CELEBRATING AND MAKING HISTORY
By Grace Lee Boggs
Michigan Citizen, June 29-July 6, 2003

This year thousands of Metro Detroiters will march down Woodward Ave. to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the June 1963 March They will see themselves marching with MLK,Walter Reuther and Rev. C.L.Franklin because they were the ones upfront in 1963.

Few will know or care where the idea for the March came from. I tell the story in my autobiography, Living for Change, on page 124. " In May l963 the nationally televised brutality of Bull Conner turning fire hoses and police dogs on black women and youth in Birmingham outraged people all over the country. In response the UAW and CORE called a protest meeting outdoors in downtown Detroit. The meeting was attended by only 50 or so people and was so lifeless that a few of us began shouting 'We want Cleage! We want Cleage!' Cleage [later known as Jerimoge] tore the whole thing up. 'This meeting is a disgrace,' he shouted. 'The organizers should be ashamed of themselves. We should be marching down Woodward Ave.with so many tens of thousands of people that the police would be afraid to show their faces!'

"That night we began meeting in small groups to plan the march down Woodward Ave. Cleage got together with Rev. C.L.Franklinto form the Detroit Council for Human Rights.(DCHR) which issued the call... The DCHR began preparing for a mass turnout by holding weekly meetings in different churches across the city. A headquarters was set up in a building owned by James Del Rio on Grand River with Tony Brown, now host of National Black Journal, as coordinator. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. agreed to lead the March. On June 23 approximately 250,000 people participated in a massive March for Freedom down Woodward Ave., more than would be at the much better known 'I Have a Dream' national March on Washington two months later. Flint, Pontiac and other Michigan cities sent delegations. From side streets up and down Woodward Ave.thousands of marchers fed into the main body . Until the l995 Million Men March there has been nothing like it."

Does it matter where the idea came from? I think it does.

To begin with, you never know when something you "instigate" will catch fire. Most people think of the 60s as one huge event after another. Much of the time there were just a few of us in a room, planning and hoping.

Also the idea for the March came in the midst of an ongoing struggle for very specific goals and for Black Power. Thus, "at the conclusion of the MarchCleage made a ringing speech, urging Detroiters to boycott supermarkets until they hired black managers and department heads. So effective was his speech that on the next Monday, only a couple of us picketing supermarkets were enough to persuade people to turn around, and within a week the supermarket chains were ready to negotiate. "Cleage was a genius at this kind of strategizing, as was Jimmy. Both of them knew that every march, every demonstration, has to conclude with something very specific, very concrete, for people to do. Otherwise you are just getting people all fired up and disempowering them because you are not providing them with a way to make a difference and thereby discover their own powers."

What are this year's organizers urging people to do after the March? We now have black Mayors and a black Secretary of State. Are we struggling for more of the same? Or should the issue now be HOW DO WE BRING THE 'NEIGHBOR' BACK INTO THE 'HOOD?

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THINKING FOR OURSELVES
MARCHING FOR TRUTH
By Shea Howell
Michigan Citizen, June 29-July 6, 2003

This week marks the 40th anniversary of the great civil rights march down Woodward Avenue led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. King delivered his first version of what is now remembered as one of his most moving speeches projecting a vision of a just America. As thousand of people march in memory of that day, many will step a little lighter with what we can claim as a victory for Affirmative Action.

No one expects Bush to celebrate this anniversary. He has shown nothing but contempt for the marching of millions who opposed the invasion of Iraq. He was equally unmoved by the thousands who rallied in support of affirmative action. He was even unsympathetic to the Fortune 500 corporations who support it.

It appears that the only marchers Bush appreciates are those inside Iran, challenging the Ayatollah. His encouragement of these demonstrations reveals his complete ignorance of the real dynamics flowing through the Arab world. Does he seriously think that any political movement inside Iran will benefit from his endorsement? Has he missed the fact that Iraq is attracting guerrilla fighters from throughout the region?

Since Bush declared the end of major hostilities on May 1, these "pockets of resistance" have killed U.S. soldiers at the rate of one every other day. This number will continue to grow as U.S. troops in massive numbers are ordered into villages to seek and destroy.

The administration propaganda machine would like the American public to believe these fighters are a small group of former Hussein cronies or mercenaries risking their lives for a few thousand dollars.

Such an analysis dishonors those who continue to die. No army of occupation wins friends. Each time U.S. soldiers fire into a crowd, attack a town, shoot a convoy or kick in a door, they provide ample reason for Iraqis to hate us.

By now it is clear that Bush not only overestimated the justification for this war, he underestimated the difficulty of securing peace. He has so little regard for the complexity of such efforts that he has ordered the closure of the Peacekeeping Institute at the Army War College.

Perhaps he thinks that all of this death and suffering will just disappear. Perhaps he thinks that the media will simply replay over and over again the image of his triumphal landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier. Perhaps they will.

But those of us concerned about the dream of justice need to demand more. We need truth. Truth that portrays the real costs of this invasion to ourselves and to the Iraqi people. Such truth telling has started as some reporters document the extent of the deceptions leading up to this invasion. In the days ahead, we should demand that the costs of occupation be made clear to the American people as well. Where are the cameras as these dead soldiers come home? Where are the interviews with the Iraqi women, terrified of their own streets? What is happening as the Shiite majority, more favorable to Iranian theocracy than American democracy, fill in the power vacuums created by us?

The great marches of 1963 forced America to confront truths long denied. King marched with the firm conviction that the American people, finally forced to look at the whole truth, could not perpetuate the horror of a segregated society. This summer we need to march with a similar conviction. The American people, forced to look at the lies of this war, will not perpetuate the horror being done in our name.