Walking Peace: An interview with three elder male peace activists about racism, peacemaking, masculinity, and right relationships with self, others, and land

JANUARY 24TH, 2015: NIPPONZAN MYOHOJI TEMPLE, BAINBRIDGE ISLAND
“Bob from somewhere”, Gilberto Perez, and Senji Kanaeda, interviewed by Lee Nan Young and Seth Martin.

Photo courtesy of Gilberto Perez

EDITOR’S NOTE:
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These interviews took place DURING the 2015 ANNUAL MLK ANTI-NUCLEAR PEACE-WALK in Washington State. The walk was several days long and was led by Senji Kanaeda and Gilberto Perez, Buddhist monks from Nipponzan Myohoji order. It included folks from many different social justice organizations, as well as peace churches, Catholic Worker homes, and activists from various anti-nuclear and anti-racist networks. Kanaeda and Perez have taken vows of poverty, and when they are not walking around the world to raise awareness of crimes against humanity and the earth, they spend most of their time providing services for their neighbors in Bainbridge Island and following the rules of their order in the Nipponzan Myohoji Temple, where they are caretakers. They have worked closely with Catholic Workers, war resisters and other peace and justice networks in the PNW for many years. Kanaeda and Perez have also both visited Gangjeong Village on Jeju Island to show solidarity with the struggle against the illegal construction of the US-supported Korean Naval Base. Both are well-known faces and figures in the PNW, not only due to their many walks and their easily recognizable Buddhist robes and continual drumming, but also because in many of the peace and justice networks they work with in and around Seattle (especially the anti-war and anti-nuclear networks), they are two of the few people of color in positions of power and leadership.  Kanaeda and Perez are currently participating in events to remember and witness the evil of the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 75 years ago. “Bob from somewhere” was a participant of the peace walk. He is a veteran activist and a long-term friend of the monks, and has joined them on many of their journeys. 

One night near the end of the 2015 peace march, the following conversation took place in the living quarters beside the temple, where Nan Young, Seth, and Bob had been provided guest rooms for the week.  We had just finished dinner, and all three elders were clearly tired, after a long day of walking and protesting. However, each was happy to share parts of his story, in hopes that it would be useful to groups that might not usually hear first-hand accounts of people of color living and working for racial and environmental justice in the US.  A slightly adapted version of the following text has already been translated by Nan Young into Korean and published in an activist-oriented journal. This is the first time these interviews have been published in English. 

-SM

Photo courtesy of Gilberto Perez

INTERVIEW 1: "BOB FROM SOMEWHERE"

Bob is an older Indigenous Chicano man who has joined many peace marches with the Nipponzan monks over the years. He preferred to share his story without including his full name, age, and other personal information.
 
FIRST, WE NEED TO START WITH A PRAYER OF THANKS FOR ALL THAT WE have, and for these young people being here, and for the monks, and for all the food and water that we have. And the security that we have right now, and the people taking care of us on this walk. I say hello to all of you out there. I hope you have peace, and I hope you have plenty of water. 

[After prayer]

I grew up in Oakland, California, in a neighborhood that was racially diverse. I was very lucky because in my neighborhood there were Mexican people, some Indian people, Chinese, African-American, Puerto-Rican, and Portuguese. People were Catholic, mostly people were Catholic in that area. So I grew up lucky, to get to know very many people with different languages and different food and different customs.
 
I was lucky enough to grow up in an area where, in our community, racism wasn’t very strong, because we all played together, we lived together, and we went to school together. And the areas that I grew up—Oakland, Berkeley, those areas—were very diverse and very progressive in that time. And so, as I grew older and I went to different schools, you could tell that the schools were not as diverse anymore. They were less and less diverse. Mostly, if you went to school in the lowlands, it was mostly children of color. If you went to school in the hills, it was more and more Anglo, with some children of color going to those schools.
 
So, I grew up at a time when there were a lot of people starting to protest. Black Panthers. Brown Berets. Native people were starting to come out and do their protests. And yet, I was still growing up looking at these things and not participating enough because I was still pretty young. And my family was pretty conservative, poor, working class. 

I went to the Army at 17—‘cause I wanted to go—like other Indian people, I wanted to go to war. Because to be poor, you had nothing. You either went to the army or maybe went to jail.

And that was also part of our culture, to join the military. And so I went in. And it wasn't until I got into the army—then I started seeing how things were not right.

Many people were running from the law. Many people had been put in jail and the stockade, because they didn’t want to go. And they came back and they didn’t like what was going on back there. Then I went to Oklahoma. And that’s when I started meeting more Indian people, and learning from my relatives over there. And then I finally came back to California, with a daughter.
I was a single parent for 20 years. And so I had a daughter, and I brought her back and raised her, with help from family. But all that time, little by little, I’ve learned more and more about our disparities in society, and racism. And you know, there was a lot of racism.

I could see it. I didn’t let it get in my way. All the books I read—I read a lot of books. In those days it seemed like you could only find books by Anglos. And most of them were about Abraham Lincoln, things like that. I read a lot of other books, science fiction books, and a lot of them always talked about peace. And then I started paying more attention to Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Indian activists, and getting more and more angry about what was happening in this country, and wondering why things didn’t change.

In the 70s it looked like things were gonna change. Then Ronald Reagan became president. And everything started turning right-wing. Started cutting back on programs for poor people and middle class people. And I started getting more involved—in the voting, of course—learning more from people about peace and activism.

And so then I went through many years until I met my partner now, who was a strong activist, and I really started getting involved. Because she’s a very strong, very strong person. We call her a warrior, a woman warrior. And I started learning more and more, getting more involved with Indian people. And then I started meeting, I got to meet the monks and meet a lot of other people. Meet people like yourselves, who are out there giving of themselves out there, for change. And of course you want change for your children and your grandchildren. ‘Cause you don’t want them to grow up in poverty, or bad water or bad food. You know, you want them to make sure and be spiritual, and to thank the Creator, and to think about Mother Earth and about all that Mother Earth has given us. And that we want to do right by Mother Earth and our own mothers, because our mothers are sacred to us. And women are sacred, in all aspects. We always have to remember that women are always sacred to us. They not only give us life, but they take care of us when we’re young, they feed us. They help us grow. We leave them, sometimes in anger. But yet we come back when we’re sad, to them. And they’re also our teachers, our first teachers.

And then, also learning more about being a man. Being a man is not always about anger, about lashing out. That we’re also teachers, and that what we show our children is what they do later on—especially boys. When boys don’t have us in their lives, they’re always looking for us. They’re always looking for Father. Always looking for that teacher to come to, and to talk to when they’re sad or they’re happy. And when we’re absent from their lives they grow up angry and desperate. A lot of times they grow up violent. But they’re always searching for us.

I’ve always had good teachers, good people in my life. Strong people. I’ve been very angry in my life about racism, about poverty. But anger only carries you for a little ways, and then it can destroy you. When I was young I thought anger gave you strength. When I wasn’t mad, I thought that I’m losing my strength. When I was too peaceful I felt weak. But then I discovered that being peaceful is really the strength, and that not being angry or lashing out is better. Especially when you’re with women. And we [men] try to overpower them, in a sense, with our voices and our attitudes. And that’s another lesson to learn. That’s something else that you have to learn.

It’s not only about learning about the peace movement, and nuclear weapons, and marching for Martin Luther King, Jr., and Hands Up, and Black Lives Matter. The other part is, Women’s Lives Matter. Like Janelle, my partner, says: “You know what I like? You’re stuck in the 60s!” I’m stuck in the 1960s when all this used to come out. Free love, peace, you know, give to everybody, don’t have a lot of possessions. I’m really stuck in that. I’m still stuck in that. And I’m always happy to meet different people, although I’m a little more conservative in my thinking. I’m a little slower to get to know people than some other people might be.

But that’s really a small, just a small little, quick little thing about me. And I’m not sure what other questions you wanna have.

 Do you have any examples, for [international, specifically Korean and Japanese] readers, of conflicts you’ve experienced between mainstream culture and your own life and culture?

I’m a Chicano. We are different from Mexicans in a way. We honor our Indian selves, our Indian souls. And also I think we’re more activists here. And we’re more stand-up-to-be-counted folks, and [we] say, hey you can’t say that to me, or you can’t do that. But the thing that you really see, growing up is: going into stores, have your money ready.

Walking in back of white women, whistle [makes a whistle warning sound]: “I’m coming by.” Make sure they know you’re behind them and they know you’re not threatening. Going places and knowing you’re going to be treated just a little differently, even though the people might not think they’re treating you differently. You know they’re treating you differently. Seeing other people being treated differently, seeing African-Americans in a restaurant or a store, how they act. Seeing them being treated a little different even than you are.

A Black man goes into a store. I go into a store, I mean, people might look at me. A Black man goes into a store, they’re really looking at him, you know. But, both of us, when we were younger, in past times, and maybe sometimes now, you go into a store—have money ready. Right here. That says I’m here to buy something.

And sometimes, depending where you live, still people look at you. I’m older now so it doesn’t happen much anymore. I’m older, but I still have these old habits. Like, have money ready. Walking by people [whistles], I’ll start whistling, let people know I’m not a threat.

Not knowing sometimes, when you go somewhere, if somebody’s treating you different because of your skin color, or treating you different because they’re just not good people. Things like that. Things like that, you know.

Am I waiting at a table restaurant because they don’t want to serve me? Or because they’re just bad service? You know, things like that. Those are the things that you live with.
 
But at least, for the most part, I didn’t live in a closed culture. Well, I lived in a barrio, in what they call a barria, which is like an area where people have their own culture, like cut off from everyone else. But at least when I lived in the barrio, I lived in a multicultural world, and I was lucky. But some people live in barrios, they’re cut off, like a Mexican barrio, maybe an Asian barrio—they’re cut off from everyone else. They have their culture within a space. But most people know that, most people grow up with that.

But there are all kinds of instances. There’s just so much stuff that you see—and it’s not just that you see it, it’s that you’re always thinking about it. You know, it’s like: am I being treated different? Is he being treated different? Is she being treated different because of this? And you know that. You know. The darker the skin, sometimes the worse it gets. Things like that, you know.

And there’s subtle racism. There’s not always racism that says, “I don’t like you.” Very few people do that these days. Only the most honest will call you a name and tell you they don’t like you. So in a way you have to sort of thank them, because they’re being honest. “I don’t like you because you’re Mexican, or you’re Asian or you’re Black.” Thanks! At least I know. You know.

But it’s the subtle stuff. Subtle racism, subtle sexism, subtle against maybe somebody who is homosexual, somebody who has bad clothes on, things like that. You know, people find out that you’re a peace person, and who you go around with. Well, they’ll start looking at you differently too. They probably already do. You know, they might look at [Nan Young] differently too. Asian. Some places, you know. But I’m not sure how much time you want to put on here, though.
 
There are so many things that you have to look at in this country. This country—yes, it’s great. Beautiful. So many beautiful people in this country. And I like it because it has so many people in it. Different people. Different languages. Different food. Different cultures. All that.

But yet, there’s another side. There’s another side of America that seems to just not want to be around other people. And we also have to remember from the Native view—and I can’t speak for all Native people. But we have to, you have to remember, a lot of Native people call this “Occupied America.” Okay, a lot of people say, yes. Indian people love people, they love everybody. But the thing is, still you’re thinking, “I have to live here, while everybody lives here. My land was here, but now I have to live here so this can be a park.” Things like that.

You know, you say I can live over here. And I can have a casino. But why can’t I have it over here? You know, things like that.

You took away my sacred food. With Indian people, the strongest feeling they have is for the land. The land is everything. When people are made to move from their land, anywhere, they feel lost. You’re lost when you lose your land. When you lose your land, you lose your mother. That’s what a lot of Indian people think. I’m losing my mother. My land. Why can’t I go back again? Because this is where their relatives are at. This is where their history is. This is where their stories are at—it's the land. That’s why so many Indian people are sad because they can’t go back to their land. A lot of people are coming this way to live because they’re driven out.

But people are getting stronger. There are more groups. There are more peace groups. There are a lot of Native groups that are getting together, getting back the land, fighting for the land, or making people realize that you shouldn’t build here. In fact, most of the attitude about the environment is coming from Indian people. Sacred water. Sacred sites, where people are buried. The land is sacred. The air is sacred. The church is everywhere.
 
I’m here and my church is everywhere. I don’t have to just go into a room to pray. I can pray everywhere. And that’s why ceremonies and things like that are very special—and we don’t always let all people in because that’s each group’s special culture. No pictures, no recordings, things like that.

But, yeah, the most important thing is the land. When you take people from their land, anywhere in the world, they’re dispossessed. They feel sad. They lose their culture. They lose their language. They lose their relatives. That’s the most important thing about all this. That’s really it.

That’s really it—don’t lose your land. And don’t lose your water. Water is so sacred. You don’t wanna let them pollute your water, pollute your land. And keep fighting for whatever you have. Because once you lose it, they won’t give it back to you.

I hope for whoever hears this, that they keep fighting for what is right for them. And keep praying. Pray. Keep praying, that is very important. Like for me, I am still learning. I am still learning from young people, old people, about how to pray, how to do. Things like that. Because I’m not a medicine person or anything like that. I am just a human being, what we call a pitiful human being, trying to do good things on the earth. Trying to be a better person, that’s all. Mitakuye-Oyasin. You say that just like a traditional prayer.

How do the peace walks play into your life?

First of all, the peace walks give me another opportunity to be with people who are striving to change the planet.

And the peace walks also give you inner peace. Because when you’re walking and you’re praying, whether you’re walking and drumming or you’re walking ahead, and then you get to meet all these people who give you food and give you shelter, and who are kind to you, and it makes you feel good again about yourself, and to feel good again about the earth.

I meet all these good people. Even though I may not talk to all of them all the time, I’m glad to be around them. Because these are the peacekeepers. And then we all share something. We all share thoughts, we share songs, we share stories. Different people that we know, we’ll give each other stuff and lend each other stuff. And the biggest thing about that is community. Because people need community. They need to be with a lot of other people. Either to be taken care of or to take care of somebody. And that’s a big thing in our community. Whenever somebody needs something, we try to help that person. We try to help children, or wives, or women with no husbands, or men by themselves.

The walks come at the right time. They said, if you’re here, that means you’re supposed to be here. Somebody else didn’t get called, in a sense, to be here. So, if I’m here, I’m supposed to be here, not by accident. Same thing with you. Not by accident. So the Creator said, “I want you here,” and then gave you that push to be here.

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Photo courtesy of Gilberto Perez

INTERVIEW 2: GILBERTO PEREZ, Nipponzan Monk and Afro-Cuban peace activist

Konnichiwa and Anyong haseyo.

Hello brothers and sisters of Korea and Japan.
 
Greetings.  

I came here when I was two years old. I heard stories from my uncles about their racism and what they felt. I lived in a mostly all-black community. Some Puerto-Ricans.

And it was a prison. Maybe not a prison with bars, but a prison from looks: the way people look at roaches, or an animal. We don’t belong in that neighborhood, we belong in that neighborhood.

The food was very inferior in the poor neighborhoods. The house was very inferior. Rats. Roaches. Broken families. Drug addiction. I lost three cousins to prostitution and AIDS. I don’t know any of my Black friends from back then.

Why do I know white friends? Because we went to Catholic school. Growing up, I went to catechisms with Irish and Italians. They felt racism when they came to this country, too. And some of them got into drugs. Italians and Irish, not just Blacks.

I was rare, to be a Cuban. It was mostly Puerto-Ricans, Cubans later. And I knew I was different because of my accent. Cubans spoke a different dialect.  

Education was important. My father, when I did see him it was every 8 months, 9 months. He was away on ship in the war, and later as a merchant seaman. But racism existed all around me. As I got older I saw that on TV everything was white. No Black people. No Latin people. No Indian people. And if I did see Indian people they were being killed by cowboys.
 
I saw that my schools had inferior books, poor teachers. They didn’t wanna be there. I saw that the high schools were also inferior. So we didn’t have an opportunity to be as equals going into college. We were not prepared to go to college. We were prepared to be mechanics, servants, door openers, slaves for the corporations. I’m not talking about individual white people. When I say white people—I mean collectively, white institutional racism. Even Jews were not allowed to print or work for The New York Times before the 1930s. It’s all, if you’re different, if you sound different, if you look different.  

So, what I say to my brothers and sisters in Korea and Japan: we are of color. Not the dominant race from Europe, whether it’s the Spanish who destroyed South America and Native America, or the Europeans who destroyed Native American lands and stole their lands after they were welcomed here. We’re people of color.  

So as my brother Bob says, we beat women. We pick on women. We rape our sisters. They rape our mothers. It's always been the history. I will let you decide whether you want to use the word "Squaw". But that is a very derogatory name. And C-U-N-T [spells it but does not say it out of respect for Nan Young]. And people used to wear the vagina around their headcap. They used to scalp Indians for $25 a scalp. $5 for an ear. Blacks, they'd hang and throw out trains, anytime they want to.  

BOB: As our brother Gilberto was saying, they would purposely try to dissuade us from going to college. They wanted us to take wood shop, electrical, and plumbing. Well, the joke was on them. We joined the unions and made a lot of money being electricians and carpenters and plumbers, and fixing things and building things. So we made a lot of money. We even had our own businesses, because they pushed us to do skilled or technical work, instead of going to college, even though we went to college later on. So the joke was on them.  

Gilberto: So, being a little older than Bob, when I got out of high school, it was a father and son union [system]. So if your father didn't work in the union, whether it was electrical or plumbing, we did not find a job. Luckily, I found a job at Barnes & Noble, the bookstore.

I read Greek history. I met people who had a dialogue, who looked at you as an equal. But they were all college students. I even met my wife there, at the bookstore.

My wife is also from Cuba, but she was raised and born in America. Her mother, because of stress, divorced early. She was a homeless person. We never found her. She was a bag lady, as they say. There are many homeless in America. And she went crazy. Probably working for low wages, and the stress on a single mother, a single Black mother in New York City. It's very difficult to be a mother, as Bob said. We not only disrespect our women, our mothers, Mother Earth, animals, the chickens, the cows—we use them for meat to eat. The cow is a mother, and we take the calf away. We take the eggs away.  

So, luckily, seeing my friends die and taking drugs, I says, you know that's not what I wanna do. Luckily, I met some Jesuits who talked about Greek Philosophy. Father Bix [a Catholic Worker from Tacoma and friend of many of the peace marchers, “Bix” passed away shortly after this interview] is a Jesuit. The Jesuits were intellectuals. I would not have made it into college, but another friend who happened to be Polish got kicked out of school. Then he went to night school. And another friend of mine went to night school later. I did the same. We could take classes with academic credits at night high school. Academic means you're prepared to go to college. So here I am, a sophomore in high school, taking algebra and trigonometry in another school. But we weren't supposed to be going to two schools. So I at least had preparation to go into college, by luck, by the spirits, by the gods.

In our family, my mother is Cuban, which is Taino in this case, African and Spanish mixed. They kill the Indians and they bring slavery to the Caribbean to look for gold. And there was no gold. And the Spanish found gold in the New World, Mexico. My father came here in the 1930s because he was going to get an education. My grandfather wanted all of us to get an education. But there was the Depression here. No education. More prejudice.  
 
And there's prejudice in Cuba, too. Light skin, you get a little fair play. Darker ones, low. So, knowing those things, knowing how we cried on a table because somebody was in jail or somebody died and we didn't have enough money for a funeral, I learned boxing. My father was a boxer, so I was tough. I had to be tough. Tough to get to school, tough to come back from school, back home. Tough to take care of my sisters and my brother, because my mother had to work. I was home alone, the eldest, taking care of my brother and sister. Because I was told, "You're the man of the house."

By the time I was 18 they killed three students in the South. Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney. For voter registration. [1964: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/slain-civil-rights-workers-found] And I went to my Catholic Church to listen to the priest say that we should not do this, or something from the priest. Nothing was said. Why the Catholic Church don't say nothing? Again, another form of racism.

Of course, that time, as Bob said, he was a little younger. At that time, I was very angry. Very angry. And upset.  I joined the CORE. Congress Of Racial Equality. James Farmer. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Farmer] They did walks with the Southern Christian Conference, and the Black Panthers. They were a party in Alabama first. Later they became the Black Panthers in Oakland.

I had decided to find myself. Why Black people don't have anything? Why Native Americans don't have anything? Why are we poor? What's going on? 

Now, I was different because I didn't have the trauma of Black people in America. I didn't have the trauma of Native American people. I came from Cuba when I was young. My uncles were strong and proud. My father was proud. We thought we were gonna get ahead. It's like I'm a newcomer from a different country. I didn't know the suffering of the Native until later. But they have much more trauma than I had.

I just saw trauma in the city. People dying. Knifing. When I was 5 years old I saw my first knifing. 6 years old, I saw my first drug addiction, dying with the needle still in his arm. I saw a man shot, with his brains on the floor, maybe when I was about 10. Later on I saw much more than that. When I went to school, most people [around me] did not go to high school, even. They got pregnant. They got lost. Even when I went to high school they were still getting pregnant. 

So, I could not get a job as an electrician, because the union would not allow us. I decided to—oh, I was reading Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, meeting people in the village, Greenwich Village. Joan Baez, Dylan. All this new conversation that I wouldn't hear in the housing project. I lived in a poor housing project. The Village had NYU, people work at Barnes & Noble, people came to get their textbooks. It was just for textbooks.

And my wife, Black, went to Catholic High schools. She sang opera, spoke French, Spanish, English, and she's a Coloratura in opera companies.  

She knew Shakespeare. In the projects. So here was this—where'd this woman come from? So she became my girlfriend. Because she was smart. Not the prettiest woman in the world [smiles], but very smart, and very gentle. Very, very gentle. Very Catholic. Sincere, faithful Catholic. So, after the shooting of Kennedy, the students, then Malcolm X was shot. Then Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Then Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Where is this freedom? Where is this Constitution? Where is liberty? Where is freedom? Where is understanding? Where is equality? Nowhere in my thinking [or what] I'd saw outside.

I went to find myself. Jack Kerouac was the reading of the time. Looking for oneself. A little Hindu, maybe Buddhism. Who am I?  Got my little Volkswagon car, a '68. I pick up a hitchhiker. He was a conscientious objector [CO], and he was doing his masters at Berkeley. Michael Schrieber. Jewish fellow. Beard. Spent maybe a year and a half in jail for not going to the Vietnam War. Where do we go? We ended up at the Chicago Convention. Students getting beat up. Cops stop us, and they said all kinds of terrible words which I won't say here. And they said, "Get out of here!" Michael still wanted to see his professor—he graduated from the University of Chicago. At the Chicago Convention, many students got hit, hurt, beat, daily.

[Chicago, then:] It's a very Irish, gang-type Mayor. Not a mayor by political democracy vote. It's just control of the gerrymandering, control of the voting system in Chicago. Later on they got a Black mayor. But then it was all Irish control. Just like New York was Irish control. My friend Michael says, "Let's get out of here." He saw his professor and [then] we went—where did we go? We went to Wyoming. The Grand Tetons. We went traveling around the country and I saw a lot of the country—the forests, the deer, the buffalo. More about Native Americans.  

Michael's father was Dr. Paul Schrieber, Dean of Sociology at Hunter College. And he took me to Berkeley, to his school. And he introduced me to one of his Black friends, whose mother, my brother Shoni [Senji] and I met in a hospital in Atlanta.

This Black friend, Jon Smith, came from a family of very light skinned Blacks who were supposed to get the mule and the forty acres. Never got that. But he became a doctor. He died of AIDS later, in New York, working in a poor hospital. The mother was a superintendent of a school, his father was a doctor, and his grandfather was a doctor who graduated from college in 1896, from Morgan State. Six doctors, black doctors, in 1896, graduating college. Imagine how many white people they—they went to Black neighborhoods to be doctors, they could not go to white neighborhoods.

So the Black doctors went into the neighborhoods. In Georgia. This particular doctor's family was in Georgia, but they lived in North Carolina. Michigan, Detroit. Jon's brother is also a doctor, he practices medicine in Kansas City, in a Black area.

By this time we had the '60s and Berkeley, being tear-gassed, and saw our students shot. Later Kent State, more students got shot.  I met Native Americans in Berkeley, and also Asians. I joined the Black Panthers for a little while. They were a little too violent for me. I won't tell you what I did, I'll edit all that out. [laughter]
 
So racism was part of my armor. I had to protect. Like I'm a warrior with a suit of armor, because everywhere I saw racism. And I wanted to cut it so that it won't affect me. As my brother Bob said, violence and hate against another one destroys you.

I saw some things. I said I wasn't going to talk about it, but I saw some things. Students were beat up in Berkeley. College students. Idealists, looking for no nuclear—this was when No Nuclear/ Ban The Bomb in Berkeley started in '68. Livermore Lapse. RAAND Think Tanks. And I got angry and I won't talk about it, what I did. But I met some Buddhist monks at the college doing a lecture. And I started reading some books on yoga and Hinduism.

I learned that yoga could give me meditation. And I was angry. You could not talk to me. I didn't want to talk to white people. I didn't want to talk to no white policeman. I was angry, very, very angry. But I started liking yoga.  

My brother joined The Nation of Islam. Some that I knew stayed with the Black Panthers, I don't know what happened to them. I didn’t stay with the Black Panthers because their language of responding to violence with violence was not my desired way of dealing with racism.

In yoga, I learned to know about my body. Who am I now? Ah, I'm spirit. And that's my culture also, because of my African culture from Cuba. The music is Nigerian. My Nigerian ancestors would be from south Nigeria of the Yoruba culture. So I knew some about the Conga, the drum. The sound of the drum was a way to pray to the gods. So I had Catholic, African traditions, and my mother practiced this with my uncles. They all had the same things in the corner. Yoruba gods (Orishas), Shango, Ogun, Yemaya, Obatala,  Etc. They did tobacco cleansing, or purging. I knew that the Native American used sage. But we were doing the same things in my house. We would clean the house and I didn't know what that was.  

Then I came back.  And I have two children. [Reflectively:] I'm leaving the country. I'm getting away from this country. It's sick. My yoga teacher was in Canada. I was going to go to Canada, but my French was not good enough so I didn't make the test. My wife could have taught in Canada. I said okay, I guess we're not going. I was already praying to the gods. Okay, you want us to be back [in the States]. Whatever you wish. And I would call God "Mother". "Mother, whatever you wish. You want me to go back to New York? Fine."

We came to New York. We waited a year, because I put resumes all the way from Canada back to New York, to get a job. And I was working for AT&T, because they needed a token. Affirmative Action happened in 1968, where they needed some Blacks, people of color, a woman, to work in a white man's world. Luckily I passed. It was not a hard test to pass, since I was already studying engineering. They couldn't find my test. But luckily a friend of mine, who happened to be Jewish, worked for the mayor's office. And his girlfriend was Filipina. They said, we just had a fellow who passed the test. And why can't you find his test? But when I took the test I had a beard and an afro. So somehow the mayor complained, and they asked me to take the test again. Again I passed it.

When they did an interview, they said, please could you take off your beard and cut your hair and your sideburns? I did cut most of my hair on my face because we needed the work. That was 1970.  
I'm back from California. Before I left California, though, I was with Native Americans in my apartment in Haight-Ashbury when they were taking over Alcatraz in 1969. And I had an Army jacket that I gave to them. And I know one of the names of the men in the group was Banks. And I don't know if he was related to Dennis Banks or not, but there were three in my apartment. They said, man we're going over to the island, and I says, man I'm going over to San Francisco State. They're stabbing students, they're hitting students. So they went to take over Alcatraz. That was their land, and that was the beginning of the American Indian Movement [AIM].

After so many killings, COINTELPRO—"Bob from somewhere" knows that—the killing of Blacks, I came back to New York and said, We're leaving. I did get a resume. I started working in Maine.
 
All my kids really act and look like they're white kids from a nice neighborhood. They don't have any knowledge about Black living or anything. Very good kids. But don't know about what it is to suffer in a Black neighborhood. Although my daughter was raped twice. My daughter. Raped twice. By friends. Because she didn't know. Too naive.  

I got promotion very quickly. I took a more than 60% cut in pay to move to Maine. Lived simple. Wood. We wanted to burn wood. I wanted to go back to land. Grow my food and grow my garden. Survive! If there was a revolution I was gonna survive. There wasn't so much racism in Maine, but we were not a danger. One Black family in the middle of nowhere. There's these new strange people. The jokes were French jokes. The racist jokes were French jokes in Maine. That was the Black person in Maine, they were the French people.

I was teaching yoga for 3 years, from 69 to about 71, and when I went to Maine I taught yoga in a Maine high school. And I knew my teacher there, as I said, because I couldn't go to an ashram. And they wanted me to become a swami, a monk. I said my children were too small.

And the only reason was that, because for the first time, I had control of who I am. I could say no to violence. I could say no, I'm not going to behave that way. I'm gonna be different. Only because I knew who I was. I was a spiritual person. I wasn't Cuban, I wasn't Chinese, I wasn't Korean, I wasn't a woman, I was a human being. A being, Who lived in the present with animals and trees and air. I breathe the same air as animals. We read from the environment, even a speck of dust has spirit. I realized that when I was studying yoga. Yoga means union with God. Yoke.

So I left the telephone company because of racism and sexism. Went back to New York and got a job in New York City. I met my friend we just spoke to, Dave. [Gilberto had just talked to Dave on the phone] We just spoke to him. He's a radical. And he was a white person from Indiana who knew about racism. I could talk to him much about racism.
 
And then I didn't get in trouble with the city. I only lasted a year because I got another promotion in the city department. But then my children were at Amherst. If I worked at the university, I saw this position, they could get free tuition. So I left my job in the city, good money, to move to Massachusetts again. Amherst.

At Amherst I used to see the Pagoda. The Nipponzan Pagoda. And I would bow. I didn't know who they were. I went down twice, never saw anybody. I did see, I think it was, a Cambodian temple on the bottom. I did see some people there.

I got in trouble at the university again. Because of racism. And I never saw any Black supervisor [chuckles] in a university. I told Bob about a story where the woman saw me come in and she locked her purse, put it in a drawer when she saw me come in the office.  

Anyway, going to New York, thinking what am I going to do next? I saw a sign that said Pagoda. I turned to go in and I sat down to meditate. I'd sat there maybe no more than five minutes and some ladies came outside talking. I said, Oh. They said, Oh are you coming in? I said, No, I just came here to be quiet. They said, Oh, somebody's here. Somebody's here just doing a peace walk. His name is Senji.

And Senji came out. And his English was not as good then. He said, Hi. I'm Senji. I'm here.

I said, Okay. And I listened. And he said, I walked the Underground Railroad last year. This year I'm retracing parts of the Slave Trade. He asked me a little bit about me and I said something. Then he told me he likes Paul Robeson. And Coltrane. And he knew a lot about Harriet Tubman, and I think we talked about Frederick Douglass.

I think I touched him and I said, What kind of monk are you? A different monk, from Japan, who knows more Black history than I do!

I said, I have Paul Robeson cds in my car. Because he liked Paul Robeson. So I went to my car and gave him the cds. He said, I don't have... I said, Don't worry. I'll bring you a walkman. He said we don't have to listen. I said, Don't worry. Where will you be in a week or two weeks? He said, Hmm.... Connecticut. I said, Okay, I'll find you.  

Then I went to New York and saw my mother. And I came back and found him somewhere, near the Massachusetts/Connecticut border. I saw Senji, and I gave him the walkman so he could listen to the music.  

I joined the walk because I saw Native Americans, white, Black, nuns, monks walking. About a hundred people, maybe. I said, Wow, what kind of group is this? I stayed with the group to New Orleans, but I couldn’t continue longer because I had to go back. I had no work. I observed K. Shoni Senji very closely. I observed my Native brothers, I observed my Black brothers. And it was like any other walk: chaos! [laughs]

People fighting. People didn't know what was going on, because of our own dysfunction in our cultures, meaning Black and Native American. We just don't have it together to organize. And the Japanese were all in unison. Very perfect. All come to eat, all at the same time. Almost perfect. I was going to call it a Japanese walk, not a Black, Afro-American walk. Always arguing, discussing, fighting. And the monks didn't understand what was going on. There's pot smoking in the back, guys with knives, guys with weapons.  [To Bob] And Billy was there!

I was like, Man what is going on here? But the intent was right. To retrace the slave path. And in retracing the slavery/slave path we met Alice Walker, and Desmond Tutu. Shoni [Senji] even touched the piano of Nat King Cole. So we met all these people. And the history. Even Shoni and I, because it was so much to be in a walk with so many dysfunctional people, we needed some rest. I said, Shoni, let's go. And I didn't know, but Shoni knew that Coltrane was born not too far from where we were walking. We went away for two days, and we found John Coltrane's birthplace.

So we were praying, chanting and burning incense at John Coltrane's birthplace. Hamlet, North Carolina. Then we got a little rest. We came back and joined the walk. 

But it has always been about racism. How does a Black person, a poor person, or somebody from another country, try to survive? And like the grass growing through the cracks of concrete, that's what Black people are. That's what women in this society are. Especially women of color. And the poor. They have to break through their crack. But as my brother Bob said, for us who have a spiritual quest, or intent, it's about your love inside. Things are difficult. Not here, not a marketing strategy, not a linguistic conditioning on how we are different. We all talk different. He talks different, you talk different, we all talk different.

Bob and I maybe have something in common because we talk street language. But you're educated. You're all three educated [to Seth, Nan Young, and Senji]. We come from a little different path. And you [Seth] can put education into music. You [Nan Young] can put it into art. Bob and I—we kick your ass. [laughter]

We fight, because we don't understand. I don't know how to do any art. I do a little poetry, maybe Bob and I can do that now. But when we were young, we didn't say we wanted to do art. We wanted to fight! Don't you touch me. Don't you touch my family. Because we were angry. If you're angry you cannot do drawing. If you're angry you cannot write poetry. You cannot sing. And anger is the main ingredient in the Black neighborhoods. Poor neighborhoods. Neighborhoods of color.

So racism is part and parcel of poverty. Racism is how they keep you in poverty. With that said, if you have another question I'd be happy to answer.  

THANK YOU SO MUCH. DO YOU HAVE ANY MORE THOUGHTS ON YOUR LIFE RIGHT NOW?  

Well, my life right now. We don't think too far ahead now. Like I said, it's not future 5-year plans. What are we doing now? Right now we're talking to my young sister, my young brother, and Shoni and I just finished a walk and we're tired. And our thoughts are: Pagoda.

So it's all these little pieces that you hear. One hundred percent mindful. He [Senji] has to cook tomorrow. We get up and pray tomorrow, almost always. Very orthodox. The same everyday. We don't know what the future's gonna bring. We do not know a thing. We don't even know about Buddhism. All we wanna know is: be a good human now. Every day. And sometimes we make mistakes. And sometimes I get a little annoyed. I'm like a fly on this all-white island [Bainbridge]. I say sometimes I am like a fly on a piece of cheesecake. [laughter]

SENJI: Yeah, his son and daughter sometimes talk to him. But they're grown up. "Oh you talk too much about racism." But you know with each one it's different. 

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Video footage by Rodney Harold

Photo courtesy of Gilberto Perez

Interview 3: SENJI Kanaeda

*A Japanese monk from the Nipponzan Myohoji order, Senji Kanaeda has resided in the US for more than a decade. He lives in and cares for the Nipponzan Mohyoji temple in Bainbridge Island. Over the years he has walked across many regions around the world for peace and justice. He believes that unless you strive to become a good person every day, life is meaningless. He strives to be humble and show mercy to all small lives. [Conversation originally in Japanese with minimal English, with Lee Nan Young. Translated first into Korean, later into English.]

Hello. I am feeling sorry that I cannot speak Korean. Actually, I feel that doing this interview in Japanese is a little bit rude. [To Nan Young:] Please forgive me for using Japanese. But it is easier for me than English.

My name is Kanaeda Senji. I grew up in Oita, on Kyushu island, in Japan but across the sea from Busan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%c5%8cita_Prefecture). I know that recently many Koreans visit the hot springs in Beppu, and in Japanese villages there are even signs in Korean. This has been the case for 30 years. These are good things, but for the past few years the relationships between Japan, Korea, and China have been bad. This is because the mindless Japanese politicians have been re-igniting the spirit of historical nationalism. But I still think there is hope, because Koreans and Japanese can meet and talk together, like this. It's very precious. When normal people, not politicians, meet together, we are making a good future.

 About American racism, the problem is really hard to solve. But people from different races and nationalities must find and make ways to meet together often. However, I feel very bad these days because these kinds of meetings are not happening often.

For around 10 years I have been doing these peace marches in the winter to celebrate MLK's birthday and legacy, and to make a better world without racism and the violence of war. This time, before the march began, I watched Selma. This movie is about MLK's biggest movement for Black voting rights. Like our steps when we march, the movie is a story about each person's steps as they walk together, and also fight for human rights and equality under the law for all citizens. The movie was about all of that. It was an amazing movie.

Actually I walked [in Selma] two times. When I watched the movie, it reminded me of those moments. Extreme courage—when I watched Selma I was touched and amazed by how much extreme courage each person had during that historical march.

And I have tremendous respect for the Koreans who fought and even died for freedom and democracy [against SK dictatorships].

I have walked for peace for a long time. So far the main theme of the peace marches has been to get rid of war and weapons. But this time the focus is on racism. When the US was created, it was made with racism, slavery, and stealing land from American Indians. These long-term problems cannot be solved easily. This is why we are walking. This is our theme.

This time the peace march finished at Ground Zero (https://www.gzcenter.org/), which is a really important place for the American Peace Movement. Besides me, as a Japanese man, and you [Nan Young] as a Korean, and a Mexican, and a few others, the majority of the GZ people are all white. And this time, actually, I was shocked there. Because last year, there was a big incident about racism in America. Police killed a young innocent Black man. Through that, we were given a chance to think more seriously about racism. Since then, there have been so many big anti-racist demonstrations everywhere in the US. But when we went to the GZ activists' gathering, the white activists there never mentioned racism even one time. I got shocked. To remember MLK [and his anti-militarism stance] during the holiday that commemorates him, how could people not think and talk about racism? This shocked me.

It's been 12 years since I came to the US [to stay permanently]. I knew there was a racism problem. But for 12 years racism was something I had to think about every day. The final stop for our peace march this winter is GZ. The majority of the white people there are highly educated, and politically radical. They have very free minds. I am sure they are amazing people. But they are white people. They don't suffer from racism. They don't have to think about racism every day. Those people at GZ have so much sympathy. But they don't need to think about racism. That is a very characteristic thing about America. I mean, white people and people of color: these two separated groups are the critical element, and difference.

17 years ago I visited the US for a peace walk. For the first time, I walked the American land. It was a route of the Underground Railroad. This is a historically very meaningful road. A Black slave escaped from a farm and attempted to get to Canada. The path became a route for the Black liberation movement. At that time, when I walked that route 17 years ago, I walked with a Black woman. Recently, I was able to meet her again, when she visited my temple. We were both really touched. Now I can speak a little better English, but 17 years ago my English was horrible. But even so, at that time, when we walked together for over a month, I heard so many stories from the woman about her life and her family. And also so many other stories. Some stories were really impressive and left deep impressions on me. One thing is that the general lifespan of a white man and a Black man are different. On average the difference is ten years. I cannot explain easily, but if I had to give one reason to explain why this is true, I would say it is because Black men have to experience racism every day.

When I came to Seattle, and to this Island, I was holding a big bag. People thought I was homeless. This kind of thing happened to me every day. To us, these things are a big stress. The ten year difference is because of stress and rage. Our minds and bodies have scars.

There are other reasons too. The Black woman's name is Sonia. Sonia never met her father until she was 41 years old. When she was six years old, Sonia's mother got a mental illness, and Sonia could not grow up with a normal family. So I asked her, How did you grow up? She told me: Grandmother, grandfather, and many different people's houses.

When I came to America, the most surprising thing to me was something that never surprises me now [because it is so common]. The majority of Black people in the US don't have a normal, healthy family. In many cases, fathers are absent. Mothers are there, but they have to work as housekeepers or daily helpers. Where are the fathers? They are in prison, or people don't know who the father is. Sonia told me that comes from slavery. During slavery, the white society couldn't forgive Black people for having families. There was slavery in other countries too, but in America it was most harsh.

I of course cannot explain easily about USA. But I can tell one thing about why America could become the most powerful nation in the world. It is absolutely from slavery and stealing Indian land. From that, this country could make an incredibly strong base, economically and militarily. During the process of making this foundation, there have been so many different people and races, but they are always split apart, and economically and politically their rights not the same. By law, it could look like a very nice society. But the real society has never reached that stage. So the mainstream of this society, which is the white people, they are not yet really citizens.

I believe one thing about America. America starts war because of racism. From the beginning until now, the US builds bases in other countries and drops bombs on other people, because this country is a racist country. That is why the US starts wars. In Asia. In Joseon. In Korea. In Vietnam. In Iraq. In Syria. Without stopping, the US did wars in other countries—except European countries. Hiroshima and Nagasaki. America dropped the atomic bombs. Many Koreans also were sacrificed. I think if America does not have racism, wars will also finish.

I'm Buddhist. A Buddhist monk. The most important teaching in Buddhism is to be a good person, as much as you possibly can. And also to respect the lives of others. Those are the biggest teachings in Buddhism. Simply, it means you should not take others' life. America is actually very far from Buddhism's teaching, I think. One thing I hope. So far, America's main religion has been Christianity. But many mainstream Americans are getting interested in Buddhism, and Asian and Eastern religions and peaceful ideologies. But I think in America it will take so long to become a peaceful country. Because to be a peaceful country means no racism. 

Peaceful country, no racism. These have exactly the same meaning. Maybe it is a story that is very far away. Actually, we don't know what to do. But what I can do right now is follow Buddhist teaching, meet many people, walk, and beat the drum. That is all I can do right now. I know it is such a small action. But I do not know another way. As long as I live, I am trying to live this way.

For the last thing, I want to send a message to Korean people. Now the relationship between China, Japan, and Korea has become very bad because of territorial disputes. So far, for 30 or 40 years, the relationship has become bad over a small rocky island that humans do not live on. It is really sad. As a Buddhist, I think that if Korea or China wants that small rocky island, we can give it [give up Japanese claims to it]. Of course I know that to Japanese politicians, this is impossible. The important thing is that we have to meet steadily, and keep talking. Now. Abe's government is really right-wing and nationalist. In Japan, there is the Pacific Constitution [which outlawed the existence of a standing army]. Abe's government is trying to throw away that constitution, raise an army, and become a country that starts wars. This is a really dangerous movement. When Chinese and Koreans are angry and resist this [trend in Japan], it gives me big power. To the people who are resisting this part of Japan, I want to be together. I want to walk with people who want peace in Korea and China.

Buddhism. Christianity. Different religious denominations. Ecumenicalism. To pray together is to change the situation. I strongly believe this. Thank you! ​

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Video footage by Rodney Harold