The King of us all
By Jim
Smith
We’re still celebrating a
happy 35th anniversary of the Beachhead, but a sadder 35th anniversary will be
upon us soon. It was 35 years ago this April 4, that perhaps the foremost
visionary in U.S. history, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in
Memphis.
King, whose Jan. 15 birthday is celebrated
as a national holiday on Jan. 19 this year, was a visionary and a dreamer who
saw far beyond his day and ours. It may be generations before most people catch
up with his vision of equality and love between people of all races.
Nowhere is King-as-visionary more
explicit than in his last book, Where Do We Go From Here? published the year he
was killed. In it, King speculates on the host of positive psychological changes
in people that could result from their having economic security. To the 4,000
people in Venice living under the poverty level and the hundreds of homeless, it
might seem like heaven on earth to have economic security. To end poverty and
related problems and provide economic security, King latches on to an
exceedingly simple solution - a guaranteed income.
With a guaranteed income, King says
“the dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning
his life are in his own hands.” One might add that people would never have
to sink so low for economic reasons as to become scabs at Ralphs, taking jobs of
others who have been locked out for standing up for their
rights.
King points out that the
wealthy have been enjoying a guaranteed income for years because of their
investments. Social security recipients also receive a guaranteed income,
although it is much too low for most to enjoy. To prevent a guaranteed income
from locking people into poverty, King says it must be indexed to the median
income of society and must increase as social wealth increases. He quotes the
economist John Kenneth Galbraith who estimates that it would cost $20 billion a
year, “not much more than we will spend the next fiscal year to rescue
freedom and democracy and religious liberty as these are defined by
‘experts’ in Vietnam.” Today it might cost $87 billion, or
less, for a guaranteed income and end to
poverty.
King was also a realist. He
knew that whites had held the ideology of racism for hundreds of years. The
“master race” belief was too strong to be eliminated in a
generation. King knew that promises to African-Americans (like those to Native
Americans) were usually broken. He observed that the Emancipation Proclamation
of Jan. 1, 1863, was not coupled with any distribution of land to help Blacks
survive. The “40 acres and a mule” promise was never realized. Even
today, 141 years down the road, we who have reaped the wealth of hundreds of
years of slave owning have never made amends.
King noted that the “illegal
immigrants” from England preferred to wipe out the indigenousness
population, rather than intermarry with them as did the Spanish and Portuguese.
As King says, “The common phase, ‘The only good Indian is a dead
Indian,’ was virtually elevated to national policy.” Perhaps it was
this profound understanding of the (white) American character that made King so
strongly advocate coalition politics. He knew it was very dangerous for
African-Americans to directly confront such a dominate culture without
allies.
What would Martin Luther King
say and do if he were alive today. He would be 74 years old this January 15.
Younger than Nelson Mandela!
In recent
years, much speculation has revolved around what would be his attitude to the
bombing of Afghanistan, invasion of Iraq and the Patriot Act. Naturally, he
would be opposed, as he was to the Vietnam
war.
He would surely take note of the
lack of forward progress toward equality in recent years. Cities are still
segregated, good jobs are hard to find, and the official Black adult
unemployment rate stands at 11.5 percent, twice the national average. Black
teenage unemployment is an astronomical 37
percent.
Segregated, with inner cities
have the poorest schools, the least amenities, second-rate supermarkets, the
most unfriendly police, etc. Here in Venice, Oakwood is still “across the
tracks,” even though they have been removed. Poverty, crime, police
brutality, lack of city services are all concentrated in Oakwood. Why in the
“Peoples Republic of Venice” do such conditions still exist. Maybe
it’s progress that racist descriptions of Oakwood have stopped being used
- at least in public - by whites in Venice. Granted some of the problems are
economic (isn’t everything), such as the high cost of property and rents.
Could racism be a factor? Could racism
explain the high fences and attack dogs that point out where whites have moved
into Oakwood? What about the rest of Venice? On a walk down most streets
you’ll pass 10-foot high fences (where is the city’s code
enforcement now that we need it?). Some newer houses are built like forts. It
would take a decent size army to storm the defenses of one of my neighbors, whom
I’ve never seen, much less met.
If Martin Luther King were alive
today, he might emphasize the importance of building community. In Venice, that
not only means getting to know your neighbors. It means getting to know Black
Venetians, Latino Venetians, homeless Venetians, white homeowner Venetians, the
whole lot. Building community means coming out from behind those barricades and
helping Black teens find jobs, getting a homeless mother to a shelter, or a
shower.
We can’t really say what
Martin Luther King would say. He’s still too advanced for us. But we can
rest assured that if he was alive today, he would be involved. He would be
speaking out about injustice, and he would be appealing to the best in each of
us.
Happy Birthday Rev.
King!
Posted: Thu - January 1, 2004 at 07:40 PM