Transcripts For CSPAN2 Panel Discussion On Race Power And Politics 20140413

You once again good afternoon and we want to welcome you to the National Black writers conference and thank you for so much for being a part of this great conference. Again lets get the organizes a big hand for organizing and putting this together. [applause] they always do such a great job. This panel is part of the great job that they are doing today. Race ,com,com ma power and politics is the title of our panel. Our moderator is marcus ford. William jelani cobb Obery Hendricks Michele Wallace. Thank you and good afternoon. Good afternoon. Hello. We would like to first of all thank you for coming to the 14th annual black writers conference. My name is wallace ford. Im the chairman of the Public Administration department at Medgar Evers School at inappropriate business and the other is the commentary blog soon to be in book form called love and hate the time of obama and a host of inclusion showed which can be seen in various parts of the country. The introduction has to do with the topic race, power and politics. Race and racism has been described as americas original sin beginning with the particularly odious form of racialbased lavery which began in this country the 1600s which is carried forward in its many iterations to this day. The issue of power has a threepart context. Because it is a very important part of the concept of power it is one of the reasons why it was forbidden for black slaves to learn how to read and write. It certainly was also a reason why it black slaves were forget and for big didnt forbidden to own property and you see that in the 21st century but after emancipation emancipation the red line if you will was drawn at a different point. That had to do with access to political power and the battle with respect to access to political power has been going on i would submit to you pearly sends emancipation and we have had the laws and restrictions and the terrorism to keep alive people from voting over many years and here we are in the 21st century talking about Voter Suppression strategies and the legislation being advocated by one major party here in the United States. We do have of course this notion of race and power. On the political side there has been a progression of politics going from of course emancipation politics to dealing with issues that we have seen articulated for so many years in the Civil Rights Era and i would suggest to you again that the Civil Rights Era and the struggle for several rights certainly is not and it is into a new phase. Certainly we had an era of political activity where there was the first black governor in the first black senator and so on in the modern era and we have had the africanamerican president as well. One of the things that the panels will be discussing is where are we in this modern era of politics in terms of black people and certainly you know the election of barack obama has brought about such terms as postracial politics for example. We have got to examine them to see what it really means in terms of political activity in the political discourse and the political direction we see for the black community here in this part, the first part of the 21st century. And so im going to do my job which is a very pleasant one and one im honored to do which is to introduce our guests. As was indicated our guests are jelani cobb mr. Marc lamont hill Obery Hendricks and Michele Wallace and we will ask our speakers to speak in that order. We will then open the discussion up to all of you because this is meant to be an interactive event im i am sure her colleagues have much to the say of interest and value and of course odu so we want to make sure we have an inclusionary process here today. With that and im going to read from mr. Copps dyre associate professor of history and record the institute of africanamerican studies. Those are copp is the author of substance of hope barack obama and the paradox of and to to the break of dawn the freestyle and the hiphop aesthetic on the hiphop aesthetic which was a finalist for the National Award for arts writing radius of book coming out called antidote to revolution africanamerican anticommunism in the struggle for civil rights. Mr. Cobb has been the featured commentator on msnbc National Public radio cnn aljazeera cbs news and the number of broadcast outlets and you have his twitter lying there in the program and you are urged to follow him as well. With that its as my pleasure indeed to introduce mr. William jelani cobb. [applause] i would like to begin by saying thank you for inviting me. Its an honor to be here. Especially someone who has been attending this conference for a very long time and from the point where i was a fledgling writer just trying to learn the ropes and find out how this undertaking this artistic undertaking really worked. So this conference has been key to me and lots of ways over long period of time so im happy to be here to talk with you today. The subject of this panel, i was somewhat apprehensive because i think its impossible to have this conversation without talking about the Obama Presidency but its also a very fraught subject in that we have these dissonant impulses that determine in many ways the way that we respond to obama and the wave will we respond to the criticism of barack obama. That was most evident to me recently when i made an oblique criticism of my brothers keeper and we will come back to that in a minute, to my brothers Keeper Program and its obvious shortcomings and failings and the difficulties implicit within trying to address issues specifically to africanamerican men while we have a black presidency. So as i was saying, i think the fundamental point here and i will say this, we are in and pointed progression while we appear to be in a point of progress. This is not atypical. If we have any knowledge of the history of black people in this country but to see there are strains of regression implicit within something that appears to be progress is not uncommon. In 2008 we saw the election of the first africanamerican president something we saw that none of us ever thought would happen. In 2012 resolve the reelection of an africanamerican president these two things have gone handinhand with the movement to eviscerate the Voting Rights act which is people have seen has been significantly successful, the ongoing move to make it more difficult for people to have access to the ballots, the ongoing unchecked excesses of the Prison Industrial Complex the ongoing issues of income inequality, the black communities which are still reeling from failure to redress the disproportionate racial impact of the housing crisis and so on so all these dynamics have happened the same time in which we have seen a black presidency and talking about those dynamics it is often taken as a criticism or referendum on the barack Obama Presidency. I dont think we should understand it as anything of the story sort. Very briefly about my brothers keeper the concerned with that program for 300 million that was raised via the Obama Administration through private philanthropic efforts to support initiatives relating specifically to young men of color and their particular neede a lot of money but its actually less than the new york city budget for the Parks Department for one year. 300 million which is spread over five years over young men of color across the United States very this is less than what the Parks Department spends on its annual operating budget for one city, for new york city. Thats the first thing. The second thing that is of particular concern here is it says and you know in 1896 when booker t. Washington, 1895 the booker t. Washington gave the atlanta address said politics could not get black people where we wanted to be the where we displaced our faith and politics. That statement galvanize what became the Niagara Movement and led to the naacp and became a century long effort to push the political envelope culminating in the Civil Rights Movement the attempts to gain Political Rights and to see where we could come up with cuties the political system to better our condition. In looking at an africanamerican president who sees disproportionate lack male unemployment sees the circumstances of jordan davis sees the circumstacircumsta nces of Trayvon Martin and the best response we can anticipate is that from brad philanthropic money. What it says is we perhaps reach the ceiling that booker t. Washington was talking about nearly 120 years ago that if this is the farthest you can go the highest pinnacle of political expression of political power is to place someone in the white house and if that person is incapable of addressing your needs on a specifically public and federal policy level and this is perhaps we need to revisit what a gritty washington was saying. What i do think if nothing else as we look toward the end of the barack obama at the strangeness we have to have the difficult conversatconversat ions about the limitations of politics and one of the new strategic directiondirection s we have to come up with if this is incapable of producing more than the anemic racial returns of the Obama Administration thus far and i will stop there. Thank you professor cobb. Next up we have besser lemont hill and Marc Lemont Hill is one of the leading hiphop generation intellectuals in the country. His work covers topics such as culture politics in education is appeared in numerous journals magazine books and anthologies. He is the author of beats and rhymes in the classroom of life hiphop pedagogy in the politics of identity. Schooling hiphop hiphop expanding the popbased education across the curriculum in the classroom and the cell conversations on black life in america and a collection of conversations between professor hill. Professor hill lectures while widely for commentary media like npr and the politicals contributor for cnn and he currently holds an affiliated faculty appointment in africanamerican studies at the institute for research in africanamerican studies at Columbia University. Please join me in welcoming professor Marc Lamont Hill. [applause] thank you everybody. I want to echo gillanis sentiment that this conference means so much and to share some time with everybody especially dr. Greenhut is done so much organizing work to make this conference possible and does so much work every day. [applause] i hated to go second because i had a sense he was going to cover a lot of interesting stuff that i agree with wholeheartedly im equally curious about what this political moment means been struggling to make sense of it. In a way that is productive for us because i could spend an hour critiquing the Obama Administrations policies as such. Im not sure if wed would get to other things. This moment is so bizarre to me for so many reasons and i will be rob reef reif but there are few things i find frustrating. One, i wonder if over the last years we have yielded a level of moral authority and Political Authority in deference to the Obama Administration symbolic track created are we excited, so excited to have a black person that we are willing to to no longer engaging treat critique . I remember and know for particularly in d. C. Being in an antiwar march. It mightve been over three or 04 and there were black people and brown people there. There is so much activism and curiosity about the invasion of iraq in conversation and critiques of empire. There was all sorts of stuff happening and then when i fastforward to now or two september i remember when we were talking about strikes and libya. I remember black people defending potential strikes in libya, defending preemptive strikes in libya. Not retaliatory strikes but the idea that we could engage in preemptive war as a means of advancing a foreignpolicy and that is the quintessential bush doctrine. An idea that black people for the first time ive known in American History to be the advocates of war to the war hawks in support of a president ial administration. That to me was puzzling and it made me wonder where center was or where center was going. That was curious to me. We know there are predator drones in yemen and afghanistan. We know what happened in libya. Its a hawkish foreignpolicy and quintessentially bush and reagan foreignpolicy and yet we have not had a critique of it. Jelani just talked about my brothers keeper initiative. I cant imagine any other moment who would be celebrating an intervention through Corporate Philanthropy as opposed to public policy. That just seems bizarre to me. All these moments where the stars bizarre stuff is happening and i dont hear or see a critique. Some of it isnt uniquely obama. I dont know of any president ial administration of last 50 years of this talk about poverty in this substantive way. This is about obamas and outliers but the expectation was that he would be an interruption in a failing consistent set of presidency art by an indifference to poverty were hawkishness etc. Etc. I think that might be the limitations of this form of politics. What im curious about and most saddened about because i dont want to just talk about obama is this intersection between race power and politics and heavily tied to late capitalism. Im wondering if we as a community can have a different kind of conversation about the state of late capitalism about the role the marketplace right now in our everyday life from the way in which education continues to be privatized. Actually everything is being privatized. [applause] this is part of the issue of race power and politics as we have become assessed with privatization and normalize privatization and we have raced privatization such as the general public has an appetite for privatization because we imagine the private to be good in the public to be bad in the public is bad because its often marked in race terms. Public education Public Housing Public Transportation Public Schooling public options. Public anything is marked as black or brown and therefore disposable innocent consequence we buy into it ourselves. We want our kids in private schools. We think of Public Housing not as subsidies but as the Taylor Holmes or Cabrini Green or were martial projects or what have you. There ways are ways in which an economic agendas being embraced economic politics and one of the things that concerns me the most is we are possessed with destroying the public good and im not sure we have a language to do that. When president obama comes to race to the top which is a marketbased response education might be better than no child left behind in a certain way but in other ways governed by the same logic. When we see mars mass incarceration over the last 50 years we see it as a crisis but not just a crisis of crime. Very little of it is a crisis of crime and not just a crisis of criminalization although that is important to think about the way the law structure but its also an economic crisis. Theres a way which we have greater market values that not only normalize mass incarceration but incentivize Companies Governments and individuals to support laws that expand mass incarceration. We have to have a conversation about the market and the economy and a conversation about the role capitalism is playing at a cutting across the sectors of our allies. We need to do that in order to have a conversation on race, power and politics and i will stop there. Thank you professor hill. Appreciate that. We now have to zerneck speaker professor Obery Hendricks who has been hailed by cornel west is one of the last few grand prophetic scholars and you were speaking before the program began. He is the former wall Street Investment executive and past president of Theological Seminary the oldest Theological Institution in the United States. President hendricks is a visiting scholar at Columbia University professor of typical interpretation at new york Theological Seminary. He is a kundra to msnbc enough to post an affiliate scholar at the center for American Progress and a trustee for the Public Religion Research institute of washington d. C. And a member of the u. S. State departments religion Foreign Policy working group. He is the author of living water the novel and its most recent book praised by governor howard dean is it Tour De Force as universe bends towards justice radical reflections on the bible the church in the body politic. Please chime in welcoming professor Obery Hendricks. [applause] thank you. Im also glad to be her. Im also a longtime participant and supporter and beneficiary of this black literature conference even before i published in before a thought about publishing any books. Im really glad to be here. I would like to shift just a little to talk a little bit more about the subject that my colleague Marc Lamont Hill introduced and that has to do with the intersection of race and power. First, we just have to remember that race has always been a strategic tool used by the forces of capitalism to divide workers and to weaken workers and keep workers from collective icing so that they can continue on with their uninterrupted profiting flow. So they demonize black folk saying that where the problem but its really a strategic tool that is used. How would the dumbest . Well they use coded racial terms like innercity and lazy and undeserving, welfare queens and all that in the racial rhetoric. They use these terms in a concept to cast blame for the plight of Everyday Americans on what we might call posts government inequality where the real cause of the vast wealth chasm in americas costs by market based inequality. Now the concept of posts government inequality, this is important. The cost of the severe wealth disparities in america is not the capitalist excesses and crony capitalism and exploitation of workers or dishonest and often illegal practices that occur in the markets. Posts government inequality says and it nor cease factors as having anything to do with economic suffering and dislocation of struggling workers. Instead posts government inequality says the daytoday economic struggles of americans are the result of Government Policies that sees peoples income white peoples income and wealth by way of federal taxation which is then transferred or redistributed to be used for the benefit of the undeserving be they faceless spend crazy or taxandspend government aircraft or distributed to caricatures of shiftless undeserving poor people which ultimately conjures up the image of black folk, lazy, supposedly welfare kings and queens. So as a result we see a sad spectacle of poor and struggling toothless white sometimes railing against redistributed policies that would give them a much fair economic shake because they are afraid of that black folks might benefit too. They need to pray there is some redistribution so they might be able to live a little bit better. And then theres what one might call one economist calls aristocratic racism, a species of social darwinism. Its the attitude of some elites belief, not all but some wealthy elites not all but particularly corporate elites in especially those of inherited wealth by the Koch Brothers is an attitude that the rich are entitled not only to eat more from the tree of life than those beneath them on the economic ladder but also to run the entire nation and they think it is their way. That is to say aristocratic racism says the rich are not just different from the nonrich as Scott Fitzgerald wrote that they are superior human subspecies. If aristocratic racism says the nonrich deserve fewer life chances then of course africanamericans are seen as all sophomore undeserving of economic equality. Here again we get the last, the least beneficial and that the policy stick under attitudes of aristocratic racism. Now what can be some of the goals of these corporate capitalists and wealthy elites strategic use of racism . One is to distract the American People from focusing on capitalist policies and practices that militate against the good of society. For example, we have the American Legislative Exchange counsel funded by the Koch Brothers that formulated this stand your ground law. They wrote the whole bill and they said it out to legislatures around the country and many of them propose the bill without changing a word to become law. Why . Well look what happened this stand your ground law and since with Trayvon Martin just to take one case. The whole attention of the nation became distracted by what happened with this stand your ground law, young black men killed. We have seen others killed. We have seen again black woman who is looking at life in prison because she shot in the ceiling but what we see is this energy and focuses on these kinds of things on the ground that we might ask ourselves why the Koch Brothers funded organization, why with ap at all concerned about stand your ground laws . The Koch Brothers and people in that class are never threatened by anything or anyone. They have armies of bodyguards. Why . They do it because it distracts us from looking at their practices. It distracts us from looking at the Koch Brothers is one of the 10 greatest polluters in america we dont look at whats going on with the Keystone Pipeline. They support this Keystone Pipeline and they are saying that its because of jobs and american needs jobs. We dont see that from 1. 1 million acres and is estimated around the keystone area estimated to make between 50 and 100 million if this pipeline is brought to fruition. So that is one reason that they use race and that is to distract us from looking at whats being done. Another recent corporate capitalists and the wealthy elites use racism and race as a strategy, its to disempower working people. So they cant effectively struggle for chu economic democracy in the workplace. Keep us divided and angry and pointing fingers working for nickels and dimes while they are making billions of dollars. Another reason for the strategies to create a poorer scapegoated labor pool that can board easily be exploited with less than living wage. And how did they do this . Theres a long list but give you a couple of samples. For when theyre trying to dismantle Public Administration, Public Education by sponsoring local politicians in favor of the private indication as per fess or hell pointed to. Also by resegregating Public Education, literally resegregating. I will give you an example of what im talking about dismantling Public Education resegregating it. Again the Koch Brothers through the american for liberty for Prosperity Organization they founded and are the largest funder of successfully elected, supported and elected local School Board Members in wake county North Carolina with buzzwords like neighborhood schools, neighborhood education to get them to dismantle the program they had that was very successful and they had this Diversity Program that allowed a real interaction between black and white folks. Very important because we have mostly black schools and we know we get the short end of the stick again. Forget the fewest resources. We dont always get the strongest teachers and we often get fewer programs and fewer advanced programs. And then also they are trying to affect us by voter disenfranchisement and attempts to demolish whatever edifice of democracy we do have a conjuring up images of cheating voters and cheating black voters. This is very important. Theyre trying to dismantle democracy. They have backed off a little but even trying to get the 17th amendment to the constitution repealed which gives voters the right to elect their own senators, directly elect the senators rather than those in state legislatures who can be easily taught out. They actually want to dismantle the voting franchise. We are concerned about stand your ground law and those kinds of things and they are getting away with murder. Also we see the conservative corporate libertarian types doing their best to withdraw funds from black communities by seeking to cut programs necessary to black Community Health and wellbeing on down the line. Paul ryan is a poster boy right now with the forces he is talking about. There is much more. I just want to end by echoing Martin Luther king in the last years of his life when he said the next phase of the black struggle this economic, for economic democracy in the work place. That is to say we must see racism as a strategic tool of capitalism so we must be involved as Martin Luther king said in class warfare. His terms, class warfare. We must fight for economic democracy in the work pace. There is no democracy in the workplace they think about it. Try to go in and say i disagree with this policy so i think you will get your walking papers that is the fight. We must see racism as a tool of the capitalist order is looking to disempower workers, dismantle unions so they can have even more of the hegemonic sway and control over our lives and destruction of our lives their life chances. Thank you. Thank you very much. [applause] i am going to ask our colleagues except for we all have to come up. If youll just bring your chairs up. You can leave your belongings. They are going to be broadcasting or projecting images on the screen. Just move your chairs over to the right right. Before the lights go out i have to memorize this. Michele wallace is our next speaker and shes a selfdescribed feminists scholar intellectual who has been furthering the work of decolonization sensor first bravin controversial look lack macchio and the myth of the superwide and published in 1979. [applause] some people are telling their age in the process. Her books include, her other books include the black Popular Culture, dark designs and visual culture and invisibility blues from pop to theory. Her attention to visibility end or that is cessation of black women has made possible new Critical Thinking around the intersection of race and gender and africanamerican visual and Popular Culture particularly in what has been called the gap around the psychoanalytic and contemporary africanamerican critical discourse. Presently ms. Wallace teaches, professor wallace teaches in the English Department stretches center at the university of new york. Please join me in welcoming professor Michele Wallace. [applause] he hi. Hi. Im here to talk about my mother, Faith Ringgold. [applause] she is a worldrenowned artist and im trying to do a powerpoint here but we cant get it to project as we wish. All we can do is get the slides sorting page so we are going to work with that if we can get less light in the room. Like that light right there. Its probably two things. One that i think is a problem between the mac pc number one and number two it is a large powerpoint. So i think there is some part of a system that is not able to feed it. There are 160 images and anyway i have got to do the right thing because my mother is here. [applause] she is enough for now and i will introduced her in a moment. I have been given many many instructions about public speaking. He dont spend all the time apologizing for things that are not going to happen. You get on with it. Anyway Faith Ringgold, today i have chosen to focus on our work from the 70s because theyre such a large array of work much of it which would be very relevant to the discussions of my other panelists who were excellent, but lately we have seen the revitalization of the 60s work with some of the writings done. There was a show at the new Burger Museum american black lighting in which i wrote a crucial essay and theres a show at the Brooklyn Museum called witness which includes three words or rather two words by the Brooklyn Museum which they have purchased. I dont know which tends to use but anyway they are in their collection and these two works, you were never going to find this out because they dont want to print the title because the title of the most important work that they have is called die for the moon. It was done the year that United States landed on the moon and his name is die so who would have thought all these years later that the white press is so afraid to use that word at least in writing that you will see it ultimately referred to as a very attractive flag painting or an American Flag or anything but that which is the name of it. Anyway the Chase Manhattan Bank almost half that painting. You have to look at it for a while because you can see that it says that. Its one of her blacklight paintings from the 60s. That work and another study now which comes out of the Civil Rights Movement and the episode in which Charlene Hunter was integrating the university. So the 60s work, i dont know whether you know it or not or whether you have gone to the Brooklyn Museum which now has a show on the artifice of on the art of the Civil Rights Movement finally here in brooklyn from the 60s. [applause] you know, its 2015 i will point out and it is curated by kevin jones who some of you may know. And so that is going on and so now my mission is to bring to the public the 70s work. Faith is much better known for tar beach and her story whos afraid of and jemima . Is also known for her childrens books tar beach being the most famous of them. [applause] and her work is in the collections and in all the major museums but right now, since i was growing up while she was doing the 70s work in 1970 i was 18. In 1979 i was 19 and in 1980 i was 28. 1979 i did black macchio. When i wrote black macchio after having spent my life living in a house with an artist to produce the work that you see behind you see behind you and who was a black feminist and do i was actively engaged with all the time, i didnt mention that. We have often talked about why but number one in excuse for myself number one i didnt know how to mention it and number two cup i was not encouraged to do so by my editors are my publishers. I was encouraged to marginalize my mother and my work. You only present presence is its dedicated to my mother and she did the picture of me on the back of the book and actually they misspelled her picture credit. I cant remember what it was. It wasnt Faith Ringgold. It was some kind of way they did that so we had some issues. Anyway we are still addressing that and i am belatedly trying to introduce you to the work of the 70s which has always fascinated me. And want to do an exhibition project. Im doing a book called Faith Ringgold, my mother my mentor. Faith ringgold, my mother my muse and my mentor. Im going to retire next year and devote my life to doing this because my mother is so wonderful. I love you mom. [applause] so im going to ask the people in control to turn the light off so that the camera since can see the screen rather than me as i know they are able to do on cspan because i have seen it done and the guy in the booth is going to just roll slowly through a selection of her works. I have cleaned this down from 300 works as she produced in the 70s and this is 160 of them. Getting loose and begins with it includes some pictures of the political activity. I also chose the 70s because this is a Political Panel and her work in the 70s was all political. I guess we are not going to get the light off for any of the lights off. How about the house lights . House lights . Me . Okay. Okay, so you can sort of see it. Actually that really does look better. So you see the work of Faith Ringgold in the 1970s. I am starting my process, i started by constructing a master chronology of all the work in order by a medium. This was the period in which in the 60s faith only produced paintings. This is the period in which she is starting to use other media and this is the reason. The reason is because she had all these big paintings and no place to keep them and nobody wanted to look at them and nobody wanted to buy them. We were living around them. She couldnt dare produce more. Sheikh capped those paintings all these years. She kept them safe for 50 years and now people are receiving them. She began to work with different materials and to get engaged in political protests. That is her in 1970 a picture of her with her work in the background. That is her indeed protesting in front of the museum of modern art art because we were very actively protesting the museums than andy cant see that picture but i look really cute in that picture. I was 19 or 18 or something. Then there is another picture of her and she got arrested for desecrating the flag. Partly the arrest was because of the paintings that is now the Brooklyn Museum on the walls. We are going to go see it today. These are political posters. Roll it up a little bit. Those are details for the womens house which she did in 1971 as an installation for the womens prison. She wanted to give it to a cuny school but nobody wanted it so she said im going to go somewhere where i have a captive audience. Which was the womens house on rikers island. So she went there and ask them what they wanted to see. This was her first abn her only painting entirely devoted to women because she had become a feminist. Everybody in the painting is a woman and it shows women doing things that we didnt ordinarily gets due in the 1970s like play the drums. The white woman who has the baby in her lap, she is reading to her from a book on rosa parks and there is a bus driver. We didnt have that. A doctor teaching at the university. Theres a lady running for president. Theres a woman bearing someone. Theres a woman cop. Anyway that is all gone now. Keep rolling. Then we have got selections of political landscapes as she did. This is a series she did for shirley chisholm. You remember when she ran for president and we didnt show her much love but my mother did and she did a series devoted to her. These are the political posters which are now worth monumental amounts of money which she used to give away. One for angela, one for the United States. Thank you. I didnt expect that much time. So i can point out the United States is up there. That was commemorating the awful thing that happened in attica in 1971. We were all so grieved about that and of course on the panelists are talking about the legacy of what happened there, which is really stunning. The criminalization of black people and brooklyn being one of the primary locations of that. Roll on. The feminist series. She began to do traveling around. She quit her job teaching as a teacher and began to go around to colleges and campuses because she couldnt show in new york going all over the country showing our work. These are feminist landscapes. She got the idea from amsterdam. She had the idea of doing landscapes but she loves to paint landscapes. And putting the words, quotations from important black women and black feminists historically. The way you to have words. Those words are quotes from those women. Then she got into the slave rape series which dedicated to black women in slavery in s and which is called the slave rape series. She wanted to really connect with the experience of black women but not having been to africa yet. Roll on. During this period she goes to africa. You see what is happening is because its so good it is taking a while for the images to load even on the slide sorter. I dont know what kind of projector this is but usually when people do power points they have two or three images. I dont know what thats about it anyway these are the maps she did. Family of women. Keep rolling. Roll on and then she started doing dolls. Family of women for the women she had grown up with. Roll on. Keep rolling. This is windows of the wedding. She wanted me and barbara to get married so she started doing wedding art. These were like stainedglass windows. This was Wilt Chamberlain who wrote it notorious for book at the time about black line. She started doing sculptures of him and also his wife and children. Then she started doing wedding couples. I would go to the house and everything was a wedding. She was trying to work on us to get us married. [laughter] in her own special way. Keep going. The wake and resurrection of the bicentennial. New rollon. All of this is work she started to do when she happened to africa. Just roll onto the end. I am done. Thank you so very much. [applause] [applause] thank you again professor. Appreciated again. A round of applause please. [applause] and thank you for the gift of your ipad here. Thank you very much wallace. Thank you for your patience. We are going to get right to the discussion part. As i mentioned at the beginning this is an interactive experience here. We certainly enjoyed their initial comments from our guest speakers. What i would ask is that i think we have a microphone over here. If you feel equal can speak without a microphone thats fine but you need to speak to the microphone. I got a very subtle message from somebody waiting in the back. If you have a question for one of the panelists i would ask you to come forward. In the interest of time there is an expression is sometimes everything has been said that not everybody is at it so we dont want to get into that. But we ask is if you have a question for one of our commentators please address it to either the entire panel or one individual and i say to my colleagues if you would like to chime in at that point with any additional comments we will just move on and see how we go from there. If you would introduce yourself please. Thank you. My name is yvette moore with united messages United Methodist women. Thank you to miss rheingold for all the books that you gave my children coming up. We really enjoyed your books. [applause] my question has to do with something Marc Lamont Hill said about privatization and it has to do with Public Schools. We all see the commercials for the Charter Schools. And they have a little thing on the bottom that says paid for by Charter School parents but we know the Charter School parents have that kind of honey their children would be in private school. I see there is a battle. They are trying to the brown folks fight. How do you organize against that kind of money . What i was wondering if i saw that paid for by Charter Schools i would turn the channel. One commercial had gone off and i turned the channel and literally another one was on. You saw it again but this brown brew versus board of education type inequality is going on the same building when the Charter Schools come in. They get renovated. The other children cant get books, dont have libraries and i know it happened in the Excellent Schools of my children went to. How do you organize against that . To that . Two made organizing work is always connected to political education so part of what needs to happen is we need to understand the nature of Charter Schools and why they could be problematic. Im not like the enemy of Charter Schools per se. Im frustrated with how they are being used. Frustrated. Charter schools we would try new curriculum and some new approach to distribute to the larger Public School system. Charter schools are publicly funded and privately run by corporations and sometimes by different strands of people. For me the problem is in Charter Schools in that way. Its the way in which Charter Schools are being used to dismantle the broader Public Education project. School choice is a broader repertoire of political possibilities is dismantling Public Education because the language itself is unproblematic. Who doesnt want choice . Choice is seen as fundamentally american. Everyone deserves choices. Charter schools are problematic to cause one they strip away large layers of funding from the broader Public School system and they go to these pockets were not everyone has equal access to them. Charter schools have the opportunities to not take students who have emotional disabilities are intellectual disabilities and the opportunity to send kids back when they dont like how theyre performing. Oftentimes their performance is different because they can throw back the ones they dont want. But the funding becomes really tricky. Theres also what we call a typically the parents you to come to school and talk to the teachers those are the ones who often ask us to Charter Schools first. So you cream off the top 10 to 15 performing students and engage parents in Public Schools are left with less engagement than even before. Mainstreaming reef accounts of students connected to each other strong and weaker students engage tsunami gauge parents. They are all in one room and everyone else is left in the other room. I wont go on too long but it creates lots of problems. The other problem problem is theyre up in new tax credits developed for Charter School buildings. A lot of the money going to Public Schools is going into the private corporations for the extensible purpose of building Charter Schools. What we see is the strengthening of private wealth under the guise of Public Education. A lot of people dont understand that. That is how they persuade parents. The other thing is the schools dont work. Most of our schools dont perform better than students at the department of education. They pick the fruit that do. Its not a fair comparison. Its not an applestoapples comparison. The first thing we have to do is organize parents by giving them the information but we also cant be dismissive particularly those who have class privilege. Her kid does go to school with no books and new teachers and theres a Charter School it depends on the state but kent sometimes its in the same building and sometimes its upstairs. I dont get mad at parents for making decisions that are best for their children but we have to create a universe where there are good options that dont come at the expense of other people. That means we have to organize and the on the School Boards and advocate so the traditional schools have teachers and administrators and School Board Members that matter. We have to organize and work. We have to vote in people who have an agenda Public Education not the de blazio vision of what Public Education should look like which a often leans on corporate interests. It comes to political education and organizing. Thank you. [applause] good afternoon. I name is jason harris and im from baltimore. The question that i have is you know i was really excited that from the start everyone talked about the economics because it seems to me that for the Civil Rights Movement the most effective event was the montgomery bus boycott. That was the thing that had an outcome that really forced an entrenched policy to be changed. In this day and age we are saying we have reached a ceiling with political power and the type of outcomes that we can have operating within this political arena. What are the strategies, the basic strategies that we can start using or are there any strategies that you have identified in your research that work as far as creating something that communities can agree on and pursue and have success with with regards to economics . Anyone want to take that . Thats a good question. I appreciate that. Just a trilogy of articles on Martin Luther king and huffington post. The first tour in the archives. You can look them up under by name. The last one is why Martin Luther king had to die. It focuses on the Poor Peoples Campaign. What Martin Luther king understood and what we have to understand is we need a real contra failing force against the forces of capitalism and wealth and we dont really have that. The union is the closest that we have so we have to really start organizing for one thing supporting unions again, fighting against the demonization of unions. How can people praised donald trump and demonize Union Workers folks who really work and in fact most of the rights that we take for granted came through the union. We need to focus on structuring unions again. Also with the Poor Peoples Campaign came selfconsciously found several broad principles and broad goals that would encompass most of the people in america in the Poor Peoples Campaign and to bring people together with common interests to fight against those who were in power and those who are in positions of exploitation. That is to say we cant come together around narrow interests. We have to use broad interest and realize that it really is us against them as king said in almost the class warfare cents. Those who are in power and its almost like they cohere into a corporate class against us but we are fighting with these different groups sometimes against one another. Im saying the first step brother is to identify some real commonalities and try to bring people together around economic commonalities. Good afternoon. I have a twopart question. I am a from this area. A single mother of three boys i raised all by myself it with the School System in this area Charter Schools are nothing new but new for us because the money from our community always went to another group him in Crown Heights they went to private schools. I have to fight as a single mother not only against the system to educate my boys to send them to private school but there was a whole challenge between the church , class privilege among us who totally had a feeling this high if you were a single parent your kid was not good enough. We held each other, we hold ourselves back. For example, when i was the mom i raised my mom in the church and today i sabres the church . They do not want to go to church we have make ministers with make it dollars. Ioc any money put back into the neighborhood they are not building schools to have our own Charter Schools we talk about what everybody does to us then quietly we dont say what we do to ourselves we have to lift up every young men. I cannot ask another culture to lift up our boys to make them be the mandate our are with the churches have failed. The question is how do we deal with that . And when i open up the paper and i look at fiances spending thousands of dollars to get her hair done and jayz another thousand then they build a stadium to they put any money back into our society . We need to stop acting as if were so needy we need hospitals. That is a great question. Of the three are now holding them accountable the church has plenty of money. Okay. Thank you. Just Going Forward i did not say it before but one question per customer be you guided before the wire. With the churches there is not a lot to be said that is not obvious. There is some real problems today. For one thing they are so in the word looking more about maintenance than what they are supposed to do with society. [applause] we have a problem with too many ministers do not know what theyre talking about. They do not understand what jesus talked about more than anything was people in and poverty that the spirit of the lord is upon me to preach good news to the polar. Blood is that other did you change the system and structure and relationships to make people pour in and keep them for . Lady to hold these preachers feet to the fire but the problem is many are so performance oriented people dont go because they want to be part of a progressive body but not to be a complication but to an audience and to be entertained. Part of it is we need to lean on the church dont expect so much unless they already go in that direction. Like you said everybody has to be a bishop for the archbishop, if they were really about changing the world and then our society and community would be very different. I dont think they are and enforcing that even though most of the people in resources are there we have to come up with countervailing forces because we go there too often to have fun. [applause] i want to be as distinct as possible. [laughter] assistant. About jayz and beyonce we remember when Harry Belafonte mentioned about 10 months ago that he did not think that they were not doing enough with what they have. People thought they could criticize belafonte to criticize younker black cloaks. I was in the middle of twitter fights. You dont understand you dont have the standing to talk to Harry Belafonte. [laughter] [applause] he referred to him as a boy at 1. He referred to him in a rap song he is from a different generation but i know i am an academic and intellectual but you would not disrespect him like that that is our brother but this mae and risks his life literally when they needed to bring many to sncc they flew down not the day of winter anything could happen to them. That is to this man is. We should be hesitant to rely upon to expect that from the celebrity model entertainer be lived in a different place we need to recognize because of capitalism and that capitalism culture they are just symptomatic of a bigger set of concerns. We could talk about this it is not unrelated but what we have to do is to go about the hard work to build a culture that can sustain itself. [applause] across all different lines do not be afraid to say things that would get you into trouble but in terms of institutions yesterday johnson publications did something i thought was unconscionable. There was a minor dispute with a person who is from the Republican Committee she said i dont want albright person to tell me about being black but it turns out the person was black and it took offense. She apologized for assuming she was white but then it continued that i still dont care what you have to say which is within her rights. She did apologize apologize for assuming the was white did you know, about one volumes he was the reaction of person that he is i am not surprised his son with the rnc but ebony magazine with the committee demanded an apology, the magazine that published the picture of emmett till desecrated body apologized to the rnc. What i said on twitter here we you to apologize to republicans after they apologize for getting the Voting Rights act. [applause] so that it is our own fault if we dont hold them accountable. [applause] as i am the chief diversity officer for this institution and thank you for your comments. Last year we gave a Lifetime Achievement aboard a so it is an honor to see her here again. My question is you talk about the tentacles of capitalism that cuts across the number of areas in society and i specifically applied to hone in on the conversation about the Prison Industrial Complex as it relates to the commercialization of black labor behind bars for i am wondering if there is no way that how to be flip the conversation to expand entrepreneurialism . We are in a Global Economy where you can do business from brooklyn to beijing how do we raise this conversation . We captured our labor the efforts that are not exploited behind bars so many young people could not get jobs outside on the street or are somehow a train to to do Software Design so if you could address that to have so many opportunities but in africa and china how do we recapture that which is ours on the global stage . I am a historian so i think about these things in the long term. To know the compromise that the slave population counts as 3 5 of the person in the house of representatives. That was undone by the 14th amendment that every individual born into this country also is the dread scott decision. So what happened . Between the 14th and 15th amendment to create a new Political Class in the south at of the newly emancipated blacks people to get the electoral check on the political power of southern democrats to defend their right to hold black people as slaves if we can have a population of those republican vin we can diminish the same sort of influence. It did not play out like that because those amendments served to give more power to southern whites because now they counted the entire population so the poles were 60 percent now when headed percent say you are entitled to more representation and more revenue. You can reduce the population to a group that cannot vote. Physically brutalizing people out of local contention. You even now have a more political powers than you had then. Historians say if we look at where people are incarcerated people come from communities like this one. Or like what ive lived in and the southeast. They are incarcerated in largely rural white areas now counted as residents of the role quite serious. And 2014 you have the same net effect as in tennessee, georgia, mississi ppi that the black bodies are used to give disproportionate power and influence to white people politically. It is not just to get rid of stop and frisk but deal with the actual infrastructure designed to put its hard limits on black people. A reporter called me to see if there would be another black president in my lifetime. I said i compared Barack Barack obama to jack johnson in 1908 there were riots industry. People were doing the electric slide. If we go on from that but because jack johnson was listed as a heavyweight champion the athletic in pressure sure major no other black person got a chance to contend again and tell zhifu was nearly 30 years later so the biggest obstacle to have another black president is those who are adversarial know it is possible. These are the dynamics we talk about. Reconstruction the same tactics, the same motivation to create the same outcome with the economic exploitation and people reduced to nonentities and american society. [applause] first i want to think michelle for being incredible. [applause] i work on the staff of the evolution books and i am part of the movement to build a revolution in a time when everything that has been said in this room today to be advocates for that and nothing less for could do one thing if there plus no way to make a revolution of the was not possible but it is now proven to be impossible. No. People should come talk to me there is a strategy that could actually work in a society would want to live in but the question that i have is, disagree with me when i say barack obama is one of the best arguments why capitalism cannot do anything for the people in the world and black people in this country and can you really argue all the things you talk about the of mass incarceration, the incredible inequality with education, the burning up of the planet that barack obama is on the forefront of with the torture of the endless war all the things that this country is doing to people across the planet, anything short of revolution that could address it . The question is what do we mean by revolution . Are we talking about something that is organic and builds from the ground up or do we add up a romanticized version of where we tear things down and all that . I think romanticizing is the realistic. But barack obama his slogan was changing and not a revolution. He did not commit to to be a revolutionary. If he had he would not have been president so we have to work on all fronts. I dont criticize him in public for this reason i the one to give aid and suffering to his enemies are my enemies. [applause] this is not directed toward should you but i do have taken criticism but i try to offer in a constructive way. Barack obama is not the problem. The problem is capitalism. Them dont question the economic structures that are destroying us to treat us like commodities. That is something we have to do from the bottom of to raise consciousness. That is really how we will do little by little. Not one that the need to follow. That brady to organically come together the best we can and to push back and look to change things as we can little five little. One quick thing about obama. Before i say things that will irritate people here, i was in South Carolina Walking Around organizing voters in 2008 that same summer. I gave large sums of money to make sure he was elected president and i served as delegate as a committed Democratic Delegate to make sure nothing crazy at the convention happened with the nomination of with hillary clinton. But that said i get the idea not to criticize in public because they do give to give a guy thought i just wish she felt the same way about us. [applause] the setup will point is we understand very clearly the limitation and a black person does not gotten credit for something they did at their job understand the position in the barack obama is in. So we have a perspective on him but for him to say we have to set limitations of what you can do you could not get a budget passed. You cannot get background checks after the 21st graders were done in connecticut but theyre so sure to make sure there is nothing to point to as your legacy. But when you criticize black people for rioting after am okay was shot on the anniversary of the march on washington and this is what you have to say then you go to more house one of the most respected institutions that we built and attended as access slaves and you will talk about the people who are not taking care of their kids . Then you go to the Congressional Black Caucus and tell them to stop complaining and put on their marching shoes said of the bedroom slippers, whose side are you on . Who are you playing to . I find that unconscionable if you cannot do anything to help poor people we understand but you have the biggest bully pulpit you need to make their lives worse than it already is. [applause] six though this has to be very quick. I will try to talk as legibly as possible papaya professor here in the Community System also a graduate of more house when understand. The question spee suze idea of the limitations of barack obama. I love america so that gives me the right to criticize her but if we recognize the limitations that we elect people we cannot trust the three months later or maybe with their own agenda, where do we go . Does that power shift to the academics when he mentioned that idea . I plus is there. I did that. But we speak about the changing of the culture. I personally dont believe it can happen within the current representative system of political power. You say naacp we are continuing to be pushed back by these voter repression so then where if at all possible . Who wants to take a swing at that . We will agree that that is not the exclusive space for political work but we have all agreed that it is indispensable it is a tactic and part of the repertoire of voting is part of the equation and that has to continue to be important to us. Be a need to have a real conversation about values not with the moralistic way but we have to reassess what matters to us and our political commitments. We talk about mass incarceration as the problem. 2. 5 million it is the most incarcerated station in the history of the world. It is unprecedented. I just want to say something. You will defer . Of course,. I will save the last thing. [laughter] you can have the grand finale. We have to stop massacres rationed obeid need to change the law and learning skills but if you go to prison and when the homes burn in california they let the inmates leave the prison to put out the fires then they get out and cannot because of the record. We laughed but how many of us have those values of crime and punishment and punishment with confinement . You get my in saying . Our whole community construct those people as bad people somebody sold crack they may make a bad decision that is anathema bad person but if you are black you are of a particular sort will not have the level of sympathy so when they see they said that is good. That is fine but 50 years is exorbitance. With a list of things up we criminalize we can put our way into new laws but that value system or a political system borne by political values that we have bought into like violence. Do you hear what i am saying . May need to have a value system shift and to inform the public about them. We need to physically do economic boycotts. [applause] i was so proud of Stevie Wonder is that i will not go. He had the luxury to do that but to just beyond putting on a hoodie beyond our twitter avatar. Said in a career out of time. I apologize i want to say the last comment. Revolution today passed to be a culture. And i have a suggestion how you can start a revolution on this very day. It will begin if every Single Person attending this conference and all your friends and family and facebook friends were to go to the Brooklyn Museum today to ask to see witness the arts and of the civilrights movement. Go in. Look at the desk. Look at the art. To that museum. Flood them. Start with that then the next thing is finding out why you cannot get on public life i in this building. Thank you. [applause] thank you to the profs and does importantly to thank all love you for attending here today your comments and attendance and participation is fantastic. Thank you very much we will have another panel in 20 minutes have a great rest of the day. [applause] if you plant a copy of this discussion there are tapes that are available later. Also very quickly we believe the doing book signings we have been scheduled in the room. Finally the reading series in the auditorium next door. There are tickets left for the fundraiser tonight. If you want to attend go to the front desk and they will let you know,. Thank you so much. [inaudible conversations] is. She is on her way. Without further delay brothers and sisters those of you standing