Aaron Glantz

OAKLAND, California, Oct 31 2006 (IPS) — Legendary musician and social justice activist Harry Belafonte grew up on the streets of Harlem, New York and Jamaica. After serving in World War II, he returned to New York and began a successful acting and singing career.

Along with his rise to worldwide stardom, Belafonte became deeply involved in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and was close friends with the Rev. Martin Luther King. In the 1980s he helped initiate the “We Are the World” single which helped raise millions of dollars in aid to Africa. He also hosted former South African President Nelson Mandela on his triumphant visit to the United States.

Belafonte has been a longtime critic of U.S. foreign policy. IPS caught up with him at the annual convention here of the California chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), the nation’s oldest civil rights group.

IPS: How would you view this year’s election [on Nov. 7] in the tradition of elections that you have viewed over the last half century?

BELAFONTE: The expectations are that the Democrats will win both the House as well as the Senate and that there will be an opportunity to break this chain of violence and the absence of firm and positive national leadership that has been lacking for so long. Having said that, however, I am concerned that beyond wanting to get rid of the right-wing administration and the forces that have molded so much of the nation’s character over the last decade or so, I’m not sure that those who aspire to political power to change this regime have brought us a platform or ideas or thoughts about governance that we can wrap our enthusiasm around.

IPS: When you mention that, I think immediately of Hurricane Katrina. This was something that was all over the news a year ago, a tremendous tragedy. President George W. Bush looked terrible, and then when I look at all the campaigns around the country, I don’t see the Democrats talking much about Hurricane Katrina.

HB: I think your observations are accurate. The Democrats do not talk much about Katrina. But then again, I do not think the Democrats talk much about anything that has to do with the plight of the poor. I think they focus on middle-class loss or middle-class aspirations and very little attention is being paid to the millions of people who are at or below the poverty line, who have been wholly unattended.

IPS: Why do you think the Democrats are not talking about issues surrounding poor people?

HB: Well, I don’t believe the Democrats have been exempt from the kind of contamination that has overrun this country culturally. I think we are a nation that is culturally rooted in greed and I think that those negative elements have blurred the visions of the people of this country.

So the Democrats are playing the same game that the Republicans play. I think their values are very much like the values of the Republicans – maybe not the kind of right-wing extreme we’re experiencing. But the right-wing extremism did not originate with Republicans. For a very long time this nation was governed by extreme forces politically who were Democrats – all from the South – many of whom since the Civil Rights Movement have never forgiven the Democratic Party or the people of this country for reversing the kind of repressive policies that we were experiencing.

Democrats have had their share of villainy. Nothing more attests to that fact than the spinelessness that was revealed by those who voted for supplying Bush with all the mandates and excuses that he needed to take us into war, as immoral as many said it is and tragic and illegal and all the other attendant descriptions. I don’t think the Democratic Party leads us to any sense of a new future.

IPS: You’ve called President Bush the biggest tyrant and terrorist in the world today. Do you stand by that and how would you compare that to the Democrats who might be in control of Congress?

HB: Well, I think I was a little bit hasty in calling him the greatest tyrant. I make that observation only because I have not met all the tyrants; I was a little bit off the mark in describing him as the greatest. But in the face of not having met all the tyrants, he is certainly the primary candidate. I think the worst of all bedfellows is arrogance wedded to ignorance, and I think that Bush, like most Americans, blurred the villainy that we have put on so many hundreds of thousands of people in the Middle East and other parts of the world with our military interventions and how we use words like “collateral damage” and all these soft words to blur the moral bankruptcy that is central to our political values, foreign and domestic.

To that extent you can describe Osama bin Laden as a terrorist, a man who has been smitten by the worst aspects of civil villainy. I think one can say the same thing about Bush. He lied to the American people. It was a very severe lie that led to a war and in that war, just American deaths have already equaled the number of people who died on 9/11.

Now you add to that the tens of thousands of wounded and not to mention the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people in the Middle East whose lives are destroyed, who are dead, and hundreds of thousands more who are maimed forever. It’s a disaster beyond human imagination and certainly beyond civil acceptability. So yes, I think President Bush has governed with terror. He’s made terror central to the American psyche.

I think a lot depends not only on how we apply ourselves at the polls – that’s just the first line of strategy – but also how we conduct ourselves in moving outside the box, bringing new values to our American democracy. Looking at it as political and social rights of citizens, the right to free medicine, free education, free social care for so those who are incapable. We need to find our compassion and our passion and our moral centre.

IPS: If I can ask you, we’re here at the NAACP convention and I couldn’t help noticing that this event is cosponsored by Wal-Mart. As somebody who’s talking about the importance of universal health care and is also one of the keynote speakers at this convention, how did you feel when you saw that?

HB: I was somewhat surprised to see that Wal-Mart was an accepted sponsor at this event. Obviously, the NAACP, which has made mistakes before, is from time to time evidencing the flaws that still touch our organisation. The NAACP is an important organisation. It’s certainly one of the most enduring, rooting in positive purpose and it has over the many decades served our citizens honourably, but sometimes they make mistakes and obviously in this instance everyone is desperate for resources and how to keep the mechanisms of organisations alive for social and human service. In the course of that, they sometimes go to places that many of us would rather that they not go.

IPS: I want to ask you finally, what keeps you going? It must be easy for someone like yourself who has achieved a certain level of comfort to relax and enjoy that comfort.

HB: I think there is much unfinished business. When I think about stepping away, as one does from time to time in the midst of great frustration, I come to the realisation that stepping away is unacceptable. There is still a great deal of villainy universally in the human family and I think we are all mandated to try to fix problems if we can exercise our responsibility to do that. I was born in poverty and I understood its ravages for a long time and as long as there’s need, I’ll be connected to something.