A Word on Words; 3803; Roger Sanjek

fb liz from nashville studio way celebrating offers literature and ideas for more than three decades this is word on workers with jobs john c and darren welcome once again to award own words my guest today is writer center is a professor of anthropology at queens college city university new york he has written a new book the gray panthers it tells the story of nearly forty years of that activist organization with the social justice agenda lograsso interviews marc us as well as rogers oh

thirty year along with his grassroots movement local wanted a world where i get you to talk about the gray panthers and the violence here for a long time and i'm delighted you came you know you take us back long before the nineteen seventies when the panthers came into existence in the giver a lot pointing out the nineteen ten nineteen twenty the problems of the only were significantly different far more punishing along the aged and the anti aging let's talk about how it was nineteen ten nineteen twelve it was huge although the analogy quite well well there were hardly any companies that had had pensions that all

employers could really let people go are almost at a whim and an often did the number of older people who no longer had any land or or or were craftspeople with their own means of support was ballooning us as the economy was changing more more people were working for someone else and as they face they're all older years when they no longer had a job they were really penniless they had no resources other than their children more often in the same kind of economic situation as workers so the percentages of older people united states who were poor began to rise above up through the of the great depression and had about a peak in nineteen forty of what was it like fifty percent of older people were to work protecting the impoverished did not have sufficient resources to live on and this was really something new this was the creation of the twentieth century as people moved away from the old nineteenth century economy and the industrial urban economies

threatening of that you're through all of years you whole period of depression are all about recovery from their social programs of the gunman begins to move in but when this sixty seven year old maggie couple reaches retirement on coming out of a background that church related lot of background it's also quite controversial for the times because she was politically for july which come out of that and magic and sixty seven years old solution let's talk about it

nine he was a fascinating character she had worked for the white of the cia for twenty years from the twenties into up to world war two our and one nineteen oh five born in nineteen oh five at the child of the depression in real science and art shoot shoot shoot but you're about to cut interest related to a tag in the nineteen thirties and is interested in and love socialist party's but mainly the growing women's trade union movement and how can the white obese hear what sounds to me from what i have lerner's with a very radical organization where there's a dozen bills that had lined up to see a wood rat and blinked when i read that organized young women workers demand better working conditions and pay and then and as we moved into world war two she was now a higher level of operations with a y and was involved with the us so which was also more radical thing is a fairly that we understand often that were organizing women are working in the war industries

here and go watch the families of two of the soldiers are on military bases and trying to provide better conditions and endo working conditions for for those women then she moved to the presbyterian church after the war and worked there from nineteen forty eight all night till nineteen seventy when she was forced to retire and she worked on our church education projects that had to do with civil rights with housing issues with the cost of healthcare while she was a she pushed for women's rights when she came to the presbyterian church she was offered forty eight hundred dollars a year and cheerful one of the other women work making here of working here making and they said thirty six hundreds and the one to raise their way just what you're going to pay me and she pushed that always been in that kind of way nineteen seventy she was told you're going to reach your sixty fifth birthday you have to retire in august though and they gave her a sewing machine and she was furious that at what she regarded the height of her art career when her contacts her abilities as a writer as a

speaker is an organizer the people she knew all around the country she would she had been representing the presenter church at the united nations should organize seminars in washington or this now was our was useless because she had one word birthday and activists erect one more birthday and she's vital i'm alive and capable and you know they just complement to continue but it's there and beyond that it's nothing there is you know spirit been some progress over these years and then there are some corporations now on many probably there that do have their pension programs or her idea is that unusual and that town of that skill the proven it and just go that turn one year older hasn't attracted a single thing from what i am what i'm about and so there comes a time i guess in nineteen seventy one six of them sit down together

talk about what that meeting must have been like where she she brought together a few meetings in the spring of nineteen seventy of people who were in a similar situation to work some of them an edge in protestant churches some in journalism some and social service occupations reaching the same point in their life and they resented this this man to retire which i thought was it was an injustice was with a civil right that was being denied them if you're capable of doing the job and you know become a different person after youre sixty fifth birthday but also want to continue to be active around opposing the war in vietnam or on civil rights issues and how so that that's what they were beginning to think of his age isn't love as these attitudes and discrimination towards older people who were seen as a different somehow from everyone else who were pushed aside who were told to disengage stay home withdraw give up we don't need you we don't really you know had anything worth listening to she thought that that was wrong and as she brought together people over the next two years

thru nineteen seventy seventy one her daughters by then she'd up to seventy people a an end and from all over the country from all over the country she begins to make connections with students two in the philadelphia area where she live to work are actively opposing though the war policies the vietnam war now is being run by richard nixon and continuing it a secret planned and the war but it's not ending and the frustration the shootings on the college campuses at kent state in ohio jackson state mississippi the tension is building and the the younger members begin to see these older people who've lived through all these decades around social justice causes who are intelligent people and they admire them the older people enjoy having younger members who want to become great actors and participate in the struggles that the younger people start to learn about some of the issues of injustice is in

nursing homes are rip offs in the hearing aid industry profiteering and they become even more interested in and enjoying so as the movement grows it's this very interesting combination of older people who have that political baptism in the nineteen thirties that that decade and younger people who had lived through the sixties and the civil rights and an anti war movements and now as they are beating people who want to continue the struggle into the seventies some of them are beginning to find their own connections into the gray panthers fascinating to me that the term gray panthers becomes the title of this movement it was a big risky it was talk about that talk about i mean i you know i don't know how given her background in social a zone of her some would have

said radical approach on civil rights human lives it strikes me and that it was an idea whose time had come and they it was an idea that involved people of all sorts of political backgrounds because you know there's no there's no stamp on in conservative democrat republican when you get to be dominating figure out so they were able to coalesce behind the nba a woman from oracle background it was almost as if they were infections it it caught on our own from six people the thousands i mean it sweeps the country and there was no place where the idea of dozen german what it would do what what what was there

in the winter in a lot of that and the dead made so attractive i think at the time she began to oppose marriage for a time and there were about twelve million retired americans and the third that had been retired against their will so this this feeling of injustice about medicare republican really was that great that this first major issue was was part of the larger political scene and go as you say people of all kinds of political persuasions who'd been pushed out of the job which they feel that they can continue to do our felt responded well i think the the the the other part that was important of course was her own personality and her her gifts as a as a speaker as an organizer she was a very photogenic person as the you know you've got a lot of thought well i'm a little boy again even as she's she and really old she's still very attractive yes she was in she had she had a lot of ways that one of her admirers describe that shouting at him in a

whisper she was very conscious of the way she dressed and spoke and she would say outrageous things that no one expected from a five foot three woman with it with white hair in a bun and granny glasses to say she would cause she would talk openly about the need for older people to maintain oh their physical and their sexual lives she talked about war and injustice and how ages and was like racism and sexism she talked about the need for housing through the life cycle so that as we become more are needy and dependent in our all all the years that the choices are there so we can continue to live as part of communities with other people and not be pushed aside into retirement or old age of ghettos as she called him she would say things that were outrageous and use language she said life begins at home at the wreck center and contagious to resume resurrection and those those gifts she has a speaker that were armed that would make people stop listen and stop where are remarkable and i think she played on that she knew how

to use those skills that you really honed her working life but now with a much larger audience for those you just tuning in i'm talking with broad authentic about his book gray panthers and about than about making you found in the great branches un lonnie smiles you're both pretty young when you when you get to the end of this this boat must be a labor of love for you because you and it so long i want to talk about that what was the magma that podium and so if you're in your thirties when you read when you get involved with that with this movement i was thirty two when i went to my first trip after reading and a media that no ice and i'd never been in a room with somebody older people before and with such energy that was very intoxicating to see these people so involved with life and it made me stop and think about why is it that we live in a society where the older people we know or are likely to be the grandparents or

maybe a neighbor and other than that these intergenerational friendships don't exist they're very unusual and as it began to make friends with people who were thirty forty fifty years older than i was and enjoy those friendships that it really did change me but that was all to look the political aisle actions of the time of the great passages in berkeley where we became members had started a free clinic for older people health clinics to try to deal with preventing people from and her nursing homes in the first place and provide some of the screening and health preventive services that medicare wasn't paying for and my wife became the director of the clinic and then she drew me and then as i met more of the activists in an inmate dignified year you know there's a certain look at the brief but it's so meaningful idiot when it deals with the gray pants and black panther's end money ceo we were going somewhere and i'm guessing oakland best

buy ceo of that done that newfound of the pampas is a seasoned justices but they rely on bobby seale black panthers to provide protection for the elderly black and white you point out there is that third day when everybody gets a social security check for a societal a month at the black panthers protect the gray branches on the day those checks come to make sure that they don't get robbed or ripped off on interestingly our organization didn't recognize that all of being a terrorist organization in some people's mind is has captured really by maggie's appeal for justice and protections and in fact the relationship became he came out close around the social programs that the great that the black panthers had established in the berkeley oakland area called les brown who was really the effective head of the of the

black panthers in oakland went to philadelphia to visit maggie and said how can we work and this was around nineteen seventy six i guess and the berkeley panthers then who had their health clinic established started talking to be a black panthers were running the george jackson health center also in berkeley about ways of working together and that my wife was actually the negotiator and trying to develop a joint breakout their black panther health clinic facility i'll and it never came about mainly because you really did come back and the the black panther our internal dynamics change quite a bit but for a while there there were there were acting move discussions every couple of weeks about how we can work together and share services and he didn't see either surprising too the older white great panther members who we knew or to the black panthers that are trying to meet the needs of of people in the community would bring them together found it interesting that you

know after after a medicare medicaid to vote for a loss of lyndon johnson but after that and i guess from the outset in order to keep her tax free status she played indoors politically and there is that anecdote about the internal injuries for them talk about that well she had she had been to the white house several times and divide by carter's order had corded maggie i'll but when ford became president that august he invited maggie to the white house along with other our representatives of senior citizen organizations and at one point he turns to her and said young lady you have something to say and to look back in and he said mr president i know young lady i'm an old woman is on and then she gave him a critique of the irs up

a patent protection bill in all the gaps and false oh which he was completely unprepared for then the next month of course he pardoned nixon and she wrote him a letter now that she was as french wrote a letter of criticizing severely for it for doing that and then coretta comes and she and she is i guess carter's mother's involvement in the peace corps and then you point out that that he really it made her especially welcomed at the white house which is another unique relationship but no president could ignore the gray panthers and president reagan had that tension to know they're they're viable force and so forth how did she deal given a radical radical liberal background how she'd deal with our

inability to endorse presidential candidates they're years she deftly wanted to do so we'll see if she actually would sometimes spoke more that she shouldn't have them busy and that she crosses the line was to get an end of the world a federal law elections campaign of the board did investigate the great patterns before the of the reelection republican party republicans and democrats reagan was the one who passed really effectively eliminated menaker retirement maybe six hour by declaring it are signing a law that clearly illegal to discriminate on the basis of age in employment and get away with it where the upper limit age and at that time reagan was seventy five and people were killing to him on the basis of if you're old enough to do the job you should certainly be able to do it and it should not be the limiting factor and maybe it might have maybe even maggie it had little lesson from ronald reagan about his own ability to understand the

problems of the aged i think so i think so i argued deal in the book almost would've saved by a city account although the message spread into cold and whether the berkeley chicago or new york there's a chapter that gives us insights into the different ways and the silhouettes in which there is this lesson the aged teachers take so long again it's a light organization i guess until her death it was very very very good glory years were really the nineteen eighties when there were more than a hundred groups around the country and in forty three states there've been about two hundred ninety groups over the years that have formed and some existed

lasted longer than others today the organization head is about maybe two dozen groups it's much more than it was at the theater and the nineteen eighties and as her physical vitality was really declining through the early nineties she died in nineteen ninety five at age nine eighty nine eighty nine just four months short of of her nineteenth birthday the vo other members who were of her her age peers were also are becoming older some of them are dying become disabled some are moving to live with their adult children so the the older cohort was diminishing the younger members were moving into the middle part of their career and didn't have the time to be active in daytime meetings though them participation that they did in their twenties and then early thirties so both of those two streams of great pat there are up that membership or really a beginning to fade and the great characters like many many style activist groups by the late eighties and nineties were just not recruiting as many members and politics really switching in washington from these group with local grassroots chapters

that really were the vitality to groups that were organized by experts in washington that did direct mailing and emailing then and really did we work from the top down so citizen grassroots politics is really undergoing a change in the gray panthers were were part of that then you know you do you need times an annual conventions and all the times when seed and the great characters interact with the dominant leaders of the feminist movement towards the animal labs of bed for ten days then you wonder is this a woman's organization those early owners only a movement i'm in a year into it and there is a place in the book where you deal with the male involvement on what the majority of older people are women in ads that women live longer than men but certainly in the gray panthers probably two thirds of the members are women and some of this other the men were

problematic they were out of the nineteen thirties and they were very dogmatic and from the point view women they like to talk more than get things done and with some of that but i certainly recognize that there were some wonderful men who were our role models for me certainly about some of them and i met around that the times social security struggles of the reagan years of work let it i still hold as as exemplars of a what i should be doing when i become active and i tried to an end in two thousand and five when when bush was pushing to private eye social security to do what they had done and speak out and go to senior centers and civic meetings and address groups of students about the truth on social security and i suppose what we thought which was was saying which was not very true for most of the painters lost all are seen is the idea still viable and valid candidate can it make a difference in the society at this time yeah i think i think the jury is out that the numbers have declined the

organization is still there they are a few people now in their sixties who were coming in as members in small numbers like i came back about five years ago after other parts of both of my life in and rejoin the group in new york that reform but i think the real question is going to be what's going to happen with the baby boomer generation who will be the poor were politically active in the nineteen sixties and early seventies what will happen to them as they began to retire and see the issues that confront them as older americans many of them they have lived through caring for aging parents and the frustrations and difficulties of dealing with insurance companies with part d medicare with the nursing home industry i would like to see alternatives for themselves when they reach that age there are fewer children and families now so people are not going to have adult children to turn to in the same kinds of numbers and i think the baby boomers that a lot of them lost money just this last year but even before that they had the questions of retirement security are going

to a comeback since just a minute long term speech has been so great to talk with you both as a million the seminal book what is a rod i'd i'd like to win but as anthropologist i've been very lucky to two to work in on this social movement i studied urban neighborhoods in west africa and in queens new york and armed working on a book about how anthropologists do what they do and how they try to speak out to the larger political and social issues that that motivate them to do the kind of work that we do this intensive field work as we call it well this is autobiographical outtake of the next book will be somewhat autobiographical i think selig some people say that the anthropologist work is always out of iraq caucus were there on the scene observing and listening to people trying to understand what they do but work were part of that that reality so it will do a deal i think with of these adventures i've had as an

anthropologist here in the united states as well as an end on a west african <unk> thank all of you all for watching i'll be really great and says thank you so much for coming into my job and john simko forward own words