What Would Dr. King Occupy?

Photo of DC Occupy on Freedom Plaza, November 12, 2011

Earlier today, Donald Trump spoke at Liberty University, ostensibly in the context of honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the day of his annual birthday commemoration.  His comments were uninspiring, to say the least.  This should not be surprising, and not just because the only thing Mr. Trump really talks about is himself.  For Dr. King's life and work were the complete antithesis of Mr. Trump's.

This presentation I made at our Temple's 2012 Martin Luther King Shabbat Service illustrates a large part of the total disconnect between the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize Winner and the likely winner of the 2016 Republican Presidential Nomination.

TEMPLE EMANUEL OF MARYLAND January 13, 2012

“What Would Dr. King Occupy?”

David Fishback

What Would Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Occupy? A timely question on this celebration of his birth. But the answer is not so much whether an 83 year old Dr. King would have been at Zuccotti Park, McPherson Square, or Freedom Plaza this past year. The answer lies in how he would have gotten to such a decision. And to explore that question, we must first explore the Prophetic Tradition.

In 1962, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel published The Prophets, his major scholarly and spiritual work on the meaning of the Prophetic Tradition in Judaism. The next year, 1963, he met Dr. King and they formed a friendship and alliance based on their common view of the Prophetic Tradition.

Rabbi Heschel explained that the prophets’ words were a “ceaseless shattering of indifference”. He reminded us that “prophet was an individual who said No to his society, condemning its habits and assumptions, its complacency”.

Rabbi Heschel noted the challenge faced by every prophet: "The prophet faces a coalition of callousness and established authority, and undertakes to stop a mighty stream with mere words. Had the purpose been [simply] to express great ideas, prophecy would have had to be acclaimed as a triumph. Yet the purpose of prophecy is to conquer callousness, to change the inner man as well as to revolutionize history." 

Here is how Rabbi Heschel described the time of the Prophet Amos: “There was pride, plenty, and splendor in the land, elegance in the cities, and might in the palaces. The rich [THE ONE PERCENT?] had their summer and winter palaces adorned with costly ivory, gorgeous couches with damask pillows, on which they reclined at their sumptuous feasts. [But a]t the same time there was no justice in the land, the poor were afflicted, . . . . and the judges were corrupt." In essence, Amos saw a society in which the rich amassed their wealth by keeping their boots on the necks of the poor.

For Rabbi Heschel and the prophets, worship without justice was meaningless. The phrase from the prophet Amos (5:22-24) so often used by Dr. King is surrounded by the following:  "[E]ven though you offer Me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings, I will not accept them . . . . Take away from Me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice well up as waters and righteousness as a might stream." 

In January 1963, shortly after the publication of The Prophets, Rabbi Heschel and Dr. King met at a conference in Chicago. They discovered in each other a kindred spirit. Rabbi Heschel marched with Dr. King in Selma, and was an ally not just in the Civil Rights Movement, but in the Anti-War Movement, as well. Both men took the Prophetic Tradition very seriously. Indeed, it was at the core of their approaches to the intersection of faith and action.

In early 1968, Dr. King was preparing The Poor People’s Campaign, in which thousands of people would come to, and stay in, Washington to seek to turn the attention of the nation to the economic problems which kept so many in poverty. It was to be, to use today's parlance, an "Occupation." It was to be a call to America to shed its complacency regarding poverty, and to act to address the conditions that perpetuated that poverty.

It was a time both different from and similar to today. Writ large, our economy then seemed prosperous. But we were bogged down in a war overseas, and the poor were mired in poverty.

On March 25 of that year, Rabbi Heschel introduced Dr. King at the annual conference of the Rabbinical Assembly of Conservative Judaism. Rabbi Heschel’s introduction bears repeating:

“Where does moral religious leadership in America come from today? The politicians are astute, the establishment is proud, and the market place is busy. Placid, happy, merry, the people pursue their work, enjoy their leisure, and life is fair. People buy, sell, celebrate and rejoice. They fail to realize that in the midst of our affluent cities there are districts of despair, areas of distress.
“Where does God dwell in American today? Is He at home with those who are complacent, indifferent to other people’s agony, devoid of mercy? Is He not rather with the poor . . . in the slums?
“Where in America today do we hear a voice like the voice of the prophets of Israel? Martin Luther King is a sign that God has not forsaken the United States of America. . . . His presence is the hope of America. His mission is sacred, his leadership of supreme importance to every one of us.
“The situation of the poor in America is our plight, our sickness. To be deaf to their cry is to condemn ourselves.
“Martin Luther King is a voice, a vision and a way. I call upon every Jew to harken to his voice, to share his vision, to follow his way. The whole future of America will depend upon the impact and influence of Dr. King.”

At the Rabbinical Assembly, Dr. King spoke about the Poor People’s Campaign, explaining that he planned to bring thousands of poor people to Washington, who “are going to stay in Washington at least sixty days, or however long we feel it necessary.” That effort, Dr. King explained, would include “an opportunity for thousands, hundreds of thousands of people to come to Washington [and say that] we are here because we endorse the demands of the poor people who have been here all of these weeks trying to get Congress to move. . . . We are dealing with the problem of poverty. We must be sure that the people of our country will see this as a matter of justice.”

Six days after he spoke to the Rabbinical Assembly, Dr. King gave what would be his last Sunday sermon at the National Cathedral, here in Washington. He asserted that the question was not whether we could deal with the issues of poverty in America, but whether we had the will to do so. Dr. King said that “In a few weeks some of us are coming to Washington to see if the will is still alive . . . in this nation. We are coming to Washington in a poor people’s campaign. We are not coming to engage in any histrionic gesture. We are not coming to tear up Washington. We are coming to demand that the government address itself to the problem of poverty. . . . If a man doesn’t have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility of the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists. Why do we do it this way? We do it this way because it is our experience that the nation doesn’t move around questions of genuine equality for the poor and for black people until it is confronted massively, dramatically in terms of direct action.”

In closing, Dr. King recognized the difficulties of the endeavor, but said, “I will not yield to a politic of despair. I’m going to maintain hope as we come to Washington in this campaign. . . . God grant that we will be that David of truth set out against the Goliath of injustice, the Goliath of neglect, the Goliath of refusing to deal with the problems, and go on with the determination to make America the truly great America that it is called to be.”

Dr. King said these words on March 31, 1968. On April 4, he was killed by an assassin.

Dispirited, the Campaign proceeded. The first demonstrators arrived in Washington on May 12, and built the make-shift Resurrection City on the south side of the Reflecting Pool. Eventually, several thousand poor people took up residence in Resurrection City, and they were joined for seminars by many supporters, including students who had come from around the country (I arranged to have many of them housed in dorms at The George Washington University). Many good things happened at Resurrection City. I most remember sitting with a group nuns and African American teenagers listening to a retired Coast Guard veteran talk about the genealogical research he was doing, in which he was able to trace his ancestors back to West Africa; eight years later, the speaker, Alex Haley, published Roots.

But the Movement sputtered as incessant rains turned Resurrection City to mud, Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated, and the June 19 rally, while not insubstantial, attracted far fewer people than Dr. King had hoped for, and had no real spark. By June 24, Resurrection City was a memory and the Dr. King’s last campaign, was over.

Prophets typically do not see fulfillment of their visions in their own
times. Dr. King saw the dismantling of American apartheid, but did not see the elimination of apartheid’s effects. His vision for a just America went beyond issues of racism, as shown by his vigorous opposition to the Viet Nam War and his recognition that economic injustice impacted all people.

That our nation recognizes him as a prophet says that we, at some level, recognize the truth of his vision. But this story, as the Exodus story, must be told to every generation, and must be seen not just as history, but as a lesson for the present and the future.
There are many views of what today’s Occupy Movements mean. Would Dr. King have occupied Wall Street or Washington in 2011 or 2012? At bottom, the critique of the Occupy Movements is that a small group at the top of the economic pyramid is not dealing fairly with everyone else. There is much truth to this critique. While the investor classes are doing reasonably well, even in this economic downturn, and the compensation for those at the top of major corporations skyrockets, the real wages of the vast majority of Americans who have jobs are stagnant or declining. And for those who do not have jobs, finding employment is very difficult.

In his March 31 sermon at the National Cathedral, Dr. King made it clear that there was nothing wrong with being rich but he saw that the rich in America had the “opportunity to help bridge the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. The question is whether America will do it. There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will."

Given Dr. King's vision of a just and equitable society, I suspect that he would have been a supporter and even a leader of the Occupy Movement. Of course, every time in history and every movement for social change is different. So we cannot say definitively whether he would be living in a tent on Freedom Plaza or MacPherson Square.

The larger lesson that I think we need to draw from Dr. King was his insistence that we see injustice and inequality squarely, that we not be complacent, and that we act. People of good will can certainly differ on the most efficacious roles of private business enterprise and democratic government in building and maintaining a society in which all people may be able to live good lives. But as Dr. Heschel reminded us in his scholarship and as Dr. King reminded us in his words and deeds, the Prophetic Tradition demands that we never be complacent and we strive to have just roll down like waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.

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Somehow, I don't think Donald Trump understands any of this -- or if he does, he does not care.