going to be talking about that institution about local politics and his name is keyes right he's well known to many people here in new york city and around the state i would presume and it's a great honor i could welcome you to converse in pledge to fit into your busy schedule my pleasure against overwhelming power by the overwhelmingly wealthy and so forth that we could and i know you're dedicated to but could you share your own birth date that sort of oh my god well i could go on probably forever born on my mother tells me  algernon black ok when it was supposed to be a great philosopher a great teacher and they were looking for young black kids at that point and my brother had gone there before me rather have an older brother who's six years old and   my same old rent stabilized apartment and a place called riverton development which is the uptown equivalent of peter cooper village in stuyvesant town when my father had gone off to world war two and four to go off to war he married my mother and i guess when he was coming home from the war i guess my mother was in charge of finding a place for them to live and she initially tried to go down to stuyvesant town and at that point i guess in the late system principal at the school at the public school right across the street from where i live and my five across and right across the street from where i live how convenient and never went there oh you did i never went there ok never went there and i went down to the ethical culture school where you were there is a kindergartner and i went in the fullest sense of the word actually is the only private school that was ever taken over by the black students because we agitated for more black studies more black students more scholarships and such think they actually indoctrinated us and taught us all the political philosophies from the middle to the left wonderful and wonderful educational experience it's a major institution not as a matter i mean it's been there all the time it's been there since have to take the train and it would take me about an hour and since signal really cool each and when you got to high school you were there in kindergarten i was in kindergarten so then i took the number ten bus number ten for ten oh ok good i did walk over to what is now frederick douglas and i was actually stimulate job very intellectually stimulating important i believe you know i don't know maybe more important in the schooling is what i well actually you know parents i mean and i look at it to the d n a and i look at our families you know parents are as much a part of the educational  functional ok i'm ok that that that's really what your dad was bruce right my dad was a judge amos saw yes it was amy well he was a lawyer yeah right yeah and actually my dad was a lawyer is that right you know i remember when he used to practice law used to take us with him everywhere we used to work in his law office where there was at one sixty broadway or twenty east fifty six street and the exciting part of it yes i recall he used to story that we have was my older brother and myself we actually my father brought us to the newport jazz festival yeah back in the sixty's and i pointed it out for three and you know and that point to newport jazz festival was held in newport rhode island yes the station wagon down in ninety five was about three or four in the morning and my older brother six years old and i and i was about i don't know eight and if you have about i'm sorry i was about seven years old at the time and i think it was yeah i was happy and i was about two or three o'clock in the morning and so my brother got behind the car and were cruising down ninety five sixty five sixteen or so i think me mad probably was much younger than the younger than anything i'm going to probably about twelve yeah but i've lived a different life but so you had a very rich family environment and the friends a great educational experience and so forth and then you went to law school i did well i went to tufts university ok in medford massachusetts  graduated one hundred seventy seven and took a couple from law well you know my undergraduate undergrad yeah and took a couple of years off i headed a educational program ok called sponsors for educational opportunity  which basically tried to help the average student get into college i mean everything was being young for the so called brilliant student and such and you know what happens to the average student i look over your bio you seem to be very interested in actually in a large measure yeah yeah bickel principal i would say that it's probably true yeah i you know i'm very fortunate i've been very fortunate and you have to if there's one thing that i've learned in this lifetime it's that you have to really do what you love thank you don't do what you love whatever that is yes whether it's investment banking or whether it's practicing medicine or practicing law you have to do what you love because otherwise you won't be able to do it well let me ask you something if i could philosophically very often a sense how many of the way that six point five billion people in the world now and oh you have about three hundred million in the united states yeah three hundred million the united states now but we've got how many of the world's population to question in a related if i could how many of the world's populations in large measure in terms of their life experience and so voice are doing things in order to less tied over materially to earn a living let's say that really do truly love what they're doing what percentage what percentage would we try to aim for in terms of a well organized human society is it possible to get to where everybody is doing something that they really love or is that an idealistic notion that could never come to be because there's a lot of things that are inherently not interesting well you have two questions here i'll try to answer all the relating and they are interrelated your first question is out of the billions of folks better to anoint five point five billion folks live on the earth yeah how many folks are doing what they'd love to do i would say way less than one percent ok thank you don't you think we could do better i think we could do better i think we could know how many people are doing things just as a necessity but yeah second question well yeah to earn a living they have to do in fact if i may have do grest a little my my maternal grandmother henry ford tinkering in the garage of my maternal grandmother when he was about ten years old really beat bill and we used to have family farms and when you're on a family farm you're doing a lot of different things you're feeding the chickens or fixing the cart or driving the horses a lot of necessity well yes that was a necessity for you to get the crops but what are getting at is there are a lot of things that individual would do that they have control over they would finish feeding the chickens the do some then henry ford set up an assembly line and the farmers now that was a major occupation and twenty nineteen century twentieth century changer the individual farmer then people had to go they went to the fact they'd get factory farming two percent of the population could feed the world with their combine so everybody went to detroit and sort of mr ford's assembly line eight hours a day they would do the same function you know taylor's ideas of economics they would do the same thing it's hard to know how that thing or young ladies have to sue so and take advantage of the fact that they're very poor they have to do it they do it they do it because they have to not because it's something it's inherently dulling it's like modern times chapman that sort of thing is what i'm getting at maybe from an ethical perspective there's too much of that in the world and that what people have to do to earn a living is just realize they're not going to be able to do what they want or what they would like to do or the arts or anything that really are creatively important they're going to have to do what the boss man tells them to do in order to have some bread to eat on the weekend maybe cape the understand what i'm saying totally ok people i find well let me  backtrack a little bit creativity and the rule is stifled in this society and in most societies i am reminded of the film midnight express yes billy hayes and yes was stuck with put into this sanitar much to our stars of the various forms of art and so forth rather than realizing an artfully led life is an ethical life and is one that you really enjoy what you're doing you understand want to try to get it large i do well and let me bring it back to focus a little because well and it helped but certainly i think a lot of hard work and when i mean i knocked on about twenty five hundred doors he went door to door i went door to door and certainly a lot of people knew me because i had done a lot of work when i guess  practitioner who had one client that client was one mutual fund did a lot of the blue sky and security registrations were and kind of boring if you ask me never took to it and became judges but i am embarrassed the whole family went into politics yeah yeah my dad used to tell me a he died when i was young said yeah he died he died he was buried it was forty eight but i was young and that was he was born eight hundred ninety nine and then when you average age for a you're getting a grounding in this aside owners know very important it isn't necessarily that use practice law it's a good grounding for being a public know everywhere other things i cannot tell you my time in law school and i didn't i had no idea at that point but has prepared me for doing something like this yeah or just for doing anything i think it's probably probably one of most versatile degrees a person can get to give is no clue requisite in which you have to do if you have a medical degree i mean it's presupposes that you will like this medicine right if you have a journalism degree i guess you're on the road to becoming a journalist but a law degree you can do anything launch and just about anything you want to so it's a very it's very versatile yeah know i think that's true no feldman down at the new school is a scholar may just call or wrote a thing about we've got a problem on the world scale now with islam a lot of people we have a pakistan afghanistan and he said about  shari'a it was very interesting he wrote in the new york times magazine he said that what they're really looking for in there let's say just say afghanistan pak there they're looking for a system a rule of law it could complicate the rule of law is so important for the structure of a society people need to have some sort of a rule of law and that's really what the islamic alot of the islamic ruckus is about is having some rules or understanding of the maybe ethical remember hearing the new every day something i didn't know exactly what it was but something about my congressman adam clayton powell oh yeah you always he school saying you know at least i have a congressman key you know even if you have one your longer friend doesn't and that i remember that affected me yeah and i remember it well you know i don't really understand it but that affected me and that kind of spurred me to try and get into public service yeah but i remember that he was inspirational you know absolutely absolutely and i go listen i grew up in a time when malcolm x was preaching on the street corner one hundred twenty fifth street and seventh avenue i remember seeing him and really hearing at columbia university i mean i was blown away yeah but these are some of the things you always look for something to read when you're a guest and you had a lesson that was a major that was a major breakthrough world society i do believe about nine hundred seventy we landed on the moon member assembly members in the state of new york and it is very similar to congress and the united states senate we have the new york state assembly hundred fifty state assembly members ok and you have sixty one senators wow ok so you have a two hundred  concerned yes actually the way it goes is that the federal government passes their budgets budgets come into the state of new york and then again we filter it down to the city ok new york because the city of new york its own separate because it's the city they have the lawyers for the city it's the city of new york it's its own separate corporation ok yeah ok i didn't realize yeah and so what happens is that you know the monies i mean we filter all the money y different level of state level and it's different and how do those things relate enter and then we have we're within a federal structure through how do we were talking about common law we're talking about the structure of rule of law how do those things relate in terms of realities that affect the people themselves that make up the population oh very old letters and even though this federal state and local know absolutely how do they own order for mayor bloomberg i'll give you an example east in order for mayor bloomberg you remember when he was trying to put forth something called congestion pricing traffic and the traffic right but he had to come up to the state of new york ok to give him the authorization in order to pass something on congestion pric things move along things move along technology science everything matches things change and so what was what was appropriate a hundred years ago is no longer appropriate this change has to come and so there are some who want to make sure that we anchor it to the constitutional principles that have got us to where we are others want to try make the big chains and that's a big dialectic that goes on all the time in human societies i guess there's nothing wrong with changing things and in changing things for changes sake but there's also something wrong with being disrespectful as well some concern and that's what i thought some of those legislators those congresspeople the senators i see only which are mostly young men you learned your lessons well at the kindergarten of the ethical  question i mean i'm the chair of the social services committee that's a very important committee i think yeah no when you think about it it's social services takes up one third of the state budget which goes up to about think about one hundred twenty million dollars there finally adds up to real real money that's right you're dealing with real money and they're committed there and you're also dealing with a issues that really directly affect the people real people and if i may it seems to me reading your bio again you are dealing with things that vouchsafed the interests of some of our least advantaged people in the society the best advantage people are well taken care of by big law firms and lots of money people overwhelming amounts of money  tax credit or the tax cut that mr bush put into effect went to the upper one percent no question no questions huge and one of there's a lot of interest that are there but you're looking out after the interests of some of the the folks what i'm trying you know it seems to me by committee yeah with that we were able to raise the allotment that those folks on public assistance are able to get public it's ok ok you are going to get more money absolutely ok let me just tell you that allotment had not been how you can exist on that in the city of new out in the city in the city of new york is absolutely astounds me your place where you live is still run several it is ok it is that that's come into the factor apart from just strict market principle or market behind the curve for twenty years that there aren't interested in the political process to look out after the interest of the least among us the gospel said we should care most for the least among that group understand we don't agree giving up to that charge very well do have no we have not ok let me just say this and you ask why yeah it had that because it you know i can see your surprise and most people don't even think about it don't even think about those folks that are in that predicament ok certainly those two and a half million people in prison in this country now that's true you have seventy thousand in prison here in new york they are all industry you're do you do but getting back to the folks i met up like a sister ok you know you asked me why it hadn't been raised yeah well because there was never the political goodwill and a lot of folks think that folks on public assistance don't vote which is absolutely not true and they think oh sure they've got a do but they also think that most of the folks on public assistance are people of color when in fact when in fact studies have been done and i don't know it definitively to be true but i would say that they are just as many white folks on public assistance as there are people of color happy to hear that but i'm also happy to hear that so many people think allotment thirty percent ok that's a percent each and every year so inherent in three years they will have a total thirty percent increase they're getting ten percent each and every year until we try to do that and then as far as i'm good you're going to have to do it again something in place where it would just automatically be there absolutely they've got a thing called the work ethic and they think that people if you really the reason that you're not doing well in this society is because you just haven't applied yourself and you're not disciplined and all that kind of thing that they put down on the people that's the traditional thing the capital assets are increasingly responsible for the production within our society and the capital assets within our you did stuff at the corporate level with one mutual one fund the capital assets are owned by a tiny plutocratic class there's nothing in this political economy of the united states of america in virtually all political economy across the world and in the international order it's a small class that owns the means of production and everybody else is like could be seen if you stretch it like a serf on a feudal estate picking up the leaves the templates all set by those with the money in the power everybody is sent to fit to that you know they have to be in order to get in and that sort of thing and that's a broad problem that the world is confronted with the haves and the have nots the haves being a very small class of people who tend to lord it over the rest and i added i my out of sync with the way in the know i think you're right on point and usually what can we do about it who are concerned about the lot of the people in a democratic context not only politically but also economic depending upon the issue  doors right now who their legislators are either on the local level or in the state level or in the federal level they wouldn't know they would not know and meanwhile those folks on the local level state level federal level we're making decisions yeah for them about them conservative that they're alive and affect their lives each and every day and that's the difference i just think it's this past year the first time i really saw some activism in our college students because back then when we were talking about in the sixty's and seventy's i thought that there was a lot more activism a lot more social awareness yeah a lot more civic awareness with with college age folks but i would guarantee you that not i would say maybe one out of ten would know who their local legislators were and so that's the way that i have found in order to effectuate change is that you have to do it on legislative level that's the way i've chosen and that's why i ran for off ok good for you and you've been there now since what you know for seventeen years and you become chairman of that major kind of you have become chair of the social services committee which in actuality takes up about one third of the budget of the state of new york which ranges from about one hundred twenty two hundred  twenty five billion dollars ok i know you represent the people of harlem and your district obviously like a congressperson would and you also represent to a degree do you speak for or have residence through the needs of the people of the have gotten intimately involved in all sorts of issues whether it's rockefeller changing the rockefeller drug law that thank you for or whether or not people can hunt on sundays up in buffalo somewhere because i know nothing about hunting what what what  people here in the state of new york yeah you do have to have that oh no absolutely what degree do you resonate to the needs of the people of the nation and i could go further we've got the united nations well that everybody has a we're all reason i'm going to yeah as new york goes so nation i think somebody said that before you but it's i'm sure they did like that or charlie wilson's it was good for general motors is good for the name that's right sure what that the whole that's that's a problem and well it's a great responsibility you're having a participate up in november behind the bench thing yes and to be there and it's going to involve jay danks berga squire and it's right some other lawyers and so what they're going to be looking at the judicial system because there's a lot of of universal justice if you would say that by judicial system that is not adequately able to deal again with the class differences that exist inherently in a society and the ra prejudice and so what so you can be looking at the judicial arrangement and how it might be able to be improved again if i read your bio right interested in the interests of some of the least advantaged among us as the groups and individuals i am going to the tender age of eighty six years old so he did find less and he didn't just when i think helped a lot of the least in mine and among good lesson and on that racial thing it was such a burning i run into and it remains on a world scale no question that we haven't got it all song harold i run into someone every day every day that tells me that you know your father cut me loose yeah yeah your father did me a favor and now i'm doing disgusting such and such but if it were not for your father i'd probably still be in jail for but i run into someone every day i don't reactionary sentiments runs so deep particularly when people are alienated in the general society is one that creates alienation was no doubt about it because it's not really yet where the future requires some legislative capacity is that i have refused to be a part of building any more prisons here in the state of new york oh absolutely do you take flak for that that's a growth industry to growth and you've got to remember a year to cut and against their time and if you look at the prison system most of our prisons are in upstate new york you know i have traveled to these towns yeah i remember traveling through clinton new york and you have a big i'm going to down a more a prison yeah and i've been to a lot of these prisons oh sure sure i'm going to correction committee that 's that's part of the subcommittee of notice a different committee i don't share this committee that committee is chaired by a wonderful legislator the name of geoffrey and aubrey that represents queens who actually was the author of the bill to eliminate the rockefeller drug  there which is all the horrible horrible but i've traveled how many committees are you on probably around five or six five or six one of which is this prison a wrecking crew yes maybe so anyway but i was going to say is that i've traveled to these upstate towns and you have to remember these little towns you know the whole town the city the hamlet whatever it is is it company town that's a company town company being yeah the prison yeah that's how they ea h have the little houses and each each house says maybe two to two cars and two point two children in the end but for the prison they were not the prison the homeless they would be homeless yeah yeah exactly ok now that's that's a model that is not a particularly good and yet it's growing they've got progress have real problems on california real power i understand they're not being able to keep bridges going because they haven't got the money they're in such deficit up in california schwarzenegger and so where they're having a hell of a time keeping the prisons open the pen there's a prison is much less this and a bit of new york being at state of california being able to function yeah and the drug kone and kind of nature of the people who are out to try and you know to put everybody in the prison as a way of teaching them a lesson or some damn thing are still pressing that kind of thing and that's out day what we need we need more justice in the system so there are people that are in any kind of way in new york state to present the united states and in the world one of the basic tenants of capitalism yes sir but i've guess what i learned years ago that you have to have a pool of unemployed or system top survive yeah you know to survive into the they have to be learned to be sycophant a lot of our institutions are authoritarian and they're they have to be taught to fit into authoritarian structures where they'll do what they're told by the boss man what i've been in of course i talk to those folks that are the unemployed you employ a bull and talk to them all the time those notes just coming out of the prison system right and the only thing that they want the o chance what they need is income in order to be able to live for one thing and lord keynes who wrote all of the you know the stuff after the second world war a major figure in terms of economic theories of war wrote a letter to his grandchildren thirty's about now by having a job right and so you have to be sick of it yet to be sick of and to be on the job that kind of the it's like white slavery and is out of step touches was need we have to have some alternative way for people to get income other than through labor but labor is as a moral principle the work ethic and all of that and that's not in keeping with what the future requires we need a new way of distributing income so that there will be demand to clear the market what can be produce we can produce more than work we have the means of clearing the market because if people don't have money to buy what we're capable we don't have a system the future requires to do what we're capable of doing we don't have a system in place that lets us collectively do what the human society is capable of with the technological augmentation a major change is needed and it has to be done at all wilson you're working in that venue i would presume trying ok good well it's a great fight and you're doing a great job thank you and i want to thank you very much trying to time busy schedule a pleasure is there an election year you have to do and no i don't i don't i'm not running until next year not until next year when next year is just around the corner saloon ok so keep running thank you doing all the good work thank you and it's been your great good pleasure and the perceptions of keith wright he's an assemblyman from the