Transcripts For ALJAZAM Talk To Al Jazeera 20240622

Discrimination in the u. S. Criminal justice system. They would say we are going to knock on doors, being a machine yelling and screaming and making noise. Another testament that there is more work to be done, video of racist chants sung by university of Oklahoma Fraternity brothers. Where does this ugliness come from . Its scary to me that these young men who you expect more from or i expect more from. The tea party is not helping the country become post rachel either. Bond says they are racist. They are wrong headed people doing wrongheaded thing, but i wouldnt compare them to the ku klux klan. The oeshl activist expressed outrage against lgbt laws. They helped me. Why should i not help me . They helped me push the needle forward i am eager to push the needle forward to them. I spoke julian bond in atlanta, georgia. We sit here today all days, the 50th anniversary of the selma march, march 21st, 1965. Tell me about that day for julian bond. It was a magic day. I was not in selma on that day. But i was here in atlantaa, and. Hearing about them by telephone. My job was to publicize to organize a Student Committee and let the people in the field know what was going on and to summon them to do something about it. In the sense, you were a forerunner to twitter . You were sending out the news that . You could say i was an early twitterer. The first tweeter of the era. Tell me. Lets talk about that. Now, with ferguson, with timir rice in cleveland, with what we saw of the horror of those Fraternity Brothers on the bus. How important are images, video telling the story . They are enormously important because they do show to a looking public whats going on, what people are doing, whats happening here in ways that you couldnt show them before. You could show photograph pictures of things but it would take a couple of days to get them out. But today, bam, bam, bam. Whatever you want to see, you can see. So the selma march, the fact that the images went worldwide, how much of an effect did that have on the work that you all were doing on the ground . It had a tremendous effect. I mean its almost i am measurable. You cant tell because here are these ordinary people, innocent people doing nothing at all, walking down the street, bam, bam, bam, please policemen jump upon them, beat them in this horrific way. All the sudden the world sees it in ways the world could not see such things before. So it was just a magic tra transformation in the way people learned these things. Was there a sense that you could say to the world, hey, listen. We are not kidding about this. This is really happening . Absolutely. This is it. This is really happening. You see this. These are real people. This is happening to real people and you can see it right now. Of course. I hate to keep saying magic, but it is magic. You are a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement. You have worked at this all your life, and its 2015, 50 years on. Same thins are happening. The same atrocities. You talk about emmit till a little bit. His influence on you . His picture was put in jet magazine and the pictures of the bloated corpse were just ugly, you willly pictures but to see them and know this is a real human being and here is the way he used to look and here is the frightening. Happened . Gee whiz, one year old earn he was. So. He was your age . Yeah. Like seeing someone in your classroom . Someone like me, my age, who was the same age as i am. It was scary. Getting back to selma march. You all had a purpose. You wanted to get the vote. Thats a tangible thing. Is there, in civil rights today, that same goal thats tangible usive . Its a tangible goal to get the story told and get it told quickly and get it told strongly, get it told fairly, let people know about it in ways they couldnt know as quickly as they could know before. So in those regards, its a little different but its the same, at the same time, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Now, the world could see this thing happening in ways the world couldnt see it before. Now, the world sees it and they react differently. The reaction is different than it was back then. Yes. It was different. Its quick. Its quicker. Its as i say, bam, bam, bam, bam, in ways that the world couldnt appreciate it before. The reaction in the streets, the reaction in the media, setting aside the pictures and just the way the Community Reacts to something that they find to be horrific like some of these events we have talked about. How is that reaction different to what the bay you have seen this boy in charlottesville virginia, university of virg student. You see him and hear him say i am a university of virg student saying dont hit me. This appeal he makes is so real, it cant be rejected. It cant be pushed away. Lets talk about the organized response to things like that. Ferguson, for example, seemed very disorganized in the way they responded to both the actual event and the grand jury and then the Justice Department is there a vacuum of leadership in black america and civil rights america . I dont think there is a vacuum of leadership. I think there is a vacuum of organized organization. These are not quite the same thing. In ferguson, the leadership was there. It was mobilizing people. It was saying, lets do something about this. Lets raise some hell about this. Today, things are not happening as quickly and are not put together as quickly as they were there then. Yeah. If today somebody said, we are going to make julian bond the de facto head of ferguson response after it had happened, differently . I would have organized people to march or protest in a particular way in a particular direction. I would have them saying, we are all going to knock on these doors. We are going to make this noise. We are going to do this thing right here. We are going to be a machine moving and yelling and screaming and making noise. And that is the difference i would make. We look back at the Civil Rights Movement as students of it and people who werent even there. We see people like yourself, like Martin Luther king, andy young. We could have a long list but when we look today, we see very often, Jesse Jackson and al sharpton. They . They are around they are around you look at the people who are the dreamers, who mobilize the sit in, the Florida State conference. Thats youth leadership, raising hell, shaking a lot of noise. They are going to make it again. Is the raising hell working . It is. Its not working as well as it might. But give them some time. This will give you some hell. You think it takes time . It takes a little time, yes. They have to get together, say we are going to do this, we are going to do that. You cant just say bam, we are going to do this thing. You have to figure out what you are going to do, what plans you have. You have to be organized in ways i think that often people are not organized today. We all see the video of these Fraternity Brothers at Oklahoma State singing that song. We react a certain way. Do you react in a particularly deplated way when you see that . I think my lord, do these kids ever learn anything . Have they learned anything at all . Where did they learn this . Where does this ugliness come from . Its scary to me that these young men who you expect more from or i expect more from, they are College Students after all. Why arent they better trained . Why arent they better educated . Idiots. Questions . No. I cant imagine why they behave in the way they do. When you see video like the university of oklahoma students, do you think, god, i thought we beat this . I thought these things were not going to happen again. I thought this was done am when i see it and learn its not done, thats the same bunch of idiots doing the same idiotic stuff over and over again, i on . Selma is has come to mind for so many people because of the film that came out this summer. But at the time, sellment was a culmination of something. Wasnt it . Yes, it was. It was a culmination of a Movement Made up of many people working hard every day some doing that, some doing this, purring the needle faster and faster and faster. I dont think you quite have that any more. Do you think we dont have that any more because they got the vote . There is not one thing, for example, gay marriage, as soon as you get gay marriage, it becomes a bit more nebulous what they are fighting for with the vote that got the vote and then it becomes scattered . I dont think its that at all. I think things we havent got and havent learned how to demand them in ways we demanded these earlier things, these earlier appeals. When we do learn how to do it, we will be right back in line again. Lets talk about the film selma. It was a hit. It brought a lot of education to people. What do you think of the movie . I thought it korff better than it was. People like myself dont like any monvie. We dont like any of them. In this one, i particularly didnt like the portrayal to president johnson. In this regard, he was a champion. He was not portrayed as a champion, but sort of a nit. He wasnt a nit the. He was a real great guy. In your estimation, did lyndon b. Johnson impede or help facilitate civil rights . He helped it, push it forward. If it hadnt been for president johnson, wouldnt have the civil rights act, the Voting Rights act. Just a succession of good things that happened when president johnson was president. True. What president ses, aside from johnson, have had positive influences in recent history on civil rights . Gee. Its hard to say because none of them have had an overwhelmingly positive effect on civil rights. If you take away president johnson, there is not a president who has been way up here in my estimation. Johnson is way up here but none of the others are. Is there someone who is surprisingly good that we dont think about too often who did good things . No. No . No. There is none. Lets talk about president obama then. You know, president obama walked across the Edmond Pettus bridge, a bridge named for a confederate general, an original member of the ku klux plan in alabama. Tell me what that felt like . I watched it on t. V. Like most people did and have walked across that bridge several times and hope to walk across it again. I was happy to see it i think it meant something positive that the black president of the United States has walked across this bridge. Segregation was named after this bridge was named after a seg gregationist and a black president has walked across this bridge. Suddenly pat of that has erased it in my mind. Barack obama, how do you view him through the prisonom of civil rights . He has had a difficult time because he has had a congress that has said no, no, no, to almost everything he wants to do so no matter what it is he tries to do, he cant do it because of the Republican Congress just does. He has had a real mess here where he cant do what he wants to do and what he needs to do. I dont think we know about president obama yet. With he need to give him time. He only has about a year and a half left. Even after that, even after that, and see what he does, see how he behaves and see what hes. In the past, you talked about the tea party as being, you know, essentially racist. Do you still believe that . Yeah. Absolutely. And they know it, too. What has their effect been on Race Relations in the country . Its been bad because they are a negative element. Thers taking their negativity and applying it to the american political system thats in not a good thing for the country. It doesnt signify that we are going to rise up. In fact,ing it makes us fall down. Is it possible to compare them to what you faced 50 years ago . No. They are not quite the same thing they are wrongheaded people doing wrongheaded thing but i wouldnt compare them to the ku klux klan i face. You go back to the ku klu ku klux klan that you faced. What was the scariest time you have had in the movement . I can remember being in downtown atlantaa and picketing Department Stores that wouldnt serve black people, wouldnt give us food, wouldnt allow us to go in and get something to eat. I felt real fear that these spindlelegged little bumsters, you know, real boys poised a real threat to me. Luc luckily, nothing untoward happened but the threat was always there you said that obama is to the tea party what the moon is to a were space wolfe. What do you mean by that . I mean that obama is to the tea party what the moon is to the werewolves. Thank you. We needed today clarify that. Good. I am glad we were able to to the bottom of that . Coming up, julian bond talks about another rights movement, the battle for lgbt equality. Stay with us. I think were into something thats bigger than us thats the pain your mother feels when you disrespect her son. Me being here is defying all odds they were patriots, they wanted their country back from the best filmmakers of our time, the new home for original documentaries Al Jazeera America presents only on Al Jazeera America Al Jazeera Amer i am michael shore. This is talk to al jazeera our guest this week julian bond, longtime veteran of the Civil Rights Movement. 50 years from now, julian bond, where do you imagine when you close your eyes race country . I am not really sure. Where i hope they will be is people will be saying, well, we have come forward more than i thought we would. I hope somebody will be saying that. If they say that, that will be okay with me. 100 years from selma . Right. Somebody says what do you want julian bond to be remembered for when it comes to say . I want people to say, he was a race man. That was a man who cared about his race and wanted to help them as much as he could. You said race is history. You said history is race. Not race is history. Right. What does that mean . It means history is race because we are always learning history. We are always reading history. We are always seeing it, whats happening in history, and we want to look at it more and see whats happening. You are a race man . Yeah. I am a race man. Thanks very much. Thank you. This is aljazeera america, live from new york city. Im tony harris. Another to democrat in the senate deifies president obama and opposes the iran nuclear agreement. Active soldiers deployed to fight forest fires in the west. And women making history, in one of the toughest programs in the u. 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