The Constitutional People and Slavery by Another Name - Bob Moses on Reality Asserts Itself

Mr. Moses says mass incarceration helped build the American steel industry, and while there has been progress, there is still slavery by another name

June 27, 14

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome back to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore. And welcome back to Reality Asserts Itself.

Now, if you've been following this series of interviews with Bob Moses, you'll know at the end of the last episode or last segment I said Bob has to get to the airport, so we're going to kind of stop our chronological movement through Bob's personal history--and his personal history is so much the history of the 1960s civil rights movement, that as well. But we're going to jump ahead now and kind of have a more overall thematic conversation. But Bob's promised to come back, and we're going to pick up the story from 1964 on in detail.

But, for now, joining us again in the studio is Bob Moses.

Thanks for joining us again, Bob.

BOB MOSES, EDUCATOR AND CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST: Right.

JAY: So, one more time, Bob's an educator, a civil rights activist. During 1960s he was a field secretary for SNCC. He was one of the main organizers of the Mississippi Freedom Summer project. He was a very outspoken critic of the Vietnam War.

And thanks for joining us again.

And I should add you're the founder of the Algebra Project, which, when you come back, we'll talk more about.

MOSES: Okay.

JAY: But I want to talk kind of much more broadly. From the early 1960s was a real awakening of African-American struggle, and the rise of a mass civil rights movement [incompr.] almost dominating--I don't know if--dominating may be overstating it, but a very enormous piece of the American discourse that broke through mass media. It broke through mainstream politics. When you look at the movement now, it's nowhere near that proportion. Of course there's organizing going on at grassroots level all over the country, but nothing nearly the scale.

Now, I guess some of--not I guess--some of the most overt forms of systemic racism have been modified--you know, the back of the bus, not being able to go into restaurants, and such. And I wouldn't diminish those things, if you're living that life, that those are achievements and they're important achievements. But I don't need to tell you how many--the proportion of African Americans that are incarcerated, the chronic urban poverty, and so on. Yet given how serious the problems still are, nowhere near the level of movement to try to change the world. And in the last interview I said, why did you risk your life? And you said because you had to. In a sense, you had to live a life with that kind of meaning, you had to do the most meaningful thing, and that you had to be where you were, including sacrificing your own life if that is what it took. So where's the movement now, and what happened to that?

MOSES: Yeah. So I'd like us to back up and look at this from the point of view of the evolution of the country. And one of the things that when I got back into the country--you know, I was out of the country for ten years and got back into thinking about this issue that you've raised--I began thinking that I needed a story in my head about the country, right? How did we get to where we are, right?

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