Every year for more than 25 years, lovers and friends of Martin Luther King Jr. have celebrated his birthday on its actual date, Jan. 15 (1929). This Saturday the 15th, the party will start at 6:00 PM at the Vet’s Hall in Garberville with a spaghetti dinner, free to all. Everyone is encouraged to bring a potluck dish as well. By 7:00 PM you can expect a little appropriate music by the SoHumsterdam Choir. The feature of the evening will be video versions of some of King’s most memorable speeches (almost any).
The event is sponsored by the Vets for Peace and donations will benefit the Southern Humboldt Poor People’s Campaign. The campaign got its start a few months back on Oct 1 protesting both the gentrification of the one time parking lot in the center of town and the fenced off “Vet’s Park,” now inappropriately named after environmentalist and political progressive Jim DeMulling.
The walkers at this campaign kick-off were mostly refugees from the Friday afternoon Peace Vigil. However, leading the walk that day were several large posters of Rev. King himself while the group sang a Bob Marley song. The Campaign was then born as a Civil Rights movement synced up suddenly across time with the last years of King as he developed the original Poor People’s Campaign.
King’s campaign was born of his comprehension of the Vietnam War as “a demonic destructive suction tube drawing men and skills and money away from the rehabilitation of the poor.” He sought to turn energy from “war to social uplift” with an inclusive coalition of poor people from environments as diverse as West Virginia, East L.A., Watts and Wounded Knee. Suddenly the unopposed triumph of the Banksters and the Corporados shows the need more than ever for a local Poor People’s Campaign to draw poor people together under a common banner. King’s “one in six” in poverty has increased to “one in five” and will soon be “one in four.”
At the beginning of winter, the Campaign had a second – “Vee Vant to Zee Yur Paperz” – protest on the day after the police “swept” Garberville and Redway. The police practiced crude profiling, stopping and questioning local poor people as suspected “transients.” Incredibly, some were asked to show papers to prove they were local.
From law enforcement’s vantage point, it was all jolly fun: a self-styled TEA Party. This “Transient Enforcement Action” included our recently elected Sheriff who strode Garberville’s main street flanked by several armed minions. “Transient Enforcement” meanwhile suggested a Building Code parallel where poor persons go out of compliance with – the what? – the Dollar Code? – if they are homeless. Individuals are then ticketed or arrested as appropriate
Unfortunately this kind of profiling is not appropriate for American people! One of the projects of the local Poor People’s Campaign is the formation of a Nomads Union to spread the word that poor people have civil rights. The Nomad’s Union hopes to go on to support people who assert these rights. As King was aware, if it was okay for Black people to have civil rights, it was okay for poor people in general to have them. Not an insurrection, but in King’s spirit, a resurrection. You don’t have to be poor to sign up, just one of the people..
So come celebrate the synchronicity of Peace and Justice in honor of Martin Luther King jr – manifesting his spirit in our local community this Saturday at 6 at the Vet’s Hall in Garberville.
Paul Encimer 707 923 4488
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