#Reclaim MLK: It's Not a Few Bad Apples, It's the Tree

By Bill Simpich, Reader Supported News

20 January 15

artin Luther King never blamed Birmingham’s history of police brutality on Sheriff Bull Connor.

Nor did he target Sheriff Jim Clark as the reason black people couldn’t vote in Selma.

Dr. King’s vision was deeper and wider. When he publicly declared his opposition to the Vietnam War, he made it clear that the US government was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

Selma to Montgomery march across Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on January 18, 2015.

Nor did Martin only opt for the easy sound-bite that day at Riverside Church.

“We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.... When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

There’s been a lot of talk for many years about what it would take to build a broad-based movement for fundamental social change in the USA. Many have said that it should be led by people of color, but it’s much easier to say that than to make it happen.

When #ReclaimMLK became a major hashtag this weekend – thanks to the work of groups like Black Lives Matter and Ferguson Action – it signaled that a historic moment is at hand.

No longer is the MLK holiday a time for a day off or for a “Day of Service” that often meant picking up trash in the neighborhood. It is a clarion call to hit the streets. Ferguson Action has called for the holiday to be a time when Americans unite in a national “resistance to injustice” in the spirit of Dr. King.

There’s been a lot of frustration over the years, watching mobilizations against various injustices like the war in Iraq or the World Trade Organization devolving into protests against police brutality on day two. The common wisdom among organizers has been to focus on economic or social injustice, and let police brutality take a back seat.

It’s ironic that it took police brutality to give the new civil rights movement the lift-off that it needed. Now activists around the United States are united that police brutality against people of color is the immediate issue, while the struggle against the “violence of poverty” is right alongside it.

People of color have taken the leadership roles in this new movement, as well as the LGBT community members among their ranks. An atmosphere of trust and solidarity is being forged among activists of all racial and ethnic backgrounds.

At the MLK mass march today in Oakland, the sweetness of shared struggle over the past weeks was palpable. People from every walk of life are in motion together, and with good reason. There were at least twenty separate San Francisco Bay Area protests from January 16-19. Transportation arteries have been halted repeatedly for hours at a time, including during the arrest of sixty-eight Stanford students on both sides of the San Mateo Bridge who were standing with people of color and unrolling a large Palestinian flag. There was a sizing-up of targets like Walmart, which employs 1.3 million Americans at wages so low that many workers have to accept food stamps to make ends meet. The Walmart owners are worth about $140 billion, the equivalent of 42% of the American public. John Crawford of Ohio was killed last summer when he picked up an unpackaged pellet gun in Walmart. The police officer shot him within one second of contact.

This new civil rights movement has come together nationally over the four days of this MLK Day weekend. Nonviolent direct action, marches, and speak-outs have been the order of the day in every major metropolitan area of the country. The focus is to make it clear that the USA is in the opening stages of a social crisis.

Think about it. The authority of the police has been shaken. In the streets, you can see it in their faces.

In New York City, many of them turned their backs on the mayor at the funerals of two of their own. There’s no getting around it. Many of these cops are not just mad. They’re scared of the power of the people.

How many cops are going to think a few times before they pull their revolver from their holster? Or a few more before they point it at anyone?

A lot of them. And that’s the response this country needs. Winning people’s hearts or minds is how social change happens.

Is it an accident that lynchings were common in this country until the rise of the civil rights movement in the 1950s?

On the other side of the coin, is it an accident that the jails and prisons filled up with young black and brown inmates after the rebellions of the sixties and seventies?

This battle’s been looming for a long time. The Oscar Grant movement in 2009 didn’t break nationwide, but it set the terms of engagement. The Occupy movement in 2011 went nationwide, but failed to engage people of color in most parts of the country. The mobilizations in support of Trayvon Martin illustrated that people’s patience was being pushed to the limit.

In Atlanta on Friday, members of the Coalition Against Police Violence held a demonstration. (photo: Kevin Liles/New York Times)

When Michael Brown was gunned down in the street, it was a basta moment in the heartland. By the time the New York district attorney refused to press charges in the televised murder of Eric Garner, the cities on the coasts were ready to go.

This winter is the time to strategize, discuss, and take action. Congress is paralyzed. There’s no distracting presidential election this year. People are in motion looking for a better day. We do not get many opportunities like this one. It’s not a few bad apples, it’s the tree.

Bill Simpich is an Oakland attorney who knows that it doesn't have to be like this. He was part of the legal team chosen by Public Justice as Trial Lawyer of the Year in 2003 for winning a jury verdict of 4.4 million in Judi Bari's lawsuit against the FBI and the Oakland police.

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