Willie Baptist (Interview 2)

Lewis: [00:00:00] So, it’s November 26 and I’m Lynn Lewis here with Willie Baptist for the second of two interviews that we’ll have done—with Willie, a board member of Picture the Homeless, Willie Baptist, a social justice leader. And Willie’s going to share some of his earlier life experience and then bring us forward to today to talk about homeless organizing. Good morning, Willie.

Baptist: [00:00:31] Good morning. Good morning, Lynn. Well, I was a product of a migrant stream, particularly Black, but also which poor whites have come to understand, out of the South. And this was largely because the economic situation was such that the cotton production, which had sustained a workforce, it sustained a workforce for a very lucrative cash crop, namely cotton for all those years—required intensive labor, you know, in its early stages and...

Baptist: [00:01:10] Particularly after the defeat of reconstruction, you had this employment of a lot of the poor whites who were not doing slave labor or producing cotton, which is what slave labor, that workforce was organized for. They were drawn into, out of necessity, into the production of cotton. So, you had this tremendous employment and the expansion of cotton production. The civil rights and the defeat of reconstruction didn’t end the fact that cotton, the most lucrative cotton in the world, was produced in the cotton belt, or slave belt, or plantation belt of the South, or the Black belt. And it’s, you know—it’s called Black belt because the soil is alluvial. Geographical formation left that thick, rich soil in the South which could… Could deal with the rigor of cotton production.
 
Baptist: [00:02:08] So, anyway, with that labor intensive, that was called into question about 1944, with the invention by Harvester, of the mechanical cotton picker. Then they mass produced it. Then you had this massive migration out of the plantation areas of poor Blacks and poor whites into the urban areas… Into segregated communities, that’s the way—because of the… Largely reinforced by the Plessy v. Ferguson, the Jim Crow legislation, as whether they can control the workforce in producing this tremendous cotton crop.

Baptist: [00:02:50] Anyway, with that invention of the mechanical cotton picker, which can now outpick fifty people, you had this massive migration out of the South. The Blacks were concentrated in the inner cities, in these big cities—New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, so forth. And so, my stream was from east Texas, Louisiana and we went to the west coast.

Lewis: Your parents?

Baptist: [00:03:21] My parents—my parents... Well, first my uncle and my aunt. They moved to—because there was jobs. They went there and they told… And this is the way that migrating development takes place. You know, your relatives move to a place, say, “Hey, here’s something. You can get a job here.” And so, you have these migrant streams coming out of the South, but you can see geographically where these migrant streams went. Like the people from New York, a lot of them come from the Carolinas and so on and so forth. Detroit, Georgia, Alabama, and Chicago—Mississippi. And then California—the west coast is east Texas. I was born in Corsicana, Texas, which is about fifty miles south of Dallas. It is noted for the fact that, besides cotton crop at that time, it’s become known as the “fruitcake capital of the world”. [Laughs] So for Christmas, they make big-time money. And I have to explain what fruitcake is, so people don’t get that mixed up. I mean, fruitcake’s just—is the cake, not the people. [Laughs]

Baptist: [00:04:32] So, anyway, I mean—I’m telling you these things because I’m re—those experiences… My family, my father, and mother never reached college. They—the highest grade was eighth grade. Both my mother and my father. Eighth grade. And they worked all kinds of jobs. They worked in the—as cotton pickers.

Baptist: [00:04:56] And when we got word from my uncle and my aunt that there’s jobs on the west coast, we then set aside a whole year of cotton picking to make enough money to get a jalopy and go out to California. I was five years old.

Baptist: [00:05:16] And, you know—when you are in that kind of situation, most families with their kids, once they reach about five years old and they can pick some cotton, because as much cotton you can get, that when you put it on the scale for weight, you get more money! So, my mother, did a little—she knitted a nice little cotton bag for me. So, I remember that. I can always remember because picking cotton is excruciating in terms of the prick prick. It pricks your hands and stuff like that. I remember just my hands being just so sore. And that kind of nailed in my brain, that experience. So, it’s there, you know, of picking cotton.
 
Baptist: [00:06:00] When we went to the west coast, for a while there we went to Bakersfield, California. We went up there. We landed in Watts, south central LA. That’s where we moved to. But then we would—during the cotton harvesting period in Bakersfield, we would go up there and it was hot as shit, man. It was just—I could never… That’s the other thing that stayed in mind was how hot it is. But the cotton production process required that kind of weather condition. Hot, hot, hot as hell. But, anyway, we knew that, and so we went up there to try to hold us over, before my father got a job—worked all kinds—dishwashing… And then finally got a construction job, and so that sustained the family.

Baptist: [00:06:48] I… My father—and this is another shaping experience. My father did something that was prescient for me and my friends, and that is that he formed a little league baseball team, and got us into baseball. And that saved us from the Vietnam draft, because I got—saved me anyway—because I got a baseball scholarship to Pepperdine University. I didn’t complete it, but I completed a scholarship, and I… I was going to get signed! My coach at my high school, Pope—he became one of the head scouts of Houston Astros. And I was absent when he came by to talk to me, because I had gotten awards and stuff, and I was the captain of the Pepperdine baseball team. That’s where I got my name, Willie, is because of Willie Mays. Anybody named William, Wilbert, or whatever… You, you know—you called—Billy… Is Willie!  So, I got my name Willie, from Willie Mays, you know, playing baseball.

Baptist: [00:07:56] But, what happened was, is that… The… I became… The Watts uprising, and the subsequent uprising during the sixties, which was the time that I had attended Pepperdine, was radicalizing everybody. And also, the anti-war movement was radicalizing everyone. And that was the time of the Black studies movements on the campus, Black students. And I founded the Black Student Union at Pepperdine. I’m one of the founders. And mainly the athletes that was on scholarship, because I had gotten a baseball scholarship, which again, that saved me from not going to the front lines in Vietnam.

Baptist: [00:08:41] A lot of my friends went, or people I knew, and they got dusted, you know—because they were at the front line. Coming out of Watts, or these ghettos and stuff—they were put up right there in the front. And so, I was avoided… Then, my father, because he had kind of oriented me toward that area… I mean that, I look back at that and I say that he was very—he saved my life [laughs] by getting me playing baseball. And I just happened to have some skills to get the scholarship.
 
Baptist: [00:09:09] Pepperdine was second only to USC in terms of highest tuition. And so, the only way I could get there, was because of scholarship. And the Black sports—athletes—the Black athletes, they were ones from the ghetto. And they were the ones that formed the BSU, along with me. We were more radical. But we had to battle these upper-class Blacks that came from this place, Baldwin Hills, where you had the upper professional families with middle incomes, and they could afford sending their kids to this expensive school, Pepperdine.

Baptist: [00:09:50] And Pepperdine was also very conservative. It was described as the… It was picked as the number one school by the John Birch Society, the most racist society to send your kids to. So, we had these very conservative kids, and our BSU was really militant. And we shut down the campus, like what was happening throughout the whole country. But the way we shut it down, we went and identi… Went to local hardware stores and picked up these big chains and chained the administrative building. And by stopping people from coming in the administration, that stopped the whole school from operating. So, we chained all the doors, and we had members of the Black Student Union, you know—sit down in front of the doors, and then a platoon of police officers came down from the Seventy-Seventh Precinct. And there was a negotiation with the police and the authorities of the school, and none of us got arrested. We got an agreement to talk about a Black Studies program. So, that’s what we were fighting for, a Black studies program.

Baptist: [00:11:06] But It turns out, and this is a very important lesson to me of how you got to approach things intelligently—otherwise you’re manipulated. In this case, what had happened is that the chancellor of the school had provoked us into this action and when we took the action, they arranged for somebody to… Burn down the auditorium, and they accused us of it. We was just at the thing, but we were accused of it. And he called the police. He’s the one had the police come.

Baptist: [00:11:39] And then the media was coming, and he’s pontificating before the media and blah blah blah, and he was able to get the insurance for rebuilding the school. Plus, then he got a job… Well, first he got a job as the head of the Republican Committee of California. And that was a steppingstone where he became the President of the University of Oklahoma. This dude was outthinking us. We used to go in his office, I’d come over in my shades and we’d be making these demands. He’d be trying to work it and blah blah. But he was manipulating us all the way, you know... We got some concession in terms of Black Studies, but he got a whole lot more. [Laughs] I say, you’re a bad son of a bitch.
 
Baptist: [00:12:18] And that just taught me, man. You know, you can’t go with romanticism or, you know—militancy. You got to think, you know—and I think early on that really embedded in me this notion that the best weapon is here [points to his head]. And even though I was mainly—I was a baseball athlete. Even then I would gravitate toward the educational role, even within the Black Student Union. But then later on, after about fifty-three years of organizing impoverished communities, I’ve always gravitated. A good forty or more years of those fifty-three years, I’ve always gravitated toward the educational aspect of it. Studying people, their development, having education, studying other social processes—the African revolution, the revolution in Vietnam and all that. So, I studied all that—and so, these things shaped me.

Baptist: [00:13:13] And of course, the thing that really had me oriented, majorly was before I came to college… I, at seventeen years old, I participated in the Watts uprising—and that radicalized everybody, Martin Luther King, everybody. The Panthers came out of that whole period of the late sixties—inaugurated by Watts, because it was one of the major cities that erupted. I think New York had activities, some smaller uprisings in sixty-four, and the same thing in Philadelphia. But it was Watts that kind of inaugurated this whole—these big cities. You know, Newark, and Detroit, you know—uprisings. And over three-hundred cities erupted in violent protest.

Baptist: [00:14:04] It was ignited by the police, but it was because of the economic circumstances. The youth was, in all these ghettos, were experiencing anywhere between fifty percent to seventy percent unemployment—and it was the ghetto! And it was a section of the so-called Black community that erupted. That’s where the concentration of police brutality and harassment was concentrated, in these ghetto areas. Not… Like Baldwin Hills, which is about maybe an hour drive from Watts in Los Angeles, it was where the professionals, upper class… You know, they were Black, and they were profiled you know, because of racism and so on, but the concentration of police brutality, harassment—was in the ghetto section of the so-called Black community.

Baptist: [00:15:03] And I think that experience really had me attracted to Malcolm X, because he began to talk about the class differentiation among the Black population. He would give this analogy of the house negro and the field negro, and I remember hearing that and said, “I’m a field negro.” That was Malcolm. “I’m a field negro.” And I knew there was a class difference. It just wasn’t “Black people”. There was a class differentiation. And I remember having—reflecting on the experience of Watts and what was happening throughout the country, where these uprisings was taking place—largely in ghetto areas, that there an economics and not just, “I hate Black people.” Kind of thing...
 
Baptist: [00:15:45] And that’s a lot of the—coming off the campuses, and it’s… A lot of that ideology is there, you know—kind of a Black nationalist, kind of cultural nationalism even, which was… Which at that time found expression in this anti-Panthers, among the more cultural nationalist elements. There was a group called US [United Slaves] that was complicit in the assassination of Bunchy Carter and them, who were leaders of the Panthers in LA. They, it turned out that the head of the US group, United Slaves, had been in contact with the FBI. This came out in actual data. And so, the complicity of these so-called, “militant Black groups”, and the destruction of the Panthers, you can see that in that experience. I, you know—our union united with the Panthers, our Black Student Union. So, these are real experiences that shaped my thinking.

Baptist: [00:16:52] When… I’m kind of going back and forth, but it’s… What happened—another major experience I had, while I was with the Black Student Union at Pepperdine, was this group, Venceremos group that recruited people to go to Cuba, on brigades. And it was early on. There’s probably about fifty-some now, but I was third brigad_e_. So, it was all Blacks and of color—it was called, “Third World”. So, they say, “You’re free. You can go free.” Oh, “I can get the hell out of here free?!” So, I said, “Yeah!”

Lewis: What year was that?

Baptist: [00:17:38] It’s got to be sixty-nine, seventy—around there. So, we took a… We had to go—it was the same year that Angela Davis was on the run. And we had, since the relationship—United States had no relationship with Cuba—official relationship. But Canada and Mexico had, for that time, Mexico was kind of closed off, was closed off and so, the plan was for us to go to Cuba by way of St. John’s, Canada. So, from LA, we had to go state by state by bus all the way up. And part of our brigade included Fania Jordan, and her husband, who is Angela Davis’ sister.

Baptist: [00:18:27] And she was—had a big natural, looked dead like Angela Davis and people, when we would stop, people would say, “Angela Davis!” They had arranged for her to be the decoy, because she was on the run at the same time. And every state that we stopped, when they changed over FBI agents for those states, they would get all of us out of the bus. We had to put our hands against the side of the bus, and they had to check us and check our identification, and check who in the hell, “Fania Jordan, make sure she’s not Angela Davis.” I thought that was a great move!
 
Baptist: [00:19:03] But, I got to know her and her husband in Cuba. And then when I went to Cuba—the people are just some beautiful people, and they were contrary to all the propaganda about the Cubans. They were beautiful people and they’d been through a revolution! And there—and I was preoccupied with the race question, like most, you know—and how they dealt with the race question in the context of a revolution. It was not some separate petit-bourgeois conception of sensitivity sessions, or some bullshit. It was in relationship to revolution—how you defeat your enemy and who you need to unite with to defeat the enemy. It was in that context that they dealt with the race question, which taught me something about the race question today.

Lewis: How old were you when you went to Cuba?

Baptist: [00:19:47] I had to have been twenty-one, twenty? Yeah, maybe earlier… I was college age. I mean, it had been, you know—toward, so maybe in my teens, my late teens. I can’t—I can’t… If I see—I can’t pinpoint a year because I always from '69 or '70—it either was '70. But I think if we look and research when Angela Davis was on the run, [laughs] that when, I know that’s when I was going on my way to Cuba, and it’s probably around 1970 or something like that. So, I was born in 1948... And so, twenty—twenty-two, yeah, about that time. Hmm. Interesting.
 
Baptist: [00:20:40] So, I went there and had some great experiences—great. I mean, you know—the Cuban people, and… I think the best experience I can give you, so I can hurry along up to the homeless period, was the experience I had—every evening our compamento, we had about four-hundred students that had come from—on this brigade, third brigade. And we was there about a couple of months, and we lived—our camp was in the Isle of Youth, which is an island just below the main island, [unclear]… And every evening, after we did our work, we would be serenaded. There was an amphitheater in the camp, and we would have our—we would eat and then we would sit down on the grass and hear speeches. There was also, we would see newsreel.

Baptist: [00:21:48] And this one evening, we was addressed by Sue Lee [phonetic], who was a commander of the National Liberation Front military unit, and she was a slight young lady. The Vietnamese are very diminutive, you know? And she was very kind, and she was passing out, as we were eating, she was just coming around—and she couldn’t speak English… So, she would just smile, and she would give us a ring. She gave everybody a ring. And another thing, she had other Cubans there, assisting her, giving everybody rings. And so, we said, “Thank you.” You know? But we didn’t—I didn’t think too much of it. I didn’t even know what to make of it, other than she’s obviously Vietnamese and blah blah blah. But it turned out she was the keynote speaker that night.

Baptist: [00:22:51] And then, when she got up there, and the Cuban brother introduced her. He says, “I have to introduce you to Sue Lee. Her family village, her village that her family lived in got totally demolished, which everybody got killed, her family, her husband, her kids, all the people in the village, by B-52 bombers. She joined the National Liberation struggle and she became commander of the unit. Her unit took down fifteen F-15 fighter jets.” Then here we are with shades. We were so militant. We had black leather. That lady right there is bad!

Baptist: [00:23:43] So everybody just perked up right there, and he says, “You know the rings that you guys are wearing? They are made from the planes, the F-15 planes that were brought down. They whittled them into rings.” We said, “Whoa, man!” We were just… She didn’t even have to say nothing, you know? She just got up there with her very kind voice, and you know… That lady did that! And you could see why! I mean, you better not fuck with her. I mean, that was, everybody just, that’s how we understood it...

Baptist: [00:24:15] And afterwards, everybody rushed up to shake her hand. And I was there with a group that happened to approach her around the same time, and one of the sisters asked her, “Well, what is it that we can do to help the Vietnamese people?” And I’ll never forget this— because that’s what I’m living out now. And that is that she says, “What you can do, is go back and build a movement to change the policies in your country. You don’t need to send us bulbs, soap, and all that kind of stuff.” You know, essentially, you know—because that’s the only thing people can think about, “Maybe we can get you this, get you that.” But she says, “Go build a movement.” And so, that I think still rings as part of who I am.

Baptist: [00:25:05] That experience, and the Cuban experience generally, was radicalizing for me and then having come out of the Watts uprising and participating in that process with my high school friends. Those things really combined.

Baptist: [00:25:20] And then with the homeless issue, I was on welfare with my kids, and I was introduced to a gentleman by the name of Chris Sprowal. Him and two other homeless guys had formed this group called the Committee for Dignity and Fairness for the Homeless.

Lewis: May I ask when and where this was?

Baptist: [00:25:39] 1986, '87, when my family moved… And we moved in with Chris Sprowal, when—just after the Union of the Homeless of Philadelphia—the Philadelphia/Delaware Valley Union of the Homeless was formed.

Lewis: How did you meet him?

Baptist: [00:25:57] A friend of mine named Bob Brown, who was the—at that time he was the district president of UE [United Electrical Workers], and he had come in contact with Chris when they began to organize. And he had his union come to the support of the Delaware Valley Union of the Homeless when they had got this campaign around this fraudulent hiring thing… Where they were hiring homeless folks and before the ninety-day period that—before they could then have to join the union, and then get the benefits of the union, they had this racket where they would bring homeless folks in there, and before ninety days, they would fire them and then keep that going. So we were exposing that. Then they got an injunction on the Homeless Union and the UE district took the place of the Homeless Union, to carry on the information picket.

Baptist: [00:26:57] So I came in just as that process was ending and the decision had already been made that there’ll be a national organizing drive, you know—to set up other unions throughout the country. 1199—Nicholas, President Nicholas supported us throughout the process. We targeted initially seven states, and we had a six-week school that we brought in prospective local organizers, to take them through training. I was part of that training.

Lewis: [00:27:32] So the Union of the Homeless grew out of this Committee for Dignity

Baptist: Dignity

Baptist: and Fairness.

Lewis: and Fairness. And how did… Was it homeless folks that started it, or was it a mix? And then how did they get from that to engaging labor unions?

Baptist: [00:27:48] Okay. The Committee for Dignity and Fairness for the Homeless was started by three homeless gentlemen, including Chris Sprowal. And it was an organization of homeless folks, and it had an advisory board, you know. They had connections that they made with different groupings, and business groupings, too—there in Philadelphia. And so, they launched the first organizing drive in Philadelphia, and was able to establish—had this founding convention of about five-hundred homeless folks, and they formed a Homeless Union.

Baptist: [00:28:26] The basis of it though, was this Committee for Dignity and Fairness had got an arrangement with the Methodist Church, one of the Methodist churches on Twentieth and Spring Garden. I’ll never forget... In the basement, the Methodist Church allowed them to have a shelter. And it was—got to have been the only homeless-run shelter in the country at that stage. And that became the base of operation for the local organizing of the Homeless Union, but then nationally, because we had—the most experienced people were in the Philadelphia area and they formed—a core of them formed the national organizing team, for the Homeless Union.

Baptist: [00:29:09] In terms of the union connection, President Nicholas, who was 1199 AFSCME, he came out of the—he had a concept of unionism that wasn’t pure and simple trade union. He was part of the civil rights movement, he came out of Mississippi—and he was able to establish a pretty strong position as the leader of that union, and that union was one of the largest union of hospital workers, in the area. And Chris Sprowal and Leona Smith had worked for him as organizers. So, he had that connection already.

Baptist: [00:29:45] But his own conviction, you know—was not pure trade unionism. And so, he saw this homeless issue becoming a cause célèbre—you know, Comic Relief and blah blah blah. He saw that he could tap into it, relate to it in a way that would help strengthen his position within the union and what the union was trying to do and at the same time, give us support throughout the country, in terms of AFSCME locals and stuff. So, he was already inclined because certain histories within AFSCME… AFSCME has a relationship with the sanitation worker strike, with the Poor People's Campaign and all that. So, you had this kind of orientation that he clearly was—had adopted.

Baptist: [00:30:34] And so—and with Chris and Leona who, Leona became the president after... She was formerly homeless, and she became the president after Chris, resigned. But Chris initiated it and Chris had tremendous experience. We was like kids. I learned a lot of tactics from him. I lived with him, and my family. My [our] kids still know each other now. They’re all adults.

Baptist: [00:30:58] Anyway, you know—I was there during the whole national organizing drive. I was part of the team that would go out before the national team. That’s—we targeted about seven states, and we brought in—like I said earlier—we brought in prospective local organizers and took them through a six-week training, and then we had the drive.
 
Lewis: [00:31:20] What kind of training did they get?

Baptist: [00:31:21] They got, you know—some technical training... You know, Chris, before he became homeless, he was a trade union organizer, so he has that experience, and he was the head of the New York CORE [Congress of Racial Equality] during the uprising in sixty-four. And also, he headed the… His experience included his experience as a trade union organizer, his experience as the head of the McGovern campaign, electoral campaign—in the Detroit area, and also, he ran for election in Long Island, and he was the head, the president of CORE, Downtown CORE. That’s the branch in New York.

Baptist: [00:32:09] So when he became homeless, he had those connections, and he had that experience. He was very articulate, and very spellbinding in his speech. I mean, he had charisma and I hooked up with him, and he had me to come—to move my family to Philadelphia.

Lewis: From?

Baptist: From Chicago.

Lewis: [00:32:31] Tell me the story of when you met—you and Chris.

Baptist: [00:32:34] Okay… I’m… I met him—I was introduced to him… I was living in Chicago, and I was introduced to him by the president of the United Electrical Workers. His name was Bob Brown, he brought him into Chicago. We sat down and talked, and he wanted me to come and help in this organizing drive, and that he would give me a job, and I’m on welfare—so, yeah. Okay. So my family moved to Chicago. We stayed there about twenty-some years, as a…

Baptist: [00:33:09] And we moved all over the country. That’s the other aspect of my life. I lived in San Francisco Bay area. I lived in LA—area. Then I moved to Chicago. And then —then from Chicago I went to Philadelphia, and now I’m in New York.

Baptist: [00:33:25] So, anyway, he came into Chicago, Bob introduced me as a possible person that can help in the drive, and you know—he impressed you. I mean, the guy, he has a stature about him, and a commanding kind of thing, but he was homeless! And… He was a likeable guy, he can—you know, he’s just a good guy, in that sense. I mean, there’s a lot of things about him, because of his history. But because of those experiences, he knew how to kind of convince me, and it wasn’t a hard convince because I was looking for a job, and he was going to hire me.
 
Baptist: [00:34:36] So, I came back, moved to Philadelphia, and I moved in with him—because the Homeless Union had acquired a house, and so had a number of families there, and I lived with him and his family. And throughout the whole other campaign, and for a good period of the existence of the Homeless Union, I lived with Chris Sprowal.

Lewis: And your children?

Baptist: And my children.

Lewis: And your wife?

Baptist: [00:34:31] My wife—all of us were involved… And I worked very closely with the United Electrical Workers’ Union. My wife got a job, she got a job there—well, and so she was an organizer and also administrator at that union. So, we had that kind of relationship.

Baptist: [00:34:51] And they were very supportive, the United Electrical Workers’ of the homeless organizing. So, you had the UE, and you had the Hospital Workers Union, 1199, that supported us—all the major cities that we founded local unions, they spoke at it, and they supported it the best way they can. It gave us a certain legitimacy and part of us naming ourselves a union was trying to… Because part of our message was, “Your members are becoming part of our members.” You know, we had a wider view, “You’re one pay check away from homelessness.” And that was along with, “We’re homeless, not helpless.” That was the key slogan at United—all the chapters.

Baptist: [00:35:32] And… And that came out of—a lot of that understanding came out of those—that six-week school that we had, where the curriculum included drawing on certain skills—trade unions, how you organize, and then there was political. I dealt mainly with the political stuff, you know—economics and politics, the experiences of the civil rights movement, experience of trade union organizing. Those are the things that we had people go through for six weeks, and we had different people come in and present. I presented. Me and Bob, we presented on economics and politics, because I had done a lot of study about that.

Lewis: [00:36:10] Who developed the curriculum?

Baptist: It was Chris and them, and you know, I was there, and we talked about it, and I made some input, but it was largely Chris and… Because he had studied, he was well-read. I mean, the guy… He was just an extraordinary individual, in terms of his knowledge. And much of his experience was mainly trade union experience, and electoral experience. So he—a large part of the organizing techniques were taken from those areas.

Lewis: [00:36:47] Tell me about some of the techniques that were—you thought, or you saw, as really effective with homeless folks, developing homeless folks’ leadership.

Baptist: Well, I think the most important technique was to bring people—homeless folks, identify homeless folks throughout the city and talk to them about the need to organize, and identify those who were inclined toward that message. And we brought them to a meeting at a church and we would discuss what are the problems that homeless folks in that area was facing.

Baptist: [00:37:26] And we had other groups that we were going to use as a kind of mutual support groups for the organizing drive, a local organizing drive, in that city. Like, for example, in Chicago. We brought people together from all the different shelters and other places where homeless folks were at. We got dinner, got food—got to get food because they’re going to be… We don’t want them to lose their, you know—not being in the shelter, they risk not getting food and stuff. And that was the best way to bring them, because we had food—we offered, “Look, we’re going to have food. We’re going to have this and we’re going to have that.”

Baptist: [00:37:59] And so, we had people go around, talk about what they saw was the most excruciating issue that they were facing, all of them—their stories and their issues that they were confronting. So, we heard different stories and different suggestions, about what to do. Like, for example, the Coalition for the Homeless, they were mainly—they were not homeless, but they had been dealing with the homeless issue, and they wanted to help us with the organizing drive.

Baptist: [00:38:28] They had launched a lobbying campaign in Springfield, Illinois, the capital—on housing. And so, obviously you’re dealing with homeless folks, they’re going to have a problem with housing. And they suggested that we have a group of people come down to Springfield to help the lobbying process, that they had—they can secure buses and homeless folks come down with them and help push that housing bill.

Baptist: [00:38:57] We heard that, and we heard other suggestions and other issues, but what turned out to be the issue most agitating people, the most in the room, was the fact that in the City of Chicago, every morning between the hours of five a.m. to six a.m., maybe seven a.m. in that period, all the shelters would have residents who were homeless, get in line to get five sheets of toilet paper.

Baptist: [00:39:27] [Long pause] That was, of course, because it was in the shelter, but they know they were in the shelter because of their job situation. You know, they work in these S.L.J. jobs—shitty little jobs. They couldn’t afford rent. So, they were in the shelters. They knew about all those problems, but what was an issue for them that you couldn’t deduct from some theory— was they had to suffer the human indignities, of getting in line to get… And you have to engage [long pause] the homeless, in order find out what that issue is. You can’t deduct that, you can’t, you know… And that was a very important lesson.

Baptist: [00:40:08] That there’s a difference between problems that are issues, and problems that are non-issues. And the only way you can identify those issues, is to probe and see which—where—which of the problems was—that most agitated them. That was the issue that you start. Not stop! You start… The education process, as well as the organizing effort. Very important.

Baptist: [00:40:28] We—today we call it Mohammed has to go to the mountain, because the mountain never comes to Mohammed, and the mountain are the people. And you got all these intellectuals that fly over mountains and go to conferences to talk about how those people down there in the mountain, are hurting. But they never engage the people. They call meetings and the mountain never comes to them, because they’re not engaging them.
 
Baptist: [00:40:48] And so, this differ—distinction between problems that are issues and problems that are non-issues, is a very important aspect of organizing that we learned. In every city that we launched the campaign, there was a different issue, different approach—because of the people, what they were dealing with immediately. It was all homelessness and all economic crisis stuff and joblessness, but those—finding those issues was critical to the organizing. At least launching the organizing stuff.

Lewis: [00:41:15] When y’all would go to different cities, I’m sure there isn’t one amount of time, but more or less, how much time did it take for y’all to take root in a place and get to know what the issues were?

Baptist: [00:41:31] Well, for the about seven—about seven cities that we initially targeted for the drive, we brought in local folks—you know, based on relationships that people knew from different groupings and stuff. They would suggest, “Maybe you could bring this guy in.” Who they’ve known, who’s a homeless guy. If it wasn’t him or her, they would point out somebody else. So over time, we were able to pull a group of them into the training—education training. So, we had people who were local already, that we had already through that school.

Baptist: [00:42:07] And then, my doing kind of outriding things… I would go, because I had been involved with the workfare struggle with Marion Kramer and them. Marion Kramer had launched this whole campaign around workfare.

Lewis: In Michigan.

Baptist: [00:42:20] In Michigan. But we had one in Chicago and other places. And so, I accompanied her. You know, I was on welfare, with my family. And so, I made—I had those connections out of that effort. So, I was useful for the campaign by going out first, meeting up with them and their contacts, and then having them be the mutual support network. So, when the national organizing team came in and hooked up with the local organizers that had been—had gone through the training, that was the key element in the campaign. So, we were able to… That approach really got us going.

Baptist: [00:42:58] And it—at that stage, homelessness had become more than a so-called, “skid row” issue, where you’re talking about families and babies and kids that was homeless.

Lewis: In the mid-eighties.

Baptist: [00:43:14] Yeah. Mid-eighties, mid to late eighties, and… Yeah. And that was about that time that you had this kind of phenomena of homelessness that was much more structural than even the thirties.

Lewis: Now, this was also the time when we started to see the effects of the Reagan cuts.

Baptist: Yes.

Lewis: And the Coalition for the Homeless, it formed in New York in '80—'79, '80, and then the national coalition broke off. The national coalition was in New York, and then they decided to go—they needed to be in D.C. because of all the federal cuts.

Lewis: [00:43:53] And the New York coalition stayed in New York, and the national coalition established itself in D.C. And Mitch Snyder, I can’t remember what year he did his hunger strike,

Baptist: Yeah.

Lewis: but it was also in the mid-eighties, and I met him and Michael Stoops in.

Baptist: Michael Stoops was back then, huh?

Lewis: Michael Stoops was a Quaker, and he was a Vietnam War resister. He was a conscientious objector, and in the seventies began working on homeless issues.

Baptist: Right.

Lewis: And was a founder of the National Coalition for the Homeless.

Baptist: Right.

Lewis: And with them to D.C. And he and Mitch Snyder were traveling around the country—in eighty-eight… I met them. I had just come back from Nicaragua, and they were organizing the national Housing Now!

Baptist: Yeah.

Lewis: [00:44:49] But it was because of Mitch Snyder and Stewart B. McKinney and like, Ed Asner... They were having like celebrities

Baptist: Yeah.

Lewis: and homeless folks sleeping out in D.C. I think '86 or '87. So this was all happening at the same time.

Baptist: [00:45:09] I know this—this is… The Housing Now! thing, we were directly part of the coalition with the Committee for Creative Non-Violence, Mitch Snyder’s group. And the National Coalition for the Homeless and a number of other groupings that combined to pull off this Housing Now! march. And what was part of promotion was the exodus marches, march of the homeless folks—from New England, New York, all the way to D.C. and from Florida up—that’s where. Now, the one in Florida didn’t gather the kind of numbers that we was able to take... And we had upwards of four-hundred some homeless folks walking, all the way to D.C.

Lewis: We went from Florida on buses.

Baptist: Oh! Okay. So, you know—I don’t know very much about that. But you was on that!

Lewis: Yeah.

Baptist: You were part of that Exodus.

Lewis: Yes.

Baptist: [00:45:56] So… But we had insisted, throughout that process, that the homeless had to speak and be prominent, and that we’re not talking about ending homelessness soon, but now. So, the Housing Now! The now part came from our agitation in the meeting. And [long pause], and… Anyway, that was quite an experience in terms of pulling together those groups. But that came as part of our national homeless organizing drive, because we had… What happened was, is that as we were carrying out the organizing drive in the seven states that we had identified, it became a cause celebration. You know, these movie stars and Mitch Snyder, became a, you know—they did a movie on him and all that kind of stuff.

Martin Sheen played him. [Laughs] And I’ll never forget—we got pissed because he says, “Well, you know—I know what homelessness is about.” You know, because he just went out there and followed Mitch Snyder around. And we said, “Man, you know that you could leave homeless any time.” And so that really got—I remember that pissing us off, that he knew what homelessness is.

Baptist: [00:47:12] But, at any rate, it was a cause célèbre and so we gathered a lot of media coverage. At one point they wanted to do a movie on Chris. And we had developed a relationship with Bruce Springsteen, who supported us, and had us at his concert—passed a bucket around, and we made good money, you know. So, “The Boss” was supporting us. In one of his biographies—autobiographies—he had Chris Sprowal and Leona Smith, our leaders, you know… He was—had them in there and that’s who he supported. So, it was kind of a cause célèbre, and so the media and everybody turned out and was covering our stuff.

Baptist: [00:47:56] And we became too dependent on it, because they would give their story, their interpretation and always leave out that we’re not simply people that are homeless. We’re people who work the economy. We had—our families had made contributions to society but were made as, “the homeless people”.

Baptist: [00:48:18] That’s the thing I think is very important, how they describe—label you, to isolate you. Of course, we say homeless people today, but it’s going to be important that we really define that. And I think this oral history project is one of the means, and also the organizing that’s taking place today—is a way to really say, “When we say homeless, this is who they are. Listen to their story.” But that time, it was corporate media that labeled us—as if we were just some kind of… Like “Black people” [laughs] you know—the inference is that if you’re Black you can’t stop being Black—so you’re “homeless people”. So, there’s all that kind of stuff, they really were able to isolate us, as if we’re some kind of separate group.

Baptist: [00:49:04] So anyway, the homeless organizing drive. We would go into the cities, we would meet with the local teams, that the local people who had attended our training had gathered, and we would talk about how to launch the campaign.

Lewis: What cities were they?

Baptist: [00:49:23] They were LA, Chicago, New York, Detroit… I’m trying to think...

Lewis: Philly?

Baptist: Philly. Definitely Philly.

Lewis: Mm-hmmm.

Baptist: Let me think.

Lewis: D.C.?

Baptist: Yes. Okay. D.C.

Lewis: D.C.

Baptist: The big, yeah. D.C., New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, LA.

Lewis: Okay.

Baptist: But then we added like New Mexico and some of the other cities, too—and also Colorado.

Baptist: [00:50:09] We organized a Homeless Union in Colorado. But what happened was, that some of the unions on their own, or some of the homeless, got wind of what we were doing... They organized their union and they affiliated. Like the Tucson Homeless Union, they organized and then they affiliated. And you know, Chris came out there and blah blah blah. But they basically did it, and the same thing with the Homeless Union in Minneapolis. So, a number of unions—up at our height, we organized some twenty-five locals in twenty-five states. At our height, we had anywhere between twenty-five thousand to thirty thousand homeless.

Baptist: [00:50:49] Our founding convention in Chicago, we had over nine hundred delegates that attended the founding convention. These were homeless folks—we went to every nook and cranny. In LA, we have over a thousand, and here in New York, at Riverside Church, that’s where I met Morales,

Lewis: Mm-hmmm.

Baptist: and he had—he was one of the ones chosen to be part of the thirty-person board that founded the New York Homeless Union.
 
Lewis: And Brenda Stokely was there.

Baptist: [00:51:18] Brenda… I mean, all the folks, man! I didn’t know—it would be good to see those connections because they’re—that those are personal connections of the Homeless Union experience with the Picture the Homeless experience. Including me, I’m a connection. And so, those connections are so important because the significance of it is that whatever you say about the ebbs and flows and some of the shortcomings, the notion that the homeless are not helpless, the notion that the homeless have to speak for themselves, they can think for themselves, they can organize, they can fight, they can lead, those are the connections in this whole struggle against homelessness, you know.

Baptist: [00:51:57] And I think we… I mean, connecting the homeless—National Union of the Homeless with the origins and development of Picture the Homeless, is a natural connection there. And I think—in many respects, I think what’s happening today, in terms of these organizing’s of homeless throughout the country, in these… In six of these, out of the twelve cities, six of them are forming Homeless Unions. It might be more, because in California, there’s an—we’ve established a California Homeless Union Leadership council, thirty-seven homeless people. And we got four locals that has been established as part of that California Homeless Union organizing drive.

Lewis: [00:52:47] You know, one of the things in any kind of organizing is how do you find people, but how do you keep people. And you have an expression—you know, “stick and stay”

Baptist: Right.

Lewis: that we want people to stick and stay.

Lewis: [00:53:05] One of the things that’s really fascinating in the way you describe Chris Sprowal, is that he was already an organizer before he became homeless.

Baptist: Right.

Lewis: And you know, this oral history project, we’re asking folks, you know, “Who are you?” Not, how you became homeless—we’ll start there.

Baptist: Yeah.

Lewis: Because the long-time leaders of Picture the Homeless that have been interviewed, all had a political analysis before they became homeless...

Baptist: Previous experience.

Lewis: Talk about their previous experience as tenant organizers, civil rights movement,

Baptist: Right.

Lewis: or just telling stories about their heroes, or people like Malcolm X, when they were children, so already the formation of a consciousness that—around justice, the justice question.
 
Baptist: Right.

Lewis: So even if it was religious faith. And so, but specifically Chris Sprowal and Lewis Haggins, who’s the co-founder of Picture the Homeless, but based on Anthony’s stories, Anthony Williams, the other co-founder, it was Lewis that approached Anthony, and was asking Anthony to go to WBAI to speak on the radio that, “We have to do something”. So, in a sense, you could say Lewis was the catalyst and saw tremendous leadership in Anthony, and then brought Anthony along. And so, the fact Lewis was already also an organizer before he became homeless…

Lewis: [00:54:52] He was a racial justice organizer. He had been involved with the National Action Network, in the beginning of the National Action Network, and comes from a family of working-class, African-American, union folks. And so, one of the things when we talk about leadership, organizations that do organizing often use this term, leadership development—as if people aren’t already leaders.

Lewis: [00:55:26] And so, I was just wondering, when you all were establishing relationships with local groups, were there particular folks you were looking for? Were there particular qualities that you saw? So, if somebody’s listening to this and they want to organize homeless folks, [smiles] and I’m talking about homeless folks in particular wanting to organize, are there things, are there qualities that you all looked for when you met somebody, that you said, “Oh, damn. I got to have this person.”

Baptist: [00:55:56] Yeah, I mean—I think, our approach—and we called it, “panning for gold”...

Lewis: Mm-hmmm.

Baptist: That to organize, you got to first organize the organizers. You got to identify them. And you identify them—not in terms of just their talk, but in terms of their walk and how they’re able to project themselves in the course of the struggle. Like around the tissue struggle in Chicago or the showers struggle in Philadelphia, certain people distinguish themselves.

Baptist: [00:56:27] They show themselves with qualities of being able to sum up what people are thinking, being able to show a certain discipline, you know. And they have… Over time, you begin to identify who they are—in the activities, not some abstraction. But it’s through the activities that we call panning for gold, and you know—everything that glitters is not gold.
 
Baptist: [00:56:53] We had an experience in Chicago where you had this Homeless Union that had formed, and you had this—they had elected officers for the Homeless Union. And the president of the Homeless Union—very articulate, very capable and did a lot of the work. That’s why they, that was clearly the leader. But there was this vacancy that they needed to fill—was the vice-president. And there was this gentleman that was—that wore a three-piece suit, that he wore every day. He was homeless, but he kept himself up, and he had a natural. And he had one of these little notebook shit—attaché that he carried.

Lewis: Mm-hmmm.

Baptist: You know… And, so people said, “Hey, why don’t you be the vice-president?” He said, “Okay. Sure.” So,,, But nobody knew where he was coming from, but you know, he was involved with some initial activities and meetings.

Baptist: [00:57:50] So they saw him, and they say, “Guy, you should be—you look like you should be [laughs] vice-president. So we’ll make you.” And we wanted to present an image, you know—that gave a different picture of the homeless… And he carried himself—just so happened to carry himself. So, when we had our first action, the president got sick, and he couldn’t show up for the first action. But everything had been organized, the media and so on. So we had our first action.

Baptist: [00:58:19] So naturally, since he’s the vice-president, he’s the one who’s got to speak before the media. So the media and the reporter came up. She asked him, “Look, you guys are here protesting. What are you protesting over? What’s your demands? You guys are looking for a job?” He says, “A job?! I’m not here for some MF job! I’m a hustler, man!” [Laughs] “A job!” And we were saying, “Oh—oh my God. He’s speaking...” And we were—we fret that night,  because on the TV we thought we were going to hear this guy—who stepped in every stereotype, you know? And they didn’t put him in, because every other word was MF. That’s the only reason. [Laughs] That’s what saved us.

Baptist: [00:59:05] So everything that glitters is not gold. And so, it’s in the course of the struggle that you learn these things. So, you learn these things… But it’s really the way we identify people is through these campaigns, and campaigns that are initiated by… Where we’re able to identify as the issues. Sometimes we hit or miss the issue, but through probing, we knew we had to find the issue, if we were going to launch and sustain the organizing.

Baptist: [00:59:29] In terms of people staying in—that was problematic. And this is the main lesson that we’re drawing today… That political education is key to organizational development. If people don’t know why they’re in it, and they don’t know… And they’re not drawing lessons from their struggles… Certain… There’s—the stories and experiences of their struggles are not documented and used to educate them… People come into that effort to get their situation relieved. As soon as they get a house—because we was able to get concessions, they leave because they didn’t—they wasn’t educated. Or if they’re diverted, or given money, or coopted or what have you... Or they make the wrong choices, like this gentleman that was the vice-president of the Chicago Union of the Homeless. That was made by a certain conception—a limited conception.

Baptist: [01:00:28] And yes, you have leaders that are natural, you have natural leadership qualities, but they don’t have the training to know—they know why personally they’re homeless. They don’t know the system or the political and economic system that produced homelessness. And so, their story is a story largely of the effects, but not of the cause.

Baptist: [01:00:04] And so, if you’re going to have leaders, you have to have a political education process to connect their story with all of the stories. And that’s a very important experience in my mind. Otherwise, I mean—we have a lot of these non-profits coming around and say, “Well, you’re an expert on homeless.” Well, yeah, I know why I’m homeless and I know what it feels like. I can tell you my story and you—and we need to hear that story. But I don’t know the political system, and the economic system that that political system upholds. I have not studied it.

Baptist: [01:01:17] The U.S. education system has left me totally ignorant as to—why homelessness? Why is it that you’ve got people who, in Detroit, that are former autoworkers, and they used to own homes, huh? And middle-income jobs—now they’re homeless. Why? Well, they can tell their individual story, and they are very expert in that. But they’re not expert in terms of the economic and political systems that produced not only their homelessness, but the whole of the homeless problem, or the poor problem. I think that is a political education task that has to be consciously, intentionally developed as part—it’s central to me of the organizing process. That’s what kept me in—involved. That’s kept the people who came out of the struggle involved—with not only our actions and our own personal experience, but us studying and reflecting on that.

Lewis: [01:02:11] I want to kind of bring us to—to Picture the Homeless. You’ve really painted, like a great kind of… Picture of the history of homeless organizing, the short version, [laughs] the tiny version. But it’s a history that isn’t widely known.

Baptist: Right.

Lewis: And so, fast forward to today. In our interview last week, we talked about how you heard about Picture the Homeless. But could you share where you think Picture the Homeless fits in, in this landscape today, in terms of homeless organizing? And what are some of the strengths that you see as a board member of Picture the Homeless, that you’ve been able to observe? And what are some of the challenges that homeless organizing in general faces, and what role can Picture the Homeless play there?

Baptist: [01:03:15] Picture the Homeless is an organization of homeless folks—men and women. It’s been that for about sixteen years. I was recruited by Lynn Lewis. I couldn’t join right away because I know most approaches around most boards had to do with raising money and doing things like that. I couldn’t see myself in that role, even though I’m a member of about three boards now. You know, but they all… United Workers in Baltimore, which is an organization of poor and homeless families. I’m a member of the National Welfare Rights Union board. And now with this People’s Forum, I’m the chairperson of that board. It’s an organization mainly of people who are working-class people and so on.

Baptist: [01:04:06] So I… My role in those situations make it possible for me to be in those many boards because it’s mainly educational. And so, I thought… Well, first of all, let me say I was attracted to Picture the Homeless because of the reasons we talked before,

Lewis: Mm-hmmm.

Baptist: of the activities, and also the notion of Picture the Homeless to me is a very powerful image. To me, it sums up the whole struggle of the national organizing drive of the National Union of the Homeless… Because it… What I’ve just told you, has got to be part of the picture, because that’s not told. So, it makes it easier to distort the picture, of the homeless—when you don’t understand that they’ve gone through organizing. They’ve done this stuff—and who they come from, who they are.
 
Baptist: [01:04:50] And with the National Union of the Homeless, we was able to project a picture of the homeless that was much more accurate, than all the other pictures that dominated the media and dominated the education system, and so on.

Baptist: [01:05:05] And so, I think the actions that Picture the Homeless has carried out has been to challenge the stereotypes that suggest that the problem is not the system, the economic system. That the problem somehow is the indiscretion, or self-blaming of the people who are the victims of that process. The actions that Picture the Homeless has carried out, which has attracted me, including—Picture the Homeless was very important for the formation of the Poverty Initiative, that’s now the Kairos Center, which now has ministers and assistant pastors and pastors throughout the country and playing a very important role in this very significant process of mass organization of the poor in the United States, called the Poor People’s Campaign.

Baptist: [01:05:08] This—now, this is Picture the Homeless’ contribution, you know? And we had to connect that because that’s all part of the same network of activities. But the idea of Picture the Homeless I think still is a relevant question in New York, as well as nationally. And that’s why I think this oral history project, drawing on these experiences and being able to tell another story is so important.

Baptist: [01:06:23] What I would like to do too is—I’m also a member of the University of the Poor, which comes out of this network, coming out of the Homeless Union and the need for leadership development. I mean, in terms of skills and political strategy—training and education. Because we’re up against some very sophisticated forces, and they’re not going to feel sorry for us. They don’t give two shits about us.
 
Lewis: They want people to die.

Baptist: Yeah. And like the brother from Tompkins Square. I’ll never forget what he said. He says, “They don’t want you on the ground. They want you under the ground.” I’ll never forget him. You know, he came out of [Ron] Casanova’s group, out of Tompkins Square Park.

Baptist: [01:07:07] So this idea of a picture, of the accurate picture of the homeless—is critical to people understanding what the problem is, you know. And it’s not just the effects. “Okay. I can tell you this story, I can tell you...” But what keeps creating the system?  You know, like King says, “True compassion” The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King says, “That the true compassion is not simply flipping a coin to a beggar. It’s understanding and reconstructing the very edifice that keeps reproducing the beggar.”

Baptist: [01:07:36] You know, that’s the same… If you don’t get at the cause of homelessness, you’re not going to ever solve it! You’re never going to build a solution, and the solution’s got to be a social movement and it’s got to include the actual organization of those who are hurting, particularly the homeless.

Baptist: [01:07:50] And to me, Picture the Homeless represents the potential to do that—and the experiences that it’s gone through, in terms of the anti-police brutality work, the housing work, this work around Potter’s Field, which I think is a very ideological, a very great experience of how to hook up with the churches and stuff. There’s a lot of great experiences that need to be replicated today, and need to… That experience is invaluable for people who are now forming homeless unions throughout the country—again, there’s a whole resurgence taking place in relationship to the Poor People’s Campaign.

Baptist: [01:08:24] And I think that the notion of Picture the Homeless is a notion that has to be fought out nationally and has to be fought out nationally and globally. And so, I see this project as being more than just Picture the Homeless in New York. I can see the potential, because that’s essentially what the struggle of the Homeless Union in the past is, and that’s the struggle of the homeless organizing today.

Baptist: [01:08:47] That a section of the population, especially the poor and homeless that are in these major cities that are being sub—that are undergoing this accelerated gentrification, which is essentially an anti-homeless, anti-poverty, anti-poor, not anti-poverty, an anti-poor campaign. They have to… In order to facilitate pushing people out, they have to give a distorted picture that isolates them. You know, in history and in political strategy, or even military strategy, you never attack that which you haven’t isolated first. So, you have to dehumanize it—you have to put it in a position where it is a separate people over here and then when the attack comes, nobody comes to your aid.
 
Lewis: That’s right.

Baptist: [01:09:29] And thus, you facilitate attack. But, you know—if they are unable to isolate you, then they risk being entangled with all these other relationships that they’re trying to maintain a relationship to. So, I think Picture the Homeless, in the struggle for an accurate picture, was breaking down those stereotypes, and those efforts at isolation that facilitate this—what’s now this clear pattern and political policy of gentrification, bringing in upper incomes into these areas, you know—having the city’s revenue base secured at the expense of poor and homeless families.

Baptist: [01:10:13] But that can’t be secured unless you have a distorted picture. Like right now, New York—there’s a picture that we have of the homeless. But then, the prevailing picture of the homeless is one that’s set up by Wall Street, and their agents. You know, in other words—and this is where I think political education comes in, because what we’re dealing with in homelessness here, as well as nationwide, having the center of the problem—is Wall Street. And Wall Street is the connection point of major enterprises. Industrial, health, all of the different industry comes—converge here on Wall Street.

Baptist: [01:10:59] And, it’s become extremely globalized in terms of what the movement of capital—through Wall Street, also moves through Tokyo, London, all these other... It’s a globalized force. And homelessness is becoming globalized, too! It’s no accident. Because these people are making money at the expense of the people, and it translates into homelessness.

Baptist: [01:11:18] And then, if they’re trying to secure a section, a social base of the system, which is the middle strata, they—part of this gentrification is about that. In other words, especially since the 2008 crisis, the cities have been in crisis in terms of revenue. And they’re having that revenue… Because there’s a lot of de-industrialization, jobs being robotized and computerized, or exported—these cities are changing their economic base. And those bases, almost in every major city, have not employed a workforce that makes the kind of money… Like in Detroit, for example those jobs, you know—Detroit’s in total crisis because you got auto workers who used to make middle income.

Baptist: [01:12:11] And so they—the tax that they send to the city helps stabilize the city and allows the city to attract, you know—do discounts, because they had a stable tax base, because they had these middle incomes. That’s moved and the city is in total crisis. You go there and it’s just totally gentrified because they had to bring in these people with higher incomes. Well, that’s a pattern in all the major cities, worldwide.

Baptist: [01:12:31] And the political element of it is, that your government apparatus, from your police to your military, to the prison system, to all that stuff, is held together by leadership, or officer corps for your bureaucracy, that is middle income. They’re like, “The system is doing okay, and you got to have that.” And the 2008 crisis has threatened that. And the continuing effect of it is threatening that. So the gentrification is a way to solidify that. But that means more of attack on the poor. More of attack on the homeless.

Baptist: [01:13:05] And to deal with that, you have to have a movement that includes the organization of the homeless, with other organizations, in a united effort against who we’re up against—and that’s the Wall Street base folks.
 
Baptist: [01:13:20] And in New York, you have this organization called the Partnership for New York—and that’s essentially Wall Street. They dictate the direction of the city council. They dictate the direction of everything. And they’re the elephant in the room. And a lot of the non-profits’ actions, they—while tactically is important to identify elements that people can understand and can see where policies like, for example, the different issues that come before city council. If you’re organizing, you have to identify and work with that. But it should be clear that the municipal bonds and all of the things that dominate the direction of the city—is coming from Wall Street. It’s not coming from the city council, you know. The campaign, funding, all that, and so on.
 
Baptist: [01:14:13] And so, if you don’t have that as your understanding, then the struggle for the picture of the homeless, the struggle for truth is going to be rendered ineffective against this tremendous effort to support the direction of Wall Street—that controls this global city.

Baptist: [01:14:35] So, I think part of the effectiveness of Picture the Homeless and what it has to contribute today, is this history of struggle, and the fact that you have articulate homeless folks that are part of that process. I think that’s the potential. The threat with this gentrification is whether or not we’re going to become part of an effort much bigger than just New York and bigger than the city, or just kind of concede to the gentrification process. And that's where this notion of non-profit organizing versus—or political organizing, I think come to the fore.

Baptist: [01:15:15] And I think that’s the challenge before Picture the Homeless now. But I think projects like this is to remind people that we got to be about organizing. We got to be about building the movement. We got to be about telling the truth! We got to be about having an analysis of what the problem is, and not just stay at the leaf and the branch of the problem, but actually show the root! Because you pull the leaf off and you pull the branch off, that don’t mean you’ve solved the problem! It just keeps coming back and gotten worse.

Baptist: [01:15:42] Homelessness is even worse, even all these years! So, I think the potential of Picture the Homeless is the leaders that—the potential leaders that they have developed over the years, and this body of experience that’s invaluable for these new leaders. They need to have it. Because one of the problems we’re facing is that you got these newly-emerging leaders who are organizing homeless folks or poor folks, and they’re being disconnected from history and also recent history. They don’t know anything about the Homeless Union… Picture the Homeless… What was that? You know, a lot of these, you know, and… And they need to know. Otherwise, they’re going to be easily manipulated by these powerful and very sophisticated forces.

Lewis: Okay. Thank you, Willie.

Baptist: Thank you, Lynn. Thanks for listening.

[END OF INTERVIEW]