| Marching
into Tomorrow:
Transforming Old Tactics into a
New Movement
Date:
Tuesday, March 06, 2005
By: Michael H. Cottman, BlackAmericaWeb.com
After
the last amen is echoed through a packed town-hall meeting,
and the final fiery speech is delivered to a decidedly
partisan crowd, historic civil rights organizations
across the country and the activists who join them are
ultimately left with a critical challenge: how to transform
their passionate, down-home rhetoric into enduring social
change.
While
emotional oratory makes for good public theater, some
say, the goal for the nation’s civil rights organizers
should be to turn their words into a viable plan to
uplift a black community that needs progressive leadership
and a sense of hope in the 21st century.
Forty years after passage of the Voting Rights Act,
black leaders are calling 2005 “the new era of
civil rights,” saying civil rights organizations
and activists should return to the 1960s-style mass
protests, marches and vocal gatherings at courthouses
to call attention to the overwhelming social and economic
challenges facing blacks in America. These demonstrations,
they maintain, are as important in 2005 as they were
in 1965 to address a range of issues -- including racial
disparities in health care, the future of Social Security
and the widening achievement gap between black and white
public school students.
Yesterday’s re-enactment of the historic Alabama
march from Selma to Montgomery, they say, best illustrates
their notion that a national call to action starts in
the streets. Over 10,000 people -- including members
of the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,
the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and the National Urban League
-- convened for the 40th anniversary of the infamous
Bloody Sunday, when blacks and others marched in 1965
to demand their right to vote.
“In
this new era of civil rights, we have to march,”
U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) told BlackAmericaWeb.com
last week, before traveling to Selma to march with her
Democratic and Republican colleagues.
“We
have to take our show on the road,” she said,
“to churches, to college campuses, to town hall
meetings. There should be momentum in every nook and
cranny in America.”
Civil
rights leaders said last week that blacks today are
faced with a plethora of problems that have resulted
in more black families plunging deeper into poverty.
There are also widespread racial disparities in the
nation’s health care system and the corporate
workforce, activists say.
According to a 2004 study by the National Urban League,
black males’ mean income is 70 percent of white
males, a $16,876 gap, and black females’ mean
income is 83 percent of white counterparts, a $6,370
difference.
The study also said fewer than 50 percent of black families
own their own homes, compared to 70 percent of whites,
and that blacks are also denied mortgages and home improvement
loans at twice the rate of whites.
Teachers with less than three years experience teach
in minority schools at twice the rate that they teach
in white schools, and 49 percent of black students’
teachers lack a college minor in the subject they taught,
compared to 40 percent of white students’ teachers,
the study concluded.
On average, the report said, blacks are twice as likely
to die from disease, accidents and homicide at every
stage of life than whites.
The black unemployment rate continues at record levels,
climbing to 10.9 percent, according to the federal government’s
unemployment numbers for February. The new figures show
that black unemployment is double the national average,
up almost a full percentage point from a year ago.
To
call attention to these disparities, some civil rights
leaders suggest a more aggressive approach by the nation’s
civil rights organizations to confront mounting domestic
concerns.
Black
leaders and civil rights organizations say they must
continue to spread out across the country with a sense
of urgency to speak directly to blacks in their communities.
In barber shops, churches, community centers and every
other social arena in our communities, blacks frequently
talk about black leadership, the role of civil rights
organizations and whether leadership is effectively
working for them.
“We
have to remind people that freedom isn’t free,
that it didn’t always exist, and that it’s
in jeopardy,” Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, founder of
the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, told BlackAmericaWeb.com
last week.
Jackson
said that on the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights
Act, the time is now for major marches around the country
to get the attention of young blacks who “O.D.
on music,” who are disenfranchised and who feel
disconnected from leadership.
The
challenge, Jackson attested, for his organization and
others, is in communicating their message to blacks
from coast to coast. Jackson said the directives black
leaders would like to share with the communities they
serve are hampered by mainstream press outlets deciding
what is news and what isn’t.
“We don’t have access to the media,”
Jackson said. “When Martin Luther King marched,
it was national news. Now we can’t even get on
local news. So we have to go out and tell our own stories.”
Jackson Lee agreed.
“Forty
years ago, there was an assumption that we could be
defeated by violence,” she said. “Today,
the assumption is that we can be defeated by silence.
The media is silent on issues that we think are important.
If it’s not in the media, then our people don’t
get it. The media can pick and choose their stories
while our people are suffering.”
Today,
pioneering organizations such as the NAACP are looking
for new, bold leadership. The Southern Christian Leadership
Conference is sponsoring an ambitious national membership
drive. The Rainbow/PUSH Coalition is underscoring social
disparities between blacks and whites and vocally criticizing
the Bush administration for its failure to address issues
of concern to blacks. The National Urban League says
it is working even more diligently to help blacks open
their own businesses and buy their own homes.
“The
NAACP is looking for someone who has the fund-raising
capabilities of Bill Gates, the eloquence of Martin
Luther King Jr., and the organizational skills of Mahatma
Ghandi,” Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP’s
Washington, D.C. bureau, told BlackAmericaWeb.com about
its search for a new national president, repeating an
earlier statement by Julian Bond, the NAACP’s
chairman of the board.
Last
week, the NAACP said it plans to interview television
and radio personality Tavis Smiley for the top job.
Kweisi Mfume stepped down from the post in January after
serving for nine years, and the NAACP hopes to name
a new president this summer.
Last
weekend, in the suburbs of Atlanta, Smiley convened
his annual State of the Black Union meeting and assembled
a panel of prominent black health-care experts, scholars,
religious figures and political leaders to address the
panoply of concerns facing the black community.
According
to Shelton, the vision for the NAACP hasn’t changed,
but the strategies and approach to reaching out to members
and the black community has evolved.
Today, Shelton said, the NAACP uses more modern technology,
such as e-mail, to communicate with members about NAACP
initiatives and legislation on Capitol Hill that could
impact blacks. The NAACP also provides more outreach
training for members, he says, to better communicate
the NAACP’s message with the public.
Shelton says the NAACP always encourages blacks to join
the nation’s oldest civil rights organization,
but he suggests that those who are not members read
black-owned newspapers to learn more about the NAACP’s
initiatives in black communities across the country.
“The fight for civil rights is at every level
– city, state and federal – and we want
to clearly articulate the goals and diversity of issues
that make up the modern civil rights movement,”
Shelton said. “Communication is the key to frame
the issues for a mass movement.”
This
weekend’s mass movement – the re-enactment
of Bloody Sunday – was co-sponsored by the SCLC.
According to its president, Charles Steele, the civil
rights organization is now operating under a renewed
vision and agenda, following a period of internal discord.
SCLC kicked-off a national membership drive on Jan.
17 of this year -- the holiday held in observance of
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday -- with
the goal to obtain 100,000 new memberships by its annual
convention in August 2005.
“As
we continue to battle the triple evils of racism, poverty
and violence that Dr. King often spoke about,”
Steele said in a statement, “the SCLC, now more
than ever, needs assistance and patronage from the community
and its supporters in order to ensure that proper funding
and human resources are available to carry out its mission
to bring about the promise of 'one nation, under God,
indivisible,' together with the commitment to activate
the 'strength to love' within the community of humankind.”
The National Urban League’s Michelle Moore told
BlackAmericaWeb.com the re-enactment march is an important,
ongoing history lesson and agreed that organizations
such as the Urban Legaue must be more aggressive in
the 21st century.
“The
march is critical,” Moore said, “because
it represents a crucial time in American history, and
it also demonstrates the bi-racial coalition of so many
different races that came together to show why civil
rights opportunities were necessary for African-Americans
to move forward and progress in this society.”
Steven
Bacon, president and CEO of BlaCon Media, an Atlanta-based
broadcast engineering firm, attended Smiley’s
panel with his wife, Cheryl, and said civil rights leaders
can play an important role in diversifying the corporate
workforce.
“We need our civil rights organizations to infiltrate
the halls of corporate America to open up opportunities
for black people,” Bacon told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
“There are still too many people telling me they
don’t see any black people in corporate offices.”
Jackson Lee said the Congressional Black Caucus has
an ambitious proposal to reduce and eliminate racial
disparities. The 43-member caucus held a meeting with
President George W. Bush in January to present him with
a domestic agenda that outlines social and economic
disparities between blacks and whites. But Bush, according
to caucus members, did not fully embrace their agenda.
U.S.
Rep. Elijah E. Cummings said Sunday’s march –
and continued demonstrations like it – are important
because “we have to be reminded from whence we
came and make sure we don’t go backwards.”
Cumminngs
noted that, when asked by black congressional leaders
last month if he favored the re-authorization of the
1965 Voting Rights Act, Bush sidestepped the question.
“He
said he’d get back to us,” Cummings.
Because it is unlikely that Bush will allocate enough
funding to help eliminate racial disparities, many blacks
say organizations like the NAACP, the SCLC and The National
Urban League, must routinely visit black communities
and talk about health care, Social Security, education,
employment -– and mass mobilization.
“In the 21st century, we have new civil rights
issues to address,” Jackson Lee said. “Health-care
is a civil rights issue. The closing of African-American
schools in Houston is a civil rights issue. People trying
to make a living with little money is a civil rights
issue. We need to take up these issues with a fever
for a new civil rights movement.”
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