The Long, Bloody Strike For Ethnic Studies

Support for NPR and the following message come from 20th century studios, the dog stars. Director Ridley Scott returns with a gripping post-apocalyptic thriller, starring Jacob Allordie, Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualie, and Guy Pierce, only in theaters and IMAX this Friday. Fifty years ago, a bitter strike upended one of America's biggest cities. It wasn't a standoff between workers and bosses though, it was a standoff between college students and college administrators. It was a multi-racial fight. Hundreds of students at a mostly white commuter college in San Francisco, California refused to go to class until more people of color were admitted. Strikers were also calling for a radical innovation at the time. A college of ethnic studies where all students could learn about brown and black communities in the United States. And I think it's fair to say things got ugly. They just started beating him and they didn't even bother with him to arrest him because he wasn't doing anything. They just left him to lie in the corner here, you can see his blood. The police were angry that the white students would even support us, everybody was under attack. I just saw brutality I never want to see again. I spent my 19th birthday in jail. Offer what? Black studies? Ethnic studies? I'm Jean Demby. I'm Shereen Marisol Maraji and this is Code Switch. From NPR. Big news on our beat Jean. If you attend the largest public university system in the country, the Cal State system here in California and that's a lot of people, you cannot graduate unless you take an ethnic studies or a social justice course. I did not know that. Yeah. So the head of the CSU system, his name is Timothy P. White, he said in a statement that taking an ethnic studies or social justice course will quote, empower our students to meet this moment in our nation's history, giving them the knowledge, broad perspectives and skills, needed to solve society's most pressing problems. That is a lovely quote, but not everyone is into this idea as some of you listening probably already have surmised. Shhh. Look, critics don't want more rules and requirements for graduation and there are actually some ethnic studies advocates who think the kind of courses you can take to fulfill this requirement that they're just way too broad. Interesting. But there are still people who are saying it's about time they think it's a step towards making Cal State students better citizens of the world. And we just have to say, like we said before in this show, none of this, none of this could have happened without a month's long, very bloody struggle at San Francisco State University, which just happens to be Shereen's alma mater. That's right, go Gators. And on this episode, I'm going to tell you how student organizers and activists in the Bay changed higher education across the entire country more than 50 years ago by staging the longest student led strike in U.S. history. Okay, goody goody goody goody. I have a lot of questions for you Shereen about the student strike. For starters, why does this stuff always happen in the Bay? What is it about the Bay? Yeah, every year. And why, in particular, did this student strike a pop-off? I haven't said this on the podcast recently, but Gene is complicated. You know what I'm saying? The short answer is it popped off because of the suspension of a grad student named George Murray in the fall of 1968. Shereen was teaching intro-English classes to incoming freshmen at San Francisco State. And many of his students were black on a campus that was decidedly very white. People point to a whole bunch of reasons for why George Murray was suspended, but his stance on the Vietnam War was a big one. Our statement was that the war in Vietnam is racist. It is a war that crackers like Johnson are using black soldiers and poor white soldiers and Mexican soldiers as dupes and fools to fight against people of color in Vietnam who have never called black people nigga. Crackers like Johnson. I mean, so he's referring to LBJ, right? That's right. And that audio we're listening to is from a televised press conference, George Murray's rockin' in Afro. He's got very dark sunglasses on. And what I haven't told you yet, Gene, is that he was a member of the Black Panther Party, which was founded about two years prior to the San Francisco State Strike. Across the Bay in Oakland, California. And George Murray is the Black Panther's minister of education. Okay. Okay. Here's his story in Jason Fedeta. On November of 1968, he travels to Cuba, participating in a very famous conference and with a very famous organization called the Organization for the Solidarity of the People's of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, Ospal. And he basically there gives the Panther analysis, you know, that the struggle of black people is tied to the struggle of all third world peoples. Jason's been researching this strike for years. He's done about 50 oral histories of the people involved, and he's writing a book about it. And he told me that George Murray talked about supporting the national liberation front, also known as the Viet Cong. And that got the attention of the Republican governor of California, Ronald Reagan, who I don't know if I have to say, but he was already not a fan of the Black Panthers. That's a whole nother post which episode. But anyway, Reagan and the Board of Trustees at San Francisco State, they wanted Murray out. And this press conference we're listening to is George Murray defending that statement. He made in Cuba supporting the Viet Cong. We are calling for victory of the national liberation front because of our political stand, which is our right, our constitutional right, we're being attacked by the power structure of this college and the state of California. Okay, Sharon, so all these students went on strike because this one dude, this one teacher got fired. From what I understand, that was the final straw, but his pension had been building between students of color on campus and the administration for many, many months. And the early agitators, remembers of the Black student union. Hello. I'm here. I'm Sharon. You didn't see my door base. Do you know I like the knocking? No, I don't move one else. I went up to the bay to speak with some of the original strikers and organizers. That's Jerry Vernardo, opening the door to his home in Oakland, California. I'm Jerry Vernardo. I am still alive. And he was there with James Garrett. Used to be called Jimmy Garrett, or sometimes I still am. Jimmy ended up at San Francisco State in the spring of 1966. He had family in the bay and he was looking for a college to enroll in to avoid the draft, as we know the Vietnam War is ongoing. He left campus before the strike kicked off, but he was instrumental in organizing the student group that started it, the Black student union. I've been involved with the cities and freedom riots and most of that student movement had come out of historically black institutions. Question then became, could you do the same thing at predominantly white institutions, which was a kind of a trickling in of more and more black students? And he told me that he was shocked by the tiny clusters of black activism that were already at San Francisco State. He figured, you know, he'd have to start his organizing from scratch. But no, there were black fraternities and sororities, black panthers, a Negro Students Association that Jerry Bernardo was a member of. Jerry's originally from Mississippi, but also had family in the bay and was at San Francisco State on the GI Bill. Jerry, people who knew him trusted him, they didn't know me. He had already been there for several years when I got there in spring of 1966. Jimmy and Jerry helped organize these disparate groups into the first black student union in America. The first? Yes. Ever? You grabbed all these groups and created like a Negro Voltron and no one had ever done this before ever. They would have said black Voltron. Oh, yeah. You right. Sorry, elders. And they rallied members of the black student union around this idea of using their education to not only help better their circumstances, but those of the entire black community. BSU members went out to black neighborhoods in San Francisco. They went to Hunter's Point. They went to the Film War and they recruited high school kids to come to San Francisco State. They wanted to create what Jimmy referred to as a critical mass of black students on campus to change the campus. To change really all of San Francisco to change the world. They had like these very big ideas. But Jerry says it was really hard convincing parents that this was a good idea. People were scared to go out to a white college campus. You were not welcome and see, we could be identified by color and you had to convince them that they're not nothing bad is going to happen to your children. We don't take care of them. So members of the BSU, Jerry and Jimmy, they're out recruiting in black neighborhoods. They're tutoring kids in those neighborhoods and they're tutoring students they recruited once they got on to campus. Right. And on campus they're doing more organizing. They're demanding work study jobs. They're getting the black fraternities and sororities access to the same campus amenities that white fraternities and sororities had access to. Here's Jimmy. All of those things, many black students didn't see they had a relationship too. So then we had to show people that they could have an ownership relationship, not to the institution, but to whatever the institution used as support mechanisms for other students. All right, so just to make sure I follow, you got Jerry, you got Jimmy, you got all these other Black students organizing, you know, other Black students on campus, then they're organizing in a local Black community, and they're also pushing the administration to treat those Black students equally to the white students who make the most of the campus. And on top of all that, they're also pressing hard on campus administrators for more Black students to be admitted, and they are winning. They get the president at the time to guarantee admission to about 400 more Black students. What? That's amazing. Here's Jerry again. That meant that you gave us your name, your telephone number, and your address, and maybe a social security number, and that was the application process, and you would send a letter of admission. You know, all this getting a letter from your high school instructor, and all that, that's trash. Danny Glover was one of the people we brought in. All right, so two questions there. Danny Glover, Danny Glover? Like, I'm getting too over this shit, Danny Glover. Famous Danny Glover was a San Francisco State alum. He was also very involved in the strike. Sadly, he did not respond to our request for an interview. Okay. And so the other thing you're saying is that you didn't have to like go through the whole rig of a role of applying. The way you think of it now, no SATs, no like none of that stuff. None of that. You give them your name, your social security number, your address, and your in. Wow. Okay. Amazing. I know. Back to Jerry. So Jerry says this happens, and then they get 200 more admission slots for another semester. And when the Latino and Asian American students hear this, they want it. So they go to the administration and they ask for admission allotments too. And according to Jimmy and Jerry, they're told by the administration to ask the black students to share theirs. So wait, wait, the administration is like, okay, all your brown kids. We gave you awesome slots. Just didn't even join us up. That's how the story goes. And Jerry and Jimmy, they weren't having it. Right. We're not in a position to be giving away anything. You know, we're not the administration. Everybody got to carry their own weight up in here. You got to go in the battle. Leaders of the black student union suggest that the other students of color, third world students get together in a solidarity group to go into battle alongside the black student union. And this group calls itself the third world liberation front. And for those of you who are rolling your eyes at the term third world, this is how activists back then referred to oppressed communities. And the term liberation front is directly from the Vietnamese national liberation front. So if you put those two things together, you get third world liberation front. Okay. So now all of these brown students, obviously you're like, let our powers combine at this point. Yes, it is black and brown. Voltron. And we know there's power in numbers. And black students made up about 4% of the campus back then. So they needed some help. Here's the story. And Jason fed it again. These other students of color, Chicanos, Asian Americans. We're dealing with the same issue that black students had been struggling with, you know, four or five years prior before black power, before black consciousness, right? They were running around trying to be white looking in the mirror and wishing they looked different. My name is Lorraine Chiu. And being involved in the third world liberation front opened up a whole new world in terms of explaining my sense of belonging and becoming in this country. Lorraine Chiu grew up in San Francisco's Chinatown. By the time I got to college at San Francisco State, I was angry. You know, angry at my parents, not wanting to share stories and angry with the fact of how they dealt with racism when they were confronted with it. Particularly, I think my father, you know, he had, because they grew up in an era where, you know, during Chinese exclusion, your whole thing was about survival and never, never being caught, you know, losing somebody's sock at the laundry that we had. And he would get cussed out by being called a stupid China man, whatever. And I would be in the back trying to listen to how he dealt with that. And he usually basically laughed it off. And that's how I entered the third world liberation front with that mental friend. I am pissed off. I don't get this. So before this strike started at San Francisco State, the longest student strike in US history. You've got the third world liberation front pushing the administration to admit more students of color, fighting for courses that reflect their experience in this country, taught by people who are not white. And then the BSU, which is a step ahead, they have a few black studies classes, and they're pushing for an entire black studies department. On top of that, Jean, you have white anti-war organizers and activists on campus too, affiliated with the SDS, students for a democratic society, who end up joining forces with the BSU and the TWLF. So you got all this activist energy churning on campus and off campus? Right. The BSU and members of the TWLF are volunteering, they're tutoring, they're organizing where they live in Chinatown, the mission, which was predominantly Latino, the film war and Hunters Point, which are black neighborhoods at the time. And Jason says it's also really vital to remember the backdrop that this is all happening against. The Vietnam War was ongoing. Dr. King had been assassinated. Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. Malcolm had been assassinated. Panthers were being shot and killed all over the country, thrown into jail. And speaking of black Panthers, it's time for a reminder that the party's minister of education, George Murray, a grad student teaching freshman English at San Francisco State, is suspended in the fall of 1968. Jerry Bernardo remembers him as a soft spoken, thoughtful guy who just put on a tough act. He says George Murray like to keep his afro a little unkempt to make people uncomfortable. That was supposed to reject the image that he was an unruly person, and he would pull Lenton in here to make it more provocative. He's the very first person that I ever met when I came to San Francisco State. We were standing in line behind each other. The very first black person that I ever met and I felt lonely. I was out here by myself. George Murray was well liked on campus, especially by the students active in the BSU, and they wanted him reinstated. When that didn't happen, the strike kicked off. Wow, so it's about to go down then. After the break. Stay with us. This message comes from progressive insurance. You're listening to this podcast, so you've got a curious mind. Did you know that drivers who switch and save with progressive save over $900 on average? Visit progressive.com and get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. National average 12 month savings of $946 by new customer surveyed who save with progressive between June 2024 and May 2025. Potential savings will vary. This message comes from NPR sponsor, Carvana. Carvana believes selling your car should be easy. Get a real offer down to the penny, picked up from your driveway. 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Jean Chirine. Coat Switch. Okay so 50 years ago the longest student strike in US history came to an end. It started at San Francisco State College in California's Bay Area and it was a multi-racial battle for more students of color and a college of ethnic studies. Alright Chirine let's just remind everybody where we left off so there's all this activism happening on campus prior to this explosion. It's a black student union and they have a coalition with other groups of ethnic and racial minorities, other people of color. They call themselves a third world liberation front and they're pushing the administration really hard. are to change the climate on campus. And all of this is happening against the craziest backdrop of the Vietnam War, a much of high-profile political assassinations, and just general social upheaval in America. The strike started on November 6, 1968. The BSU had 10 non-negotiable demands and the third world liberation front had an additional five, and here are some of the highlights. The BSU demanded that a black professor named Nathan Hare head up a black studies department and that George Murray be reinstated. They also wanted 20 full-time teaching positions in black studies and normal admission requirements waved so more black students could get into college. The third world liberation front demanded the College of Ethnic Studies that would provide relevant education to the communities it represented, and they wanted it to have four departments. American Indian studies, Asian American studies, La Raza studies, and black studies. And they demanded that all applications of non-white students be accepted in the fall of 1969. - Okay, that is a very radical list. - And that is the short list that I gave you. - Right, I mean, the stuff they're asking for is like, I mean, it's saying like change the way you admit people entirely. - Yes. - And also add a much of new curricula to the college and do that by next year. - That's right. - That's a lot. - Oh yeah, and they went hard on day one. (laughs) According to local news accounts, 400 students gathered in front of the administration building, calling for George Murray to be reinstated. Students paraded through buildings, chanting on strikes, shut it down. BSU members interrupted classes to discuss their demands and encourage other students to join the fight. - So they went into one of my classrooms and I thought I was a very moving speech or two about why it was important that everyone support them. - That's Lisa Ray Gutierrez. - Guzman now, because I married later and I added his name, but my maiden name is Lisa Ray Gutierrez. - She was 18 and a freshman when the strike started. She said she was shy and quiet and kind of confused about her identity. Her dad was Filipino and black and her mom was white and she came from a pretty conservative working class family. Her grandma saved money to pay for her first semester at state. - So I started going to all the demonstrations that were on campus, but I didn't stop playing the class right away because there were enough demonstrations that were held at noon on the speakers platform or picketing around the campus that I kept myself busy and I was supporting the strike. But then a week later, there was a demonstration to march up to the administration building. The president at the time was the sky name Smith, Robert Smith. We must have been at least 300 or 400 people that day. Multiracial, his representative came out saying that he had more important things to discuss. He convinced me to go and strike the president. When he said he had more important things to do, I thought maybe I don't agree with all the demands of the strike 'cause I still was searching it out myself. But I know that this is important. I know that minority students need to get into college if they wanna have jobs that require college. - Lisa remembers being very put off by the aggressive police response. Police were on the scene from day one. The tack squad is what she called them. The tactical squad. They wore face shields and they wielded batons. - I mean, I saw cops beating people and I saw cops on horses chasing after people. - Just a few weeks into the strike, the president of San Francisco State, Robert Smith, is confronted by protesters using loud speakers and a striker asks him why they're beating students and here's a part of his response. - There have been more police brought on campus as the concern for safety and personnel. (crowd cheering) - Jane, can you hear what they're saying there? - Who's safety, who's safety? - Yes, they're yelling, who's safety? Yours are the students. You can hear someone repeating bullshit over and over again in the background. - The police were just waiting to crowds and just started beating people with their night sticks. - Jerry Bernardo told me if the police were so brutal, they turned apolitical students into strikers. - They sprayed mace on people. They kicked people. This went on day after day after day after day and it went on both whites, blacks and other ethnic groups. Everybody was under attack. - Now, Jane, there are news accounts of students throwing rocks, carrying lead pipes, cursing out police officers and administrators kicking over chairs and classrooms, breaking windows. - So it was just chaos. - On the first day, there was an account of a stack of school newspapers being lit on fire and a bomb going off under a stairwell, but nobody getting hurt. - I'm sorry. So one of the things, you see this in op-ed pages in columns and essays all the time about how uncivil college campuses are today, right? Because somebody shouted down some person who was saying black people are stupid or something, right? I'm just like, if you look back then, okay, you had a bomb going off on this campus, right? There were bombings at the University of Wisconsin at Bluefield State, which you and I visited once. There were unarmed students getting shot by soldiers at Kent State and shot by police at Jackson State. It's just weird to hear people talk about how wild college campuses are now and how uncivil they are today. When back then, people were like literally almost at war. - All the strike vets I spoke with said some version of, those were crazy times. You're never gonna believe what happened. And it's really hard to believe. It's really hard to believe that things were that nuts. - Wow. - But one thing they also told me is that they were really disappointed with the way the media portrayed them as violent militants without reporting on the issues they were fighting for and really without reporting on how violent the police were toward them. And all of this, all of this was way too much for Robert Smith who resigned less than a month after the strike started as president of the college. And he was replaced by a man named Samuel Echie Hayakawa. He went by Si Hayakawa. He was born in Canada to Japanese parents and he was an English professor at San Francisco State. - So these students are now squaring off against a person of color? - Yes, that is right. And Hayakawa made it very clear to these students that he was not playing around. - Until these demonstrations, strikes, raids and other disruptive acts are ended, I will continue my policy of asking police assistance to maintain the security of this campus. If any of the dissenting groups really want to talk about the issues or about anything else, all I have to do is to not go out of trouble. - Si Hayakawa had the support of the chancellor's office. He had the support of California Governor Ronald Reagan, the chief of the SFPD. And there were also students on campus too who really did disapprove of the striker's approach. There was a group on campus called Smart, the silent majority against revolutionary tactics. - So I guess that kind of makes a lot of sense, right? So it's November, 1968, when this whole thing starts, the strike starts, which is the same time that Richard Nixon is elected president of the United States. He ran as the so-called candidate of the silent majority. And we tend to forget this now, but there were all sorts of white protesters on college campuses around the country who were protesting from the right and facing off against groups like the Third World Liberation Front. - But there was a ton of white student support on campus for the strikers who were out there getting beat up by the police too, as you heard from Jerry Bernardo. So Hayakawa was also facing hardcore opposition. And not only from the striking students who like to call him a puppet and a Japanese Uncle Tom, but also from faculty who were members of the American Federation of Teachers Union, who also joined the students out there on the picket line. - Hayakawa, Hayakawa, Hayakawa, Hayakawa, Hayakawa, Hayakawa. - And if that wasn't enough pushback, Hayakawa also got major pushback from the black community in San Francisco. Here's Ruth Williams, a community activist from Hunter's Point at a rally right in front of the college. - When I rise up, just about the masses of Hunter's Point rises up to. So I am so proud of the bill. I stood here in the World Liberation Group 100%. - Eloise Westbrook, also from Hunter's Point, told the crowd she's a grandmother with 15 grandchildren and wants a college she can be proud of. - I don't have a one life to give children. When I die, I'm dead, and you better believe it. But I'm dying for the rights of people. (crowd cheering) - All right, so at this point, the BSU, the Latinx students, the Asian American students are all joined in forces, but the white students who are against the Vietnam War, and you got the instructors on campus who don't like Hayakawa, like they're processing too. So basically, everyone is an open revolt at San Francisco State. - Even a group of black police officers from the SFPD calling themselves officers for justice refused to work the San Francisco State Strike. - Wow. - Yeah. But Lorraine Chiu says this did not sway Si Hayakawa from his law in order stance. He made it clear. He'd hit back hard if they staged another rally on campus. (upbeat music) The student strikers organized an on-campus rally anyway. On January 23rd, 1969, the strike was in its 79th day, and Lorraine remembers being in the library, hiding books to make it harder for students who refused to go on strike to stay. I went out of the library and I was at the fringe of this huge hundreds of people gathering for this rally and all of a sudden out of like, I didn't know where there were these horses that were huge. And like they just in a split second surrounded the entire group. And because I was at the edge of the crowd, I just saw brutality I never want to see again. Some people I knew were getting hit by bayonets with their heads bashed in blood all over the place. They fell, pushed through the ground and still getting hit when they were in the ground. And they were pushing back. So I was just kind of numb, you know, because I was just waiting to be arrested. But then after that, I started to worry about what my mother was thinking. In fact, the policemen who who booked me looked at me and the first thing that came out of his mouth with a smile was, "Young lady, what is your mother going to say?" Lisa Ray Gutierrez was arrested on that day too. She says she was charged with three misdemeanors. Illegal assembling, disorderly conduct, I think, and failure to disperse, I think with a three if I remember right. My dad had to pick me up with the bail, uh, bondsman, don't Paris and jail called bearish for bail. His name was bearish, he was the one that's in charge. 483 students were arrested that day, including Black Student Union leader Jerry Vernardo. Lorraine, Lisa, and Jerry all ended up doing time. Lorraine Chew pleaded not guilty, was found guilty, appealed, and was ultimately sentenced to 20 days. I spent my graduation going to jail. Lisa Ray Gutierrez told me she quote "copped a plea and did 30 days." And that was really traumatic because I spent my 19th birthday in jail. And Jerry Vernardo took a deal too. I did a year, other people didn't know. Here's his story in Jason Ferreira again. This is the other element of the strike that I think people need to realize. The level of sacrifice that this generation that they went through, you know, people did time. Relationships were stressed to the point of crumbling. Word would come back to members of the Thorough Liberation Front or the Black Student Union in particular. From the police saying, "We have bullets with your name on it." This is the type of stress, this is the type of pressure that was put on student leaders. Offer what? Black studies, ethnic studies? Two months after that mass arrest, the strikers reached a deal with the administration. The strike calls by the Black Student Union and other members of the Third World Liberation Front and strongly supported by the Revolutionary Black White Students in the today March 20, 1969. Strike concessions included a College of Ethnic Studies. The administration also agreed to accept, quote, "virtually all non-white students who applied for the 1969 fall semester." George Murray was never rehired though. He ended up having to leave the Black Panther Party and is now a minister in Oakland. Jason Fededa told me he doesn't give interviews about the strike. And the professor who the BSU wanted to chair the Black Studies Department, Dr. Nathan Hare, he was fired by acting president Hayek Howe during the strike and he never became the chair of the Black Studies Department. Jerry Vernardo, he didn't return to campus for 30 years. Such a bitter experience. You suffering from post-traumatic stress. Even though you won. We didn't see it as a victory. We saw it as a coming to an arrangement. Too many people busted. Too many people beat up. I don't know whether there is any victory in violence and warfare. For anybody. After he did his time, Jerry went to law school and he's a retired attorney living in Oakland, California. His eldest son created a scholarship in his name at San Francisco State's College of Ethnic Studies. And Lisa Ray Gutierrez went on to become a teacher in the San Francisco Unified School District. She was active in the Teachers Union until her retirement. Three children also went to San Francisco State and I remember one time that my daughter had an assignment to talk about the San Francisco State Strike. So who did she get to talk to with myself? So it has affected me personally rather than me politically but also personally. And even though now I'm 68 years old, I still try to do as much as I can when I can. Now I have to watch grandkids but to help continue the struggle. It changed me forever. And Chu became a professor in the Asian American Studies Department at San Francisco State. And she was associate dean at San Francisco State's College of Ethnic Studies from 2006 to 2012. She's happily semi-retired. And historian Jason Ferreira fought for a Latino studies department on the campus of the University of Illinois in the late 80s when he was an undergrad. Those student activists won and now he's an associate professor at San Francisco State University in the College of Ethnic Studies, of course. When people ask me what the strike was about and what the struggle at San Francisco State was about, I say it was bigger than a syllabus. It's bigger than the reading list that we do in our classes. That it is tied to that very same impulse of what W.E.B. Du Bois might call abolition democracy a more transformative emancipatory understanding of education. That's what black studies, that's what third world studies was intended to be. I mean, listen to the serene. It makes you make a lot more sense to me. The fact that I just walk around with my fist in the air all the time? You basically are. But also, we talked about this at the top, but all this stuff happens in the Bay. And this is where you cut your teeth. And it seems like you are the creature of this thing too. You know this, but our listeners might not. I did graduate with the BA in Rasa Studies from San Francisco State's College of Ethnic Studies. So yes, this is very much a part of me. And the day this podcast drops marks the 50th anniversary of the last day of the strike. So that's pretty cool. Alright y'all, that's our show. Please follow us on Twitter at MPR Code Switch. We want to hear from y'all. Our email is code switch at MPR.org. Send us your questions about race with the subject line as code switch. And you can stay informed by signing up to our newsletter at MPR.org/newsletter/codeswitch. This episode was produced by Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sammy Anakin and Kumara David Rajan. It was Maria Paz and Kat Chow, who interviewed Lorraine Chu. It was edited by Sammy Anakin. Our music this week is from Jay Daniel. Special thanks to Hadeh Africa Rivera, who helps direct the Metro College program for first-gen students at SF State. She helped me coordinate the interviews. Thank you, Hadeh. And a shout-out to the rest of the code switch team, Leah Dinella, Steve Drummond, Karen Griggs, Bee Bates, Adrian Flodido, L.A. Johnson. Our intern is T.R. Jenkins. I'm Gene Demby. And I'm Sheeran Marisol Maraji. Nice y'all. Peace. Okay, hey Gene. What's good? One last thing. Jerry Bernardo taught me how to make an old school cocktail, so I thought I'd share the recipe. Because you can't just fight all the time. They had such a thing as house part, as you may not have heard of such a thing. And people would come through and they'd bring stuff. Maybe a ball of ripple, and that's the ripple is a really cheap one. I just thought I'd let you know that. When you wanted to make what the Black Panther Party call a bitter dog, what you did is you took the ripple and you poured some lemon juice in it. And that was a bitter dog. They had all of this kind of stuff. All this creativity. We're only months away from Election Day. And every week, or even every few hours, there's a new twist that could affect who will win the White House. To keep up with the latest tune into the NPR Politics podcast, every day, to find out what happened and what it means for the election. 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