The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday arrives in grim times for the masses of American people, and even grimmer times for the masses of African Americans. The gains won by the mass movements of 1960s-early ‘70s (as well as of the 1930s) have increasingly become pleasant memories, with one of the last, social security, now under attack by the capitalist politicians. There’s not a lot to celebrate. Yet the profound lesson of King’s time is that by organizing determined and sustained mass struggles the masses of people can bring liberating change. So let our celebration be of each small step currently being taken to build the movements of the oppressed.
The need for political independence from the Republicans and Democrats
But this must be done independent of and against not just the Republicans, but also the Democrats. After two years in control of the presidency, and with big majorities in both houses of Congress, the Democrats record included:
— escalation of the brutal war in Afghanistan, stepped up drone attacks on Pakistan, attacks on Yemen, more weapons for the racist Israeli state, and war budgets higher than those of either of the Bushes or Reagan ($750 billion this year alone);
— continued building of a national security state that often goes farther than Bush’s, including FBI raids on the homes of anti-war and solidarity activists in the Midwest, and Obama giving himself the “right” to assassinate anyone on Earth, including U.S. citizens;
— opening more of the seas to offshore drilling, licensing building the first nuclear power plants in decades, and proposing unworkable market solutions to global warming;
— deportation of record numbers of impoverished immigrants;
— support for privatization of education through charter schools, which create a two tier education system with students stratified by social class, race, and sometimes language;
— in the midst of the greatest depression in 70 years, budget cuts instead of jobs and relief programs for the workers and poor; bailing out GM and Chrysler with $billions while forcing huge wage and benefit cuts plus layoffs on auto workers; handing untold $trillions to the financial parasites, including the tax breaks for the rich passed by the Democrat-controlled Congress in December.
And if this wasn‘t enough, the Democrats also champion racist “colorblind” policies while at the same time triumphantly proclaiming that politics have allegedly “moved beyond” race. As keynoter at the 2004 Democratic Party national convention, Barack Obama heartlessly pledged his and his party’s allegiance to this racism with the proclamation that: “There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America ― there’s the United States of America.” Then, in his presidential campaign, Obama ludicrously declared that African Americans had “already come 90 percent of the way” to equality. But for everyday African Americans, the facts speak otherwise.
The real condition of Black America
On the 2007 eve of the current depression the median Black family’s net worth was only six percent that of a white family. This was down from nine percent in 2004, 12% in 1990, 15% in 1980, and the peak of 25% in 1970—the end of the great struggles of the 1960s. And since “housing-bubble” lenders especially preyed on national minorities and women while Black unemployment is about double that for whites, this great gulf has now surely widened.
In 1974, median Black incomes were 63 percent of those of whites. In 2004, they had fallen to 58 percent of a typical white family’s. And today, Blacks are more than three times as likely to be homeless than whites are.
Over two-thirds of “middle class” Black youth now do worse off economically than their parents did. Moreover, while the education system was never fully integrated, school re-segregation has been going on for more than two decades. Thus, approximately 40% of Black and Latino students now attend schools that are 90 to 100 percent minority. This means separate but unequal education: inequality of opportunity.
Inequality in health care, with the life expectancy of African Americans five years shorter than of whites.
Disproportionate mass incarceration of Blacks and other national minorities as a “solution“ to the chronic unemployment of declining American capitalism. In fact, the U.S. now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, with the prison population exploding from about 300,000 to more than 2 million during the past 30 years, while crime rates have fluctuated and actually gone down. A huge number of these men and women are victims of the “war on drugs,“ which was intensified under Democrat Bill Clinton. And while people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at similar rates, statistics show that in some states African Americans comprise 80%-90% of all drug offenders actually sent to prison. Meanwhile, on the streets, Blacks are 3.8 times more likely to be killed by the cops in “justified homicides” than whites are.
Two Paths
There’s deafening silence in Washington about this special and growing oppression of the African American masses, as well as of other minorities. Affirmative action/targeted programs, desegregation, attacking the racism of the criminal justice system, etc, just aren’t talked about because there’s no independent mass movement forcing the politicians to even talk, let alone act. In his Audacity of Hope…, Obama put this bipartisan opposition thusly: “An emphasis on universal, as opposed to race-specific, programs isn’t just good policy: It’s also good politics.” At root of this is the fact that the Democratic Party just as much represents the capitalist class as the Republicans, and that the capitalist bloodsuckers profit from racial oppression.
But the working class is dragged down by the special oppression of national minorities, women and immigrants. It’s therefore in the interest of all working people to stand up in defense of African Americans and other specially oppressed sections of the people, as well as to raise special demands in their interest. This is the path to forging the multi-racial unity that was shown in the December strike in Georgia prisons (which was the largest in U.S. history), and this is the path to achieving the kind of multi-racial solidarity we see in the movement demanding justice for Native American woodcarver John Williams, who was assassinated in broad daylight by SPD officer Birk.
Life has revealed the actual “universal” programs Obama favored in his Audacity of Hope…: endless imperialist wars; a government of secrecy, spying and political repression; no serious action to deal with the mounting environmental crises; budget cuts and austerity for the masses while the rich are handed $trillions; speed-up and wage-cuts in the workplaces; and all the while pushing African American and other national minorities backwards.
This is the vicious bipartisan program of the bourgeoisie, and the workers and poor have almost no organization that is not controlled by the bourgeoisie (including the trade union bureaucracies) with which to fight back. But the Black people in the Jim Crow South didn’t initially have much organization either. So on their own, and in the course struggle, they built it. And it was by using the power of organization that they were able to spread their movement, link it up with other struggles in the country and globally, and eventually profoundly shake up and change the old political realities. Such is our task today.
Seattle Anti-Imperialist Committee
January 7, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011. Meet at Garfield High School, 23rd and Jefferson.
MLK Day workshops 9:30am, rally at 11:00am, and MARCH at 12:00 NOON!
Sponsored by the Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Committee