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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.
K00 PHD 1 HD 3 Hornsby. Greetings, everyone. You are listening to the kickoff show of nonviolent Austin Radio Hour. I am your host, Stacey Fraser. Pronouns are she and they.
Speaker 1:I am joined in the studio by 2 of my favorite comrades, brother Robert Tyrone Lilly and brother Jim Crosby, and they're going to introduce themselves. But I first want to thank brother Jim for providing live musical intro music today.
Speaker 2:We shall not be moved.
Speaker 1:That's right. That's right. We shall not be moved. So you're gonna hear us keep talking about this, forever because nonviolence is a lifestyle. It is a philosophy, and it is a way to move through the world, and each other with, a lot of facets, which, luckily, we have a monthly series to be unpacking some of that for y'all.
Speaker 1:And there are lots of curriculum and trainings out there on Kingian Nonviolence. I am a, graduate and a trainer in Kingian Nonviolence from the Selma Center for Nonviolence Truth and Reconciliation out of Selma, Alabama. So that is my teaching home and doctor Bernard Lafayette. Put me on the path and is my living teacher and a living civil rights legend. So, want to pay homage to him at every chance I can.
Speaker 1:So we have a lot, and I was thinking about how we're going to approach our show and Kingie and nonviolence and, reminded myself that, this is this isn't a mousse bush. Right? This is an hors d'oeuvre. This is a teaser. We are introducing you to a few concepts, a few principles, and a few steps.
Speaker 1:But if any of this is resonating with your heart and your gut like it did mine, I think, I invite you to go with that and dig deeper and, all 3 of us, I think, would be more than happy to, walk alongside you on this path. So let me turn the mic to, I'll just go I'll go clockwise here. Brother Jim, go ahead and let the folks know who you are.
Speaker 2:Okay. I'm Jim Crosby, and I taught for 27 years at my high school alma mater, Saint Stephen's on the west side of Austin, and taught senior theology. So teaching religion to, 17 18 year olds is all the way I always put it. And I was lay chaplain, so I helped in the in the chapel program. But I called my version of senior theology nonviolence 101, because I'd really focus from the start of the year on, Gandhi and King and, the way that their faith in part, shaped them and guided their work.
Speaker 2:And so they were a real focus for me all through that 27 years. I retired 4 years ago, and, shortly before I retired, I started Nonviolent Austin. And that's we started with a book club every month or so. Had, you know, had a meeting and, studied some books, and then, it evolved into a weekly vigil in front of the capital, 4 to 5 every Friday afternoon. So you can find us out there, with campaign nonviolence banners.
Speaker 2:And especially the last few years, poor people's campaign banners. We've gotten very involved with the poor people's campaign as well, and I'll be telling you about that. It's not so much this month because we're gonna focus on Frederick Douglass, but in the future. And at some point, I wanna and and this is where Stacy can really, chip in. I wanna share with you my one of my mantras that I've evolved and developed through the years, which is simply the 6, principles of kinging and nonviolence.
Speaker 2:So that's one of my background, and you'll be hearing more. But let me pass it on to brother Rob.
Speaker 3:Peace and blessings. How are you? I wanna start off this morning by saying that I give gratitude and thanks to the most high for blessing me with an opportunity to use my voice for something noble and good. My pronouns are he and him. I am a criminal justice participatory defense organizer with grassroots leadership.
Speaker 3:I wanna say a disclaimer upfront that any opinions that I put forth today are not that of my organization, but those of my own. And nonetheless, I do belong to an organization, in fact, multiple organizations. I am one who's justice impacted and I think I sent him most of my commentary from that space. I heard a minister. I wanna give honor to his name.
Speaker 3:His name is doctor Tony Roche. He was the minister I sat under for almost 4 years at Ministry Church of Christ in Abilene, Texas. He said something that was profound. It stuck with me for years, and it was, your ministry grows out of the context of your crisis. And for me, at 53 years of age, I've spent approximately 21 years of my life incarcerated in the society that I was born into as a citizen.
Speaker 3:But now today, as a part of the society, still physically, I am not allowed to be fully 100% a member because of the exclusions and barriers that that places upon me. And so I wanted to be a part of this conversation because I've experienced where that kind of exclusion and alienation can drive one to in terms of resentment and anger. And I realized today that I'm driven by love, not hate. And what's important for me is to assert myself in society. And even though I believe that many of the experiences I'm having today are injust, I can respond to those things with dignity and humanity, and that's what's important in my life today, to to to lead with my heart and my love for human beings and to honor the witness that I've had over the years as a person who's been marginalized in this society.
Speaker 3:I think that's very important.
Speaker 1:Thank you both for being here.
Speaker 3:Well, it's an honor.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I will, I usually say this at the top, so let me go ahead and say it now. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the coop board of directors, staff, volunteers, or underwriters. And you're gonna get to know the 3 of us, more, as the months, transpire. So let's, let's move into the the core of our show which is nonviolence.
Speaker 1:And I will say since we are, an audio format right now that when we say nonviolence, we are saying nonviolence as one word not non hyphen violence. So it is not the absence of violence. It is it is not a passive approach or philosophy. It is active love in just peace. So as a 27 year teacher of this content, Jeff, I'd like for you to tell us a little bit of nonviolence from a historical standpoint and across the global community in context.
Speaker 2:Well, let me go back to Gandhi a little bit because I was thinking this morning about, you know, some of the evolution of of indeed the our use of the phrase nonviolence. And he was coming from, the I think it's originally Sanskrit word, ahimsa. And and and it was used mainly, I think, by the Jains in India. And and it was often translated non harming, you know, just, first do no harm. And, as he became active first in South Africa and then back in India with developing this method, he end up calling satyagraha, which people define or translated as, soul force or truth force, holding on to the truth in ways that, became active, you know, opposing untruth or opposing injustice or opposing violence.
Speaker 2:So but it became this very positive lifestyle, so that the first of our Kenyan principles is is or the second really is no. Excuse me. The first, is courage. That nonviolence is a lifestyle for courageous people. So defining it positively that way, like you're saying, active love, pursuing truth, grasping truth, and acting on the basis of it is kinda where we can start with active nonviolence.
Speaker 1:So Gandhi is, does it go further back than Gandhi? These are universal principles, but the like, would Gandhi be the the person you put on the back if someone was gonna be a 1 on 1 on 9 violence?
Speaker 2:Well, I trace back. As you know, my my patron saint is Saint Francis. I'm an Episcopal third order Franciscan, and I think Francis really got it. And I think Gandhi and Francis were both looking back to Jesus and certainly, especially the Sermon on the Mount. Apparently, Gandhi studied it along with the Bhagavad Gita, which was his, you know, Hindu scripture of choice, but the Sermon on the Mount every day of his adult life as well.
Speaker 2:So, I would ultimately look to Jesus as far as, you know, what I would call gospel nonviolence. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Thank you. So Jim, teased principle, 1, and I carry around this little nifty card that I picked up at the Selma Center. Should you ever join me out there, I go every year. And there are 6 main principles, to Kingian nonviolence. So this is in the tradition of Doctor.
Speaker 1:King who studied and was inspired by Gandhi in India and who was inspired and motivated by Jesus. And so there's a long triang of people that are continuing to carry this rope together. It's a thread. So we're gonna be going through all of these in upcoming months, but I think we'll just throw out that first principle today for the interest of time, which is nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people as Jim just said. And, it is Encourage is
Speaker 2:in demand now. Let's just say that. It
Speaker 1:I don't see an alternative, really.
Speaker 3:And if I if I may inject a thought, you know, with my life, this is important to me because I've witnessed a community and communities that were wracked by violence. And I saw what a world looked like growing up in California in the 19 eighties where the law of the streets prevailed, right? Retaliation, for gangs and affiliation for one group or another, in one neighborhood or another, or in New York where tribalism in the sense of racism divided communities, Jews in one area, Italians in another, Dominicans and Puerto Ricans in another, and the blacks in another. I saw what a world could look like when violence dominated, and I want to tell you something. I had a revelation years ago where I realized, you know, most of my life I've
Speaker 2:been
Speaker 3:afraid. Although I've acted out aggressively in that moment, the prevailing emotion was not courage, it was fear. Fear is what drove my violence.
Speaker 1:Thank you. I've I that resonates so deeply with me, trying and I'm I'm afraid now. I mean, I'm fear is fear is a welcome emotion. It's trying to protect you. But understanding that fear instead of love as a driving force in how I move about the world, I see, I sense.
Speaker 1:All of my senses pick up on what a fear based action does, what it creates, what it manifests, and what a love based action does. This is an act of love in this moment.
Speaker 3:And and I'll say in mirroring that, I realized that to take a stance in the world, to be assertive for what one believes is right is not it doesn't come about as with the absence of trepidation or fear. It you do it through fear, despite fear, in spite of fear. Human emotion can we cannot necessarily I don't believe personally that I can divorce myself of my human condition. What I have to learn is how to flow with that human condition and allow that to, you know, not dominate, but also to impel me to do what is right, in spite of what I'm feeling internally that might be contradictory, right? I can I can love someone and still be afraid to lose them, but that fear should not have caused me to be suspicious or to be, domineering because I wanna control?
Speaker 3:And that's something I've learned as a over the course of time.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I was gonna say, I I think I've seen the quote attributed to John Wayne that, courage is being scared to death and settling up anyway. Mhmm. Something that
Speaker 1:We gotta bring a cowboy reference into k00p, Austin, Texas, which, you are tuned into. 91.7 FM, streaming online. We got folks hopefully all over this beautiful mother, online@k0op.org. If you're just tuning in, you are listening to Nonviolent Austin Radio Hour, and this is our first episode. And I'm sitting here in community with brother Robert Tyrone Lilly and brother Jim Crosby.
Speaker 1:And now I think it is time for us to shine some light on a very brave ancestor who is who used his voice and courage and bravery to speak out. And this is, Frederick Douglass and on this July 4th, which is a national holiday in this country. And I consider it a day of mourning because it hasn't been freedom for everybody, including myself in ways. So, brother Jim, do you wanna, frame this? He it was it was his idea to to do this and a brilliant one at that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, I just I was thinking earlier today that, again, that this is, you know, one of the one of the landmarks, in a way, as we think about the struggle for freedom in this country from the outset. And, if you think about, you know, in the 20th century, people like W. E. B.
Speaker 2:Du Bois, Howard Thurman, certainly Martin Luther King, Malcolm x, so many, such a crowd of witnesses, Fannie Lou Hamer, that a lot of what he was voicing in this 1852 speech, what to the slave is your 4th July, sticks with us today. I mean, it's ongoing relevance. So, I don't know. I was gonna put brother Rob on the spot to the extent you wanna say anything generally about Frederick Douglass and and his legacy before we dive into the speech.
Speaker 3:I believe it was Marcus Garvey who said that history is best prepared to reward its researcher. You know, I'm not a scholar of Frederick Douglass, but I've read a number of texts over the years that have recounted his story. He was born in Maryland and he was born into slavery and there's all of his youthful life, that's all he knew, was that he belonged to someone else. But yet deep within him there was a driving force that impelled him to strive for this notion that he had heard of in this society called Democratic Society of Freedom. And he nurtured that first by challenging himself to read, learning from his young mistress the alphabet, and then determining to read papers and to grasp ideas.
Speaker 3:So even in the context of what was chattel slavery in the South, he began to free his mind. He began to free His soul was already free, but his mind was then freed through knowledge and education. And as a result of that, he determined that my body must be free. And not only must I be free, but I must find a way to articulate the idea of freedom that encompasses all humanity. I think that's profound.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so where he goes in this speech, I'd encourage you. I was daunted when I when I first had the the idea and then pulled the speech back up. I'm pretty sure I'd read the whole thing before, but not positive because I was surprised by it. One, how long it was, about in most formats, about 14 pages of, close type, single spaced, and, kind of formal English.
Speaker 2:And so we decided we wouldn't try to read too much of it to you, but we'll, we'll read some excerpts and and, discuss them a little bit. So but he starts off quoting the the declaration of independence and lauding the US in its history, for this idea of of yeah. I put it in terms of exalting human dignity, but, of first off, in in in the declaration saying, okay. It's time for us to be free, in this case, of of British domination. And so asserting their freedom.
Speaker 2:And so, obviously, he then, several pages in, turns the corner on that and says, this doesn't seem to apply to all of us. So what is to the slave your 4th July? So I wanna start off with one of our our quotes as he begins to make that turn. He says, fellow citizens, pardon me. Allow me to ask why I am called upon to speak here today?
Speaker 2:What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and natural justice embodied in that declaration of independence extended to us? And so some of my questions that spring from that are, as he turns the corner here, does this same question apply to us still today? In what ways, especially to African Americans, because obviously he's saying I represent slaves, in white ways to other minority groups or people of color. And what about because I'm doing so much work now with the poor people's campaign.
Speaker 2:What about to the poor? So, Rob, you wanna dive in on any of those?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, obviously, for me as one who's been impacted by the criminal legal systems of this society, who's been told because of behavior, that was harmful in some form of fashion, I should be placed in a cage, I have had to toy with and wrestle with what does it mean for me to belong to a society that lauds this notion of or this principle called freedom. What does it mean for me? I said earlier that doctor Tony Roche mentioned your your ministry grows out of the context of your crisis. So for me, having lost my freedom as the result of being criminalized or being found guilty and then being, rendered the ward of a state, I've had to ask, what does it mean for me then to complete the time that I had to spend in prison, which was called my punishment, and return back to society, which is often characterized as reentry, and to become a part of the society, which is oftentimes called reintegration.
Speaker 3:What does it all imply when, at the same time, if I went to go register for an apartment, they're going to ask me have I ever been convicted of a felony? If I go to take out a bank account, they're going to do a background check. They're going to look at my credit, which may be understandable in some instances, but the background check is still problematic. At what point does my past become my past and my opportunity to become fully enmeshed or intertwined in what we call a democratic experiment become a reality? So does the question still apply?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Because we still have people in society, which I'm a quintessential representation of, who are excluded. I'm but one example, I can speak most affirmatively from the place of those that are impacted by the criminal legal system, but there are others. You know, people that are part of the LGBTQ community are ostracized and alienated and and and and scorned depending on where they live or, depending on how open they are with their choice to love. There are other groups that find themselves just as maligned in this society and yet we laud the notion that we live in a free society and simultaneously that we use these terms, we have the most incarcerated population in the United States, excuse me, in the entire industrial or Western world, and we have more people that are incarcerated today than any nation has ever had in the history of the world.
Speaker 3:So there's something going on and does the question still apply? Absolutely. Absolutely. I think we still have to grapple with what does it mean to be free in a society, to use the term freedom or free in a society where we simultaneously hold in bondage so many people that are part of the fabric of our society. These are not numbers.
Speaker 3:These are men and women, many children. These are husbands and wives, fathers and sons, brothers and sisters. These are human beings. At what point do we see the human and not see the error? At what point do we see the inward and not the outward?
Speaker 3:That to me is the question that freedom demands us to inquire.
Speaker 1:You'll hear us often talk about racism as what Doctor. King says is one of the inseparable twins. However, shout out to Kimberly Crenshaw who came up and articulated the concept of intersectionality. And I appreciate you lifting up, brother Rob, what you just did is this is about all forms of oppression and an absence of humanization and care. I will share from, you know, my personal vantage point that I have struggled with health conditions.
Speaker 1:And it really was going through the disability process that turned me more fervently into understanding what how freedom means access to health care, access to food, access to water, access to education.
Speaker 2:Housing, shelter. So, yeah, I wanna focus a little bit before we move on to the next quote about on, you know, what about poverty in general? How does it relate to this question that you're discussing, Rob? What is what is freedom to us? Yeah.
Speaker 2:How do you all see poverty intersecting with freedom?
Speaker 3:Well, again, you know, I have to speak out of the context of my own crisis. I I was born in Harlem, New York in the 19 seventies. I was raised in, at some point, in the East South Bronx, which was vastly different from the South Bronx. But in the South Bronx, in the early seventies, what I saw was what I could best characterize as blight. And what and so yes, the community was in decay.
Speaker 3:The buildings were dilapidated. I had to walk through 4 blocks of demolished and they weren't demolished like a bulldozer or a, a wrecking ball came and knocked them down. No. These were buildings that had been torched as a result of a reaction to the development of the Cross Bronx Expressway by Robert Moses and the destabilization of communities that were considered superfluous to that society. And as a result of this neglect, there was blight that replaced what was formerly a community.
Speaker 3:And as a result of the blight, there was no investment. It got to the point where this community was considered so, you know, expendable that the city services would not even come and pick up the trash. Literally, we were waiting in the South Bronx in the 1970s over trash to get from one building to the next. It was it was appalling and and and so now in hindsight, in the in the midst of it, I could not understand what was happening because I had no words to describe it. So I didn't even know, I knew what the word poor was, but I didn't conceptually know what it was.
Speaker 3:And I definitely didn't understand this notion of poverty. But what I now understand is that poverty is not the result of some inner malady. It is the result of human decisions. People make decisions just like there was a decision to compromise with the South, with the 3 fifths clause to codify slavery in the United States of America. There is a decision in many communities, including this one, to invest in some communities and divest from other communities, which then leaves people vulnerable for misuse, abuse.
Speaker 3:And what happens when communities are not funded or supported? They turn on themselves, and then they become a self fulfilling prophecy for those who have power who say, look at them. They don't deserve freedom. They don't want to take care of themselves. They don't want better for themselves.
Speaker 3:And so you create the conditions and then you hide your hand and you blame the people for their own conditions. To me, that's how poverty plays a role in it. If we've been lied to and made to believe that poverty is the outgrowth of some human malfunction, you don't they're not working hard enough. My father worked hard all of his life, but he would also complain I could not join the union. Why?
Speaker 3:Because they would not let black men join the union. So his dilemma, which was that he could not provide enough for his family, wasn't because he didn't work hard enough, because he couldn't get the kind of quality job that would allow him to support the children that he had. And that is, I think, a social problem, not a personal problem. Hence, poverty is not personal. It is social.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Sam.
Speaker 1:And thank you for rooting us back in place as nonviolent Austin is and the one of my visions and hopes for this show is to apply a framework of active nonviolence to our city, and I couldn't help but think of the expansion of interstate 35 in real time as you're talking right now. It is further displacing communities who have already been forcibly moved geographically east. And then and I think one of one of the most, illuminating examples I've learned recently, I'm on my learning journey, is, the Blackland neighborhood. My guest, Tyra Clark, a couple of months back, she, her family's from the Blackland neighborhood. And by eminent domain, the University of Texas has wiped out the Blackland neighborhood to build sports complex.
Speaker 1:So this is all really happening here in our neighborhood, and there are ways for us to get engaged around it. We're gonna, have to take a break in a second. But, Jim, we have time for you to put a bow on this one for now or at least put a pin in it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm just thinking a lot about the work of the Poor People's Campaign and, Reverend William Barber, talking about, policy murder. And we've talked a lot about there were by the Poor People's Campaign, instead of 40,000,000, there were a 140,000,000 poor people in this country in before the pandemic, in 2019. And it went down through policies, you know, to deal with the pandemic, to about a 100 and was it as low as a 112 million? And now it's up again between a 135, a 140,000,000. So it's gone back up when they let those policies lapse.
Speaker 2:So we know things we can do to eliminate, alleviate, and eliminate poverty. Can we get the political will together to do it?
Speaker 1:Thank you for that. We are going to go on a quick station break, and we will be right back.
Speaker 4:Looking to start your weekend early? Co op's got you covered. Every 1st Thursday of the month, Co op DJs will be spinning records from 7 to 11 PM at Community Garden, located in the heart of East Austin at 1401 Cedar Avenue, Unit 2. We're bringing vinyl to the people. More information at coop.org or follow us on socials at coopradio.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the theater, my dear of your love it so.
Speaker 5:Wanna know more about theater? Of course, you do. Tune in every Wednesday from 1 to 2 on co op for offstage and on air, a lively and fun show all about theater in Austin and the surrounding areas as well as the rest of the country and the world. Join Lisa and Nicole as they explore theater as only they know how to do. Wednesdays from 1 to 2 on Co op.
Speaker 5:See you there.
Speaker 2:In the hall. Welcome to the
Speaker 1:You are tuned in to k00phdonehd3hornsby. We are streaming online at k0op.org and tuned in to local airwaves 91.7 FM here in Austin, Texas. You are listening to the nonviolent Austin Radio Hour, and I am your host Stacey Fraser, pronouns she, they, and I am across the table here with my comrades, brother Robert Tyrone Lilly and brother Jim Crosby. And we are commemorating this, what is a holiday for the dominant narrative and what is I consider a day of mourning because we haven't found that freedom that is celebrated with barbecues and fireworks and consumerism. That's my opinion.
Speaker 1:So we are back to you, brother Jim, to, give a lift up another passage from Frederick Douglass's, famous July 4th speech. We'll unpack it.
Speaker 2:This is from more down in the middle. This is where he really cuts to the chase. What to the American slave is your 4th July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days in the year the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham, a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.
Speaker 2:There's not a nation on earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour. Okay. Without my questions, Rob, you wanna dive in on that one?
Speaker 1:Written in 2024. Right? 1852.
Speaker 3:You know, when I hear those words, I I think back to a film that I watched when I was incarcerated as a youth at the California Youth Authority. A professor came in and shared a video with us and the video was called 50 years of American wars. You know, we love to paint ourselves as this grand divine experience experiment in freedom and I will not deny that there are elements of our society that bear lauding and emulation, but there are just as equally elements of who we are that bear critique and analysis and condemnation. And if we're going to have a full and inclusive society, we have to be honest with ourselves. If we deny the truth of who we are and who we've been and who we are today, then we're living in some form of psychosis, social psychosis.
Speaker 3:So what Frederick Douglass did, he was pointing out this contradiction. He was pointing out that on one hand you're saying freedom, but on the other hand you're allowing the the the ownership of life. And so what did what did we do as a society? What did what did we do? We we we created laws.
Speaker 3:And in these laws, we say, well, oh, they're not really persons. You know, in order to be a person, and then we just wrote, we wrote in ink what we qualified a person to be. So person is a legal term. Right? And so we excluded African Americans or Africans or slaves from their humanity with the stroke of a pen.
Speaker 3:And then we rationalize that to ourselves and said, we're not evil because, you know, god made it such that there was some to be tillers of the soil and some to be hewers of the wood and some to be masters of the of the of the plantation. And that slaked our consciousness, but not everybody was able to rest there. Not no no was Frederick Douglass. And there were many people spanning the the the color line who questioned this idea of how we ordered our society. I learned the term some years ago called, hierarchical society, a racial hierarchy.
Speaker 3:Some resisted this notion that there was a racial hierarchy that could be rationalized by law or by divine script, and Frederick Douglass, I think, best exemplifies the sharp wit and criticism that can be leveled against this reality, this contradiction in our society.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Part of what I was thinking about as I, you know, read and reread that passage is it reminded me of MLK in 67, the famous speech beyond Vietnam a year to the date to the date before his assassination, so April 4, 1967, when he, said that that there was those evil triplets, not only racism, but materialism, extreme materialism and militarism. And, and said that in the course, in the midst of the Vietnam War at that point, that the US were the greatest purveyors of weapons and violence on earth. Today, we have nearly 800 military bases worldwide. The military budget is annually over half the national discretionary budget.
Speaker 2:Gun violence in the US makes otherwise comparable nations like Great Britain look like peaceful Edens. Are we all now victims of our national violence?
Speaker 1:I appreciate you bringing that up and, specifically, you know, kingy and nonviolence may have a certain connotation to people without in the absence of of diving into it deeply. But, and I believe that in an early writing, doctor King called it the twins, and then he added militarism as that triplet. And, it would be remiss if we didn't bring the direct connection of the military industrial complex into upholding the society as it is structured today.
Speaker 2:Especially as it our as our police, our internal, affairs get militarized.
Speaker 3:I'll weigh in on this and say, when I look back at history, I, you know, this country was conceived through a philosophy known as colonialism. One nation sent its people either forcibly or by conferring them with resources to another nation, and they claimed it for themselves despite the fact that it had people that already resided there for millennia. Then they came up with philosophies that said, well, they are savages and then there are those that are civilized. And so because they are savages, we have the right to take because they have done nothing with the land. Their concepts were different from yours and so you deny the reality and the truth of their concepts and then you impose upon their values a false narrative to justify your evil.
Speaker 3:And so, when I think about these ideas, when you talk about are we the misfortunate, victims of our own creation of violence? Yes. Because the day I remember once being in prison when, Iraqi freedom, listen to the language, was was, leveled, right? I heard a guy say, Just bomb them all. Just bomb them all.
Speaker 3:And I thought to myself, How can another human being so wantonly say drop bombs on somebody? Because we've gotten to a place where we've made violence so normal. Not only violence, but genocide. So normal that it is just another story on the news tonight that I can turn off and I can go back to sleep, because in my mind, I still am convinced that there are some that are more human than others, and some that deserve more life than others, and some that deserve more freedom than others, and some that deserve more land than others. To me, that is the that is the delusion that has created our victimization.
Speaker 2:Ready to turn toward religion in the speech?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. He
Speaker 2:begins to focus in the second half or the final third of the speech on the fugitive slaves law, and the way that that, indicted not only the North in general, but the churches especially. And so far as they took that as the law of the land and said the Christian thing to do was indeed to help send slaves back south into their slavery. And so, like I say, he indicts the churches and the preachers and what they were saying in in that warped theology. And he ends up saying, fellow citizens, I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism, which I translate as your democracy your aspirations to democracy, as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity as a lie.
Speaker 2:And my questions in response to that and hey, I apologize for my teacherly mode. It was all about Socratic questions for me, and generating dialogue, which I hope we're doing in our our hearers' minds. In 1852, Douglass said slavery rendered the country's democracy, humanitarianism, and faith all lies. Was he right? How have we remedied this and failed to remedy it since then?
Speaker 3:You know, when I think back about when I think back to the time of 1852, when I think back to the notion that the government created a policy that says you must return to the South those that have escaped. I believe it was written that no black or no slave has any right that the white man is bound to respect. And so this created a climate of fear and terror because there were people that were already free in the North who had some semblance of life. But that life now had become tenuous and they had to consider removing themselves from the place, the only place they had known as home, and then going further north to Canada. So you asked the question, where did the religion fall into this?
Speaker 3:Well, the North, generally speaking, did not have the institution of slavery that had been incrementally removed and or you know abolished slowly but surely in many northern cities. But there was still the veneer of racism that colored the minds of the north. And so black people had to ask themselves how far could we trust our white allies in the south in the north to protect us at this very critical juncture, when the government itself had now solidified with the most important court in the land that the black man or the slave had no right that anybody was bound to respect. That was a critic. That was a that was a that was a litmus test for us.
Speaker 3:That was a turning point. Churches, institutions of every sort had to grapple with, where do we stand? Because I've got a member here in my congregation. If they would've snatched him tomorrow, would I defend him or her or them? Would I stand up to protect them from being subdued by slave catchers?
Speaker 3:That posed a moral dilemma in our country. And I think today that moral dilemma exists as well. Because we have people standing on the corner today that are on house. Not everybody by choice. We have people coming out of prison that are trying to find a path forward for their lives, and the numbers are staggering.
Speaker 3:Some 600,000 every year are released back to society. Like 52% of those return back within the first year or 2 of their release. You know, post conviction poverty is pronounced in our society for those who have felony backgrounds. We have a moral dilemma. We have many churches that go into the prisons and say, we want you baptized.
Speaker 3:We love you. Jesus loves you. But when we come home, there's no space on the pew for us. Or there's space on the pew, but we have to keep our mouths closed and not talk about our reality.
Speaker 2:When you were used that word reintegration a while ago about coming out, it really made me think about, you know, the early years of the fifties sixties civil rights campaign working to end segregation. And the fact that now, education remains so segregated, housing remains so segregated. Mhmm. You know, this this whole what do we mean when we say integration or, in that case, reintegration?
Speaker 3:What do we mean by that? Well, some people would debate whether or not we were ever integrated into society, but what is meant generally by the notion that one can reintegrate is the notion that one can have a place in the world like every other human being has a place in the world. And so despite the fact that I've errored, whether you call it a crime, whether you call it a mistake, whether you call it an indiscretion, whatever you label this moment of flaw that was now identified by law enforcement and punished by the courts. Can we, as a society, look past the era and see the humanity? Can we look past the past and see the potential in the person's future?
Speaker 3:To me, that is that gray that gray area where, you know, we we should be allowing space for this notion of what's called reintegration. You know, can we forgive?
Speaker 1:I will also say that laws were written with intent to consider human characteristics and traits and actions to be mistakes or errors, but I invite looking at the laws who wrote them and what their purpose is. Because if be being human in all of those flaws or traits is part of the full human experience and condition. We are talking about, Frederick Douglass's, speech on July 4th. You are tuned in to nonviolent Austin radio hour on k0op.organd91.7fm here in Austin. I am your co host, Stacey Fraser, here with brother Rob and brother Jim, And we are 3 quarters of the way through our show, so I wanna, take this opportunity.
Speaker 1:And in time permitting, we can, you know, address and lift up any more of the the Frederick Douglass speech. But, I want to pause here for community announcements. And, as this is, Satyagraha and active love force and life force, there's a lot of stuff going on here. So we're gonna try to plug you in every month to some of the happenings and invite you to to plug in. So, brother Rob, do you wanna
Speaker 3:Yeah. I'm gonna take a moment just to announce a couple of things that are happening in the community. On July 28th, there'll be an event held at the African American Cultural and Heritage Facility at 912 East 11th Street, Austin, Texas 78702, entitled National slash through the word minority mental health month. It is now being shifted to global majority mental health awareness month with crime survivors for safety and justice. The chapter here locally is partnering with Real Queens Fix Each Other's Crowns to host an event for mental health and wellness.
Speaker 3:Also, there's another grassroots leadership every month at 7910 Cameron Road. It's at 6 PM. Host a general body meeting. Anyone is welcome to come on out and be a part of this community for those that are formerly incarcerated looking for an opportunity to make their stories have impact. I wanna lift up another cause that's going on called finish the 5 on 712 at 1100 Congress Avenue, the Texas Capitol Building.
Speaker 3:There will be advocates meeting for advocacy day to finish the 5. Kids don't belong in prison. Finish the 5 is a demand for Texas to make a plan to complete the staggered closure of all 5 remaining child prisons instead of investing in local community instead and invest in local community based and support for children in the local area. And then on to on Saturday at 11 o'clock at the Austin Area Urban League, there will be a town hall meeting for anyone interested in the conversation around council at first appearance. This is a very important issue because any one of us at any time stand at risk to be arrested.
Speaker 3:And if we are, would you not want to have a lawyer present at that first and critical moment of contest between a judge talking about what it means
Speaker 2:to have counsel at first appearance
Speaker 3:and inviting the community to get educated and if they choose to get involved. And Rob, that's not required at this point, correct?
Speaker 2:Trying to make that a requirement.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, at this point, we've only had test shifts in the community, 10 test shifts already. Every person it's a minuscule amount of people who are being given representation. There are 3 different tracks in which that looks like. So not everybody gets adequate or equal representation.
Speaker 3:There are 2 different bodies that also do the representing. So you have Cap Yes and you have the, the the public defender's office. They have 2 different ways in which they approach what it looks like to give representation at the first appearance and then there are those that have that are undocumented who now stand the risk of being deported if this s before law should become the law of Texas, which would then make people eligible for deportation right at magistrate court by somebody who's not qualified to make that decision. So there's a lot of risk that's involved in this contemporary issue, and this is about freedom. Freedom is the responsibility for us, I believe, to get involved in the process, to to become a part of the conversation.
Speaker 1:Thank you for bringing those into the room. Jim, do you have any
Speaker 2:Well, it it I wanna start out with, rather than saying stuff that's coming up is just to let people know that I had the great privilege and pleasure of being part of the choir, which I've never done before. I've never even sung in a church choir, but I was part of the choir for last Saturday's, Poor People's Campaign March on Washington. And so I was in DC for most of a week, rehearsing, and it was a beautiful experience of a a band that's mainly jazz inflected and and gospel educated and a and a group of singers who were primarily gospel singers. And to be welcomed and included as part of that and then to experience the the day on Saturday, which was planned at 3 hours and became more like 4 and, you know, is it the movement of the spirit, definitely. And so the plans for and part of what was talked about there is the plan in the next 4, 5 months to get out.
Speaker 2:How many months do we have before November, in the election? But to work in the interim to get contacted at least 15,000,000 infrequent voters among poor and low wage people in this country. And, and our motto for the day was, we are the swing vote. So I'd encourage everybody to to, Google Poor People's Campaign. You can see the live stream of of the march on, Saturday, and you can definitely look at ways to get, plugged in.
Speaker 2:There's gonna be a lot of phone banking going on and and hopefully some community events we'll keep you apprised of.
Speaker 3:I just was
Speaker 2:give another?
Speaker 3:Yeah. No. That was gonna just read the address for the town hall meeting. It's entitled Austin Area Urban League Justice and Advocacy, July 6, 11 to 1 PM at 8011 Cameron Road, Suite A 101 Town Hall Meeting, Council at First Appearance, also known as CAFA, for those detained at Travis County Jail. That is an important conversation.
Speaker 1:Thanks, to be to you both. I have a couple. Jim, do you have another announcement before I
Speaker 2:No. I just wanted to go back to, some of our Douglass related discussion, but go ahead.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Let me let me get the announcements, and we'll go back. So couple of things. One is we see you. I am in solidarity with, my siblings who are, in Gaza and Palestine right now.
Speaker 1:This is not over. It is happening right now. If you wanna plug in locally to, what I think is a a healing act of solidarity. It is the Mother's Day in Gaza quilt project that we kicked off, on Mother's Day, and we will be having activities. We, where you can make your own quilt square or you can just show up to the regular house events and make art and eat food and be in community.
Speaker 1:And we're going to, when I say we, it's a bunch of people organizing this. We're going to roll out all the the quilts that are made on the Texas State Capitol during Palestinian Mother's Day, which is gonna be March 2025. So if you are interested in jumping into that stream that's happening right now, you can actually go to mother's day in gazakwilt.net and sign up to, receive more information. On July 11th, the King Center, which is out of Atlanta, Georgia, it has its beloved day and I'm sorry, on July 12th. And, that is going to be streamed globally, and there is a full day of activities and workshops that, you can check out.
Speaker 1:That is at the kingcenter.org, slash belove. And I mentioned the Selma Center earlier. I'm planting the seed and seeing if it takes, takes root. I go every year to Selma, Alabama to commemorate Jubilee, which is the next 2025 will be the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, and the demonstration turned violent across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. We hold every year, I'm on the teaching team, a full week of level 1 Kenyan nonviolence.
Speaker 1:So, I am interested in organizing a group locally, probably 10 to 12 folks. There's space for. So if you are interested in attending Jubilee with me and making it a a full week of, also Montgomery, Alabama. I know you've been there, brother Rob and I. Have you, brother Jim, to the equal justice, institute 2 initiative and and, do all that.
Speaker 1:Please reach out. My co op email is stacie@k0op.org. If you have any questions about anything on the show, you can email me. We also are organizing ourselves digitally at this point on nonviolent Austin's Facebook page. So if you wanna keep up and we will, we can share all these announcements actually on nonviolent Austin Facebook page as well as a recording to this episode if you wanna circle back and relisten or share it with a friend.
Speaker 1:We have just a couple of minutes. So I think what we need to turn to now is any closing thoughts and ponderances before we reconvene next month.
Speaker 2:I wanna just, throw in something that's another another short quote, but not from Frederick Douglass from Reverend Barber's new book, White Poverty, How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Deconstruct can, excuse me, can reconstruct American Democracy. And he's got a paragraph where he talks about not only the 15th Amendment, giving voting rights to the formerly enslaved after the Civil War, but then the following amendments, the 19th, 24th, and 26th, which enfranchised, in turn, women, and then got rid of the poll taxes and then moved the voting age from 21 to 18. So efforts, lest we be seen as negatively critical through all this, genuine efforts and genuine gains in terms of expanding the franchise and growing our democracy. So we need to be thankful for those.
Speaker 3:And while you're mentioning that, I think it's also important because, you know, to critique does not mean to hate. To address does not mean to deplore. When we point out the discrepancies, we can still stand in solidarity with truth that's present and unquestionable. So, I want to firstly and forthrightly say, I don't hate this society. I believe in the notion of freedom.
Speaker 3:I just believe that no institution can demand or control it or determine it that it comes from something and someone greater than these governmental entities. And on that note also, I just wanna give a shout out to the shirt that I'm wearing. You can't see me with the shirt on, but those on watching me on Facebook, it says abolish slavery. Why is that on my shirt? It's from this organization.
Speaker 3:Shout out to David Johnson and Savannah. They founded the organization called CAST, which is a coalition to abolish slavery in Texas. And what do you mean slavery in Texas? Because in Texas, if you are incarcerated or any other state that the 13th amendment has been mimicked in state constitutions, then your labor is slave labor because you are indentured according to the Constitution of the United States of America. So those that are incarcerated in our society, I believe we should never forget.
Speaker 3:Hebrews 13:3 says, 'remember those that are in prison as if you yourself were there with them.' This critique is love, and it is done in love.
Speaker 1:Thank you. And I'll end, this moment today by saying that all are welcome in this tent. We are going to get there together. Isolated individualism does not serve us, and the future is right next to you. One of Tolstoy's three questions that I shared, recently with my comrades here is, who is the most important person?
Speaker 1:What's the most important thing to do? And when is the most important time? And the answers to that question are help the person next to you. It's the person next to you, and the time is now. So with that, I want to thank y'all for joining us on our first episode of nonviolent Austin Radio Hour.
Speaker 1:We are on the air here at k0op.org91.7fmradio Austin, the first Thursday of every month from 1 to 2 PM. Every month.
Speaker 3:Every month. Every month.
Speaker 1:Every month.
Speaker 2:Thanks, everybody.
Speaker 1:And, I'll be back in 2 weeks for racism on the levels at the same time slot, 3rd Thursdays from 1 to 2. Jim, brother Jim, take us back out with some of that music of yours.