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TI: Yeah, so during the '60s and '70s you had these spiritual forces, Martin Luther King, Cecil, sort of there at the movement.

JM: But they were also very radical.

TI: Yeah, radical. Do you see the same thing happening today when you see Black Lives Matter, is there a spiritual component that you're...

JM: Yes, I see a lot of clergy involved with the movements. But what I feel in terms of a lot of these movements is that it lacks a cohesive leadership. So I think you've got splinters of the protesters who were outside like the Marriott for Martin Luther King, and then you had protesters on the freeway that stopped the bridge traffic, then you had protesters at Yerba Buena. I'm not sure that they're the same people. I think that there are many splinter groups, and they all believe in justice for the Woods family, but I'm not sure that there's a cohesive leadership. It's like the Occupy movement when they occupied Embarcadero, I mean, the Justin Herman Plaza, and the mayor never -- that was Mayor Lee also -- never got the police to kick 'em out or anything like that. We brought food to them if they needed food. But it wasn't, they didn't have a cohesive kind of leadership that would say, okay, what is it that we are demanding, what is it that is needed here? And I think with Martin, he went to... what's his name? President Kennedy, President...

TI: Johnson?

JM: Johnson, oh, my god. Okay, I remember Nixon because of Vietnam. [Laughs] Johnson, and he sat at the table. I think there is not enough of the willingness to sit at the table together and say, "Here is what my people need." Here is what the injustices are, here is what is needed, here the sanitation are striking, here the bus boycott's happening. These are the reasons why we can no longer in the back of the bus, we can no longer get minimum wage or miniscule wage. We need to have more economic justice, we need voting rights. There needs to be cohesiveness about what it just. It's like with the reparations movement, it had a real focus. The testimonies were about the injustices and the effect on people's lives, and it was very focused. I think that there is not enough focus.

TI: So are these current movements, are they reaching out to you and Cecil for, not advice, but just maybe connections? Because the two of you are so well-connected.

JM: Well, they come on Sundays, they celebrate with us. They're not yelling and screaming, they're not interrupting us, but I'm just saying that I think they consider us the people, part of the people, and they know our history, some of them do. Some of them don't even know who we are, but some of them do. And the ones that do know what we do, they cannot protest. There's nothing more revolutionary than feeding people, than working with the poor. There's nothing more revolutionary than working with the poor. And revolution is about love, it's about what Che Guevara said: revolution is inspired by deep love for your people, for the people, for the suffering of the people. So I think that that's the kind of spiritual, moral leadership I'm talking about, but it's very radically-based. It's radically conclusively based, and it gives voice to everybody.

TI: You mentioned spiritual, because talking about your life, you didn't grow up a religious person.

JM: I was religious for a couple years because I thought maybe if I believed in God he would stop the incest, and he never stopped the incest, so I figured that he didn't give a shit and he wasn't listening to me. [Laughs] And I really, really am very disillusioned with -- and I'm being nice -- about institutional religion because I think it is very exclusive. Sunday mornings were some of the most segregated times of the week where you have all white people in one place and all black people in another place. And I think Glide is quite well-known for its diversity, because every Sunday we have people not only from different communities locally, but people from France and Japan and China, England, all over the world. So I believe it is that inclusivity, and part of the vehicle of inclusivity is being able to tell your story and feel heard and feel respected. And so poor people who come through our doors, we always say, "Welcome, we love, you." "Welcome, we love you." And it's a different kind of environment, it's not, "Okay, get in line, get your ticket." It really is, "Welcome, we love you." And if somebody comes late, we say, "Give 'em a bag to go."

TI: When you say diversity, how do you get the people with means, the wealthy people to show up? It seems like if you're encouraging and catering the poor, the homeless to be there, how do you get the other --

JM: Oh, honey, we're connected. [Laughs] We have friends. I mean, people in the tech world, they come to Glide to volunteer. People who, like, run Google...

TI: Why do they come? Do they feel guilty, or why are they coming?

JM: I think they come for the experience because they don't want to be perceived as dehumanizing or hating the poor or wanting to get rid of the homeless.

TI: But are they there for unconditional love?

JM: You can't change somebody else, you can only change yourself. You can only lead by example, you can only show what is possible by being yourself.

TI: But getting them there and just experiencing...

JM: Yes. If you get them into the room with a person who is scruffy and dirty, and they smile at him and that person says, "Thank you," that person suddenly becomes a human being, it's not just a person off the street. So I'm just saying that... and people who believe in what we do and experience what we do, it spreads. So Warren Buffett is an example of someone who is of means, I would say. [Laughs] His first wife, the late Susie Buffett, used to come to Glide, and she came for a couple of years before she told us who she was, and she asked us not to reveal her true identity.

TI: Because she lived in the Midwest, didn't she?

JM: She had a home in San Francisco.

TI: Omaha.

JM: Omaha, yeah. And she had a home in San Francisco and she was one of the most compassionate people I know. She took in people with AIDS, she took people who were ill, she took people on trips. If they were dying, she would take them to where they always wanted to go, she was really a beautiful human being. Anyway, she finally told us who she was, and then she brought Warren Buffett to the celebration, and Warren instantaneously checking out Cecil, checking out what we were doing, fell in love with him. And he said, "These folks at Glide are doing what nobody else is doing better than anybody, just because they care about the most marginalized." So it's, I think, not only because he experienced us, but he was also influenced by his first wife's unconditional love, and he adored her and believed in her, and believed in what she felt for spirituality. So when we went to visit Warren last year, it was great because he's such a down-to-earth, beautiful human being, and he won't give us money outright, he auctions off a lunch, and goes to lunch with the highest bidder. And last year the highest bidder won lunch with him at 2.3 million dollars. [Laughs] So it's expensive steak. But I think that's an example of somebody who is touched by what we do, who experiences that we really do what we say we're doing, and they can see some of the transformation that does occur. And we have to raise a lot of money these days.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright (c) 2016 Densho. All Rights Reserved.