The People’s Tribune’s Sandy Reid and Bob Lee interview Danny Glover at the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization Justice Fund Dinner in Benton Harbor about his vision of a new society. Here are excerpts from that interview:
“Like Dr. King said, we have to become a more people oriented society, rather than a thing oriented society. The society, the community I imagine—a friend of mine, author David Korten talks about his life growing up in small town America. What he fails to realize is that, even though life may have been simple, they were pretty racist, too. They leave out that part. Author Bill McKibben talks about smaller based companies where food is within close proximity. When 90% of food production involves some form of fossil fuel, all things are possible. There has to be something that gets us off fossil fuel. My concern is that everything we see here in the US is a microcosm. Imagine what is happening in Iraq where large companies like Monsanto and others are planning a whole different thing around farming. If traditional farming began 15,000 years ago in places like Iraq, farmers have a whole culture with farming. They have an understanding of the seed, the soil, and they know what crops you plant here or next year. That is out of the question now. By the end of the first gulf war there was depleted uranium and neutron bombs dropped, with all of the birth defects. What do we look like to the rest of the world?
“I went to Venezuela because the president elect is a good friend of mine. I wanted to come back to a small African descended community to see what they have been doing with their chocolate and banana coops. I wanted to hear how their lives and community have changed as a result of the Bolivar revolution. I wanted to hear about the idea that you are entitled to healthcare, that it’s not a privilege, and that you’re entitled to a decent education.
People will always try to move toward this, but that’s the part that is always cut out. The objective of this country was never to have anything succeed, whether it was the farmers in Guatemala or people forming other ways of living like in collectives. There used to be four ideas about development. One, sustainable job development. Two, checking the earth. Three, equitable distribution. Four, elevate the status of women. These were millennium goals. The question is how do people get back to that? How do we even get an initiative called quality education as a civil right? The US is the only country in the world that doesn’t have a national education plan; the state’s dictate. That’s the reality.
“Whether things evolve into another political party or not, young people are key. Young people pushed King and he was compelled to come out with a statement on the Vietnam war. How that happens now in a technologically advanced world, I don’t know. Where is the leadership, and how can that leadership not be bought out and compromised? Young people come with so much idealism and ideas. How do you keep nourishing that toward a radical outcome? How do we deal with this world – it has to function for all of us.
Actor-activist Danny Glover speaks with the People’s Tribune
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