Martin Luther King, Jr. (with compatriots) take over a private building in Chicago in 1965.

[Luminous Animal]

They begin to collect rents and do repairs...

I did not know this!

http://www.communitywalk.com/location/chicago_freedom_movement_slum_building/info/162702

In February 1966, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and other representatives of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the West Side Federation, and the Chicago Coaliton of Community Organizations took over the management of this six-flat "slum building." The eighty-one-year-old building owner John Bender told the Chicago Tribune that of the six buildings he owned, the one King had taken over was, a "white elephant," and that he would be "more than happy to give it to [King] if he would take over the mortgage." King argued that the legality of their actions paled in comparison to the "moral question" of helping to clean up "slum" housing.

Some angry letters to the editor about the takeover...

http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/negative-letters-editor-about-mlk

[limpyhobbler]

1. Wow those newspaper clippings sound alot like some of the posts on this site over the past few days.

[Luminous Animal]

2. Check this one out decrying the dangers of demonstrations.

http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/danger-demonstrations#

And this one Walter Winchell calling King's supporters "Haters".
http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/american-talking-back#

[limpyhobbler]

14. It really is something. If Dr. King were alive today, he would be 83 years old.

We could use his help.

From that 1966 newpaper clip:

"Dr. King has probably set back the cause by antagonizing many people who previously welcomed Negro Advancement, and he has certainly hardened the hard-core segregationalists."

sounds familiar.

[sabrina 1]

27. Wow, that sounds like a lot of posts I've seen on DU.

Some things never change.

[malaise]

3. Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Facts are not wanted - just attack the OWs

[Luminous Animal]

4. Article on how King's peaceful protests spark violence...

http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/race-hate-and-divisiveness

Perhaps sparking a "disaster for the Negro cause."

[limpyhobbler]

46. Well that certainly was a hate filled screen.

Very enlightening.

Can't quite tell which newspaper that is from. Seems to be eastern PA, I guess.

[JackRiddler]

5. Much appreciated but there are some on whom the point will always be lost.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

6. PRIVATE PROPERTY!!!!

OK, I had to say it.

I. Fucking. Love. This. What OWS is doing is a very old tactic indeed.

[sabrina 1]

28. Yes it is. But when people do not take the time to learn, we get the kind of nonsense we

are seeing on DU, of all places. But you have to support something in order to take the trouble to learn something about it.

[EFerrari]

7. What kind of a message was that?!

[Luminous Animal]

8. According to one letter writer, King was "undermining our society of law and order."

[sabrina 1]

29. Lol, are those people posting on DU do you think?

[Cali_Democrat]

9. If DU existed back then, I have no doubt that MLK would be scolded

for being so "radical" and not "appealing" to average Americans. The people doing the scolding would be the same folks that defend DLC, third way policies.

[Starry Messenger]

10. William F. Buckley's heirs are probably too ashamed to reprint his screeds on MLK.

They should really be preserved for posterity. Google news archive is full of them. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=WEVjAAAAIBAJ&sjid=XHQNAAAAIBAJ&pg=2082,2849868&dq=martin+luther+king+buckley&hl=en

[Luminous Animal]

13. I've got a few of those bookmarked on my home computer. What a cretin Buckley was.

[sabrina 1]

34. Fascinating to read those articles. And to think it is not that long ago that people actually

were fighting against African Americans having the right to vote. One thing I noticed in one of the articles, which gave LBJ some support in making a decision regarding sending in Federal troops, was the fact that the news media, according to the article, played the brutal scenes from Selma over and over again on TV which resulted in the public becoming disgusted with the actions of the police.

Today, how many media outlets showed the brutality of the Oakland Police on Oct 25th towards the protesters? I don't remember seeing any of it on the MSM. I guess they've learned that they need to conrol the media and censor the news or the public might actually learn the truth.

Our media today is nothing more than a propaganda machine. Back then at least, they did apparently do their jobs as journalists and it made a difference. It's a good thing they did not have the media we have today, or African Americans would still not be able to vote.

[Starry Messenger]

40. It was Catherina who tipped me off to the negativity of print journalism to

the Civil Rights era. She mentioned that NYT in particular was very bad in that regard. It wasn't until after the late 60's that the editors changed their tune a bit and walked back their reactionary stance on supporting Civil Rights.

You are right though, these days no sector of the media is doing its job to report what is actually going on.

[Luminous Animal]

11. In which a letter writer that King's plan to occupy Washington DC is the wrong tactic...

http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/letter-george-y-sodowick-mlk

[Luminous Animal]

12. Liberal intertubes ala 1966.

This one cracks me up.

http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/letter-w-harding-kneedler-mlk

Marches are outdated. People are getting tired of hearing about them, reading about them, and protecting them.

[socialist_n_TN]

15. Why is it that the anti Occupy people never post on

threads like this? Every other thread comparing the Occupy movement to the civil rights movement is full of "It's not the same" and "The civil rights movement wouldn't do that". But when there actually comes support for the Occupy tactics FROM the civil rights movement, they're never to be found.

Oh yeah, and you're all right. All those anti Occupy DUers would be saying the same thing about the civil rights movement that they do about Occupy.

[loyalsister]

16. There was a specific goal and a specific message

If it had been as random as OWS has been, it would not have succeeded.

[Luminous Animal]

17. Occupy Oakland had a specific goal and a specific message.

And how do you know that MLK was successful? I've only been able to find sketchy details one of which was that the building owner sued MLK, et. al.

OO's message to the city regarding Move In Day:

Dear Mayor Jean Quan, Oakland Police Department, and Oakland City Council,

As you probably know, Occupy Oakland is planning the occupation of a building on January 28th that will serve as a social center, convergence center, headquarters, free kitchen, and place of housing for Occupy Oakland. Like so many other people, Occupy Oakland is homeless while buildings remain vacant and unused. For Occupy this is in large part because of yourselves, having evicted us twice from public space that was rightfully ours. For others it is because of the housing bubble, predatory lending, the perpetual crises of capitalism, and far reaching histories of imperialism and systemic violence.

Our families, friends, and communities built the buildings that sit empty in post-industrial Oakland. Now these buildings outnumber the homeless and represent the theft of our collective labor as the class of the unpropertied and dispossessed. Allowing this building to remain vacant while so many are in need is injurious theft, injustice; its extralegal occupancy is not.

And more...

http://occupyoaklandmoveinday.org/content/letter-mayor-opd-and-city-council-occupy-oaklands-move-day

[loyalsister]

19. And a specific leader?

In the end, the civil rights movement did achieve many goals. Including desegregation, and getting the general public on their side.
OWS has raised awareness but they are not even setting specific policy goals and they are not getting anywhere near the 99% they claim to represent on their side.

[Luminous Animal]

20. The civil rights movement was active before MLK was born. He had

decades of experience on which he could build. Nor was MLK a single issue agitator. He also focused on economic justice for all and he came out against the Viet Nam war. Prior to his planned poor people's occupation of Washington DC, a U.S. Senator criticized him for not having a message and there were critics of his anti-war activities... accused of diluting his impact on advancing civil rights.

[loyalsister]

21. Yes he focused on those things in his speeches

He was one guy with many interests. OWS is a bunch of people with a lot of different ideas, objections, issues, etc.

Unlike OWS, MLK and the civil rights movement were both coherent and focused in all of their civil disobedience actions.

[Luminous Animal]

22. No. He did not merely focus on them in speeches. He also led and participated

in economic justice actions. And, like I pointed out before, MLK had the benefit of people with decades of civil rights experience, from both their successes and their failures. The movement was not born from his head fully formed. It was fortunate that he was able to capitalize on it's maturity. It terms of a movement, OWS is an infant.

[sabrina 1]

33. Whenever I hear anyone say 'but they have no message', I think of

the Goldman Sachs Girl on CNN, Erin whatever her name is, when she tried to smear OWS by going to Zuccotti Park and seeking out someone who was unable to articulate what the movement was about, then thinking she had scored big for Wall St, started her show with 'But what do they waaaaaannnt? Nobody seems to KNOW! Lol, she ended up being the poster girl for Goldman Sachs with an obvious ulterior motive, and now they use that clip on RT over and over again to demonstrate the cluelessness of the Corporate Media stenographers. Major Fail on her part.

And, btw, her ratings are so low, you know they are only keeping her because of her connections. She always comes to mind whenever anyone says 'but they have no message'. I hear her whiny voice immediately. Can't help it.

[notundecided]

41. Goals and Vision Group

can be found on NYCGA's web page. And no, I'm not going to post a link. If your interested(?) look it up.

[sabrina 1]

30. ?? Are you at all familiar with this movement? Millions of people around the globe,

because it is a global movement, including children as young as 10 years old, know what the specific message of the OWS movement is. I am surprised that you do not. I would be happy to direct to where you can find out about this movement. Only if you're interested of course.

[Robb]

18. This was IIRC about a year into King's "rent strike" campaign.

He advocated, as a means of establishing a collective bargaining chip, withholding rent altogether. The goal was to reduce rents, which were seen as overpriced and in too few hands. It didn't work, exactly, but rent control measures did come eventually, probably in no small part because of King's activism on that front.

The endgame, by the way, of this particular "seizure" was a two-part court injunction -- first ordering King not to collect rent, and secondly putting the building itself into receivership, with orders to improve the structure.

There were several "copycat" seizures in Cook County that year, but none of them resulted in receiverships.

For the record, it's worth noting King's biggest critics with regard to rent strikes (and the appurtenant demonstrations) were the Urban League and NAACP. In hindsight, they were still stinging from the violence of the summer of '66, but I expect it felt like a betrayal. I seem to recall Belafonte talking about how much that hurt Dr. King, and it's probably why he turned and focused himself on the Vietnam War.

[Luminous Animal]

23. Cool! And Occupy Chicago had a teach-in about MLK's campaign against slums...

http://occupychi.org/education/event/martin-luther-king-jr-and-housing-struggle-chicago-then-and-now

[sabrina 1]

35. Another thing it appears many people here are not aware of, the 'teach-ins' that take place

at Occupy sites and they have had some fascinating and renowned teachers, on the economy eg, Stiglitz was teaching them at Zuccotti Park so people understood how things got so bad. They also studied other movements and many of their ideas have come from those studies.

But to see all of the ignorant comments about 'stealing property' with no clue about the history of these kinds of tactics (I did not know about MLK, but did know about other countries and how successful those tactics were and in the end, how beneficial to the communities in general.

I really hope they do manage to take over some buildings and provide warm places for the homeless and food for the hungry, as they were doing before they were removed from the parks.

I read btw, that crime was DOWN in Oakland's park while the occupiers were there. If I had the money, I would donate a building to them.

What I don't get is why the Cities, who are so busy going after them and preventing them from helping the needy, do not do this themselves, provide homes for the homeless who are thrown into the freezing cold streets where often they die.

[limpyhobbler]

36. People could look a little deeper at what the occupiers were trying to do taking over the

convention center. Instead of just saying "oh that's not their property. they must be thieves", people should take a closer look at what they what they were actually trying to accomplish and then ask why the city isn't already meeting those needs.

[sabrina 1]

31. Check out Argentina, where they did the same thing. This is not a new tactic at all, and in

many places it has succeeded. Argentinians took over abandoned factories, after the Global Capitalists shut them down, driving people into poverty. They ended up in many cases winning their legal battles to continue to run them, providing jobs the government was either not interested in doing, or unable to do.

Many of these ideas OWS is implementing were studied by various groups in the movement and are excelllent ideas. In one US city, a building has been donated to the Occupiers and they are now renovating it and creating a community center for the homeless and conducting their own business there. They have so many donations from when they were in the park, they had to ask people to stop donating for a while.

I love how this one incident was jumped on by all the rightwing blogs, including Breitbart, naturally, and how the left, as always, abandons their own as soon as the right starts smearing them. Nothing will ever be accomplished by the left until they get over their fear of the mockery of the useless rightwing morons whose stupid opinions for some reason, mean more to some on the left, than anything else.

[Robb]

42. That's rather missing the point, I think.

King, by any measure, was defeated in Chicago. And being told by his peers to stay away in '67 was the capstone to his direct actions against economic injustice.

King succeeded -- and this is where OWS can as well -- wherever he crusaded for basic civil rights in broad and righteous strokes. The result in Alabama was new federal laws in '64 and '65 that specifically address the inequalities King railed against. Where he failed was in attempting to translate that crusade's message into particular issues, like "rent in Chicago is too high."

The successes in OWS have been similar to those enjoyed by King -- big issues. Movements are for big issues, like peace and justice; rent control (or, frankly, foreclosure procedures) are for politicians.

[sabrina 1]

49. Politicians did nothing about foreclosures. Millions of people are and have lost their homes

many of them illegally and rather than place a moratorium on them once it became clear there were illegalities involved, Congress merely looked the other way. People can't wait for years until Congress gets around to doing something to stop these crimes. So OWS has done what they could rather than wait, and have succeeded in shaming the banks into leaving people in their homes and accepting what the homeowners wanted in the first place. The more they do this, the more some politicians will feel the need to act. And some, especially in NYC, are now.

This movement is in its infancy. It may be the first Global Movement of its kind and as has been said, 'this is only the beginning of the beginning'. It is amazing that people expect a movement, in many places not yet four months old, to do what Congress has failed to do for over a decade.

However, it is unprecedented what they have accomplished in that short amount of time. Did Congress eg, manage to stop the Banks from imposing extra charges on people using loopholes in the new regulations to do so? It took OWS joining the 'move your money' organization to get that done and pretty quickly. People have immediate needs which OWS is addressing, all over the country, such as feeding the poor and the homeless. Once these cities stopped them from doing so, THEY did nothing to help them, just threw them out once again in the freezing cold to die.

It's the government is not functioning FOR the people so the people are stepping in and doing what they can to help people stay alive wherever they can and to get attention, which they have, for the failures of this government. We should NOT have homeless people in this country, especially veterans. OWS is showing how to deal with that problem, and it could be dealt with if the government had a will to do so. In a few places now, cities ARE working with OWS to do so.

But the bigger issues, such as the money in Politics, are the main issues of this movement as that is the root case of all other problems, why we do not representation. And it is their focus on that that is causing the hatred for the movement by those in power. But it won't stop them, because the problem is far too big and way out of control at this point. It really is now up to the people, as we all know. The electoral system has not solved it, it has become part of the problem.

[Robb]

51. None of which, notably, disputes my point.

[Puregonzo1188]

24. People tend to forget (or never knew) King was a radical socialist.

He would have been much aligned by many of the so-called liberals on this board and was very much so by their historical predecessors during his day.

[Union Scribe]

25. I don't think it's an accident that people aren't taught

that. They sanitize and neuter King in schools, watering it down to "I have a dream" and leave it at that. Interestingly, I was just reading about Republicans doing the same thing to Jesus. They make teddy bears out of revolutionaries.

[ellisonz]

32. +1000

"They make teddy bears out of revolutionaries."

[limpyhobbler]

37. quite right, it's not an accident.

That's not imply a conspiracy. It just seems to be a natural tendency.

[Luminous Animal]

26. Kick

[me b zola]

38. Recommended

[TheKentuckian]

39. K&R

[inna]

43. excellent thread. kr

[xchrom]

44. Very good. Nt

[lunatica]

45. LOL!

Take that all you nattering nabobs of negativism!

[Bluenorthwest]

47. Those angry letters sound like a few DUers....

And it really is just a few.

[raouldukelives]

48. Cue the "MLK is hurting progressives" in 3, 2, 1. nt

[woo me with science]

50. K&R

Sort of drives home what we are seeing on DU, huh.