2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: If MLK Were Alive, He'd Make White Folks Just as Uncomfortable as Black Lives Matter [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)But in the Poor People's Campaign, he was building a bigger coalition than that.
Look, it isn't "either/or".
It's not as though pointing out that the struggle involved coalitions with other groups meant arguing that Dr. King was abandoning the primacy of liberating people of color, OR implying that white leftists deserve more credit that Dr. King and the black majority of the freedom movement. I haven't heard anybody saying that Bernie was Dr. King's equal in the freedom movement, and if anybody did say that, Bernie's own supporters and Bernie himself would call whoever said that out as an idiot.
Either way, we honor Dr. King's struggle. And make no attempt to steal credit for its triumphs away from him. Or to minimize race as an issue. There really isn't an argument here.
Most of us were either quite young(I was seven) when Dr. King died, or weren't born yet. We KNOW better than to try to claim credit we don't deserve.