In our community here in oakland and grew up in oakland and has been here in oakland all his life. Welcome, paul cox. It is a pleasure to be here today. Great to have you. Tell us a little bit about your background. I was born in oak lan, my parents come from oklahoma and mississippi. Uhhuh. I was born in oakland, i have attended schools in oakland and i have had the opportunity to travel all over the country as a journalist and as an activist and participant in the civil rights struggle and as an advocate for change. You told me earlier that you had not taken a course in journalism but you are gifted in writing detail is. No, i did not take any courses in journalism, i got great grades and english and writing and composition and i remember as a youngster, i was a spelling bee champion and i have alway scarbbling. When you start to realize you have that gift, what made you to work in the community as you did so. My mother used to tell me i was named after the great paul dunbar and she read to me all of his poems and so that left an imprsion. Thats my name. Oh, i didnt know that. So i think i was stamped from birth to have a respect for the written word and a joy in the respect for it. Thats what gotme started. 1965 when i was areporter for the oakland post, i went to selma and had an opportunity to have 14 hours of an exclusive interview with doctor king. And, thats when i wedded to be a journal lichl and ism and civil rights. Since you mention selma, what did you think of the movie of that . It captured the essence and accurate and those scenes showing doctor king, that was real. Thats the way itactually went down. The viewergot a chance. I felt myself in there in the old film footage chen they showed the eye on the prize. The movie was definitely accurate when i met you in the late 1960s, you were in the black caucus and you were so involved in the community. I was a xhuptcommunity organizer myself, i was drawn to all the work you were doing. What inspired youto continue to do that . We took a unique approach. In 1966, we used to monitor the police, this was long before the black Panther Party was organized. I had done a lot ofwork with black churches and with civil rights organizations. We form whats called a black caucus, this was prior to the congressional. We formed it ofall the black organizations and 147 black churches where members of that caucus, the church that you come from was also one of members of the united methodist. I was the chair of the black caucus. We took on every issuewhether it is unnecessary for black women at kaiser hospitals for the schools system or whether the voting pattern of the district and city wide elections so forth. Extremely inspiring. Well come back to that and bring us up to today to see what you are doing thanks for being with us paul. Please join us in our next segment with paul cobb. When i introduced paul earlier, hes a member of the school board. He reminded me hedid run for city council back in 1971, way before when. It was an educational campaign, i ran to expose the district elections where even though you run from a district, you had to be voted on city wide. Even though i won thedistrict which i wanted to represent, i lost city wide even though i had 770 70 plus of the districts vote. Adequate housing and better recognitions of our schools and jobs, getting more jobs for minorities. Contracts forminority contractors. The issueof equity and fairness streams through every single strata of our society. Those issuesremain today for africanamerican men to get jobs and the Unemployment Rate and the issue of Police Brutality and we didnt call it profiling in those age. We had a groupthat would follow the police and we would get out of the car and we would recite what is now considered the miranda rights. I wound up getting arrested a lot of times myself. Okay. For interfering with arrests and things like that. The mayors conference was held last month and i believe you went there. The mayors conference in the wake last month they talked about the charleston incident or the tragic occurrence. Thatson the minds of mayors all over the country and mayors talking about how theyre instituting race and Equity Department to be more sensitive and to have fairness throughout the government. I met with stevenbenjamin whos the may over South Carolina because i had worked in South Carolina when i was with the southern election funds helping to get black elected. I talked to him and itold him how we are going to organize with him to help mobilize Voters Registration because i see the wave coming based on what politicians and republicans and democrats are now speaking out on Voting Rights as of one of the issues that has sprain from of the nine families or the nine individuals that were killed in charleston. Going back to that awful tragedy, some of the things people were talking about addressing, what are the things you think is so important coming from that tragedy that we need to address . One of this i thinks that came out is guns. Theissue of gun control and another thing that came out was the flag. I think that romney,republican, a mormon republican, i give him the kudos. He spokeout and he essentially cutoff the ring and boxed in a lot of republican legislatures and forced them to back down and reverse their position on flags. And the same thing with the hon hillary clinton, she was a strong voice and it forced every race to the table. Romneyembraced race in a constructive way and it caused a lot to do the same. Some of the thingsyou are seeing now like we are establishing a dashboard kind of display of the progress of Voters Registration and removing voters suppression and the road that churches and institutions are playing throughout the south 11 of the states of the old confederacy and others like the new confederacy like ohio and michigan when it comes to voting. Theyre the newconfederacy. What theyre doing to remove those barriers. Charleston was one of the wholliest in the old south. You had such a greatbackground of churches and religion and spirituals. Whatare your perspective growing up on the bible and how you process that in terms of your community organizing. I think that change will change in this country and society has come with the role especially for African Americans is the church as an ins institution as been the the activitial point. The drive wasfed by volunteer and generated by congregations of both black and white. When we went tomississippi in the 60s and alabama and so forth. A lot ofwhite volunteers were volunteers by denominational desire to reach elk the i. So the church is the fundamental for change. When the gentleman struck at mother emanuel, a Principal Church which i have attended when i worked inside the south, he stroke below at the heart of the symbol of black freedom and so thats why when the eld duiest church, the Mormon Church ruled out, the bureaus name, they roll out four million name of blacks who used to be on plantation and that the government released their name when that information is going throughout the country and black people will have been opportunity to have the alex haley experience. The Mormon Church has done this. The Mormon Church has done this. They bought the name and they put it on a computer disk and it is freely distributed so that you can type in your name and go all the way back to 1865 when lincoln e man pate emancipated the slaves. Thats the role of thechurch and you will see black churches working with them. I may want to see that. Lets come back to that in the next segment. Thats reallyfascinating and entrusting. Please join us with paul cobb. We are going to find out. Welcome back to mosaic, i am ron, if you have been with us, you know that paul cobb has talked a lot about the involvement of our churches. You know you heard the expression i am spiritual but not religious. You have a deafdefinition around that . Yes, i believe that, i dont know what you mean by spiritual but not religious. I think weare all gods children. And, itry to simplify the notion. Weall have cell phones and most of them have a gps requirement. Tobe religious and spiritual you have to be in a tune with the heaven father or some sup supreme or with heaven itself. The cellphone analogy says you can be tracked anywhere. Religionteaches us that his eye is on the farrow, if it is easy for us to understand that the satellite can follow us to the corn over the earth, surely. Supremebeing who invented and created man with could track each and everyone of us with a spiritual gps system. [ laughter ] i know that i receive signals just like you and i sitting here talking now. You can get a cellphone message or a call that i could not get because they did not dial my number even though we are sitting at the same place. Why could god send themessage to Martin Luther king and say go , let my people go. The spirit is the signal and communicates to us. It is theenergy that drives each and everyone of our internal gps systems. I never heard of that. Well, thats my concept that i am trying to use a md defense attorney tech lodge modern technological terminology to explain it. Well, maybe i should start. But, you know to get back to your earlier question, i am going to call romney on his cell phone and thank him for his spirit and for making that call to america that they ought to remove the flag. I am going tointerview him and ask him what is he now thinking of removing voters depression because i think just like in the bible where by the way lump sum where baylumthought hes going thought hes going to go. I think romney hasfix positive trigger ofpositive reactions of voters suppresion ideal. I remember, iremember was it 1988 where i wrote a feature article about you right. And coming back home to the churches that pu grew up in and you grew up in and becoming a pastor. You provedthat you can be an honorable man and come back home and be honored by your congregates when you were baptized. It was great. You know thatwhole history, you live down the street from the church and you have been there how long . I have been there, where i live now . Uhhuh. I live two blocks from where i went to kindergarten and now i am 71yearold now. So i amstill there. Now, i saw something on your 70th birthday. Tell us about that. Yeah, i was so proud to receive an honor, recognition by the city of officials on my 70th birthday. They were honoringthe work that my wife and i have done and are still doing as colonial of newspaper being an advocate and 45 years have been mare. Shes one of the original freedom writer. We went tobaltimore and dc, i and just met the mayor whos the National President of u. S. Congress of mayor. Well, shes from baltimore and i told her about how my wife had been a civil rights pioneer and my wife also went to the march on washington so while i was at selma, she was involved in civil rights activities in new york. Thats right. Great history. Greatinvolvement, again, i think people are hearing you are inspired and challenged and where would you stay people need to start the day that have that kind of commitment and legacy that you are leading . Well, i think earlier i mentioned these names of the bureaus of the Mormon Church, i think people should do a search of their Family History and routes. At the beginning, of of appreciation of how far we have come and how we have come this far by faith. And, that i thinkthat we should have every individual can and should have the alex haley experience and i think that will be like the road to experience. It is like Theburning Bush experience it opens our eyes and that database that the Mormon Church laid out we are going to proliferate all over the country with a weekly tabloid of all the black churches and congregation to show people how to research their routes and the love of their family to communicated into action. The route is key to building and growing the tree because by the fruits of the tree, you should know them and water your routes. That database isparamount to the rosetta stonesand paramount to the crows. Itwill be the key to make you, once you know your history and know who you are, you develop pride, dignity and a sense of unity with your own people. This last segment. Lets talk alittle bit about the oakland post. All right. All right, you can see why we invited paul cobb to be with us. Join us in our last segment. I hope you have been with us. We have been reallyinspired and enlightened by paul cobb. The icon that i call him,i am not alone in saying that. Hes the owner of oakland post, tell us about your paper. Well, i am the owner of the oakland post which is 52 52 yearold. We have nine newspaper. We have a spanishlanguage thats also 52yearold. Wow. And so where he Going National with an insert thatll be distributed in every African American congregation throughout the country thatll lay out issues of black history and accomplishments and deal with the africanamerican of what they can do abou policing issues and Economic Development and jobs and education. The paper was always delivered at our church at oakland memorial when i was there. I dont remember paying anything. Well, we freely distribute our paper primarily 75 of our hundreds of thousands of circulation is dwibt distributed distributed of house of worship. We gain advertising because of the reach and we usually in the newspaper business, you are allowed to calculate that for every person that picks up a paper they usually give you a number from one through five how many it touches in the past on rate so you can say we have a pass on rate of a quarter of a million to 300, 000 readers and people who are aware of us. I love newspaper and books. They have been in trouble. Yes. The words will never vanish. [ laughter ] the printed words will always be there. We also recognizingthe emergent of technology so we expanded to website and well be using the innovations of technology as a link and for multi platform performance and presentation news part of the paper. The news will continue. Yes. I know you are a great writer and you write great editorials and thats the highlight of this paper. I will be writing of this program and i will tell everybody to get up and look at mosaic. [ laughter ] soon, sometimes on youtube. Look us up there also. Thanks paul, it was a pleasure. That was great. Take care. Thank you for joining us. Iam ron, see you next month. When broker chris hill stays at laquinta he fires up the free wifi, with a network thats now up to 5 times faster than before so he can rapidly prepare his presentation. And when he perfects his pitch, do you know what chris can do . And that is my recommendation. Lets see if hes ready. He can swim with the sharks hes ready. La quinta inns suites take care of you, so you can take care of business. Book your next stay at lq. Com la quinta t. We begin with hi, and good morning everyone. Welcome to bay sunday. Im your host filing in for frank mallicoat. You know the rain has ended and its a beautiful day. Okay. We begin or first pitch today. If you have a show idea we would love to hear from you. All you have to do is go to facebook. Com slash bay sunday and comment to the page. How many times a day does somebody walk to you and ask you how are you . I mean immediately reply im fine, great, thank you very much. Do you really feel that terrific or is that just an automatic response. Well
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