Alice Lloyd College Panel and Discussion Peter Edelman, Dee Davis, Gurney Norman September 9, 2004

Transcription

1 Alice Lloyd College Panel and Discussion Peter Edelman, Dee Davis, Gurney Norman September 9, 2004 *Unfortunately, the beginning of this conversation was cut off due to an audio problem. After John s introduction, Peter Edelman s text comes in a few minutes into the conversation. John Malpede: So we re going to invite the real Peter Edelman, Dee Davis, and Gurney Norman up to talk about their experiences of Kennedy s visit and to bring us up to date a little bit. Edelman: to the last question. Because one thing that was certainly true about the 1960 s, for a variety of reasons, was that young people were passionately involved in the issues of the day. Whether it was because there was a lot of opposition, deep opposition, deep concern about the war in Vietnam, as you heard in the exchange here, and in Senator Kennedy s answer to the question in the recreation that took place, but also about civil rights, about poverty, about dealing with issues that were dividing us as a country at home. I find now that young people in this country, and it s certainly a great tradition here at Alice Lloyd College, are very interested in helping other people in this country. There s a tremendous commitment to service in communities. I think we should be very proud of ourselves as Americans about the commitment that we have. But I find a disconnect when it comes to getting involved in the question of why we have the problems that we face, why we have the problems about which we go out to serve and help other people. And an awful lot of the answer not all of it but a lot of the answer to that is that we need different public policy. We need different governmental action. We also need more people to be involved in the private sector, more people to be involved in our communities, more people to be involved on a voluntary basis, but we need different public policy and we will not get different public policy if we don t have public politics. And so my challenge, just for these brief opening remarks, to all of you, is that when you go out and you help, you tutor somebody in school who s not doing well, or you help in a homeless shelter, or anything that you do, you go volunteer in a hospital or a healthcare facility, ask why there are the problems there that have led people to need that help. Now, sometimes it s an individual situation and individual help is the totality of the answer, but very often, you know, as public health people say, You have to go upstream to find what the problem is. And you need to go upstream and find out why so many children aren t learning. You need to go upstream and find out why so many people can t afford housing decent affordable housing why they re in that homeless shelter, why they re in that precarious position. And that is about public policy and that is ultimately about being involved in politics. This is a very important election this year. And I would hope that everybody will participate in that election. That everybody here at Alice Lloyd College will be registered and will go out and vote and participate in our political process in this country and help register other people to vote and make

2 sure that they get to vote because people need to understand that very important aspects of our future as a country are at stake here. So, if I could do nothing else having the chance to rejoin and be here at Alice Lloyd College this evening, it would be to ensure that a hundred percent of the people who are within the sound of my voice will promise to make sure that they vote themselves and do everything they can to make sure that everybody that they know or that they can come to know will participate. I think it s just that important. And I hope we can have a discussion. As I said, I d be delighted to answer any questions you have about what was going on in I feel fortunate to still be walking around and be able to come back after all this time. And I have some pretty strong views, as you might have noticed, about where we are right now as well. So thanks for the chance to be here. (Applause) Dee Davis: I want to talk a little bit about perception and policy and about the way we see ourselves and the way other people see us. And I want to talk a little bit about what I ve come to learn in efforts of community change and how events like tonight s event and like the visit in 1968 were In 1968 when Bobby Kennedy came to eastern Kentucky I was sixteen and perhaps barely aware that he was there. But word got out, and after school in Hazard I got a ride home. I remember runnin into the house, getting a hair brush and combin my hair back and forth so that my hair stood down like his and then rushin back and getting in a car with my friends and drivin to Liberty Street. And looking at it all, taking in this kind of spectacle that I d never quite seen before. At the bottom of the street was this Lincoln with Carl Perkins in it and all the local Pa s. They were ensconced in this kind of smoke-filled car. And then, there was Senator Kennedy walking up the street with this throng: reporters, observers, fans, well-wishers. Everybody was walkin up and I ran up to get in this entourage and to look. Liberty Street was a black neighborhood: row houses, coal-camp style, giving away to hillside cottages and the pavement giving way to dirt road the further you progressed up the street. To say that most of this group never visited Liberty Street is understating the fact by a long shot. Like many mountain communities in 1968, the street reflected general conditions of poverty, but not everybody could see it. I remember standing in front of Blondy and Mattie Ollinger s house and watching Kennedy on the porch and then tentatively going in. And, like the others outside, we watched through the window as the Senator talked to the family. And I knew Mrs. Ollinger and several of the kids. Paul was a star athlete. George and I had a fist fight in the seventh grade, Pain, Jessie, Jimmy Jimmy s son is now the star quarterback of the football team. And what I saw that day and what I saw at that moment, for me, was transformational. I began to see what others were seeing and I began to see what others would be seeing when these news photos would come out later. And then, all of a sudden, I began to notice poverty that I had not really understood in any real way prior. There were hard-working families living with hard-hit circumstances all up and down that street. And all of a sudden people understood that somethin was wrong. In a

3 way, the town was busted. It was over. The world was gonna see our town, our area, and us in a different way than I d seen it. They were gonna see it the way I just learned how to look at it, and there was going to be plenty of embarrassment. To understand the mythology of the American dream, you have to understand it s powerful. Everybody wants to make it in this country. There s assumption that every able-bodied person can. Everyone thinks that they re as good as the next guy. When the system breaks down, there begins to be embarrassment, blame, denial. We don t challenge the mythology. So what we end up doing, oftentimes, is challenging activists like Kennedy, or the media that begins to transmit the pictures, cause it s a lot easier to do that. When I walked back down that street, strangely the crowd began to thin and I found myself walking right beside Senator Kennedy I could just reach out and touch him if I was brave enough to of course, I wasn t. I wanted to say somethin, but I was, really, too shy and didn t have anything to say. Probably would have said somethin stupid anyway. And I just walked with him as he went back and he got into his Lincoln and I stayed there. I studied his salt and pepper hair, I studied his skin, how it was sun-weathered. And then I watched as people would slip paper, sheets of paper in the back window and he would sign his autograph as he was talkin to the people in the back and send em back out. Then he was gone. From that point on, a lot of people, a lot of us had a real rooted interest or special interest in Robert Kennedy. We followed the somewhat surprising announcement of his presidential candidacy after Eugene McCarthy s showing in New Hampshire a few weeks later. We were interested with his announcement against the war in Vietnam when President Johnson stepped aside that, kind of followed by his campaign and then his momentous speech after the King assassination. And then I remember on a night, that June, falling asleep in front of a little black and white portable television just after the returns had come into from California and he had won, and then waking up to the horror, hearing that he had been shot. And that feeling I don t know it was intense. I remember writing a letter to the local Courier Journal after that saying that as a country, we needed to blame ourselves for what had happened, because if we didn t, we weren t going to change anything for the better. When it got published, people all over town came and told me how proud they were that my letter had been printed. To a person, they all told me that they disagreed with me, but how happy they were that the letter got in the paper. Sometimes, I guess, memory gets compressed and I ve been trying to recreate those memories a little bit here so I may have got it wrong, but in my mind it seems like it was just a short time I went back up Liberty Street and that those houses I had seen were gone. They were raised and replaced with handsome, sturdy public housing. And that s been part of the lesson I learned since that time. I can t say for sure how it all worked. I know that it was congressional action, it was an executive action, it was a bureaucratic action. I know that Congressman Perkins was most involved in changing those homes. But what I really know is that from the moment that Robert Kennedy showed up, when we all saw that something had to be done, that something changed. That it was a moment there that catalyzed a change in policy and it catalyzed a change in our community. So, I ve been in some

4 strange ways in this business of perception and policy in different ways since then. I worked a long time at Appalshop as one of the producers there talking about the perceptions of Appalachian people and now I m working at a place called The Center for Rural Strategies where we create strategic communication in support of rural communities and ways to change rural policy. What we ve learned from working here in eastern Kentucky is that policy is informed by perception. We take on campaigns that we think are gonna make a difference. We ve done several campaigns. One campaign we took on against CBS to try to stop them from putting on a reality show based on the old Beverly Hillbillies. Our feeling was that it was a show that would ridicule people for being poor and for being rural. In that we ve had a good outcome. We also took, had a campaign to try to stop the same company from creating a series called Amish in the City, and there we failed. You win some and you lose some. But, currently, we re engaged in several initiatives. One is an effort to get rural issues in front of the presidential campaigns and here we re polling in seventeen battle states - we re polling rural voters in an effort to tell these candidates that how rural people vote will be determined within the next election. We re also doing a campaign where we re looking investigating how philanthropy, how philanthropy is distributed geographically. We launched, today, a campaign I m very pleased with. We started today with an ad in the Washington Post: Will the President s promise of an ownership society include rural America? Only if the FDIC stops messing with the Community Reinvestment Act. Here we re very concerned that, in a bureaucratic maneuver just before the election, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has made a move that will exempt 80% of the effective banks from reinvesting in poor and moderate-income communities. And I don t want to go into detail, but if you go to rural strategies.org you can sign up and send your letter to the FDIC. So, um, what I d like to say is that what we ve learned here is that, as witnesses, as people who take what we learn I was inspired by those words, hearing the words from Senator Kennedy if we, as citizens, develop what we want, there s some amazing things that we can do. And we have the power to do it here in these communities. And being here and hearing those students ask these questions, I was, again, inspired and it brought back a tremendous debt that I feel that I personally owe to the students here at Alice Lloyd College from years past. I was part of the ALCORE Program the Appalachian Community Outreach Reserves. At first they were the Alice Lloyd Community Outreach Reserves. It was a group of kids who decided that the way to deal with poverty was to go into our own communities and make an effort ourselves not wait for others to do it. It was created by students from here at Caney who were inspired to make something happen. And they were demanding that their education make a difference. Be meaningful. It wasn t created somewhere else and sent in as a package deal. It was created by the insights and the experience and the learning of kids right here along this creek. And I think that after my seminal moments with Robert Kennedy, being able to actually, practically, go into communities and try to do things with community development, education, health, nutrition. It changed my understanding of poverty and how you fight it. So, in that respect, I feel like I am indebted to this

5 community over time and in the same way I would hope that I could be someone that would challenge this community to remember that heritage and to refresh it in time. (Applause) Gurney Norman: Well, my name is Gurney Norman. I grew up around Hazard, primarily in a little coal camp called Allais, at the edge of Hazard. And I also was in school for some years at the Stewart Robinson School up in Blackey in Letcher County. I went, uh, I graduated from high school and went down to UK as a freshman in And I stayed on campus five years. After my junior year, I was still twenty, I got a summer job as a reporter for my hometown newspaper, the Hazard Herald. It was a weekly. And this turned out to be one of the great jobs that I ever had. I came back as a professional observer of my own home county and of the headwaters of the Kentucky River Valley. And I began to have an, develop an overview of the structure of the society. And I have found that, over the years, this model of a mountain county in Kentucky, serves as a model for looking at all of modern society. So, it s at that point that I have long been an advocate of regional thinking. And I have worked for many years in what I guess we could call it Appalachian Studies and I know that that s strong those studies are strong here at Alice Lloyd College. So, in 1958 I began to write for publication. I was majoring in journalism at UK. And I met Carl Perkins, the young Carl Perkins that summer. And he came into our newspaper office. I came over here to Alice Lloyd College in the summer of 58 and interviewed Alice Lloyd and met Junior McCannon as well. And that was a memorable experience as well. I m so glad I got to have that experience. Well, anyhow, I began by mentioning 1958 because I want to just offer a few brief images and a few dates that might interest you and may contribute to any discussion. But I m interested in having us have some sense of the historic moment the context in which we view the rise of the Kennedys, the family in national leadership and think in terms of the decade of 1958 to I came back to Hazard the following summer, And this was a time of a major organizing effort by the United Mineworkers of America. It s fascinating, and I recommend that you find the old newspaper files and read what the local weekly newspapers were saying about this enormous, which was a national event. When John L Lewis takes the union out on strike, believe me it s a national event, in those days. And then, in 1960, I had stayed an extra year at UK and, well, this had many exciting moments. I did some more work for the Hazard Herald. But I had managed to get a scholarship to go out to Stanford University in California for a year of participation in their noted creative writing workshops. And so, 1960 then, talk about a watershed year, that was the year of the Kennedy/Nixon election race. And I had I voted by absentee ballot. And, but 1960 was such a pivotal year in American history, as of course 1968 was, as we re seeing. But, you know, if you have the interest, think of that election year and, you know, many moments in that election. For one thing there was no color television yet. There might have been in a few places, but most people had black and white television. And I entered military

6 service in the fall of 1961 and served two years stationed at Fort Ord, California, which of course, thanks to the U.S. Army, I was sent right back out very near, 80 miles, from my old group of friends and my community there around Stanford. So, effectively, I had three years of, you know, good experience on the west coast at that time. Well in 1960, just backtracking to 1960, a major even tin that year was the House Un-American Activities Committee had set up shop in San Francisco and was investigating college professors, primarily college professors, for their communistic ideas. And there were a lot of demonstrations in San Francisco against these, you know, these trials, in effect, and we could say the beginnings of a decade of public demonstration. Masses of people, in that way, participating, you know, in our process. So I m glad I remembered to say that. So anyhow, near the end of my army duty there at Monterey, at Fort Ord, there was a Folk Festival, Monterey Folk Music Festival, And I went just because, you know, I heard some famous folk singers were going to be there. And who did I hear first but Roscoe Holcombe of Daisy, Kentucky there between Hazard and Whitesburg on old Route 7. He had been part of an important Folkways record that was made called Mountain Music of Kentucky. And so introduced myself and told Roscoe that when I got back to Kentucky I d come and see him. And I did, up in the winter of Also on that music program that night, I mean that weekend, Doc Watson was also prominent, and this skinny kid that was barely, not an American icon by any means, Bob Dylan was on the program. And that s where Bob Dylan met Roscoe Holcombe and subsequently visited Roscoe at Daisy. So, I really, now let me try to make the point that Kentucky, eastern Kentucky, has always had a place in America s national culture. And so we look to, you know, certain time periods where folk music rises and speaks to the nation and carries forward the folk traditional into the national mass culture, consumer culture, I could say. Well, anyhow, 1963, early, in the month of May, Harry Caudill s book, Night Comes to the Cumberlands, had been published. So 1963 was a point when you could really feel a stirring of energies and new way of thinking and so forth, and critical thinking about the state of the nation. So when I came back to Kentucky in, a week before President Kennedy was killed, to resume work at the newspaper, I hadn t realized that this labor movement called the Roving Pickets Movement how many of us have ever heard of the Roving Pickets? ask your parents and grandparents if they remember and maybe do a little research on that. I won t go into details about it, but it was two years of walk-out strikes by middle-aged and unemployed miners who had had their medical coverage stopped by the, the union withdrew their medical cards. So, um, it was at this point that eastern Kentucky began to show up on the cover of Newsweek, Time magazine, and the national and international press was, like, all over these counties. And, so, you know, I just offer these as images. Let me think then about, you know, the later time when I returned to California and wound up living there for several years. But when Senator Eugene McCarthy s campaign started, he announced, you know, his campaign to gain the Democratic nomination in 1968, I got very excited about that and

7 identified with that project and went to some rallies. I got to see Gil St. John. That doesn t mean a whole lot to anybody under 50 I think, but, in any case And then, though, it was, I was present, you know, at home there, in this desperate season, one of the darkest hours in American history, when the war in Vietnam just took this disastrous turn for the worse with this Tet Offensive, which was mentioned. Then Martin Luther King was murdered in Tennessee and just, you know, a couple of months later, on the very day that Robert Kennedy had won the California primary, as we all know, he was murdered there in the hotel. And that was just part of this incredible turning year in American history, which year also included this riotous Democratic National Convention in Chicago when Hubert Humphrey was nominated as the candidate. Well let me just stop there and maybe that ll, you know, figure in any conversation we have. Peter Edelman: Well let s see what question or comments you have. Before we proceed, I hope she won t mind, but I want to tell you all that Mrs. Harry Caudill, Mrs. Caudill is here. Norman: Where? Edelman: Just there she is right there Norman: OK, yeah! Hi! Hi Ann! Mrs. Harry Caudill: I have something I wanna say, briefly. I think that Robert, the visit that Robert Kennedy made here gave people, the general populations, the students, the parents, the teachers, the miners, everybody hope. Because everybody took him for what he was. They loved him for what his family had been. And he took an interest, he came here, he went up on the strip mine, he went into the coal camps, he talked to the people, he asked the right questions. And I remember so well what my husband told me that night after he left. He said that when Robert Kennedy was about to get into the car to drive away from this whole thing that he turned around and he came back to my husband and he took him by the hand and he said, Mr. Caudill, we re going to come back and we re gonna do something about all of this. And I think that gave my husband hope that something would be done about all of this. And much has been done. But there s an awful lot yet to be done. Edelman: Let s hear from you. Who has a comment or a question? I might just say, you heard the personal background from Dee and Gurney. Robert Kennedy changed my life. I was a young lawyer headed for private practice. I grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. My father was a successful lawyer and my idea of doing better than my father, that was kind of the way I measured things. That was sort of a silly way to look at it, to start with, was to go practice law and be a big success in a bigger city. And I was fortunate enough to get into the Justice Department after I had worked for a couple, clerked for a couple judges. President Kennedy was still alive. He was, it was a very difficult year, because

8 for everybody because he was killed just a couple months after I went there as a young lawyer. So that was awful for the country, obviously, but it resulted in my getting involved in Robert Kennedy s campaign for the Senate. I was on my way to a job in a Wall Street law firm and I never got there. I mean, I literally had accepted the job and then I went to work for him in his Senate office as a young assistant after he d been elected and that just changed everything. And I got, just, an immersion in who it is in this country, and it s a lot of people, who aren t fully a part, who the country doesn t invite to be, fully, a part of all of our wealth and prosperity. And so, it was just an amazing experience to have the chance, not only to come here, but to be in Mississippi and to go to meet Cesar Chavez and to be in Bedford-Stuyvesant, in the neighborhood in New York, and on and on. And of course I met my wife in that process and so she made sure I never strayed from the right path. Lawrence Baldridge: I was trying to think of the statement he always made. Some people think thoughts that are and save lives? Edelman: It was a quote from Bernard Shaw. Some men see things as they are and say Why? I dream things that never were and say Why not? And it s from Back to Methuselah, George Bernard Shaw. That was, he said that at the end of every campaign speech in One time we were out in Oregon and the advanced work wasn t so great, or maybe it was just, sort of, the unfortunate thing We were on a plane that had no steps. And so, in order to get off the plane they had to bring a forklift with a cage in it. And so, we would have to get out the door and get into this cage and be lowered down in the forklift. And so, we got into the forklift and he said, Some people see things as they are and they say, Why? Norman: (Laughing) Good joke. Yeah. Linda Burnham: Hi, my name s Linda Burnham, from North Carolina, and I just have to remark on that Kennedy speech that we heard tonight because the parallels with what s going on right now were just astonishing. And I really want the audience to know that the idea for this, this program, this RFK project, started before the war was declared, even before President Bush was elected. It almost sounded like this speech was choreographed for this moment. But in fact it s just an unbelievable coincidence. And I just kept thinking, this is the speech I wanna hear from John Kerry. Edelman: Well, you know, there s a lot for people here. What if he suddenly got 200 letters from Alice Lloyd College and these environs saying Burhnam: - With the tract of the speech on it. Edelman: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I wanna say and I meant to say it earlier

9 I ve had a chance as a part of this to speak to a number of audiences and so I just realized I didn t say it to you, which is, just personally, but I think on behalf of all of us, we re so grateful to John Malpede and to everybody associated, Henriette, everybody associated with this. It s just fabulous. And those of you, we ve had a little traveling entourage here, we sort of bonded in the course of the day, although I m seeing people who didn t introduce themselves to me with their name and they should have, Linda Burnham, this is just a fabulous experience for everybody whose been a part of it. And the people who ve been working on this with John for such a long time. It s just amazing the dedication and the creativity and the caring that s gone into all this and so, you haven t done it by yourself, but of course you know that. Malpede: Absolutely not. Baldridge: I d like to say that you three have done a great job too. You ve really pointed out the history of it, the background of the concern for poverty, the War on Poverty that we had at one time. And of course, if you don t know what you re gonna miss, you can t find it. And you mentioned that the first time you saw what poverty was. I thought that was a good comment. I think also your comment, Mr. Edelman, in regard to people being committed to work on this project without knowing, without public policy that will take the policies out. And that we have to work on it. It s great. Edelman: Thank you. Thank you. I saw Caron did you wanna say something Larry? Baldridge: Not before Caron. Caron Atlas: I m struck by how we started, you were talking about those census numbers, and they re so striking, and yet people aren t paying attention. And they should. And then Dee saying policy s based on perception. And then thinking about how the, in 68 the tour brought attention. And I guess it just makes me wonder, how do you get people s attention? How do you really get people to pay attention to things that are important, like those numbers and the inequities, energy, things like that. Edelman: Well, maybe we all Dee, why don t you? Davis: I think it s difficult. I think that s really the tough question. In some ways we live in a world where there s so many images and that there is so much science that s gone into using those images to create the emotional, the visceral response that the producer wants created. And whether they re selling you toothpaste, or making sure how you vote, or scaring you about what might happen in public policy or what might happen if your deodorant fails. It s all kind of a problem because how do you get a message out? I think it s more exacting now than it was in 1968 when we virtually had three television channels and

10 people read the newspaper. And right now we have a situation where fewer and fewer people are reading the news and we haven t quite gotten to the place where we re getting trustworthy reports out in this, kind of a, mass electronic media. So, in some ways I think that we have to be demanding more of ourselves and of others and, just like I would say that those college students were demanding when they were talking to Senator Kennedy, I think in some ways we have to start fighting for a more thoughtful electorate and we need to be pushing harder to put issues on a national scale. I mean, what we do is we try to find ways to get messages out and usually the way we do that is we pick a fight, because that s the one way that you can get any attention. And it s a sad comment, but that s probably the way that you can begin to get people to pay attention to an issue. Norman: I just had one point to leave, especially address it to students. This turbulent year that we re talking about was a time of passion and social ferment all across the country and it was a time when eastern Kentucky people just emerged as full participants in the national processes. And I think that Alice Lloyd College should take a special pride in its role in those years in generating much, much of that ferment. And, you know, such activities here at the college, for one thing, Alice Lloyd College is the home of the, one of the world s great oral history collections, and, you know, testimony by older people, you know, who are now long gone, I would say, mostly. And also, Alice Lloyd College was a site of wonderful creativity and I especially remember my friend Albert Stewart, the poet and professor here who had organized writer s conferences where people came and stayed several days here at Alice Lloyd College. I include creativity, artistic creativity, as important in all these forces we re talking about. So, I hope the students might take an interest in listening to some of those old tapes and going through the great collection of photographs that s here. Baldridge: If we were only brought into the process by the leaders themselves. When Kennedy came here he was bringing us into the process. And I think it takes leadership to bring us into the process. The key is leadership. And that s what Alice Lloyd is based upon is leadership. Edelman: Well, I thank you for that, and I agree, it s leadership, but at all levels. You know, it might be leadership just in your dormitory. You know, it might be leadership just in the block where you live. That s leadership too, to bring people together to act about something, to advocate about something. That s the organization and organizing that we need to have from the bottom up. I would just add to these answers that I think this is, actually, a time of extraordinary opportunity and possibility for change. I have a strong preference as to who ought to win the presidential election, but you know, I think either way, although I think one way is very not-good for our country and worries me a great deal, but either way, if you trace it back to Howard Dean s candidacy and how many people that brought into the process this year, and all of the people who have contributed small amounts of money to MoveOn.org and a number of other and

11 to the Kerry campaign itself and to a number of other organizations that are being active politically, and the number of people who, as a consequence of being worried about the direction of this country have become politicized and active this year in ways they have not been for a long time. The challenge for after November, regardless of who wins, because, you know, well, some of us are Democrats and we re deeply concerned about the direction of the country, the fact is, if we re honest about our Democratic party, it hasn t been so perfect either about the issues that we re talking about here. And so, after November, regardless, there s those resources that exist of people that were activated. There are people who have access to all that, and that needs to be picked up on and people need to be mobilized to continue to argue for issues of justice in this country. But it is, actually, we re at a point right now, we re in a, if I can say in this deeply divided election, in a certain way, I m really quite optimistic. Baldridge: I think back then there was more bipartisanship, too, because Senator Cooper was a very great friend of Senator Kennedy and President Kennedy. Edelman: Well, there was such a thing as moderate Republicans. Audience member: Well, there was such a thing as moderate Democrats. Edelman: Well, there were, there are still some moderate Democrats, but anyway, maybe I m getting too partisan, so forgive me. Audience member: I have a question. Edelman: There in the back Audience member: I am interested in the correlation between the two elections in 1968 and now. And in 68 Senator Kennedy was talking about the War on Poverty and it seems, for me (unintelligible) so I was wondering, do you think that poverty is becoming kind of a bad word or an embarrassment or something? Edelman: It s certainly not salient in presidential politics and it ought to be. But, you know, the other thing I would say about that is that when, we haven t said very much about it here tonight, but it certainly applies in eastern Kentucky as well as all over the rest of the country: the number of people who are having economic difficulty in these country is way, way larger than the number who we call poor. And so, what we ought to be talking about, and by the way, you know, I, maybe I was a little too quick in saying that the candidates aren t talking about poverty. John Edwards made the two Americas a major theme of his presidential campaign and he s still talking about it. But, you know, when you think about the problems that people have in low-wage jobs, and the fact that we now have 45 million people in this country who lack health coverage, these are not issues just about the people who are technically poor. And the fact that there are people

12 who need help paying for child care and that there are serious problems about affordable housing, these are problems that affect tens of millions of people who aren t technically poor. And so that s the challenge, I would say, that I would put back or add to your question is that people who run for office ought to be talking about, really, everybody in this country who s having a difficult time. And that s a much larger number than those who are technically poor. Baldridge: Well the technically poor seems to be women and children and Edelman: Well, there s disproportionate poverty among single-mom-headed families, yes. Davis: I would also say about 68 that you had, probably, a better delivery system for getting poor people to the polls in that time because of the machines in the cities, because of rural, the way that you had the political machines, were set up in the counties. But, you also had a third-party candidate that took several states out of play that have been traditionally Democratic. So you had, it was in some ways, I think, a different dynamic than we have now, in terms of, we were kind of coming to the end of an era, or, after the voting rights act there was, beginning to what was happening in the deep south began to really change the national politics. And now, we re kind of on the other end of that. And, so, I think that s part of the reason that that s a major difference. Edelman: Hmm. Maybe so. We have time for Norman: There s a gentleman over here. Edelman: - two more. Is that? Then we should stop probably some thing like that? Right here, and, yeah, and there. Roy Ghent: My name s Roy Ghent. I was born in Letcher County and raised in Knott County. And I had to leave here in 53 to get a job. There was nothing here at that time. And the only thing I can say to these college kids: stay in here and get your education because jobs like I had, they re gone. You ve got to have an education to get a job. If you don t believe it, look around. That s why a lot of this poverty is in this part of the country right here. Because they drop out of school, one reason or another. And I went to Michigan. Well, I went to the army first for three years. Then I got out. To make it short, I went on to Michigan. And I got a job and I stayed there for thirty years. And I retired at 53 and I ll be 70 in about three or four more months. And I m enjoying every minute of it. But when I come back in 1978, I moved down to London and stayed there for ten years. And in Michigan when I left, on the six o clock was five or six people gettin killed death all over the place. That was in Michigan. I come down here, the first year, you didn t hear anything of that. Then all of a sudden, six o clock news, Well, one got killed over here, one got killed over there. Now, if you turn your news on at six o clock right here in Hazard, four or five have got killed. And when

13 I left here you didn t have to lock your doors. Now you better lock your doors. There s so many things goin on in our part of the country right now. And right here in Knott County, when I come back, and some of em are still here, their offsprings, right in Hindman, you had a leadership in 53 when I left here, and when I come back in 78 you had the same leadership. I believe that s why a lot in this country we don t prosper. Because no one s doin anything. They sit right here in their little huddle and draw on their salary and don t do anything. We got no law and order. You can ask any person around. We don t have law and order. We need better doctors than what we got. You ask fifty percent of the people who go to Hazard or Whitesburg, they ll tell you they were treated awful while you were in there. It s a shame. They ll keep you there a week, run up a ten thousand dollar bill, then send you to Lexington. Really, you re better off to not even stop here. I know. I laid down there five hours with a kidney stone. Just laid there. No one in front of me, you know? I went in the operating room, had an emergency at 2:00 in the morning, 7:00 the doctor come in, Yeah, you got a kidney stone. You know? I throwed up on the floor, I was wet all over. I had a mess, you know? But, things like that that needs to be changed. These coal mines. They ve come in here and destroyed the hilltops. Someone should step up in the government and say, Look, you ve got to plant 50 trees per acre you ve got to put 100 trees per acre, or whatever. They sow some grass up there that the elk won t even eat. And after awhile it all washes of in the creek. All of our creeks are stopped up now. If we get an inch of rain here in eastern Kentucky in highland, it s runnin down the street. Cause it s all come off the mountain into the creeks. And then, you take when the Kennedy s in there, they were talkin about helpin the people of this part of the country and all over the United States. Now you got two presidents sittin up there and all they can do is hack on somethin they done forty years ago. All of us that s fifty or over around here, we done things forty years ago I think we re sorry of now. Things change, you know? I look back on my life, boy I could see a lot of change if I could do it over. You know, I don t think like I did back when I was twenty, twenty-five, or thirty years old or whatever, you know? So, I think we need a lot of changes. Go to your courtrooms. Go I ve been doin a little touring lately and I been goin to the courtrooms it seems to me that a lot of these cases are settled down in a coffee shop somewhere. You know, it s really bad. And it, it comes down to this right here. Edelman: Well, thank you so much. Ghent: We need so much help. Edelman: I think, maybe the last one? Audience member: My question is, what do you take out of all this yourselves, cause you ve been participating in a performance, and obviously, every time you speak you re actually relating or contextualizing again the event to reality. But your goal has become, like you have the cast in, within a bigger performance,

14 which has become almost an allegory, a very powerful I would say, sometimes becoming almost more real than reality, if you know what I mean. But my question is what do you take back from the participatory attitude and the things that you ve learned from the people? Edelman: Is that really for me, or for? Uh, what I take back is I think we ve really, the whole discussion demonstrates it, which is, you know, in recreating the events of 1968, we really are talking about the future. We only can speak intelligently about the future if we understand the past. And, you know, Santayana said, Those who don t study history are condemned to repeat it. So, uh, I think we ve held up a light here. And this will continue tomorrow and through part of the next day. And that light, there are a lot of people here in the region and people, because of the coverage that there is around the country, and because the word is going to go out about what went on here, for whom a light will have been held up. And that light will guide them about what we should be doing about a lot of things. That s what I think. I mean I d be happy to stay here all night, but we ve been sitting here since 7:30 and you could really, really, really -? Nancy Brown: Just one more? I just, I m not gonna come back in for a long time. Edelman: You came a long way. She came from New Hampshire. Brown: I mostly want to speak, like, to the students. Edelman: Well, let s have them know you were a VISTA Volunteer down here. Brown: My name s Nancy Brown. I was here, in, for two years. I was here in 1968 as a VISTA Volunteer working in Letcher County and I lived in Blackey and I lived in Carcassone. And it was an outstanding life experience for me and it will always be a part of who I am. And I ve been back here twice in thirty-six years and I came back especially for this event so I could participate in this historic event. Cause I participated when Mr. Kennedy was here. I rode with him in a car on one of the many visits that he made, you know, throughout eastern Kentucky, going to people s homes. He was very sincere, he was honorable, but I just wanted to share with the students that when I graduated from college, even the dean of students in this college, the state university I went to out in the Midwest was surprised that I would take my education at that time and it was difficult for me to go to school being the first person in my family to go to college why would I not want to just go and make a career and make a lot of money? Why would I want to go to eastern Kentucky and make 33 dollars a week? And it was one of the most incredible experiences I ever had. And I encourage you to do the same thing. And it s made I ve worked as an outpost educator, helped start pre-school programs, helped people learn to speak out I learned to speak out and I learned to be, as one of the three gentlemen said tonight, you know,

15 participate in community service. And I could never stop doing that. I do that today in New Hampshire where I work. And I just want to encourage the students to be active and participate in our democracy. Edelman: Thank you Nancy. Thank you Dee. Thank you Gurney. Thank all of you for coming. I think this has been a wonderful evening. I know I d be glad to stay and chat with anybody individually. So, I think we re adjourned. Norman: Hey. I wanna shake your hand. You ve done a great thing in coming to join us. Edelman: Well thank you. Thank you. My pleasure. My pleasure. So nice to meet you.