Is America Possible
Description
In an unsettled political moment, the late, great civil rights elder Vincent Harding is a voice of calm, wisdom, and perspective. He was wise about how the civil rights vision might speak to 21st-century realities. Just as importantly, he pursued this by way of patient yet passionate cross-cultural, cross-generational relationship. He reminded us that the civil rights movement was spiritually as well as politically vigorous; it aspired to a "beloved community," not merely a tolerant integrated society. He posed and lived a question that is freshly in our midst: Is America possible? (Original Air Date: February 24, 2011)
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
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Vincent Harding is the voice I want to hear this week the conversation I had
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with him before his death at 82 in 2014 ever after changed the way I think about
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our democratic experiment he was a leading figure in the civil rights movement and he was wise about how the
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civil rights vision might speak to 21st century realities just as importantly
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Vincent Harding pursued this by way of patient yet passionate cross-cultural
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cross-generational relationship the civil rights movement he reminded us was
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spiritually as well as politically vigorous it aspired to a Beloved Community
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not merely a tolerant integrated society Vincent Harding posed and lived a
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question that is freshly in our midst again is America possible how do we work
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together how do we talk together in ways that will open up our best capacities
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and our best gifts my own feeling like that I try to share again and again
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question is that when it comes to creating a multiracial multi-ethnic
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multi-religious Democratic Society we
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are still a developing nation I'm Krista
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Tippett and this is on being
Vincent Harding
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Vincent Harding was professor emeritus of religion and social transformation at
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the Iliff School of Theology in Denver Colorado I interviewed him in 2011 back
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in 1955 he was working towards his master's degree in history in Chicago when the Montgomery bus boycott began
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eventually he and a few friends both black and white traveled south to see how they could be of use along the way
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they paid a life-changing visit to another young man in his late 20s Martin Luther King jr. Vincent Harding says
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that the phrase civil rights never adequately described King's vision or
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the human transformation that it stirred King for his part was intrigued by Harding's work with the Mennonites one
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of the original peace churches and by the early 1960s Vincent Harding and his late wife Rosemarie had moved to Atlanta
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just around the corner from the King's they founded Mennonite house there which helped the civil rights movement develop
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its philosophy and its practice of non-violence were you raised Mennonite
Were you raised Mennonite
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no no I had the marvelous fortune gift
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blessing of being raised by a mother who
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shortly after I was born became a single mother and who had just great hopes for
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me and one of the things that my mother wisely did was that she joined a
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fascinating little Church in Harlem called Victory Tabernacle seventh-day
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Christian Church these were magnificent women and men a mixture of working-class
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professional class all kinds of class and they loved me held me recognized
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that I had possibilities that I didn't recognize myself at the outset
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huh I had to leave them after a while because I come to different conclusions than they did but even after I left what
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I found out over the years was that love
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Trump's doctrine every time and I'm
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still deeply connected to some of the folks that I grew up with in that church
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6070 years ago hmm so you know I want to spend most of our time talking about the
Civility
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present day and mom and I want you to bring the fullness of your moral
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imagination and spiritual imagination that emerged from all your experiences including of course that and the civil
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rights movement a for example one of the words this getting tossed around a lot is civility and civil and I noticed that
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you've said you've stated very emphatically that that you think to call that movement that transformation that
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you were part of in the 1960s to reduce it to civil rights that civility in that
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cases is not a big enough word and you know and I'm what I'm hearing is I have this conversation now as a lot of people
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feel like civility is not a big enough word for us right now either so talk to me about that do you any thoughts about
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that mm-hmm yes I think that there are many things
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that have come to my mind Krista during this discussion that's going on and
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interestingly enough I hadn't quite made the connection that you were making now
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with my own thought but that's wonderful that's why we need each other I have
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felt increasingly that what we are really talking about is not how we can
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have more civil conversation but what we're talking about in the context of
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our society for one thing is how we can learn how to have a democratic
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conversation that is what we need we are absolutely amateurs at this
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matter of building a democratic nation made up of many many peoples of many
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kinds from many connections and convictions and from many experiences
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and to know how after all the pain that we have caused each other how to carry
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on democratic conversation that in a sense invites us to hear each other's
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best arguments and best contributions so
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that we can then figure out how do we put these things together to create a
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more perfect union I found that that way you keep pointing
Religion
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for years for decades you know that that asking about how to be democratic is really taking seriously that question of
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living into a more perfect union if I find that helpful as a way to open that word up and for me Crysta it also opens
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up the question of what does it mean to be truly human democracy is simply
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another way of speaking about that question religion is another way of
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speaking about that question what is our purpose in this world and is that
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purpose related to our responsibilities to each other and to the world itself
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all of that seems to me to be a variety
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of languages getting at the same reality right and so you mentioned the religious
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piece of it and you very strongly make the link in your telling of this the
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story of the civil rights movement the the healing link between religion and democratic transformation would you talk
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to me about that a little bit about what we've forgotten about the spiritual and religious dimensions of that let's
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remember Crysta that that community that helped
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to create King and that he then helped to nurture was a community deeply
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grounded in the life of religion and
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spirituality this was their way of being
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for instance everyone near him knew that he took very
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seriously this traditional beautiful
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terminology when he said that what he was seeking for was not simply equality
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or rights but what he was seeking for was the creation of the Beloved
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Community that he saw everything that
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crushed against our best human development and our best communal
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development like segregation like white
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supremacy when he moved to break down
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those laws those practices he was doing it not simply as an act of civil action
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but a deep spiritual responsibility seeing our best possibilities like my
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church community saw in me he saw it in this nation people like Jimmy Baldwin
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and others Malcolm for a certain time couldn't imagine how Martin could see
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those possibilities but I think he was seeing it because he was looking with an
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eye that was deeply filled by love and compassion and that high opens us up to
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see many things that might otherwise miss woke up this morning
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[Music]
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freedom look up this morning
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my stayed on oh I'm Krista Tippett and this
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is on being today summoning the wisdom for now of the late civil rights elder Vincent Harding in the decades after the
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1960s Vincent Harding wrote a seminal book hope and history why we must share
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the story of the movement and he began to bring young people together with elders of the movement he founded the
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veterans of Hope Project at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver to institutionalize this work in creative
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ways most riveting and instructive for the young as Vincent Harding told it our
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stories of how civil rights leaders have worked on society while at the same time
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constantly working on themselves still on three I'm a walking and talking
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with my mind stayed on freedom holiday
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hallelu Hallel
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this idea of storytelling and the importance of stories in the importance
The Importance of Stories
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of stories just for human beings in general but in a moment like this in particular comes up so much and yet I
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feel like we don't I don't know if this if we don't have the forms for it in this culture or if it's happening under
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the surface and not being pointed at I mean you are doing this my own sense to
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Christa is that there was something deeply built into us that needs story
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itself that story is a source of nurture
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that we cannot become really true human
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beings for ourselves and for each others without story and to find ways in which
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at our to share it to create it to encourage younger people to create their
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own story for instance in the work that we do with the veterans of Hope we also
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encourage the younger people to find the elders to find the veterans right not
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the celebrities not the TV stars but those folks who nobody else knows have
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lived such magnificent lives find them and then sit with them and learn how to
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ask the right questions so that the opening can take place I think that this
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country cannot become its best self
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until we find ways more effectively of institutionalizing that process of
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sharing the stories of the elders you know when you say that we as human
We Know What to Do with Stories
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beings have a built-in need for stories what your work shows is that we human
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beings also know what to do with stories right so that as you say the young people you work with
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no to take those stories as tools and pieces of empowerment in this day this
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year for their own best work because now
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it's a powerful time in this country for
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young people and others should be asking the question and what are we for do we
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exist for some reason other than competing with China or finding the best
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possible technological advances are there some things that are even deeper
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that we are meant for meant to be meant to do meant to achieve Jimmy Baldwin
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used to like to talk about us achieving ourselves finding who we are what we're
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for and making that possible for each other and so we've you're right about
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this you know the story just as you were speaking what I was thinking about Krista was when the mother with the baby
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at her bosom starts telling stories it
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is clearly not just to pass on
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information and what I find is that even
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in some of the strangest situations most often where I go where I speak where I
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share I start out by asking people to tell a little of their stories and it is
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amazing what people discover of themselves of their connections of their
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community and it's it's wonderful you know I've learned that too to ask
Hope and History 1990
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someone even to tell a little of their story is to give them a gift because we don't get asked that question and we do
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learn as much as we tell you know you a very important book hope and history
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1990 I believe yeah I think miss have been writing it in the eighties there's
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a story you tell that again I felt offered up a really practical image for now um was about you a conversation
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encounter you were having a hard neighborhood in Boston and a young man named Daryl yes would you tell that
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story about signposts his image of signposts hmm what I remember from that
signposts
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story was that their young friend of mine Eugene rivers young at that time I
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guess Jean jeans with Julia Boorstin yeah that that by the way is one of the
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characteristics of many of the elders that we have interviewed in the veterans
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project that people are persistent that
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they go on and on and on something that is not appreciated in this soundbite
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society if you don't get a told done accomplished in 10 minutes or 10 days or
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even 10 years then you surely give up and turn away but people like Jean and
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others grace Boggs is one of the great women who came out of a Chinese ancestry
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first generation in this country married eventually a black man from Alabama who
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was a union organizer in Detroit and the two of them Grace and Jimmy Boggs became
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a tremendous team until Jimmy died some
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years ago grace is now 95 and in Detroit
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she is one of the primary encouragers of the young people there
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not to be swept away by all of the talk
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about the end of Detroit's about the
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failures of Detroit but she is working with young people to help them to become
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those who build again create again well
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all of that takes us away from Victorian but also illustrates the story yeah I
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met this young man in Eugene's apartment and this young man came up just to sit
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next to me because he wanted to talk in a more personal way it turned out that
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he was one of the leaders of the drug-running folks at the time but what
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he said to me was that he really felt that one of the reasons why he had gone
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in the way that he had gone not trying in any way to excuse himself was the
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fact that he like many other young people were operating in a situation
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where they felt it was just very very dark all around them and what they
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needed were as he put it some some signposts some lights that would in
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other people's lives live human signposts yes yes that would help them
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to see the possibilities for themselves and I've always felt that one of the
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things that we do badly in our educational process especially working
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with so-called marginalized young people is that we educate them to figure out
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how quickly they can get out of the darkness and get into some much more
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pleasant situation when what is needed again and again are more
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and more people like Jean who will stand in that darkness who will not run away
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from those deeply hurt communities and
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will open up possibilities that other people can't see and any other way
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except seeing it through human beings who care about them and if we teach
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young people to run away from the darkness rather than to open up the
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light in the darkness to be the candles the signposts then we are doing great
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harm to them and the communities that they have come out of I think this word
elders
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signposts in this image of psychosis is really important I think it's an important piece of practical vocabulary
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you said a minute ago about elders that what you also tell young people is that they have to find the elders right I
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think I've thought a lot over the years about the teaching in the Hebrew Bible
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and they tested me that I think has residents across the traditions of developing eyes to see and ears to hear
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you think of that is almost a spiritual discipline that the 21st century makes
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more necessary that whole idea of
spiritual discipline
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discipline is one that clearly we have
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cast aside except when we're talking about technological development or
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military development and it seems to me that we need again to recognize that to
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develop the best humanity the best spirit the best community there needs to
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be discipline practices of exploring how
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do you do that how do we work together how to go back to our conversation how
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do we talk together in ways that we open up our best capacities and our best
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gifts my own feeling that I try to shear again and again question is that when it
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comes to creating a multiracial
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multi-ethnic multi-religious Democratic Society we are still a developing nation
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we've only been really thinking about this for about half a century but my own
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deep deep conviction is that the knowledge like all knowledge is
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available to us if we seek it the older I get the more I am convinced that that
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magnificent madman Jesus was really
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talking about something very truthful and powerful when he said you know if
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you allow yourself to really hunger and thirst after the right way then if you
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will not back off from that hunger and that thirst if you'll just keep after it
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then you will find the way you will be filled the way will find you and I think
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that that determination to find a truly democratic society and to create the
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truly Beloved Community those are things that can be available
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to us if we're willing to work with each other and work with the universe on
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developing them they don't come free and easy they are tough tough tasks for us
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to take on [Applause]
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we shall not we shall this is the voice
Mavis Staples
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of Mavis Staples one of the people who has Vincent Harding described it saying the way to freedom in the 1960s as well
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here in just a minute in creative and profound ways this also included songs like this little light of
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mine and kumbaya [Music] you can listen again and share this
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conversation with Vincent Harding through our website on being org there you can also download this show or my
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entire unedited conversation with Vincent Harding it includes much more of his wonderful personal story how his
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enjoyment of basic combat training led him to the Mennonites and how he first
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met Martin Luther King jr. joking in bed in his pajamas while recovering from a
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gunshot wound also more about lesser-known veterans of civil rights veterans of hope as Vincent Harding
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called them [Music]
Krista Tippett
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just like a tree I'm Krista Tippett on
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being continues in a moment
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[Music]
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[Music]
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I'm Krista Tippett and this is on being today in an unsettled political moment
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at the end of a divisive electoral campaign we're invoking the wisdom of the late civil rights elder Vincent
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Harding he was a leading figure in the civil rights movement of the 1960s he was also a close friend and occasional
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speechwriter to Martin Luther King jr. Vincent Harding posed and lived a
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question that is freshly in our midst again is America possible that question
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how do we do it is absolutely the question that I think is rising to the
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surface past our calls for civil discourse moral imagination but you know
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some of the tools you offer up some of the answers to that question are also
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quite wonderful I mean the discipline is mixed with the arts and creativity you
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talk about your memory of those years of the 60s that hard fight that also
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contains so much violence in darkness you say you have a memory of people singing their freedom yes tremendous
Creativity
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creativity that's I am go back to some of the old black preacher
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speaker practices by putting letters and
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words together when I think about Martin I think about Martin with the three C's
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courage compassion and creativity and I
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think that the stoking of our creative capacities is one of the jobs that is
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still necessary for us I'm always talking to my young hip-hop young people
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about the fact that we need some new songs from the hip hop generation that
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will speak about the Beloved Community in whatever terminology they choose now
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but we need some music that people can join together in to express their great
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need and desire for a better world do they engage you in that conversation oh
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yes they do we have a fantastic time as
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we try to figure out and now what are the new songs and what are the new words
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so I mean for instance let me just mention one word that we've been working with lately
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I've been on a campaign encouraging people as we think about the Beloved
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Community to stop using this word minority mm-hmm that there is something
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negative about that terminology because it always suggests that somebody else is
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the majority and the fact is that we are all now creating a new majority we are
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all part of this Beloved Community in
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community the concept of minority simply
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doesn't work you don't have a minority in a family right and so we have got to
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get new words new songs new possibilities for ourselves and again
Beloved Community
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that that phrase Beloved Community it was this phrase from the gospel which Martin Luther King used so evocatively
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to describe that community of the civil rights movement but what you wrote about how this little
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light of mine was sung at Selma mm-hmm that rather than saying governor Wallace
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give us our freedom it was about singing this little light of mine I'm gonna let
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it shine that was that was so much part of the
Let It Shine
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way in which the songs tried to encourage us not simply to be reactors
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so that instead of saying you know you honky governor we're gonna you know
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you're no good and we're going to do this or that to you the the basic
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deepest word was whatever you do we're gonna let our light shine God gave it to
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us we're gonna let it shine was the way that the words went and that
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determination to make our own action and
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our own commitment the focal point rather than a reaction to the moves of
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others was I think one the most beautiful things about about the scene
Betty Mae Fikes
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this is the voice of Betty Mae Fikes a teenager at the time and one of the freedom singers the music arm of the
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Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee the year this was recorded 1963 she spent three weeks in jail for
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singing during the civil rights struggles in Selma [Applause]
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let me mention another of those songs that recently came up in a New York
Kumbaya
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Times article I don't know if you saw this someone was writing about this
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terminology that we've taken about a kumbaya moment where we have made fun in
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a way of this whole experience that came
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out of the black church of the singing of that song and whenever somebody jokes
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about kumbaya my mind goes back to the Mississippi
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summer experience where the movement
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folks in Mississippi were inviting co-workers to come from all over the
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country especially student types to come
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and help in the process of voter registration and freedom school teaching
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and taking great risks on behalf of the transformation of that state and of this
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nation and there were two weeks of orientation the first week was the week
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in which Schwerner and Goodman and their
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beloved brother Jimmy were there and it
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was during the time that they had left the campus that they were first arrested
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and released and then murdered and the word came back to us at the orientation
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that the three of them had not been heard from and Bob Moses the magnificent
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leader of so much of the work in Mississippi got up and told these
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hundreds of predominately white young people that if any of them felt that at
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this point they needed to return home which of their schools we would not
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think less of them at all but would be grateful to them for how far they had
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come but he said let's take a couple of hours just for people to spend time
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talking on the phone with parents or whoever to try to make this decision and
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make it now and what I found as I moved
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around among the small groups that began to gather together to help each other
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was that in group after group people
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were singing Kumbaya come by here my boy
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somebody's missing Lloyd come by here we all need you Lord come by here and I
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could never laugh at kumbaya moments after that because I saw then that
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almost no one went home from there they
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were going to continue on the path that they had committed themselves to and a
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great part of the reason why they were able to do that was because of the
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strength and the power and the commitment that had been gained through
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that experience of just singing together
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and kumbaya [Music]
Im Krista
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[Applause] I'm Krista Tippett and this is on being today summoning the wisdom for now of
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the late civil rights elder Vincent Harding he was a pivotal figure in that movement of the 1960s and he worked to
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bring its lessons usefully and creatively to young people and the rest of us in the present day
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Oh
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[Music]
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[Music] was listening to the BBC in the recent
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weeks and they were you know they're watching us from afar and they were
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interviewing a journalist about this moment in American history which seems
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very tumultuous and the question was is it really more violent and more
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despairing than it's been before or does this happen repeatedly and the comparison was made with the 1960s and
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they said look there was a lot of social turmoil then there were assassinations
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right I mean many assassinations but um this journalist said and I just want to
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know what you think he said that he thought the difference between the 1960s and now was that even though there were
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was incredible tumult and violence it was at the very same time a period of
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intense hope and people could see that they were moving towards goals and that
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that's missing now what do you think about that analysis hmm Crysta I think
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that that is such a complicated kind of
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issue that I can only pick at it and
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tease it out mm-hmm play with it in the best sense of play I think that what I
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see now is the fact that all over this
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country wherever I go and of course where I go tends to be sort of self
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selective because I am most often going
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into situations where people are
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operating out of a sense of hope and possibility where in their local
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situations whether it be Detroit or Atlanta or campus someplace or church community
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in Philadelphia that there are women and men and young people who are operating
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out of hope my sense is that in the 60s
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there was probably a larger kind of canopy of hope that we could see and we
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could identify and that people could name and focus on now we are in
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particular spots locations sometimes seemingly isolated but I feel that there
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are points vocal situations where that
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is still available and where people are operating from that so I think that it
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is not simply the matter of hope or no hope I have a feeling that one of the
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deeper transformations that's going on now is that for the white community of
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America there is this uncertainty
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growing about its own role its own
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control its own capacity to name the
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realities that it has moved into a realm
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of uncertainty that it did not allow
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itself to face before and I think that that's the place that we are in and
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that's even more the reason why we've got to figure out what was King talking
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about when he was seeing the possibility of a beloved
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immunity and recognize that maybe for some of us that cannot come until some
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of us realize that we must give up what
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we thought was only ours in the building
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of a beloved nation can there be a beloved nation why don't we try and see
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my country tis of thee sweet land of
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liberty [Music]
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of thee we bout to say there's a
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question that you posed in your writing leave person receives is America possible and kind of echoes back to your
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assertion that we need more than civil discourse now we need to more fully realize what it means to be a democracy
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and I just wonder when you answer that question is America possible what people
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come to mind what answers come to mind in the form of the hope that you see embodied one of the great benefits of
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living almost to my 80th birthday is the
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great privilege of being able to meet and be with all kinds of marvelous
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people I spend a lot of my time in places like Philadelphia we're on the
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northwest side I've been deeply involved with church community the Methodist
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Church led by a magnificent woman pastor
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who has embraced the young people of the community in ways that churches often do
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not young people who are considered marginalized have become the heart of
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her work and they have seen their own
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possibilities I remember when a group of them came out to visit us at our project
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in Denver they were true Philadelphians
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they would dress from the Philadelphia streets they moved like philadelphians
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and they ran into some very interesting encounters in in Denver but at one point told them
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one young man one young woman took me aside and said could we talk to you for
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just a minute and they had started to call me uncle Vincent and they said to
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mean Uncle Vincent why do you love us so and what I saw was that they had this
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great capacity to know that they were being loved to feel it in their being
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and through later conversation that we had to recognize that that meant they
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had power and responsibility to do something for their community that had
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not been done for them I see young people like that all over this country
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and I know that they exist I know some
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of the adults who work with them in places like Greensboro North Carolina in
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Detroit Michigan on the reservations in
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New Mexico out in the LA area we've got working connections with young people
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and their adult nurturers in all of those kinds of situations and because I
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see that feel that receive their returning love I know they are capable
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of building the Beloved Community and so
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it is that kind of constant engagement
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with people who have been considered hopeless useless purposeless just like I
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saw them in the deep south people who considered backward unable to do
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anything became the creators of a new possibility for the whole nation and
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when I think about Tiananmen Square and
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Prague I realized that those folks in Mississippi and Alabama who were
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considered useless were able to speak to the world I see that again and again and
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again right in this country see it with young people see it with those who are
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loving them into new possibilities and so that's why for me the only answer
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that I can give to the question that I raise is yes as we make it possible yes
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yes Vincent Harding was chairperson of
Veterans of Hope Project
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the Veterans of Hope Project at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver he was also professor of religion and
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transformation there he published a wonderful writings including his book hope and history why we must share the
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story of the movement and an essay is America possible you can find that essay
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at on being org at veterans of Hope org you can delve into a vast repository of
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Vincent Harding's interviews over several years of his fellow elders the leading women and men of the civil
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rights movement this is the email we received from the veterans of Hope Project in 2014 about his death at 5:11
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p.m. on Monday May 19th with the spirit of many ancestors surrounding him the
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great soul dr. Vincent Harding left this world [Applause]
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[Music] [Applause]
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[Music] on being is trunculus Chris he go Lilly
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world find them at Fetzer org Kalia pea foundation working to create a future
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where universal spiritual values form the foundation of how we care for our common home
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you