Jerry Wurf, the national president of the public workers union American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, considered the Memphis sanitation workers’ protest more than a strike; it became a social struggle, a battle for dignity. Wurf called the strike a “race conflict and a rights conflict.”
Rev. William Barber talks about the Poor People’s Campaign, the Republican Party’s embrace of President Trump’s racist policies, threats to voting rights and the GOP’s remaking of the federal courts.
Our concern at this moment is with our moderate brothers and sisters who voice support for the cause of racial justice but simultaneously cling to paralyzingly unrealistic standards when it comes to what protest should look like.
Reader Comments: MLK Vision Still Vital, Necessary; Trumpcare; End of US Empire; Activism-Learning from the Past; Resources: Jubilee Haggadah; Bill of Rights Briefing; Tips for Responding to Racist Attacks; Announcements: Solidarity Rally B&H Workers; Tax Marches April 15; Peoples Climate Movement-April 29; and more...
"When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” MLK, Jr. from "Beyond Vietnam"
Reader Comments: U.S. Asks Cambodia for Millions in War Debts - for U.S. Destruction of Their Country; Trump Administration, Russian Hacking, Danger of a New McCarthysim; Democratic Party - Which Way; Bernie Sanders: Most Popular Politician in Country; Gorsuch Supports Torture; Irish-American History - James Larkin; Martin Luther King and Vietnam - 50th Anniversary of Historic Speech; Incredible Resource List (with links) from Stansbury Forum; Announcements; and more...
Martin Luther King's last book was downplayed when it was first published in 1967; even radicals thought it passe. On the 50th anniversary of its first publication--it is still in print-- the reviewers find much of value here for contemporary readers.
Honoring King's vision and legacy thus requires not simply remembering his most well-known dream: a racially inclusive society very different from the one that existed in his, or sadly, our own time. It requires recognizing the need to redistribute the power from the oppressive, exclusionary institutions, many of the same ones - housing, schools, criminal justice, the economy - he fought for until the day he was taken from us. What does honoring that vision mean today?
Reader Comments: Rearming Germany; Martin Luther King Today; Obama Commutes Sentences of Oscar Lopez Rivera and Chelsea Manning - Now Commute Leonard Peltier Sentence; Obama's Farewell Address; Meryl Streep; Cuban Medical Internationalism; Privatization Articles; Puzder Confirmation as Labor Secretary Pushed Back; Rodrigo Duterte - Readers Disagree;
Announcements: Whitney Museum - Free Inauguration Day `Diversity' Show; Trumpism: How Should the Left Respond?; more...
"I left India more convinced than ever before that nonviolent resistance was the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom." - "The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr.," edited by Clayborne Carson. In this decade - in which more people are using nonviolent resistance than ever before - scholars and practitioners alike would do well to consult the pragmatic and principled wisdom of Gandhi and King in building a way forward.
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