And in 50 years, the idea attacked on a Memphis balcony has rarely had a more worthy champion.
Political Animal:
* The man I would call the “moral compass of this country,” Rev. William Barber, had some words to share recently.
Four
diseases, all connected, now threaten the nation’s social and moral
health: racism, poverty, environmental devastation, and the war
economy—sanctified by the heresy of Christian nationalism. Since the
2016 presidential election, when white rage propelled a candidate
endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan into the White House, racism has been more
prominent in public life. Nearly every politician in the United States
condemned “hate” after the violence by anti-black, anti-Semitic, and
anti-gay white nationalists in Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer. Racism and white supremacy, however, are not about hate. They are about power. The question is not whether politicians condemn hate, but whether they promote the policy agenda of white supremacy.
No more celebrities, no more amateurs, no more reality-deniers.
Political Animal:
Then I finally read whatDahlia Lithwickwrote and all I could say was, “amen to that!”
I loved Oprah’s Golden Globes speech on Sunday.
It was mesmerizing, pitch perfect, and gave voice to many lifetimes of
frustration and vindication with eloquence and a full authority she has
earned. But I found the strange Facebook response of “Oprah 2020”
weirdly discordant and disorienting. Oprah’s speech—in my hearing—wasn’t
about why she needs to run for office. It was about why the rest of us
need to do so, immediately.
The dominant theme I heard was about giving voice to invisible people. It was the arc of the entire speech…
What
I heard in her speech wasn’t a bid to save us all, but rather a
powerful charge to the young girls watching at home to tell their own
stories, to fight for their own values, and to battle injustices with
the certainty that they will be seen and heard…
…what
Winfrey and Obama talk about is the limits of top-down power. It is one
of the great sins of this celebrity age that we continue to misread
this message as a call to turn anyone who tries to deliver it into our
savior. When someone tells you “I alone can fix it,” you should run
screaming for the emergency exits. When someone tells you to get off
your ass and fix it yourself, you should think first about running for
office yourself.
Having
watched these kinds of outbreaks come and go, I’ll guarantee you that
all of the focus on whether or not Oprah will run for president will
disappear in another day or two. What we could learn about this incident
is that the media remains obsessed with the horse race of presidential
politics and doesn’t seem capable of covering a story outside of that
frame. By doing so, they create and affirm a narrative that what this
country needs is a savior, which smacks of authoritarianism and is the
opposite of democracy.
Even
more disturbing is when liberals follow the media down that rabbit hole
and assume that the big story is about who is going to run for
president in 2020. I agree with Lithwick, Oprah’s message last night
was “a powerful charge to the young girls watching at home to tell
their stories, to fight for their own values, and to battle injustices
with the certainty that they will be seen and heard.” If they take her
up on that, it will create a wave that will dwarf the story about who
runs for president in the next cycle.
Finally,
before Oprah, there was another guy who gave powerful speeches that had
nothing to do with running for political office, and yet managed to
lead a movement that changed this country. The New Yorker remembers him
this way today.
This April 4
will mark the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination,
which means that in 2018 we will probably see even more frequent
mendacious arguments from conservatives about King and what he’d think
of modern America than we do in any other given year.
In his award-winningbookBlood Done Sign My Name,
historian Tim Tyson writes that, “In the years since his murder, we
have transformed King into a kind of innocuous black Santa Claus, genial
and vacant, a benign vessel that can be filled with whatever generic
good wishes the occasion dictates. Politicians who oppose everything
King worked for now jostle their way onto podiums to honor his memory.
Many of them quote Dr. King out of context as they denounce ‘affirmative
action,’ despite the fact that King repeatedly, publicly, and
passionately supported that principle….[O]ur memories about what
actually happened in the civil rights era are so faulty that Dr. King’s
enemies can safely use his words to thwart his goals.”
Tyson’s
book came out years before Black Lives Matter, and the conservative
lust to use King’s legacy in precisely the way that Tyson describes has
only been amplified in recent years. O’Reillydoes it. Huckabeetoo. Newspapercolumnists, etc.
The
idea that King would oppose this generation’s most prominent struggle
for racial justice is absurd, of course, but I appreciate
Ulriksen making the point explicitly that Kaep and Michael Bennett and
the rest of those who kneel and march in service of justice today
are firmly in keeping with King’s legacy. In his time, King was in many
ways an American radical. He wasn’t murdered for being a moderate.
Of course prophets are never honored in their own country. But America in particular is a genius at white-washing and borifying "heroes" who were condemned as traitors or worse in their own time and would still be condemned today if their actual politics were acknowledged and publicized.
The official US beatification of Martin Luther King has come at
the heavy price of silence about his radical espousal of economic
justice and anticolonialism.
It is easy to forget that in his day, in his own country, Rev. Martin
Luther King Jr. was considered a dangerous troublemaker. Even President
John Kennedy worried that King was being influenced by Communists. King
was harassed by the FBI and vilified in the media. The establishment's
campaign to denigrate King worked. In August 1966 - as King was bringing
his civil rights campaign to Northern cities to address poverty, slums,
housing segregation and bank lending discrimination - the Gallup Poll
found that 63 percent of Americans had an unfavorable opinion of King,
compared with 33 percent who viewed him favorably.
Today Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is viewed as something of an
American saint. The most recent Gallup Poll discovered that 94 percent
of Americans viewed him in a positive light. His birthday is a national
holiday. His name adorns schools and street signs. In 1964, at age 35,
he was the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Americans
from across the political spectrum invoke King's name to justify their
beliefs and actions.
In fact, King was a radical. He believed that America needed a
"radical redistribution of economic and political power." He challenged
America's class system and its racial caste system. He was a strong ally
of the nation's labor union movement. He was assassinated in April 1968
in Memphis, where he had gone to support a sanitation workers' strike.
He opposed US militarism and imperialism, especially the country's
misadventure in Vietnam.
In his critique of American society and his strategy for changing it,
King pushed the country toward more democracy and social justice.
On the spot where 150 years ago resistant slaves were sold south to die in the fever swamps and cane fields, 300 gathered last night to honor the continuing fight for freedom.
Lexingtonians black and white, young and old, celebrated the
50th anniversary of the 1963 March For Jobs and Freedom on Wednesday
night, building on the excitement of a huge celebration in Washington
earlier in the day.
While the event at Courthouse Square in
downtown Lexington couldn't match the size and drama of the remembrance
in Washington, the sense of history and promise in local memories of the
march and Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech carried its
own significance.
The Rev. Norman Fischer, parish priest at St.
Peter Claver Catholic Church, energized the Lexington crowd by leading
the chant "I Am The Dream."
Anthony Wright, Stan Shelby, Jonathan
Lott and Halden Hunt, all seventh-graders from Lexington's Carter G.
Woodson Academy who were born decades after the march and King's speech,
read vivid essays that they wrote celebrating both.
Kudos to U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes as well as Mayor Jim Gray for attending and addressing the gathering. Senator Mitch McConnell rejected President Obama's invitation to speak at the Washington event earlier.
THE PRESIDENT: To the King family, who have sacrificed and inspired
so much; to President Clinton; President Carter; Vice President Biden
and Jill; fellow Americans.
Five decades ago today, Americans came to this honored place to lay
claim to a promise made at our founding: “We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
In 1963, almost 200 years after those words were set to paper, a full
century after a great war was fought and emancipation proclaimed, that
promise -- those truths -- remained unmet. And so they came by the
thousands from every corner of our country, men and women, young and
old, blacks who longed for freedom and whites who could no longer accept
freedom for themselves while witnessing the subjugation of others.
Across the land, congregations sent them off with food and with
prayer. In the middle of the night, entire blocks of Harlem came out to
wish them well. With the few dollars they scrimped from their labor,
some bought tickets and boarded buses, even if they couldn’t always sit
where they wanted to sit. Those with less money hitchhiked or walked.
They were seamstresses and steelworkers, students and teachers, maids
and Pullman porters. They shared simple meals and bunked together on
floors. And then, on a hot summer day, they assembled here, in our
nation’s capital, under the shadow of the Great Emancipator -- to offer
testimony of injustice, to petition their government for redress, and to
awaken America’s long-slumbering conscience.
We rightly and best remember Dr. King’s soaring oratory that day, how
he gave mighty voice to the quiet hopes of millions; how he offered a
salvation path for oppressed and oppressors alike. His words belong to
the ages, possessing a power and prophecy unmatched in our time.
But we would do well to recall that day itself also belonged to those
ordinary people whose names never appeared in the history books, never
got on TV. Many had gone to segregated schools and sat at segregated
lunch counters. They lived in towns where they couldn’t vote and cities
where their votes didn’t matter. They were couples in love who
couldn’t marry, soldiers who fought for freedom abroad that they found
denied to them at home. They had seen loved ones beaten, and children
fire-hosed, and they had every reason to lash out in anger, or resign
themselves to a bitter fate.
And yet they chose a different path. In the face of hatred, they
prayed for their tormentors. In the face of violence, they stood up and
sat in, with the moral force of nonviolence. Willingly, they went to
jail to protest unjust laws, their cells swelling with the sound of
freedom songs. A lifetime of indignities had taught them that no man
can take away the dignity and grace that God grants us. They had
learned through hard experience what Frederick Douglass once taught --
that freedom is not given, it must be won, through struggle and
discipline, persistence and faith.
That was the spirit they brought here that day. That was the spirit
young people like John Lewis brought to that day. That was the spirit
that they carried with them, like a torch, back to their cities and
their neighborhoods. That steady flame of conscience and courage that
would sustain them through the campaigns to come -- through boycotts and
voter registration drives and smaller marches far from the spotlight;
through the loss of four little girls in Birmingham, and the carnage of
the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and the agony of Dallas and California and
Memphis. Through setbacks and heartbreaks and gnawing doubt, that flame
of justice flickered; it never died.
And because they kept marching, America changed. Because they
marched, a Civil Rights law was passed. Because they marched, a Voting
Rights law was signed. Because they marched, doors of opportunity and
education swung open so their daughters and sons could finally imagine a
life for themselves beyond washing somebody else’s laundry or shining
somebody else’s shoes. (Applause.) Because they marched, city councils
changed and state legislatures changed, and Congress changed, and, yes,
eventually, the White House changed. (Applause.)
Because they marched, America became more free and more fair -- not
just for African Americans, but for women and Latinos, Asians and Native
Americans; for Catholics, Jews, and Muslims; for gays, for Americans
with a disability. America changed for you and for me. and the entire
world drew strength from that example, whether the young people who
watched from the other side of an Iron Curtain and would eventually tear
down that wall, or the young people inside South Africa who would
eventually end the scourge of apartheid. (Applause.)
Those are the victories they won, with iron wills and hope in their
hearts. That is the transformation that they wrought, with each step of
their well-worn shoes. That’s the debt that I and millions of
Americans owe those maids, those laborers, those porters, those
secretaries; folks who could have run a company maybe if they had ever
had a chance; those white students who put themselves in harm’s way,
even though they didn't have; those Japanese Americans who recalled
their own internment; those Jewish Americans who had survived the
Holocaust; people who could have given up and given in, but kept on
keeping on, knowing that “weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh
in the morning.” (Applause.)
On the battlefield of justice, men and women without rank or wealth
or title or fame would liberate us all in ways that our children now
take for granted, as people of all colors and creeds live together and
learn together and walk together, and fight alongside one another, and
love one another, and judge one another by the content of our character
in this greatest nation on Earth. (Applause.)
To dismiss the magnitude of this progress -- to suggest, as some
sometimes do, that little has changed -- that dishonors the courage and
the sacrifice of those who paid the price to march in those years.
(Applause.) Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael
Schwerner, Martin Luther King Jr. -- they did not die in vain.
(Applause.) Their victory was great.
But we would dishonor those heroes as well to suggest that the work
of this nation is somehow complete. The arc of the moral universe may
bend towards justice, but it doesn’t bend on its own. To secure the
gains this country has made requires constant vigilance, not
complacency. Whether by challenging those who erect new barriers to the
vote, or ensuring that the scales of justice work equally for all, and
the criminal justice system is not simply a pipeline from underfunded
schools to overcrowded jails, it requires vigilance. (Applause.)
And we'll suffer the occasional setback. But we will win these
fights. This country has changed too much. (Applause.) People of
goodwill, regardless of party, are too plentiful for those with ill will
to change history’s currents. (Applause.)
In some ways, though, the securing of civil rights, voting rights,
the eradication of legalized discrimination -- the very significance of
these victories may have obscured a second goal of the March. For the
men and women who gathered 50 years ago were not there in search of some
abstract ideal. They were there seeking jobs as well as justice --
(applause) -- not just the absence of oppression but the presence of
economic opportunity. (Applause.)
For what does it profit a man, Dr. King would ask, to sit at an
integrated lunch counter if he can’t afford the meal? This idea -- that
one’s liberty is linked to one’s livelihood; that the pursuit of
happiness requires the dignity of work, the skills to find work, decent
pay, some measure of material security -- this idea was not new.
Lincoln himself understood the Declaration of Independence in such terms
-- as a promise that in due time, “the weights should be lifted from
the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.”
And Dr. King explained that the goals of African Americans were
identical to working people of all races: “Decent wages, fair working
conditions, livable housing, old-age security, health and welfare
measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for
their children, and respect in the community.”
What King was describing has been the dream of every American. It's
what's lured for centuries new arrivals to our shores. And it’s along
this second dimension -- of economic opportunity, the chance through
honest toil to advance one’s station in life -- where the goals of 50
years ago have fallen most short.
Yes, there have been examples of success within black America that
would have been unimaginable a half century ago. But as has already
been noted, black unemployment has remained almost twice as high as
white unemployment, Latino unemployment close behind. The gap in wealth
between races has not lessened, it's grown. And as President Clinton
indicated, the position of all working Americans, regardless of color,
has eroded, making the dream Dr. King described even more elusive.
For over a decade, working Americans of all races have seen their
wages and incomes stagnate, even as corporate profits soar, even as the
pay of a fortunate few explodes. Inequality has steadily risen over the
decades. Upward mobility has become harder. In too many communities
across this country, in cities and suburbs and rural hamlets, the shadow
of poverty casts a pall over our youth, their lives a fortress of
substandard schools and diminished prospects, inadequate health care and
perennial violence.
And so as we mark this anniversary, we must remind ourselves that the
measure of progress for those who marched 50 years ago was not merely
how many blacks could join the ranks of millionaires. It was whether
this country would admit all people who are willing to work hard
regardless of race into the ranks of a middle-class life. (Applause.)
The test was not, and never has been, whether the doors of
opportunity are cracked a bit wider for a few. It was whether our
economic system provides a fair shot for the many -- for the black
custodian and the white steelworker, the immigrant dishwasher and the
Native American veteran. To win that battle, to answer that call --
this remains our great unfinished business.
We shouldn’t fool ourselves. The task will not be easy. Since 1963,
the economy has changed. The twin forces of technology and global
competition have subtracted those jobs that once provided a foothold
into the middle class -- reduced the bargaining power of American
workers. And our politics has suffered. Entrenched interests, those
who benefit from an unjust status quo, resisted any government efforts
to give working families a fair deal -- marshaling an army of lobbyists
and opinion makers to argue that minimum wage increases or stronger
labor laws or taxes on the wealthy who could afford it just to fund
crumbling schools, that all these things violated sound economic
principles. We'd be told that growing inequality was a price for a
growing economy, a measure of this free market; that greed was good and
compassion ineffective, and those without jobs or health care had only
themselves to blame.
And then, there were those elected officials who found it useful to
practice the old politics of division, doing their best to convince
middle-class Americans of a great untruth -- that government was somehow
itself to blame for their growing economic insecurity; that distant
bureaucrats were taking their hard-earned dollars to benefit the welfare
cheat or the illegal immigrant.
And then, if we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that during the
course of 50 years, there were times when some of us claiming to push
for change lost our way. The anguish of assassinations set off
self-defeating riots. Legitimate grievances against police brutality
tipped into excuse-making for criminal behavior. Racial politics could
cut both ways, as the transformative message of unity and brotherhood
was drowned out by the language of recrimination. And what had once
been a call for equality of opportunity, the chance for all Americans to
work hard and get ahead was too often framed as a mere desire for
government support -- as if we had no agency in our own liberation, as
if poverty was an excuse for not raising your child, and the bigotry of
others was reason to give up on yourself.
All of that history is how progress stalled. That's how hope was
diverted. It's how our country remained divided. But the good news is,
just as was true in 1963, we now have a choice. We can continue down
our current path, in which the gears of this great democracy grind to a
halt and our children accept a life of lower expectations; where
politics is a zero-sum game where a few do very well while struggling
families of every race fight over a shrinking economic pie -- that’s one
path. Or we can have the courage to change.
The March on Washington teaches us that we are not trapped by the
mistakes of history; that we are masters of our fate. But it also
teaches us that the promise of this nation will only be kept when we
work together. We’ll have to reignite the embers of empathy and fellow
feeling, the coalition of conscience that found expression in this place
50 years ago.
And I believe that spirit is there, that truth force inside each of
us. I see it when a white mother recognizes her own daughter in the
face of a poor black child. I see it when the black youth thinks of his
own grandfather in the dignified steps of an elderly white man. It’s
there when the native-born recognizing that striving spirit of the new
immigrant; when the interracial couple connects the pain of a gay couple
who are discriminated against and understands it as their own.
That’s where courage comes from -- when we turn not from each other,
or on each other, but towards one another, and we find that we do not
walk alone. That’s where courage comes from. (Applause.)
And with that courage, we can stand together for good jobs and just
wages. With that courage, we can stand together for the right to health
care in the richest nation on Earth for every person. (Applause.)
With that courage, we can stand together for the right of every child,
from the corners of Anacostia to the hills of Appalachia, to get an
education that stirs the mind and captures the spirit, and prepares them
for the world that awaits them. (Applause.)
With that courage, we can feed the hungry, and house the homeless,
and transform bleak wastelands of poverty into fields of commerce and
promise.
America, I know the road will be long, but I know we can get there.
Yes, we will stumble, but I know we’ll get back up. That’s how a
movement happens. That’s how history bends. That's how when somebody
is faint of heart, somebody else brings them along and says, come on,
we’re marching. (Applause.)
There’s a reason why so many who marched that day, and in the days to
come, were young -- for the young are unconstrained by habits of fear,
unconstrained by the conventions of what is. They dared to dream
differently, to imagine something better. And I am convinced that same
imagination, the same hunger of purpose stirs in this generation.
We might not face the same dangers of 1963, but the fierce urgency of
now remains. We may never duplicate the swelling crowds and dazzling
procession of that day so long ago -- no one can match King’s brilliance
-- but the same flame that lit the heart of all who are willing to take
a first step for justice, I know that flame remains. (Applause.)
That tireless teacher who gets to class early and stays late and dips
into her own pocket to buy supplies because she believes that every
child is her charge -- she’s marching. (Applause.)
That successful businessman who doesn't have to but pays his workers a
fair wage and then offers a shot to a man, maybe an ex-con who is down
on his luck -- he’s marching. (Applause.)
The mother who pours her love into her daughter so that she grows up
with the confidence to walk through the same door as anybody’s son --
she’s marching. (Applause.)
The father who realizes the most important job he’ll ever have is
raising his boy right, even if he didn't have a father -- especially if
he didn't have a father at home -- he’s marching. (Applause.)
The battle-scarred veterans who devote themselves not only to helping
their fellow warriors stand again, and walk again, and run again, but
to keep serving their country when they come home -- they are marching.
(Applause.)
Everyone who realizes what those glorious patriots knew on that day
-- that change does not come from Washington, but to Washington; that
change has always been built on our willingness, We The People, to take
on the mantle of citizenship -- you are marching. (Applause.)
And that’s the lesson of our past. That's the promise of tomorrow --
that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can
change it. That when millions of Americans of every race and every
region, every faith and every station, can join together in a spirit of
brotherhood, then those mountains will be made low, and those rough
places will be made plain, and those crooked places, they straighten out
towards grace, and we will vindicate the faith of those who sacrificed
so much and live up to the true meaning of our creed, as one nation,
under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. (Applause.)
I was trying to choose the right "that character content bullshit is not what he meant" article to excerpt when I ended up where I should have started.
Luckily for you, the Rude Pundit has never forgotten just how bad-ass
Martin Luther King actually was, and he has written over the years about
how King would fuck up conservatives' shit. Now, as a handy guide when
you scream at Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity on the radio today, here's
links to all of those posts in one place, all filled with King's words:
1. Martin Luther King was against prayer in school and thought that Christianity meant that you had to help the poor.
2. Martin Luther King thought America's use of military power was immoral and that protesters loved their country.
3. This is not to mention that Martin Luther King thought that money spent on useless wars would be better spent on anti-poverty programs.
4. Unlike today's Democrats, Martin Luther King
believed that radical activism, even at the risk of arrest, was more
important than moderation and compromise. Principle over popularity.
5. Martin Luther King
believed that a janitor was as important as a doctor and that the
government had the duty to ensure that the janitor was taken care of as
well as the doctor was, including a guaranteed wage, health care, and
more.
6. Martin Luther King
believed that the rich needed to pay their fair share to help lift
people out of poverty. They should, you know, spread the wealth,
especially through taxation.
7. And, after a change of heart, Martin Luther King did not believe in owning a gun.
You got it? Martin Luther King, Jr. was not conservative. And he is not
your cuddly toy. He is not Marty, the Dream Bear. He was an openly
socialistic, confrontational radical whose "I Have a Dream" speech asked
for nothing less than a complete elimination of white privilege and the
destruction of racial and economic hierarchies. As nutzoid right
wingers call for the first black president's impeachment (which would
leave a white man with pretty much the same beliefs in the office) and
for overturning the Affordable Care Act, how are we doing with that?
Are you good to go? Are you ready to fuck up a conservative's day?
'Cause, really, that's something that Martin Luther King would have
loved you to do.
Revolutionaries don't get shot for being too nice and accommodating.
Now, go watch the whole, entire, almost-never-seen-before-footage speech from 50 years ago on Chris Hayes.
Hundreds of fast food workers in New York City began walking off the job
this morning to demand a living wage and the ability to form a union
without intimidation or retaliation from their employers, the second
such action workers have taken since November. Fast food workers went on
strike on November 29 to demand a $15 wage and the right to form a
union, and organizers expect this strike to be even larger. By 7:30
a.m., workers had already picketed multiple restaurants, including a Burger King location that was still closed despite its 6 a.m. opening time, according to organizers.
The strike was organized by Fast Food Forward, the group that also led the November walkout,
and inspired by Memphis sanitation workers who went on strike with Dr.
Martin Luther King in 1968. The strike is occurring on the 45th
anniversary of King’s assassination during those organizing efforts.
In a letter to workers and supporters, the group said many of its
members are living on food stamps or in homeless shelters even as
profits continue to rise for low-wage fast food employers. “We’re on
strike today because we can’t survive on $7.25. Higher wages will help
us raise our families with dignity but will also help lift our entire
economy. More money in the hands of workers means more money spent in
local shops and a boost for our community,” the letter says.
Profits at low-wage food employers have indeed grown rapidly since
the recession, as this chart from the National Employment Law Project
shows:
Low-wage industries like fast food are the fastest growing sectors in
America, outpacing the economy since the Great Recession. While such
jobs accounted for just 21 percent of losses during the recession, they
have made up 58 percent of jobs added during the recovery, and one in four
American workers is expected to hold a low-wage job a decade from now.
At the same time, the minimum wage is falling farther behind the cost of
living — had it risen with inflation and productivity gains since the
1960s, the minimum wage would be north of $20 an hour.
Organizers of the strike expect between 400 and 500 workers to walk
of the job today as they continue to fight for a union and a living
wage. The strike will be concentrated in Harlem, where organizers will
lead a march this afternoon.
James Earl Ray was a racist motherfucker who assassinated King because King was black and refusing to bow to Jim Crow.
But I do not think it was a coincidence that King wasn't killed until after he started taking on the money power.
On this date in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated by James Earl Ray while in Memphis to support a strike by the city’s sanitation workers.
SNIP
King didn’t really want to return to Memphis. He was upset by what happened during the mass march. Moreover, he felt the movement had slipped away from him, with young people embracing violence that he hoped to avoid. Nonetheless, King felt that if his nonviolent movement for economic justice was to succeed, winning a victory in Memphis was absolutely necessary. On April 3, King arrived in Memphis. That night, he gave his final speech.
The next day, James Earl Ray assassinated Martin Luther King as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel.
In the aftermath of King’s death, pressure rained down from both above and below on Loeb to settle the strike. He refused, but Lyndon Johnson sent his Undersecretary of Labor to see this through. On April 8, the city came to an agreement to recognize the union and pay a higher wage, though it had to continue pressuring the city once the cameras left to live up to the agreement.
The Poor Person’s Campaign went on without King, but lacked leadership and vision and faded quickly. More on that in a future post.
In a coincidence that for once works in liberals' favor, the birth control battle explodes at the same time as the release of a new biography of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger.
Unfortunately, the new biography falls far short of a much better biography written several years ago. Nevertheless the comparison reveals facts useful in fighting not only the fake controversy over contraception, but the mendacious criticisms of Sanger herself.
One of the grim ironies of Sanger’s story is that this great champion of women’s reproductive freedom could be cruel and cavalier about denying that same freedom to those she regarded as disabled. Nevertheless, both Baker and Chesler demonstrate that in this regard, Sanger was largely a product of her era. As Baker points out, in the 1927 decision Buck v. Bell, the Supreme Court voted 8 to 1 to approve compulsory sterilization. In a majority opinion written by Oliver Wendell Holmes and signed by Louis Brandeis and William Howard Taft, the Court ruled, “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute the degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.” This certainly seems appalling today, but it hasn’t been allowed to define any of these men’s reputations. Most of us understand that it’s unfair to condemn people in the past for failing to meet the moral standards of the present.
If Sanger had been an unregenerate racist, the leaders of the civil rights movement might be expected to have noticed. Instead, in 1966, the year Sanger died, Martin Luther King accepted Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Award. In the speech he wrote, delivered by his wife, Coretta Scott King, he described a “striking kinship between our movement and Margaret Sanger’s early efforts.” Sanger, he explained, “was willing to accept scorn and abuse until the truth she saw was revealed to the millions. At the turn of the century she went into the slums and set up a birth control clinic, and for this deed she went to jail because she was violating an unjust law. Yet the years have justified her actions. She launched a movement which is obeying a higher law to preserve human life under humane conditions.” I’ve never understood why this speech isn’t better known, especially among pro-choice advocates. If Sanger’s moral failures are worth remembering, surely her triumphs are as well.
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tenn., where he was standing with sanitation workers demanding their dream of a better life. Today, the right to bargain collectively for a voice at work and a middle-class life are under attack as never before. Find out more here.
Join us to make April 4, 2011, and the days surrounding it, a day to stand in solidarity with working people in Wisconsin and dozens of other states where corporate-bought politicians are trying to take away the rights Dr. King gave his life for.
Join millions of others who are electrified by King’s same dream and are joining together for our common dreams.
Yet it’s par for the course in this take-no-prisoners, slashonomics budget debate, where fighting to protect programs that help people get basic needs like housing, healthcare and heat is derided, but no corporate loophole is left unprotected. The debate in Washington has almost always been out of touch with the realities of people’s lives, but that gap has now widened into a gulf—perhaps greater than we’ve seen in generations.
Yet I still have hope.
A strong inside-outside strategy to reset, reboot and reframe the budget debate is emerging. The spirit, energy and outrage we saw in Wisconsin is being sustained and nurtured in communities across the country. Driven by progressives allied with the labor movement, people from a great range of backgrounds are standing up and delivering a message: our problem isn’t one of caring too much for working people and the most vulnerable and it won’t be solved by cutting vital investments. Our problem is freeloading corporations that need to pony up their fair share.
What demoralized progressives need to remember is there are allies on Capitol Hill showing real moxie, and doing what they can to offer real alternatives that respond to rising suffering, inequality and corporate greed, rather than shrink from it.
Consider the good Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders. Always the people’s champion, he’s called for closing corporate tax loopholes to raise more than $400 billion over a ten-year period. He’s also introduced legislation that would impose a 5.4 percent surtax on millionaires and yield up to $50 billion per year. In the House, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky introduced the Fairness in Taxation Act, which would create new tax brackets for millionaires and billionaires. (According to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, the most popular way to reduce the deficit is through a surtax on millionaires, preferred by 81 percent of Americans!)
SNIP
Common sense and humane response demand that we fight to reset the terms of a suffocatingly narrow and wrongheaded debate and pursue continued movement building. This is our heritage as progressives—independent mass movements have led this country towards its greatest ideals—we’ve seen it with the abolitionists, populists and suffragists and the workers, civil rights, women’s, LGBT and immigrant movements.
On April 4—the day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated as he stood for the rights of sanitation workers in Memphis—this movement takes its next step. Progressive allies, the Nation-inspired US Uncut and people who have simply had enough of the lies and distortions that define this budget debate, and the poor and middle-class who pay the price for it, will participate in actions, teach-ins, demonstrations, vigils and more.
This is our moment to reclaim the best principles of this country. Turnout on April 4.
Tolkein fans know Orcs were the Evil One's attempt to copy Elves, as Trolls were the Evil One's attempt to copy Dwarves.
Such efforts by those with impure motives to reproduce natural greatness always fail. As will today's pathetic screeching at the place and on the 47th anniversary of this:
"Blue" in Blue in the Bluegrass refers to my politics, not my state of mind, although being progressive-democratic in Kentucky is not for the faint of heart.
The Bluegrass Region of Kentucky is Central Kentucky, the area around Lexington. It's also sometimes known as the Golden Triangle, the region formed by Louisville in the west, Cincinnati in the north and Lexington in the east-south corner. This is the most economically advanced, politically progressive and aesthically beautiful area of the state. Also the most overpopulated by annoying yuppies and the most endangered by urban sprawl.
A Yellow Dog Democrat is one who will vote for even a yellow dog if it is running as a Democrat. I can't claim to be quite that fanatically partisan, especially since quite a few candidates who run as Democrats in Kentucky are more Republican than a lot of Republicans I can name.
But I do love the story Kentucky House leader Rocky Adkins never tires of telling about the old-timer in Eastern Kentucky who was once accused of being willing to vote for Satan if Satan ran as a Democrat. Spat back the old-timer:
"Not in a primary, I wouldn't!"
Amen.
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