BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Janie
Date: 26 Jan 08 - 03:45 AM

Warning: More long-windedness.

As I read through this thread, one thing that strikes me is the diversity of perspectives among people who share some common values. Not one person has posted here to whom social justice is not an important issue. Not one post to this thread suggests the poster does not recognize, nor is concerned with the continued presence of racism in our society, or with issues of sociopolitical economic social justice. Still, we squabble, clarify, recap, etc.

I note this not as a chastisement, but as an observation. Gee. We be humans.

The wounds of past racism, the realities of current racism, and each of our own complex emotions tell the tale of the effects of racism on all of us as individuals and as a society.    It leads to the denial of racism, when racism is really operative. It leads to the perception of racism when racism is not operative. It impairs the faculty of discernment within the individual and within the group. Think of all the times that it is likely that both racism and projection of racism are present.   

I gotta go to bed. More later.

Maybe.

Peace and discernment to all,

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Janie
Date: 26 Jan 08 - 02:15 AM

Warning: Long-windedness ahead. I'll try to break it up into shorter posts.

I would suggest that pacifism is a broad and extremely nuanced concept, the exploration of which provides the individual and society a very difficult but rich opportunity to deal with the paradoxes and conflicts that are inherent in human interaction, whether one is talking about two individuals, the individual in relationship to the group, or the interactions between groups. To the extent a person has insight into themselves (i.e. to what extent has an individual is able to speak truth to their own power) then one can both arrive at one's own synthesis, and appreciate and accept as valid the different synthesis at which others might arrive. One can recognize the importance of ideals as well as the importance of pragmatism in shaping efforts geared toward either shaping or expressing the values, attitudes and actions of society. Whether an individual personally finds a synthesis toward the pragmatic end or toward the idealistic end of the continuum will depend an a number of interrelated variables that include but are certainly not limited to personality, life experience, values and the ranking of personal values, social learning (which includes all the elements involved with socialization within a cultural context, which includes the collective and historical experiences of the social group in which one is embedded,) and self-interest.

There are always both costs and benefits to choices we make.   There are always risks. While there may be intended consequences, there are always unintended consequences. Short term cost/benefit analyses tend to be more accurate. The further into the future one tries to project, the less reliable the cost/benefit analysis. Because values, goals, time-lines, and perceptions of self-interest vary, different individuals, and different groups will use different criteria when weighing costs and benefits, and within groups there will also be differences, some more nuanced than others.

Believe it or not, this line of thought has to do with racism, in particular, and social justice in general.

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Bobert
Date: 24 Jan 08 - 06:45 PM

Well, just for historical reference, in Greenwood, Ms. in 1964 at a NSSC rally attended my Dr. King, Stokley Carmicle dropped the "BlacK Power" bomb on Dr. KIng and even though Dr. King had immediate reservations about the term, he ponderd on it worker thru his initial reactions and in his book *Where Do We Go From Here" (1967) here are a few of his thoughts:

"First, it is necessary to understand that Black Power is a cry of disappointment... It is a cry of daily hurt and personal pain. For centuries the Negro has been caught in the tenticles of white power... Black Power is a reaction to the failure of white power.

Second, Balck Power, in its braod and positive meaning, is a call to black people to amass the political and econimic strength to achieve their legitamate goals. No one can deny that the Hegto is in dire need of this kind of legitimate power. Indeed, one of tyhe great problems that the Negro confronts is his lack of power...

Black power is also a call for the pooling of balck finacial resources to achieve economic security...

Finally, Black Power is a psychological call to manhood. For year the Negro has been taught that he is nobody, that his color is a sign of biological depravity, that his being has been stamped with indelible imprint of inferiority., that his whole history has been soiled with the filth of worthlessness. All too few people realize how slavery and racial segregation have scarred the soil and wounded the spirit of the black man. The whole dirty business of slavery was based on the premise that the Negro was a thing to be used, not a person to be respected..."

*****************************************************************

In Dr. KIng's ability to re-examine and to re-think the events of the 60's as they were unfolding, it is MHO that Dr. King has the capacity to stick with the truth on one hand while changing to the times on the other...

Yes, he was initailly shocked at by "Black Power" yet found a way to take the reality that Stokley Carmicle infused into the civil rights movement in Greenwood, Ms... and run with it...

This thread is about rmembering Dr. King and what he meant to the movement and I hope these quotes take I continue to share take the "Day" part out of MLK... It's not *a* day... It's *every* day...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Bobert
Date: 24 Jan 08 - 05:27 PM

Yeah, P-Gator, I've heard John Sinclairs band a couple time at Common Ground in Westminster, Ms, where John has been hired to conduct workshops... His band is real solid but not flashy but that really isn't what it's all about... He uses the band as background music as he goes into one of his poetic lectures about blues history... It ain't really singing 'casue John can't ing and it doesn't exactly rhyme... It's kind different but very entertaining and informative... The guy is a wealth of knowledge... Musta learnt it up during the 8 or so years he spent in the joint...

Ummmmm. GUEST, GUEST... Later I'm gonna talk a little about Stokley and Dr. King's reactions/reassessments to and about "Black Power"...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: PoppaGator
Date: 24 Jan 08 - 02:47 PM

Bobert: After living here in New Orleans for at least a decade, John Sinclair was displaced in the aftermath of Katrina and has only been back for visits since August '05. I'm not sure where he's living now, but I'd guess he's back in Detroit. I do know that there has been at least one farily recent "reunion" event featuring John with members of the MC5.

I can't say that I know him well, but we moved in the same circles and had a passing acquaintance. Our respective wives became closer friends than John and I (but then that's true in way too many cases!). He's a tremendously interesting guy, put together several excellent blues bands to accompany his poetry readings, ran a great radio program on WWOZ. We miss him.

Like me and a whole lot of folks, John Sinclair has become "less political" in these latter years ~ less explicitly political, anyway ~ but in his daily and in his cultural/musical endeavors, he certainly exemplifies and advances the same values as always.

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: GUEST,GUEST
Date: 24 Jan 08 - 02:19 PM

Not a competition Bobert--erased. I don't like seeing the truth of history erased, and that is definitely what the MLK Day has become all about. Shit, look at the horse race! This year, mainstream media made MLK Day all about another chance to play their race card games.

Also, there was a definite gangster element with some of the Panthers, mostly the Oakland wing of the movement, as everyone knows. But all that gun shit was, for the most part, blustering that the mainstream media distorted and glorified. Things did get really strange around that time with all the movements. Same thing was happening in terms of the Weathermen. The mainstream media absolutely sucks at showing us the nuanced, developmental changes in people and the power structures, and at times like the 60s, that results in tremendous distortions of reality being beamed at us. How many Americans ever had one single personal encounter with an armed member of the Black Panther Party? I never did, despite them being active and around where I was in those days. But I was an anti-war activist and on the periphery of the civil rights movement in Chicago--at the intersection of the two groups. I kept my distance from most of them, but not all of them because some of them were really right on. Just like the SDS kids were. Kept my distance from the majority for sure (especially the Chicago headquarters of the SDS), but I used to hang and organize outside the city, so I never had much contact with all the "national organizers" who took over for awhile around the time of the '68 convention.

Stokely, in my opinion, eventually dissembled and went off his rocker with the whole moving to Africa, Marxist pan African thing, though he was always right on, straight on down the line, about the black middle class in the US. But then, he had some cultural distance, because certain groups in the black communities made sure he knew he would never be "one of them" because he was from Trinidad. I'm totally shooting from the hip here, but I think that ostracization may be what drove him out of the US.

That us vs you dynamic still plays itself out today. In front of me, it played out last year with Black History Month politics in my school, when an African American teacher from NYC told me our Afro-Caribbean principal wasn't "one of us". Bullshit, all of it, no matter what color, what ethnicity, what gender, what nationality, what EVER!

Peace out y'all--I GOTTA get back to work here!

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: GUEST,Bobert
Date: 24 Jan 08 - 01:51 PM

Opps...

...100..

B~

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: GUEST,Bobert
Date: 24 Jan 08 - 01:50 PM

And lets not forget the Greensboro Massacure either, GUEST,GUEST or that the last known lynching of a black man also occured in the 60's... Yeah, it was a very violent decade be it here or in Southeast Asia... And then the '68 Democratic Convention really showed the ugly side...

And, yeah, when it came to big demostrations aginst racism or the Vietnam war, the divisions (which they weren't) between SNNC, SCLC, SOC and various independent radical groups (like Richmond's Radical Student Union) were non-existent... We all got it... Stokley got it... Julian Bond got it... Dr. King got it... Ben Spock got it... GUEST, GUEST got it... I sho nuff got it... That's the most important thing about the 60's... By 1969 almost everyone that was gonna get, got it...

It's kinds silly now, though, to rehash what went on as some kinda of competetition... I had tons of respect for Stokley... For Julian Bond... For Malcolm X...

I guess the only reason that I felt so close to SCLC is because my mother was involved with SCLC and I at least had contacts thru her as to what was happening... We didn't have SNNC or SCLC in Richmond... We did have SOC but the folks who staffed it weren't all that interested to doing much... I mean, a lot of it was regional and not ideaological... You organized what you could where you were and with the materials that were most readilly available...

Then there were the biggies... For us Richmonders that generally meant Washington, D.C. where the rallies would draw folks from all kinds of communities that had been organized under under different, but complimentary, organizations...

So, I'd just rather leave my thouhgts about competing interests as mythology rather than reality...

But, inspite of my dealings with the Panthers- which BTW had nothing to do with my anti-war organizing but anti-poverty organizing- yes, I was turned off by the images they crafted for themselves... They did too much good for all that be trumped by an image problem... Same with the White Panthers... These guys weren't at all peacefull... They wore violence on their sleeves.... I mean, it ain't like I was afraid to be with them but, maybe it was my new found peace of learning how Ghandi and King could change so much without violence, I was not comfortable around many of these folks... Not all, minnd you, but many... I must also confess that maybe the years have dampened my images of the WPP becuase I attended what was supposed to be a 3 or 4 day event in Ann Arbor, drove all night to get there, went to a concert the next night and got busted for no reason other than I was driving in the black neighborhood in a VW bug with a big peace sign painted on the back and spent two days and nights in a Detroit jail??? I donno???

(BTW, John Sinclair, as in "Free John Sinclair", is alive an well and has a radio show in Louisiana and has become quite the blues historian...)

Well, I am ***stuck*** in the library waitin' on my wife so no Dr. King quotes now but I'll fire up a couple tonight...

BTW, GUEST,GUEST... How 'bout firing up a few Stokey C's quotes... I just don't have much stuff on ol' Stokley...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: GUEST,GUEST
Date: 24 Jan 08 - 12:57 PM

And oh hey--instead of re-reading King, go re-read Alinsky and listen to this and and this.

And then, start thinking all over again.

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: GUEST,GUEST
Date: 24 Jan 08 - 12:31 PM

Bobert, first know that I don't question your credentials, your commitment, or your sincerity--ever. I do take exception to the way I felt you portrayed the 60s activists who turned to and/or joined the Black Panthers as a defensive strategy in the wake of James Meredith's shooting and the March Against Fear. There are always turning point events in these liberation struggles, and that event was a high water mark, at least in the south. You see the same thing in the north with Wounded Knee, in Northern Ireland with Bloody Sunday, etc etc The reality is, the murder campaigns by the government and their paramilitaries always ends up radicalizing the oppressed population, because the level of violence always reaches a breaking point where people have to fight back to defend themselves from the onslaught of violence. THAT is what Stokely Carmichael and SNCC did, IMO.

See, the problem I have with painting the 60s black liberation movements (there is always more than just one monolithic "movement" to be sure) with that same broad brush, as I felt you did, was that brush paints Stokely right out of the picture. That is wrong as hell in my view, and it happens A LOT these days with both black and white neo-liberals, some of whom were there at the time, like John Lewis. Stokely AND Martin finished the March Against Fear TOGETHER.

When Julian Bond was backed by Atlanta SNCC when running for mayor or whatever office he was running for then, and Atlanta SNCC came down hard on the black separatist side of the fence, firing the white SNCC members from the campaign, Stokely was initially very much opposed to those actions.

He was far more complex than most of the young leadership working in the south at the time--black or white. I just have never believed that in his heart, Stokely Carmichael every truly and genuinely embraced the black separtist movement philosophy. He began as an integrationist, believed in unity (in a unifed front sort of way, certainly), and ended up being more right than King. Integration didn't do the job. Desegragation and the repeal of Jim Crow laws didn't do the job. I don't know if Stokely was the first one to coin the term "institutional racism" but if he wasn't, he was certainly one of the most articulate spokespersons to address it from that era.

We are still living today with the legacy of institutional racism--that is the part that Kucinich and Edwards are trying to focus attention on with their campaigns. Intitutional racism IS the mainstream today. White people who never suffer from it just plain don't get it, and believe it simply doesn't exist--the 60s took care of all that. The same people are staunch defenders of the gender inequality status quo, claiming that "feminism" took care of all that. There is a saying that is always a dead give away on these things. Either they say "I'm not a feminist, but..." or "I'm not a racist, but..." That makes all the buzzers in my head go off.

And don't get all hot and bothered Bobert, because I'm not talking about you. But I probably am talking about some people here in Mudcat, I just don't know who because I don't know them and their politics (you are too up front with your politics not to know your heart, so it's pretty easy with you).

You see a lot of institutional discrimination in education especially, where affirmative action programs continue to focus on race to the exclusion of gender. Except this uber-conservative educational movement to "save" the African American male--and I work in one of those schools where the plan has been just that, at the expense of the African American girls. Affirmative action laws were passed to address both forms of institutional discrimination, and they aren't doing a very good job of addressing either, even here in the purple heartland of the formerly true blue state of Minnesota.

Last but not least, King's religiousity is a problem for me, as is much of the churchified orientation of the old school SCLC, NAACP type folks. I'm a secularist through and through, and have always resented the way we are portrayed by the high and mighty religious left moralizers, be they Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist. That sort of highly moralistic tone merely lends succor to the right wing fundies backlash types. And look where cutting loose the secularists (especially the neo-liberal anti-feminists) in the post-60s era has gotten us--in a pretty fine fix.

One final thing. I have this theory that the white middle class neo-liberal denouncements of the post-60s radical left, and their embrace of status quo "moderate" political views is solely responsible for making the right wing backlash beginning with Reagan, including Bill Clinton (whom I view as being very right wing), right down to today's domination by the neo-cons, regain their stronghold in the US. In far too many ways, it seems to me, we are worse off today--in terms of winning the war against racism, poverty, and injustice--than we were in the 60s, and I fault the neo-liberals for not being vigilant and selling out the ideals of reformers of the New Left.

Neo-liberals, when history finally speaks of them from this era, will--IMO--be seen as having been active participants in the backlash movement against the 60s reformists, and the reforms of the New Deal of the 30s.

Right now, as a political force in the US, I don't think you can be any more regressive than being a so-called "moderate" of either the Democratic or Republican parties, or the party of the status quo--the growing and utterly complacent "independent middle".

The entire spectrum of human political history is littered with the remnants of regressive backsliding that wrecked peoples and nations for generations.

We've seen that happen in South Africa and the US. We've seen it happen in the Phillipines. We've seen it happen in Thailand and Cambodia. Across most of Africa and South America. You know we're screwed when China starts looking too good in comparison to us, you know?

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Peace
Date: 24 Jan 08 - 11:15 AM

The Ten-Point Program


We Want Freedom. We Want Power To Determine
The Destiny Of Our Black Community.
We believe that Black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

We Want Full Employment For Our People.
We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the White American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

We Want An End To The Robbery
By The Capitalists Of Our Black Community.
We believe that this racist government has robbed us, and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules were promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over fifty million Black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.

We Want Decent Housing Fit For The Shelter Of Human Beings.
We believe that if the White Landlords will not give decent housing to our Black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.

We Want Education For Our People That Exposes
The True Nature Of This Decadent American Society.
We Want Education That Teaches Us Our True History
And Our Role In The Present-Day Society.
We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.

We Want All Black Men To Be Exempt From Military Service.
We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like Black people, are being victimized by the White racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.

We Want An Immediate End To
Police Brutality And Murder Of Black People.
We believe we can end police brutality in our Black community by organizing Black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our Black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all Black people should arm themselves for self- defense.

We Want Freedom For All Black Men
Held In Federal, State, County And City Prisons And Jails.
We believe that all Black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.

We Want All Black People When Brought To Trial To Be Tried In
Court By A Jury Of Their Peer Group Or People From Their Black
Communities, As Defined By The Constitution Of The United States.
We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that Black people will receive fair trials. The Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the Black community from which the Black defendant came. We have been, and are being, tried by all-White juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the Black community.

We Want Land, Bread, Housing, Education,
Clothing, Justice And Peace.
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect of the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Bobert
Date: 24 Jan 08 - 10:58 AM

It ain't as much about pacifitism as much about logic and strategy... When the Black Panters decided that it was in their best interests to make it clear that the gun was going to be part of their image what they, in essence did, was invite agovernemtn that knows alot more about guns than they did to use excessive force against them... And this governemnt did just that...

I accept and embrace Dr. King's definiation of "militancy" as a behavior that is not based on "military" but of "demanding" that certain situations be corrected... That, to me, was what I felt we in the movement did well...

Fire bombing college buidings was a misguided strategy... To this day I'm not totally convinced that Hoover's boys weren't catalysts behind alot of the "violent" stuff... I know that "plants" were sent to Richmonmd and they were preachin' violence...

And I agree with GUEST,GUEST entirely on Hamas's actions yesterday... Okay, it took some explosives to pull it off but the act was non-violent and very much pro-human...

More Dr. King quotes later...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: GUEST,GUEST
Date: 24 Jan 08 - 09:19 AM

And you got it, Leadfinger--I'm envious of you realizing your dream so early in the day.

And to further clarify my own political philosophy--I've always been a non-violent resistance sort of gal, myself (if I were to use these Wiki definitions, that is), who has worked in solidarity with many a movement that advocated the use of armed struggle to achieve their people's political liberation. I personally have never advocated for armed struggle, as I don't believe it to be a more effective tactic than non-violent resistance, which I find has been most effective in 20th & 21st century politics.

In fact, I was thrilled yesterday to see Hamas blow out that wall! Now there was some mighty fine non-violent direct action, IMO. Nobody hurt, and the liberation was immediate--not to mention, a long time coming. So, while I am well aware of the gangster/criminal tactics of paramilitaries in areas of political turmoil, like Hamas, I also know their people also do a lot of really good work for their constituency. And I always ask myself first--what would I do if I was being held in an Israeli concentration camp and being deprived of life's basic necessities by a hostile military force that outguns me by a bazillion percent?

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Donuel
Date: 24 Jan 08 - 09:09 AM

He had a rare presence of mind in the most stressful situations.
I recall how Martin had the presence of mind to not pull a knife out of his chest when he was stabbed.

Crikey, If Steve Irwin had a similar presence of mind he might be alive today.

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Big Mick
Date: 24 Jan 08 - 09:08 AM

Although our disagreements are legendary, I am completely with GUEST, GUEST on that last post. Pacifism, as a theory, is admirable and makes for some very nice stories. But the fact of the matter, in the various struggles using it, is that it is simply one tactic. Real pacifism, as the base on which one builds their struggle, is not practical and just gives the wolves the ability to run rampant. As a tactic, it can be effective or ineffective depending on how it (and other tactics) are used.

It seems to this activist, that sometimes folks get all hung up on the philosophy, and lose sight of the goal, which is to bring about change. To do so requires a willingness to put oneself at risk, and use the tactics necessary to gain the goal. And of course it goes without saying that one must be very careful that they don't lose themself in the fight and cross the line which separates decent folks from murderers.

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: GUEST,GUEST
Date: 24 Jan 08 - 09:04 AM

Sorry, I meant to include this Wiki link to a page on non-violence. It's a pretty good, fairly concise explanation of what I'm trying to get at here.

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Leadfingers
Date: 24 Jan 08 - 09:02 AM

I have a dream of a 100th post

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: GUEST,GUEST
Date: 24 Jan 08 - 08:54 AM

No problemo there, Janie. I am, as usual, mildly amused at the knots people in this forum put their knickers in over anon posting.

I would like to clarify two things, and then stepping back here (we are getting quite circular in this discussion). First, I never do anything to dishonor King, I simply have strong feelings, working in public K12 education, about the effectiveness of the holiday. I base my opinion on working with kids day in and day out, in a poor, predominantly African American school (over 80%), and my colleagues who are just over 50% African American. We have one staff member who is African American who just flat out refuses to participate. Another who attended King's funeral. Some staff don't do much for MLK Day because they know it's ineffective, and focus instead on teaching African immigrant and African American arts, history, and cultures year round (my personal preference), like we are trying this year with the Serengeti migration.

Secondly, this whole non-violence business always trips my trigger. For one thing--how many people did the Black Panthers murder, exactly? Can any of the pacifist sorts here tell me that? Or actually, how many people did the black liberation movement of the 1960s murder?

Now, on the other hand, how many black activists were murdered by vigilantes, white paramilitaries, or government police?

It is far too easy to be a pacifist when the gun isn't being held to your head, or your house or church being firebombed or burned down with your family in it. That happened to HUNDREDS (if not thousands) of African American, American Indian, and Latino activists and their families in those days. So yeah, I'm real skeptical of white, middle class, neo-liberal pacifism. It's a belief system that seems on very shaky ground to me, considering it's a belief system that rarely gets tested harshly, like Stokely Carmichael's belief system was.

Finally, there are also a lot of white, middle class, neo-liberals who believe movements for political change should embrace pacifism as a belief system to make them (the middle class neo-liberals) feel more comfortable and at ease in ways that won't challenge their race advantages and the racial status quo. They flat out refuse to accept that it is perferctly legitimate for activists to use non-violence as a tactic/strategy, without being a pacifist or claiming the entire movement adheres to a Gandhian belief system.

Using non-violent direct action as a political tactic isn't the same thing as having a pacifist or Gandhian non-violent belief system. Condemning the entire black liberation movement for not adhering to the former, rather than the latter, is like condemning someone for not believing in religion.

People conveniently forget that the Gandhian principles of non-violence weren't effective in India. There are some who would argue they weren't effective here or in South Africa either, and that it was many other factors converging that eventually forced social changes--in India, for the worse as it turned out (civil war and partition).

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: GUEST,Dani
Date: 24 Jan 08 - 06:15 AM

"the most profound piece of writing that King produced"

Absolutely. Some of the most profound ANY American's produced, and one of the reasons I wish (younger) students had more opportunities to study his writings in more depth, rather than a one-day affair.

Dani

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Joe Offer
Date: 24 Jan 08 - 03:50 AM

OK, so can we get back to talking about Martin Luther King, Jr.?

I'm part of a team that teaches people who want to become Catholics. Monday night's topic was "sin." To begin the discussion, the priest had three of us do a dramatic reading of King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail." I've read that piece many times, but it hit me a lot harder when I read it out loud. It's solid theology, and I was impressed to see a Baptist minister quoting Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. And whether you're a believer or not, it's a remarkable statement on justice, perhaps the most profound piece of writing that King produced.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Janie
Date: 24 Jan 08 - 12:18 AM

I think you are reading things into my post that are not there, as well as ignoring what is there. The post is a simple recounting of the history of SNCC. I neither imply or intend any value judgement.   To the extent that you see that, it is your own projection, to which you have the right, and for which you have the responsibility.   

As you are well aware, you are also free to make whatever assumptions you choose to make regarding my thoughts regarding the MLK holiday, or Dr. King himself. In the interest of brevity, I will simply say that I don't view this as a competition, and that my interest and respect for Dr. King, as human and imperfect an individual as he was, extends beyond his role as a civil rights leader. I also do not have a tendency to mythologize him.   One can choose to view MLK day as deeply problematic, or can choose to view it as an opportunity. Either perspective is valid. I note, regarding the activities and learning opportunities to involve kids in learning and awareness about other civil rights issues and people of historical significancy, that you are treating it as an opportunity. My son's Quaker school does the same. Good on you!

'Spaw, I saw our post re: Malcolm X and have been cogitating about it. It lead me to do some hasty research about him. Thanks for posting it. While it has not been commented on, it has not been ignored by me. I doubt I am so unique that others are not doing the same.

I just deleted a ridiculously long post. The above is very incomplete. But the best i can do and stay brief.

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: wysiwyg
Date: 23 Jan 08 - 11:14 PM

... Those three together would have changed the course of our history ...

They did. It just isn't done playing out yet.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: katlaughing
Date: 23 Jan 08 - 11:06 PM

Thanks, Spaw, for posting the quotes and for your comments.

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Bobert
Date: 23 Jan 08 - 09:23 PM

You are so right, Spawzer....

There were many voices saying purdy much the same thing... I still have a very worm Malcome X poster that hung in my bedroom in the 60's...

I have spoke about Malcolm in the past and on other threads... He was the real deal... He would have made a big, big difference had he not been gunned down... A big difference... And he had a constituency that he could have brought with him who were more miliatant (in the wal that Dr. King defined it which I posted earlier) that would have made a major difference...

You know, I probably will get some heat for saying this but the big 3 assasinations were Malcolm, RFK and Dr, King... I know that folks just wanta put JFK into the mix but I never saw him as in the mix... To me it was Malcolm, RFK and Dr, King... Those were the crippling losses... Those three together would have changed the course of our history...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: GUEST,GUEST
Date: 23 Jan 08 - 08:48 PM

Oh THANKS for undeleting the messages. That makes me feel special, considering I'm still in "access denied" status and can't freely use the Mudcat front door. Don't you Mudcat mods ever get tired, wearing those heavy boots?

Janie, here is the problem I have with interpretations like yours. It completely overlooks what those kids did. Completely devalues everything SNCC stood for, everything they sacrificed, and well...just everything.

Your interpretation is all about what SNCC wasn't for most of it's life, and is historic neo-liberal revisionism at it's worst, IMO. All that just to lionize Martin?

Stokely Carmichael was not a violent, evil man--not by a long shot. And your portrayal of him as such is, again IMO, disingenuous.

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: catspaw49
Date: 23 Jan 08 - 08:47 PM

Janie, I posted above about Malcolm but was pretty well ignored. Doesn't really matter but I think your point re: Stokely and Malcolm X is accurate to a similar degree that I believe King was moving toward the crossing point a well. Malcolm was indeed moving towards that same point but from the other side when he was killed. What might have been lives in only personal interpretations and can never be known but simply discussed and argued over.

I believe that much of what was "The Movement" was better represented by others but MLK was a real factor and one to be remembered. That we forget others and for me especially that we fail to remember Malcolm for his own highly significant role seriously troubles me.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Bobert
Date: 23 Jan 08 - 08:46 PM

Yo, GUEST, GUEST...

Chill...

UI never associated SNNC with violence... If so, show me the post where I did so!!!

I did, however, associate the Black Panther Party with violence becuase of the "guns" that the Black Panters weren't shy about showing...

I did speak about the Philly chapter and how the "guns" being shown gave Police Chief Pig Rizzo the perfect opportunity to bust into the local Black Panther headquarters, make the folks in there strip naked and march them thru the street s ofm Philly ... Yeah, I did say that and I stand behind it...

I had lotta friends in SNNC and organized stuff with them and never thought of them as preaching violence... Never...

What, just because I happened to allign more with SCLC that makes me a SNNC or SOC hater???

That is copmpletely fu*ked up!!!

I also had close contacts with SDS... I had meetings in Charlottesville with Bill Kunstler and Jerry Rubin...

I brought not onlt the Black Panthers from Cicago but also the White Panters from Ann Arbor to Richmond to help them try to organize...

So before you go calling me so white Uncle Friggin' Tom yer-grandfathers-civil-rights activist, get your story right!!!

I supported everyone who was in the movement... I did not support guns or violence... As rector of Virginia Commonweath University's "Radical Student Union" I threw out two friginn' J. Edgar Hoover ***plants*** who tried to get the RSU to burn the universtity's president house... Had they won over the RSU and carried out the burning then VCU might have been the next Kent State... Instead, we were able to organize a massive student strike with thousands of kids demonstarting against the war... That was more meaningful than havin' a couple kids shot trying to burn down a friggin' house...

Now, GUEST, GUEST, you may think that we should have had a couple kids shot rather than mobilizing some 5000 kids and if that is your opinion then we differ as much today as we would have differed back then... We weren't going to stop the war by alienating people... Demand??? Yes... Alienate??? No...

I am proud to say that thru demanding that my very Republican Nixonite father finally came around and marched in the Moritorium...

That is and was the power of non-violence...

So, bottom, line, if thru violence you think we can change the world, in the words of John Lennon, "count this ol hillbilly out"...

Plus, if you think thru vilence that you can change the world you have some company on Penn Ave... So does Bush...

Peace

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Janie
Date: 23 Jan 08 - 08:12 PM

The SNCC officially advocated non-violence until about 1966, but somewhere along about 1964 the first steps away from that position began to occur within the organization.

It began with a decision to allow members to carry firearms for self-protection. In fact, SNCC members took much of the blunt of the violence rained upon freedom riders and voting organizers. Once violent white racists figured out they were alienating so much of the nation with their public violence against civil rights activists, they took it underground and started laying wait and laying traps to brutalize SNCC activists out of the public eye. The perception of some SNCC leaders, including Stokely Carmichael, was that non-violence was no longer effective as a political tool once it was no longer drawing violence against the activitists in the public arena for all the nation to see and be shocked and dismayed. By 1966 the organizational leadership had shifted to those, like Stokely Carmichael, who were also moving in the direction of violent resistance and the Black Power sector of the Civil Rights movement.

It would appear this internal conflict within the organization over the sanctioning of violence was never successfully resolved one way or the other. Carmichael and others left SNCC for the Black Panthers in 1967. H. Rap Brown became the head of SNCC, renamed it the Student National Coordinating Committee, and advocated violence. He himself left for the Black Panthers in 1968. By that time, SNCC was no longer much in the way of a functioning organization.

This internal conflict regarding non-violence vs. violence reflected what was happening in the larger civil rights movement. There was considerable turmoil and disarray within the movement by 1966 or 67. King was struggling to try to keep the movement together and move it back in the direction of unified non-violence at the time of his death. It is debatable that he could have succeeded, had he lived. Within the movement, it appears he was being marginalized.

It is incorrect to make a blanket assertion that the SNCC was non-violent. It would have depended on both the point in time of which one is speaking, and given the disagreement that existed within the organization beginning in about 1964, it probably also varied by campus.

What I take from all of this is that violence begats violence.   From it's beginnings SNCC was primarily a militant non-violent organization. Some of its members were probably moral pacifists (i.e. pacifism as a moral position) and some were pragmatic pacifists. I read somewhere that the SNCC were the shock troups of the non-violent civil rights movement. As they became covertly targeted out of the public eye, it is understandable how those collective experiences eventually lead some of it's members, especially the pragmatic pacifists, to abandon non-violence as a strategy.

This is not the greatest of comparisons, but I think there is some truth in it. Malcolm X appears to have started on the other end of the path from Stokely Carmichael. They met briefly in the middle. Malcolm X was assassinated before he had walked much beyond that meeting place, and I don't pretend to know how much further in the other direction he may have walked had he lived.

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Big Mick
Date: 23 Jan 08 - 03:54 PM

I have undeleted your messages. As best I can tell, you have violated none of the rules. You post with a consistent name, didn't attack anyone personally, and clearly stated your opinion. I don't see these posts as even combative. I have deleted messages of yours in the distant past, mostly when you were making personal attacks, or just trolling. These posts don't do any of those things.

Should the mod who deleted these have a problem with this, please PM me and we can talk about it.

All the best,

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: GUEST,GUEST
Date: 23 Jan 08 - 03:36 PM

Yes, my posts are being censored/deleted whatever you choose to call it, because I'm not popular with the moderators of this website.

Mind you, I don't do anything against the FAQ stated Mudcat rules of decorum. However, I do routinely break the unwritten rules of challenging the US boomer/Mudcat collective conventional wisdom, which reflects the middle class neo-liberal orientation of this website. This thread is a nice case in point. I post a dissenting point of view (from the conventional one being put forth here, but quite in tune with the current "edge" of younger Gen X & Y'ers. It gets deleted. Why? Mostly because the moderators detest me personally. But also, they would like to maintain the veneer of civility--they are merry censors here.

I just like to point out when they do it, so they erase all traces of my having been here.

Such a bastion of free speech, this place.

From a distance...god is watching us, no?

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: PoppaGator
Date: 23 Jan 08 - 12:23 PM

Did a post get deleted?

I read something to which I intended to respond ~ especially because I was mentioned by name (fake-name) ~ thought it over, went to the bathroom, came back, and now it seems to be gone.

Anyway: let me clarify a couple of things:

1) I am a pacifist and consider non-violence to be of absolutely primary spiritual import. This certainly affects the light in which I consider the legacy of Dr. King, but I certainly understand that not everyone shares my viewpoit.

2) I don't mean to begrudge folks of African descent their celebration of their unique heritage on this holiday. (I certainly take every advantage of celebrating St. Patrick's Day, after all!) My problem with the misperception of Dr. King's feast day as a "blacks-only" celebration is that white Americans need to understand and to be included in commemorating the man and his mission of uniting two separate Americas into a unified whole. Well, eventually.

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: GUEST,GUEST
Date: 23 Jan 08 - 11:33 AM

I believe the way King has been made into the single icon of the civil rights movement is deeply problematic, especially when it comes to teaching the next generation.

It is virtually impossible to wade through hundreds of didactic hagiographies and find anything useful to use as a teaching tool in terms of children's books.

As a K6 librarian, I pull them all and put them up, but I also use the day now to inform students of the wider civil rights movement, especially the Little Rock Nine, Ruby Bridges, and other figures and events they are far more interested in learning about, and are much more relevant to their lived experiences.

The King stuff is just too "church father" laden to be very useful, except when telling King's story, which doesn't come even remotely close to telling the story of the civil rights and black liberation movements.

And Poppagator, I have a real problem with attitudes like yours that makes King "the" non-violent icon of our time. That is the problem, in a nutshell, with the ways those sorts of beliefs erase the actual history. As is Bobert's view that SNCC was associated with violence.
SNCC stands for "Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee". They were deeply principled, but often in disagreement with King and SCLC because of their use of more direct action oriented tactics than King was often willing to use.

Showing kids what those kids (and many other activist children) suffered for THEIR commitment to non-violence has a far more profound effect on them (and one they actually remember) than more sanctimonious preaching about the virtues of King ever will. And for that reason, I believe the holiday has lost it's meaning, and is now just another day off.

I don't usually use Black History month for the civil rights struggles. I use it to get at little known aspects of black history. I'm also doing a really cool project this year teaming with our science and global studies specialists this year to teach the Serengeti migration--a brilliant way to get kids to realize that Africa isn't about a bunch of people running naked through the jungle.

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: GUEST,GUEST
Date: 23 Jan 08 - 11:15 AM

Yeah, but Obama didn't get a letter from King's son like Edwards did. Why do you suppose it is that Martin Luther King III didn't do the same for Obama? I don't think much of Obama, BTW. Far too conservative for me.

Here is the report I'm referring to:

King's son urges Edwards to press on
Posted: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 10:01 AM by Domenico Montanaro
Filed Under: 2008, Edwards

From NBC/NJ's Tricia Miller
Just before the debate on Martin Luther King Day, Edwards' campaign released a letter of encouragement that he received from none other than Martin Luther King III, the son of Martin Luther King Jr.

The letter followed Edwards' private meeting with King in Atlanta on Saturday. King applauded Edwards' focus on poverty and urged him to press on in the presidential race.

"I appreciate that on the major issues of health care, the environment, and the economy, you have framed the issues for what they are -- a struggle for justice," he wrote. "And, you have almost single-handedly made poverty an issue in this election."

Edwards and King first met a year ago when King introduced Edwards when he spoke at Riverside Church in Manhattan. There Edwards stood in the same place King's father had forty years earlier and applied his words on the Vietnam War to the Iraq War, telling an audience that silence is still betrayal (a message he repeated on the steps of the South Carolina capitol yesterday). King concluded his letter by telling Edwards to press on.

"Ignore the pundits, who think this is a horserace, not a fight for justice," King wrote. "My dad was a fighter. As a friend and a believer in my father's words that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, I say to you: keep going."

Full text of the letter is below:

January 20, 2008
The Honorable John E. Edwards
410 Market Street
Suite 400
Chapel Hill, NC 27516

Dear Senator Edwards:

It was good meeting with you yesterday and discussing my father's legacy. On the day when the nation will honor my father, I wanted to follow up with a personal note.

There has been, and will continue to be, a lot of back and forth in the political arena over my father's legacy. It is a commentary on the breadth and depth of his impact that so many people want to claim his legacy. I am concerned that we do not blur the lines and obscure the truth about what he stood for: speaking up for justice for those who have no voice.

I appreciate that on the major issues of health care, the environment, and the economy, you have framed the issues for what they are - a struggle for justice. And, you have almost single-handedly made poverty an issue in this election.

You know as well as anyone that the 37 million people living in poverty have no voice in our system. They don't have lobbyists in Washington and they don't get to go to lunch with members of Congress. Speaking up for them is not politically convenient. But, it is the right thing to do.

I am disturbed by how little attention the topic of economic justice has received during this campaign. I want to challenge all candidates to follow your lead, and speak up loudly and forcefully on the issue of economic justice in America.

From our conversation yesterday, I know this is personal for you. I know you know what it means to come from nothing. I know you know what it means to get the opportunities you need to build a better life. And, I know you know that injustice is alive and well in America, because millions of people will never get the same opportunities you had.

I believe that now, more than ever, we need a leader who wakes up every morning with the knowledge of that injustice in the forefront of their minds, and who knows that when we commit ourselves to a cause as a nation, we can make major strides in our own lifetimes. My father was not driven by an illusory vision of a perfect society. He was driven by the certain knowledge that when people of good faith and strong principles commit to making things better, we can change hearts, we can change minds, and we can change lives.

So, I urge you: keep going. Ignore the pundits, who think this is a horserace, not a fight for justice. My dad was a fighter. As a friend and a believer in my father's words that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, I say to you: keep going. Keep fighting. My father would be proud.

Sincerely,
Martin L. King, III

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Azizi
Date: 22 Jan 08 - 09:57 PM

Barack Obama Speaks at Dr. King's Church

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf0x_TpDris

"On the day before the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, Senator Barack Obama delivers a speech to the congregation of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia.

January 20, 2008

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Bobert
Date: 22 Jan 08 - 06:05 PM

Well, ya' all... I've always been a student of Dr. King... Okay, I don't wear it on my sleeve but I have lots of his writings stashed away in files and so, rather than be accused, viewed or otherwise seen as a tourist (a term I fully undwerstand) I'm just going to keep this thread alive with more of Dr. Kings words...

Dr King, abopve all, was a man of intense "faith" and "Faith"...

In his address before the National Press Club in july of 1962 he said:

"If the inespressible cruelties of slavery could not exringuish our existence, the opposition we now face will surely fall. We feel that we are the conscience of America- we are its troubles soul- we will continue to insist that right be done becuase both God's will and the heritage of out nation speak through echoing demands."

*****************************************************************

There is no other statement that I can find theat better exemplifies Dr. King's "faith" and "Faith"...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: GUEST,Dani
Date: 22 Jan 08 - 05:11 PM

Thanks for all this, Bobert. Lots to think about. I'm re-looking at my hippie friends (and my ideas about hippies) in light of King's words, and all of your.

Interesting.

Dani

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Bobert
Date: 22 Jan 08 - 01:27 PM

Yo, Brucie...

Go to Dennis Kucinich's website and see what he has to say about a Department of Peace...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Peace
Date: 22 Jan 08 - 01:07 PM

I thought this article was worth posting in its entirety.

'Editorial note: Jack Schwartzman was a lifelong opponent of war. This article, reprinted from the July-September 1981 issue of Fragments, explains his views. Approximately ten years after the article was published he voiced his opposition to the Gulf War and ten years after that, in the last weeks of his life, to the war in Afghanistan.


We were discussing war poetry in class. One student, rather bright, remarked:

"I know that war is destructive, but you must admit that it provides jobs, good jobs."

As he started to talk about the many "good" jobs that war "provided," I noticed that the heads of his peers were happily nodding in agreement. It struck me that theirs was the generation that would, in a few short years, "inherit the earth." I had to speak up, to refute their views before it was too late, before their bland acceptance of war cliche's became too deeply embedded in their philosophy. Grimly, desperately, I commenced my refutation.


***

To begin with, a "war job" is "a piece of work of specific character undertaken to assure the success of a particular war." There are many wonderful war jobs: soldier rapist, executioner munitions maker bombardier torturer, construction worker destruction worker lamp-shade maker [ed. note: a reference to lampshades that the Nazis made from human skin], ambulance driver inferior-race exterminator nurse, informer undertaker spy, surgeon, propaganda minister war prisoner prison-camp guard, draft-board official, chaplain, and prostitute (who sets up her headquarters near the military base). This delightful group keeps the war effort going.

Morality sanctifies all war jobs except those which create destruction presently considered "unsportsmanlike," such as poison gas, dum-dum bullets, and (possibly) nuclear arms. "Traditional" means of slaughter on the other hand, are fully approved. (How is scalping regarded these days?) The agitation is almost never against war itself but only against some currently "unpopular" methods of obliteration.

However I must not digress, or dwell on such trivia as groaning, moaning, and maiming, but concentrate strictly on "economic" issues. Let me launch this charming dissertation, therefore, with the assumption that, during wartime, one-third of the population is totally employed in the war effort. (The actual figures are unimportant; the formula would work with whatever statistics are used.) In such a case, the remaining two-thirds of the people are compelled to feed, shelter and clothe not only themselves but the basically parasitic holders of the war jobs. Yet in spite of shortages, and despite the bombings and the killings, not only is a part of the total population able to provide for all, but production is actually booming.

Compare this situation with the one that prevails when "peace" finally arrives. Most of the surviving holders of the old war jobs now find themselves unemployed. With the entire population available for civilian production, only a proportion of the potential labor force is working, and millions barely survive. Production seems to be exhausted.

Why should this contrast exist? The question suggests a paradox that is seemingly insoluble.

No wonder then, that my observant student, noting the economic disparities in times of war and peace, should yearn for a nice little war when jobs are plentiful and employment is secure! No wonder likewise, that those who advocate socialism should point to the apparent paradox as a contradiction "inherent in capitalism and seek total government control so that the economy would simulate wartime conditions and provide jobs for all!

Is there an answer to the problem?

The answer is there for all to see, especially in time of peace. Does it not become painfully clear when farmers are paid not to produce, when supplies are dumped overboard, when tariffs prevent the importation of cheaper better goods, and when unions prohibit the installation of labor-saving devices, that deliberately-devised "blockage" exists somewhere in pipes of the economic machinery? Does it not become evident, when most people are in desperate need, that this blockage effectively stops supply from reaching demand shutting off access to much of land and its produce?

The problem, therefore, lies in the inability to produce, but in refusal to produce or distribute.

In time of war, the powers-that-be merely suspend their own rules against unlimited production and temporarily rescind their own regulations against the availability of natural resources, thus spurring on total economic activity. In time of peace, however, much of the source of all production (Nature) is fenced off by speculative monopoly, and unemployment and poverty result.

The paradox is solved (or, more correctly, disappears) when it is realized that cessation of production is artificially induced. The so-called paradox turns out to be only a contrived illusion.

It is not "necessary" to wage war in order to obtain jobs. On the contrary war destroys jobs (not to speak of job-holders). There is no production in destruction. All that is needed in order to restore full productivity (in war or in peace), is to open the gates to Mother Nature, who always bountiful, and who always provides sustenance -- and jobs.

This is the answer to the problem.

And this economic exposition does not even begin to touch, in its intensity the mania known as war. Not only does war kill, shatter, and enslave human beings; not on does it eliminate goods, factories, and cities; but it also obstructs the vision of the eternal values of life. Each conflict sets back the advances toward Light; each conflict plunges the world further into Darkness; each conflict gives birth to barbarians, illiterates, and murderers. War feeds on itself.

My student's use of the word "good," as an adjective to describe war jobs, brings to mind a passage from Stephen Crane's bitterly ironic poem:

Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.
Because yur father tumbled in the yellow trenches,
Raged at his breast, gulped and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

Yes, indeed, dear student. War jobs are good - and war is kind.'

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Peace
Date: 22 Jan 08 - 01:02 PM

In fact, I don't even know if data exists about that. Anyone?

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Peace
Date: 22 Jan 08 - 12:55 PM

The one thing that would make that an easy sales job would be describing how war-related industries would translate to jobs in peace-related industries. IMO, people will fear the great displacement of jobs. I have no idea how many people world-wide are involved in war: soldiers, materiel producers, etc. But I would guess it is LOTS.

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Bobert
Date: 22 Jan 08 - 12:51 PM

Three words, Brucie...

...Department of Peace!!!

B~

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Peace
Date: 22 Jan 08 - 12:29 PM

One difficulty with the notion of world-wide peace is that we have nothing with which we can compare it. We have no idea what it would look like or how it would work. It makes the sales job very tough. "I'd like you to buy this product. No, I can't show it to you. No, I don't really know what it is. BUT, . . . ."

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Bobert
Date: 22 Jan 08 - 11:55 AM

In Dr. King's book entitled "The Trumpet of Conscience" from 1967 Dr, King talks about 3 groups of young people. The first group are those young people who are stugglin' and confused by the events of the 60's, the second group are the "radicals" and the third group, the "hippies"...

This is what Dr. King says about the hippies:

"The younh people in the third group are currently called 'hippies'. They may be traced in a fairly direct line from yesterday's beatniks. The hippies are not only colorful. but complex; and in mnay respects their extreme conduct illuminates the nefative effects of society's evils on sensitive young people. While there are variations, those who identify with this group have a common philosophy. They are struggling to disengage from society as their expression of their rejection of it. They disavow responsibility to organized society. Unlike the radicals, they are not seeking change but flight. When occasionally they merge with a peace demonstartion, it is not to better the political world, but to give expression of their own world. The hardcore hippie is a remarkable contridiction. He uses drugs to turn inward, away from reality, to find peace and security. Yet he advocates love as the highest human value- love, which can exist only in communication between people, and not in total isolation of the individual.

The importantance of the hippies is not in their unconventional behavior. but in the fact that some hundreds of thousands of young people, in turning to flight from reality, are expressing a profoundly discrediting judgement on the society thay emerge from.

It seems to me that the hippies will not last long as a mass group. They cannot survive because there is not solution in escape. Some of them may persist by solidifying into secular religious sect; their movement alrweady has many such characteristics. We might see some of them establish utopian colonies, like the seventeenth and wighteenth century communities established by sects that profoundly opposed the existing order and values. Those communities did not survive. But they were important to their contemporaries because their dream of social justice and human value continues as a dream of mankind.

In this context, one dream of the hippie group is very significant, and that is its dream of peace. Most of the hippies are pacifists, and a few have thought their way through to a persuasive and psychologically sophisticated 'peace stategy'. And society at learge may be more ready now to learn from their dream than it was a century ago, to listen to the argument for peace, not as a dream, but as a practical possibility: something to choose and use."

*****************************************************************

Well, well, well...

After all these years of thinking I was an "old hippie" I find that, inspite of the bellbottoms, the sex, drugs and rock and roll, that I'm more an "old radical"...

Oh well????

B~

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: catspaw49
Date: 22 Jan 08 - 01:29 AM

A very nice thread in most respects. They were troubled times and in the worst of times great men can rise to the top. Lots of wonderful quotes made on this thread. Here are a few more:


"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole."

"Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.   Without education, you're not going anywhere in this world."

"You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom."

"When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won't do to get it, or what he doesn't believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn't believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire...or preserve his freedom."

"I for one believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they'll create their own program, and when the people create a program, you get action."

"It is a time for martyrs now, and if I am to be one, it will be for the cause of brotherhood."


Pretty great stuff ain't it?






BTW, those are all quotes of Malcolm X. Why don't we close the banks and give the school kids a day off for Malcolm? Matter of fact, why don't we teach ALL of them about Malcolm in similar ways to the ways we teach about Dr. King?

Just wondering.............

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Janie
Date: 21 Jan 08 - 09:49 PM

Azizi, I don't want to speak for you, or assume I am interpreting what you are conveying correctly. I certainly don't want to imply that growing up being devalued by a majority of the people of this country because I am a West Virginian is comparable to the experience of growing up being devalued and also persecuted because being African American.    My people - many of the people of the southern Appalachians-came to this continent because of persecution and prejudice - but there is a huge difference between the experience of my ancestors and yours. My people had some choice in the matter. They were not captured by other tribes, torn absolutely without their consent from their families and their lives, with no way back. They were were not subjected to attempts to absolutely strip them of humanity. They legally had some rights and protections.    Even those of my family who were indentured were considered less in rank, but not less regarding innate person-hood.

My people suffered, but there was no systemic effort or legal sanctions in place to the extent as to try to make them less than human, as occurred with the slavery of Black people in the Americas. Suffering is certainly a universal human experience. Hope is essential to survival and some sense of wholeness and of our own worth.    Faith can sustain hope when the present reality appears to hold little, or no, likelihood of hope or power in the present.

I am not a scholar of such things and I may be wrong in my following assumption. Slavery has existed since the dawn of civilization. But until the unique institution of race-based slavery was instituted in the Americas, I don't think slaves were viewed as subhuman in most cultures in which slavery occurred. Devalued? Yes. But devalued in terms of rank, not in terms of humanity. The American institution of slavery seems to have been unique in that respect.

Azizi, I don't hear what you said about ownership as an injunction for others to keep their hands off. I hear it as an admonition to remember, honor and validate the terrible realities, past and present, of the uniquely American institution of slavery out of which these powerful songs arose, even as we take them up into our own present day concerns and realities.

I find myself thinking that the synthesis of this particular dialectic is not "yes, but...." It is "yes, and...."   

Janie

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Bobert
Date: 21 Jan 08 - 09:34 PM

Well, I sang "Preachin' Blues" that Son House wrote

I'm gonna get religion
Gonna join the Baptist Church
Yeah, gonna get religion
Gonne join the Baptist Church
Gonna become a Baptist preacher
So I don't have to work...

Felt good and seemed appropriate...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: GUEST,Dani
Date: 21 Jan 08 - 09:02 PM

Silly bears, sing whatever you like, honor a song's history/roots. What else is new? This is the mudcat, let's move on....

Here's a question: What songs did you all sing today?

Dani

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Bobert
Date: 21 Jan 08 - 07:58 PM

Okay, lets get back to songs... And if we keep in mind that Dr. King saw the civil rights struggle as a struggle of blacks and whites yoked together to overcome segregation and discrimination then I think we can all relate to what Dr. Kings wrote in his book "Why We Can't Wait" in 1963...

Here are his words:

"An important part of the mass meetings was the freedom songs. In a sense the freedom songs are the soul of the movement. They are more than just incantations of clever phrases designed to invigorate a campaign; they are as old as the history of the Negro in America. They are adaptations of the songs the slaves sang- the sorrow songs, the shouts of joy, the battle hymns and the anthems of our movement. I have heard talk of their beat and rhythum, but we in the movement are inspired by their words. 'Woke Up This Morning with My Mind Satyed on Freedom' is a sentence that needs no music to make its point. We sing the freedom songs today for the same reason the slaves sang them, because we too are in bondage and the songs add hope to our fetermintaion that 'We shall overcome, Black and white together, We shall overcome someday.

I have stood in a meeting with hundreds of yougsters and joined in while they sang 'Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around'. It is not just a song; it is a resolve. A few minutes later, I have seen those same youngsters refuse to turn around from the onrush of a police dog, refuse to turn before a pugnacious Bull CFonner in command, of men armed with power hoses. These songs bind us together, give us courage, help us march together."

******************************************************************

I think Dr. King better stated the imporatnce of song in this book than he did in the "Playboy" interview becuase of his greater emphasis on the importance of songs to the "movement"...

Now, as a traditional country blues player, I have learned afew things about blues music and musicans from the generation just before Dr. King...

Perhaps my favorite bluesman from that generation was Edward "Son" House, who like Dr, King, was also a preacher... Son House, unlike Dr. King, was conflicted and tormented by hie music because the generation just before him viewed it sternly... They labeled it "Devil's Music"... And so Son House, being a man of Faith, was terribly conflicted... Looking back at those times I fully understand why the juke joint was packed on Saturday night... It was a way of just rising above the terrible poverty and living conditions that black people suffered from during the height of the Jim Crow years... Thats why there ain't much 'blue" in the blues... It is, for the most part, celebratory music that uplifts one's spirits...

When I reread how Dr. King viewed the freedom songs during the movement I can't help but see connections between the blues and freedom songs in that both were/are intended to make us feel better about ourselves in the midst of struggle...

And it ain't a black thing... It ain't a white thing... Its a black and white together thing for as long as there are those among us who are oppressed no of us are truely free...

Now I've hurt my head... Think I'll go play a couple ol' Son House songs...

Hippies??? Maybe next...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: katlaughing
Date: 21 Jan 08 - 07:47 PM

I think it is good to remember and, perhaps adopt, Morris Dees' terminology in referring to Americans of various descents, i.e. American of African descent; American of Irish descent; American of Native descent, etc. As he puts it, it recognises our commonality first and foremost. I am pleased to see, by a quick google search, that others are using the same terminology.

From LaShawn blog:

If you must refer to my race, call me black, not "African American." It is offensive to me. There is no such color, race, or nationality. I am an American of African descent.

I have degrees in English and law.

Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett: A Biographical Sketch of America's First American of African Descent Diplomat

This was an exciting find worth sharing, which also come up in that search: Archive of rare books and arts of Americans of African descent history. A small snippet of what was found: here are first editions by Langston Hughes and nearly every other writer from the Harlem Renaissance, many of them signed; a rare biography of the architect Paul R. Williams; and the oeuvre of the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. There is an edition of "The Negro's Complaint," a poem complete with hand-painted illustrations; books by and about every notable American of African descent from George Washington Carver to Bill Cosby; and thousands more items concerning those whose names were lost or never known.

Subject: RE: BS: In Memory: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From: Azizi
Date: 21 Jan 08 - 06:51 PM

PoppaGator, you are misinterpreting my words.

At no point in this conversation or in any other post on this forum or anywhere else have I ever said that "white folks have no business singing spirituals or otherwise honoring and enjoying African-American culture".

Perhaps you posted your comment before reading my 21 Jan 08 - 05:30 PM post:

"Dani, of course I believe that everyone can sing any song including what used to be called Negro spirituals and which I now call African American spirituals."