[A-List] Martin Luther King, Jr: Visionary, Revolutionary

[Bill Totten]

by Ted Glick

Future Hope column (January 15 2007)

IPPN - Independent Progressive Politics Network


"Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit
and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty,
racism and militarism ..." (from Beyond Vietnam speech, April 4th 1967)

I'm always personally touched when the King birthday holiday in January and the
King April 4th assassination date come around. It was on that April 4th date in
1968 that I moved from concern about war and injustice to activism against them.
His violent death motivated me to compose and post a petition to Congress that
was signed by about half of the students at the college I was attending,
Grinnell College in Iowa, before I sent it off to Washington, DC. I've been
active ever since on a wide range of issues.

Over those many years, I've come to learn that it's unhealthy to uncritically
follow behind or support even the most stirring, articulate, courageous and
effective leaders. Experience has taught me that there are no perfect leaders in
the world, at least none that I've ever worked with, seen or read about. Dr King,
for example, had very real weaknesses as far as his appreciation of leadership
from women and as far as issues of fidelity to his wife, as pointed out and
discussed by Michael Eric Dyson in his book, I May Not Get There With You: The
True Martin Luther King, Jr. {1}

But each year, when these dates come around and I listen to King on TV or radio
or re-read his most famous speeches and am reminded about his life, I am always
moved.

King was a political genius. He was someone who combined a passion for justice
and an activist approach with a profound appreciation for what is sometimes
called "mass politics". On August 13 1967, on NBC's Meet the Press, he called
for "direct action and powerful action programs" to challenge racial and
economic injustice and the war in Vietnam. He was about concretely effecting
change, and he knew in his bones that change of substance only happens when
large numbers of grassroots people are organized into a powerful mass movement
that can appeal to the conscience and the best within others while exerting
political and/or economic power on those in positions of power.

He was also a product of his times. His leadership didn't come from out of
nowhere. He was called upon to provide concrete leadership to the Montgomery,
Alabama bus boycott, THE mass struggle which galvanized the civil rights
movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and similarly with the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC) which emerged out of that campaign. And as the
movements for civil rights and racial justice, and the movement against the
Vietnam war, grew and developed, King grew and developed with them.

During the later years of King's life, the years following the passage of the
Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, King began to speak out
about what he called "a far deeper malady within the American spirit ... I am
convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as
a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the
shift from a 'thing-oriented' society to a 'person-oriented' society. When
machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more
important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism
are incapable of being conquered." (Beyond Vietnam, April 04 1967)


Stewart Burns, in To the Mountaintop: Martin Luther King Jr's Sacred Mission to
Save America {2}, reports on a speech King gave about two months later, at the
end of May, at an SCLC staff retreat. King explained, "For the last twelve years
we have been in a reform movement". But "after Selma and the voting rights bill
we moved into a new era, which must be an era of revolution. We must see the
great distinction between a reform movement and a revolutionary movement. We are
called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society ..."

King located his increasingly radical beliefs squarely within the Christian
tradition. He went on to explain, "Jesus didn't get bogged down in a specific
evil. He didn't say, now Nicodemus you must not drink liquor. He didn't say,
Nicodemus you must not commit adultery. He didn't say, Nicodemus you must not
lie. He didn't say, Nicodemus you must not steal. He said, Nicodemus you must be
born again. Nicodemus, the whole structure of your life must be changed.

"What America must be told today is that she must be born again. 
The whole structure of American life must be changed."

What were the last major campaigns of King's life? There were two: support of
the striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, an economic justice
struggle, and the organization of the Poor People's Campaign, whose intent 
was to nonviolently but militantly disrupt the functioning of government in
Washington, DC until action was taken on an economic justice agenda. There is
little question but that he was killed because of his increasingly radical
perspectives and the actions he was taking to back them up. (For more on King's
death read An Act of State {3} by William F Pepper.)

Have things changed for the better since King's death? No, of course not.
Economic inequality has mushroomed to obscene levels. Racial injustice is
deep-seated and systemic. War spending is an outrage, and let's not forget that
Democratic Party leaders like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are calling for a
beefed-up military. The climate crisis is acute and of utmost urgency. And it's
hard to think of a period in history when corporations have had more influence
over government than they now have.

At the same time, if you compare the activism of the 1960's with today's
activism, there is a much broader swath of it around a much bigger number 
of issues. There are probably several times more progressive organizers and
activists now than there were then.

We are more powerful than we know, if we could but get it together, build an
independent and progressive united force, and recapture that revolutionary
spirit Dr King spoke of and exemplified. Let's act and interact with one another
- humbly and humanely - as if we truly appreciated our potential power for
positive, fundamental, urgently-needed change.


Notes

{1} http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9780684830377-0

{2} http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9780060542450-0

{3} http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781859846957-1

_____

Ted Glick works with the Climate Crisis Coalition -
www.climatecrisiscoalition.org - and the Independent Progressive Politics
Network - www.ippn.org - where his seven years of Future Hope columns are
archived. He can be reached at indpol at igc.org or Post Office Box 1132,
Bloomfield, New Jersey 07003.

http://www.ippn.org/article.php?ID=fh011507.html



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