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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27. A Call for Non-Violence

I know that a huge majority of Portland protestors are peaceful people—although I can imagine that some pro-Black Lives marchers are tossing bottles and firecrackers. And I am sure that provocateurs from the right have instigated and/or participated in some of Portland’s destructive events.

I also know that the federal presence has heightened tensions and contributed its own violence—innocent protestors have been shot and jailed; food and medical tents have been disturbed.

That said, I believe the day calls for non-violence, the kind of non-violence that Martin Luther King, John Lewis, thousands of Freedom Riders, Selma Marchers, and Birmingham students used to confront Alabama State Police; angry, screaming, spitting white bystanders; and Bull Conner and his dogs. Their weapon was their cause.

Non-violence is not easy. From Gandhi’s marchers to King’s, non-violent people have risked—and sometimes given—their lives for their cause. John Lewis thought he was dead; Martin Luther King was. But their cause was not, and the most significant Civil Rights legislation since the fourteenth amendment passed because of it.

And yes, just like the bungled reconstruction period after the Civil War led to decades of Jim Crow in the South and segregation in the North, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is under assault. And although Black Lives Matter has brought attention to police abuses, there is not resolution.

And the President is determined to continue the assault and excuse the abuses.

But wait, yesterday, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius called Portland his “dream come true… We’ve watched the Portland movie before… The idealistic protesters in the streets overplay their hand, tolerate violent provocateurs in their midst and eventually get crushed. The good guys lose; the bad guys win.”

He’s seen it in Cairo and Hong Kong.

Today, Governor Kate Brown has provided an opening, negotiated at least some Federal withdrawal. Now it’s time for disciplined non-violence, the kind that will take a baton to the head and spray in the eyes, and hunker down to be arrested. The kind that will honor the cause.

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