During this important
holiday, we meditate. We realize the sacrifice of the late Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. and other Brothers and Sisters who fought for human liberation. The
struggle of black people always dealt with fighting for liberation, seeing & opposing class
oppression, and exposing the racist white power structure in the world today.
One of the best ways to honor the memory of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
is to pray for self-improvement and to do service in our daily lives. Serving
humanity in a legitimate fashion is great. That action teaches humility,
strength, tolerance, and compassion in general. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was
born in a middle class background in 1929, but by 1968, he greatly understood
the plight of the poor in the world. He married Coretta Scott King (who was a very intelligent, Strong Sister) and raised
numerous strong children. He worked to protest discrimination and human injustice. The
Birmingham Bus Boycott in 1954 caused a great victory in the cause of ending
Jim Crow segregation. His house was bombed, but he had a great resiliency as a means for him to carry onward his journey for human liberation. He was never alone. Many unsung
heroes and other brave human beings among many backgrounds worked with him too.
Their memories should be respected as well. Dr. King became more
revolutionary as time came into his life. He suffered jail, threats, attacks,
and his house being bombed. So, he was a very courageous man. He was a
revolutionary, because he fought for radical change in society. He was never satisfied
with the status quo at all. Men, women, and children prayed to God while
protesting for freedom for it is Lord that grants human beings real liberty. The
Lord is the true sustainer and Savior of all human life. Dr. Martin Luther was courageous
to oppose the Vietnam War too. He explained fully on why he opposed the unjust
Vietnam War in eloquent terminology. He spoke of the Vietnam War's history from
the end of World War II to the 1960's. He opposed the reactionary Diem, because
Diem was violating the religious liberty rights of the Buddhists. He opposed
the burning of the huts of a village and other destructive policies that
contributed to imperialism and not peace. He understood that when you spent
billions of dollars of money on militarism while not adequately helping the poor
in America, then there is a moral problem with that reality. He died in the
midst of fighting for economic justice in Memphis. His memory lives on. His
ideals of fighting for right, opposing unjust laws and being for justice lives on in us today. He spoke the truth on Vietnam when he gave his public
denunciation of the war at the Riverside Church in Harlem in April of 1967. The
reactionaries opposed his stand on the war including the liberal Democratic
Party establishment back then. President Lyndon Johnson disagreed with Dr. King
on the Vietnam War too. In 1957, Time magazine had named King its
"Man of the Year." After his 1967 speech, it ran an article called
"Confusing the Cause," which chastised King for daring to speak about
something other than civil rights. Dr. Martin Luther King was
murdered exactly one year after he gave his speech at Riverside Church. In
1968, he wanted social democratic solutions to the problems of America, which
are still beyond what the Democratic Party then and now is prepared to accept.
He realized that to revolutionize society, there much be radical economic and
social changes in the world. Economic inequality must be defeated. Real
equality must be done via the costing the end of the current system of
oppression. He knew that Jim Crow in the South was opposed by the same politicians
who maintained segregated slums of the North. He wanted to have a multiracial
coalition to end poverty in America via an Economic bill of Rights and a
national guaranteed annual income for all Americans. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in
1968 was a whole lot different from the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from 1954.
He was right to say that we are BLACK AND BEAUTIFUL. He grew more revolutionary
as time went on in his life and that revolutionary spirit is respected by me.
He was right to say that we should oppose racism, materialism, and militarism.
He died while legitimately fighting for the rights of sanitation workers to
have basic worker rights (and union recognition) inside of the great, talented city of Memphis, Tennessee. His life reminds us that helping
our neighbors is important and love is superior to hate. Love is a very powerful
force indeed.
It has been more than 50
years after the War on Poverty. It was a continuation of the New Deal programs from
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt including the Four Freedoms of 1941. The
popularity of the war on poverty waned after the 1960's. It ended after criticism
of welfare and folks wanting to see deregulation (these views are loved by notorious reactionaries). There have been massive cuts
to federal aid to impoverished human beings in the 1980's and the 1990's. Bill
Clinton passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996.
The late historian Professor Tony Judt said that the Bill Clinton law was
Orwellian and did a lot of decline the popularity of the Great Society. It
caused more folks to reject even a minimum standard for all citizens and social
liberalism. There are many policies that still exist as a result of the Great
Society like Head Start, Volunteers in Service to America, TRIO, and Job Corps.
The economy recovered a great deal by 1964 when the poverty rate fallen form
22.4 percent in 1959 to 19 percent in 1964. Dr. Martin Luther King in 1967 said
that the War on Poverty was too piecemeal since he said that the programs
created under the "war on poverty" such as "housing
programs, job training and family counseling" all had "a fatal
disadvantage the programs have never proceeded on a coordinated basis... at no
time has a total, coordinated and fully adequate program been conceived."
In his speech on April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church in New City, King connected
the war in Vietnam with the "war on poverty." He believed that the
war in Vietnam prevented many resources to adequately fund the war on poverty.
Dr. King also said that: "...and you may not know it, my friends, but
it is estimated that we spend $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier, while we
spend only fifty-three dollars for each person classified as poor, and much of
that fifty-three dollars goes for salaries to people that are not poor. So I
was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor, and attack
it as such." He created the Poor People's Campaign as a means to address the
shortcomings of the war on poverty and fight poverty. So, we know that getting
people out of poverty is one of the most cost effective public investments. It
is one of the greatest ways to grow the economy in general. We see a decline in
welfare benefits from 1962 to 2006 as a result of a decreased support in
government War on Poverty initiatives. In the decade following the 1964
introduction of the war on poverty, poverty rates in the U.S. dropped to their
lowest level since comprehensive records began in 1958: from 17.3% in the year
the Economic Opportunity Act was implemented to 11.1% in 1973. They have
remained between 11 and 15.2% ever since. Many programs like Social Security,
etc. have reduced the elderly poverty rate massively form 44 percent to 9 percent
today. Today, many of the middle class are in risk of being the new poor.
Economic inequality is still very high. That is why we should allow the super-rich
to pay their fair share and need unfair tax breaks. We should expand Social
Security. We need single payer healthcare. We should increase state supported
education. We need to strengthen real regulations. We need to restore total
rights of workers like collective bargaining and protection from wage theft.
Austerity ought to be rejected. Access to voting and the rights of minorities plus
women ought to be protected as well. We should aggressively attack unemployment and public efforts should step to fight unemployment when all other efforts fail.
Architecture is
important in the world. There is the famous New Masonic Temple in St. Louis,
Missouri. It was built in 1926. It has many images that deal with Classical
Revival architecture, which deals with many buildings built for Freemason
meeting places. It looks very similar to the House of the Temple building in
Washington, D.C. and it has great differences as well. The location is
designated as a city landmark. Visitors can go into the temple, but only on the
days when a meeting is held. The Pear Tree Inn Union Station -St. Louis and
Courtyard St. Louis Downtown are the closet hotels to the New Masonic Temple.
The Temple builders' studied Greek, Roman, and Gothic modernist architecture
before settling on the Grecian model. We know that the temple's exterior is of
the Greek Ionic style with its simple lines, towering proportions, and overall
monumental size. The top of the temple was influenced by the Parthenon of
Greece (that celebrated the goddess Athena). There are columns that line the
Lindell Street entrance to the temple. The lower parts of the exterior have
other items as well. They are adorned with images of compasses, squares, and
other Masonic emblems. There are two Latin phrases and an image of Mercury.
Mercury is the messenger of the ancient Roman gods. Mercury is mythology gave
light to the Earth. There are a sphinx and a few griffins on the building. The
griffins are found on the ends of the south pediment and the corners of the
second terrace. All of these features make the New Masonic Temple a very
prominent building and have placed it amongst the greatest buildings in the
world. It is a famous building in the city of St. Louis. It was built in the
1920's. The temple has stood the test of time and is very durable
architecturally.
The Democrats and the
Republicans agree with the White House's police state spying agenda. The White
House is adamantly in defense of the illegal spying of the National Security
Agency demonstrates. They just want cosmetic changes or reform not revolution. The NSA has shown illegal anti-democratic and anti-constitutional
rights. They are allied with the Western elite. There are many leading
congressional Democrats and Republicans including former intelligence officials
were unanimous in supporting both President Barack Obama's speech and the NSA's
operations. Three so-called critics of NSA spying, Democratic senators
Mark Udall, Ron Wyden and Martin Heinrich, issued a joint statement hailing
Obama’s speech as “a major milestone in our longstanding efforts to reform the
National Security Agency’s bulk collection program,” as though the cosmetic
gestures towards civil liberties represented genuine concessions. The most
adamant defenders of the NSA programs, House Intelligence Committee Chairman
Mike Rogers, a Republican, and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne
Feinstein, a Democrat, appeared together on the NBC program “Meet the Press” to
support the NSA. They disagree with Edward Snowden or the former NSA contractor
who showed the illegal mass spying the NSA. Obviously, Snowden is not the devil
neither he is this perfect person. He is the fruit of the evils found in the
NSA. Retired General Michael Hayden, who headed the NSA and later the CIA,
appeared on Fox News Sunday and hailed the speech as “the most robust defense
of why we conduct intelligence and how we conduct intelligence that the
president has made since he’s been in office.” He dismissed the alterations
proposed by President Obama as insignificant. There should be no compromise
with oppression. Either we live in a freedom filled society or live under
police state surveillance. It is as simple as that. We know for a fact that
state spying has been used for the purposes of political profiling and police
repression for decades. Many of the proposals from the White House are not very
specific and vague on implementation. Still, we have our civil liberties
violation and the surveillance state grows in the world not just in America.
The 45 minute speech of President Barack Obama conceded nothing to the mass
opposition to NSA spying. The text of the Fourth Amendment reads: “The right of
the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants
shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and
particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to
be seized.” We know that the actions of the NSA are antithesis of this. The
system of white supremacy has continued this policy of surveillance long before
Barack Obama was elected as President. For decades, the NSA has collected
personal information on tons of Americans all of the time and information on
even foreign governments. This information is owned by computer banks and
political dossiers on Americans are in existence now. The police state should
be fought against period.
I love to show
advice. In
this generation period, we can learn ways to protect ourselves and be careful.
This is not about being paranoid about life. It is about being wise and using
commonsense in our lives. You have the right to not ally with folks that reject
LIFE. Life is valuable in the Universe. A waste of time is not part of our
time, so I just keep it moving when folks hate on me. I am a human being, so I
don't dwell on the negativity. Putting life into perspective and fighting for
growth are great things to enact. Karma will come to those who slander
folks and so forth. We are here for a temporary period of time. So, that is why
we ally with real people. We love greatly our families and we cherish the
authentic bonds among the human family. We can handle disagreement excluding
adolescent, demagogic rhetoric too. Our gifts are precious. My gifts deal with
teaching, dealing with spirituality, and enriching the lives of humanity. So, we
should never feed our spirits with negative energy. We just should continue to
live our lives and to do basic, comprehensive actions that maintain the fabric
of our souls. Yes, I do root for humanity to be better. My humanitarian side
comes from my mother. My more political side comes from father. So, I can be
sensitive and be political too. You just have to let folks who desire that
negative energy to be to themselves. We just focus on positive energy, hope,
human compassion, and human dignity. We are on this Earth for less than
130 years. So, a real human being would never want to restrict the gifts or the
total human potential of another human being at all. A real human being will
want human beings to achieve their great potential, to live, to grow, and to
achieve excellence contributions in the sphere of human society. When we all
have that affirmation of hope and the affirmation of action, then we can see
glorious changes in the lives of humanity. For long centuries, our ancestors
suffered unspeakable injustices, yet we are still here. We are here and we
continue to fight for our just liberation. So, we are here to continue to carry
forward the efforts of our ancestors. We carry onward the efforts to eradicate
poverty, bigotry, and any injustice in the world. Also, in life, the
RIGHTEOUS WILL GROW as time goes on. The folks who slander others and issue
disgraceful words about those that disagree will be exposed for the world to
see. Most of us want to live in freedom and with respect. When fake people try
to test the wrong one, the truth just comes out (from the real person) and the
fake people are easily refuted. Whining gets played out at the end of the
day. In the final analysis, you get busy living or you get busy going nowhere.
Going forward and moving on are better actions than slandering people, whining,
or embracing a defeatist attitude. A victorious attitude will carry real HUMAN
BEINGS places. There is always love for our communities and a continued
focused for liberation.
By Timothy
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