WBEZ Radio Interview 2001
“…If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so [that now I would have the right] to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I’d be OK.
But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in this society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf…” They were behind the weapon. (He is referring to “they” as being the Warren Court which stood “behind” the Constitution in their decisions, and the Constitution of the U.S. is a “weapon”! Weapon: As in an instrument to be used against someone.)
