Ford Hall forum; Sample

Christ you now have that we have. All of them. Good evening from George in the hall out the New England Conservatory of Music. This is George Bauer welcoming you to the first meeting of the sixty fourth season of the Ford hall forum read for the first time in the history of the forum tonight's meeting is being broadcast nationwide by NPR National Public Radio. Tonight's guest speaker is Pete Seeger who will address this meeting on the topic ecology versus poverty. Presently on the Jordan Hall stage forum President Judge Ruben Lurie is addressing the audience. Let us go now to the platform and Judge laurel and the attached to the forum. Congresswoman Chisholm will not be with us. But Dick Gregory will be of the. It'll his topic will be social problems social or anti-social. Tonight we present Pete Seeger. We're going to talk in ecology versus poverty.

You obviously know Pete Seeger and your god has been demonstrated in this large crowd and the enthusiasm of your welcome. I would like to tell you a peculiar reason why the forum rejoices in his presence and thanked him for his willingness to come in the many years that Lou Smith and I have been attached to the forum rising over 50 years for each of us. We have seen and heard. Many heroic figures in the American scene. Roger Bolivar went to jail. For his refusal to serve. In the first world war and refused to do anything except plead guilty and made one of the most eloquent speeches to the presiding judge in the federal court

a speech which is been written Republi in anthologies of great oration. Roger Baldwin founded the American Civil Liberties Union. Martin Luther King went to jail because he stood up for what he felt. Required standing up to. William Sloane Coffin faced jail and so did Dr. Benjamin Spock. These are all speakers and Spock and coughing. Free men because of the action of the Circuit Court of Appeal and this will astonish some of you so to. Speak see because after the Second World War in light of the McCarthy investigation and the so-called

Un-American Activities Committee of the Congress Pete Seeger was summoned by that committee when it was investigating the theatrical profession and the profession of the arts and he refuse to take the Fifth Amendment. Thank you. T said he had nothing to fear. He stood up on the First Amendment namely freedom of speech and its corollary freedom of association. And he was held in contempt. And the Congress voted. To have the Department of Justice prosecute him and he was tried and found guilty and sentenced to one year and the second court of appeal. In a unanimous decision threw the case up.

And that's one reason why the Foro recognizing heroism in and in these days when heroism is required where there may be danger of Lateralus. And in this forum dedicated to free speech it is a particular place to welcome. P.S. Thank you. Are we. Just as a raggy is right and B. We don't. Get milk for our labor.

The. Homeless are we. Just as homeless is homeless and. We don't. Get nothing for our labor. And a homeless old. Song was sung by tenant farmers in the south. Back around 1932 1933. It may seem funny for me to sing it here well as well clothed and well fed and so I think I'm most EU. And USA now has a gross national product. Double triple quadruple what it was in 1932 but

still. We got raggedy people. We got homeless people hungry people. A lot of these people are getting very suspicious when they hear well fed well close fight people saying Oh we must take care of the environment. We must. Adhere to the rules of ecology. We must spend some money to make our water clean our air clean save our land. Somehow there's money for that. But that doesn't seem to be money to take care of jobs and schools and hospitals and so on. I don't pretend to know the answers I'm not an economist I'm not an ecologist. I'm not a scientist of any sort. I didn't even graduate from college I was one dropout back in 1930.

If I don't get the question without hesitation tell me and I'll try again. Question play jazz. Right. Can you. Hear the radio. On the. Wall. I have a question. Name. This gentleman says in connection with C. Division of the national finals. Rich you have spoken. How is it. That anything can be done when the people keep sending back to the Congress which are eventually Vulpes least for the purposes set for us and continue to support as a request of the

given administration. How is that to be handled. Well. I think the American public's poorly informed. I wish the heck this this was television so that little pie chart could have been seen the average person in many a city seems to think that it's welfare that's bleeding the taxpayer dry. They really think this and they haven't seen the real. Statistics. They hear politicians standing up and saying we are spending 500 million dollars to clean up the water. And I think boy that's a lot of money. They don't stop to realize it's one quarter of one percent of the federal budget. And. I'm convinced that the average American is floating through life. Hoping. That he can. Avoid problems for himself. He doesn't want to be controversial he

doesn't want to get fired and. He just hopes every year he's going to get the lesser of two evils. And maybe he does. I don't have an easy solution to it and frankly I don't think the answer is entirely. To be found in voting. Politicians usually. Pay attention too. Often to a few well written letters more than they will a petition with a thousand signatures and they'll pay more attention to a lobbyist who comes up and actually buttonholes them. This is natural and often it takes something extreme to wake people up. And so it takes a terrible event like Attica. To make people realize there's something absolutely rotten in the American prison system and he's going to have to be changed

takes an extreme event like that or. In the case of the law it took. An outrageous atrocity to make them realize what was going on in Vietnam. Of those people in the field. Wait a minute wait all quiet wave. Waited a little louder. Do you have do you think that prejudice will ever see between black and white. Do I think that prejudice will cease between black and white. I guess it would be nice if it could but I'm not hung up over that at all because I know some black folk don't like black folks I know some white folks don't know like white folks I know some Chinese don't like Japanese and some don't like hunger Ariens and a whole lot of folk don't like Jews. I'm worried about. Prejudice season between

black folks and white folks. I'm worried about a system morally in shape with a law that will say to me and you as an American because I hate your goods I can never put you in a bad school keep you from getting a job as long as this man fixed it so he's raised them don't affect me. He can stay raises all his life causing or do none but run him crazy. Word by his hang up. For money. Thank you. Wolf. I've got I am. Going I am worried about is his hang ups will affect me. I went to a high school in St. Louis Missouri. There was one hundred twenty five years ago the year I got there it was beyond 125 years before I went there for 500 white kids. When I entered some high school in St. Louis one hundred twenty five years later it was an All Blacks to eighty five hundred blight in my hang up beer. Because if you think you can force me over there into a school what Eighty

five hundred kids that was built for 500 classrooms which was built for a minimum of 10 to 15 and a maximum of 20. We had a classroom with all our pleasure met a minimum of 60 chairs in there and a class low sometime ran as high as one hundred eighty. It's about time the damn teacher get to check in the road to Belden right. Now. My. Not Was. After forcing me under these conditions all my life. When I went down to take a test for the job he gave me the same test he gave the white bone. All I'm saying is the movies hurtles out my way. I'm tired of black folks in America dying six years younger than white folks and all I'm a work to do for the rest of my life and keep all your hate and your bigotry. I'm fighting my white brother to leave two years old is you. So the longer I can live the longer you can hate me and not look to get the most six years hooked on to him so I can bug him till he die. I

was thanking. Yes. Come on. Now. One question first. Wait a minute please. Please don't disturb the meeting please. Yes. Yeah this lady is concerned about. Whether you have a certain figure as to your weight. The low wage you know you should not go. No. There's a lot of people is worried about my personal where you know I can appreciate that my top weight was two hundred eighty eight pounds and that's really when people should've been worried about me. I'm down to up to 101 pounds the first day as I went on about five and a half years ago I came from 280 pounds down to 95 pounds

in 40 days of a 40 day water phase. I don't know you know how far to drop let me tell you something very interesting two things. I wake up every morning read a bit to a column and check out only eat has that been dyed. A day do not pay asked that I do not run 10 or 15 miles every morning. On the Boston Marathon on the 19th of April of this next coming year I would have been a year what I already knew nine 10 and running at 26. So I'm that word and I tell you if I die on this one it will surprise me more than it will surprise you because I had no intentions on back. I have no intentions on eating but I have that much respect for universal intelligence that know that there's a whole lot of other players that sustains us. Let me give you a better example. I got on a plane today and I realized I was in the hundred and sixty third day of not eating any

solid food. I run 15 miles around 10 miles I run 20 miles and I couldn't help but wonder. That every other day I pick up the paper and read about people in Pakistan that have died sitting under a tree. So maybe if somebody would give them some fruit juice and some water and a coals to sit under that tree till the food got there they might could survive at least two hundred and sixty three days. So there's a lot of things that deal with the body deal with the cause not be honest with you. If this wasn't for Vietnam I know minutely and physically I would have been in a wreck of a shape I lay in bed at night and hunger get to run into my body so bad that sometimes I just can only move and I just try to throw it all think about that what body laying over there where the bombs just hit and Tolu so I try to think of that mother laying there with one baby in her lap the other five key is laying in the hood there in a damn thing she can do and the hunger seen run

right out and I started my schedule last week and I will be in two three cities every day. Three hundred and ten of these lectures between now and June 1st. I've been doing this for five years so I have no intentions of believing anything to happen to me. I kind of watch it when I'm walking down the street or my trip off the curb and you know I say that it sounds funny but do you know that if a kid hit me in here with a brick tonight and kill me say that I call the one meeting like a nobody had been killed housebreak before. I got to be very careful driving Marconi drive now cause if I had an accident got killed everybody was swearing because he's home weary and he had an 8 and so I don't deal with it myself and you know people as close to me don't seem to deal with it but I can understand people really believe in that if you don't eat you don't die. Some will happen to you but I'm healthier today. Let me tell you something that's really interesting.

I ran cross country when I was in high school and college. The cross country season I never ran as much in my life. I'm 39 years old and I'm running further knowledge every day in my life but cross-country season you'd run five six miles and school would start in September when it would still be hot. Back when my hometown so we had take salt tablets. I ran track in the winter in the summertime it takes out everything. When I was in high school who I worked in a steel mill and we had to start at any time and it takes out ever to get a headache any time I got on a track running in the heat. I get a headache if I didn't take my salt tablets I have rained every day this summer and a couple days in St. Louis the chimbley was 100 too and I was running 50 miles a day. I have got a headache and I have a new sot in my shoes. So how you can explain it. I don't know but I know where you get your body in ought you to go into the nature of the universal pattern that your body was meant to

be in a lot of takes and you don't need you don't need God which way you think you. Have been. I think the time has now come to express gratitude to Mr. GREGORY. Of. GREGORY. Tonight's guest speaker in the second session of affordable forums sixty fourth season from Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. One week from tonight. The special guest speaker will be John Kenneth Galbraith. His topic the end of the heroic age in American foreign policy Galbreath is now an economist at Harvard University here in Boston and the former U.S. ambassador to India. Future speakers on this program October 17th Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pittman will discuss women's liberation. One week after that former New York Senator Charles Goodell will discuss the topic will Nixon survive in 1972.

Then on October 30 first in the special Ruben Laurie Louis Smith meeting of the Ford hall forum of Dr. Max Lerner of Brandeis University will discuss.