Be The Change You Seek…It Starts With People Power!!!
As Obama mania goes through its corporate media induced ebbs and flows, people of all stripes, concoctions and persuasions should take the time to look back to the 60s…Not in terms of over-romanticizing and over-mythologizing, but in terms of analyzing the actual gains that were made in progressive politics, grass roots organizing and issue based advocacy…
I think people have in many ways since the watershed and tragic year of 1968 undervalued the power of collective dissent and people power…In 1968 many idealistic, well meaning and in some cases naïve people thought ‘Messianic figures’ would be able to transform the bitter realities of their lives through rhetoric and protest demonstrations…That year saw two great potential ‘Candidates for Change’ cut down in a hail of sniper bullets compounded by a pathology of hate, ignorance and indifference…In 1968, U.S. cities were set ablaze, after years of built up frustrations, hypocrisy and disgust exploding like a home made molotov cocktail…Just like literary great Bro. James Baldwin prophesied ‘the fire next time’…
In the gross corporate media induced comatose state of our selective national memory and history, many believed then and still unfortunately continue to believe today that leaders make powerful people movements…But closer inspection of true history will show that people movements produce leaders and not the other way around…
MLK was reluctant in accepting his destiny, but it was the Black community of Montgomery that forced him into the limelight and the nation’s conscience…The people organized the first meeting at his church and the people helped form the Montgomery Improvement Association which spearheaded The Montgomery Bus Boycott and ignited the Modern Civil Rights Movement…So it was the people that gave the great MLK the platform and impetus to speak to the better angels of mankind…
In 1968, RFK, by then a seasoned politician marked and toughened by personal tragedy and frustrated by the sluggish bureaucratic process of beltway politics, was inspired by the utter poverty he saw while visiting the poor and dispossessed of the Mississippi Delta…He saw the plight of the migrant workers of California and visited the lost worlds of the ghettoes in cities throughout the U.S.…The people inspired him to make his run to his destiny in 1968…It was the plight of the forgotten working class poor, the sanitation workers of Memphis that forced MLK to delay his Poor People’s Campaign to prepare a trip to the site of his crucifixion, Memphis, TN in Spring 1968…In both cases it was the suffering of the least or have nots of society that inspired these men to take the personal and political risks that resulted in their ultimate sacrifices…
But History will tell also tell you that the have-nots or people at the bottom are usually at the vanguard of their own revolution and liberation and are not waiting for marching orders from the people at the top of the hill or “The Chosen One”…
Take the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party…Many of the key leaders and personalities were folks that came from what some or many would call destitute and impoverished backgrounds…These were the people a.k.a. “the forgotten ones” many pols always talk about not “leaving behind”, people at the bottom rung of the societal ladder in terms of race and class...And yet these same people had the political and spiritual courage to transform the
Fannie Lou Hamer
Fannie Lou Hamer, the spiritual leader of the MFD, did not know she could vote until she was 44 years old…She was born and lived on a plantation as a sharecropper all of life up to that point…When she got the will to exercise her right to vote, she was ‘disowned’ and kicked off the plantation that same day…Most people would have given up and went back to the comforts of their enslavement, but Fannie Lou immortally decried “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired” and instead chose a path of self determination and liberation…
With a coalition of poor working class Blacks, sympathetic White Mississippians, college educated Black and White liberal activists, Fannie Lou along with her comrades was able to re-write U.S. political history…In 1964 the year of the infamous Freedom Summer project that saw the martyrdom of three civil rights workers in Mississippi, the MFDP boldly held up the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City by blocking the seating of the all-white Mississippi Delegation…
Many of the party’s elite including Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson a.k.a. “The Architect of The Great Society” were outraged at this act…However the MFDP insisted that they should be seated instead because they represented Mississippi’s true citizenry makeup…In the end the MFDP refused to compromise their integrity and principles for two token seats…However, they made their point to a national audience and was able to secure a major victory for the civil rights movement, their direct action securing the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965…
Although the MFDP was active for only 4 years time, their energy, optimism and hard work was able to change the face of Democratic Party politics in particular and U.S. politics in general…By the end of 1960s, Mississippi saw the election of its first Black mayor since Reconstruction, Charles Evers, the brother of the martyred civil rights leader Medgar Evers…Fast forward to the present, Mississippi has the highest number of elected Black officials than any state in the Union, a remarkable feat considering its bloody Jim Crow Apartheid past…
And mind these changes were not just implemented by fancy rhetoric and hollow promises of stump speeches, catchy campaign songs, subliminal truth loose commercial ads and NY Times editorials…These changes were literally manifested by the blood, sweat and tears of everyday people…People who shared the same fears and doubts about the unknown a.k.a. the future like we all have at some point…People who had flaws, but yet had the courage to master their fears and soldier on in favor of justice…People who cared enough to reach back to help their fellow humans while practicing the foresight and perseverance to plant seeds for future generations to reap the harvest…
All Power To The People Is The Key…Be That The Change That You Seek!!!
(R2C2H2 Tha Artivist is host and editor of Tha Artivist Presents…W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe & http://www.weallbe.blogspot.com... He is also the author of James Reese Europe: Jazz Lieutenant http://www.jazzlieutenant.blogspot.com…He can be reached by e-mail r2c2h2@gmail.com)
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