WHERE DO WE GO???
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. DAY REFLECTION 2021
“… one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites, polar opposites, so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love. It was this misinterpretation that caused the philosopher Nietzsche, who was a philosopher of the will to power, to reject the Christian concept of love. It was this same misinterpretation which induced Christian theologians to reject Nietzsche's philosophy of the will to power in the name of the Christian idea of love. Now, we got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best… is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love. And this is what we must see as we move on.”
Martin Luther King, “Where Do We Go From Here?”, Atlanta, Georgia, 1967.
January 18th, 2021:
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was first signed into law in 1983, with the first federally-backed recognition day taking place in 1986, making this the 35th anniversary of the holiday. (Dr. King’s birthday was January 15th; the holiday is designated on the third Monday of January). This year’ holiday begins in the midst of extraordinary social tumult and far-reaching political chasms. The COVID-19 pandemic still continues unabated, with a current American tally of nearly 4,000 daily deaths, approaching a nationwide 400,000 total in the near future. With large gatherings discouraged by public health officials, this has altered many public-service and memorial events that would otherwise be taking place today.
Of course, this year’s holiday is in the aftermath of summertime 2020 civil-rights protests in dozens of American cities, some 56 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act in 1964 and 1965, respectively.
2021 will mark the ninth time that the holiday has fallen on the cusp of a presidential inauguration. As it so happens, this year’s holiday comes in the still-stunning aftermath of the U.S. Capitol Building being sieged on January 6th by a phalanx of thousands, its throng of participants presumably having the intent of, at minimum (if one is to be generous), disrupting the certification of the Electoral College votes confirming that President-Elect Joe Biden would be installed as the next American head of state. Again, that’s the generous read. (Gallows were erected near the Capitol steps; pipe bombs lay throughout the Capitol interior, among other 'droppings'; decorum prohibits further description).
One of the narratives that come out in the aftermath of the siege is that participants were not exclusively of whatever might be considered the ‘stereotypical’ profile; that is to say, they weren’t all unemployed high school dropouts without families. Among the still-evolving ranks of the insurgent cohort include retired and off-duty military servicepeople (including an Air Force veteran who died trying to enter the Speaker’s Lobby), police officers, firefighters, schoolteachers, prosperous CEOs. Compared to, say, Anthony Warner, who detonated himself inside his recreational van (along with much of a downtown Nashville city block), on Christmas last year, the "Capitol Mob" included runners of small businesses, carpoolers, churchgoers, youth sports coaches. Middle-class professionals. Most of whom could easily be our neighbors (or even family: an 18-year old woman in Boston told authorities of her mother’s participation in the siege).
Not quite 10 years ago, I was able to visit Washington, D.C., for the first time. It was a short weekend trip, having booked plane fare from one of those short-window sales that periodically take place. Cousin Scott showed me around the National Mall, where we visited the MLK Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the World War II Memorial, and other landmarks. Among other things, we talked about sacrifices made by past generations, feeling a call to duty whether for community, for country, or both.
A few years later, in the spring of 2014, there was a last-minute dropout regarding a national conference for the federally-funded women’s health/social work program that I had been working for at the time; a plane ticket to Washington, D.C. and a hotel room was already booked and paid for. Apparently, yours truly got the nod to be a surrogate, and I had to pack for a four-day trip. The final day of the conference was set-aside for the various local agencies from around the country to meet with the congressional legislators from their respective regions. In our group’s case, it meant seeking out Detroit-area and Michigan officials. Traveling as a group, we first walked to the House Office Buildings where the Detroit representatives were stationed.
In the case of then-Congressman Gary Peters and then-Senator Carl Levin, we only got to meet with their legislative aides, but we made sure to give them the same information packet and the same pitch as we were planning for the legislator (senior staff did most of the talking, but I did get to chime in here and there).
The meeting with Senator Debbie Stabenow was more of a mass meet and greet; both she and her aides were working a big meeting room in the Russell building, so we had to wait our turn to get to speak to her amidst all the mingling that was going on. The other legislator we did get to meet in person was the late John Conyers, who first proposed the MLK holiday mere days after King was assassinated in 1968. This meeting was much more intimate, as he met with just our own group, at his offices. He was a little late coming back from lunch but was very engaging when he arrived and was very enthused about supporting the federal grant that Healthy Start represented for social work - public health agencies. One of his aides apparently knew someone from our group from way back., which helped in our favor, one supposes. Getting from the Conyers meeting to senator Levin's office was an adventure: the meeting with Conyers ran long, leaving us maybe 10 minutes before the meeting with Levin was supposed to start. At the second floor elevator in the House building, a college-aged intern for another congressperson who was waiting for the elevator overheard our plight, and offered to guide us through the "underground" pathways to Levin's office back at the Russell building; I think we got to ride two mini-railways along the way. I was fascinated by all that I got to see along the way, though it seemed like I could only linger about four seconds at a time. I’m thinking I lost a folder, too. (Mostly, I think it had copies of my resume). I can’t properly recall the number of security gates and metal detectors we had to be cleared through, and it seemed as if I had to take off more than most everyone else in the group (I was wearing a business suit with a trench coat, and among my metal items included my watch, glasses, cell phone, business card case, belt buckle, coins, and apparently even my shoes had some kind of metal in the heels. I had to try my best to keep my pants up after taking all of that off and putting it into the container tray. After all the meetings were over, my group split up somewhat to go eat or sightseeing. Most of us ended up back at Union Station and ate at this place called the Thunder Grill. I’m thinking I had been up since five that morning, so by the end of the day I was tired, but glad to have had the experience.
Of course, back then, traveling with a group of 10 people to meet in close quarters was a non-issue and “boogaloo” was just outdated slang for dancing.
Reflecting on the events of those two trips, particularly the latter, I’m mindful of the ‘modes of engagement’ that were facilitated by our cohorts at the convention; having informal meetings with the officials and their aides, seeing another side to these individuals beyond soundbites commonly heard on a news show, and the clichés usually attributed to such. I’m also mindful that at the time of the erection of these buildings on the Capitol Mall, people who looked like the group I traveled with in 2014 were not allowed to cross the threshold except to perform the most mundane of tasks, despite having literally co-built many of these structures. I compare this to what happened during the siege: spurred on in no small part at the conviction that the results of the recent November 3rd elections were a lie (the ubiquitous phrase “vast voter fraud” gained no traction in courts), these cohorts of Americans forcefully took over the Capitol building for hours, purportedly to reinforce the will of an aggrieved population.
Whatever the specific intents were, on the part of any number of those individuals who forced their way into the building (at least for one fellow, to take a selfie?), they cannot be divorced from the results: at least five people dead, including two Capitol police officers (one from suicide, the other from being bludgeoned by a fire extinguisher); windows burst in, trash dumped, offices occupied and rummaged through. (Oh, and the Confederate battle flag got some shine again, maybe just to show that there are Kid Rock fans ‘on both sides’). As of this week, the National Mall stands closed, with razorwire fencing erected and thousands of National Guardsmen and other military and law-enforcement agencies deployed. Before the weekend, most state capitols throughout the country were warned of potential confrontations with armed protestors and ‘domestic-militia’ - based terror cells.
Obviously, the investigations and public safety preparations are ongoing. By the end of the week, the latest cycle of public officials (regionally and nationwide) will have finally been installed, and “the business” of government begins again. I won’t be so reckless to attempt to predict what the rest of the year will look like, other than to suggest that it likely won’t remotely be comfortable. Grievances—both the real ones and the imagined ones—will not vanish. It’s unknown how the annals of history will look back at this time frame. If democracy is a fragile endeavor, it is made more fragile by fealty to a narrower definition of what it can be, whom should be allowed to participate and when. Some of us pay more attention to these matters than others, which is to be expected. But even though vast circles of Americans look at ‘government affairs’ writ large with the same regard as the way season-ticket-holding football fans look at ice curling, the events of the siege should everyone pause. Increasingly balkanized realities have engendered dysfunction to the level of literal insurrection. At the risk of atrocious understatement, such developments are not sustainable.
The U.S. constitution has been referred to as “a living document”: one that can be affixed, amended, evolve, to allow for reforms of society into “a more perfect union”. Emphasis on the “more”, since it has never been perfect. Part of the legacy of Dr. King is that cooperative action among interested, invested groups of people can nudge society forward by using truth as a foundational principle to inform and enlighten. Movements that are not particularly moored by truth, with damaging narratives at work or made vulnerable for manipulation by cynical actors, commonly leave naught but desperation (and concurrently, destruction) in their wake, intentionally or not. Doors have been opened up for all of us by our forbearers. It is our responsibility to find ways to keep them open for those who will be following us.
“If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they’re real for you whether they’re real or not…. Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” James Baldwin.
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