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<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT color=#280099><FONT
size=4 face="Arial, sans-serif"><STRONG>Don’t You Dare Conflate MLK and
Obama</STRONG></FONT></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT size=4
face="Arial, sans-serif"><STRONG>by BAR executive editor Glen
Ford</STRONG></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in" align=center><FONT
color=#2323dc><FONT size=4><STRONG>“<FONT face="Arial, sans-serif"><I>Had King
survived, his break with Obama would have come
early.”</I></FONT></STRONG></FONT></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT size=4><STRONG><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif">Back in 1964, under prodding from a BBC interviewer,
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. predicted that a Black person might be </FONT><FONT
color=#0000ff><U><A href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku_6hT6gHJM"><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif">elected president</FONT></A></U></FONT><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif"> “in 25 years or less.” Four years later, shortly
before his assassination, King </FONT><FONT color=#0000ff><U><A
href="http://www.scu.edu/ethics/architects-of-peace/Belafonte/essay.html"><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif">confided</FONT></A></U></FONT><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif"> to actor/activist Harry Belafonte that he had “come to
believe we're integrating into a burning house." We now see that the two notions
are not at all contradictory. At least </FONT><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif"><I>some</I></FONT><FONT face="Arial, sans-serif">
African Americans have achieved deep penetration of the very pinnacles of white
power structures – integrating the White House, itself – while conditions of
life for masses of Black folks deteriorate and the society as a whole falls into
deep decay.</FONT></STRONG></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT size=4><STRONG><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif">The fires lit by the “giant triplets of racism, extreme
materialism, and militarism” that Dr. King identified in his 1967 “</FONT><FONT
color=#0000ff><U><A
href="http://academic.udayton.edu/race/2008electionandracism/raceandracism/race18.htm"><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif">Beyond Vietnam: Breaking the
Silence</FONT></A></U></FONT><FONT face="Arial, sans-serif">” speech are
consuming the world, now stoked by a Black arsonist-in-chief. Domestic poverty
hovers only a fraction of a percentage below the </FONT><FONT
color=#0000ff><U><A
href="http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3580"><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif">levels of 1965</FONT></A></U></FONT><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif">, with “extreme poverty” the highest on record. Black
household wealth has collapsed to one-twentieth that of whites. Today, more
Black men are under the control of the criminal justice system than were slaves
in the decade before the Civil War, according to Michelle Alexander, author of
</FONT><FONT face="Arial, sans-serif"><I>The New Jim Crow</I></FONT><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif">. </FONT></STRONG></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT size=4
face="Arial, sans-serif"><STRONG>The intervening years have shown that Dr.
King’s 1960s visions were not in conflict: the rooms at the top floors of the
national house may have been integrated, but the building still burns.
</STRONG></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT size=4
face="Arial, sans-serif"><STRONG>The deepening crisis of capitalism, the triumph
of Wall Street finance over industrial capital, the increasing imperial
reversion to international lawlessness in a desperate bid to maintain global
supremacy – all this was predictable under the laws of political economy. Had
the assassin’s bullet not found him, Dr. King would have continued his
implacable resistance to these unfolding evils, rejecting Barack Obama’s
invasions, drones and Kill Lists with the same moral fervor and political
courage that he broke with Lyndon Johnson over the Vietnam War. Absolutely
nothing in King’s life and work indicates otherwise.</STRONG></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in" align=center><FONT
color=#2323dc><FONT size=4><STRONG>“<FONT face="Arial, sans-serif"><I>The very
notion of a grand austerity bargain with the Right would have been anathema to
MLK.”</I></FONT></STRONG></FONT></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT size=4><STRONG><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif">One school of thought holds that corporate servants
like Obama could not have taken root in Black America if Dr. King, Malcolm X and
a whole cadre of slain and imprisoned leaders of the Sixties had not been
replaced by opportunistic representatives of a grasping Black acquisitive class.
In any event, had King survived, his break with Obama would have come early.
Surely, the Dr. King who, in his 1967 “</FONT><FONT color=#0000ff><U><A
href="http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/where_do_we_go_from_here_delivered_at_the_11th_annual_sclc_convention/"><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif">Where Do We Go from Here</FONT></A></U></FONT><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif">” speech called for a </FONT><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif">guaranteed annual income would never have abided
Obama’s targeting of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in the weeks before
his 2009 inauguration. Forty-five years ago, King’s position was clear: “Our
emphasis must be twofold: We must create full employment, or we must create
incomes.” The very notion of a grand austerity bargain with the Right would have
been anathema to MLK.</FONT></STRONG></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT size=4
face="Arial, sans-serif"><STRONG>Were Martin alive, he would skewer the putative
leftists and their “lesser evil” rationales for backing the corporatist,
warmongering Obama. As both a theologian and a “revolutionary democrat,” as
Temple University’s Prof. Anthony Monteiro has described him, MLK had no problem
calling evil by its name – and in explicate triplicate. His militant approach to
non-violent direct action required him to confront the underlying contradictions
of society through the methodical application of creative tension. He would make
Wall Street scream, and attempt to render the nation ungovernable under the
dictatorship of the Lords of Capital. And he would deliver a withering
condemnation of the base corruption and self-serving that saturates the Black
Misleadership Class.</STRONG></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT size=4
face="Arial, sans-serif"><STRONG>He would spend his birthday preparing a
massive, disruptive action at the
Inauguration.</STRONG></FONT></P></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>