Urban Affairs Report; Riverside: A Week Later

nina these rebels he tweeted this time vw army are urban affairs unit examines the issues that effect urban lot tonight riverside one week later this is gary joseph this past sunday morning at nine was a deadline set by james forman for the riverside church to respond to the demands of the national black economic development conference of which former spokesman things were tense around the church that morning and if you're the daily news later you're informed that the walls were lined with plainclothes men the new york times had a more conservative estimate twenty but clearly the expectation was that something might happen mercifully it did not james farmer arrived worshiped and spoke to the

news media assembled in a news conference in the church's assembly hall they joined dr ernest t campbell in what turned into more of a confrontation at a news conference announcer you will hear on this tape recording of that encounter was me day was last sunday the time just after noon here is that news conference this is jerry joseph and some legal researcher james foreign minister speaking before the conference i think we would welcome any opportunity that we can give you so is that though you are they are the only reason i did not seek you out myself mr pope it try to find it was to avoid getting into a swirling eddies of conversations that were going on throughout the church but we will

settle it that are mutually convenient time between the station that you have as much time as you need to express your point of view and do thanks for your time it's because it is big thank you we have a contractual

commitments he was supporting many of the original programming at this i really don't know well somebody interesting yes i was probably the most convenient for you to be able to do it he's been announced we were the purpose of

our gathering here is to announce and the main purpose of our gathering is to ask if there are questions that have to do with the meaning of the statement that we're hearing in response to the manifesto i'd like to say that list document was put together over this week just past and that what is in here the riverside church at least through its officers and as many members as we have been able to contact it represents the stance of the church automatic questions regarding the substance this response or either the myriad what might be

not him was mounting as close for this document with you an indicator literary sensation we have alluded to the fact in paragraph three and that the interruption of our service of holy communion last sunday samuel is across the country we indicated that the response has come to us by way of mail and telephone and telegram has been a response that can be summed up in the term the shame of it all we have tried to suggest that serious as it is to

have a service of worship terminated as ours was last week and the real family underlying came with the fact that there are such inequities in our society as mike it necessary for people to express themselves in this way the response that we have made billions and a stove with a statement indicating that the riverside church will continue to make available undeveloped to an even higher degree the kind of forum that is required in these eased the times when hearing of ideas whether those ideas are congenial are not a congenial to our thoughts at the moment we go i want to suggest that this kind of forum in our judgment does not take place most notably within the context of worship

my judgment is emphatically that when we try to make our point within the context of worship we draw attention from the content of what we're saying really abrasive ness of the interruption and this is not good either for the church or for those who are presenting a case we go on then to indicate the measures we took to try to ensure the proper ordering of our worship today and on subsequent sunday's i think we should amplified at the bottom of the page to the fact that many people across the country writing an irritation and i suppose we might say righteous indignation or exhorting us to come down not a hard and the gentleman who interrupted it has never been in our hearts our minds to do

this because we regard this as a deflection on the fundamental issue which has to do with the inequities that prevail in our society we have given what i think is a fairly strong and i know to be a sincere statement let's be done with rationalizing wherever you go in this country the white men generally speaking rights higher than the black he lives in the better parts of town stands as tilting the more desirable schools barros books from final i raised close down higher paying jobs in the rice paddies of vietnam more blacks are dying proportionately than whites because the draft laws that prevailed they were the white youth we can make it to college over the disadvantaged black youth who cannot it seems to me that those assumptions are unassailable and that they are supported by truth observation and experience we

belong to roundly indict the church for its silence in allowing this to happen it has always been my experience that however severely the church has been criticized from without that its most severe critics have been from within those of us who love the church and wanted to be what it ought to be and so there is a summary here when the church refuses to follow her martin of the busy thoroughfares of history when it talks of love that fails to press for basic justice when its message as no other focused on the wellbeing of individual souls and lax all public reference when he refuses to put its own color on the line on behalf of the disadvantaged and it lowers its voice in order to raise the what when it becomes more concerned to perpetuate and adorn its life

and to lose its life for the sake of christ in the gospel when all this happens as it has the church can be rightly charged with contributing to the social and economic inequities that provoked minorities the violence ari swanson to this situation centers in reparations restitution redress were not interested in winning about that term mauro interested in trying to define it in a costly legal flaw we believe that this is omar and that unless that all people who believe in god should feel the paragraph that describes our situation regarding this point is this reparations restitution redress call it what you will we subscribe to the conviction that given the demeaning and

heinous mistreatment that black people suffered in this country at the hands of white people in the slave economy and given the lingering handicaps of that system but still work to keep the black man at a disadvantage in our society it is just unreasonable letterman's be made while many institutions in society including perhaps especially the church i think the important why and the line around which perhaps some contention will gather is a line that says and given the lingering handicaps of that system there are people who have written to us across the days of this week who have suggested in a sense let bygones be bygones and if people back to a three generations were hardship on black people back to a three generations that somehow those things have been cancelled out by the force of this that we do not believe this we believe that the the disadvantages are still present in our

society that the black man is still hampered so that it's not simply a matter of past history that were trying to dig out there are some very present ramifications but still go on to the detriment of the white man out of that slave economy we believe this with all our hearts and so riverside sensor is that this church long committed to the struggle for civil rights has determined through its border begins to make a fixed percentage of its annual budget available to a fund to be set apart for the rapid improvement of all disadvantaged people in this country it is our hope that this fine will become national and spoke and we respectfully invite churches and synagogues across the country to join us in the planning and funding all this venture there must be taken to see that the funds contributed are spent and administered at the discretion of responsible and representative

leaders of the people the fund would help to add a note of france writer realize until that statement i think we understand that eventually that your money is required for what we have in mind then the charities and perhaps why give a moral leadership we don't encourage other institutions foundations and even government itself to recognize the rightness of this approach and to try to move when us ford gm that we have described it we refer to the next paragraph the radio station wypr and a proposal that i personally made to this committee there were three weeks ago regarding the making of a substantial body of time available responsible and representative

groups and the blackened spanish community is the kind of programming they wish to produce and here we go on to indicate that the revolutionary character of the document the manifesto its assumptions that the american way as we call it is totally beyond redemption or corruption is something that we do not subscribe to the final play is in the way of a personal invitation to the congregation to rally around one of a high water marks of old testament teaching to do just wait longer say and to walk humbly with our other questions regarding they substance of the state on a

nest ness who represents the leadership of the press here today once you've those outlets in one of you become a leader because i can contend with all of this yes we haven't had enough time to really come to know the background of the group that mr foreman represents i will say this that i think our church is awfully concerned but given the given this on becoming a reality that we be faithful to many in the black community who had been working for years i think it is fair to say and i think with the foreman would perhaps admit you can see that he does not represent the

entire black community and therefore we would want to receive him for guidance and suggestions from any group that was responsible and in my judgment including this group that is big is baseball good morning faith you know that

director that morning to the press now that the victors valiant religious foundation can be your vision all those topics and others problems where there would be a black people name a manifesto and a program that it hasn't altered the white people to say we're going to select one of violent attacks and that is to say well we will pick a bad deal with a young oral a massive macroeconomic devolve about this elected leadership which is going to be respected means that the united states now you have any more questions about that organization please advise them back gamble because it's amazon we don't know what i mean

his mouth well let's say that you don't know much about i would say that any organization as a dateline of april nineteen sixty nine as the new organization and we are farther is this question thinks his father down the road and we are administratively on this proposition we have not established than eight canons of judgment or measurement so that actually yeah i can make any commitment for the church what you're saying is this week at one overwhelmingly cuts will write weekend you also you had said that justice of the proposal as less to do certainly now what you're really saying then is that the people who you would also wasn't that it was that that was right across the street you met with the water last week

you know that he represents in religious foundation in your position but he did meet with him you've met with other ministers in this particular stage on the last week as a lucky in a religious foundation new organization is no news to you but that tried to say that this must be responsible and the president of leadership is alone not be made david weigel to manipulate the black people along what's that now you also recognized by saying economists that was especially fun today is it just goes to what we're saying now the national council churches and other people cities want to reach out to your goal but now you're said to sop up the plot has something altogether separate using the prestige of the john d rockefeller chapel rivers that apple get people to cooperate with you do in fact set up a splinter group from the national black economic development up or less resistant to win this i can only say that you're further down the line on this than we are

at the moment we have no determination as to what the administrative or movie of this and i would say i would hope that we would be in touch with with go and other groups this is what i think the documents suggest we do have a serious question about the revolutionary character of the earlier parts of the manifesto and i think it's a little bit too much to expect that if that wording in the manifesto it seriously oriented revolution that is to say if the wording is more than attention getting rhetoric it's for real then i don't see how we can find our way to work together we are willing to do what we can to use our influence the marshall fund's i think are really says in a sense been a call to the churches and synagogues of the nation and if some of them respond as i hope they do then we want them to be and as the document says in the planning and the funding and for me to suggest what

their planning or funding to look like it would be in a sense to allow them to come in later than the beginning and the thing is open now and we're working in the actively on it anyway mr gary borders ms bellante yes fbi agents ruby

right right i was ready to write that this has been swirling kind of weaker us i would say that it belongs to my theology is a very central part that we listen to anybody and everybody we have never tried not to do this the exception on the communion sunday was a matter of time and certainly was not a matter of willingness and this is still a question as business bureau

he's very curious that's a good question because i think it touches on what is really our fundamental problem having to do not with not only within justice to blacks but also to indians and appalachians on mexican americans and that is very simply that the average protestant especially simply does not know call to convert his religious fervor and commitment

into a meaningful use of car and i think when we talk about the church having been a failure regarding the use of its power as an altogether been because the church has been on well it has been inept and my feeling is that it's time we learn how to move together to get accomplished what we wish i think there are many many christians in this country who feel as though they are related to the united states the way the early christians were related to the roman empire now in a situation where the church was so grossly outnumbered and where by the way a great majority were slaves anywhere from sixty five to seventy five percent that all they could do is work into their quiet lanes of worship and so forth and therefore much of the exhortations in the new testament is directed towards personal virtue the patient the loving the zealous of song

but we're in a totally different set up in this country when you have sixty two to sixty five percent the population at least nominally related to church or synagogue you can't simply say that we are living and their power we are living in power and with our and when the christian church in this country comes of age and recognizes this fact i think there is little that it will not achieve what at the moment except for a few overate find exceptions some of whom are in this room we have not understood the dynamics of power we had been harmless as those but we have not been wise in circuits you know it is liam geraghty reports i think any kind of context that

suggests win and lose face saving or not face saving that assad were we're interested in receiving truth i'm willing to concede publicly that this concept of reparation restitution redress is about cancer and so much of what we have done as the white community for the black man we have thought was was a kind of an offering of law and i think this terminology helps us to see but while there may have been a lot better and god knows we hope there has been that it really comes down to something more basic justice reform and remember that would like to express that this particular my appreciation to the capital for much a consideration which he's given over the last seventeen days i disagree on interpretation of the interruption of service last sunday services council all right is leaving the yard sensory but nonetheless that's a mess like that i would like to make and the sponsors of the new york times

is that all i have to do is to get a list of the board of that just these not the water begins of this church but the board of trustees and one will see the jostling gases president transfer of aladdin on it one seattle have a mysterious is just right across the street and that's mark altman had which you see that there's a man named how like it was on the city planning commission like most undocumented z which is why i get so upset you find out that there's a man a more recent works out of thirty rockefeller plaza news related to the young rockefeller as you say that the president of the erie lackawanna railroad companies on the board of trustees are his upcoming i mean if i'm not mistaken was the mac and game company now that other people on that would just easily into law into business and government of the united states and that you know dr callas gotten a vicious situation where he's a pastor of a church founded by other rockefellers coming of the presbyterian to the baptist churches he doesn't but then he in fact does not have the

power to teleport trustees want to do the gaza border just these pages towering and what has these is basically went on a bad intention of all they always as the other members of the board of trustees is a former mississippi state attorney general so basically it's really about history that there's an interlocking and it ended in a manifesto and we don't reply the second bicameral gaza not reply we're going to show out telling us i'll just do that you know the city planning commission would have all has to do with housing is closely related to lindsey and i we know mr siebert charges in the united states despite a situation similar population to black white brown greene is in fact that they're being manipulated by the financial interests of this particular pattern that we can document that we will prove them and we want you to understand about or reveal any confidences but i'm sure that as amanda <unk> when you understand the extent of the

rockabilly of that in this well then you will begin speaking out against the rockefellers and it will be up here the ticket the pope he has mentioned this as a fixed percentage of the churches that have been decided i know as of this is going to take some more i think there's an amazing nimble when you consider the way institutions generally work and we were fortunate to be able to get the documents we have we have been able to move in on the actual percentage opposition be made by the abort of the directors are the deacons are the church parish that this is a baptist church in its organization and on occasion my judgment would be

that that this document which has given us such a thought provoking analysis ought to be studied by the congregation as a whole and how we will do this i'm not sure but i would like to see us small subgroups within the church groups that would include the various ethnic groups that this congregation represents various age groups so that we could study it and come together through some meaningful conclusion as to wonder what percentage would be just this is the whole thing i haven't thought that far ahead not expensive in this area we haven't even gotten for that hit but they say let me say this while we have the attention of at least those in this room and hopefully goes further there's a sense in which

is building the fact that it doesn't like him does it the fact that people worship or work in his church doesn't mean that they are opulent just because they're here the basic working budget of this church which has to do with staten program comes not from endowment with crumbly voluntary gets the people of his congregation and therefore the greatest potential for the funding of this budget wise not and anything that is tied up in a bank somewhere but lies and the money's not yet being done why the members and friends of his church and i think there is some danger and casting those associations about that because of the wealth of some of those who helped to begin this church that we haven't made it i arrived here in september september first and women's rights and to me

and this is a fact of the matter is not flat we're trying to work to make what we feel is a christian reasonable and just responds to this manifesto and i believe on the one hand well i i think extortion has to do with math and i don't think we should be turned away from from the were the substance of the term preparations simply because the method that extortion qualities to it and i might say that there are many people who went for the flags on display awaiting of the flag at the point of tactics and i think you'll find that those documents very carefully tries to draw attention away from tactics i ask myself if i were part of an

agreement it but what i did i might have done the same thing i do not know but the substance of it is that we feel the word reparation or restitution or redress has merit and we're grateful for anyone can bring aside because thats also part of this luck him that we are on we always have then we always will they do it is it will help us do the job better the policy actually the only properly to the best of my knowledge and i think this is true the only property the church says is the property in which we are now meeting church does not on the other property there he's been and i said i want to say one thing about a ground rule in the interest of my voice and your patients were going to get out of here in one

fifteen numbered and i respect the questions if we may go to the press with the foremen wishes to stay on he has a better voice than i do about or is free to do this how the budget of the church which store what you know question of the i think that's what the song seven to one charge which makes a lot of the largest corporations now don't you think that this syndication of effects the unstated percentage of our budget is kind of a dog with respect to the request and not a direct answer to it i think it could they can save those sites what i think they knew the five militants guns that is the fact that it saves a lot of money around this building and my understanding is that with the exception of two funds which are

not particularly specified or building and maintenance that the bulk of what we are endowed by the building and my feeling is if i may turn this into a positive assertion we have this building which is much levison however you measure it we want the building to be serviceable we want it to be useful i doubt that anybody in the harlem community or downtown or anywhere as ever been refused they go around of that bill than it organizations it meatier and so for this is again and the money is interest much of a troubling sustenance and maintenance of the building now the question is where to go from here and the answer is that in the spirit of jesus christ you continue to try to make a program in your building available to life in the world around you and there never has been any intention to do anything but that last night national in scope and

very specific plans on this well it depends on how many people are able to pick up our response by way of a wire services were hopeful that certain religious periodicals open and full and at least in that fashion we'll be able to or which are the churches and synagogues asking them for ideas and whether they find that what we're proposing he's never going to do this this would be my point whether it's premature to say just what form that will take but we want to get on this right away and strike while the iron scott they already have them what you're in fact saying is the united states and cooperate with interrogators foundation an organization which is always felt it sponsored by united nations and use a journalist i can only own because the

rockefellers best be as setting up an alternative they get just at morehouse nigger's a lot of that melissa sometimes i think so i'm not sure that i can recognize my remarks that sen whitehouse a negative reviews at night to recognize if go is setting up oh wait we have raised the question we have raised the question with him though regarding the seriousness of the revolutionary language in there in the document this manifesto and we're willing to discuss with a spill that point of the other point we respect the fact that there are people and a fellow who know how to do the very thing that we were speaking of a moment ago they know how to organize to make a power church effective we would be foolish not to invoke their help they would also be foolish to assume that if though represents the whole band of needy people in this country and this one is not simply for black people but it is for all disadvantaged people in other words that some people come to you visit

some demands resistance and demands to you and then you know say we'll raise the baltimore old russian the pressure that they applied on us we're going to set up something out of it if you do that when you forced us to continue our pressure on you to negotiate with the us had to put plans to leave go and so we made a quiet and i think the document bears this out that the last thing we wanted was to invoke any police action we're very grateful there were no incidents today that would have worried a hardship on people we're grateful for the way all of those who can't worship responded it was an uneasy morning for any of us and we're thankful that it worked out the way it did i get here the

coalition ms bonnie the cancellations many

listeners as we repair stations many reporters were really appealing and then

it says they are now being me as it turned out i was wrong the arrangement had been made for mr foreman to call that we were the artist set up the broadcast but as of now is not called and the churches offer has been an answer there's no indication of how long will have to wait for mazda forms replying to duck the camels response team is to form his manifesto life can be complicated sometimes necessary joseph for urban affairs report urban affairs reported

weekly hour in which vw rv our urban affairs unit examines the issues that effect urban life this is the eastern educational radio network