84. MLK

 Martin Luther King’s Day is being overwhelmed in this Inaugural week. There are National Guard troops on the mall and surrounding the Capitol and at state capitols across the country. News reports tell us that President Trump will leave town before he’s ex-president Trump and incoming President Biden is sworn in. Trump’s still not conceding. Vice-president Pence is apparently minding the store, and will attend Wednesday’s Inaugural. Trump’s close advisors are—or are being accused of—taking payments to lobby for last minute pardons. There were last-minute federal executions, and there is fear of other last minute deals that will embed Trump loyalists in government agencies and weaken environmental regulations. Safety procedures and troops and more troops—and the fear of right-wingers among troops and police—dominate the news.

 

Biden’s team is putting out word of a million inoculations a day for ninety days—Dr. Fauci says we can do it. With unbounded ambition, Biden announces a ten-day program of executive actions and legislative proposals that will address the four crises greeting him on his presidential arrival: The Covid Crisis; the Economic Crisis; Climate Change; and Racial Justice. 

 

MLK has not been completely overlooked on his day. The incoming president and vice-president worked in food banks—service in honor of King—and King’s granddaughter was on NBC’s nightly news. A rerun of an interview with John Lewis about his relationship with King aired on Oregon Public Radio. 

 

The newsreel images of John Lewis and MLK, Andrew Young and Ralph Abernathy and Joan Baez arm in arm, confronting dogs and Billy clubs, are etched in my mind. And 1968, the assassination, and in its wake the continuation of the Poor People’s Campaign in Washington D.C. I was there—in a Baptist church with Coretta Scott King and Ralph Abernathy preaching and me and hundreds of others, arm in arm, singing We Shall Overcome… 

 

Two of Biden’s four crises—racial and economic action toward equality—were on King’s list 53 years ago. Biden’s bold plans and the images of today—armed troops bivouacked in the Capitol; flashing reruns of Trump’s inflammatory speech and the mob’s occupation of the Capitol; and of lonely Covid deaths and struggling medical teams—are hopeful and unsettling. 

 

I’m nervous and hopeful, as I guess I was in that Black Baptist Church in Washington D.C. all those years ago. Two fretful days until the inauguration…

 

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