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twolostsoulsblog-blog · 8 years ago

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a piece I wrote exactly a year ago

Reflections: MLK stands for Solidarity

We may celebrate him in quiet reflection, recounting a history of suffering and his leadership in a movement fighting oppression. Or we may remember him through service, celebrating his legacy by giving back to our communities. But King himself was the legacy and successor of many great men and women before him. Freedom fighters, social intellectuals, revolutionaries, patriots, civil rights activists…these individuals have collected many titles over the years worldwide. They shared narratives of their triumphs and struggles, learned from each other, and thus perfected their techniques in the battles against powerful institutions. Their strength, however, was derived from a concept that all of them championed…but none of us give much thought to. And that is what I am thinking about today.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his predecessors stand for solidarity among persecuted, tyrannized communities. And additionally, they exemplify the need for privileged members of society (certain groups of color and no-color who may have nothing to lose at the moment) to recognize the problem and offer support.

At every moment in the history of our world, there have existed marginalized groups. And there have always been oppressors. Only the names have changed: the specific communities suffering and parties inflicting the pain have slightly varied. But the struggle is the same, and conquering patterns are similar.

When there is no immediate threat, it is easy to get comfortable. The problem can easily be in someone else’s backyard. I speak now of my own community. We have, in recent years, been accumulating privileges that do not make us an immediate target on the streets. Apart from the subtle racism and alienation in certain situations that we have grown accustomed to, we are okay with the liberties offered to us as hyphenated-Americans. Our early histories in this country are lost: the stories of exploited Chinese laborers of the transcontinental railroad, Japanese families in internment camps, trials and tribulations of South Asian migrant workers were never taught to us in school.

But there are no politicians currently trying to build walls to keep “our sort of American” out and it is not always suggested that “we go back to our country” when we speak, so we’re okay. Our brothers are not arrested in school for building clocks and our children are not dying as they go out to buy Skittles, so we’re okay. But it is exactly this process of sheltering ourselves from the struggles of our neighbors where we ignore everything MLK Jr. and others like him stood for.

When we study history, we view global liberation movements as distinct and separate. But the battle against oppression grows stronger with shared thoughts and experiences, and Dr. King (and others like him) recognized that. For example, Gandhi and other freedom fighters adopted Henry David Thoreau’s concept of civil disobedience in their opposition against the British in India. But very few are aware that their support overseas came predominately from Black intellectuals in the United States. It was the Black press that recognized and reported on the parallel between the mistreatment of Indians by the British and the racial discrimination of the Black community in the U.S.

In 1942, members of the Black community even submitted a joint letter to President Roosevelt urging him to consider intervention in the Indian liberation movement. MLK would later draw from the works of Indian nationalists, among many other global social thinkers, as inspiration for his own work within the Civil Rights Movement. These battles were not separate, they agreed, and recognizing the similarities in suffering became a moral strength. Solidarity became a means of power during these liberation movements.

Whether it was Vivekananda or Langston Hughes, Nehru or Du Bois, Bayard Rustin or B.R. Ambedkar, these intellectuals of two separate communities exchanged ideas and connected distinct experiences to recognize a shared history of suffering. They formulated international alliances across racial and ethnic lines of difference to offer moral support in the fight against oppressive institutions. Though I chose to discuss a collaboration between just two liberation movements, there are so many more examples of this in our global history. So if we choose to turn a blind eye to the adversities of others today, then we are not properly honoring the legacies of Dr. King, Mahatma Gandhi, and many others like them who advocated solidarity through their ideals and actions.

In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote: “…I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea.”

As I reflect on the life of Dr. King and many heroes like him, only two words come to mind. Love and solidarity. I’m confident the solution starts here.

“Show me that you mean Democracy please— Cause from Bombay to Georgia I’m beat to my knees You can’t lock up Nehru Club Roland Hayes, Then make fine speeches About Freedom’s way.” -Langston Hughes, an excerpt from “How about it?”

Also, for more light reading on the lost history of South Asian and African American Solidarity, check out: http://blackdesisecrethistory.org

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