Building Paths Toward Social and Economic Change

By Natalia Salinas, Chair of the NASW-CA SASJ Council

When I think of how Martin Luther King is praised it reminds me of how Mandela is praised. These two figures are often compared for their fight for a more just world. They stood for equality, anti-racism, and social justice. However, there is a careful retelling of history by the ruling class. Today MLK celebrations seem to divert attention from the fact that there is more inequality today than ever before in U.S. history. There is also just as much inequality in South Africa today as there was under apartheid.

From Black and Latin youth being shot by cops on the streets to high incarceration rates,
systemic racism is clear. Who benefits from racism and what will it take to really eliminate it? King started to talk about this in his later years as he developed a class analysis. The retelling of King’s life however focuses on events and speeches from 1963 to 1965 prior to insights developed later in his life. Events and speeches from 1965 to 1968 are non-existent in the retelling of King’s life.

The lesson we are “supposed to learn” from King is that pacifism and reforms are the best approaches to fighting injustice. The school curriculum places emphasis on his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, but leaves out his struggles against war and economic inequality later in his life.

In his speech “Beyond Vietnam” in 1967, King called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” He asked why the U.S. was suppressing revolutions “of the shirtless and barefoot people” in the Third World, instead of supporting them.

King’s death triggered over 100 riots that led to additional reforms. King saw the world on the verge of a human rights revolution and talked about this in his last public speech “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” in 1968. This speech was given in Memphis, TN, and primarily concerns the Memphis sanitation striking workers. In the last months of his life King was organizing the Poor People’s Campaign where he was working to assemble a “multi-racial army of the poor” to confront Congress.

“Why are there 40 million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy.” — MLK, Jr.

King was more than just a civil right leader and it is time for us to pick up the torch.

This year the Martin Luther King Coalition of Greater Los Angeles, as part of the National 4-Mile March Coalition of students and young people, joined the annual MLK Parade. The 4-Mile March Coalition organized marches and actions in over 20 cities across the United States on King’s birthday to demand an end to police violence and murders of African American men, women and children. 

In leading up to the MLK Parade the MLK Coalition expressed concerns to parade organizers about how the MLK Parades had become saturated with military or military-oriented contingents. Concerns were also expressed about the highly publicized participation of Sheriff Baca in the Kingdom Day parade last year, after Federal investigators had uncovered massive violations of human rights and the standard use of excessive force against inmates in the county jails under his administration. The MLK Parade itself stood in contradiction to what Dr. King actually stood for, and what he and many others worked, sacrificed and even died for.

The MLK Coalition urged parade organizers that the Kingdom Day Parades should help to highlight some of the basic conditions and struggles that King would certainly be applying himself to today. The MLK Coalition united around a general platform to create this possibility. The MLK Coalition called the community contingent to march because “it is our duty to fight for our freedom; it is our duty to win.” The coalition received the support of more than 70 other organizations, including the NASW-CA Social Action Social Justice Council, to form a powerful contingent at the parade.

The MLK Coalition has, from the beginning, taken a firm stance against militarism and militarization — both at home and abroad. The coalition is firmly committed to ending the perverse use of excessive and deadly force by police agencies in African-American and other communities. The coalition is committed, as Dr. King was, to opening other options for Black and Brown youths for education, housing and income other than service in the U.S. military.

“We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.” — MLK, Jr.