Demand forces city to change venue for Bernie Sanders, Mayor Lumumba town hall

[Donkees]

Published 3:35 p.m. CT March 30, 2018

High demand to see U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders join Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba in Jackson next week has forced the city to find a more accommodating venue.

Sanders and the mayor will be commemorating the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr at an event titled "Examining Economic Justice 50 Years Later."

The Wednesday event will now be held at Thalia Mara Hall at 255 E. Pascagoula St. in downtown Jackson, instead of the Alamo Theater in the city's Farish Street District.

https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/local/2018/03/30/demand-forces-city-change-venue-bernie-sanders-mayor-lumumba-town-hall/474303002/

[mountain grammy]

1. So happy to see people responding

Wish I was close enough to attend..will be streaming.

[zentrum]

2. It's great that Bernie

…stayed so active and is filling huge venues still.

[leftstreet]

3. DURec

[Donkees]

4. kick

Link to tweet

[Hortensis]

5. The Alamo Theater's capacity is a little over 400.

The Jackson, MS metro area is over half a million, but they think a new venue that'll hold up to 2000 will do.

Sanders has generated additional advertisement for this particular event on the anniversary of MLK's death, and that is a contribution of sorts. But Jackson, MS is 80% BLACK. They don't need him.

If Sanders really wanted to contribute to black equality, why isn't he in whitey-white Vermont raising some badly needed consciousness of the long slog to equality there? Does anyone think Vermont's 1.3% BLACK residents wouldn't appreciate some help?

Or is this advertising really all about promoting Sanders himself? About going where he can get some badly needed pictures of himself surrounded by black faces with an MLK banner behind?

[babylonsister]

6. Could it conceivably be about

commemorating the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.?

I don't understand why you're twisting yourself in knots trying to find an ulterior motive.

[Hortensis]

7. Lol. NO. He could done THAT better in Vermont,

whose record on supporting genuine equality of POC could be improved. What about promoting remembrance of MLK in Vermont? Instead of flying to MS to use their event for photo and video ops.

Come on. It's our duty to be clear-eyed and honest. All politicians position themselves for advantageous media coverage. The inadequacies of voters in general require this kind of shabby posturing and maneuvering, and lots of it.

We individually, however, are not required to dishonestly pretend it isn't happening and should not encourage more by rewarding it.

It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America. Molly Ivins

[George II]

8. Sanders is a Senator from Vermont. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis Tennessee...

...and was a native born and resident of Atlanta Georgia.

Why is Sanders commemorating the 50th anniversary of King's assassination in Mississippi instead of Memphis, Atlanta, or Burlington?

[Me.]

9. Because The Mayor As An OR Member

is the only one who invited him?

[pnwmom]

13. That's exactly what it's about. The 50th anniversary of King's assassination.

Sanders will be there to mark it along with hundreds of others.

The event is about Martin Luther King, Jr., not any of the current politicians who may show up.

[lapucelle]

11. MLK's platform was civil rights and the inherent dignity of all people.

With the recent gutting of the Voting Rights Act, we need to renew our focus on ensuring the civil and human rights of all Americans. There will never be economic justice without that necessary first step.

[Hortensis]

12. Hear, hear!

[Arazi]

10. KIck and rec

[Donkees]

14. Economic justice was always part of MLK Jr.s message

Excerpt:

As the 50th anniversary of the murder of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. approaches, historian Michael Honey reminds us in a new book that labor rights and economic justice were always part of his progressive message.

The book, To the Promised Land: Martin Luther King and the Fight for Economic Justice, (W.W. Norton, 2018) comes out on April 3—the day before the 50-year anniversary of King’s assassination.

The story in To the Promised Land starts with his speech the night before he was killed. In Memphis, sanitation workers were on strike—in the midst of a huge crisis going on in that city. He was in the midst of trying to organize a poor people’s campaign to confront the federal government about racism, poverty and runaway militarism in 1968.

King said the best anti-poverty program is a union. Where you can fight for your own agenda—somebody doesn’t have to hand it to you. But you have to be organized to do that. King always supported unions. He gave his life in that cause, in a sense.

Many workers in this country recognize King as a labor hero. “We can get more together than we can apart,” King said in Memphis. He always said we have a common destiny, and he put it in an economic framework. And we so need that.

https://www.futurity.org/martin-luther-king-jr-economic-justice-1716672/


---

When Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, NAACP president Cornell Williams Brooks, and actor Danny Glover joined thousands of Mississippians in marching for labor rights ..., economic and social justice activist Chokwe Antar Lumumba was in the thick of it. “I stand for workers’ rights,” Lumumba said, as the marchers converged on a Nissan plant where workers have been organizing for union protections. “[The] struggle does not cease and so we’re constantly in the battle of how we create self-determined lives for people. And we believe in human rights for human beings and you cannot support human rights if you’re not prepared to support workers’ rights. And so, we live in a world where you have so many with so little and so few with so much. And so, we’re trying to change that dynamic right here [in Mississippi]—we want to change the order of the world.”

The Washington-obsessed national media paid scant attention to that “March on Mississippi.” But it was big news in the state, sparking serious talk about the new wave of in-the-streets and at-the-polls activism that is sweeping the South ... that wave swept into Mississippi’s largest city, Jackson, where voters nominated Lumumba for mayor.

https://www.thenation.com/article/jackson-mississippi-just-chose-radical-leftist-chokwe-antar-lumumba-to-be-the-next-mayor/