Happy King Day: Jobless Men Keep Going

“The purpose of the slum is to confine those who have no power and perpetuate their powerlessness. … The slum is little more than a domestic colony which leaves its inhabitants dominated politically, exploited economically, segregated and humiliated at every turn.” The chief problem is economic, King concluded, and the solution is to restructure the whole society.” 

  -Dr. Martin Luther King

Speech at the Chicago Freedom Festival

2010: Slum Life in America Includes Middle Class Americans – Black, White, Yellow and Red

As we celebrate the life and historic civil rights work of Dr. Martin Luther King today, it is important to never forget that King understood  the pursuit of happiness, life and liberty were all moot in an oppressive, unjust society that would deny its own citizens access to good paying jobs, education and decent health care with a population of cowardly citizens who would ignore doing the right thing.

In the last few months of his life, Dr. Martin Luther King began reminding his listeners that the ghetto was a “system of internal colonialism.”

In his essay entitled Turning King's Dream Into a Nightmare, Chris Hedges describes how King (along with Malcom X) would have “denounced the liberals who mouth platitudes about justice for the poor while supporting a party that slavishly serves the interests of the moneyed elite.” Fast-forward from his tragic death in 1968, and our society is still ignoring the institutional and economic racism perpetuated by anti-American labor policies against U.S. workers by the well-funded Neo Frat-boy corporate state. With name-calling media mouthpieces including a university worker who repeatedly attacks educated American citizens who want to keep their jobs by calling them “racist” and xenophobe” most recently here and here, when will Americans do the right thing to demand a stop to the wholesale sell out of American tech jobs to India under the Great Skilled Labor Shortage Myth lust for “guest workers” when there are not enough jobs for our own citizens? (h/t NoSlaves.)

Hedges also explains how King courageously spoke out on behalf of people with nothing left to compromise, channeling his vision for a just society to “do the right thing” into the source of his uncompromisable faith and strength:

“On some positions, cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’ Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’ Vanity asks the question, ‘Is it popular?’ But conscience asks the question, ‘Is it right?’ And there comes a time when a true follower of Jesus Christ must take a stand that’s neither safe nor politic nor popular but he must take that stand because it is right. Every now and then we sing about it, ‘If you are right, God will fight your battle.’ I’m going to stick by the best during these evil times.”

Ironic, that the first black president has not put an end to corporate America's wholesale sell-out of American jobs and has been the biggest proponent of this great lie of a health care reform bill, like a shiny car with great airbags – which is nothing but an insurance and tech mafia giveaway –- never mind the taxpayer funded tech lobby's mandated electronic health record fraud.

Today, in this war on America's middle class, the late, honorable MLK must be rolling in his grave over the moneyed elite's protection squad  within this Democratic, black White House. Would MLK say to American workers  "get over yourselves"?

Party on, plebes!

-2Truthy

It's NOT the Economy, Stupid. IT'S YOUR JOB.