Re: Eli's a-comin'

[Csubstance@aol.com]

In a message dated 12/1/07 8:08:34 PM, taunar@plateautel.net writes:

<< So what if they want to see higher test scores.  Tell me Martin 

> would have been marching against Broad instead of with him. >> (Art Burke)

12/2/07

OK. I will. From Chicago.

When Martin (and Al Raby and others who worked with him) came to Chicago, his 
focus was on overall improvement for the people who were living in poverty 
and segregation. One of his legacies was a broad based movement that included 
those of us who organized to elect Harold Washington mayor here in 1983. That 
movement was short circuited by Harold's death and the vicious reaction that led 
to corporate "school reform" (along with "welfare reform" and "housing 
reform" -- the three horns of the same devil) by the mid-1990s.

As late as 1976, when I marched with the Martin Luther King Jr. Movement here 
in Chicago against Nazi attacks on black people moving into "white" 
communities on the Southwest Side, we were still mobilized, and most of the people 
remaining from those days still are and are firmly against corporate "school 
reform" and all the rest of that crap.

So, Art, the answer is Yes. By the end of his life, Dr. King was organizing 
against poverty (the Poor Peoples Campaign) and against the other underlying 
class injustices of capitalist society -- and not to scapegoat the public 
schools for trying to face the problems created by a vicious class and race 
segregated society.

I know. I was part of those marches, both during Dr. King's life and since. 

And he would have laughed to think the Education Trust was claiming his 
legacy, lucrative as their funding may be. Then he would have thundered against the 
betrayal's being mouthed by the Hati Kaycocks and Broad Elis of the world, 
even though it would have cost him millions in product endorsements and 
fundings. That's actually what happened when he was on the West Side here 40 years 
ago, Art. The entire corporate ruling class of Chicago lined up against him. Read 
the accounts of King's work in the Chicago Tribune from back then. 

The simplistic and truncated hagiography that has happened since can't 
overcome the real legacies of the man who not only stood up against class 
exploitation ("I Am A Man" the union picket signs said in Memphis), but also against an 
imperialist war -- despite warnings from all the official and wealthy big 
shots that he was undermining his legacy.

George N. Schmidt
Editor, Substance

www.substancenews.net

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