The last major campaign organized
by Martin Luther King Jr., which actually took place after his death, took the
form of a shantytown erected on the Mall in Washington, D.C., from which
thousands of multinational demonstrators sallied forth to protest at federal
agencies demanding a Poor People’s Bill of Rights. While different in some
respects, it is hard not to see in the Poor People’s Campaign a precursor to
today’s Occupy movement. Yet, in all the discussion of Occupy in the mainstream
media, this connection has never been made, perhaps because of the concerted
effort that has been made by the 1 percent to conceal and co-opt the
revolutionary legacy of Dr. King.
In 1964, King was awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize for his dedication to nonviolence. In the Nobel lecture given
before the award ceremonies, King directly confronted the problems of “racial
injustice, poverty and war.”
The Nobel Peace Prize has been
awarded to over a hundred people since it was first awarded in 1901. Most of
these individuals have made great contributions to the preservation of
capitalist rule and are being recognized for that contribution. The list includes
warmonger Henry Kissinger, two prime ministers of the colonial state of Israel,
the Dalai Lama and other reactionaries. Rarely has the prize been given to
someone so emblematic of an oppressed people’s struggle for freedom, so
symbolic of a movement capable of shaking the foundations of that very system.
In 1964, the U.S. government was
escalating its brutal war in Vietnam. The Cold War continued to rage. Masses of
people around the world were either building socialism, living in recently
decolonized societies or in the process
of overthrowing the chains of colonialism. Rosa Parks had been arrested and the
Montgomery Bus Boycott had occurred less than 10 years earlier. The Civil Rights
movement was in full swing and growing stronger by the moment. The seeds of
ever-expanding social rebellion were being sown.
When King gave the Nobel lecture,
he dedicated the speech—and the moment it represented—to those who had “moved
so courageously against the ramparts of racial injustice and who in the process
have acquired a new estimate of their own human worth.” He continued: “The
majority are poor and untutored. But they are all united in the quiet
conviction that it is better to suffer in dignity than to accept segregation in
humiliation. These are the real heroes of the freedom struggle: they are the
noble people for whom I accept the Nobel Peace Prize.”
After offering this dedication,
King began the speech by saying, “This
evening I would like to use this lofty and historic platform to discuss what
appears to me to be the most pressing problem confronting mankind today.” And
he did. He succinctly outlined the problems of racial justice, economic
inequality and war.
The speech marked a step forward in King’s evolving critique of the
system. He is well-remembered for his tireless commitment to the civil rights
struggle. Although the United States celebrates his vision of a more equal
society in January every year, not many in the United States know of his
speeches in solidarity with peoples fighting imperialism. Or for the
connections he made between civil rights and economic justice.
Three years after the Nobel lecture in 1967, King and the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference initiated the Poor People’s Campaign to pass an economic bill of
rights calling for jobs, housing and economic justice. In the midst of that
campaign, in April of 1968, King was assassinated. The Poor People’s Campaign
was launched despite his death, and drew some 7,000 protesters to Resurrection
City, a shantytown on the Mall. The protesters remained there for a month but
closed camp after failing to receive a positive response to their demands.
The three critical looming
problems that King pointed out in 1964 and continued to critique remain
unsolved. The capitalist system—organized to benefit the very few, the 1
percent, at the expense of the majority, the 99 percent—is incapable of fully
resolving these issues. So the problems of racial injustice, economic
inequality and militarization continue.
Given this, it is totally
unsurprising that new movements develop to challenge the onslaught of the
ruling capitalist class, to criticize the foundations of the a system that
disregards the needs of the vast majority of humanity as its benefactors strive
to constantly increase their rate of profit. We have seen, in the last year, an
outburst of struggle, from the revolts in the Arab world to the fightback in
Wisconsin to the nationwide Occupy movement sparked by Occupy Wall Street.
These struggles and movements point to a growing resistance to the crisis and
misery caused by the capitalist system itself.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a
national holiday in a country where King was vilified, imprisoned and often
disregarded. It is an important holiday. It is recognition of the power of the Civil
Rights movement, a revolutionary movement that challenged the foundations of a
racist, backwards society. It can be, and should be, a day to recognize the
continued need to confront the triple evils of racism, militarism and poverty …
to struggle until these critical problems are truly resolved.
