Transcript prepared by Gay Marie Cabral. If you use this material, please credit The Jonestown Institute. Thank you.
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(Note: Transcript prepared by Gay Marie Cabral. The editors gratefully acknowledge her invaluable assistance.)
Side 1: Blank
Side 2:
Part I:
Yvonne Golden: (tape begins mid-sentence) support from a special community that I am just absolutely, just– I’m overwhelmed with the kind of support that we’ve had. This person I’m referring to now, I want him to just to say a brief few words, before we bring on some student entertainment, but I want this person to say a word. For those of you who don’t know him, (Pause) he’s a marvelous person. He’s the best thing to ever happen to San Francisco, and I’m not just saying that. I really mean that.
Audience: (applause)
Golden: He is a minister of a community. He is a community activist. He is a developer and an advocate– an advocate of people’s programs in San Francisco. There’s a very nice– he has a very huge, I should say, Temple and congregation here in San Francisco and in LA., and he puts what everyone else has told me that’s supposed to be Christianity, he puts it to work. It is what it really, really is. He has uh, senior citizen programs. He has a– a– a drug treatment program. He has a daycare center program, and he’s out in the community, and he’s making himself heard and making himself known. I’m en– I’m really thrilled – I’m thrilled – that we’ve got such a supporter, because I know, I know, what they will do and not do to you when you have that kind of support.
Voice in crowd: Right.
Golden: I’m a victim of what the system has done to you. I was arrested in my school and put in jail because I stood up against the Nazi party. The Nazi party was at a board meeting packed that (unintelligible word), derogatory–
Audience: (applause)
Golden: So when this man is behind us, and this community is behind us, I know what this district will not do to you, and this city will not do to you. And I’ve asked him to come in tonight and say a few words, just a couple of words. We don’t want to be too long tonight, because we want to allow a lot of time for parents to talk to stu– to the– to the uh, students’ uh, teachers. I’d like for him to say a few more words. And that person is none other than Reverend Jim Jones.
Audience: (sustained applause and cheers)
Jones: First, I would like to present a check for $200 (unintelligible word). It was brought to our attention by Ron Cabral and uh, Mr. Ambercrom– Crombie– is it Abercrombie?
Golden: [Hal] Abercrombie.
Jones: –for a need for physical educational equipment, and we wish we could do more. We’re funding so many things across the entire city in the thousands of dollars, but it’s $200, and we’ll try to do more.
Audience: (applause)
Jones: This is the best lady that ever happened to our students. Although we have dozens of our own members here, we choose this high school. Uh– We didn’t come because we had to. We chose it because it’s got the best coordinator and the best teachers in my book, in the entire district. That’s right.
Audience: (applause)
Jones: It has flexibility. It exposes students to the broad range of information, experiences, curriculum of different (unintelligible word) example, basic skills, survival courses, things I never learned in high school. Swimming, outdoor educational experiences and physical therapy that we– just– just different variety of (unintelligible word). A curriculum that’s practical, applied to daily living needs, like filling out application forms, welfare forms, food stamps and job applications, as well as having college (unintelligible word) courses. We certainly need to know how to fill out forms being that we are very much oppressed still in this society.
Man holding microphone: That’s right.
Jones: (unintelligible word) there are oppressed people, only have to look at Yvonne’s experience, how many times she has been attempted to be framed merely because she speaks out her mind.
Man holding microphone: That’s right.
Jones: We want you to know, all of you at uh, Opportunity High, we’re behind you 100%. The most beautiful thing that you do is– is– is inspire free thinking, and you’ve got none of that to speak of in most schools, and I’m proud that our students– I speak on behalf of what, I don’t know, a hundred of our students that are here, and they’re all happy as they can be. And thank you for the privilege of being here.
Audience: (sustained applause)
Tape edit
Sounds of raucous celebration.
Unidentified woman: Will everybody please sit down? And will the people that are on this side of the podium please go back behind the ropes? Only the monitors are supposed to be up here. (Pause) Please go back behind the ropes. (Pause)
Unintelligible conversation
Unidentified woman: Everybody please sit down, and please clear this side of the podium. Only the monitors and the speakers are to be on this side. Thank you. (Pause)
Tape edit
Part II
Jones: I wish to convey to you that we have the following people who have pledged support to me this morning and last night against the Bakke decision. George Moscone, Mayor of San Francisco.
Drum beat. Applause.
Unidentified voice: Right on.
Jones: Joseph Freitas, District Attorney, San Francisco.
Drum beat. Applause.
Unidentified voice: Right on.
Jones: Charles Gain, Chief of Police. Richard Hongisto, Sheriff of the San Francisco County. Robert Mendelsohn, supervisor of San Francisco County. Dr. Carlton Goodlett, publisher of the Sun-Reporter, nine newspapers in the area and President of the National Newspaper Publishers Association of the United States. Reverend Tony Ubalde, housing commissioner that was just appointed along with me couple of days ago to the Housing Commission of San Francisco, and pastor of the very active Bath– Bethany United Methodist Church. Reverend Cecil Williams, pastor of the Glide Memorial Methodist Church.
Unidentified voice: Right on.
Jones: Reverend Lynn Hodges, Executive Director of the Northern California Council of Churches. Reverend Marvin Chandler, Executive Minister of the San Francisco Council of Churches. Dr. Karl Irvin, President of the Northern California/Nevada Christian Churches Disciples of Christ of well over a hundred churches. John Maher, founder of the Delancey Street Foundation. Vincent Hallinan, we all know as the upstounding attorney– trial attorney of the people.
Unidentified voice: Right on. Right on.
Jones: Mr. and Mrs. Charles Garry [Charles and Louise Garry], the distinguished civil rights attorney, he’s all right– already saying that he is making– filing a petition against the Bakke decision. Benjamin Dreyfus, the prominent attorney and associate of Charles Garry, along with James Herndon, partner to Garry’s firm, who has joined other lawyers in petition– tition– petitioning for a rehearing. The American Civil Liberties Union of San Francisco also pledged to me this morning their support against the Bakke decision. Albert Kahn, the author of several best-sellers, including High Treason, Sabotage, and The Great Conspiracy, pledged his support. North of Market Street Senior Organization (pause) and many other churches – I– I think I better quit – many churches of all denominations and pastors.
When we look at this terrible Bakke decision in conjunction with the alarming rise of racism in America, with the Supreme Court decisions that are threatening other civil liberties, with attacks on the press by the government, with the benign neglect, the total lack of concern and apparent acceptance of poverty and unemployment in America, we ought to be deeply concerned and alarmed here today.
Drum beat. Applause.
Jones: This is the kind of precedent that is dangerous. Yes, ominous. It can spell the eradication of all the gains that were won by the civil rights movement of the 1960s. It will mean that all of our efforts to institute a– equality could well be in vain, that the civil rights workers who died in the South may well have died in vain, that the people who marched, the Medgar Evers, Viola Liuzzo, the countless people who have been shot, beaten, brutalized, jailed, fire-bombed and evicted, have gone through it all in vain, and that the nationwide efforts that went into getting legislation passed to make right 400 years of injustice, slavery, exploitation, torture and oppression, all this can well be in vain. This decision is an ominous sign that blacks, brown[s], Asians, Native Americans, and even poor whites, all of us of color, are being given a message that we are not wanted in the mainstream of American life, that we are expendable.
Man holding microphone: All right, Jim. Yeah.
Drum beat. Applause.
Jones: The decision is a major step towards setting up all Third we– World people for even harsher measures that would lead to the creation of a permanent state of economic, social and political obsolescence for us. And both recent and current events in the world have shown us what the next step could re– very well be. Samuel Yette in his book The Choice tells us that it is the issue of survival itself. (Pause) (Voice moderates, then builds) The Bakke decision is part and parcel of what is shaping up to be a conspiracy against poor and Third World people in this nation, and the conspiracy begins with the abridgement of civil rights, violation of treaties and promises, taking away of liberties that give all people an insurance of human dignity and equality. It doesn’t stop with students who have been given an unequal education being refused admission into the establishment schools. It doesn’t stop with taking away the only chance that deserving young people (unintelligible word) ever have of realizing their potential. It will have further ramifications, you can be damn sure of that.
Drum beat. Applause.
Jones: It will affect equality in the fields of housing. This precedent can affect precedence in employment and in social services of every kind. It’ll keep the poor in bondage. It’ll keep the door shut. And if it has been opened a few inches, the door will slam entirely shut.
Applause.
Jones: What was achieved in the streets, what was achieved in the lunchrooms, in the movie theaters, the buses and the halls of Congress in the sixties, is now being systematically wiped out in the courts. Blacks, browns, Asians, our Native American peoples, who have already been the victims of genocide, all Third Word– World people, all the poor, the disadvantaged, are now being targeted. We are seeing America being divided into two nations, one affluent and one white, the other impoverished and non-white. The line is being drawn. And while 8000 people, according to the paper this last week, are becoming poor, falling beneath the poverty level every day in the United States of America.
Drum beat. Applause.
Jones: And those who are already poor are becoming poorer. The rest of the population is being brainwashed to believe that things are going well, that everything is looking better. Look at your TV. Poor people can be starving, but we can get a TV. And the images of the affluent society are there to entertain us every day, to persuade us that America– the American dream is being realized more than ever, but we know better. We are not fooled.
Drum beat. Applause.
Jones: My friends, we are facing a most ominous time in the coming years. The light of liberty could well be going out in the land, this greatest and most powerful land around the world. In nation after nation we see the persecution of mi– minorities. Torture is an epidemic. It has been made an institution and official policy of government in some 60 nations around the world. So when we look at the Bakke decision– and I bet if you asked people on the street about it, you won’t find one in a hundred who is even aware of it, and if they were, would most likely probably not even give a damn, or most likely would agree with it, or agree with keeping us niggers out of the college. We have to look at it in the context of what is happening all over the nation, as unemployment mounts, as busing protest turns into racist violence, (voice drops to more intense tone, then slowly rises) as the Klan gains thousands of recruits, as migrant workers are brutalized and denied their rights, as Native Americans are left to die in squalor in concentration camps and the wastelands of America – I have about one more minute – and its blacks are entrapped in the concentration camps of our inner cities as the state of siege begins to take its ugly shape in leaderless and hopeless nation, choking with its own affluence while millions are wasting away and dying. I say we have to look at this decision as yet another signpot– signpost on the road to tyranny, with a decision that would effectively sabotage our ch– to train– our efforts to train black and brown doctors to give us medical care that is so desperately needed, black and brown lawyers to help us with legal problems that plague poor people trying to survive in a society where the laws too often are written for the rich and the privileged, a decision that would sabotage the training of Third World educators to help us overcome the cultural brainwash, the rip-offs, the deceit, and the impossible conditions for advancement that exist in our communities, our ghettoes. With such a decision being handed down from rich white judges in what is supposed to be the most liberal state in the union, the state that is years ahead of our times, we are told, we are in a serious condition. And this last parago– paragraph, I hope that the message will get out about this decision, and that our legislatures can do something to reverse it. If not, another nail will have been driven in the coffin of democracy, another nail in the coffin of equality, freedom, justice and civil liberties, and when these things are gone, my friends, we will be in a predicament that could very well mean our very survival.
Drum beat. Applause.
End of tape.
Tape originally posted March 2010