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ACCORDING TO LIZ - Martin Luther King, Jr. believed in the sanctity of human beings. All human beings.
He rose to historical prominence by spearheading the fight for negro equality but as a preacher, as a writer and orator, spent vast amounts of time cogitating about everyman’s place in the world.
He listened to those around him, saw the injustices, but also understood that there could never be equality for black men without equality for everyone else – women, other races, the poor and disenfranchised.
That made him take on the corporate structure of the American economy and oppose wars that profited American armaments companies, condemning the American poor, especially those of color, to fight in overseas for the benefit of multinationals.
It was MLK broadening his civil rights battles to include all workers that led to his death.
Today, MLK’s understanding of the importance of people’s pride in their labor as contributing to a greater society beneficial to everyone would have placed him diametrically opposed to the Donroe Doctrine and the current president’s entourage with their view that the world was theirs to rape. That it was the right of the powerful to extract as much as possible as fast as possible from this world.
And the rest of us – pah! who cares?
While venerated for his leadership in the civil rights movement, King quickly came to advocated against the militarism that increasingly sucked up taxpayer dollars in the American quest to dictate economic terms to all countries, a quest that has led to the current president’s overweening ambitions on the world stage.
MLK was known for using materialism interchangeably with the negative aspects of individualism, fighting the excesses of materialism and the harms it brought ordinary people... definitely diametrically opposed to the views of the current denizen of the White House.
King would also have been appalled by the Trump administration’s persecution and inhumane treatment of immigrants in the country that once opened its arms in a “world-wide welcome… [to the] poor... [and] huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
MLK’s greatest gift was his ability to reach across economic and racial boundaries to elicit sympathy for the working poor, no matter people’s color or social standing. And invoking anger against oppression using the values espoused by a panoply of religions and the power of the news media to help propel people’s consciences to buoy up the underdog.
When, at the instigation of Alabama’s segregationist governor George Wallace, state troopers and armed civilians attacked peaceful civil rights protesters crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge to raise awareness of ongoing racial injustices in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, reporting of the gratuitous violence vastly raised awareness and strengthened support across the country for King and his moral mission.
Protestors from the 1960s (and from decades since) still embrace the validation of their actions, no matter the extent of their success. The affirmation, their ability to feel effective in challenging the powerful continues to empower them, and that their beliefs are worth fighting for.
Such positive emotions encourage risk-taking and give courage to other people and other communities focused on big-picture change.
Unfortunately, bad actors among protesters – some anarchists, some provoked by violent police response and others planted by advocates for the status quo – can easily grease the fall of a movement. Leadership has to emphasize that turn the other cheek, no matter how shameful, no matter how painful.
During the Montgomery Bus Boycott, MLK’s home was bombed. In response: King told a crowd of his neighbors “We believe in law and order... “Don’t get panicky. Don’t do anything panicky at all. Don’t get your weapons. He who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword. Remember that is what God said. We are not advocating violence…I want you to love our enemies. Be good to them. Love them and let them know you love them.”
Shamefully, at the urging of many around him and fearing for his family, King then applied for a gun permit and purchased one.
Bayard Rustin, raised by a Quaker grandmother and a political activist who later helped organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, went to Atlanta and pushed MLK to get that gun out of his house promoting the Gandhian pacifism that King had earlier espoused in the name of Jesus.
Gandhi's principles of non-violent protest called satyagraha, formed from the Sanskrit words for truth and insistence, fueled the wholesale revolt in India against the British monopoly of the salt industry and the taxes they imposed on a locally available commodity necessary for human health in a hot climate and the preservation of food.
Gandhi’s approach to revolutionary change, reportedly learned from Thoreau who read deeply of the Upanishads, the texts underlying the rise of Hinduism and the quest for inner peace, informed many of the protests of the post-World War II era in America.
The triad of wrongs that MLK fought against most of his life may have started with endemic racism but increasingly included this country’s expanding military intervention in other countries’ political and economic affairs, and the materialism of the burgeoning U.S. economy in its search for cheap labor.
King understood that without overcoming these, there can be no peace in the world.
Like MLK, the moral-minded among us choose speech and action to shine a light on the world we live in today so that others can see, so people can learn, to find for Americans a way to peaceful coexistence.
As Rob Bonta said in his MLK Day e-mail “It is people — people lifting their voices in peaceful protest, speaking out against injustice, cruelty, and corruption — who drive us toward greater justice. Toward the society we need and deserve.
MLK’s final action was fighting for the protection and rights of garbage workers something that terrified the economic elite who benefited from broad economic inequality and perceived King spreading beliefs in equality – socio-economic and moral – as a threat to their own superiority.
Making America Great Today
King was an early supporter of women’s rights. He advocated for a woman’s right to contraception and the right to control her own body.
King marched with women who were underpaid and overworked. King organized for women who were victims of oppression.
Most importantly King respected women, acknowledging them as educators, contributors to positive social change, and as fellow participants in fighting for civil rights, labor rights and against the Vietnam War.
Tomorrow, January 20th, the Women’s March is organizing Free America Walkouts across the country in defiance of current government policies and to demonstrate that a great America can only exist “…the moment we stop cooperating with fascism.”
Just as so many soldiers, whites, and women were among the 200,000 who marched on Washington in support of Jobs and Freedom and heard the “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963, just as the affluent and the famous joined workers and the economically deprived in 1968’s Poor People's March on Washington, many men will walk shoulder-to-shoulder with women tomorrow in protest against the materialism, the militarization, and the racism of an administration devoid of what really makes America great.
Moving Forward
MLK was a wonderful orator but the truth in his words live on today.
“Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals.”
“If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts. Be careful, ‘brethren!’
“True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
Let’s then invoke the ever-fresh breeze of Martin Luther King, Jr., a man of the people for the people, to waft away the xenophobic decomp of the Washington swamp.
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno now living in Vermont and a regular CityWatch contributor. She writes on issues she’s passionate about, including social justice, government accountability, and community empowerment. Liz brings a sharp, activist voice to her commentary and continues to engage with Los Angeles civic affairs from afar. She can be reached at [email protected].)
