Tag Archives: Activism

May Conservatives Remember you Fondly!

18 Thursday Jan 2018

Posted by in History, Politics

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26239122_10215319195278210_5540301171360502791_nMy title may seem like an oddly partisan blessing, but it’s more of a partisan curse. It’s not the worst form of damnation you could wish upon a person, but for some folks it oughtta be bad enough.

The curse is real though.

This happens.

Civil Rights activists must have felt the sting of this curse this last weekend as right wing America did its best to distinguish Colin Kaepernick from Martin Luther King, Jr. It seems, their efforts had been necessitated by publican of an image linking Kaepernick, Michael Bennett and Martin Luther King, all kneeling together. Outraged to see Kaepernick and MLK connected, plenty of folks took to the net to tell us Bennet and Kaepernick shouldn’t be put on the same level as MLK. Beyond that, cultural conservatives assured us that MLK was selfless and that Kaepernick is simply out for himself, that King was a patriot whereas Kaepernick hates America, and that MLK preached unity whereas Kaepernick is being deliberately divisive.

Heard that last one a lot this weekend.

I’m not old enough to remember MLK’s activism in its day, but I am old enough to remember cultural conservatives attitudes towards him before he became a national holiday, before you could find roads named after him all over America, before admiration or MLK became a forgone conclusion. And of course before conservatives began to claim him as one of their own. We heard many of the same things about Martin Luther King back then that are said of Colin Kaepernick today. Lots of folks were not so impressed with his patriotism. As to divisiveness? Hell, he could be so lucky as to be described as merely divisive! I grew up hearing stories about how MLK and other civil rights leaders were just trying to cause trouble, simply drawing attention to themselves. Things were getting better, plenty of people assured me. Those activists were simply making things so much worse. Divisive? Hell, MLK that would have been an improvement over the things said of him at some of the dinner tables I’ve attended.

It’s a poetic injustice, really, seeing Martin Luther King transformed into a means of silencing black activists. He’s been held over the heads of the Black Lives Matter movement for some time now, and thrown in the face of just about any African-American deemed a little too disruptive by conservatives, especially by those conservatives moderate enough to think of they’ve learned the lessons of the civil rights movement. Gone are the days when cultural conservatives would spit ‘commie’ after hearing the name of Martin Luther King. Now, being more comfortable with his legacy, they spit his name at any black activists they find more threatening today.

That’s gotta be a special kind of Hell, to be used against those who carry on your legacy? If so, it’s a special Hell reserved for people who’ve earned a lot better.

What I think a lot of moderate conservatives and a good deal of middle-of-the-road America likes about MLK is the notion that we should be color blind. Some folks may even mean it. Others just like the prospects of using this principle against social justice warriors, affirmative action programs, and any number of left wing causes that ask us to take difference into account. Yet, the message of equality changes a great deal when it’s employed in this manner. When King delivered his “I have a dream” message, equality was message flying in the face of white privilege. If you’ll pardon the cliche, it really was a way of speaking truth to power. Today that message is used to speak power to truth. It is a call to ignore real differences in opportunity, to silence those in need of help, and to preemptively dismiss any political agenda aimed at helping the underprivileged. There is something genuinely vicious about the way cultural conservatives have turned King’s message on its head and turned him into a weapon well-suited to re-enforcing comfort and privilege.

It’s enough to make you lose your lunch.

***

Sadly, this isn’t an uncommon thing. It seems that those leaning to the right have a general tendency to remember some lefty figures fondly, but only after forgetting the lefty part. How many people have complained about the politics in Roger Waters concerts over the years? Some folks may have specific complaints about aspects of Waters’ politics, but a fair number seem genuinely shocked to find political content in Animals or The Wall.

Maybe they were just too stoned to listen the first time.

I know. Pink Floyd lyrics may not warrant the same admiration as the life of Martin Luther King, but in a sense that impression too illustrates the point. Just as with Kaepernick and questions about whether he should be on the same par as MLK, the veneration of MLK here misses the mark. When someone advocates on behalf of those in need, or confronts those who abuse power, should we really be all that concerned about how they compare to other heroes? Or should we be more concerned about how their politics contributes to something of value?

Yes, that was a rhetorical question.

***

And then of course, there were those people shocked and outraged to find Coretta Scott King. As George W. Bush attended her funeral, some thought it inappropriate for those honoring her legacy to speak out against the Iraq. And thus his decision to honor her, became her limitation, or rather the limitation on what could be said in her honor while he was present. I get it. It’s a little rude to criticize the President when he’s sitting right there, especially knowing that he doesn’t have to be. But you know what’s more rude? Expecting the funeral of an activist with a life-long commitment to non-violence to pass by without any comments on the greatest war of the day.

In America, even our conservatives are happy to celebrate liberal activists.

Once they and their own learn to be quiet about it.

“We love you, shhhhhhh…”

Alaska Federation of Natives, 2011

28 Friday Oct 2011

Posted by in Alaska, Native American Themes, Politics

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The Alaska Federation of Natives held its annual meeting in Anchorage this last week (October 20-22). This is a big event and it’s filled with enough stories to fill many a blog. What grabbed my attention this year was the participation of Senator Lisa Murkowski.  Watching the first of two presentations she was to give at this year’s convention, brought to mind two other moments.

First, there was last year’s meeting of the AFN, held in Fairbanks. Senator Murkowski spoke then as well. At that time, she was a write-in candidate for her own office. Her principal opposition, Joe Miller, had secured the Republican nomination for Murkowski’s position. A Tea Party favorite, Miller had been openly critical of Alaska’s tribal corporations. Faced with a near certain Republican victory, Alaska’s Native leadership threw its weight behind Murkowski. Lost in the shuffle, the Democratic nominee, Scott McAdams, struggled to keep in the race.

The Alaska Federation of Natives endorsed Murkowski and she spoke at their convention. Denied the chance to debate Murkowski in a public forum, or to speak on their own, McAdams and Joe Miller made appearances on the floor of the convention. If McAdams received little in the way of attention, Miller must have received a very chilly reception.

A year later, Senator Murkowski took to the podium again, this time at the Dena’ina Civic and Convention center appropriately enough, the very location at which she announced her write-in candidacy. This year, Murkowski took to the floor once during the convention itself, and once again at the closing banquet, both times the substance of her speech was an expression of thanks. If Murkowski’s gratitude was apparent, so was the pride of AFN leadership. They had played a substantial role in getting her back into office, and this year’s AFN proved to be an opportune moment to trumpet that victory.

The second thing on my mind proved to be a very different kind of moment in the politics of indigenous affairs. In early February, 1998, then President of the Navajo Nation, Albert Hale, threatened to shut down the roads passing through Navajo lands. Doing so, he suggested would help to teach non-natives to respect the sovereignty of the Navajo Nation

The immediate response to Hale’s threat was fascinating. Non-Indians wrote all manner of letters to various local newspapers, most of them angry. On the one hand, much of the criticism seemed understandable. Hale hadn’t really put any specific issue on the table, so no-one knew really what he wanted out of the move. (Some of the more cynical among us might have believed it was to draw attention away from an ethics investigation which soon led to Hale’s ouster.) But something more interested proved to be happening in those letters; an awful lot of non-natives were learning the hard way that Indian people’s still held a measure of power in the United States. For all the poverty and corruption one can find in Indian country, for all the problems that tribal leadership seemed unable to resolve, there were at least a few things that they could still do. And one of those things was to make it a lot more difficult to drive through parts of the Southwest.

This is where the other letters from that time come in, the ones from the Navajo people. Many were less than pleased with Hale’s gambit themselves. I was living in Fort Defiance at the time and I recall quite well the shaking heads and office gossip. This was not the way to do things, at least according to the folks I knew.  What use is sovereignty if it only means shutting down roads, some seemed to say? It would be far better, so the argument went, to build a road, or at least to repair the roads already there.  A gesture intended to show the power and force of the Navajo Nation, Hale’s threats seemed only to underscore the relative weakness of Navajo leadership.

I couldn’t help but think about Albert Hale’s road-gambit as I saw Lisa Murkowski speak at AFN.  The basis for the comparison sis simple enough. To me, Hale’s move had always been something of a low-moment in Native American politics, but now I was watching a high one, at least as measured by raw political power. This was Native Alaskans doing what Hale had failed to do back in 1998, they were actually building something.  Now as it happens, it wasn’t a road that Alaskan natives built here, it was a political base capable of affecting a major election, but that election itself is precisely what it will take to get the roads built in Alaska’s Native communities.  Faced with a threat from an outside source, The Alaska Federation of Natives did what it took to ensure that their own interests were protected.

Such victories are hardly new for the Alaska Federation of Natives, but perhaps that is my point. In a world where native politics is so often relegated to symbolic victories, this organization stands out as one of the major players in Alaskan politics. The theme for this meeting of the AFN was “Strength in Unity,” and what better proof could its leaders offer than the re-election of Murkowski to the U.S. Senate. Here at least, Native Leaders had demonstrated with perfect clarity that they were a force to be reckoned with.