MLK’s legacy & renewed assaults on the workers & oppressed
Published Jan 15, 2011 10:42 AM
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights, social justice and peace activist
who was martyred on April 4, 1968, was born 82 years ago on Jan. 15. Since 1986
Dr. King’s birthday has been commemorated by a federal holiday on the
third Monday of January. This year the holiday falls on Jan. 17.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich., on March 14, 1968, a
few weeks before his assassination. King was targeted by a racist gang opposed
to open housing in that affluent suburb of Detroit.
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The recognition of Dr. King’s birthday as a federal holiday was the
result of a nearly two-decade struggle waged by African-American political
leaders and artists. They held mass demonstrations on this day every year and
sponsored legislation in the U.S. Congress that eventually was passed, even
under the right-wing administration of Ronald Reagan. Today federal, state and
local offices as well as banks and many educational institutions are closed,
and literally thousands of commemorations are held throughout the United
States.
In 2011 the MLK federal holiday comes at a time when everything Dr. King and
the Civil Rights Movement fought for during the 1950s and 1960s is under attack
by Wall Street and its surrogates in the administration and Congress.
Ruling-class propaganda that is relayed daily through the corporate and
government-sanctioned media is specifically designed to reinforce the existing
conditions of exploitation and oppression against the working class in
general.
A renewed round of attacks is taking place that seeks to blame the growing
budget deficits facing numerous states and cities on the hard-won benefits of
public sector employees, the unemployed and the poor. The 2010 elections were
ideologically rigged to make a reactionary social agenda the first order of
business for the current Congress and state legislatures throughout the
country.
For at least two and a half decades, massive layoffs, wage cuts and slashing of
employee benefits have ravaged workers in the private sector. Utilizing the
same methodology, the ruling class has now targeted the public sector. Leading
spokespeople for the ruling class, both inside and outside of government, are
openly calling for the elimination of the right to strike for school teachers
and other public employees, drastic reductions in salaries and benefits, the
seizure of municipal and state pension funds by Wall Street, and the complete
eradication of collective bargaining rights for civil servants, where they
still exist.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marching with
striking Memphis sanitation workers, 1968.
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The working class must face this challenge politically and build broader
alliances to advance its own program for jobs, job security and employee
benefits; moratoriums on foreclosures, evictions and utility shutoffs; and an
end to the Pentagon budget and the bailout of the banks, which together drain
trillions of dollars from the national treasury every year.
Lessons of 1968: King & the struggle against poverty, war,
racism
Every year the corporate media deliberately overlook or distort the pivotal
role of the civil rights and Black power movements during the period leading up
to and after the assassination of Dr. King. Although King and other charismatic
leaders were important in the struggles to break down legalized segregation and
win universal suffrage and affirmative action programs, it was the involvement
of millions of African Americans, Latinos/as, women, youth and workers of
conscience that constituted the decisive factor in winning the gains of that
period.
In the spring of 1967, Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference came out decisively against the U.S. military occupation of Vietnam.
In taking this anti-war position, the SCLC linked the war in Vietnam with the
failure of the U.S. to adequately address the problems of poverty,
unemployment, national discrimination and oppression.
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee had taken a clear position
against the Vietnam War in January of 1966. In June, during the “March
Against Fear” through Mississippi, the “Black Power” slogan
was advanced. These developments coincided with growing rebellions in
African-American and Puerto Rican communities throughout the country.
King’s position on the war in Vietnam provided the basis for even greater
unity among the Black power, civil rights and anti-war movements of the period.
In addition to King’s anti-war stance, the SCLC had identified the
necessity of eradicating poverty in the United States as prerequisite for the
creation of a genuinely democratic and egalitarian society.
In February of 1968, the Memphis, Tenn., sanitation workers, who were almost
all Black, went on strike to demand recognition and collective bargaining
rights through the American Federation of State, County and Municipal
Employees. The racist city administration of Mayor Henry Loeb refused to
negotiate with the workers, and a citywide strike support committee was
established, headed by James Lawson, a long-time civil rights organizer.
King was invited to Memphis to address a community rally on March 18, where
13,000 people gathered to hear him speak. He called for a general strike in
Memphis to force the city administration to recognize the sanitation
workers.
On March 28, the day of the general strike, the police rioted and attacked a
mass demonstration in downtown Memphis. The city administration shot dead a
14-year-old African-American youth and declared an emergency, calling in the
National Guard to suppress the demonstrations and the sanitation strike.
Three days later, on March 31, Dr. King delivered a major address at the
National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. He said: “There can be no
gainsaying of the fact that a great revolution is taking place in the world
today. In a sense it is a triple revolution: that is, a technological
revolution, with the impact of automation and cybernation; then there is a
revolution in weaponry, with the emergence of atomic and nuclear weapons of
warfare.” (“Testament of Hope,” 1991)
King continued: “Then there is a human rights revolution, with the
freedom explosion that is taking place all over the world. Yes, we do live in a
period where changes are taking place and there is still the voice crying
through the vista of time saying, ‘Behold, I make all things new, former
things are passed away.’”
King then stressed the need for a global view of developments during the
period: “First, we are challenged to develop a world perspective. No
individual can live alone, no nation can live alone, and anyone who feels that
he can live alone is sleeping through a revolution. The world in which we live
is geographically one. The challenge that we face today is to make it one in
terms of brotherhood.” To which we would add today “and
sisterhood.”
After the assassination of Dr. King, rebellions and mass demonstrations erupted
throughout the United States. In Washington, D.C., thousands of federal troops
were dispatched to guard the White House and the Capitol.
Although the Poor People’s Campaign launched by the SCLC did take place a
few weeks later and hundreds of marginalized workers of all nationalities
camped out in Washington demanding immediate relief from the U.S. Congress, the
effort was thwarted and eventually smashed by the federal government.
Rebellions continued in the cities and on the campuses during the summer and
fall of 1968. In Detroit, African-American workers formed the Dodge
Revolutionary Union Movement which engaged in wildcat strikes against the
racist bosses, over and above the union bureaucrats.
At San Francisco State College and other campuses around the country,
African-American students and their allies shut them down, demanding Black
Studies programs and other efforts to make higher education relevant to the
plight of oppressed peoples in the United States. At Wayne State University in
Detroit, African-American students took control of the South End campus
newspaper, making it a revolutionary organ that was distributed to people in
the community, at high schools and plant gates.
Challenges for working class & oppressed today
The ruling class took advantage of the economic crisis caused by capitalist
overproduction, which has led to massive unemployment and growing poverty, to
escalate political repression and attacks on workers’ wages and benefits.
The strategic position of African-American workers within industry and the
urban areas has been weakened with the further globalization of capital and the
systematic lowering of wages and living standards among the oppressed and the
working class in general.
Today the oppressed peoples and workers have been placed on the defensive.
Further attacks are underway against all sectors of the working class,
especially where workers were able to win public sector jobs, educational
rights and other social benefits. The further restructuring of capital by the
ruling class, absent of a monumental fightback, will inevitably lead to
millions more being thrust into joblessness and poverty.
The workers and the oppressed have no choice but to form broader alliances to
fight the system of low-wage capitalism. This is a critical period and the
issue of low-wage workers must be specifically addressed to counter the ruling
class propaganda that they have nothing in common with sectors of the
proletariat who have health insurance, a few vacation days and pensions —
all of which are threatened and up for seizure by the banks.
If the public sector unions were to be smashed, it would provide even greater
openings for the ruling class to further exploit and repress all the workers
and the oppressed. If the wars of occupation against the peoples of the world
are allowed to continue, the ranks of working class and oppressed youth will be
further condemned to the ravages of the Pentagon and the prison/industrial
complex.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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