The new equality

Late in the evening of the second day of the negro writers conference said to see them are the stage curtains drawn. We held a panel backstage in the main conference hall. The subject under discussion was Nat Hentoff who recently published book the new Equality taking part where Nat Hentoff Ralph Gleason Roy Jones Kenneth Rexroth and myself. We begin with Nat Hentoff giving a brief description of what he set out to do in his book. In one sense in the book is kind of a primmer for white folks. One of the sad and unforeseen and astonishing things about 1964 is that you still need printers from the Royal had a piece in The New York Herald Tribune two three weeks ago. One of the things he said was that people still come up and ask what are the Negros want. And as he said they want what anybody else wants which is when you go on from there but that's a point that many whites of the have come up to

yet. And the book tries to indicate. Then it's long past time. Several centuries past time to have any dependence whatsoever on white plurality or white conscience or whatever that if anything is going to happen beyond civil rights because that's the point we're at now how it's going to have to happen in terms of the negroes getting power starting a dynamism or furthering the dynamism now to the point where there is some kind of eventually some kind of coalition so that the society can be changed you can't patch up what is now you can talk as Whitney Young talks about incorporating the Negro into the fabric of the society the society doesn't doesn't have any more viability as it's constructed now economically and politically you've got to change it and you've got to change it radically or the way you are now with civil rights doesn't really mean one damn thing to the to the guy in the ghetto. And that you know Broadway is what the book's about.

You discuss several different kinds of action and several. Different philosophies of action in this situation. And could you go on and talk about them just a little bit. I mean we well this is still a very much of a virgin feel just what you do to get power. It's just remarkable. Maybe not so remarkable but it's an index of how far you have to go to indicate that at this point right now there is so little connection really between various movements in various Northern cities in the south. Sure you have co for going in in Mississippi now you have Snick doing some other activities in the south but there is still no real coalition because of lack of resources lack of people lack of money between Snick in the south let's say and the various corps in the east. Nor do you have any real penetration into the mass in

the ghetto. It's another point the liberal had made here this morning that new talk about ending demonstrations which in itself is an index of where they establish leadership is about 40 years back. You're also saying if you're thinking about it that you're ending demonstrations that really have yet to engage the mass of the people and they get a once in a while you do get a Jesse Gray who hits them where it is in terms of let's say housing and you get some kind of real mass support. But it so far there isn't the kind of organizational capacity. And the other things that go with it to make that last and grow and eventually go across the country I've heard all kinds of. Fine speeches by let's say by a trust and for whom I have great admiration about. Wouldn't it be nice in terms of social dislocation if we stopped everything moving in 100 cities across the country on any given day but I'm going to do that and that's only the very beginning because you've also got it. If you want to make the kind of economic changes that you need just starting very minimally with

billions of dollars of expenditures for housing and conservation and schools etc. are you going to change the whole Congress. I mean it's a cliche about how you talk about a war against poverty involving eight hundred million dollars. What are you talking about. This is more of the same old nonsense. In other words there has to be a change in power. And the only dynamism of the country now is is the negro dynamism but it's still in Kohut. There is not yet the kind of organization the kind of getting together of whatever resources there are that will make this really move and spread. The right question is do you how do you think. I mean change you're asking for how do you think that it's going to happen. I mean do you think it's going to happen by say this. Well what has to change the society do you think that it will change voluntarily.

Hell no it never no never. I didn't think no no no no. First of all I'm not at all sanguine in any case. No no I realize that I was just asking for so you know I leave it to the society. But by that you know the the the slogan turmoil of the last few years the power structure the white power structure is never going to change voluntarily. The only thing that can change it is power against it that will make it move. And for this to happen it has to operate on a number of levels simultaneously but with some kind of design that has a steps and the like that you know that are viable but that you can see a goal moving to it. This could involve mass selective boycotts against real parts of the power structure where it hurts at the same time that you if you're going to run a candidate against an Impala I'd say don't run another hack. You're going to run somebody who really knows what the score is and this means the whole political like East River Corps in New York. Has been talking I don't know how far the organizing has gone

in terms of block by block organization of a particular ghetto getting people involved first of all by moving on immediate problems in the neighborhood from ANP stores that charge different prices in the ghetto than they do in the white neighborhoods from the schools and the kind of pressure you can put against them and eventually and that's what kills me that would eventually cause how much time do you have. Eventually you also then by getting this kind of mass sustained action you get a politician in there who is more than the connotation of the word politician is meant Up to now because the way it has to go eventually has to. Again does it as I say as you have to capture Congress or at least change it so radically that that that there can be some action there. If there was a in the Wall Street Journal fittingly when the first poverty message came out the war against poverty. Some guy running a report on it said that he quoted an aide to one of the senators left unnamed saying I don't know what these guys are going to do about poverty because I never met anybody who's poor

except those that were working for the you know you have a problem of an indifference which there is every indication will grow rather than decline because what you're dealing with. You said this afternoon in the discussion we had with. With or is that the. You see what is happening to great sections of the population both white and black is that they are becoming redundant they're being put on the shelf. The time will come when half the population of the world. We don't need Africa today that's one reason why it's being freed. Nobody who needs it. I mean it's no longer economically essential to the preservation of either world communism or world capitalism I don't need it. You know they can turn it into a great Poor Farm Now look there's this simple statistic everybody boasts not everybody had an illegal about the March on Washington.

They say well there were two hundred thousand people marching on a very large percentage of them are white most of them were from out of town. What is the pot Negro population in Washington D.C.. It's four hundred and fifty thousand. Most of them didn't bother. I think that in retrospect and also because I was there that day and felt very sad I think that indicated a great good sense because the march as it was conceived didn't mean anything what it was it was you know it was conceived with the noblest of intense but it was a real of a sieve kind of thing because what's going up at this only increases the indifference. Yeah because you don't have a counterpoise to the kind of thing the kind of planning that has been characteristic of the movement so far at least in terms of the March kind of thing you don't have the kind of leadership yet that will say you know the hell with us walking down what was a Pennsylvania Avenue. I'm not and I'm not saying that you sitting down in Congress is going to do anything either. But certainly just the

demonstration that all these people can march peaceably and clear out of that town sell fast and leave so little litter. What does that prove that what does that do. Yeah. But what about what or what will people it say what will the poor be interested in and what won't they be indifferent toward me were going to think would move that I would say Turn them on bread. Well you know what that is. Yeah but the system can afford I mean feel bald is not for instance is not some kind of Marxist he's a Bush White columnist and he has planned it out that it would be far simpler and far cheaper to give everybody in the country about $400 a month and forget about it and he has powerful friends at the top of the administration this is a you know I don't know that I'm not sold on the side not tension and I statesmen politicians lie to get elected.

So they're you know they're not going to take over anything any idea like that is going to class them votes. If these votes are countable by them in any important numbers let you know by the rhythm in reverse and incidentally it doesn't make Keating and Janet heroes particularly they didn't disappoint Goldwater it just merely means that their electorate doesn't want to support go and that's all they had to get back to the US question but since you brought up the above he may have friends in high places but I can't think of a single congressman certainly including an Impala or the real liberals as they think of the cells like Aston Myron Allen who would vote for a guaranteed annual wage because at home right now in terms of the people who really exercise the vote they'd be considered kooks. Yes but I've got a cast in Iran brought him I suppose who maybe I shouldn't say this. I may lose seats but I have a favorite it would have already Laura thinks as you think ass tomorrow both knows but the point is that the gist is that says.

Everybody who is well informed knows that the problem of providing this huge population with bread is nothing important. Problem is that it's not going to be solved but getting back to the right is the only way it is going to be solved and again I'm not that optimistic that it is going to is if you get some kind of a real and not a euphemistic hopeful kind of thing a real neo populist thing going that creates the kind of vote so that guys in Congress vote because they want to stay and they want to stay in office and they know that's where the power is at least in certain districts. But in terms of what's going to get the people moving it's all kinds of things and it starts it has to start it seems to me with very specific things like the as they say the riots that have been going on now and I think it was in Jersey City some of the kids were saying among other things they would like a place to play. It's a pretty small thing but in that particular neighborhood I think it was Jersey City or Rochester. The playground had been closed for like two or three years and

sure enough they opened it you know a couple days. Right. And this is a very small thing but there are all kinds of things that go on in the ghetto that I very simple to fix up from traffic lights and the school thing is no big and then they finally realize that there's such a thing as an educational Park in New York they realize that it's on the agenda of the school committee and who is going to happen until they move for it. But if you got I don't care who did it cause or or the Muslims or Malcolm if he ever gets an organization going. If you've got the kind of an organization that could could put pressure in the ghetto on specific businesses where ever you can get pressure going if you have enough victories that mean something not the kind of victories that are announced to you from the white newspapers. Then you have a chance of a momentum going. But this isn't even beginning yet at least in most places you know you have sporadic instances of it core in Chicago and Cleveland and other places. But this is where it has to be at.

Isn't this a somewhat utopian view even of the political possibilities of the situation you say. Well you mention the playground and I had a thought. Sometimes these playgrounds are closed because. Incidents keep taking place. They're not safe. What I'm trying to suggest here is that the problems which have been inherited over such a long period of discrimination are not to be wiped out for simply that these things feed back on each other and that you have sometimes a good reason for feeding the cycle. Well for example if the streets are unsafe if playgrounds unsafe and the police department closes it we know that there may be sociological reasons for this to have taken place why this was unsafe neverless was unsafe. If you move Negro families from let's say ghetto slum into new high rise apartment houses they may not be nice places to live in the sense of warm or human

but can you explain in simple terms or in terms which are politically acceptable. Why do these places get rundown so quickly as they do. You know this that I don't mean this at home and it sounds like my wagon talking time. You know if you ever want to say there are nothing that simple but there is nothing that complicated I mean the poor or whatever color they are aren't that different social logically determined or whatever. Sure you don't. Everything links into everything else but you take the playground being unsafe or the streets being unsafe. You have the kind of cops that you have and they get all the first thing you. You do it seems to me as you get them out of there. You get a civilian complaint board that is more than any board that exists in the country now because none of those boards mean anything because they don't have the right to initiate. They don't have the right to have their own investigative staff or anything they're still cops Bors no matter what they're called. All these are small things but if you combine them. Open

your playgrounds for God's sakes it's long past time to start training teachers not only for the so-called disadvantaged neighborhoods but to teach to teach anybody. Look at the one of the most disgraceful things going the country in are the kind of teachers you get in the so-called ghetto schools. These are not impossible things to do they don't even take very much money they take some guys in power who have some sense of responsibility and knowledge and ability to follow through. How you get these guys in power is the beginning of the now. Well you know I don't like to boast about everything is hunky dory in sunny California but it is true that cities like New York and Chicago and increasingly down east and upstate cities I run by plane are not criminals. I mean though they are I mean they're run by I mean all of these city officials are guilty every day things which put the same thing

and been through for truth for generations. Well I know but now the now the all the chickens have come home you know the crimes are also more subtle now like I got in her calendar it was the chairman of course for Bronx try to citizen's arrest on their way absolutely legitimate citizen's arrest because he was breaking the law you know what they did or they said in a building you know you know I mean this is this is a good try to right the marriage got to be this is the nightmare of what's going on in the past but they seem to have this continuously deteriorating situation now it's just perfectly true I don't tell me I sound like married life but it's perfectly true that there are dozens of them housing projects which the elevators are no longer used because they are dangerous. I don't mean the old shopkeepers and wives like that stuff. I say they're dangerous to the inhabitants and you have this continuous You say they're not the same. I mean that they're the same they're not all that different. But there is a very important thing there's a cant term for it and I mean you have to do is

build one of these high rise minimum housing projects and you fill them with people who immediately become nameless boarding a building's high riper high rise. I'm trying that hard. That's what I mean. Yeah you know but never the peace ball when I had an Esquire that did raise the wrath of the Amsterdam News and all the fine people who lived in the. If you find high rise apartments all he was saying and it couldn't have been clearer is that if you make it perfectly evident to these people that you're putting them away somewhere from the rest of the city they're going to not have an army they're going to be damn mad and they'll piss in the elevators and they'll rip the doors off and I think that's one of the healthy signs about and I think it's a very healthy thing that kids drop out of school considering the kind of schools that dropping out of I think the fact that the kids are rioting You know I try to be a pacifist but I don't know you know if you don't show some kind of life some kind of reaction when there's nothing else there then you're dead and these people and I dead yet.

That's right. I think here in Rochester this said they talk about the curfew and they said we were out last night. Yeah yeah. MARTIN Oko back home where their baby. Yeah. Well maybe there is no one place to start with but the thing about the book that struck me the thing that struck me about it was the fact that it opened up for discussion all of the problems that began after that golden day occurs when there is no more discrimination. What do you do then. You know I mean after there is none there is no it is not completely integrated society has no further use for a Chicago Defender and we face unemployment and all the rest of these things and what happens at that point nobody wants to talk about race. And in San Francisco it seems to me to have particular application because everybody makes believe that San Francisco hasn't got any of these problems merely because nobody from his point got down on the polished picket line. And it ought to be very simple to understand that the powerless picket line didn't mean anything but a

hundred points. And I don't see how it could. And certainly the Cadillac Agency back in line didn't either. And I'm not trying to rank either of those. And it's the shock and the horror of events by people who have had a completely self-created world of unreality like the San Francisco judges who all of a sudden wake up to find out that is not like that anymore and their reaction to it is pure anger and nothing to do with justice. And you've got to discuss these problems what do you do next how do you get at this thing. Everybody's been hiding it for. So you have to take the whole system apartment piece by piece. You've got to get rid of this guy going anywhere and I credit circuits is just you know it's just what I was going to say it's a circular process which is just like an immense web. All of that has to be on not oh who's going left. That's really where there is already the real hangup is that my gasoline going to come out of the gasoline

is that magic word leadership. What do you think now that don't you think America at this present moment let's say only eight months after Kennedy got killed don't you think it's now even more difficult to get into some kind of rational idea of what to do and where to go. I mean this country nominates go order and it as it has and say you know creasing possibility that he will be the president maybe because the chances are that she wouldn't even have said last year. But what happens then. I mean what happens when Goldwater was elected or is there any difference between Goldwater and Johnson or do you say the negroes care whether there's any difference. I would say it would be very hard. I'm going to vote for Johnson because I'm voting against Goldwater but I would be wondering how I would convince somebody on a Hundred and Twenty fifth street to vote for Johnson I think I think that even for somebody and I did Twenty fifth street there's some reason too only because Johnson is more viable and can be pushed to some extent and I think that's

not that he's going to be pushed anywhere which merely means anything to anybody on the 25th Street. I don't know it's the hang up there is you know some guys on the left say well if you get Goldwater and that will really polarize things and things will get so bad that the whole thing will go either fish fascist or will be accelerated in terms of getting a real basic change and you've got to have the hang up with that is that if Goldwater was elected especially in view what's happening now with the North Vietnam business there may be nobody left to make any kind of changes at all. Yeah that's that's I think increasingly you know there's no excuse for any white man in the world to be in Asia. Yeah in 1964 that's the most that's the weirdest kind of presumption. That's like sure we're 16 miles out but what are we doing 61 miles out of you know so I was curious why did you not say there's an increasing looks increasingly is no good in my killing. Well look I'm a New York boy you know when I've been in New York and New York you know everybody

that I know says Well hell go for growers and I'm good but see I just came from Buffalo. You know the outlands and there are people on the faculty of the University of Buffalo who have go artistically as they have and that's Miller's hometown too but I think that a great majority of poor white men and middle class white men will go for go toward a magazine man. Yeah I'm going to people because it it will it will support this play as as was named arrested and one of the only things I've ever read of his that interested me saying that Goldwater appealed to the kind of naive and maybe true. Almost tragic sense of loss that Americans had that is the loss of religion the loss of say. A kind of golden American dream that even the Fania West put down a coup me put down I think for all times but the loss of that which

go appeals to you know and he makes it a very cut and dried thing. Good and bad and he's able to talk much straighter than Johnson who has to like hedge a lot of bets you know whereas Gordon by virtue of his kind of Gaia lessness on that level is able to talk very straight in playing to a lot of people and they figure that means something. But it is I think going to polarize things to a great extent. If he does you know if he does get elected I mean nothing in New York where they stab that core demonstrator as kids on Mulberry Street Italian kid whose grandfathers were probably anarchists Yeah. Well now functioned for less a function as a kind of unpaid fascistic troupe. Sure you know and they're talking about Goldwater and their grandfathers would have probably shot him on the spot. I mean if that what's his name McDonnell the head of the steelworkers union said a couple of weeks ago that if he was pretty sure if he pulled his union now they'd go for Goldwater. Now these are

spiritual and maybe lineal descendants of guys who are on the lines in the 30s and. Thought Roosevelt was in some respects the savior of the working man and all like that. Well now that you've got musicians working in the next band you know they're going to vote for Goldwater that I didn't know and you could Goldwater stickers and Volkswagens at the University of California as well as a university in Buffalo and writing in the same time you've got people and I don't mean ex field hands. I know some people where recently are educated you know Creoles of color entering their third generation and leave you get continuous deteriorating processes of all kinds. You've got this. Any luck to bull demand of the Negro

population. And then you've got this whole backwards against it this is this is. Horace was talking about syndromes. This is Casey Jones. Well you know it's really psychotic parents along with a breakup. I mean this is this is a terrible smash up which is the danger which is growing every hour. I mean try to try to imagine someone who came to this country from I don't know I don't know where that you can imagine and it's pure psychosis because here you have a country that has learned with a remarkable ability how to produce and never bother to learn how to distribute it. And you've got all these resources and you've got what is it 30 40 million poor and the whole thing as you say is cracking up all down the line. It's not only three generations on welfare it's what happens to you when you're on welfare and I'm not talking about the lack of an issue that I'm not talking about the fact that you begin to look at yourself the way the wealthier

people do in the way the cops do. And you have a whole other system of law in this country for people on welfare no matter what of the coke what color they are maybe the same article is telling about the Manchester Guardian. This guy wrote I'm going to show you. Well two things he pointed out that were very interesting. First that since Kennedy has died there has been an average of from 22 to 30 percent increase in business profits in America. Sometimes you know for corporations sometimes as much as 50 percent since Johnson got it. And another thing that he pointed out was that now the classic situation a revolution has to be changed since for the first time maybe you have let's say a minority oppressed by a majority let's say that for all the kind of let's say even if you said a third of the people were poverty which I think is too big a number. Still the great majority of middle class American is quite willing to accept what's going on as being right. So you have the weight of this

mass you know which reverses the classical revolutionary situation piling on this minority. So then that means with it being polarized already with say the white poor never being able to say I was going to say the black poor I mean that would never happen because that was their only salvation that you're better than those negroes. So then to me you know it isolates what the negroes have to do. Are you going to do or maybe won't do. But I think we'll get isolated even further and makes them finally not invisible man at all but very visible and it places this enormous burden on the negro you know to get this kind of thing started. More of a burden than I think any kind of pre-revolutionary sector of any country has ever had before because how how can they do that. How can I generate enough of a momentum so that to make the next bridge you've got to get the white poor together. But how are you ever going to get them to see that it can be

done theoretically but it's going to take the kind of. Of momentum that it's almost impossible to envision all I think this is I really think the white poor blew their chance at the reconstruction. I mean after the Civil War when those radical Republicans were down to 40 eggs in a mule etc. that was the time that could've changed history this country had they really taken those 40 acres and each black and each disfranchised white man gone out and done it together and taken the country away from the planners and the owners and the Northern industrialists. But since the era of like they say corporate capitalism it seems to me it's becoming difficult even to strike up a dialogue with it on any kind of human terms even for a white person or a black person I mean any dialogue with that corporation. So there you know it becomes a sort of despair. So that I would. You knew of waiting for leadership even.

I don't know what I could tell the group to do but I would say this. For instance in Birmingham and I said this and for the in the Herald Tribune that when those kids got killed got bombed in Birmingham Birmingham should have come to a stop they should have walked out of that steel plant. They should have refused to go back until those people were found and they should have done whatever it was they had to do to survive. That's true but you said without waiting for leadership how do you get this thing to happen. Well you know the leadership has to come from them or you have to be provided by the sheer act itself of what his party they should have. Because there was leadership preaching the other way we have a man who flies all over the country putting out fires name Martin Luther King and he told him to stay in the plants approving it. I don't understand the churches not only in the plan did he he told them specifically to stay in the plant and not work at all well I don't think the only people who were thinking about that were some of the kind of fugitive people from the US. What is it the cynics who are thinking along those lines and say some people that they call leftists down

there. But no no it was the leadership is always pushing them away from any gun. Act like that any kind of anarchistic I like that. Why did you mean that day's morning or something of this sort would be energy is taken. I am not talking about today's morning I'm talking about until downtime me until I mean every negro who washes some baby or clean some floor or works in a steel plant. They don't understand that they do the nastiest the dirtiest work the work that the white men have forgotten how to do and if they just walk out now and stop it now you know make this country come to a halt. Similarly jobs might not be there when they want to might not be but then that would create another situation and put it into another context take the Chicago school situation which is abysmal and it's getting worse and some of the the leadership the conservative leadership there says well I've had two school walkouts and nothing much happened. What if you had 200000 negro parents keeping their kids out for six

months. Where they get the jail space first of all to put those parents in the school. There's bound to be a change that has to be a change and it's this sad situation like that if you really have a prolonged strike and if your demands are specific. Well isn't there a law of diminishing returns. We talk about white backlash. I don't want to use that in the same drugs when we say that structure is good he says he said something you said because it doesn't mean our Yeah. Let's let's let's talk about writing let's just say there is there is something in this business but diminishing returns you take action and you take action you take what returns. Well you're pushing your push I mean there have been any returns that's what I'm saying. Well they're going to get there has not been a law passed which did anything but underwrite constitutional privileges which already existed. Yeah I think has to happen exactly. I think it's I don't think you can think in terms of things like diminishing returns and white backlash I mean this is this is taking ameliorative position when the whole thing is going down.

You just don't have time to worry about this kind of thing and first of all it doesn't make any sense. I mean there's been all that people talk about demonstrations there and there really been minimal ACTA there's been minimal activity on the streets for anything to happen now has to take real social dislocation we haven't had that we haven't had a city stop and we haven't had a school system stocked. Let's have something like that happen then yes maybe you can talk about diminishing returns but even then I doubt it. Yes but you know who's going to stop it. Just see here's the whole problem now. It's true that the Cadillac agency house of no action actions in San Francisco were not because yesterday was heartened by the by the one negro ghetto that swept under the rug gets out of all the main lines of traffic it lays over and might explain people who don't know it lays over in the southeast

corner of the city and no through traffic those who tell it's hidden it's really under the rug. And. It car sales people didn't take part because it meant nothing to them. Furthermore the actions were in themselves absurd. I mean of course we know that all Negroes drive Cadillacs but nobody cares whether they sell them I mean Cadillacs are not a problem to the negro and either and the people who took part in these actions were largely white students and their friends and celebrities. And this is to be a nice old balsamic word for this little jargon co-parent citizen concentration. And I think it's an excellent time. But the significant thing is that in no actions of this sort anywhere in the country do you involve large sectors of what negroes call the middle class that is if you get a job in the post office you might do the

negro middle class and it's it's a pathetic term. Hardly middle class but they consider themselves and a minimum of these people let alone what negroes call the upper class which is really middle class professional people merchants insurance brokers people like there's nothing vulgar or not here I want him out there nobody out there in the audience. They're all a bunch of Bohemians like us or students are. Adult Education at X and school teachers in Ireland is no Negro middle class now until you get some kind of bridge into the Negro community the leadership is not going to come from the completely dislocated people from the slums except by some one a miracle. There is no communication is breaking down all along the line but I don't see how the middle class is going to be any kind of a bridge.

Well the point is that you don't have those. Yeah I don't think there are any more relevant anymore to anything that's going to happen. Well yes but if you think that out of people who have been subjected to complete subjection for generations revolt comes you missed. Well I've seen never have historically never in the history of the world of the people revolted. Well first of all you've got a state of mind now in the ghetto that is certainly a pre-revolutionary. Now riots are not revolt on all but you've got where the rights come from. I mean this is not a passive subdued immobilised subjugated people these are people ready for something. And you get leadership coming out of the so-called ghetto Malcolm X came out of the ghetto. He's a leader. I don't think he's been a very effective one yet. He may never be. Jesse Great started out from the is still in the ghetto. I still don't know where quite where he's going. I know guys in the East River corps who have lived in the

ghetto all their lives they don't only have the capacity they think they know what to do but there aren't enough of them yet. I'm not I don't think I'm being overly sanguine in saying that there is plenty of leadership potential there. I do what I don't know is how you get the cohesion going how you get enough of them together in enough places first in a city and then across the country. But I have no doubt whatsoever that there is there are leaders right there and you see the most dangerous thing in the world is to unleash a Shakuri without knowing where you're going and you just end up with mountains of dead people. I'm not saying that again the some of the one people I've talked to and they're mainly the East River Corps guys and some of the heart some of the har you younger people who haven't been institutionalized yet because they don't have the money and how are you. They know what to do. I mean they have a pretty firm they certainly know more than New York Times The New York Times is very responsible as you know. I don't fear it where I fear a Shakuri is is where you don't utilize the leadership capacity you have now that it gets to be

you know there's nothing else to do so you go out and you know. You go down like what's that poem that everybody was reading today. You go down like as much of a man as you can be. Well you know I was thinking of something else and a development that even though I scream against the black middle class and continue to do so there is now a phenomenon of violently disaffiliated black middle class the youngest the other trying to find for instance that most of the kids when I first came to Greenwich Village for instance there were you know few negroes and you know most of them were homosexuals over there just because you could get in anybody's bed but now I find all over the east side for instance in a situation that is still a ghetto experience and it's so weird because we come out of say middle class homes and go to a ghetto go to a mixed ghetto and I find all the negro all my

friends for instance in New York. The boys like AB Spelman the ruins of Thomas Paine or Bob town. I find these people to be the most violently. Not only disaffiliated from that sense of being displayed from the middle class but say not in the sense of the terms of being assimilated but now wanting to actively see this society come to a halt or change and the loudest advocates now of let's say complete reconstruction by whatever means have been middle class negro says UK. But there's your kid. Well yes but the great trouble with this is that at the present time it's almost completely new list. I mean these are my friends to live right not to particular people name you know what I know and you know as well as I do that this is almost a complete put down and.

If the situation explo things are going to happen so fast that this kid he is not going to even know nor I'm not going to know. Well I'm not saying I'm just saying showing that if they know what I was I'm not talking about and that kind of revolutionary sense that way. I mean to say that if I the son of a postman as you said the middle class and a social worker and a son of a Republican Assemblyman if I can say that I want this to stop now I want to blow up it has to I think then you can begin to get the feeling of what the poor man must feel but cannot articulate the kind of complete and I mean Neil as you know but I thing. Also it's a matter of not wanting to hear any more double talk in that sense of Neil ism so that everything has to stop so that we can begin again. Do you or do you think there is good faith for instance in any part of our government actually good faith reason or none whatsoever like you know never easier for complete good faith in politics what are you asking for. Are you calling Well you know I don't know how much straight honesty at least in some areas.

Well Robin renewable public housing this is a most dishonest kind of thing that's been going on for years the you know that. So again it's a cliche what happens in urban renewal why it's done who benefits from it who doesn't but the relocation which is a far as Bob knows as a New York I suppose I'll get sued for this should be in jail now. I don't know what the laws are but whatever that there should be laws to put him in jail for what he did in New York City under urban renewal. And this is not endemic to New York it's all over the country. Well I want to get it what you're suggesting because I don't see any alternatives in what you've all said so far which indicate some sense of political practicality and you can all jump on me for that again. But I mean you're talking from who suckled him sort of that kind of cataclysmic pressure of change you're going to bring about our you know seething on the set I have. He said it was a bad bet Well he said Well Sir Paul Axelrod said piles of dead now.

If you come up if somebody comes up who will listen to somebody who wants doing it I know there's going to be piles of dead. You're going to posit dead people black and white all over this country I mean very soon because those police cannot get away with that thing they were doing before where the hundred negroes injured three police know that won't happen because a lot of those kids are going to start to shoot back you know and do what they can that way no that's going to happen. That has to happen because the average white American will not realize what this country has become. He won't realize it when it's become so then what are you asking for these people who have never been asked what they think about anything that's suddenly come up with some kind of rational plan for the ordering of the society. I'm saying they're going to destroy the society. All right there are two things going here I think has been talking about the way you bring about change and that's what I was addressing myself to as forcing change when you're talking about response to a situation that already exists and that's a little bit different. I don't know how to tie the two together I don't think I I don't know really what I want that if

Louis has any I think it's a very the problem is like they say are very simple. I mean you know what the problem is are for instance we're talking about well in one sense it's money as he said bread like a man said you got you make 85 billion dollars a year. I will. On 10 percent of 10 percent of people in this country are black they deserve 10 percent of that. You know that's simple. That's very simple. There's probably enough money in our governor's safe to straighten up Harlem if somebody wanted Harlem straightened up. If they didn't benefit by its existence. But those problems are so simple that if anyone had really good heart and good faith there is enough money in this country to outfit the entire world I mean everybody knows that. You know but do you see any possibility at all before the piles of bodies start rising for anything to happen that would give the people in the ghetto any reason to think that things are going to change.

I don't know. I don't I really can't see that I mean foreign look at our foreign policy. I mean look at our foreign policy and we are doing the same things. Only now we're getting ready to go into North Vietnam and maybe finally get into a war with China which they cannot win unless they use atomic bombs. They can't be China using conventional weapons the Chinese will run them back into that bay. But so what's happening and in domestic affairs we're moving toward Now this election again out of. Perhaps Goldwater even without go into the idea that Goldwater could be suggested at this time means that a great many people want him. I don't know what to say because solutions are so simple that because people don't use those solutions it seems to me nobody wants to. And it's also true that quite obviously that the majority of the ones

not in power and those in power really don't know how bad it is. They don't know how close we are to chaos do they do they understand the possibility of those solutions. I would say this they are proud because they think that what is going on now is a natural thing. I think for instance the average let's say recipient of benefits from imperialistic countries let's say the European western think that this is the natural order of things that they are somehow. Chosen People that it's supposed to be this way. I mean let's say it's American liberal or radical that might be that's a liberal might be a shaman a radical might want to change it. But for the average man waited by a century of imperialism centuries of imperialism they think this is the way things are supposed to be. You can't talk to them about their innocence an industrial revolution making European culture dominant

over the rest of the world and now the rest of the world is catching 11. They don't understand about that. They think that this is the natural order of things that they are supposed to be in the driver's seat that people are supposed to do their bidding that they are better than you read our immigration law and you get it straight fact what we think of people around the world by the diminishing number we allow into this country. I mean that's why it may be it may be but social dislocation I mean a real social dislocation maybe one of the only hopes in that maybe that can make the majority know how close they are. And then somebody can say you know look the solution is that so look you see as long as we have business as usual psychology and. Here after all you live in a democracy maybe a bunch of them obviously but not so much so that there are certain measures which you cannot take without the consent of the government whoever in the

government. Consent. Let's take that that single thing of urban renewal now. The argument as you know is very simple that if we build subsidized housing. Indefinitely there is no limit to the people in Mississippi and Arkansas. And so with it's north and it will destroy the economy. Yes all right now the answer to this is very simple. Take the money the federal money away from the states that refuse to take care of their own they have no right to live under the law and apply it to the Northwards and make. But you see then you get another step you have to do something else then you get another step and you have to do something else. And every time you start unraveling one of these gains there is no end to it and the political structure is not prepared

to face reality. They don't think in terms like that. You think in terms of books. Well sure they think in real terms of votes but also they think and go on day to day business by his side. How to get back in the office. You know Read it read I'm going to use the ordeal of power the first thing you did when they got into Washington was to figure out how to get back in again. You know this is all they were doing. Did you see that did you see. I have stones review of that biography of Lyndon Johnson The New York Review of Books that was not great where he showed he had him voting for the Wagner Act and he wasn't even in the office. Don't talk to the Republican convention as being the politics of the insecurity of the rich. They were worried about their money and this one. Yeah just narrow minded and this is what Goldwater came out of. Yeah this is the point where that kind of insecurity manifests itself in the kind of total reality that allows for the nomination of a Goldwater

and whether you can push the insecurity into a confrontation with the reality is the crucial problem. Except if I read the studies and studies that I've read correctly a lot of Goldwater support is from. Middle class and lower middle class and let's say small businessmen as well as you as opposed to the very rich one will not necessarily I mean there are very rich or evil who are just generally I don't know either saying no no I'm saying the people who are who see no reason why their lives should change because they're doing all right then I worry about Bill's a little that sort of thing but they're really not worried about eating they're not worrying about what their kids are going to become with that kind of thing you want without having a great deal of cash money. Was it didn't anyone notice this same that seem to run through a lot of the Goldwater supporters outside of the convention hall about the wealthy Rockefeller and the wealthy Eastern money men and the wealthy Kennedys and all this kind of stuff going room to room. That's reward money I mean the goal winners were to post World War 2

money new money those people that's why it's so much in the West. That's the Eastern Republican and you saw that is they stand to lose as much in terms of dollars and cents if go want to start screwing around with the economy as they have set it up say till Kennedy or even as Lyndon Johnson I mean if they want to pull back all those deals with Russia and all those new markets that in terms of this new morality they go What is asking have to be stopped. Book area go home. Yeah I mean not that there's a lot of cash dollars lost then but it's this motel owners building also one other thing you talk about the people at the convention liking about the evil Eastern money. Believe me if that eastern money of Rockefeller had come into the convention suddenly converted to Goldwater I don't think there would've been that bugged both these two movies. Oh yes but Rockefeller is not going to be converted to go the dresser was the announcement today that he's supporting the Republican ticket all the way to Long Island and he believes great.

Joy with it. Yeah look I supported Portuguese when they were wiping up a note yesterday in his simple minded daughter came out and then she wrote this thing about my days with Prince Bodog. Yeah it was the Belgian Filipino. Yeah Philipa playing piano through free Africa. Well you see the thing is that you have this business as usual political that it's a little bit obvious that. That election our goal a lot of water is not controllable because go he probably personally controllable easily enough. But Goldwater is riding a tiger of completely re-organized grassroots reorganised Republican Party which has been taken over by by goon squads from the rose colored slum was. The.

Obvious thing in a safe responsible politician. I'm sure I'll see Rockefeller. This is just nonsense Service man. Because four years of Goldwater will freeze the free you know deep depression you don't think Chase National banks are going to start handing out money right left and watch Goldwater's elected like it's doing now. Everything in the country will freedoms and for use of this phrase and we'll be back in a far worse situation with Hoover who did try to do a few things in his small way. These people are inviting social revolution they're inviting the cutting of their own problems which I gather are business as usual the narrow vision of Republican Party politics.

Blocking means of Nelson Rockefeller from zone has been so thorough that psychosis that is usually what I'm syndrome is going to produce leaders. The whole thing is going to run right along like crashes into the stone wall leaders will show up you don't even have to think about who they are they have to show up. All right I always feel if we're here any better than I do the whole discussion is predicated on the assumption that I let you know I'd like to jump in here. I'd like to jump a step what with the structure of the new society have to be that you're talking about we haven't. Really made a concrete suggestion. Well there are a number of ideas that I think can be interrelated one is well first of all with cyber nation and you can't stop and you couldn't stop the steam engine is not going to stop this. There just will not be enough jobs as we understand work today. Even if you had the billions of dollars you're going to need anyway and that you do need anyway for as you know the everybody knows this by now nobody does any money for schools for

hospitals or again conservation for mass transit for rebuilding some of those horrible mistakes that have been made in the cities all through the years. Even if you put all that kind of money into it it still wouldn't be enough jobs and you're going to have to have us think of all of his say now all by himself. Pretty much a guaranteed annual wage which by elementary economic laws would provide the purchasing power etc etc.. But it has to be done and this involves a whole reconstruction of values in the society it has to be done first of all without the concept that the guaranteed annual wage like welfare now is a handout to these Popper's who are really a fifth class citizens and it's going to have to involve a radical and I mean radical change in education from the ground up so that when a kid gets to be 16 18 20 22 his whole site will be turned toward the kind of work that is now not necessarily paid for in

the same way that other work is but it's going to mean something to him and to society as a whole that all kinds of work that you can do from writing poetry to working in you know education in various kinds of ways that are now kids don't go into because it's so you make more money as an engineer or as a lawyer or some kind of technician that kind of thing. Maybe no answers to the questions that you're asking because you haven't got time enough to stop the whole wheel from turning to start at any one particular spoke. But you know you could if you had the time start and throw out all the textbooks and all the elementary schools and start over again so everybody isn't totally brainwashed you know the biggest myth we savor in this country is the idea that you get an education in the public schools is the last place you get an education. There's another myth myth that if you get an education somehow you're a good man or that you really have an education that means something to change you have a lot of educated people that aren't good man you know with all the action behind exams or that an education will change you for the better.

Isn't a really horrible paradox is that say something like automation you know over and over again or says that here's a thing that's going to make it easier to be human being. But instead of that because you know it's a simple thing if you have something that makes it easier to be a human being and everybody the only people who do that finally are artists that is. I always figure that if a man invents an air conditioner by tomorrow that air conditioner ought to be available to anybody who wants an air conditioner if a man invents a fast car a good car for instance why are no cars for at least as good as a Ferrari. They found out how to make a Ferrari. You know why not. We're all here together. That's the weird thing rolling in to be here a little while I'm going to die nobody knows what's going to happen. But yet this kind of fake hedge money that only certain people deserve certain things which is finally is 18th century let's just lock John Locke and the sort of ruling heads of this country still kowtow to some kind of weird 18th century morality when they're in the 20th century. You know no are the ruling heads but the people would have what. But there is to have.

Yeah I mean it's here now. Notice that this whole discussion has nothing to do with. Socialism versus capitalism this is not an issue. There is no indication that if. Socialism took place tomorrow the problems would be a van not alive you know it and it's all of the interest of the caplets class for them or large sections of. No I mean there are all sorts of people including Nelson Rockefeller. Personally he's perfectly well aware now that I mean the big boys I don't mean anybody below. I mean any Indian can you know sell a lease should be in the end I mean I don't know but I mean they're famous for that you know 80 year old Indians you know the people I know where the new hundred million dollars I mean anybody can become an oil man. But the actual real power structure of the country the boys who really control the machine.

They I think they do have in fact suddenly discovered that he has slipped away from them. They and they they can't do anything about it it's all to their interest to do that. But those bowling alley owners those motel owners all at second world war money they don't and they're still let go of the department store. That kind of money new money there are willing to be intransigent about their gains because their gains have still to do with actual cash to be spent. You know Robert you know me you know whereas Rockefeller and Scranton's and those people that money is not even money in you that's just power you have the power has suddenly become mean. Yeah I mean I was sitting one time the office of the Rockefeller Foundation Tucker had big business they were an exhibition it looked like. Not gobble have these heat other I mean solar

oven. It's a great problem because a lot of people know India is think it is nothing to burn they can cook food and they don't digest enough of it so they can get a solar oven which can cook. The two parties are living with us. For say a dollar they can whip large areas of diet efficiency gains really start the process first. So here they all are these guys pinstripes and this big exhibition of these things who would look exactly like God help you. I was upstairs and I was talking when they saw us he said Look out there. He said Here we are draining the fire had made some crack about the planned march just muscling in the evening. They grind the pipe dream. We do this we hear Wein we

keep people around in Indian changing look. And I know you know you know that right. It's going to be said Well. That well it's probably true that legally this is a monster which nobody seems to be able to get that and power in relation to this basic change at the top of the structure doesn't mean anything. And yet we are sitting here talking about how we're going to bell the cat at the bottom of this. Well if you don't get power coming up from the bottom you know could change anything that's already here how are you going to get these people like Nelson Rockefeller who is the governor as you said to entertain such concepts to even admit the possibility of these changes mean that he's not you know that of course it's perfectly true that people like this if you scare him that I

felt like they were scared 1930 too. Well no I realize that's the whole point it was that here were asking where's the only answer. We're asking for the for the good society we're asking for some kind of heaven on earth I think. I just don't see that as a realistic possibility. I mean is that what we're asking for your I know let's have or at least sure oh you know if we keep you keep it as it is as a fight oh you're so impossible. I don't say it's impossible I'm not saying that when our Civil Rights Act which is just a military itself. Yeah I mean there has been change there has been in some very simple sense of how man lives some progress in that sense although the basic ideas men have had I think there might be five or six they haven't changed but I think in terms of making it easier to be here and a lot of senses it's it's gotten much less difficult and it could you see finally he was talking about work and

cybernetics Finally the only people who are going to work will be those people who have something that they want to do poets like people like that. I mean nobody else should have to work. There's no reason for man to work anymore at something he doesn't want to do. We're going to have to wind this up pretty soon. Maybe I'd like to just ask one final question. I know there are differences between your eyes approach and that's approaching and I don't think they've been made clear. They haven't emerged for some reason. Maybe I don't know what they are. Well I have the feeling there are and maybe we just haven't hit the right kind of discussion to do this and maybe we've all been agreed on the final end maybe the means are different. Maybe what we consider possibilities for change are different. Well I don't know. My my ideas about it is that I think personally I'm going to ask

negroes. First of all to dig themselves you know find out what they want to do whether they want to be slaves you know or whether they don't. I mean some people would don't mind. I mean I don't mind being slaves which some people would rather die. And I think on the one hand you ask for a change in the hearts of men so that people will build the best car possible because that's the only thing that seems to make sense to you. We're leaving out economics we're leaving out all the rest. Yeah well I said before no I said no more than I did nothing and you're putting down Martin Luther King for saying well you know let's let's have a change in the hearts of all men let's all love each other and we you know I'm just trying to get I'm just trying to say that if we're asking for. Finally some kind of utopia. That's just you know that's each man's thing. That's each man's concern himself because no amount of any progress is going to change the essential problems of being alive and being conscious.

But I in terms of social organization for social change I see. Only that it will only come among Negroes in say the kind of fit of despair and anger that say has caused violence and will cause more. I mean I would call now for as I said before for Negroes to stop this country now. But I'm bringing up King again you parking down before because he didn't call for the kind of I use the word drastic action that you think would achieve drastic action it's not drastic it's very logical very rational. Well I said I suppose King probably feels that kind of action that he's been calling for which is that you must absorb evil in order to finally end up by having good luck. They leave the instance of that labor I gave.

What's wrong about that look. After all there was a civil conflict in San Francisco. The lines were clearly draw on and the participants were where of the risks involved. Nevertheless when two marching longshoreman were killed the city stopped about it for four days. Yeah it's still a air you know. And nobody else got killed that was and now it is really quite remarkable that the city of Birmingham didn't stop when those children were killed because that wasn't you know I was in the maritime strike this is just a kids gun design these go you know. And there is no question but what these murders throughout the south are in instance after instance with the connivance or the direct participation of the authorities.

One last thing let's say you talk about changing the hearts of men preceding any change like you said we're talking about the kind of society in which they'll be a change of the hearts of the men so that they'll have Ferraris for everybody. Doesn't work that way you you've got to start with what you've got now and that means you start on the basis of self-interest. It seems to me it's the self-interest of everybody who drives a car to want to have a ferrari. And if he ever gets to the point of realizing that it ain't so hard to have that happen it would happen once you get the big the beginnings of this kind of realization and any kind of mass basis and that's both black and white. Poor black poor white middle class put all the way down the line. Then you start the thing moving. I don't expect any re-evaluation of values until this thing starts going if it ever does get going but if you're going to wait for a change in values forget it for God's sakes don't wait for a change in the Rights of Man. All right since it's very late you've been up probably a long time it's been a long day. I want to thank you on this or any last remarks from anyone else.

Right now the rebels Thank You can integrate with that hand tougher of police and in the region.