By PETER MOLENAAR
January 16, 2023…
The MLK Day observance at the Powderhorn Park Community Center was a marvelous production. Tabatha, thank you so much for having mastered the ceremony straight from your heart. Oh, but it was the children who stole the show with spontaneous dance and gymnastic display. On the other hand, the two young women who performed a choreographed Afro-fusion dance blew me away. Then, to close the show, there was our own Brass Solidarity Band. Wow!
One sour note:
A young man had managed to insert himself ahead of the main program. He read on and on (and on) from a cell phone script (hmm) intent upon casting aspersions at Dr. King. Indeed, he asserted that Martin had been under the influence of “white liberals”. (Oh my!)
Moral means to moral ends? To be sure, “everything depends on conditions, time, and place”. Hey, a strategic conception must make a connection to significant masses of people. Right? Therefore, the inference that Martin’s nonviolent opposition was incorrect (or cowardly) is vile, to say the least.
A reminder note: consistent readers of the alley know that the burning of the 3rd precinct was initiated by white-nationalist provocateurs.
In truth, Dr. King understood that, subsequent to ‘the great migration’, Black Liberation would proceed via the struggle for equality and integration, and not via a struggle for a separate nation, (within historic boundaries which no longer existed.) He also understood that, taken as a whole, his people would not enter “the promised land” (i.e., socialism) without capital relinquishing ownership of the means of production. To verify this truth, the history of the Highlander Folk School can be found online.
Granted, the struggle for multi-racial working class unity remains ongoing. Even so, our gathering at Powderhorn Park clearly demonstrated that Dr. King’s life was not in vain. Dear neighbors, we remain in the quantitative phase of the revolutionary process. The ‘great leap forward’ is yet to come.
