Cesar Chevez Speaks at the University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio

Thank you. Brothers and Sisters thank you very much. At least some of the NRA. Thank you very much. We want to thank Brother Leo Mary fear the University of Dayton for the arrangements for the use of the facilities here. We want to thank Reverend Robert Sandman for the Reverend Robert calls for the service and specially also thanked Mr. Salmon for both and for putting us up. We came in about midnight. They had some good Mexican food for us and they put us up in the house and we got a very good rest. So we want to thank you also for that. We want to thank Sister all gaits for Sam and the brothers who sang before I got here and throughout the conversation it was really good. I thought we had some dissension in the crowd when we started. So thank you

very much. We certainly want to thank the staff here Roberto Konya and Becky Hurst for their work and their commitment. And you know I came from Coachella. Thursday. I left from directly from the picket line about two o'clock in the afternoon and the temperature there was one hundred twenty one degrees. You could see the men and women and children on the picket line going up for men to sacrifice of standing there under the blazing sun and being a witness to those things that they believe in face across the street with all of the guns that the Teamsters have been importing. The number keeps raising every day and standing there now for over two months in Coachella telling the growers and the

Teamsters that we are men and women and we are we count. And you sign those contracts without without asking us who we wanted. Well one of the Teamsters Union are we one of the Farm Workers Union and standing up there and facing all sorts of abuses. Standing on those picket lines day in and day out starting at 4 o'clock in the morning. Living in the Coachella city parks that we've got the right to use after several jailings and a lot of harassment from the local police and leaving that park and going to 10 12 different locations in the morning and talking to our brothers and sisters who are being brought in from Mexico illegally illegal aliens to break our strikes and pleading with them

and using every means at our disposal to convince them. In a nonviolent way to leave those feels the joyous and I want you to know that the men and women and children those picket lines are giving that struggle every bit of energy they have. They will talk to them about the union about the benefits about the right to decide for themselves and for their future. Who should represent them. They talk to them about the experiences of the Union for the three years that they were under contract. They talk to them about the future they talk to them about the news of the other 12 strikes that we have raging all over California and Arizona. They will read to them from my newspaper they will read my counts from other newspapers they will read to them from the Bible they will read to them from whatever source that the pickets feel and think that it's going to help them

convince the people inside to join them. And I think what they're saying when we stand those picket lines they're really saying that. We count we have to make the decision which uni is going to represent us. We have counting the our friends that are coming to be with us in this hour of crisis. We have as many as fifteen hundred pickets in those picket lines. We have more people on the picket lines and the growing has people working in the fields opposing US are about 300 or 300 professional people have been brought in face by the Teamsters. Fifty dollars a day seven hundred fifty four room and board and the sole job is to harass us. And lately their job has been to attack us physically and try to scare us off of the picket lines.

You see it is very difficult for the Teamsters and for the growers to understand that first of all we have the right to make that decision and secondly it's very different from the understand that if we don't strike back they think they were frightened. The great pleasure and delight in abusing our women verbal is. They. If they strike one of our pickets and we don't hit back. This infuriates him even more and they get up and they say and they shout across the picket line across the road and they say aren't you a man wanted to fight back. And if they are abused in their abuse verbal and we don't respond then it's

beyond them they can't understand how they don't understand us. They fail to understand the power of nonviolence. You say it took us fifty eight and a half months from September of 1965 through April of 970 to get those contracts. And in those 58 and a half months. The people who fought that battle gave everything they had. I mean that they did not get a paycheck in almost five years means that they lived on five dollars a week plus some of the benefits it means that almost everyone that had a house lost his house means that anybody who was making car payments lost the car. It means that we have group Families sometimes broke up families to sentiment to boycott. And it's a good example of that. It means that we have to do.

And to invent and to sacrifice and to and to produce and to get a cut to get things done in the boycott and the strike is never before and even when we were about two three months away from victory some of our friends would say we think it's a losing battle. We think that you're never going to win. And that in phases whatever was said during those long long months we had this. This faith that we have nothing in life. And I for one and I'm sure most of them felt that. Our grandfathers were poor and their fathers or their grandfathers fathers were poor and my dad was poor and I was poor and my kids had nothing to look back to poverty vacante the same situation continue and I would really have nothing to lose. The growers

had destroyed unions S.A.T. years ago. Eighty five years ago the Chinese who were imported here to this country to work on the railroads. In the Pacific coast were all of a sudden out of a job because the roads were built. And so on. Every culture started in California and there was a great need for hand labor. And so the growers began to send recruiters into the cities of San Francisco Sacramento Stockton to bring Chinese to work in those fields. And from there developed the need of having someone the employer want to have someone to deal with he couldn't deal with 200 300 or a thousand workers and that was the beginning of the fear and hate it. Labor contractor system it was in those days that the beginnings of the labor contractor system as we know it today

originated. And that's a central dispute. One of the two disputes the the central dispute of course is to the workers from workers have the right to determine for themselves by a secret ballot election who should represent them. The other dispute is Should not there be in the labor contracts. In the collective bargaining agreements something about the way in which workers are going to be hired. And so we have now today in agriculture throughout the United States in California we call them labor contractors. In Florida they're called. Crew Chiefs. In Ohio I suppose they're called hiring bosses. But whatever name you use it's the same middlemen. Who has the job because the employer has given up that right

has the job of hiring and firing workers at will. And uses that tremendous power over the lives of men women and children with an event for food and to eat on those jobs. They use that tremendous power over their lives to exploit them. And if you don't live in the camp then he tells you to live there and pay my rent you can get a job and if you don't buy the company store you can get a job and if you don't take loans out on Monday or Tuesday and pay 100 percent interest in the course of a week you can get a job there. And if you don't give them a present every day every payday you can get a job there and if you don't give them a kickback you can get a job there. We haven't had to be a woman to be young and pretty you can't get a job there. And this inhuman treatment because of the power of the labor hiring bosses over the lives of these workers

has been the single most. Gordon rallying point for our workers and so we negotiated with the employers. They talked about having a difficult time under the Union and every time that they criticize us and if we examine what they're saying they were telling us that they want that system to continue at all costs. Let me tell you how important it is to them and how important it is to us. We know two weeks in advance at least that the grosser have no intention of signing with us but we were faithful and we we lived up to that contract until the very minute that their contract expired. We could have struck home two weeks earlier and caused even more problems. But we lived up to the contract to the very last moment and nine and a half hours after the official expiration of the contract there was a joint announcement by the growers

and the Teamsters that they had signed a contract. He imagined negotiating a contract in nine hours. This hour the night hours from 12:00 midnight to 9:30 in the morning. Negotiating 31 different contracts in the valley of Coachella alone. And coming out and saying we now have signed contracts with the Teamsters because they represent our workers. Two weeks before the expiration of the contract we called on religious people throughout the country and some of the congressmen to come and have a survey to come and be witnesses to really want to find out what the people want it directly from from them from the workers. And there were delegations from here and other places. Some congressmen came and though they couldn't come send their representatives David Hernandez went from here. He went with a group of clergymen to a field and the workers thinking that they were Teamsters

refused to let him into the field until they were sure that they were not Teamsters. And they took a survey and they surveyed almost a thousand people. They put these 25 subcommittees of this delegation and went and they found that 72 people that they talked to didn't want a union at all. They didn't want anything to do with the union. They found that 84 people wanted the Teamsters in over 800 wanted our union. And that's that's a fact that cannot be refuted it's there on the record. The contracts were signed and the teams went crying all over the country we signed a contract we signed contracts with with a great broad and we don't have the hiring hall. The hiring hall is not a proper thing to have. Let me tell you what's happening. We fought like day and night you know 160 in

1969 we could've gotten a contract with everything. Most of the things we needed except. Changing that hired the labor contractor the hiring boss system was it now the workers must have a right to determine how they're going to be hired not how many. That's the prerogative of the employer just who's And I have a job because there are for every job we have there are three or four people there to fill a job there has to be rules made by the group by the workers in assembly where they can express their feelings and the world can decide how it's going to be done. And we said no thank you. We'll fight longer. We fought a whole year. Finally we convince the growers that we needed to hurry up. Say it's so important. Let me tell you what's happening now with the teams of contract we fought so there is a shame and it's just an

indication that how much the employer of the grower thinks about his workers when there were no restroom facilities for men or women and where if the time came. For the need to for a restroom to be used the best women can knowing you've seen this done many times three or four women will take their shirts off or their jackets and they'll they'll form a circle. So one of their coworkers can use a restroom that way. Utterly disgraceful inhuman. And someone said this has to stop and we have to have clean restrooms and they have to be nearby where workers can use and they can use them whenever they have to whenever the need comes. And so we fought for that we fought for two days and two nights in negotiations. Finally we planted into their heads that it was necessary and important and so they brought the

rest rooms. The rule was that they had to be separate facilities for men and women and then to be one restroom for every 35 workers. And they had to be cleaned at least every day and sometimes twice a day. And we took charge of inspecting those restrooms are our business agents and our organizers. And it became a hassle for three years. But towards the end they had learned to keep those restrooms clean to keep them there and to have separate facilities. And the Guardian want this. And then we talked for a whole day and a half. About the need to have clean water. Do you have ice cold water and have individual drinking cups and never occurred to them that this is important for workers today. If you go to those fields you'll see the same thing that the hiring bosses do. No restrooms. Maybe one restroom that hasn't been cleaned in the whole week for the whole crew. In those fields the day their workers have to fight every single day of trying to get ice

into the water. And the individual drinking cups are out. You know that they are trash mouth as he sees it affects babies. Mostly you know the last feels. It's quite common Franklin to have a whole a whole crew and everybody they come in touch with. Get trench mouth and that the cup right now is pretty pointed west before we got the first contract. Then we gotta get a beer can and it's open on top and they put a piece of baling wire to make the handle and everybody brings out a Community Cup. Minor things indeed but important things. This is of the things that make workers realize that they're human beings that they pay and that they count. We got a 10 minute break. Workers can stop work for 10 minutes at mid morning and mid afternoon. After we got the 10 minute break under the contract we had to go there and spend hours and

hours and hours because of hiring bosses who were no longer hiring bosses because the we had taken their job over to a hiring hall where then hired a supervisor and his foreman and they refused to let those men take those 10 minutes and we filed a grievance charges against the company and put all kinds of pressure indeed and argued and pressured those workers and growers to let those workers take those 10 minutes. After almost a year under contract we were able to get the the workers to take the 10 minutes not be afraid to take them. Those 10 minutes are gone. They don't get a 10 minute break and it seems that countries don't get eyes wide with them good restrooms. And you know I don't get these things that are so basic and so was so or they cost employer nothing. How can we ever think they're going to get the important things. Before we came in a common practice was for hire in Boston

there's 35 people in the crew and one or two missed a day or not doing the work as he wants it done he says. All of you are going to take our rest. We're going to rescue the whole crew for three days because there's two people in your crew that aren't doing their job well or maybe didn't show up on Monday. We eliminated that in our contract is still and it's still happening now. So the Teamsters gave up the right to have a union. They have a contract and they get their dues but they have no they haven't had one single meeting in over three years in the letters where they get contracts and that country and that they have had a contract in Coachella for over two months and at one single meeting with any people they have a contract with them got their people and so brothers and sisters. This is some of the things that we. Let me tell you the.

In 1969 there was another issue and was an issue that almost kept us from getting a contract in 1017 we were well prepared to go to 71. Well question of pesticides. I am making an announcement tomorrow. I don't work on pesticides. Let me tell you. We were not actors but we know an awful lot about pesticides. We know from the experience and from our deep interest in understanding friends that we fuse when we fuse do to believe that these nerve gases diluted nerve gases that were there were developed in Germany during the during the period of Hitler and were not diluted and used to kill insects and bugs were refused to believe that they're not harmful.

We know that they're harmful and we're. In the clinics that will develop for farm workers one of the there are two or three common illnesses that workers have and one of them is skin diseases of all sorts. And we say that that has to do with pesticides but we got in our contracts were the first group that I know of to outlaw DDT. We beat the British government we outlawed on our country's dignity before the Regarding blood over there and then we followed suit I think it was in 1071 in July of 71. Our country said you know here a government no more DDT as you know DDT was used because it's very inexpensive it's dirt cheap and it will kill everything in sight including human beings but it saves money for the growers

and it doesn't break up when it comes in the food and it's there in the food that you eat. We arrange for what we call a re-entry period. We fought for two weeks on the whole question of if this fever sprayed here when is it safe for people to return. And from all of the information we could gather from some of the scientists who are who have an interest in the matter we finally came to a negotiated position we wanted 28 days in our contract so we got to 20 when we got 21 days in the grower under contract to spread this film this field. Our workers would not go in there until 21 days at the labs to let the to let the pesticide break down not that it's totally safe to do it. But there was a most we could get and it's

more of what they're getting now. You know two weeks ago we were picketing the Moreno ranch in Coachella. There were about 40 crew 40 workers. About a third a fourth of the workers they need to do the job. And right where they were while they were doing their work in the sending of brakes before the highways they were in a huge spray rig and they were spraying those fields spraying the people up together with the grapes. And it was only when we got on the bull horns and we began to talk to the to the employer and to the guy running the spray rate and shout and scream that they start the spray. We're going exactly back to what they've been doing for many years. On the on the organophosphate point of the nerve gas poisons. The workers have been led to believe that that all the space of the same they said everything the worker calls everything software has all been spraying software and my eyes

are watering. I was spraying software in my and I'm bleeding under my fingernails while I was spraying Soffer and I have double double vision or blurry vision. Well I have not sure I have a headache. Generally what happens is when the organophosphates are sprayed. One of several things will happen it is a split vision blurry visions headaches nosebleeds serious cases of bleeding under the fingernails. They will go to the doctor one is very pronounced and a doctor will say we don't know what's wrong with you and all the deaths that we've had. People die if they go to sleep. And they go to sleep 10 o'clock 11 o'clock at night 8 o'clock 9 o'clock and most of the deaths and we have deaths every every year. And we were documented. These

things occur between like 3:00 and 4:00 o'clock in the morning 5:00 in the morning. And so there is not one single word that we heard of or know about pesticides in the so-called Teamster contracts. That's why the employers like the Teamsters. They brought in their guests. That's why we have this very difficult fight before it before us. It's not a question of losing a few members or it's a question of wiping out a whole union every single contract that expired not only in grapes. You've heard of the Gallo wine company win a contract with them for seven years. It expired just expired. And the Teamsters went to Santa con the Gallo sign a contract with the Teamsters. They don't even represent one worker. We have 280 workers there most of them Mexican and recent Portuguese

immigrants. Not one worker represented by them. They sign a contract. Brothers and Sisters. But what's really tragic and the things that the makers work day and night is that see if we could it was this time and this resources. And your help to bring a union to other workers we have to go back and redo the work that we did for five and a half months for almost five years. And probably the most tragic thing of all is when you consider the conditions of the workers and you see as an example take a farm worker a black farm worker a family in Florida. Saying average 6 or 7 kids and they're asked every year to travel up the East Coast into the eastern part of the United States and then come back. And these workers these families now before they leave Florida they know that they want to be worse off than when and when they get back. And yet they

go every year they go. And one has to understand why do they go. They know what they want they want the same things that you and I want for our family. Yet they go and then they go they know they have to go to an uncertain job they have to go right in a car that may or may not get them there when they get to the job and if they do find a job they have to put up with the hiring boss. If they do find and hire them they do find a job. Most likely they were asked to live either in a shack under a tree still under a bridge and they do get to work they're going to be paid a pittance for the job for their laborers. They're not going to be subjected to all of the exploitation gimmicks that the home boss has. And after they planted and cultivated and harvest the food they come back then nothing to account for. You take a similar situation with a Mexican family in out of Texas and they go into California to Oregon to Washington and back to Texas. And before they leave they'll

tell you all we know that and we're just going to live we're not going to make any money we're going to be able to get it. But they do it every time. And it seems to me that they have a very clean and keen understanding of what really the importance of the contribution because you see this men women and children who who who are asked to migrate to 3000 miles a year are the same. They're responsible for the fruits and the vegetables and the nights and the cereals the grains that you eat almost every time you sit in the table and when you sit in the table you see a luscious piece of fruit and or vegetables. Keep in mind that almost with very few exceptions that fruit got there because someone was exploited. Someone was sacrificed with no hopes of any return for their labors to get that food there to feed you and the rest of the

country and part of the world. They do this all the time. And what's really tragic is that these same men and women and children who are asked to give so much of themselves if they planned it and cultivated and harvested the greatest abundance of food that this great rich nation has ever seen in their whole world. When they come back they haven't any food left for themselves. It's worse than that then the cobbler's son has to go barefooted because his father makes use and can afford shoes for him. It's worse because this these men and women children do participate in. Their labor produces the food they had any food for themselves. And this is what we're trying to change and every time that we run into problems that any time that we think we're getting tired every time that we begin to doubt ourselves or God is look into into our lives. We're at the corner and in Eliseo and David and Richard and

me and those that work in the fields where they just think back we went through it as brothers or sisters we're never we're never going to stop. We're going to win this fight. We're going to win because the workers must have their own union to get ahead. Not just any union. And we're going to win because the workers want their own union and we're willing to prove it by an election. We're going to win because we have we've lost everything and we have nothing. The only thing remaining for us is to go ahead to do the work nonviolently not to be afraid of the lead pipes and the baseball bat. When I left Wednesday morning Thursday morning from Los Angeles I got into Chicago to change planes and come over to over to Ohio. And I called the office and the message was that the Teamsters that descended on our picket line and Lamont with lead pipes and baseball bats and

beating a 67 year old man unconscious when he was in the ground he was kicked. Mrs. Mrs. Lease Mrs. Lease. Charlie I was hit with a with a lead pipe as you came in to try to pick the man up had a broken hand and a broken arm and husband came in to try the fender he got two broken ribs. Brother that was a 1000 year old boy was really was full of blood. The sheriff's department who are really not our friends. There may have been. We're forced to say that is the most vicious and savage attack that they've ever seen. You know we didn't respond back with violence. There's not there's a sergeant who's in charge of the detail. That sort of goes around with the pickets very anti farm workers. And after the attack

after people were in the hospital and the teams were jailed he came in and said you know he told the press I've never seen anything like it. Describe the bloody attack and so when the news said you know I haven't seen anything like it to the discipline of these workers. This is these are good people. He never said that before. He was so impressed because we didn't fight back violently. And he came to the picket line the next morning and for the first time began to to say good morning to the pickets and began to stoop to try to be friends with him and he came and he had a copy of the marquis out and he used to laugh because our newspaper was reporting the things we see him and you say ah there's nothing but lies here. He came to one of the pickets I now believe what you say here. And that that sheriff sergeant was so against this change. When he saw that attack and saw discipline the part of the workers changed today is a good friend.

As a great example of the power of the vast power and the unlimited power of nonviolence which really comes from a Christian believes. And we're going to continue doing that. We're going to continue standing up and being counted and the armada of threats or violence. Nor does it matter how long it takes we're going to be successful and someday we'll come back to Dayton to thank you for the work you're going to do for us. We need your help as we've never needed before. We need you to stand with us here in Dayton. Because if you stand on the picket line at the at the parking lot or at the entrance to liberals to us it's the same as you were standing with facing the guns and facing all of the dangers when we stand. Men women and children and the picket lines in Coachella and in Phoenix and L.A. know and Lamar in Fresno in Salinas brothers and sisters we want to thank you and wish you guys versus. A.

Thank God. They don't say much. I know it's a matter of people you know that do not want to deal with anything. When you get down to the communities you know and I don't think it's always on a conscious level and should get to be difficult to deal with. People know that it's always some kind of way to relieve that for a few moments and his use of the chemical and then the availability is of a different types of chemicals. There it is. And they start to to to make use of it.

The. Last few years. Well I think that you know historically we did that. We know that drugs should be used in different cultures to oppress groups of people and I don't think that we can be naive enough to think that this wouldn't happen here in this country and have if drugs can be used to cool out or to control poor people. I mean if we and we take a look at kind of allies if that's what's happening. So I think that poor people who are you know a prime target for or for drugs for many reasons you know we can talk about particular with do it with young black people just insane in terms of of the times you know

we went through the whole civil rights movement in and then went on to you know whites in Detroit and the more I don't know what you call it. Overt actions in terms of desperation in terms of you know of the struggle to terms about some kind of liberation. And you could almost see the influx of more drugs into major cities as that was going on. You met or you didn't go back to San Francisco to the Flower Children of Haiti last very. I was living in some Cisco at that time and what they was into was was mostly you know apart and stuff. And as they made the transition into a more radical position about things that were going on they got more involved in drugs at the same time. And I don't think that's an accident you know where we're you know by the end of the so-called flower children period they were all junkies you know. And he has

you know and I was there was by that time we experience services school state and things in Berkeley and a lot of other things because they've gone through a whole different thing. Well this I can see that in terms of young whites you can follow that in terms of the problems and in the cities with the influx of drugs and methadone has just come along to let out to to do to kind of the same thing only a different way is that it does. Yeah yeah. What I can remember you know when when you know in terms of drugs it was mostly musicians and a few hustling people and things like that used your time. Machine. To deal with it now. You've got. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people employed

in bureaucracies buildings you know. Said technology just to deal with the problem of drugs. And again it's still addressing itself to the problem of drugs and the machinery that goes and the all the accoutrements that go to reinforce that and no alternatives and solutions that deal with any of the conditions the social conditions that breed to begin with. Transient. How is it you think it serves the interest of the world to the government beyond it employs a lot of people which of course it's good to have a million people about them by a couple years. Well I suppose it's a lot of people who like to kill a pretty much the same ideas and theories about it but.

It would serve the government's interests to have some sort of control over this whole phenomena. I would imagine since the American public is concerned you know the vast majority of people concerned with law and order crime in the streets and all of that. The only measure of control that the government could have is if they control this entire phenomenon in order to do that they have to set up the machinery with which to do it. But when the country being politically what it is and the system that it is it also has to find means to make it make some sort of sense business. Wise So they have to realize profit as well as business too. So it's you know a good company you know collusion with the government and industry business and community is you know cooperating now with a vested interest in drugs. What. Does.

It. Mean to write you want to do this or are you going to go with more with meth or you just want to deal with meth and that's primarily what the film is going to be relating to. The way it is very lean in very simplistic terms is that it's it's so highly addictive. You know it's much more addictive than heroin especially any heroin that you get today in the streets or anywhere else for that matter. You know their withdrawal is much more difficult and much more lengthy and much more unpredictable and erratic. The research done on it is faulty and some of it's classified and some of it's been. On the market and available to people on records you know from all sorts of sources there's been all sorts of research on evaluations of experiments done on it in this. All

kinds of information on it. All of it pretty negative. You know to the effect that it's a highly addictive drug that it's not recommended for maintenance. In any case anywhere really you know that if anything at all it could be used for some sort of modified detoxification purposes. And even that's questionable especially with heroin you know it's a much simpler thing to withdraw from heroin by withdrawing from you know with another drug. And that's been demonstrated and proven that that can be done it has been done has been accomplished people who've used methadone to withdraw from heroin find themselves locked out of the frying pan into the fire and with much more serious complications. And fessed up can take it from there into the physiological. Problems of drugs methadone babies in particular. And help people who are coerced especially you know in cities you

know in terms of the whole system that deals with welfare and the courts you know poor people you know how they're coerced into accepting these services offered by various institutions. That's right. Your sense is that. By being by being involved with one major thing a central registry you know everybody must register as an addict and be fired from the central registry. There they are printed in mud. Identified etc.. What is also implicit in the system is clearance valence which is. A very profitable business we get you know mail advertising for urine analysis laboratories.

You know just send drugs through the mail by the way we get mail asking for us to send packets of drugs through the mail and letting people in the community and parents and families know if they want to have their children's drugs analyzed or something that they might be taking they just package it up in a little packet and send it to this year in the analysis factory here and they will analyze it for you and send you back the result. Everybody. Near enough is how you really get here you have just one big question for everybody to hear you is when you move on counters. That's. Good because I said it was a real humorous thing when we first got here when you heard about in the experiment that they did to just test the credibility of your analysis and they did the whole thing with some judges and some probation people and a couple of

social. Sociologists kind of faces. And half of them turned up positive as heroin to preclude in couple of judges. Well you see that the chemicals they use you know a series of little vials with little sticks in the vials and you dip them into certain solutions and then they come up blue purple green chartreuse that indicates you know positive on a particular drug. You know save blue Speedo yellow for methadone etc. you know you know you know if you drink a little quinine you know with your gin something like that you level come up positive learn heroin. So there's the credibility of the screening. You know. Technology and that's not to mention the human. Fallibility of the people conducting these these these things in the labs who are you know also paid salary. You know who really couldn't care less if

depersonalize you know it's like a factory. You know and they just you know do all this analyzing you know and categorizing and making up statistics and they're not related at all to the people the problem or anything else just little glass sticks with different colors on it that you know signify extra. So. Yeah. Truckers. You know say yeah boy it's hard for you coming. Somehow over the morning yesterday state morning I think you know all these large questions that you span used wrapping paper someone deeply with every day you wanted to cancel it is true. Yeah I mean it's like hotel rooms or paper gallery will be here.

For weeks filming this. You won't find this implicit in the films where you really want to know and to know some things will be plus some things we want certain things. You'd like to know which. You can't. Lee Curtis this morning which is a good analogy maybe some sort of parallel out of it's directly connected I just can't look at it at this moment. But it was a very interesting article on the whole business of welfare in D.C. special investigators investigating people violating you know their applications for welfare kids continuing to take welfare while they're collecting unemployment while they're working on jobs. So what they're trying to do is modify. This condition. They say so that a person does not have to be penalized if they're poor enough if they're poor enough it's not worth taking a person to court persecuting them and criminalizing the issue by saying because you have overdrawn on welfare

will just cut off that money. And then you can collect your unemployment but not of course if you are working too. The point of a statement made you know enough position to this whole system that seemingly is very benevolent and trying to ease a situation was made by a head of war which is woman head of the Welfare Rights Organization here in DC who says that this is again a subterfuge and a kind of means of controlling people creating a cheap labor market. If you can get people off the welfare rolls and not you know like oppress them too much give them just a little bit of a taste and keep them in a certain income bracket. Give them some on the job training through these welfare programs. Get. Let them have their little piece of unemployment. Blah blah blah until they earn the little bit of money on the job training and then they make a salary of

perhaps $6000 etc.. What they do is fatten then expand. A large cheap labor force. That's controlling people and deceiving them you know by telling them that they're going to educate them employ them and give them training so that they can earn a living so that they will have to be on welfare and that they can collect unemployment if they're laid off. So it's built into a system. Which implicitly oppresses people who do not have information. About the government and the system they live in by not hand information they can't effectively begin to change it. Or resisted in any way which is the essence in the kind of basis and the approach that we use here when we take what we say what we mean when we say we educate people to their

social economical and political. You know position and connection themselves to the community that they live in. And how drugs plays right into that same. Premise. OK. I think that. Most people were not there. At that. That's about as far as they would get the energy to get on the job training or anything it was just a way of kind of like sticking with the program getting on welfare and sort of the robot as much mostly still to get blocked as Walker wasn't enough even to eat let alone buy the cocaine only you know you know. So yeah I can really see that I want to go back to work back to the whole question you know and roll around was talking to it's you know you should wait until like you know let's talk about you know became especially black.

Yeah how that works. How about you know the really big question but something that will certainly be of a major was one of the most. Maybe this is hard. Yeah I know I know that has yet to take me right. That's what most of the stuff we want to show comes out right. Yeah well actually the way you say it it doesn't I mean both of you express really difficult concepts and very you know down to earth sort of way. Most of the stuff will be will the. Grapple be people doing things as well. We have people you know talking about why Iraq is important to them that kind of thing so talk about whether you want to have a real M.O. of people doing interviews like this. I mean not that we need the information to we know. We have a guy doing a long time because he's got the most right.

Let's connect what happens to me here. It always comes out very badly. We've had very. It's for the city to make. The time to really put the fire out. Just for you folks believe they're. Going to try to. Compare I have no. Problem. Different work. Yeah well we don't but there is who we take different from. Yet you say Well I think the difference is that it's something we take a different attitude toward people is just that we relate to people. That's the difference. Because that's all there is and I think and that sounds like

it's facetious but that's exactly where it's at. That's what sad people when we tell you about methodology Turner governments you talk about a systems idea telling our fantasies you know you know you talk about abstractions you're talking about idealism you're talking about all sorts of impractical word games you know and systems and ways and styles that are devised you know to fit people into instead of responding to people and people and their needs. You know in the general and in the particular as far as individuals too you find a whole different perspective and a whole different way of going about relating not only to ideas but to people is just a shift in values. A total shift in the reverse of values. That's you know

that's the question. What do you mean if I can find a match to be much of you. OK. OK you go. Let's assume we give you the benefit of the doubt to a system that's designed to control people. Let's say that that's a positive. OK let's say they're not you know like the middle of press is you know greedy people that they really want to hurt or cress anybody they just want to control the situation and provide the best benefit for the majority of the people. Just here.

You know a person goes to a clinic and says I'm without it. I don't have any place to live. I've got a couple of court cases on me. I've got a family. We the parents and or children wife husband said. I don't have a job I don't have any skills. It's hypothetical. I don't want to go back to jail. I don't want to have to rip somebody off or I can't because it's too hard. I don't want to run. So the clinic says OK you know first thing we do is let's have your name your idea of a blood feels the whole data sheet. You know where the guy was born the blood sensor and then puts him through a

series of cubicles in this machinery. Now the machinery is already set up. You know. It already concludes what the problem is. It already has a system designer and you know with something in mind to do something to that person to relieve him you know of his anxieties and give him drugs take them off the streets eliminate crime you know play out to the best of their ability because realistically they cannot put you know people in this kind of situation. Q training schools you know in a system which says that students pay for their education. You know for the best education I mean you don't you know the scholarships are at a minimum and at the very best the circumstances even with good track intelligences are OK even

that sort of bare minimum. OK there's a quota of scholarships in the system which says you pay for your education it's compulsory up to a point you know. And then whatever it is that's compulsory is very questionable too and inadequate. You know we'll get to that. So you have this guy here who's told that if he behaves himself and may give him his drugs and he. Comes when he's supposed to come to see his probation officer his counselor whomever whenever he's supposed to on time and his urine that he takes two or three or four or five times a week depending on how dangerous a menace he is comes clean he will continue getting his drugs. You know he will be provided by welfare. You know some sort of living circumstances that will be provided and decided by the state.

OK. And along with that he would get within a limited framework the opportunity to avail himself of some sort of job counseling. You know and out of that framework he might be able to get a job you know because he has no skills of course there's no opportunity to move beyond this frame of reference. So yes take points there available to him what he's able to take you know which could be anything you know sweeping floors and said. All the tests they tell him. Well if you behave yourself in here you're a good boy or girl with your drugs etc. etc. you might be able to go to school you know and get you know like some sort of skills to enable you to get a decent job. Again all of these things are set up for you but there are already institutional institutionalized you know that job counseling thing. The education thing which is been there before you came

and applied for methadone the same situations. They're just trying to get out of there giving him a process which will enable him to go right back into it and cope with exactly the same conditions. There are not changed records like a static stagnant You know absolutely no fixed system value system doesn't change you know there are some Band-Aids and reforms once in a while you know and somebody will drop a few tokens down there for a while everybody will scramble and kill each other for it. You know and the thing just goes on and on. But that's ok it's still you know relating to people what you're doing is trying to sustain a system and make the system work and make the system serve the system. You know. When the people have to scramble and do the best they can. You know. To.

Adjust to that system. OK. Well we need you know to begin with. We do on a very very very basic level. For starters. What would tell a person in essence is that you don't have to do which you do it. Know what you can do instead of that for now. You know you can put one foot in front of the other. I'll show you where the bathroom is his bathroom. Are you too busy finding out where the door to the bathroom is have put you from the other. And there's a stairway.

There's so-and-so and there's J and then there's you know porkchop or whoever you know and this is what you do here in order to survive you have to do something to survive. You know you have to contribute to your own survival. There's no free ride there's no pie in the sky. You know there are no illusions your personal beliefs about God and man you know are following you keep them to yourself and what you do here is you put one foot in front of the other and you tap into and make contact with your immediate reality. You get yourself here and now and that's how the process begins and that's an oversimplification but that's pretty much what it amounts to. If you distilled down to an essence to get a person in touch with himself his own physical being and other physical being these walls floors smells food you know

to keep him constantly in touch with that. Street right near you and really just in the way. There are some disciplines people here told me in no it gets abstract too. People are told they come here to learn self-discipline how to get their thing together. Which story abstract we go in you either feel comprehend that from your own frame of reference or we think somebody is crazy when they say that to you. And most people you know receive that from their own individual frame of reference it means something different to every individual he says. So that's what we say to people here get yourself together. Just pick it up and says runs off. Everybody have lives here. You know what I think.

OK well you know one of the things is that we educate people very early as early as possible that the whole premise that people who used or been addicted to drugs for a thing like that time and somehow are dependent or physiologically dependent on drugs or in other words was a dope fiend always joking. Some people need drugs is a myth and is incorrect in this categorically false. No. And it's been reinforced and perpetrated by too because people don't seem to want dope. You know very simply. And given the choice of drugs and no drugs inevitably will choose drugs or social sciences psychiatry's medical.

Lunatics who are subjected to the kind of after a while can't come up with any kind of evidence to the contrary. You know or cannot affect a solution. You know move through their experience and their experiments and experimentation with drug addicts turn off very badly and rightfully so. Things are very very destructive and you know you're doing. What. You know the premise is that somebody needs drugs. That's. What. We have here. Well the position that rock takes is that. You could you could almost very easily assume that this is the case given the conditions remaining as they are in the community.

You know the poverty. The complete hopelessness the whole turnover thing the whole despair thing you know there are no jobs no homes no money no food no you know no means of survival except by any means necessary you know under those conditions you could almost see and the availability of drugs legally or illegally you know from all sides you know you can very easily make that assumption you know that some people traffic's really. Causing change here or near here. Here is an important one. Yeah OK. Like this.

One of them. Well. One of the values of this system is a highly individualistic kind of free enterprise thing which sounds on the surface like a very positive very good very free kind of thing. But if you analyze it and really think about it what it fosters is. You know and what it encourages given you know human nature as it is without any illusions about you know it's its ultimate goodness. It fosters a kind of highly competitive. You know status thing in seeking kind of thing if it isn't status its material or its land or its the most of its control or its mastery and complete complete control of one's destiny. Did that by any means necessary. System and create a system

which has a. Rally. Digital free enterprise. On the same lines. Why so I feel I don't understand why something works to hold for people to get a little bit but I think that when things get if you get it and you want to have like a have a set up like a regular thing so that you can sit down to read but just run so you can make some time to talk about and get into some of this political stuff. Yeah OK I was busy. We'll be here to see because that's actually good. I saw she's trying to force one of the best ways to express his or her to be nice and I could be absolutely see. It happen by doing. Are you or are you giving what people are just starting to look at you I know it will be a Hi-Lo like getting

more like. Highly political anything like your experience for me. It's a class where those i've used to be giving out concisely get more natural situation. If you think of you can wait. Your time here. That's where you get across the whole to do not use it doesn't seem right. All right it's not necessarily. Because of what I want to put aside. Now understand why drugs I don't understand why I need someone to change my life because. I want to ask you now do you see the political you know our eyes we see. OK well what I did see it is I'll just respond to the last one kind of tied up in that I think you know what we ought to do is set up like a whole thing so the right can have the time to be seen you know like by himself. So you could be set up like a regular interview

kind of thing so that you can get a more comprehensive think. The problem with phones and running back and forth illegal hopeless is it trying to get this thing off the ground because unless unless we map out I think what we have to do is map out a kind of an agenda shooting schedule and who are you going to talk to what you're going to shoot when you going to shoot it because otherwise this is going to wind up happening soon or around the environment you know because you go into a class or a rap session or something with all the equipment and with tape machines and literally do is disrupt the organization. What can you live my. Side when you're feeling well the house was on him. You know he didn't want the car OK. He'd be kind of sad.