Call to conscience, commitment, and action in the celebration of Martin Luther King Jr
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MLK-D.A.R.E. coalition: ficials we demand an end to empty promises when you run for office and service to the rich and privi leged while in office. To the banks, universities, real estate developers, gentrifiers, and others that profit from our poverty and misery, we say you will be held accountable to the people of this city. To those who refuse to pay their fair share of taxes to help fund our schools, we assure you change is on the way.
To the Philadelphia police department, we declare that we intend to hold you to democratic, human, and anti-racist standards in your relations with Black and Brown communities It’s time for change! It’s time for Black, Brown, and poor communities to realize political and economic power to change conditions that shape their lives and communities. But most of all it’s time that we trans form the structure of institutions, the foundations of our communities and our values.
Toward Beloved Community “We seek a beloved community, where racism, big otry and prejudice are not tolerated and the continual reproduction of poverty, hunger and homelessness ceases. We seek beloved community where disputes are resolved within, through peaceful conflict-resolution and equitable laws serve the ends of justice. We seek beloved community founded upon a qualitative change in our souls as well as in our lives, a true revolution of values that will cause us to question the fairness and justice of our past and present” (Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” April 4, 1967). J and equality are what democracy looks like in ac ustice is what love looks like in public. Freedom tuality. Moreover, without life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for Black folk, these values can hardly exist for anyone. Black freedom is a condition of the freedom for all fellow citizens. Our commitment to justice, democracy and the people is what grounds our hope in the realization of a new city that serves all of us. Our hope is rooted in what led Martin Luther King Jr to the conviction that America could become a great nation if we the people rose up and practiced the religious, moral and social values we claim as our foundations.
From our diverse communities, faiths, moral beliefs and ideologies we are united in love for justice and our people. We are grounded in a love sublime, an all-embracing love for all God’s children. The prophets of the Old and New Testaments and the Holy Quran inspire us. We seek courage from the examples of our ancestors and embrace the spirits of our martyrs of the distant and recent past.
We will march and rally for the future of our city and nation in the spirit of hope. We are confident that change is on the way. This will continue and intensify ongoing protest actions, sit-in, die-ins, pray ins, teach ins, petitions and whatever else is necessary to turn the tide towards justice. We declare our right to pro test for right. And in the words of the great Black song of hope, “we ain’t gonna let nobody turn us around.” We will march until, in the words of Martin Luther King, “Justice runs down like waters and righteous ness like a mighty stream”.
What We Stand For Racial Justice and the Dignity of Each Person T ing schools. Policies that fund schools based he racist school-to-prison pipeline begins in fail upon property taxes, redistribute funding to charter schools, and require teachers to teach to standard ized tests condemn poor communities to segregat ed, understaffed, under-resourced, and ineffective schools. In Philadelphia, a “majority minority” city, public schools doom Black and poor students to des titution, graduating only 10% of those who enter 9th grade and leaving half of all adults without the litera cy skills required to compete for “family-sustaining” jobs with benefits.
Bigoted racial profiling, stop and frisk, mandatory minimum sentencing, and three-strikes-you’re-out policies entrap black youth in criminalization and create a culture that devalues Black life and condones police misuse and abuse of power throughout the Black community.
Pennsylvania spends hundreds of millions to build prisons, in which more than 60% of inmates are Blacks and Hispanics. For Black males in their thir ties, one in every 10 is in prison or jail on any given day, and two-thirds of all persons in prison for drug offenses are people of color. These insidious poli cies of institutional racism, apartheid education, and mass incarceration must stop!
Recognizing that liberation for Black people advances the freedom of all, we must work tire lessly to extinguish racist philosophy, abolishing policies of racism and restoring the dignity, value, and productive potential of the Black communi ty, Black youth, and Black men especially. We are committed to establishing a city and society in which all are viewed as created in the image of God with in alienable human rights and justice as their birthright. Economic Justice and Stability With extremely high levels of poverty and deep delphia’s unemployment rate in recent years has been 15.1% for Blacks. However, when those who are un deremployed or have dropped out of the labor force altogether are counted, the figure jumps to close to 30%. Instead of tackling problems of unemployment and discrimination, Philadelphia is spending millions to displace the poor, destroying Black communities and businesses, to gentrify neighborhoods for the wealthy.
Nationwide, policies that privatize prisons and prison services enrich the elite who then lobby and contribute to politicians to institute draconian poli (continued on page 5, in “Big Eyes: A woman artist trapped in cruel deception”)
SOCIALIST ACTION JANUARY 2015 3