Where Do We Go From Here? – Dr. King and Jane McAlevey
This article was originally published on Daily Kos.
By Alan Singer
Inauguration Day this year is the same day as the federal holiday commemorating the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. With the ascendency of Donald Trump to the Presidency this week, progressives need to discuss “where we go from here?”
Martin Luther King asked that question in a 1967 address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King told the convention “We must honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here, and one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?’ And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy . . . [W]hen I say questioning the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated.”
The weekend before the inauguration there were People’s Marches in a number of U.S. cities protesting against proposed Trump initiatives. Rallies were held in Washington DC, New York, Newark, Atlanta, San Francisco, San Diego, and Philadelphia. Felicia and I were in Birmingham, Alabama for a wedding so I attended a rally there at the Federal Building, two blocks from Kelly Ingram Park where police and firefighters attack black students trying to desegregate the park in 1963.
But at this juncture, mass rallies are insufficient. Trump and his followers make it clear that liberals and progressives are enemies of the people who should be ignored or punished. Two other strategies may be equally impotent. Civil disobedience mostly annoys the people they inconvenience and doesn’t convince anyone to change their minds. Some Democratic Party elected officials plan to work with Trump on positions they seem to share and to claim credit for the achievements, but as Elon Musk will soon learn, Donald Trump does not share center stage with anyone.
Jane McAlevey, who died of cancer last summer at the age of 59 was one of the most successful union organizers in the United States during the last three decades. Her advice to progressive organizers was always to convince the unconvinced instead of preaching to those who already agree with them.
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Alan Singer is a historian and teacher educator at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York. His most recent books are Social Studies for Secondary Schools, 5th edition (Routledge, 2024) and Class-Conscious Coal Miners (SUNY Press, 2024). Blogs, tweets, essays, interviews, and e-blasts present his views and not those of Hofstra University.