The following comes from The Nation’s adaptation derived from Michael K. Honey’s To the Promised Land: Martin Luther King and the Fight for Economic Justice: Activists today are taking up Dr. King’s mantle and reviving the Poor People’s Campaign:
Fifty years ago, on April 4, 1968, a bullet robbed us of one of the great human-rights leaders of the 20th century. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee, accelerated the racist backlash of the late 1960s. Along with the murder of Robert F. Kennedy two months later, this tragic trajectory led to the election of Richard M. Nixon, who escalated the Vietnam War and unleashed police and FBI forces against movements for change.
However, the bonds of memory cannot be so easily dissolved. Ending poverty and fighting for union rights are back on the economic-justice agenda today. Fifty years after King, Memphis remains an appropriate launch pad for these campaigns. “Fight for $15” organizers met there, picketing McDonald’s and marching on the anniversary of the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike. The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which will be meeting in Memphis on the 50th anniversary of King’s death, launched its “I Am 2018” campaign to fight for racial and economic justice and combat so-called right-to-work laws. The Rev. William Barber, the Rev. Liz Theoharis, and others also met in Memphis to begin their new Poor People’s Campaign to end poverty, which is modeled on King’s original crusade.
Yet even as Memphis’s now-multiracial political leadership celebrates the accomplishments of the civil-rights movement in the city, the challenges remain daunting. A majority-black city of more than 600,000 people, Memphis has among the highest rates of poverty and infant mortality of any US city its size. Although higher wages for working-class people would clearly benefit both a consumer-based economy and the city’s tax base, the traditional low-wage, anti-union business model is back in style in Republican-run Tennessee. Nationally, private-sector unions—which now represent less than 10 percent of the American workforce—are under attack, as are their public-sector counterparts.
In our own time of escalating crisis, why return to the story of Memphis and Martin Luther King? Activists and historians tell us why: Understanding the critical year of 1968 and King’s agenda for social change can help us clarify the organizing imperatives of today. In Memphis and elsewhere, the bonds of memory 50 years since King are helping people to remember, and to fight. [...]
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“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.” ~~Martin Luther King Jr. (1963)
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On this date at Daily Kos in 2011—Scott Walker's administration gave a state job and a 26% raise to the son of a major supporter
Wisconsin Republicans claim that their state is broke, and have used that claim to justify stripping state workers of their collective bargaining rights. And yet, even though they claim to be broke, Scott Walker's administration just gave a state job, and a 26% raise, to the son of a major supporter who has no college degree, no relevant experience, and two drunk driving convictions. JS Online:
Just in his mid-20s, Brian Deschane has no college degree, very little management experience and two drunken-driving convictions.
Yet he has landed an $81,500-per-year job in Gov. Scott Walker's administration overseeing environmental and regulatory matters and dozens of employees at the Department of Commerce. Even though Walker says the state is broke and public employees are overpaid, Deschane already has earned a promotion and a 26% pay raise in just two months with the state.
Ah, a state job with a big salary and a huge raise. You don't need a degree, relevant experience, a clean criminal record, or even a formal application.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: No way to catch up on all the Trump insanity. But Armando goes in-depth on the latest from Mueller, the NYPD and the emoluments cases. Scott Pruitt sinks deeper in the swamp; Donald Trump snipes at Amazon; George Papadopoulos walks into another bar and….
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