In public squares across the country, Occupy protesters honor Rev. Martin Luther King's memory on this holiday devoted to him. Their tribute is more meaningful and enduring than the granite monument that President Obama dedicated to Rev. King in Washington, D.C. last year.
That's because the Occupiers are pressing for a cause -- economic justice -- that Rev. King had embraced in the months before his assassination in 1968. And they're pursuing it with the technique he advocated - nonviolent protest.
Rev. King's final crusade, his Poor People's Campaign, and the Occupiers' championing the nation's 99 percent are remarkable in their similarities. It's tragic that in the 44 years since Rev. King launched his campaign for an economic Bill of Rights that the nation's poor and middle class have lurched backward instead of forward. It's hopeful, however, that a whole new generation of idealists has taken up the dream of economic justice.
In the year before Rev. King was gunned down, he persuaded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to join him in a movement devoted to securing for all citizens the basic needs that would enable them to pursue the American Dream, to pursue happiness. He believed every able-bodied person should have access to a job with a living wage. And he believed every American should have decent housing and affordable health care. Without economic security, he said, no man is free.
Rev. King's dream has its roots in the progressive movement, containing key elements of Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt's proposed Economic Bill of Rights. Roosevelt, the beloved president who gave the country Social Security, pushed the Economic Bill of Rights in the waning days of the war.
Roosevelt said the original Bill of Rights had made the country great, but its political entitlements had proved inadequate to assure Americans equal opportunity to pursue happiness. The president who had pulled the country out of the Great Depression, the man born to great wealth, warned:
"People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made."
So he advocated a second Bill of Rights "under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all -- regardless of station, race or creed."
Among the rights Roosevelt proposed were a sustaining job, a decent home and adequate medical care.
Just 24 years later, Rev. King took up that cause for all people -- regardless of station, race or creed. He was murdered before completing plans for a march on Washington. But just weeks after his death, his widow and fellow Southern Christian Leadership Conference ministers, including Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, led protesters into the capital city on May 12, 1968.
They went to federal offices seeking anti-poverty legislation. Then they established a shantytown called Resurrection City. Its huts and tents extended the length of the reflecting pool. As many as 1,800 people camped there through virtually continuous rain. The bad weather, the mud, the lingering trauma from Rev. King's assassination and the murder of Robert Kennedy on June 5, 1968, just a few weeks into the encampment, depressed the protesters.
In a recording from those difficult days, Rev. Jackson can be heard attempting to rally the demonstrators with the chant:
"I am. Somebody. I am. God's Child. I may not have a job, but I am somebody."
The crowd repeated Rev. Jackson's words, just like the "human microphone" used by the Occupiers today.
After six weeks, 1,000 park police surrounded Resurrection City, routed the remaining protesters with tear gas and razed the structures. This is prescient of the fate of too many Occupy encampments, from the original in New York's Zuccotti Park to its twin across the country in Oakland's Frank Ogawa Plaza.
After destruction of the shantytown in 1968, Rev. Jackson said:
"Resurrection City cannot be seen as a mud hole in Washington, but it is rather an idea unleashed in history. The idea has taken root and is growing across the country."
After the Occupy Wall Street evictions, protesters said the same:
"You can't evict an idea whose time has come."
Still, the Resurrection City protesters didn't get what they came for. They had sought major legislation to give opportunity to America's poor. At that time, 13 percent of the nation's population -- 25 million people -- lived in poverty.
Today, it's worse; nearly twice as many Americans -- 46.2 million -- live in poverty. The rate is worse as well -- 15.1 percent.
In addition, in the past decade the gap between rich and poor widened. In the past five years since the great recession began, banks evicted record numbers of families from their homes. And Republicans are threatening to repeal health care reform, the one achievement bringing the nation closer to an economic Bill of Rights.
No wonder protesters resurrected Resurrection City.
What Rev. King preached and what many Occupiers seem to believe is that paramount in a republic is job creation, not wealth creation. The duty of government is not to ensure that the rich get richer but to establish equal opportunity for individuals to achieve freedom, independence and happiness.
Without a job -- without adequate income -- freedom, independence and happiness are impossible.
"This is America's opportunity to help bridge the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. The question is whether America will do it. There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will."
Those are Rev. King's words. The Occupiers have shown they have the will to achieve his dream.
Follow Leo W. Gerard on Twitter: www.twitter.com/uswblogger
But "the strategy that works" is exactly the same: get in their faces, and stay there.
There are, believe it or not, only about 1,000 people TOTAL who are causing tremendous grief for more than 312 Million others, just because they are sitting in top-dog positions in this Government =and= they have, to a (wo)man, been completely "bought."
For every high-criminal, then, there are over 312,000 individual Plaintiffs.
If enough of those 312,000 people steadfastly refuse to continue to be a Plaintiff, they won't be.
Occupy, which does have an encampment in D.C., has changed the national conversation from deficits to jobs and income inequality.
Yes, there are some critics. But many of us admire the strength, both moral and physical, that the occupiers have exhibited.
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/01/16/video-mlk-niece-says-her-uncle-would-have-been-a-pro-life-social-conservative-today/
A Nobel Economist Says Globalism Is Costly For Americans | Foreign Policy Journal
"Offshoring has destroyed the economy
by Paul Craig Roberts
June 1, 2011
These are discouraging times, but once in a blue moon a bit of hope appears. I am pleased to report on the bit of hope delivered in March of 2011 by Michael Spence, a Nobel prize-winning economist, assisted by Sandile Hlatshwayo, a researcher at New York University. The two economists have taken a careful empirical look at jobs offshoring and concluded that it has ruined the income and employment prospects for most Americans.
To add to the amazement, their research report, “The Evolving Structure of the American Economy and the Employment Challenge,” was published by the very establishment Council on Foreign Relations.
For a decade, I have warned that US corporations, pressed by Wall Street and large retailers such as Wal-Mart, to move offshore their production for US consumer markets, were simultaneously moving offshore US GDP, US tax base, US consumer income, and irreplaceable career opportunities for American citizens.
Among the serious consequences of offshoring are the dismantling of the ladders of upward mobility that made the US an “opportunity society,” an extraordinary worsening of the income distribution, and large trade and federal budget deficits that cannot be closed by normal means. These deficits now threaten the US dollar’s role as world reserve currency..."
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/10/signs-of-dissent-what-about-the-47-who-pay-no-federal-income-taxes/246721/
Signs of Dissent: What About the 47% Who Pay No Federal Income Taxes? - Derek Thompson - Business - The Atlantic
"...Who pays no federal income taxes? I think I have the picture you're looking for. This piechart shows the households paying no FIT, with all inset numbers in thousands of dollars (i.e.: 20-30 means $20,000 to $30,000). The big takeaway is that more than half of the folks who pay no federal income tax make less than $20,000 a year. It is also true that 7,000 millionaires paid no federal income tax last year (more on that factoid here)...."
Many of the 47% give something more far more precious than money: their young to serve in the U.S. military.
You heard it first. Right here on this blog.
It's like heaven here in the good ol' US of A. How could you not believe the UnterBridgen Dwellungeners?
Yes, it's true. The rich give all their money to you! It's a Christmas Miracle! Believe the Footwear Marionette crowd. They've got it right. The rich are the best people in the world. That's why they're rich!
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/PRS85006173
FRED« Nonfarm Business Sector: Labor Share
While corporate profits are increasing:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CP
FRED« Corporate Profits After Tax
Mainly because of reduced wages and benefits:
"JPMorgan’s July 11 “Eye on the Market” newsletter put it, “Reductions in wages and benefits explain the majority of the net improvement in [profit] margins… US labor compensation is now at a 50-year low relative to both company sales and US GDP.”
The two-party corporate-controlled duopoly just put three more job-killing NAFTA-style trade agreements in place with Columbia, Panama, and South Korea.
In 2004, the Bush administration stated that the offshoring of blue-collar and white-collar jobs would enrich the U.S. Link available upon request.
In 2011, the Obama administration selected GE's CEO, a high priest of the offshoring cult, to be the jobs czar.
"At the banquet table of life there are no reserved seats. You get what you can take and you take what you can hold. And you can't hold anything without power. And power comes from organization."
— A. Phillip Randolph
That means the top 20% own 85% of EVERYTHING!!!
Wealth equality is the highest it's been since the last Great Republican Depression...and you are arguing that it should be even more....
Congratulations!
Chart of Economic worries of Americans http://sas-origin.onstreammedia.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/na5yo2syo0mxjcyaedp-aa.gif
But what's interesting for a GOP push poll, when the GOP says "entitlements" and regulations are the end of the world as we know it, is just how very, very few people consider either a problem!
It is our duty to pick up the torch from our fallen heroes, and carry it forward to the mountain top.
We have a long, long way to go yet!
Rest in Peace, Martin.
Me neither.
Unions are the Borg, a collective. Subjugation of the individual to the group, and the insistence that all contributions are essentially equal, all people equally productive. The only people who like working in unions are under-achievers, they like getting same reward for little work.
Shocking, right?