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I found that comment interesting, both in light of what actually happened that long-ago day in August, 1963 and what happened just this past Saturday and the resultant hullabaloo over ANSWER's role. To me, both what happened then and what is happening now merely reflect the ugly downside of coalition work - a downside that it seems folks really don't want to accept as part of making meaningful change. So here are my thoughts on it, starting from the past. It makes me smile that anyone would hold up the 1963 March on Washington (properly called the March for Jobs and Freedom, which should tell you something right there) as an example of ideal for a single-issue march whose "few" speakers were selected to "inspire people". The March on Washington was, in fact, a compromise event of the highest order, that its organizer A. Philip Randolph (an organization all by his himself when it came to effective activism), agreed to allow to be less revolutionary than it was originally planned to be for one reason and one reason only - obtaining a critical mass of Black persons in Washington DC and putting the kibosh on what was a veiled threat by JFK to allow J. Edgar Hoover’s CIA to turn DC into a police state while the march was in effect. To accomplish this, Randolph (along with his mentee Bayard Rustin) was ultimately was forced to share "equal billing" with 5 Black organizations, all of which had slightly different emphasis and different approaches to the problem: the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE – pacifists that emphasized Ghandi-like racial reconciliation until post 1954; SCLC – Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Dr. King’s organization, founded after Rosa Parks’ sit down, comprised of ministers and those with a religious approach to the problem); SNCC – Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; and A. Philip Randolph’s group; NAACP – we all know what that is; and the National Urban League probably the only truly grassroots organization in the bunch, formed in the ghettos of the North following the great Black migration, with access to capital and jobs as their primary mission. I think it's instructive to compare both the list of diverse organizations that form International ANSWER with this list. Maybe it's just me, but they don't all look like communist fronts.....they indeed look like a list of groups for who either war or racism/ethnic conflict is a mobilizing principle. Going back to 1963, Randolph had more problems he had to handle trying to hold what was otherwise a cornucopia of different folks with different agendas together for the single event. For example, he had to address the fact that many of the footsoldiers on the ground fighting for Black equality were women and yet they were excluded as speakers (in the end, we got to sing, and have a separate tribute to our womanness, but that's it.) But more importantly, he had to add some more folk in order to accommodate the fierce pressure on the event brought to bear by JFK, to avoid Hoover turning D.C into an armed police state for the weekend. As a result, the list of speakers was pretty long (not counting all the musical acts) and when you look at it, some of the connections are rather hard to see: Program for the March for Jobs and Freedom The March on Washington certainly was not a "single issue march," even though again historical revisionism has made it so for most people today because all they know of it is the last 20% of Dr. King’s speech. As you will see below, there were lots of “issues”. The list of demands for the March was rather omnibus, but ultimately whittled away in favor of the Civil Rights Bill in no small part because the “leaders” insisted that the larger concerns of the grassroots give way in order to pacify JFK and the "mainstream" politicians, who IMO were scared shitless about the prospect of hundreds of thousands of angry Black folk descending upon Washington DC demanding anything . (I probably would have been angry, too but I was only 2 and still in diapers - my mom and dad said I had a good time at the march though, probably because I was then just a round-faced happy baby with no concern for anything other than my bottle and my dollies. How 42 years changes things…) The March on Washington was the ultimate brainchild of a socialist revolutionary (who had already terrified the government twice before by threatening a similar march, only to have both Roosevelt and Truman capitulate to his demands rather than run the risk that JFK chose to run until it became clear what was about to happen whether he liked it or not, and how the US would look internationally if it did). The March was ultimately made a success, however, by a coalition of folks who really did not agree with each other about much, substantive or methodological, when it came to establishing priorities. Including with the socialism of A. Philip Randolph, the March's leader and organizer. But nonetheless, all agreed on one thing: Black people were entitled to better. And wanted it - right now (then.) The crowd that ultimately appeared in DC was recruited by all these organizations. Each had their particular constituencies, with their particular emphasis, represented. Yet despite these differences and the rivalries between the organizations, the intended audience for these different constituencies voted with their feet - they showed up - because there was at least *one* thing they all agreed on. When you realize what the true intent of the organizers of March on Washington was (to put heat on people high and low oppressing black folks, north, south, east and west, with sheer numbers) it seems clear that it probably *didn't really matter* too much from the perspective of the original organizers and most of the actual participants what Dr. King had to say about the details of the struggle from his perspective. He was just a very popular young minister whose religiously based approach, while different than the other approaches of the other organizing groups and concerned about moral issues to a larger degree than other groups, was still related to the bottom line goal that they all shared despite their differences in priorities, membership and message: black empowerment. Without regard to some thought Dr. King was an accomodationist or a communist, or whether women were or were not allowed to be speakers, or whether whites were welcome participants, or whether the Labor Movement was really relevant to folks who were getting waterhosed and dog-chewed in the south trying to get lunch or register to vote. There certainly were only some who cared about whether DC was a state. In the end, everybody got a little piece of their "say." (That Dr. King ended up giving the last few famous paragraphs of his speech that day spontaneously at the behest of the late Mahalia Jackson is who asked him to “Tell them about your dream, Martin!”, as they say, history. Since it is that part that arguably made him a national hero as opposed to what he was called most of the time back then, a communist who hated America. Especially after he started the next year injecting another highly “off-message” subject into speeches and marches and rallies focused on empowering Black people - the immorality of the Vietnam War.) While the beloved "I Have a Dream" excerpt was lovely oratory, it really was largely "off message" with the stated purposes of the march. Dr. King's own advance-prepared words confirm this. Black People simply did not descend on Washington D.C. in those numbers to feel good; they came to demand what they believed they had a right to demand right then, right now from their government. As Dr. King said, they came to demand that the nation make good on the bad check it had given its Black citizenry. Right then, right now. Or else. Imagine if, today, what we were taught as most important was the speech probably closest to that viewpoint, shared by the lead organizers and most of the folks who traveled far and wide to the event: the censored speech of now Congressman John Lewis, who advocated nothing less than “scorched earth” (albeit nonviolent), against Jim Crow that would “fragment the South into 1,000 pieces.” Even though that was a far more “on message” speech than Dr. King’s from the perspective of many who had traveled far and wide, do we today accuse Dr. King of having “hijacked” the March merely because of his own deeply personal and religious take on the problem, and exhortation for us to be spiritual people united in our humanity, even in our anger? Obviously, we don’t do so, even though his historically-preserved ending message was just a small snippet of his words that day, the entirety of which history now calls the "I Have a Dream" speech even though that message was definitely not about his dream -which was, if you read the entire speech) clearly only tangentially related to the goals and objectives of the March. Like International ANSWER, a group that clearly and publicly bills itself as being against "war and racism" as equal priorities, the organizers of the '63 march had different priorities. Compare ANSWER's many issues with the long list of demands put forth by the organizers (A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin) for the March on Washington: One: passage of a meaningful civil rights legislation at this session of Congress with no filibustering.
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