Musician, actor and social activist Harry Belafonte, speaking at the University of Michigan Monday, called on Americans to work to reverse a litany of social ills, including materialism, violence against women and what he said was a return to racist policies of the past. Belafonte delivered the keynote speech at the 28th annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Symposium at the University of Michigan. In his trademark low and gravely voice, Belafonte reminisced about time spent with the late King and delivered messages as sharp and clear as the notes he once sang. Belafonte’s targets during his speech included the ‘One Percent,’ the Tea Party, the American prison system, hip hop artists and misogyny. “I’m not too sure where America is at this moment,” he said as he opened his speech. “We seem to have lost our moral compass… if we ever had one.” Related story: Being Black at University of Michigan organizers threaten physical action if demands arent met Belafonte recalled that his last meeting with King was shortly before he traveled to Memphis, where he would be shot at the Lorraine Motel. They were meeting as a group to plan a march on Washington, D.C., that was meant to launch the Poor People’s Campaign. “’I’ve come to understand that with all we’ve done, as long as we’ve fought for integration, the many victories we’ve experienced, I’ve come to the realization that I think we’re integrating into a burning house,’” Belafonte quoted King saying. “A silence fell over the group as we tried to make sense of what brought him to this conclusion, and I said to him ‘Martin, if you feel we are engaged in an empty cause that will yield something rather painful at the end of the journey, what would you have us do?’ and he said ‘Well I think we’re just going to have to become firemen.’” To the assembled crowd that filled the lower section and both balconies of Hill Auditorium, Belafonte admitted that he had come to agree with King that the ‘house’ that African Americans fought so hard to get into might be on fire. Already, he said, efforts are being made to roll back hard-fought victories from the civil rights era. “There are forces who have learned from lessons of the past. They looked back and said ‘how did we make the mistakes we made that allowed black people the rights to become citizens of our nation and to have such an influence on our culture? How did we permit all that?’” Belafonte said. “And they have decided to put together a scheme, and that scheme is to methodically bit by bit, and piece by piece take back the nation they thought was theirs, and they’ve done so cleverly.” Noting the grassroots efforts by the Tea Party, Belafonte charged that the group is targeting mechanisms “from the smallest tasks of dog catching and local sheriffs to school boards.” He said that the changes at the local and state level by the group are aimed in part at limiting the rights of African Americans and other minorities. The movement’s wealthy benefactors, especially the Koch brothers, drew Belafonte’s ire. We don’t have the KKK riding around lynching people, we now have something even more horrific. We have the prison system. “Men who call themselves, ‘the protectors of Greater America,’” he said. “… They have bit by bit begun to flood America with corrupt money. They have begun to buy institutions, to buy governments, to buy elected officials and overthrow local government. They’ve changed state governments, changed the voting rules, gerrymandered districts and they’ve begun to put back those rules, those cruelties, that we so valiantly struggled against.” One of the chief institutions that Belafonte said was responsible for the new paradigm in race relations is the prison system. He said he became involved in the system after reading that America has the world’s highest prison population. “We don’t have the KKK riding around lynching people. We now have something even more horrific,” Belafonte said, allowing a dramatic pause. “We have the prison system. We use the system to continually crucify the poor.” The long-time activist who has been involved with a wide variety of issues and causes ranging from spearheading the We Are the World efforts, to his most recent pet project, combatting misogyny and violence against women. The singer whose biggest hit was the Banana Boat Song announced during his speech that on Fathers Day, June 15, he hopes that 1 million people will gather in Central Park to hear a free concert intended to raise awareness about both abused women, and their abusers. “Of all the curable social ills, none could be solved as easily as violence against women,” he said. “It is men who created it and men who must stop it.” Earlier in his speech, Belafonte had criticized today’s “hip hoppers” for being too concerned with gold and material wealth, as well as promoting what he sees as questionable fashion trends. “You see them walking around with their clothes hanging off of their bodies,” he said, eliciting laughs from the audience after his sign language interpreter gave a demonstration. In closing, Belafonte called on those in the audience not to be spectators, but to work for the change that they hope to see in the world around them. He said that time is running out before negative momentum takes hold, making positive change impossible. “I recognize that the world is in trouble. It is our world, and it is we who must fix it. If we don’t, very soon, nothing will be fixable,” he said. “We’re already on that path.” At the conclusion of Belafantes speech, student activists waiting on the steps of Hill Auditorium announced a set of demands designed to increase minority representation and involvement on campus. The MLK Jr. Symposium continues through Feb. 7 and includes a number of exhibitions, panels and forums. More information can be found at mlksymposium.umich.edu/ Ben Freed is a general assignments reporter for The Ann Arbor News. Email him at benfreed@mlive and follow him on twitter at @BFreedinA2. He also answers the phone at 734-623-2528.
Posted on: Thu, 23 Jan 2014 06:25:33 +0000