ARMED LOVE 13: White Panther Party w/ DJ PreSkool

This Wreckage

Sean KB and AP Andy

Music, Arts

4.2 • 970 Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2025

⏱️ 80 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 1968, Huey P. Newton told an interviewer that whites who wanted to support the Black Panthers should create the White Panther Party. Later that year, a trio of Michigan radical artists (John Sinclair, Leni Sinclair, and Plum Plamondon) did just that. Gaining notoriety from their campaigns to legalize marijuana, support political prisoners, and the popularity of revolutionary rockers the MC5, the White Panthers formed chapters around the country, and continued their activity through the seventies, long after other New Left formations dissolved.

Among them was our guest today, Larry Weissman, aka DJ PreSkool. He joined the party in 1971 until he was jailed during a public dispute over gun rights against mayor Dianne Feinstein. We talk about the history of WPP, their political line, their alliances and disagreements with other New Left groups, the importance of weed and rock n' roll to their program, and how he continues that spirit today as house DJ in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Check out PreSkool's Underground Syllabus Friday at Casette in Ridgewood, Queens: https://dice.fm/event/eoanp6-dj-preskools-underground-syllabus-14th-nov-cassette-new-york-city-tickets

DJ PreSkool's Bandcamp

Read Guitar Army by John Sinclair

More on WPP food program: https://www.foundsf.org/Hard-Left_Politics_Enters_the_People%E2%80%99s_Food_System

More on WPP wiretaps and entrapment: https://www.necessarystorms.com/home/watergate-wiretaps-and-the-white-panther-party

https://fifthestate.anarchistlibraries.net/library/101-march-19-april-1-1970-the-history-of-president-pig

Check out the rest of the Armed Love Series: https://www.patreon.com/collection/87680?view=expanded

Song: Henry Rollins & Bad Brains - Kick Out the Jams

Transcript

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0:00.0	King out the gems, motherfuckers!
0:06.0	Yeah!
0:12.0	All right, we are here with DJ Preschool.
0:17.0	We're an episode of Armed Love, our side project about the revolutionary
0:21.0	chemical culture of the 60s and 70s and DJ preschools. Should I call you that? Should I call
0:27.2	you Larry? You can call me Larry. All right, all right. Yeah, we can go with that. Larry. Larry
0:31.9	preschool. Um, he was a member of the White Panther Party. Correct. And this is some, this was a group, Revolution Organization founded in the late 60s, uh, mostly known for being around the band, the MC5. Um, but people don't really give them credit as something, people talk about it as like, it's kind of a fan club of the band, but it was a serious revolutionary organization.
0:56.6	It was.
0:57.6	There were many other chapters besides Detroit.
1:02.0	I was a member of the Bay Area chapter.
1:05.5	There were chapters in 13 or 14 cities and in London.
1:11.3	And while all of those chapters were,
1:17.1	the basic idea was the 10-point program of the White Panther Party,
1:20.7	which was, the number one point was to support the Black Panther Party.
1:25.8	Each of those chapters carried out their own
1:29.1	political organizing and and and work uh in the cities that they were at uh while john definitely
1:37.2	traveled around and and uh you know checked in with people each of those chapters was carrying
1:44.1	out a lot of serious work.
1:45.9	Yeah, it's John Sinclair, by the time.
1:47.2	Yeah, the Bay Area chapter was, went all the way up until 1983.
1:55.2	And all throughout the 70s, we were heavily involved in anti-gentrification and carrying out a lot of different survival
2:05.9	programs and also of course supporting the Black Panther Party mostly by selling the Black
	...

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