Credit: Creative Commons/Forge Mountain Photography
In school rooms across America, kids like mine are coloring pictures of Martin Luther King and watching slide shows about Ms. Rosa Parks. It’s Black History Month again-“the shortest month of the year,” a friend of mine wryly observes. But it’s amazing how broadly we celebrate those who sat-in, marched, and cried out for justice in America 50 years ago. No one in America today can argue that King doesn’t matter. He’s standing on the National Mall, memorialized in stone.
But remembering our history matters little if it doesn’t reshape how we see the present. While communities across America are telling neat and clean stories about the 1960s, most of the mainstream media is ignoring the biggest broad-based organizing effort in the South since that time.
When historians tell the story of the Civil Rights Movement, they note how 1960 was a key turning point because, beginning in Greensboro, NC, some 2,000 people sat-in and were arrested that year. Their experience was a spring board for the Freedom Rides, which led the Movement into Alabama and Mississppi where the struggle for Civil Rights and Voting Rights was won.
Right here in North Carolina, a direct action campaign started again in 2013. 945 people were arrested at 13 consecutive Moral Mondays. Over a hundred thousand people rallied at North Carolina’s General Assembly through the summer, growing out of a grassroots coalition that the NC chapter of the NAACP has been organizing since 2006.
Then, on the second Saturday in Black History Month, our coalition came together to show the nation what this movement looks like. Over 80,000 people marched on Raleigh on a cold, rainy day.
But the New York Times didn’t cover it. CNN didn’t cover it. The major news magazines ignored the largest march in the South since Selma.
Why? I think of Gandhi’s dictum: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Such is the nature of things in general. But NC’s Foreward Together Movement hasn’t been ignored. The campaign this past summer got decent coverage-much of it accurate and focused on the issues that organizers cared about. TIME Magazine interviewed the NC NAACP’s Rev. William Barber for their story on the African-American community’s response to the Trayvon Martin verdict.
The absence of national coverage of this historic Moral March is noteworthy then. It almost feels like orchestrated silence.
Interestingly, Rev. Barber has been in the news the past couple of weeks. Honing in on a comment he made about Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, conservative pundits have moved from ignoring and laughing to fighting. The head of the GOP in North Carolina held a news conference to call for Rev. Barber’s resignation.
And the media has followed. Rather than report on the mass action of 80K plus, they have reported on the disdain of the Tea Party for one of their chief critics.
This, too, we must tell our children is part of black history. We know from FBI files that were released through the Freedom of Information Act that J. Edgar Hoover’s office distributed press released to discredit Martin Luther King. Most of the people we now celebrate were labeled as suspicious or as “known subversives.”‘
When those in power cannot defend their actions, they always move to change the subject. And if history tells us anything, they will do it “by any means necessary.”
But the Freedom Movement knows that none of these tactics work. Yes, they may prolong the inevitable. Yes, they convince some. And yes, they hurt many. But truth has a way of getting out, no matter how hard evil works to cover it up.
People are hearing that 80K folks marched in the streets. And they are asking why. When they learn what’s happening, they are joining us. More will come.
Then, we will win.
I’m listening to the news from the Ukraine. The truth is that we see how at great expense ordinary people have taken on a corrupt government, and all the media tries to do is tell a story of Putin or Russia v EU or the west . People in power everywhere fear true democracy read people power and will try to stick to the same old line of us v them to convince the voters to support the status quo. It will be interesting to see how the voters of Scotland go. If you havent already discovered the films of Adam Curtis then see The Power of Nightmares on Thought Maybe .
Jonathan,
Write one more blog telling us more about what the issues are in NC and in these demonstrations, and tell us more about the meaning of Moral Mondays…Thank you.
Here my short piece on why 945 people were arrested in NC last summer:
http://sojo.net/magazine/2013/09/forward-together-not-one-step-back
For longer investigative report on what’s happening in NC, see Bill Moyers “State of Conflict” on PBS.
Wonderful article, so needed, thank you. We had a talk about the 60’s movement in my church study group last week and I am trying to email this article to them but having some trouble (the “to” box only lets me type addresses in — never mind, I’ll figure it out!) Anyway, we have to ALWAYS keep that Gandhi quote in front of us. Thanks again.
It is certainly time for following Gandhi, and all over the world. The way our media treats us and the way the State Department treats Latin American legislatures and way our military-industrial complex tramples everyone are all close relatives, examples of a thousand closely tended corporate self-protection mechanisms. We still have to do business, but not for profits like these, and often not for profit at all, but there are lots of new models for doing business. It has never been about Capitalism versus Socialism. It has never been about People Power and Truth Telling, either, but it is soon to be, for which in my old age I am eternally grateful.
Great column. I wish we could say that the press not covering protests is something new. Unforunately, it’s not.
I am glad to read about another powerful example of the compassionate rebel revolution that is everyone around us and is working for social change in many different ways often under the radar of the mainstream media. These are ordinary people changing the world and their voices and stories need to be heard.
That’s why I have published two award-winning books of stories of these everyday heroes.The current one is now available as an e-book as well as a printed copy, You can read some sample chapters at my new, dynamic website: http://www.compassionaterebel.com.
Thanks for all that you do to make the world a better place to live.