Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 50 years later: The struggle against racism, war and poverty continues

by ABAYOMI AZIKIWE

Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his life for the elimination of national oppression, the war policy of the Pentagon and the necessity for the lifting of the masses of people out of poverty. His assassination was a by-product of a system built on forced removals of the indigenous people, the enslavement of Africans and the super-exploitation of workers in general.

Behind the Trump veneer is a system of oppression and exploitation, which must be uprooted.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the martyrdom of the central figure in the movement for civil rights and peace in the United States during the 1960s.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his life for the elimination of national oppression, the war policy of the Pentagon and the necessity for the lifting of the masses of people out of poverty. His assassination was a by-product of a system built on forced removals of the indigenous people, the enslavement of Africans and the super-exploitation of workers in general.

Today, some five decades later, the presidency of Donald Trump is by no means an aberration within the socio-political context of American history. The dominant choice between Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and her Republican counterpart Trump during 2016 represented two sides of the same fraudulent process of maintaining the status quo.

As First Lady in the 1990s, Clinton witnessed the criminalisation of tens of millions of African Americans and Latinos. The dreaded crime bill, the effective death penalty act and other reactionary legislation would facilitate the growth of the prison-industrial-complex incarcerating even larger numbers of oppressed peoples.

Although the myth exists of economic expansion in the 1990s, the growth was illusory in the sense that it empowered the financial institutions, which ensnarled many into deeper debt both on a personal and institutional level. The following decade of the 2000s brought about the collapse of the financial matrix designed to maximise profits for the banks, insurance companies and their operatives within the private sector.

Millions were subjected to individual bankruptcies, home foreclosures and evictions. By 2008-2009, the working people of the US were forced into paying for a bailout of the same banks and corporations, which created the crisis. There was the initial $700 billion congressional gift to the financial institutions in the fall of 2008. Later came the “restructuring” of two out of three auto firms being Chrysler and General Motors. Moreover, the Federal Reserve Bank forwarded trillions [of dollars] to the banks after 2008 with the explicit purpose of saving and fortifying international finance capital.

As a result of this process wages fell, homes were lost and many municipalities suffered from drastic declines in services, the lay-off of teachers and closing of schools, along with a heightening of state repression to reinforce the imposed austerity. African American wealth, largely deriving from home ownership, fell by at least 50 percent.

Pambazuka for more

Comments are closed.