It has been a few years since I heard a speech that popular culture has largely stripped figures like Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Jr., and, most recently, Nelson Mandela of their fundamental radical zeal. Yesterday, I read a few articles and commentaries that attempted to restore the total body of work of Martin Luther King, when most people remember a single, albeit powerful, message.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” Martin Luther King, Jr., said fifty years ago last summer.
But Martin Luther King’s dream extended well beyond that simple yet articulate vision and, in his day, he was a polarizing figure to both those who fought to preserve the status quo and those who pushed for change by means other than non-violent resistance.
I was particularly taken aback by a letter from Republican Assemblyman Dan Logue, who serves the northern part of our county and into the valley. The title was “Martin Luther King Jr. opposed class warfare.”
While I think the Assemblymember meant well here in writing, “Of all the qualities I have admired about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, the one that stands out the most to me was his earnest desire for unity. He lived in a nation divided by skin color and sought to unite all people. As we mark the holiday honoring Dr. King on January 20th, I hope we will use it as a day to remember King’s dream that we may, ‘sit down together at the table of brotherhood.’”
He would add, “Racial inequity deeply weakened our nation’s rightful claim as a champion of freedom. Dr. King recognized this. Following in the footsteps of other civil rights leaders before him, he pursued justice by appealing to our best instincts, not our worst. His legacy heralded the joining of hands together for the common cause of freedom through hope and faith.”
However, he writes, “Dr. King showed us that positive change can be achieved without violence.”
Actually, what Dr. King showed us is that positive change will be resisted with violence at every turn as the powers that be fight to cling to their status quo. What Dr. King showed us is that the forces of hate and the acts of violence can be defeated through love, faith and non-violence.
That misunderstanding is understandable. However, I particularly object when Assemblymember Logue writes, “It is his message of looking to the future that states ‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.’ That supersedes our divisions of class warfare whether they are based prejudice or drawn by politicians.”
Apparently, Assemblymember Logue believes that Martin Luther King’s history ended in 1963. Writes Peniel Joseph in an op-ed run in the Daily Democrat this weekend, “Missing from many of the annual King celebrations is the portrait of a political revolutionary who, over time, evolved into a radical warrior for peace, justice and the eradication of poverty. During his last three years, King the ‘Dreamer’ turned into one of the most eloquent, powerful and scathing critics of American society.”
By 1967, Dr. King recognized that racial reconciliation could not occur as long as race divided the working class along racial rather than economic lines.
Dr. King, in December 1967, “organized a Poor People’s Campaign to address issues of economic justice and housing for the poor in the United States, aiming itself at rebuilding America’s cities.”
“The Poor People’s Campaign did not focus on just poor black people but addressed all poor people.Martin Luther King Jr. labeled the Poor People’s Campaign the ‘second phase,’ of the civil rights struggle – setting goals such as gathering activists to lobby Congress for an ‘Economic Bill of Rights,'” describes the Poor People’s Campaign website in their history of the movement. “Dr. King also saw a crying need to confront a Congress that had demonstrated its ‘hostility to the poor’ – appropriating ‘military funds with alacrity and generosity,’ but providing ‘poverty funds with miserliness.’”
It adds, “Under the ‘economic bill of rights’ the Poor People’s Campaign asked for the federal government to prioritize helping the poor with an antipoverty package that included housing and a guaranteed annual income for all Americans.”
“In an unwitting testament to his commitment to the struggle of working Americans, King was assassinated amid a campaign to rally sanitation workers on strike for decent wages and better working conditions in Memphis, Tenn,” Peniel Joseph notes. “Yet King’s powerful rage against economic exploitation and war is often overlooked when we think of him as only a race-healer.”
Ironically, these kinds of efforts are at the very heart of what politicians like Assemblymember Logue describe as “class warfare.”
“It took leaders like Dr. King to remind the nation that it had strayed from its original message of harmony, Assemblyman Logue concludes, noting, “Today, we need to return again to a nation united around his message of liberty, self-reliance and opportunity and one nation under God.”
But the message of Martin Luther King is missing from these words. Martin Luther King was concerned about justice, a word that the Assemblyman never uses. He was concerned with equality.
Self-reliance? After the successful Montgomery Boycott, Dr. King offered a different vision, “The end is reconciliation, the end is redemption, the end is the creation of the beloved community.”
As the King center explains, while Dr. King did not coin the term, he “popularized the term and invested it with a deeper meaning which has captured the imagination of people of goodwill all over the world.”
For Dr. King, “The Beloved Community was not a lofty utopian goal to be confused with the rapturous image of the Peaceable Kingdom, in which lions and lambs coexist in idyllic harmony. Rather, The Beloved Community was for him a realistic, achievable goal that could be attained by a critical mass of people committed to and trained in the philosophy and methods of nonviolence.”
Moreover, Dr. King’s Beloved Community “is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth.”
In the Beloved Community, “poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.”
That is not the message that people like Assemblymember Logue can understand or support. But that was the message of Martin Luther King.
Dr. King’s world is not one without conflict, he viewed conflict as “an inevitable part of the human experience.” The strength of his message is that “conflict could be resolved peacefully and adversaries could be reconciled through a mutual, determined commitment to nonviolence. No conflict, he believed, need erupt in violence. And all conflicts in The Beloved Community should “end with reconciliation of adversaries cooperating together in a spirit of friendship and goodwill.”
We have too quickly forgotten that the end of Dr. King’s vision was not just a colorblind society, but a society in which we fight for social justice.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
And lest we forget… Toward the end of his life, Dr King also spoke out strongly against the Vietnam War… I would also argue that King’s theology–an eschatological vision of the reconciliation of all things–provided the vision for his “Beloved Community.” Here is King on Vietnam:
“We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and for justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.”
–Martin Luther King, Jr., “CONSCIENCE AND THE VIETNAM WAR” in The Trumpet of Conscience (1968)
Good post. Je d’accord. Came close to having to choose between being a medic or moving to Canada. Was leaning toward medic. That’s how my dad served in WWII and Korea.
In the last post on MLK Matt wrote:
> When we discuss subjects like this one it is always useful to remember
> that the root of the word “prejudice” is “pre judge” and with all due
> respect to many of the posters here in the Vanguard, we all practice
> a whole lot of “pre judgement” whether we want to admit it or not.
While it seems like we have less and less people every year that “pre judge” and don’t want to hire someone because they are “black,” we have more and more people that “pre judge” and don’t want to hire someone because they are “Republican”…
Then David wrote:
> Dr. King in December 1967, “organized a Poor People’s Campaign to
> address issues of economic justice and housing for the poor in the
> United States
As a “regular white guy” who grew up in a poor family I hear rich Republican politicians “say” they want to help the “working class” but in the end “most” of what they do is helping their friends and relatives get rich and get elected to higher office.
As a regular white guy who has spent a lot of time in the black community I hear rich Democrat politicians “say” they want to help the “poor and working class” but in the end “most” of what they do is helping their friends and relatives get rich and get elected to higher office.
> Actually, what Dr. King showed us is that positive change will be
> resisted with violence at every turn as the powers that be fight to
> cling to their status quo.
Just like gang members will often “give up” some of their turf to avoid a war the rich “old money” whites gave up some “turf” to the “new money” blacks who basically do the same thing the whites were doing (make their friends rich and get their family members elected to higher office). I have been critical of George HW Bush who gave his Skull & Bones (and Bohemian Club) pal Bill Draper a job at the Import Export Bank to give money to friends of Republicans and how out of all the people he could find to run for President he picked his kid GW (who is also a Skull & Bones and Bohemian Club member). I don’t see any difference when someone like Jesse Jackson helps his (Kappa Alpha Psi) brother Jesse White get a job as IL Sec of State who then of all people helps Jesse get his kid Jesse Jr. (an Omega Psi Phi) elected to Congress IL.
Years ago when I was out with an Alpha Phi Alpha friend we saw SF Mayor Willie Brown at a bar. My friend went up to Willie and gave him the Alpha Phi Alpha “grip”. Seconds later someone from the bar came over to “buy us a round on the house”. My friend later told me that in addition to members like Mayor Brown and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that Alpha Phi Alpha has sent more brothers to Congress in recent years than any “white” fraternity…
What company/entity requires disclosure of party affiliation as part of the employment process? Been through a number of them, and that never came up…
hpierce wrote:
> What company/entity requires disclosure of party affiliation as
> part of the employment process?
Below is an example I read about yesterday in SF “after” someone was hired:
http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/San-Francisco-s-new-blacklist-5160024.php
I think Frankly can probably give you some local examples.
I have friends that work in education that tell me that if the powers that be find out you (are someone like David) that might agree with a Republican on even two of 100 issues you are screwed…
If that is true, and I’ll give you the benefit of a doubt, those people should be “outed”, stripped of their positions, and to the extent the law allows, stripped of their post-employment benefits.
And my opinion would not be different if the political affiliations were reversed.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says conservatives, and perhaps anyone else who happens to disagree with him, “have no place in the State of New York.”
Scott Eckern, the Sacramento theater director whose political donation in support of California’s Prop. 8 ban on same-sex marriage has become a lightning rod in the debate over gay rights, resigned due to harassment from rabid leftist gay rights activists.
Yes, this type of thing happens a lot. And it is happening more and more.
The Godless I-view-my-ideology-as-my-replacement-for-spirituality left is the most intolerant political side by far.
I have written before that political tolerance is our new civil rights challenge, and red versus blue replaces white versus black as our new “racial” conflict.
But note that there are very few conservatives that reject quality talent because of their political view. Although what conservatives are doing more of these days is shrugging… stopping their investment in business growth that would allow them to hire talent. And some of this shrugging in in direct response to the increased tendency for liberals to call the shots of government and the economy.
“New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says conservatives, and perhaps anyone else who happens to disagree with him, “have no place in the State of New York.””
i’d like to see the quote in context
Cuomo: ““Their problem is not me and the Democrats; their problem is themselves,” he said. “Who are they? Are they these extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that’s who they are and they’re the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.”
So I guess extreme liberals should move out of Texas while we are filtering people by their political beliefs.
Texas will be a Democratic state within ten years.
Miss Wendy “misstated details” Davis won’t be it’s Governor, that’s for sure.
Who is he speaking about, who is “their”?
David wrote:
> Who is he speaking about, who is “their”?
Google is your friend:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Davis_(politician)
The “old” Wendy may not have had a chance but the “new and improved” Wendy (that looks like a TX GOP Wife) just might win:
http://realwendydavis.wordpress.com/
SOD, there was no “their” in my post, David is referring to Frankly’s post. Google that……….
Frankly
I fail to see how Mr. Cuomo’s statement is so very different from your invitation to me to move from Davis if I do not want additional growth.
It would seem that neither end of the political spectrum has a monopoly on feeling that those who do not agree with them should move.
I don’t want you to move Tia, I just want you to be happy.
How does that compare with Cuomo’s statement?
I don’t think it does.
There’s no defending Cuomo’s statement.
Agreed. And there is no defending anyone’s statement that someone else should move because of their political beliefs or preferences for lifestyle. It is equally indefensible regardless of who is making the suggestion.
Robb wrote:
> And lest we forget… Toward the end of his life, Dr King also
> spoke out strongly against the Vietnam War
When I voted to Obama I hoped he would have done more to end US involvement in foreign wars, but I think that the power of the “military industrial complex” is just too much for any president to fight (just like the “poverty industrial complex” is too much for any president to fight).
Most (but not all) of the “military industrial complex” spending is just to make connected people rich and give some jobs to (mostly) poor Republicans not to “keep us safe” just like most (but not all) of the “poverty industrial complex” spending is to make connected people rich not “help the poor” and give some jobs to (mostly) poor Democrats.
Despite what they “say” every anti-war president has increased military spending and every anti-welfare president has increased welfare spending…
“every”? Reagan and Carter come to mind.
hpierce wrote:
> “every”? Reagan and Carter come to mind.
Carter:
1976 Welfare Spending ~$60 Billion
1980 Welfare Spending ~$81 Billion
1976 Defense Spending ~$283 Billion
1980 Defense Spending ~$303 Billion
Regan:
1980 Welfare Spending ~$81 Billion
1988 Welfare Spending ~270 Billion
1980 Defense Spending ~$303 Billion
1980 Defense Spending ~$426 Billion
ok… Carter ran to be more supportive of the disenfranchised… by your figures, welfare spending went up. Reagan promoted a “strong” defense. Spending went up, according to your figures. What am I missing
Also, all spending/revenue bills originate from the H o R, not the Executive Branch.
hpierce wrote:
> spending/revenue bills originate from the H o R,
> not the executive branch.
It is a cop out to say that Carter “didn’t want to” increase defense spending and Regan “didn’t want to” increase welfare spending since “very few” spending/revenue bills in the past 40 years had the votes to become law without a signature from the executive branch (the H o R rarely has 2/3 voting one way to override a veto).
And, perhaps it is a cop out to note that both presidents “spent” significantly more in both categories during their administrations. In my opinion, you did not make your point.
hpierce, SoD always tries to make two points, the Democrat side and the GOP side, on almost every post he makes.
Despite what they “say” every anti-war president has increased military spending and every anti-welfare president has increased welfare spending…
This is a bit of a misleading statement when you look at the total budget picture.
With the exception of funding for the great wars, defense spending as a percent of GDP has declined. For example, the US was spending 5.5% of GDP on defense after WWII in 1947. In 2012 the US was spending 4.4%. 2014 estimate is 3.7%. This is below the post 9-11 average of 4.2%.
As a percent of the federal budget, defense spending has declined from 46.9% in 1962 to 24% in 2012.
In 1981 44.9% of all fed employees where in defense-related jobs. Today that number is about 35%.
Meanwhile, total federal budget spending as a percentage of GDP has steadily risen from 11.6% in 1948 to 22.8% today… and with Obamacare and Democrats’ massive increases to entitlements, it is projected to skyrocket higher in the coming years.
Since 1931, every single year except for TWELVE (1947, 48, 49, 51, 56, 57, 60, 69, 98, 99, 2000, 2001) ended in a budget deficit.
The bottom line… the left and an irresponsible press and media are perpetuating the lie that defense spending is our problem. It is not. The problem is that politicians are fond of giving away money we don’t have to other government programs (i.e., unionized government employees) and social programs. And there are three human pursuits driving this tendency:
1. Help self, friends and family get rich and richer.
2. Buy political power.
3. Satiate liberal social justice – save-people-from-themselves – impulses.
The problem does not stop unless and until we stop electing politicians that demonstrate their reliable propensity toward one or all of these three pursuits. That is what the Tea Party is demanding. How is that working out in our left-tilted popular and political culture?
I wrote:
> Despite what they “say” every anti-war president has increased military
> spending and every anti-welfare president has increased welfare spending…
Then Frankly wrote:
> This is a bit of a misleading statement when you look at the total
> budget picture. With the exception of funding for the great wars,
> defense spending as a percent of GDP has declined.
It is not a “misleading statement” it is a “statement of fact”.
Tying spending to GDP is a way to hide the fact that spending is going up. What would you say to your wife if she bought 10 more pairs of shoes than last year but pointed out that since your kids now have part time jobs her spending “as a percent of family income” has actually “declined”…
I like Frankly and know that he really wants to make the world a better place, but unfortunately (just like so many that just listen to talking points from the “other side”) he is caught up in the “spin” that his side puts out there to hide what they are really doing (making their friends and relatives rich and tossing a few crumbs down to the people that voted for them)…
SouthofDavis said . . .
“Tying spending to GDP is a way to hide the fact that spending is going up. What would you say to your wife if she bought 10 more pairs of shoes than last year but pointed out that since your kids now have part time jobs her spending “as a percent of family income” has actually “declined”…
Thank you for saying this SoD. As we move forward with solutions to our local Davis budget crisis, we need to keep this idea in mind. If we see revenue increases from incremental taxes and/or economic development, we need to not simply pass those incresaes on to City employees automatically.
We need to take a hockey stick mentality, with a long period of no increases (possibly even further decreases for the firefighters) until baseline revenue capture catches up with the overheated expense escallation we have experienced over the ten-year period that preceded this current Council.
You have to tie historical spending to some common measure to provide some perspective. You can use inflation if you want to, but I don’t think that tells enough of a story.
GDP is the total private economic production of the country. This is exactly what tax revenue derives from. No GDP, then zero tax revenue. Do you disagree with this? I hope not.
Measuring historical spending per GDP is the most accurate way to gage real shifts in spending. It is the percent of our entire economic pie.
So I completely disagree with you that tying spending to the GDP is “hiding facts”. I think just the opposite is true. The lie from the left is that we are spending all this money on the military that we should be spending on entitlements and social programs. Never mind for a minute that the average voter lacks a clue about how tenuous his peaceful and prosperous life is if Russia and China decide now is a good time to eff up the US, or that the Islamists figure out how to get one of North Korea’s or Pakistan’s or Iran’s nukes lobbed over onto one of our allies or one of our foreign military bases. When we look at the percentage of the economy we have been spending on defense, it has significantly declined. When we look at the percentage of the economy we have been spending on non-defense, it has significantly increased.
I do agree that both Republican and Democrat politicians are to blame.
But in 2007 we started experiencing the Great Recession… otherwise the Great Correction. So we know now what we should have been doing. But the Democrat in the Whitehouse and the one leading the Senate are doing more of the very things that we had been doing. What has changed? We are spending less on our military and more on entitlements. CRA still exists. Glass Steagall is still overturned and banks play in investments and investment houses play in banking. There is still regulatory pressure for banks to lend to poor minorities. There is still ARMs and zero down and low doc mortgages. The Fed is still keeping rates low and buying treasuries by the shipload. Freddie and Fannie still exist and are still driving a mammoth secondary market. Realtors are still telling buyers where they can buy and flip a home to cash out. Derivatives and other securities backed by inflated home mortgages are still being traded… and by underfunded pension funds.
You can keep pointing back for comparison to make excuses for those in charge; but I don’t roll that way. We cannot change the past, we can only “move forward.”
And this President and Democrat Senate are doing everything but moving us forward.
And voters are finally starting to show their disapproval.
And Obama says it is just racism that is causing his low approval ratings.
The man is the most egotistical and narcissistic actor of a leader than we have every elected, but for some reason he has been Teflon… the Messiah.
History will trash him and we Americans are going to have get some counseling to figure out why we denied admitting that we elected a dud and our country was being irreparably harmed by his amateur self and friends that was powered by a broken and dangerous dogma.
The data for the previous can be found here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/historicals
this leads to an interesting question: who gets to define what MLK was? contemporary history seems to define mlk simply by his 1963 speech, ignoring the totality of his history. by doing so, we gain left-right consensus on the civil rights movement but we lose the more radical elements of MLK’s philosophy
Same as JFK. History does not match the pop culture by a long shot.
Never has. Never will. That is why they call it pop.
Self-reliance? MLK? i too despise the co-optation of mlk into a teddy bear
It is very interesting how both MLK and JFK were both complete sex-addicts and guilty of copious infidelity and this has not done much to tarnish their reputation as historical icons. I understand that the FBI has locked MLK files until 2027. It is anticipated that there will be a lot of revelations about his womanizing and also his active role in the pursuit of communism.
JFK is also primarily responsible for the Bay of Pigs fiasco that certainly led to the Cuban missile crisis, and escalating the Vietnam conflict to a war… the dropping of Napalm and Agent Orange… and the resulting deaths of hundreds of thousands Vietnamese and 58,220 US soldiers.
And now we have Obama spying on the world, using drones to kill people, causing extended joblessness, failing to improve poverty and crappy education, etc., etc., etc….
I wonder, do Republicans get so much apparent forgiveness as do the heroes and icons of the left?
Of course that is a rhetorical question. We know the answer is no. Hell Nixon ended the Vietnam war and he continues to be demonized for much less political malfeasance than Mr. Obama’s use of the IRS to punish his political opponents.
“I understand that the FBI has locked MLK files until 2027. It is anticipated that there will be a lot of revelations about his womanizing and also his active role in the pursuit of communism.”
it’s good that you repeat unsubstantiated conspiracy theories printed in right wing blogs.
it’s good that you repeat unsubstantiated conspiracy theories printed in right wing blogs.
Is Wikipedia a right wing blog?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.,_Records_Collection_Act
since anyone can post information, it would not consider wikipedia a reliable source
Come on DP. It is peer reviewed like are your global warming studies.
Again, is Wikipedia a right wing blog? That was your claim… that I was posting from a right wing blog.
Do you dispute this point that MLKs FBI files are locked up? What do you base that opinion on… left wing blogs?
I cant tell you how many times I’ve seen liberals on here post Wikipedia as a reference.
Guilty as charged.
By the way… on Obama’s need to punish Republicans using the IRS… did ya’ll know that Democrats gave away many dollars that would have gone to social programs to get the GOP to accept leaving in new rules that gives the IRS more statutory power to harass GOP groups?
This fits.
With the left political class, it is all about keeping power. The little people are just pawns in the game they play to that end.
These new rules are in the current Omnibus budget bill just passed.