radical and organizer of the new left and past president of students for democratic society once commented that the coming of versity rebellion of one thousand nine hundred sixty eight was a microcosm of what would happen in america and the world colombia's problem is the problem of america in miniature as he put it it is just published in groundbreaking exhaustive book a time to stir colombia sixty eight editor paul cronin artfully captured the time in this quote for seven days in april one thousand nine hundred sixty eight students occupied the buildings on the campus a commune of versity to protest a planned gymnasium in a nearby harlem park links between the university war and what they saw as the university's unresponsive attitude toward their concerns exhilarating to some and deeply troubling to others the student protests paralyze university grabbed the world's attention and inspired other on prising for many of the events at columbia inspired a lifelong dedication to social causes while for others they single the beginning of the chaos that would soon engulf the left it reflects the sense of organizer and student of organizing who was the chairman of the columbia chapter of students for democratic society in the spring of one thousand nine hundred sixty eight kicked out at columbia he was drafted and then said he wanted to go into the u s army to organize fellow soldiers against the war which resulted in his being granted a mental illness deferment he became a full time organizer for s d s and helped form the weathermen faction and the weather underground he was the last national secretary of s t s a federal fugitive for seven and a half years he surrendered in one nine hundred seventy seven and then moved to albuquerque new mexico where he became a basic skills instructor at the local community college teaching fractions and algebra for thirty years as he says insists today our job now is to rediscover and recreate the old organizing model which is education base building and coalition and which is democratic and nonviolent now before we welcome mark to the show i want to show a very welcome art again to the radical magination is great to have you here i'm so glad you're able to do this show we've had a couple of snowstorms and we're finally able to make it and fittingly on april fourth the fiftieth anniversary of course of martin luther king's assassination and again so much as the been going on to for the fiftieth anniversary of the columbia rebellions so again welcome from albuquerque new mexico marc it's great to see you thank you for having me jim thank you thank you tell us a little bit we want to talk about what you're doing now as an organizer we want to also bring our audience into an understanding of some of the issues that were going of versity when you were a student then give us just of a brief background of how you got involved in all this what was going on a columbia at the time what do you what do you remember about those those years i know it's a lot to remember again you know i was just laughing about what was the purpose of the war you know was it a well intentioned mistake or was there something deeper going on well these were in time period as they were radicals they were they they were people who who who went deep to try to understand what was and the world i joined them because they were the smartest people around them smarter than a lot of my professors good professors were particularly involved in the anti war activities and you didn't learn about you r use were using really sharp kids i did not only were shorter but a lot of men were were children of communist or socialist or labor activists and so they knew how to organize that's the main thing for me my take away is not only about us imperialism will the nature of war but also if you that it is possible to organize a mass move and and th  over the years we were lucky in that we were continuous and time with the labor and civil rights movement and so we knew how to organize right now the job is for people to do to rank to the draft boards so that they could take the lower performing students but over the years we settled on one major issue which was that columbia was part of a  notorious venture or empire we developed over years and all reese ahead and sixty eight right it was kind of like a perfect storm and we had no idea that that a number of factors would come together we we had no idea that this was going to happen but what happened was american public opinion on the war slipped in a two month period right and also that was march thirty first for martin figure out what was going on trying to feel it but in this perfect storm so not what happened on campus that really ignited this takeover what was the specific incident t s but we were the main thing though when that happened on april twenty third was we formed a new coalition with the with the blacks the student afro american society as saying yes and they actually literally been held together without the black students i would have ron brown here in in may he's going to come do a show with us too so you but we we but it was a black student that and thousands of people outside but all of us had in our minds the fact that we and to do this to support the black students of hamilton on irony of this whole situation is that when your story has mostly been told as a white absolutely so so again not you get caught up we're not just going ahead with the mark rudd story here but we want to also make this clear of what was going on as the sixty's carried on things got wilder and wilder and there was counter movements and repression and you then become it's ironic also i'm doing another show later today with karl dicks who you may know  exploit it throughout the country and that was the development of the weatherman of s d s which i was one of the leaders it took its name from a paper we wrote little success whether an action so we were so enamored of our own ideas that we when we were succeeding in winning over large numbers truck and i became a fugitive for seven have yours oh yeah so now it's not a bad story now essentially what happened was we banded organize and we thought that we in our own actions could spark some kind of revolution there's a whole history behind this which you may or may not want to go into but it has to do with a sort of  willfully missed constructed history of the tube and revolution well tell us a little about that as much as you'd like to right  was what was wrong with that what what what what part of that do you think social movements all self destructive for this country was not in a reversion state that's the biggest error we had a fantasy as did all the political system we call it socialism but it was a fantasy never we weren't even close and the country was as conservative in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight sixty nine as it is now that we ignored all these other trends which were the ones that eventually fifty years later took are now in power it's really a story and i feel in the sense that we it's ridiculous there's no proof at all well we talked a little before about the new poor people's campaign and about ideas and movements the hard work reverend barber william barber is for eight years has been organizing and in the south and elsewhere to the point now where he is the day after mother's day as you probably know is going to be having direct actions simultaneously tells a story of the organizing the model monday movement in north carolina so what happened in north carolina was that far right extremists took over the entire state government out and discriminated against but it but including white liberal white people who supported they built a very effective movement that started with direct action every monday or one i want  poverty racism and war and the effect and the effects of militarism kin was brilliant in putting those three together and in fact that effort for him they're called the fusion and the poor people's campaign so the links are there and the idealism is there and as you work with young people and students and organizers do you see some of the same idealism that that that the walt started with as well and how to move from a mass movement which we had during the war in vietnam and the civil rights movement to actual power and the far right and policy right mark and policy and start and policy by lately i mean within the last twenty years we have to go for power so that's one of the areas i'm working on now is the transformation of the democratic party from being a corporate party to a party o moral narrative if you will speaking truth to power allowing the disenfranchised to speak as well and being advocates but again it is going back to a prophetic tradition isn't it  and love the other love the brother love your brother and so on is that something that that the left had some difficulties dealing with or was confused about and the barber in a sense is trying to rectify which was in a documentary interviews with hitler secretary and she was nineteen years old in one thousand forty three and she was drafted out of the steno pool to be a personal secretary and she looked at him as a father figure everybody in hitler's inner circle was convinced that they were completely immoral and what they're doing they were ridding the world of  believes that there are more there has to be some way of proving that morality is the greater good for the greater number of people and that for example the free market system does not work for a lot of people well is it i get what you're saying but is it all that complicated when we talk about caring compassion loving the other i mean we all you say each of us wants to do that but we do in different ways and some are more destructive than others i think we could all agree we both can agree that it has to be nonviolent right i mean hitler attended accomplish his vision of morality through extraordinary violence right so it has to be nonviolent that it does seem that there's hardly a question of that  in terms of to give myself i don't know i try to do the best i can i probably think about david gilbert in prison twelve or fifteen times that you know what else are you doing in albuquerque there in terms of your organizing and teaching well after trump's election we found that there was a huge upsurge in the number of people who want to get involved in  curriculum that we're trying to get into the hands of of people of leadership of these mass movement organizations like in the visible a number of others so i see the development of this mass movement and on the one hand and then a second hand the development of a movement for power so that we're that's the transformation of the democratic party i work at the local level trying to know people and getting to know who they are and relating to what they're where they're at and they're and what they need and and the the situations are in and the pain that the feel that's under the point that's a start obviously list and listening to people listen to what people are feeling and thinking rather than come in there with some preconceived paradigm i have i take a definition of organizing a martial cancer he writes  to some particulars they are there has to be a strategy there has to be goals objectives that have to be a structure to accomplish those goals course and have to be relationships  strategize that's why i start i go back to colombia because there literally was a strategy the strategy was to try to figure out how to politicize campus and we had gays in years of education confrontation development of issuers building relationships getting to know people as you say but but but we took on ourselves this as back to the gospel tradition of black churches so you know culture becomes an important part of organizing but but but believe me there are so conscious leaders the remnant ok if we're going back to ancient israel the remnant people it doesn't have to be a lot of people who remember and carry on the tradition and who can raise consciousness as as you did  yourself and others of course in the sixty's do you feel that that is also part of your what you're working on now is to be part of a remnant of remembrance of transformation and educating and organizing people um