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See terms at discover.com/credit card. Hey

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everyone, you're listening to Code Switch. I'm

0:23

B.A. Parker. And I'm Gene Dunby. So

0:25

Gene. What's up? When I last

0:27

visited D.C., we grabbed this Uber together.

0:29

Do you remember this? There

0:32

we go. Fun fact, did you know

0:35

that the Pan-African flag is the green is for

0:37

the Irish? Are you

0:39

serious? In solidarity with their struggle. What

0:42

did you just tell me to do? That's what

0:44

Marcus Garvey was interviewed in 1920 and he

0:46

was like, it's black, red, and green. The

0:48

green is for Irish solidarity. Yeah. I

0:53

still cannot process this. Wait, what? Is that true,

0:55

Parker? What? Kinda,

0:57

sorta. Okay,

1:01

the more common story about the

1:03

green in that flag is that

1:06

it symbolizes the natural fertility of

1:08

Africa. Right, that's what I heard. Right, but also

1:10

it makes sense why

1:12

that story is compelling enough that we

1:14

both believe it. I

1:16

mean, Garvey was known for his

1:18

solidarity with Irish self-determination. And

1:21

he was outspoken during the Irish

1:23

War of Independence and often drew

1:25

parallels between Irish freedom and black

1:27

freedom. And Irish people have a

1:29

reputation for solidarity with colonized people because

1:32

they themselves were colonized by the

1:34

Brits. And look, in the

1:36

context of where we were going in

1:38

the Uber, it made sense.

1:41

We just walk, where is it this? Oh,

1:44

it's right there. Okay, oh, we got

1:46

42 seconds. So you took me

1:48

to this Irish pub called Kelly's Irish Toms. It's right

1:50

near Union Station here in DC. Not that far from

1:52

the NPR building, as a matter of fact. Give

1:55

me your thirsty, your famished, your

1:57

befuddled masses. Okay.

2:00

The Fuddled? The Fuddled. I

2:03

was trying to find something that was mentioned in a

2:05

book from the 90s called Black and

2:07

Green. Okay. It's about the

2:10

history of black and Irish civil

2:12

rights movements and the author,

2:14

Brian Dooley, wrote about seeing an unexpected

2:16

picture up in that pub and I

2:18

wanted to see if it was still

2:20

there. There you go. There he

2:23

is! Wait, there he goes! Alright,

2:25

Gene, what are we looking

2:27

at here? We got

2:29

a picture of Frederick Douglass, old

2:32

timey looking, like 1800s photo. Just

2:34

kind of young here too. You brought

2:36

me to an Irish pub to find

2:39

Frederick Douglass and a picture

2:42

of Frederick Douglass that apparently has been up there for

2:44

like decades? That's right,

2:46

Gene! Okay, but how does that

2:48

make sense, Parker? Well, okay, that's what

2:50

I want to get into for this episode, Gene.

2:53

Beyond and before Marcus Garvey, there's

2:55

a long history of solidarity between

2:58

activists and civil rights leaders in

3:00

the US and Ireland and through

3:02

that exchange, we can get a

3:05

glimpse into how organizing gets more

3:07

complicated across borders and race. And

3:10

that history dates back to when Frederick

3:12

Douglass toured Ireland in 1845. Uh-huh.

3:16

So we're going to get into it. Stay

3:19

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4:49

right, so you were saying that Frederick

4:51

Douglass toured Ireland in 1845. Can you

4:53

say more about this, please? All right.

4:56

Very curious. So, to get into

4:58

it, I want to introduce you

5:00

to Cecilia Hartzell. My name is

5:02

Cecilia Hartzell. I am a historian.

5:04

Cecilia is from the US and

5:06

currently lives in Ireland, and she

5:08

gives talks on African-American history. And

5:10

one of her areas of expertise

5:13

is Frederick Douglass' visit to Ireland.

5:15

Okay, but why? Why

5:17

was Frederick Douglass in Ireland to begin with? So

5:21

in 1845, Douglass had just published his

5:23

memoir, Narrative of the Life of Frederick

5:25

Douglass. It was a call to

5:27

action around abolition. It made

5:30

Frederick Douglass, who was a fugitive from slavery,

5:33

one of the most famous people in the United States.

5:35

And that fame was dangerous. He

5:38

knew he was at risk of being

5:40

recaptured. By then, the

5:43

British had legally abolished slavery, so

5:45

fleeing across the pond made sense.

5:47

Right. So he did

5:49

that. So he was in Dublin,

5:52

Wexford, Limerick, up in

5:54

Belfast. All right, so Frederick

5:57

Douglass, he's touring around Ireland, living. free.

6:00

But what was he doing when

6:02

he was there? What was he doing in particular? He was giving

6:04

a lot of talks. He spent

6:06

a lot of time here talking

6:09

about abolition, American churches links to

6:11

slavery. There were a lot of

6:14

active anti-slavery societies on the British

6:16

Isles turning their causes toward ending

6:18

slavery in the US. African

6:21

Americans who escaped from slavery became sorry

6:23

if you will on a circuit going

6:25

over there to tell them what being

6:27

enslaved was about. And Douglas was really

6:29

the star of that circuit when he

6:31

went over in 1845. He's

6:34

given like TED talks for black

6:36

freedom basically. Basically. They were

6:38

very receptive to him. In fact,

6:40

it's through abolitionists in the UK

6:43

that Douglas is able to purchase

6:45

his own freedom. And

6:47

there were Irish activists who had

6:49

Douglas's attention whose works got reported

6:51

on in the States like Daniel

6:54

O'Connell. Douglas says that he

6:56

first came across Daniel

6:58

O'Connell by hearing his name cursed

7:00

by his masters. O'Connell

7:03

was known as the Liberator.

7:05

He led and won the fight

7:07

for Irish full citizenship in the

7:09

1830s. Daniel O'Connell was an

7:11

Irish nationalist who was focused

7:13

on Catholic emancipation. He

7:16

wasn't so much about Ireland leaving

7:18

the UK. He

7:20

was about Catholics being

7:23

able to practice their religion, being able to

7:25

inherit property, being able to serve

7:28

in Parliament without being

7:30

discriminated against. But that's not

7:32

why slave owners in Maryland were cursing him.

7:35

O'Connell was also an outspoken

7:37

abolitionist and he's been calling

7:39

out the United States' hypocrisy

7:41

for decades even

7:43

when it lost some popularity or

7:46

funding. O'Connell would never shake the hand

7:48

of a slave holder if he knew

7:50

him to be one and he would

7:52

never take a donation from a slave

7:54

holder saying he would never fire the

7:56

freedom of Ireland for the price of

7:59

slaves. Douglas really wanted

8:01

to see O'Connell in action, so

8:03

he dropped into a meeting he knew O'Connell

8:06

would be speaking at. In

8:08

one of Douglas' letters published in

8:10

an abolitionist newspaper, he recapped

8:12

the speech, writing, He said, Douglas

8:30

wrote a lot about how impressed he

8:32

was with O'Connell's speaking. I

8:46

have heard many speakers within the last four

8:48

years, but I confess, I have

8:51

never heard one by whom I was

8:53

more completely captivated than by

8:55

Mr. O'Connell. According

8:58

to his letter, he wasn't planning on

9:00

introducing himself, but while he was lingering

9:02

around hoping to get closer, Douglas'

9:05

friend got him an introduction, and that

9:07

was the one night the two men

9:09

met. Douglas was 27 and

9:11

O'Connell was 70. O'Connell

9:15

died two years after, and even though

9:17

they only met in person once, O'Connell

9:20

had already shifted Douglas' worldview.

9:23

Okay, but how so? Well, Douglas

9:26

was there at the start of the Great

9:28

Famine, which lasted from 1845 to 1852. So,

9:34

I guess we should probably give an explanatory comment here.

9:37

This is what a lot of us

9:39

know in the States as the potato famine, when

9:41

about a million people in Ireland died

9:44

of starvation or disease, and

9:46

that kicked off a half-century wave of

9:48

Irish folks immigrating to the United States by

9:50

the millions. And the famine

9:53

wasn't just about crop failure.

9:55

It was the result of

9:57

oppressive colonial policies. were

10:00

still growing crops, but since

10:02

the British controlled the farmland

10:04

and housing, the Irish couldn't feed

10:07

themselves. Their crops had to

10:09

be shipped out to Britain and the rest

10:11

of the empire in order to stay housed.

10:13

There was stark poverty across Ireland that Douglas

10:15

wrote about in an 1846 letter. I

10:19

see much here to remind me of my

10:22

former condition. He who

10:24

really and truly feels for the American

10:26

slave cannot steal his heart to

10:28

the woes of others. And

10:30

he who thinks himself an abolitionist yet

10:33

cannot enter into the wrongs of others

10:35

has yet to find a true foundation

10:37

for his anti-slavery faith. It's

10:40

kind of like that Audre Lorde quote.

10:43

It goes like, I'm not free while any woman

10:45

is unfree even when her shackles are

10:48

very different from my own. Exactly. Oh

10:50

my gosh. We love Jean the

10:52

Wominess. I think seeing the poverty

10:54

here, I think it broadened his

10:56

understanding that yes, things were

10:58

horrible for African Americans in America,

11:01

but there were chains of suffering

11:03

that linked people in Ireland to

11:05

African Americans as well. So

11:08

Douglas was in the UK for about 19

11:11

months. When he prepared to

11:13

leave Britain in 1847, he

11:15

quoted O'Connell in a speech called,

11:18

Farewell to the British People. O'Connell

11:20

once said, speaking of Ireland, how

11:23

truly or falsely that her history

11:25

may be traced like the

11:27

track of a wounded man through a crowd. This

11:30

description can be given of Ireland. How

11:33

much more true is it when applied to

11:36

the sons and daughters of Africa in

11:38

the United States? Their history

11:41

is nothing but blood, blood,

11:43

blood. Hmm.

11:48

Yeah, that's why Frederick Douglas might

11:50

be up on the wall of

11:53

an Irish pub in the US for decades.

11:55

Okay, okay, okay. But back to that

11:57

bar in D.C. We

12:00

should probably say that it's

12:02

a cop bar, like a really copied

12:05

cop bar. Yeah. The walls were

12:07

plastered with police badges. There

12:10

were a bunch of doors to police

12:12

cars on display. And those doors were

12:14

covered in signatures, I'm presuming that those

12:16

are the signatures of cops. Oh, I

12:18

looked it up. They were definitely cops

12:20

and FBI agents and all kinds of

12:23

law enforcement. Okay, okay. But that

12:25

portrait is a salute to Frederick

12:27

Douglass, you know, for his solidarity with Ireland. But

12:30

Irish American cops, you

12:32

know, who came to dominate policing in a lot of big cities,

12:34

like the ones that you and I grew up in, they

12:38

were smack in the middle of

12:41

a more contentious history between Irish

12:43

Americans and Black Americans here in the US.

12:45

Uh-huh. And when we come

12:48

back, we're going to fast forward to

12:50

1960s when a young Irish activist runs

12:52

into exactly that. Stay

12:55

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14:27

Heads up, this section contains depictions

14:29

of violence. Parker.

14:32

Jean. Coatswitch.

14:34

All right, so Parker, you've been leading me down this

14:36

rabbit hole about how a visit

14:39

Frederick Douglass took to Ireland in 1845

14:43

sparked this whole history of

14:45

solidarity and exchange between black activists

14:47

here in the United States and

14:49

Irish Republican activists, both

14:51

of whom were fighting in very different contexts

14:54

for self-determination. So all right,

14:56

we're moving to the 1900s

14:59

after the Republic of Ireland won

15:01

its independence and Northern Ireland was

15:03

established as part of the United Kingdom. Okay, my

15:06

feet is pulled up. I got my chin in

15:08

my hands. Let's go. Okay.

15:13

In 1969, a young member of

15:15

parliament from Northern Ireland named Bernadette

15:17

Devlin came to the US

15:19

on a highly publicized tour. When

15:22

she was 21 and considered a bit of

15:24

a rabble-rouser, one of her opponents

15:26

called her Fidel Castro in a mini

15:28

skirt. I mean, that's one

15:31

of those things that's clearly meant to be an insult, but I

15:33

feel like a lot of people would think it was a compliment.

15:37

I mean, so yeah, kind of

15:39

like Douglass in the 1840s, Devlin

15:42

came to the US to get support

15:44

for the Irish and the plight they were

15:46

facing back in Ireland. This

15:48

was at the start of a time we now

15:50

know as the Troubles. I guess maybe

15:52

this is an explanatory comma. I think so. Let's

15:55

do an explanatory comma. The Troubles was

15:57

this period between the 1960s and the 1960s. 1990s

16:01

when Irish nationalists and Irish Republicans

16:03

were fighting for Northern Ireland to

16:05

be a country that was independent

16:08

from the United Kingdom. Yeah, and

16:10

the British government condemned the Irish

16:12

fighting for independence as terrorists and

16:15

used force to quell any protests.

16:18

Yeah, we should say, like, and be

16:20

really clear here, the troubles, if you

16:22

don't know, were really, really

16:24

ugly. Like, there was this infamous

16:27

Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972

16:30

when these British soldiers were stationed

16:32

in Ireland, shot dozens of unarmed

16:34

Irish protesters. Some of the

16:36

radical Irish nationalist groups carried out bombings that

16:39

killed other Irish civilians, which was controversial stuff

16:41

even among, you know, their fellow nationalists who

16:44

wanted the British going. And these bombings are

16:46

part of where those terrorism accusations come from.

16:48

Right, and a lot of the

16:50

time that conflict is oversimplified as

16:52

an issue between Catholics and

16:54

Protestants, but it

16:57

had very little to do with religion actually. The

16:59

Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland

17:01

were fighting against things like

17:03

hiring discrimination, disenfranchisement, housing

17:06

discrimination, police brutality.

17:08

You know, sounds

17:10

familiar? Yeah, just a little

17:12

bit. Just a little bit. Devlin also

17:14

wanted American citizens to know how they

17:16

were complicit in what was happening to

17:18

the people in Northern Ireland. Here

17:21

she is on Meet the Press during that 1969 visit.

17:23

I think that America

17:25

should realize that America

17:27

supplies the guns to the British

17:29

government, we supply the arms

17:32

to the Royal Ulster Constabulary, we

17:34

supply the arms to the B-Specials who shoot

17:36

people in North Maryland with us. Hmm,

17:41

I mean, that framing, you know,

17:43

that America is supplying an occupying

17:45

force overseas that has

17:47

some contemporary resonances, but

17:50

back then how did people here in

17:52

the United States react to the case that

17:55

she was making? Well, Devlin was

17:57

trying to court Irish-American support

18:01

and was surprised at the friction she

18:03

was running up against, specifically

18:06

their hostility towards Black people.

18:09

Like Frederick Douglass and Daniel O'Connell,

18:11

Douglass thought that there was obvious

18:13

similarity between her experience as a

18:15

Northern Irish Catholic and Black struggles

18:18

in the US. She

18:20

wrote that solidarity into her speeches,

18:23

she visited Black Panther chapters. Later

18:26

in life, she'd befriend Angela Davis. At

18:29

one of her events in Detroit, she reportedly

18:32

refused to speak until the Black

18:34

folks online were let in because,

18:36

you know, it's 1969. Yeah,

18:38

right, right, right. Meanwhile, Devlin thought

18:40

she'd find solidarity with the Irish immigrants

18:42

that had come to the US after

18:45

the Great Famine through the early 20th

18:47

century because they've come

18:49

to America, were oppressed themselves,

18:52

and faced discrimination in the US. But

18:56

there wasn't really. Right, and throughout

18:58

the 20th century, there's this idea, I was thinking

19:00

about this historian at Harvard, his name's Khalil Jabbar-Mohamed,

19:02

and he's written a lot about the history of

19:04

policing in America. And he said

19:06

that policing was central to the

19:09

way Irish people went from something of a

19:11

pariah class in the United States to

19:14

folding into this broader tapestry of

19:16

American whiteness, like securing police

19:18

jobs in cities like New York and

19:21

Philly and Chicago and your hometown of

19:23

Baltimore. It created

19:25

this pathway for patronage, for building

19:27

local political influence. And over time,

19:30

that allowed Irish people in

19:32

the United States to shed this dubious reputation for

19:35

criminality because they were now the

19:37

agents of law and order. But becoming

19:40

cops also meant that

19:42

those same Irish Americans

19:44

were often enforcing the social

19:46

control of Black folks in those same cities. I

19:49

think that's what's bugging me because there was

19:51

this window to maybe organize and

19:53

see their situations as

19:55

similar. Instead, a lot

19:57

of the Irish in America... did

20:00

this thing where they found encouragement

20:03

and opportunity in separating themselves from

20:05

black people and I'm not

20:07

the only one disappointed Devlin

20:10

was so disheartened by the rhetoric of

20:12

a lot of the Irish Americans she

20:14

encountered She decided to show

20:16

them how she really felt about their behavior.

20:18

Okay? What did

20:21

she do? All right Well the mayor

20:23

of New York had given Devlin a

20:25

key to the city as a way

20:27

to honor the work She'd done in

20:29

support of Irish Catholics. Okay, and

20:32

in Bernadette

20:34

was given an award By

20:36

the mayor and she gave

20:39

it to the Black Panther Party You

20:41

heard that right She turned

20:43

around and re-gifted the key to

20:45

the Harlem chapter of the Black

20:47

Panthers with the message quote To

20:50

all these people to whom this city and

20:52

this country belong. I Returned

20:54

what is rightfully theirs this

20:57

symbol of the freedom of New York

20:59

end quote. Oh wow I

21:02

mean, I don't know what the Black

21:04

Panthers would want with the kid to the city But I

21:06

kind of get the symbolism she's gone for yeah, but Parker

21:10

Whose voice was that that we just

21:12

heard that's Reverend Herbert Daughtry senior He's

21:14

a black civil rights activist and the founder of

21:16

the House of the Lord Church in Brooklyn where

21:19

he grew up He's

21:21

worked with Reverend Jesse Jackson.

21:23

He was the spiritual advisor

21:25

to Tupac What

21:27

this is the kind of cat we should all know about

21:29

like he's hanging out in the background of every photo of

21:32

the last 50 years He's

21:36

93 now and Activism

21:39

has been his life's work

21:41

and he has the slogan

21:43

save the planet Save

21:46

the people and Reverend Dodger is

21:48

part of the next iteration of

21:50

this exchange between Irish

21:52

and black activists in 1983

21:57

the Reverend was invited to visit Northern Ireland

21:59

with the small small group of black

22:01

activists and artists to bear witness to

22:03

the Catholic struggles during the troubles. It

22:06

was captured in the documentary, The Black

22:09

and the Green, by the late filmmaker

22:11

St. Clair Bourne. You know,

22:13

such a thing that us in the

22:15

Republican movement would not think about, things

22:18

that are split into people. It's critical

22:20

now. If there were ever a time

22:22

that people of goodwill,

22:25

progressive people, right, needed

22:27

each other, you know, now

22:29

is the time. Because if we don't find

22:31

each other, these people who constitute the

22:33

rulership of the United States and other

22:35

Western countries are going to blow up

22:37

the world. Full disclosure, Jean,

22:40

this documentary is what led me down

22:42

this path in the first place. And

22:44

you just heard Daughtry's voice in that film.

22:47

Huh, okay. So why was Reverend Daughtry

22:50

invited to Northern Ireland? Well, Reverend

22:52

Daughtry was a co-founder of the

22:55

National Black United Front, which focused

22:57

on being radical leftist

22:59

Pan-African Christians, which is a

23:02

vibe. He

23:04

gained notoriety in the 1970s

23:06

for leading protests after the assault

23:08

of several young black teenagers in

23:11

downtown Brooklyn. And

23:13

Irish Republican organizers took notice.

23:16

Daughtry was also organizing in solidarity

23:18

with the Irish struggle. In

23:22

1981, there were the hunger strikes

23:24

in Ireland carried out by Irish

23:26

Republican paramilitary leaders in prison in

23:28

Northern Ireland. They

23:30

were striking against Margaret Thatcher's

23:33

government, revoking their status as

23:35

essentially prisoners of war. And

23:38

Reverend Daughtry remembers it being part

23:40

of the larger movement. Basically,

23:43

the hunger strikes were separately demanding

23:46

independence from Britain. They

23:49

had been at it 800 years, they say. Ultimately,

23:52

10 prisoners died of

23:54

starvation. And one of them,

23:57

Bobby Sands, was an elected member of parliament

23:59

at the White House. time. Bobby

24:03

Sands was a leader

24:05

of the hunger strike who

24:07

died in prison and

24:11

became close to the Irish

24:13

struggle. The

24:16

second hunger strike drew support from all over

24:18

the world and Irish Republicans

24:20

gained political power and agency. Irish

24:23

Republicans, IRA members and reps for Sinn

24:26

Féin, which is an Irish Republican political

24:28

party, were the ones who reached out

24:30

to these black American activists, in

24:32

part because they admired what the civil rights

24:35

movement did in the United States. And

24:38

while Daughtry and his fellow activists

24:40

ended up accepting the invitation to

24:42

go to Ireland, they were a

24:44

little hesitant based on their interactions

24:46

with Irish Americans in the States.

24:50

Okay, so that's kind of the flip side of

24:53

Devlin's experience in the States. Yeah,

24:55

and it's something they were having

24:57

a hard time reconciling. Like

25:00

in Ireland, the Irish were the

25:02

oppressed, but in the US, towards

25:05

black people, the Irish were members of the

25:07

oppressors. Yeah, people in the US can kind of

25:10

get caught up in the mechanics of how race

25:13

and power work here in the US. But we

25:15

sometimes forget that, you know, those

25:17

mechanics don't really map onto the rest of the world

25:19

and that this works very differently

25:21

elsewhere. Yeah, and on Reverend

25:23

Daughtry's way to Ireland, he had

25:26

a layover in London, and he

25:28

had found himself chatting with a

25:30

British theologian who assumed Daughtry was

25:33

on a missionary trip. He said, you're

25:36

going up there to try to convert them.

25:39

And we'd all look at this

25:41

thing and all

25:43

the disgust and the contempt that

25:46

is usually reserved for us. Before

25:48

he even got to the

25:50

island, Reverend Daughtry started to

25:52

experience and understand those foreign

25:55

dynamics. It kind of blew my mind,

25:58

you know, the world. Here's this. white

26:00

dude. Now he included me

26:03

in his group against

26:05

some other white folks. Once

26:09

he landed, Reverend Godfrey said that being

26:12

in parts of Northern Ireland felt like being

26:14

back home. He could so

26:16

clearly see his experience as a black

26:18

person in the US within the

26:20

streets of Belfast. Sort of

26:22

like what Frederick Douglass was saying, like a century and

26:24

a half before, when he said, you know, I see

26:26

much here to remind me of my former condition. So

26:30

it was an economic

26:33

oppression, economic exploitation. People

26:36

tried to confine it to religions

26:38

and Roman Catholics, but

26:40

it was it was people that

26:43

were being treated that way. Godfrey

26:46

was also struck by how present

26:48

violence was in every part of

26:50

their journey. From the

26:52

rubble aftermath they witnessed in some neighborhoods

26:54

to the recent histories of where they

26:56

slept. So

26:59

here in Belfast, they just put

27:01

me up in a home with

27:04

a family. And it's so happened that

27:06

the family they put me with was

27:08

a family who had experienced

27:10

a brunt of British oppression.

27:13

Reverend Godfrey stayed in the house of

27:15

a woman named Suzanne Bunting. Her

27:18

husband was a man named Ronnie

27:20

Bunting, a leader in

27:22

the Irish National Liberation Army, a

27:24

group that waged a very personal

27:26

war against the British Army and

27:29

the police force in Northern Ireland.

27:31

They had Hatchet knocked

27:33

down the door, the

27:36

British, to get to her house. Her

27:39

husband had been killed, shot nine

27:41

times. Two of his friends

27:43

in the next room was killed. She

27:47

was shot four times and

27:49

her daughter had to crawl

27:51

over the bodies to get

27:53

to the neighbors to tell them what had happened.

27:56

And that's why I stayed. This

28:00

happened just three years prior

28:02

to Daughtry's visit. That's

28:07

one of the sticky things about this history,

28:09

right? Like of course, there's this awful violent

28:11

oppression the UK is enacting on the people from

28:14

Northern Ireland. And at the same time, the IRA

28:16

is notorious for its violence. Like there was a

28:18

time in big British cities

28:20

where you couldn't find trash cans in public

28:22

because that was a place that the IRA

28:25

would sometimes stash bombs. They blew up buses

28:27

in London, right? It was scary. Yeah, the

28:29

group of activists Daughtry traveled with

28:31

were also more of the nonviolent

28:34

type. Some were even mentees

28:36

of Martin Luther King Jr. But

28:39

the longer the trip went, the

28:41

more these activists were becoming unsure

28:43

of that nonviolent stance. In

28:46

fact, Reverend Daughtry has heard the

28:48

documentary saying, quote, I

28:51

don't believe there is any such

28:53

thing as nonviolent change. What

28:56

we tend to call the nonviolent sixties

28:58

wasn't very nonviolent at all. The

29:01

question isn't one of nonviolence.

29:04

The question is who's going

29:06

to receive the violence and

29:08

whether there will be reciprocity, end

29:11

quote. So

29:16

Parker, what did Daughtry end up getting out of

29:19

this visit to Ireland? Well,

29:21

like what we heard from Frederick

29:23

Douglass after his visit to Ireland,

29:25

Reverend Daughtry talked about this ability

29:27

to see the oppression that's not

29:30

just outside our front door. It's

29:32

what Reverend Daughtry kept telling me during

29:34

our interview, his mission statement for the

29:36

past 60 odd years. Save

29:38

the planet, save the people. To

29:44

the oppressed, to the captives of

29:46

the oppressed, to heal

29:48

the sick, to open the blind eyes. That

29:51

has been the priority is the

29:54

least of these,

29:56

the working to

29:58

bring quality. life

30:00

to the world's masses. Not

30:04

to neglect the rich, but

30:07

to prioritize the poor. And

30:13

the legacy of that solidarity is

30:15

something we're seeing in activism today.

30:18

Right, like you see organizers associated with the

30:20

movement for Black lives or the indigenous activists

30:22

in the land-back movement tying

30:24

their cause pretty closely to those

30:27

of Palestinians, as one example. Right.

30:29

In November, 2023, over

30:32

a thousand Black pastors in the

30:34

U.S. called on President Biden to

30:37

take action towards a ceasefire in Gaza. One

30:40

of those pastors is Reverend

30:43

Daughtry's daughter, Bishop Leah Daughtry.

30:46

Here she is talking to Joy Reed on

30:48

MSNBC. Because as people of faith, as

30:50

people of conscience, and given

30:53

the call on who we purport

30:55

to serve, that is Creator God,

30:57

we could not stand by and

30:59

watch the horror

31:01

that is taking place in

31:03

Gaza and in Israel as innocent lives

31:06

are being decimated. And

31:08

across the pond, activists and politicians

31:10

from the Republic of Ireland and

31:13

Northern Ireland have been leading the way

31:15

in calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

31:18

In January of 2024, there was

31:20

a march in Dublin. One

31:22

of the speakers was none other than

31:25

Bernadette Devlin. My

31:27

generation knows

31:29

what oppression was like. We

31:32

know what it was like for

31:34

a whole community to

31:37

be defined as guilty. Now

31:40

in her 70s, Bernadette is still fighting

31:42

the good fight. It's

31:45

something that compares with what the

31:47

people of Gaza have to endure.

31:52

But the generations before us

31:55

on this side of the border know

31:58

what it was like. to

32:01

be an oppressed nation. So

32:05

I remember last fall there was this Israeli minister

32:07

who said that Palestinians should quote, go to

32:09

Ireland or the deserts. And at the time

32:11

I was like, okay, he's just pulling some

32:14

random country out of his ass, right? Like

32:16

the way Bugs Bunny tells people to

32:18

go to Timbuktu. And then I

32:21

learned about this longer shared

32:23

history between the Irish and

32:25

the Palestinians. Because both of them were

32:27

colonies of the same British

32:29

empire. This is dude Lord

32:31

Arthur Balfour, who was the prime minister of the

32:33

UK. He was the foreign secretary of the UK

32:36

at different points in his career. But

32:38

he was nicknamed Bloody Balfour for

32:40

how violently he oppressed the Irish

32:42

and their calls for freedom. And

32:45

Balfour is also the namesake of

32:47

the Balfour Declaration, which paved the

32:49

way for the state of

32:51

Israel and Palestine. So he fast forward

32:53

all these decades later and maybe it's unsurprising that

32:55

Ireland was the first European Union member

32:57

to call for the creation of a Palestinian state that

33:00

was way back in 1980. It

33:02

was one of the first countries in the EU to

33:04

demand a ceasefire in Gaza last fall.

33:07

And Ireland is set to

33:09

join South Africa's genocide case against Israel

33:12

in the world court. You

33:16

know, I think about

33:18

this journey we've been on, learning

33:20

about the history of the solidarity.

33:23

And it's about so much more

33:25

than finding it super interesting. I

33:28

mean, frankly, Gene, this story gives

33:30

me hope. Can you say

33:32

more about that? Well, it showed me

33:34

what looking out for one another can actually

33:37

look like. It can look

33:39

like supporting abolition. It can look like providing

33:41

aid. It can look like advocating for people

33:43

who can't speak for themselves at the moment.

33:46

It can look like literally liberating

33:49

the oppressed. Yeah, it kind

33:51

of makes me think of that Audrey Lord quote we talked about earlier. And

33:53

you know, the false trap of

33:56

a singular struggle. Any

33:58

opportunity we have to underline that point. is

34:00

the opportunity we should take. And

34:03

also, to the extent that it's a singular

34:05

struggle, it's because of the British Empire. And

34:10

that's your show! You can

34:12

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Switch. And thanks to everyone who

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34:46

Comm. It's edited by Dalia Martana.

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And a big shout out to the rest of the Code Switch

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thanks to our Frederick Douglass, Sa'it

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