Amiri Baraka Speaks! Pt2

Amiri Baraka: Well, I'm a poet, a writer, I guess you'd say, and a political activist. You know, I'm a Marxist. You know, I was born in Newark, New Jersey, 1934. Finally, I went away to college. I went to— first I went to Rutgers-Newark. When there was no black people in there. And then I went to Howard University and was thrown out of Howard University after 3 years. Then I joined the Air Force because I was embarrassed to be kicked out of college. And I got kicked out of the Air Force. So I mean, it's just— I was going 2 for 2, actually. And then I came to New York, you know. I started writing poetry really— well, I started when I was a little boy. You know, I had a newspaper when I was about 10. The newspaper had 10 copies that I had to write by hand, and I would pass them out to people in the community. So I must have had that feeling of wanting to communicate a long time ago, early. And I took a writing class in high school my last year. And in college, I started trying to write a little bit. One thing that turned me on, you know, I mean, a lot of stuff turned me on to writing. I mean, Langston Hughes early in my life, at one point even E.E. Cummings and Pound and people like that. But then when I went to Howard, something happened. I read a collection Of García Lorca translated by Langston Hughes called, you know, Gypsy Ballads, Gitano. And that made me think that I wanted to really be a poet, a writer, because that was the way— and the way Langston had translated it was so beautiful. You know, when you get 2 great poets like that together, Lorca and Langston Hughes—

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Amiri Baraka: You get a kind of sensuousness that you wouldn't get otherwise, you know, because Langston spoke Spanish. And then I went to the service, and I was a weatherman in a B-36 bomber. I was a weather gunner. But at night, I was the base librarian. You know, this woman discovered that I had a feeling for books, and I never saw her no more. She gave me the keys. And that was it. She was gone.

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.

Amiri Baraka: And I used to be in the library, me and about 6 or 7 dudes, and I ordered all the books, all the records, and we actually taught ourselves the history, I guess, of Western literature, the history of Western music, in that library every night. You know, we'd sit in there 3 or 4 hours till it was lights out all over the base. And what we'd be doing is talking, talking, talking, reading, reading. Reading, reading, listening to music. And that was my real education, I think.

Speaker 3: Where were you stationed at the time?

Amiri Baraka: I was stationed in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. Is that right? And that, you know, I mean, that was a very interesting kind of thing, because it was still— it was like the South of the United States, you know, only they treated the Puerto Ricans like they was the blacks in the South, you know. If you had your uniform on, you could go to those hotels. But the locals couldn't go. This was in Viejo San Juan. But that was a good experience for me in the sense I hated it. But at the same time, I taught myself. We taught each other a great deal. Then I got out and I came to New York. I wanted to be a reporter. A writer. I came to New York and got an apartment for $28 a month, 3 rooms, no heat. You know, you had to put your feet in the oven to stay warm. You know what I mean? It was New York. My mother and father brought me over to that apartment, man. And they came in with towels and stuff. And when they saw that apartment, my mother started crying. Oh my gosh. Oh my God, my son, what has he done? No, they couldn't understand it, you know, but, you know, I thought it was hip, you know. Greenwich Village, 1957, you know, first time I'm living by myself, you know, trying to write. I got a job the next day in a bookstore, which was a famous bookstore. I didn't know it. Gotham Book Mart, famous bookstore, you know. I mean, I delivered books to famous writers, you know. I mean, that's how it— I didn't know what it was. I just walked in there and said, I want a job. They said, okay. But, and that's how I got into the New York thing. I had read about Allen Ginsberg in the newspapers in Puerto Rico when the paper, the Village Voice, came out, the first editions. I got those, you know, when Mayor Koch was liberal, when Norman Mailer was on the editorial board, you know. And I'd read about this cow he was having, you know, they were banning the book.

Speaker 4: Right.

Amiri Baraka: You know, for these words. And by that time, I was sending poetry out once a week, and it was coming back the next week. You know, I was sending it out to these journals, and the poetry would come right back with, you know, rejection slips. So when I read about this guy who had written this book and the police wanted to lock him up, I said, I got to meet this guy. He must be doing something right. That's just before I got kicked out of the Air Force, you know, for—

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Amiri Baraka: Why did I get kicked out of here? I got kicked out of here for— they said I was a communist. They were visionaries, actually, because I thought I was a Buddhist, you know. I mean, it just shows you they were reading into the future, you know.

Speaker 6: Right.

Amiri Baraka: Yeah, the guy said, you're a communist. What do you mean, man? But anyway, so I came to New York, and that was the beginning of my literary career. I met all those people. I mean, New York in the 19— Late '50s and '60s was like no place in the world, you know, like no place in the world, you know. And the world was like no place. I mean, the stuff that was happening all over the world, you know. I mean, to be there in New York at that time— remember, I came out of the service in '57. '58, the Montgomery bus boycott. They blew up King's house. You understand? '59, Fidel Castro. '60, Malcolm X appears for the first time. I'm in Cuba in 1960. SNCC. Starts in 1960, February 1st, 1960, the Greensboro, you know, sit-ins. The whole student movement begins then. And as a young man then, I'm trying to deal with literature and the whole question of revolution, you know, all trying to figure out how you do that. And then a call came one Saturday and said, would you like to go to Cuba to take Langston Hughes' place? So that's, that's kind of incredible stuff, you know. Some dude said, you want to go to Cuba? Because Langston couldn't go or didn't want to go. I said, yeah, why not?

Speaker 3: I mean, you know, it's cool.

Amiri Baraka: Let's go. And that's how I got to Cuba, you know, July 1960, you know. So that's one year after the revolution in Cuba.

Speaker 5: Thank you.

Amiri Baraka: You know, the people still walking around with guns. You know, they brought students from all over Latin America and all these European intellectuals, you know, Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre, all those people, all descended on Havana. And then we took about a 14-hour train ride from Havana to Oriente, you know. And we went up to Sierra Maestra, where Fidel spoke. He spoke about 2 hours that day, maybe 2 and a half hours, I swear to God, in the hot sun, you know. But, you know, the question was, that didn't even matter. You understand? And you were transfixed in that kind of thing, you know. Except I was so dry, I wouldn't— you know, I needed some water. I didn't have a canteen, you know. I was thirsty. We were sitting out in the sun. You know, the doggone—

Speaker 3: what do you call them?

Speaker 8: The farmers had those big hats.

Amiri Baraka: Yes. You know, they was hip to what was happening. But I'm out there with my head, and it's just baking me, baking me. So I said, I got to get some water. I got to get some water. So then I see these milicianos go up to this faucet coming out of the ground, you know. And you know, the young militia people, they go and they start drinking this water, man. They drinking this water. I said, great, great. I went over and drank that water, man. I had diarrhea for the rest of the time in Cuba. I finally had to destroy a paper with my picture in it, you know. Because it wouldn't stop, you know what I mean? I mean, it was some water that they could drink because they, you know, that's their element. Yeah, they used to it. That's their element. I said, well, you know, they drinking.

Speaker 9: It's cool.

Amiri Baraka: It wasn't cool. No, it wasn't cool. And you got to meet Mr. Castro, correct? Yeah, I met Fidel then that day in Sierra Maestra. I wrote an essay about that called Cuba Libre that won an award, you know, show you the double— the duplicity of American life, you know. I met Che Guevara. He gave us a lecture when we was down there. Juan Almeida, who was the, you know, commandante of the army. A lot of the Cuban poets, you know. And you met Fidel Castro? But see, I wasn't political. I was coming, becoming, I guess, political. I got on this train with all these Latin American writers, these poets and stuff. And they were harassing me for 14 hours about America. You know, this bourgeois country, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I said, hey, man, I'm not political. I'm a poet. You know, what do you mean you're a poet? How can you be a poet and you're not political? So I had to hear that for 14 hours, you know.

Speaker 2: I'm sorry.

Amiri Baraka: So when every time they would come to one of these little towns, all of the students would say, you know, viva Cuba libre! Or, you know, you know, unidad y lucha! Venceremos! And I would say, viva 42nd Street! You know, viva Charlie Parker! Because I didn't really have anything to say, you understand? I mean, in the sense of, of a revolutionary sense. But it's interesting that that, that year Malcolm X first appeared. That's the first year.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Amiri Baraka: He actually appeared on television. 1960. So it all came together. Plus also Robert Williams was there. You know Robert Williams who in Monroe, North Carolina, he was the head of NAACP. And he was fired from the NAACP because he had led, he had led sit-ins, swim-ins. They wouldn't let the black people swim in the pool. They'd climb over the fence, they'd swim in it. Swim-ins. They'd go to the library, have read-ins.

Speaker 10: Read-ins.

Amiri Baraka: They attacked the Klan. The Klan was marching. They ambushed the Klan and took their hoods off and discovered that they were the state police.

Speaker 4: Time.

Amiri Baraka: But they did that the week after the Lumbee Indians. The Lumbee Indians did it first. And then Robbenham, who was an ex-Marine, they did it. Then the NAACP fired him from head of the NAACP because he said you have to meet violence with violence. In 1950— 1958, that was— '59, that was—

Speaker 3: Out.

Speaker 5: Out.

Amiri Baraka: You couldn't say things like that. You have to meet violence with violence, he said. And finally, he went into exile because they attacked his house. And they wanted to charge him with kidnapping a white couple whose life he had saved. And he fled to Cuba. And the Cubans gave him amnesty, Fidel. And then later he went to China. But Robert Williams is a great— Little-known story of the whole civil rights movement. He was one of the first militants, and not just rapid militancy, but actually the confrontation with the Klan straight out. I mean, I can tell you some stories, but it might be a little too much bad language. But Rob Williams actually took me to the American Embassy in Cuba. When the Klan was attacking his house disguised as the state police. It was really good. All they had to do was take off their robes and they were the state police. They were attacking. He took me to the Klan— I mean, he took me to the embassy and went to the American ambassador and pulled out a gun and said, MF, you either going to call North Carolina and get them people off my land, I'm going to blow your MFing head off.

Speaker 8: Wow.

Amiri Baraka: See, that's who Robert Williams was. And I was standing there, of course, as an innocent bystander. That's what my claim is. I'm an innocent bystander. I didn't know what he was going to do. But Cuba taught me a lot of things. First, that young people actually, if they organized and understood what they was doing, they could make revolution. I understood that very clearly. Because all those people were my age. They were all in their 30s. Fidel was barely 40 then.

Speaker 10: Che Guevara.

Amiri Baraka: Che Guevara, they were in their late 30s and 40s. They were young people. We were all young people. You know, you can understand that. It wasn't like some old dude or something like that. These were young people. You know, all the poets were young people. You know, these people in their 20s, they were old as I was. You know, so that was why I was so influenced by that. I always say that Malcolm X and Fidel Castro, my 2 heroes of the 20th century. You have to understand that. When Fidel came to Harlem and met with Malcolm X, which was one of the shrewdest things that was ever done, because when the people wouldn't let him in down, you know, saying he's too militant— oh, my beard. Jesus. So you're too militant to be— you know, we're not going to let you in these Midtown hotels. He went to Hotel Theresa on 125th Street.

Speaker 4: Right.

Amiri Baraka: And you know, he had all the barbudos, all the bearded army people out on the balcony all the time, and the people just circled Teresa.

Speaker 2: You know what I mean?

Amiri Baraka: They circled. They'd be sitting out on that balcony eating chicken, you know, and they're like, hey, hey, what's happening? But that was like a political coup, you know? And Fidel has done that relentlessly to these people. They're not smart enough to actually do anything. They think they can do something, but they never can. Quite, even when they get those terrorists like this guy, you know, Posada Carriles, you know, these terrorists who blow up airplanes, blow up airports, they still can't win, you know. So that was the beginning of my real understanding, you know, Malcolm X, Fidel Castro, that was my understanding of politics in the 20th century, you know. My son just went down to Cuba a couple of times the last years. My wife and I went to Caracas two years ago to the conference in defense of humanity, and what was really ironic about that? I was getting beat up then by the press about this poem. Somebody blew up America, you know. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. So when I go to to to Venezuela, I get off the plane. There's a billboard big as this goddamn room with my picture on it. You know. Myself, Alice Walker, Danny Glover, you know, all on this huge billboard, you know, because we were going down there for this conference. And when I was in the conference, another thing, Chavez is answering questions. He answered questions, about 4 or 5 hours worth of questions. We thought we was going to eat at 8 o'clock. We ended up at 12 o'clock. We sat there answering questions. People lined up and kept asking him questions. Yeah. So a guy comes in the place, and I said to my wife, I said, I know that guy there. I know that guy. I can't identify him, but I know him. So they shook hands, he sat down. And so then Chavez says, and now I want to introduce the great Algerian revolutionary Ben Bella. And I was sitting behind Ben Bella. I couldn't believe it. You know, who still looks great. Still looks great. But then I went to the Encyclopedia Britannica because I was writing an article on, you know, The whole visit to Caracas. And there's no mention of Ben Bella. You look up Algeria, the Algerian Revolution, there's no mention of Ben Bella. So all the kids who come up looking for that, there's no Ben Bella in there. They don't know that.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Amiri Baraka: They might know about the FLN and, you know, the fact that Algerian revolutionaries overthrew the French. So forth. But you find out more information in the Battle of Algiers, that movie, than you will from the Encyclopedia Britannica. So that's where my politics comes from. You know, I was a— when Malcolm was murdered, I left the Village and moved to Harlem, organized the Black Arts Repertory Theater School, which lasted one year. And really, fundamentally, why it split up is because black is not an ideology. You know, we're saying black, black this, black this, black this, but what black are you talking about? Are you talking about nationalist? Are you talking about Muslim? Are you talking about Christian? Are you talking about communist? What kind of black are you talking about? You understand? So in the end, it actually ended up people shooting each other. I mean, that's how violent that got, you know. Yeah. But we did some good things. We went to Harlem right after Malcolm was killed. Malcolm was killed in February. We were in Harlem by March. All summer we organized. We had 5 trucks every night going out all through the summer.

Speaker 3: One truck had music on it.

Amiri Baraka: One had poetry. One had drama.

Speaker 2: That's right.

Amiri Baraka: You know what I mean? One had dance, and we would send the trucks to parks, to vacant lots, you know, to play streets. Every night we would move them around, just like army. We would move them around, and that's how the whole Black Arts Movement spread nationally, the fact that we hammered at it. Because our idea was that we had to bring the most advanced, the most advanced art, that why should we reserve what we thought was so hip For downtown Greenwich Village, you know, why don't we bring that into our community and see what happens, you see? And that has a profound effect. You, you, you, you, you don't understand how much effect it has, you know, the stuff that they hear on, say, the radio and stuff, what that is. And then if you bring the most advanced artists into, you know, not just what the, what the stations are willing to play, but the most advanced, bring that in there and see, you know, like people were saying, Sun Ra.

Speaker 8: Yeah.

Amiri Baraka: It's so out, Sun Ra, nobody could dig Sun Ra. We brought Sun Ra to Harlem and people started dancing.

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.

Amiri Baraka: You know, it was out, but they knew what to do with it. They would be dancing. You know what I mean? So that question of no matter how advanced you think your stuff is, go back to the people. See the reaction they have to it. See how they dig it, what they think about it, you know. I mean, there's a poet named Tony Medina. That's a famous line from his poem he repeats. The people dig it, MF. The people dig it. You know what I mean? I mean, it's— that is your final judge of what you do, the people. That's your judge. You know, I tell my students, my writing students that all the time. You think you're so hip. You see them dudes digging that hole over there? When they get ready to sit down and have their sandwich for lunch, go over there and read them a poem. See if they'll listen to it or whether they hit you in the head with something. And then you'll find out whether your stuff—

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Amiri Baraka: Whether your stuff is strong enough, you know. Can you read to them people? Them guys with them hard hats on?

Speaker 9: Try that.

Amiri Baraka: You know what I mean? So naturally, some will, and that's good because it gives them the confidence that what they're doing is worthwhile. You know. I don't know. And some of the other questions we were talking about, if you might talk about that whole question of black brown unity is important to me because.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Amiri Baraka: In the fabled '60s, which is really a couple of decades when they say the '60s, you're talking about the '60s, the '70s, the building block of all of that civil rights movement and the Black liberation movement was unity between nationalities. That's the bottom line. You know, the bottom line was that. So that, for instance, I'll give you a small instance and a large instance, the same thing.

Speaker 3: 70.

Amiri Baraka: 70, you know, and of course, I mean, I could go back further. I mean, the greatest thing that I would say, of course I'd tell you about Fidel, but if you ever look at the 1961 flick with Du Bois and Mao Zedong in Tiananmen Square, you know, where he says, Africa, learn from China. Africa, learn from China. That speech, you know, read that speech about the unity of all people struggling. The Bandung Conference, again, that Malcolm was talking about, the unity of the Third World people, the unity of the colonial, the people who have been made colonies, that unity, very important. Huey Newton visiting China, Malcolm X traveling around Africa, these are important, important things. So that in 19— What was it, '71? The racists in Newark, in the Italian section, were burning down these Puerto Ricans' houses. And I told you about that before. We declared a mutual defense pact with the Young Lords, myself and Felipe Luciano, who's still a close friend of mine. We declared a defense pact. An attack on us is an attack on them. An attack on them is an attack on us. The racists sent a telegram to the governor asking, was that legal? We said, attack on the Puerto Rican community is attacking the black community. Attack on the black community is attacking— Now, there is 60-some percent of that community is black, you know, and at the time at least 15% was Puerto Rican. Now it's much larger than that. So the idea of them actually seeing all of those people coming after them was enough to make them get off it. And that's what you have to do. You have to see that unity. And so now, You know, another strong connection we had was a brother named Corky González from Colorado. And then Tijerina with the land seizures. You know, all of those things, and all of those things are important. But the Young Lords, Black Panther unity was very important. And because of the strength of those movements, you had people like Ewart Kong from the Chinese national movement.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Amiri Baraka: The Red Guards, the Asian national movements, the Young Pioneers, the white poor white people's movement. They turned everybody on, you see, because the question was unity and struggle, unity and struggle. Unidad, unidad y lucha. That was the that was the question, and we all knew then, you know, when when when Nazi Tongue said, you know. You know, nations— no, countries want independence, nations want liberation, and people want revolution. That cry for us was a universal cry. You know, we used to say— that was Mao— used to say, revolution is the main trend in the world today. We loved to say that in the '60s. We would always say, revolution is the main trend in the world today, no matter what you say, police. Right. You know, or city council. Revolution is the main trend in the world today. It's not today. Revolution is not the main trend in the world today. The main trend in the world today is what? Neofascism, repression, war, you know. So that question of how do you now reverse that, the struggle against imperialism, the struggle against neofascism. And one of the things that they're doing is trying to divide the Black and brown communities. You see what's happening in—

Speaker 11: Los Angeles.

Amiri Baraka: Los Angeles. You see, that's very, very, very dangerous because the more that happens, the easier both of us can get killed.

Speaker 4: Divide and conquer.

Amiri Baraka: That's all it is. You know, that's the first lesson if you take Latin in a book called Caesar's Commentaries. That's the first Latin. All Gaul is divided into 3 parts. Keep it that way. In other words, he's saying when, you know, the Romans conquered France, Gaul, Mm-hmm. All Gaul is divided into 3 parts. Keep it that way. Maintain that division. So that's— I mean, they tell you that's a long, long, old, old struggle. And that's what's happening to us now. They're trying to use the Latinos and the blacks to divide them the same way they divided white and black workers, although the white workers had much more racism in them. But still, they would get the blacks to work for less, and then the whites would resent that. They will get the Latinos to work for less, and the blacks will resent that. But the question is, you have to see who's doing that and get them unified and attack the doers of that, not each other, you see? Because if you attack each other, you fall into their trap. You know, you fall into their trap.

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.

Amiri Baraka: And people say, well, don't you think we need allies? If somebody's beating your head, would you rather have somebody watching it join the enemy?

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.

Amiri Baraka: Or jump him.

Speaker 9: You know what I mean?

Amiri Baraka: That's simple, it seems to me. If you've been in the street, you know. You know, get that sucker there. But that's where we are now. And it's up to us to fight against that division. It's up to us to fight that, you know, to fight that. You know, like, you know, you mentioned Albert González. It's true. Whether Albert González or Condoleezza Rice, You know, they all go when the wagon comes. You understand? I mean, because they do not serve us. There's no ethnic ties with them. They serve imperialism.

Speaker 9: That's all.

Amiri Baraka: You know, I tell you what she said. You know, she said they asked her, did you think about the civil rights movement? She said, you know, I was in college and I was learning to play the piano. And I never thought much about the counterculture. She said the counterculture? You mean we the counterculture? That mean your mom and father was the counterculture? No, just us, the ones struggling against. Because, you know, her father was even against Dr. King, Condoleezza Rice, you know. I mean, he lived there.

Speaker 2: I mean, in—

Amiri Baraka: what was that? Where were the— Birmingham, where they blew up the church and killed those 4 little girls. She went to the same church. You understand that? But her— that was part of the Black bourgeoisie that was opposed to King opposed to them. You see, it's not no simple ethnic kind of connection. It's about ideology and commitment. So then there's people in Birmingham who was against King, black people. But now when Birmingham is desegregated, they benefit too. You understand? She said the civil rights— again, Condoleezza Rice— she said the civil rights movement wasn't really necessary. They let my parents go into the stores on the weekend. I mean, that's outrageous. Oh, that's what you think it was about, going into stores? You think it wasn't about equality and self-determination, it was about going into stores? You know, I saw my grandmother going to a store one time down south, and the lady wouldn't let us try that stuff on. She threw it down, said, I'm not interested in that. But that clarity on us, our class divisions within our own nationalities, Yeah. You know, they're clear. What they call in Spanish, what, the vendepatria, the people who sell the country. You know, what they call the compradors, you know, the people that work for imperialism who look like you. You know, what Cabral called native agents, you know. So we have to begin to look for classes and class struggle. And in the '70s, we thought we understood that. The whole left, the New Left, was a multinational left, you know. Anyway, if you got any questions, I can answer them.

Speaker 4: I have a quick question. Recently on the internet, there's an activist that actually came out and started to attack those of us as artists that are trying to use any kind of social issues and change in our lyrics. And his comment kind of sparked a lot of the artists to respond. Do you have any—

Amiri Baraka: What's the guy's name?

Speaker 4: I don't know who it is.

Amiri Baraka: Is he from LA? I believe he is. Yeah, well, he's a fool.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I responded to him.

Speaker 4: Did you? Because I just saw some of my friends that are also artists, because we struggle with that.

Amiri Baraka: First, I would say it might be the FBI. You have to assume that people that take those, those kind of positions like that work for the state. You have to assume that, you know what I mean? And that's what I said to him. He wrote me this thing, and I said, you must be the FBI.

Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what happened to La Raza Unida here in Texas also with the Jheri knot, because he's out. In exile in Mexico, and a lot of people have long forgotten the struggle with the land rights.

Amiri Baraka: Who?

Speaker 4: Tijerina.

Speaker 3: Tijerina, yeah.

Speaker 4: Which you were talking about. And so some of us are trying to find our elders and go to them, but they have been exiled, especially within the Chicano movement. And so as artists or as anybody that's struggling, what would you say to especially artists? Because here in Texas, like you speak of the South, there are still places here that if I drive from here to Louisiana, if I stop, They won't serve me. And it's a very sad and scary thing, but it still exists.

Speaker 8: Yeah.

Amiri Baraka: Well, this is— remember, this is occupied Mexico.

Speaker 9: That's right.

Amiri Baraka: I mean, if you want to be clear about that, you know what I mean? This is all a sham.

Speaker 6: Right.

Speaker 4: We know that. And we speak about that. But so those of us that are trying to make a change within our music and within our art, what— as long as you've been in all of your experience, what kind of words of wisdom do you have to us? Because just hearing you this morning, just It sparked it back inside of me, just to know that I'm not selling out, I'm doing the right thing, I'm defending my people, and I'm really trying my best. But to anybody that might lose focus or hope, especially within hip-hop, because some of us are actually trying to make a difference in the underground, utilizing that tool, like, that's been taken over by the government, utilizing that movement of music and putting our words into it, do you have any—

Amiri Baraka: Well, see, first of all, anything that you do, you have to think like Escape slaves. Anything you do, you can't stay there long. You know, you make your camp here, you got to move tomorrow. If you're doing one kind of thing, you remember at a certain point they're going to catch up and they're going to take it over. You know, like Ice-T, he's against the cops today, next week he is a cop on television. Right. I mean, that's what they do. You see what I'm saying? So you got to always understand you cannot stay one place.

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.

Amiri Baraka: But you have to create an institutional presence at the same time that cannot be destroyed. You know, like I say, for the Afro-American people, that's 27 cities. You should— you have to find out where do the Latinos in America constitute a significant plurality, you understand, in any of these cities? Where can that network be set up nationally so that you have venues? So you can go from, say, Texas to Oklahoma to Colorado to Louisiana, you know, and present your art on programs. And that's very important, that the networking is important. And also that you have alternative spaces to do your thing. The venue is important. The venue, having a place to do what it is you want to do, that's important. Because if they control all the venues, Then you've got to get signed off by them before you do anything. You see what I'm saying? And that's the way it is. We live now in Newark, occupied Newark, because they swept us out last May. This guy Booker came in with $6.5 million to become mayor of Newark and swept all the council. My son, my second oldest son, Raz, was a councilman, was a councilman. And that's sad to see. Counterrevolutionary motion. But the point is, you know, it's like a fight, you know, so you get hit. You got to hit back. It's not the end of the world. You just have to find out what to do. I ain't going to do that no more. I'm not going to drop my left anymore. You know what you have to do. And that's significant, don't drop your left. We have dropped our left.

Speaker 5: Hmm.

Amiri Baraka: You know, the left has—

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.

Amiri Baraka: Diminished in the United States, you know. And no matter— the people, it is the people's movement ultimately, but the people have to have some leadership. And leadership that is revolutionary and daring and intellectual, you know. Leadership that thinks and knows, you know. I would love— I wrote a poem. I would love to hear the conversation between W.E.B. Du Bois and Mao Zedong. I saw the picture of them and they're standing there talking and smiling and laughing with each other. I would love to hear that conversation.

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. You understand?

Amiri Baraka: These 2 brilliant men, 2 brilliant men, you understand? I would love to hear what they were talking about and what they thought. I know one thing they said that was recorded is that Du Bois was complaining, saying, you know, I've made so many mistakes, I've made so many mistakes. And Mao told him, you haven't made as many as the Chinese Communist Party. You know, to say what? Don't be sitting there telling me about your mistakes. You know what? We all make mistakes. Yeah. You know, like Monk said about mistakes, there's 2 kinds of mistakes, the regular kind and the ones that sound bad. So we all make mistakes. Some of the mistakes is not necessarily negative, you know. It's just things that you have to then learn from. I'm not going to do that like that anymore, you know, and be willing to criticize yourself. That's the essence of intellectual growth, criticism and self-criticism. To criticize and to self-criticize, and often the self-criticism first. Always the self-criticism is first. What did you do to make us black and blue? You know what I mean? That's the first thing, self-criticism. And that's the hardest thing for people to do. Self-criticism is very hard for people to do, but it's necessary. It's necessary, you know.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I got one question. The poem that you wrote about the 9/11 situation that got a lot of controversy.

Amiri Baraka: Yeah.

Speaker 3: I want to see if you have more insight into that. Maybe there was some stuff that you, that you didn't add into the poem or just, just dealing with that 9/11 situation because—

Amiri Baraka: Well, you know, the 9/11, I spoke on that. I said, you know, the question— what I couldn't understand why they would get so uptight. I mean, I didn't even know the question about— first of all, it wasn't even about Jews except the part that I said who, who killed the Jews in the ovens, you know.

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.

Amiri Baraka: But when you mentioned Israel, they got excited, because first, what I was saying is that the Israelis knew that the attack was going to be made. But so did the British. So did the French. So did the Chinese. You know, I mean, they warned the United States repeatedly. They said that. The Russians. And what the Israelis did was simply warn their nationals. You know, I didn't say Jews. I said Israelis.

Speaker 9: Why?

Amiri Baraka: Because there's more Israelis working in that World Trade Center, you know, the largest shipping— third largest shipping company in the world, you know, American-Israeli Shipping Company. All those companies function out of the World Trade Center. That's why they call it the World Trade Center. You understand? Because it has the people, the nations of the world in it. And if you want to find out, to show you the hypocrisy, You can go to the Wall Street Journal and find out who the tenants of the World Trade Center was 9/11. You can get the tenants. How many numbers? How are they? Who was in there? And you'll find out. You understand? How can more Australians die than Israelis in the World Trade Center?

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

Amiri Baraka: How come more Jamaicans die in the World Trade Center 9/11 than Israelis? You know? But how do you cover yourself? You say Israel, they say Jew. I said, I wasn't talking about that. American Jews die with us. Even a fool knows that. Anybody that was in there died. What I'm talking about is how did them people who wasn't there get warned, you see? And that's not a dirty question. That's a question that tells you the function of nations is to warn their nationals.

Speaker 9: And their attendant evil racism have been the dominant forms of our torture. And national oppression and racism are still very much with us. Black people came to this country as many different nationalities, that is what many of you call tribes. We came as many different nationalities with many different subcultures of the African culture. Our history was systematically eliminated. Slavery, colonialism, imperialism always remove the oppressed from history.

Speaker 8: Yes.

Speaker 9: The oppressors always tell us that our only history is their history, that we exist as sidekicks for their historic development. Afro-American literature does not come to exist as a genre, that is a body of work, until the late 19th— until the early 19th century with the slave narratives. Frederick Douglass' narrative is a signal work, but also there's a fantastic display at the beginning of the 19th century Works by Henry Bibb, Linda Brent, Moses Roper, Box Brown, the Crafts, Wells Brown, James Pennington, Solomon Northrop, and many more. We say that Afro-American literature comes to exist once the Afro-American nationality comes to exist. We did not come to this country as Afro-Americans, we came as many different nationalities of African. The Afro-American nationality comes to exist as an amalgam of different African nationalities and the American experience. We say that Afro-American literature begins as a genre with the slave narratives because these slave narratives begin to ideologically reflect the concerns of the majority of Black people. Say the literature of Phillis Wheatley and Jupiter Hammon and some people who wrote earlier generally is the writing of house slaves who were writing That is, with the permission of the slave masters. Black people, uh, it was against the law for Black people to be literate for the first 200 years in this country. It was against the law for us to learn to read and write. You could be killed for learning to read or write. So that Phillis Wheatley or Jupiter Hammon, say Phillis Wheatley writing about how good it is to come to America because now she can be exposed to American culture, is not the ideological reflection of what the masses thought. The masses who were Mm-hmm. In the fields did not believe that slavery was a good thing. Ditto Jupiter Hammon, who tells us that perhaps slavery is a good thing because it will teach us humility, and so when we get to heaven, we'll know how to act around God. Definitely, that is not a reflection of what the Afro-American masses, that is the great majority of black people, felt. So that the slave narrative, the anti-slave narrative, is the beginning of the kind of African-American literature as a genre that is produced by a new nationality, the African or Afro-American. At the same time that the slave narratives developed, and a little earlier, there were another group of writings that also emerged, a reflection of the struggles in the North against— I mean, with those Blacks who were considered free, and I put that in quotation marks and also next to free, I put haha on the paper. You can't see that. But this literature was a reflection of the Negro Convention movement, also in the early 19th century. And people like Henry Highland Garnet and C.L. Langston, C.L. Redmond emerged as powerful speaker-writers. Also David Walker, whose appeal in 1829 so rocked this slave country that it caused the slave plantation owners to even quarantine black sailors from coming in southern ports. But their fears were not completely unfounded because about 18 months later Nat Turner rose in the most successful of the rebellions and killed 55 slave owners and their family. And it should be noted that Nat's raid was completely sanctioned by the Bible, that is, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. By the end of the 19th century, Millions of black people began to leave the South, but as I said, still 60% still lived there, and 8 out of 10 of us even up here were born there. They left the South because they were trying to escape from the Ku Klux Klan fascism. They left because the boll weevils had eaten up all the cotton. They left because the capitalists in the North were now advertising for cheap labor because they were getting ready to go on the stage as international imperialists, that is, after they wiped out the Mexicans in the middle of the 19th century. By 1898, then they wiped out Spain, that is, they kicked Spain out of Cuba and Puerto Rico and the Philippines to make those places safe for American investment. And so by the 20th century, the United States wanted to come on the scene as the full-up international imperialist, and so it needed cheap labor, and so it sent out the word for cheap labor, and the blacks began to go north. And if you Check the blues of that period, or the literature of that period. It is about— a lot of it is about that migration, that northward migration. For instance, here's a couple of blues lyrics. Say, I'm going to get me a job now working in Mr. Ford's place. Say, I'm going to get me a job now working in Mr. Ford's place. Say, that woman told me last night, say, you cannot even stand Mr. Ford's ways. Or, my home's in Texas, what am I doing up here? My home's in Texas, what am I doing up here? Or, I'm a poor old boy a long ways from home. Or, I'd rather drink muddy water and sleep in a hollow log than go up New York City and be treated like a dirty dog. Langston Hughes' important statement in 1926, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain, serves as a statement to identify the concerns of a whole generation of Black artists, not just writers, but Black artists and indeed Black intellectuals. He begins The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain and says, I want to be a poet. I want to be a poet. He says, one of the most promising of the young Negro poets said to me once, I want to be a poet, not a Negro poet, meaning, I believe, I want to write like a white poet, meaning subconsciously, I would like to be a white poet, meaning behind that, I would like to be white. And I was sorry the young man said that, for no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself. And I doubted then that with his desire to run away spiritually from his race, this boy would ever be a great poet. Poet. But this is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America, this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible. That's a quote of Langston Hughes written in 1926. Much of the early Harlem Renaissance was Black is beautiful, Black conscious, attention to African heritage. And you can see the replay in the '60s Black Arts Movement. People like Langston Hughes and Claude McKay were among the most important writers of the Harlem Renaissance and also the middle writings of that period of W.E.B. Du Bois. And this literature showed the development of a national consciousness that reflects the need first of the people to defend themselves against their oppressors and then to attack them. In the '30s, there was an even sharper struggle in the Black liberation movement, of course, because the bottom dropped out of American capitalism. People were on the streets starving. The Depression, similar to the— I guess we're going through the early phases of a depression right now. But because of this depression, the bottom dropped out of the exotic aspect of the Harlem Renaissance. And so now Black writers saw themselves facing an even harsher Reality. And the Harlem Renaissance so-called faded, that is, as Hughes said, when Black folks were in vogue. The '40s, some of the radical ideas that existed in the '30s continued. Writers not only like Theodore Ward and Richard Wright, but also Margaret Walker and Gwendolyn Brooks, also Brooks speaking with the Chicago tongue, Margaret Walker also speaking with the Chicago tongue, but also reflecting the experience of Blacks deep in the heartland of the Black nation in Mississippi who still yearn for land even though they live in the North or in some other city where they labor in the shadow of the plantation. It expresses this longing for land and power somewhere or our dreams of equality and democracy remain just that— dreams. By the '50s, the United States had emerged from the Second World War relatively unscathed. Became the most powerful nation in the world. And so what they did during the '50s is try to systematically eliminate the radical ideas of the '30s. In other words, they accused these radical writers that existed in the '30s, they accused them of being traitors to their country, not that— told them they weren't trying to transform their country, they were traitors to their country. You heard of that, called McCarthyism. You heard, for instance, of the Hollywood 10 locking up people for thinking. That is, making a kind of inquisition in this country. For black writers, it was especially harsh. W.E.B. Du Bois was indicted as an agent of a foreign power. Richard Wright had to leave the country by 1946 and go to Paris, where his— he became increasingly more existentialist and less socialist. Langston Hughes was actually made to go down to the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Amiri Baraka: Oh, my God.

Speaker 9: And cop out before the great humanitarian fascist Senator Eastland and say that he was sorry he had written those terrible works in the '30s, but that he wouldn't do it again. And Paul Robeson was made an exile in his own country. They refused to let him use the concert halls or the stages, refused to give him roles in films and plays, had house Negroes testify against him in the halls of Congress, and finally Yes. Drove him to his death. At the same time that this came to exist, the so-called New Criticism came to exist, where people now told us that writing, to be great, could have no social consciousness, that to interpret writing, one had to remove it from its social category, from its social context. But you know, one definition of a liar is somebody quoting you out of context. But they said that now The literature had to be removed from its context to understand it. And interestingly, most of these New Critics, the core of them, were initiated by a core of Southern white writers like Robert Penn Warren, like John Crow Ransom, like Allen Tate, who said, for instance, that Southern society had produced a great culture except for the relatively minor flaw of slavery. But in the '60s, after this '50s period of reaction, Yeah. And just after the civil rights literature. In the '60s, another outburst of Black literature centered in the major cities in this country emerges. And you can always tell when the literature is about to erupt because the people have already erupted. What the literature reflects is the struggles of the people, so that in 1964, for instance, when Blues for Mr. Charlie opened in February and My own Dutchman opened in March, and Malcolm X had been speaking before about what would happen in this country. It was only a matter of months until August and the Harlem Rebellion, or in 1965, the Watts Rebellion. The writers did not create these rebellions, as the judge thought when he sentenced me to 2 years for having written a poem. The writers did not create these rebellions. The writers were reflecting the actual mood of the people and what— were reflecting what life it was— what life it itself actually was. And so in the '60s, the Black Arts Movement focused in Harlem, but also throughout this country, began to reflect the struggles of the Black liberation movement. We wanted to emulate Malcolm X, who came to oppose the Black bourgeoisie who was telling us that we had to turn the other cheek, that we would overcome someday, probably after we were dead. Malcolm X told us about self-determination, self-respect and self-defense. And so the writers, the young writers of the Black Arts Movement in the '60s wanted to reflect that. People like Clarence Reed and Clarence Franklin, Steve Young, Larry Neal, Sonia Sanchez, Yusef Iman, Sun Ra, Ed Spriggs, Sam Anderson, Walton Smith, Harold Crews, painters like Joe Overstreet and William White.

Speaker 8: Right.

Speaker 9: Musicians like Albert Ayler and Sonny Murray and Archie Shepp and Milford Graves and Andrew Hill and Pharoah Sanders. We were trying to reflect the actual movement of the Afro-American people for liberation. It spread from Harlem to the West Coast, where people like Ed Bullins and Marvin X opened up Black Arts West. In the Midwest, people like Woody King and Ron Milner took up the challenge, opening theaters. And we brought our art into the streets. We performed before thousands of people. We read poetry in vacant lots, on street corners, in playgrounds. We put on plays out in the streets. And so we brought Black literature in the '60s to the people at large. Mao Zedong, in an essay called Problems of War and Strategy, points out that in capitalist countries like this one, When the time comes to launch an insurrection and war, that is the civil war between the working class and its allies and the tiny bourgeoisie and its lackeys to end capitalism and end national oppression and racism and women's oppression, the first step will be to seize the cities and then advance into the countryside. And at that time, the cities will speak once again. They will speak again at the highest level of our epic, and that will be the most advanced And most beautiful literature that we can conceive of, at least right now. I'll end with these 3 slogans: Long live revolutionary artists of all nationalities. Liberation of the Afro-American nation. Long live socialist revolution.

Speaker 2: Thank you.

Speaker 8: People keep telling me to put my feet on the ground. I get mad and scream, there is no ground, only shit pieces from dogs and horses and men who don't live anywhere. They tell me, think straight and make something of yourself. Make something. I shout and sigh. I am a poet. I write poems. I make words cartwheel and somersault down pages. Out of my mouth come visions distilled like bootleg whiskey. I am like a radio, but I'm a channel of my own. I keep saying I do this, and people keep asking me, what in the hell is— what in the hell am I going to do? What in the hell is going on? Did somebody roll over the library with an atomic truck? Did Hitler really burn all the books?

Speaker 4: It's true.

Speaker 8: Nobody in the United States can read or understand English anymore. I must have been the last survivor of a crew from Mars. I mean, this is where someone in brown khaki comes to arrest me and green X-ray lights come out of my eyes and I can leap over skyscrapers and fly into the night. I can be sure no one will find me because I am invisible to ordinary human beings in the USA. There are no poets who go to their unemployment officer saying, I'm putting down my profession as a poet. They are sure to send you to another office, the one for aid to totally dependent persons. People keep telling me these are hard times. What are you going to be doing 10 years from now? What in the hell do you think? I'm going to be writing poems. I will have poems inching up the walls of Lincoln Tunnel. I'm going to feed my children poems on rye bread with horseradish. I'm going to give my— send my mailman off with a poem for his wagon, give my doctor a poem for his heart. I am a poet. I am not a part-time poet. I am not an amateur poet. I don't even know who that person could be. Whoever that is authorizing poetry as an avocation is a fraud. Put your own goddamn feet on the ground. Writers do not have to plan another existence forever to live schizophrenically, to be Jane Doe and Medea in one body. I have had it.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker 8: I am not going to grow up to be something else. I am going to be old and gray and wizened as Aunt Mamie, and I'm going to write poems till I die. And when I have gotten out of this body, I'm going to hang around in the air and knock over everybody who got their damn feet on the ground.

Amiri Baraka: Was your reading heavily poetic? Did you read very much poetry?

Speaker 5: We read a great deal of poetry. It was endemic to the family. And out in Dayton, Ohio, of course, we had the tremendous example of Paul Laurence Dunbar. We grew up Both reciting Paul Laurence Dunbar's poetry and hearing it recited. He was a native of Dayton, Ohio. I, as a matter of fact, when I was a member of the Boy Scout troop there in Dayton, was part of a group that took fruit to Dunbar's mother, who was still living on there, a kind of Whistler's Mother in Ebony, as I remember her sitting there. And I have it in my diary. I I kept the diary when I was 11 and 12 years of age, and I said, she's getting along fine, but just nobody will go live with her. She was up in her 80s. I was reading the— I was aware of the poets, the Harlem Renaissance poets, as well as those you studied in school, the traditional American poets whom we all read and studied. So my thinking was shaped by that. But, you know, my feeling is that my— to the extent that reading influenced my perception of the city, this was truer of foreign cities than it was of those in this country. I think of the time when the first night when I arrived in Paris, and my awareness of Paris had been shaped by my reading of Dumas and de Maupassant and Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, and there was such a great thrill to be in this Paris which I had become familiar with through my reading. And even more so, I suppose, this was true of Rome. Paris was extraordinary, but it had not really approached the exhilaration I felt that surprised me that I had when I went to Rome because Rome was antiquity. Rome was the place of the Caesars. And I remember I'd known Leila Khaled's Ancient Rome the first afternoon I was there. There were not many people around. I crossed the Tiber and I Shouted, those ahead— those behind cried forward, and those ahead cried back. You know, I suppose they thought it was a pretty odd adult person roaming around. But that I had such a sense of Rome from my having read about Rome. Not that much, but certainly all of— there's so much in the literature, even biblical, that gives you a sense of this antiquity of Rome. So that was— I felt it wasn't simply what I saw, but what I had perceived decades before: the Colosseum, the Senate, the Tiber River, the Forum.

Speaker 10: Right.

Speaker 5: Forum. I knew all of those before I arrived. My dad's favorite book took me always— it acquainted me with one of his— it was the Iliad. He was constantly reciting that. His favorite was those ringing couplets of Pope's translation of the Iliad. And so I was always immersed a bit in antiquity. That, of course, preceded Rome, but still I had that sense. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. sense of reaching back to that period. Perhaps you could say that the prose is more accessible to masses of people than is the poetry, particularly a more obscure and recondite poetry, a confessional poetry which is idiosyncratic with the poet himself and his individual experience. But Both are important. Here in New Jersey, I think of William Carlos Williams.

Speaker 3: Do you think of yourself as an urban poet?

Speaker 5: Yes and no. I think I made some reference to that. As I looked over it, I find reflected much of the city in my poetry. It is more cast in this grim mode, which is consonant with the right South Side of Chicago and And Baldwin's apocalyptic vision of Harlem. I think it's more in that mode than it is in this idyllic past. There's some of that, but not very much. That's very definitely reflected. But also the black heritage, which is very largely rural. It stems from the South. It comes— it's the southern rural scene. There's a great deal of that, which I did not experience. myself growing up, only indirectly, and later on in my life when— well, I did in the teens, I went South and I was made much more aware of the terror which dominated the South for black people, and I think that affected my poetry to a great extent. Well, that's a rural scene, so both elements are there. The city— but the city is there, city is there. The city is the Gethsemane, the city is the new Gethsemane for black people as situations turn. It first was the South, but now it's moved to the North, and this experience of a hell of oppression has as its cadre the urban environment.

Speaker 6: I'm wondering if you could talk about the The last time I was home to see my mother, we kissed, exchanged pleasantries and unpleasantries, pulled a warm, comforting silence around us, and read separate books. I remembered the first time I consciously saw her. We were living on the 3— in a 3-room apartment on Burns Avenue. Mommy always sat in the dark. I don't know how I knew that, but she did. That night I stumbled Into the kitchen. Maybe because I've always been a night person, or perhaps because I had wet the bed. She was sitting on a chair. The room was bathed in moonlight diffused through tiny windowpanes. She may have been smoking, but maybe not. Her hair was 3/4 her height, which made me a strong believer in the Samson myth, and very black. I'm sure I just hung there by the door, and I remember thinking, what a beautiful lady. She was very deliberately waiting, perhaps for my father to come home from his night job, or maybe for a dream that had promised to come by. Come here, she said. I'll teach you a poem. I see the moon. The moon sees me. God bless the moon, and God bless me. I taught that to my son, who recited it for her, just to say we must learn to bear the pleasures as well We have borne the pains.

Speaker 10: I feel that a writer's, a creator's objective and intent is to struggle, to wrestle, to come up with a bit of truth about life. And that's a big enough task. And if, if, if we— if in a lifetime a writer can, can, can manage in whatever his genre or the mode or, or that he's working in to manage to capture some shred of truth about human existence and human relationship, then I think we, we, we, we, we, we, we've served our purpose. And that's the most that you can ask, uh, ask for us directly, because in Managing, even in an imaginative way, to capture some aspect of truth, it is that which we feel might illuminate some corner of human existence, and people themselves will recognize it and respond in whatever way they need to, being confronted with the truth. The wonderful thing about theater is That theater can, can, can still communicate to even illiterates. I mean, that's, that's the thankful thing about, about theater, in that it can, it can communicate and is not dependent upon, let's say, somebody reading well or having learned how to read imaginative works. I, I I myself don't doubt that possibly when there's some time and distance from this immediate period, that the last decade and possibly the last 2 decades in American theater, that any objective assessment of it will probably conclude that the most significant development in American theater has been the rise of the Black theater movement itself. For our size of population and social and economic position within this culture, I think that the Black theater movement was an astounding creative development And that it will prove as significant to American theater as the, quote, angry young men phase of British theater. I think it was no accident that this very vital movement happened. It did not come out of the— inner consciousness or the pondering of the artists themselves. It was a movement which coincided with an upheaval in American society where Black people were trying to define themselves and to fight for what they consider to be their rightful place in American society. It was through this tumult that those artists were stimulated to find their own outlets and forums to artistically, imaginatively deal with the issues of the day, the issues that had endured Historically. Historically, and so forth, that suddenly a very, very fresh, vital, viral, virile movement developed. And since many of the outlets of this society were closed off, the theater became almost a favorite place for the energies of this impulse to express itself. In saying that, it's, I think, quite obvious that this was essentially an urban experience. This was an art which the theater, which in most of its enduring works dealt with, was by city dwellers, dealt with themes of city life, and paralleled the energy, the problems, and everything else that was happening to Black people in the larger society as a whole. Just a listing of the plays, starting from A Raisin in the Sun, Mm-hmm. Dutchman, Ceremonies and Dark Old Men, River Niger, Stye of the Blind Pig, the bulk of Bullins' work, The First Breeze of Summer, The Offering, Colored Girls, Eden, The Mighty Gents. All of these works in some way, most of them deal specifically with an urban locale, some instances very Very literalized New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago. And I think that in relation to the theme of the conference, that the Black theater movement probably typifies more than any other wing of the theater this link between the art and the urban society itself. And I think that that's only natural because the fate and resolution of black people's existence in this country is dictated and determined by black people's trials and tribulations and triumphs in the major urban centers of this country. And the black participation in the theater is merely reflective of this. I have come to the conclusion that once the black theater movement itself made a thrust for autonomy, which essentially meant black artists running the institutions and, and making decisions about what they did, that once that was done it became very convenient to a certain extent for the larger society and its critics and sometimes our brother artists, brother and sister artists, to think, well, that was a separate— that was something that was separate from the larger picture. And consequently Even if The River Niger wins the Tony Award as the best play of the year, and I'm not saying anything about believing in awards, but since it is, it does exist as a value judgment, you will very seldom see a survey or a conclusion Which would deal with Mamet and Joe Walker together. It is almost as if the subculture, if you want to put it that way, the art itself, is deemed separate, and in some instances, I think, thought to be not of— not up to the par. Of the majority art, when any realistic objective assessment of these writers writing in the same period, there are comparisons that are made in terms of similarities and also differences. The one thing is that they— there's no such thing when Black people in America talk about their own autonomy There's no way that what we— at least what I mean— is that we are able to extricate ourselves from being part of the larger society. And I don't think that there is any way that the larger society, the majority society, can extricate itself from us.

Amiri Baraka: Thank you.

Speaker 2: Thank you.

Speaker 10: I have said to a few white— my fellow white playwrights who I've come in contact with at one point that it was possible, in terms of the connection, it is possible that we saved the day for them to become the neorealists. It was the period in which The Black writers resuscitated, if you want to put it that way, the conventional mode of realism at a point where it seemed that white playwriting had reached a dead end, to a certain extent, as a group. And we went on and did what we had to do. And finally, 5 or 6 or 10 years later, there comes the emergence of a group of, quote, white neorealists who Were not ashamed to write some accessible works. So at least half-jokingly, sometimes I said, well, maybe if during that period of time we held a stage for you to allow you to reemerge out of academia or out of imitation of European modernism to find your own voice. Now, I say that may be an exaggeration.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 10: But I think that possibly if there was a real study of all of the writers writing at the same period of time, that you would find that consciously or unconsciously, we do touch. The River Niger and all of the public audience that saw The River Niger spoke to the public that saw it, including the The only thing in terms of subject matter and theme, like any other great art— Sean O'Casey was universal because he spoke about the particulars of his Irish experience, the place, the particularities of what he was going through. It is through the particular that we generalize, that it becomes universal. That does not mean that black writers should Cease to write about the particulars of their experience. If they are good enough writers, if they have given us enough dab of truth, it will communicate itself to all other peoples. Its universality will emerge out of its particularity.

Speaker 11: Whatever energy one might see in my work is derived from the energy that I receive from the city itself. I grew up right here in Newark in the Ironbound section. All of these sounds and everything tended to make one a little bit more active during the day. I mean, you sort of got into the rhythms of the Bethlehem Steel plant behind me, the Barth Smelting Company plant across the street from me, the junkyards down the street. The planes overhead, the boats with the whistles, and you could hear the trains going along the railway right across the river in Harrison. And all these sounds produced their own kind of rhythm. And that rhythm, even though I wasn't aware of it at that time, actually became a part of me. And I— even though now I live in a much quieter neighborhood, it's very hard for me to get used to, because I grew up with those rhythms and sounds of the city. And they manifest themselves in the writing itself that I do, because almost all the plays that I've ever written take place in the city with those same kinds of sounds in my characters' ears and heads and memories that I had when I was coming up.

Amiri Baraka: Wow.

Speaker 11: So the city is is— as it is a very great part of me, it's a great part of the plays that I write. And it's reflected in all of my work. The neighborhood that I grew up in is very much different from Howard Street that Hurd writes about, or it's different from the Newark that Baraka might write about or the Harlem that Piri Thomas wrote about. My neighborhood had some of the same problems. We had our share of alcoholics. We had our share of people who wound up in Trenton State or Clinton Correctional and all of that. But at the same time, it was a very strong working-class neighborhood with people from all walks of life— European immigrants, There was even a Japanese war bride who lived on that street. There was a great many people from the Caribbean, a great many people from Puerto Rico. There were a lot of black people who had come to Newark during the war to work in the defense plants and at the shipyards and things like that, and just stayed on after the war was over. And we all grew up together.

Speaker 5: Yes.

Speaker 11: Amidst all those factories and everything. And while it wasn't the easiest of lives, it was a very comfortable life, because we had very strong family ties and a very strong neighborhood. And so my view of city life would be— is a little bit at odds with the more preponderant view, which is The city is a horrible place full of dark, menacing creatures who are lurking on every street corner ready to grab some kid up.

Amiri Baraka: TV, the hate that hate produced. You know, 1960s, also February 1st, SNCC, you know, the sit-ins down in Greensboro. So all this stuff is affecting me. I'm— that's my generation.

Speaker 2: But you didn't join any of these movements. You decided to make your sword out of your pen.

Amiri Baraka: Well, I was the president of the Fair Play, or the chairman of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee when I was in—

Speaker 2: Oh, you were?

Speaker 4: Okay.

Amiri Baraka: Oh, yeah. And then also we had supported Robert Williams in a lot of ways that the police did not like or would not like. But anyway, I was getting very political. And even the question, when a group of artists came together Because we had been meeting to find out, Black artists, what can we do? Here we are down here in Bohemia, so-called, down here in the Village, but the movement is all around us. And it's, you know, and that's when we began to think about putting together an organization of artists that would take the art as seriously as any other aspect of liberation. That was— Who was that? We began to talk about it when we were down in the Village. We moved right after Malcolm was murdered, we moved to Harlem.

Speaker 2: How much focus did you give to making a living at what you did? In other words, was it frightening to be an artist, quote unquote, as far as how you were going to make a living?

Amiri Baraka: Did it scare you at all?

Speaker 2: No?

Amiri Baraka: No, because first of all, I guess I had never thought about it like that. You know, the hungriest I've ever been to To tell the truth, it was at Howard, you know, when I was a student. And I always think— and maybe that's my petty bourgeois background— I always thought that, you know, I was going to make it some kind of way, whatever I had to do, even if I had to get a pistol and a stocking cap and go rob the A&P. I never thought of myself as being somehow bereft because of these people. You know, I thought that I would prevail one way or another. I never, never questioned that.

Speaker 2: Right.

Amiri Baraka: And so, even when, you know, uptight— one gets uptight— I never doubted my ability or capacity to deal with it. So, when we went uptown to Harlem, I still had some little money from the theater, remember? And because Dutchman had opened a couple of years before that and was still— you know, I still had this little rep downtown. But that was one of the things, as I said many, many times, that opened my eyes, the night that that play opened.

Speaker 2: Right.

Amiri Baraka: And I went and read all those papers, and I could see they thought I was crazy, you know, this crazy man, all this language, all this black—

Speaker 8: Oh, really?

Amiri Baraka: Yeah, look, because there used to be a lot of newspapers in New York.

Speaker 2: They panned your—

Amiri Baraka: They didn't pan it. They said it was nuts. They said it was violent and nuts. I mean, they were saying 2 things at one time. They were saying, this play is— I mean, this play will scare the hell out of you. It will do so-and-so-and-so. But this man, with that profanity and that, you know, that mad anti-whiteness and so forth and so on, You know, he's crazy. So then when I read that, I said, they're going to make me famous, so they're going to pay for it.

Speaker 2: You know what this means.

Amiri Baraka: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2: Time for another break.

Amiri Baraka: Yeah. I thought it meant that we blacked.

Speaker 2: No.

Amiri Baraka: This is— that's this, see?

Speaker 3: Not this.

Speaker 2: I want to ask you what is perhaps an overly simple This is a simplistic question, but how do you feel about this country?

Amiri Baraka: This country? Well, it's my country. You know, I mean, I'm an Afro-American. I was born and raised in this country. You know, my people all the way back raised in this country. Like Paul Robeson said, hey, we helped build this country for free. So, you know, in a sense, I claim this country. Black people claim this country. That's why that stuff with Bush, you know, that the bushwhacking —that we just got, the ripoff in Florida, which violates the Emancipation Proclamation, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That's why this is so ugly and tragic, that the only black vote in the United States counted is Tom S. Clarence. I mean, that's incredible to me, that one black vote— and that Bush has the nerve to walk around, a counterfeit president for a fake democracy.

Speaker 5: Right.

Speaker 2: I mean, that's my view. So, despite the fact that you spent decades ranting and railing at this country, you still love this country?

Amiri Baraka: Hey, if I didn't, I would go. I would leave. I would split. But we have as much— you know, the 40 or 50 million black people out there, we have as much claim to this country as anybody, you know. And the consciousness, once I had gone to Harlem and the Black Arts Movement movement, come back home to Newark, did the political work, married my wife. We had, you know, 5 children. Raz, you know, my second son, he came out of Howard and wanted to run for mayor. He ran for mayor the minute he got out of Howard. I mean, I don't mean years later. I mean, the minute he graduated, the next year he was running for mayor at 20. Wow. 20, whatever. To me, that's the consciousness of trying to change this. And that's what black people have always been about. It's not that, you know, we want to change this. We want equal rights. That's all. We want democracy and self-determination. We don't want to put anybody in no tricks. We don't want to, you know, exploit anybody, you know. And but we have a lot of different ways of looking at that. And that's what we have to deal with, is the question of unity of our views without claiming to be monolithic. Like, my wife and I argue about politics more aggressively than most people do, you understand? Yet at the same time, Amina and I know exactly that we want to transform this. This— and the people that I've loved the most in this country and think the most about are people who have the same way, same vision, that this must be changed. You know, that the world— you know, Du Bois said, hey, at the beginning of the 20th century, there was enough food and clothing and capacity in terms of our own engineering skills and sort of everybody on the planet could live like kings. But the little narrow-minded racist scoundrels that actually control the world cannot understand that. You know, they cannot understand that. And so, the question of self-determination first. We must do what is necessary for us to do. That's Malcolm again. And democracy, of course.

Speaker 2: He had quite an impact on you, too.

Amiri Baraka: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker 2: Where does Africa come into your artistic lens?

Amiri Baraka: Well, Africa, I think, really began to hit me with the Lumumba thing.

Speaker 2: Patrice Lumumba.

Amiri Baraka: Patrice Lumumba assassination. You know, and that's where I met, strangely enough, I met Askia Touré, who at the time was Roland Snellings. I met Larry Neal. And at first, when we met, we didn't even know specifically we were poets. We didn't— you know, we came together actually to try to destroy the Metropolitan Opera when they killed Lumumba, because that was infuriating, you know. I mean, that— because, you know, in line with the whole civil rights movement, —civil rights kind of thinking that was proceeding at that time, you know, which was about to change, you know, because Malcolm and Fidel had come on the scene, SNCC had come on the scene, you know, to see that independence had been achieved, and then they would snatch it back, just like they'd done with Kabila. You know, they've been in Kabila's— it's interesting. They've been on Kabila— gee, that's the same name.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Amiri Baraka: There's Malcolm's daughter who's in trouble, similar. But Kabila, since he laid out what he wanted to do, you know, the kind of populist, kind of people's democracy that he wanted, they have not ceased to be on him. Now, here's Mobutu, the bloodiest, most backward, you know, Negro on the planet, perfectly cool with him all these years. Everything's cool, you know, as long as he lets the And gives them, Union Minare, Rockefeller and them, gives them access to the riches.

Speaker 2: We had a program on Zaire and came up with a clip of Malcolm back then talking with such clarity about what was going on in what was then called the Congo. What kind of a person— you knew Malcolm.

Amiri Baraka: Yes.

Speaker 2: What kind of a person was he?

Amiri Baraka: Well, I met Malcolm one time. And we sat and talked 6, 7 hours up in the Waldorf Astoria with Mohamed Abdou.

Speaker 2: Tell me, what energy did you get from him? What kind of energy?

Amiri Baraka: Well, 2 of the greatest people I've met in my life, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Malcolm died a month after I met him. Dr. King died 10 days later.

Speaker 2: Oh, Jesus.

Amiri Baraka: But they both said the same thing to me, which is what I know Kwame Ture and I have been saying, even though we've never agreed on a lot of things. The question of a united front. And that's what Malcolm kept saying. He kept telling me that. He said, rather than you— because, you know, I was playing super left at the time, you know, oh, these Negroes are no good, no— saying, rather than you— Hostilizing all these people, you know, and putting all these people down, you shouldn't be You shouldn't be trying to get away from the ACP. You should be trying to get in the ACP. See, that was when he was in OAAU. And he was talking— and he already met Babu. Babu was one of the most astute politicians in Africa, which is why he's no longer there, you know, a great man, a learned man, you know.

Speaker 2: Time for another one of these.

Amiri Baraka: Okay.

Speaker 2: Not this.

Amiri Baraka: Not this.

Speaker 2: In your career as a craftsperson and as an onlooker to this life, what do you see now today? How do you feel about the movement, if any, of our people in this country? Are you encouraged? And especially, how do you feel about young— the young people and what their values are and where they're headed?

Amiri Baraka: Well, my wife Ameed and I have been in the movement. You know, I mean, when I got back to Newark, met her, married, we created the Spirit House, you know, trying to bring politics and art together like the Bard, and then the Committee for Unified Newark, the Congress of African People, elected Gibson We elected Sharpe James. And it's always a question of— nothing is direct. It's always— you know, there's always uneven development. There's always going to be— I mean, the old is always going to give you trouble with the new. You're always going to have that struggle. So, I think this. I think that, like, seeing my youngest children, like, you know, Raz is running for council.

Speaker 2: Right.

Amiri Baraka: In 202. His brother Mitty is the mayor's aide over in the North. You know, son Obalaji heads up a recreational program. And little child Shani is a schoolteacher. You know what I mean? They all see and understand, to whatever extent they've developed, that this thing is evil and needs I think what's happening, though, we're getting some kind of broader maturity. Now, this recent Bush thing has, I think, taught a lot of Americans, not only black folks, whose pocket they picked, but they picked these white people's pockets, too, you know, in ways that maybe they would not think was possible before. And I think that even though we've taken a hard shot, we've— that was a battle we lost. That's a civil war going on.

Speaker 2: It's a civil war.

Amiri Baraka: Civil war is going on. Just like the Reconstruction was destroyed after we thought we were coming out of slavery and they threw us back, so that after the civil rights movement, a lot of people thought the civil rights movement meant, you know, like all of these right-wing Negroes saying, everything is cool now. The civil rights movement, you don't have to talk about black now. They just showed you that's a lie. You see, they showed you that's a lie. And all these liberals like Nader and them who thought, you know, I'm going to run independent, not thinking about labor, not thinking about black people, who delivered the thing to Bush. It means that the movement now has to stand back and sum up what's going on.

Speaker 2: And where does the art fit into this?

Amiri Baraka: The art, for me, is the way I speak, the way I make my points, the way I want to say it. Now, obviously—

Speaker 2: Are the arts keeping up with the movement in this country?

Amiri Baraka: The fact is this, that the arts have to create their own voice, their own vehicle.

Speaker 2: I see.

Amiri Baraka: You see, if you, if you think that you're going to put a play in the theater and you're telling the theater owners, die, and they're going to put that on, you're crazy. Or if you think that they're going to publish your book and the book says, all you people who own these things need to be locked up, they're not going to do that. The point is that we, the people who feel oppressed, the people who feel exploited, black people obviously, but minorities obviously, Americans who have any consciousness of any nationality Obviously, you're going to have to put together your own alternative superstructure. You're going to— if you want to write books, you're going to have to create the mechanism for writing those books. My books are poetry. And, you know, I would have— I've got maybe 10 books unpublished in my house.

Speaker 2: Really?

Amiri Baraka: Oh, yeah. I mean, publishers don't even bother me, except small publishers. But you have to be able and willing to understand that you have to produce that yourself, that you don't have the luxury of sitting back and saying, well, my publisher's going to come and it's going to give me a $1.3 million advance. You know what I mean? I mean, the advances that I could get from a publisher are so pitiful that I would be justified hitting them in the head with a stick. You know what I mean? It's not even— it doesn't even— so, in many ways, it's better for me to publish my own works Put them on the net or in the 27 cities where Black people live, are either a majority or a plurality, to find ways to distribute those in those 27 cities, to find ways to take theater to those 27 cities. You know the 27 cities where you got relatives. That's where I'm going.

Speaker 2: Okay. Last question. What do you say to young would-be writers? Anything?

Amiri Baraka: What I say to them is don't wait for I don't think I'm good enough for anybody. Write your stuff. Get it out. If you think you're good enough, you know— and you're not good enough if you think everything you write is good. No. If you're not giving yourself a report card on your work— because anybody could do a good them poem. You know, I could write a good me poem anytime I want to, but it'll just be a shell, you see? So you have to get to the point where you actually can discern your real You have to separate the real stuff from your fake real stuff, you know? And then you have to publish it yourself. You cannot wait for some publisher who wants to turn you into what they see as, you know, optimum, maximum. You have to go for yourself.

Speaker 2: On that note, we do have to stop. We're out of time. But thank you—

Amiri Baraka: Okay.

Speaker 2: —for this.

Amiri Baraka: Great, great.

Speaker 3: When I met Walter, he was in Tanzania. He had just gotten sick, and he was in the hospital in Dar es Salaam. Dar es Salaam. And I talked to him a couple of times there. That was the first time I met him, in Dar es Salaam, you know. But I had known his writings, and I had heard about him from the people in the general kind of Pan-Africanist groups. When I got to Tanzania, you know, one of my closest friends there was Mohamed Babu, who, you know, talked about Walter a lot, you know. What it was, it was clear to me, for people who had come— who had been nationalists and then were sort of trying to find more solid ground, as far as nationalism is concerned, because, you know, it was going into the whole cultural nationalist thing and getting involved in a lot of, you know, atavism and You know, worship of the past and so forth and so on. And so, for me, Rodney was similar to Cabral in that he had a more materialist approach to the whole business of struggle, you know. And that's what attracted me to him. One of the things that Walter said that was always important to me, he said, We cannot let— we cannot let racism and white supremacy deprive us of the most important things white people have said, talking about Marxism. And I thought that was important. I thought it was very important at the time to hear that, because that was—

Speaker 2: That's right.

Speaker 3: Clearly right. I mean, you couldn't let, you know, backward racists make it impossible for you to understand scientific socialism. And, I mean, there's still a lot of black people around today that I could name that still need to heed that advice, you know, who are still so, you know, what can you call it? Misinformed. Just blitzed intellectually by racism that they can't deal with the question of scientific socialism. That's still very, very clear, very true. Tanzania, what was important about Tanzania is that even, you know, Nyerere talking about Ujamaa, you know, even as some kind of African socialism, if you want to, but still, Ujamaa, the question of socialism, was on the table, you know, and the question is, how are you going to deal with it? Plus, then, as you began to talk to the people who were actually involved in the African liberation movement, they were all socialists. I mean, except for, you know, people like in UNITA, some right-wing group, you know, most of those people Well, you talk about MPLA or TANU, you know, they were talking about FRELIMO, you know, ANC. You know, they were talking about socialism. And so, that question of how do you embrace that, and particularly in the West, the U.S. and the Caribbean, how do you embrace that? And that's what made that important.

Speaker 6: Right.

Speaker 3: Rodney was important, was an important thinker there, because he was definitely a socialist and was saying, just like Cabral, that we have to learn from everybody. So that was very important. And, I mean, it's funny. The United States particularly is funny, because Even today, with the Obama thing, which is, to me, a continuation of the, you know, the civil rights movement, black liberation movement, the period from the late '50s through into the '70s is really very intense, very intense. And— What was it like? For struggle here. It was, you know, because the Black Power Conference and then the Congress of African People and then, you know, the Panthers Constitutional Conference and then, you know, the Gary Convention and African Liberation Support Committee, all those things, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. That was a generation really trying to find its way, you know. And that never stopped, actually. It just happened You know, more sporadically, because then Nixon came on the scene. And what Nixon did is he divided the movement. He put out the idea of black capitalism and then jailed and killed the militants at the same time, you see. So there was really—

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker 3: The way of dealing with it. The legacy of that went through the movement, see, so that on the black capitalism side, you could finally get a Condoleezza Rice and a Powell, you know. You could generate, you know, these CEOs, Time Warner and, you know, all those things. You could generate that, and you could actually cool out the national movement to a certain extent. But there was a lot of confusion.

Speaker 8: Right.

Speaker 3: Too, you know, because a lot of those people, the people who were the most militant, were killed. And then, you remember, you lost Malcolm X, Martin Luther King. A little while later, Stokely Carmichael died. You know, Rap Brown was in prison for life. You know, the whole confusion with the Nation of Islam, you know, in terms of some people still holding them responsible for Malcolm's murder.

Speaker 8: Right.

Speaker 3: You know, Farrakhan's whole role. And so it's been very confusing, to a certain extent, since then. But, see, the dynamic of that is what even today creates an Obama. That's that force, still, of the people, you know, that they haven't stopped. That actually the Obama thing is what united them on a higher level.

Speaker 5: Right.

Speaker 3: You say 98% of 45 million people, the Afro-American people, because without the Afro-American and the Latinos to some extent, there wouldn't be— Obama wouldn't be the president. But the question that Rodney and I and some other people were arguing about nationalism and socialism still remains very key. In fact, I'm writing an essay My last essay of the 6— maybe not the last one, but I wrote about 6 or 7 essays on Obama since '07, early in '07. And the one now to sum it up just before inauguration, where we are— and we're still fighting with some people, you know, who want to say Obama's election is just to preserve capitalism and so forth and And so forth and so forth. I mean, to be that simple-minded— like I say, some of these nationalists who want to call themselves the black left are really nationalists who think that anarchism or Trotskyism makes them militant. You know what I mean? And it doesn't. I mean, you could say that about when we were getting killed to integrate bathrooms, lunch counters. You know what I mean? When we were going to jail to integrate bus terminals.

Speaker 5: Right.

Speaker 3: Do they think that Obama's presidency is less significant? You know what I mean? It's just too crazy. You know, you have to see things as they actually are and see that things proceed in stages and step by step. And you have to be able to understand at what stage you're at and then seize the next lever to go forward. But you cannot—

Speaker 11: I mean, this whole thing about we're in a revolution.

Amiri Baraka: Right.

Speaker 3: There's no such a sweeping revolution. This is not 19th century Russia or 20th century China. You know, this is the 21st century in the most advanced capitalist country in the world. And so, unless you approach it that way, then you're always on the margins making quotes, you know. But the actuality of power, which is what revolution is supposed to be, to seize your power, Never comes to pass. Never comes to pass. What do we do to transform this country into a socialist country? What do we do? Now, you don't think that the election of Obama makes it that a step closer? You know, the right does. They know that, you see. I mean, the fool in Michigan who was the day after the election is standing on the corner in a Klan uniform. A Republican delegate, when they ask him, says that Obama is an Islamic communist. I mean, man, he really got it hooked up, you know, a black Islamic communist. I mean, he'd need to die 3 times. But it's still that kind of murky question of are you a nationalist, are you a socialist? And I think that that's something that we have to thrash out here.

Speaker 8: And I think that that's something that we have to thrash out here.

Speaker 3: Still, in the 21st century, we're still going to have to, you know, thrash that and fight that out to get some clarity on it and make demands on people in terms of clarification of the ideology, you know. King and Malcolm X were both representatives of the African-American people, you know, different ideological aspects of it. But they killed them both. How much greater would it have been if that had been in one party and we could have argued those things endlessly inside that? You understand?

Amiri Baraka: The same thing with Garvey and Du Bois.

Speaker 3: They exiled both of them. You know, wherever you thought you were standing in that, you have to see that it's the whole thing that's offensive to the oppressors, not this aspect or that aspect, but the whole thing.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 3: And until you can find a way to unify that whole— like, I mean, 98% of people, black people, voted for Obama. That's the kind of unity we're going to need to get rid of the rest of this. And I think that that's why right now the main thrust has to be to get a big united front for a democratic coalition in government and to get rid of the leavings of Racism and white supremacy, and also to end the complete domination of monopoly capital over the people's needs, you see. I mean, if you give $1 trillion, $2 trillion to those people, then I don't want oversight over those banks. I want to own those banks, see. I don't want to give $250 billion to the auto industry and say we have oversight of it. If we give them $250 billion, we ought to own it.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 3: You know, it ought to be the United States auto companies. You understand? All those mortgages should be paid to the government. You know, it shouldn't be no— those banks should not be allowed to be out there like that. You understand? If you want private enterprise, then deal with it privately. See, you can't tell me about the market system and free enterprise, and then you're going to come with your tin cup to me for $2 trillion.

Speaker 10: Right.

Speaker 3: I'm not making $20 million a year. There were some hearings on television the other day. The guy from Lehman Brothers, bankrupt company, he left with $580 million. So then he argues with the guy who's questioning him, that's not accurate, those figures are not accurate. The guy says, well, how much did you leave with? $380 million.

Speaker 8: Oh, boy.

Speaker 3: So, I mean, if you can play with that kind of money, beautiful, do that. But then when you stub your toe, don't come to me, see, who has millions of starving people and unemployed people to deal with and to take care of. You understand what I'm saying? So that's— those are the things I think this Obama thing, and why we have to And finally, connect this nationalism and socialism that these people are talking, these divisions, because we have to now unify the majority of people. They're in a position, the black ones and the white ones, to end white supremacy, end racism, pass some laws against it. You understand? We're at that point right now. When he talks about a post-racial coalition, Now we should seize that. You know, when they talk about when the people are, like, angry about, you know, these monopolists getting $2 trillion, now we should seize on those. Those points now are clearer in people's minds. I don't mean leftists or revolutionaries. The people now understand that it's time to get rid of racism. They understand it's time to get these people off our backs. Right. You see, and if there's any leadership in that, the people, the self-called revolutionaries, they should be trying to fight for the leadership of that, you know, rather than, you know, sitting on the side criticizing Obama before he even gets into office. It's incredible. Incredible. I mean, when you have people like C.L.R. James and Rodney and Carmichael, as well as Malcolm and people like that, you have to see that as the intellectual legacy that you can borrow and use anytime you want to. The whole Pan-Africanist struggle, in essence, is for what?

Amiri Baraka: Self-determination. Equal rights.

Speaker 3: Wherever in the world It's the same thing, you know. The so-called focus of any revolutionary is the seizure of power, you know. Not to see Obama related to that is not to understand the movement, you see. The seizure of power. To have a black dude in— as the president of the United States is important. How we utilize that, then that's on us, you see. That's on us.

Amiri Baraka: Right.

Speaker 3: He obviously knows what he's doing.

Amiri Baraka: The question is, do we know what we're doing? You know?

Speaker 3: And I wish Walter Rodney was alive so he could dig this.

Amiri Baraka: I know he would crack him up.

Speaker 3: You know? He's very funny. Or Stokely.

Amiri Baraka: I know we would laugh and laugh, you know?

Speaker 3: Because ultimately what it is, is what these people don't understand is that boy is smart.

Amiri Baraka: Yeah. You see what I mean? And they don't know about black people, that there's a million of us around this planet who are as smart as Obama, you know, who know exactly what this is and what needs to be done to it, you know. I mean, Walter Rodney's thing about how Europe undeveloped Africa is a textbook, a premier to learn about colonialism. And that's the thing.

Speaker 3: A national oppression. You know what I mean? And so, we have to see from that, how does monopoly capitalism undevelop the Afro-American community, the Latino community, you know, the Caribbean community? You know. And now the United States is a multinational, multicultural— I mean, there are as many Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Ecuadorians, Jamaicans, Haitians in this town In New York, you know, it's incredible. You can't be— you cannot be anywhere in, at least, the Northeast, where I live— definitely multinational, multicultural. And that's part of the weight that we bring to this now. It's not just us anymore. See, it's not just Black Americans anymore. All of these people are exploited.

Amiri Baraka: I'm a Muslim.