Intro
I’ve pretty much, up until this point, steered away from reading anything Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) By the time I got to college, I’d had enough of Houghton Mifflin, mainstream media and Mrs. and Ms.[X] shoving the stories and legacies of MLK down my throat. (Or no, better, wrestling his being into my African-American psyche.) Of all of the black excellence they could have paraded in front of my middle school eyes, (not Angela Davis, not Fannie Lou Hamer, not bell hooks, not Audre Lorde), they chose this black male, this charismatic leader, an orator with graceful and elegant rhetoric, the leader of the civil rights movements of the 1960s. (This man's influence extended, even, to my Spanish class. Where every single person in the class had to get up in front of the SmartBoard and recite I Have a Dream or Yo Tengo un Sueño.)
So. Up until this point, I had had enough of MLK.
But. After several conversations with friends and folks I organize with, I was encouraged to read Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? (The title itself spoke to me in this moment of crisis.)
And now I really get it, the hype about MLK. His words have resonated so deeply with me that I had to write a whole thing (this) about it.
So. Writing this for two reasons. One, because I felt a desire to continue processing the questions and content in a way that goes beyond reading the book from cover to cover, then putting it away. I needed a bubble bath with the book, a vacation with the book, a retreat into the book, so to speak. This is that. It felt like a disservice to the book, which MLK published a year before he was assassinated, to not put more of it into the world, and into the minds of other people. (Especially with a title so fitting for the times.)
Which leads me to the second reason I’m writing this; I need other people to wrestle with the same questions that MLK does in the book. I hope that maybe you’ll be called to continue the conversation with me.
Also. On the day that I’m writing this (5/26/2020), George Floyd was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I'm heartbroken. I am furious. I feel powerless. I feel an eerie sense that, (this comes after spending a night watching Freedom Summer, seeing upfront the vitriol white Southerners had for black people), though much has changed, much hasn’t changed at all. Where do we go from here?
So sharing a few (okay, a lot, cause the book has so many FIRE quotes) quotes below -- organized by theme -- my thoughts, reactions, and additional questions that arose as a result of reading. And because I’m lazy, 80% of this post is quotes. The 20% are my reactions and those to the quotes. You can also check out the full version of the book here.
Freedom
“As long as the mind is enslaved the body can never be free.” Wow Dejah how are you freeing your mind? Questions, questions.
“Freedom is won by a struggle against suffering. By this measure, Negroes have not yet paid the full price for freedom. And whites have not yet faced the full cost of injustice.”
“What is freedom? It is, first, the capacity to deliberate or to weigh alternatives... Second, freedom expresses itself in decision… A third expression of freedom is responsibility…”
Power / Leadership
“Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” Noted.
“Power, properly understood, is the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political or economic changes. In this sense power is not only desirable but necessary in order to implement the demands of love and justice.”
“What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best its love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”
“This had led Negro Americans in the past to see their goals through love and moral suasion devoid of power and white Americans to seek their goals through power devoid of love and conscience.”
Racial Justice for African-Americans
“The ubiquitous discrimination in his daily life tells him that laws on paper, no matter how imposing their terms, will not guarantee that he will live in “masterpiece of civilization.” If laws on paper don’t liberate us, then what will?
“While the ultimate answer to the Negroes’ economic dilemma will be found in a massive federal program for all the poor along the lines of A. Philip Randolph’s Freedom Budget…” Sounds like the Green New Deal to me :D
“...the largest economic problems confronting the Negro community will only be solved by federal programs involving billions of dollars.” Again, Green New Deal to me.
“The hard cold facts today indicate that the hope of the people of color in the world may well rest on the American Negro and his ability to reform the structure of racism imperialism from within and therby turn the technology and wealth of the West to task of liberation the world from want.” Wow, that is a lot a lot of pressure to place on the shoulders of African-Americans. But also the possibility of the thing… liberation. For.So.Many.
“They failed to realize that hatred and hostilities were already latently or subconsciously present. Our marches merely brought them to surface. How strange would it be to condemn a physician who, through persistent work and the ingenuity of his medical skills, discovered cancer in a patient. Would anyone be so ignorant as to say he caused the cancer? Through the skills and discipline of direct action we reveal that there is a dangerous cancer of hatred and racism in our society. We did not cause the cancer; we merely exposed it.” MLK was commenting on white folks desire for calmness and peace, when African-Americans marched and protested for their basic rights. Obedience and complacency (and cooperation) got us nowhere.
Multi-Racial, Cross-Class Movement
“What is needed is a coalition of Negroes and liberal whites that will work to make both major parties truly responsive to the needs of the poor. Black Power does not envision or desire such a program.” I’m often frustrated when groups don’t have an analysis of power, or don’t understand or are not rooted firmly in the belief of a multi-racial, cross-class movement. If we want radical, systemic change, we need people power (and political power and the People’s Alignment.). And to build enough people power to attack, at the root, the evils of capitalism, white supremacy, and colonialism (amongst other -isms), we need a multi-racial, cross-class movement to do so. (For more, read this.)
“It will take such a small committed minority to work unrelentingly to win the uncommitted majority. Such a group may well transform America’s greatest dilemma into her most glorious opportunity.”
Strategy
“What is the most effective way to achieve the desired goal?” Feel like a grounding in this question is OFTEN LACKING from the day to day. I’m reading Hegemony How-To by Jonathan Smucker, and this quote reminds me of a passage in the book on how sometimes, organizers’ actions and behaviors stem to satisfy an in-group (or core group of a movement), rather than connect back to the public or to any real plan or strategy that is linked to achieving the desired goal or outcome. Smucker says, “We must ask ourselves if our intention is to bring about meaningful change, or if it is simply to act out righteous narratives.”
The Impossible: (The Life of the African-American)
“He who starts behind in a race must forever remain behind or run faster than the man in front. What a dilemma! It is a call to do the impossible.” Why equity matters.
“Whether some, black and white, realize it or not, black people are very beautiful.” So so beautiful. A mantra. An affirmation.
“Regarding black institutions such as the Negro church, the Negro press, the Negro fraternities and sororities, and the Negro professional association. We must admit that these forces have never given their full resources to the cause of Negro liberation.” Has me thinking of so many black organizations that “serve” black people, but that are not rooted in liberating black people, and actually perpetrate oppression.
“There exist two other areas, however, where Negroes can exert substantial influence on the broader economy. As employees and consumers Negro numbers and their strategic disposition endow them with a certain bargaining strength.”
“Negroes are traditionally manipulated because the political powers take advantage of three major weaknesses. The first relates to the manner in which our political leaders emerge; the second is our failure so far to achieve effective political alliance; the third i the Negro’s general reluctance to participate fully in political life.”
“There must be a climate of social pressure in the Negro community that scorns the Negro who will not pick up his citizenship rights and add his strength enthusiastically and voluntarily to the accumulation of power for himself and his people.”
“How shall we turn the ghetto into a vast school? How shall we make every street corner a forum, not a lounging place for trivial gossip and petty gambling, where life is wasted and human experience withers to trivial sensation? How shall we make every houseworker and every laborer a demonstrator, a voter, a canvasser, and a student? The dignity their jobs may deny them is waiting for them in political and social action?” This really moved me; there is so much potential for organizing, for political education, for community. As a means and end to liberation for black people.
Education
“Education without social action is one-sided value because it has no true power potential.” Went to an environmental education conference in October. And just reminded me how apolitical education can be. What is the purpose of education, if you don’t also give someone the tools (or at least highlight the path) towards using that knowledge to transform society. (Grace Lee Bogg’s book The Next American Revolution did an incredible job at reimagining the purpose of education)
And transforming society often requires someone to understand where power is held, and where + how power needs to shift to bring about said transformation. Why I love organizing. It is the process by which we enable people to turn the resources they have into the power they need to make the changes they want. (Pulled from Organizing: People, Power, Change.)
White Liberals
“The white liberal must rid himself of the notion that there can be tensionless transition from the old order of injustice to the new order of justice.”
“This means that white liberals must be prepared to accept a transformation of their role. Whereas it was once a primary spokesman role, it must not become a secondary and supportive role.”
“Empathy is fellow feeling for the person in need -- his pain, agony, and burdens. I doubt if the problems of our teeming ghettos will have a great chance to be solved until the white majority, through genuine empathy, comes to feel the ache and anguish of the Negroes’ daily life.”
“The great majority of Americans are suspended between these opposing attitudes. They are uneasy with injustice but unwilling yet to pay a significant price to eradicate it.”