Martin Luther King And #BlackLivesMatter

Unless the gentle reader only gets their information from Faux News, you are aware that the protests of police brutality and epidemic of unarmed black men being killed wantonly are ongoing in cities throughout the nation.

Republicans, like Milwaukee County Supervisor <a href="http://crooksandliars.com/2014/12/milwaukee-elected-officials-tweet-mocks">Deanna Alexander</a>, have sunk so low as to mock these deaths. Republicans, like Alexander, have also complained that these protests are causing inconveniences by doing die ins at malls and blocking freeways.  Republicans, like Alexander, have also complained that special interests (read: the Labor Movement) has tried to hijack the same movements that they deride:

(Wisconsin Jobs Now is a pro-labor organization that has also been leading the #BlackLivesMatter protests.)

They really take the cake when they say that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would never have approved of these tactics or Labor's involvement in the protests.

For all their carping and complaining, the only thing that these people have accomplished is to put their ignorance on display for everyone to see.

Dr. King addressed these issues in 1961, when he spoke to the national convention of the AFL-CIO:

Negroes in the United States read this history of labor and find it mirrors their own experiences.  We are confronted by powerful forces telling us to rely on the good will 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 good will of those who oppose us.  Indeed, we have brought forward the method of nonviolence to give an example of unilateral good will 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 hopes.  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.

This unity of purpose is not a historical coincidence.  Negroes are almost entirely a working people. There are pitifully few Negro millionaires and few Negro employers.  Our needs are identical to 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.

Indeed, the ties between the labor movement and race equality goes all the way back when union organizers went to the Deep South to help blacks fight for better wages and working conditions.  Conservatives who want to restore a plantation economy have been bitter ever since.

Cross posted at Crooks and Liars.

Quote of the Day

"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." - Martin Luther King, Jr. King 

Sadly, there are many today who will try to rationalize not only their tolerance of evil, but their aiding and abetting it.

Was Martin Luther King Jr. A Republican?

By Jeff Simpson


Why no.  He absolutely was NOT!

King was not a partisan and never endorsed any political candidate. In a 1958 interview, King said “I don’t think the Republican party is a party full of the almighty God nor is the Democratic party. They both have weaknesses … And I’m not inextricably bound to either party.”

King did, however, weigh in on the Republican party during his lifetime. In Chapter 23 of his autobiography, King writes this about the 1964 Republican National Convention:

The Republican Party geared its appeal and program to racism, reaction, and extremism. All people of goodwill viewed with alarm and concern the frenzied wedding at the Cow Palace of the KKK with the radical right. The “best man” at this ceremony was a senator whose voting record, philosophy, and program were anathema to all the hard-won achievements of the past decade.

Senator Goldwater had neither the concern nor the comprehension necessary to grapple with this problem of poverty in the fashion that the historical moment dictated. On the urgent issue of civil rights, Senator Goldwater represented a philosophy that was morally indefensible and socially suicidal. While not himself a racist, Mr. Goldwater articulated a philosophy which gave aid and comfort to the racist. His candidacy and philosophy would serve as an umbrella under which extremists of all stripes would stand. In the light of these facts and because of my love for America, I had no alternative but to urge every Negro and white person of goodwill to vote against Mr. Goldwater and to withdraw support from any Republican candidate that did not publicly disassociate himself from Senator Goldwater and his philosophy.

As his son says:

 However, in a 2008 Associated Press story, King’s son and namesake Martin Luther King III said:"It is disingenuous to imply that my father was a Republican. He never endorsed any presidential candidate, and there is certainly no evidence that he ever even voted for a Republican. It is even more outrageous to suggest he would support the Republican Party of today, which has spent so much time and effort trying to suppress African American votes in Florida and many other states."

Next time a republican tries to tell you that MLK Jr. was a republican, or buys a billboard to announce it, now you know the rest of the story!