hillary, mlk and what is it really all about?

so, I've been thinking about starting a blog to comment on political topics and items in the news. every day, it seems like there is something I feel like spouting off about, but have thus far managed to keep my comments to myself or else only impose them on the unfortunates who happen to stop by my table in front of stroh's on abbot kinney while I'm reading the paper in the morning. it's been a fairly easy thing to procrastinate on the creation of this blog, I've been aided by my natural disinclination to take on any unnecessary commitments or obligations, and am very aware that a blog can be a nagging demand on one's time - having allowed my old blog to go neglected for ages and ages and atrophy into a mere storehouse for various little art projects and announcements, that don't quite fit in on my website. I've also refrained from starting a blog of this sort because I'm well aware that the internet/blogosphere suffers from a terrible glut of blogs by people expressing viewpoints that readers will either agree with or disagree with but seldom be swayed by, and not only does this add to my general belief in the futility of making the effort, it also brings up the issue of ego and pride because of course I don't want to cast myself in with all the other quacks and self-righteous pundits.

nevertheless, I find myself with a bit extra free time today and since I seem to be lacking in what little restraint I usually have, I've given into the temptation and am beginning this blog - we'll see how diligently I stick with it.

today is martin luther king jr day and that will serve as the impetus for this initial entry. not specifically mlk, or the holiday, but what I want to comment on are the accounts of hillary clinton's statement at the abyssinian baptist church in harlem yesterday. every report I've read about this has had the same quote by her regarding her teenage experience of going on a trip with members of her church youth group to hear dr king speak in chicago; "It was a transforming experience for me, He made it very clear that the civil rights movement was about economic justice.'' here's an latimes article and here's one from the washington post. but there are countless others (actually, according to the google news search I just did, there are 778 related stories - but I think "countless" was a fair estimate). I find this unsettling. I mean, yeah sure economic justice was a part of it, but there was more to it wasn't there ? maybe not...

so anyway, I did a little research, first I found this webpage, that explained to me just what it was that hillary heard. apparently she attended an event hosted by the Chicago Sunday Evening Club where king delivered his "Remaining Awake through a Revolution" sermon on April 15, 1962 (which incidentally, was a day after my grandmother's 55th birthday and three days prior to my sister's first - I believe neither of them however, were in chicago that evening).

I can understand how an impressionable teenage girl would come away from that speech with the impression that "the civil rights movement was about economic justice.'' quite a lot of the speech does in fact focus on the importance of overcoming poverty - you can read the whole speech here, but if you're in a hurry, I'll include a brief pertinent excerpt;

There is another thing closely related to racism that I would like to mention as another challenge. 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.

he goes on to talk about the opportunity that america (the us) has "to help bridge the gulf between the haves and the have-nots." but the important thing to keep in mind is that this is only one part of his speech and this speech is only one of many that he gave and the eradication of poverty and pursuit of economic justice is only one part of the civil rights movement.

don't get me wrong - I'm all for the eradication of poverty - I think I'm more in favor of it than hillary - way more. but I think that reading these words she spoke yesterday, quoted over and over in news articles, ellicited a negative reaction in me for a few reasons.

first, I really believe that the civil rights movement is about much more than "economic justice," I believe that it is about social justice and political justice and racial, ethnic and gender justice. I believe that it is about changing the very nature of the way our society and culture think - to allow for acceptance of our fellow human beings even when they are to greater or lesser degrees different than we ourselves are, or even when they believe in things or see things differently than we ourselves do. hillary clinton's statement, by focusing on economic justice cheapens the civil rights movement by portraying it as a materially based rather than a spiritually based thing.

second, I can't help but interpret her words as a jaded use of mlk's legacy to further her own agenda. I don't believe for a minute that hillary's idea of economic justice is remotely similar to mlk's vision of ending poverty through our nation's wealth and the 20th century's scientific and technological advances. hillary wants improve our economy, and she will try to do what she deems necessary to accomplish that and if history and precedent is any gauge she will do that at the expense of not only our most poor citizens, but also the impoverished throughout the world - and as the economy improves, the actual beneficiaries will be those who already had and once again the have nots will be left behind. mlk was looking at the big picture - he was not talking about improving our national economy for the sake of our nation's wealth, he was talking about ending poverty throughout the world - using our nation's wealth and power to end poverty at home and abroad - and not, by the way just economic poverty, but the poverty of opportunity (" if a man doesn’t have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists.") and finally, the thing that really bugged me about all these articles quoting hillary's comment is that the more times I read it, the more I kept expecting to read about somebody questioning it, but I haven't found one single instance of even a raised eyebrow over the supposition that "the civil rights movement was about economic justice.'' - and again, I'm not saying that the pursuit of economic justice is not an important part of the civil rights movement, but I am saying that it is not the only part or necessarily even the primary part, and I think it's important to ask just what a politician means when they use that phrase - the implication from the way the news articles presented her comments was that economic justice (whatever she meant by that) is what mlk and the civil rights movement were working for - but that misses the point of so many other social and cultural and political aspects to the movement... or at least I think it does.

so that's it, I'd be interested to hear any responses to this. maybe I'm just naive when it comes to things like this and maybe "it [really i]s the economy stupid" and maybe all people want is wealth or the perception of it for themselves at any cost, let the chips fall where they may, and maybe all the other stuff is just fancy talk. I honestly don't know. but I've always thought the civil rights movement was about change of a different sort than mere economics.

which does bring me to what I see as a tragically missed opportunity by the clinton camp - although a telling one - as I said, I think it's fair and unsurprising that a teenage girl would walk away after hearing king's "Remaining Awake through a Revolution" sermon and think that the civil rights movement was only a call economic justice, but it seems that as an adult running for office and alluding to the experience publically, it seems that she - or at least one of her people - would've reread it to see what else he was saying, and had they done so, they would've found this;

I want to say one other challenge that we face is simply that we must find an alternative to war and bloodshed. Anyone who feels, and there are still a lot of people who feel that way, that war can solve the social problems facing mankind is sleeping through a great revolution. President Kennedy said on one occasion, "Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind." The world must hear this. I pray God that America will hear this before it is too late, because today we’re fighting a war.

I am convinced that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world. Our involvement in the war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva Accord. It has strengthened the military-industrial complex; it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation. It has put us against the self-determination of a vast majority of the Vietnamese people, and put us in the position of protecting a corrupt regime that is stacked against the poor.

It has played havoc with our domestic destinies. This day we are spending five hundred thousand dollars to kill every Vietcong soldier. Every time we kill one we spend about five hundred thousand dollars while we spend only fifty-three dollars a year for every person characterized as poverty-stricken in the so-called poverty program, which is not even a good skirmish against poverty.

Not only that, it has put us in a position of appearing to the world as an arrogant nation. And here we are ten thousand miles away from home fighting for the so-called freedom of the Vietnamese people when we have not even put our own house in order. And we force young black men and young white men to fight and kill in brutal solidarity. Yet when they come back home that can’t hardly live on the same block together.

ok, you get the idea, and I'm sure you don't need me to suggest you replace the vietnam references to iraq ones. it seems to me, that if hillary was really against the war, she would've brought up this part of king's speech too... but I don't think she really is against the war, except when it works to her benefit - and I don't think she felt that bringing this comparison up would've worked to accomplish her goals - because she's not against war - in fact I think she sees a lot of economic advantages to it, and so it would be awkward to touch on mlk's statements, so she didn't bother. to be fair, obama is pretty ok with the whole war in general thing too, much more than I'd like him to be - kucinich is the only one who truly believes in peace, and alas I don't think he stands much of a chance...

oh, and by the way - just because I love a little math problem, I wanted to update mlk's figures. it turns out that figuring the cost of the war in iraq at 487 billion (I looked it up here and rounded down) and the number of iraqi deaths at 150, 000 (I know there're lots of uncertainties about that figure, but it seems a pretty reasonable estimate) then we as a nation of tax payers it costs us 3.25 million dollars to kill an iraqi. hmmm - there's somethin' to think about.

and just for fun, I used the figure 500,000 for the number of iraqi deaths - and even if that estimate is the accurate one, we still pay about a million per scalp.

happy mlk day!