Monday, January 18, 2010

The Enduring Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Enduring Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Our Fight Against Racism, Poverty and War Continues

by Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire
Commentary

January 15, 2010 is the 81st birthday of the civil rights and anti-war martyr Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A national holiday in his honor is held every year on the third Monday of January where federal offices, state and local municipal agencies are closed. In addition, some private businesses pay tribute to King by giving their workers the day off.

This recognition of Dr. King, an African-American clergyman who was born in Atlanta, Georgia on the eve of the Great Depression, grew out of a struggle that lasted for nearly two decades. Numerous civil rights organizations, artists like Stevie Wonder and African-American politicians such as Detroit Congressman John Conyers, led the fight for the adoption of the federal holiday.

In 1986, after the King Holiday Bill was passed by the U.S. Congress, it was signed into law reluctantly by perhaps one of the most ideological right-wing presidents, Ronald Reagan. Every year the federal government, transnational corporations and their media counterparts, present a view of Dr. King that literally strips his legacy of the broad social movements that constituted the civil rights and anti-war struggles that took place between the mid-1950s and the late 1960s.

The corporate media in their portrayal of Dr. King reduces his contributions to the struggle against racism, poverty and war to a few soundbites from his classic "I Have a Dream" speech that was delivered in front of hundred of thousands of people in Washington, D.C. and the millions more who watched and listened over national television and radio that faithful day on August 28, 1963. However, those who participated in the struggles of the period and studied its history in retrospect, understand that although Dr. King was a tremendous orator and charismatic figure within the movement, his efforts were a reflection of the mass consciousness and political commitment of millions within the United States and around the world.

This understanding of the historical and social context which produced leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and countless others who sacrificed their well-being and lives to fight institutional racism, poverty and war is fundamental to the ongoing efforts to complete the revolutionary movements that made such a monumental impact during the 1950s and 1960s.

With the election of the first African-American President Barack Obama and his inauguration in January 2009, as significant as this was, by no means resolves the social contradictions that have characterized the United States since its inception. In fact the election of Obama has created new and more complex challenges that activists are grappling with in the current period.

Why King's Legacy Remains Relevant Today

After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), founded by Dr. King and others in 1957, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) which was formed by youth in 1960, realized that the focus of the African-American struggle would need to shift toward addressing the fundamental institutional racism and class oppression that was still prevalent in the United States. With the passage of civil rights legislation and the mass mobilizations surrounding the movement against segregation, a new wave of repression by the ruling class was launched in the South.

The eventual failure of the Johnson administration's "War on Poverty" due to its lack of funding and disempowerment of the poor, coupled with the escalation of military involvement in Vietnam during mid-1960s, created a political crisis in the United States which still remains unresolved in the 21st Century. During the 1960s the ruling class stifled the mass movement towards genuine equality and self-determination by both channeling the aspirations of African-Americans into the electoral strategy of the Democratic Party and by intensifying the repressive apparatus of the state and the corporations.

This reaction to the gains of the civil rights struggle was illustrated in an article cited in the introduction of Samuel Yette's book, "The Choice: The Issue of Black Survival in America". The article noted was published in the January 31, 1967 issue of the New York World Journal Tribune where Marianne Means reported that "The practical economics of wage increase (to 84 cents per hour) hardly warrant the sudden eviction of huge numbers of impoverished Negro families...but political realities are something else again." (Yette, 1971, p.11-12)

Later in the book, Yette draws the readers' attention to a letter written by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to President Johnson on August 10, 1966, where he also addressed the mass removal of African-Americans from the land they had farmed for decades as a result of wage and political demands put forward by the movement. Dr. King said to Johnson that "Last January, numerous poor, homeless Mississippi Delta Negroes went to the empty Greenville Air Base seeking shelter from the winter cold. They were forcibly driven off by Federal troops.

The letter continues by pointing out that "Some fled to Northern ghettos. Some burdened already overcrowded Mississippi kinfolk. Others are trying desperately to survive today on 400 acres of land in Washington County without adequate permanent housing, jobs, education, on the verge of starvation, and with little hope. Another group of poor, evicted Mississippi Negroes at Tribbett, Washington County, Mississippi, struggled through the long winter in tents because of the Federal Government's failure to respond to their pleas for housing. They have no jobs and almost no food." (Yette, 1971, pp. 90-91)

Yette places the expulsion of African-Americans from the agricultural areas of the South during the mid-1960s within the broader trends in the labor market during this period. The author quotes from a Department of Labor press release issued on June 15, 1964 from the Secretary of Labor at the time, W. Willard Wirtz, that described the growing structural unemployment in the United States as a "human scrap heap."

The press release said in part that "We are piling up a human scrap heap of between 250,000 and 500,000 people a year, many of whom never appear in the unemployment statistics.

"They are often not counted among the unemployed because they have given up looking for work and thus count themselves out of the labor market. The rate of nonparticipation in the labor force by men in their prime years increased from 4.7 percent in 1953 to 5.2 percent in 1962. The increase has been the sharpest among nonwhites, increasing from 5.3 percent to 8.2 percent in that period." (Yette, p. 13)

In examining the situation of labor at the beginning of the second decade of the 21st Century, it is obvious that things have worsened tremendously. The actual unemployment rate among African-Americans and the working class in general is far higher than what the federal government acknowledges in its monthly report on job losses. The official unemployment rate in the U.S. is 10 percent, however, the actual level of unemployment is much higher. Rates of joblessness among youth and the oppressed are much higher, with African-Americans and teenagers suffering the highest levels of unemployment.

In December 2009, it was estimated that 85,000 people were thrown out of work. Nonetheless, this figure is not reflective of the broader trend towards declining social wages for the class as a whole.

There have been three stimulus or recovery packages enacted by Congress and two successive administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama over the last three years. Yet during this same time period, 8 million workers have been laid-off according to official government statistics. Millions of working people have lost their homes and apartments during this time frame as well. Despite this dire economic crisis that is unprecedented since the Great Depression, the federal government and the corporations have no effective plans to put the estimated 34 million people back to work at decent wages with benefits.

The principal objectives of the ruling class in the United States today is the widening of the so-called "war on terrorism" and the maximization of profits for the bankers, industrialists and insurance companies. By promoting fear of "terrorism" among all segments of the working class population inside the country, the ruling class is seeking to build public support for its aggressive wars of domination in central Asia, the Middle-East, the Horn of Africa and Latin America.

The Working Class and Oppressed Must Advance Their Own Program

With the escalation of the war of occupation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Obama administration at the behest of the Pentagon, is dashing the hopes that millions of working people and nationally oppressed embodied in their mass support of the Obama campaign of 2008. Just as the prospects for improvement of the social conditions of the African-American people in the 1960s and 1970s were eviscerated through the "war on poverty" and the occupation of Vietnam, today the rising militarism of the U.S. around the world has trumped the material needs of the masses.

When Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in late 2009, he claimed that U.S. imperialism had underwritten world security for the last six decades. However, what he did not say is that during the post World War II period the U.S. has utilized its military might, funded by profits accrued from the exploitation of labor, to fight against every progressive and revolutionary movement that has developed to challenge world capitalism and racism.

It has been the United States ruling class through its state that has waged wars against the peoples of Korea, China, Vietnam and south-east Asia, Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Cuba and other geo-political regions throughout the world. In addition, the U.S. ruling class has waged war against the people of this country by stifling the civil rights, black power, anti-war, women and working class movements that have arose since the late 1940s.

Consequently, organizers must raise issues that address the needs of the workers and the oppressed. What the majority of people in the United States and the world need today are jobs, income, healthcare, quality education, housing and a life free of intimidation and harassment by the armed agents of the capitalist and imperialist states. This is the only way that the true legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. can be realized in the present period.

On March 4 students around the United States will protest the drastic cutbacks in education funding that have been taken away from the people in order to fund the Pentagon and the Wall Street bankers. What youth must militantly ask is: how can the ruling class and its state talk about national security when tens of millions inside the country are without jobs, decent incomes, utility services, health care and a quality education?

The peoples of the Middle-East, central Asia, Africa, Latin America and other areas of the world have not taken anything away from the working class and oppressed inside the U.S. The true enemy of the people of the U.S. is the bourgeoisie that has not only taken trillion of dollars in wealth away from the people but have also sent youth into battle to carry out the bidding of the bankers and militarists.

A major jobs initiative being planned for April 10 must politically challenge the false notion of a "jobless recovery." Increasing profits for the corporations does not translate into better conditions for the workers and nationally oppressed. Taxpayer bailouts of the banks and insurance companies has resulted in depression-like conditions for greater numbers of working people.

No comments:

Post a Comment