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To set up day care for their workers.
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Oh, that's nice, that's wonderful.
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Which The Amalgamated had in Chicago. So I worked for them
there, and one of the things that I did was to learn to use the video
camera and to film what the children were doing in the daycare center so
that the parents could see what daycare was.
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That's wonderful.
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Hmm,
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That's really wonderful.
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That's interesting, so they didn't know. Daycare was such a new
concept.
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Oh, yes, and The Amalgamated was trying to promote it, and
the OEO—the Office of Economic Opportunity—gave grants to 10 daycare
facilities around the country to try to develop daycare in areas such as
Chicago. So I was working in the Chicago region for The Amalgamated.
9
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Okay, well, I—what, January 13th today? 2017.
10
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It's Friday the 13th! [laughs]
11
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Friday the 13th. This is our final session of the—of our time
here, and so certainly at any point, if you want to, anyone wants to take
this in any direction they see fit, I would defer to you. I only have one
question on the agenda, or maybe two, but it has to do a little bit with
this idea. Continuing on the questions Catherine was asking related to
education, but really focusing in on the field of popular education in
particular. Some of the work of Paulo Freire and Myles Horton, and if that
had any kind of resonance for you at any point in your work.
12
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Well, I'm under the impression that I already told the
camera a couple of Myles Horton stories, the one about the meeting at Ozone
during the Depression, and the other at which he introduced Blacks and
whites to one another by just reading them matter-of-factly in the order
that they appeared, and then after a few days, how I asked how this newly
formed interracial group was going to convey common sense to their
colleagues. I do feel that Highlander went through certain well-defined
phases, there was the labor phase prior to World WarII, then there was the
quitting of the CIO when it turned toward McCarthyism and the expulsion of
communists or alleged communists, communist oath by all office holders.
Then a civil rights phase, We Shall Overcome having been perfected in its
present form as Highlander by Guy Carawan and others, and then a much less
well-defined recent phase on strip mining and ecology generally. But that's
not quite taking hold in the way that the first two had.
13
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What about working with migrant or immigrants and—
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An awareness, an awareness of an extraordinary number of Latin
Americans in the middle of Appalachia. But again, I'm not sure how many
Highlander staff really became fluent in Spanish, and I think the group has
been for some years trying to find a new director. We knew—we know fairly
well Jim Sessions, who was the director until a few years ago and his wife
Fran Ansley. We got a Christmas greeting from them. But Highlander may have
played its essential historical part, which was a very large, very
significant one.
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They've changed the name to Highlander Research and Education
Center. At one point, oh, maybe more than 10 years ago probably, they gave
us some sort of an award where we could stay in Myles Horton's house, and
they would provide food and we could enter into things down at the main
center to the extent that we wanted to as sort of a rest and relaxation
place for people. They did it for once a year—I guess something like
that. Other times that we were there, Gary Stevenson, who was an organizer
for the—was it Teamsters at that time? The overnight campaign and so
forth to have organizers and people that they were trying to train as
organizers meet there. And the thing that was so significant, and it's
true, I have a Highlander t-shirt as well as the one I want to explain
here. The rocking chair. It was this large circle of rocking chairs.
Everybody had a rocking chair, but you are always part of one circle. Not
with some people sitting behind others and so forth, but one very large
circle with many, many rocking chairs. I brought out this shirt, which is a
shirt that came from the school where our grandson goes in Guatemala. It's
the only Waldorf School in Guatemala and it's very highly regarded for the
quality of the education there. But it says on it in three different
languages—well, the school teachers in three different languages, the
predominant language being Spanish, also the indigenous language that's
most common in that particular village—although not necessarily in an
adjacent villages but in this particular village—and in English so that
the children are learning to read first in Spanish, but when they have
songs and so forth, they will sing in any one of the three languages. And
this says, "education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a
fire." I think that's a quotation from Freire. So, I just wanted you to
see. El caracol, and that means—it's a kind of snail, right?
16
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Yes.
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And they use that that image, they dance around the circle of
the great big snail. They do all sorts of things that the children are
engaged in growing food, and taking care of rabbits, and all sorts of
artworks, and make things, and the reading and writing and math and so
forth are part of the curriculum, but they're just working along with a lot
of other things.
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Do you feel your work is within that same—has been within
that kind of same universe that they were working with, in terms of the
kinds of objectives you were setting out to achieve?
19
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Yes, I mean the TCI work that we're doing, it's if not
lighting a flame, you know, protecting it from the wind blowing it [laughs]
20
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And did you have that sense, is that an evolving sense, or is
that something that has gone back maybe even towards the time you were in
Atlanta? Or, you said, I think, and I don't know if you were here,
Staughton—I mean, Alice, I'm sorry—when Staughton was talking, he said
that when you were in the Macedonia community that you had actually gone to
Highlander to participate in a workshop on intentional communities?
21
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He did, I did not.
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Okay, and that was your first, initial interaction? But it
didn't have much of an impression on you then, if I understood what you
were saying.
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Well, I mean the intentional community movement was, I
suspect more than anything else, former conscientious objectors trying to
recapture the community they had experienced during the war, much as former
soldiers, former civil rights workers. When you've been through an intense
experience together, it's hard to let it go. It's hard to believe you can't
just wish it into being again.
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Well, what they said was that conscientious objection was
saying, no. They wanted to demonstrate something affirmative, you know, to
be creating something that was new and a positive expression of what they
believed.
25
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And that's similar to your present view on non-violence, about
it being beyond just a kind of not participating in violence, but an
embrace of empathy and—
26
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Have you talked at all about things at Macedonia, such as not
gossiping and so forth?
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No.
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Well, one of the things that was a central pillar of
Community Macedonia—and I think also the Society of Brothers, which
succeeded them—is, if you have a problem, you don't gripe about it to the
next person. You go up to that person and say, I'm sorry, maybe there's a
misunderstanding or whatever, but I'm really troubled by what you did said,
whatever it is, we need to work this out. And part of the rationale for
that is, if you have a sense of, "well, that guy's always bouncing off the
wall, and coming up with this and that crazy idea," and that person in a
business meeting brings something up, you don't just think: it's his idea,
nobody else needs to listen to it. There was the sense that if one person
in the group had an uneasy feeling, we needed to listen to it. Maybe he was
seeing something that the rest of us were missing. But if you already had
it in for that person, you weren't going to hear it. You weren't going to
evaluate it. You weren't going to take it in and really take it seriously.
And that it is very destructive if you get gossiping going. And let me tell
you, our granddaughter—she's now a senior in high school—in her junior
year of high school, at the prom, they chose the prom queen and the prom
king. Well, she was chosen for the prom queen and she explained it to me,
that she doesn't gossip so she doesn't have any enemies. And I thought:
that's our granddaughter [laughs].
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It seems that kind of shapes some of the things we're talking
about in terms of work in prisons, where you need to really be kind of
conscious in terms of what you say, from what you hear, and how you report
it across lines of administration and prison. That being attentive to to
the forms of communication are kind of essential to that work?
30
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Yes, and speaking behind people's backs is a good way to get
things off on the wrong track, you know, to increase antagonism - "well, so
and so told me such and such about her, better not trust her the next
time." Just, you know, I mean those kinds of things can fester, can create
all sorts of problems and misunderstandings, and he said, she said. I mean,
I think that this concept of direct speaking is very important, and when we
left Macedonia and went through this crisis of how do we live in the world
again, I remember working in the Admissions Office at Columbia Medical
School—where I was file clerk or some such thing, secretary—going to
the dean's secretary, she was my supervisor, and wanting to bring things
up. And I remember her saying, "Alice, people don't want to know what you
think." And despite that, there were about four different occasions when I
had the feeling, I may lose my job over this, but—and my family was
dependent on it, Staughton was in graduate school. I went to the dean and I
said, I'm troubled by the way we're reporting such and such, or whatever it
was. And he would come back about half an hour later and say, "Alice, I've
been thinking about what you said, I think you're right." So, I mean, I
staked my job, our family's then-livelihood, on direct speaking, and kept
my job until we moved to Atlanta.
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It seems one of the core things we haven't really had a chance
to talk about is how your relationship has shaped your work in all these
different periods of time, it's kind of changed and transformed. Is there
anything you can—
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I just wanted to say one more thing. I remember, in
connection with Workers Against Toxic Chemical Hazards we got to know a
particular woman, and several years later she called and said, "Alice. I
want to ask you what you think about this because I know you will tell me
what you think," you know, not just come up with what I think you want me
to say, you know, what you want to hear. But I will tell you, good or bad,
what I think. And this has been very true in my correspondence with
prisoners. A letter came yesterday or today from one, who had consulted me
about a course of litigation that he wanted to pursue, and I told him why I
didn't think it would would fly, and he wrote back a very courteous letter
thanking me. I mean, why should they—If they go to court, that four
hundred dollar filing fee is taken out of their inmate accounts a few
dollars at a time for an indefinite, I mean, it takes forever to pay that
off. So if they wanted to buy a new sweatshirt, they wouldn't have enough
money to do it. You don't want them to be in that situation unless they've
got something that's likely to fly. And if you can tell them why, you know,
I can say this is just my opinion. I'm not the judge, I can't tell you for
sure, but I don't think it's worth it for you to put yourself in that
situation.
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It seems that direct speech is a part of accompaniment,
because—
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It is, it's taking the person seriously and giving them the
best that you can bring to them rather than just saying what you think they
want to hear. Now, you asked about our relationship. I remember when we
were first married, Staughton would not go to bed at night until resolving
whatever issue it was with me. I mean, he just had this, man, this was
before Macedonia. You don't sleep on something like that. You resolve it,
and then you go to sleep. Am I accurately remembering?
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I hope so.
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Yeah, I do remember that in Chicago, before Macedonia.
37
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And we understand somewhat that your work with the Freedom
Schools, you did your work with the draft counseling. As I understand it,
and tell me if I'm wrong, you came together on Rank and File, that was
maybe your your first kind of collaborative project?
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Yes. Before that, we had done—
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Deeply collaborative, I should say.
40
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Yeah, we had the first edition of Nonviolence in America: A
Documentary History, he did all of the research, all of the selection of
material, and I did all of the busy work while he was in Mississippi. That
changed. I did rank-and-file with his encouragement.
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We Won't Go.
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Excuse me. We Won't Go with his encouragement, and Rank and
File, I did— There were some accounts that he basically worked on, and
others that I basically worked on. But I don't remember, I'm sure that
there would have been the kind of exchange that you described between your
parents of, whichever one of us had done the first draft, the other one
then went over it and made suggestions. As it has evolved. I think it's
still true that about some things I have done the initial writing and
formulation and research and know more about it than he does, and there are
other things that's reversed. That's true of our latest book that's on
moral injury. I did most of part one and he did most of part two, but he
cut down, cut a lot out of the US section with regard to conscientious
objection before even the first pamphlet came out. I contributed chunks of
part two in the new book, where it was stuff that I had worked with for
years and it was, you know, accessible to me. I think we have for some
years now had the feeling that any project that we did together was likely
to come out better than if either one did it alone. I mean, particularly
our written products, but our—in some ways we're very, very different.
But it was interesting, in the litigation about the Ohio State Penitentiary
we had a third colleague, and in general Staughton and I would see things
from one point of view and he would come at it from a totally different
point of view, and we were a wonderful team. I was the detail person. Jules
was the walking encyclopedia when it came to case law and came at the legal
side of it with a very different point of view. And Staughton was this
marvelous writer that could take some pedantic something that Jules had
written and make it sing. But Jules and I worked together on the drafting
of the complaint in the Ohio State Penitentiary case, and I remember Jewel
saying to me, "if I can't understand it, you can't expect the judge to
understand it," and having to, to rewrite it so that at least Jules could
understand it [laughs]. What next?
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I'm open, really. I think, I guess, maybe one— Okay one
question, did you encounter Paul for shortly after it was published? Or,
how did you encounter Freire's work?
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I have never read much of it. I'm basically a non-reader.
That is, when I was in fourth grade I suddenly realized, you know, all of
these other kids are reading chapter after chapter and I haven't gotten
through chapter one. I read out of necessity, not for pleasure. So if I
don't have to read something, I'm not likely read it. So, but Staughton I
think is an avid reader, and he's interested in so many things that I think
that's a question for him.
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Well, I think I found Freire both in the Pedagogy of the
Oppressed and in We Make the Road by Walking somewhat abstract as a writer.
But, concept-wise, there were things that immediately gripped me. If you
were working as he did, with the children of landless farmers, who had to
endure the experience of losing control of whatever land they had had and
sleeping next to fertile farmland that an absentee owner wasn't using, then
you might begin the literacy process with the word for land: tierra. This
other quotation from Alice's shirt, I love. And just to be sure that it's
understood, the thing you are not doing if you are a Freire-ian teacher is
to take a predetermined content and pour it into the open mouth of the
little bird who is assigned to your classroom. That's the original sin. And
what you have to do instead is to find what makes that child's eyes
suddenly light up. What you could describe and that's described in that
little epigram as as the lighting of a fire, or the—as I guess I more
often think of it, I didn't light that fire, but I can get down on my knees
and blow on it and try to keep it going.
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I was going to say something but I lost it. I was affected by
the Montessori, Maria Montessori. And when I worked for The Amalgamated
clothing workers in their daycare center, I remember a teacher who had had
Montessori training who would give some attention to how a child learned.
For example, if you're holding alphabetical cards, and you say this is an
A, this is a B. You don't ask the child, which one is the A, which one is
the B? You say which one is the B, which one is the A? Why? Because they're
most likely to remember the last one mentioned, and therefore they will
have more of a success in responding, and it would only be after they had
gotten that that you might another time say, which is the A, which is the
B. And, I mean, the detail with which learning things are worked out, so
that a lot of them are self-learning. That is, in preparing materials for a
Montessori kindergarten co-op—which where our youngest child was at the
time—suppose the parents were making a puzzle. So you get a picture and
put it on cardboard, and then turn it over, and put on it some addition
facts—like two plus, two equals four or something like that—and then
you turn it back over, and you—I may be confusing some things, but the
idea is, when the puzzle is cut apart and you give the pieces to the child,
the child has to match up so that the facts are correct. But then they can
self check because they turn it over and see whether the picture works. So
that they're self-correcting. They can tell if they've got it wrong because
the picture doesn't line up, but if they have everything lined up, if they
answered all the questions correctly, then they know. And if they need to,
then they can make the correction, and this sort of self-correcting
learning. I thought that was very interesting, that these things had been
thought through as to how children themselves, almost when they're playing
with the pieces can figure out: yeah, I did it, and it worked. Our little
grandchild who goes to El Coracol, I don't know how many puzzles he made
when he was visiting here last summer, very complicated puzzles. Or
Lego—a prisoner sent him a Lego kit to make a helicopter. How he managed
to get that Lego set, I don't know, but somebody brought it to us and said
it was from him, and it was. But I think these kinds of things that engage
children in succeeding in figuring out a problem, or succeeding in
constructing something. These are very important.
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And with regard to something that Staughton was saying, if
people asked me to make a presentation on something, I'm very hesitant to
do it. How do I know what you want to know from me? I need to know, what's
your question? Where are you going? You know, if it gets close enough to
something that I know something about I'm more than glad to tell you, but
just open-ended to give a speech on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? I don't
want to do that, because I don't know what what the questions are in other
people's minds.
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And I suppose that I have a feeling that there is a
natural order of things, outside us and within us, and I'm still shocked
when people self-consciously depart from that natural order of things. And
perhaps that leads me to approach other people a little less deferentially
than Alice. That is to say, my point of view is, surely it is self-evident
to you as it is to me that such and such. Now, if that's the case, friend,
I honestly don't see how you can contemplate so-and-so. and I said, I guess
I'll believe that and practice it so long as I have breath to do so. It may
not be true. Perhaps people are not united in that way by something
underneath the different colors and shapes in which we appear in the world.
But I'm afraid I may be encouragable and unteachable in any direction other
than that. And, if that be so, if people left to themselves naturally
becomes neighborly, comradely, how we manage to create such chasms between
ourselves and other human beings is a great mystery to me. And I think it's
it's very important. And a particular problem for the movement for social
change in this country, that we allow ourselves so much to become partisans
of a of a single issue, or even a singular group. No matter how much in
need or how justified in their opposition that group may be, to me the
great joy of being a human being is discovering invisible bridges between
oneself and others. And Alice and I frequently say, "well, at least we're
part of a community of two," meaning our marriage. And we both have reason
to recognize that, you know, Marriage is a kind of discipline, it's a self
discipline.
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One makes choices for one thing rather than another if it
means you can do it, we can do it together. Let me put it that way. I might
well have become a biologist rather than a nursery school teacher. Our son
became a biologist, so. I do think that one—or, that we tend to make
certain choices. We decided that we would both go into law, as it being
something that we might more likely be able to do together, and it
certainly has been. But anybody who knew me for the first fifty years or so
of my life would never have thought that I would become a lawyer. I mean,
you know, I used to make things with my hands, I wasn't into intellectual
stuff.
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One of the signal experiences for me was the US steel
suit, because—how to say it? We had a perfectly legitimate legal theory,
but it wasn't compelling in the sense that nothing else could be argued,
but only our legal theory encompassed the well-being of many, many people
who were affected by whether the steel mills and the Mahoning
continued—in the Mahoning Valley continued to operate or not. And I had
taken up labor law and come to Youngstown with the self admonition as
"Staughton, cool your jets." As a speaker about the war to other persons
like yourself—that is, students—you could take these intuitive flights
and there was likely to be a response. That's why I was so effective as a
speaker. And I said to myself, "now that's not going to be true in
Youngstown. You do what you can Staughton, but don't imagine yourself at
the head of any parades any longer." And then there came the US steel
[unclear], Where US steel announced that it was going to close the mill at
a certain date, which happened to be just before the judge had said he
thought he might like to have a hearing, a trial in Youngstown and US steel
said, "well, your honor that's going to be after we close the mill." And, I
may have the details not altogether in order, but my recollection is that
several of my colleagues said, "well, that's it Staughton," and somehow the
feeling manifested itself: no, we can't let that be it. Who do they think
they are? Did they think they can tell the judge that his desire to have a
hearing is irrelevant because they, a private corporation, a money-making
business, have decided otherwise? And so our whole presentation had a kind
of preparatory, appealing, zeitgeist spirit.
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And one of the things that the judge did in the period
before the trial, he ordered that it be held in Youngstown. And that meant
that we'd be closer to Pittsburgh, and that meant that we could subpoena
the chief executive officers of US steel, but it also meant that this drama
was going to be a holy drama played out in front of the human beings most
affected by it. And I think I mentioned previously, that Ramsey Clark, the
former United States Attorney General had associated himself with the case.
And he and I had obtained the court's intervention and initial injunction
forbidding US steel to close the plant before trial. When we went up to
Cleveland and Mr. Clark, about six-foot-six, spoke earlier and told the
judge that to understand this matter we had to start with the Railroad
Strike of 1877, and after an hour or so he'd gotten up to the steel strike
of 1919 and it fell to me to try to explain how what was before the judge
was an elaboration of this pattern. That went sufficiently well, that we
got the injunction, the trial was going to be in Youngstown, they weren't
allowed to close the operation before the trial. And so we presented our
case, the president of the local union most affected, a Puerto Rican, was
on the witness stand all day long. He and I, working together. And then all
of the witnesses had spoken, and the next day would be time for closing
remarks, and I stayed up all night preparing mine. And as it turned out,
when I got up to speak the next morning, the judge had already written his
decision before closing remarks from either party, but I didn't know that.
Nor do I remember what I said, but I remember, I remember trying to evoke
that natural order of things of which I spoke. People work together at a
particular calling, an entire community depends on that activity, young
people graduate from high school, go to the military, come home, their
uncle gets them a job in the mill. Generations of the same family live near
one another, families eat together two or three times a week, this is how
it was in this Eastern European community.
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And, you know, the spirit of the Lord descended on me,
and I was able to put that into words fairly well. and it was such an odd
experience, because as I say, I had told myself "now Staughton, you're not
going to be—your well known natural eloquence is in fact a socially
conditioned eloquence that only appeals to people, like yourself. So, you
know, display a little humility, brother." But I realized that I was
speaking for a whole valley, and when I came back to the council table
there were six local unions that were plaintiffs in the lawsuit, in
addition to many individuals, churches, so on. And when I came back to the
council table, I realized - well what do you know? These are steel workers,
I didn't grow up with them, what in the world am I doing? But I did speak
for them. And I could just, I mean, you could have cut it with a knife.
53
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I had the experience also that we were a voice for the
voiceless. The people could hear us when they couldn't hear the people whom
were most affected.
54
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Yeah, with prisoners—of course as Alice said earlier
today I think—the mere fact of responding, of replying to a letter, of
showing up to an appointment, of acting out the fact that you were part of
the same world with with people—
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A sure way to undermine trust of a prisoner is to say you'll
do something and not do it. And you know, if I tell them I'll let you know,
I'll look this up, I'll whatever, I do it. I make sure I do it, and I build
relationships of trust with these men.
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I don't know if you're familiar with the British film about
the life of Gandhi, but there's this scene earlier in it, There's a scene
early in the film where Gandhi has been leading the fight in South Africa,
which of course was his first theater of struggle against the passes. That
people like himself, despite his barristers clothing, an East Indian person
of dark-skin, people had to use—such persons had to have passes to go
from A to B. And when they went, they had to sit in a certain railroad car.
Not a different railroad car. And Gandhi, I think initially not so much
because he shared the life experience of working class East Indians in
South Africa, but with a certain sense of "don't, you realize, I graduated
from such-and-such university of Great Britain, you see that this collar
represents? What do you think youre doing?" One of the first protests that
he, I suppose I have to use the word organized, had to do with burning
these passes. And Alice's favorite description of what we're doing in the
world is drawn from a scene where Gandhi has been clubbed to the ground by
British soldiers watching this. And he reaches out a hand, picks up one
more pass, and puts it in the flames. I never had any natural brothers, and
although I loved my sister we were quite different. I was the older, I was
the son king, the first child, and a male. But the experience of
brotherhood or common humanity is just the breath of life for me. And for
you.
57
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Well, I'm much more of a— I grew up without close
relationships outside the family, and I'm much more of a recluse who
occasionally goes out and contacts other people, but I'm happy to be alone
a lot of the time. He can't stand being alone for very long [laughs].
58
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But yet you were so much wanting to live in community,
So how—what's the interplay between feeling sort of like a recluse and
wanting to live in the intentional community?
59
00:51:47.200 --> 00:55:07.700
Well, I think one of the best experiences I had in high
school was being part of a madrigal group where there were four of us on a
part, and the very gifted music teacher who was directing us would ask us
to listen to the other parts, and to be aware of when our part was the one
that should be coming out most strongly and when we should be backing off
so that somebody else's part was was more leading. And within the part, to
blend our voices with the other voices who were singing, and in rehearsal
she would sometimes ask for one soprano, one alto, one tenor, and one bass,
just four of us to sing it at one time, and to get that experience of being
part of a group. And I love that kind of relating, not in a way that I had
to articulate as an individual person, but where I was part of a group
process, and I think I have loved that ever since. That is, I would much
rather be part of a small singing group than play the piano, where it's
just me having to figure out how to relate the different things that are
going on under my fingers. That kind of relationship with other people is
extremely important, and to be able to have a living relationship where
it's not just a personal relationship, it's not just that we love each
other, but that we're trying—we have a common purpose in life, that we're
trying to live a good life in relation to other people. Where other people
are heard, where other people are respected, where other people are
regarded as contributors to a whole. Our daughter Martha does some kinds of
things with weavers in Guatemala, and one of the things that they have done
is to take a ball of yarn, and I might throw it to Catherine, Catherine
throw it to Staughton, Staughton throw it to Dan, Dan throw it to me, I
throw it to somebody else. You make this web. What happens if one person
drops the yarn? All of the tension goes out of the web and what you have is
just a pile of yarn. But as long as each person holds the yarn, then you
are making this, you're constructing something that nobody individually has
envisioned before, but it's a new something that you're creating together
by you doing your part. Your part is to hold the yarn before you throw it,
so that there will be enough tension from the previous person for that
thread to maintain its part in the whole web.
60
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When we were living at Macedonia, we were living amongst
persons who had grown up with various degrees of explicitness as
Christians. And to let you know how ignorant of all this I was, I had come
across in the University of Chicago Library—
61
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Isn't this before Macedonia?
62
00:55:38.900 --> 00:55:39.300
Yeah.
63
00:55:39.400 --> 00:55:39.700
Yeah.
64
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A passion play that had been produced in medieval
England, in the city of York. And I looked at this thing and I thought -
what was it about the city of York that they could produce this
extraordinary drama, people appearing before the throne of God and being
dispensed judgment, depending on how they cared for other human beings
during their lives. And I thought - I'm going to really have to research
York. It took me about a week to realize this wasn't the city of York, this
was the 25th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. And having encountered
Christianity so little, I was especially drawn at Macedonia to Buddhism.
And a couple of characters came through the community who were from the
west coast and followers of Alan Watts, and talked about the Laughing
Buddha, who wasn't grim and a sourpuss Like Jesus of Nazareth.
65
00:57:25.800 --> 00:57:27.107
He wasn't a sourpuss.
66
00:57:27.500 --> 00:57:30.200
Well you tell me how many jokes he told [laughs].
67
00:57:30.200 --> 00:57:37.400
Wouldn't have to tell jokes, you can tell stories and
engage people [Alice and Staughton laugh]
68
00:57:37.400 --> 00:58:23.200
In any event, I somehow—this is really
incredible—made away from our community in the Hills, where we didn't
have a telephone, where we were on several miles of dirt road before we
even hit an asphalt surface, I made my way to the public library in Atlanta
and I came out with these two books, I think two books, of Buddhist
parables. I'm trying to think of the name of the editor of the book.
69
00:58:23.200 --> 00:58:23.715
Sousuke?
70
00:58:25.800 --> 01:01:55.500
No, no, it was a Tibetan. But I'm—boy, I was into it. And
there came a certain— I would get up at 5:00 no matter when the evening
meeting had ended, and I would put on my knit hat, keeping it down over one
ear so I wouldn't freeze to death but up over the other are so I could hear
the cowbells, figure out where the critters were. And, I would address them
gently but kicking their behinds, and they would get up, and I can't really
say that I drove them to the barn, they knew perfectly well where the barn
was, but I would trail along behind. And if it was a certain season of the
year—I think more winter than summer—at that time of day the sun would
come up, and we—our community was almost a thousand acres nestled among
hills, so that you could see the sun come up over the ridge of hills. And
as it did so and various parts of the world came into view, everything I
could see was part of a world that we were creating together. Indescribable
feeling. And one particular winter morning, after the milking, the cows
were showing me how to get back to their pasture. I was trailing along
behind, and I suddenly stopped. And I looked down, and I saw on the path
that I almost stepped on a calf that just been born. And it was the nearest
I came to experiencing Satori, a Buddhist moment of enlightenment. But I
fear that, despite my great attraction to many things in the Old and New
Testaments, my feeling that through those persons there came into the world
certain really new notions of forgiveness, and empathy, and compassion, and
solidarity. I think I'm still essentially, well, I describe myself as a
Christian and ethics in a Buddhist in metaphysics.
71
01:01:55.900 --> 01:01:58.976
And a Marxist in something or other else [laughing].
72
01:01:59.900 --> 01:02:03.300
A Marxist, accompanying Romero, did you say?
73
01:02:04.000 --> 01:02:17.700
How would you say it? I think you've said from a historical
point of view, yes. But in a predictive vision of a new society, no. How
would you say it?
74
01:02:19.000 --> 01:06:25.807
Well, I guess I would say that making money off of other
human beings and letting money decide the value of anything, are just
inexpressibly sinful in my eyes. Money stands at the opposite extreme of
the experiences of fellowship, and comradeship, and brotherliness, and
sisterliness. And money just isn't a part of what you see when the sun
comes up over the ridge of hills. Nor is it—I don't think there are many
moments of enlightenment associated with the color of the piece of paper
over which you almost stumbled. And I take such joy in the fact of family,
because it seems self-evident to me that although in many ways my parents
did not practice closeness with their own parents, with my grandparents.
Still, as Alice and I have passed through the world, I think sitting here
today I can say that we are part of a circle of brothers and sisters, and a
blessed circle of love with our three children, with our seven
grandchildren, with number of great grandchildren—I really have a thing
going with Barbara's eldest who's about six years old, we draw pictures for
each other. And so, if you are fortunate enough to have that experience, in
the small world of family, in those relationships which God or nature has
given us which for the most part we didn't choose but which simply
happened. So that we have all sorts of brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law
that we have to find a way to get along with, no matter whether we would
have chosen that relationship or not. We are given family. We must pass
through that and live in that with a degree of peacefulness, and dignity,
and joy in one another, or how can we pretend to shape the ethos of the
entire world?
75
01:06:27.300 --> 01:08:59.700
On the other hand, If we're fortunate enough to be
blessed with a family that itself is a receptor of love and mutual support,
seems that it should be relatively easy to take the next step and with the
people with whom we were jammed. With the Cubans in Catherine's film, the
wonderful lady who—she kind of has the Staughton role in the film,
pulling everything together into statements about - if you had the
opportunity to do so-and-so and you're given that at a very early age, why,
the world is all before you. And it somehow seems it should be easy for
people to sort themselves out and create a fabric without significant
blemish together. But it isn't. They make life hard for each other. Or
perhaps I should say, we, we human beings make life hard for each other.
I'm so exasperated with folk in the movement. There's been some
particularly raucous meeting, people have called each other names, we once
used a man who was deep into the embroils of Trotskyism and went to a
convention where he and his friends hung out a banner which said "shit,
let's split" [laughs]. How that comes into the world and infects our— I
just— it's beyond me.
76
01:09:00.200 --> 01:09:15.376
Well, and then we have a friend who spoke of the political
party in which people treated each other as well as they treated outsiders.
Now, as much as that was a pretty extraordinary thing [laughing].
77
01:09:16.800 --> 01:10:51.638
Alice, and I are just two childlike, innocent lambs. It's
taking the image too far to say in a world of wolves, but I think we just
hold up our little candle and it is enough. There's some passage in Genesis
which I've had difficulty retrieving, but—and I'll get all the names
wrong, so I won't call the names—but the father becomes aware of his
long-lost son and he says, "it is enough. I have seen my son," I think it's
Joseph, "before I died." And I think Alice and I do a fairly good job of
not driving each other crazy with our various anxieties. Between us we must
own all the anxieties in the world, she has her set and I have my set
but—
78
01:10:54.100 --> 01:10:56.200
I think other people have it a lot worse.
79
01:10:56.700 --> 01:11:47.146
Really? I guess so, must be, that's quite a discovery.
But basically, I think what we feel is it is enough, and if we haven't
managed to make over the whole world outside us, in the spirit of the man
who said of his murderers that they knew not what they were doing.
Hopefully, we're in, within shouting distance of that spirit. Once in
awhile it descends on us.
80
01:11:48.400 --> 01:12:37.254
It's strange that one of the images that comes to my mind
hearing you speak is an incident about— when we lived on the Spelman
College campus. Oh, that's fine. That's great. When we were living on the
Spelman College campus, right across the street from the campus were homes
where there might be one house with 10 people living in it, Black families
with children. And a couple of years ago, Barbara was taking—our eldest
child—was taking a continuing education course here in the Youngstown
area.
81
01:12:37.700 --> 01:12:39.500
Required by the church.
82
01:12:40.200 --> 01:13:51.500
Well, and required I think also for her teaching certificate,
for the Catholic teaching certificate. So, she called and said, "Ma I need
to be prepared to make a presentation on civil rights in the '60s. Do you
still have a copy of that picture?" Of herself and her brother along with
some of the children from across the street. And she said, "and Lee and I
were the only one wearing shoes." The only ones wearing shoes. And I did
have the picture, and she took it to the class, and they passed it around.
But that little child who—I mean generally things happen now, and then
she forgets it because she's onto another thing—she remembered that
picture. And when it came time for her to make a presentation, she went
back to her own childhood and asked me to let her borrow that photograph.
83
01:13:56.200 --> 01:15:22.100
So the mystery of of the glue, what is it that holds
people together? What is it that breaks down separation and division? I
just, I cannot believe that it's a formal religious creed because the world
is not of one creed, it's not going to be of one creed, and anyone who puts
his or her whole life behind that hope is going to be disappointed. We're
different, and yet the essential Macedonian proposition was that beneath
the language of different creeds and outlooks on the world, there was
something in common. There was an experience that all human beings share.
And that was pretty easy for me to affirm because I had come through this
school system where we believed that the place where men meet to seek the
highest is Holy Ground.
84
01:15:25.100 --> 01:15:39.161
And I would come at it more from the Quaker precept of
there is an inner light in every person, or what they say is that of God in
every person.
85
01:15:40.500 --> 01:15:43.261
[unclear] they also speak of the inner light.
86
01:15:43.300 --> 01:18:04.623
Yes, and, since for you and me both there's a lot of ambiguity
with regard to the use of the word God and what that means, I think—I
don't know whether I mentioned it on tape or not—but the the idea that
John Dominic Crossan was saying, that for some people, I mean, all of these
religions are just a metaphor, a way of trying to to get at what is really
there, and that there are many different paths, or as Staughton was saying,
many trails up the mountain. And the important thing is to try to pierce
that veil and touch something that may be unseen, unheard, but you have to
believe it's there. And just think, when we were children radio was just
coming in. How did, how is it possible, you cannot see those sound waves
when you look outside but somehow they're there. Now it's people storing
documents in the cloud. The number of things that we rely on where we can't
see but we have learned that it's there, people don't stop and think about
that. It's interesting how, I have a certain degree of what you might call
mental telepathy in relation most particularly with Martha, and I'm likely
to know when she's having a hard time. But there are also times when, if
I'm not hearing from her, I'll just sort of do what I call tune in, and she
seems to indicate that I'm right on with it. And so I will tell her, well,
you know, my radio told me you were doing okay, or whatever it was
[laughs], we don't— but we have this little joke about tuning in and our
radio [laughs].
87
01:18:08.700 --> 01:18:17.807
This card is almost full and it's going to bump to the
other card, and then I also am aware that it's quarter to four.
88
01:18:18.400 --> 01:18:22.200
Are there more things that you want to explore?
89
01:18:22.300 --> 01:18:46.407
Well, I think at this point the best thing to do would be to
ask for any kinds of, real kinds of closing comments that you'd like to
leave, leave the this larger experience with that. Are there any other
questions you'd like to answer? I know we've been doing some of that,
but...
90
01:18:48.000 --> 01:19:01.300
My biggest disappointment is that we haven't heard enough
from the two of you. That is, what would your responses be? Such that we
could say, you know, be in a discussion where we were building something
together.
91
01:19:04.700 --> 01:19:08.800
Yeah, I know on the family stuff, and—
92
01:19:11.200 --> 01:19:13.284
The what do you think question [laughs].
93
01:19:15.300 --> 01:20:28.323
Let's see if we can do something about that, not by
having a discussion here and now but agreeing to kind of exchange products
of our work together. I mean, I can tell you that a few sentences from
Dan's paper to a rather thirsty wanderer in the desert. Was very important
to me. He really nailed the difference between oral history as a potential
university archive, as an appendix or footnote to the historical narrative,
and in contrast that oral history as the indispensable clue to what it was
all about. I think that's of great importance to all of us. Similarly—
94
01:20:30.800 --> 01:20:58.323
Excuse me, one second. Can you switch this back to A? I
can't get it to go to the disk A, because that is, B is what we just
recorded. So we can actually, there are the ones from this morning that
were already downloaded. So I sort of— When you gave it to me a little
bit ago and you said, so we could also— the thing is, if we want to keep
recording—
95
01:20:58.500 --> 01:20:59.646
Got it. Hold on.
96
01:21:03.500 --> 01:21:05.000
With the time, the 4:00.
97
01:21:14.900 --> 01:21:19.284
I'll go back to— yeah. Then we'll go to A, then I'm
going to turn it back off...
98
01:21:19.800 --> 01:21:39.100
As much as this thing cause headaches, it does seem to actually
provoke a lot of—well, I'm not going to say it provokes
conversation—but having this crazy contraption in the middle like that
huge reel-to-reel thing that you set out on the table, maybe he has some
value.
99
01:21:39.700 --> 01:21:51.900
Well, I wanted to say that I felt your description of what we
think about accompaniment was very precise, and much appreciated.
100
01:21:56.500 --> 01:22:58.407
And it's one I think that spoke to me, your thoughts that you
developed, and answered, and resonated with questions that I had certainly
been thinking about. And so, you know, I think that is in part why I feel
like I understood what you were saying when you were talking about
accompaniment. And I do think this way in which people draw upon thinking,
and reflecting upon personal experiences about— kind of a fundamental
part about building dialogue and community, and it's not just about the
past. It's also about the present, and personal transformation, and larger
social transformation. I do think—
101
01:22:59.200 --> 01:22:59.976
It's an instrument.
102
01:23:00.500 --> 01:23:16.854
It is an instrument, and I think it's one that helps us start,
as you've said, with where you are at. That's— You can't just fill the
empty vessel, because that vessel is not empty to begin with.
103
01:23:17.500 --> 01:23:20.600
And you don't have to study for seven years to begin.
104
01:23:21.000 --> 01:23:21.354
Yeah.
105
01:23:21.800 --> 01:23:25.154
Maybe begin where you are, Or when and where you've been.
106
01:23:25.800 --> 01:23:27.000
And how else could you?
107
01:23:27.200 --> 01:23:37.691
Yeah. And what from where you've been is, if not
determinative, an indication as to where you might want to go next.
108
01:23:40.700 --> 01:24:27.176
But it is that mutuality, that tossing of the ball of yarn that
allows us to move beyond that, and we think that, and reflect, like as I
toss it to you and I feel that tension pulling on me, that pushes me to
rethink that, and think through. So as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking
of my own personal relations, my relationship to my sister, my parents, and
my wife, and my daughter, and at the same time I'm thinking through where,
what am I going to do when I get back to Washington DC? Where, what will it
be? You know, so all these thoughts are spiraling in my mind like that
snail spiral [laughs].
109
01:24:27.600 --> 01:24:46.061
Well, what if, as you held the yarn and tossed the ball to
the next person, you said one word? What would come out of a group of 12
women sitting in a circle? You know, who knows what word would occur to
Catherine, or what...
110
01:24:49.900 --> 01:25:13.000
I've just been really moved also these days, and it's
how I've felt every time I've come here to spend time with the two of you,
at this beautiful example of a life long commitment to many things. I might
say, you know, to a life of struggle.
111
01:25:15.300 --> 01:25:16.800
I wouldn't want that term [laughs].
112
01:25:16.800 --> 01:27:06.900
I think— I know, I resisted that term the first time
around, that's why I chose commitment. But I guess I mean just sort of
being in there, and actively engaged, and trying to work on the issues that
you care about, and trying to work it out, and trying to help us all move
forward. And that, you know, requires—I'm not sure what exactly that
requires—but it's like you didn't get—I don't mean to say you didn't
get discouraged, you shared with us many moments when you were really
discouraged and in pain and you know—but you kept going, you both kept
going and kept going together, and there's something we need to know,
something about what it takes to stay on this path for the long haul. And,
so it's really beautiful just to hear you, to be here with you, and listen
to you, and share with you. Sharing that, reflecting on it. Because it's
also a life, you've also had a life of study, you've had a life of sharing
what you are learning. And to try to always be building the circle and keep
this faith in the circle is very much needed.
113
01:27:06.900 --> 01:27:14.900
To bring people into the circle rather than having them out
on the margins and sort of, maybe I'm here and maybe I'm not.
114
01:27:16.300 --> 01:27:58.400
And in some ways, I mean, that is—the bad word for that would
be organizing, but—whatever the kind of creation of that circle is kind
of at the core of the work to some extent, at the center. You know, and I
love this idea of—and I hadn't really put it—but really kind of looking
at the painfulness, and the sorrow, and the shame as— not avoiding it but
attending to it
115
01:27:58.500 --> 01:28:17.346
A clue to what one really cares about, how one really wants
to live, and to try to give people the courage to close that gap between
where they feel they are and where they feel they should be.
116
01:28:22.900 --> 01:28:38.400
So I guess what would give me a modicum of joy is if we could
find a way to make space in this room for the chaise longue in the other.
[Group laughs]
