Organizing the New Majority
Interview with Bertha Lewis
Bertha Lewis is president and founder of the New York-based action think tank, Black Institute and former president and chief organizer for the community organizing group, ACORN. A veteran organizer and powerful public speaker, Bertha has been organizing since the 1980s. The following is an excerpt from a conversation recorded for Radio RP&E on the occasion of Urban Habitat’s State of the Region where Lewis gave one of the keynote addresses to the equity advocates gathered.
B. Jesse Clarke: What does good organizing mean to you and what were the issues that first got you involved?
Bertha Lewis: Well, you know, we’re a membership organization and we organize low- and moderate-income folks. We take our issues from our members and fight on things that affect them. But the fight has to benefit our members and at the same time, move public policy.
For years, people understood that the banks put a red line around black and brown neighborhoods and you couldn’t get credit to buy and if you could, you were exploited. After the savings and loan debacle, we saw that there was something called the Community Reinvestment Act and we created programs where folks were counseled so that they really understood about buying something that they could afford. Our interest was for them to stay in their homes long-term. For years we fought to get banks to open up and actually give credit so that low-income people could buy if they were counseled. And for years we tried to sound the alarm about predatory lending and subprime mortgages because [previously] we could not get credit into our neighborhoods. Then the banks discovered, “Ah, there’s gold in them there poor people’s hills!” and the frenzy around subprime loans and predatory lending [started]. We were railing against it but, of course, who listens to us?
Sure enough, what we predicted would happen, did happen. Here’s what folks don’t tell you about the foreclosure crisis: in New York, we had a one percent default. Why? Because all of our folks were counseled and we always counsel people into buying homes and having mortgages that can withstand any hardship. But they don’t talk about folks [who were] counseled and survived the foreclosure crisis.
Clarke: When you look back at our system, what’s the thing that’s got to change? I mean, the Community Reinvestment Act was supposed to get people into homes. But it was flipped on its head to: Let’s give them a loan package they could never repay and let’s double the price of their house and get twice as much money, and then let’s take it back and sell it for a quarter of the price back to ourselves and then sell it again! It’s terrible. If you had a crooked landlord doing this on a one-on-one basis, everybody would be going, wait a minute now. You sold it first and you sold it twice, and so on.
Lewis: But that’s exactly what’s happening.
Clarke: How are we going to change that?
Lewis: Here’s where I think all things come together. Number one, the whole financial collapse came about because there was no regulation and regulations that were on the books were not enforced because it’s the free market and, you know, business needed to thrive. We had a mindset in this country that actually worshipped rich people. So, anything that benefitted making money and rich people was fine. You see this being manifest today. There really is a war on the poor. If we can exploit you, if we can pay you below minimum wage, if we can exploit your labor, then something is wrong with you, poor people. What the Right and those conservatives understand is, there are more of us than there are of them.
The rise of the Tea Party was not accidental. You’ve got to give credit where credit is due. The day after the 2008 election when the Right lost, they immediately set about organizing... and looking at the 2010 midterm elections. This is why I’m always on a “Wake up, progressives” tour, you know? Wake up, Left! Don’t sleep here because you must organize, organize, organize all the time.
ACORN had the largest voter registration operation in the country. At its height, we accounted for 25 percent of all voter registration. Karl Rove in 2004 put his sights on us because we had a minimum wage ballot initiative in Florida. We registered over a million people and moved those people to the polls based on issues; the issue of raising the minimum wage, not on a personality. Even though George Bush won that state, people who may have voted for Bush also went to the other section of the ballot and voted to raise the minimum wage. That was dangerous. The New York Times published Karl Rove’s emails saying: This is the real danger to the Republican Party and to the Right; we must go after them. So, there ensued AttorneyGate. You remember Alberto Gonzales and the resignation of those U.S. attorneys who said, “We’re being used for political purposes.”
Clarke: Right.
Lewis: It all started with us. So, they had their sights on us for a while and developed a way to go after us. It was really quite brilliant: Take your strength and turn it against you. Discourage these new voters—young people, people of color. We’re hurtling toward being a majority minority country. You’ve got to blunt that somehow.
Clarke: Where are the places you’re starting to see emerge this powerful alliance of communities of color and progressives and women to actually turn this right side up again?
Lewis: Well, I think this is why the election this year is so important. Because you’ll begin to see, like you say, this new majority, this coalition of folks who find that they have interests in common. Women are under attack. Black folks are under attack. Brown folks are under attack. Left folks are under attack. Progressives are under attack. Our cities are under attack. People can see very clearly—it’s in their self-interest to come together. When the Right attacks, they really set up an atmosphere for groups to come together and really be stronger and fight back because the Right becomes so extreme that everyday people can see it’s crazy. But we understand that we are in a real war. There’s no complacency here. You have women of all stripes coming together saying, listen, they can pass a law in Texas cutting healthcare for 300,000 poor women, mostly black and brown. They can do some draconian things here. So I’m happy. Because, you know, as an organizer, we thrive in polarizing situations. And America is polarized more than ever before.
Clarke: Well, but you said when you were a community organizer—without any Alinsky training—you looked at the individual interest of each member—and our self-interest is at stake. We’re being attacked as progressive. We’re being attacked as people of color. We’re being attacked as women. But then, you said there was a second ingredient—what was that second ingredient?
Lewis: Public policy... It’s not just what affects your members, but what kind of policies we put in place that are going to benefit more than just your identified folks—and that’s the key.
Clarke: We need an ‘action tank’ to pick up these policies and present them out there so that this new majority can take them.
Lewis: You know what? What’s good for people of color, what’s good for black folks, is good for America and good for the world. Like General Motors, you know? If we don’t look at stuff from the point of view of black people and people of color here in the United States throughout this, we’re ignoring things that could help our country.
[For the Black Insittute], I decided that we need to have three strategies: (1) Data, research, and polling. There are studies and data that sit on dusty shelves in academia about people of color, about black folks. But there is no company that exclusively polls people of color. We’re always a tab in a larger poll. (2) If you could bring down the data and the research and, as Malcolm X said, make it plain, [you could] turn it into public policy. Train people on how to turn it into legislation. (3) You’ve got to be able to move it on the ground, because you can have all the advocacy in the world and the best ideas in the world, but if you don’t move it on the ground through grassroots organizations and mobilize people around it, it won’t make a difference. So that’s what I want: Research, which is sort of symbolized by the head. Leadership, training and development, signified by the heart. And then, being able to move it on the ground.
Clarke: In closing, I want to give our audience at Radio RP&E a little taste of your remarks at the State of the Region...
Lewis: Whether we call ourselves the new majority or just the majority, I do not accept the idea that we are going to wait until 2050 and then shazam! all of a sudden, we will be the majority. We already are. Look from city to city and from region to region and you can see people of color are already the majority. We’ve got to realize that we are the majority already and act like it. We don't need to wait until we get to critical mass, we are at critical mass.
We're here talking about changing demographics, what do you think the Right is doing? Voter ID and voter suppression, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the attack on healthcare and contraceptives, access to healthcare for poor women—what do all these things have to do with each other? Fear of a black planet!
We have an opportunity right now to move people to the polls based on their own self-interests and issues. So, the message is this: If we are the new majority, start acting like it! Let us make sure that electoral politics, as well as real, on-the–ground, knock-on-doors, face-to-face organizing is part of that.
B. Jesse Clarke is the editor of Race, Poverty & the Environment.
New Political Spaces | Vol. 19, No. 1 – 2012 | Credits
To order the print edition of "New Political Spaces" use the back issues page.
You can also subscribe to the Radio RP&E podcast feed or listen on iTunes
To read more of our stories please sign up for our RP&E quarterly newsletter and occasional updates.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 BerthaLewis-RPE.mp3 | 31.27 MB |
 19-1.clarke-lewis.pdf | 1.41 MB |
Mitchell Silver Keynote Address April 2012
Keynote speakers Mitchell J. Silver, president of the American Planning Association, and Bertha Lewis, president and founder of The Black Institute, delivered exhilarating and passionate calls to action as they spoke about the changing demographic in the United States and how to ensure that low-income people and people of color have the infrastructure and policies in place to support their success.
To read and listen to an exclusive interview with Bertha Lewis or read the transcript of this speech please visit Radio RP&E: New Political Spaces.
Bertha Lewis Interview Transcript (Raw)
Lewis: Well it was really sort of organic, you know. I didn’t know anything about Saul Alinsky or anything like that. I just—a group of us had answered an ad in the Village Voice newspaper (02:30) that said, “Low rent deal. Be an urban homesteader. Take two apartments, make a live/work space.” And I was in the theater. I was producing original plays at that time. And, of course, we were all up in the Bronx. We’re just like, yes, we’re so earnest and [laughs] but the building that we got lured into, (03:00) no windows, no floors, no plumbing, no heat. You know, we were truly urban homesteaders and that’s where I learned to sweat pipe and do drywall. And we all sort of helped each other. It was very, very romantic and very exciting, but at the time, this was what was affordable to us.
And I remember being at the theater just getting ready to open a play. (03:30) I got a phone call from my neighbor who called the theater and said, “Bertha, there are men here with guns and they say we have to get out.” And I know it sounds dramatic, but I left the theater that day and never returned. And it became the beginning of a battle just to fight for my home. You know, back then in the South Bronx, there were many distressed buildings (04:00) and you had these speculators. They would come and buy them up for—make a deal with the city for taxes. And we were an earnest little group of tenants and we did what everybody told us to do and we actually were two weeks away from having the property sold to us as a group so that we really would be urban homesteaders. And I tell you, (04:30) it was in my life an epic battle to really understand what organizing was about and the political implications and having every single day to fight for your own home. So those are my beginnings and, you know, seven years later (05:00) I didn’t have any job. A guy who had helped us all along the way, his name was Nelson Rodriguez—
Clarke: Wait, wait. Did you keep the house?
Lewis: Well, here’s the thing.
Clarke: OK.
Lewis: Nelson Rodriguez said, “Well, you know, if you don’t have a job, you should come and apply with the organization I’m with called Banana Kelly”. And I said, “To do what?” And he said, “Well, we have an opening for a community organizer”. I said, “Well, what the hell is that?” (05:30) He said, “Well, you really are doing what you’ve already been doing here”. I said, “Do you mean to tell me that people will pay you to fight for justice?” And he’s like, yeah. And that was it. And we did have the eight year battle. It’s very difficult to hang together and stick together and we thought we had lost. I went to work for (06:00) ACORN. 20 years later—and this, again, is bizarre—20 years later, New York ACORN took over possession of that same building, rehabilitated it, and now it houses 40 low-income families. I mean, you can’t make this stuff up. [laughs]
Clarke: Wow. Well, you know, as long as we’ve moved in to that (06:30) ACORN period—and I was interested, too, because I read that in the nineties that you organized against redlining using the Reinvestment Act.
Lewis: Community Reinvestment Act.
Clarke: The Community Reinvestment Act to pressure banks to see what you could do to stop redlining for the homeowners that were in the Bronx. The cycles come and go, but that is kind of an amazing—I mean, just talk a little about what was the story? I mean, after that speculative wave (07:00) and some people were trying to actually buy houses and live in their own houses, what was the role of ACORN and your work there in terms of the Community Reinvestment Act?
Lewis: Well, you know, we’re a membership organization and we organize low and moderate-income folks. And we take our issues and fight on things that affect our members. But two things have to happen. One, the fight has to benefit (07:30) our members. But two, at the same time, it’s got to move public policy. For years people understood that the banks put a red line around black and brown neighborhoods and you couldn’t get credit to buy and if you could, then you were exploited. So after the savings and loan debacle, we looked and saw that there was something called (08:00) the Community Reinvestment Act that said if these banks are going to merge, then they really do need to create a real program. And we actually created programs in which if folks were counseled so that they really understood about buying something that they really could afford, our interest was for them to stay in their homes long-term. So for years we fought to get banks (08:30) to open up and actually give credit so that low-income people could buy if they were counseled. And for years we tried to sound the alarm about predatory lending and subprime mortgages because it was ironic. For years we could get credit into our neighborhoods. And then banks discovered, ah, there’s gold (09:00) in them there poor people’s hills. And so the whole frenzy around subprime loans and predatory lending came in. We were railing against it but, of course, who listens to us?
Clarke: The New York Reinvestment [Coalition].
Lewis: I mean, and all across the country. And sure enough, what we predicted would happen did happen. Here’s what folks don’t tell you about the (09:30) foreclosure crisis story. In New York, we had a one percent default. One percent. Why? Because all of our folks were counseled and we always counseled people into buying homes and having mortgages that could withstand any hardship. So they don’t talk to you about if folks are really counseled and it you work with them, (10:00) they survived the foreclosure crisis.
Clarke: And they got loan products [without]--
Lewis: Exactly right. Exactly right.
Clarke: --balloon payments, escalating interest rates and surprise clauses and upfront fees that—
Lewis: So, it really makes me, you know, it really makes me crazy because you fight so hard to get some benefits for poor people. But in our free market economy, folks will always find a way to exploit that. (10:30)
Clarke: Well, you know, if you look at the work that the successors to ACORN doing now—here in California you have Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment. And I know there’s 18 or 20 chapters, or no longer chapters, but separate independent organizations across the country carrying on some of that work. But how do you see the relationship between this foreclosure crisis, this devastation of the, not surprisingly, in our views that the same communities that were redlined well, that first were segregated in the 1940s, (11:00) then were integrated so to speak [laughter] in the 1960s. They were redlined and then they were predatory lent. Now they’re being foreclosed. When you see that organizing and you see ACCE carrying on this kind of work and the other community organizers, what do you see happening? And, you know, you go back to in our system, what’s the thing that’s got to change? I mean, what—if a Community Reinvestment Act wasn’t strong enough to keep them from flipping it on its head? Here we go. We’re going to get people in their homes. (11:30) Now let’s flip it on its head. Well, let’s give them a loan package they could never pay for and let’s double the price of their house and get twice as much money and then take it back and sell it for a quarter back to ourselves and then sell it again. So it’s a terrible—if you had a crooked landlord doing this on a one-on-one basis, everybody would be going, wait a minute now. You sold it first and you sold it twice, and so on.
Lewis: But that’s exactly what’s happening.
Clarke: So where do you see this—where do we get involved if the Reinvestment Act (12:00) was a weak instrument?
Lewis: Well, I mean—
Clarke: How are we going to change that? What is ACCE doing? What are the other groups—
Lewis: The Community Reinvestment Act was just a tool. Here’s where I think all things come together. Number one, the whole financial collapse came about because there was no regulation and regulations that were on the books were not enforced because it’s the free market and, you know, business needed to thrive. (12:30) We had a mindset in this country that actually worshipped rich people. And so the culture became anything that benefitted making money and rich people was fine. You see this being manifest today. There really is a war on the poor. If we can exploit you, if we can pay you below minimum wage, (13:00) if we can exploit your labor, then something is wrong with you, poor people. Here’s what’s good. What’s good is folks like ACCE here in California and, like you say, 17, 18, 19 groups, we will multiply. And it’s when the right attacked ACORN. What it did was just spur social justice (13:30) Frankensteins, for lack of a better—you know. People got so outraged. And they said, you know what? We know what the attack looks like now. We can protect ourselves against that and we will proliferate. And that’s what happens. What the right and those conservatives don’t understand is there are more of us than there are of them and groups get stronger. (14:00) Voting matters because what really matters are local elections. What we see happening in these state Houses, we see an attempt to suppress voters. We see an attempt to even stop registering voters because that’s what really counts.
Clarke: Yeah, well, I want to get back to that and the period after ACORN, (14:30) with such a vicious, cooked-up campaign to blacken the name of the organizers that were actually engaged in some very good work. The notion that the voter registration cards were somehow defective was part of the libel.
Lewis: A brilliant strategy, by the way.
Clarke: But the, and the nonsensical story of pimps and whores. (15:00) We hope that part has been undone in terms of our readership, but if it hasn’t, [we’ll put a sidebar for] it.
Lewis: Good.
Clarke: But the question about what--this is a long campaign they’re involved in. First off, they went after the biggest voter registration outfit in the country after an election, by the way, which was swung by the new voters.
Lewis: That’s right.
Clarke: And then they have passed, I don’t know, 18 voter suppression, voter ID, citizenship check laws.
Lewis: 30.
Clarke: 30? Oh. (15:30) I haven’t been counting. They’re moving fast. And then the [Alec] group is—
Lewis: That’s right.
Clarke: --churning them out. So where do you see this—when it first happened with ACORN, it was like, oh it’s just this nutty right-wing guy’s website. And he pays a videographer to go around and do mean stuff. And boy, that’s weird. It caught on so bad. I wonder what happened and gee, too bad. Oh, where is that group? Oh, too bad. They’re out of business. So it kind of caught people’s up. Now we’re into this. Like you said, we know they’re—so how do you see that (16:00) trajectory and where are we in that process right now, because we have another election just coming up in—
Lewis: We do. I mean, the rise of the Tea Party was not accidental. You’ve got to give credit where credit is due. The day after the 2008 election when the right lost, they immediately, immediately set about organizing. They immediately set (16:30) about looking at the 2010 midterm elections, immediately. This is why I’m always sort of like on a “Wake up, progressives” tour, you know? Wake up, left. Don’t sleep here because you must organize, organize, organize all the time. You began to see a tactic because those of us who consider ourselves on the left (17:00) and progressive, you know, we’re really very civilized about our arguments. We always think that they have to be grounded in fact. Well, the other side doesn’t care about fact. It is all about winning and maintaining power.
When you go after the largest voter registration operation in the country—at our height, we, ACORN accounted for (17:30) 25 percent of all voter registration. Karl Rove in 2004 put his sights on us because we had a minimum wage ballot initiative in Florida. We registered over a million people and we moved those people to the polls based on issues, the issue of raising the minimum wage, not on a personality. Even though (18:00) George Bush won that state, people who may have voted for Bush also went to the other section of the ballot and voted to raise the minimum wage. That was dangerous. The New York Times published Karl Rove’s emails saying this is the real danger to the Republican Party and to the right. We must go after them. So there ensued AttorneyGate. (18:30) So you remember Alberto Gonzales and the resignation of US attorneys who said, “We’re being used for political purposes.”
Clarke: Oh, right. Right. The whole scale just slipped my mind for a while there, didn’t it?
Lewis: It all started with us. So they had their sights on us for a while. And they developed a way to go after you and it was really quite brilliant. Take your strength and turn it against you. (19:00) Discourage these new voters, young people, people of color. We’re hurtling toward being a majority minority country. You’ve got to blunt that somehow. And so they take a long-term view. And all politics is local, so if you can affect city council, state Houses, now you’ve set yourself up with an atmosphere in which—Wisconsin (19:30), you know, you can go after labor. You can go after those groups that represent poor people.
Clarke: Well, but if you turn that on its head, if you look at these demographic trends and you see the majority minority, minority majority, the majority of the majorities, which has been really here all along, especially if you take a look at the women’s vote. So if we look at that 99 percent, OK, well we’ll do the math later. 66.6 percent. But that majority has been here. But now that the new majority is really gaining (20:00) that kind of threat, where you see the fear in places like Arizona in that top demographic that people over 65 are 80 percent white and the people under 35, there’s 60 percent people of color. You see that gap and you see that shift. Thinking about the contours of the new majority coalition, what are some of the—you know, you turn this on the head. You had that right-wing strategy looking 10 years out. What are the contours and where are the places where you’re starting to see emerge (20:30) this powerful alliance of communities of color and progressives and women to actually turn this right-side up again?
Lewis: Well I think this is why this election this year is so important. Because I think what you’ll begin to see is, like you say, this new majority, this coalition of folks who find that they have interests in common. You know, women are under attack. Black folks are under attack. (21:00) Brown folks are under attack. Left folks are under attack. Progressives are under attack. Our cities are under attack. So people can see it very clearly and see it’s in their self-interest to come together. See, that’s what I mean. It’s like when the right attacks, they really set up an atmosphere for (21:30) groups to come together and really be stronger and to fight back because the right becomes so extreme that everyday people can see this is crazy. But we understand that we are in a real war. There’s no complacency here. And you have women of all stripes coming together saying, listen, they can pass a law in Texas cutting healthcare from 300,000 (22:00) poor women, mostly black and brown. They can do some draconian things here. So I’m happy. It’s almost like—[laughter] because, you know—
Clarke: Thank you, Rush.
Lewis: --as an organizer, we thrive in polarizing situations. And America is polarized more so than ever before.
Clarke: Well, but when you go back to this (22:30)—you said when you were a community organizer without any Alinsky training, nonetheless you looked at the individual interest of each of these members and our self-interest is at stake. We’re being attacked as progressive. We’re being attacked as people of color. We’re being attacked as women. All of us have this self-interest. But then the second ingredient, you said there was a second ingredient. It wasn’t just enough to look out for your interest because, sadly, we have seen the end road (23:00) of looking out for your own interest in the labor unions. You’ve seen the end road of looking out for your own interest in the narrow definition of feminism that could get a Secretary of State. You know, we’ve seen that looking out for your own interest without the second—what was that second ingredient?
Lewis: Public policy.
Clarke: And for this new majority, what are the policies?
Lewis: Well, remember when I said the unique thing about ACORN—and now our model is being duplicated—is you not only look out for your members’ (23:30) self-interest for them, because we were like a community union. That was our model. But whatever the campaign was not only had to benefit your members but change public policy so that it benefitted other folks that were in a like situation. I think that’s the key and I think what people—even labor—realizes now that they are under (24:00) this brutal attack, they have been under attack for decades. I mean, you know, we’ve seen union membership go down in this country. And unions, organized labor was at its height when? When it came outside of the workplace and actually got involved in social justice issues like civil rights that affected their members. (24:30) So it’s not just what affects your members, but what kind of policies that we put in place that are going to benefit more than just your identified folks and that’s the key. And I think that’s what community organizations are looking at now. No more can you put a shell or a bubble around you. You really do have to open up.
And I think, I think what has happened is sort of like the old clichés, you know. (25:00) I used to always say they come for me in the morning; they’re coming for you at night. And now people have seen that played out and it’s very real. It’s extremely real. And folks are saying, you know what? When you work for social justice, this is not just a hobby. This actually affects the world. It actually affects my neighborhood (25:30) and I have to look outside of myself. That’s why, I think, community groups like ACCE here in California grow stronger, grow better out of this adversity and out of recognizing we are at war and we need to have allies of all stripes.
Clarke: So, now if we were to get to that place, and we see some of it stirring here in California for sure. And we did sort of sidestep the last little (26:00) right-wing wave in terms of our elections, but we didn’t exactly stop it and turn it back, either. It’s still washing over us, particularly as we look at the real impact. So when you’re talking about the policies, I know that now that you’ve moved on to create a new organization called the Black Institute and you’re thinking about, particularly, the policies—it’s sort of a think and action.
Lewis: It’s an action tank.
Clarke: Action tank. OK. So it’s taking action. What policies—because, you know, when you said you organized in Florida for minimum wage (26:30) in the state of Florida, so they upped the minimum wage in the state of Florida.
Lewis: Right, right.
Clarke: So, you know, that’s a pretty basic idea. But there’s sort of a mystification here like, well, we need an action tank to pick up these policies and present them out there so that this new majority can take them.
Lewis: Well, I mean, it is very simple but you don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. (27:00) Now this thing called ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, ALEC. Now people know that word, they know that acronym. They know that this is a right-wing think tank. Well, of course, there’s millions of them. You know? I mean, what was the senior Bush, you know, a thousand points of light? You know, they’ve got the Heritage Foundation (27:30) and the Cato Institute and this and this and this. And for years, people hadn’t really heard about ALEC. But groups like ACORN and others, we knew about them. And again, I think what we have to do is trust each other and not fall into the trap of being territorial, of saying, well—of falling prey to foundationitis, where a foundation (28:00) will say, “Well, we’ve already got one of those. We don’t need another one.” Well, to hell with that. Community groups have got to find ways to do earned income so that you don’t rely on the kindness of strangers, so that you can weather the storm. We need a thousand points of light. And in 2009 after I began to reorganize the ACORN chapters (28:30) because, you know, you’ve got to live to fight another day. And another cliché, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Well, they didn’t kill us. They made us stronger. And you morph in to what you need to do.
And I remember standing down by the White House and there’s these dueling kind of protests going on about healthcare. (29:00) And you had these people saying, “Well, the American public doesn’t really want universal healthcare. They don’t want single payer.” And I said, “What America are you talking about? Who are the people that you’re talking about?” Not being able to affect comprehensive immigration reform in the 21st century (29:30) when the country, again, the browning of America had begun decades before, this fear of a black planet was just palpable. And I decided, you know what? What’s good for people of color, what’s good for black folks is good for America and is good for the world. So, like, General Motors, you know? (30:00) So if we don’t look at stuff from the point of view of black people and people of color here in the United States and throughout the [this war], then we’re ignoring things that could help our country.
I decided that we needed to have three strategies. One, data, research, polling. There are studies and data that sit on dusty shelves in academia (30:30) about people of color, about black folks. There is no company who exclusively does nothing but poll people of color. We’re always a tab in a larger poll. So if you could bring down the data and the research and as Malcolm X said, (31:00) make it plain, turn it into plain language, turn it into public policy, train people on that, train people on how to turn that into legislation. But then you have to have the third element. You’ve got to be able to move it on the ground because you can have all the advocacy in the world and you can have the best ideas in the world but if you don’t move it on the ground through grassroots organizations, organize, and mobilize people around it, (31:30) it won’t make a difference. So that’s what I wanted the Institute to be. Research, which is sort of symbolized by the head. Leadership, training, development, signified by the heart. And then being able to move it on the ground. Green for grassroots. I figured after the ordeal that I’d gone through with ACORN, (32:00) I knew about forming ACORN chapters. I also knew that there were other organizations that really met that challenge and came up. And I said, well, if I could connect with them and we start working together, we could deal with immigration. The face of immigration is a lot blacker than the frame that it’s all about undocumented Latinos. You know, (32:30) there is a huge, huge black population of immigrants from the Caribbean, from South America, and from Africa and they need to be included in that narrative. The privatizing of education, this is serious because now that these urban school districts have more melanin in them and have more color, all of a sudden now, (33:00) once again, let’s privatize.
Clarke: And make some money off it.
Lewis: Then you’ve got to—the environment and, of course, economics. So we have three strategies, four areas of interest, and for me this idea had been brewing in my head for a very long time and I just said what the hell? We’re in a war, so I may as well fight the war the way that I think is most effective for me (33:30) and that’s what I’m doing with the Black Institute. And that’s why I’m here in California today.
Clarke: Well, that’s a great segue into what we’ll be actually doing tomorrow. And I want to acknowledge that this is part of a project here that the Urban Habitats Bay Area Social Equity Caucus is putting on for the State of the Region conference, which will be featuring a powerful public speaker, Bertha Lewis, (34:00) and we’ll be getting more of this stuff tomorrow. And we want to thank, especially, the people who are putting the conference on: Frank Lopez, who’s not in the room with us right this minute, but who will be listening to this soon.
Lewis: Yea, Frank. Yea.
Clarke: Frank, he’s been doing quite a job. But actually the entire Urban Habitat staff’s been pulling on. And I want to also thank our board engineer today, Joe Feria-Galicia and Christine Joy Ferrer, publishing assistant in the house. So thanks for joining us, Bertha, and we’ll look forward to (34:30) finding out the three strategies, the four areas, and the key to building the echo chamber of the left.
Lewis: [laughs] Yes, yes, and I thank you guys for having me on. This is fabulous. It’s wonderful to have your own media outlet. Because remember, what did the right do? Little by little, they did their right-wing talk radio, took over radio stations. (35:00) So—
Clarke: Here we go.
Lewis: We can do the same thing.
Clarke: And we’re starting it here. Thank you again, Bertha.
Lewis: Thank you.
[End of Audio]
Bertha Lewis Keynote 4/26 Raw Transcript
Bertha Lewis;
[00:00]Ok how y'all doing? Now the people that had the fried chicken, no napping, all right, no napping because you're on camera and you will be recorded. And ah? So what was I doing between 2007 and 2012? [00:30]I got carted off to the right wing gulag. My god its cold in the gulag, but that’s all right. Glen Beck and I had our affair. That’s why he does the thing that he does and says the things he says about me, he wanted to have a love child. But I saidvno Glen, [01:00]the demographics are changing. Well I guess, you know Mitchell was so great, you know, this guy. The PowerPoint, everything all fancy-smancy, but really on time and really got us to thinking about what’s really real and digging down into the numbers. [01:30]You know?
So my message today is whether we do need to figure out what to call ourselves, the new majority or just, we are the majority instead of minority and I do not accept the fact that we are going to wait until 2015 and then shhhh, all of a [02:00]sudden we will be the majority, we already are. See I don't believe all the stuff that these people try to tell us, we already are. Look from city to city and even from region to region and we say well, you know, people of color are already the majority there. When you start putting that stuff together, that means we got to realize that we are the majority [02:30]already and we need to act like it. We don't need to wait until we get to critical mass, we are at critical mass. I mean you can even look in this room, right? You know that not too long ago this room was decidedly melanin challenged. [03:00]But we got our melanin and all melanin thing on now.
Let me just give you a brief little thing about the Black Institute and who we are and yes, I did not focus group the name. People were saying, whoa, don't call it the Black Institute, you know, you want to be more universal. And I'm like, Black is universal, Okay? Okay? [03:30]and every color in the rainbow.
I was standing in D.C. in 2009 when the Healthcare debate came up and there was this tiny little group of people walking around with tea bags and talking about "We don't want universal Healthcare, we don't want single payer and the American people [04:00]don't want it and we have a poll." And I'm like what Americans are you talking about? Who? Because people in my hood definitely want universal Healthcare. So who are you and then it all became, begin to come together for me, and I began to understand and to realize that these were the people that the day after [04:30]the 2008 election, the Right started to organize these people. We were all partying, feeling good, you know. Yeah we finally got it, first Black President. [We're peoples racial] Whoo. Everything's going to be all right now. Wrong! [05:00]Wrong. The minute you stop organizing, the minute you stop bringing people together, you have lost.
So what I'm here to say today in all of my different remarks is, regional planners, those of you who are doing research, data collection, and writing fabulous [05:30]things like this. Listen, the one thing that you better have, is you need an organizing component. [Remark from crowd] Absolutely. Absolutely. After I did reorganize the former ACORN chapters, and it was, you know, its all good because [we'll send that girl with that said (singing) can you [06:00]makes you stronger, a little longer.] I can’t remember what it is but you get the point. Theses bastards tried to kill us and when you are faced with death, things flash before your eyes. And the things that flash before your eye are what actually really count. That you cannot be moderate, you do have to be radical [06:30]because they will lie on you and they will attack you no matter how reasonable you believe you are being, understand that. So for me when I saw these town hall meetings turn into debacles it became clear that they had to remove ACORN from the chess board because you would [07:00]know if the ACORN red shirts had been in on those town hall meetings, they would have been an entirely thing, entirely different. Also what I realized was that these folks were serious, there was fear of a black planet, that they would do whatever it took, however long it took, to change the dynamic. [07:30]We're here talking about changing demographics, what do you think they're doing? What do you think they are doing? Voter ID and voter suppression, ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, [08:00]the attack on Healthcare and contraceptive and access to healthcare by poor women. What do all these things have to do with each other? Fear of a black planet. Fear of you all and your regional planning and what kinds of things you are planning. Maybe we ought to change the terminology to not [08:30]be [social-like really] but social fairness. Every last one of you in the room today is a threat. You are a threat to the powers that be. You need to understand what a danger you are. Get that in your heads, you are dangerous. I know, "I'm kind of nice, I got, I have multiple [09:00]degrees, I'm not like those other people, I'm doing research, nothing wrong here, you crazy Bertha, you go and make people afraid." Well guess what? [09:30]You cannot hide because you are dangerous and that’s how they look at you.
We don't have progressive elected officials, you think because you elected someone, because they're Latino, or they're Asian, or they're Black, that somehow or another they have a predisposition to social justice? [10:00] This is why we are in the fix we're in today. Because we try to say well if we support this one or that one maybe we'll get one or two things because intrinsically we understand they're not progressive, they don't even know how to think progressively. [10:30] Now any funders in here, don't get your pantyhose in a wad, I'm not trying to foment partisan politics because I know that is forboden for 501c3's, however, issue advocacy is not, and the issue is, what is progressive policy [11:00]and you cannot have progressive policy if you don't have progressive elected officials, you just can't, it won't work. Folks come into a room, they hear race, they get up and leave, they hear gender, they get up and leave. When you go to these city halls and you go to the state houses, the reason that we're having so many problems [11:30]today was again the day after Barack Obama was elected, those folks on the right were already at the 2010 elections, already. You think that because we have the facts and the data that Americas is browning and that there will be people of color in the majority that these folk are sitting back? [12:00] They are looking back at their counterparts in South Africa. You think that a [par time] can't come here when everybody is black and brown and in the majority? You better think again, because the powers that be don't care about your numbers if you don't [12:30]act like numbers are your power.
It’s an understanding, the demographic change, we got to be a little bit deeper. I keep saying Black, I keep saying Black and not African American. Why? Because you got people like Mitchell, all mixed the hell up. [13:00]This is not your traditional up from the South migrating Negro, this is super Negro. As regional planners, [13:30] you got to dig down into who these demographics are. You've got to look at how you are going to effect comprehensive immigration reform. It has to be part of your plan, because guess what, it isn't just about borders and Latinos [14:00]hopping over fences and having anchor babies. If we're looking at the economics of this country and regionally, our comprehensive immigration reform, if it'll ever come please God, we need to look at who's coming into this country, African immigrants are the most [14:30]highly educated of all immigrant groups combined.
There’s a dirty little secret going on in this country about education, where education and immigration cross. The recruitment of international teachers. These are professionals and they are coming up from the Caribbean, [15:00]Black immigrants from South America as well as Africa, and its a cottage industry of recruiters that not only charge the teachers, but the system. I don't know if any of you heard about Filipino teachers in New Orleans [15:30]that were practically indentured servants, had their passports taken away, forced to live in trailers, and give part of their earnings back to their recruiters, it was like an international professional coyote. But here's the other thing, I was, I was over at Howard College and [16:00]talking to a class and one of the students said to me "you know Mrs. Lewis, I know what the left is all about, I know what progressives are all about, I know what we want, but I just can't figure out what the right wants because it just doesn't seem to be clear to me." And I said well, it right in front of [16:30]your face...privatize everything. Privatize everything. The war on public education is raging all around us. It is predatory education. We will no longer have public schools in a minute if we don't watch out. [17:00]International teachers are being recruited to populate charter schools. That is their new thing, be aware of this, be aware.
If we are talking about geography and people moving around and us being in the majority, in urban settings and [17:30]inter-suburban setting, all of a sudden when the school system is now black and brown it got to be privatized. It just like gentrification happens after we take away services in neighborhoods and we call it urban renewal but you remove the folks out of [18:00]that system, it is the same thing that is happening in public education, be aware. You got to be able to put that into your formula.
We have an opportunity right now to move people to the polls based on their own self-interests and issues. [18:30]ACORN at its height accounted for 25% of all voter registration in this country. One organization. Well with that dubious distinction, we had a bull’s-eye on our backs that was huge, you see, in a way, why we had to be removed. [19:00]I mean it makes perfect logical sense.
Using this Trayvon Martin moment again in your planning, where was Trayvon Martin shot? In a gated community that arguably according to whomever [19:30]you want to believe was 50/50 in terms of white vs. people of color. A gated community. Again, the rise of these types of developments have proliferated…proliferated. If we want to look at what kind of housing [20:00]we're having, anytime you have a gated community, that already sets up a certain mentality. Are you keeping people in or you keeping folks out? Is there free movement even between the neighbors in this place? Regional planners, think about the proliferation of gated communities and its not just the rich, [20:30]we convinced moderate, middle income folks that they should be in gated communities too. This is why we have this whole flight to the suburbs. Lets have a house and a yard for the dog.
Well I'm a boomer. [21:00]Let me tell you a little secret about boomers. We get cranky and once we hit a certain age, we revel with it. Early on in our life we were like, so restricted and all of a sudden the big sexual revolution and we got loose, and then we got too loose [21:30]and had to pull back. And yeah, we seen far too much, and we actually have seen you know in our short lifetime things change drastically so we get cranky, and we like it because we can finally be cranky and talk about all the things that we see that we don't like and that other people shouldn't like and [22:00]one of the things that we don't like is people not being call what they really are, like you all, dangerous. There's nothing safe about you. The fact that revolutions and what you all are doing, it costs money. Sorry funders in the room but most folks sitting up in here [22:30]are suffering from foundation-itis. No foundation can tell me that they are suffering, not when the stock market is over 13,000. There's no such thing. You bounce back and your investments have bounce back even better and greater than before. [23:00]Think about self-sufficiency. We are not going to be able to do the things that we want if we don't have self-sufficiency. We need our own bean pies. The Nation of Islam don't give a damn about what you think of about them because they got a bean pot. And we got to think [23:30]about that. What is our self-sufficient motto? You cannot keep relying on the kindness of strangers because they have an agenda. We got to change our minds about how we are going to fund our own revolution and it isn't going to be from government grants or from totally from foundations, it cannot be, because if it is, [24:00]the revolutions certainly will not be televised.
But because there were folks who actually said we are going to tell the truth and shame the devil...bull. Occupy. The occupy movement has does more for your regional planning than you all have done for a decade. [24:30]You should give them a hand. Because no one was talking about inequality before these crazy ass people laid down and said "that’s it, no more, no more." You got to join up with labor. Please, please, please. And god knows [25:00]they can be a pain in the ass. Lord knows, I know, but you got to go to them because what is happening. Changing demographics, their rank and file demographics are changing. Don't let some guy in a suit, who's a business suit, he's a business agent. They don't even call themselves organizers anymore, they're business agents. [25:30]You say look, I know what your rank and file looks like. I know who they are, there is no separation between labor and community because their rank and files live on streets which are neighborhoods, which are part of communities, if they would only recognize that, we have to help them. Wisconsin didn't happen by accident and they need us, they need us, [26:00]they need us. You don't have to beg, you need to tell them come and invest with us. There has to be an inside outside strategy here. Stop the bickering, stop the crumb snatching, please just stop it. Its my turf, you know, [26:30]some funder tells you, "well we already got one of those." Why don't you come up with something different, or here’s a dollar, I want all ten of you to share it because we want to maximize. I mean sometimes you just got to walk away [27:00]and say no, the 10 of us say that is unacceptable, the work is too important and you will respect us and you will recognize us. I know again that sounds real radical [inaudible] don't tell us to do that but you have too. You just have to take a different tact.
I said in Detroit and I'm going to say it again, [27:30]I don't care how academic you are, I don't care how researcher in it you are, I don't care. Every last one of you needs to have a political voter registration, voter turnout door-knocking component. If you don't have it within your own organization than you better get with someone who does, and they exist. [28:00]You must do this. Earlier I was in the demographic section and they were saying, "Oh the universities used to have departments just devoted to different ethnicities and they don't have it anymore.” Well damn, that’s unacceptable. All we been doing is how we are the new majority, so [28:30]if we're so new, lets get real and start exerting that power right now. Who are the African Americans? That’s a whole different class of folks. Black faces need to be at the table when we talk about immigration reform. When we talk about immigration reform, we got to talk about changing how we treat professionals. Theses are our cousins; [29:00]we need them here to fight the battle with us. So it is disturbing to me when I don't see a real effort to say, yes we're going to use Twitter, yes we're going use Facebook, we're going to go into the cloud. That was really frightening to me because I had just gotten down with cyberspace then [29:30]they said, "go into the cloud." I was like, nah. No more of that forced march thing for me. I’ve seen too many science fiction movies where none of us are in the future except [inaudible].
So the message is this. If we are the new majority, start acting like it. [30:00]If we are the new majority, let us make sure that electoral politics as well as real on the ground knock on the door face-to-face organizing is part of that. The Black Institute has three strategies: The head, data, research, polling but it doesn't mean anything if you cant make a claim and bring it down to the heart which is [30:30]leadership turning all that rusty dusty stuff into reality and training people to do it but none of it, it will always be advocacy if you don’t move it on the ground. You still have to knock on doors. You ain't getting away from that. You can have all the videoconference you want. [31:00]And here’s the proof right in your own publication, Black and Latino coalition's Black anti-immigrant laws in Mississippi. Whenever I’m in Mississippi I try to be inside after dark. So if they can do it in Mississippi, we can join website to website, strange bedfellows and all kind of coalitions, we have to do it [31:30]for our own survival, you cannot do it alone. And so, in conclusion, you want to call to action? You gonna get up off your ass right now. Stand up, stand up, stand up. Mic check, Mic check. We are the majority, and we will rule. [32:00]We are fired up, and tired of all the bullshit, and we wont take it anymore. We are the majority, not in 2050, we are the majority right now, and we will rule. Thank you.