Would King have been killed if he didn't start attacking capitalism?

[prolesunited]

I think they were surprised in the success he had in bringing down racial barriers. However, they knew they could still control African-Americans through other means, such as poverty, substandard education, inadequate transportation systems, etc.

But, King started to shift his focus to making changes in the capitastic structure of the U.S.

King, however, believed in government sway, calling capitalism a system "permitting necessities to be taken from the many to give luxuries to the few. " The "profit motive" has "encouraged smallhearted men to become cold and conscienceless."

Poor People's Campaign

In November 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. and the staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) met to discuss the direction of the movement following the victories of the Civil Rights legislation, the emergence of Black Power, and urban riots the previous summer. SCLC decided to launch the Poor People's Campaign, a movement to broadly address economic inequalities with nonviolent direct action. The campaign was not launched until after King's 1968 assassination, however, and the absence of King's leadership was believed to have compromised the campaign's effectiveness. The Poor People's Campaign ended in June 1968 without making a significant impact on the nation's economic policies.

The idea for the Poor People's campaign grew out of what King termed the "second phase" of the civil rights struggle. After the "first phase" had exposed the problems of segregation through nonviolence, King hoped to address what he called the "limitations to our achievements" with a "second phase." In its ideology and style, the Poor People's Campaign demonstrated a merging of the "first phase" tactics into "second phase" goals. Through nonviolent direct action, King and SCLC hoped to focus the nation on economic inequality and poverty. The campaign also differed from previous SCLC campaigns, as it aimed to address the struggles of a cross-section of minority groups. "It must not be just black people," argued King, "it must be all poor people. We must include American Indians, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and even poor whites."

http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/about_king/encyclopedia/poorpeoples.html

So, what's your opinion on this?

BTW, if anyone has a link to the full text of "The Other America" speech he gave at Stanford, I would appreciate it.

[trumad]

1. King was killed because he was a nigger

in the eyes of a racist piece of shit by the name of James Earl Ray.

[prolesunited]

3. Actually, there is some dispute on that

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (Court TV) — A Memphis jury sided with the family of Martin Luther King, Jr. Wednesday and agreed that a cafe owner and several "unknown" conspirators were involved in a 1968 plot to kill the civil rights leader.

In its wrongful death suit, the King family focused on 73-year-old Loyd Jowers, who claimed in a 1993 interview with ABC that he participated in a conspiracy to kill King that was hatched in his cafe. He said that mobsters offered him $100,000 to find someone to kill King.

King's relatives saw the suit as perhaps their final chance to find out, in a court of law, the truth behind Martin Luther King, Jr.'s slaying. Jurors awarded them only $100 in damages, but the family insisted the suit was not about money. They insisted the suit was a search for the truth. That search united them with Dr. William Pepper, the longtime lawyer of one-time confessed King assassin James Earl Ray

http://www.courttv.com/archive/trials/mlk-civil/120899_verdict_ctv.html

[el_gato]

5. You are mistaken trumad

Even King's family don't believe that anymore.

[hector459]

25. King was assassinated because of his stance on the Viet Nam war.

His voice was beginning to take root among many and for that he and the Kent state students and a few others were killed.

[ngant17]

38. Read Bill Pepper's book

Bill Pepper's book, An Act of State: the Execution of Martin Luther King (Verso, 2003), has been out for a while. It is still required reading for anyone interested in how the an illegitimate regime will wield its ill-gotten power, not just a Bush regime against Iraq, but against any regime against dissenters foreign and domestic. I can email selected excerpts from above book, as text files, if you send email to me ([e-mail]) and/or use message function in DU.

Also see
http://blackopradio.com/archives.html
2003 archives for RealAudio text on the above topic.

[ChairOne]

12. Exactly. /eom

[prolesunited]

14. You don't think there

was anything behind it other than that? What is your opinion on the assassinations of JFK and RFK? No foul play there either?

[ChairOne]

15. Um, murder IS foul play par excellance.... /eom

[prolesunited]

17. I did word that poorly and apologize

What I meant to say is that you accept the official story and do not believe that there is anything conspiratorial about the string of assassinations that took place in the '60s.

[ChairOne]

18. No worries.... I was being uncharitable... :)

But as to the question:

(1) Hell if I know.

(2) I do know that in the case of King, as opposed to either of the k's, is that the concept of *overdetermination* applies (e.g., you have a heart attack right as your brain explodes). King's being an uppity nigger who didn't know his place, and who worked tirelessly to filth-ify the good and pure white race with his mudbabies was enough to predict his death.

(3) I'm not known as a tinfoil kinda guy. When there's live dispute, that's fine, however. But how anybody who wasn't there and involved with the relevant people can claim to know one way or the other is beyond me. Being an uppity nigger clearly suffices, though. One wonders what the motivation for looking for *another* explanation is.

So all in all, in the lack of overwhelming evidence, I suppose I'd have to declare myself to be agnostic.

[TwilightZone]

16. "No foul play there"

While I realize that you probably meant something conspiratorial, murder is certainly "foul play".

[tk2kewl]

2. Putting on my tinfoil hat...

maybe this is why there is so much opposition in the democratic party for an economic populist platform. do some know that being anti-corporation will guarantee bloodshed? :tinfoilhat:

I am not minimizing your question. The assassinations of the 60s really took away some of the most inspirational heats and minds America has ever seen. And the beginning of the right-wing nightmare we are in now started then. :scared:

[unpossibles]

4. this would not surprise me

look at how many people are willing to turn a blind eye to injustice so that they do not lose profits - SS, the environment, energy, civil rights, voting, etc

This is hard because I am a capitalist on some level, yet also feel that greed is killing us. And to be honest, greed and corruption exist in EVERY political and economic situation where those in power take from those not in power.

I think this is very likely, just as I think that Michael Moore started getting all the negative press after he lashed out against the media, and just as nader got a bad rep after taking on Detroit and many corporate interests.

Corporatism is ruining America - to be able to separate a business as an entity removes those responsible for it's atrocities to be rewarded and safe from repurcussion. The bottom line is the bottom line and people are resources.

[tk2kewl]

"people are resources"

Ugh! I hate the term "Human Resources." Personnel was just fine. It would be a different story if we thought of economics in sustainable terms. Resources would be things that are cultivated and cherished, but ion OUR world they are things that are consumed and exploited, and it is rarely different for the human variety.

[sandnsea]

10. On target!

"Resources would be things that are cultivated and cherished, but in OUR world they are things that are consumed and exploited, and it is rarely different for the human variety."

That sums it all up precisely.

[Crandor]

11. How did you make a post with no number?

parent post in the post list just says "#" with no number, and in the post header it says "Original message"

[tk2kewl]

13. I never noticed it before

I think its an artifact of the double-post

sometimes the form seems to double post, notice I have two posts with the same title. One has the number 6 and the has no number.

[deutsey]

34. Utah Phillips on "America's Valuable Natural Resource"

"You're about to be told one more time that you're America's most valuable
natural resource. Have you seen what they do to valuable natural
resources? Have you seen a strip mine, have you seen a clear cut in the
forrest, have you seen a polluted river? Don't ever let them call you a
valuable natural resource. They're going to strip mine your
soul. They're going to clear cut your best thoughts for the sake of
profit unless you learn to resist. Because the profit system follows the
path of least resistance and following the path of least resistance is
what makes a river crooked!"

[tk2kewl]

6. "people are resources"

Ugh! I hate the term "Human Resources." Personnel was just fine. It would be a different story if we thought of economics in sustainable terms. Resources would be things that are cultivated and cherished, but ion OUR world they are things that are consumed and exploited, and it is rarely different for the human variety.

[Vidar]

24. J. Edgar Hoover hated King, trying to cause his suicide through

blackmail concerning infidelities. Considering King's family absolved Ray of guilt, I would regard the assassination as Hoover's second, more successful attempt.

[Tinoire]

7. That's what my momma always said... it was when King began to speak

against the war and against Capitalism that they decided he had to go.

He'd grown too much in stature and his anti-Capitalism talk would have stirred up quite a hornet's nest for the US. A respected Black preacher sounding just a little too socialist- couldn't have that!

[prolesunited]

8. He was just getting ready

to launch the next phase of the movement, and as you can see, they did launch it, but it faltered without him leading it.

It's interesting is how they have managed to sanitize his true message over the years. Did you ever hear about him embracing the cause of economic justice in your school books or is that aspect ever high lighted in King Day observances?

[Tinoire]

26. Sadly no... I had to buy his works to find that out

My favorite, my night reading, is "A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.", James. M. Washington, ed., Harper Collins, 1986. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project, www.stanford.edu/group/King/home.htm has a LOT too.

God I miss the man. He would have made mincemeat out of all the people shaming his memory when they dare spit his name out EVER and yet at other times justify these obscene wars and the obscenely unjust distribution of wealth for which there is NO justification.

Peace


We are everlasting debtors to known and unknown men and women.... When we arise in the morning, we go into the bathroom where we reach for a sponge provided for us by a Pacific Islander. We reach for soap that is created for us by a Frenchman. The towel is provided by a Turk. Then at the table we drink coffee which is provided for us by a South American, or tea by a Chinese, or cocoa by a West African. Before we leave for our jobs, we are beholden to more than half the world.

~Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963

If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the hopes of men the world over.

~Martin Luther King, Jr., Beyond Vietnam lecture, 4 April 1968


We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

There comes a time when people get tired of being plunged into the abyss of exploitation and nagging injustice.

~Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, 1958

As I like to say to the people in Montgomery: "The tension in this city is not between white people and Negro people. The tension is, at bottom, between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness."

~Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, 1958

The poor in our countries have been shut out of our minds and driven from the mainstream of our societies, because we have allowed them to become invisible.

~Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Prize lecture, 11 December 1968

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

~Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967


Perhaps only his sense of humor and irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation in the world speaking of his aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores.

~Martin Luther King, Jr., about Ho Chi Minh, Beyond Vietnam lecture, 4 April 1968

If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the hopes of men the world over.

~Martin Luther King, Jr., Beyond Vietnam lecture, 4 April 1968

If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you to go on in spite of all. And so today I still have a dream.

~Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1968

"The Drum Major Instinct" February 4, 1968, Ebenezer Baptist Church: "I love this country too much to see the drift that it has taken. ... God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war, (such) as the war in Vietnam. And we are criminals in that war. We have committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride, and our arrogance as a nation."

"Where do we go from here?" King's last, and most radical Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) presidential address: "And one day we must ask the question, 'Why are there forty million poor people in America?' And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. ... You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, 'Who owns the iron ore?' You begin to ask the question, 'Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water?' ... Now, when I say question the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problems of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together."


and to end the circle:

I swear to the Lord
I still can't see
Why Democracy means
Everybody but me.

~Langston Hughes, The Black Man Speaks

[JoshK]

9. No doubt, his attacks on the econ. system added urgency to

the passion felt in some quarters to see him removed.

When has America ever reacted to that type of criticism calmly or rationally?

This AM, for those who saw Howard Zinn on C-Span, several viewers called in with their voices trembling with hatred. One, a lady from Missouri, asked him if he was a "Communist." Another, a rightwing nutjob from Alabama, called him "anti-American." Those people were of the same social element that would have reacted to King's April 1967 speech at Riverside Church, by frothing at the mouth & desiring to see him immediately liquidated.

[K-W]

19. Will they be replaying that or can I download it anywhere? EOM

[prolesunited]

21. Archived WJ programs are here

http://www.c-span.org/homepage.asp?Cat=Series&Code=WJE&ShowVidNum=6&Rot_Cat_CD=WJ&Rot_HT=206&Rot_WD=&ShowVidDays=30&ShowVidDesc=&ArchiveDays=30

It doesn't look like it's been added yet. It was an excellent show.

[deutsey]

20. It's all interrelated

King's anti-racist work, his growing economic critiques of American society, and his outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War are all intertwined.

The fact that King didn't kill himself when the FBI tried to blackmail him into commiting suicide left the elites in this country no alternative but to kill him. He had become a major threat to the very foundation of their power and control of society.

[prolesunited]

22. I just don't understand how people

still put all of their faith and trust in the government in light of stories like this.

[deutsey]

31. Stories like this aren't common knowledge

I'm willing to bet that most people in America do not know that the FBI was behind that attempt to blackmail King into killing himself.

Just last week, I was at the monthly meeting of the peace group I volunteer for. I mentioned something about COINTELPRO to one of the volunteers (an older woman who was a young adult when COINTELPRO was in full swing), and she had no idea what I was talking about.

If she isn't aware of something like that, I'm sure the average person out there watching Oprah and Survivor doesn't know about it.

[AP]

23. The rumor was that RFK was going to pick MLK as his running mate.

Imagine how different America would be if that happened.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

27. "The Establishment" wanted JFK, RFK, and MLK done away with.

:cry:

[deutsey]

32. Let's look at the big picture

My theory is this:

The wealthy elites in this country were opposed to FDR in the '30s. They thought he was a socialist and a traitor to his class.

Some of these people even supported or were sympathetic to Hitler (Lindbergh, Bush's grandfather).

Some of these people even plotted a coup against FDR that was exposed by decorated war hero Smedley Butler. http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/Butler.html

The coup fizzled when exposed and FDR went on to redefine American society for decades.

In the '50s the right had made significant gains in stifling New Deal liberals and the Left in general with McCarthyism. They had also reasserted their political and economic control under what Eisenhower later called the "military-industrial complex".

I don't think JFK was a saint, but as he gained power in the early '60s I think he posed a threat to the crowd that hated FDR. RFK and particularly MLK certainly did in the late '60s.

The elites were not going to let another popular president or leader of a mass movement threaten their regained grip on economic and political power in America and around the world.

In my opinion, that's why the assassinations of the '60s happened (a CIA manual in the '80s actually stated that eliminating leaders through assassination is a good way to destabilize mass movements).

I still haven't made up my mind about Wellstone's death, but I believe it's very possible that he was killed for the same reasons.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

36. Even though the GOP got back a great deal of power in.....

the 50's, Eisenhower was a self described "liberal" Republican who Respected most aspects of the New Deal. The worse thing that he did was bring his party back to life.

[deutsey]

37. I wonder if Ike's farewell warning about the military-industrial complex

was his way of trying to alert America of what had happened to our form of government?

But, Lincoln apparently was also concerned about corporate power usurping our elected form of government. The robber baron power structure that emerged after the Civil War lasted pretty much until the Depression, more or less. FDR and the Left was able to use that to their benefit in the '30s.

So I guess this goes back even further than the '50s. It seems to me, though, that the same interests, methods, and even some of the same people from the '50s have been at the heart of the crisis in our republican (small r) form of government since JFK's murder.

They fucked up in the early '70s with Nixon and Vietnam, but they came back strong under Reagan and faced no real threat from Clinton (in fact, he's the one who faced a threat from them).

I do wonder if there's hope that we'll save the Republic from the imperialistic, even fascistic powers dominating our country now (see Mussolini's definition of fascism as the merger of state and corporate power). At the moment I have grave doubts, but I keep fighting the good fight in the hope it will help make a difference.

[Dirk39]

28. Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 1963

"MY DEAR FELLOW CLERGYMEN:

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statements in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

(...)

First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."

http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/frequentdocs/birmingham.pdf


A bit off topic, but I just use the chance to post a link to this brilliant letter he wrote.


Hello from Germany,
Dirk

[bobbieinok]

29. do you have a date for this Stanford speech????

I heard him speak at Stanford, but I don't remember that it was on 'The Other America'.......I don't really remember what he talked about, just that I got a chance to hear him

I also heard him speak the summer of 1960 in Tulsa OK .... I was one of 6 whites in the largest black church in Tulsa (they couldn't get any other than a 'black' meeting place)

[Matilda]

30. I believe King was killed because he had recently begun

to speak against the Vietnam War.

Bobby Kennedy was killed because he was the peace candidate.

I think JFK was most likely killed because in his second term he
planned to start a phased withdrawal from Vietnma. He knew the
US would never win there, but had to wait until his second term
because it wouldn't have been popular with the general public.

I think the likes of Halliburton and Co. did them all in - with
help, maybe, but they drove it. I believe that firmly.

[KG]

33. in a country that throws around the term 'freedom' around like confentti

a person that speaks out about what freedom really means is too dangerous.

[orpupilofnature57]

35. If it had not been that ism, it would've been another. Evil=fear

[H2O Man]

39. One can only speculate ....

certainly, there were plenty of KKK-types and related pin-heads who were inclined to kill him.

What we can say for sure is that when King began to challenge the economic system, and to internationalize his efforts, he was killed. And those who killed him were not the KKK pin-heads.