bear witness. brothers too. >> tell us since we are talking about sanitized, tell us about martin luther king and his -- what do you mean by that? >> you mention his name, it is like john cold frame and knee nazi moan, just got to pause for a moment. how, in the face of so much hatred and contempt could he do shout so much love, the face of so much terror? he is in the paddy wagon in the 1960s the get him in the dark with a german shepherd coming get him every moment. and in readsville prison, looks like martin had a nervous breakdown. one word to say, this is the price we must pay for the

freedom of our people. that is why we are talking about when we talk about martin luther king. he is the product of a tradition, comes out of a rich tradition, brother moses is in arizona somewhere. he understands that. what happens to martin luther king jr.? he gets sanitized and sterilized because that much black glove and fire is always a threat to america. americas misunderstands black rage as always being connected to revenge. it can be connected to black love. this is what love looks like in public, tenderness is what feels like in private. he was a tender man too just like malcolm. he was a sweet man. but he had a deep commitment to justice. when he died 72% of americans disapproved of him. 55% of black people disapprove of martin when he died.

everybody loves him now that the worms got him. the fbi said he was the most dangerous man in america. how come? so much love. so much fire. why was that he was unpopular at the end? a critique of empire, the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, he was telling the truth, vietnam, trying to organize all poor people beyond civil rights, adding human-rights, and talked about in 64 going to the united nations, bringing america to try for the violation of human rights of black people. that is the marvin it scared folks. and understandably so. when you are working at that level of love and fire it would be very difficult to embrace -- you have to embrace at a cost.

it is radical. >> we turned into santa claus. >> exactly, turned him into an old man with toys in his bag, everybody can't wait to see him. the same to nelson mandela but that is another text for another time. marvin, this radical king would keep track of the centrality of the love commitment and compassion and willingness to pay the costs. this was part of the challenge of the intergenerational. is a love letter to the younger generation. i am passing from the scene. i don't need to be center stage. tell that to al sharpton. you don't need to be center stage. there is something called grassroots leadership, indigenous leadership in these contexts. get out of the way of the camera and let the young folks speak, let them tell their truth.

you stand alongside them. we go to jail when we go to ferguson. we want the young folk to know some of us old school folk, and we love them and love and deeply. we might not understand everything but we are in solidarity with them even as we want to respect and protect and correct them. we stand alongside them like cold frame allowing eric dolphin to play, cold rain could have been center stage every performance. yet -- what the young voices in. come john, see what i'm talking about in terms of what it means to tell the truth but also make room for the young folks coming through because so many of them have been unloved and uncared for and unattended to and i have been so loved and cared for and attended to for three lifetimes. got the shiloh baptist church at

yale and princeton so it is a matter of keeping the caravan of love for the love train curtis mayfield sank about. get ready, don't need a ticket to get on this love train. but are you ready for the love train? .. everybody is a star. that ain't no joke. everybody. everybody is a star, not just beyoncé. everybody is a star. >> some of these stars,

start lining up at the microphone because we will let you ask some questions. i will ask one more while you get in line. in. in fact, one of the characters i was intrigued by was ella baker. in fact, i think what you were saying about not being center stage was really ella baker's mo. >> sister barbara ramsey, one of the great of our day, we live in the age of ella baker's. a relation to occupy wall street. in particular charismatic, believed like a jazz orchestra did, to raise all the voices, not one at the center, no head negro in charge who could be murdered or co-opted. you bring all the voices. as executive director of

kings organization and the voices of stokely, michael, diane nash, a wave of others. ella baker was a democratic activist, a democratic activist, but she believed the centrality of grassroots because the meant to t5 the mental capacity and ability of those every day people, those james cleveland called ordinary people. as you access their ability and capacity, you do not have to have just one leader representing all black people and all brown people, usually to be co-opted. and once you co-opted or murder, lo and behold depression, disorientation, and the possibility of those capacities in the abilities of ordinary people to overlook. ella baker is someone we

have to catch up with. she is ahead of us, and she died, of course, working closely with my precious puerto rican brothers and the liberation movement. she was cosmopolitan, international, always at a grassroots level, and there is nothing wrong if people think you are charismatic, but you must use your charismatic as a form of service not a form of conspicuous consumption that makes you center stage as an individual rather than part and parcel of the group. that is why count basie was always with the group. him projecting himself as some individual. he understood there is no talent without the group. we could go on and on and on

mama coal and sister maria here, too. >> okay. let's. >> okay. let's start with the questions. thank you, on that high note >> thank you for being here, thank you for continuing with the struggle. my name is paul fletcher. you know you know my dad arthur a fletcher. >> from kansas? >> yes. >> yes. >> i just want to mention that, though. absolutely. >> i was skimming i was skimming through your book and noticed one of the sections that i definitely have concerned with i read in the new york times it was $60 trillion that the banks used to launder arms and drug money from the cartel and selling arms to the iranians and no one went to jail, nobody went to jail, and yet jail, and yet we are going to jail for petty drugs. and i am glad you mentioned,

, but when i tell people $60 trillion they still look at me like him talking about something that cannot be imagined. i'm like, yeah, it's hard to believe that when this economy is for trillion dollars and we have 60 trillion being stolen. and nobody. too big, they said, to go to jail. >> that was in the book, though, book, though, brother. >> that was in the new york times. >> outcome of the times? i thought somebody snuck something in my text. i got you. i understand. >> in the book you start out in the beginning talking about no one went to jail before the catastrophe of 2,008. >> all of the crimes committed on wall street, insider trading, market manipulation to me are absolutely right. the jamie diamond calls at the white house and makes a deal. they get caught straight to jail.

that that is a criminal justice system that is in some ways criminal, that is in some ways criminal. it is true. if you talk about rule of law for four people, let's have will of law for all people. for wall street if we have it for main street. what jane austen would have called constancy. increasing tuition, interest rates for students, still out of control. the banks treated that way and students another. which group is more important for the future of the country, the student or the bank? what are we talking about? priority, not a matter of

hating on rich people. some rich people can do the right thing in my view. i will fight for their right to be wrong. i'm a libertarian about these things that we have to tell the truth in regard to how warped our criminal justice system really is. you know michelle alexander's great texts of the new text the new jim crow. zero, absolutely. >> thank you for being here. my question is not about the case, the fact, verdicts, but what do you think martin luther king would say about the reaction and protests and ferguson? >> from the young people themselves? >> what i am saying is, maybe how i feel, martin luther king stood for peace and peaceful protest. i am wondering, what do you think he would say about what is going on there. >> i see what you are saying

i can speak on behalf of martin, but based upon his life, his work, his witness, he would call for resistance, resistance, but it would be nonviolent resistance. that is the kind of whether he was. resistance but nonviolent resistance, which is to say, he would not go to ferguson and say, we have got to cool things off. the cool things off you end up in a deep freeze. the challenge has always been how do you channel your rage into love and justice rather than hatred and present? that is the question, and that is the question martin luther king was wrestling with and answered it with nonviolent resistance. i think, in fact, you are right. keep in mind for my calling for peace and calm is not downplaying the violations that have been taken place, not just in ferguson, every 28 days, every 28 hours a

precious gem brother is shot by police or security guard. this is the tip of an iceberg. you can't go in and say we are concerned about the violence of the young folk cannot deal with the violence of the system. and martin luther king would want to accept that. but like myself he was at jesus loving free black man who put love at the center. america ought to be grateful in fact, in some ways america ought to see black people and give them a standing ovation. yes. all this hatred, contempt, and still dishing out the wonders about love. what is it? sending the contempt back and how long will that tradition line.

america, america, i'm praying for you. you are in a world of trouble. >> is true. it's true. >> i was moved by your lament that ida b wells is not a household name. i'm interested. i am interested in hearing your thoughts about the importance of the intergenerational transfer of knowledge of the struggle, basic knowledge of history to the sustaining of black prophetic or even to spark new fires. >> that is such a profound a profound question and is very much what this book is about venture not just for versus black folk that human beings all around the country. we live in a whole world driven by big-money. on the money is very much

about the erasure of memory and historical connection. all are confined to the present. fleeting pleasure, you see,, you see, not the attention to the things that matter. and this is especially true for young people. we live in a timed our music is still dominant. all they have is music. and it is so thin coming from the oligarchs that control recording, radio, video, live performance. it is rare to get a group that sounds a sweet and mellow.

there is no group among young people that sing of collectivity,, no band other than roots on the national level. how come the young folks go to school with no arts program. it is a vicious cycle. i don't have i don't have access to imagination and critical intelligence through the arts. some of them some of them can't sing in tune and still make a million dollars. net king cole turns over in his grave. i come from a people that were concerned about getting it right, and they saying the notes because souls were predicated on what you got those notes right in that church are on the block or

in the club, but now with the corporatization of music the same way our universities are corporatized and schools are corporatized, integrity, pushed to the margin, just getting over the 11th commandment, thou shalt not get caught. that is will we are teaching our young folk. get over by any means, just don't get caught. that is a sad thing. >> given the universal human challenge of preserving treasures and earthen vessels what comfort do you have for aspiring prophet who seek to raise their voices in a way that will not contradict the four principles that the boys highlighted in your text. >> what a wonderful group. miami-dade college. every time i count me found

out got this good stuff for me. every time i come. i'll put it this way. >> but you're here now, though. you're here now. i think every generation that takes people who are full of fire, love, fire, love, compassion, willingness to pursue what i call the way of the cross is a christian. there have to be enough examples around. a wonderful line. examples are the go karts of judgment. young folks primarily see marketeers everywhere they go.

sometimes not enough good example. now they are more entrepreneurial. so forth and so on. wu-tang. it will obtain clan got it right, didn't they, crane. cash rules everything around me, but it does not have to go me. one can be old-fashioned. and i do think young folks are hungry and thirsty and that ferguson is the pick of an iceberg. they are tired of the old models of the marketeer. give me something real. that is what young folks are saying. they want to see the real thing. the host of others.

i have six of them here, and this is just the peak of this wonderful tradition. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> i wanted to ask you in light of obama's immigration speech on thursday can you comment on how well or not wealthy did when he talked about this marginalized group. >> i appreciate that question. one, we have to recognize just like abraham lincoln in fredericton t5 frederick douglass and philip randolph , our dear brother barack obama was pressured i the magnificent wave of activism of young immigrant brothers and sisters from all around the country. i was blessed to be a small a small part of it.

we marched in front of the white house. it looked like we had the chance of a snowball in hell at that time. it took him a while to do it political cock elation. he did not want to do it before the election. he's a politician like any politician. we understand, brother barack. i applaud what he did yesterday. i think he should have gone further, but we benefit, health care benefits, other kind of benefits, pay taxes and no benefits. there something wrong about that, something deeply wrong about that. he took the first step. of course he will get a firestorm. he will get that if he is singing out of tune in the shower. so what, that ain't new. what, that ain't new. in the sky is blue and grass is green. take a stand. because of part of my criticism is that he tends to punt on second down rather than fourth-down.

he gives into quick, not enough backbone, backbone, but i was glad to see what he did and that we will keep the pressure on to make sure immigrant brothers and sisters are treated in such t5 but i say this, i don't like the fact that people talk about america as a nation of immigrants which overlooks our indigenous brothers and sisters, you see. that is not true. immigrants have immigrants have played a fundamental role in the shaping of america, but there were some folks who were already here when they landed. they don't need they don't need to be in the room for us to be truthful about that and then there's the state t5 then there is the distinction between voluntary and involuntary immigrants. we laugh. violation. i don't know. i have not found out, but in

voluntary immigrants, that is a different thing. hitting the ground, jamaica, the hitting the ground moving. haiti, they hit the ground moving, what great people they are. different circumstances. don't put it in the same category. some put it in the same category. thousands of bones in the bottom of the atlantic ocean that will remind us of that immigration track of those precious dignified africans who came here and encountered a slave auction, , and that is also what we are dealing with for ferguson, already criminalized before we got here and still look at too many of our precious young black people as if they were criminals before they had done anything. true for brown, but especially for black. i appreciate that question.

i applaud him this time. i time. i applaud him. zero, yes. absolutely. >> we have time for one more >> my name is louis armstrong. i i heard you say something earlier about the 400 years. what i want to ask you is those 400 years you are talking about, is they the same 400 years of genesee's 1513 or some other time. >> in the biblical text. >> yes. >> i got i got to ask that. >> creative imagination, my brother. appreciate it. i appreciated. it is difficult for me to make that kind of late an hour late, modern time to some of those deep truth told that shape my own position and therefore i would never want to make any kind of direct parallel. i read the biblical text in

a spirit. i focus. i keep track of what is in that text in the way of keeping track of the love and justice. it does not justice. it does not really spillover into the particular years and parallels. it is more the love and justice that i am focusing on, but you stay strong. absolutely. absolutely. >> thank you so much, cornell west, such a wonderful conversation. i wish it could go on and on. at mac