From Direct Action Must Be Remembered As Part of Dr. Kings Legacy (VIDEO) - The Real News Network: So everybodys familiar with the I Have a Dream speech. Its almost anodyne. But back in 1959 -- Im going to read something to you that Dr. King wrote in a presentation. This is a dream that he had four years before his I Have a Dream speech. He says he has a dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. Now, thats the kind of dream that has application in todays world and in todays politics. But in 1963, he wasnt talking about income distribution for a large public. It would take a while. It would take a kind of growth in the movement and new voices coming in that would move King to speak his mind, I believe, on issues of social transformation and of war and peace. ... And so, finally, in 1967, when King makes the best speech of that period of his life, April 4 at Riverside Church, and breaks with Lyndon Johnson over the Vietnam War and calls the Vietnam War a war on the poor, besides being immoral and a crime against the Vietnamese people, he describes the militarist military industry as a great suction machine that just sucks all of the resources that should be going towards bettering the lot of people in this country and sucks it into the Pentagon. He spoke in terms that were not socialist, but certainly in terms that any socialist would use. But the reason that I read that 1959 speech earlier on is to say that this was his philosophy, his outlook on the world before the March on Washington. His dream was always bigger than the one that he exposed to the world in 63. ... The question then becomes: well, okay, so were no longer officially subcitizens. What do we do in terms of these burning questions, not just black poverty, not just de facto segregation in housing and education, but what do folks do in terms of really coming to grips with their fundamental rights to organize society in ways that suit their peoples needs, that is, the self-determination question? That is one that is unresolved. Instead, many of Dr. Kings lieutenants and others took advantage of the opportunities that the death of American grand apartheid divided to go into business and into the Democratic Party and to break with the legacy of grassroots organizing and direct action. In fact, today, I think, maybe one of the best proofs of what has been lost is the fact that very few people today understand what direct action is. They think it just means walking down the street and possibly shouting slogans and holding up a placard. But direct action, as Dr. King understood it and practiced it, meant bringing a social institution or the society itself locally to a halt, to make the system scream, just like its victims screamed, to bring contradictions to a head, so that everyone could see what the real problem was, that is, to confront authority. And thats not understood in terms of what Kings legacy is. -- Glen Ford therealnews/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11356
Posted on: Tue, 21 Jan 2014 00:57:55 +0000
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