| It is tense. You hear the rustle of hundreds of feet walking and hear muffled voices. A voice rises in song. "Ain't goin' a let nobody ..." Other voices join in. There's anger and harsh words, too. "Go, home, troublemaker." Martin Luther King, in another scene, speaks about his dream and his "four little children." Then a shot is heard around the world. Flames rise to the sky and then each dies out. We can't hear, and we can't see anymore. We can't remember the clubs smashing against skulls or see and smell the twisted, charred bodies hanging on the trees or recall children hosed with gushing water or feel the tiredness of women as they walk to houses where they work cleaning for low wages. The tension is underground. Voices are silenced. In place of resistance and the spirit of life is an image of King as a man who never agitated, who never spoke up to White supremacy, or who never took a stand against the government's engagement in Vietnam. A mind-numbing series of sound bits obscures his shout out to the nation to see and to work on behalf of the "least of us," the poor and working class. Now, our children hear nonviolence and interpret no action or resistance to being lured into lethargy. The man who was hunted by the FBI and who received death threats daily is now a saintly figure, etched in a narrative that suggests everyone loved him while he was alive. That King would warn again of a nation's arrogance in inflicting destruction and mayhem on other people's lands. King would urge that we do something! He would urge our young children to stand up straight, focus their eyes on life not death, for they would need to feel to think! But America has no memory of this King. America, at risk of loosing its own life, is giving itself over to the pursuit of death while it gives us an unusable past in which our young Black children are not expected to see beyond an opaque image. They cannot feel the anger and urgency King felt those morning he had to pulled himself out of bed, wishing he could retire to Jamaica, but putting on his thinking cap and battle fatigues instead. Our children can't feel or see this man. In the meantime ... In New Orleans, Black youth, American citizens, are without schools in the world's wealthiest nation! Last week, I spoke with Sakura Kone, Coordinator of Media for Common Ground in New Orleans who confirmed that 50 percent of the schools are not opened. "We are starved for resources," he said. "All the wards from 1 through 15 are 90 percent Black, working class and poor," Kone explained, yet, "there are no skills training programs and no recreational centers. The young people are here, 'hanging out without guardians; raising themselves because parents are trying to secure employment and housing in other parts of the country. " Grassroots organizations like Common Ground provide assistance. The organization has "adopted" O. Perry Walker High School; however, grassroots organizations like Common Ground and the young people themselves are overwhelmed. According to Kone, some of the youth live four or five together under one roof, sometimes with girlfriends or boyfriends. "The pregnancy rate is up by five times, but the young girls are still in school, and a few have jobs at MacDonald's. They have their hearts in the right place," Kone said, while they try to cope with dim demoralizing conditions. This society has let them down, written them off through its successful narrative campaign featuring them as intellectually inferior and inherently violent. Often, family has let them down, but they are trying to cope. Kone recounts a situation where older adults responded to the establishment of a crack house. Members of Common Ground and other grassroots organizations approached the young people in this house and reminded them that the elders were focused on assisting their parents and grandparents. "If you are remaining in New Orleans," the youths were told, "we will get you skills training." A few days later, Kone said, the young people closed the crack house down themselves. "They want better," Kone said. Who wants to creep about on the "dark side"? King was for more than simply integrating the races. He was about quality of life. He was for reminding Black Americans that we are a people who found a way out of no way and overcame despair and dehumanization many times. We once resisted meaningless images that made us complicit with the demoralization of our children. This month of February should be used to begin to restore our collective memory of resistance. Let's celebrate the resumption of our struggle, for we have even more at stake -- our children, our future. |
| Voices/ Dr. Jean Daniels Martin Luther King |
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