We have a full day of programs today. Gather at Central United Methodist Church - a historic Detroit church, stop on the Underground Railroad, supporter of left wing causes, a place where Dr. King spoke before his assasination, all round wonderful beautiful place. We will march down Woodward Ave., which ends at the foot of the Detroit River where there is a big public park. There is a big statue commemorating the Underground Railroad, is is a slave family preparing to cross the river to freedom in Windsor, Ont. directly across the river (there is a mirror statue in Windsor with the family arriving safely). Then we walk back to Central where we will show videos, have music, hot food (it's 10 degrees out today! I hope it's very hot) and fellowship.

This is my favorite day, Labor Day is too political and the left is too frightened of May Day. The organized powers that be let us alone today and it will be great.

Happy MLK Day.

[quote=jamesleo,Jan 17 2005, 03:03 PM]



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Hi Barb: Its like he never lived and the events of the Civil Rights Movement never happened. Funny you mention the Underground Railroad. We still have tunnels along the Hudson River from Peekskill. Soujner Truth lived in New Paltz for many years. Be thankful we live in 'Blue States' My wife, finally saw Fahrenheit 9/11 for the first time last night. She was very upset with the LIla Lipscomb portion.
Is Lila still in Michigan?

As Stevie Wonder sang: Happy Birthday to ya!

what do you mean "It's like the civil rights movement never happened"?
I don't think so. There may be a lot of work still to do, but you could never say that the civil rights movement didn't accomplish some real, and lasting changes.

You know, Fred, it's not like that song is a work of musical genius, but I sure like the joy and the spirit of it.

I agree Maria.

Yes, Lila Lipscomb still lives in the Flint area. She travels the country speaking against the war.

James, there may be assholes aplenty in this country but the civil rights movement had an enormous and lasting impact. The problem is more one of apathy and entitlement.


I'm so cold, it was such a cold day! My knees are permanently frozen. But I'm walking on air. It is so wonderful and welcome to spend the day with people who feel as I do, to be around the very old, some of who saw King speak at that very church (the only one in Detroit who would let him speak and preach) in the early sixties, the very young, who were so happy and excited. The cold didn't matter. The upcoming coronation didn't matter. For the moment, we stopped worrying about the upcoming invasion of Iran. For a few sparkling cold hours this afternoon, there was a welcome singleness of purpose.

Photos on What have you been doing today thread.

Our town is about 50% African-American, and I've attended about a dozen MLK ceremonies at our little MLK Park. The crowd is mostly African-American, although the veterans groups who attend diversify the crowd a little bit. I'd take Patrick, but it is always too bloody cold to have him stand in the snow in the park while everyone sings "Lift Every Voice & Sing." My Mayor gave a very honest and off-the-cuff speech on how cultures look at each other negatively, and how many problems this has caused in the world.

I don't want to start another thread so maybe we can make this the American Civil Rights Movement thread.

Today is the 45th anniversary of the lunch counter boycott in the U.S. - Woolworth stores had a policy of not serving blacks at their lunch counters. On this day in 1960, four black freshman from Greensboro North Carolina walked into a Woolworth in town, sat down at the counter, refused to leave till the end of the business day, and came back every day until Woolworth changed their policy. It took six months, and every day they returned with more people. This simple action inspired violence by the entrenched white men who made these evil laws. It also inspired countless acts of bravery.

Yesterday, a troll that hangs around these parts sneered that nothing gets done by doing anything - vote and obey seems to be the advised course of action. Here is a wonderful example of direct non-violent action, against the status quo, that ended in a major civil rights victory and a change in the direction of the United States.

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!

My favorite activist holiday! I hope all Americans and all lovers of freedom celebrate a genuine hero today.

Martin Luther King Jr. Talks about the Labor Movement

"The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old-age pensions, government relief for the destitute and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life. The captains of industry did not lead this transformation; they resisted it until they were overcome. When in the thirties the wave of union organization crested over the nation, it carried to secure shores not only itself but the whole society."
—Speech to the state convention of the Illinois AFL-CIO, Oct. 7, 1965

"Negroes in the United States read the history of labor and find it mirrors their own experience. We are confronted by powerful forces telling us to rely on the goodwill and understanding of those who profit by exploiting us. They deplore our discontent, they resent our will to organize, so that we may guarantee that humanity will prevail and equality will be exacted. They are shocked that action organizations, sit-ins, civil disobedience and protests are becoming our everyday tools, just as strikes, demonstrations and union organization became yours to insure that bargaining power genuinely existed on both sides of the table.

"We want to rely upon the goodwill of those who oppose us. Indeed, we have brought forward the method of nonviolence to give an example of unilateral goodwill in an effort to evoke it in those who have not yet felt it in their hearts. But we know that if we are not simultaneously organizing our strength we will have no means to move forward. If we do not advance, the crushing burden of centuries of neglect and economic deprivation will destroy our will, our spirits and our hope. In this way, labor's historic tradition of moving forward to create vital people as consumers and citizens has become our own tradition, and for the same reasons."
—Speaking to the AFL-CIO on Dec. 11, 1961

"We know of no more crucial civil rights issue facing Congress today than the need to increase the federal minimum wage and extend its coverage.

"We believe it is imperative that farm laborers, among the most abused and neglected of all American workers, be included at last among those who benefit from the Fair Labor Standards Act. We want coverage extended to include those millions in retail trades, laundries, hospitals and nursing homes, restaurants, hotels, small logging operations and cotton gins who still work for starvation wages.

"While we are mindful of the shocking fact that less than one-half of all non-white workers are covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, we do not speak for Negro workers only. A living wage should be the right of all working Americans, and this is what we wish to urge upon our Congressmen and Senators as they now prepare to deal with this legislation."
—Statement on minimum wage legislation, March 18, 1966

"Today Negroes want above all else to abolish poverty in their lives and in the lives of the white poor. This is the heart of their program. To end the humiliation was a start, but to end poverty is a bigger task. It is natural for Negroes to turn to the labor movement because it was the first and pioneer anti-poverty program….

"Negroes are not the only poor in the nation. There are nearly twice as many white poor as Negro, and therefore the struggle against poverty is not involved solely with color or racial discrimination but with elementary economic justice….

"Now most serious thinkers acknowledge that dislocations in the market operation of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will. The poor are less often dismissed from our conscience today by being branded as inferior and incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands, it does not eliminate all poverty.

"To a degree, we have been attacking the problem by increasing purchasing power through higher wage scales and increased Social Security benefits. But these measures are exercised with restraint and come only as a consequence of organized struggles…Those at the lowest economic level, the poor white, the Negro, the aged, are traditionally unorganized and have little or no ability to force a growth in their consumer potential. They stagnate or become even poorer in relation to the larger society."
—Speaking to shop stewards of Local 815, Teamsters and the Allied Trades Council, May 2, 1967

"Less than a century ago the laborer had no rights, little or no respect, and led a life which was socially submerged and barren….American industry organized misery into sweatshops and proclaimed the right of capital to act without restraints and without conscience. The inspiring answer to this intolerable and dehumanizing existence was economic organization through trade unions. The worker became determined not to wait for charitable impulses to grow in his employer. He constructed the means by which fairer sharing of the fruits of his toil had to be given to him or the wheels of industry, which he alone turned, would halt and wealth for no one would be available…

"History is a great teacher. Now everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed of levels of production. Those who attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them.

"Negroes are almost entirely a working people…. Our needs are identical with labor's needs: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old-age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community. That is why Negroes support labor's demands and fight laws which curb labor. That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature, spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth."
—Speaking to the AFL-CIO on Dec. 11, 1961

"In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as 'right to work.' It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights. It is supported by Southern segregationists who are trying to keep us from achieving our civil rights and our right of equal job opportunity. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone…Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights. We do not intend to let them do this to us. We demand this fraud be stopped. Our weapon is our vote."
—Speaking on right-to-work laws in 1961

"With the settlement of many of these early strikes, there was little or nothing added to the pay envelope, little or nothing for job security and a mountain of debts to pay and harsh memories to forget. Yet there was one thing that was won, one thing that was fought for as indispensable, one thing for which all the pain and sacrifice was justified--union recognition. It seemed so miniscule a victory that people outside the labor movement scorned it as in fact just a defeat. But to those who understood, union recognition meant the employer's acknowledgement of that strength, and the two meant the opportunity to fight again for further gains with united and multiplied power. As contract followed contract, the pay envelope fattened and fringe benefits and job rights grew to the mature work standards of today. All of these started with winning first union recognition."
—Speaking to shop stewards of Local 815, Teamsters and the Allied Trades Council on May 2, 1967

Mine, too. Thanks for the quotes, Barb. After I graduated from college (and could finally read for "fun" rather than for "study"), I bought Why We Cant Wait and Where Do We Go From Here. Over 20 years later, they were still powerful. You could feel the emotion in his writing, and yet, that paled in comparison to hearing him or seeing him speaking.

Let me also link to this speech, "Beyond Vietnam". Just as relevant today as when it was first delivered.

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/m...reaksilence.htm

"A time comes when silence is betrayal." And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.