40 years since Dr. King's assassination
http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article20.php?id=852
May 23, 2008
By Eljeer Hawkins, Harlem, New York
"Still America's collective memory of King captures only a reductive
freeze frame, a historical notion of his life and labors." -- Houston
A. Baker, Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals
of the Civil Rights Era.
The Roots of Dr. King's Radicalism
The political character and social vision of Dr. King was shaped and
transformed by the black freedom movement in the U.S. and the
revolutionary process internationally, especially the colonial
revolution. Dr. King's public ministry, social gospel, and Christian
democratic socialist vision are rooted in his studies at Morehouse
College, Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, and Boston
University. Dr. King's father and grandfather were ministers and
teachers of the social gospel and liberation theology. Dr. King was
mentored by such figures as Morehouse President Benjamin Mays, the
tactics and teachings of non-violence by Mahatma Gandhi, the writings
of Walter Rauschenbusch and Reinhold Niebuhr, and the political work
of union leader and socialist A. Philip Randolph, who developed the
tactics of the protest movement of the '30s and '40s that defined a
generation of the black freedom movement.
In his 13 years of political work, Dr King's radicalism was largely
rooted in the interests, needs, and aspirations of the black working
class and the poor. This was reflected in his determination to
alleviate the economic, social, and political misery faced by working
people and the poor with a programmatic call for a total
"redistribution of wealth," guaranteed annual income, the need to
nationalize some industries, and a "revolution of values."
These are the ideas that big business, the two-party system, the
black leadership, and some members of the King family would like us to forget.
The Poor People's Campaign
"The roots of economic injustice are in the system rather than in men
or faulty operations." -Dr. King
The urban explosions of Watts, New York, and Roxbury in the
mid-to-late '60s were the culmination of the failure of capitalism
and President Johnson's liberalism to solve the systemic problems
faced by the generation of African Americans who migrated to the
north in the '20s and '40s to escape rural poverty, white supremacy,
violence, and Jim Crow. Even with the developing industrialized and
powerful trade unions in the northern states and cities, blacks
experienced segregation and the denial of rights and resources,
becoming prisoners of police violence, poor housing, mass
unemployment, and an entrenched political system built on racism and
white supremacy. The Kerner Commission report would confirm what many
in the black freedom movement and black community knew to be true,
that urban explosions were not caused by militant instigators, but by
the conditions of racism, abject poverty, and systemic federal
government neglect.
Dr. King's travels to Watts and black communities in northern cities
helped him realize that their culture, leadership, and urban
landscape were very different from the conditions that blacks faced
in the south. The African American community in the north would
question Dr. King's tactics of non-violent civil disobedience.
Historian and theologian James H. Cone would state in the documentary
Citizen King 1963-68: "There was a belief that the gains of the civil
rights movement would trickle down to the northern cities; it didn't
work that way." Dr. King and the movement would invest time to firmly
understand the conditions of African American workers and poor people
in the north, including Dr. King and his family renting an apartment
on the predominantly black West Side of Chicago.
The black power movement was inspired by the revolutionary struggles
in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Individuals like Robert
F. Williams and Malcolm X and organizations like the Black Panther
Party, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the
Radical Action Movement posed the question of self-determination,
self-defense, and political and economic power, drawing on political
philosophies ranging from socialism, revolutionary nationalism, and
Maoism to black capitalism. The black power movement challenged Dr.
King to reformulate his thinking and brought out his radical side.
The earlier phase and character of the civil rights movement was
linked to the Democratic Party and was dominated by reformist
politics, turning the spotlight on the brutal realities of white
supremacy in the South. The aim of the movement was to embarrass the
U.S. government and to enforce legal equality, including voting
rights in the South during the Cold War period.
The black power movement posed questions of political independence
from the two-party system, internationalism, and reaffirming African
Americans' sense of self-worth. The birth of the Poor People's
Campaign is rooted in a critique of U.S. capitalism including
consumerism, imperialism, militarism, racism, and structural poverty.
Dr. King spoke of putting people's needs first before "profit margins
and motives" and raised the question of political and economic power.
The campaign came out of an intense debate and discussion within the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) about the goals and
aims of the campaign against poverty and the resources needed for
such a campaign. The Poor People's Campaign would eventually create a
rift in the SCLC. Even King expected violent confrontations with the
federal government and its troops in Washington, D.C.
Simultaneously, the black freedom movement would be met with
governmental opposition under the auspices of the Counter
Intelligence Program (Cointelpro), which sought to prevent the
development of a unified radical movement and leadership. Cointelpro,
developed under the leadership of FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, was a
continuation of the Palmer raids of the early 1900s and the McCarthy
witch-hunts of the late '40s early '50s to neutralize the movements
of resistance against U.S. big business at home and abroad.
The Poor People's Campaign would bring together a multi-ethnic
coalition of organizations and individuals from among Puerto Ricans,
Mexican Americans, indigenous, blacks, whites, labor, churches,
workers, and the poor. The involvement of single mothers,
welfare-dependent households, and their organizations like the
National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) would challenge the
patriarchic ideals of the movement and educate Dr. King on the issues
facing women and welfare families. Dr. King and the movement tried to
find a way to end the twin evils of poverty and racism, making
necessary a radical reinterpretation of the non-violent civil
disobedience and direct action tactics used in the South.
The tactics of protests, boycotts, and sit-ins at corporate
headquarters, used by the SCLC organizational arm Operation
Breadbasket headed by the then-radical Jessie Jackson in Chicago,
represented the beginnings of a radical response to poverty. It
culminated in a new march on Washington, a permanent encampment
demanding a total reconstruction of the economic foundations of the
United States. This radicalization was reflected in Dr. King's final
SCLC speech entitled Where do we go from here?:
"And I say to you today that if our nation can spend thirty-five
billion dollars a year to fight an unjust, evil war in Vietnam and
twenty billion to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of
dollars to put God's children on their own two feet right here on
earth…And one day, we must ask the question, "Why are there forty
million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that
question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about
broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin
to question the capitalistic economy."
King and the Vietnam War
"Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my
own silences and to speak from the burnings of my heart, as I have
called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam…"
Dr. King, Beyond Vietnam speech at Riverside church, April 4, 1967.
Dr. King's powerful indictment of U.S. imperialism in Vietnam would
mark a watershed moment in his public ministry and the civil rights
and antiwar movements. In fact, Malcolm X was one of the most
high-profile black leaders to oppose French colonialism and U.S.
military intervention in Vietnam. But Dr. King's antiwar statement
and activism, as a Nobel Peace Prize-winner and leader of a mass
movement, was a monumental event.
For two years, Dr. King vacillated on the question of making public
statements on the war. During early discussions with the Johnson
Administration, particularly with the U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations, Arthur Goldberg, Dr. King sought to bring about a peaceful
resolution to the war with UN-sponsored peace talks that included a
ceasefire with the National Liberation Front in Vietnam. He received
nothing but scorn from the media, while the civil rights and
Democratic Party leadership questioned King's "meddling" in
international affairs. As Rev. Bernard LaFayette, Jr., who was
appointed director of the Poor People's Campaign, would explain:
"There were some black preachers telling him he was out of his
element." The civil rights leadership and advisers like Roy Wilkins
and Bayard Rustin feared that this would harm his "relationship" with
President Johnson and voting rights legislation. For a while - and as
Johnson continued the build-up of the war - King remained publicly silent.
The war would remain a deep concern for King as the U.S. involvement
in Vietnam intensified. Activists within the black freedom movement
like Rev. James Lawson, SCLC militants and members like James Bevel,
and strong antiwar statements from SNCC and Stokely Carmichael
pressed King to make a statement. The time spent in northern cities
among the radicalized sections of workers and young people and their
antiwar mood had a profound effect on Dr. King.
It was events, the diversion of half a billion dollars from community
action programs to war spending in Vietnam, as well as the increasing
death toll of U.S. soldiers, particularly black soldiers who were
disproportionately placed in combat units, that caused Dr. King to do
something. From January through November 1966, almost a quarter of
army casualties were black.
As a staunch advocate of pacifism and practitioner of non-violence,
the images of the destruction of Vietnam would be profound for King.
As he would state: "We have destroyed their two most cherished
institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their
land and their crops."
King's silence on the war would be no more. The themes of the speech
cowritten by historian and Rev. Vincent Harding would draw on the
interconnection of the national and international struggle for
freedom and economic justice. Dr. King's use of the terminology of
imperialism, colonialism, racism, nuclear war, militarism, and
poverty, casting U.S. big business and government as the "greatest
purveyor of violence" supporting some of the most brutal
dictatorships in the world, showed he had started to analyze the
foundations of global capitalism and its violent expression, war.
Dr. King's anti-Vietnam war stance shows his total commitment to come
to grips with the great questions of the day, and a changing
political situation. His courage to speak truth to power despite the
slings and arrows unleashed by the media, big business, and the civil
rights and Democratic Party leadership on his criticism of the war
allowed Dr. King's radical instincts to come to the fore.
More importantly, his antiwar activism, organizing, leading of
marches, and speaking became a conduit for the marriage of the civil
rights and antiwar movements. King's loss of support from liberals,
traditional civil rights leaders, church leadership, the SCLC, and
the Democratic Party because of his radicalization was immediate.
Roger Wilkins, a U.S. Justice Department official, pointed out that
"Johnson was outraged … He turned sour toward King and the movement.
He felt that Martin had rejected him." The SCLC executive board voted
against backing Dr. King's public statement against the war.
The movement would develop new radical allies, deepening the radical
tone of leadership and articulating the deep crisis facing American
capitalism and democracy and the need for a new vision for society.
Speaking in 1966, Dr. King stated: "We are dealing with class issues.
Something is wrong with capitalism…Maybe America must move towards
democratic socialism." His socialism was not rooted in a serious
class, Marxist analysis of capitalism but was inspired by the example
of Jesus Christ and an egalitarian interpretation of the Christian
faith. Dr. King's Christian socialism was never articulated at public
events or in the pulpit, only at SCLC and private meetings. He was
unwavering in his belief of a more humane and spiritual vision of the
world. This was reflected in his Beyond Vietnam speech at Riverside
church on April 4, 1967:
"A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the
fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the
one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's
roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day, we must come
to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed… A true
revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast
of poverty and wealth… A true revolution of values will lay hand on
the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is
not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of
filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting
poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of
sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically
handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with
wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to
spend more money on military defense than on programs of social
uplift is approaching spiritual death."
Dr. King and the Memphis Strike
"Whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they're going
somewhere. Because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent."
(Michael K. Honey, Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike,
Martin Luther King's Last Campaign, pp. 422-423)
The Memphis sanitation workers' strike of 1968 epitomized the
struggle for economic justice. Ending the poverty wages earned by
working people punctuated Dr. King's question, "what's good with
integrating a lunch counter if a man doesn't make enough money to buy
a hamburger?" The Memphis strike showcased the industrial unionism of
the southern working class and the power, violence, and resistance of
white supremacy. The strike challenged the culture of oppression and
inferiority that the black sanitation workers and the black working
class and poor endured daily from slavery to Jim Crow. Dr. King's
participation in the campaign is not an accident; it is rooted in the
political, economic, and social aims of the black freedom movement.
Dr. King politically and organizationally understood the link between
the labor and civil rights movements. The "captains of industry" and
big business opposed both labor and civil rights, holding down wages
and violently attacking strikes for union representation and better
working conditions. The U.S. capitalist class and their political
representatives have always used racism and sexism to divide the
working class and deny human rights, economic justice, and social
uplift to the black masses, immigrants, and women.
To help organize the unorganized, King spoke at countless union halls
across the country, including on the platform of 1199 Healthcare
Workers Union during their organizing drives, and at the AFL-CIO
Convention in 1961. He greatly admired A. Philip Randolph, President
of the Sleeping Car Porters Union and Chair of the Negro American
Labor Council, which would conduct important political battles within
the AFL-CIO and the labor movement on racism, job discrimination, and
unionization. So when Reverend James Lawson called for assistance in
a bitter and brutal struggle for unionization, economic justice, and
human dignity, the black freedom movement and Dr. King would answer the call.
The Memphis, Tennessee city and state governments had a long history
of denying labor and civil rights. After Roosevelt's New Deal, World
War II, and the enactment of the anti-working-class Taft-Hartley Act,
the situation deteriorated with the anti-communist fervor, opposition
to unions, and maintenance of Jim Crow. Big business and their
politicians would crush union organizing. That failure would be
coupled with the AFL-CIO's conservative bureaucratic leadership
ending organizing drives, denying vital resources, and succumbing to
the racism of southern apartheid.
To be a sanitation worker was a miserable job to have in Memphis. 40%
of sanitation workers lived below the poverty line. On a stormy night
attempting to find shelter, in the back of their garbage truck Robert
Walker and Echol Cole would be crushed to death due to poor and
outdated equipment. The workers, community, and AFSCME (the union
representing the sanitation workers in Memphis under the leadership
of Jerry Wurf) found themselves in a brutal and violent struggle with
the city administration under racist Mayor Henry Loeb. The city
divided along class and racial lines. The role of the black churches
would be crucial to Local 1733 and the 1,300 black sanitation
workers, providing a home for the workers to organize, strategize,
and gather. The local religious leadership would develop COME
(Community On the Move for Equality) and the black power self-defense
organization The Invaders would pose important questions to the
movement over strategy and tactics. King and the SCLC were central to
the Poor People's Campaign's efforts to bring the national and
international press to Memphis and King's campaign against poverty:
"You are reminding not only Memphis but you are reminding the nation
that it is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive
starvation wages…" (All Labor Has Dignity speech, March 18, 1968)
Dr. King's All Labor Has Dignity speech was a shot across the bow of
the Memphis business establishment, and he posed the question of a
general strike: "I tell you what you ought to do, and you are
together here enough to do it: In a few days, you ought to get
together and just have a general work stoppage in the city of
Memphis… And you let that day come, and not a Negro in this city will
go to any job downtown. When no Negro in domestic service will go to
anybody's house and anybody's kitchen. When black students will not
go to anybody's school, and black teachers…" (Michael K. Honey, Going
Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last
Campaign, p. 303)
The labor movement has used this militant call to stop business as
usual and challenge the ruling elite about which class controls
society. The 1919 Seattle general strike, inspired by the Russian
Revolution, was led by socialist and militant trade unionists and
placed the working class in virtual control of the city for five
days, democratically administering resources and services. The
historic Minneapolis Truckers strike of 1934, which shut down the
city and made Minneapolis a union town, was led by Socialist Workers
Party members and paved the way for the building of the Teamsters as
a powerful union. The longshoremen's union (ILWU) has called for a
"No Peace No Work" strike shutting down ports along the West Coast on
May 1 in protest against the war in Iraq, which provides a great
example about the kind of policies needed for workers to stop U.S.
imperialist wars.
Dr. King's speeches and his arrival in Memphis demonstrated his
commitment to the campaign. While continuing to organize for the new
radical March on Washington, there was no turning back for the
freedom movement. The slogan "I am A Man" defined the struggle and
the fighting spirit for justice, equality, and freedom, which
inevitably led to a struggle against the very foundations of the
political, economic, and social institutions of white supremacy.
The first mass march led by King would end in violence when police
provocateurs, members of The Invaders, and youth began shattering
windows and destroying property. Having always stated he would never
lead a violent march, King left the march. The press and racist
establishment politicians like Democratic Party Senator Robert Byrd
from West Virginia would ridicule Dr. King for causing trouble and
running away like a "scared rabbit."
In essence, they sought to discredit King's radical stance on the
war, poverty, and racism. On April 3, 1968, Dr. King returned to
Memphis for another march, fighting an injunction by the city
administration and big business. That evening, he delivered his final
address, I've Been to the Mountaintop, a speech given before; this
version was filled with an eerie mood. The daily death threats and
his political trajectory signed his death warrant. On April 4 at 6:01
pm on the balcony of the Loraine Motel, the life and mission of a
minister, thinker, activist, organizer, and revolutionary was gone
with one single shot.
The strike would open an important period of industrial struggle for
unionization of the Memphis working class. It marked the final phase
of the civil rights movement and the beginning of the ascendancy of
the black power movement.
The Struggle for Freedom Today
The working class, the poor, and people of color are facing a deep
crisis at present. As of January 1, 2008, more than one out of every
100 adults is in prison, with half being people of color. We have 2.3
million prisoners, the highest number in the world. Researcher Dr.
Gopal K. Singh of the Department of Health and Human Services has
found "…widening socioeconomic inequalities in life expectancy at
birth and at every age level." The affluent and rich are living
longer than the working class and poor - who are succumbing to heart
disease, cancer, and stress.
This past year witnessed a staggering number of jobs lost, while food
and gas prices increased across the country. Over the past eight
years, three million manufacturing jobs have disappeared. Globally,
food shortages have led to riots and mass demonstrations by workers,
peasants, and the poor against the horrors of capitalism's
globalization agenda in several countries. As the U.S. economy
continues its downward spiral, the Federal Reserve saw it appropriate
to bail out financial giant Bear Stearns, while millions of the
working and middle classes scrambled to find a way out of the cycle
of debt and home foreclosures. The three trillion dollar wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq have drained resources and human lives like some
"demonic destructive suction tube."( Dr. King, Beyond Vietnam speech
at Riverside church, April 4, 1967)
The survivors of Hurricane Katrina are now facing a new tsunami. The
re-collection of grant money, given by the federal government to
survivors to rebuild their homes, is being sought by big business due
to so-called overpayments. Government reports show that half of New
Orleans's poor are permanently displaced: "…Areas that are fully
recovering are more affluent and predominately white. New Orleans,
which was 67 percent black before Katrina, is estimated to be no
higher than 58 percent black now." (Human rights lawyer Bill Quigley,
"Half of New Orleans's Poor Permanently Displaced: Failure or
Success?," March 6, 2008)
The crisis of leadership is quite pronounced today. The legacy and
leadership of Dr. King is the exception and not the rule. Today, we
need a new, radical, mass movement of the working class and poor to
challenge capitalism and big business. This movement must be
multi-ethnic, gender-balanced, democratic, accountable, and
politicized, learning the lessons of the black freedom movement. A
movement organized in our workplaces, communities, and schools around
demands for national healthcare, jobs for all at a living wage,
against racism and poverty, for environmental justice for the planet,
and to end militarism and imperialist wars.
As we have seen, big business and its two parties will continue to
try to take back what they were forced to give up due to militant
social struggle by workers and youth. The life and labors of Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. will continue to provide an example for this
generation of workers, poor, youth, and people of color to defeat
racism, poverty, and war and end the misery of global capitalism with
the vision of building a democratic socialist world.
--
Program Against Racism and Poverty
Free national healthcare and childcare systems.
Abolish tuition fees; create free high-quality public education for
all, from pre-school through college.
Full employment with a living wage.
No housing foreclosures.
End the war – Cut military spending. Use the money to rebuild the
inner cities and the infrastructure under union conditions and wages.
Build schools, hospitals, and affordable, decent housing.
Shut down all military recruitment centers on our campuses and
communities; build training, employment, education, and cultural centers.
Defend immigrant rights; papers for all.
End police brutality and harassment through labor-community
committees to control all aspects of public safety.
Abolish the death penalty.
Break with the two parties of big business. For independent anti-war,
anti-corporate candidates to challenge the two parties of big
business and prepare the way for a mass workers' party.
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