Part One: What's In It For Me?
Mark Thompson on "Make It Plain" Sirius Left Radio Show asked his listeners the following question: "If Dr. King had been allowed to live would he accept the possibility of electing an African American as President as the realization of his dream?" The "yes" votes led the "no, there is more to do" votes by 52% to 38%, the last time I looked. Wow, that made me go back and reread the speech of Dr. King called "Where Do We Go From Here?" And to check Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States" chapter "Or Does It Explode?"
Barack Obama as President living in the big white house would be realizing one part of Martin Luther King’s dream. It would be a symbol of the pride and worth that Dr. King felt was essential for African Americans to have. "As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free." "I am somebody". "But where do we go from here?", asks Dr. King. The next "challenge" was "to discover how to organize our strength into economic and political power." And that would mean that the "forces of power demanding change" would have to "confront"... "the powerful forces of the status quo".
Dr. King said that:
Now, power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political, and economic change. Walter Reuther defined power one day. He said, "Power is the ability of a labor union like UAW to make the most powerful corporation in the world, General Motors, say, 'Yes' when it wants to say 'No.' That's power.
If Barack Obama's ascendancy into the big white house would be the culmination of Dr. King's dream, what happens to the rest of us? I hate to sound crass, but I've been here before. Where does the economic part come in? If African Americans don't get the modern equivalent of 40 acres and a mule, what's the purpose? If progressive old timey liberals don't finally get an economic bill of rights starting with healthcare, then what's the purpose? Haven't we all figured out that if you raise up the bottom of the ladder, the middle goes higher too? That's what's in it for me.
Without a strong platform of economic justice and a call for more equality, could an Obama presidency become symbolic of getting into the right schools, so you can get to know the right people, so you can belong to the right clubs (or wrong one as is the case with Skull and Bones)? "For what purpose?", Dr. King asks. It cannot simply be about bringing people together. Together for what purpose? Should it be about special people or we the people? Where is the call to higher purpose of making it real plain that the triple evils of racism, economic planned misery, and war are "all tied together"?
Howard Zinn brilliantly articulates in his "People’s History of America" that the story of America should be about the people and their movements, not the small group of people that occupy the big house every 4 years. They come and go and are as careless most of the time as Daisy and Frank Buchanan were as they ran over people.
Part Two: Where's My Mule?
"We Didn't Get the mule. So we decided we'd ride this donkey as far as it would take us." Rev. Al Sharpton said in his speech at the Democratic Convention of 2004.
The pesky concept that caused the most trouble at the founding of our nation was that "all men are created equal". It gave John Adams and Alexander Hamilton major aggita. But Tom Paine was able to put it simply in his pamphlet "Common Sense." Paine argued that this new country would be the land of opportunity for all who lived and worked here and they would have a voice in how it was run. So the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker should take up arms to defend this concept of liberty and justice for all. And they did.
The history of our nation is the history of various folks figuring out how to gain power and for what purpose? The idea of owning some land, 40 acres and a mule, was the solution to the problem of achieving true freedom with equality was for a person. A man of property was deemed to have worth. A man of property could vote.
So here we are 230 years later and where are we? Ronald Reagan and his economic flim flammers started another revolution and with a cynicism beyond belief stole the words of Thomas Paine to begin the tearing down of our republic. "We have it in our power to begin the world over again," Reagan exclaimed at the Republican convention in 1980.
Thus began the down-is-up and up-is-down chapter of American history. We all were given tickets on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride and we’ve been on it ever since. But now the ride operator is nowhere in sight. Can we get off this foolish ride that has made us all serfs in a feudal system once again? Should we wait for the experienced ride operator to come back? Can we HOPE that a new ride operator will be kinder and at least slow the ride down? Or are we all willing to jump?
It’s the economic justice, stupid. For "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," said Dr. King. And this phrase was repeated this week by Martin Luther King III when he urged John Edwards to stay in the fight. Without John Edwards in this fight, economic justice won’t even be mentioned. The forty acres and a mule part will be kicked to the side because the people who went to the right schools and know the right people don’t give a real rat’s ass about any of that. They want to be players in a rigged game. They want to sell a lot of crappy bonds, mortgages, funds, so they get great big bonuses. They are angry about paying taxes for old fart baby boomers.
Dr. King said that without love, power is meaningless.
Now, we got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. (Yes) Power at its best [applause], power at its best is love (Yes) implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love. (Speak) And this is what we must see as we move on.
Dr. King took on the concept of the 40 acres and a mule and called for a "guaranteed annual income" to solve poverty. John Kenneth Galbraith agreed that it would work. In 1967, Galbraith said it would cost 20 billion per year and that the Vietnam War was costing 35 billion.
Again, Dr. King talks to power:
The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the assurance that his income is stable and certain, and when he knows that he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal conflicts between husband, wife, and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on a scale of dollars is eliminated.
So I voted "No" to the question of having a African American president as somehow the epitome, the apex of Dr. King’s and Tom Paine’s dream. Yes there is something to be said for symbolism, and yes, we’ve come a long way, but we have miles to go before we sleep. And the detour we took in 1980 took us down a very low road. Sorry, but we’ve got to make our way back to the fork in the road and take the high road out of the muck.
We have to get out of the muck and throw off the chains; the chains in our head that reveres the salesmen of Wall Street who sold out the American Dream. The chains in our head that reveres the player over the worker. The chains in our head that gives away our power for some gruel. We have all become slaves to the corporations. And today it is clear from reading economists like Paul Krugman that we can restore dignity and restore decision making to all of us by having universal health care. We will then no longer be slaves to corporations. We can move from job to job freely without fear of losing our health care. And then, what they fear most will happen. The people will like that equality deal. They'll want more of that social democracy stuff that those pesky Europeans have.
We have nothing to lose but our chains. I finally get what that phrase was all about. And it sure doesn’t mean that finally getting to live in the big house means that you are free. Who got you there? Who are you beholden to? Who's pulling the strings? And to what purpose? We must ask all our candidates that and demand honest and true answers. Dr. King speaks using the words of I Corinthians 13:
And so I say to you today, my friends, that you may be able to speak with the tongues of men and angels; you may have the eloquence of articulate speech; but if you have not love, it means nothing. you may ascend to the heights of academic achievement (Yes sir) so that you have all knowledge (Yes sir, Yes); and you may boast of your great institutions of learning and the boundless extent of your degrees; but if you have not love, all of these mean absolutely nothing. What I'm trying to get you to see this morning is that a man may be self-centered in his self-denial and self-righteous in his self-sacrifice. His generosity may feed his ego, and his piety may feed his pride. So without love, benevolence becomes egotism...
Love is another word for brotherhood. It is a movement that will not be stopped because "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. But as much as love is patient and kind, I have put away childish things and I am ready to have that revolution that Tom Jefferson said we had to have every thirty years. We have not kept faith with our founders and it's time to put on our big boy and girl pants.
As the Bible says, when everything is swept away, and you stare into your brother's face, there remains but three things; faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love. The greatest of these is the brother/sisterhood of man.
Simply put. I Got the faith. I Got the hope. Now for the Love thy neighbor and the love with power part. Power to the People. Let's kick out the Criminal Cannibal Capitalists. Vote Solidarity. Vote for the People. Vote for the Mule. And cut to the revolution.
Further Reading:
Glen Ford on the theft of wealth from African Americans: "People of Color Face Historic Wealth Loss". http://www.blackagendareport.com/
Chalmers Johnson on "Going Bankrupt: Why the Debt Crisis is Now the Greatest Threat to the American Republic"
http://www.truthout.org/...
Dean Baker Interview: "What Was Actually Happening While You Led a Life" The radical wrong turn we took in 1980 while Europe and other wealthy countries took the high road.
http://www.truthout.org/...
Robert Samuelson's Ope Ed in the Washington Post called "Capitalism's Enemies Within."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...