Presidential Candidates Take the ‘Social’ Out of ‘Change’
Martin Luther King Jr.'s Legacy and the Primaries
New America Media, Commentary, Roberto Lovato, Posted: Jan 16, 2008
Editor's Note: Presidential candidates now clamor for change, and many invoke Martin Luther King, Jr. for their own political benefit, but lost in the debate is the social movement of change, notes NAM contributing editor Roberto Lovato.
The spirit of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. still seems to stir serious controversy among politicians. But, as we're witnessing with the latest racial politics pushing the primary process, the King icon is also being used to build the fortunes and legacies of these politicians, especially those who would be president.
Despite a racial controversy involving a newsletter bearing Ron Paul's name that called King a "world-class adulterer" and "pro-communist philanderer," the Republican candidate plans to launch a new and likely record-breaking multimillion dollar "super Tuesday" fundraising campaign on Jan. 21, Martin Luther King, Jr., day; Mitt Romney mentioned seeing King only to later "clarify" that he never actually saw him; Rudy Giuliani regularly makes references to King in speeches, books and security consulting engagements that earned the former New York mayor the millions of dollars that were, until recently, paying for his campaign. And Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are in the midst of a fierce battle over the MLK legacy to see who deserves to win the black vote.
Lost in the bickering over and celebrations of King as an individual is any notion of the social movement that defined King and an entire generation. Similarly, the mind-numbing mantra of "change" mouthed ad infinitum by all of today's presidential candidates would have us believe that they, not we, are the arbiters of change. The King anniversary appears to provide candidates an opportunity to remind us that they have a monopoly on "change."
The most recent electoral banter around King takes place within the collective amnesia about his views, especially his later views focusing on issues dogging us to this day: racism and poverty, prisoners and war. To the detriment of our political process, we forget that King's views came about at least in part as a response to a black political milieu defined not just by white racism, but by the wealth of spirited action and the intellectual perspective provided by millions of people, thousands of organizations and other, less-requited political stars – Angela Davis, the Black Panthers and their combination of service and calls to militancy; Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam and their own brand of self-determination; Stokely Carmichael and the more militant students of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. These and many others influenced and pressured King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the 1960s.
As the harried run toward this year's King celebrations and the South Carolina primary continues, the practically propagandistic repetitions and variations of words and phrases like "change," "hope," "content of character", "I have a dream" and other King-isms are coded and distributed for mass consumption like Coca-Cola. Coke is, in fact, the main corporate sponsor of a gigantic new civil rights museum located just a shout from Ebenezer Baptist Church and King's birthplace in Atlanta.
Nowhere is this denial of the "social" in "change" better exemplified than in statements made by Hillary Clinton, who said last week, "Dr King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done." Few among the pundits noted how Clinton's framing of the issue deleted the social component of change. Instead, the media, pundits and even community leaders are engaged in a heated discussion about what the candidates believe: whether it was King, the individual, or Johnson, the individual, who "realized" the dream.
This climate has benefited Barack Obama, who speaks more skillfully than any other candidate to a still mostly white electorate that is largely unwilling to deal collectively with issues of race and racism beyond the platitudes one hears during official celebrations of King. Obama's King-like cadences and charisma give us that semi-religious feeling that goes with being part of a social change movement -only without a social change movement.
In critical ways, the lack of the "social" in our discussions of "change" allows us to gloss over crucial differences between Obama the candidate and King, the leader of the Poor People's Campaign. When asked how he would like to be remembered after his death, King said, "I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison."
Like his competitors, Obama spends most of his time making speeches packed with calls for tax cuts and other proposals targeting the crumbling bastion of individualism: the "middle class." He spends little to no time at rallies dealing with those most devastated by the lack of change: working class people, especially young people like those fueling the Jena Six movement. As he and the other candidates vie to be the inheritors of the King legacy, those who would be King say not a word about forcing "change" in a prison industry that predicts the value of its stock based on the future school performance of black and Latino third graders.
As we decide, during these times of continued crisis, on whom to vote for and what to do beyond the ballot box once they get elected, we might do well to recall the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., social change agent: "Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals." Not one dedicated individual, but many.
US Politics
African American stories
Stories by Roberto Lovato
Page
1 of 1
|
User Comments
AngieatWhatNewsShouldBeDotOrg on Jan 19, 2008 at 20:52:37 said:
DR. KING'S CHALLENGE
Great article. In that same spirit, I offer DR. KING'S CHALLENGE. Can you take to heart the words he spoke just four days before he was gunned down? Here are those words:
“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. . . . Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. . .
WE ARE CHALLENGED TO RID OUR NATION AND THE WORLD OF POVERTY. Like a monstrous octopus, poverty spreads its nagging, prehensile tentacles into hamlets and villages all over our world. Two-thirds of the people of the world go to bed hungry tonight. They are ill-housed; they are ill-nourished; they are shabbily clad. I’ve seen it in Latin America; I’ve seen it in Africa; I’ve seen this poverty in Asia. . .How can one avoid being depressed when he sees with his own eyes evidences of millions of people going to bed hungry at night? How can one avoid being depressed when he sees with his own eyes God’s children sleeping on the sidewalks at night? In Bombay more than a million people sleep on the sidewalks every night. In Calcutta more than six hundred thousand sleep on the sidewalks every night. They have no beds to sleep in; they have no houses to go in. How can one avoid being depressed when he discovers that out of India’s population of more than five hundred million people, some four hundred and eighty million make an annual income of less than ninety dollars a year. And most of them have never seen a doctor or a dentist.
AS I NOTICED THESE THINGS, SOMETHING WITHIN ME CRIED OUT, \"CAN WE IN AMERICA STAND IDLY BY AND NOT BE CONCERNED?\" And an answer came: \"Oh no!\" Because the destiny of the United States is tied up with the destiny of India and every other nation. . .Not only do we see poverty abroad, I would remind you that in our own nation there are about forty million people who are poverty-stricken. . .this is America’s opportunity to help bridge the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. The question is whether America will do it. There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will. In a few weeks some of us are coming to Washington to see if the will is still alive or if it is alive in this nation. We are coming to Washington in a Poor People’s Campaign. . . We are coming to demand that the government address itself to the problem of poverty. . . yes, it will be a Poor People’s Campaign. This is the question facing America. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation.
AMERICA HAS NOT MET ITS OBLIGATIONS AND ITS RESPONSIBILITIES TO THE POOR. One day we will have to stand before the God of history and we will talk in terms of things we’ve done. Yes, we will be able to say we built gargantuan bridges to span the seas, we built gigantic buildings to kiss the skies. Yes, we made our submarines to penetrate oceanic depths. We brought into being many other things with our scientific and technological power. It seems that I can hear the God of history saying, \"That was not enough! But I was hungry, and ye fed me not. I was naked, and ye clothed me not. I was devoid of a decent sanitary house to live in, and ye provided no shelter for me. And consequently, you cannot enter the kingdom of greatness. If ye do it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye do it unto me.\" That’s the question facing America today.\"
(The full text of Dr. King’s sermon entitled “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution” containing the above quotes can be read here: www.tinyurl.com/82npj . Dr. King delivered it at the National Cathedral, Washington, D.C., on March 31, 1968, and you can listen to two audio excerpts of the sermon at that same link.)
Today, forty years after Dr. King gave that speech, 41 percent of humanity still defecate in the streets because they have no access to sanitation, one-quarter are forced to live without electricity, and 30,000 kids DIE UNNECESSARILY EACH DAY (see my website for the proof, along with an article about the statistical accuracy of such numbers generally at www.tinyurl.com/yttp3s ). If you are indeed up for King’s challenge, you’ll need to seek out that world perspective he spoke about and get the real front page news on your own, because news which affects the largest number of people in the most serious ways is only rarely covered by television shows and newspapers!! This website, www.WhatNewsShouldBe.com, is one of the places you can find it. It is only when information concerning the most pressing issues facing humanity is widely known that the needless death and suffering can be stopped. There is enough for everyone ( www.tinyurl.com/ytmfd3 ). Please pass it on. Thank you and Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!
Angie
www.WhatNewsShouldBe.com
David on Jan 16, 2008 at 04:08:42 said:
Roberto,
Great article. I must make one clarification.
Dr. Ron Paul has nothing to do with the whole Martin Luther King fundraising effort about to take place on January 21st. Like the all the other drives, this one is a spontaneous grass roots planned event. Its going to be huge!
www.freeatlast2008.com
Landon on Jan 16, 2008 at 03:53:50 said:
I beleive there is a MLK money bomb on the 21st. freeatlast2008.com/
mark Freedom on Jan 16, 2008 at 03:44:30 said:
Roberto Lovato.The qoutes you listed by Ron Pauls name were NOT his.That is slander sir !
-->Try These instead: "Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans only as members of groups and never as individuals." - Ron Paul
"... it is the federal government more than anything else that divides us along race, class, religion, and gender lines." - Ron Paul
"The true antidote to racism is liberty." - Ron Paul