natalunasans reblogged
natalunasans reblogged
chemicalheart-deactivated202009
Martin Luther King Jr. made the forbidden connections between Capitalism, Imperialism, Racism, and the Vietnam War. As a result, after he was assassinated even his memory became toxic, a threat to public order. Foundations and corporations worked hard to remodel his legacy to fit a market-friendly format. The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, with an operational grant of $2 million, was set up by, among others, the Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Mobil, Western Electric, Proctor and Gamble, US Steel, and Monsanto. The center maintains the King Library and Archives of the Civil Rights Movement. Among the many programs the King Center runs have been projects that “work closely with the United States Department of Defense, the Armed Forces Chaplains Board and others.” It cosponsored the Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture Series called “The Free Enterprise System: An Agent for Nonviolent Social Change.
Capitalism: A Ghost Story by Arundhati Roy (via rikodeine)
natalunasans reblogged
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the establishment (and their media) like to celebrate MLK’s love of imperial America and centrist economic doctrine. The symbol celebrated bares little resemblance to the actual man and his ideas.
There is a reason the FBI orchestrated a well-resourced campaign to destroy King that ultimately culminated in J. Edgar Hoover having a letter sent to King to push King to commit suicide.
The reason is Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. opposed capitalism and the American empire.
In the last campaign before his assassination, King campaigned for a democratic socialist agenda. Called the Poor People’s Campaign, demands included a guaranteed job, retribution of land and capital, and more inclusion of the poor in state decision-making.
Yes, taking land and money from rich people and giving it to poor people was part of King’s dream.
King’s own views of capitalism are often sanitized in textbooks and mainstream media stories, but he could not have been for explicit:
“You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then,” King declared. “You are messing with captains of industry. Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism. There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.”
King’s anti-capitalist views cannot really be bifurcated from his struggle for racial justice as they come from the same spiritual conception of the world. For King, capitalism was part of materialism. which was part of a deadly triplet.
When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered,” King asserted.
King also backed a universal basic income, believing it was a better solution to fighting poverty than the programs put forward by President Lyndon Johnson’s War On Poverty.
In his 1967 book, “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?”, King made his position on fighting poverty and a UBI crystal clear, “I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective—the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.”
natalunasans reblogged
Today we honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This photograph in the Jewish Museum collection by Civil Rights photographer James Karales shows Dr. King alongside Ralph Bunche (the first African-American to win a Nobel Peace Prize) and Rabbi Abraham Heschel (known for his activism that combined Judaism with social action). These three men who linked arms in the historic 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery greatly raised awareness of the difficulty faced by black voters in the south and the the crucial need for a Voting Rights Act, passed later that year. On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the Jewish Museum will be open from 11 am – 5:45 pm.