“The Fierce Urgency of Now” — Michelle Alexander and Lucas Johnson

34:52That's how he began the speech. Time comes when silence is betrayal, and that time has come in relationship to Vietnam. And I think to myself, what are the silences we are holding now? And in so many places, Palestine has been an unspeakable thing. Even in social justice circles, if you want to keep your funding, you can't use the word genocide. You can't speak the truth about the horror that is unfolding in Gaza. that even as every civil rights and human rights organization around the world says, this is genocide. It is treated almost as impolite to say it aloud in public. And people ask themselves again and again, well, is it worth me speaking the truth about something on the other side of the world when it risks the thing I'm fighting for right here at home and the community I'm fighting for right here at home.

36:02And Vincent and Martin Luther King Jr. said yes. And that's what this speech is, is that if you have to sacrifice speaking the truth about the dignity and humanity and the spark of divinity that exists within each and every person on the side of the globe, if that's the price of your supposed liberation at home, you are losing when you think you're winning. And I think that's what we've seen is again and again, we have embraced a kind of liberal politics that have traded some people's rights for others, right? In many ways, what I was writing about in The New Jim Crow and the crisis of mass incarceration was just that.

36:57We had a Democratic president who said that he wanted to make his cabinet look like America, Bill Clinton, and he did. and yet he escalated the drug war far beyond what Reagan and Nixon had done and helped birth a vast new racial undercaste that stripped millions of the very rights that were supposedly won in the black freedom struggle. And many liberals at the time said, well, we must be silent about that because if we make too much noise about them, the others, those who are viewed as criminals, who are thought of as felons, we might risk affirmative action. We might risk the progress that is slowly being made, getting access to Ivy League schools or increasing the middle class.

38:00We might risk it if we stand up for, as Vincent pointed out, the least of these. And I think what King and Vincent kind of called us to was this awareness that if we fail to stand in solidarity with the least of these, whether they are, you know, living on the streets of New York, living in the rubble of Gaza, looking up at bombs falling on them in Iran. If we fail to imagine that their fate is ours, like, we are all doomed. And that's the awakening that's required of us now.

38:55Something else that I feel, and Lucas, you and I have talked about this across the years, there's an evolution in this speech, or they gave voice to an evolution, which they might have called a maturation of their vision. And precisely in this question of civil rights as a limiting frame, right? So there's a moment, And actually, it's in the speech that we didn't hear. He says, for those who ask the question, are you a civil rights leader and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace? I have this further answer. In 1957, when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto to save the soul of America.

39:46and yes it's not just that war takes away is wrong and takes away from the building up of our own society but war is an and he said war is an enemy of the poor and yeah this now where is it the um oh here it is on the one hand we are called to play the good samaritan on life's roadside but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring, and that gauntlet was never picked up.

40:40You know, I, um, those words in that speech were so moving for me. Those were the words that I used in my application to seminary before I ever met Uncle Vincent. Um, and I, I said I wanted to do edifice changing work. Okay. Dr. Harding told me that, you know, those were Brother Martin's words. Those weren't his. And I think about what they speak to. The level of transformation necessary in this country is so deep and so profound. The task we have to commit ourselves to is enormous. we can't there's no there's nothing to go back to um we have to make something new we have to begin again thinking about james baldwin and eddie cloud jr's work we have to where we are right now there's no going back we we have to transform this place and that means we have to transform our relationships to each other you and I recently spoke about and I think you you kind of were pointing at this too there can be a spiritual danger or I don't know a spiritual loss of perspective in being on the right side you said there's a risk of becoming participants in a politics of grievance But I think it's much more complex than that.

42:24And I think in a room like this of people who turned out for this event today, like, let's talk about that. What is this? And I think this is also spiritual analysis and not, right? This gets at an analysis that is more paradoxical and more exacting and more life-giving. Yeah, I think that thinking about Dr. King's sort of witness and prophetic power, Part of the reason why people are so afraid of having more deep and fundamental conversations about the transformation necessary in this country, I mean, part of it is a poverty of imagination. Part of it is, you know, we don't believe that we can create something more.

43:18we are afraid of what happens if we peel back the layers and the truth is exposed and so it's like we we always rush to to cover something up the type of relational organizing that dr harding modeled was one in which he was able to build community in a way that could let people know that it was okay to confront the truth, that it was okay to sort of let the truth shape you and let it, even if you had to fall apart, then you fell apart in ways that were needed. And I think that that's the kind of politic that we need in this moment. I guess I would just add that one of the things that I really appreciated about Vincent and what he modeled is that the quest for justice is not a team sport in the way that our politics tend to be played today, and that you need to speak the truth about yourself and your own limitations and failings, as well as speak the truth about our political leaders of the time, no matter what political party they adhered to.

44:49And this process of truth-telling about yourself can be uncomfortable and painful to recognize your own cowardice. I remember saying to Vincent at one time, like, I'm not sure that I actually would have had the courage to board one of the buses that was heading into Klan territory that was about to be firebombed. Like, I would like to believe that I would have been a freedom rider and that I would have been part of that river. But I don't know if I would have had the courage to do that. And he said, you don't have to dive into the river headfirst. You have to ask yourself, are you willing to take another step in?

45:36And I think that's a question that I live with, which is like, can I take another step into the river? Is there one more step I could take? Is there, could I be a bit more courageous today than I was yesterday? Could I risk a little bit more? But I'm also recalling that he shared with me that he felt really personally still, after all these years, worried and conflicted about the position that he supported and encouraged Martin Luther King to take, you know, when he came out against the Vietnam War because the personal toll was so high. You know, when King delivered that speech right here in this place, the civil rights leaders that were his friends and allies were telling him, no, don't do it.

46:30Don't do it. You are risking the future of our movement. You're risking the gains that we have made. Don't do it. We need, you know, Johnson as an ally. You cannot do this now. And he did it anyway, knowing that people would believe that he was risking this movement that he had risked his life for and so many had sacrificed so much for. And then immediately afterwards, of course, he was canceled. More than 150 newspapers railed against him. The New York Times, Washington Post, One of them said that basically he was a traitor to his cause and his people. It cost him so much in the end and probably his life.

47:13And I think we have to all ask ourselves what risks are we willing to take? And are we willing to tell the whole truth about our own cowardice as a way of taking another step in? And are we willing to challenge those who are supposedly our friends and allies in politics? You know, in these times, it's so easy to rage against those who are currently in power. That's the easy part. But then the piece of it where we have to ask ourselves, why is it that so many of the liberal politicians and Democratic politicians who love to quote Martin Luther King on his birthday and want to claim the mantle of King and quote these words, why are they accepting donations from AIPAC?

47:57Why are they voting for bombs? that are going to be sent to Palestine and Iran. Like, how is this? How is this in any way, any remote way, aligned with the revolution of values that King said was necessary and that we all know is absolutely essential if we are ever actually not just going to save this supposed democracy, but birth, right? A democracy that truly honors the dignity and humanity of all. And I guess the last thing I'll say is that Vincent wore this pin that I have on right now, which says, war is terrorism. He wore it everywhere. and I was so struck by it when I first saw him with this pin saying war is terrorism because we weren't waging a traditional war at the time.

49:00I mean we were still I guess in Iraq pulling out of Iraq but what he was partly doing was flipping on its head the phrase war on terrorism. he was flipping it on his head and not war on terrorism war is terrorism and he was insistent about that and he was insistent that we not celebrate you know the assassination of Osama bin Laden the way the democratic party was so proud that Obama was the one who got the job done And he was insistent that we not celebrate, right, like the murder of people like Gaddafi and others, that we take seriously this idea that we can love our enemies and see the dignity and humanity in them and not rejoice in the suffering of anyone, including those our nation has defined as our worst enemies.

50:04And that kind of moral clarity calling us to the kind of revolution of values that remains consistent no matter who's in office, whether they're a Democrat or Republican, that the truth we're speaking and what we're working for and fighting for remains the same. And that we will not worry about short-term political losses for speaking the truth, knowing that we are doomed in the long run. if we think we can compromise on the dignity and humanity of anyone.

50:45I do love in the speech when he says, when I speak of love, I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force, which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. And also, and we don't have time to at all delve into this, but this matter of what it means to love our enemies internally in American politics right now as part of the democratic, as part of America remaining possible is such a burning question, I think. I do want to talk about, you know, what the beloved community means to you now and how we find it and make it.

51:36And something that stayed with me so much that I've quoted so many times from the conversation I had with Vincent was his notion that we cannot underestimate the importance of what he called live human signposts. I feel like that's also a way of talking about what you said. you take the next step, but also don't underestimate the effect it has on other people to watch someone taking the next step or stepping into the river. And it seems to me that, you know, you, one of the things you talked about in your research when you were doing the New Jim Crow is the most punitive nations in the world are the most diverse.

52:20and gosh that feels like such a way to understand what is happening in our country which never turned its back on its punitive it has just gone deeper and deeper into this punitive culture and as you wrote your book and we're out in the world you saw that there were people who didn't so many people who didn't want to live this way um that there are tremendous um people and projects everywhere. I know you see that now. I think that's in the project you're working on now. I see that, Lucas, I know. So it is, again, it's this both and living that we're called to. Yes. Yes. We're so understandably transfixed by what is terrifying in our world.

53:06And also just what is uncertain in our world, which our bodies translate as threat, uncertainty. And this is a time of tremendous uncertainty. When people ask me, where do I look for these generative people and projects for this beautiful story that is also unfolding, to say, look at the world around you. It's hard for us. We're in our screens, we're at the headlines, we're looking at things that are far away and at this large national global level And sometimes to see that beauty that we can be part of, that healing that we can be part of, we actually have to actively reorient around the world we can see and touch.

53:53Yeah, I think there's a growing awareness. I mean, that there's no choice but for us to transform this. There's no choice. There's no escape from this. We have to, now, we have to change this. and that to me is encouraging that's that's that's a source of hope and I think we have to remember these aren't problems we can solve alone right that we actually have to come together and form beloved communities and you know um I love the interview you did with Vincent Harding I hope everybody listens to the beautiful interview you did with Vincent Harding. And one of the, probably my favorite moment in that interview is when Vincent tells you a story he had also told to me, which was about how people kind of dismiss the kind of kumbaya of, you know, it's become a put down it's a kumbaya moment that's so kumbaya right and he says it's painful to hear that because he remembers that when young people were getting ready to board the buses on the freedom rides risking their lives and were preparing to sign their wills and write final letters to their parents and make final phone calls in case they did not come back alive, that they would gather together in a circle and sing, Kumbaya, come round here, my Lord.

55:38Come round here, my Lord. As we together are going to do something that requires an unimaginable risk. in the name of justice for something we may never see or experience ourselves. And, you know, I am struck in this moment that we are experiencing multiple converging existential crises, the threat of world war, the potential collapse of our democracy, looming climate catastrophe, the rise of AI. And at this very same moment, when so many people are fearful and where there's an epidemic of loneliness, we are also experiencing an exodus from our religious traditions, particularly among progressives.

56:32White Christian nationalism is doing all right in these times, but there's been an exodus from our religious traditions. And I get it. Many people are leaving for very good reasons. And like I said, I myself don't claim a faith tradition. But what is filling the void? Today we have kind of consumerist wellness strategies. People go to yoga. If they can afford it, can go to a retreat. But there's a void. And I think that the tradition that Vincent Harding was anchored in, a tradition of love and liberation and rebellion and resistance. It's a tradition that has been informed by the wisdom of our faith traditions, but it transcends our faith traditions.

57:24That tradition of radical love, Thich Nhat Hanh was in. Bell Hooks stands proudly in, right? Joanna Macy and Grace Lee Boggs, and the names can go on and on, of people who are firmly in this tradition of radical love, of revolutionary love, and we can carry it on. And whether we belong to a faith tradition or we don't, and that's really the work that I am passionately committed to, along with Niall Fort, who is here. We're launching an organization called Spirit of Justice that aims to provide and build spiritual homes for people committed to justice outside of traditional religion that is anchored in this river of radical love.

58:16And I think we need it. We need to come back to each other, even if we don't belong to a faith tradition, and take seriously this work of building beloved communities so that we can cultivate the kind of moral courage that young people had when they boarded those buses and sat at lunch counters and were willing to risk their lives.

58:51So, I do want to, I did bring some words of Vincent from that conversation I had with him, which was so formative for me and is so beloved by so many. But before I read them, you know, Michelle, I've heard you speak a couple of times here and last night about questions Vincent would ask you that were really countercultural in terms of, you know, as an activist, as a thinker, as a public intellectual, as an organizer, and he would consistently remind you that you also needed to take time to be still. And I'm curious, Lucas, if there are, you know, practices like that that come from the spiritual well of understanding that are countercultural.

59:41And I think this is also why it's so important what you and I are doing, introducing this spiritual perspective and practice to people who haven't inherited it and the way that human beings kind of were born into these traditions until 10 seconds ago in cosmic time. Yeah, let's just talk a little bit about these quiet practices that are not in the manuals of how to be an organizer or how to be a political activist, but in this vision whose wisdom we have been soaking in now are absolutely essential to getting it right.

1:00:24I've been talking a lot.

1:00:30Well, you use that expression centering down to center down, you know, which I think Vincent Harding got through Howard Thurman

1:00:46and I learned a lot from Quaker practice. Yes, I do know that about you. Lucas will be in Zoom meetings that are supposed to be work and he's really comfortable with silence.

1:01:02I think about how the importance of being able to listen to what's going on in yourself before you're attempting to organize these big complicated things and making space for that. And I think that's something I saw Vincent Harding did, to take his time. He had a different sense of time. He invited us into a different sense of time. And that sense of time was also rooted in a different system of values. And so I think about the spiritual practice of slowing down. That's what comes to mind. Yes. Vincent Harding gave me several books by Howard Thurman. And I was just blown away to learn that the person who wrote what was considered by Martin Luther King Jr.

1:02:08the book that was the Bible of the civil rights movement, that's how it was referred to by King, a book called Jesus and the Disinherited, was written by a man, Howard Thurman, who was a mystic. and I was so struck by that because where is mysticism in the story of the movement that we often hear and are told and yet there was this Christian mystic Howard Thurman who took very seriously his relationship with trees and he was so ahead of his time in so many ways And who thought it was absolutely essential to practice the art of settling down and becoming present with oneself, but also with the natural world, in order to cultivate the capacity for moral clarity and moral action.

1:03:09And I've really resisted that message. I was very much in the activist mode, the doing mode, movement building mode. What must we do now? And Vincent, again and again, kept encouraging me to consider this question of not just what must we do, but who must we be and who must we become in order to rise to the challenges of our time? and so learning how to practice stillness and cultivate presence in my own life it's an ongoing challenge but it's one that I take seriously now because I now understand that as Howard Thurman put it like if you don't learn to listen to the sound of the genuine within you you will forever ever be at the ends of strings that someone else pulls.

1:04:07And that is what sort of clicked it for me. It's like, oh, I am not really free. If I am trapped in a mode of reactivity, I am responding to agendas and actions of others. And if I'm going to cultivate a capacity to be free and to choose courage and compassion and speak truth, I have to cultivate a space within me that is not being pulled by others and that is not reactive, but actually reflects a genuine choice rooted in a capital T truth that I can't access if I'm constantly overwhelmed and busy and reacting to the demands of life and to the horrors of the world. So I do see that spiritual practice as an essential part of doing the courageous work that's necessary in the world today.

1:05:21so I do want to bring Vincent Harding's voice into the room from this gift of a conversation he gave me in 2011 I've thought about this and shared it so many times across the years and it's so consonant with the conversation we're having today we are absolutely amateurs at this matter of building a democratic nation made up of many many peoples of many kinds from many connections and convictions and from many experiences and to know how after all the pain that we have caused each other how to carry on democratic conversation that in a sense invites us to hear each other's best arguments and best contributions so that we can then figure out how do we put these things together to create a more perfect union.

1:06:18This also opens up the question of what does it mean to be truly human? Democracy is simply another way of speaking about that question. Religion is another way of speaking about that question. What is our purpose in this world? And is that purpose related to our responsibilities to each other? and to the world itself? All of that seems to me to be a variety of languages getting at the same reality. How do we work together? How do we walk together, talk together in ways that will open up our best capacities and our gifts? My own feeling that I try to share again and again, Krista, is that when it comes to creating a multiracial, multiethnic, multireligious, democratic society, we are still a developing nation.

1:07:12But my own deep, deep conviction is that the knowledge, like all knowledge, is available to us if we seek it. In another place, he said, the older I get, the more I am convinced that that magnificent madman Jesus was really talking about something very truthful and powerful when he said, if you allow yourself to really hunger and thirst after the right way. Then if you will not back off from that hunger and that thirst, if you will just keep after it, then you will find the way. You will be filled. The way will find you. At the very end of our conversation, you know, he talked about the young people he was working with and the lineage, the impact and the imprint of the movement of which he was a part and how that had rippled through the world and through other countries, right?

1:08:10And anyway, and he said, and he talked, I see again, again and again, right in this country, see it with young people, see it with those who are loving them into new possibilities. That's why for me, the only answer I can give to the question of, is America possible? Is yes, as we make it possible. Yes, yes. one thing that came through as I was revisiting that conversation with him and thinking about being with you is that he insisted also that making America possible is not possible without music and without new words and I don't know I just wonder you can respond to that however you wish But I do wonder if there are new words that are emerging as you walk with this, in this tradition, through this world of ours.

1:09:12Absolutely. I mean, I think one of the reasons why kind of we at Spirit of Justice have been talking about the need to create spiritual homes outside of traditional religion is because even those of us who don't belong to a traditional religion, religion, we still need music and song and celebration and a place to grieve and a place to be challenged and inspired and to be grounded and rooted in something real, a tradition that is deeper than what you might experience in like a feel-good protest where everyone's got really cool, funny signs, but underneath it, like, what is it that we are really willing to live and die for?

1:10:06What is the purpose of our lives? And how might we best honor that purpose in the days that we have, those questions, especially now when we are trying to raise children and explain to them the crises of our time and how they might still have faith and hope for their own futures. We need places where we can come together and sing and dance and weep and be silent and still together. and so I loved that every time I attended a meeting with Vincent, he insisted that there be some kind of music and some kind of song and it touched a part of me and I think everyone in the room differently and you show up differently when you're invited to sing together or to hit a note together.

1:11:02I think it's also really important for us to recognize that as you just quoted him saying, the work of love is really hard. And I think very often, even very well-meaning, wonderful people and kind of the spiritual communities kind of have a way of talking about love and sort of a feel good, fluffy, we all just need to love each other kind of way, which I think on some level is dishonest about what love is and requires. As anyone knows in their family, what it takes to keep on loving your family members through good times and bad. Yeah. It's not all, you know, roses. That kind of love is so often about what you do in spite of how you feel at the moment.

1:11:56Absolutely. And so this kind of question of what love calls us to, and that it's not a vibe, It's not just a feeling. It's not an emotion, but it's a commitment. And as bell hooks would say, right? Like it's a practice. It's a daily practice. And that is something that we can strive to do on our own. But I think we do so much better when we do it together in community with the support of others, showing up in solidarity and showing up in times of joy as well as extraordinary grief and making space to sing. Lucas.

1:12:43You've taken us out. You get the last word. I mean, I don't need to say anything. Michelle, yeah. But what I will say, I mean, we are about to close with a song that Dr. Harding created and that we're going to invite everyone to sing with us. And it's going to be led by Art Jones, who leads the Spirituals Project, which Dr. Harding helped inspire and name. So you're closing on a beautiful note. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, both of you. Thank you. Being Life's Human Signpost.

1:13:26We are building a new world. We are building a new world. Builders must be strong. Michelle Alexander is a civil rights lawyer, legal scholar, and best-selling author of The New Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. She is currently a scholar in residence at Union Theological Seminary, where she's preparing to launch Spirit of Justice, a new organization dedicated to nurturing the spiritual lives of those committed to justice. Learn more at spiritupjustice.org. Lucas Johnson is an organizer and public theologian who cultivates space for the spiritual transformation that brings about beloved community.

1:14:21He is currently traveling in the United States, evoking stories about the movements that expanded American democracy and resurfacing Vincent Harding's question, is America possible in this 250th year since the Declaration of Independence? Find him at lucasjohnson.online.

1:14:50special thanks to the amazing team of people who made the event at riverside church possible including casey donahue kim allen reverend adrian thorne jacob schmidt okira correa and saxophonist langston hughes ii whose gorgeous performance of precious lord opened this episode

1:15:20Our funding partners include the Hearthland Foundation, helping to build a more just, equitable, and connected America, one creative act at a time. The Fetzer Institute, supporting a movement of organizations that are applying spiritual solutions to society's toughest problems. Find them at fetzer.org. Calliopeia Foundation, dedicated to cultivating the connections between ecology, culture, and spirituality. Supporting initiatives and organizations that uphold sacred relationships with the living earth. Learn more at calliopeia.org. And the Osprey Foundation, a catalyst for empowered, healthy, and fulfilled lives.

1:16:06On Being is an independent production of the On Being Project based in Minnesota and New York City.