Resolving the conflict between being visionary and being pragmatic is critical for those who want to transform society. Can we be both visionary and strategic?
The June 18 march will “be a generationally transformative declaration of the power of poor and low-wealth people and our moral allies to say that this system is killing all of us and we can’t…we won’t…WE REFUSE TO BE SILENT ANYMORE.”
It was not the failures, but the victories of PUSH that taught Jackson the most crucial of political truths: No amount of private successes could transform a public system working against the interests of poor and working people.
The fact that Black Americans are still fighting the same battles against voter suppression, inequality and the right to have a dream almost 54 years after his death is the most accurate measure of what this nation thinks about Martin Luther King.
King spent his last birthday organizing poor people of all races against immoral spending priorities. We need that revolution today.
Throughout his adult life, Martin Luther King Jr believed in striking down not only racial apartheid but class exploitation. That twin commitment was embodied in his final effort: the often-forgotten Poor People’s Campaign.
Violence has not produced justice anywhere. We must build a nonviolent movement in the 21st century that advances a multi-racial democracy that has never before existed in the United States.
John Lewis declares that, during the 1960s, he was arrested “a few times.” Then the elder statesman and éminence grise of the civil rights movement pauses before correcting himself in front of the large Dallas crowd he’s addressing: “40 times…"
What happened to Floyd happens every day in this country, in education, in health services, and in every area of American life, it's time for us to stand up in George's name and say get your knee off our necks.
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