POP Unites with Labor, Community Groups to Honor Dr. King's Real Legacy

The New Jersey-based People's Organization for Progress will this year once again observe the April 4th anniversary of the death of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. together with the New Jersey (and national) labor movement and dozens of other community-based and progressive organizations.

When an assassin's bullet felled Dr. King forty-three years ago this coming Monday, the murderous intent of the rulers of this country went far beyond eliminating a single troublesome leader.

They aimed to murder a movement.

During the previous year, Dr. King had spoken out against the War in Vietnam, begun developing plans for the Poor People's Campaign (a multi-ethnic, multi-national march that would place one-million homeless and poor people on the Mall in Washington DC), preached that "every bomb dropped over Vietnam explodes on a poor community in the US" (developing the war-at-home/war-abroad analysis), and marched with striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee demanding both dignity and a living wage.

During his last year, Dr. King was helping hundreds of thousands of activists grasp the imperialist character of the racists who rule this country, and the movement he was building was becoming implicitly and throughly revolutionary.

This is why they wanted to kill the movement, even more than see Martin himself dead.

Honoring Dr. King's legacy while remembering his assassination has become the banner of numerous events in early April. For nearly 30 years, POP's friends in Black Workers for Justice in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina have held an annual "Martin Luther King Salute to Labor Banquet" and it's happening again this weekend.

This year, the People's Organization for Progress is again joining this tradition while uniting with the AFL-CIO's call for April 4th labor support actions.

On Monday, April 4, 2011 POP will join with Communication Workers of America - District 1, CWA Local 1037, the NJ State N.A.A.C.P., the International Longshoremen's Association Local 1233, New Jersey Black Issues Convention, NJ Immigration and Workers Rights Coalition, the New Black Panther Party, Veterans for Peace-Chapter 21, Essex County Women of Color and Allies NOW Chapter, Newark Anti-Violence Coalition, Black Telephone Workers for Justice, Postal Workers Against the War, Sierra Club, CODEPINK, New Jersey Tenants Association, the Enough is Enough Coalition, the NJ Industrial Union Council, and the Union County A. Philip Randolph Institute (among many, many others)…

Assemble at the corners of Broad & Market Streets in Newark, New Jersey at 5:30 P.M.

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(UPDATE) Honoring Rev. King…

N.J.'s People's Organization for Progress rallies to remember the Actual Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

UPDATE: An interesting reality check arrived via email, it seems that the title of honoring Dr. King must have flipped an automated-switch on the computers at the Build the Dream site. They are raising money for the proposed Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial in DC. Now while I have nothing against a National Memorial to Dr. King, the promotional video on their site inadvertently illustrates the very point we made about the comic-book fantasy of "King-the-Dreamer" as opposed the actual historic activist Martin King…

Check out their King-the-Dreamer video and their site here.

—Rahim

Lawrence Hamm, People's Organization for Progress chairman, and POP Financial Secretary Angenetta Robinson place wreath at the largest memorial to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the State of New Jersey.

Although it might seem a bit late to post photos from the People's Organization for Progress' annual memorial on the anniversary of King's April 4 assassination, today is the 42nd anniversary of Dr. King's funeral, attended by hundreds of thousands filling block after block near the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

For a number of years, POP has held a wreath-laying at the Martin Luther King. Jr. monument at the MLK Plaza Hudson-Bergen Light Rail station in Jersey City. Last Sunday was a beautiful day and POP was well received by neighborhood residents, many walking home from church after Easter Sunday services.

POP members and neighborhood residents at Hudson-Bergen MLK Light Rail station

Every January 15th since the Martin Luther King, Jr. Birthday Holiday was signed into law in 1983, Dr. King's legacy becomes the stuff of government-sponsored hallucination. No one is supposed to remember the opposition that even the idea of this holiday faced in Congress. In fact, many of the same politicians (and news media talking-heads) who nowadays candy-coat his legacy into a fantasy of "dreams" and "non-violence," were violent opponents of the national King holiday for nearly twenty years.

But for the past eight years since the present US adventure in Afghanistan and Iraq began, thoughtful commentators (some even in the mainstream media) have taken the April 4th anniversary of Rev. King's murder to remind us that the date of Dr. King's murder falls on the one-year anniversary of his "Time to Break Silence" sermon at Riverside Church where he publicly proclaimed his opposition to the War in Vietnam.

Larry Hamm, Chairman of the People's Organization for Progress, "drops a little history"

But to truly understand the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. we must take a deeper, more nuanced view of history. As speakers at the rally pointed out, King's 1968 opposition to US imperialism in Vietnam and his view that the cost of the war kept necessary funds from reaching poor communities, was the end of "universal support" from Black clergy. But as People's Organization for Progress chairman Lawrence Hamm pointed out, the history was even more complicated than that! In fact, the famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail" in 1963 was not a philosophic essay expounding the tactic of non-violence. Though some observers may allege that today, at the time it was an appeal to clergy of Birmingham (including African-American preachers) who had opposed the Birmingham campaign altogether. "Many Black clergy had asked Dr. King to stay home, not to cause trouble," Larry Hamm told the crowd, "Many who today claim to have 'marched with Martin' were the same preachers who called him a 'trouble-maker' or a 'communist' and asked King to stay out of Birmingham."

POP Vice Chair Larry Adams, a Jersey City resident, speaks

As one speaker pointed out, "Historically the most significant aspect of Dr. King's assassination was the character assassination carried out by supposed friends and supporters after Martin's death, people who turned Rev. King into 'a man with a dream' instead of the people's fighter that he was!"

To view additional photos from last Saturday's memorial click here.

Old billboard in Tennessee purporting to show Martin Luther King at "Communist Training School" (it is actually the Highlander Center for Labor Education, and Mrs. Rosa Parks is there as well).

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Forty Years On

Forty years ago Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in Memphis, TN. Today thus marks one more skirmish in the battle over the legacy of Dr. King. Since the decisive victory in the struggle to get the King Day holiday in 1983 (when the federal law passed, although King Day was not recognized by all 50 states until 2000), the third Monday of January has generally been the focal point of that battle. And it's a time when a drastically Disneyfied version of his life and message dominate the culture.

The observation of Dr. King's assassination, while he was in Memphis supporting the struggle of Black sanitation workers, is a good time for us to brush off the soundbite cobwebs of "the content of his character" and remember King as a revolutionary. And a revolutionary not only in the objective role that he played, but in the conclusions he was drawing from the struggle, about the need to "get on the right side of the world revolution" and to conquer "the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism."

Who claims King and to what end is actually the subject of a daily struggle in US society. Here is a small example, from the video for "Til We Get There" (two years old now) by M-1 (of Dead Prez) and featuring, as they say, K'naan and Stori James. The rap celebrates unity in the Black Nation and identifies it as a necessity on the long to freedom. It namechecks King in passing:

Took a page from the book of Martin Luther
And decided that it's better to hug ya than to shoot ya
I'm sorry homie if it's not what ya use ta
But the way that we livin' these black lives is beautiful
All the things we've been through and the tree we done bloomed
We probably family but we never knew

That's what's called solidarity
When we struggle it's therapy,
After chaos we get clarity

Oh, yeah!

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