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My point is that we
grow up we go to school
we go to junior high school and they teach us about
in my day they used to call it civics I don't know if they still do but of they teach us about government
they teach us about democracy
they talk about the three branches of government than that
you know that
checks and balances
and they give you the impression that this is what democracy is about that you put the
democracy on the blackboard yeah
they make a diagram that and show the executive the judiciary and the legislative and the arrows
well of course
historically
that's not how change has come about
and the experience of black people
is one striking example of it
even after the fourteenth and fifteenth amendment was added to the constitution after the civil
war
it didn't matter
the law wasn't going to be enforced by the President of the united states
and so in order to make the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments come alive
black people had to take it unto themselves which is what they did in the fifties and
sixties yeah
and this is also true of the labor movement for the labor movement
that's even more dramatic because the labor it didn't even have
amendments to the constitution that gave them rights and way that black people finally got
right to fourteenth fifteenth amendment
and working people with no constitutional rights
the constitution after all is not a document that
favors the
economic needs of people Roosevelt saw that that's why he proposed at one point an 0:01:44.820,0:01:46.590 economic bill of rights
no the constitution does not provide a right to
health care or to housing or to food
and so working people had to go out and strike and boycott face the police face the
national guard
they had to do it themselves that's how the eight hour day was won