Alice Walker: Outlaw, Renegade, Rebel, Pagan

Democracy Now!. Posted February 14, 2006.

Editor's Note: Renowned author, poet and activist Alice Walker was the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, which she was awarded in 1983 for "The Color Purple."

Last month, one thousand people gathered at a church in Oakland, Calif., to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Media Alliance. Onstage at the event, Amy Goodman of syndicated radio show Democracy Now! interviewed Alice Walker. What follows is an edited transcript of Goodman's interview.

Amy Goodman: I was just saying to Alice that I think one of the last times that I saw her was right before the invasion. It was International Women's Day, March 8, 2003.

She was standing in front of the White House with Maxine Hong Kingston, Terry Tempest Williams, and a number of other women. It wasn't a large group, about 15 or so women, and they stood there, arms locked, and the police told them to move, and they said no. And they all got arrested.

We were trying to get their message out on community radio. I was interviewing them on cell phone. The police didn't appreciate that. So, really, the last time that I saw her was in the prison cell with her. But, Alice, you said that day, as we were in the paddy wagon or in the police wagon, that it was the happiest day of your life. Why?

Alice Walker: Well, you were there. I have so much admiration for this woman, so much love for Amy. ... So I was very happy that she had appeared to talk to us about why we were there. Nobody else was asking.

And so, there we were, arrested in this patrol thing, and actually I did feel incredibly happy, because what happens when you want to express your outrage, your sorrow, your grief -- grief is basically where we are now, just bone-chilling grief -- when you're able to gather your own forces and deal with your own fears the night before, and you arrive, you show up, and you put yourself there, and you know that you're just a little person -- you know, you're just a little person -- and there's this huge machine that's going relentlessly pretty much all over the world, and then you gather with all of the other people who are just as small as you are, but you're together, and you actually do what you have set out to do, which is to express total disgust, disagreement, disappointment about the war in Iraq.

About the possibility of it starting up again, all of these children, many of them under the age of 15, about to be terrorized, brutalized and killed -- so many of them -- so, to be able to make any kind of gesture that means that the people who are about to be harmed will know that we are saying we don't agree — just the ability to do that made me so joyful.

I was completely happy. And I think that we could learn to live in that place of full self-expression against disaster and self-possession and happiness.

AG: You have had a continued relationship with the police officer who put handcuffs on you.

AW: Yes, because he really didn't want to do it. And I could see that they really did not want to arrest us. And he, this African-American man, truly did not want to arrest me. And I totally understand that. Would you want to arrest me? No. No, no. You would not. So even as they were handcuffing me, they were sort of apologizing … I thought that you put the handcuffs [with] your hands in front, but they put them behind you ...

Then later, after we were released ... They take your shoes, I was there trying to put my shoes back on, and he came over, and he got down on his knees, and he said, "Let me help you." And I said, "Sure."

And I put my foot out, and he helped me with my shoes, and we started talking about his children. Well, first of all, he told me about his wife. He said, "You know, when I told my wife that I had arrested you, she was not thrilled." And so, then I asked him about his family, and he told me about his children, and I told him I write children's books. And so he said, "Oh, you do? Because, you know, there's nothing to read. The children are all watching television." I said, "That's true." So it ended up with me sending books to them and feeling that this is a very good way to be with the police.

... I realized fairly recently -- I went to Houston to the Astrodome to take books and other things to the [Katrina evacuees], and the police, a lot of them also African-Americans ... It was very clear that they, like the people who had lost their homes, really wanted some books. But, as one of them said to me, "I really would like a book, but I'm not the people. I'm the police." And I said to him, and then some of the people said that, too, they said, "You know, these people are the police, they're not the people."

However, I said to the people and to the police that the police are the people, and we have to remember that the police are the people ... And so, there they were, these big guys who probably had not had anybody offer them a book to read in years, if ever. They had gone into the army and into the police force because they did not have an education. That's part of why they're police ...

AG: I was reading Evelyn White's biography of you, called "Alice Walker: A Life," and she goes back to 1967, and you had just come to New York, and you were submitting an essay to American Scholar. It was 1967, so you were about 23 years old. And it was entitled "The Civil Rights Movement: What Good Was It?" You won first prize. It was published. "The Civil Rights Movement: What Good Was It?"

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »