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CHAPTER TWO

Understand the Dream, Reclaim the Legacy

Jamala speaks at rally held by progressive organizations

as an alternative to the annual Dr. Martin Luther

King march and commemoration. (1995)

Another Dimension of Dr. King

January, 1996

“...These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born....We in the West must support these revolutions...”

These are the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Yes, you heard me. Our non-violent, turn-the-other-cheek King asked us to support revolution in the world. This is another side of Dr. King that rarely gets attention and as with other world leaders, the focus on their lives is narrow and one dimensional. We rarely get to see their growth and development over a period of time.

We know that Dr. King was a very young man when he was thrust into the position of heading up the Montgomery bus boycott, a campaign that marked his initiation into the civil rights movement. As an inexperienced organizer, he had to learn what it would take to make change in the South.

As King organized poor, black people to take power on the various fronts, he began looking beyond the surface to find out how such conditions were created, perpetrated and maintained. His analysis of the root causes of exploitation and oppression took him directly to the system of capitalism. King discovered that racism and classism were essential to maintaining profits and control.

Like Malcolm X, King really got into trouble when he began making the connections between the United States’ role and the suffering and underdevelopment of the Third World. He began looking at the struggle of African Americans as part of a world-wide struggle for equality and self-determination. His last writings affirmed that he truly grasped why the lives of poor people of color would continue to deteriorate until they understood the source of the problem. He told us about that in From Chaos to Community.

There are some folks who want to keep serving us the limited vision of Dr. King and we shouldn’t let them. Hail him up, sing praises unto him, put him on calendars - just remember the real essence of his beliefs. Remember that King was growing in his knowledge about power relations, although he may not always have had the right tactic for a particular struggle. He was the epitome of a great leader because he was a great learner.

As we ready for the many activities to celebrate the birth of a King, I would like people to appreciate the two things that I admired most about him. One was his activism and two, his unselfish commitment to the struggle for human rights.

There are many who claimed to have walked with Dr. King during those tumultuous times of the Civil Rights Movement. There are many who observe his birthday in a number of ways. The real question is - do people carry out Dr. King’s ideals every day? Are they actively involved in challenging the white power structure as he did, in order to uplift a race of second-class citizens? Yes, King was non- violent, but he was an activist.

Dr. King’s genuine commitment helped him to keep his “eye on the prize.” You’d better believe there were plenty of times that he was bribed with big dollars to stop what he was doing. Unlike too many of our so-called leaders, money was not a motivating factor for Dr. King. To his death, he and his family lived moderately, but comfortably. He did not drive a fancy car, or wear fancy clothes. He did not walk with the people in his overalls one hour and then go to an extravagant life in the suburbs in the next hour. He paralleled his life, more than most, to the legendary man referred to as Jesus Christ.

Let January 15th serve as a time of renewal and re- dedication to the REAL philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He correctly told us that “anybody can be great because everybody can serve.” By doing so, we can take our cities from “chaos to community.”

Rethinking the King

February, 2001

St. Louis boasts of having one of the biggest commemorations in the country for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It is also one of the oldest celebrations. The annual march is a time for rejuvenation and re-commitment. A time for networking and organizing. A time for raising the issues of the day and setting a course for the year. I’ve always maintained that if the thousands of people who march each year honored Dr. King’s legacy by engaging in some meaningful action the other 364 days, St. Louis would be a different place.

We are often led to Dr. King’s most famous “I Have a Dream” speech. His eloquence, whether one agrees with his views or not, remains uncontested. I think he is one of the greatest orators of modern times. I prefer to lift up his less than famous, but most poignant, speech delivered to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1967. Dr. King attempted to answer the question “Where do we go from here?” also the title of his must-read book. The message is just as compelling and relevant today as it was then. Time is overdue to teach our children about the whole King, particularly as his last writings reveal his growing and changing insights into the America he had experienced and studied.

This last presidential speech begins with the inequities in society that have blacks getting half the good things that whites enjoy as full-fledge citizens, and twice the bad. King spoke of the disparities in employment, health, income, housing, education, etc. More than three decades later, the plight of African-Americans doesn’t appear to have changed much. Dr. King goes on to do more than describe a bad situation.

First, he acknowledges that we “must massively assert our dignity and worth” and “stand up amidst a system that oppresses us.” We must be proud of our heritage and our contributions. This may seem like a simple task, if you discount the fact that only 135 years ago, we were chattel slaves. It is a condition that more than hovers over us like an unwanted shadow. It permeates every aspect of our lives, from self-image to relationships. Dr. King correctly insisted that at the core of any freedom movement must be an offensive against “cultural homicide.” Today, we can add cultural suicide to our destruction, as we allow and promote abounding images that degrade and corrupt us as a people. The boob tube, with its negativity toward blacks in the news, sit-coms and music videos, literally spits at us 24-7.

Dr. King went on to talk about the need for full employment, for economic and political power. He also affirmed his non-violent philosophy, but who knows? If he had lived long enough, this country’s continued violent response to our existence might have changed King’s views on this. All bullies must have their day.

Now, like then, there is no “time for romantic illusions and empty philosophical debates about freedom. It is a time for action.” The strategy for the transformation of this society is still the task before us all.

Reclaim the Dream

January, 2008

For years now, I have been sweetly singing the same refrain - sometimes it became a rant – and that is those of us who really understood Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream were falling down on the job. We had let our guard down. We had ceased to be vigilant, not only in protecting the dream but in carrying out the dream that has now become an extraordinary legacy. Worse, we are bestowing honors in the name of Dr. King on destroyers of the dream. Many in the social justice movement feel the same way.

There were times over the past several years when efforts were made to disrupt the pretentious pomp and circumstance of King Holiday activities. Dr. King would be sickened by the lack of substance that pervades the hard- fought day that is supposed to be about sacrifice and struggle.

Reclaim the Dream will roll out this year. It is supported by those who are deeply involved in the kind of people’s work that Dr. King made his life’s work. A website has been set up at www.reclaimthedream.org that reminds us the dream has been “hijacked.” His “message of economic and social justice has been whitewashed and watered down to diversity and non-violence.” Organizers of Reclaim the Dream are asking people who share their concerns to join them in two activities planned for January 21st. The first is at Kiener Plaza across from the Old Courthouse at 9:30 am to form the Dream contingent. There, we will hear messages to authenticate the dream. Later at 7:00 pm, there will be a discussion at Legacy Bookstore, located at 5249 Delmar Blvd.

Look around St. Louis. Does it appear as if we’re working on Dr. King’s dream? What would Dr. King do (WWKD) about some of these social problems? Regarding the attack on the public schools, Dr. King believed that “the function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.” Our children are being robbed of a true education and ultimately, their futures.

The growing economic gap between the rich and poor is becoming an acceptable fact. Dr. King would have found it unconscionable, believing “the curse of poverty has no justification in our age” and that “the time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.” On police brutality and the criminal courts, Dr. King said that “law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.” He would be critical of a police department that persists in racial profiling and a prosecuting attorney’s office that has difficulty figuring out what is a crime. On the illegal Iraqi war and U.S. imperialism, Dr. King was on point when he predicted that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”

Dr. King reminded us that “of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.” He would be appalled to see that the richest country in the world had 45 million uninsured citizens.

Dr. King would be all over injustices like Fire Chief Sherman George’s forced removal and the lack of substantive leadership at the top. He would be wondering why too many of us have been passive about his legacy. Sadly, he knew that “the ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”

Let us stand up. Reclaim the dream. “The time is always right to do what is right.”

Postscript: At the annual MLK event in 2010, Mayor Francis Slay

was soundly booed by hundreds of defenders of the dream and

prevented him from delivering his remarks, a public humiliation

that made national news. Slay has consistently shown his contempt

for working people in general and for the African American

community in particular. The mayor has now limited his

appearances in the black community accordingly.