EUGENE, Ore. – Unlike fans of corporate raiders and Wall Street billionaires, marchers celebrating Martin Luther King’s birthday feature hand-made signs that state Dr. King’s view that “all labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance.”
It was some 50 years ago, back in 1962, that a young Mario Savio -- and others who set the stage for today’s “Occupy Wall Street” movement -- really listened to the words of Martin Luther King and joined forces for a true America, in what Dr. King called: “A true revolution of values,” where all Americans, and not just the rich, had “dignity and importance.” In turn, Jan. 16 finds a winter sonata in white with an old-fashioned show storm greeting marchers in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in the Eugene area; while those who also marched for “Occupy Eugene,” and “Occupy Portland,” remember 50 years ago when Mario Savio -- a white college student at University of California at Berkeley was inspired by a black man, Dr. King -- and, in turn, these Civil Rights and Free Speech Movement leaders breathed an exasperated sign, and said they don’t trust any of the political campaign promises made by rich politicians. Back in the Sixties, protesters such as Dr. King and Savio reminded their fellow patriots, that many politicians acted more like used car salesmen than true statesmen. Dr. King did not like those who degraded the poor and working class in America. Dr. King believed all Americans were equal, and that continues to upset many in red state America today, say political science experts who note how "very look it took for America to embrace a Martin Luther King holiday."
Dr. King inspired Mario Savio and today’s “Occupy” movement
It was back in the early Sixties, that Dr. King said: “A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love."
Flash forward to today’s modern age where artists such as the rock band Linkin Park produced an album titled “A Thousand Suns” in 2010 that blends human ideas from Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mario Savio to try and illustrate today’s human fears that are also expressed in the worldwide “Occupy” movement.
In turn, these “voices” from both the Sixties, and today’s Occupy movement find little support in Washington or with this latest crop of Republicans who want to be president in 2012.
Thus, it’s no surprise that both Dr. King and Savio liked to quote Rabbi Hillet from the 1st century B.C. who said: “What is hateful to you do not do unto others. That is the entire law. The rest is commentary.”
According to Linkin Park, they chose both Dr. King and Mario Savio because they first spoke – some 50 years ago – about the fear of what’s going to happen in the world.
“If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one,” states a quote from the Hindu Sanskrit scripture, the Bhagavad Gita (that both Dr. King and Mario Savio once quoted) and the title “A Thousands Suns,” for this concept album by Linkin Park that many say symbolizes “what the Occupy movement is all about.”
“When we’re marching in Eugene, and Springfield, and all across America today in celebration of Martin Luther King, we’re also celebrating the work done for Civil Rights and for the Free Speech Movement,” explained Blake, an “Occupy Eugene” protester who also participated in the “Occupy Portland” and “Occupy Cal” protests this past fall and summer.
Savio launches an “Occupy” revolution at UC Berkeley
While many who give no quarter to the influence of Martin Luther King – saying “it’s for those who read Ebony magazine” – a young, white University of California at Berkeley student named Mario Savio said in 1962 that he was “inspired by Dr. King,” and watched the clock as it edged toward the freedom’s that Dr. King called for and said, “Dr. King needs all our help.”
The rest is now American history and the start of “The Free Speech Movement” that characterized the recent and ongoing “Occupy” movement that is hunkering down for the winter months, but organizers who also have that “right stuff” like Martin Luther King and Mario Savio say they will be back in force during this election year to share Dr. King’s words of love, forgiveness and brotherhood for all Americans, and not just good stuff for that 1 % who control so much wealth and privilege in America today.
"When you oppose injustice done to others, very often - symbolically sometimes, sometimes not so symbolically - you are really protesting injustice done to yourself." In his own words, Mario Savio explains the impetus behind the Free Speech Movement at the University of California at Berkeley for himself and for many of the other movement's participants.
According to a recent UC Berkeley press release about the annual “Mario Savio Memorial lecture series” at the university that draws some of the top thinkers in the world, “much of the motivation for the social movement at Berkeley came from the rising of the civil rights movement in the southern United States. In both situations, people were being denied their Constitutional rights as human beings and citizens of the United States. Students like Savio were working with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to resolve the injustices taking place for African-Americans in the South and soon realized that they too were subject to injustice. Savio says, 'it was both the irrationality of society, that denies to Negroes the life of men, and the irrationality of the University, that denies to youth the life of students, which caused [the] rebellion" at Berkeley .”
Reich echoes Dr. King and Savio with “Class Warfare in America” lecture
UC Berkeley public policy professor and former U. S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich will now hold his Mario Savio Memorial lecture in conjunction with Tuesday’s Open University Strike and Day of Action at 8 p.m.
Occupy Cal protesters recently reached out to U. S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich – who spoke at the Mario Savio Memorial Lecture earlier this year during the “heat of the Occupy movement nationwide” – with a lecture titled “Class Warfare in America.”
While most Republicans and Tea Party members such as Carl Rove -- who call the “Occupy” movement a bunch of hooligans -- Reich reminded people that it was people such as Martin Luther King and Mario Savio, the renowned leader of the free speech movement at UC Berkeley, that these two were also called names by the establishment that feared their message of love, peace and understanding; while rejecting the Republican establishment view that “some Americans are more equal than others due to their class status and great wealth.”
Occupy movement takes lessons from Dr. King
For anyone who’s studied the Sixties Civil Rights and Free Speech and Women’s Equality movements, “one of the typical characteristics of a successful social movement is the presence of charismatic leaders. This is true for the civil rights movement, with leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., and it is equally true for free speech movement, states a UC Berkeley report on “social movements” such as Occupy Wall Street being about “strength in the masses,” and “mobilizing a group of people who together advocate and work for such change as Dr. King’s call for “dignity for all Americans,” and not just the rich and powerful.
Thus, the real story of Martin Luther King, Jr. is how he inspired people, both during his life, and today in 2012.
In the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley, for example, the student population rallied around a handful of courageous individuals that took it upon themselves to see that the movement accomplished its goals along the lines of what Dr. King advocated with “peaceful protests.”
Savio was a white student who believed in social justice
One such extraordinary student was Mario Savio, a junior studying philosophy at UC Berkeley, who embodied every characteristic that defines a charismatic leader. “Mario Savio embraced his position as spokesman of the students, rallying and energizing the campus with his stirring off-the-cuff speeches, acting as the student's ambassador to the administration, and preserving the integrity of the students and the movement with his professionalism and political tactics. These personal contributions helped bring the movement from small student uprising, to a campus-wide social movement that, under Savio's direction, refused to cease until the common goal was met,” stated a UC Berkeley overview of why there’s so many physical and mental memories of both Savio and Dr. King around the campus.
Also, such memories of Savio's work for peace occurs each Jan. 16 during Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
The protestors called for Savio to speak, and he rose to rally the students together, building excitement and fervor with his eloquence:
"There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you cannot take part; you cannot even tacitly take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the wheels, and the gears and all the apparatus and you have to make it stop. And you have to make it clear to the people who own it, and to the people who run it, that until you are free their machine will be prevented from running at all… The futures and careers for which American students now prepare are for the most part intellectual and moral wastelands. This chrome-plated consumers' paradise would have us grow up to be well-behaved children. But an important minority of men and women coming to the front today has shown that they will die rather than be standardized, replaceable and irrelevant."
"The crowd roared. It was a deafening crescendo of cheers, some jeers, and the cries of "freedom,” while also singing Dr. King’s motto of “We shall overcome.”
Image source of the album cover for Linkin Park’s 2010 album titled “A Thousand Suns” that blends human ideas from Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mario Savio to try and illustrate today’s human fears that are also expressed in the worldwide “Occupy” movement. Photo courtesy Wikipedia
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#1 OWS and MLK
On the eve of his assassination, Martin Luther King launched a campaign against economic injustice, calling for an encampment on the lawns of Washington D.C. — much like the Occupy encampments across the country today.
On January 16th, Occupy Wall Street continued Martin Luther King’s quest for economic justice through nonviolent action.
We traced the roots of extreme inequity to Wall Street itself. We begin at the African Burial Ground to make the statement: Wall Street is the exact site of the slave auction block, upon which our prosperity as a nation was built. The very wall that Wall Street is named for was built by enslaved Africans. Just one month before MLK’s birthday this year, Wall Street marked the 300th anniversary of the law establishing New York’s first slave market. Thousands of Africans were sold at this market as Wall Street pocketed the profits. While slavery has been abolished, racism and systematic profiteering of the working class has not.
The Occupy Movement is exposing the corporate takeover of our public spaces and, more recently, private homes – especially in the communities of color which have been hardest hit by predatory lending practices. Banks like Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Goldman Sachs have preyed on vulnerable communities of color. Almost twice as many African-American homeowners have lost their properties to foreclosures as Whites. In turn, the black community is three times more likely to have negative or zero “net worth” than Whites.
We ended our day in honor MLK by supporting U.S. workers exploited by Wall Street to turn a quick profit. Wall Street profiteers who once made a killing off the products of slave labor here in the United States today make their profits from outsourced sweatshop labor, prison labor and slave-wage conditions in the U.S. All of this at the expense of U.S. workers and their right to make a fair, living wage.
“At Madison Square Garden,” explained Michelle Crentsil, of the Communications Workers of America and Occupy Wall Street, “we will meet African American and Latino Cablevision workers as they confront Cablevision CEO and Knicks owner James Dolan – a member of the 1% who makes more than all of the workers in Cablevision combined and is blocking their right to organize.”
King’s Vision and the Occupy Movement:
“As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars,” said King. Days before his murder, he declared that the next phase of the civil rights movement would be a Poor People’s Campaign—an outcry for justice for the millions of Americans in “economic bondage.” He called for a Resurrection City in D.C.—much like the Occupy encampments across the country—where hundreds of thousands of poor people would come to the National Mall, live together and engage in nonviolent action directed at a Congress which did not concern itself with the needs of the 99%.