Peace & Community

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.

On April 4th, the anniversary of both Dr. King's 1967 "A Time to Break the Silence" speech and his assassination in Memphis one year later, 11 people reported to federal prison for actions taken in the spirit of Dr. King. Last November, in Columbus, Georgia -- a couple hours from the city of Atlanta where King's ministry was centered -- some 20,000 people gathered outside the walls of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation to call for the closure of this infamous facility, known better as the School of the Americas.

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.”

C. Scott Vanderhoef, Rockland County Manager, was the guest of honor and recipient of Nyack College’s 2008 Social Justice Day award last Friday. He was being recognized for his long career of caring efforts for the needs of people of all classes and communities in Rockland County. Given the center seat at the head table, tall and with a strong aura of presence, featured guest, Scott was still humbled and overshadowed by a substitute keynote speaker and the presentation of a token of Rockland County history.

When he was assassinated on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was a member of the National Council of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Long-time FOR member Pamela Blockey-O'Brien told me that during a phone conversation last week. After her call I was inspired to revisit King's essay, "My Pilgrimage to Nonviolence," printed in Peace is the Way, the Fellowship magazine anthology edited by Walter Wink.

When I was minoring in African American Studies in college, I learned about civil rights leader Bayard Rustin. We were told that he was a close confidante, adviser, and assistant to Dr. King. Rustin was a dedicated and effective organizer, and some accounts even informed us that he was gay and had a history of association with the Communist Party.

What I never knew - until recently - was that he was also the Race Relations Secretary of FOR (from 1945 until he was unfortunately fired when his sexuality was publicly exposed in 1953). And I also didn't understand how important FOR was to informing King's strategies on nonviolent resistance. Here Rustin tell his story:

In August of 1945 I left Lewisburg Penitentiary, where I had been in jail as a conscientious objector. I had gone in to prison in 1942 for three years' term. Given good time, I was able to come out in August of 1945, at which time I went back to work for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, with which I had been associated since 1941. At this time I also was beginning to give a great deal of my time as director of the Civil Rights Department of the Fellowship of Reconciliation — FOR — to CORE [Committee on Racial Equality].