Looking for light

 This piece was written by AFSC colleagues Lewis Webb, Amy Gottlieb, and myself about looking for light in dark times on the occasion of the observation of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

In 1968, during his “I’ve Been to the Mountain Top” speech, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shared: 

 “The nation is sick; trouble is in the land, confusion all around. ...But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century. Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee, the cry is always the same: 'We want to be free.’” 

Today, it is dark enough to see the stars. The Trump administration’s attacks on immigrants, working people, and democracy itself have brought us to this dark moment. But in that darkness, there are stars that shine with love, flicker with hope, and guide us toward freedom. 

In communities standing up for immigrants nationwide, that light is unmistakable. Thousands of people are on the front lines every day—documenting ICE abuses and violence; accompanying immigrants to school, medical appointments, court hearings, and immigration check-ins, and speaking up to demand humane immigration policies. Even in cities that have been directly targeted by militarized government forces, people have shown that they are willing to confront armed, masked officers to protect their neighbors and communities. They are proving what we know to be sure: our communities are stronger with immigrants.  

As Dr. King wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail: 

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”  

In the struggle for economic justice, communities are building power through both advocacy and direct action. Trump’s budget bill made drastic cuts to health care and food assistance while giving more tax breaks to the wealthy. But a majority of people in the U.S. support a different path that ensures all people can thrive. According to recent polls, most people support labor unions and increasing the minimum wage. There’s also strong support for  affordable child care and housing, debt-free education, and Medicare for All. But people aren’t just advocating for change—they’re creating it. They’re forming mutual aid networks to share resources and meet each other’s immediate needs when the government won’t.   

As Dr. King demanded in 1967:  

“Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice.”  

In working for peace and justice, communities are resisting authoritarianism and violence in all its forms.  

People of faith are holding vigils to bear witness to oppression and affirm the power of love when put into action. Young people are protesting attacks on their rights and civil liberties on campuses and in the streets across the country. With our voices and votes, we are demanding our elected officials defend the rule of law and democratic principles. Together, we are building nonviolent movements that prove real security comes from caring for one another, not through violence or force.   

This is the “garment of destiny” Dr. King described. We are all tied together, and what affects one affects us all. The way forward requires us to keep building these connections, to understand our struggles are shared, and to protect and care for each other in all we do. 

In 1965, Dr. King said: “We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.”   

We are building that society now—through every act of accompaniment, every demand for justice, every refusal to give in to authoritarianism. The stars are visible. Our path is clear.  

The legacy of the UMWA

 In happier times, my home state of West Virginia was known as a union stronghold. This tradition of labor action and struggle goes back to at least 1877, when railroad workers in Martinsburg set off something close to a nationwide general strike. 

It continued as coal miners faced company and government repression, including brutal private mine guards, military intervention, airstrikes, legal injunctions, arrests, and imprisonments.  

On my watch with AFSC, I’ve tried to support the struggles of unions on picket lines and at the policy level, ranging from metal workers to building trades to retail workers to teachers and school service workers. Sometimes things got a little wild.  

I’ve made it an informal but unbreakable rule that whenever a good labor dustup happens within my range to drop everything and show up. I’m probably at least as loyal to unions as to the church I belong to … but if I had to choose between them, all bets are off. 

For people unfamiliar with the labor movement, there are three main kinds of unions: craft unions representing primarily skilled trades; industrial unions representing workers at all skill levels in a sector; and public employee unions such as those representing education workers or government employees. The AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. federation of unions, comprises around 60 unions of different types and industries. 

Where I come from, you’ll hear people talk about this or that union, but when they say the union, there’s one they have in mind: the United Mine Workers of America. Coincidentally or not, AFSC has a long history of supporting this union and the workers and communities it represents. Over a century ago, AFSC began providing food assistance and supporting economic alternatives for unemployed miners and their families. More recently, it has supported UMWA members in strikes, legislative struggles, mine safety, and corporate bankruptcies that threaten retirees and surviving family members. 

People outside Appalachia may think of the UMWA, if at all, as a relic of an earlier age and a dying and dirty industry. In fact, even though its membership has dramatically declined over the last decades, it has arguably had the greatest impact on economic justice of any single organization. To the extent there’s still a middle class in this country, much of that is due to its direct and indirect influence.  

The UMWA was founded in 1890 by the merger of the Knights of Labor Trade Assembly No. 135 and the National Progressive Miners Union. At a time when most unions represented skilled craft workers—mostly white, U.S. born, and male—the new union’s first goal was “to unite in one organization, regardless of creed, color or nationality, all workmen eligible for membership, employed in and around coal mines, coal washers, and coke ovens on the American Continent.” It was thus an early example of an industrial union, one that tried to represent all workers in a sector. 

The union’s progress in West Virginia was slow and sometimes bloody. It was long known that the state was rich in coal and other minerals, but it required the coming of the railroads to make large-scale extraction economically feasible. Outside investors began gobbling up land and mineral rights and displacing mountain families, generally with the support of state politicians.  

Let’s just say the good guys lost that one.  

After wiping out most of the state’s old-growth forests, corporations began building coal camps in isolated mountain communities and instituting a system of total control, including company towns, company stores, company doctors, armed company mine “guards” to enforce obedience up to and including the use of violence, and company-controlled schools and churches. In many cases, workers were paid with company scrip or currency. Those with the temerity to organize or strike faced eviction from company housing, at the very least. 

Companies actively recruited African Americans from the deep South, mostly white locals, and recent European immigrants to the camps. They hoped a “judicious mix” of different ethnicities would prevent union organization. 

They were wrong. 

From Colorado to West Virginia miners struggled, sometimes physically, for the right to organize, with something like guerilla warfare breaking out in my state during the Paint and Cabin Creek areas in 1912-1913. The struggle inspired writer Ralph Chaplin to pen the song “Solidarity Forever,” an international anthem of the working class. More militant struggles followed, including the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest workers’ uprising in American history. So far. 

It wasn’t until the New Deal era that the right of miners to organize was firmly established. For a generation or two… 

And in the 1930s, the UMWA, under the leadership of the theatrical and sometimes confrontational John L. Lewis, launched the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which initiated vast organizing drives in steel, auto, rubber, and other industries. Unafraid to confront the highest levels of authority, he once said “you can’t mine coal with bayonets.” 

During the CIO organizing drive, he proclaimed with characteristic flourish, “Let the workers organize. Let the toilers assemble. Let their crystallized voice proclaim their injustices and demand their privileges. Let all thoughtful citizens sustain them, for the future of Labor is the future of America.” 

These organizing drives eventually won union recognition along with higher wages, better benefits, and improved working conditions for millions of American men and women. These new industrial unions, such as the United Auto Workers (UAW), would become strong financial and political supporters of the Civil Rights Movement. 

This was not lost on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., an ardent supporter of the labor movement. In his words, “During the ’30s, wages were a secondary issue; to have a job at all was the difference between the agony of starvation and a flicker of life. The nation, now so vigorous, reeled and tottered almost to total collapse. The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress.  

“Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old-age pensions, government relief for the destitute and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival, but a tolerable life. The captains of industry did not lead this transformation; they resisted it until they were overcome. When in the ’30s the wave of union organization crested over our nation, it carried to secure shores not only itself but the whole society.” 

The wave that Dr. King spoke of has unfortunately receded over the last 40 years, with devastating consequences. But it remains an example of what can be done when working people act in solidarity. 

So year-round, but especially on May Day and Labor Day, I celebrate the victories and mourn the defeats of the world’s diverse labor unions. However, one union has pride of place. In more ways than one, it lit the way in many dark places. 

(I wrote this piece for Labor Day on AFSC's website.)

A priest and a prophet

 When I was in junior high, I got into a war of wills with my mother. She was a hardcore Episcopalian, and was hellbent, no pun intended, on me getting confirmed in the church.

At the time, I had just emerged (mostly) from my nihilistic juvenile delinquent phase but had no interest whatsoever in religion

We butted heads but eventually struck a deal: I’d go to confirmation classes with Father Bill Kirkland, the new priest at St. Timothy’s in Hurricane, and then make my own decision.

Kirkland was one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever known, although I was slow in recognizing it. He was raised in rural Georgia as a severe fundamentalist, attending a very strict Baptist college with the original John Birch, for whom the hardcore rightwing conspiracy theory-believing John Birch Society was named.

Kirkland eventually moved on theologically but didn’t give up on religion. After serving in WW2, he studied theology at Edinburgh and at the famous Union Theological Seminary in New York. He taught philosophy at what would become the University of Charleston.

After a few classes, I began to conclude that this whole thing might not be as dumb as I thought. It apparently stuck, despite my best efforts to escape.

Kirkland was active and unafraid to speak out for social justice, but mostly he attended to priestly duties, celebrating sacraments, visiting congregants, comforting the sick, putting the dead to rest. After he retired, his ministry consisted of walking the dogs at the local animal shelter. 

The course of my life would probably have been very different without his influence. He reminds me of a cryptic line from Psalm 110 about a mysterious holy man who blessed Abraham in Genesis: “Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”

I didn’t realize for years that he was a direct student of one of the greatest and most influential theologians of the 20th century, Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), who left his mark in the halls of congress and on the picket lines of the labor and Civil Rights Movement.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of Niebuhr’s “unswerving devotion to the ideals of freedom and justice”

I’d heard about Niebuhr for years, but my interest peaked years ago after reading Parting the Waters, the first volume of Taylor Branch’s powerful study of America in the King years. By then, I’d been working for the American Friends Service Committee for a few years, an organization that had close ties to Dr. King and others in the movement. I learned from Branch that Niebuhr was a major influence on King and many others. He has been claimed by people across the political spectrum—even people who weren’t religious.

Naturally, Kirkland was glad to share his memories of Niebuhr. I also took a l deep dive into his writings.

Niebuhr took the concept of sin seriously, but not the way we often use the term. He thought of it less as this or that misdeed but rather the all-too-human tendency to put ourselves and especially the groups we identify with (ethnic, racial, religious, national, political, etc.) at the center of the universe. If we all have this tendency as individuals, it is multiplied when we come to group behavior and social systems. Most individuals have consciences, but often the closest thing to the conscience of a group is its persecuted and despised minority. 

He was fond of quoting St. Augustine (354-430) as saying that “Without justice what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers? And what is a band of robbers but such a kingdom in miniature?”

He also reminded us that we are often most dangerous when we think we’re the most righteous. You can call it human weakness, original sin, or evolutionary baggage, but ignore it at your peril. Many of the worst atrocities in history have been committed by true believers of one stripe or another who were sure they were right.

In Niebuhr’s view, there is no such thing as absolute purity. Human motivations are always ambiguous, and the conflicts of the world are between sinners, not between the totally evil and the totally righteous. That view may seem grim, but it’s a pretty good antidote for self-righteousness.

But if all are sinners, all haven’t done the same amount of damage. He called this “the equality of sin and the inequality of guilt.” There is a huge difference between the Roosevelts and the Hitlers of the world, one that matters.

This assessment of human nature challenges the ideas of inevitable progress or utopias, but the news about human nature wasn’t all bad. In addition to original sin, we’re also gifted with “original justice.” These views have profound political implications: to paraphrase a famous Niebuhr quote, our capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but our capacity for injustice makes it necessary.

For Dr. King, his theology was an antidote to “the false optimism characteristic of a great segment of Protestant liberalism” and “a persistent reminder of the reality of sin on every level of man’s [sic] existence.” According to Branch, King “came to describe Niebuhr as a prime influence on his life, and sometimes referred to Gandhian nonviolence as “a Niebuhrian stratagem of power.’”

In 1965, King invited Niebuhr, then 73, to participate in the famous march on Selma. He replied with regret that “Only a severe stroke prevents me from accepting … I hope there will be a massive demonstration of all the citizens with conscience in favor of the elemental human rights of voting and freedom of assembly.”

I’m grateful that, thanks to Kirkland, Niebuhr is part of my lineage. I learned this from him: a good society or group is one that is structured in such a way as to limit the amount of damage we can do to each other.

(This appeared as a column in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Crossroads

 One person who has influenced my thinking and living across the board is the Jewish philosopher and theologian Martin Buber (1878-1965), whose work was cited by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail (which was itself first published and widely distributed by the American Friends Service Committee).

I first came across Buber in an intro philosophy class at Marshall University, although that was only from secondary sources. The basic idea of his most famous book, I and  Thou, is that the world is twofold to people depending on whether we relate to other beings in an I/Thou or I/it mode. The latter is instrumental and transactional, while the former involves real meeting and dialogue. 

(He also acknowledged that in real life you can't stay in I/thou mode all the time with everybody you meet, say at a drive through window or toll both or in a serious struggle...but you could remember it.)

I started thinking more and more about Buber in my first year of working for AFSC on economic justice issues in WV. It struck me at the time--and still--that the line between organizers and exploiters could be very thin and often crossed in that both try to get other people to do what they want them to. 

At one point, when I was driving down to Logan County in the midst of the Pittston Coal Strike (1989-1990), I had an intense experience that was almost visual. An image of a crossroads passed through my mind, probably when I was crossing a railroad track on Route 10. 

The takeaway was that there were two roads to choose from. In one, people were seen as ends in themselves. In the other, they were things to be manipulated and one had to decide which way to go. I had the sense that the choice was fundamental, but one was free to change directions at any time. 

Eventually, I went to the source and read I and Thou. It took three readings and a commentary by Maurice Friedman for much of it to sink in, but it felt like a shock of recognition, as in yeah, this is what I've been clumsily trying to realize.

I read further and came  across another very practical idea that stuck with me in an essay called "Education" that I often try to apply when writing, speaking, or choosing or evaluating social action. The idea was "inclusion," which he described as "experiencing the other side."

As he put it, "Its elements are, first, a relation, of no matter what kind, between two persons, second, an event experienced by them in common, in which at least one of them actively participates, and, third, the fact that this one person, without forfeiting anything of the felt reality of his activity, at the same time lives through the common event from the standpoint of the other."

My takeaway there is the idea that one should try to experience or anticipate how something we say or do would be experienced by others. He didn't go there in the essay, but I think it's a very important practice and even a needed strategy for people interested in social change. Too often, groups do their thing  or drop their cargo without thinking through how that would land in the experience of others, including especially those whom they want to influence. Like one way radios. This could wind up alienating people rather than moving things along.

The great radical Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (1921-1997), best known for his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, was also influenced by Buber. He spoke about the vast difference between issuing directives or communiques versus engaging in dialogue and relation. 

I think it goes back to the crossroads.

Prophecy and hypocrisy, revisited

 Over the years, I've been to many observations and celebrations of the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. While many of these have been inspiring, there is often the fly of what Lincoln in another context called "the base alloy of hypocrisy" in the ointment, as I noted in this post from two years ago. I still recommend checking out the lyrics there of the late Phil Ochs' song Crucifixion, which sums up this dynamic better than anything I can say.

Specifically, the hypocrisy that grates on me occurs when politicians and people in positions of power who would have feared, hated and despised everything Dr. King  stood for--especially in later years when he turned his attention increasing to issues of economic justice and opposing the war in Vietnam--speak pious words from the pulpit or podium. As Ochs sang, "the drama is distorted to what they want to hear."

This year, the King family has issued a strong statement calling for "no celebration without legislation" for voting rights. As Andrea Waters King was quoted by CBS News, "We can't celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. without having the legislation, the cornerstone of his legacy, the cornerstone of our democracy, solidified."

That message is especially relevant to West Virginia, where Senator Joe Manchin's vote, which looks like a longshot at this point, will be crucial. Ironically, after some struggle by lots of people here led by the state's Black community, Manchin helped to draft the Freedom to Vote Act, which actually  has a lot of positive provisions, especially if partnered with the John Lewis Voting Rights Act...but it looks like he won't vote for it, supposedly out of reverence for senate rules.

Whatever.

This is one of the decisive moments in US history. My advice to Senator Manchin is this: if he doesn't act decisively to protect voters' rights and democracy, don't bother showing up for these events ever again. It would just add insult to injury.

Really.

And while we're at it, please check out this op-ed from the Charleston Gazette-Mail on the same topic by Rev. David Fryson.

Labor Day: Remembering a giant

Labor and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph

 Two recent events made me think of A. Philip Randolph, an underappreciated hero of the labor movement and the African American struggle for freedom, justice, and equality.

The first was close to home. In West Virginia, Aug. 26 is officially Katherine Johnson Day in honor of the brilliant African American mathematician whose story is featured in Margot Lee Shetterly’s 2016 book “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race.” The book was made into a film of the same title that was nominated for Best Picture at the 89th Academy Awards.

Johnson was born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia in 1918. A mathematical prodigy, she attended what is now West Virginia State University, a historically Black college, at age 15, graduating at 18 with majors in math and French. She was one of a handful of students to integrate West Virginia University’s graduate school. 

In 1952 she joined the all Black Computing section at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, NASA’s forerunner, which was headed by Dorothy Vaughan, a fellow West Virginian. She would eventually play a major role in doing the math that made the lunar landing and other space advances possible.

At age of 97, Johnson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. She died earlier this year at the age of 101. Her obituary in the New York Times began with these words: “They asked Katherine Johnson for the moon, and she gave it to them.”

The second event that reminded me of A. Philip Randolph was more somber. It was the Aug. 28 “Get Your Knee Off Our Necks” March on Washington for racial justice and an end to police brutality. The march was held on the 57th anniversary of the original march best known for Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Neither of these events might have happened if not for the life and work of Randolph (1889-1979), an African American writer, editor, democratic socialist, union leader, and civil rights pioneer who made a huge mark on American history over several decades.

Born in Crescent City Florida, his father was an African Methodist Episcopal minister and tailor and his mother was a homemaker and skilled seamstress. Both were fearless advocates for racial justice.

Randolph headed to New York as a young man, working and attending college classes. He loved theater, and founded a Shakespearean society in Harlem, where he played many of the leading roles. Always concerned with the rights of Black workers, he edited radical monthly periodical The Messenger beginning in 1917, which the Department of Justice referred to as "the most able and the most dangerous of all the Negro publications." Randolph himself was called “the most dangerous Negro in America.”

In 1925, Randolph became the founding president of The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a union representing Black workers on the luxury rail cars manufactured by the union-busting Pullman Company. The Brotherhood was the first Black-led union to be affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. Despite the name, the union also represented women who worked as maids on the rails.

It took a dozen years—and the help of New Deal labor legislation—but in 1937, the Brotherhood won major concessions from the company in what was probably the first major contract a white employer signed with a Black labor leader. 

The Brotherhood was instrumental in opening the path to a decent livelihood for tens of thousands of Black workers. It’s no accident that one of the leaders of the 1950s Montgomery bus boycott that propelled Dr. King to national prominence was Brotherhood member E.D. Nixon.

Randolph also opposed segregation in labor unions and eventually helped end it, serving as a vice president of the AFL-CIO.

He was as comfortable playing hardball with presidents as with corporations. As the nation ramped up production during World War II, Randolph threatened a march on Washington to protest discrimination in federal employment and companies receiving government contracts—a move that pushed the Roosevelt administration into issuing Executive Order 8802 in 1941, which barred hiring discrimination in defense industries and federal agencies and created the Fair Employment Practices Commission. 

This would eventually help open the doors of federal employment for Dorothy Vaughn, Katherine Johnson, and other brilliant “hidden figures” in the aeronautics and space industries.

After the war, Randolph founded the League for Non-Violent Civil Disobedience Against Military Segregation that went head to head against the Truman administration. The result was Executive Order 9981, which ended official discrimination in the U.S. military.

He was assisted in these efforts by Bayard Rustin, a brilliant Black organizer (and Quaker who worked with AFSC). When Rustin, a gay man, was attacked for his sexual orientation by U.S. senator and segregationist Strom Thurmond and others, Randolph responded by expressing complete confidence in Rustin, saying “I am dismayed that there are in this country men who, wrapping themselves in the mantle of Christian morality, would mutilate the most elementary conceptions of human decency, privacy and humility in order to attack other men.”

Rustin would later say of him that “no one has stood beside me in times of trial the way Mr. Randolph has. He is the only man I know who has never said an unkind word about anyone, or who refuses to listen to an unkind word about anyone, even though it may be true.”

Randolph and Rustin’s greatest effort was organizing the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which featured speeches and performances by Dr. King, the late Congressman John Lewis, NAACP leader Roy Wilkins, West Virginia-born labor leader Walter Reuther, James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality, singers Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, and many others.

Randolph himself spoke as well, saying that “we know that we have no future in a society in which 6 million black and white people are unemployed and millions more live in poverty.”

That march inspired generations of Americans, including those who marched this summer.

This is only a partial list of the accomplishments of an amazing life. This Labor Day, I’ll remember many of those who fought for workers’ rights, but Randolph holds a special place for me. 

In the words of his beloved Hamlet, “He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.”

(This ran as a post in the AFSC blog and ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail in a slightly different form.)

"Everybody's got a right to live"

"We need an economic bill of rights."--Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In the United States, people talk a lot about rights and freedoms. Often, however, the discussion is narrow in scope, as in freedom from external constraints or the interference of others. Thinkers such as Erich Fromm have referred to this concept as “negative freedom” or “freedom from.”

While these freedoms are important—some are inscribed in the Bill of Rights—they are incomplete. Positive freedom, sometimes called “freedom for” or “freedom to” is about the ability of people to act freely and develop their potential. It also implies the right of people to meet their basic needs as members of the human community.

Having one kind of freedom without the other is pretty cold comfort. As the French author Anatole France wryly noted, “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”

As World War II was winding down, President Franklin Roosevelt in an address to Congress explicitly recognized that negative freedom was not enough. “We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. ‘Necessitous men are not free men.’ People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”

He called for a “Second Bill of Rights,” which would guarantee all Americans the right to such basics as employment, a living wage, education, health care, leisure, and security in the event of sickness, age or disability.

Roosevelt died before he could advance this vision, but his call helped inspire the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, which includes a pretty comprehensive enumeration of social, civil and economic rights.

Alas, it’s one thing to declare rights and quite another to actually exercise them.

Twenty years after the UN Declaration, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. renewed Roosevelt’s call, saying that “We need an economic bill of rights. This would guarantee a job to all people who want to work and are able to work. It would also guarantee an income for all who are not able to work. Some people are too young, some are too old, some are physically disabled, and yet in order to live, they need income.”

The original Poor Peoples’ Campaign that Dr. King and allies initiated 50 years ago aimed to make those rights a reality.

As you may have noticed, we haven’t got there yet. Up until now, such demands and declarations have been matters of wish and aspiration rather than fact. In the real world, people only have those rights they can effectively realize, even in the face of opposition. 

And that’s why the American Friends Service Committee is one of many organizations actively participating in a revived Poor Peoples’ Campaign, which describes itself as “A National Call to Moral Revival.”

A basic demand of the campaign is that that everybody has the right to live: “Given the abundance that exists in this country and the fundamental dignity inherent to all humanity, every person in the United States has the right to housing, education, health care, welfare, decent and dignified jobs and the right to organize for the realization of these rights.”

It's past time to make those rights and freedom a reality. We are committed to the struggle and we encourage you to get involved as well.

In my home state of West Virginia, we have a long tradition of fighting for those rights—and sometimes winning. That tradition reaches from the Great Rail Strike of 1877, which spread from Martinsburg across the nation, to the Mine Wars of the early 20th century to the Black Lung Movement of the 1970s to the WV Teachers’ Strike of 2018, the ripples of which are still spreading across the nation. I’m proud of the role AFSC has played and is continuing to play in supporting working people in several of those struggles.

Those who came before us aimed high. Henry David Thoreau’s challenge to us is more relevant than ever: “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” 

(This originally appeared on the American Friends Service Committee website.)

Revisiting Dr. King's Poor People's Campaign 50 years later

Fifty years ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his allies made some ambitious plans. They hoped to bring poor people together across racial and other social divides to call for “a radical redistribution of economic and political power.”

They hoped that a multi-racial Poor People’s Campaign would awaken the conscience of the nation and spark a mass movement to end poverty, systemic racism and the war economy.

The campaign came to pass but the desired results obviously did not. I can’t help but wonder what might have been different had Dr. King not been assassinated on April 4, 1968. I don’t believe that history is made by a few heroic figures, but it seems clear that individuals can make a huge difference.

In any case, half a century later we have unprecedented levels of economic inequality and a political system dominated by the very wealthy who seem intent on widening the gap. More people in America live in or near poverty now than in 1968.

Today, in the wake of passing gigantic $1.9 trillion in tax cuts that benefit primarily wealthy people and corporations, Congress is contemplating drastic cuts and restrictions in food assistance to vulnerable Americans as the mammoth Farm Bill comes up for reconsideration.

Slashing spending on food assistance by billions and cutting off basic help to millions won’t promote work, although it is likely to exert a downward pressure on wages for working Americans.

Other programs — like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, student aid — that help millions of Americans and tens of thousands of West Virginians are also being targeted at a time when the wealthiest 1 percent owns more than the bottom 99.

This is clearly a moral issue, one that is all too often ignored by those preaching restrictive versions of religion and myopic views of morality.

Ignoring issues of social justice goes against the grain of the biblical religion so many profess. The prophet Isaiah, honored alike by Jews, Christians and Muslims, couldn’t be any clearer:

“Woe to those who make unjust laws,
to those who issue oppressive decrees,
to deprive the poor of their rights
and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,
making widows their prey
and robbing the fatherless.
What will you do on the day of reckoning,
when disaster comes from afar?
To whom will you run for help?
Where will you leave your riches?” (Isaiah 10:1-3)

Around the country, there is a growing awareness of the need to revisit the goals of the Poor People’s Campaign in our new context and to issue a national call to moral revival.

In the words of the Rev. William Barber and the Rev. Liz Theoharis, co-chairs of the new campaign, “There needs to be a new moral discourse in this nation — one that says being poor is not a sin but systemic poverty is.”

(This ran as an op-ed in today's Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Of Dr. King, poverty and hypocrisy

As the nation marks (it's hard to say celebrates these days) the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., I started thinking about the many things Dr. King had to say about poverty, of which this is one example:

 “The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.”

and this is another:

"...it is obvious that if a man is to redeem his spiritual and moral ‘lag,’ he must go all out to bridge the social and economic gulf between the ‘haves’ and ‘have not’s’ of the world. Poverty is one of the most urgent items on the agenda of modern life.”

and this is another:

 “There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we have the resources to get rid of it.”

The observation of King's birthday provides the occasion for conspicuous displays of hypocrisy perhaps outmatched by only a few religious holidays.I'm sure quite a bit of that was on display in WV's capitol today even while that body prepares to ramp up the war on poor people that is the subject of this Jacobin article. 

I think it's going to be a long winter. Maybe even literally.

Some words of Dr. King to consider in WV

 (Image by way of wikipedia. Circa 1963.)

“In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right to work.’ It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights.

Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone…Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights. We do not intend to let them do this to us. We demand this fraud be stopped. Our weapon is our vote.” —Martin Luther King, speaking about right-to-work laws in 1961

The uses of history: reflections on Nietzsche and Martin Luther King Jr.

I've been running around too much lately to come up with a fresh post, but here's one from MLK Day six years ago. Parts of it are fortunately dated (ending the Iraq war), but most holds up.


El Cabrero has been thinking about the uses of history lately. This seems like a fitting topic on the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday.

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had some interesting things to say on this topic in his essay "On the uses and disadvantages of history for life" in his Untimely Meditations.

As the title of the essay suggests, Nietzsche wasn't interested in history as a social science or academic discipline but rather in how people can make use of history for their own purposes, and specifically to enhance human vitality.

The essay begins with a quote from Goethe:

"In any case, I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity."

Thinking about history has some risk since life requires both remembering and forgetting and we can suffer from both a scarcity and a surplus of historical awareness. We can get lost in the past to the detriment of the present.

Nietzsche identified three ways in which history could serve to enhance human life:

*There is a need to revere, conserve and treasure those things of the past that give people a sense of identity. He called this the antiquarian approach.

*For oppressed people, there is at times a need to "break up and dissolve a part of the past...bringing it before a tribunal, scrupulously examining it and finally condemning it..." He called this the critical approach.

*For those who aspire to making their own mark on history, the past can contain inspiring examples of the deeds of others. From these, we learn "that the greatness that once existed was in any event once possible and may thus be possible again..." He calls this the monumentalistic conception of history.

In the context of remembering the life and work of Dr. King and the tens of thousands of others who made huge gains for civil rights and social justice, the latter approach can be most useful to our life today. It would be tragic to allow this huge struggle to simply become a pious memory instead of a goad to action.

Here is one way to think about the legacy of Dr. King and others in Nietzsche's monumentalistic manner:

Once upon a time not too long ago, a relatively small number of people, in spite of all their human limitations, made a huge difference to the nation and the world against all odds. The fact that it was done is proof that it can be done.

That's the awareness we need to bring to the struggle for a living wage for working people. As Dr. King wrote in Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?,

There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid, or day laborer.

That's the awareness we need to bring to the struggle to restore the rights of workers to organize, a struggle for which King literally gave his life in Memphis.

That's the awareness that we need to bring to the struggle to end the unnecessary war in Iraq and reshape America's domestic and foreign agenda. As King said,

There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.

In other words, don't just remember the past, use it as an inspiration. Other people, who were just as screwed up as we are, did pretty damn good. It's our turn.

50 years back

One thing West Virginia does well is public ritual. On Wednesday afternoon, the state officially observed the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington at which Dr. Martin Luther King gave his famous "I have a dream" speech. There was music, speeches, an appearance by Gov. Tomblin and other officials, a bell ringing, and a reception.

The event was organized by the Herbert Henderson Office of Minority Affairs, which was established by legislation in 2012 (legislation which some of us worked for a few years to enact).

I took several pictures, including some of my friend Rev. Ron English, who worked with Dr. King, attended the  march, and spoke at the event. The picture, alas, did not turn out. But this article in which he tells his story turned out very well.

JUST ONE MORE. Here's Nobel economics laureate Joseph Stiglitz on how Dr.King influenced his work in the field.

Scoped

Posts from this blog may be a bit irregular this week. I'm having knee surgery Monday and may be out of it for a while. That might be my excuse, anyhow.

The knee in question has been cranky for a long time but has gotten a lot worse this summer. Every step has been painful. I've had to give up several things I like to do, including jogging, jumping rope, kicking a heavy bag, and sparring in karate.

I mean, jeez, it's been nearly three months since I kicked anybody in the head. I'm going through withdrawal.

The procedure is pretty simple, arthroscopic surgery on an outpatient basis. The only part of it I'm dreading is the wait. I'm not supposed to go in until 1:30 p.m. and have been told not to eat or drink anything after midnight. That wouldn't be so bad were it not for the fact that the instructions perversely include coffee as well. It's gonna be a long morning.

Still, I look forward to having my leg back at some point.

THE DREAM AND THE MONUMENT. Here's an op-ed by a friend of mine on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from someone who knew him.

GOING TO BAT FOR HEALTH CARE REFORM. While we're at it, here's another Gazette op-ed from another friend in defense of the Affordable Care Act.

BAD RIGHT WING IDEA #5857495. Mandatory drug testing for public assistance in Florida hasn't turned up very many users.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

An (unintentional) teachable moment

Ever since I started working on social justice issues for the American Friends Service Committee, I've made it a habit to study the history of various social and political movements (and even military history). I try to look as dispassionately as possible at what worked and what didn't--kind of like the way football coaches and players watch videos of old games or how athletes in combat sports study old fights.

Naturally, I've spent a good bit of time studying the history of the Civil Rights Movement in the US. That name, however, is misleading. It was never one unified movement, but rather several often conflicting ones. Nor was it a triumphal procession, as we tend to look back on it on a day like today. Still, in all its diversity it is an inspiring and astonishing story.

The power of that story became clear to me in the most unusual setting. Quite a few years ago, I was working at a summer camp for low income youth from two very poor and very white counties in southern West Virginia. It was free time, so I was glad to let the little heathens run free and catch a few moments of reading under a shady tree. The book was Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63 by Taylor Branch.

Then something really strange happened. I drew a crowd. A circle of kids formed as if I was juggling cats or performing some other feat. It took me a while to realize that many of them possibly had never seen an adult voluntarily reading a book.

"What are you doing?" I was asked.

"Uhhh, reading."

"Are you in school?"

"No, I just like to read."

"What are you reading?"

I showed them the book and told them what it was about, recounting as briefly but clearly as I could the history of racism and legal segregation in America and the epic fight to overcome it. This was news to several of the kids, for many of whom their only knowledge of African Americans came from television.

I showed them the pictures in the book, many of them showing acts of violence and cruelty as well as heroism. They seemed at first to have trouble believing that this kind of thing really happened.

I told them that the fight for human rights and justice was never over and that it might be their turn one day. There was an almost audible silence at that point--except for the wheels that seemed to be turning in some heads. After a few more minutes of thinking and talk, they drifted away to other diversions.

I didn't get a lot of reading done that day. But I'm glad I brought the book.

Knocking holes in the darkness

I can't think of anything better to say on Martin Luther King Jr. Day than to recommend that the Gentle Reader check out this interview with civil rights leader Rev. Samuel "Billy" Kyles about the life, work and death of Dr. King.

Kyles draws on a figure of speech attributed to the young Robert Louis Stevenson. The story goes that one night the boy looked out his window at a lamp lighter who went from pole to pole lighting old fashioned gas street lamps and called out "There's a man coming down the street punching holes in the darkness!"

Kyles suggests that this is a good image for the work of Dr. King and a challenge for the rest of us.

(Given the general state of the world, it should be steady work anyhow...)

ON THAT NOTE, this item argues that if Dr. King was around today he'd be talking about poverty and economic justice.

HAITI. Here's more about the American Friends Service Committee's response to the earthquake in Haiti.

A GOOD FRIEND OF MINE was honored by El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia for her contributions to the causes of civil rights and social justice.

OTHER TOOL USING ANIMALS. Add crows to the list.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A revolution of values

Image courtesy of wikipedia.

"A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth...

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood."


Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.