Latest / The Real News Podcast / Marc Steiner: A Life Standing for Free Speech | Ep. 8

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Marc Steiner: A Life Standing for Free Speech | Ep. 8 · The Real News Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: That's nice to change so much.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, this is where the when we were kids. This
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: is where the black and Jewish world met. Okay, right here,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: because Jewish was the side Jewish and then and then
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: baltimost onund and twenty fifth Street was Conslania Avenue and
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: that was down that way.
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: So that's where it all.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Alright.
• 0:30
  Speaker 4: Late last summer when I was in Baltimore, you and
• 0:34
  Speaker 4: I went over to Mondomen Mall.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Well, that's right, and you.
• 0:38
  Speaker 4: Told me the story of your first political activism, all right,
• 0:43
  Speaker 4: and if you could just set us up, like where
• 0:44
  Speaker 4: are we right now?
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: We're the Mundomen Mall on the west side of Baltimore,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: and it looks really different than it did when I
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: was a kid. I mean, it's just all we've done
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: the whole outside, probably inside as well. But this was
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: a predominantly white mall and we used to shop here,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: and my mom and I came down here was nineteen
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: sixty and we went down. I forget we were shopping
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: for whatever we came for, And so we were there
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: and we're looking over the railing, and as we looked
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: up over the railing, there were these line of black
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: collar students turned up to black collar students picketing the
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: white coffee Pot, which was an appropriate name because it
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: was segregated. They had restaurants all across the city. So
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: I asked my mom. I was thirteen, not quite fourteen.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: I asked my mom, could I joined the picket line?
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: And she said in English actions, all right, my dear,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: go as captain and see what he says. We went
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: downstairs and they said sure, and I started. That's first
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: I marched. And so from that moment on I was
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: in a civil rights movement. And then a couple of
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: years later I became the youngest person to be arrested
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: in civil rights in Maryland, in Cambridge, Maryland, Baltimore, but
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: in Cambridge, which was like we used to call that Marylands,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Mississippi Eastern Shore, which is where the when of the
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: last n jings in America took place on the Eastern Shore.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: And so that was what opened up this world for me,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: you know. And I would say, like from eleven years
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: old to like seventeen, when I was expelled in my school,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: my world was it was different. It was segregated, but
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: my world was black because of boy scouts, the street corner,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: the all black frat. It was of middle class black guys.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, so that was my world, you know. And
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: in Baltimore, this is people forget. Baltimore is a Southern city.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: It's a mixture of the industrial North with the immigrants
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: coming from all across Europe and later from Latin America
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: that was later from all across Europe. And it's a
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: southern city. It's a deeply segregated town. It's still very divided.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, there are very few interracial neighborhoods in Baltimore
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: even day.
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: Mostnays and mostly black. They're white or the Latino.
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: This is the Battle for Free Speech, a multipart narrative
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: podcast series brought to you by the Real News. I'm
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: Michael Fox, and today we're going to spend the entire
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: hour speaking with my co host Mark Steiner. First, let
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: me say that if you've been listening to this podcast,
• 3:24
  Speaker 4: you will notice that he's been absolute lately. Unfortunately, he's
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: been dealing with some health issues and he had to
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: take a step back. That is all the more reason
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: why I'm so excited to get to speak with him
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: today for the entire hour. And let me just put
• 3:40
  Speaker 4: this into context in this podcast We've looked at the
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: attacks on free speech rights today in the United States.
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: We looked at the history and how movements and organizations
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: have stood up and used free speech in their work.
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: We looked at how social media AI and disinformation are
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: undermining our free speech and how people are reponding in
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: the United States and abroad. In this final episode of
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: the series, we're going to focus on what free speech
• 4:07
  Speaker 4: means within the context of one person who's been through
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: it all. That is my co host Mark Steiner. He
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: turned eighty earlier this year. Today I sit down with
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: Mark to discuss all of these incredible layers of his life, community, organizing, theater, education, journalism,
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: what they all mean for him, and how they all
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: add up to nearly seven decades standing up and fighting
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: for free speech, and how they fit into the battle
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: for free speech today. That is where we're going to
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: spend this hour. I'm so excited because the stories of
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: his life are incredible, they're often funny, and for me,
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: they really take the idea of free speech to another level.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy our conversation. And the backstory is
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: that a my mother always raised us with clarity about race,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: that there's no difference between races. We're all the same,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: We're all human beings. And when I was eleven, I
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: wanted to join the Boy Scouts, just dying to be
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: a boy Scout. Read all the books. My English grandmother
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: and uncle sent me books about British Boy Scouts, and
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: I was just really into it. And so my mom
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: and Missus Jackson, who is a black woman who works
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: as a domestic in our home, were sitting at the
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: end of the workday together as usually did, having coffee
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: and cake before Missus Jackson left and she was being
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: picked up by her nephew, mister Dennis Foster, and so
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: they were eating and I ran downstairs. Mom, Mama, be
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: eleven years old. Next week I got to join the
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Boy Scouts. You gotta sign me up. And she said,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: all right, Love, we'll sign you up straight away. Beth
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: to Villa Monday morning, which is the local synagogue that
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: we used to go to. And I said, Mom, I
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: don't want to be in a Jewish troop. I want
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: to be in a troop of all cards of kids
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: which didn't exist. And mister Foster, who's African American, put
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: his coffee cup down and looked over the table and
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: said I'm a Scout master, you can join my troop.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: And my mother, I remember Alex still see her face,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: she said, oh, that's a lovely idea. She knew exactly
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: what that meant. And so that Monday he picks me
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: up in his mercury at the house and we drive
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: off from northwest Baltimore and passed the golf course and
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: went down to a street called Gasto Boulevard and into
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Warbrook Junction, which was the sheepparated line between black and
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: white neighborhoods. Then we kept on going down North Avenue
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden the world became black. Went
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: and made it right on Broadway, which is a deeply
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: working class black neighborhood, made a left of ra Actional
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Avenue and ended up in front of the Faith Baptist Church.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: And there I joined and integrated troop, as I always say,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: because I integrated it. And so I was a little
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Jewish boy in nineteen fifty seven in segregated Baltimore in
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: all black Boy Scout troop where I learned firsthand about
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: racism as a little boy, whether it was the Boy
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Scout troops. So we camped near in the boy Scout
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: camp were mostly white troops, and then one kid saying
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: to me, what are you doing? You know, shoot with
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: all those ends for? And I remember that shocking a
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: boy Scout would use that word. Or when we went
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: out with mister Foster to get some ice cream or whatever,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: and we stopped in front of an ice cream shop
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: and people kids spot out of the car and I
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: remember sitting there in the car and I'll never forget
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: his words. He looks in the window. I said, Mark,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: wherever we can go, you can go. And those kind
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: of things became foundational for me and understanding what kind
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: of society we live in as a little boy, what
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: we faced, And so that that time when I was
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: thirteen and we were at my Domin shopping center and
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: my mom said the last they pick a captain, And
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: I went down there and Skip Logan was the leader
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: of the picket line.
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: He was also the head of the Civic.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Interest Group, which was Baltimore's armor off Snick, the pseudento
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: of ballin Courtneting Committee, which is a major civil rights
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: radical civil rights group said short and gave me a
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: picket sign, and I started going to cig meetings and
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: became very active. They wouldn't let me sit in until
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: I was sixteen because they didn't want me getting arrested
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: if I didn't, you know. And the first arrest I
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: had was in Cambridge, Maryland, which we used to call
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Maryland's Mississippi. It's rough. I was sixteen arrested and I
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: was the youngest whitest thing there and they pulled me
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: out and put me in this woman looked like a kitchen.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: And then all these cops may be out. Remember how
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: many six eight cops around on the table, And it
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: had me wanted me to sign this document that said
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: I was coerced by communists to come down to fullmen,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: how trouble among the Negro population of Cambridge, Maryland. And
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: I refused to sign. And then it's proceeded to get
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: hot and they poured hot coffee on my head and
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: smacked me around and punched me around and hit me
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff. And I wouldn't sign,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: and they it's a digression. My mother, she was, she was,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: She was a tough lady. She was beautiful and tough.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: But she always told us, the three of us, the kids,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: to come home on your shield. That was her line.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: To us. You are around her maiden name. We never
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: back down.
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: You come home on your shield. So I didn't sign.
• 9:44
  Speaker 5: Wow.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: So Mom got me out, took me home, and I
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: got you fixed up.
• 9:55
  Speaker 5: But so.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: I can continued on the picket line and continued working
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: in Cambridge and going between Cambridge and Baltimore. The longest
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: trouble was I I started screwing up in school because
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: I was so involved with it. Between the civil rights
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: movement and the street corner, I didn't get much school
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: time in.
• 10:12
  Speaker 5: What was it?
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: What was it about Cambridge? What was it about Cambridge? Maryland?
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: That was Cambridge was well. So there were two focal
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: points of the civil rights movement in Maryland. One was
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Baltimore because it was the biggest city with the largest
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: black population except for all black towns in Prince George's
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: County and some other places. And Cambridge, Maryland, which was
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: the eastern shore of Maryland that you had passed through
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: go on the eastern shore. Eastern Shore was literally like Mississippi.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: It was the deep South in Maryland. So our work
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: was in both places, and in Cambridge we were both
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: picketing to integrate things, but we were sitting in and
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: we were registering people to vote. And the leader of
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: that movement was a woman who became very famous in
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: America because she became a figure. Her name was Gloria Richardson,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: had segregated hospitals, housing jobs to hold well.
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: I interviewed her years later on my radio show in
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: the nineties.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: She was really old then, and I remember one of
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: the greatest days of my life because I was in Cambridge,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: set the equipment up, about to do the interview, and
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: she looked at me and said, I remember you, you
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: with that little white boy. That was a great day.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: And she actually remembered me. And so it was a
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: rough place and I really literally was beaten and tortured
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: in the prison. They wanted me to sign a paper
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't sign, but anyway, that was the civil rights here,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: right and so and I I had a very weird teenagehood.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: It started out because I was a white boy and
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: all black boy scout Tupe on the east side of town,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: which was a working class community. I started hanging out
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: with this group of black eyes. Two groups of black eyes.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: One was the Imperials, who were the sons of black doctors, lawyers,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: judges of middle class guys so close to some of them,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: and the other was the guys on the corner. That
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: happened because when I was in junior high school in
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: the seventh eighth grade, I was friends with some of
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: the black guys in class, and it was newly integrated
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: and the majority of kids were white, but there's a
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: huge population of black students and we became friends and
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: I started hanging out with them, and that was the
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: street corner. So I had these two worlds and I
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: was part of and I was also a member of
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: the Young Sources Alliance, which was a Trotsky youth group
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: that I joined when I was fifteen, and so I
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: was a young revolutionary.
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: Mark. You also refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: and the Lord's Prayer in school.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Right in the tenth grade. When I got to City,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: which is a high school, I refused to take part
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: in opening exercises, which was then became part of a
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court decision that I was mentioned in. So you
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: had a pledge of allegiance and you read the Lord's Prayer,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: and I refused to do that. It was the Lord's
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Prayer as well. I refused to do the Lord's prayer.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: And when they did opening exercises, I would leave the
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: homeroom and stand out in the hallway till it was
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: done and then have to walk back in.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: And the same thing when it came to giant student assemblies,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: I'd get up, walk out of this downy with thousands
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: of students and walk back in after they opening exercises.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: So I became a target. Like one day, there used
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: to be these trucks that would be outside the school
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: on lunch time, were selling food to Caise who didn't
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: want to eat the captiria. They got to get food
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: from these food trucks. And I'm standing outside the pizza
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: wagon right and these remember seven or nine white guys
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: semi circled me around the wagon and I looked back
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: and I said, okay, here we go. So and I
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: ordered my pizza and the guy said, we don't like
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: to know end lovers in the school. And I looked
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: back and I said, sound like a personal problem me, man,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: what do you want to do about it? And they
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: came at me, and when they did, the pizza came out.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: I grabbed the hot pizza and pulled it out and
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: threw it in his face. So he had this hot
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: pizza burning on his face. And these guys jumped to
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: me and beat me up. And I walked back into
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: the classroom after lunch and my shirt was torn. I
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: was bloody and shit. The teachers told me, you need
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: to go to the nurse. The guy sat next to me,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: guy named Stokes, who was black. We were all because
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: we were set. Our chairs were assigned by alphabetical order.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: So I was sitting next to Stokes since I'm Steiner,
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: And he still said, what happened to you?
• 15:02
  Speaker 5: Man?
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: I told him? He said what next? Thing? I knew
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: after school, all these black guys beat up all these
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: white guys because what happened to me? Wow, And I
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: got suspended and I got school, got suspended. And then
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: one morning the homeroom teacher said, Starner, this is no
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: damn standing. Go sit in your seat. And I said,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: mister Camps, he can't speak to me with a little respect,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: don't talk to me at all. And he said, what
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: did you say? And he walked over to my somewhere
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: I was sitting, and he had his yard sick, you know,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: in his hand, and he picked it up, said what
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: did you say? Steiner? When he raised the yard sick.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: I went and hit him, and so all these teachers
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: came in and grabbed my ass and took me down
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: to the Principal's office, Vice Prince's office. Mister Yost, Doctor
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Green Maria, who was the Vice princee who graduated at
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: that high school with my father in the class of
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: twenty nine, called the hospital where my dad had just
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: gotten out a surgery. He was a surgeon. Bop had
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: to come up to the place, and Vice Priends went al,
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: this is Mark Junior year City. He opened up some
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: white out, which was when people typed on typewriters had
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: white out to cross things out. Open up a bottle
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: of white out, said this is Mark Junior York City.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: Get him out.
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: So I was banned from all city schools, and my
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: junior year never existed. Was sent away, and I saw
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: I was in the Civil rights movement, and I after
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: that that I got beaten up in the Eastern Shore,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: and my parents came and got me and brought me back.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: But I kept staying in that and my life was
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: between civil rights movement and the Street Corner and some
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: other radical groups. I was part of the Young Socials, Lions,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: fellowship House, things like that.
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: But I didn't do was go to school.
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: This Supreme Court case that you said that you were
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: part of for for refuse to say the Pledge of
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: allegiance and the Lord's Prayer and stuff.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: What was this court case? My name was only mentioned.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: It wasn't my case. But there was a student in
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Baltimore who also refused take partner of the exercises. His
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: case went all the way up and that's the reason
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: they took prayer out of schools. Wow. Wow. And so
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: it was me and two other guys in Baltimore who
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: didn't take partner in the opening exercises. It wasn't my
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: case though.
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah. You know what's fascinating about this mark is that
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: when I was talking with mary An Franks, you know,
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: she's the professor, the law professor at George Washington University.
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: Uh huh, she said that for her, one of the
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: most and I don't remember the court case. I don't
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: remember if it was this one or another one, but
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: she said that the court case in the Supreme Court
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: which defended people's right to not say the Pledge of
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: allegiance right was exactly what the First Amendment should be
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: because not only should it give us the right to
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: to speak out, but it should also give us the
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: right to remain silent in moments that we don't we
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: don't want to, you know, follow the doctrine of the US.
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: And she said that that is like the example of
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: what the First Amendment and what free speech, you know,
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: should be in the United States. I thought, that's so interesting.
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: I didn't realize that you were you had a similar experience.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: It was.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: It was in some ways a.
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: An isolating experience because.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: I would walk out of the home hoom, and I
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: have to walk out these assemblies, as I said earlier, Yeah.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: And it was, you know, it was jarring because I mean,
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: I was like this target for being this weird kid.
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: Why did you not say it? Why did you not
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: participate in the assemblies?
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Because I believed that religion had no place in public
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: schools as a kid. My father wasn't more happy with it.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: But both my parents were atheists. Even though my mother
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: converted to Judaism, they were both atheists. I mean, I
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: raised in this contract very world where both my parents
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: were atheists, and every twice a week because I was
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: also kicked out of Jewish schools. When you were Jewish,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: if you didn't go to Jewish school, you went to
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: Jewish school twice a week in the evening in the afternoon.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: It's like, you know, Hebrew lessons and everything else. And
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: I was kicked out of there too. And so mister
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: Mona Schevitz, who was a Holocaust survivor who taught there,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: would come to my house twice a week to teach
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: me the Talma, the Torah, Hebrew Jewish history, and so
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: I was steeped in that as a kid. Well, first
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: to me it was christianizing the prayer in school. And
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: what about us who don't believe in Jesus?
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: How incredible was it that your mom supported your organizing,
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: she supported your activism. Did she always kind of remain
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: steadfast in defending you and in supporting you standing up?
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean she she was always She's a radical
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: brit She came from a family that of miners who
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: ended up owning the coal mine.
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: In England.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: She was a radical as a young person. She remember
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: the Communist Party in Britain for six months didn't drive
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: with her free spirit, so she left. But she was
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, she was always like an She was always
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: a little different than the rest. Everybody loved her, but
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: she was a little different than the rest. She was
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: an actor. And when my kids we went out and
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: caught butterflies and labeled them and found amphibians and reptiles
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: in the rivers and brought them home and created terrariums.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: And you know, she was just And she also liked
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: her vodka. Mom liked her vodka. She was a trip.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: She was a trip.
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: Wow, Mark, I want to move forward a little bit
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: in the timeline.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: When you were.
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: Banned from from city schools in Baltimore, you ended up
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: going was it called Stockbridge?
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: Tell me about Stockbridge? And is it true that you
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: actually shared a room with Ourlough Guthrie roommates.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Wow, that was our junior year. We shall stay in
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: touch in our junior year. So I ended up in
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: Stockbridge because I couldn't go to any public or private
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: school in Baltimore because I also punched out. The kids
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: showed me around Friends school the day we were I
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: was supposed to go to Friends. I asked him a
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: simple question, his father on Glenno Commusement Park, that we
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: were picketting to integrate. When he said, we keep what
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: ends to a minimum. I said, what did you say?
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: And that was it. That's all she wrote. So I
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: couldn't go anywhere. So when we ended up in Stockbridge, well,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: the headmaster came down to Baltimore to interview interviewed.
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: His name was Hans Mater.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: And Hans was a Marcusian socialist who was in the
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: anti Nazi resistance in Germany in the thirties and forties
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: and an educator. Interesting guy, Hans Mader m a ed
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: e R. I say Hans because we all call our
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: teachers by their first name at Stockbridge and we went
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: out to Miller Brothers, which was embaldem was fancy as restaurant,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: and so he asked me, this is nineteen sixty three,
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Sotniel Mark. I don't know who your heroes are. I said,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Chego Varr and Malcolm X. He said, oh, this is arundfood.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: You must come to my school. And I ended up
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: in this co educational, interracial international boarding school in the
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: Berkshires with this incredible radical faculty, and many of my
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: best friends are still from that era from my experience there,
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: so that's why I ended up there, and I graduated
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: in sixty five instead of sixty four.
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: But that's all right, and it was one of it
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: was a great experience. It's it saved my ass.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: It saved my ass a from the street corner because
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: it was all on the road to getting ending up
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: in juvenile jail for other stuff, and it was it
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: was a great place to have it. Having it ended
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: up that county had a couple of really progressive schools.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: For whatever reason, they flocked to Berkshire County.
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: Wow, amazing, amazing.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: Mark.
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: Were you at the march on Washington sixty three?
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely there because I was
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: in the Civic Interest Group, which I said was Baltimore's
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: Arm of Snake Student of Molan coordinating committee. And we
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: all took the bus down from Faith Baptist Church from
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: Tip down to to DC. It was an amazing day.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: I mean it was hot, hot as hell. I just
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: the wrong way, but it was okay.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I was there, but i'd been because I
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: was in the civil rights movement, and and so all
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: of us who had been part of what was going
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: on in Cambridge and in Baltimore and on Route forty
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: freedom rides, we were there. Yeah, we were there.
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: Wow, that's such an iconic moment, you know, in US history.
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: It's almost hard to believe it actually even happened in
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: real life, right, because it's so iconic.
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: A quarter of a million people of all races together
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: in marching in the DC at one time?
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: Did What did that feel like?
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: Mark? It was amazing. I mean because you know, you're
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: on demonstrations and you maybe have twenty thirty people with
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: you when you're on picket line or which you're sitting
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: in or whatever. It was very different. This is a
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: mess of America from across America. That it was. That
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: and being part of the Poor People's Campaign in sixty
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: eight were amazing experiences just because of what they brought
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: and the numbers of people from all different communities across
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: the country being in DC at one time.
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was amazing. Yeah, it was I'll never forget.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: I mean it was huge for me.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Because I was in a school either, so I was
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: a full time activist and getting ready to be shifted
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: off to Berkshire County.
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: Talk to me a little bit about the Poor People's Campaign, Like,
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: you know you're organizing for it. I mean I know
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: that you were there in DC in those days. Tell
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: me a little bit more about about your role.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Well, I was living in DC. We were founding Liberation
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: News Service at the time, and I was working with
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: the Washington Free Press and n SDS.
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: There's a thing called e RAP Students for Democratic Society.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry seriously, which was the leading radical left group
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: in campuses across the country.
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: And with the n SDS there was a thing called
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: e RAP.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Economic and Research Action Project, which were which were people
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: in STS who went into poor communities to move into
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: communities to organize. And so one of those communities was
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: in Chicago in Uptown.
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: Uptown is a black in the southern the ghetto, a
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: lot of who's migrated from the South to the North,
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: very john.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: And stuff like that. We had a school teach very
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: good people, but how the system works in the United States.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: And they had an organization there called the Young Patriots,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: who were the equivalent of the Black Panthers in the
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: poor white community. So I'll get very close to them
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: when I was in STS and did a lot of
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: work with them. And there's still one of the guys there,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: high Therm and is back down he and he's the
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: one guy who staid he's still around. I've done a
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: bunch of interviews with him about his work over the years.
• 26:52
  Speaker 6: All through the city.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: There's thirty million dollars supposed to be split up that
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: bring poor people out of poverty. So our job was
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: organize the poor white community into Resurrection City. And so
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: we went all through work poor white work class communities
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: in the United States, especially in the Northeast Beach I did,
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: and in Appalachia itself to organize them to come down
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: to be part of Resurrection City.
• 27:19
  Speaker 6: Since the middle of May, the campsite of Resurrection City
• 27:22
  Speaker 6: has housed the poor marchers campaigning in Washington. The murder
• 27:26
  Speaker 6: earlier this year of doctor Martin Luther King gave renewed
• 27:29
  Speaker 6: intensity to the demands for equal opportunities as the underprivileged
• 27:34
  Speaker 6: came to petition the powerful for a new deal and
• 27:37
  Speaker 6: a new hope.
• 27:40
  Speaker 7: A lot of people knew the condition some of these places,
• 27:43
  Speaker 7: and I think that when they see and know the condition,
• 27:47
  Speaker 7: that a lot of people will be interested enough to
• 27:50
  Speaker 7: try to make things for them.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: It was interesting uncampment of mostly white Southern poor that
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: flew the battle flag of Dixie above their encampment. Wow,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: because it was the rebel flag. Nobody gave a shit
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: in the camps about that, and it was a pretty
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: amazing experience. I mean, here you have this encampment of
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: black folks from across America, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, poor whites,
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: some Asians, some Chinese and Japanese people in this living together,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: eating together, cooking together, working together. And it made a
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: statement that I it's to this day. It's what pushes
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: me to do the work I do, because you can
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: see what.
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: Is possible if you organize and fight.
• 28:57
  Speaker 7: We'll building our own house over there.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: And I want to tell you something.
• 29:00
  Speaker 6: It looks better than anything that we have in Browns
• 29:03
  Speaker 6: Or we got our house better than anything in Flatbush,
• 29:06
  Speaker 6: which is middle prayer.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: I think it is working down in Resurrection City, and
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: please listen to that. That beautiful thing down there is
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: just the top of a movement that stretches from coast
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: to coast.
• 29:21
  Speaker 5: This is the last chance, I think, for this country
• 29:23
  Speaker 5: to sort of respond to the quiet and peaceful petitions
• 29:27
  Speaker 5: of people for asking for very very just solutions to
• 29:31
  Speaker 5: very very real problems.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: So I was there until they tore down Resurrection City.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: When they came in, they had then apartment in DC
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: because that's where I was living that and then in
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: super Policy Studies became a refugee center for people who
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: were forced out of the Resurrection City. The saddest part
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: of it was there was no structure beyond that moment
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: to keep it together, to create a movement that could
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: really that did change things, but could really have changed things.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: And we had we had something to solidify it and
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: make it come together. But many things came out of that,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: you know, in different parts of the country. It was
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: a historically important moment in this country, clearly important. It
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: began when King was assassinated and his body laying in
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: state in d C for a while, and it could
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: have been a greater moment than it was, but it
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: was a It was an important moment in our history.
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: Mark, I want to just pause for a second. You know,
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: all of this organizing activism. Obviously this is a podcast
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: about free speech, and I want to connect it up.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, free speech.
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: What does all of this mean for you for free
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: speech in your mind? Like, how does free speech straddle
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: all of these issues in terms of organizing in you know,
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: your teens and your twenties.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: The movement that began at Berkeley with Mariosavio, who was
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: a civil rights work. It's important take a note here
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: is that that movement exploded and it was led by
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: people who had been white, who were white who are
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: civil rights workers in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia before and
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: then went back to their campuses. And so I always
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: look at the free speech movement was birthed by the
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: civil rights movement. People were radicalized to fight when they
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: go back and that was one of the causes on
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: their campuses that they fought for. And it happened across America.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, Berkeley was the center, but like I was
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: at Maryland, the University of Maryland sixty five and in
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: sixty four I was still at the Stockbridge, but it
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: became something I was as obsessed with. It was a
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: movement that frightened the establishment because in part what it
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: came from civil rights, but also because these academic establishments
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: were these quote unquote state institutions that controlled life on campus.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: This was the first major disruptions that took place in
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: decades on campuses. Who could never believe such a thing
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: could happen. At the University of.
• 32:26
  Speaker 5: California, for this many students were said they bad enough
• 32:31
  Speaker 5: and they're going to.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: Stand up right now.
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: And that radicalized helped radicalize an entire.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Movement student movement in this country. That was the beginning
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: of it. I mean, without the free speech movements, there
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: wouldn't been an SDS for that kind of power. So,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: I mean it was a critical movement in changing America.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: And many of the students remained radicalized, organized and went
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: and continued on. And that thing is why people forgetting
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: know the movement kind of waned and died. That particular movement,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: the people in it continued to push. Yeah.
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, most universities were run by.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: The wealth of this country, and this establishment figures who
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: ran that wealth also ran our universities.
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: That was the first major confrontation against that in that era.
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: Mark talked about the Washington Free Press and the Liberation
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: News Service, like, how were you involved? What were those outlets?
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: Well? I was involved first off with the Washington Free Press.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: After I was flunked out of college, I moved to
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: DuPont Circle, which is a neighborhood in DC which is
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: around the corner from Martiroom Free Press, and I met
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: the guys that the people from Marhroom Free Press. We
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: hit it off immediately and I started writing for them
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: and working for them and also with sts at large.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: In DC, we actually had the Radical Movement had rented
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: a building on near DuPont Circle and Logan Circle was
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: whose three stories of the different movements had their headquarters
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: in that building. Wow, I was there. We guy in
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: Marshall Bloom and I organized a national conference all the
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: underground papers in the country to come to DC for
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: a week long meeting. Because there were underground papers across
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: America then, I mean every city had one. I mean
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: everybody had one, small cities, big cities, college towns, they
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: were everywhere, and so we brought them together to start
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: what became Liberation News Service, which really became an effective movement.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: And we were collecting stores from across the globe, across
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: the country and giving it out to all the papers
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: across the country to use and creating a communication between
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: the underground papers and some college papers Michigan, Chicago, Wisconsin
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: of the places around the country. So in its lifetime
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: it was a very effective group.
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: I think it's fascinating to think about how that communication
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: was happening back then, you know, because right now everything
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: is oh it's all internet. You just send an email.
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: It's super easy. All right, there's no internet, right, And
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: so back in those days, you're what is this like
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: over over over telephone you're sending you.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: Know, telephone and US mail.
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: Wow?
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, telephone and US mail.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. That was the only way to communicate, the
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: only way it could happen.
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: What was it about the media, the underground media.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: And the writing?
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: What was it that called your attention? Why did you
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: want to get involved in this?
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: The largest group creative papers are alternative weeklies speaking to
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: a different population against the war, for the civil rights movement,
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: for the radical movement, the countercultural movement that took place
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: in the late sixties early seventies. So it had its
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: audience and in alliance with groups like the Black Panther
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: newspaper and other black and Latino newspapers around the country
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: that were part of it as well. But it was
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: this alternative press that made a bit difference because people
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: actually read it, gave a kind of brought community together,
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: you know, in ways it doesn't exist right now. I mean,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: we've got this right here where we're working in real news,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: which in some ways is the grandchild of the underground press,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: but there were so many. Every locality had one. I
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: can't think of a part of our country did not
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: have a piece of the underground press. So we were
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: able with Liberation News Service to share stories around the
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: country and to bring stories in from Europe and Asia
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: and Africa to show them with the papers around the country,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: and also bring people together to talk strategically about what
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: it means to create a newspaper and an underground press
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: and how that's an organizing tool. It was a great period.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I mean it was the same
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: period where we were involved in draft resistance. It was
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: the same period where we were smuggling people out of
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: the country into Canada to get out of the army,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: and then I was involved in as well. We actually
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: thought the revolution was in hand. Little did we know
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: what I'm about to happen, but it was what it
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: was a significant movement.
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: Was there a backlash by you know, elites, by the
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: forces that be against the underground papers or was it
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: so underground that it wasn't a big deal.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: That's a great question. What was the demise of the
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: underground papers? That'd be a really interesting question to explore.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, part of it was people drifting away and
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: getting older and the movement dissipating and just not being
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: there anymore. It could have been something as simple as that,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: but it's at the same time as Cone tel pro
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: is happening. Right, Oh no, no, no, nos y. Look man,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: here's the story. I guess this was nineteen sixty early
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: sixty eight maybe, and we had some telephone problems. So
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: we asked the local Washington company come over and fix it,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: and they were doing that, and then when the guy
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: who was working on it said you want us to
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: fix the other phones, and we went, sure, which other
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: phones do you mean? And he said, just half a
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: block away at whatever the number was, seventeen something P Street.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: We were seventeen nineteen P Street and we said, oh,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: sure you can take those out.
• 38:44
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: So they were buggy. So the fence were collecting information
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: on us literally across the road. They were no real
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: indict Mimsis could place at least where we were in Washington.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: But when the movement got more militant and more aggressive,
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: and like all my friends at STS who became part
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: of the weather Underground, that was a different that was
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: a different time. Then they came after everybody. I mean
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: when I in sixty eight, I went to Cuba January
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: February March of sixty eight, I was in Cuba.
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: Yes, yes, show.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: They came after us who went there. They tried to
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: seize our passports. They're harassed us. They got they got
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: me fired from a job, and one job wouldn't fire me.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: That was a couple of years later when they came again.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: So they did go after if you were on the
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: if you were on the left, and when you were
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: still active, they came over to silence you.
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: Mark fast forwarding in a little bit a couple of
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: years talk about the Tenants Union Group in Baltimore.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: So, as I said earlier, inn sts is a group
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: called e RAP, and these are people who went out.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: Tom Hayden others who's probably the most famous for the
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: Crew went out and to organize in different working class
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: communities across the United States. So that was the kind
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: of the early stages of people doing that. We weren't
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: part of e RAP, but we were just revolutions and
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: radicals who were wanted to go introduce organizing. Baltimore had
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: up because of the steel mills, because of the docks,
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: a lot of people ended up taking jobs in those places.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: The autoplant to organize those organize internally inside unions in
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: the workplace, and the people moved into the communities to
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: continue organizing in the community. So we had collective houses
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: across Baltimore, the neighborhood like Waverley, South Baltimore Piged Town,
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: I mean across the city. And so there were four
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: of us who knew each other really well, and we
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: moved down to South Baltimore and got really involved in
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: both the South Baltimore Voice and in created the Attendants
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: Union group. We went out of organize tennis of these slumlords,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: mostly white, while the white and black there was There
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: was a street called Charles Street, which is the main
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: thoroughfare in Baltimore, but the bottom part of it in
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: this part of Baltimore was to divide between black and
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: white working class communities. In South Baltimore, the black community
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: is called sharp Letton Hall, which before the Civil War
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: was the oldest is one of the oldest, biggest free
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: black communities in the country anyway, So we began to
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: organize and other things were happening too. Radicals in Charles
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: Village is the neighborhood and those of us organizing in Waverley,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: another white black working class community. We created the People's
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: Free Medical Clinic with radical young doctors and nurses to
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: serve the people. Add a People's Free Grocery store where
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: my ex it was to my dear friend and my
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: daughter lived above it, and it was a grocery store
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: that where there were no profits made, but were there
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: to serve the people, to give them food so that
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: they could buy food it cost. And we had a
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: People's Free garage that was started by two people in
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: the John Brown Collective that I was part of as well.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: After South Baltimore, I was part of John Brown Collective.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: And the people Who Garage is a place where these
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: two guys, Michael O'Brien and Jean Flannagan. Jane was a
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: vet and Mike was just one of those big Irish boys,
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: and they knew cars and they started people and they
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: started this garage where people could come fix their cars
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: and work in their cars and be taught how to
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: work in their cars. So we had all these collective,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: cooperative movements that we started in the city. So it
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: was it was really a center of radicalism that hasn't
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: gotten much play in terms of our history. And it was,
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: and it was mostly really a working class movement. It
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: wasn't just college kids, the people who lived in the
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: community who radicalized in different ways. So that when in
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, when the invasion of Laos happened, we
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: organized a demonstration against the war. In that demonstration, there
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: were a lot of Vietnam Vets who were part of
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: our work and other people as well. And what they
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: didn't expect the police was that they probably like college
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: kids and run.
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: The difference was it wasn't that kind of group.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: It was a group of hard fighting, hard drinking, crazy
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: working class kids. So when the police attacked, we all
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: stood and fought. I really fought. The headline I so
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: have on my wall at home which said twenty one
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: police sent to the hospital. I mean, it was wow.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: And and people got charges like assault and battlement, tent
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: mayhem and murder and other things like that. And I
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: was charged, but that's another story because that broke his
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: cops nose when.
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: He tried to arrest me.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: So it was it was it was a really center
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: of radicalism, both organizing and in militancy in the city
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: and it changed laws. I mean, we tug changed the
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: tenant laws in Baltimore, working with radical legal aid lawyers
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: who were on the left working in legal aid, and
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: we would we would organize rent strikes and put the
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: money aside in case we had to give it back.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: And but anyway, we actually changed the law to benefit
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: the tenants of Baltimore through our work through our rent strikes. So,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: I mean it was it was a heady period in
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: the early seventies. Here we were doing a lot of stuff.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, people's through medical clinic was unheard of. It
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: was like the box and nurses giving their time time
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: when they were not getting paid to work in a
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: medical conduct for poor working class people in the city,
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: you know. So it was it was a very special
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: time and to be pard of, nobody planned it in
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: that way. It just happened.
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: We were just there and we just began to organize
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: and work.
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's something I think that is really important that
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: is oftentimes missed or people don't make this connection, and
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: that is like the deep roots between organizing activism, standing
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: up and our right to free speech. And I don't
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: necessarily mean the free speech movement. I just mean our
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: right to stand up and speak out. I feel like
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: these are two different things. Someone might be oh First Amendment,
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, that's over here, or oh, that's our right
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: to speak, and then organizing activism or protesting is there
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: as if they're separate, but they're not. You said something
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: a couple of episodes ago that really stuck with me,
• 45:58
  Speaker 4: and you said, free speech is organizing, It is coming
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: together and taking action to actually organize. Can you talk
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: a little bit about that.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: Free speech is at the root of the struggle for
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: independence in the eighteenth century in this country. That's where
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: it began. You may have gone past that in terms
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: of marks and the Wobblies and the rest, but the
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: roots were in is very American and that we demand
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: the right to say we have to say, and to
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: organize and to stand up and speak, and if it's
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: done right, it can be a very scary opposition to
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: those in power. And I think that's what we saw,
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: and I think there's a movement of foot now to
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: clamp down on free speech in this country. I see
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: a lot of what we face in America today as
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: a reaction to what we did fifty years ago. M
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: that's been building all these decades and the and they
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: fight to stop free speech as part of it. You're
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: seeing it across the country. I mean on campuses today.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: Many campuses are doing their best to shut down radical
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: protesters on their campuses, to end the right to stand
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: up and say what you have to say. It's one
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: of the fundamental rights in any democratic society. You can't
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: have it without it. It's uncomfortable, it can be misused,
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: but you have to have it.
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Mark, talk to me about theater and what theater
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: means to you. It's been a huge part of your life.
• 47:46
  Speaker 4: But it's something that when when I go back and
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: when you, yeah, I hear stories or you tell stories,
• 47:51
  Speaker 4: it's like the theater piece which is so important, and
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: that you've worked in theater for years, those stories end
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: up sidelined a little bit, or I don't I don't
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: hear that. All talked to me about what does theater
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: mean to you and how important has this been in
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: your life and why.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: The theater has always been part of my life since
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: I was a teenager, especially once I got to Stockbridge,
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: the high school I graduated from, but we had this
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: Broadway a Broadway theater guy as our acting teacher and stuff.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: But I think that.
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: The theater of the streets and the underground theaters across
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: America and the world.
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: Played a vital role. We would do street theater against
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: the Vietnam War, where we would act out what's happening
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: to the Vietnamese and actually pulling people into it who
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: are on the street. It didn't always work so well
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: because people resisted, but that was part of it, and
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: we made the bridge between this is what happens to
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: the Vietnamese people and we're dressed like American soldiers. So
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think that there's always been a radical
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: left element in theater, especially in Europe and here in
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: the United States, and I think that it has always
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: played an important role in things like a Living Stage
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: in DC, the Gorilla Theater movements in New York and
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: San Francisco and LA and Baltimore, where we would act
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: out things on the corner to show the world and
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: what was going on in Vietnam, to show the world
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: what was going on in poor communities, to show the
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: world the threat against our very democracy and rights to
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: freedom in this country. And I haven't thought about this
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: in a while. There was some brilliant theatrical minds who
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: dove into this all over and I think that in
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: retrospect I had a greater effect than you think. I mean,
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: because you're you're bringing theater into community, into the streets
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: that make people stop, especially when you pull them into it,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: forced them to be part of it, and they weren't
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: expecting that. What people don't realize it doesn't get much play.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: I got planned some books is that theatre has always
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: been part of political movements, especially on the left, more
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: than the left and the right, for sure. And they
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: were in the Civil rights movement. There was Freedom Theater
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: in part of Snake student of AOL recording committee, and
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: the music was the Freedom Singers as well. And we
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: had Living Theater in New York City, which was a
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: group nobody knows about anymore, but it was this incredible
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: theater of the streets giving They went out and did
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: this incredible work, original work that really talked to issues
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: and talked to people that they were influenced on me.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: I've been in theater forever and met Tall a Botroom
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: School for the arts for fifteen years. This hop More
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: Ensemble was mine and I worked in the prison theater
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: when I ran a therapy program for inmates under twenty
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: one an adult prison, and a world famous actor came
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: out of our group, Charles S. Dutton, who left us
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: too soon. He became known as Rock and he had
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: a TV show called Rock. So I started a theater
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: company in the prison and we performed in the prison,
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: and guys flocked to it because I did theater classes
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: twice a week inside jail. It's for a good part
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: of my life. Who was at the center of my
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: work and being inspired by left theater in Paris, in London,
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: New York, in Palestine, Israel, where actors were crossing boundaries
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: early the Palestinian Israelians coming together to do political theater.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: And those things are getting lost and they're very effective
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: and they become a voice that doesn't get hurt. Otherwise
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: people don't realize. In Snick, the freedom theater that performed
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: all throughout the South. Nobody talks about that anymore, but
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: they were doing these performances in churches in cotton fields
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: across the South. And political theater seems to have lost
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: its lost its power at this moment. It maybe resurrect itself,
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: always does, but it's incredibly important because you're doing when
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: we had guerrilla theater in the streets around the Vietnam War,
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: we did it all over Washington, DC is where we
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: had a Washington grilla theater, and we were really pulled
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: people at of the crowds and make them prisoners, to
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: give them the film what felt like to be a
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: Vietnamese stuck in this hell of an American war, and
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: in working class communities. It gave people an outlet, a
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: creative outlet they didn't have before. Yeah, you know, we
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: became some weirdo theater people into actually being part of
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: the community.
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: It's incredible how as you're mentioning this, you know, it
• 53:13
  Speaker 4: comes to mind just how much theater is this form,
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: this deep form of communication, because you're not just telling
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: a story, but you're actually part of it. You're actually
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: acting it out. And particularly when it's gorilla or when
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: when it's on the street, you're trying to incorporate other people.
• 53:29
  Speaker 4: So you're you're literally being immersed in the story as
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: if you are an actor, as if you're actually living
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: it yourself. And how profound that is. It's another form
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: of communication, but even more active, right, but even more active.
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, you had the living theater. You had the Diggers,
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: you had the Art Workers Coalition and Grill Action Group.
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: You had all these groups around the country who were
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: deeply involved in community life and what they did was
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: interpret people's lives through the theater. You know, interpret what
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: you're going through through theater to have a creative outlet
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: to allow that to happen. And they were part of
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: a movement. We did that when we were organized as
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: the Tennis Union Group. Besides chage law, we actually put
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: on creative theater in the community about what it felt
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: like to be a victim from your home. You interview people,
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: get their stories, and you turn that into theater to
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: tell people what they went through, the struggles they've gone through,
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: and to tell that story. And we did that with
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: Vietnam vets, took down their stories and then performed their
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: stories to talk about what people went through. And they
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: were very highly emotional pieces that really affected people because
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: you were using and some of the people who acted
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: with us were Vietnam Vets, but the others were not
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: Vietnam Vets. We were anti war vets. But to tell
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: that story and also to tell the story using the
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: voices of Vietnamese We turned some of that into radio
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: theater as well. I mean when I did my Vietnam
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: documentary series, we did nine audio documentaries, in some video,
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: most of the audio. We spent a lot of time
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: with Vietnamese actors and bringing stories back to create stories
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: that emotionally told the story of what it was like
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: to live through that war from the Vietnamese side. Political
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: theater is not always popular with some people, but it's important.
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: If there's anything I missed more than other, stuff is
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: missing the theater. I missed the theater I do, I
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: might have to rectify that.
• 55:53
  Speaker 4: That's right, Mark, what was the first time that you
• 55:59
  Speaker 4: were on air? Tell me the story of how your
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: show began.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: Everything on my life has been an accident, nothing completely
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: planned totally. So it was nineteen ninety two ninety three.
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: I was trying to create a history of the Jewish
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: people through their music. It was the history of Jewish Music, Wow,
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: And so we did a couple of episodes by man WJSHW.
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: Then was the public radio station of Baltimore. I raised
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: some money, did a bunch of interviews, and I was
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: trying to create this history of Jewish music. I was
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: trying to make a bridge then, because I was having
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: been a Zionist, I wasn't part of the anti Zionist
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: movement and was trying to build bridge, Build a bridge,
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: tell a story, but anyway, So that's how it began.
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: So at the station. For various reasons, the history the
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: series didn't take off. But into the gentlemanor's office. David
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: Craig a good guy, and he said to me, Mark,
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: we're thinking about talk starting, maybe a talk radio thing
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: on the on the station. It was a classical station then,
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: and he said, you know Baltimore, you know politics, you
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: know life, you're you know lots of stuff. What do
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: you think about that? And out of my mouth came,
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: I think you should let me be the host. He said,
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: what you don't know radio. You've never been run a
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: radio show. How could you be the host? I said,
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: give me the mic, I'll be the host. And so
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: we went back and forth, and he opened the door
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: you shouldn't have opened, and I kept bugging him, kept
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: hacking them, hockey Is. He had to shore him for
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: bugging somebody. I kept talking them, and he finally said, okay, man,
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: look I'm taking all things considered off. Every Tuesday night
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: from seven to eight thirty, no money, no producer, see
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: what you can do?
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: And I said, okay, I'll take it.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: And I did. And the first show I did was
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: the debate on nor plant. Nobody knows what nor plant
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: is anymore. No nord Plant was a controversial drug implanted
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: in women's arms to keep them from getting pregnant, and
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: it was being used in inner city neighborhoods. So I
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: had this debate between four people pro and con. That
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: was the first show, and then it just grew from there.
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: Every week I would do a show a week on
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: many different subjects. I mean, I do a show from
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: inside prison, inside the juvenile center. I did shows on
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: abortion rights that that shows, interviewing politicians. I just kept,
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: you know, and we did a lot of community We
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: led a lot of broadcasting from the community itself. And
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: then the show went from Tuesday nights to Tuesday and Thursday,
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: and then it went from Tuesday and Thursday to Tuesday,
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: Wednesday and Thursday, and then it went from Tuesday, Wednesday,
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: Thursday to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And we just built
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: the show out and then they decided to sell the station.
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: Tons Copts wanted to sell the station. So I helped
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: lead the move into buy the station, and we raised
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: the money to buy the station, and I went to
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: all these really wealthy people and raised money from listeners
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: and raised five million bucks and bought the station.
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: And then I was vice president for broadcast.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: And I went to a full time talk show host
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: as well, Monday through Friday noon to two. That's how
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: it started, and it opened a world for me that
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: allowed me to have bring voices to the air that
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be hurt anywhere else.
• 59:58
  Speaker 4: He Spaltimore, midd.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: Category. We did the work that other public radio stations did,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: public radio shows did, but we brought voices on from
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: the left. We brought voices on from poor working class communities,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: We brought voices on organizers, and we brought the traditional
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: points on as well. But to me, it was a balance.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: It was a missing from the from poor working communities,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: from organizers, and bringing issues up they didn't want to
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: bring up. And so we built the show and it
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: became very popular, and we ended up buying two other
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: radio stations in Maryland, so the broadcast went across the state.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: Into d C and up in the Pennsylvania and into
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: West Virginia.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: And then became nationally known and I eventually lost about
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: the internal wars where was pushed out. That lied to
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: a revolt when people picked at the station for like
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: six months, but that's never got back there. No public
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: radio station had ever brought voices of Colorados station as
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: the main part of the broadcast, and I changed. I
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: did that.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: And to really uh broaden the audience in ways that
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: didn't exist before.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: It was a great part. It was great.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: It was It was a lot of work, but it
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: radically changed radio and Baltimore, at least for that period.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: Mark, what what should journalism be? Real journalism for you.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: Lord, Real journalism has to get under the headlines and
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: under the news. Real journalism has to bring in voices
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: that have not heard anywhere else, not just your pontificators
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: or pay to you salary. I mean, they're part of
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: it as well. They're going to be there, but you
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: gotta bring other voices in. You can't be cozy with
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: elected officials. Your job is to question elected officials, not
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: to be their best friend. Your job is to bring
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: the voices of the street, of the community, whatever that
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: community is, to the airwaves.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: For me, in terms of racism and race in America.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: It means no matter what subject you're talking about, whatever
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: that is, whether it's politics, a theater, or music or culture,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: whatever it is, you have to bring voices of color
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: into the conversation always. And this city men, black voices,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: Latino voices, whatever that is. That you can't let it
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: be the domain of white men talking. And I know
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: I'm a white man talking, but that's not the point.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: The point is when you're doing the work, you have
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: to change from the inside. One of the attacks I
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: got when I was in WYPR from the guy who
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: took over the company and from some of the board
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: members is there were too many black people on the air.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, and that mindset's there and you
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: have to fight it. One of the great beauties of America.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: As we know, this country has its issues and they
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: run deep, but we are the most multi racial, multi
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: cultural nation in the history of humankind. We have to
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: make that part of our work. We have to let
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: that resonate. We have to make that part of what
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: we produce and do and work. I mean, we forget that. Yeah,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: racist runs deep. Class issues are pervasive. We're fighting to
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: save the environment all that's real. But we are an
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: amazing place in many ways, and we forget that for
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: all its faults, and well, the fact that this country
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: was founded by men who enslaved other human beings. The
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: documents they wrote for white men belong to all of
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: us and I you know, and so they had no
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: idea they were birthing a democratic movement to upset the world,
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: but they did, you know, and I think we have
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: to Those things are really important to remember.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Mark, I listened to a talk you gave a
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 4: while back, and in the talk you had a story
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 4: about the question of what is communication? And there was
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 4: a group of Native Americans there who had an incredible
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 4: oh right vision or understanding of what this was. Can
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 4: you just can do you remember this?
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: I do it guy exactly. It was something changed my
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: entire approach to my work. So this one guy, Joe Waterman,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: he was in a rapper hole. Holy man.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: They have four holy people in their nation.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: He was one of the four. We became very close
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: and we had a conversation in public, and he asked
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: the question what is communication? And everybody had ideas making
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: sure you could say what you have to say and
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: putting our ideas out there and being forceful and all
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: those other things people say, and he looked through on
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: the woman and said, it's one thing, it's listening. Listening.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: So it was the beginning of my radio career, and
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: I realized that's the key to running conversations, that's the
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: key to producing something is listening to what other people
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: have to say, not just listening to yourself, but hearing
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: what they say and letting that kind of push the
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: conversation and learn something new from it. You don't have
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: all the answers, learn something new. So whether it was
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: me listening to a conservative person on the right or
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: listening to a Gorilla and Al Salvador, listening to what
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: they had to say and understand that truth lives in
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: every corner, even though that can be on the left
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: or right wherever you are, that can be an anathema.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: It's the only way to find the truth, is the
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: only way to find out what's really real, is to
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: listen and listen objectively to what people have to say
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: and turn off your shit so you can hear it.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: Did I say that word? Yes?
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 4: So sorry, that's awesome. Mark you. I have a quote
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 4: here from someone that I want to see if you
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 4: can tell me what this means to you, George orwell,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 4: who controls the past controls the future, Who controls the
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 4: present controls the past? Yeah, what does that quote mean
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 4: to you? Why is that quote important right now?
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite statements because if you control
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: the interpretation of what's happened before, you control people's understanding
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: of why we're here now and where we're going as
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: a constant debate in battle. You can't give up the
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: struggle to control that. You have to fight for it
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: all the time. You can't let them define what it
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: means to understand why we're here, understand the struggles that
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: brought us here and where we're going to take them.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: But I think it's a really critical thing. I mean,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: it's just like the other one I said, listening. They're
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: both equal parts of understanding how you communicate and understand
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: why we're here and who you are. And that's why
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: history is so important. I mean, when I first started
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: out academically, I wanted to be a PhD in history
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: because I need to understand. I need to understand the
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: past and the contradictions in the past, and understand the
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: contradictions you understand that nothing's written in stone. Existence is struggle.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: It always has been, always will be utopian perfection. It's
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: a great idea, but then pass me the joint. I mean,
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: you know, so I think that that that that concept
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: is really is extremely critical to our understanding, which is
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: why when you're doing a program, when you're when you're
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: interviewing people, you really have to step back and everything
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: you do is fuel by your own life. You can't
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: help that. But I mean, but you have to step
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: back and really listen to what people are saying so
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: you can bring out their truth so others can wrestle
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: with it, and if they need confronting in that process,
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: you confront it and push back. Which is why when
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: I think about what we do, how important it is
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: we have. We have a critical role to play in
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: bringing understanding to the world. The truth lives in every
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: corner and you have to listen. No one has a
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: hold on it.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 4: Marcus, is there anything else to add that you think
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 4: is important about your time organizing, your time and theater,
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 4: or your time on the radio, and its relationship to
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 4: our right to speak up, our right to stand up,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 4: to speak our voice, and to push for a better America.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: I go back in my head to what happened in
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: the South and the civil rights movement, which is a
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: terrifying moment and a moment of absolute oppression, the battle
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: for free speech which took place in the South. As
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: I said earlier, there's no mistake that the people who
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: launched that battle on the West coast were civil rights
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: workers first and brought that idea and intellect to the movement.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: And we're facing a moment again it's a little different.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: I think we're politically facing the most dangerous moment in
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: my lifetime, politically where the right is of seizing power
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: across the country and the racist right is seizing power,
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: and that now the battle for free speech is more
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: critical than ever.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: We cannot let them take it away, and we have
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: to stand up to that.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: Tell the stories we have to tell, put it out
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: there in every medium we can find, and fight for
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: the right to speak our minds, which we taken away
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: from us. If we don't, that's what we face right now.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, Trump is not the problem. It's those around
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: him that created this monster that are the problem. So
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: now from the street corner to the work at Real News,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: to other places around the country. This is where the
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: critical work is being done. The right to speak our
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: mind is a fundamental right in this country. We can't
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: let it go. We can't let it be taken away.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: We can't be pushed into a corner to fear standing up,
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: to tell the truth and to speak out. This is
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: Mario Savio and free speech movement on steroids. Well, we
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: face at this moment the reason that we started the
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: underground newspapers in the sixties, we had the Washington Free
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: Press where we had all the other papers around the country.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: It is because we pushed free speech to its limits,
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: which we had to, and we have to do it again. Look,
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: I'm old. Who knows. I mean when you hit eighty
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: you can be here a year, six months, ten years, fifteen,
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: fuck knows. I'm part of my friends again. But we
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: have in this battle to save this future for our children.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: We can't let our freedom of speech be taken away
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: from us. It's at the heart of all of our freedoms.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: I did a lot of work writing and research years
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: back on the founding fathers of this country and writing
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: the Constitution, and it dovetailed unknowingly to me at the
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: moment with my relationship with the indigenous world. When you
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: read some of this stuff from the eighteenth century, a
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: lot of the belief in democracy didn't not just come
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: from England or France, from right here among the Iroquois,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: among the five civilized tribes that were the most democratic
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: nations on the planet Earth just about. They're the ones
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: who taught the white colonists what it meant to be free,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: would it meant to be a democracy, and would have
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: meant to let people speak their minds and say what
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: they had to say without being ridiculed. And I think
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: that's an important lesson for us to learn that authoritarianism
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: was brought to us by some crazy people from overseas
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: and Europe and other places. But the fundamental basic fights
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: for freedom or here, and they're based on the fights
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: to the abolition of slavery. All those are the roots
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: our of our freedom of speech. And we have to
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: be really strong to stand up to fight and keep
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: that freedom and push back the oppressors who are at
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: the door.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 4: Amazing, Mark, thank you so much, my friend.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: Always good to talk with you, man. I really love
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: doing stuff with you. It's always great. It's fantastic your
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: work everything else. Yeah, always.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 4: Hi, folks, thanks for listening. I'm your host, Michael Fox.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 4: That is all for the Battle for Free Speech. I
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 4: hope you enjoyed today's episode, and I hope you enjoyed
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 4: this series. It's been such an honor and a pleasure
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 4: making it. Thank you so much for listening and caring
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 4: about this podcast. You can show your support by subscribing,
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 4: leaving a comment or a review in your podcasting app,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 4: and by telling a friend. It really helps to spread
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 4: the word about the show and the state of free
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 4: speech in the United States today. Before I go, let
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 4: me just say that we will be rolling out some
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 4: incredible bonus episodes in the coming weeks. Please check those out.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 4: We'll be bringing you some full interviews with people who
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 4: I featured in this podcast, as well as some more
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 4: on the ground reporting which I just wasn't able to
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 4: fit into the official series. If you'd like to find
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 4: more about the Battle for Free Speech and my work
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: on other podcasts, you can find me at patreon dot
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 4: com forward slash Mfox. There you can also support my
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 4: work become a monthly sustainer or sign up to stay
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 4: abreast of all the latest on this podcast and my
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 4: other reporting in the United States and across Latin America.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 4: You can find links to more of Mark Steiner's work
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 4: in the show notes, or just search for the Mark
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 4: Steiner Show. He has a ton of content out there
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 4: from over his many years of journalism. As this is
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 4: the final episode of this series, I want to thank
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 4: everyone who sat down with me over the last year
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 4: and everyone who I spoke with on the streets. I
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 4: am grateful for your insight, knowledge and understanding. A huge
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 4: thanks to all my supporters on Patreon and everyone who
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 4: kicked in over the last year to help fund my
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 4: reporting for this podcast and my other work, in particular
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 4: Judy Hughes and Michael and Mary Ann Fox, you are amazing.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 4: Many thanks to my musician friends Jordan Klein and Danielle
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 4: Nunez who helped me to create the theme music for
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 4: the series. Other music was from Blue Dot Sessions and
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 4: Epidemic Sound. Many many thanks to my intern and research
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 4: assistant on this podcast, Ben Schweiger. He just graduated from
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 4: the University of Colorado. If you are listening and you
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 4: need research support, please hire him. His LinkedIn is in
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 4: the show notes. To the team at The Real News,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 4: y'all are amazing. Tremendous. Thanks to Stephen Frank for his
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 4: excellent sound design and production work. Huge thanks to Kayla Rivara,
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 4: Max Alvarez, Jocelyn Dombronski, and also Heather Geis for your
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 4: stellar editorial support. David Hebden and Cameron Granadino in the studio,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 4: you guys are amazing. Rosette Siwally, James Dally and Ryan Johnson.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 4: Thank you for everything online, Jonathan, thanks for believing in
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 4: my work and this project in particular. I want to
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 4: send a special shout out to my co hosts who
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 4: joined me over these episodes, including Taya Graham, Mansa Musa,
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 4: Max Alvrez, and Laura Flanders. It was incredible to speak
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 4: with each of you. Thank you so much for taking
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 4: the time and for all that you do. And above
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 4: all else, thank you Mark Steiner for joining me on
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 4: this endeavor. It's been a pleasure to develop this idea
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 4: into fruition, and it's been an honor to work with
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 4: you on this series. I've learned so much. The battle
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 4: for free speech is production of the Real News. Please
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 4: make sure to sign up for the Real News Network's
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 4: newsletter so you never miss an episode. You can find
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 4: that at therealnews dot com. Thanks for listening. Please keep
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 4: an eye out for those bonus episodes. See you next time.