Abdoulie,
My pleasue... Glad you found it worthwhile reading.
Regards,
Kabir.
jawo abdoulie <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Mr Njie,
Thanks for this piece.
Abdoulie Jawo
Amadu Kabir Njie wrote:
Hypocrisy from Bush, Clinton at funeral of Coretta Scott King By Jerry
Isaacs
8 February 2006
A funeral service was held Tuesday in Atlanta for Coretta Scott King, the
widow of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Over the last
several days more than 157,000 mourners came to pay respects to Mrs. King
who died of ovarian cancer on January 30 at the age of 78.
The death of Coretta Scott King evoked an outpouring of popular sympathy
from those who identify her and her husband with the struggle for social
equality and justice that animated the mass movement against Jim Crow
segregation. Her death also evoked a torrent of hypocrisy and posturing from
leading figures from both political parties, including President Bush and
three former US presidents who gave tributes at the funeral service.
One could not listen to their remarks without being struck by the fact that
Martin Luther King Jr. was opposed to just about everything these people
stand for. From Carter, to former president Bush, to Clinton, to the current
occupant in the White House, they have all presided over an enormous
rollback in civil rights, the growth of poverty and inequality, and an
explosion of US militarism around the world. It should be recalled in regard
to this last point that King was murdered in 1968 as he was coming into
sharp opposition to the Democratic Party over the Vietnam War.
George W. Bush's presence at the ceremony was particularly grotesque. The
president's career is closely associated with those who opposed the civil
rights movement, including his own father. In his unsuccessful election
campaign for the Senate in 1964, George Herbert Walker Bush opposed the
Civil Rights Act enacted that year, denouncing Texas' Democratic Senator
Ralph Yarborough as an "extremist" and "left-wing demagogue" for supporting
the federal legislation that outlawed racial segregation.
The modern-day Republican Party is the product of a conscious appeal to win
segregationist votes in the 1960s, after the national leadership of the
Democratic Party—which had long been the party of Jim Crow in the
South—moved to support civil rights legislation. Leading figures of the
Republican Party today, such as Georgia Congressman Bob Barr and former
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi, have close and public ties
to white supremacist organizations such as the Council of Conservative
Citizens.
Bush, whose utter indifference towards the conditions of life confronted by
the working class and poor African Americans in particular was demonstrated
to the whole world during Hurricane Katrina, is systematically dismantling
whatever social safety net remains in the US, including Medicare, Medicaid,
public education and housing. Moreover, while he referred to the "vicious
words," "bombings" and other threats that Coretta Scott King and her family
endured, he has launched a campaign of illegal spying on American citizens
that mirrors the FBI surveillance against King and others in the civil
rights movement 40 years ago.
As of late last week, Bush reportedly had no intention of attending the
funeral and had planned to send his wife and father, the former president,
while he gave a speech on his budget-cutting plan in New Hampshire. The
president's handlers apparently convinced him it would be a good move
politically to attend, particularly since his minimal support among black
voters had plummted since Hurricane Katrina. The fact that a black minister
with close ties to the White House was officiating at the ceremony also
helped.
The remarks by Bush and his father were perfunctory with all present aware
of the hollowness of their efforts to identify with King's legacy.
The enormous chasm between the lifestyles of the privileged representatives
at the funeral and the broad masses of blacks and working class people was
impossible to conceal. Despite all of the hypocritical tributes to the
struggle for civil rights waged four decades ago, the ceremony provided a
palpable sense that developments in American since 1968 have betrayed the
ideals for which King had fought.
Southern Christian Leadership Council co-founder Reverand Joseph Lowrey and
others noted that Coretta Scott King had publicly opposed the war in Iraq,
which he suggested had been launched on the basis of lies. In a clear
reference to Bush's attack on civil liberties former president Jimmy Carter
noted that the Kings had been the target of "secret government wiretapping"
and that the "color on the faces" of the victims of Hurricane Katrina had
shown that the struggle for civil rights had not been completed.
The underlying political tensions within the ruling elite were highlighted
when Carter deliberately refused to shake the Republican president's hand.
The efforts of the Democrats to wrap themselves in the mantle of the civil
rights movement, however, were no more sincere that Bush's. The Democrats'
capitulation to the Bush administration on a host of questions, from the war
in Iraq, to government spying, to the appointment of right-wing Supreme
Court justices, is an expression of the fact that, in the end, this party
defends the interests of the same economic elite as the Republicans.
Former President Clinton noted that just four days after her husband's
assassination Coretta Scott King traveled to Memphis to support the struggle
of the striking sanitation workers that her husband had been championing
when he was killed. At the time, she insisted that the "right to a job and
an income" was the only way to "pursue life, liberty and happiness" in
America.
But the Democrats today, no less than the Republicans, are thoroughly
hostile to the struggle of the working class to attain such basic rights.
Just two months ago, the entire political establishment was denouncing
transit workers in New York City as "selfish thugs" because they dared to go
out on strike to defend their right to health care and pension benefits.
Hillary Clinton, the US Senator from New York, who joined her husband in
addressing the funeral, called the strike illegal and upheld the state's
strike-breaking Taylor Law that imposed thousands of dollars in fines on the
workers.
President Clinton whose "welfare reform" had a devastating impact by
eliminating the guarantee of a minimal income for millions of poor people,
including African Americans, epitomized the rightward shift of the
Democratic Party over the last several decades and its repudiation past
social reforms.
The past 40 years has seen an enormous social polarization in the US that
has affected the entire political establishment, which is unified in its
efforts to further enrich the wealthiest layers of American society.
This process also had a severe impact upon the civil rights movement King
built. That movement—which never challenged the underlying economic causes
of inequality, i.e., the capitalist system itself—in the end elevated a
privileged layer of African Americans through such programs as affirmative
action, while failing to significantly change the conditions of the great
mass of black workers and youth.
The struggle against racial discrimination is directly connected to the
great social question in America: the division of society into two classes
whose interests are irreconcilably opposed. The guarantee of genuine
equality and democratic rights can only be achieved through a fundamental
reorganization of economic life to meet the needs of the masses of working
people, not the wealthy few.
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