diplomacy in my own name

The activists, disabled or sick in a variety of ways, occupied multiple federal buildings across the the USA. The occupation of 50 United Nations Plaza Federal Office Building in San Francisco lasted 26 days, the longest of the protests, and I believe the longest occupation of a federal building in the USA's history.

The protest was spear-headed and led mostly by disabled women, many of them queer disabled women.

The length of the occupation was only made possible by the support of the Black Panthers, who brought food to the activists daily and stood their ground against the FBI when the feds tried to stop them from entering the plaza in an attempt to starve the protesters out. The Black Panthers then proceeded to bring hot meals every day for the rest of the protest, which ended with the enactment of the 504 regulation

Moral of the story: mass movements and protests work better when you have solidarity among various movements who, while initially fighting for different people, are all fighting for a common goal--rights, safety, empowerment, etc--and the Black Panther Party was demonized by the federal government and individual authorities not only because they were they fighting for the rights, safety, and empowerment of Black people, but because they were fully capable of and did bring unity among the many civil rights groups fighting for the individual causes, in a way that would have enacted great change in this country had they not been infiltrated and destroyed from within, arrested on bs charges, or flat out murdered by the federal government.

books i read in 2021: rise to the sun by leah johnson