Racial, Economic & Gender Justice

On the afternoon of our first day here in Tehran, five of us within the Fellowship of Reconciliation's 7th interfaith peace delegation to Iran were interviewed by a young adult-focused television program.

LeAnne Clausen's prison cell: Drawn by LeAnneI just received another set of letters from prison, written by LeAnne Clausen. (Actually, they are e-mails typed up by friends of hers, based on her correspondence from prison, and sent out via a group created on the social networking web site Facebook, but no matter!) LeAnne is one of the 11 peace and justice activists who were arrested last November for "crossing the line" at the School of the Americas Watch in Columbus, GA, at the annual protest there. (She also participated in FOR's December 2007 peace delegation to Iran, and has traveled to Iraq and other countries with groups like the Christian Peacemaker Teams.)

Just read this great piece in Facing South by James Perry of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center about the amazing work that is going on to rebuild the city, both socially and physically. He clearly sees direct implications of King's legacy in New Orleans.

King noted that a key to successful advocacy is making the situation ripe for negotiation. He advised that this can be done by using non-violent advocacy to make a situation "so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation." One can only imagine the discomfort of members of Congress as they looked into the eyes of Women of the Storm and members of the Louisiana Housing Alliance who lamented story after story of the government's failure to provide for the needs of Americans in the wake of the 2005 storms. The result: billions of dollars were allocated for Gulf Coast recovery.

My dear friend and brother Dedrick Muhammad, Senior Organizer and Research Associate at the Institute for Policy Studies, has written a saddening report on the state of African-American community and ultimately democracy in Post-King America. The report helps to situate the legacy of King in a concrete way within the prophetic tradition to call our nation into account.

Dr. Martin Luther King recognized that the next phase in the African American’s quest for civil rights and equality was one that would focus on the economic divide between the wealthiest Americans, the working class, and those in poverty. King’s analysis of economic inequality as the foundation of racial inequality remains as valid today as it was 40 years ago.

Among the remembrances of the April 4, 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. was an event at Riverside Church in New York City this Wednesday evening featuring the transformational lessons of King’'s last year for the American polity for today.

As we remember the 40th anniversary of Dr. King's death today, this message from ColorofChange.org serves to remind us that even as we live through these historic, politically-heady times -- there is still much work to be done.

Innocent. And in solitary for 35 years.

Take action to achieve justice for the Angola 3:

After a week of intense public pressure, officials at Angola prison moved Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox out of solitary confinement for the first time in 35 years.¹ But they're still locked up--for a crime everyone knows they didn't commit.

Together, we've started to turn things around by making it a political liability for the authorities at Angola to keep Wallace and Woodfox in solitary confinement for challenging the violence and segregation at Angola.² We need to keep the pressure on to force federal and state authorities to intervene and release these innocent men. Will you join us?

http://colorofchange.org/a3/

This week, on April 1st, I ran a great conference at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, titled MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR: THE MAN, THE MESSAGE, THE MOVEMENT. It was co-sponsored by the Memphis Theological Seminary, where I have taught for many years, and the University of Memphis's Department of Communication. The excellent event featured two keynote speeches: one was titled "I'm Happy to Be Here Tonight: King's Final Speech and the Rhetoric of Hope," delivered by Dr. Frank Thomas, pastor of Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church; the other was "Remember King in Memphis" by Dr. Maxine Smith. What a privilege to help host this event in the city where King died forty years ago tomorrow.

Today I delivered a paper at another conference in Memphis on Dr. King's life and legacy. Given my close connection and commitment to the Fellowship of Reconciliation (I currently serve on FOR's National Council), and the fact that Dr. King was himself on FOR's Advisory Council at the time of his death four decades ago, I thought FOR members might appreciate this commentary.

[Ed. Note: The following article will appear in the Spring 2008 issue of Fellowship magazine, and is offered here online in the context of this week's observance of the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968. Click here to subscribe to Fellowship.]

Sitting in our favorite coffeehouse, Tyler Jared, my eldest son, and I are having our “man time.” I am sipping a cappuccino and he is drinking some orange concoction. We stare into one another’s eyes, with an occasional “What?” breaking our silence. We are excited to see each other and saddened by the time we have spent apart. I hold a deep sense of calling that has taken me around the world, but away from him and his siblings. He has grown so much. He is now taller than me, his 13-year-old face starting to break out with pimples, voice cracking, but he is still my baby. I hold his hand and run my fingers through his golden locks. It embarrasses him, but he does not stop me, because I am Dad.

He interrupts the silence. “Dad, everyone knows you want to be like Martin Luther King.”

Today, March 21, is the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, while reading this week’s address on race in America offered by Senator Barack Obama again would be an appropriate remembrance for the day, the following message from the Secretary General of the United Nations also embeds the moment in larger preparations for a world conference in 2009 and our individual responsibilities each day.

Richard Deats, former executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and editor of Fellowship magazine, called my attention today to the latest column by John Dear -- another former ED at FOR -- in the National Catholic Reporter. John now travels the world teaching about Jesus' message of nonviolence, and he writes about this message in the context of world spiritual leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.