“You are King”
January 18, 2007 at 5:09 pm by Web Editor in News
The lighting is subdued there in the state Capitol near the governor’s office, where an oil portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. hangs.
It’s a good likeness.
It looks like him.
But the life and death and deeds of the Atlanta native remain flesh-and-blood battles out on the streets of the poorest neighborhoods and in the seemingly most desperate causes, state Rep. Tyrone Brooks, D-Atlanta told a crowd of Vine City neighbors and community activists at Hands on Atlanta Tuesday night.
Appearing a day after he participated in the annual MLK Day march, Brooks said honoring the slain Civil Rights leader starts with on-the-ground organizing and mobilizing.
"In this state," Brooks said, "In Martin Luther King’s home state, 500,000 African-Americans are not registered voters. 120,000 in Fulton: not registered voters. 100,000 in Dekalb: not registered voters. …7 million African-Americans in this country: not registered voters."
The numbers are unacceptable.
"You cannot make the dream be a reality and not be a registered voter," Brooks said. "Name me an issue, and I will show you how it connects back to the body politic. I will show a connection back to your government. …Listen, brothers and sisters, there is no way we can love King and not be involved in political decisions. You can’t love King and not be a registered voter. Martin Luther King put his life on the line so we could have the right to vote. And it’s not about voting for president, or senator or a legislator. It’s about voting for yourselves."
The speech represented the main event of a Dr. King summit sponsored by local AmeriCorps affiliates on Menes Street. The forum included a panel of local leaders who spoke about King, rounded out by another address delivered by the Rev. Kenneth Glasgow of Dothan, Ala., founder of the Ordinary People Society. Listening to Glasgow, you could close your eyes and think you were hearing a sermon by the Rev. Al Sharpton. It turns out Glasgow is Sharpton’s brother.
"I’m a person that went through jail, drugs, crack," Glasgow told the crowd. "I did 12 years in prison because of my own wrongdoing. But I’ve been out and in six years I’ve been doing things you should have been doing."
The prison industrial complex, Glasgow said, spends $29,000 a year per prisoner in this country. The prison population, he added, is 62 percent African-American.
"How can we be a minority in the majority all at the same time?" Glasgow asked.
Tanya Colbreth and Eric Heflin, AmeriCorps project coordinators, introduced singers Elise Witt and the Chestnut Brothers, who warmed up the crowd. Then the panelists settled in and responded to the question: What would King think about contemporary America?
The Rev. Calvin Peterson, an Atlanta activist on behalf of people with disabilities and author of the book Nothing is Impossible, said the King legacy has hit hard times.
"Dr. King is turning over in his grave," Peterson said. "Dr. King’s spirit is tormented in knowing that the public school system in this country is still segregating disabled students. I think Dr. King’s spirit is tormented because every 56 seconds in this country a disabled child is being born. In essence, I think Dr. King is upset."
Joe Dunlap of the state Department of Community Affairs’ environmental division helps coordinate the "Keep Atlanta Beautiful" campaign, which focuses on re-instilling pride in crumbling neighborhoods.
"There’s definitely room for work," Dunlap admitted. "Environmental justice issues are not being addressed as aggressively as they should. The environment doesn’t care who you are or where you come from. It’s up to us to come together and deal with it."
Rosie Watkins of Cornelia, past winner of an AmeriCorp Award, said she’s from a small rural town in Georgia, one of 30 siblings. She shook her head sadly at the question.
"How much do we cultivate the Martin Luther King Dream?" she asked. She took her thumb and forefinger and spaced them about a half an inch apart. "This much," she said. "This much. The majority of the people in my town are black. The dream is a cover-up. The dream is like Katrina — about to explode. Half our boys between the ages of 14 and 18 can’t go to school. The kids get tired of going to school. Something is going on in the educational system. You know when kids in our town can’t get a job in Burger King that there’s a problem. The dream? No. This much…" thumb and forefinger, "This much."
Christi Ketchum, Project South youth counselor coordinator, was up next.
"When we talk about Martin Luther King Jr.," she said, "we talk of the people that were in the struggle with Martin Luther King Jr. The dream was community. …When we let them put one person up on a pedestal it makes what he did seem impossible. Young people have to see themselves in King."
Byron Amos of the Vine City Civic Association was born and raised in Vine City and still lives in the neighborhood, which, Amos was quick to point out to the audience, is where King once moved with his young family.
"I have to deal with the legacy of King daily," Amos said. "As I look at my office window and I see the truancy van moving in, drug abuse, the police cars. It begins to hurt."
He gave a nod to Ketchum’s point.
"One of the things we’ve allowed society to do is we’ve put Martin Luther King Jr. so far up on a mountain that our people have forgotten he was one of us," Amos said.
King rose out of vital African-American institutions. "The two biggest houses in the black community are the church house and the school house," Amos said. "Until we take care of that, we will systematically destroy the black community. …We have to listen to what our old people told us, not what society sold us."
Brother Tyree of the New Black Panther Party sat at the front of the room in black beret and uniform with a similarly clad bodyguard at his right arm. In the hall outside another uniformed sentry stood watch.
"Consumer rights," said the Panther leader, "are not civil rights."
You could lay the content of King’s life, work and speeches over the present-day situation in America and it would all have immediate application and relevance.
"You could lay that down right over the Iraq war," Tyree said.
It was up to Brooks, the keynoter, to bring all the voices together. A member of SCLC at 15, jailed 65 times for his civil rights work, elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1980, founder of GABEO and on the move all the time around Georgia as part of his group’s ongoing voter-registration drive, Brooks went to the front of the room. He opened up by celebrating the life of Dora McDonald, King’s secretary, who died last week at the age of 81; who went with the Civil Rights leader when he accepted his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, who went with him everywhere, traveled with him, lived with him, fought with him.
"I’m so sorry we’ve lost this woman," Brooks said. "I just have to lift her up tonight. She did what she did to make Martin Luther King Jr. the great leader."
He paused to honor her.
"Do not despair," Brooks said a moment later. "Do not believe the media when they say, ‘Dr. King’s dream is dead.’ …You will never know who King is until you read Dr. King: his letter from the Birmingham jail, his Riverside Church sermon against Vietnam. Fill up your homes with King’s literature and his books and you won’t have to call the police because your baby’s cursing you or beating you."
Fight the drugs with King’s books, he said.
Fight gangs and youth violence with his words.
Don’t stop studying King and renewing the message over and over again.
"We are doing the work of Martin Luther King every day — in our own way," Brooks said. "…You are Kingites. Don’t let anybody tell you the dream of Martin Luther King Jr. is dead. It’s not dead because it’s within you. Don’t let anybody kill your spirit. You are King."
Then Brooks left, to go to a memorial service at Ebenezer Baptist Church for Dora McDonald.
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