On his blog “Cloaking Inequity,” Julian Vasquez Heilig remembers Dr. King as an extremist and quotes his words.
Heilig writes:
So if you are a supporter of union busting via mayoral control, parent trigger, vouchers, and charters you are at odds with MLK, and you will find yourself on the wrong side of history. 
Says Heilig:
Be inspired to be a creative extremist for unions and living wages. Honor MLK’s memory and reject the “right to work” neoliberal nonsense.
And let’s not forget one of MLK’s organizers of The March on Washington, Bayard Rustin who said: “We need in every bay & community a group of angelic troublemakers.”
This is a fine time to remember and pay tribute to the core advisors who MLK depended on over the corse of his journey. Both liberals and conservatives have air brushed out of MLKs journey two extraordinary intimate advisors who mentored and advised MLK: Stanley Levison and Bayard Rustin. Read the extraordinary, brilliant MLK biography by Taylor Branch; it is well worth your time and effort.
Dr. King was working on his Justice for Janitors project when he was killed—Custodial staff for the city of Memphis were making minimum wage.
He went to public school, Booker T. Washington, an extremely historic institution then and now. (Not that he would have had much choice.). His kids went to public school also. (Atlanta Board of Education) Atlanta has few parochials and privates were for the very rich although with his fame they might have found a private that would have taken them. It would have been way across town, however. I couldn’t imagine him or anyone in his immediate family supporting discriminatory or corporately run privates. He went to a private college, Morehouse and his sister is a Professor Emeritus at Spelman, a sister school. She tutored a friend of mine who was in a public elementary school. Again, there wasn’t much choice for African-Americans then.
Dr. King was extremist and ahead of his time, but time caught up with him and he probably changed the world a good 20 years before it would have changed without him. He was just doing God’s work.
On the surface right-to-work sounds great, everyone has a right to work without paying to join a union. But it keeps down wages and prevents workers from having any kind of job protection or from being fired just because the boss does not like them. Dr. King knew what he was doing in supporting unions, even though they sometimes get a little out of hand.
“Right to work” should be known as “right to freeload”. You may have a “right to work”, but you don’t have a right to the benefits negotiated by the union if you’re not chipping in to the union.
If someone does not like being “forced” to pay union dues, they are free to seek employment elsewhere. Why must the government get involved? It appears to me that the conservatives and libertarians are asking the government to distort the market. I am certain that they would argue that if a worker does not like their pay, they are free to seek employment elsewhere.
Everyday I am inspired by great people , especially Dr king . He has done great deeds for social justice. .we must keep up his legacy and promise.
twinkie1cat: if I am unclear or fail to make sense, please excuse. But your comments got me to thinking…
The other day Chiara Duggan used the phrase “choice not voice” when it comes to charters. I interpreted her remarks to mean two things. First, that the parents who choose charters make a choice that often leaves them no say, or at least much less, than what they enjoy in traditional public schools. Second, that they begin to lose all say about what choices are offered to them in the first place, since charters are increasingly coming at the expense [literally] of existing public schools.
IMHO, this explains why the leading charterites/privatizers want to deny parents, students and communities a very simple choice that the owner of this blog has mentioned on a number of occasions: a well-resourced local public school that is staffed from top to bottom by the best [re qualifications, experience and training] available people. But then, from a traditional business POV, why make the “public school option” an attractive one? You don’t win market share and $tudent $ucce$$ by building up your competition and making them look good. Hence when self-styled “education reformers” assume control of public school districts they act as if they are on any team that isn’t the “public school team” [just one egregious example is LAUSD’s John Deasy and his $1 billion iPad fiasco].
Let me put that through the English-to-English translator: “school choice” = “choosing among the alternatives allowed you by those in mad dog pursuit of $tudent $ucce$$.”
How does this relate to “right-to-work”? To begin, just where in the entire US of A is there a law [constitutional, state, municipal] that guarantees the general populace the “right” to a job? [Please note I am not speaking here of something like having extra “points” for certain jobs because you are a veteran.] Yes, it is a catchy slogan but what it means is that the vast majority of us have the “right” to apply for work and, if we’re lucky, get hired. If we choose well, or just luck out, we are treated with dignity and respect and our contributions are valued. If we choose poorly, or had little or no choice but because of desperate circumstances accepted the first job offer we could get, and are treated abusively and unfairly, too bad, we made the wrong “choice.” The “choice” though isn’t ours to make—it belongs to the employer. Or so it goes when “right-to-work” is interpreted as denying people union representation and protections.
Again, if this seems unclear I apologize in advance. Yet “choice” as a sweet soundbite for the consumer-minded seems all-powerful, until you begin to consider who is controlling—or at least attempting to control—the sorts of choices that are available, what those choices entail, how final they are, and whether any of the cage busting achievement gap crushing choices we are offered have any merit to them.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
The quotation, as presented, is quite truncated. Here are Dr. King’s full words:
” So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime–the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.”