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Learn about the principles and practice of nonviolence as an active force for personal, social, and political change. Co-hosted with Grassroots Leadership Criminal Justice / Participatory Defense Organizer and Visions After Violence Fellow with Texas After Violence Project Robert Tyrone Lilly and Jim Crosby, the show covers current events, learning opportunities, and nonviolent direct action taking place locally. Airs 1st Thursdays of every month from 1-2 pm CT at KOOP Community Radio 91.7 FM in Austin, Texas, and streaming online at koop.org.
Our tale to tell, gonna tell it well. Gonna know the real facts, gonna ring the bell. Gonna love our neighbors, see our numbers swell. We've got some treasure, our tale to tell. Well, let's talk about a race cut to the chase.
Jim Crosby:Let's know our history, not get erased. Let's do the hard work and get face to face, break down the walls, y'all accept the grace, and let's break down poverty and the war economy. Make me an activist, not just a wannabe. We're all beloved in true community, honor each other's precious humanity for our ecology. We've got biology, just in good science.
Jim Crosby:With a little geology, no more destruction. Fossil fuel mythology, love mother earth now, that's our ecology, and look to true religion, not the lie division. Lift up each other, don't spew derision. Respect all preachers, love with precision, the law of love as true religion. Our tale will tell.
Jim Crosby:Gonna tell it well, gonna know the real facts, gonna ring the bell. Gonna love our neighbors, see our numbers swell, we've got some treasure, our tale to tell, our tale to tell.
Stacie Freasier:Bravo, Jim Crosby. Hello, everyone. You are listening to our 2nd ever nonviolent Austin Radio Hour Show here on coop, k0op.org. Thank you for streaming. If you are listening to us via the web, 91.7 FM for those of y'all that can or within the scope of our, tower bandwidth and airwaves here in Austin, Texas.
Stacie Freasier:I am your host, Stacey Fraser. My pronouns are she, they, and I am a Kenyan nonviolence conflict reconciliation trainer. I am a mother to a 6 year old. I am a granddaughter. I am many, many things, and I am, trying to make my ancestors proud and create a better future right now.
Stacie Freasier:A a better present, really. I've been trying to walk my talk, in every moment, and I do that through present moment awareness. So I am joined by my comrades, Jim Crosby. Introduce yourself for folks and then, let us know what you were playing there.
Jim Crosby:Okay. Yeah. I'm Jim Crosby, and, I founded non violent Austin, about 6 years ago. We've got a, a vigil every Friday from 4 to 5 in front of the Capitol on the 11th Street sidewalk. 4 to 5 in the afternoon on Fridays.
Jim Crosby:Come join us. And, gotten real involved with the Poor People's Campaign in recent years, and that song is one of several that that I wrote using Mississippi John Hurt's music. That was, my Creole Bell, which was probably the first of his songs that I learned about, 50 years ago on guitar. And, but I wrote that song thinking that I'd like to get into one song, all 5 of the interlocking evils that the Poor People's Campaign is struggling against. And those are respectively poverty, obviously, being the Poor People's Campaign, white supremacist racism, environmental destruction, the war economy, and they've since added, when they talk about economy, health care in particular, as as where we should be spending our money, and the false moral narrative of religious nationalism.
Jim Crosby:So, some of them went by quickly in that song, but they're all at least mentioned and touched on there. And, so that's a lot of what we'll be talking about here today, especially as we talk some about white poverty, Bishop Barber's, new book, William Barber, who's one of the co chairs of the Poor People's Campaign.
Stacie Freasier:Thank you. Brother Rob.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:I'm just sitting here basking in the melody of my friend's beautiful guitar playing and singing, enjoying the fact that I get a chance to kick it with a a real entertainer and a theologian and a professor at that, as well as another dedicated human being who is devoted to love and peace in our society. My name is Robert Lilly, and I am a member of the justice community. I'm also employed by grassroots leadership. And I wanna say as a disclaimer, any thoughts that I share today are not that necessarily of grassroots leadership, although I will be here to talk about programs and things that we do. But they are exclusively the outgrowth of my own study, research, time, and effort put into understanding what does it mean to be a black man in America and how do I navigate a society that has historically excluded me or deemed me the enemy, sometimes public enemy number 1.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:So today, I wanna just flow with you all and enjoy what it means to be in community with 2 beautiful human beings.
Stacie Freasier:Thank you. Received. And I'm gonna shine it back to you. Have a lot of love for these 2 humans in this room with me, and we're doing it right now.
Jim Crosby:Building beloved community.
Stacie Freasier:Building beloved community. Also, a disclaimer on behalf of CO OP, the views expressed here within the entire next hour, not necessarily those of the CO OP board of directors, staff, volunteers, or underwriters. So, yes, we are breaking down the principles and the, the 6 principles and the 6 steps of nonviolence in the tradition of, one of, my strongest teachers, doctor reverend doctor Martin Luther King Junior. And we're gonna frame today's show around principle 2, which is the beloved community is the framework for the future. And this, I was listening to Tara Brock, who is another, teacher of mine on the way in who had devoted a podcast episode on Beloved Community.
Stacie Freasier:And she said, Beloved Community is an evolutionary aspiration. And I really appreciated that because as I think of and define Beloved Community, I believe that we have it within our capacity to achieve, and that isn't far out into the future. That is bringing beloved community to light now and in microwaves, in policy ways, in organizing activities, in, loving ourselves. I mean, there are a lot of ways that this can go, but, but that is, I really appreciate Tara's words on that. And so the beloved community was picked up actually as a concept by doctor King.
Stacie Freasier:He was a student of philosophy, and he was an eclectic thinker and, so he he was actually introduced to the term beloved community while in his, doctoral studies. And so doctor King, believed that realizing his vision would require systems of law, education, infrastructure, health care, and municipal reform, and that no one sector or person could create it alone. He also believed that to create the beloved community, people must love their neighbors as they love themselves, commit to tangible action, and acknowledge limitations and conflict in order to work on difficult issues. So some of the characteristics that, this and I drew from the King Center out of Atlanta, Georgia, and they have a treasure trove of information on their site and events. But some characteristics of the beloved community, according to King, include ending poverty, hunger, and homelessness, replacing racism and discrimination with sisterhood and brotherhood, which I expand now to siblinghood to be as inclusive to all gender identities, resolving international disputes through peaceful conflict resolution, and triumphing over fear and hatred with love and trust.
Stacie Freasier:Another, one of our living teachers, is Reverend Barber. And so I'm looking over to Jim who had a really, brilliant suggestion of of how to further frame this conversation today. So do you wanna, walk us through that
Jim Crosby:for a sec? Yeah. Just dive right in and Yeah. Ask you all for it. Questions.
Jim Crosby:Yeah.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:Well, if if I may just
Jim Crosby:Go ahead, Rob.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:Begin, Jim. I just wanna speak because I was listening to Stacy, describe the elements of the Beloved Community. One thing that came clear to me was, you know, this is an aspiration. Right? This is a hoped for aspiration by this profound, theologian, leader, and teacher that is no longer with us, but his legacy lives on.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:Of course, you know, many people would say that that's a dream that cannot be realized. It's too idealistic. But what I do what I approach how I approach this subject is from what I've experienced. And because of what I've experienced, I know that what has been cannot longer can no longer it it it cannot remain. It has to be questioned.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:The violence, the war that I in my 53 years of life that I've lived, those circumstances, we cannot settle there. So I'd rather be an idealist than a realist. I'll pass.
Jim Crosby:Yeah. And I think, you know, I think we wanna be realistic. But, yeah, if we lose our ideals, we've had it. So, yeah, bringing those 2 together and having an ongoing moving balance toward greater and greater justice is is, you know, clearly what we're talking about. So, part of the way we wanted to frame this today is, let me see the book, Rob, so I can get the subtitle that that right.
Jim Crosby:Reverend Barber has recently cowritten with Jonathan Wilson, Heartgrove, a book called White Poverty. And I love the the clarity of the of the the clarification of the subtitle. How exposing myths about race and class can reconstruct excuse me, reconstruct American democracy. So part of what we're gonna do is go through briefly the 4 myths that he seeks to expose and, just kinda base our discussion on that. So y'all ready to dive right in?
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:100% ready. Let's do it.
Jim Crosby:Okay. So I'll list the 4 myths first. 1, pale skin is a shared interest. Okay? So all white people have more in common than they don't, and that and then they have with other people.
Jim Crosby:2, only black folks want change in America. You know, so obviously and true and yet prevailing as a myth oftentimes. Right?
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Jim Crosby:3, poverty is only a black issue. And 4, we can't overcome divisions. And I'm gonna make the case that in recent years, maybe that 4th one is the most dominator, you know, operative. So but let's start with number 1. Pale skin is a shared interest.
Jim Crosby:In dispelling this myth and contradicting it, and laying out the history of it, reverend Barber says that, racism isn't an idea that led to a system of oppression. It's the other way around. Right? He says, it is instead the story of American the story Americans told themselves to explain why the use and economic exploitation of black people was good, just, and even righteous. So shading into the theological justifications.
Jim Crosby:Right? To get buy in from black people's potential allies among their fellow servants, this story had to include the myth that pale skin is a shared interest. So he's acknowledging that at the time early on, you know, as we developed this, you know, white supremacist racism, it was to justify what was already in place in terms of economic exploitation and slavery. And he's acknowledging that were there were a lot of Europeans who had come to this country as indentured service. So they, in some ways, had more in common with, the enslaved people from Africa than they did with their the people claiming to be masters of Botham.
Jim Crosby:Mhmm. So my question for us to kick things off is, though proportionally African Americans today have a much higher poverty rate than those of European descent and sheer numbers, there are many more white people in poverty in this country than blacks. How do you think poverty has gone to be associated so much more with African Americans? And in what ways do poor whites have more in common with poor people of color than with their fellow whites?
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:I think I wanna go back first of all, excellent, passage that you've chosen today and type it to the book is is quite, apropos. So I want to first dive in about the the myth that pale skin is a shared interest. Years ago, and this fascinates me, years ago, I remember reading a book called That Came Before the Mayflower by Lerone Bennett junior. If you are a reader out there, I suggest you pick up the book That Came Before the Mayflower. In this book, because I was a young man in my twenties, I didn't really have a historical context for our society.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:So many things that were going on in the world, I didn't quite understand because there was no way to understand it unless I went back and reviewed the historical record. Doctor Lerone Bennett junior is just but one voice. There are many out there, but he was one that I came to trust who exposed me to the early early colonial time in America. And what I learned through reading before the Mayflower, was the idea that whiteness is a conception, is a construct, it has a beginning. The earlier the early colonialists that came here did not identify themselves or people by color.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:They identified each other by religious affiliation or the lack thereof. So you are the believer in Catholicism or you are a believer in Mormonism or you were, a quaker or you were some derivative thereof of the thousands of varieties that existed in or the numerous varieties that existed in. But there came a time when they began to see those people that were commoners, those that were under the foot of the elites at that at that time who were banding together. They were quote unquote women who came from Europe and men who came from Africa forming families and bonds. And when that occurred, they had common interest.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:They realized those that had power were hoarding the wealth. They were dominating the the levels of power. And so, they began to realize that if they allow this to continue and persist, their rule would be subject to overturning. And so, what they did was they incrementally began to institute laws policy that puke that made it punitive for any person of color whether they were white or black, which is a construct, that was imposed based on the reinforcement of punishment. So for so for example, if a white woman quote unquote a woman today presenting as white was found in a relationship with a black person, then the the the the children of that union first of all, the white male would be punished whipped and his property would be taken whatever property he had acquired which was extremely important in early colonial society and the woman if depending on what the race they were if she was black, the children that they bore would be perpetually rendered into slavery.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:And so, incrementally over time, these ideas were given reality based on the law. So white pale skin became a shared interest only as a result of the need to maintain unfair distribution of wealth. It was justified based on that. So getting to the last part of your question, the question was give me the repeat that question.
Jim Crosby:In what ways do poor whites have more in common with poor people of color than with their fellow whites?
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:You know, poor whites poverty is poverty. The reality is those that are without and if you have an exorbitant amount of wealth in our society held by a few people, an inordinately really inordinately small number of people, right? And you have a majority of people that are less well-to-do, Then that's the predicate for unity right there Doesn't matter what color our skin is The reality is we have a responsibility to begin to look at why is there such inequality and we and then that becomes the basis for our unity go back historically, you could look at the populist movement in the South, which I think probably would fit into some of these other questions you're probably gonna bring up in a moment.
Stacie Freasier:If you are just tuning in, welcome. You are listening to nonviolent Austin Radio Hour here on k0op.org and 91.7 FM here in Austin. I am your co host, Stacey Fraser, pronounced she, they. I'm here with brother Rob, Robert Tyrone Lilly, brother Rob, and, brother Jim Crosby. And, we are diving into inequality, poverty.
Stacie Freasier:We're springing off the the 4 myths of, from the book White Poverty by, Reverend William j Barber, the second, Reverend Doctor Barber. So, Jim?
Jim Crosby:Yeah. I just wanted to pick back up. He goes on still in the on the same question, the same myth. In order about the deconstruction of culture of the various different Europeans that were coming. He says, in order for white people to believe that they were white, the customs and folkways that tied them to the British Isles or the French countryside or the Rhine Valley had to be replaced with the myth and traditions that united them with plantation owners.
Jim Crosby:This could not be a culture of shared goods since the people who claimed to own black people did not want to see their personal property diminished. In other words, they weren't gonna buy off these, you know, the white indentured folks or the poor white people. Thus, white identity became more often than not a culture of shared fear. How do we see this fear perpetuated and manipulated to this day?
Stacie Freasier:Well, I I have a personal bone to pick on this one because, you know, whiteness whiteness is not a culture y'all. Like, whiteness is not a culture. In fact, it is, vapid. It's devoid of culture. It's devoid of music, food, song, you know, all of these things that my ancestors from the same area that geographically that Jim just mentioned from, you know, what is now known as France and Switzerland and Germany, you know, in the 1600 came over, settled in, you know, Greenville, North Carolina, and started enslaving people and gave up their, their cultural traditions in exchange for survival here on this economic model of, land ownership.
Stacie Freasier:And, you know, that's I'm angry. I'm angry about that because, now here, you know, at this point, can't tell you how many years of my life I have lost to, not having that cultural rootedness and then trying to fill that void, that spiritual void in my life with, false false fleeting, you know, ideas of to fill that. And so I'm reclaiming my cultural ancestry that that I also gave up as a white body person in this society as we have structured it thus far.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:I once was in I was in prison and I talked to first of all, thank you for your answer. I appreciate your candor. I was in prison and I talked to a minister. He was a white presenting male. And we're gonna I'm gonna use that qualify qualifying framework right now because I think the biggest thing I wanna point out based on my last question my last answer to your question, Jim, was this is a social construct.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:It so, like, listen. So give me give me a backup before I go to the minister. If I gave you 4 silver things that I called quarters, what would you tell me they're equal?
Jim Crosby:$1.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:$1. Okay. And that $1 is described as what? A piece of what? Money.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:Okay. Money. But it's also literally
Stacie Freasier:Currency.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:Currency. But literally, it is a piece of Paper. Piece of paper. Yeah. Literally.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:Right? It only has value to the extent that we agree that those 4 coins, which are either silver or some combination of thereof, that those things represent something that can be traded for goods. That gives it meaning. The same thing with whiteness. Whiteness only has value based on our continued agreement that it is something to be valued.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:So how do we give it worth? How do we give it value? We give it value because we infuse it with meaning. We create symbols and images that fortify it and reinforce it. We create images of divine things and we only portray them in one representation to indicate that that thing represents the divine.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:And so over the time over the course of time, whiteness has become to represent worth symbolizing a hierarchy of humanity where white is at the top and every other, color scheme goes to the bottom. But the tricky thing about this history is this. You have to read a book called the history of white people by Nell Painter. In that book, doctor Painter talks about this expanding category of whiteness. Whiteness was historically only seen to be legitimate if it referred to white Anglo saxon protestants if you were a Catholic you were suspect if you were from Ireland or you were from, some some some other Eastern Asian excuse me, East European, country, you were considered non white.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:And that category had to expand over time because in our Western North American society, we needed to create this container that would then weld together all of these people with diverse interests based on the history in Europe. We had to create a new container for that for that idea that we wanted to weld these people together to be a a wedge between those that have and those that have not. So that minister that I told you about, he talked about the mud seal. I said, what is the mud seal? He said, well, in my community, you know, if you could point to the mud seal and you weren't that, you weren't at the bottom, then you could do you could say, well, at least I'm not down there.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:So white so dark so blackness became the criterion by which you you were or have not. And you were disenfranchised or you were, considered on the margins and that we can go into that further.
Stacie Freasier:And let me say that this have and have not, there is plenty to go around. So the idea of scarcity, was also constructed to a large extent in order for this to work. So there was plenty to be had, but then this creation of the haves and have nots was also intentional by design.
Jim Crosby:Yeah. Rob, did you were you gonna say something?
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:Yeah. I was just gonna add. You asked about fear. I wanna speak to that because historically, if this thing called white is precious, in some instances inviolable, right? So we lift up the white woman and make her pristine.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:So we we give this concept, this construct meaning. Well, and we impose it upon persons, right? It doesn't really exist except in our minds But we impose it upon people and we say now you white woman are the pinnacle of of beauty and and and, grandeur And so, now we and when people buy into that philosophy that my my identity in this whiteness is my worth. Anything that supposedly can taint that which in this instance is, you know, when we're talking about racial constructs in America, any kind of mixing between the groups was considered miscegenation. And so, this idea that somehow this whiteness cause I mean, if you look at things in a literal sense if you mix colors together, right?
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:So so, colors become darker colors, dilute lighter colors. So, in this instance, this whiteness if it can be diluted or in as historical terms as it was called mongrelization. You know, so if if whites could be mongrelized, if they could be diluted, anything that risk that posed that threat posed that potential represented a threat. And now this collective fear that our way of life, which is white life, our way of life, which is white property, our way of life, which is white wealth, anything that could corrupt that or potentially dilute that, which means lessen possession, control, dominance of, became a threat.
Stacie Freasier:And it's still a threat. I mean, bring us into the present, and that's why we have the show because this is this stuff is hanging on. And and it's, the, you know, the the root of a lot of the discontent at best and at worst the, you know, blatant killing of black women. And I'm gonna bring Sonia Massey's name here into this conversation because this happened on July 6th. An Illinois deputy shot and killed Sonya Massie in her home.
Stacie Freasier:She called for help and then was murdered by the police. So this is real, and I believe I have hope, and I believe that there can be an alternative. There needs to be no more black women martyrs. Period.
Jim Crosby:And our final section, but and we'll move faster in the other three myths, I think, but, here's a final section from from this section on, Palin as as a shared interest, where he does bring it into the president. And, in recent years, Reverend Barber, in particular, has talked about a third reconstruction, that there was a reconstruction after the civil war to which the k k rise of the KKK and and, Jim Crow were reactions. He calls the civil rights movement of the fifties sixties the second reconstruction, and the southern strategy, he's gonna talk about a little bit in this section just now, is then the second reconstruction. And that would we're now in and needing a third reconstruction. So the Poor People's Campaign, for example, has been involved with a 3rd reconstruction bill that you can look up and has been before congress in recent years.
Jim Crosby:You need to okay. So here's our last section on on this particular myth. Historically, it's important for us to see the KKK and Jim Crow as reactionary responses to Reconstruction after the Civil War. Likewise, the so called southern strategy, which I'm saying is a reaction to the civil rights movement of the fifties sixties, in the latter half of 20th century, has been used to keep poor folks divided from each other along racial lines. As the early move was to depict black men as rapists who deserved lynching, so the later development of dog whistles in politics and the subtle use of phrases like law and order and make America great again keep the myth of white common interests based on fear alive.
Jim Crosby:As Reverend Barber puts it in talking about political operative Lee Atwater's influence, he says, Atwater acknowledged that the southern strategy originated with the 1968 and 1972 presidential campaigns of ab Alabama segregation as governor George Wallace. Wallace did not win, but he taught the new conservative extremists how to use the language of anti elitism, anticommunism, and dog whistles, racial code words, to inflame white voters reeling, some even seething, with fear and hatred of the Black Freedom Movement, the anti war movement, the counter cultural movement, and the women's liberation movement. So I just wanted to close out this section, this myth with a question for you. We're in a presidential election season. How do these ongoing realities shape the campaigns, not only for president, but all the way up and down the ballot?
Stacie Freasier:I I'm not gonna shortchange us on that one. We need to go to quick break, and we're gonna pick up with your leading question again when we get back. If you're just tuning in, you are listening to nonviolent Austin Radio Hour here on k o o p h d one h d three. We will be right back.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:In coopradio.
Stacie Freasier:Welcome back to the show. We were listening to Nonviolent Radio Hour here on Nonviolent Austin Radio Hour here on coop.org. Thank you folks who are streaming online from everywhere. I am your co host, Stacey Fraser. Pronouns are she and they.
Stacie Freasier:I'm here with brother Robert Tyrone Lilly and brother Jim Crosby.
Jim Crosby:He, him.
Stacie Freasier:He, him. Thank you for pronouns. And Jim asked that question again, and we'll unpack it a sec.
Jim Crosby:Okay. Let me get back to it. But basically, it's it's present day, our election going on now. We're in the presidential election season. How do you see these ongoing realities shaping the campaigns not only for president but all the way up and down the ballot?
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:You know, doc, Marcus Garvey, Marcus Mosiah Garvey, and by the way, for those that don't know, we're in Black August. August is known as Black August. Look that up on your computers, especially those of you who have solidarity with the men and women that incarcerated. But I wanna lift up doctor, I wanna lift up Marcus Mosiah Garvey's name because he said history is best prepared to reward its researcher. Why is that important?
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:Because as you talked about the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow and these terroristic, approaches that were used historically, it had as its motivation, determination to uphold a philosophy. The philosophy of white supremacy. It was the intent of those adherents, those that believed in this philosophy, to keep America white. Right? They believed that America was founded by the white quote unquote forefathers and it was developed by the white quote never mind the people that lived here before then.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:Never mind the great legacy of civilization that existed predating European colonization. This this white, presence was the saving grace of this North American continent. And so, government that was formed, even though it was a reflection of the native tribes and how they organize themselves prior to the establishment of our union. Right? These these adherents these devotees wanted to preserve the idea of whiteness and so By any means necessary they would determine to suppress any expression that counted it, right?
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:So inclusion diversity any kind of move towards expanding rights was a threat. So you ask, how does that relate to today? Well, you don't have to be a genius to figure that out. All you have to do is have a bit of awareness. First of all, some sensitivity to the to the need to study history and its value in our society.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:And and just on on a side note, one of history is maligned. Oh, I don't wanna read a history book. If you don't know where you come from, you don't know what's going on today, and you can't know where we're going tomorrow. So so Governor Wallace and all of these, historical characters that began to to to recast language so that it could be used to elicit a certain response from the masses. But without indicating a racist intent, they are the mold that these new current politicians are walking in today.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:I'll give you a quick example. Super predators. I came up under that language. Here's another example. Delinquents.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:Here's another example. Welfare mothers. Right? Welfare queens. Right?
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:All of this language is symbolic and it and it it projects into the mind of those who listen to it certain images. And those images are images that have been infused just like whiteness has been infused with a certain meaning. All of these other groups that are now associated with this language have been given a certain meaning, and you do it by associating ideas and and concepts with it over the course of time.
Jim Crosby:Even something as seemingly innocuous as a phrase like inner city. Inner city. Urban.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:Mhmm.
Stacie Freasier:There are more white people on welfare in the US than there are black people. And so these this narrative is, I think, a pathetic power grasp to try to hang on back to your culture of of this fear. Right? It's just this collective fear that's motivating and and people who have power, which are still majority older white men with a few white women. And then, honestly, the rest is just almost completely
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:absent. Superfluous. Right. I would say really quickly. Historically, you know, these efforts by the Ku Klux Klan, we we oftentimes think, well, you know, they hated white black people.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:Yes, they did hate black people. But one of the things that these terroristic acts were done in the spirit and intent of was taking back a land that had been acquired by the former slaves. So again, land equals what? Power. And so these efforts today to continue this kind of subtle hint towards violence, and the use of violence it is designed to create that same response as it was historically, intended.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:Only now in contemporary times.
Jim Crosby:And I've been told to move a little faster, so we're gonna move a little faster.
Stacie Freasier:And before we move, let's tie it back to King's principle of the beloved community is the framework of the future. So my question is one of, well, what what what does the beloved community look like in terms of elected representation, in terms of how this election how the next couple of months even look if we're gonna ground it into, like, right now moment in time. So what's the beloved community look like right now?
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:Mhmm. I I do you wanna jump? Okay. I'll just say this. You know, as I've been I'm a student of history and a student of life and I'm a lifelong learner.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:And as I look at my life, the life around me, the life the world that I'm surrounded by, I have to ask myself the question. Who deserves the right to exist? Because at the end of the day, that's exactly what politics and the aspiration for power is designed to accomplish, you know Existence can only be supported by the offering of sustenance and power is that which you know possesses the means to provide sustenance, right? So who so power power? What kind of power do we want in existence?
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:Power that says you don't deserve the right to exist? This group of people because I don't like the way they look, you have green hair today. So I'll make a rule tomorrow because anybody that wears green hair, they're weird and I don't like them. Is that the kind of society we want? Or do we want a society that says, look, there are principles that historically have shaped the bedrock of this nation.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:Principles that are being sullied by these ideas of exclusion. The very colonists that came here came here fleeing from oppression. They came here because they lived in a land that told them you could not be who you were or we would kill you, burn you, chop you up, you know, just decimate you. And they came here because they wanted a place to express themselves in their full. That is the world that I believe the beloved community wants to bring into existence.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:And that is the kind of power that I'm going to honor in my work, my effort, my my diligence to support. Power that says, look, everybody deserves the right to exist. There's no such thing as an expendable human being. There's no such thing as someone is that that is disposable. There's no such thing as someone who doesn't deserve the right to breathe.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:When we begin to do that, we begin to play God. And that is not a game that I wanna play.
Jim Crosby:So building Beloved Community is all about overcoming division. So I wanna cut to the chase with pale skin as a shared interest is what we've been discussing for most of this hour. The second and third myths that, the book seeks to challenge are only black folks want change in America, and poverty is only a black issue. I hope we can readily I refer people to the book, but we can readily categorize those as false. But this fourth one, like I say, may be the most pressing.
Jim Crosby:We can't overcome divisions. How do we deal with that myth? And so I wanna read you a little section from the book. And in this section, a lot of reverend Barber's personal story comes into play. He was the president of the NAACP in North Carolina for a time.
Jim Crosby:He started the Moral Mondays Movement in 2013 when advocates and listen closely to this because, there's been a lot of talk even in Texas with the Poor People's Campaign of maybe starting a Moral Mondays, movement, when the legislature is in session. So moral Mondays were when advocates for different issues from all over the state, North Carolina, showed up on Mondays for weeks on end, gathering together in support of each other and each other's causes. He calls that fusion politics. He tells of how fusion politics, that movement, shaped the founding of the Modern Poor People's Campaign a few years later. And then he goes back in time in this section to talk about how the current version of white Christian nationalism developed.
Jim Crosby:Conservative operate operative Paul Weyrick and evangelical televangelist Jerry Falwell were 2 of the instrumental people early on, got together in the 19 seventies to form the Moral Majority. So in the last couple of days, I commend to you. I watched the 2 new documentaries, Bad Faith and God and Country, both of which, deal with the rise of Christian nationalism and give you a lot of this history. They give detailed looks into how we got into this huge sense of division that we feel today. So one of the things that Reverend Barber has done besides the, poor people's campaign is to start repairs of the breach, which is for faith leaders opposing Christian nationalism.
Jim Crosby:And the way I've come to phrase it is there's nothing, Christian about any form of nationalism. So, he says, our team of repairs and listen closely to this because he's gonna talk about a slideshow, which you obviously can't see on the radio. Our team at Repairs of the Breach created a set of slides to help folks see how issues that impact poor communities interlock in US politics. On the first slide, a map of the United States highlights areas with the highest levels of poverty. Okay.
Jim Crosby:So a poverty map linking Appalachia with large stretches of the South and the Midwest. On a second slide, we overlaid states that have passed voter suppression measures since 2010. Certainly, this includes Texas. The geographic areas match almost precisely. Okay.
Jim Crosby:Remember, Appalachia, large areas of the South and the Midwest. Then on subsequent slides, we highlighted the states that have passed anti abortion or anti LGBTQ legislation to fuel the, quote, culture war that has been pushed by the southern strategy. With each overlay, the same areas of the country kept getting highlighted. When we showed the states that refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, the states mashed up again. Then finally, we overlaid a map showing the highest concentration of white evangelical protestants.
Jim Crosby:There it was again, the same pattern. What Reverend Barber and the Poor People's Campaign are doing to overcome division is to both make clear on one hand this history and the white supremacy and colonialist dominating domineering thinking that has shaped it, as well as on the other hand, positively presenting a positive inclusive understanding of faith that makes clear there's nothing Christian about nationalism. So my question for us to end up with, how has this sense of division impacted each of us personally, not only the 3 of us here in the studio, but, out there listening? How has this sense of division impacted each of us personally is what I wanna ask and how are we dealing with it?
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:I will jump in and say this. Pain is pain is pain is pain. You know, years ago, I remember speaking, it was a woman, a white woman, who was a benefactor for my organization, an organization I founded in another city. And, she was telling a story. She was a wealthy woman and she was telling a story.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:And the long and short of the story is this. She began to talk about her father who was an alcoholic, and one day he had a stumble and fell down the stairs. And as she was recounting this pain in her life and describing her mortification behind the the dilemma of her father, she began to cry. And all of a sudden, something struck me. I realized I had not been looking at this white woman as a human being.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:I have been looking at her as a pocketbook and by the tone of her skin. And what I realized was that I was just as guilty of those people, just as guilty of those errors, those poor decisions of people that I had been pointing to as mile pressers in that moment. Now, mind you, I didn't have power, so I couldn't dominate her life. And truly, this woman at this time wasn't dominating my life. But it was that that division of how I saw her that was our barrier.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:I had to get to a place in my development as a human being where I could begin to see the humanity of other persons around me apart from the way they have been characterized in our society. Now, that's not easy. That requires a great deal of introspection, determination on our part to ask ourselves, what kind of person do we wanna be in this world? Do I want to be the individual that is fearful and aversive because of difference? Or do I want to lean into the diversity of the world and say, you know what?
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:I value such a wonderful creation that we that we have so many unique people on the face of the earth. When when Robert Lilly dies, there will never be a Robert Lilly on the face of the earth again. When Stacey Fraser dies, there will never be a Stacey Fraser on the earth again. When Jim Crosby dies, there will never be. So if that is true, I've got to use this moment for everything that this moment represents because I only have this moment in this form.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:So so to me, that is the antithesis. That is the antidote to that poison that wants to keep us divided based on superficial realities, based on external manifestation, based on dress, based on sexual orientations. All of these things are surmountable. We can overcome them, but it requires on our part. I believe truly an intentionality that great men like Mahatma Gandhi and doctor Martin Luther King who were lifting up today with the beloved community, they pursued and they urged us to pursue.
Jim Crosby:And that intentionality, I think, is is what religious traditions have called repentance. It's a change of direction, turning by intention.
Stacie Freasier:And I frame it as it is an awakening of that which is our birthright, which is love. It is in us. The seeds of love and and humanity are in us, all of us. And to maintain and withhold, with, held up and prop up white supremacy culture requires a death, a dampening, a, a pushing away of those things that make our hearts sing and shine. And so once once I, as a white bodied woman walking through this world, realize that what I am what I have lost and what I have given up and what it requires of my spirit and soul to be to maintain silence, therefore, be complicit with the current racial status quo.
Stacie Freasier:I'm not willing to give any more of my spirit and love on this precious, precious sacred moment that I have on this earth.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:If I may say one last thing, I had an experience when I was incarcerated. There was a a a queer male in my community inside the prison and I was intrigued or interested in learning who was this human being, but I was afraid to engage with this person because I was afraid of what people would say around me. I was afraid that they would equate me with that person and that person had been demonized, been ridiculed, been play put down and that was my dread that I would be put down. And so I wanted to avoid that and so what I did was avoid him. Finally, I got to the place where I decided I was going to resist that that fear and I was going to engage with this person because I wanted to know their story Right just like I needed my story to be known that day I wanted to know that person's story and as I began to inquire from that person's story, the same thing happened like it happened with the white woman.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:I saw a human being. And as a result of seeing that human being, I had an epiphany. I realized that I was allowing other people's thoughts. I had never consciously decided to be homophobic. But I was by virtue of the information that had begun to encapsulate and surround my thinking.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:And so what I needed to do is I needed to make an effort to look at myself with a spiritual microscope and ask myself, is this the person that I want to be? And if this is not who I wanna be and I have the right to decide who I wanna be, then I'm gonna purge myself of that by sticking my proverbial finger down my proverbial throat and throwing up all of that madness. And that's what I did. And I, today, am the person I am because I've decided to be different. And to me, that is how we deal with this madness.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:We have to decide. Every one of us has to decide who do we wanna be in this world and how do we wanna be in relationship to our fellows, our siblings.
Stacie Freasier:The the goal that I keep in mind is liberation. And that's liberation in all its forms. Liberation to have green hair. Liberation to love who you wanna love. Liberation to, do what makes you feel alive, not what is required to be able to have a house, a car, and health care.
Stacie Freasier:Right? So so I I invite us to keep our eyes on liberation as a mantra. We have 9 minutes left. We, you are listening to nonviolent Austin Radio Hour here on k0op.org. Hc1hd3 91.7 FM Radio Austin.
Stacie Freasier:I want us to root ourselves and hold us accountable to ourselves to remember community and make a couple of announcements of how folks can plug in. I have a couple, here. I actually had a computer crash, so I'm going off a paper here. The we got many big things going on right now, but one of them is the city of Austin budget process. And, one of my comrades posted that council city council here in Austin has until August 6th to submit their budget amendments, and that means that there is a window of opportunity for everyone listening to get, plugged in with a an organization that you, have a relationship with or maybe don't yet.
Stacie Freasier:A couple of those that I can think of are undoing white supremacy Austin, Austin Justice Coalition, many other community powered ATX, and get involved in getting your voice heard because, very few voices are actually informing the city budget, and yet it has a huge, you know, ramification on our life. And then the other one I have is get out the vote efforts are really, really ramping up, and I'm looking at brother Radquist. He has some stuff over there, to talk about. But, poor people's campaign, is 1 a big organizer in get out the vote efforts. So you can check that out.
Stacie Freasier:Austin Justice Coalition has a project orange initiative where, folks volunteers. And if you're interested in getting plugged in, there's still, I think, 6 visits left where, folks are going in and registering people to vote who are currently incarcerated and may not even be aware that they have a right to vote. So project orange from Austin Justice Coalition, I'm gonna hand it on to you brother Rob.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:Thank you very much. Grassroots leadership is also involved in that city budget conversation with the community investment budget. So shout out to all of those people that are in the trenches making that a reality, the people deciding where they want their money to go. I wanna lift up something that's happening at, Grassroots Leadership, which is at 7910 Cameron Road on August 6th. Anyone is welcome.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:There will be an event called night out for safety and liberation. Night out for safety and liberation is an annual event which typically takes place on the 1st Tuesday in August, where we redefine and reimagine what public safety means for our communities. We welcome you, to come out, anyone who wishes to. Our goal is to change the conversations about public safety to be less focused on fear, punishment and criminalization and more focused on how we can define equity and power by investing in our communities. This is a hint to what a community could look like without cages, without cops, without prisons being the only solution to all of our complex problems.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:What keeps us safe? We keep us safe.
Jim Crosby:And I wanna defer my time to brother Rob and keep putting him on the spot because I joined him, yeah, day before yesterday, I guess, at the commissioner's court. Tell us about CAFA.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:Yes. Thank you very much. So counsel at first appearance or having a attorney that represents 1 in the court space when you're being magistrated. On TV, it seems like it's a natural given. Right?
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:But in Travis County, that is not the truth. That is not the reality. Right now, we have test shifts that have been put forth by the commissioning squads. We are watching those test shifts. They're just about over.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:I think we have 2 more coming up this month. But grassroots leadership is involved in an ongoing effort to push for what's called in person holistic representation at first appearance. This is a very important cause because at stake is the pending, legislation called s b 4, which could then put in the hands of magistrate judges the potential power to, to deport someone, to a country they may not even belong to. And so we're standing in solidarity with our brothers and sisters that come across the border. We're saying that their lives matter just as much as black lives matter.
Robert Tyrone Lilly,:We're saying that what's happening at the border is just as important to us as what's happening in the prisons. And so we're standing in solidarity by advocating for representation at first appearance. If you wanna get involved with that, that anybody that's out there that wants to learn more about that, you can go to the website grassrootsleadership.org.
Stacie Freasier:You have, been gracious listeners today. Thank you for joining us this month and every month, for nonviolent Austin Radio Hour. We, are on a standing, first Thursday of the month at 1 PM time slot here on k0op.org91.7fm in Austin. I have a show coming up in a couple Thursdays, and that is on the 3rd thursdays of the month from 1 to 2 as racism on the levels. I host and have sit in conversation with Austin area movement leaders, organizers, healers, artists, everyone who is committed to collective liberation and we unpack what's going on, on cultural, interpersonal, internal systemic levels.
Stacie Freasier:Here in Austin, in the fight for continued fight for racial justice. Andrew Harrison will be my guest, and, we are gonna be talking about black censorship. So I think we are out of time, folks. I am, thankful in advance of brother Jim for bringing in his guitar today and hopefully most future shows. Jim, what are you gonna take us out on?
Stacie Freasier:What song?
Jim Crosby:This one called embodied trauma, lyrics that I wrote to another John Hurt tune called the coffee blues. And yeah. And this is about healing trauma together in community, beloved community.
Stacie Freasier:That's true. And we're gonna go out on this song. So here's to us building beloved community. Thank you all, and we'll see you see you soon.
Jim Crosby:Embodied trauma. Embodied trauma. What we're gonna do about embodied trauma. You got it from your daddy. I got it from my mama.
Jim Crosby:Everybody's got some embody trauma. Just look at your hand, I'm looking at my hands. It's in our brains too and in our limb gland. Embodied trauma, source of all this drama. What we're gonna do about embodied trauma?
Jim Crosby:White body supremacy whose idea was such lunacy? It must have served some colonial piracy. Embodied trauma, embodied trauma. What we gonna do about embodied trauma? We got to talk it out.
Jim Crosby:We gotta sing it out. We got to march it out. We gotta dance it out. Embodied trauma. Embodied trauma.
Jim Crosby:What we're gonna do about embodied trauma? Embodied trauma, source of all this drama. Together, let's heal our embodied trauma. That's based in part as a response to the wonderful book by Resmaa Menakem, My Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. So we do it together in community.
Jim Crosby:Yeah. Look this up. Coffee Blues by written by Mississippi John Hurt is where, John Sebastian got the name Levin Spoonful for his band back in the what? The sixties, I guess.