We all love King, but remember it wasn't King's Movement, it's The People's Movement

In Alabama, as I am sure may be happening in other places in the nation, there has been an influx of talk about the Civil Rights Movement. Much talk has been hijacked by the corporate elite trying to re-write history. But much has been told with the truth and justice it deserves. I read this one today from the "Birmingham News," and it spoke to me and inspired me to write a comment back.

I want to say despite looking across from my desk every day and seeing the 1956 mug shot from the first time Brother Martin got arrested in Montgomery at 27 years old hanging on my wall, I never look at that photo and just see him and the intensity in his eyes. I see the intensity and the passion of every day people deciding it was time to take action. I see the children, and their parents, of Birmingham. The "nameless" who traveled from across the country to join in on the march from Selma to Montgomery. I see the often forgotten campaigns in Harlem, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles fighting for economic justice in "The Poor People's Campaign" and campaigns of the like. I see the oft-forgotten leaders and organizations, some small, and some who were powerhouse organizations, such as CORE, The Congress for Racial Equality, and its co-founder James L Farmar. I see the individuals who went into towns like Clayton, Alabama and went into the "wrong" laundry mat with a purpose of defiance towards injustice. I see the people who never marched but did what they could behind the scenes. People who included a Detroit mother who one day packed up, left her children and husband and said I will be back. Leaving to answer the call of the fight despite not knowing a single marcher or participant. She did it to answer the call for justice and freedom. She saw people, and she decided she needed to head Bama Bound, and pronto. She did not return. People rooting way back to the Niagara movement and beyond. It starts with one. A movement is not built on the backs of the famous. It is built on the backs of the everyday citizens who decides to respond to the call for Justice.

""We love Dr. King," Cotton said. "I love Dr. King, but it was not Dr. King's movement. He did not start the civil rights movement."... "It was started by one person here, one person there, one person over here," she said. "If you see something wrong, sometimes you may have to start an action all by yourself," Cotton said. "One person sees something wrong and starts doing something about it. People will join you if you do it with the right spirit."" - Dorthy Cotton of the SCLC.

Let us not forget movements take decades to build in full force. But in starts with individual defiance towards injustice, and resisting the status quo. It starts with a revolution of conscientiousness and awareness. It starts with one, and through your action and energy, building relationships, building brotherhoods and sisterhoods, building a family, a family who will then resist together.

"A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back -- but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you." – Marian Wright Edelman

Birmingham News Article:
http://www.al.com/living/index.ssf/2013/04/dorothy_cotton_aide_to_the_rev.html