Hyaets 2012 Lenten Guide, Week 2

Week 2

2012

Lenten Guide

Occupy: A Movment Past and Present The Occupy movement can be a bit difficult to understand and political allegiances often influence one’s view quite heavily. Weeding through the media’s portrayal of Occupy Wall Street and various local Occupy camps can be cumbersome enough for adults, but when I think about explaining Occupy to my 3 year old daughter, I am just at a loss. However, I recently happened upon a local expression of the occupy movement that gave me hope for explaining the movement to my daughter. I think you will understand why when you see the pictures below!

Why Occupy?

There is no common “platform” of the occupy movement. It is contextual to the particular struggles in each city and place. A common theme is the mantra “We are the 99%”. This mantra expresses the powerlessness of the many beneath the few, particularly in an economic fashion, ie. 1% of the people of the US hold 37% of the wealth while the rest is distributed among the remaining 99%. In fact the next 19% hold another 50%. That means that the bottom 80% of us have less than 10% of our countries wealth. And the bottom 80% includes those of us who make less than $88,000 a year in total income.

This means that out of 100 people with a total of $100,000 • • • • • •

1 person has $37,000 19 people have a total of $48,000 which means about $2500 each The next 20 people have a total of $10,000 which means $500 each The middle 20 have a total of $4000 which means $200 each The next 20 have $200 which means $10 each The bottom 20 have $100 which means $5 each

Now these numbers can be striking, but for those in the bottom of these quintiles it is not just striking - it is a daily struggle to survive.

And it has made folks angry. In fact, some suggest that the only common thread among the occupy movement is anger.

Anger is certainly a common theme among people who are tired of oppression, of being pushed to the bottom of the economic ladder. Yet there is something deeper than anger. The Occupy movement, while it is new in this generation, is not without roots. In fact, in many ways the occupy movement is a contemporary expression of a movement started by civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. After victories during the civil rights movement of the early and mid 1960’s, King began to realize that far more was at stake than just civil liberties and human rights. During his travels, King began to see the economic injustices of the United States and he was moved and disturbed by them. Though the SCLC, King planned and launched the Poor People’s Campaign in 1967 which was highlighted by a march from Mississippi to Washing, DC to set up a shantytown called Resurrection City on the mall at the same site King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. King was shot and killed before the march and creation of Resurrection City, yet the SCLC went through with King’s plans.1

Today’s occupy movement certainly comes in line with the ideas behind the Poor People’s Campaign (see article), though there are differences. In many ways the Occupy villages are not all that different than Resurrection City. In fact, one could view Resurrection City as an Occupy Washington, DC group.

Above: Resurrection City, 1968

Below: Occupy Wall Street, Oakland, 2011

Yet what is most striking to me is the similar purpose I see within both the Poor People’s Campaign of the 1960’s and the Occupy Movement of 2011. This purpose is best described by Alexis Madrigal in an article in The Atlantic: The point is not to hold a city park. The point is to dramatize the struggle of weak against strong, which is also the struggle of poor against rich. If the dominant theme of the occupations

is, as Jay Rosen succinctly put it, “public policy favors the rich,” then having the public police arrest the weak becomes a powerful metaphor for the message of the movement.

I believe the greatest point that the Occupy Movement has to make is a dramatizion of the daily struggle of the powerless (the “have-nots” or the “have-less-and-less”) against those in power (the “haves”). This was the primary point of the the Poor People’s Campaign. Today, the Occupiers have as much, if not more, opportunity to turn power in on itself in a similar way to the civil rights movement of days past. Let us pray that we all have the eyes, ears and hearts to comprehend and understand the unfolding Occupy drama that we might learn from the actors and playwriters rather than ignore or dismiss a narrative which too often goes untold.

See The Martin Luther King You Don’t See on TV on the following page as well as: • Eyes on the Prize—PBS http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/story/15_poor.html • History of the Poor People’s Campaign http://www.poorpeoplescampaignppc.org/ HISTORY.html • Photo Gallery of the Poor People’s Campaign http://johnphillipsphotography.com/ Poor_People_Gallery/index.html

1

The Martin Luther King You Don’t See on TV Media Beat (1/4/95)

By Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon

It’s become a TV ritual: Every year in mid-January, around the time of Martin Luther King’s birthday, we get perfunctory network news reports about “the slain civil rights leader.”

The remarkable thing about this annual review of King’s life is that several years — his last years — are totally missing, as if flushed down a memory hole.

What TV viewers see is a closed loop of familiar file footage: King battling desegregation in Birmingham (1963); reciting his dream of racial harmony at the rally in Washington (1963); marching for voting rights in Selma, Alabama (1965); and finally, lying dead on the motel balcony in Memphis (1968).

An alert viewer might notice that the chronology jumps from 1965 to 1968. Yet King didn’t take a sabbatical near the end of his life. In fact, he was speaking and organizing as diligently as ever. Almost all of those speeches were filmed or taped. But they’re not shown today on TV.

In the early 1960s, when King focused his challenge on legalized racial discrimination in the South, most major media were his allies.

Network TV and national publications graphically showed the police dogs and bullwhips and cattle prods used against Southern blacks who sought the right to vote or to eat at a public lunch counter.

But after passage of civil rights acts in 1964 and 1965, King began challenging the nation’s fundamental priorities. He maintained that civil rights laws were empty without “human rights” — including economic rights. For people too poor to eat at a restaurant or afford a decent home, King said, anti-discrimination laws were hollow.

Noting that a majority of Americans below the poverty line were white, King developed a class perspective. He decried the huge income gaps between rich and poor, and called for “radical changes in the structure of our society” to redistribute wealth and power.

“True compassion,” King declared, “is more than flinging a coin to a It’s because national news media beggar; it comes to see that an have never come to terms with edifice which produces beggars what Martin Luther King Jr. stood needs restructuring.” for during his final years.

Why?

By 1967, King had also become the country’s most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech delivered at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 — a year to the day before he was murdered — King called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.”

In his last months, King was organizing the most militant project of his life: the Poor People’s Campaign. He crisscrossed the country to assemble “a multiracial army of the poor” that would descend on Washington — engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol, if need be — until Congress enacted a poor people’s bill From Vietnam to South Africa to of rights. Reader’s Digest warned Latin America, King said, the U.S. of an “insurrection.” was “on the wrong side of a world King’s economic bill of rights called revolution.” King questioned “our for massive government jobs proalliance with the landed gentry of grams to rebuild America’s cities.

Latin America,” and asked why the He saw a crying need to confront U.S. was suppressing revolutions a Congress that had demonstrated “of the shirtless and barefoot peoits “hostility to the poor” — approple” in the Third World, instead of priating “military funds with alacsupporting them. rity and generosity,” but providing In foreign policy, King also offered “poverty funds with miserliness.” an economic critique, complainHow familiar that sounds today, ing about “capitalists of the West more than a quarter-century after investing huge sums of money in King’s efforts on behalf of the poor Asia, Africa and South America, people’s mobilization were cut only to take the profits out with no short by an assassin’s bullet. concern for the social betterment As 1995 gets underway, in this naof the countries.” tion of immense wealth, the White You haven’t heard the “Beyond House and Congress continue to Vietnam” speech on network news accept the perpetuation of povretrospectives, but national meerty. And so do most mass media. dia heard it loud and clear back in Perhaps it’s no surprise that they 1967 — and loudly denounced it. tell us little about the last years of Life magazine called it “demagogic Martin Luther King’s life. slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.” The Washington Printed with permission from FAIR under a Post patronized that “King has Creative Commons license. Original at:

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2269

John 1:14

Seek the Lord and live, or he will break out against the house of Joseph like fire, and it will devour Bethel, with no one to quench it.

Ah, you that turn justice to wormwood, and bring righteousness to the ground!

They hate the one who reproves in the gate, and they abhor the one who speaks the truth.

Therefore, because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.

For I know how many are your transgressions, and how great are your sins— you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and push aside the needy in the gate.

Therefore the prudent will keep silent in such a time; for it is an evil time.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us...

(literally, “he set up his tent in our midst”)

Amos 5: 6-7, 10-15

Exodus 32: 1-4

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron and said to him, ‘Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ Aaron said to them, ‘Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.’ So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. He took the gold from them, formed it in a mould, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’

Acts: 2:43-47

All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.

Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

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