Listen Here; Bayard Rustin: Firebombs Or A Freedom Budget

Why. Now I love children and I think something needs to be done for 17 year olds. But the same youngsters the jobs who are to graduate where there are no jobs and you know there are no jobs. Before you send them there is too little motor car dealers and send them back into the ghetto. Since the beginning of this nation we have

attempted to make a moral and psychological analysis of prejudice. The economic and social degradation to which it has played and I am afraid we are still doing so. Even amongst the so called young negro revolutionaries today. Certainly this has been true of whites throughout our history. We have. Behaved as if the problem were a psychological one and one of just plain hatred to the negro. It was never as such. And it is not now such and we will not deal with the problems in the future. As such I wanted to make clear what I am saying I want to give a few examples. Thomas

Jefferson awoke one night in a sweat. He had just heard and had a nightmare. What was that nightmare that he had seen the flag of the United States being torn asunder. Negroes pulling on one and the slaves and whites pulling back and the nation was torn to bits. He rose from his nightmare sat down at his desk took a pen and creating a moral response. That is to say he wrote that on his death. The slaves should be men and humanity that they should be set free. Then again you have the basic problem that has plagued us from the beginning. Jefferson did not do what he ought to have done. Noble as a man in the obvious way was at

his death no one here could be against that. What we should have done if the civil war was truly not to rend this nation to bits in the most vicious battle that has ever taken place. Making what is happening in Vietnam look like peanuts. More he should have made a moral response which led to political conclusion. He should therefore have gone into Congress with a program and a political meaningfully program for the elimination of slavery but it remained an MA role added to it. As great as the abolitionist was they too made the same mistake.

They were all against slavery because it is morally wrong. But name for me one abolitionist who had an economic and social problem for what was to be done won that war completely and who in the process of that war project did end economic and social problems. It is often said that Negroes have no problem we always had an economic and political problem. It was we who said we want 40 acres and a mule in order to start life again. When slavery is finished the abolitionists turn their backs on an economical social program. They got tired and they disappeared into thin air. Even today the rabbit who I understand have affection for and have worked with me

and who I profoundly respect. Nevertheless are making the same basic mistake. The argument being we want black power whatever that is with no real definition of it. We want self-respect. We want dignity. All of which I am in favor of. But it is another blind alley because dignity and self-respect must bring from the economic and social position which you hold in the society and cannot be missile logic and the solely created out of some response or dignity. Well any objective situation indeed makes dignity impossible.

Now the big question before the United States is whether we're going to understand one thing. In nine years today there is as a group will be on the part of Blatche to blacks. As a reason any place else in the world. At the moment. I say my dear friends that no economic or social order has ever been revolved on the race on the basis of color. It must be valid on the basis of law. I have more in common with a member of the young Socialist leader who sees the degree to which there must be socialization of this nation. Then I am with

Jake. Jackie Robinson a black. Panther. Because of the no social movement can be fundamentally on color. But we must see is that all men are capable of being that the likelihood is that the proposition will reverse the bill as Bruce was white. And if one sees the universality of the possibility of brutality and racism then one looks somewhere else for answers. The problem surely the most brutal behavior when Martin Luther King was asking that nigger who should have the right to have houses in Chicago but it didn't make any description of brutality and white racism for me to understand that problem the problem is simple. Since

racism is basically possible in all. The problem is you Bill and economic and social structure which has so much injustice in that that racism is raised from the bottom and socially and politically organized. Or do you build the kind of economic and social order which reduces the possibility of that prejudice to an irreducible minimum where it cannot be politically and socially organize. That's the problem Mark came and any other make no leader will be strong in these cities. And that's the reason I was shocked by Martin King's talking about the disruption of cities which I'm happy never proceeded to carry out. Because the problem is not plain prejudice which is there and will people

in the economic and social order where I'm not enough in the society where it's not enough housing in the society where many people in the society a society in which the lower middle class whites are up the gear economically and therefore more economic sphere the negro's all with frustration with that situation and you will be stuck. If only on the land had been adequate housing in Chicago if there were adequate jobs if this nation were not insisting upon a poor unemployment rate that's been good for the society no matter how much prejudice there was at the bottom it could not have expressed itself in political organization. Now having said that I think before I talk about the freedom budget it is

necessary for us to make some analysis of where we are now because everybody is writing long articles about prejudice and discrimination. The United States as if we were back in 1955 or 56 or 57 or 50 or 60 or 62 with three or four The fact is my friend. We are in a different opinion. The problem of civil rights than we have ever seen in our history and practically none of the experiences of the past. Is particularly significant. Let me therefore the modern revolution that which began when the Montgomery Bus protest.

1955. But that period ended in the 65 period after we had received the civil rights bill and the Voter Rights Bill. Therefore in order that I could help us understand the nature of the situation I'm going to revive the problem into two parts. I should move for two periods one by which I mean the period from the Montgomery bus protests to the passage of the voter rights bill I saw we further in contrast to period number two which is appearing we are now in. Period number one. We were fighting almost exclusively for those things which are made

a lot. The right to vote which any white person had the right for public accommodations which all white people had they were the true great rights of that period. That's what the Montgomery Bus protest was about. That's what the freedom that's what the sit ins were about. That's what the march on Washington was about etc.. That's what about Selma was about Birmingham was about. Now I want you to know in the present period we are dealing with practically no fundamental question in the minds of many which are Negro problems for what need was are now interested in its decent housing decent jobs decent education and the right of participation in decision making.

Larry I look forward to the new what people today but those men. Are the result of basic contradictions in our society and not. Demands to brutalize the negro. Now when we learn that we will learn about great deal about the fact that the Senate did not turn down 37 to 33 today not to give drones to people over 65 because they want to brutalize negroes. But because we have a son like that doesn't give a damn what happens to elderly people. That is a contradiction in the whole nature of American society and it is that contradiction that the problems for the negroes will be solved or they will not be solved at all.

People accuse me of being too liberal and too close to the establishment. Perhaps I am but I have more sense. About the nature of the white community than they have. This society never has and never will do anything special for the Negro. That is the reason we call it the freedom budget for all Americans. It is not that I do not know that Negroes are most brutalized by poverty while they are. But I also know that 67 percent of the poor are white and the less we are going to do our program which had to do with the elimination of poverty and not concerned with negro poverty we will not get anywhere in the society. If the society were now prepared to do something special for Nick woes

it would not have been required that something special be done for but is just the problem. Number two in the first period 55 to 65. The nature of American pressure on the new community would not permit the class struggle to emerge in the Negro community. Ralph Bunche could vote some places he couldn't eat some places and where he couldn't eat neither could you share. But now you come along with the civil rights bill. You make all negroes the right to use public accommodations and to vote. And what this means is that negroes who have money who are economically independent now can vote and those who don't cannot have money to use hotels theaters restaurants can use them and those who don't can.

That's for the first time now. We are not only faced with that. Reason having the wife but equally vicious is now only in class problem within the global community. So what they said to me Mr. Ruston your house never want you going back to New York nothing you can do to talk to us. Same thing with you Martin Luther King because you have made it and we have the class problem that not only must now fight for their rights in the general society but that those who do not have it are I was angry as negroes who have it and who have made it as they are and one who have it as a very new element in the picture. Thirdly when you talk

in the early period about the right to vote about the right to even public accommodation you were talking about something that the government doesn't have to put up any money for except when it meant the Everest get shot they sense the police out to see if they can find who shot him or money. King's having a demonstration. The federal government may send in a few more shows to watch. In the current period since no one's city including Boston has money to put its unemployed back to work since no city including Boston has enough money for a decent educational system. Since no city in Boston can in fact find an answer to the problem of housing without federal aid this is a period where billions of dollars must come from the federal government. If anything a poll is top car. In the early period.

Make no joke about it. I sat with news night after night during those 10 years plan. We create the dynamic of that revolution from 55 to 65. That dynamic for the revolution was created by Bull Connor and his dog and his fire hoses and the killing of people and the bombing of churches. In this new period. People cannot be unified by Bull Connor's dog. And white support cannot be created by sudden brutality. Because you don't want to exist anymore in the form it did. That means therefore that we must now create the dynamic for that change ourselves. That's a very different thing and I submit to anybody here who is Jewish to think on the fact

that if there had been no Keppler I doubt there would be a Palestine today and Israel. The point I'm making is there are times when maybe it factors in the society can congeal things. This is the time where negative factors in the community pull things apart. In the old Pierian all the youngsters needed was bravery and perseverance. They just said to rest. They swam in the swimming pool no matter what they did to them. They rested when they come back we'll beat them they come back and finally get a breakthrough. No young negro today with courage and

perseverance are going to make any contribution. For in this period one needs an analysis of politics one needs an analysis of the processes of social change one needs to know how to build alliances. One needs to know sociology economics and psychology and the old leadership is big and a part of the shenanigans which you now see is the interim period where some youngsters think that they have now transferred their speak making at Birmingham and Soma and Montgomery to national television. But they will tell us nothing about the nature of social change nor do they have a problem economic social or political.

Now there's one other factor in the 0 0 period we were coasting on. And in trial no. Psychological way that was moving toward progress. That is to say if you had asked any individual in this nation particularly university What is the most compelling problem we face between 55 and 65 in the very name we have in the civil rights movement since 65 we have been moving against the psychological concern forces of this nation. If you now ask the average American what is the most compelling problem. He will say and bring the war in Vietnam

and he is right. So but psychologically the war in real has trapped us. It has the civil rights movement down the middle. It has caused many white people who are in it to say that must wait now until we stop it now. And this has made it possible for a congressional backlash which is always going up. My problem with. The war has given them a patriotic platform on which to stack for the stopping of that progress. And let me say here lest there be some confusion the notion that we can do nothing about the domestic problems until we deal with Vietnam is vicious. It is precisely what the goal want and Easton sack.

And if anyone expects me to go back to the ghetto and tell negroes that I've just been talking with my white liberal friends who convinced me that nothing can be done to the war in Vietnam is over. Then I think I must have holes in my feet. But I want to point it out more differently my friend. If the war in the now were over tomorrow morning I would still want more money. Then we are spending in Vietnam for loose in Asia Africa and Latin America. For the creation of democratic institutions and for a lot of people who are starving in India. And we are not prepared when the war in Vietnam is over. To insist on more money than is being spent for our positive international conventions.

We are in trouble. I. Was there for the war in Vietnam is not an economic and financial power. We have the wealth to do both. It becomes a psychological and political problem because we do not have the courage to fight off in our own mind. Left wing concepts which are printed as right wing concepts and vice versa because it is here that you will find the STDs and the child's saying the same thing about the freedom and it's no good to the war in Vietnam at all and whether they say it for different reasons or not does not bother me because the reasons that people behave politically as they do is unimportant. It is that there is a political alliance between them to destroy. Finding in this regard my dear friend there is something else. The

period from 55 to 65 was a period of faith we shall overcome we shall never turn back. We should never be turned around Martin Luther King had a dream. On August 28 1963. No negroes have a dream today. Oh I have a nightmare. This is no period of hope there's a period to spare. And make no confusion about it. While we cannot get real rioting unless we do something now about housing schools and jobs and representation. It was not bad housing bad schools bad jobs and the absence of participation which caused the riots. The riots were caused by a home less ness.

That nobody believes in the networked community that tomorrow or a week from next Thursday or year from now or 10 years from now that there will be full employment that there will be the destruction of slums that there will be public health measures that there will be schools that there will be representation. That was the cause of the violence. The hopelessness. Now I come there for the freedom budget because the freedom budget is for the purpose of restoring hope. In a situation it's very simple. It says number one. While we are all poor everything which has been done in the war on poverty and why we must find it now. We have to find war on poverty though it is relatively insignificant.

Why do we have a point. Because we must continue to establish that this nation has an obligation to eliminate poverty. Here again though I criticize the war on poverty I will not join the Brigid's who would be delighted to have me say it's no damn good. I never could have worked to eliminate poverty because the only way to eliminate poverty is to say families of the poor are economically. And now I love children and I think something needs to be done for 17. But the same youngsters who are to graduate where there are no jobs and you know there are no jobs. Before you send them there is

no I love. And as far as I know you have a thought. And then send the children back to the same schools the same houses with just the same teachers who cannot share the same parents who are separated and think you've done something just the opposite has been proven and could have been written about in 1910. And one point could have been written by some of our About Town. In fact Mr. Morgan ranked the best nor the most incisive report it was written by even Frank Frasier of

Howard University who was black. As he was black. But this is what we know from Italians and Irish who are two groups who had very similar problems. High crime family instability and all the other things which hand me a change in situations which made it possible for the fates of those families to gain economic independence and gain economic independence. All the problems in the community gradually reduced. Now we're trying to reverse it if we will only help the little children three and four. John's

father who still cannot be respected and somehow wrong. Well the people we are not. Only something about children and teenagers but it goes to the family. It says who is poor and what significance doesn't. This is a cultural. Difference between a man who is one who's poor. One does not.

Respect Governor Rockefeller. Democrat I'm not sure I can afford. I go to auctions around and pick out my own according to my ability. That's culture. Since. Then it has nothing to do with how much money he's got. Comedy is a problem that's facing the freedom budget. Poor money the poor so that they can no longer be described for something will happen.

Capitalist I want to the first thing to do when they get this money is to go out. Now that may sound like a joke but this is a part of the economic theory I'm expanding to the degree that we put money in their hands and buy TVs and shoes and brushes and toothpaste and the kind of perfume men used to get the pimples so girls will love our gross national product increases. And from that national We want to get this money for the freedom and. Now the black capitalist

black but we say number one. Public works. Now forget Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the EPA because I'm not talking about anything like that. I'm talking about public works for the benefit of the rich and the poor. Rocky let me talk about Kennedy for a minute. Kennedy is a poor man. He announced last spring he can no longer take his children on the Hudson because it's so dirty. Well let's help him. First of all we have many of these poor. To work training our members so we can take children Sam on the Hudson. But I don't want to be nonpartizan. I want to be nonviolent.

Let's help I want to follow. All right we hope he comes in with your five or six times a week and he's no better off the dope addict on home street in regard to the breeze. It is filthy. So we put now it was always people back to work. Proving the A are so poor is not so poor. Incidentally now all the colored people also up and down and it can be a little more spirited because it was a tweener. Now we repeat this in building subway systems. We repeat the same building hospitals we repeat the same building schools we repeat this and doing a thousand things but I don't want those young negroes and poor whites. Just going out there to deal with air pollution as if they were dragging me. I am one of many of them could be training in the process. To

become assistant engineers and those who have the ability to get an engineering diploma out of the air rather than from the Board of Governors of Harvard. That we create our concept of education in the process. Number two for all those who cannot work those who are too young too sick to psychologically and physically cripple that they get a guaranteed income and for nobody else. Number three Let there be family allowances which every civilized country has that there be medical care completely free. This is what the freedom but it has. Lost some time in Britain I catch a terrible toll so I go to a doctor when I leave I say doctor how much do I owe you. He says nothing and I said Doc I

didn't know that the British medical system took care pharmacy. He looked at me as if I was stupid he said why not foreigners. Plenty of foreigners who can't pay. I said but I can pay you pennies so what we care about is that you're not down in the on the ground sniffling and sneezing giving the rest of us hopes. Well I thought that was a perfectly magnificent philosophically selfish way of looking at it. We must stop fooling ourselves poor whites and poor are not going to go to college in this country on the basis of these few scholarships that Harvard and Yale and the others get together themselves on the back. I would prefer to see them put every poor on a scholarship and use the money to the political process.

Where everyone who has a brain can study from the time to read the finds start me and give him a sound for going to school. These are some of the things the budget calls for the budget for that when we talk about helping themselves are prepared to help themselves. One poor working at minimum wage in Mississippi for $3 a day in housing in Montgomery Alabama. Help them sell. Now we want $2 minimum wage so that people

don't have. Now you say my father owns a little store and he couldn't possibly pay $2 billion on weight. If you're still you're probably right. I want to help him too. Oh I want to help everybody. Here we can see some cigars Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Harrington's railways for billions of dollars and we can give them dollars because they don't plant or because they plant here or because they burn this crop and save this one. Then I am for a $2 minimum wage in which those employers who cannot afford to pay and receive subsidies from the government in order to pay I am not brutalizing the poor small businessman. I am for

helping the worker who is exploited and if they do that we have to help the small businessman. Amen. Now some of the criticisms freedom budget now have done in just a second. One thing people say about we embody there's almost a section in there in which you actually talk about defense figures. How could you talk about difference figures aren't You can someone be and now I most certainly am but I am not my friends. As to how money can be spent. On the ME and you show that. On the basis of the government get and they have to spend money to prove that they can have it for the freedom budget.

Which is precisely the plan to move Europe. When are we going to have the Marshall Plan. My back to the fact that we're spending money on the military. We have the putdowns to prove how all the money would be spent. Therefore we had to estimate how much the federal government was going to spend on military things. It wasn't that we wanted them to do it but we had to make a sensible estimate. Second budget is not about. The participation of the poor. But I want to make it quite clear there's nobody who has spent more of his life trying to make it possible for the poor to express themselves. I am old.

Who are likely young right rose to have a decision over their life. Everybody else has. Why not us. But I am not going to fall for a gang of foolishness. Alternately in a democracy really patient the poor whether radicals like to think so or not until the moment of revolution comes by which I mean a violent revolution. Is the political processes of the major political parties and a minor political parties which I think there be now you take a small group working on housing in Newark New Jersey they sink because they get together and vote Mrs. Smith on the some board. The real democratic participation.

It is possible only if we can get through the budget. It was you know committing billions of dollars to being slammed into the north tower while Mrs. Johnson sitting on a committee voting in the vacuum that no matter what those negroes on that committee decide it only we don't make any money. So I am saying that in the process. Ah been sice thing all I'm going to be her going to help make decisions. That is a process of masturbation. It is over covered by a financial policy and priorities in the nation that is meaningful. The freedom budget stands for the change of priority national plan.

The government becoming the employer of last resort the government becoming the house of last resort. The dedication of putting sufficient money in the people's pockets so that they can live in this affluent society with dignity free education free medical care but much much much more important than anything else that we in the freedom budget don't think we have all the answers. For example we don't think we really have the answers on how you get the best methods within the political structure for the participant participation of the poor in your workshops that we would welcome a discussion of that because we don't have the answers. We don't know when example how much of this can be done by private enterprise. How much needs to be done in the overall picture. By a combination of private enterprise and government and how much must be exclusively done by government. We welcome your suggestions from these discussions you have

in helping us out in these regards. Let me just say in conclusion my friends. That we are up. Against the most. Difficult period of American history that we have ever faced. Now I don't think anybody can accuse me of being red hot fire brand. Nobody can say that I haven't made my criticisms of black power but I think they are. There are negative criticisms. Nobody can say that I haven't jumped on stick for that anti-Semitic letter that they put out. Nobody can say I haven't defended what I believe to be right and I can be critical. But having said that I want to say to my white friends that

although I am very distressed with the behavior of some young negroes. How could we have expected that this kind. Of disaffection and disregard for America and what it stands could have been avoided. I am not threatening because I do not threaten. But I am here to say if you like young girls today are a totally different breed from my generation. It's one of the reasons I sometimes have trouble understanding. When I'm downtown. My grandmother said to me by don't you go nowhere in you know white women and if you see me bothering you ask me the time. Or. Directions. Just pretend you don't hear her and people because they're nothing but trouble. Environment

when you go downtown whether you're running or whatever the policeman tells you to do you do it. Even if you're right and do what he tells you you do faster and get out and push his own little brutalised by right when you go downtown and any white people call me nigger or black bastard. You're here you let him just go. Say nothing. Now what's happened. Friends don't say anything. Well now you've got to admit. That young equals rejecting that kind of thing and standing up and saying all right I'm not going to put up with this anymore. They are not friends. They mean there are elements in the society in the community which need something manly and not because they are devils. Would in fact prefer to see the society destroyed and the cities burned down.

If they cannot have respect we have got to make a peace with this. And the only way we can give them that respect is not by urging them to study Swahili. And not by refusing to collect African art. And not by appeasing them in conferences by giving them 50 percent of the vote when that 10 percent of the people and not by permitting one. Too much to endure and they need no indignity. You know I'm coming to the battle. For those economic and social demands which are all known and brings freedom to the poor and relieving the well the most desperately poor of all.