Tape 5, 2000 April
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | Tonal quality to get a good one going, | 0:00 |
and all I'm saying is | 0:03 | |
we have to understand... | 0:05 | |
(audience laughing) | ||
We must consciously understand | 0:07 | |
that we must do both simultaneously. | 0:10 | |
That's all I'm saying. | 0:13 | |
See, and I think the point that was left hanging | 0:14 | |
by what your statement was, | 0:17 | |
what we did in the movement was politicize the movement. | 0:19 | |
You said Jim Lawson's a good man. | 0:22 | |
We know he can step, we let him into Congress. | 0:24 | |
We check on him every two years | 0:26 | |
and we'll stop teach-ins. | 0:27 | |
We'll stop mobilization. | 0:29 | |
We'll stop mass political education. | 0:30 | |
We'll stop supporting the rise of local leadership. | 0:32 | |
We politicized it. | 0:37 | |
Now what we've got to do | 0:38 | |
is take governments back from the government. | 0:39 | |
That's what we gotta do. | 0:40 | |
And we do it neighborhood by neighborhood. | 0:42 | |
Speaker | Yes ma'am. | 0:47 |
- | [Female Audience Member] Yeah, | 0:48 |
this business about whether racism has changed, | 0:49 | |
I think it is really important to note that | 0:53 | |
there has been, I think, some shifts in meaning, | 0:56 | |
and a lot of racist agendas get perpetuated | 0:59 | |
because people do not agree on what words mean, | 1:05 | |
and they don't agree on what issues mean. | 1:08 | |
For example, this whole thing about school vouchers, | 1:13 | |
which I think is both an assault | 1:18 | |
on the public school systems, | 1:20 | |
an assault on the public sphere of life, | 1:22 | |
and also a way to begin reinstating | 1:26 | |
class and racial differences, | 1:32 | |
but the reason why this isn't that clear | 1:34 | |
is that a lot of working class blue collar black people | 1:38 | |
feel exploited, manipulated, and cheated | 1:43 | |
by the public schools, | 1:46 | |
- | Mm-hmm. | |
- | and are therefore perfectly willing to go along | 1:48 |
with an agenda which poses itself as being democratic | 1:51 | |
about educational empowerment and so on and so forth, | 1:58 | |
about resentment of arrogant teachers unions | 2:01 | |
and so on and so forth, | 2:06 | |
but which in fact also has another agenda. | 2:07 | |
And I think until we can somehow disentangle this question | 2:10 | |
about meaning and language, | 2:14 | |
it's a lot of racism that's masquerading | 2:16 | |
under facially neutral stuff. | 2:19 | |
- | That's why I'm saying it has to change. | 2:24 |
That's what I mean when I say | 2:25 | |
it has to change. | 2:28 | |
- | Right. | |
- | Answering another question on... | 2:30 |
Answering another question, | 2:33 | |
I'm trying to answer questions that you have raised. | 2:34 | |
We haven't forgotten about those questions, | 2:37 | |
and that a question comes up about | 2:40 | |
did we do right in the desegregation of schools? | 2:44 | |
Did we do right in the integration of schools? | 2:48 | |
Do we like the results of what we have? | 2:53 | |
What? | 2:57 | |
- | [Male Audience Member] Oh, that question, really, | 2:58 |
I have asked that question since 1972. | 3:02 | |
I went into the fifth grade | 3:09 | |
in a segregated school in North Carolina. | 3:11 | |
And then I went to college at central, | 3:15 | |
but I left college and now I'm back in college. | 3:17 | |
Now, private school just shows you basically | 3:19 | |
a segregated school, | 3:23 | |
and which is better, which is worse, | 3:26 | |
and what's the result? | 3:30 | |
But I like knowing that if I want to transfer | 3:33 | |
from Charlotte and go to state, I can. | 3:37 | |
I think it's a personal choice whether you | 3:41 | |
want to go to a predominantly black | 3:43 | |
or predominantly white or totally mixed, or... | 3:46 | |
But the choice, the option, the freedom to do it. | 3:49 | |
Yes, it's terrific, yeah, you know. | 3:54 | |
But I think the choice if you want to go | 3:57 | |
to a predominantly black or predominantly white | 4:00 | |
or mixed school or whatever | 4:02 | |
is yours. | 4:05 | |
But to have the freedom to do that, | 4:07 | |
to make that choice. | 4:10 | |
- | Did you have the choice | |
when you were in high school? | 4:11 | |
- | Hmm? | 4:12 |
- | [Female Audience Member] Did you have the choice | 4:13 |
when you were in high school? | 4:14 | |
- | [Male Audience Member] Yes, I could have gone | 4:15 |
to a private school. | 4:17 | |
You know, and there are schools in North Carolina, | 4:19 | |
many church schools in North Carolina now | 4:21 | |
that are basically black, | 4:23 | |
you know, predominantly black, and if my parents | 4:25 | |
could afford it and could pay for it, | 4:27 | |
and if I want, you know, I could, | 4:29 | |
I do now have the choice, and I think that's, | 4:31 | |
to me, that is what it's all about. | 4:34 | |
At one time, we didn't have the choice. | 4:36 | |
It wasn't a choice. | 4:39 | |
You know, there wasn't an option. | 4:40 | |
That's what racist segregation was like. | 4:43 | |
- | May I say something about that? | 4:45 |
I think that violence, racism, sexism, | 4:46 | |
greed, capitalism and greed, | 4:50 | |
which in many ways are the same thing, | 4:53 | |
have all taught the American people a lot of individualism | 4:57 | |
rather than teaching us democratic values of community. | 5:03 | |
The issue is more than an issue of choice. | 5:10 | |
And I can speak as one who had choice all of his life. | 5:14 | |
I have always gone to desegregated schools. | 5:20 | |
I grew up in Ohio. | 5:23 | |
So I'm not talking about whether or not | 5:26 | |
choice is important or not. | 5:29 | |
That was the only thing available to me in Ohio. | 5:31 | |
I'm talking about the fact that it is the responsibility | 5:34 | |
of a democratic society to have quality education available | 5:37 | |
for every child whether they live in Ohio | 5:43 | |
or Mississippi or in Guam, | 5:45 | |
and a quality education that is accessible, | 5:49 | |
that helps them to become literate human beings, | 5:52 | |
human beings who are able to tap the resources | 5:58 | |
that are in them to accept life and to grow in life | 6:02 | |
and to become life. | 6:07 | |
That, it seems to me, is the fundamental question. | 6:09 | |
- | [Male Audience Member] Literate and human beings. | 6:13 |
- | Yes, literate and human beings. | 6:14 |
Capitalism since the 60s | 6:17 | |
has directed the educational system of America | 6:20 | |
towards: stay in school so you can get a better job. | 6:23 | |
Well, we are not just people who get jobs. | 6:29 | |
We are human beings. | 6:31 | |
We bleed and hurt and cry. | 6:33 | |
We love, we hate. | 6:35 | |
We're human beings. | 6:37 | |
Education should be about helping to enrich children | 6:39 | |
so that they can take full advantage of the gift | 6:43 | |
of life that is in them. | 6:47 | |
- | [Male Audience Member] Say amen. | 6:49 |
Audience | Amen. | 6:51 |
- | So that does mean we have to find some ways to help | 6:52 |
we the American people to develop a sense of community, | 6:56 | |
a sense of democratic community, | 7:01 | |
that looks at these issues not from my personal situation | 7:05 | |
only or primarily, | 7:09 | |
but from the point of view of the whole people? | 7:12 | |
- | And a system that deals with racism in the school system. | 7:16 |
- | No way. | 7:22 |
- | See some... | |
Let me, let me, let me, let me see if it can go | 7:26 | |
to your belly. | 7:29 | |
- | Okay. | |
All right. | 7:31 | |
- | Can you understand why | 7:33 |
a black man would not want a white man | 7:37 | |
or a woman beating on his children, | 7:42 | |
disciplining his children? | 7:45 | |
Huh? | 7:47 | |
Can you understand why a white man | 7:49 | |
would not want a black man | 7:52 | |
or a woman beating on his children? | 7:58 | |
- | [Male Audience Member] I wouldn't want nobody | 8:02 |
beating on my children. | 8:03 | |
- | All right, all right, you might say that, | 8:04 |
but there's got to be some discipline. | 8:07 | |
We can argue over that, | 8:08 | |
but I'm saying why is it easy for us to accept this? | 8:10 | |
The stopping of all discipline in our schools? | 8:16 | |
There's got to be discipline in our schools. | 8:20 | |
There's got to be some discipline in our schools, | 8:24 | |
some kind of way. | 8:26 | |
And I'm from the old school. | 8:27 | |
- | Yes sir. | |
- | I'm from the old school, yeah. | 8:30 |
I'm saying, I'm saying... | 8:32 | |
(laughing) | 8:34 | |
Audience Member | I'm sitting next to, | 8:36 |
between your foot and your head. | 8:37 | |
(laughs) | 8:39 | |
- | Yes, I know that. | 8:40 |
- | I'd like to speak from my side, | 8:41 |
or my point of view. | 8:43 | |
I mean, I'm a young black man, | 8:43 | |
and I was in school when you were punished by your teacher | 8:45 | |
'cause I used to get some serious whoopings from my teacher | 8:48 | |
with rhythm sticks or whatever, whatever, | 8:52 | |
and it also curbed the appetite of anybody else in class | 8:53 | |
that would want to act up because the teacher had the power | 8:57 | |
to keep them from acting up | 9:00 | |
because this is what you're here for, | 9:02 | |
you're here to learn and you're here to do this. | 9:03 | |
And then, on the flip side, | 9:05 | |
I went to school where you couldn't do anything. | 9:07 | |
The teacher's hands were tied, | 9:09 | |
and I see the teachers getting hit with chairs, | 9:10 | |
and all different types of things going on | 9:12 | |
in the public school system that don't need to be there | 9:13 | |
for the simple fact is the discipline is gone | 9:16 | |
and also the whole community is gone. | 9:18 | |
I mean, the breakdown of our community | 9:21 | |
and our people as it takes. | 9:23 | |
It's an old African proverb: | 9:25 | |
it takes a village to raise one child, | 9:27 | |
and the whole thing is our whole community is broken down. | 9:30 | |
Now you see little black kids walking down the street. | 9:33 | |
Before you couldn't go down the street | 9:36 | |
and do something wrong without your parents knowing | 9:37 | |
by the time you got home. | 9:39 | |
You would get three whippings. | 9:41 | |
You would get a whooping from the person | 9:42 | |
that saw you doing it, | 9:43 | |
then you'd get a whipping from your pops | 9:45 | |
or your mother when you got home, | 9:46 | |
and then you'd get another whipping from the other person, | 9:48 | |
your other parent when they got home. | 9:50 | |
You know what I'm saying? | 9:52 | |
And that's what happens. | 9:53 | |
And that's what's wrong with our people today | 9:54 | |
because our kids are so lost and so mad | 9:55 | |
because, okay, well, naw, you can't touch me, | 9:58 | |
you're not my father, you're not this, you're not that. | 10:00 | |
And then here come the parents trying to defend that | 10:02 | |
but yet they don't understand that we all need to help | 10:05 | |
discipline all the little ones | 10:07 | |
so when they get older they understand. | 10:08 | |
It is a community, and it's all of us together. | 10:10 | |
Man On Right | But may I say | 10:13 |
we need to stop bashing our children and young people. | 10:15 | |
- | That's right. | 10:18 |
- | Mm-hmm. | |
- | Because our children and young people have been birthed | 10:19 |
into this American environment, | 10:22 | |
and they have gained from the environment, | 10:26 | |
no matter where there's a birth, | 10:28 | |
whatever that environment is offering. | 10:30 | |
Their values have been taken out of the environment | 10:31 | |
in which they have been birthed. | 10:34 | |
And if there's violence in the schools, | 10:37 | |
that is because we have a violent society | 10:41 | |
that nobody really wants to deal with. | 10:44 | |
And it's equal to the issue of racism. | 10:46 | |
Racism was a violent institution. | 10:49 | |
What do you think lynching came from? | 10:51 | |
Who do you think went after escaped slaves? | 10:54 | |
The sheriff. | 10:56 | |
The sheriffs and the militia, | 10:59 | |
that's what became the police. | 11:05 | |
Who do you think have been a major vanguard | 11:08 | |
to help keep black folk in their place, | 11:12 | |
especially black males, but the police? | 11:14 | |
I mean, the system has been from day one a violent system, | 11:18 | |
and the children did not learn the violence | 11:24 | |
from the man on Mars. | 11:26 | |
They drank the milk of violence here in the United States, | 11:31 | |
which is one of the reasons why you cannot be against racism | 11:37 | |
and then for the Iraqi policy of bombing in Iraq. | 11:40 | |
You cannot be for racism, | 11:44 | |
you can't not be against racism, | 11:46 | |
and then be for police forces that are able | 11:48 | |
to batter or torture people in jail | 11:51 | |
or kill them on the street though they are unarmed. | 11:54 | |
And you cannot be against racism | 11:57 | |
and then for an economy which says that it's fine | 12:00 | |
that some people work for nothing, | 12:03 | |
and few have the wealth from the poor | 12:06 | |
switched over to them. | 12:10 | |
It's why these issues are interconnected and interdependent. | 12:12 | |
And what one of the things that the movement | 12:16 | |
of the 60s came to and what one of the reasons | 12:18 | |
for a non-violent perspective was to recognize | 12:21 | |
fundamentally human problems are interconnected | 12:25 | |
and interdependent. | 12:29 | |
And you cannot become myopic people | 12:32 | |
who see race as a kind of a singular task | 12:36 | |
and don't see the way in which the... | 12:40 | |
What's the octopus? | 12:46 | |
Uh, tentacles? | 12:48 | |
The tentacles of racism are everywhere across this nation, | 12:49 | |
and you can't cut one off. | 12:57 | |
You've got to deal with all of them to stop the stuff. | 12:59 | |
Speaker | Reverend Lawson, I agree with | 13:03 |
the broad vision that you have is beautiful, | 13:05 | |
and I love that vision. | 13:08 | |
I wish everybody could embrace it. | 13:10 | |
Can I take us back to the point where we were before, | 13:12 | |
which is on a smaller scale? | 13:15 | |
Think about a specific school. | 13:17 | |
Think about being in a school at the time of desegregation, | 13:19 | |
and I've read about communities where | 13:22 | |
when schools were desegregated, | 13:26 | |
one of the big problems of course was that the surrounding, | 13:28 | |
the majority society, the white society finally was forced | 13:31 | |
kicking and screaming to desegregate schools. | 13:35 | |
When they did it, they didn't do it | 13:37 | |
in the best way possible. | 13:38 | |
Usually what they did is they just threw | 13:39 | |
some black kids into white schools | 13:43 | |
and expected them to deal with the majority culture | 13:45 | |
and the way the white kids would respond | 13:47 | |
and all of it any kind of reciprocal way. | 13:48 | |
But, that having been done, in that bad way, | 13:51 | |
a lot of teachers both black and white would say | 13:55 | |
that some things that had been present in the old school | 13:59 | |
maybe got lost in the old black schools, | 14:02 | |
have been lost as far as teachers supporting students, | 14:07 | |
letting them know that they were loved | 14:11 | |
as well as disciplined, | 14:13 | |
because all of a sudden you got white teachers | 14:15 | |
and black teachers having difficulties figuring out | 14:18 | |
how to still express that concern that goes beyond | 14:21 | |
academic concern for students that they feel | 14:24 | |
like they don't know, | 14:26 | |
and I think that, you know, | 14:28 | |
the expressions that I've heard from many African Americans | 14:29 | |
who experienced segregated schools | 14:31 | |
and remember them as being nurturing places, | 14:34 | |
despite the fact that the books were old | 14:37 | |
and they were torn up and the desks were old and whatever, | 14:38 | |
remember them as being nurturing places. | 14:41 | |
What they feel was lost was some of that nurturance | 14:42 | |
that was there in the segregated setting, | 14:45 | |
and I just, you know, leaving aside the questions of Iraq, | 14:49 | |
when I think about desegregation of schools | 14:53 | |
and maybe what was being lost, | 14:56 | |
I wonder if you could respond to, you know, | 14:58 | |
the idea that what could schools do to sort of regain | 15:00 | |
some of that feeling of community that was present | 15:06 | |
before desegregation? | 15:10 | |
Male Speaker | We got to go back to the basics. | 15:15 |
Male Speaker | It seems it comes down | 15:19 |
to human relations, right? | 15:20 | |
- | [Female Audience Member] Yes, it does. | 15:21 |
- | [Male Audience Member] We're talking about teachers having | 15:22 |
- | We got to reclaim our schools. | 15:23 |
- | Yeah, I'll just tell you. | 15:26 |
I've been very involved with these school issues. | 15:28 | |
I worked for a desegregating school system | 15:30 | |
when I was right out of college, | 15:32 | |
and participated in the desegregation. | 15:33 | |
We were really excited at the time. | 15:35 | |
We thought, this is great, we didn't realize | 15:38 | |
all of these issues that were emerging. | 15:40 | |
And, of course, part of what was happening | 15:42 | |
was that black teachers were losing their jobs. | 15:44 | |
Black principals were losing their jobs. | 15:48 | |
These community institutions were being shut down. | 15:50 | |
A lot of times the schools were sacrificed. | 15:53 | |
- | Let's not make a mistake. | 15:57 |
- | And you know | |
we did it wrong. | 15:59 | |
I mean, that's the reality, is that | 16:00 | |
is was done wrong. | 16:02 | |
- | Well, it wasn't done according to the wishes | 16:03 |
of the African American community. | 16:05 | |
It was done by the school board | 16:08 | |
that had maintained segregated schooling | 16:10 | |
and who thought that segregated schooling meant | 16:13 | |
that the black folk were inferior | 16:16 | |
and that the black folk got the second hand | 16:18 | |
textbooks if they got textbooks and all | 16:20 | |
the rest of it. | 16:22 | |
It was, it was the passion | 16:23 | |
of the teachers in the segregated school systems | 16:25 | |
especially, primarily in the South. | 16:31 | |
It was the passion of the teachers | 16:34 | |
and the educators who in spite of | 16:35 | |
the circumstances caused the school | 16:40 | |
to become a productive community for learning | 16:43 | |
and for becoming. | 16:46 | |
- | [Male Audience Member] Let us please not make a mistake | 16:48 |
of trying to enhance segregated schools | 16:51 | |
Audience Member | I know. | 16:57 |
- | But let us look at what we're not talking | 16:59 |
about, what we have to go back to | 17:01 | |
and that is stability, order, the respect | 17:02 | |
that education was given by the black community. | 17:06 | |
I lived in a small town. | 17:09 | |
I knew everyone in that town. | 17:12 | |
Everyone in that town knew me, | 17:13 | |
and from the time when I was 10 years old | 17:15 | |
until I left at 17 to go to community college, | 17:17 | |
I was told by everyone in that town, | 17:19 | |
whatever you learn cannot be taken away from you. | 17:21 | |
The land can be taken away from you, | 17:24 | |
your property, everything, all of your money, | 17:25 | |
so I'm saying, I'd say this, | 17:28 | |
I was buttressed by an entire community | 17:30 | |
that knew that I was going to be the first | 17:32 | |
one from my family to graduate from college, | 17:34 | |
that I was going to do that, | 17:36 | |
and it was, it became sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. | 17:38 | |
We don't have that anymore. | 17:41 | |
Let us understand that we do not have that. | 17:43 | |
And if we start looking at the school system | 17:45 | |
without that social underpinning of a community | 17:47 | |
that says, in my day and age, it would have been | 17:51 | |
treasonous for someone to say that | 17:55 | |
because I'm trying to get As | 17:57 | |
I'm trying to be white. | 17:59 | |
Young blacks faced with that in the | 18:01 | |
educational school system today. | 18:02 | |
So let us when we romanticize, | 18:04 | |
let's put a little pragmatism | 18:06 | |
in that romanticism and say | 18:08 | |
we need to build that culture that supports | 18:10 | |
and gives credence and credibility to education | 18:12 | |
and not to a segregated school system. | 18:16 | |
Jim | Yes, sir, in the back? | 18:20 |
I see a hand. | 18:21 | |
- | Okay, thank you, first off, I want to say | 18:22 |
that it's a real privilege to be here, | 18:25 | |
to actually see, to actually connect | 18:26 | |
names to faces and all the people | 18:27 | |
that you've been kind of reading about | 18:29 | |
and hearing about. | 18:30 | |
I'm a student in Charles Paynes' class over at Duke | 18:32 | |
and so I'm really excited to be here. | 18:34 | |
I have a question kind of related to | 18:37 | |
some of the things that we have talked about | 18:40 | |
in terms of in terms of education | 18:42 | |
and people's relationship to education | 18:44 | |
and also kind of a democratic response | 18:47 | |
to undemocratic initiatives, mainly this voucher, | 18:50 | |
voucher program. | 18:54 | |
Here in North Carolina | 18:55 | |
I know there's a lot of you who could | 18:56 | |
probably do this better in terms of | 18:57 | |
there's a large number of African American | 18:59 | |
families and children who are moving into | 19:01 | |
charter schools in the state of North Carolina. | 19:03 | |
I think the state of North Carolina | 19:06 | |
has the highest per capita percentage | 19:08 | |
of African American students from all income | 19:10 | |
levels in charters schools. | 19:13 | |
It's pretty high | 19:15 | |
if not the highest in the country. | 19:16 | |
And one of the phenomenons that's going on, | 19:18 | |
one of the things that's happening | 19:20 | |
in places like Durham and in Charlotte | 19:21 | |
and in other cities in North Carolina | 19:25 | |
is that low income families are being approached | 19:26 | |
by charter schools and by charter institutions | 19:29 | |
and are being told, look, your schools, | 19:32 | |
the schools that your kids are in right now | 19:34 | |
aren't providing them with the things, | 19:37 | |
with the basic essentials that they need, | 19:39 | |
and here's an opportunity for you | 19:42 | |
to take your kid out of that school | 19:44 | |
and come into this charter school. | 19:46 | |
And so my question is, and it seemed to me | 19:48 | |
that this, um, I'm thinkin' a lot more | 19:51 | |
about these things, my wife is pregnant | 19:53 | |
with our first kid and so I'm already thinking | 19:56 | |
about okay, schools, what's up? | 19:58 | |
Where are we going to have to move to? | 20:00 | |
What are we going to have to do? | 20:01 | |
Who am I going to have to smack? | 20:03 | |
I'm not above smacking somebody if someone | 20:04 | |
wants to mess with my kid. | 20:05 | |
Um, I'm not there yet, Reverend Lawson, | 20:07 | |
I'm getting there. | 20:09 | |
And so I guess | 20:10 | |
my question is, is in with this phenomenon, | 20:11 | |
what is the kind of the democratic response | 20:15 | |
to this phenomenon, which to me seems like | 20:18 | |
one of those, one of those really serious | 20:21 | |
intersections of personal and political? | 20:23 | |
You know, when I don't have any kids, | 20:25 | |
you know, yes, I'm an avid supporter of public | 20:27 | |
schools, and I'm an avid supporter of this, | 20:31 | |
but what happens when it comes down to the comedown. | 20:33 | |
When I'm given an opportunity | 20:36 | |
you know when I'm given an opportunity | 20:37 | |
to make this move, my question again | 20:39 | |
is, what is the democratic response, | 20:41 | |
what should be the democratic response | 20:43 | |
to that phenomenon? | 20:44 | |
Jim | Yes, sir. | 20:48 |
Audience Member | The, um, I want to say two things. | 20:49 |
One is we're, we can't go back to where we were | 20:56 | |
because we're not the same people. | 20:59 | |
We're no longer a Southern people. | 21:00 | |
We three generations removed from the South. | 21:02 | |
It's not a question of whether or not | 21:05 | |
some black schools were nurturing | 21:06 | |
and some were strict and some of us | 21:08 | |
who went to integrated schools got the | 21:10 | |
rattan like your white confreres did, | 21:13 | |
we cannot recreate those situations. | 21:18 | |
But part of the discussion revolves around symptoms. | 21:21 | |
When Jim Lawson talks about | 21:25 | |
we have to change the culture in the White House | 21:26 | |
and the prison system, one of the developments | 21:28 | |
that came out of the movement is we began | 21:32 | |
talking about systems. | 21:34 | |
We were fighting a system. | 21:36 | |
We are still fighting a system. | 21:38 | |
It doesn't, as Jim Lawson, says it's all connected. | 21:39 | |
It doesn't matter | 21:44 | |
whether it's the, what is vouchers? | 21:45 | |
When Jim talks about the names of people | 21:48 | |
the Republican party is the organized | 21:51 | |
expression of reaction in this country today. | 21:53 | |
They define conventional discourse. | 21:56 | |
Vouchers are simply one of their fundamental | 21:58 | |
tenets which is raid the public treasury, | 22:00 | |
privatization, that's what vouchers and charters are. | 22:04 | |
They want the public treasury | 22:07 | |
whether it's privatize the schools, | 22:09 | |
whether it's privatize the prisons, | 22:10 | |
privatize the sky, air, earth or water. | 22:12 | |
It's to raid the public treasury, and that's | 22:15 | |
where WTO comes from. | 22:17 | |
Who funds the IMF who funds the group? | 22:20 | |
- | World Bank. | 22:21 |
Audience Member | It's no longer something | 22:23 |
a question of surplus coming from the labor, we must, | 22:24 | |
the times are different. | 22:27 | |
Audience Member | Can I just say one thing about charter | 22:31 |
schools that, that? | 22:33 | |
Audience Member | Well, our people are not the same. | 22:36 |
If we used to say and it was implied | 22:38 | |
it was very clear, we had to be twice | 22:41 | |
as good as white boys to make it. | 22:43 | |
That was clear. | 22:45 | |
That was how we were taught, | 22:47 | |
but now you have a situation where a little | 22:48 | |
12 year old kid on a crew being a lookout | 22:52 | |
for the gangbangers makes more money | 22:56 | |
than his daddy if he has a daddy. | 22:59 | |
So the myth of America that it's about education | 23:02 | |
when it was always about power, the myth | 23:05 | |
of education no longer holds, no longer obtains. | 23:08 | |
It's not the way in fact, it's not the golden road. | 23:11 | |
You can be as ignorant as you want to be | 23:15 | |
vis a vis George W. Bush Jr. | 23:16 | |
(laughing) | 23:19 | |
(clapping) | ||
Audience Member | Or Ronald Reagan. | 23:24 |
With the air of confusion in which they are | 23:27 | |
continually being misinformed, disinformed, | 23:29 | |
given false explanations, false rationales, | 23:32 | |
false analyses, and our task is to try | 23:34 | |
to see through a glass darkly. | 23:36 | |
- | Okay, uhuh. | 23:45 |
- | I think, I think one response to your | 23:46 |
question is, we have got to, the way | 23:47 | |
to stop violence in schools is to bring more | 23:50 | |
creativity and more involvement of parents | 23:53 | |
and students into the curriculum | 23:55 | |
and into the day to day activities of schools. | 23:57 | |
It, the freedom schools, proved that. | 24:00 | |
The success of the freedom schools | 24:01 | |
was people felt a sense of ownership. | 24:03 | |
And unless we can work that kind of | 24:05 | |
the labor unions and the parents and the students | 24:07 | |
into that equation because we can't argue it | 24:11 | |
for the sake of arguing. | 24:13 | |
They're gonna want to | 24:14 | |
look at test scores because oh, we gave | 24:15 | |
the charter schools test scores, we gave | 24:16 | |
your school some test scores, and look at this. | 24:18 | |
And the mistake we shouldn't make is | 24:20 | |
using good will and altruism as an argument. | 24:23 | |
- | Well, I think right now the most exciting union organizing | 24:28 |
in the country is in Los Angeles | 24:34 | |
where a number of our unions that are waking up | 24:36 | |
to the necessity of organizing the poor workers | 24:39 | |
have discovered that it can't be done 10 by 10. | 24:42 | |
It has to be done one by one | 24:45 | |
because the management is harassing | 24:47 | |
and making people fear for that little bit | 24:49 | |
of money so badly so there has to be a one | 24:52 | |
on one process until that person at the New Otani Hotel | 24:56 | |
where we've had a struggle | 25:03 | |
going on now for four years, until that one | 25:05 | |
person in fear who needs that money for his | 25:08 | |
household or her household gains from | 25:13 | |
that one on one relationship enough courage | 25:17 | |
to recognize, I can do something about this, | 25:20 | |
and I will do something about it. | 25:23 | |
And they join the cause. | 25:24 | |
So we have rediscovered the importance | 25:26 | |
of that one on one business for the terrible | 25:29 | |
organizing we have to do, so focus in and get started. | 25:32 | |
Do something. | 25:37 | |
That is in large measure what many people | 25:38 | |
did in the 50s and the 60s | 25:42 | |
that produced the movements of the 60s. | 25:44 | |
Focus. | 25:49 | |
Work at it. | 25:50 | |
Research it. | 25:51 | |
Develop strategies for acting. | 25:53 | |
Train people to do it, and go to work on it. | 25:56 | |
- | And please, before you use the Freedom Democratic Party | 26:00 |
as a justification for not acting, please listen. | 26:03 | |
- | No, that's something-- | 26:05 |
- | Please listen, | |
all of you, to Linda May Johnson's tapes | 26:08 | |
for the two weeks of the convention. | 26:11 | |
He spent his entire time | 26:13 | |
stopping that movement. | 26:15 | |
- | Exactly. | |
- | And he pitted the entire federal government-- | 26:17 |
Audience Member | Yeah, that's right. | 26:19 |
- | There are tapes to demonstrate. | 26:20 |
Audience Member | Exactly, exactly. | 26:21 |
- | And incidentally, that is one of the historic tools | 26:22 |
of non-violence, | 26:28 | |
to create a parallel institution. | 26:29 | |
(laughs) | 26:33 | |
the Freedom Democratic Party is a classic one, | 26:35 | |
it's a beautiful example | 26:37 | |
of creating the parallel institution that caused. | 26:39 | |
- | But you came through that, son. | 26:43 |
Quiet time. | 26:46 | |
You came through that just when you get off of work. | 26:48 | |
Audience Member | Between classes. | 26:50 |
- | Yeah, between classes. | 26:52 |
- | That's right. (laughing) | |
Audience Member | Stop assigning so much reading. | 26:54 |
(audience laughing) | 26:56 | |
- | You need people to commit themselves | 27:01 |
and drop out and fight. | 27:05 | |
You need that. | 27:09 | |
Now, where is it going to come from? | 27:11 | |
I don't know, but when it comes, | 27:12 | |
I'm going to be supported. | 27:16 | |
Audience Member | But you also need to have | 27:19 |
the type of relationship between the local issues | 27:21 | |
that you're fighting on, | 27:23 | |
and the national debt-- | 27:24 | |
- | Exactly. | |
Audience Member | Because there are people sitting | 27:27 |
around little rooms, smaller rooms than this | 27:28 | |
well, plotting has been about the Heritage Institute, | 27:32 | |
or the vouchers in the charter schools. | 27:34 | |
People sitting around plotting, | 27:36 | |
their plot may manifest themselves, | 27:37 | |
impact a variety of institutions in a variety of ways, | 27:40 | |
but they are plotting to take over, in fact. | 27:44 | |
The right wing now controls the house and senate | 27:50 | |
of the United States. | 27:52 | |
They've appointed two thirds of all the federal judges, | 27:54 | |
this is why Kenneth Starr kept winning all those deals. | 27:56 | |
And if Bushy-wushy wins the White House | 27:58 | |
there will be a control of all three branches | 28:00 | |
of the American government. | 28:02 | |
- | Mm-hmm. | 28:03 |
- | Exactly. | |
Audience Member | I will say as long | 28:05 |
as we say Donald Trump. | 28:05 | |
- | I'm just saying my assumption is | 28:07 |
that these guys here, | 28:12 | |
whoever under the hearing of mount recourse... | 28:16 | |
Audience Member | Well... | 28:22 |
- | Will commit themselves. | 28:24 |
Drop out. | 28:28 | |
(audience laughing) | ||
I'm not talking about dropping out of school. | 28:30 | |
I'm talking about in the sense | 28:33 | |
of dropping out of society. | 28:35 | |
Don't be touched by the golden apples, | 28:38 | |
the $200,000 house. | 28:44 | |
Something's got to wait. | 28:47 | |
Audience Member | You'd get caught now. | 28:49 |
(audience laughing) | 28:50 | |
- | He's right though. | 28:53 |
He's absolutely right. | 28:54 | |
We must have no loyalty to racism, sexism, violence, | 28:55 | |
greed, capitalism as this present shows for sexism. | 29:00 | |
Man On Left | We, in a group like this, | 29:05 |
if there's a group... | 29:07 | |
- | Withdraw all loyalty. | 29:08 |
- | If you got 10 guys | 29:09 |
that committed themselves to go further, | 29:13 | |
and all you're doing is going for it | 29:18 | |
like we used to do, | 29:20 | |
you've got time to read, | 29:22 | |
you've got time to get on the internet, | 29:23 | |
you've got time to see what the national issues are, | 29:25 | |
and who are acting. | 29:29 | |
You've got time to get in a push-mobile | 29:31 | |
and go to California | 29:35 | |
and hook up with them guys, | 29:37 | |
and go to Minnesota and hook up with those guys, | 29:39 | |
and go to Chicago and go to New York. | 29:42 | |
You've got time to do it. | 29:45 | |
And that's what it's going to take, the hook-ups. | 29:49 | |
The hook-ups, I mean. | 29:52 | |
I just hope I'm alive, | 29:53 | |
because my dream is that | 29:56 | |
in about 15 years, emerges... | 30:00 | |
That some magic's going to happen in our country, | 30:08 | |
number-wise, and it's going to be possible | 30:13 | |
for some political things to happen, | 30:17 | |
because it never happened before | 30:20 | |
in the history of our country. | 30:22 | |
And I hope that I'll be alive when it does happen, | 30:24 | |
20, 25 years. | 30:28 | |
Group leader | Yes, sir. | 30:29 |
Audience Member | Just a couple of things... | 30:31 |
Speaker | Oh, I've got to see some women's hands. | 30:33 |
I haven't been really. | 30:34 | |
Okay, I've seen one. | 30:36 | |
Men are talking too much. | 30:37 | |
Audience Member | Well I just wanted to-- | 30:39 |
Speaker | And I'm talking too much. | 30:40 |
Audience Member | My name is Wally Rather. | 30:41 |
I worked in Mississippi and Safety Corp, | 30:43 | |
and one of the things that I learned | 30:45 | |
and I still carry with me | 30:47 | |
is that freedom is a constant struggle, | 30:48 | |
and there's not little solutions that solve it, | 30:51 | |
like integrated schools, | 30:57 | |
that can solve the problem, right? | 30:59 | |
The problem is there. | 31:01 | |
It's a system, like Bill said, | 31:02 | |
and you may have a victory, or you may have a defeat. | 31:05 | |
But that's not the end of it-- | 31:09 | |
- | Right. | 31:11 |
- | You know? | |
It's there and it's going to take the rest of our lives | 31:12 | |
to straighten it all out. | 31:15 | |
- | Yeah. | |
Audience Member | And you've just got to keep on going. | 31:17 |
- | Keep at it. | 31:18 |
Audience Member | And for you, with the kid on the way, | 31:19 |
go into that community where he's going to go to school, | 31:22 | |
and start running for the school board now. | 31:26 | |
Or better yet go to the people who've lived there | 31:28 | |
for a long time and get them working on it. | 31:30 | |
Audience Member | Gotta organize first, see where | 31:32 |
the school board's at. | 31:33 | |
- | Yeah. | |
- | Yes, please. | 31:36 |
- | [Female Audience Member] Yeah, and this sort of piggybacks | 31:37 |
on what was just said because it think | 31:38 | |
part of this young person's frustration | 31:40 | |
that I was hearing was this idea that no matter how hard | 31:45 | |
people fought the system didn't respond in the way | 31:48 | |
that it should have, | 31:51 | |
and then I think when we say things are the same | 31:52 | |
it might give the impression that no progress was made. | 31:53 | |
I mean, that, you know, Vincent Harding said this once, | 31:56 | |
I think it must be in a movie or something, | 31:59 | |
but if you think things haven't changed, | 32:01 | |
you don't know how they were, | 32:03 | |
and we have to understand | 32:05 | |
while struggle is eternal and constant, | 32:07 | |
each generation has a destiny to fulfill, what's the quote? | 32:10 | |
Strichlan knows all the-- | 32:15 | |
Audience Member | This is supporting Fanon, | 32:16 |
"Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, | 32:18 | |
"discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it." | 32:20 | |
- | [Female Audience Member] Thank you. | 32:22 |
Where's that page number again? | 32:23 | |
(audience laughing) | 32:25 | |
You know, there has been progress and there has been change, | 32:27 | |
that while there's still racism | 32:30 | |
it is in a different form today, | 32:31 | |
and each generation has to figure out | 32:33 | |
the particularities of injustice and oppression. | 32:34 | |
I mean, I teach, I'm a historian, | 32:37 | |
and one of the things that I find comforting about history | 32:39 | |
is that things don't, | 32:42 | |
I mean, things don't stay the same. | 32:44 | |
They do change. | 32:45 | |
The one thing you do know about the future, | 32:46 | |
it's going to be different than today. | 32:47 | |
It can be better, it can be worse, | 32:49 | |
but it's going to change, | 32:52 | |
and human agency plays a role in that. | 32:53 | |
Human beings and what we do or what we don't do | 32:55 | |
really does matter, | 32:58 | |
and that's the ultimate source of, | 33:00 | |
not that we're going to achieve some utopia, | 33:02 | |
but that what we do matters is what keeps me from being | 33:04 | |
terribly, terribly cynical. | 33:07 | |
So I think that, you know, I mean, | 33:09 | |
things that people in the 60s did was absolutely heroic. | 33:11 | |
It made a difference. | 33:15 | |
It didn't solve all the problems, | 33:16 | |
but it did make a difference, | 33:18 | |
and that's part of I think what we have to understand | 33:19 | |
in order to give young people confidence, | 33:21 | |
and the last thing I'm going to say is | 33:23 | |
there are student struggles going on, | 33:24 | |
and you mentioned the sweatshop movement | 33:26 | |
which is very active. | 33:27 | |
University of Michigan just had a, | 33:29 | |
What was an 18 day sit-in | 33:32 | |
over a racist club that exists there, | 33:34 | |
and I'm always getting emails about struggles. | 33:38 | |
I think one thing about understanding the new situation | 33:40 | |
is that our enemies, | 33:42 | |
and I think we ought to say it like that. | 33:43 | |
- | Yeah. | 33:46 |
- | You know, and I've gotten | |
more sophisticated measures | 33:46 | |
of not allowing movements to spread. | 33:48 | |
I mean, one of the ways a sit-in spread | 33:51 | |
was partly through word of mouth | 33:52 | |
but also was through the media, | 33:54 | |
through the black press, et cetera. | 33:55 | |
Media doesn't cover a lot of struggles | 33:58 | |
that happen on campuses and so forth, | 34:00 | |
so we have to develop other networks to do that. | 34:01 | |
- | Yeah, to be fair, we need... | 34:04 |
I need to say to you what many of us from the 60s | 34:08 | |
have said about today, | 34:11 | |
that everything has changed, | 34:13 | |
and nothing has changed. | 34:14 | |
There are sort of two parts to the picture. | 34:18 | |
- | It's dialect. | 34:20 |
- | Yeah. | |
Now, one of the biggest evidence that things did change | 34:21 | |
is the organization of the religious | 34:26 | |
and the political right to turn it back, | 34:28 | |
still finding another illustration that things did change, | 34:32 | |
is that no president since the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 | 34:36 | |
has ever funded the Affirmative Action entitlements | 34:41 | |
section seven, title seven, | 34:46 | |
with staff and the educational resources | 34:48 | |
because title seven was to convince the American people | 34:51 | |
that we do not have a meritocracy, | 34:55 | |
that you're getting hired by who you know, | 34:58 | |
and to convince the American public and the marketplace | 35:01 | |
of the necessity of genuinely desegregating | 35:06 | |
and de-sex-an-iz-ing the marketplace. | 35:09 | |
Now, that has never been done, | 35:16 | |
and that's why the right has been able to say, | 35:18 | |
"Oh, reverse discrimination. | 35:21 | |
"Preferential treatment." | 35:23 | |
All of which are lies. | 35:25 | |
But that's what you hear, | 35:27 | |
because they have organized so vigorously and thoroughly, | 35:29 | |
with a great deal of money from right wing foundations | 35:33 | |
for the purpose of reversing | 35:38 | |
the changes that the 60s did begin to initiate. | 35:40 | |
Everything has changed and nothing has changed. | 35:46 | |
Audience Member | The other thing that is | 35:47 |
most effectively is they removed the respectability | 35:48 | |
from the senate. | 35:51 | |
Audience Member | From the what? | 35:53 |
- | From the senate, and the right to desecend. | 35:54 |
And we must restore that. | 35:57 | |
- | Yes. | |
- | And must regenerate it, | 35:59 |
- | Exactly. | |
- | and re-fight it. | 36:00 |
We must be very concerned of devaluating social movements | 36:01 | |
and organizations by the number of people | 36:06 | |
they get involved, | 36:09 | |
as well as the objectives. | 36:10 | |
And I think once you get someone to join a labor union, | 36:13 | |
or to register to vote, | 36:17 | |
or to speak out against the World Trade Organization, | 36:18 | |
then all of a sudden they retreat, | 36:20 | |
say, "I'll never do that again." | 36:22 | |
They find other things to do. | 36:23 | |
Speaker | All right, yes, go ahead. | 36:26 |
- | [Female Audience Member] I would like to ask | 36:27 |
that they are going to be around | 36:28 | |
the rest of the conference. | 36:30 | |
I teach at Ole Miss, | 36:31 | |
and I advise a student group that's two years old, that-- | 36:33 | |
- | Yeah, SEED. | 36:38 |
- | SEED, yes. | |
That hosted a statewide student seminal race last October, | 36:41 | |
attended by 180 students, | 36:45 | |
all eight public institutes and higher learning | 36:48 | |
plus four private schools, | 36:51 | |
and some of it is that they had to go back to their schools | 36:52 | |
and organize on some of those campuses | 36:56 | |
because there wasn't any organizing. | 36:57 | |
But there's a core there now, | 36:59 | |
and they're interested in reaching out, | 37:00 | |
and there are some of those students here, | 37:02 | |
and if y'all meet, maybe you can energize each other, | 37:03 | |
and then you sort of take this expertise-- | 37:06 | |
- | Harvard! | 37:08 |
- | and go back to your campuses | |
so that you can start an organization | 37:10 | |
that you're talking about right now. | 37:12 | |
Don't wait for somebody else to do it, do it now. | 37:13 | |
Audience Member | Currently we've just formed | 37:14 |
a progressive alliance at Duke, | 37:15 | |
attempting to network all the progressives. | 37:17 | |
- | Let's hook SEED up. | 37:20 |
- | Organizations that exhibit-- | |
- | Let's hook SEED up. | 37:22 |
- | current students against | |
workshops, so they basically that. | 37:23 | |
- | Let's hook up, and then y'all come to Mississippi, | 37:24 |
or whatever. | 37:26 | |
- | So despite my frustration, | |
you still-- | 37:27 | |
- | [Female Audience Member] You're still frustrated | 37:28 |
but you're doing the work. | 37:29 | |
- | [Male Audience Member] We're doing it anyway, | 37:30 |
that's right! | 37:31 | |
- | That's why I said it. | |
(laughing) | 37:34 | |
- | It's a good life, | 37:36 |
but it's being frustrated in life trying to do right, | 37:36 | |
trying to do that which is just, | 37:38 | |
and to fasten it. | 37:40 | |
I see any other hands? | 37:43 | |
It ends at 4:45 period, | 37:45 | |
and it is 4:45. | 37:47 | |
Audience Member | I have a reading list here. | 37:49 |
- | Oh! | 37:50 |
- | Oh! | |
- | I'm leaving this special reading list. | 37:51 |
Those people who do not read the books | 37:54 | |
have afflictions, and they go to hell. | 37:56 | |
(audience laughing) | 37:59 | |
Now, would anyone like this reading list? | 38:02 | |
(laughing) | 38:04 | |
- | Yeah, please? | 38:06 |
- | Please! | |
- | And if you don't, if we run out, | 38:10 |
I want to reproduce it because I want you to have it. | 38:11 | |
I concentrate on Mississippi and on race. | 38:13 | |
I especially refer you to By The Color Of Our Skins, | 38:16 | |
and A Nation of Strangers. | 38:20 | |
To read those two books is to understand racism in America. | 38:22 | |
- | [Female Audience Member] The Color Of America. | 38:26 |
Audience Member | We were talking | 38:27 |
about discipline in school, | 38:28 | |
something that was pointed out about showing this, | 38:30 | |
welcome this morning, | 38:34 | |
and that is that it has, was began in 1865 | 38:35 | |
and it had a policy | 38:38 | |
for non-discrimination in 1865, | 38:41 | |
it was one of the few schools in America that had that. | 38:44 |
Item Info
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