Sorry Glenn Beck, but King dream is on the march in Detroit

[Enrique]

http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/editorial/article_ec56788c-b45e-11df-b3cc-001cc4c03286.html

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But anyone who was paying attention knew that Saturday's slick, right-wing event was not the continuation of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which was called by the great socialist labor leader A. Philip Randolph and organized by another socialist, Bayard Rustin -- both close allies of King, whose explicit focus on economic and social justice stood in stark contrast to Beck's preachments.

The true descendant of the 1963 rally was the serious, issue-oriented march organized Saturday in Detroit by the United Auto Workers, a key supporter of the 1963 event, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a former aide to King. As Jackson declared: "Detroit and Michigan are ground zero of the urban crisis. It's time to enact real change for working families and all America."

Jackson and the new activist president of the UAW, Bob King, led the march, which marks the beginning of what the union head describes as a "massive campaign that brings so many concerned citizens together in the name of peace and mobilizing forces for change."

"Every community has in some way witnessed the effects of the nation's economic meltdown. We need industrial and employment policies that work to keep jobs and manufacturing in the United States," says King. "Workers need to earn decent wages to provide for their families and help keep their neighborhoods and communities viable."

Off in Washington, Beck was complaining about how the country has "wandered in darkness" and talking about how "I kind of feel like God dropped a giant sandbag on my head," while Sarah Palin was claiming she could "feel the spirit of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr." and "the one true God."

In Detroit, a pastor who actually marched with King spoke not of getting sandbagged but of real struggles and real accomplishments: of how marches in 1963 "transformed the country because of mass action" and led to enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

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