← On Being with Krista Tippett
On Being with Krista Tippett
“The Fierce Urgency of Now” — Michelle Alexander and Lucas Johnson
01:16:34
From Krista: On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech at Riverside Church in New York City called “A Time to Break Silence.” This is often referred to as his “Beyond Vietnam” Speech. His own allies criticized it as a risky departure from a focus on civil rights. But Dr. King had never seen his calling confined to those two words. The Vietnam War needed to end, he believed, and he needed to say that plain. And in the waging of this war — and all of its consequences for people at home, especially the poor — he saw an underlying crisis that threatened the very soul of our nation. On that same date this year, the 59th anniversary of this speech, hundreds gathered again at Riverside for reflection, song, and a reading of portions of the speech. It was drafted by Dr. King’s friend and comrade Vincent Harding, a beloved former On Being guest, and many of his friends and family joined this year. None of the words of this speech is as famous as the sentence “I have a dream....
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- [00:26]
A
On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. Gave a speech at Riverside Church in New York City titled A Time to Break Silence. This is often referred to as his beyond Vietnam speech. His own allies railed against it as a risky departure from a focus on civil rights. But Dr. King had never seen his calling confined to those two words, and his vision never stopped evolving. The Vietnam War needed to end, he believed, and he needed to say that plain. And in the waging of this war and all of its consequences for people at home, especially the American poor, he saw an underlying crisis that threatened the very soul of our nation. On that same date this year, the 59th anniversary of this speech, hundreds gathered again at Riverside for reflection, song and a reading of portions of the speech. It was drafted by Dr. King's friend and comrade, Vincent Harding, a beloved former on being guest and many of his friends and family joined us. The exquisite saxophone that you're hearing now, the musician Langston hughes II playing Dr. King's favorite hymn led into the conversation you're about to hear from between me and Michelle Alexander and Lucas Johnson. If you're so inclined. You'll find links to listen or read this speech in full in the show notes. You don't need to read them to wonder and reflect along with Lucas and Michelle about this speech's very direct resonance for us now in our world of wars and our country with a soul that feels endangered, I believe wherever you sit along the spectrum of our divides. I gave a long introduction up top as we began our conversation at Riverside, which will further drop you into context. And I take you there now without further ado. I'm Krista Tippett and this is on being. It feels like what we should do is sit in silence, but we can all do that later perhaps. It's so wonderful to be here. I'm delighted to be in residence at Union Seminary this year. It is incredible to be in this sanctuary today, to have received that beautiful welcome from Reverend Thorne and to be here with beloved community that accompanied and proceeded from this speech. And I know that it would delight Vincent Harding that we are here doing this and also that there are new generations present because he gave the last decades of his life over to walking alongside young people, new generations, and sharing the story of the movement of which he was part and the profound lessons and hope that that it carried. And there are many directions we could go in this conversation. We could have a conversation up here about the world, our world at war, and about governments and leaders and what we in our time call real time events and challenges. But we're not going to do that. For one thing, real time confuses happening with meaning. We are going to ground ourselves in a different kind of time here, today, in this place. We are going to step humbly onto the long arc of the moral universe that bends towards justice. This speech reminds us of the work that endures beyond leaders and events of the day, and that can be neglected at our peril if too many of us to narrowly focus our imaginations and creativity and callings on what transfixes and demoralizes in the moment. As you said to me the other day, Lucas, when we met, none of the words of this speech is as famous as the words I have a dream from an earlier speech of Dr. King. This speech altogether gives voice to the less remembered and heated evolution of the vision of Martin Luther King Jr. And Vince Vincent Harding and others. And in that sense, it is not merely prescient, but prophetic. That our world is broken, it tells us, should come as no surprise. We endlessly recreate its injustices in new guises with ever graver consequences. A line from this speech seems directly aimed at our ears and our hearts. I felt like my heart stopped when I read it and when I heard it again. Here we are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. What are the callings now, finally for us to pick up in creating the world we want to inhabit in the beyond of this moment of great peril and an equal magnitude of possibility. I am so honored and delighted to be here with all of you and also with these two humans who loved Vincent Harding and who he deeply loved, Lucas Johnson and Michelle Alexander. Perhaps you know their work. You can read more about it. Just a very, you know, in the program, a very brief biography of Michelle is that she's a civil rights lawyer, a legal scholar, and the author of the profoundly important book the New Jim Crow. And she's currently a scholar in residence at Union Theological Seminary and founder of Spirit of Justice, a new organization dedicated to nurturing the spiritual lives of people committed to justice. And we'll talk about that. And Lucas Johnson has an inadequate sentence that he contributed. It says that he is a community organizer who works to build the beloved community in himself and others. And that's true. But I will say that part of my story of getting to know Vincent Harding and having the incredible privilege and gift of interviewing him a few times but for the first time in 2011 is that a couple of years later, after we became friends. I invited him to participate in something I was doing, and initially he said yes. And then he called me back and he said, actually, who I want you to invite is Lucas Johnson, this young man who embodies for this time what we were working towards in those years of the movement. And Lucas became my co leader for several years and absolutely someone who helped co create years of the On Being project and our call to social healing. So I will stop talking now and be in conversation with these people who I also so love and revere. And I want to start with your origin stories of knowing Vincent and go from there. The project that's gathering all of us here today has storytelling at its heart. And one of the things that has come through so poignantly and with such urgency in my conversations with civil rights elders across the years. Vincent, but also Ruby Sales and John Lewis and others, is that we as a society have not remembered in all its complexity the story of what happened. And therefore, we cannot learn fully what these leaders and this movement had to teach us and what it bequeathed us. And, Vince, you've taught me that Vincent always put that hyphen in the word remembering. Remembering also re embodying. So, Lucas, but I wonder if you would start by just introducing. How would you start to tell someone who'd never heard of Vincent Harding who he was to the world in the world, and also who he was to you, who he became to you. You just have a few minutes for that.
- [09:23]
B
Wow. Well, first I want to do something else because it's on my mind. I want to thank our brother Langston for that beautiful rendition of Precious Lord.
- [09:35]
A
Yes.
- [09:43]
B
So many of us who spent time with Vincent Harding will probably recognize. I remember the story he told us about when Dr. King was killed. Dr. King loved precious Lord. He loved that song. And at the Lorraine Motel, he loved the particular performance of Precious Lord by the jazz musician Ben Branch. And Ben Branch was pulling into the hotel, and Dr. King saw that Branch had arrived, and he came out onto the balcony and he said, hey, Ben, are you going to play that song tonight? And that's when he was shot. I think that. You know, I was in a conversation, I think it was with Shea Howell earlier this week, or it might have been Bill Wiley Kellerman. I'm not sure which one of these wonderful organizers, activists, told me this story, but they reflected on the fact that they think that Uncle Vincent told us that story in part to remind us of how brutal events can happen alongside beautiful moments of people living their lives. You know, it lets you into the grief that Those who knew Dr. King felt and experienced that day. And so precious Lord just sort of brought me to that memory, and I wanted to share that. Vincent Harding, describing who he was, you know, he was a historian of the movement. He was someone who was a giant in so many ways. He had this profound relational way of moving through life and moving through the world and connecting people. A lot of us have been reflecting on his book, There is a River. He taught us that there is a river moving through history that we have an opportunity to wade into. It is a river that moves with the spirit of justice, that moves with the ability to transform us and transform the broken and the destroyed places that we live amongst. For me, Dr. Harding, I feel like I'm not being very eloquent about talking about the river right now, but for me, Dr. Harding was someone who had the ability to see me in ways that I didn't know I needed to be seen. He made me fall back in love with the struggle for transforming this democracy. I don't know. How do you, Michelle, how do you talk about who Vincent Harding was?
- [13:00]
C
You know, first, I really want to thank you for organizing this gathering in honor of Vincent as well as in honor of this speech that he gave, which I believe could not be more relevant to our current moment. It's a speech that I've been obsessed with in recent years, talking about incessantly, writing about repeatedly. And last night I heard someone else say, you know, I've been obsessed with this speech, too. And when someone asks me, you know, why. Why this speech? Why do you keep talking about the speech from 1967? He said, well, no one has written a better speech since. And I think that's true. And I think I heard you say at the beginning, Krista, that sort of, this isn't the place to talk about the wars of the moment and the politics of our current moment. And I find myself sitting with that as I'm thinking about the memory of Vincent and thinking to myself, well, if not now, when? And if not here, where these beautiful words that were read are excerpts from this speech. But I urge everyone to read the speech in its entirety, because one of the things that struck me so much when I read this speech for the first time was how profoundly historical and political it was. The beginning of the speech is a detailed discussion of American deception and atrocities and betrayals of peoples around the world and what it has meant for us to be on the wrong side of global revolutions around the world and to be investing in militarism rather than feeding the children and paying our workers at home. And so I think it would be a betrayal, not just of Vincent, but of the tradition to which he belonged if we don't make time in this conversation to name the horrors of the wars that are occurring today and why we as a nation are approaching spiritual death as a result of the choices that are being made today right now. But I. I have to say that for me, Vincent changed the trajectory of my life. I met Vincent about a year and a half after my book the New Jim Crow was published. The message of the book was finally breaking through. It came out right after Obama was first elected in our nation was awash in post racialism, and we have overcome and we now have our first black president, and we don't need to talk about the ugly racial history. And so, you know, for the first nearly two years, it was difficult to get an audience. But finally, thanks to the hard work of so many activists, when the message finally started to break through, and instead of talking to small groups of activists, there were suddenly hundreds of people showing up in churches and auditoriums. And I should have been overjoyed. People kept saying, aren't you so happy? Look what's happening. It looks like things are really changing. I was actually sinking into a real depression. I was finding difficult to get out of bed in the mornings, much less make it onto stages. And at first I just thought, you know, I'm just exhausted. I have three young children at home. I haven't slept in years. I just need to get home to my babies. I'm just tired. But I also started noticing that as I was walking off the stage, sometimes to thunderous applause, I would hear this voice echoing in my head. A voice saying, all sound and fury and signifying nothing.
- [17:31]
A
Sorry, say that again.
- [17:32]
C
All sound in fury and signifying nothing. And at the time, I didn't even remember that it was a Shakespeare quote. I'm like, where is this coming from? Like, why is that what I'm feeling and hearing right now? And it was around that time when I was feeling like, it looks like things are changing, but they aren't really, and sinking into this place of hopelessness when it looked like I should have been overjoyed that Vincent Harding invited me to speak at Iliff School of Theology. And I'm embarrassed to say that at the time he invited me, I didn't know who he was. I found out as I was rushing through the airport to catch my flight to Denver, and I was on the phone with my sister who's an African American history scholar and professor. And she said, who did you say you're gonna see? And I was like, vincent Harding. And she's like, do you know who he is? You know, I'm like, no. And she said, you know, I wouldn't even be in this field doing the work that I'm doing if it hadn't been for Vincent Harding. He was one of the founders of the field of black studies. He was a close friend and spiritual advisor of Martin Luther King Jr. He wrote Kings Beyond Vietnam speech, like, you need to know who he is. And I was like, I gotta go. And I gave my new Jim Crow speech and walked off that stage with that same sinking feeling. And afterwards, as everyone was leaving, Vincent pulled me aside and in his loving, grandfatherly voice said, you know, thank you, daughter, sister, niece Michelle for your work and your research and for indicting this system. He said, but I think there's a deeper message here that you are struggling to name and claim, perhaps even for yourself. And I think that deeper message is what Jesus was trying to say when he said, what you do unto the least of these, you do unto me. It's like, that's the message. That's what this is all about. It's not about building bigger and better movements or power struggles. If we don't awaken, not just to our racial history, but if we don't awaken to who we are, that we belong to each other, to the oneness of all, that's what will ensure that these cycles of oppression and domination and exploitation and control are born again and again, like we must awaken to who we are, to one another. And as he was speaking, you know, as anyone who's come to know, Vincent will tell you, that you have a feeling of, like, truth, capital T, truth, being spoken to you. And I have to say, I wasn't entirely open to the message. I don't belong to a religious tradition. I never have. My parents were opposed to organized religion. But when he spoke those words, I realized there was a spiritual dimension. There was a depth. There was something missing in my own work and my orientation to justice. And after that, he became a mentor to me in the final years of his life. And we began having phone conversations every couple of weeks where he would really challenge me when I would want to talk about strategy and movement, tell me the war stories. He would say, have you been quiet today? Have you cultivated stillness? Have you learned to listen to the sound of the genuine within you? And he was, I think, in his own way, Teaching me how to become clear, to cultivate moral clarity and courage, which I hope in the work that I'm doing now with spirit of justice and others, that we will honor this tradition, this river, and build upon it. Because I don't think it's an overstatement what was written in that speech. That literally the future of humanity depends on it.
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A
Yes. And that it's abundantly even more clear and urgent now, the same thing. I don't know, Lucas. I mean, I want to say yes. Yes. I want this to be a yes and right, because these words have been spoken again in this place and we all think, we all know it is also about the wars we are now waging and participating in. There's also a turn in the speech about making sure that we keep going back to the underpinnings, which is also the move you just made. So, I mean, I wonder. Lucas, you know, the question I wanted to ask, but I'm perfectly happy for us to take another question, is what is the conversation you. And you've already started this. The conversation you've been having with Vincent in your head and your heart in this time and what you would like for us to remember in this time with and perhaps even history that simply was not passed on. I mean, Lucas, from you I have learned that non violence, you know, has almost come down simplistically heard. It's a withholding, an absence of violence. And in that sense, it can also be portrayed as something passive. But what I've learned from you, that you learned at the feet of Vincent and Dorothy Cotton and other people, is that it is a way of being. A very active, passionate way of being.
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B
Yeah. So I want to talk about that.
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A
You talk about whatever you want to talk about.
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B
What's on my mind right now. Doctor Harding never. He hated the expression the civil rights movement.
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A
I wanted to ask you about that. I've been not wanting to use the language of civil rights because in the conversation I had with Vincent Harding, who also said, that is too small. And you have always said, that is too small. So that's a good place to start.
- [23:58]
B
Yeah. And I've been thinking about it today because I've been thinking about it from the perspective of, you know, so he preferred to talk about the black freedom struggle or the Southern freedom movement or the movement for the expansion of American democracy. But one of the things he used to always say was, you know, we didn't. We weren't singing songs in the street about civil rights. We were singing about freedom. And he felt like the language of civil rights was too narrow to describe the movement for which people risked and gave their lives. And I was thinking about the problem with the way that we tell the story of the movement in general. We tell the story of, you know, these courageous people did. Did these things. And then, you know, the 65 Civil Rights act was passed, and then we arrived somewhere. And I think that, one, that's simply not an accurate telling of history. Two, it condenses a history of struggle that began with enslavement to a few decades. Right. It also disorients us to what the goal is. See, the fact is, we never achieved freedom. This right here that we're experiencing isn't freedom. We achieved something, and maybe that was civil rights. We did achieve a right to vote in some sense, but that work was never done. And I've been thinking about, like, you know, all the despair and the disorientation of this moment, you know, after the country repeatedly betrays and betrays us, repeatedly shows us what the true values are of the country. I've been thinking that, like, if we understand, if we have an accurate understanding of what the goal, what the prize always was, then it's harder to be despairing because we have to understand ourselves as continuing a struggle. You know, Uncle Vincent used to always, you know, I would engage him on in some moment or another, and I would say, aren't you tired? Aren't you? Maybe this was after the killing of Trayvon Martin. I said, aren't you tired? Aren't you angry? Aren't you tired that we have to keep doing this? And, I mean, I understand now that I. In a way that I didn't fully understand it there. He would. He would have, you know, he had that loving chuckle that he would do sometimes. You know, it was never patronizing or condescending. It was. It was this. This, you know, and he would say, you know, my brother, we didn't do everything that we did so that you could rest. You know. You know, there's a sense that we keep thinking that we have to work until we do, until we reach some point, and then we are. Then it's done. But that's not an accurate reading of the work that's needed. That's not an accurate understanding of our role to play. And so I feel like he would always push us to understand the black freedom struggle with a different sense of time and continuity and to help us understand our work in it, and that it is an ongoing work that we carry forward, you know, that we. I inherited achievement and things that I did not contribute to before my birth. And I have to do my part for what comes beyond. And so that's been with me today. So you had started to ask about, you know, what's the conversation that I keep having with Uncle Vincent right now? And I think that's one of those conversations. Conversations about nonviolence. Well, I've been talking a lot.
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A
No, no. Well, you and I have also discussed. And yeah, I want you to jump in as well. That the violent ending. Right. The assassinations, the demoralization, and then of course, the Vietnam War, which proceeded beyond all of that, can lead some to feel that not enough was right, that it. To really question what was accomplished at all. And that that also is a problematic way of remembering that you feel called to redress.
- [28:51]
B
Yeah, I mean, part of it. We don't tell the full story of what happened after. You know, we don't talk about the assassinations. We don't talk about cointelpro. We don't talk about the assault on the movements that occurred. And I think that part of what happens is, you know, I've been in conversations with young folks who. They look at Dr. King, they look at the nonviolent struggle, and they see it. I remember that I was in a room with Zahara Simmons, one of a SNCC organizer, remarkable activist, freedom fighter. And we were actually in Belgium. This was right after the Charlie Hebdo attacks. And so the police were brutalizing black and brown neighborhoods in all over Europe. And I had asked Dr. Simmons to come and share her wisdom with communities there. And this young brother with a Congolese background stood up and said to her, he said, the reason why y' all are having these troubles now, Michael Brown had been killed. And so people were aware about the black struggle in the United States and what we were going through. And he said to her, the reason why y' all are dealing with what you're dealing with now is because y' all were nonviolent then. That's the reason why y' all are dealing with this now. And Dr. Simmons patiently heard that question. And she said, when you love the people you're organizing, you don't want to see them harmed. And then the young brother, there was a. We had interpreters working, and he thought he understood. And so he jumped in and said all this love stuff. Are you talking about love? That's the reason why you have this problem. And then other people who had, like, felt what she said jumped in and said, no. She said, when you love the people, you're organizing, you don't want to see them harmed. And then a beautiful sort of conversation erupted about what that means. And then we had to sort of help people understand the context of brutality, context of having the arsenal of the most powerful country in the world turned against its own citizens on the streets. And the choices and the decisions that people had to make and the spiritual work to choose nonviolence in that context, and all the different layers that one had to work through. Then one began to understand the depth of what our elders did and what they worked through in those days. And a glimpse of what King's philosophy of nonviolence, how deep, deeply rooted and how complicated and how difficult it actually is.
- [31:59]
A
And, I mean, Michelle, I feel like your work with the New Jim Crow and beyond is a chronicle of the prophetic prescience of this vision. Also that is represented in the speech that if the moral and spiritual chasm, you know, below the form of injustice of a time is not met, of our time in our country, of that time, it recreates itself. And that's exactly what you brought into the light for more people.
- [32:37]
C
Yeah, I mean, I think that what Vincent was sort of challenging me to see was that I was giving speeches and writing and speaking as the Though what was required was simply facing our racial history in order to prevent us repeating it and to end the cycle that we were in. And Vincent, as a historian of racial history, takes our racial history very seriously and is committed to teaching it and writing it and passing it down. So in no way was he minimizing the importance of understanding our racial history. But he was calling me beyond it, saying, yes and right. The we must face our racial history. And what that ultimately means is coming to this deeper understanding of who we are and that we belong to one another. And what I understood him saying in that is that this love ethic requires something of us. It's not a feeling. It's not a sentiment. It's not something you just cultivate on your meditation cushion for 15 minutes in the morning and go about your day. Like when you take seriously that you love as your neighbor the child in Vietnam in the same way that you love the child on the streets of Watts or down the street from you, that it makes demands upon you. It's not a feeling. It's a moral responsibility that arises. It's, I am my brother's keeper. I am my sister's keeper. What does my love require of me if I am to act as though I believe that he is truly my brother? She is truly My sister. Right. And, you know, when I think about what Vincent's legacy, what the legacy of this speech is, for me, what arises in this moment relates to how he began the speech, which is he said, a time comes when silence is betrayal. That's how he began the speech. Time comes when silence is betrayal. And that time has come in relationship to Vietnam. And I think to myself, what are the silences we are holding down? And in so many places, Palestine has been an unspeakable thing. Even in social justice circles, if you want to keep your funding, you can't use the word genocide. You can't speak the truth about the horror that is unfolding in Gaza, that even as every civil rights and human rights organization around the world says this is genocide, it is treated almost as impolite to say it aloud in public. And people ask themselves again and again, well, is it worth me speaking the truth about something on the other side of the world when it risks the thing I'm fighting for right here at home and the community I'm fighting for right here at home? And Vincent and Martin Luther King, Jr. Said, yes. And that's what this speech is, is that if you have to sacrifice speaking the truth about the dignity and humanity and the spark of divinity that exists within each and every person on the side of the globe, if that's the price of your supposed liberation at home, you are losing when you think you're winning. And I think that's what we've seen is again and again, we have embraced a kind of liberal politics that have traded some people's rights for others. Right? In many ways, what I was writing about in the new Jim Crow and the crisis of mass incarceration was just that. Right? We had a Democratic president who said that he wanted to make his Cabinet look like America, Bill Clinton. And he did. And yet he escalated the drug war far beyond what Reagan and Nixon had done and helped birth a vast new racial undercast that stripped millions of the very rights that were supposedly won in the black freedom struggle. And many liberals at the time said, well, we must be silent about that, because if we make too much noise about them, the others, those who are viewed as criminals, who are thought of as felons, we might risk affirmative action. We might risk the progress that is slowly being made, getting access to Ivy League schools or increasing the middle class, we might risk it if we stand up for, as Vincent pointed out, the least of these. And I think what King and Vincent kind of called us to was this awareness that if we fail to stand in solidarity with the least of these, whether they are, you know, living on the streets of New York, living in the rubble of Gaza, looking up at bombs falling on them in Iran. If we fail to imagine that their fate is ours, we are all doomed. And that's the awakening that's required of us. Now,
- [38:56]
A
Something else that I feel, and Lucas, you and I have talked about this across the years. There's an evolution in this speech or there's a. They gave voice to an evolution which they might have called a maturation of their vision and precisely in this question of civil rights as a limiting frame. Right. So there's a moment, and actually it's in the speech that we didn't hear. He says, for those who ask the question, aren't you a civil rights leader and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace? I have this further answer. In 1957, when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto to save the soul of America. And yes, it's not just that war takes away is wrong and takes away from the building up of our own society, but war is an. And he said, war is an enemy of the poor. And yet this. Now where is it the. Oh, here it is. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women not. Will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. And that gauntlet was never picked up.
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B
You know, those words in that speech were so moving for me. Those were the words that I used in my application to seminary before I ever met Uncle Vincent. And I said I wanted to do edifice changing work.
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A
Okay.
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B
Dr. Harding told me that, you know, those were Brother Martin's words. Those weren't his. And I think about what they speak to. The level of transformation necessary in this country is so deep and so profound. The task we have to commit ourselves to is enormous. We can't. There's no. There's nothing to go back to. We have to make something new. We have to begin again thinking about James Baldwin and Eddie Glaude Jr. S work. We have to. Where we are right now. There's no going back. We have to transform this place. And that means we have to transform Our relationships to each other,
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A
you and I recently spoke about, and I think you kind of were pointing at this, too. There can be a spiritual danger or, I don't know, a spiritual loss of perspective in being on the right side. You said there's a risk of becoming participants in a politics of grievance, but I think it's much more complex than that. And I think in a room like this of people who turned out for this event today, like, let's talk about that. What is this? And I think this is also spiritual analysis and not right. This gets at an analysis that is more paradoxical and more exacting and more life giving.
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B
Yeah. I think that thinking about Dr. King's sort of witness and prophetic power, part of the reason why people are so afraid of having more deep and fundamental conversations about the transformation necessary in this country. I mean, part of it is a poverty of imagination. Part of it is, you know, we don't believe that we can create something more. We are afraid of what happens if we peel back the layers and the truth is exposed. And so it's like we always rush to cover something up. The type of relational organizing that Dr. Harding modeled was one in which he was able to build community in a way that could let people know that it was okay to confront the truth, that it was okay to sort of let the truth shape you and let it, even if you had to fall apart, then you fell apart in ways that were needed. And I think that that's the kind of politic that we need in this moment.
- [44:09]
C
I guess I would just add that one of the things that I really appreciated about Vincent and what he modeled is that the quest for justice is not a team sport in the way that our politics tend to be played today. And that you need to speak the truth about yourself and your own limitations and failings, as well as speak the truth about our political leaders of the time, no matter what political party they adhered to. And this process of truth telling about yourself can be uncomfortable and painful to recognize your own cowardice. I remember saying to Vincent at one time, like, I'm not sure that I actually would have had the courage to board one of the buses that was heading into clan territory that was about to be firebombed. Like, I would like to believe that I would have been a freedom rider and that I would have been part of that river, but I don't know if I would have had the courage to do that. And he said, you don't have to dive into the river head first. You have to ask yourself, are you willing to take another step in. And I think that's a question that I live with, which is like, can I take another step into the river? Is there one more step I could take? Could I be a bit more courageous today than I was yesterday? Could I risk a little bit more? But I'm also recalling that he shared with me that he felt really personally still, after all these years, worried and conflicted about the position that he supported and encouraged Martin Luther King to take. And, you know, when he came out against the Vietnam War, because the personal toll was so high, you know, when King delivered that speech right here in this place, the civil rights leaders that were his friends and allies were telling him, no, don't do it. Don't do it. You are risking the future of our movement. You're risking the gains that we have made. Don't do it. We need, you know, Johnson as an ally. You cannot do this now. And he did it anyway, knowing that people would believe that he was risking this movement that he had risked his life for and so many had sacrificed so much for. And then immediately afterwards, of course, he was canceled. More than 150 newspapers railed against him. The New York Times, Washington Post, one of them said that, like, basically, he was a traitor to his cause and his people. It cost him so much in the end, and probably his life. And I think we have to all ask ourselves, what risks are we willing to take? And are we willing to tell the whole truth about our own cowardice as a way of taking another step in? And are we willing to challenge those who are supposedly our friends and allies in politics in these times, it's so easy to rage against those who are currently in power. That's the easy part. But then the piece of it where we have to ask ourselves, why is it that so many of the liberal politicians and Democratic politicians who love to quote Martin Luther King on his birthday and want to claim the mantle of King and quote these words, why are they accepting donations from aipat? Why are they voting for bombs? They're going to be sent to Palestine, in Iran? Like, how is this. How is this in any way, any remote way aligned with the revolution of values that King said was necessary and that we all know is absolutely essential if we are ever actually not just going to save this supposed democracy, but birth right, a democracy that truly honors the dignity and humanity of all? And I guess the last thing I'll say is that Vincent wore this pin that I have on right now which says, war is Terrorism. He wore it everywhere. And I was so struck by it when I first saw him with this pin saying, war is terrorism. Because we weren't waging a traditional war at the time. I mean, we were still, I guess, in Iraq, pulling out of Iraq. But what he was partly doing was flipping on its head the phrase war on terrorism. He was flipping it on its head and not war on terrorism. War is terrorism. And he was insistent about that. And he was insistent that we not celebrate, you know, the assassination of Osama bin Laden, the way the Democratic Party was so proud that Obama was the one who got the job done. And he was insistent that we not celebrate, right, like the murder of people like Gaddafi and others that we take seriously this idea that we can love our enemies and see the dignity and humanity in them and not rejoice in the suffering of anyone, including those our nation has defined as our worst enemies. And that kind of moral clarity calling us to the kind of revolution of values that remains consistent no matter who's in office, whether they're a Democrat or Republican, that the truth we're speaking and what we're working for and fighting for remains the same. And that we will not worry about short term political losses for speaking the truth, knowing that we are doomed in the long run if we think we can compromise on the dignity and humanity of anyone.
- [50:46]
A
I do love in the speech, when he says, when I speak of love, I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. And also, and we don't have time to at all delve into this, but this matter of what it means to love our enemies internally in American politics right now as part of the Democratic, as part of America remaining possible is such a burning question. I think I do want to talk about, you know, what the beloved community means to you now and how we find it and make it. And something that stayed with me so much that I've quoted so many times from the conversation I had with Vincent was his notion that we cannot underestimate the importance of what he called live human signposts. I feel like that's also a way of talking about what you said. You take the next step, but also don't underestimate the effect it has on other people to watch someone taking the next step or stepping into the river. And it seems to me that, you know, you. One of the things you talked about in Your research when you were doing the new Jim Crow is the most punitive nations in the world are the most diverse. And gosh, that feels like such a way to understand what is happening in our country, which never turned its back on its punitive, has just gone deeper and deeper into this punitive culture. And as you wrote your book and we're out in the world, you saw that there were people who didn't want so many people who didn't want to live this way, that there are tremendous people and projects everywhere. I know you see that now. I think that's in the project you're working on now. I see that, Lucas. I know. So it is again, it's this both and living that we're called to.
- [53:00]
B
Yes, yes.
- [53:02]
A
We're so understandably transfixed by what is terrifying in our world and also just what is uncertain in our world, which our bodies translate as threat. Uncertainty. And this is a time of tremendous uncertainty. When people ask me, where do I look for these generative people and project for this beautiful story that is also unfolding to say, look, look at the world around you. Right. It's hard for us. We're in our screens, we're at the headlines. We're, you know, we're looking at things that are far away and at this large national, global level. And sometimes to see that beauty that we can be part of, that healing that we can be part of, we actually have to actively or reorient around the world. We can see and touch.
- [53:53]
B
Yeah. I think there's a growing awareness, I mean, that there's no choice but for us to transform this. There's no choice. There's no escape from this. We have now, we have to change this. And that to me is encouraging. That's a source of hope.
- [54:15]
C
And I think we have to remember these aren't problems we can solve alone. Right. That we actually have to come together and form beloved communities. And, you know, I love the interview you did with Vincent Harding. I hope everybody listens to the beautiful interview you did with Vincent Harding. And one of the, probably my favorite moment in that interview is when Vincent tells you a story he had also told to me, which was about how people kind of dismiss the kind of Kumbaya of, you know, it's become a
- [54:58]
A
put down, it's a Kumbaya moment.
- [55:00]
C
That's so Kumbaya.
- [55:02]
A
Right.
- [55:03]
C
And he says it's painful to hear that because he remembers that when young people were getting ready to board the buses on the freedom Rides, risking their lives, and were preparing to sign their wills and write final letters to their parents and make final phone calls in case they did not come back alive, that they would gather together in a circle and sing Kumbaya. Come round here, my Lord Come round here, my Lord as we together are going to do something that requires an unimaginable risk in the name of justice for something we may never see or experience ourselves. And you know, I am struck in this moment that we are experiencing multiple converging existential crises. The threat of world war, the potential collapse of our democracy, looming climate catastrophe, the rise of AI. And at this very same moment, when so many people are fearful and where there is an epidemic of loneliness, we are also experiencing an exodus from our religious traditions, particularly among progressives. White Christian nationalism is doing all right in these times, but there's been an exodus from our religious traditions. And I get it. Many people are leaving for very good reasons. And like I said, I myself don't claim a faith tradition. But what is filling the void Today we have kind of consumerist wellness strategies. People go to yoga, if they can afford it, can go to a retreat. But there's a void. And I think that the tradition that Vincent Harding was anchored in a tradition of love and liberation and rebellion and resistance. It's a tradition that has been informed by the wisdom, our faith traditions, but it transcends our faith traditions. That tradition of radical love Thich Nhat Hanh was in bell hooks stands proudly in right, Joanna Macy and Grace Lee Boggs. And the names can go on and on of people who are firmly in this tradition of radical love, of revolutionary love. And we can carry it on. And whether we belong to a faith tradition or we don't. And. And that's really the work that I am passionately committed to. Along with Niall Fort, who is here, we're launching an organization called Spirit of Justice that aims to provide and build spiritual homes for people committed to justice outside of traditional religion that is anchored in this river of radical love. And I think we need it. We need to come back to each other, even if we don't belong to a faith tradition and take seriously this work of building beloved communities so that we can cultivate the kind of moral courage that young people had when they boarded those buses and sat at lunch counters and were willing to risk their lives.
- [58:51]
A
So I do want to. I did bring some words from Vincent, from that conversation I had with him, which was so formative for me and is so beloved by so many. But before I read them, you know, Michelle, I've heard you Speak a couple of times here and last night about questions Vincent would ask you that were really countercultural in terms of, you know, as an activist, as a thinker, as a public intellectual, as an organizer. And he would consistently remind you that you also needed to take time to be still. And I'm curious, Lucas, if there are, you know, practices like that that come from the spiritual well of understanding that are countercultural. And I think this is also why it's so important what you and Niall are doing, introducing this spiritual perspective and practice to people who haven't inherited in the way that human beings kind of were born into these traditions until 10 seconds ago in cosmic time. Yeah, let's just talk a little bit about these quiet practices that are not in the manuals of how to be an organizer or how to be a political activist, but in this vision whose wisdom we have been soaking in now are absolutely essential to getting it right.
- [60:25]
C
I've been talking a lot.
- [60:30]
B
Well, you use that expression centering down to center down, you know, which I think Vincent Harding got through Howard Thurman. And. I learned a lot from Quaker practice.
- [60:50]
A
Yes, I do know that about you. Lucas will be in Zoom meetings that are supposed to be work, and he's really comfortable with silence.
- [61:03]
B
I think about how the importance of being able to listen to what's going on in yourself before you're attempting to organize these big, complicated things and making space for that. And I think that's something. I saw Vincent Harding to take his time. He had a different sense of time. He invited us into a different sense of time. And that sense of time was also rooted in a different system of values. And so I think about the spiritual practice of slowing down. That's what comes to mind.
- [61:50]
C
Yes. Vincent Harding gave me several books by Howard Thurman, and I was just blown away to learn that the person who wrote what was considered by Martin Luther King Jr. The book that was the bible of the civil rights movement. That's how it was referred to by King. A book called Jesus and the Disinherited was written by a man, Howard Thurman, who was a mystic. And I was so struck by that, because where is mysticism in the story of the movement that we often hear and are told? And yet there was this Christian mystic, Howard Thurman, who took very seriously his relationship with trees.
- [62:44]
A
He was so ahead of his time in so many ways, and who thought
- [62:51]
C
it was absolutely essential to practice the art of settling down and becoming present with oneself, but also with the natural world in order to cultivate the capacity for moral clarity and moral action. And I really resisted that message. I was very much in the activist mode, the doing mode, movement building mode. What must we do now? And Vincent again and again kept encouraging me to consider this question of not just what must we do, but who must we be and who must we become in order to rise to the challenges of our time? And so learning how to practice stillness and cultivate presence in my own life, it's an ongoing challenge, but it's one that I take seriously now, because I now understand that, as Howard Thurman put it, like, if you don't learn to listen to the sound of the genuine within you, you will forever be at the ends of strings that someone else pulls. And that is what sort of clicked it for me. It's like, oh, I am not really free. If I am trapped in a mode of reactivity, I am responding to agendas and actions of others. And if I'm going to cultivate a capacity to be free and to choose courage and compassion and speak truth, I have to cultivate a space within me that is not being pulled by others and that is not reactive, but actually reflects a genuine choice rooted in a capital T, truth that I can't access if I'm constantly overwhelmed and busy and reacting to the demands of life and to the horrors of the world. So I do see that spiritual practice as an essential part of doing the courageous work that's necessary in the world today.
- [65:22]
A
So I do want to bring Vincent Harding's voice into the room from this gift of a conversation he gave me in 2011. I've thought about this and shared it so many times across the years, and it's so consonant with the conversation we're having today. We are absolutely amateurs at this matter of building a democratic nation made up of many, many peoples of many kinds, from many connections and convictions and from many experiences. And to know how, after all the pain that we have caused each other, how to carry on democratic conversation that, in a sense, invites us to hear each other's best arguments and best contributions so that we can then figure out how do we put these things together to create a more perfect union. This also opens up the question of what does it mean to be truly human? Democracy is simply another way of speaking about that question. Religion is another way of speaking about that question. What is our purpose in this world? And is that purpose related to our responsibilities to each other and to the world itself? All of that seems to me to be a variety of languages getting at the same reality. How do we work together? How do we walk together, talk together in ways that will open up our best capacities and our gifts? My own feeling that I try to share again and again, Krista, is that when it comes to creating a multiracial, multi ethnic, multi religious, democratic society, we are still a developing nation. But my own deep, deep conviction is that the knowledge, like all knowledge, is available to us if we seek it in another place. He said, the older I get, the more I am convinced that that magnificent madman Jesus was really talking about something very truthful and powerful when he said, if you allow yourself to really hunger and thirst after the right way, then if you will not back off from that hunger and that thirst, if you will just keep after it, then you will find the way. You will be filled with the way will find you. At the very end of our conversation, you know, he talked about the young people he was working with and the lineage, the impact and the imprint of the movement of which, which he was a part and how that had rippled through the world and through other countries, right? And anyway, and he said, and you know, he talked, I see again, again and again, right, in this country, see it with young people, see it with those who are loving them into new possibilities. That's why for me, the only answer I can give to the question of is America possible? Is yes, as we make it possible. Yes. Yes. One thing that came through as I was revisiting that conversation with him and thinking about being with you is that he insisted also that making America possible is not possible without music and without new words. And I don't know, I just wonder. You can respond to that however you wish, but I do wonder if there are new words that are emerging as you walk with this, in this tradition, through this world of ours.
- [69:12]
C
Absolutely. I mean, I think one of the reasons why kind of we at Spirit of Justice have been talking about the need to create spiritual homes outside of traditional religion is because even those of us who don't belong to a traditional religion, we still need music and song and celebration and a place to grieve and a place to be challenged and inspired and to be grounded and rooted in something real, a tradition that is deeper than what you might experience in, like a feel good protest where everyone's got really cool funny signs, but underneath it, like, what is it that we are really willing to live and die for? What is the purpose of our lives and how might we best honor that purpose in the days that we have those questions, especially now when we are trying to raise children and explain to them, the crises of our time and how they might still have faith and hope for their own futures. We need places where we can come together and sing and dance and weep and be silent and still together. And so I loved that every time I attended a meeting with Vincent, he insisted that there be some kind of music and some kind of song. And it touched a part of me. And I think everyone in the room differently. And you show up differently when you're invited to sing together or to hit a note together. I think it's also really important for us to recognize that, as you just quoted him saying, the work of love is really hard. And I think very often, even very well meaning, wonderful people in kind of the spiritual communities kind of have a way of talking about love and sort of a feel good, fluffy, we all just need to love each other kind of way, which I think on some level is dishonest about what love is and requires, as anyone knows in their family, what it takes to keep on loving your family members through good times and bad. It's not all, you know.
- [71:49]
A
Well, that kind of. That kind of love is so often about what you do in spite of how you feel at the moment.
- [71:57]
C
Absolutely. And so this kind of question of what love calls us to and that it's not a vibe, it's not just a feeling, it's not an emotion, but it's a commitment. And as bell hooks would say. Right. Like it's a practice, it's a daily practice. And that is something that we can strive to do on our own. But I think we do so much better when we do it together in community, with the support of others. Showing up in solidarity and showing up in times of joy, as well as extraordinary grief and making space to sing.
- [72:39]
A
Lucas, you're taking us out.
- [72:44]
B
You get the last word. I mean, I don't need to say anything, Michelle. Yeah, but what I will say, I mean, we are about to close with a song that Dr. Harding created and that we're going to invite everyone to sing with us. And it's gonna be led by Art Jones, who leads the spirituals project, which Dr. Harding helped inspire and name. So you're closing on a beautiful note.
- [73:12]
A
Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, both of you, for. Thank you. Being life's human signposts. Michelle Alexander is a civil rights lawyer, legal scholar, and best selling author of the New Jim Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. She is currently a scholar in residence at Union Theological Center Seminary where she's preparing to launch Spirit of Justice, a new organization dedicated to nurturing the spiritual lives of those committed to justice. Learn more@spiritofjustice.org Lucas Johnson is an organizer and public theologian who cultivates space for the spiritual transformation that brings about beloved community. He is currently traveling in the United States, evoking stories about the movements that expanded American democracy and and resurfacing Vincent Harding's question Is America possible in this 250th year since the Declaration of Independence? Find him at LucasJohnson online. Special thanks to the amazing team of people who made the event at Riverside side Church possible, including Casey Donahue, Kim Allen, Reverend Adrian Thorne, Jacob Schmid, o' Keira Correa, and saxophonist Langston Hughes ii, whose gorgeous performance of Precious Lord opened this episode. Our funding partners include the Hearthland foundation, helping to build a more just, equitable and connected America, one creative act at a time. The Fetzer Institute Supporting a movement of organizations that are applying spiritual solutions to society's toughest problems. Find them@fetzer.org Kaliopeia foundation dedicated to cultivating cultivating the connections between ecology, culture and spirituality. Supporting initiatives and organizations that uphold sacred relationships with the living earth. Learn more@kaliopeia.org and the Osprey Foundation A catalyst for empowered, healthy and fulfilled lives. On Being is an independent production of the On Being projected based in Minnesota and New York City.