Had To Cry Today

 Today is January 18, a day the U.S. Federal government has designated an official holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., a man that government murdered on April 4th, 1968. [1]

Naturally, certain media outlets devoted some airtime or text space to content about King. Democracy Now! (democracynow.org, which is also aired on various radio stations) played parts of his speeches, including the last one, which he delivered in Memphis, Tennessee, the night before he was murdered there. He was in Memphis to support striking African-American sanitation workers, who were horribly abused and underpaid by the racist rulers of that city. The death of two of their brethren in a trash compactor was the last straw for these workers, prompting the strike. [2]

King's last speech foretold his own death.

The murder of King is tragic on a number of levels. On the deepest level, it is the triumph of evil over good. That is the hardest part to take.

It was a victory of racists over the oppressed "black" population of America. That gave heart to racists all over the world, ad pain and gloom to "blacks" worldwide.

It was a success for the U.S. power structure, whose members fervently hated King. King was the target of vicious attacks in leading U.S. media for his opposition to the Vietnam war, by the Washington Post in its editorial page a year earlier, and Life magazine, among many others.

It was a sweet victory for the FBI, especially the two leading culprits running that secret police agency, John Edgar Hoover and William Sullivan. Hoover branded King "the most dangerous negro in America." Sullivan at least met with poetic justice, shot dead in an apparent assassination. His killer was the son of a police official, and he claimed to be out hunting and thought Sullivan was a deer. (Sure.)

It was a victory for the CIA, which carried out the hit and arranged to frame the fall guy, a petty criminal and racist named James Earl Ray.

The "elimination" of King threw the civil rights movement into disarray, removed its most stirring orator nad leading figure, an irreplaceable person. It prompted riots in 100 cities, allowing the pwoer structure to kill more blacks (those inclined to rebellion). It helped elect the "law and order" candidate for president that November, RIchard Milhous Nixon, one of the most pathological figures in U.S. history. It helped deepen the racial divide. Divide and rule is a cardinal principle of the U.S. elite.  And tactially, it freed the way for the Johnson regime to crush the rally in Washington King had organized, which intended to stay in the capital city of the Empire until certain legislation was passed by Congress to economically aid the poor.

From the point of view of the ruling class, King was a menace. By coming out against the horrendous war on Vietnam, talking about the need to reform the capitalist system to resolve the race issue, and reaching out to aid workers, King could potentially raise people's consciousness by connecting the separate "issues" of war, racism, labor rights and the economic system and dcreate broad unity in segments of the populace. An intolerable menace.

And what of King's main nemesis, the creator of the secret police agency, the FBI? The bourgeois elite have mostly turned their backs on Hoover. Apparently his legacy of political repression is inconvenient for them- it clashes with their propaganda about loving "freedom and democracy" and the U.S. as "the land of the free."  But he is memorialized anyway. THe natioaal headquarters of the FBI, the main nest of this colony of fascist insects, is emblazoned with Hoover's name: "The J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building." As a state within a state, the FBI is free to honor the discredited Hoover. Establishment emdia and politicians maintain a discreet silence about this outrage, and do not demand the building be renamed. You see, in the U.S., unlike in other police states, no one controls the FBI. The U.S. is the police state to beat all police states.

King was a saint. That is, a person who was willing to sacrifice his own life for the greater good of humanity. He opposed violence against the vicious repression and terrorism against black people. He in a very articulate and dignified way asked the system to change its ways. Its response was to murder him.

So I spent part of the day crying. Not for the death of a good man. Good people die all the time. I can handle that. In part what caused my tears was the power of King's own words. In part the poignancy that a rare person, an American saint, was eliminated by an evil power structure that has ruled America from the beginning without interrupttion. But the main cause of my tears was the FACT that evil won, as it often does on this planet. Evil is destructive of humanity. And on a deeper level,  Evil is anti-Life.

1] Reactionaries and racists on every level of American society opposed the creation of the holiday. The political utility of the holiday for the power structure is that it can coopt King's legacy, erase his opposition to the Vietnam war and his economic critique of U.S. capitalism, and transform a vital leader and potential source of contemporary inspiration to push for change, into a plaster saint.

2]  Democracy Now ! program, click here.   Memphis sanitation strike as per Wikipedia, click here.