Transcripts For CSPAN3 History Bookshelf Danny Glover The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 20180217

Card image cap



take part in this amazing group of people we have here. professor at this teach about things the black power mixtape. have such an amazing group of powerhouse folks here, don't you think? [applause] >> i would also like to thank you as our audience. it means you recognize and support this ongoing work and the commitment of these cultural warriors we have in our midst, and we are continuing in the ,truggle for human rights equality, and freedom of speech. so the struggle continues. i would like to frame the conversation we will have around this issue. we have a lot of young people in the audience. what ise relate presented in the book and the film? that weth this in mind would like to emphasize the impact of this film and the book. ,ere we are at the new school an institute of higher education, and we are all educators in one way or the other. generations3-4 this this film documented period. we are excited and overwhelmed it is possible to have this here today. question to our panelists is what was the impetus for you to put yourselves on the front line in this struggle? brian, you were a little younger. you can tell us last. but kathleen and danny, i would like to hear what you thought your initial impetus was. in reality, the impetus in my case, i had been wanting to join for a long time, but by the time joined ano it, i organization that was in the process of getting committed to black power -- i was -- and i met people involved with the black panther party and ended up november california in afterwhich was 4-5 weeks healy newton was in an altercation and wound up in prison charged with murder, a policeman dead, and he was facing the gas chamber. the leader of the black panther said it is more huey'sant to save yo life. huey out.e have to get the impetus was a man who had started a revolutionary movement was facing the gas chamber, so we said let's do it. let's free huey. didn't have to go anywhere. i was born and raised in san francisco, and i remember specifically the number of 1966, and i had been attending the ,lack panther party of america and i had been attending their meetings that summer and there was a storefront in my community . about tome time, i was go back to school, so i was spending time at san francisco state as well. there was this large influx of in otheromen involved groups who mitch regulated to san francisco. sanchez.ke sonia son those are the kind of things that happened. connection because ande were former members hadblack student union gained control of the associated 1967.t budget by spring were starting a communications project. once the block party took action after bobby hutton death and huey's arrest, the whole area was on fire. everything was drawn to that right there. we begin to develop a relationship with the black it has party, and if not been for that radicalization's, we might not have gone on strike in , we might not have gone on strike. was ourhe party that biggest supporter during that strike that brought in other people. educationd political classes together, so as the party was going through an intense period, at the same time we were mutually supportive of had other come because it become a mass strike, and also supporting the party and do whatever we could do. >> actually you had quite a few students who were panthers in the bsu. >> that is the other thing. , we were not radical enough. some of us joined the black panther party. >> amazing. >> wow. >> brian? >> as a toddler, i was deeply committed to black power. [laughter] >> it was inborn. obviously i was a toddler. , i amistening to you talk struck by the enthusiasm and energy you have for these moments now, still, and i think there is something about this for and book that raises new generation that has not yet tasted what it feels like to collective power. you are clapping because we should walk around thinking that, but we don't, and that is why i am excited to be sitting do anything i can for myself and others to teach about this movement to go back to the questions that were ,aised, this question of power can we do things and change things? i watched this film with my father, who was not involved in he had nont, but personal connection to any of the people you are describing, but this film -- he turned to me and said, you know what, brian, these people kicked in the door's that i walked through. humanized people and he was over and over again struck by their intelligence, charisma, that they were saying things that made so much sense. why they want to bury the black power tradition and are still after the black power militants and why the history of ringing this back to life is important, still matters, and is a dangerous. >> so made things happened in oakland and san francisco at the time. i met hank johnson 1966 when we were going to meetings in the fillmore and they were trying to put some sort of stopgap on redevelopment, removal from their homes, but i met hank there and other people who were part of the black panther party, and the way in which was so amazing, and this comes from all , their organizing capacity. the bsuwhat happened to was our organizing ability. those elements that came to the wasy were part of what happening at an incredible moment, and is sent san francisco state was a teaching tenlege, it had tend to tutorial centers around the city , and we always said, how do we use that as a platform for mobilizing the community around education. you guys have party answered my next question, but i always have more. i want to touch on something howd did say, and that is ofonly got to see one side the movement in terms of what the media allowed us to see, right? this film does a totally different thing, takes us inside to humanize the people who were that isit, and something we don't give to see too often and something this film does extremely well. with that in mind, i would like to show clip number one, if we could roll clip one, please? [video clip] singing abouts this for the fbi, but it is just song and words. a few years ago i was listening to stokley carmichael's speeches , and it was shortly after 9/11 in america and i was making a reservation with jetblue airlines to fly to california. the airport, the fbi, cia, and tsa intercepted me and took me in a back room and started questioning me about this stokley carmichael speech i was listening to. they were very concerned with me listening to the stokley 1967, sol speech from 40 years ago. we have wrapped talking about shooting other people, but the fbi is not looking for them. they are looking for me because i am listening to this speech from 40 years ago. the fbi is still scared of this man. he doesn't have the influence he had then. [end clip] >> so, i was saving that for later. that was the clip i wanted to show, because i knew you would respond like you did, but it still plays to the point you were making about why this is still so dangerous in the movement is considered so dangerous. saying how the fbi stopped him at the airport because he's listening to a stokley carmichael speech from 1967. what is that saying about where we are today and where can we go from here? >> i think they went to great lengths to put that jeannie back in the bottle. brought them whenever they could into the party, and for the rest it was punishment and mass incarceration, and that continued. think that they had to put down the black radical movement in part because it inspired so many other movements and parts of what was happening in america trying to model themselves on the panthers and people like stokley carmichael. they went to all that expense, length, and involvement to make that happen, and now they can't just roll that back and say, sorry. we should not have those people in prison. >> the media coverage at the time of stokley carmichael's activity in the black power era was extraordinarily twisted and they tried to make him seem all , expose arrests, talk about him like a dog. he shoulderson said be the subject of retroactive control. they try to demonize and tried to isolate the information fromould get rom stokely or any of us -- but in sweden it was quite different. cameramencurious and could go anywhere and talk to anyone they wanted. sweden had a different policy about covering america. the u.s.not follow abuse of itself or the vietnam war. they also taught or you could read in their media stories about what they called the other america. this is about the civil rights movement, the black power movement, and this wasn't about fear. it was news. that is footage of stokely in sweden. people were going around the what and making it clear the black movement was about, and it was very exciting and stokely was charming, sexy, and exciting, and people were attracted. people who were attracted were cornered off in one room, and a lot of times they would be all black. said they woul form perceptions that were entirely different. kill white people, this is what the fbi wanted to think these movements were about so they could justify their abuse. >> we know this and we can see this throughout american history, the controlling ideas, the idea of controlling our imagination. imagine this process, a very democratic process. it was in hierarchal process with the black panther party and the black power movement as well. you had charismatic figures like this young woman right here, and on, sheer when she came became an iconic figure in that sense in that she was really spokesman for the black power movement and was connected to the black panther party. those are incredible visual .deas they wanted to cut this and suffer that. >> a little too visionary? >> yeah, and because they are ,harismatic, as kathleen was stokely, or many of the others, or huey himself. the moment you saw huey sitting in that chair, the question as young people, even when i was those students working down there, i wanted to be like them. i was 14 years old, 15 years old. i wanted to be like then. pmagine you had huey pugh newton and people wanted to be like him. you had to suffer that idea. >> now i would like to try to get to the clip i was looking for before, which on my pages stokley carmichael. can we try that one again? yeah? hm, it got out of order somehow. that is the one you just played. maybe you didn't play the whole thing? perhaps? where is anthony? , four is not the one. [video clip] >> this is it. >> call president johnson on the telephone trying to get hold of dr. martin luther king couldn't get no diamonds from his mines said, burn, baby, burn ♪ fbi.is for the that is the hotline. nothing ise, man, wasted. different takes a form. what form will you take when you die? >> he said, this is for the fbi. hadas a fiery speaker and passionate ideas, but he was a calm, cool, collected person, so he is singing this for the fbi, but they are just words. i was listening to stokley carmichael speeches you for a record i was working on. 9/11 and itly after was making a reservation on jetblue airlines to fly to california. when i got to the airport, the me, cia, and tsa intercepted and took me in a back room and started questioning me about this stokley carmichael speech. they probably had some sort of bug or tap or something, but they were very concerned with me listening to this stokley carmichael from 1967, 40 years -- we haveds he said rappers who talk about shooting people all the time, killing, but the fbi is not looking for them. they are looking at me because i'm listening to the speech from 40 years ago, and it shows you the power of those words. they still resonates today. he doesn't have the same influence over our community he did then. >> so you got [end clip] >> so you got to see it twice. what i wanted to talk about was this behind the scenes look at the leaders of the movement. i never saw this kind of footage before i saw this film, and what was it about the young swedish filmmakers, journalists, that allow been that kind of access, and why would they look for that? >> because they could do what they wanted. they were not told by their editors to this, do that. i saw footage in this film that completely blew my mind. i don't particularly remember swedish tv, but in algeria first they showed images of the building where we were. no one in america has ever seen the building of the international black panther party, other than one picture in york times magazine. that is the only picture i have seen. you can't turn on tv and hear what he has to say, but in this film we hear him saying, yes, we want to reach the level of the vietnamese and make our provisional revolutionary government, but we have not gotten to it. can you imagine? fbi would not allow because the united states is at war. that is part of it, the politics of war, anti-communism, and the insanely psychotic level of white supremacist madness we were being subjected to. responsive.ere not we did not go along with white supremacy. in fact, we challenged it openly, condemned it, and made fun of it. we had a movement around the country and the world repudiating it, so this is probably in the context of the vietnam war and her own sense of being disrespected, the names they got called, etc. it might have had something to do with how they responded to this, but it also intimidates the press and the people. they are afraid. blackther part of the power movement is that it is internationalized, the struggle here of african-americans, the collaborations with the struggles of vietnam, algeria. this is right after the algerian liberation, and also connected with the african liberation to support groups within the, on , anc, all of this in some sense had an enormous power and resonated with people. so now the civil rights movement for all intents and purpose was an internal struggle in the united states, dealing with racism, white supremacy. now we begin to ponder the question of a system of capitalism. all those again to frame a discourse, so you are making alliances an in algeria, connecting to vietnam and other movements around the world. malcolm did it when he went to mecca. he came back and begin to talk about the international relationship, taking the struggle of african-americans to the u.n.\ and now you have a local grassroots organization doing that work, talking about communityhrough protection from police. free schools, free health care, breakfast for children. breakfast for children was the predecessor to the governments records for children. breakfast for children was started by the black panther party. [applause] >> thank you. we don't remember that. we forget that. you have all these things happening on a local level, taking on a local level and building national and international networks here at that is dangerou. that is dangerous. toamerica has a tendency think there is something wrong with black people, genetically, culturally, psychologically. is reasons shift, but it always something. it is hard for people living here to step outside of white supremacy and ask a question like, why are you in jail? what are you doing here? are to this day radicals per trade as irrational people whose radical miss flows from their irrational psychological problem. instead of flowing from their theytions of life, so don't know any better. they might as well ask angela davis, why are you here? ok, let's talk about why i am here. thank you for asking me a question. let's talk. i am talking and the cameras are rolling and i am telling you unedited what i think? when people see that, they are so struck and taken in by it that you start to think that these people grew up in a horrible condition and got the idea they could do something to change it. maybe that is what the whole thing is about them and not some pathological problem. [applause] with that reference to angela davis, thank you for that, brian . can we go to clip number three, please? [video clip] the trial will be his stork in its unfairness. -- the trial will be historic in its unfairness. i think they seized upon this opportunity to try her and put her to death. originally fired her from her teaching job at the university of california and this is an extension of that as far as i'm concerned. the evidence presented to the grand jury shows that the guns that week used in the shootout -- the guns that were used in the shootout were registered in her name. assuming that is true, that is all it shows, that she owns some guns. there is nothing illegal in the state of california about owning guns. it is not a crime. because of the inflammatory press that has built up around since then and because of the need the government felt to put her in jail and two from their point of view kill her, they could put enough pressure in that grand jury room to get an amendment. in the actual interview with angela in this film is priceless. and yougela in jail have never seen this footage anywhere else if you have not seen this film. , i would love for you to talk about the women of the movement. angela, we know you were the first female leader within the party. prof. cleaver: that is not true. the first one was joanne mitchell who was a student. i came on the central committee but she was the women's captain for the central committee. , theidea of leaders movement, the civil rights movement in the south was mobilized and organized, dominated by the activities of women. the men who are spokesman are designated leaders and they are lit -- they are written about in the press and they go to meetings, but they do not actually reveal, that does not reveal the way the movement evolved. when you put the term leaders, then people unconsciously want to see a male. that does not mean that all the work and all the leadership and all the education and all the programming was not done by quite a few women. in the black panther party, the people who started it, as time went on and more and more men got arrested, it got to the point where the majority of actual panthers on the ground were women. i think there is no major effort in the larger society to understand what radical movements are about and no larger movement to understand what the leadership of black women is about. that does not mean it is not there, but it is discounted. prof. materre: danny, do you want to add anything? danny: i cannot add to that. understanding what black radicalism is. there is a black radical tradition throughout the 20th century we do not call on. we think of the moments, specific moments in time when we look at the civil rights movement, but if you look at the , winning of the 20th century e b du bois, those who came andugh the communist party then look at who was at the on panter conference africanism. there you have some of the future leaders of the caribbean, , you have all these who are part of and wedical tradition never embrace that part of it. even today, in terms of understanding that whatever changes happen, you have to step outside of the content that you -- outside of the context that you are functioning in and find another narrative for liberation. that comes through the black radical tradition. the panther party and the black power movement is part of a much larger historical context. it is a reimagining of democracy. you're bringing people to the table and reimagining democracy, having them participate in their own liberation. it is a reimagining. they are not looking for democracy to play out in some other ways. way of it ande use the process itself. [applause] the movement i joined, the black power movement evolved out of the civil rights movement in the deep south. in the deep south, many of the leaders were actually women. they were not given that title committeeganization aker whoted by ella b was on the staff of the sclc and she was the inspiration and the mentor and she allowed the leadership within that youth organization called student nonviolent coordinating committee to mature and develop. by the time i moved to california in the fall of 1967, there was a woman who had been secretary,ecutive very welling knowledge leader. i remember seeing pictures of her in ebony magazine. impressed. inspiring to see young people, young women, young men working together, challenges and -- challenging the sheriffs, going to jail, going on these buses. rides.der of the freedom being a radical, being a woman, they were not inconsistent. of thesay a large part american population had not been educated to the fact that there was this leadership within women . when they see the organizations, they do not see the leadership because it is coming out of a tradition they are not familiar with. doctor and others -- a doctor sent others from howard university down. it was ella baker who brought bob moses. that is what kathleen is talking about. i think america tells itself a story about these movements that undercuts the kind of work those women leaders were doing. that is all behind the scenes and as far as we understand, these were overnight success stories. this was america's next great civil lights -- civil rights leaders contest and whoever gets on stage wins. this was something that was built over decades of work. there are a couple great books out there. a book about ella baker and rosa parks about whom the mythology has reached incredible proportion. the degree to which we cut off rosa parks from who she was as an organizer is astounding and does a disservice to all those who are laboring in top conditions, trying to keep at it , seeing no fruit of their labor for years and years and feeling like nothing is going to give. to celebrate her comp and when she moves into the limelight, but to forget the decades that preceded it, also does a disservice to those of us who are trying to follow in her footsteps. i am glad you said that because i want to talk to you about, as an educator you've been in the new york city public schools for over nine years. how do we get this information, --s film, this talk into the corebook into the curriculum of the new york public schools? i am not talking about once a year during the growth hysteria month. ro hysteriaeg month. [laughter] >> i have to give credit to a friend of mine who coined that phrase. we do not want this as a once a year thing. we want this embedded as american history. brian: that is right. it is american history. there is no america without the africans that were kidnapped and brought here and built the country. at every stage in american history, the black struggle is central to understanding the story of the country. what i found -- i was in elementary school teacher eight of those years in harlem. that is what students want to learn about. it is not hard. the hard part is trying to deal of standardized testing, trying to deal with all of the demands and everything they are putting on our schools, the budget cuts and the school closings. the problem is not how to get to kids -- kids want to learn real history, history about people fighting back, you have them in the palm of your hand. they want to learn about that. that is what has them the most riveted and the most interested. have to sermon eyes or preach to young people. their life, when they're exposed to real history, they make their own meaning out of it. it is not hard to see the struggle of yourself and your parents and your cousin and your uncle in the struggles of yesteryear. what people do not know is we have a legacy of standing up and of winning and a feeling that we can win. that is what we have to let them be exposed to. [applause] i know we have some questions from the audience but i have to mention two more things. i know amy goodman was here, did she just leave? she is waving. there she is. thank you it, amy. danny, i know you are just on democracy now about a week ago. oh, you will be on tomorrow? when was that interview with you? that was some months ago? i just saw that recently. danny: it was right after them dropping the death penalty and we knew we had reached one stage but we still have to free --. [applause] on that show, amy surprised you by getting her on the phone. everybody should go watch that. you had been fighting for his freedom for over 20 years. ozzie davis and i were part of the defense committee. who -- weout someone were on the defense committee going way back. prof. materre: and here we are still trying to get him out of jail. he is off death row but he is still in prison. danny: i was on the defense committee of geronimo pratt as well. way back. [applause] i would be remiss if i did not and knowledge my producing partner. jocelyn, stand up, please. all the work your end did, jocelyn has found ways we can involve the community in having these discussions. i have a great friend who is my little brother, he is one of the great filmmakers in the world. [applause] prof. materre: we have some questions from the audience and i'm going to start with one i know is from a student of hours -- of ours. is clear thatit activism has changed over the years and it seems it has become more individually-based. how can we make it collective once again? the problems that any activist is attempting to address our collective problems -- are collective problems. if you have individual solutions, they are not going to work. and regroup and posturing,izing, not not rattling off things out of your head, organizing, putting together people in a group or a movement of some sort where they participate in making choices and implementing their decisions. prof. materre: that is excellent, yes, thank you very much. here is another question. we made the comment at the beginning that we are several generations removed from the movement, my question is what request doection, or you have of young people today in terms of continuing and honoring their struggle? i missed part of that. what advice,: direction, or request you have of young people today in terms of honoring the struggle? chicago and just in there was a young man named emmanuel pratt on the south side. he has a fishery and is teaching young kids sustainability in terms of food production, growing food and fish and everything else, he has also made a business out of it. that is the kind of business we need. i've been spending the last year with a group of students in mississippi. students working and supporting nissan workers in canton, mississippi. seven of those workers sat in at nissan in protest against one of the organizers who was advocating for union, he sat in that office singing freedom songs and they gave him his job back. that is the kind of activism i see on those levels. all of the activism that we have come out of has been transformative. we have to understand that when it becomes individualized is not transformative. the only have activism that is transformative when it is collective. when you saw young brothers put the jacket on, it was extraordinary. all those things were extraordinary. it has to be transformative. what is in existence now in the systems and alliances, building alliances to service what needs to be done at the moment. that does not take away from the fact that we have to change this. we still have to change this. no matter what we have gone through and a matter what we have in the white house we stuff to change this. that is transformative. that, how to we connect into that and understand that. evolution, revolution. prof. cleaver: what i think is problematic is that the activism of the last 20 years is not well known. if you live six states away, you do not know it exists and you make the assumption it is not existing. is a hostility and the larger media to show anything that involves collective action involving young people, young black people, but sometimes they have to show it like the protests in louisiana, they cannot not show it. and we arere: finally hearing three weeks later about the nigerian girls they kidnapped, three weeks later. when trayvon martin was murdered in florida, 22 high schools in florida had walkouts. how many of you heard that? how many had wall-to-wall coverage and interviews with the organizers? just thinking about that when you are speaking. there is a way in which there is a blackout that makes it difficult rustic connect to strands of organizing that are going on. i think we benefit from a knee those of solidarity, of connecting the dots, of assuming that our struggles are connected to each other, dependent on each other, and on that basis expecting and trying to build solidarity between different struggles and different issues. and using this technology you're using now, tweeting and texting to instill this connection and getting the word out more that we do not get through the mainstream press. we have the technology, let's use it. , i hearderre: danny that you wanted to make a film about the haitian revolution. [applause] prof. materre: what is the think this person would launch a kickstart her campaign for you if you wanted to. danny: i met jocelyn barnes 15 senegal, an a set in movie we were doing that she had translated the script and gotten the rights from the novel, found the director and found the money to do the film. as you sitting one night said, trying to find something to do when you're doing an all-night suit -- an all-night shoot and she mentioned the things we want to do, it was like the whole sky lit up when we said the haitian revolution. discussion, itself, led to the relationship that formed l'ouveture films. that is the centerpiece of our company. we still have a vision of doing that. but all the other relationships we have had, the time that , you can go on, what we have coming out now that we have gone in the past and everything else. we are trying to get to that point, we will get to that point of doing this movie, but there are so many other things that have evolved out of that when that light came on and we knew we wanted to form a company to bring the kind of work that we saw, to find someone else, to support african filmmakers. those are the kind of things that evolved out of that. that is where we will go until further notice with the haitian revolution. as soon as you need our support, please let us know. this question is from a documentary filmmaker doing a documentary on a black homeless veteran who says that slavery is alive and well in america today. he believes that black folks need to look inside themselves and not white folks to tell them who they are. your response? i passed a man on the street this afternoon. he had a sign that said homeless veteran, please give me whatever you can for food. i walked past him and i thought about them and i -- i thought about him and i said this is insane. i found some dollars and i said this is all i have. 75% of thethat homeless in new york are veterans. that tells you something about the level -- the lack of compassion, the lack of reality in the government that we have. if 75% of the homeless in new york city are veterans. they are begging for money. this is crazy. v.a. ignores the disaster. is thewanted to get at manner in which we access inormation and participate communities has been radically altered by the politics of this country. in the time of the black panthers and the radicals, all of these different groups were percolating, the united states was not the number one total leader of the world. the united states was in competition. between people on the capitalist side and people against the capitalist side, it was called the vietnam war and it went on for quite some time. it ended in vietnam becoming an independent country as it should have been. and ats many years ago this point there is no opposition to the world domination of the economic system of the united states. people can how function within this country and how they think and how they respond to each other. we have to get out of this one thing,- what was bush's new world order. we have to get out of this new ugly order to get to a better order where we can communicate and do something to solve the problems we actually have. prof. materre: without in mind i've a question i've been dying to ask brian, having to do with the model in the system that seems to be evolving in our education system and that is the notion of the pipelines to prison in our schools. have any know if you ideas about how we should be mobilizing around that issue to break up that model and are there instances you can tell us about that are doing that? need to stop stopping and frisking students in the hallways of school. stop giving them repeated , stops for petty offenses policing them in the hallways of their own building. i think that is an obvious place to start during we have to add to that the things that are alienating students, increasingly, that are pushing them in those directions. if we have a highly standardized curriculum and a high pressure testing, all of that is just a giant sorting mechanism that has nothing to do with genuine inquiry, nothing to do with intellectual development, nothing to do with teaching and learning. [applause] for students who are already maybe with good reasons, this curriculum and the standardized this that and the other are just another chance to check out from the school experience. it is boring. now turn to page 35. it is ridiculous. coreu go on the common website, they want to take things that are explosive in our history and they want to take away the danger. they want you to teach the letter from a birmingham jail without ever talking to students about why martin luther king is in a jail. they want you to teach the gettysburg address without talking about the field littered with bodies that lincoln is standing in and why the field is littered with bodies. they want you to teach a decontextualized skill set that has nothing to do with why you need skills in the first place. i could go on and on. it is not just the metal detectors, it is not just the police in the hallway, there is something else going on that is making school culturally irrelevant. insensitive to them and who they in a way that feeds into the other thing as well. it is not just locking up six-year-olds although they are locking up six-year-olds, it is not just that, it is also what is happening to process the school itself. prof. materre: how do we correct that? what is it going to take to move beyond that? then: we have to overcome high bar that has been set over and over again by the supreme court that says a pattern of racism does not count as racism. you have to catch somebody saying the n word. not donaldre sterling, you are not dumb enough to get caught on camera sh, ridiculous things, you can do anything you want to black people. you can shoot them down. did zimmerman say the n word? who cares what came out of his mouth? it is what came out of his gun. you can do anything to people as long as you do not say the old-fashioned words that say you are racist -- if you keep that off the table, you can do anything to people. we have to say that is racist during if most of the kids getting put in handcuffs at age six are black, that is racist. -- if mostthe kids of the kids getting -- if most of the schools getting shut down or black, that is racist. every institution has a plaque on the wall saying they are color and will treat everyone equal. we have to say this kind of color blindness is the new racism. [applause] prof. materre: does either one of you want to respond to that? prof. cleaver: i wish there were 100 more elementary school teachers who had the same thought. can we have an institute for elementary school teachers? brian: i am working on that. prof. materre: i will take one more for questions from the audience because this is a good one. it is about coalition building. it says that many of us are of us are trying to work between coalitions like students for justice in palestine -- [applause] diasporaof the african and the feminist collective. [applause] however, we are having trouble getting folks to believe that constitute each other. how can we get people to see that and believe that? prof. cleaver: there is a challenge of organizing but it is also a form of community building. you will organize and talk to people you know because you sat down and you ate lunch and you went for a walk and you are in a class, it is kind of hard to organize with strangers. to form connections and build alliances and build relationships in the process of developing political challenges. that is key. if you do not do that, your political challenges do not go anywhere. i am sure some of you have had that experience. brian: it is also political education. nypdu do not know that the learned to occupy the bronx by going to the training center in ramallah, you do not know the connections between occupation and occupation. we have a lot of political educating to do to realize the connections between our struggles. time in've spent some , and what wasgan so amazing, i remember one meeting with about 30 different organizations, small groups, one around rethinking one about urban gardening and food production, ex-panther whoan has an organization for peace zones. i watched all these organizations support each other and they were able to develop a common narrative. that should be the driving force andtheir coalition building as kathleen said, organizing. all of those particular things allow us to find ways in which we can build these coalitions. coalitions are essential. strike francisco state would not have been successful had it not been for ,frican-american students native american students, hispanic american students, asian students, and progressive white students. it would not have been successful. it is finding those ways of mobilizing and organizing and creating the language and the the language and narrative of transforming. for thoserre: students in the audience are looking for a class to take in the fall that will emphasize that, just a little blatant self-promotion, i am teaching race, ethnicity, and class in the fall so be sure to join us. i would like to close with a couple quotes. kathleen, you say there is a systematic system to prevent the leaders from having their natural effect. it is always difficult to mobilize people, but when you illuminate martin luther king, robert kennedy, not to mention all the others who are being killed, you diminish the strength of that movement. to be moreosen cowardly, maybe he would have lived longer but that is not the choice you made. thank you for that. [applause] danny, you used a reference to paul robison and we just lost paul. as paul each generation said makes its own history. a new generation must now make its history but it faces huge challenges, whether it is the climate crisis, the global financial crisis, the prices of poverty, or the crisis of inequity in the world. we do not have to start anew. all of us can draw on the resources of those who have struggled before us and the people in black power mix tapes, 1967 to 1975 gave a strong shoulders to stand on. [applause] and if you have any closing remarks you would like to make, we can do that now and we would like to invite people to stay for the book signing and regular roundtable talking. prof. cleaver: i would like to say people have to believe they can do this. jim foreman used to always say -- he was my first mentor -- i have never worked so hard in my life. the first weekend i got to atlanta, i do not think i slept three hours in the weekend, taking notes. there was chaos. what i was going to say is you have to be able to believe in yourself, believe what you want foreman used-- always say we will win without a doubt. but you do not know when. we have to put when off the table and believe that we can win. win, this is a country going down the tubes, a little fascist hole, in the future. danny: i think one of the things just thisme away from is the enormous contributions that have been made in the past and as we have all said, we can build on that. even though we feel as if we are at some sort of impasse in our capacity to build, to struggle, we are still here. there are so many, this audience, the young people in this audience are the testimony to the necessity of the work we have to do. available,, we are we want them to develop their tools. tolysis, truth telling, listen to the entire story and building create new stories. [applause] brian: everywhere i go i feel like i see young people trying to absorb something from the black power movement. i see them reading malcolm x on if i wear my angela davis t-shirt, inevitably i am stopped 27 times trying to go somewhere. i feel that there is a new generation that is tried to figure out how to break out of that impasse and what we should understand here and i think we do understand in this room is that there is an important legacy here that is essential to what it is we have to do from here for that breakthrough. that is why they want to bury it and that is why we want to present it in a film, and a book , in whatever form we can, we need to get it out there. lastly, i want to say that i am so proud to be sitting up here with two of the heroic figures from the black power movement. thank you universe for putting me up here. prof. materre: thank you so much anthony from haymarket books for putting this together. please stay and get your book two powerhouses on the stage. thank you so much. on history bookshelf, here from the country's best-known american history writers of the past decade every saturday at 4:00 eastern. you can watch any of our programs at any time when you visit our website, c-span.org/history. you're watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. up next on american history abouty shively hawk talks her stepfather james shively and his imprisonment after his plane was shot down and he was captured by the north vietnamese in 1967. is the author of "six years in the hanoi hilton." the national archives hosted this 45 minute event in conjunction with the opening of their remembering vietnam exhibit. david: i ask all vietnam veterans or united states veterans that served during the vietnam era from 1955 to may 15 of 1975 to stand and be recognized. [applause]

Related Keywords

Sweden , Mississippi , United States , New York , Haiti , Nigeria , Vietnam , Republic Of , Algeria , San Francisco , California , Louisiana , Florida , American , Nigerian , Americans , Haitian , America , Ozzie Davis , Robert Kennedy , Bobby Hutton , Stokley Carmichael , James Shively , Ella Baker , Trayvon Martin , Amy Goodman , Geronimo Pratt , Jocelyn Barnes , Hank Johnson , Amy Danny , Martin Luther King ,

© 2024 Vimarsana

comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.