Give the Candidates the MLK Test, by Glen Ford

[eridani]

Black Agenda Report:
The journal of African American political thought and action
Presidential Politics 2008—the Issues
Issue for Jan 16–22, 2008
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php

Give the Candidates the MLK Test
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

The "hope-la" and "change-la" emanating from the Obama and Clinton campaigns turned sour as Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday approached. The two front-running candidates and their corporate media-megaphones found themselves on shaky ground when the subject turned to the actual history of MLK and his antagonist/ally, President Lyndon Johnson. The vapidity of the debate revealed, once again, the shallowness of American political discourse, which has been stripped bare of relevance to past, present or future realities. Fortunately, Dr. King left a voluminous record of his own political analyses. Rather than allow them to blather further, the candidates should be tested on the question: What would Dr. King do? All but one would fail.

"What would Dr. King do?"

The corporate media-mangled Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton "debate" over the relative contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and President Lyndon Johnson coincides with the birthday of the actual Martin Luther King. Since the corporate media is totally incapable of covering or even tolerating the raising of any issues of substance, and because both Obama and Clinton avoid real issues, real facts, and real history like the plague, we urge that thinking voters put the candidates to the Martin Luther King Test. What would Dr. King do, if he were alive?

Dr. King said the "triple evils" of his day were militarism, racism, and economic exploitation. In his brilliant April 4, 1967 speech at New York's Riverside Church, Dr. King showed the interaction of all three "evils" in the world; that these evils worked together against the interests of humanity. King declared that the Vietnam War, and other U.S. wars in the Third World, were evil manifestations of American militarism and an attempt to prevent other peoples from making "their arrival as full men" in the world—a reference to the underlying racism and economic exploitative nature of U.S. foreign policy.

In addition, Dr. King said he was "compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor" in the U.S. King noted the "shining moment" when, after years of struggle, President Johnson became a collaborator with the Civil Rights Movement, pushing through Congress both civil rights and anti-poverty legislation. But then "came the buildup in Vietnam," and King knew, in his words, "that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube."

"Obama and Clinton have already failed the test."

What would Dr. King say, today, about the two quarreling corporate candidates, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton? There can be no doubt but that he would judge them as he did his former presidential ally, Lyndon Johnson. The Iraq war has taken at least a million Iraqi lives, as the Vietnam War had killed one million Vietnamese, by Dr. King's reckoning in 1967. It is an attempt to prevent Iraqis from exercising control of their own land and resources, just as King believed the Americans were attempting to do in Vietnam. And the Iraq War, just like the Vietnam War, insures that the U.S. will "never invest the necessary funds or energies" to rebuild America's cities, restore the social safety net, or provide universal health care.

Senators Obama and Clinton fail the Martin Luther King Test, miserably. Obama wants to add 100,000 troops to the U.S. Armed Forces, at a cost of over $100 billion—even as he proposes partial withdrawals from Iraq. Clinton seeks 80,000 new soldiers and Marines. As sure as the sun rises, a bigger U.S. military means more wars, and no money for domestic "change."

The only candidate who would pass the Martin Luther King Test is Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, whose platform for peace, truly universal health care, a living wage, and an end to corporate domination of American life harkens back to that "shining moment" in the Sixties that King mentioned, when there were "hopes" and "new beginnings." But the corporate media has caused the Kucinich campaign to disappear from coverage and televised debate.

Lyndon Johnson finally failed the Martin Luther King Test, in Vietnam. Obama and Clinton have already failed the test, through their own policy proposals. Neither has earned the right to speak of Dr. King's legacy.

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at: Glen.Ford {at} BlackAgendaReport.com.

[Egalitarian]

1. K&R

Nice article to hand out on Monday.

[Angiewnsb]

2. Now Your Turn to Take King's Challenge

Yes, the candidates and mainstream media have failed the MLK test.
Now why don't you try your hand at King's Challenge - and see whether you
can take to heart the words he spoke just 4 days before he was gunned down.
Here are those words:

KING'S CHALLENGE

“FIRST, WE ARE CHALLENGED TO DEVELOP A WORLD PERSPECTIVE. No individual can live alone, no nation can live alone, and anyone who feels that he can live alone is sleeping through a revolution. The world in which we live is geographically one. The challenge that we face today is to make it one in terms of brotherhood. . . . Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. . .

WE ARE CHALLENGED TO RID OUR NATION AND THE WORLD OF POVERTY. Like a monstrous octopus, poverty spreads its nagging, prehensile tentacles into hamlets and villages all over our world. Two-thirds of the people of the world go to bed hungry tonight. They are ill-housed; they are ill-nourished; they are shabbily clad. I’ve seen it in Latin America; I’ve seen it in Africa; I’ve seen this poverty in Asia. . .How can one avoid being depressed when he sees with his own eyes evidences of millions of people going to bed hungry at night? How can one avoid being depressed when he sees with his own eyes God’s children sleeping on the sidewalks at night? In Bombay more than a million people sleep on the sidewalks every night. In Calcutta more than six hundred thousand sleep on the sidewalks every night. They have no beds to sleep in; they have no houses to go in. How can one avoid being depressed when he discovers that out of India’s population of more than five hundred million people, some four hundred and eighty million make an annual income of less than ninety dollars a year. And most of them have never seen a doctor or a dentist.

AS I NOTICED THESE THINGS, SOMETHING WITHIN ME CRIED OUT, "CAN WE IN AMERICA STAND IDLY BY AND NOT BE CONCERNED?" And an answer came: "Oh no!" Because the destiny of the United States is tied up with the destiny of India and every other nation. . .Not only do we see poverty abroad, I would remind you that in our own nation there are about forty million people who are poverty-stricken. . .this is America’s opportunity to help bridge the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. The question is whether America will do it. There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will. In a few weeks some of us are coming to Washington to see if the will is still alive or if it is alive in this nation. We are coming to Washington in a Poor People’s Campaign. . . We are coming to demand that the government address itself to the problem of poverty. . . yes, it will be a Poor People’s Campaign. This is the question facing America. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation.

AMERICA HAS NOT MET ITS OBLIGATIONS AND ITS RESPONSIBILITIES TO THE POOR. One day we will have to stand before the God of history and we will talk in terms of things we’ve done. Yes, we will be able to say we built gargantuan bridges to span the seas, we built gigantic buildings to kiss the skies. Yes, we made our submarines to penetrate oceanic depths. We brought into being many other things with our scientific and technological power. It seems that I can hear the God of history saying, "That was not enough! But I was hungry, and ye fed me not. I was naked, and ye clothed me not. I was devoid of a decent sanitary house to live in, and ye provided no shelter for me. And consequently, you cannot enter the kingdom of greatness. If ye do it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye do it unto me." That’s the question facing America today."

(The full text of Dr. King’s sermon entitled “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution” containing the above quotes can be read here: http://tinyurl.com/82npj . Dr. King delivered it at the National Cathedral, Washington, D.C., on March 31, 1968, and you can listen to two audio excerpts of the sermon at that same link.)

Today, forty years after Dr. King gave that speech, 41 percent of humanity still defecate in the streets because they have no access to sanitation, one-quarter are forced to live without electricity, and 30,000 kids DIE UNNECESSARILY EACH DAY (see my website for the proof, along with an article about the statistical accuracy of such numbers generally at http://tinyurl.com/yttp3s ). If you are indeed up for King’s challenge, you’ll need to seek out that world perspective he spoke about and get the real front page news on your own, because news which affects the largest number of people in the most serious ways is only rarely covered by television shows and newspapers!! This website, www.WhatNewsShouldBe.com, is one of the places you can find it. It is only when information concerning the most pressing issues facing humanity is widely known that the needless death and suffering can be stopped. There is enough for everyone ( http://tinyurl.com/ytmfd3 ). Please pass it on. Thank you and Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!

Angie
www.WhatNewsShouldBe.com

[eridani]

3. Excellent first post!

Welcome to DU!

[DesertRat]

4. Only Kucinich would pass the MLK test

Thanks for the great post. :kick:

"The only candidate who would pass the Martin Luther King Test is Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, whose platform for peace, truly universal health care, a living wage, and an end to corporate domination of American life harkens back to that "shining moment" in the Sixties that King mentioned, when there were "hopes" and "new beginnings." But the corporate media has caused the Kucinich campaign to disappear from coverage and televised debate."

[tomreedtoon]

5. JEDNE: John Edwards Does Not Exist.

Especially to Glen Ford, who is obviously biased. He's probably happy to make the whitest guy in the race the Invisible Man for once.

[eridani]

6. He's still allowed into the presidential debates, no?

Ford thinks that just fighting corporations isn't enough; you have to fight the notion that the US can afford to continue to afford to dominate the rest of the world through military force. Kucinich is still the only candidate who thinks of that as even an issue, however commendable Edwards' populism is otherwise.