AGR promotes violence and inaccurate history

Editors, Asheville Global Report,

After reading an AGR commentary promoting violence (“Black people have a right to rebel,” 4/26-5/2, 2001), I question AGR’s mission. It states, “We cover news underreported by the mainstream media, believing that a free exchange of information is necessary to organize for social change.” What kind of social change? Violent?

Furthermore, the pull quote selected for the commentary shows that neither the author nor AGR’s editors have an historically accurate idea of how blacks and whites united achieved justice for African-Americans—and the poor and oppressed of every race—in the 1960s.

Lorenzo Komboa Ervin says, “We are an oppressed people, who have the moral and political right to rebel...We have been...enslaved, so we must fight back.” Coretta Scott King mentions another option, how her husband “tried to channel the frustrations and anger of oppressed people into constructive courses, into massive nonviolent, though militant demonstrations.”

Ervin continues, “Truthfully none of the civil rights bills of the 1960s outlawing Southern segregation...would have been passed if the white government had not been afraid of Black people emptying in the streets. So street rebellion is effective.”

Positive change has never been the result of fear of “Black people emptying in the streets.” You empty in the streets, you play The Man’s game—throw a rock at The Man, The Man throws a bigger rock back. How does destruction bring dignity? Respect? Food on the table? “Ultimately, violence has the serious defect that it can be terminated by greater force,” said Martin Luther King. “The number available for violence is relatively small and can be countered. Conversely, nonviolence can mobilize numbers so huge there is no counterforce. Its power is such that it can be sustained by the will of its supporters not merely for days, but even for extended periods.” …

“We were not passive resisters,” Ms. King pronounced. “We were a militant organization which believed that the most powerful weapon available is nonviolence. The nonviolent Movement made a real and permanent contribution to the life of this nation. It was, and still is, powerful and effective. Martin and his colleagues spearheaded the drive for direct confrontation between the just black cause and the white power structure. Martin also did his best to prevent that confrontation from becoming a bloodbath.”

That is how the demands of the 1960s were won. By doggedly sitting in and getting hauled off to jail. By being beaten and not resisting. By being handcuffed in the middle of the night and driven for hours in a car with hostile police officers, destination unknown. By facing angry mobs on the Freedom Rides. By millions of ordinary people, highly organized and trained in nonviolence, putting their lives on the line again and again and again. “Emptying in the streets”, conversely, is an unfocused, self-defeating vent for frustration that could never move Justice forward as Martin Luther King’s nonviolent movement did. The basis of that movement was love. …

Lorenzo Komboa Ervin endorses “armed community defense, and I believe then we will see funerals on both sides.”

Funerals on both sides. Will murder break the chain of violence, or condemn another generation to its consequences? Instead, in the words of Horace Mann, “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”

The actual documentation of the Civil Rights Movement can be seen in the video series “Eyes on the Prize.” A concise story of how the movement was organized, “Journey to the Promised Land,” can be heard at www.coyotenation.org.

AGR, is peace the social change toward which you strive? If so, weigh carefully the content of opinions you publish, that they at least have a basis in fact. And take to heart Martin Luther King’s admonition, “This movement is based on the philosophy that ends and means must cohere. The means must be as pure as the end, that in the long run of history immoral and destructive means cannot bring about moral and constructive ends.”

Anna Maria Caldara
Bangor, PA