[OccupyCU] Fwd: Thursday: Come for a discussion of Racism in the U.S. and the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington

Thu Aug 15 16:53:38 UTC 2013

Hey all,
This event is going on tonight.
We are trying to build for the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington.
If people are interested in going to the march, let me know:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: C-U Socialists (ISO) <info at newsletters.isouc.org>
Date: Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 8:00 PM
Subject: Thursday: Come for a discussion of Racism in the U.S. and the 50th
Anniversary of the March on Washington
To: japhillippe at gmail.com

[image: The International Socialist Organization] <http://www.isouc.org>

When: Thursday, August 15, at 7:00 pm

Where: UIUC campus, Armory building (505 E. Armory), Room 133

We will be watching a video of Dr. Keeanga-Yamhatta Taylor (a member of the
ISO and soon-to-be professor at UIUC) speaking with Airickca Gordon-Taylor,
cousin of Emmett Till and executive director of the Mamie Till Mobley
foundation. They spoke together the week after the George Zimmerman
verdict. We will follow that up with discussion of the state of racism in
the U.S. and how to fight against it, including discussion of our plans to
go to the 50th Anniversary of the Marrch on Washington on August 24.

We are trying to put together a group of people who are interested in going
to the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, in Washington, D.C., on
August 24. So if you are interested, please let us know by emailing
japhillippe at gmail.com:

50th Anniversary of the March on
Washington<http://nationalactionnetwork.net/mow/>
------------------------------
 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington

[image: mowflyer-8613]

_______________________________________________________

http://socialistworker.org/2013/08/01/why-were-still-marching
Why we're still marching

Fifty years after the historic March on Washington, the struggle for
justice continues.
 August 1, 2013

[image: Protesters gathered in the wake of the not-guilty verdict for
George Zimmerman]Protesters gathered in the wake of the not-guilty verdict
for George Zimmerman

THE 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is one of the most famous
moments of the 20th century. Every schoolchild learns about Martin Luther
King's "I Have a Dream" speech. The image of the crowd in front of the
Lincoln Memorial, packed into every available space around the Reflecting
Pool, is instantly recognizable.

But this high point in the struggle for justice is almost always treated as
a matter of *history*--a powerful, important, inspiring event, yes, but one
that belongs to the past. After all, we're told, King and the civil rights
marchers were challenging a system of legalized segregation where Blacks
had to sit at the back of the bus--whereas in the United States of the 21st
century, a Black man sits in the Oval Office.

But 1963 and 2013 are not so very far apart. Many of the strongly felt
demands that brought a quarter million people to Washington, D.C., 50 years
ago remain unfulfilled. King's dream of a society rising "to the sunlit
path of racial justice" remains just that: a dream, not a reality.

The murder of Trayvon Martin last year and the acquittal of his murderer
George Zimmerman last month are further proof that the struggle to achieve
the dream must continue. The fact that Martin died because a self-appointed
neighborhood watchman decided he didn't belong in a gated community in
central Florida after dark would be grimly familiar to the civil rights
marchers of 50 years ago. So would the fact that Zimmerman got away
scot-free after stalking and shooting an unarmed Black teenager.

There were already plans in the works to commemorate the 50th anniversary
of the March on Washington in late August. But the not-guilty verdict
delivered by the nearly all-white jury in Sanford, Fla., has given that
commemoration an urgent purpose--to send the message, loud and clear, that
racism is not a thing of the past, and that it's time to confront it in the
here and now.

Like Martin's killing last year, the Zimmerman verdict not only outraged
millions of people, but caused a surge of protest and activism in numerous
cities. Organizing for the August 24 anniversary events in Washington and
elsewhere can be another step toward focusing that anger and discontent.

Those who want to follow in the footsteps of the civil rights movement
today should use this opportunity to deepen the connections between the
people who are beginning the work of challenging the many faces of racism
and injustice in the U.S. today.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THE MARCHERS of 1963 *did* bring about a different society through their
struggles. Having an African American president would have been
inconceivable in a previous era. The civil rights movement did break the
back of Jim Crow segregation and opened opportunities for Black Americans
in many different social spheres.

But for all the signs of progress achieved by the civil rights movement,
it's also clear that racism continues to deform American society.

By just about any measure, African Americans suffer economic, political and
social discrimination and disadvantage. Blacks are 13 percent of the
population, but account for 39 percent of the U.S. prison population. In
economic good times and bad, Black unemployment is roughly twice the
overall average--and in the wake of the Great Recession, joblessness and
poverty afflict African Americans in many urban areas at levels not seen
since the Great Depression.

All of this was true months ago as preparations for the 50th anniversary of
the march began. But events of the last few months--not only the Zimmerman
verdict, but the U.S. Supreme Court's blow to the Voting Rights Act, one of
the main achievements of the civil rights movement--have given the August
24 japhillippe at gmail.comdemonstration what King, in 1963, called "the
fierce urgency of now."

Rather than remembering 50-year-old speeches and slogans, marchers this
year will have immediate questions on their mind, too--stopping
restrictions on voting rights, repealing the racist "Stand Your Ground"
laws in place in nearly two-thirds of the 50 states, confronting the
continuing crisis of unemployment and poverty.

Of course, the experience of the struggle is very different for marchers in
2013. The 1963 march was a landmark for a movement that already involved
millions of people. It was a national crescendo after almost a decade of
civil rights advances and defeats, beginning in Montgomery and Little Rock,
and passing through Greensboro and McComb and Albany and more. Among the
marchers in Washington were tens of thousands of people who had sat in at
lunch counters, registered voters, organized against job discrimination and
endured beatings by racists.

Today's march will start from a much lower level of organization and
activity. Much of the widespread anger at Trayvon Martin's killing never
got turned into action. Activism around this and other racist outrages has
tended to rise and fall quickly. Thus, the protests against Martin's murder
last spring helped inspire intense campaigns to win justice for the victims
of police violence, in New York City, Chicago and Oakland, to name a few
places--but it was difficult for these localized initiatives to link up
nationally or maintain ongoing organization.

So the anti-racist struggle has a far less definite shape in 2013. But
that's all the more reason to seize the opportunity of the national
mobilization this August--to bring the struggles that *are* taking place
into contact with each other, to connect the networks of people who
responded to the Zimmerman verdict in different cities, and to draw those
who are new to activism into more regular activism.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THE LEADING forces involved in this year's March on Washington will be
mainstream civil rights organizations like the NAACP and National Action
Network (NAN). SocialistWorker.org has been
critjaphillippe at gmail.comicalof these groups at many points in recent
years, particularly when they
avoided challenging Barack Obama and his administration for failing to take
any action on issues affecting Black America.

At a press conference in July, Obama spoke powerfully about his reaction to
the Zimmerman verdict, the issue of racial profiling and even the "history
of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws." But the
remarks were most notable because Obama has said almost nothing about these
issues during his presidency.

Black America has suffered the brunt of the economic crisis, a generation
of young Black men is still being criminalized by the New Jim Crow, a
social crisis is tearing apart the poorest African American neighborhoods
in big cities, one state after another is trying to resurrect restrictions
on Black voting rights not seen since long before 1963--and the country's
first Black president has been silent.

And what's more, Black political figures--with some brave and honorable
exceptions--have defended the silence.

Rev. Al Sharpton, the leader of NAN, spoke out after the Zimmerman verdict,
and NAN called for vigils on July 20 that brought out people in more than
100 cities. Yet Sharpton led the attack against African American critics of
Obama like philosopher Cornel West and talk show host Tavis Smiley when
they dared to speak out--during the 2012 election campaign, no less--about
Black poverty and the need to challenge racism.

No one should forget this record. But it's still a welcome development if
mainstream groups put resources into organizing for August 24.

First of all, this will widen the mobilization, both for the Washington
march and for anti-racist demonstrations generally. The experience of the
July 20 vigils called by NAN, for example, is that they brought out a range
of people who hadn't gone to earlier protests. It's all to the good if
participation in anti-racist protests is bigger and broader.

Plus, groups like NAN and the NAACP or political figures like Sharpton and
Rev. Jesse Jackson are talking and acting in ways that will lead their
supporters to question why they refused to speak up before, why they
avoided action before--and, now, why they want to limit the aims of this
march and future mobilizations so that Obama and the Democrats aren't put
on the spot.

That's another certainty about the March on Washington: The Obama White
House will put pressure on march organizers to avoid criticism of the
president and focus their speeches on attacking the Republican
Neanderthals, to downplay institutional racism and go along with the
mantras about individual responsibility.

All this dovetails with the agenda that mainstream civil rights groups have
followed for years. They won't suddenly transform themselves for August 24.

But it's also true--as is so often the case for big demonstrations--that
the speeches from the platform in Washington will be less important than
the convictions and aspirations of the thousands of people who will attend
the march.

For them, the March on Washington will also be about their decision to
attend, the discussions they were involved in before the demonstration and
on the way there, the connections they make with other marchers, and the
commitment they will hopefully make to stay active after August 24.

Fifty years after the civil rights movement's historic March on Washington,
we still need to be marching against racism and injustice. The not-guilty
verdict in Sanford, Fla., gave us a bitter example of what happens when
bigotry and hate aren't confronted. But the great legacy of the 1960s
struggles provide an inspiring glimpse of what we *can* achieve when masses
of people organize to fight for a better world.

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