AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman.

DANNY GLOVER: I’m Danny Glover. Democracy Now! means exactly that, that it is demand. It’s demand that we hear the truth. It’s demand that we be full participants in a system that is life-affirming. It means it is a demand that we be full participants in a system which takes the present and the past and the future, and places it within our grasp.

AMY GOODMAN: On the 36th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X, actor and activist Danny Glover hosted a celebration last night of Malcolm X’s life at the City College of New York. Last night’s event marked the launch a major fundraising campaign to support the purchase of a permanent home for the Malcolm X Museum.

But the museum wouldn’t be limited to one space. Building on the idea of using Harlem’s public spaces as its collective memory, a number of public sites that were significant in Malcolm’s life will be recognized and developed, where so much of his organizing efforts took place. Sites such as the Audubon memorial, the mosque at 116th Street and the new outdoor plaza at 110th Street, among others, would be incorporated.

Among those honored last night was a longtime activist, Yuri Kochiyama, whose parents were forcibly interned along with 120,000 other Japanese Americans during World War II. She was a close friend of Malcolm X, lived in Harlem for decades, and held him in her arms as he lay dying on February 21st, 1965, at the Audubon Ballroom. She has moved back to Northern California but sent this message by videotape.

YURI KOCHIYAMA: February 21st, 1965, was the day that Malcolm was killed. That day, when we went to the Audubon Ballroom, where the meetings are held, for some reason, everybody felt something was going to happen. And we even heard that Malcolm, when he had come, seemed a little bit disconcerted. He told his bodyguards not to be armed at all, because he didn’t want to frighten women or children.

None of the speakers who were supposed to speak that day showed. When Malcolm was introduced and he came on, two Black men jumped up, and one said, “Get your hands out of my pocket!” And everybody looked in that direction. And there was no one protecting Malcolm, when shots rang out. Soon as we turned back to the stage, we saw that Malcolm was hit, and he went straight back and fell. And all hell broke loose. People were running. All the chairs had crashed to the floor.

Just then, a young brother came by who seemed to know how to get to the stage, and I followed this young brother to the stage and went right to where Malcolm was. And I just put Malcolm’s head on my lap. He was having difficulty breathing, and he never said a word.

But Malcolm, I don’t think, will ever die. What he stood for, his visions of a fairer world, his spirit will live on forever.

AMY GOODMAN: Yuri Kochiyama, longtime activist, friend of Malcolm X, now near 80, living in Northern California, one of the three people who were honored last night by the Malcolm X Museum campaign, as a Malcolm X Museum is being established by the City College, a part of the City University of New York.