4 episodes
DOPE IS DEATH EyeSteelFilm
-
- Society & Culture
-
-
5.0 • 26 Ratings
-
By the early 1970s, heroin was flooding the streets of New York City. Black and Puerto Rican neighbourhoods like Harlem and the South Bronx were hardest hit. This four part podcast series explores how Dr. Mutulu Shakur, stepfather of the late Tupac Shakur, along with members of the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords, combined community health with radical politics to create the first acupuncture detoxification program in America. Over the course of the 1970s, the Lincoln Detox People’s Program became a fixture of hope in the South Bronx and detoxed thousands of people off of drugs. DOPE IS DEATH explores why this program was considered a threat to the political and social stability of the United States. And how its brightest star, celebrated community activist and healer Dr. Mutulu Shakur, ended up one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted until he was captured and convicted of RICO conspiracy. Today, 34 years later, Dr. Mutulu Shakur remains incarcerated. Civil rights hero or enemy of the state? DOPE IS DEATH dives deep into the history of COINTELPRO and other legal tools that law enforcement can utilize to repress political dissidents.
-
Episode 1 – ‘Come On, Put The Pins In!’
Thousands of individuals across America struggling with opioid and heroin addiction are benefitting from a 5 point ear acupuncture protocol called NADA (National Acupuncture Detox Association). In this first episode of DOPE IS DEATH we talk with Juan Cortez of NYHRE (New York Harm Reduction Educators) about the effectiveness of acupuncture in treating withdrawal symptoms and other secondary symptoms associated with drug use. We discover how radical activists, including members of the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords, and the Republic of New Afrika, developed this protocol almost 50 years ago at the dilapidated Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx. They called their revolutionary drug treatment program the Lincoln Detox People’s Program.
Featured guests are:
Juan Cortez of NYHRE
Dr. Samuel Kelton Roberts Jr.
Dimitri Mugianis -
Episode 2 – ‘Radical Roots of Acupuncture’
In episode 2 of DOPE IS DEATH activist, professor and author Johanna Fernandez takes us back to the late 1960s and early 1970s during the height of the heroin plague that ravaged Puerto Rican and Black communities in New York City. Drawing from her seminal book on the subject, The Young Lords: A Radical History, Fernandez describes how a coalition of young activists, including members of the Young Lords and the Black Panther Party, took over the Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx to demand quality healthcare and drug treatment for their medically neglected communities. We will also talk with activists Cleo Silvers and Felipe Luciano about their involvement in the hospital takeover and the events leading up to it.
Featured guests:
Johanna Fernandez
Cleo Silvers
Felipe Luciano -
Episode 3 – ‘Acupuncture Needles – Tools of Healing or Rebellion?’
The Lincoln Detox program consisted of acupuncture to treat the withdrawal symptoms and political education classes to treat the psychological vulnerabilities associated with drug use. In episode 3 we talk about how political education classes are healing and how acupuncture serves the Black liberation movement with two individuals whose lives were positively transformed by the teachings of Dr. Mutulu Shakur. Activist and historian Haki Kweli Shakur talks to us about how white supremacy is embedded in the public education system. And acupuncturist Dr. Shadidi Kinsey talks to us about how acupuncture is a tool towards self-determination.
Featured guests:
Haki Kweli Shakur
Dr. Shadidi Beatrice Kinsey -
Episode 4 – ‘Policing the Minds of the People’
In this final episode of DOPE IS DEATH we will talk about why Dr. Mutulu Shakur is still in prison after 34 years. And how far the government will go to use the criminal legal system to shut down political movements that confront it. His longtime comrade Watani Tyehimba will tell us about the FBI’s COINTELPRO program and how they became subject to it. And attorney Brad Thomson of The People’s Law Office will explain to us the current status of his case and why Dr. Shakur should be released.
Featured guests:
Watani Tyehimba
Brad Thomson
Customer Reviews
Highly Recommend - wow
This is a great companion to the doc Dope is Death and really addresses the context of The War of Drugs and the importance of health care as a right for all peoples. So much interesting information about Mutuly Shakur, Black Power and The Young Lords and their quest to heal their communities and at large.
I'm just sad there were only 4 episodes. Can't wait for more from this excellent storyteller.
RECOMMENDED!!!!!
Highly recommended, very informative about a healing practice that would be so beneficial for many people today.
Are you ready?
No, you’re not. There are so many twists and turns and characters and forces at work and conspirators and locations that you won’t be able to keep from falling out of the vehicle that is this podcast. Just try to hold on as we zip from some random guy in Montreal treating lumberjacks with acupuncture to the heroin infested streets of Harlem to rural China with barefoot Black Panther doctors to a cell of a federal prison with Tupac’s stepdad! Did I give it all away? Not even close!