Detroit, Michigan – On January 16, Martin Luther King Jr Day, the Detroit MLK Day Committee organized a large gathering, which took place at Historic Saint Matthew's-Saint Joseph's Episcopal Church with the theme of “Six Decades of Mass Movements, The Struggle Continues.” Issues addressed included winning full funding for the Right to Counsel Ordinance and ensuring that all Detroit residents have access to quality housing, water services, good schools, environmentally sound communities, and healthy food. Marchers also demanded an end to police crimes, no more funds to NATO and ending the proxy war in Ukraine. Several FRSO members took part in and provided logistical support for the event.

Detroit has a long legacy of struggle based around Martin Luther King Jr. Sixty years ago on June 23, 1963, it was the site of the Detroit Walk to Freedom, which was the largest civil rights demonstration to ever take place in U.S. history, with attendance ranging from 125,000 to 500,000 with the keynote speaker being delivered by Martin Luther King Jr, who gave an early version of his “I have a Dream” speech.

The Detroit MLK Day Committee continues to strive for equality, housing rights, economic justice, social justice and anti-militarism.

After a speakout, there was a short march down Woodward Avenue to a new Black food cooperative down the street which is in the process of being built.

Chants during the march declared that housing, water, jobs, education, right to counsel are human rights (“Fight, fight fight!”) and to free Palestine.

#DetroitMichigan #DetroitMI #AfricanAmerican #DrMartinLutherKingJr #MLKDay

New York, NY – Over 50 people gathered on January 18, in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The crowd rallied at the 125th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard in Harlem, a neighborhood that has had a long history of Black revolutionary organizing. Along with the rally, others participated in a car caravan that passed by the rally.

The event was organized by the People’s United Front, with speakers from organizations such as the New Abolitionist Movement, Cuba Si Coalition, New York Community Action Project, Families for Freedom, and many others.

Each of the speeches addressed one of the issues laid out by the People’s 10 Demands, which included an end to mass incarceration and release of all political prisoners; an end to police terror, affordable housing for all; amnesty for all undocumented people; an end to U.S. military interventions abroad, and others.

Along with speeches, speakers also led the crowd in chants, including “Free them all!” and “How do you spell racist? N-Y-P-D!”

The rally ended with an African American young person reciting from memory a portion of MLK’s famous I Have a Dream speech.

#NewYorkNY #PeoplesStruggles #DrMartinLutherKingJr #Antiracism

In November, Lumen, formerly known as CenturyLink, announced that the company would, for the first time, be giving non-union workers the holiday in an effort to make Lumen more “diverse and inclusive.”

“We are deeply disappointed by Lumen’s recently announced decision to give the MLK Holiday to everyone except union members,” the letter reads. “In your announcement, leadership cited listening to employees and the significance of Dr. King’s message. Yet this decision directly undermines Dr. King’s legacy of fighting for civil and labor rights. We are asking you to make it right and extend the MLK paid holiday to all Lumen workers.”

The letter was accompanied by signatures from 1500 Lumen workers and community supporters who signed a petition asking Storey to include union members in the holiday.

#WashingtonDC #DC #PeoplesStruggles #DrMartinLutherKingJr #CommunicationsWorkersOfAmericaCWA

The Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), is proud to sponsor the upcoming program “ The Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr: The George Floyd Rebellion, Black Liberation, and the Struggle for Socialism.”

The program will draw lessons from the rebellion and offer direction for the peoples’ struggle in the year to come. It will feature Frank Chapman, speaking for the Central Committee of the FRSO and Aislinn Pulley, of Black Lives Matter-Chicago. The program will be moderated by Michael Sampson of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression or NAARPR, from Jacksonville, Florida.

2020 was a disastrous year for the people of the United States, with tens of millions thrown out of work in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and hundreds of thousands dying in the country’s worst pandemic since 1918. Both of these catastrophes were aided and abetted by President Trump who anti-science views combined with incompetence made the United States number one in COVID-19 infections and death in 2020.

But 2020 was also the year of the historic uprisings after the murder of George Floyd as millions of people across the country protested continuing killing by police. The cases of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky and Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia had already led to protests in African American communities who have suffered from police crimes dating back to the slave era.

The program will be at 5 p.m. Central Time (3 Pacific/4 Mountain/6 Eastern) on Sunday, January 17. It will be hosted by the FRSO on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

#UnitedStates #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #DrMartinLutherKingJr

Saint Paul, MN – On January 20, Twin Cities Coalition 4 Justice 4 Jamar (TCC4J) held an evening event to honor the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., Marcus Golden, and “stolen lives” of community members lost to police crimes and terror.

The event took place in Rondo, a historically Black and working class neighborhood and included a potluck dinner, political program, and entertainment. Over 50 people attended, a majority Black and women.

The program included a short video The Radical History of MLK, which highlighted King’s work in the Black liberation movement, for labor struggles like the 1968 AFSCME sanitation workers strike in Memphis, and for all working people. The program also honored the anniversary of the 2015 #ReclaimMLK Black Lives Matter Minneapolis march held in Saint Paul after the Saint Paul Police Department murdered of Marcus Golden. The 2000-people strong march went through the same historically black neighborhood that this year’s event was held in and it marked a heightening of the local struggle for Black liberation and against police crimes in Minnesota. Monique Cullars-Doty (aunt of Marcus Golden) joined the struggle at that time and still actively organizes with TCC4J as a leader who helps organize other families and survivors of police terror.

An excerpt of Frank Chapman’s “report from the battlefield” from the re-launching of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression in November was also shown. Attendees cheered and applauded during the speech. Chapman’s February 7 and 8 Black History Month tour in Minnesota was highlighted, along with the work for community control of the police in Minneapolis.

Daphne Brown and Toshira Garraway both sang and Loretta VanPelt, organizer and emcee of the night, led everyone in “Say their name” chants, as well as the Assata Shakur “We have a duty” chant to close the event.

#SaintPaulMN #Labor #OppressedNationalities #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #PoliceBrutality #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #DrMartinLutherKingJr #Antiracism #AFSCME #PoliticalRepression #MarcusGolden #TwinCitiesCoalition4JusticeForJamarTCC4J

St. Paul, MN – On April 4, 80 people gathered at the Minnesota State Capitol building to honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and to use his words to analyze the militarism of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Both MLK and NATO are connected to the date of April 4.

On April 4, 1967, Dr. King delivered his “Beyond Vietnam” anti-war speech at the Riverside Church in New York City. He would tragically be assassinated exactly one year later, on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

On April 4, 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty was signed marking the inception of the military alliance known as NATO.

The program began on the capitol steps with songs by Sister Brigid McDonald, introductory words by Sue Ann Martinson and Mel Reeves, a bell ringing by Veterans for Peace, and a eulogy to Reverend King by Bishop Richard D. Howell Jr. of Shiloh Temple.

Martinson, a member of Women Against Military Madness, opened the event: “Martin Luther King called Vietnam a symptom of a deeper malady of the American spirit. Today we have another symptom, Venezuela. He predicted that we would be marching and attending rallies without end unless a significant change in American life and policy took place; now we have endless wars and in the case of Venezuela an attempted coup with a threat of war.” She added, “We are addressing two silences today, one is the silence around the ‘Beyond Vietnam’ speech and its anti-militarism, pro-peace message at formal programs about Dr. King such as they have on Martin Luther King Day. The other is the silence around the breadth and extent of U.S./NATO bases worldwide.”

Inside in the capitol rotunda the crowd heard two main presenters: University of Minnesota Professor August Nimtz on the civil rights legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., and Major (Ret.) Todd E. Pierce on NATO.

Interspersed throughout the program were readings from the “I Have a Dream” and “Beyond Vietnam” speeches by local elementary and high school students.

The event was sponsored by the Minnesota Peace Action Coalition, Veterans for Peace Chapter 27 and Women Against Military Madness.

#SaintPaulMN #AntiwarMovement #PeoplesStruggles #NATO #DrMartinLutherKingJr

Fight Back News Service is circulating this important speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was delivered at Riverside Church in New York City, April 4, 1967

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” 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.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstandings, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church — the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate — leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia.

Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reason to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans, who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

The Importance of Vietnam

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor — both black and white — through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years — especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked — and rightly so — what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, “Aren't you a civil rights leader?” and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: “To save the soul of America.” We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath— America will be!

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission — a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for “the brotherhood of man.” This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men — for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the “Vietcong” or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

Finally, as I try to delineate for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

Strange Liberators

And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond to compassion my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony.

Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not “ready” for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some Communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam.

Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators — our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss reunification with the north. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change — especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy — and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us — not their fellow Vietnamese —the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go — primarily women and children and the aged.

They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one “Vietcong”-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them — mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only non-Communist revolutionary political force — the unified Buddhist church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. What liberators?

Now there is little left to build on — save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call fortified hamlets. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these? Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are our brothers.

Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation Front — that strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the south? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of “aggression from the north” as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent Communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them — the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the north, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.

When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard of the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the north. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless on Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor.

This Madness Must Cease

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:

“Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.”

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.

In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:

End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.

Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.

Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.

Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government.

Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement.

Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We most provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary.

Protesting The War

Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.

As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military “advisers” in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken — the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a Communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

The People Are Important

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgement against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every moutain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain.”

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept — so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force — has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:

Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says : “Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.”

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The “tide in the affairs of men” does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: “Too late.” There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on...” We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world — a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter — but beautiful — struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated: Once to every man and nation Comes the moment to decide, In the strife of truth and falsehood, For the good or evil side; Some great cause, God's new Messiah, Off'ring each the bloom or blight, And the choice goes by forever Twixt that darkness and that light.

Though the cause of evil prosper, Yet 'tis truth alone is strong; Though her portion be the scaffold, And upon the throne be wrong: Yet that scaffold sways the future, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow Keeping watch above his own.

And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when “justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

#NewYorkNY #AntiwarMovement #InJusticeSystem #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #DrMartinLutherKingJr #Vietnam #Socialism

Memphis, TN – Members of AFSCME and other unions, along with civil rights activists, marched in Memphis, April 4, the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. King was in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers, members of AFSCME Local 1733, at the time of his 1968 murder.

The march comes at a time when public worker unions are facing attacks and responding with a growing wave of resistance.

#MemphisTN #AFSCME #DrMartinLutherKingJr #Antiracism

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following April 16, 1968 statement from Mao Zedong on the assassination of Martin Luther King. Statement by Comrade Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, in Support of the Afro-American Struggle Against Violent Repression

Some days ago, Martin Luther King, the Afro-American clergyman, was suddenly assassinated by the U.S. imperialists. Martin Luther King was an exponent of nonviolence. Nevertheless, the U.S. imperialists did not on that account show any tolerance toward him, but used counter-revolutionary violence and killed him in cold blood. This has taught the broad masses of the Black people in the United States a profound lesson. It has touched off a new storm in their struggle against violent repression sweeping well over a hundred cities in the United States, a storm such as has never taken place before in the history of that country. It shows that an extremely powerful revolutionary force is latent in the more than twenty million Black Americans.

The storm of Afro-American struggle taking place within the United States is a striking manifestation of the comprehensive political and economic crisis now gripping U.S. imperialism. It is dealing a telling blow to U.S. imperialism, which is beset with difficulties at home and abroad.

The Afro-American struggle is not only a struggle waged by the exploited and oppressed Black people for freedom and emancipation, it is also a new clarion call to all the exploited and oppressed people of the United States to fight against the barbarous rule of the monopoly capitalist class. It is a tremendous aid and inspiration to the struggle of the people throughout the world against U.S. imperialism and to the struggle of the Vietnamese people against U.S. imperialism. On behalf of the Chinese people, I hereby express resolute support for the just struggle of the Black people in the United States.

Racial discrimination in the United States is a product of the colonialist and imperialist system. The contradiction between the Black masses in the United States and the U.S. ruling circles is a class contradiction. Only by overthrowing the reactionary rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class and destroying the colonialist and imperialist system can the Black people in the United States win complete emancipation. The Black masses and the masses of white working people in the United States have common interests and common objectives to struggle for. Therefore, the Afro-American struggle is winning sympathy and support from increasing numbers of white working people and progessives in the United States. The struggle of the Black people in the United States is bound to merge with the American workers’ movement, and this will eventually end the criminal rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class.

In 1963, in the “Statement Supporting the Afro-Americans in Their Just Struggle Against Racial Discrimination by U.S. Imperialism,” I said that the “the evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and throve with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the complete emancipation of the Black people.” I still maintain this view.

At present, the world revolution has entered a great new era. The struggle of the Black people in the United States for emancipation is a component part of the general struggle of al the people of the world against U.S. imperialism, a component part of the contemporary world revolution. I call on the workers, peasants, and revolutionary intellectuals of all countries and all who are willing to fight against U.S. imperialism to take action and extend strong support to the struggle of the Black people in the United States! People of the whole world, unite still more closely and launch a sustained and vigorous offensive against our common enemy, U.S. imperialism, and its accomplices! It can be said with certainty that the complete collapse of colonialism, imperialism, and all systems of exploitation, and the complete emancipation of all the oppressed peoples and nations of the world are not far off.

#UnitedStates #Remembrances #AfricanAmerican #China #DrMartinLutherKingJr #MaoZedong

True art imitates life but it can never be art for art’s sake. The most elevated art is but a reflection of the struggles, ideas and inspiration of a particular nation, class or race. Through her eloquent and powerful graphic presentation of events leading up to the historic march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Ava DuVernay, the director and producer of the film, has shown us more social and political truths than all the politicians, pundits and moralists put together. She achieved this by giving a truthful depiction, by having a concrete historical approach to the events described and by giving depth and content to the ideals and genuine passions that express the many-sided facets of individual characters.

There is no abstract moralizing, no impersonations instead of live characters. The cast of characters, Dr. King, Correta Scott King, Malcolm X, LBJ, J. Edgar Hoover manifest from the actions they are engaged in the purpose and direction of the movie. There are bombings, police brutalities and murder, jailing and repression served up by racist white mob violence, the local police and highway patrol. There is the FBI harassment orchestrated by J. Edgar Hoover and buttressed by the political chicanery of LBJ; and yet these courageous people continue to march and protest, continue to rise up in spite of threats, murderous violence, slander and numerous dirty tricks.

They dared to struggle and dared to win. LBJ dared to try to hold the movement back and he lost. But the driving force in the fight for the right to vote was the people, that vast army of men and women who were workers, students, men of the cloth, mothers and their children, seniors, radicals, socialists and communists who put their bodies on the line over and over again; these were the people who came face to face with the armed might of the state, who bled and died in the streets of Selma and yet did not falter in their resolve to march on. It was these people and their leaders, who walked through the valley of the shadow of death, that gave us our finest hour and that fleeting moment of glory before the assassin’s bullet found first Malcolm and then King.

Those who decry this movie as a farce because it didn’t make LBJ the hero who saved the day are a farce themselves. I am talking about the New York Times and the Washington Post and all their cohorts. Go see the movie and I promise you, that because you have a conscience it will speak to you in the words of Dr. King: “No lie can live forever…Truth crushed to earth shall rise again…I have seen the promised land…I fear not any man…mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”

This is the movie for the world to see because it gives to one an inside look into one of the most racist and oppressive societies known to humanity. But you can’t venture to look and not be moved in your heart and mind to detest the cruelties of racism and to love and be in solidarity with those who fight back. If you are in the struggle it will inspire you to stay in and give more, if you are not it may inspire you to join the struggle and make it your life.

Frank Chapman is Field Organizer for the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression

#ChicagoIL #Movies #AfricanAmerican #DrMartinLutherKingJr #Antiracism #Selma

Minneapolis, MN – More than 100 people braved below-zero weather to join a Martin Luther King Day march here, Jan 21, for “Jobs, Justice, and Housing.” The event was organized by Occupy the Hood and Minnesota Neighborhoods Organizing for Change.

A statement from the organizers notes, “This march seeks to honor that legacy of Doctor King – the MLK of the ‘Vietnam and Beyond’ speech, in which he condemns the militarism, materialism, and racism in U.S. society and proclaims that: ‘A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death… Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’”

After rallying at 16th Street and Hennepin Avenue, marchers made their way to the skyway system, where they moved through downtown Minneapolis. A concluding rally was held near People’s Plaza. Among the speakers there was Deb Konechne of the Welfare Rights Committee, who spoke of their struggle at the Minnesota legislature to raise the welfare grants.

#MinneapolisMN #DrMartinLutherKingJr #OccupyTheHood #MinnesotaNeighborhoodsOrganizingForChange

Newark, NJ – The People’s Organization for Progress (POP) marched and held a speaking program Jan.15 in observance of the 83rd anniversary of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. An excellent turnout of 150 people representing many different organizations marched from the Lincoln Monument through the downtown area. The gathering marked the 204th day of POP’s Daily Picket for Jobs, Peace, Equality and Justice.

For the second year, the program was held in the chambers of the Newark Municipal Council. Councilpersons Mildred Crump and Ras Baraka spoke, as did representatives of the NAACP, the New Black Panther Party and others.

Veteran activist Amiri Baraka recounted a visit from Dr. King. Baraka was at home in the city’s South Ward, when he saw police cars drive past and heard helicopters overhead. A little later the doorbell rang. Baraka opened the door. Martin Luther King was standing there. “Hello, LeRoi,” he said. He wanted to talk about a united front within the Black Liberation Movement. King had recently met with Elijah Muhammad.

A few days later, Dr. King went to Memphis, Tennessee to support the strike of the city’s sanitation workers.

#NewarkNJ #AfricanAmerican #PeoplesOrganizationForProgress #DrMartinLutherKingJr

Dallas, TX – On the evening of Jan. 15, Occupy Dallas and Occupy Now held a candlelight vigil at the Meyerson Symphony Center in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. The vigil was in response to a call from Occupy Wall Street for vigils to take place across the country. The Meyerson Symphony Center was hosting its annual Black Music and Civil Rights Movement concert. Occupiers held signs reading, “Occupy Dallas honors Martin Luther King” and “Thank you.” Others held candles. Turnout was about 50 on a Sunday evening in January.

The next day, Occupy Dallas attended the Dallas Martin Luther King day parade. Also on Jan. 16, Occupy Dallas held a protest at the Federal Reserve in Dallas.

Although the Occupy Dallas encampment was torn down by police on the night of Nov. 17, occupiers continue to hold protests and meetings almost daily. An upturn in activity is expected as spring approaches.

#DallasTX #DrMartinLutherKingJr #OccupyWallStreet #OccupyDallas

Minneapolis, MN – Organized by Occupy the Hood, about 250 people joined a Martin Luther King Day march here, Jan. 16. Marchers assembled at one of the city’s largest homeless shelters, the Salvation Army Harbor Light, and proceeded to City Hall for a rally.

Members of the Minnesota Committee to Stop FBI Repression distributed leaflets to march participants about the FBI’s campaign against Dr. King and the current FBI repression directed against Carlos Montes and other anti-war activists.

A statement from the event’s organizers said, “On this King Day observation we march in the spirit of Dr. King’s desire for justice for all. So in his honor we march to demand: jobs for all; a freeze on foreclosures; housing for all; workers rights and a livable wage; no more cuts to social programs; an end to racist mass incarceration; an end to scapegoating immigrants; an end to discrimination in all its forms.

#MinneapolisMN #OppressedNationalities #DrMartinLutherKingJr #OccupyWallStreet #OccupyTheHood

Oakland, CA – The power of workers to bring production to a halt was on dramatic display April 4, when longshore workers of ILWU Local 10 shut down the ports of Oakland and San Francisco for 24 hours, in solidarity with the heroic struggles in Wisconsin.

The big container port of Oakland was deader than a doornail Monday at 6:00 a.m. I saw a long snake-line of trucks bearing shipping containers idled on the roadway. The shipping cranes were all “standing at attention” – i.e., not working any containers (These are same Port of Oakland cranes that gave George Lucas the idea for some of his “Star Wars” imagery).

The ILWU hiring hall was practically deserted at dispatch time for the night shift, leaving several hundred jobs unfilled. The dock workers stayed away, and no cargo was worked on any shift Monday in Oakland or San Francisco.

The rank-and-file-initiated shutdown was part of nationwide actions on April 4 to challenge the draconian budget cuts and union busting in Wisconsin and other states.

An “organized act of resistance” by rank-and-file dock workers

“This was a voluntary rank and file action – an organized act of resistance,” said Clarence Thomas, a dock worker and Local 10 executive board member.

“It is significant that the action by Local 10 was taken in solidarity with Wisconsin public sector workers who are facing the loss of collective bargaining,” Thomas said. He pointed out that April 4 is also the anniversary of the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – who was killed in Memphis demanding collective bargaining for sanitation workers in that city.

“So we’ve come full circle,” he concluded. The Memphis public workers got their union, after a two-month strike. Now 40 years later their Wisconsin counterparts are threatened with losing theirs. But it is Wisconsin’s fierce resistance that is inspiring all of us today.”

It is not surprising that the 24-hour port work stoppage came out of International Longshore & Warehouse Union Local 10, a racially diverse, predominantly African American local, and the home local of legendary labor leader Harry Bridges. Martin Luther King was named an honorary member of Local 10, six months before he was killed in 1968.

#OaklandCA #InternationalLongshoreWarehouseUnionILWU #DrMartinLutherKingJr #Wisconsin #PublicSectorUnions #April4 #InternationalLongshoreWarehouseUnionLocal10 #ILWU

Newark, NJ – Around 600 people turned out on here April 4 for a March for Jobs, Peace, Equality and Justice initiated by the People’s Organization for Progress. The date marked the 1968 assassination of Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. A speaking program followed at Essex Community College.

Dozens of organizations joined in support of the march. The Communications Workers of American turned out hundreds of its members. The themes of the event were workers’ rights, civil rights, the need to end the wars and meet human needs at home. Speaker after speaker noted that Dr. King’s life was taken as he was engaged in support of the efforts of sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee to unionize and gain a better life.

The turnout was a strong show of working class unity in the face of acute crisis in the capitalist system.

#NewarkNJ #AntiwarMovement #PeoplesOrganizationForProgress #DrMartinLutherKingJr

St. Paul, MN – More than 3500 trade unionists and their supporters marched here, April 4, to stand up for workers’ rights on the anniversary the Martin Luther King Jr.’s murder. A sea of signs and banners filled John Ireland Boulevard as workers marched to the state capitol building.

A broad cross-section of Minnesota’s labor movement took part in the rally, including AFSCME, the Teamsters and the Communication Workers of America.

The April 4 protest took place in cities across the U.S. Promoted by unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO and others, the demonstrations proved to be a massive mobilization of the labor movement and its allies. Hundreds of thousand joined rallies and marches to stand in solidarity with the workers of Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and other states that are on the front lines of the fight to resist union busting efforts.

Sarah Martin of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression was among those at the Saint Paul protest encouraging workers to sign the ‘Pledge to resist FBI and Grand Jury repression.’ She stated, “We got a great response.” Illinois U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is leading a witch hunt that aims to put trade unionists, anti-war and international solidarity activists in jail. “Working people understand this is unjust and must be opposed,” Martin said.

#StPaulMN #Teamsters #AFLCIO #DrMartinLutherKingJr

Minneapolis, MN – The Committee to Stop FBI Repression has issued a leaflet on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King and the struggle against political repression. Tom Burke, a spokesperson for the Committee to Stop FBI Repression urges activists to distribute the flyer at Martin Luther King Day events, stating, “Dr. King was a giant in the struggle for equality, peace and justice, and the FBI did its best to destroy him. Distributing this flyer at MLK Day events brings out an important message about the government’s continuing attempts to repress movements that are working for social justice.”

Burke also urges participating in the Jan. 25 protests against repression. Jan. 25 is the day that nine Palestine solidarity activists have been told to appear in front of a Chicago Grand Jury. To date, a total of 23 international solidarity, peace, justice and labor activists have been subpoenaed to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s Grand Jury witch hunt.

The leaflet reads in part, “The FBI’s targeting and attacks against King from 1955 until after his assassination in 1968 is something that should never be forgotten. Their attacks on King were illegal and outrageous. Unfortunately they were not unique – they were in a context of much broader FBI attacks on all progressive movements. In that period the sharpest FBI attacks were against Black, Native American, Chicano, Puerto Rican and Asian movements, in particular the FBI COINTELPRO that targeted the Black Panther Party and others, as well as the anti-war and student movement. But FBI harassment of progressive movements didn’t end with the 1960s.”

The leaflet concludes, “We are now seeing rapidly increasing FBI attacks on anti-war and international solidarity activists, also under the guise of ‘anti-terrorism,’ in the Midwest. The FBI’s investigations have led to 23 activists being subpoenaed to testify at a grand jury to be interrogated about their peace activism. These modern-day FBI attacks are a continuation of the FBI’s ongoing practice of trying to discredit and stop any movements for social change.”

“Since they thrive on secrecy and fear, we need to boldly expose and work to stop the FBI’s repressive actions, as we continue to speak out and build the movements for social justice. Doing both of those things is the best way to fully honor the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.”

To download the leaflet, go to: http://www.stopfbi.net/resources/flyer/flyer-martin-luther-king-jr-today-%E2%80%93-fbi-attacks-peace-and-justice-activists

#MinneapolisMN #AfricanAmerican #FBI #DrMartinLutherKingJr #September24FBIRaids #CommitteeToStopFBIRepression

Birmingham, AL – On Jan. 18, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, dozens of people gathered here to participate in the Solidarity March with the Birmingham Homeless Coalition and Birmingham Peace Project. Under the banner of, Breaking the Silence: Perpetual War=Perpetual Poverty, protesters spoke out against the war and for affordable housing and fair wages. Marchers began in Linn Park downtown and continued on to the Greater Birmingham Ministry. There, several speakers took the stage, including Rodney Cole, videographer of police harassment and violence towards the homeless; Sarah White, union organizer and human rights activist and Rosa Clemente, community organizer, hip hop activist and former Green Party vice-presidential candidate.

Tuscaloosa's chapter of Students for a Democratic Society traveled to the Birmingham rally. They spoke and handed out flyers about the unionizing of their campus bus drivers. The union, ATU Local 1208, is fighting for a living wage and benefits from the multinational British corporation that employs them. This corporation, FirstGroup PLC, has a contract with the University of Alabama and is refusing to negotiate with the workers. The students urged the rally attendees to call the president of their university to demand fair pay for the bus drivers.

As the march made its way through downtown Birmingham, the marchers, primarily people of color and many homeless, chanted, “Feed the poor! Stop the war!” and “One, two, three, four – we don't need no rich man's war!” Signs held by the marchers demanded that the government “Stop taking from the poor to give to the rich,” and, “All war is against the poor.”

Victor Beard of the Coalition for the Homeless stated, “It's about time that people got together to make some noise about what’s been hidden from society. We have 30,000 living in poverty here in Jefferson County and 25,000 homeless, while all around we see vacant houses, vacant buildings and vacant hearts.”

Sarah White of the Mississippi Worker's Center for Human Rights delivered an inspiring speech, describing her experience at a catfish processing factory. 95% of the factory workers were Black women; they were being subject to long hours in a strict work environment, as well as many instances of harassment. White took part in unionizing her fellow workers, who have since been experiencing a vastly improved work environment. She concluded her speech by saying “We can overcome anything, just lock hands.”

As Rosa Clemente, the event's final speaker, took the stage, she said “Free the land down here,” in a tribute to the struggle for self-determination of African Americans in the south. She said after the event that the significance of the event being held in Birmingham was great. “The history down here is amazing. It is home to the first modern-day struggles for civil rights that were covered by the media. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have spoken to the people I spoke to today. This is the best place to be today.”

#BirminghamAL #Birmingham #AntiwarMovement #PoorPeoplesMovements #StudentsForADemocraticSociety #AfricanAmerican #DrMartinLutherKingJr #RosaClemente #BirminghamHomelessCoalition #BirminghamPeaceProject #ATULocal1208 #MississippiWorkersCenterForHumanRights

For this year’s holiday honoring Dr. King, we are printing 3 commentaries on King’s political thinking that are important for understanding today’s situation – Fight Back! editors.

The birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has been a national holiday for the last twenty years. It is a time to remember his life, to reflect on the changes brought about by the Civil Rights movement and to recommit ourselves to his struggle for peace, economic justice and racial equality.

This January, the coming U.S. war with Iraq, the economic recession that has thrown millions out of work and the government persecution of Arabs and Muslims make it all the more important that we remember what Dr. King fought for.

Growing up in California, I can remember the racial segregation. When my parents were looking to buy a house, there were three separate listings of homes for sale: one for whites, one for blacks, and another for ‘others.’ When I went swimming with an African American friend’s family, we drove for miles to a swimming pool in a large black community. And I remember having to walk out of a restaurant after waiting almost half an hour for someone to take our order, while whites who came in after us had already gotten their meals.

Later, when I went to school, I learned about how Dr. King led the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott, which began in 1955. In Montgomery, white supremacy meant that blacks had to sit in the back of the bus, and if the seats were full, blacks had to give up their seat to white passengers boarding the bus. For more than a year, the African American community, sparked by Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat, did not ride a bus until the city agreed to desegregate the bus system.

I saw film clips of the brutal treatment of Civil Rights protesters in Birmingham, Alabama. Fire hoses and vicious dogs were turned on the protesters and more than four thousand – mostly children – were arrested. And how could anyone forget the words of Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1963 March on Washington? Facing a crowd of more than 250,000 people, Dr. King spoke of his dream of brotherhood. “Let freedom ring!” said Dr. King, ending his speech with the words of the old spiritual, “Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last!”

The struggle of the Civil Rights movement ended racial segregation and won blacks the right to vote, which had been denied them since the 1890’s. But the struggle of Dr. King did not end there. In 1964, police brutality triggered an insurrection by African Americans in Los Angeles. The poverty of the urban black ghetto in Watts and other cities in the North and Midwest led Dr. King to champion the cause of economic justice. In 1968, Dr. King was organizing a Poor People’s Campaign, saying, “We need an economic bill of rights. This would guarantee a job to all people who want to work and are able to work. It would also guarantee an income for all who are not able to work.”

Dr. King was also an early advocate of affirmative action. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, founded by Dr. King and other civil rights leaders in 1957, created Operation Breadbasket to create jobs and business opportunities for the black community. “If a city has a 30% Negro population,” said Dr. King, “then it is logical to assume that Negroes should have at least 30% of the jobs in any particular company, and jobs in all categories rather than only menial jobs, as the case almost always happens to be.”

Last, but not least, Martin Luther King Jr. was an outspoken opponent of the war in Vietnam. His principled support for nonviolence led him to say, “I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.”

#UnitedStates #StPaulMN #CapitalismAndEconomy #PoorPeoplesMovements #AfricanAmerican #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #DrMartinLutherKingJr #MLK #CivilRightsMovement #SouthernChristianLeadershipConference #SCLC