← Green & Red: Podcasts for Scrappy Radicals
Green & Red: Podcasts for Scrappy Radicals
ENCORE: Remembering MLK, Radical, Democratic Socialist and Opponent of State Violence (G&R 456)
01:18:04
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- [00:01]
Scott Parkin
Welcome to Green and Scrappy Politics for.
- [00:04]
Bob Bozanko
Scrappy People, a regular podcast on radical environmental and anti capitalist politics. Brought to you by Bob Bozanko and Scott Parker.
- [00:32]
Scott Parkin
Welcome to the silky smooth sounds of the Green and Red podcast. I am your co host Scott Parkin in Berkeley, California today and I am.
- [00:43]
Bob Bozanko
Joined by Bob Bozenko. And as always, we thank you for listening and watching and sharing and retweeting and supporting us in any way possible. Today we're going to commemorate and celebrate Martin Luther King day, which is January 15th. Everybody knows Martin Luther King. Everybody knows a lot, I think, about Martin Luther King in 2020. King was referenced all the time by pretty much everybody on all sides of the rebellions we saw that were kind of constant for months in American cities, both large and small. Black Lives Matter obviously referenced and looked at the civil rights movement in the 1960s as kind of one of its inspirations. People, liberals especially, but also people on the right, often invoke Kings non violence to condemn people who were in the streets. Others pointed out that King hits at a riot is the voice of the unheard. So he was used by everybody. And what we want to do today is talk a little bit about an element of Martin Luther King's life, a critical, important, huge element of Martin Luther King's life that really isn't discussed that much. King is presented correctly as this man of peace, this guy who advocated nonviolence. The story is well known on Martin Luther King Day, which has been wildly commodified. Burger King celebrates Martin Luther King Day. You can get a buy one, get one free at McDonald's for Martin Luther King Day. Furniture stores have Martin Luther King sales. I wrote an article once called MLK for Sale and I was trying to find it and rather than I knew where it was, but it was just easier to Google it. And I put in on Google MLK for sale. And the first hit was 50 stores that are having Martin Luther King Day sales, right? Like the NBA. That's a huge day for, if you're a basketball fan, they have Martin Luther King Day where they just have games on ESPN and ABC all day. So there's clearly this commodification of King and they feature the I have a dream speech, very powerful. And they talk about kind of his very passionate and moving words about racial reconciliation, which is all absolutely necessary and obviously who he was. There's another side of Martin Luther King though that they're not going to talk about for obvious reasons. King was pretty radical. Martin Luther King had visions of America that In many ways were far closer to, you know, Eugene Debs and A.J. musty and Saul Alinsky than they were to a lot of these people who now use him. Not just the conservatives. Louis Gohmert, the most odious and stupid man in Congress, who had called for violence because of the election, then said, oh, no, no, I meant like direct, you know, nonviolent protests, like Martin Luther King. Right. But even liberals, I think, you know, kind of misuse King because, you know, if you start to kind of let people know that this American hero who has a day named after, you know, they honor honoring his birthday, really had this incredibly radical critique of American society, American economy, American democracy, then, you know, you legitimate ideas, you know, we're not gonna have a Eugene Debs day. We're not gonna have a Paul Robeson day, Right? So I think it's important to talk about this and try to let as many people as possible know about it. Right? So what we're gonna do is talk about King's kind of radicalism, I guess, and we're doing it thematically, which makes way more sense in five different areas, and go probably kind of alternate on them. First, it's Martin Luther King's economic ideas. King identified himself more than once as a democratic socialist and believed that capitalism had serious flaws, that it could not really work for most Americans, especially poor Americans. Talk about his dissent against the Vietnam War. Very powerful. Which really helped create a major cleavage between King and the liberals. People like the Johnson administration who had, you know, they'd been on the same side during the era of the Civil Rights act and Voting Rights Act. Then something that I think very few people know about, that actually I didn't even know about myself until, you know, much later, was that Martin Luther King was really one of the leaders of a movement in 1967 and 1968 to boycott the Olympics. And that may not seem like that big a deal today. The Olympics, very professionalized. But in the 60s, that was the ultimate test of America's role in the world. That was the epic battle between good and evil, between the United States and the Soviet Union, and black athletes were crucial to the American Olympic team's success. So to suggest you were going to boycott the Olympics was incredibly powerful. Then the poor people's campaign, which many of us know about, and then finally, I think an area that is probably the least known of all this, which I think Scott and I ourselves have more recently kind of started focusing on, which is King's writing about, like, direct actions, street protest, demonstrations, and even property destruction. So King, even though he was nonviolent, he called it a militant nonviolence. He believed that you should aggressively confront your oppressor. King did not advocate violent responses, but there was also a tactical element to that because he understood that the state had overwhelming power when it came to violence. So we're going to talk about all of those things and try to give you a little different picture of Martin Luther King. So when we go forward and you talk to people about this and you share this and you discuss it, you can kind of see King in a far more kind of organic and comprehensive way. So first, I think Scott's going to talk a little bit about King's views on the American economy. Now, keep in mind, the civil rights movement was a movement with inside the framework of capitalism. It was a movement to allow people to take, to participate, to go to restaurants, to ride buses, to go to stores, to work in particular places. But King himself, even though that movement took place within a framework of capitalism, capitalist integration as well as racial integration, King himself was a far more sophisticated and radical critic of American economic society.
- [07:49]
Scott Parkin
Before we start off, as always, we want to thank everyone who is a loyal listener, loyal member of our audience. We want to thank everyone who shares and follow shares our posts and follows us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and this is just a reminder, please follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, please become a subscriber for us at YouTube and you know, if you're in the Apple podcast platform app, please give us rate and review us. We really appreciate it. We're as we advertise in our title, we're a scrappy little podcast. We're swashbucklers in the podcast universe or even swashbucklers even in the left podcast universe. And so every little thing that all of you can do to help us spread the word, we really appreciate it. And if you have a few dollars, we also would appreciate any sort of donation. You can become a patron and just give us a couple bucks every month on an ongoing basis@patreon.com greenred podcast or you can go to our website, greenandredpodcast.org and there's a support button there and you can make a one time donation. But whatever you can do to help us, whether it's retweeting, sharing, telling your friends about us or making a donation, it's all very appreciated and it's going to a good cause now. Oh, and the last other thing is that we have started a medium publication that's medium, which is a big time website. And we've begun posting episodes and articles and blogs that we're writing. And so please go to Green and redmedia on medium just to enunciate that so everybody's really clear what I'm talking about. And check us out. It's a new thing. You can also see the link for it in our show notes.
- [09:42]
Bob Bozanko
Yeah, Rupert Murdoch is looking in his rearview mirror because we're getting closer.
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Scott Parkin
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Watch out, Wall Street Journal, here we come. And so I'm gonna actually start off today's MLK show talking a little bit about King and democratic socialism and economic justice. And, you know, like Bob said, King is, like, most remembered for his work on fighting for civil rights in the south and calls for racial reconciliation. And then there's this other piece which is less talked about, but as we're now over 50 years past his death, we'd like to think that it's becoming a little bit more known. And so just to kind of take that to the next level, I'm gonna talk a little bit about King and his economic justice work, as well as him identifying as a democratic socialist.
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Bob Bozanko
Now.
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Scott Parkin
There'S an organization in the US Right now which actually gets a lot of attention, especially in the left podcast universe called the Democratic Socialists of America that was actually founded in the early 60s, I believe, by a man named Michael Harrington, who wrote a book called the Other America. And it's in the last five, six years, particularly since the Sanders campaign, it's really seen a. It's seen a resurgence in American political life. And it's been. It's. You know, I have a lot of critiques of dsa, Democratic Socialists of America, and of the left podcast universe. But I would say that, you know, for progressive candidates, you know, DSA locally shows up a lot. King also identified as a democratic socialist. And, you know, I'm going to start off with reading a couple of quotes. In the mid-50s, he actually wrote a letter to his then fiance, Coretta Scott, who later became Coretta Scott King, which said, I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. Early on, as he was a young grad student, young seminary student, he actually was already leaning towards what is actually an ongoing theme in the Green and Red podcast, which is towards anti capitalism and not just sort of like reform or reform of the capitalist system. To the Negro American Labor Council in 1965, he said, there must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. And this is just to Put this out there. This is after Harrington has established the Democratic Socialists of America. He's identified that there's another America. And King had his own thoughts about that and was in agreement with some of what is now popular thought in the left and what was a growing movement back in the 60s also after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, Civil Rights Act. King began, and we're going to talk, Bob's going to talk a little bit more about the poor people's campaign later. But, you know, King became much more interested in a lot of this work around economic justice to the point where he actually even went and lived in housing projects in Chicago in the late 60s. You know, he started organizations which started chapters in cities in the north, in the Northeast or the Midwest, Northern Midwest, which basically did a lot of work around housing and around economic justice. About a year after he had spoken to the Negro American labor council. So in 1966, he explained that solving the economic problem of the Negro would involve billions of dollars. You can't end slums without profit being taken out of the slums. But if you do that, you're really tampering and getting on dangerous ground. You are messing with the captains of industry. To do this would be to tread in difficult water because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism. That is really key thing here. And we talk a lot about this system of little L, liberal, little D, Democratic, little C capitalism, this sort of system that we're part of a huger universe critiquing. And so that was also King's point. He's not this sort of like liberal reformist when it comes to these economic matters. He's actually as much of a democratic socialist, revolutionary thinking person as like Bob said, Eugene Deb, Saul Alinsky, folks like that. And then after, and just to kind of like put a, put a emphasis on this at the, towards the end of his life is after the Civil Rights and Voting Rights act went to effect and Southern apartheid was beginning to be dismantled, King's focus on inequality and the economy changed his standing in America. It's also going to be his, you know, opposition to the war in Vietnam, but it's going to become his undoing that the liberal establishment which he had built ties with, who had supported him when he was seeking inclusion in the American system for blacks in the south, now began to abandon him when he spoke of the greater problem of material injustice for blacks and inequality for all poor people all over America. Now I just want to, I want to flag that like a Month or two ago, we did an episode on jfk, and we talked about how JFK was actually fairly conservative on the civil rights movement. And he was somewhat opportunistic about that, is like, this is the sort of liberal establishment. This is the Democratic establishment. It's, like, very conservative on progress, even around racial justice. And so the civil rights movement had actually sort of changed a narrative talking about this as a campaigner. There was a narrative that had changed around civil rights, mostly through the blood, sweat and tears of civil rights activists on the ground in the south and other parts of the country. And so that sort of, like, mainstream liberal Democratic establishment moved. Now King is moving it further to the left, and he is calling for critiques and critiques of capitalism. He's calling for Democrat. He's talking about Democratic socialism. And so the mainstream liberal Democratic establishment is not going to go for that. And they actually, as we're going to kind of lay out more and more through this episode, is going to begin this resistance. And so the other piece I want to really emphasize here is that the sort of hard right at the time, whether it's the sort of Goldwater rights or whether it's the segregationists in the south, is like they. While they resisted and opposed King and hated King and everything he stood for, the real pushback, the real interesting piece, because they are the ones in power, is going to be from the liberal Democrats. And so. And that's this sort of contrast we actually talk about on the show a lot, which is this contrast between, like, the left, like an actual left, like those who want things like fair housing, you know, jobs, you know, better pay and employment, healthcare, things like that, versus this sort of idea of corporate liberalism. So I'm gonna hand it off to Bob, who's muted.
- [17:27]
Bob Bozanko
Me being muted, is a lot of people's fantasies.
- [17:30]
Scott Parkin
There's probably a list out there, including.
- [17:32]
Bob Bozanko
A couple ex wives, right? No, toward that. And I forgot what I was going to say in the. In the midst of making a stupid joke. Anyway, I think King's radicalism, which is. Oh, my point was going to be that I think a lot of us on the left have kind of, you know, looked at King as somebody who has been a beacon for the things we believe in for a long time. And so, you know, we're kind of addressing this to people who are, you know, kind of good liberals who, you know, think the system needs to be reformed, admire the hell out of Martin Luther King as we all do. But, you know, I don't think it's a Stretch at all. And I don't think it's being inappropriate to suggest, you know, King is a radical guy. He's. I don't want to say he's one of ours, you know, but I really would put him in that pantheon with people like, you know, Gene Debs and others who really did speak out in this incredibly powerful way and had an audience to do it. Probably the most remarkable public act in this regard, because it was very well known and it probably constituted his break with that liberal establishment, was his position on the Vietnam War. King never was an advocate of the Vietnam War, but he had this really strong relationship with the liberals because of this Southern civil rights movement. And eventually the way in which Lyndon Johnson really kind of at expended a great deal of political capital for the Voting Rights act and the Civil Rights act and the Voting Rights act. But in 1965 already, he would start to make kind of comments, you know, about Vietnam. And his basic point. Well, it was kind of twofold. One, he's a minister and he's a pacifist. So, you know, the violence and the bloodshed really, you know, obviously were very difficult for him. Also, kind of shades of what we're hearing now in 2021, there was also this contradiction, this hypocrisy, right? King would often say, you know, they praised us for being non violent against Bull Connor and against Jim Clark and against Laurie Pritchett. But when we say be non violent against the Vietnamese, they get angry at us, right? So King has this kind of moral element to it. This. He's a pacifist. But also he believed that the commitment to Vietnam had overtaken the civil rights movement and opinion polls from the early 60s through 1964, 65, whenever Americans were asked, you know, what's the biggest problem facing America today? Was civil rights. But then it started. Vietnam. The numbers for Vietnam started to increase. And then by, I Forget it was 1965 or 1966, Vietnam became the number one problem for Americans. For a lot of Americans of all political stripes, the Civil Rights act and Voting Rights act kind of ended it. It was over, right? That took care of it. They succeeded, they won. And King, you know, could have retired at that point and, you know, become a star. He could have done. He could have become a, you know, done a lecture circuit. He could have gotten all kinds of probably offers to be on corporate boards. He could have certainly gotten endowed professorships or become a university president, whatever he wanted to do. He could have sat back and made bank and just kind of reveled in the glory. He was a Nobel Prize winner, but he didn't. And as you pointed out, he went to Chicago, he went up north, he started doing that. We'll talk more about that with Poor People's campaign. And he spoke out against the Vietnam War. And I'm not going to talk a lot about it because we have a great clip that we're going to play a decent segment of in a minute here. But just the background to it was that on April 4, 1967. And that's one of those eerie historical coincidences, right? It was exactly one year to the date where he was assassinated. But he was going to give a sermon that day, preach at Riverside Baptist Church. And the night before he called. There's a lot of stories surrounding it, but my favorite was the night before he called Stokely Carmichael and said, you know, I want you to be in the church tomorrow for my sermon. And Stokely Carmichael later became Kwame3. Said, I've heard you speak a hundred times. You know, I don't want to get up early, go that. And King said, I'm talking about Vietnam. And Stokely Carmichael said, I'm gonna be there. And so he began. And the speech is titled A Time to Break the Silence. And it's incredibly powerful. It's on and we'll put it in the notes. You know, the whole thing is about 50 some minutes long. You really should. It is, I think, one of the most important speeches in US history. But we're going to play about a four minute segment where he really, I think, gets to the point of what America is really like and how Vietnam is. You know, you can't have this civil rights movement and boast about the Voting Rights act and the Civil Rights act and racial reconciliation and continue to have this war in Vietnam. And this also speaks to something that you and I have talked about a lot, which is that if you're going to be radical and you want to change America at home, you also need to be anti imperialist abroad. Right? So we're going to play about what, about a four minute clip, I think, of King's. An excerpt from King's speech. But I would encourage all of you to listen to the whole thing.
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Scott Parkin
Here we go.
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Martin Luther King Jr.
Since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. That is, at the outset, a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A Few years ago, there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty folk. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam. And I watched this program, broken and eviscerated as if it was some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. Perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took place, and it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinary high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society, in sending them 8,000 miles to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been returning repeatedly, faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watched them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village. But we realized that they would partly live on the same block in Chicago. I cannot be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor. My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettos of the North. Over the last three years, especially the last three summers, as I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through non violent action. But they asked, and rightly so, what about Vietnam? They asked, if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problem, bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghetto without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our bonds, I cannot be sorry for those who ask the question unto yourself, civil rights leader, and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace. I have this further answer. In 1957, when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto to save the soul of America. We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way, we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of column who had written earlier, oh yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me. And yet I swear this hope America will be. Now it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present world. 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 deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land. As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1954, and I cannot forget that the Nobel Peace.
- [29:34]
Bob Bozanko
I think one of the most striking lines in any public speech in that era, maybe in the 20th century, was king calling the United States the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. So, you know, I can't talk about this unless I speak to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government. You know, this is during the, the Cold War is still raging at this point. King already had great credibility globally, but this really turned him into a larger than life figure, not just among liberals, but people throughout the third world, people in the streets. And as you can imagine, I mean, can you imagine anyone saying that today? I mean, Bernie Sanders has never come close to that. And every American politician, left, right, whatever, ends the speech with God bless the United States of America.
- [30:33]
Scott Parkin
Trump says more anti imperialist things than he actually does.
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Bob Bozanko
Unfortunately not for the right reasons. But no, I mean, he, he, you know, criticized the Vietnam War in 2016. I mean, the squad is, is pretty quiet about, you know, American policy toward Cuba and Venezuela and Bolivia and places like that. King did not do that and if anything, really created a massive schism between him and that liberal establishment that had been, you know, really important because he was, you know, the Civil rights movement was a legislative movement. It was trying to get laws passed. And you can do that. That's a lot easier than changing America, than changing its economic system or kind of empowering poor people. And remember, this is taking place at the same time SNCC is doing its thing, STS is doing its thing. So it's, it's serious. I mean, I think we have talked about King before and I think at one point we talked about the populist as well and said that I think there are two anti capitalist challenges in all of American history that actually kind of rattled the ruling class. And it would be the populists, the early populists, before they kind of created this kind of racial segregationist kind of split and joined the Democrats. So the populist and King in the late 60s, the stuff Martin Luther King was saying and doing in the late 60s, King had credibility. King had global reputation. King was operating at a time when other groups, like I said, SNCC or SDS or even the Black Panther Party and Union, SNCC had a. I'm sorry. Martin Luther King had a really strong relationship with labor. You know, labor in America has never been radical, but it clearly wasn't as comatose as it is today. And so I think King's words really frayed and maybe broke that relationship between him and the White House and the liberals. Ending apartheid in the south was necessary for a lot of reasons, and Northerners could get behind that. You know, if, if, if you're a working class person in Ohio or New York or Pennsylvania or wherever. California, Los Angeles. Yeah, I mean, if King, and King is saying, you know, we should be allowed to vote in Mississippi, we should be allowed to ride a bus in Montgomery or have a job at Birmingham or, or walk along a bridge in Selma, then you're not going to have people really balk at that. And in fact, they can kind of have this moral superiority. Like we're not like those Southerners. Right. But now he's talking about kind of the core of American life. You're not supposed to criticize. Right. Dissent stops at the water's end. So again, I can't stress that enough to say that this is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. My own government is utterly stunning. It's just I can't really understate how important that was. And it took a lot of courage. I mean, King, you know, I don't want to get into the King versus Malcolm X thing, but, you know, because there's this juxtaposition Right. King was nonviolent. Malcolm King constantly had a bullet on his back and actually faced greater peril, you know, in his life than Malcolm did. And I'm not. I think they're both incredibly important leaders. But King had this immense moral courage. And to do what he did, to say what he did was really critical. I mean, and this did it. I mean, the Southerners had been trying to call him a communist, and they had been attacking him and all this. None of this stuff really stuck. But now he went after Johnson and the liberals, and that really was kind of the end. Right. Martin Luther King's world himself personally had changed, and American politics had changed with it. And this kind of backlash that you're going to see with Richard Nixon is already kind of in effect. And the liberals, just like the liberals were so important in McCarthyism, the liberals were really crucial to this anti civil rights, anti Democratic backlash in the later 60s, because, shockingly, they didn't fight. They allowed the other side to control the narrative, to create the terrain. Kind of like 2021. It was kind of like the Trump years. Right. And King got caught up. The Obama years, American history. Right. So now, at the same time this was happening, Martin Luther King started talking about the Olympics, which, as I said, is one piece of this that I came too much later. I was aware of the Olympic boycott, of course, but I wasn't aware of King's role years, some years ago, not that long. John Carlos spoke here in Houston and had a chance to chat with him for a little bit, which was really cool. Dave Zirin, I think, was supposed to be there that night but couldn't make it. And Carlos began to talk about going to these meetings about the boycotts with Martin Luther King. And I really didn't know that he was that deeply involved in it. So I think that's really important to speak about, too.
- [35:43]
Scott Parkin
Yeah. And, you know, just a. It's a. It's interesting, like, kind of like wearing my. My campaign or I had. It's really kind of what I was. As I was like, rereading things about this the last day. It's, like, really interesting to see how they sort of, like, went at it. It's like, you know, they call for a boycott. They, you know, try to get a number of other athletes to sign on to it. They actually came up with demands which, you know, were. Which I assume were like, A, they were the right thing to do, and then B, they were also set to appeal to, like, black athletes, which is actually really interesting comparison to like what we've seen in the last like six months or so, as we've seen, you know, Major League Baseball and the NBA and soccer and women's soccer and the WNBA all sort of like engage in like, not just boycott actions, but also like, you know, refuse to work, strike sort of activities. But the demands that. Well, the first thing I'll do is I'll actually read a quote from King about this which is like, I absolutely support the boycott, not only as Martin Luther King, but as the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. And his goal there is that he's this sort of like leadership figure, particularly in like the black community, and he is trying to move athletes to support this. But the demands included an end of discrimination of the famed New York Athletic Club, the restoration of Muhammad Ali's stripped heavyweight title because he'd refused to be drafted. Which is like a, you know, we should actually just. We need to do a show on that actually. Cause that's actually an important kind of piece of history of this period. They were demanding at least one more black coach on the U.S. olympic team. They were demanding a ban on the South African Rhodesian participation in the Games. You know, as folks know, those were like some die hard apartheid racist regimes in southern parts of Africa. Then they also were demanding the removal of Avery Brundage, an old Nazi, let's be really clear about that, an actual Nazi who was in the Nazi regime in Germany as head of the International Olympic Committee. And Brundage, to show that he was not a racist, made sure to express his opinion that 1936 Olympic hero Jesse Owens is a fine boy. Right? And so like, you know, an offensive personality. And you know, this, this is like a sort of unknown piece of sports history. And then I will say that it was actually somewhat effective due to the pressure that was put on Brundage and others by King, especially the ioc. The International Olympic Committee had a revote on South Africa's admission to the Games and this time banned it from participating. Right. And so like, you know, we're familiar with an anti apartheid movement in the 80s, and we're familiar with the collapse of the apartheid regime in the late 80s, early 90s. But like, you know, this is the 60s and we were fighting that fight then. And so, you know, sports is as we like to talk, we like to talk a lot about culture and like the sort of impacts of like left politics, et cetera in popular culture and culture. And so sports is a critical piece of that. And it's actually an important place where we can engage people. It's a place where we can organize people, and it's a place where we can actually kind of shift some norms. And so that is what happened here. And then, of course, Muhammad Ali. And then the Olympic athletes at the 1968 Olympics in. In Mexico City are like kind of real critical pieces here. Tommy Smith and John Carlos raising their fist up, the Black power fist, as they accepted their gold and silver medals.
- [39:53]
Bob Bozanko
Golden, bronze, gold and bronze. Actually, there's another great side story that the silver medalist was Peter Norman, a white guy from Australia who also participated in the protest. I'm not sure. He may have turned his medal back in, but in San Jose, where John Carlos went to school, there's actually a statue of Peter Norman. And they were very close, remain very.
- [40:14]
Scott Parkin
Close, until when Peter Norman died, Tommy Smith and John Carlos were actually pallbearers at his funeral.
- [40:21]
Bob Bozanko
Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, that the cause. Sports has really kind of entered the political world in ways that we hadn't imagined. And Ali was clearly part of that. And now, I think, in the last several years, Kaepernick, and then this year, it just exploded. LeBron James yesterday put out some very powerful statements, you know, about the decision not to indict any of the police in Kenosha. And then, of course, the riot at the Capitol where those vandals there were treated with kid gloves. And LeBron James become really a powerful public spokesperson on these issues. Megan Rapinoe. And I think a lot of lefties in the past are kind of snooty about sports. I've always. I mean, for years, I never talked about that. I always kind of kept it, you know, and left a certain. I was kind of. You know, I figured I'd be mocked if I talked about, you know, like, watching the World Series or going to a college football game. And it's really an important way, I think, to reach out to people. If we want to meet people where they're at and, you know, increase our, you know, the people who are, you know, part of this movement, then I think talking about sports is in, you know, it doesn't even have to be about Kaepernick or LeBron James. It could be about, you know. You know, think about how much you're paying for that ticket and that hot dog and beer at the ball game. And that's a publicly subsidized stadium, you know, that kind of thing, so.
- [41:49]
Scott Parkin
But cities and states pay for stadiums for billionaire teams.
- [41:54]
Bob Bozanko
Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. It's private profit, socialized debt. And I think, you know, that, like I said, the Olympic. Of all these things, I think the Olympic boycott, Kings rolling. The Olympic boycott really kind of struck me the most because, you know, Harry Edwards organized it. He was a discus thrower and a sociologist. Right. And he was considered pretty radical. But again, I just can't even describe boycotting. I mean, think of the shit Kaepernick has caught. You know, you're talking about boycotting the global competition that would decide once and for all whether communism or capitalism was the best system. Right. And to take that on really required, like kind of an immense level of courage. And it was, you know, really kind of the type of political and moral courage you just don't see really anymore. I mean, you know, everybody now, I mean, they're, you know, the Democrats right now are in a quandary over, you know, what to do to Trump. Should we do anything about, I mean, can you imagine that? Right? You know, their, their first concern is fear, like, how's this going to affect us? Not, you know, this crazy madman, psychotic is inciting people to violence and killing people. You know, so King, King really, you know, kind of, if I may go off on a bit of a detour, there was a great show in the early 2000s called boondocks, and Aaron Magruder did it. And most controversial show, I think by.
- [43:27]
Scott Parkin
Far was based on a comic strip. It started as a comic strip based.
- [43:29]
Bob Bozanko
On a comic strip. Yeah, he's from the University of Maryland. And the most controversial show was called the Return of the King. And in it, Martin Luther King was in a coma and came back to life in the early 2000s and continued to say the kind of things he said. He was against the, the Iraq war and he, you know, was discredited and caught hell for it. Right. And the point there was that people have forgotten this part of King's legacy. They haven't forgotten it. They've either been denied hearing about it. There are elements all across this political spectrum that don't want people to know about this. Right. Conservatives don't want people to know about King's kind of aggressive, assertive manner. They prefer him to be this non violent guy. And liberals obviously are served by that as well because much of his critique was aimed at them. And in fact, there are parts of his critique which are aimed at the African American community as well. So this very legitimate idea of King is I have a dream. And this guy who wanted racism is all true, but it's also far safer than talking about these kinds of things.
- [44:39]
Scott Parkin
So Kind of talking to shift gears a little bit, talking about the poor people's campaign, the part two from Democratic socialism. Is that just to kind of preface what you're going to talk about is that it's really important to know that there's actually a poor people's campaign that started off towards the end of the Obama years when a lot of Southern legislatures were waging economic warfare on the poor in their states. It was led by.
- [45:10]
Bob Bozanko
William Barber.
- [45:11]
Scott Parkin
William Barber, I was going to say Benjamin Barber and wait, I think you're right. Wait, no, Benjamin Barber is an author who writes neoliberal bullshit.
- [45:19]
Bob Bozanko
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's William Barber. Yeah. Minister from North Carolina.
- [45:22]
Scott Parkin
Is it? I believe, I believe so. And so, you know, it's, you know, and he and William Barber's Reverend, Reverend Barber is seeking to sort of like bring back the spirit of the, of the. Not just the. Around racial discrimination even though, but also like the sort of economic injustice issues. And so I just want to, I want to say that this is like, has very much a kind of sort of modern day context.
- [45:50]
Bob Bozanko
Absolutely. And you know, remember in 2016, Hillary Clinton said, well, you know, you can get rid of capitalism and then that's not going to get rid of racism and sexism or something like that. Right. And the fact of the matter is King actually was arguing quite differently. King was a civil rights icon and what he was doing, like I said, he could have just, you know, kind of taken it easy and lived a high life with fame and all kinds of stuff. But he continued to fight and actually bit off a much bigger piece in a lot of ways because he decided to take on the class nature of American society. He went from being a civil rights leader, especially a Southern civil rights leader, into being a classic critic and a class. The leader of what he would hope to see as a class based movement. And this was his last crusade. And this is when the liberals really kind of cast him aside. Taking on the Jim Crow system was vast. But like I said before, you had this kind of support. I always use the example of Archie Bunker. Right. Archie Bunker, you know, probably was okay with civil rights because it didn't really affect them. You know, if somebody was allowed to vote in Mississippi, if a black guy was allowed to vote in Mississippi, or if a black woman was allowed to ride on a bus and Alabama, that does not personally affect you in the North. But now you start talking about economics and that invariably involves questions of economic priorities, of taxation and things like that. And it turns. So King announced a poor people's campaign in 1967 to address the lack of wealth and democracy among the poor. King connected all of those things. The capitalist system, race and racism, poverty, militarism. He had this kind of comprehensive idea that linked all of those things together, which we really don't see much clearly in the last several decades, since the kind of beginning of neoliberalism, really, with Jimmy Carter and especially in the period after that. But King in 1967 announced that he would have a poor people's campaign, a campaign not just for African American civil rights, but for all poor people. For, you know, obviously for blacks who disproportionately were poor in southern cities and in northern industrial areas like Gary, Indiana, but also for white farmers in Appalachia, who statistically are actually the poorest people in America. For Native Americans in New Mexico, for farm workers, Filipino and Mexican farm workers in California and in the Valley of Texas. He was going to talk to all these people and he had significant connections with labor, a lot of labor was involved in this. He wanted, you know, he said, we will also look for the participation of the millions of non negro poor, Indians, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Appalachians and others. And we shall welcome assistance from all Americans of goodwill. King and his associates in 1968 drafted what they called the Economic and Social Bill of Rights, taking off of FDR's World War II effort to create an economic Bill of Rights. This is in 1968, eight years before the bicentennial, they said, with the bicentennial coming up, 200 years after the Declaration of Independence, Will the right to pursuit of happiness mock the majority of Negroes locked up in an economic underworld of poverty, joblessness and unemployment? So he's not talking about the vote and equal access to buses and restaurants right now. He connected this crusade also to the Vietnam War, as he had before, because as he said, the black and white poor together, the black and white poor were killing and dying at the same time, Right? He often sounded like Frederick Douglass. Remember the famous letter from a Birmingham jail where he said, I'm inclined to think now that the biggest problem is the white moderate. He channeled Frederick Douglass in 1968. He said, Will Negroes be able to celebrate the Fourth of July? What is it that young people in the streets have a right to a life of unemployment and low pay when there's work? So his Bill of rights, this economic Bill of rights that the Poor People's campaign drafted demanded decent paying jobs, good paying jobs for all employable people. Many ghettos had 30 to 50% unemployment in the 60s on unemployment and underemployment. King demanded careers, not make work jobs. There were a bunch of summer jobs. I actually worked on a couple where you'd get three months of work during summer vacation or something like that, and minimum wage jobs. But he wanted real jobs that would create full time jobs that would give you wage and also to give you access to careers. And that also involved access to education. In 1965, King said about 30 million people were not even eligible for public assistance. People who were living in poverty. So the right to decent housing and the free choice of neighborhoods came next. And it ended with demands for equal education and funding for black schools, for poor schools in all kinds of poor areas. He, like sds, talked about the right to have a role in decision making, participatory democracy. And then, you know, I don't know where the data came, the numbers came from, but he claimed that the United States and Vietnam was spending $500,000 for each enemy soldier killed compared to $53 for each poor person at home. Even if the numbers are way off, the ratio clearly isn't. And that's, you know, and we know that today, right. The Pentagon's budget is immense compared to any other kind of program. This was trying to develop a national class movement. And this really was the final break between the liberal establishment and King. I think, I'm sure I've said this before on one of our podcasts, the Richard Goodwin. No, no, I'm sorry. It was Harry McPherson, who was one of LeJ's main aides, was working with King during the Poor People's Campaign. They were trying to organize it along the lines of the 1963 March on Washington. They were trying to get permits and set up speakers, and they were going to have an encampment there, Resurrection city. And in 1963, the Democrats, the Kennedy administration was really accommodating. In 1968, not so much. They weren't giving them permits. They were making it difficult. And I think I've said this before, I was at the LBJ library looking something else up, and I came across this, this discussion on the poor people's campaign. So of course, like, oh, I want to read this. And McPherson, and I'll never forget this, these words, he said, you know, the Negro has become sullen and ungrateful. The Negro has become sullen and ungrateful, which is the textbook definition of condescending liberal patronizing. Right. He all but called them deplorables. Right. Sullen and ungrateful. And this was the liberal approach now to the poor people's campaign, it played out a lot different.
- [53:43]
Scott Parkin
It lands somewhat similar to what we hear, like, Obama saying about defund the police, to be honest.
- [53:50]
Bob Bozanko
Yeah. Snappy slogans. Right. Or remember when Obama was president, and instead of, like, you know, he did talk about Trayvon Martin, but then he started talking about, you know, black kids need to pull their pants up kind of stuff, too. Right. So he. Yeah. And Clinton, of course, with Sister Soulja and Billy Ray Rector. So, yeah, this is clearly common in US History among liberals. Let's keep. Let's make that. We know that Trump and his people and Reagan and Goldwater were virulent racists. There's no question about that. So there's no point, really. I mean, I think that's established, but it's important to understand. Understand the role that the Democratic Party, the Clinton and Obama administration, has really played in this. The. The. The prison reform, the welfare reform of the 90s with. With Clinton, which disproportionately impacted, obviously, poor people and African Americans.
- [54:43]
Scott Parkin
And plus Clinton's crime bill championed by Joseph Robinette. Biden.
- [54:50]
Bob Bozanko
Yep, Biden. And who was it? John Kasich in the. Who's become a Democratic icon now? Right. I. I think Casage was the moving force in the House on that one. So here we go. This is the actual. The full McPherson quote. The Negro showed himself to be not only ungrateful, but sullen, full of hate, and the potential for violence. Right. That's no freaking different than. Well, it's not as crude, but that's exactly what Trump was saying last year. You know, so this is. This. You know, I don't like pithy things, but what's the old joke, you know, scratch a liberal and you'll get a fascist underneath it or something stupid like that. But the point is that there. There really are these kind of common places where they meet. The poor people's campaign was never gonna succeed. I mean, it was like the liberals had basically, you know, we're gonna make it impossible, make it difficult. And then King was killed. And it's important to understand King died while engaging in labor activism. He had gone to Memphis because a group of garbage workers there were trying to organize an AFSCME union, the American Federation of State County Municipal Employees. That's why he went there, to show solidarity with these garbage workers who were trying to organize a union. And that's when he was murdered. But that, I think, really is really a key piece of his legacy. It's the poor people's campaign and the way he transcended this very powerful role as the leader of these anti apartheid forces in the US south with great success, and instead of just kind of stopping there, move beyond that and try to create this really immense national movement of poor people. And everybody knows that there are way more poor people than wealthy people, that poor blacks and poor whites and poor Latinos and, you know, kind of working class men, working class women, working class straight people, working class gay people, working class people in cities, working class people in rural areas all have way more in common with each other than they do with the rich. And that I think, like the populist at one point in any movement, you know, and the labor movements in the 30s is what. Bacon's Rebellion, right. That's what really scares the ruling class. Because, you know, if they. If they can keep all of us divided, right, Then, you know, it's just a lot easier for them. If we look at each other, if we look at, you know, thugs in the street or rapists or whatever Trump calls them, right. If we, you know, the Chinese and the China virus, if we continue to take that tack and, you know, divide ourselves that way, then it's just so much easier for them to do whatever they want. And King understood that. And that's what the poor people's campaign was about. They did continue it. Ralph Abernathy led it, and it just. It fizzled out. But a really good part of King's legacy. Right. And that, I think, brings us to something that I think you have talked about before, and I've learned a lot about this from you, which is not just that King believed. I mean, I knew that there have been books on King's militant nonviolence and kind of the more aggressive nature of protest, but actually went beyond that. So this summer, when people were really using King to essentially insist that these people stand down and they just have prayer vigils and all that, invoking King. Well, that wasn't necessarily true. King actually believed that more assertive or aggressive or even more direct. I'm not going to call it violent because I don't believe throwing a brick at a building is violence. But King actually had a much larger tactical spectrum or strategic spectrum, I think, than we're aware of.
- [59:04]
Scott Parkin
Yeah, I think what. I'll start with talking about King's thoughts around property destruction and things that you would see in some of these, what were essentially race riots in places like Newark and Detroit. I'm actually going to start off with a quote from his letter in the Birmingham jail, which is nonviolent. Direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which is constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. And so, like, King is actually pretty famous for that quote. And like, this is, you know, and especially, you know, I come out of organizing most recently in the climate movement. And so, like, white liberals within the climate movement love that quote. And they talk a lot about it. And so, you know, they. And then there's a key emphasis on the word nonviolence. And with the word nonviolent, we kind of get into this, like, into this, like, more, you know, detail oriented debate about what is violence, who is violence against. Bob, you just said it like, throwing a brick at a window is not violent. I'm 100% with you on that. And so it's actually pretty interesting that. And so that's a sort of like, mantra of a lot of, like, kind of white liberals who engage in, like, street activism and street organizing. And, like, I'm not gonna, like, criticize that too much, but I feel like that part of the story that also needs to be told is, like, some of King's other views on this, particularly towards the end of his life. And so in this piece called Trumpet of Conscience, you know, King actually draws a strong moral distinction between property against violence and property against persons. He, you know, there's actually some really kind of rich quotes in that writing. He, in fact, says, I am aware that there are many who wince at a distinction between property and persons who hold both sacrosanct. My views are not so rigid. A life is sacred. Property is intended to serve life. No matter how much we surround it with rights and respect. It has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man. And so King draws a distinction between inanimate objects and living beings. I would expand that definition of. Of not just man, but also like all living beings. And I feel that way about, you know, whether it's animals or whether it's like, you know, living things in the ecosystem, like trees and forests, et cetera. And then so I think that's a kind of important thing to kind of kind of flag. And then the other thing that King. Another thing that King does in this piece is rather than prioritizing or the rooting out of property destroyers for obstructing his message, which is actually something a lot of liberals do in these social justice, environmental circles, he actually tries to explain their Message, Where's the quote? The focus on property in the 1967 riots is not accidental. It has a message. It is saying something. It is saying something. And you know, that's the piece in the kind of more famous quote is at the end. A riot is the language of the unheard. And then we also heard it in that video, we played the audio, which is that he would go through these kind of burnt out streets after these riots and he would try and tell these young black men that rifles and Molokov cocktails are not going to be the solution to your answer. And their response is, but what about Vietnam? The United States of America seems to think the solution to their answer comes from violence. And so he sees it as a very understandable, very understandable thing to engage in this sort of, in using these tactics and strategies.
- [63:31]
Bob Bozanko
In fact, let me just cut it from a turn. I think that's important because I was thinking about this week because people are creating this equivalence now between let's say, Portland and what happened in the Capitol last week. And to me, the real issue there, which is what King just said, was that the idea behind it were 180 degrees apart. And King often pointed out that most of this violence was initiated by the police. Right, right.
- [63:57]
Scott Parkin
That was my third point, actually.
- [63:58]
Bob Bozanko
Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It's okay.
- [64:00]
Scott Parkin
It's okay.
- [64:01]
Bob Bozanko
But my point is there's a big difference between, you know, what happened in Portland, what happened last week. I mean, defending human rights is very different than thinking that, you know, some insane conspiracy that stole election votes is destroying America. So sorry about that.
- [64:19]
Scott Parkin
No, it's all good. I mean, I think that actually the important thing to mention about, like, what happened to the Capitol is that a big sort of like mantra for those folks is Blue Lives Matter and that police aren't being respected. And it's the Black Lives Matter versus Blue Lives Matter argument. And they're definitely. I have family who live in Fort Worth, Texas, who are like arch conservatives and help organize Blue Lives Matter marches right. In Dallas, Fort Worth. And as folks were storming the Capitol is like, they were like, fuck blue lives. And they were like fighting the police. I found that actually one of the more interesting things of what happened at the Capitol the other week, the very, very important thing, and King is like, like you said, is very careful to emphasize the police responsibility for most of the violence against people during the riots. There's a last quote, it's a little bit of a long quote, which is the bloodlust interpretation ignores One of the most striking features of the city riots violently, they certainly were. But the violence to a startling degree was focused on property rather than against people. There were very few cases of injury to persons and the vast majority of rioters were not involved at all in attacking people. The most publicized death toll that marked the riots and the many injuries were overwhelmingly inflicted on the riots by the military. It is clear that the riots were exacerbated by police action that were designed to injure or even kill people. As for the snipers, no account of the riots claims that more than one or two dozen people were involved. In sniping from the facts, an unmistakable pattern emerges. A handful of Negroes use gunfire substantially to intimidate, not to kill. And all of the other participants had a different target, property. And so, you know, and kind of like going with this sort of like anti capitalist theme is that like, you know, in the eyes of many people who were rioting. And I would say this like holds true for riots which are still, you know, we've. Riots haven't ended since the late 60s, clearly. And so like, you know, the property is the, is the sort of like, it's an assault on the sort of like white establishment, you know, the corporate establishment, et cetera. I mean, I don't know if folks had that deep an analysis. Maybe they did. Probably some of them did, but like, it's like a really important thing to sort of like kind of like put out there is that when you're engaging in property destruction in a moment like this or in other moments, whether it's like black bloc anarchists in Seattle or some of the property damage we saw from the George Floyd, Breonna Taylor uprisings this summer, is that, that's not targeting necessarily individuals, that's not targeting people, that's actually targeting buildings. And to them, you know, the buildings represents, you know, this sort of like power. It represents the power in our society which they hold over everyone else. All those poor people you talked about in the previous, in the previous session section. And so King, it's actually pretty amazing to me that this thought, these thoughts, this writing from King is actually not more widely circulated. It's fascinating to me and I think it's like an important thing that we need to continue talk, talk about. And also I know from like Indian friends of mine, like from India, Gandhi actually held similar views. Right. And so very, very important sort of piece of the conversation that needs to be entered into.
- [67:58]
Bob Bozanko
Yeah, King is often invoked and essentially to, you know, disarm. And I don't mean militarily, but in a sense, disarm people in the streets. Right. You're not allowed to do this. You know how to do this. I mean, this summer, one policeman was killed. It was an off duty officer who was working. It was a retired officer working security at a pawn shop. On Wednesday, far more police. Well, one. One policeman was killed and a bunch were injured and wounded by these people who support blue lives and all that stuff.
- [68:33]
Scott Parkin
The Wednesday before last.
- [68:36]
Bob Bozanko
Yeah, I don't even know what day it is anymore, but there's a difference. And I think, yeah, that part of King. But obviously we both know why that part of King isn't put out there. Nobody wants. You think Obama's gonna talk about King that way, do you? I mean, I mean, it's silly to say what would he be doing if you were alive today? But, but we're going to do it anyway. I mean, what do you think Martin Luther King's position would be on defund the police?
- [69:02]
Scott Parkin
I mean, I, I think he'd be the. To the left of defund police, to be totally honest. I think he'd probably be abolitionist. You know, I think it'd be like abolish the police. I think he'd be like, you know, abolish the, the carceral state to abolish prisons. Like, which is like, you know, position that is very popular in more radical circles and conservative circles, far right conservative circles. The one other thing I want to, I want to kind of point out is that like the, the other week at the Capitol, the, you know, the, the right wingers, the fash that went in there, they, they, their goal was to do a. People's apprehension of politicians, particularly Democratic politicians. They supposedly, whether they did it as in jest or not, built a gallows out for Mike Pence. There's a whole lot of different threats they made about Nancy Pelosi. Not that we're fans of Pence or Pelosi or any of those folks, but the folks who invaded the Capitol the other week had clear ideas about inflicting per. Damage against people. Right. That we don't see that in the, in the, like, it's not definitely, it's definitely part, not part of the rhetoric. It's definitely not part of the sort of like, you know, chats which get leaked out later, the Facebook commentary or what have you. Really kind of important thing is that they were targeting people when they invaded the Capitol Hill, you know, and I think that actually says a lot about, you know, that movement that small but growing and Dangerous movement versus like this kind of sort of bigger movement which is rooted in other, other principles. Right. And the principles in which we, we both embrace.
- [70:51]
Bob Bozanko
You know, Heather Heyer was killed. Two people in Kenosha were killed. I forget the name of the guy in Austin was killed. 105.
- [70:57]
Scott Parkin
Garrett Foster. Garrett Foster, yeah.
- [70:59]
Bob Bozanko
Garrett Foster. 105. There have been 105 incidents of right wing, these violent right wing extremists using their automobiles as weapons. On the other side, you have real important thing.
- [71:10]
Scott Parkin
A lot of state legislatures have passed laws that it's actually okay to drive your vehicles into people.
- [71:16]
Bob Bozanko
Just on another level, the governor of Florida has been encouraging it. You know, DeSantis and you know, on the other side, you had one proud boy or oath keeper in Portland killed who, you know, was waving his gun around. So, no, Antifa doesn't go out trying to kidnap leaders and claiming that it's going to execute them publicly or anything like that. Right. There's clearly a difference. There, There is no equivalency. And King, King needs, you know, people need to stop invoking King, obviously for these kinds of purposes. They're not gonna. But it's, that's, that's why we do this. So people understand that there's another part of it. You know, there's other stuff out there. I just, you know, I can't stress it enough. I've been saying it all summer, like there's a huge difference between, you know, a cop putting his knee on somebody for eight and a half minutes and throwing a brick through Target, you know, or Starbucks. Yeah, whatever. I mean, you know, you can fix it. They have insurance. Windows can be fixed. George Floyd was dead.
- [72:17]
Scott Parkin
Yep, absolutely. So we should. That's the sort of the end of our. The sections that we had come specified. We were going to talk about if. Do you want to start with the wrap up?
- [72:29]
Bob Bozanko
No, I mean, I think, I think it speaks for itself. I mean, this is an element, not just the Martin Luther King's legacy that's important. But I think if we talk about this, then we're also going to talk about ideas and issues that really should be acceptable in terms of the political discourse we have. Political discourse is incredibly narrow. I mean, as soon as Wednesday happened, you had Pelosi saying, we're going to resort to our better angels and this is not who we are and we need reconciliation and all that kind of stuff. And what that does is it shuts off a discussion of the kinds of issues that Martin Luther King was raising and that certainly haven't gotten any better in that regard. I mean, we're not living in 1954 or even 1965. I mean, and let's make that clear. I would never say things are worse now than they were then. There's been a huge retrenchment and backlash. But at the same time, you know, these issues are the same. King spoke about them. And now, you know, the people who speak about him tend to be put on the fringes. Nobody with the. I mean, that's the thing to keep in mind. Martin Luther King had immense public, you know, notoriety, credibility. Nobel prize winner, you know, really famous guy. And if the state, if the ruling class, and if the liberal ruling class can do him the way they did, then, you know, it's, it's a tough road ahead because if they can attack and discredit King and eventually, you know, maybe even get him killed, then we're up against something. But we can't do it with these piecemeal measures. And we're not going to do it with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and all this kind of stuff. I mean, you're going to need to really hit the system where it exists. And that includes war and empire. It includes these cultural events like the Olympics, and it involves tactics like busting up a Starbucks or a bank if they have to. Yep.
- [74:38]
Scott Parkin
It's not gonna, it's gonna be, it's gonna require more than the performative politics with the Kenji cloths. Bowing with the Kenji cloths.
- [74:45]
Bob Bozanko
Yeah. And, you know, the system isn't gonna take itself down. No, no, no.
- [74:52]
Scott Parkin
So, folks, you have been listening on this Martin Luther King Day to the Green and Red podcast. If you like what you hear, please follow us on all of our social media. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. If you did not just watch us on YouTube, please go to YouTube and find us Green and Red podcast and hit subscribe. If you're watching us on YouTube right now and you haven't subscribed, why not do it? Do it. Give us a rate and review on the Apple podcast platform. And if you have a few extra bucks and you want to become a patron for the cost of a beer, you can give us five bucks a month through patron patreon.com greenred podcast or you can go make a one time donation@greenandredpodcast.org and hit that support button. And we would greatly appreciate it.
- [75:43]
Bob Bozanko
Yeah. Also if you or anyone, you know, has like a community radio station show or a podcast or anything like that and you like what we do, you know, let us know and we could, you know, you could use this or you could talk to us about, you know, some of this stuff. So we want to get the word out there and remember this is not an economic investment for us. We're not making any money on this. We're spending money on it. We really genuinely believe we are saying things and talking to people that in this vast world of left social media generally goes unnoticed, you know. So that's why we do this. We want you to hear the people we talk to and think about some of these history stories we do. So we really appreciate it.
- [76:32]
Scott Parkin
Yep. Plus, plus, you know, our witty banter and edgy humor is like what wins the day.
- [76:39]
Bob Bozanko
Yeah. And then Scott's just so damn pretty you just want to look at him, you know, so.
- [76:45]
Scott Parkin
All right, folks, well I've had enough of that. We'll talk to you all later. Take care.
- [77:16]
Bob Bozanko
Sa.
- [77:42]
Martin Luther King Jr.
Sam.