insisted that
in health and medical work,

the stress should be
on the rural areas.

The primary motivation for
becoming a barefoot doctor

must be to serve the people.

We wanted to create
a medical cadre,

just like they
did in China.

♪♪

I helped the revolution.

I helped the revolution
because I knew how.

I knew how to do it.

♪♪

Mario Wexu, and
his father Oscar,

who ran the Quebec Acupuncture
Institute in Montreal,

gave us six scholarships
to go to their institute

and become acupuncturists.

My father, Oscar Wexu,
he learned acupuncture

in Europe, in France.

He brought acupuncture
here when we came here

originally at the
end of 1951.

But he wasn't doing
acupuncture in the beginning

because he was afraid
they'd lock him up;

they'd think he was
some kind of a coo-coo

and lock him in a
coo-coo house, in an asylum.

Who's this crazy guy
putting needles in people?

In the beginning, he was
doing just Chinese massage.

And then we used to get
all these lumberjacks.

I'm breaking my thumbs
on these lumberjacks

who are strong like hell.

Each massage treatment was
like a wrestling match

with the devil.

♪♪

So I told my father
at that time,

why don't we give
them acupuncture,

instead of breaking your
thumbs on these guys?

In the beginning, my
father didn't want to.

But after, as soon
as he did one person,

the next day he came
with eight people.

And a week later, there
was thirty people,

and within a month there
was people lining up

all through the street.

It became very popular,
the acupuncture.

So my father started a school,
and we started teaching people.

So me, my father, my sister, my
brother-in-law, started working.

And we were doing
350 people a day;

we had a six-month
waiting list.

♪♪

You have to understand
the situation in Quebec

at that time, before we
had the Medicare card.

The doctors wouldn't
treat anybody poor.

The poor were
really abused.

So we wanted to do acupuncture
to help the poor people.

Now we had The
Black Panthers

and the people
wanting acupuncture.

In Montreal, the same thing:
the people wanted acupuncture.

We didn't force it on
them; the people wanted it.

♪♪

[foreign language]

[laughter]

You're getting much better;
I like it, I like it.

The liver's good,
you're good.

Breathe in.

Exhale.

Breathe in; exhale.

Let it out.

Breathe in; let it
out. Exhale.

I'm a drug addict; I've been
a drug addict fifteen years,

I'm thirty-one years old.

I used to shoot heroin.

I've got track marks
if you wanna see.

Are you relaxed?

I'm very relaxed.

Before I came here, I was
depressed. I had anxiety.

And then, the acupuncture
has helped me.

I'm like, happy now.

I feel relaxed, I feel calm.

Take a breath in, a
breath in, then exhale.

Thank you.

I was a drug user
for many, many years.

I was in and out of jail.

I was on the streets with
the whole shabaz thing

that comes with it.

With the violence, the
suffering, the pain.

It wasn't till
actually one day,

I walked through 138th
street and 3rd avenue.

And I was walking, and I somehow
came across this building

that I seen people
going in there,

and I asked
what that was.

And they told me, "Well, this
is like a recovery center.

There's actually a
program." And I was like,

you know what, I
desperately need a program

right now in my life,
and I walked in there.

And I was exposed
to acupuncture.

That was my first real
taste of holistic health.

It was great; I was receiving
acupuncture treatments

every day, sometimes
twice a day.

And then I decided
to get off methadone.

I was on methadone
for 15 years.

It was acupuncture and learning
about Tai Chi and Qigong

and how to do deep breathing
and also being surrounded

by people who supported me, that
I was able to change my life.

You go straight down
so, you do Shenmen...

The kidney is
at the base,

See? Where both the edges
touch pretty much.

At the base right there,
that's your kidney point.

♪ [bass line with
snapping fingers]♪

♪♪

[door buzzer]

Voice on speaker:
Whenever you're ready.

I'm ready when you're ready.

My names is Mutulu Shakur.

Well, I think it's
important to realize

that the pioneers are always
the ones targeted as the fools

and the naysayers
and all the rest.

Walter: Mutulu was
our leader.

He was one of the
most vocal activists

in the community
at the time.

If it wasn't
for Mutulu,

maybe we wouldn't have had
the acupuncture program.

Mario: He helped
to heal people.

He liked healing people.

He was good at it; there's
no doubt about that.

But I think he used
it also as a political tool.

It gave him power and it
gave the people power.

Maybe it also gave him a
following; I don't know.

Maybe it gave him more of a
following; I don't know.

Me, I didn't want to hear
anything about politics

when I was teaching.

It was not politics; it was
love and healing people.

That's all that mattered
for me, that's all.

I never discussed
politics with him.

I didn't even know they
were Black Panthers

for about five years after
I stopped teaching them.

I didn't know
anything about that.

Walter: We got the
people who we detoxed,

and the community involved
in political work.

So they all became activists.

[protestors chant]

People 'round the world
are picking up the gun.

Run Rocky run Rocky
run run run!

People 'round the world
are picking up the gun.

Run Rocky run Rocky
run run run!

Walter: Cause we had all
these clients. Ex-clients.

They were no longer clients.

They were ex-clients,
part of the movement,

protesting the inequality
of police brutality,

injustice in
the courthouse.

Protester: Jail the
rich and free the poor!

[siren wails]

We're trying to
wake up the people

to what we are
going through.

We're trying to
tell the people;

it is only Blacks and Puerto
Ricans in those prisons.

And the white man
if they is poor!

I remember one demonstration
that we had in front of,

I thinkit was
Citibank on 138th street.

There had to be at least
500 people in the street.

We closed the street down;
traffic couldn't move.

[shouts]

So we became an issue
in the South Bronx

and a threat to
the establishment.

But before they
came to attack us,

they attacked the
doctor's collective,

which was basically a
collective of white doctors

at Lincoln Hospital, who were
very active, very political.

And who actually had been
supporting the movement,

especially the Young Lords
and the Black Panther movements

by donating money,

by paying rent

for some of the
offices that we had.

They were lending
us their cars.

So when they attacked
in the New York Times,

they attacked the
doctor's collective,

and they called them Marxists,
Leninists, communists.

Those kinds of words, I knew
that our days were counted.

When you're in
the South Bronx,

you either get activist
or you get the hell out.

Or you get hurt.

Black, white, Puerto
Rican, young and old,

all working together.

Which is what I want
to see in our society.

We spent a lot of time
with Richard Taft.

He was one of the doctors
that really did care

about the revolutionary
ideas that we had

and was committed to
the detox program.

Walter: Richard Taft may have
looked like he was the leader.

Obviously, he looked like the
leader because he was MD

and he was white, and people
thought that he was the head.

That was their mistake.

He wasn't born in the South
Bronx or some other ghetto.

He came from a family that
had connections and stuff.

So I always questioned,

who killed him?

I don't think he
killed himself.

I don't know how we
will ever prove that

since so much
time has gone by.

[protesters shouting]

Carlos: At that
particular time,

the administration
of the hospital

was complaining about
the Lincoln Detox.

They wanted to come in
and control our program,

which meant that they wanted
audits and people coming in,

observing, and they
wanted to fire people.

Walter: They were threatening us
with closing down the program.

And so, we went to
the corporation,

and the element of surprise
has always been in our favour,

so we got there super early.

We locked out the employees

and everybody who came
to do business that day.

Then we sat down and Mutulu
negotiated with the

Health and Hospital
corporation

about what we were gonna
do with the program.

We didn't want to put anybody
in a position of leadership

because history had
already told us

that when you put a leader
up in front to run the show,

they just bump
off the leader.

And then the
movement falls apart.

So we didn't want to
put one face up front.

And who was the leader?

Well, that was their
job to figure it out,

but we weren't going to tell
them who the true leader was.

And I would think that that
gave us a few more years.

♪♪

Woman: Mutulu was involved
in a lot of different things.

He was received by the
Chinese government.

You know, he was involved with
the Republic of New Afrika.

The big difference with the RNA,
the Republic of New Afrika,

and the Black Panther Party

was they were talking about
land and independence clearly.

We were saying, in the
Republic of New Afrika,

that this land should
be allocated to us

and reparations, funds,
to build this land

and to build our nation
should be given to us.

It was always clear that
that wasn't going to happen,

that this government wasn't
going to just say, "here".

And also, I mean these people
who were young, arrogant,

sometimes cockish, that rubbed
them the wrong way also.

We were supposed
to be subservient.

We're not supposed to
be developing programs;

we're not supposed to be
discovering new ways

to treat something,
you know.

We were supposed to follow,
and that was not acceptable.

So from the mentality of the
Herbert Hoover type people,

I could see why they would
want to keep an eye on him.

I really understand that.

And I understood
that at the time.

FBI memos made
public today

show that the
late J. Edgar Hoover

ordered a
nation-wide campaign

to disrupt the
activities

of the New Left

without telling any of
his superiors about it.

The FBI campaign lasted
from 1968 until [fades out]

The FBI undertook a program in
1968 to harass and destroy

New Left political
organizations whose views

the federal police
agency disagreed with.

The purpose of the program would
be to expose ... [fades out]

♪ [high-hat cymbal]

♪♪

♪ [piano]

♪♪

Walter: In 1977, we returned
with our acupuncture degrees

so Mutulu decided,
we'll open up a school

and we'll call it The Lincoln
Detox Acupuncture School.

And we did it.

Now, did we have permission?

No.

Were we going to
ask for permission?

No, because we knew they
would have said no anyway.

We just did it.

[woman] I was in the
first class of students

and we started at
Lincoln Hospital.

Lincoln Detox and Mutulu
and other people

had built a relationship to
Mario Wexu in Montreal.

He came and we had training.

It was a three-year program
that we all went through.

Woman: It was always steeped in
this struggle for human rights

and for health care for all,
and in the struggle

to really understand the
system we were living under,

and what it was
doing to people.

China was still
doing just tours

that had to be arranged
politically.

♪♪

Mario: And of course,
they were Maoists,

but they had no idea what
communism was like.

That's why eventually they
wanted me to bring them,

as a guide, to China,
because they got grants

from the federal
government to go to China

to see the acupuncture.

But I told them, Mao
Tse-Tung don't give a damn

about you guys.

He'll use Black
guys as publicity.

He don't give a shit.

♪♪

The CIA followed
us around China.

It was very bizarre, because I
actually thought--this was 1977

- I thought China was
communist and progressive...

and the American government...

I got it, it was
really clear.

♪♪

[prison gate buzzes]

[metal clangs]

[camera shutter click]

I remember when Koch actually
sent the riot police

to the entranceway
of our clinic.

We went to go to work
and there were padlocks.

So we didn't know
what was going on.

♪♪

When they closed
the clinic,

it was like we had to
fend for ourselves.

Cleo: Corporate doctors at
that time saw everything

that we were doing
as a threat.

Because what we
were saying,

and the other thing
that's so important,

is that we were
calling for free,

quality health
care for all.

That was the bottom
line for all of this.

That we demanded free,
quality health care for all.

That was the first call.

Which now, everybody is talking
about and it's a big deal.

But that was the first time,
in the 1960s and early '70s,

and it came from that
same group of people.

And so when I say there
were two detox programs,

there was the first one, which
was the People's Program,

and after that, it changed.

There was no longer
any politics.

It just became the Lincoln Detox
program under Michael Smith

and there was no politics.

That was the end of the
political education.

And people went
their own way.

Mutulu created BAAANA
and he moved into Harlem.

Susan: To create a new clinic
was really the only alternative

in order to keep the ideas of
the project and program

alive and to keep having a space
to be able to treat people.

But it then became a
private enterprise,

so the funding for it
completely changed

and access for people who
really needed it also changed.

And it then became
a political project

which was the Black Acupuncture
Association of North America.

This was where the school
and the clinic was housed.

This is what I think --in
Mutulu's mind--

is that he wanted
to create BAAANA to serve

the whole person.

The drug addiction
thing was great

because it opened them up to
the idea of acupuncture,

but it's more of
a holistic thing.

All parts. We need healing
on so many different levels.

♪ [drums]

You know, it was a real
family thing after a while,

when I came in BAAANA.

Because I was comfortable with
everybody; everybody knew me,

and I just seen a good
thing that was going on

and I seen that I was
starting to feel better,

getting stronger
about myself,

you know, and having
better decisions.

They were
treating everything.

And I think what I
enabled them to do

was to have a little bit
of medical oversight.

In terms of, is
there certain things

that they really
shouldn't be treating,

that needed some other
kind of intervention?

That really didn't
happen very much.

Then they had
started the school,

which really populated
this entire city

with community-based
acupuncturists.

Two to three of the people
started their own schools

that still exist.

And they did all this
before there was any

New York state recognition
that they could do it.

It was completely in your
face, saying we are doing this;

it's for the people; what
do you have to say about it?

And then they began to do
the work with the state

to recognize non-MD
acupuncturists.

That was the first.

And now, of course,
they're everywhere.

So I was with my Kung-fu brother
and we were selling incense

and oils on the street
corner in downtown Brooklyn.

A woman comes
along, and she says,

a Black acupuncture school
opened up in Harlem.

A Black acupuncture school:
I couldn't believe it.

Opening up in
September in Harlem.

So I followed up; I
went up to the school.

♪♪

[shouts]

Please, please help us!

Reagan: Almost three
years ago,

President Carter came
down to this very spot.

Woman: What are
you gonna do?

What a minute.

It is three years, and
nothing has been done.

[people shout negative remarks]

Please, wait a minute.

Right now in Congress.

What are you
gonna do for us?

I'm trying to tell you!

But can you?

Can you tell us what
you're capable of?

I am trying
to tell you!

I can't do a damn thing for
you, if I don't get elected.

No, but what are
you gonna do anyway?

But make promises...

I was trying to tell you,

but you wouldn't stop
talking to listen.

I was part of an
organization that was called

the May 19th Communist
Organization

and we came under complete
attack in the early 1980s.

In 1981, it wasn't just us.

There were people around the
country who were involved

in supporting revolutionary
nationalist Black politics.

Makini: I remember
telling Mutulu this

and I didn't know it
would be a prophecy.

Mutulu was that person who -

we could be out at
the after hours show

and we could be
partying all night.

and he would come home and
maybe get an hour's sleep.

And he would get up and take a
shower and he was on the case.

Nothing stopped him from
taking care of his business.

And I used to tell him all
the time, I was like,

"Mutulu, if you do
everything, nobody else

is going to know
how to do shit.

So they didn't show up and
instead you're doing it.

So you're doing everything,
but what happens

if something happens to you?

Who's gonna do it?"

And that's exactly
what happened.

It was like, oh my God.

Because he had his hands
out, helping everybody.

I think they looked at him,

on all the levels that
he was dealing with:

politically, socially,
medically, etcetera.

That, when they looked
at him, they say,

the problem is this guy here,
he's got too much influence

in too many areas.

He's potentially a leader.

We need to get rid of him.

♪♪

Makini: I had just gone to bed,
cleaned up my room, my space,

got my baby
together, lay down.

And about two hours
later, I heard this boom!

They had blown the door
off, the hinges off,

just blown it off
with some apparatus.

And when I got up to look,
I was on the 4th floor,

and looked over the
railings, all I could see

were those black SWAT
caps and the lights

on the end of their
guns pointed at me,

coming up the stairs,
you know in the dark.

Cause they had cut the
lights and everything.

It was harrowing.

♪♪

It's a very strange
atmosphere in the street.

And, I was going to work, and
there was nobody on the street.

This was in the morning.

Normally, it would
have been a busy day

on the street in Harlem.

And as I am walking toward the
clinic, once again I look up,

and there are FBI Black
Ops people on the roofs,

all around the
clinic in Harlem.

And as I'm walking, there
is literally a tank

rolling down the street,
coming in the wrong direction.

Today, seven people from
the radical underground

were indicted in
the robbery-murder

of a Brink's truck in which
three were shot to death.

Subsequent investigations center
here, on this Harlem townhouse,

which back then, housed
an acupuncture clinic.

Mutulu Shakur, head of
the acupuncture clinic,

and FBI reports say, the
suspected ringleader

in the Nyack robbery.

But by the time they came
to arrest Shakur, he'd left.

One defendant was Kathy
Boudin, radical, fugitive.

Others came from exotic groups
like the Black Liberation Army,

the Republic of New Afrika.

Showing something police had
never seen before:

white and Black criminals
working together.

Whites renting the cars,
Blacks doing the jobs.

Among those indicted today
for murder and robbery

in the Brink's holdup: Katherine
Boudin, Nathaniel Burns,

David Gilbert, Samuel
Brown, Judith Clark...

I was tortured for about six
hours when I was captured.

I've still got scars from
where they burned me,

pulled my toenail out,
flushed my head in the toilet.

That was their way
of waterboarding me:

sticking my head in the
toilet and flushing it.

I was involved in
supporting the politics

of this whole
group of people.

And so I, along with
many other people,

were targeted in this
federal RICO conspiracy case.

And I was placed on the
FBI's most wanted list

at the end of 1982.

And because I didn't believe
that it would be possible

to fight this case, I
went underground.

And was being hunted and looked
for with shoot-to-kill orders

by the FBI for
two-and-a-half years.

[police siren]

Susan:My husband is a
physician - was a physician.

He was actually working at
Lincoln Hospital at the time,

when the FBI arrested him.

And he was brought
before a grand jury

and they said that
he was accused of

treating one of the people
who had been wounded

in the aftermath of
the Brink's case.

And he wouldn't talk,
so he stayed in jail.

He refused to collaborate.

So he was in jail
for about a year.

And then they indicted
him as an accessory

after the fact
of the robbery.

And at that point,
he went underground.

News Anchor: Besides the people
charged in the actual crimes,

the grand jury has
jailed six others:

associates and friends
of the defendants.

Jailed them not because they
were involved in the robberies,

but because they
wouldn't furnish hair

and handwriting samples.

Aiysha: In '82, that's when I
got visits from the FBI.

They brought me
in to the courts.

So they say, would you
like to answer questions?

And I says, I don't
know anything, you know,

I was just a patient.

And I said, I was told
to take the fifth.

I took the fifth,
and they said, no.

Either you tell us what we want
to hear, or you go to jail.

And at that point, I took the
position of going to jail.

I said, I have to live
in the community.

I have a child,
I have family.

I don't know
what's going on.

And, at that time,
they incarcerated me.

[siren]

My husband was jailed for
resisting the grand jury,

you know, because he was
a friend of Mutulu's.

So, there must have been
surveillance before that.

Sikou: Mutulu and I was
on the same case.

One of the charges that I
was charged with was

helping to liberate
Assata Shakur.

And being involved
in expropriation

of armoured trucks.

And I was given
forty years on one

and twenty-five-to-life
on the other.

I won in court, after
thirty-three years,

if you can count
that a win.

We were living in a
revolutionary period.

So, to stick up a bank
to feed the people,

or to build a
people's army,

that had happened
all over the world.

From the People's Republic
of China, Russia, Vietnam.

That was part of the
movement, that was part

of the liberation
struggles of the world.

So we weren't creating
that situation,

we were just imitating
that situation.

We were part of a
world revolution.

I didn't know the
details, you know.

I knew what had happened
after the fact.

It wasn't meant to be
a violent overthrow.

The Wells Fargo Heist,

which was done by a Puerto
Rican militant group,

not a bullet was shot
or a drop of blood.

The Brink's was a
different story.

Susan: Then I was arrested
in 1984 in New Jersey.

It was very ironic
in so many ways,

because after I was convicted
of possession of weapons in

New Jersey and given a 60-year
prison sentence for that,

the charges in the case itself
which had sent me underground

to begin with were dropped
for lack of evidence.

And I think that's important,
because that also speaks to

what kind of evidence there was
or wasn't against Dr. Shakur.

So the first eleven
years I was in prison,

I was either in small group
isolation, solitary confinement,

lock-down, or maximum security.

Then, after the first decade,
I did make it into population,

where I became an
organizer once again.

And became a peer-advocate
and an AIDS-advocate

and a prison-legal-
human-rights-advocate,

which is really difficult
to do in prison.

But we managed to do it.

One of the men suspected of
taking part in the 1981

armoured car robbery has
been captured in California.

Shakur's four-and-a-half-
year flight ended

in this residential
neighbourhood

in West Los Angeles.

He was still running,
authorities said,

when he was literally
tackled from behind

by two New York
police officers,

who had chased him across
the years and miles.

Myself and some other people, we
were unindicted co-conspirators.

So they say that we were
involved in it, you know,

they wanted to lock
us up and kill us too.

And they attempted
to do those things.

But any time that
you have a movement

and a struggle
that's going on,

they're going to highlight
specific people,

as you heard him say.

They highlighted him
because he started a clinic.

Shakur: Our children, who
were targeted and harassed,

who were followed, who
were... you know ...

put in fearful situations
because, like myself,

I was clandestine for
many years and on the run.

And so my daughter and my
sons were always followed,

and they would go
into their schools.

So they knew the
reality of what this is.

Tupac wasn't angry
just to be angry.

His mother's life, as a
member of the Panther 21

and the Panther situation,

his growing up in
Lincoln Hospital with us

and that whole struggle.

He grew up around dope
fiends all his life.

He grew up with the tension of
what we were going through

with these counter-
intelligence operations.

In a better world, we could have
done better with that anger.

In a better world.

In better circumstances.

But I think he did the
best that he could.

[indistinct chatter]

OK, so we're gonna do the same
exact thing on the other side.

I wanna make it so
they don't come out.

Turn your head for me.

For the liver.

For the lungs.

It stimulates the point.

When I put this
into your ear,

I'm sending a message
to your brain.

Because every part of your ear
represents the inside of you.

So when we're stressed
out and we're worried,

the muscles get very tight;
it's difficult to breathe.

You get angry; you get
upset really easily.

This will relax you.

You'll see, in ten minutes
you're gonna feel like,

wow, was there
medicine in here?

No, the medicine's
already in your body.

This is just releasing
it into your organs,

increasing the blood
flow to your brain.

We see progress
in people's lives,

where before I would see the
pain that people go through,

through drug use.

I would see the suffering.

But I felt, at that time,
there was nothing I could do.

I would just either
witness the pain

and act like it
didn't happen,

and just keep moving and
keep getting high myself

because I had my own pain.

Today, regardless
of my own pain,

I try my best to ease the
pain that others have.

And today, I see that when
people walk through these doors,

and they're in
pain, and they go...

[clap]

[stifling a sob]

You gotta cut that!

You're doing well,
keep going.

It's OK.

[laugh] Gimme a second!

When I see people in pain, and
they come out of here

feeling better, then I
know I did my job.

I know that I did
something today

that made a difference
in somebody's life.

And that's the most
important thing to me.

captions by
sas harris