Ronald V. Dellums |
November 12, 1971
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Ronald V. Dellums
Congressman, California; Former Member, Berkeley City Council; Former Psychiatric Social Worker, California Department of Mental Hygiene; Program Director, Bayview Community Center; Director, Hunters Point Youth Opportunity Center
Q: Has your radical attitude softened any since your election to Congress?
A: Well, I'd like to think that I handled that in my speech. As I said, I think we have to define what we mean by radical. Someone else put that label on me - I guess it's easier to sell papers by calling me the radical, mod-dressing person from Berkeley, than to perceive me as a human being - and that's what I am. I did not go to Congress as some freak. I did not go to Congress as some isolated individual. I did not go to Congress to be a rhetorician. I was there to be a serious human being, to raise what I considered the human question and try to function within the framework of my integrity and that has not changed. That has not changed. If you choose to call what I'm talking about radical, then I have not changed. If you choose not to define it as so. I was saying those same things before I went to Congress. I might just add very briefly that Congress can make one very humble, because when you lose 50 battles to one victory, it makes it very clear that one man is not about to change this country by himself. Thank you very much.
Q: Is the present Berkeley City Council better or worse than when you were a member?
A: I think I ought to take the Fifth on that question. Because if I say it's better, it's an indictment of myself. I thought I was a distinguished, conscientious member of the Council, and if I say it's worse, then I'm condemning the group. But let me be very serious. To the degree that young people have become engaged in seeing electoral politics as not totally irrelevant, but as a mechanism to redress grievances, not in isolation of the struggle that goes on outside the electoral process, I think that Berkeley and the Berkeley City Council is much better off for it.
To the degree that blacks and whites and browns and reds and yellows have come together, and continue to come together to discuss the serious problems that effect the entire community of Berkeley, then I think Berkeley is better off for it. The young people who now make up the Berkeley City Council were elected by the people, and they have a right to grow and develop and to lead and to make decisions. And some of you will disagree with the decisions that they make, but they have been chosen by the people, and that's a very important responsibility, and it's a very rare privilege bestowed not on many. And I think that they will go forward in the next weeks and months to try diligently to make Berkeley truly a great community. I know it has the ability to do it. I frankly think that Berkeley is better off than it was when I was there. They now have several people who are willing to speak out on the serious questions of the day.
Q: Ron, we have an inordinate number of questions dealing with the sailing of the Coral Sea and I've picked this one as a classic. Is the action of the Berkeley City Council in providing sanctuary for deserters and cowards, anything more than a ploy to the baby vote, 18 to 21 years?
A: That's a loaded question, isn't it? Right, right. No, you see, I think there are a great many presumptions in this question. One, that the young people are deserters and cowards. I don't think they are, because you've got to broaden your perception on why they took this action. Perhaps these are courageous young people who are standing on their convictions when they realize that the Congress and the Senate and the administration have not ended the insanity of war. That maybe they had to take some more desperate action that makes them vulnerable to the authorities, that means greater risks for them. I don't think it's a coward who stands up to fight back against the evils. A man once said that all that's necessary for evil to win in the world is for enough good people to do nothing, and these are young people who are trying to do something, who are trying to strike out against evil. And maybe you may disagree with that position, but I would say to you, then why aren't we forcing our elected officials to end the insanity of Vietnam, and then we wouldn't have the kind of things that we're having on the Coral Sea?
I think the Berkeley City Council was courageous in taking the position of providing some sanction. Not that the authorities won't go into a sanction to arrest, but the point is that I think it meant that at least one city in Northern California was willing to embrace the young people and who understood, philosophically and principally, what they were trying to do. And I think that was a noble gesture and a noble act, and I applaud the City Council for its doing it.
Q: Do you feel violence is warranted or justifiable for a worthy cause?
A: I am not an advocate of violence. I have several children. I have never even purchased a cap gun for my kids. I don't believe in training them in the notion of death and violence. I advocate peace in my home and non-violence in my home, and I have never even purchased a war toy or a weapon of violence for my kids. I think the greatest struggle, as I said earlier, is the ability of man to engage in the struggle of life and not in getting preoccupied with the issue of death.
I don't think violence is a viable way to solve the problems of this country nor the world. I think we ought to have learned something about the Vietnams and other wars that we've had. We continue war, and one war is always the last war, but it manages not to be. One thing that I learned in West Oakland was that all violence did was to prove to me that I could get hurt or hurt someone else. And all war does is prove to me that we can destroy ourselves as human beings. I don't believe in violence as a way of solving problems. I think violence is divisive because, unfortunately, the politicians in this country, when violence occurs, never addresses itself to the reasons why violence occurs. They only address themselves to the issue of violence. So that if a bomb, if a brick is thrown through a window, you have 300 speeches on the floor of Congress about making it a federal law to break a window in a public building, but you don't have federal laws going to the frustration of young people who even engaged in the impotent act of throwing a brick through a window.
You and I have got to assume the leadership in making violence a non-viable alternative. And in order to do that, you and I have got to make some serious commitment to change the course of this country from where it is going to where I think it can go.
Q: You stated that what is needed most is total unity. That being the case, isn't the cooperative, conciliatory approach more rewarding than radical approaches?
A: Well, number one, I think the person who wrote this question - while I think it's a serious one - again, is caught up in the labels. Because, see, what is a radical approach? I think you probably could define conciliatory with much more speed and ease than you could with what is radical. And what is radical is what you oppose and, unfortunately, that's the way we project ourselves. Those people we disagree with, we discredit them by calling them radicals, but we don't address ourselves to what they believe in.
You see, I don't agree that we have to continue to compromise, continue to be conciliatory. There are principles that are being raised by the young. There are principles that are being raised by the racial minorities; by the women, by the old, by the poor in this country. And I don't think you become conciliatory when you deal with the issues of values and principles. I think you've got to have enough courage to stand firm in what you believe in and not compromise.
We've compromised this country into agony, and I think the time has come for us to stand up and assume some leadership. The politics of consensus and the politics of conciliation have gotten us to the position that we're in. I'm now suggesting that we've got to have enough courage to stand up and lead this country to the kind of dream that I think we all started out to have when America, in the early stages of America. I think we've got to make some serious, clean, clear, hard stands. I think we've got to try to educate people. We've got to start getting people to raise the appropriate questions, deal with the issues and start understanding a new kind of strategy that we've got to resolve. And unity doesn't require conciliation; unity requires us to understand that different groups of people move out of their own self-interests. And we can rally the people around objectives that speak to our self-interests.
One of the shortcomings of the civil rights movement was that it was not based on the premise of self-interests. We thought we could move one group of people for another group of people's reasons, and it didn't work. I'm now saying we've got to all move together out of our own self-interest, our total self-interest. If you are the intellectual, for example, who sees zero population as an important factor to the survival of people on the face of the earth, then my question is, How do we get racial minorities to stop having children when we still call them niggers? You see? How do we get them to limit babies when they're still paranoid, and rightfully so, because we haven't dealt with the serious issues that can mitigate against the paranoia? And my point is that all of our self-interest is contained in solving the total problems of people in the country.
If you're not poor, you've got to be engaged in the process of overcoming poverty, because when we overcome that, people can move to the sophisticated issues that you understand. So our survival as people is tied up in our ability to solve the human question.
Q: Should Congress take action to reduce the present labor strike power?
A: No, I don't think it should. Again, I think that we're being very simplistic in our approach to the economics. People are saying the reason why we have inflation is because the trade unions are negotiating higher contracts. I'm sorry I don't have my arithmetic before me, but we did some analysis over the past 30 years. The fact of the matter is that the per-unit cost of labor is cheaper now than it was in 1940.
So it's not the question of labor cost. That's not the issue, but, again, it's either the blacks or the radicals or the labor unions who are the scapegoats. We constantly want to find some simplistic answer to the serious problems. And so I don't think that the strike, that the power of the unions to strike should be limited, because you've got to have some way to walk in and negotiate the circumstances under which you shall or shall not work, and that should be a legitimate right if we're not going to exploit human beings. But the issue of inflation does not rest on the question of labor, having the right to strike on negotiating contracts. That's a simplistic view and, again, we're trying to find easy scapegoats for some very complex economic questions in the country.
Q: Congressman Dellums, we have a number of questions on the Black Panthers, and I've picked this one out as the representative one. What purpose do they serve in the political struggle of the black people? Do you endorse their tactics? What is their future as you see it?
A: What purpose? A three-part question, two minutes. What purpose do they serve? All right, first of all, the Black Panthers, as I see it, are the scapegoats, because it's easy to point out the Black Panthers and not deal with the human questions that the Black Panthers raise. I think the purpose that the Black Panthers serve is a purpose that any avant-garde group of people serve who are trying to challenge the contradictions and trying to challenge the problems in the country. And that is to raise those questions, to surface those issues, to challenge the society to think and to respond, and I think that's the purpose that they serve. The white community is not monolithic in its political approach and neither are the blacks. Neither are the browns, neither are the reds, neither are the yellows. We run the full gamut of political spectrum. We have people on the far Right, we have people on the far Left, and so do others. And so the purpose of the Black Panthers is the purpose of any other political organization. And that is to raise the consciousness of people, to raise the issues, and try to pinpoint the problems.
Now, you ask me do I endorse the tactics. The point is, what tactics are you talking about? Under the First Amendment to the Constitution, they have a right to express their views. They have a right to challenge the policies to which they disagree. Under the First Amendment to the Constitution, they have a right to assemble, they have a right of freedom of speech, right of freedom of expression, and they're exercising those rights. I don't see the Panthers engaged in any violence at this point, in Chicago, in Los Angeles. There are indictments now, not against the Panthers, but against the authorities. They're indictments not against the Panthers, but the people who broke down the doors and shot them. Because the Panthers are young people who are raising questions. You may or may not disagree with them on their perception of the world or the perception of the problems, but I think you need to listen very carefully to what they're trying to say and not write them off because of some newspaper headlines calling them extremist or radical or racist, because they're not. They're trying to raise some issues, and if we were solving the problems, then I would think that the Panthers would dissolve. There's no need for Left political organizations if the country's functioning adequately and smoothly and functioning with some sense of humanity and justice. And I think that what you and have got to do is be preoccupied with solving the problems as opposed to moving against the people who are merely raising those problems. Thank you very much.
Q: Congressman Ronald Dellums, we have time but for one more question, and when you have answered that question, the meeting will stand adjourned. Before asking it, however, I wish to thank you in behalf of the more than 14,000 members of The Commonwealth Club of California for your stimulating remarks this afternoon. The question is as follows: do you find your name, Ronald, a tremendous political asset?
A: Well, first of all, I generally go by Ron Dellums and not Ronald. Yeah, I think it's a help. But, you know, I've been raising some questions and trying to engage in some politics that is not calculated to always make sure that you expediently cover your back. So, you know, I'm not sure that I will be reelected next time, but at least I have operated within the framework of my integrity.
You know, the one Ronald went from the movies to politics, and after Vice President Agnew attacked me, he made me a national figure, and so I now have a great deal of experience before the cameras. So I think that if I don't go back in politics, maybe I'll go in the movies and reverse the process.
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