I first started using the term “The Beloved Community” when I went
south during he so-called civil rights days. That was around 1938. We were arrested
for going to the black section in a segregated movie theater but we didn't serve
time or anything.
The civil rights period began in December 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to go
to the back of the bus and ED Hutton, a sleeping car porter bailed her out and
helped organize the Montgomery bus boycott, over the original objection of Martin
Luther King, who didn't think that was the way to go about it. Several times
I was involved in marches in the South. One of the earliest times when I stayed
with a black family, the mother said to me that she couldn’t take her
children shopping because they couldn’t use the toilets downtown, and
if they tried to do it in the alleyway, they would probably get arrested.
We would watch the cars going by and would wonder if they were going to stop
and throw a bomb. She said, `Oh, its so nice to have you become a part of our
Beloved Community.’ The Beloved Community was a term often used in the
South by those dedicated to the equality and human rights of all people. I've
used it ever since. Equality and the sanctity of every human being, including
the prisoners, who had done terrible things, but are still human beings and
still have the spark of the divine in them. Which is what I found out in case
after case after case. Including my bank robber friend.
After the 1968 Democratic Convention, the so-called trial of the Chicago Eight
or the Chicago Seven, I slept on the floor and the toilet had over run and we
were lying in the wet from the toilets. Eventually I ended up in a cell with
a bank robber. I never forget his saying to me, "You know, you don't need
a knife or a jimmy or a gun if you have the right other materials. If you own
stocks and bonds or have money in the bank, then you don't need to steal and
end up in prison. Some people rob banks and other people become bankers and
rob the people."
We have a class society where some people, because of their race or ethnic
group or because of their birth into the lower classes are treated as sub-human.
You could protect yourself and close your eyes, but everywhere I go I see people
who are unhappy. Not just poor people. I grew up discovering in my well-to-do
neighborhood that a lot of people who had all kinds of material things still
were not happy. The happy people have always seemed to be people who did some
little token thing well, which could be anything from having a garden and being
close to nature, or who worked with their hands to produce something useful.
Or my father, who had more compassion than most people. When we would go out
together, my father would always stick up for the waitress who might have brought
the wrong food, or food that was overcooked.
When I took bread to the poor they called me a saint, when I asked why they
were poor, they called me a communist. Nobody ever called my father a communist
because he didn't question the economic system. At the very end of his life,
on his deathbed, he told me that he was glad I had lived my life the way I had.
He said that he wished that somehow or other he had been able to live that way.
Of course, I told him about the waitresses and all the others ways and said
that he was an inspiration to me. So in a way, he was a part of my Beloved Community.
As children, we picked up more from the way our parents acted than what they
said. What they said was often very brutal or racist. But they treated individual
human beings as honored entities.
On "Movements For Social Change":
The danger of working to eliminate oppression and discrimination and the injustices
in the world is that you can become part of a movement that, either because
it lacks a sense of humor, or isn't connected enough with spiritual things,
with nature or art or music, becomes self-righteous. People come to believe
that others who don’t think like they do are not good people. That crept
into the movements for social change at the end of the 1960s.
You asked earlier how I keep going. Well, I keep going because I don't think
that you can judge the truth of a way of life by how much change it effects
within a short period of time. If nothing else, you are living the way you believe
in living. If nothing else, you may be sowing seeds. Who is to say when those
seeds will come to fruit? I think it is arrogant of people to think that they
have to succeed in their goals.
Way back, maybe in the 1940s when I would go to Washington to demonstrations,
I got strength from them, because even in a smaller demonstration you knew that
there were people from many different counties and towns, who thought like you
did, from a Beloved Community. But I also saw the tendency to become a little
self-righteous. `We know the truth’ and so forth. But anyway I decided
I would not go to Washington or any other city for a demonstration for peace
and justice unless I also, before I left, went to a museum, an art gallery or
a concert. Sometimes I had to get out of prison before I did. On the whole,
I have done that ever since. Most recently, in August 1996, when we demonstrated
again outside the Democratic National Convention, I was arrested for calling
for the release of political prisoners like Leonard Pelletier and Mumia BuJamal
and Linda Evans and so forth. The afternoon before my plane left, I was going
to go to a concert -- symphony orchestra – but they were sold out. We
tried to go to a museum but it was closed because of the convention that night.
So as soon as I got home I went to the first chamber music recital I could.
I don't have faith that we are going to change the world, or that I am going
to change the world. But I often quote Charlie Parker, the great jazz musician,
who said "Jazz comes from who you are, where you've been and what you've
learned. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn." And I say
to people, spiritual values come from whom you are, where you've been or what
you've learned. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn."
On "The Courage of Conviction":
When I would stand by my beliefs in prison, war resistant activities, the prison
officials threatened to transfer me to a prison where the inmates would definitely
kill me. Ordinarily that kind of thing didn't frighten me but one night in solitary,
I faced one of the biggest crisis of my life. I felt that to continue with what
I believed would isolate me and probably lead to death. I was in a cold sweat
over it for a few hours. And then sometime before I went to sleep, it was like
I died. I faced my death and concluded that I was ready for it. I hesitate to
use the words, but I came back to life. Spiritually. And for a quite a few years
after that it didn't matter. When I was in Albany, Georgia and some guy was
following me with an open knife, and I expected him to stick it in my back any
minute, I wasn't afraid. When I was thrown into a jail in Americus Georgia and
the guy who threw me in with the white prisoners said, `This is one of those
white adjutators from up New York (not true) who says that you should eat with
the niggers and use the same toilets (true) and so take care of him.' And somehow
or other, I wasn't afraid. Somehow or other I had enough confidence or self-assurance
that I didn't care if I was killed so somehow I was able to reach out to them.
The first time when that really left me in a serious way, was in 1967 when
I was sent bombs in the mail, and one of them arrived New Years Eve. It looked
like a box of scotch. If I had opened it in the normal way, a hand grenade would
have gone off. Finally, I opened the package from the bottom and saw black powder
and wires. I felt horror because my first grandchild and all of my children
were there.
Courage is not really an issue because if one feels strongly about something,
one acts in accord with it. It may seem like courage to somebody else, but it
is really conviction. I think of an example. I know a family who had a member
of their family murdered and they have reached out to the parents of the murderer.
As one of them put it: `I lost a son and he lost a son.' And so he went to see
them. That could be called courage. Or a mother who lost a daughter demonstrating
outside a prison against the execution of the man convicted of the murder. If
you are not spiritual in the sense that I believe in being, and if you don't
believe in forgiveness, if those are abstractions, then it would take courage
to visit the murderer. But if you feel within yourself the unity of human beings,
including those who have done terrible things, and feel compassion, that will
lead you to reach out. Even if the words don’t come at first.
On "Integrity":
I think you have to live your beliefs. You may experience oppression and hatred
against you, but if somewhere in your life you experience forgiveness for the
things you have done, then you can go from there to finding the courage to live
up to your beliefs.
I think that human beings are body, mind and soul and integrity means combining
body mind and soul so that they are all part of you. If we lack any one of them,
the others are a little less valid.
On "Love":
Sometimes I capitalize Love. The problem in our society is that first of all
we are taught that happiness and success come from gaining more power, privilege,
material goods than one's neighbors or other people. That does not lead to integrity
or fulfillment or courage. One of the early inspirations of the sixties came
from people who knew that their parents had more than adequate material things
but still weren't happy. The combination of that knowledge, plus the example
of young black people in the south who did sit-ins at Woolworths and places
like that, led us to challenge a world in which people do not love other people.
Real love is not falling in love with an individual, although that can be a
pathway to real love. But real love comes from becoming aware of what I sometimes
call the divine spark or the Buddha qualities within every human being. It’s
there if you look for it.
Somewhere in the book I say that given the falseness of our society, there
is a tendency for people not to say something until they think it will get a
good response. In other words to cater to the falseness of society and not saying
things frankly that might offend people. Somewhere I say that the beginning
of a new life and a new kind of love is to be willing to become completely naked
with one person. But it is easier to take your clothes off and have sex than
it is to be completely naked. But you can be naked with someone you don't have
sex with. Or the wonderful thing when a relationship that involves sex works
right is that you are not only naked in the body but are naked in the soul.
You say things that express your nakedness as well as your unity.
I don't have any role models. I believe in being true to yourself and learning
from other people.
From The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky:
Above all, love little children, for they are here to arose our tenderness,
to purify our hearts, and in a sense to guide us. My brother, a youth who was
dying, asked the birds to forgive him. That may sound absurd, but when you think
about it, it makes sense, for everything is like the ocean. All things flow
and are indirectly linked together. If you push here, something will move at
the other end of the world. It may be madness to beg the birds for forgiveness,
but things would be better for the birds, for the children, and for every living
being, if we were nobler than we are. My friends, be joyful like children, like
the birds.
If you meet someone who shares that joy with you, and loves little children
like you do, be glad and go into each others arms or something like that.
On "Spirituality":
I hated church, but I was always a good reader. Shelley referred to a particular
passage from the New Testament, and to my utter surprise I fell in love with
the New Testament. But I was just as selective as the minister was. The minister
in the church that I hated always talked about sin and hell fire and damnation,
and I slipped right by those sections and read how Jesus said "Love your
enemies. Do good to them that hate you. Pray for those that spitefully use you.
The rich will find it as difficult to get into heaven as a camel passing through
the eye of a needle." I am against material poverty and spiritual poverty.
I am for simple living.
When I went to divinity school, I doubted that I wanted to be a minister. But
I wanted to read the various interpretations of Church history and the bible.
Old and New Testaments. I had already been very influenced by Gandhi, who was
a Hindu, and had read many books by other Hindus and other non-violent advocates,
so I probably already had a strong spiritual emphasis. But I wouldn't call myself
necessarily a Christian. By the time I went to divinity school, I was reading
Joseph Campbell who said, "The fool hath said in his heart that there is
no God, but the greater fool hath said there is a God and he's ours."
I fell in love with my own interpretation of Jesus, even though there are other
things in the New Testament that are contrary to everything I do believe. When
anybody thinks that they know the whole truth, or that any historic book, whether
it be Christian, Hindu, Islam, Jewish, that any one of those things tells the
whole truth and you have to believe every word, I think that they are fooling
themselves. There are tremendous contradictions within every one of those documents.
As a matter of fact, Gandhi said: "I disbelieve in conversion. My efforts
should never be to undermine another's faith, but to make him a better follower
of his own faith. You may call yourself an atheist, but so long as you feel
akin with all human kind, you accept God in practice." It would be better
if he had said, `So long as you feel akin with all human kind, you accept what
I call God, in practice.'
I have learned something from just about every spiritual group that I have come
in contact with. Some of the most positive influences of my life have been atheists.
Some atheists are just people who resent the narrowness, authoritarianism and
self-righteousness of so many religious groups. But you can't put the deepest
values of life into words. I think you have to try to live them, you have to
try to imbibe them from other people, including people who disagree with you,
imbibe them from nature. I think I say somewhere in the book, it is certainly
a part of my approach to life is that I look at a cloud, or a tree, or the face
of a child, and it inspires me.
The Second World War:
I did not have a clear cut sense of right and wrong in all issues of life.
I had an awful lot to learn. I'm 81 years old now and I'm still learning new
things. But when it comes to prison, I was lucky enough that when I graduated
from Yale in 1936, the United States was supporting Hitler, just like it supported
and rearmed Saddam Hussien, and before Saddam Hussien, the Iranians. America
was rearming Hitler. I was an anti-fascist, based again with my experiences
with poor Italians and poor Irish. I did not accept the German hostilities toward
the Jews. I did not know that much about it, it wasn't that clear, but when
I was in Oxford I used to visit Nazi Germany. I went to several bookstores and
always asked for the works of one of my favorite poets, Heinrich Heine, who
had been banned because he was Jewish.
At one of the stores, the owner went down into the basement and brought up
one of the books and suggested I stay in the ghetto. So from then on I stayed
in bed & breakfasts in the Jewish area. When I got to Oxford, I found out
that a German Rhodes scholar was in my particular college -- New College, Oxford.
I assumed he was Nazi, but it turned out he wasn't. He came from a distinguished
family, not Jewish by the way. He gave me the names and phone numbers of some
of the anti-Nazi movement in Germany. When I went there on vacations, I worked
with the anti-Nazi movement.
During that time I and many others, Jewish and non-Jewish, tried to persuade
the United States to raise the quota for Jewish immigration, and to stop supporting
Hitler’s regime. Well-known people like Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein
could get into America, but whole boatloads of Jewish refugees were being turned
away. So actually, I did only a year at Oxford, and I decided to come back.
I was so besieged in my heart by these people. Of course, we didn't succeed
at all. When I went to the Union Theological School, high on the hill over Harlem,
I was one of six students who decided to move to and live in Harlem. There was
one black student there and a lot of black workers.
Corporate America was deeply involved in rearming and supporting Nazi Germany:
IT&T, Ford and General Motors -- built plants in Hitler’s Germany.
American Corporations are still doing the same thing -- wherever some dictator
makes it easy for them in terms of labor or protects them from environmental
requirements. Actually, after the war was over, these corporations received
millions of dollars in compensation for the destruction of their plants. They
actually supplied the bombs etc. that destroyed those plants.
I did a year and a day in prison before Pearl Harbor was attacked. In August
1939, Hitler signed the Nazi/Soviet Friendship Pact, and the United States knew
it would not be able to persuade Hitler to expand eastward into the Soviet Union
and destroy communism. The communists wanted Hitler to expand westward and destroy
some capitalist countries.
On "Prison":
The first Saturday night in Federal Prison, I walked in with a black man that
I had been talking with in the yard, and the guards directed him to sit in the
black section and me to sit in the white section, so naturally I sat with him.
Just as the movie was about to start, I was dragged out and put in solitary
confinement.
I was often put in very close quarters with the most violent inmates. The good-hearted
guards, of which there were some, said to me it was a way of teaching me “what
the world is really like instead of your idealistic non-violence.” Other
guards tried to get the inmates to kill me. Even though I was exposed to people
who had committed the most heinous crimes imaginable, I found out that if you
treated them with respect and love, and gave them some reason to believe in
themselves, maybe because you believed in them, a completely different side
to them would come out. For instance, a bank robber who, when he was fourteen
years old, had stolen some fruit. Coming from a disadvantaged family and the
wrong ethnic group, he was put in reform school. I did worst things than that,
and got caught, and my father, Chairman of the local Republican Committee, and
a prestigious lawyer, would intervene on my behalf.
Once we even stole the high school car and drove to the swimming hole. My friend
was put in reform school for stealing some fruit, and while he was there he
was raped by an older inmate. It was so traumatic for him that when he got a
chance he escaped. When they found him, they gave him extra time for escaping.
He was actually one who I managed to help. He still had ten years to go, but
I got a lawyer for him and helped him to get out.
Once, on an elevator, I watched as a Mafia leader was being manhandled. I was
in handcuffs, but I put myself between the guard and the inmate. The warden
later offered the mafia leader parole if he would kill me, but the mafia leader
refused.
Dave’s response when I asked him what meant the
most to him from his book (From Yale To Jail):
That part about be naked. Get rid of all of your pretenses. Especially if I’m
speaking to people who are old enough to remember the trial of the Chicago Eight,
where the judge was so unfair and so forth, I sometimes read the section dealing
with the sentencing. I said, “I feel more compassion for you sir, than
I do any hostility. I feel that you are a man who has had too much power over
the lives of too many people for too many years. You have sentenced people to
degrading conditions without being fully aware of what you are doing. You undoubtedly
feel correct and righteous as often happens when people do the most abominable
things."
Sports have become so ridiculous in the society. The idea is to defeat your
neighbor.
If you do your best and your neighbor does his or her best, you enjoy the communion
of it and it doesn't matter whether you win or lose. I quote the example of
one of my Yale classmates. I was in the lead in a mile race and I looked around
and saw that he was running second and the person from the other college was
far enough back that I could wait and hold hands and we crossed the finish line
together. I actually got a letter from him just before the book came out saying
that that was one of the most inspiring things that ever happened to me. I can
ståill remember the coach yelling at me "You are a disgrace."
On Federal Elections:
Elections in this country are obsolete now. In fact the U.S.
government is obsolete, despite all of the efforts beginning with World War
II to become a superpower and control as much of the world's economy as possible,
now the multi-national corporations have rendered both the elections and the
government obsolete. I am not saying that there are not a few areas where the
government has some decisive power, but basically the corporations control both
political parties. They control the media, which decides who is presented as
a serious candidate for the presidency. Actually, I vote locally and attend
Vermont town meetings and speak up there, along with other people, but the national
elections have been a farce.
On the Paperback Edition of From Yale To Jail:
The book was originally published in hard cover by Pantheon. By the time the
paperback interest developed, I had already become disgusted with Random House.
When Pantheon offered me a contract, they had just fired the editor who was
responsible for the book. David Rohm, who is now an engaged Buddhist, took over
the book.
When David had read a few chapters, he passed the book on to Andre Shiffron,
the publisher, and Andre talked to David about doing it into two volumes. Then
they fired Andre and the new publisher, Fred Jordan, and I had a wonderful conversation.
It ended by me signing a contract. However, he was fired three and a half months
before the book was published. There was such a public scandal over firing Andre
that they temporarily hired someone else who was progressive to take some of
the sting out of it. But when they got rid of Fred, I became what is called
in the book business a publisher's orphan. From then on the book was handled
by someone in Random House, who had no interest in the book. Above Random House
is Advance and above Advance is another corporation and it goes all the way
up to S.I. Newhouse, one of the richest men in the world. Newhouse dominates
much of book and magazine publishing in the U.S. Random House did everything
they could to kill the book – including not filling bookstore orders --
even when I was speaking nearby and had scheduled book signings. Even the bookstore
close to my home in St. Johnsbury Vermont couldn't get books. It wasn't until
I wrote them citing a clause in my contract that stated that if they were not
filling orders, the rights reverted to me after a year. After several letters
and phone calls, bookstores started getting books six months after they ordered
them.
Fred was the publisher at Pantheon Books ... Someone at Random House took charge,
handling the book in ways that reflected the opposition of that multi-national
corporation, headed by S.I. Newhouse, to having my thoughts, to having my thoughts,
feelings and experiences reach a wide public. Now the rights have reverted to
me....
I met Michael and Beth Strong, owners and publishers of Rose Hill Books, of
at Dan Berrigan's 75th birthday in New York in May. I talked to them and we
basically reached an agreement. Then, coincidentally, I went the next day to
War Resister's League to see old friends and so forth and there was Michael
Strong, doing volunteer work at War Resister's League. So it has been a good
fit.
