An Evening With Some Community Organizers

Last night I had the pleasure of attending the 15th Anniversary Awards Dinner for LAANE (The Los Angeles Alliance For A New Economy), which brought 1,000 people to the Beverly Hilton (including Mayor Villaraigosa, Sean Penn, and more) and raised $500,000 for their cause. I know I get depressed reading about endless budget fights and cutbacks to schools and health care, so it's important to take comfort (and some valuable lessons) in those doing important work - and fighting some of the most powerful and entrenched interests in the city and the country - and winning.

LAANE is a group dedicated to fighting for economic and environmental justice by building coalitions and waging campaigns to improve the lives of people in underserved and at-risk communities. Their success stories include some of the most astonishing victories of the last decade - the living-wage campaign in Los Angeles, the (eventually) successful grocery worker's strike, the campaign to keep Wal-Mart out of Inglewood in 2004, the fight for justice for hotel workers near LAX. More recently, they achieved success with a landmark blue-green alliance of nearly 40 environmental groups, community organizers and labor organizations like the Teamsters, to clean up the Port of Los Angeles, which resulted in a huge victory for clean air and clean water which will also provide good-paying sustainable jobs for truck drivers. The Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports is a model for the nation, to combine economic security and respect for the environment at the ports, and Chuck Mack & Jim Santangelo from the Teamsters were honored last night (sporting leis flown in by a Teamster rep from Hawaii).

Another of their campaigns is the "Construction Career Policy," dedicated to providing local residents in low-income communities the opportunity to get middle-class, union construction jobs on projects happening in their area. This has resulted in thousands of jobs for at-risk and underserved communities of color, and the goal is for 15,000 jobs over the next 5 years. Mayor Villaraigosa presented Cora Davis, a construction business owner and leading advocate for the program, with an award.

Finally, in the wake of the movie "Milk," many are remembering the work of Cleve Jones, an activist in San Francisco during the era and the leader of the AIDS Quilt Project. Today, Jones is a community organizer working for UNITE HERE, and he has worked with LAANE on their campaigns to create living-wage jobs and improve working conditions for the 3,500 hotel workers around LAX Airport. Sean Penn, who became friendly with Jones over the last year working on "Milk," presented him with an award for his service. In his speech, Jones talked about these noble working-class people, many of them immigrants, "the ones who are serving you dinner tonight," and he paid tribute to their struggle and dignity. He also had a few words to say about the passage of Prop. 8, which left him heartbroken and drew eerie parallels to the Prop. 6 campaign he worked on with Harvey Milk in 1978. But, Jones said, the real parallel moment is 1964, a time when civil rights for African-Americans in the Deep South appeared remote. "Now is the time for Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to sign a new Civil Rights Act restoring fundamental rights for every American in this country." It's not the tactic you hear from the leading gay rights organizations, but Cleve doesn't hold much of a brief for them either:

The new (gay rights) activists have impressed some gay rights veterans.

“They’ve shown a clear ability to turn out large numbers of people,” said Cleve Jones, a longtime gay rights advocate and labor organizer. “It’s also clear that they are skeptical of the established L.G.B.T. organizations. And I would say they have reason to be.”

Overall, it was inspiring to see a community-based organization so dedicated to restoring fairness, justice, dignity and respect to a part of a population that frequently doesn't have a voice in political affairs, and more important, to see them get results. LAANE is doing some great work.

Great Stuff Around The Web About Dr. King

These are all must-reads.

Kai Wright on Dr. King's forgotten legacy as a radical who pushed an economic and political agenda that was stridently antiwar and opposed to the demons of "racism, materialism, and militarism". Actually I don't know how lost this radical vision was, at least today. Even on the usually vapid cable news, you heard about economic justice and saw quotes from bystanders at McCain's ill-received speech saying "He's a war guy, Dr. King was all about peace." CNN ran a pretty powerful piece about the Memphis sanitation workers, and they aired copious excerpts from black radio that was really revealing. I think a lot of these concepts have become internalized, and kind of exploded today.

Maybe that's because Dr. King's ideas, including his 1967 speech protesting the Vietnam War at a time when it was uncomfortable to do so, was so evergreen, and could be applied to this very day.

See also Rick Perlstein, pushing back on the painted-over history that conservatives try to use to forget their incendiary hatred of the civil rights leader.

Martin Luther King was shuttling in and out of Memphis in support of striking garbage workers. Or, as Governor Buford Ellington put it, "training 3,000 people to start riots." 500 Tennessee citizens signed a complaint asking a U.S. district judge to suspend Governor Ellington's frightening plans for National Guard training exercises that would simulate riots in black neighborhoods. Ellington huffed in return: "When we say we are going to train the guard to protect the lives of people and their property, there is a big hullabaloo about it" from "people who would like to see riots." A third of the New York Times's dispatch on the controversy focused on the fact that one of the 500 petitioners had been arrested for possession of marijuana.

The 1968 civil rights bill moved to the House. Minority leader Gerald Ford announced he would fight the open housing provision. Southern governors, ignoring outright a 1967 decision of the Fifth Circuit articulating an "affirmative duty...to bring about an integrated, unitary school system in which there are no Negro schools and no white schools--just schools," were served a deadline by the dreaded Harold Howe II: comply by September of 1969, or else. The California Democratic Council adopted a pro-Gene McCarthy resolution at their annual convention. The keynote speaker--Martin Luther King--refused to indicate a preference for McCarthy or RFK, but made it clear he opposed the incumbent: "Flame throwers in Vietnam fan the flames in our cities--I don't think the two matters can be separated."

The next morning, a Saturday, the President popped around to the Sheraton Park Hotel for a breakfast speech to the National Alliance of Businessmen that all but accused his critics [like King] of being against the troops:

"Earlier this week in the East Room of the White House, I awarded the Medal of Honor to two of our bravest fighting Marines....

"As your President, I want to say this to you today: We must meet our commitments in the world and in Vietnam. We shall and we are going to win.

"To meet the needs of these fighting men, we shall do whatever is required."

Maybe the finest historian on the conservative agenda. That's a REAL must-read.

Early Morning, April 4

(bumped. Also see Beyond the Mountaintop, a study of economic and poverty issues 40 years after the death of Dr. King.)

... shot rings out, in a Memphis sky,
free at last, they took you alive
but they could not take your pride...

And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.

And I don't mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

And so I'm happy, tonight.

I'm not worried about anything.

I'm not fearing any man!

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!

Just to contextualize, Martin Luther King was in Memphis working with striking sanitation workers who wanted a fair contract from the city. He was a civil rights leader but understood civil rights as an economic justice issue, as an issue of equality, not just of humanity but opportunity. The workers were threatened and attacked and kept on marching for their rights. King's fight was for freedom of assembly, for equal protection, for justice in all its forms. To me, this was actually the most powerful portion of that speech:

Now the other thing we'll have to do is this: Always anchor our external direct action with the power of economic withdrawal. Now, we are poor people. Individually, we are poor when you compare us with white society in America. We are poor. Never stop and forget that collectively -- that means all of us together -- collectively we are richer than all the nations in the world, with the exception of nine. Did you ever think about that? After you leave the United States, Soviet Russia, Great Britain, West Germany, France, and I could name the others, the American Negro collectively is richer than most nations of the world. We have an annual income of more than thirty billion dollars a year, which is more than all of the exports of the United States, and more than the national budget of Canada. Did you know that? That's power right there, if we know how to pool it.

We don't have to argue with anybody. We don't have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don't need any bricks and bottles. We don't need any Molotov cocktails. We just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, "God sent us by here, to say to you that you're not treating his children right. And we've come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda fair treatment, where God's children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you."

And so, as a result of this, we are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy -- what is the other bread? -- Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart's bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain. We are choosing these companies because they haven't been fair in their hiring policies; and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on strike. And then they can move on town -- downtown and tell Mayor Loeb to do what is right.

The power of collective action. The power of bottom-up organizing. The power of seeing a world where everyone is in it together, where everyone has a stake in one another. The power of fighting for justice and fairness and right, and moving mountains just by walking together. We get cynical in this medium a lot, and maybe we have a right to; after all, forty years ago they shot Dr. King for leading such a movement. But the legacy lives on, and I believe in his aphorism that "the long arc of history bends toward justice." This movement, this place where we've all gravitated, is but a small kernel of that legacy. But it's growing, and regardless of the President or the Congress or whoever it will continue to move forward. And one day, we will get there.


...oh yeah, just so you know, and want to tell a friend, John McCain voted against making Martin Luther King's birthday a holiday in 1983.

UPDATE: I guess people are killing Sen. Obama for not being in Memphis today, but I don't know, isn't it a measure of Dr. King's legacy that on this day, a black man is running for President in NORTH DAKOTA? Content of their character?

McCain On King

Color of Change:

McCain Voted Against Creating Martin Luther King Holiday. In 1983, McCain voted against a motion to suspend the rules and pass a bill to designate the third Monday of every January as a federal holiday in honor of the late civil rights leader, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The motion passed 89-77. [HR 3706, Vote 289, 8/2/83; CQ 1983]

McCain Said His Position Has ‘Evolved.’ During a 2000 interview, McCain compared his evolution on this issue to former Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater. "I believe that Barry Goldwater, to start with, regretted his vote on the 1964 Civil Rights Act," McCain said. "I think that Barry grew, like all of us grow and evolve. In 1983, when I was brand-new in the Congress, I voted against the recognition of Dr. Martin Luther King. That was a mistake, OK? And later I had the chance to ... help fight for ... the recognition of Dr. Martin Luther King as a holiday in my state." [ www.salon.com 4/18/00; Accessed 4/2/08]

Arizona Governor Rescinded Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In 1987, One of newly elected Governor Evan Mecham’s first acts in office was to rescind Arizona’s recognition of the Martin Luther King Holiday. “Mecham strikes many voters as a simpleminded ideologue who is giving a bad name to the nation's second-fastest-growing state. After rescinding the Jan. 19 holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr., Mecham defended the use of the term "pickaninnies" for blacks.” [Time 11/9/87]

McCain Said He Thought Governor Was Correct in His Decision According to the Huffington Post, “In 1983, McCain voted against passing a bill to designate the third Monday of every January as a federal holiday in honor of King. Four years later, then-Arizona Governor Evan Mecham rescinded Martin Luther King Day as a state holiday, saying it had been established through an illegal executive order by his Democratic predecessor. McCain said he thought Mecham was correct in his decision.” [Sam Stein, Huffington Post, 4/1/08]

McCain Consistently Voted Against The Civil Rights Act Of 1990. In 1990, McCain voted against a bill designed to address employer discrimination at least 4 times. According to the Washington Post, the “Civil Rights Act of 1990 is designed to overturn several recent Supreme Court rulings that made it much more difficult for individual employees to prove discrimination. The legislation, being fought by business, also would impose new penalties on employers convicted of job discrimination.” [S 2104, Vote #304, 10/24/90; Vote #276, Vote #275, 10/16/90; Vote #161, 7/18/90; Washington Post, 7/9/90]

McCain Avoided Directly Answering Question on Affirmative Action, Finally Said He Opposed Quotas. While appearing on Hardball, McCain was asked about his views on affirmative action. After criticizing teachers’ unions, McCain said, “I want to test voucher programs. Cindy and I have chosen to send our 15-year-old daughter to a Catholic school, because we think that's the best.” He added that he’d ensure that, “Every school and library in America is being wired to the Internet… But, no, I do not support quotas, and have seen the results of it.” [NBC, “Hardball,” 2/9/00]

McCain Would Not Support Affirmative Action for College Admissions. In a 2004 questionnaire, Senator McCain indicated he would not support affirmative action policies in public college admissions. [2004 National Political Awareness Test- Senator McCain]

McCain Voted Against Addressing The Disproportionate Number Of Minority Children In Prison. In 1999, McCain voted to table an amendment that required States to address juvenile delinquency prevention efforts and system improvement efforts designed to reduce, without numerical standards or quotas, disproportionate number of juvenile members of 'racial minority groups' who come in contact with juvenile justice system. The motion to table passed 52-48. [S 254, Vote #130, 5/19/99]

I don't think McCain is some kind of racist (though defending his vote rejecting the King holiday by saying there weren't a lot of black people in Arizona is pretty ignorant). I don't much think he cares. It's not "his" issue... which of course means that inequality isn't his issue, economic justice isn't his issue, dignity for the downtrodden isn't his issue.

This speech he's giving right now is very poorly received. It's in the rain and the umbrellas are obscuring his head on the live shot. People are yelling at him about being too late to recognize the King holiday. I don't think most of them are even listening. He sounds like he's mad at King. He has no idea how to give an inspiring speech, and there's kind of a value in that. They're yelling at him and booing him at the end. Wow. Jesse Jackson is being too gracious.

UPDATE: Think Progress has the video. I guess CNN had a better live shot. Meanwhile, Obama's speech in Fort Wayne, Indiana was typically superlative.