Gandhi invades the South; Nonviolence in a violent world

Good evening and welcome again to the subject. Of nonviolence in a violent world. My name is Edward Keating. With me again tonight Iris and Pearl and Roy Kepler. I think gentlemen we might take is our theme for tonight. The title of Gandy invades the south. And I would like to posit a thesis for the basis of this discussion. When Gandhi led his nonviolent resistance movement in the end and was successful many people tried to explain it away on the basis that first of all there was a great number of Indians and a few British that the British were ruled by a sense of justice and fair play and that they would not go all the way to crush the Indians. That there was somehow a consensus within the community that allowed all of this to succeed. These people argue that if you were to extend

this into the international situation you probably would fail because of the absence of consensus the absence of community values and so on. It is my personal opinion that the situation in the south today is a classic analogy of the Gandy situation translated into international term us because we have here a hostile. Force represented by the white supremacists of the South who have power. Particularly in terms of raw and physical. Power. There is no consensus on one side we have in this polarized situation. Millions of white Southerners who are saying one thing and holding one set of values on the other hand we have millions of Negro Americans with different

values and different demands that they are insisting be met. It is interesting to know that we have here a confrontation of conflicting ideas and conflicting techniques in attempting to resolve this difficult situation on the part of the white Southerner supported by the state and often led by the state. We have violence we have lynching. We have murder. We have intimidation we have cattle prods we have bullwhips we have water hoses and all of the other instruments of violence and in opposition to this we have the nonviolent resistance of the Negro Americans down there engaged in a battle with the violent forces. And I would have to say from this moment at least it appears that the nonviolent resistance is succeeding and the violent

resistance to this is failing. ROY Would you like to comment on that. I think that substantially your analogy is a good one. This situation may not be exactly that of an external invasion of force but that it's a good analogy of the sound definitely does feel it. I agree the. I suppose opponents of this view would say that this is true but that one of the reasons the nonviolent group is winning is because it is relying on the superior strength and and sense of violence of the federal government to intervene on its behalf. And yet the federal government has done very very little intervening particularly in a violent form. It has been in a nonviolent form principally in

the form of legislation out of Congress and so on particularly in recent times in Alabama there have not been the presence of federal violent force. But more a juridical force did you say right that they they were relying on this for I think that opponents of the view that he put forward good audibly holding that they were relying on this external force to intervene we had an editorial in that how a lot of times just last week by Alexander bodie in which he substantially said that in his opinion the majority of people not all but the majority of people using nonviolence in the south today were relying in the ultimately on others to rescue them from the situation and possibly with violence. I can't think of any more erroneous view than than Bodhi is in that situation. I don't agree with it either but I mention it is an example of the kind of skepticism.

But I think one of the things that we misunderstand in the north is the fact that this movement in the south is indigenous. It is an action brought about by the indigenous negroes living there attempting to achieve their rights guaranteed under the Constitution. The only time we have the presence of the federal government or. Individuals is at a moment of crisis and they come in almost after the fact. The interesting and I think significant point is that the Negroes in so my Alabama for example. Began this action on their own and I don't think history in the United States would give these people much hope of strong outside help particularly from the federal government because we've had a century now in which to get it. We haven't gotten it so that I think we can say essentially that the movement in the critical southern states like

Alabama Mississippi and Louisiana is indigenous and these people have put their lives right on the line and they've done it in a nonviolent form. And it appears to work. I agree. In fact the air it seems to me of the viewpoint Alexander body put forward is a failure to understand all of the pressures and forces that nonviolence can make use of legitimately. It was said it was the Gandhi that the reason that India achieved his freedom was because of the economics of the situation or because of Britain's changing imperial situation in the in the world and I'm sure that just as all of these things were interrelated this is true and that the Gandhian movement took advantage of or made use of these other verses up and help them up. There's no doubt that you can as the nonviolent forces in the south have

developed an intentional technique of disruption of the community which means to bring to the surface every weak point in the community's life. And to bring about a state of crisis so that the community as a whole will have to confront the injustice. Right and also make it very clear they're interrelated. There are some. Somebody or groups that are passive that they really can carry on without They really showing by I think their nonviolent activity and by this kind of creative disruption they're very much in or related with the law in their bright active way. Now of course one of the most dramatic and early manifestations of this disruption was in Montgomery in 1056 with Mrs. Parks. I always likened the situation of Mrs. Parks feet hurting to the firing on Fort Sumpter almost the beginning of this this incredible revolution really rather than civil war.

This is what brought Dr. Martin Luther King into prominence. And as you recall when they were about to launch this bus boycott in Montgomery Alabama. Even Dr. Martin Luther King and all of the people who had organized the thing that fatal moment in that morning they looked out the windows and wondered whether or not the people would actually honor the boycott. And they did. They not only boycotted the buses but they also boycotted the stores downtown. But the situation was even more critical of him than that. Because that morning the group that met were not prepared necessarily to carry out a nonviolent boycott. They met in an emergency and that the insistence of a man whose name escapes me now Nixon Mr. Nixon who was a member of the.

Brotherhood of reverent borders and he felt that they needed to do something it was he who suggested at least one day boycott and he came to the meeting armed and he urged the others to arm and there was a moment of indecision whether or not this would be a essentially a nonviolent or violent movement. And this was worked out behind the scenes and their group was challenge to try nonviolence. There were several people who played a role in this and some of the people who were guarding Martin Luther King at that point were armed. And the first act they had to engage in was to disarm their own community of physical weapons. And there is where they made a crucial decision to carry out a nonviolent boycotting program. So it does work it does work and not only it works but I think again part of the myth. That people hold against nonviolence what I think is correct if

it were not a myth or an illusion is that it's not very carefully planned or is not very carefully organized and perhaps an earlier meeting with us. I mention the book by John bomb Iran Conquest of Violence which shows how carefully Ghandi organized the resistance and and in some way one can read Martin Luther King's book Why We Can't wait to also show. That this is. Carefully. It is. With. A spirit of love. One cannot really got away with you know denying this or pretending it doesn't exist because this is the revolution. But it's modern intelligence that really are not in my view inseparable but that on the contrary they really are the same I suspect but anyway that done enormous with enormous intelligence and with Brevik organisation brae sensitive organisation work and King's book and so that me in some of the essays makes this bright clear on what the decisions were how they were organized

how they were carried out. It's important to read I think I think it's not without interest for several of the past years three or four as the burgeoning revolution went on there were various points reached. Two or three years back there was a point in which a new edge of militancy was being demanded in the Negro community in the Negro leadership and in the civil rights movement. And there was a kind of moment of competition as who would prove that he was the most militant or as militant as everybody else. There was a moment also in which nonviolence was questioned and people said we've gone as far as you can go with nonviolence. And I remember seeing interviews on television with Martin Luther King in the first question of the interrogator was do you believe that you've now reached the limits of nonviolence thinking that you can only go to a certain point presumably and

then you erupt into some kind of a violent movement that is trying to come to power and overpower others. What I think is really failed understand by reading those even would how the civil rights movement or how Martin Luther King is that this is a revolution and not only is that a revolution in the sons the men are seeking rights that have been denied to them but there are men who are seeking entire even different kind of institution a way of life it's a really it's a revolution against violence it's really it seems to me the one revolution that has yet not been fully undertaken and Knott's the revolution against this kind of organised brutality and this is I think terribly important as they do I think people in Washington do not see it even the well-wishers. I really don't see that this is a revolution of and highly different kind of order. I think there's another dimension to this whole thing. Here we are sitting here talking and we sit ins I think more than anything else happened to be white.

But I feel in my own way just deeply involved in this revolution as anyone else because of the horrible situation of Negro Americans is not an isolated thing. All you have to do is is witness the poverty that exists that we try to ignore and we've tried to ignore for generations it took someone like Michael Harrington to begin to expose it. But I sense. In creasing concern on the part of many Americans regardless of color. And incidentally I think in a sense regardless of the civil rights movement who bit in vision the civil rights movement as a manifestation of a human revolution that's taking place in society today. I find myself increasingly distressed over the war policies of this country as if somehow there's a hidden

gyroscope that seems to be leading us to some monstrous event. In terms of violence when you see so much poverty and you you hear this talk of the war on poverty which really only you might say scratch is the bottom third of the fat middle section of the country that it doesn't really touch the untouchables that we talk in terms of federal aid to education bill one billion two hundred million dollars and yet this only scratches the surface and not only in terms of dollars does it only scratch the surface but the whole educational system itself as you know Haitians Perrott for you know for things for the good way of life this sort of thing which is manifested in material things you owe it to yourself. The problem of the burgeoning of these incredibly vulgar commercials for

deodorants and hair tonics and move up to a new type of beer or improve your status by buying a Christie's home. There is or is a growing revulsion over all of this. And yet we seem to be locked both in the civil rights movement and in let's call it the total human revolution in that in the doubled jaws of a vise is one that pressures us from one side which cries out for justice and for humanity. And there's the other side that keeps pressing against us and this impressment could only be described in terms of the form of the dollar sign. Man must have food clothing and shelter. And if we violate the ethos of the system that food clothing and shelter can be denied us and I think these this is the tension within each of us. Not only here tonight but I think

in most people I would do those things that conscience demands. But I must eat and I have a wife and I have children. How do we reconcile these two. Compressing forces. I have even a more slightly more discouraged view. I was surprised to hear that because I've always known I proposed as a few of those areas only in the sense that stations are rather own in demonstrations there whether in seminars or with friends that they feel somehow that there is life. It really doesn't count politically that there they really are zero's that the kind of rife that would be possible for a thorough hour even for a Gandhi reading isn't possible anymore that they don't count and it's and it's. There's sort of a

sigh and a kind of a last it but there really is this kind of defeat that I feel all around or think that I see and hear from you know very intimate friends that well someone else really is you know it's all out of our hands. And if it's all out of our hands then we're through because then it seems you know all to need to be in the hands of the Marx Brothers or fronts Kafka you know that. Well. This fiction of it being on ever hands is understandable with the kind it was seemingly overwhelming social forces and the overriding problem in all of our lifetimes of war itself and the total war the in the total claim of the state over the lives of people the holding of whole populations in hostage makes individual man feel pretty impotent. There is another factor to this though that I don't know I don't know exactly how it relates and that

is the keen sense in middle class America and not just America I'm sure of the location. I studied to become and am now a. Doctor Lawyer merchant thief. And that's what I can do. I have no right to turn in tips and people who will you know in the name of human freedom go 8000 miles around the world and drop nap on bombs on people they've not seen won't stand up in their own community for freedom won't even risk their own job because that they see themselves only as capable of doing that one thing. This is a real myth. Actually in our society fiction of our own mines because there are alternatives still exist and there are men whose live show that they can do other things besides what they were trained to do if if it's a choice.

But even the dropping of the napalm bombs in Vietnam 8000 miles the right men wrote to tell you this was not very choice. Again it's the same thing that they surrounded the young men and they had no choice and the older men the officers will tell you really is then simply the same they may have no choice. I think though that finally you reach a point where you have to break with the establishment when a moral issue becomes transcendent. And if as I sometimes put it in Christian terms the sign of the Cross has been replaced with the sign of the dollar bill. I think if you're going to end all the establishments which work on that premise that where right where rather where might makes right and where in the south might makes right. You have to break. I'm afraid with the with the institutions that are going down that lemming path and I suppose one of the first things that we would have to do would be to be prepared to embrace poverty in terms of things

we would have to embrace nonviolence in efforts to achieve goals that are of a moral nature. We would have to get over this syndrome of racism that we have not only in terms of Negro Americans but in terms of the ease with which we can destroy a colored people in Southeast Asia or in the Congo or anywhere else. It's almost as if we have to a St. Francis did turn his back and in a sense walk out of the building naked into the snow. Well maybe this isn't fair to say you know because there I'd like to think. That the things that we do in radical violence though they're not radical enough that we really are saying we won't pay our taxes that we're breaking with the establishment that we won't play their game we won't sign their loyalty

oath we won't pay their bills. But I just want to say the ironic thing is I've always been able to make a living Yanni right and I've got it not bad and I and I you know I I'm not affluent but I live presently. I don't maybe I shouldn't be but I think there's this curious thing I've said in our practically my whole adult life the things that men say you can't say no to and get on and I feel fine. And I do even that non But maybe maybe that's because I haven't really pushed hard enough or been. Radical enough. But I think there is this curious thing in our society and this is one of the side that I should mention that one of the hosts the size of the individual free enterprise system is not the beauties of its economic first safe perhaps as much as that during the McCarthy period for example members of the American Communist Party went into business in the small businesses where they were relatively immune

from the forces that as they were allowed in tolerated and had a certain degree of freedom there that they were not allowed in other areas of their lives. So that there is a sentiment in our society in which you can you don't. You could. You certainly can undertake poverty voluntarily and identify yourself with impoverished people and this has been done and is being done by some people. It's not a question. Roy you have to make here my point is that you don't I'm making a charge you're not necessarily going to be driven into poverty but you certainly can make a break with the establishment. Yes but the term I used was be prepared to embrace poverty you know. Now I don't I mean I don't mean necessarily that you are going to live in the city dump or something like that. But what I mean is that you cease being hung up on the principle of acquisition of things. Because at this anything person that I've ever known who is really lonely and lost and confused

and surfeited. Tired beyond endurance. It's the wealthy you can only wear after ski so much you can only get into the jet set for so long and it begins to haul life has no meaning this man searches for meaning. And I think that this whole business that we've been talking about now for so many hours and we've always been sort of framing it in terms of nonviolent and nonviolent resistance. I think this is a manifestation of this very very profound revolution that's taking place and man because we have witnessed history we witness daily events around us today. And it simply doesn't make sense when you think of it in the traditional terms. And it isn't. Unfortunately it isn't just the role the because the sea is down all over the whole kind of meaninglessness to live the kind of pointless

kind of violence on our streets with the kind of. Through our fame is that people who are not off will do also because their life had really become meaningless to him again in terms of violence everything in our society justifies it again. The right Johnson will act will be to send troops and most people commend as even people get favor of civil rights but again they're commending the cage that we really have to break out of and so I think what a nonviolent revolutionary is citing he is going to live his life and he thinks he can live it socially and politically as a relatively free man but I agree with you ab it means really breaking with most of the present forms that we have and a really bright clear note to those forms that they have outlived themselves and we really run out of them. I think Graham it's a man's determination really to live his life by his own

insights and I don't think this takes courage. I think it really takes some sort of insight into what your life is the bomb. This is happening though. This is I think the encouraging side of it in the civil rights movement in this country has been the most liberating force in the lives of many people not just of negroes not just of a few whites but now increasingly of people generally. Young people are attracted to it. Ministers of peace are at least trying to ask. But at last they are you in right. Getting in and putting their lives on the line a bit and they are coming back new man some of them waited a long time some of them waited a lifetime but let's give them credit. Now they are involved and life has new meaning it has a purpose and it has fulfillment. You know the interesting thing is I was talking with John Henry Faulk a couple of weeks ago and we were developing a certain point.

And his comedy that he used to be so famous for before this debacle of the aware organization was basically social commentary. And I suddenly had an idea and I realized something based on some things I have read and so on that the protesters like the folk singers like Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger the comedians like Dick Gregory and Godfrey Cambridge and so on who are engaging in the most devastating social commentary and attacking frontally were all of these hideous establishment that are so denigrating man are themselves making vast amounts of money. You see now this suddenly made me realize I think a fact of life.

That what we have is we have a country with millions of listeners who are ready to listen to these things and yet we have very few voices to speak to them. And I think that's why people like Dylan and Seeger and fall and Cambridge and so on are getting the audiences they're getting because people want they want something. Right. There are two things to this and one has always been Roy's point. People are listening and now we really have to tell them something real that they're listening to people of nonviolent persuasion but I think there's another dimension to this also I would say is a much harder gap. Not that it's not hard to say something real but they get those restiveness the stop being passive. I hope this is a rather than an arrest rated anecdote. Joan Baez gave a concert a few years ago before she herself was confident about speaking about the news of peace and nonviolence. So after a

piece after an intermission she said. I really want to say something. But a friend of mine is here who says A better for me but he's really speaking for me or I wouldn't do so. I want. To speak. Well I knew I could only speak at her concert for about 3 of our minutes robbing winched So I really only spoke for say for minutes. It was really enters the intense kind of this like as well as some sort of overwhelming response favorably but there was really dislike she was giving a performance and they were passively accepting it and adoring it and I said they couldn't do it. I said that she had found a medium a protest she had found a meeting medium of liberating herself to some degree I said. Each of us had to do that. You could not be a passive listener. It didn't count. And that's what Izod was three minutes more or less. And it really caused a

tremendous kind of anxiousness and distress and Bieber was a retort of things shouldn't go on in a concert. And of course it is the kind of thing the job now does herself in the concert she doesn't need me to do it on. But I get this thing of rescinding this thing ad that you talk about that they really want to hear because they are groping but then to really make an an Iraq or a commitment and is bad when one sad fact is to be committed and they could be committed is to be in danger. Those were great words on. And inside I think. Yes but the first step IRA into Tenet is is to listen at the time of the brand. Well I was going to say to the one people are about to put their toe into the water for the first time they just put the tip of it in. That's right and I am encouraged. On the other hand by the number of people who have begun to act in the last few years compare this to the silence of 10 years ago. Yes pretty acquiescence 10 years ago.

Why was Alexander bodie concerned in his editorial. Because people were taking their their concerns and their lives out onto the streets. Absolutely. For example just a yes just this morning at mass for example there was a priest who gave the homily. And we don't call them sermons anymore we call them home why I don't know. You mean and you mean to their faces you got home. Those that's the official title for him. But the point is that this priest who I've been listening to now for quite a number of years who hasn't really been with it at all has begun to make some tentative efforts in the main area of social justice. And he delivered a homily this morning going directly to the matter of Selma and the civil rights and so on. I sat there and I was I tended to be impatient.

But then I realized no this man is beginning to rock in the right direction he is beginning to become involved and concerned. And so just because at certain concerts and certain priests and certain ministers and certain politicians and so on are only now beginning to get some understanding of this thing and are beginning to talk about it for example in terms of the Vietnam business. There is a growing dissatisfaction with our war policy in South Vietnam despite the efforts of the mass media to explain so much away. There is a growing discontent and concern. Reston Lipman in the papers various other editorial writers but among people themselves. Who are partners in this crime. Reluctantly are somehow I think searching for a vehicle of expression.

But again I don't think we should get hung up on one aspect of the problem. I think man is of a whole piece. Society is and I think that and again you know when we began this series I was more or less what you might say and almost an outsider concerned but not convinced. And so on the more I sit here and listen to these ideas the more I begin to see how they fit into the ideas of nonviolent resistance how they fit into this whole pattern of revolution that's taking place in this country and I think in the world it seems to me that in this point the question of the revolution in the world but it's the one real hope we have for the making the revolution a humane a democratic one instead of allowing it to become a totalitarian revolution. I think this is I think this is the significance the other thing I don't know.

I think there's significance to on another level which is always. Complementary to what Roy says. Is the only way that in our short lives that we have a chance to grow up. You know I this is our chance to be him even if the political situation changed and people were getting enough to eat I think again only confronting one problem nonviolently both internally as well as socially and politically. Maybe we grow up. Maybe we really don't repeat the same kind of stupidity is not only politically and socially on a large scale but also you know personally and privately that there really this is a chance to really develop humanly It seems to me to do to make steps to make a new step of another dimension in the history of mankind I think it is you know the thing that interests me is that in the crises that generation that we've gone through. The intensity of the problem increased the rapid degree and Mihm in trying to confront these new problems have been not measured up in

many ways on the other hand they have measured up better and better and more quickly than ever before. And I think I'm really encouraged I think we need time and we may lose the odds are still heavily against us but the tremendous strides to been made in many parts of the world and destroyed have been made in the United States among people I think are most encouraging precisely because they are producing more mature people people who can grapple with these intense problems with with more objectivity than they were capable of in the past you mention the newspapers. Think back to other crises of this kind of international order in which great pressure was being brought to us on newspaper men to give out the official line and then think of the newspapers still in this country who are not giving up the official line to the present moment in this Vietnam crisis but who are resisting who are questioning the official policy and who are exposing sometimes indirect. But nevertheless exposing its inadequacies and I think that this is a measure of gain that we need to see

these all as building points and we need to bring America together the attitude of the press about nonviolence about things pacifist is remarkably transformed in the last 10 years. That's true. In fact we don't have our ice in the branches. We didn't have a one 10 years ago I think another. I'm going to bigger hurry but you know in that I'm I'm and it's not that you know it's not in the same way as saying that say I mean Graham this guy says I want a job now which is certainly our mentary understandable. But I and I'm sure this is true for Roy to him for ADD. I feel that. I know you can only you know in a sense social changes aren't things that really happen quickly but I feel sometimes they are but sometimes they aren't. The urgency is that I think normally there really is this disaster. That's all the and certainly it isn't hypothetical it's happening in Vietnam today

and I'd again I think one should be encouraged by both the things that you decide but I think also the rate of. Iraq we have to struggle to deal with. You know it is our Gen and Berger as a writer you know should be Wrotham by rob them as well not this Marine just back we're doing it with every florist generalities here again. But it brings us back to the question of why if there is this much internal resistance to this kind of a path people don't I think again it is because they don't sense an alternative in this area. Non-violence is still meaningless to them and they can legitimately say you know it doesn't come as far as I can see have any application. What could you do in this kind of situation and how could it be applied and I think that the theorists and the practitioners of nonviolence have here to face squarely to this problem that we haven't gotten very far in this kind of application.

We we talked earlier about nonviolent offense. That's if somebody is invading you. What do you do about your own country when it's invading somebody else. Right but I think in some sense we never were right to do but have been unable to build this kind of grassroots nonviolence outside of the civil rights could we know how to disrupt our government if we really could move enough people to disrupt it that we could get Johnson to make a decision to pull out because I think we know the techniques of disruption is Rodney's by address to much of the call creative disruption which I agree with. But I granted some things happened in the last few weeks in America where the I think there was this rising tide against America's unilateral military actions in Vietnam. I think thanks to some and some really right people's contents energies and emotions were quite successfully and I don't mean manipulated but

really authentically gone off. So it's still OK to bomb a thousand miles away but it isn't OK to take Ronn right ministers life and XOMA And again I think how to dramatize the right for about one woman and not one Giles in Vietnam I think this is really the problem for us and I think we need to be not only strategy is good at the goal men either not only strategist but I think we have to be dramatis. I don't know how long Graham Greene who wrote the The great problem is that in our hearts there's a secret dictator ready to countenance the death of a thousand strangers. If we think it will save the few we love. Exactly. And this it seems to me is the dimension of this problem that the one is here. The other is there and how do we make the people of Vietnam be

real people to Americans here. I think one way to make the people in South Vietnam and North Vietnam real to us is by beginning to make our neighbors who live across the street or with whom we work real to us instead of objects or things. I think one of the most debilitating aspects to you might say this process of conversion. Is that too few people have any sense of involvement because they are not on the firing line of Selma Alabama. They are not in Washington D.C. formulating policy. They are ordinary people who lead ordinary lives who work who have families who have hobbies who have friends and associates. There are locked up in the system too but for example how often do we ever sit

down with a so-called friend and talk. How much more we spend our time in idle chit chat about what the San Francisco Giants are doing or the engine trouble of the car. How often do we really get to know each other as human beings. We know each other. We know our neighbor for example. As a Republican as a Methodist let's say as an employee of United Airlines as the father of so many children the husband of a woman and so on. But we never seem to penetrate to the man that's there we always think of the the affiliations that he has as if by affiliations we determine the character but personality of the man. I think the catch is that that's how we determine our sours amounts home. You know the reason we do it through our neighbor is because that's exactly what we think of ourselves I'm an engineer

I'm a professor I'm minuter I'm a bookseller I'm a teacher. I think this you have the problem in this and I think if we somehow. None of the intensity of that life would to his eyes. Then we would know it in Vietnam but we don't know it very intimately yet you know Arsalan that somehow we were very much away from the absolute miraculous beauty and also the thing that always surprises me about people who who advocate or condone violence who they don't know how fragile they are both psychically and visit me violence. I can't stand it it drives them crazy it destroys their body. And yet on the other hand this somehow real insensitivity I always feel not toward me but toward themselves that they have. They really don't know how fragile they are infinitely fragile and that's part of the fact that they can grow it's part of the fact that they can be something to their environment. Is that very front Julius.

But somehow I think you know this is really ignored in themselves and so they say I don't know anything about that I'm a professor a friend of ours once said it's only an expert who really can really not understand things that you know Islam began on. I know I had a most interesting experience week or so ago Yugoslavia was in my homies the editor of a newspaper in Belgrade. And it is marvelous man. Incidentally my children were absolutely thrilled at the thought for the first time in their lives they're going to have an honest to god comics in their home and it was a delightful experience. And Sergei is a very fine man. We got along beautifully but nevertheless for quite a bit of the evening. Sergei was on and we despite the fact that we agreed in many many things. Nevertheless I had the sense that he was on and then

in one moment my wife said because we began to talk about the civil rights movement everything like that my wife suggested that we play a Pete Seeger record of these social protest songs all the time. Up until this moment Sergey had been sitting on the couch. And then after listening for about five minutes and some of the words he couldn't get so I suggested to him that he rather get the feeling of the view of the voices and the music and the air of the whole thing. We realized that within five minutes that man had gotten off the couch sitting on the floor and for the rest of the evening we had a marvelous time because I think this human breakthrough that we will. I wasn't sitting there as I was an American or something like that and he wasn't sitting there as a Yugoslavia and so on. But picking up the era the nuances of this revolution that's taking place suddenly

the barriers were down and we became for the first time truly human in our relationship. I think this is what we need. It was so crap I see this so often in my own life and in the lives of friends where we sense that we conclude that we have no alternative. The course that we're pursuing you know alternative you're going to get yeah we live in a world in which everything is predetermined and we see no alternative. It seems to me that part of the job that we're engaged in is to open up alternative I think specifically also what both of you said in part this kind of humanness or whatever you want to say take a breath it will form an artist sentry if it's not already destroyed I thought of that I think if this is the bubbly or infinitely thorny thing we're going to take some sort of and hung around. Years ago when he wrote the origins of

totalitarianism said there must be a new political principle which really were all. Transcend the nationalism and take care of every human being in this new world. That's how she starts the book out. She doesn't come back and she doesn't find this new political principle I really think it exists in Gandhi and non violence that there really is a new political principle but I think her analysis is absolutely correct unless there is really a new political principle that really does take care of each of us in the sense that it does really comprise each of us that we that we really will destroy. I think that principle now is known. I think now that principle really has to be implemented. It has also to be interpreted and implemented. I think these go together probably but it seems to me that again talking about the American community and the American reaction is one of the difficulties that I sense is the traditional American way of salivating

in political matters. And even today in the Vietnam crisis the ordinary reaction of most people who are concerned is I must write a letter to my senator let the president know how I feel perfectly. Natural so natural that they see no other alternatives open to them and they did they realize in a very frustrating way that that isn't going to be enough. That the real decisions aren't made in those political channels any longer. If they ever work but they don't see alternatives to that and it seems to me that our job is to push in this case we're saying the alternative to that is not to make take your appeals to the politician in the traditional sense or at least not to do only that but to take it out into the street take it to your neighbors grind in your heels and say no you have all of this range of things you can do to register your opposition to this policy and you don't just limit it to a letter to the

president of course the civil rights thing again is that in America as the best example that they have really it isn't that right rushing them is done through them. Roshan in the real sense that they really in a sense created this by going out on the street and they fought and that will be and they probably the conventional civil right before core but really it was the streets and the killer of all curious people. Frederick Niti said every really major philosophical. Content every major major philosophical controversy is at last resolved on the street in the wire. MARGARET This is actually this is true you know we often think of the individual as feeling impotent and maybe even being impotent to affect change. This is not true and I think it sort of goes back to the old idea of the old fairy tale of the emperor's clothes. Everybody seems to go along for for years and years and years with the belief that

the emperor is wearing clothes and the child comes along and says the emperor has no clothes. And then people suddenly see for the first time the fact of the matter is that. The people are tremendously potent and in contrast to that the political leaders are really in a very fragile delicate position. Let me give you an example in nonpolitical terms it involves the Catholic Church. You know there have been quite a to do over in Rome at the Council on the artificial birth control and there's a great controversy flourishing now in the Catholic community where you don't think that that controversy arose because of a sudden change of heart on the part of celibate priests. No. This came about as a result of the pressures in the confessional for example and in conversation and in an honest awareness on the part of some investigators of the fact that a disturbingly

large percentage of Catholics are practicing artificial birth control period end to report UC. So these people enroll that they're going to keep keep the the flock you might say in some kind of order and not in a sense suddenly find themselves generals without an army Auto where all of this enormous pressure taken the situation in California of the bishops in terms of Proposition 14 they were subjected to enormous pressures from both sides. I think that if the the the advocates of justice had been a little more active. Possibly the bishops would've reacted more strongly to that that thing but I pressured but I just I think that in political terms in terms of the federal government the state government and so on that if the people would just for once realize their awesome power to effect

changes that they would probably engage in more activity right and they'd be much happier beside that the real power that their life would be a joy to them. Yes this. Is there's nothing more dreadful than feeling yourself as I described earlier in that vice is right. But to suddenly wake up and see that the vice really isn't there that you are free to make choices. And again what are we after we're after fulfillment. We don't find fulfillment in being atomic Tang's or being impotent. It's only in potency and in action that we have a sense of fulfillment when you become engaged in the liberation of others you are liberating yourself. Yes that's very and seems the only way that you can liberate yourself. And. And this again it seems to involve the age old principle that we are hesitant to even discuss nowadays and that's that embarrassing word love how difficult it is for two people very simply and directly to say I love you.

This is embarrassing. But in trying to fulfill one's beloved whether it's a wife or whether it's a child or whether it's humanity one finds fulfillment. And only finds it in Rob which is an active thing. Unfortunately too many people say oh yes I love negroes I love the South Vietnamese You know and then they they get in a few emotional the fusion you know and they think that this is sheer nonsense because love is an active thing and I think when you see it say and people who are retired fairly good at it say like. I've gone near Christ you never get something that's not some other well you know it's something that is really rigorous and demanding and growing and I think this is why we're asked this is why we stay away from live because it demands the most from us and it demands in a sense both the greatest strength and the greatest kind of exposure. And we've got it and we're growing at it when we how about but we're

the fright of that first time it had to stop. You know that you talked about right. I think wrong to make that stop. You know you gob the lot of you know the great. Yeah. The minute that you guys come alive you know it's awful incidentally is to is to eventually go into that pool of water and to discover that it's lukewarm. You know there's no ride vitality is there. I. I but I think what we sometimes get hung up on too is the old saying that you only die once and you should and you want to die for something worthwhile. You know there's a corollary to that you only live once and therefore you should live something that's where you go out and you don't get the choice how you're going to die. You do have a choice how you're going to live somebody maniac may bump you around when we step out of here this evening. So we don't know but we have the choice right now of being as decent as we can muster is sensitive to each other. We have no control over how the

good guys who are going to die you know I've got those other you know kamu you know he died absurdly You know in that. OK Rima each of us and all of us but we could live back 3-D our toys but we could might.