It's Not MLK v LBJ - What Change Requires (The Nation)

[kpete]

MLK v LBJ: What Change Requires

Katrina vanden Heuvel | The Clinton/Obama debate misses the obvious: the power of a broad-based multi-racial progressive movement to enact real change.

.........................

What Neither Obama nor Hillary is speaking to is the power of an independent, broadly based, multi-racial progressive movement to demand and make change. As Robert Borosage writes in a January 8th blog on the Huffington Post: "The lesson of the King years isn't a choice between rhetoric and reality, or between experience and change. ...Obama is right that there is power in the word, that hope has a true force in the world. Hillary is right that Johnson's experience and forcefulness were vital to passing the civil rights laws. But King's example and lesson is that neither of these is sufficient...The lesson of the King years is the vital necessity of an independent progressive movement to demand change against the resistance of both entrenched interests and cautious reformers."

Johnson was pushed to do far more than he had ever imagined by the movement that Dr. King helped to galvanize.

As we celebrate the hopeful symbolism of a Democratic field in which the two leading candidates are a woman and an African-American, it's also worth remembering what King understood so well. "Electing good liberal leaders," as Borosage writes, "was necessary but not sufficient."

We must organize, mobilize, agitate and vote --but always keep alive that inside-outside strategy which King understood the power of, and which pushed Johnson to enact voting rights legislation which even today demands defense from assault by those who devalue our democracy and its spirit.

more at:
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters?pid=269862

[MethuenProgressive]

1. Not "MLK v LBJ" but "MLK & LBJ"

Just inserting a little reality into the faux outrage and hysteria.

[MADem]

3. Thank you, and let me post my favorite link of the day to drive that point home

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/july-dec97/lbj_10-14.html



President Johnson and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

PRESIDENT JOHNSON: A good many people told me that they heard about your statement. I guess on TV, wasn't it?

MARTIN LUTHER KING: Yes, that's right.

PRESIDENT JOHNSON: I've been locked up in this office and haven't seen it, but I want to tell you how grateful I am and how worthy I'm going to try to be of all your hopes.

MARTIN LUTHER KING: Well, thank you very much. I'm so happy to hear that, and I knew that you had just that great spirit. And you know you have our support and backing. We know what a difficult period this is.

PRESIDENT JOHNSON: It's just an impossible period. We've got a budget coming up that we've got nothing to do with. It's practically already made. And we've got a civil rights bill that hasn't even passed the House and it's November, and Hubert Humphrey told me yesterday that everybody wanted to go home, and I'm going to ask the Congress Wednesday to just stay there till they pass ‘em all. They won't do it, but we'll just keep them there next year until they do, and we just won't give up an inch.

MARTIN LUTHER KING: Uh-huh. Well, this is mighty fine. I think it's so imperative. I think one of the great tributes that we can pay a memory of President Kennedy is to try to enact some of the great progressive policies that he sought to initiate

PRESIDENT JOHNSON: Well, I'm going to support ‘em all, and you can count on that. And I'm going to do my best to get other men to do likewise. I'll have to have you-all's help. And I never needed it more than I do now.

PHIL PONCE: Michael, the title of your book is "Taking Charge." And here within three days after the assassination he is taking charge

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: He sure is. And the other thing is that we historians always wonder if what a president says in public is the same as what he says in private, and this kind of thing shows how committed Johnson was to the civil rights bill, which passed the following summer, although then he got very angry at black leaders who wanted him to move faster because he thought that they weren't grateful enough.

PHIL PONCE: How much pressure did he feel to pass a the civil rights law?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: He felt that this was a sign of his ability to carry on where John Kennedy had left off at the time of his death. He also knew that so many people were looking at a southern president and wondering if he was real or not. The result was that because of his enormous political skills he was able to get that bill passed, especially as a tribute to John Kennedy, perhaps as JFK might not have been able to do.

[xchrom]

2. when i read this all i can think was the VERY active anti-war movement

both in the lead up to the war -- and in getting dems back in control of both houses.

and how little impact all of that has had on the beltway.

how active people have been to try and make things right in the gulf coast -- and how we can't movement there --

one has to remember in all of this was a tectonic shift that happened in the reagan years.

we are in a new time -- and i think what is required to make the changes we all need is still just coming to light.

[mondo joe]

4. Your subject line is misleading. Try" "It's Not MLK v LBJ". NT

[catnhatnh]

5. JEDNE....

...why are there so few stories that feature just the top two repub candidates???