Saturday, July 30, 2005
The Making of a War...on poverty
The U.S. and its wars! The ongoing War on Drugs and now against Terrorism are appalling enough; however, it was The War on Poverty (1964-1968) that the rest emulate. Frankly, I haven't known this country to win a declared war in my lifetime-whether Korea, Vietnam, or even the Gulf War, which sought ultimate redemption. I am convinced that the War on Poverty, a campaign supposedly to alleviate impoverishment, gained legislative support due to the Long Hot Summers in urban America. Between 1965 and 1968, more than three hundred riots occurred, resulting in two hundred deaths and the destruction of several thousand businesses.
This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the Watts rebellion, which launched the greatest amount of public scrutiny. On August 11, 1965, a routine traffic stop in South Central Los Angeles provided the spark that lit the fire of discontent. The rebellion lasted for six days, leaving 34 dead, over a thousand people injured, nearly 4,000 arrested, and hundreds of buildings destroyed. “Burn, Baby, Burn!” was the enraged battle cry, as beleaguered African American citizens expressed their pent up fury. Watts pointed to Northern problems as complex and urgent as those of the South—perhaps even more so.
I take exception with referring to Watts as a race riot. Historically, race riots resulted when white mobs wantonly attacked African Americans to further racial oppression. As for ‘riot,’ it is a term that trivializes African American overt expressions of violence. In Iraq, the media describes U.S. opposition as insurgency. These uprisings were a form of protest bordering on revolt, and they reflected the anger and confusion felt by many under ghettoized conditions. The nation was not aware of the depth of ghetto despair until the Watts rebellion.
Watts occurred eleven years after the Supreme Court struck down legislation upholding the separate but equal laws of the land. The Civil Rights Movement in the South galvanized attention. Meanwhile, a high jobless rate, poor housing, and bad schools plagued inner cities. Urban cities began to burn incessantly every summer for most of the 60s. Rather than being planned strategies, most of these uprisings were spontaneous as the result of a direct catalyst such as police brutality. As the Kerner Commission’s study of U.S. riots bears out the primary cause was racism: “White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it."
Although the War on Poverty generally focused on rural America, it functioned primarily as a weapon to pacify urban unrests. It is the same tactic perennially used by power structures. According to the July 10, 2005 London Sunday Times, before explosions rocked that city and as part of that government’s counter-terrorism strategy codenamed Operation Contest, the plan was “’to win over the hearts and minds’ with policy initiatives including anti-religious discrimination laws, Muslim mortgages and high-profile roles for leading Muslims.” This strategy of prevention speaks to how, regardless of what the nation says about its refusal to be provoked by violence, it only bows to the threat.
While not advocating violence, I only state an observation. I insist that Martin Luther King’s nonviolence movement was one tactic. Yet, when it came down to the passage of the federal civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965, it was those Long Hot Summers, primarily in the urban North, that contributed to these results. By 1965, the use of nonviolent direct action increasingly came under attack by African American activists.
The history lessons from the past should prepare us all to recognize that, what government officials now prefer to call “The Struggle Against Extremists,” cannot be achieved. Downgrading their rhetoric from a war, for military recruitment purposes, bears out what I’ve been saying all along. It amounts to a concession. I aver that there should be no place for war, or its rhetoric, in the 21st century and beyond. Moreover, pacification movements never bring about peace and justice. Struggle, now there’s a great concept! Quoting abolitionist Frederick Douglass, "If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” Let us not abdicate the persistence of our struggle to the unjust. A luta continua….the struggle continues.
This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the Watts rebellion, which launched the greatest amount of public scrutiny. On August 11, 1965, a routine traffic stop in South Central Los Angeles provided the spark that lit the fire of discontent. The rebellion lasted for six days, leaving 34 dead, over a thousand people injured, nearly 4,000 arrested, and hundreds of buildings destroyed. “Burn, Baby, Burn!” was the enraged battle cry, as beleaguered African American citizens expressed their pent up fury. Watts pointed to Northern problems as complex and urgent as those of the South—perhaps even more so.
I take exception with referring to Watts as a race riot. Historically, race riots resulted when white mobs wantonly attacked African Americans to further racial oppression. As for ‘riot,’ it is a term that trivializes African American overt expressions of violence. In Iraq, the media describes U.S. opposition as insurgency. These uprisings were a form of protest bordering on revolt, and they reflected the anger and confusion felt by many under ghettoized conditions. The nation was not aware of the depth of ghetto despair until the Watts rebellion.
Watts occurred eleven years after the Supreme Court struck down legislation upholding the separate but equal laws of the land. The Civil Rights Movement in the South galvanized attention. Meanwhile, a high jobless rate, poor housing, and bad schools plagued inner cities. Urban cities began to burn incessantly every summer for most of the 60s. Rather than being planned strategies, most of these uprisings were spontaneous as the result of a direct catalyst such as police brutality. As the Kerner Commission’s study of U.S. riots bears out the primary cause was racism: “White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it."
Although the War on Poverty generally focused on rural America, it functioned primarily as a weapon to pacify urban unrests. It is the same tactic perennially used by power structures. According to the July 10, 2005 London Sunday Times, before explosions rocked that city and as part of that government’s counter-terrorism strategy codenamed Operation Contest, the plan was “’to win over the hearts and minds’ with policy initiatives including anti-religious discrimination laws, Muslim mortgages and high-profile roles for leading Muslims.” This strategy of prevention speaks to how, regardless of what the nation says about its refusal to be provoked by violence, it only bows to the threat.
While not advocating violence, I only state an observation. I insist that Martin Luther King’s nonviolence movement was one tactic. Yet, when it came down to the passage of the federal civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965, it was those Long Hot Summers, primarily in the urban North, that contributed to these results. By 1965, the use of nonviolent direct action increasingly came under attack by African American activists.
The history lessons from the past should prepare us all to recognize that, what government officials now prefer to call “The Struggle Against Extremists,” cannot be achieved. Downgrading their rhetoric from a war, for military recruitment purposes, bears out what I’ve been saying all along. It amounts to a concession. I aver that there should be no place for war, or its rhetoric, in the 21st century and beyond. Moreover, pacification movements never bring about peace and justice. Struggle, now there’s a great concept! Quoting abolitionist Frederick Douglass, "If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” Let us not abdicate the persistence of our struggle to the unjust. A luta continua….the struggle continues.
