Zev Aelony

Nonviolent civil-rights activist. Representatives of electronic security equipment. Born in 1938 Del: What is your definition of the the Civil Rights Movement? Zev: I don't know if I can define it, but my description would be. It was a movement that was primarily non-violent. That is the part that I was in. To fulfill the promises of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence of publicly guaranteed rights of American citizenship. For many of us it was part of a human rights movement to guarantee the rights of all people. The movement was primarily non violent because if you use violence you are attacking other human beings and if you are trying to defend the rights of all people there is a conflict right there. The movement was centered on achieving an end to certain extreme forms of oppression against African-Americans. That was part of the larger movement. An example of that would be one of the originators of the Center for Racial Equality, was a lady who was one of the two Japanese Americans who got out of the roundup on the west coast by getting a job with a church in Chicago. Where the first committee for racial equality was founded. It was a movement to eliminate racism. Del: Would the protesting and boycotts of the past be an effective way to make the change today? Zev: Yes, but it is a broader question then just those two techniques. Those are two techniques among many, but the only way to achieve human rights is through organizing in ways that is intended is to bring it to all people. To support the rights of others and and themselves. People need to stand up for their own rights and people need to stand up for the rights of others. Zev: There is a conflict in our society and in each and every one of us between tendencies towards violence and rage and tendencies toward love. And anger can sometimes be part of that love, but rage can only lead to doing harm to others. Whether it is massive imprisonment, or death penalties, or invading other countries. Whether it is refusing to allow other people basic necessities of life, such as segregation did. But also such is the current movement to make sure that some people don't have enough to live on. And to elevate others in their own mind by great wealth. These are opposites we have tendencies within each of us and we have to find ways if we really want to build a better world of humane values. We have to find ways to bring out the best in each of us. Those techniques can be used for good or evil. There are some techniques such as carrying a gun or sword can ultimately only be used for evil no matter what the intent is. But protest and boycotts can be used for good, or evil and we have to make sure that it is used in the interesting of a universal respect for all. Del: How did you participate in activism during the Civil Rights Movement? Zev: My earliest memory goes back over 50 years ago. There were of a few of us high-school students who participated in an NAACP campaign. I believe it was called completely free by at 63 and I think this was back in 1953. We were trying to remove the remaining impediments, even here in Minnesota there were certain things, like a black person could not call themselves a realtor. There were a lot of artificial impediments including so-called gentlemen's agreements that kept Black, Jews, and others out of certain neighborhoods and those were starting to break down but the city was still largely segregated and in jobs as well. There was a large campaign in the early and mid 50's to influence Dayton's department store to hire Negro sales people. The situation was even stranger at Sears where it was a company founded by a black Minnesotan and became a major corporation under the ownership of a Jewish family and they discriminated in employment against both those groups. I became involved in those things and went to Israel for while. Then to Chicago where I was involved in opposition to new housing built by a university that was restricting housing to Blacks because they did not want the complete housing complex to become populated by Blacks. They felt that if more than 35% Blacks moved in that no White people would move in. I eventually went to the University of Minnesota and began helping fellow students get housing and work toward student integration. For a short while I also lived in Georgia prior to coming to the University, and had been shocked and horrified by the level of violence I saw used to enforce segregation there. And the cruelty and victimization to people. As a result of that I went to a Congress of Racial Equality training session in Miami. So when the Students for Integration started I was one of those who advocated the use of CORE tactics. And we began working on housing integration and employment integration here. And began to realize that something needed to be done on the state level and began looking for someone who would support fair housing and employment legislation and found at that time a very young legislator by the name of Don Fraiser who we began to pursue those things through. We went to some hearings and most of us who were even younger then him were a little disconcerted to see what a quiet and soft-spoken person we had as our advocate and began to think this wasn't going to work. Then we found out that he was much more affective with his quiet and his soft spoken demeanor then any advocate we could have hoped for. He was extremely effective and legislation eventually began to pass. When I appeared before the draft board I had applied for status as a conscientious objector. I objected to war in general. To violence in general and to the U.S. invasion of Vietnam, and to their aggression over there in Indo China. And it was clear that some of the board members hadn't even heard about what was going on over in Vietnam at that time. And that led to me being classified as 4F because they didn't think that a Jew a could be a conscience objector. So I chose myself I decided that I would do an alternative service and I chose to become one of the original members of Congress for Racial Equality Soul Force. That was a full time organizing position on a some what volunteer level we got $25 a week. And that's how I came involved. Del: What you think is the most important issue African-Americans have to address today? Zev: There are complexities in all of us and we have to face those. And we have to face that there are movements both toward human rights and towards a suicidal, sadomasochist evil. And we see much of the latter, unfortunately is dominating our political structure right now. We have leadership led by people whose dynasty began with the support of the rise of the Nazis. If you look back in Old New York Times newspapers and the Wall Street Journal's you'll find the name of George Herbert Walker and Prescott Bush. George Herbert Walker was kind of a bully, a Yale graduate, a former boxer. From an old family that did pretty well. He bullied his own family to the extent that most of his kids were not enthusiastic about doing much with him. So he went into business with his son-in-law Prescott Bush who was also from Yale, and also from the skull bones. They with some of their friends from the skull and bones ran at an operation called the Union Bank Corp.. largely funded by German industrialist. And they've raised tens of millions of dollars which funded among other things the rise of the Nazi Party. One of their subsidiaries helped the party to get its castle near Munich as its national headquarters at the time when the party was having trouble financially. They were often over spending and they were not in position to get a conventional mortgage and through their Dutch subsidiary it was funded. And after the invasion of Poland the Nazis were rewarded with the full ownership of a steel mill near Awerwitz where they used slave labor. And in 1942 the U.S. was at war with Germany and they continued their pro Nazi activities and eventually their properties were seized. During the Civil Rights Movement I remember the current president helping to run his father's campaign as a kind of a strategist for his father's campaign in Texas. His father lost running as an extreme racist. And the current president also ran a friends campaign in Alabama with the same results. And the family's attitude was such where as he was engaged to a girl that he called the love of his life. And his family nixed it because she had Jewish grandparents. This is a dynasty whose basic games and techniques have not changed and is not because they are evil people or anything like that. It's because of a sickness that unfortunately is shared by enough of the society. There is nothing secret about what I have said. In Stalin's time or Hitler's times these things would not be printed or if they were printed they would be restricted to archives somewhere and not available. But these things are available to to anybody who bothers to look them up. We have to address the broad issue of racism in American, history, and its sources, because we are headed not back to where we where, but we are headed into even greater depths of racism and violence unless we change our course. Del: What do you think of the Civil Rights Movement today? Zev: I think we are starting to see some signs of a resurrection of the Movement. I think some of us made some major errors in the late 60's and 70's. Letting our fatigue overwhelm us and not carry it to its fulfillment. We allowed people to organize violent Movements through 'agents provocateurs'. There were and are people who believe violence is a way of achieving good ends and if it's for a good end it isn't violent. You find people who will distinguish between terrorism and legitimate warfare. And when I challenge them to show me the difference they can't. We need to take a look at where we are going. We need to look both at means and ends. If the ends are not ends of human equality, including everybody, even those who hate us. If the means are not means that bring everybody together...as the older Bush used to say, 'we are in deep doo', worse than that maybe. Del: Would you consider yourself active today? Zev: Not active enough. Del: How would you define the relationship between a Black Arts Movement and the Civil Rights Movement? Zev: I think that Black Arts and Civil Rights Movement like other out group movements of the arts are intimately linked. Whether it is Sweet Honey In The Rock, Alice Walker, or visual arts. Human beings exist in a cultural milieu and what I was saying of history is just a part of that. We have to understand ourselves as human beings in a human societies, and the arts are a part of that, whether its directly political or whether its totally not representational. It all relates to who we are as peoples in societies. And if we want to liberate ourselves we have to understand who we are and what this universe is about. Del: Control Zev: Here we don't consider it torture when we lock up people in a small cage 473 hours a week, will we bind people, a blindfold them, don't tell them what they are charged with that, and don't even allow the families to know where they are. And under proposed legislation it would make it illegal to let somebody know someone is the held or not. Control is something that can be a good thing or a bad thing. If it is self control if it is people learning how to control their own lives and their communities together that's a very good thing. But on the flip side to that there is a small elite group of people like the Skull and Bones crew who think they're somehow the natural elite who want to rule all of the rest the world. And I'm using that as example not to put down those people but the thing is if you set out to control from the outside you end up damaging not only all of those other people, but yourself as well. In what often seems to be a mysterious self-destructiveness in these people. People who have everything, but these people what all these means still resort to drinking and drugs, I think it is something we ought to study. I think there is a terrible disease and it is something that we pass on culturally it's not inherent. We have to show ourselves better than our parents, we have to show ourselves better than other people, There is a range of people from the best of us to the worst of of us and the range it is often narrow. People often find themselves in a bind that they can't get out of and the results can be violence on a massive scale. Del: Dehumanize Zev: I think that is a critical word right now. We see the dehumanization of opponents from many different directions. And this is critical and nothing good can come from that. I said all these things about our current administration but if you take away they're humanity you make it even worst. You can't dehumanize other people and do anything other then make it worst. We see that in our prisons. I was chatting with a corrections officer recently and he commented on some state legislatures who had been there and advocated among other things, taking away desserts, and double bunking, all kinds of things to make this situation in a very harsh prison even harsher. It was a high security prison so about 40 percent of the prisoners are expected to spend the rest of their lives there, but the rest of them are going to get out. And he said when you talk about doing all of these mean things to them, I want you to ask yourself, they are going to be your neighbors one day how angry do you want them to be? I think he was getting at something that has more of an universal application and that is of just how certain basic needs including being respected in society and that sort of thing. Where we set out to correct wrongs by acts of vengeance against others we not only dehumanize them but we dehumanize ourselves and we also ensure perpetuation the wrongs that are. Del: Stigma Zev: There are a lot of things that I dislike yet I have to recognize that it is somebody else's decision. It doesn't mean that we can't be opposed to something that someone else supports, of course we can, but we cannot stigmatize a person or community without also dehumanizing all of us. Del: Traumatize Zev: People get traumatized in a variety of ways. It can be getting beat up or jailed as I was on some occasions. It can also be through economic deprivation, or being continuously harassed by those that are suppose to protect them. Del: Loss Zev: There is the loss of our rights that we've seen in the last decade or so. In particular since 9/11, but even before that. When we had the blowing up up the federal building in Oklahoma. The first thing that happened was a Muslim man was arrested even though he had nothing to do with it. We had passage of supposedly security warranted legislation that as I see really had nothing to do with security it was really aimed at restricting people's civil and human rights. Del: Identity Zev: I think it comes in many forms. Popularly people speak of identity in economic terms as far as identity thief. People will take your Social Security number or your account information to establish false identities. To my mind identity is how we see ourselves how we understand ourselves and I believe Mrs. Clinton's book was right it takes a village to raise a child, but it also takes a village just to be an individual. Del: Survival Zev: Survival has to be more than just a matter of breathing or not. But survival is critical in terms of do I continue to be what is important for me to be. I have been fighting cancer for the last year and a half. I am more afraid of the cancer in our society then I am of the cancer in my gut. And for me survival is both living and experiencing, and enjoying everything in a personal sense. It's also my family, my community, the country, the world, and none of those levels can be feted by the other. Del: Inspire Zev: I think people inspire a lot of things. Sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. I was somewhat intrigued this past month there have been big front page stories on the death and career of Strom Thurman of South Carolina. And discussions that seemed to be superficial, but discussion was needed. But there was one tiny paragraph in the obituary page about the death of Jim McCain of South Carolina. And Jim McCain of South Carolina it seemed to me played a much more important role. He was founder of the South Carolina Committee on Registration and Education and one of the reasons that Strom Thurman was forced to change his politics and moderate his racism and eventually it was Jim McCain that organize voters registration under conditions where he was under threats of death every moment of his life. From when he began organizing in the 1950's, until quite recently. And even recently everything he had done in the past was a danger to his life. And it seems to me that was a story that should of been on the front pages of our papers. Del: Hope Zev: Hope is what I think we need. It has to be connected to action. We have to be looking forward and without hope nothing can change for the better. We need hope, we need dreams, and my dream is similar to what King spoke of. And that is to see a world where people are concerned about each other and where relationships are familiar, there needs to be communal love. Del: Closure Zev: Closure never comes. I see people using it when talking about the death penalty. How it is good, because it brings closure to the families of the victims. It does nothing of the kind. I see interviews with people who are walking away from a judicial murder and one of things that is people say is now maybe we can get on with our lives, but it didn't really solve anything. But the fact of the matter is what they were hoping for or expecting is impossible. Killing someone else did not make things better. Closure never occurs. If something is wonderful is done it never ends, and something is terrible is done, it never ends, and doing something else terrible will not make the first terrible thing go away, but doing something else wonderful will help, to make the wonderful eternal.

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