1/21/02:SF's ML King Celebration

Happy Birthday, Brother Martin!
The 17th Annual Martin Luther King official city celebration in San Francisco celebrated Martin Luther King's 73rd birthday and honored Martin Luther King's legacy with a parade up Market Street and a rally at Civic Center auditorium on January 21, 2002, a federal and state legal holiday. Hundreds of children, ages 6 to 14, took the train from the Peninsula to San Francisco and led the parade, in the cold rain, with rain gear. They were closely followed by an outstanding Labor Contingent and Free Mumia Abu-Jamal contingent, the two best and most vocal contingents in the noontime parade.

The Labor Contingent was led by the smartly-dressed marching corps of the ILWU (longshore workers) and had union banners, the gay Pride at Work banner, Living Wage and other labor banners. Members of the San Francisco Central Labor Council marched in this contingent. We were of all ages and colors and participated in many vigorous chants such as "Who's got the power? Labor Has the Power! What kind of power? Union power!" "No justice, no peace!" "What do we want? Freedom! When do we want it? Now!"

The Free Mumia Contingent mixed the "Free Mumia" and "Happy Birthday, Brother Martin" chants and had the tremendous energy of youth and the young at heart.

The importance of attending the Martin Luther King celebrations for all of us, regardless of color, is not only to make us feel better, although that is always a worthy cause, but to show solidarity for all causes because their cause is our cause and our cause is their cause. We need each other desperately in these desperate, hungry, war-mongering, racist scapegoating times. This year, the scapegoating of Arab-Americans, Muslims and Sikhs was highlighted in many Martin Luther King celebrations, including San Francisco's.

Participating in the Martin Luther King celebrations is a good reminder of the reality that the black liberation struggle is the locomotive of American history because the black community is overwhelmingly workingclass, and its struggle for freedom spans all of American history. It was black slave labor that literally built the foundation of this country and the history of struggle of the black community is the history of struggle of the entire workingclass.

It is the black liberation struggle that gave rise to the women's liberation, gay liberation and other such identity liberation struggles. It is also integral to all progressive movements from labor to peace. When we march for Brother Martin, we are marching for all these causes and more. Just as we always paid tribute to the labor organizers of the 1930s and 1940s during the civil rights movements of the 1960s, today we must salute Martin Luther King, the civil rights movements of the 1960s and the labor movement of the 1930s and 1940s, and we do that every year at the Martin Luther King celebrations.

We march on Martin Luther King Day for the entire legacy of the civil rights era, including Independent Media sites, for it is all one movement. In the 1960s, these sites would have been called Movement sites, for we were all part of The Movement. At least two of those sites recognize the importance of Martin Luther King, front and center. They are Los Angeles at:
http://www.la.indymedia.org/index.php3
and Washington, D.C. at: http://www.dc.indymedia.org/

If you want peace, if you are opposed to capitalist globalization, if you are for any progressive cause, you should be in the Martin Luther King parade and/or at the celebration every single year. It will reinvigorate you and build unity of your struggle with the black liberation struggle and vice versa. Labor understands that and was there.

As to the non-essential businesses that were open on this legal holiday, shame on you. In particular, if you are a women or gay male attorney of any color or a non-white male attorney, you owe your position to the civil rights movement and to Martin Luther King's work. The same is true of all other professionals. The integration of most professional organizations did not occur until the 1940s, after World War 2, which had as its subtheme, a fight against racism. It continued, as far as women are concerned, into the 1970s.

Every ethnic studies, black studies, La Raza studies, women's studies and gay studies program owes its existence to Martin Luther King and the entire civil rights era. This writer walked the picketline at San Francisco State in the student and labor strike for black studies in 1968. Those programs are now threatened with extinction due to budget cuts. Those programs must not be cut and if you have an opportunity, please say so out loud and in writing.

In San Francisco, restaurants refused to serve blacks in the 1940s. The swanky hotels would not rent rooms to blacks. Asians could not marry whites in California until 1948. San Francisco has a horrifying history of anti-Asian discrimination. It also has a history of anti-Semitism in employment, as late as the end of the 1940s, after World War 2 and the Holocaust. In the 1960s, we sat in and picketed auto row on Van Ness and the Sheraton Palace Hotel so blacks would be hired as auto salespersons and at better paying jobs that maids and janitors at the hotels. We fought against housing and education discrimination in the 1960s so that now such discrimination is illegal, but continues to exist with redlining of homes and substandard schools for the poor, who are often non-white. The struggle continues and that is why we all must participate in the Martin Luther King celebrations and all other such progressive demonstrations.

The next official celebration in San Francisco will be Gay Pride Day on June 30, 2002. See http://www.sfpride.org/ Everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, who supports labor and gay rights, and whether or not you are a worker, is welcome to join the Labor Contingent, sanctioned by the San Francisco Central Labor Council. Labor has been in the lead hour for the past 2 parades and hope to remain there as labor must always lead for it is labor that creates all wealth.

A good source for the speeches of Martin Luther King and the history of the civil rights movement can be found at :
http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/

Happy Birthday, Brother Martin!