January 11, 2018

Reality Check

Cancellation of Roland Martin Show: A Sign of Black Powerlessness
By A. Peter Bailey

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - When first hearing about TV-One’s cancellation of Roland Martin’s show for “budgetary” reasons, my immediate reaction was bull crap. I am convinced that his show was cancelled because some advertisers and some Trumpets were outraged because of Roland’s Afrocentric perspective when reporting and interpreting news.

Though I didn’t always agree with Roland’s positions on certain issues, for the past five years his thought-provoking, informative, meaningful show was a valuable source of information on what is happening in this country. He introduced his audiences to knowledgeable black folks with expertise in the arenas of economics, education, culture, politics, etc., who are never seen or heard on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, CBS, NBC or ABC. And he did it with an honest swagger that black commentators on those networks had no opportunity to match. White advertisers and political Trumpets were unable to deal with that kind of honest black assertiveness. So they threatened to create “budgetary” problems for TV-One.

Which brings me to a second reaction when hearing about the cancellation: “This is what happens to a group of people who resolutely refuse to organize a comprehensive, national movement that will promote and protect their economic, cultural and political interests in this group-oriented society.

For the past half-century, we, as a group of people, have acted as though we no longer live in a country in which White supremacy/racism is the dominant ideology. White people may disagree among themselves about many things. But one thing that most of them agree upon is that they should be in control of the United States of America. This is still true despite the election and re-election of President Barack Obama.

Too many of us rejoice over symbolic individual achievements such as the first Back president of this or that major corporation, institution, club or organization. When I express disdain about what these symbolic, individual accomplishments do for us as a group of people, I am accused of being “stuck in the 1960s.”

I accept this accusation before reminding the accuser that most firsts haven’t halted the killing of unarmed Black males by police officers, the rising incidents of overt White supremacy on numerous White college campuses, the disgusting way that too many Whites portray Michelle Obama on the Internet or the respectability given to known members of the Ku Klux Klan by Trump and his Trumpets.

These are the consequences of our refusal to organize a national movement to promote and protect our interests. Impulsive marches and protest demonstrations while chanting “No Justice, No Peace,” to counter the above manifestations of White supremacy do not a movement make. Many of these actions have become basically profiling for television.

What is difficult is to organize an ongoing movement that would have made it impossible for TV-One to have cancelled Roland’s show. The station would have let the organization know who was doing the threatening and it could have warned the threateners that messing with that should would inspire a national boycotts of whatever they were advertising to sell to us.

That’s how a group with real power takes care of business. Our most potent weapon against such incidents in this money-driven country is our collective economic resources. If we don’t effectively use those resources in our war for equal rights, equal justice and equal opportunity, we are basically blowing smoke.

A. Peter Bailey, whose latest book is Witnessing Brother Malcolm X, the Master Teacher, can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Jan. 14, 2018

Dr. King and the Dignity of Work

By Julianne Malveaux

 

 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. didn't plan to get involved in the Memphis garbage worker's strike.    He hadn't planned to be there on the fateful day when he was shot on April 4, 1968.  But he was pressured to go the first time and found the garbage worker's strike compelling.  He promised to return, and felt it important to keep his word, despite a packed schedule.

 

Memphis was so very important because the 1300 Black men who worked in the Sanitation Department were treated despicably.  Two workers had been crushed in a garbage compactor in 1964, but the faulty equipment had not been replaced.  On February 1, 1968, two more men, Echol Cole, 36, and Robert Walker, 30, were crushed in the compactor.  

 

The two men were contract workers, so they did not qualify for workmen's compensation, and had no life insurance. The city of Memphis paid $500 plus one month's pay for their funeral expenses.  Robert Walker's wife, Earline, was pregnant at the time of his death.

Memphis garbage workers were notoriously ill-treated.  

 

They were poorly paid, at $1.60 (the minimum wage) to $1.90 per hour.  They were not paid overtime, even though they were often required to work more than 8 hours a day.  Their pay was so low that many held second jobs, or received public assistance.  They were not paid to work when there was inclement weather, like rain or snow.  And their supervisors, mostly white, were much better paid, no matter what the weather.  After the deaths of Echol Cole and Robert Walker, garbage workers demanded better wages and working conditions, and union recognition.   The City Council agreed, but the racist, indifferent mayor, Henry Loeb, vetoed the City Council's action.  The men went on strike on February 11, 1968, and stayed out 64 days, until April 12.

 

Have we forgotten the poignant pictures of grown men carrying hand-lettered signs that said "I Am A Man", and the irony of these hard-working men having to declare that which should have been perfectly obvious?  Memphis Black garbage workers were not treated as men, but as disposable beings considered only useful for dealing with other people's rubbish.  

 

They weren't the only ones.  Lots of Black people, even after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, received unequal pay, and thoroughly unacceptable terms and conditions of work.  The city of Memphis was violating national labor laws, but because those they demeaned were Black, nobody cared, and nobody noticed until the garbage workers went on strike.

The Association of Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) is the union that the Memphis garbage workers were affiliated with.  They have developed a campaign,  "I AM 2018"  (https://www.iam2018.org) that is focused on organizing and on a series of events to commemorate the strike, remember Cole and Walker, and focus on the dignity of work.

 

The I AM 2018 campaign is needed now, more than ever, as worker dignity is constantly assailed.  The federal Department of Labor seems to be on a campaign to rescind Obama-era rules that improve life for workers.  For example, an Obama rule would require employers to pay four hours of wages to workers who are "on call" whether they are used or not.  

 

Why? Because if the workers are on call, they are tethered to the telephone and need to be paid for their time.  Since 45 was elected, though, many have lined up to ask the Department of Labor to rescind the proposed rule.  

 

They say that the rule is too costly for corporations and businesses and that it will cost the nation jobs.  New York State Senator Chris Jacobs says the proposed rule will be a "devastating blow" to business. In this aggressively and myopically pro-business climate, who wants to bet that the proposed rule will be rescinded?

Just as King stood with Memphis garbage workers, he would now stand with the I AM 2018 campaign, and with the "on call" workers who can't get respect or compensation for their availability.  We are still not finished with the work Dr. King started, not finished with the struggle for economic justice.  We have yet to attain equality, yet to develop an economic agenda for shared prosperity, for workplace dignity and for human rights.

 

January 14, 2018

Martin's Birthday Sermon: The Negro Is Your Brother

This is No Time for Silence

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - As the world pauses to honor one of the greatest African Americans, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, most conscious Americans are bowing our heads, though not in prayer.

We are enraged that Donald Trump, who garnered the presidency through his "birther" inquisition, questioning President Barack Obama's legitimacy and identity, continues to display vulgar bigotry, hatred and racism. He, and the GOP, have spent his first 360 days, literally, attempting to turning around the Obama Administration's policies to support the disenfranchising of non-White Americans and nations.

Equally, many of us are appalled by the silence from the African-American "faith leaders" who flood the airwaves, pulpits and megachurch auditoriums with messages of deliverance, hope and prosperity in the face of this adversity and darkness. If we've ever needed "a Word" from the Lord, as a community, we sure do need it now. Yet as my grandmother would say, "you can hear a rat piss on cotton" from those leaders who have such stark messages that will free you from every defiling form of deviant, lustful, immoral and heart-wrenching sin that will send you to the hell.

Dr. King was a global humanitarian, yet his primary calling was as a prophet. He used his prophetic voices to spare not and cry aloud, addressing the concerns across racial identity, leading the charge for equality for the least advantaged. King, and his contemporaries, jailed in Birmingham understood, that they weren't just wrestling against being bitten by dogs, hosed down and lynching's but there were principalities, powers, rulers of darkness, spiritual wickedness in high places. And, those high places had seats that effected public and social policy.

In the book, Where Have All The Prophets Gone, Marvin McMickle reminds preachers that they have no right to preach prophetic words with their fists balled up and index fingers pointing out and pointing away from themselves. I contend that preachers all need to point a finger toward themselves and examine their calling. Jesus was a prophet who came to set at liberty them that were bruised. We can't just deliver a superficial message of faith without works.

Sitting in a shithole because of injustice, Dr. King pens, "The Negro Is Your Brother," commonly known as the Letter from the Birmingham Jail. About the letter, McMickle says "King preaches from the prophetic text and becomes a prophet in our midst."

In the absence of any of the modern day celebrated and proclaimed apostles, (arch) bishops, and right-reverends having a prophetic word, in response to the recent Trump debacle, we will let King preach for them this Sunday morning. "Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial 'outside agitator' idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."

King refers to himself, Jesus and other great reformers as extremists. "So, the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be? Will we be extremists for hate or for love? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime - two were extremists for immorality. Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists."

And I believe this creative extremism fused in love should compel clergy to come out from their silence and stand up for justice, for equality and inhumanity. In other words, silence in the face of such demeaning rhetoric and practices from the White House is ungodly and demands a godly and bold response.

Keith Magee is a public intellectual with a focus on social justice and theology. He is currently Senior Fellow, Culture and Justice, University College London; Director, Social Justice Institute at Howard Thurman Center on the campus of Boston University, where he is a Scholar in Residence; and Senior Pastor, The Berachah Church, Dorchester Centre, MA. For more information visit www.4justicesake.org or follow him on social media @keithlmagee.

Jan. 14, 2018

The Power of the Presidency: Will Ethnic Cleansing Be Next?
By Barbara Reynolds

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The ''sh*thole" debacle: It is one thing to rhetorically hate a race of people but it is quite another to have the power and the resources to destroy them. That is why Trump's arguing that people from "sh*tholes," like Haiti and Africa don't belong here is so disturbing.

In a sense he is telling the world black and brown people have no place in America. He made that loud and clear when he said, "Haitians Get Out." Will we see ethnic cleansing? Are we witnessing the rise of America's Hitler? Character assassination precedes physical assassination.

First there is the slander, the painting of people of color as worthless, unpatriotic, and lawless. Here is a president who labeled black football players "sons of bitches," had kind words to say about the White nationals who were beating up protestors in Charlottesville and refused to provide the help to Americans suffering from hurricane destruction in Puerto Rico. One of his first hires was Steve Bannon, an avowed white supremacist whose plan was deconstruction, which meant satisfying Trump's base by dehumanizing people of color, robbing them of survival tools and ensuring more black men wound up in jail.

Trump's father was reportedly a Klansman, so the hatred he has for Blacks was passed through his DNA. He tried to violate Barack Obama's right to be president through the lie that he was born in Kenya - one of those sh*thole places. When that didn't work as president he is obsessed with destroying Obama's legacy especially through budget cuts that are destroying Obamacare. By cutting that he sees how he can destroy Obama's legacy and the race that he sprang from.

The deconstruction of people of color is not only through his inhumane immigration policy but the cutback in EPA regulations which allow toxics to flow freely into places where people of color live. Cuts in Medicaid and Medicare will push seniors to cut back on preventive care, another measure that will hit blacks who are on the bottom of the economic poll. To pay for the billions his tax cuts provide to his rich friends, millions will not have health care, healthy toxic free environments, and their beds will be the cold sidewalks as he cuts out aid for the homeless.

The other problem is Trumpism, the Republicans do not stand with the America who believes that all are created equal. No they support Trump's racism, the White evangelicals pretend that unmerited greed is not a sin and the Black pulpits are mostly silent.

But I still believe that there is enough of us - the Irish, the Italians, the Japanese, and hundreds of other races - whatever so-called "sh*thole" we may be accused of coming from will still rise to make America great again and not hate again. We will run for office, we will vote our strength, and we will never hate, bully, slander others. We will never lower our values to become the tyrants who are now ruining this country. We are better than those at the top, so we must rise up and reclaim the honor and dignity in the name of all those, black, white , red and yellow, who died to make us free.