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Sunday, August 29. 2010

A Dream, A Scheme and the Aftermath

Saturday, August 28th, was the 47th Anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech, given at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. Normally, I wouldn’t have noted the occasion because, let’s be honest, I’m not that diligent. But, belonging to an organization that suggests we be rigorously honest, I’ll try that honesty thing here. I don’t know why honesty is important, but the other people in this organization are nice folks so I’ll give it a whirl.

People like Glenn Beck not only get away with lying, he gets paid to lie on radio and TV! Like when he said he didn’t know his little Restoring Honor rally was scheduled for the anniversary of King’s speech. On the Lincoln Memorial steps, where King gave his speech. Umm ... yeah Glenn, we believe that one.

Of course, Beck said he wasn’t trying to be Martin Luther King, Jr., because, after all, Beck was giving his speech two flights below where King stood when he gave his speech 47 years ago! Makes perfect sense when you put it in that context.

And if you YouTube Glenn Beck, you can see Beck telling everyone he’s restoring honor for White folks because, after all, we are the ones who first championed Civil Rights! Except that when “we” were championing Civil Rights after winning our freedom from the King of England, we didn’t include dark-skinned people of any ethnic group or nationality, most especially the African slaves and those who may have been slaves at one time.
 If you go to This Site, you can watch Jon Stewart lampoon Beck’s I Have a Scheme rally.

Until the Civil Rights movement picked up steam in the 1950’s, it positively sucked to be a Negro, to use the vernacular of 50-60 years ago. Actually, it sucked for a long time after Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his speech on August 28, 1963, but the tide was turning, at least a little.

So, this is how I came to know this past Saturday was the 47th Anniversary of that famous and most important speech in American History — a white-haired dickhead hijacked that anniversary to promote himself. He did get close to 90,000 White people to show up for it. King, well, he only had … oh wait, there were about 200,000 people attending the 1963 March on Washington August 28, 1963. Mostly African-Americans, but a large number of other ethic backgrounds as well.

Unlike Glenn Beck, Martin Luther King didn’t just speak to and for one race that populates this nation, he appealed to the better angels of all persons: “… when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, Black men and White men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’ ”

Honestly, I wish I had blogged about this at least a day ahead of time. King’s speech, along with Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, stand as two of the most important speeches in American History; King’s coming 100 years (and almost nine months after) President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation went into effect.
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Today, August 29, is the 5th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina hitting the New Orleans, LA area. No need to rehash the drama — real drama — that unfolded in the weeks that followed. The storm itself was bad enough, the damage from it was already in the billions, but when the levees that keep the waters surrounding New Orleans at bay broke — in 87 different places — the tragedy was magnified by ten, by a hundred. Eighty per cent of The Crescent City was under water.

More than 1,800 people lost their lives as a result of the storm and the aftermath, countless thousands more were injured, and hundreds of thousands were left homeless. People became refugees in their own country. They were shipped to places as far flung as Denver, CO and here in California. Many of those people have chosen to stay where they landed after the storm. No wonder, the devastation around New Orleans, especially in the 9th Ward, remains. Much of New Orleans is still unlivable. Five years later.

President Obama gave a speech in New Orleans today, Sunday, August 29, 2010, pledging more assistance to the Gulf Coast, not just for the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, but also because of the British Petroleum oil disaster on the Deep Water Horizon that occurred just 131 days ago on April 20, 2010.

Maybe Glenn Beck can do something positive with his influence, a touch that can bring 90,000 people to our nation’s capitol. Bring them to New Orleans (and the Gulf Coast) and help, with their blood, sweat, tears and money, to alleviate the poverty and devastation caused by those two events: Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil disaster.

But, he obviously can’t make any money being of service to his nation.

Posted by Tim Forkes in NEWS and POLITICS at 12:13 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

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