The Meaning of It All

MLK Day: It's more than the events; it's about coming to a new understanding of what we can learn from Dr. King's words--and his legacy

Today I participated in only my second MLK Day march in the space of five years. This is partially because for the last three I actually, scandalously haven't had the day off from work (I took a vacation day today) but mostly because I'm lazy. The 'point' of the march is different for different people; some go specifically to remember Dr. King; some go to expose their kids to the reality behind the holiday; some go to be a voice for their particular human rights or justice-related cause; some go to dress up weird and march in a parade and be on TV.

Last time I went, I got to hear Coretta Scott King speak and had some lovely interaction with fellow marchers. Last time, the big issue was the impending Iraq war, and a record number of white folks came out to protest that. This time, the most visible 'issue' was the impending primary elections, the outcome of which may just have as far-reaching results as our failed Shock&Awe campaign.

Generally, everyone's outward behavior was quite civil (including--technically-- the very silent man on the Auburn St. sidewalk with the sign saying "Jesus is Lord Hell Awaits You"--as were the amazing bystanders standing peacefully around him). I walked behind a group of Fired Up Ready To Go Obama supporters (of multiple races and ages) who had nifty chants and creative signs, and even when The Hillary People came next to us, we just waved and smiled pumping our signs (I had an Amnesty Int'l sign for Troy Davis), and as far as I know, none of them breathed fire or shot us the evil eye or anything. It may have, indeed, been the first time recently that I've seen the two camps seem just fine with letting people have whatever opinions they choose to have.

But one experience that is a repeat from my last march is this: afterward, lying on my bed, all my limbs aching with exhaustion from the day, I'm still thinking about Dr. King and what he really stands for, beneath all of the weird pop culture garlands we've buried him with. Excuse me if I say that for many, his name has almost the equivalent magic of the Miss America Answer ("World Peace!"). In other words, if you're white and don't want to appear racist, say how much you love MLK. If you're black and want to talk about civil rights, MLK is a sure bet, whereas you have to sweat over whether to quote Malcom X or not. It's easy to put Dr. King up on a mural or put his face on the bulletin board during Black History Month.

We all know "I have a dream..." but many of us don't know the layers and layers of deep, rich substance and tension that lay beneath those often-glibly quoted words.

And that's why I think that revisiting Dr. King's life and his writings and sermons and speeches is part of the holiday still acting as a catalyst for change in our lives.

Here are some generally famous words of Dr. King that usually aren't used in sound bytes or sermons. I saw them quoted today on a blog that was saying how relevant the words are to the '08 election at hand. (That conjecture was a bit hard for me to see. But I'll get to that in a minute.)

I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. . . . .

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking.

But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.
. . . .
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
. . . .

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
. . . 

[We] who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with an its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

Remember, these words were being applied to the present election. Time periods from totally different planets, I would say. Yet--we're so thirsty for meaningful existence as part of our postmodern landscapes that, in a way, we can't be blamed for drawing comparisons between the huge tragedies or hardships referred to in the Bible with our light daily trials (such as getting a ticket or watching our favorite American Idol contestant go b-bye).

Still.

All this to say, I was thinking about something today: how soft we all are. We freak out over stupid things and have no patience or resolve or selflessness. And then we want credit for every good thing we do or for every 'hard' thing we go through.

We like to hail MLK and sing the refrain of the familiar stories that have images splashed onto our minds forever, like the fire hoses & the dogs; the marchers on the bridge and the police; the freedom rides and the people walking in droves; the speech on the Washington mall. We like to rewind and repeat the images and sound bites for their emotion and their reassurance of our present safety and freedom.

But we forget the long hours and days and nights and weeks and months of suffering, whether the public and private indignity diffused throughout the Southern landscape, both city and country--or the days in that dark, cramped cell, not knowing how much longer.

We forget the sleepless nights or the fear for one's children; the decision to be willing to forfeit one's relative 'peace' that seemed so hard-won for the chance of greater and truer freedom.

So--the problem is that we regard our freedom too cheaply, in concept rather than by way of blood-stained experience. I remember these hidden images not as something my life is directly connected to, but rather, just one face of the experience I feel the people of our generation lack perspective of. I could make more lists of images, but tonight those are the ones that stick with me.

My Last Will and Testament to the Clintons

A Confession: My week of initiation into the camp of Clinton-hatred was enough to depress me right out of civic participation

It all started for me right before the New Hampshire primary. You know the events: every bit of the Clinton & Clinton Circus’ antics has been dissected and made into temporary national monuments by the media at this point: Bill’s “Fairy Tale” rant; Hillary’s alleged tears and “Some of us are right and some of us are wrong” speech. It got worse in the days following the bizarre and overblown surprise primary win: the weird MLK/LBJ comment; the Bob Johnson I’m a Brother So I Can Diss Him intro speech; the shuck and jive and assorted cocaine crap; the Aha! We’re Finally Forcing You to Allegedly Play the Race Card! volleys. Indeed, all overblown, tabloid-style headlines.

But back to that first fateful day of the tears and the fairy tale: something unraveled in me said fateful day. I think I reacted so violently because I lost what respect I still had for the Clintons that fateful day, and that was a sad thing for me. No, there was nothing new about them that really came out that fateful day, but I’d still managed to draw a line objectively between what I disliked about them personally with what I respected them for in terms of talent, confidence, and ambition.

Suddenly, my starry-eyed summation of the whole landscape (Obama was winning by a landslide and confounding Everybody because We, the People, were Taking Back America) devolved back into the kind of politics that I’d previously shrunk away from, distastefully doing my duty on election day every few years and voting for the lesser of two evils. Like many ordinary Obama supporters, getting involved and being genuinely, personally interested in politics was not something I'd chosen to do for quite a long time—until Barack came along.

But somehow, I got caught up in said devolution around me. I'm pretty passionate about injustice, and blinded myself to what was happening: I was falling for the silly old game of superficial American political drama. (As in Did she really cry? Did he really say he didn’t mean cocaine? while Pakistan’s elections are being further sabotaged by suicide bombings.) I armed myself like any novice blogger, with my sharp-edged analysis and obsessive linkage; I reported any and every bit of legitimate, recent, and self-created dirt the Clintons' deserved to be held accountable for on Digg, and I'm ashamed to say that I rather enjoyed putting my spin on things at times. I sounded like a broken record to myself, but I didn't care. I was mad, and I was on a mission to make sure that the press didn't spin things too far into the Clintons' corner. I was obsessed with the wisdom of my own astute perceptions and persuasive analysis.

All this took its toll on me, just like negative politics will for anyone (I guarantee you that people like Sean Hannity and the like suffer from chronic constipation--and I mean this in the most sympathetic and self-deprecating of ways, God bless his soul). I was getting depressed. I was getting wild-eyed and sleep-deprived from nights of obsessive reading and blogging and digging and such. Hyperbolic language was beginning to slip into my once-careful political vocabulary. I was beginning to call Bill and Hill names. Gratuitous names. Just like the ranks of over-zealous opinion-obsessed Americans I once thought I was above. I was getting doomsday about the future of America in general and harping to God and myself (yes, I was talking to myself) about how evil always wins. I was getting a crick in my neck.

Well, it all came to a head tonight as I was driving home. Instead of music, I was listening to POTUS (incessant talk radio about the elections) on my trusty XM radio, and NewsHour with Jim Leher was on (although a certain Judy was standing in for Jim, I must note). Just like this morning, they were yakking about the whole “racial tensions” thing that’s been straining Senator Obama and The Clintons this week. A sign of my waning emotional energy: some of the very incidents that have gotten me so hopping mad (although I’ve disagreed with much of the media spin on them) were being discussed, and I was already feeling burned out on it and resentful that I was actually still listening like an addict.

But then I perked up. A familiar raspy voice came on, one I haven’t heard since Coretta Scott King’s funeral last year: the Reverend Joseph E. Lowery, a wonderfully feisty old saint whose only transgression in my eyes was having a notorious street in my neighborhood named after him that we’ve confused for years with its old name. “Judy” was asking esteemed Rev. Lowery (one of the founding civil rights leaders and close friend of Dr. King) what he thought of the whole Clinton statement about MLK and LBJ and the brouhaha that has trailed it. Then another voice came on the air: it was my (*MY*) esteemed representative, John Lewis (junior civil rights movement veteran and friend of MLK). Definitely perked up.

Now, I must make this clear: I love John Lewis. I mean, the man (the very definition of a good incumbent) has been working his tail off in Washington for ages on behalf of my neighborhood here in Atlanta. He (well, his staff, of course) will take your complaints about your agricultural rights (although I can’t say that we have much to plant out here…and I’m not about to report my neighbors siphoning out their laundry water into my tomatoes) or testy government agencies who are not dealing with the mosquito-infested city creek or the disgracefully potholed MLK Blvd (which, after a ludicrous 5-year drama, has finally been repaved to our great shock). He regularly sends me letters (even form letters are appreciated) in response to my form letters and petitions about supporting Darfur aid or voting yet again against drilling in the ANWR and other such crunchy environmental concerns. I respect the man deeply. So, to make a long story short, I found myself having devolved to the point that I was cussing at him in the car.

Now, I must note objectively that he somewhat deserved it. He was rudely cutting off Rev. Lowery (his senior, hello) every other minute, for one. And then, after droning about how he was BFF with MLK and sort of kind of BFF with LBJ (thus making him the final judge on the situation), he unfairly used the situation to endorse and defend Hillary and Bill as the First and Rightfully Second Black Presidents of the United States and blame Obama for trying to make them out to be racist when they’d been working hard with the black community while a certain “inexperienced” yet "articulate" young man was allegedly smoking crack. Okay, he didn’t use those words, but he might as well have, or so I thought. My blood pressure was sky-rocketing as usual.

So there I was, shamefully cussing at him and so mad that I kept almost shutting off the radio. But I had to hear out Rev. Lowery, who was the voice of the calm, collected sage, saying (in so many words), “If Mrs. Clinton says she meant no disrespect, I’m perfectly willing to accept that, and now…LET’S MOVE ON to the important issues of this campaign and quit all this ridiculous divisiveness.” And, the shred of reason within me kept thinking I had to hear out Lewis, who might redeem himself.

(Disclaimer: I understand that John Lewis has a long history with the Clintons, and is absolutely entitled to be loyal to his friends and feel strongly about a situation where they seem to be coming under fire from part of Black America. But reason is not the point here. Remember? I’m still a wild-eyed insomniac at this point...)

When I got home, I dove straight onto my computer to tap out a calm and respectful letter to my esteemed representative. I was disappointed in his comments and handling of the situation.

I did not think he was being fair to blame Obama’s “camp” for supposedly stirring things up (Lowery countered that the media was the real culprit, from all he’d observed) due to some defensive memo, as though the Clinton “camp” doesn’t send out any sort of negative memo meant to attack Senator Obama.

I thought it was unfair for him to say that “no right-thinking” person would misconstrue Hillary’s words as being offensive. I thought he should know that, while I agreed with him that Hillary did not intend to say anything to directly diminish MLK or bring out the race card, we also had the right to take issue with what she said for our own reasons.

I wanted him to know that, not only was he ignoring what Obama in fact did take issue with—nothing to do with race (Obama says he felt she was elevating legislative power over the power of the people to come together and bring about change)—he was dismissing what I took issue with: that she was showing her utter lack of understanding of what it means to actually BE a minority in America.

I took issue because, while I don’t discredit the Clintons’ work or interest in African American interests (and I will not comment on their motives but rather, will assume they’re all golden), they simply cannot claim to know anything about the experience of a minority in America. They somehow think that they, like supporter and billionaire BET mogul Bob Johnson (who amazingly claimed he was allowed to call Obama an “young articulate black man” because he himself is black) are allowed to say whatever they want because they’ve done this and that for black Americans for a bazillion years or however long they claim to have lived.

I take issue (and I promise you, this will end, and definitively so) that, even in retrospect, Senator Clinton did not (or would not?) see why perhaps some folks would be taken aback by her glib comparison within the context of topic on hand. So, while I don’t think she was saying that LBJ was way more of a hero than MLK (although, as Salon editor Walter Shapiro aptly notes, it’s “never a good sign when a Democratic candidate feels compelled to stress, ‘Dr. King is one of the people I admire most in the world’"), the statement ultimately reveals the bottom line: the Clintons have a problem when they are not the center of attention, whether the competition is An Articulate Black Man stealing some limelight or the ever-untrumpable icon that Martin Luther King Jr. is. (As was it the bottom line of their New Hampshire meltdown—and yes, I do believe the tears were very real—for this very reason.)

And therein ends my last paragraph devoted to What is So Totally Wrong With The Clintons. My little car-bound mouth-off to someone I would normally treat with the same deference reserved for my grandmothers (and don’t misinterpret that—in my culture, you do NOT badmouth your grandma no matter what) snapped me back into reality.

Oh how the mighty have fallen. When you find yourself in the same sorry state of eye-stabbery (as in the Biblical plank-in-eye hypocrisy hyperbole) that so disgusts you about the person/“camp” you’ve decided is your “enemy,” it’s time to admit you’ve been scammed by the ole devil hisself. As in ye olde deville who likes to kill as many birds as possible with a single arrow (nope, sin isn’t enough—if you can be self-righteous—and thus, even blinder to your own problem at the same time as carrying out said sin, all the better!!!).

So tonight I give up my veiled celebrity worship of the Clintons. (After all, people say they hate Paris Hilton, but if they didn’t idolize her by loving to hate her, she wouldn’t be the #1 most celebrity celebrity.)

Tonight I swear off as much gossip, slander, and non-constructively negative news in general about the candidates. Because really, if I’m this tattered and manic after a week or two of this—then, if and when Obama wins the nomination, how the heck am I going to handle the barrage of scary neo-con poo about being a liberal Muslim extremist that will be inevitably flung the poor man’s way by Hannity and his ilk?

No, really, we all must desist this pointless whinery and sniveling and hiss-n-claw action. We talk about the Republican party only being united by a potential Hillary nomination; but we really should be talking about a potentially divided Democratic party if these hysterics don’t desist (I know I for one, originally thought I’d vote for Hill if she won, as did many other independent-leaning Democrats like me—and now we’re all threatening to vote for the potentially disastrous John McCain).

That’s why I swear it all off tonight and instead swear to spend my energy on the stuff that matters the most: our country’s current demise and the potential of doing something about it as a nation, as progressively united as we possibly can be in the coming days.

Tonight I return to what originally drew me into being obsessively interested in American politics for the first time in my life: hope. Good ole harried and battered hope. Yep, the good ole—or should I say “new”?—politics of hope. Because really, when do you ever have this many everyday, normally-disgusted-with-politics Americans come teeming out of the woodwork in mind-boggling numbers? When have this many non-politically-geeked-out Americans willingly flocked to community centers to volunteer to phone bank or canvass?! I mean, when was the last time people even knew what “canvass” means?

Barack Obama—and much more importantly, Barack Obama’s message, which is quickly being embraced and embodied by Americans cut from every kind of cloth—is certainly something worth talking about.

As Reverend Lowery pointed out tonight, we have too much to do to get stuck on these weird and divisive nitpicking squabbles based on words, words, and more worthless words. Time to get to work.