Transcripts For CSPAN2 Panel Discussion On Race Power And Politics 20140526

[inaudible conversations] hey, once again, good afternoon. And, again, want to welcome you to the National Black writers conference. Again, thank you so much for being a part of this great, great conference. Again, lets give the organizers a big hand for organizing, putting this together. [applause] they always do such a great job, and this panel part of the great job that theyre doing today. Race, power and politics is the title of our panel. Our moderator for the day is wallace ford. His panelists will be Marc Lamont Hill and obery hend distribution, so hendricks, so lets welcome our moderator for the day, wallace ford. [applause] thank you and good afternoon. Good afternoon, hello. Good afternoon. All right, okay. We would like to, first of all, just thank you for coming to the 14th annual black writers conference here at medgar evers college. My name is wallace ford, i am the chairman of the Public Administration department here at the school of business, and im the author of the point of view, contemporary commentary blog soon to be in a book form and also the host of the inclusion show which can be seen in various parts of the country. The introduction today has to do with the topic, of course, race, power and politics. Race and racism has been described as americas original sin beginning with the particularly odious form of raciallybased slavery which gab in this began in this country in the 1600s and which is carried forward in its many iterations to this very day. The issue of power has a threepart context; theres knowledge, theres economics, and theres the political aspect of it, of course. And it is one of the 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. Certainly was also the reason why black slaves were forbidden to own property. And, of course, we see iterations of that again Going Forward even into the 21st century. But after emancipation, the red line, if you will, was drawn at a different point, and that had to do with access to political power. And the battle with respect tos access to political has been going on, i would submit to you, really since emancipation. And weve had the laws and restrictions and the terrorism to keep black people from voting over many years. And here we are in the 21st century, and were still talking about Voter Suppression strategies and legislation being advocated by one major party here in the United States. And so we do have, of course, this notion of race and power now on the political side. Theres been a progression of politics going from, of course, emancipation politics to dealing with issues that weve 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 civil rights certainly has not ended, but its entered into a new phase. And certainly, you know, we had an era of political activity where there was the first black mayor, the first black governor, first black senator and so on in the modern era, and now weve had the first africanamerican president as well. One of the things that panelists 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, and weve got to examine that and just see what it really means this terms of the political activity, the political discourse, the political direction that we see for the black community here in this part of, first part of of e 21st century. So im going to do my job which is a very pleasant one and one that im honored to do which is to introduce our guests. As was already indicated, jeff landny cobb, mr. Mark Marc Lamot Hill and, of course, mr. Obery hendricks and Michelle Wallace. And were going to ask our speakers to speak in that order, and we will then open the discussion up to all of you, pause this is meant to be an interactive event. Im sure our colleagues have much to say that is of and value, and, of course, so do you. So we want to make sure that we have an inclusionary process here today. So with that, and im going to just read from mr. Cobbs bio. Hes an associate professor of history and director of the institute of africanamerican studies. Professor cobb is the author of substance of hope. Barack obama and the paradox of process. The devil and Dave Chapelle and other essays, and a freestyle on the hiphop aesthetic which was a finalist for the National Award for arts writing. And he has a book coming up called antidote to revolution africanamerican anticommunism and the struggle for civil rights. Mr. Cobb has been a featured commentator on msnbc, National Public radio, cnnal aljazeera d a number of other National Broadcast outlets, and you have his twitter line there in the program, and youre certainly urged to follow him as well. With that, its my pleasure, indeed, to introduce professor jelani cobb. Thank you. [applause] one, id like to begin by saying thank you for inviting me. Its an honor to be here. Especially as 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, you know, how this undertaking, this artistic undertaking really worked. So this conference has been key to me in lots of ways over a long period of time, so im very happy to be here to talk with you today. I want when we saw 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 way that we respond to criticism of barack obama. You know, that was most evident to me recently when i made a to bleak criticism of the my brothers keeper. Well come back to that in a minute, of the my brothers Keeper Program and its rather obvious shortcomings, 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, that we are in a point of regression while we appear to be in a point of process. And this is not atypical. To see that there are strains of redepression implicit within something that appears to be progress is not uncommon. So in 2008 we saw the election of the first africanamerican president , something that we saw that none of us ever thought would happen. This 2012 we saw the reelection of an africanamerican president , and these two things have gone hand in hand with a movement to eviscerate the Voting Rights act which people have seen which has been somewhat significantly successful. The ongoing move to make it more difficult for people to have access to the ballot, the ongoing, unchecked excesses of a Prison Industrial Complex, the ongoing issues of income inwallty inewallty, the impact of the housing crisis and so on. So all these dynamics have happened at the same time in which weve seen a black presidency. And in talking about those dynamics, it is often taken as a criticism or referendum on the barack obama presidency. I dont think that anything, it should we should understand it as anything of the sort. Very briefly about my brothers keeper, the concern with that program, 300 million that was raised by the Obama Administration through private philanthropic efforts to support niche thetives relating specifically initiatives relating specifically to young men of color and their particular needs, 300 million sounds like a lot of money, but its actually less than the new york city budget for the parks d. For one year. Department for one year. 300 million spread over five years over young men of color across the United States. And 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 thats really a particular concern here is that it says and, you know, in 1896 when booker t. Washington, 1895 when booker t. Washington gave the atlanta compromise address in which he said politics really could not get black people where we wanted to be, that we had kind of mistakenly placed our faith in politics, that statement galvanized what became the niagara movement, what led into the naacp, what became a centurylong push the attempts to gain Political Rights and to see where we could, how we could use the political system to better our condition. In looking at a africanamerican president who sees disproportionate black male unemployment, sees the circumstances of jordan davis, sees the circumstances of Trayvon Martin and the best response that we can anticipate is that there private philanthropic money, what it says is that we, perhaps, reached the ceiling that booker t. Washington was talking about nearly 120 years ago. That if this is the farthest you can go, the highest, the pinnacle of political expression, your 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 Policy and federal policy level, then it says perhaps we need to revisit what booker t. Washington was saying. Now, i dont want to take it to be seen that i dont think politics is useful. But what i do think, if nothing else, as we look toward the end of the barack Obama Administration, we have to have Difficult Conversations about what are the limitations of politics and what are the things that we, what are the new, Strategic Directions that 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 ill stop there. Thank you, professor cobb. Our next up, we have professor lamont hill, and mark la monday hill is one of the leading hiphop generation intellectuals in the country. His work covers topics such as culture, politics and education has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Hes the author of hiphop pedagogy and the politics of identity. I want to echo the sentiment that this means so much and im grateful to be invited especially doctor brend brenda t has done so much organizing to make this possible. [applause] i hated to go second because i had the sense that he was going to cover interesting stuff that i agree with wholeheartedly. I am equally curious about what this moment means and im struggling to make sense of it in a way that is productive for us because i could spend an hour critiquing the policies but im not sure that would get us as far as other things might. At this moment is so bizarre to me for so many reasons and i will be brief. I wonder if over the last six years we have yielded a moral and Political Authority in deference to the Obama Administration. Are we so excited to have a black president that we are willing to no longer engage in critiques . People argue that w weve paintd the Political Engagement before obama that ira member in being in dc. It might have been free and over four. To resolve this talk about whether it was mass distraction for critiques of empire and all sort of stuff happening and then when i fast forward to now or september i remember we were talking about strikes and libya and people were defending preemptive strikes not retaliatory with the idea that we engaged in the preemptive war and that is the quintessential bush doctrine and the idea that maybe for the first time ive known in American History to be advocates of the war in support of the president ial administration that to me was puzzling and it made me wonder where our center was and where it was going. That was curious to me. We know there are predator drones being struck. We know what happened in bolivia is all this stuff happening and yet we havent had a critique. He talked about the my brothers Keeper Initiative and i cant imagine any other moment we would be celebrating an intervention through the Corporate Philanthropy as opposed to Public Policy. All these moments and i dont hear or see the critique. For 50 years they talked about poverty in a substantive way so it isnt just obama is an outlier as part of every expectation is he would be an an interception and a consistent set of presidencies that are marked by the indifference. That might be the limitation of this form of politics. But what i am curious about because i dont just want to talk about obama and how it is related to capitalism. Im wondering if we can have a different kind of conversation about the state of the capitalism about the role that the marketplace right now in our everyday life from the way in which education continues to be privatized. This is part of the issue of the politics that we have become obsessed with privatization and we have graced the privatization such that they have a kind of appetite because we imagined the privates to be good and to be bad and the public is bad because it is often marked on race terms Public Schooling and public options is marked as black and brown and therefore disposable and as a consequence, we buy into it ourselves. We think of Public Housing not as a subsidy that as a housing in the projects would have used that there is a way the economic agenda is the racial politics and one of the things that concerns me is we are obsessed with destroying the public good. It might be better than no child left behind but in other ways it is governed by the same logic when we see the mass incarceration going from 250,000, 2. 5 Million People incarcerated we see it as a crisis but it isnt just a crisis of crime. Very little of it is a crisis of crying and its not just criminalization although that is important to think about the way that the law is structured that there is a way in which weve created market values that normally normalized incentivize the companies, governments and individuals to support the wall that extend the mass incarceration so we have a conversation about the market and about the role the capitalism is playing in these sectors of our lives we need to do that to have a conversation and i will stop there. [applause] thank you professor hill. Appreciate those comments. We now have as the next speaker purpose or hendrix that is one of the last grand scholars and we received before the Program Began and we are hoping that you are not the last. Hes a former wall street executive and past president of the Theological Seminary the Oldest Institution in the United States. Professor hendrix is currently visiting and religion into professor at the new york Theological Seminary and hes contributed to the Huffington Post and the center for American Progress trustee for the American Public Research Institute in washington, d. C. And a member of the state Department Religion for in policy working group and is the author of living water a novel and the most recent book praised by governor howard dean as justice radical reflections on the bible, the church and the body politic please join me in welcoming professor hendrix. [applause] thank you. Im also glad to be here. I am a longtime participant and supporter and a beneficiary of the literature conference even before i thought about publishing any books. I would like to talk more about the subject but my colleague introduced and that has to do with the intersection of race and power. First we have to remember that race has always been a strategic tool used by the forces of capital to divide the workers is and weaken the workers and keep them from collective rising so that we could continue on with their uninterrupted profit for so they say that we are the problem, but it is a strategic tool that is used. They use the terms like undeserving, welfare queens and all that in their initial rhetoric. And they use this for the plight of Everyday Americans on what we might call the post government in a quality. When they call it to the mid america is really caused by the marketbased inequality. The concept of the post government, this is important. This is the cause of the wealth disparity is not of the capitalist excess crony capitalism and exploitation of workers were outright dishonesty both say that they ignore these factors as having anything to do with the economic suffering and dislocation of struggling workers instead postgovernment and equality says that the daytoday economic struggles of americans are the result of Government Policies that sees peoples income and wealth by way of the federal taxation which is then transferred or, here we go, or redistributed to be used for the benefit of the undeserving tax and spend up your credit score distributed to caricatures of the undeserving poor people which conjures up the image of black folks, supposedly leave the welfare kings and queens. And so as a result we see the spectacle of the poor and struggling toothless wife sometimes railing against the economic shape because they are freighted black folks might benefit, too. They need to pray there is redistribution so they might be able to live a little bit better. And then theres what we might call, one economist calls the aristocratic racism, the species of social darwinism and its the attitude of wealthy elites may be most particularly corporate, and especially those of the vienna heritage like the coke brothers as an attitude that the rich are entitled only to eat more from the tree of life than those beneath them on the economic ladder but also, to run the entire nation. They think it is their right. The rich are not just different from the non rich, that that they are a superior human subspecies. If aristocratic racism says that the non rich deserve fewer life chances, then of course africanamericans are seeing all the more undeserving of economic inequality. So here again, we get to the least beneficial end of the policy under the attitudes of the aristocratic race. What can be the goal of the elite strategic use of racism . Wine is to distract American People from focusing on the capitalist policies and practices that militate against the good of society. For example we have the American Legislative Exchange council funded by the Koch Brothers and the legislatures and the country and many of them propose propose bill without changing a word to become the law. Look what happened with stand your ground for instance with Trayvon Martin to take one case. The whole nation became distracted by what happened with the stand your ground law. They are looking at life in prison and we see this energy and focus is on these kind of things on the ground but we might ask ourselves why would they fund an organization out of stand your ground applause . The people in their class are never threatened by anything or anyone. They have armies of bodyguards. They do it because it distracts us from looking at their practices. To distract us from looking at one of the ten greatest polluters in america. We dont get what is going on in the pipeline. The support of Keystone Pipeline they say that its because of jobs. America needs jobs but we dont even see that 1. 1 million acres and that is estimated at is around the keystone area and they are estimated to make between 50 to 100 million if this pipeline is two provisions of its one reason that they use race to distract us from what is being done in another reason the corporate capitalists into the wealthy elites use racism and race as a strategy is to disempower working people, so they cannot effectively struggle for the true economic democracy in the workplace. Keep us angry and looking at each other and pointing fingers when they are making billions of dollars and another reason for the strategy is to create a poor and a less educated scapegoating the labor pool that can even more easily be exploited with less than living wage wages. They are trying to dismantle Public Education by sponsoring local politicians who favor private indication as the professor pointed to. Also, that by resegregation be example im talking about on segregating it, again, the Koch Brothers through the american liberty Prosperity Organization they founded the largest successfully elected local School Board Members and weak county North Carolina with words like neighborhood schools, neighborhood education to get them to dismantle the program they had that was very successful and that the students were not arguing about metadata to this Diversity Program that allowed a real interaction. Its very important because when we have mostly black schools we know that we get the short end of the stick again. We get the fewest resources. We dont always get the strongest teachers and often even fewer programs and then also they are trying to affect this by voter disenfranchisement and the chance to demolish whatever democracy we do have by conjuring up images of cheating voters and achieving black voters. Now this is very important. They are trying to dismantle the democracy. They are even trying to get the 17th amendment to the constitution repealed which gives voters the right to elect their own senators. They actually want to dismantle the franchise. We are concerned about stand your ground and that they are getting away with murder and we also see these corporate libertarian types doing their best. Paul ryan is just a poster boy right now with that foolishness hes talking about but 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 struggle is economic, economic democracy in the workplace to say that we must seek racism as a tool of capitalism so we must be involved as Martin Luther king said in class warfare. We must fight for economic democracy in the workplace. There is no democracy in the workplace. Think about it to say i disagree with this policy in cuba that youre working papers. So that is the fight we must see it as a tool of the capitalist order working to disempower workers so they can have more of the control over our lives and our life chances. Im going to ask our colleagues they are going to be broadcasting images on the screen. Michelle wallace is a scholarly intellectual furthering the work of the decolonization since her first brave and Controversial Book black macho and the myth of the superwoman published in 1979. [applause] some people are telling their age in the process. [laughter] her other books include the black popular culture, dark designs and visual culture and indivisible blues from ppapa to theory. Her attention to the visibility and worthy fetishes of black women in the gallery and museum have made possible the Critical Thinking of the race and gender in to their culture particularly in what has been called the gap around the psycho Analytic Focus of the African American political discourse. Presently, ms. Wallace, professor wallace teaches at the Graduate Center at the City University of new york and please join me in welcoming professor wallace. [applause] im here today to talk about my mother faith. [applause] she is a world renowned artist and we are trying to do a powerpoint, but we cant get it to project as we wish. If we can get that light right there. Its probably two things. One, theres a problem. Number two i is a large powerpoint. And so i think maybe theres some part of the system that isnt able to see that its like 160 images. I have to do this because my mother is here. [applause] i want to introduce her in a moment. You dont spend all the timee apologizing for things that are not going to happen. We focused on the work of the 70s because it is such a large array of work much of it would be very relevant to discussions of my other panelists who were excellent, but lately you can see the revitalization of the 60s work with some of the writing that ive done. There was the show of the acm and there is a catalog in which i wrote a crucial essay and there is a show right now in the Brooklyn Museum called witness which includes three works which they have purchased. But anyway, they are in their collection. And these works you are never going to find this out because they dont want to print the title because the title of the most important work they have is called fly us back to the moon and it was done the year the United States landed on the mo moon. The word is die nigger and who would have thought that the light press is so afraid of that word that it is a very attractive flag painting or an American Flag or anything but die nigger flag for the moon. They almost hadnt thought of painting because you have to do their bit for a while before you can see that it says that. Its one of her black night paintings from the 60s. Anyway, that work and another work of study now that comes out of the Civil Rights Movement and particularly. They were integrating the university. 2015 i will point out. Now my mission is to bring to the public the 70s work. Her story quotes and jemima and shes also known for her childrens books, tar beach being the most famous of them. And her work is in the collection of all of 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 or in 1980 i was 28. In 1979, i did black macho. When i did a black macho after having spent my life living in a house with an artist that produced the work that you see behind you, producing the work that you see behind you and who was a black feminist and who i was actively engaged with all the time i didnt mention that. And we have often talked about why. Number one come in excuse for myself, number one i didnt know how to mention it and number two i wasnt to do so by my editors or publishers. I was to marginalize my mother in my work and her only presents ipresenceis that it is dedicatey mother and she did the picture on the back of the book and actually they misspelled her picture credit. I cant remember what it was. It was some kind of way they did that so we had some issues. 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 i want to do an exhibition project in the book and im doing a book called my mother might use my mentor. My mother, my muse, my mentor. I developed my life to doing this. My mom is so wonderful. I love you mom. [applause] so, im going to ask the people in control to turn the lights oflight offso that the camera ce screen rather than me as i know they are able to do on cspan. The guy in the booth is going to just slowly roll through the selection of the work. Ive told this down from the 300 works that she produced in the 70s and this is 160 of them. It includes and begins with some pictures of the political activity. I also chose the 70s because this is the Political Panel and the work in the 70s was all political. So i guess we are not going to get the lights off. Housewives . That does look better. You can see the work in the 1970s. Im starting my process by i started by constructing a master chronology of all of the work in order by medium and this is the period but in the 60s they only produced paintings. This is the period they started using other media and this is the reason. I was 19 or 18 or something. And then theres another picture of her with the judson three. She got arrested desecrating the flag because she does flag art. Partly the arrest was because of the painting thats now at the Brooklyn Museum on the walls. Were going to go see it today. Then these are political posters. Roll it up a little bit. Those are details of the, for the womens house which she did in 1971 as an installation for the womens prison. She wanted to give it to a 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 likers island. Rikers island. So she went there and asked them what they wanted to see. And this was her first, maybe her only painting, entirely devoted to women. Because she had become a feminist. So everybody in the painting is a woman, and it shows women doing things we really didnt ordinarily get to do in the 1970s like play drums. The little, the white woman who has the baby in her lap, reading to her from a book on rosa parks. And theres a bus driver, we cant have that. We didnt have that. Doctor whos teaching at a university. Theres a lady running for president. Theres a woman marrying somebody. Theres a woman cop. Anyway, thats all blah now. Keep rolling. And then weve got selections of political landscapes that she did. This is a series she did for shirley chism. 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. Then, roll. 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 [inaudible] commemorating ooh, great. I didnt even expect that much time. Okay. So i can point out the United States vatica is up there. That was commemorating the awful thing that happened at attica in 1971. We were all so grieved about that. And then, of course, some of 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. These are the feminist series. She began to do tonkas that she could roll up, that she didnt have to stretch and that she could travel around with. 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 her work. And these are feminist landscapes. She got the idea from seeing tibetan tonkas in amsterdam. She had the idea of doing landscapes, which she loves to paint landscapes, and putting the words, quotations from important black women and black feminists historically. And so the way you do on a city bet tan tonka tibetan tan ca, you have words. Then she got into the slave rage series which is dedicated to black women and slavery in tonkas in which she wants to its 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. See whats happening because its so big, its taking a while for the images to load. I dont know what kind of projector this is, but usually when people do powerpoints, you know, they have two or three images. I dont know what thats about. [laughter] anyway, these are the [inaudible] that she did, family of women. Keep rolling. Roll on. And then she started doing dolls. Family of women were her, the women shed grown up with. Roll on, keep rolling. This is windows of the wedding. She wanted me and barbara to get married, and so she started doing wedding art. [laughter] and these were, like, stained glass windows. Roll on. This is Wilt Chamberlain who wrote a notorious book at the time about black women. She started doing sculptures of him and also his wife and children. And then she started doing wedding couples, full sculpture, hanging them all around. Id go to house, and everything was a wedding. And she was trying to work on us to get us married. [laughter] in her own special way. Keep going. [laughter] okay. The wakened resurrection of the bicentennial negro. Roll on. Just roll. All of this is work she started to do when shed been to africa. Just roll on to the end. Im done. Thank you so very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] okay. Thank you again, professor wallace, appreciate it. Thank you. A round of applause, please. [applause] and thank you for the gift of your ipad here. [laughter] thank you very much, wallace. We are going to get right to our discussion part. As i mentioned at the beginning, this is meant to be an interactive experience here. We certainly enjoyed our initial comments from our guest speakers. What id can ask is that if you would i think we have a microphone, well, we have a microphone over here. If you feel you can speak without a microphone, thats fine, but oh, no, you need to speak to the microphone. Ive just been, gotten a very subtle message from somebody waving in the back saying speak into the microphone. So if you have a question for one of the panelists, id ask you to come forward. In the interest of time, theres an expression that sometimes everything has been said but not everybodys said it, and so we dont want to get into that. [laughter] so wed ask is that if you have a question for one of our commentators, please address it to either the entire panel or one individual, and id say to my colleagues, if youd like to just chime in at that point with any additional comments, and well just move on and see how we go from there. So with that, and if youd introduce yourself, please. Thank you. Thank you. My name is yvette moore, United Methodist women. First, thank you to ms. Rhine gold for all of the books that you gave my children coming up. We really enjoyed your books. [applause] my question has to do with something marc hill, lamont hill said about privatization, and it has to do with Public Schools. We all see the commercials for the Charter Schools, you know . And they have a little thing on the bottom that says paid for by Charter School parents, but we know that the Charter School parents had that kind of money, their children would be in private school, and we wouldnt be having that. And i see theres a battle, theyre trying to make the brown folks fight, you know . How do you, how, how do you organize against that kind of money . When i was wondering if i saw that, paid for by Charter Schools, i turned the channel, you know, one commercial had gone off, literally, another one was on. I said, oh, yeah, because you saw it again. But this brown v. Board of education type inequality is going on inside the same building when the Charter Schools come in, they get renovated. The other children cant get books, cant get dont have libraries. And i know that that happened to the Excellent School that my children went to. How do you organize against that . Yeah. I mean, to me, organizing work is always connected to political education. So part of what needs to happen is people need to understand the nature of Charter Schools and why they could be problematic. And im not, like, the enemy of Charter Schools per se. Im frustrated with how theyre being used. Charter schools were designed to be sort of laboratories of experimentation and innovation. So we would move a wed have a Charter School, and we would try new teaching techniques, some new approach that we would then distribute to the larger Public School system. Charter schools are publicly funded, theyre often privately run sometimes by corporations, sometimes by people, sometimes by different strands of people. So for me, the problem isnt Charter Schools in that way, its the way in which theyre being used to dismantle the broader project. Political possibilities is dismantling Public Education. Because the language is itself unproblematic. Who doesnt want choice . Choice is seen as something fundamentally american. So the language of choice gets used to smuggle in a particular type of political vision and strategy. Charter schools are problematic because, one, they strip away large layers of funding from the broader Public School system, and they go to these pockets where not everyone has equal access to them. Charter schools have the opportunity to not take students who have emotional disabilities, intellectual disabilities, they have the opportunity to send kids back when they dont like how theyre performing. Often times their performance on state exams are different because they can throw back the ones they dont want. But not with the funding, which becomes really tricky. Theres also what we call a creaming effect. Typically, the most engaged parents, those are the ones who often access the Charter Schools first. And so you cream off the top 1015 performing students and most engaged parents, and Public Schools are left with less parental involvement than even before. We called mainstreaming, youd have a balance of students connected with each other, engaged parents and not engaged parents, now theyre all in one room, and everybody else is in this other room. Forgive me, i dont want to go too long. But it creates, it creates lots of problems. And then the other problem is there have been new tax credits developed for Charter School building, right . So a lot of the money that was going into Public Schools is going into private corporations coffers for the ostensible purpose of building Charter Schools. So what we see is the strengthening of a private wealth under the guise of Public Education. Lot of people dont understand that. They persuade parents, dont you want a choice . Rich people get to go to private school. Now you get to go to one. The other thing is most of these schools dont work. [applause] theyll pick the three that do, but thats like me going to bronx science and saying all Public Education works, right . Its not a fair comparison. So, i mean, first what we have to do is organize parents by giving them the information. But we also cant be dismissive or condescending to parents, particularly those of us who have class privilege, and say these parents got the world wrong. If there is a School District that is better and it is a Charter School [inaudible] sometimes it is, sometimes its in the same building, sometimes its upstairs. They literally annex it out. So i dont get mad at parents for making decisions that are best for their children. What we have to do is create a universe where there are good options that dont come at the expense of other people. And that means we have to be on these school boards, advocate for sitebased selection of Public Education so that the traditional schools also have teachers and administrators and School Board Members that matter. We have to organize and do the work. We have to vote in people who have an agenda of Public Education, not just a de blasio vision of what Public Education should look like which often is leaning on corporate interest. Again, it comes down to political education and organizing. Okay, thank you. Next please. [applause] good afternoon. My names jason harris. Im from baltimore, new futurism. Com. 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. Like, that was a thing that had an outcome that forced an entrenched policy to be changed. So in this day and age now were saying weve 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 this any strategies that are there any strategies that youve identified in your research that work as far as creating something that communities can agree on and pursue and have success with in regards to economics . Okay. Anyone in particular want to take that . Yes. Thats a good question. Brother, i appreciate that. Just did a trilogy of articles on Martin Luther king for the Huffington Post. First two are in the archives, you can look them up under my name. Is last one is why Martin Luther king had to da. And it focuses on the Poor Peoples Campaign. What Martin Luther king understood and what we have to understand is that we need a real countervailing force against the forces of capitalism and wealth. And we dont really have that. Unions are the closest that we have. So we have to really start organizing, for one thing, supporting unions again, fighting against the demonization of unions. I mean, how can people praise donald trump and demonize union workers, folk who really work . And, in fact, most of the rights that we take for granted came through unions. So we must focus on structuring unions again. We also have to, with the Poor Peoples Campaign king selfconsciously found several broad principles and broad goals that would encompass most of the people in america, this Poor Peoples Campaign, and to bring people together with common interests to fight against those who are 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 interests and realize that it really is us against them, as king said, in almost a class warfare sense. Those who are in power are doing everything they can to push back and to dismantle and to disempower. And they almost, its almost like they cohere into a corporate class against us, but were, you know, fighting with these different groups sometimes against one another. So im saying the first step, brother, is to identify some real commonalities and try to bring people together around economic commonalities. And one commonality, of course, is the concept of economic democracy. We have at least formal democracy everywhere in american life, at least formally anyway, except the workplace where we spend most of our waking hours. And that is a travesty and a tragedy. But most people dont see it that way. We have to raise consciousness and say, look, we are in a state of neofeudism. Those who are in control tell us how long we work, whether we can go home, if were sick, whether we can go home and see our childrens programs in school, that kind of thing. I think that is a broad, a really broad interest, set of interests that affects all people. And i think thats something we need to really Start Talking about and try to get together common interests and push aside as much as we can those things that divide us. Thank you. Yes, next, please. With hi. Good afternoon. Im sorry, the youd introduce yourself, please . Oh, my name is deborah scotters, i am from this area, crown heights. Ive been a single mother, three boys i raised all by myself in this School System in this area, and i watched. Charter schools are nothing new. Its new for us, because the money are our community has always went to another group in crown heights, and they all had the private schools. I had to fight as a single mother not only against the system to educate my boys and send them to private school, but there was a whole challenge between the church, class privilege amongst us ourselves who totally had a ceiling this high that if you was a single participant be, your kid, your children wasnt good enough. So we held each other. We hold ourselves back. For example, when i came along, i raised my children in the church, and i say today where is the church . My children do not want to go to church. We have mega ministers with mega dollars. They own planes, they own jets. I dont see any money being put back in the neighborhood. Theyre not building schools so we can have our own Charter Schools. We talk about what everybody does to us, and then quietly we dont say what we do to ourselves. We have to lift up our young men. I cant ask another culture to lift up our boys and make them be the men they are when our churches have failed them. And my question is, how cowe deal with that how do we deal with that, and id like mr. Hendricks to answer that. And mr. Cobb, i would like for you to answer about economics. When i opened up the paper and i look at beyonce spending thousands of dollars to get her hair done, jayz spending another 7,000 to have his barber come to get his hair done, and then they build a stadium, are they putting money back into our society . We have money. We need to stop acting as if we are begging and so needy. We need to build. We need hospitals. We need them to give money. Thats a good question, yeah. And we are not making them accountable. So my question to you is i how can we make people within our own society stop doing the class thing good. The church has money, plenty of it. Hiphoppers okay. Okay. Thank you. [laughter] okay, just Going Forward, i was just going to say were going to ask one question per customer. But you got in before the wire on that so, yes, please, professor hendrickss and professor cobb. In terms of churches, theres not a hot to be said thats not a lot to be said thats not obvious. Theres some real problems with churches today. For one thing, churches are so inwardlooking. Theyre more about institutional may not neighbors than what maintenance than what theyre supposed to be about, that is changing the society. [applause] we have a problem with too many ministers do not know what theyre talking about. They do not understand that when jesus talked about more than anything except god was poor people and poverty. That jesus said the spirit of the lord is upon me, anointing me to preach good news to the poor. Whats good news to the poor other than youre going to change the systems and structures and relationships that make people poor and keep them poor . What we have to do, i think, is Start Holding these preachers feet to the fire if we can. The problem is that many of these churches are so performanceoriented that people dont go to them because they want to be part of a progressive body, they often go to be, not be congregations, but to be an audience, you know . To be entertained. And so part of it is i think we need to lean on the churches some, but dont expect so much from them unless theyre already going in that direction. Because today with those prosperity [inaudible] and all that and like you said the planes and everybodys got to be a bishop or something, theyre just not this if they were really about changing the world like their faith is supposed to tell em to do, then our society would be very different. Our communities would be very different. I dont think that they are really the ones we should be going after, unfortunately, even though most of our people, so many of our people and resources are there. I think were going to have to come up with countervailing forces despite them because folk are going there too often to have fun. Professor cobb, i believe the question was also addressed to you. [applause] or the second question was, yeah j. Im going to be as succinct as possible. [inaudible conversations] i want to be as succinct as possible. I think that about jayz and beyonce, we all remember when our great elder, Harry Belafonte, mentioned i guess that was about ten months ago now, eight months ago now that he didnt think jayz and beyonce were doing enough with the resources that they have. And, you know, people thought that they could criticize mr. Belafonte as just another one of the civil rights generation criticizing, you know, younger black folk. And, you know, i was in the middle of twitter fights. I think marc was probably in it too. No, no, you dont understand, you dont have the standing to talk to Harry Belafonte [laughter] right. [applause] i think he referred to him as a boy at one point. Yeah. He referred to him in a rap song. And its like, look, thats someone whos from a different generation, but, you know, i know im an academic and im an intellectual, but a whole different other side of me comes out if you want to disrespect him like that, because thats my brother. You cant talk to him like that. Moreover, you dont have the standing because this man risked his life, literally risked his life. When they needed to bring money to sncc in 964 because he and Sidney Poitier flew down there, not that nothing could happen to them, but that the government would be forced to investigate if something did. So thats who, thats who this man is, right . But that said, that said, i think we should be hesitant to rely upon or to expect that from the celebrity model of entertainer. We live in a different point, and i think we need to recognize that because of capitalism and moreover the capitalism culture, jayz and beyonce are just somatic of a much bigger set of concerns. And we can talk about this, its not unrelated to the pastors and the preachers and so on. What we have to do is actually go about the hard work of building a culture that can sustain itself, that can reject the values, and this dose for [applause] us across all sorts of different lines. I know to not be afraid to say things that will get you into trouble. The last thing ill say about that is this in term of our institutions and what were willing to fight over, yesterday johnson publications, ebony magazine did something i thought was unconscionable, unconscionae should all talk about this. Theyre ebonymag on twitter. A writer had a dispute, a minor dispute with a person who is a press person for the Republican Committee, and she said i dont want a white person to tell me about being black. As it turned out, this person was black and took offense to it. She apologized for assuming that he was white, but then the conversation continued, like i basically still dont care what you have to say. Which is perfectly within her rights. She did apologize for assuming the person was white. Hes also Juan Williams son. If we know anything about Juan Williams with, the flagrant sexual harasser and this is in the record, go google and the reactionary person that he is, im not surprised his son works on behalf of the Republican National committee. However, ebony magazine saw fit when the Republican Committee demanded an apology for the tweet, ebony magazine, the Publishing Company that published the picture of emmett tills desecrated body, kowtowed and apologized to the Republican National committee. And so what i said to them on twitter, i was, like, no, you apologize to the republicans when they apologize for gutting the Voting Rights act. [applause] and so if we have institutions, it is our own fault if we dont hold them accountable. Okay. Thank you. Next question, please. Thank you. [applause] thank you, dr. Ford. My name is sylvia canard, im an attorney for this constitution. For this institution, and thank you very much for your comments. Last year we actually gave a Lifetime Achievement award to ms. Faith ring gold, so its a delight and an honor to see her here again. My question to the panel is this you talked about the tentacles of capitalism that cuts across a number of areas in our culture and society. And i specifically wanted to hope in on hone in on the conversation about the Prison Industrial Complex particularly as it relates to the commercialization of black labor behind bars. And im wondering if there is a way for us to think about triple, how do we flip this conversation to expand entrepreneurialism particularly among our young men, but among our people . Because we are in a Global Economy where you can do business from brooklyn to beijing on the internet. And so how do we begin to raise this conversation to think about how do we recapture our labor and the efforts of our labor that are now being exploited behind bars for so many young people who could not get jobs outside on the streets but are somehow being trained to do computer consoles and software designs behind prison walls. So if you can address that, please. Because particularly, we have so many opportunities to do business in not just the caribbean, but in africa, china has basically taken over, africa. So how do we recapture that which is ours from an economic and on this global stage . Thank you. Anyone want to take a try at that . [inaudible conversations] sure, please. This is a really Quick Response to this. Im a historian, so i think about these things in the long term. So we all talk about a threefifths compromise, we know what that is in the constitution, that the slave population would be counted as threefifths of a person in the house of representatives. The threefifths compromise was undone by the 14th amendment, ratified 1868 so that every individual whos born in this country is a full citizen, and it was undoing of the threefifths compromise, it was also undoing the dred scott decision of 1857. So what happened out of this . This was an attempt by northern republicans to between the. 14th and 15th amendments to create a new Political Class in the south, and thats out of the newlyemancipated black people that would be a check, an electoral political check on the political power of southern democrats who had torn the country in half to defend their right to hold black people as slaves. So you say we can create a population that will vote as republicans, then we can actually diminish their ability  influence in National Affairs that they once had. It did not play out like that because the 14th and 15th amendments actually served to give more power to southern whites than they had before the civil war. Because now if youre counting the entire population, so as opposed to just 60 , youre counting 100 of the population. So that means youre entitled to more representation, more revenue from taxes and so on. But if you can reduce that population to a group of people who cannot vote through terrorism, through physically brutalizing people out of political contention, you now have even more political power than you had then. And so, you know, historians say whats past is prologue. So we look at where people are being incarcerated. We look at the communities. People come from communities like in the one. They come from communities like the community i lived in, like the community i lived in and i grew up in southeast queens. And they are sent and incarcerated in largely rural white areas. So theyre now counted in the census as residents of these rural white areas. And so in 2014 you have the same net effect that you had in 1872 in tennessee, in 1874 in georgia or mississippi and so on, and that is block bodies being used to give disproportionate power and influence to white people electorally and politically. This is not simply about a matter of we need to get rid of stop and frisk. We need to deal with the actual infrastructure which is designed to put limits, hard limits on the political capacity of black people. The last thing ill say about this is this a reporter called me and wanted to know if i thought there would be another black president in my lifetime, and i said, you know, well, i compared barack obama to jack johnson in 1908. 1908 jack johnson became the heavyweight champion, and there were riots in the street. 2008 a black man became president and, you know, there was black people doing the electric slide in the street. And were saying we can neatly bookend about that. But if we go about that, was jack johnson existed as heavyweight champion, the athletic infrastructure made sure that no other black person got a chance to contend again until joe lewis nearly 30 years later. And so it was like the biggest obstacle to you having another black rest is that the forces who are adversarial to us now know it is possible for a black person to become president. And so these are the dynamics were talking about. This is reconstruction, postreconstruction again. The same tactics, the same motivations and trying to create the same outcomes which is disempowerment and black people being reduced to nonentities in american society. Thank you. Yes, please. [applause] first, i want to thank Michelle Wallace for bringing the incredible artwork to this room. [applause] could you introduce yourself, please . Yes. My names connie julian, i am part of a movement to build revolution in a time when everything that has been said in this room today, to me, advocates for that. And nothing less. And it would be one thing if there was no way to make a revolution, if it was impossible and everything that people in the 60s tried to do is now proven to be impossible. No, its not. People should come talk to me. Bob avakian has a strategy for revolution that could actually work and a society youd want to live in. The question i have for you is could you, i mean, disagree with me when i say that barack obama is one of the best arguments for why capitalism cannot do anything for the people of the world and black people in this country and that can you really argue that all the things youre talking about the mass incarceration, the incredible, savage inequality within the education, the burning up of the planet which barack obama is on the fore front of, the torture, you know, endless war, all of these things that this country actually is doing to people across the planet is there anything short of revolution that could actually address it . The question is, question is what do you no, youre fine. You can i think the question is, you know, what do we mean by revolution. And thats, you know, do we have, are we talking about something that is orr begannic organic and gradually builds from the ground up, raising peoples consciousness or do we have some romanticized version like we had in the black nationals movement . I was part of that, i was a soldier, where were going to tear things down. I think the last one is not realistic. Barack obama, i think its important that his slogan was change and not revolution. He did not come in to be a revolutionary, of course. And if he had, well, if he was a revolutionary, he could not have been president. So i think we have to be working on all fronts. I dont vociferously criticize barack obama in public for this reason, i dont want to give aid and shelter to the enemies. His enemies are my enemies. [applause] so i do and this is not directed towards you, but i do have critiques and criticisms of him, but i try to offer them in a constructive way. [applause] barack obama is, ultimately, not the problem though. The problem is capitalism. The problem is that were not questioning the economic structures that are destroying us and treating us like that is comodifying us like were things. Martin luther king said thingfying us. Thats what we have to do from the bottom up, raise consciousness, try to get some of these preachers to, you know, do some reading and thinking about changing the world, and i think thats how were going to do little by little. I dont think theres any one leader that we need to follow. No, i dont think theres any one leader anymore. I think we just need to organically come together as best we can and question and push back and look to change things as we can. Hitting by little. I say one really quick thing about obama. I felt that way about barack obama. And before i say things that will irritate people here, ill let people know, i was in South Carolina in 100 degree heat walking around, organizing voters in 2008 in North Carolina in that same summer doing the same thing. I gave large sums of money to make sure that he was elected president , and i served as delegate in 2008, as a committed Democratic Delegate in 2008 to make sure that nothing crazy at the convention happened where the nomination was given to hillary clinton. That said, i get this idea of not criticizing barack obama in public so that you dont give aid and succor to his enemies, i just wish barack obama felt the same way about us. [applause] there you go. [applause] and so because the point, the definitive point at which i broke with that administration was we understand, we understand very clearly the limitations any black person whos ever not gotten credit for something they did at their job understands the position that barack obama is in. [applause] and so we have a particular kind of empathetic perspective on him. But for him to then say we understand the limitations of what you can do, you cant even get a budget passed, you couldnt get background checks after those 20 first graders were machine gunned in connecticut because these people are so committed to making sure that therell be nothing you can point to as your positive legacy in this country. I understand that. Were all clear. But when you turn around and criticize black people for rioting after Martin Luther king was shot at the anniversary of the march on washington, and this is what you have to say a, and then when you turn around and go to morehouse, one of our most respected institutions which we built and attended as exslaves and anchor ourselves in that tradition of learning and you have to talk about the people who are not taking care of their kids. And then you turn around and go to the Congressional Black Caucus and tell them to stop complaining and put their marching shoes on take off their bedroom slippers and so on, im then wondering, well, exactly whose side are you on . What exactly are you playing to . I find that unconscionable. If you cant do anything to help poor people, we understand. But dont use the biggest bully pulpit in the world to make their lot any worse than it already is. [applause] okay. We have one more question here. Okay. So they are telling me this has to be really, really quick. Im going to introduce myself and talk as legibly as possible. My name is ervin, im a professor here at hunter and in Queensboro Community be college, im also a graduate of morehouse, so i understand what youre saying. My question, actually, speaks to this idea of the limitations that you mention of barack obama. Obviously, James Baldwin famously said i love america, that gives me the right to criticize her, right . But that point being, so if we recognize the limitations of Representative Democracy in the sense that we elect people that we may not be able to trust, you know, two months later or three months later or maybe inserting their own agenda at times, where should we go . Is that power now shifting to the academics when there was a time, you know, you mentioned that whole idea of, look, there i us with in that heat, i did that, but we all speak about this changing of the culture. I dont, i personally and maybe this is my own choice dont believe that it could happen within our current Representative Democracy, you know, system of political power. Granted, you know, you guys are saying naacp, all these things happen, we need to keep fighting for these, but we are continuing to be pushed back by these laws or these voter oppression things. Where should we shift the at all possible as as opposed to relying solely on the political all right. Who wants to take a swing at that first, please . I professor hill . I think we all agree that electoral politic isnt the exclusive space for political work, but i think weve all sort of agreed that its an indispensable space. I think its strategy, i think its a tackic. Its part of the repertory. And i think its always been. We didnt vote our way in 64 65. Voting is part of the equation, but so is marching, sitting in, so is all the other work that we do. And i think that has to continue to be important to us. I think part of what we need to do is have a real conversation about values, and i dont mean that in the rightwing, moralistic sort of way. What i mean is that we have to reassess what matters to us. And we have to assess our political commitments. Ill give you an example just to make it concrete. We all have talked about mass incarceration as a problem, right . 2. 5 million africanamericans being imprisoned. We incarcerate more than anybody else. Historically, unprecedented. Wallace . Yes. Im sorry, i just want to say something. Go ahead. You going to defer . Of course. Because i was going to say the last thing. Okay. [laughter] ill let you do the grand finale. So then the question is we need to stop mass incarceration, but we also these a and we also need to change laws. The problem is you go to prison, and you learn how to be a firefighter, and when rich peoples homes burn in california, they literally let the inmates leave to fight the fires, and then they get out of prison and cant fight fires because of their felony record. Were loving, but how many of us also have a certain value system around crime and punishment . Is how many of us equate justice with punishment and punishment with confinement . Do you get what im saying . When someone has a drug addiction, we in our own community conduct those people as bad people. That doesnt make a bad person. The problem is we bought into it that if youre a black woman on crack in particular, youre a person of a particular sort, and so when you end up with 20 years in prison, we dont have the level of sympathy for the white boy in his college dorm getting high on cocaine or marijuana. Or the same people who are abolitionists when they see Kwame Fitzpatrick in jail for 50 years, maybe he should be in jail, but for 50 jeers is 50 years is exorbitant. We can vote our way into new laws to some extent, but if we have a value system that still is informed by or a political system that is informed by particular values that we bought into it like permanent war, like violence, like you get what im saying . Thats why i keep going back to political education. I think we need to have a shift and a conversation about what our values are and then inform the public about them. I think we need to physically do economic boycotts. That worked in montgomery, that needs to continue to happen. I was so proud of Stevie Wonder for saying hes not going to florida as long as stand your ground is on the books. What kind of strategic, targeted boycott could we engage in beyond just putting on hoodies on our twitter avatars, right . Thats not enough. You get what im saying . Close to our time. Okay, i apologize. Okay. I just want to say the last thing. The lard word. The last word. Okay . Penultimate. The revolution today has got to be a culture. And i have a suggestion for 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 all your family and all your facebook friends were to gy 2q the Brooklyn Museum today and ask to see witness, the