BILL MOYERS: One of her first heroes in that community was A. Philip Randolph, the charismatic labor leader who had won a long struggle to organize black railroad porters In the 1930s. on the eve of World War two, Randolph was furious that blacks were being turned away from good paying jobs in the booming defense plants.
When he took his argument to F.D.R.... the president was sympathetic but reluctant to act. Proclaiming that quote 'power is the active principle of only the organized masses,' Randolph called for a huge march on Washington to shame the president. It worked. F.D.R. backed down and signed an order banning discrimination in the defense industry. All over America blacks moved from the countryside into the cities to take up jobs - the first time in 400 years, says Grace Lee Boggs, that black men could bring home a regular paycheck.
GRACE LEE BOGGS: And when I saw what a movement could do, I said, "Boy, that's what I wanna do with my life."
GRACE LEE BOGGS: It was just amazing. I mean, how you have to take advantage of a crisis in the system and in the government and also press to meet the needs of the people who are struggling for dignity. I mean, that-- that's very tricky.
BILL MOYERS: it does take moral force to make political-- decisions possible.
GRACE LEE BOGGS: Yeah. I-- and I think that too much of a-- our emphasis on struggle has simply been in terms of confrontation and not enough recognition of how much spiritual and moral force is involved in the people who are struggling.
BILL MOYERS: Let me take you back to that terrible summer of 1967, when Detroit erupted into that horrible riot out there.
GRACE LEE BOGGS: You see, I ask you to think about your calling it a riot.
BILL MOYERS: What would you call it?
GRACE LEE BOGGS: We in Detroit called it the rebellion.
BILL MOYERS: The rebellion?
GRACE LEE BOGGS: We-- and because we understand that there was a righteousness about the young people rising up-- it was a rising up, it was a standing up, by young people.
BILL MOYERS: Against?
GRACE LEE BOGGS: Against both the police, which they considered an occupation army, and against what they sensed was- had become their expendability because of high-tech. That what black people had been valued for, for hundreds of years, only for their labor, was now being taken away from them.
BILL MOYERS: And you think that this question of work was at the heart of what happened-- or it was part of what happened in Detroit that summer?
GRACE LEE BOGGS: I don't think it's that they were conscious of it, but I thought-- what I saw happen was that young people who recognized that working in the factory was what has allowed their parents to buy a house, to raise a family, to get married, to send their kids to school, that-- that was eroding. They felt that-- no one cares anymore.
GRACE LEE BOGGS: And what we tried to do is explain that a rebellion is righteous, because it's the protest by a people against injustice, because of unrighteous situation, but it's not enough. You have to go beyond rebellion. And it was amazing, it-- a turning point in my life, because until that time, I had not made a distinction between a rebellion and revolution. And it forced us to begin thinking, what-- what does a revolution mean? How does it relate to evolution?
BILL MOYERS: Yes, but where is the sign of the movement today?
GRACE LEE BOGGS: I believe that we are at the point now, in the United States, where a movement is beginning to emerge. I think that the calamity, the quagmire of the Iraq war, the outsourcing of jobs, the drop-out of young people from the education system, the monstrous growth of the prison-industrial complex, the planetary emergency, which we are engulfed at the present moment, is demanding that instead of just complaining about these things, instead of just protesting about these things, we begin to look for, and hope for, another way of living. And I think that-- that's where the movement-- I-- I see a movement beginning to emerge, 'cause I see hope beginning to trump despair.
BILL MOYERS: Where do you see the signs of it?
GRACE LEE BOGGS: I see the signs in the various-- small groups that are emerging all over the place to try and regain our humanity in very practical ways. For example in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Will Allen, who is a former basketball player has purchased-- two and a half acres of land, with five greenhouses on it, and he is beginning to grow food, healthy food for his community. And communities are growing up around that idea. I mean, that's a huge change in the way that we think of the city. I mean, the things we have to restore are so elemental. Not just food, and not just healthy food, but a different way of relating to time and history and to the earth.
BILL MOYERS: And a garden does that for you?
GRACE LEE BOGGS: Yes. A garden does all sorts of things. It helps young people to relate to the Earth in a different way. It help them to relate to their elders in a different way. It helps them to think of time in a different way.
BILL MOYERS: How so?
GRACE LEE BOGGS: Well, if we just press a button, and you think that's the key to reality, you're in a hell of a mess of a human being.
BILL MOYERS: So it is that this woman who marched and agitated and argued in mass movements and social protests for over 70 years...has come full circle...to find seeds of hope in small places where people work quietly and patiently on every imaginable front.
BILL MOYERS: These days, Boggs works through what's known as the Beloved Community Initiative to encourage people like this in cities across the country to see themselves as crucial to how democracy works. And for whom.
BILL MOYERS: You know, you didn't have to come here this past weekend. You're 91 years old. Why did you come?
GRACE LEE BOGGS: Because I think the initiative that I am part of, the beloved communities initiative, is identifying and helping to bring together small groups who are making this cultural revolution that we so urgently need in our country.
GRACE LEE BOGGS: And I see this as part of a pilgrimage which human beings have been embarked on for thousands and tens of thousands of years. It's-- it's too-- you know, people think of evolution mainly in terms of anatomical changes. I think that we have to think of evolution in terms of-- very elemental human changes. and so, we're evolving both through our knowledge and through our experiences to another a stage of human-- humankind. So, revolution and evolution are no longer so separate.
BILL MOYERS: But the economic system doesn't reflect this evolution. As-- as you just described it, outsourcing of jobs, the flight of capital, the power of capital over workers. All of that has-- the system isn't catching up this.
GRACE LEE BOGGS: Well-- just-- don't expect the system to catch up, the system is part of the system! (LAUGHTER) What-- what I think is that, not since the 30s have American-- have the American people, the ordinary Americans faced such uncertainty with regard to the economic system. In the 30s, what we did, was we confronted management and were able, thereby to-- gain many advantages, particularly to gain a respect for the dignity of labor. That's no longer possible today, because of the ability of corporations to fly all over the place and begin setting up-- all this outsourcing. So, we're gonna have - people are finding other ways to regain control over the way they make their living.
BILL MOYERS: You know, a lot of young people out there would agree with your analysis. With your diagnosis. And then they will say; What can I do that's practical? How do I make the difference that Grace Lee Boggs is taking about. What would you be doing?
GRACE LEE BOGGS: I would say do something local. Do something real, however, small. And don't-- don't diss the political things, but understand their limitations.
BILL MOYERS: Don't 'diss' them?
GRACE LEE BOGGS: Disrespect them.
BILL MOYERS: Disrespect them?
GRACE LEE BOGGS: Understand their limitations. Politics-- there-- there was a time when we believed that if we just achieved political power it would solve all our problems. And I think what we learned from experiences of the Russian Revolution, all those revolutions, that those who become-- who to get power in the state, become part of the state. They become locked in to the practices. And we have to begin creating new practices.
BILL MOYERS: What will it take for this next round of change that you see as promising? What would it take?
GRACE LEE BOGGS: It takes discussions like this. I mean, it takes a whole lot of things. It takes people doing things. It takes people talking about things. It takes dialogue. It takes changing the whole lot of ways by which we think.
BILL MOYERS: Do you see any leaders who are advocating that change? I mean, people that we would all recognize, anybody we'd all recognize?
GRACE LEE BOGGS: I don't see any leaders, and I think we have to rethink the concept of "leader." 'Cause "leader" implies "follower." And, so many-- not so many, but I think we need to appropriate, embrace the idea that we are the leaders we've been looking for.
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