BrownTown is honored to be joined by an OG in the game -- activist, organizer, and professor Bill Ayers. The gang discusses the similarities, differences, and peculiarities of Chicago hosting the Democratic National Convention in 1968 and in 2024. Bill bears witness to the socio-political context leading up to the 1968 Convention while they analyzes the role of grassroots movement-building (or the "fire from below") on electoral politics, anti-war/genocide activism, and building towards revolution. Originally recorded August 12, 2024, a week before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois.
BrownTown is honored to be joined by an OG in the game -- activist, organizer, and professor Bill Ayers. The gang discusses the similarities, differences, and peculiarities of Chicago hosting the Democratic National Convention in 1968 and in 2024. Bill bears witness to the socio-political context leading up to the 1968 Convention while they analyzes the role of grassroots movement-building (or the "fire from below") on electoral politics, anti-war/genocide activism, and building towards revolution. Originally recorded August 12, 2024, a week before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois.
"Two things that are never on the ballot are war and capitalism." --Bill Ayers
GUEST
Bill Ayers is a long-time activist, organizer, and is formerly a Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago, (now retired). Bill has written extensively about social justice and democracy, education and the cultural contexts of schooling, and teaching as an essentially intellectual, ethical, and political enterprise. His books includeTeaching toward Freedom, Fugitive Days: A Memoir; Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident, Race Course: Against White Supremacy, Demand the Impossible! A Radical Manifesto, and most recently When Freedom is the Question, Abolition is the Answer: Reflections on Collective Liberation.
Read more about Bill on Influence Watch or his website and follow him on Facebook and Twitter. Listen to his podcast Under the Tree and follow it on Instagram, and Twitter.
Mentioned in or related to episode:
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CREDITS: Intro soundbite from Martin Luther King's Jr.'s last speech "I've been to the Mountain Top". Outro music Fight Like Ida B & Marsha P by Ric Wilson. Audio engineered by Kiera Battles. Episode photo by unknown.
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BrownTown is honored to be joined by an OG in the game -- activist, organizer, and professor Bill Ayers. The gang discusses the similarities, differences, and peculiarities of Chicago hosting the Democratic National Convention in 1968 and in 2024. Bill bears witness to the socio-political context leading up to the 1968 Convention while they analyzes the role of grassroots movement-building (or the "fire from below") on electoral politics, anti-war/genocide activism, and building towards revolution. Originally recorded August 12, 2024, a week before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois.
INTRO
(Sound clip from Martin Luther King's Jr.'s "I've been to the Mountain Top")
"I call upon you to be with us when we go out Monday. Now, about injunctions- we have an injunction, and we are going into court tomorrow morning to fight this illegal, unconstitutional injunction. All we say to America is, be true to what you said on paper. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for rights. *cheering*
BODY OF EPISODE
[00:01:45.820] - David
I'd like to welcome everyone to another installment of Bourbon 'n BrownTown. It's your boy David, coming to you from Harambe Studios in Chicago. As always, I'm hanging out with my boy, Caullen. Caullen, man, how you doing today?
[00:01:56.830] - Caullen
I'm doing good. I feel like I've been- I'm always honest when answering that question, but from the past couple episode I've been like, I'm struggling, David. We out here.
[00:02:05.120] - David
Help me. Blink twice.
[00:02:06.260] - Caullen
No, exactly. But, no, I don't know. I feel good. I feel like we had some travel lately. Just screened No Cop Academy film at other places. I had a little solo retreat with some other Black folks in the country doing good work. And between the travel, and this season, and this summer being a lot work-wise here with shit going on in the world, personal stuff-wise, which has been good in the past several months. I feel like we're entering a new season, collectively as myself, as you and I, as Soapbox, as Chicago movement, as people in the world with a lot of simultaneously terrifying stuff coming up. But also in that terror, a lot of power and collective possibility. So I feel excited. I feel a lot of mixed emotions moving into this season. So, yeah, I'm feeling decent.
[00:02:54.330] - Caullen
And as always, I'm like, oh, I didn't prepare enough for this episode. We have a stalwart with us. But even the pre-conversation, pre-recording conversation has been fruitful. Sippin' a little whiskey, it's not even 2:00 p.m. on Monday, but that's okay.
[00:03:05.686] - David
That's okay!
[00:03:06.100] - Caullen
So I'm feeling good, but that's the context in which I'm feeling good. Y tú?
[00:03:12.550] - David
Yo, man, I've been.... I've been really gassed because we have check-ins with organizations or comrades. Like, man, how you doing? I'm like, yo, I'm actually fucking pumped dude. Like, I've been fucking hyped. Like, oh, what happened? Oh, yeah, I saw you were traveling. Yeah, bro, we went to Seattle, then we went to Vermont. I hadn't been to either places. I was on a plane for more times than I think I've ever been ever really. It's like that three and a half, four hour plane ride.
[00:03:33.730] - Caullen
Yeah.
[00:03:35.040] - David
But just really gased and really excited to hang out with the right people. I think when we go, it's different with when we've gone to New York or even True/False Film Festival- but being able to tour with some of our projects, like No Cop Academy. Like crashing One Million Experiments with the Respair fellas. I think it just brings different people to those spaces. And it's like-minded individuals. It's people who understand the game that's being played and these are the motherfuckers on our team, so to speak. So I don't know, it was really exciting. Really encouraging. Really, really excited to be back in Chicago. And as you mentioned, it's summertime Chi.
[00:04:07.050]
[audio clip of "Summertime" by DJ Jazzy Jeff, Fresh Prince, and Hybrid]
[00:04:09.110] - David
We all know shit is always popping. Shit's crazy. Kiera just came back from Market Days, she's doing alright. Caullen, I appreciate you naming just the other side of that coin, which is unfortunately genocide, death, police brutality, the militarization of states and etc. Etc around the world. And so we always have to hold that with the other. Because two things can be true. We can be experiencing joy while things are taking place. But it's kind of- continue as we center-in at Bourbon 'n BrownTown, excited to kind of get into the shits of this conversation.
[00:04:39.780] - Caullen
With us, we have Bill Ayers, a longtime activist, organizer, and formerly a Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago, now retired. Bill has written extensively about social justice and democracy, education and the cultural context of schooling and teaching as an essentially intellectual, ethical, and political enterprise. He's written a myriad of books. I'll just name a few of them. They include Fugitive Days: A Memoir, Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident, Demand the Impossible! A Radical Manifesto, as well as When Freedom is the Question, Abolition is the Answer: Reflections on Collective Liberation. So much more we can say about this man, but I'm going to shut up and have him speak for himself. Bill, what's going on?
[00:05:27.150] - Bill
It's great to be here. Both of you, thank you so much for having me. It's an honor. But I was really resonating to your little conversation with each other, because what you were describing is how I feel every day, which is caught in a contradiction, or I sometimes say I woke up dancing the dialectic. Because it is the best of times and it's the worst of times. I feel like Charles Dickens would understand completely where we live, because on the one hand, as you all were kind of remarking, we live at a time when there's a proxy war in Europe, a shadow war in Asia, a genocidal war in the Middle east, and at the same time, we've never seen such quick resistance among the American population; which has really changed the narrative about what's going on in Gaza, in Palestine. Unbelievable. I mean, if you'd said to me five years ago, we'll be having a conversation about America's role as an enabler of ethnic cleansing and genocide, I would have said, you're probably out of your mind, but we are having that conversation. And I tip my hat to the Palestinian people, Students for Justice in Palestine, The Dissenters, Jewish Voice for Peace, because they've made that happen.
[00:06:43.520] - Bill
So at the same time that police murders continue apace, I've never seen a bigger outpouring for racial justice in this country than I saw in 2020 and participated in. So we have to kind of remember, as you said, two things can happen at once. It could be the best of times and the worst of times. And that always brings me to where I think we all ought to be living and thinking, which is contradiction. Contradiction, the universal experience of humanity. And here we are, looking forward to some peace demonstrations here in Chicago. Also looking forward to the coronation of the next candidate for president. All these things are happening at once, so let's not get stuck in a single-minded or one-sided way of looking at things.
[00:07:32.240] - Bill
There's another contradiction that I'll mention, just because, Caullen, you touched on it, and that is this- has been a contradiction my whole life. I never know how to balance being personally as happy as I am and as lucky as I am with how dismal and dark the world seems to me sometimes. And it's that trying to figure out how to live with joy and live with anger, how to live with being pissed off at everything you see around you, but knowing that you can't get to where you want to go if you're just pissed off. You have to- only grace and love and forgiveness and generosity will take us where we need to go. So those are the contradictions I live with every day. And I was pleased at how well you guys kind of laid those out.
[00:08:20.410] - Caullen
And on that, we end the episode. I'm just kidding. Thanks so much for that, bringing yourself into that broader theme in all of your work and all of your love that you're bringing into the space. I have lots of thoughts, but, David, I'm curious how you're situating with what Bill just mentioned and anything else before we kind of get rolling.
[00:08:42.680] - David
No, I think to me, I just see all the connections. Because today, here we are talking about the DNC in 1968. And so some of us weren't around during that time. And yet it's so beautiful when we constantly think of the way history repeats itself. When the lesson isn't learned. And/or how the state, in this example, how the state moves or acts differently because of what took place. And so I'm really excited to kind of start centering a little bit of your journey, Bill, in terms of like, you were around in '68. Curious to hear what are some of the things you remember? What do you recall? And I know we'll definitely talk a little bit more about that past, but I'm just excited to stay in the dialog of having an opportunity to dissect history in a very, very colloquial fashion- because we're not scholars.
[00:09:30.960] - Caullen
I mean, I have a Masters in Sociology.
[00:09:31.600] - David
I ain't like Bill, I ain't got that many books under my belt right now. Pero, I do think it's important for us to be able to have this opportunity to talk with folks who are part of history. And connecting it to the history that we're making. History that we're currently pursuing in the moment. But that's kind of where I'm at. And so I'm curious-
[00:09:52.180] - Caullen
For sure. I would love to add, I think for folks who may not be familiar with you or your work, especially before you became a scholar, I would love to hear a little bit of that. Because we were talking off mic beforehand- I think, now, for Caullen being transplanted into Chicago, been here 15 years or so, definitely my political and creative home now. I know you as one of the OGs of the game, especially in Chicago and stuff. And so I know that now. And obviously we know AirGo and Respair fellows, and other folks in movement who are close to you as well, which feels really good. I feel honored- for folks like you, whether the folks that are OGs or folks we know, be in our presence and be friends and comrades feels really cool. But not everyone has that experience.
[00:10:39.740] - Caullen
And then I also think about the first time I heard your name, I think I was 17, 16 or 17. Obama was running for president for the first time, and.... We can have a whole episode on that. But thinking of how the Right wants to get at anything to bring anyone down who doesn't agree with their ideology. But I remember them like, oh, Obama's friends with Bill Ayers. He's a terrorist. He's friends with terrorists. Ahhhh. And I was like, who the hell is this Bill Ayers dude? And I feel like, from who I'm hearing this from, and how they're talking about him, he's not a terrorist. Or maybe he is for the right reasons. What does that even mean? My 17 year old self was going crazy. So that was the first conversation which I heard your name. And they were talking about your work with Weather Underground and things. And so, all that is to say, I would love to end David's longer question, he alluded about '68 for sure, but where you were when the world was, at that time?
[00:11:35.430] - Bill
Sure. You know, one quick clarification, perhaps. I never really believed the idea that history repeats itself. I think that history- we see themes repeating again and again, but that's because contradictions weren't resolved. One of the most obvious is the struggle for Black freedom. I mean, this is a centuries old struggle. So you say, well, history is repeating itself- not exactly. It's the same contradiction: white supremacy, Black oppression, it takes many forms. It takes many guises. The guise we're in now includes mass incarceration, which we've talked about in the past. So it's not like this is brand new. It's not like it's repeating itself. It's a theme that's never gone away. So I think we have to kind of remind ourselves of that.
[00:12:25.660] - Bill
But let me go back to some of the early days. I should say right up front, though, that I'm not one of the old people you probably know who is nostalgic for a ship that already left the shore. That's not me. I feel very much of the movement at this moment. And I've never felt like, oh, there were the good old days, and now history is repeating itself. No, I don't buy that. I feel like we did what we did, and I'll talk a bit about that. We failed more than we succeeded. And that's the nature of political movements, social movements, radical movements. We learn some lessons, not a lot. And we soldier on. I mean, that to me, is how one lives a life; that you try to kind of name the moment that you're living in, react to it, learn from it, and go on. And I could say more about that.
[00:13:19.550] - Bill
But I go back pre '68 just to say something about the war in Vietnam and the Black Liberation struggle at that time. In 1965 was the first time I was arrested. And I was arrested in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with 39 other students inside the Selective Service office, the draft board that was selecting young men to go fight and die and kill in Vietnam. And 39 of us took over the office and destroyed some property. We were determined to bring the issue of the war in Vietnam to the public mind.
[00:13:56.920] - Bill
But just to put that in a little better context, there had been a rally on campus, University of Michigan, the founding city of Students For A Democratic Society. A hotbed of student radicalism. We had about 300 people at a rally on campus. We were surrounded by a couple thousand students who wanted to see us arrested, expelled from school, and so on. So don't get the idea, again, the mythologizing of the so-called 60s. And I say "so-called 60s" because nobody looked at their watch on December 31, 1969, and said, oh shit, it's about to end, what are we going to do? Nobody said that. Nobody lives by decades, that's marketing, that's mythologizing. That's bullshit.
[00:14:41.610] - Bill
But I was arrested in 1965. A couple thousand people opposing us, a few hundred people in opposition to the war. And we were arrested, and I did ten days in county jail. But it's important to see the context: it was a big civil disobedience against the war. We were borrowing tactics and ideas from the Civil Rights Movement. We were trying to put our bodies on the line. And at that moment, 1965, about 20% of Americans opposed the war. Three years later, about 56% of Americans opposed the war. And a super majority in the world opposed the war. Well, what happened between '65 and '68 leading up to the moment you're interested in?
[00:15:28.520] - Bill
What happened was the Black Freedom Movement came out not unanimously, but significantly against the war. Muhammad Ali, the champ, announced that he would not fight in the white man's army, that no Vietnamese ever called him the n word, and that shook the country up. It got him in a lot of trouble, too, and it was a courageous thing to do. The student nonviolent coordinating committee, the kids who'd led the lunch counter sit ins and the freedom rides, they put out a statement, say, in 1966, saying, no Black man should go 10,000 miles away to fight for a so-called freedom he doesn't enjoy in Mississippi.
[00:16:07.890] - Bill
And Martin Luther King famously gave speech after speech, and finally the most famous speech "Beyond Vietnam", given in April 4th, 1967, in which he says, "the greatest purveyor of violence on earth is my government." He said we're on the wrong side of the world revolution. He said that we need to get right with humanity. And many people said to him, stay in your lane. And King said that night, at Riverside church in New York, people who think I have a lane and it doesn't include peace don't know me. I don't have a lane. My lane is humanity. My lane is justice. And I'm not going to "get in my lane" in some kind of ghettoized idea of the power's view of what a civil rights leader should do. So these things were happening.
[00:16:58.100] - Bill
The other thing that was happening in those three years- there are many things. The other thing that was happening was Vietnam vets were coming home and telling the truth about what they had done there, what they had seen there, what they had suffered there. And they not only brought new energy to the anti-war movement, but they had their own organizations, and they gathered in Washington, DC, and threw their medals at Congress. And they said, I don't want this stinking medal. It was the most extraordinary demonstration you've ever seen. The country shook to its boots.
[00:17:30.170] - Bill
A third thing that was happening, this is the least significant, but it matters to me, is a lot of us were knocking on doors. Not only getting arrested and organizing demonstrations, which we were. But frankly, by that time, it was fairly routine for me to get arrested or to get beaten up by the police. That was fairly easy. A much more difficult task was going to Detroit and spending a summer knocking on doors in working class neighborhood. Bringing literature, bringing truth about the war, that was hard work, and we met a lot of opposition, but we also found some allies and some recruits. So these things happened between '65 and '68.
[00:18:09.280] - Bill
In March 1968- March 31st, Lyndon Johnson, the president at the time, goes on television, and at the end of a speech he says, "I will not run for reelection." The country was shocked. And he was reacting to the anti-war pressure growing. He was reacting to a senator who threw his hat in the ring to primary Johnson around the question of peace- a guy named Eugene McCarthy and all of his acolytes came to Chicago. They were called The Clean For Gene Kids, they were in the streets. But so Johnson stepped down. You cannot imagine the ecstasy that I felt that night. Because for three years I'd been organizing, being arrested, marching, fighting and now suddenly we had won. Now it's true, a million people were dead, but it was about to end.
[00:19:06.310] - Bill
So we swirled spontaneously out of our apartments and our dormitories, all over the country, but I was in Ann Arbor. And we swirled through the city. And late at night about 500 of us landed on the lawn of the president of the University of Michigan. He had a bullhorn, and I had a bullhorn. I was the president of SDS; he was the president of the university. And I said something ridiculous like, "fuck you, you motherfucker", something into the mic- into the megaphone.
[00:19:38.120] - David
Valid.
[00:19:39.990] - Bill
He later, incidentally, the president of the University of Michigan, in his memoir he said, "Bill Ayers and I often disagreed but he was always articulate." And I think, well, maybe that was articulate for 1970.
[00:19:52.688] - Caullen
Very clear and direct. You knew what that meant.
[00:19:53.390] - Bill
You know, what the hell? I just babbled something. In any case, what he said that night, president of the university stood up and said to 500 anti-war people trampling his front lawn, "you have won a great victory. You have changed the country. Be satisfied, be happy and go home knowing that you've done something historic." He believed it that night, and I believed it that night. And four days later King was assassinated. And two months later Kennedy was assassinated. And two months after that Henry Kissinger emerged from the swamp he was living in, I think it was called Harvard, and joined Richard Nixon. And now we knew, the war wouldn't end, the war would expand.
[00:20:40.320] - Bill
And here was the situation, this is- I'm trying to set the scene for you because it's easy-. In retrospect it's always easy to sum things up and say this is the linear presentation of what happened. It wasn't like that. Swirling, swirling, swirling; contradiction after contradiction. But this created a crisis for the anti-war movement and a crisis for democracy. The people were against the war. We'd done everything we could think of to stop the war. And the war was not only going to grind on, but every week that it went on 6,000 people would be murdered in our name. Every week two World Trade Centers in our name. And there was no end in sight.
[00:21:22.530] - Bill
So again, looking back, we can say, well, the American war in Vietnam was ten years. Yes, 3 million people were killed, it was terrible. But it was ten years. Looking forward from 1968, it was infinite. And every week, 6,000 people murdered by our government. And what do you do? So, within my own birth family- I'm the middle of five kids. One of my brothers went to Canada as pride of the Great Peace Migration. One of my brothers joined the Democratic Party and tried to build a Peace Wing. One went to the communes. One went to the factories. And I did what I did. I was one of the founders of the Weather Underground. And our intention, well, our intention was to make a revolution; but in the short term, our intention was to end this war and issue a screaming response to genocide. Were any of the five of us brilliant, perfect vanguard? No. Were any of us crazy? I don't think so. And so that's what led to us going underground years later.
[00:22:24.640] - Bill
But maybe we should go back to '68 and the convention itself.
[00:22:28.830] - Caullen
Yeah, no, I mean, that's- I mean, thank you for sharing all that. And the plot points and the context, and how you felt at the time. Kind of to your broader point, as far as how we look at history and how we live through history, you know, where David and I are coming from, we can read your memoir or something, or get those kind of cultural artifacts. But otherwise, we know dates, we know what happened, we know those things; and so bringing in how you as a person felt and how the sensibility of the movement or things were around you, as well as those dates that we know to be true, leading up to a certain decade or date or whatever is important. And it's lovely hearing that reflected in that way.
[00:23:03.820] - Caullen
But I love how you talked about, both of you, actually, how you talked about history. And David, you mentioned history- I forgot how exactly you said it, as far as looking back. But I think also we know, in this room, we're living it right now. And what you said before you got on talking, Bill, about when you're in it, you're just kind of like, oh, we're just doing stuff, we don't know what the future's gonna look like, we're just doing the things. And I think- I feel like maybe because I'm in- I think we're in a special situation or special community here in Chicago, that I feel like we're living history. And I think I wouldn't if it wasn't for learning from, and reading, and talking to folks like you and just thinking about how I've gotten where I am politically. And like, okay, now I can kind of see these plot points.
[00:23:52.860] - Caullen
And maybe it's because of the digital age we're in. Like A Trump, A COVID. David's heard me say this a million times, but even just this year alone, the weeks have passed like, I know these are going to mean something because they mean something now and they will in the future. And so, I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm a filmmaker and storyteller, so I'm like, alright, these are plot points. These are dates, these are things that are going to be there that are both kind of bullshit, because some of these things don't really matter, but you know how they move people. And if people are moved in a certain way, you can use that as a storytelling device to get folks on board for ideologies more transformative. And it feels like some of the kind of work you did, too.
[00:24:24.430] - Caullen
Biden dropped out of the race. Trump "assassination attempt," another episode. Other things that happened where I'm like, I just kind of roll my eyes at them. I'm like, wait, this is a huge moment in history, whether it should be or not. And how is this going to play in the immediate future as well as the future future? Which, of course, we don't have a crystal ball, so we don't actually know, but I think there is a way you can learn from context of what's happened. Because your point, Bill, it's not repeating, it's a continuum.
[00:24:51.360] - Bill
And the contradictions and the themes have to be resolved or have to be addressed, again and again. But I want to underline the point you made, because I think it should be presented to your people, to your audience, in a big letter way. And that is to say, yes, we are living in history. But to say this is a historic moment always irritates me. Every moment is historic. You don't know its meaning exactly, and you may not know in your lifetime.
[00:25:20.520] - Bill
I'm often reminded of Zhou Enlai, who was the Premier of Communist China. He was asked by a French journalist in, I believe, the early 1950s. He was asked by a French journalist, "what was the impact of the French Revolution of the 18th century on the Chinese Revolution of the 20th century?" And without missing a beat, Zhou Enlai said, "it's too soon to tell." Now, that knocked me over, because how do you fucking know what means anything?
[00:25:52.050] - Bill
I mean, the one thing I know for sure, having lived for the last 80 years, is that whatever we did in 1968, in 1965, in 1982, whatever we did was prelude to what has to be done now. And that's a much more important way to think about history than to think, oh, I can get to the bottom of things. History is constantly being- history both means what happened, but also the word means what we tell ourselves happened. And that shifts constantly.
[00:26:26.580] - Bill
Even in my lifetime. To tell the story of slavery, today, without slave narratives is inconceivable. How do you know anything about slavery without reading the accounts of the workers who were enslaved? Without reading the accounts of the people who resisted. But when I grew up, the history books didn't have any of that. So history is being remade as it should be. You look at something like the 1619 Project and you just have to cheer that it's something that's trying to make sense of the world we live in now by looking at some of the antecedents. And I think that's- so put it in a big letter message: WE ARE LIVING IN HISTORY. History is always living. And the interpretation of history is part of our job. But part of our job is not to get stuck in thinking that history happened once upon a time.
[00:27:21.160] - Bill
I said earlier about not believing that- not being nostalgic for the so-called 60s. But I say that intentionally because I think too many young activists for too long were saying, oh, I was born in the wrong decade. That's bullshit. You were born here and now, man. This is where it is. And I'm so glad to be here and now. People also- you know, you guys referred to me as an OG, and people say- people of your generation, dudes, I'm of your generation.
[00:27:50.240] - Caullen
I'm here right now!
[00:27:50.870] - Bill
I'm living now, I'm not dead! You know, when I'm dead, you guys can tell stories, but that's not now. I'm going to be in the streets next week, as I often am. I'm going to be knocking on doors, as I often do. I'm going to be agitating and writing and speaking because that's what I do. Because like other people, other like-minded people, I want to pay attention to the world as it's unfolding. I want to be astonished at both the ecstasy and beauty in all directions, but also at the unnecessary suffering. Then I want to do something. I'm not ready to sit on the couch and have a phone call with Joe Biden. I want to do shit now! You see what I'm saying?
[00:28:36.760] - Caullen
I appreciate that you brought that up. I was thinking about the- first of all, OG is a term of endearment.
[00:28:46.200] - Bill
I took it as that, honestly.
[00:28:48.030] - Caullen
But, no, I hear you as far as your generation or whatever, but I-
[00:28:51.700] - Caullen
No, no, I think about when folks were like, oh, it's my grandma, I can't. My grandma voted for Trump, she's racist. She's like, yeah, whatever, whatever. But she's just from a different generation. Like, no, is she alive? Then she's from now. And she's the one at the Trump rally saying, "mass deportations now." Like, literally. So it's like, what are we... She's from here. So it goes on the flip side as well, you know? But I always think about that, so thank you for that.
[00:29:12.300] - Bill
You know, I think that's really another really important point you're making, Caullen. I think that we have to- not only if we want to breathe democracy into this frail and frightened society, we have to be willing not only to talk to strangers, but to stand up and say what we believe. Not always in an aggressive or confrontational way, but we have to say the truth as we see it. Or how do people know how to bounce off of us? Grandparents are a great example. Parents are a great example.
[00:29:43.300] - Bill
I remember when our comrades went to Cuba in the 1960s, late 1960s, and met with the Vietnamese. And we had big plans, and we told the Vietnamese all the things we were going to do to make a revolution in the United States. And they were very kind and very understanding. But they also said to us late at night, "I'd really like you to talk to your republican parents."
[00:30:09.700] - Caullen
Let's go!
[00:30:11.160] - Bill
And that always knocked me out because we weren't interested in talking to our republican parents. We were rinsing or tearing the shit up. But actually, both are true. You don't have to choose. Both things can be true. We can be organizers, we can be thoughtful, and when we can't convince people, we can be self-critical. Because I've believed my whole life, and people often think I'm out of my mind when I say this, I've believed my whole life, that on the 10 or 15 most important issues facing us, I'm in the great majority in this country. Now, I don't always- I'm not always convincing. I'm not always able to mobilize that great majority, but I believe I'm in the majority. And therefore, if I can't convince people, shame on me. And if I'm not trying, that's even worse.
[00:31:00.180] - David
I love that. I love that. I appreciate all the context in terms of history and stuff. I appreciate kind of hearing the levels in which we're even engaging. Just this very conversation. Like, we started with talking about 1968 Chicago DNC.
[00:31:13.790] - Bill
We can go back to it, too.
[00:31:14.720] - David
We're not even there yet!
[00:31:15.500] - Caullen
But aren't we, though? But aren't we?
[00:31:18.660] - David
I love it. I love it. And I think something just to name to you, Bill, I don't know if our B'nB listeners are aware of that. But I think, to me, I always use my parents as the measurement of like, okay, is what I am saying, is what I am telling you making sense? Kind of a place for that. So I appreciate the Vietnamese.
[00:31:36.280] - Bill
I think that's a very good standard. I think that's very good standard. I think we should all try to do that. And I think we should also remember that we live in the United States of Amnesia. And that means we are citizens of the United States of Amnesia. People don't remember day-to-day, week-to-week, year-to-year, epoch-to-epoch. I mean, so it's important to kind of recognize that part of what your responsibility is as a moral person, certainly as an organizer or an activist, your responsibility is not only to pay attention and open your eyes to reality, which is always changing. Opening your eyes once and then saying, "I've got it" is.... That's orthodoxy. And that's bullshit.
[00:32:24.530] - Bill
But opening your eyes continually and then being willing to talk to people who are going to sleep, as Ta-Nehisi Coates calls them, The Dreamers. I'm thinking suddenly of my- 30 or 40 years ago, I was taking care of my mother who had broken her ankle. And she asked me very innocently, this often happened with my mom and me, and she said, "what is this thing I've heard about called global warming?" And I gave her a very mild explanation.
[00:32:57.000] - Caullen
The capitalist class, ma!
[00:32:59.200] - Bill
I didn't go there. I gave her a very mild- I didn't want to scare the shit out of the old lady. And she was my beloved mother. But she looked at me very coldly and she said, "well, I'm sorry I asked." Exactly. You're sorry you asked, because now you heard. And when you heard, you have to do something. And in your little suburban glory holes you don't have the problems that other people have, so you can pretend and you can close your eyes. But that's exactly what privilege does. Not just on that issue, but on every issue. That is privilege.
[00:33:38.490] - Bill
The real problem of privilege isn't- no one should spend time worrying about guilt and shame, people should worry about being put to sleep. Because privilege is an anesthetizing drug, and it's offered to us free of charge. And if we buy it, whether it's American privilege, white skin privilege, male privilege, whatever privilege you're talking about, if you buy it, you're being put to sleep, you're being drugged. And that's why we have to kind of push ourselves to wake up, pay attention, be smart about it, and never stop. Every morning, wake up again and try to make sense again.
[00:34:16.140] - Bill
So the question I ask at the beginning of my classes, at the beginning of gatherings, I often ask the question, "how do you name this political moment?" Because the political moment is changing day-by-day, hour-by-hour. Naming it once isn't good enough, you have to keep alive. And so that's what I think you guys are saying, and we're saying together: stay alive, stay awake, and then do something.
[00:34:44.290] - David
I think some of the other things that kind of add to that build up was JFK was assassinated in '63. Malcolm X was assassinated in '65. So to your point of privilege and this kind of- I'm always talking about how we've been pacified in terms of everything that we've been given. And at that time, the Internet wasn't a thing tv and radio were. And so these kind of flashpoint moment, I think that's... These... I can't imagine experiencing these things. Like losing JFK, losing Malcolm X, hearing Muhammad Ali, and then losing MLK. And then- so these flashpoint moments kind of being put in people's faces ever more, ever present.
[00:35:23.760] - David
And then next thing you know, you get Bill knocking on your door, you're like, hey, did you hear about this? You're like, I actually just seen- you know what I'm saying? The way people are then able to connect the dots. And so, my kind of question, and I'm curious how you- your response, but why do you think the DNC chose Chicago in 1968 out of all the places it could have gone?
[00:35:41.420] - Bill
Well, I think it had to do with Illinois being a bit of a swing state. I think it had to do with Mayor Daley being a power broker within the Democratic Party. I think it had to do with wanting to make a splash in a big urban center. Look, let's historicize this a bit, too. You go back four years, and you have the challenge of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. I don't know if you know that story?
[00:36:06.400] - David
Could you give us a little context?
[00:36:07.140] - Bill
Okay, I'll give you a little bit of it. But the student nonviolent coordinating committee and the other civil rights organizations in Mississippi decided to mount a challenge, first in 1960 and then in 1964. And the Mississippi Freedom Movement brought forward an entire delegation, and they wanted them seated at the convention, not the regular Democrats. The regular Democrats were all crackers and racists. So they brought forward a slate that included Fannie Lou Hamer, the great organizer, the great former sharecropper who became a mother of the movement, and what an upheaval that caused. And they were worried about repetitions of that. They wanted to have a convention that was peaceful, but of course, they'd hung themselves on the Vietnam War.
[00:36:58.870] - Bill
Now, here's a contradiction or a parallel. Lyndon Johnson had a very "successful presidency" in his terms. Not in my terms, but in his terms.
[00:37:09.156] - Caullen
Air quotes, y'all.
[00:37:10.110] - Bill
He had passed legislation that was consequential. He had organized a coalition that was meaningful. He had passed civil rights legislation, the farthest reaching civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. Don't get lost, though, this didn't come from Lyndon Johnson's head, full blown. He was responding to fire from below. That's always important to remember. That the ideas that change the world, whether it's Johnson or whether it's Roosevelt, who was a patrician from the Hudson Valley, he wasn't a workers right guy, but he was responding to a workers movement.
[00:37:48.530] - Bill
The most significant and obvious one is Abraham Lincoln. He went into office. Nobody's ever read his first inaugural address. You haven't, I'll bet. The first inaugural address is the one where he genuflex in front of the slavocracy and he says, "I don't want to mess with your business. I have no business messing with you. I accept you." It was the second inaugural address that you've read, because that's taught in the schools. And that one could have been, and may well have been, written by Frederick Douglass. That's the one where he says, "for every drop of blood drawn by the lash, we shall respond with a drop of blood drawn by the sword." I mean, whoa, Abe, calm down.
[00:38:33.230] - Bill
But the point is, that these three great presidents who we think about, they all got their greatness because they were responding. They were politicians responding to fire from below. But in terms of Johnson, cracker from Texas, there's an anti-war movement, and they're trying to figure out how do we respond to this, how do we negotiate, deal with this? And so they come to Chicago, and they don't really expect what's about to happen. Hubert Humphrey, who was a raging liberal, happy warrior from Minnesota. We got another one, so... Another parallel. But Hubert Humphrey tried very hard in July to shift his position against the war, but he was too closely tied to the war. He was the cheerleader for the war. And Johnson sacrificed his presidency on the Vietnam War.
[00:39:30.600] - Bill
And so it's worth remembering these things simply because- speaking of Humphrey, I mentioned how easy it was to fight the police and how hard it was to organize- how emotionally more difficult it was. Well, I was a member of the American Federation of Teachers. And when Humphrey first was campaigning for the presidency, he addressed the National Convention. And I was there, and there were 1,500 people in the hall. And I stood up and denounced him. And that was maybe the hardest thing I'd ever done. I'm shouting above 1,500 people: "You're a warmonger. You're killing Vietnamese" on and on. And the whole time I'm feeling my mother on my shoulder saying, Bill, we're polite people, don't do that, that's embarrassing. And it's funny because it's that middle class upbringing, it reaches up and tries to smite you.
[00:40:25.120] - Bill
Anyway, that's a parallel that I think is worth noting, that the war brought Johnson down and it ruined his presidency. It also ruined his legacy. And here we are with a pre-announced genocide being carried out by a liberal democratic administration. And it is having a similar kind of impact. It's destroying what might have been some hopeful moves forward around the environment or around other issues.
[00:40:55.480] - Caullen
I had a conversation with a friend the other day just via texting, but I put a post up about democrats not codifying Roe v. Wade. And he was like, well, it's not really fair because- and he tried to give me the details of the past 20 years and stuff. And I was like, okay, we disagree. But I know you're making this in good faith, and I know you know some things I don't, so let's talk about it. And an underlying thing was, he was talking about this moment right now with Biden stepping down, and Kamala Harris, and Biden's "legacy" and to whose legacy that means. And for him, he was mentioning the "unsexy" legislation that he had passed. He named a couple of different things. And I was like, I kind of- not conceded the point, but I was like, sure, these things happened and wouldn't have happened under, like if Trump won.
[00:41:39.380] - Caullen
However, any democratic candidate who won that primary would have done those things because they had to, because of movement. And what they actually signed up and passed was a watered down version of what movement was demanding. And so I was like, if you talk about narrative- and he was annoyed about some things he's seen, which I kind of agreed with. Some things I've seen, which he agreed with, which were different as far as: movement, centrists, liberals, people, politicos, whatever. But I was like, what's... you make a point, but what is included in that conversation, it's not context, what's included in the conversation is movement always making that thing happen.
[00:42:15.020] - Caullen
So it doesn't really matter who's in that seat; if they're a Democrat, they would have done it because they had to. And also what they did was not good enough. And the idea of being practical or having to move a certain way isn't inherently untrue, because I think what we fight for in this room is sustainable for people on the planet. But also, the right isn't doing what's practical, they're just doing what they want to do and figuring it out, and then we move towards them. So it's like...
[00:42:37.130] - Bill
No, I think you're absolutely right. And I think that what you're calling movement, I'm calling fire from below. And I pay attention to electoral politics, but it's not where I live. Where I live is in movement building. And movement building always involves mobilization of masses of people, changing the narrative, and then connecting the issues. So I think we're at a phenomenal moment in movement building. I mean, you can talk about different issues, but in Illinois, we're in a phenomenal moment of movement building around abolition of prisons. It's a phenomenal moment. If you'd said, ten years ago, we would be where we are today, everyone would have thought you needed your head examined. Of course, there's no way to predict, but here we are.
[00:43:21.930] - Bill
And the same is true, you're right, about environmental issues. For example, we talked about contradictions when we began our conversation. And certainly the destruction of life on earth is a screaming crisis that we have to address. And it kind of amazes me sometimes that when we know this crisis exists, that people can go on with business as usual. I often think about the pandemic and how quickly people like Arne Duncan, who was Obama's Secretary of Education, and really everybody else, wanted immediately to return to normal. I did not want to return to normal because normal is a state of emergency for most people. I wanted to think of something new. Let's go in a different direction.
[00:44:07.630] - Bill
And I think we have those inflection points presented to us again and again, and we should seize them. And my work, and I think many people who listen to you, their work, is trying to build an irresistible social movement that can actually move things forward. And as you say, real politics will find a way to follow, but it never is going to lead. It's never going to set the moral conditions or the moral terms of the struggle in a way that we can set them.
[00:44:36.880] - Caullen
David, I'm curious, with the whole parallel conversation- if you don't mind- I feel like your mind and energy is there as far as paralleling some of the stuff happening now, or has had the past couple of years. 2024 election, whatever, DNC in Chicago next week with the '68 convention, considering everything we've had named contextually.
[00:44:59.680] - David
Yeah. I mean, I think in the research that we were able to do, it's so interesting what data tells you in terms of CPD in '68 had clear orders to keep the peace by any means necessary.
[00:45:14.400] - Caullen
That's such a weird thing to say.
[00:45:15.380] - David
That's the word. That's what I heard, Bill, is that- can you second that?
[00:45:19.730] - Bill
Well, I think, again, let's talk about the cops. Because in '68, the police was a- the police force was an organized racist organization. It was under the direct thumb and rule of Mayor Daley, he set the terms a year before. It's worth remembering that in '67, there were riots all over the country. So-called race riots. And a presidential commission came out a year later, March '68, and said, we're moving toward two separate societies, Black and white and unequal. And I read that and I'm like, where have you fucking been? We're moving towards two? Are you kidding? This is the reality that we were born into, thrust into, and we've been confronting ever since. So the idea that somehow something's happening, that we're moving in that direction, it was nuts. *laughing*
[00:46:12.660] - Bill
But at that point in '67, Daley issued a command, famously: Shoot to kill arsonists, shoot to maim looters. "Shoot to maim looters, shoot to kill arsonists." And so everyone knew the cops were going to be a scary force. And today, the cops are a scary force. Not quite as structurally racist or personally- still structurally racist, completely, but not as- now there are more African American-
[00:46:42.090] - Caullen
We got Black cops, we got queer cops.
[00:46:43.790] - Bill
We got a Black cop, exactly.
[00:46:44.956] - Caullen
We got a cop car with a rainbow.
[00:46:45.910] - David
We hide our tattoos.
[00:46:47.330] - Bill
And it's worth remembering that every colonial government in history has had its people from the colony who serve it. But what I was going to say about the cops back then is that, part of Daley's strategy to keep the demonstration small was to say, if you come to Chicago, you will be killed, or you will be jailed. And it had a measurable effect. When I think about myself organizing for that demonstration, and I was very much- I was a student organizer in Michigan and Ohio. I traveled those territories and mobilized students to build SDS chapters, to unite with the Black Panther Party and the Black student unions, and to fight racism on campus and war research and all the rest of it.
[00:47:40.650] - Bill
That summer and fall and winter, we were trying to mobilize people to come to Chicago. And we had two goals. One goal was to bring a million people to Chicago. On that goal, we failed miserably. We had a tiny demonstration. It was one of those demonstrations which was so iconic in retrospect, that I've never met a person my age who wasn't there. But it's materially impossible to be true because it was a tiny demonstration compared to the demonstrations of the day. I mean, we had half a million people in Washington. We had, I don't know, we had a small demonstration here.
[00:48:19.350] - Bill
But our second goal was, our audience was not those inside the coliseum, our audience was the whole world. That's why our slogan was, "the whole world is watching." And we wanted the world to see two things. One is, that American political power was upheld by force and violence and nothing else. It was not popular, it was upheld by force and violence. And we succeeded in that.
[00:48:47.330] - Bill
The other thing we wanted to tell the world is, there are people willing to put their bodies on the line who will try very hard to stop this government from its war making fantasies, its empirical- I mean, its imperialistic ambitions. There are people here who will do that. And we wanted to be those people. It's also worth noting that even though it was powered by, and a lot of the reputation is about students and students coming to Chicago, it was a much broader group than that. And the Black Movement was there. SNCC was there. Ralph Abernathy showed up with a Mule Train on South Michigan Avenue. Bobby Seale was part of it. So it's a myth to say it was all white and all young and all students. It was also linked to peace, was linked to justice, as it always must be. And those are the two issues that drove SDS and drove SNCC, and those are still the issues that should be driving us today.
[00:49:52.060] - David
Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that. But Caullen, to continue adding, so we're seeing... Appreciate that context towards CPD and where they were. At this point, we're understanding that they've mobilized themselves very well. I think there's a lot of reports out, the Triibe definitely being one of our favorite, in naming that right now, CPD is scheduled to get $17.6 million just for personnel. So that's just for people who are going to be working the streets.
[00:50:20.000] - Bill
Unbelievable.
[00:50:21.270] - David
14.5 million is going to "unspecific equipment". Which has been told by the state that will be a permanent asset to the city. But it's like, what the fuck are we spending 14.5 million for that isn't clean water?
[00:50:32.450] - Bill
And is it an asset? I mean, my god.
[00:50:34.970] - Caullen
"Asset to the city", it's like...
[00:50:36.270] - David
"To the city". And so-
[00:50:38.540] - Caullen
"City" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that phrase.
[00:50:39.800] - David
Yeah. Another thing that we'll add is, so we've confirmed that the city has also hired 500 out of town police officers. Which, in one of the quotes, forgot who necessarily said it but, out of state police officers are not from here and there's no process to hold them accountable for the violence that they can cause. And so these are some of the things that we're starting to see.
[00:50:58.630] - David
We're also- the way the streets are starting to get closed, the way the residents are starting to get impacted. If you live near the UC or MacArthur, probably more by UC, your cars gonna get checked on a regular basis if you live there. And so just the heightened sense of CPD kind of... I want to say that maybe they're trying to learn from their mistakes in '68? And you hope...
[00:51:21.200] - Bill
I don't buy it. I don't buy it.
[00:51:23.160] - David
In terms of-
[00:51:23.860] - Caullen
*laughs inaudibly*
[00:51:25.210] - David
Well, I mean, I don't know. I think, to me, it's like, I would hope that if I'm CPD, which I'm not, right. But it's like, alright-
[00:51:31.080] - Caullen
That would be a shock to me.
[00:51:32.110] - David
Under Brandon Johnson, I think- I don't know- it's like, you don't need the same thing that happened in '68? Like, if I'm Brandon Johnson, I'm like, alright, I'm not Daley. I'm not telling you all to shoot to kill or shoot to maim. Like, I don't know. I don't know.
[00:51:44.942] - Caullen
I mean, I'm listening. I wanna hear your point.
[00:51:46.040] - David
I mean, I'm literally just trying to think through the state, in my eyes, was always trying to do what they think is right. And so to me, they believe that these extra people is gonna keep the peace, so to speak. They've also allowed permits in comparison to the '68, where they did not allow a single permit for protest.
[00:52:01.960] - Bill
Well, they negotiated and negotiated and negotiated and then denied, and that's a standard tactic. You negotiate people to death, and then you deny what they ought to have. But I hear what you're saying. The contradiction for Mayor Johnson is, on the one hand, being a labor organizer, being somebody who comes out of a progressive wing of the democratic party, not wanting to have a fiasco in the streets, but also knowing that he's got a police department that's not under his control. I mean, he's got a police chief who's been talking about mass arrest sites and when they're going to deploy the mass arrests and when they're going to round people up in large numbers. I mean, it's going to be astonishing to watch. And I hope you're going to be there, I'm going to be there.
[00:52:56.760] - Caullen
I'm thinking about, man, so many thoughts. We said, are you gonna be there? Or are you gonna be there? And I'm thinking about 2020... Allegedly, after a certain action on July 17th. And an alleged Columbus statue was torn down by some folks. Talking about that event afterwards, and Operation Legend going on across the country, the disappearing of people in different cities, folks talking about footage Soapbox allegedly has or doesn't have from that event, and warrants for that footage. Things that were alarmist back then. Actually happened, alarmist back then, and talking about that event afterwards and folks were like, Were you there? And I was very careful with my words.
[00:53:40.460] - Caullen
And we do this podcast, I talk in public kind of often so I'm like, if I was, I would have seen that-. I was still very careful talking about it. So it's interesting, that moment and talking about it now, I still have those alarm bells in my brain. Then to ask about next week and... For listeners, for context, we're recording this a week from the 19th of August 2024, which is when the convention starts. And so even thinking of this idea of tracking history and being in it and looking back and looking forward, this recording in this room right now is doing that. In the sense of the main event of us having this conversation is around this thing next week. And for someone who might listen to this podcast two weeks from now, and their framing could be totally different.
[00:54:16.990] - Bill
Sure.
[00:54:18.268]
[crosstalk 00:54:19]
[00:54:19.150] - David
Like, I thought they all had bombs in their cars.
[00:54:21.360] - Caullen
Well, let's think about that as far as how we're having this last dance type conversation as far as moving the timeline back and forth.
[00:54:31.710] - Bill
But one of the things that you make me think of is that I can guarantee you that whatever happens, that at the end of the day, the left is going to be blamed for whatever happens, because they always are and it's almost always wrong. Hubert Humphrey- the line from '68 is that Humphrey lost because of the demonstrators and that's completely false in my view. Humphrey lost because of Humphrey. Al Gore lost because there was a counter- a green candidate in Florida- that's nonsense. Al Gore lost because Al Gore goes along with the program.
[00:55:12.470] - Bill
So here we are with a pre-announced genocide going on, and the United States unable- because it doesn't want to- to take a side of peace and to take the side of disarmament and to take the side of no more money for settlements, no more money for ethnic cleansing and so on. But they won't do that because that's not who they are. So we can pretend that they're free agents acting- the two things that are never on the ballot are war and capitalism. Those are never on the ballot under any conditions. And so it's up to them to change the terms.
[00:55:47.060] - Bill
We could have a very peaceful festival of life in Chicago, if all that would have to happen is the democratic establishment would have to say, shit, we got it wrong. You're absolutely right. We don't want to be a colonial power anymore, and we don't want Israel to act as our cats paw in the Middle East. We're against that, so we're with you. And if they did that, we could have a festival of life, but they're not likely to do it.
[00:56:14.480] - Caullen
And that's not who they are; not who they want to be.
[00:56:16.220] - Bill
That's not who they are. That's what I'm saying. You can look at any ballot and you can talk about issues that are of significance. You can talk about voting rights. You can talk about women's rights. These things matter. Maybe we should talk for a minute, in a minute, about voting. But the thing that's never up for discussion is: is capitalism makes sense for us? I mean, isn't there a better way to go? And I would argue all the time that, yes, there are many, many better ways to go. And capitalism is a moribund racket that's driving us all to the end of the earth. So, yes, we could talk about capitalism.
[00:56:56.730] - Bill
We could talk about the war machine. The fact that the US is the greatest purveyor of violence, as King said, it's multiply true today. It's the most violent country ever to exist in the history of the earth. Now, we don't think of ourselves that way, but we are and we need to come to terms with that, wake up to that in order to oppose it. And as long as the two great war parties in history, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, don't come to terms with their absolute engagement with the war industry and the war reality, we have a lot of work to do.
[00:57:40.460] - Caullen
Absolutely.
[00:57:42.540] - David
I mean, I'm just thinking about- my immediate thought and we'll popcorn to you, Caullen, in terms of Kamala.... I'm just thinking about their first comment a couple weeks ago or a couple days ago- I don't even know at this point of time. Time is an illusion. But them naming someone being like: call for a ceasefire, call for a ceasefire. And she's like: oh, you're a single issue voter? Shut up, because you want Trump to win. And just using that language.
[00:58:04.860] - David
And then a couple days ago, they took a stance and they kind of- I don't know if y'all seen the video- they kinda talked to the protester who was yelling for a ceasefire, and kind of alluded to maybe I'm gonna pull a Humphrey's and try calling for a ceasefire. But your point is, how can you when you're so ingrained, so entrenched, so much of a cheerleader to that? So is Harris ultimately gonna lose? Are we gonna get a repeat of after effects at the DNC? I don't know.
[00:58:29.300] - Bill
Who knows? It's hard to predict, but it is true that- I mean, you started by saying two things can be true at the same time, and I want to second that. I've seconded it twice already. But it is also true that the lesser of two evils is still evil and the lesser of two evils is still lesser. And if you don't believe that- I mean you can say, and I do say, that the political parties are like Tweedledum and Tweedledumber, and there's maybe an inch of difference between them. But a lot of people who are vulnerable live in that inch. You don't, I don't, but a lot of people do. And I'm not cynical about... Well, let me put it this way- I'm cynical about voting. I think it's a practical matter. And I think it's not a moral issue, it's a practical question. So because I live in Illinois, I'm voting for Caullen.
[00:59:29.090] - Caullen
That's right! Caullen for Pres, y'all!
[00:59:29.710] - Bill
But if I lived in Wisconsin, I would think differently about it.
[00:59:35.290] - Caullen
Yeah, that's a real reality. I feel like I've had conversations with folks who know my/our work and stuff, and know my politics and they live in that inch but are swiping right on going more left. And having conversations about- not as explicit- but like, well, what if Trump? But what if this? But we have to vote for Kamala and .... And I'm just like, how sustainable are any of these- either of these futures? And how does- how has anything transformative ever happened? And then how tired I am of it?
[01:00:11.670] - Bill
Well, sure, you're tired, and that's part of what we have to- when we think of the rhythm of activism or the rhythm of moral behavior, I start with the fact that you have to open your eyes and pay attention. But then you have to be astonished, then you have to act. Most importantly, you have to doubt and start over. But in doubting, you also need to take a breath, because we're here for the long run. You're not going to burn out in 30 days or 30 months.
[01:00:39.660] - Bill
But the reality is that people too often confuse voting with a moral stance. It's not a moral question. If you are a movement builder and you have the strategy to build a third party or you have the strategy for- well, then that's one thing. But when I say the lesser of two evils is lesser, ask anyone, any woman who's had to confront the reality of Dobbs, that's something that we could have avoided and we didn't. And I think that we made a huge mistake in that, because Dobbs didn't have to be the law of the land. But... And Hillary Clinton was a nightmare, there's no question.
[01:01:21.640] - Bill
I mean, the interesting thing is Bernardine and I, my partner and I, had already gotten our signs made protesting Clinton. We were with a group of a few hundred people. We were going to be on Constitution Avenue holding up signs about the warmonger as she rolled down to her inauguration. Well, we already had our airplane tickets. And so we ended up in Washington at the Women's March. But that's one of those examples where the predictable, the normal, the habitual was challenged. And that is sometimes called the "queer art of failure." You fail, you have to rethink. If Clinton had been elected, we could have gone around our sleepwalking ways, but suddenly people had to wake up. And I think that's worth noting. Your relationship is percolating along normal, and then you find out your partner had an affair- Boom! That's the queer art of failure: suddenly you have to rethink everything.
[01:02:20.590] - Caullen
What I was gonna say before was the thing about framing, and how you mentioned- they're already blaming whatever happens on the protesters in Chicago, the left was doing this, or Antifa was doing that, or with Humphrey's things back then. And there's- journalism is a whole weird mixed bag of corporatism and what have you. But even local publications I read and look after are having that same narrative as far as like, oh, all these pro-Palestinian protests make the left look weak on crime. And then the right can use the "tough on crime" mantra and then win the election. And that's still fodder, they're playing with you, after everything we've seen the past several years. And it's... I shouldn't expect better some of the time, but sometimes it's a scoff and it's shocking because I thought we discounted that several times over.
[01:03:16.440] - Bill
Well, actually, I think you should expect better. And I think that one of the problems we have often among progressives and on the left and among revolutionaries is that we assume that the system is corrupt and therefore we don't pay attention. So when Watergate happened, I had so many friends who didn't think it was a big deal. Of course they tapped the phones. Of course they broke in. Wait- be outraged! And you think about it in your everyday life. I mean, there was a time when seeing a homeless child at a train station was cause for outrage. As soon as you've gotten used to it, you've fallen into a trap. We should be outraged every fucking time, and we should want to tear, well, our hair out or the system down. But I think that it's important that we not get used to it and that we say no.
[01:04:08.680] - Bill
And I think that again and again, our job, as I said earlier, is to reframe issues. So right now, because of what you were pointing to- that we can anticipate- we have to say it's not the encampments that created the problem; it's the genocide that created the encampments that created the problem. And to see American universities and American university administrators act the way they've acted this year- I think is revelatory, illuminating. And I think we should point to that and reframe that. What is the role of a university? What is academic freedom? When you have the presidents of Ivy League schools crawling in front of congressional-know-nothing committees and apologizing and naming names of professors. People compare it to McCarthyism.
[01:04:58.940] - Caullen
I was about to say, it sounds like McCarthyism.
[01:05:00.380] - Bill
It's way worse than McCarthyism. McCarthyism had to do with whether I was a communist or a member of the Communist Party or a fellow traveler. This is about what you can say and teach in school. This is an attack on academic freedom, writ large. And I think the fact that our squirrely corporate university leadership couldn't stand up to that and couldn't make a full throated defense of academic freedom, which is incidentally different than the First Amendment; because they couldn't do that, that reveals something horrible at the heart of our educational system.
[01:05:37.170] - David
Man, I'm just thinking... So, Caullen, I appreciate you letting our listeners know we're a week out. I'm kind of thinking- expect everything and doubt everything. But I guess for some of our listeners, Bill, I think it would be cool- you mentioned organizing, getting people to '68. You know, we're in 2024. What's something that you- what's a piece of advice that you would offer a young organizer who's doing what you were doing in '68?
[01:06:07.430] - Bill
Well I told you that I'm not nostalgic. I'll also tell you that when I was 20 years old- and it's worth remembering when we talk about the Panthers or SDS in those years- we were 19, 20, 21. We were kids and we were taking on this huge responsibility, but we were just kids, and that's worth remembering. But when I was a kid, I learned from the old; and now that I'm old, I learn from the kids. And I don't have much advice.
[01:06:36.980] - Bill
If there's one thing that I carry with me, because I made these mistakes over and over, it's that you should follow the rhythm that I mentioned, and I think most activists and organizers do. Pay attention, be astonished, act, doubt, repeat. That's a good rhythm to follow. But the one thing I'm certain of is that when you feel self-righteous, you're wrong. You may be right on the issue, but your self-righteousness is wrong. And that leads to dogma, it leads to orthodoxy, it leads to mistake after mistake. So when you feel you're superior, that's wrong.
[01:07:16.950] - Bill
And I think in the '69, '70 period, when all hell was breaking loose and it felt like the world was coming undone at the seams, we took a very orthodox set of positions. We, the Weather Underground, and me personally. And I think that because I experienced that, I feel like whenever I get near dogma or orthodoxy, I get a nosebleed, and that's a signal back up. I mean, I just think that that's something we should all avoid. In other words- stay an organizer. Don't become a self-righteous asshole who knows everything and has nothing to learn.
[01:08:00.670] - Bill
Organizers, like good teachers, are always learning. And my standard for- we're going to have these demonstrations next week- my standard for every action, demonstration, intervention of any kind, my standard is pedagogical. Did I learn and did I teach? If I learned and I taught- terrific. If all I can say about the demonstration is, "I looked terrific in that headband throwing that Molotov cocktail", it's not good enough.
[01:08:27.510] - Caullen
My photo on Instagram got like a thousand likes.
[01:08:31.130] - David
*laughing* I knew it.
[01:08:32.930] - Caullen
My keffiyeh, my shades look sharp. You know what I'm saying?
[01:08:35.910] - Bill
You looked awesome. Exactly. And all I'm saying is, don't take that to be success. It's beautiful, and I want to put the poster on my wall, but it's not revolution. And it's not even organizing or effective militancy.
[01:08:50.280] - Caullen
That's such a good pearl of wisdom. Because when David asked the question, I was like, we got so many pearls already. But I think 1) that exists in movement today, I don't think that is much more of a revelation for folks. But I think about that, and I think about movement, and I think community building, more broadly, movement or not. And then just how it's all based on relationships. And I think about just getting an ego or self-righteousness in any form of relationships- with your partner, with your friend, with whatever; and how if that spurs up in that moment, there's probably something to check about yourself. And how this is just a bigger tent, something that's more transformative on a mass level- though I think all of personal relationships, rolled together, are that. So I'm just thinking about the micro, mezzo, and macro of what you're saying so I appreciate that.
[01:09:40.590] - Bill
And I think a phrase that's in style again, is the idea of building the beloved community. And the beloved community is a community that takes care of itself, that looks out for each other, that's powered by love, that's powered by forgiveness, generosity, grace. It's not powered by being correct every minute. That's not the standard. So I think what you're offering is good advice. So let's build that beloved community. Let's be shoulder to shoulder, arm in arm, heart to heart, over the next barricade and then the next one. Because there's always another one.
[01:10:19.010] - David
Yeah. That's - so we have the DNC in Chicago, then we got the elections in November, and then we got- we'll see what's going on in fucking 2025.
[01:10:26.450] - Bill
We got to end a genocidal war. I mean the urgency of that shouldn't be lost on anyone. The idea and the idea, the tropes that are being exposed; the idea that we bombed that hospital because there was an Al-Qaeda commander there. Now, I've never seen the mainstream media react this quickly with some wisdom. I saw a mainstream reporter say to an advisor to the Israeli prime minister, "you said you bombed that hospital because there was a Hamas leader there. If a Hamas leader were in a hospital in Tel Aviv, would you bomb the hospital?" And he said, well, of course not, of course not. Because the Palestinian people don't matter. And by the way, you're bullshitting. There was nobody in there. Unless you want to say, which they always said in Vietnam, which is- you don't remember this- but the Vietnam...
[01:11:22.310] - David
Please tell.
[01:11:23.390] - Bill
I mean, there was a thing that the US military did. They had a thing that the press began to call the 'Five O'Clock Follies'. Every afternoon at 5 o'clock-look it up, the 'Five O'Clock Follies'- every afternoon at 5 o'clock, the PR people from the Pentagon would brief the press. And every time in the Five O'Clock Follies, they'd say, six Americans were killed and 1,000 Viet Cong were killed. Now, they were making this shit up, and they were going through a village like My Lai, torch the thing, kill 180-280 people and they say, well, they were all Viet Cong. That kind of- the dehumanization that's involved in that. The idea that in Vietnam whole sections of the country were designated "Indian territory", literally. That's what the military called them- Indian territory. You could carpet bomb those places.
[01:12:20.820] - Bill
John McCain, a so-called war hero, was shot down over Hanoi bombing civilians. And the idea that he gets to walk away a hero because he legitimately did suffer in a prison- there's no question about that- but he was also a war criminal, and they all were. So the idea that somehow we get this idea that we should salute and be respectful- No! It's an aggressive, invading occupying army and what we're witnessing in Gaza should be familiar to every American. What we're witnessing in the West Bank should be familiar.
[01:12:58.710] - Bill
When you have a group of settlers go into a community, park their vehicles, and then say: this belongs to us. And then begin to burn olive trees and burn fields and burn buildings. Do you not remember Kansas? Do you not remember Montana? How the hell did the United States get built? Settlers, settler colonialists who came in and killed the indigenous people and stole their land. And that's what we're witnessing right now. So we're familiar with it, and we should rise above our history and be willing to oppose it.
[01:13:31.900] - Caullen
And to your point of history doesn't repeat- we don't think about or have any kind of restoration or honest conversation about those things. Which is why they keep continuing- it's like, we don't do that, we haven't had that in this country. And you mentioned My Lai and mentioned the Five O'Clock Follies like you know, you don't remember. But I remember studying it in school. I made a whole report on My Lai. And the thing I've probably said in this program before as far as the rhetoric and the framing that they use: it's lazy because it's the exact same lies and exact same- they're not even trying anymore.
[01:14:15.920] - Bill
Right.
[01:14:16.320] - Caullen
Which I think also is putting out how our creativity and our storytelling and our thinking outside the box- or realizing there is no box- is pointing to liberation, is on the road to revolution. The other day I saw a meme that was like: the biggest Olympic event is collective gaslighting. And it was all the press secretaries and fucking all of them...
[01:14:35.420] - Bill
That's great.
[01:14:36.640] - Caullen
And all of them just at their podium in the White House lying to people or "telling the truth" and press being like... To the point of the story you mentioned, so that means that these lives don't matter. And it's refreshing to see that, even though it's the bare minimum. And then having this conversation with folks outside of this room is somehow nauseating. When I think I'm in The Matrix and I'm like, it's so clear, this is so messed up, right? "Well, you know, but Trump!" And I'm like, are you serious?
[01:15:08.990] - Bill
No, but I think you're pointing something very important, and that is- and it's really a responsibility of all of ours- that is that if you line up their army, their military, their spycraft against ours, they win. But if you line up our creativity, our moral imaginations, our social thinking against theirs, we win. And so we have to mobilize what we mobilize our strengths and don't play to their weaknesses. So I think it's hugely important, the role right now, I mean, the bubbling movement that's going on around arts and arts interventions and the One Million Experiments that we referenced earlier, this is what's going on. And I think we should- we're not yet a coordinated, coherent movement, but we are on the verge of something great, and we should all take responsibility for bringing that great thing into life, for midwife-ing the greatness right in front of us.
[01:16:09.870] - David
That's it. And the last thing I'm thinking about- and we'll end with that- is I think one of the things that I found was interesting when looking at '68 was the response that the media played. Whether that's the tv journalists being out in the streets and how they covered or didn't cover, or said but didn't say enough. So making those same connections to today. But I think to that same point, the last thing we add is, I think people in their creativity, in their passions, but also in understanding what it takes to be a moral person. I think there's a larger funnel in terms of being able to have this type of conversation, this type of dialog, this type of thing.
[01:16:49.000] - David
And so, for all of our listeners, always listening, definitely continue to get plugged. I think Bill named off a bunch of groups that we know are going off during this next week. And so, as we always mentioned, find a movement home, find a community of folks.
[01:17:07.340] - Bill
Find your people. Who are your people? Yeah.
[01:17:09.880] - David
Who are your people? And then, get ready. I think that's the last thing we'll leave on.
[01:17:15.880] - Bill
But I'm going to add one thing, even though it's not going to make it into the cut. And that is, when you mentioned My Lai and you said you did read about My Lai in school, and there are things like that. But here's again the problem I was mentioning earlier about the news being happening after happening. So My Lai was an atrocity, it was a horror. You couldn't bury it under a rock and so it came out. The My Lai is taught as if My Lai is sui generis, that is, it's a singular event. My Lai happened every day. My Lai was the nature of the conflict.
[01:17:52.190] - Bill
And so we would have these images like the head of the South Vietnamese, the chief of police of the South Vietnamese national police, walking up to a young kid, 20 years old who was in shackles, whose face was pummeled, who looked really beaten down and tortured. And he walks right up to him and shoots him in the temple. That made it onto the national news, that was a big deal. But that was just one of something that happened daily. It happened that that one was seen. But you have to know the nature of that conflict was genocide, it was torture, it was cruelty, it was oppression, it was predation; all those things were the nature of it.
[01:18:35.110] - Bill
And it's like when we talk about slavery, you can talk about this slave rebellion or the Haitian rebellion. You can talk about Harriet Tubman or John Brown. But what you forget is the system itself- for hundreds of years, was a system of torture, rape, cruelty, dehumanization. And that's what we lived with, that's in our DNA. So we have a lot to work against, a lot to work toward.
[01:19:03.270] - David
So, for anyone who would love to learn more about Bill and what they're doing now, is there anything you can plug for yourself in terms of...
[01:19:11.150] - Bill
Well, I mean, I guess there are two things I'd mention. One is, I have a podcast that I started with Malik Alim several years ago. Malik died way too young in a tragic accident, and we continue in his spirit. And the podcast is called 'Under The Tree: A Seminar on Freedom.' And we have some terrific guests and some terrific conversations. But then I'm always reminded that one of my granddaughters said to me: pops, she said, every grown up man I know has a podcast.
[01:19:44.750] - Caullen
That's hilarious!
[01:19:45.960] - Bill
Yes, they're springing up like weeds. *laughing*. But so, that's one way I can get- you can find me. And the other is that I'm publishing a book September 10th, we'll be at Pilsen Community Books that night with Eve Ewing. And the book is called When Freedom is the Question, Abolition is the Answer: Reflections on Collective Freedom. The subtitle points to the fact that it's not essays on your individual right to do anything the hell you want, it's about how do we get free together, arm in arm. And so, if you get a chance, come out to Pilsen Community Books or Haymarket House the next night, or Seminary Co-op the next night. I'll be everywhere.
[01:20:31.700] - David
Yo, with the back to back to back!
[01:20:33.580] - Bill
Yep.
[01:20:34.370] - David
I love it.
[01:20:35.990] - Bill
Thank you so much, guys, I really appreciate being with you.
[01:20:38.570] - David
Yeah, Bill, we really appreciate you being on. Let's get ready. We'll have a conversation about what shit looks like after the DNC comes and goes. And so, as always from Bourbon 'n BrownTown, stay Black, stay Brown, stay queer.
[01:20:53.420] - Caullen
Stay tuned. Stay turnt.
[01:20:55.120] - David
See you for the next one.
OUTRO
Music Fight Like Ida B & Marsha P by Ric Wilson.