The Hard Truth – Wanted: An MLKing Day of J-U-S-T-I-C-E!
19th December 2011 · 0 Comments
By Min. J. Kojo Livingston
Contributing Columnist
A month from now people will gather across the United States to commemorate the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the movement he symbolized. Most of the activities will crap; a parade of bigwigs and public officials who never were involved in social justice work and who probably spend more time selling us out than helping us.
Now, the government has taken over, so you know it’s crap. They have the National Day of Service. Go to the “Day of Service” website and you will find a call for “Drum Majors for Service.” Talk about a slap! These creeps actually altered King’s words to make the day “safe” and non-offensive to racists others who oppose what King really stood, lived, fought and died for.
King talked about being a Drum Major for JUSTICE.
The Day of Service crowd says that Dr. King should be remembered by picking up trash and doing maintenance and other projects that won’t offend anyone and that won’t mention things like racism, discrimination or unjust wars then or now. In other words, they want King’s legacy to be that of another Black janitor or maintenance man.
Let’s be clear: There was trash that needed picking up when King was alive, but that’s not where he put his efforts. There were plenty of “safer” things that Dr. King could have done other than confronting racism and injustice. He chose a different path in life. He would choose a different path today, because racism and injustice are still alive and still need to be eradicated.
It would be more honorable to simply ignore Dr. King than to misrepresent his legacy.
Speaking of legacy, some folks are saying that we should support the Day of Service garbage because Coretta and the Kids are down with it. If Coretta pushed this, then she was simply wrong. My God, folks! Think! If she said honor him by joining the Klan would we do that? Look at what he DID and what he SAID! See if that lines up with what will happen on his day in most cities.
King’s kids are, for the most part, an embarrassment to himself, the movement and the race. They’ve made a spectacle of themselves repeatedly, even fighting like vultures over his dead carcass in public courtroom battles and trying to pimp his words and images. The fruit may not fall far from the tree, but it can roll for miles.
People can push the Day of Service because they are banking on YOU not reading or studying Dr. King for yourself. They know that all most people today know or remember about King is one part of one speech. This must change.
Why would a die-hard Black Nationalist like me give a flip how King Day is celebrated?
Glad you asked!
King spent a good part of his “career” fighting for integration. I’m not down with that. As a Nationalist, my solution involves self-sufficiency and self-determination. When we won integration we lost our souls. Look at us now. We stopped supporting our own businesses and started acting like damn animals because we gave up our culture.
King promoted the philosophy of Non-Violence. (Heh, heh, heh) I agree with that…but only halfway. I believe that you should not initiate harmful behavior, physical or otherwise against anyone. However, to quote Malcolm X…“if they put their hands on you…”
So, how you do dat dere? How do guys like me justify supporting the King Day at all?
Because of WHAT he wanted and HOW FAR he was willing to go to achieve it. Where I and militants of various stripes connect with Dr. King is in his commitment to JUSTICE. We have different ideas of how to get there, but most of us want the same basic end result: A society that is fair and just to everyone; a society that promotes the well-being and the highest development of all people. The other thing that makes us respect Dr. King is that he was willing to put his life on the line to fight for social change and he called on others to do the same.
You won’t be hearing much of that at the King Day rallies or parades next month. That’s because the people in charge aren’t down with what he really stood for.
That’s why Destiny One Ministries is encouraging real Freedom Fighters everywhere to do their own People’s King Day with the theme “A Day for Justice” to connect-the-dots between the issues of racism, war, poverty that King fought while he lived and their contemporary counterparts. King would be busy today, fighting the violence and injustice and hatred that are burning this nation down before our very eyes. The threat of overt fascism, the crime of mass incarceration, the attack on education, environmental racism, and the list goes on and on.
I support neighborhood clean-ups, sponsored a bunch of them myself, but not to represent the life’s work of Dr. King. It’s just wrong.
What made King and the Movement he symbolized worth celebrating is the same thing that made them DANGEROUS: An absolutely fearless, unrelenting commitment to racial justice and social change. That’s what his Day should be about…
…and That’s the Hard Truth!
This article was originally published in the December 19, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper
