Imploring OWS To Protect Themselves By Hailing
Rev. King's Condemnation of Wall Street's Wars
By Jay Janson
31 October, 2011
Countercurrents.org
OWS Oakland, anti-war demonstrating Iraq veteran head bashed in during police attack.If protesters had been holding photos of revered US national hero Reverend Dr. King and banners quoting King condemning Wall Street creating wars for "unjust overseas predatory investments while withholding investing in America at home," police would not have had the stomach or nerve to beat and attack with dangerous crowd control weapons
That marine veteran demonstrator in Oakland, who had his head bashed in a police attack a few days ago. What if he and the people around him had been holding up Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King signs, placards and banners with Rev. KIng's image and quotes from his sermon Beyond Vietnam - a Time to Break Silence that condemned Wall Street for creating wars to maintain its "unjust overseas predatory investments while withholding investment in America at home."
- would the police have gone ahead with stun and tear gas grenades and rubber bullets anyway?
No, In 2011, police will not have the stomach or nerve to beat and attack supporters of revered US national hero Reverend Dr. King with crowd control weapons that can cause fatalities!
Thirty-four years ago, sure! Maybe Oakland police might have been sicking dogs on them as well.
Back then, before the year ended with King shot in the head, the New York Times, Washington Post, all the Network news and print media were vilifying King as a traitor, an unpatriotic friend of America's communist enemies in those in Asia. "A discredit to his race, who has ended his usefulness as a civil rights leader." was one media commentator's judgement.
But since then times of changed. Today, very few are aware that media once labeled King a traitor while he was alive.
Forty-three years have passed since King's assassination and the riots that followed in black communities across America. By officially acknowledging King as a hero, the establishment pushed memories of Dr. King upstairs and off the streets where they fomented dissent. The assassinated Martin Luther King has been for a long time now the only American hero whose birthday is celebrated with a three day holiday from work. You get that holiday even if you are a white supremacist begrudging it, and King's portrait is on commemorative postage stamps issued by most all nations
Only the elderly remember that once King was dead, Wall Street owned mass-media made sure that during all these years not a single word about his condemning US wars and US predatory overseas investments would be heard or read. At the recent unveiling of the Washington King Memorial, even King's own family and his close friends, who had held the wounded and dying King in their arms and had gone on to highly profiled political careers, dared not mention those fiery condemnations of US wars during his last year on Earth. And today, there is not a church or congregation in America that would endorse King's condemnation of US wars - not even the very National Association of Baptist Churches that had paid for King's pension. The real King is a hot potato for church people who support and accept every new US war, many still doggedly praising the Vietnam War that King denounced as genocide. (There is an international petition circulating "calling for pastors of all faiths to condemn US wars the way Martin Luther King did.")
The vast majority of Americans, being young or middle age, believe the story corporate media projects, that King was murdered for successfully marching for black civil rights. These people will not understand that King had to be silenced. King, intensely popular among blacks and conscience bitten whites, would have been listened to by far too many to let him go on talking about US wars to maintain cruel and immoral investments on three continents.
Wall Street-owned mass media has made sure the youth of America would not know of of King's historic world-shaking sermon that made bold large-lettered headlines across the pages of newspapers all around the world, "KING CALLS US THE GREATEST PURVEYOR OF VIOLENCE IN THE WORLD TODAY!" There's is a powerful and protective slogan for Occupy Wall Street marchers! "King says Silence is betrayal! Everyone Must Protest!" is another passionate cry to quote. "US Wars and Covert Criminal Activity in Africa, Asia and Latin America, Are Meant to Maintain Unjust Overseas Predatory Investments that Bring Death and Unimaginable Suffering to Poor People Bring our Soldiers Back in Body-bags or Crippled and Deranged!" Can anyone proclaim this truth in their own name and get the same attention, make the same impression, as King's words do.
During his two memorable 1967 sermons, King gave half-hour long peoples-history lessons going back to 1945 to expose absurd lies of Wall Street media. Today we need to all teach each other the history of the lies that have concealed secret arrangements for CIA covert crimes against humanity in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America since 1953, - arrangements that always originate within a dominant financial element that rules our society through ownership and manipulation of 98% of all electronic and print media sources of information.
But many misled TV-believing pro-war Americans, not a few among the police, will be pissed off to read those quotes on signs and banners, because it will be hard for them to believe that the King America praises as a wise preacher and patient civil rights leader,’really spoke such condemnations of his own government and amoral US business practices.
So, Occupy Wall Street will have to accomplish what the peace movement has never been able to, namely, educate the America public about the whole Martin Luther King, who was brave enough to denounce Wall Street's heinous crimes against humanity for investment policies that bring great wealth to incorrigibly greedy investors who set themselves as a model for a society deep into materialism.
But Occupy Wall Street has help! Since August, when Veterans For Peace National endorsed and called for all chapters to promote the
International Campaign for Awareness of King's Condemnation of U.S. Wars and the "unjust overseas predatory investments they are meant to maintain."
http://kingcondemneduswars.blogspot.com/
has grown to be embraced by most clergy related sincere anti-war organizations at home and abroad.
Archbishop Tutu encourages its wider publication. Former US Att. Gen. Ramsey Clark, author of both civil rights laws, along with celebrities like Wynton Marsalis and Pete Seeger have signed on. Pete is inviting Arlo Guthrie, Harry Belafonte, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Willie Nelson and Tony Bennett, who are expected to join him. Film maker Michael Moore, and so many other artists, movie and sport stars will add to a roster of Americans of conscience who will make this King revival initiative a catalyst for humanity realizing its capability to make criminal wars and citizen business exploitation by an elite unacceptable.
King pointed to the horrifying wars and CIA covert attacks on poor countries as the basis of all exploitations by the world investment community led by Wall Street. King's stature can provide spiritual protection from a national hero clergyman's words of moral leadership.
Which slogan is stronger?
'VETERANS PROTEST US WARS!' or "MARTIN LUTHER KING CONDEMNED US WARS!"
'DR. KING CONDEMNED US WARS ALL FOR WALL ST. INVESTMENTS!' Can anyone say this in his or her own name with greater effect?
'KING CONDEMNED WALL ST OWNED MEDIA'S ABSURD LIES THAT KEEP US IN IGNORANCE, FEAR, WARS and BONDAGE' Will this statement have same power to educate, if King's name be left off?
Last year, in the streets of Europe, people started crying out against banks and bank-controlled governments. Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Bahrain, saw super massive daily demonstrations of tens of thousands and more over many months against their Wall Street-owned dictators long impoverishing them. In Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and in what was prosperous Libya with an Wall Street opponent dictator, US and NATO air force saw to Wall Street's interests with selected mass homicide.
But today people all over America are demonstrating against Wall Street itself, and no longer uselessly against an obedient government that Wall Street owns. Bravo! A getting to the root of problem of who has power over us, that is now being copied everywhere.
However, many Veterans For Peace are imploring the participants in the various Occupy Wall Streets to invoke, for their own protection, Rev King's Wall St. wars condemning phrases before some veterans get themselves killed or permanently maimed like so many thousands of men, women and children occupying protestors in the Middle East. Wall Street is a fearfully dangerous enemy, don't let's be naive, warn deception experienced Veterans.
Invoking Occupy Wall Street in Kings name will also emphasize Wall Street investors' profitable US war crimes abroad that is the key to Wall Street injustice at home.
Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer, who has lived and worked on all the continents and whose articles on media have been published in China, Italy, England, India and the US, and now resides in New York City. Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his. GlobalReserch, InformationClearingHouse, CounterCurrents, DissidentVoice, HistoryNewsNetwork, are among those who have republished his articles
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